Israeli Gidi Grinstein says below that it’s essential for Israel to cultivate elites; and god knows he does. He is one of Arianna Huffington’s friends, a dinner partner on her recent trip to Israel. Tom Friedman is also a fan. Grinstein is the President and founder of the Reut Institute, which provides strategic support to the Government of Israel. "In April 2007, Reut was described as Israel’s Premier Strategy Group by Thomas Friedman."
Now read Grinstein in Haaretz, on Israel’s delegitimation. Notions embedded in this article are so skewed from reality, it is amazing. The delegitimation has nothing to do with Gaza. It’s all about antisemitism. Critics of Israel are in cahoots with Iran and should be living in Berkeley.
Turning Israel into a pariah state is central to its adversaries’ efforts. Israel is a geopolitical island. Its survival and prosperity depend on its relations with the world in trade, science, arts and culture – all of which rely on its legitimacy. When the latter is compromised, the former may be severed, with harsh political, social and economic consequences.
The transformative change taking place stems from an unholy alliance with some European elites. The radical, brutal, sometimes-fascist Islamic states and organizations that reject Israel share aims with Europeans that deny the right of Jews to self-determination..
the delegitimization effort would continue even if Israel were to sign a comprehensive peace treaty with the PLO: Indeed, the forces that drive this effort are not Palestinian moderates, but rather people who oppose Israel’s very existence. An agreement would only fuel their campaign to converge around the next outstanding issue that comes up between Israel and the Arab world.
Israel’s delegitimacy is propagated in a few global metropolises – such as London, Madrid and the Bay Area – that are hubs of international NGOs, media outlets, academia and multinational corporations. Therefore, an extraordinary effort is required to respond to and isolate Israel’s delegitimizers. We must play offense and not just defense.
The most effective barrier to fundamental delegitimization is personal relationships. In every major country, Israel and its supporters must develop and sustain personal connections with the entire elite in business, politics, arts and culture, science and academia.
The transformative change taking place stems from an unholy alliance with some European elites. The radical, brutal, sometimes-fascist Islamic states and organizations that reject Israel share aims with Europeans that deny the right of Jews to self-determination..
‘Unholy Alliance’ is a term that has been used to describe the relationship between the politics of German National Socialism and the occult. In this case you can choose (or not) whether the ‘Islamo-fascists’ represent corporate fascism and European elites are the priests of the occult, or the other way round, but certainly anyone who questions the legitimacy of Israel is an Odin-worshipping Nazi. No delusional hyperbole there.
Sounds antisemitic to me!
Yup. “Jews control the elite opinionmakers.”
It’s really delusional that Zionists think that people simply want to deny them self-determination. As if Jewish self-determination in reality (not in theory) was benign and came at no cost to anyone else.
Gee, Cliff, are trying to make Dick Witty’s day, give him his reason for being on this unemployable Friday morning? I can already hear him tap dancing on his computer key board–yes, it will be the same painfully awkward “whitebread” dance, and in tune with David Duke’s wooden prance of “continuity.”
As quoted; ‘The most effective barrier to fundamental delegitimization is personal relationships. In every major country, Israel and its supporters must develop and sustain personal connections with the entire elite in business, politics, arts and culture, science and academia.’ Yes, as it was shown by history; it is the elite (particularly academic, arts, culture, politics, and business) that does the thinking, the commoner does the dying…so goes Russia, France, Philippines, US, England, Germany, Spain, South Africa, Italy, and so on…
Zionists want to ingratiate themselves into the Left basically. They already have the ‘elites’ as a matter of definition since they themselves are elite.
No one is going to talk about Jewishness in any meaningful context in the mainstream, as it relates to ideas of nationalism and political capital.
What we will continue to get is more efforts to humanize the Jewish State, like Abba Eban’s various catch-phrases.
Wasn’t Spielberg going to produce a reality (LOL) TV show about some hospital in Israel or something? ‘Where Arab and Jewish doctors work side-by-side’.
Yea.
False paradigm of parity. Israelis suffer, Palestinians suffer, it’s soooooo complicated! Let’s just let them work it out! Holocaust, Holocaust, antisemitism, antisemitism!
If you take a look around the most popular websites on the net – ones which have forums like IMDB for example – the political discourse is bent toward the right.
On this issue, you get a lot of slapstick racism and bigotry towards Arabs and Muslims.
And conversely, a lot of slaptstick support for Jews (of course European).
A lot of ‘Muslims want to establish world-wide caliphate’, ‘Islam is a death cult’, ‘Israel is an advanced society surrounded by people who want to destroy it, out of jealousy’. That sort of thing.
To even begin a discussion with those people you have to deal w/ their presumptions.
People should do a study on this, since we now have access to the hasbara handbook as well. And just formulate Palestinian-camp responses w/ citations from all the historical evidence. Draw parallels to other colonial conflicts and pay attention to logical fallacies that Zionists regularly employ.
This latest strategy is just another way to avoid the issue and focus on tactically shut-down the discussion. So they want to ingratiate themselves with ‘elites’.
It reminds me of that quote from Herzl, where he said that the Zionists would supply their supporters with a river of gold or something like that.
This is just disgusting. They will basically buy people off. People who are so spineless anyways.
zamaaz, no one, no time, has ever accused Thomas Friedman of doing any “thinking”. And he doesn’t seem inclined towards the other option.
The “elite” they want to schmooze with, of course, but it’s funny, nowhere do they mention the good will or cultivating of their favorite,
“the Jewish People”. Isn’t that great! Israel has grown to the point that she doesn’t need us any more. Good-bye, Columbus!
Grinstein must be getting really nervous to blow his annual propaganda allowance on one Haaretz article. We must be doing something right :-)
Sometimes it seems like Israel is every antisemites dream state.
It surely can be. You can blame anything the ‘Jewish State’ does on ‘Jewishness’!
Cite some messed up part in the Torah. Or find some crazy quote from a Zionist leader and you’re set.
It happens all the time to Muslims.
And look at some examples of anti-Islamic and anti-Arab ‘intellectualism’ :
link to forums.gametrailers.com
This is probably the extent to which many people in this country will think on the subject.
It’s like this on most popular website forums that have a ‘Politics’ section. Everyone posting based on conjecture. Lots of antisemitism-button-mashing. And lots of Islam-bashing.
Other popular websites like IMDB.com are worse. I can’t think of a single forum (not blog) on the internet where there is a substantial amount of posters who will counter the Zionist/American jingoist [often for both, racist/bigoted/chauvinist] perspective.
Maybe, but Grinstein deserves to have his propaganda license revoked for this shoddy piece of work. It’s just so crude. And I say this as a former (albeit junior) member of the profession.
Note all the positive or sympathy words associated with Israel (island, survival, prosperity, trade, science, arts, culture, self-determination), and all the negative words associated with its “enemies” (unholy alliance, European [!] elites, radical, brutal, fascist, Islamic, reject, deligitimization). Note the finessing of “Islamo-fascist” to “sometimes-fascist Islamic states and organizations”. Note the liberal smoke screen – this isn’t about peace, and I’m not attacking “moderate Palestinians” – followed by the “Israel’s very existence” phosphorescent magenta herring. He even throws in “multinational corporations” toward the end, not to mention that nefarious Bay Area! The whole thing is then wrapped up with another “arts, culture, science” reference.
Ok, so he wants to make important friends, but who’d want to hang out with such an inept, over-the-top hack? It’s embarrassing. Oh, Arianna and Tom. Guess that answers my question.
I suspect this was meant purely for internal consumption and not to be shown to the goyim.
What are we that stupid? Kinda shoots the “Jewish genius” theory to hell, doesn’t it? Besides, doesn’t Grinstein he know that anyone (even Bay-Area European elite radical sometimes-fascist Islamic multinational corporations) can read Ha’aretz nowdays?
C’mon, do we have to go on using that word? You know, if that’s the standard, anybody can write in talking about “kikes” or similar.
Expunge, I beg you, that word from your vocabulary. As the boss told his secretary, it’s “lousy”.
I agree with Mooser, Shmuel. But appreciate you address the absurdity of “secretly” addressing the “ingroup” in Haaretz, which completely ignores not only Gidi Grinstein’s central aim of cultivating the non-Jewish movers and shakers out there but also the media which Shmuel rightly points out.
“Goyim” always reminds me of the Protocols … Is there an edited edition in the States with context, text and annotations like over here Jeffrey L. Sammon’s (Leavenworth Professor of German Literature Emeritus) edition? I never managed to finish reading one of the diverse versions before his edition. It was hard enough to read some of the fiction sources, like Sir John Retcliff aka Herman Goedsche’s Biarritz.
sorry, Sir John Retcliffe.
Goyim? I don’t like it either. Non-Jew works fine, because it’s from an outside perspective that I presume is benign/neutral – a statement of fact.
Victims have this annoying habit of trying to delegitimize their oppressors.
You have no idea how infuriating it is, that reproaching look on the face under your boot.
The math is inescapable regarding the I-P situation. The whole world sees it except
the USA and Israel–keep repeating the same dysfunctional pattern, and see where you get:
link to thejerusalemfund.org
Perhaps average Americans might start thinking about it when the finally realize
that our dole to Israel could be use here (Black Caucus, where are you–oh that’s right,
also beholden to AIPAC steering funds), coupled with–what will it take, Israeli attack on Iran, using Saudi Arabian air space–this year? Give anyone enough rope and they will hang themselves. I see Uncle Sam and Uncle Israel determined to believe in
the power of the elite (the ultimate whores). Why should any historic model not
be there for all not to see? That’s what’s called normal in human affairs.
How many GIs identify with the Pals? That’s a lot to ask, given the individual GIs
background and lack of political contacts. They should.
You can’t be that impatient. Try and remember what must be accomplished: an entire religious community, decentralized except for Zionism, where it is highly organised and effective, will have to come together, and completely reverse fifty years of thinking, and then find the will and organisation to accomplish the kind of task it has heretofore never taken on.
It’s always seemed to me that Zionism is the kind of thing which will produce schism, before it can be responded to on that basis. Can a decentralized religion schism?
Israel, of course, could beat us to the punch by forming relationships with the kind of elites who call themselves, without irony, “goyim”.
I see the subject elites, subject of Israel-First cultivating, as those who have a secret pleasure in watching the Jerry Springer Show; what a way to gain confidence by looking at trailer trash and inner city trash in the full throes of their limitations!
It also helps that your career depends on it.
The whole arab (and Persian and Kurd, etc) world is simply those screened for viewing, as by Jerry Springer; he takes his screening and hosting manipulation right to the bank, as do our elite ridden by AIPAC.
The “goyim” are Jerry’s audience, his biggest chorus of chanters; Jerry is–of course, Jerry, plain and simple. It’s all about the criteria for getting on the show, both in the “acts” and in the chosen aired shows (further edited, to show only hail Jerry).
The show goes on.
And don’t you just love those GGW DVD and CD commercials?
What could be better than showing handicapped people killing each other?
Midget wars? Cock fights?
I’d like to put the elite in an arena and watch them spit at each other. And take
a few hundred random names out of the phone book, give them rocks, and let
them throw at will into the arena.
link to 74.125.47.132
What I want to know is this: When is someone on the show (hopefully more than one guest) going to turn out to be an experienced and fit fighter, with the requisite skills and energy to give that “Steve” guy the pounding he so thoroughly deserves. For that, I would pay admission.
You mean that goy Steve guy who was uppity enough to say to himself, if Jerry can do it, so can I?” Take it too, to the bank? Poor Steve, he doesn’t realize
it’s an advantage to be a member of a minority when making the majority laughing stock characters for I am better than you entertainment–what’s not to like about reality TV? The match made in hell: Jerry Springer versus Sarah Palin. The former Ohio city mayor versus the former Alaskan governor… isn’t that something to look forward to next election cycle? Which one is your role model for dealing with Hobbes’s world? Sorry, you can’t pick Senator Lieberman or McCain, and Rahm I is too evasive for you.
No, I mean, (it’s been years since I even glanced at the show, these days, who has time for life’s more refined pleasures?) Steve the “bodyguard” the one who always separates the battling balboostas and their assorted consorts. Just once, I would love to see one of the contestants (gee, how do you think they get the results they want, as against every social and self-conscious restraint? Or do those people not have those things?) haul off and knock him out. Best of all, it should be when he isn’t looking! Wham!
He is every goon in the world to me, that Steve.
The problem for Grinstein’s plan is that what he calls”sustainment of personal relationships” is largely based on deception and fear. His target audience of ‘opinion makers’ in my opinion has a greater capability for ‘bullshit detection’ than the general public. Once they are clued in that the story they have been getting has been inaccurate and their bullshit detectors are actually switched on, no amount of hasbara can whitewash the central defining characteristic of an increasingly fascist Israeli state: an obsession with a multi-stage campaign of occupation, ethnic cleansing, and colonization.
Fear of damage to occupational success and livelihood from discrimination based on false charges or insinuations of antisemitism has hithertofore been the weapon of choice to manage professionals, especially politicians, who have seen through the myth of the traditional Israeli narrative and recognize the damage the Israeli Lobby is doing to America. The primary problem with this social control mechanism is that it is fundamentally unstable on a long time scale. Fear changes individual behavior, but it doesn’t change hearts and minds, and its efficacy is fundamentally correlated with how widespread it is. Intimidation not only doesn’t buy you love, it buys you hostility.
Social processes of interpersonal transfer of information and behavior control are highly non-linear. Good systems of control, e.g. the reward (insurance breaks) and punishment (tickets, jail) system for maintenance of basic standards of vehicular driving safety, have genuine support minimizing the non-linearity in response from small changes (including natural variation) in driver attitudes, e.g. drivers receive a decreased chance of death or injury inflicted by others in return for their efforts to minimize careless behaviors of their own that would threaten others. The Israeli Lobby’s cultivation of a culture of fear is entirely one-way. One doesn’t get anything positive back from toeing the line, only a lack of a negative, e.g. being made an example of the cost of defiance. The genie is already out of the bottle. There is safety in numbers, and once the numbers reach a critical mass where effective punitive measures no longer can be applied, change in level of support, involuntary or otherwise, are far more likely to shift to hostility than apathy.
Yeah, CM, so how long will it take for Chris Matthews to step up to the plate furnished by the 1st Amendment? I mean, Jeez. And how about Rachel Maddow or Keith Obermann? The genie has actually been out of the bottle for a long time–does only Pat B smell the perfume? Oh that’s right, Pat B =David Duke. Back to you, Wolf Blitzer.
Those folks are only the tip of the iceberg of the ‘opinion makers’. An example of the non-linearity to which I refer would be one of them seeing the truth, prominently and accurately telling it on in prime-time, and not getting punished for it. I think enough of the rest would then step up to the plate, at least in proportion to its legitimate newsworthiness, i.e., its not the only story out there so it would be unreasonable to expect any general topic network journalist to focus exclusively on the Israeli Lobby and Israeli occupation, ethnic cleansing, and colonization. Their focus on the story would ensure that much more accurate information would be transmitted to the general public in a much faster way than it is currently being spread in universities by concerned students, and by activist groups and independent media. I view the work of these groups as critical to setting the stage for a revolution in MSM. It may take decades, and we may not live to see it, but it will happen.
I wish to be clear on what I consider to be the objective of these processes: an end to Israeli occupation, ethnic cleansing, and colonization, justice for Palestinians, and a stable state where the rights of both Jews, Muslims, and Christians are respected. If this cannot be accomplished then I think it completely appropriate to work for a complete termination of American political, financial, military, and diplomatic support, both public and private, for Israel, with consequent delegitimization of American political Zionism, e.g. the registration of AIPAC and all other Zionist groups as agents of a foreign government, and painful legal consequences for those who violate the law. Israelis have shown repeatedly by their behavior that the carrot will not work without the stick.
One doesn’t get anything positive back from toeing the line, …
I’ve changed my mind. This is incorrect, although I do think that rewards are often quite small on an individual level, e.g. most national politicians actually don’t receive in my opinion that much money from the Israeli Lobby, and more focused on institutions, e.g. the Democratic Party and university philanthropy. J.J. Goldberg, a senior columnist at “The Forward”, has commented on the amount of political contributions from Israeli Lobby groups.
oops
J.J. Goldberg, a senior columnist at “The Forward”, has commented on …
“Once they are clued in that the story they have been getting has been inaccurate….”
Colin, my friend, don’t you read Glenn Greenwald? And that’s not by far his only word on the subject. Ever read Bob Somerby?
They would seem to say that the bullshit detectors got turned off long ago, and the only thing they worry about is making the story fit their melodramatic Manichaeism and propensity to believe the pelf is always right.
I can’t see the MSM changing their line on Israel.
When I say ‘opinion making class’ (OMC) I’m not just talking about media elites. I’m talking about the upper 5-10% of society who run businesses, are military officers, clergy, lawyers, or middle or senior grade civil servants, teach in high schools and universities, etc. People who are considered respectable in their communities, and set the tone and drift of conversation. Sure, they are ‘guided’ by the information they get from the Olberman’s and Greenwald’s, but they tend to be life-long learners and can and do think for themselves at a far higher rate than the general population who work for them.
In short, I’m talking about people who have functional bullshit detectors that haven’t gone off yet. I would say Olberman’s has gone off, but he is self-censored. Greenwald’s and Phil’s and Adam’s have gone off, and they are contributing to changing the rest of the OMC. It is a coupled non-linear process, and just because the guys at the very top don’t play ball, and much of the OMC hasn’t clued in yet, doesn’t change that increasing portions of the OMC are catching on to the truth, and that that process will eventually influence the guys at the top, which will catalyze the process amongst the OMC and eventually the rest of the general public.
I realize that I am making a lot of abstractions, and that I am working from the assumptions that pro-colonization Zionists are lying to everyone else, don’t have justice on their side, and that most people abhor ethnic cleansing and colonization. I think these assumptions rest on pretty solid foundations.
Colin, I have to leave again, so don’t bother answering, but I think this is the wrong premise:
is largely based on deception and fear.
I doubt he thinks he is deceiving, he in fact believes that the elites, since more educated, can be more easily convinced of the righteousness of his case. Mooser offered a explanatory model for this: Ziocaine.
The main idea is that antisemitism will stay with us eternally while other more minor prejudices will and are losing force. From the core of this model no matter what you do and how you act the “majority” of non-Jews will always despise you if you are Jewish, so you basically do not need to need to consider a relation between your actions and the response of the world out there. But this “majority” can only be controlled by the movers and shakers. This is the Janus face of the Protocols, in which the European extreme right projected their own will to power on “the Jews” or more precisely their leaders.
There is not only a circle of violence but also a circle of thinking out of which there seems to be no escape. Or as Mooser suggests, it will be really hard to accomplish.
projected their own will to power on “the Jews” or more precisely their leaders.
while planning to strongly control the majority. Go back to Machiavelli but always remember the story is much older.
I doubt he thinks he is deceiving …
You are probably right. However, he is deceiving people, including himself. I think a lot of these pro-colonists Zionists live in cognitive bubbles where they can pretend they are the good guys and that everyone (except naturally recalcitrant Muslims) who doesn’t think so just hasn’t been exposed to enough ‘truth’.
My point wasn’t to comment on his perceptions, but the perceptions of those in the OMC, both before and after they find out they have been getting fed a line. I went through the same process. I was a knee-jerk supporter of Israel until I ascertained that the story about the Israeli ‘high-fivers’ celebrating and filming the trade towers as they burned was indeed true. Confirming articles from both Haaretz and the Forward (among others) convinced me, and that single piece of data, Israeli government operatives documenting and cheering on the mass murder of my countryman, led me to question everything I thought was true about Israel. I discovered that very little was.
I hope he and like-minded Zionist propagandists stay in their bubbles. As long as they do their game plan will be flawed and they will make mistakes like Grinstein’s that will hasten the end of their dominance in US foreign policy formulation and execution.
Chelsea Clinton, the daughter of one of the most prominent families in American politics, has chosen a Jew for a husband. The groom-to-be, Marc Mezvinsky, is the member of a family of businesspeople and politicians. Further proof that Jews can be found in the very center of the American establishment: The former president and the current secretary of state will be the in-laws of a Jewish guy.
With all of our appreciation and very long friendship with Bill and Hillary Clinton, and despite the fact that the latter’s image serves as a role model to many women across the world – we could look at the same story from an opposite angle, and we should be concerned by it.
link to ynetnews.com
Oh noes. Hand wringing so desparate that you can hear the bones cracking. How about a little concern for the Clintons, what with their daughter marrying into the Mezvinsky criminal enterprise?
You are making this up, right? Not about Chelsea marrying a Jewish guy, but that article in ynet came out of the Onion, right? Never mind, went and looked. Ouch, ouch! Good freakin lord, what are we doing to ourselves?
are you suggesting the equivalent of hawkish Zionist intermarriage rules for American Christians? No Jewish partners allowed, marc b?
No, I was just being a wise ass, actually. I couldn’t care less who marries whom.
yes, mooser, judaism has jumped the shark.
The main problem with this article is the term “delegimation”. It implies that there was some legitimacy in the first place.
You pointing that out just shows how much bullshit people have to cut through just to get to the crux of the issue.
“deny the right of Jews to self-determination.”
If “self -determination” means the right to set up a state, then there is no such right for Jews.
Setting up a state requires territory. The right to set up a state in the territory belongs to the people who live in that territory. (The inhabitants are, after all, the persons who will be most affected by the exercise of the right. )
Since Jews are spread over the world in a variety of territories, they have no right as Jews. Their rights are those of inhabitants of the territory, by virtue of being inhabitants of the territory.
Australian Jews have the same rights of self-determination as other Australians. They have these rights because they are Australians resident in Australia. And they have no additional rights of self-determination that are not shared by all other Australians.
Very clearly put.
Excellent post.
“Australian Jews have the same rights of self-determination as other Australians. They have these rights because they are Australians resident in Australia. And they have no additional rights of self-determination that are not shared by all other Australians. ”
I’m surprised that noboby stepped forward to make it clear that Australia was founded on land stolen from Aboriginals. I guess only Americans get the America treatment.
Indeed. The rights of the Aboriginals were ignored by the settlers. The consequences of this are still a major problem in Australia.
Cecilie Surasky on Muzzlewatch:
link to muzzlewatch.com