Benno Schmidt, the chair of the trustees of CUNY, has called on the executive committee to reconvene to reconsider the decision about Tony Kushner's honorary degree. So Kushner will get his honorary. He thinks he can make everyone happy, Schmidt. But he refuses to condemn Jeffrey Wiesenfeld's scabrous racist language:
If it were appropriate for us to take politics into account in deciding whether to approve an honorary degree, I might agree with Trustee Wiesenfeld, whose political views on the matters in controversy are not far distant from my own. But it is not right for the Board to consider politics in connection with the award of honorary degrees except in extreme cases not presented by the facts here. The proposed honorary degree for Mr. Kushner would recognize him for his extraordinary talent and contribution to the American theater.
Writes my friend: "I might agree with trustee Wiesenfeld, whose political views on the matters in controversy are not far distant from my own." Meaning that Schmidt thinks Palestinians *might not* be human as opposed to *are not" human?
As has been said in various other threads here, this is serving to peel away the veneer that allows such attitudes to safely remain in shadow.
It’s about time!
So many recent posts here on the Kushner affair, and rightly so, but I’d urge those dropping in on Mondoweiss to read this unusually forthright short article, considering the whole practical “end game,” which I now take the liberty to paste here in full–I apologize in advance for interupting this thread–it was published in the San Francisco Chronicle on May 4th last:
“Israel’s Future”
By Ahmed Moor
In an April 27 op-ed, Rabbi Doug Kahn accurately quoted me as having written that “ending the occupation doesn’t mean anything if it doesn’t mean upending the Jewish State itself.” He did not take the line out of context, nor did he misrepresent what I intended to say; democracy in Palestine/Israel and the realization of full human and political rights there for Palestinians means the end of Jewish privilege in my birth country.
The conversation around the Palestinian-Israeli conflict is wrapped in a myth: That the Palestinians will one day have a viable state of their own in the West Bank and Gaza. The reality is that there will be no viable Palestinian state, ever. There are three main reasons for that:
First, the process of ethnic cleansing that created Israel and made my grandparents refugees in 1948 has not stopped. Israel continues to ethnically cleanse the West Bank and East Jerusalem of Palestinians to implant Jews in their place. There are now more than 500,000 Jewish colonists living in the midst of 3.5 million Palestinians. No one is going to remove these settlers from the lands their state has stolen for them.
Second, Israel relies on Palestinian water to survive. The Jewish state controls the mountain and coastal aquifers that sit under Palestinian land. Relinquishing control of those resources is not an option for any Israeli leader.
Finally, the Jordan Valley is too strategically important from a military perspective for Israel to withdraw from it. Israeli army regulars will always have a presence there. The Jordan Valley sits in the West Bank, which means that the Israeli army will always be in the West Bank.
There are more realities that bear on the question of whether the Jewish state will continue to exist.
Twenty-five percent of Israelis (not counting refugees like me in the Occupied Territories who don’t have an Israeli passport or citizenship) are not Jewish. America is more Christian than Israel is Jewish. There are fewer African Americans proportionally in America than there are Palestinians in Israel. And all of those non-Jewish Israelis are having more children than the Jewish ones are.
In Israel, they call this the “demographic problem.” I don’t know how they propose to solve their demographic problem.
Today, there is numerical parity between Jews and Palestinians in the Holy Land. And since we Palestinians do not accept the argument that it was necessary to ethnically cleanse Palestine to establish a Jewish state, we are inconveniently calling for our rights.
The late Tony Judt described the Jewish state as an anachronism. Perhaps if Israel had been established in 1848 the indigenous population — the Palestinians — would have faded from view. But history had a different plan for the world’s last colony.
Many of us in Palestine/Israel, including many non-Zionist Jews, are working toward real democracy in the country. I am confident that we will succeed in creating a race-blind society. Perhaps Rabbi Kahn will help us achieve our humanist goal.
Ahmed Moor is a graduate student in public policy at Harvard University’s Kennedy School of Government.
Amazing! — some truth in our MSM when it comes to the I/P issue.
But wait! I tried to find a web link to this remarkable article of truth in the San Francisco Chronicle, and guess what — I couldn’t find it — (only a cached version)! Has the SF. Chronicle scrubbed the page — and why? However, I can still find Doug Khan’s piece on the “A campaign to delegitimize Israel”.
Is this yet another “successfully?” example of the “Israel Action Network” funded and managed by the Jewish Federations of North America (JFNA) in partnership with the Jewish Council for Public Affairs (JCPA) to stamp out free speech when it comes to Israel?
Federations, JCPA teaming to fight delegitimization of Israel
link to jta.org
The Jewish Federations of North America (JFNA), an organization that receives federal funding (taxpayers $$). I would like to know the amount of federal oversight that is used to make sure that the federal dollars handed over to the JFNA (and other Jewish) organizations are actually going to the earmarked projects they are supposed to going to?
Congress approves $19 million in security funding – 2011
( Jewish Federations of North America)
link to jta.org
I’m emailing this dude to ask what’s happened to Ahmed Moor’s article.
Johnson, Jay
Opinion Page, Assistant Editor
jjohnson@sfchronicle.com
Hello Jay,
Please can you tell me why I can no longer read, nor link to Ahmed Moor’s “Israel’s Future, remarkable and insightful responding to Rabbi Kahn’s article “A campaign to delegitimize Israel” which I can still read and link to? Only a cached version of Mr Moor’s article remains:
link to webcache.googleusercontent.com
I look forward to hearing from you.
Thank you Jay!
Sincerely
edit button went too soon :( “a remarkable and insightful response to”
Homeland Security has given them that amount every year since 911….out of something like 275 organizations that get funds, 253 of them are Jewish oganizations….19 million is 2/3 of the entire HSD budget for domestic groups for security.
In other vein……another example of having to pick up the bill for Israel..
“EU covers Israel’s suspended tax money to PA
May 6, 2011
(JTA) — The European Union approved an extra $124 million in emergency aid to the Palestinians to supplement tax moneys frozen by Israel.
“It is important that access to essential public services remains uninterrupted and the right to social services is respected,” Reuters on Friday quoted Catherine Ashton, the E.U. foreign policy chief, as saying.
Israel stopped payment this week on $105 million in owes the Palestinian Authority on customs duties and other taxes because of the unity agreement the P.A.’s Fatah Party signed with Hamas, a banned terrorist group.
The E.U. money would go to essential employees and to families in need”
Money,money,money…it’s always money. If it were even possible to ferret out and add up all the money they have gotten from the world everyone’s head would explode.
American, very astute comment. Homeland Security amounts to securing to the max the 3% or less Jewish portion of the Amerian population. Why should American homeland security be any different than US foreign policy’s securing the Jewish Israeli population? Nothing makes me more certain of Amerian goy naivete and gullibilty than following the American goy taxpayer money. As a seconday support of my views disregarding jews, how about Emer Gantry?
Time for goy americans to wake up:
“When I was a child, I understood as a child and spake as a child. When I became a man, I put away childish things.” (1 Corinthians 13:11)
American: “…In other vein……another example of having to pick up the bill for Israel..”
Yes, as well as the State Dept picking up the bill for Israel’s PR and Marketing campaigns (including coordinating with the JCPA[?]) under the “Office To Monitor and Combat Anti-Semitism”. The Office To Monitor and Combat Anti-Semitism apparently being only a “satellite office” of the State Dept. under Bush, but is now an integral part of the Hillary State Dept. on the 7th floor. Hannah Rosenthal, Special Envoy to Monitor and Combat Anti-Semitism. U.S. Department of State. also most notably former head of the Jewish Council for Public Affairs (JCPA) from 2000-2005, as well being, interestingly enough, on the advisory council of J-Street.
Ms. Rosenthal spoke at the Mittleman Jewish Community [April 2011]
link to jewishreview.org
Oh, the problems with the lobbyist and government “revolving door”.
Yet another interesting facet of this thing is what seems the vast degree that Kushner’s defense—put up by himself and, it seems to me, most of his supporters other than those here admittedly—is fundamentally grounded on the proposition that “No no, Kushner is just *mildly* critical of Israel….”
Wonder what “extreme cases” in Mr. Schmidt’s view would be that justified denying an honorary degree to someone based on their politics? Certainly I suspect things might have been very different if instead of this involving Mr. Kushner with his mere mild criticisms of Israel, it was someone else who was prominently, harshly critical of it.
Indeed I suspect they’d be so different that a latter such person would never have been nominated for an honorary CUNY degree at *all.*
Recall Vanessa Redgrave, hired as a performer for a concert by the Boston Symphony, then fired by the BSO (after rumpus by big donors) because she was a strong supporter of the PLO. (And they say BSD against Israelis is unfair! Heavens to Betsy, it appears that they practice BSD.)
They do practice BSD. Beautiful insight, lying in plain sight. Like their own conspiracies eg, Everyone’s out to get the Jews.
Wonder what “extreme cases” in Mr. Schmidt’s view would be that justified denying an honorary degree to someone based on their politics?
The CUNY computer science department could probably write a program to determine the answer, based upon the number of cannibals nominated for honorary degrees, the number of edible trustees available to vote, the number of appeals and petitions coming in each hour, & so forth – based on CUNY’s existing missionary algorithm ….;-)
“Yet another interesting facet of this thing is what seems the vast degree that Kushner’s defense—put up by himself and, it seems to me, most of his supporters other than those here admittedly—is fundamentally grounded on the proposition that “No no, Kushner is just *mildly* critical of Israel….””
Yep. The NYT just put out an editorial today (May 7) saying that Kushner’s statements on Israel were not all that remarkable, though they disagreed with them. You know they aren’t disagreeing with his claim that Israel has the right to exist–they just can’t bring themselves to agree with his criticisms.
It’s a step forward that they admit his views aren’t that remarkable, but you’re also right to suspect that someone just a bit more critical of Israel (and without the shield of being America’s greatest living playwright) would be hung out to dry without all of this support.
The American landscape contains Zionist-racists (the *not human* school of thought) and fellow travelers (politicians, businessmen, media people, people who depend on these) who know (or think they know, which comes to the same thing) that their livelihood or social position depends on “making a good record” on Zionism/Israel.
Until there is a real collision between one of these and someone espousing a strongly pro-Palestinian (and strongly anti-expansionist-Zionist) position, and the latter wins hands-down in a a very public way, the fellow-travelers will continue to make the same calculations-of-interest (and so will the expansionist-Zionists).
How would it be otherwise? So. Who is Benno Schmidt? American? A New Yorker? Three guesses what his politics are on this issue so close to us.
Why, pabelmont, he’s what else? A top ivy-league scholar of US constitutional law, specialing in the 1st Amendment. If memory serves, he’s been a top ivy league university dean here and there along the way. But you know that, I bet.
According to Wiesenfeld, Kushner is a Jewish anti-semite because he says Israel engages in ethnic cleansing, a blood-libel. He also says Jews/ Israelis don’t have a culture that worships death, but the Palestinians do. Is Kushner right about his own people’s culture? Here’s a look at the tradition of martyrdom within Jewish culture: link to thenation.com
I would call this sort of worshiping death…..more like capitalizing on death really.
New Israeli ID cards to commemorate Holocaust dead
Published May 05, 2011
Associated Press
– Israel is unveiling new identity cards for its citizens that will commemorate the Jews killed in the Nazi Holocaust of World War II.
The serial numbers will begin at 6 million, the number of Jews who perished in the genocide. The new cards, to be introduced in the coming months, will also include six Stars of David, representing the 6 million victims.
Baruch Dadon, head of the new ID card project in Israel’s Interior Ministry, said a government committee tasked with planning the updated, biometric cards came up with the idea to incorporate Holocaust symbolism into the design.
“We haven’t forgotten them,” said Dadon of the Holocaust victims. “They are with us … and they will be with us in the future.”
‘New Israeli ID cards to commemorate Holocaust dead”
This is absolutely ghoulish; they’re branding the Holocaust dead.
Woody, more like emotionally branding the living, eh? Sort of like issuing dog tags with your stuff on one side, and a Shoah victim’s on the other. That way you can be Baruch Goldstein AND Anne Frank–like magic! Wonder if they match up the blood types they stamp in, so to continue the analogy?
‘The new cards, to be introduced in the coming months, will also include six Stars of David, representing the 6 million victims.’
To Woody’s comment about ‘branding’ — a future generation, ignorant of history, probably will think the Magen David is a postwar corporate logo whose six points refer to the six million.
Now they just need a service-marked slogan to go with it.
>> Israel is unveiling new identity cards for its citizens that will commemorate the Jews killed in the Nazi Holocaust of World War II.
That is some kind of twisted. I wonder if Israelis – the ones who don’t feel they need to “Worship the Holocaust!” – will be able to opt out of this snazzy card and get a regular identity card instead.
Hi eljay. From what I read about the new ID cards, the only change will not be in what appears now on any ID card, but the replacement cards and any new originals will bear a card serial number representing one of the standard six million dead. By the numbers then, maybe only the ID cards for Jewish Israelis will bear such a serial number? I could be all wet on this as I just glanced at a bit of news about this a few days ago. The idea reminds me of that museum where if you visit you are issued an individual visitor ID fact card on an individual who died in the Shoah, so he or she’s ghost is walking with you as you roam through the museum.
>> Citizen May 7, 2011 at 9:27 am
Yeah, according to this article, it does seem like the only identifiers are the serial # (starting at 6 million) and the Stars of David. Thankfully, it’s not more blatant.
Love this quote, though: “We are the state of the Jews,” said Dadon. “I think this was necessary.”
What a wonderful, supremacist “f*ck you” slap in the face to all non-Jewish Israelis.
this holocaust nostalgia is strange. i recently saw a TV commercial appealing for charitable donations to help holocaust survivors, showing shots of holocaust survivors living in squalor. how about israel take care of the survivors instead of spending so much time worshipping the dead?
marc b, is that the commercial that always plays during the Glen Beck show? It shows incredibly old & impoverished jews living in apparently some vague part of the former USSR, where, it’s directly implied, the (atheist Gentile) PTB there now are leaving them to die in their lonely misery? With the data following that allows all Glen Beck junkies to donate to help them out? Mmmmm, they should get Sarah Palin to hep, as in “Shake n bake, n Ah hepped!”
That would send in those dollars from the US population that can afford them least. I mean, can you imagine what a joke this commerical is in Scarsdale? Just between themselves, of course.
citizen, the only reason i would ever watch beck is for the possible entertainment of value of seeing someone’s mental decomposition on TV. this commercial was on in the middle of the afternoon when one of the local bigs (ABC/NBC/CBS) was selling infomercial time. it just struck me as bizarre that israel would sit idly by while these survivors were re-using tea bags because they were so poor.
marc b, I understand & empathize. But you need to get a gander at the commerical I am talking about–let me know, how it compares to whatever one you saw, ok? I don’t really watch Beck, but I put him on in the background periodically, occasionally glancing to see his physical drama antics. He’s a real clown show man. For awhile, I did watch his show directly, marveling how he connects some dots on his blackboard and never others, which obviously he has the brains to connect. To me, he’s a perfect example of a guy full front to enhance the dollars and power in his pocket, a real grass roots opportunist, juggling the current conflicting political groups for his own advancement. If you ever wante to see what Hitler learned as a young man in Vienna, look at Beck’s antics and his chalkboard, both as to what it shows and doesn’t show in connecting the dots. What you will see is what is the opportunistic tie that binds between Nazi careerists and Zionists careerists. Beck is the gentile Dershowitz, as he would have been the young Hitler in his time. Neither are really up to the job, perhaps because neither were ever aspiring fine artists in a milieu that was, or was it not, so political? You gotta admit, although Hitler was really good at painting landscapes and buildings, etc, he left a lot to be desired when he painted human beings. Point is, in part, neither Dershie or Beck can paint at all.
@ Citizen,
Very interesting article….very convincing.
That late Baruch Kimmerling “is” an interesting man.
Not that it matters much:
Arendt wouldn’t have known the dimensions of this whole bureaucratic machinery, hadn’t she been hired to approve or disapprove the publication of Raul Hilberg’s thesis shortly before. Hilberg never forgave her for advising only one volume of it should be published. But she extensively relied on his research in her own book on the Eichmann trial.
If I remember correctly, Raul Hilberg also complained about gate-keepers in Israeli archives in his short autobiography. The politics of Memory
Concerning martyrdom, in this context I think the religious origins of the sacrifice may be interesting. Abraham’s Curse Doesn’t religion already contain a nationalist core, national myth that can be adopted in the secular nationalist field?
Since it surfaced in RW’s comments lately I will take a closer look into this.
Chilton’s chapter on the Epistle to the Hebrews, a milestone in the separation of Judaism and Christianity, is interesting both in itself and a glimpse of one phase in the endless dispute between those who believe in a more Jewish Jesus (Chilton) and in a more Hellenistic Jesus (Crossan). How powerful and disturbing a figure the Lamb of God is.
Yitzhak Laor’s ‘Myths of Liberal Zionism’ offers a useful account of how the near-sacrifice of Isaac is exploited in modern Israeli literature.
Euripides’ Hecuba has a mighty speech describing the sacrifice of Hecuba’s daughter Polyxena by the victorious Greeks. It doesn’t work, in that Hecuba is emboldened and the Greeks gain nothing – a good theological point, perhaps.
Citizen, this is a great article you quote – thanks for bringing it to my attention. That – and the books mentioned – I will use for a piece I am working on.
BTW, this article mentions that Hannah Arendt’s books were not translated into Hebrew for the longest time. That explains, finally why I never as much as heard of Arendt till I came to the US.
On another note – my late father apparently knew Rudolph Kastner reasonably well. The torrid controversy surrounding this character and deeds kind of clarify why Kastner’s name was mentioned in my household in whispers, and the conversation quickly shifting to another language – which the kids didn’t understand, preceded by furtive admonition – “the kids are here….”. For me, the name Kastner became like something of a ghost, a closet on which you never open the door.
Thus were we all shielded from unpleasant truths and alternative voices. Further strengthens my little thesis on blowing bubbles in Bubbleland.
My apologies for going OT. But this article was really a revelation. Thanks again for mentioning.
Koch and Goldberg agree with Wiesenfeld but want to diffuse the story because of the celeb factor. Zionists have a total investment in media control, why they freak out over mall stars like Justin Bieber and Macy Gray etc. Laughable if not for the daily atrocities.
“I might agree with trustee Wiesenfeld, whose political views on the matters in controversy are not far distant from my own.” Meaning that Schmidt thinks Palestinians *might not* be human as opposed to *are not” human?
This is the quote to keep the story boiling. Now it is not just Wiesenfeld but Schmidt as well. The lobby is wounded, let’s keep picking at it.
“In addition, I am concerned about the procedural unfairness of our action. The objection arose at the eleventh hour without any opportunity for research and preparation necessary for the presentation of a full and balanced appraisal. ” Benno Schmidt
At least he got this part right.
Time and again, Zionist thugs barge into meetings at the last moment, rant and rave, and overpower milder members. It happens often in Canada.
So he agrees with Weisenfeld but wants the controversy to go away by giving Kushner a gong. What a jerk. He can’t find it within himself to consider the lies and malice that Weisenfeld deploys.
I hope Kushner refuses their ridiculous and now devalued ‘honour’, which is now clearly worthless as it appears to be grudgingly given by a bunch of racist hypocrites who are so self-centred they don’t even understand their own bigotry and antidemocratic values.
so self-centered they don’t even understand their own bigotry and antidemocreatic values
totally lost
and how’s that for leadership?
compared to, say, the way leadership evolved during those eighteen miraculous days in tahrir square
the magic of the all for one and one for all
live
doable everywhere now, by popular demand
since we’re in a world in which the prevailing narrative is the opposite of the real one, between jeffrey wiesenfeld and tony kushner, guess which of the two is the nazi?
“But Mr. Wiesenfeld interrupted and said the question was offensive because “the comparison sets up a moral equivalence.”
Equivalence between what and what? “Between the Palestinians and Israelis,” he said. “People who worship death for their children are not human.”
Did he mean the Palestinians were not human? “They have developed a culture which is unprecedented in human history,” he said. ” Jim Dwyer ,in link to nytimes.com
This is what is coimg out of the mouth of a ex-governemnt offical ;i.e “People…not human.” and it goes unpunished by the academy,government,and by media. What would happen to a one who exchanges the position of the two warring people ( i.e Plaestine and Israeli ) in this conversation? He will never be hired or elected or be allowed to publish a book or raise any social event. He will be condemned as an antisemite!!!
I think we should start email campaign to have both Wiesenfeld and Schmidt removed from the board of trustees.
Not being privy to any of the involved individuals’ thought-processes, I’m tempted to view this in a way as to how I would deal with these actions. Finkelstein lost his tenure, Kushner didn’t get his honorary degree [when this story first unfolded]. Do I believe people should be denied something purely based on their beliefs? No, I don’t, because I sincerely believe [no, not 'naively.' Being naive is being cute] in the fact that I have to listen to and try to understand an other person’s reasoning, before I start the ‘draw your conclusion/s’ process. Would I want to work for individuals who treat me like I’m a bubonic plague riddled lab rat on the loose? Wold I want to receive anything from individuals/corporations/this, that or the other thing, so I can tell myself, ‘At least you tried to fight injustice?’ Personally [that being the basic premise of my monologue], I would opt out and do my own thing. The need or urge to bend over backward to satisfies others, has long since evaporated from the parts of my brain where they used to roam around.
I read and hear a lot about ‘Israel’s rights…,’ my question still remains the same: those rights are based on what exactly? International law? UN resolutions? If anyone knows the answer, please feel free to educate me.
Israel’s right to be a state rests solely on its recognition by the UN General Assembly. That same body is likely to recognize the state of Palestine in October.
The blowback:
The Guardian is reporting that “at least three prominent previous recipients have declared they no longer want their honorary degrees from the university.”
– Barbara Ehrenreich, activist journalist: “Please expunge me from your record of past honorees.” she said. She was joined by
– Michael Cunningham, also won a Pulitzer: “I was shocked and dismayed to hear about the treatment Tony Kushner received at the hands of the CUNY board of trustees.”
– Ellen Schrecker, Yeshiva University historian.
And Benno Schmidt — former president of Yale and dean of Columbia Law School — is busy affirming Wiesenfeld’s racist line in a particularly cowardly way.
Have to say I get a perverse pleasure from the thought of brain-dead racist ingrates like Wiesenfeld and Schmidt finding themselves twisting in the wind.
They are not brain dead. They believe in their particular brand of racism. It’s a faith, a secular faith or ideology. They’ve chosen not to question their basic premises. Many highly intelligent and educated folks have been/are like that. To treat people as individuals makes the world very complicated. They only follow universal logic and ethical/moral principles so long as the similie or analogy is clothed the way they always want it to be. That way you get to be righteous and a higher being. If it’s also a good money/career maker, well then…
I agree with you, Citizen.
I do wonder about the intellectual capacity of people who show little or no ability or inclination to reflect on their own positions.
such brain dead racist ingrates finding themselves twisting in the wind
yes
thataway!
oh happy day
Because the Israel lobby and their tireless sycophants have been getting away with this sort of behaviour for years, unquestioned, they presumably think nothing of it, and carry on as normal. Therefore it is really worth kicking up against their veiled racism – it might come as a shock to these creeps that their values are completely at odds with the people they have so determinedly exploited and manipulated for many years. Cast Lead changed forever the way many people saw the overbearing violent state of Israel, these kind of incidents, which throw a light on to an area kept in the dark for a long time, can act as a catalyst, and can empower many to stand up to the bullying and lies which they have been intimidated about doing so for a long time. Keep up the pressure and fight the power.
I espouse the idea that G.W.Bush has knowingly (at least as commander in chief) practiced torture, murder, and kidnapping. There, I said it. Now I hope someone will propose me for an honorary degree at CUNY so we can see if these views are so extreme as to justify denying me my degree. (Sadly, I cannot think of any reason why they should want to honor me.)
the zionists never admit they’re wrong? When caught with mud on their face, what they do instead is huff and puff and threaten to withhold their support until such time as the apostate returns to the fold. If not, they launch a smear campaign, and there goes the career of one more brave soul who dared to stand up for justice in palestine. Where they get in trouble is when someone refuses to bow down, because inevitably their response to real adversity is to lose control and boil over, thereby setting themselves up for the inevitable deflation, once they’re exposed for the nincompoops that they are. Playing this game but once in a while doesn’t seem to have hurt the zionists. but lately they’ve been steadily ramping up the frequency and intensity of their attacks on those of us who struggle for the palestinian cause. Their intent is to isolate us and then pick us apart by whatever means they deem necessary. They assume that these antics can only grow and strengthen public support for the zionist entity. Except as they get louder and louder, angrier and angrier, they may be overdoing it, such that some of this negativity is going to rebound against them
“Wait a second, they’re at this too often and too damn hard. Something else must be going on here.”
open-mindedness appearing on the scene?
a chance for the truth to get out
Didn’t Kushner say he wouldn’t accept the award if CUNY offered it again? I doubt if Benno Schmidt’s statement would persuade him to change his mind.
Kushner had a new play open Off Broadway last night: Tony Kushner talks about his latest play, ‘The Intelligent Homosexual’s Guide to Capitalism and Socialism with a Key to the Scriptures’.
Lysias, after reading the article you linked to and the play snippet and Kushner’s comment on it, I think it’s safe to say Kushner will do exactly what he wants to do regarding that award. If it includes accepting it in public, he might–and give a short chat the CUNY top dogs might not like.
I’m guessing that Benno Schmidt is Jewish. If true, what we have here are two “power Jews” (Joel Kovel’s useful phraseology). This is significant. Zionism has been good to the power Jews, hence, the power Jews support Zionism and Israel with the same ruthless obsession with which they pursue power. The two go hand in hand.
Dunno. Schmidt is a German name, but OTOH, lots of German Jewish family roots in USA. What kind of funeral service did his family have when his father died, not so long ago? If memory serves, his current extended family appears mixed…step children? Love his Edison schools business, eh?
That is way too easy. He’s not. The establishment in the US has committed itself to the support of Zionism, and Benno Schmidt is definitely a child of the establishment. Don’t kid yourself that Israel is a project of Jews. Was Lord Balfour a Jew? Hardly. He was a conservative Scottish politician with an agenda to protect the Suez canal and the British Empire. Your intellectually lazy comments are just anti-Semitism. As early as 1945, Senator Taft — a rock-ribbed conservative Republican with no stake whatsoever in the Zionist dream, was calling for a Jewish state in Palestine. In geopolitical terms, the US establishment immediately post WWII was considering how to control the oil supplies of the Middle East and how to solve “the Jewish problem” (millions of displaced, traumatized refugees — many with socialist and communist sympathies — whose properties and bank accounts had been illegally seized). In the kindest possible interpretation, establishing Israel helped Europe get rid of a population that needed a lot of help and could have disrupted US/European plans to confront and push back Russia while establishing a client state in the Middle East that could be counted on to police the oil interests.
You got a good ostensible point, rosahill. What ye ole greedy local Lord could function without his court jew to build his war chest? What Russian noble landowner without his jewish middle man, tax collector, etc? Look at just who Lord Balfour addressed his declaration to: Lord Rothschild, the core modern international banker. And just who most seduced Wilson to enter WW1, while the Brits were pooping out and Brit industry & those who venture capitalitzed with it on both sides of the Atlantic composed a giant begging debtor–enough to send in those pitiful doughboys, so aptly named. And, hey look at Scoop Jackson, not to mention… Dick Chaney. I agree he’s no zionist, and neither is Bush Jr. Politics makes strange bedfellow. Can you say, Glen Beck? Of course none of this necessarily contradicts what you say, but it supplements it into, what? Everybody jump in. And don’t forget to watch the non-zionist congress folks from state areas nearly devoid of jews genuflect
at the upcoming AIPAC conference. One more thing, let’s not forget the US State Dept, diplomacy corps, and Big Oil were ALL dead set against Truman’s unilateral recognition of the new state of Israel.
Citizen, I did “look (in Wiki) at Scoop Jackson” and learned several things about him which are, as you suggest, germane to this rosahill discussion.
1. “As a [Congress] representative, he visited the Buchenwald concentration camp a few days after its liberation in 1945.”
2. “[He] raised his national profile by speaking out on Soviet-U.S. relations and Middle East policy regularly, and was considered a front-runner for the nomination when he announced the start of his campaign in February 1975. [He] received substantial financial support from Jewish-Americans who admired his pro-Israel views,…”
3. “In 1974, [He] sponsored the Jackson-Vanik amendment in the Senate … which denied normal trade relations to certain countries with non-market economies that restricted the freedom of emigration. The amendment was intended to help refugees, particularly minorities, specifically Jews, to emigrate from the Soviet Bloc. [He] and his assistant, Richard Perle, also lobbied personally for some people who were affected by this law—among them Anatoly (now Natan) Sharansky. [He] also led the opposition within the Democratic Party against the SALT II treaty, and was one of the leading proponents of increased foreign aid to Israel.”
The point I wish to make is that a person’s motives are very often complex. Think what a kick to his head the Buchenwald visit would have been.
Certainly he was an American imperialist and a cold war warrior, but his motives regarding Israel could well have been two-fold.
The vehemence of the negative responses to the rosahill post puzzles me. What does it matter who played a bigger role in getting Israel on the map? It’s ancient history! Surely what’s important today is to keep trying to achieve justice for the Palestinians.
And frankly, as I look at this statement of mine, “trying to achieve justice for the Palestinians,” it sounds terribly pious in my ears.
Yes it is one motive I have for joining this struggle. But there are others. I have grandchildren. I’d like to see some vital resources left for them on planet earth. I want this conflict over asap, I want all conflicts over asap. We have immense environment problems coming down the pike at us. We need to direct our energies at these.
The vehemence of the negative responses to the rosahill post puzzles me. What does it matter who played a bigger role in getting Israel on the map? It’s ancient history! Surely what’s important today is to keep trying to achieve justice for the Palestinians.
Since mine was one of the”vehement” responses, I’ll try to explain so you can understand my reaction. I believe one of the main obstacles standing in the way of justice for all in Israel/Palestine is a communal belief held by a significant part of the Jewish community, both here in the US, in Israel, and to some extent in the international Jewish community that Jews are “eternal victims” with no real agency or responsibility for their own actions. It is NEVER their fault, either individually or as groups. This is the opposite of the anti-semitic idea ( its always the Jews fault) but it is just as inaccurate and corrosive as is that anti-semitic belief. Rosahill was playing this same victim scenario, where Israel is not a “Jewish project” but an anti-semitic ploy by gentiles to get rid of Jews in Europe.
I’m sorry, but that kind of utterly senseless excuse making gets my goat because it is part and parcel of the same damaging belief that allows Israel to do whatever it wants because its always someone else’s (usually the Palestinians’ but often enough the gentile rest of the world’s) fault. The idea is both repugnant and at the heart of the core issue which created and sustains the conflict, Israel’s refusal to treat Jews and non-Jews as equals.
Jews in Palestine were responsible for the land covenants that forbade selling land to non-Jews, and also forbade non-Jews working on “Jewish” land. They were responsible for boycotting those who bought Arab produce or employed Arab labor. They were the ones who screened which Jews were allowed to enter Mandate Palestine, and which were not. Israeli Jews were the ones who planned and executed the ethnic cleansing of the Palestinians, as well as the ones who badgered and bullied Jewish refugees in the DP camps who refused to “volunteer” to join the pre-State Israeli army. Israeli Jews are the one’s who control the government of Israel that throughout the past 63 years has denied Palestinians their human rights. This is what rosahill is denying in his/her post. That is why I am so vehement about opposing what was written.
Just to make clear, I am not referring to any collective guilt on the part of all Jews, which I do not believe in. What I am saying is that pretending that individual Jews both singly and in groups bear no responsibility for the creation of Israel (or less responsibility than selected gentiles, or gentiles as a group) is equivalent to pretending that southern whites bore no responsibility for the Jim Crow South.
And really, explain to me why Britain, whose empire extended throughout the Middle East as well as across the world after the end of WWI, needed to have a small group of Jews “police the oil interests” in other Middle Eastern, non-Jewish majority countries. Its a truly laughable comment in its unreality.
When does a descriptive comment of the social and political history and context of Zionist colonization, the economic forces behind it, the political actors pushing it, and the groups other than Jews benefiting from it and promoting it turn from neutral description to normative injunction against “blaming Jews” or from accurate history to whitewashing? Is the problem on this website — as opposed to the Jewish community more broadly — that Israel/organized Jewry get blamed insufficiently for their actions?
As far as I can tell Mondoweiss is not exactly a fire-breathing anti-imperial Marxist revolutionary samizdat arguing for the global overthrow of capitalist empire. Instead, anyone who argues that the primary goal of American Middle East policy is control of the profits from oil proceeds is lambasted as an apologist for the Israel lobby, which is not only ridiculous but also toxic. The movement in general is at total variance with the academic literature on Israeli state formation and its inter-relations with Ottoman, British, then American empires. I happen to have The Other Israel sitting on my desk next to me; shall I start pulling quotations? The movement is also generally myopic vis-a-vis imperialism, rejects analysis of the lobby as a capitalist institution, has no idea what the hell the petro-dollar system is, doesn’t know about the Achnacarry Agreements, mis-understands the 1967-1973 period, and so on. Israel was a project of Jewish nationalism. It could not have succeeded without imperial sponsorship. The existence of the Jewish Zionist state has had feedback input on American imperial management, to some extent, but the real feedback mechanisms have been on Israel, which given its aims, methods, and dependence on imperial capital could never have been anything other than it was. If you want to play Hades’s accountant and tally up who the hell is responsible for which increment of mayhem that’d been delivered on the Palestinian people, the Arabs of the Levant, North Africa, and the peninsula, and also the Arab Jews of the Middle East and frankly the global working class, that’s fine, get going with that abacus. Personally, I am interested in promoting BDS and overthrowing Zionism in the context of ending imperial control of the Middle East and changing the domestic social system and social institutions. The old-line Palestinian and Arab left understood that it was a package deal, an understanding that is now somehow “Chomskyite materialism” or whatever. I don’t care much about Chomsky but I am crystal-clear about what needs to be done to end Zionism and bring about justice in the Middle East and it goes a lot further than the lobby. I am not original in this conclusion; rather totally derivative. Perhaps I should quote Arab Ghassan Kanafani who said the same things so no one can accuse me of being “tribalistic” or whatever diversion is summoned up to avoid the issues at hand in favor of identity politics, or, identity anti-politics. I would not necessarily phrase things as Rosahill did, but I think a good hard look at who is in denial about what would be beneficial. We have work to do, and this bickering is getting annoying, not to mention destructive.
For people like President Truman, who called New York City “Kike Town,” it solved two problems. It stifled the flow of Jewish refugees created by Hitler into the US and it satisfied the Zionist Jewish Democrats.
Don’t kid yourself that Israel is a project of Jews.
Is this the new hasbara line? Nothing is ever the fault of any Jew? The gentiles must have made them do it? Israel most certainly WAS and IS a “project of Jews”. They sought help and support from powerful gentiles, but the idea and the effort that produced Israel is a Jewish product, despite the fact that not every Jew agreed with or supported it.
Your intellectually lazy comments are just anti-Semitism.
And what would you call your own intellectually lazy comment?
I really think its way to late in the game to be blaming gentiles for the creation of Israel. Buck up. Jews are just as capable of coming up with bad ideas as anybody else. Let’s all correct the mistake and move on, instead of trying to further the already discredited “Jews are always blameless” meme.
Tree, if Israel is a project of the Jews, by the Jews and for the Jews, then where do we place the key support for this project given freely by a majority of the United Nations members in 1947, by Balfour and the British, by Christian Zionists, by the Hashemite monarchy, or even the USSR?
There are few countries in existence today that owe their existence to the international community as much as Israel. East Timor and Bosnia come to mind.
It is precisely because of this well known collective responsibility that UNRWA exists, that Europe and the US give so much money to ‘take care’ of the Palestinian budget, etc. It accounts for the unprecedented international infrastructure in and around Israel (all the UN forces in Lebanon, Syria, US troops in the Sinai), etc.
So make it all about Jews if you like. But that’s a kind of myopia, judging the past by the present. As everyone knows, Zionists didn’t even become a majority faction in the Jewish world until the physical elimination of rivals in Europe.
So make it all about Jews if you like.
Strawman argument. The only one claiming blamelessness for any party is rosahill and she’s in denial about the primary role that Jewish individuals and groups had in the formation of Israel.
She was the one who claimed that it was not a “Jewish project”. She (he?) seems to think that its was all a plot by gentiles to hoodwink poor unsuspecting Jews and Herzl, Nordau, Ruppin, Jabotinsky, Weizman and Ben Gurion, among the myriad others, were all dupes and frontmen set up to “police oil interests” in the Middle East, despite the fact that Britain already had a beachhead of its own in Palestine and didn’t need Jewish frontmen to “police oil interests” from the one specific Middle Eastern place with a noticeable lack of oil.
And this…
In the kindest possible interpretation, establishing Israel helped Europe get rid of a population that needed a lot of help and could have disrupted US/European plans to confront and push back Russia…
…is a blatant disregard for the primary role that Jewish Zionists played in preventing Jewish refugees from going where they wanted to go if that destination wasn’t Palestine/Israel. Have you read Grodzinsky’s In the Shadow of the Holocaust, or any of Elmer Berger’s writings of the times? Israel was shameless in treating the refugees like garbage and doing all it could to hijack them for its own selfish purposes, regardless of what the refugees really wanted or needed. Again, she’s claiming that Israel and Jewish political Zionism had little or nothing to do with the fate of Jewish refugees when the truth is 180 degrees out from such a claim.
So please redirect your lecture on universal responsibility to rosahill. Or are you agreeing with her that Israel is not a Jewish project in conception and execution, regardless of the shamefully codependent help it has received from western heads of state ? Poor, poor Jews. Scapegoated again with responsibility for Israel. Please, pull the other one.
CLENCHNER- “…where do we place the key support for this project given freely by a majority of the United Nations members in 1947.…?
Good heavens, are you that naïve? The vote to support the partition of Palestine (never actually implemented per the plan, by the way) was a classic example of power politics orchestrated by (primarily) US Zionism. Arms were twisted, threats were made. See “A Calculated Risk: The U.S. Decision to Recognize Israel,” by Evan M. Wilson.
ROSAHILL- “Your intellectually lazy comments are just anti-Semitism.”
First of all, don’t you ever call me an anti-Semite again. I, for one, have lost all patience with Jewish anti-Gentile chauvinism. How easy to smear someone to hide the paucity of your own ideas. And if either you or Schmidt are not Jewish, then you both would appear to be philo-Semites, currying favor with those you perceive to be powerful. And make no mistake, Israel would never have come into existence as a Jewish state without Jewish power and Jewish support.
The point I was trying to make in my brief comment and discussion starter is that Zionism has benefited American Jewish Zionist elites, and that the continued ideological fealty to Israel and Zionism tends to indicate that the Jewish-Zionist elites still perceive that Israel and Zionism provides power-seeking benefits. This is not to discount the impact of ideology which tends to take on a life of its own, rather, the fact that Schmidt felt compelled to identify himself with Wiesenfeld’s Zionist ideology shows that he didn’t want anyone to think his actions indicated that he was other than fully supportive of the Jewish state. The relationship between Zionism and American Jewish power and support for Israel is something which needs to be discussed as part of the overall issue of power-seeking and the political economy.
As for your comments, some are so outrageous it is hard to know where to begin.
“The establishment in the US has committed itself to the support of Zionism, and Benno Schmidt is definitely a child of the establishment. Don’t kid yourself that Israel is a project of Jews. Was Lord Balfour a Jew?”
Credit where credit is due, your interpretation of history is quite unique. Balfour the father of Zionism? Uncle Sam committed to supporting American Zionism (not to be confused with support for Israel)? The US forcing Jews to Israel as part of US geo-strategy involving control of the oil? Israel as a Goyish plot to seize Jewish wealth (for downtrodden people, they always seem to have a lot of wealth to seize) and exclude socialists? Why, with all of that Gentile connivance and hostility, it is a wonder that Israel became the Middle East hegemon, and American Jews so uniquely prosperous. Explanation? Meritocracy, what else.
Actually, the subject of Zionism and Marxism as competing ideologies for the loyalty of the Jewish collective is a topic well worth pursuing, but not here, not now, and not with you.
Wiesenfeld & Taxpayer Welfare to Banksters
link to muckety.com
Here’s the macro-context within which Truman made his famous decision to recognize the state of Israel (not the “Jewish” state of Israel):
“Throughout the Roosevelt and Truman administrations, the Departments of War and State, recognizing the possibility of a Soviet-Arab connection and the potential Arab restriction on Oil supplies to the United States, advised against U.S. intervention on behalf of the Jews.
Britain and the United States, in a joint effort to examine the dilemma, established the “Anglo-American Committee of Inquiry.” In April 1946, the committee submitted recommendations that Palestine not be dominated by either Arabs or Jews. It concluded that attempts to establish nationhood or independence would result in civil strife; that a trusteeship agreement aimed at bringing Jews and Arabs together should be established by theUnited Nations; that full Jewish immigration be allowed into Palestine; and that two autonomous states be established with a strong central government to control Jerusalem, Bethlehem, and the Negev, the southernmost section of Palestine.
British, Arab, and Jewish reactions to the recommendations were not favorable. Jewish terrorism in Palestine antagonized the British, and by February 1947 Arab-Jewish communications had collapsed. Britain, anxious to rid itself of the problem, set the United Nations in motion, formally requesting on April 2, 1947, that the U.N. General Assembly set up the Special Committee on Palestine (UNSCOP). This committee recommended that the British mandate over Palestine be ended and that the territory be partitioned into two states. Jewish reaction was mixed — some wanted control of all of Palestine; others realized that partition spelled hope for their dream of a homeland. The Arabs were not at all agreeable to the UNSCOP plan.”
link to trumanlibrary.org
Truman’s personal reasons for unilaterally recognizing the state of Israel are also documented at the Truman library, and have been discussed before on MW. They include (1) intense pressure from Zionists, who made him aware in no uncertain terms that if he did not do so they would throw their money, NY votes, and prevailing media influence to Dewey; (2) devotion to his haberdashery business buddy, who was Jewish; (3) his association of Jews/Israel with the bible; (4) his idea he was aiding the historical underdog. We all know he grew frustrated with the chutzpah of the Zionists and banned them from his office; he was aware that when the underdog gets power he becomes the uberdog, and he railed privately about the Zionists in this context, but felt such a tendency was universal. Still, he burned a big pile of drummed-up letters pleading for recognition. But his old business buddy got him to relent, and the rest is history. The Zionists got their promise from him, and he signed the letter of recognition after deleting the adjective “Jewish” from the state he was recognizing. He’s also on record, if memory serves, as saying he did not care about the Arabs.