Siegman says Palestinians are turning to violence ‘to achieve freedom and self-determination’

Henry Siegman has an important piece up at the Nation in which he explains the recent Palestinian violence as a natural political response to an unending occupation.

Siegman is a former head of the American Jewish Congress who has expressed more and more sympathy for Palestinians in recent years with the downfall of the two-state solution. His jumping-off point is a recent New York Times ad from rightwing Rabbi Shmuley Boteach in which the rabbi accuses Secretary of State John Kerry of justifying “the spilling of Jewish blood” because he has deplored Israel’s settlements as a factor in the recent outbreak of stabbing attacks.

Siegman says that Boteach, who is funded by Sheldon Adelson, is acting like Joseph Goebbels, the Nazi PR man. Siegman can get away with the Nazi parallel because he himself escaped the Nazis as a boy

Boteach's ad accusing John Kerry of anti-Semitism
Boteach’s ad accusing John Kerry of anti-Semitism

Then Siegman explains that Israelis have no right to demand that Palestinians “forgo violence in their struggle to end their suppression.” He characterizes the Palestinians as freedom fighters:

 Successive Israeli governments have sustained a half-century-long occupation of the Palestinians through the application of deadly violence by its military. What right do they therefore have to demand that Palestinians forgo violence in their struggle to end their suppression? Is the Palestinians’ resort to violence to achieve freedom and self-determination—considered “peremptory norms” in international law—less legitimate than Israel’s resort to violence to deny them their freedom and self-determination?

Siegman reminds us of the history of Jewish terrorism under the British mandate– “violent resistance to occupation”:

In fact, no one has asserted the right to violent resistance to occupation more forcefully than the Jewish terrorist groups in the pre-state era. The Irgun, headed by Menachem Begin (which became the Likud, now headed by Netanyahu), terrorized the pre-state British occupiers.  Yitzhak Shamir, who was also elected prime minister of Israel, headed the Stern Gang. He wrote in the journal of his terrorist organization, LEHI, “Neither Jewish ethics nor Jewish tradition can disqualify terrorism as a means of combat.… Terrorism is for us a part of the political battle being conducted under the present circumstances and it has a great part to play.”

And here is the dramatic conclusion of the article, in which Siegman says that Boteach and Benjamin Netanyahu’s insistence that the Palestinians are the powerful party is reminiscent of Nazi propaganda, saying Germans were being victimized by Jews:

Boteach argues that there cannot be moral equivalence between victims and their oppressors, but he, like his patron [Adelson], believes Palestinians who have lived for half a century under Israel’s occupation are the oppressors and their Israeli occupiers are their victims. As someone who was born in Germany and lived for two years under Nazi occupation and the Vichy regime that rounded up Jews for deportation to Auschwitz, I can assure Boteach, and Prime Minister Netanyahu, that their perspective is one that Goebbels, who considered the German people to have been the victims of the Jews, would have greatly admired.

Remember that Shmuley Boteach served as UN Ambassador Samantha Power’s consort to the Israel lobby two years ago so she could get her job; he vouched for her pro-Israel bona fides. A few months after she got the job, Boteach’s protector, Sheldon Adelson, called on President Obama to nuke Iran. Now Boteach, a rightwing Republican, turns on Power’s colleague, Kerry, as an anti-Semite. Again, the lobby is a force that transcends partisan politics, and liberals/Democrats must kiss the ring, even when that ring has a Sheldon Adelson connection.

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I have long admired Henry Siegman, his many fine pieces published in the London Review of Books and elsewhere.
From the Nation article –
The accuser is a Rabbi Shmuley Boteach, who has designated himself as nothing less than “America’s Rabbi.” He ministers to the spiritual needs of the casino mogul Sheldon Adelson …
While Adelson owns many casinos and the Republican Party,
he does not own America—at least not yet.

Boteach’s claim to be America’s rabbi may therefore be somewhat premature.
Brilliant !

In the USA , shooting a teen can get you life.

“Officer Jason Van Dyke, 37, turned himself in to authorities Tuesday morning and was later ordered held without bail in connection with the fatal shooting of 17-year-old Laquan McDonald, according to the Cook County State’s Attorney’s office. Van Dyke is scheduled to appear in court again Monday as Judge Donald Panarese said he wants to see video of the shooting.

The dash-cam video, which a judge ordered police to release by Nov. 25, is said to show the teen holding a small knife and walking away from officers when one unexpectedly opens fire, spraying the teen with more than a dozen bullets and continuing to shoot as McDonald lies lifeless on the ground, according to an attorney for the McDonald family.

Prosecutors said in court Tuesday that the shooting happened within 15 seconds, but for 13 of those seconds McDonald was on the ground. They added the video “clearly does not show McDonald advancing toward [Van Dyke].”

http://www.nbcchicago.com/news/local/Chicago-Officer-Charged-in-Teens-Fatal-Shooting-353037121.html

In Israel , it is business as usual and Kerry /Obama tell us that Israel has a right to defend itself.

So why is this cop being charged.He said he felt in danger as the kid had a knife..That.s the yardstick used by the goi and accepted by the US gov.

But will violence be helpful for Palestinians? Especially given its random nature, namely you kill somebody that you know nothing about. Even Arab countries now denounce terror – unlike their erstwhile sympathy when it was only directed against Israel – they came to understand to where it leads.
It appears that the Palestinians are ready to sacrifice real interests of theirs for the imminent relish of problems – suffering and fear – their acts cause to Israeli Jews. A shortsighted attitude that has failed them in the past time and again – yet, in an almost addictive manner, they walk into it moonstruck. When they will wake up there will already be new realities around them – and surely they will blame the Israelis for that.

Siegman gets it and dares say it. When Boteach teaches that Kerry is an antisemite, then Siegman teaches that Boteach is like the greatest of the Nazi liars. You want name calling? You got name calling in spades. We’re so lucky to have Siegman. Long may he prosper.

As to “[Jewish terrorist groups] terrorized the pre-state British occupiers”, while correct, allows the reader to imagine that the Brits occupied “Israel” or even “pre-Israel” whereas what they occupied was that part of Ottoman territory which, as Jewish “nationalism” had been invented and bubbled up, became subject to consequent and natural feelings of Palestinian nationalism and thereafter became known (in a national as well as in a territorial way) as “Palestine”.

So, to simplify, Jewish terrorists terrorized the British to move them out of Palestine so that the well-armed and militarily well-trained Jewish terrorists — the by-Jews-somewhat-disapproved-of terrorist gangs together with the by-Jews respected militias called Palmach and Haganah — could win it for themselves from the defenseless and no-longer-defended-by-Britain Palestinians.

And after conquering a fair territory these terrorists declared themselves a nation-state and their militias an army! A history sort of like the history of ISIS, isn’t it?

Unlike ISIS in that the Jewish religious fundamentalists were originally anti-Zionist and then — by virtue of the situationally malleable doctrines of their rabbis — switched horses and becoming Zionist-territirialist maximalists?

So, various lessons. First, Siegman: the oppressed and suppressed have a right to resort to violence to end the suppression and oppression, and what the Israelis are doing (including outright murder) is not (always or perhaps at all in OPTs) “defense”. Second, territorially-maximalist religious-fundamentalist ideology is not the private preserve of ISIS but is equally a feature of Israel (who led the way!). And last, third, that when Boteach speaks, all you really know is that his mouth is open.

I saw a powerful play last night at the Signature (NYC), “Incident at Vichy” by Arthur Miller.. It is about people arrested and about to be deported to Nazi concentration camps. It is a play about dread.

One of the interesting points Miller made is spoken by a German regular Army Colonel who is (against all his feeling) coerced into helping with the process of selecting people for deportation. When challenged by a Jew, who says in effect “Be a Person!” (and refuse — or act against orders), the Colonel says, “Don’t you understand? There are no “persons” anymore” (under Nazism). All are puppets, pawns, moved by Hitler. This is not so just of the Jews and Gypsies, the most obvious victims, but also of the German people including the German Army, including this Colonel.

I think we know how the colonel felt. And I think American Jews might feel the same way if they ever came up for air. Boteach is Adelson’s (and AIPAC’s ad Israel’s) puppet or pawn, but not an independent “person”. Siegman is still a “person” and a brave one. America’s political class have allowed themselves to become the puppets, the pawns, of the monied class, what I call the BIGs and corporately the “oligarchy”. Not just big-banks, big-credit-cards, big-oil, big-pharma, big-agri, big-defense, but also big-Zion (AIPAC et al.) They may be politicians but they are no longer (most of them) “persons”. (Just look at the Republican clownery. Look at Hillary, wholly-owned by big-banks and big-Zion, maybe by others as well.)

We live in scarey times. I thank Mr. Siegman for standing up and saying important “home truths” to Boteach and by extension to Adelson, AIPAC, adn their pawns the Zionist branch of American Jewry.

I had the pleasure of having a workshop in Ramallah with Mr. Siegman, very understanding and very aware man.

I’m curious to see how they are going to try to spin that an actual survivor of Nazi Germany is a self hating Jew.