Total number of comments: 38 (since 2011-10-29 15:55:43)
I hold these truths to be self-evident: that all people (including Palestinians) are created equal, and they are endowed with (i.e., born with -- they don't have to negotiate for them) certain inalienable (cannot be taken away) rights, that among these rights are LIBERTY. The Palestinians are entitled to human rights, and that the Jewish people of Palestine/Israel are entitled to the same rights. Those rights can be realized in whatever way the Palestinians decide -- self-determination (i.e. two-states) or equal rights in a bi-national state, or if they prefer, they can immigrate to Dearborn. It's not for me to say. I am an American and responsible for what my nation does. What is for me to say is that my country should not support Israel, because it is not a democracy; Israel is using my nation's moral sanction and weapons to subjugate another people. I have a responsibility to oppose that.
Ms. Young: At the same moment you were rejoicing over your "freedom to live and pray" in Jerusalem, the Muslim leader of the city was in an Israeli jail.
link to forward.com
Does that accord with your sense of justice?
Millions of Muslim Palestinians who live in Gaza and the West Bank are unable to come to worship at the Al Aqsa mosque. Even those who live in Jerusalem are frequently barred from Friday prayers on the pretext that they will engage in political demonstrations (as if Jews never do that at the Kotel, see, e.g. what happended with the "Women of the Wall" yesterday).
I think you pretend that the conflict is about religious tolerance and that all the Jews want is to "live in peace." What Zionism actually demands is Jewish political power, forever, over Eretz Israel and everyone in it.
For those born in and attached to the land for generations, but not fortunate enough to be Jewish, Zionism permits, indeeds requires, subjugation.
How can you celebrate "Jewish freedom" when there are 5000 Palestinian prisoners in Jewish jails for the crime of resisting subjugation? How can you celebrate your freedom when a million and a half Palestinians remain confined to the Gaza ghetto?
I would welcome a cite for the Yaalon quote. I couldn't find it on the internet, and the right-wingers deny he ever said it. link to thestar.com
Remarkably, Ross' Jewish mother married a Catholic, and they together raised Dennis (in a non-religious household).
Does he now criticize his mother for harming the Jewish people and promoting assimilation?
Phil has hit on an important point when he say's there is nothing inherently wrong with "dual loyalty."
I think we make a mistake when we play that card against Jewish-American supporters of Israel. Merely supporting a foreign state's policies, and championing them as an example, is not wrong, provided those policies and that example are in accord with human rights. The problem is not their support for a foreign country, it is support for a certain country -- Israel -- which undermines our nation's commitment to democratic principles.
I feel we fall into a bit of left-wing McCarthyism when we play the "dual loyalty" card. It is not so dissimilar from the Zionist claim that we are anti-semites, self-hating Jews and even proto-Nazis if we criticize Israel.
Regrettably, Warren is a standard pro-Israel flak.
I tried to post this on the NYT comments section for Shore article:
The author does us a great service by rescuing from an unwarranted oblivion one of the greatest heroes of the 20th century, Marek Edelman.
But it was not just Edelman’s “hereness,” that caused his unpopularity in Israel. It was his strong support for the Palestinians. Indeed, in 2002, he published a letter addressed to “the Gaza fighting organizations,” thereby analogizing Hamas to the Warsaw ghetto fighters. link to dailykos.com
That didn’t go over well.
But he was not the only one who saw that the fight against oppression was indivisible. Just this past week, on the occasion of Holocaust Memorial Day, one of the last surviving ghetto fighters, Chavka Folman-Raban (who made aliyah after the war), said: “Rebel against the Occupation. No–it is forbidden for us to rule over another people, to oppress another [people].”
link to richardsilverstein.com
Of course, they understand full well there are no transports leaving Gaza, and the oppression of the Palestinians can not (yet) be described as genocide. But they understand ghettoization and ethnic cleansing when they see it.
From the great Anielewicz:
"Do not forget that the hardest thing in war is the battle within ourselves. Not to become accustomed to the degrading conditions that our enemies force upon us. One who becomes accustomed stops discriminating between good and evil, he becomes a slave both in body and soul to the degrading conditions. Whatever happens to you, remember: Don't accept, fight against this reality”
link to yadvashem.org
Was he talking about the Palestinians?
There is no freedom for non-citizens to come onto U.S. soil for the purpose of incitement. The U.S. denied visas to Nazis leaders before the war, as did Great Britain. The U.S. denies entry to people all the time on the grounds that they are likely to incite violence. It's true that sometimes the U.S. and Britain utilize the exclusion power to keep out people for purely political reasons having nothing to do with incitement. In Feiglin's case, however, he is actually engaged in racist incitement. He does not deny the racist label. And clearly he wants the Arabs to be transfered from Israel--either to Jordan or to heaven. BTW, you don't think Britain is a democracy like the U.S.?
I commend you for highlighting Feiglin's visit. (Keep in mind he is banned from entry by Britain because of racist incitement. Why not the U.S. as well?)
I think you underestimate the importance of his Knesset election victory. This is a dramatic turing point in the history of Zionism, because it ruptures the anti-racist consensus that has prevailed since the movement was founded.
Recall that Kahane had to found his own party to get elected the Knesset in the late 1980s. He was eventually expelled under the provisions of the Anti-Racist Law (known as the Kahane Law), which outlaws racist incitement and empowers the Knesset to expel a member for it.
Fast forward to 2007, when the first open Kahanist, Michael Ben-Ari, was elected. He too ran on a minor party ticket. Instead of expelling him, though, the Knesset three times voted to expel Arab members, or entire Arab parties.
Now we have Feiglin, who is elected on the Likud ticket. Moreover, he has twice gotten 23% of the Likud membership's vote in the primaries.
Keep in mind that the Zionism of the right wing, going back to Jabotinsky, abjured the racist appeal. Whatever other arguments were made for the Jewish state, no leading political party or politician resorted to stating, as Feiglin has, “You can’t teach a monkey to speak and you can’t teach an Arab to be democratic. You’re dealing with a culture of thieves and robbers. Muhammad, their prophet, was a robber and a killer and a liar. The Arab destroys everything he touches.”
Of course, there is an inherent racism in the creation of a Jewish state and there is de facto racism in all of Israeli history. But even Begin declared that he was anti-racist, and was never quoted making racist statements about Arabs.
That Feiglin can run on the ruling party's ticket and win shows how far Kahanism has come. That the Likud did not insist that he be expelled is a dramatic break with Zionism's consensus position, which included the mainstream rightwing parties. Of course, he will never be expelled from the Knesset.
It would be as if David Duke garnered 23% of the Republican primary vote, and was elected on the Republican ticket to the Senate.
Feiglin is a genocidal maniac. He not only calls for stripping the Arabs citizens of Israel of their citizenship, he advocates they be ethnically cleansed, along with the Palestinians of the West Bank and Gaza. His plan to offer monetary incentives is merely a cover for using massive violence to carry out another Naqba.
I don't believe I am an alarmist when I say the Palestinians are very vulnerable to an ethnic cleansing or a genocide. Certainly if there were a "mega-terrorist" event, a dirty bomb, a mass killing of Jews, or a nuclear detonation on Israeli soil, the Jews would not hesitate to carry out a final solution to the conflict. Feiglin is creating the new consensus for such an event.
Your concerns are well-founded.
I worry more about Hanin Zoubi that Obama, however. The level of virulence in the Jewish press is reaching a fever pitch with respect to her. She walks around without any security whatsoever.
First, nuclear weapons are a threat to life on the planet and therefore every nation has an obligation to seek their elimination. At a minimum, the five "legal" nuclear powers should sign a treaty forswearing first use.
Second, in the absence of complete disarmament, every nation has a sovereign right to have the weapons it deems necessary for defense. If Iran withdraws from the NPT, then it has the same right to the weapons as does Israel.
Third, a nuclear-armed Iran is preferable to a war with Iran.
Fourth, protecting Israel's nuclear monopoly over the Middle East is not worth the life of a single U.S. soldier, sailor or marine. Israel made a very fateful decision when it elected to be the first to introduce nuclear weapons into the region. They made their bed, now let them lie in it.
May I respectfully suggest that more important than Mr. Lapid's election to the Knesset, was Moshe Feiglin's.
Feiglin is a reincarnation of Rabbi Meir Kahane. But whereas Kahane had to create his own party to run for, and win a seat in, the Knesset, and both he and his party were eventually expelled from the Knesset, Feiglin ran on the Likud ticket and thus will never be expelled.
When the Likud allowed a Kahanist to set up a faction inside itself, it made a dramatic turn away from the anti-racist consensus that heretofore had predominated. Menachem Begin (and Jabotinsky) at least claimed to be anti-racist. Feiglin makes no such claim.
That Feiglin now sits within the ruling party’s Knesset bloc, and heads a faction that won 26% of the Likud membership's vote in an internal party leadership vote, speaks volumes about how far Kahanism has come in recent years.
May I respectfully suggest that more important than Mr. Lapid's election to the Knesset, was Moshe Feiglin's.
Feiglin is a reincarnation of Rabbi Meir Kahane. But whereas Kahane had to create his own party to run for, and win a seat in, the Knesset, and both he and his party were eventually expelled from the Knesset, Feiglin ran on the Likud ticket and thus will never be expelled.
When the Likud allowed a Kahanist to set up a faction inside itself, it made a dramatic turn away from the anti-racist consensus that heretofore had predominated. Menachem Begin (and Jabotinsky) at least claimed to be anti-racist. Feiglin makes no such claim.
That Feiglin now sits within the ruling party’s Knesset bloc, and heads a faction that won 26% of the Likud membership's vote in an internal party leadership vote, speaks volumes about how far Kahanism has come in recent years.
Before we all get too excited over the Chuck Hagel as the Messiah of the left, lets keep a few things in perspective.
The pro-Israel lobby will now look to McCain, Lindsey Graham and Cornyn (all on the armed services committee) to lead the charge in an attempt to neuter Hagel. If Hagel backtracks significantly, then they have won a significant victory.
Why was he nominated at all? Obama, and some sectors of America's ruling elite, realize the status quo with the Palestinians is inherently unstable. Their will be a new intifada and renewed pounding of Gaza. That will inflame the Arab street, and could lead to the overthrow of the Saudi and Jordanian regimes. Obama wants stability, and that means Israeli concessions to Palestinian demands, not more settlements, not de facto apartheid.
But by merely pressuring Israel, the U.S. is declaring the status quo to be untenable. That leads to an inconvenient truth: it is untenable because the Palestinians remain a subjugated people.
Yes, the Hagel nomination is the opening shot in the attempt to push back against Bibi. Even liberal Zionists like Tzipi Livni realize Israel's policy of annexation combined with ghettoization is unstable for the simple reason that Israel's Jews will be ruling over an Arab majority. But they have no alternative because removal of any but a tiny fraction of the settlers would trigger a civil war.
I am not one of those who puts any hope in liberal Zionism (or Barak Obama) to resolve the conflict with a just and lasting peace.
Does she support compassion for Leonard Peltier?
The reason its not a "Jewish lobby" is because they don't speak for the Jewish American community. Is it not a fact that our most articulate critics of Israel through the decades have been Jewish Americans?
We must all learn to confront the slander that we are either anti-semites or self-hating Jews it we oppose the subjugation of the Palestinians. Rule does not do that effectively enough.
It is absolutely true that we single out Israel for its treatment of the Palestinians and not China, Sri Lanka or Singapore for the maltreatment of its ethnic minorities. We do so because our nation singles out Israel, above all other nations, in three ways:
1. The $4 billion a year in free weapons (three time the next largest recipient, Pakistan). And that is only the tip of the iceberg. If Israel had to pay cash for the intelligence product they get from us, the bill would be ten times that amount;
2. The 43 UN vetoes we have cast in a desperate effort to prevent Israel's total diplomatic isolation; and
3. Most importantly, more important than the prior two by orders of magnitude, is the moral sanction we give to Israel.
America does not pay for Assad's tanks or China's police. We do pay for a part of every IDF bullet the whacks a Palestinian.
We can proudly assert that America's great ideals of liberty, freedom, and, above all, equality, are being degraded by our support of Israel. America's policy of unremitting support for Israel is not only morally wrong, it is dangerous.
We now have four of our nine carrier battle groups deployed in the Persian Gulf for the sole purpose of protecting Israel's nuclear monopoly over the Middle East. If we think we have a jihadi threat to our homeland now, with until we kill off 10,000 Iranian civilians as "collateral damage" from the release of uranium hexafloride gas.
BTW, as Americans we don't have any right to tell the Palestinians one state or two states. Our only responsibility is stop facilitating the occupation of the West Bank and the imprisonment of Gaza.
Did anyone look at Henry Kissinger like he was wearing payos when, during the Yom Kippur war, he, as he himself described it years later, "put the entire military airlift capacity of the United States at the service of the IDF"?
After all the irrelevant stuff about Jewish religious history, Sand and Weiss finally get to the point:
"[The correct policy is] symbolically to accept a number of Palestinians that will not be a menace to Israeli culture of today. Israel has to symbolically show that as a nonracist state it must accept the right of refugees, but you can’t give the 5 million that right. I’m sorry, I cannot make everything possible."
Yikes, Palestinians are a "menace".
This view is very similar to Norman Finklestein's and is a bright-line distinction that will inevitably push both of them into the Likud camp.
Both Sand and Finkelstein essentially love the Jewish state and their criticisms are passionate because they believe its current policies endanger that state.
First and foremost, they realize there is no Israel without a Jewish majority. An apartheid regime is unsustainable. That is why their main enemy is not Netanyahu; it is Ali Abunimah. The problem is not Zionism, it is the threat of a bi-national state in which a non-Jewish majority will eventually emerge and exert political rights attendant to majority status. (Sand's anxiety is similar to David Dukes' as we whites here in the U.S. face a similar demographic destiny.)
So the Zionist project then becomes one of somehow channeling Palestinian demands for self-determination into a political shell that has the appearance of granting self-determination and human rights while maintaining Israeli hegemony. My argument would be that after June 4, 1967, that project was doomed. (Read this little gem to find out why Israel's policy has not changed since '67: link to haaretz.com
Why is it doomed? Self-determination requires a contiguous territory and an independent economy. Niether is possible.
1. Israel now has commenced a de facto annexation of Areas B and C, as they call the 60% of the West Bank they administer. There is scant reason to believe there will be any change in the Israeli policy because there is no internal opposition to it, and there will be no effective external opposition either.
2. The Arabs of the West Bank and Gaza will always be reliant on access to the Israeli labor market. Once international subsidies go away (currently 30% of West Bank and 60-70% of Gaza GDP and over 60% of their government budjets), there is no independent "Palestinian economy" and unless they discover oil under Ramallah, there never will be.
So in order keep the "menace" at bay, what's left? Bantustans (which is the Likud policy) or bantustans plus (which is Sand's proposal).
The right of return is somewhat of a non-issue right now. Even without whatever number of returning refugees there might be, the demographic "menace" has already reached the tipping point. All Sand's comments do is confirm the essence of the Zionist project: maintain a Jewish monopoly on power without a Jewish majority.
Israel's greatest ally right now is Abu Mazen, and, increasingly, Khaled Meshal. They both share the delusion that there can be a viable Palestinian state. Meshal believes it will be a launching pad for redeeming all of Palestine but that too is a delusion.
That being said, two events would have to occur to make a two-state solution viable:
1. the Messiah comes down and reverses the course of Israeli policy, and
2. the Palestinians accept a truncated self-determination similar to the deal the IRA got in Northern Ireland.
Phil, I am old enough to remember the run-up to the war in Vietnam. There was hardly any discussion in the 1960 presidential campaign of the incipient war in Southeast Asia. There was virtually no daylight in the presidential debates between Kennedy and Nixon on the issue of "fighting communism."
When it came to Johnson vs. Goldwater, "our true friend in the region" was none other than the corrupt regime ruling South Vietnam, and the issue was who could best support them.
It was only as the layers of hypocracy were stripped away that American people repudiated the policy.
With our Israel policy, its about 1965. We have a ways to go, but as Israel consolidates its apartheid rule over the West Bank, and maintains the siege of Gaza, they will have to use more and more violence. The edifice of the "only democracy in the Middle East" will degenerate into a Syria-like suppression of the Palestinians, and may well include the Arab citizens of Israel.
Fear not, the righteousness of the Palestinian struggle will become more apparent to our fellow citizens.
Mr. Less Progressive: Were the Jewish "blockade runners" ferrying olim to Palestine deserving of a swift "kick in the ass"? See, e.g. link to en.wikipedia.org.
I agree with Don's comment above. I just finished re-reading "The Abandonment of the Jews" by David Wyman (1984). No doubt there were anti-semites with FDR's government, and no doubt Congress could have opened the doors to more Jewish immigrants prior to the outbreak of the war in September 1939. But the fact is, those measures would not have saved but a small fraction of the six million. Read "The Myth of Rescue" by William Ruberstien (1997) and "Saving the Jews: FDR and the Holocaust" by Frank Cohen (2006) .
America did not "abandon" the Jews because we did not abandon Europe. Certainly we could have. Instead we sent an army of 2 million across the Atlantic to crush the Nazi power. (I refuse to accept the warmed-over, pseudo-Marist view that this was done solely to save the British empire or establish an American neo-empire.)
I believe a key tool of the Zionist propaganda here in the U.S. is to assert that failure to support Israel is tantamount to a new "abandonment."
I find this explanation unconvincing. All six of your points address the circumstances of the posting, not the content. That you intended the tweet for a private group only raises the suspicion: why do you wish to hide this group and its activities? If the tweet was, as you have said, an example for a discussion group on examples of racist propaganda, why not release the groups prior discussion materials?
You state "the man is a nutcake." Perhaps you might expand on why you believe this to be true, as certain commenters here seem confused on the issue.
I haven't read Atzmon, so I don't know if he's an anti-semite.
I advocate the following view: the Shoah was one of the worst crimes of all human history, maybe the worst. That fact did not justify the dispossession of the Palestinian people, or their continuing subjugation.
I hope Mondoweiss does a story on the hijacking of Richard Silverstein's web site. Tikkun Olam. It has been down for two days now, and diverts to a rabid pro-Israel server.
In fact, why don't you offer Richard the opportunity to post on your blog while he is battling the Zio-hackers.
If anyone doubts the veracity of the Corrie claim, read this testimony from a D-9 dozer operator during the 2002 siege of Jenin:
"For three days, I just destroyed and destroyed. The whole area. Any house that they fired from came down. And to knock it down, I tore down some more. They were warned by loudspeaker to get out of the house before I come, but I gave no one a chance. I didn’t wait. I didn’t give one blow, and wait for them to come out. I would just ram the house with full power, to bring it down as fast as possible. I wanted to get to the other houses. To get as many as possible. Others may have restrained themselves, or so they say. Who are they kidding? Anyone who was there, and saw our soldiers in the houses, would understand they were in a death trap. I thought about saving them. I didn’t give a damn about the Palestinians, but I didn’t just ruin with no reason. It was all under orders."
link to gush-shalom.org
link to un.org
1. Your post would be so much more credible if you sourced it to either Israeli or non-partisan links.
2. Does any of it really matter? The Zionists carried out an ethnic cleansing, just as the Europeans did to the Native Americans. Now what? All Israeli Jews will "return" from whence they came? Arabs will become a majority and will impose upon the Jews what was imposed on them?
Your post is, at minimum, one-sided, Krauss. You seem to think the Muslim Brotherhood is like the Communist Party of the USSR.
On the contrary, it is a very loose grouping of Islamists, with many different trends and tendencies within it. It has no centralized authority that imposes a single view of Islam on its followers, as the CP did.
Sure al-Qaradawi has said some disgusting anti-semitic nonsense. The quote you cite is actually from a speech he gave at the height of the Gaza war to a rally to condemn the massacre in Gaza, and yes, it was a massacre. Here's the clip: link to memritv.org
That the IDF had killed 27 members of the Samoumi family the day before does not excuse his words, but it puts them in a context.
He has also said the following, during less fraught moments: "There is no enmity between Muslims and Jews....Jews who believe in the authentic Torah are very close to Muslims." "Muslims are against the expansionist, oppressive Zionist movement, not the Jews." He condemned the 9/11 attacks and has supported women's participation in the political leadership of the Brotherhood. His views on gender issues are remarkably progressive for a fundamentalist. link to en.wikipedia.org
Rather than demonize the Brotherhood, we westerners should be cautiously optimistic. This is not some monolithic Taliban-type movement.
Phil, you have once again struck the right balance. This is indeed a terrorist attack. It is a deliberate targeting of civilians to achieve political goals. But it cannot be a pretext for assaulting either Iran or Lebanon.
In 1982, On 3 June 1982 Israel’s ambassador to the United Kingdom, Shlomo Argov was shot and seriously wounded in London by terrorists belonging to the Iraqi-backed Abu Nidal terrorist organization. The PLO condemned the attack. That did not stop Arik Sharon from using it as a pretext to assault Lebanon, on the grounds that Israel had the right to "clean out terrorist bases." More than 10,000 Lebanese and Palestinians died during the course of Israeli's occupation of southern Lebanon, which ended only 1999.
Israel is desperately looking for a pretext, any pretext, to assault Iran and Hezbollah.
Norman, why is the effort by Mondoweiss (and others) to "push Israel/Palestine into the public" worthy of ridicule? Isn't that what your whole adult life has been about?
You often quote Gandhi saying that a political movement's job is to get people to act on what they already know to be true. What is increasingly clear (see, e.g. P. Beinart, et al.) is that the occupation is incompatible with core American notions of equality and justice. What Mondoweiss and BDS are doing is attempting to get American policy to reflect those core beliefs. Why is that the same as singing Hare Krishna in a San Francisco park in 1967?
The problem is not "Jewish self-government" per se, its how it has been realized. No one would have a problem with a Zionist state located in Antartica. The problem is that, as constructed in the real world, it must inevitably be an apartheid state. I think the Zionist movement realized there were a few Arabs in Palestine when they made that territory the focus of their efforts at the expense of Uganda, the Patagonia region of Argentina or Birobidzan.
Does saying that there is such a thing as a Jewish nation make me a Zionist? Maybe. But I, like Beinart, insist that any political entity that receives American support be a democracy. Israel is not a democracy.
Ultimately, Beinart argues, apartheid rule over the Arabs will be fatal to any expression of political Zionism, since it is inherently unstable an increasingly reliant on American political and military support.
The effects of Polonium ingestion described by Dr. Perkins are remarkably similar to what Arafat was said to have endured in his last two weeks. A detailed account of Arafat's death was published by Haaretz in 2005. link to haaretz.com. What is notable is that Arafat's doctors at a French military hospital noted the collapse of his platelet count, followed by liver failure.
Keep in mind that Polonium-210 can only be made in a nuclear reactor, and is most efficiently produced in a heavy water reactor (which is what Dimona is).
Some problems with Marxism-Leninism-Norman Finklestein Thought:
Norman says:
"Don't Israelis (or Jews residing in Israel) also get to claim a distinct and unique identity? And, if so (I cannot see why not), then where do they get to exercise their right of self-determination? The international community says, inside the Green Line."
Certainly Afrikaaners also have a "distinct and unique identity." But no, they don't get self-determination, if by that you mean, an army. (That is the core of "Jewish self-determination", is it not?) Within a democratic South Africa, Africaaners are, however, entitled to equal treatment under law and perhaps some state-sanctioned protections for the Africaaner language and culture, such as the right to have Africaaner-language schools.
Why does the one-state solution so terrify Norman, Benny Morris and Alan Dershowitz? Norman may be right that it is pie-in-the-sky. But his tone suggests its more than that.
He says we "cannot be agnostic about Israel's existence." That's a very troubling comment since it echoes the Zionist trope that to support a one-state solution is to support a second genocide. What Norman is saying is that if there is no Israel, there is no Jewish people. Do Native Americans had a "right to self-determination"? I'd say its just a strong as the Jewish people's right, and I can think of a few parts of the North American continent where they are entitled to "redeem the land." Does the fact that they have not done so mean that the "distinct and unique identity" of Native Americans has been abolished? I doubt it. In fact, American democracy has found ways to protect it. (I won't even go into the African-Americans' right to self-determination, but as a former Maoist, Norman is very familiar with the arguments for the "Black Belt Nation" and why they turned out to be drivel.)
Norman's opposition to one state suggests that he believes the Palestinians would use democracy as a stepping stone to a Naqba for the Jews. If he believes that is the core trajectory of Arab and Palestinian nationalism, let him say so. His talk about "Salafist" influences with the Palestinian community echoes Bibi. What is remarkable is how mellowed Hamas has become. Hamas is now the main agent for the suppression of Jihadis in Gaza. link to haaretz.com. The jihadi tendency has long failed to gain traction within Palestinian society, which is evidence for just the opposite conclusion as to its future prospects.
What we cannot be agnostic about is Israel's subjugation of the Palestinians, and our nation's support for it.
The main problem with the one-state solution is that very few Palestinians IN PALESTINE support it. If that changed, I would hope Norman would be on board, as would I.
seafoid, I find your comment "Judaism is at the rotten heart of it" offensive. Zionism is at the rotten heart of it and there are quite a few anti-Zionist Jews.
To the Zionists who argue this point, I say, first, thanks for your honesty. Most Zionists deny the Naqba, and vehemently deny that a slow-motion Naqba is under way right now.
I would draw a further distinction between the actions of Israel and white Americans. According to Jared Diamond's excellent scientific survey of the matter "Guns, Germs and Steel", it is probable that over 90% of the Native American population of this continent died not as a consequence of intentional violent acts of the Europeans, but rather, smallpox. As the germ theory of disease was unknown in the early 1500s, while tragic, this mass die off was not intentional. There has been nothing unintentional about Zionism's treatment of the Palestinians.
Moreover, although America did ethnically cleanse the remnants of the Native American people, we eventually came to uphold our ideals of freedom and liberty when we unconditionally made all of them U.S. citizens. (They did not have to recognize white America's "right to exist.")
We tried a "two-state" solution, in the form of the reservations, and even concluded "treaties" with them, which today have the same legal status as treaties with foreign sovereigns. But we could not in fairness reconcile that with the reality that they were integrated into our continental nation but did not have "equal rights under law".
I would argue that the "one-state" solution we have today, where Native Americans still have treaty rights and a limited self-government, together with full U.S. citizenship, may be a model solution for a certain other long-enduring conflict. And thank you Zio-fascists for pointing that out.
David: When we see a significant faction in the Fatah Revolutionary Council come out for one state, or a new (youth) movement emerge among Palestinians, or when a respected leader like Marwan Barghouti backs it, we will know it has traction, not before. I hope it happens, but I'm not holding my breath.
Right now, its occasionally used by the PA more as a pretty empty threat to attempt to get concessions out of the Europeans and Americans.
I see a difference, btw, between 1ss and a "bi-national state." The latter will permit constitutional protections for both Arabs and Jews, which I would support.
How many more years and more settlers will it take before Finkelstein concludes that the 2ss is now impossible?, David Samel asks.
That is a question properly posed not to Finkelstein, but to the Palestinian people. And that means the ones living under the Israeli boot, not the Princeton-educated elites speaking from the perch of their U.S. citizenship.
Is it not a bit ironic that the one-state solution is being hotly debated not in Ramallah, or in an auditorium at Bir Ziet University, but at Harvard?
I can agree with every word of Samel's analysis, but then I have to say to myself, surely the Palestinians see the same "facts on the ground." It may offend my sense of justice if the PA were to accept a two-state solution, but at the end of the day, why should anyone care what a bunch of Americans think. I personally believe the 1ss makes more sense, but I have to ask myself why it has virtually no support among Palestinians living in the West Bank or Gaza.
Until an indigenous Palestinian movement emerges behind a 1ss, shouldn't we keep our mouths shut and focus on what is our responsibility: stopping our own nation's support for Israel?
Norman, if you are reading this, I have the following question: What business is it of ours (Americans) what the Palestinian people decide is a proper means of redressing their subjugation?
It is for the Palestinians to decide one-state or two. I well remember back in our Maoist days the ultra-left nudnicks who accused the Vietnamese of selling out at the Paris Peace Talks for making concessions that allowed the South Vietnamese regime to gain a temporary legitimacy. Don't you think it's a bit gaulling for us to be telling the Palestinians how to effect their freedom?
I see the whole one state/two state debate here as inappropriate. We have a responsibility as Americans to stop our country's support for a nation that subjugates 4 million Palestinians. We have a responsibility, right now, to stop the war against Iran that is about to unfold. Our country's moral sanction, not to mention weaponry, make the subjugation and the wars possible. Isn't what BDS is doing effectuating our responsibility to oppose what is being done in our name?
I want to add that I too, was a teenage Maoist. Indeed Norman and I worked together on a Maoist newspaper back in the day. I agree with his conclusions regarding the usefulness of that approach to politics. I haven't spoken with him in years, but I always admired his intellectual courage. With a Phd in Politics from Princeton, he could have chosen a nice, sedate academic career. What he chose instead was anything but sedate.
Christopher Hitchens was once a militant supporter of Palestinian rights, before he flipped.
Dare I say it? Norman is sounding a little like Hitchens or, may Yaweh forbid it, Benny Morris.
I agree with the previous poster who alludes to the "destroy Israel" trope NF uses. Yes there is a wing of the Palestinian national movement that would like to replace Jewish apartheid with Moslem apartheid. Why is that relevant to whether the Jewish apartheid has a "right to exist"? No doubt there are some Palestinian exterminationists (just as there are more than a couple of Zionists who believe genocide is permissible to secure the Jewish state). Unless you believe that the Palestinian national movement is just a cover for an ethnic cleansing of Israel's Jews, why use that language?
Isn't that the core claim of the Dershowitz's of the world? The Palis must be caged up until they "recognize Israel's right to exist"?