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Hedy got a rock-star welcome at Move Over AIPAC in 2011. "Hed-Y! Hed-Y! Hed-Y!" She still considers herself an anti-Zionist despite what happened to her family. That is how her parents raised her. But their fate hasn't changed her convictions, which have remained steadfast all her life.
Hedy Epstein is a rara avis. I once took part in a vigil outside a Conservative synagogue over Palestine. The vigil was the height of scandal to polite liberal society. Hedy Epstein came and stood with us, and spoke; she tried to contact the rabbi of the synagogue, who hid from her. She tried to get a letter into the local paper, to no avail. She has no illusions about Zionism, in Palestine, or in "anti-occupation" divestment circles.
Why is there such vast ado about next to nothing? Divestment from "companies profiting from the occupation" is a joke. The resistance doesn't come from companies clamoring for their vast profits from "the occupation", which are irrelevant. Resistance comes from organized Jewry, like the 1200 rabbis, like the Israeli diplomats who intimidate the UC Berkeley student govt etc etc.
In 2002, when divestment first came up, on a few campuses in the US, there was no talk of "divesting from the occupation". The Palestinian call for BDS did not specify "the occupation". It was understood that Israel must be sanctioned. "Divestment from occupation" is a US left Jewish invention, designed to protect Zionism and those who support it from scrutiny, in the name of "practicality" and "realism".
P&R begin with bowing to the Israel lobby of the left. Two decades ago these forces were striving to keep Israel's atrocities and US funding off the agenda.
Proposition W and The Pacification of the U.S. Middle East Movement
link to cosmos.ucc.ie
A new generation, new terms.
I agree with Doug. PK is not very interested in Israel. In that he is "normal", wears his Jewishness very lightly, not as a crippling identity complex. His kid gloves treatment is simply the normal Amurkin reaction, despite the advantages of his position as Phil points out.
I heard Mads Gilbert speak on Wednesday at Harvard Law School, very engrossing, and well received. BTW, their book "Eyes in Gaza" was still available on Amazon as of Wednesday, in hard cover, though it's not available from Interlink, and the paper edition won't be out till Sept.
That afternoon he spoke at the Harvard School of Public Health, where he was disrupted by two Zionists. The police had to be called to take them out. One guy was allowed back in but was still unable to restrain himself. Gilbert said it was the worst experience he has ever had in an academic setting. He puffed himself up to the dean, who apologized profusely.
rws450:
The fact there is now a Jewish debate seems to be a step forward since previously there was no counter.
RWS, some us, perhaps older, and with more memories, are not satisfied that we are still "getting started". This control of the left has been going on for a long time. See for instance this 1990 piece on New Jewish Agenda (now defunct).
Proposition W and The Pacification of the U.S. Middle East Movement
link to cosmos.ucc.ie
It is essentially a Jewish debate. The Methodists are doing what the Jewish left permits them, arguing for divestment from "the occupation". They oppose, not Israel and its US supporters, the most important of whom are the organized Jews, as this hysterical reaction shows. Rather they oppose "corporations profiting from the occupation" as if this drives things, when it is irrelevant.
Resistance comes, not from corporate profiteers, but from Zionists. From Israeli diplomats, pressuring the Berkeley student govt, the Olympia WA co-op. And from the US organized Jews. "Occupation" is not the ssue, rather Zionism, including the "Zionism of Jewish peoplehood" which drives the organized Jewish establishment.
As Seafoid noted:
Huge swathes of Jewish officialdom appear to have been co-opted by the Ziobots.
Which will make the endgame vicious in a way that South Africa wasn’t.
The other factor in making the endgame vicious is the success of the Jewish left in controlling the critical agenda, suppressing the real issues--- Zionism, and the power of the US organized Jews.
Irish Catholic Noonan has always cast herself as a woman of the people, up from immigrant roots, even while shilling for the GOP. Finally, a limit is reached.
"And I would have started to call him Jack.”
Phil, if there were a journo award for Incorporating the Spouse's Perspective, you (or maybe your wife) would win hands down this year.
Separate but equal liberation movements. JVP is not advancing but retarding Jewish liberation, which can be achieved, not on Jewish, but only human terms.
The modern period of Jewish history was brief and unrepresentative, lasting, symbolically, from 1789 to 1967. Then it was joyfully back to the ghetto, in the West no less than Israel. The classical liberal aims of emancipation and participation in liberal society are today simply opportunities to assert Jewishness. The spirit of liberalism has been abandoned for the spirit of the Jewish Volk, left right and center, as totally as the Germans abandoned liberalism for their Volk. Today most of the Jewish Volk uphold liberalism simply as a Jewish interest, outside Israel, while in Israel they insist on the opposite, in the same Jewish interest.
The Jewish left presents itself as a kinder, gentler Volk, and tries to oppose the majority Volk on that basis, rather than opposing it unequivocally, with the gentiles, its only possible, true allies, whom it instead manages and controls for its limited purposes. Zionism has made a total, unbelievable mess of the left just as it has the mainstream.
Again, some thoughts on this are at
Liberal Citizenship, not ‘Jewish Identity’
link to questionofpalestine.net
More to come. Stay tooned.
Haneen Zoabi thinks she needs to oppose Zionism, but she hasn't heard JVP. When will she wise up?
The question applies with equal force to the US, where the Zionist conceit of "Jewish peoplehood" drives everything from Palestine policy to complicity in Israel's drive for war on Iran.
Thursday, March 29 2012|+972blog
MK Zoabi: Struggle for democracy is a struggle against Zionism
Haneen Zoabi, an MK from the Balad party, speaks to Elsa Rassbach about Land Day and her relationship as a Palestinian to Zionism and citizenship.
By Elsa Rassbach
link to 972mag.com
JVP is the biggest gatekeeper of all. The curious may find answers, or more (useful) questions, at
Liberal Citizenship, not ‘Jewish Identity’
link to questionofpalestine.net
Phil, I liked Mondoweiss better when it was edited by hungry outsiders with ideas. Now you've become a micro-establishment, drawn in by the communal ($-powered?) tractor beam. While you are getting misty over J Street, at least we can look to Israel for critique.
Wednesday, March 28 2012|+972blog
J Street third annual conference marks shift to the right
By Moriel Rothman
link to 972mag.com
Tuesday, March 27 2012|+972blog
What’s wrong with J Street – an open letter to members
By Dr. Naftali Kaminski
link to 972mag.com
I believe this is incorrect. One of the links in the story, a Ma'an News story, says that Shalabi is not in hospital but in a prison clinic which is inadequate to care for her, according to supporters. See also this story from Adameer
link to addameer.org
The two Haaretz articles don't really contradict. Obama denies promising, but Panetta will handle the request in detail, as the 2nd piece notes. What orders did Panetta get?
The opportunity for the left to make common cause with the realists was lost decades ago, thanks to the Chomskyite "strategic asset" orthodoxy. The Jewish left so enjoyed sticking it to the gentiles over anti-semitism with "strategic asset" that it never bothered to analyze the sources of US policy, beyond a risible case for "strategic asset".
It declined to give cover to the gentile critics like Paul Findley, the grand old man of the Arabophile politicians (in whose district I grew up) and encourage realist academics like Mears and Walt. Nothing budged it from that course, not the 1973 war, not the 1978 or 1982 invasions of Lebanon, not the crushing of the first intifada, or the phoney peace of Oslo, or the second intifada, or 9/11, which was above all an attack on US patronage of Israel.
Instead of "strategic asset" we should have had a forthright condemnation of the "Israel lobby", and a complete analysis of American Jewish pro-Israelism. Equally important, there should have been a full depiction of the moral antipodes of those forces, the traditions of anti-Zionism, classical Reform, Marxist internationalism, and what the last Israel Shahak (who calibrated my psyche) called the "modern secular Jewish tradition" which he dated from Spinoza.
But nooooooe. It was far too much fun policing the left, affecting to be threatened by anti-semitism, when Zionism is the mortal threat to us all. So we see the reductio ad absurdum, at Move Over AIPAC, and again at Occupy AIPAC, of Phyllis Bennis, a bishop under Pope Chomsky on strategic asset, holding forth on opposing the arms industry, even as thousands of AIPACers and the top of the federal government are meeting down the street.
Even when the left finally organizes a national demonstration, it is so impoverished that the hoary orthodoxy dominates. The panel of the anti-AIPAC experts was again second fiddle this year.
I would feel more confident if the US weren't preparing so eagerly for war, "just in case", and also preparing Israel for war. For example the US will sell Israel its biggest "bunker busters" and also provide advanced aerial refueling equipment as a result of Netanyahu's visit.
link to haaretz.com
Moreover, the US now has 3 aircraft carrier groups in and around the Gulf, which one officer has called a quorum for war. This link is about the 3-carrier rule.
link to counterpunch.org
There has been other discussion about the 3 carriers now present; this stuff is actually on public navy.mil web sites. Precise dates of sailing and arrival on station are not posted in advance, but such deployments are too big to conceal and generally acknowledged shortly after the fact.
My head still tells me this is too over the top to happen. My heart isn't so sure.
The "realists" are a remarkable phenomenon, politically and historically. They are an establishment in exile, veterans of the Foreign Service and intelligence agencies and Congress, including some of the most talented; Chas Freeman is fluent in Mandarin Chinese (translated for Nixon in China) and Arabic. They are in exile because of their opposition to a Zionist Middle East policy; Loy Henderson was their Moses, exiled to a post remote from his Near East specialty, after leading the State Dept's opposition to Zionism in the 1940s. Has US history ever seen such an elite division over foreign policy? Not perhaps since the War of 1812.
They are comparable to the non-Nazi German conservatives in the 1930s, whom Hitler outflanked and purged on his way to total war. If we manage to avoid war on Iran before the presidential election ,it will be a major victory, but it will leave everything, incl Iran, still hanging fire.
Well said and well done, thank you M J.
I received the following from a friend recently:
On another note, my daughter called today – she’s a junior in college – and explained that she was writing a paper for her African-American Studies course on Palestinian Hip-Hop as a form of cultural resistance. She recounted that she responded to the queries from her prof. as to whether she had some familial connection to the issue by explaining that she had a Jewish background but did not consider herself Jewish. Proud Dad. . .
I suspect that, as the horrors in Washington, Palestine and west Asia deepen without respite, this will become the "new normal".
I stand corrected, by analogy with the anti-apartheid movement in the US, which as we all know was led by "progressive whites".
"Still: It's time to support MJ Rosenberg, who has been an unbreakable leader inside the Jewish community (during all those years that I among others was intermarrying and assimilating). "
Is this the M J Rosenberg who used to edit Near East Report at AIPAC? See
link to huffingtonpost.com
And contributed a piece on Jewish self-hatred to the 1973 "Jewish radicalism" reader of Porter and Dreier?
M J has doubtless turned over many new leaves since those days, good for him. But it seems despite, not because of, his involvement in "the community". He is living that down, becoming a liberal citizen, beyond his 'Jewish Identity'
link to questionofpalestine.net
"And that guy is a professor. Of political science. At a real university."
Well, sort of. The entirety of modern Hebrew culture is part and parcel of the Zionist project, and at Hebe U that means cranking out the needed ideas. See Gabriel Piterberg's The Returns of Zionism for starters. The late Israel Shahak was ostracized while on the faculty there.
It's nice to see Zionism's usurpation of the indigenes viewed as a practically self-obvious, fatal flaw of Zionism. Maybe I don't follow the MW comments closely enough. "The Holocaust" is usually adduced as the show-stopper conundrum in such discussions (maybe not here), but it isn't, for myriad reasons you have probably realized.
My question is, if Zionism's irredeemable injustice is realized, why does the "left" not criticize and reject Zionism, and its various dogmas and derivatives like "Jewish peoplehood", including in the "diaspora"?
Instead, for 45 years we have had this dehistoricized, technical/legal critique of "the occupation" and international law and human rights, which alone is not remotely adequate.
I discussed these matters in the recent article I keep citing here, "Liberal Citizenship, not 'Jewish Identity'". I will be obnoxious and continue to cite it occasionally until it is unnecessary.
link to questionofpalestine.net
Let's not let that distract us from Beatrice Webb's observations about the London Zionist lobby. The 1929 Palestine uprising came after the Jewish population had tripled from 52,000 in 1919 to 156,000. The British Empire was faced abruptly with the consequences of the Balfour Declaration, adopted in desperation (and from intense Zionist persuasion) in 1917. There were various deliberations, the Shaw Commission, Hope-Simpson's report, and a White Paper, and the British reversed their commitment to the Balfour Decl, decided to greatly reduce Jewish immigration. The London Zionist lobby went into overdrive, and the outcome was what the Arabs called the "Black Letter", dictated by Weizmann to PM Ramsay MacDonald, reversing the reversal. No fairy tale, alas. See inter alia Susan Silsby Boyle, "The Betrayal of Palestine. The Story of George Antonius", Walid Khalidi, ed., "From Haven to Conquest"
link to
Thanks
When and where is Abunimah speaking at Brandeis? I have googled and searched Brandeis's web site and looked at EI and can't find a clue.
Harry Clark
link to questionofpalestine.net
"Overcoming these attitudes in the States is a Jewish assignment. Before the Penn BDS conference earlier this month, the Jewish Federations held an anti-boycott meeting, at which Alan Dershowitz reportedly told a young Jew who asked, But didn’t we throw them out of their houses, that this was not true. The land was barren, and the displacement of the peasants was only what any other country has done to get itself up on its feet."
Phil, it's not simply a Jewish assignment, it's the assignment of all US citizens. The only special duty of Jewish Americans is to stop being "Jewish" in a political (Zionist) sense, stop practicing identity politics, and join the rest of us. That "young Jew" at the Federation will forever remain isolated within "the community". The only hope is a public movement against the power of AIPAC, the Federation, the Conf of Presidents et al. Liberal citizenship, not Jewish identity, as I keep saying.
Liberal Citizenship, not 'Jewish Identity'
"As far as I can tell, the only version of zionism that was not racist in theory was the kind put forward by those like Judah Magnes who believed in coexistence with the Palestinian people. "
Inanna (wonderful nom de net), I'm afraid that Magnes, Buber et al were no better. After 1945, The "binationalists" wanted immigration leading to a Jewish majority. Magnes probably deluded himself that such a thing was possible by peaceful agreement with the Palestinian Arabs. Buber, I think, realized that it was a pipe dream and kept peddling it because he saw 1948 coming.
My piece on Palestine in the 1940s, "When Palestine was at Stake", has some background.
link to questionofpalestine.net
"it’s fairly obvious to most people how the actions of zionism (as opposed to an ideal or an aspiration) has been and continues to be racist"
Annie, there is no defensible Zionist ideal or aspiration. That's the kind of identity loophole that is infinitely cherished and belabored in these discussions (by epic casuists like Chomsky).
Just read enough history, and the original writings, where translations can be trusted (Hebrew often not, more accessible languages yes).
I look forward to reading your book. In the meantime you might find this critique of Jewish identity politics stimulating...
Liberal Citizenship, not “Jewish Identity”
link to dissidentvoice.org
Another attack from the Boston Jewish Advocate on the Harvard one-state conference. And an attack on the Harvard Middle East Center Outreach program.
The no-Israel conference (Feb 24)
What if Harvard hosted a conference “Eliminating Israel: What’s next?”
Actually, that’s not a hypothetical question; in effect, it is the premise of next month’s One-State Conference.
The student-run conference aims “to expand the range of academic debate” over the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and “educate ourselves and others about the possible contours of a one-state solution and the challenges that stand in the way of its realization,” according to its Web site.
One might think that among those “challenges” are the concerns of the nearly 6 million Jews who live in the State of Israel, not to mention millions of others of Jews and non- Jews worldwide who believe strongly in the importance of a Jewish state. However, the roster of speakers is packed with academics who have been sharply critical of Israel.
But that can be explained: “One thing we are allowed to do as individuals, as groups of people, is circumscribe the range of the conversations we choose to have,” said Ahmed Moor, a graduate student at the Kennedy School of Government and a Palestinian-American, in an interview with The Advocate.
Yes, it would muddy the waters just a bit to provide historical context about how and why Israel came to be; about how Arab massacres of Jews during the British mandate derailed nascent discussions between moderate Muslims and Jews about a joint state; about how in 1948 the Palestinians rejected a UN partition plan that would have given them a state larger than any they can hope for today; and about the challenge of reversing the anti-Semitism that has been bred into Palestinians for decades through their schools, their mosques and their media.
Maybe, we’re wrong, and these concerns will be raised. We doubt it, though. The gaping hole in the conference guest list brings to mind, say, the United States sponsoring a conference about making all of North America a single nation, but not inviting Canada and Mexico.
Perhaps we do Moor a disservice by dwelling on balance. Chances are he would have found few Israel advocates willing to take part in a discussion about the demise of the Jewish state. Why lend credibility to a pipe dream that, if enacted, would in all likelihood turn into a nightmare for the Jewish people? Look at the bloodshed in Syria, Egypt and Iraq: If Muslims aren’t safe in their own lands, think what would happen to a Jewish minority in a Greater Palestine. But even if the Middle East were as tranquil as Switzerland, no Jews in their right mind would give up Israel – centuries of persecution have shown us that we must have our own homeland.
Still, while the one-state solution remains very much a fringe position, thanks to the stalled peace talks, it has been gaining traction on the left as has the push for a Greater Israel on the right. Indeed, if the status quo persists, as Israeli Defense Minister Ehud Barak warned two years ago, Israel risks becoming an apartheid nation where a largely Jewish minority dominates a largely disenfranchised Palestinian majority.
Such a one-state solution is no more palatable than the one envisioned by the organizers of next month’s Harvard conference.
We fear that the One-State Conference will be a waste of time at best and yet another forum for bashing Israel at worst. While the dean of the Kennedy School has declared that Harvard does not in any way endorse the conference, the university – even if unintentionally – is lending the event its prestige by serving as host.
But of greater to concern to us is that future world leaders – the very students who attend the Kennedy School – receive a complete and nuanced picture of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. While we don’t expect the Middle East conflict to be solved in an Ivy League lecture hall, we do believe that universities can play an important role by encouraging rigorous, respectful debate among all those with a stake in the dispute. And that is no pipe dream.
==========
¦ Outreach center is accused of bias (Feb 17)
By Leah Burrows
Advocate Staff
A Harvard program that offers public and private school teachers resources on the Middle East is under fire from a media watchdog group and conservative blogs for bias against Israel.
The critics assert that the Outreach Center at Harvard’s Center for Middle East Studies and its director, Paul Beran, are providing anti-Israel speakers and materials to primary and secondary school teachers seeking to supplement their Middle East curriculum.
The Committee for Accuracy in Middle East Reporting in America (CAMERA) last December released an article outlining the center’s “biases,” citing its past use of the controversial “Arab World Studies Notebook” and Beran’s involvement in the Boycott, Sanctions and Divestment movement.
Several blogs, including The American Thinker, and the national Jewish newspaper The Algemeiner have also picked up CAMERA’s accusations.
Both the university and Beran declined to speak with The Advocate about the concerns raised by CAMERA. The university also declined to comment on the specifics of the center’s funding, only confirming it receives money from the university, private donors and the federal government.
The center has advised teachers in Brookline and Newton, among other school districts, on such topics as the Israeli/Palestinian conflict, Islam, the Iraq and Afghanistan wars, Sept. 11 and the Arab Spring. It also offers resources on the arts, culture, language and religion.
In 2010, the Center for Middle East Studies received about $280,000 from the US Department of Education’s National Resource Centers Program, which supports international studies centers at universities nationwide.
In its article, CAMERA criticized the resources Beran recommended on the outreach center’s Web site regarding the Israeli/Palestinian conflict. The list of about 30 films and books includes “History of Modern Palestine: One Land, Two Peoples,” by Ilan Pappé, an Israeli historian who calls Israeli treatment of Palestinians ethnic cleansing; and the documentary “Occupation 101,” by Sufyan and Abdallah Omeish, which features interviews with several anti-Israel activists including Noam Chomsky and has been condemned by the Anti-Defamation League as propaganda.
The list also contains mainstream Israeli and Palestinian works, such as David Grossman’s novel “To the End of the Land”; the graphic novel, “Waltz with Bashir” about the first Lebanon war; and the Academy Award-nominated film “Promises,” which follows a group of Israeli and Palestinian children.
Steven Stotsky, the senior researcher at CAMERA who wrote the article, said that Beran and the center’s resources skew the history of Israel and prey on the ignorance of teachers about the region.
“You have to present accurate history because you’re dealing with people with limited knowledge,” Stotsky said in an interview. “If not, you do a huge disservice to the country because it’s mis-educating young Americans.”
Stotsky criticized Beran’s use of “anti-Israel” Jewish scholars, filmmakers and organizations such as Jewish Voice for Peace, which supports the BDS movement; Sarah Roy, a senior research scholar at the Center for Middle East Studies whose review on Mathew Levitt’s book, “Hamas: Politics, Charity, and Terrorism in the Service of Jihad,” was rejected by peer review panel at Tufts University’s Fletcher Forum on World Affairs for lack of objectivity; and Israeli filmmaker Yoav Shamir, whose film “Defamation” questioned whether the Anti- Defamation League overstates anti- Semitism.
“There is clearly a motive here, and I think that motive is that Beran is trying to claim that Jews aren’t supportive of Israel,” Stotsky said.
CAMERA also questions Beran’s objectivity in light of his involvement with the boycott and divestment movement. Beran, who has a doctorate in international public policy from Northeastern University, has often spoken out in support of BDS.
At a 2005 Harvard conference on the Israeli/Palestinian conflict, Beran said the BDS movement helps shed light on the “Zionists for their racist and ethnically focused concern in the Israel-Palestine conflict.”
The CAMERA article did not cite any examples of the Harvard outreach center’s materials being used in classrooms. Several teachers who have used the center expressed satisfaction to the The Advocate.
“At the center, they treat us like professionals who do our own thinking,” said Sean Turley, a social studies teacher at Newton South High School. “They say, here we think you should read this or look at this, but they are very diligent to present a lot of ideas.”
Turley sought help from the center when he designed a 10thgrade lesson plan about the Israeli/ Palestinian conflict. He said that in the three years he had been using the plan he had not received any complaints about the curriculum.
Last fall, one parent did complain about anti-Israel bias in a ninth-grade reading assignment given by another teacher from the “Arab World Studies Notebook,” which was used in a lesson plan about women in the Muslim world. However, the assignment was not provided by the Harvard center, according to Jennifer Morrill, head of the Newton South history department.
The article is no longer being used, according to Morrill.
Kate Boynton, a social studies teacher at Brookline High School, used the center to find a speaker to address her class about the Iraq and Afghanistan wars and attended a workshop two years ago on teaching about the Middle East.
“The workshop presented information and materials from multiple perspectives,” Boynton wrote in an email.
The Advocate contacted other school districts, but few responded or were able to name teachers who had used the center.
There have not been any other specific complaints from teachers, students or parents about anti-Israel bias in the classroom related to the center, according to Margot Einstein, a Newton-based activist looking into the center.
A group of local activists, not affiliated with any specific organization, is evaluating textbooks and other readings for bias in their presentation of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and of Islam, Einstein said.
Over the past several years, the Israeli Consulate to New England had sponsored a professional development course at Framingham State about Israel and the Middle East conflict for public and private schools teachers.
For budget reasons, the consulate said it was unable to offer the program this year
======
Clarification:
In the Feb. 17 article “Outreach center is accused of Bias,” Newton activist Margot Einstein is reported saying that she knew of no specific complaints about high school courses that used resources from the Outreach Center at Harvard’s Center for Middle East Studies. In a follow up interview after the story ran, Einstein said that her comment was not intended as an endorsement of the center. She said that she and a group of fellow Newton residents continue to be concerned about how Israel and Islam are presented in Newton schools, and about the role played by the Harvard center.
Harry Clark
link to questionofpalestine.net
The Boston Jewish Advocate ran a story attacking the one-state conference, text below. The Israeli consul called it "the end of the Jewish homeland and the Jewish people." These are of course the main fictions of Zionism, and it is impossible to speak meaningfully of a unitary state in Palestine with equal rights for all citizens without addressing Zionism.
A unitary state cannot be conceived if half the population are not merely citizens, but members of an international "people" with a right to emigrate from all over the world and be granted citizenship on arrival. The "Jewish" national group can only be Israeli Hebrew, a secular nationality, not an international "people" open only to those of putative "Jewish" descent. Boas Evron discussed the history of this idea in his 1986 book "Jewish State or Israeli Nation".
Nor can a unitary state be conceived without support in the US, Israel's crucial supporter. Yet anti-Zionism is a foreign language here, no less on the left than in the Zionized mainstream. I discussed these issues in a recent story called "Liberal Citizenship, not 'Jewish Identity'" on DissidentVoice and my web site.
link to dissidentvoice.org
My site links to a PDF with notes
link to questionofpalestine.net
Here is the story from the Boston Jewish Advocate. It's behind a paywall so no URL.
==========
Harvard under fire over Israel
¦ Student-run conference eyes one-state solution
By Leah Burrows
Advocate Staff
A controversy has arisen over a student-organized conference at Harvard University’s Kennedy School of Government focused on a one-state solution to the Israeli- Palestinian conflict. Pro-Israel groups and the Kennedy School dean have criticized the conference agenda for lacking balance.
The conference’s purpose is to consider the feasibility of a single state that could encompass Israel, the West Bank and the Gaza Strip, according to organizers. It would result in the end of Israel as a Jewish state and, depending on its borders, eventually leave Jews in the minority.
The One State Conference, which is scheduled for March 3 and 4, is co-sponsored primarily by graduate-student groups, including Justice for Palestine, the Palestine Caucus and the Association for Justice in the Middle East.
Scheduled speakers include Stephen Walt, co-author of the controversial book, “The Israel Lobby”; llan Pappé, an Israeli historian who has accused his nation of ethnic cleansing; and Diana Buttu, a former spokesperson for the Palestinian Liberation Organization.
“This is a who’s who of the anti- Israel crowd,” said Rob Leikind, director of the American Jewish Committee Boston chapter. “If the organizers had invited people from a range of points of view to talk about the merits of the one-state solution, that is one thing. But there is a common thread among those present in that they have all been strong opponents of Israel, and they think that Israel should not exist in the way it does.”
Combined Jewish Philanthropies, CAMERA, Harvard Students for Israel and the Israeli Consulate to New England have also raised concerns about the conference.
In response, David Ellwood, dean of the Kennedy School, released a statement distancing the university from the conference.
“I want to emphasize once again that Harvard University and the Harvard Kennedy School in no way endorses or supports the apparent position of these student organizers or any participants they include. We hope that the final shape of the conference will be significantly more balanced,” the statement read.
Ahmed Moor, a graduate student at the Kennedy School who has been planning the event for the past year, rejected the notion that the conference should include two-state supporters.
“If I was holding a two-state conference, I wouldn’t be asked to invite people who are Kahanists, for instance, or Greater Israel types or one-staters for that matter,” Moor said. “One thing we are allowed to do as individuals, as groups of people, is circumscribe the range of the conversations we choose to have. And that’s what we’ve done here. We want to talk about one state.”
Moor said he did not expect conference participants to whitewash the challenges of the onestate solution. Several of the speakers, including Walt, do not view a one-state solution as viable, Moor said.
“In putting forth any kind of positive political program on the horizon, I think it’s important to grapple with the realities of the situation,” he said.
The university said that the event has received support from “modest” funds set aside for student conferences. Beyond that, neither Harvard nor Moor would detail other sources of funding.
“Students typically come forward with general ideas in many circumstances long before they have invited specific people or finalized a program, and generally administrators try to be supportive of student ideas for events that they are planning,” said Melodie Jackson, associate dean for communications at the Kennedy School.
Jackson noted that the conference was one of several student-organized events at the Kennedy School this semester. Others include the Jewish Caucus Seminar Series, and The Israel Conference scheduled for April, organized by Israeli students from around the university.
Harvard Students for Israel, an undergraduate group, said it planned to write letters and op-eds in student publications against the one-state conference. However, the group said it had no plans to protest at the event.
“We want to make it clear that [the one-state solution] is a minority opinion,” said Joshua Lipson, co-president of Harvard Students for Israel. “[The conference] is presenting the one-state solution as something mainstream, when what we are seeing is something that is genuinely radical. Whether we are dovish or hawkish, we think is pretty radical to think that a sovereign state should be dismantled without discussing why it should not.”
Lipson and many of the conferences critics, emphasized that the student groups had every right to discuss a one-state solution, but expressed hope they would include a diversity of viewpoints.
“We all understand and respect academic freedom, but this is really not doing good to anyone,” said Shai Bazak, consul general of Israel to New England. “To put an end to the Jewish homeland and the Jewish people in the state of Israel, it’s something that no one with clear mind really endorses.”
For Moor, the one-state solution is an avenue for equal rights, not the destruction of the Jewish people – and that is worth a conversation, he said.
“It seems like there is a lot of pressure to abort the conversation perhaps before we’ve had a chance to engage with one another in good faith,” Moor said.
"Now listen, I have no illusions about the separation of government and corporation or government and special interest. Just look at Newt Gingrich or, heck, the whole Bush administration... But this latest Ross revelation, in which a government power-broker not merely retains but possibly gains power by leaving government, makes the standard arrangement look almost clean."
Lizzy---Israel is a *foreign country*, not merely a predatory corporation.
See William Rubinstein's "The Myth of Rescue" for a corrective to some of this. The first chapter is on-line, at the NYT, plus a review, which admits Rubinstein's case, too grudgingly, against the author's first inclinations, which says something.
link to nytimes.com
I think Rabbi Rodberg is about a generation off in his estimate of the relation of anti-Zionism to anti-Semitism. The point where this arose is with the October revolution in 1917, when Jews were stigmatized as radicals. Prior to that the Jewish establishment, Jacob Schiff, Louis Marshall et al at the American Jewish Committee, were admirably forthright in defense of Jewish rights.
The AJC was founded by Schiff et al in 1906 to assert their leadership as the US Jewish scene had been transformed beyond recognition by 25 years of Russian Jewish immigration. Well before that, Schiff and the patricians had stepped up as philanthropists and sponsors in various ways of the immigrants. The facile critique is that they were merely protecting their social position, but they believed in the liberal promise of the US, and defended Jewish rights, including the right to immigrate, fighting off immigration restrictions until after WWI. They were respected for this Jewish patriotism by the Jewish socialists who were their class opponents. (Jonathan Frankel, "Politics and Prophecy" discusses these relations a bit I believe)
The high point of this outlook came with the AJC's attack on the Russian commercial treaty around 1910-12. The objection was that American Jews travelling in Russia were forced to observe the same restrictions as Russian Jews. Traditional discreet, elite intervention failed; Schiff stalked out of a luncheon with Pres Taft, refused to shake his hand, declared to Marshall, "This means war!" The AJC mounted a public, AIPAC-style campaign, on the affront to US citizenship and the US passport, and whipped Congress and the country into a frenzy.
Timorous Jews objected, but Marshall dismissed them with contempt as "Jews who would crawl on their bellies rather than demand their rights". Marshall was a corporate lawyer and Schiff an investment banker of course. And Congress declined to renew the treaty. It was a symbolic victory, of the confidence of the Jewish elite in the liberal possibilities of American society, inter alia. The AJC was careful to define the issues in American terms, as an affront to rights associated with US citizenship, not simply as discrimination against Jews. The AJC rejected the "anti-defamation" approach.
The October revolution shook their confidence in the US. Schiff died in 1920, and Marshall led the AJC until his passing in 1929. The AJC dropped its high-minded Americanism and published a lawyerly rebuttal of the charge of social radicalism. Marshall and the AJC went after Ford, and exacted an apology and cessation of his worst anti-semitic agitation, supported by a boycott against Ford and promotion of Chevrolet. This where we look to anti-Zionism as an establishment response to anti-Semitism, a way of showing one's loyalty to the US.
Numerous examples do not leap to mind, but it was probably there. It is noteworthy that the American Council for Judaism was strongest outside the Jewish centers of the northeast. Its constituency was more mindful of gentile society, and the ACJ's emphasis on Americanism and classical liberalism supported that; the ACJ was full of bourgeois notables, of course, people like Stanley Marcus et al.
Lessing Rosenwald co-led the ACJ with Berger when it began in 1942-3. After Sept 1939 he was the leading Jewish figure in America First, the anti-war isolationist group. Most Jewish opinion supported Britain from opposition to Nazism. AF recruited Lindbergh as spokesman, and his outburst about Jews promoting the war led Rosenwald to resign. Rosenwald was the scion of the Sears Roebuck family; Sears was based in Chicago, though LR moved to Jenkintown PA near Philly to start the catalog operation. His social roots were in Chicago, which was the seat of isolationist sentiment. "Colonel" McCormack, the Tribune publisher was FDR's arch-foe. Anti-Zionism and the ACJ fit naturally with this America-first outlook.
While it may have had defensive value, liberal anti-Zionism was, unlike Zionism, a positive program, and people espoused it without feeling apologetic or defensive. Its positive virtues, not any defensiveness, produced the heroic rear-guard action from Rosenwald, Berger, and the ACJ against Zionism in the 1940s.
Zionism did not arise in 1945, as Rodberg says, from Jewish insecurity. "Gentleman's Agreement" was the name of a 1947 film exposing anti-Semitism which won the Oscar for best picture, and 2 others. See the Wiki page
link to en.wikipedia.org
Had Jews felt insecure they would not have supported Zionism, which was opposed by the military and diplomatic establishments. This required extraordinary mobilization to overcome. Nor is it true that Palestine and South America were the only refuges for the remnant in Europe. Roosevelt had proposed generous immigration post-war, and sent Morris Ernst to sound out the Jewish community; Ernst was vilified for weakening the case for Palestine. This is in Walid Khalidi's reader, "From Haven to Conquest." Michael Cohen in "Truman and Israel" notes that Truman favored immigration, but claims it failed for "weak leadership". As Cohen shows, Palestine certainly had strong leadership, thanks to the Zionist machine, which had no use for immigration to the US. It also coerced the remnant in Europe to Palestine (Yosef Grodzinsky, "In the Shadow of the Holocaust")
"I do not think there is anything Israel could do that would endanger their unconditional support by the US govt...They have sunk a US ship, killed US citizens, engaged in ethnic cleansing, colonialism, and apartheid " (They didn't sink the Liberty, merely shot it to pieces and killed 34 crew, while LBJ and McNamara countermanded the rescue orders of admirals at sea)
Israel's US supporters have orchestrated wars and incited the 9/11 attacks. Stephen Walt dated the decline of the US empire from the first Gulf War, in which Israel was instrumental, as it was in the "dual containment" of Iraq and Iran, and the 2003 invasion of Iraq. This turns on its head the facile "strategic asset" argument worshiped by the left.
The pronouncements of the organized Jewish grandees are noteworthy, though there is no sign yet they have anything to be worried about in Washington.
The BBs started a few yrs ago, and there was resistance thru typically obscure channels that resulted in BB companies cancelling agreements with Palestine groups paying for the BBs. The BBs in ABQ were cancelled I think. Are they back up? The BB campaign kept going and there was still resistance but not totally successful as we've seen, though some of the messages are unnecessarily innocuous in my view. My favorite would be the WTC towers burning and a caption, "your tax dollars at work. end aid to Israel"...quelle scandale...
Every time I go thru airport security I'm tempted to remark loudly, "a small price to pay for supporting the only democracy in the Middle East", but that would be asking for it no doubt.
Don't forget the terrific old journalists. See the link below about Tikva Honig-Parnass's new book. She is a 48er, was in Mapam in the early 1950s, joined Matzpen in the 1960s.
False Prophets of Peace
Liberal Zionism and the Struggle for Palestine
link to haymarketbooks.org
I have a Palestinian friend, long resident and a citizen of the US, from Ein Kerem. He told me before I first visited that it was "the most beautiful village in Palestine." I respectfully smiled and nodded, thinking inwardly that every Palestinian thought his the most beautiful village. Until I visited and saw that he was prpobably right, it is absolutely stunning. I later explained myself to him and apologized for even inward thoughts.
At some Arab-Jewish "dialogue" event he remarked that Hadassah hospital was built on the lands of Ein Kerem. A Jewish interlocutor said, "that must really make you proud."
Another interesting question is whether Ben Hur could even be made today. I happened to see it recently. There are scenes of the Sermon on the Mount and the miracles of loaves and fishes and the crucifixion. At the end of the film, the Judean nobleman and his family, by then impoverished proletarians, convert to Christianity. Judean nobility is part of the illusion and falsity of This World, to be exchanged gladly for Christian redemption in the next.
It's all perfectly innocuous, with no disparaging of Jews or Judaism, nothing like what one heard about Mel Gibson's passion play (which I did not see). Still, one wonders if such an outcome would be produced today by a major studio. (Gibson used his money, and was chancy with distributors I think)
Simone, welcome to MW, glad you have found refuge here. An e-group I was on was once removed from Yahoo with no warning whatever. Yahoo has a rep for intolerance on the Palestine question. Daily Kos is presumably about opinion but no more tolerant than some Zionist internet executive.
Anyway---what did you mean by your comment about Isaac Deutscher? "It is not clear to me when Isaac Deutscher, the Yiddish poet, biographer of Stalin, and humanist ceased to be an intellectual. This must have happened at least a decade before he passed away. "
Why does JVP focus on "the occupation" as the issue? Israel's atrocities are not driven by corporations profiting from "occupation" but from Zionist ideology and the power it has in the US. Our responsibility as US citizens is the extraordinary support the US govt gives Israel. If BDS does not draw attention to that it's diverting attention from the real issue.
It's all your fault Phil! I hope you're happy!
link to nytimes.com
world-cup.html?hp
Za'atar, Breakfast of Champions for 5,000 years
is my favorite Palestine t-shirt.
here is the link to CHA's book, which I meant to include
link to amazon.com
I also want to thank Phil for his observations on the perennial weakness of the white bread left on Palestine.
It's true that the "left" is largely PEP, which probably explains much of its Democratic Party opportunism. One suspects PEP and Dem opportunism are largely one and the same thing.
For this and other reasons, it is ineffectual and simply wrong to look to "the left" for a position on Palestine. Such a position will only emerge from a left-right alliance, of the sort proposed by the year-old Come Home America, founded a year ago by Ralph Nader, the American Conservative. See link to comehomeamerica.us
They had an event in DC this Sunday past at Busboys and Poets.
A CHA collection of writing is out; I have ordered it. The ToC is on-line at Amazon, don't see anything on I/P expressly but the authors are generally not in the PEP camp.
One suspects that white bread, Zionised "left" will not participate in such a coalition precisely because it won't be PEP, because the Jewish left would not control it on Palestine.
Which it should not. This is an issue for the world, and as citizens we are answerable to the world. Jewish Americans are perfectly welcome as liberal citizens, but the baggage that too many of them insist on bringing with their essentialist "Jewish identity" they will have to check at the door, or at the cultural recycling depot, exchange it for styles from Berger, Deutscher, Luxemburg, Rodinson, Shahak...
This is interesting news; that place was outrageous. Yale is moving from blau-weiss, in the spirit of the Nazi "brown" universities, back to merely blue.
However, the author's interpretation is understated and incoherent. "I was pointing to the tension between nationalist opposition to racism and humanist opposition to racism."
Zionism never embodied "nationalist opposition to racism". It is and always has been the mirror image of anti-semitism. It arose at the same time as racialist anti-semitism, with which it agreed whole-heartedly on the failure, or mere undesirability, of the liberal ideals of Jewish integration and assimilation; that Jews had no place in the "German nation"; there were no "Germans of the Mosaic persuasion", or French, or English, only, eternally, essentially, "Jews", forever alien and apart.
"[W]e are at an important crossroads when it comes to ideas about anti-Semitism... If ... opposition to anti-Semitism is based on a sense of justice, then it is simply inconsistent to perpetuate injustice in Palestine on the basis of opposition to anti-Semitism. The two positions – opposition to anti-Semitism and active support for justice, freedom, and equality for the Palestinians – must, instead, accommodate and reinforce one another."
This is true on its face. However, anti-semitism is utterly insignificant and marginal, as the professional anti-anti-semites like the ADL concede reluctantly. We will be "at an important crossroads when it comes to ideas about anti-Semitism" when we replace critique and study of anti-semitism with critique and study of Zionism, which threatens to precipitate horrors which may make the Judeocide look like collateral damage.
At one point the polls of Jewish opinion on attacking Iran were so embarrassing that one group sent out the word to cool it. At the annual AIPAC mtg some yrs back the crowd was literally screaming for an attack on Iran, to the embarrassment of the meeting's chiefs, with world media present. Iran has also been a hot topic at "the GA", the "general assembly" of Jewish Federations in North America, the local cadres of organized Jewry.
One source of data is the American Jewish Committee polls. They're on the AJC web site. It looks like about half of American Jews belong to a synagogue or temple; the largest portion are Reform, the next largest Conservative (just recently surpassed),
a minority Orthodox, and a few splinter movements. Broadly speaking, roughly half of American Jews belong formally to "the community" though the proportion of committed and active is surely less.
There or elsewhere you can find that while a majority favor a two-state soln what they mean by it is highly unjust and repressive. They oppose sharing Jerusalem. They want an arrangement that ratifies most of Israel's land and settlement grabs. They oppose the 67 line as a border. They feel that "the Arabs want to destroy Israel". Back in the 90s the ACJ used to ask how many favored cutting Israel's US aid and the answer was around 10%; they no longer ask that question. Even if the number has tripled it is not impressive.
Broadly speaking the Presidents Conf does speak for American Jews, far more than JVP. There is a higher level of public awareness, and additional Jewish debate, but no revolt among the organized ranks. J Street, and the Beinart-Halevi exchange under AJC auspices reported today, don't challenge fundamental premises. Some claim there is a disaffected, silent minority, esp among the young, but many flock to J Street, the latest liberal Zionist deception; another view is that the organized leadership is passing to the most dogmatic and inflexible elements as liberals are disaffected. So far, at least, there isn't the slightest diminution of the power of Presidents Conf views.
Our ME policy is a disaster, and much of it is due to Israel. The IL may have made the margin of difference in the Senate vote on Gulf War 1 in 1991. The "dual containment" of Iraq and Iran and the Iraq sanctions regime were invented by Martin Indyk, WINEP alumnus and Clinton ME officer on the NSC, later ambassador to Israel. 9/11 was an attack on US patronage of Israel above all. Gulf War 2 was due to a coalition of gentile radical nationalists and the Jewish neocons against "realist" skeptics. The chief victims of the alarming erosion of civil liberties are the designated enemies of Zionism, Arabs, Muslims and Anglo activists and supporters. The US-Israel relationship is an ongoing catastrophe for the US and the world, and the responsible parties are indeed a major social problem. The list of suspects begins, if it does not end, with the organized Jewish community, and as far as one can tell, most Americans of Jewish background support them.
Only in the philo-semitic climate of the US would such a stmt be denounced as anti-semitic, which these days is just Jewish hate speech, often internalized by gentiles. The problem today is Jewish chauvinism, overt uber-Zionism, or contrived, indefensible "fears". The gentiles are fearful this time. Dealing with Jewish power begins with the Jewish paths to universalism, anti-Zionism, as I have said twice. The problems begin on the left, in my view, because of something called the "Jewish left", which has been imposing itself since 1967. This was in sharp contrast to the early 1960s Jewish elements of the New Left, who wanted to appeal to all of society. They had little to complain about, as Jews.
After the June 1967 war, the "Jewish radicalism" movement arose; see Porter and Dreier, eds., "Jewish Radicalism: An Anthology" (Grove, 1973). The left Jewish sensibility is not politically uniform; it exists in more and less sophisticated forms; but it is clearly recognizable..Today Jewish Voice for Peace is the leading example.
Inter alia, JVP appears to have no sense of its members' obligations as US
citizens. “We are trying to create a space in the Jewish world where
we can express our criticism as Jews without needing to apologize for
ourselves," said JVP's Rebecca Vilkomerson. . JVP's web site states:
"Jewish Voice for Peace members are inspired by Jewish tradition to
work together for peace, social justice, equality, human rights,
respect for international law, and a U.S. foreign policy based on
these ideals." While JVP cites universal, secular standards, it
substitutes "Jewish tradition" for democratic citizenship in measuring
its obligations. Why is "Jewishness" the desideratum, and what does it
mean? What can it mean?
Religious Jewishness is recognizable, subject to certain limitations,
like a clear affirmation of belonging to a religious minority, not to a
national group. The great anti-Zionist Reform Rabbi Elmer Berger was
unapologetically Jewish, grounded in a firm sense of Jewish religious
liberalism deriving from modern Jewish emancipation. This liberalism
upheld "justice, equality, human rights and respect for law" by
strictly separating Jewish religiosity from any national claims, by
categorically rejecting Zionism.
From this principled foundation, Berger could confidently regard the
mainstream as mad dancers around a golden calf, didn't fret about his
"identity" and "acceptance", unlike JVP. He opposed Zionism in
principle, not merely an "occupation", unlike JVP. (See this writer's
"When Palestine Was at Stake" for a comparison of the liberal Arab
nationalist, Zionist binationalist and Reform anti-Zionist positions
in the 1940s, link to sites.google.com
But JVP is not a religious group; it has a new "rabbinical council",
but it was not started as a religious group and does not identify
itself as one. Yet JVP proferrs "Jewish identity" as basis for
upholding universal norms, as if "Jewish identity" was a universal
category. Since Yiddish culture in the US has disappeared, in
the normal process of development, can being "Jewish" in
secular terms mean anything other than a form of
of privilege?
The Israeli ex-patriate jazz musician Gilad Atzmon dismisses adherents
of left Jewish identity politics who insist on being "recognized by
the community." "I wonder why. What is it that they
need from the Jewish community? Why don't they just get on with the
socialist agenda and join the human family as ordinary people?"
"Recognition is something you may aim to achieve,
nevertheless, it isn't something you can ever demand." "Seemingly, it
is 'identity' that concerns such people, who think that "identity
reflects on one's authenticity...It is the other way around. Identity
and identity politics alienate from one's reality, not to say
authenticity."
[block quote this para]
"Identity" is nothing but "Identification".. Searching for Identity is
not a genuine search into the notion of one's authentic self.
Identity politics aim at setting measures of Identification, it sets
categories of belonging, it demands recognition and it opposes any
form of authenticity or real self. It prefers gathering and grouping
rather than meditation on the self. In fact, people who possess a
genuine notion of a real self do not crave the acceptance of any
community, neither Jewish nor any other. People with real self are
recognised for who they are rather than accepted for what they claim
to be. (Gilad Atzmon, "Between the Shtetl and the Big City. One
Hundred Years of Jewish Solitude," Sunday, October 4, 2009; see
link to gilad.co.uk
Chauvinist identity politics has produced the familiar, circumscribed critique of the "left" over the past several decades: two-state/strategic asset/anti-occupation, which is designed to conceal Jewish agency within the US, and Zionism itself. JVP stages mock-"debates" with J Street over BDS, when J Street avows support for "Israel's qualitative military edge" and all other US support. To acknowledge that
such an interlocutor would obviously oppose BDS, that the real issue is whether Israel should be coerced at all, would acknowledge the futility of JVP's attempt to lobby within "the community". In any event, JVP advocates BDS only against "the occupation".
It condemns Israel's war crimes but reduces that criticism to plea-bargaining by failing to address the Zionist and US Jewish roots of the problem, rather like viewing WW2 and the Judeocide as violations of treaties on collective security and minority rights
while ignoring Nazism. It drives Helen Thomas from the temple of polite society, a fallen woman. Etc etc
"Jews" (and gentiles) are not ethnic identity ciphers but citizens of liberal society. The views of Elmer Berger and the other universalists are the standards of citizens responsibile for the depravity of their government and society. Here is a reading list: Elmer Berger, "The Jewish Dilemma", a heroic defense of liberalism and emancipation against the rising Zionist tide in 1945. And his battle diary, "Memoirs of an Anti-Zionist Jew", published by the Institute for Palestine Studies in 1978. Isaac Deutscher, "The Non-Jewish Jew and Other Essays",. Maxime Rodinson, "Israel, a Colonial Settler State?" and "Cult, Ghetto State". Deutscher died in August, 1967, having lived to see Zionism enter its maturity, with perfect clarity. Rodinson defended the CSS thesis vs the Union of Jewish Students in France in 1964, and his classic essay was produced on the eve of the 1967 war, in a special issue of Les Temps Modernes (J P Sartre, ed).
At the time of his premature death in 2001, Israel Shahak was considering a book on Spinoza, the most rigorous of the 17th c rationalist philosophers, who was expelled from the Amsterdam Jewish community for his free-thinking ways. Shahak saw Spinoza as the progenitor of the "modern secular Jewish tradition" as he called it. This idea was the unlikely destination of a life that begin in Warsaw in 1933, thru the Warsaw Ghetto, Bergen-Belsen, post-war Palestine and Israel, a destination entirely self-discovered, surely one of the remarkable moral and intellectual journeys of our time. In the absence of his book on Spinoza, see his other published works, incl with co-author Norton Mezvinsky. See also Ari Bober, ed., "The Other Israel", about the Israeli Matzpen, whose founders
were contemporaries of Shahak.
The views of all these people were well to the left of anything in the US in the period after 1967, and the ex-patriate Israelis continue to be, such as Ilan Pappe, Gabriel Piterberg and Gershon Shafir, who go beyond two-state/strategic asset/anti-occupation, address Zionism and acknowledge the "Israel lobby", which is our chief responsibility, not theirs.
Remarkably, the Move Over AIPAC gathering is the first time ever that a national demonstration has been called opposite the annual AIPAC mtg and the obsequious tribute rendered by half of Congress and the top of the executive. The expulsion of Helen Thomas shows why it has taken decades to reach this point, and that the forces which delayed it are still influential.
That's far more than I intended to say when I first responded on this item, and have no more for the forseeable future.
I'm surprised at the naivete of these remarks. JVP is not part of "the Jewish community" if we measure it by, say, membership in the Conference of Presidents. The groups in that body are the mainstream organized Jewish community, and their similarities are far more important than the differences. Their influence on ME policy is clearly a major social problem. 9/11 was mainly an attack on US patronage of Israel.
J Street is not in the Conf of Presidents, but it is clearly trying to be a mainstream player.
JVP is even farther outside, but it aims to be part of "the community" as JVP people have expressly stated on this web site. JVP's approach is to limit critique to the minimum--thus it acknowledges Israel's war crimes, in legal terms. It limits activism like BDS to "the occupation". It says next to nothing about Zionism itself. And it tries to control set limits for debate outside "the community", to suppress any perception that the organized Jewish community is a major social problem.
From the earlier post:
The moral support for a broader critique is the Jewish approaches to universalism, the classical Reform anti-Zionism of Rabbi Elmer Berger; the Marxist internationalism in which Jews were prominent; and what the late Israel Shahak called the “modern, secular Jewish tradition” which he dated from Spinoza.
Some MW sophisticates seem to think judging "Jews" (whatever that means today) by their universalist traditions is anti-semitism, which is naive at best.
This is a major cop-out. The people who claimed that the "media would focus on Helen Thomas" are simply afraid to defend the view that the organized Jewish community is a major social problem in this country. AIPAC is merely the tip of the iceberg. The bus ads and billboards in Seattle haven't been suppressed by AIPAC, which works in Washington. AIPAC doesn't suppress reflection on the US-Israel relationship in academia. Etc etc etc.
Some members of the media may well have focused on Thomas. Defending her would have broadened the discussion to the problem of communal Jewish power in this country, a problem that begins on the left, with refusal to defend Thomas.
This refusal is part of a larger left Jewish design to limit critique; to limit BDS, and critique generally, to "the occupation"; to acknowledge Israel's egregious violations of international law and human rights, including war crimes; but to avoid criticizing Zionism, rather like describing WW2 and the Judeocide as violations of League of Nations collective security and the minority rights clauses of the Versailles treaty, without discussing Nazism.
The moral support for a broader critique is the Jewish approaches to universalism, the classical Reform anti-Zionism of Rabbi Elmer Berger; the Marxist internationalism in which Jews were prominent; and what the late Israel Shahak called the "modern, secular Jewish tradition" which he dated from Spinoza.
The Jewish left has no use for these either; it has no concept of its obligations as US citizens, only as "Jews", members of "the Jewish people", the ur-Zionist fiction. In religious terms "Jewishness" must include Berger's categorical rejection of Zionism, at least from any liberal standpoint. In secular terms "Jewishness" is simply a form of privilege and discrimination, as we see in ceaseless, successful efforts to control the Palestine discussion.
Actually Lee the Zionists brought "primitive social organization" to Palestine, which distinguished racially betw Jews and non-. Before the British Mandate, the indigenous Jews and the Arabs (Christian and Muslim) were syncretic in their religious practices, attending each other's holiday ceremonies and honoring each other's saints. The British invented the "land of three [separate] faiths" which suited Zionist designs for distinction and discrimination. The Zionists murdered indigenous Jews who resisted their designs.
Thanks for the tip on the Tribune editorial. The Trib may be pro-Israel but this may also be a residue of the midwestern common sense on the Middle East that has marked Illinois politics. Illinois has produced 3 national politicians, Paul Findley, Charles Percy and Adlai Stevenson III, with balanced views, all of whom were either destroyed or damaged by the Israel lobby. The current senior senator from IL is Richard Durbin, whom AIPAC hired to gun down Findley in 1982 in the 20th congressional district, Springfield and environs (where I grew up; IL is now down to 19 or less). As the world turns, Durbin has just chaired hearings which allowed Muslims to defend their civil liberties, a riposte to the outrageous attacks by Rep Peter King's hearings. Durbin did not get that idea from AIPAC. Alas I'm sure he still gets many other ideas from them.
Otherwise, this discussion does not dissuade me that Zionist censorship is at work in the absence of Al-Jazeera (like the absence of academic criticism of US-Israel relations).
As I said on +972, when Didi Reimer mounted his pulpit and said that the "activist left must condemn the murders", such killings are about as consequential and efficacious as American Indians scalping white settlers on the frontier. I think this is a somewhat better analogy than Nat Turner, but that is germane also.
When will Harvard, or anyone, address Jewish Zionism, which is by far the major part of the US-Israel relationship? Andrew Bacevich's talk at MIT last Tuesday was a squib. He recited a fair number of damning facts about Israel and US-Israel relations, but shied away from any warning of dangers or an urgent need to change it. He offered that the US veto of the UN Security Council res against settlements was designed to reassure Israel and show that the US would not abandon it. I'm waiting for Harvard or MIT or any of the academic shops in Boston to organize a major event examining the US-Israel relationship. Waiting in vain I fear.
This prompted by internal discussion, by such people as Tzipi Hovotely and Moshe Arens, the thinking person's right, as opposed to the overtly fascist right. Of course, their goal is Zionism by other means, incorporate the West Bankers as citizens comparable to the Green Liner Palestinians today, and exclude Gaza. Still, it's more constructive than ethnic cleansing, and might lead somewhere in the hypothetical event external pressure, the sine qua non for any justice, were ever applied.
Yes you did, and David was responding to that.
To cite another authority, Chas Freeman, the "strategic asset" thesis fails at the outset, when Israel was created against the opposition of the US military and diplomatic establishments, when the nascent IL overwhelmed the federal govt and US society 1944-48.
Another authority, James Petras, has accused Chomsky, quite correctly, of lawyering, spinning arguments and writing briefs. Chomsky dismisses the postwar events and subsequent history on various spurious grounds, like Truman's Christian Zionism, or most generally, by claiming that "the corporations" who allegedly run everything didn't complain, and haven't since, or they would have put an end to it, tautologically.
Chomsky sets up "the corporations" as an axiom from which he can "prove" that the IL is of no consequence. Chomsky uses his definition of "interests" and "influence" to trivialize and make invisible the actual history, the daily construction of "US interests" in Washington. The representatives of "the corporations" who run foreign policy were overwhelmed in the mid 1940s by the extraordinary Zionist mobilization, which has imposed Israel as a US "interest" ever since.
Israel does interact with "US interests" in important ways, in radicalizing and destabilizing them. Thus 9/11 was mainly an attack on the US-Israel relationship, which was exploited to create a neo-fascist climate at home, and to invade Iraq in 2003, by a coalition of gentile radical nationalists and Jewish neoconservatives, against the "realists" who would otherwise have prevailed.
The 2-state/strategic asset/anti-occupation orthodoxy of the Chomskyites is an attempt, largely successful until recently, to conceal Jewish agency and Zionism itself, while acknowledging Israel's war crimes and the atrocities of "the occupation". Missing is a critique, using the Jewish anti-Zionist traditions as a point of departure, to analyze and oppose the ideas and institutions and impact of the Zionocracy.
The Chomskyite school contribute importantly to the powerful current that Mearsheimer and Walt have to swim against, and even today they continue to limit critique to "the occupation" as with BDS. Considering what's at stake, this failure is in my view comparable to the "treason of the intellectuals" that Julian Benda excoriated in his 1927 book about the role of intellectuals in the climate that preceded WWI.
The NC reference was in Phil's post on "Obama's Dred Scott decision" on Feb 20.
link to mondoweiss.net
That was the only ref in perhaps a dozen posts of the last few days mentioning the IL view of the US-I relationship.
Phil, where did you mention Chomsky in an item on the UN veto? I couldn't find it here for instance.
link to mondoweiss.net
In the last few days Mondoweiss has posted several items referring to the "Israel lobby" view of the US-Israel relationship, as it does from time to time. None of them mentioned Noam Chomsky, and he is hardly the only advocate of the contrary "strategic asset" view. Now along comes David Green, offering a potted summary of Chomsky's views on the US-Israel relationship and cognate matters. Green apparently can't think for himself, so he tries to awe us with Chomsky's authority. I'm not awed, by Green or by Chomsky, and will continue to think for myself, as will the posters and readers of MW I'm sure.
See Gershon Shafir's "Land, Labor and the Origins of the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict" for the comparative colonial-settler analysis. Shafir is an Israeli ex-patriate of course, sociology prof at UC San Diego, and is speaking at the London conference. See also Gabriel Piterberg's "The Returns of Zionism". Piterberg is another ex-patriate, at UCLA, and is also speaking at the conference. Shafir is the analyst of social structure, Piterberg of the ideas that drive it. We need to extend the rigor of these analyses to the US Zionocracy, to its ideas and structure and impact. The remarkable fact is that the left in this country, for all its critique of Israeli war crimes and "occupation", has largely failed to criticize the forces at work, has hidden behind the two-state/strategic asset/anti-occupation orthodoxy, which conceals Jewish agency and Zionism itself.
I spent a day in Safad and what struck me was not the Jewish mystical quality but the Carmel California quality. Safad is a very "quaint" town, picturesque, view of the Sea of Galilee from a park atop a hill, old buildings and streets, all thoroughly rehabbed and gentrified, full of signs like "The American Jewish Women of Safad Welcome You To a ... At 24 Kaballah Street". "The Palm Beach-Safad Friendship Association Presents..." There was an old building with an Arabic inscription over the doorway, its inhabitants long since vanquished so that US Jews can enjoy a Carmel Calif lifestyle in their faux-"old country"
The binational state was not some humanist "solution" but was undemocratic. Brit Shalom advocated in 1925 full political equality with the Palestinians, including immigration and demographic parity for Jews, when they were 17% of the population. After 1945 Jews were 33-35%. The binats wanted political equality leading to immigration and demographic parity and majority. Palestinians who disliked the Zionisation of their country could move to federated Transjordan or Syria. After 1945 Elmer Berger and the American Council for Judaism opposed binationalism, argued for a single state governed by its inhabitants, which would have mean an Arab majority with a Jewish minority. Martin Buber was asked to support this but refused.
No doubt the right-wing 1-state discussion is Zionism by other means. But it's not simply a settler idea. I don't think Tzipi Hotevely, Moshe Arens and Menahem Rivlin are settlers. As a defense of Zionism its more constructive than massacre and expulsion. In the purely hypothetical event the US exerted enough pressure on Israel for it to consider a peace of any sort, 1-state would possibly become more than Zionism's last stand.