Total number of comments: 6 (since 2010-06-03 20:57:08)
Deminer
When the Russians were in Afghanistan I had over 120 photographic exhibitions of my dye transfer print exhibition The Afghan Folio, mostly in US and Canadian college galleries and municipal museums, but Gorbachev asked that the show be sent to Moscow. In the 1970s I worked on many archaeological excavations in Israel, and though a gentile I once took the full Ulpan program. In 1980 I shot a long photographic essay on the West Bank that has rarely been shown and never has been published. I have two degrees in religion, and for all of my adult life I have worked to bring the West to a better understanding of other religions through positive images of other cultures. In 2000 the Taliban invited me back to Afghanistan, and I worked for four years as the UN photographer for demining. As soon as I returned Middlebury College in Vermont threw my web site off their servers because an alumnus complained that it "threatens the State of Israel." The site was put on their servers by a Jewish faculty member to begin with, and it does not mention Israel. My approach has always been to show the beautiful and the good of Islam, not to run down Israel, but again and again I find that it is not OK to show anything beautiful about the Afghans or the Palestinians. Seven years ago I moved to a remote part of Nova Scotia, my exhibits sit idle in their crates. The most shocking thing for me to witness has been the total complicity of American academia. When the Russians were in Kabul I was asked to speak by many a college and university gallery. I have had my seven years in the wilderness, my Afghan book is finished, 188 photographs meticulously cleaned and balanced and printed, with a text for each photo. The book on Egypt and Palestine is nearly done. The catch is that once I was warmly received in every publisher's office in Paris, and as I said I once had over a dozen gallery shows in the US every year, but now nobody will talk to me at all. Publishers in London, Paris, and New York literally will not let me in the door or even discuss a book that explains to people why we should love these people who have been willfully set-up to be our enemies. I have one 10 page essay that I am particularly eager to get others to read.
Within Jewish Israel are two different cultures, two very different approaches to the world: the division between secular and religious Judaism. Western religious history often focuses upon the interactions of different ancient peoples and the moral obligations of those who were part of a group in or out of power. Enlightenment-inspried political theory mandates a single people with identical rights. Where Israel gets into logical trouble is when they try to justify our actions with both religious tradition and the intellectual framework of the Enlightenment. The whole "all men are created equal" argument and mental framework comes from a system that is logically incompatible with that of religious heritage, a central element of which was the necessity for Israel to remain separate from other peoples.
Zionism continually plays these two logical systems off against each other, using first the logic of one and then of the other, as is convenient. At one moment the Jews are a religious people taking back their God-given homeland, and the next they are defenders of secular democracy in the Middle East, carrying on the Enlightenment tradition of Moses Mendelsen and generations of modern, secular philosophy. When actually on the street in Israel we find that a majority of Israelis say they are not religious, they are secular Jews. They are in fact atheists whose Jewishness is but racism, and they are not running a democracy either, for the Arabs are not full citizens. In attempting to have it both ways American and Israelis have no single moral framework at all, only a smorgasbord of unrelated moral one liners, trite phrases, and highly professional advertising and media people capable of turning every argument to their account.
During the week after Kent State I helped organize the march on Washington the following weekend. We tried our best to make it go off non-violently, and things did in fact go fairly smoothly. Now looking back I often wonder if a hundred thousand people in Southeast Asia died painful deaths, because American college students did not burn a few more ROTC buildings, overturn a few police vans, and start riots in which a few dozen Americans died. Could the deaths of a couple of hundred college students in America have stopped the war five years earlier, saving a hundred thousand lives? They very well might have, and drawing a line in the sand over war back then might have made these fiascos less likely today. Passivity is THE prime characteristic of the great American gentile herd today. There has been remarkably little reaction to the prospect of a Supreme Court with three Jews and not a single Protestant. This generation of American young people have no ability whatever to take moral actions of the non-violent or the violent kind. Their silence has been stunning.
Without American support for war, Israel would have made peace with her neighbours decades ago. If there was big money to be made from peace, concord would be busting out all over. You get what you pay for, or are willing to sell-out for.
The hysteria in Israel over a Muslim bomb, seems misplaced, since it is illogical. Pakistan already has one, and New York is a much more tempting target than Tel Aviv. Making a Nagasaki mess out of New York would take the wind out of Zionist sails in Israel and New York, but blasting Israel would only embolden already-powerful Zionist forces in America. The use of nuclear weapons against Israel by others in that part of the world would be like throwing a hand grenade in a small room. The actions of Israel pose a greater threat to New Yorkers than to Jews in Jerusalem, and this is a function of the fact that the power driving the situation is centred there.
All of these possibilities are probably alarmist hysteria. Given sufficient time all high flying economies come down, by crashing usually, and a genuine Wall Street or dollar collapse will soon end this special relationship, not with a bang but a whimper.
Followers of Sunni Islam believe that leadership of Islam should fall to those elected by the leaders of the community, while the Shia believe that leadership should have passed from Mohammed to Ali, the son-in-law of the Prophet, and should be an hereditary office. The Shia regard many of their hereditary Imams as Saints and make pilgrimages to their tombs, while the Sunnis reject this belief in a hereditary class of spiritual leaders and the veneration of their tombs. There is then an intellectual similarity between the racism of Judaism and that of the Shia. Both have an hereditary priesthood and a tradition of regarding some people as being born more holy than others. Travellers to both Israel and Iran often leave their first visit talking about the stunning level of arrogance that they encountered, and much the same can be said for New York and Hollywood.
Aside from the very real dangers to others from nuclear fallout, this conflict between Iran and the Jewish controlled nations (Israel and the USA) is a win win situation for the world as a whole. If these fundamentally arrogant states destroy one another, what is the down side for Africa and Southeast Asia, South America, Eastern Europe, and the Pacific? If this conflict drives America over an economic cliff and on to internal melt-down, then the greatest danger to the species, the out-of-control American military-industrial monster, is rendered impotent.
That we have any personal control over history is a modern illusion as silly as any mediaeval superstition. When something so obviously in accord with contrapasso is going on as this fight between the Jews and Shia, why not just sit back and enjoy the spectacle? Fundamental to all of the Western religious tradition is the notion that God controls history, with considerable flair and occasional humour.
I think I found an answer to the question: What was this guy doing at Harvard. I searched Google for “jewish ivy league.” The first page on the list was on the site of The Jewish Student Press Service, an article titled Ivy League Makeover by Franci Levine Grater:
"It may not be surprising that Jewish enrollment at Princeton, with its preppy atmosphere and a history of anti-Semitism, is the lowest of the Ivies. Jewish students account for only 10% of Princeton undergraduates, compared to between 25% and 35% of undergraduates at Harvard, Yale, University of Pennsylvania, Cornell, Columbia and Brown. Only Dartmouth, tucked away in Hanover, New Hampshire, has comparably low numbers of Jewish students. But Princeton is not merely plagued with low Jewish enrollment. Of even greater concern are the numbers' recent plunge; undergraduate enrollment was 11-12% last year, and as high as 15-18% only five years ago. The drop has not gone unnoticed by Jewish students at Princeton who, in cooperation with the CJL and the admissions office, have recently mobilized to change the perception among prospective students that Princeton is not hospitable to Jews."
According to Google, 1.7% of Americans are Jewish. Google gave the CIA as the source for this statistic. I would maintain that pro-Jewish sites like this one are as dangerous as any hard core so called "anti-Semitic" ones, and they very often present remarkably similar facts. Princeton University was founded as a college to train Presbyterian ministers. Miss Grater says it is “plagued with low Jewish enrollment” though it has 6 times as many Jews per capita as the general population. She is indignant that it does not have 15 to 20 times as many Jews per capita as gentiles, like the rest of the Ivy League. It is not surprising that Dartmouth should have a low Jewish enrolment, of “only 10%,” since the State of New Hampshire is .9% Jewish.
As I have said before (see above) the greater danger to Jews may lie in the USA. All a demagogue need do is state the bare facts, using pro-Jewish web sites. With this kind of arrogance firmly in place, crash the economy dramatically, and you will suddenly find the great herd of American gentiles looking at this problem that they have avoided for so long. Accusations of anti-Semitism for saying anything about rising Jewish power have been so aggressively pursued for so long that the herd has learned to leave the whole problem alone. If the economy crashes, they suddenly shift their attention to little statements like this one by Ms Grater, a statement that does go a long way toward explaining what such a person was doing at Harvard.
As terrible as all of those nuclear possibilities seem, I think the greater danger for Jews at this time lies in the United States, though Israeli actions might help set that off. It seems to me the odds are better that Israel will some how muddle through, because the players there may hate each other, but they know each other, and the expectations and fears are limited and real. The reaction to the Kagan appointment has made my blood run cold, because it is so tepid, because I see so little serious opposition. That tells me that the great herd of gentiles no longer takes the government seriously, everyone is waiting for the US economy and dollar to crash. They may say little now about a Supreme Court with three Jews and no Protestant member, because the herd instinct is strong; deep down they know a change is coming.
America consciously follows the lead of the Greeks and Romans, the next step is a unified executive, a protector to guarantee the republic, backed by the military. The power of fundamentalist Christianity within the US military has been steadily spreading and now has deep roots there. A comment was made by General Patraeus recently to the effect that ties with Israel were getting to be hard on the military. I will not go look up that vague remark, because the telling feature was that he said anything at all. America is inching toward its full blown Empire period. Once in control of Rome, Augustus cracked down on the decadence with a thorough regime of morals laws, while pretending to fully restore the Senate. How can any events of this kind, military control and morals legislation, not be a direct challenge to Jewish dominance in finance, academia, the arts, and the media? How can the dictator not have an anti-Jewish mandate if the people believe that the crash was due to a bias favouring Israel abroad and Jews running the economy at home?
It is not that the gentiles have not noticed the percentage of Jewish names on the Bank failures, the Congressional committees appointed to clean it up, the NPR reporters who cover it, and the comedians who make jokes about it. They notice, but it is not generally in their nature to complain about it; some breeds of dogs bark a lot more than others. This next round of the Great Awakening is not going to be an intellectually sophisticated one. All study of religious history and teachings has been banned in the public schools for generations, and in recent years the clergy has been belittled on all fronts, perhaps even more than they deserve. The herd of gentiles operates on a different survival strategy from most readers of Mondoweiss, but it has been a remarkably successful one.
Those living in the Middle East have seen a lot of blood, and while they are nervous and angry and fractious, somehow I do not fear what they might do the way I fear what American and her armies might get up to. I keep thinking of the chapter in Braudel's The Mediterranean…. where he describes in detail the way Jews became heavily involved with the economy of one late mediaeval city after another, fleeing to the next when the economy fell into recession. Then I see America with Jews oh so visibly in charge of the economy, beneficiaries to exponentially increasing wealth and power, while the poor get poorer, the incarceration rate rises, the national debt climbs out of sight, and military adventures, that I know from first hand experience to be lost, grow daily in cost. Both the backers of Israel and her enemies know of the extraordinarily extent of US support for Israel, but I do not think the former are as aware as the latter of the extent to which this support could vanish in an America in serious economic, civil, or military trouble. It would be instantly gone the minute a military commander took control, for, let's face it, the Jewish presence in the US military academies is not that strong. The great herd could rapidly turn and move as one in some other direction, taking down all in its path.