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- Taking on Bill Clinton and the ‘bigshots’, Chris Matthews says … 9
- Judge who acquitted war criminals at Hague had ‘close and … 4
- Latest DC mantra: The two-state solution is dead, long live … 38
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- ‘Girls on Fire’ tell Alicia Keys — Don’t play Apartheid … 195
- The horror: ‘Breaking the Silence’ releases women’s frightful testimonies of … 134
- Meet the Israeli-linked firm that sold Big Brother machines to … 94
- House committee votes to give Israel another 1/2 billion in … 93
- An Israeli veteran comes forward to decry ‘how shitty we … 93
- Palestinian activist Abir Kopty: Oslo should go, the peace process … 87
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- The horror: ‘Breaking the Silence’ releases women’s frightful testimonies of … 126
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- Palestinian activist Abir Kopty: Oslo should go, the peace process … 102
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- ‘No consequences… ad finitum’ — Reporters reject State Dep’t explanation of US policy on settlements http://t.co/RuwyEzmToV, 3 hours ago
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- Palestinian prisoner Hussam Shaheen writes -- Singing sensation Mohammad Assaf has given us a ‘national umbrella’ http://t.co/Yss65BM24p, 3 hours ago
- Singing sensation Mohammad Assaf has given us a ‘national umbrella’ — writes Palestinian political prisoner http://t.co/xtd1fZIiqR, 3 hours ago
- If the PA ever does build a state, it will be one with Israeli oversight of its internal affairs http://t.co/gbeqbhTlVY, 3 hours ago
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The War of Ideas in the Middle East
I believe that my first introduction to Mondoweiss came through a link on Antiwar.com, which comes out of an old-style, Barry Goldwater libertarianism. Justin Raimondo is a very good writer and a solid thinker. The interesting thing about antiwar.com libertarianism is that it does not make a fetish out of property rights to the exclusion of others. And it is solid on the I/P issues.
The Pauls, pere et fils, preach the nonsense of government as enemy of private property, regulation as bad, taxation as theft, guns as good, but they also take the rights of security from one's own government seriously.
Rhetorically, trying to smear anti-zionism as a new form of anti-semitism is a two-edged sword.
It could lead people to think as planned:
1. Anti-semitism in any form is a horrible thing
2. Anti-zionism is a form of anti-semitism
3. So, anti-zionism is a horrible thing
Or not as planned:
1. Anti-zionism, based as it is upon principles of equal rights, is not a horrible thing
2. Anti-zionism is a form of anti-semitism
3. So, there is at least one form of antisemitism that is not a horrible thing
If I were in the hasbara business I'd avoid the tactic as dangerous.
RE: "Richard Haass is wrong."
On "Morning Joe" the briliant Glenn Greenwald reduced Haass to almost-silence. Greenwald ended his segment with the hope that eventually the Amercan people would reject this level of surveilance. I think I saw a smile on Haass' face, or perhaps a look of self-satisfaction, when he was able sneak in the last word, "Until the next terrorist attack." It was chilling.
When will someone whom people listen to make the case that terrorism, or "terror", is not, and never has been, a national security threat. Never a threat to U.S. freedoms or democracy or way of life. There are such threats, though: Corporatism, Oligarchy, Russia's remaining nuclear-tipped missiles and, by far the greatest such threat, the use and manipulation of terroist activities by the federal government to limit our freedoms and spend taxpayer money on a vast, useless security network.
Activities of terrorists are a threat to individual citizens, but the risk is miniscule compared to drunk drivers, smoking, drug abuse, type II diabetes, air pollution, handguns, street crime, mass killers, iatrogenic illness, ... etc. And of course, as small a threat as terrorism is, it would be far smaller if U.S. foreign policy did not inspire young men to dream of attacking the U.S.
Only a bamboozled nation of cowards would give up an iota of liberty to protect against this threat of 'terror'.
"... we are all being treated as if we're all in Gitmo ..."
Justin Raimondo has a great piece on this, comparing the NSA's vision of the USA to Bentham's prison design, The Panopticon, a glassed-in circle with guards in the middle who can "see everything". Link:
link to original.antiwar.com
It's a blight on Harvard that the self-serving propagandist Dershowitz still has an academic title and position. It's a blot on DePaul University, with its money grubbing cowardice, that Norman Finkelstein does not have an academic title, something his research and writing thoroughly justifies, nor the right to do what he loves, teaching.
Norman Finkelstein is a pioneer. He deserves all that is good.
Thanks to W. Jones and Hostage for their elucidations. The issue of Paul's role in loosening the requirement of circumcision is parenthetical, but the Jerusalem Council's focus on it is important. I do, though, think that it was Paul's actions and writings in regions outside of Palestine that brought the issue to a head in the council. The existence of the issue as an important focus of the council indicates an early realization that there were different roads that the Jesus movement could take, one of which, often associated with James, was to remain solidly within the traditions of the Law while accepting Jesus as a central rabbi. This was not the road taken and Paul seems to have one out, the idea of a replacement covenant being one eventual consequence. The circumcision issue was in a sense a proxy for that wider discussion. Or so I've thought.
This may be the most incisive and instructive piece I've ever read on Mondoweiss, and there have been many. It gets at the deepest foundations of the conflicts in Israel/Palestine, of what following Jesus might have meant, of what it could mean to be a Jew, of what could have been if Jesus hadn't been hijacked. (Paul may have been the villian there. Recalling that it was he who stopped requiring circumcision for gentile males to join a Jesus commnity. In fact there would not have been "Christ"ian communities since all that Messiah stuff - where the term "Christ" = something like "Messiah" - would not have developed. The discussion illustrates the depth of the definitional muddles, and so the confusions, that arise in trying to bridge the sides. Congratulations to the three you for an amazing interview.
How can the "businessman" in the foreground shoot his terrorist? The barrel of his gun is broken off. Calling all Freudians!
Why do I take more interest in the aggressive and oppressive policies of Israel than those of other states? The stock pro-Israel answer is self-hatred or (in my case) antisemitism. In fact for me there is no other country whose inhumane policies distort American politics and foreign policy. What other country's leader can extort nearly thirty standing ovations from our bought-and-paid-for Congress. What other country can maneuver the U.S., against its own interests, to alienate the world's most oil-rich region. What other country can get the Amercan President to declare that it would not be in the interest of Palestinians to have the UN declare a Palestinian State, a claim that all the world knew was a lie and knew that the President knew was a lie. What other country can drop cluster bombs or Lebanese civilians without critcism from the U.S. government. What other government can have it as a stated policy to keep a people, in this case of gaza, in a state of marginal starvation without a peep of criticism from the U.S governmant. The leader of the democratic party states that she goes to work every day (in the U.S. Congress) thinking of the love she has in her heart for Israel. (It made me wish at very least that she had two hearts.) The greater interest that I have in issues surrounding Israel than in other despotic regimes rests upon the harm that the U.S./Israel pact has done to my country, the U.S.
Catholics have not been without sin when it comes to marrying outsiders. When I brought my Episcopal bride-to-be to the priest of the parrish of my alter boy days, he did his vetting and then was prepared to sign a document attesting that she did not pose an "undue threat of pollution". We were married by a justice of the peace.
“ Deputy Israeli Foreign Minister Zeev Elkin, a confidant of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu" thinks this is "unfortunate", why? Because it, "creates among the Palestinian leadership the illusion that in this manner they can achieve the result.” They are wrong to believe that there can be a Palestine? And in what manner is he speaking about? Did the Palestinians, with their immense, world-wide money and political influence pressure Google to recognize the obvious?
After the Boston bombings I heard a reporter recount that very soon after the bombers' pictures came out a high school wrestling friend of the younger brother talked with the brother on the phone and the topic of Obama's remarks at the ceremony came up and the brother is reported to have said something to the effect that Obama does all the time what the bombers did. That seemed to me to be a big story but I never heard it repeated.
Into John Kerry's mouth went his foot and out of his mouth,by some miracle, came the truth. Too bad he'll be forced to to choke on it.
Adam, This is a wonderful post. As a retired philosophy prof., I find so much good philosophy here. Reading your piece I thought of King's "Letter from a Birmingham Jail," written to liberals, Christian and Jews specifically, who support his goals but not his methods. He's off the liberal reservation, doing rather than chatting. Here's a bit.
"I must make two honest confessions to you, my Christian and Jewish brothers. First, I must confess that over the past few years I have been gravely disappointed with the white moderate. I have almost reached the regrettable conclusion that the Negro's great stumbling block in his stride toward freedom is not the White Citizen's Counciler or the Ku Klux Klanner, but the white moderate, who . . . prefers a negative peace which is the absence of tension to a positive peace which is the presence of justice; who constantly says: "I agree with you in the goal you seek, but I cannot agree with your methods of direct action"; who paternalistically believes he can set the timetable for another man's freedom; . . . "
I’m still with J. S. Mill that the correct response to speech we don’t like is not to squelch but to answer.
The use of the relatively new and ill-defined label “hate speech” is most often to repress rather than answer speech. In that way it resembles the older label “anti-semitic.”
I'm still with J. S. Mill that the correct response to speech we don't like is not to squelch but to answer.
The use of the relatively new and ill-defined label "hate speech" is most often to repress rather than answer speech. I that way it resembles the older label "anti-semitic."
I find the use of the term "faith" in contemporary discourse to be confused and superficial. We should think of faith as an an action rather than a particular belief content, as the decision to go along with something prior to any proof that it's the right thing to do or believe. Everyday human life is filled with acts of faith: That my bride or groom is the right person, that what I teach my students will be good for them, that my candidate will do what I hope, that my children will choose correctly if I give them the chance, that Mondoweiss will make justice in Israel/Palestine more likely. Everyone who lives honestly and with care is a member of a "faith community" whose values and beliefs are as dear as the preachings of a certain Nazarene, the words of an angel memorized by a desert dweller in a cave or the requirements of the pharasees. As usual, Stanley Fish is sloppy in language and thought leaving readers to wonder what he said or where he stands.
Alex Kane is a very good reporter who manages to get to where the story is. Congrats to Alex.
I think that optimism concerning the end of Israel as a Jewish state, that is, as a state that assures greater rights to those who are ethically or religiously Jewish, should be tempered by a worry. The worry is the status and potential use of Israel's weapons, especially including nuclear weapons, when the hoped for end is near and afterwards. It takes no great imagination to construct cataclysmic scenarios.
Also open for discussion therefore should be whether the undemocratic two-state solution might not be morally preferable as a goal.
Pro-Zionist bias is pretty much a culture at NPR. Think of Terry Gross's roster of interviewees and the fact that she never challenges even the most obvious pro-Zionist distortions.
On "ends and means", clearly the benefits of an action sometimes justifies it and on other occasions - particularly when the action violates human rights - the intended end, even if a good, does not justify the means. A blanket, "The ends don't justify the means," is simply not true.
I take Prof. Slater's first paragraph as the operative one. The rest is beside the point. Mondoweiss, to its great credit, creates a free market for ideas on I/P in a world that tries its best to shut down any such an exchange. Whether this or that analogy will win or lose friends is a rhetorical question. The point of the debate is not persuading (sophism), that's Dersh's thing, it's about saying what's what's true and finding reasons to prove it.
The point of an analogy is to clarify. When we knew more about the solar system than the atom we looked at the atom as if it were a small solar system. If that helped understanding fine, if it didn't then drop the analogy. But it wouldn't make much sense to say, "Well you can't compare an atom to a solar system, one's bigger than the other." Nor would it make sense to say, "Don't compare them or people won't like you."
The Lobby, whether it's the Israel, Jewish, Zionist or Likud lobby is way out of the closet now. It will be interesting to see if and how it tries to hustle back in. I think the door's clanked shut and locked behind it.
Thank you Ms. Murad for this story. The focus of these issues is rarely on the very specifics of the occupatioin. It's about "the region", or vile American politicians, or whether Iran is a threat. But the specifics, the minute to minute, is where the suffering is to be found. Pamela Olson is so correct, it's hard to imagine the courage it must take to live in those minute to minutes. I believe that the story is getting out and as it does the courage and the dignity of the Palestinian people will move to its center. How then will the Israelis appear in comparison?
NPR reported today (in Boston at least) the scheduling of the committee vote on Hagel and noted opposisition to Hagel "even from Democrats" based upon some of his foreign policy statements ABOUT IRAQ. (Emphasis added)
What happened to the NPR of David Mamet's claim that NPR stood for National Palestinian Radio?
Every biographical sketch of the life and work of the philosopher/
logician Bertrand Russell writes with incredulity about his retracted contract to teach at City College, unfit according to the famously blockheaded NYC politicians of 1940 because he advocated for the wisdom of living together before marrying.
How can this not bring to the mind of any thinking person all the Inquisitions and totalitarian processes throughout the ages that have forced dissenters to recant their ideological failings and humble themselves before the alter of coerced opinion.
It's a pathetic display. And the fact that no colleague of Hagel's rises to demand of the interrogators, "Have you no shame?" is a pox on Right Wingers and Progressives alike.
JFK was already James Bond's biggest fan when his CIA began concocting plans to assassinate Castro (poisoned cigars, ballpoints with hidden hypodermics). Cheney was gleeful in his promotion of the racist, pro-torture "24". I wonder if President Obama has been following the bloody exploits of the assassin, Mitch Rapp via Vince Flynn's novels.
-- I’d only quibble with blaming “evolution” for it. I don’t think it’s her fault. Nor are our little essentialisms universal with mankind. So there’s hope. --
Mooser, Thanks for the comment. An honor. I was thinking more of the evolution of ideas, where a notion gets solidified because it has a use value but doesn't disappear even when changed circumstance renders it dangerous. Essentialism likely had its survival benefits in tribal times as did many other morally terrible ideas. In any case the fact that something came about through evolution, even the genetic kind, is not in itself a reason to think it would be universal (think, fair skin) or immutable, (think skin color again).
Thanks to JennieS and RoHa for their comments. I agree that some use 'Arab' as designating a culturally definined group. But I disagree with the assertion, if I understand it correctly, that the term is not on other occasions used to designate a group that shares physical lineage. It may be that JennieS and RoHa are saying that even though some use these terms in a shared physical lineage fashion they are wrong to do so.
In my own case, if 'essentialism' is the idea that different people born into different classifications (woman/man, white/black, gay/straight, Jew/Gentile) have different rights and obligation based upon their classification, then I reject essentialism and consider it to be one of the most dreadful and damaging ideas that evolution has bestowed upon us.
---No. “Arabness” is not genetic. It is cultural. Your Arab Jew colleague was brought up speaking Arabic in an Arabic culture. That makes him an Arab---
Thanks for the comment, but cultural and genetic/lineage criteria have long competed to classify human groupings, in both the pre and post-DNA days. And ideological reasons often determine the use of one over the other, witness the recent ciation of DNA markers to solidify the nationhood of the Jewish people. This is also true, historically and today, of the grouping of Arabs, the oldest tradition defining Arab as a descendent of peoples from the region of the Arabian pennisula.
I have probably missed it, but I don't recall seeing the expression "arab jews" before on Mondoweiss. "Israeli Arabs", yes, but not "arab jews". It reminded me of a long time faculty colleague who was a child in Haifa and later fought with the Irgun and was in a British prison for the 1948 war. I found it at first shocking and then clarifying when, during one of our coversations, he said something like, "When I was a child we were all Arabs. I was a Jewish Arab and I had friends who were Muslim Arabs and others were Christian Arabs." So, if indeed the Israeli Jews from Russia, Italy and Poland share genes with that tribe that emigrated from Ur, expelled the people of Philistia from their land and was itself expelled by the Romans, mustn't every Jewish Israeli be an Arab?
"And, yes, there are hateful Arabs and Muslims who would erase Israel from the map. Why do the Israelis keep empowering them?"
If there had been a way for Israel to occupy an entire Palestinian-free "greater Israel" other than by forcing Palestinians to flee their homeland in order
to have work, food, medicine, education, safety from bombing and every other basic human need they might have chosen it. As it is, they seem willing to ride out the negatives until the job is done, confident that over the long term all will be forgotten.
Beware of the politician with something to prove to dear old Dad. See George W. Bush, John Kennedy, John McCain, George Allen and now Bibi.
And isn't it odd that, regardless of how the name "Bibi" is received in Israel, a man who grew up in the U.S. would accept it as a nickname?
Mark Braverman makes the point that (paraphrasing) since the U.S. enables, indeed promotes, the mess that is militaistic Zionism and the consequent suffering of the Palestinian people, it cannot walk away now. But, first what would be the effects of applying that ethic to U.S. actions everywhere that it has meddled, e.g., Iraq, Syria, Iran, Chile, Nicaragua, Cuba, Vietnam, and more? Or is the U.S. relationship to Israel again to be held "special"? Second, might not walking away, a policy of benign neglect (no more military aid, no more diplomatic cover, no more military cover, no more phony "100% behind Israel's right to defend itself") be the most effective way to force Israel to dismantle its system of theft and oppression, unleashing international courts, EU boycotts, diplomatic isolation, UN recognition for Palestine and more?
The damage to the civil liberties of everyone, Americans and all others, by the bogus hysteria that is called the "war on terror" as prosecuted now by two Administrations would have been unimaginable just days before nine-eleven. Spying upon citizens, indeterminate detentions without charges, kill lists, assasinations by the American government of Americans without charges or verdicts, the militarization of law enforcement. Generations of children will grow up where this overreaching by government will seem commonplace, where people will wonder at the NSA's tapping of their phones, "What's all the fuss?" With that, it's difficult to envision ever returning to a time when courts protected individual liberties and the government respected the Constitution.
I do as well. I was driving home from having taught an evening philosophy class in the early 1970s when I heard of Bertrand Russell's death. I was surprisingly sad then and I miss his presence now. He was a man in full.
John Mullen
The ad is offensive, false and intended to hurt. But even if it didn't backfire, as it seems to have, it should not be suppressed. Every suppression of speech, no matter how loathsome the speech is, increases the likelihood and perceived acceptability of suppressing more speech. What has happened as a result of this ad demonstates Mill's axiom that the remedy for speech you don't like is not suppression but simply more speech.
Mondo going mainstream. Terrific news. It's recognition of the great writers, researchers and thinkers on Mondoweiss.
Well done!!
John Mullen
Philip,
Thanks for great thoughts about Miller's masterpiece. I recall seeing it while in grad school and the guy I was with said as we were leaving something like, "I think I have a clue about how the Greeks felt after seeing a tragedy." His father, like mine, was a salesman, but that's not in any way an advantage as the themes are so universal.
I taught the play for years in Intro to Philosophy relating it to Marx's early ideas about alienation: from labor, self, others and nature. It fit perfectly though I doubt Miller intended it.
You are a great writer!
John Mullen
One of the most heartfelt and beautiful tributes to the America that good people seek that I have ever read. Thank you, Phil
John Mullen
M.J. Rosenberg is a courageous man. Imagine the pressure he's under. I salute him.
If I were forced to come with an alternative to "Israel Firster" to describe the likes of Dersh (and don't forget Senators Leiberman and Casey) I'd consider "Israel Onlyers".
As a former logic prof, I like to spot patterns of reasoning. Here's one:
Critic A (of Likud policies) states "X" or uses the phrase "Y".
Past antisemites have stated "X" or used the phrase "Y"
Therefore: Critic A is an antisemite
Recall Dershowitz's minions culling antisemitic websites to find ideas or words that Walt and Mearsheimer had stated or used. Ackerman links to an article that dredged up earlier uses by antisemites of "Israel firster" so Philip Weiss will be convinced never to use the phrase. Do I dare announce that I'm hungry? It's surely a stock pronouncement of David Duke. My goodness, I'd be channeling David Duke!
The logical fallacy of evaluating an idea by its "pedigree" (as Ackerman put it) appears in every logic text and will be easily spotted by any freshman logic student.
Congratulations Philip and Adam. Even more, thanks for your great work and your human spirit. There's nothing like mondweiss.
John Mullen
Welcome Annie,
I've been really impressed with your writing and insights. It's great to know you'll be writing more for Mondowesiss.
John
Thanks, Annie.
You are wonderful and these young people are so incrediblt brave! It is very inspiring.
I'm not so much concerned with reporters from the countries they report on. I am concerned with U.S. government foreign policy and military decision makers who hold citizenship in additional countries. Does anyone know how many G. W. Bush and/or Barack Obama advisors and decision makers hold Israeli citizenship?