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Total number of comments: 8 (since 2012-06-08 02:39:30)

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  • Wrestling in the Daylight: A Rabbi's Path to Palestinian Solidarity
    • jrfinkel September 5, 2012 at 6:45 pm with 4 replies

      sardelapasti writes, "The time now is that of the rats jumping out of the sinking ship..." From this I take it to mean that you think that Rabbi Rosen is a "rat." I take it to mean that you would consider anyone--and everyone--who changes their position on Israel to be a "rat."

      This sure is a funny way to go about political activism, which is based on the strategy of convincing people to change. Yea, let's work to convince them and then call them "rats" for not changing earlier. Worse, let's call those people who change their minds "morons."

      I am reminded of the ultra-left activist who tried to undermine Not In My Name when we started it here in Chicago in 2000. "Where were you in 1969?" he once asked me accusingly before he actively set about to destroy us. I always wondered where he was in 1948; but I was not silly enough to ask him, nor to ridicule him for not being active when he was an infant.

      Of course, the main problem is that he is still an infant. Ultra-leftism (and into this category I put Mooser and sardelapasti) continues to demonstrate that some people appreciate little about the dialectics of change.

    • jrfinkel September 5, 2012 at 4:10 pm

      Gee, Mooser, I wish we could all come out of the womb as enlightened and impervious to social conditioning as you. Tell me, how does it feel to be fully formed and perfect? When did you stop developing?

  • Finkelstein stands by 'BDS cult' accusation, says it's 'historically criminal' to not support the two state solution
    • jrfinkel June 11, 2012 at 4:10 pm

      I am not playing "semanitcal games." I am discussing the semantics of certain words and trying to explain why I think that it is important to use certain words to mean certain things. Incorrect usage either derives from, or can lead to, bad politics.

      I am specifically not arguing that you are incorrect in your remarks about the Jewish Agency and its involvement in terrorist activity. You need not convince me of facts I already know.

      That the JAFP was the "internationally recognized public agent of world Jewry" at a time when most Jews in the world rejected Zionism is certainly food for thought.

    • jrfinkel June 11, 2012 at 3:34 pm

      are you also advancing the idea it is anti semitic to call israel the jewish state rather than the zionist state?

      Actually, yes I am. Israel is a Jewish state; and it is a Jewish state only because it is founded on the ideology of Jewish Supremacy, not because the majority population is Jewish or because its leaders make some bogus claims to represent those whom it does not.

      Israel is not The Jewish State. Most Jews do not live there, and, despite what Israel and its supporters claim, it neither acts for nor represents world Jewry. To claim otherwise is anti-Semitic.

      Why? Because if one insists on identifying all Jews with Israel (by calling it The Jewish State), then one necessarily makes all Jews guilty of Israel's crimes. And these crimes then become Jewish crimes.

      This claim can only be made by accepting the Zionist myth that Israel represents all Jews: that is is The Jewish State.

      Does this make Zionism itself anti-Semitic? Yes. Zionism never challenged anti-Semitism. It embraced, promulgated, and benefited from anti-Semitism. It set out to negate 2000+ years of Jewish experience during which Jews invented ourselves and differentiated ourselves into many ethnicities.

      By the way, this is why we in Chicago called ourselves Not In My Name. We wanted to demonstrate that there is a clear difference between Jews and Israel. By doing this, we successfully (and rather quickly) changed some attitudes within the Palestinian, Arab, and Muslim communities here and combated what Finkelstein has called "spillover" anti-Semitism, which results from incorrectly identifying all Jews with Israel.

    • jrfinkel June 11, 2012 at 1:28 pm

      The fact that the Zionist movement and the Jewish Agency and Israel claim to speak for, and act in the name of, all Jews is only that: a claim. You are perfectly free to accept their mythology. That is up to you. But it leads directly to blaming Jews, rather than blaming the Zionist movement and Israel. That is also your prerogative. But I suggest that this analysis is both inaccurate and anti-Semitic.

      You do not have to convince me that the Jewish Agency and the Irgun (etc) were party to terrorism. The historical record is clear on this point. Indeed, the Irgun were the original Middle East terrorists. But they and the Jewish Agency no more represented world Jewry as did the man in the moon. It matters not one whit who they claimed to represent.

      Words matter. The fact that some Jews were terrorist does not make their acts Jewish crimes for which all Jews are guilty. This is why I suggest that the term "Jewish terrorism" be replaced by the more accurate term, "Zionist terrorism." It's a small point but I think an important one.

    • jrfinkel June 9, 2012 at 11:47 pm with 12 replies

      Saying that "[Israel] was born of Jewish terrorism" implies that there was something intrinsically Jewish about the terrorism and suggests that world Jewry was responsible for it. There are those who make this claim, of course (Shamir, Eisen, and Atzmon). But I consider it to be an anti-Semitic argument.

    • jrfinkel June 9, 2012 at 1:43 pm

      I can understand why they might: Israel is an oppressive, colonialist, expansionist and Jewish-supremacist state...

      Yes, the rejection of Israeli nationalism is all quite understandable. That does not mean that it leads to a practical solution.

      In my view, just as Zionism was the (conscious) negation of 2000+ years of Jewish experience, Israeli nationalism can be the negation of Zionism. Indeed, this is the historic task of Israeli society: to supersede Jewish nationalism with Israeli nationalism. The former cannot be democratic; the latter can be.

      ...born of Jewish terrorism...

      Israel was born of Zionist terrorism, not Jewish terrorism. Most Jews in the world had nothing to do with it and there was nothing uniquely Jewish about it.

    • jrfinkel June 8, 2012 at 3:46 pm with 2 replies

      I find it interesting that so many people ignore what Norman Finkelstein actually says and, instead, comment on what they think he said. This seems to be as true of those on the left (who claim, for instance, that Finkelstein is opposed to BDS) as it is of those on the right (who claim that Finkelstein is a Holocaust denier).

      It seems to me that Finkelstein is correct on two important points. First, when it comes to the national question, he answers that Israelis have a right to have a state. Secondly, he grounds his activism on what is possible given the current objective and subjective conditions. He rejects the utopian notions that are all too prevalent in this movement.

      The conflict between two national identities must be resolved, not by demanding that each side reject its national aspirations, but by accepting both. Yet those with the most power--Israeli and U.S. leaders--reject Palestinian nationalism (while many within the Palestinian solidarity movement reject Israeli nationalism).

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