Total number of comments: 3402 (since 2009-09-12 00:56:04)
pabelmont
Retired. Married for 24 years to Palestinian-American, Quaker. Myself of Jewish descent, non-religious. Classical musician (cello). Run my own website, 123pab.com, for which I do all the programming (PHP, MYSQL). Favor an international intervention, as a "deus ex machina", to rescue Palestinians, Israelis, and USA from the tail-wags-the-dog AIPAC-et-alius. This probably means doing an end-run around USA's UNSC veto and doing more-or-less coordinated BDS at nation-state level. Non-Action on Global Warming is a far bigger threat to all the world than the 63-year non-action on Israel/Palestine. On this topic, I am truly hopeless: "I cry a tear for the soon to be late humanity."
Website: http://123pab.com
"I think it was the old man who, passing Reform and Conservative synagogues, spit at them, saying he could smell the taint of hell emitted from t hem."
If this and other quotes above are true, makes the worst of the Islamic fundies look not so out-of-step with American Values We All Share.
But seriously, we are all out of touch, all out of touch. Helen Thomas was way out of line. MAKE THEM ALL GO HOME is not an American value if THEM is Jews. (Its OK for others, evidently). Go to your oculists for a new pair of glasses for observing "American values".
I love the idea of getting devices back but, really, wouldn't you prefer to get them back AS THEY WERE TAKEN and containing the same stuff in memory? Not deleted and not edited?
And without "meta-data" added to show that your stuff was actually photoed in 1937. And like that.
Jews have spoken to other Jews on this issue. The signs are Jew-to-Jew communications.
Now we need Jew-to-other communications, as: "Everybody, please speak your mind about human rights in Israel and Palestine -- this issue is not, repeat IS NOT, a question for Jews alone. Please do not abandon us, Jews, who care about human rights."
Mushy talking, mushy thinking -- "beginning to". The Lobby, hard at work, its effects always visible, always reassuring (to the Lobby). 'No dear, its not "apartheid" yet, but it is beginning to seem so.'
Walt's article mentions: "By taking concrete steps to relieve Palestinian suffering"
Here, the "concrete steps" when considered in the context of the paralysis imposed by The Lobby suggests someone staggering around in the Mafia's trademarked "cement shoes".
"Hate blockade." Thanks, Dan. A journey of 1000 miles starts with a single step.
Talk v. action.
Israel's first rule is that it doesn't matter what other (countries) say, but only what Israel does. However, point of clarification, it might matter what other countries do if only they would get over the idea that talking (threats) can be effective with Israel. Israel does not care about threats. It cares about acts.
Especially with the kindly old buffoon USA preventing UNSC action, there is little in the way of action for Israel to fear. But EU countries, Turkey, etc., could cut off trade, cut airline communications, recall ambassadors, and all that. It would be a start.
Hey, a great idea. Heard it before. Jews oppressed in Germany, etc., need a home. Give them one (they need it, deserve it) but somewhere else, somewhere WHERE THE OPPRESSORS WILL NOT BE INCONVENIENCED.
Helen Thomas thought the Israeli Jews could/should return to their homes. Bet she thought the Palestinians (1948 refugees) should do so as well.
Status quo ante anybody?
Someone should endow a chair at Columbia School of Journalism (or the like), the Helen Thomas Chair, funded in perpetuity, which she should occupy for the first year or so.
Speaking truth is hard enough. Speaking truth to power is so much harder.
In 1948, Israel built an orphanage, funded by robbing banks. Philanthropists they called themselves. Bank robbers, we knew them to be. Einstein said no to Shamir, and Israel made him its premier. There are no Palestinian people, Golda kindly told us, while rocking the orphans' cradles.
In 2010 the people who need the orphanages are those who owned the banks in 1948. What banks will the philanthropists of 1948 rob now? And what new orphans create?
The world, so long silent, wonders at its long silence.
Great blog idea!
Gosh, a tame-and-in-daylight high-seas interception? That's no fun. And lest we worry that if Israel'd waited until day-light the ship might have arrived at Gaza's port during the night, recall that the Israeli theory allowing interception-in-international-waters would have allowed an interception during daylight the previous day!
Helen Thomas should be fired because she's biased? Oh, good point! Although I can think of quite a few others who should be fired if "bias" is the test.
Many people are abusers, murderers, torturers, because of what happened to them earlier in life. People abused as children often (not always, and not only) abuse others after they "grow up". The (European branch of the) Jewish people as a whole were horribly abused during the Holocaust, and it was no picnic before in Poland and Russia. My father's Russian uncles told me a bit about it when I was young.
Nevertheless, generally, we treat abusers, murderers, and torturers as criminals even if we may sometimes mediate the punishment because of the background. And, chiefly, we aim to stop the crimes, whatever the punishment may be.
I think we can all, Jews and others, be understanding of the background that has led to Israel's becoming the violence- and crime-addicted country it is today. But that should not lead us to accept the continuation of that violence and crime.
Our uncomplaining acceptance of it (given that we are aware of it) becomes our violence and our crime. We become complicit. Accessories after the fact.
And it is NOT just a problem for members of Jewish communities, even though it is a particularly poignant problem for members of any such community.
The gift that Tema Okun brings us is her attempt to deal with that very special and difficult problem in a way to make it comprehensible to non-Jews (and Jews not members of such communities). She is helping every person to ask "what will it take to say enough?". I hope President Obama reads this beautiful essay.
The driver of the car was pushed aside by the mechanic. Even if the driver had a beautiful, a just, or merely a defensible destination and itinerary, his mechanic (who alone knew how to make the car work) replaced the driver and redefined the destination and itinerary.
Admirers from afar remembered, always and sometimes rather desperately, the stated destination and itinerary chosen by the (original) driver--and ignored the actual destination and itinerary chosen by the actual driver (originally merely the mechanic).
Now when we ask whether the destination ("ends") justifies the itinerary ("means"), we must recognize that the itinerary has delivered us to quite another destination than that described by the (original) driver.
Perhaps you suppose I am speaking of Israel, and perhaps I am. But think, too, of the USA, who gave the driver's keys to the corporations and became subject to the constant control of money and, thus, to the control (as to Israel) of The Lobby.
How did USA TV cover it?
We in blog-land get a bit confused: the MAIN media in the USA is TV. Newspapers and their "e" versions are second, and blogs third (and OUR BLOGS, not even in the picture). Our over-concern with the NYT is understandable but overdone. Of course, PRINT NYT does have some reach.
Narcissism -- the disease of the Narciss-im. good essay.
If only NATO and EU could break loose of USA, take their own pulse, measure their own temperature, measure their own red-count, ACT LIKE INDEPENDENT HUMAN BEINGS (that is, states and organizations of states), and take a fresh look (that is, take a look at all) at what Israel's been doing and USA's been granting immunity and impunity regarding -- then we might see some real action taken, on TRADE, on OECD, sanctions, diplomatic relations, all within the powers of these countries and unions, and many DEMANDED BY FOURTH GENEVA CONVENTION, etc.
Newser is MSM? I guess, if NYT is ruled out * * * .
But what do these papers say: Boston Globe (owned by NYT), LAT, WaPo ?
If I write \ and then write \ , what happens? [not what I wrote!]
Hmmm. Seems thqat bad HTML is screened out. Good!
Stressing International Humanitarian Law and Human Rights Law:
One would like to see Israeli human rights folks, from their perspective of greater knowledge, speaking "truth to power" by speaking directly to US (and European) Jews and urging action of a political sort, such as:
Please tell your legislators and governments and newspapers that you are Jews and you support international law in all circumstances and that -- because they are illegal at international law -- you condemn absolutely Israel's continuing blockade of Gaza and continuing occupation of the territories that Israel occupied first in 1967 and still occupies, including Gaza, the West Bank (including occupied East Jerusalem), and the Golan Heights, irrespective of any claim Israel may have made to have "annexed" any of these territories.
Here are facts that you should tell your respective publics: FACTS
Here are interpretations of International Law that you should tell your respective publics: LAW
(And, indeed, JVP and others have pretty well been saying these sorts of things and should continue in that direction.)
Maybe Bibi thinks they DID use restraint! What might they not have done otherwise?
Look up Cordesman in Finkelstein's "This Time We Went Too Far". Especially pp 55-57. Straight megaphone for Israeli line w.r.t. Gaza 2008/2009. THEREFORE THIS CHANGE MAY BE IMPORTANT.
"Our shame, however, will be harder to live with." (Grossman).
I hope there is more than shame to live with. This is, perhaps, the enjoyment of power by someone with scruples against enjoying power.
But if a non-democratic (because "Jewish") state is a necessity (especially if a tragic necessity, created "of need" rather than "of right"), then it should be as small as possible so as not to usurp more than necessary of the land the Palestinians (and perhaps some Israeli Jews as well) need for their own state, which I hope will come into existence soon and as a democratic and non-religious state. Christians and Muslims (and Jews) and others always got on well in the days before 1930; but times change, the Christians have largely been expelled or chose to leave.
Therefore, the line-shifting w.r.t. "green line" is all wrong: the Israelis should give up land to the Palestinians, not the other way around. And especially as the Israelis have shown "in full cry" that they regard the green line as impermanent and negotiable, it should be seen to be impermanent and negotiable in the other direction as well.
Maybe three states?
Or how a few million European Jews became "refugees" and 6 million or so became "late." Lot of actual or constructive "passive voice" going on here. No actors.
"Those who relocated to the West Bank" is not, strictly speaking, "passive voice", seeing as how the persons mentioned are said to have RELOCATED (THEMSELVES). However, there is no mention whatever of their general (what? 99.98 % ?) desire to return to their homes and you-know-who's refusal to allow that to happen. And the UNGA's repeated assertion that they should be allowed to return.
Yes, on the whole, WaPo seems to have left a bit out.
And never forget to glance at the Brass Plaque in the sidewalk on E.60, Manhattan, between # 4 and #14, which commemorates the fundraising for the Jewish terrorists before 1948. See here
Yes, move toward liberal democracy, not toward "liberal Zionism". But be careful of "democracy", too. Or is it "neoliberal"? Don't want to live in a state of ANY size which is substantially run by and for its (or anyone else's) corporations.
Familiar situation. Many people must feel that way. In the USA, many feel unwilling to speak up because of a fear of being "kicked out" of a personal/community/cultural membership they still value.
Special Israeli prisons for Gazonauts?
But Israel already holds airplane arrivees (and, oddly, departees) for hours and hours and searches them and demeans them and rifles their baggage and photo- and computer-memories and DAMAGES STUFF and CONFISCATES STUFF.
So, what's new?
Someone should ask them (hats off to North Korea for raising the question a week early) What is their authority for stopping boats in Mediterranean off Gaza coast (if there is no occupation of Gaza, that is).
Phil, Heap praise on Beinart. The trip of 1000 miles begins with a single step. He is walking toward the outer door of his house--from the inside. soon he will walk outside and see the sun shining and realize there is a whole world, an important world, outside his house.
I should think that--like you--he has "broken his rice bowl" within that house. Like you, he needs to find a "rice bowl" or at least employment in the greater world.
He will learn that it is possible to be moral and just without basing that morality on Judaism or on Zionism. And like Goodman and Schwerner he will make common cause with the oppressed on general principles.
The word "exile" is not in exile. The word "Palestine" (like so many of the people of Palestine) is (in some circles) in "exile". Put there by Zionists. Must not be spoken approvingly. The approving use of this dreadful word on the test, even merely in passing, as it was used, was an assault on the student's delicate identify, delicate sense of "political correctness". How was I supposed to write an essay when I was in shock? Ohh, the horror!
Poor kids.
Grown-ups (are we really?) have some choice, some discretion, some ability to weigh this and that. Kids are in identity-never-land, and some of them've been told to go into anaphylactic shock upon hearing APPROVING mention of the word "Palestinian" (bringing the WORD in from exile, so to speak).
Parents should be called in for a talk with the principal. This is serious metal illness. This kid could not survive in college if she cannot write a short essay on a simple topic merely because the "P" word had been uttered.
As with all these questions, the matter of MONEY & POWER should be raised. The monolith is the wealthy tip of the USA-Jewish iceberg. This IS monolithic. Publishers of big papers, owners of big TV networks, etc. THIS IS THE LEVEL OF POLITICAL CONTROL.
The fact that there is discussion elsewhere is irrelevant. We (all of us) here are irrelevant because we don't elect politicians.
They (Dersh and Yahoo) cannot change reality." Well. whether it's the Samson threat (what, to nuke NYC if USA fails to support Israel?) or merely AIPAC, the "reality" is that the Israelis are LIVING what the Kaiser (WWI) and Hitler (WWII) believed to be reality, namely, that POWER allows (and perhaps requires) ALL, and the flimsy democracy (USA) does NOT stand in its way. That is the REALITY, We cannot change it. That is Israel's leadership's (perceived) reality, and what is reality, ever, but a perception?
However, we can hope that events somehow change the USA's mind (or EU's) and allow enough force (just enough mind you) that Israel's crazies (never forget "the boss has gone crazy" in Gaza 2008-2009!) can be forced to accept something which, to them--to them remember--will seem something short of the destruction of Israel and, thus, not constitute the trigger for their bombs.
The danger, of course, as the Israeli right-wing have seen (and the reason that the Kfir Brigade cannot control either its own soldiers or the settler crazies) is that the Israeli right-wing crazies have moved the bar so far as to make the removal of even the remote settlements SEEM like the destruction of their dream, that is, SEEM like the destruction of Israel. The trigger finger tightens on the Samson trigger.
The Zionist decision to expel the Palestinians was deceitful in that it was hidden from the world (if not from the Jews and Arabs of Palestine). Nowadays, we must prove that they intended it from (before) the beginning and that no such expulsion was "promised" or contemplated by UNGA 181. Creation of Israel as a "Jewish state" was a fraud to the extent that it gained support without explanation that its CENTRAL TENET (and NOT an unexpected or conditional side effect) was EXPULSION.
It appears that [1] Zionism understood that to pack the world's Jews into any territory beginning with what they could get in 1939-49 they would need to expel the "Arabs"; [2] the Palestinians feared expulsion (meaning either that Jews were talking about it or that it was obvious; and [3] the Zionists did NOT TALK ABOUT IT in the West, neither in the run-up to UNGA 181 (1947) nor when "accepting" the proposal expressed in 181 nor after the Arabs refused that invitation.
The decision by Zionism's leaders to go to war appears to have been made well in advance of 181, perhaps as early as 1939, and expressed itself in the terrorism that expelled the British (I have read no report of large scale opposition to that terrorism on the part of the Jewish Agency before 1947, but I welcome correction). The decision to go to war seems to have encapsulated a (silent) decision to expel "Arabs". One can imagine Ben-Gurion saying (in private, not to the US envoy or the NYT), "We must wash the dishes before serving dinner on them."
Beautiful statement: "The possibility of a future injustice against Jews is held to justify the actual past and present injustice to Arabs."
Also, since weapons technology (and availability) increase with time, Israel can always claim that its safety against military and terrorist attack (apparently but a small part of that piece of mysticism which is called "national security") increase with time, so that it (alone among states) is ENTITLED to extend its boundaries (and EXPEL more people). this CLAIM should be rejected.
As to denying entrance to Israel: The USA issues (or denies) visas to visitors. No reason at all that I can imagine that any country should routinely issue visas to anyone who asks. Feel free to deny and delay. USA surely does!
BUT -- if a visa has been issued, the right to enter the country should be guaranteed absent powerful evidence of something UNKNOWN and UNKNOWABLE to the visa issuer. Here, Abeer Afana's history was unchanged (one imagines) from date of application for visa until arrival in Israel. Granting her a visa and then denying her entry is pure hooliganism.
Israel should pay all her expenses and $500/day for wasted time.
Israel HAS been solving its Palestinian problem, haven't you noticed? It's problem is that it wants the land without the people (the geography without the demography, in Afif Safieh's cheerful formulation), and it's been doing just fine, just fine.
In 1947-50 it expelled 85% of the non-Jewish population and declared their land "absentee property" which it then transferred to the Jewish National Fund, which holds the land as trustee for the "Jewish people" and will not sell or lease any of this land to non-Jews.
In 1950-67 (and perhaps still), Israel confiscated land from its non-Jewish citizens by a variety of means. One, a delicious scam for those who like scams, was to declare the land a "closed military area" for 3 years, thereby preventing cultivation of the land, and then seize the land as a forfeit under an old Ottoman law by which land reverts to the state if it is not cultivated for 3 years. Neat huh?
By now we all know what's happening on the West Bank (including occupied land near the Old City of Jerusalem) in terms of land seizures.
Land seizure has been a corner-stone in Zionist practice and has never stopped.
And a variety of means have been used to encourage Palestinians to emigrate: expulsion in mass (1947-50, 1967), exile of a few, denial of family re-unification, denial of residence cards (for Jerusalem, for West Bank), smashing of the economy, military smashing (WB and Gaza), general hardship (starvation of Gaza, apartheid chopping-up of West Bank). At a slower pace (except originally and in 1967) Israel has been busy clearing away the people. (However, a high Palestinian birth-rate has made this ineffective except by comparison to "what if").
These practices have not been "because" of Palestinian fighting, terrorism, politics, or anything else. They have been "because" of Zionist desires and their charming ability to "give themselves permission" to perform illegal and/or immoral acts, to say nothing of their ability to get away with it all.
If the "reset" button has been pushed, then we should see it seriously reported (that is, not just book reviews) in Forward, WP, HuffPo, Ha'aretz, and (a month later, on p. 13), NYT.
Until then, it is just the intellectuals (and the rat pack, sorry friends, "the choir") talking to them/our selves. But revel in it. It happens so seldom!
Instead of this play (in which EW is a bit player), how about a play ABOUT EW
which quotes him on Holocaust, on human-rights for THESE and THOSE and then quotes him on human-rights for Palestinians (with whatever quotes are available, or -- as I imagine -- with 1 minute of silence, while GAZA YouTube plays on a screen behind him).
Or this could be a teaching play about US official Jewry, and show the Museum of Tolerance and other artful dodges.
Play might be called, "Why saying 'Never again' is easy to say but hard for some people to mean."
(Well, I'm no playwright, that's for sure!)
Honest Zionists say that "you must break eggs to make an omelet" and mean by this that Zionism is BASED on the need for ethnic cleansing. After all, Zionists wanted the land -- not merely to control it and to control its people but -- to settle it.
Nakba is not an accident. It did not result from a divine wind blowing. It was deliberate and necessary if the Zionist project was to succeed. The land-clearing continued after the 1949 armitices with land-grabbing within Israel from Israeli-Palestinians. The histories are clear on this.
The USA should keep -- in its back pocket -- strategies to handle all stupid contingencies, e.g., Israel tells us (somehow, by indirection perhaps) that it is about to attack Iran.
I suggest making, at that time a public statement that the US has no plan to attack Iran, sees great harm in anyone else's doing it, and advises any country contemplating such an attack to remain continent or suffer unspecified consequences.
About the play which was cancelled:
"He was metaphorically placed in the room with this man so I could investigate moral complexities about what kind of person could commit the kind of crimes Bernard Madoff committed. . . . It enabled me to look at both ends of the moral spectrum and the points in between. And so I was very sorry to have displeased Professor Wiesel. And quite devastated by his response," she says.
Wiesel and Madoff were placed at opposite ends of a moral spectrum? Or was Wiesel at some "point in between"? (Clarification is now unlikely.)
33% of $45=$15. 30% of $45=$13.5.
The math is easy. This AM, WNYC fund-raising told us there was a 1 for 2 matching contribution, so if you gave $50 is was worth $90. Hmmm. pretty good. But if you gave $100, it was worth $150. The arithmetic, in anyc ase, is easy, but the LAW? The law is so hard. Take the settlements. No, really!
These are a fascinating breed of un-uniformed-but-armed-combatants: [1] they are within a territory where there is an army of occupation and they are not opposing it but are protected by it [2] but they are present to protect people who are present illegally (as they themselves are).
If you try to steal an old lady's purse, may she hit you with her umbrella (in self-defense)? How about if it's not her purse?
May a bank-guard in a bank shoot-to-kill a bank-robber who is not threatening anyone's health or life? What if the bank was stolen and the thieves hired the bank-guard? And, especially, what if the thieves who stole the bank stole it from the guy who is (now) the bank-robber?
God is smiling on them? Nonsense. They are triumphalists. They got "permission" somewhere to act that way, adn once they started doing it, it was fun. Taunting the "other" and the helpless is fun for some people, little boys often. But this behavior can be taught, adn, far more important, it can be taught AGAINST.
Where are the liberal Rabbis giving their lessons in good behavior? Is there, at long last, no decency among the Jewish leadership, not anywhere there? (But I will admit, it would be very hard after a lifetime becoming and acting as a committed Zionist to turn your own world on its head and start publicly distancing yourself from it. That's why the younger generation becomes so important. The child shall be father to the man.)
Shlomo Sand says that Israel was created by a "rape," but that the child of a rape deserves to live. WELL, NOT QUITE.
In the context of I/P, Israel is the rapist. The holocaust is a Johnny-come-lately and, although it is worse than a "rape", it did not itself produce Israel. Zionism was well under way long before Hitler was born. Jabotinsky was on the job before Hitler.
A more apt metaphor is that of the child of abuse which becomes abusive when grown. The Jews who made the final push to create Israel described themselves (I suppose) as "good", "decent", "human-beings", "religious", and "needy" because "ill-treated", but of all these descriptions the one which counted (as we see now, when the gloves have come off, revealing the scars where the fingernails were pulled out) was "ill-treated". They've forgotten all the "decent", "human-beings" part. Israel was started before the holocaust, but the heavy lifting occurred afterward.
The modern Israelis have grown to think the "mis-treated, abused" part both permits and demands that they repeat what happened to them, reversing roles, acting as a new tormentor to another victim.
“The greatest mistake Israel could make at the moment is to forget that Israel itself is a mistake. It is an honest mistake, a well-intentioned mistake, a mistake for which no one is culpable, but the idea of creating a nation of European Jews in an area of Arab Muslims (and some Christians) has produced a century of warfare and terrorism of the sort we are seeing now. Israel fights Hezbollah in the north and Hamas in the south, but its most formidable enemy is history itself.”
This is devious mischaracterization because it elides the crime of stealing a territory and expelling a people, saying only, "creating a nation of European Jews in an area of Arab Muslims (and some Christians) ." Honest mistake, well-intentioned mistake, my foot.
Creation-of-Israel probably deserves the Talleyrand prize: because although (from the ordinary non-pre-1945-statist-view, stealing and expelling are a crime) it was also a blunder to create a situation for constant warfare.
The USA, of course, follows this other (dark) light unto the nations by deciding to fight a war endless by its very definition and equally stupid. If we should beware of small states, we should be even more wary of states that believe themselves "noble", "lights unto the nations", "beloved of God", or any other such stupid deliberate mis-seeing of the reality of human nature.
I agree: letting China prosper (but does it really prosper with its buying up of USA debt?) is poor statecraft.
But USA has been blinded by so many MANDATORY STUPIDITIES such as love-Israel and hate-communism and destroy-terrorism and ignore-human-rights and LOVE-WAR and LOVE-OIL (while timidly talking abut global warming) that it is hard to see how a sensible USA could emerge.
Beware anything labelled "BIG". I've reserved the term (in my writing) for the apparent masters of America, BIG PHARMA, BIG BANKS, BIG ARMAMENTS, BIG ISRAEL (aka The Lobby), but there may be other perfectly good BIGs out there to worry about. Still, Breitbart promises "snarkiness", so all is not lost !?
His anger is easy to understand. Look at his own beauty in the photo. He probably thinks he should have won (and, darn, he's not female, and that's another thing, these beauty contests should really open the field to men, too).
"I have never heard of a democratic state denying entry to thinkers (or anybody else for that matter) who neither call for violence or break local or international law."
Hunh?
Weeeeel, the USA routinely denies entry to people invited here to speak. Perhaps, though, it is by now the recieved wisdom that the USA is not (or no longer) a democracy. On the other hand, perhaps he means "any person to whom a valid visa had already been issued" ??
In the trail of tears which is the failure (by various parties) to act meritoriously when they had the chance, the failure of the US to act to require Israel to accept the refugees of 1947-49 is the greatest. There was "Jewish money" in the US electoral scheme then, of course, but sadly, it was no-where what it was to become.
We said the right words but refused to take the right actions. Israel understood what its leaders have understood from the beginning (and which some of them have also said out loud) that "it does not matter what the Goyim say. It matters what the Jews do". Well, it also matters what the "Goyim do", but sad to say, it still doesn't matter what they say. And they still don't do a darn thing.
In my feeling, Israel has stolen ALL of Palestine, and there is no difference (in reality, setting international law to one side) between Israeli control of Tel-Aviv and of E. Jerusalem. It's all colonialism. The land seizures (not by arms-length purchase) are all theft. Piracy.
That's feeling, my feeling. Based on that feeling, call the settlements Colonies, call them Stolen Land, whatever.
At law (by very broad agreement), Israel is a state (and that not al illegal robber) in its pre-1967 territory, and the 1967 accretions are [1] held in belligerent occupation by Israel and [2] ownership is unsettled, with some tendency to refer to OPTs as "Palestinian" lands. Usage is such that Israeli "settlement" in OPT has come to mean a building devoted to Jewish residence (but it is illegal for an Israeli to live there!) built upon land taken (stolen) illegally from the residents of the occupied territory.
So, what it IS is a building -- built on illegally acquired land and illegally occupied by Israeli citizens.
To emphasize this illegality, it has become insufficient to say "illegal settlement" because this plays into the Israeli game of suggesting (fraudulently) that there are also "legal" settlements. I'd suggest "settlement (illegal at international law)".
If it makes anyone feel better, how about "Israeli colonial settlement (illegal at international law)".
NYTimes here
pointed here:
which mentions Chomsky non-entry event
If Goldstone's apartheid-era rulings will ban him (and he was not a Nazi as far as I know, Nazis being the largest statutorily-singled-out group of not-allowed-as-immigrants-people), then will not [FAIR APPLICATION OF] the same rules bad a lot of Israelis?
"and that America has almost nothing in common with freedom or justice. "
This means that, as endlessly repeated, Israeli and US values are identical. what people don't say, it that they are also identical (or close enough) to fascist values.
"First they came for the terrorists, but I didn't care because I wasn't a terrorist. Then they came for those merely accused of terrorism, but I didn't care, because I wasn't [yet] accused of terrorism. Now, when they've come for me, there is no one left to protest."
BTW, the really neat thing about Chomsky and the clown, etc., is that (as far as I can guess), Chomsky HAD a VISA (don't leave home without it) and the implicit promise of a visa ISSUED AFTER RESEARCH BY THE STATE ("you may enter and remain as a tourist for 2 weeks" or the like) was REVOKED BY A GUARD AT THE BORDER. Kiss your travel dollars goodbye! One wonders, what changed between the date of issuance of the visa and the denial of entry?
Congress prefers non-violence to violence (on the part of Palestinians and other protesters) . Violence is to be the preserve of the State and violence by the State is almost always OK.
But that doesn't mean that Congress wants to oppose Israel. Far from it. Just to shut down violence (except by the State). Remember the Kent State shoot-em-up? That was OK.
Torture (of persons accused of "terrorism") is OK. Detention without most rights (of persons accused of "terrorism") is OK. And what is "terrorism"? I don't know and you don't know, but the police and FBI and CIA and such-like: they know. Indeed, their lowest-level, least-educated employees know. "Accused of" ? By whom? On what evidence? And who decides?
Is Hitler winning (again)? Is USA degenerated into a police-state?
The reform rabbis who love Israel probably love the idea, the flag, the rallying cry, the quasi-patriotism. And ignore the uncomfortable realities.
My mother (arch anti-religious Jewish background) used to joke that the last time Jesus's name was mentioned in the Unitarian Church was when the handyman hit his thumb with a hammer. Meaning: a religion can get lost from its nominal principles.
Why Jews want to be Jews beats me. I don't. I married a Christian, indeed a Christian Palestinian. A very good pianist, and music is MY religion (or at least my practice). But if you want to "be" a Jew, you gotta believe something or do something about it. But what?
I guess the Reform Jews feel a need, and maybe even more so their Rabbis feel a need to have a SOMETHING at the CORE and since the mere IDEA of Israel seems not to be enough (as it may have been when NEXT YEAR was less likely to be fulfillable), the MERE IDEA has been substituted for the REALITY (both permitting and requiring that the reality be studiously ignored).
And, of course, giving up ISRAEL as a belief would also mean giving up HOLOCAUST as a justification. "We are a people because Hitler made us one and Hitler made us require Israel, so we do require Israel, and therefore Israel can do no wrong."
Ask the rabbis what they believe Israel (or any other country) is FORBIDDEN to do and then see how it squares up with the reality.
What's it mean, "an end to the occupation of Palestinians lands" (excluding "anneded" lands ) ?
Minimally it means, remove Israeli troops and settlers from these places, leaving THE OCCUPATION within the annexed lands.
It's a good idea. A good start. Israel out of Gaza and out of most of West Bank, leaving Israel as belligerent occupier of the so-called, purported, "annexed lands".
I wonder if the Rabbis think of it that way, that is, think of it as:
[1] immediate Israeli pull out of troops and settlers and wall
[2] no more shenanigans like in Gaza, with troops controlling boundaries
(i.e., end of occupation means what it says, not a fake, as presently in Gaza)
[3] NO ISRAELI OWNERSHIP OF ANNEXED LANDS, MERELY CONTINUING OCCUPATION AND STRIFE AND HUMAN-RIGHTS ISSUES
There is no question that The Lobby controls Congress and through Congress the Administration. But what does that tell us? Only that other (and bigger) BIGs (BIG ARMAMENTS, BIG OIL, BIG BANKS, so many of them) either agree with The Lobby or disagree so mildly that they make no fuss.
Imagine if several big corporations (or whole industries) really believed, and believed strongly, that USA support for Israel harmed them. There'd be contention and Congress might move off top-dead-center. But of all the propositions that are unproved (and, indeed, usually not even stated), the proposition that one or more BIGs (other than The Lobby) care to oppose US policy for Israel is the most unproved (and unstated). If someone could show proof of any major US industry which was suffering, and knew it was suffering, because of USA support for Israel, then there'd be something to talk about.
It's like primary elections: no-one votes except the most committed. The big corporations either don't care about Israel or care about it as strongly as The Lobby does. Or agree with the Lobby, perhaps influenced by pro-Israel CEOs and such.
I have advanced the theory elsewhere that the BIGs who direct USA policy are a terrible danger because they don't look at the whole picture and don't take a long view. But they are very, very good at what they do, and what they do is control the USA government by spending money where it counts. They may be making a mistake. It may, in fact, matter even to them, and in a negative way, the way The Lobby drives the USA. But they don't see it and don't oppose it.
The bottom line is -- they don't oppose it. You've seen the marches in Washington. Just people. Meaningless. You don't see a march of corporate lobbyists descending on Washington asking Congress to jettison Israel. that is the bottom line. This is the USA.
The BIG BANKS may have purchased themselves an insurance policy (the "too big to fail" insurance policy) but the USA has no such policy and the BIGs don't know that because they have short-term goals and no big-picture (and no devotion to any sort of "public good").
"Boy does this look good." Duncan Kennedy's syllabus curiously omits UNGA 181! Some people think that this was a "birth certificate" for Israel.
Phil, I have always said that we need more non-Jewish scholars of Jewish history. The late great Gershom Scholem disagreed; he said that Jews should write Jewish history. No, we need more air in the room. We need to understand this majestic history that is now so engaged with elements of militarism and imperial power. Hunh? Perhaps by "Jewish history" here, you mean history which involves (among others) Jews. Like the history of Wall Street?
Since when is the study of I/P "Jewish history"? Surely it is (just as much) Palestinian history. And, as you indicate, due to the interventions of Britain and USA, it is also part of international power-politics.
Unless "Jewish history" is limited to intra-communal matters, or is limited to the stories of the Bible (which Israel Finkelstein assures us are not history at all) it always involves others. If the "Amalekites" ever existed, they probably have their own take on events that some people would prefer to call "Jewish history" and to leave to the capable hands (and only to the capable hands) of Jewish scholars.
If Israel is being (or feels it is being) delegitimized, it is because Israelis on the whole feel (and outsiders do as well) that what Israel is doing today (Gaza, settlements, erasing Arab East Jerusalem, land-grabbing, water-grabbing, etc., etc.) is INTRINSIC to Israel so that--assuming as many do--that these activities are illegitimate, if follows that Israel is illegitimate (AB OVO so to say) because there is "no air between" Zionism as it was before 1948 and Israel as it is today.
If Israel would only stop behaving badly, it would to that extent be less illegitimate. But by all evidence it cannot stop. It cannot stop behaving badly because it is Israel and has a destiny to fulfil which requires impossibly bad behavior. Or so people on both sides (those that like the behavior and those that deplore it) seem to agree (while, of course, disagreeing on the characterization of the behavior as "bad").
How to explain this?
from "When We Were Very Young", A. A. Milne. QED.
It's an idee fixe: Israel must be a "Jewish State", simply MUST you know, and must therefore expel the Palestinians and keep them out; if expulsion is illegitimate (as most of the world thinks), then this aspect of Zionism is itself illegitimate and Israel (as the physical embodiment of the Zionist philosophy) is illegitimate. (However, if the young Israelis could agree to live in an Israel that was not a "Jewish State", then the illegitimacy disappears, and a "Jewish" and democratic Israel becomes possible, where "Jewish" means whatever you like except not "overwhelming-majority-Jewish population". Like NYC for example.)
Delegitimize Israel? If this Nakba commemoration causes any person (say a Hillel member) to feel that Israel is no longer (or never was) "legitimate", or causes anyone else to feel that way, well, fine. that's what FREE SPEECH is all about.
If it merely causes people to conclude that the occupation is illegitimate (for which position a strong case can be made), well that is even better.
Hillels are saying, "forget the truth and consider our tender feelings." Phooey.
If they accuse the Nakba presenters of telling lies, their comeback is evident -- tell truth to overcome the lies.
In one of Noam Chomsky's books, as I recall, he related a story of a pirate, in chains before the Emperor and about to die, saying, 'Everything I have done, you have done, but you have done it a 1000 times more than I have.' (The Emperor, note, was not about to die for his crimes.)
I guess Israel's strategy, from 1945 onward, has been 'damn the torpedoes, full steam ahead' and (more recently, with the USA safely chained and muzzled, domesticated and tranquillized), 'We are too big to fail'. Israel's crimes are so grotesque that the USA cannot approach them; and no-one else will approach them while the USA lies paralyzed, bleeding out dollars to fight Israel's wars.
Too bad the OECD will not read this and re-consider.
Aren't they ALL signatories to Geneva Conventions?
And ALL required (as ICJ sees it) to require Israel to remove the WALL?
J-S is taking CoP(oMJAO) to task because they say (for lobbying-with-Obama-purposes) that Israel should not accept a deal which Obama presumably thinks Israel should accept. Does J-S ACTUALLY SAY that his counsel to Obama is that he SHOULD demand the return of all/most of occupied "Jerusalem" along with most of the occupied West Bank to the Palestinians?
Politics got UNGA 181 (1947) and politics got OECD (2010) despite all.
What more to say?
Left to their own devices, Israel is a major power and PA /PLO is not. Of course, the US's $3B/yr (or $6B opr whatever it really is) helps Israel, but more as a signal that its coercion of USA is still working. The USA's veto in UNSC is real, however.
But the "facts on the ground" (tho by now substantial, even more than substantial--gargantuan) are a "chip on Israel's shoulder". As that phrase was originally used, a "chip on the shoulder" is a bit of wood which one dares another to knock off. Their chief characteristic is not permanency (tho that is always claimed). their chief characteristic, like so much of what Israel does, is "testing" especially testing the USA. How will Israel know that it is time to change policies? Never by listening to what the USA (or anyone else) says. But by watching what the USA does.
Testing is a way to prod the USA. Every time it just moves a little, turns around, and lies down again, like a dog disturbed in its sleep, Israel knows that it is safe to continue.
So far, the USA always lies down again (except for Eisenhower in 1956, and a bit of Bush-I).
Israel dares the USA to knock off the settlements and wall. The USA could do it. The USA will not do it without some major prod (maybe one which Avi has listed.
Well, Debonnaire has said it all. Maybe too much. Gotta love that coke-bottle glasses line. But, hey, you need two to have a discussion, otherwise its just a lecture. And the ethical culture folks are probably pretty aged and pretty Jewish and unconsciously main-line, like a lot of NYC audiences (including chamber-music audiences, not just Israel and Jewish stuff) and have no idea that they are having a "NOT A DEBATE" instead of a "YES, IT IS A DEBATE".
Shoulda asked Phil.
I've heard that large iron deposits in the earth will falsify a magnetic compass's reading. So you never really know where true North is. But there may be clues. Also to "moral compasses."
As to moral compasses, if Mandela really liked Goldstone (after all the death sentences, of which he must have known) and the Israel-hard-liners detest him, then he must be all right. That's how I read the "moral compass."
Thanks for this careful NPR-watch. Hope NPR and the reporter read this and weep (at least internally). But, realistically, they have their masters as most people do.
(The blogosphere is the country of masterless warriors, "ronin." Apparently not very dangerous, but who knows?)
Note from "Turbulent Times in Palestine, The Diaries of Khalil Totah, 1886-1955" (Institute of Palestine Studies, 2009):
February 28, 1939: As it appears that the Jews are losing their case in London, they started violence. Bombs in Haifa killed 2 Arabs & wounded 3rd. The bus from Ramallah to Jerusalem carrying Arab officials was shot at by a Jew in Mea Sharim near Italian Hospital. 11 bullets from an automatic pistol. Bomb exploded in bazaar in Jerusalem & killed 5 Arabs, wounding others.
March 1, 1939: A bomb containing (it is said) 50 lb. of explosive matter was found in a tin in the bazaar not far from Haram [in Old City, Jerusalem]. It was on the roof of a house. A policeman discovered in time. It was set to explode at 8 AM; the wire was detached and all was well. The last few days have been days of children parades & demonstrations as jubilation over prospective Arab independence. * * *
What was going on? In London? Everyone seems to have read it wrong! Maybe it was this, from wikipedia, approving One State and Arab majority in 1949:
The White Paper of 1939, also known as the MacDonald White Paper after Malcolm MacDonald, the British Colonial Secretary who presided over it, was a policy paper issued by the British government under Neville Chamberlain in which the idea of partitioning the Mandate for Palestine, as recommended in the Peel Commission Report of 1937, was abandoned in favour of creating an independent Palestine governed by Palestinian Arabs and Jews in proportion to their numbers in the population by 1949 (section I). A limit of 75,000 Jewish immigrants was set for the five-year period 1940-1944, consisting of a regular yearly quota of 10,000, and a supplementary quota of 25,000, spread out over the same period, to cover refugee emergencies. After this cut-off date, further immigration would depend on the permission of the Arab majority (section II). Restrictions were also placed on the rights of Jews to buy land from Arabs (section III).
Wmhite_Paper_of_1939
The White Paper was published on 9 November 1938, and approved by Parliament in May 1939.
- - - -
During the Arab Revolt 1936-1939, the Brits disarmed the Arabs to a large extent whilst the Jews created their secret army, Hagana. The result was an unequal struggle in 1947 (or, perhaps, a more than otherwise unequal struggle). so, the MacDonald White Paper promised an Arab-majority Single State, and this energized the Jews, and a lot of history happened!
- - - -
"he is sure that the authorities are equipped to deal with the problem effectively."
Assuming that the people who died (in USA) did not have the benefit of "authorities" "equipped to deal with the problem effectively", does this Israeli assurance sound like an artifact of bio-warfare?
In a previous post, I made a mistake, a typo. Sorry.
I meant to say that, as to WB&G, and assuming the war of 1947-49 was not a civil war , then Israel has only the rights of occupier, not sovereignty.
The world regards pre-1967 Israel as a proper sovereign state, and who is anyone to argue that the world is wrong?
Another possibility is that EVEN if the war of 1947-49 is regarded as a civil war, the fact that Jordan and Egypt occupied WB&G, respectively, means that Israel's re-capture of WB&G (re-capture in the limited sense that these places were part of Mandatory Palestine and thus part of the ONE STATE about which the civil war was fought) leaves them as "occupied territory".
Israel ought to prefer this to the idea that it is proper sovereign of ALL I/P, because then we have a One State but no democracy (and no desire for democracy in The One democracy In The Middle East).
"But if it's one state, shouldn't the Palestinians be given voting rights?"
If you regard the war of 1947-50 as an invasion by a non-state belligerent (the Jews), then Palestine was and remains the country of its people (then 2/3 Arabs) and Israel is an occupier of all but WB&G (and, as a state, is the first state to be created by use and threat of force AFTER the Nuremberg Trials and UN Charter (purported) to outlaw aggressive war-making.
On this view, Israel should be required to remove the WALL and remove the SETTLERS, because there are rules about belligerent occupation and Israel never had any claim to WB&G until after the 1967 war, and the claim it has is the limited claim of the belligerent occupier--no more.
On the other hand, you might regard the war of 1947-50 as a civil war among the residents (and then-citizens, apart from those of the the Jews who were then-illegal Jewish immigrants).
On this view, I/P is one country and all its citizens should have the same rights (one hopes, democratic rights, as Britain as Mandatory was supposed to be making Palestine ready for self-rule and, again presumably, for democracy). Being a bit despondent just now about the possibility of a "just and lasting peace" based on two states, I am ready to imagine the 1-state solution based on recognition that Israel won the war (of 1947-49) and has naming rights. But I'd insist (if it were up to me, as it is not) that the 1-State be democratic.
"Netanyahu confuses (perhaps intentionally) the legitimacy of his government's particular policies with the very legitimacy of Israel's existence--but the two are not equivalent. "
Indeed, see my The Four Israels.
Sometimes it is good to describe crimes as "crimes" even if a decision is taken neither to punish the perps nor to provide for the victims.
Here, the crime of dispossession--so unexpected by Truman--is on-going and even if the USA remains unwilling to demand a return to the status-quo ante (of 1947 or 1966), there is still time to demand a stop to settlement building. But this, the USA has been unwilling to do (except by silly words that all the world except perhaps US believers in The First Israel has learned are meaningless).
'[T]he Americans were responsible for the creation of a gangster state headed by “an utterly unscrupulous set of leaders”. ' Well, yes. But, worse, the USA has become (at the level of national government elites, where it matters) a gangster state.
First the kids were in a cart behind a tractor. Second, it was hit more than once -- and was deliberate murder.
"An Israeli military spokesman confirmed two had been killed when a military vehicle hit a Palestinian tractor, while a National Police representative said the "unfortunate accident" saw two young girls, riding in a cart pulled behind the tractor, were struck."
As flagged above.
By this account, the kids were riding in a CART TOWED BEHIND. surely we can all agree that a "jeep" can crush a "cart" especially if it hits it twice?
As the principal quoted article relates:
"With the body of one sister draped obscenely over its front bumper, the jeep reversed for five or six metres and then rammed once again into the tractor. What might have been a tragic accident is thus revealed for what it was – a cold-blooded murder."
Deir Yassin was boasted about in the first edition of the book "The Revolt" by Menachem Begin (but some of this was removed in later editions). The idea was to frighten the Palestinians into running out of the war zone (as it advanced and overspread much of Mandatory Palestine). The massacre itself (and the public display of the few survivors of the massacre and the stories about how women were treated) had the desired effect, and many Palestinians ran.
The "revolt" in the book's title was the terrorist war by the terrorist wings of the Yishuv against Britain to encourage the war-weary Brits to pull out and leave Palestine to the tender mercies of the Jews, who had thoughtfully provided themselves with an army (Hagannah) to deal with the Palestinians (who had no army) after the Brits left (and a bit before-hand, I expect).
See also: The Bible Unearthed: Archaeology's New Vision of Ancient Israel and the Origin of Its Sacred Texts , Israel Finkelstein et al. Same idea: Bible written as a propaganda piece in 700 BCE, no prior history at all, no Slaves-in-Egypt, no red sea, no walls of Jericho, etc. A great read if you are happy with these conclusions, because you find out WHY they conclude this stuff.
Bad question, E3, "are you for or against a Jewish state" ? Very bad question.
Sample answer in three parts:
[1] I'm for "a" Jewish state, the smaller the better, maybe 1 square km in Tel Aviv, with lots of high-rise buildings to accommodate all the Jews who demand to live in a TRIBAL "country", a "Jewish state".
(Happily, I am not an anti-Semite, with this answer, because I am "for" "a Jewish State".)
[2] I'm also for another country, also inside Mandatory Palestine, for Palestinians who similarly demand to live in a TRIBAL "country".
[3] THEN all the rest (of Mandatory Palestine) for normal human beings--Jews and non-Jews, Israelis and Palestinians, who are happy to live in a democracy where people can be free to be themselves and do not try to control each other. You know, like New York City.
SEE? That way everybody gets what he wants, and YOU get "a Jewish state." Was it really "a" Jewish state you wanted, or a particular one? Or one with a minimum size? Or what? Try to be precise. But, I warn you, it's no fun, being precise.
If I criticize Israel because it doesn't want to allow the creation of an ethnic-defined state for the Palestinian people upon a LARGE chunk of the territory with which they have been associated by 500 (at least) years of recent history, how can it defend itself when it is demanding the right to something much more obscure -- a state for a "people" defined (as far as I can see) only by having been mistreated in many (but not in all) places around the world, no genetic similarity, no same language, no same place of birth (all these being the opposite with the Palestinians), and not even the same religion (the early Zionists being mostly irreligious, as I am).
In short (I have a lot of trouble with "short")--why are not the Palestinians entitled to 1/2 of Mandatory Palestine and the water that goes with it as their homeland (under the rules of self-determination) when they've been living in Palestine since 1500 IF Israeli Jews (who've mostly been living there only since 1930) are entitled to any part of Palestine at all?
"Fair is fair" or "fair is not fair", which is it, and why?
(Only) Palestinians Living in the past? Have you (Oh!, surely not!) forgotten the Holocaust? But dredging up the past is dangerous. How about Begin and Shamir and their merry boys in the Jewish terrorist days of 1939-48?
For the moment, these horrible Jewish (we know who our friends are and you are no friend) groups are helping the rest of us to know which groups WE should support. I was surprised to see MADRE on the list. Goes to show.
But we will laugh at them until they stop this nonsense and then we will be on our own again.
The problem of getting Obama and IRS to list settler groups as terrorists is, of course, at the heart of this. I regard Israel as a supporter of terrorism and Israel as a "rogue state", but fat chance department. The USA has always known who its fiends (sorry, friends) are.
"Jerusalem is dear to many!"
Indeed. And thus not likely to be negotiated "away" by either party. Not w/o pressure.
AND THUS, once again I say the obvious: let the nations say to Israel: "You may have as much of Jerusalem as the peace treaty says you may have, but not one square inch of it sooner. International Law of Occupation requires you to leave now and for the duration of the occupation, so LEAVE!"
That's why we need a new LOBBY (and not J-Street!) to represent American Jews who desire a return to respect for international law, international standards of human rights, and (therefore) a recall of all of Israel's settlers and demolition (or donation in perpetuity to the Palestinians) of the settlement buildings and highways wherever settlers or settlements or highways exist or reside within territories occupied in 1967.
This lobby should center on Jewish membership so that AIPAC and those who respond to it can sit up and take notice (just in case its the "voice of the Jews" which is interesting to them rather than the "voice of the money which talks").
This lobby should neither be Zionist nor anti-Zionist, but should be pro-Truth, pro-Justice, pro-Peace, and pro-Rule-of-Law.
If anyone out there knows how to start a new lobby, now's surely the time to do it.
Hillel acts (it seems) as if it had a corporate charter clause saying, "Hillel activities must be pro-Israel" whereas, more likely, if it has a clause in its corporate charter of this sort at all, that clause says, "Hillel activities must be pro-Jewish."
Now the right-wing anti-human-rights anti-international-law one-Jewish-fingernail-is-worth-100-goyishe-lives hard-as-nails Israeli-Settler-Zealot-AIPAC folks give themselves permission to go further, and to treat Hillel as if it had a charter clause saying, "Hillel activities must be pro-Israeli-Settler-Zealot".
This misconstrues Judaism, I feel rather sure (but I'd better check with the Neturei Karta folks to be sure) and sure makes one hell of a leap of judgment about what's good for Israel (if one is determined to make that a test).
Perhaps a little academic freedom would be a welcome leaven (if passover is finished).
Phil. you really know how to read these things -- reading for what it ways and for what it doesn't say. Thanks.
"an airgram signed Rusk in 1968, meaning that it went out from the State Department under Johnson, saying that creating settlements in the West Bank was "contrary to Article 49 of the Geneva Convention." You cannot transfer population into occupied territories."
I knew about this, and have a copy: "In 1978, the Legal Adviser of the Department of State [wrote] to the United States Congress concluded that "the establishment of the civilian settlements in those territories is inconsistent with international law."
(see here) but never heard about the Rusk airgram.
"during which they were questioned repeatedly, and their passports were confiscated."
NB: Not "examined" or "taken away for close examination." CONFISCATED. Aren't passports the property of the issuing nation, and wasn't Israel stealing SPANISH property?
<<>>
Most countries declare by law that passports are government property (perhaps even counterfeit ones), and may be limited or revoked at any time, usually on specified grounds. A limitation or a revocation is generally subject to judicial review. (wiki)
The travel documents issued by the State of Israel to its citizens (passports and laissez passer) are the property of the State and should be carefully safeguarded.
see here
Although held by individuals, all Canadian passports remain property of Her Majesty in right of Canada.
And doesn't this fit in so well with [1] policeman #1 confiscates Palestinian's "papers" and [2] policeman #2 arrests the Palestinian for not possessing the requisite papers and [3] the court then deports the Palestinian or sentences him/her to 7 years in jail for the "crime" of not possessing the requisite "papers" at the moment of arrest? OR AM I GETTING ALL THIS crime of "bad papers" WRONG ?
"The piece dwells completely inside The New Yorker's Upper West Side comfort zone, of people who like to think that the two state solution is just around the corner and Israel is a thriving democracy."
OK, if that is what the ANTICIPATED READERS actually think, then the article is aimed at a readership that is comfortable in what Phil (and I) regard as delusions.
But is Haim Saban of this mind-set? Or is he a manipulator aiming to keep in place the worst-of-the-worst and his interviewer ignoring all THIS and aiming merely at the comfort of the readers?
"Yes, Virginia, slavery-and-segregation are almost over, the KKK is no more" writes an interviewer of a Grand Dragon. IS THIS IT?
As to "psychosis of insecurity", that's what some people may say but it is almost certainly not a universal.
The BOSSES are not PSYCHOTIC (at least not with insecurity). If they have a disease it is SOCIOPATHY. They are trained manipulators, not fear addicts. Maybe some of the masses are fearful -- and I'd guess that they are trained to be so by constant repetition. So please distinguish between the TRAINERS and the TRAINED SEALS. When the BOSSES hurt the Palestinians to the point that a very, very few of them resort to suicide bombing, for example, the BOSSES know that they are preparing the way for the next HUGE OVER REACTION. they love terrorism because it is SOOOO ineffective as resistence and SOOOOO effective as an excuse for deviltry.
Watch this watch swinging before your eyes. You are feeling tired, you are feeling very tired, you are feeling very tirted. When you wake up you will feel VERY INSECURE, VERY, VERY INSECURE. (And when you are asleep, I will feel very powerful.)
"I can't blame Charney Bromberg for feeling solidarity with Israelis because of that connection. What I do blame the Diaspora for is again and again deferring to their Israeli connections on critical questions, for saying, who am I to tell them not to blockade Gaza, they live there, I don't! Deferring to a psychosis of insecurity bred of the Holocaust and a Likudnik policy of endless war."
In other words, it is not for us to criticise how people feel. Ask them how they feel! Get them to expound on how they feel! But ask them whether law matters, whether human rights (outside of law) matters, if human decency (however defined) matters.
Get them to start thinking about whether there are ANY LIMITS when a vastly powerful entity (Israel) decides to do whatever it wishes to do to a vastly powerless entity (the Palestinian people).
And ask them how the settlement project helps Israeli security in ANY WAY WHATSOEVER and whether its importance is not, rather, AND SOLELY, to expel the Palestinians living under occupation by slowly boiling the frog
Hey guys, why miss a chance? You're on a roll! Maybe, who knows, she's not even a woman. And maybe she's not speaking, either. But if Lynn Gottlieb is actually speaking tonight, well, some people will be glad to know so they can go and listen.
The two-state solution is dead ONLY if Israel is allowed to maintain its settlers, its settlements (buildings) as Israel property, its wall. this is likely, but is no more "foregone" than any other "fact on the ground". It's not over until the * * * thin man sings his song of freedom. Let's encourage him to sing it.
At present Israel/Palestine is not a democracy -- as we all know. But who "owns" the land of I/P?
At present and since sometime in the period 1967-2000, Israel has made it clear that its preferred "solution" to the I/P impasse is its own unilateral One State Solution, namely, the occupation, which is non-democratic and apartheid-in-style.
It is not that there is a danger that sometime in the undefined future Israel "might" become undemocratic. The Greater Israel of pre-1967 Israel PLUS the occupied Palestinian territories is already undemocratic.
If Israel claims ownership of the entire I/P as inheritor of the Palestine Mandate, and if the world agrees to forget about the issues connected with "belligerent occupation", then Israel is non-democratic today, and the exclusion of the refugees of 1948 only makes this more pointed.
If Israel denies that it inherits the entire I/P from the Mandate and instead claims the right of conquest (a claim at odds with the new rules announced at Nuremberg in 1945 and by the founding of the UN with its agreements to ban the threat and use of force in international disputes), then Israel possesses the entire I/P by right of conquest -- and the combined I/P is still undemocratic.
If Israel agrees that it is merely the "belligerent occupier" of the occupied territories, then its wall and its settlements are illegal and should be removed forthwith.
I gather that the US position is that there is an occupation. In that case, for human rights reasons and for the support of the rule of law as well, and because of Gen. Petraeus's comment, the situation is "ripe" for President Obama to intervene.
I would suggest that the proper initial intervention is to require removal of the 550,000 settlers and the wall, perhaps within 6 months or a year. The next intervention (if still required by then) is something along the lines of an imposed peace treaty.
The removal of the settlers (and perhaps the salutary destruction of the settlements buildings as a strong reminder of who owns what) would undo the "facts on the ground" which so depresses Meron Benvenisti and others. As an Israeli he must, perhaps, believe in the permanency of the settlements.
As a human being (who is not an Israeli) I can believe and urge that their impermanence be proved by strong action from President Obama.
Thanks, eGuard, for that: its here.
The pus is coming to a head in the pimple. Decision time is upon us. At some point President Obama (and even people like Senator Schumer) will have to decide what they stand for. Do they stand for endless evasion of international law and cruelty and killing, or for something else. Are there limits, or is immunity and impunity what its all about, what its always been all about?
In short, if they call themselves Zionists, do they support THIS Israel (do they, in short, support "any" Jewish State) or do they have limits?
And now dum-dums shot at unarmed (and unharmful) protesters. There MUST be a limit. ISRAEL IS CRYING OUT FOR HELP. This sociopathy cannot be allowed to proceed. The Israelis have no internal limiting circuits. Some rabbi or other has told them that the Palestinians (and, indeed, the internationals, thus, all the goyim) are drugged cockroaches in a bottle, fit for nothing but killing. Nothing is disallowed to Israelis.
Anti-Semitism should be expected to flare after this becomes public. So publicize it so that the reasonable Jews will stop supporting "any" Jewish State, stop supporting "this" Jewish State, stop talking about the appropriateness of "a" Jewish State, and start joining the BDS bandwagon.
Judge Goldstone should tell the South African Jews about this (and remember that the dum dum bullet was either manufactured and distributed by the IOF or else was a 'good idea" of the soldier who shot it) and ask them to reconsider their horror at his Report.
Apologies. My previous post replied to this in the comment of David Samel.
"Goldstone is not the only decent Zionist in the world. I know many other people I consider to be very decent, reasonable, and honorable, who believe in the appropriateness, even the necessity, of a Jewish State."
I very much dislike to read that someone (as a Zionist) supports "a" Jewish State. This is a seriously incomplete statement to the point of meaninglessness. What does "a" mean in this sentence? If we cannot tell whether the speaker supports "this" Jewish State, we (anti-Zionists or anti-this-Israelists) do not even know if the speaker is an enemy or a friend.
If Judge Goldstone (or anyone else) wants to call himself a Zionist who supports "a" Jewish State, let him have the decency to explain what the "a" means. Does it mean "this" Jewish State (assuming arguendo that Israel is a Jewish State), you know, the one which mistreats its own non-Jewish citizens and runs this horrible, horrible (and expanding) occupation?
Or does it merely express a sort of pious wish or dream, you know, support for some Jewish State in the sky, somewhere in a galaxy far, far away, where there is no occupation, no usurpation of the Palestinian homeland, no expulsion and forced exclusion of the Palestinian people from their homes for 62 years, no barbed wire, no bayonets? Perhaps something Judah Magnes would have supported as a Jewish National Home in Palestine (among the others and not instead of the others).
Perhaps there is a Zionist somewhere who does not accept "this" Israel but is not opposed to "some" removal of Palestinian lands, some inconveniencing of the Palestinian people, but who despises the reality of "this" occupation as much as I do and wants Israel to withdraw entirely and as soon as possible from ALL the territories occupied in 1967. Such a person should stand up and explain, especially to the Jews in the USA, what he "demands" or "desires" by way of Zionism and what he detests as to "this" Jewish State.
But don't weasel out of it by saying "a". A lot depends on what the meaning of "a" ahhhhh is.