Total number of comments: 300 (since 2012-06-27 14:34:05)
Stephen Shenfield
Stephen Shenfield is a British-born writer. After several years as a government statistician, he entered the field of Soviet Studies. He was active in the nuclear disarmament movement. Later he came to the U.S. and taught International Relations at Brown University. He is the author of Russian Fascism: Traditions, Tendencies, Movements (M.E. Sharpe, 2001). He now works as an independent researcher and translator. He is a member of the World Socialist Movement. A collection of his writings is on his new website at stephenshenfield.net.
Website: http://stephenshenfield.net/
How do you know that the people selling their abilities to the intelligence industry are doing so willingly? Most of us lack access to the means of life, which are monopolized by the wealthy minority. Therefore we HAVE to sell our abilities in order to get what we need for ourselves and our children. If we are lucky we may be able to choose to whom we sell them and avoid selling them to immoral employers like intelligence, prisons, manufacturers of weapons, harmful drugs etc. But many people are unlucky and have no real choice for all sorts of reasons (what skills they have, where they live, how old they are, etc.). True, they can say no and end up hungry and homeless, together with their children, but is it fair to expect this of them? Is it fair to tell them off if they put the welfare of their families first? What would you do if you were in such a situation, Professor Ellis? I know that my willingness to reject immoral ways of earning a living has directly depended on my ability to earn a living by moral means.
Anderson conflates "the United States" with "Americans" but they are hardly the same thing. By "Americans" does he mean Americans in general or specific Americans responsible for specific crimes? The former, I fear.
Similarly, Zionist crimes are the responsibility not of Jews in general but of the specific Jews who committed them.
The doctrine of group responsibility diffuses blame among innocent people while letting the guilty individuals off the hook.
It's a form of blackmail, in the name of good manners. Silence always works for the status quo.
How do you feel about the Roman empire, by the way? Do you sympathize with Boudicca's uprising?
It may be worth explaining that there exists a full spectrum of opinion on Zionism within Orthodox Jewry. At one extreme is the Orthodox Jewish rabbinical establishment in Israel, which is of course Zionist (with some variation in degree of extremism). Naturei Karta (in Jerusalem and New York) represents the opposite extreme, giving public expression to their anti-Zionism at every opportunity. The Satmar sect is also anti-Zionist in principle, but has avoided public expression of their anti-Zionist views for "diplomatic" reasons -- that is, in practice they have been non-Zionist rather than anti-Zionist. At least they have been up to now. This event suggests that they are now realigning with the open anti-Zionists -- not by decision of their leading rabbis but as a result of a movement from below.
The use of the biblical name Amalek to refer to Israel struck me as curious. The bible does not make clear what entity the word refers to, only that Amalek must be destroyed. It is a sort of symbol of pure evil. The Zionist-Orthodox use it to refer to Arabs or Palestinians.
The URL is http://www.breakingthesilence.org.il
The stories told in the videos are completely inconsistent with the "bad apples" interpretation. Can you really not see that? Or perhaps you haven't listened carefully to them? Or perhaps you are deliberately lying about them?
The "silence breakers" are deviants in the sense that although they were socialized into the general brutality they initially wanted to behave humanely. Because Gil initially treated Palestinian prisoners in a relatively humane way (giving them water, keeping them in the shade out of the hot sun, not kicking them, etc.) she was ridiculed and ostracized, denied weekend leave, and given extra guard duty. These pressures sufficed to make her conform. The higher ups encouraged soldiers to "develop their creativity" in thinking up new ways to be cruel to Palestinians. The message that runs consistently through all the videos is that brutality is the norm, not the exception.
There is an enormous amount to be learned from the testimonies in the Breaking the Silence videos -- all of them, whether the speakers are male or female. About the mechanics of the occupation, how soldiers are induced to behave in the way expected of them, the relationships between ordinary soldiers, unit commanders, and higher ups, between male and female soldiers, between soldiers and settlers, etc.
A common refrain of these soldiers (of course, they are not typical in this respect) is that they started out with the intention of being humane, but in fact it didn't take long for them to turn into "monsters". The key role in transforming them was played by the unit commanders, who are obviously highly skilled at doing this (did they receive formal training to do this, I wonder).
Dickens and all the other great social writers of the 19th century (Zola, Gogol, Twain, etc.) are unfortunately still very relevant to us, as anyone who has read them knows, because the social changes that have occurred since then are changes of detail and degree rather than essence. We are still living in the kind of society against which they protested.
Fagin is framed for a murder he did not commit. Though a master of pickpockets, he draws the line at murder. When they arrest him the police kill his beloved pet crow Moses. The judge plays on the anti-Semitism of the jury and public, then offers to spare Fagin's life if he "accepts Christ". Dickens was always on the side of the persecuted, and that included the Jews. If he were alive today he would be on the side of the Palestinians.
anti-Gentilism
That's exactly what the person wants. "Come on, come on, hate me, for God's sake! Because if you don't hate me I haven't a clue who I am." And: "If you don't hate me how can I justify the resentment I feel against you?"
Thank you, Don
And to the tribal beliefs enshrined in Orthodox Judaism. A holy people, a people of priests, a light unto the nations, etc. If Jews are holier, i.e., closer to God, than non-Jews, then an attempt to exterminate them must be especially evil, more evil than an attempt to do the same to a less holy people (Gypsies, Hereros, etc.). I strongly suspect that this often underlies the insistence on the uniqueness thesis. Certainly for Orthodox Jews who still believe that Jews are spiritually superior to Gentiles. Possibly also for some Jews who no longer consciously believe this but are still influenced by the "psychic residue" of the belief, which causes an "irrational" feeling that genocide is worse when the victims are Jews .
Uniqueness of the "Holocaust" (if we have to use that word) is probably argued most coherently by the Jewish theologian Emil Fackenheim. It is argued at greatest length by Steven Katz, but his method is simply to list "competing" events and for each one think up ad hoc reasons why it is not comparable to the Holocaust. Fackenheim at least identifies five specific features that he claims are unique to the Holocaust. His critics, however, have cogently demonstrated that all his five features can also be found in other genocides.
In view of the weakness of the uniqueness thesis, the interesting question is obviously why its advocates persist in upholding it. That is a matter of speculation, but I would not reduce the matter to one of political expediency.
The media blackout doesn't surprise me, because this is dynamite that may finally destroy US and European support for Israel. Even Christian Zionists can hardly be expected meekly to swallow all these insults against their faith. Netanyahu must understand this and wish he could halt the anti-Christian steamroller because that is obviously what the interests of the State of Israel require, but the only way he can do that is by giving up power and allowing the formation of a new coalition that is less dependent on the Orthodox (though even that might not suffice).
The anti-Christian persecution in I/P also has the potential to shock many American and European Jews, the majority of whom belong to Conservative and Reform congregations and are, I suspect, blissfully unaware of this and many other aspects of the medieval bigotry preserved in Orthodox Judaism.
I received my Jewish education (such as it was) from a Conservative rabbi in north London. He told us that Jews have the greatest respect for Jesus as a teacher, though they consider him only a man and not divine. It made sense to me that Jews should respect Jesus as a teacher because I could see how close his teachings were to those of Hillel, who lived a couple of generations earlier. At the same time, the rabbi allowed us to assume that all Jews share this respectful attitude. He did not inform us about the hateful things said about Jesus in the Talmud. I first learned of them from Shahak's book.
I suppose that the rabbis who compiled the Talmud hated Jesus so much because they saw themselves as the successors to the Pharisee sect whom Jesus so harshly condemned. Jesus and the early Christians were loyal to Judaism, but they did hate the Pharisees and the Pharisees returned the compliment.
Such narrowness, such ignorance! The terms "denial" and "denier" are often used in contexts that have nothing to do with either the Judeocide ("Holocaust") or the Nakba. There are those who deny the Armenian genocide, the Circassian "genocide," the Ukrainian Holodomor (famine), etc. So there is no piggybacking, just one more application of broadly accepted terms.
I see the marchers are all dressed identically. That must be to demonstrate their commitment to "Western values" like individualism and diversity.
Arendt was a European intellectual of the old cosmopolitan type. That was a very appealing identity for semi-assimilated European Jews. That is why they were so happy in and loyal to pre-WWI Austro-Hungary. Like the Stalinists and the Nazis and for very similar reasons, the "pure" Zionists hated such people. Their ideology was also European, but modeled on European ethnic-volkisch nationalism. They didn't like her because she didn't display the correct feelings, because she was a complicated and ever ambivalent intellectual. And in a woman, of course, all this was even worse. But ultimately it was a clash between two variants of Europeanism. Arendt too had not been educated to identify with or care about non-Europeans.
There is evidence that Obama did have radical ideas in his youth. But at quite an early stage he became extremely cautious in his public stances, suggesting he was already thinking of a career in mainstream politics. His behavior is certainly "conservative" (not to mention deceptive, manipulative, hypocritical, cowardly, etc.) but the possibility that he is still a radical deep inside cannot be excluded. I think that this may be why the 1% are so wary of him despite his subservience to them. They sense that he is not wholly predictable or reliable.
For a more detailed discussion, see my essay "The World Outlook of the Young Obama" at
link to stephenshenfield.net
Please explain how you know that.
Factor in the fact that Israeli "security experts" have trained oppressive governments in quite a few countries, from Guatemala to Zimbabwe, to torture their own people. Getting Israel to respect human rights would have a positive spin-off in many other places.
Regarding "deep Middle Eastern roots."
Whatever roots one or another group of Homo Sapiens may or may not have in any other region, we all have our deepest roots as a species in the Great Lakes Region of Africa. Perhaps a movement will arise to "return" there? I can just imagine it.
There is a good scene in "The Life of Brian" where these benefits are enumerated. Roads, aqueducts, sewers, a stable currency, etc. And the Romans knew how to put down dangerous fanatics and extremists, didn't they?
Mideast oil is of modest and declining importance in the US energy equation. The opposite is true of Japan, but is the US really supporting Israel for the sake of Japan?!
Wouldn't it be in the interest of the US to switch the funds it pours into Israel to restoring its crumbling domestic infrastructure, for instance?
If (with Aiman) we define "chosenness" very broadly to refer to any claim to superiority or exclusivity, then it can be found in many different traditions. The narrower idea of a "God-chosen people" -- an ethnic group specially chosen by God to play a crucial role in history -- may well have a unique origin in Judaism. (I don't know enough about all the world's numerous religions to be completely sure, so please allow me to hedge a bit.)
However, having a unique origin in Judaism doesn't mean it is altogether absent from Judaism's daughter religions. As I mentioned, Oliver Cromwell's Puritans at the time of the English civil war believed that God had specially chosen the English in the same way that He had once chosen the Jews. This helps explain why Cromwell invited Jews to resettle in England. The Jews and the English were both chosen peoples.
Another example is the "Russian idea" in the theology of the Russian Orthodox Church. Many Russian Orthodox Christian thinkers have believed that God chose the Russians for the special role of preserving and spreading Christianity in its pure form. Again the analogy with God earlier choosing the Jews is quite explicit.
Both Christianity and Islam have their own version of the "chosen people" but isn't that because they were both so strongly influenced by Judaism? Moreover, the tendencies within Christianity that were most influenced by Judaism placed the most emphasis on "chosenness" (for Cromwell, for instance, the English were the chosen people). Basically they were reacting to the "chosenness" of the Jews by saying: "No, you're not the chosen ones, we are!" So isn't Judaism indirectly to blame for these offshoots too? What examples of "chosenness" can be found outside the Judeo-Christian-Moslem tradition? Among Buddhists, let's say? I'm not aware of any.
Jews who adhere to traditional Judaism believe that they have been 'chosen' by God and not by themselves and that the will of God must be obeyed. We people of Jewish origin who have come to understand 'chosenness' as self-appointed and therefore open to criticism (e.g., as a source of antagonism) and renunciation have adopted a viewpoint external to traditional Judaism. We are therefore no longer Jews in the traditional sense, though we may still be regarded and/or regard ourselves as Jews in some other sense.
I just read the article you refer to (originally from Ha-Aretz) and "an admitted anti-Semite" is a gross distortion of its content. Orwell did indeed admit to experiencing anti-Semitic emotional reactions to some (not all) Jews, but intellectually he was firmly opposed to anti-Semitism and viewed these reactions as a problem to be overcome.
Orwell's anti-Semitic feelings would not necessarily have led him to hate Israel. That would have depended on how common the "Jewish" traits that repelled him were among Israelis. If Orwell would have hated Israel, that would more likely have been a reaction to traits that he did not identify as "Jewish."
Any room for atheists in the "multifaith dialogue"?
One of the main psychological resources at the disposal of the Zionists is the desire of many Jews in various countries to feel a connection with a positive Jewish past. In order fully to exploit this resource they must present Zionism as the only positive Jewish past. Evidently Yiddishkeit retains its potential as a competitor to Zionism in this respect, but I expect the reaction would be the same to a positive focus on the long history of Judaism in Iraq, for instance.
"Make aliya" differs from "immigrate" not only because it includes a Hebrew word but mainly due to its religious-ideological-emotional connotations. Thus, "make aliya" translates into proper English not as "immigrate" but as "ascend to Zion."
"Visiting professor from Israel" could be someone originally from Israel who has been living elsewhere for many years. The term "the region's only democracy" might refer to Turkey, Lebanon, Egypt, Tunisia perhaps.
Israel sold plenty of arms to the "notoriously anti-Semitic" Argentinian junta. The Zionists don't really care about anti-Semitism, and don't even pretend to except when they can use it as a political tool. Remember that Israel owes its existence to the aid it received from another "notorious anti-Semite" -- Stalin.
Your first proposition ("When an individual can’t locate her resistance somewhere beyond her individuality, she needs to broaden her search") at least admits that an uprooted individual is capable of resistance. But your second proposition retracts this admission: "Without a rooted identity, there is no resistance." Am I alone in detecting a logical contradiction here?
What is "identity" anyway? You seem to be talking about ethnic identity, because you insist on "roots" and an identity based on convictions, for instance, lacks roots. Nevertheless, resistance based on individual conviction is quite possible. On what "rooted identity" was Galileo relying when he told his inquisitors: "Eppur si muove" (the earth still moves, not the sun)?
Trees have roots. People have legs.
Stalin was also opposed to "rootless cosmopolitans" -- perhaps you would clarify the difference between his view and yours?
Here is a counter-slogan you might like to chant:
From the sea to the river
We will eat chopped liver!
The trouble is that the results are based on what people say, not what they do. If an overwhelming majority of Americans really don't mind living next to people of a different "race" why are most residential areas in the USA still racially segregated? Obviously Americans are more careful than people in some other countries to observe the rules of political correctness when they answer questions from pollsters.
The contrast implied in the title is exaggerated. Who enforces the court orders? Whoever does it, armed force can be used if required. The only difference between now and 1948 is that now the legal formalities are (at least sometimes) observed before Palestinians are forcibly expelled, while in 1948 they had to be improvised after the event.
"Return to Haifa" is about a Palestinian couple who after 1967 are able to go back to what used to be their home in Haifa. They discover that the baby boy who they lost in the stampede to escape the Zionist forces during the Nakba has been adopted and raised as a Jew by the family now living in the house and is now serving in the IDF. I don't know whether things like that happened in real life, but it is effective as a literary device. The message (as I understood it) is that who ends up in what role can be a matter of chance: identities are not predetermined.
I noticed a discrepancy between the lead-in on the home page, which incorrectly attributes to the author the view that the displacement of the Palestinians began in 1948, and the article itself, which notes that the process began earlier than that.
As I understand, displacement began with the first purchases of land by Zionist agencies. Zionist agents bought land from the landlords who owned it (many were absentee landlords who resided in the towns). Then the peasants who tilled the land and whose forebears had done so for many generations were thrown out to make room for Jewish colonists. If they resisted they could be displaced by force. They could remain within Palestine, but they lost their homes and livelihood. This was the start of the ethnic cleansing that has now been underway for about a century.
The growth of Israel's population depends on NET immigration, i.e., numbers coming in MINUS numbers leaving. Tell us how many emigrants left in 2012.
Does it matter who does it, so long as it is done -- and as soon as possible? The best chance of that is if we all work together, irrespective of background. Because separately we might not be strong enough.
But there are genuinely shared values. The most important one is hypocrisy.
What the US and Israel care about is not whether a political force is secular or Islamist, national or sectarian etc., but whether it is subservient to US and Israeli interests. They ask themselves, for instance, what the policy of a new government is likely to be toward Iran, Lebanon, Golan. Turkey is no doubt trying to get its own concerns taken into account (Kurds, water etc.), though it is evidently not fully in the loop.
The opposition in Syria includes forces that are at least as anti-US/Israel as Assad, probably more, so perhaps these forces have been growing in strength and the motive for Israel/US to intervene now is to halt this process before it goes "too far" and ensure that the new government is made up of people dependent on them.
After the Nakba the term "infiltrator" was used to refer to any expelled Palestinian who managed to get back across the armistice lines into what had become "Israel." Most were unarmed. Many had "infiltrated" in order to retrieve possessions left behind in the rush or harvest the fields that they still naturally regarded as theirs. It is in this context that we must understand the mindset in which African refugees are also "infiltrators." Basically, an "infiltrator" is any non-Jew who manages to penetrate Israel's borders and thereby exacerbate the "demographic problem" and threaten the "Jewish character of the state."
Good stuff. My only proviso is that Kovel is talking not about Zionists in general but about "liberal Zionists." As Israel continues to drift toward fascism, the effort to manage the contradiction inherent in the stance of the "liberal Zionist" becomes more and more difficult, pulling him or her deeper into insanity. That is why this reads like a psychiatric text about the split personality and its delusions and projections. Consistent Zionists, by contrast, need not worry for their sanity. Their conscience is a tribalist conscience and they follow its dictates.
I recommend following the link, not only for the text but also for a series of brilliant photographs. I want to describe three of the photos.
Photo 1. Graffiti on a wall. Three Magen Davids alongside the words "Kill Arabs!" (in English, though there are of course similar slogans in Ivrit -- and Russian).
Photo 2. Israeli soldier pointing his gun at a row of little Palestinian schoolgirls, who appear to be in the process of putting their hands up.
Photo 3. A woman settler and a young boy wearing a kippah (her son?) assaulting a Palestinian woman. The woman settler is gripping her victim's headscarf (pulling it off, presumably), while the boy is clearly kicking her leg.
How about putting together a collection of eloquent photos of this kind? Photos that could be placed on placards under the heading: "This is what you are supporting when you support Israel."
The price in treasure. But there is also the price in blood.
"Persuaded" by such means as the distribution of fabricated anti-Semitic leaflets and exploding bombs in Jewish cafes. This was done in both Egypt and Iraq. The beans were spilled by some of those who participated in the Zionist anti-Jewish terror campaign.
The position that Levy is advocating -- to demand "either a real state separate from Israel or the right to vote in a single state" -- makes a lot of sense. It puts the ball firmly where it belongs -- with Israel as the stronger party. But there are a few problems.
For one thing, I cannot recall any other case of a campaign to demand "either A or B" -- can anyone? It would be hard to maintain a balance: in practice the emphasis would tend to be either on A or on B. "We demand either A or B" does not make a very effective slogan.
As so much diplomatic capital has already been invested in the 2SS, it might be best to leave the main emphasis there while introducing the subtext that a 1SS could also be acceptable.
A lot of care needs to be taken in defining both A and B because both are vulnerable to co-option. Let us suppose that under huge pressure Israel concedes on territory and withdraws settlers and military forces from the whole of the West Bank and also agrees to share Jerusalem, but still holds firm on less salient though vital issues like control of borders, air space and aquifers. If the West Bank is turned into a second and bigger Gaza, would that constitute a real state?
The right to vote can also be co-opted by extending to the whole of the joint state the two-level system of citizenship that currently exists within the 1948 borders. That is, all resident Palestinians would become "Palestinian citizens of Israel" and be allowed a measure of influence on matters that the Zionists do not regard as essential, but basic laws would be entrenched to exclude non-Jews from decision making in certain areas considered vital to "the Jewish character of the state" -- immigration, land etc. This is the idea being promoted by some Likudniks -- with the conscious intention, I suspect, of providing Israel with a fallback strategy in case it comes under irresistible pressure from an "anti-apartheid" movement.
To show how eminent these Europeans are, be it noted that they include 4 former prime ministers, 2 former deputy prime ministers, 5 former foreign ministers, and a former secretary general of NATO. Here is the full list of signatories:
Guiliano Amato, Former Prime Minister of Italy
Frans Andriessen, Former Vice-President of the European Commission
Laurens Jan Brinkhorst, Former Vice-Prime Minister of the Netherlands
John Bruton, Former Prime Minister of Ireland
Benita Ferrero-Waldner, Former European Commissioner and Former Foreign Minister of Austria
Teresa Patricio Gouveia, Former Foreign Minister of Portugal
Jeremy Greenstock, Former UK Ambassador to the UN and Co-Chair of the EEPG
Lena Hjelm-Wallén, Former Foreign Minister and Deputy Prime Minister of Sweden
Wolfgang Ischinger, Former State Secretary of the German Foreign Ministry and Co-Chair of the EEPG
Lionel Jospin, Former Prime Minister of France
Miguel Moratinos, Former Foreign Minister of Spain
Ruprecht Polenz, Former Chairman of the Foreign Affairs Committee of the German Bundestag
Pierre Schori, Former Deputy Foreign Minister of Sweden
Javier Solana, Former High Representative and Former NATO Secretary-General
Peter Sutherland, Former EU Commissioner and Director General of the WTO
Andreas van Agt, Former Prime Minister of the Netherlands
Hans van den Broek, Former Netherlands Foreign Minister and Former EU Commissioner for External Relations
Hubert Védrine, Former Foreign Minister of France and Co-Chair of the EEPG
Vaira Vike-Freiberga, Former President of Latvia
According to the Kaballah, God had a little mishap, a hiccup perhaps, as He was engaged in the delicate job of creating light and the divine light was shattered into a googolplex of tiny shards. It is therefore incumbent upon us as Jews to concentrate the force of our prayer to bring all the shards back together and restore the integrity of the divine light. That is tikkun olam (repairing the universe). In our days, however, even presidents and cardinals indulge freely in tikkun olam, and that raises in my mind the apprehension that the universe, God forbid, may get accidentally overtikkuned -- that is, so densely reconcentrated that it disappears into a black hole and is never heard of again. Unless God has another hiccup at just the right moment.
According to LinkedUp, Col. Noy worked in Zimbabwe in the field of "security and investigations" for Glamer International, apparently a policing and security firm. Perhaps the democratic opposition to Mugabe knows something about him. No doubt this is not his first experience as a hired thug.
Europeans, but not Africans and Asians, are of partly Neanderthal descent. We/they are not fully Homo sapiens. Does anyone think that explains anything?
It is very clear that since Oslo the mainstream of Palestinian opinion and most Arab governments have been willing to make peace with Israel on the basis of two states with the boundary along Israel's 1948-67 border (with minor mutual adjustments) and Jerusalem as the shared capital. That offer clearly remains on the table. As soon as Israel accepts it negotiations will be concluded. But you know very well that Israel rejects this offer, insisting that Jerusalem is exclusively theirs, so is the Jordan Valley, so are the main settlement blocs, the aquifers, etc. etc. For the Palestinians to negotiate under these conditions can only mean accepting whatever scraps an increasingly extremist Israel is willing to let them have.
In view of the obvious reasonableness of the Palestinian and Arab offer, it is also obvious that Israel is the "immature" side, the side that rejects compromise. It is hard to believe that you don't know that.
Why "rightly so," Kalithea? Do you really think it right that the "Germans as a people" should have been "forced to make amends" (not only with tax dollars but above all by assuming a heavy burden of guilt and stigma) -- including all those who always voted against the Nazis before 1933 (the Nazis never won the votes of a majority of the German people in a free election), those who continued at enormous personal risk to resist after 1933, and the generations who were still children or unborn in 1945?
"Jews as a people" will really be in trouble if the principle of collective responsibility is ever applied to us, because the degree to which we as a collectivity are responsible for Zionism is much greater than the degree of the Germans' responsibility for Nazism. Thanks to the internet and websites like Mondoweiss, we will not be able to claim that we did not know what was going on.
In either case -- whether you accept the label of "traitor" or say that you are not a traitor (implying that perhaps someone else is) -- you are accepting "traitor" as a meaningful concept and thereby accepting the moral framework of ethnic warfare that gives the concept meaning. It is better not even to try to engage with people who think and talk this way. Instead let us stick to a sharply distinct alternative framework of humanistic values and offer it to those whose minds are open.
I recall that Israel once tried to deport several hundred Palestinian prisoners to Lebanon but Lebanon would not accept them and they were stuck in a makeshift camp in no man's land for weeks. I don't remember exactly when this was or the outcome -- I think Lebanon eventually took them in. So even if third countries refuse to cooperate Israel can still find some way to deport people. (There was a similar case in 1939 or 1940 when the Nazis deported many Jews into the no man's land between the German and Soviet occupation zones in Poland and the Soviet Union refused to take them in.)
In my study of variants of the Haggada, the text followed at the Passover Seder, I found that most Orthodox Haggadot expressed unalloyed joy and gratitude to God for the nasty things He did to the Egyptians. Haggadot associated with Reform and Reconstructionist and even Conservative Judaism expressed some measure of regret or else avoided the theme altogether. From the beginning Orthodox Judaism was the only kind with a significant presence in Palestine/Israel: it was part of the deal that the state made with the Orthodox rabbis to keep other brands out. So gratitude to God for the enemy dead is a norm of Judaism as it exists in Israel.
Israelis tend to be rather insensitive because they are engineered that way. The early Zionists, themselves "old Jews," wanted to create "new Jews" who would be more confident and forthright (some openly said: aggressive and cruel) and therefore less sensitive than the despised Jews of the Galut (Exile). They deliberately brought up their children to be unlike themselves. Those children, of course, then reverted to the more usual pattern of bringing up their own children to be like themselves.
Do you really think it is fair to equate British policy in Northern Ireland with Israel's treatment of the Palestinians? British government spokespeople have repeatedly said that they are willing to let go of Northern Ireland as soon as a majority of the province's voters show that that is what they want. In fact, many in the British establishment take the informal view that Britain would be well rid of the place.
The heroes of the IRA operated a reign of terror in the areas under their control. People who behaved in a way they disapproved had their kneecaps smashed.
RJL: Why should the process of reconciliation START with the Palestinians renouncing the idea of kicking Israeli Jews out of Palestine? This idea is no more than a fantasy that they have no power to realize, while their own dispossession and displacement are a continuing reality in the West Bank, the Jordan valley, the Negev, etc. Isn't it up to the stronger side, who have the power to kick and use it every day in reality and not in fantasy, to take the first step toward reconciliation, simply by stopping kicking?
You may think that whoever began the conflict should take the first step to end it. The trouble is that even after all the works of the "new historians" like Morris and Pappe you still believe that it was Arabs who started the conflict. Do you really not know that the forcible dispossession and expulsion (and in some places massacre) of Palestinians began in 1947 several months BEFORE Arab military forces entered Palestine and tried unsuccessfully to halt that dispossession and expulsion?
Unless the category of "hate speech" is given a very clear and narrow definition, delegitimizing it poses a real danger to civil liberties. I suggest limiting it to refer only to speech that arouses hatred for some group of people as such. Such speech has to be prohibited because it easily leads to violence against people in that group. However, "hate speech" should not be understood to encompass even harsh and biased attacks against any system, practice or doctrine associated with one or another group of people. Here the appropriate response is to argue back and expose the bias, not suppress the opponent's views. In particular, speaking as an anti-religious person who is convinced that religions do great harm to humanity, I insist on the right to criticize Judaism, Islam, Christianity, Hinduism, or any other religion without being libeled as a purveyor of hatred.
Amira Hass may be a "failure" in terms of the goal she set herself, but that does not mean her activity was futile judged by other criteria. I think that without her (and a tiny handful of others like her) the situation now would be even more hopeless than it is. Many of us set ourselves unrealistic goals and then unfairly blame ourselves for not achieving them.
Some theoretical reflections about violence and its recognition.
One distinction is that between the violence of individuals and the violence of institutions. Institutional violence is also inflicted by individuals, but by individuals acting as agents of institutions rather than on their own account.
Institutional violence goes unrecognized to the extent that the institutions inflicting it are viewed as legitimate and therefore entitled to use violence that in their judgment is necessary to the performance of their functions. For the conformist only "bad" acts can count as violence. The acts of legitimate institutions are by definition good, so they cannot be called violent even if they are physically identical to "bad" violent acts. Just as there can never be such a thing as "state terrorism."
Another distinction is that between open and latent violence. Violence exists in its latent form when people submit to the demands made on them in an attempt to avoid suffering open violence. Sometimes the attempt succeeds, and then the violence inherent in the situation remains invisible. When the attempt fails, the situation contains both latent and open violence.
It is not only Palestinians who throw stones. The settlers do too. One thing I noticed in Israel/Palestine was how many stones there are lying around everywhere. No doubt the Almighty left them there so that people could throw them at one another.
Perhaps even including occupied territories Israel isn't big enough for anywhere to be really "remote" but it does have a region with "horrible" desert terrain and concentration camps for Palestinian prisoners. It's called the Negev.
I accept the critique of the use of feminism as a tool of Western imperialism. Afghanistan is a good example. Great use has been made of the plight of Afghan women to legitimize the NATO invasion of that country. Pro-Establishment Western feminists have lionized Afghan women activists like those of the Revolutionary Association of Women of Afghanistan, while never mentioning the opposition of those activists to the presence of foreign troops.
At the same time, it is hard to swallow the claim that Islam is not a patriarchal religion. Can anyone really read the Quran and fail to perceive that the author has a patriarchal view of women? Of course, this is not to say that other religions are different in this respect. The fact that an issue is misused for evil purposes should not affect our judgment of the issue itself.
If the veil as an institution has nothing to do with patriarchy, then it is hard to understand why in most societies where it occurs (the Tuareg are an exception) it is worn only by women and not by men. The veil has existed in many societies, including ancient Judea, Christian Byzantium, Zoroastrian Persia, feudal Korea, and ancient Athens -- the supposed birthplace of our much-vaunted "Western values." But these were all patriarchal societies. I have not heard of a counterexample.
Veiling can be understood in a broader sense to include other forms of socially imposed concealment of the natural self, such as makeup and cosmetic surgery. That is another reason not to single out Islamic countries for criticism or compare them unfavorably to "the West."
Raising children in ANY faith (or anti-faith) is a form of child abuse, directed against their intellectual autonomy and self-realization. Our responsibility as adult educators is to give children easy access (in changing forms geared to their stage of maturation) to objective comparative information about the widest possible range of faiths and philosophies, so that they can find their own ways. Parents who take this view will not fall out with one another over how to raise their children, whatever their own faiths may be.
Of course, being human they are biologically capable of self-reflective thinking and a few of them exercise that capability. But they also (correctly) perceive such thinking as a threat to the solidarity of their ethnic group, which is what matters most to them, and therefore go to enormous efforts to suppress it in other co-ethnics and also in themselves.
The kapos were Jews selected to work directly for the SS. A better analogy to the PA would be the Judenrate (Jewish Councils) in the various ghettoes and their police, which collaborated with the Nazis but had formal autonomy and in some places helped the resistance.
But if there were Arab women present might they not claim some direct knowledge of the subject? Some people may want to listen to them, thereby distracting attention from the "expert" official speakers. Surely you can see what a threat it would be!
This sort of thing is quite normal in Western elite circles. There are conferences on Haiti from which Haitians are excluded, on Afghanistan without a single Afghan present, and so on. What business is it of theirs, after all?
A problem for whom? For Zionists (and other tribalists) assimilation is certainly a problem. And not just one problem among others, but THE problem -- an evil at least as bad as the Holocaust (they actually say that). What would not be justified to fight such an evil?
After the last bout of fighting between Gaza and Israel, according to the truce agreement brokered by Egypt, there were supposed to be negotiations about the blockade. Did they happen? Did they lead to any results? I've seen no reports about them. Did they disappear down the memory hole?
What I find morally most disgusting about Obama's stance is that he encourages ordinary people to take risks and even sacrifice their lives in the cause of social progress, while he himself is unwilling to risk anything and admits that he will do nothing until and unless public pressure forces him to. It would be so easy for him to take a stand and help cut short the agony, but he steadfastly refuses to do so. Or perhaps it is not so easy, because he has so deeply internalized his role as servant to his masters (the wealthiest people of his country) that the very thought of defying them fills him with terror? Well, it is only that type of black person they would have allowed to become president of the US.
What are the implications for Afro-Americans? Will President Obama now put forward a plan to carve out a "land of their own" for "his own people" in the United States? Or will he revive Garvey's philosophy of a return to Africa?
They have stones
Break their bones
Give us drones,
Mr. Jones!
Take out a loan
To buy a drone
What's wrong with "eius culpa"?
The international legitimacy that Israel enjoyed in its early years (outside the Arab world) was based mostly on the perceived need for a refuge for Jews in the aftermath of the Holocaust. Gromyko's speech to the UN conveying Soviet support for the establishment of Israel presented the issue in this way. The justification on the basis of ancient mythology has never had much impact, except I suppose on fundamentalist Christians. The fact that the Zionists are now demanding recognition on this mythological basis shows how far they have lost contact with reality and is one of the reasons why Israel is now rapidly losing the legitimacy it once had.
Actually he did nothing of the kind. To his dying day he thought he had reached the fringes of Asia (the East Indies, not the West).
Perhaps Columbus should be remembered in order to be ceremonially cursed.
Columbus Day can be renamed Arawak Remembrance Day.
The chiefs who "sold" their people's land did not own it. It was not theirs to sell. So the "contract" was invalid.
There are Jews in Iran. Perhaps their opinion on the matter is worth something. Why not go to Iran, visit the synagogues there and talk with them?
Why should being critical of the beliefs held by large numbers of people make someone a hater of humanity (misanthrope)? Why should criticism not be rooted in love? That is, can I not criticize beliefs because I see that they cause misery in the believers, as well as in others whom their beliefs lead them to victimize, and because being a lover of humanity I want to reduce human misery?
And why should it be worse to criticize beliefs held by many people than beliefs held by only a few? Surely, other things being equal, beliefs held by many people are capable of causing more misery than beliefs held by only a few?
I think the reluctance to identify people as Jews at least partly comes from a very reasonable uncertainty about how such a statement will be understood or misunderstood. "Catholic" is generally understood to mean affiliation to a clearly defined religious institution. There is still a little room for confusion (as with "lapsed Catholics") but not very much. When you identify a person as a Jew, are you referring to his or her religion, ethnicity, nationality, descent, politics, ethics, self-ascribed identity, or what? If you want to avoid misunderstanding, you either have to explain the matter fully or avoid it altogether. Which will naturally depend on the context.
"Al Jazeera ... says 15,000-30,000 Israelis have moved to the former epicenter of Nazism."
I checked and discovered that this is not true. Al Jazeera says they moved to the German capital.
Specialists do not agree on how widespread conversion to Judaism was among the Khazars, but travelers' accounts (for instance) demonstrate that it was not limited to royalty. And many non-Khazars in the Khazarian empire, especially Slavs, also converted to Judaism, perhaps in larger numbers than the Khazars (seeing that Yiddish shows a very strong Slavic influence but hardly any Turkic influence; see also the latest genetic analysis). The "descendants from the Levant" were refugees from Byzantium -- not so very numerous.
What, Stalin? He was a Georgian (original name Jugashvili), though some think he was an Osset. Probably you are joking.
A couple of suggestions.
Many Jews may interdate and later intermarry as a form of natural (in modern societies) adolescent rebellion against the pressure of parents and the Jewish community to marry within the faith. They do it precisely because they are urged not to. It is the most obvious way of escaping from a network of obligation that irks them. Many non-Jews who "marry out" of their own birth community may have a similar motivation. This is not the same as being prejudiced against the other sex of your birth group as individuals.
Many of those who rebel against their birth community in their youth may seek to return to it at a later age after coming to appreciate its positive aspects. This may often lead to divorces. At the same time, of course, there are many intermarried couples who do not divorce.
How can he possibly do that? Some of those killed by Stalin are in heaven, while others are in hell. If justicewillprevail goes to heaven, how can he tell that to the victims of Stalin who are in hell? And vice versa.
As I understand it, according to Halakha an errant Jew remains a Jew (though a bad one) only for so long as s/he does not adopt a different religion. But I am willing to be corrected by someone more knowledgeable than myself on the subject.
However, why should anyone who is not an Orthodox Jew feel obliged to judge the matter on the basis of Halakha? I agree with other contributors to this discussion that many people of Jewish descent, perhaps a majority, are not Jewish in any meaningful sense. Karl Marx was not a convert to Christianity. His parents were. He received no Jewish education. He himself rejected all religions. In terms of identity and culture he was a German.
However we frame the issue, the Zionists will always respond: "What you are saying amounts to denying Israel's right to exist!" That is supposed to make us so scared that we retract. Levine takes the bull by the horns and replies: "So what?"
"No right to exist" sounds like destruction and extermination, but what is being denied the right to exist is not a group of people but a specific state regime. When a state has a geographical name, like South Africa, the state regime can be changed without changing the name of the country, and that is what happened when apartheid was abolished. If Israel were called, say, the East Mediterranean Republic, the Zionist regime could be dismantled without changing the name of the state. Then we could say: "We don't deny the right of the EMR to exist, God forbid! But we want to change the legal-political regime. Regime change is supposed to be a good thing, isn't it?" But "Israel" refers to a specific ethnic-religious group and by implication to a state that privileges that group, so how can we avoid "denying the right of Israel to exist"?
1. Karl Marx was of Jewish descent, but he was not Jewish in any other sense.
2. Communism as Marx envisioned it has never existed anywhere, so we cannot tell whether or not it would work.
3. The right to free expression means nothing if no one is willing to listen to you. Everyone has the right to be listened to.
I don't think they are necessarily "playing the victim" and they may well feel unsafe. But the responsibility for that lies with those who have indoctrinated them with ideas like "the whole world is against us" and "anti-Zionists are anti-Semites." They should also be told that their support for Israel makes others feel unsafe.
A man I knew, a British Jew, was born in Israel as a result of his parents happening to be there on vacation at the time. They weren't planning for this to happen -- the birth was premature. He grew up in Britain and gave the matter no further thought until at the age of 18 he received a draft notice to serve in the IDF!
Right. The Law of Return gave "Jews" the "right of return" with the exception of "enemies of the Jewish people"; who is to be regarded as an "enemy" is at the discretion of the minister of internal affairs. Who is a "Jew" is a complicated matter, with slight differences between one law and another. Basically, a Jew does not have to be an active Zionist to immigrate to Israel (other reasons are possible for wanting to immigrate) but it is doubtful whether an active anti-Zionist would be allowed to immigrate. As such people generally wouldn't want to anyway, it may remain a hypothetical question.
In many parts of Eastern Europe (Romania, the Czech Republic etc.) they are very unsafe. Now then, they come originally from India, but which part and what outside power can they persuade to sponsor a state for them?
I'd like to get an anti-occupation T-shirt of similar design, but it seems this one is made only for women, as part of the Code Pink campaign against Ahava cosmetics. Still, let's give them a plug --
link to codepink.myshopify.com
Why the gratuitous insult against animals?
An anti-Palestinian pogrom.
Many Israelis say that a binational state would lead to permanent civil war (though Bauer is really upping the ante when he casually throws in genocide). Even Uri Avnery says this. It seems that they are making a dispassionate prediction, but I think the "prediction" is really a threat. They are saying: "We are not going to put up with that and we shall respond with violence" (perhaps not the speaker personally, but enough Jews to create havoc). After all, are Palestinians going to start a civil war if they get their rights within the framework of a binational state? I don't think so.
In the mass consciousness created by the crudest variant of Zionist propaganda, "Palestinian" means "terrorist" -- simply because this is virtually the sole context in which Palestinians are ever mentioned.
Want to bet that Birthright will take up at least some of your ideas? You think you're being satirical. Actually you're acting as unpaid advertising consultants for them.
Another source (in Arabic and Hebrew as well as English) is:
IsraeliPalestinianSchoolbooks.blogspot.com