-
-
- Netanyahu govt to impose fines on mayors of cities that … 0
- Resume builders: Be a broken record on Iran, cheer authoritarians … 1
- UN Committee: Israeli system ‘tantamount to apartheid’ 0
- Slater on Beinart 9
- And we live on… 1
- US official — we went to Israel first 3
- Israel lobby’s favorite senator tries to erase Palestinian refugee status … 23
- Israel takes 30 dunams of land near Salfit ‘for security … 4
-
- BDS victory: South Africa strips Ahava’s ‘made in Israel’ label 713
- Video: Israeli mob demands all African refugees be deported from … 475
- Day after pogroms, Likud MK calls for internment camp for … 427
- Neverending Nakba: Israel breaks lull, attacks Gazan farmers 413
- ‘This is not fair play’: Mahmoud Sarsak’s family demands his … 389
- March of the Flags 345
- Neocons in Washington Post: Military strike on Iran would ‘calm … 323
- Nabi Saleh’s Bassem Tamimi convicted by Israeli courts based on … 293
-
- The Messiah’s Donkey: Settlers fire on Palestinian villagers as the … 235
- Aharon Appelfeld’s rage at the German language (and Arendt’s need … 156
- US to differentiate between ‘personally displaced’ Palestinian refugees and their … 130
- March of the Flags 127
- Affirming a Judaism and Jewish identity without Zionism 113
- Feeling the hate in Long Island 97
- Israeli judge to issue verdict in Rachel Corrie case 94
- WaPo’s Walter Pincus says US is ‘going above and beyond … 87
-
Recent Comments
click link to see last 100 comments- Slater on Beinart (9)
- radii: the train has left the station and a few like Beinart have noticed but think they can still run and catch it...
- Citizen: This is all tempest in a Jewish identity teapot because Congress just gave Israel $4 Billion dollars for...
- Krauss: Have you all noticed how the real liberal Zionists, even with warts and all, keep getting more and more...
- Resume builders: Be a broken record on Iran, cheer authoritarians in Gulf (1)
- Annie Robbins: Having recognized its weakness, the US knows that it will be the UN that takes the lead in Syria and...
- Did Israeli Eurovision contestant watch too much Juliano Mer Khamis? (54)
- Annie Robbins: GL, urban dictionary has PEP, just no explanation of progressive except for palestine....
- German Lefty: Annie, it looks like you got infected with the Eurovision virus. Great. The more fans, the better. The...
- US official — we went to Israel first (3)
- traintosiberia: OMG! Why I don”t have that Stockholm Syndrome yet! How long do I have to feign that I have it.
- Annie Robbins: a U.S. official…asked to remain anonymous owing to the sensitive nature of the issue. sensitive?...
- And we live on… (1)
- Talkback: They should make Gaza the most beautiful place just to p*** compulsory expellers off. Enviromental...
- Israel lobby’s favorite senator tries to erase Palestinian refugee status for millions (23)
- piotr: How many Jews who made aliya were actual refugees from Roman persecution? Thus the “Jew who taunted...
- Slater on Beinart (9)
Our Writers
More WritersBlogroll

From 1936 to 1948 I was a "self-hating Jew" (in today's terminology). I was opposed to the Zionist/Jewish Agency program to establish the "Jewish National Homeland." From 1948 to somewhere in the current century I tilted at other windmills. Then I was awakened from a long ideological slumber by a headline "Is the 2ss dead?"
I entered active polemic life in defense of the 2ss until near the end of 2011, when I finally realized that in fact there was no rational possibility of a viable Palestine. Indeed, the official Likud platform states that Israel will never allow an independent Palestinian state west of the Jordan, which is explicitly claimed as the Eastern border of Israel. [So much for your negotiations, Mr. Obama and Mrs. Clinton]
I am now for the unitary 1ss with full and real equal rights for all. This will take work, both within and without Cis-Jordan along the model of what it took to end apartheid in South Africa [BDS!].
Incidentally, your hair splitters who see the term anti-Semite as directed at more than Jews, because Arabs are also Semites, the term was coined by European and American defenders of the Jews per se, who didn't know anything about other Semites. Anti-Semite is today a goy who criticizes Israel, just as self-hater is the Jewish equivalent. Did I see one of your commenters [in a different thread] who extended the concept of Semite even to Iranians because they are also Mideastern Muslims?
I beg to differ. Most Jewish communists on the eve of WWII were anti-Zionist. I know, because I was one. In 1936, age 15, I was at Camp Achvah, for young Zionists. I was helped to see that to create the Jewish National Homeland we Jews would have to do to the native Palestinians what the European settlers did to the native Americans. There were also other considerations, that I don't have to go into here.
I made inquiries. "What movement on the left is anti-Zionist?" My young socialist friends at Achvah told me "Only the Communists." That did it for me. That fall I joined the YCL. This led me on a lifelong journey, via Prague, Calcutta, Paris and eventually home. I am no longer a communist, but still anti-Zionist.
BTW, in Prague I met two members of the Rosenbergs' cell on the lam to the Soviet Union, who tried to recruit me for the enterprise they were going to set up there, but it was too late. I already intended to redefect.
"Self-hater" makes sense. This is a Jew who objects to Israel's policies, but keeps that to himself for fear of being called "self-hater." He hates himself for keeping silent.
For other comments of Israeli Newspeak, see my blog: link to open.salon.com
By taking US aid off the table, by passing up an opportunity tended to him by Helen Thomas at his very first presidential press conference to denounce Israel's nuclear arms, Obama has tied himself into a strait jacket. But Congress can get him off the hook.
Article 1, Section 8, “The Congress shall have Power…(10) “To define and punish Piracies and Felonies committed on the high Seas, and Offences against the Law of Nations;” in other words, violations of international law. Some courageous member of congress can set up a committee to investigate Israel and propose appropriate punishment, such as withdrawing US arms and $$$.
I was in Prague from 1948-1959. Not only did I witness the Slansky show trials, I translated the trial transcript from Czech and Slovak to English. I was unable to take either the book or my translation manuscript with me when I left. One of the phrases of choice in the trial was "Cosmopolitan Zionist conspiracy." There was definitely a witch hunt against Jews. One of Gottwald's physicians, Dr. Haas, a Jewish psychoanalyst and a personal friend of mine was imprisoned until the Khruschev revelations. A Jewish friend of mine in Prague told me the following bit of Jewish black humor at the time:
Q. What's an anti-Semite?
Ans. Somebody who hates us a bit more than absolutely necessary.
I have been anti-Zionist since 1936 (age 15). Anti-Zionism cannot be confused with anti-Semitism but equating the two is a weapon of choice to discredit defenders of the Palestinian people--as we well know.
I sent the following message to State on the queries page:
"Hani Almadhoun is an American citizen who is trying to leave the Occupied Territory (West Bank). I understand he has difficulty getting US consular assistance. Can you look into this?"
I don't expect anything to come of this, but if a few dozen of us took such action, that would probably have an effect. More than just griping amongst ourselves. No?
I was one of the '30s Stalinists. I don't know if Henry Wallace was even a fellow traveller but we did support him for president in '48. More interesting is the CP position on Zionism. We were dead set against the policy of reclaiming Palestine as a "Jewish national Homeland." Among the reasons were precisely that this would lead to treating native Arab population the same way taht European settlers treated native Americans. Also, such a project would only be viable with massive subsidies from the diaspora.
As a 15 year old know-it-all at Camp Achvah, a summer camp in the Catskills for Jewish youth, it was this realization that led me to become a communist. Now, 73 years lter, I have long since ceased to be a communist but I am still against the Zionist program of absorbing all that remains of Arab Palestine. Those predictions have been only too amply been confirmed by history.