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Total number of comments: 107 (since 2010-07-15 21:48:13)

Tom Pessah

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• Let's negotiate over how we divide the pizza while I eat the pizza
  • Tom Pessah September 30, 2011 at 12:50 pm

    you're right, Annie, it sounds like a GREAT book: look, here's an excerpt from the epilogue

    “I asked the emotional tour guide if she could explain the fact that so many Europeans loathed the Jews so much and in so many places at once. I was thrown out of school for a week.

    “It seems I didn’t learn the necessary lesson because when we studied the middle age blood libels, I again wondered out loud how the teacher could know that these accusations of Jews making Matzo out of young Goyim’s blood were indeed empty or groundless. "
    link to aljazeerah.info

    you're so right, Annie, what are people getting so upset about this? who knows, Jews probably do make matzot out of the blood of young goyim. I'm willing to bet you can't bring yourself to denounce that at all, can you?

  • Tom Pessah September 30, 2011 at 6:00 am

    just out of curiousity, if lying in order to portray the Nazis as the victims of the Jews isn't enough to get you to distance yourself from him, what would be? what more does he have to say about Jews to rank as an antisemite?

  • Tom Pessah September 30, 2011 at 4:48 am

    Annie: "he is implying there were collectives within the jewish community who pissed people off both today, and during weimer period. i would imagine that might be true"

    you "would imagine"? so you're saying you don't have any evidence that any Jewish collective was doing any harm to anyone during the Weimer period, but you "would imagine" that based on something you think about Jews today? that's very interesting, so you're saying you "imagine" there is some kind of continuity in the way Jews behave which annoys gentiles, so interesting you would think that about Jews.

  • Tom Pessah September 30, 2011 at 4:31 am

    Annnie: "he is implying there were collectives within the jewish community who pissed people off both today, and during weimer period. i would imagine that might be true tho i would never blame anyone for their own genocide. being pissed at people is not a reason to kill them or use collective punishment, ever. but would it be to imposing to ask “what pissed them off”?

    that's a great question Annie, you know I should ask my aunt about that. She lost every single member of her family in the camps apart from one cousin, I think she was 9 years old at the time. Maybe I should give you her phone number and you can ask her yourself who she pissed off, I mean there must have been a good reason why she lost her entire family. Only do be sure to clarify that " i would never blame anyone for their own genocide", as you felt the need to emphasize, just in case someone thought you were implying that.

    btw another blog today had more nice Atzmon quotes explaining that Nazism was a response to a Jewish assualt on the Germans

    "Not even Saul Friedlander in his otherwise comprehensive overview of German policy, Nazi Germany and the Jews, mentions the fact that the Jewish declaration of war and boycott preceded Hitler's speech of March 28, 1933."

    However, it turns out Atzmon was lying and the "jewish declaration of war" was in fact a *response* to anti-Jewish violence. link to jewssansfrontieres.blogspot.com
    link to jewssansfrontieres.blogspot.com

    but again, nice to see someone sticking up for Hitler. Keep on defending him.

  • Tom Pessah September 29, 2011 at 2:15 am

    Annie: "i’ll be the first to stand up and say jews are not a “sinister ideological collective”. but is there a “sinister ideological collective” operating within the jewish community? it sure seems like there is to me."

    fine, so in order for criticism of, say, the Zionist establishment within the Jewish community to be effective, it's necessary to distinguish that criticism from all-out incitement against Jews, and it would be very helpful in this context if you *could* actually 'stand up and say Jews are not a 'sinister ideological collective', and stand up like that whenever you hear people inciting against Jews as Jews - just as you would do for muslims, palestinians, women, gays etc. Otherwise you are giving ammunition to people who equate anti-Zionism with anti-Judaism.

  • Tom Pessah September 29, 2011 at 1:43 am

    Woody, I don't think anyone is claiming every single word that comes out of Atzmon's mouth is offensive. Besides the passages that people quote here there are also legitimate (if not particularly original) points. Yes, the memory of the Holocaust has often been manipulated for political means. Yes, it is important for everyone, including Jews, to look at history not only from the viewpoint of the victims. Yes, there is plenty to criticize about Zionism. However, when you go out of your way to use inflammatory language, for example when you call on gentiles to "find within ourselves the powers to contain this sinister ideological collective", (the Jews)
    link to networkedblogs.com
    , you don't do anything to advance those causes. It really isn't necessary to incite against Jews to make those points. I don't know why he uses this language, maybe he was traumatized as an Israeli soldier serving in Lebanon, but whatever the reason is, calling Jews a "sinister ideological collective" isn't some kind of thought-provoking argument, it's pretty childish mudslinging. You're doing him no favors by constantly referring people to this mysterious deep context that makes everything he says acceptable. It isn't necessary to read every single word he has ever written to see that these comments are pointless. And we don't need legitimate causes like pro-Palestine activism to be mixed up with provocation for the sake of provocation. Too much is at stake.

  • Tom Pessah September 28, 2011 at 5:20 pm

    Annie - "can’t we blame the nazis for the holocaust and still asked “why do these things keep happening to Jews” ?

    first of all, if you are willing to blame the nazis for the Holocaust you should be denouncing someone who wrote "Rather than blaming the Goyim, the Germans, the Muslims, the Arabs, it is about time the Jewish subject learns to ask the 6 million $ question: “why do they pick on me?” - this sentence says quite clearly that blaming the Germans is reprehensible. This is what "rather than" means in plain English. It doesn't mean "we need to accept X and in addition do...".

    Secondly, it isn't such a big mystery. Jews were minorities in many places and suffered like other minorities, probably less than some. In the Christian world they were associated with murdering Jesus, which was a prevalent myth throughout those societies.

    Thirdly, women have been raped throughout history. Should they also ask themselves "why do they pick on me"? Native Americans were exterminated all over the Americas - should they be asking themsleves why, "rather than" blaming those who exterminated them? just because something is frequent doesn't mean that the victim is somehow to blame. Again, if you want to discuss this in the context of a political movement like Zionism, that's a whole different ballgame, but to say that "rather than" blaming the Germans all Jewish men women and children in Nazi-occupied Russia rounded up and shot should have asked themselves "why me" is beyond offensive.

  • Page: 1
  • Tom Pessah September 28, 2011 at 11:59 am

    Sumud - here is the quote again

    “I am suggesting that the only way to internalise the meaning of the Jewish Holocaust is to teach Jews how to start looking in the mirror, to teach Jews to ask themselves why conflicts with others happen to them time after time. Rather than blaming the Goyim, the Germans, the Muslims, the Arabs, it is about time the Jewish subject learns to ask the 6 million $ question: “why do they pick on me?” The Jews who already doing that are known as self-haters, yet they are a million moons ahead of the Jewish tribal discourse. They clearly see the conflict between universalism and Jewish tribalism.”
    link to peacepalestine.blogspot.com

    now, it's one thing to say in the context of the political project of Zionism that Zionist Jews should take responsibility for what they created, and not view history from the standpoint of the victims. And it's a completely different thing to talk in this context about the Germans and the "the 6 million $ question" which is an obvious reference to the Holocaust. Saying in this context that "rather than blaming" the Germans Jews should "start looking in the mirror" is a quite clear example of blaming the victim.

    and if you think I'm making this up, in a recent interview he made the connection again:

    Interviewer: I tell people we are almost getting into a Weimar situation, do you see that happening?

    Atzmon: Absolutely. It is very tragic to say, but I can see it. And the only thing that can save the Jews from themselves is if we, the goyim, let’s say --

    Interviewer: I heard you joined the goyim a few years ago, you are on the goyim team now.

    Atzmon: Yes -- if the goyim, the gentiles, basically -- find within ourselves the powers to contain this sinister ideological collective.
    link to networkedblogs.com

    why is it necessary for the gentiles to contain this "sinister ideological collective"? because of something they did during the Weimer Period. If they hadn't misbehaved it wouldn't be necessary to "save them from themselves" - he is again implying that they were responsible for what happened after the Weimar period=the Holocaust.

    Now I realize Atzmonologists will claim that when he refers to Jews as a "sinister ideological collective" he means it in a good way, just like when he praised Wagner's "astute" comment that "Jews were only capable of producing money-making music and not works of art"
    link to gilad.co.uk

    there is always some kind of mysterious context that makes these comments much better than they sound, just like Wagner's music

  • Tom Pessah September 28, 2011 at 5:26 am

    the pretty obvious point is that you can criticize Israeli crimes without minimizing Nazism - to write, for example, as Atzmon did, "Nazis were indeed proper expansionists, they were trying to take towns and land intact. Carpet bombing and total erasure of populated areas that is so trendy amongst Israeli military and politicians (as well as Anglo-Americans) has never been a Nazi tactic or strategy."
    link to aljazeerah.info

    As Tony Greenstein responded -
    For three days, in April 1941, German bombers raised Belgrade to the ground.
    William Shirer, The Rise & Fall of the Third Reich, p.988, Pan Books, London, 1964.

    Hitler’s plans for Russia included the mass starvation of 30 million Russian civilians and the complete razing to the ground of Moscow and Leningrad.
    William Shirer, The Rise & Fall of the Third Reich, pp. 996-7, 1020

    to say nothing of the wiping out of Lidice or mass murder in Oradour-sur-Glane.
    link to azvsas.blogspot.com

    the Ahmadinejad-type logic, that we need to either support the Israeli government or apologize for the Nazis, is really twisted

  • Tom Pessah September 28, 2011 at 5:15 am

    you know, you spend so much energy denouncing Zionists, but this is the exact replica of the standard "singling out Israel" argument. Personally I have called out people on this very site for denying the Nakba (which was ethnic cleansing, not genocide) link to mondoweiss.net

    but I shouldn't have to in order to call out bigots like Atzmon. If someone asks in the context of the Holocaust "why do these things keep happening to Jews" as if they are to blame for their own genocide, why do we need to change the subject to denial or justification of other crimes?

  • Tom Pessah September 28, 2011 at 5:04 am with 44 replies

    I'm happy to correct you since you are in fact wrong.
    You could define the Holocaust as ten people who happened to be Jewish dying of a cold, and deny all the rest, and then pretend you're not denying it. You could also say you're not denying the Armenian genocide, just that they were killed intentionally - maybe a lot of them died because of the conditions in WWI.

    But there are standard definitions of what constitutes Holocaust denial. "While historians disagree on different aspects of this phenomenon, it is basically agreed on that the Holocaust may be correctly defined as follows: (1) the Holocaust was the intentional murder of European Jews by the Nazi government of Germany during World War II as a matter of state policy; (2) this mass murder employed gas chambers, among other methods, as a method of killing; and (3) the death toll of European Jews by the end of World War II was roughly 6 million. "
    link to holocaust-history.org

    There has been a lot of historical research on this topic and actual documents have been discovered. For example, this letter of January 29, 1943 was written by SS-Hauptsturmführer (Captain) Karl Bischoff to SS-Oberführer (Sr. Colonel) Hans Kammler concerning the progress made on Krematorium II.

    In this letter, the word "Vergasungskeller" is used to describe the supposed "morgue." That word means exactly what it sounds like: "gassing cellar," a (homicidal) gas chamber.
    link to holocaust-history.org

    you're welcome to read all 327 footnotes of this article on Auschwitz link to holocaust-history.org

  • Tom Pessah September 28, 2011 at 1:57 am with 15 replies

    it's CRAZY, right? why would anyone find passages like this offensive? good you're still standing up for him, Annie! keep up the good fight for universalism!

    "I am suggesting that the only way to internalise the meaning of the Jewish Holocaust is to teach Jews how to start looking in the mirror, to teach Jews to ask themselves why conflicts with others happen to them time after time. Rather than blaming the Goyim, the Germans, the Muslims, the Arabs, it is about time the Jewish subject learns to ask the 6 million $ question: “why do they pick on me?” The Jews who already doing that are known as self-haters, yet they are a million moons ahead of the Jewish tribal discourse. They clearly see the conflict between universalism and Jewish tribalism."
    link to peacepalestine.blogspot.com

    yeah, exactly! why blame the Germans for the Holocaust?? if the Jews got 'picked on' they must be to blame, right? that's the only reason a true progressive universalist would give.
    link to peacepalestine.blogspot.com

• PA astroturf effort to build campus momentum for statehood falls flat
  • Tom Pessah September 27, 2011 at 4:37 pm with 4 replies

    volunteering in local NGOs in the West Bank, supporting BDS efforts, helping organize the Palestinian Youth Movement, hosting speakers to raise awareness, raising funds for initiatives like MECA's Maia project (supplying clean water for children), participating in the Gaza Freedom March and this year's flotillas...

  • Tom Pessah September 27, 2011 at 4:12 pm

    a lot of times so called "pro-Israel" students assume their pro-Palestine equivalents are their mirror image - as if people get their talking points from the PA or Arab governments, or act as their spokespersons. It's good to demonstrate the independence of these grassroots organizations from the unelected PA.

• Atzmon and Jewish identity
  • Tom Pessah July 1, 2011 at 3:39 am

    no, it refers to Wagner's "astute reading", it doesn't say "astute meshige" anywhere.

  • Tom Pessah July 1, 2011 at 1:03 am

    Citizen - "Over all, what was done to the Jews is worse than what has and is being done to the Palestinians. Does this excuse what Israel has done, is doing to the Palestinians? "

    no, it doesn't. One of the background assumptions here is that anyone who doesn't deny the Holocaust is a "Zionist historian" who wants to justify ethnic cleansing. That's nonsense. You can easily recognize the Holocaust happened and also recognize ethnic cleansing happened, it's pretty easy to accept both things at the same time.

  • Tom Pessah July 1, 2011 at 12:57 am

    Annie, thank you for the clarification. I understand you feel you don't know enough about the Holocaust to get into the debate. However, at the beginning of the thread I posted a link to an article by the person you were debating on the subject of Jews transcending "tribalism" and achieving "universalism". Here it is again: "Wagner wrote that Jews were only capable of producing money-making music and not works of art. I guess that Israelis do not like meshiges with an astute reading of the socio-economy of the show business." Here is the link - link to gilad.co.uk
    - you can look and see for yourself if I am twisting or misquoting anything. This is an example of simple bigotry which which can be identified without any expert knowledge. Surely you don't agree that a certain group of human beings is inherently incapable of producing works of art? likewise, to understand why the "Jews killed Jesus" libel is emotional for people you don't need to be an expert. The answer is pretty simple - a) that's false, and b) that was used through the centuries to persecute Jews. A decent ally to Jews should be able to speak up when they hear defamatory statement like that, instead of insisting that their discussion of Jewish identity with the person who made those statements should just continue uninterrupted. It would be exactly the same if you were discussing African American identity with a person who stated they had an innate tendency to rape white women. Do you need to be an expert on biology or whatever to respond to this claim? would you just say you're not an expert and continue the discussion as usual? it's easy for you to say you would blow it off since you're not the one targetted, but that's not the way solidarity works.

  • Tom Pessah June 26, 2011 at 3:27 pm

    if he were simply restating the fact that most historians think that there was no master plan until 1942, he isn't "doubting an aspect of the narrative" but the opposite - accepting it. The point I was trying to emphasize was the quotation mark around the word kill, not the 1942 or 1944 date - that's the denial part. What he is doubting is the Nazis' intention to kill Jews (“If, for instance, the Nazis wanted the Jews out of their Reich (Judenrein – free of Jews), or even dead...") and the function of Auschwitz as a death camp ("if the Nazis ran a death factory in Auschwitz-Birkenau, why would the Jewish prisoners join them at the end of the war?”). (I've provided the links to those two quotes several times, below)

  • Tom Pessah June 26, 2011 at 2:45 pm

    a) explain to me why he is putting the word kill in quotation marks.
    b) most historians do agree there was a master plan around 1942.
    c) regardless of the master plan, mass murder of ostjuden began in 1941, another reason not to put the word kill in quotation marks.
    d) in another place he begins asking "If, for instance, the Nazis wanted the Jews out of their Reich (Judenrein – free of Jews), or even dead, as the Zionist narrative insists... " link to aljazeerah.info
    - so the quotation marks aren't a mistake - he trying to contest the fact the fact that the Nazis wanted the Jews dead. Can you at least admit that?
    e) "That is not historical inquiry, that is religious dogma. Atzmon is doubting an aspect of the narrative " if you want to doubt that the Nazis wanted the Jews dead, simply refute the evidence that we have. If we have Himmler's Posnen speech ("we had the duty to our people to do it, to kill this people" - link to holocaust-history.org
    then prove that this speech didn't take place. This is how historians work - they take the evidence and argue over it. Atzmon isn't arguing with a specific historian, or challenging a specific document, and yet he is still saying that "65 years after the liberation of Auschwitz, we must be entitled to start to ask the necessary questions. We should ask for some conclusive historical evidence" as if that evidence doesn't already exist - for example, link to holocaust-history.org
    So on the one hand we have real researchers who have conducted research and found proof (as well as survivors), and onthe other hand we have people like Atzmon who have conducted no research but spread false information about how surviors of Auschwitz didn't wait for the Red Army to liberate them. This isn't some kind of scientific enveavour, this is completely baseless lying. I don't see how sticking to what we already know from historical research is "dogma". What is the alternative? claiming that WWII never happened? is that also an audacious challenging of some kind of orthodoxy?

  • Tom Pessah June 26, 2011 at 1:09 pm

    you know, I spend a lot of time every week arguing with people put the terms human rights abuses in quotation marks (as applied to the occupation), that claim "Arab Israelis" enjoy equal rights, that no war crimes occured in Gaza, that anyone who uses the term occupation is either misinformed or antisemitic, that no one was systematically expelled in 1948 - I spend my time arguing with them because these lies are causing immense human suffering. So when someone comes along and says "the Jews killed Jesus" or “if the Nazis ran a death factory in Auschwitz-Birkenau, why would the Jewish prisoners join them at the end of the war?” in an environement that was supposed to be progressive, that would agree with me that all the preceding claims are dangerous lies, I expect someone to call out this bigotry. Instead it seems I have intruded on an intimate tea party you're all having with Spinoza the Holocaust denier who doubts if there is "conclusive historical evidence" for the "Holocaust religion", and published completely unfounded lies in a site like aljazeera. And all this is"silly" to you? wow.

  • Tom Pessah June 26, 2011 at 12:46 pm with 8 replies

    Atzmon wrote "if the Nazis ran a death factory in Auschwitz-Birkenau, why would the Jewish prisoners join them at the end of the war?" - he is attempting to disprove the existence of death factories in Auschwitz. This to you is "holocaust minutiae"??

    I am providing counter-evidence to the lies he spread on a popular site like al-Jazeera, which could end up convincing people that there is no “conclusive historical evidence” for the “religious narrative” of the Holocaust. And this you call "petty mud slinging"? How low can you go? is the existence of death camps, or the putting the idea that the Nazis killed Jews in doubt (""even Zionist historians agree that there was no master plan to ‘kill’ the Jews " - notice the quotation marks around the word kill, as if that is something we need to distance ourselves from) - is all this some kind of esoteric hobby of mine that is wasting your time? and Holocaust deniers are like Spinoza? what the hell is wrong with you people? and you can be sure I'm just as much a thorn in the side of Nakba deniers or any other deniers. History matters.

  • Tom Pessah June 26, 2011 at 5:05 am

    WHAT ARE YOU TALKING ABOUT? here is Atzmon saying "When I was young and naive I was also somehow convinced that what they told us about our ‘collective’ Jewish past really happened. I believed it all, the Kingdom of David, Massada, and then the Holocaust: the soap, the lampshade*, the death march, the six million. As it happened, it took me many years to understand that the Holocaust, the core belief of the contemporary Jewish faith, was not at all an historical narrative... I think that 65 years after the liberation of Auschwitz, we must be entitled to start to ask the necessary questions. We should ask for some conclusive historical evidence and arguments rather than follow a religious narrative" link to gilad.co.uk
    how much more blatant does he need to be? what do I need to "try to understand" - that there isn't conclusive historical evidence for death marches? what is wrong with you?

  • Tom Pessah June 26, 2011 at 4:30 am with 2 replies

    ... and that includes people who only want to have a pleasant chat with this promoter of "universal discourse." True universal discourse means standing up to racism, not chatting with the racists.

  • Tom Pessah June 26, 2011 at 4:21 am with 24 replies

    for the record, I would like to clarify what is meant by Holocaust denial, and why Gilad Atzmon falls into that category. This is an attempt to deliberately lie about historical evidence in order to promote a specific political agenda. It is harmful and completely unscientific and unethical.
    In an essay (ironically) called "Truth, History, and Integrity: Questioning the Holocaust Religion" Atzmon writes "When I was young and naive I was also somehow convinced that what they told us about our ‘collective’ Jewish past really happened. I believed it all, the Kingdom of David, Massada, and then the Holocaust: the soap, the lampshade*, the death march, the six million. As it happened, it took me many years to understand that the Holocaust, the core belief of the contemporary Jewish faith, was not at all an historical narrative for historical narratives do not need the protection of the law and politicians... I think that 65 years after the liberation of Auschwitz, we must be entitled to start to ask the necessary questions. We should ask for some conclusive historical evidence and arguments rather than follow a religious narrative that is sustained by political pressure and laws". link to gilad.co.uk
    Atzmon is clearly saying here that there is no "conclusive historical evidence" for the "religious narrative" of the Holocaust. This is false: we have documents where the Nazis speak of gassing devices link to holocaust-history.org
    , poison gas link to holocaust-history.org
    eyewitnesses to the gassings link to holocaust-history.org
    speeches by Nazis describing the murder link to holocaust-history.org
    and much more. To claim as Atzmon does that so far we have no "conclusive historical evidence" is a blatant lie.

    To back up his claim, in this essay Atzmon "quotes" a Holocaust survivor, Prof. Israel Gutman, whose testimony is supposed to back up Atzmon's question - "the Nazis ran a death factory in Auschwitz-Birkenau, why would the Jewish prisoners join them at the end of the war? Why didn’t the Jews wait for their Red liberators?". Even if Gutman's testimony was of escaping with the Nazis, this does not in any way invalidate any of the evidence we have, that the Nazis did indeed run a death camp in Aeschwitz, as the documents I just quoted attest to. But as it happens, you can see Gutman in this video on youtube, and at 1:21 you can hear him saying he was liberated *at this concentration camp* - instead of "joining the Nazis". link to youtube.com
    According to wikipedia Auschwitz was liberated by the Red Army, apart from some prisoners who were forced to participate in Death Marches. In other words, those who were able to stay in the camp *did* wait for the Red Army to liberate them. link to en.wikipedia.org
    . And if you don't like Wikipedia go read Hilberg, Kershaw or any other serious historian of the Holocaust.
    So even this piece of evidence that Atzmon supposedly quotes does not invalidate any of what we already know. And again, even if there was one testimony that didn't cohere, it does not by itself make documents about the use of gas to kill Jews in Auschwitz suddenly go away.

    This is meant to be a progressive site, one that is dedicated to fighting racism in all its forms. Jews were systematically murdered by the Nazis, as documented by all the sources I referenced, uncovered by several decades of historical research by real historians, not jazz musicians, who have uncovered many real documents like the ones I linked to before. Denying this systematic murder of Jews and putting it in quotation marks, in order to be provocative, is something any genuine anti-racist should be speaking up against, just as you should oppose lies about other atrocities, like the Armenian Genocide or the Nakba. Anyone who fails to do that is morally bankrupt and complicit with racism.

  • Tom Pessah June 25, 2011 at 9:43 am

    thank you Max. I'm just wondering how people who see themselves as anti-racists are perfectly happy having a pleasant conversation about "universalism" with someone who writes that "even Zionist historians agree that there was no master plan to ‘kill’ the Jews " - so the systematic Nazi murder of Jews is now something we put in quotation marks? was it a tsunami that killed them? can people really be blind as that to bigotry? and just google, for goodness' sake, you'll find endless examples of Atzmon's ties to Holocaust deniers.

  • Tom Pessah June 25, 2011 at 9:33 am

    your idiotic pronouncements aren't worth wasting any more of my time, but for the record, the Nazis didn't 'kill' Jews in quotation marks, the did actually kill them, and that started in Operation Barbarossa when the Germans invaded the Soviet Union in June 1941. They went from village to village, put people in dykes and shot at them, and then went on to the next village. You just to look it up on wikipedia, for Christ's sake - link to en.wikipedia.org
    . Look at the photos of executions of Kiev Jews by German army mobile killing units. (Einsatzgruppen). And after that, OPEN A BOOK - read Browning's Ordinary Men, all the details are there. Not 1942, not a plan and not killing in quotation marks. How DARE you ignore the memory of all those who were murdered? quotation marks my ass.

  • Tom Pessah June 25, 2011 at 1:17 am with 6 replies

    I really don't get what you're saying. If you want to say many of the survivors aren't benefitting from the reperations, or that historians shouldn't rely on oral history blindly and should combine different sources, I have no argument with you and most people wouldn't, this isn't some kind of mythical "red line". This is how historians already work. If you're saying the Holocaust shouldn't be exploited for pretty sinister political purposes, I also agree 100%. But when someone says, exactly like Ahmadinejad, we should *now* start looking at the Holocaust as a historical event, the implication is that 50 years of Holocaust scholarship by historians, and the entire body of survivors' testimonies, don't count at all, that until now there has been no historical scholarship of the Holocaust. The rhetorical technique here is to throw out these claims, make the provocation, and then to pretend there is some kind of alternative meaning here that only incredibly smart people can ever hope to comprehend, rather like in the Emperor's New Clothes. So when someone quotes Wagner about how Jews are incapable of producing works of art, only "money-making music", and then in the very next sentence mentions an "astute reading of the socio-economy of the show business", you only see "bigotry in the eye of the beholder", as if the second sentence apparently had no connection with the one that immediately preceded it and there is a completely different meaning here which can't be explained in plain English to regular people. Do you really approve of that? and btw, does this "down with red lines" apply to other cases too? I argue just as passionately with Nakba deniers, but according to what you're saying I should just relax and let them claim that everyone left voluntarily.

  • Tom Pessah June 24, 2011 at 5:36 pm with 32 replies

    Annie, I won't "hijack" your conversation any more, but this is just to say I am truly disappointed with you. A consistent anti-racist can denounce bigotry against any group, not just Zionism. There's no point in denouncing Zionism from any perspective that isn't consistently anti-racist. If you can't see very clear examples of bigotry on this thread, you're a pretty poor ally both to Jews and to Palestinians.

  • Tom Pessah June 24, 2011 at 5:01 pm

    if one sentence says Wagner "once wrote that Jews were only capable of producing money-making music and not works of art." and the next sentence mentions "an astute reading of the socio-economy of the show business", one assumes the astute reading is is the claim that Jews aren't capable of producing works of art. If the second sentence had no connection to the first one, why does it appear directly after it? what was Wagner's "astute reading" then?

  • Tom Pessah June 24, 2011 at 4:52 pm

    >>The message is clear. The holocaust better be treated as an historical chapter>> Raul Hilberg wrote "the destruction of european jews" fifty years ago, and since then scholars have been conducting historical research on it. What is new about the idea of treating it historically? it's been done many times.

    >>If the Nazis wanted the Jews out, why did they schlep them back at the end of the war.>> could you just explain in plain English whether or not you agree that Nazis shipped Jews out of Germany to concentration camps in Poland to be exterminated. Just say "yes" or "no," it's a pretty simple question.

  • Tom Pessah June 24, 2011 at 3:32 pm

    let's try again. If you say "the Holocaust narrative, in its current form” “doesn’t make any historical sense” – and an example of that is the claim that “the Nazis wanted the Jews out of their Reich (Judenrein – free of Jews), or even dead” - are you not saying that to claim the Nazis wanted the Jews dead doesn't make any sense? if not, *what is this sentence saying?* what exactly doesn't make historical sense? instead of calling me dumb or incompetant, just provide an alternative understanding of this sentence. What does it mean?

  • Tom Pessah June 24, 2011 at 2:16 pm

    so for goodness' sake, if there is some deep meaning behind the phrase "doesn’t make any historical sense", what is this deep meaning? just say it, once and for all, instead of telling me I don't understand. You're acting like every sentence is so incredibly profound that simple mortals can't comprehend it. When he says "the Jews killed Jesus" or agrees with Wagner that "Jews were only capable of producing money-making music and not works of art," this isn't some kind of stunningly deep intellectual acheivement, it's pretty primitive bigotry.

  • Tom Pessah June 24, 2011 at 1:34 pm

    none of these are "taboo" questions. They're a useless distraction. It's like saying that raising the question of whether water turns into ice under a certain temperature is "taboo". It isn't taboo, there just exists evidence to the contrary that you don't bother educating yourself about. I already provided a link to a site with many documents, but in case you didn't click on it, it includes a letter to the The Reich Ministry for the Occupied Eastern Territories" dated October 25, 1941, which discusses "the production of the required shelters and gassing devices" and complains "the envisaged devices are not available in sufficient quantity; they will first have to be manufactured." If you were wondering who is meant to be gassed, the end of the letter explains "According to information from Sturmbannführer Eichmann, camps for Jews are to be set up in Riga and Minsk, to which Jews from the Old Reich territory may also come." link to holocaust-history.org
    The point is there has already been plenty of historical inquiry about this event, and plenty of historians have written books on it (check out Hilberg, Kershaw, Browning). Casting doubt on things you haven't bothered to read isn't some kind of brave challenging of taboos, it's pure laziness.

  • Tom Pessah June 24, 2011 at 12:58 pm

    so please do explain. He's criticizing "the Holocaust narrative, in its current form" because it "doesn’t make any historical sense" - in other words, it is inaccurate. An example of what "doesn't make any historical sense" is the claim that "the Nazis wanted the Jews out of their Reich (Judenrein – free of Jews), or even dead". He is challenging the "Zionists" who support that claim that "doesn't make any historical sense", isn't he? or if not, what exactly is your interpretation? and what exactly was "ignorant" about the parantheticals?

  • Tom Pessah June 24, 2011 at 12:47 pm

    >> They make clear that some Jews — Temple priests, supporters of Barabbas and so forth — were responsble for the death. The point those words are making is that the Jews as a whole, neither then or nor now, can be held responsible. >> great, so you're saying some Jews 2000 ago were involved, even though they didn't execute him.

    Atzmon, on the other hand, is saying " the Jews were responsible for the killing of Jesus " link to gilad.co.uk
    - not "some" Jews but "the" Jews. This is pointless incitement which has been used for centuries to persecute Jews.

  • Tom Pessah June 24, 2011 at 12:36 pm

    so please look below of another piece of his writing (12:13 pm) where he seems to be distancing himself from the "Zionist narrative" that claims Nazis deported Jews in order to murder them, and provide a better reading than my "incompetant" one. Not to mention his even deeper comment on Wagner, about how "Jews were only capable of producing money-making music and not works of art" - this he calls "an astute reading of the socio-economy of the show business.” link to gilad.co.uk
    I feel this "astute reading" is so profound that I am intellectually incapable of understanding it properly, so I would be very grateful if you could explain it to me.

  • Tom Pessah June 24, 2011 at 12:13 pm

    let's try this again. Let’s take the following excerpt from another of Atzmon’s “writings”:

    “It took me years to accept that the Holocaust narrative, in its current form, doesn’t make any historical sense. Here is just one little anecdote to elaborate on:

    If, for instance, the Nazis wanted the Jews out of their Reich (Judenrein – free of Jews), or even dead, as the Zionist narrative insists, how come they marched hundreds of thousands of them back into the Reich at the end of the war? ” link to atlanticfreepress.com

    in my reading he is distancing himself from the “Zionist” claim that the Nazis wanted the Jews out of the Reich (so there were no trainloads to concentration camps, apparently), or “even” dead (perish the thought- the Nazis wanting the Jews “even” dead? how crazy is that – accusing good old Hitler of wanting to kill Jews!).

    If I have “my head up my ass”, *what is your reading of this “writing”?* how am I misinterpreting it? is he not distancing himself from the current "Holocaust narrative" that claims the Nazis wanted the Jews dead?

  • Tom Pessah June 24, 2011 at 12:00 pm

    yes, obviously, but then you do need to explain why, if you have a document that shows Nazis used gas to kill Jews, you are hypothesizing that this was not the case. Is the document false? so what about the other documents? if you hypothesize atoms don't exist, you need something to back that up before that becomes a scientific endeavour. Just saying "no it isn't" doesn't make it scientific.

  • Tom Pessah June 24, 2011 at 11:55 am with 7 replies

    see my response above - 11:36 am

  • Tom Pessah June 24, 2011 at 11:42 am

    interestingly, by the way, he does write that the Nazis "marched hundreds of thousands of them back into the Reich at the end of the war," which makes you wonder what they were doing *outside* the Reich before they were marched "back". Why were they hanging around Poland if the Nazis didn't want the Jews out of the Reich "or even dead"?

  • Tom Pessah June 24, 2011 at 11:36 am

    ok, let's take the following excerpt from another of Atzmon's "writings":

    "It took me years to accept that the Holocaust narrative, in its current form, doesn’t make any historical sense. Here is just one little anecdote to elaborate on:

    If, for instance, the Nazis wanted the Jews out of their Reich (Judenrein - free of Jews), or even dead, as the Zionist narrative insists, how come they marched hundreds of thousands of them back into the Reich at the end of the war? " link to atlanticfreepress.com

    in my reading he is distancing himself from the "Zionist" claim that the Nazis wanted the Jews out of the Reich (so there were no trainloads to concentration camps, apparently), or "even" dead (perish the thought- the Nazis wanting the Jews "even" dead? how crazy is that - accusing good old Hitler of wanting to kill Jews!). If I have "my head up my ass", what is your reading of this "writing"?

  • Tom Pessah June 24, 2011 at 11:02 am

    "Then why did Piper, the Director of the Auschwitz Museum, say the holes were added after WWII?"

    you can read a detailed response to the "holes" argument here link to holocaust-history.org

  • Tom Pessah June 24, 2011 at 10:54 am with 8 replies

    "Casting doubt upon the mountains of existing evidence without providing any justification isn’t scientific in any way." Sure it is. That’s actually how ‘science’ works."

    nope, sorry, science does not consist of casting doubt *without providing justification.* If you want to doubt not "colorful memory" but documents like the ones I just linked to, about how Zyklon-B was poured into the gas chambers, then you need to give some reason. And if you don't have any reason, and you do have documentation of how gas was used to murder people in this camp, don't begin phrases with
    "if the Nazis ran a death factory in Auschwitz-Birkenau…” as if this is something controversial.

    By the way, calling the entire body of testimonies from concentration camps "colorful memory" pretty much fits any standard defintion of Holocaust denial. And I hear it wasn't such a "colorful" experience in the camps.

  • Tom Pessah June 24, 2011 at 10:45 am

    " Pope Benedict XVI has made a sweeping exoneration of the Jewish people for the death of Jesus Christ, tackling one of the most controversial issues in Christianity in a new book.
    ... In "Jesus of Nazareth-Part II" excerpts released Wednesday, Benedict uses biblical and theological analyses to explain why there was no basis in Scripture that the Jewish people as a whole were responsible for Jesus' death.

    Interpretations to the contrary have been used for centuries to justify the persecution of Jews."
    link to usatoday.com

  • Tom Pessah June 24, 2011 at 10:40 am

    the point is pretty simple - it is unhelpful to repeat claims that are both false and dangerous. The Catholic Church has recognized that the Jews did not kill Jesus. The New Testament describes how he was executed by the Romans. This claim is both false and dangerous as it was used to incite hatred and violence against Jews for hundreds of years. It is as false as to claim black men have a tendency to rape white women, which is also dangerous and has also lead to much violence against black men. It's pretty simple.

    People who are "universalists" don't incite against specific groups, and it is perfectly easy to be against Zionist or other forms of racism and against anti-Jewish bigotry at the same time. There is nothing heroic or daring about repeating lies that have already been disproven over and over again.

  • Tom Pessah June 24, 2011 at 10:08 am with 28 replies

    Stephen Jay Gould didn't just dismiss the discpline of biology, he went through the evidence like the serious scientist that he was and explained very carefully why it was false. Here, again, is a link to many many documents proving that Auschwitz was a death camp, contrary to Atzmon's claim cited above ("if the Nazis ran a death factory in Auschwitz-Birkenau...") - link to holocaust-history.org
    You have, for example, an inventory from March 31, 1943 that mentions the devices by which the Zyklon-B was poured into the gas chamber. Instead of arrogantly "calling for historical research" as if no one has done so until now, simply educate yourself about the current evidence, and if you have doubts about its authenticity then explain why you think all the historians and survivors who support these claims are wrong and you are right. Casting doubt upon the mountains of existing evidence without providing any justification isn't scientific in any way.

  • Tom Pessah June 24, 2011 at 9:45 am

    duh, so what is your point? that some Jews are racists? Some muslims and some christians and some hindus are also racists, in case you haven't noticed.

    But to criticize "who get angry when blamed for killing Jesus" is to pretend that this false accusation (ever hear of Pontius Pilate?) hasn't had any deadly consequences for Jews for hundreds of years. What on earth is the purpose of repeating this old libel if not to encourage more hatred?

  • Tom Pessah June 24, 2011 at 8:28 am with 12 replies

    Zionists are not happy at all with the recycling of some old 'Anti-Semitic slogans and images’. They are especially annoyed when they are blamed for the death of Jesus. I would suggest that perhaps we should face it once and for all: the Jews were responsible for the killing of Jesus who, by the way, was himself a Palestinian Jew.”

    There is no doubt that the role of Jews in Christ’s death has become a major Western historical and religious narrative. Yet, I continue to argue that this is an irrelevant historical fact. Instead, I present a crucial question which Hirsh has managed to deliberately dismiss:
    “How is it that people living today feel accountable or chased for a crime committed by their great ancestors almost 2,000 years ago?”

    My answer to this question is as follows:

    “I assume that those Jews who get angry when blamed for killing Jesus are those who identify themselves with Jesus’ killers. Those who would commit this murderous act today. link to gilad.co.uk

  • Tom Pessah June 24, 2011 at 4:54 am with 1 replies

    " Atzmon says he considers the holocaust to be like any other period of history, one that is constantly studied and viewed anew, as new discoveries come to light. "

    wonderful, and I consider it important to have people studying the human body. Interestingly, it turns out there is a whole discipline called biology, including labs, journals, conferences, academic departments etc which study precisely that. Similarly, and amazingly, quite a few people did in fact think the Holocaust was worth studying. There are historians who study it, journals, academic departments, conferences - a lot of stuff going on even before Gilad Atzmon thought of it. They actually do discuss new evidence that comes to light.

  • Tom Pessah June 24, 2011 at 4:36 am

    in the article quoted above, he says "” if the Nazis ran a death factory in Auschwitz-Birkenau, why would the Jewish prisoners join them at the end of the war?"

    in other words, he is doubting the fact that the Nazis ran a death camp in Auschwitz. Scholars like Hilberg are not doubting that fact. If in 2011 he suggests that we should all "start treating the Holocaust as a historical chapter" as if there has been no scholarship to prove Auschwitz was a death camp, then yes, he is a Holocaust denier and he is willfully ignoring all the historical evidence to the contrary. And he should be shunned.

    If you really don't know any of the evidence about Auschwitz have a look at link to holocaust-history.org
    - it has documents of the use of Zyklon-B, gassings etc.

    Again, none of this has anything to do with criticizing Zionism. You can criticize the misuse of the Holocaust without denying historical facts.

  • Tom Pessah June 24, 2011 at 4:04 am with 1 replies

    Atzmon's website contains many gems like "Wagner also held views that are far from being popular amongst Jews. He once wrote that Jews were only capable of producing money-making music and not works of art. I guess that Israelis do not like meshiges with an astute reading of the socio-economy of the show business."

    link to gilad.co.uk

    somehow I was under the impression that Jews are, in fact, capable of producing works of art, and have in fact done so on occasion, but please do educate me - since you say he isn't criticising Jews indiscriminately as an anti Semite would.

  • Tom Pessah June 24, 2011 at 3:06 am

    link to holocaust-history.org

  • Tom Pessah June 24, 2011 at 1:58 am with 25 replies

    in case you're not aware, the Holocaust has already been subjected to quite a lot of "historical scrutiny". There are historians who have spent their entire lives documenting it. The audacity it takes to ignore the entire body of evidence and to expect people to start from scratch, because Gilad Atzmon is unaware of any of this, is truly astonishing.

  • Tom Pessah June 24, 2011 at 1:41 am with 3 replies

    you're confusing a pretty simple issue. One is the historical evidence for the Holocaust, and the other is how it is being used politically. Atzmon calls for the Holocaust to be subjected to "historical scrutiny" as if historians haven't been doing that for several decades, as if the evidence can't fill whole libraries (look at the documents at link to
    On this very thread he claims that people simply "died of exhaustion." You can recognize that systematic extermination happened, and still oppose various political uses of this fact. Neither Seham not myself consider ourselves Zionists, but we can still make this pretty simple distinction.

  • Tom Pessah June 23, 2011 at 2:41 pm

    "65 years after the liberation of Auschwitz we should reclaim our history and ask why? Why were the Jews hated? Why did European people stand up against their next door neighbours?... Why did America tighten its immigration laws amid the growing danger to European Jews? "

    and we should also ask - why were homosexuals, people with disabilities, gypsies, children of African Americans and others hated by the Nazis? Atzmon should explain to us what they all did wrong. Poor Nazis, they have such a bad image as a result of the "draconian laws" against Holocaust denial - isn't it nice people like him are finally standing up for them?

  • Tom Pessah June 23, 2011 at 2:32 pm with 9 replies

    the guy is a full-fledged Holocaust denier:
    " if the Nazis ran a death factory in Auschwitz-Birkenau, why would the Jewish prisoners join them at the end of the war? Why didn’t the Jews wait for their Red liberators?"

    link to aljazeerah.info

    is it really necessary to point out that yes, the Nazis did in fact run a death camp at Auschwitz, and no, the Jews did not "join them" at the end of the war? how arrogant can you get to deny all the historical evidence? you don't have to be a hasbara junkie to oppose Holocaust denial.

• Challenging anti-Semitism must be rooted in opposing racism, not defending Israel
  • Tom Pessah June 17, 2011 at 1:53 am

    ...just to clarify that - she wasn't saying anti-Jewish prejudice needs to be ignored or accepted, but that confronting it requires building Jewish-Arab solidarity to combat crimes routinely committed in the name of Judaism.

  • Tom Pessah June 11, 2011 at 4:10 pm

    as a brilliant Palestinian friend pointed out to me today, "Regarding Arab hatred for Jews, every time a zionist burns a Palestinian orchard, murders a Palestinian, abuses a Palestinian he says that Palestine is a Jewish land and that he is a Jew. When an Arab or a Muslim hears that, do you think that he's going to hate the zionists or the Jews? When the zionists constantly identify as Jews while they are abusing the Palestinians, they shouldn't expect the Arabs or the Muslims not to hate the Jews. For that reason, I told you that zionism is the only form of anti-semitism that exists because it harms the Arabs and the Jews at the same time."

• 'A Gay Girl in Damascus' has been seized, her family is desperate
  • Tom Pessah June 7, 2011 at 4:42 pm with 1 replies

    We ask all those who care about Amina to send this message to the Syrian embassy in your country to show the regime that the world is very much aware of Amina's case and will not let the Syrian regime get away with any harm that might come to her. Feel free to edit the message to add a more personal touch to it. Please be sure to keep the tone of the letter respectful.

    Subject: Abduction of Syrian blogger Amina Abdullah Arraf

    Your Excellency [here you can add the name of the ambassador, if it is known to you],

    I am writing this letter to express my deepest concern regarding the situation of Amina Abdullah Arraf, a Syrian blogger who has been kidnapped in Damascus on June 6th. Since then, her family was not informed about her whereabouts, the charges against her or her medical condition.

    The Syrian regime must immediately and unconditionally release Amina Arraf if, as appears to be the case, she is held solely for the peaceful exercise of her freedom of expression, association and assembly.

    I am deeply concerned that Amina Arraf may have been subjected to enforced disappearance. I urge the Syrian authorities to disclose her whereabouts immediately. I call on the Syrian authorities to ensure that Amina Arraf is protected from torture and any other ill-treatment. She must be granted immediate and regular access to her family, lawyers and adequate medical care.

    Yours truly,

    [Your name]

    You can find the e-mail addresses of all the major Syrian embassies here

    link to embassy.goabroad.com

    If you don't find the e-mail address on this list or elsewhere online, all embassies list their phone numbers. Please call the embassy and express your concern about Amina's disappearance.

    Please share this note or post it on your blog.

• Epic of a patient. A patient traveler. A Palestinian patient traveler.
  • Tom Pessah June 6, 2011 at 1:49 pm

    I'm so sorry you and your people are going through this. Thank you for reminding us to work harder to raise awareness about this.

• American Jews you must face down your terror and come out to your families
  • Tom Pessah June 8, 2011 at 4:41 am

    I don't want to link to any of his "writings," but Gilad Atzmon has written that he doesn't understand why Jews in concentration camps didn't wait for the Red Army to liberate them and instead "escaped" with the Nazis. My aunt did exactly what he claims didn't happen - she, and many others, were liberated from the concentration camps and certainly didn't see the Nazis as their protectors. Nowadays it is hard to find more blatant examples of Holocaust denial. This man, who is busy advertising the work of other deniers, should be shunned from any progressive political movement.

  • Tom Pessah June 7, 2011 at 11:35 am

    I think we can make some finer distinctions between different kinds of Zionists. Someone could be closeted critic, I know a few of those. The way to approach a closeted gay person isn't necessarily to tell him/her "let's face it, turns out you're gay, get over it already! just go ahead and tell people."
    The vocal Netanyahu supporter who is making wildly ignorant statements with absurd confidence isn't the same as the woman who "doesn't know," who in private conversations turns out to know much more than she admits but isn't taking any action. What's the best way to help her?

  • Tom Pessah June 6, 2011 at 5:45 pm with 2 replies

    yes, but the question is if blunt demands are the best way of approaching people who aren't confident enough to state their opinions publicly, for all the reasons I mentioned. I would make blunt demands from officials or CEOs or AIPAC supporters, but we shouldn't only be focusing on the loudest usual suspects. I'm not saying we shouldn't hold people accountable or stop pushing them out of their comfort zone - just wondering what the best way of doing that is.

  • Tom Pessah June 6, 2011 at 10:18 am with 4 replies

    Phil's title doesn't exactly reflect the tone I was trying to set here, which wasn't about making such blunt demands.

• The community of fear and the community of hope (Choose)
  • Tom Pessah May 12, 2011 at 12:45 am

    "Mandy Patinkin saying we must walk into the nerve center of the fear."

    all the Torah on one foot.

• Report: Israel used white phosphorus in latest Gaza attacks
  • Tom Pessah April 19, 2011 at 11:18 am with 1 replies

    Human Rights watch pointed out that "if smoke-screening was the intended aim, then the IDF possessed alternatives to the highly incendiary white phosphorus; namely, 155mm smoke projectiles, which produce the equivalent visual screening properties without the incendiary and destructive effects... Even if Israeli soldiers or armor in need of cover had been on the ground in the areas where white phosphorus was used, airbursting the munition creates a less effective smokescreen than ground-bursts because the smoke is more widely dispersed." link to hrw.org

• 'Move over AIPAC' conference to honor Helen Thomas
  • Tom Pessah April 18, 2011 at 2:59 pm

    @Maggie
    email admin at calsjp.org, and we can talk more

  • Tom Pessah April 17, 2011 at 8:03 pm

    @Woody - any Palestinians with roots in the country belong there, whether they themselves were expelled or whether it was their parents or grandparents.
    @Lyn - if the U.S. were to send troops over the border to Mexico or Canada, take over some land ... then removal of those civilians would be ethnic cleansing?
    I wouldn't consider relocating settlers back to Israel ethnic cleansing. If someone expected Israelis of European ancestry to "go back" to Europe that would be reverse ethnic cleansing, which is how I interpreted her original comments.

  • Tom Pessah April 17, 2011 at 7:25 pm

    can't disagree with that.

  • Tom Pessah April 17, 2011 at 5:05 pm

    according to the article linked above, "Asked to elaborate on where the Jews in Israel should go, Thomas said, "Poland, Germany and America, and everywhere else." She didn't say
    occupied territories", she said Israel/Palestine in general.

    And in answer to your question, I fully support the right of return - link to borderlinecrimes.com
    - as part of a future where anyone born in Israel/Palestine is allowed to live there. So I'm being quite consistent.

  • Tom Pessah April 17, 2011 at 3:56 pm with 4 replies

    >It’s a ‘self goal.’
    does everyone get the soccer reference? (translated from Hebrew?)

  • Tom Pessah April 17, 2011 at 3:34 pm with 32 replies

    Lynn, what she said is that Jews living in Palestine should "go back" to Europe. That is a claim directed against Jews currently living there, regardless of how many generations they have been there and away from Europe, regardless of if they truly are from Europe or not, and regardless of whether or not they consider themselves Zionists or act in accordance with the government's policies. This was basically advocating for reverse ethnic cleansing, just like someone saying all European Americans should leave the country they were born in because of the crimes committed against Native Americans. She already apologized for that, but turning her into a keynote speaker is a huge gift to AIPAC - they can just say anyone who opposes them wants Jews out of Palestine.

• Why BDS can’t be an internal Jewish conversation
  • Tom Pessah April 17, 2011 at 2:48 pm with 1 replies

    I'm talking about the idea that you can have an internal Jewish BDS debate, and arguing that it's counterproductive, for the reasons I mentioned.

    Maybe Glenn Beck is a bad example. So take Rick Sanchez, or the outcry against Mel Gibson. Their bigotry is much less tolerated than anti-Arab or anti-Muslim bigotry in this country.

• The documented record still stands: Israel intentionally targets civilians and civilian infrastructure
  • Tom Pessah April 3, 2011 at 3:27 am with 22 replies

    GuiltyFeat - the debate is around Israel's war crimes since that is what is being denied. Hamas' war crimes are completely obvious and have been pointed out again and again by the Goldstone Report, Human Rights Watch, Btselem and anyone else who investigated the war. There is no point in just repeating what everyone agrees on.
    The debate is between those who think both sides committed war crimes, and those who exonerate the Israeli army.

• What the Goldstone op-ed doesn’t say
  • Tom Pessah April 3, 2011 at 3:36 am

    for goodness' sake, you have all the links to the reports. How much more context do you need? just read them, seriously.

  • Tom Pessah April 2, 2011 at 10:02 pm with 4 replies

    >>So, all Hamas has to do to avoid being accused of war crimes is to claim that it was targeting Israeli military installations or that it was in error.

    it did! "Hamas Insists Rockets Were Not Aimed at Civilians" link to query.nytimes.com

    should we take their denials seriously too? or should we assume that if they shot inaccurate weapons again and again into civilian areas, with full knowledge that civilians were being harmed, they can't possibly claim that this was a mistake? the same logic applies to the IDF.

• Goldstone’s Backtrack: Some points to remember
  • Tom Pessah April 3, 2011 at 1:49 am

    >>The stated purpose of the Goldstone report was TO compel Israeli investigation and reforms of its procedures and policy making. In this article, he is declaring that that has succeeded

    given the fact that several hundred civilians died, including over 200 children, and that this happened more than two years ago, you would think that successful investigations would have produced a few actual punishments for the people involved. The army is very quick to arrest and jail non-violent activists against the wall like Bassem Tamimi link to haaretz.com
    , but nothing of this kind has happened to any of the soldiers involved, apart from one who stole a credit card.
    so it's great Goldstone is satisfied, but what about the families of all those who were killed and wounded by these attacks? what about all the children who were maimed or wounded by the phosphorus bombs? was no one responsible for that?

    >>IDF had any responsibility to protect Israeli civilians from assault,
    war crimes aren't self-defence. I mentioned several examples of these in the post, and you just need to click on the links to find the original reports, which are much more detailed. If you think murdering civilians as a form of retaliation is ok, you have no case against Hamas. Goldstone's op-ed won't make all the evidence suddenly go away.

• Chomsky, 'materialism,' and the Israel lobby thesis
  • Tom Pessah February 25, 2011 at 4:13 am with 4 replies

    could someone explain to me why the two theses are mutually exclusive? sure, some big corporations must be profitting from the military aid, but at the same time, the Lobby is very clearly involved in pressuring politicians. Their interests go hand in hand.

• Next, Palestine
  • Tom Pessah February 21, 2011 at 2:57 am

    >>nothing is done to the protesters until they try marching to dismantle the wall.

    Why are you spreading complete falsehoods? They declare it a closed military zone and then start firing teargas at the protesters, even if they're just standing there.

• What planet are they on? Which century? Israeli parliamentarians toil against 'mixed race' couples
  • Tom Pessah February 10, 2011 at 3:46 am

    haMishpat haIvri - legal principles in Jewish writings that can serve as the basis for current legislation

• Through the Looking Glass – Five years in Students for Justice in Palestine
  • Tom Pessah January 19, 2011 at 11:05 pm

    Clenchner - the answer to your query if there is an authentic demand to integrate is the Qaadan case. In 1995 the Qaadans, an Arab family, tried to buy land in a new community settlement called Katzir, which was established by the Jewish Agency. They encountered the same administrative obstacle that had kept Arabs out of all such settlements (how many kibbutzim/moshavim do you know with Arab members?) Unlike others, the Kaadans decided to fight this in court. The high court ruled in their favor in 2000, their decision was not respected, and Qaadan didn't move in until last year - fifteen years after the case began.
    link to challenge-mag.com

    In reaction, the Knesset initiated a law to prevent similar violations of segregation in the future.
    link to hahem.co.il

    In the cities the same goal is achieved through state mortgages that generally encourage people to stay in Arab or Jewish areas.

    An Adalah paper argues that "The sole, acceptable premise for the promotion of such settlements cannot be based upon considerations of national identity, but rather on the principle of “corrective justice”, or as it is more commonly known - “affirmative action”."
    link to adalah.org

  • Tom Pessah January 19, 2011 at 1:33 pm

    I also went to a Neve Shalom/Wahat el Salam group in high school, and I know of people who got involved in Reut-Sadaka though I wasn't myself. My point, however, is that these things need to be consciously organized. In a big city in the U.S. in 2011 my impression is that there is less need to organize meetings between whites and African Americans, who are a much smaller part of the population than Arabs in Israel - people are unlikely to grow up without a single member of another race in their school. Tel Aviv isn't some kind of isolated rural community - in any other country the employment opportunities, education institutions, entertainment, nightlife would attract people from all over the country, including Arabs. But aside from the extremely high levels of rent, the city has a history of segregation - starting from the expulsion of several Palestinian villages in 1948 in its eastern and northern parts, continuing in segregated schools (apart from a handfull in Jaffa), I read there are employees in the municipality who track "problematic" romantic relationships, it is very difficult for Arabs to rent a flat in the city (it took a friend of mine over two months to find one, and then she got fired from her job for talking Arabic to the cook in the kitchen) - the segregation is very very deep.
    It's important to remember this because people often focus all their indignation at settlers, but there at least there are Palestinians to be seen.

• Stunner: Protesters in Tel Aviv call Barak 'child murderer' of Gaza!
  • Tom Pessah January 5, 2011 at 4:21 pm with 1 replies

    Phil, not only Jews study at Tel Aviv University. The heckler was Ali Muwassi of the Tajjamu' party. You can see a video here - no English subtitles, but he's shouting "you're a liar, terrorist." Barak calls him childish and says he's taken risks to try and reach a settlement with the other side.
    link to arabs48.com

• Yehoshua sanitizes
  • Tom Pessah November 30, 2010 at 1:24 am

    omg, what ARE you talking about? what is any of that based on? this isn't truth, it's "truthy," as Stephen Colbert would say.

    1 "ethnic cleansing was in fact mutual, if not initiated and emphasized by the Palestinian “side”.
    no, that's total BS. There was no nation-wide Palestinian army that could go from one Jewish community to another and cleanse them all, even if they wanted to. And most of them didn't: Ben-Gurion, (yes, Ben-Gurion, not exactly a staunch advocate of Palestinian rights) estimated in March 1948 "it is now clear, without the slightest doubt, that were we to face the Palestinians alone, everything would be all right. They, the decisive majority of them, do not want to fight us, and all of them together are unable to stand up to us" (Flapan, 1987:73).

    2. "The majority of Zionist actions were defensive as well." Excuse me? several hundred villages? eleven out of twelve cities? the city of Majdal in 1950, after there was already a cease-fire? bedouin tribes in the Negev throughout the 1950s? The massacres of Deir Yassin, Lydda, Dawayima - ALL of those were defensive? where are you getting that information from?

    3. "Its not that the hundreds of incidents didn’t happen. They did." so notice how much space you devote to the expulsion of 80% of the Palestinian population (oh, yeah, there were some "incidents") vs. the space you devote to the seige of Jewish Jerusalem. How come?

    4. "to hundreds of incidents of “petty” ethnic cleansing (snipering civilians, bombings, cutting off roads).
    you can't just define ethnic cleansing however you want. But if you want to focus on these sorts of attacks that fall short of taking over entire areas militarily, there was complete symmetry between both sides: there was a siege of Palestinian Jerusalem and there was sniping at Jaffa, just like there was a siege of Jewish Jerusalem and sniping at Tel Aviv. The difference lies in a much greater campaign of conquering the Palestinian areas, for which there was absolutely no equivalent. Yes, there was a seige of Jerusalem but no nation-wide coordinated campaign by a Palestinian army.

    5. "I don’t see it coming out good guys and bad guys, but good/bad guys and good/bad guys. "
    and yet you keep emphasizing "cleansing was in fact mutual, if not initiated and emphasized by the Palestinian “side,” The majority of Zionist actions were defensive as well" - doesn't this sound like the Palestinians initiated and the Zionists defended themselves? how is this any different from good guys/bad guys?

  • Tom Pessah November 29, 2010 at 11:44 pm

    "necer again" is a response to the Holocaust, and Holocaust comparisons were a part of what legitimated the cleansing in 1948, so I wouldn't recycle them. No one is suggesting either the Jews or the Palestinians should have been removed, or justifying any attacks on either community. But in order to move forward and to alleviate people's ongoing suffering, particularly that of the refugees, history needs to be faced squarely and openly, just as Americans need to come to terms and educate themselves about their treatment of Native Americans. Fighting for survival is one thing, expelling most of the Palestinian population is another.

  • Tom Pessah November 29, 2010 at 12:08 pm

    "observing that no viable Jewish community was possible without a state, and that a state was not possible without some population resettlement."

    BINGO - so behind all the fluff about "there was a war," "we need to be balanced," "tactical not strategic," "less intentional" etc etc you are now admitting that there was a transfer, and that you actually SUPPORT that idea. The truth comes out.

    And by the way, some Zionists at the time, including many leaders of Mapam, the second largest party, criticized the transfer because they had some moral backbone and didn't automatically apologize for warcrimes.

  • Tom Pessah November 29, 2010 at 12:00 pm

    who cares about their views? they aren't rabbis, they're historians. What matters is the documents they uncovered.

  • Tom Pessah November 29, 2010 at 11:58 am

    the debate over Plan Dalet is a bit pointless, in my view. There is no doubt that after April 1948, when the British were packing up, Zionist forces started taking over Palestinian areas. There are two possibilities: either they wanted the population in those areas to stay (as usually happens in wars - the British didn't expel the Palestinian population in WWI), or they wanted them to leave. When the occupation of most villages and urban neighborhoods was accomplished through massive prolonged bombardment of civilians' homes, the answer is pretty straightforward.
    If you want, I can refer you to actual documents in the archives where they recognize that the bombardment is causing the population to flee, or to Uri Avneri, Nativa Ben Yehuda, Yigal Alon and others who admit they wanted the population to flee, or numerous examples of actual commands in Benny Morris. It gets pretty obvious when you stop looking for apologetic excuses.

    Yes, there were exceptions, not all of the villages in the Galilee were destroyed, and the Jewish Mayor of Haifa sincerely wanted people to stay, but the general trend was expulsion. Morris mentions an IDF investigation conducted after the war about why so many Arabs remained in the Galilee - it seemed odd to *them*.

  • Tom Pessah November 28, 2010 at 7:56 pm

    I think you are misreading this sentence.
    "The Palestinian Arabs make a grave declaration before the UN, before God and before history that they will never submit to any power that comes to Palestine to impose a partition.

    ***The only way to establish a partition is to get rid of them all: men, women, and children.

    The subject of the statement is *Palestinian Arabs*. They (or rather Husseini, speaking in their name - although no one elected him to that position) are declaring their opposition to partition, and saying they are willing to sacrifice *themselves* in order to prevent it. This is like saying "over my dead body."

  • Tom Pessah November 28, 2010 at 7:44 pm with 8 replies

    "Its as specific as saying “the Zionists”. Both are half truths, if that.
    The import is that the effort to ethnically cleanse was more tactical than intentional and conspiratorial (as asserted), and was mutual."

    I wouldn't say "the Zionists," but I would say several senior army commanders, with the full support of Ben-Gurion, the PM and Defense Minister, carried out a pretty organized, coordinated policy of expulsion. There was nothing comparably close to that on the Palestinian side in terms of coordinated leadership, and no similar uniformity within the Arab armies - for instance, Jordan collaorated with Israel across many fronts, with the exception of Jerusalem.

    The main victims of ethnic cleansing, Palestinian villagers and towndwellers, were expelled en masse, whether or not they had taken part in any kind of violent action. There is no basis for saying the majority of them engaged in "victimization of Jews." The residents of Deir Yassin, for example, prevented Arab armed forces from entering their village and actively prevented attacks on their Jewish neighbors - and we all know how they ended up. Many Palestinian communities throughout the country signed non-aggression pacts with their Jewish neighbors, and got expelled anyway. Please don't distort the historical record with vague accusations against entire ethnic groups.

  • Tom Pessah November 28, 2010 at 4:18 pm with 2 replies

    while ethnic cleansing is not the same as genocide, the denialists of both have a lot in common. Ahmadinejad isn't "really" denying the Holocaust, he just repeatedly suggests that we need to conduct historical research on it to determine what really happened - as if there aren't whole libraries of books already written on the subject. The suggestion that we need "to actually study the detail and the context, to determine that" similarly disresepects the decades of scholarship around this issue, including IDF commands explicitly mentioning expulsions, testimonies of commanders like Yigal Alon and Yitzhak Rabin, and of course the voices of the refugees themselves. To assume we all need to start from scratch, as if none of this was ever published, is truly Ahmadinejad-esque.

    "on the ground, the Arab effort to ethnically cleanse the land of Jews was often even more intended and pronounced"
    this is a very vague statement. You can say specific Arab armies, like the Egyptians, attacked Jewish communities and attempted to cleanse them, but to blame "the Arabs" in general, including the Palestinians who got expelled, many of whom tried hard to stay out of the fighting, is pretty ignorant, and there is absolutely no basis for saying "it was more intended". You don't seem to have read much of the literature on the subject.

• In tribute to the 'Young, Jewish, and Proud'
  • Tom Pessah November 17, 2010 at 2:59 am

    and needless to say in relation to (muslim and christian)Palestinians - full freedom of travel to and within Israel/Palestine, free Birthright trips, generous offers of citizenship...

  • Tom Pessah November 17, 2010 at 2:38 am

    illustrations - the way muslim students at UC Irvine were suspended for a year for a disruption very similar to that of the Netanyahu speech (which had no consequences for the disrupters), the very different levels of tolerated speech in the media about jews and about muslims, strict limitations on donations to muslim organizations in the middle east vs. no limitation at all to donations to settlers' organizations, institutionalized recognition of jewish holidays (e.g. the expression "holiday party" instead of "Christmas party," Hallmark cards for Hanukka) vs. hardly any institutional recognition of muslim holidays, visibility of Jewish role models on TV shows with no muslim equivalent, media focus on Jewish victims and Muslim perptrators of violence in the middle east rather than the other way round, etc etc etc

  • Tom Pessah November 16, 2010 at 10:42 am

    this is a nice example of how genuine anti-racist sentiments can be appropriated to do hasbara for the government. Witty is suggesting that people should "confront one’s attitudes towards those that are quiet, abstain from overt political expression, or even express criticism of the way that dissent communicates (or doesn’t)." Anything else would be "racism" and targetting of "bad Jews."

    So who are the examples of those who are quiet, abstain from overt political expression or courageously voice their dissent?

    "Lieberman and Netanyahu"!

    thanks for standing up for underdog, once again.

• We would not have had to interrupt Netanyahu if the world listened to Palestinian voices
  • Tom Pessah November 11, 2010 at 3:57 pm

    why do people think the most important thing solidarity activists need is a constant stream of (highly predictable) advice? you remind me of all those “athletes” who watch sports matches on TV – those with a remote in one hand and a beer in the other, who are constantly yelling at the players. Don’t be a couch potato - if you truly care about these issues, and you think you have good ideas, just roll up your sleeves and do something yourself!

  • Tom Pessah November 11, 2010 at 3:46 pm

    excellent response. The most people with privilege can do is to amplify the voices that are being ignored. Bravo!

• My meeting with Henry Waxman
  • Tom Pessah November 14, 2010 at 11:49 pm

    Raising the issue of saving lives is meant to distract attention from any serious discussion of why the wall is where it is. It's a hasbara trap that is worth avoiding.

  • Tom Pessah November 14, 2010 at 11:42 pm with 1 replies

    the point people are missing is that there is a difference between simply having a wall, and the specific *route* that this one has taken. If the purpose was simply security there would be no reason to build it deep into the West Bank.

    IDF Chief of Staff "Ashkenazi, who was appointed in February 2007, was outraged when he later discovered that the real reason for the original route was not security needs, but rather plans to set up a new neighborhood north of [settlement] Tzufin. He told [Defence Minister] Peretz at the time that he no longer wanted IDF officers defending the fence's route in court. The route is a political issue, he argued, and therefore, it must be determined by the government. "

    link to haaretz.com

• Eyewitness to the Nakba
  • Tom Pessah September 12, 2010 at 12:56 am

    and don't forget that Palestinians from some of the coastal cities really were driven into the sea, in fishing boats, under heavy bombardment, and many drowned on the way. Amazing how this has gotten reversed in people's memory.

  • Tom Pessah September 12, 2010 at 12:54 am

    >>Israel is still stuck in 1948, politically, emotionally, ideologically and morally

    one of the most salient symptoms of this is how completely mainstream it is to suggest that if "they" (Palestinian citizens of Israel, but increasingly leftist Jews) don't like it in Israel, they should leave. You hear this right across the spectrum. There is hardly anyone who thinks of Palestinians as being rooted in specific locations.

  • Tom Pessah September 8, 2010 at 11:15 am with 2 replies

    >>it appears that after all these years he is still incapable of showing signs of some minimal introspection
    I was there at this meeting and he showed a lot of ambivalence and discomfort, alongside his justifications. If you read what he says carefully here are a lot of contradictory thoughts about what he did. If he had no regrets he wouldn't come to give testimony in Zochrot.

• Israeli soldier mocks Palestinian prisoners in Facebook photos
  • Tom Pessah August 16, 2010 at 4:03 pm with 5 replies

    not unique to her, but you make it sound so natural and normal. What about holy wars against Americans or Israelis? would you say it's just an "ugly business" when some civilians get blown to little pieces, but oh well, it's in the nature of (holy) warfare?

• A Jewish peace group grapples with BDS
  • Tom Pessah August 14, 2010 at 2:30 pm

    the full text of the UC Berkeley divestment bill, together with videos and vivid testimonies from this ongoing debate, can be found here
    link to caldivestfromapartheid.com

• Updated comments policy
  • Tom Pessah August 13, 2010 at 11:00 am with 2 replies

    "[Helen] Thomas neglected to mention that Jews went back to Poland after WW2 and the Poles killed them."

    Citizen: "some Poles had noticed many Jews were leaders of Communism’s competitive attempt to take over Poland before Hitler invaded. "

    link to mondoweiss.net

  • Tom Pessah August 13, 2010 at 6:00 am with 9 replies

    this is an important decision. You've had some people here justifying pogroms against Polish Jews after WWII since too many Jews were communists, and all sorts of vile stuff that has nothing to do with critiques of Zionism. If you want to create a space for more open criticism of Jewish and Israeli privilege there have to be some lines drawn. So bravo.

• Dialogue re Kristof, non-violence, and stones
  • Tom Pessah July 16, 2010 at 2:35 am

    Anarchists Against the Wall, one of the main Israeli organizations supporting these protests, are also facing mounting legal costs. Their legal fund also serves to support Palestinians.
    here is their call for support -
    link to awalls.org

    and more about the range of activities they are involved in
    link to awalls.org

  • Tom Pessah July 16, 2010 at 2:25 am with 1 replies

    Since I was quoted here, I just wanted to clarify my own position. Kristoff seems to think he understands the occupation better than the Palestinians, based on a visit of a week or two. In reality, the mainstream media isn't eager to cover non-violent protests (which go on all the time, there are many villages who do this, and most Palestinian resistance has always been non-violent) and the army can be very brutal in suppressing them (I think the film Bil'in My Love shows soldiers shooting teargas at protestors in wheelchairs). Therefore, I don't think the stones/no stones dilemma should be such a focus of discussion, especially not an online discussion among non-Palestinians. If we want to support the resourceful and brave popular committees of Bil'in and the many other Palestinians villages who protest every week (Wadi Rahal, Maasara, Um Salamuna, al-Walaje, Beit Omar, Hebron, South Hebron Hills and many others places) we can help them cover their financial and medical costs, put pressure on the army to end arbitrary arrests, try to get more news about them into the mainstream media etc etc.

    Here is a call for action against Canadian companies building illegally on the village's land, including details for online donations
    link to bilin-village.org

    if you really care about supporting them, check this out and see what you can do.

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