Not behaving like Caesar's wife-- Goodman last month called for Israel to wage an international "war" for its public image. Now he's calling for war against Iran.

Notice the sloppy thinking-- that Iran is threatening America with nukes, threatening a world war.

Daniel Nolan reports for the Spectator, a Hamilton, Canada, newspaper on a speech by Goodman on Thursday night at a local synagogue, sponsored by the United Jewish Appeal:

A prominent Israeli writer is advocating his nation attack Iran’s nuclear development facilities now because the risk is too great after that country builds nuclear weapons.

Hirsh Goodman doesn’t believe sanctions being pushed by Western nations will stop Iran and said something has to be done this year before Iran moves its nuclear work underground.

He said a nuclear Iran, along with a nuclear Pakistan, would plunge the world into “a new cold war, if not a hot one.”

“The minute Iran is nuclear, it’s a whole different game,” Goodman said Thursday night at the Beth Jacob Synagogue in west Hamilton.

“Not because they are going to blow up Israel. They’ve got missiles that can reach the east cost of America, but what happens if the ayatollah (Iran’s supreme leader) wakes up one morning and destroys the Saudi fields and the Kuwaiti oilfields and the West is left with no energy.”

 

A recent response to a subpoena from the United States Capitol Police has revealed the main assailant of a peaceful demonstrator who was physically attacked and injured on May 24, 2011, to be Stanley Anthony Shulster, allegedly a member of the American-Israeli Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC). According to the lawsuit, Mr. Shulster, a retired lawyer, admitted to assaulting Rae Abileah, a member of CODEPINK, in the House of Representatives while she protested the Israeli occupation of Palestine during the speech by Benjamin Netanyahu, Prime Minister of Israel. The Capitol Police issued an arrest warrant for Mr. Shulster for this attack.

Mr. Shulster’s biography on the Jackson County, Oregon Republican Women website identifies him as “an Unpaid Lobbyist,” and a “Volunteer in the Israel Defense Forces Medical Unit and a member of AIPAC.” The bio states: “At the last AIPAC meeting in May of 2011 Stan was present to hear the stirring address that Prime Minister Netanyahu gave to Congress and he grabbed the woman who heckled the Prime Minister while he was speaking.”

Abileah protests Israeli occupation
during the speech by Netanyahu 5.24.2011

Rabbi Shmuley Boteach also attested to the assault when he wrote in his blog, “The elderly gentleman to my right, whom I had been talking to just before the speech started, pulled the flag out of her hands, cupped his hands over her mouth, and assisted in subduing her.”  Additional witnesses have been identified by the U.S. Capitol Police.

According to the complaint, Mr. Shulster grabbed the banner held by Ms. Abileah, used his hand to attempt to gag and suffocate Ms. Abileah, and yanked her head back, injuring her neck. As a result of the attack, Ms. Abileah sustained a neck strain, swollen neck and muscle strain, and has since suffered from frequent head and neck aches as well as emotional trauma.

Ms. Abileah is a 29 year old American Jew of Israeli descent, who works as the Co-Director of CODEPINK, a women-initiated grassroots peace and social justice organization that seeks to end U.S. wars and the U.S. funded occupation of Palestine.

“I was shocked that the biography of the person who attacked me would brag about his use of violence. This lawless behavior echoes the routine actions of the Israeli government and military in carrying out violent acts daily against the Palestinian people. I am hopeful that my filing suit will be a clear signal to those who attempt to silence peaceful protesters, that they will be held accountable for their illegal actions,” said Ms. Abileah.

Photos of the action and assault can be found here.

AIPAC’s 2012 annual policy conference will be held from March 4 to 6 in Washington, D.C. It is expected that peaceful protesters will challenge AIPAC’s policies of supporting Israel’s ongoing crimes against the Palestinian people and its threats of attacking Iran.

(Plans for OCCUPY AIPAC are under way and will take place March 2-6 in Washington DC.)

About a week ago the David Project co-produced a video, where a full cast of unpaid college students parodied the newest cannon of viral YouTube videos with "Sh*t people say about Israel."  The video depicts "college students" making generalizations about Israel, or asking naive questions, and closes with a standard hasbara line: Israel wants peace. 

In the video, one brunette co-ed says, "I heard everyone there is in the army." Then, twirling her hair follows up with "are you in the army?"  Another sits with a friend eating from a Sabra container and asks, "is it Hamas or hummus?"  Later, what appears to be a student giving a presentation in class says, "Israel uses disproportionate force against the Palestinians," backed with a clip of, "Jews have no connection to the land of Israel." 

The purpose behind the statements and questions in the video is to demonstrate that people who support the Palestinian cause, are uninformed on Israel, its society and politics.  At the end, the video concludes with a bunch of clips where confused looking people say "you mean Palestine?" and then the punchline:

'No, we mean Israel. Because Israel wants peace. Israel is the only democracy in the Middle East. Jews have been in Israel for over 3,000 years. Israel wants peace. Hamas doesn't want peace. Peace, peace, peace, peace.'

Last fall the David Project created a department that trains college students in multimedia production.  The program, Israel Video Advocacy Project was held in November in Baltimore, MD, where the hasbara group brought sixteen students together for a crash course in production.  Dubbed as "video advocacy" in order to "create a positive atmosphere towards Israel on campus," the David Project also provided each participant with "a flip camera and a USB wrist-band loaded with video-specific links and resources, as well as general Israel campus advocacy information." 

The program is in its pilot year, and "Sh*t people say about Israel" is the first video. (For a double-whammy of sexism and hasbara, check out "Shit Girls Say (Taglit Birthright Israel Parody."

Post-racial racism

In early January comedian Franchesca Ramsey created the online video genre that "Sh*t people say about Israel" models.  She produced what Colorlines calls a "popular and critical examination of race," through her video "Shit White Girls Say…to Black Girls."  In the short, Ramsey, clad in a blond wig uses a voice that pitches the perfect imitation of "not trying to be racist" and being very racist, while asking a series of naive questions to the camera. What makes the video funny is that the perspective is from a black spectator and mocks the notion of a "post-racial" society.

People loved the videos and in days over a million viewed it.  Young people also started making their own, which reflected their particular experience.  "Shit white girls say...to Arabs," reflecting growing Islamophobia and Orientalist attitudes, "Shit White Girls Say... To Brown (Desi/Indian) Girls," reflecting widespread appropriation of Indian culture. 

Though, not all of the videos engage in a constructive discussion of race and gender.  In addition to the videos above, a series of well-made "Shit girls say" videos hit it big online, however in this series men dressed up as women, and depicted women as annoying, insecure and self-obsessed. As Samhita Mukhopadhyay writes at Feministling these videos further gender stereotypes rather than deconstruct them. 

If Ramsey's video is to explore the gaze of the oppressed, a more apropos video would be called, "Sh*t Zionist say to Palestinians."  However, no one has made that video yet.

Post-PennBDS conference, Hasbara groups and journalists described pro-Israel students as "ignorant," and unable to defend their stance against statements such as "Israel took Arab land." From "Lessons Learned from the Frontline,"  Lisa Hostein, executive editor of the Jewish Exponent, laments:

the pervasive ignorance of young Jews and too many adults who can't begin to counter simple questions about Israel's legitimacy let alone respond to the more sophisticated sophistry from those like BDS keynoter Ali Abunimah.

Bryan Schwartzman, also from the Jewish Exponent confirms this inability to counter with an anti-BDS narratives. The writer asks:

[D]id BDS speakers like Electronic Intifada co-founder Ali Abunimah reveal how much pro-Israel students need to learn in order to counter arguments that are steeped in the language of universal justice and human rights?

His answer -- yes. Schwatzman continues with Hasbara failures by detailing Abunimah’s keynote speech, where he de facto throws Abunimah a moral endorsement over Alan Dershowitz. Referencing the Palestinian activist/author as recently catching  the pro-Israel professor in a lie, during his February 2nd speech. Schwartzman writes:

During a question-and-answer session there, a female student asked Dershowitz, 'If an Arab student comes up to me and says, 'You took my land,' and I respond, 'Yeah, but we support gay rights,' how does that add up?’

Dershowitz said the answer is that the Jews didn't steal the land.

In addition to articulating Hasbara faults, both journalists managed to highlight what they viewed as the one victory: consensus. The Exponent found though Pro-Israel students and Zionist organizations failed to provide any meaningful challenge to BDS, they were successful in sending a unified message that they are all against BDS. Therefore, while pro-Israel students may be ignorant, at least they are successful at sticking together.

Hat tip to Nima Shirazi for catching this**
 

After immersing myself in all things Israel/Palestine for the past few years, and working hard for some modicum of justice to be dealt to Palestinians who have suffered so much only to be denied even recognition of their suffering, I have tried to imagine what post-apartheid Israel will look like.

First the good news: the willful ignorance of people refusing to see the oppression against Palestinians is eroding. Zionists are working overtime to make the oppression appear to be a kinder and more tolerable injustice, which I believe accounts for the gaining influence of organizations like J-Street. But those organizations' insistence on holding on to the main core tenet of the oppression, an ethnically pure state, means that people will sooner or later see through the bankrupt philosophy.

The plight of Palestinians and historical facts, rather than myths, are making their way into main stream discussion. From high school classes, to churches and grocery stores, in media, film, poetry, and literature, the Palestinian side of the story is finally being told.

An example of this reversal from myth to historical fact is found in the work of Waziyatawin, a Dakota scholar and activist. In an earlier book, What does justice look like[1] she uses Herzl’s Jewish state as a model for how justice can be brought to indigenous Americans: just as Jews returned to the land from which they were expelled, so should the Native Americans return to their lands. She has since renounced that model after learning about the ethnic cleansing of Palestinians and she participated in a Women of Color delegation to Palestine. I consider someone with such impeccable anti-colonialist credentials who had been deceived by the Zionist myths as an example of the former success of those Zionist myth-makers. But their successes are becoming fewer.

It is no longer heresy to talk about any other solution than the (what has always been considered "reasonable") two-state solution. The one-state solution, a secular democratic state of all its citizens, each with equal rights and responsibilities, is no longer such a wild and crazy idea. In large part, the acceptance of this democratic idea into the discussion is due to international solidarity activism, mainly the Boycott Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) movement (and I must give a shout out to an organization in which I am involved, Minnesota Break the Bonds Campaign).

I believe that it is a matter of time, and not a long time, that the regime in Israel will fall and there will be a government of all the people in Palestine. What an idea: universal suffrage, a constitution guaranteeing equal rights, representation in parliament, a new national anthem…

At the end of apartheid, international Palestinian solidarity activists will have to bow out. We’re not asked to do more than to use economic and moral pressure to help bring about the end of this oppressive regime. I have no skills that could be useful to a new government or state. My past involvement in this issue gives me no credibility. My work is done.

So what will this new state look like? Does post-apartheid Israel mean a just society with equal rights for all the people of Palestine? A society which respects the human rights of all people? Where racism isn’t tolerated, criminals are brought to justice, and reparations for past injustices are made? What does justice look like?

Post-colonial models

My optimism ends at the certainty that there will be a post-apartheid Israel. After that, the optimism fades as I search for post-colonial models. Apartheid in Israel is often compared to that of the former South Africa, but post-apartheid South Africa has a dubious record.

Less than 10 years after the adoption of the new South African Constitution, the democratic government of South Africa, led by Nelson Mandela and the African National Congress, was confidently declared a success.[2] The 1996 Constitution took precedence over parliament (i.e. the legislators were sworn to uphold the Constitution, not their offices), federal and provincial/local governance was worked out, individual rights were given precedence over nationalities' rights, and systems of working with traditional group leadership were identified.

But by 2008, Johann Rossouw described the increasing xenophobic and racist violence in South Africa as occurring in a country which was "not yet post-colonial."[3] The "romantic image of post-apartheid South Africa…was an illusion," said Rossouw. In many ways there are analogies to be drawn between South Africa and Israel, including the fact that in both countries fiercely nationalistic movements replaced British colonial systems. When the Afrikaners took the reins of government in the early 20th century, they instituted severe oppressive policies against non-Afrikaners, including the apartheid system which began in 1948. This system was not only a method of controlling the colonial subjects, but it also worked to separate those colonial subjects from each other, preventing them from forming alliances which could have helped to overthrow the regime years before its final demise.

The post-Mandela South African government has shown characteristics of many post-colonial African governments: corruption, censorship of the press,[4] government cronies amassing immense wealth at the expense of the majority of the poverty stricken population, neglecting to provide services and infrastructure for those people. Much of this anti-democratic governance may be attributed to economic policies forced upon the new country by the International Monetary Fund (IMF),[5] a new colonialism. This leads to statements by impoverished and unemployed residents of slums, that things were better under apartheid when, for some, at least there were jobs.[6]

The South Africa experience is an imperfect analogy, as all analogies are. South Africa is a country with vast mineral wealth. The victims of apartheid make up about 80 percent of the population and had been exploited for their labor. Israel has few natural resources and the apartheid system there was never for labor exploitation. The very western economic system in Israel may insulate it from falling into the trap of indebtedness to institutions like the IMF, and therefore if there is to be exploitation in post-apartheid Israel, it will come from within the country. This brings me to the second model, and one that seems to me even more apt: post-slavery United States.

Michelle Alexander’s extremely disturbing book The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness,[7] describes systems of race-based control in the United States. Following the end of slavery, when it was clear that no "40 acres and a mule" would be forthcoming to most former slaves, many newly freed slaves had to resort to returning to indentured servitude to earn enough to feed themselves and their families. Shortly after Reconstruction the system we have come to know as Jim Crow was instituted, stripping African Americans of their recently acquired right to vote and hold elected office and instituting an oppressive system of total control, which rivaled the system of race-based slavery. That system came to an end in the 1960s with the Civil Rights era, but has been replaced by an equally oppressive system of control called the War on Drugs. Cloaked in non-racial terms, drug laws target primarily people of color, meaning huge populations are imprisoned, disenfranchised, impoverished, and left permanently in an under-caste.

Because this system appears to target only law-breakers, rather than people of a certain race, most people in the U.S. are disinterested in its real effects. People can point to successes in civil rights, like the election of an African American president, to prove that we have overcome racism in this country. We don’t have to examine the statistics showing the enormous disparity in numbers of people (mainly men) of color compared to whites who are incarcerated. People who have been convicted of a felony (and drug crimes are for the most part non-violent offenses) face a lifetime of unemployment, racism, homelessness and often disenfranchisement, and all of this is legal and accepted, because they are perceived to be "bad guys" who deserve what they got.

It is because the racism and oppressive system of control of populations of non-whites can be invisible to most whites, that I believe this is the most likely analogy for what post-apartheid Israel will look like. It may not be a war on drugs that becomes the system of control, but some other non-racial method of maintaining a permanent under-class.

Demographics

Demographics are the most boring of statistical data if the subject is voting patterns in Wisconsin or migration patterns into urban areas, but it becomes the most racist of terms when the subject is Israel and Palestine. My fingers hesitated as I reached the "g" in "demographics," giving my brain a chance to find a synonym. But "the underlying rationale for ethnic cleansing" is hardly better.

Israeli society is dominated by the minority Ashkenazi Jewish population (those descended from Eastern Europeans). As of 2006 only 22% of the Jewish population were Ashkenazi Jews, and the rest were Mizrahi[9 PDF] (from the Middle East, Asia, and Africa). Just as white privileged people in the U.S. were able to drive a wedge between poor whites and African Americans by allowing poor whites some measure of superiority over blacks, Israeli society drives a wedge between the Mizrahim and the Palestinians. Ben-Gurion’s disdain for Jews of Middle Eastern origin (he said they were "difficult human material—[their] cultural level is low")[10] is shared by many Ashkenazi Jews today and the Mizrahim suffer discrimination in housing, education, and employment. They would be natural allies of Palestinians, were it not for the exploitation of this wedge. Mizrahi Jews supported Avigdor Lieberman’s extreme racist Yisrael Beytanu party overwhelmingly in the last elections, which mirrors some poor white Americans’ support of racist candidates.

Among the Jewish population in Israel divisions are exacerbated, as fundamentalist Orthodox Jews discriminate and attack others for not being Jewish enough. The Orthodox Jews have had special privileges since the beginning of the State, where the men don’t work or serve in the military, but receive welfare benefits and subsidized housing. In post-apartheid Israel how willingly would they give up those benefits? How willingly would the rest of the population continue them?

The divide and rule strategy, which served colonialists so well created havoc during post-colonial periods (a recent extreme example being the Rwandan genocide). Palestinians, too, have been divided into many groups, which may never re-coalesce into a single people: there are the Palestinian Israeli citizens, West Bank residents, Gaza residents, refugees within the West Bank and Gaza, refugees in other countries, diaspora Palestinians, and now Hamas supporters and Fatah supporters. At times the various groups have had little respect for one another, and certainly after many years of separation, culture, language and priorities have become differentiated. In a post-apartheid country, even one in which the Palestinian population is approximately the same as the Jewish population,[11] would these differences further divide people or could the population embrace differences? History does not show many examples of the latter.

The birthrate within Israel (not including the occupied territories) is about 3 children per woman, higher than other developed countries.[12 PDF] This is about 3.75 children per Palestinian Israeli woman and 2.97 children per Jewish Israeli woman.[13 PDF] Currently, with Israel’s fear of "losing the demographic war," Jewish families with many children are encouraged. It is not unreasonable to believe that Palestinians feel the same way. Overpopulation, overcrowding in cities and suburbs, and dwindling resources, will only exacerbate the problems.

Environment and Land

Even well-intentioned post-apartheid players in Israel will come up against physical factors that would destroy hope of justice. These include changes to the landscape, land use, resources, and environment.

The Jewish National Fund (JNF) has worked for over a century to build parks over ethnically cleansed Palestinian villages. It uses them as propaganda to promote its "good stewardship of the land"—carbon sinks, green space, the encouragement of wildlife habitat, a quiet spot for (Jewish) Israelis to picnic, etc., and all the while not mentioning the violations of human rights, the massacres, the theft, that take place because of those parks.[14] Justice demands that those parks be returned to the villagers and descendents of those villagers who were expelled. But in post-apartheid Israel, could that happen?

In the last 10 years, the estimated average per capita carbon dioxide emissions by Israelis were 6.9 metric tons per year (compared to 15.1 tons per capita per year for U.S. citizens).[15] With a population of about 8 million,[16] this is more than 55 million metric tons of CO2 per year emitted on average from both Israelis and Palestinians. One acre of forest absorbs approximately 75 metric tons over 20 years.[17] (These numbers are given for rainforests and not arid regions, and may not be equivalent.) Since 1901, the JNF has planted more than 250,000 acres of trees,[18] giving a sequestration rate of 18.8 million metric tons of CO2 in 20 years. In other words, the sequestration rate doesn’t come close to the emission rate. But regardless of the origin of those forests, or the effects of forest fires,[19] there would be a world-wide outcry if the future state tried to cut out its lungs, even to repair a previous injustice. Since the trees planted over ethnically cleansed villages are not native to the region, their presence there has changed the ecology of the land, which is no longer suitable for growing the crops that sustained the former residents.

Land that has been confiscated for roads, houses, and the apartheid wall, is equally unsuitable for farming. With a wildly increasing human population (there and everywhere else), the land will be required and used for other purposes. The vast majority of Palestinians who were stripped of their living as farmers or herders will have to give up the dream of returning to that life for good. Those types of farms will be replaced by factory farms, squeezing the highest yield from the smallest acreage, using high amounts of chemicals and water.[20] Those farms will be owned by the settlers and their descendents; Palestinians will work as laborers on the Jewish-owned farms. Land redistribution ends up badly no matter where it is done or for what reason, and I can’t envision a scenario where land is taken from a settler to give back to the Palestinian who formerly owned it. The Palestinians who have suffered from land and livelihood confiscation, assessments of extraordinary fees, denial of educational opportunities, will not have enough wealth to purchase a farm, even if a Jewish land owner did not have heirs to which to will the land.

With the land being now designated for various purposes, with an increasing population and decreasing resources, and with the divisions among the different Palestinian groups, what are the chances that a significant number of refugees will have the opportunity to return to the country? Unfortunately, I see this also as a very low probability.

I believe that the system of apartheid in Israel will end, but I do not believe that the end will mean justice for Palestinians. So with all this pessimism, why do I continue? Well, for one, I’m desperately hoping someone will read this and point out my basic analytical error. But I’ve thought about this for a long time and don’t believe I’ve made an analytical error. For another, I like to believe that had I lived during slavery in the U.S., even knowing the oppression that African Americans would face at the end of that system, I would have worked to end it. And then I would have worked to end Jim Crow. The end of one struggle is the beginning of the next.[21] So I will continue to work for justice and human rights in Israel/Palestine and continue to hope that somehow an equation can be found which will allow for justice to prevail.

___________________

1 Waziyatawin, Ph.D., What Does Justice Look Like? The Struggle for Liberation in Dakota Homeland. St. Paul:Living Justice Press, 2008.
2 Bekker, Simon and Leildé, Anne, "Is Multiculturalism a Workable Policy in South Africa," International Journal on Multicultural Societies (IJMS), Vol. 5, No. 2, 2003: 119-134. http://unesdoc.unesco.org/images/0013/001387/138797e.pdf.       3 Rossouw, Johann, "South Africa: not yet post-colonial," Le Monde Diplomatique. Aug. 2008.
4 Achmat, Zackie, Dawes, Nic, and February, Judith "Muzzling the Rainbow Nation,"New York Times, 30 Nov. 2011.
5 Klein, Naomi, The Shock Doctrine: the Rise of Disaster Capitalism, Metropolitan Books. New York: Knopf Canada, 2007.
6 "Some things were better under apartheid," BBC News, 29 May 2010.
7 Alexander, Michelle, The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness. New York: The New Press, 2010.
8 Never mind that the 40 acres would not be taken from any white land-owner. If any freed slave had received land it would have been expropriated from Native Americans’ land anyway.
9 "Jews and others, by origin, continent of birth and period of immigration," [PDF] Central Bureau of Statistics, Government of Israel.
10 Grodzinsky, Yosef, In the Shadow of the Holocaust. Monroe: Common Courage Press, 2004.
11 Palestinian population fast approaching that of Israeli Jews, in vBulletin, 1 Dec. 2011.
12 "Table 3.13 – Fertility rates, by age and religion," [PDF] Statistical Abstract of Israel, 2011.
13 Ibid.
14 See www.stopthejnf.org and the fourth e-book: Greenwashing Apartheid: The Jewish National Fund’s Environmental Cover Up [PDF]
15 "Carbon Dioxide Emissions (CO2), metric tons of CO2 per capita (CDIAC)." Millennium Development Goals Database. United Nations Statistics Division.
16 "Israel population tops 7.8 mn", European Jewish Press. 8 Jan. 2012.
17 FAQ. World Land Trust.
18 Blumenthal, Max "The forest through the trees: What the Carmel fire reminds us about Israel’s history." Mondoweiss. 7 Dec. 2010
19 Ibid.
20 Despite the high water wastage for which settlers in the occupied territories are known, Israel has pioneered the field of water re-use in agriculture. Some of this water will be recycled.
21 Thanks to Bob Kosuth for this line!

In recent weeks, the Israel lobby has drawn a red line on the use of the phrase "Israel Firster." Supporters of Israel have lectured us that it is an "anti-Semitic trope." Here, for instance, is Spencer Ackerman denouncing the use of the term at Tablet:

“Israel Firster” has a nasty anti-Semitic pedigree, one that many Jews will intuitively understand without knowing its specific history. It turns out white supremacist Willis Carto was reportedly the first to use it, and David Duke popularized it through his propaganda network. And yet [M.J.] Rosenberg and others actually claim they’re using it to stimulate “debate,” rather than effectively mirroring the tactics of some of the people they criticize.

As if the very words have anti-Semitism in their DNA.

Well Ackerman is wrong. The term Israel Firster was used by a Zionist before it was used by white supremacists. I just got a hold of the American Jewish Committee's Yearbook for 1961. It cites the use of the term "Israel Firster" by a legendary Zionist, the late Abram Leon Sachar, the leading American historian of Jews and president of Brandeis when he said it.

Read the screenshot below:

I'll write it out:

American Jews and Israel

American Jews continued to raise large sums of money for Israel, and to defend it. Israelis, for their part, continued to seek greater commitments from American Jews and more emigrants. The conflict between Prime Minister Ben-Gurion and Nahum Goldman, president of the WZO (World Zionist Organization], did not abate. On june 2, 1960, at a meeting of Mapai's central committee, Ben-Gurion declared that neither Israel nor the Jews outside Israel needed the Zionist movement as an intermediary between them. He said that Goldmann was "neither an Israeli nor an American," but "a wandering Jew."

American Jews continued to object to Israel's claim that a genuine Jewish life was possible only in Israel. Abram L. Sachar, president of Brandeis University, at the biennial convention of JWB [Jewish Welfare Board], declared on April 2, 1960 that among Jews there is no room "for Israel Firsters whose chauvinism and arrogance  find nothing relevant or viable in any area outside of Israel."

Sachar was speaking to the JWB, or Jewish Welfare Board, which bought Torahs for Jewish boys in uniform. American uniform. And he made his comments in the context of American Jews being loyal citizens of the U.S. Ben-Gurion, the first prime minister of Israel, had long urged American Jews to move to Israel. The American Jewish community was resisting the pressure to make "greater commitments" to Israel.

Sachar was a goldplated Zionist, national director of the B'nai B'rith Hillel Foundations who wrote that the "rebirth of [the Jews'] independent homeland" was "an event pregnant with incalculable opportunities for creativity and enrichment."

But Sachar needed to draw a red line of his own. He didn't like Israel Firsters. Here he is in the New York Times, 1960:

Dr. Abram L. Sachar, president of Brandeis University, rejected tonight the "dogma that only in Israel is a genuine, normal, substantive Jewish life possible."

I can't get the rest of that clip because my computer's wonky, but you get the point.

Now let's review the context in which "Israel Firster" has arisen in 2011-2012: a situation in which supporters of Israel are pushing the U.S. to go to war against Iran in some measure out of concern for Israel's security. One of these supporters is Sheldon Adelson, who personally revived Newt Gingrich's campaign with $10 million after Gingrich called Palestinians an "invented people" and who is now said to be dickering with Romney's campaign about the terms on which he will give money to the Republican frontrunner.

That dickering will turn on Romney's promises re Israel, you can be sure of it. Because, as Adelson has said, he "unfortunately" wore the uniform of the American military not the Israeli army, and he wants his son to be a sniper for the Israeli army because "All we care about is being good citizens of Israel."

If you can criticize Adelson's giving without venturing the thought that he puts Israel first-- well, do me a favor and don't turn my mind into spaghetti.

The Center for American Progress has folded under pro-Israel pressure. It has recanted its use of the term Israel Firster. The fabulous young journalist, Zaid Jilani, who used the expression in tweets, has moved on to another job. Look over the battlefield today and only Andrew Sullivan, MJ Rosenberg, and Glenn Greenwald have stood up for the acceptability of the term. Courageous writers all. And they can say that the words have a good Jewish pedigree...

P.S. I wonder what's next for the Zionist Censors? How about "Matzorian candidate?" Jon Stewart said that about the Republicans expressing endless support for Israel, with hints of dual loyalty. Sure sounds like a "trope" to me!

In The Crisis of Zionism, Peter Beinart lays out in chilling detail the looming danger to Israeli democracy and the American Jewish establishment's refusal to confront it. And he offers a fascinating, groundbreaking portrait of the two leaders at the center of the crisis: Barack Obama, America's first "Jewish president," a man steeped in the liberalism he learned from his many Jewish friends and mentors in Chicago; and Benjamin Netanyahu, the Israeli prime minister who considers liberalism the Jewish people's special curse. These two men embody fundamentally different visions not just of American and Israeli national interests but of the mission of the Jewish people itself.

Beinart concludes with provocative proposals for how the relationship between American Jews and Israel must change, and with an eloquent and moving appeal for American Jews to defend the dream of a democratic Jewish state before it is too late.

Thanks to Max Blumenthal--who read from an essay on the foundations of Zionism at the boycott conference and whose understanding of the Zionist crisis is more fundamental, and realistic, than Beinart's.

At Sunday afternoon's talk by Max Blumenthal and Sarah Schulman, Schulman spoke of the pattern of "Jewish substitution"-- the need on the Establishment's part to seek Jewish voices about the issue. Well, I felt a twinge, because Schulman and Blumenthal were in front of us, both Jewish, and I was about to be on a panel about the media with Blumenthal and Helena Cobban. (And Penn chairman David Cohen and president Amy Gutmann had come out against the conference days before; and the Super Bowl taking place later that day had two teams with Jewish owners; as I insisted at my panel, we make up a significant part of the establishment.)

At my media panel, Amy Kaplan, the great English prof at Penn who participated in the conference despite a storm of contumely and smear, asked the journalists whether the Nakba was ever going to be covered by the mainstream press. "How important is history to reporting events in the present, in the context of trying to get out an alternative view which is suppressed by the mainstream?" she asked.

I said that it was essential that Americans learn about the Nakba, it was great old/new news essential to an understanding of the refugees, and that inevitably the New York Times Magazine would run a Nakba piece but in the form of the emotional water-slide that Blumenthal and I had shot down some years before-- the Times would have a young Jew waking up to the crimes committed by the Zionists 64 or 74 years ago, whenever the Times gets round to it. This is not news. Palestinians have known about it for a long time. But that's the way the media will deal with it. Another Jew in recovery from suppressed memories will discover ethnic cleansing and the early Zionists' program for a "strong" Jewish majority in the land.

Subsequently a black woman in the audience rose to observe that the same thing had taken place during the civil rights struggle. "We call that the white gaze," she said, poetically.

I was then aware that my need to fix my own community, to push them toward recognitions, to undo the Israel lobby, to get them out of selfish nationalism, will limit my effectiveness in the Palestinian solidarity movement. That's OK; I will support that movement and put my shoulder to the wheel. But I took some pleasure-- watching a panel on the Jewish response featuring members of Jewish Voice for Peace-- hearing Liza Behrendt, a Brandeis graduate, saying that she wants to get Zionists on board with boycotting Israel. Later a friend said that Behrendt was naive, but I saw value in Behrendt's idea. At AIPAC I have often been struck that here are 5000 or 7000 people in a room acting in some measure out of charity: they are working for people they don't know on the other side of the world. Now it happens that they are ethnocentric, nationalist and are clapping at racist statements-- still they are pouring out energy and money for people they don't know. And I believe that energy can be shifted.

The mood of the BDS conference was so relentlessly positive, so hopeful, so alive with the concern for human rights, that I see it as inevitable that young Jews will want to align themselves with this program. Some of them may want to come as Zionists, and undo Zionism from inside. That wouldn't be such a bad thing. The Palestinian condition was created chiefly by Jews. And just as Holocaust evasion ended in a great cultural moment in the 1970s, Nakba denial will also end in a great cultural moment that is coming soon. Young Jews will be thirsting for knowledge of those events, and thirsting to try to repair the damage.

During the conference, I stayed at my mother's house, and she pressed on me a Soda Stream seltzer-maker she'd bought for my wife. I told her I couldn't take it; and I thought she was for the two-state solution, Soda Stream is occupying the land the Palestinians were supposed to get. Rabbi Lynn Gottlieb suggested I take it and bury it. But the incident shows how backward my community is, how sunk. I love my mother. I want to help that community redeem itself.

Ali Abunimah said the highlight of Alan Dershowitz's talk before the conference at the Jewish Federations came when a young Jew said, Yes Israel is a great democracy, etc, etc, but didn't we throw those people off their land? The right question, Abunimah said; and Dershowitz answered with lies, that there were hardly any Palestinians there, etc. The young man's question is not going away.

Mayor Michael Bloomberg had a message to New York City's Muslim community: don't worry that the New York Police Department showed an anti-Muslim film to around 1,500 officers, because top cop Ray Kelly “probably visits more mosques” than many Muslims in New York.

Speaking at a press conference in Queens, Bloomberg continued his defense of Kelly: “He has reached out to this community as he has reached out to lots of other communities. We have things regularly at 1 Police Plaza for clergy people of each religion, including Islam. And we'll continue to do that.”

But Muslim community leaders and activists, backed by a diverse coalition of allies, are having none of that. They want Kelly fired. And they say this latest incident shows how anti-Muslim sentiment has become institutionalized in the NYPD.

A rejoinder to Kelly's defense was already on display at around the same time Bloomberg spoke, at a January 26 press conference on the steps of City Hall. Protesters held signs labeling Kelly a racist. Anger was in the air, and Muslim activists and allies repeatedly called for Kelly's resignation; for “corrective training” for the officers who viewed the film; and for independent oversight of the NYPD. As chants of “Kelly must go” rang through the air, some activists demanded state or federal oversight of New York City police.

“This outrage is a violation of the honor of our city and those who protect it,” said Cyrus McGoldrick, the civil rights manager for the Council on American-Islamic Relations' New York chapter.

The battle is centered around an Islamophobic film titled The Third Jihad, which was shown to police officers on a continuous loop during “the sign-in, medical and administrative orientation process,” according to police documents obtained by the Brennan Center for Justice. The film, which is filled with violent imagery and posits that mainstream Muslim groups are in fact secretly plotting to take over the U.S., was financed by the Clarion Fund, a right-wing organization with links to Israeli settlers. Compounding the NYPD and Bloomberg administration's problems is the fact that Kelly willingly agreed to sit down for a 90-minute interview for the film and that NYPD spokesman Paul Browne lied about Kelly's involvement and how many officers saw the film.

This is hardly the first time NYPD's problematic relationship with the city's Muslims has come to light. But what makes the episode significant is the media firestorm it has created over the spokesperson's lies at a time of increasing awareness of police abuse due to Occupy Wall Street-related arrests and brutality. Muslim activists are looking to capitalize on that energy as they confront the NYPD in the weeks ahead.

Since the September 11, 2001 attacks, the NYPD has had a fraught relationship with the city's 800,000-member Muslim community, one of the fastest growing religious communities in the city. Billions of dollars have been spent to make NYPD one of the most powerful forces in the fight against terrorism. But the NYPD has been routinely accused of harassing and entrapping Muslims in terrorism-related cases. The final straw for many Muslims came when an Associated Press investigative series published last summer exposed an arbitrary spying program, implemented with CIA help, that targeted virtually all of New York's Muslims. A “demographics unit” established at the NYPD has “monitored daily life in bookstores, bars, cafes and nightclubs” in Muslim communities, as well as mosques, the AP reported. It was also revealed that the NYPD spied on Muslim student associations on college campuses.

Revelations of the spying program dealt blows to a Bloomberg administration whose relations with the Muslim community were at a relative high note when the mayor defended the Park 51 mosque project near Ground Zero in lower Manhattan.

“These practices paint a dangerous picture of the ways in which law enforcement engages with Muslim communities under the banner of national security,” reads an August 25, 2011 statement from the Muslim American Civil Liberties Coalition. “These McCarthyite spying techniques threaten the civil rights of all Americans, and deepen the long-existing rifts between communities of color and police in the United States.”

Then came the most recent revelation about the showing of The Third Jihad. Although the Village Voice first reported on the story last January, a Jan. 23, 2012 New York Times report, based on police documents obtained by the Brennan Center, has received a lot more attention due to the AP expose on the NYPD's spying program.

“Seeing that propaganda like this is being used in training is almost logical in light of Associated Press reports on the NYPD's comprehensive and warrantless surveillance of Muslim New Yorkers,” said CAIR-NY's McGoldrick.

After the most recent revelations broke, Browne's lies about the NYPD film screening became a hot media topic. The AP ran a January 30, 2012 article titled “New York Police Spokesman Comes Under Fire.” The two free daily papers in New York led with the story after it broke, and some city council members have called for more oversight of the NYPD as a result of the incident. Protests calling for Kelly's resignation have kept the story in the news, and an editorial, an opinion piece and a column in the New York Times were published in recent days criticizing the NYPD.

A burgeoning alliance between black and Latino activists working against “stop-and-frisk” police tactics, Muslim activists and Occupy Wall Street could keep the momentum going. Jumaane Williams, a black city council member and OWS supporter whose own run-in with NYPD has turned him into an outspoken advocate against police abuse, spoke at the rally and denounced the NYPD's “corrosive culture.”

The coming together of long-time anti-police brutality activists and OWS was chronicled in The Awl in a report by Michael Tracey. Titled “A Fresh Movement Against the NYPD's Culture of Misconduct,” the article detailed how OWS has reinvigorated New York's anti-police brutality movement. As Tracey shows, the alliance is natural given OWS' experience with police brutality—something communities of color have had to combat for decades. And OWS' attention to police brutality has also been a boon to Muslim activists.

On October 21, 2011, a CAIR-NY-organized day of prayer was held in Zuccotti Park. Although it attracted little attention outside the anti-Muslim blogosphere, it was a sign of an alliance to come.

“CAIR-NY’s endorsement of Friday Prayer at Occupy Wall Street stems from a conviction that many of the issues brought into the international spotlight by Occupy Wall Street affect Muslim communities disproportionately,” read a statement announcing the action. “Especially in light of the recently exposed NYPD surveillance in Muslim Student Organizations, we need to unite in our repudiation of government corruption and our rejection of the political effort to marginalize our voice.”

A month of organizing followed the prayer action, and a much larger rally at Foley Square against the NYPD spying program was held in November with hundreds of people, including a contingent from OWS. Muslim youth broke into chants of “We are the 99 percent” as they marched to NYPD headquarters to make their discontent known.

“It's really critical we create this broad-based movement,” said Faiza Ali, a community activist and organizer who attended the November rally. “On the whole there's a general distaste for the police department and the way they've been operating, especially recently given the police brutality issues being raised at Occupy Wall Street...All of these issues are connected, and [we have] the support of Occupy Wall Street on this issue.”

Muslim activists like Imam Talib 'Abdur-Rashid, the spiritual leader of the Mosque of Islamic Brotherhood in Harlem, say the public pressure on Kelly and the NYPD won't stop until corrective action is taken. Speaking at the January 26 press conference, Abdur-Rashid promised more public protests on these issues in the coming weeks and laid out the stakes.

“We are facing the specter of a 21st-century COINTELPRO,” he told reporters. And activists say the fight is just beginning.

“This is part of a long-term strategy,” Linda Sarsour, a prominent Palestinian-American activist in the NYC Muslim community, recently wrote. “We are not just reacting anymore.” 

This article originally appeared in AlterNet.

One of the stars of the boycott conference at Penn was Sarah Schulman, the writer/professor who wrote the groundbreaking pinkwashing piece in the New York Times last November: How Israel uses gay-rights to launder its human rights violations.

In the Q-and-A, a man rose to ask Schulman how the piece had gotten into print. Schulman laughed and said, "Ok, here's the back story." And then told an astonishing story.

I'll relate that story in a minute. First you have to eat your spinach: Schulman's very wise ideas about the ways that the Palestinian solidarity movement can grow from "a vanguard movement to a popular movement."

Schulman only got into Palestinian solidarity two years ago. But she has been a "hard-core" activist all her life, chiefly about AIDS and queer freedom. You can ask, Where has she been, what about Gaza? but that's a stupid question, a question that blocks growth. And the beauty of Schulman's engagement here is that when she was told not to go to Tel Aviv University two years ago, and she said, "What boycott?" she didn't get defensive and nutty. No, she looked into the issue and saw that it was straightforward and simple-- and then she was in.

This is the type of person we need to engage: morally clear, independent, brave people. Schulman's own Jewishness dropped right away when she saw what Palestinians were experiencing. She had been there once, to see cousins. But any family allegiance simply dropped away when she saw what was going on. Beautiful.

And what Schulman counseled is that for the movement to grow and effect a paradigm shift in the U.S. discourse it must really work on its messaging. It must define one goal, ending US military aid to Israel. It must translate "manifesto culture to soundbite culture." In doing so, it must avoid "heightened rhetoric, highly ideological language," and academic language, including old left language.

It must do its utmost to find a Palestinian face who will be as imprinted for American news organizations and their bookers as Hanan Ashrawi was in a previous generation. It must open an office in NY with a Palestinian at the helm. It must seek celebrity endorsement.

And there was this, which I found personally persuasive and moving:

This movement reminds her of early days in LGBT and AIDS activism. It is a movement on behalf of rightsless people. (Hey--we are going to win!) But as the movement grows, "we have to be wise and we have to be flexible.... The founders [will] lose control of the discourse."  Ideological purity will fade away as more and more come into the movement.  "That's the price" of success. I believe Schulman  completely. I wanted to hug her. (And by the way I am happy to sacrifice all ego-capital that I have accumulated here, for the sake of the family of Mustafa Tamimi, killed when he protested his village's loss of access to its sole source of water).

OK, now you've had your high fiber. The Q-and-A came and a guy asked how Schulman managed to get the pinkwashing piece published. Here's her tale:

Last June a "young, Chinese American gay guy" who had not long ago gone to work at the New York Times Op-Ed page reached out to Schulman to write a piece on the 30th anniversary of the discovery of AIDS.

Schulman said, "You want a progress narrative." She couldn't write that. The young op-ed editor said, No, but when Schulman turned in her piece, which was not a "progress narrative," it got killed, as she had expected, and the Times ran a "progress narrative."

The young editor felt bad about the outcome and asked her what else she could write for the Times. Schulman sensed that he had a "very idealistic idea of the Times," and no sense of the "Jewish politics of the Times" (oh, I love this phrase, it is a gift of insight), but she said, "What about pinkwashing?" Huh? The international promotion by Israel of the freedom it gives gays in Israel as a means of masking its denial of human rights to Palestinians. She showed the editor some pieces from the Guardian.

"He said, 'Sure.'"

Schulman knew what was coming. She turned in a "900 word piece with 150 pages of documentation.... [and] for the next three months we fought over the piece.... [at times] we literally screamed at each other."

The Times op-ed staff came up with question after question to challenge Schulman's assumptions. No one there knew that she had a "secret research team of queer women," translating documents from Arabic, Dutch, German and Hebrew!

One of the foolish queries on the piece was: "You have to prove that Israeli gay people are anti-Arab." And there were "all these ridiculous delays."

The documentation grew to 300 pages, and the Times just "couldn't come up with something that would justify killing it."

The piece ran on November 22. And I don't see much evidence of "pulling and hauling," as one of our earlier writer-savants puts struggling with the world. A fine piece, it ends: "The long-sought realization of some rights for some gays should not blind us to the struggles against racism in Europe and the United States, or to the Palestinians’ insistence on a land to call home."

The piece was sensational. It is surely Schulman's most famous writing. She took great pleasure when Benjamin Netanyahu cited it as a reason that he would not contribute to the New York Times.

And then a postscript. Schulman said that on January 24, the NYT ran this AP report saying that Tel Aviv is a great gay destination-- "a plant" for the Israeli government, a "piece that had never been factchecked... rife with factual inaccuracies."

Schulman concluded that the piece was "obviously some deal brokered between the Times and the Israeli government." She wrote to her young editor to ask if the piece had undergone anything like the scrutiny that hers had received during its 3-month gestation. She did not hear from him.