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.)

News spreads fast. Bloomberg is reporting Adelson isn't planning on floating Gingrich anymore which leaves him high and dry and scrambling for cash.

Five losing contests later, Gingrich and Winning Our Future, an outside political action committee supporting him, are almost silent on television airwaves, offering free water and coffee at events, and revamping a fundraising strategy based largely on the support of a single wealthy backer, Sheldon Adelson, and the Las Vegas casino owner’s family.

In the past seven days, Winning Our Future has spent $61,290 on broadcast television advertisements, compared with $636,920 spent by Mitt Romney and a super-PAC backing him, Restore Our Future, according to data compiled by New York-based Kantar Media’s CMAG, a company that tracks advertising.

For now, the Adelsons don’t plan to deliver another big check to float Gingrich’s campaign, according to a person familiar with their deliberations.

So, have you checked out that video up there yet? (I rec, it's funny) Gee, what can I say?  Does America deserve a president named Santorum? Wrong question. Do I think he'll win? No. Do I think he'll win the GOP nomination? At this point, maybe. I've been saying all along you can't win the GOP nomination if the fundies don't love ya, and fundies don't like Mormons, something about hell....it's hard keeping all those extremists sorted out. I wish we could send them to an island far far away, together. Anyway, enough of my ramblings.

The Hill:

But Rick Santorum's wins in Missouri, Minnesota and Colorado have instead coalesced support around his campaign, with Gingrich now looking for another miraculous come-from-behind.

Meanwhile, a super-PAC supporting Santorum's campaign told Bloomberg the money has been "rolling in" since the former senator's upset wins, including a $1 million donation earlier this week.

Googled Santorum lately? Yep, that site is still holding strong and remains in the #1 position, after the Santorum campaign's paid spot. But it doesn't end there, it's not just a gag site, something I realized tonight when I clicked on "Click to continue":

Rick Santorum is Good at Winning Caucuses

Caucuses by nature are built around people who are the most politically passionate. In Democratic caucuses, this benefits a candidate who is a bit further to the left, and his success in caucuses was a big key towards President Obama's run to the Democratic nomination four years ago. But, as being too far to the left is considered completely unacceptable in our political climate, a socialist group is unable to highjack the proceedings. Things are different in the Republican, where you have two groups of complete whack jobs who are viewed as being a part of the conservative mainstream: the Ron Paul Libertarians and the extreme Religious Right. These people are more passionate than your average conservative, and are more willing to spend their time attending a caucus.

Think of it this way: following the Florida Primary, won by Mitt Romney, a fair amount of attention was paid to the low turnout rate. About 8.5% of Florida's population showed up to vote in the Republican primary. Compare that to Colorado, where just over 1% of the state population participated in the caucus, and Minnesota, where less than 1% participated. And while Santorum had a strong showing in Missouri's primary, that primary was merely symbolic and awarded no delegates. As a result, Missouri's Republican Primary only drew from 4% of the state's population.

What's the conclusion to draw from this? Santorum does have a following. In Midwest states, he is the social conservative candidate of choice. But we won't know if he's become the social conservative candidate of the south until March. More importantly, we have no evidence to this point that Santorum can win anything that a significant portion of a state's population actually shows up to. Until he does that, Santorum is merely the King of Contests Nobody Gives a Shit About. And while that may parlay a better contract for him with Fox News this fall, it will not get him the Republican nomination and certainly would not allow him to even put up a competitive race against President Obama in the General Election.

Comedians are going to have a field day with this, that's one thing we can look forward to.

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.

The article states: “The Governor’s educational visit was part of a JUF initiative that, for the past two decades, has brought influential leaders to Israel.” Quinn signed a “formal agreement on academic cooperation between Ben Gurion University of the Negev in Beersheba and the University of Illinois at Chicago (UIC) to establish a wide-ranging partnership. The agreement will promote faculty and student exchanges, joint research, and other academic activities of mutual interest. The agreement greatly expands the existing relationship between the universities in the field of public health.”

Beyond principled opposition to such academic agreements between our public universities and those of the apartheid Jewish state, it’s important to note that the academic merit and social outcomes of such agreements are obviously limited by the political context that provokes fundamental opposition from advocates of social justice. In relation to Motorola, for example, it’s impossible to believe that there will be public discussion promoting the public interest regarding military applications in general or surveillance technology in particular.

Similarly, such an agreement cannot conceivably promote consideration of fundamental and historical water resource and environmental degradation issues pertaining to political conflict between Israel and Palestine, Lebanon, Syria, and Jordan. It’s also highly unlikely that the essentially political nature of such an academic agreement would allow or encourage researchers to address the public health concerns of Palestinians, either as citizens of Israel or in the occupied territories; nor would they likely address, for example, the conditions of African immigrants in Israel who find themselves increasingly despised and unwanted.

A biased and discriminatory political agenda, dictated and limited by Israeli state interests and U.S. hegemonic interests in the region, is thus inevitably part and parcel of such academic agreements. The public university and its scholarly and scientific reputation is commandeered and exploited by the Israel Lobby in order to serve and legitimize that agenda.

Beyond this particular “academic exchange,” my perspective is informed by the principles of the BDS movement and the challenges inevitably presented to the movement by the Israel Lobby’s incessant pressure on public officials and institutions at all levels. As a long-term resident of Illinois and employee of the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign (UIUC), I have been a journalist and activist regarding the manner in which Jewish and Zionist institutions have come to occupy the putatively public space of our public university—clearly to the detriment of dignity and justice for the Palestinians, as well as informed discussion in a democratic and scholarly context of the Israel/Palestine issue.

Continuing from an article that I wrote for Electronic Intifada in 2009, I argue here that the developments noted above constitute egregious extensions of the Zionist infrastructure that has been promoted by the Israel Lobby in state government in general and in public higher education in Illinois. I would hope that this opportunistic, outrageous, and cynical agreement between Governor Quinn and Israeli officials creates a critical mass of awareness and potential activism within and beyond the BDS movement in Illinois. I would hope to see a clear response to the manner in which the Lobby feels entitled to self-righteously promote—without objection—what are repugnant and sectarian political interests in state politics and higher education—disingenuously and transparently framed in terms of technological, scientific, and economic development.

From my perspective as a Jewish pro-Palestinian activist in Urbana-Champaign, I have observed two primary developments: first, the establishment of a privately-funded Program for Jewish Culture and Society two decades ago and its attendant moral emphasis on the Holocaust and Jewish victimization in general; second, the use of PJCS as an institutional and moral umbrella for an Israel Lobby-funded and baldly propagandistic“Israel Studies Project,” which has moreover been clearly racist in its exclusion of Palestinian Israelis from its purview.

Blatant conflicts of interest regarding PJCS in relation to the Israel Lobby were obvious from the start, and dovetail with Governor Quinn’s junket. The promoters of PJCS were two professors with prominent positions in local Jewish institutions—religious, secular, and Zionist. One professor, Michael Shapiro, is the father of Daniel Shapiro, current U.S. ambassador to Israel.

In 2004, Michael Shapiro worked closely with Michael Kotzin, JUF Executive Vice President, to fund the Israel Studies Project, part of a state-wide effort by the Israel Lobby at both public and private universities. Kotzin wrote in the Forward in 2004 that the “manner in which Israel and the Middle East are taught about in the nation’s university classrooms has increasingly come to the fore as one of the most difficult and far-reaching challenges facing the Jewish community.” In translation, this is to say that the Lobby needs to take serious measures to intervene in academia to promote Israel’s interests, in response to students who are increasingly enlightened regarding the plight of the Palestinians.

Kotzin, a long-time Lobby apparatchik in Chicago, accompanied Governor Quinn to Israel, commenting “It is particularly gratifying to be here with Gov. Quinn today when that partnership moves to a new level.” Quinn’s group was addressed in Israel by Ambassador Shapiro, who tellingly “called his address to the group ‘his first official duty’ after arriving the day before to assume his responsibilities as U.S. Ambassador to Israel.”

I would add that the Urbana campus has also procured, for the past two academic years, a visiting Jewish-Israeli professor of Israel Studies whose position is by no means disinterestedly funded by the Schusterman Family Foundation and the American-Israeli Cooperative Enterprise (AICE). According to the Jewish Virtual Library, “The aim of the program is to present American students with a broad understanding of Israel's history, society, politics, culture and relations with its neighbors and the broader international community.” In plainer language, the aim of this program—as of the Israel Studies Project at UIUC and the broader Israel Studies movement in general—is to promote a sanitized version of Zionism, Israel, and Israel’s oppression of the Palestinians. The current visiting professor at the Urbana Campus, Rhona Seidelman, has well-served this purpose.

It is unacceptable that a visiting professor essentially hired by the Israel Lobby is charged with teaching the one class offered at UIUC on the history of the Israel/Palestine conflict. Perhaps needless to say, UIUC has never hired a professor of Palestinian or Arab background specifically in relation to teaching and research regarding the topic of Israel/Palestine. Regarding any other oppressed minority, it would be unheard of for faculty members to be bought and paid for by interests promoting and justifying such oppression. But in the case of the Israel Lobby on campus, it is business as usual. At UIUC and other campuses in Illinois, the Lobby has de facto attempted to limit the institutional space within which Palestinian perspectives can be understood and legitimized.

The political proficiency and resources of the Israel Lobby in Illinois and elsewhere present formidable challenges to pro-Palestinian and BDS activists. Nevertheless, popular support for Israel, including among Jews and on campuses, is at an all-time low. The recent and welcome radicalization of the notion of “occupy,” combined with the principles and goals of the BDS movement, suggests assertive and persistent responses to Lobby business as usual on campus and in state government.

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**
 

In one of the most amusingly delusional wishful thinking hasbara articles I have ever read Jonathan Tobin tries and fails to convince us nobody is really worried or even thinking about Palestinians anymore, and they are irrelevant. I kid you not. This is a must read in terms of setting a new tone of fanatical discourse. It's almost unbelievable, but then again, it is what we've come to expect from Commentary Magazine.

In the very same paragraph Tobin references the Hamas Fatah unity deal as "what can only be termed a momentous turn of events" the confirmation Palestinians are  'irrelevant' is supposedly due to the "lack of alarm or even much worry about the impact of Hamas on the peace process".

Someone should clue in Tobin the 'lack of alarm' doesn't signal the irrelevance of Palestinians, it rather confirms the general public is not freaking out by the prospect of dealing with Hamas and would rather see the show on the road. All that pro team fear mongering just isn't working. What it signifies (and everyone already knows) is there simply is no 'peace process' where Israel is concerned and hasn't been for long long time, if ever. It's been a delay hoax for long enough and nobody is chomping anymore, least of all Palestinians. Literally nobody, no one I can think of anyway.

Tobin claims "the world is gradually moving on". Uh huh/not. In fact there were, according to Google, over a 1507 related articles covering the recent signing, including Fox News, the Financial Times, the SF Chronicle and everyone in between. That doesn't sound like moving on to me, it sounds like 'in the news'. The most recent (7 minutes ago as I'm typing this) is from the editorial staff at Haaretz, Netanyahu is punishing Israel :

Netanyahu's ultimatum looks like a pretext for torpedoing talks on a final-status agreement based on the Quartet's outline and U.S. President Barack Obama's speech last May. But these negotiations were on the rocks even before Abbas signed the agreement with the head of Hamas' political bureau, Khaled Meshal, due to Israel's refusal to freeze construction in the settlements and present substantive positions on a permanent border.

The ongoing crisis in the diplomatic process is playing a key role in tilting the political balance in the territories toward the opponents of a compromise. These opponents already laud the Israeli withdrawal from Gaza as a victory for "the resistance," and burying the diplomatic process would open a path for them to take over leadership of both the PA and the PLO in the upcoming competition for the Palestinian electorate's backing.

Netanyahu must end his obsessive search for flaws in the internal Palestinian agreement and focus instead on an initiative for ending the conflict. For he has the ability to do so.

No one in the reality based community is pretending this is over or that Palestinians are 'irrelevant'. Things are just heating up. Palestinians did the polite thing. Once again they bent over backwards, delayed their UN bid and carried out the wishes of the Quartet (wishes Israel flipped the bird at and twisted around with all the best hasbara their think tanks could come up with). We're moving on from Commentary's overwraught bloviations ("Peace will have to wait until a sea change in Palestinian political culture that will make it possible for the PA to sign a deal that recognizes the legitimacy of a Jewish state no matter where its borders are drawn."). People are accepting Hamas is here to stay and serious people should prepare to play ball. Maybe you should grow up and start reading the news. Here's Bloomberg : Making a Fatah and Hamas Partnership Work for U.S., Israel:

The news that the mainstream Palestinian group Fatah has agreed to form a unity government with the militantly Islamist Hamas may move some to dismay. Although there are ample reasons for that reaction, this development may also present an opportunity.

There is evidence, however, that the movement is re- evaluating its friends and options and that at least some of the leaders in this fractious organization are experimenting with a more pragmatic tone. Hamas’s agreement to share power with secular rival Fatah is itself something of a concession.

All of this leaves policy makers in the U.S. and Israel with two broad options: They can seize on these developments as a moment of weakness for Hamas and seek to reinforce its isolation, thereby preserving the status quo; or they can work with governments that have open communications with Hamas, such as Turkey, Qatar and Jordan, as well as the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt, to encourage Hamas onto a more moderate path. At this particular moment, the latter seems a policy worth exploring.

Isolation has succeeded in keeping Hamas militarily weak, but on other counts the policy has failed. Notably, it ensured that Hamas remained in the willing arms of Iran, and an economic blockade failed to stir revolt inside Gaza. Hamas is unlikely to fold up and disappear any time soon.

Who's irrelevant? Commentary Magazine, that's who.

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.

Yet Judt's arguments, and his great rogue state that uses the Holocaust as a get out of jail free card line, are quoted.

[Judt] argues that Israelis and their American supporters have used the Holocaust as a “Get Out of Jail Free card for a rogue state,” but seems to think that his own Jewishness and the fact that he lived in Israel at one point give him the authority to be as morally obtuse in return. Judt seems intent on transferring the lessons learned in Eastern Europe, where genuine liberalism mostly replaced ethnic nationalism, to a part of the world where such liberalism just won’t work. His proposal for a binational state was put forward with the self-certainty of an intellectual who has never had to deal with the realities of practicality and power...

[My students] are fortunate not to live in a world where ideas could be translated into monstrous projects for the transformation of society, and where being an intellectual could often mean complicity in enormous crimes.

I wonder what Fukuyama really thinks--did he perhaps want to go further and praise Judt a bit more, and the Times wouldn't let him? It kind of gives me that impression, but one never knows.

There's a context. Fukuyama is a subtle and accomplished thinker, a former neoconservative who broke over the Iraq war. Eight years ago, he had a semi-famous feud with Charles Krauthammer, who implied without saying so directly that Fukuyama was an anti-semite for noticing that the neocons may have internalized Israeli hostility to Arabs, and that it distorted their world view. An outsider could see that Fukuyama clearly won the ensuing exchanges, but it's a bruising thing for a gentile trying to maintain establishment credentials to go through-- and not everyone has the thick skin or temperament for it.

Can one sense in Fukuyama's criticism of Tony Judt's anti-Zionism a whiff of Stockholm syndrome, of bruises that still need shielding. Or does he really think (as Israel and its Washington allies try to steer America into yet another Mideast war) that the "realities of practicality and power" require shutting our minds to the questions Judt was raising?

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.