At the Forward JJ Goldberg has a good piece on the recent call for political unity within the Jewish community on the Israel question, a “pledge” defied by the neocons and by J Street, which are attacking one another. Goldberg is in the J Street camp. His piece ends on the racism of the right wing.
So here’s what I’m starting to think: What unifies the Jewish right is not love of Israel but fear and loathing of the Arabs, and anything and anyone giving Arabs a moment’s satisfaction — even an Israeli prime minister who has served his fellow Jews before — is craven, foolish and treasonous.
Unify that, guys.
Now I would say that loving Israel means dining on racism, breakfast lunch and dinner. That argument is going to take place as soon as the neocons are finally exiled, and the liberal Zionists begin to have it out with the non-Zionists…
A fine indication of the imbalance of power that Jews, who are in control of so much (especially in USA) profess fear (and loathing) of anti-Semitism but so often have no trouble (and express no loathing regarding) expressing anti-Arab (which often means anti-Muslim or anti-Muslim-Arab) feeling or opinion.
It is as if to say: We who are so powerful must be protected against anyone who attacks us hatefully, but we who are so powerful must be allowed to attack others hatefully. (In short: what’s mine is mine and what’s yours is mine, or heads I win and tails you lose.)
Hatred of Arabs unifies all Zionists including those that call themselves liberals, leftists, and socialists. These people are still a large bloc of in the US. Liberal and even leftist Zionists dominate the Democratic Party of the US. They are no less racist than the Neo-Cons. After all the Nakba took place under Ben Gurion and the Labor Party not Jabotinsky’s followers.
Goldberg is understating the depth of the problem. There are four major factors in play:
1. Ethnic extremism (including anti-Arab racism)
2. Religious extremism (including an obsessive and fanatical anti-Muslim bigotry)
3. Ideological extremism (including hostility to modern Western democratic and American values)
4. Classism (a strong bias towards extreme plutocracy and oligarchy)
Goldberg, and Jewish progressives in general, have much more on their plate than they imagine — and I really doubt that they are going to be able to prevail in this battle — they are greatly outnumbered and outfunded, and they were much too slow to wake up to the severity of the crisis. The neocon/neolib axis has acquired absolute control over both the Republican and Democratic Parties. I am almost tempted to say game over.
Sean McBride
http://friendfeed.com/seanmcbride
http://friendfeed.com/mideast-politics
Cindy Sheehan at the Veterans for Peace National Convention
Sunday August 7, 2005 – 19:37
EXCERPTs]
The Veterans for Peace National Convention wraps up today at the University of Dallas in Irving, Texas.
Cindy: And I’m glad to hear everybody else’s words, because somebody’s gotta stop those lying bastards. Somebody has to stop them.
[snip]
Then we have this lying bastard, George Bush, taking a 5-week vacation in a time of war. You know what? I’m never going to get to enjoy another vacation, because of him.
My vacation probably – -this is really sad because I have a really cute dress I was going to wear to the banquet tomorrow night, but I’m either gonna be in jail or in a tent in Crawford, waiting until that jerk comes out and tells me why my son died.
[snip]
So what really gets me is these chickenhawks, who sent our kids to die, without ever serving in a war themselves. They don’t know what it’s all about.
[snip]
And I’m gonna say, “And you tell me, what the noble cause is that my son died for.” And if he even starts to say ‘freedom and democracy’ I’m gonna say, bullshit.
You tell me the truth. You tell me that my son died for oil. You tell me that my son died to make your friends rich. You tell me my son died to spread the cancer of pax Americana, imperialism in the Middle East. You tell me that, you don’t tell me my son died for ‘freedom and democracy.’
Cuz, we’re not freer. You’re taking away our freedoms. The Iraqi people aren’t freer, they’re much worse off than before you meddled in their country.
You get America out of Iraq, you get Israel out of Palestine…
(massive round of applause)
And if you think I won’t say bullshit to the President, I say move on, cuz I’ll say what’s on my mind.
[snip]
People don’t just want to hear it, they want to know, what can we do? What can we do to get him out of power? And I’m gonna say the ‘I’ word. Impeach. And we have to have everybody impeached that lied to the American public, and that’s the executive branch, and any people in congress, and we gotta go all the way down and we might have to go all the way down to the person who picks up the dogshit in Washington because…
We can’t let somebody rise to the top who will pardon these war criminals. Because they need to go to prison for what they’ve done in this world. We can’t have a pardon. They need to pay for what they’ve done.
[snip]
So anyway, I’m gonna go to Crawford tomorrow, and I’m gonna say I want to talk to him, and they say, he’s not coming out, I’m gonna set up my tent there until he comes out to talk to me.
Another thing that I’m doing is – – my son was killed in 2004, so I’m not paying my taxes for 2004. If I get a letter from the IRS, I’m gonna say, you know what, this war is illegal; this is why this war is illegal. This war is immoral; this is why this war is immoral. You killed my son for this. I don’t owe you anything. And if I live to be a million, I won’t owe you a penny.
And I want them to come after me, because unlike what you’ve been doing with the war resistance, I want to put this frickin’ war on trial. And I want to say, “You give me my son, and I’ll pay your taxes.”
[snip]
It’s up to us, the people, to break immoral laws, and resist. As soon as the leaders of a country lie to you, they have no authority over you. These maniacs have no authority over us. And they might be able to put our bodies in prison, but they can’t put our spirits in prison. And I know that Camilo came out a much stronger person, he’s one of my heroes, it’s great a row of heroes in front of me here.
[snip]
And we demonize the Iraqi people, where, most of this country doesn’t even think we’re killing innocent people.
Because, “Oh Cindy, don’t you remember what happened on September 11th?”
“Yeah, but, were any of those people in Iraq? And the people who flew those planes into the Trade Center, where they from Iraq?”
When I was growing up, it was ‘Communists’. Now it’s ‘Terrorists’. So you always have to have somebody to fight and be afraid of, so the war machine can build more bombs, guns, and bullets and everything.
But I do see hope. I see hope in this country. 58% of the American public are with us. We’re preaching to the choir, but the choir’s not singing, if all of the 58% started singing, this war would end.
I got an email the other day and it said, “Cindy, if you didn’t use so much profanity… there’s people ‘on the fence’ that get offended…”
And you know what I said? “You know what? You know what, god-damn-it? How, in the world is anybody still ‘sitting on that fence’?”
“If you fall on the side that is pro-George, and pro-war, you get your ass over to Iraq, and take the place of somebody who wants to come home. And if you fall on the side that is against this war and against George Bush, stand up and speak out.”
But whatever side you fall on, quit being on the fence.
The opposite of good is not evil, it’s apathy. And we have to get this country off their butts, and we have to get the choir singing.
We need to say, bring our troops home now. We can’t depend on the people in charge binging our troops home. Because you don’t plan on bringing the troops home when you drop so much of the reconstruction money into building permanent bases.
I was hoping to come to the banquet tomorrow night, but unless George comes out and talks to me, I’ll be camping at Crawford.
Thank you.>>
http://bellaciao.org/en/article.php3?id_article=7436
The Jewish disagreements are scary to the Israel Firsters .
They are running around like crazy trying to hammer every Israel issue gopher that pop it’s head up out of a hole.
But too late now, Americans are already having a whole different, long past due, conversation about Israel and both parties.