AMEU: Joel Kovel on Israel's Immunity despite savagry

Here's AMEU's flyer for the latest issue of their publication, The Link. Every issue is outstanding and all their back issues are available on their website.

This article, by the brilliant Joel Kovel, the author of Overcoming Zionism, will resonate with many. I'll excerpt two sections, the first which gives the most realistic definition of the Lobby that I've seen.

The second is an important description of soft Zionists. It's a good reminder that there are some who see themselves as anti-Zionists, and/or are opposed to Israel's brutality, wanton destruction and lawlessness, but who, nevertheless, are opposed to efforts to transform the Jewish state into a state for all its people. They find ways of denying the reality of the power of the Lobby, often by smearing opponents as anti-Semites. It's as if they don't understand that Zionism, on the road to becoming perhaps the most destructive ISM in history, means a Jewish state. How can you be an anti –Zionist and support a Jewish state? How can you oppose Israeli oppression and support a Jewish state? The structure of Israel as a Jewish state requires its savagery.

I have one minor or not so minor quibble with Kovel. He writes that U.S. support for Israel would collapse if not for the power of the Lobby (as per his definition). I believe it’s more complicated. Part of the power of the Lobby is that it resonates not merely with activists, but with a large majority of the population, the grassroots who, for a variety of reasons, believe that the Jews are good and the Arabs and Muslims are bad. It’s a Lobby-grassroots dynamic that’s mutually sustaining. The Lobby is telling many people what they want to hear.
Ronald


A DEFINITION of the LOBBY
from Joel Kovel's "Overcoming Immunity"

The suppression mechanism is usually ascribed to an influencing agent, or lobby, either called the “Israel Lobby” or, equivalently, the “Zionist Lobby,” with its apex in AIPAC. Needless to say, a massive and richly funded institutional system of lobbies are a vital part of the process; indeed, one might call them the factories in which the manufacture of the final product is carried out. But the suppression of criticism is not made from whole cloth; there are also components and raw materials to be taken into account. So it is with the lobbies, the raw material for which entails a common belief system that circulates among elites and stems from deeply held assumptions that go back to the origins of our society.

The lobbies as such are therefore powerful enforcers of a much more broadly based system. This develops within what is called civil society, the interconnected set of institutions that comprises the connective tissue of a nation, and includes churches and synagogues, schools, libraries, publishers, and a wide range of community organizations. Among this great mass certain Zionist organs of repression have crystallized in recent years—Campus Watch, CAMERA, the David Project, and so forth—and, in alliance with traditional Zionist groups such as the Anti-Defamation League and the Zionist Organization of America, have acted as focal points of repression. I am sure that they communicate with each other, with AIPAC, and with other major Jewish organizations, as well.

But while there are definitely lobbies among these networks, the overall network is no lobby. It would be better to call it, as sociologist James Petras has, a “Zionist Power Configuration,” or perhaps we could say, a “Zionist Apparatus.” What we call it is not especially important; what matters is that we understand that the loose and decentralized character of the network floats atop an attitudinal sea that supports the basic notions of Zionism, and functions to structure the Israeli cause in the collective mind.

Though a great many repressive acts are initiated by one node of the network or another, a great many others are executed without any particular organizational focus. These fade off, as is the case with most discriminatory campaigns, into gestures and slights, shunnings and glances that never register on the meter as newsworthy. Thus numberless decisions are made by publishers to automatically reject books critical of Israel, at times without even an acknowledgement of receiving the manuscript; or literary agents will decline to represent the work; or if the book finally does get published library committees will decide not to purchase it, or editors of journals will more or less automatically decide not to review it.

***

KOVEL on SOFT ZIONISM

from Joel Kovel's "Overcoming Immunity"

The soft Zionist cannot so easily override the moral contradictions that dog the Jewish state. He is therefore obliged to admit criticism. But he cannot allow criticism to reach the stage of calling Zionism itself into question. Therefore soft Zionism calls for “responsible” criticism and remains divided in its soul. This leads to a veritable frenzy of subterfuges, rationalizations and legal pettifogging. The soft Zionist, generally speaking, does not exult in Israel’s power nor allow himself to dream of Jewish restoration. He will console himself, rather, with “realism” and call attention to the complexities and imperfections of this world. He will advance the (quite specious) notion that everyone is entitled to a national state; or ponder the great sufferings of the Jews and their entitlement, therefore, to a country of their own; or congratulate the Jewish state for allowing the Palestinians who live in Israel proper to vote, all the while chiding its improprieties. More generally, he will consider Israel to be a “normal” state; and when its massive impunity and lawlessness is pointed out—for example, that the country has flouted scores of U.N. resolutions, or that it lacks a constitution—he will rejoin that after all, England lacks a constitution, too, or that nobody is perfect, or that the Arabs are much worse. The technique of the soft Zionist, then, is to employ lines of reasoning that enable Palestinians and Jews to be compared on equal ground—for example, how much each side has suffered, or as perpetrators of equivalent violence. Thus the soft Zionist dwells on narratives—individualized lines of reasoning that foster the equivalence of both sides in a complex and imperfect world—rather than on basic structures of justice whose asymmetry reflects the actual history of Zionist conquest.

Soft Zionists are more numerous than hard Zionists and are often successful in academia, the law, and politics. Being conflicted, they can go one way or the other, and thus on occasion will aid the cause of justice. An important example has arisen in context of the debacle of the neocon-driven 2003 invasion and occupation of Iraq. This has provoked a reaction from representatives of the so-called “realist” school of foreign policy. In the process, Israel itself has come under open criticism for the first time from within the elites, and this in turn provoked a harsh reaction from hard Zionists....

***

Kovel continues with a discussion of President Jimmy Carter's book, Palestine -- Peace Not Apartheid.

read more:

http://ameu.org/printer.asp?iid=284&aid=605

***

Overcoming Impunity, by Joel Kovel
AMEU's Latest Issue of The Link
January 1, 2009
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Contents of This E-mail:
-- Overcoming Impunity
-- Lessons Learned
-- Link Author Joel Kovel
-- Rabbi Elmer Berger
-- The USS Liberty Website


This is the first of five scheduled year 2009 "alerts" to inform you of a new issue of The Link.

Overcoming Impunity
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~


Writing in Haaretz on Dec. 29 about Israel's all- out war on Gaza, Israeli historian Tom Segev observed that:

Israel is striking at the Palestinians to "teach them a lesson." That is a basic assumption that has accompanied the Zionist enterprise since its inception: We are the representatives of progress and enlightenment, sophisticated rationality and morality, while the Arabs are a primitive, violent rabble, ignorant children who must be educated and taught wisdom - via, of course, the carrot-and-stick method, just as the drover does with his donkey."


Israel learned long ago that whatever gratuitous violence and collective punishments it might unleash on Palestinians using weapons and cash from American taxpayers, the U.S. Government would remain silent at best, or, as in the current case of Gaza, perform as cheerleaders. Israel, as Dr. Joel Kovel, points out in the current Link operates without restraint under an umbrella of impunity provided by the world's sole superpower.

Lessons Learned
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~


In listing incidents which informed Israel that the U.S. would always be its Great Enabler, Kovel begins with Israel's 1967 attack on the USS Liberty in international waters off the coast of Gaza. Thirty-four seamen were killed and 137 wounded. President Lyndon B. Johnson called off a rescue mission and survivors were ordered to say nothing about the incident. To this day it is the only peacetime attack on a U.S. naval vessel that Congress refuses to investigate.


Impunity was drawn upon once again by Israel just four days ago when its Navy vessels set upon the mercy ship Dignity 90 miles off Gaza in international waters, firing live ammunition around it without warning, ramming it three times, and forcing it to abort the mission of delivering three tons of medical supplies and surgeons to besieged Gazans.


Link Author Joel Kovel
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~


Joel Kovel, a retired medical doctor, is Professor of Social Studies at Bard College in Annandale, N.Y. He describes himself as a "citizen of the United States and a Jew descended from Russian-Ukrainian immigrants," and explains how he came to write about Zionism and Israel:

Although I spent a great portion of my adult life in movements against racism, war, U.S. imperialism, the corruptions of media and mass culture . . . , I remained relatively quiet about Israel itself until the year 2000. This was not for lack of aversion to Israeli policies, nor did I fear the accusation of anti-semitism, the identification of which with criticism of Israel I had always regarded as tedious, albeit pernicious, nonsense. My reticence stemmed, rather, from certain family conflicts. When the individuals concerned in these--chiefly my mother--passed away, my political development in this sphere resumed and, as if to make up for lost time, gathered speed.


Rabbi Elmer Berger
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~


As each new Link is placed on our website, a companion issue is selected from our archive. To complement Dr. Kovel's discussion on Zionism--his book "Overcoming Zionism" is available from AMEU--we have chosen a Link written by Rabbi Elmer Berger, who for 50 years headed up American Jewish Alternatives to Zionism.


During that half century, Rabbi Berger refused to travel to Israel, saying he would do so only when Israel acknowledged its theft of Palestinian lands, allowed refugees who wanted to return to do so, and paid reparations to others for the land and property they had lost. Rabbi Berger died in 1996, never having set foot in Israel.

As a new feature of every Link issue we interview the webmaster of a site we believe deserves attention. Our interview for this issue is with James Ennes, Jr., who discusses the USS Liberty website. Ennes was on the bridge of the Liberty when it was attacked by Israel.



The USS Liberty Website

Contact Information
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
email: info@ameu.org
voice: 212-870-2053
web: http://www.ameu.org

Gaza Pogrom: Israel Required Palestinians Rockets to Inflict Pogrom + Sniegoski on the power of the Lobby

This image from Israeli sources of a Quassam rocket which apparently landed in Israel from the Gaza strip seems to have Hebrew markings. One question is how did it get such markings?
[:Note: I was later reminded by an alert reader that the Hebrew markings are most likely messages sent in Hebrew to their Jewish cousins. Thanks for the correction.}



http://api.ning.com/files/6yTQ2G99aOTbFK*SAM96tleUKVQoEYkzVDKGppMnQkwLWkuwx4BGWcjJXIG4Aj8uswEv21EFEMcCq81jX116h1BwqnYKX7py/qassam19.jpg


Are they of Israeli origin and if so how did they get to Gaza? If indeed the rockets were made with Israeli parts and "smuggled" to Gaza by means of the Rafah tunnels, that might be one more piece of evidence that this whole "crisis" was manufactured, just as was the 33 day Lebanon War of 2006 with the active participation of the Bush administration and Elliot Abrams, their point man on the Middle East. .

Many have noted that it was Israel who broke the cease fire on Nov 4, 2008 by killing six Hamas activists -- not to mention cutting off vital food and fuel shipments and everything else. Israeli pressure on the Palestinians was dramatically ratcheted up after the January 2006 Parliamentary elections which Hamas won. The elections themselves were insisted upon by the Bush administration, knowing that Hamas would win. (Remarkably this point was made in the US election campaign.) And once again, as in the Lebanon war, it is the US is playing a leading role preventing a cease fire. It is also clear to many that Israel is deliberately targeting civilians just as they are targeting the civil infrastructure so as to make life as difficult as possible for 1.5 million Gazans. Their long range plan is to eliminate non Jews entirely. Could any message be clearer? We don't want you here!!

I was surprised to find in the Forward, a report from a right-wing think tank, the Jerusalem based Shalem Center (not to be confused with the Leftist Philadelphia based Shalom Center) quoting senior fellow Martin Kramer acknowledging that “Israel could have ceased Hamas rocket fire by opening crossings.” Although the Forward article confusingly continues with Kramer saying that “from a political point of view, it is not about rockets but about crossings,” it’s remarkable to find a right wing or any wing Israeli or pro Zionist voice acknowledging that the rockets (and Israeli casualties) have been driven by Israeli policy. (See "What Happens to Gaza When the Fighting Stops?" http://www.forward.com/articles/14907/ )



We can see the current attack on Gaza as yet another post-November parting gift from the Bush-Cheney administration to the incoming Obama team and to the world. (The deep and ongoing CIA/ISI connection suggests that it's not unlikely that the recent terror attack in Mumbai was their first such gift.) In both cases, their actions betray, as have all their policies for the last eight years, their nihilist agenda of permanent war and limitless destruction for its own sake.



As for the wall-to- wall pro Israeli line in the media and in Congress in the face of unspeakable atrocities against a captive, helpless gentile people by Israel and the West who claim Never Again as on abiding mantra, most readers understand that the power of the Lobby, when it comes to defending the most vicious Israeli ruthlessness goes beyond even their grassroots supporters.



Nevertheless it’s worthwhile reviewing a few timely paragraphs from author and analyst Stephen Sniegoski on “Congress’ Gaza Resolution Illustrates Power of the Israel Lobby”

--Ronald

http://bleiersblog.blogspot.com/
http://bleiersdoc.blogspot.com/
http://desip.igc.org/
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Sniegoski writes:

According to the critics, John J. Mearsheimer and Stephen Walt, in their “The Israel Lobby,” much exaggerated the power of the lobby. The critics claimed that congressional support for Israel simply reflected the views of the American people. Congress’ recent resolution on Gaza, however, would seem to belie this criticism and underscore the immense power of the Israel Lobby. Congress almost unanimously endorsed the Israeli mass killing of civilians in the Gaza Strip, which, of course, involves the use of American weapons. By voice vote, the Senate gave unanimous support for the resolution. The House of Representatives voted 390 for the resolution with only 5 against [Kucinich, Moore (WI), Paul, Rahall, Waters]



The view of the American public, however, was significantly different. As the following article points out, the American people “do not support this senseless slaughter in anything near overwhelming numbers.” [Quoting from a Rasmussen Poll]

“Americans, while far more sympathetic to Israel than the Palestinians, are closely divided over whether the Jewish state should be taking military action against militants in the Gaza Strip. Forty-four percent (44%) say Israel should have taken military action against the Palestinians, but 41% say it should have tried to find a diplomatic solution to the problems there...”

[Source: Rasmussen Reports, Dec. 31, 2008]



The author continues: “If 41% of Americans didn't support the onset of military action, surely fewer than that support the disproportionate murder of over 700 people. Yet, 89.6% of our representatives just voted to express our government's support for this crime. Less than one percent of the House voted 'no'.”



The author wonders, rather pretends to wonder, “How did we get to this point where there is such a massive distortion and disconnect between what the public thinks and how their representatives vote? That's a matter for speculation.”

Let’s engage in a little “speculation.” Despite a media which has slanted coverage of Gaza about as much as possible in favor of Israel (totally different from what the rest of the world is getting), the American public is roughly divided on the issue of the correctness of the Israeli attack. That Congress provides almost unanimous support for Israel (even when such support is contrary of American national interest since it increases world hatred of the US) would seem to indicate the power of the Israel Lobby.

Very few of those Americans who oppose the Israeli attack on Gaza base their political support and voting on the Israeli-Palestinian issue, and even those few who do lack the wherewithal to make much of a political impact. In contrast, the Israel Lobby can exert considerable power (money, media) against those members of Congress who oppose it. Since members of Congress, in the main, tend to be lacking in sincere conviction and political courage, they are not willing to take the chance of opposing the Israel Lobby. Of course, the same is true in the media—bucking the lobby is simply not career enhancing. The vast majority of people simply prefer career success in the media or politics as opposed to becoming a martyr—especially a martyr who might be smeared as a devil by the pro-Israel saturated media. Average Americans don’t sacrifice much by taking a position opposed to Israel—certainly, in most cases, their jobs do not depend on their views of Israeli policy. --S.S.



__________________________________________________________

http://www.boomantribune.com/story/2009/1/9/145856/9720



The Gaza Strip Conflict Resolution

by BooMan

Fri Jan 9th, 2009

On the scale of offensive one-sidedness in the Israel-Palestine conflict, the ironically named Gaza Strip Conflict Resolution is probably about a 'five'. The actual text of the resolution has a couple of disputable facts, but its real fault lies in its arbitrary selection of facts. Yet, critiquing the factual basis for the resolution is outside the scope of this essay. It was carefully crafted to assure maximum support. And it just received maximum support in the House, where it passed by a vote of 390-5 with 22 Democrats voting 'present' and 16 representatives not voting.

The five representatives that voted against the resolution are Dennis Kucinich (D-OH), Gwen Moore (D-WI), Ron Paul (R-TX), Nick Rahall (D-WV), and Maxine Waters (D-CA). I believe 21 of the 22 Democratic members that voted 'present' are members of the Progressive Caucus.

The important thing is that 390 members of the House voted for a resolution that states (in part):



Read more:



http://www.boomantribune.com/story/2009/1/9/145856/9720

Stephen Zunes: Rahm Emanuel: Single Loyalty? --To Israel

The choice of Rahm Emanuel as Obama’s chief of staff is scary, Emanuel is hardly a voice for change. It’s hard to distinguish many of his policies from Bush’s.

I’ve been trying to discern a silver lining. Could it be that, like Lincoln, Obama is cleverly including opposition to change within his administration. Also by choosing Emanuel, Obama might be trying to soften blows he might otherwise receive from AIPAC and the Israeli lobby in case he hints at a more just U.S. Mideast policy.

Yes, we can hope, but it’s hard now to imagine Obama moving away from the right on crucial issues. Didn’t I already read in the New York Times a reaffirmation of Obama’s promise to add to the devastatingly bloated “Defense” budget?

The Zunes article is so good it’s hard to excerpt. I’ve also added a couple of paragraphs from Alex Cockburn’s very good article on the same subject.
Ronald
***


Is Obama Screwing His Base with Rahm Emanuel Selection?
By Stephen Zunes, AlterNet
November 7, 2008,
http://www.alternet.org/story/106189/

Stephen Zunes writes:

I had really wanted to celebrate Barack Obama's remarkable victory for a day or so before becoming cynical again. I really did.

And yet, less than 24 hours after the first polls closed, the president-elect chose as his chief of staff -- perhaps the most powerful single position in any administration -- Rahm Emanuel, one of the most conservative Democratic members of Congress.

The chief of staff essentially acts as the president's gatekeeper, determining with whom he has access for advice and analysis. Obama is known as a good listener who has been open to hearing from and considering the perspectives of those on the Left as well as those with a more centrist to conservative perspective. How much access he will actually have as president to more progressive voices, however, is now seriously in question.

Illinois Congressman Rahm Emanuel is a member of the so-called New Democrat Coalition (NDC), of group of center-right pro-business Congressional Democrats affiliated with the Democratic Leadership Conference, which is dedicated to moving the Democratic Party away from its more liberal and progressive base. Numbering only 58 members out of 236 Democrats in the current House of Representatives, the NDC has worked closely with its Republican colleagues in pushing through and passing such legislation as those providing President Bush with "fast-track" trade authority in order to bypass efforts by labor, environmentalists and other public interest groups to promote fairer trade policy.

Emanuel began his political career as a senior adviser and chief fundraiser for the successful 1989 Chicago mayoral campaign of Richard M. Daley to seize back City Hall from reformists who had challenged the corrupt political machine of this father, Richard J. Daley. Emanuel later became a senior adviser to Bill Clinton at the White House from 1993 to 1998, serving as Assistant to the President for Political Affairs and then Senior Advisor to the President for Policy and Strategy, and was credited with playing a major role in shifting the Clinton administration's foreign and domestic policy agenda to the right. Emanuel was the single most important official involved in pushing through the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), the bill ending Aid for Families with Dependent Children (AFDC), and Clinton's draconian crime bill, among other legislation.

Leaving the administration in 1998, Emanuel worked as an investment banker in Chicago, where he amassed an $18 million fortune in less than three years prior to being elected to Congress.

As head of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee since 2004, Emanuel has promoted pro-war and pro-business center-right candidates against anti-war and pro-labor candidates in the primaries, pouring millions of dollars of donations from Democrats across the country into the campaigns of his favored conservative minions to defeat more progressive challengers.

Emanuel was a major supporter of the Iraq War resolution that authorized the invasion of Iraq. Indeed, he was the only one of nine Democratic members of Congress from Illinois who backed granting Bush this unprecedented authority to invade a country on the far side of the world that was no threat to the United States at the time. Even more disturbingly, when asked by Tim Russert on "Meet the Press" whether he would have voted to authorize the invasion "knowing that there are no weapons of mass destruction," Emanuel answered that he indeed would have done so, effectively acknowledging that his support for the war was not about national security, but about oil and empire. Not surprisingly, he has also voted with the Republicans in support of unconditional funding to continue the Iraq War and has consistently opposed efforts by other Democrats to set a timetable for the withdrawal of U.S. occupation forces from that country and related Congressional efforts to end the war.

At a time of record budget deficits, Emanuel has been a passionate supporter of increased spending for the Pentagon and has resisted efforts by fellow Democrats to trim excesses in the Bush administration's bloated military budget. For example, he has repeatedly voted against amendments to cut funding for Bush's dangerously destabilizing missile defense and even voted against an amendment to identify unnecessary Pentagon spending by examining the need, relevance and cost of Cold War weapons systems designed to fight the former Soviet Union.

A major hawk regarding Iran, Emanuel has also voted against Democratic efforts to prevent the Bush administration from launching military action against that country and has joined the administration in exaggerated claims about Iran's alleged nuclear threat. He is not opposed to nuclear proliferation if it involves U.S. allies, however. Emanuel has consistently voted against a series of Democratic amendments that would have strengthened safeguards in the Bush administration's nuclear cooperation agreement with India to prevent U.S. assistance from supporting India's nuclear weapons program.

Emanuel is also a prominent hawk regarding Israel, attacking the Bush administration from the right for criticizing Israel's assassination policies and other human rights abuses. He was also a prominent supporter of Israel's 2006 attacks on Lebanon, even challenging the credibility of Amnesty International and other human rights groups that reported Israeli violations of international humanitarian law. Emanuel's father had emigrated from Israel in the 1950s, where he had been a member of the terrorist group Irgun, which had been responsible for a series of terrorist attacks against Palestinian and British civilians in mandatory Palestine during the 1940s. Emanuel himself served in a civilian capacity as a volunteer for the Israeli army in the early 1990s.

It is unclear how serious of a blow Obama's selection of Emanuel is to those who hoped that Obama might actually steer the country in a more progressive direction. It's easy to see it as nothing less than a slap in the face of the progressive anti-war elements of the party to whom Obama owes his election, particularly following his selection of Sen. Joe Biden as vice president. (See my articles "Biden's Foreign Policy 'Experience'" and "Biden, Iraq, and Obama's Betrayal.")

However, this does not necessarily mean that Obama as president will pursue nothing better than a Clintonesque center-right agenda. Someone with Obama's intelligence, knowledge and leadership qualities need not be unduly restricted by the influence of his chief of staff as less able presidents have. At the same time, this shocking appointment of Emanuel is illustrative of the need for the progressive base that brought him to power to not celebrate too long and to refocus our energies into pushing hard to ensure that the change Obama promised is something we really can believe in.

Stephen Zunes is a professor of politics and chair of Middle Eastern Studies at the University of San Francisco and serves as a senior policy analyst for Foreign Policy in Focus.
© 2008 Independent Media Institute. All rights reserved.
View this story online at: http://www.alternet.org/story/106189/
***


November 7 / 9, 2008
CounterPunch Diary
From
Hail to the Chief of Staff

By ALEXANDER COCKBURN

Working in the Clinton White House, Emanuel helped push through NAFTA, the crime bill, the balanced budget and welfare reform. He favored the war in Iraq, and when he was chairing the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee in 2006 he made great efforts to knock out antiwar Democratic candidates. On this site in October and November, 2006, John Walsh documented both the efforts and Emanuel’s role in losing the Democrats seats they would otherwise have won.

In 2006 Emanuel had just published a book with Bruce Reed called The Plan: Big Ideas for America, with one section focused on “the war on terror”. Emanuel and Reed wrote, “We need to fortify the military's ‘thin green line ‘around the world by adding to the U.S. Special Forces and the Marines, and by expanding the U.S. army by 100,000 more troops. …Finally we must protect our homeland and civil liberties by creating a new domestic counterterrorism force like Britain's MI5.” Recall that Obama has been calling throughout his recent campaign for an addition of 92,000 to the US Army and US Marine Corps.

Emanuel and Reed had fond words for the mad-dog Peter Beinart, neocon warrior theoretician for the Democrats, roosting Marty Peretz's The New Republic, and author of The Good Fight where Beinart explained why a tough new national security policy is as essential to the future of progressive politics as a united front against totalitarianism and communism was to the New Deal and the Great Society. Emanuel and Reed also commended Anne-Marie Slaughter's proposal for "a new division of labor in which the United Nations takes on economic and social assistance and an expanded NATO takes over the burden of collective security." In other words, let NATO shoot the natives and the UN clean the floors.

Read more: www.counterpunch.org

Dual Loyalty on the Upper West Side + Justin Raimondo on Obama on bended knee to the Lobby

NYC Upper West Side Jews having trouble with Obama?
Anecdotally from my Upper West Side health club. One Jewish supporter of Obama told me that several of his acquaintances were having trouble with Obama. He guessed it was racism. I suggested it might be Israel.

Another -- this one I guessed was a Zionist -- told me about an upcoming forum about Obama at a local synagogue next week. He said there was concern that an Obama presidency might be hurting them in their pocketbooks. When I challenged him, he allowed how there might be other issues of concern.

Here's Justin Raimondo on Obama's response to a Zionist interrogation. What pleasantly surprised me was how much freedom of action he managed to cut out for himself. But it's because of his intelligence and independence that they'll vote against their pocketbooks and for McCain.

It's called dual loyalty, and yes, Bill, it's alive and well on the Upper West Side, not to mention other parts of the city.

Ronald


Justin Raimondo:
Obama vs. The Lobby
No matter how much he grovels, it's never enough
http://www.antiwar.com/justin/?articleid=12834

Washington Post: Quel Surprise: Bush is also bad for Israel

Laura Rozen's useful warandpiece.com blog found this WP article pointing to the obvious: that George W. Bush's policies after all aren't very good for Israel either. The article was written with the common misconception in mind that Bush's policies were intended to be good for Israel. The underlying idea is that his bad policies were mistakes, somehow, miscalculations.
It's interesting how reality has to be twisted like a pretzel, especially when reality is staring us in the face --well ok, my face.
His policies were intended to be as bad for Israel as they are for everywhere else, especially the US, and especially the Middle East (isn't that where Israel is situated?). Bush and Cheney are diehard (pun intended) proponents of Year Zero --destroy everything and then (theoretically) start over. Only they believe in crushing everything and everybody to the point where it's impossible to survive, much less start over.
Interesting that it's taken two terms of Bush for some of these smart guys quoted in the article to wake up to the effects at least of what Bush is doing.
Ronald

WP:
May 13, 2008
Appearing at an Israeli Embassy reception last Thursday to mark the 60th anniversary of the Jewish state, Vice President Cheney voiced a sentiment that is common among many American Jews, evangelicals and others. "Israel has never had a better friend in the White House than the 43rd president of the United States," he said.

Yet as President Bush prepares to return to Jerusalem this week to celebrate the milestone, that assessment is the subject of fierce debate both here and Israel. Few doubt the sincerity of Bush's passion, which has translated into unprecedented backing for Israeli self-defense and the most clearly stated presidential commitment to protect Israel if it is attacked.

But from left to right, Bush also faces criticism for pursuing Middle East policies that, many diplomats and analysts believe, have left Israel more threatened than when he assumed office in January 2001.

"The sum total is that if you measure Israeli security at the beginning of this administration and at the end of the administration, based on things the president either could have done, should have done or failed to do, the report card is pretty negative," said Daniel C. Kurtzer, who served as Bush's first-term ambassador to Israel.

As one former US government officer commented on news that Lebanese Druze leader Jumblatt had basically surrendered to Hizbollah, "Same guys that gave you Gaza gave you this. Do you think any of them are smart enough to see what they've done?" Adds another former US official who served in Lebanon: "This administration is bankrupt in every way -- absolutely hopeless."
Posted by Laura at 11:03 AM

Left I on the News blogger has it right. Virtually all the influential Democrats are supporting -- or can't be seen not to be supporting -- a US attack on Iran. As many are warning, such an attack is likely to have a devastating effect on what is left of the US republic -- and for many many millions, that will be the least of the horrors.

Left I doesn't get into the reason that such a fanatical Zionist as Senator Lieberman can summon extensive political support for such a catastrophic undertaking. But as a advocate for Palestinian human and civil rights, LeftI probably wouldn't disagree that such potentially destructive legislative underwriting of Bush-Cheney warmongering is made possible or demanded by the powerful Zionist lobby which has been demonizing Iran as an existential threat with increasing persistence.

The mechanism of such demonizing is the same as has been pursued by leaders ever since there were human groups or tribes that coveted the resources of other human groups. Politicians soon learned that a quick and easy way to stay in power and to control a restive population was to promote fear and hatred of the Other (see Orwell's 1984).

Since 9/11 we have become even more tightly bound captives of this leadership requirement/desire for war in large part, because of the power and authority of one man, Dick Cheney, in a way that is perhaps unprecedented in US history. The Bush-Cheney leadership understands that in order to facilitate their pathological desire for endless war they can harness the power of Zionist interest in dominating the Middle East through constant tension and threats of war. Thus the devastation of Iraq and the current threats -- perhaps to be carried out early next year -- against Iran.

It’s not clear whether someone as clever as Senator Lieberman is driven more by arrogance or by denial in his refusal to recognize that his desire for an attack on Iran is likely to result in a disaster for both the US and Israel, and more likely in the short term rather than the middle or long term.

Our reality today is that the pathology and the ideology of those who were considered crazies only a few short years ago is present in the White House, the most powerful and darkly effective military machine the world has ever seen. And all this is supported and enabled by those who actively or tacitly support a Jewish state in the former Palestine. It's a little weird that our very civilization should be threatened by such a project and that this should be the moment in our history when the proverbial manure will find its way to reaches heretofore untouched.

In a footnote that might be helpful to those seeking evidence of the power that Zionism today has over the U.S. political system, one can find in a very useful and important newly published book by the redoubtable London based Palestinian activist and writer, Dr. Ghada Karmi, in her chapter on "Why Does the West Support Israel?" a quote from a campaign speech that Senator John Kerry made in 2004: He said:

“We are not secure while Israel, the one true democracy in the [Middle Eastern] region, remains the victim of an unrelenting campaign of terror…American leadership is needed to bolster Israel’s security at home as well as in the region.”

It should -- but doesn’t necessarily -- go without saying that Kerry has it exactly 180 degrees wrong: it is Israel which has been threatening the security of many if not all of its neighbors at one time or another or ever since it was implanted into the neighborhood.

That our leading politicians are forced to parrot the myth of Israeli insecurity as a regular staple in our campaign seasons and at all other relevant moments ought to be evidence enough of where is the tail and who is the dog.

As it happens, Dr Karmi is coming to the States in early November to publicize her new book, Married to Another Man: Israel’s Dilemma in Palestine . Those interested in learning about her appearances should contact me or Manal Ramadan : manalramadan2023@yahoo.com who is arranging her schedule.
Ronald
***


Blogger Left I on the News wrote:
Tuesday, October 02, 2007
The meaning of Lieberman-Kyl

http://lefti.blogspot.com/

There's been a lot written about the Lieberman-Kyl amendment that passed the Senate the other day 76-22, with Hillary Clinton voting for it and Barack Obama shamefully absenting himself from the vote. Most of the attention has been on its designation of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard as a "terrorist organization" and the implications that has for the possibility of a war against Iran (since the Senate has already given its approval for a "war on terror"). Amazingly, some Democrats are even bragging about how sections 3 and 4 were excised from the amendment before its passage:
(3) that it should be the policy of the United States to combat, contain, and roll back the violent activities and destabilizing influence inside Iraq of the Government of the Islamic Republic of Iran, its foreign facilitators such as Lebanese Hezbollah, and its indigenous Iraqi proxies;

(4) to support the prudent and calibrated use of all instruments of United States national power in Iraq, including diplomatic, economic, intelligence, and military instruments, in support of the policy described in paragraph (3) with respect to the Government of the Islamic Republic of Iran and its proxies;
But these deletions, while some kind of improvement, still don't detract from what the amendment accomplished in giving an imprimatur to war against Iran. Consider point 2 for example, which remains:
(2) that it is a vital national interest of the United States to prevent the Government of the Islamic Republic of Iran from turning Shi'a militia extremists in Iraq into a Hezbollah-like force that could serve its interests inside Iraq, including by overwhelming, subverting, or co-opting institutions of the legitimate Government of Iraq;
After all, if this is our "vital national interest," then whatever it takes to defend that "national interest" is surely acceptable.


So, even as amended, there can be no doubt that this amendment was a strong endorsement by the Senate, including half of the Democrats, for war against Iran. But actually, the reason I'm writing here is to call attention to the one section of the amendment which has been pretty much overlooked - section 1:
(1) that the manner in which the United States transitions and structures its military presence in Iraq will have critical long-term consequences for the future of the Persian Gulf and the Middle East, in particular with regard to the capability of the Government of the Islamic Republic of Iran to pose a threat to the security of the region, the prospects for democracy for the people of the region, and the health of the global economy;
What does that mean to you? I tell you what it means to me - that the Senate has just endorsed not just war against Iran, but an indefinite presence in Iraq, now justified as preventing Iran from "posing a threat to the security of the region."
***

Sara Roy's review of a book on Hamas Censored

Don't miss the details below of how Sara Roy's review of a book on Hamas was censored. Yet another instance of Zionist censorship, this time of an article by a highly regarded academic who has written definitive books on life in Gaza and on life for the Palestinians under Israeli occupation.

The interesting thing is that in so many less than high profile cases, an Alan Dershowitz is not required to silence any semblance of an anti-Zionist, or anti Israeli policy, or simply objective position. All that is required in these cases is a pro Israeli faculty member or two to notice that this or that review, this or that associate professor is not good for the Jews, not good for Zionism.

The Zionists have the power, they know they have the power and they know they are free to exercise their power with minimal chance of pushback or consequence. So the niceties of fair play, academic freedom, of speech, don't apply. (Would we do the same thing if we had the power?) The same can be said of the "war on terror."Freedom of speech, due process doesn't apply to those who are perceived as terrorists, enemies, real or imagined of the US and/or Israel, as long as they are Muslims.
Ronald
***>
> BOOK REVIEW
>
> Hamas: Politics, Charity and Terrorism in the Service of Jihad by
> Matthew Levitt. Yale University Press, in cooperation with the
> Washington Institute for Near East Policy, 2006. 324 pages, $26.00,
> hardcover.
>
> Sara Roy
> Center for Middle Eastern Studies, Harvard University
> http://mepc.org/journal_vol14/0707_roy.asp
>
> Author's Note:
> This review, published here in its entirety, was originally
> commissioned by The Fletcher Forum of World Affairs, the official
> foreign-policy journal at the Fletcher School at Tufts University.
>
> Between the time I was invited to write the review and the time I was
> told it would be published, over two months had passed during which I
> had had several exchanges, some of them difficult, with the editorial
> staff. However, by the end of the process the editor-in-chief, with
> whom I had been working, was pleased with the review, and so was I. He
> sent me an e-PDF of the review as it would appear in the journal
> (Volume 31:1 Winter 2007). The PDF version of the page proofs revealed
> that the editor had excerpted two relevant sentences (featured in
> sidebars) to highlight observations that I had offered in the review:
>
> 1. "While there can be no doubt that, since its inception, Hamas has
> engaged in violence and armed struggle, and has been the primary force
> behind the horrific suicide bombings inside Israel, Levitt's
> presentation reduces this increasingly complex and sophisticated
> organization to an insular, one-dimensional...entity dedicated solely
> to violence...and Israel's destruction."
> 2. "The ability of Hamas to reinterpret itself over time through
> processes of radicalization, de-radicalization, de-militarization, and
> re-radicalization is a pronounced and common theme in its historical
> evolution."
> During a subsequent exchange the editor-in-chief wrote, "Thank you for
> your hard work as well. It's a good review." I believed that was the
> end of the matter. Just a few days later, I received the following
> e-mail message from the same editor-in-chief:
>
> Dear Ms. Roy:
> ?After careful review and much consideration of the merits of your
> piece, we have decided that we are ultimately unable to publish your
> review for this edition. Your review was evaluated by several of our
> editors and an external editor for objectivity. Unfortunately, they
> disagreed with my decision to publish your review for the following
> reasons: despite their agreement with many of your points, all
> reviewers found the piece one-sided. This one-sidedness dissuaded
> readers from reading the piece to the end; ultimately, this last point
> is the most important. Although I found your arguments valuable, if
> readers consistently feel this way, I am unable to move forward with a
> piece. My apologies for the way in which this process was carried out,
> and for the time that you spent on editing the piece. Thank you once
> again for your submission and your efforts. If you would like to
> discuss this further, please feel free to e-mail me.
>
> In more than 20 years of writing and publishing I have never
> experienced such behavior or encountered what to me, at least, is so
> blatant a case of censorship. I am therefore extremely grateful to
> Anne Joyce and Stephen Magro for agreeing to publish the review in
> Middle East Policy.
>
> ===
>
> At the beginning of the first Palestinian uprising, I was living in
> Gaza and spent much time in the refugee camps interviewing families
> about the political and socioeconomic changes taking place around
> them. Despite the harsh living situation, Palestinians were filled
> with a palpable sense of hope and possibility that has since
> evaporated. Hamas was then struggling to create a popular
> constituency, despite overwhelming support among Palestinians for
> secular nationalism. That was 18 years ago, and neither I nor anyone
> else ever thought that Hamas would one day emerge as a major political
> actor: democratically winning legislative elections, defeating the
> majority Fatah party and heading a Palestinian government.
>
> In his recent book, Matthew Levitt, who is deputy assistant secretary
> for intelligence and analysis at the U.S. Department of the Treasury
> and an expert in financial counterterrorism, argues that Hamas is
> strictly a terrorist organization that is not only a domestic threat
> but a global one, a part of an international jihad network with links
> to al-Qaeda that must be met with force. He further argues ? and this
> is the core of his book ? that despite the existence of differentiated
> political, social and military sectors within Hamas, they are all part
> of the same "apparatus of terror."
>
> Levitt devotes significant attention to attacking the Islamist social
> sector (dawa) and Hamas's charitable institutions. It is the principle
> aim of his book to show how Hamas uses its extensive social-service
> network-mosques, schools, kindergartens, orphanages, hospitals,
> clinics, sports clubs, youth clubs-to further its primary political
> agenda, which he claims is the destruction of Israel. He argues that
> through its social support structure and services, "Hamas leverages
> the appreciation (and indebtedness) it earns through social welfare
> activities to garner support ? both political and logistical ? for its
> terrorist activities." Levitt summarizes his argument as follows: "The
> general deprivation of the Palestinian people in the Israeli-occupied
> territories predisposes them to favor the much-needed social support
> that Hamas provides." He continues, "In addition to purchasing
> goodwill, charities also create a built-in logistical support umbrella
> underneath which terrorist operations are sheltered and operate." He
> explains that the dawa network operationally supports terrorism
> through recruitment, employment and financing and by providing
> institutional legitimacy.
>
> His evidence, at times interesting, particularly with regard to
> Hamas's external sources of financing, is more often than not based on
> assumption, extrapolation and generalization. For example, as evidence
> for how religious organizations raise money for Palestinian terrorism,
> Levitt quotes from a pamphlet produced by a Quranic memorization
> center that was sponsored by the Ramallah-al Bireh charity committee.
> The pamphlet listed 30 ways to enter heaven, including "Jihad for the
> sake of Allah by fighting with one's soul and money."
>
> In another example of how hospitals are used to support terrorism,
> Levitt briefly describes the Dar al-Salam Hospital: "According to
> information cited by the FBI," the hospital is considered a Hamas
> institution because it was founded with "Hamas funds and protection."
> But Levitt fails to provide any real evidence of these funds or how
> and why they are considered "Hamas." The assumption is that these
> ties, even if they are shown to exist, are inherently evil and can be
> nothing else.
>
> In a chapter on how the dawa teaches terror and radicalizes
> Palestinian society, Levitt writes, "Recipients of Hamas financial aid
> or social services are less likely to turn down requests from the
> organization such as allowing their homes to serve as safe houses for
> Hamas fugitives, ferrying fugitives, couriering funds or weapons,
> storing and maintaining explosives, and more." He cites as evidence
> for this sweeping statement one resident of Jabalya refugee camp in
> Gaza who fed Hamas militants daily. The possibility that Palestinians
> receive support from Hamas institutions without preconditions or that
> popular support requires more than the lure of financial incentives
> and free social services does not enter Levitt's argument. Levitt also
> claims, "When angry, frustrated or humiliated Palestinians regularly
> listen to sermons in mosques in which Jews, Israelis and even
> Americans are depicted as enemies of Islam and Palestine, Hamas's
> official policy may not restrain individual enthusiasm." One wonders
> how Mr. Levitt knows these things, given that he appears never to have
> stepped inside a Hamas institution in Gaza or the West Bank or to have
> conducted any fieldwork at all.
>
> While these arguments are oft-repeated in today's media, Levitt does
> little to address research that supports a very different conclusion
> regarding the Hamas dawa. Some of the key findings of this research
> point to institutional features that demonstrate no preference for
> religion or politics over other ideologies, particularly in
> programmatic work; an approach to institutional work that advocates
> incrementalism, moderation, order and stability; a philosophical and
> practical desire for productivity and professionalism that shuns
> radical change and emphasizes community development and civic
> restoration over political violence; and no evidence of any formal
> attempt to impose an Islamic model of political, social, legal or
> religious behavior, or to create an alternative Islamic or Islamist
> conception of society.
>
> While there can be no doubt that, since its inception, Hamas has
> engaged in violence and armed struggle and has been the primary force
> behind the horrific suicide bombings inside Israel, Levitt's
> presentation reduces this increasingly complex and sophisticated
> organization to an insular, one-dimensional and seemingly mindless
> entity dedicated solely to violence, terrorism and Israel's
> destruction. To fully understand the current political stature of
> Hamas, it is necessary to closely examine the dramatic transitions
> that have occurred within the organization itself, among Palestinians
> with respect to their society, and in Palestine's relationship with
> Israel.
>
>> From the point of view of Hamas, Palestine is an Arab and Islamic land
> that fell to colonial control with the demise of the Ottoman Empire.
> The establishment of the State of Israel is viewed as a way to
> perpetuate colonial authority over the Muslim homeland and is
> therefore illegitimate. As victims of colonialism, Hamas argues that
> Palestinians have the right to resist and struggle to regain their
> homeland and freedom, viewing this as a local and nationalist
> struggle. Now, almost two decades after its birth, Hamas has grown in
> size and popularity. While changes have not been made to its frame of
> reference or objectives, its political discourse has become more
> refined and streamlined, particularly with regard to its relations
> with local groups, political factions, other religious communities and
> other nations.
>
> Unfortunately, Matthew Levitt's book does not address the critical
> evolutionary processes ? particularly with regard to its
> organizational structure and political, social and economic role in
> Palestinian society ? that have characterized the Palestinian Islamist
> movement and Hamas's rise to power. The ability of Hamas to
> reinterpret itself over time through processes of radicalization,
> de-radicalization, de-militarization and re-radicalization is a
> pronounced and common theme in its historical evolution. Levitt
> neglects to address the significance behind this commitment to
> reinterpretation. His analysis aims simply to demonize Hamas, and he
> discounts the critical connections between changing patterns of
> protest and structures of society, competing visions of a Palestinian
> social and political order, and contesting Islamic and secular
> definitions of meaning and legitimacy. The synergy among these forces
> has characterized the history and growth of Palestinian Islamism.
>
> Israel's military occupation, which has long been the defining context
> for Palestinian life, is almost absent from Levitt's book. Hamas's
> popularity and growing empowerment derive from its role as a
> resistance organization, fighting against an occupation that is now 40
> years old. Israel's steady expropriation, fragmentation and division
> of Palestinian lands; settlement construction and expansion; closure
> restrictions and destruction of the Palestinian economy are not part
> of Levitt's discussion, nor is the right of the Palestinians to resist
> these measures. In those few instances where the occupation is
> mentioned, it is couched in terms that acknowledge Palestinian
> hardship ? a reality exploited by Hamas ? but justified as a response
> to terrorism. In the absence of any serious examination of Israel's
> occupation, Levitt's portrayal of the rise of Hamas is completely
> detached from the context within which it was produced and shaped.
>
> Despite evidence to the contrary, the organization is also described
> as a movement incapable of transformation, ignoring the improvements
> in Hamas's political discourse regarding political compromise with the
> State of Israel and resolution of the conflict. During the period of
> the Oslo peace process, for example, some dramatic changes occurred
> within Hamas. The organization was moving away from the extreme and a
> position of confrontation towards one that was more centrist and
> moderate. This shift was characterized by a reorientation in policy
> and strategic emphasis from political/military action to social works
> and community development. Accompanying this shift was a redefinition
> of the nature of the Palestinian struggle, which was no longer for
> political or military power per se but for defining new social
> arrangements and appropriate cultural and institutional models that
> would meet social needs without resort to violence. Similarly, the
> Islamist movement was not advancing a policy of isolation but was
> calling for greater accommodation and cooperation with both domestic
> and international actors.
>
> Since Hamas's victory in the January 2006 legislative elections, there
> has been a further evolution in its political thinking ? as evidenced
> in some of its key political documents ? characterized by a strong
> emphasis on state-building and programmatic work, greater refinement
> with regard to its position on a two-state solution and the role of
> resistance, and a progressive de-emphasis on religion. (See Khaled
> Hroub, "A `New Hamas' Through Its New Documents," Journal of Palestine
> Studies, 34 (4) (Summer 2006)). These are absent from Levitt's
> discussion. Levitt also overlooks questions that are vital to any
> analysis of Hamas, especially at present. To name just a few, what
> were Hamas's ideological, philosophical and structural boundaries? How
> and why were they reset and expanded? What is the role of religion as
> opposed to politics in Islamist thought and practice, particularly in
> the public sphere? Are religion and politics truly unified? Can Hamas
> reconcile faith and ideology with a demand for a place in the
> political system?
>
> Levitt's book has many serious flaws and merits a detailed critique
> that extends well beyond the scope of this review. His is not a work
> of analysis or scholarship, to say the least, and despite certain
> points that are interesting and accurate, anyone wishing to gain a
> substantive, reasoned and critical understanding of Hamas would do
> well to look elsewhere.
>
> *********************************************************************

Tony Karon: Jewish Opposition to the Lobby?

Tony Karon perceives growing dissent among American Jews, a source of potential power that might serve as a counterforce to the Israel Lobby. Karon makes for interesting reading and he provides important documentation of current events, but I think he's way too optimistic. The power of the Lobby is today greater than ever -- to the point that it's currently on steroids despite the heroic work of President Carter and Walt/Mearshimer and others.

Here are a few sentences about Hillary's position on Israel from the JTA (9.12.07) which effectively sum up the depth of the obeisance to the Lobby of the Democrat front runners -- and virtually everyone else running for president.

In her new position paper on Israel, Hillary Rodham Clinton comes not only to praise the Jewish state but to bury doubts that she would be any less vigilant in its protection than the Bush administration...
Perhaps, but Clinton faces challenges for Jewish support from two flanks: Rudy Giuliani, the former New York mayor who is a Republican front-runner, has moved even further to the right of Bush, saying that now is not the time to consider Palestinian statehood. And Sen. Barack Obama (D-Ill.), her chief rival for the Democratic nomination, has made considerable inroads among liberal Jewish donors.Despite the stepped-up challenges from Obama and Giuliani, a recent poll of 200 rabbis from all of the major denominations named her as the presidential candidate most supportive of Israel and Jewish causes.

One might think that it is evident that the power of the Lobby has been lifted to it's current hyper intensity in large part due to the terror events of 9/11 and the false attribution of Muslim fanatics as the cause or even as unwilling patsies on the scene. It's worth emphasizing that the terror of 9/11 is the springboard and the repeated justification for the phony but powerful and disastrous "War on Terror." That's bad enough. Equally dispiriting is that even opponents of Bush's purposeful and endless war against civilization have difficulty looking at the stark evidence of controlled demolition which ought to demonstrate that Osama couldn't have done it.

(For a handy primer on some of the evidence demonstrating that it must have been an inside job see: Summary of David Ray Griffin's 10 major points in support of controlled demolition [ http://www.truthmove.org/content/demolition-wtc-7/ ]This particular link provides, among much else, a handy video of the rather obvious free fall controlled demolition of WTC Building 7.

It's also probably clear to many that the reason that so many on the left choose to believe Bush on this matter and no other is because they are comfortable with the notion of fanatical Muslim terrorists -- which is precisely the core of the strength of the Lobby.

Ronald
***

Tom Dispatch
posted 2007-09-13
Tomgram: Tony Karon on Growing Dissent among American Jews
I often think of the letters that come into the Tomdispatch email box as the university of my later life -- messages from around the world, offering commentary, criticism, encouragement, but mainly teaching me about lives (and versions of life) I would otherwise know little or nothing about. Then again, the Internet has a way of releasing inhibitions and, from time to time, the Tomdispatch email box is also a sobering reminder of the mindless hate in our world -- of every sort, but sometimes of a strikingly anti-Semitic sort, letters that are wildly angry and eager, above all, to shut down or shut up commentary or debate of any sort.

It's ironic, then, that the threat of sparking such "anti-Semitism," as well as charges of being functionally anti-Semitic, have been used for a long time in this country as a kind of club to enforce, within the Jewish community, an exceedingly narrow range of correct opinion on Israel and its behavior in the world. In recent months, such attacks from within the Jewish establishment seem to have escalated whenever any professor or critic steps even slightly out of line, and the recent controversial book, The Israeli Lobby and U.S. Foreign Policy by John Mearsheimer and Steven Walt has caused a little storm of consternation. Tony Karon, who runs the always provocative Rootless Cosmopolitan website, suggests that these attacks may not be what they seem, that the need to turn back every deviation from Jewish orthodoxy may actually reflect a loosening of control within the political world of American Jews, and a new opening, a Jewish glasnost. Tom

Is a Jewish Glasnost Coming to America?

http://www.zmag.org/content/showarticle.cfm?SectionID=107&ItemID=13777

[This article first appeared on Tomdispatch.com, a weblog of the Nation Institute, which offers a steady flow of alternate sources, news, and opinion from Tom Engelhardt, long time editor in publishing, co-founder of the American Empire Project and author of The End of Victory Culture (University of Massachusetts Press), which has just been thoroughly updated in a newly issued edition that deals with victory culture's crash-and-burn sequel in Iraq.]

Despite a Backlash, Many Jews Are Questioning Israel
By Tony Karon

First, a confession: It may tell me that I hate myself, but I can't help loving Masada2000, the website maintained by militant right-wing Zionist followers of Rabbi Meir Kahane. The reason I love it is its D.I.R.T. list -- that's "Dense anti-Israel Repugnant Traitors" (also published as the S.H.I.T. list of "Self-Hating and Israel-Threatening" Jews). And that's not because I get a bigger entry than -- staying in the Ks -- Henry Kissinger, Michael Kinsley, Naomi Klein, or Ted Koppel. The Kahanists are a pretty flaky lot, counting everyone from Woody Allen to present Prime Minister Ehud Olmert on their list of Jewish traitors. But the habit of branding Jewish dissidents -- those of us who reject the nationalist notion that as Jews, our fate is tied to that of Israel, or the idea that our people's historic suffering somehow exempts Israel from moral reproach for its abuses against others -- as "self-haters"is not unfamiliar to me.

In 1981, my father went, as a delegate of the B'nai B'rith Jewish service organization, to a meeting of the Cape Town chapter of the Jewish Board of Deputies, the governing body of South Africa's Jewish communal institutions. The topic of the meeting was "Anti-Semitism on Campus." My father was pretty shocked and deeply embarrassed when Exhibit A of this phenomenon turned out to be something I'd published in a student newspaper condemning an Israeli raid on Lebanon.
By then, I was an activist in the anti-apartheid movement in South Africa, which was consuming most of my energies. Having been an active left-Zionist in my teenage years, I had, however, retained an interest in the Middle East -- and, of course, we all knew that Israel was the South African white apartheid regime's most important ally, arming its security forces in defiance of a UN arms embargo. Even back then, the connection between the circumstances of black people under apartheid, and those of Palestinians under occupation in the West Bank and Gaza, seemed obvious enough to me and to many other Jews in the South African liberation movement: Both were peoples harshly ruled over by a state that denied them the rights of citizenship.

Still, this was a first. I could recite the kiddush from memory, sing old kibbutznik anthems and curse in Yiddish. I had been called a "bloody Jew" many times, but never an anti-Semite or a self-hating Jew. What quickly became clear to me, though, was the purpose of that "self-hating" smear -- to marginalize Jews who dissent from Zionism, the nationalist ideology of Jewish statehood, in order to warn others off expressing similar views.

What I like about the S.H.I.T. list's approach to the job -- other than the "Dangerous Minds" theme music that plays as you read it -- is the way it embraces literally thousands of names, including many of my favorite Jews. Memo to the sages at Masada2000: If you're trying to paint dissenters as demented traitors, you really have to keep the numbers down. Instead, Masada2000's inadvertent message is: "Think critically about Israel and you'll join Woody Allen and a cast of thousands..."

A New Landscape of Jewish Dissent
The Kahanists are a fringe movement, but their self-defeating list may nonetheless be a metaphor for the coming crisis in more mainstream nationalist efforts to police Jewish identity. The Zionist establishment has had remarkable success over the past half-century in convincing others that Israel and its supporters speak for, and represent, "the Jews." The value to their cause of making Israel indistinguishable from Jews at large is that it becomes a lot easier to shield Israel from reproach. It suggests, in the most emphatic terms, that serious criticism of Israel amounts to criticism of Jews. More than a millennium of violent Christian persecution of Jews, culminating in the Holocaust, has made many in the West rightly sensitive towards any claims of anti-Semitism, a sensitivity many Zionists like to exploit to gain a carte blanche exemption from criticism for a state they claim to be the very personification of Jewishness.

So, despite Israel's ongoing dispossession and oppression of the Palestinians in the occupied territories, then-Harvard president Larry Summers evidently had no trouble saying, in 2002, that harsh criticisms of Israel are "anti-Semitic in their effect if not in their intent."

Robin Shepherd of the usually sensible British think-tank Chatham House has gone even further, arguing that comparing Israel with apartheid South Africa is "objective anti-Semitism." Says Shepherd: "Of course one can criticize Israel, but there is a litmus test, and that is when the critics begin using constant key references to South Africa and the Nazis, using terms such as ‘bantustans.' None of these people, of course, will admit to being racist, but this kind of anti-Semitism is a much more sophisticated form of racism, and the kind of hate-filled rhetoric and imagery are on the same moral level as racism, so gross and distorted that they are defaming an entire people, since Israel is an essentially Jewish project."

I'd agree that the Nazi analogy is specious -- not only wrong but offensive in its intent, although not "racist". But the logic of suggesting it is "racist" to compare Israel to apartheid South Africa is simply bizarre. What if Israel objectively behaves like apartheid South Africa? What then?

Actually, Mr. Shepherd, I'd be more inclined to pin the racist label on anyone who conflates the world's 13 million Jews with a country in which 8.2 million of them -- almost two thirds -- have chosen not to live.

Although you wouldn't know it -- not if you followed Jewish life simply through the activities of such major Jewish communal bodies as the Conference of Presidents of American Jewish Organizations and the Anti-Defamation League -- the extent to which the eight million Jews of the Diaspora identify with Israel is increasingly open to question (much to the horror of the Zionist-oriented Jewish establishment). In a recent study funded by the Andrea and Charles Bronfman Philanthropies (an important donor to Jewish communal organizations), Professors Steven M. Cohen and Ari Y. Kelman revealed that their survey data had yielded some extraordinary findings: In order to measure the depth of attachment of American Jews to Israel, the researchers asked whether respondents would consider the destruction of the State of Israel a "personal tragedy." Less than half of those aged under 35 answered "yes" and only 54% percent of those aged 35-50 agreed (compared with 78% of those over 65). The study found that only 54% of those under 35 felt comfortable with the very idea of a Jewish state.
As groups such as the Jewish Agency in Israel (which aims to promote Jewish immigration) and the American Jewish committee expressed dismay over the findings, Cohen and Kelman had more bad news: They believed they were seeing a long-term trend that was unlikely to be reversed, as each generation of American Jews becomes even more integrated into the American mainstream than its parents and grandparents had been. The study, said Cohen, reflected "very significant shifts that have been occurring in what it means to be a Jew."

Cohen's and Kelman's startling figures alone underscore the absurdity of Shepherd's suggestion that to challenge Israel is to "defame an entire people." They also help frame the context for what I would call an emerging Jewish glasnost in which Jewish critics of Israel are increasingly willing to make themselves known. When I arrived in the United States 13 years ago, I was often surprised to find that people with whom I seemed to share a progressive, cosmopolitan worldview would suddenly morph into raging ultranationalists when the conversation turned to Israel. Back then, it would have seemed unthinkable for historian Tony Judt to advocate a binational state for Israelis and Palestinians or for Washington Post columnist Richard Cohen to write that "Israel itself is a mistake. It is an honest mistake, a well-intentioned mistake, a mistake for which no one is culpable, but the idea of creating a nation of European Jews in an area of Arab Muslims (and some Christians) has produced a century of warfare and terrorism of the sort we are seeing now." Unthinkable, too, was the angry renunciation of Zionism by Avrum Burg, former speaker of Israel's Knesset.
And, in those days, with the internet still in its infancy, the online Jewish dissident landscape that today ranges from groups in the Zionist peace camp like Tikkun, Americans for Peace Now, and the Israel Policy Forum, among others, to anti-Zionist Jews of the left such as Not in My Name and Jewish Voices for Peace, had not yet taken shape. Indeed, there was no Haaretz online English edition in which the reality of Israel was being candidly reported and debated in terms that would still be deemed heretical in much of the U.S. media.

Thirteen years ago, there certainly was no organization around like "Birthright Unplugged," which aims to subvert the "Taglit-Birthright Program," funded by Zionist groups and the government of Israel, that provides free trips to Israel for young Jewish Americans in order to encourage them to identify with the State. (The "Unplugged" version encourages young Jews from the U.S. to take the Birthright tour and its free air travel, and then stay on for a two-week program of visits to the West Bank, to Israeli human rights organizations, and to peace groups. The goal is to see another side of Israel, the side experienced by its victims -- and by Israelis who oppose the occupation of the West Bank.)

Clearly, much has changed, and the ability of the Zionist establishment -- the America Israel Political Action Committee, the American Jewish Committee, the Anti-Defamation League, and others -- to impose nationalist boundaries on Jewish identity is being eroded. It's worth remembering in this context that anti-Zionism was originally a Jewish movement -- the majority of European Jews before World War II rejected the Zionist movement and its calls for a mass migration from Europe to build a Jewish nation-state in Palestine. The most popular Jewish political organization in Europe had been the Yiddishe Arbeiter Bund, a Jewish socialist party that was militantly anti-Zionist. Even among the rabbis of Europe, there was considerable opposition to the idea of Jews taking control of Zion before the arrival of the Messiah (and there still is, of course, from a sizable minority of the ultra-Orthodox).

Of course, the Holocaust changed all that. For hundreds of thousands of survivors, a safe haven in Palestine became a historic necessity.
But the world has changed since then, and as the research cited above suggests, the trends clearly don't favor the Zionists. I was reared on the idea that a Jewish nation-state in the Middle East was the "manifest destiny" of the Jews. I learned in the Zionist movement that Jewish life in the Diaspora was inevitably stunted and ultimately doomed. But history may have decided otherwise. The majority of us have chosen to live elsewhere, thereby voting with our feet. Indeed, according to Israeli government figures, some 750,000 Israeli Jews (15% of Israel's Jewish population) are now living abroad, further undermining the Zionist premise that the Diaspora is an innately hostile and anti-Semitic place.

The Ferocity of Nationalism, The Universality of Justice
Increasingly anxious that most of us have no intention of going to Israel to boost Jewish numbers, the Israel-based Jewish Agency -- apparently oblivious to irony of its own actions -- has complained to Germany over official policies that make life there so attractive to Jewish immigrants from former Soviet territories, thus discouraging them from going to Israel. More immediately threatening to the Zionist establishment, however, is another reality: Many Jews are beginning to make once unthinkable criticisms of Israel's behavior. If you want to bludgeon Jewish critics with the charge of "anti-Semitism" when they challenge Israel's actions, then it's hardly helpful to have other Jews standing up and expressing the same thoughts. It undermines the sense, treasured by Israel's most fervent advocates, that they represent a cast-iron consensus among American Jews in particular.

That much has been clear in the response to the publication of John Mearsheimer and Steven Walt's controversial new book The Israeli Lobby and U.S. Foreign Policy, which challenges the wisdom and morality of the unashamed and absolute bias in U.S. foreign policy towards Israel. In an exchange on the NPR show Fresh Air, Walt was at pains to stress, as in his book, that the Israel Lobby, as he sees it, is not a Jewish lobby, but rather an association of groupings with a right-wing political agenda often at odds with majority American-Jewish opinion,

Abe Foxman of the Anti-Defamation League, argued exactly the opposite: Walt and Mearsheimer, he claimed, were effectively promoting anti-Semitism, because the Israel lobby is nothing more (or less) than the collective will of the American Jewish community. Which, of course, it isn't. In fact, in the American Jewish community you can increasingly hear open echoes of Mearsheimer and Walt's skepticism over whether the lobby's efforts are good for Israel.

But Foxman's case is undercut by something far broader -- an emerging Jewish glasnost. Of course, like any break with a long-established nationalist consensus, the burgeoning of dissent has provoked a backlash. Norman Finkelstein -- the noted Holocaust scholar and fierce critic of Zionism recently hounded out of De Paul University in a campaign of vilification based precisely on the idea that fierce criticism of Israel is the equivalent of "hate speech" -- could be forgiven for being skeptical of the idea that the grip of the ultranationalists is weakening.
So, too, could Joel Kovel. After all, he found his important book Overcoming Zionism pulled by his American publisher, the University of Michigan Press, also on the "hate speech" charge.

Jimmy Carter -- who was called a "Holocaust denier" (yes, a Holocaust denier!) for using the apartheid analogy in his book on Israel -- and Mearsheimer and Walt might have reason for skepticism as well. But I'd argue that the renewed ferocity of recent attacks on those who have strayed from the nationalist straight and narrow has been a product of panic in the Jewish establishment -- a panic born of the fact that its losing its grip. As in the former Soviet Union with the actual glasnost moment, this is a process, once started, that's only likely to be accelerated by such witch-hunting.

Last year, a very cranky academic by the name of Alvin Rosenfeld, on behalf of the oldest Jewish advocacy group in the U.S., the American Jewish Committee, got a flurry of attention by warning that liberal Jews such as playwright Tony Kushner, Tony Judt and Richard Cohen, all of whom had recently offered fundamental criticisms of Israel, were giving comfort to a "new anti-Semitism."

"They're helping to make [anti-Semitic] views about the Jewish state respectable -- for example, that it's a Nazi-like state, comparable to South African apartheid; that it engages in ethnic cleansing and genocide. These charges are not true and can have the effect of delegitimizing Israel."

In reality, though, whether or not you agree with the views of those critics, they simply can't legitimately be called anti-Semitic. Actually, I doubt any of those he cited have accused Israel of genocide or compared it in any way to the Nazi state. (Former Israeli Knesset Speaker Avram Burg, however, recently did write, in reference to Israeli militarism and hostility to Arabs, "It is sometimes difficult for me to distinguish between the primeval National-Socialism and some national cultural doctrines of the here-and-now."). But the ethnic-cleansing in which the Israelis expelled 750,000 Palestinians in 1948 and the apartheid character of Israel's present occupation of the West Bank are objective realities. Rosenfeld is suggesting that, to take an honest look at either the occupation or the events of 1948, as so many Israeli writers, journalists, and politicians have done, is to "delegitimize" Israel and promote anti-Semitism.

Just last week, Danny Rubinstein, senior correspondent covering Palestinian affairs for the Israeli newspaper Haaretz, was slated to speak to the British Zionist Federation – and then, at the last minute, his speech was canceled. The reason? Rubinstein had pointed out that "today Israel is an apartheid state with different status for different communities." (While many liberal Jewish Americans can't bring themselves to accept the apartheid comparison, that's not true of their Israeli counterparts who actually know what's going on in the West Bank. Former education minister Shulamit Aloni, for example, or journalist Amira Hass use the comparison. (The comparison first occurred to me on a visit to Kibbutz Yizreel in 1978, when the elders of my Zionist youth movement, Habonim, who had emigrated from South Africa to Israel, warned that the settlement policy of the then-new Likud government was designed to prevent Israel letting go of the West Bank. The population there, they told us, would never be given the right to vote in Israel, and so the result would be, as they presciently put it, "an apartheid situation.")

Use of the term "apartheid" in reference to the occupation does draw the attention of those who prefer to look away from the fact that Israel is routinely engaged in behavior democratic society has deemed morally odious and unacceptable when it has occurred in other contexts. It is precisely because that fact makes them uncomfortable, I suspect, that they react so emotionally to the A-word. Take black South Africans who suffered under apartheid on a visit to the West Bank -- a mild-mannered moderate Nobel Peace Prize winner such as Bishop Desmond Tutu, for example -- ask them about the validity of the comparison, and you know the answer you're going to get.

Moreover, it's an answer with which a growing number of Jews, who place the universal, ethical and social justice traditions of their faith above those of narrow tribalism, are willing to deal.

In an earlier commentary, perhaps presaging his break with Zionism, Burg noted in 2002:

"Yes, we Israelis have revived the Hebrew language, created a marvelous theater and a strong national currency. Our Jewish minds are as sharp as ever. We are traded on the Nasdaq. But is this why we created a state? The Jewish people did not survive for two millennia in order to pioneer new weaponry, computer security programs or antimissile missiles. We were supposed to be a light unto the nations. In this we have failed. It turns out that the 2,000-year struggle for Jewish survival comes down to a state of settlements, run by an amoral clique of corrupt lawbreakers who are deaf both to their citizens and to their enemies. A state lacking justice cannot survive. More and more Israelis are coming to understand this as they ask their children where they expect to live in 25 years. Children who are honest admit, to their parents' shock, that they do not know."

Although I am not religious, I share Burg's view that universal justice is at the heart of the Jewish tradition. Growing up in apartheid South Africa was an object lesson in Jewish ethics. Yes, there was plenty of anti-Semitism in the colonial white society of my childhood, but the mantle of victimhood belonged to others. And if you responded to the in-no-way-exclusively-so, but very Jewish impulse to seek justice, you found yourself working side by side not only with the remarkable number of Jews who filled leadership roles in the liberation movement, but also with Christians, Muslims, Hindus, and others.

Judaism's universal ethical calling can't really be answered if we live only among ourselves -- and Israel's own experience suggests it's essentially impossible to do so without doing injustice to others. Israel is only 59 years old, a brief moment in the sweep of Jewish history, and I'd argue that Judaism's survival depends instead on its ability to offer a sustaining moral and ethical anchor in a world where the concepts of nation and nationality are in decline (but the ferocity of nationalism may not be). Israel's relevance to Judaism's survival depends first and foremost on its ability, as Burg points out, to deliver justice, not only to its citizens, but to those it has hurt.

Tony Karon is a senior editor at TIME who also maintains his own website, Rootless Cosmopolitan, where he comments on everything from geopolitical conflict to Jewish identity issues. "Rootless Cosmopolitan" was Stalin's euphemistic pejorative for "Jew" during his anti-Semitic purges of the late 1940s, but Karon, who grew up in South Africa and whose family roots lie in Eastern Europe, and before that France, takes the term as a badge of honor. Karon was a teenage activist in the left-Zionist Habonim movement before finding his way into the big tent of the anti-apartheid liberation struggle, an experience that prompted him to re-imagine what it meant to be a Jew in the world.
Copyright 2007 Tony Karon



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Jean Bricmont: Why Bush Will Get Away with Attacking Iran

Bricmont says Americans live in a totalitarian society -- from an Israeli perspective. What would we say from an American perspective?

As far as Israel is concerned, the United States is a de facto totalitarian society--no articulate opposition is acceptable. The U.S. Congress passes one pro-Israel or anti-Iran resolution after another with "Stalinist" majorities.

But the power of the Lobby is only one of his many points. His main point is that that normal political considerations do not apply to this administration. The fact that war against Iran is bad policy is not going to stop Bush. On the contrary, Bricmont leaves open the possibility of considering that the worse the results of such a war will be, the better that will satisfy Bush and Cheney. They are determined on a policy that will produce chaos, anarchy, destruction and suffering, there and here and everywhere.

In a preview of my comment below, I quibble with one of Bricmont's paragraphs where he attacks elements of the academic world.

[I don't blame the academic world or any other particular group for our current crisis. We're in a situation where the good guys, normal people wanting to live their lives in relative justice and peace are leaderless, and have been leaderless due to the success of the secret government's 60s assassinations of our natural leaders: JFK, RFK, MLK, Malcolm, and the resultant non appearance of those who would have normally followed. Into the vacuum moved Reagan, Bush Sr Bush Jr to the point where there is no difference between the secret and the public government. In a footnote, Clinton did as much as he could for the secret government from the Democratic side as in WTC 93 and Oklahoma City. --RB]

Ronald


http://desip.igc.org
***

September 4, 2007

www.counterpunch.org

When Wishful Thinking Replaces Resistance
Why Bush Can Get Away with Attacking Iran

By JEAN BRICMONT

Many people in the antiwar movement try to reassure themselves: Bush cannot possibly attack Iran. He does not have the means to do so, or, perhaps, even he is not foolish enough to engage in such an enterprise. Various particular reasons are put forward, such as: If he attacks, the Shiites in Iraq will cut the US supply lines. If he attacks, the Iranians will block the Straits of Ormuz or will unleash dormant terrorist networks worldwide. Russia won't allow such an attack. China won't allow it -- they will dump the dollar. The Arab world will explode.

All this is doubtful. The Shiites in Iraq are not simply obedient to Iran. If they don't rise against the United States when their own country is occupied (or if don't rise very systematically), they are not likely to rise against the US if a neighboring country is attacked. As for blocking the Straits or unleashing terrorism, this will just be another justification for more bombing of Iran. After all, a main casus belli against Iran is, incredibly, that it supposedly helps the resistance against U.S. troops in Iraq, as if those troops were at home there. If that can work as an argument for bombing Iran, then any counter-measure that Iran might take will simply "justify" more bombing, possibly nuclear. Iran is strong in the sense that it cannot be invaded, but there is little it can do against long range bombing, accompanied by nuclear threats.

Russia will escalate its military buildup (which now lags far behind the U.S. one), but it can't do anything else, and Washington will be only too glad to use the Russian reaction as an argument for boosting its own military forces. China is solely concerned with its own development and won't drop the dollar for non-economic reasons. Most Arab governments, if not their populations, will look favorably on seeing the Iranian shiite leadership humiliated. Those governments have sufficient police forces to control any popular opposition-- after all, that is what they managed to do after the attack on Iraq.

With the replacement of Chirac by Sarkozy, and the near-complete elimination of what was left of the Gaullists (basically through lawsuits on rather trivial matters), France has been changed from the most independent European country to the most poodlish (this was in fact the main issue in the recent presidential election, but it was never even mentioned during the campaign). In France, moreover, the secular "left" is, in the main, gung-ho against Iran for the usual reasons (women, religion). There will be no large-scale demonstrations in France either before or after the bombing. And, without French support, Germany--where the war is probably very unpopular -- can always be silenced with memories of the Holocaust, so that no significant opposition to the war will come from Europe (except possibly from its Muslim population, which will be one more argument to prove that they are "backward", "extremist", and enemies of our "democratic civilization").

All the ideological signposts for attacking Iran are in place. The country has been thoroughly demonized because it is not nice to women, to gays, or to Jews. That in itself is enough to neutralize a large part of the American "left". The issue of course is not whether Iran is nice or not ­according to our views -- but whether there is any legal reason to attack it, and there is none; but the dominant ideology of human rights has legitimized, specially in the left, the right of intervention on humanitarian grounds anywhere, at any time, and that ideology has succeeded in totally sidetracking the minor issue of international law.

Israel and its fanatical American supporters want Iran attacked for its political crimes--supporting the rights of the Palestinians, or questioning the Holocaust. Both U.S. political parties are equally under the control of the Israel lobby, and so are the media. The antiwar movement is far too preoccupied with the security of Israel to seriously defend Iran and it won't attack the real architects of this coming war--the Zionists-- for fear of "provoking antisemitism". Blaming Big Oil for the Iraq war was quite debatable, but, in the case of Iran, since the country is about to be bombed but not invaded, there is no reason whatsoever to think that Big Oil wants the war, as opposed to the Zionists. In fact, Big Oil is probably very much opposed to the war, but it is as unable to stop it as the rest of us.

As far as Israel is concerned, the United States is a de facto totalitarian society--no articulate opposition is acceptable. The U.S. Congress passes one pro-Israel or anti-Iran resolution after another with "Stalinist" majorities. The population does not seem to care. But if they did, but what could they do? Vote? The electoral system is extremely biased against the emergence of a third party and the two big parties are equally under Zionist influence.

The only thing that might stop the war would be for Americans themselves to threaten their own government with massive civil disobedience. But that is not going to happen. A large part of the academic left long ago gave up informing the general public about the real world in order to debate whether Capital is a Signifier or a Signified, or worry about their Bodies and their Selves, while preachers tell their flocks to rejoice at each new sign that the end of the world is nigh. Children in Iran won't sleep at night, but the liberal American intelligentsia will lecture the ROW (rest of the world) about Human Rights. In fact, the prevalence of the "reassuring arguments" cited above proves that the antiwar movement is clinically dead. If it weren't, it would rely on its own forces to stop war, not speculate on how others might do the job.

[This is the one paragraph that I disagree with. I don't blame the academic world or any other particular group for our current crisis. We're in a situation where the good guys, normal people wanting to live their lives in relative justice and peace are leaderless, and have been leaderless due to the sucess of the secret government's 60s assassinations of our natural leaders: JFK, RFK, MLK, Malcolm, and the resultant non appearance of those who would have normally followed. Into the vaccuum moved Reagan, Bush Sr Bush Jr to the point where there is no differnce between the secret and the public government. In a footnote, Clinton did as much as he could for the secret governnent from the Democratic side as in WTC 93 and Oklahoma City. --RB]

Meanwhile, an enormous amount of hatred will have been spewed upon the world. But in the short term, it may look like a big Western "victory", just like the creation of Israel in 1948; just like the overthrow of Mossadegh by the CIA in 1953; just like the annexation of Alsace-Lorraine seemed to be a big German victory after the French defeat at Sedan in 1870. The Bush administration will long be gone when the disastrous consequences of that war will be felt.

PS: This text is not meant to be a prophecy, but a call to (urgent) action. I'll be more than happy if facts prove me wrong.

Jean Bricmont teaches physics in Belgium and is a member of the Brussels Tribunal. His new book, Humanitarian Imperialism, is published by Monthly Review Press. He can be reached at bricmont@fyma.ucl.ac.be.

Ronald Bleier: The Israel Lobby, the role of the grassroots and the radical Bush- Cheney Regime

My article, “The Israel Lobby, the Grassroots and the Radical Bush-Cheney Regime,” is available at: http://desip.igc.org/radicalbushcheney.html

My article is a revised version of a talk that I gave at a conference on U.S. Policy in the Middle East at LaGuardia Community College on May 10, 2007.


My review of some of the details of the power of the Lobby to force the U.S. to adopt policies at variance with its own interests in peace and stability in the Middle East and elsewhere will be familiar to many readers. In addition, I point to the role of the grassroots supporters of the Lobby who play an all too evident, although as yet minimally analyzed, role in effectively supporting Israel’s largely unrestrained militaristic and expansionist policies.

Here’s an excerpt from my paper on the role of the grassroots
But only a tiny fraction of these grassroots pro-Israeli people, are Lobby activists. It’s the Lobby that “actively work[s] to shape U.S. foreign policy in a pro-Israeli direction.” A tiny number of activists directing Lobby policy would matter less if the few reflected the many. But often, on key issues like the war against Iraq, these Lobby activists represent the extreme right wing of the Israeli ruling elite and not the great majority of the rank and file. For example, most of my secular friends and family are passionately opposed to George W. Bush and his policies, especially the Iraq war. At the same time, they are strong supporters of Israel. If you were to ask some of these people, as I have done, if they see a connection between their support for Israel and Bush’s ability to pursue a war against Iraq, they would be confused. They wouldn’t understand such a question. Most express their full and unquestioning support of Israel. They don’t see Israel as an aggressive, oppressive state. They see Israel as beleaguered, attacked on all sides, especially by the media.

For example, even in the case of the entirely unprovoked and horrific Israeli war against Lebanon in 1982, the grassroots typically downplayed Israeli aggression and war crimes if they didn’t take the easier route of total denial. And lesser Israeli atrocities like Prime Minister Shimon Peres’s summer pre-election bombardment of Lebanon in 1994, or Sharon’s 2004 assassination of Hamas leader, wheelchair- bound Sheik Yassin, and a month later his successor, Abdel Aziz Rantisi, generally fly well below their radar. And to the extent Israel’s supporters are confronted with any unpleasant or critical information on Israeli policy toward the Arabs in the news, they tend reflexively to blame the media.

Thus the Lobby is empowered because most Jewish and Christian and other gentile supporters of Israel will fall into line and effectively support even the most oppressive and pitiless Israeli policies. If they are somehow made aware of some of the brutal and shocking details, they view Israeli actions as necessary for its defense. Atrocities against Muslims and Arabs are minimized, because in their worldview, “those people” aren’t humanized, and are often identified as enemies or terrorists. Similarly in any particular congressional or presidential race, supporters of Israel don’t generally see themselves voting to bolster the power of the Lobby. They vote for a politician and/or for the party they prefer. At election time, support for Israel is rarely an issue. Typically the grassroots correctly take for granted that the candidates they vote for also fully support Israel.

***


Heretofore, in the decades preceding the 90s, the baleful effects of Israel’s brutal polices and its role in destabilizing the international order have been relatively limited, and by and large restricted to the peoples of the Middle East, especially to the Palestinians and other Arabs, with the caveat that in order to successfully pursue its goals, Israel required and acquired sufficient control of the White House and Congress from even before the creation of the State in 1948. The Lobby’s control has become more and more sophisticated and viselike through the decades and the various U.S. administrations. But now that an extraordinarily vicious and reckless U.S. administration is in power, a perfect storm has been created that may be irrevocably moving the U.S. into –who knows? --the final catastrophe that is the logical outgrowth of the iniquitous and improbably successful substitution of the bogus “war on terror” for the previous Communist demon.

Read more:
http://desip.igc.org/radicalbushcheney.html

Ronald Bleier
http://desip.igc.org