Zionism lobbies the empires

Posted on June 29, 2021 by gantonius

 Clark, Harry F.

Journal of Contemporary Iraq & the Arab World, Volume 14, Number 3, 1 September 2020, pp. 266-286(21)

Review of: A Broken Trust: Sir Herbert Samuel, Zionism and the Palestinians, Sahar Huneidi, foreword by Walid Khalidi (2001) London: I. B. Tauris, 340 pp., ISBN 978-1-86064-172-5, h/bk, out-of-print

The Palestine Deception, 1915‐1923: The McMahon-Hussein Correspondence, the Balfour Declaration, and the Jewish National Home, J. M. N. Jeffries, edited and with an introduction by William M. Mathew (2014) Washington, DC: Institute for Palestine Studies-USA, 175 pp., ISBN 978-0-88728-320-8, p/bk, $16.00

Palestine. The Reality. The Inside Story of the Balfour Declaration 1917‐1938, J. M. N. Jeffries, with a new introduction by Ghada Karmi (2017) Northampton, MA: Olive Branch Press, 800 pp., ISBN 978-1-56656-024-5, p/bk, $30

Israel’s Armor: The Israel Lobby and the First Generation of the Palestine Conflict, Walter L. Hixson (2019) Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press, 324 pp., ISBN 978-1-108-70532-5, p/bk, $29.99

Zionism lobbies the empires

Zionism lobbies the empires  (pdf)

Abstract

The ‘strategic’ view of the relationship between the Zionist movement and Great Britain, and later between the state of Israel and the United States, emphasizes the interests of the great power, while the ‘lobby’ view stresses the power of the Zionist, later Israel Lobby. The 1917 Balfour Declaration expressing British support for a Jewish ‘national home’ in Palestine was criticized by the military, diplomats, and in Parliament; its eventual approval was due to the Zionist lobby. In the 1940s the Zionist, later Israel lobby, overcame US diplomatic and military opposition and secured support for partition of Palestine and establishment of a Jewish state. In the crisis of spring, 1967 the Johnson Administration sought to restrain Israel and avoid war, before assenting to Israel’s attack on June 5, under enormous Lobby pressure. Similar pressure informed the decisions to defer Israeli evacuation of the occupied territories to a general peace settlement, and to sell Israel advanced aircraft. The defensiveness of writers on the Israel Lobby is due to the accusation of antisemitism; the antipode to antisemitism is not the ‘strategic’ and other views that conceal the Lobby, but the classical liberal traditions that rejected Zionism.

 

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Noam Chomsky and BDS: the ‘responsibility of intellectuals?’

Posted on January 31, 2013 by gantonius

Noam Chomsky’s critique of the boycott/divestment/sanctions movement against Israel, in solidarity with the Palestinian people, attracted wide attention. The Nation, where his article appeared, published five responses, to which Chomsky responded, and at least five appeared independently. Chomsky’s views were not new, but were first expressed during a BDS initiative in 2002, at Harvard and MIT. The wide attention his recent remarks earned was due to the growth of the BDS movement since.

Harvard/MIT 2002

The Harvard-MIT initiative was a response to Israeli suppression of the al-Aqsa intifada, the Palestinian uprising that began in September, 2000. It was provoked by the swaggering entrance to the Islamic shrines in Jerusalem of then-defense minister Ariel Sharon, accompanied by a thousand Israeli police. There was a demonstration, an Israeli massacre, and resistance across the West Bank that Israel attacked with utmost ferocity. The uprising expressed seven lean years of frustration with Israel’s exploitation of the 1993 Oslo accords with the Palestine Liberation Organization to further engorge the occupied territories and suffocate Palestinian life. As prime minister, Sharon ordered Operation Field of Thorns, the lavishly violent reconquista of Palestinian areas of the West Bank, including the drunken bulldozing of the center of Jenin refugee camp, and its inhabitants.

Against this sanguinary backdrop, a Harvard-MIT petition called for “the US government to make military aid and arms sales to Israel conditional on immediate initiation and rapid progress in implementing the conditions listed below. We also call on MIT and Harvard to divest from Israel, and from US companies that sell arms to Israel.” The petition called for Israel to comply with UN Resolution 242 and withdraw from the territories conquered in the June, 1967 war; stop torturing, as called for by the United Nations Committee Against Torture Report of 2001; comply with the Fourth Geneva Convention prohibiting settlement and other practices in the occupied territories; and acknowledge in principle the Palestinian right of return as expressed in UN Resolution 194 (and related international law).

The petition garnered 443 signatures from Harvard and MIT faculty, staff, students and alumni, while a counter-petition garnered more than 3,200 signatures, amidst animated discussion. Then-Harvard President Lawrence Summers opined that “Harvard should not be an organ for advocacy on an issue as complex as the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.” He did exactly that by stating: “The suggestion that [Israel’s] defense against terrorist attacks is inherently immoral seems to me to be an unsupportable one.” At a prayer meeting on campus at the start of fall term, Summers stated: “Serious and thoughtful people are advocating and taking actions that are anti-Semitic in their effect if not their intent…. Where anti-Semitism and views that are profoundly anti-Israeli have traditionally been the primary preserve of poorly educated right-wing populists, profoundly anti-Israel views are increasingly finding support in progressive intellectual communities.”

Chomsky could have defended divestment as amply justified by Israel’s conduct and denounced Summers as unfit to lead an institution of higher education. He would have been vindicated resoundingly by Israel’s ongoing atrocities, and by Summers’ later claims about women’s inability in science, faculty no-confidence votes, and his resignation in 2006 after the shortest presidential term at Harvard in 144 years. Instead Chomsky was as upset as Summers that Israel could be sanctioned. In November, Chomsky told a Harvard audience: “I am opposed and have been opposed for many years, in fact, I’ve probably been the leading opponent for years of the campaign for divestment from Israel and of the campaign about academic boycotts.” One witness told this writer that the audience was “astonished.”

Full article at Noam Chomsky and BDS: the ‘responsibility of intellectuals’? See also a partial transcript of a November, 2014 panel on BDS at Harvard at which Chomsky spoke.

In his memoir, The Lost Traveller’s Dream, the late Joel Kovel cited this article as an example of how “active critics have intervened to hold Chomsky to account before a higher tribunal.” (333, n 12). Thank you Joel, of blessed memory, for that and other encouragement, and for your clarity over Palestine. See Joel’s Overcoming Zionism, reviewed here.

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The End of Modern Jewish History

Posted on January 15, 2013 by gantonius

The Jewish state of Israel and the organized Jewish communities abroad have constituted the Zionist Jewish people, whose aggrandizement has replaced liberalism as the Jewish social principle. This outlook has also deeply affected the Jewish left, who have abandoned the classical liberalism of the Enlightenment and emancipation, which rejected Zionism categorically, for a minimal critique of Israel’s “occupation” of the territories conquered in 1967, etc.

The article has three sections, “The Establishment,” “The Jewish Left,” and “Noam Chomsky.”  It is 17,000 words plus notes, the merest introduction to the subject. It is in the final issue (#38) of Left Curve. The article is online, in PDF form, at The End of Modern Jewish History. A summary of EMJH was read at a publication party held at the Emerald Tablet Gallery in San Francisco on July 9.

“The End of Modern Jewish History” is an emerging theme. See Enzo Traverso, La fin de la modernite juive (Paris, 2013). An English edition was published by Pluto Press in 2016:

The End of Jewish Modernity

An English review of the French edition is at

The end of Jewish modernity?

Judaic Studies at Brown offers a course, “The End of Modern Jewish History”. See JUDS 1716, 2/3 of the way down this page

JUDS 1716. The End of Modern Jewish History

Publication of Left Curve #38 was delayed by the passing of the editor, Csaba Polony, on March 9, 2014.

“A memorial to Csaba last night at an SF art gallery was SRO … The audience was a who’s who of who remains ambulatory in the North Beach culture scene,” wrote a friend in an email. RIP Csaba, you have gone to your reward.  Alas, #38 proved to be the last issue

LC38-cover

Number 38 also contains an article by Rahela Mizrahi: “Usurping Art: Patterns of Expropriation, Conversion & Appropriation of Palestinian Heritage by Israeli Fine Arts.”

LC #37 contained a fine poem on the 30th anniversary of the Sabra/Shatila massacre by James Scully.

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Nordstream Isle

Posted on March 29, 2023 by gantonius
Now sit right back and you’ll hear a tale,
A tale of a fateful trip
That started from this Baltic port
Aboard this tiny ship.
The mate was a mighty sailing man,
The Skipper brave and sure.
Five passengers set sail that day
For a gas pipeline tour, a gas pipeline tour.

The weather started getting rough,
The tiny ship was tossed.
If not for the courage of the fearless crew,
The Minnow would be lost. The Minnow would be lost.
The ship set ground on the shore of this uncharted Baltic isle,
With Joe Biden, and Scholzie too,
Macaroni, and his wife,
The Rishi Sun,
Ursula and Giorgia
Here on Nordstream Isle.

Now this is the tale of our castaways,
They’re here for a long long time.
They’ll have to make the best of things.
It’s an uphill climb.
The first mate and the Skipper too
Will do their very best
To make the others comfortable
In their Baltic island nest.

No gas, no heat, no energy.
Not a single industry.
Like Robinson Crusoe,
It’s primitive as can be.
So join us here each week, my friends.
You’re sure to get a smile
From seven stranded castaways
Here on Nordstream Isle.
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Ukraine references

Posted on July 23, 2022 by gantonius

Here are some references on the Ukraine war, starting with 13 articles by Olga Sukharevskaya, a Ukrainian diplomat and jurist now residing in Moscow. She started writing them early 2022, as the crisis developed, before Russian forces entered Ukraine on February 24. All of them appeared on Russia Today, which is now banned from Google search results in Europe, and subject to various censorship elsewhere. The next is from Sputnik, about the reign of terror visited on Ukraine’s Russophile citizens after the 2014 coup. The excerpt from Ukrainian TV shows Ukrainian Nazis candidly stating the real purpose of the Maidan uprising, not about “joining Europe”, but about a right-wing resurgence and war on Russia. Two articles argue that Russia’s attack was self-defense. If you can only sniff at ‘Russian state sources’ like a FB censorship algorithm, you are a sheep.

Richard Sakwa, professor emeritus at University of Kent (UK), is perhaps the leading competent, honest figure in the sorry body of academic Russia studies. He has published widely on post-Soviet Russian politics and international relations.

Ivan Katchanovski, prof at Univ of Ottawa, wrote a detailed study of the sniper murders of Maidan demonstrators that were a key factor in the overthrow of President Yanukovich. He attributed them to right-wing forces firing on demonstrators, not to the government. The study was accepted for publication, then rejected on political grounds.

Guy Mettan is a leading Swiss journalist and member of parliament, one time speaker, and writer on international affairs, including two books, on Russophobia, and on US domination of the EU

Diana Johnstone, journo living in Europe since the 1960s and PhD in history, wrote excellent accounts of the origins of the current aggression against Russia, and of the Baltic gas pipeline attacks.

John Helmer, academic and journalist living in Moscow since 1989, attributed the pipeline attacks to rabidly Russophobic Poland, assisted by Denmark, Sweden and US.

The interviews and articles by Jacques Baud, a Swiss with intel/military background, who worked with Nato on Donbass issues, are very informative and heterodox.

Gilbert Doctorow has a PhD in Russian history from Columbia, had a career in east-west business, and writes on the Ukraine war and related topics.

A Twitter thread compiles the advice of nearly 20 foreign policy experts, from George Kennan onward, for Ukrainian neutrality and against expanding Nato.

ConsortiumNews editor Joe Lauria wrote a long account of the 2014 Maidan coup against the Yanukovich government, in defending CN against censorship

The Slavyangrad Telegram channel has been active in various forms since 2014, as a blog, as a zine, and as a Telegram channel. Slavyangrad is partisan, but discerning and informative, edited by a Russian from the Donbass, living in Toronto, and many colleagues.  Its material has been widely cited.

The Grayzone Ukraine archive has informative material as does Moon of Alabama.

From peacemaker to warmonger: Tragic downfall of Ukraine’s Volodymyr Zelensky
https://www.rt.com/russia/547298-from-peacemaker-to-warmonger/

How Crimea became part of Russia and why it was gifted to Ukraine
https://www.rt.com/russia/549962-peninsulas-complex-fate-how-crimea/

How Ukraine’s ‘Revolution of Dignity’ led to war, poverty and the rise of the far right
https://www.rt.com/russia/550266-euromaidan-ukraine-history-results/

Under the Wolfsangel: The uncomfortable truth about radical ideologies in Ukraine
https://www.rt.com/russia/551975-nazi-influence-ukrainian-politics/

How a century of political violence in Ukraine is linked to the atrocities of today
https://www.rt.com/russia/555285-national-torture-tradition-military-crimes/

The Russian language in post-Soviet Ukraine: 30 years of discrimination against the country’s most popular tongue
https://www.rt.com/russia/556942-language-discrimination-ukraine-oppression/

Leaked documents expose Ukrainian attempts to destabilize Russia and draw NATO into a full-scale war with Moscow
https://www.rt.com/russia/562803-best-defense-is-good-offence/

Ukraine is preparing a law on full control over the media, as the last vestiges of press freedom disappear in Kiev
https://www.rt.com/russia/564217-ukraine-vs-freedom-of-speech/

Bye-bye, Kiev, hello Cote d’Azur: As Westerners send aid, here’s how Ukraine’s corrupt elites are profiting from the conflict
https://www.rt.com/russia/566935-they-robbed-ukraine/

Olga Sukharevskaya: West ignores evidence of Ukrainian torture and use of prohibited weapons when making ‘war crimes’ claims
https://www.rt.com/russia/567697-tortures-prohibited-weapons-concentration-camps/

Nuclear Ukraine? Amid ‘concerns’ over alleged Russian threat, the world overlooks the real danger
https://www.rt.com/russia/569292-one-step-from-nuclear-armageddon/

Olga Sukharevskaya: How the West has long planned to use Ukraine to fight a proxy war with Russia
https://www.rt.com/russia/571578-how-west-sponsors-killing-of-people/

‘Peacemaker’ of death: This Ukrainian website threatens hundreds of thousands with extrajudicial killings — some are Americans
https://www.rt.com/russia/560965-ukrainian-mirotvorets-website/

What Did Putin Mean by ‘Denazification’ of Ukraine and Why is It so Important?https://sputniknews.com/20220225/what-did-putin-mean-by-denazification-of-ukraine-and-why-is-it-so-important-1093375330.html

Ukrainian Nazis on the 2014 coup. It was never about ‘joining Europe’ but about a right-wing resurgence, and breaking up Russia.
https://vk.com/video287829890_456246790

The Legality of War
https://journal-neo.org/2022/03/08/the-legality-of-war/

Why Russia’s intervention in Ukraine is legal under international law
https://www.rt.com/russia/554166-international-law-military-operation-ukraine/

Richard Sawka, publications; articles at top, books below on this page
https://www.kent.ac.uk/politics-international-relations/people/2273/sakwa-richard#publications

Ivan Katchanovski, publications; https://uniweb.uottawa.ca/members/1150. For suppression of his article about Maidan see his tweet at https://twitter.com/I_Katchanovski/status/1611196287122116609 and Kit Klarenburg at Grayzone https://thegrayzone.com/2023/03/12/academic-journal-maidan-massacre/

Guy Mettan, author of CREATING RUSSOPHOBIA From the Great Religious Schism to Anti-Putin Hysteria, and EUROPE’S EXISTENTIAL DILEMMA: To Be or Not to Be an American Vassal, author page at publisher Clarity Press: https://www.claritypress.com/book-author/guy-mettan/

Diana Johnstone The Specter of Germany Is Rising
https://consortiumnews.com/2022/09/12/diana-johnstone-the-specter-of-germany-is-rising/

https://consortiumnews.com/2022/09/28/diana-johnstone-omerta-in-the-gangster-war/

John Helmer on the pipeline attacks

http://johnhelmer.net/the-bornholm-blow-up-repeats-the-bornholm-bash-poland-attacks-germany-and-blames-russia/

http://johnhelmer.net/aftershock-of-nord-stream-explosions-rumbles-warsaw-polish-politicians-go-nutters/

on Poland’s 2021 attack on the pipe-laying ship
http://johnhelmer.net/the-bornholm-bash-the-baltic-bluff-the-blinken-blink-the-retreat-of-force-from-war/

Jacques Baud, The Military Situation in Ukraine, 1 April 2022
https://www.thepostil.com/the-military-situation-in-the-ukraine/

Jacques Baud, The Military Situation in the Ukraine—An Update 11 April 2022
https://www.thepostil.com/the-military-situation-in-the-ukraine-an-update/

Our Interview with Jacques Baud 1 May 2022
https://www.thepostil.com/our-interview-with-jacques-baud/

Jacques Baud: “The goal is not to help Ukraine, but to fight Putin” 1 June 2022
https://www.thepostil.com/jacques-baud-the-goal-is-not-to-help-ukraine-but-to-fight-putin/

Interview on Ukraine with Jacques Baud 1 July 2022 Part 1
https://www.thepostil.com/the-latest-on-ukraine-from-jacques-baud/

Interview on Ukraine with Jacques Baud 1 July 2022 Part 2
https://www.thepostil.com/the-wests-debacle-in-ukraine-a-conversation-with-jacques-baud/

Jacques Baud, Hidden Truth about war in Ukraine 1 August 2022
https://www.thepostil.com/the-hidden-truth-about-the-war-in-ukraine/

Interview on Ukraine with Jacques Baud 1 September 2022
https://www.thepostil.com/our-latest-interview-with-jacques-baud/

Gilbert Doctorow’s page with many informative articles
https://gilbertdoctorow.com

US experts opposed to expanding Nato and favoring Ukrainian neutrality
https://twitter.com/rnaudbertrand/status/1498491107902062592

Consortium News
Joe Lauria’s defense of CN against censorship, with an account of the 2014 Maidan coup against Ukraine Pres Yanukovich
https://consortiumnews.com/2022/10/16/the-response-newsguard-rejected/

Slavyangrad Telegram channel
History of the channel, which has appeared in different forms since 2014.
https://t.me/Slavyangrad/16843
Main page
https://t.me/Slavyangrad

Grayzone Ukraine archive, many informative stories
https://thegrayzone.com/tag/ukraine/

well-known source edited by Bernard, apparently Russian with a military background, living in US
https://www.moonofalabama.org/

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Damascus: Pearl of the Desert

Posted on October 4, 2019 by gantonius

PROFESSOR R. J. ROBINSON
Assiut Training College, Assiut, Egypt
The Biblical World, Vol. 33, No. 3 (Mar., 1909)

Among the Arabs Damascus is known by several picturesque names, each derived from some characteristic of the city itself. Its inhabitants assert that it is the oldest city in the world, hence it is quite frequently called the “Immortal City.” As to the truth of this we are not prepared to say. Its foundation is lost in the shadowy mists of the world’s twilight, and in the absence of historic facts no positive statements can be made. Yet there is not a fallen city today but Damascus was old when it was built, and still flourishes long after it has passed away. Amid the growth and decay, the rise and fall of races and dynasties, of civilizations and religions which have thronged the world for four thousand years Damascus has remained the one perennially great world-city. So we may in all truth claim that if it be not the oldest then it is assuredly among the oldest cities of the earth, older by ages than the “Eternal City,” as Rome proudly boasts herself to be. Another title which shows the poetry of oriental imagination is “The Pearl Set in Emeralds.” The appropriateness of this name is easily appreciated when the city is viewed from the top of one of the neighboring hills whence its oval shape is best seen. The color of the city is pearl gray and it is surrounded on all sides by gardens composed of shrubbery and verdure without number and trees uncountable, giving to the “pearl” the “emerald setting.”

full article:  Pearl of the Desert

This article is romantic and perhaps a bit orientalist but still interesting. At the time this was written the Arabs were chafing under Ottoman rule, and would eventually revolt in 1916. The movement was led by Sharif Hussein of Mecca, but Damascus was a key node, until the Turks hung scores of the plotters. After the war the Syrian National Congress convened in Damascus and on March 8, 1920 proclaimed the Arab Kingdom of Greater Syria, with Faisal, Hussein’s son, as King.

“Greater Syria” meant Ottoman Syria, including Palestine, parts of Mesopotamia (later Iraq), parts of modern Turkey, and Lebanon. The Allies awarded France a Mandate for Syria and Lebanon at the San Remo conference in April. Faisal surrendered to the French but his war minister, General Yusuf al-‘Azma,  resisted, and was defeated at Maysalun in July, followed by the capture of Damascus the next day. This, the British occupation of the rest of historic Syria,  and the later annexation by Turkey of Iskenderun province, with support from France and a fraudulent referendum, sealed Syria’s division, the original Nakba.

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Fawlty Zionist Towers

Posted on January 24, 2019 by gantonius

Basil!

Yes Sybil?

Haven’t I told you never to play Israel?

Yes… but… well…

What, Basil? What don’t you understand?

It’s special. I will show them how to make a Waldorf salad.

Basil! Their comics will use the act and call it Israeli salad.

I never thought of that. I can’t let them steal my material.

You cannot, Basil.

Ignorant, culture-stealing barbarians!

That’s right Basil.

Occupying, oppressive apartheid colonists!

Yes Basil.

Waldorf salad is over their heads! They are too evil to be funny!

You understand, Basil. Ahh, here’s Mr Peled. Welcome, Mr Peled. Take Mr Peled’s bags up to Number 8, Basil.

Peled? The son of an Israeli general? We know all about your type. You steal land, water and Waldorf salad!

No no Basil! He’s on our side!

I’ll show you a thing or two, you apartheid colonizer!

No Basil! He’s (WHUMP! THUMP! OOF!)

Mr. Peled is a black belt in karate, with more degrees than you have bruises.

Would you like… Waldorf… shalad?

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Evening at the Talk House

Posted on April 18, 2017 by gantonius

a play by Wallace Shawn

The evening depicted in Wallace Shawn’s  most recent play  is a meeting of the company of a play, convened on the tenth anniversary of its opening, at the Talk House, an old theater district club. The dramatist, Robert, played with oily confidence by Matthew Broderick, in the New York production directed by Scott Elliott, opens the evening with a long monologue that introduces the characters and the times.[1]

Robert had forgotten the anniversary of the play until reminded by a call from Ted, who had composed some incidental music for it. Robert was also surprised to learn from Ted that the company had thoroughly enjoyed putting on the play, and would enjoy gathering to mark the occasion.

Robert thought the play his best, even though it had flopped. To audiences Robert’s plays “seemed vaguely medieval, but I always explained that really most of my plays took place in an imaginary kingdom that preceded history altogether or stood to one side of it.” This play, Midnight in a Clearing with Moon and Stars, “told the story of a powerful king, his loyal sons, and a  princess, but actually the central figure was a sort of independent knight.” The play had been noticed by “a certain Mr. Ackerley, who not long afterwards began to take a more and more prominent place in our national life,”  with the result that “certain lovely prizes were awarded several years later, after  I’d moved into the more congenial form of writing that sustains me today.”

Mr. Ackerley has introduced a New Order, in part by deploying his “cruel side, more and more in evidence, one could say, but how do these personal traits translate themselves into nation-wide happiness or unhappiness, or do they, you see?” Under the New Order, playwriting and production and theater-going have collapsed, but that is fine with Robert, who has decided that theater was  “fundamentally no less mindless than what dogs do or what cows do, an animal business of sniffing and staring.” The decline of theater is “a small price to pay for the rather substantial benefit derived from entering into an era that quite a few people would describe as much more tranquil and much more agreeable than the one that preceded it.”

Robert was once excited to see his New Orderly ideals come to lit, costumed, beautiful life on stage: “self-sacrifice, first of all, I suppose; courage–or heroism on a field of battle, if that was the venue; the instantaneous, repeated decision to choose suffering in preference to dishonor. The power and magnificence of the body, I suppose, when inspired into action.” Robert persuades himself that the TV show for which he is well-paid head writer, “admittedly in an entirely different style, presents some of these same ideals  in a more contemporary package in each thirty-minute segment.”

When Ted suggests holding the reunion at the Talk House, a famous theater district club where the company had often adjourned after a performance, Robert is surprised to hear that the place still exists. It was and is still run by Nellie, assisted by Jane, then an aspiring young actress, now still aspiring, and still assisting Nellie at the reduced, faded, but extant Talk House. In the main room, Robert is joined by Nellie (Jill Eikenberry), Jane (Annapurna Sriram), Ted (John Epperson), now doing occasional advertising music, Bill (Michael Tucker), once the producer, now a successful talent agent, Annette (Claudia Shear), once the costume designer, now tailor to private clients, and Tom (Larry Pine),  male lead in Midnight, now star of Robert’s TV show.

Robert is also astonished to discover a once-familiar actor named Dick, slumped in a chair, his face severely bruised, played by Wallace Shawn. “I was beaten, rather recently, by friends, but you see, I actually enjoyed it very much, in the end.” “They were right, obviously. I was getting to the point where I was about to cross a line.” Dick had once been quite successful, before Midnight, not since, and unlike Robert, misses the old days.

on CounterPunch   or

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Ms. Weir Goes to Washington

Posted on September 9, 2016 by gantonius

(On CounterPunch September 9, 2016, 6900 words, and below.

The scurrilous attack in summer, 2015 on Alison Weir and If Americans Knew by Jewish Voice for Peace and US Campaign to End the Occupation, has threatened Weir and her audiences with violence. On March 30, Weir spoke at the Walnut Creek, CA public library, about her book Against Our Better Judgment, about Zionist influence on foreign policy. A few weeks before, Weir had been warned by Walnut Creek police of hateful on-line incitement to disrupt the talk; the threat referred to the JVP-USC material against Weir. The Walnut Creek Parks and Recreation Department received phone calls from people planning to protest the talk.

The talk, sponsored by the Mount Diablo Peace and Justice Center and Rossmoor Voices for Justice in Palestine, was well-attended, including by members of Stand With Us, an Israel propaganda outfit. They protested with signs and handed out fliers, also referring to the JVP/USC material. At the talk, five protestors seated themselves in the front row, and more stood at the back of the hall holding signs. During the talk, SWU protestors shouted repeatedly at Weir, prompting some audience members to call for them to stop. Only by speaking loudly, directly into the microphone, could Weir make herself heard.

Helen Lowenstein of SWU, a significant donor to pro-Israel organizations, according to Weir, was escorted from the hall by Walnut Creek police. She “swiped at” an audience member who was recording her, and was arrested and taken away in handcuffs. The Bay Area Jewish press decried an outbreak of anti-Semitism in their version of events.(1)  As of this writing, the Contra Costa County district attorney’s office has not prosecuted Lowenstein. One supporter later wrote to Weir, “Alison, your equanimity was extremely impressive—I think that really strengthened the message, because it made clear that facts and reason are on our side and the Zionists   are nasty bullies.” Weir said that she didn’t actually feel calm, but was glad it seemed that way.

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Dying to Forget the Israel Lobby

Posted on April 21, 2016 by gantonius

PDF with notes at Dying to Forget the Israel Lobby?

on CounterPunch April 22, 2016

by Harry Clark

Irene Gendzier makes two main claims about US Middle East policy in the late 1940s in her book, Dying to Forget. Oil, Power, Palestine and the Foundations of U.S. Policy in the Middle East  (New York: Columbia University Press, 2015) . One is that there was no contradiction between US support for Zionism and its goal of establishing a Jewish state in Arab Palestine, and US interest in the region’s oil reserves. This claim is based on heretofore unexamined contacts between Max Ball, who headed the Oil and Gas Division of the U.S. Department of the Interior, and Eliahu Epstein, Washington representative of the Jewish Agency, the Jewish state in the making in Palestine. Gendzier argues that these contacts, outside official foreign policy, enabled the Jewish Agency to address US concerns about the impact of Zionism on US oil interests, and to insert its arguments into the discussion in the Truman White House. The “encounter between Max Ball and Eliahu Epstein in 1948 forms the basis of the ‘oil connection’ discussed in this book. The encounter. . . revealed that major U.S. oil executives were pragmatic in their approach to the Palestine conflict and were prepared to engage with the Jewish Agency and later with Israeli officials, albeit within existing constraints.” (xxi)

The second is that Israel’s military prowess in the 1948 war showed the Pentagon that Israel had changed the regional balance of power, and should be included in US military planning, and oriented toward the West and away from the Soviet Union. The USSR had supported partition of Palestine into Arab and Jewish states, and Czechoslovakia in the emerging Soviet bloc had supplied Israel with arms. These “strategic” concerns about Israel’s potential role, Gendzier claims, outweighed US concerns for the effects of the war that established Israel: the destruction of Arab Palestine, the creation of a large refugee population, the antagonism of the Arab world, and potential “instability,” the hegemon’s bugbear, with consequences for US interests. The Pentagon’s judgment about Israel’s military ability has been noted by other writers, but Gendzier makes stronger claims. These “strategic reasons,” she argues, “undermined Washington’s critical position on Israeli policy toward refugee repatriation and territorial expansion. These vital factors in the conflict between Israel-Palestine and the Arab world thereby assumed a subordinate position.” (xxii)

Here, then, is the logic of U.S. oil policy, which was responsible for the increasing deference to Israeli policies whose purpose was to ensure that Israel turned toward the United States and away from the USSR. This objective, in turn, was allied to Washington’s principal goal in the Middle East—protection of its untrammeled access and control of oil. (xxii)

Observers of US politics recognize the US-Israel “special relationship,” and the “strategic asset” and “Israel Lobby” conceptions of it. The “asset” concept holds that the relationship expresses fundamental “US interests” that are independent of any Lobby influence, that the Lobby is powerful only when it promotes those interests. The Lobby proponents see a quasi-sovereign force capable of defining or undermining US interests. This book is clearly intended to enhance the “strategic asset” view.

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The Ecumenical Deal, 2.0

Posted on October 17, 2015 by gantonius

In 1992, Marc Ellis wrote an important article for the time, “Beyond the Jewish-Christian Dialogue: Solidarity with the Palestinian People,” which appeared in The Link, published by Americans for Middle East Understanding.  Ellis found that “the Jewish progressive consensus position is a form of oppression vis-à-vis the Palestinian people.” The consensus of the time emphasized the “two rights of Jews and Palestinians to the land,” Israeli atrocities as “aberrations,” and the anguish of “the Jewish soul.”

Ellis instead recognized the genocidal import of Zionism and the state of Israel. “What if… the Jewish character of the state makes expendable, in a terrifying sense, makes logical, the end of indigenous Palestinian culture and community in historic Palestine?” He found that the “ecumenical dialogue” of liberal Christians and Jews had turned into “what one might call the ecumenical deal: eternal repentance for Christian anti-Jewishness unencumbered by any substantive criticism of Israel.”

The ecumenical deal has broken down somewhat as Christian churches have discussed Israel’s oppression of the Palestinians and sold investments in companies doing business with “the occupation,” often with great trepidation, against furious Jewish hostility. The interfaith outreach of Jewish Voice for Peace attempts to re-establish the ecumenical deal on more limited but defensible terms.

Entire piece (2700 words) on CounterPunch

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Invader of the Jewish State

Posted on May 15, 2015 by gantonius

Haneen Al Zoubi in the US

Haneen Al Zoubi, champion of democracy and embattled Palestinian member of the Israeli parliament, spoke in the northeastern US in late April. Al Zoubi is from Nazareth in the Galilee, northern Israel/Palestine, whose population stubbornly remains 50% Palestinian Arab despite nearly 70 years of intensive Judaization, to the consternation of Israel. She is an outspoken opponent of the Jewish state, and its oppression of the Palestinians, be they citizens, under occupation or in exile. She was aboard the Turkish vessel Mavi Marmara in 2010 as it led a flotilla attempting to break Israel’s blockade of Gaza. Israeli commandos boarded it on the high seas and killed 9 activists; two days later she attempted to describe it to the Knesset and was vilified and physically attacked in a tumultuous session. Al Zoubi’s views and activism have made her an object of fear and loathing in Israel, the target of attempts to limit her parliamentary privileges, to prevent her from running in elections, to remove her citizenship; and the target of racist and sexist diatribes, death threats and physical attacks.

Israel’s antipathy toward its Palestinian citizens arises of course from its definition as the state of the Jewish people rather than of its citizens. The current radical antagonism has been building since the 1993 Oslo Accords between Israel and the Palestine Liberation Organization. Israel envisioned a “peace without Arabs,” as Israeli ex-patriate scholar Amnon Raz-Krakotzkin put it.1 The Oslo Accords did not recognize the Palestinian Arabs as equal inhabitants of historic Palestine, and the injustice done them by the establishment of Israel. Rather they expressed the idea of “separation,” which would remove the Palestinian Arabs from Israel’s midst and let it continue its separate, Zionist, Jewish destiny. The principle of “separation” introduced “a new mood of intolerance towards the Arab minority inside Israel,” as veteran journalist Jonathan Cook observed.2 This led to increased repression, which escalated sharply with the outbreak of the al-Aqsa intifada in September, 2000, and since, from the suppression of the al-Aqsa intifada, to the 2006 attack on Lebanon, to the massacres of Gaza in 2009, 2012 and 2014.

Al Zoubi spoke with great energy and conviction, to audiences in Boston, New York, New Jersey and Washington, on a tour organized by the Palestinian American Community Center in Clifton, NJ, an outpost of patriotism and culture in ultra-Zionist greater New York. The PACC’s web site features a wide variety of programs. New Jersey Palestinians raised the Palestinian flag at Paterson city hall on May 3, as the PACC raised $430,000 for a kidney dialysis center in Ramallah. The following remarks are from her address to the Palestine Center in Washington on April 27 (video and edited transcript, supplemented in a few spots by the author’s transcription).

Full article on Dissident Voice

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