“It has been a long honeymoon, but it may at last be coming to an end. The neoconservatives and the Iraq war have had the positive effect of exposing the ways that an ultra-Zionist agenda hurts the American interest (a subject of another Grant F. Smith book). And so today a new debate over Zionism has begun in America: how pro-Israel should the United States be? And how pro-Israel should the American Jewish community be? Given the success and power of Jews in this country, a factor that I.L. Kenen [the founder of AIPAC] and his adversaries would never have anticipated, this is not just an ethnic conversation; it is one that all Americans can join. I hope that the light Smith shines on a period in which Jews were far more ambivalent about Zionism will help to restart that debate.” - Philip Weiss
This time it’s not Iraq, but Iran. A must read post about dissent, and a major one at that! Go here.
Update: When extremists attack
I am not going to make the same mistake twice. I don’t think a war with Iran is coming, thank God, but this time I am not going to pull any punches. My voice isn’t very important in the grand scheme of things, but I’m going to do my job–and that means letting you know exactly where I stand and what I believe. I believe there are a small group of Jewish neoconservatives who are pushing for war with Iran because they believe it is in America’s long-term interests and because they believe Israel’s existence is at stake. They are wrong and recent history tells us they are dangerous. They are also bullies and I’m not going to be intimidated by them.
A follow-up from Prospects for Peace on why Klein’s cause is everybody’s cause:
The problem for the American Jewish community would not seem to be with exposing the objectionable positions of Jewish neoconservatives and then having a debate. The danger is in the opposite approach — in creating the impression that the Jewish neoconservative voice is the Jewish voice, or that of the “pro-Israel” lobby, and in drowning out, or more accurately, suppressing the voice of the majority. That would be a way to not only increase the risk of an extremely dangerous policy being pursued and to make support for Israel the partisan domain of the far-right bomb-bomb-bomb Iran crowd, but it would also cede the ground to those who are emptying the charge of anti-Semitism of all meaning. And those are good enough reasons for Joe Klein’s cause to be our cause too. - Link
“Syberberg’s Hitler is no discrete entity of Biblical evil. He is one of us and needs explication. Even his paintings are relevant. Recurrent images of the Black Maria, Thomas Edison’s first motion picture studio, suggest the role that mass media has contributed to the creation of Hitler. In fact Syberberg correlates the rise of mass media with the rise of fascism. And through it all he probes the question of the extent to which Hitler was a projection of his society’s madness, and the extent to which Hitler projected his own madness upon society. Syberberg clearly sees Hitler as an eternal and omnipresent force, with his policies living on in all nations and cultures, especially the United States. Pogo put the proposition more succinctly: ‘We met the enemy and he is us.’ Syberberg’s Our Hitler focuses on Germany but is a warning to all against potential complicity.” - Shirley Goldberg in “Our Hitler: the Self-reflexive Image of Evil”
Bolton inhabits that neo-con netherworld where philo-Israelism comes exceedingly close to being anti-Israel. Their ideal image of Israel bears little resemblance to the actual Israel that exists or the predicament that it finds itself in. They literally love Israel to death—being almost totally indifferent to the living, breathing Israelis who bear the consequences of the warrior policies that the neo-cons advocate. Their version of Israel is destined to live by the sword in perpetuity, should cede no inch of territory and is thrust into the front line of their clash of civilizations. - LINK
The hole blown by Hamas in the Gaza-Egypt border fence has finally punctured the bubble of delusion surrounding the U.S.-Israeli Middle East policy. In a moment reminiscent of the collapse of the Berlin Wall, through the breach surged some 350,000 Palestinians — fully one fifth of Gaza’s total population, as my friend and colleague Tim McGirk observed at the scene. And what did they do on the other side? They went shopping for the essentials of daily life, denied them by an Israeli siege imposed with the Wehrmacht logic of collective punishment. And the Egyptian security forces didn’t stop them, despite Washington and Israel urging them to, because U.S.-backed strongman Hosni Mubarak would provoke a mutiny among his citizenry and even his own security forces if they were to be ordered to stop hungry Palestinians from eating because Israel has decided that they should starve until they change their attitude. - Link
From Jeff Halper:
I am not a Palestinian; I am not one of the oppressed. I only hope I can use my privilege in an effective way in order to redeem the gift the people of Gaza have given all of us: the realization that the people do have power and can prevail even in the face of overwhelming power*. We may each express our responsibility towards the people of Gaza in whatever way most suits us, but as the privileged we must do something. We owe the Palestinians and the Palestinians writ large at least that. - Link(link added by me)
Hopefully, THIS ONE will be brought down soon … to the satisfaction of both peoples. Fingers crossed!
Posted by ed~
