Jews sans frontieres

Classic case of hypocrisy?

2012-01-29T08:01:00.001Z

Well, classical really. Apparently the classical conductor, Christoph von Dohnányi is lined up to perform with the Israel Philharmonic Orchestra. Here is an appeal to von Dohnányi from the British Committee for the Universities of Palestine:

Dear Christoph von Dohnányi,

We were impressed to read that lastOctober you cancelled several appearances as conductor with the Hungarian StateOpera, in protest at appointments made by the mayor to the New Theatre in Budapest. You were quoted as saying that you did notwant to appear in a city ‘whose mayor entrusted the direction of a theatre totwo known anti-Semites of the extreme right’.

We share your alarm at thegrowing power of racist and authoritarian parties in the Hungarian state, andwe salute you for the stand you have taken. But we‘re also interested to see that you actively support thewithdrawal of cultural engagement as a means of expressing political and moraloutrage. Please allow us to suggestthat moral and political considerations might therefore argue against yourappearances this coming April as guest conductor with the Israel PhilharmonicOrchestra.

Leave aside for the time beingthe painful fact that between 1947 and 1949 more than half the Palestinianpopulation was driven out of what became Israel, and has never been allowed toreturn (many historians, including BennyMorris and IlanPappe, have documented this; and then there is this old man, AmnonNeumann, describing on film exactly how his Palmach unit got Palestiniansto leave).

Leave aside for the moment theillegal military occupation of remaining Palestinian land since 1967, eventhough every day, dunum by dunum, it removes Palestinians from their land andabuses their rights (for example, the Guardian newspaper has just reportedthe systematic mistreatment of Palestinian children in Israeli prisons).

Please look at one event thathas occurred since the start of this year.

On 11 January 2012 the IsraeliSupreme Court decidedthat marriage to an Israeli citizen does not give Palestinians from the Occupied Territoriesor elsewhere the right to reside with their spouses inside Israel. These people, and their children, are nowliable to be expelled. Articulating thecourt’s majority opinion, Justice Asher Grunis said, ‘Human rights are not aprescription for national suicide’. Presumably István Csurka, whose role in the New Theatre in Budapest youunderstandably object to, might voice similar ethno-nationalist sentiments inrelation to the presence of Jews and Roma in Hungary (and according to the Anti-DefamationLeague, he has done so, many times).

Our argument is that racism isindivisible. If one is outraged by thepresence in power of racists in one place, one has to be outraged by theirexercise of power elsewhere too. Israelipoet Yitzhak Laor saysthe Israeli Supreme Court decision is motivated by the desire to ‘maintain aJewish majority…The looming expulsion of thousands will be carried out with thesilent agreement of enlightened members of society [for whom] maintaining aJewish majority is an ideological common denominator’.

Some of those ‘enlightened’members of society will be sitting in your concerts, Christoph von Dohnányi,enjoying your interpretation of Schumann and Mendelssohn. Meanwhile, says Laor, ‘the expulsion ofwomen and children from their homes will be carried out by a state that hasnever held Arabs to be equal before the law’.

We could suggest furtherreading – thisaccount of the harassment and dispossession of the Bedouin in the Negev – Israeli citizens, but not Jews. Thisinterview with Haneen Zoabi, a Palestinian member of the Israeli Knesset,who says: ‘Jewishness here means Zionism, not Judaism. It is misleading to talk about a Jewish anddemocratic state; it is a Zionist state…To choose Zionism at the expense ofdemocracy is now legitimate; you are defending the Jewish state’.

We applaud the good exampleyou have set by withdrawing from your concerts at the Hungarian StateOpera. We respectfully suggest thatconsistency should lead you to do the same with regard to the IPO. Please don’t let those ‘enlightened’ membersof Israeli society continue to believe that their racism is tolerable andexcusable because it’s directed at Palestinians. Please don’t go.

Yours sincerely,

Professor Haim Bresheeth
Mike Cushman
Professor Adah Kay
Professor David Pegg
Professor Jonathan Rosenhead

I hope he heeds the call.

Gove gave what to who and why?

2012-01-28T14:12:00.000Z

This is weird. Harry's Place is very worked up about an article in The Guardian which they are suggesting shows insensitivity on Holocaust Memorial Day (yesterday). The Guardian article says that the UK's Education Minister, Michael Gove, awarded a £2 m grant to the Community Security Trust (CST), a zionist group mostly funded by Gerald Ronson supposedly to provide security for Jewish premises, schools, shuls, etc.

Here's HP, under the headline, The Guardian’s Holocaust Memorial Day Surprise:

The Guardian has celebrated Holocaust Memorial Day by running a “gotcha” piece which implies that Michael Gove MP improperly provided government money to the Community Security Trust Michael Gove, the education secretary, awarded £2m of public money to an organisation that he promoted as an adviser for four years.

The education secretary personally made the decision to give taxpayers’ money to an organisation to fund better security at Jewish schools. Gove has promoted the Community Security Trust(CST) as an adviser since 2007.
Documents obtained by the Guardian show that Gove personally wrote to the trust confirming that the education department was awarding the money to it. He issued a public statement saying that he had “secured the funding” to the trust.

Richard Benson, the trust’s chief executive, replied to Gove twice thanking him for his “personal commitment” to providing the funding. Benson’s letter lists Gove as a member of its advisory board, along with more than 50 others.

The minister has taken a strong stand against antisemitism. However, questions are being asked over whether he should have taken any role in awarding the money to the organisation.

The Guardian article, according to its history, appeared in yesterday's print edition but it was updated subsequently to take into account the fact that the CST claims it was only distributing the money. This paragraph was inserted:

All the money is distributed by the Community Security Trust to the schools which then employ the security guards. As the trust's role is essentially administrative, none of the money is retained by the trust or pays for any of the trust's work.

And the amendment is mentioned at the bottom of the online article thus:

This article was amended on 27 January 2012. The original may have implied that the Community Security Trust retained cash or employed school security guards.

Now if you scroll back up you will see that in the online article as copied by HP there is a link to the ministerial announcement. Here it is again. And here's how the Department for Education announced the funding:

Education Secretary Michael Gove today confirmed up to £2 million to fund tighter security measures in Jewish faith schools.
Community Security Trust (CST), a charity working to ensure the safety and security of the Jewish community in the UK, will receive revenue funding for the extra measure of security guards at 39 Jewish voluntary-aided faith schools across England.
Parents of children at these schools currently pay around £1.6 million a year out of their own pockets, along with the CST providing £400,000, to ensure their children have a school environment safe from any potential anti-semitic or racist threats.
Schools are responsible for funding general security measures such as fencing, gates and CCTV out of their main school budget. However, following assessments obtained by the CST, the extra security provided by guards in place at Jewish faith schools helps ensure pupils and staff remain safe.
Confirming the funding on the last day of Chanukah, the Jewish Festival of Lights, Michael Gove said:
Faith schools make a fantastic contribution to our education system and none more so than Jewish faith schools, which teach children the importance of ethos, values and a belief in social justice.
Children and staff at these schools should feel safe at school and able to learn in an environment free from any anti-semitic or racist threats. That is why I have secured funding of up to £2 million for 2010-11 to be made to the 39 schools via the Community Security Trust.
The first payment of £650,000 will be paid in arrears for the autumn 2010 term, with up to £2 million funding being provided for 2010-11, subject to further evaluation.
Richard Benson, Chief Executive of Community Security Trust, said:
CST is grateful to the Secretary of State for recognising the importance of security provision at state-funded Jewish schools, and for the time he and his Department have spent assessing the problem and constructing a viable solution. We will work with the Department for Education and the Jewish school sector to ensure that the funding for school security is distributed efficiently and according to need.
Joshua Rowe, Chair of Trustees at King David Schools in Manchester, welcomed the news:
What a wonderful Chanukah present for the whole Jewish community. We hugely appreciate the support the Secretary of State for Education and the Government will now offer – to ensure that our schools and pupils receive the protection they require and deserve.

There's no mention of the rather technical issue of who handles the money or who is employed by whom. The fact is that The Guardian reported pretty much what appeared in the departmental statement together with a criticism of the fact that Gove has been an advisor to the CST. The article doesn't even mention the fact that some of the CST's reporting on antisemitism is, at best, controversial and that many of us see its role as defending and promoting zionism rather than protecting Jews.

Neither The Guardian article nor the Education Department's statement nor HP mention that Michael Gove describes himself as a "proud zionist", though surely this could be considered relevant. The Guardian article might also have asked if there are any strings attached to the allocation of funds by the CST but it didn't.

In other words, this is an HP rant about nothing. The Guardian reported what Gove's department reported with the additional information that Gove has been an adviser to the group to whom the funding was being given. And what did HP add to the Education Department and The Guardian reports? Well, it reported the fact that yesterday, apart from being Friday 27 January 2012, was Holocaust Memorial Day. And how did Harry's Place "celebrate" Holocaust Memorial Day? By reporting what The Guardian reported, by lamenting the passing of some blogs and looking forward to the closure of The Guardian. In other words the only mention of Holocaust Memorial Day at Harry's Place on the day itself was in a piece decrying The Guardian for a straightforward factual report.

UPDATE: The Guardian article has now reappeared in Saturday's edition. Curiously there is no mention of this in the "article history" to the online edition which is still dated Friday 27 January 2012.

Abbas notices that peace process isn't happening

2012-01-26T12:07:00.002Z

Wow! I've heard many times that Abbas got a doctorate for denying the holocaust so he won't be getting one for stating the bleedin' obvious, but he certainly deserves one this time; possibly more so than last time.

Here's Ha'aretz:

The time frame that the Palestinians have allowed for talks with Israel in Amman under Jordanian auspices expires on Thursday. According to diplomatic sources associated with the Middle East Quartet - the United States, United Nations, European Union and Russia - last-minute efforts are underway to head off the talks' collapse, but the prospects seem slim.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's representative to the Amman talks, Isaac Molho, met on Wednesday in the Jordanian capital for a fifth time with the head of the Palestinian negotiating team Saeb Erekat - but at this point no formula has been reached that would enable the talks to continue. Erekat made it clear that because Israel has not presented its position on the issue of borders with a Palestinian state, from the Palestinians' standpoint, the talks have ended.....

......Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas met in Amman with Jordanian King Abdullah and told the monarch from his standpoint talks with Israel had run their course without results.

No sh*t Sherlock?

Atlanta Jewish Times editor calls for lynching of Obama

2012-01-21T11:45:00.001Z

Is that a fair description of what actually happened? See this from Ha'aretz:

The owner and publisher of the Atlanta Jewish Times, Andrew Adler, has suggested that Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu consider ordering a Mossad hit team to assassinate U.S. President Barack Obama so that his successor will defend Israel against Iran.
Adler, who has since apologized for his article, listed three options for Israel to counter Iran’s nuclear weapons in an article published in his newspaper last Friday. The first is to launch a pre-emptive strike against Hamas and Hezbollah, the second is to attack Iran’s nuclear facilities and the third is to “give the go-ahead for U.S.-based Mossad agents to take out a president deemed unfriendly to Israel in order for the current vice president to take his place and forcefully dictate that the United States’ policy includes its helping the Jewish state obliterate its enemies.”

As soon as I read this my mind turned to this lynching in Atlanta back in 1915.

h/t Matthew Tenzer.

Self-hatred in Manhattan?

2012-01-21T11:32:00.000Z

Well it's still at the allegedly stage at the minute but what it looks like is another case of a Jew going round spraying anti-Jewish graffiti complete with swastikas and causing a lot of shock and horror in the process. I only heard about this today but it was even in the Daily Mail a few days ago. The New York Daily News seems to have been the first mainstream paper in the US to cover the story. The local, DNAinfo.com appears to have been the first with the news:

MANHATTAN — A Chelsea man made several threatening and anti-Semitic phone calls over a month-long stretch to elderly women in his neighborhood and Brooklyn, police said.

David Haddad, 56, faces aggravated harassment as a hate crime charges for the alleged spree, which began last December and mainly targeted elderly women.
The first incident occurred Dec. 11 when an 80-year-old Brooklyn woman who lives in the 61st precinct—which includes Sheepshead Bay and several other neighborhoods—said she received numerous threatening calls containing anti-Semitic messages.

On Jan. 10, anti-Semitic symbols and messages were found on five apartment doors inside a Chelsea building. A female victim in the building said she also received a threatening anti-Semitic call, police said.
The next day, an 87-year-old Chelsea woman reported receiving a threatening phone message, also containing anti-Semitic statements.

Then on Jan. 12, a 78-year-old woman who lives in the 61st precinct claimed she received a threatening call as well.
It is not clear if Haddad knew any of the victims or why he allegedly targeted them.

The various mainstream sources are saying that the motive involved a business dispute. I wonder what Judge Judy would say.

EU terrorises Netanyahu

2012-01-19T05:07:00.000Z

Letter in The Independent:

Donald Macintyre's report from Jerusalem that the EU is giving up hope for a viable Palestinian state (12 January) is as extraordinary as it is appalling. The EU lists Israel actions: demolitions ; prohibitive planning for the Palestinians, but uninhibited for Jewish illegal settlements; the apartheid separation barrier; restricted travel except for the settlers; denial of access to water and other natural resources. This reads like the pogrom it is.

But what is worse is the mooted EU response, which consists of "calling on Israel to halt demolitions and building of settlements". Wow, I bet that makes Netanyahu plead for mercy!

Israel's main market is the EU, where Israel has special access, denied to her neighbours, with the associate status agreement. This agreement is supposed to be dependent upon a country's respect for human rights. The EU has suspended agreements where a country can be seen to be in breach. So I urge every one to write to their MEPs and demand the EU take such a course of action, before it is impossible for Palestine to exist.

Peter Downey
Bath

Here's a list of Members of the European Parliament.

Vagina monologue in the Knesset

2012-01-18T10:35:00.000Z

For translation see Ha'aretz. For explanation check out the Urban Dictionary.

Pretext yes, context no

2012-01-17T11:48:00.001Z

There's an article in today's Guardian print edition and of course on line titled, LSE nazi games in context. But don't expect context. Rather, an article with a news peg about some students from the LSE playing a nazi themed game resulting in a fight in which a Jewish student got his nose broken has been used as the pretext for a bogus attack on Palestine solidarity activism and criticism of Israel.

You know early on where the article is going with an ahistorical passage such as this:

It is a sickness that emerges from generation to generation, always with a new resentment to prosecute – the murder of the Christ, well poisoning, usury, the Jewish invention of communism or its opposite libel, Jewish world domination through capitalism, and now a Jewish state that defends itself, kills Palestinians, and is corrupted. The crimes are different, but the criminal is always the same. It is just a shame the Jew from the LSE didn't have bigger fists, but I would always suggest that Jews avoid the Alps.

It's not just the pathetic attempt ("Jews avoid the Alps") of the writer, Tanya Gold, playing Woody Allen, that is at issue here. She managed to sneak in a hasbara nugget, "a Jewish state that defends itself". But there's more.

Antisemitic discourse is now mainstream and to say it all comes from the crimes of the Jewish state feels disingenuous and a denial of the past. Antisemitism is too old to sprout anew from nothing. Leftwing antisemites despise Israel, but are less vocal on the crimes of other oppressive states (China, Russia, Saudi Arabia). They call it "whataboutery", and say that any defence of Israel is propaganda.

It is whataboutery and worse since Israel's existence is predicated on its crimes and defence of any state is propaganda it's just in the State of Israel's case it is always false propaganda,

But still there's more:

The incidents mount up – the heckling of an Israeli orchestra, the graffiti on university walls, the demand that Jews denounce Israel if they wish to be accepted in polite society, the plays and TV films written without context, the violence against Orthodox Jews (visible Jews), the sale of antisemitic toys in Poland, the terrible fact that 12,000 Facebook users think to mock the Holocaust, not lament it.

Goodness! When did heckling musical hasbara become antisemitic? And which plays or films are being referred to here? I'm guessing she means one play, Seven Jewish Children by Caryl Churchill and probably only one tv programme, The Promise by Peter Kosminsky. Nothing antisemitic about either but I can't think of anything else and Tanya doesn't say.

But what Tanya Gold has done here is write an article intended to defend the State of Israel and to smear the critics. The article is only ostensibly about antisemitism. And people wonder why real antisemites like, eg, Gilad Atzmon, are given a free pass. The fact is that the bad faith allegation of antisemitism has been overdone. People are now confused and Tanya Gold's crying of wolf isn't intended to help.

Ethiopians protest against racism in Israel

2012-01-13T14:40:00.001Z

This reminds me of a joke I heard a long time ago about the Israeli Education Ministry ordering teachers to honour the legacy of the late Rahavam Ze'evi, an open advocate of the ethnic cleansing of Arabs from Palestine. A teacher told the her class how courageous Ze'evi had been in advocating the, ahem, "Transfer" of the Palestinian population. A child said, "that's wonderful, Miss, when can we do that to the Ethiopians." The teacher said "don't be so racist in my class!"

Anyway, a couple of days ago Ha'aretz reported on a demo by Ethiopians and "representatives of various groups who feel weak in Israeli society."

"The phenomenon of racism harms us all, and it is impossible to separate the discrimination of Ethiopians in Israel from the discrimination of Arab residents or Russian-speakers," said Rabia Elsagir, a resident of Shfaram and member of The Coalition Against Racism in Israel, who attended the protest with a handful of people from the Arab sector.

There are of course many examples of racism in Israel but two more occurred just recently. One was the water throwing incident in the Knesset just the other day:

For a comment on this see Magnes Zionist.

The other is a further degeneration of the State of Israel into an explicitly apartheid situation within Israel itself and not simply between Israel and the occupied territories. The Israeli High Court has now effectively ratified Israel's so-called Citizenship Law which spells out a crucial difference between the Jewish and Arab inhabitants of Israel within the pre-67 boundaries. Again here is Ha'aretz:

Israel’s High Court rejected on Wednesday petitions against the Citizenship Law, which prevents Palestinians married to Israeli Arabs from receiving Israeli citizenship or residency. Six judges voted to reject the petitions, while five voted to accept them.
Israel generally grants citizenship to spouses of Israelis in a gradual process. In the spirit of this process, a similar process was instituted for the naturalization of spouses of permanent residents, though the process is a little longer. A 2002 temporary order excluded Palestinian spouses from these processes and barred them from becoming Israeli citizens.

And again Magnes Zionist has a scathing comment:

Yesterday, the State of Israel became the first western state whose High Court ruled that some citizens have fewer fundamental rights than other citizens based on their ethnicity. Actually, it had done so before, but yesterday it rejected the most sustained challenge to the “Citizenship Law,” which bars the non-Israeli spouses of Israeli Palestinians from becoming citizens. So while an Israeli Jew from Brooklyn has the right of marrying anybody she likes, and having her spouse naturalized, a native Palestinian Israeli citizen cannot marry a distant relative who lives in a town five minutes from her house – unless that relative was a Palestinian collaborator, working for the Israelis, and then, only by special approval of the Minister of Interior.

Yet another answer to Goldstone and all those who try to make out that Israel isn't an apartheid state.

Clichés are usually wrong

2012-01-09T12:29:00.000Z

There's quite an interesting blog called the Muddle East run by a chap called Matt Hill. Matt supports the two-state solution in that he sees the maintaining of a state for Jews as essential, desirable and inevitable. See this from his latest post:

It's become almost a cliche: everyone knows, roughly, the likely shape of a future peace deal between the Israelis and Palestinians. And it's true that on issues like borders, settlements, even refugees, the chasm separating the two sides in 2000 has narrowed - even amid all the violence and overheated rhetoric.

Matt describes himself "moderately pro-Palestinian" but this is relative to the fact that he often cross-posts at Harry's Place where his support for the two state solution and criticism of the State of Israel sends most of the commentators and those of the hosts who can bothered to comment into a feed frenzy.

Anyway, he recently stopped by the Magnes Zionist blog and Jerry Haber, the blogger there, returned his visit with a comment of his own as follows:

Thanks for stopping by my place. I think my email is there. Anyway, it's

jeremiah.haber@gmail.com

You wrote:

It's become almost a cliche: everyone knows, roughly, the likely shape of a future peace deal between the Israelis and Palestinians.

You are right -- it is almost a cliche, and like so many almost cliches it is a comforting one.

Fortunately, I stopped believing in it a long time ago.

You see, the proposed peace solution that "everybody knows" (to quote Leonard Cohen) is what the Israeli philosopher Avishai Margalit calls a "rotten compromise". It allows certain groups in Israeli and Palestinian society maintain their current life styles, at the expense of other groups in both societies who will suffer. On my blog, I have been most sensitive to the suffering of the Palestinians who are the victims in this conflict, and that compromise will condemn them to years of subalternation. But I cannot deny the suffering of some of the perpetrators, the brainwashed settlers, should they have to evacuate their homes for several generations. (I can't deny it; I also can't get as upset about it.)

Faith in the peace process allows the liberal Zionist to sleep at night. She sees the daily injustices and inequities (and iniquities) committed by her side against the Palestinians, and longs for some relief, some way out. So she lives under the illusion that things will get better if only the messiah comes, sorry, if only the right formula is figured out. So she will talk about confidence-building measures, state-building, reducing tension, people-to-people initiatives, joint summer camps. In the meantime, more settlements are built, more settlers enter the high ranks of the judiciary, military, and government, more Palestinians are arrested, and most Israelis don't give a damn.

I have been observing this conflict for forty years. The sides are further apart today then they ever have been. And generations of Israeli Jews and Palestinians are growing up with almost no contact whatever -- much different from when I was here as a young man.

My advice to you is to come to Israel, and take Breaking the Silence's trips to Hebron and Ramallah. You won't be able to read the Atlantic again.

And how's this for another cliche: Things will have to get a lot worse before they get better.

I am betting on the truth of that one. And when things do get better -- and they will -- the final settlement won't look anything like your cliche says it does.

Let's keep the dialogue open. Unlike some of my cohorts, I believe in kiruv, engagement.

Peace,

Jerry

So in this case the Magnes Zionist appears to be not as enamoured of zionism as generally understood as the "moderate... pro-Palestinian" is. Should Jerry Haber change the name of his blog? Should Matt Hill change his self-description? Of course both could do either but I'm guessing neither will do either. I do think Matt Hill's blog is worth a look at but I needed the excuse that Jerry Haber's comment has given me.

Ask a man who knows: De Klerk answers Goldstone

2012-01-05T08:54:00.000Z

I was sent this BBC Radio 4 programme recently. It actually went out on 29 December 2011. It has De Klerk, the last white president of South Africa, explaining why apartheid had no future, not in South Africa anyway.

What I supported as a younger politician was exactly what the whole world now supports for Israel and Palestine, namely separate nation states will be the solution. In our case we failed. There were three main reasons. We failed because the whites wanted too much land for themselves. We failed because the majority of blacks said this is not how we want our political rights. And we failed because we became economically totally integrated. We became an economic omelet and you can never again divide an omelet into the white and the yellow of the egg. And we realized in the early eighties we had landed in a place which has become morally unjustified.

Goldstone denied the apartheid analogy here.

A poster for the sport boycott of apartheid-era South Africa

2012-01-04T20:56:00.001Z

Norman Finkelstein on the passing of Hitchens

2012-01-02T15:33:00.000Z

I've only just stumbled on this Norman Finkelstein obituary (sort of) of Hitchens. See it here. I'm off out now but I might revisit this later:

A Brief Comment on the Passing of Christopher Hitchens
Even some of the critical commentary on Hitchens’s passing pays tribute to his robust atheism, which no doubt shocked readers ofVanity Fair.
But the ultimate irony seems to have gone over everyone’s head.
When I first learned that Hitchens was diagnosed with an excruciating and terminal cancer, it caused me to doubt my atheism.
Could it be merely chance?
The news came just as Hitchens was about to go on a book tour for his long-awaited memoir.
It was as if he was setting out on his victory lap when the adulating crowds were supposed to fawn over him and—wham!—his legs were lopped off at the kneecaps.
Could it be the hidden hand of a Jehovah?
If I still had doubts, the events of the past week dispelled them.
First Hitchens passed.
If that wasn’t burden enough to bear, the next day Vaclav Havel imploded.
The deep thinkers among us were now beside themselves with grief.
But then, on the third day, Kim Jong-il kicked the bucket.
Was this a practical joke, and who was the joker?
Biblical scholars report that divine interventions usually come in threes.
Moe, Larry, Curly.
Christopher, Vaclav, Kim.
I cannot help but see in this otherwise improbable sequence a divine intelligence at play.
The irony could not be more perfect: the god that the vindictive but witty Mr. Hitchens made a career scoffing at turns out to be…vindictive but witty.
But I will leave the last word to a close buddy of Hitchens’ who is himself a true believer.
When Saddam Hussein was executed, Tony Blair remarked: “I do not believe in capital punishment, but I think the world is a better place without him.”
When I heard that Hitchens was dead, I took a deep breath.
The air felt cleaner, as if after a 40-day and 40-night downpour.
***
I get no satisfaction from Hitchens’s passing.
Although he was the last to know it, every death is a tragedy, if only for the bereft child—or, as in the case of Cindy Sheehan, bereft parent—left behind.
But, still, life is full of surprises.
No one should be too smug in his certitudes.
And if you’ve made a career of pissing on other people’s mostly innocuous beliefs, should it surprise that outside the tiny tent called Vanity Fair, your memory stinks of urine?

Wow!

Where was I when Hitchens died?

2011-12-25T22:05:00.000Z

Nope, I don't remember where I was or what I was doing when I heard that Christopher Hitchens died but I did remember him on the telly once, back in the 1990s, saying something like, "I shall never forget where I was standing and what I was doing on the day [Kennedy] nearly killed me." I was worried that, as with so much pre-internet stuff, I wouldn't be able to find the quote, but he obviously liked the point so much he dusted it off for his 2010 memoir, Hitch-22. The New York Post liked it too. And so did I.

I remember seeing him at a London Review of Books discussion with Tariq Ali et al after the former had nailed his flag to the mast of the neo-con "war of terror" and managed to show himself to be quite a nasty racist in response to one member of the audience.

Q[uestioner]. Tariq Ali was the only one I think who mentioned that the United States is the sole global power that we have now and what we are seeing is the dawn of a new imperialism. So why is it that we are so – we, meaning the global community – why are we so content at letting America have its say regardless of what the rest of the world thinks of it. It has committed a whole host of crimes on a vast scale in international law. It is suspending civil rights as far as the al-Qaida prisoners are concerned. It is actually riding roughshod over all norms of international law and why – where is Russia, where is Japan, where are all these countries?
........
C[hristopher] H[itchens]. ....I will not reject the challenge from the comrade, who I would say was from the Subcontinent. I would ask him this. He wanted to know why a country that – I think I have you right, sir – was indifferent to the norms of international law, was not more opposed by Russia and China, was that how you had it? Where was Russia, you said, where is China, why do they lie down under this lawlessness? I think your question answers itself: I think you had a real nerve asking it actually, or shall I say Chechnya or Cambodia or North Korea or Tibet or Kurdistan? It wouldn’t make any difference to you – would it? – any more than if I asked you how many people are currently flooding to the borders and ports of your country to immigrate to it – or to Russia or to China. Ask yourself that. One of the greatest problems that the United States has at the present moment is that everyone wants to come and live there: they’re wondering now how generous they can be. We should all have such problems; you will never have a problem like that, and nor will your ideology

Another time, I remember him saying that the war on Afghanistan should continue unabated through Ramadan and that "I always crank up my anti-zionism at Yom Kippur", though I don't remember hearing or reading his anti-zionism, cranked up or otherwise. I can't find that one on the net. Nor can find any evidence of his anti-zionism on the net now.

What else do I remember? Yes, I remember thinking he was quite a good egg when he was on the telly with Shere Hite but also I remember wincing when he referred to her as Mademoiselle Hite, as if the Mademoiselle bit might detract from her credibility. This too was pre-net, and he can't have been as proud of that one as he was of the Kennedy remark because I can't find the Hite stuff anywhere.

So, there's a lot on the net now about "Hitch", most of which is flipping ludicrous. I suppose that's quite fitting. He was obviously quite proud of his flipping but he didn't seem to be aware of his ludicrousness. The fact that there were at least three obituaries for Hitchens in the Daily Mail show both the extent to which he had flipped and how ludicrous he had become by the time he died, though, to be fair, one of the tributes was from his brother, Peter. Many of the obits mention George Galloway's put down of Hitchens as a "a drink-soaked former Trotskyist popinjay". Hitchens had turned up to support some House UnAmerican Activities Committee or other against Galloway. The Mail didn't mention that Galloway dispatched Hitchens with even greater ease than he did the committee itself and I haven't seen any of the obits mentioning the "grapple in the Apple" debate between Hitchens and Galloway courtesy of Democracy Now. Woops, that's not true. There was one which I can't place right now. It said something about the debate generating more heat than light but I am fairly sure Galloway said that himself at the end of the debate.

But there have been some very entertaining posts on the passing of Hitchens my personal fave is from Flying Rodent of the Between the Hammer and the Anvil blog. See this:

Evasion, retrenchment, misdirection, ad hominem assaults. These were his weapons in his Great Intellectual Struggle, a cause in which he clearly regarded himself as an intellectual Field Marshall, sending his fellow word-warriors into combat.

Pick your Iraq-related controversy, and Hitchens had a highly-conditional, deeply duplicitous argument ready for deployment. When a survey revealed a massive death toll resulting from the war, Hitchens invoked a nebulous "some percentage" of the bodycount who were maybe, probably murderous baddies.

What percentage? Hitchens neither knew nor cared. All that mattered was reducing the damage to the war effort, to allow it to continue unimpeded in all it's righteous violence.
On the torture, rape and murder of prisoners at Abu Ghraib: Bad, but not Guernica and anyway, not as bad as Saddam.

Cindy Sheehan, a woman with some wacky opinions who also happened to be the mother of a dead US soldier? Not so much an exploited, grieving woman as a moral blackmailer, said his angry hatchet job.

When he was embarrassingly suckered by the obvious fraudster Ahmad Chalabi - Other candidates would be worse.

On Iraq's horrifying civil war, a situation resulting entirely from the decision to invade in the first place - your problem, you fucking deal with it if you want to end the war so much... Or, in one of his favourite gambits - Al Qaeda ate my homework.

Louis Proyect's immediate obituary was more about Alex Cockburn's obituary and more about Cockburn himself than about Hitchens but his subsequent pointer to Reading the maps was welcome, though I don't agree that it was "the best Hitchens obit". It does provide some useful links including Proyect's own obit and Finkestein's Hitchens obituary which appeared about 9 years before Hitchens actually died:

In the early years of the Iraq war Hitchens was regularly excoriated by left-wing commentators, but few of his old opponents have felt the need to renew their fury in the aftermath of his death. The blogger Louis Proyect was one of Hitchens' most ferocious and persistent critics, but his obituary for his old enemy is surprisingly measured. Alex Callinicos, whose Socialist Workers Party was often condemned as an ally of 'Islamofascism' by Hitchens, has also refrained from denunciations............

Hitchens' advertisements for Bush's war were written in haste, and without great regard for either facts or logic. Reviewing The Long Short War, a collection of twenty-two pro-war articles penned in late 2002 and early 2003, Norman Finkelstein noted how often Hitchens contradicted himself, even within the confines of a single article. Finkelstein found Hitchens claiming that the war had nothing to do with oil, then stating on his very next page that 'of course it's about oil'. He saw Hitchens arguing that Saddam's regime was on the brink of 'implosion', then asserting a page later than 'only the force of American arms' could bring regime change in Iraq.

As it happens, all these years down the line, it is worth revisiting Finkelstein's piece:

an apostate is usually astute enough to understand that, in order to catch the public eye and reap the attendant benefits, merely registering this or that doubt about one's prior convictions, or nuanced disagreements with former comrades (which, after all, is how a reasoned change of heart would normally evolve), won't suffice. For, incremental change, or fundamental change by accretion, doesn't get the buzz going: there must be a dramatic rupture with one's past. Conversion and zealotry, just like revelation and apostasy, are flip sides of the same coin, the currency of a political culture having more in common with religion than rational discourse. A rite of passage for apostates peculiar to U.S. political culture is bashing Noam Chomsky. It's the political equivalent of a bar mitzvah, a ritual signaling that one has "grown up" - i.e., grown out of one's "childish" past. It's hard to pick up an article or book by ex-radicals - Gitlin's Letters to a Young Activist, Paul Berman's Terror and Liberalism… - that doesn't include a hysterical attack on him. Behind this venom there's also a transparent psychological factor at play. Chomsky mirrors their idealistic past as well as sordid present, an obstinate reminder that they once had principles but no longer do, that they sold out but he didn't. Hating to be reminded, they keep trying to shatter the glass. He's the demon from the past that, after recantation, no amount of incantation can exorcise.

And as recently as May this year Hitchens was still attacking his former comrade, Chomsky, conveniently forgetting that his journey to the neo-con right didn't begin quite as immediately after 9/11 as he would have liked people to believe.

How the European Union supports Israel and the US by giving Palestinians "aid"

2011-12-23T19:10:00.001Z

Watch this great documentary on the effects of NGO proliferation in Palestine.

Zionist racism in Tel Aviv

2011-12-12T23:32:00.001Z

Rally against Sudanese refugees in Tel Aviv, calling to "restrict their movement" and set up concentration camps.

Protest against Veolia in Camden, London, UK

2011-12-11T13:24:00.001Z

Bin Bag Protest: Veolia out of north London

On Tuesday at 9am we will be gathering at Camden Town Hall in order to protest at the meeting of the NLWA board who will be voting on the Fuel Use contract for North London. NLWA will also be making decisions about bidders for the main waste processing contract and it is a great opportunity for us to remind them about the campaign through a Bin Bag Protest.

This will reinforce the vital work that has been done recently by members of No2VAG in terms of vital legal arguments and contacting councillors again to repeat the key messages as well as raising environmental, financial and corporate conduct concerns.

A number of people have prepared materials, placards [see attached], Veolia Scream bin bag and clothing (white overalls) which will be brought and a member has prepared a Veolia Scream facepaint design so it will be visually impressive. All you need to do it turn up for an hour on Tuesday morning. If you are willing to be face-painted please arrive by 8.45am. Wet wipes and water will be on hand to clean up afterwards! If you have other materials you wish to bring along these will be welcome.

Bring along yourself, your ideas and enthusiasm!

Decision day nears for waste project worth billions

Published: 9 December, 2011

The latest Islington Tribune published letter includes details of our protest:

Tuesday 13 Dec 9-10am

Camden Town Hall,
Judd St [Opposite St Pancras Station; between King's Cross and Euston],
London WC1H 9JE

Will north London throw £4.7billions down the drain?

The evidence against Veolia:
1) Grave misconduct for aiding and abetting on-going Israeli war crimes
2) Financial crisis - nearly 60% loss of share value in the last 6 months [see latest - below]

3) Racist recruitment practice - advertising jobs for Jews only
4) Guilty of putting residents lives in danger in the 2007 explosion of waste [Preston, Lancashire, closing the M6]

5) Technical solutions bad for the environment [while competitors offer harnessing of CHP heat, Veolia offer no real Heat Recovery]
6) Poor recycling [Veolia business concentrates on incineration and is new to the separation of co-mingled waste needed for meaningful recycling]

The NLWA has ignored the evidence against Veolia and it insists:
"none of the matters raised so far have been found to affect Veolia’s ability to perform satisfactorily a contract for NLWA".

Would the NLWA councillors take it more seriously when they vote this Tuesday on whether to shortlist Veolia?

If you are on facebook - you may wish to invite your friends to:

http://www.facebook.com/events/296349483731462/

Veolia Financial Crisis:

In the summer Veolia was forced to disclose its financial crisis, including fraud and since has been in free fall. This week Veolia announced to investors [6 December] that it's dumping its new partner, Transdev - they only got hitched a few months ago after courting for 2 years. This divorce won't be cheap. Bloomberg's take was: "Veolia Exits Mass Transit With $6.7 Billion of Asset Sales to Reduce Debt". Such a change of heart should worry all north Londoners. The waste authority is keen to tie the knot with Veolia for 30 years to the tune of £4.7billions. The NLWA councillors will vote this Tuesday on whether to continue flirting with Veolia.

Grave Misconduct

The Tribune edited out "grave misconduct": inadvertently altering the substance of the letter - a distortion the NLWA does all the time, except the NLWA should be aware of the difference, given the legal advice available to them:

"to Veolia's grave misconduct in aiding and abetting the Israeli violation of international law and human rights of the Palestinians"
was edited to:
"to the company’s operations in Israel".

http://www.islingtontribune.com/letters/2011/dec/decision-day-nears-waste-project-worth-billions

The unaltered letter [the full letter sent to the Islington Tribune]:

The international media is analysing this week [again] the crisis surrounding Veolia. From the FT to Reuters they all agree it is serious. But the NLWA responses show it is still in denial.

The problem is that Islington would have to live with the legacy of the NLWA aversion to facts and UK law. The waste contracts the NLWA appears so keen to grant Veolia are for 30 years! And it isn't small money – in fact it's the biggest UK waste project worth £4.7 billion.

While I'm writing this letter, Islington councillors would be contemplating which company would be dropped out of the three horse bid for billions of pounds waste related contract. The vote is next week.

It seems, the north London councillors at the NLWA are held by the scruff of the neck. It even rejected all 3 deputation applications to explain the Councillors why the legal advice they were given by the NLWA isn't sound.

Hundreds of residents have communicated their concerns, from Veolia's guilt in the 2007 explosions putting in danger residents and closing the M6 & M55, to Veolia's grave misconduct in aiding and abetting the Israeli violation of international law and human rights of the Palestinians. No one will be able to say that the NLWA awarded these contracts in ignorance of the complicity of one of the bidders in complicity with flagrant and ongoing war crimes.

Will the Islington councillors have the courage to stand up for Islington and vote against Veolia?

Islington residents will be protesting when the NLWA come to vote this Tuesday 13th from 9am outside the Camden Town Hall near King's Cross.

NLWA

North London Waste Authority process the waste from the 7 boroughs:
Barnet, Camden, Enfield, Hackney, Haringey, Islington and Waltham Forest

The Republican Freak Show on Israel

2011-12-10T15:09:00.001Z

How to view this video in the UK

Mustafa Tamimi, 28, murdered by Israel during a peaceful protest against the ethnic cleansing of Nabi Saleh

2011-12-10T14:26:00.001Z

Mustafa Tamimi (L) poses for a photo with his parents (front) and brothers in the West Bank village of Nabi Saleh, 10.9.2010. (Photo: Activestills)

For more articles about the popular Palestinian resistance in Nabi Saleh, see Electronic Intifadah.

Video shot after Tamimi was hit in the face by a gas canister, shot by an Israeli soldiers at close range.

Israeli pigs in action

2011-12-07T13:29:00.002Z

The lobby lobbies Israel

2011-12-06T09:49:00.001Z

Here's Akiva Eldar in Ha'aretz on how America's Jewish (yes, Jewish) lobby successfully lobbied Israel over a racist advertising campaign by the State of Israel in the USA.

An uproar in the "holy city" of New York. An Israeli Absorption Ministry campaign - using the slogan "Before Hanukkah turns into Christmas, it's time to return to Israel" - has convulsed the offices of Jewish professionals in the city. How dare those Israeli beggars patronize us? Who has ever heard of such chutzpah: delegitimizing Jews in America?
Heads of Jewish federations have sent urgent letters to Israel's prime minister, warning that the campaign is liable to harm relations between Israel and the U.S. Jewish community. Really! Ambassador Michael Oren apologized, and Benjamin Netanyahu canned the slogan. Apologies were made, now everyone can prepare for Hanukkah parties. And the main thing? "Jewish leaders" are now free to become involved in a renewed struggle against the "delegitimization of Israel." Or, in other words, they will defend Israel's government, whose forte is promoting the delegitimization of the "other."

Actually it's the State of Israel that delegitimises the "other", not this or that government. Zionism is zionism after all but the Eldar isn't averse to promoting the oxymoron of Israel being "a democratic, Jewish state".Tony Greenstein covers the whole issue of what prompted Israel's racist advertising campaign in the first place.

A word about the "A" word

2011-12-04T09:38:00.001Z

Many people will have already read about the recent Question Time style debate at Birmingham University. I only just found out about the fact that a question about whether or not Israel can be described as an apartheid state was banned from even being asked. Apparently this was at the request of the World Zionist Congress affiliated Jewish Society.

Anyway, here's Ben White, on the banning of the "A" word from the proceedings:

The whole debate can be watched on YouTube, but one of the talking points of the evening came when, barely half an hour in, an audience member asked the panel if Israel is an apartheid state. The chair’s unexpected reply was that this was not a subject that could be discussed: “I’ve been told I can’t have that as a question”, she stressed (watch here). Inevitably, all the panellists then proceeded to address the issue – Victor Kattan said he’d refer to “A”.
What the audience didn’t know is that in the run up to the event, members of the Jewish Society had pressured the Debating Society to prohibit my book ‘Israeli Apartheid: A Beginner’s Guide’ from being available for purchase. Despite the fact that J-Soc was free to make available any of their own literature without restriction, J-Soc students threatened to withdraw their official association with the event, if I brought along copies of my book to sell. Eventually, they backed down when the Debating Society refused to concede the point.

Ben smartly links the debate and the attempted suppression of one side of it to the Birmingham University students' union's adoption of the bogus EUMC working definition of antisemitism:

Further crucial context is the adoption by the Birmingham student union in 2010 of the notoriously politicised and discredited ‘EUMC working definition of antisemitism’. This 2005 document, left to gather dust by the EUMC’s successor body the European Union Agency for Fundamental Rights (FRA), has been ably critiqued by Richard Kuper here, here, and here, and also by Antony Lerman here.

In fact, earlier this year, the Universities and College Union (UCU) voted overwhelmingly in favour of a motion that criticised the way in which the working definition “is being used to silence debate about Israel and Palestine on campus”.

Thus after the J-Soc attempts to prevent the sale of my book, the debate organisers were understandably anxious about encouraging a question on apartheid that could see them accused of racism, according to an interpretation of the student union policy.

This was the first time that the Debating Society had held an Israel-Palestine debate since the EUMC motion passed; it was, in effect, a test case. What transpired on Thursday not only showed the extent to which groups will go to stifle discussion of Israel’s crimes, but also how such efforts can so often spectacularly backfire.

I presume it was the students' union's adoption of the working definition which led to the attempted ban on the "A" word. The problem here is that zionists will claim that the working definition has not been used to stifle debate because the debate was had. Of course this will be a lie as the video attests. I wonder if the WZC's affiliates in Birmingham will use their humiliation as an excuse to ban future debate on Palestine altogether.

Commentary on the “Philosophical Thinking” of Gilad Atzmon

2011-11-26T15:41:00.047Z

This article is not about Atzmon’s antisemitism, which has been discussed elsewhere [1]. However, Atzmon recently deemed David Landy, who writes here at JSF, alien to “philosophical thinking,” and “unable to grasp… metaphysical depth.”[2] As Atzmon knows, we Jews are tribal. No sooner did I read it than an effervescence of “clannish solidarity” percolated through my veins like echoes of far away drums. I therefore set myself the task of discovering the essence of Atzmon’s fabled “philosophical thinking,” and perused his recent offering, The Wandering Who, blunderingly published by Zero Books.[3] Yet this is no traditional book review. Space and time constraints limit me to commenting a single chapter. I chose chapter nine, which mostly levels unproblematic accusations against Israel. As the commentary is longer than the chapter reviewed, I hope that by the end of it the reader understands why a serious review of the full book is not likely. Unless Zero Books decide to publish an annotated edition.

Atzmon in his own words

What Zionists think of themselves is not very interesting; far more intriguing is the duality referred to above, the chasm between who they think they are and what they actually are, between self-image and public image, consciousness and unconsciousness. Unconsciousness, says Lacan, is the ‘discourse of the other’, which is very much the male fear of impotence. Rather than the anxiety induced by the fear of being caught malfunctioning, it is the fear of being known as dysfunctional. The real terror here is the unbearable threat that the fiasco may become public knowledge.

At the time of the 2006 Lebanon war, the Israelis’ ‘discourse of the other’ encompassed CNN, Sky TV, BBC and the West in general. As the war proceeded, it began to appear as though resentment was mounting amongst those who were no longer willing to accept Israeli brutality. Indeed, this gulf between the confident Israeli self-image and the total contempt of the other is exactly where the neurosis of Yehoshua, Oz, Grossman and the majority of Israelis came into play.

Two and half years after its military flop in Lebanon, Israel found itself once again in the midst of a second disastrous war that it had launched.This was Operation Cast Lead (2008), a total war against the people of Gaza and their democratically-elected leadership, Hamas. Along the campaign,Israel attempted to implement the lesson of the 2006 war. I think, probably optimistically, that by then, somebody at the state hasbara bureau must have read Lacan. The Israelis would try to save themselves from fully grasping who they are and what they do by blocking out every possible mirror.Consequently the IDF barred all foreign media from entering Gaza, in order to guarantee a propaganda success. It wasn’t just about barring Goyim from entering the battle zone, but about preventing Israelis and Zionist Jews around the world from seeing themselves through the gaze of the Goyim. It was a crude attempt to divert the discourse so that Jewish unconsciousness was kept intact.

Atzmon follows with analyzing a detail from a Coen Brothers film, alleging that the key character, a Jewish American physics professor by the name of Larry, sheds light on the same issue.

In the dream, Larry is confronted with his guilt through his Goy neighbour. Rather than the fear of being unethical, it is the fear of being caught out as unethical that torments Larry. It is the ‘discourse of the other’ (the gun-toting neighbour) that introduces Larry unconsciously to a sense of guilt. I link this back to the case of Israel: it is not the idea of being unethical that torments Israelis and their supporters, but the idea of being ‘caught out’ as such.

Atzmon concludes:

The Coens’ Jewish tribal cinematic reality is the Jewish unconscious, of which Jews are far from being proud. Like Al-Jazeera and Press TV in Gaza, the Coens reveal Jewish ghetto malaise to an audience of millions. But they also tackle the notion of Jewish unconsciousness by the means of mirroring.

The Argument

Let’s outline the argument. The chapter introduces three pieces in evidence:

the gap between the self-image of Israelis and what was seen on TV during the 2006 Labanon invasion,
the gap between the self-image of Israelis and what was seen on TV during operation Cast Lead,
the gap between the self-image of Larry as a good man, a fictional American Jew, and the truth.

In each case, the gap produces a strong reaction:

the alleged neurosis of Israeli authors (undocumented, we see nowhere evidence or definition of the neurosis),
the barring of foreign journalists from covering operation Cast Lead in Gaza,
Larry being tormented by his neighbor’s contempt.

The evidence reveals a pattern, a gap between self image and public image, which produces a psychological symptom which fits, according to Atzmon, Lacan’s psychoanalytical theory. Applying Lacan’s theory to the evidence therefore helps identify the “Jewish Ghetto Malaise” and the “‘Jewish ghetto’ mindset”, which explains the evidence and therefore Israel’s behavior.

What is wrong with this argument? Pretty much everything, as I will enumerate.

A Chamber Pot Called ‘Lacan’

Lacan does not use the terms ‘unconsciousness’ and ‘consciousness’ Atzmon attributes him. He uses ‘the unconscious’ and ‘the subject.’ Since the unconscious is Freud’s (and Lacan’s) central theoretical concept, mangling it is the equivalent of referring to Einstein’s “theory of relatives,” or the centrality of “classic struggle” in Marxism. It is a sophomoric term paper blooper of the kind that teaching assistants love to share.[4] Atzmon claims he studied philosophy in graduate school. Perhaps he fell prey to one of those internet scams.

Nor did Lacan say that unconsciousness is “the discourse of the other.” He said that “the unconscious is the discourse of the Other.” Capitalization is important, since ‘Other’ and ‘other’ are in fact opposing concepts for Lacan. The other (uncapitalized) is the object of desire and stands in an imaginary relation with the ego. This fundamentally narcissistic relation is that which Lacan identifies in the act of gazing at oneself in the mirror. The narcissistic relation interrupts the other relation, that between the subject and the Other. The Other (capitalized) is the symbolic order, language and the primary law of signification and desire, which constitutes the subject and is inaccessible to it. Atzmon attributes to Lacan almost the precise opposite of Lacan’s concept of the unconscious. ( la lettre volée )[5]

Therefore, the Lacanian telegram, “the unconscious is the discourse of the Other” refers to the unconscious as that which is both at the core of subjectivity and related to as alien and inaccessible to it, being the external and constitutive symbolic order of language. By no stretch of interpretation can it mean ‘what CNN and Press TV say about me that I don’t know’, which is how Atzmon uses the term ‘unconsciousness.’ Whereas the mirror provides Lacan with the paradigmatic model of imaginary, narcissistic identification, Atzmon uses the image in the mirror and on the TV screen as synonyms with the truth.

Put simply, Atzmon’s alleged theoretical apparatus does not exist.

Distinctions without a Difference

Rather than the anxiety induced by the fear of being caught malfunctioning, it is the fear of being known as dysfunctional.

The syntactic form ‘Rather than A, B’ presupposes a meaningful difference between A and B. Putting aside that I don’t know what “anxiety induced by fear” means, let alone how it differs from fear, what is the difference between the two legs of this construction? Although the muddy prose does not help, it could be that Atzmon distinguishes between the fear of failure in the act (performance anxiety) and the fear of stigma (being known). How does this distinction affect his argument?

If ‘it’ in the above quote refers back to “the male fear of impotence,” which is, we are told, “pretty much” the definition of unconsciousness (according to ‘Lacan’, though certainly not according to Lacan), then Atzmon argues that the male fear of impotence is not performance anxiety but rather the fear of stigma. That would be a questionable assertion, both because these two fears are intertwined—one fears failing at least partially because of the projected stigma—and because I suspect most men would rather not be impotent even when there is nobody around to know it.

Alternatively, ‘it’ could be a forward reference to “the real terror here”, which apparently refers to Israel’s symptom. In that case, the expression “rather than” distinguishes between “the male fear of impotence” and Israel’s symptom, thus arguing that Israel’s symptom is different from unconsciousness. This would invalidate the whole argument which is based on the application of that term to Israelis.

Differences without a Distinction

Since there is allegedly a single ghetto mindset, the three facts in evidence for this mindset should reveal the same psychological pattern. They don’t.

The real terror here is the unbearable threat that the fiasco may become public knowledge.
The Israelis would try to save themselves from fully grasping who they are and what they do by blocking out every possible mirror
Rather than the fear of being unethical, it is the fear of being caught out as unethical that torments Larry.

One can either be in denial about one’s crimes or blasé about them. One cannot be both. If one experiences guilt when caught, that is to the extent that the transgressed value has been internalized. If Israelis tried to avoid fully grasping what they have done (as Atzmon claims they did in Gaza), they could have only done so to the extent that they cared about the ethical implications of their deeds, not only about being caught (as Atzmon claims about Larry’s condition). If, on the other hand, they only wanted to avoid the repercussions of being exposed, they would have no reason to hide their behavior from themselves. The second and third patterns are not merely different psychological states, but mutually exclusive ones.

The first pattern is yet again different. Not revealing that one is an alcoholic is not the same as not revealing that one is a child abuser. Covering up a weakness so as to appear strong is not the same as covering up a crime so as to appear innocent.

In theory, different patterns can have an underlying unity, but they don’t have to, and they most likely don’t have one when they are mutually exclusive. Anyway, underlying unity needs to be shown. But there is no evidence that Atzmon is aware that his examples do not add up.

On The Interpretation of Films

Another example of Atzmon’s ‘Lacan’ at work is his cockamamie interpretation of Larry’s dream in the Coen brothers’ film, A Serious Man.

It is the ‘discourse of the other’ (the gun-toting neighbour) that introduces Larry unconsciously to a sense of guilt.

On the contrary. The dream's gun toting neighbor is not the Other. He is just a neighbor, namely, an other who provides a narcissistic reflection to the ego. One of the film’s main themes is the difference between experience (close to the Lacanian Imaginary), the realm of sense and visibility beneath which is glimpsed the Real, the realm of trauma and events, (the tornado, the disease, the car accident), and the Symbolic, the network of signification, religion, community, tradition, which governs the web of stories and interpretations that allows a person to make sense of the event, to survive, overcome, anchor oneself and relate to experience. We see that theme at the very beginning in the “Hassidic tale,” in which the husband (simple experience, sensible reality, the Imaginary) meets a helpful stranger (the Real) and invites him over to dinner, whereas the wife (tradition, knowledge, community, the Symbolic) possesses the communal knowledge that the man is dead, and therefore, deconstructing the image, interprets the event as a curse and the visitor as a dybuk. The same theme is introduced through the difference in quantum mechanics, between the stories “that help make sense of it”, such as the story of Schrödinger’s cat, and “how it really works”, the mystery that the incomprehensible mathematical formulae seek to represent.

The dream, as Freud notes, is a wish fulfillment fantasy, but the wish is not the manifest content. Larry’s desire, as the whole film reiterates constantly, is for the Other, for answers, for God, for meaning. But the truth of this desire is questioned. Does he really want answers, or does he want the questions to go away? He is asked directly, “do you really want to go back to how things were before?” His predicament in the film is precisely that he does not feel guilty of anything, and that means that he does not know what he wants. It is that predicament which makes the film a meditation on the biblical Book of Job. Larry’s wish therefore appears in the dream as the desire to be punished. By making himself a sinner he becomes the other of the Other, therefore eliciting punishment, which both release him from his predicament (fulfills his wish) and reintegrates him into the Symbolic by giving the misfortunes that befell him meaning. The Symbolic order, and the guilt that is essential to it, is the condition of the continuation of human life, which is why the only appropriate punishment is death. The neighbor who shoots him in the dream does not confront Larry with his real guilt, but is rather the imaginary representation of his own desire to be found guilty, to be guilty so he can continue to live, to be punished by God so that the disruptive question of God's will can go away. This is the paradox of the film, which is the theological paradox of Job, in that, in order to radically fulfill God’s will, one has to sacrifice the desire for order, for meaning, and for a relation with God, and vice versa.

Dream Work: Condensation and Displacement

Atzmon reaches conclusions about “Israelis and Zionist Jews.” However his evidence, to the extent that it is factual, does not have the same scope. The first and second evidence relate to the actions of Israeli authorities, primarily the IDF and the government. The third piece of evidence is a detail from a film, a dream, which relates to a fictional Jewish American character about whose political sympathies nothing is said. How do we get from these specific instances to the mindset that characterizes Zionist Jews and Israelis in general?

Regarding moving from governing authorities to Israelis, Atzmon offers nothing. It must be assumed that there is no such thing as a society, namely, a differentiated whole, divided by class, race, gender, status, etc, rife with both conflict and cooperation, with internal relations of domination, resistance and co-optation.

Otherwise, one could ask for example, are those who were prevented from “fully grasping” what happened in Gaza the same people as those who issued the order to bar journalists from Gaza? If not, what is the relation between them?

Rather than presenting a relation, Atzmon’s drift between the different categories works like a dream. Freud describes the unconscious thought process as the work of two mechanisms of substitution, condensation and displacement, which Lacan translates to metaphor and metonymy. The IDF / Government of Israel / Israel / Grossman / Israelis / Zionists / Jews (and we may continue with terms from elsewhere, Wall Street / Greenspan / the Bund / Marxists, etc. etc. practically ad infinitum) is such a signifying chain, in which every term can be substituted for the others through such mechanisms.

Regarding the move from the fictional Jewish character Larry to Israel, Atzmon is more explicit, although his explanation refers only to crossing the Atlantic and ignores the question of crossing the gulf between fiction and social reality.

…A Serious Man delivers a clear message regarding Israel and Zionism, for Israel is the Jewish state and, despite the Zionist promise to build a civilised nation, it functions as a Jewish ghetto, subject to all the symptoms of abnormality conveyed by the Coens.

What Larry’s case teaches us can be applied to Israel because Larry is Jewish and Israel, Atzmon says, is “the Jewish State” and functions as “a Jewish Ghetto.”

Thus, Atzmon practically declares that what ultimately connects Larry to Israel is a pure signifier, ‘Jewish,’ whose presence justifies substituting one to the other. Presumably, you know one Jewish thing you know them all. However, we need also examine the function of the signifier ‘ghetto’, as it may suggest a more substantial claim, thus giving ‘Jewish’ a positive content.

In what way does Israel function as a ghetto? It does function as such as a simile. There is one aspect of Israel that is like the Jewish ghetto/shtetl of yesteryear. Both are geographically bounded areas in which Jews live among Jews (in Israel, to the extent that Palestinians are segregated). Thus, the simile “Israel is like a ghetto” can be useful if one makes an illuminating argument on the basis of that aspect, but the simile does not exhaust its terms. In other key aspects Israel is not like a ghetto. It is a sovereign state possessing an army and nuclear arms, something the Jewish ghetto usually lacked. It is much larger, much more internally differentiated by class and race, much wealthier in the aggregate, etc. Why is the similar aspect determinant while the differences are not? Ultimately, Israel is like a ghetto in the same way that a gun is like a penis. The simile may illuminate why some men worship guns. But you cannot deduce from knowing that one needs a license to own a gun that owning a penis requires a license as well. What gives Atzmon’s false inference the appearance of solidity is, again, the sliding through the signifier ‘Jewish.’

Furthermore, in what way is the American Jew Larry connected to a “Jewish ghetto”? Larry lives among non Jews, thus lacking even that aspect of the ghetto that applies to Israel. While aspects of Larry’s life as depicted in the film are intensely Jewish, including some that might be illuminated through the metaphor (and not the reality) of the ghetto, there is no reason why either Larry’s ethical lapses or his sex fantasy would be so illuminated, rather than, for example, through male subjectivity, quantum mechanics, suburbia, academic life, theology, etc. Non Jewish men fantasizing about sex with the neighbor are not unheard of, and Larry’s decision to take the bribe is no more Jewish than his student deciding to offer one is Korean. The connection between Larry’s lapses and the ghetto in which he doesn’t live is a pure semiotic slide through the signifier ‘Jewish’ and its permutations: Larry /Coen Brothers / Jewish / Jewish ghetto / Zionism / Jewish State. Atzmon glides from one term to the other, as if dreaming, or spinning free associations on the therapist’s couch, revealing little about anything other than his own unconscious.

Occam’s Razor and Gyges’s Ring

The Israelis would try to save themselves from fully grasping who they are and what they do by blocking out every possible mirror. Consequently the IDF barred all foreign media from entering Gaza,

Consider these four factoids:

The Alawite Syrian regime imposes a virtual media blackout on the popular uprising going on in Syria. [6]
The NYPD prevented journalists from covering the eviction of the Occupy Wall Street protesters from Zuccotti Park.[7]
The Chinese censor scrubs the internet for any mention of the dissidence.[8]
Israel barred all foreign media from entering Gaza.

One could offer four different theories, each positing a new entity, one for each fact: an Alawite mindset explaining Syria, a Han Chinese mindset explaining China, an NYPD mindset explaining the NYPD, and a Jewish mindset explaining Israel.

Or one could suggest a single theory that explains why governing authorities or elites seek to control official information despite knowing that the information will spread anyway. To take one example, in Domination and the Arts of Resistance, James C. Scott offers a sophisticated analysis of interactions between dominated and dominating groups, introducing the concept of “the public transcript,” and arguing that the ideological performances of elites that seek to control the public transcript are primarily directed at themselves.[9]

What would Occam do?[10]

A similar appeal to Occam’s razor invalidates every other explanation Atzmon offers in this chapter. Do we need a special Jewish ghetto mindset to explain why the IDF sought to cover up its incompetence during the 2006 invasion of Lebanon? Do we need a special ghetto mindset to explain an illicit sexual fantasy of a fictional character? Do we need one to explain the fact that some ethical rules are sometimes obeyed by some people out of the fear of being caught?

As for the latter, hypothesizing that Atzmon’s graduate studies in philosophy consisted in corresponding with an on-line scammer hawking sham degrees might explain why he is unaware that the question ‘why do people behave justly?’ is somewhat old, as is the argument that they do so out of fear of punishment. In the second book of Plato’s Republic, for example, Glaucon argues:

…that those who practise justice do so involuntarily and because they have not the power to be unjust will best appear if we imagine something of this kind: having given both to the just and the unjust power to do what they will, let us watch and see whither desire will lead them; then we shall discover in the very act the just and unjust man to be proceeding along the same road, following their interest, which all natures deem to be their good, and are only diverted into the path of justice by the force of law. The liberty which we are supposing may be most completely given to them in the form of such a power as is said to have been possessed by Gyges the ancestor of Croesus the Lydian. [11]

The story proceeds with the myth of the ring of Gyges [12], who becomes corrupt after acquiring the power of making himself invisible. Incidentally, Gyges then

… seduced the queen, and with her help conspired against the king and slew him, and took the kingdom.

Could it be that Glaucon reached his unflattering conclusions after observing the behavior of the many Jews who packed fifth century B.C. Athens? There weren’t any. Were the Athenians themselves so ‘Jewish’? Apart for the inherent offensiveness of the formula, that would be an odd argument given how much hay Atzmon makes from the imaginary opposition he posits between Universalist “Athens” and tribalist “Jerusalem.” (To close a circle with the film, in the following paragraph, accessed through the link above, Plato indeed conjures a Job.)

“Dear Consumer,”

Given that the text falls apart for being breathed upon, one has to ask how it works; what is the pleasure of the text? And, leaving that to another day, why would the author serve his readers the intellectual equivalent of canned dog food? A possible answer could be that he internalized Alan Greenspan’s market ethics. Atzmon cites Greenspan explaining why subprime mortgages were a good thing:

Innovation...has brought about a multitude of new products, such as subprime loans and niche credit programs…With these advances in technology, lenders have taken advantage of credit-scoring models and other techniques for efficiently extending credit to a broader spectrum of consumers.

The same is true of the field of books and articles. If there is a market for intellectual dog food, why ask why? There always will be entrepreneurs eager to satisfy the demand—for a modest return, be it mostly vanity.

Post-Scriptum: a Joke

A man visits a therapist and asks for help. The therapist proposes a Rorschach test. The therapist shows him the first inkblot and asks, what do you see? The man looks at it and replies, I see Jews. The therapist holds up the second image. What do you see? I see Jews. The therapist shows him the third image. What do you see? I see Jews. And so they go through the whole set of inkblots, and the man keep saying for every image—I see Jews. The test finished, the therapist folds the images back into a drawer and says: I think you might have an obsession with Jews. Why? Asks the man, upset. It is you who collects so many pictures of Jews!

NOTES (all links in the text are repeated here)

[1] http://www.amazon.com/review/R3FQP8JFUYL04Z/ref=cm_cr_pr_perm?ie=UTF8&ASIN=1846948754, http://www.amazon.co.uk/review/R1KZGNK4HT5FAA/ref=cm_cr_pr_perm?ie=UTF8&ASIN=1846948754, http://www.sue.be/pal/Atzmon.html,
http://jewssansfrontieres.blogspot.com/2011/09/few-point-for-occasion-of-atzmon-saga.html,
http://azvsas.blogspot.com/2011/03/guide-to-sayings-of-gilad-atzmon-anti.html,
http://www.palaestina-portal.eu/Stimmen_Israel_juedische/davidsson_elias_atzmon_the_wandering_who.htm.

[2] http://jewssansfrontieres.blogspot.com/2011/11/atzmon-and-alderman-preaching-from-same.html

[3] http://leninology.blogspot.com/2011/09/zero-authors-statement-on-gilad-atzmon.html

[4] http://www.cse.unsw.edu.au/~norman/Jokes-file/StudentBloopers.htm

[5] Jacques Lacan, Le séminaire sur « la lettre volée » in Écrits I, Éditions du Seuil, 1966, pp. 66-67.

[6] http://english.al-akhbar.com/content/coverage-syria-truth-victim

[7] http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2011/nov/15/occupy-journalists-media-blackout

[8] http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-pacific-13281200

[9] http://books.google.com/books/about/Domination_and_the_arts_of_resistance.html?id=tl9q9DbnkuUC esp. pp. 102-103

[10] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Occam%27s_razor

[11] http://www.classicreader.com/book/1788/16/

[12] Plato’s story is most likely one of the inspirations of Tolkein’s the Lord of the Rings.

The Police, the Zionist and the Crawler

2011-11-25T17:58:00.006Z

by David Landy

Five years ago, the Israeli embassy in Ireland tried to hold a cultural event in Dublin city centre. They bought over the Israeli writer, AB Yehoshua to the Irish Writer’s Centre on Parnell Square. On a balmy June evening, we held a noisy, peaceful protest, reading from Yehoshua’s writings – the one where he looks forward to a ‘purifying war’ on Palestinians in Gaza and advocates collective punishment. We also read – loudly – from the works of two Palestinian poets – Ghassan Zaqtan and Zacharia Mohammad - who Israel had prevented from coming to Ireland when they were booked to read their works in the Irish Writers Centre. We were, as the police said, entitled to protest.

Last night, the Israeli embassy held another cultural event in Dublin City centre, a film festival in Filmbase, in Temple Bar. Naturally, we held a similar protest. It was a larger protest, but equally good-natured – although this time it was in the rain and cold. The only real difference was the attitude of the police. As our press release describes it:

A protest outside the Israeli Embassy sponsored “Israeli Film Days” in Temple Bar turned acrimonious this evening when Gardai broke up a peaceful demonstration by pro-Palestinian activists outside the venue. Citing Section 21 of the Public Order Act, Gardai forcibly removed around sixty activists from the area outside the venue, Filmbase, on Curved Street in Temple Bar, while others were removed from inside the venue.

Prior to the removal, the protestors had gathered to chant slogans and hand out leaflets explaining why they were opposed to the event. Between 5.30 and 6.40pm the activists held a loud, colourful, vibrant and entirely peaceful protest outside. By this time the majority of those attending the event had entered without incident – including the Tanaiste and Foreign Minister, Eamon Gilmore, and Justice Minister Alan Shatter, and it was at this time – after everyone inside had gone downstairs into the cinema area - that Gardai began to forcibly remove the protest from the street. After being forced off Curved Street, the protest found itself split into two crowds, on Temple Lane Street and Eustace Street.”

More information about the police shutting down our peaceful protest can be found here: http://www.ipsc.ie/press-releases/gardai-break-up-peaceful-protest-outside-israeli-embassy-sponsored-film-festival

Why did the police take such radically different approaches to such similar Palestinian solidarity actions? The immediate answer isn’t hard to find – we have a new Justice Minister, Alan Shatter. He is an Irish Jew and a staunch Zionist, and has always considered that his remit involves representing Israel in Ireland.

I have seen police clear a street of protesters before, but never with such lack of enthusiasm. They knew that this was an operationally stupid decision which only prolonged and intensified the protest. They were aware that we had actually been on the point of leaving. But orders is orders is orders and clearly our presence had become embarrassing to our Justice Minister in the presence of his Israeli friends. After all, they wouldn’t stand for that type of nonsense in Israel. So the rabble was cleared from the street.

However, Alan Shatter was not the only Irish Minister inside the Israeli festival of propaganda. Shamefully, near-unbelievably, our Foreign Minister, Eamon Gilmore, leader of the Labour party (and formerly from the Workers Party) was also present. This was despite the fact that a scant fortnight before, 14 Irish citizens, including two elected representatives had been attacked in international waters by Israeli commandos and dragged to an Israeli prison. After the Filmbase protest, there was a public meeting where these flotilla participants talked of their abuse by the Israelis. They also told of how Irish embassy staff who tried to ensure their release were lied to and treated badly by the Israeli officials. Evidently Eamon Gilmore isn’t concerned about Palestinians, but one would have thought that national pride would have led to him staying away from this Israeli event.

It’s awkward to bring up issues like national pride and national sovereignty without endorsing some kind of bigoted and small-minded nationalism. But the erosion of Irish national sovereignty over the last year is important, whether it is the IMF control of our economy, or the kowtowing to European banks. It is akin to the erosion of Greek sovereignty, which led to them impounding the Freedom Flotilla.

Our government protests that Ireland is not like Greece, but only in that we are good subjects that will abide by whatever rules the German and French governments and banks set us, not like those feckless Greeks. These days in Ireland it feels like the old colonised attitudes never really went away. That our elites were just waiting for the time to doff their caps to new masters. This more-or-less willing handover of vestiges of national sovereignty has had the knock-on effect that the government is less willing to risk offending anyone perceived as powerful. When Israeli officials called Ireland the most anti-Israel place in Europe and blamed our docile little government for this shocking state of affairs, http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-4149059,00.htmlsmall wonder that our Minister for Foreign Affairs crawled to Temple Bar to placate them and to appear at this festival of Israeli hasbara.

So now we have a toadying Minister for Foreign Affairs, a Zionist Minster for Justice.

This augers a sea-change in our government’s attitude to Palestine and Palestinian solidarity. First there is change in the police’s attitude - from easy tolerance to degrees of repression. More importantly, it speaks of a change in our government’s practice of at least voicing concern about the repression of Palestinian (while admittedly doing nothing), to a position indistinguishable from other European governments.

This change is not all bad – it indicates that Palestinian solidarity in this country and internationally is seen as a force to be taken seriously and combated rather than humoured. It shows how our actions, the events like the flotilla and the ongoing international boycott campaign, are starting to disrupt the normal flows of state and economic power.

For the growing governmental drift to Israel is taking place at a time when solidarity with Palestine in this country has never been stronger. It is one more indication of the widening divide between people and politicians in this country.

In the meantime, we can be happy that this protest turned out to be such a success. Our aim was to politicise Israel’s use of culture to whitewash their crimes. For the price of a few small bruises, we succeeded beyond all our expectations. We are confident that there will be a good, determined turnout for our protest this evening and Saturday and Sunday. For this, the police, the Zionist and the Crawler are to be thanked.

Netanyahu, the new occidentalist prophet

2011-11-24T11:50:00.002Z

While Washington is confused by the Arab masses, not knowing how to control them, afraid that backing the dictators too openly would backfire, trying to co-opt the revolutions with various palliatives or overrun them with military action, Netanyahu assumes the role of the prophet of unwavering reaction, the new De Maistre of the Occidental world.

Almost a year after the Arab Spring began, Netanyahu's speech, his sharpest Knesset comment since the wave of uprisings swept out of Tunisia, provided a glimpse into the prime minister's true views concerning the massive popular unrest movement.
The speech showed an expressed lack of trust in Arab nations' ability to maintain a democratic regime; a yearning to go back to the days of ousted Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak; a fear of the collapse of the Hashemite royal house in Jordan, and an utter lack of willingness to make any concessions to the Palestinians.

"In February, when millions of Egyptians thronged to the streets in Cairo, commentators and quite a few Israeli members of the opposition said that we're facing a new era of liberalism and progress...They said I was trying to scare the public and was on the wrong side of history and don't see where things are heading," he said.

But time has proved him right, Netanyahu said. His forecast that the Arab Spring would turn into an "Islamic, anti-Western, anti-liberal, anti-Israeli and anti-democratic wave" turned out to be true, he said.

Netanyahu also slammed Western leaders, and especially U.S. President Barak Obama, who had pushed Mubarak to resign from power. At the time this was happening Netanyahu said in closed talks that the American administration and many European leaders don't understand reality. On Wednesday, he called them "naive."

"I ask today, who here didn't understand reality? Who here didn't understand history?" he called from the Knesset podium. "Israel is facing a period of instability and uncertainty in the region. This is certainly not the time to listen to those who say follow your heart."
Netanyahu used the upheaval in the Arab world to justify his government's inaction vis-a-vis the peace process with the Palestinians. Haaretz, November 24, 2011

War heroes

2011-11-24T09:31:00.002Z

Above, the hero of the massacre of Gaza shake hands with the hero of the killing of protesters in Tahrir square.

Iconic pig

2011-11-22T08:59:00.009Z

Joni Spigler collects Sgt. Pepper's icons.

Pig herding for beginners

2011-11-20T19:53:00.003Z

After police officer Lieutenant John Pike (Phone number +1.530.752.3989, email japikeiii@ucdavis.edu, please let him hear from you) attacks sitting, peaceful students with pepper spray, the students of UC Davis, in a display of effective popular discipline, herded the pigs and led them out peacefully.

American Leftist has great coverage of the daily developments in the West Coast.

The Nation published Norm Stamper, chief of the Seattle Police Department during the WTO protests in 1999. Stamper describes the police decision that started the Seattle events as a mistake, and laments the growing militarization of US police forces around the US. His most important paragraph however is one about the link between the brutality of the police and the hierarchical organization itself.

The paramilitary bureaucracy and the culture it engenders—a black-and-white world in which police unions serve above all to protect the brotherhood—is worse today than it was in the 1990s. Such agencies inevitably view protesters as the enemy. And young people, poor people and people of color will forever experience the institution as an abusive, militaristic force—not just during demonstrations but every day, in neighborhoods across the country.

Much of the problem is rooted in a rigid command-and-control hierarchy based on the military model. American police forces are beholden to archaic internal systems of authority whose rules emphasize bureaucratic regulations over conduct on the streets. An officer’s hair length, the shine on his shoes and the condition of his car are more important than whether he treats a burglary victim or a sex worker with dignity and respect. In the interest of “discipline,” too many police bosses treat their frontline officers as dependent children, which helps explain why many of them behave more like juvenile delinquents than mature, competent professionals. It also helps to explain why persistent, patterned misconduct, including racism, sexism, homophobia, brutality, perjury and corruption, do not go away, no matter how many blue-ribbon panels are commissioned or how much training is provided. (The Nation)

Perhaps introducing Occupy Wall Street consensus based General Assembly model to the police would be a good thing, though I am afraid that this will probably have to wait for after the revolution. As it were, I'd disagree with Stamper here, as the problem of police brutality is has much to do with the "professional" corporate mindset that the police both embodies and serves as it is to "juvenile delinquency" of police officers. Professional culture only provides a simulacrum of personal liberty while hiding the hierarchies beneath motivational speaking jargon. As long as the police work for the 1%, it will be brutal when the 1% feel threatened. But one could agree with Stamper that the brutality of certain police officers is inculcated through the dehumanizing process to which which the lower ranks of the police are themselves subjected.

Some UC Davis academics have risen to the occasion, and not in the typical way of trying to contain and tame student anger, but in genuine solidarity. Bob Ostertag describes the concrete changes in police strategy that we are witnessing. Nathan Brown, Assistant professor in the English department, wrote a sharp open letter calling for a resignation of the UC Davis Chancellor, Linda P.B. Katehi.

Of course, the militarization of the police is equal parts a reflection of the ruling class preparing for over a decade to exactly what is happening today, and a business, indeed one of the few sectors of capital that is not just doing fine but booming today. In Egypt, the Tahrir Intifada entered a new phase:

The tear gas used against the Egyptian people, as reported by the Hossam el-Hamalawy, and Patrick Connors, is manufactured by CSI, which bills itself as "a leading manufacturer and marketer of tactical munitions, pyrotechnics, less-lethal crowd control and launching systems sold under the CTS and Penn Arms brands." CSI is a venture capital project owned partly by Point Lookout Capital, whose two partners are no doubt making a killing, quite literally, in the death business, including the "less lethal" franchise of CSI. It is perhaps worth pondering the uncommon honesty of CSI, whose products for "law enforcement" are marketed as "less-lethal" rather than non-lethal. As usual with violence, there is an Israeli connection. CSI sells the gas canisters that Israeli soldiers use, not only to attack protesters, but also to kill them. The pepper spray used in UC Davis is manufactured by another company, whose name will be revealed in due course. But the differences between companies is not as important as the unity of the class of people who own all of them.

Update from Nedster: Egyptian thugs show the world how it's done:

Remi Kanazi - 'This poem will not end apartheid', London, 12.11.11

2011-11-17T17:19:00.003Z

You can catch Remi's performance in the UK:

Nov 13 London
Nov 14: Cambridge
Nov 15: Brighton
Nov 16: Portsmouth
Nov 17: Southampton
Nov 18: Dorset
Nov 19: Bristol
Nov 20: Bristol
Nov 21: Oxford
Nov 22: Birmingham
Nov 23: Liverpool
Nov 24: Nottingham
Nov 25: Leicester
Nov 26: Leeds
Nov 27: Newcastle
Nov 28: Manchester
Nov 29: London

Click here for more info on each city, when it becomes available.

UPDATE:

The routine murder of Houda Hawajah

2011-11-17T15:29:00.003Z

The routine murder of Houda Hawajah by bored Israeli soldiers was captured live by the Israeli TV cameras. In a rather unusual move, the TV station ignored the rules of self-censorship that reign in the Israeli media, and aired the footage.

UPDATE
As it was pointed out to me, this is an old video. Not that there is anything wrong in principle is remembering old events, but that was not my intention. I was just careless.

Bibi beggars belief

2011-11-15T11:10:00.000Z

This has always been the case of course but I didn't get round to doing a post, when it was news, about Sarkozy and Obama pouring their hearts out to each other about what an indignity it is having to deal with Netanyahu, in Obama's case, every day. An article in today's Ha'aretz has given me the excuse to dust off the old news and to run an alliterative headline which I always enjoy:

If the law enabled putting leaders on trial for serial defrauding of the public and obtaining support through deception, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu would be keeping company with Moshe Katsav in prison. The former president has been convicted of raping women who were his subordinates and misuse of his authority. Netanyahu is having his nefarious way with Israeli democracy and using his status in order to lead Israeli society astray, all the way to diplomatic and economic isolation. From there it is but a short way to regional war and apartheid - the only question is which will come first. Yet nevertheless, a whole country is continuing to give in willingly to a liar who does not cease to harass and endanger it.

Silly article really but that's my excuse for revisiting the Sarkozy, Obama, Netanyahu business out of the way.

There's another article in today's Ha'aretz describing Obama's side of the conversation with Sarkozy as a "gaffe" which I suppose leaving the microphone on was. Apparently Obama has acknowledged the "gaffe" but

“With respect to the ‘hot mic’ in France, I'm not going to comment on conversations that I have with individual leaders,” Obama said in Hawaii.

But the thing about the affair which troubled me most was this:

Several journalists, including a few from large media organizations, heard the initial exchange between Obama and Sarkozy but did not initially report it, agreeing among themselves that to do so would be a violation of journalistic ethics.

Now how on earth does it violate journalistic ethics to report that two presidents who support Netanyahu in everything he does don't actually believe a word he says? Surely it is more of a violation of their calling that journalists agree among themselves to cover up such a newsworthy report.

Rafeef Ziadah - 'We teach life, sir', London, 12.11.11

2011-11-15T00:07:00.001Z

An amazing performance that you will watch again and again and again.

Atzmon and Alderman – preaching from the same hymn book

2011-11-14T15:49:00.003Z

By David Landy

There have been a few reviews of my book, Jewish Identity and Palestinian Rights - generally positive, but also pointing out that it has too much sociological jargon, which is fair enough, I guess (sigh). There have also been a couple of bad reviews from exactly the type of people you’d dread getting good reviews from. In my case, from the right-wing Zionist Gilad Atzmon, and right-wing anti-Zionist Geoffrey Alderman. Or maybe the other way around.

Sometimes it’s difficult to tell.

Alderman’s brief review argues that the book proves that Jews who criticise Israel as Jews are trying out some bizarre form of perverse ethnic identification. Connoisseurs of Atzmon will be more than familiar with this particular thesis. In his review, Atzmon mixes this farrago with the conspiracy theories we’ve come to know and love. Thus, one failing of my book is that I don’t realize how these Jews are engaged in a conspiracy to expel the good folks out of Palestine solidarity. How could I have missed that? (maybe I’m part of the cover-up!) Another problem is my failure to understand that Jews in Jewish groups are somehow categorically different from Jews in general pro-Palestine groups (despite membership overlap). And so on.

But worst is when they agree with the book – for what they agree with is emphatically what the book does not say – Alderman on the tortured identities of participants, Atzmon dishonestly using a partial quote from page 26 to depict participants as selfish Zionists. This is even more irritating (just) than being called a postmodernist.

There’s loads in the book to criticize and/or praise, and I’ve received some genuinely fruitful criticism from movement activists. So why do these reviewers attack and support what isn’t actually there? No point in being naïve; the reason is clear. Both authors are using their reviews as an opportunity to once again launch their well-rehearsed attacks on Jews who criticize Israel. In this, the book itself is incidental, so small wonder that there is some similarity between their reviews.

Alderman at least doesn’t advise me to read Alderman, in the way Atzmon advises that the best I can do is read Atzmon. Ironic that. Alderman, for all the disagreements I have with him, can write well and does have interesting things to say about British Jews. Whereas Atzmon – well, I think I’ll treasure this line for the rest of my life: ‘Philosophical thinking also seems alien to Landy so he is unable to grasp the metaphysical depth of questions connected to identity, identification and authenticity in the context of Jewish culture and ideology.’

That’s me told.

So how was Finkelstein?

2011-11-13T10:08:00.001Z

Not so great, I'm hearing. Here's a feedback from Naomi Foyle on the British Writers for Palestine website:

On Friday Nov 11 2011, at UCL, world-renowned scholar and activist for Palestinian rights Prof Norman Finkelstein appeared in conversation with Prof Jonathan Rosenhead of BRICUP (British Committee for the Universities of Palestine), discussing the proposition:

The Palestinians having being denied justice for 63 years, those who support their rights must endorse their call for Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS), including academic and cultural boycott of Israel.

Prof Finkelstein also gave a public lecture in the evening, which unfortunately I could not attend. Following is my report on the afternoon conversation, which turned into a debate. I won’t give a blow-by-blow account of the discussion, which was videoed and presumably will soon be available online.   Rather I will just summarise here the main disagreement between the speakers, and give my reaction to it.

Jonathan Rosenhead opened with a clear historical overview of boycott as a strategy, and ended by saying that in the case of Palestine, it should continue until the Palestinians ask us to stop supporting it – that is, until the system of oppression they suffer under has ended. Norman Finkelstein responded by arguing forcefully that the Boycott Divestment Sanctions campaign should work toward goals based in International Law, not some vague, impossible to define, outcome; and that we shouldn’t feel obliged to follow the Palestinians’ lead, as previously this would have obliged us to support suicide bombing. He said much else, including giving a review of the state of International Law on Palestine, and the helpful advice to cite this more in our literature, but I want to focus on this essential point of discord.

Frankly I was very surprised to hear Prof Finkelstein’s criticism of BDS.   I, and others, spoke from the floor, reminding both speakers that the demands of the BDS movement, as stated by PACBI, are clearly based on International Law:

[that] Israel withdraws from all the lands occupied in 1967, including East Jerusalem; removes all its colonies in those lands; agrees to United Nations resolutions relevant to the restitution of Palestinian refugees rights; and dismantles its system of apartheid.

Prof Finkelstein responded by saying that while the first three demands are sound in law, the last, the demand for Israel to dismantle its system of apartheid, is not, because Israeli apartheid hasn’t been recognised by the UN or other bodies of International Law.  He claimed that without this legal underpinning, the goal of ending apartheid in Israel is counter-productive – that it ‘turns people off’; that BDS will never become a mass movement if we try to get people to sign up to tampering with the state of Israel itself.

I also tried to discuss this with him afterwards. I asked him why, if the situation in Israel fits the UN definition of apartheid, we shouldn’t work toward getting iron-clad legal recognition of this fact. But Prof Finkelstein rejected this approach, saying ‘ that would take 100 years’.
Underlying Prof Finkelstein’s hostility to this key plank of the BDS movement appears to be the fear that the demand to end Israeli apartheid is a disguised call to ‘end the state of Israel’, rather than ending the way the state is currently organised, which is how all the people I know interpret the demand. After all, South Africa still exists as a state.   Personally, I think Prof Finkelstein is sadly out of touch with the robust health and rapid growth of the BDS movement.

Far from being a threat to building a mass movement, the demand to end Israeli apartheid is one that everyone can understand – every ordinary person on the streets of the UK knows what South Africa was like; all they need is some basic education about Palestine to see that apartheid is operating there as well. Especially considering that the South Africans themselves are taking such leadership in BDS, and separate campaigns to End Israeli Apartheid are evident all over the internet, it’s a nonsense to say that the demand is unrealistic. On the legal front, the very recent Russell Tribunal on Palestine Capetown Session has recommended (among other pertinent goals):

The UN General Assembly to reconstitute the UN Special Committee against Apartheid, and to convene a special session to consider the question of apartheid against the Palestinian people. In this connection the Committee should compile a list of individuals, organisations, banks, companies, corporations, charities, and any other private or public bodies which assist Israel’s apartheid regime with a view to taking appropriate measures.

In my view, the current BDS strategy is right on target, and I wish Prof Finkelstein would put his considerable legal chops in the service of the goals of the Russell Tribunal.

I also wish to respond to his second criticism of the BDS movement – that it takes its leadership from the Palestinians. To deal first with his counter-example – in my view, the BDS movement is not at all comparable to the suicide bombing campaigns, which made no formal call for international support, and were never, to my knowledge, endorsed by any UK solidarity group.   Rather, solidarity works to provide and support democratic alternatives to such desperate, tragic, violent and, indeed, as Prof Rosenhead stated, politically counter-productive measures. The Palestinians themselves have turned en masse away from suicide bombing as a strategy – as comedian and ‘extreme rambler’ Mark Thomas recently recounted in his recent Walking the Wall tour, countless Palestinians get through holes in the wall daily, not to bomb civilians, but in order to work illegally in Israel.   Instead, Palestinian civil society has overwhelmingly endorsed BDS, and taking our leadership from them is an essential part of the moral legitimacy of the campaign.

First, if BDS was just a matter of personal conscience, then indeed I would be a hypocrite for spending so much time promoting the boycott of Israel and not other countries with terrible human rights records. Second, as I have stated before, it is not up to us in the West to dictate to the Palestinians how they should run their campaigns.   Instead, we can choose which campaigns we want to support, and then do so wholeheartedly, and in a spirit of solidarity, dialogue and willingness to learn.   I don’t believe in capital punishment for any crime, and would never endorse any kind of violence that was not clearly in self-defense, in the strictest sense of the term. But as I have argued before on this blog, Palestinian violence must be seen in the context of 62 years of oppression, and ending that systematic injustice, in a way that is 100% consistent with the principle of Palestinian self-determination, is the only way to end that violence.

By criticizing this key demand of the BDS movement, and dismissing the paramount importance of the need to work in solidarity with the Palestinians, Prof Finkelstein is playing Jenga with the Palestinian struggle – poking and pulling away the foundational planks of its existence.   We don’t need that at this time. We need an atmosphere of mutual support and co-operation between the legal, civil disobedience, and BDS strategies. I thank Prof Finkelstein for his very useful summary of the legal position of the Palestinian cause and Prof Rosenhead for his profound commitment to the principle of solidarity, and I place these thoughts on record in hope that they may contribute to a spirit of unity in the popular movement for Palestinian human rights.

Note: Jenga is a game played with wooden blocks, which players take turns to remove from a tower and balance on top, creating a taller and increasingly unstable structure that eventually collapses. The word is derived from the Swahili term for ‘to build’.

Finkelstein has been stating the same case for some time now but I don't think it is simply grounded in international law. Rather, I think it is grounded in what Finkelstein sees as international consensus. Consensus is a far more subjective notion and it may well be that Finkelstein's position accords with the consensus of the circles in which he moves or in which he wants to be accepted.

Tony Greenstein did attend the Friday night session of the Finkelstein talk and his comments are to be found on his blog and in the comments below this post.

The Norman Finkelstein Matinée at the UCL

2011-11-09T14:03:00.001Z

An addition to the previous post on Norman Finkelstein's speaking engagements in London this week.

Norman Finkelstein in conversation with BRICUP chair Jonathan Rosenhead
2 pm Friday November 11
Christopher Ingold Lecture Theatre
UCL Chemistry Building
20 Gordon Street, London WC1 6BT
This is opposite the Bloomsbury Theatre.
To reserve your place please email Naomi Wimborne-Idrissi at jews4big@gmail.com

They will discuss the proposition:
The Palestinians having being denied justice for 63 years, those who support their rights must endorse their call for Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS), including academic and cultural boycott of Israel.
This is in addition to Finkelstein's lecture at 7 pm in the Logan Hall, Institute of Education
for which booking is required.
http://www.eventsbot.com/events/eb253345787

Norman Finkelstein in the UK

2011-11-05T09:00:00.001Z

Norman Finkelstein speaking engagements in the UK but check out additional info below the list for what is happening in Manchester:

DATE 7/11/2011
PLACE: University of Leeds
TIME: 7:00 PM
SPONSORS Palestinian Return Centre
CONTACT EMAIL ADDRESS AND TELEPHONE NUMBER irial@hotmail.co.uk, +447976637686
———————————————
DATE 8/11/2011
~~PLACE: University of Manchester~~ Friends Meeting House, 6 Mount Street, M2 5NS
TIME 7:00 PM
SPONSORS Palestinian Return Centre
CONTACT EMAIL ADDRESS AND TELEPHONE NUMBER sana.aburawa@student.manchester.ac.uk, +447871663857
————————————————————
DATE 9/11/2011
PLACE University of Nottingham
TIME 6:00PM
SPONSORS Palestinian Return Centre
CONTACT EMAIL ADDRESS AND TELEPHONE NUMBER miss.raja@live.co.uk, +447411430873
—————————–——————————————————–
DATE 10/11/2011
PLACE University of Birmingham
TIME 6:00 PM
SPONSORS Palestinian Return Centre
CONTACT EMAIL ADDRESS AND TELEPHONE NUMBER cxc087@bham.ac.uk, +447792284352
—————————–————————————————————————-
DATE 11/11/2011
PLACE Logan Hall, London
TIME 7 PM
SPONSORS Palestinian Return Centre and Jews for Boycotting Israeli Goods
CONTACT EMAIL ADDRESS AND TELEPHONE NUMBER laythhanbali@hotmail.com, +447935819927

—————————–————————————————————————-

Manchester venue changed after lobbying from the, er, lobby, in this instance the Jewish Society, an affiliate of the Union of Jewish Students which in turn is an affiliate of the World Zionist Organisation. Here's Jews for Boycotting Israeli Goods on what happened to change the venue:

Manchester University has caved in to Zionist pressure and forced students organising a speaking tour by Professor Norman Finkelstein to move his planned lecture off campus.
Students from Manchester Action Palestine said the university management and Union “capitulated to pressure from JSOC [Jewish Society] to limit attendees of the event to students only, depriving the public of seeing one of the world’s foremost commentators on the Israel-Palestine conflict.”
JSOC members alleged that the safety of Jewish students would be endangered if the public were allowed in, even though they had made clear their own intention to attend and hold a picket.
Instead of standing up to this blatant attempt to interfere with freedom of expression, administrators issued an ultimatum saying that the lecture would have to be closed to non-students or be cancelled.
Action Palestine has been obliged to find a new location in the city. They are asking supporters to send protest letters to Martin Conway (martin.conway@manchester.ac.uk) Head of Governance Office and Deputy Secretary, and Pat Sponder (pat.sponder@manchester.ac.uk) Head of the Office of Student Support and Services.

According to the UJS website they "want to be open and honest about what we do" and yet the only indication that are a affiliates of the World Zionist Organisation is in a blog post from last year. I don't think the Manchester University Jewish Society even pretends to be, what was it? oh yes, "open and honest about what we do".

In your eyes a sandstorm?

2011-11-04T14:32:00.000Z

Another day another question mark. In Your Eyes a Sandstorm is journalist and author (and friend of mine) Arthur Neslen's latest book on Palestine and is subtitled "ways of being Palestinian". It's a wonderful book and it reminds me of the autobiography of Malcolm X as told to Alex Haley. Arthur has Palestinians from different generations of struggle and from the various Palestinian communities: West Bank, Gaza, Jerusalem, Israel and the diaspora, detail their autobiographies to him with the author providing historical, geographical or political background, together with his own questions and thoughts as appropriate.

Here's the description from the publishers, University of California Press:

Who are the Palestinians? In this compelling book of interviews, Arthur Neslen reaches beyond journalistic clichés to let a wide variety of Palestinians answer the question for themselves. Beginning in the present with Bisan and Abud, two traumatized children from Jenin’s refugee camp, the book’s narrative arcs backwards through the generations to come full circle with two elderly refugees from villages that the children were named after. Along the way, Neslen recounts a history of land, resistance, exile, and trauma that begins to explain Abud’s wish to become a martyr and Bisan’s dream of a Palestine empty of Jews. Senior Fatah and Hamas figures relate key events of the Palestinian experience—the Second Intifada, Oslo Process, First Intifada, Thawra, 1967 War, the Naqba, and the Great Arab Revolt of 1936—in their own words. The extraordinary voices of women, children, farmers, fighters, drug dealers, policeman, doctors, and others, spanning the political divide from Salafi Jihadists to Israeli soldiers, bring the Palestinian story to life even as their words sow seeds of hope in the scorched Palestinian earth.

The book takes its title from a poem by Tawfiq Ziad.

Oakland to the ruling class

2011-11-03T16:01:00.001Z

War on Iran?

2011-11-03T14:58:00.000Z

The question mark there means that this quick post is a guess regarding the current round of sabre-rattling against Iran. I didn't think too much of Netanyahu's yabbering about a possible strike against Iran because he's always doing that. If he stubs his toe it's Iran's fault and the PA/PLO's recent successful UNESCO bid together with the US's failure to prevent it even by pulling the plug on UNESCO funding has given Netanyahu an urgent need for a distraction. This has been all over Ha'aretz for a little while now. But The Guardian is usually a tad more cautious and nuanced over middle east issues and it is reporting mostly a pro-US line on its front page and some inside pages today; including its editorial. In fairness the editorial is urging caution but it is not negating what it is promoting as legitimate Israeli and American concerns. It doesn't mention a UK interest in all this but it does say, uncritically, that the UK is making contingency plans to do whatever America decides.

Now what else has been happening apart from the Palestinian diplomatic efforts? Well, the Arab spring has been happening since, er, the spring. The west has been mostly opposed to the Arab spring because it has challenged some of its favourite dictators. Even Gaddafi had come into business friendly favour in recent years and Assad has been a handy chap for those nasty "extraordinary" renditions. But they lost that Tunisian chap and Israel's fave Mubarak had to go, though his mainstay, er, stays, er, mainly.

So what to do? Trump up an issue with Iran. Distract attention from the Palestinians and try to halt the Arab spring, though smartly, by attacking or just winding everyone up over Iran, a non-Arab middle eastern state.

That's just my guess, that's all. I've rushed this and I ought to have included more links and comments. If I have time later I'll do just that.

Advertising Standards Authority orders Israel Land and Acquisition Network to tell the truth, shock!

2011-11-02T14:47:00.000Z

Here's an adjudication by the Advertising Standards Authority taking ILAN Real Estate to task for flogging West Bank land as "Israel".

The adjudication is quite a useful document. Look:

Ad
An ad in The Jewish Chronicle for a property development, in June 2011, was headlined "Vineyard View EFRAT New Neighbourhood in Dekel UNIQUE DEVLEOPMENT OF 26 NEW HOUSES". The ad featured aerial photos of the development and bullet pointed text listed the features of the development, including "Independent Group Purchase ... Israeli finance subject to status".
Text in the bottom half of the ad, underneath the heading "Why use I.L.A.N?" stated "With our network of experienced agents across Israel, covering major locations such as Bet Shemesh / Ramat Bet Shemesh, Efrat, Hashmonaim, Herzliya, Jerusalem, Netanya, Modiin, Ra’anana, Rechovot, Tel Aviv, Yad Binyamin, Zichron Yaakov & more ... We strive to adhere to the highest standards you would like to receive from an experienced real estate consultant to help you cope with the hurdles of the Israeli property market and business environment ... We put you in contact with English speaking professionals, to help you make your home in Israel experience a little bit less stressful incl Mortgages, Insurance, Legal, Interior Design, Architects & a Building Surveyor ... With our negotiating skills, creativity & ‘holding your hand’ we will navigate you through the process of buying in Israel. If you have a property in Israel that you would like to sell, we provide a unique blend of local, national & international marketing ... Visit the I.L.A.N. stand at the Israel Property Expo on Sunday 26th June". The ad included the logo for Israel Business Brokers (IBB).

So that's the ad which appeared, as the blurb says, in the Jewish Chronicle. So what was the issue?

Issue
The complainant challenged whether the ad misleadingly implied that the development in Efrat in Dekel was in Israel, whereas he understood it was a settlement in the occupied West Bank.

And here are the response and the assessment:

Response
ILAN Real Estate (ILAN) did not respond to the ASA’s enquiries.
Assessment
Upheld
The ASA was concerned by ILAN’s lack of response and apparent disregard for the Code, which was a breach of CAP Code (Edition12) rule 1.7 (Unreasonable delay). We reminded them of their responsibility to respond promptly to our enquiries and told them to do so in future.
We considered that the references in the ad to ILAN’s experienced agents across Israel, the help they offered in negotiating the Israeli property market and making house buying in Israel less stressful, and the list of major locations in Israel ILAN covered, as well as to the Israel Property Expo, Israeli finance and buying a property in Israel, strongly implied that the development in Efrat in Dekel was in Israel. We noted that we had not seen evidence that that was the case, and understood that Efrat and Dekel were located in the occupied West Bank. We considered that the fact that the development in Efrat in Dekel was in the West Bank, in territory not internationally recognised as part of Israel, was likely to be highly material to consumers and that the omission of the information rendered the ad misleading.
The ad breached CAP Code (Edition12) rules 1.7 (Unreasonable delay) and 3.1 and 3.3 (Misleading advertising).

So what about any action being taken?

Action
The ad must not appear again in its current form. We told ILAN to avoid in future similar ads misleading as to the location of property developments. We asked CAP to inform its members of the problem with ILAN Real Estate.

No action regarding the Jewish Chronicle then. Well in fairness how can the JC be expected to vet every real estate dealer in land in Palestine? I'm sure they wouldn't want any of their readers inadvertently settling in occupied territory.

#Occupy is on the right path

2011-11-02T14:14:00.001Z

Last night Occupy Oakland's General Assembly did something that is likely to catch on with occupations across the country.
They voted to encourage the occupation of foreclosed properties across their city. After all, the bursting of the property bubble is part of why they're on the streets right now.

There is a movement similar to this under the overall Occupy umbrella, It's called Occupy Vacant Properties, and it has been most visible in San Francisco, where families are even reclaiming their old homes post-foreclosures. (Business Insider)

World laughs at Israel

2011-11-01T09:00:00.001Z

Listen up for when Israel's casts its vote at the UNESCO conference:

UK abstains, Austria yes, Germany no, France yes, China yes, Russia yes.... voting 173 members , abstentions 52 , majority needed 81, votes in favor 107, votes opposed 14!

Palestine is member of UNESCO, and speaking truth to the lackeys

2011-10-31T22:33:00.001Z

What an enjoyable video! I have a question. What kind of personality it takes to stand there and repeat that horse manure? Who applies for these jobs and who accepts them? Is there a test you have to pass to get this job? Something like finding a kid with a puppy in the park and strangling the puppy?

The right of return

2011-10-29T11:49:00.000+01:00

Here's an interesting article on Der Spiegel website about how increasing numbers of Jews are exercising their right of return to the land of their parents and grandparents, Germany:

An increased number of American children and grandchildren of Holocaust survivors have applied in recent years for the German citizenship stripped from their family members by the Nazis....

Under Article 116 of Germany's constitution, known as the Basic Law, anyone who had their citizenship revoked during the Nazi regime for "political, racist, or religious reasons" is eligible to reapply for German citizenship. The provision also makes allowances for the descendants of Nazi victims, and does not require them to give up the citizenship of their new home countries......

It's been an option for American Jews with German roots for years, but the number of applicants nearly doubled from 2007 to 2008 and has remained high, according to statistics from the German Federal Office of Administration in Cologne. In 2010, there were 815 such applications from the US. There were more applicants from Israel, but the number has steadily declined -- from 3,505 in 2003 to 1,459 last year.

The stats raise more questions then they answer and the answers aren't in the article. I'd be interested to know why there were so many more applications from Israelis of German descent than Americans. Is it because life is better in America than Israel? Is it because more holocaust survivors went to Israel? I doubt if it's that latter.

I suppose I should just be pleased that Germany supports the right of return.

People of Oakland under attack by thugs in uniform

2011-10-26T10:56:00.001+01:00

One protester after being hit by a chemical weapons canister. (The use of chemical weapons during a war is a crime, but it is perfectly legal for attacking civilians)

I don't want to jump to conclusions before we hear all the lies from the police department and the mayor of Oakland. After all, this protester from Occupy Oakland could have ties to al-quaeda, and maybe he tried to bite an officer. We need to hear all the lies first. If you want to get the lies in person, which is highly recommended and may be even entertaining, if not downright educational, the allegedly "progressive" mayor of Oakland, Jean Quan, will take your call at (510) 238-3141. Remember that she's really on your side.

On the brighter side, explaining how it works in Palestine might get a tad easier.

Some US soldiers choose their battles

2011-10-20T20:03:00.001+01:00

One Marine has the cops in his sight

Another has everything in his sight

This great next one a year old, from the US Social forum, a good reminder that what happens at OWS has a history.

Book Launch: You're all invited

2011-10-19T10:23:00.004+01:00

My book is out on the streets, and the book launch is next Tuesday - October 25th in SOAS (not the main campus). Anyone in London is invited along where I'll be discussing the book with the audience, and especially with Richard Kuper, the former head of JfJfP. All the info is below

Looking forward to seeing you there!

Jews for Justice for Palestinians

SOAS Palestine Society

London Middle East Institute

invite you to the book launch of

Jewish Identity and Palestinian Rights

Diaspora Jewish Opposition to Israel

David Landy in conversation with

Richard Kuper, former Chair of JfJfP

Tuesday, October 25, 7pm

V211, School of Oriental and African Studies

Vernon Square, Penton Rise, London WC1X 9EW

Diaspora Jews are increasingly likely to criticise Israel and support Palestinian rights. In most Western societies, Jewish organisations have sprung up to oppose Israel’s treatment of Palestinians, facing harsh criticism from fellow Jews for their actions.

Jewish Identity and Palestinian Rights is a groundbreaking study of this growing worldwide social movement, examining how it challenges traditional Jewish representations of itself. It looks at why people join this movement; and questions how they relate to the Palestinians and their struggle.

About the Author

David Landy is an Irish-Jewish academic, active in the Palestine solidarity movement. Formerly chair and currently national organiser of the Ireland Palestine Solidarity Campaign, he is based in Dublin where he lectures sociology in Trinity College Dublin.

www.jfjfp.com / www.soaspalsoc.org / www.lmei.soas.ac.uk

To all released prisoners, it's a good day

2011-10-18T14:10:00.005+01:00

To those who are coming back to their homes today and to their families, blessings, and to those who are still not allowed to come home, may you come home soon! Of the 4,347 political prisoners remaining in the jails of the apartheid state, 3000 Palestinian political prisoners are on hunger strike since September 27, demanding end to a number of repressive practices and the release of

Ahmad Sa’adat, a Palestinian national leader and the General Secretary of the PFLP, who has been imprisoned since March 2006 and, since winter 2009, has been held in solitary confinement following his call to resist the Israeli military attacks on Gaza in December 2008-January 2009 (Operation Cast Lead). (AIC)

The Hamas prisoners swap deal has been criticized for, among other issues, accepting some of Israel's conditions, including exile for many of the released, and for the poor timing that is shadowing the ongoing resistance in the prisons. The prisoners strike is getting growing support internationally and should get more, especially in the US, the world leader in incarceration and the slow and systemic torture of prisoners. Meanwhile, Ahmad Saadat's conditions deteriorated and he has been hospitalized.

Toufic Haddad argues on Jadaliyya that, despite valid criticism, the Hamas deal was a success that ought to be recognized and understood. He also makes a number of points that deserve repetition. First, about the success of Hamas in the prism of the choice of prisoners to be released:

Hamas was remarkably successfully in forcing Israel to release large numbers of prisoners with high prison sentences. In fact, 315 of the 477 prisoners released in the first major round have life sentences (310 men, five women); 144 prisoners have sentences longer than ten years; only nine prisoners have sentences less than ten years...

The impressive depth of this deal is best illustrated by adding up the total number of years erased by the deal, at least on paper...If an Israeli civil court understanding for a life sentence (twenty-five years) is nonetheless applied to the number of Palestinians sentenced to life in prison, we arrive at the figure of 23,150 years negated through this deal...In addition to those serving life sentences, however, the total number of years of those serving high but non-life prison sentences totals just over 4,585 years...If both figures are added together, a staggering 27,735 years are technically negated by the deal. All this from less than half the total number of prisoners released (roughly 45 percent). Jedaliyya

Another point that Haddad makes forcefully, and that keeps being lost on the imperial media:

...for any political strategy pursued by Palestinians and their allies to succeed, the enormous disparity in the “valuation” between Palestinian and Israeli people and prisoners of war needs to end. That one single Israeli soldier could be negotiated for more than one thousand Palestinians gives pause to question how a situation arose locally and internationally where such disparity of value became possible.
To illustrate this disparity, suffice it to say that twenty-six Palestinian prisoners in the Shalit deal were already in prison before Gilad Shalit was even born, with the longest amongst them—Nael Barghouti–having served thirty-four years in prison. In fact, ten Palestinian prisoners expected to be freed in this deal spent more time in Israeli prison than Nelson Mandela spent on Robben Island, although not one of them is known to non-Arabic-speaking publics. Not one of them—Sami Yunis, Fuad al-Razem, Uthman Musalah, Hasan Salama, Akram Mansour, Fakhri Barghouti, Ibrahim Jaber, Muhammad Abu Hud'a, Nael Barghouti, and Salim Kiyal—is the subject of a Wikipedia entry, for example. In contrast, Gilad Shalit, who has spent five years in captivity, is a household name in many western countries, holds honorary citizenship in three countries, and has Wikipedia pages translated into twenty-three languages. The disparity in perception, organization and financing between Zionist propaganda and Palestinian organizing is obvious, shocking and humbling. This is the legacy of entrenched racism, complicit media practices, sustained dehumanization campaigns, asymmetrical colonial and global power dynamics, disorganized or incompetent political projects and priorities. Whatever the cause, the disparity must be eradicated, and fast.

UPDATE: Assuming it is accurate, another piece of good news.

RAMALLAH, October 17, 2011 (WAFA) – Palestinian prisoners in Israeli jails on hunger strike for three weeks Monday suspended their strike after reaching an agreement with the prison administration to end the solitary confinement punishment, according to Minister of Prisoners Issa Qaraqi. (Wafa , Hat tip to Mondoweiss)

UPDATE 2: From aljazeera, two profiles of the kind of records Israel is famous for, the oldest and the longest serving Palestinian prisoners. Both were found guilty by an illegitimagte apartheid court for having played a minor role in operations that result of the death of, in one case, a soldier, and in the second case, a settlement security officer. Welcome home!

Sami Younis

An undated photograph of Younis.

Younis, almost 80 years old, is believed to be the oldest Palestinian prisoner in Israeli jails; has spent nearly one-third of his life behind bars.

He was born in 1932 in the village of Arara, near Umm al-Fahm, and worked as a taxi driver.

He was arrested in 1983; after several months in detention, he was charged with involvement in the kidnap and murder of Avi Bromberg, an Israeli soldier who was killed in 1980.

Younis was initially given a death sentence, which was reduced on appeal to life imprisonment.

Younis says he was tortured during the months he was detained and interrogated before his trial. He also reportedly has suffered several medical ailments while in prison, including a heart attack.

In an interview earlier this year with the Ahrar Centre, a Palestinian prisoners' group, his daughter Kauthar expressed her hope that her father would be included in a future prisoner swap.

"My father has been frustrated by talk of previous deals because the prisoners from inside Israel itself have been excluded," she said. "Now he hopes that the resistance groups will include them in any future deal and not exclude them under pressure from the Israelis."

Nael Barghouti

Barghouti in an undated photo released by his family.

Fifty-four-year-old Nael Barghouti is the longest-serving Palestinian prisoner in Israel: he has spent 33 years, nearly his entire adult life, inside an Israeli prison.

Barghouti was arrested in April of 1978 and charged with taking part in a "commando operation" which killed one Israeli near the West Bank settlement of Halamish.

Both of Barghouti's parents died during his time in prison, and his sister has been banned from visiting him for the last two years, according to WAFA, the official Palestinian news agency.

"After 30 years in captivity, we are just soldiers returning to our bases," he told the Palestinian newspaper Falastin.

Barghouti's cousin, Faher, was arrested in June 1978 - two months after Nael - and has been in prison ever since.

He is also scheduled for release. Faher's son Hadi was born after his arrest, and the two have only met behind bars, according to an interview in Haaretz.

Throwing the dogs a bone?

2011-10-17T17:45:00.005+01:00

I noticed an Israel advocate bemoaning the fact that an anarchist called Ian Bone had suggested that the Israeli secret service group, Mossad, had some involvement with Liam Fox and his friend, Adam Werrity and even that Fox could have been a "useful idiot" for Mossad. I don't why the guy singled Bone out for criticism when the same story has appeared in The Daily Mail and The Daily Telegraph. But there is a crucial difference between the Mail and Telegraph stories on the one hand and the Ian Bone post on the other. Well the Mail and Telegraph stories are still on line in their original places whereas the Ian Bone post has disappeared. Note that Ian Bone says "This story has a long way to run yet and could reach a lot higher up the food chain" and yet it appears to have run away from way down the food chain.

Anyway here's google cache to the rescue:
Ian Bone

OCTOBER 16, 2011 · 3:04 AM

↓ Jump to Comments

LIAM FOX ‘USED AS USEFUL IDIOT’ BY MOSSAD

This story has a long way to run yet and could reach a lot higher up the food chain. Here’s what the Mail on Sunday says:

‘But my source told me that what really was worrying senior officials in the MOD, FCO and Cabinet Office was the possibility that Fox could be being used as a ‘useful idiot’ by Mossad, Israel’s far-reaching and extremely effective intelligence service.

Key funding sources for Werritty were from the Israeli lobby and a rather obscure commercial intelligence agency.

Might Mossad be pulling Werritty’s strings, with or without his knowledge?

3 tales of the lobby in the UK

2011-10-16T09:43:00.000+01:00

The first story concerns the arrest of Palestinian political activist, Raed Salah, using evidence apparently fabricated by a self-styled Jewish security organisation in the UK, the Community Security Trust. If you follow the link to Asa Winstanley's Electronic Intifada report you will see the evidence of fabrication and if you check out this Guardian article you will see that the Home Secretary appears to have based her decision to excluse Raed Salah, not on anything he had done but on who wanted him excluded in the first place.

I would have missed the second story were it not for the correspondence with the Islington Tribune following an outrageous decision by Haringey Council to prevent schools attending a Palestinian literature festival following lobbying by the Board of Deputies of British Jews. Here's how the story first broke:

A ROW has erupted between Islington North Labour MP Jeremy Corbyn and a senior Town Hall official over advice warning primary schools against taking part in a Palestinian literature festival.
Former children’s laureate Michael Rosen is among those taking part in the event, organised by Haringey Justice for Palestine group, which runs from September 29 to October 2.
Mr Rosen is also angry about the advice that schools should not become involved. He said: “It’s very disappointing and a rather strange way to behave by Islington Council. Instead of entering into a conversation with the organisers they have simply taken the word of someone and then taken this somewhat draconian step to advise people not to take part.”
The advice came from the Labour-controlled council’s corporate director of children’s services, Eleanor Schooling, who warned that the “political” nature of the event might contravene the 1996 Education Act.
Two schools, including Duncombe Primary in Upper Holloway, were due to take part in the Tottenham Palestinian Literature Festival. Both have since reluctantly withdrawn from the event.
However, it appears that Ms Schooling had been advised by the Board of Deputies of British Jews, who had expressed concerns.

By the time letters protesting the Council's decision were being published in the IT the same paper was reporting that the UK Education Minister and "proud Zionist", Michael Gove, had lobbied against schools participating in the event.

Here is the letter that had me taking notice of the whole issue. It is from Yael Kahn:

IT was rather misleading for the Board of Deputies of British Jews to claim it represents all British Jews.
I and other Jews living in Islington would have nothing to do with this partisan, sectarian and Israeli-apologist body.
Having left Israel because of the apartheid against Palestinians, it is important for me to work with those objecting to racism of all forms.
One such group is the No to Veolia Action Group and if you are appalled by the Israeli illegal settlements then you can join us at 7.30pm on Monday, October 24, at the Regent pub in Liverpool Road.
YAEL KAHN
N1

Good letter! A report, a complaint and a call to action.

And story number three involves the lobbyist and the recent ministerial resignation. Here's former UK diplomat Craig Murray in yesterday's Daily Mail wondering if Liam Fox's "best man" was a willing lobbyist for Israel or just a useful idiot.

Late Cable Street commemoration news

2011-10-11T05:05:00.000+01:00

There have been a lot of Cable Street commemorations since the start of this month and some are still to come. I went to a talk last week by David Rosenberg of Jewish Socialist Group and Roger Mills at Housmans, the leftist bookshop. David was discussing his book, Battle for the East End and Roger was discussing his, Everything happens in Cable Street.

I've been reading Battle for the East End and it deals with far more than the battle of Cable Street, more than just the east end and more than just fascism and the struggle against it. The book is subtitled, Jewish responses to fascism in the 1930s but it is something of a social, political and economic history of the UK in the 1930s though of course there is a special focus on fascism, Jews and London's east end.

Here's the blurb taken from David Rosenberg's East End Walks site including dates of forthcoming talks and the chapter titles from the book:

Battle for the East End: Jewish responses to fascism in the 1930s
268pp ISBN: 978 1907869181 Five Leaves Publications, 2011, £9.99
What’s the book about?
During the 1930s, Oswald Mosley’s Blackshirts intensified their campaign against the Jewish community, particularly in London’s East End. As that campaign became more overtly antisemitic, and more physically intimidating, Jewish groups debated how to deal with the Fascist threat, ultimately building their own defence organisations, and forging alliances with other campaigners. The simmering tensions in East London culminated in the Battle of Cable Street, when more than 100,000 people, especially from the local Jewish and Irish communities, prevented Mosley’s troops from marching through the East End.

In Battle for the East End, David Rosenberg charts the changing nature of the British Union of Fascists’ ideas about Jews and describes the growing rifts between the official leaders of the Jewish community and those who wanted to mount an active resistance to the fascists.
“Battle for the East End is written by an anti-fascist activist with a real feel and connection both to the politics and the geographical area he writes about. For anyone who wants to understand the political, historical and cultural context in which the Battle of Cable Street took place then Battle for the East End is a must for the bookshelf.” Searchlight Educational Trust
“The Battle of Cable Street is one of the most celebrated moments in Anglo-Jewish history and, in Battle for the East End, David Rosenberg gives a compelling account of the context and controversies that surrounded it, made even more vivid by eye-witness testimony.” Nadia Valman, Jewish Chronicle
Contents of the book
Preface
Introduction
1. Britain’s Jews
2. How Jews were viewed
3. The rise of Mosley’s movement
4. Antisemitism and the British Union of Fascists
5. How Jewish leaders perceived the threat
6. Battle for the East End
7. Divided on defence: the grassroots rebellion
8. Rally to Aldgate and Cable Street
9. Antisemitism, fascism and the state
Conclusion
Order it online
To purchase the book online go to:http://inpressbooks.co.uk/battle_for_the_east_end_jewish_responses_to_fascism_in_the_1930s_david_rosenberg_i022676.aspx
Battle for the East End is one of five publications that Five Leaves are publishing to coincide with the 75^th anniversary of the Battle of Cable Street. To see the other titles visit: http://www.fiveleaves.co.uk/

Come to a reading/discussion from David’s book
Wednesday 12th October, 7.30pm Reading/discussion at England’s Lane Bookshop, NW3 4YD
Thursday 13th October, 5.30pm, illustrated talk on Cable Street with book excerpts, in Small Hall Cinema, Goldsmiths College, SE14 6NW
Thursday 20th October 6.30pm Brick Lane bookshop, 166 Brick Lane E1 reading/discussion (jointly with Roger Mills)
Saturday 22nd October, 11am, illustrated talk on Cable Street with book excerpts, at the Anarchist Bookfair (room 319), Queen Mary College, E1

I must say that David Rosenberg deserves special credit for wading through a mountain of Jewish Chronicles from the time when they were advising Jews to not be so Jewish and to stay at home and ignore those nasty fascists.

Bread and Roses

2011-10-10T01:44:00.000+01:00

Against ethnic cleansing, against UEFA whitewashing Israel and against war criminals visiting the UK

2011-10-06T14:56:00.001+01:00

And it's all in today's Guardian letters page:

On Thursday Palestinians are protesting about the latest instance of ethnic cleansing by the Israeli government. In the Beer Sheba (Beer es Saba) region of southern Israel about 30,000 inhabitants are about to be driven from their homes.
Their villages have been designated "unrecognised" for more than 60 years, making their lands easy prey for confiscation. And while they are refused the same rights as other Israeli citizens to facilities such as running water, schools and hospitals, the Israeli state demands their taxes.
The British government must condemn any move to evict the Palestinian citizens of Israel from their lands, which were documented under the British Mandate as privately owned Palestinian land – not ownerless as the Israeli state now claims.

Geoffrey Bindman QC
Victoria Brittain
William Dalrymple
Ken Loach
Tony Benn
Ahdaf Soueif
Miriam Margolyes
Caryl Churchill
Jeremy Corbyn MP
Linda Riordan MP
Bob Russell MP
Martin Caton MP
Katy Clark MP
Alex Cunningham MP
Julie Hilling MP
John McDonnell MP
Andy Slaughter MP
Dame Jenny Tonge
John Pilger
Leila Sansour
Ghada Karmi
Ilan Pappe
Dr Salman Abu Sitta
Prof Steven Rose
Prof Hilary Rose
Louise Christian
Rodney Bickerstaffe
Bruce Kent
Reem Kelani
Lowkey
Kika Markham
Michael Rosen
Leon Rosselson
Alexei Sayle
Jeremy Hardy
Hugh Lanning, Chair PSC
Keith Sonnet
John Austin
Canon Garth Hewitt
Andy de la Tour

• Those who lead European football must respond to an appeal from Palestinians dismayed at the prospect of Israel hosting Uefa's under-21 tournament in 2013. A state that uses military might to hold sway over land it illegally occupies and exploits, flouts international law and ignores UN resolutions surely forfeits the right to be treated as a member of the community of nations. But western powers continue to embrace Israel as an ally.
During the 2011 under-21 tournament in Denmark in June, 42 Gazan football clubs, backed by many sporting bodies, wrote to Uefa president Michel Platini calling on his organisation not "to reward Israel for its violent repression of Palestinian rights". We ask Uefa to respond positively to this plea.
Stephane Hessel diplomat
Ken Loach filmmaker
Michael Mansfield barrister
Miriam Margolyes actor
Nurit Peled Sakharov Prize for Freedom of Thought joint winner 2001
John Pilger journalist and filmmaker,
Ahdaf Soueif novelist and political and cultural commentator
Jean Ziegler vice-president, advisory committee of the UN human rights council

• The government changes the law and brings out the red carpet to allow alleged Israeli war criminals into the UK (Former Israeli minister to visit UK after change in arrest law, 4 October) but changes the rules to arrest visiting Palestinians whose only "crime" is to campaign for their rights (Palestinian activist was held unlawfully, says high court, 1 October). The Goldstone report, which has been endorsed at the UN general assembly, provides clear evidence of how in its 2008-09 attack on Gaza, Israel was responsible for attacks on children, use of human shields, and use of phosphorous bombs and flachettes in civilian areas. Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch have also documented serious cases of abuse. For William Hague to invite to the UK Israeli leaders who were in government at the time these alleged crimes were committed is a slap in the face for relatives of the 1,400 dead, the 5,000 injured and the many others who suffered due to Israel's Cast Lead attack on Gaza.
Dr Stephen Leah
York

Not bad, not at all bad. Now wait for the balancers....

The ever meaningless victories of liberal Israel

2011-10-06T11:26:00.002+01:00

Israeli liberals are in a celebratory mood for a day. The Supreme Court ordered the Minister of Interior to register an important secular israeli writer as "without religion" instead of "Jew." Itzhak Laor deflates this delusional celebration, pointing out that the state registers religious affiliation as a code, and showing how, underneath the code, the (colonial) definition of an Israeli Jew is "anyone who isn't Palestinian."

A big celebration. Even Yoram Kaniuk, not only his grandson, and not only masses of immigrants from the former Soviet Union, will from now on be defined negatively: "without religion" (afer a court last week sided with the Israeli writer, granting him the right to register his status that way ). That is how the whole is being redefined: We are all Jews by religion, except for Kaniuk, his grandson and the immigrants from the FSU, who acquired Jewish identity from the Jewish Agency envoys and lost it at the Chief Rabbinate, which is the department for identifying Jews.
And still, the festivities surrounding this quasi-constitutional event look somewhat like a high school drinking party: You get drunk after a few gulps, and vomit.
Why list religion at all? Where else is religion listed in the population registry? In which democracy does a person's religion appear on the lists? The secular celebrants are saying with anger full of satisfaction: "only in Iran," since by means of the comparison with Iran we immediately join the West, just as by mocking the ultra-Orthodox one becomes "modern" here; but Israel really isn't a religious state.
The truth is harder to digest. In the first place religion is listed for the purpose of national identification, unconnected to religion. Because the nationality clause created "constitutional problems," the state was afraid to leave its citizens without identifying them. And that's how they gave the Chief Rabbinate the job of being the identifier: Jews, and those who aren't Jews are Muslims, or Christians or Druze.
Not to worry: The Shin Bet security services and the police fill in the blanks, and if there's confusion between a Christian from Kiev who sells good pork in Netanya and a Christian from Yefia who works in the pig sty of one of the kibbutzim in the Jezreel Valley, the concerned citizen needn't worry. Everything is properly registered, without any euphemisms. Not only in the cellars of the Shin Bet and the codes of the police, even the Central Bureau of Statistics, which annually provides the public with demographic data about the number of Arab babies and Jewish babies that were born, has created a category of "Christians who are not Arabs."
That shows you that it's less important to the state if you're a Catholic from Mi'ilia, or a Greek Orthodox Christian from Lod, or a Protestant from Reneh, or a Pravoslav from Ashdod; what's most important is whether we're talking about an Arab, or about someone who can join the ruling majority, in other words the Christian from Kiev, regardless of his language and his culture. A negative definition: He's not an Arab.
The formal religious institutions were invented by Zionism during the period of the state in the making, when it imported Rabbi Kook to compete with Rabbi Sonnenfeld from Mea She'arim. But the rabbinate has no connection to halakha (religious law ) because the Jews never had central institutions for halakha. That's why the rabbinate does not decide on halakha. Since the establishment of the state it has been engaged only in identifying nationality.
Now we should ask those who are celebrating with Kaniuk: Can a Jewish state be "Jewish" - forget its partner, "democratic," for a moment - without the identifying institutions: the rabbinate, the police, the Shin Bet?
Isn't the reason for the tremendous importance of the "religion clause" the anti-democratic need to distinguish between Jews and Arabs, in order to discriminate simply by defining the difference? Of course.
It seems that the vast majority of those celebrating Kaniuk's success are willing to be satisfied with little, a kind of trampling on the hat of the religious. We screwed them again. But the main thing is that we are left with the glory of chauvinism itself: A country that is defined according to the nationality of the majority is informing the minority every morning: We are, and you are not.(Haaretz, October 6)

Protest against Tzipi Livni visit to the UK

2011-10-05T12:37:00.000+01:00

5pm, Thursday, 6th October

Outside Downing Street, Whitehall, London, SW1 - nearest tube stations Westminster, Charing Cross.

Tzipi Livni, who faced an arrest warrant in the UK in 2009 over war crimes committed during the so called "Operation Cast Lead", feels she now can visit the UK because our Government – with the support of the Opposition party – has just changed the law on universal jurisdiction.

According to The Guardian:

The former Israeli foreign minister, Tzipi Livni, will meet the foreign secretary, William Hague, in Britain on Thursday in the first test of a new law governing arrest warrants for war crimes.

For a commentary on the change of UK law to appease Israeli war criminals see Electronic Intifada.

Jews sans frontieres

Classic case of hypocrisy?

Gove gave what to who and why?

Abbas notices that peace process isn't happening

Atlanta Jewish Times editor calls for lynching of Obama

Self-hatred in Manhattan?

EU terrorises Netanyahu

Vagina monologue in the Knesset

Pretext yes, context no

Ethiopians protest against racism in Israel

Clichés are usually wrong

Ask a man who knows: De Klerk answers Goldstone

A poster for the sport boycott of apartheid-era South Africa

Norman Finkelstein on the passing of Hitchens

A Brief Comment on the Passing of Christopher Hitchens

Even some of the critical commentary on Hitchens’s passing pays tribute to his robust atheism, which no doubt shocked readers ofVanity Fair.

But the ultimate irony seems to have gone over everyone’s head.

When I first learned that Hitchens was diagnosed with an excruciating and terminal cancer, it caused me to doubt my atheism.

Could it be merely chance?

The news came just as Hitchens was about to go on a book tour for his long-awaited memoir.

It was as if he was setting out on his victory lap when the adulating crowds were supposed to fawn over him and—wham!—his legs were lopped off at the kneecaps.

Could it be the hidden hand of a Jehovah?

If I still had doubts, the events of the past week dispelled them.

First Hitchens passed.

If that wasn’t burden enough to bear, the next day Vaclav Havel imploded.

The deep thinkers among us were now beside themselves with grief.

But then, on the third day, Kim Jong-il kicked the bucket.

Was this a practical joke, and who was the joker?

Biblical scholars report that divine interventions usually come in threes.

Moe, Larry, Curly.

Christopher, Vaclav, Kim.

I cannot help but see in this otherwise improbable sequence a divine intelligence at play.

The irony could not be more perfect: the god that the vindictive but witty Mr. Hitchens made a career scoffing at turns out to be…vindictive but witty.

But I will leave the last word to a close buddy of Hitchens’ who is himself a true believer.

When Saddam Hussein was executed, Tony Blair remarked: “I do not believe in capital punishment, but I think the world is a better place without him.”

When I heard that Hitchens was dead, I took a deep breath.

The air felt cleaner, as if after a 40-day and 40-night downpour.

***

I get no satisfaction from Hitchens’s passing.

Although he was the last to know it, every death is a tragedy, if only for the bereft child—or, as in the case of Cindy Sheehan, bereft parent—left behind.

But, still, life is full of surprises.

No one should be too smug in his certitudes.

And if you’ve made a career of pissing on other people’s mostly innocuous beliefs, should it surprise that outside the tiny tent called Vanity Fair, your memory stinks of urine?