Here LIES Jonathan Hoffman of the Zionist Federation

I'm late with this so apologies. Many readers will be aware of Ben White's new book on the segregationist entity that is the State of Israel. Well I haven't read it but it must be very good because the zios are pulling out all the stops to rubbish it. The American Jewish Committee hosted Jonathan Hoffman on their Z-word blog to denounce Ben as a liar and they have so far refused Ben White space to point out the various falsehoods in the "review". Here's Ben's post to his own site:

Response to Jonathan Hoffman’s article on my book, Israeli Apartheid: A Beginner’s Guide

UPDATE - Philip Weiss has blogged about this here.

Introductory note:

Jonathan Hoffman is co-vice chair of the Zionist Federation in Britain. At an event in the Houses of Parliament four weeks ago to launch my book Israeli Apartheid: A Beginner’s Guide, a man in the audience shouted repeatedly during my presentation. I later discovered that this man was Jonathan Hoffman when I saw his own rather different account of the evening on the Harry’s Place blog.

Hoffman has since written a review of my book which was posted on the ‘Z-Word Blog’, a website run by the American Jewish Committee. An abridged version of this review was offered to those going to an event for my book organised by War on Want last week. He had been banned by the charity from attending due to his past disruptive behaviour. This is my response to his review.

The main emphasis of Hoffman’s response is that my book is “a Big Lie.” This is based on the claim that the book is full of “doctored quotations” and “false quotes”, a veritable “catalogue of falsehoods”. This is strong stuff: the title of the Z-Word Blog post talks of “lies, damn lies” while the version distributed outside the War on Want event repeated the word ‘lie’ over 20 times (or as it appeared, ‘LIE’).

However, out of 399 listed footnote references in my book, Hoffman can only make a case for one quotation being incorrect. Moreover, Hoffman himself does what he accuses me of: making straightforwardly false claims about the book.

The quotation which I am quite prepared to reconsider is from the beginning of Part I, when I cite Ben-Gurion writing, “We must expel Arabs and take their places”. The first prominent historian to include this quotation was Benny Morris, in The Birth of the Palestinian Refugee Problem. This quotation was subsequently questioned by historian Efraim Karsh, who analysed the meaning of the hand-written edits in the original document. Morris accepted this point, and in Righteous Victims (2001), cited the quotation as: “We do not want and do not need to expel Arabs and take their places”.

This, however, is one quotation from a large body of evidence – a fraction of which is included in my own book. Despite the repetitious claim that the book is full of ‘false quotes’, this is Hoffman’s only example where he can provide supporting evidence (though not of a ‘fabrication’).

Let’s take an example of where Hoffman tries to pretend that there has been a ‘false’ quote:

Part One takes only one paragraph to get to ‘ethnic cleansing’ (a phrase repeated on average every 12 pages in the book). It then quotes Jabotinsky out of context: “Zionist colonisation, even the most restricted, must either be terminated or carried out in defiance of the will of the native population”. Jabotinsky (writing in 1923) also said “I understand as well as anybody that we have got to find a modus vivendi with the Arabs; they will always live in the country, and all around the country, and we cannot afford a perpetuation of strife”. But White does not quote that passage (of course). As we will see, ‘doctored’ quotes (that is, partial quotes or quotes taken out of context or isolated from important supporting quotes) permeate this book.

Hoffman does not contest the accurace of the quotation – he can only suggest decontextualision (a rhetorical step down). But even this claim is on shaky foundations. Hoffman gives a further Jabotinsky quotation, he says from 1923. In fact, the quotation comes from a letter written in July 1925. Furthermore, in the very same segment, Jabotinsky repeats his belief that the only way to realise a “Jewish Palestine” is “to make them [the Arabs] lose every vestige of hope” of resisting Zionist colonisation.

One can go on. Hoffman says:

Another false quote from the “Israel Bashers’ Greatest Hits” is ‘A Land Without A People, For A People Without A Land’ (pages 16 and 22). But even White resists the temptation to attribute it to an early Zionist (it was “coined and propagated by nineteenth-century Christian writers”).

In what way then can this be considered a ‘false quote’, given that Hoffman himself says I don’t “attribute it to an early Zionist”? Then there is this:

Avi Shlaim is his source for his assertion that Jewish forces significantly outnumbered Arab forces throughout the 1948 War of Independence. What a shame White ignored this passage from the same source…

Hoffman duly quotes from Shlaim, but the idea that I have deliberately omitted contradictory evidence is rather laughable: the whole section from which these quotations are taken is one in which Shlaim is deliberately undermining the “myth” that “the Israeli victory [in 1948] was achieved in the face of insurmountable military odds”.

Perhaps because Hoffman’s evidence for the book being ‘permeated’ with false quotes and lies is rather thin on the ground (or perhaps because he just didn’t read it all), Hoffman also gets some things plain wrong. One might call them, well, ‘false quotes’:

Example #1.
Hoffman wrote, “White claims that the Israeli government planned the genocide of the Israeli Arabs”.

I never wrote that in the book, and I have never written that anywhere else.

Example #2.
Hoffman wrote, “But there was no ‘ethnic cleansing’ and Plan Dalet was not a masterplan to achieve this non-aim, as White contends.” The War on Want event special print out read: LIE ‘Plan Dalet a masterplan to achieve ethnic cleansing’ - LIE

I never said Plan Dalet was a “masterplan”. I mention it twice in a 13 page-section on the Nakba, and say it played “an important role”.

Example #3.
Hoffman wrote: “Now White moves the focus to Gaza and the West Bank. Nowhere in this section does he mention that Israel pulled out of Gaza in 2005 (indeed in places (eg page 60) it is as if this had not happened)…” The War on Want event handout read: “Israel pulled out of Gaza in 2005” – NEVER STATED IN THIS BOOK

Now one begins to wonder if Hoffman has only ever opened the book at random (perhaps with one finger hovering over Caps Lock). On p.61 there is a map of the Occupied Territories titled ‘Settlements established and evacuated 1967-2008’ – the key includes ‘Settlements evacuated in September 2005’. On p.62, I list the settlements established since 1967 in the OPT, including “the Gaza Strip’s 16 settlements dismantled in 2005”. There is also a specific section in the ‘Frequently Asked Questions’, stretching over four pages (pp.111-114), directly discussing the Israeli withdrawal from the Gaza Strip in 2005.

A final point. Hoffman also chooses to contest, among other things, the illegality of Israel’s settlements in the Occupied Palestinian Territories:

White repeats the untruth that the settlements are illegal (p62). The United States for example has not considered them illegal since the time of Professor Eugene Rostow, US Undersecretary of State for Political Affairs, 1966-9.

Firstly, if the US has “not considered [the settlements] illegal” since 1966-’69, one wonders what led the US Department of State to tell its embassy in Israel in 1968 that “the transfer of civilians to occupied areas, whether or not in settlements which are under military control, is contrary to Article 49 of the Geneva Convention”; or Jimmy Carter to say the following in July 1977: “This matter of settlements in the occupied territories has always been characterized by our Government, by me and my predecessors as an illegal action”. Secondly and more importantly, international law is not created by US administrations, and the settlements are considered illegal by: United Nations Security Council resolutions, the International Court of Justice, the European Union, and High Contracting Parties to the Fourth Geneva Convention. Despite all this, Hoffman says it is untrue that the settlements are illegal.

Hoffman called my book an “artless, crude piece of Israel-bashing”, as well as a “tired piece of intellectually bankrupt propaganda”. He seemingly feels that the case I make in my book will simply collapse under the weight of his insults and insinuations. Hoffman has (literally) shouted ‘Lies!’ about the book, but his own response – published by the AJC’s ‘Z-Word Blog’ and linked to by sites like Harry’s Place, is characterised by bluster, a disregard for international law, and simple untruths about the book supposedly being ‘reviewed’.

If you follow the link to the Z-word blog be sure to check out the comments. At first they're the usual nonsense, praising the author of the post without indicating that they have read what it is the "reviewer" is supposed to be reviewing. Then Dan Judelson of Jews for Justice for Palestinians makes an appearance to underscore Jonathan Hoffman's sheer dishonesty, specifically on international law and the settlements. Well that smoked out the dregs. Hoffman appears to tie (or LIE) himself in more knots, a raving lunatic calling himself Modernity Blog pops in to dishonestly accuse Dan of dishonesty and, not to be outdone, Dr David Hirsh sends in his latest sock puppet, Shachtman to, er, change the subject and make up a few lies of his own.

Well done Ben!

Liberal Tel Avivians?

Max Blumenthal interviewed some rather nasty young American-Israelis in Jerusalem a few weeks ago and posted the resulting video on Youtube where the zionist guardians of the permissible promptly removed it. He then posted it to his own site but it has disappeared from there too.

Well anyway the original "feeling the hate in Jerusalem" was criticised in some zionist circles as being contrived or at least not representative of mainstream Israeli opinion. See this from Mondoweiss:

Benjamin Hartman, a young correspondent for Ha’aretz who had moved to Israel from his hometown of Austin, Texas, wrote that my video was “circling the internet at a critical velocity on a mission to humiliate the Jewish people.” Hartman concluded that I was “speaking to the wrong crowd at the wrong time of night,” a meme that would comprise the key talking point for bloggers and organized Jewish groups (including the Israeli chapter of Democrats Abroad) seeking to discredit and ultimately suppress the video.

Hartman then offered me advice on where to find the right crowd, and at which time of night they might be on their best behavior:

“I hope Blumenthal films his next segment in Tel Aviv, though the results would probably be far less salacious. On a balcony in Florentin, he would ask the drum circle what they think of Obama and through the purple haze would hear only praise for the president, before being forced to listen to a 30-minute account of a recent trip to Nepal.”

Unbeknownst to Hartman, who only attempted to interview me days after publishing his review and then published a piece questioning whether I had been “fueling anti-Semitism,” I had already filmed my next segment in Tel Aviv. (And I had already spent an evening, sans camera, with an Israeli hippie on a balcony in Florentin, though he told me through the purple haze that the Palestinian people do not exist and should be immediately transferred to Jordan).

Now that I have released my footage from Tel Aviv, I wonder what Hartman and other, even more insecure critics of my first “Feeling the Hate” video will do to ensure that the sequel does not “humiliate the Jewish people.” Will they rely on the same old hasbara?

Which "same old hasbara"? lying? or banning?

Irish tent solidarity with victims of Israeli home demolitions

From the Derry Journal:

'Tent City' in the Bog

Published Date: 14 July 2009
By Staff reporter

Dozens of anti-war activists from throughout the North West converged on Free Derry Corner yesterday to create their very own 'Tent City'.

The Derry action was just one of dozens of similar events held simultaneously in New York, Washington, Chicago, Sweden, Denmark, Holland, France, Spain, London, and Egypt on International Day against House Demolitions in Palestine.

It was organised in solidarity with hundreds of Palestinian families whose homes continue to be routinely demolished by the Israeli State.

The family-friendly day of action saw men, women and children gather together to pitch a tent in solidarity, as passing motorists beeped their car horns in support.

The temporary tent-dwellers were further encouraged by entertainment from Gawa Fusion, a Moroccan six-piece band, Bogside musician Declan McLaughlin and others.

See a whole lotta more pics at Irish Indymedia.

Afghan rebels?

I just read today's letters in The Independent. They seem to be responding to an editorial that, no doubt, supports the war there. I guess that because whilst the articles in the Indie can be very good, truthful even, the editorials often express an opinion completely at odds with the reports from the field. Anyway, see these letters and maybe you can track down the editorial. That bit's not easy because the Indie site isn't as navigable as The Guardian, but go on, have a go:

What are we doing in Afghanistan?

I’m very disappointed in The Independent’s position on the war in Afghanistan (leading article, 10 July). We have been in that benighted land for nearly eight years and the goal of “crushing the camps which train terrorists” is apparently no closer to completion.

What camps? After eight years and the participation of more than 40 countries, have we still not found them? And do terrorists actually need “camps” in Afghanistan or anywhere else, or just a backroom in Leeds, Reading, Riyadh or Islamabad? Or maybe even a quiet corner of the Lake District?

We are currently losing a soldier a day in pursuit of this dubious enterprise. And what is there to show for it? What is our government’s appraisal of the situation? Are we winning, and if so by what measure?

The Independent is allowing itself to be sucked into the argument about lack of equipment, but this is merely a sideshow; we have known for years that the equipment is below par. More important questions are those regarding lack of accountability, lack of strategy, and whether our continued presence there is not a persistent stimulus to terrorist activity elsewhere.

IAN BARTLETT EAST MOLESEY, SURREY

Our young people killed in Afghanistan are collateral damage of an international arms trade we enthusiastically sustain, in which we participate, and from which we profit.

Our bombing in Afghanistan and Iraq has killed far more innocent Afghanis and Iraqis than any civil war in either countrywould have done.

We are seeking to establish a democratic system in an area of the world culturally alien to it. Many of our main allies in the area are deeply undemocratic states; at least one a monarchic misogynistic theocracy as repressive as the Taliban themselves.

For the second time in 30 years, self-trained indigenous Taliban Afghanis are withstanding the combined might of super-power armies, massively superior in technological warfare. In the 1970s, Russia had many more well-trained conventional forces than we can muster or would ever commit.

They were politically able to accept a loss rate our public would never permit, yet they had to give up.

The internet and global communication; the irresistible dissemination of ideas from women’s rights to the benefits of democratic institutions, and, yes, even free world trade are far more likely to defeat misogynistic repression than our assembly-line production of martyrs for men who know how to exploit them.

KEITH FARMAN ST ALBANS, HERTFORDSHIRE

If our motive for being in Afghanistan is humanitarian, then be prepared for countless future military interventions on behalf of democracy, selfdetermination, women, and sexual minorities. If it is fear of al-Qa’ida reestablishing a base, then the west will need to flex its military muscle until the Muslim world consists entirely of client states.

But what about 9/11 and 7/7? Acquiesce in foreign adventures and we the citizenry become belligerents, hence targets. Alas, each of us in a democracy is jointly and severally responsible for the actions of our elected government.

These days, empire means blowback, sometimes even in our homeland.

YUGO KOVACH WINTERBORNE HOUGHTON, DORSET

David Miliband’s assertion that the future of Britain rests upon the successful outcome of the war in Afghanistan has all the trappings of a Newspeak announcement from George Orwell’s Ministry of Truth.

As was the case of the 2003 US/UK invasion of Iraq, the 2001 US/UK invasion of Afghanistan was founded upon a false casus belli manufactured by a frustrated US administration requiring an oil pipeline through Afghanistan to the Caspian Sea.

Britain has no right to be in Afghanistan and Britain will remain susceptible to retaliation until we cease to promote American foreign policy and remove our armed forces from other nations’ soil.

PATRICK LAVENDER TAUNTON, SOMERSET

When the Prime Minister states that “There is a chain of terror that runs from the mountains and towns of Afghanistan to the streets of Britain” he is right, but not in the sense he intends.

The US/UK military campaign to subjugate the rebellious Pashtun province of Helmandis not winning hearts and minds. Instead, it sows seeds of bitterness and vengeance with every (shamefully underreported) air strike. The occupation is radicalising a new generation at home and abroad. And, in counterpoint to its stated aims, it provides a training and testing ground for guerrilla tactics and technology.

The asymmetric conflict against the Pashtun insurgency in Afghanistan is resembling more and more the US embroilment in South Vietnam, with one crucial difference; the then Labour government had the courage and foresight not to involve UK forces.

CLLR TONY HARWOOD (LIB DEM) MAIDSTONE, KENT

The murder of a leading feminist and the stoning of women campaigning against President Karzai’s laws, which sanction rape within marriage, should not be tolerated by the UN, let alone theUKand US.Yet President Obama and our own Prime Minister have sanctioned more troops to support such a regime. Our taxpayers’ money and troops are supporting this policy.

STEPHEN SARTAIN LONDON E5

Is it too much to assume that The Independent couldn't find one letter worth printing that supported the editorial position? They'll turn it around tomorrow I'm sure.

Tel Aviv University and Israeli war crimes

Electronic Intidada

As part of Tel Aviv's centenary celebration, the School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS) in London hosted a Tel Aviv University Special Lecture Series from January to March 2009. Taking place in the midst of Israel's war on Gaza -- which had already mobilized SOAS students to organize a number of activities in solidarity with Gaza, including the first student occupation in the UK -- students and a number of lecturers expressed their opposition to the lecture series.

The student union overwhelmingly passed a motion criticizing the lecture series' attempt to whitewash Tel Aviv's colonial past and present and called for the end of SOAS's collaboration with Tel Aviv University (TAU) in hosting the series on the grounds of its role in giving key legal, technological and strategic support for maintaining and expanding Israel's colonial occupation. The School's Director, Professor Paul Webley, opposed the cancellation and defended the continuation of the lecture series by invoking a prerogative of freedom of speech and citing the pedagogic value of diversities of opinion. Conspicuously absent in the Director's defense was any engagement with the nature and scope of TAU's research portfolio.

In response to the director's failure to acknowledge the serious implications of collaboration with TAU that undermined the reputation, integrity and fundamental ethical principles of SOAS, the SOAS Palestine Society prepared a briefing paper for him and the Governing Body outlining TAU's intensive, purposive and open institutional contributions to the Israeli military. While the signatories of the briefing paper recognized the importance of freedom of speech, they were also keenly aware of the need to uphold the rights of the oppressed and expressed that no right reigns absolute over the fundamental right to life. It is precisely therefore that it is wholly untenable that partnerships with institutions facilitating, advocating and justifying ongoing war crimes can be legitimized with recourse to an ideal of academic freedom.

The briefing paper presented irrefutable evidence of TAU's deep investment in the facilitation and prosecution (at both the material and conceptual level) of what amount to war crimes. Along with many other examples of expansive institutional culpability, it identified the leading role played by TAU in developing an explicit military doctrine of "disproportionality" calling for the targeting of Palestinian and Lebanese civilians and civilian infrastructures. All of the data assembled and clearly sourced in the briefing paper is publicly available and widely known both at TAU and to the wider Israeli public. Indeed, TAU's valorization of its contributions to the military is an emphatic feature of its domestic public image, repeatedly underlined by university president Zvi Galil and celebrated in public relations campaigns. It is in part for this reason that demonstrating the complicity of TAU in the commissioning and enabling of ongoing war crimes is a relatively straightforward task. At the same time, this transparency discloses the extent to which the institution's overt roles in illegal and oppressive military programs go unchallenged, which reflects troubling patterns of acquiescence across Israeli academia and reveals the degree of mobilization obtaining in wider Israeli society.

When the SOAS director and the Governing Body of the school were confronted with the evidence in the briefing paper and the repeated demand to cancel the lecture series was made once again, the school's response was that:

"[N]either SOAS as an institution nor the governors as a group have decided to take a stand on the issue of continuing to work with TAU and ... it is unlikely that they would do so. Whatever the sympathies of individual governors may be, it would be virtually impossible and inappropriate for SOAS to take a political stand of this nature with regard to an individual academic institution or group of institutions in a particular country. This would go against the basic principles of academic freedom to which SOAS is legally and constitutionally bound."

This response utterly -- and most likely willfully -- ignored the evidence implicating TAU's role in death, destruction and oppression and stands testimony to the abject failure of educational institutions such as SOAS to place even minimal pressure on TAU to dissociate itself from oppression, illegality, and war-craft. Yet even this failure of omission, casting a shadow on the ethical integrity of scores of academic institutions such as SOAS, is translated into a far more serious failure of commission when universities offer themselves (their institutional reputations along with those of their faculty and studentship) as partners in the production and projection of an occlusive image of TAU as an unproblematic center of higher learning. This failure cannot be glossed over by recourse to notions of academic freedom or assertions about the pedagogic value of diversities of opinion unless these principles are elevated to an absolute status, absolving academia itself from an entire field of ethical responsibility.

SOAS has previously lived up to such ethical responsibilities when challenged to do so. In 2005, the institution responded to revelations about its holdings in weapons industries on the part of the Campaign Against Arms Trade (CAAT) by immediately divesting from these companies. In doing so, SOAS implicitly recognized the need to fully dissociate itself from institutions profiting from war and producing its technologies. TAU's overt privileging of military research and development, its institutional primacy in the authoring and propagation of illegal military doctrines and its celebratory self-definition as a "front line institution" in the production of Israel's "military and technological edge" makes its embrace at SOAS a betrayal of the ethical principles upheld in 2005.

Undoubtedly, SOAS's collaboration in the production of a celebratory public image of TAU and the oppressive and criminal activities fostered, facilitated and celebrated by that institution signals a profound disregard for the consequences of such institutional partnerships on SOAS's integrity and ethical reputation as an institution. Perhaps this should not come as a surprise given that the restructuring of universities into profit-orientated organizations in much of the western world, and in the UK in particular, means that university managements perform and conform with the interests of the powers that be more than ever before. The boycott, divestment and sanctions movement that is gaining rapid support across many campuses in the UK remains the only effective tool to confront collaborating universities and demand the boycott of Israeli academic institutions involved in the perpetration of war crimes.

Download the full study [PDF]

The meaning of Obama, sort of

This piece of sublime by a certain William K. Wolfrum deserves notice:

We White Men are now an infinitesimally oppressed, slightly less powerful majority

My friends, for many years, I have lived a life of divine privilege. By birthright, I was special - white as all get out and as male as could be. Basically, I hit the genetic lottery, and grew to be secure in the fact that all rights available to a human belonged to me.

But those days have come to and end, and with them, a tiny percentage of my hopes and dreams. You see, in just over six months, the United States has seen a black man be elected President of the United States, and a Latin woman be nominated for Supreme Court. My friends, these jobs were once the sole property of men like me. White men. White men who didn't care about non-white men, and didn't have to because we're white. But those times are changing. And I am frightened.

Now, sure, I understand there are white men out there that will help white men like myself bridge the infinitesimally small new gap. I also understand that white men still make up 90 percent or more of Congress, and roughly 100 percent of the mainstream media. But these privileges are no longer purely a given, and in fact have the unseemly feel of large-partism just thrown our way by the minorly less impotent minority class.

Because, you see, not that long ago, when a Supreme Court seat opened up, I had the warm comfort of knowing that I - with no law experience whatsoever - had a much better chance at becoming a Supreme Court Justice than a woman with a Puerto Rican heritage. A woman who would have never even have been given the opportunity to gain law experience not so long ago. But now, I feel the same oppression as the blacks that were enslaved in the U.S., and the Native Americans who were slaughtered. I am now part of an oppressed, negligibly less powerful majority.

So what happens to me now? This year the Supreme Court is off limits to a white, non-law-practicing male like myself. And the Presidency is now firmly in the hands of someone who lacks the comforting whiteness that I and my fellow white men have come to accept as the norm. As someone who once had limitless opportunities, I now find the ease of which I could stumble into those opportunities limited ever-so slightly. But I believe that we White men can come back and reclaim the absolute and complete power we once held. We must begin our own civil rights struggle. We must take to the streets. It is time for a white male movement.

I believe it is time for white men to get together and form an organization that fights for our needs. In keeping with this new "Enlarge the Gap" movement, we should dress uniformly, perhaps in all white to further enhance our whiteness. Let me tell you, organization is key. And while the triflingly more powerful minorities of this nation may scoff at a large, well-organized group of white men marching the streets dressed in white with torches, for we white males it will be the type of thing that empowers us. Because the ruling, pampered minorities do not understand what an angry group of vaguely oppressed white men can accomplish. They have no historical perspective, at least as far as I learned at the private school I attended. They see us only as extremely powerful, but not God-like any longer. This tiny, almost unnoticeable gap between deity and hyper-powerful is a gap we must close.

We must fight. Today, a white male child will be born into an oppressive society where the color of his skin will only be a great advantage, not an incomprehensibly powerful advantage. That child will see that there is now extra competition out there between himself and his dreams. That child will be born into a society that - while understanding his cultural values and belief systems - will no longer automatically fearfully submit to them. That child will be destined for a life of dreams and promises that will only very likely be fulfilled. The guarantee is now gone, and we must get it back.

My white male friends, we shall overcome. We are a theoretically oppressed majority, but our voices can be heard. White men, spit the imperceptibly less silver spoon from your mouths and yell to the skies "The White Man will rise again! Power to the white male."

Thank you, and I have retained counsel, several bodyguards, a maid, hairstylist and personal valet on this matter.

That Judenrein thing

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu used the Nazi term 'Judenrein' in a recent meeting with the German foreign minister to condemn the Palestinian demand that West Bank settlements be removed, a confidant of the premier has said.

"Judea and Samaria cannot be Judenrein," the confidant quoted the prime minister as telling Frank-Walter Steinmeier earlier this week.

Asked how Germany's top diplomat responded to hearing the term used by the Nazis to refer to areas "cleansed of Jews", the confidant said, "What could he do? He basically just nodded." (Haaretz, June 10, 2009)

It takes a certain warped mind to compare the removal of illegal settlements, established through blatant and intentional disregard of international law as part of a conscious campaign for ethnic cleansing ("maximum land with minimum Arabs"), to the Nazi attempt to exterminate European Jews.

But don't blame Netanyahu. Warped mind, thy name is Zionism. After all, to give just one tiny example, it wasn't long ago that a certain hackademic who shall remain nameless described the defeat of the Zionists in the UCU as the outcome of a campaign to make the UCU "free of Jews." And if you go and google 'Judenrein', you will note that the rabid Jewish right has been using this term to describe the anti-colonial struggle in the OPT for a very long time.

This is what I love about Netanyahu. He is irrepressibly icky. All the foul, nauseating, self-righteous self-pity that has been festering in the Zionist psyche but kept firmly in check by pragmatic "labor" leaders from Ben Gurion to Peres, at least in international settings, is now gushing out, officially written into the record by an Israeli PM who wears his necrotic heart on his sleeve. Perhaps that is because in Netanyahu, the personal and the political are one, the humiliation experienced by Jewish identity as it was steamrolled by European modernity, out of which Zionism was born, resonating with Netanyahu's family's own humiliation at the hand of the labor regime in Israel, which he has never forgiven. Humiliation, resentment and lashing out in revenge are the core elements of the Netanyahu universe and one of the keys to his appeal in an electorate saturated with humiliations. He is the thus the perfect, almost excpectant, foil for Obama's policy of ostensibly humiliating him/Israel, which he can only experience as deja vu all over again, just as every mild criticism of its actions or call for restraint is experienced by Israel and its supporters as a new "Auschwitz". Netanyahu is the surfeit of the Zionist death drive, a talking wound with a one word repertoire: "Nazi. Nazi. Nazi. Nazi. Nazi. Nazi..." Ad nauseam.

Why I love Netanyahu

As you surely remember, before the last Israeli elections, I endorsed Netanyahu as the candidate who, if elected, would do the most amount of good for both Palestinians and Israelis (admittedly unintentionally)

Well...

Netanyahu appears to be suffering from confusion and paranoia. He is convinced that the media are after him, that his aides are leaking information against him and that the American administration wants him out of office. Two months after his visit to Washington, he is still finding it difficult to communication normally with the White House. To appreciate the depth of his paranoia, it is enough to hear how he refers to Rahm Emanuel and David Axelrod, Obama's senior aides: as "self-hating Jews."

"He thought that his speech at Bar-Ilan would become mandatory reading at schools in the United States, and when he realized that Obama gave no such order, he went back to being frustrated," one of his associates said.

At a recent meeting with with Netanyahu, ostensibly about the understandings with the U.S. on the settlements, former prime minister Ehud Olmert was shocked to see the prime minister focusing mainly on the media. "Is this what he called me in for?" a source close to Olmert quoted him as saying.

Behind closed doors, Netanyahu's coalition partners - including Defense Minister Ehud Barak and Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman - have also expressed shock at his behavior. One senior minister told an aide that he is finding it very difficult to work with the premier. "He drives us mad," the minister said. "Every minute things change, and I am constantly busy doing maintenance on Netanyahu." (Haaretz, June 9, 2008)

Now that Rahm Emanuel has been called a "self-hating Jew", and called that by a true expert on the subject, I feel the label has been sorely devalued, and I kindly ask all our fiercest critics to find fresh ways to express their loathing of us.

PS. thanks to the economic crisis, the cost of being evil is going up, which, like the Madoff scandal, is a benign side effect of the general misfortune. Netanyahu and his Finance Minister, Yuval Steinitz (who is even more insufferable than Netanyahu), tried (and failed) to impose a value added tax on fruits and vegetable, i.e., a new regressive tax that would bear most heavily on the poorest consumers. You can't say this lot is not consistent in their utter contempt for their beloved "Amyisrael" (nor can you deny that their voters earned it).

Tweeter Feed

For those who haven't noticed, there is a tweeter feed at the top that is used mainly for one liners and news flashes. In order to allow feedback of the tweeter feed, the comment section for this post will be soon linked from the box above.

Positive thinking

Phillip Weiss wants more positive thinking:

Let me try. The BDS statement defines the conditions for the normalization of the status of Jewish Israelis in Palestine and in the Middle East:

These non-violent punitive measures should be maintained until Israel meets its obligation to recognize the Palestinian people’s inalienable right to self-determination and fully complies with the precepts of international law by:

1. Ending its occupation and colonization of all Arab lands and dismantling the Wall;
2. Recognizing the fundamental rights of the Arab-Palestinian citizens of Israel to full equality; and
3. Respecting, protecting and promoting the rights of Palestinian refugees to return to their homes and properties as stipulated in UN resolution 194. (B.D.S call)
   

And it also says what we need to do to get from here to there.

In a nutshell, first, Israeli Jews divest or our forced to divest from their privilege. Then, political negotiations between equals can establish concrete institutional expressions for the new polity/ies.

Is this not positive enough, not visionary enough?

Now maybe I get Weiss wrong and what he really asks is whether I "believe there should be a Jewish state?"

If Jewish Americans want a Jewish state, they should peacefully petition their government according to the First Amendment, to establish one such state in Idaho. Whether there should be a Jewish state in Palestine is none of their business. If Palestinians and Jewish Israelis, negotiating under conditions of equality, decide that a Jewish state is a desirable element of the new constitutional arrangement, then there should be one. I for once would not want one. I have a preference for institutional diffusion that fosters overlapping but out-of-phase identities, sliding "Hebrew" from beneath "Jewish" and deterritorializing both at an angle to the state, a state that I would want strongly socialist, defending all its citizens from international predation. But that is just my opinion, and we should not confuse that with what should be the focus now, ending apartheid in Palestine.

This distinction should be of particular importance for Jewish Americans. The struggle in the U.S. should not be the one between J-Street and AIPAC about "what is really good for Israel". This is a fight over influence that obscure the real challenge, which is for Jewish Americans to work through their fantasies and to come to terms with the dark side of their history as a U.S. identity group. Just as Jewish Israelis must come to term with the Nakba, Jewish Americans need to write their own history critically. They need to rub their own nose in the huge damage, the untold suffering, that their infantile infatuation with a wild-west Zion, with Jewish "manliness" and with fashioning for themselves a new "ethnic" particularity in multicultural America has wrought on people thousands of miles away. They should also ask themselves who stoke this infatuation, who funded it, and who benefitted from it. They should ask themselves how to make amends and to whom to make amends. And they should rethink the question of how to establish a communal identity in the U.S within the constraints of ethical coexistence, which means above all giving up the nihilism of the Holocaust Religion. Only after they have done this durcharbeitung can they come back to the question of what kind of relation they can have with a Jewish community in Palestine.

Debating the "Jewish state" in the U.S. is counterproductive unless it is done with this awareness of distance. Jewish Americans discussing the fate of the Jewish state without having done this critical work on their own responsibility are, to borrow an Americanism, "not helpful".

The struggle in Honduras escalates

While protesters against the oligarchic coup are shot in the street, Obama, who in fact owns the political class of the client state of Honduras, is trying to have his cake and eat it, notwithstanding the libidinal investment of some leftists (still worth reading).

The starvers of Gaza meet

...And assure the world the Gilad Shalit is in good health, as was widely reported. About the health crisis that is imposed on the other million and a half residents of Gaza they had nothing to say, most probably, to be fair to our two grandfatherly vampires, Peres and Mubarak, because none of the journalists attending the press conference asked about it, and if any of them did, none of the editors of the Western media thought the question was fit to print. After all, unlike Gilad Shalit, they are merely Arabs.

P.S. isn't Mubarak's petit salon tastefully decorated? The warm tones in the carpet are made with blood (and did you notice there are no mirrors?).

Zionism and books

French Zionist thugs assaulted a radical bookstore in Paris, smashing computers and destroying books.

Librairie Résistances agressée
envoyé par chrisdenhond. - L'info internationale vidéo.

The JDL, Jewish Defense League, to which the thugs claimed to belong, is considered a terrorist group in the U.S., but is legal in France, perhaps because France has an infamous history of assaults on anti-colonial bookstores. Perhaps because Jews can do no wrong in France.

This is Zionism. More on that at Tony Greenstein, Europalestine and Kedma (multilingual).

The long march in Gaza

I've just heard about this protest action from the Just Peace UK list though the details were first reported by Richard Hall in the Lebanese Daily Star and Norman Finkelstein's website on 1/7/09:

A coalition of activists belonging to various Palestinian solidarity organizations are planning an international march in Gaza aimed at ending the blockade of the territory. The event will aim to bring thousands of demonstrators from around the world to march alongside Gazans as they breach the blockade imposed upon the population since the election of Hamas in 2006.

"This march draws inspiration from Mahatma Gandhi," said a draft statement of purposes and principles written by the "Coalition to End the Illegal Siege of Gaza," obtained by The Daily Star. "Those of us residing in the United States also draw inspiration from the civil rights movement," it added.

The statement also outlines plans for the march, which will take place on January 1, 2010. "We will march the Long Mile across Erez checkpoint alongside the people of Gaza in a nonviolent demonstration that breaches the illegal blockade," it said, adding that "We conceive this march as the first step in a protracted nonviolent campaign ... If we bring thousands to Gaza and millions more around the world watch the march on the internet, we can end the siege without a drop of blood being shed."

Professor Norman Finkelstein, a political analyst and author of several books on the Israel-Palestine conflict, is one of the organizers of the march. "We want to send over several thousand people from around the world to march alongside several hundred thousand Gazans," he told The Daily Star.

Finkelstein hopes that large numbers of international activists and world leaders will attend the march, and as a result, prohibit a violent response from Israeli authorities. "If the likes of Jimmy Carter, Noam Chomsky, Bishop Tutu and Nelson Mandela are at the head of the march; if behind them are students holding high signs of the schools from which they hail - Harvard, Yale, Princeton, Oxford, Cambridge; if behind them are the ill and the lame, the young and the innocent of Gaza; if behind them are hundreds of thousands of others, unarmed and unafraid, wanting only to enforce the law; if around the world hundreds of thousands are watching the internet to see what happens - Israel can't shoot," he said.

"The first formal organizational meeting of the coalition is set for July 13," said Finkelstein. "We hope then to create an umbrella steering committee. Right now the working group consists of individuals who belong to organizations that have been active on the Israel-Palestine conflict such as CodePink." Members of the coalition are now contacting Palestinian solidarity groups around the world in preparation for the march.

Well that appeared 5 days ago and I haven't heard from either the Palestine Solidarity Campaign in England and Wales or Scottish PSC so I don't know if they're up for it or not. It's certainly an imaginative initiative.

Israel needs more segregation?

That's what a Shas minister is saying according to this Ha'aretz article:

Housing Minister Ariel Atias on Thursday warned against the spread of Arab population into various parts of Israel, saying that preventing this phenomenon was no less than a national responsibility.

"I see [it] as a national duty to prevent the spread of a population that, to say the least, does not love the state of Israel," Atias told a conference of the Israel Bar Association, which focused on a reforming Israel's Land Administration.

The Shas minister referred to Harish, a housing project built for the Haredi community in northern Israel, saying that the Arab population from the nearby Wadi Ara was spreading into the Harish area.

Atias went on to address the issue of the Galilee, saying that "if we go on like we have until now, we will lose the Galilee. Populations that should not mix are spreading there. I don't think that it is appropriate [for them] to live together."....
.......
Atias argued that lands should be marketed to each sector separately, in order to create segregation, not just between Jews and Arabs but also between other sectors, such as ultra-Orthodox and secular Jews. "There is a severe housing crisis among the young ultra-Orthodox couples, and in the general population. I, as an ultra-Orthodox Jew, don't think that religious Jews should have to live in the same neighborhood as secular couples, so as to avoid unnecessary friction. And since some 5,000 to 6,000 religious couples get married every year, a problem arises because they require a certain kind of community life that goes along with their lifestyle."

Now this is stange to me because I thought that Israel was already a segregationist state so what's been happening?

The housing minister went on to say that the problem stemmed from faulty handling of land within the Land Administration and the Housing Ministry, among other reasons. "Today there is a serious housing crisis facing all the young couples in Israel, in part because of the limited appropriation of land in recent years in the Lands Administration and the Housing Ministry, and also due to faulty decision making which resulted from the high turnover of ministers over the last decade ? 8 ministers have held the office of Housing minister in the last decade and the Land Administration wasn?t under the ministry's authority for part of the time."

Ah, I see. Israel has always been a segregationist state but the high turnover of ministers has led to administrative inefficiencies that meant that segregation as per the zionist project wasn't enforced with due rigour.

If anyone finds this story in the mainstream English language media please let me know. I suspect this overt expression of what zionism is all about will slip below the radar.

Saying "YES!" to BDS

Have a look at this on the Common Dreams site:

For Once, the Yes Men Say No

by Andy Bichlbaum & Mike Bonanno

The Yes Men, co-directors of the new award-winning documentary film The Yes Men Fix the World, have decided to withdraw their film from the Jerusalem International Film Festival, in support of the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions campaign:

Dear Friends at the Jerusalem Film Festival,

We regret to say that we have taken the hard decision to withdraw our film, "The Yes Men Fix the World," from the Jerusalem Film Festival in solidarity with the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions campaign (http://www.bdsmovement.net/).

This decision does not come easily, as we realize that the festival opposes the policies of the State of Israel, and we have no wish to punish progressives who deplore the state-sponsored violence committed in their name.

This decision does not come easily, as we feel a strong affinity with many people in Israel, sharing with them our Jewish roots, as well as the trauma of the Holocaust, in which both our grandfathers died. Andy lived in Jerusalem for a year long ago, can still get by in Hebrew, and counts several friends there. And Mike has always wanted to connect with the roots of his culture.

But despite all our feelings, we cannot abandon our mission as activists. In the 1980s, there was a call from the people of South Africa to artists and others to boycott that regime, and it helped end apartheid there. Today, there is a clear call for a boycott from Palestinian civil society. Obeying it is our only hope, as filmmakers and activists, of helping put pressure on the Israeli government to comply with international law.

It is painful to do this. But it is even more painful to hear Israeli policies described as "fascist" - not just from the ill-informed and the clueless, not just from the usual anti-semitic morons, but from well-informed Jewish activists within Israel. They know what they're talking about, and it's painful to think that they could be right.

As we're sure you know and deplore, the Israeli government has recently authorized the construction of new units in an illegal West Bank outpost - one that is illegal even according to Israeli law. On Monday, nine Palestinians were injured as Israeli authorities demolished their East Jerusalem home. Tuesday, the Israeli navy stopped a ship from delivering medicine, toys, and other humanitarian relief to Gaza, and detained over twenty foreign peace activists, including a Nobel Peace laureate. Meanwhile, a UN commission was in Gaza investigating much worse abuses committed early this year.

Whatever words are applied to such actions, our film mustn't help lend an aura of normalcy to a state that makes these decisions. For us, that's the bottom line.

There is certainly another way to do things in Israel/Palestine, and that is what we must fight for, however feeble our means. As for our film, there is another way for it to be seen in Israel... and in Palestine, so that the people most in need of comic relief, who would never have been able to see it at the Jerusalem Film Festival anyhow, will be able to see it too. Within the next few months, we will make this happen.

To those who want to see our film, savlanut and sabir (patience)! And for all the rest of us, a little LESS patience, please.

L'shanah haba'ah beyerushalayim,

Andy and Mike

The Yes Men

www.theyesmen.org

--The Yes Men

Yup, I mean yes, a little less patience with Israel is what's required now.

Israel whines about Amnesty report

Well what a surprise! Israel is complaining about "bias" in an Amnesty International report accusing it of war crimes. Here's the Jewish Telegraphic Agency:

Amnesty International was manipulated by Hamas in its report that accused Israel of committing war crimes during its Gaza military operation, the Israeli army said.

"We find it both questionable and objectionable that a well-respected and ostensibly objective international organization such as Amnesty could produce a report on Operation Cast Lead without properly recognizing the unbearable reality of nine years of incessant and indiscriminate rocket fire on the citizens of Israel," read a statement released from the office of the spokesman of the Israel Defense Forces. "The slant of their report indicates that the organization succumbed to the manipulations of the Hamas terror organization."

The report released Thursday accused Israeli military forces of using civilians, including children, as human shields and conducting random attacks on civilians during the operation in December and January.

The IDF spokesman said that "the IDF utilized various fighting methods and advanced technology to minimize harm to the civilian population, while engaging terrorists who were operating from densely populated areas and using the local population as a human shield.” It noted that the IDF allowed for a daily humanitarian cease-fire to allow food and medical supplies to enter the coastal strip.

Amnesty International in its report said it did not find any evidence that Hamas used civilians as human shields. But in a small section of the 117-page report, it said that the rocket attacks from Gaza against Israel "constitute war crimes."

After all that Gaza suffered, I'm not sure it's appropriate for Amnesty to be criticising Hamas. I'm not saying they're above criticism but the attack on Gaza was going to happen no matter what Hamas did. It's what Israel does. And anyway, Amnesty should focus on states not resistance groups.

Action NOW: Israel attacks Free Gaza boat

By now, many readers will be aware that Israel has attacked the Free Gaza boat, boarding it (apparently in international waters), imprisoning its 21 crew members, and stealing the supplies – building material, olive trees, toys etc, that they were trying to bring to Gaza. More information here.

It’s a matter of urgency to get active on this, writing and emailing local politicians, press and governments, and holding demonstrations. There’s some suggestions here (here in Dublin we’re holding a protest this afternoon). The reason for the urgency is less to ensure the release of the 21 crew members since they will, according to Israeli press reports (if they can be believed), be released eventually, even while 1,500,000 Gazans remain in prison.

But if we fail to mobilize for this now, the Free Gaza movement – one of the most powerful ways foreign activists can expose Israeli occupation and help Palestinians – will be destroyed by Israel. Israel’s siege of Gaza will be tightened and yet another avenue for hope and effective solidarity will be shut down. Only a wave of foreign condemnation will make sure that Israel doesn’t do this again, and hopefully force Israel to release the much-needed supplies as well as the crew.

For those dealing with media, the Israeli line is here – these are Hamas supporters, Israel supports aid going through, and this aid will go through ‘subject to authorization’. They are all lies. The captured crew members are solidarity and peace activists including a Nobel Peace Laureate (from Ireland), Israel will not let aid go through, and as the cargo was selected since it is stuff that Israel does not allow through – toys are luxuries, building materials are banned, and as for trees! –Israel will probably let it rot or steal it.

Time to get active.

Leonard Cohen to play Soweto as well as Johannesburg

Woops, silly me. According to Ha'aretz, thanks to pressure from principled and consistent anti-racists, Leonard Cohen is now going to play a gig in the West Bank as well as one in Tel Aviv.

International music legend Leonard Cohen will perform in the West Bank city of Ramallah two days after his upcoming performance in Israel, Haaretz has learned.

The concert in Ramallah is set to be held on September 26, in the Palestinian city's Cultural Palace; about 1,000 fans are expected to attend.

Cohen's decision came after pro-Palestinian activists attempted to dissuade the singer from performing in Israel.

Actually I got the headline analogy from Deborah Fink on the Just Peace UK list. And the analogy is a good one. It's a disgrace that Cohen is passing Israel off as a normal country and equally disgraceful that he thinks adding Ramallah as an afterthought to his visit to Tel Aviv somehow rectifies his wrong. It doesn't and he knows it doesn't.

Leonard Cohen has shown himself to be tolerant and even supportive of the most explicitly racist regime on the planet and he thinks he can cover that up by playing to the victims of the ideology to which he subscribes. Hopefully, he will have another afterthought and cancel all gigs in occupied Palestine.

A half-truth is worse than a lie

From yesterday's Independent