The ever meaningless victories of liberal Israel

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

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.

Explaining race to OccupyWallStreet

Manissa McCleave Maharawal writes powerfully about how she was drawn to the occupation of Wall street and her experience with challenging the invisibility of race in the that space. You should go read the whole piece, but here are below a few paragraphs:

...I think this is what Occupy Wall Street is right now: less of a movement and more of a space. It is a space in which people who feel a similar frustration with the world as it is and as it has been, are coming together and thinking about ways to recreate this world. For some people this is the first time they have thought about how the world needs to be recreated. But some of us have been thinking about this for a while now. Does this mean that those of us who have been thinking about it for a while now should discredit this movement? No. It just means that there is a lot of learning going on down there and that there is a lot of teaching to be done.

On Thursday night I showed up at Occupy Wall Street with a bunch of other South Asians coming from a South Asians for Justice meeting. Sonny joked that he should have brought his dhol so we could enter like it was a baarat. When we got there they were passing around and reading a sheet of paper that had the Declaration of the Occupation of Wall Street on it. I had heard the “Declaration of the Occupation” read at the General Assembly the night before but I didn’t realize that it was going to be finalized as THE declaration of the movement right then and there. When I heard it the night before with Sonny we had looked at each other and noted that the line about “being one race, the human race, formally divided by race, class…” was a weird line, one that hit me in the stomach with its naivety and the way it made me feel alienated. But Sonny and I had shrugged it off as the ramblings of one of the many working groups at Occupy Wall Street.

But now we were realizing that this was actually a really important document and that it was going to be sent into the world and read by thousands of people. And that if we let it go into the world written the way it was then it would mean that people like me would shrug this movement off, it would stop people like me and my friends and my community from joining this movement, one that I already felt a part of. So this was urgent. This movement was about to send a document into the world about who and what it was that included a line that erased all power relations and decades of history of oppression. A line that would de-legitimize the movement, this would alienate me and people like me, this would not be able to be something I could get behind. And I was already behind it this movement and somehow I didn’t want to walk away from this. I couldn’t walk away from this.

And that night I was with people who also couldn’t walk away. Our amazing, impromptu, radical South Asian contingency, a contingency which stood out in that crowd for sure, did not back down. We did not back down when we were told the first time that Hena spoke that our concerns could be emailed and didn’t need to be dealt with then, we didn’t back down when we were told that again a second time and we didn’t back down when we were told that to “block” the declaration from going forward was a serious serious thing to do. When we threatened that this might mean leaving the movement, being willing to walk away. I knew it was a serious action to take, we all knew it was a serious action to take, and that is why we did it.

I have never blocked something before actually. And the only reason I was able to do so was because there were 5 of us standing there and because Hena had already put herself out there and started shouting “mic check” until they paid attention. And the only reason that I could in that moment was because I felt so urgently that this was something that needed to be said. There is something intense about speaking in front of hundreds of people, but there is something even more intense about speaking in front of hundreds of people with whom you feel aligned and you are saying something that they do not want to hear. And then it is even more intense when that crowd is repeating everything you say– which is the way the General Assemblies or any announcements at Occupy Wall Street work. But hearing yourself in an echo chamber means that you make sure your words mean something because they are being said back to you as you say them.

Law change lets Livni visit UK

Here's YNET:

Opposition Chairwoman Tzipi Livni announced that she will travel to London next week, her first trip to the United Kingdom since it issued a warrant for her arrest in the aftermath of Operation Cast Lead.


British Foreign Secretary William Hague called Livni last week, on the eve of Rosh Hashanah, and invited her to visit the UK. On Sunday, she said that she has accepted the invitation.

Related stories:

• UK amends law that allows arrest of Israeli officials
• Peretz evades UK arrest warrant 
• Meridor cancels UK visit for fear of arrest 

The news came two weeks after British legislators amended the law that allowed arrest warrants to be issued against Israeli officials, making Livni's trip possible.

The article goes on to list out some of the Israeli war crimes suspects who have had to avoid or flee the UK for fear of arrest.

In Memoriam Taha Muhammad Ali

Palestinian poet Taha Muhammad Ali from Nazareth passed away.

Taha Muhammad Ali is one of the leading poets on the contemporary Palestinian literary scene. Born in 1931 in Galilee village of Saffuriya, he fled to Lebanon, together with most of the inhabitants of his village, during the Arab-Israeli war of 1948. A year later he slipped back across the border with his family and settled in Nazareth, where he has lived ever since. The Saffuriya of his childhood has served as the nexus of his poetry and fiction, which are grounded in everyday experience and driven by a storyteller’s vivid imagination. He is self-taught and began his poetry career late (in 1983). Taha Muhammad Ali writes in a forceful and direct style, with disarming humor and unflinching, at times painful, honest—the poetry’s apparent simplicity and homespun truths concealing the subtle grafting of classical Arabic and colloquial forms of expression. In Israel, in the West Bank and Gaza, and in Europe, audiences have been powerfully moved by Taha Muhammad Ali’s poems of political complexity and humanity. He has published several collections of poetry and is also a short story writer.(Sakakini)

Ambergris

Our traces have all been erased,
our impressions swept away -
and all the remains
have been effaced...
there isn't a single sign
left to guide us
or show us a thing.
The age has grown old,
the days long,
and I, if not for the lock of your hair,
auburn as the nectar of carob,
and soft as the scent of silk
that was here before,
dozing like Arabian jasmine,
shimmering like the gleam of dawn,
pulsing like a star -
I, if not for that lock of camphor,
would feel not a thing
linking me
to this land.

This land is a traitor
and can't be trusted.
This land doesn't remember love.
This land is a whore
holding out a hand to the years,
as it manages a ballroom
on the harbor pier -
it laughs in every language
and bit by bit, with its hip,
feeds all who come to it.

This land denies,
cheats, and betrays us;
its dust can't bear us
and grumbles about us -
resents and detests us.
Its newcomers,
sailors, and usurpers,
uproot the backyard gardens,
burying the trees.

They keep us from looking too long
at the anemone blossom and cyclamen,
and won't allow us to touch the herbs,
the wild artichoke and chicory.

Our land makes love to the sailors
and strips naked before the newcomers;
it rests its head along the usurper's thigh,
is disgraced and defiled in its sundry accents;
there seems to be nothing that would bind it to us,
and I - if not for the lock of your hair,
auburn as the nectar of carob,
and soft as the scent of silk,
if not for the camphor,
if not for the musk and the sweet basil,
if not for the ambergris -
I would not know it,
and would not love it,
and would not go near it...

Your braid
is the only thing
linking me, like a noose, to this whore.

(ofblog)

Empty Words

Ah, little notebook,
yellow as a spike of wheat
and still as a face,
I’ve protected you
from dampness and rodents
and entrusted you with
my sadness and fear,
and my dreams—
though in exchange I’ve gotten from you
only disobedience and betrayal…
For otherwise where are the words
that would have me saying:
If only I were a rock on a hill…
unable to see or hear,
be sad or suffer!
And where is the passage
whose tenor is this:
I wish I could be
a rock on a hill
which the young men
from Hebron explode
and offer as a gift to Jerusalem’s children,
ammunition for their palms and slings!

And where is the passage
in which I wanted
to be a rock on a hill
gazing. out from on high
hundreds of years from now
over hordes ,.
of masked liberators!

And where is what belongs
to my dream of being
a rock on a hill
along the Carmel—
where I call on the source of my sadness,
gazing out over the waves
and thinking of her
to whom I bade
farewell at the harbor pier
in Haifa forty years ago
and still…
I await her return
one evening
with the doves of the sea.

Is it fair, little notebook,
yellow as a spike of wheat
and still as a face,
that you conceal
what you cancel and erase,
simply because it consists of empty words—
which frighten no enemy
and offer no hope to a friend?

from NEVER MIND, Twenty Poems and a Story, translated by Peter Cole, Yahya Hijazi, Gabriel Levin, Poetry dipatch

The occupation through some (unusual) Israeli eyes

A capitalist press for the capitalist's pigs

h/t Michael Green

Sa'adia: The Ashkenazi Burden

An Israeli film from 1951 was rediscovered recently. The film reveals the racism of the Ashkenazi state. This is a recent news item about it.

Jewdas Cable Street event tonight

¡No Pasaran Cable Street – 

Party like it’s 1936!

• 
  

In a time of austerity, riots, and a rise in the price of beigels, Jewdas returns to Cable Street……….

Live Bands, Film, Talks, Cabaret, Fascist Baiting and Revolutionary Borscht.
Live Music from:
Daniel Kahn & Merlin Shepherd – a mixture of Klezmer, radical Yiddish song, political cabaret and punk folk, accompanied by top UK Klezmer clarinettist
Klezmer Klub feat. David Rosenberg – songs of Yiddish London telling the story of the Jewish east end from 1900 to the 1930s
The Ruby Kid – Hip-hop and spoken-word poetry, influenced by the cinema of Woody Allen, the politics of Hal Draper and the music of Aesop Rock.
The Electric Swing Circus – electro swing sensation.Big band swing. Gypsy jazz. Thundering drum beats. Phat bass lines. A dazzling stage performance.
+ Stephen Watts reciting poetry of the East End.
+ Full film programme of riots, resistance and rabbles
+ Talks on Gandhian resistance, Spanish Civil War, Anti-fascist activism today as well as performance poetry.
+ Communist-Fascist Arm Wrestling, The Three Yentas, Live Guernica tribute painting, Cantorial Drag
+ DJ Notorious spinning speeches, 30s swing and hard beats
+…more
Dress Code: 1930s chic. Fascist, Communist. Yiddish Musical Hall
Free entry for all who were there in 1936! For the rest of you its £7 on the door and £5 if you book in advance HERE

View Larger Map

Saturday October 1st
from 8.30pm

Jamboree
Cable Street Studios
566 Cable Street,
London E1W 3HB

£5 advance, £7 on the door.

Buy advance tickets here.

supported by Bet Klal Yisrael

Reply to Brian Leiter

Brian Leiter, who has defended Mearsheimer, admirably but a little less critically than I would prefer, from his ugly right-wing attackers, has linked to this blog with the following words:

Chris Bertram (Bristol) directs me to an anti-Zionist blog, which does have a somewhat more sober critique of Atzmon (though it is a bit thin on supporting evidence, and I think misunderstands both 19th-century anti-semitism and Atzmon's position--but read it for yourself and compare it with the linked interview, above).

I don't usually use the space here for one on one back and forth, but I'll break that habit for the occasion, and those not interested should skip.

First, "somewhat more sober" means that he considers what I wrote not sober. Since he has presented no basis for that, that is not serious, which is unfortunate given the context of trying to defend Mearsheimer against "hatchet jobs.". Degrading the discussion to the level preferred by Goldberg is not going to benefit either Mearsheimer, nor certainly the value of "honest intellectual discourse."

Now, he also makes three shorthand critiques, none of them, even if true, justifying describing me as lacking sobriety. The first, is that I am thin on supporting evidence. This is true only of the first half of the post, which indeed doesn't present much evidence, as all relevant evidence (which is tedious and repetitive, because Atzmon writes faster than I read, which isn't a compliment) has been presented by others and I don't feel the need to rehearse it. If Leiter wants to discuss examples of Atzmon's antisemitism, he could address directly, for example, the letter of Zero Books authors, none of whom qualify as right wingers by a long shot.

The second critique is that I misrepresent 19th century antisemitism. I focus on what is in my opinion the most relevant aspect of nineteenth century antisemitism, relevant because, first, it is undeniable that it developed politically as a self-conscious political tendency that had a huge impact on history, and second because it is quite often ignored by liberal and Zionist writers who (for different reasons) want to depoliticize antisemitism (and racism in general) and turn it into either a mere personal sickness, or a purely cultural phenomenon. Of course, there is a lot more, and my one sentence hardly does it justice. However, I compared Atzmon's hedging of his attack on "jewishness" to Marr's, who hedged his attack on the exact same concept, Jewishness, in pretty much the same way. I'm sure Leiter would agree that Marr was an antisemite.

The third critique is that I misrepresented Atzmon's position. I will deal with that later, because I am not particularly keen on representing Atzmon's positions either way. Leiter defends Mearsheimer, and my concern is that he does it with the requisite nuance and critical capacity, rather than merely circle the wagons. Usually, it is fair to assume that what Jefferey Goldberg says is the opposite of the truth. But once in a blue moon he strikes gold. Unfortunately, his ability to make the most damage with it depends on people refusing to believe that it could happen.

Here is what I said in criticism of Mearsheimer. He presented an article by Atzmon as innocently making the uncontroversial point that "jews have agency." I urge Leiter to read that article and form his opinion. I focused on a single issue from many present. The factual premise of the article is that Hitler was reacting to a coordinated Jewish attack on Germany when he ordered a boycott of Jewish businesses. As Leiter surely knows, that isn't just any accusation. In a generalized form, the claim that Germany was under a coordinated Jewish attack was one of the key points of Hitler's Mein Kampf, a staple of the "knife in the back" theory about the outcome of the First World War, and one of the justifications for the anti-Jewish policies of the Third Reich. In its restricted form, that was what Hitler claimed when he announced that boycott on March 28, 1933.

Therefore, when someone claims that this was indeed the case, both directly with regards to the boycott, and as a more general point that the boycott illustrates, she is saying that Hitler's explanation for why he called for a boycott of Jewish business was true and that this explains how the situation of Jews in Germany deteriorated. Of course, one would only be justified in saying this if it were indeed true. Now, it isn't true. It is a gross misrepresentation of both how Jews reacted to Hitler and of the inner dynamics of the NSDAP in relation to Jews. I'm not aware of any reputable historian who thinks it is true. Atzmon, as he is wont to say, isn't a historian. That means that when he makes a historical claim he either invents it or he relies on someone else. In this case, he relies on an article in The Barnes Review, a white-supremacist publication known for its holocaust denial (The Jewish Declaration of War on Nazi Germany The Economic Boycott of 1933 Article from The Barnes Review, Jan./Feb. 2001, pp. 41-45). He also covers his tracks by not citing that source directly, but referring to another site that cites it (but he does include assertions present only in the source article). I urge Leiter to examines that article and the quality of the primary sources and the "research" presented in it, as well as the fact that the article deals with "previous scholarship" by falsely accusing Friedlander of falsifying the chronology, a claim that Atzmon repeats as a generalized claim about "Jewish texts."

Now, my question is, should a Chicago University professor that teaches about the holocaust be able to smell something fishy when he encounters a false claim that effectively repeats Hitler's propaganda? Should he then be able to follow this claim to its sources and evaluate them, or not? Or should he ignore all that and strive to provide a lawyerly interpretation of the article's author's innocent attempt to argue the obvious? Is it possible to criticize Mearsheimer's poor judgement here without being called by Leiter for lack of sobriety?

Now we can go back to the third critique, that I misrepresented Atzmon's positions. Leiter argues this based on an interview with Atzmon. The underlying assumption is that Atzmon is a honest person advancing a fairly coherent argument, including representing his own positions with an accuracy consistent with intellectual norms. Since there is no agreement on that, presenting Atzmon presenting his positions as evidence that I "misrepresented his positions" is what logicians call petitio principii.

But since Leiter cites a specific interview, and since he teaches philosophy, I would like to engage him in analyzing thoroughly this nugget: ‘how can I tell the truth about Israel, the Lobby, and Zionism and still maintain my position as a humanist’? What conception of humanism, truth and the relation between them can make this sentence make sense? Does Leiter agree that telling the truth about Israel, or challenging AIPAC's actions, or explaining why Zionism is wrong, poses a particular difficulty for a humanist but is quite unproblematic for an anti-humanist? Does that mean that Israel, Zionism, and the Lobby have a particularly affinity to humanism? What is that affinity? Of course Jeffrey Goldberg would agree that there is. Does Leiter agree? Has he ever felt that tension? (I haven't.) Does it mean that truth is not on the side of humanism? Is there a similarity in this statement to those liberals who were "mugged by reality" and who have been leading the imperialist right in the US? Or is it a version of Karl Schmidt's "state of exception" argument, in which in order to maintain humanism as a universal law one must suspend it in the case of the Jews. I don't understand what this sentence means other than Atzmon feeling the need to transform humanism into its opposite in order to rehabilitate a particularly anti-humanistic attack on his pet peeve, Jewishness.

A few points for the occasion of the Atzmon saga going mainstream

Of course Atzmon is antisemitic. I think a lot of people who steered clear of him, including yours truly, have been loath to say that because of the way this accusation has been weaponized by Zionists, and the desire not to give them any credibility. But that kind of circumlocution quite often has a price. Had people been less circumspect, the implosion of Mearsheimer might not have happened. It takes a unique kind of genius to cede the moral high ground to the denizens of Harry’s sewer, where every kind of bigotry is acceptable except antisemitism, or the concentration camp volunteer guard Jeffrey Goldberg.

One doesn’t need to parse Atzmon’s most hateful words, or identify his most egregious falsifications, such as asking whether the Nazis wanted to kill Jews, blaming the holocaust of “Jewish pressure”, etc., to show his antisemitism. These are but manifestations. That confusion is the result of not having a clear idea of what antisemitism is. Antisemitism is fundamentally a political analysis that explains social and political pathologies as effects of some essential Jewish attributes. This is Atzmon’s core idea, which he keeps touting as his big contribution. Atzmon’s reflection on why he isn’t antisemitic itself shows that he is, as As’ad Abukhalil called him, not merely antisemitic, but “one of those classical anti-semites.”

Atzmon's key defense is that he speaks neither of Jewish religion nor of Jews, but of Jewishness, which he defines as “Jewish ideology". This distinction precisely repeats the two gestures that establish nineteenth century antisemitism as a political tendency. Wilhelm Marr coined the term Antisemitismus to distinguish his political analysis of Western societies in terms of Jewish pathology from the old anti-Jewish prejudices based on the denigration of Jewish religion. In his programmatic pamphlet, Marr also takes care to dissociate himself from less sophisticated Jew haters, specifically writing, “Not individual Jews but the Jewish spirit and Jewish consciousness have overpowered the world.” (Victory of Jewishness over Germanity) Compare that to Atzmon:

You may note that I neither refer to Jews as a racial or ethnic group; nor am I directing my critique towards Judaism, the religion. And whilst Jews can indeed succumb to what I define as 'Jewish ideology', (and many of them do) it is valuable to bear in mind they can also be its most virulent enemies.

Substituting "Jewish ideology" for "the Jewish spirit and Jewish consciousness" is all what makes Atzmon's take on Jewishness "ground breaking." Everything else is derivative.

Another point about Mearsheimer's implosion.

As the authors of Zero books have noted in their protest letter about Atzmon, it is easy to be fooled by Atzmon's convoluted and pretentious claptrap. Mearsheimer could have extricated himself from his self-inflicted fiasco with little effort, at most a little uncomfortable 'oops'. Instead, he decided to stand his ground in the most obtuse way, defending an article in which Atzmon effectively plagiarizes white supremacist fabrications as example of Atzmon’s not being an antisemite. All he had to do to find out where Atzmon gets his knowledge of history was click on a few links Atzmon provided, and find the source from which he lifted the claim that

Jewish texts tend to glaze over the fact that Hitler's March 28 1933, ordering a boycott against Jewish stores and goods, was an escalation in direct response to the declaration of war on Germany by the worldwide Jewish leadership.

It doesn’t take a sleuth to determine that the source of this fabrication is an article of writer who advocates something called "ethno-nationalism," published in the holocaust denial publication, The Barnes Review, the brainchild of Willis Carto, an American white-supremacist and a former affiliate of David Duke. The article, linked indirectly by Atzmon, is hosted on a site whose political flavor can be easily gauged by this enthusiastic introduction to another article:

Entire books have been written on the topic of "why Germany lost the War" - or, conversely, "why the Allies won". This booklet exposes a vitally important, but often underestimated factor: the German traitors who worked to destroy the German Reich from within. Their attempted assassination of Adolf Hitler on July 20, 1944 was only the tip of the iceberg. More and more, it appears that the Allies would not have been victorious without their help - and that, in fact, the war might never even have come about without their machinations!

But let alone that Mearsheimer, despite being a political science professor, has a tin ear, and a not very scholarly attitude to checking sources, even more disturbing is the incongruity between his attitude and the fact that he “taught countless University of Chicago students over the years about the Holocaust and about Hitler's role in it.” It is preposterous to accuse Mearsheimer of holocaust denial, and the mainstream people who attack him now have very little integrity. But that is not enough. How does someone who teaches history at Chicago University defends the integrity of an article that is based on a fabricated historical claim, in the area of his teaching, without noting that the core claim is a fabrication? There was no “declaration of war on Germany by the worldwide Jewish leadership.” First, there was no worldwide Jewish leadership (it’s an antisemitic and nazi boogeyman), and, second, as Saul Friedlander writes (and as Lenni Brenner fleshes out in detail) :

most of the Jewish organizations in the United States were opposed to mass demonstrations and economic action.

Atzmon, one can be sure, hasn’t read any “Jewish text” (his racializing code word for competent history) on the matter. He apparently read one article in The Barnes Review, and from this article he took, and made his own, the (yet another) false claim that

Not even Saul Friedlander in his otherwise comprehensive overview of German policy, Nazi Germany and the Jews, mentions the fact that the Jewish declaration of war and boycott preceded Hitler's speech of March 28, 1933. Discerning readers would be wise to ask why Friedlander felt this item of history so irrelevant.

In fact, Friedlander includes the story of the organizing among Jews during the first months of Hitler’s rule in the first chapter, pages 6-11 of the abridged edition of Nazi Germany and the Jews. It is available on line, so it is easy to check. Here is Friedlander actually setting the sequence of events:

Much of the foreign press gave wide coverage to the Nazi violence [from early March]. American newspapers, in particular, did not mince words about the anti-Jewish persecution. Jewish and non-Jewish protests grew. These very protests became the Nazis’ pretext for the notorious April 1, 1933, boycott of Jewish businesses. In mid-March, Hitler had already allowed a committee headed by Julius Streicher, party chief of Franconia and editor of the party’s most vicious anti-Jewish newspaper, Der Stürmer, to proceed with preparatory work for it. (Ibid. my emphasis)

It is funny in a not funny way that a professor of political science would describe a writer who draws his "knowledge" of history quite exclusively from far right white nationalist publications as a “universalist” who “is the kind of person who intensely dislikes nationalism of any sort.” What is not funny in a not funny way is how Mearsheimer managed to destroy his own intellectual standing for defending an insignificant blurb. (And just to be clear, the implosion of Mearsheimer does not mean that AIPAC is any less nefarious an organization than it was last week.)

---

[ADDED]
urls not linked in this article:

1. http://www.gilad.co.uk/writings/judea-declares-war-on-obama-by-gilad-atzmon.html
2. The Barnes Review, "The Jewish Declaration of War on Nazi Germany", The Economic Boycott of 1933" archived at http://www.wintersonnenwende.com/scriptorium/english/archives/articles/jdecwar.html
3. http://www.wintersonnenwende.com/scriptorium/english/archivesindex.html
4. http://www.aljazeerah.info/Opinion%20Editorials/2011/January/3%20o/Jews,%20Judaism,%20and%20Jewishness%20By%20Gilad%20Atzmon.htm

Israel lobby UK - again

I suppose I shouldn't be surprised that an Israel advocacy group in the UK can get a Palestinian put away in the UK and possibly deported from the UK but this Guardian article by David Hearst did surprise me when I first saw it.

The home secretary, Theresa May, was warned by senior officials in the UK Border Agency not to deport a Palestinian activist accused of antisemitism, saying the evidence against him was disputed, open to legal challenge and that the case was "very finely balanced".

Sheikh Raed Salah, leader of the Northern branch of the Islamic Movement, who has been in Britain, in prison and on bail since his arrest three months ago, will appeal against his deportation before an immigration and asylum tribunal on Monday.

Emails seen by the Guardian, show that May was determined to find a reason to exclude Salah, before the evidence against him had been verified.

Just 17 minutes after receiving a report on the activist, prepared by Michael Whine of the Community Security Trust, a UK charity monitoring antisemitism, Faye Johnson, private secretary to the home secretary, emailed about a parliamentary event Salah was due to attend.

"Is there anything that we can do to prevent him from attending (eg could we exclude him on the grounds of unacceptable behaviour?)" she wrote. Whine's report said Salah's record of provocative statements carried a risk that his presence in the UK could have "a radicalising impact" on his audiences.

The whole case against Raed Salah, apart from the fact that he is a Palestinian (with Israeli citizenship) critic of Israel revolves around a load of disputed quotes.

Salah's legal team say the quotes he is alleged to have said and written were doctored to make them sound antisemitic. There is no suggestion that CST doctored the quotes.

Ok, that's nice. The CST can get a guy banned or imprisoned then deported but, oh no, it doesn't doctor quotes.

Rotten sardines caught in Turkish facebook dragnet

Names of the small criminals who followed the criminal orders of the big criminals and committed piracy (actually, that is unfair to real pirates) and murder on the high seas, while taking over the Mavi Marmara.

Agai Yehezkel, Aharon Haliwa, Alex Shakliar, Amir Ulo, Amir Abste, Amir Shimon Ashel, Anna Strelski, Anton Siomin, Aram Zehavi, Ariel Brickman, Ariel Karo, Ariel Rifkin, Ariel Yochanan, Arnon Avital, Assaf Bryt, Avi Balut, Avi Bnayahu, Avi Mizrakhi, Avi Peled, Aviad Perri, Aviel Siman, Avihay Wizman, Avihu Ben Zahar, Avishay Levi, Avishay Shasha, Aviv Edri, Aviv Kochavi, Aviv Mendelowitz, Baruch (Barry) Berlinsky, Basam Alian, Ben-Zion (Benzi) Gruver, Bnaya Sarel, Boaz Dabush, Boaz Rubin, Boris Schuster, Dado Bar- Kalifa, Dan Dolberg, Dan Harel, Daniel Kotler, David Shapira, David Slovozkoi, David Zini, Eden Atias, Eden Atias, Efraim Aviad Tehila, Efraim Avni, Eitan Ben-Gad, Elad Chachkis, Elad Itzik, Elad Shoshan, Elad Yakobson, Eli Fadida, Eli Yafe, Eliezer Shkedi, Elik Sror, Eran Karisi, Erez Sa'adon, Eyal Eizenberg, Eyal Handelman, Eyal Zukowsky, Gil Shen, Gur Rozenblat, Gur Schreibmann, Guy Givoni, Guy Hazut, Haggai Amar, Hanan Schwart, Harel Naaman, Hila Yafe, Ido Nechushtan, Ilan Malka, Itay Virob, Liran Nachman, Michelle Ben-Baruch, Miki Ohayon, Moshe Tamir, Nadav Musa, Nathan Be'eri, Nezah Rubin, Nimrod Schefer, Nir Ben-David, Nir Dupet, Nir Ohayon, Niv Samban, Noam Keshwisky, Ofek Gal, Ofer Lahad, Ofer Levi, Ofer Winter, Ofer Zafrir, Ofir Edri, Ohad Girhish, Ohad Najme, Omer Dori, Omri Dover, Or Nelkenbaum, Oren Bersano, Oren Cohen, Oren Kupitz, Oren Zini, Pinkhas Buchris, Raz Sarig, Ron Asherov, Ron Levinger, Ron Shirto, Ronen Dan, Ronen Dogmi, Roi Elkabetz, Roi Oppenheimer, Roi Weinberger, Sahar Abargel, Shai Belaich, Shaked Galin, Sharon Itach, Shaul Badusa, Shay Unger, Shimon Siso, Shiran Mussa, Shlomit Tako, Tal Alkobi, Tal Bendel, Tal Kommemi, Tal Ruso, Tamir Oren, Tamir Yadai, Tom Cohen, Tomer Meltzmann, Geva Rapp, Tslil Birbir, Udi Sagie, Uri Ron, Yair Keinan, Yair Palay, Ya'akov(Yaki) Dolf, Yaniv Zolicha, Yaron,Finkelman, Yaron Simsulo, Yehosua (Shuki) Ribak, Yehu Ofer, Yehuda Fuchs, Yehuda Hacohen, Yigal Slovik, Yigal Sudri, Yizhar Yona, Yoav Galant, Yoav Gertner, Yoav Mordechai, Yochai Siemann, Yochanan Locker, Yom-Tov Samia, Yonathan Barenski, Yonathan Felman, Yoni Weitzner, Yossi Abuzaglo, Yossi Bahar, Yossi Beidaz, Yotam Dadon, Yishai Ankri, Yishai Green, Yuval Halamish, Zion Bramli, Zion Shankour, Ziv Danieli, Ziv Trabelsi, Zuf Salomon, Zvi Fogel, Zvi Yehuda Kelner.

The list of the big criminals is easier to compile, beginning with Obama, Netanyahu, and Ashkenazi. For some reasons, the Turkish government doesn't list Obama, although no Israel crime is possible without his approval.

If the people on this list think twice before landing in any airport other than the one is ethnically cleansed Lydda, that's already the beginning of accountability.

Now, this list, compiled by the Turkish government, mostly based on facebook, may or may not be accurate. Of course, Israel could provide the accurate list.

The Story behind the film that "saved Israel's reputation"

As PACBI and many others have been claiming, based on quite explicit and publicly available information, Israeli state institutions fund and use art in order to whitewash Israel's image and deflect attention from its vicious apartheid and daily murder. This effort is called "Brand Israel." According to Haaretz, the Oscar winning film "Strangers No More," masquerading under progressive politics of inclusion and attention to the plight of non-Jewish refugees inside Israel, was conceived as a propaganda project that associates Israel with all the humane values that Israel tramples upon every day.

The Oscar-winning film Stranger No More, according to Keren Tal [Rogozin school manager] was produced in order improve Israel's shaky image after operation 'Cast Lead'. The idea for the project was advanced among others by the Tel Aviv Development Fund. "After a consultation with Tel Aviv's Mayor Ron Huldai, the Foundation invited Lin Arison (second wife of billionaire Ted Arison, founder of the National Foundation for the Advancement in the Arts) to examine how to promote Israel's image," says Tal. "I was informed that she will attend school and that she had half an hour for the purpose." The visit ended Arison's words: "We will be in touch."

A month and half later Tal received an email from Karen Goodman and Kirk Simon, the directors of the film, informing her that they wanted to visit the school. They remained there for about a year and a half, shooting the film a week at a time.

What did you think of the film?

"It brings an intense emotional story because it zooms in on something human and touching. The film was one of the factors that halted the deportation of the children. The producers say that it was screened in about a hundred festivals".

So did the film achieve its aim, improving Israel's image?

"I am at peace with that even though it is contrary to my political views. I want to see Israel undergoing a change. The film did well for children who live with a feeling of social exclusion. Ours is a society surrounded by racism, and children suffer from it as they walk down the street. I feel proud when I see the faces of the children and the staff in the film.

“People were paying attention to the Oscar while and I went back to dealing with the daily grind, especially since this was when Eli Yishai came with the deportation announcement. The movie did not not bring me to where I am today. My work brought me. The everyday puts one in touch with so many wrongs and difficulties, that the ratings and the publicity are not important to me”.

Dr Maggie Navon, North America Vice President for Tel Aviv Development Foundation, gave a slightly different account this week of the birth of film. Three years ago, the Foundation decided to raise funds in the United States on the occasion Tel Aviv’s centenary. Among others, they contacted Lin Arison. When Arison came to Israel she went off to explore cultural hubs such as the Suzanne Dellal Centre, It was then that Huldai and the Fund suggested that swing over to the Bialik – Rogozin school. What should have been a fifteen-minute visit lasted an hour, and Arison was captivated by the children’s and Tal’s charm.

"The directors contacted Tal two weeks later. Arison paid for the production out of her money and the US HBO channel only acquired the movie during the final production phase. It was ready for release just when Israeli Apartheid Week was taking place in the United States. During this week the state of Israel was the object of grave accusations and it was described as an apartheid state, and the film saved its reputation. If it were only possible to duplicate Karen Tal, who is a model of ultimate leadership, the state's situation would be infinitely better.”

From Haaretz, translated from Hebrew by Sol Salbe, with my humble improvements.

So what do you say about Cultural boycott?

Well, the translator of this text, Sol Salbe, doesn't like it. He is also peeved at Boycott from Within,

I also wanted to make the point that the self-proclaimed BDS from Within is a phony. It is strange that not a single one of their "hundreds of supporters" has read this Haaretz article. It really helps their case but evidently none of them is sufficiently integrated to Israeli society to read the culture pages, at least not in Hebrew.

Got to love it when liberal Zionists, especially those who got a good Israeli education, reveal their deep far right-wing racist xenophobic worldview, which in Israel is simply mainstream, and even called "left". You get it? If you live under the Israeli apartheid regime, but you get your news from an Yiddish or Arab or Russian or English source, and don't read the "cultural pages of Haaretz" (which means that most likely you are not a white, European, upper middle class, over-educated and under-politicized Ashkenazi snob), then you don't have the right to describe your political view as "from within." You are a foreigner. Not "well integrated," and Eli Yshai probably got your number.

Eugene TerreBlanche alive and kicking in Palestine

Surely others will see the similarity here. This is Harriet Sherwood in today's Observer:

The settlers come down the hill from the outpost, mostly on foot, but occasionally on horseback or in tractors or 4x4s. They carry Israeli flags, and sometimes bring guns, shovels and dogs. There may be as few as three or as many as 40. They taunt the local villagers and sometimes attack them. Often the Israeli army arrives and trains its weapons on the villagers.

Now consider the invasion of Bophuthatswana by Eugene Terreblanche's Afrikaner Resistance Movement (AWB). There are details on wikipedia here and there is a documentary on youtube here.

Of course, for all the similarity, there is a key difference between the racist tormentors of the Arabs of Palestine and the racist attackers of the Blacks of South Africa. In Palestine, the racists are the state or they have the support of the state. In South Africa even the apartheid authorities opposed the AWB eventually.

No depth too deep for Obama

I'm not talking about Obama's ludicrous speech to the UN on Abbas trying to find somewhere to sit in Manhattan.  It's this article from yesterday's Daily Beast (Newsweek) about how it was Obama, not Bush, who sold bunker buster or deep penetration bombs to Israel.

While publicly pressuring Israel to make deeper concessions to the Palestinians, President Obama has secretly authorized significant new aid to the Israeli military that includes the sale of 55 deep-penetrating bombs known as bunker busters, Newsweek has learned.

In an exclusive story to be published Monday on growing military cooperation between the two allies, U.S. and Israeli officials tell Newsweek that the GBU-28 Hard Target Penetrators—potentially useful in any future military strike against Iranian nuclear sites—were delivered to Israel in 2009, just several months after Obama took office.

The military sale was arranged behind the scenes as Obama’s demands for Israel to stop building settlements in disputed territories were fraying political relations between the two countries in public.

The Lawyers, guns and money blog asks some interesting questions about this as to whether the shipments were military or political.

The military logic is that the Obama administration believes that Israel should be better equipped to strike hardened Iranian nuclear facilities. That’s it; these are the only targets Israel might consider attacking in the near to medium term that would require such ordnance. One way to read this is that the administration thinks that an Israeli strike on Iran would be a good idea. This may be possible, but the administration doesn’t appear to have been doing much else in order to push Israel into an attack.

So that leaves political.  Maybe Obama was looking for a policy result from Israel but,

Bibi has consistently given Obama the finger on policy, and has made his support ofObama’s GOP opponents about as clear as possible. Obama has no leverage; no GOP President will reduce the level of military aid sent to Israel, and Bibi finds a Republican administration preferable for a variety of reasons.

So

This leaves the impact on Iran, and on Israel’s domestic supporters. To borrow another phrase, the whole point of politicized arms shipments to Israel is lost if you keep it a secret. Even if we accept the premise that Israel’s US constituency could in some sense be satisfied by bunker buster shipments, it’s hard to see how secretshipments help solve the problem. Perhaps the logic was that since someone had to know, elite level signalling would serve to insulate Obama from attacks. This again means that, effectively, Obama was dependent on Bibi’s goodwill for the plan to work. Good luck with that. The Iran problem is essentially the same; Iran can only be intimidated by things it knows about. It’s possible that some US negotiator somewhere showed some Iranian diplomat a packing slip for the bombs, but that strategy works whether or not the US actually ships the weapons.

And so we’re left with the question that has too often characterized the Obama administration: For this bad policy executed incompetently, what’s the balance between bad and incompetent? On the upside, at least Eli Lake has been uncovered as the administration shill he’s always been.

Simple ineptitude? Can that really explain the policies of the most powerful state on the planet?

London Philharmonic Orchestra condemned

I posted before on the disruption of the Israel Philharmonic Orchestra at the Proms by Palestine solidarity protesters. Well, before the performance, four members of the London Philharmonic Orchestra, together with several other people, signed a letter to the Independent, calling on the BBC to cancel its invitation.  These LPO musicians have now been suspended and this has led to another letter with many signatories, this time to the Daily Telegraph:

Musicians’ Israel protest

SIR – We are shocked to hear of the suspension of four members of the London Philharmonic Orchestra for adding their signatures to a letter calling for the BBC to cancel a concert by the Israel Philharmonic Orchestra.

According to a statement from LPO managers, quoted in the Jewish Chronicle, the action was taken because the musicians included their affiliation to the orchestra with their signatures – a convention that is common practice within the academic world, for example.

One does not have to share the musicians’ support for the campaign for boycotting Israeli institutions to feel grave concern about the bigger issue at stake for artists and others. There is a link being created here between personal conscience and employment, which we must all resist.

A healthy civil society is founded on the ability of all to express non-violent and non-prejudiced opinions, freely and openly, without fear of financial or professional retribution.

The LPO management states that, for it, “music and politics don’t mix” – yet its decision to jeopardise the livelihoods of four talented musicians for expressing their sincerely held views is itself political.

Why should it be so dangerous for artists to speak out on the issue of Israel/Palestine? We are dismayed at the precedent set by this harsh punishment, and we strongly urge the LPO to reconsider its decision.

Howard Brenton
Siobhan Davies 
Mike Leigh 
Sir Geoffrey Bindman QC
Philip Hensher
Miriam Margolyes
Richard Barrett
Caryl Churchill
Siobhan Davies 
John Harteco
A.L. Kennedy
Ken Loach
Simon McBurney
Steve Martland
Annette Moreau
Cornelia Parker 
Prof. Jacqueline Rose
Michael Rosen
Alexei Sayle
Kamila Shamsie
Mark Wallinger
Dame Harriet Walter
Benjamin Zephaniah
Kirsty Alexander 
Yasmin Alibhai-Brown 
Michael Attenborough
Prof. Mona Baker
Derek Ball
Chris Bluemel
Richard Black
Ian Bourn
Prof. Haim Bresheeth
Victoria Brittain
Michael Carlin
Jonathan Chadwick
Prof. Michael Chanan
Sacha Craddock
Andy Cowton
Raymond Deane
Ivor Dembina
Dr Kay Dickinson
Dr Hugh Dunkerley
Tony Dowmunt
Patrick Duval
Gareth Evans
Moris Farhi
Dr Naomi Foyle
Jane Frere
Carol-Anne Grainger
Tony Graham
Lee Hall
Michelle Hanson
Laura Hastings-Smith
Dr Wallace Heimwriter 
John Hegley
Matthew Herbert
Prof. Susan Himmelweit 
Mary Hoffman
Dr Fergus Johnston
Ann Jungman
Reem Kelani
Judith Kazantzis
Conor Kelly
Anthea Kennedy
Aleksander Kolkowski
Dr Adam Kossoff
Malcolm Le Grice
Prof. Yosefa Loshitzky 
Jamie McCarthy
Dr Carole McKenzie 
Ewan McLennan
Jeff McMillan
Helen Legg
China Miaville 
Roger Mitchell
Jenny Morgan
Carol Morley
Alan Morrison
Paul Morrison
Ian Pace
Sam Paechter
Miranda Pennell
Jeremy Peyton Jones
Henry Porter
James Purefoy
Laure Prouvost 
William Raban
A.L. Rees
Lynne Reid Banks
Frances Rifkin
Leon Rosselson
Martin Rowson
Dr Khadiga Safwat
Sukhdev Sandhu
Dominic Saunders
Guy Sherwin
Kevin Smith
Prof. John Smith
Anne Solomon
Ahdaf Soueif
Helen Statman
Michael Stevens
Susannah Stone
Trevor Stuart
Ingrid Swenson
Alia Syed
Jennet Thomas
Miranda Tufnell
Prof. David Turner 
Francesca Viceconti
Michelene Wandor
David Ward
Samuel West
Ian Wiblin
Andrew Wilson
Eliza Wyatt
Robin Yassin-Kassab
Zoë Wanamaker
Dr Paul Goodey
Professor John Miller
Anna Clarke

Big of the Telegraph to publish it really given that it's something of an inhouse rag for zionism in the UK. Mind you there are some big names among the signatories and even Norm of Normblog is a little anxious about what the LPO has done.

"Some of my best friends are Zionists"

Someone's been busy capturing the changing winds of US Jewish American consciousness.

Initial Development Trailer: Some of My Best Friends Are Zionists from Open Letter Productions on Vimeo.

BICOM briefing boob

Many thanks to Mike Cushman on the Just Peace UK list for linking to this Guido Fawkes' blog post about an embarrassing mispost by BICOM CEO, Lorna Fitzsimmons.  It appears that an email from her intended only for the eyes of donors to the Britain Israel Communications and Research Centre got sent instead to the media.  As it happens, Fitzsimmons's mistake was first reported in the Daily Mail which, remarkably, stands to the left of the Guido Fawkes' blog but the latter's post is more detailed:

After his story earlier in the week about pro-Israel lobby group BICOM, Guido was tipped that their CEO Lorna Fitzsimons, the former Labour MP, was in some serious trouble. He was tracking down an email that was accidentally sent out on Monday to some of BICOM’s media list instead of the intended recipients – the donors. Annoyingly Ephraim Hardcastle beat him to it this morning and reveals how Lorna blurted to the world that she has been:

“…liaising with BBC and Sky to ensure ‘the most objectively favourable line was taken…I briefed Jonathan Ford, the Financial Times leader writer for his upcoming leading article… BICOM had regular contact with the Editor at Large of Prospect magazine, David Goodhart, helping to inform him about the forthcoming UN vote on Palestinian statehood…”

We have put the whole email online here. It’s standard lobbyist boasting, but Guido imagines the FT editors will take a dim view of any sign of them being influenced by a PR operation. A BICOM source tried to play down the story as“mildly embarrassing”, but it was the comment given to the Mailthat really tickled Guido: “A BICOM spokesman denies that Ms Fitzsimons is to lose her job.” If you have to say it…

There's a little bit more to the post and the pdf of the email is worth a look at.

International solidarity can lead to isolation

I think that's the message of the Jewish Leadership Council and the Histadrut in response to the UK's Trades Unions Congress's (TUC) review of its dealings with the zionist trade union federation. Here's Martin Bright in the Jewish Chronicle:

The TUC this week voted to review its relationship with the Histadrut, Israel's General Federation of Labour, and reaffirmed its commitment to the boycott movement in partnership with the Palestine Solidarity Campaign.

The unprecedented move was voted through on the last day of the TUC's annual congress in London and could lead to the severing of a relationship that goes back to the 1920s.

A wide-ranging motion on the Middle East was proposed by Andrew Murray, chief of staff at the Unite super-union, who is also chair of the Stop the War Coalition. The motion restated last year's TUC decision to "disinvest from, and boycott the goods of, companies who profit from illegal settlements, the Occupation and the construction of the wall."

An amendment calling for the Histadrut review was proposed by Hugh Lanning, deputy general secretary of the Public and Commercial Services union and chair of the Palestine Solidarity Campaign. It called on all unions "to review their bi-lateral relations with all Israeli organisations, including Histradrut." The amendment was opposed by the RMT, the rail workers' union, which argued that the TUC should continue to work in partnership with fellow trade unionists in Israel.

Both the Jewish Leadership Council and the Histadrut have written to TUC General Secretary Brendan Barber to express their concern at the move, which marks the growing influence of the boycott movement within UK trade unions. Supporters of Israel believe the move could lead to the international isolation of the TUC and remove it from future discussions between Israeli and Palestinian trade unionists working for peace.

Woops, not the JLC or Histadrut, it's "Supporters of Israel" who are concerned for the well-being and international connectedness of of the TUC.  I've had a few conversations lately with people suggesting that the definition of zionists should be wide enough to include people who never wanted a state specially for Jews or even wide enough to be utterly meaningless but I have never seen "supporters of Israel" being used to mean supporters of the UK's trade union movement, infiltrators, entryists, maybe, but not supporters.