.

Michael Lerner on Israel/Palestine
http://www.tikkun.org/core_vision


'PEACE, JUSTICE AND RECONCILIATION' FOR ISRAEL AND PALESTINE


We are committed to full and complete reconciliation between Israel and the Palestinian people within the context of social justice for the Palestinians and security for Israel. We call upon Israel to end the Occupation, to return settlers to the pre-1967 borders of Israel (providing them with decent housing), and to take major (though not total) responsibility for Palestinian refugees. We oppose Israel’s violations of Palestinian human rights and we insist that Israel adopt a strategy based on open-heartedness toward the Palestinians, repentance for past misdeeds, reparation, and genuine acknowledgement of the ways that some Israelis were oppressive, murderous, and oblivious to the legitimate needs of the Palestinian people. We call for an end to the teachings in Jewish and Israeli schools and media which demean or demonize the Palestinian people; instead we seek to replace those with teachings that emphasize the humanity and goodness of the Palestinian people, Arabs and Muslims. Although we affirm Israel as a Jewish state side by side with Palestine, we believe that all non-Jews in Israel, including most importantly Arab or Palestinian citizens of Israel, should have full civil rights in Israel and equal economic entitlements to any Israeli who has served in the army.

We call upon the Palestinian people to acknowledge the right of Jews to maintain their own homeland in the pre-1967 borders of the state of Israel, with Jewish control over the Jewish section of Jerusalem (including French Hill and Mt. Scopus and the Jewish Quarter of the Old City) and the Western Wall, and unimpeded access to the cemetery on the Mount of Olives. We call upon the Palestinian people to stop acts of terror against Israel and to listen and heed the growing number of Palestinian voices that are calling for a strategy of nonviolent civil disobedience We call upon Palestinians to end all teachings in their schools and media which demean or demonize the Jewish people or Israel and to replace those with teachings that emphasize the humanity and goodness of the Jewish people.

We recognize that some Palestinians will respond by pointing out the structural violence inherent in the presence of the Israeli Occupation and the settlements. We agree with these points, but still believe that the breakthrough necessary to free Palestinians from Occupation will only come when the Israeli people feel enough safety to contemplate arrangements based on trust. Just as Israelis must demonstrate that they see Palestinians as created in the image of God and deserving of full respect, so the Palestinians must demonstrate that they see Israelis as created in the image of God and are deserving of full respect.

Both sides need to recognize a need for repentance for past deeds that were hurtful and oppressive. Jews must understand why Palestinians were fearful that the more highly organized and politically sophisticated Zionist movement that began to emerge in the period 1920-1948 might lead to the disenfranchisement of Palestinians, and why Palestinians today feel that "the right to return" to their homes is no different from the right of return that was at the basis of Zionism.

Similarly, Palestinians need to acknowledge their own role in helping create the conflict by their armed resistance to Jewish immigration to Palestine in the years when Jews were being annihilated or when Jews were crawling out of the death camps and crematoria of Europe.

This is just a sample of the stories we must learn from each other so that we can build reconciliation of the heart, based on genuine compassion for each other. Political arrangements cannot be trusted until there is a serious commitment on both sides to compassionate listening to each other. Its only when both sides can tell the other side's story with compassion and conviction, and both sides recognize that in some important respects both sides are wrong and both sides are right that we can hope to move to a real reconciliation of the heart.

All the fancy agreements and all the political maneuvering is secondary to developing an open-heartedness and generosity in both peoples to the legitimate needs of the other. We believe an important step in that process is for both sides to learn how to tell the other other side's narrative in a convincing and compassionate way. This has been done in part in Rabbi Michael Lerner’s book Healing Israel/Palestine, and in the works of various Israeli and Palestinian thinkers who are able to transcend their own community’s demand for proving that their side is the “righteous victim” and the other side is “the evil oppressor.”

We call upon the United States and other world powers to intervene with all their influence and economic power both to stop the cycle of violence and to achieve the creation of a demilitarized Palestinian state in all of the West Bank and Gaza (minus the most minimal border alterations), an end to the Occupation, and an end to acts of terror. We will support efforts to convince the United States to condition aid to Israel on the end of the Occupation. We call upon the peoples of the world to come to Israel and Palestine and actively interpose ourselves between the warring sides to provide protection to civilians on both sides. And we call for all parties to adopt the nonviolent philosophies and strategies of Martin Luther King Jr. and Mahatma Gandhi.

Although we do not support any form of nationalism as an ultimate good, we understand why, in this historical moment, the Jewish people need a state of our own. With memories of the murder and genocide of our people still fresh and the perception that we would have been far less vulnerable had we had a state and an army—with the persistence of virulent anti-Semitism in the world today—the Jewish people cannot be asked to be the first to voluntarily eliminate the protections of the nation state. That’s why, at this point in time, the TIKKUN Community is supporting a two-state rather than a bi-national solution to the Israel-Palestinian crisis, even though some members of our community believe that such a bi-national state is the only way to achieve social justice for Palestinians.

After what Jews have been through, it is not reasonable to expect them to be the first to give up the protections of an armed state. On the other hand, we see nationalism as a perverting influence in Jewish life—and one that must be overcome. So we do hope Israel will become one of the first 20 percent of countries of the world to overcome the trappings of national chauvinism, militarism, and excessive focus on boundaries-—say, for example, after the United States, Russia, China, Japan, Iraq, Iran, Syria, India, Pakistan, England, France, Germany, Italy, Egypt, Poland, Argentina, Chile, Mexico, Libya, Saudi Arabia, Algeria, Nigeria, Ethiopia, Uganda, and South Africa have pioneered that path by abolishing borders and accomplished full disarmament. Until then, the Jewish people have a right to their own state, which we hope will eventually move in the direction of confederation with Palestine and Jordan for economic and political cooperation.

Okay, let's look at Lerner's namby-pamby evasive drivel (gee, this is going to take a lot of time to go through this liberal Zionist pablum):


Michael Lerner on Israel/Palestine:

"PEACE, JUSTICE AND RECONCILIATION FOR ISRAEL AND PALESTINE"
http://www.tikkun.org/core_vision


Lerner: "We call upon Israel to end the Occupation, to return settlers to the pre-1967 borders of Israel (providing them with decent housing)..."

PROVIDING THOSE RABIDLY RACISTS 'REDNECK' JEWISH RELIGIOUS FUNDAMENTALIST SETTLERS -- WHO'VE EVEN ATTACKED PALESTINIAN CHILDREN ON THEIR WAY TO SCHOOL (just google it) -- WITH "DECENT HOUSING"! WHAT THE FUCK IS *THAT* DEEP CONCERN OF LERNER'S ABOUT...!???

AND HOW ABOUT DESEGREGATING -- DE-APARTHEIDIZING ALL OF PALESTINE, INCLUDING THE ENTIRE STATE OF ISRAEL -- AND ABOLISHING ISRAEL'S RACIST ZIONIST APARTHEID IDEOLOGY-- AND POLITICAL,LEGAL & IDEOLOGICAL SELF-DESIGNATION -- AS "A JEWISH STATE"?

HOW ABOUT ONE UNIFIED STATE, IF THAT'S WHAT THE PALESTINIANS WANT. OR TWO STATES WITH NEITHER ONE DEFINED ON THE BASIS RACE, ETHNICITY, RELIGION OR, OTHERWISE, ANY FORM OF APARTHEID? -- WITH ABSOLUTELY EQUAL RIGHTS FOR ALL?

HOW ABOUT SENDING THOSE SETTLERS, THAT LERNER IS *SO* CONCERNED ABOUT -- WHOSE HOUSING WAS *HIGHLY* *HIGHLY* SUBSIDIZED IN THE FIRST PLACE BY THE STATE OF ISRAEL -- BACK TO THEIR SUBURBS IN AMERICA AND EUROPE!?


Lerner: "...and to take major (though not total) responsibility for Palestinian refugees."

Why not, necessarily, "total". The Zionists and Israel had "total" responsibility for turning them into a minority and refugees in their own land in the first place and dispossessing them or otherwise running them off -- mostly through (now admitted by "the New Historians" in Israel) direct armed force.


Lerner: "some Israelis were oppressive, murderous, and oblivious to the legitimate needs of the Palestinian people."

"SOME"??? What fuckin' Israeli doesn't know that the Palestinians were driven off of their land? -- WHICH CONTINUES TO THIS DAY! What Zionist Jewish immigrant didn't know then that Palestine was not, "a land without a people"! This remark sounds like the excuses of "the good Germans" of the Nazi era who claimed -- or didn't want to know -- what was happening to the Jews in Nazi Europe!


Lerner: "We call for an end to the teachings in Jewish and Israeli schools and media which demean or demonize the Palestinian people;"

WELL, I'M GLAD THAT LERNER AT LEAST ACKNOWLEGED THAT!


Lerner: "...Although we affirm Israel as a Jewish state side by side with Palestine..."

I KNOW THAT **HITLER** TRIED TO WIPE POLAND OFF THE MAP, BUT ISRAEL IS ***IN*** PALESTINE.

OTHERWISE, LERNER "AFFIRMS" THAT, NOW THAT WE ZIONISTS HAVE ABOUT 85-90% OF PALESTINE, LET'S CALL IT EVEN AND KEEP OUR "JEWISH STATE" -- EVEN THOUGH AT LEAST 20% OF THE PEOPLE LIVING WITHIN ISRAEL ITSELF ARE PALESTINIAN (which Israel refuses to call Palestinians -- it goes to well with, ahem, "PALESTINE").

AND ALMOST *HALF* OF "GREATER ISRAEL, OR WHAT THE DIEHARD RABID RACIST RELIGIOUS ZIONIST -- ESPECIALLY THE JEWISH SETTLERS -- CALL "ERETZ ISRAEL" IS PALESTINIANS -- NOT INCUDING THOSE PALESTINIANS WHO HAVE BEEN EXILED OUT OF PALESTINE ENTIRELY.

WHERE'S THE "HUMANITY AND GOODNESS" THERE!?

WHERE'S THE "JUSTICE" *THERE*, MICHAEL?

GEE, MICHAEL, WHAT DID BLACKS USED TO SAY DURING AMERICAN 'JIM CROW' SEGREGATION / APARTHEID?: "WHY *THANKS*, MISTAH JONNNES...! THAT'S MIGHTY *WHITE* OF YOU!"


Lerner: " we believe that all non-Jews in Israel, including most importantly Arab or Palestinian citizens of Israel, should have full civil rights in Israel and equal economic entitlements to any Israeli who has served in the army."

Now, how are Palestinians and other non-Jews supposed to have all these equal rights in a politically, ethnically, and legally self-defined "Jewish State"?

That's like saying that Blacks could have had full equal rights in "A Jim Crow State" or in "A White State" or in "An White Afrikaner State" -- or that Jews could have equal rights in "An Aryan Christian State".

It's also akin to saying that people can have equal rights in a "separate but equal" state.

IS LERNER *RENOUNCING* ZIONISM!???

(End of analysis of Paragraph 1. More analysis later. Shit, I don't have all night for this. As they say, a *LIE* -- even _a liberal Zionist's_ LIES -- can make it all around the world, before the *TRUTH* even has a chance to lace up its boots.)

AS ONE ANTI-ZIONIST JEW SAYS (TYPICAL OF OTHER JEWISH PRO-PALESTINIAN HUMAN RIGHTS ADVOCATES/ACTIVISTS) EVERYTIME HE HEARS LERNER: "WHERE'S A *BARF* BAG!?"

OH, I JUST *COULDN'T RESIST RESPONDING TO THIS IN PARAGRAPH 2 OF LERNER'S LIBERAL ZIONIST DRIVEL!

Lerner: "We call upon the Palestinian people to acknowledge the right of Jews to maintain their own homeland..."

"the right of Jews to maintain their _*OWN*_ homeland..." [?????]

IN SOMEBODY _ELSE'S_ LAND???

NO ONE has a _right_ to self-determination "in their *ancient* ancestral homeland", from 2,000 years ago, 1,000's of miles away, on another continent, in another inhabited land, at the expense of the people who actually _LIVE_ there! It's an arugment that is _literally_ worse than *medieval*!

Look, there hasn't been a Jewish kingdom - for a period of time - in parts of Palestine for 2,000 years! And the ancient Hebrews weren't the first people there anyway (not that that even matters). What if ALL of us went back with our particular ethnic or religious group and imposed a displacing nation-state for ourselves where our _ANCIENT_ religious ancestors once had a small _ANCIENT_ kingdom for some period of time _2,000 years ago_ and where hundreds of thousands or millions of other people now live/d in modern times?

So, among other things, Israel *KEEPS* having a right to move in thousands of Jews, semi-Jews, and quasi-Jews, and *FICTIVE* Jews (remember the Russian 'Jews' who didn't even know they were Jewish and the 'Jewish' mountain Peruvian Indians Israel declared -- "ABRAHIM CADABRAHIM! POOF! YOU'RE A JEW!" -- and moved in to Israel? -- almost anything to offset the Palestinians, especially birthrate) every year at the expense of the people who live there in _the 20th & 21st century_, the Palestinians?

Only white-supremacy - Christian *or* Jewish - could find that to be a valid moral proposition applied to the 3rd World.


NOW *I'M* GETTING NAUSEOUS...!

Okay, let's look through more of Michael Lerner's namby-pamby evasive and RACIST drivel:


Lerner: "We call upon the Palestinian people to acknowledge the right of Jews to maintain their own homeland in the pre-1967 borders of the state of Israel,"

Well, there have been other posts about THE SHEER RIDICULOUSNESS of this ARROGANT and RACIST claim. NO ONE has a right to go claim "their ANCIENT homeland" in ANOTHER people's land. Palestine was about 95% NON-JEWISH before the Zionist influx of European Jews. And it certainly wasn't "a land without a people" as 750,000 to 1,000,000 Palestinians were driven off through various means -- but mostly throughWESTERN IMPERIALIST INTERVENTION (especially in the form of the UN) and through FORCE and JEWISH TERRORISM -- to bring about the state of Israel. The indigneous people who lived in Palestine had lived their (or their direct ancestors) CONTINUOUSLY for more than 2,000 years. Many Palestinian Arabs could trace their direct families living in their homes and on their land for 100 YEARS to CENTURIES.

Jews have NO RIGHT to, in particular, "a[n ideologically/religiously] Jewish state" in ANY part of Palestine -- just like whites/Afrikaners had to right to "a white Apartheid state" in any part of South Africa. And for Michael Lerner to say so represents the highest form of Western European arrogance: RACISM.

If Jews want to live in Palestine, they can live there as whites do in South Africa -- in a pluralistic multicultural society with absolutely equal rights for all regardless of race/ethnicity or religion. (Hopefully most of the hardcore racist Jews will leave -- but I hope they don't come here. Maybe Antarctica.)


Lerner: " with Jewish control over the Jewish section of Jerusalem (including French Hill and Mt. Scopus and the Jewish Quarter of the Old City) and the Western Wall, and unimpeded access to the cemetery on the Mount of Olives."

Well, first of all here, "the Jewish section" (including the Jewish suburbs) of Jerusalem keeps *GREATLY* expanding by leaps and bounds because Jews keep taking more and more Palestinian land. Otherwise, Palestinians -- UNLIKE JEWS -- are forbidden to expand their homes (not so much as a room addition) for, perhaps, a growing family. Palestinians certainly are forbidden to buy more land -- UNLIKE JEWS. This situation represents parts of THE JEWISH 'JIM CROW' / APARTHEID LAWS in Israel/Palestine.

There are also other RACIAL LAWS -- like forms of ANTI-MISCEGENATION LAWS (hindrance restrictions on marriages between Jews and Palestinians, especially in terms of where they can live and who can get citizenship) in Israel that amount, in total, to ISRAEL'S 'NUREMBURG LAWS'.


Lerner: "We call upon the Palestinian people to stop acts of terror against Israel and to listen and heed the growing number of Palestinian voices that are calling for a strategy of nonviolent civil disobedience"

First of all here, political ZIONISM has been the OVERWHELMING act of terror in Palestine: the removal of the Palestinian people through armed force -- VIOLENCE -- including direct massacres, the obliteration of over 400 Palestinian towns and villages, and the most TERRORISTIC Zionist methods by ANY definition of the word TERRORISM, just by the time that Israel declared itself a state.

But, the COLONIALISTS always want the indigenous/native people to only use the methods of 'resistance' that the *COLONIALISTS* prescribe -- and that is, typically, of course, "nonviolent". Well, the Zionists did not invade nonviolently; the Palestinians have no oblivation to resist nonviolently. Besides, every int'l law and moral principle gives an invaded invaded innocent people the right to whatever form of resistance they choose, including armed defense.


Lerner: "We call upon Palestinians to end all teachings in their schools and media which demean or demonize the Jewish people or Israel and to replace those with teachings that emphasize the humanity and goodness of the Jewish people."

First of all here, Israel -- unlike the Zionsts, including Michael Lerner would want even all Jews to believe, let alone the rest of us -- does NOT represent, nor is the equivalent to all the Jewish people or Judaism. In fact, I would say that to equate the human rights crimes of Zionism to all of the Jewish people or Judaism is itself ANTI-SEMITIC -- although clearly not enough Jews around the world, who may not identify with or want anything to do with Zionism are not doing enough -- JUST LIKE "the good Germans" and the early Nazis and then growing Nazi anti-Semitism -- to stand up and publicly oppose it -- under far greater freedom and far less danger than "the good Germans" had.

Second, what A SICKENING *INSULT* that Michael Lerner would slap in the face of the Palestinians! Why should the Palestinians embrace "the humanity and goodness" of the people who have been aggressively dispossessing them (the Palestinians) and/or brutally colonizing Palestine for over 65 years. The Palestinians will embrace "the humanity and goodness" of their invaders when their invaders start BEHAVING with "humanity and goodness".

But gee, the Palestinians hardly need to learn to demean or demonize Israeli/Zionist Jews in Palestinian schools! And that's an apochryphal canard -- a fabricated and false urban legend -- spread by Israeli/Zionist Jews anyway. Israeli/Zionist Jews themselves have been directly doing a pretty good job of teaching Palestinians how to demean and demonize Israelis/Zionists through over 65 years of Jewish terrorist groups, militia, or ISRAELI STATE TERRORISM/VIOLENCE.

NO LESS THAN GANDHI CALLED ZIONISM "A CRIME *AGAINST* HUMANITY".

IT'S LIKE THE ARAB GUY IN THE DOCUMENTARY FILM "CONTROL ROOM" SAID, "THE WEST NOT ONLY WANTS TO INVADE US, THEY WANT US TO *LIKE* IT [AND THEM] TOO!"

ANALYSIS OF LAST SUMMARY PARAGRAPH OF MICHAEL LERNER'S PABLUM SCREED — 07 FEB 2006 POST:


I'm _JUMPING AHEAD_ (I couldn't take all that racist drivel in between) to the last paragraph of Michael Lerner's pablum, the only post on 07 Feb 06 below -- because there really is a LOT of capped off, summarizing HYPOCRITICAL DRIVEL by this glib, 'New Age' liberal moral slimeball HUCKSTER AND CHARLATAN Michael Lerner there. But because white Westerners are so even subconsciously racistly mentally conditioned against non-Europeans, that last paragraph -- as well as all the other paragraphs in his spurious, specious and duplicitous PR "message" for "Peace, Justice and Reconciliation" -- might actually sound, well, "reasonable".


Lerner: "After what Jews have been through, it is not reasonable to expect them to be the first to give up the protections of an armed state." "

Well, it certainly *IS* "reasonable" for Israeli Jews to give up -- like South Africa at last -- AN APARTHEID COLONIAL STATE, especially one BASED ON A LIE that Palesine was "A LAND WITHOUT A PEOPLE"!

And, again, the state of Israel is *NOT* the equivalent of all Jews in the world or in modern history! It's *ANTI-SEMITIC* to directly associate the mass land theft, the conspiracy to mass dispossess others, and the most relentless at least 65-years human rights crimes with ALL Jews. Many Jews -- though not nearly enough -- including holocaust survivors and former anti-Nazi resistance fighters -- MORALLY **REJECT** THE ZIONIST ISRAELI APARTHEID STATE. They morally reject an ideologically, politically and legalized "Jewish state" based in an inhabited land where the OVERWHELMING population was non-Jewish and where even today almost HALF the population is Palestinian -- and where inside the borders of Israel itself *20%* of the population is non-Jewish (Palestinian Muslims, Christians, other religions, and secular). By comparison about 12% of the overall American population is Black.


Lerner: "On the other hand, we see nationalism as a perverting influence in Jewish life—and one that must be overcome."

Moral HYPOCRITICAL perverts is right! After all they go on and on about the Jewish Holocaust, what the Nazis did, and how the average Nazi-era German turned their heads away. Pro-Israel/Zionist Jews are HISTORY'S BIGGEST HYPOCRITES!!


Lerner: "So we do hope Israel will become one of the first 20 percent of countries of the world to overcome the trappings of national chauvinism, militarism, and excessive focus on boundaries-—say, for example, after the United States, Russia, China, Japan, Iraq, Iran, Syria, India, Pakistan, England, France, Germany, Italy, Egypt, Poland, Argentina, Chile, Mexico, Libya, Saudi Arabia, Algeria, Nigeria, Ethiopia, Uganda, and South Africa have pioneered that path by abolishing borders and accomplished full disarmament."

Maybe we all should have waited until the world had "overcome the trappings of national chauvinism", "abolishing borders and accomplished full disarmament", before we ended SLAVERY in the U.S., before we ended JIM CROW in the U.S., before we granted women THE RIGHT TO VOTE and EQUALITY UNDER THE LAW, before we ended the GENOCIDAL Vietman War, before we ended the GENOCIDAL U.S. proxy terrorist Contra war in Nicaragua, before we got South Africa to end APARTHEID, and before we ended NAZISM, "THE *ARYAN* STATE", and the Jewish HOLOCAUST!

Michael Lerner's 'until we get to Never Never Land' -- OH, IT'S 'NEVER NEVER' EVEN FOR LIBERAL RACIST, GROSSLY HYPOCRITICAL ZIONIST APOLOGISTS LIKE LERNER ALRIGHT -- intellectually sickening moral excuse is morally nauseating!


Lerner: "Until then, the Jewish people have a right to their own state,..."

_NO ONE_ HAS — AND _NO_ AMOUNT OF SUFFERING GIVES ANYONE — A MORAL RIGHT TO A RACIALLY AND IDEOLOGICALLY SELF-DEFINED AND THUS INHERENTLY *RACIST* NATION-STATE — ESPECIALLY IN THE MODERN WORLD.

NO WONDER MICHAEL LERNER — WITH HIS NEW AGE LIBERAL JEWISH CHAUVINIST RACISM — MAKES MANY ANTI-ZIONIST JEWS **BARF**!!

FINAL ANALYSIS OF MICHAEL LERNER'S RACIST PABLUM:


Lerner: "This has been done in part in Rabbi Michael Lerner’s book Healing Israel/Palestine, and in the works of various Israeli and Palestinian thinkers who are able to transcend their own community’s demand for proving that their side is the “righteous victim” and the other side is “the evil oppressor.” ...Both sides need to recognize a need for repentance for past deeds that were hurtful and oppressive."

But Zionist Jews *ARE* "the evil oppressor[colonialist invaders]" in Palestine-Israel.

Maybe the Jews of Nazi Germany should have "transcend[ed] their own community’s demand for proving that their side is the “righteous victim” and the other side is “the evil oppressor.” Maybe Jews "need[/ed] to recognize a need for repentance for past deeds that were hurtful and oppressive" to the *Nazis*!

After all, Hitler, with his people/country wretchedly oppressed by the indeed UNJUST Treaty of Versailles, just wanted to gather all the ethnic German diaspora, dispersed over Eastern Central Europe, into one exclusivist German state: "An Aryan Christian State".


Lerner: "Jews must understand ... why Palestinians today feel that "the right to return" to their homes is no different from the right of return that was at the basis of Zionism."

A "Right of Return" based on "Zionism"!? Political Zionism, which was conceived around the +/-1890's (around the time that the U.S. was finishing up its extermination of the Native Americans), started *LONG* before Nazi Germany. Now, during the Armenian genocide in Turkey, many Armenians refugees fled to Palestine -- and had an Armenian quarter in Jerusalem -- but they didn't go there to pushed the Palestinian Arabs off the land, take the place over, and set up a racially exclusive "Armenian State"!

What Michael Lerner does in all his PSEUDO-LIBERAL ZIONIST PABLUM is to repeatedly try to make morally equivalent the OPPRESSED and the OPPRESSOR, the Zionist invaders and the indigenous/native Palestinians.

HEADS UP ON MICHAEL LERNER:


Not many, if any, potential audience members will probably even get a chance to ask Lerner about any of the deeper moral issues in this thread.

The ole windbag will probably employ his standard practice (I've seen him in action before):

He will talk FOREVER in his new age spiritualism mumbo-jumbo. He will thus wear his audience down -- as people get worn out and leave in a series of ones, twos, and fews, if not in groups -- to the last relatively few holdouts.

Then there will only -- calculatedly -- be time left (maybe only 15 minutes) for a few questions, although many questioners are likely to be lined up at the Q/comment-&-A microphone(s).

If there is a microphone, he will let long-winded fluff-ball or fawning questioners (any that don't seem to be an intellectual threat) go on forever, to eat up time.

Or, more probably, those many questions/comments might very well only be taken on *small* index cards -- which essentially limits all remarks to 30 seconds, this avoids anyone being able to meaningfully frame or contextualize their question/comment -- and even then any semblance of truly morally challenging questions will be sifted out.

But, the moderator may insist, "We'll only take questons -- no comments," thus precluding any meaningful critique. (You can always end your public comment with, "What do you think about that?")

Lerner will give long-winded (10-15, maybe even 20, minute) more mumbo-jumbo answers (then the remaining audience will be lucky if there's time for 2 or 3 questions), saying substantively NOTHING (unless you like to hear new age spiritual mumbo-jumbo), to prodigiously eat up more time.

This will also cause more audience members, increasingly, by Lerner's calculated strategy, worn out, to leave. You'll be lucky if 10-15% of the audience remains by the time Lerner finishes (he will have purposedly bored the rest of them nearly comotose): this is also a calculated tactic to make sure that as few as people as possible get to hear any truly challenging question or comment to Lerner. Any morally and intellectually serious person might very well leave the room asking, "I gave up my evening for this?"

You see, Lerner is really just promoting HIMSELF -- oh, and his magazine -- he's not promoting any real substantive presentation or real dialogue or deeper moral inquiry. And, of course, he's there to be a liberal guilt-self-relieving Zionist apologist for Israel -- his role, otherwise, is a 5th column Zionist in the liberal or progressive movement -- and to make a moral _equivalency(!!)_ between the invader (Zionist Jewish influx) and the invaded (the indigenous Palestinians), between the colonizers and the colonized.

Now, maybe Lerner will have seen this thread and modify his game plan, somewhat -- or, maybe not.

"‘NEVER AGAIN’ OVER AGAIN — on Holocaust Remembrance Day"


I thought that “Never again!” meant never again for all humanity — not just never again for European Jews.

-

The Daily Californian newspaper
University of California at Berkeley
Berkeley, CA

Friday, May 6, 2005

Holocaust Remembrance Day


"‘Never Again’ Over Again"

- by Joseph Anderson

Berkeley, California, city councilperson Kris Worthington’s letter to the Daily Californian (“Lurking Legacy of Discrimination,” May 3) deals with Holocaust Remembrance Day and the very profound tragedy European Jews suffered under the Nazi regime. We are called again to learn the lessons of history. But have we?

The primary lesson was supposed to be “Never again!” But, a very sad disappointment — and even for many Jews, including some Holocaust survivors — is that we really have not learned. For, as I grew up seeing the horrors revealed in Holocaust documentaries and movies, I thought that “Never again!” meant never again for all humanity — not just never again for European Jews. Where is remembrance day for the Native American, the black slave, the Filipino, the Armenian, in effect the Vietnamese, and the U.S. Vietnam war expansion-triggered Cambodian holocausts?

Blacks were also victims of Nazi Germany's holocaust machine that consumed other ethnic minorities like the Roma, in addition to the mentally handicapped, and before that blacks were genocidal victims of Germany's colonizations in Africa — as with genocidal Western European colonizers (there and in the Americas).

As a member myself of an often oppressed minority whose religious traditions have identified with the Biblical legend of the Jews’ oppression, it saddens me to see many pro-Israel Jews oppress others via a foreign state that would claim to embody Jewish values. For African American ideals, “The Promised Land” is not a land to be "reclaimed" after hundreds, or even thousands, of years, citing God as the real estate agent. The Promised Land doesn’t echo the injustices of the past by, in part, replicating them upon others. The Promised Land is the creation of a just society with an appreciation for the diversity of all humanity and equality for all.

I appreciate Worthington’s letter, but I object that it makes it seem like Berkeley has become a bastion of Jew-hatred: “In Berkeley itself, Jews have far too frequently been victims of hate crimes,” he wrote.

California criminal-justice statistics show that hate crimes for all minority groups have gone down — except for indigenous Middle Easterners and Muslims.

Kris writes that overt prejudice, discrimination and institutionalized exclusion are unacceptable. But, that’s exactly what Jews who commemorate the Holocaust — yet who also ideologically believe in an exclusionary Jewish state — support every day for Israel.

Others, like many of us, like “the good Germans” of another era, turn our heads away from this human rights catastrophe against, in turn, another villified minority: the Palestinian people. Their resistance to brutal ethnic cleansing — something any people would resist from any other people — is, ironically, labeled “anti-Semitic.”

To paraphrase Worthington, Holocaust Remembrance Day should cause us to reflect, to learn that the horrors of all these catastrophes did in fact happen, to support the oppressed everywhere, and to join in the activism to say, “Never again!” — for all humanity.

__________________________________________________________________

Joseph Anderson is a Berkeley resident, an occasional
contributing columnist/essayist to various newspapers,
political and literary publications, a grassroots progressive
political activist, and an occasional interview guest on KPFA's
Hard Knock Radio in Berkeley.

(the above is the slightly longer, original version
of the word length-constrained version published at

http://dailycal.org/article.php?id=18630 )

"HOLY SHIT!" CHECK THIS OUT!


"The wrongs of the Holocaust were hardly righted by stealing land from Arabs and giving it to Jews."


read the entire column here: http://www.dailycal.org/article.php?id=3589


COLUMN BY REBECCA KAHLENBERG
Daily Cal Columnist
Thursday, October 19, 2000


Taking sides about Israel gets more and more difficult the further back in history you go. The land where the nation of Israel stands is accustomed to being soaked with blood. Countless territorial wars have been fought over who gets to control these "holy lands." Ever since the Egyptians stole the land from the Hebrews and enslaved them in 1479 B.C., the area changed hands regularly for 2,000 years, until in the 630s A.D. the Muslim world took it over for what would prove to be a 1,300-year reign. The Christians tried to claim the land during the crusades, but failed miserably.
This tale of woe gets even more complicated. The creation of the state of Israel by the British in 1948 was based on a British declaration in 1917 that the Jews deserved a national home in Palestine. This was supposed to somehow make up for the Holocaust and the death of roughly half of the world's Jewish population. To recap, the British took over Muslim land and gave it to the Jews to atone for European atrocities. Hmmm. Not surprisingly, the legitimacy of the state of Israel was never secure. Since 1948 there have been frequent outbreaks of violence over territorial rights.

So now there is more violence. Although the United States is, militarily and economically, allied with Israel but not with Palestine, American leaders are nonetheless trying to broker peace talks and patch things up. During the most recent round of talks, the Americans decided that neither Yasser Arafat nor Barak would even speak to the press - Clinton did all of the talking. According to The New York Times, "the Israelis and the Palestinians both made separate oral promises to the Americans, who will return to their former role as broker, policeman and judge" (Oct. 18).

What is wrong with this picture? A lot of wrongs have been done in the Middle East, and all sides have deep grudges that are certainly not going to evaporate. Palestinian demands are clearly not taken seriously - the brokers of peace unilaterally support Israel with arms. Why does the United States do this?

Oil is usually the real reason for American actions - the American industrial machine feeds on oil that we don't have, so we have to fight to keep it cheap and available. But Israel, as far as I know, has no oil. America has Muslim allies in the Middle East, so America can't just be pro-Jewish and anti-Islam. America's interest in the peaceful existence of the Israeli state must be due to the strategic value of our relationship. Yet no mention is ever made in the American press of the economic or military relationship between the United States and Israel. All of the news coverage treats American intervention as a given. There is no explanation of why Clinton should be in the Middle East seeking peace. But is this our peace to make?

After 1,300 years of Muslim control, you can't make a peaceful and legitimate Jewish state in Israel, not even with liberal access privileges to Holy Lands. Even if the Jewish people originate from this area, the Islamic heritage cannot be erased in 50 years, nor can it be ignored. The only way the state of Israel maintains its legitimacy is by virtue of the extremely badass Israeli military, with its close ties to the United States. This does not seem like a very holy relationship for a people to have with their holy land - holding on to it by the strength of bombs and machine guns while people who have lived there for centuries are left displaced. The Israeli army has all of the technology the developed world has to offer. Palestine does not. This is not a fair fight.

Fairness, some would say, should not figure into my calculation - I am Jewish. If Israel is given away to the people of Palestine, many of my people would have nowhere to go. The Palestinians show no love for Jews - therefore, I have no illusions that they would be kinder or more democratic controllers of the state of Israel. Jews have endured a lot of suffering and it is lamentable that they should endure more. But how can I side with my people when they bomb entire villages of Palestinian civilians in retaliation for the murder of two Israeli soldiers? Is this righteous? Furthermore, how can I feel comfortable taking sides at all when I know that the American media suppress information about the racism of Israelis against Arabs?

In 1993, National Public Radio's "Fresh Air," usually an excellent source of news, refused to air a story about Israeli settlements in the West Bank because the Jewish settlers interviewed for the story expressed the opinion that the Arabs were "less than human" (from http://www.fair.org). The executive producer of the show justified the decision, saying the views of the Jewish settlers they were able to contact were "out of focus."

A lot of things are out of focus here. The wrongs of the Holocaust were hardly righted by stealing land from Arabs and giving it to Jews. This fighting is supposed to have something to do with God, but I see no God here. This is about land and old hatred, not God.

Jewish people are quick to point out global anti-Semitism, but the behavior of the Israelis merely makes it easier to hate Jews. Judaism is a religious faith, after all. So I suppose that faith should affirm my allegiance to my people. How is this supposed to work - eye for an eye for an eye for an eye? The cycle could continue forever. Why is it righteous to agree with the killing as long as I am on the winning side?

The God of the Koran says that all men are equal because they are lesser than God - I believe this to be true. I also believe that the holy land is owned by no one but God. The Palestinians deserve justice and the American people deserve the truth about the situation in the Middle East. Or else the cycle of bloodshed will never end.

"ZIONIST CLAIM TO ISRAEL: MODERN-DAY APARTHEID"

- by Joseph Anderson

Thursday, October 12, 2000

The Sproul Plaza rally this last Thursday in support of Palestinian rights ("Groups Rally to End Mideast Clashes," Oct. 6) brings into clear focus a paradox in the Zionist worldview.

Zionist religious ideology speaks of Israel as "the promised land"—promised to them by “God”! — thousands of years ago! (A claim of "divine rule!") As an African American concerned for the human rights of all people, I offer an alternative to this worldview.

Martin Luther King, Jr. often spoke of "the Dream" of "The Promised Land" for African Americans, as Zionists respectively do for themselves. But, King did not speak of African Americans going back to West Africa, our "Motherland," after almost half a millennium, to find "our land" and dispossess continuously indigenous Africans of theirs. He never talked about seizing someone else's land at all!

The "Motherland" we were taken from 400 to 500 years ago is, of course, just not for us the same motherland that exists at all anymore: we cannot point to "our house," or "our property" — not even "our village."

When King spoke of "the Promised Land," after all this historical time, he meant for us to create a country — a land — and a society of human rights, dignity, social justice, equality for all and a love for all humanity. He meant for all of us Americans — and all of us indeed — to create "The Promised Land" starting in our hearts. King's vision was not chauvinistically nationalistic, not long-desired-for real estate, but ultimately a concept of humanity — a place in the heart!

This is the idea that modern-day Zionists miss. This is the idea that Zionists could have taken from their tragedies and holocaust, as King took from ours. This lack of consciousness is the flaw in "the dream" of modern-day Zionism's "promised land," it takes and subjugates the land of others — it's Israeli apartheid.

The skewed worldview of Zionist ideology arises, I believe, from a particular psychological phenomenon. I believe that Zionists are experiencing, on the level of the Israeli national psyche, the well-known victim's psychological identification reaction, whereby some of those who were once victims of long-term severe abuse and brutality (as European Jews were under Nazism and European anti-Semitism) often go on to abuse and brutalize others. This is in the false belief that no one else, in the victim's mind, has ever really suffered what the victims have suffered — a priority and a monopoly on "real" pain, and a failure to validate another's. Such victims (here Zionists) think that they could never become brutalizers or oppressors themselves, and that no one else can ever really be brutalized or oppressed by them — no matter what is done at their hands or in their name.

Thus, by this belief, Palestinians can never be victims of Zionists, and Zionists can never be oppressors of Palestinians. This represents a double tragedy, like what Albert Einstein said: "It would be my greatest sadness to see Jews do to Arabs [Palestinians] much of what Nazis did to Jews."

___________________________________________
Joseph Anderson is a member of the National
Council for African American Men and a Berkeley
resident.

"Reflections on Zionism From a Dissident Jew"

- by Tim Wise


So it’s official. The U.S. has withdrawn from the World Conference on Racism, being held in Durban, South Africa. And though the cynical and historically observant might suspect that this decision was merely in keeping with our longstanding unwillingness to deal with the legacy of racism on a global scale, the official reason is more circumscribed. Namely, the mid-conference pullout was intended to register displeasure at various delegates who are pushing resolutions condemning Israeli treatment of Palestinians, and Zionism itself: the ideology of Jewish nationalism that led to the founding of Israel in 1948. As the conference speeds towards a no doubt controversial conclusion, perhaps it would be worthwhile to ask just what all the fuss is about?

Although one can argue with the claim made by some that Zionism and racism are synonymous--especially given the amorphous definition of "race" which makes such a position forever and always a matter of semantics--it is difficult to deny that Zionism, in practice if not theory, amounts to ethnic chauvinism, colonial ethnocentrism, and national oppression.

For saying this, I can expect to be called everything but a child of God by many in the Jewish community. "Self-hating" will be the term of choice for most, I suspect: the typical Pavlovian response to one who is Jewish, as I am, and yet dares to criticize Israel or the ideology underlying its national existence.

"Anti-Semite" will be the other label offered me, despite the fact that Zionism has led to the oppression of Semitic peoples--namely the mostly Semitic Palestinians--and is also rooted in a deep antipathy even for Jews. Though Zionism proclaims itself a movement of a strong and proud people, in fact it is an ideology that has been brimming with self-hatred from the beginning. Indeed, early Zionists believed, as a key premise of the movement, that Jews were responsible for the oppression we had faced over the years, and that such oppression was inevitable and impossible to overcome, thus, the need for our own country.

Having never read the words of Theodore Herzl--the founder of modern Zionism--or other Zionist leaders, most will find this claim hard to believe. But before attacking me, perhaps they should ask who it was that said anti-Semitism, "is an understandable reaction to Jewish defects," or that, "each country can only absorb a limited number of Jews, if she doesn’t want disorders in her stomach. Germany has already too many Jews."

While one might be inclined to attribute either or both statements to Adolph Hitler, as they are surely worthy of his venomous pen, they are actually comments made by Herzl and Chaim Weizmann, eventual president of Israel, and--at the time he made the second statement--head of the World Zionist Organization. So in the pantheon of self-hating Jews, it appears criticism, for Zionists, should perhaps begin at home.

Going back to my days in Hebrew school, I never understood the dialysis-machine-like bond that most of my peers felt for Israel. On the one hand, we were told God had given that land to our people, as part of His covenant with Abraham. This we knew because Scripture told us so. But this never carried much weight with me. After all, many Christians--with whom I had more than a passing acquaintance growing up in the South--were all-too-willing to point out that the Scriptures also said (in their opinions) that I was going to hell, Abraham notwithstanding.

As such, accepting Zionism because of what God did or didn’t say seemed dicey from the get-go. What’s more, this was the same God who ostensibly told the ancient Hebrews never to wear clothes woven with two different fabrics, and who insisted we burn the entrails of animals we consume on an alter to create a pleasing smell. Having been known to sport a wrinkle-free poly-cotton blend, and having not the fortitude to disembowel my supper and incinerate its lower intestines, I had long since resolved to withhold judgment on what God did and didn’t want, until such time as the Almighty decided to whisper said desires in my ear personally. The Rabbi’s word wasn’t going to cut it.

On the other hand, we were told we needed a homeland so as to prevent another Holocaust. Only a strong, independent Jewish state could provide the kind of unity and protection required of a people who had suffered so much, and had lost six million souls to the Nazi terror.

Yet this too seemed suspect to me. After all, one could argue that getting all the Jews together in one place--especially a piece of real estate as small as Palestine--would be a Jew-hater’s dream come true. It would make finishing the job Hitler started that much easier. Better, it seemed then and still does, to have vibrant Jewish communities throughout the world, than to put all our dreidels in one basket, by pulling up stakes and heading to a place where others already lived, hoping they wouldn’t mind too terribly if we kicked them out of their homes.

In the final analysis, accepting Israel as a Jewish state for Biblical reasons made no more sense to me than to accept a self-identified Christian or Islamic nation: two configurations that understandably raise fears of theocracy in the heart of any Jew. And to in-gather the Jews to Israel for the sake of safety made no sense whatsoever. The only logic to Zionism then, seemed to be the "logic" of raw power: that of the settler, or colonizer. We wanted the land, and getting it would provide an ally for European and American foreign and economic policy. So with pressure applied and force unleashed, it became ours.

Nearly 800,000 Palestinians would be displaced so as to allow for the creation of Israel: around 600,000 of whom, according to internal documents of the Israeli Defense Force, were expelled forcibly from their homes. At the time, these Palestinians, most of whose families had been living on the land for centuries, constituted two-thirds of the population and owned 90% of the land. Though some Zionists claim Palestine was a largely uninhabited wilderness prior to Jewish arrival, early settlers were far more honest. As Ahad Ha’am acknowledged in 1891:

"We...are used to believing that Israel is almost totally desolate. But...this is not the case. Throughout the country it is difficult to find fields that are not sowed."

Indeed, the large presence of Palestinians led many Zionists to openly advocate their removal. The head of the Jewish Agency’s colonization department stated: "there is no room for both peoples together in this country. There is no other way than to transfer the Arabs from here to neighboring countries, to transfer all of them: not one village, not one tribe, should be left."

Herzl himself conceded that Zionism was "something colonial," indicating again that we were not discovering or founding anything. We were taking it, and for reasons we would never accept from others. As Shimon Peres--seen as one of the most peace-loving Israeli leaders in memory--said in 1985: "The Bible is the decisive document in determining the fate of our land." Such is the stuff of fanaticism, and we would say as much were a fundamentalist Christian to make the same statement about the fate of the U.S., or anywhere else for that matter.

That most Jews have never examined the founding principles of this ideology to which they cleave is unfortunate. For if they were to do so, they might be shocked at how anti-Jewish Zionism really is. Time and again, Zionists have even collaborated with open Jew-haters for the sake of political power.

Consider Herzl: a man who believed Jews were to blame for anti-Semitism, and thus, only by fleeing for Palestine could we be safe. In The Jewish State, he wrote:

"Every nation in whose midst Jews live is, either covertly or openly, anti-Semitic...its immediate cause is our excessive production of mediocre intellects, who cannot find an outlet downwards or upwards. When we sink, we become a revolutionary proletariat. When we rise, there also rises our terrible power of the purse."

He went on to say, "The Jews are carrying the seeds of anti-Semitism into England; they have already introduced it into America." Were a non-Jew to suggest that Jews were to blame for anti-Semitism, our community would be rightly outraged. But the same words from the father of Zionism pass without comment.

Worse still, early in Hitler’s reign the Zionist Federation of Germany wrote the new Chancellor, noting their willingness to "adapt our community to these new structures" (namely, the Nuremberg Laws that limited Jewish freedom), as they "give the Jewish minority...its own cultural life, its own national life."

Far from resisting Nazi genocide, some Zionists collaborated with it. When the British devised a plan to allow thousands of German Jewish children to enter the U.K. and be saved from the Holocaust, David Ben-Gurion, who would become Israel’s first Prime Minister balked, explaining:

"If I knew that it would be possible to save all the children in Germany by bringing them over to England, and only half of them by transporting them to (Israel) then I would opt for the second alternative."

Later, Israeli Zionists would again make alliances with anti-Jewish extremists. In the 1970’s, Israel hosted South African Prime Minister John Vorster, and cultivated economic and military ties with the apartheid state, even though Vorster had been locked up as a Nazi collaborator during World War II. And Israel supplied military aid to the Galtieri regime in Argentina, even while the Generals were known to harbor ex-Nazis in the country, and had targeted Argentine Jews for torture and death.

Indeed, the argument that Zionism is racism finds some support in statements of Zionists themselves, many of whom have long concurred with the Hitlerian doctrine that Judaism is a racial identity as much as a religious and cultural one. In 1934, German Zionist Joachim Prinz, who would later head the American Jewish Congress, noted:

"We want assimilation to be replaced by a new law: the declaration of belonging to the Jewish nation and Jewish race. A state built upon the principle of the purity of nation and race can only be honored and respected by a Jew who declares his belonging to his own kind."

Years later, David Ben-Gurion acknowledged that Israeli leader Menachem Begin could be branded racist, but that doing so would require one to "put on trial the entire Zionist movement, which is founded on the principle of a purely Jewish entity in Palestine."

Laws granting special privileges to Jewish immigrants from anywhere in the world, over Palestinians whose families had been on the land for generations, and measures that set aside most land for exclusive Jewish ownership and use, are but two examples of discriminatory legislation underlying the Zionist experiment. As the International Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination makes clear, racial discrimination is:

"any distinction, exclusion, restriction or preference based on race, color, descent, or national and ethnic origin which has the purpose or effect of nullifying or impairing the recognition, enjoyment or exercise, on an equal footing, of human rights and fundamental freedoms in the political, economic, social, cultural or any other field of public life."

Given this internationally recognized definition, we ought not be surprised that at a World Conference on Racism, some might suggest that the policies of our people in the land of Palestine had earned a place on the agenda. As such, we should take this opportunity to begin an honest dialogue, not only with Palestinians, but also with ourselves. Neither the chauvinism so integral to Zionism, nor the ironic self-hatred that has gone along with it are becoming of a strong and vital people. Just as a dialysis machine is no substitute for a healthy and functioning kidney, neither is Zionism an adequate substitute for a healthy and vibrant Judaism. Surely it is not for this ignoble end, that six million died.

_______________________________________________________
Tim Wise is an antiracist activist, writer and lecturer. He can be reached at tjwise (at) mindspring.com

"Fraud Fit For A King: Israel, Zionism, And The Misuse Of MLK"

- by Tim Wise


Excerpts (for quicker reading):


"Because of my criticisms of Israel--and because I as a Jew am on record opposing Zionism philosophically...

...every January, with the Martin Luther King Jr. holiday just around the corner, I have come to expect someone to misuse the good doctor’s words so as to push an agenda he would not likely have supported.

[Israel stands for everything MLK would have opposed, like _RACISM_ and substituting one kind of racist supremacy for another -- which he _explicitly_ condemned in his speaches.]

And yet, even with my cynic’s credentials established, the one thing I never expected anyone to do would be to just make up a quote from King; a quote that he simply never said, and claim that it came from a letter that he never wrote, and was published in a collection of his essays that never existed. Frankly, this level of deception is something special. The hoax of which I speak is one currently making the rounds on the Internet, which claims to prove King’s steadfast support for Zionism.

But it was his duplicity on King’s views that was most disturbing. Though [Mark] Finkelstein only recited one line from King’s supposed “letter” on Zionism, he lifted it from the larger letter, which appears to have originated with Rabbi Marc Schneier, who quotes from it in his 1999 book, “Shared Dreams: Martin Luther King Jr. and the Jewish Community.” Therein, one finds such over-the-top rhetoric as this:

“I say, let the truth ring forth from the high mountain tops, let it echo through the valleys of God's green earth: When people criticize Zionism, they mean Jews--this is God's own truth.” The letter also was filled with grammatical errors that any halfway literate reader of King’s work should have known disqualified him from being its author, to wit: “Anti-Zionist is inherently anti Semitic, and ever will be so.” The treatise, it is claimed, was published on page 76 of the August, 1967 edition of Saturday Review, and supposedly can also be read in the collection of King’s work entitled, This I Believe: Selections from the Writings of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. That the claimants never mention the publisher of this collection should have been a clear tip-off that it might not be genuine, and indeed it isn’t. The book doesn’t exist. As for Saturday Review, there were four issues in August of 1967. Two of the four editions contained a page 76. One of the pages 76 contains classified ads and the other contained a review of the Beatles’ Sgt. Pepper’s album. No King letter anywhere.

...These things seem imminently clear from any honest reading of his work or examination of his life. He would be a broker for peace. And it is a tragedy that instead of King himself, we are burdened with charlatans like those at the ADL, or the Des Moines Jewish Federation, or Rabbis like Marc Schneier who think nothing of speaking for the genuine article, in a voice not his own.

But of course, the kinds of folks who push an ideology that required the expulsion of three-quarters-of-a-million Palestinians from their lands, and then lied about it, claiming there had been no such persons to begin with (as with Golda Meir’s infamous quip), can’t be expected to place a very high premium on truth."
___________________________________________________


read full commentary at
http://www.zmag.org/Sustainers/Content/2003-01/20wise.cfm

"Damage Control: Noam Chomsky & the Israel-Palestine Conflict"

- by Jeffrey Blankfort


Excerpt:

"Given the viciousness and the consistency with which Chomsky has been attacked by his critics on the "right," one ventures cautiously when challenging him from the "left." To expose serious errors in Chomsky’s analysis and recording of history is to court almost certain opprobrium from those who might even agree with the nature of the criticism but who have become so protective of his reputation over the years, often through personal friendships, that have they not only failed to publicly challenge substantial errors of both fact and interpretation on his part, they have dismissed attempts by others to do so as "personal" vendettas.

Chomsky himself is no more inclined to accept criticism than his supporters. As one critic put it, "His attitude to who those who disagree with him, is, by and large, one of contempt. The only reason they can't see the simple truth of what he's saying is that they are, in one way or another, morally deficient."[3]

Although I had previously criticized Chomsky for downplaying the influence of the pro-Israel lobby on Washington’s Middle East policies,[4] I had hesitated to write a critique of his overall approach for the reasons noted. Nevertheless, I was convinced that while, ironically, having provided perhaps the most extensive documentation of Israeli crimes, he had, at the same time immobilized, if not sabotaged, the development of any serious effort to halt those crimes and to build an effective movement in behalf of the Palestinian cause.

An exaggeration? Hardly. A number of statements made by Chomsky have demonstrated his determination to keep Israel and Israelis from being punished or inconvenienced for the very monumental transgressions of decent human behavior that he himself has passionately documented over the years. This is one of the glaring contradictions in Chomsky’s work. He would have us believe that Israel’s occupation and harsh actions against the Palestinians, its invasions and undeclared 40 years war on Lebanon, and its arming of murderous regimes in Central America and Africa during the Cold War, has been done as a client state in the service of US interests. In Chomsky’s world view, that absolves Israel of responsibility and has become standard Chomsky doctrine."

read full article at:
http://www.leftcurve.org/LC29WebPages/Chomsky.html


_______________________________________________________________


[Jeffrey Blankfort is, among numerous other credentials, well-known in the San Francsisco Bay Area progressive community: he is a veteran photojournalist (he has many fantastic photographs, both political, from various national and international political movement eras, and cultural), a political essayist, a community radio host/guest (currently in San Francisco and Mendocino County, CA, and formerly on KPFA in Berkeley, CA), an occasional public lecturer, a contributor to CounterPunch, Left Curve, Dissident Voice, Common Dreams, the San Francisco Bay View (a venerable African American newspaper), the Anderson Valley Advertiser, etc., and the book, "The Politics Of Anti-Semitism", edited by Cockburn & St. Clair; a veteran progressive political activist from the Civil Rights Movement, the Vietnam War movement, the anti-Apartheid movement, the pro-Palestinian human rights movement (as an anti-Zionist Jewish-American). Blankfort won a SIZEABLE settlement in a lawsuit against the ADL for its illegal spying against him (and other progressive political activists and progressive organizations and movements, like the anti-Apartheid movement against then South Africa).]

"A Forgotten Resistance: The Mosque of Paris" — MUSLIMS PROTECTED JEWS FROM THE NAZIS!


The Father Bill O’Donnell Social Justice Committee is honored to host Dr. Annette Herskovits who will present this half-hour documentary by Derri Berkani and talk about her own harrowing experience as a child, barely escaping the Nazis because she was protected by _MUSLIMS_ in Occupied France during WWII. MUSLIMS/ARABS also protected European Jews in North Africa, most notably in Morocco.

Jews and Muslims have often lived and acted in harmony. During WWII, MUSLIMS in France protected Jews from deportation to Nazi death camps. The Paris MOSQUE became a refuge for anyone hiding from the German occupiers, including Jews, many of them children. The mosque’s rector even provided false birth certificates “proving” that Jews were MUSLIMS. Solidarity between Jews and Muslims FLOURISHED beyond the mosque.

The film’s director found a leaflet distributed by Algerian workers after Paris police conducted the first massive round-up of Jews. It said: ‘The Jews are our brothers, and their children are like our own children.”

A Forgotten Resistance: The Mosque of Paris, a documentary directed by Derri Berkani; in French with English subtitles. Approx. 30 minutes.


[ So, MUSLIMS _PROTECTED_ JEWS FROM THE NAZIS and were pretty good at resisting the Nazi attempt to exterminate all the Jews (who lived there or fled there) in France. Of course, this is in addition to the fact that during the Inquisition Jews went/fled to the _ARAB_ world for safety. Historically, Jews often went to the Arab/Muslim world for safety. And before Zionism - and the European Zionist colonial invasion - Arabs and Jews lived in fair peace in Palestine. Jewish/Israeli academics *KNOW* all this.

WHERE'S Hollywood's and Broadway's 'Anne Frank', or rather "Anne François" stories about the French Muslims? Why don't any of those prominent Hollywood and Broadway Jewish directors and producers do a movie/play about that!? OR DOES THAT NOT FIT AMERICA'S/EUROPE'S RACIST ARAB/MUSLIM STEREOTYPES?

Funny these MORONIC Jewish Arab-haters never seem to post comments and rail against the Christians! Christians have killed -- often after gleefully and sadistically torturing first -- literally MILLIONS more Jews than Muslims/Arabs ever have killed. It wasn't even Muslims/Arabs who threw the ancient Hebrews out of Palestine -- it was Europeans! And WHO oh WHO led to the Jews being thrown out of ancient Palestine anyway??? Yeah, those Muslims and Arabs 'just hate Jews because Jews are Jews', don't they!? And look what ZIONIST/ISRAELI JEWS — THE WORLD'S BIGGEST HYPOCRITES — have done in return. ]

LERNER IS A ZIONIST; HIS SON IS IN THE ISRAELI PARATROOPERS; THEY'RE BOTH RACISTS.


Lerner is "a liberal Zionist". That's like being "a liberal racist", or "a liberal misogynist", or "a liberal homophobe", or "a liberal anti-Semite", or "a liberal Segregationist", or "a liberal pro-Jim Crow Southerner", or "a liberal pro-Apartheid Afrikaner", or "a liberal white-supremacist", or "a liberal Nazi".

And Lerner's son is in an elite Israeli military service. That's like being in the Nazi stormtroopers. One anti-Zionist Jew said that for Lerner to have raised a son who joined the Israeli _paratroopers_ — that Lerner ought to be prosecuted for child abuse!

Either one is an anti-racist or not.

Lerner is NOT.

Either one believes in full absolute legal equality - regardless of race, ethnicity or religion - or not.

Lerner does not.

Nelson Mandela and Desmond Tutu both said about Zionism: "It looks like apartheid to me."

Desmond Tutu said that, "If you were to substitute the word black, for Palestinian, and substitute the name South Africa, for Israel, you would think you were talking about apartheid South African."

But many South Africans say that Zionism is _WORSE_ than South African Apartheid was.

The wry joke in South Africa is, don't go calling Zionism "apartheid" and giving apartheid 'a bad name'!: _WE_ whites never shot MISSILES from helicopter gunshipts, and dropped 1-TON BOMBS from fighter aircraft, and fired SHELLS from tanks into the black townships and bantustans!


The "Peace Now" (the so-called "liberals") crowd in Israel is _ZIONIST_! In fact, an anti-Zionist can't really find a home in or be a member of, "Peace Now". That's why "Peace Now" isn't called "JUSTICE NOW!"

The "Peace Now" crowd just, more or less, wants to freeze the present injustice in place - now that Israel already has nearly all of Palestine (without becoming a pariah state in the West too) - and give the Palestinians a few crumbs to mollify them.

Lerner, "the Tikkun community", "Peace Now" - and even _CHOMSKY_ (who opposes any South African style sanctions/divestment against Israel) for that matter - and the garden variety Jewish redneck settlers all represent the same racist injustice and _HYPOCRISY_: it's all just a matter of degrees. They ALL believe in a Jewish-supremacist/exclusivist state.

Martin Luther King said that, "Peace is not merely the absence of violence; it's the presence of JUSTICE."

As Desmond Tutu said, I don't want apartheid with a smiling face.

Lerner (and his New Age 'spiritualism' mumbo-jumbo hypocrisy) represents Zionism - racism - with a smiling face.

So, when you all see him, ask him about this - and watch Lerner do the soft shoe shuffle.

ZIONIST JEWS *ALWAYS* MAKE *THEMSELVES* THE TRUE VICTIMS, EVEN AS THEY ARE ATTACKING, INVADING, AND BRUTALLY ETHNICALLY CLEANSING OTHERS!:


"I cannot forgive the arabs [she refused to call them Palestinians] for forcing our children to shoot at them"

'I will never forgive the Arabs [Palestinians] for what they made _us_ do to _them_!!'

– Golda Meir

"The Zionist argument to justify Israel's present occupation of Arab Palestine has no intelligent, moral or legal basis in history."

— Malcolm X

"It [Zionism] would be a crime against humanity"

— Gandhi


(from "The Jews of Palestine, 1938")

"It would be my greatest sadness to see Jews do to Arabs [Palestinians] much of what Nazis did to Jews."

— Albert Einstein

"Should we [Jews] be unable to find a way to honest cooperation and honest pacts with the Arabs [Palestinians], then we have learned absolutely NOTHING during our 2,000 years of suffering and deserve ALL that will come to us."

— Albert Einstein

The problem with people resisting colonization – as with "martyr/suicide bombers" using all that they have left – is that sometimes they just won't "fight fair": won't fight the way the oppressor colonizer wants them to fight.

(I'm sure that Palestinian "martry/suicide bombers" would prefer to deliver their explosives the same way the Israelis do: with the latest helicopter gunships, jet fighter aircraft, and tanks. Mostly supplied by the U.S.)

In the times of American slave revolts, the cry of the brutal plantation slave-owners might have been, "We tried to shoot as many of those niggers as we could, but the savages just kept coming at us with *pitchforks*! Can you *imagine* *that*...!? *Pitchforks*! ...They're *barbaric*, I tell you!"

The difference is that the slaves were taken and enslaved unwillingly.

The "palestinians" however, A) turned down there own country in 1948 and at Camp David and B) live on disputed land purely as a result of their conutries of origins forfeiting said land in 1967 after a failed attempt at Israeli genocide.

The plight of the American slaves and the "palestinians" isn't even remotely alike. It's an utter insult to the memory of the slaves to compare them to the islamist murderers of "palestine".

The difference
by fresca Saturday, Feb. 18, 2006 at 5:28 PM

You're making no sense nor are you even forming any creative insults.

You're simply posting gibberish.

Step it up JA! Quit shuckin' and jivin' and get to work.

fresca: "The plight of the American slaves and the "palestinians" isn't even remotely alike. It's an utter insult to the memory of the slaves to compare them to the islamist murderers of "palestine"."

It's so 'nice' having someone like *fresca* speaking up for Black folks. Ain't it...??

JA, you're no closer to the experience of being a slave than I am.

Just because you're some Black guy from Berkeley that hardly gives you some sort of ownership of the right to speak on behalf of slaves.

So yeah, I'm the perfect person to point out that the "palestinians" aren't even remotely similiar to the American Black slaves.

Aren't we getting *defensive* O' Great White Spokeswoman for the Blacks!?


fresca: "JA, you're no closer to the experience of being a slave than I am."

Actually, I'm a *HELLUVA* lot closer, O' Great White Spokeswoman for the Blacks!

"Actually, I'm a *HELLUVA* lot closer, O' Great White Spokeswoman for the Blacks!"

That's nonsense.

Why? Simply because you're Black?

So I guess that makes me a helluva lot closer to being a great artist since Van Gogh was white.

You have no experience with slavery. Until you do, you're on the same level as me.

I'm sure you want to cloak yourself in the martyrdom of the oppressed Black anscestor of the slave but save your breath. No one's buying it. You're no more intouch with the pain of slavery then the fucking descendents of the slaveholders themselves.

All long gone history.

O noble oppressed Black MAN.

...for her own ZIONIST RACIST agenda.

But, when fresca -- a.k.a. Becky Johnson of Santa Cruz -- is called on it, or backed into an intellectual or moral corner, or otherwise exposed for who she is, she just reverts to her usual racist slurs of one kind or another (as much against Palestinians, Arabs in general, and Muslims):

http://la.indymedia.org/news/2006/02/146096_comment.php#147842 :


So Becky
by fresca Saturday, Feb. 18, 2006 at 5:30 PM:
"God bless his nappy lil' head."


LOL!
by fresca Sunday, Feb. 19, 2006 at 6:50 PM:
"Another welfare gettin' colored folk JA?"


This is in addition to numerous other racial slurs, most of which LA-IMC has, unfortunately, already deleted from still other threads -- which I asked LA-IMC *not* to, so that everyone could even more clearly see fresca for what she really is.


You're not qualified to intellectually or morally stand up to me, fresca. Therefore, this exchange will be ...

*TERMINATED*.

Make that O Sensitive Black Man.

I guess JA can dish it out but he can't take it.

Oh well, on with the BANNING OF FRESCA.

Anyway, the exclusive ownership of the pain of slavery by JA has been..


TERMINATED.