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Wednesday, February 14, 2007


THE GENIE
IS OUT OF
THE BOTTLE.



There is still an ongoing debate raging in anti-war and left circles concerning Israel and Zionism, and the Jews, that generates much heat and recriminations, especially towards those of us who insist on the right to critically examine all this, and especially Zionist/Israeli behaviours in the Middle East, indeed the latter's very legitimacy as an entity, and what many of us consider its crimes against the Palestinian people. So is daring to critique Israel, and the Zionist movement as a distinct ideological element within international Jewry anti-semetic, or is it not, is it not a legitimate intellectual right which folks generally must have? (Along with the right to examine and critique all other elements of social , religious and political life.)

Well, it turns out we gentile critics of Israel share a discussion and set of disagreements currently raging within the Jewish religion/community itself.



http://observer.guardian.co.uk/review/story/0,,2010212,00.html

The Observer February 11, 2007

The new Jewish question : A furious row has been raging in the international Jewish community over the rights and wrongs of criticising Israel. At its centre is a British historian who accuses his fellow Jews in the US of stifling any debate about Israel. His opponents say his views give succour to anti-Semites. One thing's for sure: any appearance of consensus over the Middle East has been shattered.

By Gaby Wood

On 3 October last year, the distinguished British-born historian Tony Judt was preparing for a public lecture when the telephone rang. He was due to give the talk, entitled 'The Israel Lobby and US Foreign Policy', at the Polish consulate in New York in less than an hour. The caterers were already there. But when he picked up the phone he was informed that his lecture had been suddenly cancelled.

He was also told that Abraham Foxman, the national director of the Anti-Defamation League (ADL) was on the phone to the Polish consul. Whether the call from the ADL was the cause of the cancellation would become the subject of heated debate in the days and months to come. Foxman labelled such accusations 'conspiratorial nonsense'; however, the Polish consul, Krzysztof Kasprzyk, later acknowledged that he had been contacted by a number of Jewish groups - including the ADL and the American Jewish Committee (AJC) - who were concerned about Judt's anti-Israel message.

'The phone calls were very elegant but may be interpreted as exercising a delicate pressure,' Kasprzyk said. It didn't take him long to see how it might look for Poland, given its history, to be fostering arguments that in certain spheres of American intellectual life have been conflated with anti-Semitism.

'They do what the more tactful members of the intelligence services used to do in late Communist society,' Tony Judt says of the ADL when I speak to him from his home in New York. 'They point out how foolish it is to associate with the wrong people. So they call up the Poles and they say: Did you know that Judt is a notorious critic of Israel, and therefore shading into or giving comfort to anti-Semites?'
Now, whether my recent banning from Tyee, for example, has elements of this attempt on the part of some Jewish supporters of Zionism and Israel to shut down criticism, and drive home the point that all such counter criticisms of Israel and the Zionists are anti-semitism and will not be tolerated, I don't really know for sure. Though I do know that Beers did in his email to me, accuse me of being an anti-semite. So, I certainly may be forgiven my suspicions. :-)

It seems to me though, unless we are prepared to give Jewish and non-Jewish, typically Christian supporters of Zionism carte blanche world control over what are and are not allowed as critical intellectual discussions, around a major issue that threatens the entire world with all out, even never-ending war, that what is legitimate "critical" positions for some Jews to take vis a vis Israel/Palestine is no less so for the rest of us. Unless this New World Order which the US Empire and its Zionist/Israeli allies are attempting to forcibly put in place is to simply and unquestionably be surrendered to. Which I am not.

And there is no position that I advocate, for example, even questioning the legitimacy of the original establishment of the State of Israel in Palestine itself, in compensation for a European holocaust crime against the Jews, and carrying out now its own holocaust upon the entirely innocent Palestinians, that is not similarly raised by many Jews themselves.

Rabbi Yisroel Dovid Weiss, spokesman for Neturei Karta International, a world wide organization of anti - Zionist Orthodox Jews said in a public prayer recently, “the day should soon arrive when the Zionist enterprise – the State of “Israel” - will be peacefully dismantled and Jews and their Palestinian neighbours will live together in a Palestinian state in peace. Ultimately the world should merit to see the glory of the Creator excepted by all. AMEN”

Amen, I say to that as well. I an atheist agree with this Orthodox Jew and his organization.

As well:

Philip Weiss, a bold polemicist whose New York Observer blog, MondoWeiss, has been besieged by posts on the subject since he addressed it last week, has even gone so far as to declare a new movement. His account of it embraces the new forum for dissent, Independent Jewish Voices, which was launched in Britain last week by an eminent group that includes Eric Hobsbawm and Harold Pinter. In launching its manifesto, Independent Jewish Voices has taken the 40th anniversary of the occupation of the West Bank and Gaza Strip as an occasion to create 'a climate and a space in which Jews of different affiliations and persuasions can express their opinions about the actions of the Israeli government without being accused of disloyalty or being dismissed as self-hating.' One of its founding principles is: 'The battle against anti-Semitism is vital and is undermined whenever opposition to Israeli government policies is automatically branded as anti-Semitic.' 'A lot of people, like Tony Judt, have been doing brave work here in the US for a while,' Weiss tells me. 'What has happened specifically is that for once, the mainstream is paying attention.'

He dates the beginning of this back to last March, when an explosive article about the influence of the Israel lobby on American foreign policy, written by two American political scientists, Stephen Walt and John Mearsheimer, was published in the London Review of Books (having originally been turned down by the Atlantic Monthly). The response to the piece was so overwhelming - and so coloured by accusations of anti-Semitism - that the LRB decided to host a debate on the subject in New York last September. That debate was sold out; Tony Judt, one of the speakers, gave an exceptionally eloquent performance, in the course of which he said it was significant that the event had been hosted by a London publication. Public conversation on the issue had been so absent in America, he suggested, that it could only be opened up by importation.

'When Walt and Mearsheimer were published in London,' Philip Weiss continues, 'I said: something's changing.' Since then, the publication of former president Jimmy Carter's book, Palestine: Peace Not Apartheid, and the attention given to Rosenfeld's accusations in his AJC article, have proved, in Weiss's view, that 'there's no question that something has changed. One of the excitements of what's going on right now is that people who have had feelings about this and have not expressed them are popping up all over. It's personally very stirring to me that this is happening. I can't believe it.'


Indeed it is, and it's time such "neoconized" left-lite online rags as the Tyee and their favourite son writer, Terry Glavin caught up with this new times reality. The genie is out of the bottle and will not be put back in again.

In fact, the debate is so current that the online magazine Slate has come up with a quiz entitled 'Are You A Liberal Anti-Semite?' (Sample question: 'Which state's offences against humanity bother you most? a) Sudan b) Israel c) Massachusetts'.) One of the prizes is dinner with Tony Judt.

Tony Judt is, in the words of a fellow historian, 'one of our most dazzling public intellectuals'. As a prominent professor at New York University and a regular contributor to the New York Review of Books, the New York Times and The Nation, he has a strong and widely heard voice. His latest book, Postwar - a magnificent, opinionated and vast history of Europe since 1945 - was voted one of the 10 best books of last year by the New York Times. A talented forger of links between thinkers from countries all over the world, Judt worked tirelessly after 1989 to bring together eastern European and American intellectuals, and he solidified these efforts by founding the Remarque Institute at NYU in 1995 to promote the study and discussion of Europe in America. A natural polemicist, he brought with him to New York an Oxbridge tradition more pugnacious than is generally characteristic of American academic life, and found himself - after years spent concentrating on European history - drawn back into an engagement with the Middle East.

In 2003, Judt wrote an articulately provocative piece for the New York Review of Books entitled 'Israel: The Alternative', in which he argued, among other things, that Israel was 'an anachronism' that was 'bad for the Jews' and should be converted into a binational state. The offices of the New York Review were inundated with letters as a result. Last year, Judt wrote an op-ed piece for the New York Times in which he argued that America's fear of anti-Semitism when discussing Israel wrought tremendous damage. As the page was about to go to press, the editor rang him up. 'Just one thing,' he said, 'You are Jewish, aren't you?'

Come out here into the wide, wide world of fresh air, free political ideas debate and discussion David Beers and Terry Glavin, around an issue that has been too long suppressed by true believers and chickenshits such as yourselves, until the internal pressure built up has finally blown the pressure cooker apart-, and left you two dudes standing there with egg all over your bare-assed faces.

11 comments:

Larry Gambone said...

No David Beers or Terry Glavin yet. Hmmm... Pienso no hay muchos huevos!

The Sentinel said...

The ADL is typical of the double speak that the Israelis are so fond of: It serves little other purpose then to defame anyone it perceives as an opponent, secondary of course to its intelligence gathering operations; spying on, and collating information about not just US citizens but citizens globally.

If it were any other group that carried out activities such as these, funded by largely by a foreign government the US would no doubt have closed it down a long time ago.

It has a very curious history and formation, as pointed many times by many people, including Louis Farrakhan:
"In 1913, something happened. Four things were set up in the year 1913. First, the Federal Reserve Bank, the IRS, the FBI and the Anti-Defamation League of B'nai B'rith. All were set up in the same year. Is that a coincidence? Or is there a tie in?"

An unsavoury source, maybe. Factually correct, defiantly.

Very sinister.

Coyote said...

Larry,

They don't want to do me any favours. 8-D

Sentinel,

You are off on a different wavelength than I am altogether, Sentinel. Even if what you say is true, and I don't really know that, with, "First, the Federal Reserve Bank, the IRS, the FBI and the Anti-Defamation League of B'nai B'rith. All were set up in the same year. Is that a coincidence? Or is there a tie in?", still pretty much looks more like a coincidence as an explanation yet to me. I'm sure a whole bunch other institutions and organizations got going in that year too, if we had a full list. Are they too then part of this same conspiracy?

I think not.

You're going to need more hard evidence than this sheer speculative fantasy, to convince me of this oarticular "Jewish Conspiracy" theory here, frankly. And I don't deny that "the Jewish Lobby" such as is the ADL, like the Knights of Columbus, sundry organizations of evangelicals etc. etc. all constitute a kind of low level conspiracy, fully rejectable by an understanding public. Capitalism and its particular ruling class functions, no doubt, within complex sets of competing class AND "other" interests.

Hell, even we Scottish-Canadians, and atheists for example, have our own low level conspiracy organizations to try and advance our interests. Don't see squat wrong with it.

Though, we do have a right to be some concerned when one or another seems to be exerting an undue and democracy bypassing influence. And I have my concers about ADL as well.

Additionally, some of you other readers may want to check out: http://truthatsentinel.blogspot.com/
It might give you all a better understanding of, [i]perhaps[/i], where this guy is actually coming from.

That said "everyone" gets their right to speak here. Everyone.

We just all need to be able to separate "fact" from "fantasy", and "bigotry". Not always easy, I 'fess.

The Sentinel said...

"still pretty much looks more like a coincidence as an explanation yet to me"


In 1913 the United States government gave control of its economy to private financiers, calling themselves the Federal Reserve Bank. Amongst other, absolutely insane powers granted to this private, profit making cabal was the exclusive right to print US dollars and mint US coins, which are then sold back to the government at a high interest price. The use of this technique has created the smoke and mirrors reality of 'national debt' (a national debt so steep that, even the FRB admits could not be paid if every man, woman and child in the US gave up everything they own to pay it.)

Which then led to:

The IRS being set up in 1913 to collect tax on an unprecedented scale, federally, to pay for this new 'national debt'

Which led to the:

BOI (Bureau of Investigation, forerunner of the FBI) being given federal powers in 1913 to investigate and enforce violations and evasions of the new tax system, robberies of FRB facilities and general finical crimes that were prevalent in anger and protest at the two events above.

The FRB were identified, quite openly at the time, of being made up almost exclusively of Jews (to this day their has never been a non-Jewish director of the Federal Reserve system) which the led to the formation of:

The ADL, or 'B'nai B'rith' in direct response to the charges of conspiratorial usury. The organisation has stayed with us ever since.

All facts, all checkable.



"I'm sure a whole bunch other institutions and organizations got going in that year too, if we had a full list. Are they too then part of this same conspiracy?"


Look into the reasons behind why that these four organisations came into being in the same year for yourself and then tell me if you think that this may be a facile statement.



"...It might give you all a better understanding of,perhaps, where this guy is actually coming from."


Where am I coming from exactly?

Have you already decided my label / pigeon hole / box / affiliation?

Everything I have posted is reasoned and / or sourced.

It may not be fashionable to say, or even pleasant to hear, but truth often isn't.

Coyote said...

There are many different views of the world, and all the elements and events that make it up, no doubt.

"The FRB were identified, quite openly at the time, of being made up almost exclusively of Jews (to this day their has never been a non-Jewish director of the Federal Reserve system) which the led to the formation of:" wrote Sentinel.

At and after which point you lose me, because it seems to me that one does not necessarily follow the other-, unless one is ready to make the leap of faith which you suddenly do here, that the Jews are responsible for it all still, or so it seems to me.

While I accept that many small and large "conspiracies" are in fact a part of life, though we often dress them up and attempt explain them away to something less, my wingnut troll sensors are really going off here. For there are also other kinds of conspiracies which exist, of which the Holocaust was the result of one, 'twixt the German ruling class who feared a Communist revolution and the Nazis who were prepared to eliminate that problem for them, of which the Jews were one of the handy to hand scapegoats in the process as well.

So we will simply have to differ, even though many a good lie often starts out with a grain of truth-, such as I suggest, you are spinning here.

Nobody has a monopoly on evil, neither us, not even capitalism, or the Jews.

I see their influence merely being some inordinate right now, largely for the initial reasons of especially European guilt, which they fobbed off for criminal compensation onto the poor Palestinians, launching another European inspired Holcaust conspiracy-, AND for reasons having to do with the poswar rise of US imperialism and its empire ambitions (as the older British Empire imploded in the postwar)-, within which real conspiracy the Zionist Jews and their Israeli State have to now, at least, been useful in helping the new US Empire effort, how e're currently failing, control the Middle East.

Merely now all falling in on itself, like I say, and for which the Jews again, regrettably, are likely to again be the West's scapegoats and pay the higher price in the end. Like I say, it seems to me, regrettably.

In reality, the Jews are really no better nor worse than the rest of us. The holocaust just made them a little more desparate, such that they were prepared even to resort to the crime of stealing the land of the Palestinians and carrying out a holocaust against them, which is still ongoing.

The Sentinel said...

There are many different views of the world"

Of course. But when you watch football, not matter how you interpret the lead up, a goal is still a goal. Much the same way as the FRB came first, then came the IRS to milk the citizens for it, the FBI to protect it all and then the ADL to defame dissenters.

And pretty much how all 'national debts' are devoid of reality. Explain to me the alternative theory to that.



"...At and after which point you lose me..."


It is not hard to check for yourself. The founders were almost exclusively Jewish. It is a fact.

Do with it as you will; I made no suggestions.

Just because you may not want to hear a fact it does not make it any less true.



"So we will simply have to differ...)


I make no attempt to convince you of anything. I have merely presented some facts that are easily verifiable.



"...even though many a good lie often starts out with a grain of truth-, such as I suggest, you are spinning here{...}my wingnut troll sensors are really going off here..."


This is also termed 'argumentum ad hominem' and it is the second time you have used it.

You have attempted to discredit me personally rather then directly addressing the substance of my comments; you have also invoked the use of 'ad hominem circumstantiae' in the same vein.



"In reality, the Jews are really no better nor worse than the rest of us"

I never mentioned anything of the sort. Again, I merely presented facts.



"... the Jews were one of the handy to hand scapegoats{...} The holocaust just made them a little more desparate..."


If you look into history in a bit more detail you will find that the Jews have rarely been merely just scapegoats; some unfathomable, wholly inexplicably phenomena as to why immense animosity has been directed at them.

Largely, as a group who believe themselves to be the 'chosen people' and a community that does not like to mix, they have set themselves apart from the host countries they have resided in whilst deliberately seeking positions of influence and vast profit: Banking, media, and politics.

Because the of closeness and 'closed off' nature of their community and some of the beliefs they hold natural questions are asked about motive and intent.

This has happened throughout history. Sometimes without justification, sometimes with.

This is not anti-Semitism to say these things. They are all true.

No one is above criticism; it is only when an aura is placed around a group that suggest they are do the real problems begin.

Coyote said...

"Of course. But when you watch football, not matter how you interpret the lead up, a goal is still a goal. Much the same way as the FRB came first, then came the IRS to milk the citizens for it, the FBI to protect it all and then the ADL to defame dissenters." Sentinel.

Except, though you don't seem to want to hear it, I suspect because you are a kind of "true believer" yourself, we are talking about goals in two different games here.

Because one comes first, and one comes second, it does not necessarily follow that the third is even connected to either previous event. That is the case you have failed to make. There are just too many leaps of faith in your theory-, that the development of the Anti-Defamation League is in any way connected to the other developments you indicate. Other than, and I'm taking your word for it here, just to make a point, all of them occurred in the same year.

Big deal.

Which proves nothing in so far as your nutbar Jewish Conspiracy theory. Show me the official and verifiable minutes of the meetings, or some other such tangible evidence, even cross referencing statements by the parties involved, or even a veiled admission-, other than the coincidence of the year 1913 that connects them, and you may be in the ballpark of making a real connection.

And I haven't even begun to critically examine the factuality of the claims you make on the year 1913 alone. Which would have to be examined in detail as well, from reasonably objective, not nutbar sources.

Which is at this point leading me to conclude that you are just another brownshirt nutbar such as we encounter from time to time when attempting to have a critical and objective discussion about Israel, Zionism and the Jews, of at least it is as high a likelihood as your claim.

Coincidences to do not facts make, but merely point to a threadbare thin hypothetical possibility.

Without something more to go on here than your mere speculations, your rationality is spinning in tight circles, chasing its own tail, and there is little point of substance to even continuing this discussion-, from my perspective.

All that is really sinister here is yourself, though you do make a number of good points about the private banks printing money etc. And which is not to say that there were no Jews, or Catholics, Protestants or even Masons and Knights Templar involved in any or all of these events. Just that your global Jewish conspiracy theory, allowing that all movements are conspiracies to one degree or another, more and less effective, falls flat on its face.

Indeed, I have my own private conspiracy going here-, to bring down capitalism and transform society.

Like I say, though you choose to ignore this, my bet is many organizations, official and otherwise, came into being and passed out of existence in 1913. Coincidence, not of itself evidence of a Jewish conspiracy to dominate the world.

There is more of a Hitlerian ring to all this than factual evidence. You know the one about a lie repeated often, loudly and insistently enough.

The Sentinel said...

"you are a kind of "true believer"{...}as your nutbar{...}you are just another brownshirt nutbar{...}All that is really sinister here is yourself..."


Like I said, all of this is just 'argumentum ad hominem' and it is now the third time you have used it; merely adding to the litany of abuse each time.

If this is your idea of free speech and the conduct of it, you may as well give up right now.



"There are just too many leaps of faith in your theory{...}Other than, and I'm taking your word for it here, just to make a point, all of them occurred in the same year{...}And I haven't even begun to critically examine the factuality of the claims you make on the year 1913 alone{...}Coincidences to do not facts make{...}Without something more to go on here than your mere speculations..."


Absolutely amazing. You admit that you know nothing about it at all. Nothing.

You do not even know that they were all formed in the same year but you still manage to spit a lot of venom and pour a lot of scorn onto these facts from a position of complete ignorance.

You are too lazy to even do five minutes research, but only too eager to throw around unfounded insults.

Maybe start here, and see if they even attempt to deny it, and look at the date at the bottom:

http://www.adl.org/PresRele/NatIsl_81/2403_81.asp



"Show me the official and verifiable minutes of the meetings"


I don't have the official and verifiable minutes of the meeting between your mother and father when you were conceived but I know that it happened.



"...cross referencing statements by the parties involved..."


Do you want me to blow your nose and wipe your arse as well? You are the one disputing the veracity of the facts.


" have my own private conspiracy going here-, to bring down capitalism and transform society"


Good luck, I think you will need it.



All of this abuse and hyperbole from someone who boldly states "This is free territory, where left and right, the good, bad and the ugly, and everything in between gets to belly up to the bar, chew the fat, and wrestle in the mud, the blood and the beer of unrestricted freedom of speech" at the head of their blog.

Amazing.

Anonymous said...

Thanks for that Coyote. Nice to see that openness and free speech doesn't mean that disagreeable ideas won't be met with reason and fairness or, for that matter, instant deletion.

Nice precedent. And one which others, in other places, who also 'subscribe' to similar principles ought to emulate.

Well done.

Coyote said...

"Nice precedent. And one which others, in other places, who also 'subscribe' to similar principles ought to emulate." wrote Anonymous.

Thanks, Anonymous. ;-) wink.

Coyote said...

"All of this abuse and hyperbole from someone who boldly states "This is free territory, where left and right, the good, bad and the ugly, and everything in between gets to belly up to the bar, chew the fat, and wrestle in the mud, the blood and the beer of unrestricted freedom of speech" at the head of their blog.

Amazing." wrote Sentinel.

What can I say? You are here and have had your say. It is not necessary that I agree with you. Which I don't, at least on all your points.

And you are still welcome back. :-)