3. Gradually, in spite of the Jewish-Israeli Lobby, even Americans will come to understand reality
25th March 2006
Posting 3. on the Jewish-Israeli Lobby, posted by George Salzman
Oaxaca, Saturday, March 25, 2006
Friends,
Today I got e-mails from two good people:
1. Eldad Benary <> forwarded from Jane Toby <> a talk given at the Riverside Church in New York on March 22 in commemoration of Rachel Corrie, killed by the Israeli Army three years ago (March 16, 2003).
2. Fred Nagel <> sent the same talk, titled
by Jonathan Tasini, who quickly identified himself
As a Jew who lived in Israel for seven years and whose family still lives there and has deep roots going back more than 80 years, it breaks my heart that there is a refusal to grapple with an almost untouchable topic in our country: why does the United States have such a one-sided policy in the Israel-Palestine conflict? And it’s the reason I agreed to speak at the event which honored Rachel’s life and her beliefs. The event took place at the historic Riverside Church. I stood in the pulpit in the very same place that Dr. Martin Luther King stood almost 40 years ago. And that’s where I began my remarks: |
To be honest, I don’t think most Jews — and certainly this is true of most Americans — understand the brutality of the occupation, the violations of international law and our role in perpetuating that occupation. Most Jews have never been to the area and so they either have no idea what goes on or choose to ignore the awful reality. Their perceptions are framed by the MSM [Mainstream Media, I assume he means —G.S.] and pandering politicians. |
Tasini’s talk is available at: www.huffingtonpost.com/jonathan-tasini/why-jews-must-speak-up-on_b_17806.html and www.commondreams.org/views06/0324-35.htm
Despite my mildly favorable view of this clearly political talk (normally I detest political talks), I recalled harsh criticism by Mark Bruzonsky <> of the conduct (not the content) of the memorial event, which was co-hosted by Amy Goodman and Jim Zogby. Bruzonsky has proven himself very knowledgeable. Here is his posting, available at:
www.middleeast.org/read.cgi?category=Magazine&num=1393&standalone=0&month=3&year=2006&function=text
RACHEL CORRIE - Another New Tragedy
Now Politically Raped by Jim Zogby after being Killed by Israelis and Disregarded by Americans
Rachel Corrie was a dedicated and courageous human rights activist as well as a gifted writer. At age 23 she was purposefully crushed to death by an Israeli Army bulldozer as she tried to stop the demolition of a Palestinian home in the Gaza Strip on 16 March 2003.
MER - MiddleEast.Org - Washington - 20 March: Pro-Palestinian groups, along with most Arab-American groups, have a sad but mostly deserved reputation for mediocrity and incompetence — this on top of cozy associations for those most in the news with the worst of the Arab ‘client regimes’ who of course always keep them on a very short tight leash.
When it comes to those who are promoting the memory and the cause of Rachel Corrie they are among the most dedicated — as was she — but sadly, as current events illustrate, they are also among the most politically naive. This week in fact they are allowing one of the worst on-the-take Arab-American hucksters to host an event that has grown out of the New York City cancellation of the powerful and important London play “My Name is Rachel Corrie”.
For host Jim Zogby is quite the opposite of everything courageous and dedicated Rachel Corrie was.
Put simply Zogby has milked and bilked the Palestinian cause for years now, greatly benefiting himself and cronies while in the end, if judged by results rather than rhetoric, actually helping make things even worse for the Palestinians … far worse in fact. Insiders haven’t forgotten when Zogby went to bat for the notorious Israeli Lobby agent Martin Indyk endorsing him as an “Arab American” and thus helping secure him a powerful place in Washington affairs. In turn a few years later, on top of many other things done for Zogby as a kind of Arab American Uncle Tom, Indyk appointed Zogby’s son to be his assistant at the State Department! Also a few years ago Zogby championed something called ‘Builders for Peace’ — a major multimillion dollar tie-in to the ‘Oslo Peace Process’ which Zogby then manipulated so that much of the money ended up in the bank accounts of himself and friends. Then, just a few years later, with all the things Zogby promised were going to greatly help the Palestinians coming to nothing other than more hardship and bloodletting, ‘Builders For Peace’ was totally canceled without even one single major project being completed for Palestinians in the occupied territories. The list of Zogby scams and outrages goes on … and on …
The following ‘spoof’ newsletter about Jim Zogby was published by Palestinian students some years ago and helps illustrate what he has been all about for quite some time. If Rachel Corrie were alive and knew what was happening here in the USA as she did in Occupied Palestine she would be the first one telling Zogby off with more words of her own and chastising him endlessly for his hypocrisy and duplicity. What a further tragedy that those who care so much about what Rachel Corrie stood for, and what she so sadly died for, lack the understanding and the courage themselves to prevent her political rape on top of all the other indecencies. [To see the ‘spoof’ newsletter, go to Bruzonsky’s posting.]
March 26th, 2006 at 10:15 am
From: Bill Templer <>
Date: Sun, 26 Mar 2006 05:37:57 -0800 (PST)
Hi George,
If you want you can post this below as response, with my name. I think some corners on the left are getting a bit naïve about where the lines to anti-Jewish vilification may actually lie. Good to stir up a bit of discussion. My views on Israel are not anti-Jewish, David Duke’s are. Yet at times we seem nebbich to be saying the same thing. adelante Bill
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It strikes me ever more that critique of the ‘Jewish-Zionist lobby’ in the states treads at points on very thin ice, coming close to the arguments of white supremacists like David Duke. The Walt and Mearsheimer paper that has caused a stir (largely because of the mainstream ‘stature’ of its authors) does not really come to grips with this very openly anti-Semitic attack from the far right stateside on Israeli ethnocracy and geopolitics, and the ‘Jewish’ control of the U.S. media and just about everything else. An attack which Duke typifies. Duke himself has claimed that Walt/Mearsheimer ‘vindicates’ his diatribes against the Jewish lobby in Washington and across the U.S. power elites. That led to an article in the NY SUN this week: www.nysun.com/article/29380
I don’t agree with much of that SUN article, but it also raises the question of how close some arguments in Walt/Mearsheimer come to the ‘world-conspiracy-of-the-Jews’ thinking on the right — in part a very religious right with which Duke is directly associated. Read this new article by Duke: www.davidduke.com/?p=502 “Jewish Extremists Circle Their Wagons in Hate Campaign Against Harvard Dean,” written in part in response to the SUN piece.
I know that that article by Duke has been circulated on some listservs purporting to be ‘left’. Take a look at Duke’s new book: Jewish Supremacism, the preface on ‘Jewish control of the American media’ is on his website.
I don’t think we can simply ‘ignore’ such vicious hate-mongering that at key points intersects like a Venn diagram with some of our own critique. My own sense of this at the moment is to perhaps include a statement in a paper I’m writing for a major journal (on the sacralization of genocide in Deuteronomy and the Book of Joshua, and in American Puritan and Israeli right appropriations of that narrative) openly distancing myself from these anti-Semitic tirades by anti-Semitic white supremacists in the states against anything Jewish, and most especially Israel. I may find Duke soon praising me nebbich for analyzing ‘racism in the Old Testament.’ We can’t ignore the growing presence of all this, esp. in cyberspace. I read discourse again and again, some on the left, where ‘Zionist’ seems to be a code word for ‘Jewish’ and almost anything is fair game. ‘Zionist’ influence here, ‘Zionist control of the US anti-war movement’ there. At the least, our analyses of neo-con politics and the influence of lobbies have to be razor-sharp. More rigorous science than we tend to muster. Bill