Posting 20. to The Jewish-Israel Lobby, by Bill Templer
Robert Fisk’s article in the Independent (April 27, 2006) “Breaking the Last Taboo: The United States of Israel?” perpetuates the false notion that critique of Lobbytalk comes almost only from the pro-Zionist Jewish right in the states, or in Australia, where Fisk has faced the ‘Jewish lobby’ in Oz. Why cannot those extremely critical of vicious Israeli voelkisch policy at the same time be concerned about potentially racist anti-Jewish discourse inside Lobby analysis and its web of rhetoric and implication?
London-based sociologist David Hirsh critiques Fisk in an article “Slipping Standards” that is worth reading: http://commentisfree.guardian.co.uk/david_hirsh/2006/04/conspiracy_is_an_easy_way_out.htmlI I don’t agree with Hirsh on a number of points, but the initiative on the Left and website he has organized over the past year ENGAGE http://www.engageonline.org.uk brings together much thoughtful commentary about the dangers of this discourse. Hirsh like Avnery and Chomsky is highly critical of Israel, but Hirsh like Avnery thinks Israel should not be destroyed. And is a fierce enemy of what he perceives as anti-Jewish rhetoric disguised as ‘anti-Zionist’ in Britain and elsewhere, and now using the Lobbytalk as a ‘cocoon.’ I suggest you look at Engage: the journal, the articles. The arguments. Remember these are people on the Left, a whole spectrum. What Jeff Blankfort might inimically call the ‘Jewish Defense League within the Left.’
There you can also see the consciously offensive ‘stars and stripes’ cover of the Independent for April 27 that many Jews will find anti-Semitic in the classic sense. Of course there is more than one reading of the image:
http://www.engageonline.org.uk/blog/article.php?id=391 What’s yours? I think some of you may be pretty unaware of anti-Semitic discourse and imagery over the decades. The new xenophobic far right anti-Roma / anti-Turk / anti-Jewish party ATAKA in Bulgaria uses imagery of a similar kind. Is this where the Anglo-American Left is wending?
Hirsh notes: “There is a real, current danger of the emergence of an anti-semitic movement in Europe and America - as well as elsewhere. This is not, at the moment, a battle on the streets. It is a battle on the level of discourse. And much of the careless discourse comes from the very anti-racists, liberals and socialists who ought to be the most sensitive to the danger of the emergence of this kind of racist movement. The left needs to get its act together on this. If the left can’t or won’t fight anti-semitism then we will all be in real trouble - because nobody else will.”
Sounds a bit similar to some of my own comments here a week ago. Hirsh and I differ regarding a ‘transformed’ Israel, because I’ve argued for a kind of radically de-Zionized version of Buber’s vision in the old Brit Shalom of a single unitary cooperative commonwealth, a ‘no-state’ solution. A Palestinian/Israeli zapatismo.
ITEM: Regarding blanket claims in Lobbytalk, take this one from Mearsheimer/Walt: “Anyone who criticises Israel’s actions or argues that pro-Israel groups have significant influence over US Middle East policy … stands a good chance of being labelled an anti-Semite. Indeed, anyone who merely claims that there is an Israeli lobby runs the risk of being charged with anti-Semitism.”
COUNTER-FACT: One of the most outspoken critics of Israel and an eminent Palestinian social scientist has just been granted a full professorship at a major US university, and at no time was there any attempt to ’smear’ him. Nor had he ever experienced any such interference in his work. He is feared in academic circles in Israel for his astute scientific analysis of land policy, and the workings of the Israeli ethnocracy. How many other Palestinian social scientists are teaching in American academe and not being targeted by campus-watch.org and similar rightwing initiatives? Worth examining. Sure, Juan Cole is being targeted. But the above is a pretty broadside salvo. A scholar probably more radical than Cole, and a Palestinian left-nationalist in his analysis, is not. Why? The campus-watch.org website has only a small number of US campuses on its hit list. Take a look for yourselves.
Writing in the LRB, Robert Pfaltzgraff of the Institute for Foreign Policy Analysis in Cambridge/MA has some interesting comment: “The authors allege that ‘over the past 25 years, pro-Israel forces have established a commanding presence’ at US think-tanks, and give a list that includes the Institute for Foreign Policy Analysis. The basis on which the authors make this assertion escapes me. We have undertaken studies of US policy towards the Gulf States as well as Israel and other countries in and around the Middle East. To the extent that such studies support Israel or any other states in the region, this is the result of an independent analysis of US needs and interests. If Mearsheimer and Walt had taken the time to interview me or any of my colleagues, they could easily have discovered this.”
In any event, I suggest you look at ENGAGE as a tonic against the excesses of your own conviction in this discussion. I agree with its major thrust, not its defense of left-liberal Zionism. And not with its principled opposition to the idea of academic boycott, where I am much closer to Ilan Pappe.
But the same rage for justice that can attack the Israeli plutocracy can also criticize racist suggestion and innuendo about Jews and ‘Jewish power’ in America and what some of us think is now emerging, a kind of ‘Sozialismus des dummen Kerls,’ as August Bebel characterized anti-Semitism on the left in Germany some 130 years ago. Hirsh is a comrade in the struggle against that. As is the Alliance for Worker’s Liberty socialist tendency in the UK that Hirsh and ENGAGE seem near to: http://www.workersliberty.org/ (’Jewish-dominated’?) , a grouping itself in solidarity with the Alliance for Green Socialism http://www.greensocialist.org.uk/ags/
As Liz Burbank recently wrote: “Making an israeli ‘lobby’ the issue and making the terms of the terms of this set-up debate ‘either-or’, ‘yes-no’ takes U.S. imperialism off the hot-seat. […] Meanwhile this vicious deception must be exposed and opposed because it aids our real enemies and because this strata’s role and influence is critical, beyond its own academic circles, in general media propaganda, and in broad mass movements as well as revolutionary working class and anti-imperialist movements. […] By design or default, this timely sneak attack has all the earmarks –and intended effects –of a psyops job–soon to be translated undoubtedly via the capitalist media for broader consumption.” (“Cui Bono & Some Thoughts on “The Ferment Over the ‘Israel Lobby,’” 29 April 2006).
Posting 5. in the On the Ground category, by George Salzman
The following sequence of e-mails began as a response to a statement I made about the Israel-Palestinian conflict (which I cannot find right now, but will include if possible), and went on to the topics of ownership of land, government oppression, taxes, citizens’ resistance, “traditional” 18th and 19th century piracy, gun ownership, etc. The e-mails circulated among a variable “small” list ranging from a few up to about 50 individuals, depending on whether people responded individually, hit Reply or hit Reply All.
Subject: Re: Jewish lobby report doesn’t help achieve Middle East peace
From: Lawrence Salzman <>
Date: Sat, 22 Apr 2006 12:21:39 EDT
To: George Salzman <>
In a message dated 4/22/2006 11:42:41 AM Eastern Standard Time, George Salzman writes:
> The Israeli and U.S governments have no interest in a just peace or a two-state “solution”.
George: If these are your words, you’re about as on target as you were in 1948 in supporting Henry Wallace and in the 1960s when you supported Chairman Mao’s Cultural Revolution.
In Israel’s recent election Lukid lost much ground and now is a minor party in the Knesset. Israeli voters overwhelmingly voted for parties that are for a two-state solution.
You apparently ignore and/or dismiss the political and social impact of last Monday’s suicide bombing in Tel Aviv where nine people waiting on a line at lunchtime to buy something to eat were killed and dozens wounded. Hamas not only didn’t condemn this senseless bombing, but said it was a response to Israeli policy.
George, do you really think people will react to such terrorism by deciding to commit political suicide and even possible personal suicide? Frankly, it’s absurd that you could assume such policy on the part of Hamas and its directly or indirectly controlled terrorists would have the effect Hamas proclaims it desires, that is, Israel should let itself be destroyed without any response.
What Hamas is “achieving” is to convince Israelis that their only course of action is to perform surgery, geographic and economic.
Geroge, if Israel were as you seem to believe, it would have “solved” the problem in the manner Hamas has stated it wants to solve the problem if and when it gains the power, i.e., just going in and killing by the tens of thousands.
You and I can read all the writings of all the people and all their respective opinions and thoughts, but the bottom line is that Hamas has stated with absolute clearity that it will not recognize Israel’s right to exist. If you were told by another that he/she didn’t recognize your right to live, you’d defend yourself, or at least I assume that’s what you’d do. I don’t picture you lying down on the ground and motioning to the person threatening you to thrust his knife into your back.
I read these notes that are sent around and some of them are signed “brother.” George, I hope you never have to count on these people if you’re ever in need and have nothing to give them in return for their help. I’m probably one of the very few whom you could really turn to in a time of true need. Los
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From: George Salzman
Date: Sat, 22 Apr 2006 12:30:18 -0500
To: Lawrence Salzman
CC: Adam D. Sacks <>, Alan M. Dershowitz <, … (CCs to a total of 30)
BCC: (Blind CCs to 22 addresses)
Oaxaca, 22 April 2006
Lawrence, why don’t you post your note to the weblog, or at least send it to the “small” multiply-addressed group? I’m unable to deal individually with everything coming in, and find what you write totally ignores the history of Zionist conquest of the Palestinians, which was wrong from its inception. We can disagree of course without becoming “enemies.” I know that and I treasure that possibility.
Maybe we’ll have a chance to argue this summer, and maybe you’ll take the opportunity to read some accounts of what I understand to have been the history. I believe you are immersed in a false interpretation, which is tribalist, racist, capitalist, and nationalist, in essence very right-wing, though I know you think of yourself a liberal Jew. I’m doing my best to stimulate open discussion. Of course I have my bias: Everyone is potentially my “brother” or “sister”. I don’t give a shit about whether someone is labelled Arab, Jew, Russian, Catholic, Baptist, we are all, to use my friend Joe Bageant’s term, “brothers under the skin.” Give up thinking that “Arabs” and “Jews” are different kinds of homo sapiens. Forget Thomas Friedman and The Jew York Times. It just occurred to me, I can send this note to the “small” group. Have you read the papers by Gabriel Ash that I mentioned in my earlier note today? If not, I recommend them to you.
All best wishes,
George
Although this “multiple-address e-mail” is going to a relatively small group of recipients, not to my “mass” e-mail distribution list (of about 1400), if you wish to be added to or removed from this “small” list, please let me know.
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From: Dan Hughes <>
Date: Sat, 22 Apr 2006 19:56:13 +0200
To: George Salzman, Lawrence Salzman
The IRA ‘terrorism’, such as it was, was unpleasnt (I lived in London during all of it), but it was effective. It has brought about a change. If the other guy has jets and uses them on you, and you don’t any help like that from the USA, what do you do?
Silly nonsense, much of this.
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From: Lawrence Salzman
Date: Sat, 22 Apr 2006 15:48:19 EDT
To:
CC: (CCs to a total of 31 addresses)
In a message dated 4/22/2006 1:30:53 PM Eastern Standard Time, writes:
> I’m doing my best to stimulate open discussion.
George: When you refer to the New York Times as the “Jew York Times” do you really think you’re stimulating discussion or just appealing to those who think as you do?
You tell me I ignore what you write. Realize you ignore the facts I present to you. Please tell me what political purpose is served when a suicide bomber blows himself up at a luncheon counter at lunchtime in Tel Aviv, killing nine and wounding dozens?
Let’s assume Zionists “stole” all this land from Palestinians. Okay, when are all these folks who think as you do, including that women in Seattle who told me my response was stupid when I mentioned to her that she’s living on land stolen from Native Americans, going to “go home” to where their families came from? When we chatted on the phone you sort of chuckled and asked me if they should move back to Europe. Well?
Realize, we were still stealing Native American land when grandpa’s three sisters and their husbands, left Minsk in the 1880s and became pioneers in what at that time was called Palestine and controlled by Turkey. The time dimension is the same. Therefore, people who feel as you do who live in the Southwest and other areas where we stole land from Native Americans, including parts of the Northwest should reverse their families earlier emigration and return to Europe or possibly Asia, depending on their background.
I’ll leave it at that as I don’t want to “yell” at you as I believe you’re as blind as you claim I am. Be well. Los
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From: Adam Sacks <>
Date: Sun, 23 Apr 2006 03:22:59 -0700 (PDT)
To: Lawrence Salzman, George Salzman
CC: (CCs to 31 addresses)
Not only did “we” steal land from indigenous peoples on this continent (and not only in the west), but we continue to steal from them. Nor are we the only ones to overrun and destroy cultures throughout a long history of human migrations and mixing, but the scope of our work is unprecedented in its breadth and destruction.
Does that mean it is forever thus? Well, maybe, but I think we must nevertheless do our best to bring humanity into human affairs. We have the potential for a global perspective and the opportunity to know and do better. That’s why I maintain that at least some of the problems with Zionism, little that I know about it (notwithstanding the reflex stereotyping on the part of people who don’t know anything about me), like most of the other “isms” including mainstream environmentalism, is the concentration of wealth and decision-making power away from people whose lives are directly affected.
The forces of colonialism and corporate globalization are doomed because they are unsustainable. Unfortunately, following the current course they will take much of life on earth with them, nor do they show any signs of turning the ship around. We might have an opportunity to change that course, but only when human beings everywhere have the opportunity to exercise our birthrights - to make the decisions that affect our lives and to base our decisions on the seventh generation.
Where to start? Right in our local communities, and when we organize right (and non-violently) we become a wedge under the toenail of the oligarchy which has the potential to bring it to its knees.
Cheers,
Adam
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From: Thomas K Wilson <>
Date: Sun, 23 Apr 2006 17:03:39 -0500
To: Adam Sacks, Lawrence Salzman, George Salzman
CC: (CCs to 11 addresses)
There are a couple things on my mind as I follow this exchange. One is the extent to which our rantings and ravings and bickerings have NO effect on the progress of Imperial Capitalism as it crushes the life out of us and the planet. Another is this whole thing about who has a “right” to what property.
Should the US support the secular state of Zions Biblical claim to the land they are calling Israel? Who knows, and what the hell IS the US anyway? What and who is it really comprised of? Can the state be said to actually exist any more than, say, imaginary debt backed fiat “money”, for example?
As far as I can tell, the state is merely comprised of the intentions and activities of a few and the acquiescence of the rest, for their own purposes (whether or not they even understand what those purposes are or that they are able to agree or not agree to anything). For the most part this arrangement is enforced at gunpoint. In fact, the state, as it exists nearly everywhere, is, in and of itself, the definition of coercion.
(George, if this is too heady for you or Bageant, oh well; but I hammer nails for a living and I have discussions like this all the time with “Joe Sixpack” as we’re so derisively labeled by the elitist “progressive” intelligentsia. We’re not stupid just because our fingernails are broken.)
What matters is what is actually happening. When someone is shot in the head they are usually actually dead. When someone forces you off “your” land or out of your domicile then you are shelterless. If the other guy is armed and you are not and he intends to do you harm then you are shit out of luck.
First of all I do not see how anyone can assume to “own” property. What I understand is that we all need to eat and to shelter ourselves and our progeny, where ever it is we happen to be, either by birth or misadventure. In order to do that we need some level of security; of the ability to continuously use a piece of land or an area of land. We could, as pirates do, steal what we need from other people who have produced the things we want or need, or trade for it and live like the Romani, moving from place to place. Some how each of us has to make it from cradle to grave.
I , personally, have an arrangement with the state and some usurers posing as bankers, whereby I occupy a piece of land in return for which I turn over pieces of paper representing time I’ve spent doing tasks for other people (that they are unable or unwilling to do for themselves). In return for the surrender of these “chits” for which I’ve traded the irreplaceable hours of my life as well as skills I’ve had to pay to acquire (either in time or money), my “right” to use this property is enforced by other men with guns (who are also compensated with pieces of paper for the use of their time and skills). In return I get a piece of paper which serves as my title to this arrangement.
You could say I have a treaty with the state which protects my use of the land, WHICH I CANNOT EVER LITERALLY OWN.
As long as I want to continue to use the land, I have to pay, either for the protection of the state, or for the imaginary claims of the usurers (who created the pieces of paper in the first place with their clever pens by “lending” “money” they did not actually possess [actually manipulations of other men’s promises to repay].) NOBODY EVER OWNED THAT LAND AND NOBODY DOES STILL. NOBODY EVER REALLY PAID A NICKEL FOR THE LAND, ONLY THE “TITLE”, SO HOW DOES ANYONE HAVE A RIGHT TO DEMAND MONEY FROM ME FOR IT? Because they have more guns than I do.
The only fact that is not in dispute is that men with guns control its use. What matters is that which actually happens.
What about Israel? The only reason Israel exists is that the would-be-Israelis had more guns, and arrangements with people with more and bigger guns, to take control of the land they now occupy. Any claim to Biblical title is imaginary shit, just like claims to any title to any land anywhere by anybody (including the allegedly indigenous). Membership in the club (Juda-ism in this case) is also imaginary shit. Everyone is from somewhere else and ultimately their ancestors were not members of the club but made up the rules and, voila’, the club existed, at least in their imaginations. Make up the rules and then decide who to exclude from the club. All clubs are imaginary shit even if the people you exclude don’t look or talk like you. Even if you get guns and shoot them.
We shoot each other for imaginary reasons all the time (like those goddamned communists we had to shoot to keep America safe from…?).
The question is, do the people of the United States want to be a party to enforcing this claim? [I sure as fuck don’t. Do you?]
The question then becomes, how do we opt out of this arrangement? How do we get clear of the enforcers?
How are we bound and how do we dissolve the bonds?
The bonds dissolved in the USSR when “they” could no longer afford to pay their military to enforce the contracts they assumed to hold against the people. The same could be said for Argentina. The same was true in Rome.
The power the “theys” of the world hold over us is imaginary (and monetary) in nature. As I’ve said, money is also imaginary, just like club memberships. That does not mean that the men with guns are using imaginary bullets.
I would say if all of us held an equal ability to force our will on others or protect ourselves from having the will of others forced on us then we would have a mighty fine Mexican Standoff.
The only political party worth a crap: http://www.gunsanddope.com/
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From: Adam Sacks
Date: Mon, 24 Apr 2006 06:03:18 -0700 (PDT)
To: Thomas K Wilson <>, Lawrence Salzman <>, George Salzman <>
CC: Adam Sacks <>, Alan Dershowitz <>, As’ad Abukhalil <>, Gush Shalom <>, Benjamin Melançon <>, Bill Templer <>, Dan Hughes <>, Dorothy Naor <>, Eldad Benary <>, Fred Nagel <>, Gabriel Bolaffi <>
Hey TK -
Aside from the gun scenario, in which I think we all wind up shooting one another or always wondering when/where the next bullet is coming from (just like now), I think your analysis is right on target. I do disagree with you about pirates, however. They got a bum rap since they were anti-nation-state, and the nation states wrote the history books.
Many pirates were men (and some women) who were impressed into the British Navy and abused and tortured (and often slaughtered) to keep them working as cogs in that empire machine. Every once in a while they pulled off a mutiny, and established democracy at sea. The pirate code in the late 17th and early 18th centuries was based on all that they were determined never to do to each other – as the Brits had done unto them – and they established democracy on the high seas. One person, one vote; elected officers who were obeyed only in the heat of battle, otherwise they were just like everyone else; booty shared equally; health care, such as it was, for everyone. No wonder they had to be eliminated, and to top it off, forever the target of calumny. But that’s what nation states do for a living.
BTW, what I see in my work is that some of the most radical democratic work in this country is being done by so-called “Joe Sixpacks”; we “progressives” are mostly part of the problem, not the solution – which has always been the case in the “progressive” movement since its beginnings in the late 19th century.
Cheers,
Adam
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From: Lawrence Salzman
Date: Mon, 24 Apr 2006 12:14:43 EDT
To: Thomas K Watson
CC: George Salzman
In a message dated 4/23/2006 6:08:29 PM Eastern Standard Time, writes:
> There are a couple things on my mind as I follow this exchange.
Enjoyed reading your note, even though I don’t agree with everything you say. However, I do relate to your idea that nobody “owns” land as our “ownership” is time dimensioned while the land is assumed to be forever, hopefully. We “rent” land, even though most have the illusion that they own it.
As far as present day Israel, it has the same legitimacy as any other nation. It fought for its life, and yes, with the assistance of some other countries. Those who tried to prevent Israel’s birth were also supported by other countries, but they did not prevail.
Realize, without the help of France, the American Revolution might just be a paragraph in British history books.
One of the folks who feels that Israel is a country founded on “stolen” land, called me stupid when I suggested to her that she lives on land stolen from Native Americans in the state of Washington. That was a most interesting comment on her part, not for what it said, but what it implied. She accepts as a given that she’s entitled to live on stolen land because “we” drove the former owners off of the land and anyway, they are not a problem anymore. We humans are capable of rationalizing any behavior that suits our thoughts and most often are not even aware we are implicitly accepting facts “on the ground” and in disregard to how these facts developed.
Anyway, I could go on, but that’s enough for the moment. For the record, George is my “older” brother. He’s 80 and I’m the kid at 75. We have disagreed politically at least as far back as 1948 when he supported Henry Wallace while I went for Harry Truman.
Just another thought. When viewing another’s logic, always try to determine his/her assumptions. It’s assumption which “drive” logic and you can reach any conclusion logically if you choose, explicitly or implicitly, the “proper” assumptions.
As has been said, “False assumption, impeccable logic, absurd conclusion.
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From: Thomas K Wilson
Date: Mon, 24 Apr 2006 21:59:29 -0500
To: Adam Sacks, Lawrence Salzman
CC: George Salzman, L. Urban Kohler <>
I’m responding to this limited group since I don’t dare hit “reply all” since there’s no way for me to see the entire list of addressees, and several people just asked to be un-included (don’t ask me why I can’t I just can’t). If any of you think this exchange would be of interest to anyone you are free to forward:
I don’t feel any differently about Israel than I do any other aggressive nation state. I dislike them all and disagree with their “right to exist” just like and for the same reasons that I disagree that corporations have rights.
I understand why many Jews from a variety of countries wanted a place of their own where they might have some freedom from assaultive neighbors (Richard III threatened to murder some of my ancestors if they didn’t convert or leave England in the 1300’s) but the fact that they decided on Palestine and not Miami was just utter fucking stupidity as far as I can tell (I understand that’s a vast oversimplification; I’m familiar with the history of the Zionist movement). Maybe stupidity tinged with wishful (fantastical) thinking and lots of arrogance. As if any God worth his/her salt would be that much of a prick, to send his/her “chosen” people to someplace they’d be guaranteed to be hated.
It was as much a move of Anglo imperialist anti-Semitism (nobody wanted those Jew-bastard-troublemakers in their country; least of all Harry Truman) as any act of faith.
It was a dumb move. Like, I’d take my dumb white ass to Harlem because some of my ancestors owned property there once (and they may have). I don’t think so. But I digress.
Adam, the gun scenario is central to the argument. Might may or may not make right, but an oral argument will never trump a loaded .38 .
I will grant you that not everyone is cut out to take their own protection into their own hands, but all of us need protection to exist. The pirates understood this. How many of them armed themselves exclusively with fountain pens? None, I think. They had an equal say in their society because they insisted on it and could back that up. They would have guffawed Ghandi off the plank.
The ability to apply equal and opposing force of some kind is what keeps us in balance. That applies to truth and reason and walking and swimming and tai chi, as well as force of arms.
Keep in mind that aside of various epidemics, states have been responsible for way more loss of life than individuals or even gangs. States have murdered over 100 million people (non-combatants) since about 1900. Usually those people were disarmed, legally or by force, by the state first; then they were slaughtered.
How is putting all of us on an equal defensive footing going to do anything worse than that? I see no improvement over that in the current unequal, racist and classist system. If we do not need states for protection we do not need states. In fact, states are by and large “protection rackets” that we are unable to resign from without being brutalized.
I will not accept that there is a class of people (the police/military) who have superior judgment, are wiser or more capable of protecting me than I am myself. It is entirely unfair, not to mention foolish, to lay that responsibility on anybody else.
The question is; how do we get from blabbing to each other on the internet to turning these ideas into practical on the ground practice by real people? Obviously, many people are living in intentional communities, or, like me, have gone back to the land to one degree or another. I don’t know how to accelerate this process (necessity may do it in the near future) effectively. I also don’t have any idea how to stop the mayhem which is being committed in my name by persons effectively beyond my control.
One last thought. I believe voluntary association is more to the point than the over simplistic idea of “non-violence”.
I think that if I am not harming anyone and someone attempts to coerce me into doing anything I don’t choose to, especially if they threaten my life (anyone attempting to coerce you while wearing a gun is threatening your life), then that should be considered by any sane person to be a capital offense. I think coercion needs to get a real bad rep; like seriously bad; like no-one-would-be- stupid-enough-to-attempt-it bad.
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From: Adam Sacks
Date: Tue, 25 Apr 2006 04:52:13 -0700 (PDT)
To: Thomas K Wilson, Lawrence Salzman
CC: George Salzman, L. Urban Kohler
Hi TK -
Great insights, and I think will have to agree to disagree about arguing with loaded .38s. If someone is hell-bent on pulling the trigger there’s not much to say. But oral arguments frequently trump explosion chemistry, and shooting has never led to anything but more shooting as far as I can tell. Nor is there any way your loaded .38, your Uzzi, your dirty bomb, is going to trump the armed might of the nation state. It’s the oral argument (or demagoguery) that
ultimately rallies the populace to change that (for better or worse).
If I’m anything resembling a pacifist, it’s because violence never seems to result in peace (unless you call such things as the Cold War and Mutually Assured Destruction “peace”). Even if pulling the trigger in locale “A” quiets things down a bit, the ripple is felt elsewhere in this irrevocably connected web we weave.
Cheers,
Adam
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From: George Salzman
Date: Tue, 25 Apr 2006 08:15:38 -0500
To: Adam Sacks
CC: Thomas K. Wilson, Lawrence Salzman, L. Urban Kohler, James Herod <>
Oaxaca, Tuesday, 25 April 2006
Hi Adam,
Thanks for responding to Thomas. I’ve been over my neck these last couple of weeks, and am unable to jump in as I’d like. I am as outraged as you Tom, but small arms are just that, small. The excerpt from James Herod’s essay, Getting Free, is also the view I have of how we ought to proceed:
A further assumption I make is that it is impossible to defeat our ruling class by force of arms. The level of firepower currently possessed by all major governments and most minor ones is simply overwhelming. It is bought with the expropriated wealth of billions of people. For any opposition movement to think that it can acquire, maintain, and deploy a similarly vast and sophisticated armament is ludicrous. I have nothing against armed struggle in principle (although of course I don’t like it). I just don’t think it can work now. It would take an empire as enormous and rich as capitalism itself is to fight capitalists on their own terms. This is something the working classes of the world will never have, nor should we even want it.
This does not mean though that we should not think strategically, in order to win, and defeat our oppressors. It means that we have to learn how to destroy them without firing a single shot. It means that we have to look to, and invent if necessary, other weapons, other tactics. But we must be careful not to fall into the nonviolence/violence trap. Is tearing down a fence a violent act, or resistance to the violence of those who erected the fence in the first place? Is throwing a tear gas canister back at the police who fired it an act of violence, or resistance to an act of violence? Nonviolence is a main ideological weapon of a very violent ruling class. They use it to pacify us. They use their mass media to preach nonviolence incessantly. It’s an effective weapon because we all (but they don’t) want to live in a peaceful, nonviolent world. We would do well to chart a careful course through this swamp.
These 2 paragraphs are from the preface to his essay, at http://site.www.umb.edu/faculty/salzman_g/Strate/GetFre/P.htm. I’ve found James’ work inspirational and suggest you check it out. He’s only wrong about a few points, the ones he and I disagree on.
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From: Lawrence Salzman
Date: Wed, 26 Apr 2006 08:02:16 EDT
To: Thomas K. Wilson
CC: George Salzman, Adam Sacks, L. Urban Kohler, James Herod
In a message dated 4/25/2006 10:13:45 PM Eastern Standard Time, writes:
> The only way Israel is going to end the Palestinian “problem” is either by
> absorbing the Palestinian state whole (which looks pretty unlikely) or by
> exterminating anyone in the middle east capable of presenting resistance
OR;
> by getting the fuck out of Palestine.
> This shit about creating a heavily armed and fortified garrison state is not
> just not workable; it is not rational.
> There may be other solutions that would work that have not occurred to me
> (duh) but clearly I can’t think what they are.
Here’s an idea. Hamas recognize Israel’s right to exist. Appoint Abbas, for instance, and let him sit down with Israeli leaders and attempt to pound out a two-state compromise, as he has often stated is the path to peace.
Realize the recent election in Israel clearly expressed the desire of the voters for a two-state solution. Likud lost many of its seats in the Knesset and is now a minor party.
When you people leave the land you are living on that has been stolen from Native Americans, I’ll be more impressed with your basically no-compromise attitude to a “solution” of the conflict between Palestinians and Israel.
Do any of you really think suicide bombers will bring Israel to its knees? By the way, study what happened in Hebron in 1929 when Arabs living there killed and drove out all the Jews. There had been Jews living in Hebron literally since the time of King David as it was the capital of Judea at that time.
It was King David who moved the capital from Hebron to Jerusalem. (The names are still the same after roughly 3,000 years.) The Jews living in Hebron in 1929 were not “Zionists,” but religious Jews whose families had lived there for centuries if not since biblical times. When you cut someone with a knife, the wound heals, but it leaves a scar.
Unfortunately, the “solutions” proposed by many who send these notes back and forth will not solve the problem in either George’s or my lifetime. Actually, our family which goes back to the 1880s in what was then Palestine, were for a bi-national state. Unfortunately, it developed into a political impossibility for reasons just like the Hebron pogrom and other “incidents” such as the killing of two of our great uncles who were farmers. There can be no solution unless both sides sit down and pound out a compromise.
————————————————————————————
From: L. Urban Kohler <>
Date: Wed, 26 Apr 2006 11:45:44 -0700 (PDT)
To: Lawrence Salzman <>
I don’t know if this is really relevant to the discussion, but my feeling from election results, etc. is that most Middle-easters would love to find a peaceful compromise, but that there is something naive being assumed by any of us when we point out that current strategies are not working.
I think it’s because a small faction (maybe it could be described as a guerilla movement that thrives on crisis and instability, which could include some unexpected bedfellows, such as arms makers and bankers, as well as neocons) really don’t want peace.
Another thing I see operating is something former 60s activist Rennie Davis (one of the “Chicago 7) believes is a newly discovered principle of physics, that perception actually CREATES physical reality. Here’s something I wrote to a local talk show after hearing Rennie Davis interviewed:
As a veteran of 1969 war moratorium protests in DC I was excited to hear Rennie Davis on JeffExchange. He makes a good case for the power of perception in creating reality. (and for the conclusion that we can & must create a better world by expecting and percieving our world the way we desire it to be)
But how can I escape from the pessimistic thought that a very powerful faction of humanity (the most powerful, not in numbers but in capacity to create reality,) now percieves, and insists that we ALL percieve, the world as divided into armed camps with greedy and competetive agendas and machiavelliasn intentions?
Does not THIS perception currently “precede reality” and is this not exactly why we have this greedy, nasty, deadly world? (certainly there are people and areas that son’t fit this negative description, but overall, uhnless you are pollyanna ostrich, you have to see that for most, life is less than utopian!)
A perfect smaller example of what I would call a self-fulfilling reality driven by preconceptions (Rennie’s physics principle of thought preceding physical reality) is Israel’s prdicament. By perceiving themselves the objects of Arab hatred and acting accordingly they have BECOME the objects of Arab hatred. It’s like my neighbor’s dog, a sweet-looking border collie, who sets up incessant barking whenever I am in my yard and if I approach the fence and talk sweetly to her, even bring her treats (which she accepts) she neverltheless gets more agitated the closer I get, charging at me and baring fangs, and barking ever more visiously.
Yes, perception precedes and creates reality! My neighbor’s dog, Israel, and the neocons all live in the world created by their perceptions. But this is MY world too, yet against my will I am helping pay for their perpetrating of these ugly perceptions. It seems to me perceptions backed by bared fangs, by occupation and intimidation and by pre-emptive war, are winning out over perceptions backed by love. Much as I’d like to (and try to) address my neighbor’s dog and the world’s problems with love, so far it is not working. I honestly don’t blame the dog.
I truly believe the majority of us (perhaps every single one of us!) has good intentions. For this we deserve love, and yet our world does not seem to be a manifistation of widespread good intentions. How come??
————————————————————————————
An added note: In a private e-mail, Adam Sacks mentioned the book The Many-Headed Hydra, by Peter Linebaugh and Marcus Rediker, a history of the Atlantic trade in the 18th and 19th centuries. I don’t have his note (can’t save everything), but recall him saying it was a period of much racial and ethnic mixing, a very vital time. Sounds interesting — so much does.
Please, if you want to add comments to the above discussion, it would be a great help if you decide to post them directly to the blog rather than writing me. On the other hand, if you want to write other individuals whose addresses are given, that’s fine with me. It’s just that I’ve been overwhelmed with the volume. Many thanks for your interest.George
Posting 19. to The Jewish-Israeli Lobby category, Nadia Gould’s request for clarity
Oaxaca, Sunday, 23 April 2006
Dear Nadia,
This is in answer to your e-mail, namely
————————-
Subject: Re: Jeffrey Blankfort’s article in Counterpunch
From: Nadia Gould <>
Date: Fri, 21 Apr 2006 10:27:24 -0400 (GMT-04:00)
To: George Salzman <>
Dear George,
Have you seen my book Hitler made me a Jew (Boson Book sold at Barnes and Noble or Amazon)? I started to read your enclosed email correspondance and I couldn’t continue — it scared me I am now 77 — if you read my small (84 pages) book you will understand all the emotions it brings back – 6 millions Jews were systematically killed when the world stood still doing NOTHING and let it happen and I was a lucky one to escape through Spain and Portugal – I know ANTISEMITISM I can smell like the gas from my stove – How many Jews are left in this world today? You (or the people with whom you discusss) are telling me that Israel is imperialist - racist - elitist … etc… Please write you or
whoever is writing you — write it all in CLEARER language EXPLAIN what you are really saying because if you say what I began to smell I feel sick —
Nadia
—–Original Message—–
From: George Salzman
Sent: Apr 21, 2006 12:53 AM
To: Jeffrey Blankfort
Subject: Re: Jeffrey Blankfort’s article in Counterpunch
Oaxaca, Thursday, 20 April 2006
Hi Jeff,
Thanks for writing. Glad to hear from you, and that you can accept my appreciation of your work in spite of my previous criticism. The articles that Manuel Garcia referred to in his latest two notes, the ones by Gabriel Ash, are for me not such easy reading, but I think he’s doing something that completely escaped me, especially the second article, which ends with . . .
————————-
Nadia, I’m sorry that the writing in the e-mail correspondence is not clearer and easier to understand. I urge people to use straightforward everyday language, but many academics seem reluctant to do that. Separately from the question of clear language, there is the problem that the issues are fairly complex. No one with even only the most basic acquaintance with the 20th century does not know of the horror of the Nazi slaughter of European Jews. It was a genocide against Jews by Christian nations, not by Islamic nations. The major powers decided to “provide a homeland” for Jews — in Palestine — which was inhabited by people who had lived there for ages. The founding Zionists were well aware they would have to push out the Palestinians.
If you have not read the research paper by Mearsheim and Walt, “The Israel Lobby and U.S. Foreign Policy”, you can glance at their clear discussion (on pp. 9-10 of the full version at papers.ssrn.com/abstract=891198) of the Zionists’ awareness that their project would entail much suffering by Arabs.
For example, they write,
The mainstream Zionist leadership was not interested in establishing a bi-national state or accepting a permanent partition of Palestine. The Zionist leadership was sometimes willing to accept partition as a first step, but this was a tactical maneuver and not their real objective. As David Ben-Gurion put it in the late 1930s, “After the formation of a large army in the wake of the establishment of the state, we shall abolish partition and expand to the whole of Palestine.” 32
To achieve this goal, the Zionists had to expel large numbers of Arabs from the territory that would eventually become Israel. There was simply no other way to accomplish their objective. Ben-Gurion saw the problem clearly, writing in 1941 that “it is impossible to imagine general evacuation [of the Arab population] without compulsion, and brutal compulsion.” 33 Or as Israeli historian Benny Morris puts it, “the idea of transfer is as old as modern Zionism and has accompanied its evolution and praxis during the past century.” 34
. . .
. . . Ben-Gurion told Nahum Goldmann, president of the World Jewish Congress, “If I were an Arab leader I would never make terms with Israel. That is natural: we have taken their country. . . . We come from Israel, but two thousand years ago, and what is that to them? There has been anti-Semitism, the Nazis, Hitler, Auschwitz, but was that their fault? They only see one thing: we have come here and stolen their country. Why should they accept that?” 37
I think that’s about as clear writing as you’ll find anywhere, and it’s all carefully referenced. When I got your note I went to look at our earlier correspondence. The first note, about 2 and 1/2 years ago, was
———————
Subject: regarding your last message
Date: Sat, 1 Nov 2003 10:03:05 -0500
From: Nadia Gould <>
To: George Salzman <>
Dear George ,
I thank you for sending me your last message even though I had asked you to stop sending me your newsletter - this last one was very interesting and I appreciated getting the website address of the Shalom people - it is a funny coincidence that I had received a day earlier the address of website of Hamas (located in Holland) - I have traveled in Muslim countries for many years and I have lived in the homes of great wonderful warm people - the best - I love many things about the culture believe me- I personally, am not religious but I, barely, escaped the Holocaust at the very end of 1942 read my book!!!
my dear George, PLEASE show me websites from the Muslim world that could be compared to the Shalom in Muslim countries – if you can — I will maybe change my mind for the moment I am not convinced that the Palestinians are not the pawns of the extremists Muslims who hold the Moderates everywhere in the Muslim world hostages-
sincerely ,
Nadia
NADIA GOULD
212 666 7553
LOOK FOR MY BOOK
IN BOSON BOOKS
NON-FICTION
———————
I have not seen your book, which you promised to mail me but apparently forgot to do. There are two excellent groups in Palestine I happen to know of offhand, The Palestine National Initiative (Al Mubadara) which has a website at http://www.almubadara.org/en/ (somewhat out of date), and The Gaza Community Mental Health Center. In a recent paper, at http://site.www.umb.edu/faculty/salzman_g/Strate/2006-02-18.htm, I wrote,
Among the many responses to Hamas’s sweeping electoral victory is the relatively brief assessment of Dr. Eyad El Sarraj, psychiatrist and founder and director of the Gaza Community Mental Health Center (GCMHC). It is not among those many articles cited by Bill Templer, possibly because it was published after Templer completed his article. I got it by e-mail from the GCMHC on February 12. It is available at http://www.gcmhp.net/File_files/onvictorhamas.html.
The Gaza Community Mental Health Center is first rate. You might also contact a friend, Laurie White <>, a Jewish woman from Ann Arbor who is part of an organization, Zeitouna <, of Arab and Jewish women who are soon going to Israel-Palestine and who are devoted to achieving real peace, peace with justice and dignity for all people. The main point is to recognize our common humanity. The horrors of the past cannot be undone, but we can try to use our intelligence and compassion to change the course of history to bring an end to such horrors.
Posting 18. to The Jewish-Israeli Lobby, an essay by Israeli peace activist Uri Avnery, 22 April 2006
Who’s the dog? Who’s the tail?
I don’t usually tell these stories, because they might give rise to the suspicion that I am paranoid.
For example: 27 years ago, I was invited to give a lecture-tour in 30 American universities, including all the most prestigious ones - Harvard, Yale, Princeton, MIT, Berkeley and so on. My host was the Fellowship of Reconciliation, a respected non-Jewish organization, but the lectures themselves were to be held under the auspices of the Jewish Bet-Hillel chaplains.
On arrival at the airport in New York I was met by one of the organizers. “There is a slight hitch,” he told me, “29 of the Rabbis have cancelled your lecture.”
In the end, all the lectures did take place, under the auspices of Christian chaplains. When we came to the lone Rabbi who had not cancelled my lecture, he told me the secret: the lectures had been forbidden in a confidential letter from the Anti-Defamation League, the thought-police of the Jewish establishment. The salient phrase has stuck to my memory: “While it cannot be said that Member of the Knesset Avnery is a traitor, yet…”
And another story from real life: a year later I went to Washington DC in order to “sell” the Two-State solution, which at the time was considered an outlandish, not to say crazy, idea. In the course of the visit, the Quakers were so kind as to arrange a press conference for me.
When I arrived, I was amazed. The hall was crammed full, practically all the important American media were represented. Many had come straight from a press conference held by Golda Meir, who was also in town. The event was to last an hour, as is usual, but the journalists did not let go. They bombarded me with questions for another two hours. Clearly, what I had to say was quite new to them and they were interested.
I was curious how this would be reported in the media. And indeed, the reaction was stunning: not a word appeared in any of the newspapers, on radio or TV. Not one single word.
By the way, three years ago I again held a press conference, this time on Capitol Hill in Washington. It was an exact replica of the last time: the crowd of reporters, their obvious interest, the continuation of the conference well beyond the appointed time - and not a single word in the media.
I could tell some more stories like these, but the point is made. I recount them only in connection with the scandal recently caused by two American professors, Stephen Walt of Harvard and John Mearsheimer of the University of Chicago. They published a research paper on the influence of the Israel lobby in the United States.
In 80 pages, 40 of them footnotes and sources, the two show how the pro-Israel lobby exercises unbridled power in the US capital, how it terrorizes the members of the Senate and the House of Representatives, how the White House dances to its tune (if indeed a house can dance), how the important media obey its orders and how the universities, too, live in fear of it.
The paper caused a storm. And I don’t mean the predictable wild attacks by the “friends of Israel” - which means almost all politicians, journalists and professors. These pelted the authors with all the usual accusations: that they were anti-Semites, that they were resurrecting the Protocols of the Elders of Zion, and so forth. There was something paradoxical in these attacks, since they only illustrated the authors’ case.
But the debate that fascinates me is of a different nature. It broke out between senior intellectuals, from the legendary Noam Chomsky, the guru of the Left throughout the world (including Israel), to progressive websites everywhere. The bone of contention: the conclusion of the paper that the Jewish-Israeli lobby dominates US foreign policy and subjugates it to Israeli interests - in glaring contradiction to the national interest of the US itself. A case in point: the American assault on Iraq.
Chomsky and others rose up against this assertion. They do not deny the factual findings of the two professors, but object to their conclusions. In their view, it is not the Israel lobby that directs American policy, but the interests of the big corporations that dominate the American empire and exploit Israel for their own selfish aims.
Simply put: does the dog wag its tail, or does the tail wag its dog?
I am nervous about sticking my head into a debate between such illustrious intellectuals, but I feel obliged to express my view nevertheless.
I’ll start with the Jew, who went to the Rabbi and complained about his neighbor. “You are right’” the Rabbi declared. Then came the neighbor and denounced the complainant. “You are right’” the Rabbi announced. “But how can that be,” exclaimed the Rabbi’s wife, “Only one of the two can be right!” “You are right, too,” the Rabbi said.
I find myself in a similar situation. I think that both sides are right (and hope to be right, myself, too).
The findings of the two professors are right to the last detail. Every Senator and Congressman knows that criticizing the Israeli government is political suicide. Two of them, a Senator and a Congressman, tried - and were politically executed. The Jewish lobby was fully mobilized against them and hounded them out of office. This was done openly, to set a public example. If the Israeli government wanted a law tomorrow annulling the Ten Commandments, 95 Senators (at least) would sign the bill forthwith.
President Bush, for example, has withdrawn from all the established American positions regarding our conflict. He accepts automatically the positions of our government, be they as they may. Almost all the American media are closed to Palestinians and Israeli peace activists. As to professors - almost all of them know which side of their bread is peanut-buttered. If, in spite of that, somebody dares to open their mouth against the Israeli policy - as happens once every few years - they are smothered under a volley of denunciations: anti-Semite, Holocaust denier, neo-Nazi.
By the way, American guests in Israel, who know that at home it is forbidden to mention the influence of the Jewish-Israeli lobby, are dumbfounded to see that here the lobby does not hide its power in Washington but openly boasts of it.
The question, therefore, is not whether the two professors are right in their findings. The question is what conclusions can be drawn from them.
Let’s take the Iraq affair. Who is the dog? Who the tail?
The Israeli government prayed for this attack, which has eliminated the strategic threat posed by Iraq. America was pushed into the war by a group of Neo-Conservatives, almost all of them Jews, who had a huge influence on the White House. In the past, some of them had acted as advisers to Binyamin Netanyahu.
On the face of it, a clear case. The pro-Israeli lobby pushed for the war, Israel is its main beneficiary. If the war ends in a disaster for America, Israel will undoubtedly be blamed.
Really? What about the American aim of getting their hands on the main oil reserves of the world, in order to dominate the world economy? What about the aim of placing an American garrison in the center of the main oil-producing area, on top of the Iraqi oil, between the oil of Saudi Arabia, Iran and the Caspian Sea? What about the immense influence of the big oil companies on the Bush family? What about the big multinational corporations, whose outstanding representative is Dick Cheney, that hoped to make hundreds of billions from the “reconstruction of Iraq”?
The lesson of the Iraq affair is that the American-Israeli connection is strongest when it seems that American interests and Israeli Interests are one (irrespective of whether that is really the case in the long run). The US uses Israel to dominate the Middle East, Israel uses the US to dominate Palestine.
But if something exceptional happens, such as the Jonathan Pollard espionage affair or the sale of an Israeli spy plane to China, and a gap opens between the interests of the two sides, America is quite capable of slapping Israel in the face.
American-Israeli relations are indeed unique. It seems that they have no precedent in history. It is as if King Herod had given orders to Augustus Caesar and appointed the members of the Roman senate.
I don’t think that this phenomenon can be wholly explained by economic interests. Even the most orthodox Marxist must recognize that it also has a spiritual dimension. It is no accident that American (as well as British) fundamentalist Christians invented the Zionist idea well before Theodor Herzl hit upon it. The evangelical lobby is no less important in today’s Washington than the Zionist one. According to its ideology, the Jews must take possession of all the Holy Land in order to make the Second Coming of Christ possible (and then - the part they don’t shout about - some Jews will become Christians and the rest will be annihilated at Armaggedon, today’s Meggido in Northern Israel).
At the basis of the phenomenon lies the uncanny similarity between the two national-religious stories, the American myth and the Israeli. In both, pioneers persecuted for their religion reached the shores of the Promised Land. They were forced to defend themselves against the “savage” natives, who were out to destroy them. They redeemed the land, made the desert bloom, created, with God’s help, a flourishing, democratic and moral society.
Both societies live in a state of denial and unconscious guilt feelings - over there because of the genocide committed against the Native Americans and the horrifying slavery of the blacks, here because of the uprooting of half the Palestinian people and the oppression of the other half. Both here and there, people believe in an eternal war between the Sons of Light and the Sons of Darkness.
Anyhow, the American-Israeli symbiosis is unique and far too complex a phenomenon to be described as a simple conspiracy. I am sure that the two professors did not mean to do so.
The dog wags the tail and the tail wags the dog. They wag each other.
Listen and watch this video by Cindy against Bush and the war — and then imagine it filtered through the anti-Lobby discourse. Is that the kind of antiwar movement you want to build? Imagine the adjective ‘Jewish’ or ‘Zionist’ even one time in her discourse. Bill
Dear Bill,
You’re a tough, determined, valuable ally. But so is Jeffrey Blankfort, and Noam Chomsky, and many others. I can barely stay in the swim. Obviously, with your latest post to the blog you’re attempting to raise the discussion to a higher level, tackling the “body language” of writing. I’m reminded of an earlier piece titled, “To the shoemaker, there’s nothing like leather”, just as To the plumber, there’s nothing like copper tubing, and now, To the linguist, there’s nothing like critical discourse analysis (CDA). Oi! Oi! Oi! There’s no end to how much I still have to learn. I’ve had for many years an allergic reaction to the word “semiotics”, ever since my daughter Erica first brought it home from Brookline High School, and when I came upon “sociosemiotics” in your essay, I felt an involuntary constriction in my throat, but that didn’t stop me. It’s a good essay, and you end it with your feet solidly on the ground: “Meanwhile, the real struggle is against Israeli fascist policy and U.S. geopolitics. Our comrades are in Budrus and Bil’in every week fighting that. Direct action. Palestinians and Jews shoulder to shoulder, facing the Israeli army.” But I’m by no means persuaded that your position on the matter of labelling is correct.
Like you, I think Gabriel Ash’s two articles are excellent, though I’ve read them only once. It seems to me that he constructs a better frame of reference from which to think about what’s going on than the one we were using earlier. I’ll close this note with a few other facets of this multi-address correspondence.
1. I think we are building real trust among ourselves in this effort. An example is in the changing position of Karen Spence, who wrote me on 13 Apr 2006, “Are you trying to get me killed, or have my life ruined? What the hell is your strategy here?” Karen has moved, I think comfortably, back into participation in the discussion.
Subject: Re: The flood seems to be subsiding
From: George Salzman
Date: Sat, 15 Apr 2006 11:08:53 -0500
To: Karen Spence
CC: Jeffrey Blankfort , Adam D. Sacks
Karen, this is just to acknowledge your note that begins,
———————-
Subject: RE: The flood seems to be subsiding
From: Karen Spence <>
Date: Sat, 15 Apr 2006 10:56:18 -0400
To: George Salzman <>, Adam D. Sacks <>
CC: Jeffrey Blankfort <>
This is one issue, in particular, that I would welcome wholeheartedly to be wrong all of the time, especially when it comes to not giving someone the benefit of the doubt. …
———————-
Building trust in the movement for human liberation is a major problem. I’ve tried to explore it in an earlier writing, which starts:
Mutual Aid and Mutual Trust
essay 5 of the series
Building the Global Grassroots Infrastructure
December 29, 2001
Summary: In the context of ongoing terror promoted by the U.S. government, building mutual aid and mutual trust within the growing global grassroots infrastructure is considered.
THE IMMEDIATE CONTEXT
Instead of Mutual Aid, Mutual Horror
Immediately after the September 11, 2001 attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon the U.S. regime — George W. Bush and the rest of his Cabal — fully supported by mainstream U.S. corporate mass media, launched its War FOR Terrorism, a global attack on all fronts to further promote and assure U.S.-directed terrorism. It began in the U.S. with adoption of police-state control measures and military mobilization, and a sustained propaganda campaign by the Bush Cabal and its mainstream corporate media allies, looking towards broad government violations of traditional rights to privacy and many of the supposedly inviolable constitutional guarantees of Americans. Less than one month later, on October 7th, the U.S. regime began its massive bombing strikes against Afghanistan. …
and somewhat indirectly more recently in an essay that begins:
Out of the box!
Towards humane survival
G. S. <>
February 18, 2006
Once upon a time there lived a very smart Jew. At age 70 he received a letter from a rabbi, who explained that he had sought in vain to comfort his 19-year-old daughter over the death of her sister, “a sinless, beautiful, 16-year-old child.”
In reply the elderly Jew wrote, “A human being is a part of the whole, called by us ‘Universe,’ a part limited in time and space. He experiences himself, his thoughts and feelings as something separated from the rest — a kind of optical delusion of his consciousness. This delusion is a kind of prison for us, restricting us to our personal desires and to affection for a few persons nearest to us. Our task must be to free ourselves from this prison by widening our circle of compassion to embrace all living creatures and the whole nature in its beauty. Nobody is able to achieve this completely, but the striving for such achievement is in itself a part of the liberation and a foundation for inner security.” [1]
The Hamas electoral victory: a chance to break out of the box?
Or are we prisoners still?
NOTES:
[1] The exchange between the rabbi and Albert Einstein was in the New York Times obituary published one or a few days after Einstein’s death on April 18, 1955 at age 76.
These efforts of mine reveal much of what I believe we need to do. Certainly trust among ourselves is a rock-bottom requirement. But it takes effort, and total honesty with each other.
Sincerely, and with best wishes, George
2. One of the shortcomings of this entire discussion is, as it were, its stress on objective un-emotional analysis, as though only a commitment to purely logical discourse can serve us. Of course (excuse me, Bill) I know we need to be rational but we ought, I think, to let our passion for decency and love not be hidden by dedication to unemotional exchanges. There’s no sense of moral outrage — and I mean real, fierce rage — in, for example, the Mearsheimer-Walt paper. At least with Chomsky’s writing, his outrage usually ripples beneath the skin of his sarcastic prose, though I’m not sure his ZNet piece shows it. And Gabriel Ash’s fine work reads as though it were the product of a logic machine, at least that’s how it struck me. It’s like a straightjacket of academic discipline that we’re confined to. That’s no good for getting to the folks we really need to get to listen and learn. Here’s what Joe Bageant has to say about this in one of the numerous notes that already came in today:
Subject: from joe bageant
From: Bageant, Joseph <>
Date: Fri, 21 Apr 2006 08:30:59 -0500
To:
Greetings my fellow grizzled old coot!
And thank you George for the reasonable voice of your reply in the face of my desperation. Times are hard and it “gets pretty drunk out” some nights. Working inside small town red state America has taken its toll on my nerves for sure. You’re right. The struggle is global and needs to be fought that way. It’s hard to remember from this vantage point. About the only way in which I would differ with your insightful reply is that … well, come to think of it, I would not disagree with a word of it.
Another thing: It has occurred to me that Joe Sixpack may be irrelevant in the 2008 elections, if the battle is truly that of information, media, manufactured consent and all that stuff so discussed by internet intelligencia on the left. I just don’t know anymore who among us are pawns and who are not, such is the level of illusion and disinformation. (I can tell you for sure that Jeff Saint Clair is a Bildergerger-launched disinformation robot shape shifting as an internet leftist!) Seriously though, I know only one thing at this point: the battle for the consciousness and dignity of man is certainly benefiting from the Internet, but it will ultimately be fought right here in good old “meatspace.” Face to face, door to door and person to person. Sort of a Fallujah of the heart. But as long as we are all in different cultural silos of class and talking only to each other, the only result will be that we will coalesce as “the opposition,” for sure. But so what? So we get a little air time on NPR like we did this morning about the Israeli Lobby. So what? Again it is just one more group of elites arguing with another. Academics. Politicians. Media. Leftist Internet pundits…
Meanwhile, there are tens of millions of Americans who have been blinded, then raised and fattened for profit like cattle by the capitalist state and its economic, cultural, military and political elite. And when the money elites set fire to the barn as they exit with all the dough for their offshore villas, the cattle will stampede in their rage most likely toward scapegoating some darker skinned mook, or war, or some other atrocity as they have been trained. And there will be no one to lead them.
When that happens, it would be damned nice if the comfortable progressive liberal and leftist folks with the IRAs and the masters degrees and the aesthetics and insight that only education can bring knew just one poor working mook at the chicken plant well enough to call them on the phone. And I mean really know them. Have been to their cheap weddings and helped with their troubled kids. Really know them as human beings as friends, and god forbid! Maybe even loaned them a few bucks when they were behind on the heating bill. (LOL! Never happen! Leftists believe the government should do it.) Because then when the stampede starts the left could influence the direction in which it runs, the road that will be taken in the face of fear and insecurity and rage at having been betrayed. The culturally inflicted blindness of the working class voter in America is misused by both parties, we know that. But even a blind man can HEAR the truth when it is spoken. The trick for us is to deliver it to someone other than the choir in which we sing. Face to face. Hell we don’t even do that with each other for the most part. We do it on then net. However, I must say I was deeply humbled when you went to such great discomfort and expense to visit me in Winchester. I was moved to near tears, but never showed it, did I? The pride of old men…Southern men are the worst.)
On the other hand, being raised in such meanness and poverty, maybe I just have too much residual class hate for everyone born even one more rung up the ladder than I was. I dunno. You are the only Jewish intellectual I seem to like personally. And if you find the sudden discovery of the Jewish Lobby by Jews themselves interesting, well hell ole buddy, so do I. It’s kinda like a dog finding its own ass, but what the hell? You’ve tolerated a lot of my blindnesses and even hand carried the books to me that would cure them. (I am still working on Peter Kropotkin.)
Whatever the case, I have experienced hundreds of times what Jeff St. Clair quoted in his post: “One of the successes of the lobby’s merchandising of the Holocaust has been that people are fearful of saying or writing the word “Jew” in a negative manner whereas it is open season on every other group on the planet.”
And even that doesn’t convince me that, fucked as the Jewish Lobby is, it is in no particular way near the heart of America’s problem. It is simply another one being acknowledged. The problem seems to be the heart itself.
Joe Bageant
Kiss Nancy for me, and when I get to Oaxaca some day, I will kiss her myself when you aren’t looking.
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Subject: PS: from joe bageant
Date: Fri, 21 Apr 2006 08:43:05 -0500
RE: I’m sending this out to a very limited list, still, if you want me to take your name off this list (it’s not my so-called e-mail distribution list of about 1400), please let me know.
Nah. Send it to all 1400 if you want I don’t care. I have no secrets. And besides, we all need to be more open, be more trusting, throw all our secrets out onto the porch for our neighbors to see.
Your brother,
joe
3. And here’s the start of “There’s nothing like sociosemiotics” — to the linguist:
To the shoemaker, there’s nothing like leather
November 11, 2003
Subject: What about voting? Should we, and if so for whom?
Date: Tue, 11 Nov 2003 08:40:53 -0600
From: George Salzman <>
BCC: (entire general list)
Oaxaca, Thursday, November 11, 2003
Friends:
When I first went to live in Boston in 1964 I got a pair of Madre boots, made by Fabbiano in Italy. Although I already had heavy duty mountain boots, good for rough rocky terrain and ice fields in the Colorado Rockies; the lighter …
How do we get to the good people who, for example, are ordinary, everyday right-wing religious fanatics? Not with our intellectualizing — that’s for sure.
Posting 16. to The Jewish-Israeli Lobby category, by Bill Templer
To answer George: yes, it IS about language. My own recent critique is precisely about discourse and language. Rhetorical analysis. That is what I’m trying to address a bit in the constructions of a masterful journalist like Blankfort. One dimension is FACTS ABOUT SOCIAL PRACTICE, the societal networks of Capital and its geopolitics, which Ash looks at pretty convincingly — what at a LEVEL OF POLITICAL ANALYSIS the discussion is about.
SOCIOSEMIOTICS AND THE POLITICS OF DISCOURSE: But another level in any text or their ensemble is the texturing of the discourse itself, the representations and imaginaries it creates, its discoursal world. It seems elementary to have to say this here. How racism functions at various key levels is through LANGUAGE and imaging, its architecture and innuendo and inculcation. How gendered talk is reproduced and constructs a universe is something any feminist knows. How anti-Zigan talk works is bitter knowledge to East European Roma. How anti-Palestinian racism works as a ‘discourse’ in Israel is likewise clear to any Palestinian, in the Negev or elsewhere. That discourse underpins and reproduces social practice. How anti-Semitism circulates at the level of verbal construction of attitudes and images in Europe, North America and elsewhere remains an analogous set.
CRITICAL DISCOURSE ANALYSIS: CDA sets out to look precisely at that, like the key work of linguist Norman Fairclough (U Lancaster) and many others. Teo talks about the need to “unpack the ideological underpinnings of discourse that have become so naturalized over time that we begin to treat them as common, acceptable and natural features of discourse.” You can find some papers of Fairclough at http://www.ling.lancs.ac.uk/staff/norman/norman.htm A recent book of his on CDA is Analyzing Discourse: Textual Analysis for Social Research (Routledge 2003).Here a brief paper for starters: http://www.ling.lancs.ac.uk/staff/norman/paper4.doc
I’ve worked with Palestinian social scientists on how reporting about Palestinians is slanted in the North American press. We’ve used some techniques of CDA.
I’m pretty sure that what Eliot Cohen and others on the Jewish right are responding to in part is this DISCOURSAL WEB OF INNUENDO AND UNDERTONE that shapes and reproduces attitude in analysis on ‘Jewish power and its organizations.’ The politics of rhetoric. Ash in his analysis does not address that. Neither does Chomsky or John Spritzler. Neither do Mearsheimer and Walt. Nor in fact does Eliot Cohen in an explicit way.
They look at the elephant and what it could be — not its discoursal construction and texturing and ‘framing as a narrative.’ I suggest that part of what is seriously needed is CDA analysis of this Lobbytalk.
Any 9th-grade high school kid can be taught to do this in critical media analysis. In CDA, Fairclough also examines “the ‘resonance’ of discourses, their capacity to mobilize people, not only in the institutions but also in the lifeworld.”
In any event, I would agree with Juan Cole that Likud and its stateside mafia are what need concentrating on. As he says: “David Horowitz and Daniel Pipes are encouraging a new kind of antisemitism, which sees it as unacceptable that Jews should be liberals or should crticize Likud Party policies.”
ANTI-ZIGANISM: I worked for many years with Roma in southeastern Europe, who are the pariah minority par excellence. Their discrimination in social practice is huge, insidious. And it is interwoven with a whole web of anti-Gypsy DISCOURSE in Romania, Bulgaria, Moldova, Serbia, and most especially ‘Albanian’ Kosovo. –Is discourse everything? Of course not. Especially for the Roma. –Is it central? You bet. Bulgarian discourse is saturated with anti-Roma talk and attitude, a whole anti-Zigan imaginary that kids are inculcated with from an early age. And their parents take for granted, naturalized discourse. Ask any African-American, including Cynthia McKinney: what African-Americans are highly sensitive to in the media is a whole webbing of allusion and innuendo.
MAIN THESIS: The same techniques in CDA we have used to analyze ‘rhetoric’ in slanting reporting on Palestine or in anti-Roma discourse have to be applied to Lobby talk to unpack the discoursal features. That is part of the problem of how Lobbytalk is perceived and interpreted. That is not being done.
Of course: anti-Jewish attitude is far more than language as it is translated into a world of actions. But it is ALSO a tissue of word and subtext and allusion. That is one level. In a mediatized world, a primary level many Jews may be responding to in their unease about Lobbyspeak. And the level mobilized when conservative Jews point to anti-Semitic aspects of anti-Israel analysis, and attacks on AIPAC and ADL.
HYPHENATED AMERICAN: Let me comment a bit (more) on Jeff’s construction linking Lantos, McKinney and “out of town wealthy Jews.” In anti-Jewish discourse, that latter phrasing is incidentally absolutely loaded. What I didn’t mention in the brief bit I posted on George’s blog is Jeff’s ‘implicit labeling’ of Lantos as a ‘hyphenated American.’ Whose real loyalties are to another country.
This is an old part of the nativist representation and imaginary in the states. As Theodore Roosevelt said in 1915: “There is no such thing as a hyphenated American who is a good American. The only man who is a good American is the man who is an American and nothing else.” Jeff does not use the term specifically (how could he?) but suggests this quite clearly at a couple of points, letting the reader ‘extrapolate.’ This is typical rhetoric on the right. It is old stock in anti-Semitism stateside. A whole sub-universe is brewed beneath the textual surface where these things reverberate.
Jeff is a masterful journalist who knows how to ‘texture’ his narrative. Which is why he foregrounds Lantos and then does not mention him again in the last 40 percent (!) of his Counterpunch article on McKinney. Is this good writing? Yes, when slanted texturing is part of the journalistic game. Something we look at a lot in CDA analysis of newspaper articles.
Jeff writes: “Far too many Palestinians have been killed, tortured and imprisoned on the altar of Jewish sensibilities for Bill or anyone to have legitimate objections to anyone else calling people and things for what they are.” ‘Legitimate objections’?
Fabricating implicitly racist discourse is illegitimate. The media are full of such fabrication. Is some specific discourse subtextually or overtly racist? Sometimes a hard question. But discussing and analyzing whether discourse is racist (or chauvinist or ableist) is a central part of what the left in the states remains about. Where’s the line between ‘implicit’ and ‘explicit’? Sometimes hard to determine.
So I’ve tried to begin (really just begin) to unpack some of the DISCOURSAL underpinnings of what may be going on in critique of the Lobby. Others should do this more systematically. It’s needed. Beyond the kind of debate by Ash, Chomsky, Spritzler and others. I know that Rob Jensen, a critical journalism prof at U Texas very sensitive to how journalists manipulate discourse — and just gratuitously attacked by Jeff in his last posting — also agrees about this.
‘Gratuitous’ is an accurate term to designate some of what is going on here. For example, Jeff’s remark that someone named ‘Mordechai’ objected pretty strongly to his slash-and-burn bit on Lantos in Counterpunch. He could have said: ‘one angry respondent’. But Jeff didn’t. This is how ‘representation’ works, CDA Lesson 1.
Jeff is very aware of this: “I have not read Bill’s critique and if all he found to object to was my reference to Jews (and no doubt mentioning Mordechai by name stirs the same reaction) then … I am not inclined to read it.” Jeff knows the levers he pulls. ‘Stirs the same reaction’ is part of what CDA foregrounds in its prisms. It also looks carefully at the tightrope between labeling with or without the article ‘the’.
Jeff: “Saying Jews’ is very different from saying ‘The Jews,’ but that applies to every ethnic, national, or religious group.” Sure, but depending on context, that specific semiotic difference can be minimal, even if the ‘semantic’ difference is specifiable. EXAMPLE: ‘Mormons are there behind the scenes trying to gain control ….’ vs. ‘The Mormons are there behind the scenes ….’ Mormons would probably object to both. In Bulgaria, we have struggled to have the print media stop labeling people arrested as ‘Roma.’ Does Jeff want California papers to give the race or ethnicity of anyone arrested? I’m sure not. In Germany in 1935, it used to be: ‘Der Jude xxxx …’ To echo Jeff: “Calling people for what they are”?!
As Fairclough notes: “language connects with the social through being the primary domain of ideology, and through being both a site of, and a stake in, struggles for power.”
Meanwhile, the real struggle is against Israeli fascist policy and U.S. geopolitics. Our comrades are in Budrus and Bil’in every week fighting that. Direct action. Palestinians and Jews shoulder to shoulder, facing the Israeli army.
Posting 11. to General (no specific category), by Nancy Davies
Just a question—
The popular take on Iraq is that the Bush administration failed to plan properly. That they didn’t know the attack and its subsequent policies would be followed by complete collapse of the Iraq state. That dismantling of the Iraqi police was just poor judgment. That looting the culture and destroying its history was so unexpected. On and on. One “error” after another.
So my question is, does anyone out there think like I do – the Bush administration’s results are exactly what they wanted and planned for. I think, first, it is scarcely possible to be so stupid. Secondly, I think a failed Iraq State is exactly what was sought, and soon a failed Iran State will join it, if the Bushwackers can mount on an attack.
Why? Oh, I think it’s about money. Both Iraq and Iran would have liked to convert from petrodollars to petroeuros. Since neither country supplies oil to the USA, the US’s ability to act as the only middleman in the dollar market in New York represents a nice piece of change coming into the coffers for no purpose other than its own gain. Petrodollars keeps the rest of the world tethered to the US in various economic ways which I don’t claim to understand, but I have a good nose for following the money.
Furthermore, those countries that do depend on Middle East oil will be mightily handicapped if Iranian oil is not available. A ruined Middle East can only benefit the neo-con corporate Bushwackers, not harm them.
Another case in point might be New Orleans. Did the wealthy want the poor and black population to be saved, to resettle, to rebuild, and go on with their lives? I simply don’t believe that, and neither does anybody displaced from New Orleans. So was it incompetence? What, more incompetence? Or was it a deliberate gamble on an outcome in favor of wealthy redevelopers, and an ethnic cleansing by “natural” forces?
Well, what’s going on in Haiti? Did we ruin that country on purpose? You bet your ass we did.
Should we conclude that death and destruction in so many parts of the world is exactly what the Imperium wants? Outcomes are not always accidents of bad management. Often they are outcomes of good management.
Posting 15. to The Jewish-Israeli Lobby category, by George Salzman
Subject: Jeffrey Blankfort’s article in Counterpunch
From: George Salzman <>
Date: Wed, 19 Apr 2006 12:35:08 -0500
To: Jeffrey Blankfort <>, Bill Templer <>
CC: Adam D. Sacks <>, Alan M. Dershowitz, …
Oaxaca, Wednesday, April 19, 2006
Dear Jeff and Bill,
Manuel Garcia called our attention to your article, Jeff, in Counterpunch, at www.counterpunch.org/blankfort04172006.html, in a note on Monday. Several hours later I sent you a congratulatory note (which just now I fished out of my Trash mail folder) that read:
Subject: [Fwd: Re: A belated answer]
From: George Salzman <>
Date: Mon, 17 Apr 2006 20:28:47 -0500
To: Jeffrey Blankfort <>
Oaxaca, Monday, April 17, 2006
Hi Jeff,
This article is incredibly well done, more evidence of your value in uncovering The Jewish-Israeli Lobby.
Sincerely,
George
It was intended to be only a personal note, because of course (I too, like Jeff and many others, use “of course” to stress the obvious) I did not anticipate your adverse criticism of Jeff’s paper, Bill, which you later posted to the weblog. I think your criticism is totally wrong, and I have printed out your posting, “15. Untouchables?” in order to go through it carefully before writing a rejoinder. I’m very glad you are using the blog as it is intended, for direct posting, and I wish other folks would use it also. It’s set up so that anyone who registers, which is not complicated and at no cost, receives a default “author” status, enabling the author to post both articles and comments on other posts. Comments can be put up without even registering.
I know, Bill, that you don’t like having individuals being labelled as Jews, and I think I understand why, but I believe you are in error. This in spite of the fact that of all the people I correspond wi
