Israeli Criticism Of Zionism & Of Israel's Treatment Of Palestinians

"America, which provides a great deal of financial, military and political support for Israel, needs to be aware of this debate in Israel and in Jewish circles, and to understand the ramifications of uncritical support for the policies and actions of Israel toward the Palestinians and its Arab neighbors. To stifle and censor the discussion of these important issues does no favors for the United States or for Israel or the Jewish people."

By Edward C. Corrigan
(Thursday, August 19, 2010)
Courtesy Of "Media Monitors"



Critically analyzing the political ideology of Zionism, or criticizing Israel's policies toward the Palestinians, almost invariably leads to attacks from the defenders of Israel. This is especially true in North America, but far less true in most other countries in the World. As a result most North American politicians have learned to be very careful with their words when it comes to the subject of Israel and the Palestinians.

Here is what noted financier, George Soros, writing in The New York Review of Books, on April 12, 2007, had to say on this the lack of debate in the United States and how open the political debate on the Palestinian issue is in Israel:

The current policy is not even questioned in the United States. While other problem areas of the Middle East are freely discussed, criticism of our policies toward Israel is very muted indeed. The debate in Israel about Israeli policy is much more open and vigorous than in the United States. This is all the more remarkable because Palestine is the issue that more than any other currently divides the United States from Europe ... ((George Soros, "On Israel, America and AIPAC," The New York Review of Books, Volume 54, Number 6, April 12, 2007.))

Former U.S President Jimmy Carter who helped bring about the peace agreement between Israel and Egypt has also written and spoken out on Israel's policy towards the Palestinians. Carter's book Palestine: Peace, not Apartheid generated severe criticism from the American Jewish community. Here is what Cecilie Surasky, from the Jewish Voice for Peace and Muzzle Watch, had to say about this treatment.

Few people anywhere have endured more vicious demonization regarding the Israel issue than Nobel-prize-winning former US president Jimmy Carter. It is a sad statement that the man who did more for peace for the Israelis than any other U.S. president, is now vilified as an anti-Semite in Jewish communities across the land, most notably for titling his book Palestine: Peace, not Apartheid. In fact, Carter is one of Israel's few true friends who remains impressively committed to doing whatever he can to bring about some kind of resolution, rather than taking the easy road by giving the self-destructive government more of what it wants: arms and money to occupy more land. (( "Jimmy Carter's apology to the Jewish people," by Cecilie Surasky. Muzzle Watch. December 28, 2009.))

Issues that are virtually forbidden in the North American public arena are treated much differently in Israel where such topics are part of the general political discourse and debate. It is worth reviewing the political debate and critical public discussion of these issues in Israel to compare the environment in North America.

Two unlikely sources for Israeli criticism of "the Jewish State's" policies are former Israeli Prime Minister Menachem Begin and former Israeli UN Ambassador and Israeli Labor Party Foreign Minister Abba Eban. In response to what Begin considered "hypocritical" criticism of his government's bombing of Beirut in 1981 which killed hundreds of Lebanese and Palestinian civilians he offered a "partial list" of more than 30 Israeli military attacks against Arab civilians under Israeli Labor Governments. This exchange was published in the Israel Press in August 1981.

Begin wrote that: "under the Alignment government, there were retaliatory actions against civilian Arab populations; the air force operated against them; the damage was directed against such structures as the canal, bridges and transport." ((Menahem Begin, letter, Haaretz, August, 4, 1981; translated in Israleft News Service, 191, August 20, 1981, cited in Edward Herman, The Real Terror Network, (Montreal: Black Rose Books, 1982), p. 77.))

A rather shocked Abba Eban, wrote in reply: "The picture that emerges is of an Israel wantonly inflicting every possible measure of death and anguish on civilian populations in a mood reminiscent of regimes which neither Mr. Begin nor I would dare to mention by name." (( Abba Eban, "Morality and warfare," The Jerusalem Post, August 16, 1981 in cited in Edward Herman, The Real Terror Network, (Montreal: Black Rose Books, 1982), p. 77.))

Here is Edward Herman's analysis of the exchange and other statements on the use of military force made by Israeli officials:

Eban is harshly critical of Begin's letter because of the support it gives to Arab propaganda; he does not contest the facts. He even defends the earlier Israeli attacks on civilians with the exact logic which orthodox analysts of terrorism attribute to-and use to condemn-retail terrorists: namely, that deliberate attacks may properly be made on innocent parties in order to achieve higher ends. Eban writes that, "there was a rational prospect, ultimately fulfilled, that afflicted populations [i.e., innocent civilians deliberately bombed] would exert pressure for the cessation of hostilities."

Begin's list is indeed "partial." It is supplemented by former Chief of Staff Mordechai Gur, whom stated that "For 30 years, from the War of Independence until today, we have been fighting against a population that lives in villages and cities," offering as examples the bombardments that cleared the Jordan valley of all inhabitants and that drove a million and a half civilians from the Suez canal area, in 1970, among others. The Israeli military analyst Zeev Schiff summarized General Gur's comments as follows: "In South Lebanon we struck the civilian population consciously, because they deserved it ... the importance of Gur's remarks is the admission that the Israeli Army has always struck civilian populations, purposely and consciously ... the Army, he said, has never distinguished civilian [from military] targets ... [but] purposely attacked civilian targets when Israeli settlements had not been struck." ((Edward Herman, The Real Terror Network, (Montreal: Black Rose Books, 1982), p. 77-78. For further discussion of what Edward Herman describes as "Israel's Sacred Terrorism," see p. 76-79.))

Michael Ben-Yair was Israel's attorney general from 199396. He writes that after Israel won the Six Day War in June 1967:

We enthusiastically chose to become a colonial society, ignoring international treaties, expropriating lands, transferring settlers from Israel to the occupied territories, engaging in theft and finding justification for all these activities. Passionately desiring to keep the occupied territories, we developed two judicial systems: one progressive, liberal in Israel; and the other cruel, injurious in the occupied territories. In effect, we established an apartheid regime in the occupied territories immediately following their capture.

That oppressive regime exists to this day. (( "The Six Day War's Seventh Day," by Michael BenYair, Haaretz, March 3rd, 2002. This article is also reproduced in The Other Israel, Voices of Refusal and Dissent, Foreword by Tom Segev and Introduction by Anthony Lewis, edited by Roane Carey and Jonathan Shainin. (New York: New Press, 2002), p.13-15.))

Avraham Burg was speaker of Israel's Knesset in 19992003 and is a former chairman of the Jewish Agency for Israel. Here is how Burg is described in an article published in The New Yorker magazine.

Short of being Prime Minister, Burg could not be higher in the Zionist establishment. His father was a Cabinet minister for nearly four decades, serving under Prime Ministers from David BenGurion to Shimon Peres. In addition to a decadelong career in the Knesset, including four years as Speaker, Burg had also been leader of the World Zionist Organization and the Jewish Agency for Israel. And yet he did not obey the commands of pedigree. "Defeating Hitler" and an earlier book, "God Is Back," are, in combination, a despairing look at the Israeli condition. Burg warns that an increasingly large and ardent sector of Israeli society disdains political democracy. He describes the country in its current state as Holocaustobsessed, militaristic, xenophobic, and, like Germany in the nineteenthirties, vulnerable to an extremist minority. (( "The Apostate: A Zionist politician loses faith in the future," by David Remnick, The New Yorker, July 30, 2007.))

In 2003 Burg published an article titled "The end of Zionism." In it he wrote:

Israel must shed its illusions and choose between racist oppression and democracy.

The Zionist revolution has always rested on two pillars: a just path and an ethical leadership. Neither of these is operative any longer. The Israeli nation today rests on a scaffolding of corruption, and on foundations of oppression and injustice. As such, the end of the Zionist enterprise is already on our doorstep. There is a real chance that ours will be the last Zionist generation. There may yet be a Jewish state here, but it will be a different sort, strange and ugly. (( "The end of Zionism," by Avraham Burg, The Guardian, September 15, 2003.))

In 2007 another article was published in Haaretz on Avraham Burg. He is quoted: "to define the State of Israel as a Jewish state is the key to its end. A Jewish state is explosive. It's dynamite." In the interview Burg said that he was "in favor of abrogating the Law of Return and calls on everyone who can to obtain a foreign passport." This statement one of the strongest antiZionist pronouncements yet made by the former leading member of Israel's Jewish establishment. Burg, who was interviewed on the occasion of the publication of his book "Defeating Hitler" said "the strategic mistake of Zionism was to annul the alternatives. Israeliness has only body; it doesn't have soul." (( "Burg Defining Israel as a Jewish state is the key to its end," by Ari Shavit, Haaretz, June 7, 2007. See also "Leaving the Zionist ghetto: Interview with Avraham Burg," by Ari Shavit Haaretz June 8, 2007.))

Here are the words of another veteran Israeli politician, Yossi Sarid, on the comparison of Israel's policies toward the Palestinians and Apartheid. Sarid served as a member of the Knesset for the Alignment, Ratz and Meretz between 1974 and 2006. A former Minister of Education and Minister of the Environment, he led Meretz between 1996 and 2003.

The white Afrikaners, too, had reasons for their segregation policy; they, too, felt threatened - a great evil was at their door, and they were frightened, out to defend themselves. Unfortunately, however, all good reasons for apartheid are bad reasons; apartheid always has a reason, and it never has a justification. And what acts like apartheid, is run like apartheid and harasses like apartheid, is not a duck - it is apartheid. Nor does it even solve the problem of fear: Today, everyone knows that all apartheid will inevitably reach its sorry end. One essential difference remains between South Africa and Israel: There a small minority dominated a large majority, and here we have almost a tie. But the tiebreaker is already darkening on the horizon. Then the Zionist project will come to an end if we don't choose to leave the slave house before being visited by a fatal demographic plague. It is entirely clear why the word apartheid terrifies us so. What should frighten us, however, is not the description of reality, but reality itself. Even Ehud Olmert has understood at last that continuing the present situation is the end of the Jewish democratic state, as he recently said. (( "Yes it is apartheid," by Yossi Sarid, Haaretz, April 25, 2008.))

Another prominent Israeli politician who served many years in the Knesset, Shulamit Aloni, has also been scathing in her criticism of Israel's policies toward the Palestinians. (( "You can continue with the Liquidations, by Shluamit Aloni, January 18, 2002 published in "The Other Israel, Voices of Refusal and Dissent," Foreword by Tom Segev and Introduction by Anthony Lewis, edited by Roane Carey and Jonathan Shainin. (New York: New Press, 2002) p. 85-87; and "Murder of a population under cover of righteousness," by Shulamit Aloni, Haaretz, March 6, 2003; "Just make sure we don't know," by Shulamit Aloni, YNet News, April 8, 2006. Also see "First Lady of Human Rights: A Conversation with Shulamit Aloni, Former Knesset Member Who Headed the Meretz Party," interview with Amy Goodman, Democracy Now, August 14, 2002.)) Aloni, is the Israeli Prize laureate who once served as Minister of Education under Yitzhak Rabin. She wrote, "Jewish selfrighteousness is taken for granted among ourselves to such an extent that we fail to see what's right in front of our eyes. It's simply inconceivable that the ultimate victims, the Jews, can carry out evil deeds. Nevertheless, the state of Israel practises its own, quite violent, form of Apartheid with the native Palestinian population." (( "Indeed there is Apartheid in Israel," by Shulamit Aloni, Yediot Acharonot, May 1, 2006. The article is was published in Israel's largest circulating newspaper in the Hebrew edition but not in the Englishlanguage YNetNews. It was translated by Sol Salbe, an Israeli-Australian editor and translator, and distributed through the Australian based Middle East News Service sponsored by the Australian Jewish Democratic Society. The Hebrew original is here.))

Aloni also defended former U.S. President Jimmy Carter:

The US Jewish Establishment's onslaught on former President Jimmy Carter is based on him daring to tell the truth which is known to all: through its army, the government of Israel practises a brutal form of Apartheid in the territory it occupies. Its army has turned every Palestinian village and town into a fencedin, or blockedin, detention camp. All this is done in order to keep an eye on the population's movements and to make its life difficult. Israel even imposes a total curfew whenever the settlers, who have illegally usurped the Palestinians' land, celebrate their holidays or conduct their parades. (( "Indeed there is Apartheid in Israel," by Shulamit Aloni, Yediot Acharonot, May 1, 2006. The article is was published in Israel's largest circulating newspaper in the Hebrew edition but not in the Englishlanguage YNetNews. It was translated by Sol Salbe, an Israeli-Australian editor and translator, and distributed through the Australian based Middle East News Service sponsored by the Australian Jewish Democratic Society. The Hebrew original is here.))

On the Palestinian issue she argued:

...Israel is an occupying power that for 40 years has been oppressing an indigenous people, which is entitled to a sovereign and independent existence while living in peace with us. We should remember that we too used very violent terror against foreign rule because we wanted our own state. And the list of victims of terror is quite long and extensive.

We do limit ourselves to denying the [Palestinian] people human rights. We not only rob of them of their freedom, land and water. We apply collective punishment to millions of people and even, in revengedriven frenzy, destroy the electricity supply for one and half million civilians. Let them "sit in the darkness" and "starve." (( "Indeed there is Apartheid in Israel," by Shulamit Aloni, Yediot Acharonot, May 1, 2006. The article is was published in Israel's largest circulating newspaper in the Hebrew edition but not in the Englishlanguage YNetNews. It was translated by Sol Salbe, an Israeli-Australian editor and translator, and distributed through the Australian based Middle East News Service sponsored by the Australian Jewish Democratic Society. The Hebrew original is here.))

Here is what Yossi Paritzky, a member of the Shinui Party who served in the Israeli Knesset and also in the Israeli cabinet, had to say about racial discrimination in Israel:

One of the clearest rules that distinguishes a democratic state from a nondemocratic state is the principle of equality when it comes to rights and obligations. In a democratic country, all citizens regardless of race, religious, gender or origin are entitled to equality when it comes to national assets, services and resources, and all citizens regardless of race, religion, gender or origin are equally obligated by national duties.

For example, in a democratic country everyone must pay taxes (although at different rates, of course,) and everyone must obey the law. On the other hand, every citizen in a democratic state is entitled to enjoy individual freedoms. One is entitled to purchase assets in the country, marry anyone he or she wish, work wherever one wants, study whatever one wishes, and express himself or herself as they wish.

In short, equality is the basic tenet of a liberal western democracy and without it a country is not democratic in practice although possibly democratic by law.

....in a series of three decisions that are separate but connected through a stench of racism and discrimination, Israel entered the dismal pantheon of nondemocratic states. This past Wednesday, Israel decided to be like apartheidera South Africa, and some will say even worse countries that no longer exist. (( "Our apartheid state, Three racist, discriminatory decisions undermine Israel's democratic character," by Yossi Paritzky, YNet News, July 24, 2007.))

The following are comments made by Yossi Beilin, a member of the Knesset, and chairman of the Israeli MeretzYahad Party, on the uproar caused in the United States over former U.S. President Jimmy Carter's book Palestine: Peace Not Apartheid.

I cannot recall when the publication of a book has generated such a debate in Israel. And even though we are talking here about a book that was published in the United States and has yet to be translated into Hebrew, the quiet way in which "Palestine: Peace Not Apartheid" has been received in Israel is nevertheless noteworthy, not least because it is Israel itself that is the object of Carter's opprobrium.

Part of the explanation for why Carter's book did not set off any public outcry in Israel lies in the difference in literary culture. For better or worse -- and I, for one, certainly think that it is for worse -- books just don't matter here in the way they still do elsewhere. Yet perhaps a larger part of the explanation lies with the difference in political culture, and with local sensitivities (or perhaps insensitivities) to language and moral tone.

It is not that Israelis are indifferent to what is said about them, but the threshold of what passes as acceptable here is apparently much higher than it is with Israel's friends in the United States. In the case of this particular book, the harsh words that Carter reserves for Israel are simply not as jarring to Israeli ears, which have grown used to such language, especially with respect to the occupation.

In other words, what Carter says in his book about the Israeli occupation and our treatment of Palestinians in the occupied territories -- and perhaps no less important, how he says it -- is entirely harmonious with the kind of criticism that Israelis themselves voice about their own country. There is nothing in the criticism that Carter has for Israel that has not been said by Israelis themselves. (( "Carter Is No More Critical of Israel Than Israelis Themselves," by Yossi Beilin, The Forward, January 19, 2007 republished in Occupation Magazine, February 2, 2007.))

Uri Avnery, the leader of the Israeli peace organization Gush Shalom, also served in the Israeli Knesset. He has written many articles criticizing the occupation of Palestinian land after the 1967 War. ((See for example "On Israeli Fascism: A Little Red Light," by Uri Avnery, CounterPunch, April 28, 2009; and "Racists for Democracy," by Uri Avnery, Gush Shalom, May 30, 2009, published in Occupation Magazine, May 31, 2009.)) In one of his many articles he compared Manifest Destiny in the United States and Israel.

In this respect, too, Israel resembles the United States, which was founded along the Eastern seaboard and did not rest until it had reached the Western shores on the other side of the continent. The incessant stream of mass immigration from Europe flowed on westwards, breaching all borders and violating all agreements, exterminating the Native Americans, starting a war against Mexico, conquering Texas, invading Central America and Cuba. The slogan that drove them on and justified all their actions was coined in 1845 by John O'Sullivan: Manifest Destiny.

The Israeli version of Manifest Destiny is Moshe Dayan's slogan: "We are fated". Dayan, a typical representative of the second generation, made two important speeches in his life. The first and better known was delivered in 1956 at the grave of Roy Rutenberg of Nahal Oz, a kibbutz facing Gaza: "Before their [the Palestinians in Gaza] very eyes we turn into our homestead the land and villages in which they and their forefathers have lived ... This is the fate of our generation, the choice of our life - to be prepared and armed, strong and tough - or otherwise, the sword will slip from our fist, and our life will be snuffed out."

He did not mean only his own generation. The second, lesser known speech is more important. It was delivered in August 1968, after the occupation of the Golan Heights, before a rally of young Kibbutzniks. When I asked him about it in the Knesset, he inserted the entire speech into the Knesset record, a very unusual procedure in our parliament.

This is what he told the youth: "We are fated to live in a permanent state of fighting against the Arabs ... For the hundred years of the Return to Zion we are working for two things: the building of the land and the building of the people ... That is a process of expansion, of more Jews and more settlements ... That is a process that has not reached the end. We were born here and found our parents, who had come here before us ... It is not your duty to reach the end. Your duty is to add your layer ... to expand the settlement to the best of your ability, during your lifetime ... (and) not to say: this is the end, up to here, we have finished."

Dayan, who was well versed in the ancient texts, probably had in mind the phrase in the Chapter of the Fathers (a part of the Mishnah, which was finished 1800 years ago and formed the basis of the Talmud): "It is not up to you to finish the work, and you are not free to stop doing it."

That is the hidden agenda. We must haul it up from the depths of our unconscious minds to the realm of consciousness in order to face it, to reveal the terrible danger inherent in it, the danger of an eternal war which may in the fullness of time lead this state to disaster. (( "Manifest Destiny?," by Uri Avnery, Gush Shalom, April 12, 2008.))

Sometimes the sons and daughters of leading Israeli politicians also strongly disagree with their parents politics on the Palestinian issue. Here are the comments of Steven Plaut, a strong Zionist supporter, who has taken upon himself the task of attacking former Israeli critics of Israel.

Perhaps the most bizarre antiIsrael expatriate....is Yigal Arens, who works at the University of Southern California in computer technology. Arens is the son of Moshe Arens, the militant nationalist political leader of the Likud in Israel, who served as Israel's Minister of Defense. Arens junior however has devoted himself to demonizing Israel and promoting boycotts of Israel. Perhaps he enjoys making his daddy angry. (( "Network of Expatriate Treachery," by Steven Plaut, FrontPage Magazine, July 9, 2007.))

What Plaut does not acknowledge is that a highly regarded authority on International law Richard Aren's, the brother of Moshe Arens, also was a strong critic of Israel. He equated Israeli policies towards the Palestinians with the Nazi persecution of the Jews. (( Rosie DiManno, "Israeli policies like Nazi persecution Arens' brother says," Toronto Star, September l9, 1983, (published only in the Metro edition). See also John Motavalli, "The Arens brothers, agreeing to disagree," The Middle East, March 1983, p. 1920.)) Their family gatherings must have been interesting.

Uri Davis, author of Israel: An Apartheid State (London: Zed Books, 1987) and many other studies ((See for example Uri Davis, Palestinian Arabs in Israel: Two Case Studies (co-author), (London: Ithaca Press, 1978); Citizenship and the State: A Comparative Study of Citizenship Legislation in Israel, Jordan, Palestine, Syria and Lebanon, (Reading, Berkshire UK: Ithaca Press, 1997); and Apartheid Israel: Possibilities for the struggle within, (New York: Zed Books, 2003).)) on Israel and Zionism was elected in August 2009 to serve on the Fatah Revolutionary Council. ((See, "First Jew is elected to Fatah Revolutionary Council," by DPA, Haaretz., August 15, 2009.)) In an interview with the British daily newspaper The Observer Davis explained his views on Zionism. To quote the article:

Davis is careful with his definitions of both "Zionism" and his own "antiZionism". The Zionism that he opposes is the "political Zionism" of Israel's founders, the Zionism that amounts, he says, to land grab based on ethnic cleansing.

Davis himself insists on reclaiming a wider meaning for the word, not least because he was shaped, as he grew up, by a different school: the "spiritual Zionism" of thinkers such as Ahad Ha'am, religious philosopher Martin Buber and Judah Magnes, cofounder of Jerusalem's Hebrew University.

In contrast to political Zionism, which saw Jewish statehood alone as a solution to the Jewish question, these spiritual Zionists believed Palestine could not accommodate a Jewish homeland but should become a national spiritual centre that would support and reinvigorate the Jewish diaspora. (( "Why Israeli Jew Uri Davis joined Fatah to save Palestine," by Peter Beaumont, The Observer, August 23, 2009. See also "The lonely struggle of Uri Davis: The Jewish born Fatah councillor is widely mocked but his secular vision for a binational Israel is not so crazy," by Seth Freedman, The Guardian, September 1, 2009.))

Davis is not the first Palestinian Jew to serve in Palestinian governing structures. Ilan Halevi, a Jewish Palestinian, held a topranked position in the PLO. He was the PLO ambassador to Europe and its representative to the Socialist International. ((Brendan Weston, "An Interview with Ilan Halevi: Both Jew and PLO Member," The Arab World Review, April 1988, p. 16. For an example of his work see Ilan Halevi, A History of the Jews: Ancient and Modern, translated by A. M. Berrett (London & Atlantic Highlands, NJ: Zed Books, 1987).))

The antiZionist Neturei Karta Jewish religious sect has also asked for affiliation with the Palestine National Council. Rabbi Moshe Hirsch has even offered to serve as minister for Jewish Affairs in a Palestinian governmentinexile. ((Press release: Tevet 20, 5748, January 10, 1988, from Sevenman Neturei Karta Supreme Council. See also Ed Krales, "Orthodox Jews Oppose Israel," Palestine Focus, JulyAugust, 1987, p. 8.)) Rabbi Hirsch stated:

We are as Palestinian as Yasser Arafat. There are Jewish Palestinians, and there are Muslim Palestinians and Christian Palestinians. In regard to issues relating to the Palestinian people, we also have our interests. If a state is established we would like to have our representation in the government.

Another example of the type of discussion that goes on in Israel is the following statement made by Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert: "For sixty years there has been discrimination against Arabs in Israel. This discrimination is deepseated and intolerable." Olmert made this statement while addressing a meeting of the Knesset committee that was investigating the lack of integration of Arab citizens in the Israeli public service. ((See "PM slams 'discrimination' against Arabs," by Elie Leshem and Jpost.com Staff, Jerusalem Post, November 12, 2008. For another example of see "Olmert voices sorrow for plight of Palestinian, Jewish refugees," by Shahar Ilan, Haaretz, September 15, 2008.)) Prime Minister Olmert also made the following comment in an interview with Haaretz: "If the day comes when the twostate solution collapses, and we face a South Africanstyle struggle for equal voting rights, then as soon as that happens, the State of Israel is finished." ((See "Olmert to Haaretz: Two-state solution, or Israel is done for," by Aluf Benn, David Landau, Barak Ravid and Shmuel Rosner, Haaretz, November 29, 2007. "Olmert: Clock ticking on Jewish state," Jewish Telegraph Agency, November 29, 2007. See also "Olmert warns of end of Israel," BBC, November 29, 2007. Olmert also made similar statements in an interview in November 2003. See "Maximum Jews, minimum Palestinians," Haaretz, November 13, 2003.))

Yet another example is Knesset Speaker Reuven Rivlin (from the right-wing Likud Party) who called for a fundamental change in relations between Jews and Arabs in Israel. He urged the founding of a "true partnership" between the two sectors, based on mutual respect, absolute equality and the addressing of "the special needs and unique character of each of the sides." The Speaker was reported to say all this in an address to be delivered at the president's residence in Jerusalem on August 3, 2009. Quoting from Rivlin's prepared speech which was released to the media:

...the establishment of Israel was accompanied by much pain and suffering and a real trauma for the Palestinians (in large part due to the shortsightedness of the Palestinian leadership). Many of Israel's Arabs, which see themselves as part of the Palestinian population, feel the pain of their brothers across the green line a pain they feel the state of Israel is responsible for.

Many of them encounter racism and arrogance from Israel's Jews; the inequality in the allocation of state funds also does not contribute to any extra love. ((See, "Knesset Speaker: Establishment of Israel caused Arabs real trauma," by Haaretz Service, Haaretz, August 3, 2009.))

Can you ever imagine a top American or Canadian politician making statements like these, or a leading Canadian or American newspaper publishing comments like these ones? If the politicians did make statements like these what would be the reaction?

Rivlin, however, still tried to focus the blame on the Palestinian leadership for the problems and does not fully acknowledge Israel's part in the expulsions. These expulsions and massacres started before the official declaration of Israel's Independence on May 14, 1948 and before the "intervention" of the Arab armies. According to Israeli Historian Ilan Pappe there were expulsions of the Palestinians from 30 villages after the War had ended in 1949 and in fact continued until 1953. ((See "Completing the Job," Ilan Pappe, The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine, (Oxford: Oneworld Publications, 2006) p. 179-198. See also "The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine," by Ilan Pappe review by Stephen Lendman, Global Research, February 7, 2007.))

Here is what Israeli Historian Ilan Pappe wrote on the ethnic cleansing of the Palestinians:

Ethnic cleansing is not genocide, but it does carry with it atrocious acts of mass killing and butchering. Thousands of Palestinians were killed ruthlessly and savagely by Israeli troops of all back grounds, ranks and ages. None of these Israelis was ever tried for war crimes, in spite of the overwhelming evidence. ((See "Completing the Job," Ilan Pappe, The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine, (Oxford: Oneworld Publications, 2006) p. 179-198. See also "The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine," by Ilan Pappe review by Stephen Lendman, Global Research, February 7, 2007.))

Rivlin also does not address the land seizures from Palestinians who fled or were expelled from their homes but remained in Israel. These individuals were considered Israeli citizens, but still lost all of their property. These individuals are called "present Absentees," an Orwellian phrase if there ever was one. Here is how one Israeli academic, Gabriel Piterberg, describes the phrase and how it relates to Israel: "How the founding myths of Israel dictated conceptual removal of Palestinians, during and after physical removal. The invention of 'retroactive transfer' and 'present absentees' as the glacial euphemisms of ethnic cleansing." ((See "Erasures," by Gabriel Piterberg, New Left Review, July-August 2001; see also "Unrecognized' Palestinians," by Stephen Lendman, ICAHD website, September 09, 2007, published in Occupation Magazine, September 9, 2009.))

Nor does Rivlin acknowledge that most of the Zionist leadership wanted all of Palestine without its Arab population and this wish "miraculously" came true. ((One unrestrained expression of this view is found in the book They Must Go, by Rabbi Meir Kahane (New York: Grossett & Dunlap, 1981).)) Palestinian leadership, inept as it was, cannot be blamed for everything.

Veteran Israeli Peace activist, and former Knesset member, Uri Avnery had the following to say on the Goldstone Commission findings:

Is there no limit to the wiles of those dastardly antiSemites?

Now they have decided to slander the Jews with another blood libel. Not the old accusation of slaughtering Christian children to use their blood for baking Passover matzoth, as in the past, but of the mass slaughter of women and children in Gaza.

And who did they put at the head of the commission which was charged with this task? Neither a British Holocaustdenier nor a German neoNazi, nor even an Iranian fanatic, but of all people a Jewish judge who bears the very Jewish name of Goldstone (originally Goldstein, of course). And not just a Jew with a Jewish name, but a Zionist, whose daughter, Nicole, is an enthusiastic Zionist who once "made Aliyah" and speaks fluent Hebrew. And not just a Jewish Zionist, but a South African who opposed apartheid and was appointed to the country's Constitutional Court when that system was abolished.

All this in order to defame the most moral army in the world, fresh from waging the most just war in history!

Richard Goldstone is not the only Jew manipulated by the worldwide antiSemitic conspiracy. Throughout the three weeks of the Gaza War, more than 10 thousand Israelis demonstrated against it again and again. They were photographed carrying signs saying 'End the massacre in Gaza', 'Stop the war crimes' 'Israel commits war crimes', 'Bombing civilians is a war crime'. They chanted in unison: 'Olmert, Olmert, it is true They're waiting in The Hague for you!'

Who would have believed that there are so many antiSemites in Israel?! (( "Those Dastardly AntiSemites," by Uri Avnery, Information Clearing House, September 19, 2009.))

Avnery also commented on the reaction of Israelis to the accusations of Israel committing war crimes:

The instinctive reaction in such a situation is denial. It's just not true. It never happened. It's all a pack of lies.

By itself, that is a natural reaction. When a human being is faced with a situation which he cannot handle, denial is the first refuge. If things did not happen, there is no need to cope. Basically, there is no difference between the deniers of the Armenian genocide, the deniers of the annihilation of the Native Americans and the deniers of the atrocities of all wars.

From this point of view, it can be said that denial is almost "normal". But with us it has been developed into an art form. (( "Those Dastardly AntiSemites," by Uri Avnery, Information Clearing House, September 19, 2009.))

The 2009 Israeli election which occurred after the attack on Gaza saw a further shift to the right in the Israeli electorate. Right-wing parties that were once considered racist fringe parties had moved into the Israeli mainstream and Kadima, founded by Ariel Sharon, found itself on the left of the Israeli political spectrum. The out emigration of more than one million Israelis, ((Emigrating from Israel is called Ayeridah (going down). Immigrating to Israeli is called "Aliyah" or "ascent". Demography is a sensitive topic for Israelis and there is considerable debate over the numbers of emigrants and their reasons for leaving Israeli. See "Israel's demographic dilemma," by Howard Skutel, International Perspectives, March/April 1987, p. 21-23. A YNet News article reports that 800,000 Israelis are living in the United States. See "Demographic threat a myth: The Jewish majority west of the Jordan River will remain strong," by Yoram Ettinger, YNet News, February 9, 2006; see also, "Recent Trends in Emigration from Israel: The Impact of Palestinian Violence," by Ian S. Lustik, paper presented at annual meeting of the Association for Israel Studies, Jerusalem, June 14-16, 2004; and also "Aliyah sees 9% dip from 2005," by Moti Bassok, Haaretz, February 21, 2007; "Emigration from Israel exceeds immigration, report," Deutsche PresseAgentur (dpa) April 20, 2007 posted on the St. Louis Jewish Community's web site. To quote the article: "....Maariv newspaper reported that approximately a quarter of the Israeli population was considering emigration. Almost half of the country's young people were thinking of leaving the country, the report said. Their reasons included dissatisfaction with the government, the education system, a lack of confidence in the political ruling class and concern over the security situation.")) clearly has had some effect on Israel's politics. Many Israelis who were opposed to the direction Israel politics was taking and being opposed the continued occupation of the West Bank left Israel. Many of these emigrants did not want their children to do their compulsory military service in the Occupied territories and be part of a perpetual war with the Arabs. This exodus supplemented by the immigration of militant right-wing Zionists and right-wing religious Zionists to Israel, in my opinion, has resulted in a decided shift towards the right in Israeli politics. This shift has supported the rise of politicians like Avigdor Lieberman who openly calls for the expulsion of the Arabs. Here is what one Jerusalem born Israeli expatriate had to say on the shift in Israeli politics:

The Arab citizens of Israel, traditionally ignored by left and right Zionists as a "barely tolerable" minority, embody the impossibility and futility of the attempt to achieve ethnic purity by means of division. A few years of rising racism inside Israel turned its Arab citizens into a "ticking bomb" of the "demographic danger", and unleashed unprecedented attacks against them by the right wing, with little to no response from the Zionist left. Avigdor Lieberman gained his startling achievement in Tuesday's elections by riding this wave to its natural conclusion. His revolutionary idea - giving up not only territories in the West Bank and Gaza but even territories of Israel proper, in order to get rid of as many Arabs as possible - confused and embarrassed the Zionist left. It had also exposed the absurdity and moral unacceptability of the whole Zionist idea by taking it to its only rational conclusion. If having a Jewish state is the most desirable goal, than getting rid of the nonJewish citizens is the only rational way to go about it. And hey, it is all to take place in a very benign way: no more talks of "transfer", but an adoption of the "lefty" slogans of division. And all this under the new sinister banner "No loyalty - No citizenship".

The fact that Lieberman can easily claim to be a genuine successor of Israel's founder, Labourite David Ben Gurion, should be an alarm bell in the ears of any Israeli liberal. It is time for any Israeli with an enlightened selfimage to look at the mirror and see Avigdor Lieberman staring back. It is time to stop the procrastination over the question whether Israel can be both Jewish and democratic. Lieberman provided the answer loud and clear: it cannot. At this late hour, when the shadow of protofascism is hovering over the land, it is time to join forces with Palestinian citizens in the battle against ethnic purity, and for a true democracy. It is time to stop fidgeting, and to admit that monoethnicism cannot be a framework for liberal values. It is time to apologise to MK Azmi Bshara, who was dabbed "an Arab nationalist" by Israeli liberals because of his call for "a state of all its citizens". It is time to rethink Zionism. (( "It's time to rethink Zionism," by Daphna Baram, The Guardian, February 17, 2009. Daphna Baram is a freelance writer and journalist. Her features and articles have appeared in the Guardian, New Statesman, Independent, Jewish Quarterly, Ha'aretz and Yediot. Born in Jerusalem 1970, she worked as a human rights lawyer in the military courts in the Went Bank and Gaza, and later as a feature write, commentator, news editor and deputy editorinchief for the Jerusalem based weekly Kol Ha'ir. Her book Disenchantment: The Guardian and Israel (2004) was written during a fellowship period at the Reuters Foundation programme and a year as a senior associate member at St Antony's College in Oxford. Her translation into Hebrew of The Nuremberg Interviews was published in March 2006 (Ivrit). She is based currently in London.))

Other critical voices from Israel's political circles include the late Livia Rokach, (also transliterated as Rokah) the daughter of Israel Rokach, Minister of the Interior in the government of Moshe Sharett, second prime minister of Israel; ((Livia Rokach, Israel's Sacred Terrorism: A study based on Moshe Sharett's Personal Diary, and other documents, (Belmont, Massachusetts: Association of ArabAmerican University Graduates Inc, 1986). See also "Livia Rokach Israel's Sacred Terrorism: A Study Based on Moshe Sharett's Personal Diary and Other Documents," Washington Report on Middle East Affairs, March 18, 1985, p. 11. Review by Richard Curtis.)) and former General and Knesset Member Mattityahu Peled who headed the Progressive List for Peace; ((On the 1967 "Six Day War" General Mattityahu Peled, a member of Israel's general staff in 1967, opined that "the thesis according to which the danger of genocide weighed on us in June 1967, and that Israel struggled for its physical existence is only a bluff born and developed after the war." Le Monde, June 3, 1972, p. 4; For an example of his views see, "IsraeliPalestinian Peace: If Not Now, When?" by Mattityahu Peled. keynote speech given at the Breira National Conference in 1977; see also, "The Palestinian Position: An Exchange," by Mattityahu Peled, and Reply by Bernard Avishai, New York Review of Books, Volume 27, Number 3 - March 6, 1980. See The Other Israel for commemorative articles published in his honor after his death including, "A 'traitor' before his time," by Teddy Preuss, Translated from Davar, March 12, 1995; and "I shall not see his like again," by Uri Avnery, translated from Ma'ariv, March 3, 1995.)) his daughter Nurit Peled-Elhanan a lecturer in Language Education at Hebrew University; (( "On education, racism and murder," by Nurit PeledElhanan, Jerusalem, March 16, 2006, translated and published in Occupation Magazine, November 24, 2007; and In the State of Israel the Jewish mother is disappearing," by Nurit PeledElhanan, speech given to the Israeli Peace group Women in Black, on December 28, 2007, translated and published in Occupation Magazine, January 6, 2008. She blamed Israel's policies for the death of her daughter Smadar. Smadar (14 years old) was killed by an Arab suicide bomber on September 4, 1997.)) and his son Miko Peled; ((See "Fighting for peace," by Judd Handler, San Diego Jewish Journal, October, 2003; "It's Time To Visit Gaza," by Miko Peled, Electronic Intifada February 17, 2007. "Torture: Read it in the Israeli press," by Miko Peled, The Electronic Intifada, April 4, 2007, republished in Occupation Magazine on April 5, 2007; "A crack in the wall," by Miko Peled, The Electronic Intifada, October 1, 2007; "Pardon me, But I'm Jewish," by Miko Peled, Activist Magazine, October 15, 2008. "They like to call it war," by Miko Peled, Occupation Magazine, September 20, 2009. He is an Israeli peace activist and writer living in the US. Peled is cofounder of the Elbanna Peled Foundation in memory of Smadar Elhanan and Abir Aramin.)) and Meron Benvenisti, former Deputy Mayor of Jerusalem. (( "A ridiculous war against the gaps," by Meron Benvenisti, Haaretz, June 29, 2006.))

This article only reviews a portion of the critical debate in Israel from Israeli politicians. There is much more debate and critical examination of Zionism and of Israel's policies toward the Palestinians. Serious discussion of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict must include the full spectrum of opinion in keeping with democratic values, free speech and much needed critical inquiry. In Israel, there is a vibrant political debate, and while this debate and democratic discourse is coming increasingly under attack, this debate contributes to the vitality of Israeli society as it deals with the Palestinian issue, the nature of a "Jewish State" and how to govern its society.

America, which provides a great deal of financial, military and political support for Israel, needs to be aware of this debate in Israel and in Jewish circles, and to understand the ramifications of uncritical support for the policies and actions of Israel toward the Palestinians and its Arab neighbors. To stifle and censor the discussion of these important issues does no favors for the United States or for Israel or the Jewish people.

Defeating Potential Challengers In Eurasia

"The U.S. is reacting to China's rise by moving its unmatched military machine into the latter nation's neighborhood and consolidating an Asian NATO to surround it as the original North Atlantic military bloc, now global in its scope, does Russia....To have expected anything else is to have been either inveterately naive or, as the self-proclaimed commander-in-chief of the world's sole military superpower Barack Obama recently branded his Chinese counterpart Hu Jintao, willfully blind."

By Rick Rozoff
(Saturday, August 21, 2010)
Courtesy Of "Media Monitors"

"Eurasia is...the chessboard on which the struggle for global primacy continues to be played."

In its annual report to Congress on the Chinese military this week, the U.S. Department of Defense "voiced alarm over China's military buildup," with particular emphasis on what was described as the nation "investing heavily in ballistic and cruise missile capabilities that could one day pose a challenge to U.S. dominance in the western Pacific." [1]

The report, originally to have been presented on March 1, bears the title of Military and Security Developments Involving the People’s Republic of China 2010 [2]

While commenting favorably on China's increased "contributions to international peacekeeping efforts, humanitarian assistance and disaster relief, and counter-piracy operations," it focuses extensively on what was noted above: That the nation's military capacity may keep pace with its economic growth and pose a challenge to the domination of the western Pacific Ocean region that the U.S. gained after World War II and, as with Europe and now Africa, to an almost uncontested degree after the end of the Cold War.

Washington's incremental and to most of the world imperceptible subordination of Europe through NATO expansion began in the early 1990s and has been completed over the last eleven years, since the war against Yugoslavia and the incorporation of the first former Warsaw Pact nations into the American-controlled military bloc in 1999.

Troops from 20 NATO new member and candidate states from Eastern Europe, the South Caucasus and Central Asia were deployed to Iraq after the U.S. invasion of 2003, then in the last days of 2008 transferred to Afghanistan where they serve under NATO command. To date 38 nations in Europe (inclusive of the South Caucasus) have provided forces for the Afghan war. Every European nation (excluding minuscule microstates) but Cyprus, in part because of its divided status and Turkish opposition, is either a full NATO member or involved in partnership programs with the bloc. Former Soviet and Yugoslav republics Armenia, Azerbaijan, Bosnia, Macedonia, Moldova and Montenegro (the world's newest - universally recognized - nation) have advanced Individual Partnership Action Plans and Georgia and Ukraine specially crafted National Annual Programs for integration into the Alliance. The U.S. has subjugated Europe through NATO.

With the launching of U.S. Africa Command on October 1, 2008, the Pentagon has consolidated individual and multilateral partnerships with almost every country on the continent in an effort to, in large part, diminish Chinese and Russia influence.

The Middle East has followed the same pattern, with only Iran and Syria not drawn into the Pentagon's and NATO's (with the Mediterranean Dialogue and the Istanbul Cooperation Initiative) military network. Iraq, Kuwait and Jordan host U.S. and NATO forces and Persian Gulf states Bahrain, Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates are military partners of the U.S. and the North Atlantic military bloc. The United Arab Emirates, Bahrain, Jordan and Egypt have supplied military personnel for the Afghan war.

Developments over the last twelve years have seriously called into question Washington's control of the southern half of the Western Hemisphere, and in 2008 the Pentagon reactivated its Fourth Fleet (which had been disbanded in 1950) for the Caribbean Sea and Central and South America as part of the U.S. response to an increase in independent foreign policy orientation by several nations in the region.

2010 has signalled Washington's return to Asia and, in particular, concerted and mounting actions to challenge its main economic rival in the world: China.

The Pentagon is currently conducting large-scale war games in South Korea, the second major joint exercises since late last month, and on August 18 Defense Department spokesman Bryan Whitman announced that the U.S. will hold anti-submarine warfare maneuvers with South Korea in the Yellow Sea, which borders Chinese territory to the north and the west.

Whitman mentioned that "The latest military exercise, planned for early September, followed a visit by Gates and U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton to Seoul last month." [3]

The past few weeks have seen a series of commentaries in the Chinese press on escalating U.S. military presence in Northeast Asia and the South China Sea. [4] The tone of many of them, often by major military officials and strategists, is one not heard since the Cold War, and the beginning of it at that.

Terms that have appeared in the articles include gunboat diplomacy, brinkmanship, hegemony, unilateralism, bullying tactics, muscle-flexing, Cold War mentality, super war machine and Asian NATO.

A recent feature in Global Times entitled "Dreams of empire a trap for modern powers" asserted the now monthly U.S. war games on either side of the Korean Peninsula - the Yellow Sea and the Sea of Japan - are "definitely aimed at China," and that Washington is attempting to reclaim its sphere of influence in East Asia after its seven-year involvement in Iraq (the same will soon be true for Latin America as well) and "sending a reminder" of its military power to the region. The piece, however, also said that "China and Russia are both unable to accept such claims. China's several military exercises and Russia's extremely large-scale military maneuvers are responses to the US's 'strategic reminder.'" [5]

The same publication wrote on August 18: "The Pentagon, facing budget pressures due to the economic downturn, naturally wants to keep China as a lasting military threat.

"The US continues to flex its military muscle by surrounding China with its military bases, engaging in a war in neighboring Afghanistan, and continuing to sell weapons to Taiwan." [6]

In the same vein, an editorial in People's Daily said that "By giving the aircraft carrier USS George Washington's free access to the Yellow Sea and South China Sea, the United States seems to tell the world that the 'Asia-Pacific [region] and the [Pacific] ocean are still dominated by the United States.'" [7]

China Daily reported that analysts have recently commented that "The disturbed waters around China reflect how changes in the political landscape between China and the United States are laying the foundation for a future Asian power struggle." Shi Yinhong, senior scholar of American studies at the Beijing-based Renmin University, was quoted warning that "the US possesses long-term military advantages and sticks to its hegemonic ideals."

The same piece said concerning the threat of the U.S. soon deploying the USS George Washington supercarrier - which has "cruised along waters surrounding China, covering nearly 2,000 nautical miles in East Asia during the past two months" including in the South China Sea - near China's northeast coast that "Beijing is within striking distance of the nuclear-powered aircraft carrier in the Yellow Sea." [8]

People's Daily said of the pretext Washington employs for its increasing and presumably permanent military intrusion in the area, the sinking of a South Korean warship almost five months ago: "The United States made a lot out of the Cheonan incident by making use of joint exercises to re-control the situation in Northeast Asia. It also took advantage of the...attitudes of the ASEAN Regional Forum and some ASEAN countries and greatly played up the so-called [Chinese] 'threat' to speed its return to Southeast Asia....[I]n light of the country's recent display off the South China Sea, the escalating actions appear to be more a strategic show of strength rather than just a reaction to one particular incident." [9]

A Chinese analysis of August 18 presented the developments discussed above in a concise historical and geopolitical context:

"US intervention in the South China Sea disputes isn't incidental. It's the outcome of the Barack Obama administration's 'return to Asia' strategy. Some American analysts argue that China expanded its influence in Southeast Asia as the US was focused on the 'war on terror' after the 9/11 attacks. Their logic is simple: any potential challenger to Washington in Eurasia should be the target of US global strategy....By getting involved in the South China Sea disputes and fanning trouble between China and its neighbors, Washington aims to contain Beijing and re-establish its global hegemony." [10]

What is at stake in the seas off the coasts of the Koreas and in the South China Sea is more than the March 26 sinking of the Cheonan and more than just East Asia.

The observation that the U.S. will not tolerate any competitor or future rival in Eurasia, and that the control of that vast tract of land from the eastern Atlantic to the western Pacific is the key to global domination, is not typical of language often heard in China. It is rather that most associated with Zbigniew Brzezinski in recent years. The latter has been held in high esteem in China as he was National Security Advisor in the Carter administration, running U.S. foreign policy behind the back of Secretary of State Cyrus Vance, when Washington transferred diplomatic recognition from Taiwan to the People's Republic of China on January 1, 1979.

In his 1998 book The Grand Chessboard: American Primacy And Its Geostrategic Imperatives, Brzezinski triumphantly gloated that "The defeat and collapse of the Soviet Union was the final step in the rapid ascendance of a Western Hemisphere power, the United States, as the sole and, indeed, the first truly global power." [11]

The leadership of China, first courted by Richard Nixon and Henry Kissinger in 1972, saw Brzezinski as the man most responsible for weakening Beijing's and Washington's main adversary at the time, the Soviet Union, with his support of anti-Soviet forces from Afghanistan to Poland and the undermining of Moscow's allies in Africa, the Middle East and Southeast Asia.

With the USSR out of the way after 1991, though, it should have dawned on Chinese officials that the first sole and truly global power would sooner or later be knocking on their door as well. It has taken almost two decades, but just that is occurring.

It is not as though they were not notified, either.

The opening sentence of Brzezinski's introduction to The Grand Chessboard states: "Ever since the continents started interacting politically, some five hundred years ago, Eurasia has been the center of world power."

In the book's introduction and in its second section, "The Eurasian Chessboard," the self-styled geostrategist, customarily grouped among (and perhaps at the top of) what are called America's foreign policy realists, offers sweeping and grandiose claims symptomatic of acute individual as well as national megalomania.

His comments include:

"For America, the chief geopolitical prize is Eurasia. For half a millennium, world affairs were dominated by Eurasian powers and peoples who fought with one another for regional domination and reached out for global power. Now a non-Eurasian power is preeminent in Eurasia — and America's global primacy is directly dependent on how long and how effectively its preponderance on the Eurasian continent is sustained."

"How America 'manages' Eurasia is critical. A power that dominates Eurasia would control two of the world's three most advanced and economically productive regions. A mere glance at the map also suggests that control over Eurasia would almost automatically entail Africa's subordination, rendering the Western Hemisphere and Oceania geopolitically peripheral to the world's central continent. About 75 per cent of the world's people live in Eurasia, and most of the world's physical wealth is there as well, both in its enterprises and underneath its soil. Eurasia accounts for about three-fourths of the world's known energy resources."

More to the point in regards to the current situation, he brashly asserted that "America is now Eurasia's arbiter, with no major Eurasian issue soluble without America's participation or contrary to America's interests."

"All of the potential political and/or economic challengers to American primacy are Eurasian. Cumulatively, Eurasia's power vastly overshadows America's. Fortunately for America, Eurasia is too big to be politically one.

"Eurasia is thus the chessboard on which the struggle for global primacy continues to be played."

With the Russian government conceding point after point to Washington of late - including U.S. and NATO air, infantry, naval and interceptor missile deployments, exercises, bases and installations on the Baltic and Black Seas, in the South Caucasus and Central Asia - and India all but formally recruited into an Asia-Pacific version of NATO, China is Washington's main "potential political and/or economic challenger" in Eurasia and hence in the world.

It is not so much a matter of China choosing to play that role as being cast in it nonetheless. For no other reasons except its economic power, its size and its location.

As Brzezinski stated over twelve years ago, "How America copes with the complex Eurasian power relationships — and particularly whether it prevents the emergence of a dominant and antagonistic Eurasian power — remains central to America's capacity to exercise global primacy."

The U.S. is reacting to China's rise by moving its unmatched military machine into the latter nation's neighborhood and consolidating an Asian NATO to surround it as the original North Atlantic military bloc, now global in its scope, does Russia.

To have expected anything else is to have been either inveterately naive or, as the self-proclaimed commander-in-chief of the world's sole military superpower Barack Obama recently branded his Chinese counterpart Hu Jintao, willfully blind. [12]

Notes:

[1]. Wall Street Journal, August 18, 2010

[2]. The Military and Security Developments Involving the People’s Republic of China 2010
http://tinyurl.com/2f7nube

[3]. Reuters, August 18, 2010

[4]. Part II: U.S.-China Crisis: Beyond Words To Confrontation, Stop NATO, August 17, 2010
http://tinyurl.com/2ap3hzr

[5]. Global Times, August 15, 2010

[6]. Global Times, August 18, 2010

[7]. People's Daily, August 17, 2010

[8]. China Daily, August 18, 2010

[9]. People's Daily, August 17, 2010

[10]. Xinhua News Agency/China Daily, August 18, 2010

[11]. The Grand Chessboard: American Primacy And Its Geostrategic Imperatives
http://tinyurl.com/2ap3hzr

[12]. Obama Doctrine: Eternal War For Imperfect Mankind, Stop NATO, December 10, 2009
http://tinyurl.com/ydccqv2

U.S. Risks Military Clash With China In Yellow Sea, Stop NATO, July 16, 2010
http://tinyurl.com/238nsdd

Their Maps and Our Destinies

The Aggression Is Ongoing

"It is Israel which promotes wars against our people, because it is an entity based on extremism, killing, settlement, occupation, terrorism and assassination. The only way to deter it is to force it to pay for all the destruction it is causing in Lebanon, Palestine and Iraq, in the same way Turkey has done. Only then, will it stop drumming up war against this or that Arab or Muslim country. The task of inquiries and investigation commissions is not only to find out the ‘mistakes’ which caused wars, but to know the objectives for which these mistakes have been made and to make those who promoted them pay the price. Aggressors should bring their war criminals to account, compensate their victims and rebuild the areas destroyed by their wars."

By Bouthaina Shaaban
(Thursday, August 12, 2010)
Courtesy Of "Media Monitors"


Our peoples in the region have become target for war mongers who spread pain, destruction, blockade and bloodshed. We have become the west’s guinea pigs for torture and assassination. In the beginning we are accused of “possessing mass-destruction weapons”, “hosting terrorists” and “endangering world peace and security” before they wage their international wars on our cities. Then, inquiries are set up, just for public consumption, in order to find out the truth, but without the possibility of restoring to our nation its lost security and future. The war on Iraq is a model for claims and distortions which have been marketed politically and in the media as if it were an urgent problem that required “fast remedy” and without which Iraq would pose “a threat to world peace and security”, particularly to the “security of the United States”.

The story of mass-destruction weapons was fabricated; and here are the facts today which show that terrorism did not exist in Iraq before the war. It was the invaders who opened the doors wide open for terrorism. The ex-MI5 chief Eliza Manningham-Buller confirmed to the Chilcot inquiry that “Our involvement in Iraq radicalised a few among a generation of young people who saw [it] as an attack upon Islam.” She adds: “There was no evidence of any link between Saddam Hussein and al-Qaida – not even the CIA believed that”. Former deputy prime minister, Lord Prescott, said in his testimony to the same inquiry: “When I kept reading them, I kept thinking, 'Is this intelligence?' "It's basically what you have heard somewhere and what somebody else has told somebody... so I got the feeling it wasn't very substantial”.

The Chilcot inquiry proved beyond doubt the absurdity of the decision to wage war on Iraq, and that the U.K was pushed somehow to get involved (The Independent, 31 July, 2010). Chief UN inspector Hans Blix spent years refuting the mass-destruction-weapons lie. He has stated again and again that the war was illegal and unnecessary.

One reason why wars continue to be waged on us is the lack of courage in taking tough measures against the aggressors, not forcing them to apologize for their crimes and pay the price for their aggression and deterring them from taking haphazard war decisions which bring disasters on millions of people without feeling the least responsibility. If anyone cares to ask for a positive model in this regard, it would be the Turkish position concerning the Israeli attack on the Marmara ship. This is a position which shows that peoples can get their rights if they insist on getting them. Intransigent Israel has yielded and returned the three ships to Turkey and accepted to take part in an international investigating commission. Turkey will ask for an apology and for compensation for the martyrs’ families.

While we follow such news, we see the destruction in Iraq since 2003, and devastation in Lebanon as a result of the 2006 Israeli aggression and the ongoing killing and destruction in Gaza and find that rebuilding in Lebanon is taking place without asking Israel, which caused the destruction, to be responsible for rebuilding and compensating all those who suffered because of its wars. This is actually the only way to force those drumming up war to think twice before they wage war on peaceful nations under fake pretexts.

If such wars are waged under the slogans of ‘democracy,’ ‘freedom’ and ‘human rights,’ let someone examine the quality of life of people living under such wars. If the quality of life is the objective, no one can claim that wars achieve freedom, dignity, security or stability. On the contrary, they undermine the very foundations of a better human life.

The results of inquiries into the war on Iraq seem to be completely detached from the ongoing war in Afghanistan, from drumming up war against Iran, from repeated aggressions against Lebanon’s security and sovereignty and the ongoing war on Gaza.

Women in Iraq have been the first victims of the American war, despite the rhetoric used by the neo-conservatives about women’s rights and freedom. The conditions of Afghani women show they were the prime victim of the war. If these wars also consume the children of those who wage them, in whose interest is the drumming up of war despite all the losses and all the destruction they cause?

It is Israel which promotes wars against our people, because it is an entity based on extremism, killing, settlement, occupation, terrorism and assassination. The only way to deter it is to force it to pay for all the destruction it is causing in Lebanon, Palestine and Iraq, in the same way Turkey has done. Only then, will it stop drumming up war against this or that Arab or Muslim country. The task of inquiries and investigation commissions is not only to find out the ‘mistakes’ which caused wars, but to know the objectives for which these mistakes have been made and to make those who promoted them pay the price. Aggressors should bring their war criminals to account, compensate their victims and rebuild the areas destroyed by their wars.

When will an inquiry be set up to investigate the crime of throwing a million cluster bombs in south Lebanon before Israel was forced to stop its 2006 war? These are the same people who promoted the war on Iraq and who continue to flame up a lost war in Afghanistan. When will international justice catch up with them and make the road to freedom and security the road of peace and stability not that made by guns and missiles waging wars on people dreaming of a free, dignified and peaceful life? When will war promoters and planners realize that the maps on which they draw their attacks are actually full of lives, families and communities and not a waste land to be bombarded with their hatred? When will they realize that the signs they put on their maps to wage wars destroy the lives and futures of millions of people?

In the most recent Israeli aggression against Lebanon, Washington and the United Nations once gain adopted Israeli lies, despite the fact that Israel is always the aggressor against Lebanon. The real danger lies in the source of information according to which war is waged; and Israeli lies always constitute the main contributor to such sources.

The New Ghetto

"In order to extricate itself from this new ghetto, Israel needs to change its policy. Were the present government to do so, Israel would be forgiven the composition of its leadership. But the likelihood of this happening is slim because Israel's leaders believe in the path they have chosen: some of them suffice with lip service to peace while others don't even bother with lip service and state openly that they don't believe in peace. None are prepared to pay the price for peace."

By Yossi Beilin
(Monday, August 9, 2010)
Courtesy Of "Media Monitors"

Political Zionism led by Theodor Herzl would not have come into existence were it not for anti-Semitism in Europe, pogroms in Russia and a fear lest the emergence of the Jews from the ghetto and their integration into the economic, political, media and academic systems of the day provoke a sharp and violent reaction against them. There were alternative Jewish movements aimed at reaching the Land of Israel on the basis of religious motives or in order to build a new society founded on agricultural settlement and social justice. But that was not the Zionist movement as established in 1897.

The real dream of most of those who established Zionism at the end of the nineteenth century was to integrate into Europe. Since they concluded that this was not practical, and considering that a return to religious life in the ghetto was not desirable, they adopted a fallback option whereby the Jewish people would move to a state full of Jews that by definition could not be anti-Semitic. The awful failure of the Zionist vision was that it was realized after and not before the Holocaust. The existence of a nascent Jewish "Yishuv" in the Land of Israel saved a few hundred thousand Jews from the Nazi destruction machine but not the millions for whom the gates of the world were locked. The main importance of Israel in my view is that it is the only place in the world that is unconditionally open to Jews wishing to come.

Herzl's vision described a country with a fully empowered Arab minority living in amity with the Jewish majority, a country living at peace with the world and accepted by it. In the prevailing reality prior to the 1979 peace treaty with Egypt, Israel was a foreign implant in the region, living by its sword, boycotted by the entire Arab world. This was the exact opposite of the original vision.

But Israel of the 1990s was the Jewish state closest to the vision of Herzl and his colleagues: the Arabs living in Israel enjoyed relative prosperity and a far higher level of equality, the Arab boycott was partially abandoned and 13 Arab states engaged in discussion with Israel concerning regional development (in the multilateral talks on water, economic cooperation, refugee rehabilitation, environment and arms control). The peace process encouraged many countries to establish diplomatic relations with Israel, and Israelis were proudly welcomed by the world in view of their rapid economic development and scientific and other achievements. The original Zionist dream, which delegated to Israel a global mission in the fields of international law, human rights, aid to developing countries, etc., was very close to realization. Our status in the United Nations and in other international organizations was never better.

The past ten years were ones of dramatic reversal of Israel's global status. Without asking whether this is exclusively Israel's fault (I don't think so), the facts speak for themselves. Against the backdrop of the violent clashes of the second intifada, the Second Lebanon War, Operation Cast Lead in Gaza and, most recently, the events surrounding the Gaza flotilla, Israel finds itself in a situation reminiscent of the 1970s, when the UN adopted the insane decision (rescinded only 17 years later) to define Zionism as a racist movement.

Israel of today has been pushed almost completely out of the Arab world, the Arab boycott has returned to its earlier dimensions and formerly friendly countries are turning their backs. Various parties in international academia and the trade union movement are passing resolutions to boycott their Israeli colleagues, and representatives of the government of Israel have a hard time completing their prepared remarks even in American universities.

There is little the current Israeli government can do to change the world's attitude, combat the boycott efforts and neutralize the attempts to turn the country into a new ghetto--one from which it is inconvenient and even embarrassing to depart. The country is led by an extreme right-wing coalition most of whose spokespersons are busy vindicating the arguments of our international critics. Israel's number one diplomat, Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman, is perceived as a fascist-leaning racist. He cannot hold an intimate conversation with a single serious actor anywhere in the world.

In order to extricate itself from this new ghetto, Israel needs to change its policy. Were the present government to do so, Israel would be forgiven the composition of its leadership. But the likelihood of this happening is slim because Israel's leaders believe in the path they have chosen: some of them suffice with lip service to peace while others don't even bother with lip service and state openly that they don't believe in peace. None are prepared to pay the price for peace.

In this reality, the only possibilities for change are a strong American policy that leads both sides to peace, or waiting for the next elections. Meanwhile, Israel will continue to pay an unbearable price of isolation from the world.

The Elders Of Anti-Zion

"For years now, the ministry has been mistreating the refugees from Africa and other places. The Darfur survivors, who risk their lives to reach Israel through the Sinai desert, are caught in the streets by special manhunt-squads of the ministry, thrown into prison and then deported...This week, the government decided to expel 400 refugee children who were born in Israel, speak Hebrew and have never known any other homeland. This evokes tragic memories of the 1930s, when Jewish refugees from Germany could find no asylum anywhere and were returned to the Nazi hell."

By Uri Avnery
(Saturday, August 7, 2010)
Courtesy Of "Media Monitors"



I was shaking with fear.

A well-groomed gentleman appeared on TV. He was identified as the chief of an association called Re’uth (“Sight”), whose aim is to monitor the groups which deny the legitimacy of the State of Israel.

What they have uncovered is indeed frightful. The enemies of Israel, we were told, no longer believe that they can destroy Israel by force of arms. Instead, they have adopted a new strategy: to bring about the collapse of Israel by denying its very legitimacy.

The initiatives of small local groups in various countries are not what they appear to be. Far from it! They are part of a world-wide, organized and coordinated conspiracy, which uses every means to achieve their nefarious aim. Unlike the “Protocols of the Elders of Zion”, the forged document that was produced a hundred years ago, this is a genuine plot, something like the “Protocols of the Elders of Anti-Zion”.

Only one detail was missing in the disclosure: where is the secret headquarters of this international conspiracy?

Happily, I am in a position to provide the missing information. Shocking as it may sound, the headquarters of the Elders of Anti-Zion is located in Jerusalem.

THE RE’UTH organization is a group of amateurs and only deals with superficial symptoms. Unlike them, I have undertaken to conduct an in-depth investigation.

Who are the secret agents of the conspiracy that is now threatening the legitimacy of Israel? Who are the people who supply all the anti-Israel groups throughout the world with deadly ammunition against us?

Here is a preliminary list of the most dangerous conspirators:

At the head of the list there appears, of course, Avigdor Ivett Lieberman, who used his cunning to attain the position of Foreign Minister of Israel.

In less than a year and a half, Lieberman has managed to undermine the legitimacy of Israel beyond repair in many countries.

His success in getting appointed as foreign minister is, by itself, a staggering achievement for someone with his background. He is perceived throughout the world as an unbridled racist, compared to whom France’s Jean-Marie le Pen and Austria’s Joerg Haider look like pious democrats. Since being appointed to his position, many of his international colleagues refuse to be seen in his company. They avoid him like the plague.

Since then, Lieberman has succeeded in getting Israel hated in many countries. He has called the Swedes and the Norwegians anti-Semites. He has insulted the Turks, when his obedient deputy publicly humiliated the Turkish ambassador by seating him at a lower level than himself. He has told the President of Egypt to “go to hell”. It seems that he sits in his office every morning, spinning the globe and asking himself: “Which new country can I insult today?”

Now there is hardly any country in the world prepared to receive him, except under duress. His activity as Foreign Minister is limited mostly to the four countries connected with his origins: Moldova, Belarus. Ukraine and Kazakhstan. No Israeli foreign minister could possibly have done more to damage the legitimacy of his country.

BUT LIEBERMAN is up against a very serious contender: the Minister of Defense, Ehud Barak.

During the last few days he has achieved the impossible: turning the Lebanese army, too, into an enemy.

To appreciate the magnitude of this achievement, one has to remember that only four years ago, Israel practically issued an ultimatum demanding that the Lebanese army be deployed on the border with Israel. It was one of Israel’s conditions for ending Lebanon War II. Only the Lebanese army, the master strategists in Jerusalem decreed, could ensure quiet on the border. They treated the UN force, UNIFIL, with thinly veiled contempt.

This week, the Lebanese army opened fire on Israeli troops, killing a battalion commander. How could this happen? In several places there are tiny enclaves between the Israeli border fence and the recognized international border. As far as sovereignty is concerned, these enclaves belong to Israel. The land itself, however, is worked by Lebanese villagers. The Israeli army decided to “trim” the trees in these areas in order to facilitate observation.

The Lebanese announced in advance that they were opposed. UNIFIL asked Israel to wait for the return of its commander from abroad, so as to enable him to mediate. The Israeli army refused to wait and sent a bulldozer. When the arm of the monster reached over the fence, and after warning shouts, the Lebanese soldiers opened fire.

Would a normal person have endangered his relations with the Lebanese army for some branches of a tree? Certainly not. What better proof that Barak is acting under the orders of the Elders of anti-Zion?

But this is only the latest instance. It is overshadowed by the Gaza War (“Cast Lead”). There is no need to reiterate the details of that operation: the wholesale killing of civilians, including hundreds of women and children; the demolition of buildings, including schools and mosques; the use of cruel weapons, such as white phosphorus; the denial of medical aid to the wounded; the blocking of escape routes; and so on and so forth.

“Cast Lead” caused a world-wide shock. In many countries, anti-Israeli groups sprang up like mushrooms after the rain. Far-away Gaza became the center of world attention.

For Barak that was not enough. He persuaded the government to boycott the inquiry commission appointed by the UN, headed by a Zionist Jewish judge. The commission did its work nevertheless, and its findings detailed accusations of Israeli war crimes. Instead of investigating, admitting, apologizing and paying compensation, Barak started a campaign of personal defamation against the judge, which only magnified the damage to Israel. Belatedly, the Israeli army started investigations of its own, which recently confirmed the main findings of the Goldstone report. What does this say about Barak?

But even this was not enough for him. It was the Gaza flotilla incident which revealed his full capacity for delegitimizing Israel. If the ships had been allowed to deliver their small, symbolic cargo to Gaza, the matter would have been forgotten in a day or two. Barak’s military operation achieved the opposite: for months now the world has been in uproar, the Gaza blockade has remained at the center of world attention, our important relationship with Turkey has been irreparably damaged.

When the UN requested Israel to cooperate with an international investigation, Barak reacted with contempt. And instead of appointing at least a State Board of Inquiry with full powers, the Israeli government announced a powerless commission, lacking any credibility and without serious terms of reference. And after all the damage had already been caused, the Israeli government agreed this week to cooperate with the UN commission after all. It’s the classic story of the servant who brought his master rotten fish from the market. When told to choose between eating the fish himself, being flogged or being banished from the town, he chose eating the fish, but could not finish them. When he was being soundly flogged, he could not bear it anymore and therefore chose banishment. So he ate the rotten fish, was flogged and was banished.

Without a doubt, the Elders of anti-Zion should confer on Barak the title of “hero of delegitimization”.

THE THIRD place on the list is certainly due to the Minister of the Interior, Eli Yishai.

Everybody knows that Israel is the State of the Holocaust Survivors, a state that embodies the basic values of the Jewish people. That is the centerpiece of our Hasbarah (literally “Explaining” – in reality propaganda).

The eminent proof for this pretension should have been our attitude towards pitiful refugees, the survivors of massacres who have reached our country and ask for asylum,

If so, why does the Minister of the Interior do everything in his power to prove the very opposite?

For years now, the ministry has been mistreating the refugees from Africa and other places. The Darfur survivors, who risk their lives to reach Israel through the Sinai desert, are caught in the streets by special manhunt-squads of the ministry, thrown into prison and then deported.

This week, the government decided to expel 400 refugee children who were born in Israel, speak Hebrew and have never known any other homeland. This evokes tragic memories of the 1930s, when Jewish refugees from Germany could find no asylum anywhere and were returned to the Nazi hell.

True, Israel is not the only country in the world that ill-treats “illegal immigrants”. Many countries, from the US to France, do the same. But Israel claims to be The Jewish State, and mistreatment of refugee children is a mortal blow to the basis of its legitimacy.

THE LIST is long.

The other central pillar of the legitimacy of Israel is the claim that we are “The Only Democracy in the Middle East”.

If so, what can we say about the Jerusalem judge who condemned a man whose new Israeli lady “friend” willingly had sex with him after a few minutes’ acquaintance, and found him guilty of rape only because he had hidden from her that he was – God forbid! – an Arab?

What can we say about the Minister of Police who is loudly supporting a policeman who put his revolver to the head of a thief and shot him at point-blank range, while the man was sitting in his car and trying to escape, because he was an Arab?

All these doings – and many more – are contributing every day to the worldwide conspiracy that is aiming at the delegitimization of the State of Israel. But who is the head of the plotters?

All the evidence points in one direction: the man who appointed all these agents to their positions, where they are doing irreparable damage: Binyamin Netanyahu. A master conspirator who hides behind the façade of an incompetent politician.

AS IS well-known, the “Protocols of the Elders of Zion” were concocted by the secret police of the Russian Czar, based on a 19th century tract originally written against Napoleon III.

The “Protocols of the Elders of Anti-Zion” are being composed these days by Binyamin Netanyahu and his cronies.

A Necessary Prelude To Peace?

"Beneath the official level of western governmental support for Israel, there is private disquiet about Israeli conduct. And at the popular level, there is a sea change in opinion: where Israel was once seen as the victim, it has now become the bully. In Britain, for example, the strength of popular sympathy for Palestinians is striking. Anecdotal evidence suggests that the same is happening elsewhere....If this trend continues and Israel's isolation worsens it will be no bad thing. It may be the only way for Israelis to grasp that endless aggression comes at a price and that peace is not made through the barrel of a gun."

By Ghada Karmi
(Monday, August 9, 2010)
Courtesy Of "Media Monitors"

Can Israel survive its recent battering in public opinion? Many believe that this may be a defining moment in a long history of Israeli impunity. Hitherto, Israel's record of recovery from international censure has been impressive. A string of past misdeeds--the 1982 Lebanon invasion and siege of Beirut, the Sabra and Shatila camp massacres, the 2006 Lebanon War, the interminable occupation of Arab land, even the 2008-9 war on Gaza that should have been decisive--failed to tarnish Israel's reputation irreparably. Despite strong international condemnation each time, Israel was always able to shrug off its critics.

The Israeli attack on the Gaza freedom flotilla on May 31 is the current object of international censure. But, going by the past, there is no reason to suppose this time will be different. Speculation about a growing international isolation that will damage Israel may be just that. This May, Israel gained membership in the prestigious OECD, unprecedented for a state of its size. An upgrade of relations with Europe, already most favorable to Israel, is delayed but not cancelled. The fuss over the Gaza flotilla assault is already fading, and Israel may feel it has succeeded in facing down international condemnation yet again.

Yet it may not turn out so well this time. Bravado, the flaunting of Israeli power over the US Congress and the recent success in apparently restoring cordial relations with the US president cannot disguise a tide of rising panic among Israelis. For a state so wedded to the idea of itself as legitimate, reputable and a worthy member of the world community, the battering this image has received in recent months must be worrying. The international climate of opinion has never been so hostile toward Israel. The savage assault on Gaza between the end of 2008 and early 2009 had a powerful impact on international public opinion, further aggravated by the recent assault on the Gaza freedom flotilla, in which nine Turkish humanitarian activists were killed. Israel's stock invocation of anti-Semitism and security threats is not working. Its partial easing of the blockade on Gaza has also failed to stem the tide of criticism.

Last month Israel's only Islamic ally, Turkey, announced a suspension of all military cooperation with Israel, worth $7.5 billion. Turkish airspace has been closed to Israeli military aircraft. Fear of reprisals has kept Israeli tourists out of Turkey, and Israeli army officers have been instructed not to visit there. The United Nations has insisted on an independent inquiry into events around the Gaza flotilla, and not the one Israel proposes. Israel's hitherto unfettered control over Gaza is further under threat by the European Union's call for an end to the Gaza blockade and its intention to set up a monitoring mechanism of Gaza's land and sea crossings so that more humanitarian aid can enter the Strip unimpeded. Even Israel's staunchest ally, the United States, has called the Gaza siege "unacceptable".

Relations between Israel and several western states have been strained since January. Britain and Australia both expelled Israeli diplomats in reaction to the illegal use by Mossad agents of their passports in the Mahmoud al-Mabhouh killing in Dubai. The Polish authorities arrested a Mossad agent accused of involvement in the killing. Britain, France, Spain and Italy have demanded firm action over the flotilla attack. On June 14, Israel's defense minister, Ehud Barak, cancelled a trip to the Paris Arms Show, having been warned that pro-Palestinian groups would seek his arrest.

Meanwhile, the boycott movement against Israel, already active, has gained astonishing momentum. Israeli officials are now frequently targeted at universities in Europe and America, forcing them to cancel lectures. This week 76 distinguished Indian academics, including the writer Arundhati Roy, signed a call for the cultural and academic boycott of Israel. They have joined the well-established British academic boycott of Israel movement, BRICUP, and a growing US academic boycott group. A cultural boycott of Israel movement is also developing; the Pixies, Klaxons and Gorillaz recently cancelled concerts in Israel. Prominent writers Alice Walker and Iain Banks are also boycotting Israel. Banks has refused to have his books translated into Hebrew, as has Jordan's Queen Rania whose book for children has just been published.

Dockworkers in Sweden, Norway, India and South Africa are refusing to handle Israeli ships. In San Francisco, bay dockworkers delayed Israeli ships for 24 hours, unheard of in the US. Britain's Unite union has resolved to boycott Israeli companies, and there is a mounting movement in Europe and the US for divestment from companies such as Caterpillar, which work to support Israel's occupation of the Palestinian territories.

Individually none of these acts is likely to threaten Israel. It is their collectivity and the speed with which they are spreading and increasing that is important. Beneath the official level of western governmental support for Israel, there is private disquiet about Israeli conduct. And at the popular level, there is a sea change in opinion: where Israel was once seen as the victim, it has now become the bully. In Britain, for example, the strength of popular sympathy for Palestinians is striking. Anecdotal evidence suggests that the same is happening elsewhere.

If this trend continues and Israel's isolation worsens it will be no bad thing. It may be the only way for Israelis to grasp that endless aggression comes at a price and that peace is not made through the barrel of a gun.

Blind Support For Israeli Policies

Increasingly Seen As Imperiling Judaism's Moral Integrity

"As we move further into the 21st century, American Judaism stands at a crossroads. It must decide what it wants to be. Shall it be a thoughtful religion, giving meaning and purpose to the lives of its adherents and having an influence for good upon our larger American society? Or will it become an inward-looking group focused upon the notion of Jewish "ethnicity" and dedicating itself to advancing the interests of the State of Israel, whatever that state may do? Is it to be part of our religious community, or is to be part of the foreign policy establishment?"

By Allan C. Brownfeld
(Monday, August 9, 2010)
Courtesy Of "Media Monitors"

It is becoming increasingly clear to more and more thoughtful American Jews that blind support for Israeli policies—whatever they may be—is imperiling Judaism's moral integrity.

There can be little doubt that those organizations which claim to speak for American Jews in fact represent only themselves. American Jewish opinion is more sharply divided than ever before.

A front-page article in the May 6, 2010 New York Times carried the headline, "On Israel, U.S. Jews Have Divergent Views, Often Parting From Leaders."

The article's author, Paul Vitello, wrote that "...the recent tension between the Obama administration and the Israeli government over the stalled Middle East peace process...has raised serious questions about whether the traditional leadership of the American Jewish world is fully supported by the mass of American Jews."

Establishment organizations such as the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations criticized the Obama administration's pressure on Israel and even accused the White House of sabotaging Israel's very foundations. In a videotaped statement, former New York City Mayor Edward Koch addressed an angry crowd outside the Israeli Consulate in Manhattan, declaring that President Obama's demand for a settlement freeze in East Jerusalem was nothing less than an orchestrated effort "to undermine the legitimacy of the state of Israel."

At the same time, however, other Jewish voices increasingly are being heard. "Most Jews have mixed feelings about Israel," Rabbi Tamara Kelton of the Birmingham Temple, a secular humanistic congregation in Farmington Hills, Michigan, noted. "They support Israel, but it's complicated. Until now, you never heard from those people. You heard only from the organized ones who are l00 percent certain: 'we're right, they're wrong.'"

States Jeremy Ben-Ami, founder of the Washington, DC lobby J Street, the latest of several organizations representing the voice of liberal Jews who support Israel but not all of its policies: "People are tired of being told that you are either with us or against us. The majority of American Jews support the president, support the two-state solution and do not feel that they have been well represented by the organizations that demand obedience to every wish of the Israeli government. If you had taken their word for it, Obama should have gotten 12 percent of the Jewish vote. But he got 80. That should say something."

In an important article in the June 10, 2010 issue of the New York Review of Books titled "The Failure Of The American Jewish Establishment," Peter Beinart, associate professor of journalism and political science at the City University of New York and a Senior Fellow at the New America Foundation, wrote: "Among American Jews today, there are a great many Zionists, especially in the Orthodox world...And there are a great many liberals, especially in the secular Jewish world, people deeply devoted to human rights for all people, Palestinians included. But the two groups are increasingly distinct. Particularly in the younger generation, fewer and fewer American Jewish liberals are Zionists; fewer and fewer American Jewish Zionists are liberal. One reason is that the leading institutions of American Jewry have refused to foster—indeed, have actively opposed—a Zionism that challenges Israel's behavior in the West Bank and Gaza Strip and toward its own Arab citizens. For several decades, the Jewish establishment has asked American Jews to check their liberalism at Zionism's door, and now, to their horror, they are finding that many young Jews have checked their Zionism instead."

Rather than fostering free and open discussion, Beinart pointed out, the organized American Jewish community has sought to stifle it: "In recent years, American Jewish organizations have waged a campaign to discredit the world's most respected international human rights groups.…The Conference of Presidents has announced that 'biased NGOs include Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch, Christian Aid, and Save the Children.' Last summer, an AIPAC spokesman declared that Human Rights Watch 'has repeatedly demonstrated its anti-Israel bias'...Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International are not infallible. But when groups like AIPAC and the Presidents Conference avoid virtually all public criticism of Israeli actions—directing their outrage solely at Israel's neighbors—they leave themselves in a poor position to charge bias."

Beinart, whose family attends an Orthodox synagogue, lamented that, "This obsession with victimhood lies at the heart of why Zionism is dying among America's secular Jewish young. It simply bears no relationship to their lived experience or what they have seen of Israel's. Yes, Israel faces threats from Hezbollah and Hamas. Yes, Israelis understandably worry about a nuclear Iran. But the dilemma you face when you possess dozens or hundreds of nuclear weapons, and your adversary, however despicable, may acquire one, are not the dilemmas of the Warsaw Ghetto. The year 2010 is not, as Binyamin Netanyahu has claimed, 1938. The drama of Jewish victimhood—a drama that feels natural to many Jews who lived through 1938, 1948, or even 1967—strikes most of today's young American Jews as farce."

Recently, leaders of the Jewish Community Federation of San Francisco learned that one of the film groups it supported had sponsored the screening of "Rachel," an Israeli documentary about Rachel Corrie, an American woman killed in Gaza, and critical of Israel's security forces. They adopted new rules early this year prohibiting any of the cultural organizations it supports from presenting programs that "undermine the legitimacy of the state of Israel."

This, in turn, produced a strong response, in the form of "An Open Letter To All Jewish Communities," which appeared as an advertisement in the May 7, 2010 issue of The Forward. The letter declared: "...our usually liberal community has set a dangerous precedent that may affect the range of American Jewish voices on issues concerning the Israel-Palestinian conflict...In the interest of human rights and civil liberties for all people, we strongly advocate unfettered freedom of speech, open-minded public education, respectful discussion, and willingness to engage in that time-honored Jewish tradition of fruitful debate and meaningful dialogue. The Jewish community is riven by a fateful debate over the future of Israeli democracy and the occupation of Palestinian lands. Attempting to curtail that debate will only drive it into the shadows, where it will become ever more extreme."

Among those signing this letter were Profs. Robert Alter of the University of California at Berkeley, Joel Beinin of Stanford University, David Biale of the University of California at Davis, and Naomi Seidman of the Graduate Theological Union, filmmaker Alan Snitow, author Paul Kivel, Rabbi Lavey Derby and a host of others.

Dueling Advertisements

Dueling full-page ads concerning Jerusalem are another indication of the depth of division within the Jewish community. In April, Nobel laureate Elie Wiesel published an ad in The Washington Post, The Wall Street Journal and The International Herald Tribune calling upon the U.S. to stop pressuring Israel over Jerusalem in an effort to move Palestinians to the peace table. In response, J Street placed full page ads in Jewish weekly newspapers containing a statement by former Israeli cabinet minister and political commentator Yossi Sarid.

Addressing Wiesel, Sarid wrote: "I read the beautiful open letter you penned...From it I learned that you know much more about heavenly Jerusalem, but less about its counterpart here on earth. An outsider reading your letter would probably have concluded that peace has already taken root in the City of Peace. He would learn that in Jerusalem, Jews, Christians and Muslims worship their gods unimpeded, that 'all are allowed to build their homes anywhere in the city.' Someone has deceived you, my dear friend. Not only may an Arab not build 'anywhere,' but he may thank his god if he is not evicted from his home and thrown onto the street with his family and property. Perhaps you've heard about Arab residents of Sheikh Jarrah, having lived there since 1948, who are again being uprooted and made refugees because certain Jews are chafing from Jerusalem's space restraints."

Blind support for Israel's policies of occupation, argues Prof. Tony Judt of New York University, an active Zionist in his youth, has eroded Judaism's moral position. Writing in the May/June 2010 issue of Tikkun, he declared that, "If there is one cast-iron law of history, it is probably that occupations and other forms of colonial rule are sooner or later resisted, and when that point comes, the occupier has a straight-forward choice between leaving and allowing the native population to exercise its independence and self-determination—or staying. When the time came, Israel made the disastrous decision to stay. The rest was predictable."

Referring to those American Jewish groups which have supported whatever Israeli governments have chosen to do, Judt asked: "How...does a reputedly intelligent people, with traditionally strong humanistic values, manage constantly to delude itself about what is going on, what lies in store and what needs to be done? And how has it allowed the Jewish Star of David, and by implication the Jewish religion and Jewish people, to become associated in the eyes of growing numbers of people with repression?"

As we move further into the 21st century, American Judaism stands at a crossroads. It must decide what it wants to be. Shall it be a thoughtful religion, giving meaning and purpose to the lives of its adherents and having an influence for good upon our larger American society? Or will it become an inward-looking group focused upon the notion of Jewish "ethnicity" and dedicating itself to advancing the interests of the State of Israel, whatever that state may do? Is it to be part of our religious community, or is to be part of the foreign policy establishment?

The majority of American Jews appear increasingly alienated from the groups which speak in their name. They reject the Zionist idea and share the philosophy proclaimed as early as 1841 at the dedication ceremony of Temple Beth Olohim in Charleston, South Carolina, at which Rabbi Gustav Posnanski declared: "This country is our Palestine, this city our Jerusalem, this house of God our Temple." In its 1885 Pittsburgh Platform, American Reform Judaism declared: "We consider ourselves no longer a nation, but a religious community."

The growing politicization of Judaism has alienated increasing numbers of American Jews, in particular in the younger generation. Its moral integrity is under attack. Surely, now is the time to take stock and change course.

My Experience With The ADL

"The idea of an organization committed to fighting hate and defamation based on religion is a great idea. But if the ADL is committed only to stopping the defamation of the Jewish people while participating in the defamation of the Muslim community, then it has clearly gone against its own goals and vision."

By Daoud Kuttab
(Tuesday, August 10, 2010)
Courtesy Of "Media Monitors"

The aim of this blog is not to pile it on the Anti-Defamation League (ADL), but to show that this organization that is expected to fight hate, discrimination and defamation, has little tolerance for the suffering of any group other than the Jewish population.

I was invited by the ADL sometime in 2002 to speak to a delegation of ADL chapter heads from all over the US who were making a visit to Israel. The group would not come to the Palestinian territories or even anywhere in East Jerusalem so I had to travel to see them at their hotel, the King David Hotel in West Jerusalem.

The meeting was scheduled for three in the afternoon, and the director, Abe Foxman asked if I could come ten minutes early. I did and he met with me separately saying that he had an important meeting and could not attend my talk but wanted to talk to me one on one. We talked in general terms and then I mentioned what had happened at a pro-Israel rally in Washington, D.C., not long before, when the Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz was booed as he told a packed crowd of thousands that "innocent Palestinians are suffering and dying as well. It is critical that we recognize and acknowledge that fact.''

Foxman was apologetic to me and reassured me that this was not a universal boo, but that it was a tiny minority certainly not representative of the majority of those attending the rally. Foxman then left for his meeting, and I entered the conference room where the directors of all the ADL branches were waiting for my talk.

In such situations I usually check, and I was assured that I was the only Palestinian that this group would meet. I often joke about being the token Palestinian and try to speak honestly to the group, explaining to them that I feel the responsibility of representing the entire Palestinian political spectrum and not just my own rather "moderate" point of view.

My discussion covered the usual aspirations of Palestinians wanting to end the Israeli occupation and live in freedom and independence. I often explain that both peoples have a choice of either sharing the power or the land, but one party can't forever subjugate the other party. After politely listening to me, the question-and-answer period came, and I was hit with a barrage of questions, mostly about Hamas and their refusal to recognize Israel and so on. I tried to answer them with whatever information and arguments I could without being a representative of Hamas. But I would always try to force them to consider the suffering of the Palestinian people and not to focus only on one radical party.

To help illustrate my position, I express again my displeasure at what happened in that Washington rally in which a pro-Israeli official was booed simply for reminding the American Jewish audience that Palestinians also suffer and die. This didn't go well with the audience, but I remembered what Foxman had said, so I thought of trying to gauge their position. Knowing that they didn't have any idea what Foxman had told me, I asked them whether the booing was from a small group or whether it was more representative of the entire group.

One of those in attendance (I think he headed the ADL in St. Louis, Missouri) quickly responded. I was there, he said, and we all booed Wolfowitz, it was not an isolated response. Others in the room shook their heads in agreement.

I never told the group that I had heard the exact opposite from their more sophisticated national director, and since he had left, I never had a chance to related what I had heard from the St. Louis ADL director.

I have not spoken at an ADL visit since then, but I thought of this story when I followed the flip-flopping position of the ADL director who was vehemently opposed to the creation of the Islamic Cultural center before the vote of the Manhattan council, only to backtrack the day after the unanimous vote. I couldn't help but remember the discrepancy between what I had heard from Foxman directly and what his local directors were saying.

My wife and daughter moved to the US for a while this summer, and when we went to register my daughter at the Cheltenham Township School District, I noticed ADL stickers all over the wall opposing Hate. I totally agree with the need for an anti-hate education beginning in schools, churches, synagogues and mosques. But the fight against hate has to be universal if it is to be effective.

The idea of an organization committed to fighting hate and defamation based on religion is a great idea. But if the ADL is committed only to stopping the defamation of the Jewish people while participating in the defamation of the Muslim community, then it has clearly gone against its own goals and vision.

Tolerance Is Always The Better Option

If Muslim women choose to don a headscarf or pray or fast, that is their choice and their way of expressing their devotion to their faith. However, expressions of faith are not one-dimensional. Spirituality has been embraced throughout the ages by various means and by various religions and faiths. It is not for humans to dictate to other humans how to connect with their higher power. Likewise, it is not for people or governments to impose (even unofficially) a code of dress or conduct that then becomes the primary marker for their morality."

By Joharah Baker
(Tuesday, August 10, 2010)
Courtesy Of "Media Monitors"

Not very often does one come across an article that it truly mind provoking. Today, I was fortunate enough to read such a piece, which has since left me contemplating my own society and the concepts of tolerance and acceptance. The article, entitled, "Bikini or headscarf -- which offers more freedom?" (http://tinyurl.com/28gdnp3) which appeared on CNN deals with the conflicting emotions of an Anglo-Saxon white American mother whose young daughter embraces the Muslim headscarf. The article is insightful in that the mother explains her initial reluctance to accept her daughter's choice but realizes in the end that there is no one right answer or one right way to live one's life.

The article, like I mentioned earlier, was a catalyst for reflection on my own Palestinian society and the slow but palpable move towards conservatism. Having lived in Palestine for nearly 30 years, it is not difficult to see the changes in society overall, the increase in young women donned in Muslim attire, the headscarves over more and more female heads, the ankle-length "jilbab" in various colors modestly covering western clothes. It is an obvious trend even in the more cosmopolitan Ramallah, a city with a mixed Muslim-Christian population where many of its residents have had extensive exposure to the western world. Still, religion, or at least the physical manifestations of it, has increased and intensified over the years. In the northern and southern West Bank and in Gaza, this trend is even more tangible – most Muslim women are covered from head to toe in what has become something of a moral marker by which women are judged.

Here is my point of contention with this trend and why the CNN article (originally published in O Magazine) made such an impact on me. For myself, a secular (albeit spiritual) Muslim, it is not the fact that so many Muslim women choose to cover their heads that irks me. This is a choice, a right that all able-minded adults should reserve. It is the fact that whether a woman covers her head or not is the standard by which she is judged is what pains me, for this is an indicator of the lack of tolerance our society is moving towards.

This is the perfect time of year for such a discussion. Ramadan, the holy month of fasting is days away. Muslims are meant to utilize this month for meditation, for self-reflection just as much as for self-denial, piety and prayer. Muslims fast from dusk until dawn for an entire month. No food, water, cigarettes or sexual encounters are allowed during the hours of fasting. However, the month is not designed solely around the abstinence from food and drink but focuses on the betterment of the person, the purity of mind and heart and on the embracement of tolerance.

In Palestine, and perhaps in other parts of the Arab and Muslim world, this is lacking. While Palestinians pride themselves (and rightly so in this day and age of sectarian strife) on Muslim-Christian tolerance, it is the Muslim-Muslim relations that have begun to suffer. Thirty years ago, walking through my small Jerusalem-area village without a headscarf was nothing unusual. There were plenty more girls and women dressed just like me. Today, not only am I (and those few others) a rarity in this village or any other village of selection, but I am not immune from criticism for a look I have donned all my adult life. Girls as young as nine can be seen with headscarves and long modest attire, something rarely seen in the past. Again, if this were a conscious choice (even from a nine-year old) then so be it. However, it is the coercion which I am sure takes place behind closed doors in many cases, the pressure that "good girls" cover up that makes me so uneasy. Whether a woman wears a headscarf or not should not be the indicator for her character or her morality. Women, just like men, should be judged on their behavior and value system, not on their appearance.

Before imaginations go wild, it should be made clear that Palestine has not become Afghanistan or Saudi Arabia. However, in Gaza, where the Islamic movement Hamas is in control, signs of "enforced morality" are becoming more and more apparent. Last month, the de facto authority there banned women from smoking the water pipe in public. "It is inappropriate for a woman to sit cross-legged and smoke in public. It harms the image of our people," Ihab Ghussein, Hamas Interior Ministry spokesman was quoted as saying at the time.

In the West Bank, where Hamas has failed to retain a stronghold and where the secular Palestinian Authority under Mahmoud Abbas rules, the situation is not as threatening. However, social norms can oftentimes be stronger than any political decrees, especially when they carry religious interpretations. This has proven true in our society as a whole, which does not impose the headscarf by law, but the occurrence of which has increased nonetheless due to social pressures.

Next week, as Ramadan starts, I think it is imperative that the customs of our society are respected and honored whether you chose to observe the month of fasting or not. This means that disrespecting those who fast is just as inexcusable as forcefully imposing it. If Palestinian Muslim women choose to don a headscarf or pray or fast, that is their choice and their way of expressing their devotion to their faith. However, expressions of faith are not one-dimensional. Spirituality has been embraced throughout the ages by various means and by various religions and faiths. It is not for humans to dictate to other humans how to connect with their higher power. Likewise, it is not for people or governments to impose (even unofficially) a code of dress or conduct that then becomes the primary marker for their morality. The CNN article is a perfect example of tolerance, one that will hopefully be embraced on a large scale, not only by Muslims, Christians and Jews but by all peoples about all issues. The bottom line for any society to function properly on the basis of tolerance is acceptance of those it embraces and to judge, not on physical appearance but on the quality of character.

Democracy's Not For Dummies

"Reducing these problems to the typical good vs. evil political thought paralysis is exactly what rulers want. It keeps people battling over issues that should bring them together. Meanwhile, we move closer to economic and environmental breakdown through more wars, more mindless fossil fuel consumption, and more actual and dangerous bigotry towards American muslims than toward any immigrants, legal or illegal, from anywhere in the world."

By Frank Scott
(Friday, August 6, 2010)
Courtesy Of "Media Monitors"

Under the guise of fighting terrorism a paranoid and secretive U.S. government has several hundred thousand employees working with Top Secret clearance. How can anyone but an idiot expect to keep secrets when hundreds of thousands of people have access to them? And with so many top secretly watching one another watch one another, how did billions of dollars suddenly vanish from an Iraqi slush fund?

When facts about the Afghanistan war that should have been common knowledge had we a truly free media were finally revealed to the public, the heroic revealer was arrested while the cowardly concealers charged that he was endangering our military. These traitorous jackals clamor for more troops in Afghanistan while denying jobs here at home where the only stimulus program sends workers to invade foreign countries for alleged defense of our “homeland” . This costs thousands of lives, billions of dollars, makes more enemies for us and increases the threat of terrorist attacks.

Our industrial infrastructure is in dangerous disrepair, our financial infrastructure is propped up by taxpayers who get nothing but personal debt for their public investment, millions are unemployed and descending into poverty, the upper middle class is being lowered to middle while the middle sinks into permanent debt . And government spending is criticized for everything but foreign wars that cost trillions, profit a small minority and cause deadly loss for the great majority.

The venal idiots and sanctimonious dolts in charge of this disaster have enough weapons to destroy the world as they claim to preserve democracy here - where it hasn’t existed since the original western settlers arrived - while creating it in other nations - where it hasn’t a chance to exist until western military settlers depart . If we were citizens instead of merely consumers we might see that we make an insane asylum look like a center for the pursuit of reason and morality.

After the supreme court made it even easier to market politicians, corporate money is flooding the financial cesspool mind management calls our democracy. The wealthiest not only indirectly purchase their political servants but in the further privatization of government decide to take direct political power themselves. The billionaire who bought the mayor’s office in New York has set a trend and now another billionaire is attempting to purchase the governor’s office in California. How long before another billionaire puts a down payment on the presidency?

Media dutifully reports who has the most campaign money and is therefore a sure winner when the people - in their usual minorities - go to the polls and select either a billionaire or the tool of billionaires. Calling this a democracy would only make sense to patients at the world’s busiest mental health crisis center.

In the midst of what we’re told is an economic recovery that hasn’t yet reached tens of millions who don't own banks , the armed menace not only continues but has more billions shoveled into the Pentagon psycho ward, with more ominous threats made to Iran on behalf of Israel and saber rattling directed at North Korea, Venezuela and Somalia, among others. It is imperative for the public to take action that will turn this monstrous if enfeebled state vehicle around before it goes over a cliff. But not if we continue to be divided by political ploys that set minorities against minorities and prevent identification of the problems affecting the majority. Those cannot be solved by ghettoized groups of Americans, but only by a united democratic nation.

The color coded insurrections we create in foreign countries that are falsely called democratic revolutions may be ironically balanced by color coded red and blue states rising against the government here. Manipulated by focus groups and polling, voters are reduced to market research clusters and subjected to advertising campaigns that sell politicians as so many consumer goods. But there may be a backlash and recent actions in Arizona and Missouri are signs of hope even as they are criticized as misguided over reactions. Both states attempt to confront real problems which bring great private profit to owners of the federal structure but social loss to them. While their analysis of capitalism may be naive, so is their opponent’s unquestioning acceptance of immigration and health care policies that benefit minority capital at the expense of a majority of the people.

Reducing these problems to the typical good vs. evil political thought paralysis is exactly what rulers want. It keeps people battling over issues that should bring them together. Meanwhile, we move closer to economic and environmental breakdown through more wars, more mindless fossil fuel consumption, and more actual and dangerous bigotry towards American muslims than toward any immigrants, legal or illegal, from anywhere in the world.

Calling for unity among America’s disunited can only seem hopeless to those with no real desire for survival. None of us will be safer and most of us will be in great danger if the fanatic Israeli lobby gets a lunatic American government to go along with an attack on Iran. The suffering we would inflict on innocent Iranian people might be greater than what we would experience, initially, but at some point all of us will feel the deadly results of such an insanely immoral act. And we will feel it whether we are straight, gay, single, married, white, black, native or immigrant. Hopefully we will not need such a tragedy to bring us to our national senses, but we could strive towards democracy by thinking in terms of avoiding such a further calamity by beginning to act like the most important identity group with the most common interest; American members of a tragically, pointlessly, economically divided human race.