NOVANEWS
- Inside the Beltway, at Cato no less, Iranian winner of Milton Friedman award says ‘gushing wound of Palestine’ is source of the radical fundamentalism
- If it was all about oil, we’d have boots on the ground in Venezuela…
- Dershowitz has Groucho Marx syndrome, only wanting to be at events that don’t invite him
- Hillel to DePaul SJP: The Nakba is a ‘festivity to to delegitimize and destroy Israel’
- Dershowitz Goes To Tel Aviv
- New ‘HRW’ report affirms Goldstone’s claim: Israel wantonly destroyed Gaza’s civilian infrastructure
- Dersh the knife
- ‘J Street’ calls out Conference of Presidents over two-state-solution
| Inside the Beltway, at Cato no less, Iranian winner of Milton Friedman award says ‘gushing wound of Palestine’ is source of the radical fundamentalism Posted: 14 May 2010 10:14 AM PDT
Amazing DC event. Huge Cato Institute dinner, 800 folks in the Washington Hilton ballroom in black tie, for the awarding the bi-annual Milton Friedman award. Amusing and occasionally profound speeches by CATO head Ed Crane (plenty of Greece mockery) and George Will. Republican country here, knowledgeable people with strong minimalist government views. I enjoyed the video snippets of Friedman on 1970’s talk shows, when he really was an iconoclast.
This year’s award was given to Akbar Ganji, an Iranian author and democracy activist who spent six years in prison, some of it in solitary confinement. The introductory video showed a cell, one room with a toilet in it. He was released and came to the West in 2006. He’s a green advocate, an anti-fundamentalist, but he’s sure not playing any neocon role. For his speech, Ganji stood at the podium with his green headscarved wife while a translation from Farsi was read. If anyone was expecting an America good– Islam bad discourse, they went away confused. Here at the heart of his speech, was the core bit of advice: don’t invade, don’t bomb, and bring justice to Palestine.
Not a word, not a single word, about “they hate us for our freedoms.” He was applauded, a standing ovation, though not thunderous. The conventional, neocon soaked, Republican mentality will give way slowly. Other think tanks, the Times, the Wash Post, the Likudnik hive will put out boatloads of words to shore up their big lie: Israel has nothing to with our problems in the MidEast, it’s the liberty of American women they can’t stand. But it’s hard to discount a man who spent six years in a Tehran prison, the price for fighting for human rights in his country. Bravo to Cato, for a gutsy and important selection.
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| If it was all about oil, we’d have boots on the ground in Venezuela… Posted: 14 May 2010 08:40 AM PDT
The latest in a dialogue about the Israel lobby theory.
In his response to my criticism Stephen Maher oddly ends up repeating the same leaps of logic that I objected to in the first place. To wit: no one disputes the fact that the US covets Middle Eastern energy resources. The question I asked is how from this fact has he (or the people he is ventriloquising) inferred Israel’s strategic value? He offers the standard response that Israel confronted and defeated Arab nationalism on behalf of the US. This would seem a persuasive argument if one were to pick up history from an arbitrary point somewhere in the early 60s. He seems unaware that Nasser, who was seen as an anti-Communist modernizer, was assisted in his ascent to power by the CIA (specifically by Kermit Roosevelt of Operation Ajax fame); and the Arabs, who saw the US as a non-imperial–indeed anti-imperial power–only turned to the Soviet camp after the Eisenhower administration blocked aid to Egypt for the Aswan dam under pressure from the Israel, China, and cotton lobbies. Maher probably hasn’t heard of the Lavon Affair either. Arabs only turned against the US as a consequence of its support for Israel. If Israel defeated Arab nationalism, then it was merely vanquishing an enemy of its own creation. It was doing the US no favor. Even Nixon understood this, who in ’73 initially refused to support Israel against the Egyptians because he said US was obliged to protect Israel but had no obligation to protect its conquests (the Sinai). When asked why he misrepresented quotes by Brzezinski and Kennan, Maher says he was merely trying to demonstrate that there is a broad consensus on the strategic importance of Middle East oil to the US (an uncontroversial claim). If there is such a consensus and yet there is none when it comes to how best to secure these resources, it should be obvious that there is no direct correlation between coveting the resources and wanting war. The relevant question then is who pushed for the Iraq war? He does not answer.
Maher’s next accuses me of absurdity, only to follow the accusation with a non sequitur. He assumes what he has to prove. He asserts that wherever there’s a conflict between US and Israeli interests, the former always prevails. By way of evidence he claims US applied ‘severe military sanctions’ against Israel in 2004-2005, and cites the earlier instance where US successfuly pressured Israel against dealing with China. (For some odd reason, Maher leaves out the other instance that Noam Chomsky cites as example of Israeli subservience: the 1982 AWACs sales to Saudi Arabia.)
It seems Maher is blind to the irony of his own claim. Isn’t US support for Israel premised on its status as a ‘strategic asset’? For the US to support Israel it isn’t necessary that it serve a strategic interest so long as it is not seen as being openly hostile to the said interests. Did he expect the lobby to argue that selling advanced weapons based on US R&D to its chief rival was somehow serving its interests? The AWACs story is even less convincing. Those who trot it out rarely mention that when the sale was first attempted by Carter it was vetoed by Congress. Reagan succeeded only after the Congress imposed humiliating terms. The AWACs planes would only be flown by US pilots, and the accompanying F-15s will have neither long range fuel pods, nor weapons racks. But the context was even more important. Reagan was only able to justify the sale through Bill Casey’s help who at the time was encouraging the Saudis to underwrite the proxy war in Afghanistan. People who point to the military-industrial complex as the chief determinant of policy do have a point. A state of conflict does fill its coffers, even if a war is not always necessary for its profitmaking. It was the alarm over detente that led to the rise of the neoconservatives as a nexus between the Israel lobby and the MIC in the early ’70s. And through thinktanks like JINSA and CSP the alliance has since been solidified. However, when their interests come into conflict, once again, the lobby triumphs. In the mid-80s the US lost the biggest arms contract of history — the Yamamah deal — when Reagan personally encouraged King Fahd to turn to the Brits instead since he knew he couldn’t confront the Congress again after the bruising he took over the AWACs sale. Likewise, in 2007 the sale of $20 billion worth of weapons to Saudi Arabia was only approved after the administration promised a similar amount to Israel (except that the Israelis won’t pay, but receive top-drawer weapons). If the ‘service’ Israel renders is to receive free US weaponry, surely there are plenty of other states which could do the same at far less political cost. The next claim which is often put forth is that in advancing its interests through a regional proxy the US behavior is no different than it has been elsewhere in the world, such as in Indonesia. But for this argument to be valid, one would have to show that the US behaves in exactly the same manner all over the world where its interests are at stake. Yet we know this is not true. What about states like Oman or Qatar, which actually invited the US to open bases on their soil? What about a state like Uzbekistan, where it did have a base yet left when it was told to? What about a state like Venezuela, where it has none? If there is variance in its behavior, then that means it could be different in I-P too. It becomes pertinent then to ask why US behavior is the way it is in I-P and not the way it is elsewhere. Since US behaves imperially in other places, does that mean we can’t say United Fruit pushed for the overthrow of Jacobo Arbenz in Guatemala? After all, no leftist shies away from pointing out that the US overthrow of Arbenz was instigated by a powerful non-state actor. But somehow by blaming Middle East policy on the lobby you are giving imperialism a free pass. (It is like saying that by blaming the driver for a hit-and-run you exonerate the car.) Yes, the US has a horrendous imperial record around the world, including invasions, overthrows, destabilization and proxy wars. It backs many authoritarian regimes. However, this does not mean that US policy around the world is uniform. In some places it is imperial without being destructive, in others it is destructive without being imperial. The difference is not insignificant. Had the realists had their way, there would be 1.2 million fewer dead people in Iraq. The US covets resources in many places but that does not automatically translate into imperial aggression. Otherwise won’t we have boots on Venezuelan ground by now? No one has challenged US authority and prestige more strongly and more consistently than Hugo Chavez. A more ludicrous version of these arguments attributes policies in the Middle East to some unitary, coherent entity called ‘capital’. One could of course think of ‘capital’ as a metaphysical concept, which, like God, works in mysterious ways leaving no evidentiary trail. This kind of faith based analysis, removed from politics, history and experience, has the advantage of freeing us from the burden of evidence. One would have thought this subjectless, structuralist approach would have expired with Louis Althusser’s strangled wife. Yet it persists in ever more ridiculous forms, mainly, as Tony Judt put it, because it renders their argument ‘invulnerable to any criticism of the empirical sort’. In this instrumentalist approach the state has no autonomy whatsoever; it is merely a pliant expression of ‘capital’. Of course, no one who has read Marx’s astute political analysis in the Eighteenth Brumaire, or is familiar with his concept of Bonapartism (or Gramsci’s Caesarism, or Mills’s relative autonomy of states), could make such laughable assumptions. Capital of course manifests itself in more tangible forms, such as, say, the Fortune 500. And the interests of the Fortune 500 have been repeatedly thwarted by the lobby, beginning with the passage of the US Israel Free Trade Agreement (which foreshadowed NAFTA). ‘Capital’ has since lost in excess of $80 billion, and its interests were again frustrated in the confrontation over the Iran Libya Sanctions Act. Decisions of war and peace are never monocausal. They inevitably involve multiple variables, convergence of interests, and contingent factors. One could therefore say that the Israel lobby is one factor among others. One could however also say that Mt. Everest is one mountain among others.
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| Dershowitz has Groucho Marx syndrome, only wanting to be at events that don’t invite him Posted: 14 May 2010 07:44 AM PDT
Yesterday we did a post about Alan Dershowitz attacking a Harvard colleague, Duncan Kennedy, in his speech at Tel Aviv University last week. Dershowitz assailed Kennedy’s class on Israel/Palestine legal issues at Harvard Law School. Then Kennedy responded to Dershowitz in a collegial email.
There’s been a lot of water under the bridge since then. First, here is the syllabus of Duncan Kennedy’s class. Boy does this look good. I have always said that we need more non-Jewish scholars of Jewish history. The late great Gershom Scholem disagreed; he said that Jews should write Jewish history. No, we need more air in the room. We need to understand this majestic history that is now so engaged with elements of militarism and imperial power. Second, Dershowitz has now responded curtly by email to Kennedy. I reprint the entire email below. I must laugh at one line. Dershowitz says that Kennedy never invited him to speak at the class. Dershowitz also was upset that Brandeis did not allow him to debate Jimmy Carter three years ago and that Walt and Mearsheimer didn’t invite him to debate. It is grandiosity on his part, and seems an acute variant of Groucho-Marx disease (I only want to be a member of a club that won’t have me). OK, here’s Dershowitz’s letter, which begins with a reference to former HLS student Joel Pollak, an Israel lobbyist and phenom who is already running for Senate from Illinois (why not Supreme Court?):
I will pass along Pollak’s email below. But first, here is Duncan Kennedy’s wise response:
Now the rest of this post is comprised of Joel Pollak’s note to Alan Dershowitz. Paragraphs are indicated by / marks. Don’t have time to do formatting.
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| Hillel to DePaul SJP: The Nakba is a ‘festivity to to delegitimize and destroy Israel’ Posted: 13 May 2010 06:39 PM PDT  Chicago’s very own Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP) at DePaul University is making local headlines due to its event to raise awareness about the oppression of Palestinians within Israel’s apartheid walls. Today, Thursday, May 13, DePaul’s SJP is organizing and hosting a “Die In” to commemorate the hundreds of thousands of Palestinians evicted from their homes and forced to face the muzzle of Israeli guns since the creation of the state of Israel in 1948. Sixty-two years later, SJP protests these injustices.But the “Die In” has evoked a counterprotest by pro-Israeli communities both inside and outside of DePaul’s campus. While SJP continues to plan the logistics of this event, Hillels Around Chicago has just begun circulating a memo in an attempt to denounce the protest. The full statement can be found at the bottom of the post. A representative of Hillel kindly included her contact information in the memo so I took the liberty of calling her to gain a better understanding of Hillel’s reasoning. She literally echoed the exact words of Hillel’s released statements.
According to her, Hillel felt the need to defend Israel from such biased and provocative pro-Palestinian sentiment. I didn’t quite follow her logic. How would a few actors delegitimize the state of Israel? The protestors aren’t in any way fabricating facts or exaggerating the reality of the situation.
Unfortunately, Hillel seems to have forgotten that Israel’s oppression of the Palestinian people has caused even more grief. Every single day, Palestinian sympathizers here and abroad are forced to cope with the never-ending news that more children have been illegally imprisoned without due process, that humanitarian aid has been blocked, and that live ammunition had just torn through a peaceful protest.
This post originally appeared on the blog Sixteen Minutes to Palestine.
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| Dershowitz Goes To Tel Aviv Posted: 13 May 2010 04:31 PM PDT
In an angry, demagogic speech at Tel Aviv University’s graduation ceremony this week, Harvard Law School professor Alan Dershowitz stridently attacked Israeli academics who have dissented from their government’s positions and who have sought to rally outside pressure against the occupation of Palestine. He singled out by name professors Shlomo Sand, Anat Matar, and Rachel Giora, assailing them for giving support to the international BDS campaign and for “lend[ing] credibility to non-credible arguments.” (Dershowitz did not say what those arguments were or why they were not credible, however.)
“Academic freedom is not only the province of the Israeli hard left,” Dershowitz proclaimed. “Academic freedom also includes the right to agree with the government, to defend the government, and to work for the government. It includes the right to be patriotic.” The Harvard law professor’s speech earned a harsh rebuke from a group of faculty members who said in a petition that his rhetoric “borders on incitement.” But if Dershowitz rankled audience members at all, they had a strange way of showing their displeasure. His most aggressive broadsides against academic dissenters were greeted by loud, sustained applause; the conclusion of his speech was rewarded with a standing ovation. Before setting in on the academic evildoers, Dershowitz hailed Israeli universities for “support[ing] the mission of the IDF.” “The IDF has payed back Israel’s universities multi-fold,” he declared. Dershowitz did not mention any of the Israeli university system’s other accomplishments or highlight any other strengths. In his apparent view, institutions like Tel Aviv U are valuable primarily as research arms of the Israeli military-intelligence apparatus. Then, without even a scintilla of evidence, Dershowitz luridly accused left-wing Israeli professors of forcing their politics on their students. “Any professor who punishes a student for not agreeing with his controversial opinion is guilty of academic harassment, which is a variant on what we all would agree is an academic violation, namely sexual harassment.” According to Dershowitz, Matar, Giora, and Sand were not only traitorous; they were the moral equals of sexual criminals. (Is that a pubic hair on your copy of The Invention of the Jewish People?) Next, Dershowitz told the inspiring tale of a pro-Israel American student named Joel Pollack who supposedly found himself in a college course on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict led by an allegedly pro-Palestinian professor. According to Dershowitz, Pollack “simply went online and created a course of his own in parallel to the professor’s… By the end of the semester more students supported Joel’s perspective than the teacher’s perspective. This is competition in the marketplace of ideas and it can work!” Dershowitz’s call for students to undermine professors they disagree with and report their classroom behavior to outside political watchdogs (with assistance from partisan operatives like himself) recalled the neocon former Trotskyist David Horowitz’s “Academic Bill of Rights,” a failed nationwide legislative initiative that would have mandated the hiring of one right-wing professor for each professor who assigned supposedly left-wing material and would have allowed students to sue their professors. (Dershowitz footnoted David Horowitz and Peter Collier’s “The Anti-Chomsky Reader” in his book-length attack on Jimmy Carter, “The Case Against Israel’s Enemies.”) Omitted from Dershowitz’s story (which, according to Harvard Law School professor Duncan Kennedy, was largely false) was the fact that its hero, Pollack, was Dershowitz’s former research assistant. Currently, Pollack is campaigning as a Republican Tea Party candidate for the seat of incumbent Democratic Rep. Jan Schakowsky in Illinois on a neoconservative platform. And Dershowitz, his former mentor, has endorsed his candidacy. Here is Pollack in all his Teabagger glory: Dershowitz went on to suggest that Israel’s internal conflicts were rooted in ethnic pathologies, remarking, “to be Jewish is to be uncomfortable.” Then he told an old Jewish joke about a “downtown shul” that moves uptown with a new rabbi; in the end its members realize that persistent, vehement argument is a Jewish tradition. His stereotypical characterization of Judaism as a form of neurosis revealed his cultural limitations. Dershowitz was appealing to the only Jewish sensibility he has known: the Ashkenazi kind that finds its expression in everything from Borscht Belt humor and to the corridors of Israeli power. The culture of the Mizrahim who have been systematically marginalized by Israel’s Ashkenazi elite but who comprise a majority of Israel’s Jewish population falls entirely outside Dershowitz’s narrow range of experience. (During Tel Aviv U’s graduation ceremony, Israel’s swarthy elements were hardly acknowledged at all. Dershowitz’s stem-winder was followed by a recitation of poetry by Anton Chekhov, not exactly a Levantine native son.) Dershowitz recalled his meeting the day before with Amoz Oz, the literary figurehead of Israel’s Ashkenazi elite who is still regarded by many as a leader of the “peace camp” despite his full-throated endorsement of every Israeli military campaign since the first invasion of Lebanon. According to Dershowitz, Oz told him that his Russian barber “hates Israel” because “everyone thinks they have the right to express an opinion on everything.” “Yes,” Dershowitz said with a wag of his finger, “welcome to Israel! Where everyone has a right to express their opinion!” While Dershowitz spoke, the Palestinian Israeli activists Ameer Makhoul and Omar Said languished in prison cells after being detained without charges and accused by Israel’s internal security service of unspecified crimes against the state. “Security reasons” was the only reason the Shin Bet offered for imprisoning the activists. The Mizrahi Israeli peace activist Ezra Nawi had also been freshly imprisoned, sentenced to a month in jail and three years probation for placing his body between Israeli bulldozers and Palestinian homes. On the other side of the Green Line, Palestinian medical students were recently refused entry to Jerusalem after they rejected a Shin Bet officer’s demand that they spy on fellow students at Al-Quds University. They were thus prevented from continuing their medical training. As usual, the Shin Bet offered “security reasons” as its explanation for denying the students their education. Anat Matar, the Tel Aviv University professor denounced by Dershowitz, has been an outspoken advocate for the hundreds of Palestinian students who have been arrested and detained by Israel’s security services for simply refusing to do its bidding, or for belonging to student organizations the Israel government does not approve of. “When the flag of academic freedom is raised,” Matar has written, “the oppressor and not the oppressed is usually the one who flies it. What is that academic freedom that so interests the academic community in Israel? When, for example, has it shown concern for the state of academic freedom in the occupied territories?” As Dershowitz concluded his speech, he reassured his hosts in Tel Aviv, “Israel will survive its dissenters, as will this great university.” Yes, but as what?
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| New ‘HRW’ report affirms Goldstone’s claim: Israel wantonly destroyed Gaza’s civilian infrastructure Posted: 13 May 2010 11:24 AM PDT
In its official responses to the Goldstone Report, Israel has vehemently denied that it purposely and systematically destroyed Gaza’s civilian infrastructure during “Operation Cast Lead,” as the U.N. report alleges.
One of the many damning allegations in the report states that as the Israeli military began withdrawing from Gaza on January 15, 2009, “there appeared to be a practice of systematically demolishing a large number of structures, including houses, water installations, such as tanks on the roofs of houses, and of agricultural land.” Human Rights Watch (HRW) released a comprehensive, 134-page report today titled, “’I Lost Everything’: Israel’s Unlawful Destruction of Property during Operation Cast Lead.” HRW’s report comes to a similar conclusion the Goldstone Report does: Israel committed war crimes in Gaza when “Israeli forces caused extensive destruction of homes, factories, farms and greenhouses in areas under IDF control without any evident military purpose. These cases occurred when there was no fighting in these areas; in many cases, the destruction was carried out during the final days of the campaign when an Israeli withdrawal was imminent.” As this latest report notes, the targeting of civilian infrastructure seems to have been official Israeli policy, according to statements made by Israeli officials. For instance, Deputy Prime Minister Eli Yishai said, “we have to determine a price tag for every rocket fired into Israel,” and recommended that “even if they fire at an open area or into the sea, we must damage their infrastructures and destroy 100 houses.” The HRW report examines 12 cases of “unlawful destruction” of civilian property, including the el-Bader flour mill, juice and biscuit plants, and seven concrete factories. HRW recommends that Israel conduct impartial investigations into the cases the report documents, and to prosecute those responsible for war crimes. That will not happen, though, as a separate April 2010 HRW report concludes that “Israel’s investigations into serious laws-of-war violations by its forces during last year’s Gaza war lack thoroughness and credibility.” In addition to that recommendation, the HRW report urges the United States to halt all sales of Caterpillar D-9 bulldozers until “an official investigation into the IDF’s use of these bulldozers to destroy civilian property in Gaza” concludes. The report also repeats the Goldstone Report’s recommendations that if independent and impartial investigations by the parties involved in the 2008-2009 Gaza conflict do not materialize, the International Criminal Court should get involved.
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| Dersh the knife Posted: 13 May 2010 10:57 AM PDT
Last Saturday Alan Dershowitz gave a speech at Tel Aviv University in which he lashed out at professors who criticize Israel and use their Jewishness to do so. And those who aren’t Jewish, too. Dershowitz apparently told a story about fellow Harvard Law School prof Duncan Kennedy not by name.
(The transcript of the speech says only “Tell Joel Pollak story here,” a reference to an Israel lobbyist/acolyte of Dershowitz’s who is mentioned in the story). Duncan Kennedy has responded to Dershowitz in a collegial manner. His email is flying around the net; he let us post it. I don’t have the attachments, but you get the story. Hi Alan, Congratulations on your honorary degree from Tel Aviv. Here is what I gather you said about me in your speech, from the video: “Let me tell you a very brief story about a student of mine who was taking a class from a professor at Harvard Law School who was teaching a course on the Israel/Palestine conflict. The course was completely one-sided with all the materials representing an anti-Israel point of view. When Joel asked the professor to add some material to the syllabus that would give the students a balanced point of view, the professor rebuked him and said that this is my class, I teach what I want. Well, Joel didn’t accept that … ” A couple of things. First, I hired Joel as my research assistant during the summer before the course, and got him in off the wait list. He provided many of the materials for the class, all of it strongly pro-Israeli-government material. The attachment has my email invitation to him to work for me, and he accepted. Second, I think Joel would confirm that I never rebuked him for proposing materials. As you’ll see from the next email in the attachment, I went on asking him for material, in particular describing Palestinian war crimes, even after he had begun to denounce the course. Third, I actually invited him to speak to the class when I taught it the following year, and he accepted — that’s the third email exchange in the attachment. As to whether the course was “completely one-sided with all the materials representing an anti-Israel point of view,” you may remember that I included a chapter from The Case for Israel [by Dershowitz] in the very first class, and you were kind enough to send your secretary around with a correction to the 2,000/200,000 misprint in the first printing. I’ve attached the syllabus for the second year, which includes the many pieces that Joel recommended and that I included (e.g., Katz and Karsh). I find it hard to believe that anyone who read this syllabus could describe it as you do. In fact, I’m quite proud of its balance. (I’ll send you the first year’s syllabus as well if you’d like me to — it’s just as balanced, but I like the second year’s better because I missed some very good pro-Palestinian pieces the first time around.) Yours, your colleague, Duncan Kennedy
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| ‘J Street’ calls out Conference of Presidents over two-state-solution Posted: 13 May 2010 10:18 AM PDT
I keep waiting for Americans for Peace Now to leave the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations because it’s a rightwing organization that doesn’t stand for what APN stands for, a two-state solution. The reason APN hangs in there is because of access, solidarity. Here’s a good sign. Jeremy Ben-Ami of J Street is calling out Conference chairman Alan Solow, at Huffpo, over some Jerusalem belongs to the Jews ads the organization has placed. I wish the language were stronger, given the religious fundamentalism of the ads, in contravention of all international law, but this is a good step:
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