NOVANEWS
- I’m crushed and livid (massive Jewish expansion set for Obama’s lap, East Jerusalem)
- Religion doesn’t matter any more,
- Supporting Iraq war was, and apparently still is, a good career move
- The movie where Ari Ben Canaan finds out his father is Darth Vader
- Elena Kagan made who/whom mistake in 2006
- To defuse one-staters, liberal Zionist must justify ‘wrongs’ of ‘48
- Anti-Zionist show in Rochester is back on, though not in original church venue
- ‘NYT’ makes excuses for Netanyahu
- Long predicted, Goldberg’s eclipse finally begins
I’m crushed and livid (massive Jewish expansion set for Obama’s lap, East Jerusalem)Posted: 28 Jun 2010I’m crushed and livid. Jerusalem master plan: Expansion of Jewish enclaves across the city:
This is heating up to massive proportions. And Coteret brings us more info:Channel Ten News: Construction starts at Shepherd Hotel settlement compound in Sheikh Jarrah, East Jerusalem
Aha! Careful incisions! So livid. I’m practically speechless. |
Religion doesn’t matter any more,Posted: 28 Jun 2010Noah Feldman of Harvard Law School says in a piece in the NYT pointing out that Elena Kagan will make it three Jews on the Supreme Court, and no Protestants. It’s easy for him to say, he’s a winner. Also, Feldman served in the Coalition Provisional Authority in the Iraq war and occupation. Was Zionism, which has a religious component, a factor in support for the Iraq war among Jews manning the establishment?By the way, Feldman doesn’t credit E. Digby Baltzell with helping to open the blueblood doors in the ’60s. His book the Protestant Establishment was very important, though; it said that a caste of WASPs was keeping out the talented, including many Jews. The honest question that Feldman won’t go near here is whether the networks that I was part of at Harvard in the 70s, the rising Jewish establishment that lifted him too, didn’t have a castelike quality.Certainly we looked out for one another. Is it mere coincidence that Lawrence Summers, a Jew, taps Elena Kagan to be dean of the Law School? What is our Jewish obligation, as winners, to hire diversely? (And yes, I include myself).P.S. Here is Adam Garfinkle, also of the Iraq war braintrust, writing in Jewcentricity about religion and the neocons, and showing that religion matters very much indeed:
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Supporting Iraq war was, and apparently still is, a good career movePosted: 28 Jun 2010I’m told that last year in a panel at Columbia Journalism School, a writer for The New Yorker said that only one member of the magazine’s staff who dealt with foreign policy opposed the Iraq war. Wow. Why did this leading magazine that told people how to think about Vietnam flub this one so bad?There is no introspective spirit in this New Yorker piece by George Packer about why we went to war with Iraq. Apparently, Peter Beinart and Packer himself did so because of Republicans, and a spirit that fairies implanted in the American establishment:
But Beinart and Packer are liberal Democrats. What did they believe that made them so wrong? Packer gives us class-day bromides:
Got that? I bet those two isms that scare me so much, careerism and Zionism, had something to do with it. Beinart has said recently that he would sacrifice his liberal values in Israel for his Zionism. What else would it make him do? Why did Tom Friedman say he wanted the U.S. to smash something in the Arab world to answer suicide bombers in Tel Aviv?Why did Ken Pollack, leading the New York Times forward to the hustings, dismiss the Palestinian issue as meaningless to the Arab street?P.S. The piece misspells the word “overweening,” putting an a in it. Hard times at the New Yorker. |
The movie where Ari Ben Canaan finds out his father is Darth VaderPosted: 28 Jun 2010From Slate’s the best movies never made:
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Elena Kagan made who/whom mistake in 2006Posted: 28 Jun 2010And oh god, I bet she’s another sleeper Zionist, too; the Times says she praised an Israeli judge as her hero at Harvard Law School.
Of course this Times story paints Barak as a great liberal. The only democracy, right? God save the Jewish people, and the people people too. |
To defuse one-staters, liberal Zionist must justify ‘wrongs’ of ‘48Posted: 27 Jun 2010This is further evidence that Zionists across the board are seriously out of touch with reality. In Haaretz, Chaim Gans invokes humanism and morality in condemning the post 67 settlements but accepts as just the far greater crimes that were committed in 1948, which he doesn’t deny. Gans is forced to make the argument because he states that the one-state position has been given impetus not just by the left, but by right-wing settlers who are endangering the entire enterprise:
Thus, his embrace of Jewish superiority, in the end, makes him no different than those he criticizes. Comparing the ethnic cleansing of the Palestinians with the allied bombing of Dresden, as if the Palestinians had initiated a massive war against the Jews and deserved no more consideration than did the Nazis, is mind boggling from someone who is attempting to present himself as a reasonable man. Are there, one may well ask, any reasonable Zionists? |
Anti-Zionist show in Rochester is back on, though not in original church venuePosted: 27 Jun 2010Yesterday we ran musician Rich Siegel’s report that a gig he was doing at a church in Rochester, NY, with Gilad Atzmon, like Siegel an anti-Zionist, got cancelled because of political pressure, including from a local temple, B’rith Kodesh. Some folks who read the report queried John Keevert, a Rochester social justice activist who had helped schedule the event at his Unitarian church.Keevert said that Siegel’s report was inaccurate. “We did not cancel because of Temple pressure.” Why then? “Scheduling conflict,” he wrote in a note to the questioners. “it has been scheduled in a new location, same time.” We asked Siegel for the latest:The concert has been reinstated, but at a different venue. I am convinced that the concert was initially canceled because of the objection from the rabbi. And I believe that what is being said now is pure bull.Here’s the story: This concert/presentation at First Unitarian of Rochester has been booked for probably around two months- I can check old e mails to verify. All of a sudden we get a communication that the concert is canceled. Two reasons are given: 1) that there are other events scheduled at the same time in the building, and the noise level would interfere, and 2) that a local rabbi contacted the church objecting to Gilad Atzmon.So please note that it was stated outright from the start that ONE of two reasons was the communication from the rabbi. To deny this now is disingenuous.The concert/presentation came about when Dan McGowan, founder and chairman of Deir Yassin Remembered, booked us to play in Geneva, NY, which we are also doing, and then got in touch with the church and offered us for a second night. Dan continued to be involved, and when the church canceled giving those two reasons, Dan offered two options: to move the concert to a different venue, or to keep it at the church, removing the musical aspect of the evening and turning it into spoken presentations by the three of us- Dan, Gilad, and myself.No noise. The church turned him down, proving that the rabbi’s objection was the one and only reason for the cancellation. The church was clearly determined to just shut down the event, and was not interested in options, and I have e mails indicating exactly that.Dan and I had a conversation and agreed that we should organize an e mail and telephone campaign. I’m good at that, so I spread the word and people started making communications. A friend of mine, Emman Chehade Randazzo, a Palestinian woman married to an American and living in Chicago, telephoned John Keevert, chair of the Social Justice Council. He was one of the two people involved in both the booking and the cancellation, the other being Ron Johnson of the church.(I’m not sure if the council is part of the church or a separate entity.) John Keevert took Emman’s call, and explained to her that he had heard some very disturbing things about Atzmon (evidently from the rabbi). Emman communicated to me that he said, basically, that Atzmon is a Jewish Anti-Semite. This was significant because it made it clear that the people we were dealing with had been influenced by propaganda, and it was not just the rabbi’s objection that caused the cancellation but it had evolved into a situation where it had become, through the rabbi, our own host’s objection.I got in touch with Atzmon and communicated the situation to him. He in turn called Keever and explained that he is often quoted with “cherry-picked” quotes taken out of context, and was able to convince Keever that he is not an Anti-Semite and that it would be very bad indeed to cave into pressure from Zionists.I wasn’t privy to the conversation but all of a sudden we were back on, at another venue, but still hosted by the church and the Social Justice Council. And it seems from the character of subsequent conversations that our hosts have returned to being as enthusiastic as they previously had been. It seems that they came to a realization of some sort, probably that the rabbi was part of an agenda that they don’t want to support. |
‘NYT’ makes excuses for NetanyahuPosted: 27 Jun 2010Can it be a coincidence that just as Netanyahu is about to visit Obama, reports surface that the the un-frozen settlement ‘freeze’ continues in robust fashion (“Construction begins on 20 homes in Sheikh Jarrah”).I’m not a prophet, but I’m going to guess that this, too, will be chalked up to bureaucratic snafus that Netanyahu had no control over or knowledge of.And I wonder if that excuse/explanation will make it into the NYT lede if/when they choose to report this. I always appreciate tips on how to think about news developments in the Middle East.Oh: Isabel Kershner in the NYT:
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Long predicted, Goldberg’s eclipse finally beginsPosted: 27 Jun 2010Everyone’s talking about this post by Glenn Greenwald on Jeffrey Goldberg’s journalistically-disastrous performance in the buildup to the Iraq war. Greenwald puts more fuel on a fire that can only be built now, when that tragic decision is in the past, about why we made the mistake. He know that this has to do with “Israel-obsessive devotees” like Goldberg. Showing that the left understands, we can’t get past the Iraq war without talking about the occupation.
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