NOVANEWS
11/28/2010
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Dershowitz is unreliable narrator
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Americans are catching a clue, I tell you
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NPR’s Holocaust obsession
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Halper predicts collapse of P.A. in 2011, and ‘violence, chaos,’ and hope
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Human Rights Watch blasts light Gaza sentences, Amnesty International blasts Bedouin village removal
Dershowitz is unreliable narrator
Nov 27, 2010
Philip Weiss
Former Senator Jim Abourezk gave a speech lauding Helen Thomas a week ago and it was published later on Counterpunch. Alan Dershowitz, the subject of an Abourezk anecdote, complained to the website about the piece. From Alex Cockburn’s column:
From: “Alan Dershowitz” <dersh@law.harvard.edu>
Date: November 22, 2010 12:09:48 PM PST
To: <counterpunch@counterpunch.org>Subject: Response to Article
In his [CounterPunch] article entitled “Honoring Helen Thomas” dated November 22, 2010, James Abourezk makes the following statement:
“I once called Alan Dershowitz a snake on Al Manar television. Al Manar is Hezbollah’s news channel in Lebanon. When he found out what I had said, he wrote a column in the Jerusalem Post, calling me an anti-Semite.”
It is a lie.
Here is a link to my article to which he refers. (http://www.huffingtonpost.com/alan-dershowitz/a-real-snake_b_65194.html?view=print) I challenge him to find the term “anti-Semite” in the article. I also challenge your readers to read the article and judge Abourezk’s credibility. Now I will characterize Abourezk: He is a liar. “
I duly clicked on the Huffington Post link thoughtfully provided by prof. Dershowitz and indeed, there is no use of the term “anti-Semite” in the column by the noted Harvard law professor, published on September 21, 2007. But since the prof. is a notoriously slippery fellow, I put a couple of sentences from that same column into the google search engine, pressed button A and, hey presto, up came the same Sep 21, 2007 Dershowitz column, printed that same day on the site of the United Jewish Foundation. And lo! there was a final paragraph, omitted from the Huffpost version. Here it is, in bold type.
“Well maybe former Senator Abourezk isn’t so different from the late Senator Bilbo after all. He uses the word ‘Zionist’ in precisely the same bigoted way Bilbo used ‘kike.’ [Huffington Post version ends here.]
“It is true that not all anti-Zionism is anti-Semitic, but just because it is anti-Zionist does not mean it is not also anti-Semitic. If the shoe fits…” (C2007 FrontPageMagazine.com 09/21/07)
“Anti-Semite”… “anti-Semitic” … A minute difference on which the slippery prof. would no doubt try to hang his hat, but to any impartial observer it’s plain enough that Abourezk’s memory is true. Dershowitz was sliming the former distinguished senator from South Dakota as an anti-Semite. It’s maybe why Huffington Post dropped the final paragraph as libelous, unless Dershowitz reserved the slime for the version he sent FrontPageMagazine which, the vigilant reader will have noted, was credited as its source by the United Jerusalem Foundation.
Americans are catching a clue, I tell you
Nov 27, 2010
Philip Weiss
From the always-entertaining Matt Bors, who works for many newspapers in the U.S. and lives in Portland. Thanks to Ali Gharib:
NPR’s Holocaust obsession
Nov 27, 2010
Henry Norr
After waking up this morning to yet another Holocaust story on National Public Radio’s Weekend Edition, I headed to npr.org’s search page to check my impression that such stories been coming thick and fast lately. Narrowing my query to “Heard On Air” (excluding the blogs, Associated Press stories, and other things posted at the website), “Past Year,” and “News” (the only NPR programs I regularly listen to), I found 20 stories, not including today’s, that included the word “Holocaust.” Comparing other historical phenomena with tragic consequences, I found 15 hits on the word “slavery,” 11 on “native Americans,” nine on “communism,” five on “Rwanda genocide,” one on “Armenian genocide,” and one on “Ukrainian famine.”
Suggestive as these results may be, such simple word searches don’t get at the heart of the matter, because most of the hits are passing references within stories focused on current issues. But of the 21 stories that mention “Holocaust,” six by my count were sustained, in-depth discussions of some aspect of the Nazi murder of the Jews more than 65 years ago: today’s interview with an Israeli professor about his new book on one famous photograph from the Warsaw ghetto, an October 28 item on the role of German diplomats in the genocide, an August 28 piece on the Nazi Nuremberg laws, a July 23 analysis of the role of the French national railroad in the deportation of French Jews, an April 15 piece on the memories of American vets who helped liberate the Nazi concentration camps, and a March 9 segment entitled “Russian Village Haunted By A Hidden Holocaust Past.”
By contrast, only one of the 15 stories that mention slavery was focused on the history of black slaves in the U.S. Not a single one of the stories with the phrase “native Americans” dealt with their dispossession and near-extermination. And so on with the other categories.
Also of note is that NPR’s stories on the Holocaust talk almost exclusively about the murder of Jews. I spotted no references to the millions of non-Jews – Roma, gays, trade unionists, leftists, etc. – who were also killed in the camps, nor to the tens of millions of Polish and Russian civilians who died in the war.
For NPR, it seems, the Holocaust is the Chosen Tragedy.
Halper predicts collapse of P.A. in 2011, and ‘violence, chaos,’ and hope
Nov 27, 2010
Philip Weiss
In “Palestine 2011,” Jeff Halper says the peace process has failed: “There will be no negotiated settlement, period.” And he imagines two outcomes in the next year, one being that the Palestinians declaring a state unilaterally, the other being more catastrophic/lytic. (Thanks to Hazel Kahan.)
I’m optimistic that 2011 will witness a game-changing “break” that will create a new set of circumstances in which a just peace is possible. That jolt which smashes the present dead-end paradigm must come from outside the present “process.” It can take one of two forms….
[Unilateral declaration of a state], while still possible given the deadlock in negotiations, is unlikely, if only because the leadership of the Palestinian Authority lacks the courage to undertake such a bold initiative. A second one seems more likely: in 2011, the Palestinian Authority will either resign or collapse, throwing the Occupation back on the lap of Israel. Given the deadlock in negotiations, I can’t see the PA lasting even until August, when (sort-of) Prime Minister Salem Fayyad expects the international community to give the Palestinians a state.
Even if the 90-day settlement freeze eventually comes into effect, Netanyahu will not negotiate borders during that period, the only issue worth discussing. Either fed up to the point of resigning – Abbas may be weak and pliable, but he is not a collaborator – or having lost so much credibility with its own people that it simply collapses, the fall of the PA would end definitively the present “process.”
The end or fall of the PA would create an intolerable and unsustainable situation. Israel would be forced to retake by force all the Occupied Territories, and unable to allow Hamas to step into the vacuum, would have to do so violently, perhaps even invading Gaza again and assuming permanent control. Having to support four million impoverished Palestinians with no economic infrastructure whatsoever would be an impossible burden (and hopefully the “donor community” would not enable the re-occupation by stepping in to prevent a “humanitarian crisis,” as it does today).
Such a move on the part of Israel would also inflame the Muslim world and generate massive protests worldwide, again forcing the hand of the international community.
Looked at in this way, the Palestinians have one source of enormous clout: they are the gatekeepers. Until they – the Palestinian people as a whole, not the PA – say the conflict is over, it’s not over. Israel and its erstwhile allies have the ability to make life almost unbearable for the Palestinians, but they cannot impose apartheid or warehousing. We, the millions supporting the Palestinian struggle the world over, will not let it go until the Palestinians signal that they have arrived at a settlement that they can live with. Until then, the conflict will remain open and globally disruptive.
If any of these scenarios comes about and new possibilities of peace arise out of the violence and chaos that will ensue, the real question is: where will we be, the people who support a just, inclusive, workable and sustainable peace? Here in Israel/Palestine, unfortunately, there is no discussion over what may happen in the next year. Not only do we of the Palestinian and Israeli peace movements fail to give adequate direction and leadership to our civil society allies abroad, we tend to pursue “politics as normal” disconnected from the political processes around us, more reactive than pro-active. Despite its crucial importance to the Palestinian struggle, for instance, the BDS campaign moves along and accumulates strength, but is not accompanied by focused, timely campaigns intended to seize a political moment. …
