NOVANEWS
01/10/2011
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Dep’t of Homeland Security suggests anti-Semitism may be motive for assassination attempt in Arizona
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Remnick takes another step– the occupation is ‘deeply wrong’
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Angry Arab says that after Bill Clinton got in, Arabists were ‘eliminated’ from State Dep’t
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Ynet: US gov’t believes that Palestinian state would be ‘disaster’ and 2nd Tehran
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Amidst ghettoes, camps, and a mural for a mass-murderer, a settler offers his coexistence plan
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Hillary Clinton condemns Shepherd Hotel demolition as demonstrators cry, ‘This is stolen land’
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Abu Rahma family has become symbol of occupation (and of an authoritarian regime– Gideon Levy)
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Barghouti: Ariel U boycott is first step
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War and Michael Walzer
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Israelis demolish Shepherd’s Hotel in occupied East Jerusalem to make way for Jewish housing
Dep’t of Homeland Security suggests anti-Semitism may be motive for assassination attempt in Arizona
Jan 09, 2011
Philip Weiss
JTA picks up a Fox News report that a Dept of Homeland Security memorandum has mentioned the alleged gunman’s connection to American Renaissance, a nativist group that Homeland Security notes rails against ZOG (Zionist Occupied Gov’t) and is “anti-Semitic.” The memo also mentions that wounded congresswoman Gabriel Giffords is Jewish. The JTA story says that Giffords made her Jewish identity a proud point of her political campaign (following a 2001 trip to Israel, after which she embraced her Jewish roots).
Remnick takes another step– the occupation is ‘deeply wrong’
Jan 09, 2011
Philip Weiss
There was an emotional encounter between neocon Bret Stephens, New Yorker editor David Remnick and Fareed Zakari on CNN’s GPS today. At 12 or so, Zakaria brings up the recent Israeli interview with David Remnick, in which he said he is sick of the occupation. And Remnick responds:
I’ve always been tired of it. What I think of it is relatively immaterial.. If things seem quiet now, and I was just in Israel for ten days, and in the West Bank as well… I know this is not by any stretch of the imagination as perilous as Pakistan…but the corrosive effect of occupation on Israeli society and on the region is really serious. And so it is disappointing.. that Obama for whatever reason is going to slowly withdraw from this issue and not spend any big political capital to do it. Because the only place that will be able to bring people to the table is the United States.
Neocon Stephens then objects. Zakaria says,
It is now 43 years, you [Stephens] were the editor of the Jerusalem Post, it is 43 years, the Israelis have been ruling a population that it has not enfranchised and it has not yet let go. You can’t be comfortable with that.
Stephens: No I’m not. I’m against the occupation.
Zakaria: But what does that mean?
Stephens: It’s bad for Israel. It’s bad for the Palestinians. It’s bad for the world.
Remnick: And it’s wrong. It’s deeply wrong.
Eliot Spitzer is also on the panel. I believe he safely ducked this issue. And let me say one other thing. An all-star panel, as Zakaria advertises it, and three of the four panelists are Jews, and their opinions range from neoconservative to liberal Zionist. This is why I harp on the new quasi-Jewish establishment, because of our inevitable representation in such fora. Where are the realists? (Only Zakaria) Where are the Arab-Americans? Or the anti-Zionists? When Remnick says that what he thinks of the occupation is immaterial, he is wrong. He has the power to help shape American Jewish opinion. And that’s the ballgame.
Angry Arab says that after Bill Clinton got in, Arabists were ‘eliminated’ from State Dep’t
Jan 09, 2011
Philip Weiss
Angry Arab has a fascinating post on a letter written to the NYT by ass’t sec’y of state Jeffrey Feltman. Angry Arab– As’ad AbuKhalil– uses the letter as an opportunity to reflect on the elimination of Arabists from the State Department since the Clinton years.
A few quick points before the excerpt: there were Arabists all over the State Department in the 1940s, 50s, and 60s; and they generally lost.
They opposed the creation of Israel and warned that it could only be established and preserved by force (prophetic). They pushed for the right of return of the Palestinian refugees, and lost (and the wound still festers). The Arabists were described as a romantic and anti-Semitic and fuddy-duddy elite in the Robert Kaplan book that Angry Arab mentions below, The Arabists– a book that treated Israel’s creation as a great liberal advance. Many of them came out of the old WASP establishment; and it is impossible to talk about the vanishing of the Arabists without speaking of the rise of Jews into the Establishment and the Jewish mistrust of that blueblood ancien regime.
I was raised to dislike and fear Arabs; and my youthful prejudice is still widely shared in American Jewish life. Erica Jong wrote, Arabs and Other Animals, as the title of one of her chapters in her bestseller Fear of Flying– a no-cost prejudice, like the n-word back when Mark Twain was writing. Clinton’s was the most philosemitic presidency in history. He appointed two Jews to the Supreme Court, and his Middle East negotiating team was almost all Jewish. These sociocultural factors are of course significant in policymaking; and though I believe younger Jews are far more worldly than their parents’ generation, the change is taking place slowly. Brzezinski was railroaded after the Carter administration because he was seen as being too pro-Arab.
He was said to be advising Obama; I don’t see hide nor hair of him. The great Rashid Khalidi (who as an Obama adviser actually might have saved the two-state-solution) was blackballed during the 2008 campaign. And remember the manner that the neoconservatives blackballed Chas Freeman as National Intelligence director in early 2009– an Arabic speaker, who liked Saudi Arabia, he was deemed an Arabist. Forget about it. That happened in the Obama administration, of course, and why? Well for the same reason that Feltman and Treasury’s Stuart Levey can endure from the disaster Bush administration into the Obama administration, because they are regarded as reliable by the Israel lobby, a force outside partisan politics. It’s all of a piece, the character of the new Establishment.
Angry Arab:
So Jeffrey Feltman wrote a letter to the New York Times today to express his disapproval of a Lebanese newspaper and its editorial line. When I read that last night, I could not help but think of the degradation of Middle East expertise in the US government. It is fair to say that ever since Bill Clinton came to power, the Arabists were completely eliminated from policy making positions at the White House and State Department (although some remain at other branches of the US government). Of course, the war on Arabists began in earlier years: Henry Kissinger tried to marginalize them in earlier years too. Their obituary was written in the book on their record by Robert Kaplan.
In the late 1990s, I spoke about the Arabists and made the point I am making now at a conference at Georgetown University. After my talk, I was approached by Robert Pelletreau–he was the last Arabist to serve as the Assistant Secretary of State for Near Eastern Affairs because the job went after him to ardent Zionists from outside the Foreign Service: people like Martin Indyk–and he pleaded with me to not use the word “Arabist” because it hurts the career and image of Middle East specialists at the US government. Feltman comes from the Foreign Service but does not dream of ever being considered an Arabist: not only because of his Likudnik politics but also because of his failure to achieve any of the knowledge or competence of Arabists in yester years….
This is not about politics: I am not endorsing the political views (always timid) of former Arabists: but I am at least pointing out the competence of Arabists in comparison to the Zionist crowd who now occupy positions of power relating to the Middle East in the US government.
So Jeffrey Feltman wrote a letter to the New York Times today to express his disapproval of a Lebanese newspaper and its editorial line. When I read that last night, I could not help but think of the degradation of Middle East expertise in the US government. It is fair to say that ever since Bill Clinton came to power, the Arabists were completely eliminated from policy making positions at the White House and State Department (although some remain at other branches of the US government). Of course, the war on Arabists began in earlier years: Henry Kissinger tried to marginalize them in earlier years too. Their obituary was written in the book on their record by Robert Kaplan.
In the late 1990s, I spoke about the Arabists and made the point I am making now at a conference at Georgetown University. After my talk, I was approached by Robert Pelletreau–he was the last Arabist to serve as the Assistant Secretary of State for Near Eastern Affairs because the job went after him to ardent Zionists from outside the Foreign Service: people like Martin Indyk–and he pleaded with me to not use the word “Arabist” because it hurts the career and image of Middle East specialists at the US government. Feltman comes from the Foreign Service but does not dream of ever being considered an Arabist: not only because of his Likudnik politics but also because of his failure to achieve any of the knowledge or competence of Arabists in yester years….
This is not about politics: I am not endorsing the political views (always timid) of former Arabists: but I am at least pointing out the competence of Arabists in comparison to the Zionist crowd who now occupy positions of power relating to the Middle East in the US government.
Ynet: US gov’t believes that Palestinian state would be ‘disaster’ and 2nd Tehran
Jan 09, 2011
Jeffrey Blankfort
Ynet piece by Hagai Segal:
“George W. Bush issued his two-state vision only after Ariel Sharon voiced a similar vision. Until that point, the Americans believed (just like Israel’s governments) that a Palestinian state would be a disaster. Secretly they still think so, because one Tehran is enough, yet they cannot be against it when Israel is in favor.”
Another demonstration of the confidence many Israelis have in their influence in Washington. To date it has not been misplaced.
Amidst ghettoes, camps, and a mural for a mass-murderer, a settler offers his coexistence plan
Jan 09, 2011 06:23 pm | Scott McConnell
Our group has been five days in Israel/Palestine; the scene is more depressing than my last trip here five years ago. Against the inexorable tightening of the screws on the Palestinians– Occupied Palestine brings to mind Orwell’s image of a boot stamping on a human face, forever—one can perhaps balance the heightening of international awareness and protest, and a quickening in the long dormant Israeli Left. But there is room for surprises from unexpected directions.
Our day began with a bus trip out to Hebron—a pause on the side of the road to take in the separation Wall surrounding Bethlehem, severing it from its farmland and olive trees. A Presbyterian colleague told me she once believed the world would never put up with the Israelis turning Bethlehem into a walled ghetto, but the world has, with hardly a peep. The road to Hebron is a vivid demonstration that you don’t need to occupy a large amount of territory to maintain control: here a Palestinian refugee camp, from 1948—and outside it a small complex of Israeli gates and pillboxes and machine guns. Everyone who enters or exits must satisfy the IDF guards.
Here another Arab town, surrounded by the Wall, cut off from its own olive trees, which now fall on the Israeli side. One suspects there are aquifer considerations too—the Wall is generally routed to steal water from the Arabs and give it to the settlers. Here’s another crossing where the Palestinians now have to go through a tunnel to reach the other half of their town.
Hebron of course, is a trip in itself—a place like no other in the world. The city center has been turned into a ghost town for the benefit of a few hundred settlers—guarded by an equal number of IDF. After viewing the tombs, we wander the deserted streets on a cold afternoon. The Palestinians have been removed from the city center. A European NGO witness and observation patrol drives slowly around. Eight year-old settler girls throw rocks at it. The settlers have painted a mural, which looks to me like an attempt to portray a heroic Baruch Goldstein, mowing down Muslim worshippers with a machine gun. My Israeli guide, from New York, isn’t sure that’s what the painting represents.
And then, a lift in the mood, from a most surprising source. On the drive back we stop at Gush Etzion, a hilltop settlement, to meet with Nachum Pechenick, the director of Eretz Shalom. Born in Hebron, he is a settler who wants, allegedly, to co-exist peacefully and meaningfully, with his Arab neighbors. Our group is pretty skeptical. We are tired, but turn up the hill. He meets us and we follow to a restaurant. Night has fallen, the sky is clear. You can see Jerusalem on the right, and before us, all the way to Tel Aviv and the coast. Pechenick is in jeans, big knitted kippa, big brown beard, about forty. We sit down for tea and coffee in a restaurant full of settlers and their kids, warm and convivial. The guy starts talking . His English is halting, but expressive. He draws you in. He is religious, charismatic—reminds me of the 60’s. He loves the land, has a mystical attachment to it, won’t leave. His own settlement is illegal, even by Israeli standards. But his group tries to make friends with Palestinians—cooperate on soil, water, joint playgrounds with their kids. (This last may be the most radical, un- Zionist, and potentially productive, concept.) Respect their property. He hopes to live, he tells us, as a religious settler Jew in a Palestinian state.
Peace must be made on the ground, between neighbors. I try to maintain my realist stance, but am taken by it. The guy is, kind of obviously, full of love. When he says that peace won’t come by driving Jews from Judea and Samaria, it does make sense. (It won’t come from what the Israelis are doing now, that is clear enough.) But after forty-five minutes it becomes plain to me that Nachum Pechenick should have an American audience. I would wager a lot of young American Jews –feeling as trapped by the current situation as I do–would find him enormously appealing. Certainly more so than the fraudulent peace maneuvers of Dennis Ross and George Mitchell.
Pechenick tells us has nearly a thousand followers. Who knows? If he’s right about the thousand, he could, I believe, have ten thousand after a month of talking to college Hillels. And through that emerge as a meaningful part of our sense of what’s possible.
A bit of googling finds Pechenick last spring trying to organize a joint demo last spring with West Bank Palestinians against a fence expansion. He is, as he puts in his not quite colloquial English, “off the box.” Over to you, Tikkun. Here’s his website: www.eretzshalom.org.
“George W. Bush issued his two-state vision only after Ariel Sharon voiced a similar vision. Until that point, the Americans believed (just like Israel’s governments) that a Palestinian state would be a disaster. Secretly they still think so, because one Tehran is enough, yet they cannot be against it when Israel is in favor.”
Jan 09, 2011 06:23 pm | Scott McConnell
Hillary Clinton condemns Shepherd Hotel demolition as demonstrators cry, ‘This is stolen land’
Jan 09, 2011
Alex Kane
Caterpillar and Volvo bulldozers demolish a part of a historic hotel in occupied East Jerusalem. (Photo: Alex Kane)
[UPDATE: Hillary Clinton condemns the destruction:
[We are very concerned about the initiation of demolition of the Shepherd’s Hotel in East Jerusalem. This disturbing development undermines peace efforts to achieve the two state-solution. In particular, this move contradicts the logic of a reasonable and necessary agreement between the parties on the status of Jerusalem. We believe that through good faith negotiations, the parties should mutually agree on an outcome that realizes the aspirations of both parties for Jerusalem, and safeguards its status for people around the world. Ultimately, the lack of a resolution to this conflict harms Israel, harms the Palestinians, and harms the U.S. and the international community. We will continue to press ahead with the parties to resolve the core issues, including Jerusalem, in the context of a peace agreement.]
Ramallah, West Bank–I was a witness to the destruction of a historic hotel in occupied East Jerusalem today, but activists bearing witness didn’t let the incident go on without making some noise.
After meeting with members of the Rifka Al-Kurd family, who now live steps away from illegal settlers who evicted members of the family to take over their home in Sheikh Jarrah, the delegation I am with received news of the hotel demolition.
Up the street from the Rifka Al-Kurd family residence is the Shepherd Hotel. Al Jazeerareports:
The Shepherd Hotel was razed by three Israeli bulldozers, early on Sunday, as part of a plan to build a new settlement of 20 units in the heart of the occupied city.
The hotel is located on the demarcation line between two Arab neighbourhoods of Sheikh Jarrah and Wadi al-Joz. The site will not only divide the two neighbourhoods but it will also change the aspects of occupied Jerusalem.
According to official documents, the hotel was owned by al-Quds Mufti, Haj Amin al-Hussaini, who was deported by the British rule in 1937. He later died in Lebanon in 1974.
The settlement project is funded by Irving Moskowitz, a wealthy Jewish-American gambling magnate.
Mammoth Caterpillar and Volvo bulldozers were working on razing a wing of the hotel.
Defending the demolition in front of the press was Elisha Peleg, a Jerusalem City Council member who is part of the right-wing Likud Party. Peleg insisted that “Jerusalem is the united capital of Israel,” while international activists and Palestinian women yelled “this is stolen land,” “shame on you” and disrupted his interviews with the media. In front of the gates to the hotel stood Israeli police and private security guards carrying rifles.
I told Peleg that he was a shame to Jews around the world. He turned around and told me that journalists shouldn’t voice their own opinions and that there was nothing wrong with building for Jews.
“They want to continue to take more land,” said Nasser Ghawi, a Palestinian resident of the East Jerusalem neighborhood of Sheikh Jarrah who has also seen his home taken away and given to Israeli settlers.
Israeli activists hastily organized a protest against the hotel demolition.
Alex Kane is a blogger and journalist based in New York City. He blogs on Israel/Palestine and Islamophobia in the U.S. at alexbkane.wordpress.com, where this post originally appeared. Follow him on Twitter @alexbkane.
Caterpillar and Volvo bulldozers demolish a part of a historic hotel in occupied East Jerusalem. (Photo: Alex Kane)
