NOVANEWS
Posted by: Sammi Ibrahem
Chair of West Midland PSC
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When tribal identity and an exaggerated sense of insecurity trump reason and compassion
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Saudi Arabia buying more Pakistanis for Bahrain crackdown, US still supporting the sectarian regime
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Goldstone’s daughter was ‘furious’ with him, Times reports
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My friend Len Weinglass (1933-2011)
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Lachrymose history is bunk
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Wikileaks: U.S. threw its body down to block Goldstone Report’s progress to the Hague
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Bibi’s Sharia
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Helen Thomas paid a price– and so did Jennifer Nelson
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A night in Bil’in
When tribal identity and an exaggerated sense of insecurity trump reason and compassion
Apr 19, 2011
Anonymous
A friend in Saudi Arabia sent a note with the subject line above, about Bahrain, and asked that we protect his/her identity.
I have to tell you that the situation in Bahrain and the reaction of my fellow Sunni Saudi friends and relatives here to the unfolding events across the causeway has actually made me more pessimistic than ever regarding a peaceful solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. How are they related? you may ask. Well… while the Israeli state and military’s treatment of the Palestinians is definitely far worse than the treatment of the Bahraini state and military of their Shi’ite citizens so far, it is the reaction of the majority of Bahraini and Saudi Sunnis that I have found most alarming and depressing.
While I can’t excuse it, I now better understand how and why 90% of Israelis are so terrified by the presence of a dirt-poor half starved Palestinian populace on their doorstep in Gaza that they wholeheartedly supported Operation Cast Lead and the resulting murder of over 1000 mainly unarmed civilian Palestinians. In a similar manner, ordinary putatively educated Sunni Saudis lined up behind the Bahrain government’s violent suppression of Bahraini Shite demonstrators. While a few of my fellow Sunnis initially sympathized with the poor and jobless Shi’ite demonstrators, it did not take a lot of propaganda effort for the ruling elite or the “haves” in Bahrain to turn an economic struggle between haves and have-nots into a phantom Iranian inspired sectarian conspiracy to dominate all the Sunnis in the Gulf area. It seems that wherever you go, people subconsciously pick and choose the information they absorb into their minds, based on their preconceived belief systems.
Sunnis in Saudi Arabia who cheered on the Tunisian, Egyptian and Yemeni revolutions suddenly changed their minds when it came to their Shi’ite neighbors clamoring for equal rights. In that way, they are not different from Liberal American Jews who support South American leftist guerrilla movements and Black Liberation movements at home, but go silent or hostile when it comes to the Palestinian armed or even unarmed struggle.
Therefore, I am more pessimistic than ever that the Israelis will ever feel remorse or guilt for whatever cruelty the extremists among them mete out to the Palestinians. People will only change their minds when they are forced to. That means that the only way the Israelis will change their attitude toward the Palestinians is if they have absolutely no other choice.
Saudi Arabia buying more Pakistanis for Bahrain crackdown, US still supporting the sectarian regime
Apr 19, 2011
Seham
and other news from the Arab uprisings:
Bahrain
Bahrain braced for new wave of repression
Arrests and troop movements signal another government crackdown on protests in the tiny Gulf state.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2011/apr/16/bahrain-arrests-repression
Bahrain: Attack on Rights Defender’s Home
(Manama) – Unknown assailants lobbed teargas grenades at the home of a leading Bahraini human rights defender in the early hours of April 18, 2011, Human Rights Watch said today. The attack, which took place at 3:30 a.m. in the village of Bani Jamra, targeted the home of Nabeel Rajab, head of the Bahrain Center for Human Rights and a member of the Human Rights Watch Middle East Advisory Committee.
http://www.hrw.org/en/news/2011/04/18/bahrain-attack-rights-defender-s-home
Bahraini forces demolish two mosques
Saudi-backed Bahraini forces have reportedly destroyed two more mosques in line with the country’s policy of demolishing Muslim religious sites.
http://presstv.com/detail/175441.html
‘Bahraini forces arrest teachers, pupils’
Bahraini police and soldiers enter the western village of Malkiya., Bahraini security forces have reportedly arrested several teachers and students in the town of Hamad in a new wave of crackdown on anti-regime protesters.
http://presstv.com/detail/175410.html
Kuwaitis defy orders to invade Bahrain
A number of Kuwaiti naval officers have disobeyed orders to reinforce the violent Saudi-backed crackdown on the popular revolution in Bahrain.
http://presstv.com/detail/175145.html
Bahraini Activist Defies Threats
President of Bahraini group says he will continue to campaign against torture and unfair imprisonment, despite intimidation by the security forces.
http://iwpr.net/report-news/bahraini-activist-defies-threats?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+iwprstories+%28IWPR+Stories%29
Bahrain escapes censure by West as crackdown on protesters intensifies
Bahraini government forces backed by Saudi Arabian troops are destroying mosques and places of worship of the Shia majority in the island kingdom in a move likely to exacerbate religious hatred across the Muslim world. “So far they have destroyed seven Shia mosques and about 50 religious meeting houses,” said Ali al-Aswad, an MP in the Bahraini parliament.
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/middle-east/bahrain-escapes-censure-by-west-as-crackdown-on-protesters-intensifies-2269638.html
Saudi Arabia buying more Pakistanis for Bahrain crackdown
The Fauji Security Services (Pvt) Limited, which is run by the Fauji Foundation, a subsidiary of the Pakistan Army, is currently recruiting on war footing basis thousands of retired military personnel from the Pakistan Army, Navy and the Air Force who will be getting jobs in the Gulf region, especially in Bahrain and Saudi Arabia. But sources in the Fauji Foundation say over 90 per cent of the fresh recruitments, which started in the backdrop of the recent political upheaval in the Arab world, are being sent to Bahrain to perform services in the Bahrain National Guard (BNG), and that too at exorbitant salaries. Thousands of ex-servicemen of the Pakistani origin are already serving in Bahrain and the fresh recruitments are aimed at boosting up the strength of the BNG to deal with the country’s majority Shia population, which is calling for replacement of the Sunni monarchy. Bahrain’s ruling elite is Sunni, although about 70% of the population is Shia… Pakistan in fact turned its gaze towards West Asia following the visits of, first, Saudi prince Bandar bin Sultan bin Abdul Aziz and then, Bahrain’s foreign minister, Khalid bin Ahmed al Khalifa, in March. Though pro-democracy sentiments haven’t gathered a critical mass in Saudi Arabia, Riyadh is worried that the popular upsurge in Bahrain, a mainly Shia country over which Sunni kings rule, could well, with time, permeate across the border. The Americans seem to have endorsed Riyadh’s decision to seek Islamabad’s assistance. In return, the Saudi prince has offered support to resuscitate the Pakistan economy and meets its energy demands. But the khaki circles in Rawalpindi believe that Pakistan won’t commit its regular forces to a country other than Saudi Arabia.
http://friday-lunch-club.blogspot.com/2011/04/saudi-arabia-buying-more-pakistanis-for.html
Exposing The Bahraini Regime
Saudi Arabia has sent forces to Bahrain. What does the intervention of Gulf forces mean to the region? Will it provoke Iran? And could Bahrain be the next state to fall?
Egypt
Suleiman questioned by Egyptian prosecutors
Former vice-president questioned in connection with violence against protesters during uprising that toppled Mubarak.
http://english.aljazeera.net//news/middleeast/2011/04/2011419135452796989.html
Egypt: Mubarak Family’s Wealth Doesn’t Add Up
CAIRO — Egypt’s financial oversight body says the former president of Egypt and his family have amassed wealth beyond their means in the form of properties and bank accounts. The state news agency said Monday the agency found that the 82-year old former president and his two sons and wife own several properties around Egypt, including luxury apartments, and palaces, as well as empty land plots and valuable farm land.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/04/18/egypt-mubarak-wealth_n_850613.html
Iraq
Anti-American protests grip Iraq
Supporters of anti-Occupation cleric Moqtada Sadr suggested there could be a rebel uprising if U.S. forces stay beyond December and tribal leaders in the northern province of Ninawa called recently for the departure of American forces.
http://www.upi.com/Top_News/Special/2011/04/18/Anti-American-protests-grip-Iraq/UPI-80951303141339/
Health Directorate: 98 wounded in Sulaimaniya protests
Sulaimaniya hospitals in Iraq received 98 wounded including 65 members of the security forces injured in Monday’s protests, Sulaimaniya Health Directorate reported on Tuesday.
http://www.alsumaria.tv/en/Iraq-News/1-63184-Health-Directorate%3A-98-wounded-in-Sulaimaniya-protests.html
Libya
Libya death toll ‘touches 10,000’
Opposition claim comes as UN gets humanitarian access to Misurata and efforts are on to evacuate those stranded.
http://english.aljazeera.net/news/africa/2011/04/2011419114217768868.html
10,000 Libyans flee to Tunisia
Some 10,000 Libyans have fled in the last 10 days from the besieged Western Mountains region to Tunisia, the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), said Tuesday.
http://www.alarabiya.net/articles/2011/04/19/145992.html
Libyan rebels claim control over Ajdabiya
A Libyan ship carrying mostly Ghanian migrants and some injured residents from Misurata has arrived in the opposition-held city of Benghazi. The vessel was carrying almost 1,000 people. The UK has pledged almost $2.5m to help move those stranded in the besieged city. Meanwhile, fighters loyal to Muammar Gaddafi surrendered to pro-democracy forces near the town of Ajdabiya on Monday. The area is now under full rebel control. The rebels are hoping more NATO airstrikes will push back Gaddafi loyalists. Al Jazeera’s Mike Hanna spent the day in Ajdabiya with opposition forces.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G7jtJ_15O4E&feature=youtube_gdata
Fighting continues in Misurata
Britain is due to hold urgent talks on Libya’s humanitarian crisis at the United Nations later on Monday. The besieged city of Misurata is one of the main places of concern. An opposition spokesperson says shelling by Gaddafi’s forces on Sunday alone killed at least 17 people. Al Jazeera has gained access to the city. Cameraman Craig Pennington and corrrespondent Jonah Hull boarded a trawler carrying supplies from Malta, and made the 24 hour voyage to Misurata.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OY6UDJI577o&feature=youtube_gdata
Snipers, cluster bombs panic Libya’s Misrata
MISRATA, Libya (AFP) – Snipers, cluster bombs and intense shelling are spreading panic in Misrata, an AFP reporter said on Monday, as a doctor reported 1,000 people killed in six weeks of fighting in the besieged city. With fears growing that refugees will attempt a chaotic mass escape by sea from the city of 400,000, UN chief Ban Ki-moon called for a ceasefire and a political solution to the two-month-old conflict in Libya.
http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2011/04/18/snipers-cluster-bombs-panic-libyas-misrata/
Libyan forces pound Misrata, 1,000 evacuated by sea
Evacuees say conditions in Misrata are becoming increasingly desperate and hundreds of civilians are believed to have been killed.
http://www.trust.org/alertnet/news/libyan-forces-pound-misrata-1000-evacuated-by-sea
Misrata, Libya Rebel City, Pounded By Gaddafi Forces
BENGHAZI, Libya (Reuters) – A chartered ship evacuated nearly 1,000 foreign workers and wounded Libyans from Misrata on Monday as rebels said they had gained ground in fighting with government forces in the besieged city. “We wanted to be able to take more people out but it was not possible,” said Jeremy Haslam, who led the International Organization for Migration (IOM) rescue mission.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/04/18/misrata-libya-gaddafi-bombing_n_850712.html
Gaddafi Forces Firing On Civilians In Misrata, Says Head Of NATO Military Operations In Libya
OTTAWA (Reuters) – The head of NATO’s military operations in Libya Monday accused forces loyal to leader Muammar Gaddafi of hiding in hospitals and firing on civilians from the roofs of mosques in the rebel-held city of Misrata.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/04/18/gaddafi-forces-firing-on-civilians-libya-says-nato_n_850796.html
Video: AJA exclusive video of skirmish in Misrata
April 18, 2011: Al Jazeera has obtained exclusive video that portrays revolutionaries clashing with Gaddafi Forces and foreign mercenaries in a school yard in the Karzaz district of Misrata.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mf3-1ZOd2to&feature=player_embedded
Civilians stranded in Libya’s stalemate
Hundreds of thousands of civilians are caught in the middle of Libya’s military stalemate. More than half a million have already fled and 5.000 a day are crossing into Tunisia and Egypt. But many more remain stranded. In Misurata, they have been under siege for nearly two months but now Gaddafi’s government has promised UN officials safe passage into the city. Al Jazeera’s Jonah Hull reports.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w6v4tUK69z4&feature=youtube_gdata
Thousands of Libyans flee remote western area-report
TUNIS, April 18 (Reuters) – Some 11,000 Libyans have fled a remote and mountainous western region, where government forces are fighting rebels, and crossed into Tunisia over the last week, Tunisia’s state TAP news agency reported on Monday. It said 3,000 people, including women and children, had arrived in the last two days alone at the southern Tunisian border town of Dehiba, fleeing “intense bombing” that had destroyed many houses.
http://www.trust.org/alertnet/news/thousands-of-libyans-flee-remote-western-area-report
Humanitarian coordination in Libya
As humanitarian aid arrives in Libya, shipments are prioritised for those areas, such as the besieged city of Misurata, which need it most. But the rest of the country also requires help, and UN under-secretary general Baroness Amos has arrived in Libya to help coordinate the relief effort. Al Jazeera’s Sue Turton, reporting from benghazi, tells us of the efforts underway to get help to the most desperate.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XI-zj3AXe9s&feature=youtube_gdata
UN envoy secures lifeline for Misurata
UN deal with Libya allows humanitarian access to besieged port as UK pledges to fund rescue of 5,000 stranded migrants.
http://english.aljazeera.net//news/africa/2011/04/201141821324392205.html
Libya: International community must urgently increase aid to Misratah
Much of Misratah remains without communications, power or water as civilians are caught up in a worsening humanitarian crisis.
http://www.amnesty.org/en/news-and-updates/libya-international-community-must-urgently-increase-aid-misratah-2011-04-19
Britain to send military advisers to Libya
Foreign minister says team will be sent to help support Libya’s opposition council, but will not train or arm rebels.
http://english.aljazeera.net//news/europe/2011/04/201141912396271515.html
Gaddafi envoy holds talks in Morocco
RABAT, April 19 (Reuters) – Morocco hosted a visit by a Libyan deputy foreign minister on Monday, a rare diplomatic link between Muammar Gaddafi’s government and one of the staunch allies of the Western coaltion determined to overthrow him. Morocco has been one of the small number of Arab countries and the only North African state openly involved in talks with Western powers over the Libyan crisis.
http://www.trust.org/alertnet/news/gaddafi-envoy-holds-talks-in-morocco
All quiet in west Ajdabiya
A sandstorm on Sunday prevented NATO aircraft from targeting troops loyal to long time Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi as they advanced on Ajdabiya. Just 24 hours later, the weather conditions have changed, and anti-Gaddafi fighters advanced some 40km west of the city. Al Jazeera’s Mike Hanna reports from the western edge of Ajdabiya with more details.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VG8FvLpVewo&feature=youtube_gdata
Saif admits Qaddafis are Brutal Foreign Occupiers, Juan Cole
Saif al-Islam Qaddafi, son of the dictator, gave an interview yesterday to the Washington Post. In it he justified the Libyan army’s horrific attacks on the besieged city of Misrata:‘ “You know what happened in Misurata? It’s exactly what happened in the Cold River [Nahr al-Bared], in Tripoli, Lebanon. The Lebanese army went and attacked three or four civilian districts in Tripoli to fight Jund al-Sham, the soldiers of Islam, you know that terrorist group in Lebanon. They destroyed maybe half the city, they didn’t kill civilians there, but they fought the terrorists because they were inside the buildings. The Americans, the West, they supplied the Lebanese army, and it is a legitimate mission to fight terrorists inside Tripoli of Lebanon. You remember? And I remember they sent an airlift with the Hummer vehicles, arms and munitions. The same thing in Grozny in Chechnya, when the Russian army fought the terrorists, because the terrorists went inside the buildings in Grozny. The same thing happened with the Americans in Fallujah. You know Fallujah? It’s exactly the same. You are not fighting or killing innocent people or civilians, because it is not in the interests of anybody to kill civilians, but the terrorists are there, the terrorists are there. ‘
http://www.juancole.com/2011/04/saif-admits-qaddafis-are-brutal-foreign-occupiers.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+juancole%2Fymbn+%28Informed+Comment%29
Syria
Syria lifts emergency law
Government approves bill lifting emergency law, in place for 48 years, following demands by pro-democracy protesters.
http://english.aljazeera.net//news/middleeast/2011/04/2011419135036463804.html
Gunfire in locked-down Syrian city
Reports of shooting as thousands protest in Homs while Syrian government claims country is facing “armed insurrection”.
http://english.aljazeera.net//news/middleeast/2011/04/201141817736498882.html
Protesters destroy government symbols in Syria’s Douma
Protesters took to the streets in the streets in the Damascus suburb of Douma on Sunday. They removed pictures of President Bashar al-Assad and his father, former president Hafez al-Assad.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dY9AsDCEFjc&feature=youtube_gdata
Inside Story: Syria’s emergency laws
Bashar al-Assad, Syria’s president, says the country’s state of emergency should be lifted by next week. Inside Story, with presenter Darren Jordon, discusses with guests: Walid Saffour, president of the Syrian Human Rights Committee; Ivan Eland, a senior fellow and Director of the Centre of Peace and Liberty, at the Independent Institute. This episode of Inside Story aired on Sunday, April 17, 2011.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rPzAj7Wrldg&feature=youtube_gdata
Tunisia
Essential Viewing: Five Tunisian Films from a Postrevolutionary Perspective
It is impossible to watch Tunisian film today from an exclusively prerevolutionary perspective. The present historical juncture will stealthily thrust itself to center stage. Besides, the value of film does not reside solely in its appropriateness to its own historical moment of production, but equally in its relevance to other, yet to come, historical moments. It becomes highly productive, not to say inevitable, that we rethink postcolonial Tunisian film through the lenses of the revolutionary and now postrevolutionary moment. When we do, it will have become clear that several Tunisian filmmakers had creatively evaded censorship and charted a counterintuitive genealogy of rebelliousness that cannot possibly be overlooked in our effort, scholarly or otherwise, to understand the provenance, scope, and significance of what happened on January 14, 2011.
http://www.jadaliyya.com/pages/index/1282/essential-viewing_five-tunisian-films-from-a-postr
Yemen
Security forces fire on Yemeni protesters
Firing in Taiz comes as UN says that 26 children have been killed in violent protests over the last two months.
http://english.aljazeera.net//news/middleeast/2011/04/201141910531861200.html
As Yemenis run low on gas and food, revolution could take off
Since protests began earlier this year, Yemen’s currency has plummeted, oil production has dropped, and food prices have risen by as much as 45 percent.
http://rss.csmonitor.com/%7Er/feeds/world/%7E3/jDOaUTuvdQ8/As-Yemenis-run-low-on-gas-and-food-revolution-could-take-off
Other
“Warning shot to the Saudis: People in Washington are getting sick of you!”
“… Riyadh, alarmed by the Obama administration’s failure to prop up its ally of three decades Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak, is sending signs of its displeasure and its move toward exploring alternative security arrangements. Last month, former Saudi intelligence chief Prince Bandar reportedly went to Pakistan, ostensibly to discuss the possibility of importing Pakistani troops to help the Saudi regime suppress internal unrest should the need arise….. as a signal of possible Saudi interest in acquiring Pakistani nuclear weapons if Washington doesn’t protect Riyadh from Iran’s nuclear program.
http://friday-lunch-club.blogspot.com/2011/04/warning-shot-to-saudis-people-in.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+friday-lunch-club+%28%22friday-lunch-club%22%29
Buy a T-shirt, donate to the Red Crescent
Get a T-shirt with the awesome Arab revolution logo on the right from here and the proceeds go to the Red Crescent, which has been doing incredible work tending to the injured in the Arab uprisings and particularly in Libya where its volunteers face great danger to help others. The Red Crescent is the regional equivalent of the Red Cross, with which it partners to provide emergency relief across the world.
http://www.arabist.net/blog/2011/4/19/buy-a-t-shirt-donate-to-the-red-crescent.html
Goldstone’s daughter was ‘furious’ with him, Times reports
Apr 19, 2011
Philip Weiss
The Goldstone Report and reconsideration won’t go away, they are back on the Times front page. A good report by the Times’ Ethan Bronner and Jennifer Medina on why Goldstone did it boils down to, He loves Israel and thought he was going to reconcile the two societies, Palestinian and Jewish, through his report but was oh-so wrong about the politics. A man who says he may have been “naive” about the U.N.’s commitment to evenhandedness seems to have been naive about the Jewish response to his document. Then there are the politics of his family, and his daughter who spent 10 years in Israel. Oh my, what was the Zionist judge thinking? And when is a shul going to stage the war inside the Jewish family? Times:
In trying to understand why he published an essay on April 1 in The Washington Post retracting his harshest accusation against Israel and toughening his stand toward Hamas and the United Nations — an essay that has been rejected by the fellow members of his investigation panel — the South African precedent is important. For Mr. Goldstone, it was the model of how the Gaza report would work. Instead, it helped drive Israeli politics farther to the right, gave fuel to Israel’s enemies and brought no notable censure on Hamas.
“I know he was extremely hurt by the reaction to the report,” said Aryeh Neier, president of the Open Society Foundation, who has known Mr. Goldstone for years and remains close to him. “I think he was extremely uncomfortable in providing some fodder to people who were looking for anything they could use against Israel.”..
Hailed by the Arab world and the anti-Israel left, he has been censured by those with whom he had always identified. One of his two daughters, who spent more than a decade in Israel and now lives in Canada with the man she married here, has been furious with him, according to a family friend; he was nearly unable to attend the bar mitzvah of his other daughter’s son in South Africa…
As he said in an interview with the newspaper The Forward, “I was driven particularly because I thought the outcome might, in a small way, assist the peace process. I really thought I was one person who could achieve an evenhanded mission.”…
The Times piece includes this egregious mischaracterization of the facts, in favor of Israel’s version of events:
One area of disagreement was whether 250 police cadets killed on the first day should be considered fighters. Israel said yes; most others said no.
In November, the Hamas interior minister, Fathi Hamad, told the newspaper Al Hayat that many of the dead were fighters: “It is a fact that on the first day of the war, Israel struck police headquarters and killed 250 members of Hamas and the various factions, in addition to the 200 to 300 operatives from the al-Qassam Brigades. In addition, 150 security personnel were killed.”
The implication was that the 250 cadets were fighters and that the total number of militants killed amounted to some 700. Many sent Mr. Goldstone the update.
BFD. As I have reported here earlier, Goldstone specifically rejected the Hamad #s back in January at Stanford as propaganda, and then embraced them in the Washington Post in April. Why’d he flip on such an essential particular? Pure political pressure, working on his guilty conscience.
My friend Len Weinglass (1933-2011)
Apr 19, 2011
Michael Steven Smith
Leonard Irving Weinglass, Attorney and Counselor at Law (1933-2011)
“Death is not real when one’s life work is done well. Even in death, certain men radiate the light of an aurora.” –Jose Marti
Len was not a 60s radical. He was something more unusual. He was a 50s radical. He developed his values, his critical thinking and world view in a time when non-conforming was rare. He told a newspaper interviewer in Santa Barbara in 1980 that “I would classify myself as a radical American. I am anti-capitalist in this sense — I don’t believe capitalism is now compatible with democracy.” Socialism he thought could be, if given a chance, that socialism was still a young phenomenon on the world scene, that another world, a non-capitalist world, was possible. He saw his legal work as his contribution to the collective work of the movement. He didn’t care a bit about making a fee. “I want to spend my time defending people who have committed their time to progressive change. That’s the criteria. Now, that could be people in armed struggle, people in protest politics, people in confrontational politics, people in mass organizations, people in labor.” Defending people against “the machinery of the state” as he put it, was his calling. He felt that one may have a fulfilled and satisfying life if one “aligns with the major thrust of forces in the time in which you live.”
The third of four children, he grew up in a Jewish community of 200 families in Bellville, N.J. and attended high school in nearby Kearney, where he was a star end on the football team and Vice-President of his high school class. He went on to George Washington University down in D.C. for college on a scholarship. Len was an outstanding student and was accepted in 1955 into Yale Law School. There was a story that he liked to tell about his college job. He worked running an elevator at the Senate Office building. Lyndon Johnson was cold and rude to Len when riding in his elevator car. The one Senator who was friendly and who chatted with Len and always inquired as to how he was doing was…..Richard Nixon, whom Len was later to confound by winning a dismissal for Daniel Ellsberg and Tony Russo in the historic Viet Nam era Pentagon Papers case.
Len went from Yale in 1958 directly into the Air Force. In those days because of the draft there was no choice. One had to go into the military. Len was a lawyer in the Judge Advocate General’s Corp and rose from a second lieutenant to the rank of captain. The Air Force had charged a black airman with some sort of crime. Len was assigned the case and got him acquitted. This infuriated the brass, which was used to exerting its command influence over the results of military trials. French politician Georges Clemenceau once remarked on this practice, quipping that “Military justice is to justice as military music is to music.”
The brass had Len transferred to Iceland of all places. Why Iceland? Because it’s a country entirely populated by white people. There are no non-white genes in their DNA pool. Drug companies for this reason use Iceland to test drugs. The US government had a deal with Iceland that they would never send a non-white GI to Iceland so as not to risk polluting their gene pool. The brass figured Weinglass, the troublemaker, would never be able to defend a black man again, at least not while he was in their military. Len cooled his heels until he was discharged, learning Icelandic in the meantime so he could speak directly to the Judges there without an encumbering translator. When he arrived in an Icelandic court for his first trial the steps leading up to the building were lined with spectators. He asked his driver why? They wanted to see Len. They had never seen a Jew before.
He was discharged from the Air Force in 1961 and went on to set up a one-man law practice in Newark, New Jersey. When interviewed by the New York Times for Len’s obituary, Len’s friend and law colleague Michael Krinsky (Len was of counsel to the firm Rabinowitz, Boudin, Standard, Krinsky and Lieberman of New York, NY) said he had first met Len in Newark in 1969. He considered Len “a modern day Clarence Darrow”. Krinsky told the reporter that Newark “was a rough place to be. A police department and a city administration that was racist and as terrifying as any in America, and there was Lenny representing civil rights people, political people, ordinary people who got charged with stuff and got beat up by the cops. He did it without fame or fortune, and that’s what he kept doing, in one way or another.” He did it for 53 years, being admitted to the bars in New Jersey, California, and New York.
We all know of Len for his famous legal work in the Chicago Seven case with Abby Hoffman, Dave Dellinger and Tom Hayden during the Vietnam War period. We remember his expertise in advocating for death row inmate Mumia Abu-Jamal. He finally got his friend Kathy Boudin out of prison after 23 years. He represented Puerto Rican independentista Juan Segarra for 15 years. In the Palestine 8 case, where the defendants were charged with aiding the Marxist Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, he was part of a team which stopped their deportation. That took 20 years. David Cole, his co-counsel along with Marc Van der Hout, remembers that Len “…coined the term ‘terrorologist’ while cross-examining the government’s expert witness on the PLO. He was a joy to work with in the courtroom. Our immigration judge, who was Lenny’s age, always eagerly wanted to know whether ‘Mr. Weinglass’ would be appearing whenever there was a proceeding.”
Len took the tough political cases, the seemingly impossible ones where his clients were charged with heavy crimes like kidnap, espionage and murder. “He wasn’t drawn to making money. He was drawn to defending justice,” Daniel Ellsberg said. “He felt in many cases he was representing one person standing against the state. He was on the side of the underdog. He was also very shrewd in his judgment of juries.” Len observed that a typical phone call to him started out with the caller saying “‘You’re the fifth lawyer I’ve spoken to’. Then I get interested.”
The case of The Cuban Five was Len’s last major case. He worked on it for years up to the time of his passing, even reading a court submission from his bed in Montefiore Hospital in the Bronx. The case highlighted what Len considered the U.S. government’s hypocrisy in its “war against terror.” Len came into the matter at the appellate level after the Five had been convicted by a prejudiced jury in Miami. His client Antonio Guererro and the others were found guilty of conspiracy to commit espionage against the U.S. sometime in the future. They were sent from Cuba to Miami by the government of Cuba to spy, not on the U.S., but on the counter-revolutionary Cubans in Miami who were launching terrorist activities from Florida directed at persons and property in Cuba, attempting to sabotage the Cuban tourist economy. They gathered information on the Miami based terrorists, compiling a lengthy dossier on their murderous activities and turned it over to the FBI. They asked the U.S. government to stop the terrorists, who were targeting the Cuban tourist industry by planting bombs at the Havana airport, on buses, and in an hotel, killing an Italian vacationer. But instead of stopping the terrorists, the U.S. government used the dossier to figure out the identities of the Cuban Five, had them arrested, prosecuted, convicted, and sentenced to long prison terms.
What Len said about the use of the conspiracy charge is illustrative of his precision and clarity of thought.
Conspiracy has always been the charge used by the prosecution in political cases. A conspiracy is an agreement between people to commit a substantive crime. By using the charge of conspiracy, the government is relieved of the requirement that the underlying crime be proven. All the government has to prove to a jury is that there was an agreement to do the crime. The individuals charged with conspiracy are convicted even if the underlying crime was never committed. In the case of the Five, the Miami jury was asked to find that there was an agreement to commit espionage. The government never had to prove that espionage actually happened. It could not have proven that espionage occurred. None of the Five sought or possessed any top secret information or US national defense secrets.
Len was drawn to men and women accused of doing extraordinary acts of bravery and resistance. A sampling of some of his cases over his 53 years of practicing law are:
* 1971: Represented Kenneth Gibson who became the first African-American mayor of Newark, New Jersey in a taxpayer’s suit which led to his candidacy and reclaimed the largest real estate asset owned by the City of Newark.
*1971: The defense of Anthony Russo who was charged with Daniel Ellsberg in the Pentagon Papers trial for the release of classified documents on the history of U.S.-Vietnam relations.
*1972: The defense of John Sinclair, Chairman of the White Panther Party in Detroit, Michigan. The case came before the Supreme Court, resulting in a landmark decision prohibiting the government’s use of electronic surveillance without a warrant.
*1973: The defense of Angela Davis who was charged with murder in connection with a shootout at the Marin County Courthouse in an attempted escape by inmates in California.
*1974: The defense of 8 Vietnamese students who faced deportation from the U.S. as the result of their political activities in opposition to the war.
*1975: Represented Jane Fonda in her suit against Richard Nixon, et. al. for unlawful harassment and violation of her constitutional rights of free speech and assembly resulting from her public activities in opposition to the war in Vietnam.
*1976: The defense of Chol Soo Lee, the only Korean on death row in the United States in California.
*1976: The defense of Bill and Emily Harris, members of the Symbionese Liberation Army, charged with the kidnap of Patricia Hearst.
*l977: The defense of the Altmore Brothers, black inmates in Alabama, who organized a prisoners’ union and were then charged with murder.
*1978 The defense of Paul Skyhorse and Richard Mohawk, two organizers for the American Indian Movement, charged with first degree murder in the longest trial in the history of Los Angeles to that point.
*1980: The defense of Mark Loc, a Chinese-American member of the Communist Workers Party, charged with the attempted bombing of the National Shipbuilding Company in San Diego.
*1981: The defense of Kiko Martinez, a Mexican-American attorney and political activist, charged with a series of attempted bombings in Colorado.
*1982: The defense of Salpi Kozibiukian, an Armenian patriot charged with being part of a conspiracy to plant a small explosive device at a freight terminal of Canada Airlines at the Los Angeles International Airport.
*1982: The defense of Alvin Johnson, a black inmate in the State of Georgia who faced the death penalty as the result of charges that he killed a prison guard at the Reidville prison.
*1983: The defense of James Simmons, a Muckleshoot Indian from Oregon who faced the death penalty as the result of charges that he killed a guard at the Walla Walla prison in the State of Washington.
*1985: The defense of Stephen Bingham, an attorney charged with smuggling a gun into George Jackson in his attempted prison escape in 1971.
*1986: The defense of Spiver Gordon, a black political organizer and former associate of Martin Luther King, charged in Alabama with voter fraud as the result of organizing a registration drive.
*1987: The defense of Amy Carter, daughter of President Jimmy Carter, charged with l5 other students at the University of Massachusetts with the seizure of a building in protest over CIA recruitment.
*1988: The defense of Katya Komisurak, an anti-nuclear activist, charged with destroying a computer at Vandenburg Air Force base which was part of a first strike weapons system.
*1992: The defense of Peter Lumsdaine, an anti-nuclear activist, who was charged with destroying a Navstar satellite, part of a first-strike system, at a Rockwell International facility just prior to its being launched.
*1993: The defense of Marjorie Peters, an aide to the first African-American mayor of Birmingham, Alabama, charged in a politically motivated prosecution brought by the Bush Justice Department.
*1997: Served as legal advisor to a former Green Beret who was investigating the deaths of a thousands of Laotians, particularly children, who have been victimized since the end of the Vietnam War by unexploded anti-personnel bombs dropped by U.S. aircraft.
*1998: Represented Larry Hildes, a California attorney, who was arrested and had his hand broken by California police while serving as a legal observer for protestors who were opposed to logging the redwoods in the Headwaters of California.
*1998: Represented Majid Saatchi, an Iranian national residing in the United States, who was arrested and prosecuted for shouting “murderer” at the visiting foreign minister of Iran at the United Nations in New York.
*1999: Filed a federal habeas corpus action in the federal court in Philadelphia on behalf of Mumia Abu Jamal, an African American journalist and political activist, who has been on death row in Pennsylvania for a quarter of a century awaiting execution for the killing of a police officer, a crime he has steadfastly denied.
*2001: Filed application for parole on behalf of Kathy Boudin, a member of the Weather Underground, who was sentenced to 20 years to life in l984 for her participation in the robbery of a Brinks truck.
*2002: Filed a federal habeas corpus action in the Federal Court in Alexandria, VA on behalf of Kurt Stand, convicted of espionage on behalf of East Germany in l998 as a result of Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act searches of his home, including the planting of a microphone in the marital bedroom.
Len grew up with his two adoring older sisters Elaine Nicastro and Natalie Franzblau and his much younger admiring brother Steve Weinglass during the depression in Bellville, New Jersey, a town near New York City which had a small Jewish community of some 200 families. Len’s grandfather, his mother’s father, was the head of the congregation and used to lead the religious services there. He owned some properties in New York City. Len’s father Sol Weinglass owned two local drugstores. Business went bad for both men. Len’s parents lost their home and had to move the family in with relatives for awhile. His grandfather, like many businessmen during that time of economic disaster, faced with ruin, killed himself.
“Childhood shows the man,” Milton wrote, “as morning shows the day”. When he was nine years old Lenny had a dear friend, Johnny; they were inseparable, palling around together all the time. They had a fight. Lenny came home with a badly blackened eye. His father asked what happened. Lenny replied that he was in a fight. But you must have really gotten in some punches too, inquired his father, you must have given it back to him.? No said Len, I didn’t hit him. Why, his father asked incredulously? Because, replied Len, “he was my friend.”
Len was a very successful and popular high school student in Kearney, New Jersey, a town near Bellville where his family had moved. He played saxophone, was tall and handsome, and sported a fifties pompadour hair style, spending a lot of grooming time behind a closed door in front of the bathroom mirror. His father jokingly complained that he had raised a girl. As vice-president of the senior class he was expected to go to the senior prom. Time went past. Prom night was approaching. Still he had no date. His sisters asked him whom he was taking to the dance. He wouldn’t tell. But he knew. He escorted a plain wall flower who otherwise might not have gone.
When Len graduated he wanted to take a trip across the country to California. He got his father to drive him to the highway. His dad sat in his car weeping as Len hoisted his thumb at passing trucks. Soon an l8 wheeler stopped and Len piled in. He called often from the road reporting that he was frequently picked up by cars and trucks, that everyone was nice to him, buying him meals and that he was making good time on his trip west.
He didn’t take any identification with him. There was a lot of anti-semitism in the U.S. in the early fifties. Len didn’t want people seeing his last name was Weinglass and identifying him as a Jew. When he got to California he got work on a truck farm, doing stoop farm labor with Japanese agricultural workers. One night one of them was killed. Len was afraid that without an ID he would be a suspect. He jumped the fence in the middle of the night and got out of there.
Len was reserved, modest, but self-confident, unflamboyant and precise. He was, as attorney John Mage has written, “…a meticulous, well-prepared litigator and with an extraordinary degree of practical wisdom and foresight.” Len’s dear friend the distinguished attorney Marty Garbus said Len was the best jury selector and cross-examiner he had every know. Former U.S. Attorney General Ramsey Clark wrote to Len in the hospital that “You have been an inspiration to me since we first met in 1969. Your quiet, selfless, relentless, brilliant and heroic commitment to truth and justice — against all odds — has made a difference worldwide. Having been at your side here at home, in Chicago, Iran, the Philippines, Nicaragua, Venezuela, and for the Cuban Five I can testify to your sole, selfless commitment to a world of peace and principle and good times along the way.”
Gerardo Hernandez, one of the Cuban Five, who is serving a life sentence in a maximum security prison in California, remembered Len’s last visit to him, which was shortly before he went into the hospital.
Not long ago Len came to visit me and we worked for several hours preparing for the next step of my appeal. I noticed at the time that he was tired. I was worried With his advanced age that he was driving alone after a long trip from New York. The weather was bad and the roads from the airport up to Victorville wind through the mountains surrounding the high desert. I mentioned my concern to him but he did not pay it any attention. That was the way he was, nothing stopped him.
Len had an ironic and wry sense of humor. He had a large one room cabin atop of a high hill overlooking the Rondout reservoir in New York’s Catskill mountains. He lived up there in a teepee off and on for several years before designing the cottage. He had a special joy, which he inherited from his mother Clara, gardening and raising fruit trees. This was an especially difficult pursuit because he had mistakenly planted the trees on the south side of the hill where they got plenty of sun but were vulnerable to a false spring, blooming early, then getting damaged by a frost, which could occur up there as late as June. Nonetheless Len persisted and sometimes got a crop of apples, pears, and plums. The crop would then be eaten by the neighborhood bears. “I grow the fruit,” Len complained, “then the bears come and eat it and I go to Gristedes.” With regard to his work in the courtroom with his friend and colleague the colorful Bill Kunstler during the the Chicago 7 case, Len reflected that he was often referred to as “the other lawyer.”
He kept his sense of humor even during those terrible final days at Montefiore Hospital. His surgeon operated on him but abandoned his attempt to remove what turned out to be a large spreading malignant tumor, undetected by the pre-op CTscan. When the surgeon saw what it really was, that it was an inoperable tumor, he could do nothing but sew Len back up and tell him the bad news. Len looked up at us from his bed in the recovery room after being informed by the surgeon, accessed the situation, and said, simply, “summary judgement.” And so it was. He lived but another six weeks, steadily declining, never getting to go home, never giving up, even as several doctors told him “you are in the final stretch.”
Len was strong and vigorous up to his last illness . Since his highschool days he never lost his interest in football and closely followed the professional game. He was a Giants fan of course, but sentimentally he liked the Green Bay Packers because they were the only team in the league owned not by billionaires, but by the municipality of Green Bay. While Len was in Montefiore hospital the Packers made it into the Superbowl against the Pittsburgh Steelers. “ Want to bet on the game,” I asked. “How about five bucks.” He raised his finger to the sky. “Ten?,” I ventured. “No,” he whispered. “Fifty.” So my nephew Ben got us a bookie in Connecticut and we put down fifty bucks apiece. The Packers were favored so we had to give away 3½ points. Len advised that this was a responsible bet. It sure was. The Packers wound up winning in the last quarter by 4 points. I congratulated Len on his sagacity. That win lifted his spirits.
Len was a longtime member of the National Lawyers Guild and served as a time as the co-chair of its intenational committee. He was the recipient of the Guild’s Ernie Goodman Award, named after the extraordinary Detroit socialist lawyer and Guild leader who helped build the auto workers union and later organized the Guild to send its members down south to protect black people during the civil rights movment.
The Dean of Yale Law School Robert C. Post wrote Len’s sister Elaine to express his sympathy, writing that “Leonard Weinglass lived a full and admirable life in the law and exemplified the spirit of citizenship that lawyers at their very best display. He brought great honor to the legal community and to Yale Law School, which takes pride in all he did and was.”
Len was a Jew, but rejected the idea that it was racial ties or bonds of blood that made up the Jewish community, seeing that view as a degenerate philosophy leading to chauvinism and cruelty. He rejected Jewish nationalism, embracing instead an unconditional solidarity with the persecuted and exterminated.
Len was not religious. The emergency room admitting nurse asked him what his religion was so she could fill out the questionnaire. He paused and answered “leave it blank.” Two weeks later when he was admitted to the hospital he again was asked what his religion was. “None,” he answered. Religion to Len was superstition. Being part of a sect was too narrow and confining for Len. The Jewish heretic who transcends Jewry belongs to a Jewish tradition. The historian Isaac Deutscher had a phrase for it, “the non-Jewish Jew.” Len was in line with the great revolutionaries of modern thought; Spinoza, Heine, Marx, Luxemburg, Trotsky, Freud, and Einstein, whose photo hung in Len’s Chelsea loft. These people went beyond the boundaries of Judaism, finding it too narrow, archaic, constricting.
I don’t wish to stretch the comparison. Len was not so much a radical thinker as a man of action. But his intellectual understanding – he was well educated and widely read – powered his activity. He had in common with these great thinkers the idea that for knowledge to be real it must be acted upon. As Marx observed, “Hitherto philosophers have only interpreted the world, the point however is to change it.”
Like his intellectual predecessors. Len saw reality in a state of flux, as dynamic, not static, and he was aware of the constantly changing and contradictory nature of society. Len was essentially an optimist and shared with the great Jewish revolutionaries an optimistic belief in the solidarity of humankind.
Len died in the evening of March 23, 2011 as spring was approaching in New York. He had plans to celebrate Passover in April, as usual, with his family in New Jersey. He knew quite a lot about Passover, led his family’s observance at the seder every year, and kept up a file on the holiday. He liked the idea that the Jews had the chutzpah to conflate their own flight from slavery with spring and the liberation of nature.
He had plans to tend his fruit trees on the side of the hill next to his Catskill cabin. He would have put in a vegetable garden near his three block long driveway, which frequently washed out and which he repaired with sysiphean regularity. He would have set out birdseed on the cabin’s porch rail, where he would sit in a lounge chair on a platform and watch the songbirds feed.
He loved being out on that porch, high up on a hill, particularly at day’s end, seeing the sun go down over the Rondout reservoir which supplied some of the drinking water to New York City. Back in 1976 he told a student reporter for UCLA’s Daily Bruin that leading a committed life was satisfying, fulfilling, and that was what made him happy.
He will be remembered personally as a good, generous, and loyal friend, a gentle and kind person; politically as a great persuasive speaker, an acute analyst of the political scene, and a far-seeing visionary. Professionally Len Weinglass will live on as one of the great lawyers of his time, joining the legal pantheon of leading twentieth century advocates for justice along with Clarence Darrow, Leonard Boudin, Arthur Kinoy, Ernest Goodman, and William Kunstler.
“Lenny cannot be replaced,” wrote his friend Sandra Levinson. “There are no words for the loss we all feel. Do something brave, put yourself out there for someone, fight for someone’s dignity, do something to honor this courageous just man.”
Leonard Irving Weinglass: Presente.
Michael Steven Smith
New York, NY
April l7, 2011
Lachrymose history is bunk
Apr 19, 2011
Delia Relke
A response to the post yesterday on the “meaning of Helen Thomas.”
… it is simply a fact – not less of a fact because anti-Semites turn it into a grievance – that Jews play an important and influential role in American cultural life. We are not just “the people of the book,” but the people of the Hollywood film and the television mini-series, of the magazine article and the newspaper column, of the comic book and the academic symposium. When a high level of concern with remembering the Holocaust became widespread in American Jewry, it was, given the important role that Jews play in American media and opinion-making elites, virtually inevitable that it would spread throughout the culture at large
—Peter Novick, The American National Narrative of the Holocaust; There Isn’t Any” [2003]
It is much easier to talk about the fact that Jews are overrepresented in the upper reaches of Western culture and society if you put it in historical context.
First, you have to chuck out that “lachrymose narrative” that Zionists cling to, and address the hills and valleys of Jewish accomplishment and Jewish persecution.
Robert Wistrich’s theory of antisemitism as “the oldest hatred” is rubbish; misogyny is centuries older and provided a lot of the language of antisemism, to wit, the medieval myth that male Jews menstruate, and other “feminizing” concepts that have informed the bigoted view of Jews for centuries. Read Otto Weininger.
Only when you have debunked Zionist myth-making can you balance out the enormous contributions Jews have made to Western civilization on the one hand, and their easily misconstrued — and sometimes abused — influence on the other.
Wikileaks: U.S. threw its body down to block Goldstone Report’s progress to the Hague
Apr 19, 2011
Philip Weiss
Are the walls of the “special relationship” falling? No way. But five years after Walt and Mearsheimer, the issue is finally being poked at by the mainstream media. Here at Foreign Policy under the headline “Special Relationship,” Colum Lynch reports on the latest wikileaks cables on the U.S. and Israel, showing the efforts to stymie the Goldstone Report. If you go to the cables, Ambassador Rice speaks about building a “blocking coalition” against the report:
The new documents, though consistent with public U.S. statements at the time opposing a U.N. investigation into Israeli military operations, reveal in extraordinary detail how America wields its power behind closed doors at the United Nations. They also demonstrate how the United States and Israel were granted privileged access to highly sensitive internal U.N. deliberations on an “independent” U.N. board of inquiry into the Gaza war, raising questions about the independence of the process.
In one pointed cable, [Susan] Rice repeatedly prodded U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon to block a recommendation of the board of inquiry to carry out a sweeping inquiry into alleged war crimes by Israeli soldiers and Palestinian militants. In another cable, Rice issued a veiled warning to the president of the International Criminal Court, Sang-Hyun Song, that an investigation into alleged Israeli crimes could damage its standing with the United States at a time when the new administration was moving closer to the tribunal. “How the ICC handles issues concerning the Goldstone Report will be perceived by many in the US as a test for the ICC, as this is a very sensitive matter,” she told him, according to a Nov. 3, 2009, cable from the U.S. mission to the United Nations.
Rice, meanwhile, assured Israeli Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman during an Oct. 21, 2009, meeting in Tel Aviv that the United States had done its utmost to “blunt the effects of the Goldstone report” and that she was confident she could “build a blocking coalition” to prevent any push for a probe by the Security Council, according to an Oct. 27, 2009 cable.
Rice assured Lieberman. Rice assured Lieberman. It wasn’t a month ago that even David Remnick described Lieberman as“proto-fascistic.” And we’re bombing Libya because of attacks on civilians and meanwhile kissing this guy’s behind?
Remnick, by the way, once mocked Walt and Mearsheimer by saying, oh if we somehow ended the Israel-Palestine conflict the lion would lie down with the lamb– wait here are his words: “Mearsheimer and Walt give you the sense that, if the Israelis and the Palestinians come to terms, bin Laden will return to the family construction business.” Ha ha ha. As if our entanglement on one side of this conflict hasn’t helped destroy the American brand across the Middle East.
Bibi’s Sharia
Apr 19, 2011
Philip Weiss
From Ynet, Netanyahu on avenging the settler murders in Itamar:
Israel, Netanyahu stressed “will catch such killers wherever they may be and cut off their hands. This manifests both our commitment to the notion of justice and to our citizen’s security.”
Thanks to Annie.
Helen Thomas paid a price– and so did Jennifer Nelson
Apr 19, 2011
Philip Weiss
This is so delicious I’m not eating my lunch. Just be a little patient with a winding storyline…
Let’s go back to the dawn of time, the 2010 congressional campaign. Democratic congressman Mike McMahon was representing a Brooklyn-Staten Island district that included a lot of Arab-Americans in Bay Ridge. I met some of them, and they dug McMahon for saying halfway decent things about foreign policy. McMahon was on Foreign Affairs. And then during that campaign, McMahon had to fire his aide. Remember why?
In an effort to show that Republican challenger Mike Grimm has received most of his financial support from donors outside of New York’s 13th district, Democratic Rep. Mike McMahon’s re-election campaign gave the New York Observer a list of more than 80 Jewish donors to Grimm.
The list was entitled “Grimm Jewish Money Q2.”
At least half a dozen of the donors on the list live on Staten Island, which is part of the 13th district.
“Where is Grimm’s money coming from,” Jennifer Nelson, McMahon’s campaign spokesperson, asked the Observer. “There is a lot of Jewish money, a lot of money from people in Florida and Manhattan, retirees.”
In an effort to show that Republican challenger Mike Grimm has received most of his financial support from donors outside of New York’s 13th district, Democratic Rep. Mike McMahon’s re-election campaign gave the New York Observer a list of more than 80 Jewish donors to Grimm.
The list was entitled “Grimm Jewish Money Q2.”
At least half a dozen of the donors on the list live on Staten Island, which is part of the 13th district.
“Where is Grimm’s money coming from,” Jennifer Nelson, McMahon’s campaign spokesperson, asked the Observer. “There is a lot of Jewish money, a lot of money from people in Florida and Manhattan, retirees.”
The point is, you’re not allowed to even talk about this issue in American politics. And oh yeah, McMahon lost to Grimm.
Now part the misty clouds of yesteryear and enter the present. The Forward has a fabulous piece of reporting by Josh Nathan-Kazis and Nathan Guttman on how hard-right on Israel Michael Grimm is.
Rep. Michael Grimm broke ranks with his party and became the first House Republican to call for the release of Jonathan Pollard.
The freshman member from New York has made Israel a key element of his political work. And while the Republican House leadership has thus far refrained from speaking out in favor of a commutation of Pollard’s life sentence for spying for Israel, Grimm pays small heed to political consensus.
Grimm also came out against his own budget-cutting camp when talk of slashing aid to Israel was on the table. And he strongly opposes a two-state solution for the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Two states is the position adopted by President George W. Bush during his administration and by party leaders today.
Now why is Grimm taking these positions. Well– the Forward says it has something to do with… Jewish money.
Grimm is not Jewish. But his hawkish views on Israel seem to square with Jewish constituents, especially among the Orthodox community, in his congressional district, which includes Staten Island and parts of Brooklyn. They are in line, too, with Jewish donors from outside that have helped him get elected.
During his electoral campaign, Grimm drew significant support from Jewish donors living outside the district — so much so that, in July 2009, the press office of incumbent Democrat Mike McMahon circulated a list of Grimm donors under the heading, “Grimm Jewish Money Q2.”
The press officer who distributed the list was quickly fired, and McMahon apologized for the list’s distribution.
Some of Grimm’s Jewish support, particularly during the early months of the campaign, came from the supporters of Rabbi Yoshiyahu Yosef Pinto, a Sephardic kabbalist with deep ties among Israel’s political and business elite and with growing influence in the United States. Last June, Grimm sat beside Pinto at the front of the sanctuary in his Manhattan yeshiva while the rabbi delivered a lecture.
One thought on “Mondoweiss Online Newsletter”
Leonard Irving Weinglass
He is great man.
I am proud to call him my brother
He believe human right
He is my lawyer
I like him very much