NOVANEWS
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Times coverage of ‘fly-in’ protest masks nature of Israeli control over Palestinian lives
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Israel included on Homeland Security terrorism watch list
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Welcome to Israel
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Will abstracted, isolated Obama be prey to neoconservative policy elite re Iran attack?
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Naomi Klein: How climate change should affect a N. American Jew’s view of Israel
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Way back machine: Senate hearings in ’77 were titled ‘The colonization of the West Bank territories by Israel’!
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Eric Alterman on his dual loyalty and the U.S. pressuring Palestinians to accept ‘their historic position’
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Strauss-Kahn. Israel every morning
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Amira Hass, the flotilla, & Jewish stereotype
Times coverage of ‘fly-in’ protest masks nature of Israeli control over Palestinian lives
Jul 08, 2011
Adam Horowitz
A friend writes:
Isabel Kershner has some useful information about Israel’s hysterical response to the fly-intoday, though she leaves out the frightening scenes of angry crowds at the airport.
But she obfuscates the basic reality that the fly-in was mean to underline, that Israel controls all borders and entry and exit of Palestinians and foreigners into and out of the West Bank, and cuts Palestinians off from the outside world. Readers won’t learn these very basic facts about Israeli control over Palestinian lives in the NY Times.
Instead, this is how Kershner describes the initiative to fly-in via Israel’s Ben Gurion airport:
There were persistent reports that the foreign visitors would try to create chaos and paralyze Ben-Gurion Airport, despite strenuous denials from the organizers of the campaign, who advocate nonviolence. They insisted that the foreigners only wanted to transit the airport and “go to Palestine.” (The West Bank has no airport of its own.)
A less knowledgeable reader might ask, “Well why didn’t they just cross a land border to visit the West Bank?” (Kershner didn’t tell you that Israel similarly controls the land borders).
Another reader might ask, “Why don’t the Palestinians just build their own airport rather than using Israel’s? Don’t they get enough foreign aid?” (The NY Times didn’t explain that Israel won’t allow Palestinians to have their own airport).
This is how AP has described Israeli control of the borders in it’s reporting on the fly-in:
Visitors can reach the West Bank only through Israeli-controlled crossings, either through international airports or the land border with Jordan. Citing security concerns, Israel bars most Palestinians from entering Israel or using its airport, meaning they must travel to neighboring Jordan to fly out.
Why can’t the NY Times describe these basic structural realities?
Israel included on Homeland Security terrorism watch list
Jul 08, 2011
Lizzy Ratner
Yep, you read the headline right. On May 1oth, the Department of Homeland Security’s Office of the Inspector General committed the diplomatic equivalent of a Freudian slip when it included Israel on a list of rogue terror states, YNet reports. Nor was Israel the only ally on the list. Also included? Such sterling friends as Bahrain, Turkey, Morocco, and the Philippines.
But before you get too excited, the Department of Homeland Security has already issued an apology to Israel, brushing off the matter as a silly misunderstanding.
“The addition of Israel to the list… was based on inaccurate information provided to the OIG [Office of the Inspector General] during the course of its audit,” said John Morton, director of the US Immigration and Customs Enforcement division of DHS.
Hm, “inaccurate information“? Sounds fishy. Maybe whoever was compiling the list simply didn’t realize Israel was an ally. Or maybe he or she just has a deliciously pointed sense of humor.
Welcome to Israel
Jul 08, 2011
Adam Horowitz
A crowd attacks participants in Ben Gurion Airport (Photo: Joseph Dana)
Joseph Dana has been stationed in Ben Gurion Airport all day reporting on the “Welcome to Palestine” initiative. The scene he has shared can only be described as chaos. Israel hasbarred journalists from entering the airport, arrested Israeli activists who came to Ben Gurion in solidarity and stood aside as Israeli passerbys cursed, spit on and punched “Welcome to Palestine” travelers arriving from abroad.
In an piece on +972 titled “Air Flotilla” successful in exposing Israeli blockade of West Bank, Noam Sheizaf has described Israel’s response to the protest as “panic” and added, “it seems that the whole country has gone mad.” That looks about right, and it appears the “air flotilla” has also been successful in exposing the delusional siege mentality that seems to be governing Israel and the vast majority of its citizens these days. The government’s existential fear of tourists visiting the occupied territories is yet another sign that the delegitimization of Israel is a self-fulfilling prophecy that Israel’s leaders seem bent on bringing to fruition.
Below is Dana’s live twitter stream from this morning and be sure to read over the last few hours.
Will abstracted, isolated Obama be prey to neoconservative policy elite re Iran attack?
Jul 08, 2011
Philip Weiss
Great piece by David Bromwich in NYRB on Obama’s political temperament– a preference for imperial utterance… extreme abstraction alternates with spasmodic engagement… seeks isolation/vacation from Washington, and is vulnerable for that reason. So no wonder Netanyahu cleaned his clock, and why “the neoconservative policy elite” is able to muscle Obama. This is an extended excerpt from the end of the piece, with its consideration of the ways that Netanyahu’s huge success in Congress may affect Obama’s maneuverability on the Iran question:
Netanyahu’s speech to Congress was also part of a larger strategy of his right-wing coalition. He got his invitation to address Congress from Eric Cantor, the House majority leader, and the Republican Party is now working to detach Jewish donors from the Democrats and to convert Republicans at large to the Likud and neoconservative politics that support a greater Israel. In the pitch offered to Americans, taking sections of the West Bank from Palestinians is as warranted as the taking of lands from American Indians. Mike Huckabee has indicated his sympathy with this point of view. Sarah Palin wore a Star of David on her necklace in her recent liberty tour. Glenn Beck has planned a mass event, “Restoring Courage,” on August 24 at the Southern Wall excavations in the city of Jerusalem. Americans of the chauvinist and evangelical right are being invited to think of Israel as a second homeland.
Considered as a response to this predicament, Obama’s speech at the State Department, with its broad-gauge pronouncements and its candor regarding Palestine, was utterly overmatched by Netanyahu’s speech to Congress….
Netanyahu made the “existential threat” of Iran a major part of his appeal to Congress, as was to be expected. And this is probably the final terrain on which, in the next two years, Obama will have to confront the difference between the reformist intentions he cherishes and the conventional signals he has been sending. In 2007, there were many signs that the neoconservative policy elite, and the Office of the Vice President, wanted the US to back Israel or combine with Israel in an attack on Iran. They were thwarted by Admiral William Fallon, the commander of CentCom, and a letter from the Republican Senator Chuck Hagel to President Bush, and a few other acts of resistance from persons in authority. Most of all, the case for attacking Iran was defeated by the 2007 National Intelligence Estimate, which declared that no evidence existed of an Iranian nuclear program that could yield a weapon.
The 2011 NIE has now appeared, and it says much the same. But it has been kept under wraps by the Obama administration, in a manner reminiscent of the way the 2007 NIE was suppressed, as far as possible, by Cheney and Bush. According to Seymour Hersh, writing in the June 6 New Yorker, American intelligence has found “no conclusive evidence” that an Iranian weapons program exists. A June 3 New York Times article by Ethan Bronner backs up the Hersh report with testimony from Israeli sources. Meir Dagan, the recently retired head of Mossad, and other senior members of the Israeli intelligence establishment are now warning Israel, and by implication warning America, not to fall in with the adventurism of Netanyahu—the war fever he is drumming up in two countries with no foundation in an actual threat.
Yet Obama’s national security advisers have disparaged Hersh’s findings as warmly as if they were still seeking a pretext to attack Iran. And the tight inner circle around Obama has denied a visit with the President to informed dissenters on Iran policy like Thomas Pickering. As a Times editorial pointed out on June 13, the latest report of the International Atomic Energy Agency cites new reasons for calling on Iran to disclose the possible “military dimensions” of its nuclear program. Plainly the answers to such questions will form a necessary part of any negotiations between Iran and the US. Meanwhile, the attempt to isolate the President from views such as Pickering’s seems full of hazard; though presidents who are said to be victims of isolation, from Johnson to Reagan to Obama, have become so by staying close to persons who shield them from unwelcome stimuli. In the same way, one recalls, on Afghanistan Obama declined offers of help by dissenters from the Petraeus-McChrystal escalation policy, even when they came from officials as well placed as Karl Eikenberry and Richard Holbrooke.
In appointing a new chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Obama passed over the person who was said to have been his first choice, General James Cartwright, the former vice-chairman of JCOS: a skeptic on Afghanistan who had become a trusted adviser of the President. He has appointed instead General Martin Dempsey, who had served as head of Tradoc (Training and Doctrine Command for American ground forces). The Israeli newspaper Haaretz devoted a June 1 article to the appointment of Dempsey under the headline: “Obama’s New Security Staff May Approve Attack on Iran.” The author of the article, the military correspondent Amir Oren, finds it significant that Dempsey has studied closely the operations of the Israeli Defense Forces, and that he worked at Tradoc with an IDF liaison officer. This appointment can stand as the first of many footnotes to the encounter, in late May 2011, between Barack Obama and Benjamin Netanyahu.
Naomi Klein: How climate change should affect a N. American Jew’s view of Israel
Jul 08, 2011
Philip Weiss
Great stuff happens and then goes by the boards, but below is an exchange from 6 weeks ago that I don’t want to forget.
In May we (along with the Culture Project) staged a panel on the Goldstone Report with Naomi Klein among others on stage in New York, and at the end moderator Laura Flanders asked Klein a question about global warming as it touches on the Israel/Palestine issue. I thought about it today because of the water war that Israel is now carrying out on the West Bank, destroying Palestinian cisterns. So here’s the exchange, wonderful for Flanders’s koan about self-interest & solidarity (I haven’t stopped thinking about it since), and for Klein’s inspired answer:
Flanders: I do want to give Naomi a chance to say, to answer one other question. Because I hear solidarity I also want to hear, I believe real solidarity is based on self interest. We all share an interest in resolving this conflict, and our own conflicts we are responsible for, and our part of it. We also I think have a self interest in a climatic way, having to do with our climate, our planet, our future as a planet. You’re working on this; I don’t want you to spill the beans on your book and your movie. But you said behind, backstage that it’s not unrelated.
Klein: …That’s a really great last question. I was mentioning to Laura, I am working on a book about climate change, it isn’t about Israel Palestine. But I am really immersed in this issue, and have been now for three or so years. And I find myself in situations talking to groups of people whose countries are going to disappear under the waves. They are literally planning for the disappearance of their states. And this is the future we are headed to, I know this is a completely different topic, but obviously climate change is going to affect the region that we are talking about very strongly. Water wars are going to intensify. I think we can see a really bad outcome for how climate change would play out in Israel Palestine, particularly when it comes to water. But I have this other idea, about what could happen. Because, I really do think we are looking at a much less secure world where it’s only a matter of time before everybody is confronting these facts, that a great many people in the world are going to be looking at their states disappearing. We are going to be looking at a huge number of climate refugees because of our refusal to deal with climate change. When I think about that world of insecurity and I think about what that means to me as a North American Jew, and the fact that I have been told that I have a right to not just one state but two, two secure states, I actually think that climate change might be something of a game changer there. And my hope is that it may create an opening for North American Jews to think about what security really means; what real security means, that it’s not a fortress and that it is these universal values.
Way back machine: Senate hearings in ’77 were titled ‘The colonization of the West Bank territories by Israel’!
Jul 08, 2011
Philip Weiss
Yes, it was in 1977. I was wearing muttonchops. That’s a link to a Library of Congress record titled “The Colonization of the West Bank Territories by Israel,” a Senate hearing on “The Question of West Bank Settlements and the Treatment of Arabs in the Israeli-Occupied Territories” dated October 17 and 18, 1977. Fouzi El-Asmar, the Palestinian poet and author of the amazing book To Be an Arab In Israel, testified. El-Asmar lived behind barbed wire for a while, near Lyd. Also testimony from the great Dr. Israel Shahak, Professor of Chemistry, Hebrew University, where he describes how settlements are first referred to by their Arabic names, and then later biblical names.
There is one pro-Israel witness, Yehuda Zvi Blum, a professor of international law at Hebrew U. Today it would be all Blums. You can see where Sen. Jim Abourezk asks him:
I personally know of the former president or existing
president of Birzeit University who told me that he was taken summarily
with a bag over his head and dumped across the Lebanese
border in the middle of the night with no trial and no hearing and
no charges. Let’s take that one example. Do you approve of that
OK: What’s happened to my country, the U.S., that we can’t call colonization colonization and have the likes of Saree Makdisi and Mazim Qumsiyeh and Jeff Halper testify before the Senate? I believe the reason is the rise of the meritocracy, the new order of Jews inside the establishment, the Israel lobby as a fact of our elite culture. In ’77 the WASPs were still au saddle. As I hasten to add every time I make this point, it’s a great thing, generally, for everybody that the bluebloods were deposed, them too. But when it comes to Middle East policy it means that there’s no debate.
Listen to the great Shahak:
First of all, I would like to point out that the creation of the settlements in a territory, whose inhabitants then cannot settle in the state which settles this territory violates, in my opinion, the right of equal justice, the right which says that the people should be treated under equal law. I oppose both inside the State of Israel and in every place and in every forum of the world the statement of my Prime Minister, Mr. Begin, that Jews have the right to settle in the land of Israel because rights should be given irrespective of religion, race, and nationality. As I said in my own country, I say here that if the Jews of Tel Aviv have the right to settle on the West Bank, then they have it only under conditions that a mutual and equal right should be given to all the people, let us say, people of the West Bank to settle in Tel Aviv. Every other situation violates the conditions of freedom as known in modern states and violates the very principles established by the American Revolution and of the French Revolution and the most fundamental rules of a modern democracy. It returns us to the principles which were employed by anti-Semites against Jews. I say this especially as a Jew.
And listen to this:
I believe that especially now the Israeli Government is creating a class of quislings which should not be confused by any means with the previous notables
of King Hussein. These last, are newly made men. Tn many cases they are criminals, as I have said, and it is the aim, like in many other atrocious colonial regimes, to make of those people leaders.
Eric Alterman on his dual loyalty and the U.S. pressuring Palestinians to accept ‘their historic position’
Jul 08, 2011
Philip Weiss
I’m undertaking a new Jewish identity project: I’m going to start reaching out to prominent American Jews to talk about what makes them Jewish and when they got inoculated with Zionism. And below is one of my favorite statements by a Jewish journalist about his identity as it touches on his perceptions of what’s good for America and good for Israel.
Eric Alterman of the Nation is an important liberal, and he made the statement two years ago at the 92d Street Y, and I’m deeply grateful to him for his honesty. It was a panel called “Why we need a liberal Israel lobby,” where Alterman brings up the question of dual loyalty. Alterman is eloquent (if misguided) on the idea that he has dual loyalty. And then he is honest, if again misguided, I believe, on the extent to which the only players at the peace table are Israel and the United States, and Israel must agree to the terms for a Palestinian state before it can exist. And that means the U.S. compelling Palestinians to accept their “historic position,” even if this will anger Arabs across the region. And here I’d remind you that Alterman is on the left in this whole conversation in the U.S.; he actually criticizes Israel now and then.
I dig this speech out now for a few reasons. Because I have a genuine scholarly side, and I happened on this panel the other day and finally transcribed it and was blown away. BecauseJack Ross’s new book traces the rapid and absolute inscription of Zionism inside Jewish American life of which Alterman, who was sent off to Israel at 14, Zionism “drummed into” him, is a perfect example even inside the Thoughtful liberal media. Because Alterman was lately hired as a columnist by the moderator of the debate, Jane Eisner of the Forward (and by coincidence, I just got emails from a couple of folks about Alterman opposing one-state in the Forward).
But mostly because I think arguing over Jewish identity, a fight over Jewish identity and Zionist identity and what it means to the American and Jewish future is absolutely crucial to world peace… I want more debate, not less.
Here’s Alterman in his own words (the video is below, it’s at 33 or so):
Alterman: You know, one of the touchiest words you can say when you’re discussing Jews and Israel is the word dual loyalty. It’s sort of one of those words that American Jewish officialdom has ruled out of the discourse. If you say dual loyalty, you’re playing into the hands of anti-semites, because it’s been a consistent trope among anti-Semites that you can’t trust Jews. etc. etc. And I find this very confusing because I was raised dually loyal my whole life. When I went to Hebrew school, the content of my Hebrew school was all about supporting Israel. When my parents who I think are here tonight sent me to Israel when I was 14, on a ZOA [Zionist Organization of America]-sponsored trip… [laughter/backtalk] that was a bad idea, yeah– it was drummed into me that I should do what’s best for Israel.
I was at the Center for Jewish History not long ago where I heard Ruth Wisse, the Yiddishist professor at Harvard who happens to be the Martin L. Peretz professor, instruct a group of young Jewish journalists that they should think of themselves as members of the Israeli army. That in Israel young people have to serve in the army– well, they didn’t have to serve in the army, but they should think of themselves as members of a Jewish army, supporting the Jewish people, supporting Israel, putting aside their intellectual qualms and concerns about things. Like [the recent elevation of Foreign Minister Avigdor] Lieberman.
Now it so happens that because so few people are willing to say this, and there’s certainly good historical reasons for this, I end up being quoted by Walt and Mearsheimer as the only person saying, I am a dual loyal Jew and sometimes I’m going to actually go with Israel, because the United States can take an awful lot of hits and come up standing. Whereas if Israel takes one serious bad hit it could disappear. So there’s going to be some cases where when Israel and the United States conflict I’m going to support what’s best for Israel rather than what I think is best for the United States.
The big fiction that permeates virtually all discussion and I bet you even in J Street, but certainly amongst official organizations is That there’s no such thing, that there could be possibly anything that could be both Good for Israel and Bad for the United States or vice versa. Every single speech you go to at AIPAC or the AJC says, thank god that our interests and values are perfectly aligned and We support a strong Israel and we support a strong United States. No– that’s not always going to be the case. They’re two different countries with two different strategic interests and different points of view on certain things.
Lieberman is bad for everything as far as I understand the world. He’s in the long term detrimental to Israel’s interest, and he’s certainly not in the United States interest, which has a strong interest in maintaining peace and stability in that region. And so in this case, there isn’t really a conflict in my saying, look if the Israelis are going to elect a government that’s detrimental to my interests and Israel’s interests… I’m going to do everything I can to convince them to elect a different gov’t. Just the way the Palestinians elected a bad thing by electing Hamas…
[Alterman then describes Israel’s role in founding Hamas, a “terrible mistake as many countries historically have made a terrible mistake.”]
As a friend of Israel and a person who’s concerned with the long term health and happiness of the Jewish people. I’m going to say I’m not going there with you guys, I have no trouble doing that.
Eisner: Can you imagine a time where you would feel that dual loyalty and go with Israel?
Alterman: I just said, there are many occasions.
Eisner: Can you give us an example?
Alterman: Off the top of my head. Well look, to me the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is simple in the following regard. It’s complicated in most regards. But it’s simple in the following regard. The only people who can deliver peace, who can deliver a state to the Palestinians is the Israeli public… You can’t force Israel to make peace against its will. Israel will only make the concessions necessary to peace if they believe that the Palestinians are sincere about making peace so I can see that saying to the Palestinian leadership or saying to the Saudi leadership or Egyptian leadership, look we need to do a lot of unpopular things in Palestine to demonstrate to the Israeli public that the Palestinians have finally accepted their historic position and are now ready to make the peace that the Israelis can trust– now I’m not saying we’re anywhere near that situation, I’m answering your hypothetical question– that might make the United States a great deal more unpopular in the Arab world. It might increase terrorism in the Arab world…
Here’s a much simpler example actually. I think that bin Laden and 9/11 were to some degree inspired by U.S. support of Israel. I think a great deal of the terrorist attacks and the sort of pool of potential terrorists who want to attack the United States are inspired by the United States support for Israel. I’m not saying we shouldn’t support Israel for that reason. I’m saying, Dammit if that’s the price we have to pay, then I’m willing to pay it. I’m just saying Let’s be honest about it. Let’s not pretend that it’s unimaginable that the two states can be in conflict because if these two states happen never to be in conflict it would be the only time in history that ever happened, and yet we all treat it as if it’s a given.
Strauss-Kahn. Israel every morning
Jul 08, 2011
Philip Weiss
I’m announcing my new Jewish identity project today. Well actually it’s my old project, but dressed up a little. This is from Haaretz today, Anees of Jerusalem spotted it. Who knew?
Although his alleged sexual exploits are making waves, it is Israel, not women that is in former IMF Chief Dominique Strauss-Kahn’s heart. In an interview with the newspaper “Liberation” back in April, just over a month before he made headlines for attempted rape charges (that are looking increasingly shaky), DSK told the French daily that only three things could prevent him from becoming the next president of France – his money, his women and his Judaism.
The fallen-from-grace financier recounted an interview he gave some years back with the “Tribune Juive”(The Jewish Tribune), in which he said “I wake up every morning and think about how I can help Israel.”
And does this kind of affection have any consequences? You tell me. Don’t be conspiratorial now.
Amira Hass, the flotilla, & Jewish stereotype
Jul 08, 2011
annie
Amira Hass has written an important article in Haaretz originally titled The Flotilla and the Jewish Stereotype. I mention “originally” because within the 10 minute interval of drafting this post for you last night Haaretz has changed the title to “In dealing with flotilla, Israel is anything but smart”. Which is true of course, in dealing with flotilla, Israel is anything but smart. Hass discusses why and how in the article; read the whole thing, especially the end: “blocking the flotilla only increased their motivation to keep placing the Palestinians’ demand for freedom at the forefront of the international agenda.” But the article is a jewel, a keeper, because of what she says about the Jewish stereotype, or the one lacking lately in the public image.
In anti-Semitic caricatures, the cunning Jew is doomed to lose and his control over the world is fated to come to an end. But Israel’s government is revising the caricature and sketching a glorious victory. A war of attrition, in the form of mysterious breakdowns and unprecedented red tape by the Greek authorities, thwarted the flotilla’s original plan to anchor off the Gaza coast. When Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu openly thanked the Greek government, he knew full well what he was thanking it for.
………
This is a convenient time to be using pressure tactics. Greece’s socialist government is in a fragile situation, as the European Union and the International Monetary Fund are forcing the country to adopt an austerity plan that most of its people oppose. True, the fact that Greece has become a subcontractor of the Israeli army did not bring the masses into the streets, but there is no doubt about it: The sympathy of the Greek soldiers who arrested the Tahrir’s passengers and of the bureaucrats who delayed them was with the flotilla and with Gaza, not with their government’s orders. That’s all we need: another country whose government gets along well with Israel in complete opposition to popular sentiment.
The flotilla’s organizers added a term from the world of business and globalization to their description of Israel’s domination of the Palestinians. Israel, they said,was outsourcing the industry of the blockade on Gaza. In exchange for reward, a foreign government – Greece – took on an active role and adopted a deliberate policy of keeping the Gaza Strip one huge prison.
Logic dictates that a government whose policy validates anti-Semitic stereotypes ought to worry Israelis and Jews worldwide. But the Israeli government is doing what its voters want and believe in. For there is one stereotype that has not been recycled here: that of the wise Jew.
