NOVANEWS
- MJ Rosenberg is leaving ‘Media Matters’ to start his own blog
- Connecticut Senate hopeful calls congressman a ‘whore’ for AIPAC in televized debate
- Dear Red Hot Chili Peppers…
- Government hypocrisy competition
- Hot off the presses — Jewish Voice for Peace’s 2012 Haggadah
- Israeli army raids West Bank village, arrests minors and steals gold jewelry
- Another campus walkout, this one at Wayne State speech on Palestinian child suicide bombers
- U.S. school trip that doesn’t go to Yad Vashem is anti-Semitic, Foxman suggests
- The intellectual cowardice of Günter Grass’s critics
- Finkelstein ‘not going to be an Israel-basher anymore’ but remains ‘appalled and disgusted’
MJ Rosenberg is leaving ‘Media Matters’ to start his own blog
Apr 06, 2012
Philip Weiss
MJ Rosenberg
MJ Rosenberg has just announced that he is leaving Media Matters to publish his own blog. I can’t wait to read his blog. Rosenberg is a great journalist, he’s been a leading opponent of war on Iran, he’s had a stirring career breaking with community norms on the Israel lobby, he’s a leader to countless other journalists. Oh and he stuck to his guns on “Israel firster,” and then retired the term…
And as for the politics of this move, well… what can you say? This move obviously has something to do with the smear campaign launched by neocon Josh Block. Since he waged it, Zaid Jilani has left Center for American Progress, numerous posts at CAP were amended to reflect The Approved Truth, and now MJ Rosenberg is starting his own site. It’s like that old saying: If the kitchen’s on fire, get out of the kitchen.
As for the politics of this: I can’t wait to hear MJ Rosenberg, at his own blog! Godspeed MJ.
This is my last column for Media Matters. As of Monday, I’m striking out on my own with a brand new website and blog: MJayRosenberg.com.
The reason for this step is that it disturbed me greatly to see an organization to which I am devoted facing possible harm because of my critical writings about Israel. I have no doubt that the crowd that opposes any and all criticism of Israeli government policies will continue to turn its guns on Media Matters if I am associated with it.
I could not live with myself if that happened — not only because I care deeply about the organization and my colleagues, but also because Media Matters does such important work confronting the lies that emanate from the far right and especially Fox News.
My presence here is being used in an effort to shut Media Matters up. That won’t happen, of course…
Richard Nixon famously said to the press after his failed attempt to become governor of California, “just think how much you’re going to be missing. You don’t have Nixon to kick around anymore.” I, however, will most definitely be around. More than ever.
The blog goes “live” tonight!
Connecticut Senate hopeful calls congressman a ‘whore’ for AIPAC in televized debate
Apr 06, 2012
Annie Robbins
NBC Connecticut, broadcast April 5, 2012
Wow, this is exciting.
“I’m appalled that when I talk about the neoconservatives somehow it’s twisted to be some sort of a racist comment,” long-shot candidate Lee Whitnum said in response to U.S. Rep. Chris Murphy. “This is documented fact. The neoconservative role in the taking down of Iraq [with an] unnecessary war is fact. It’s not opinion.”
“I’m dealing with whore here who sells his soul to AIPAC [American Israel Public Affairs Committee], who will say anything for the job,” Whitnum explained, pointing towards Murphy and then adding that state Rep. William Tong was “ignorant” for defending him.
“What I would like to propose is a prosecution of settlers here, American settlers, who go to Israel and maim or kill in the Promised Land. Since 2000, 66,000 of the indigenous culture have been killed, many of them by American settlers. This is viewed all over the Middle East and we are hated for this worldwide.”
Note that much of Lee Whitnum’s website is devoted to bashing the Israel lobby. Something like Marcy Winograd’s insurgent campaign against Rep. Jane Harman in California two years back.
(Hat tip MW commenter Les)
Apr 06, 2012
Tali Shapiro
Red Hot Chili Peppers logo
I’ve been a huge Red Hot Chili Peppers fan since I was 14 years old. The prospect of a live show in Israel has always been slim-to-non. I saved up some serious cash for their last slated show, way back when, needless to say I was heartbroken when they cancelled. Over a decade later things are quite different. It seems ridiculous to me that the Red Hot Chili Peppers would even consider crossing the picket line of the global Palestinian liberation movement, that’s been forming since the last time they cancelled. One thing remains the same though : It’s very hard to reach a band of their stature. I want to make sure that no artist can say they didn’t know. Not about the atrocities of the apartheid state and its brutal occupation, and not about the movement to boycott, divest and sanction it. Below is the letter I’ve sent the band via snail mail.
Dear Anthony, Flea, Chad and Josh,
My name is Tali. I’m a citizen of Israel from the privileged side of the apartheid, who supports the Palestinian call for boycott, divestment and sanctions on the state of Israel. It doesn’t take much to get me to talk about the atrocities I witness here everyday, but I’d rather make it as brief as possible, so you’ll actually take the time to read this.
I’m a long time fan and it’s no lip service. I grew up on your songs, like American Ghost Dance and Johnny Kick a Hole in the Sky, but I wouldn’t understand them until much later, when I would join the weekly demonstrations of Palestinian villages against the state’s brutal incursion and theft of their lands. You may have heard the analogy to South African apartheid, which is accurate and then some, but if Israel succeeds, it will look more similar to what the whites had done to the Native Americans.
I can’t explain to you how deeply your lyrics resonate down in these parts, and how bitter it is that you may perform here. I, of course, can’t attend your concert in clear conscience, though I would have loved to.
Your performance would be a crowning achievement for Shuki Weiss, so I’d like to tell you a bit about his role in culturewashing Israel’s war crimes. Weiss and the Israeli government have a special relationshipin which they include him in Knesset meetings about outlawing the protesting tool of boycotts, and hesends them VIP tickets to shows he produces. This is not just corruption within the system, but corruption that serves to whitewash Israel’s war crimes against the Palestinian people, using international artists such as yourself. As quoted in the latter article:
Tourism Ministry spokeswoman Shira Koa said that the ministry had agreed with the producers of the concert that the event would be used to promote Israel as a safe tourism destination. “Madonna belongs to an exclusive club of mega stars, who draws thousands of fans from abroad to her concerts. For this reason, the ministry authorized an agreement with the producers that would give the ministry video and stills footage of the singer and her entourage, both during the concerts and her visits to tourist sites in Israel, to be used in international marketing campaigns. They also agreed to have four displays at the concert with films promoting Israel, supplied by the ministry, targeting the thousands of foreign tourists… Such promotion campaigns are regular occurrences both in Israel and abroad.
Please remember that your privilege to speak to a captive audience is not a sign of others’ freedom to do so. When Palestinians express themselves, they pay a heavy price. (This is what happened under the mainstream media’s nose, just this week) I hope that you heed the Palestinian call and choose not to perform in Israel. I and my friends, who are prohibited from from attending your show by military law and force, will be happy to rock out, once equality is practiced in this region. Until then, we’ll be kicking holes in the sky. Care to join?
Sincerely, bitterly, hopefully
Tali
(Crossposted at PulseMedia)
Government hypocrisy competition
Apr 06, 2012
David Samel
Koran burning protest, Afghanistan
Here are two recent entries in what is shaping up to be a closely-contested Government Hypocrisy Competition between Israel and the US. First, here is Ehud Barak, explaining why the Israeli government was compelled to evacuate Jewish settlers from their new Hebron “outpost” in an apartment building: Mr. Barak said that . . . he would “not allow a situation in which unlawful actions are taken to determine or dictate ad hoc facts to the authorities.”
Seriously? So would it be wrong for Israel to move its Jewish citizens into West Bank settlements, in violation of international law, thereby creating “ad hoc facts” on the ground that determine the boundaries of a future Palestinian State, and even whether such state is feasible at all?
What could possibly compete with that for hypocrisy? Try this entry from anonymous US government officials. Who is to blame for the violent riots that erupted in Afghanistan over mass burnings of the Koran? Those who actually burned the Koran? Those who invaded Afghanistan a decade ago and have killed, and continue to kill, untold numbers of civilians, thereby creating a powderkeg just waiting for ignition? Of course not. Iran is to blame. As the NY Times reports:
Just hours after it was revealed that American soldiers had burned Korans seized at an Afghan detention center in late February, Iran secretly ordered its agents operating inside Afghanistan to exploit the anticipated public outrage by trying to instigate violent protests.
Without Iranian secret agents whispering in their ears, Afghans would have placidly accepted this new outrage. Iran’s devious machinations are especially troubling, because Iran has actually threatened to retaliate if attacked, rather than calmly accept military punishment for its possible, theoretical, hypothetical, speculative efforts to acquire less than one percent of Israel’s nuclear capabilities.
[W]ith NATO governments preparing for the possibility of retaliation by Iran in the event of an Israeli attack on its nuclear facilities, the issue of Iran’s willingness and ability to foment violence in Afghanistan and elsewhere has taken on added urgency.
Leave it to those insane fanatics to cynically capitalize on a trivial incident and fuel the flames of Afghan anger. How dare the Iranians meddle in the affairs of a neighboring country? Don’t they know that under international law, the right to meddle is invested only in countries halfway around the world? Are they deliberately trying to provoke us into bombing them? How long must we allow this intolerable situation to continue?
While the contest for Most Hypocritical has been spirited and is currently too close to call, some may be disappointed to learn that for dissemination of idiotic self-serving government pronouncements, camouflaged as “news” without the slightest bit of critical journalistic examination, there is no current rival to the NY Times.
Hot off the presses — Jewish Voice for Peace’s 2012 Haggadah
Apr 06, 2012
Philip Weiss
Check it out….
Israeli army raids West Bank village, arrests minors and steals gold jewelry
Apr 06, 2012
Alex Kane
Two weeks ago, Israeli Border Police officers sicced a dog on protesters in the West Bank village of Kafr Qaddum (Photo: PSCC)
One of the most important WikiLeaks documents on Israel was a cable describing a February 2010 meeting between the Israeli and US militaries in which Amos Gilad, an Israeli defense official, says, “we don’t do Gandhi very well.”
Gilad’s right. The Israeli army’s crackdown last night on the West Bank village of Kafr Qaddum is only the latest example of how Israel deals with the popular resistance movement in Palestine. The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) routinely raid West Bank villages that resist settlements and the separation barrier, and arrest, harass and beat residents, including protest leaders.
Kafr Qaddum is one of the newer villages to join the popular resistance struggle, holding demonstrations against settlement encroachment for the past 9 months, according to the Popular Struggle Coordination Committee (PSCC). Last night, 20 people from the village were arrested by the IDF. This raid comes a few days after a Monday raid on the village in which the IDF attempted to arrest a 2-year-old.
Several of the raided houses were ransacked and left with extensive damages to their interior. Soldiers have gone as far as pillaging gold jewelry estimated in thousands of Shekels from the house belonging to Atta Shtawi, whose son Sabri was detained.
Among those arrested are three minors–one 16-year-old and two 17 year-old – as well as Riad Shtewi, a member of the village’s popular committee.
Ma’an News also reported on the raid.
Two weeks ago, an Israeli military dog chased after protesters in the village and injured Ahmed Shtawi, a demonstrator.
Popular struggle leaders in Kafr Qaddum say they won’t be deterred by the Israeli repression. After the attempted arrest of his son, one popular struggle leader in the village, Murad Shtayeh, told theElectronic Intifada’s Linah Alsaafin that the army “thought this stunt — whether carried through or not — would serve as a punishment for us, but the truth is that it will not deter us from our protests.”
Another campus walkout, this one at Wayne State speech on Palestinian child suicide bombers
Apr 06, 2012
Philip Weiss
Brooke Goldstein, target of walkout
Nick Meyer reports in the Arab American News on another campus walkout, this one at Wayne State University in Detroit two days ago. The speaker was Brooke Goldstein, an Israel lobbyist.
About 70 people conducted the walk-out with the support of the Arab Student Union and Students for Justice in Palestine on campus along with Jewish Voice for Peace in Detroit, speaker Brooke Goldstein, who was brought to campus by the Jewish Law Students Association. Goldstein is the founder and director of the Children’s Rights Institute, which says it was created to protect the rights of children throughout the globe.
The groups took issue with the speaker in large part because the organization makes no mention the vastly disproportional deaths of Palestinian children and those in the Arab world compared to Israelis, and seems to focus on isolated, dramatized stories of alleged child suicide bombers.
“They fail to mention that Israel has a regimented child soldier program of their own and that they also have teenagers manning checkpoints with assault rifles, for instance,” said attendee Jimmy Johnson.
A Jewish American student named Matthew said that the decision to walk out was the right one. He said that fellow Jews against the Zionist occupation have faced difficulties finding jobs and wanted to withhold his last name.
From Goldstein’s site:
Filming the documentary Martyr, Brooke ventured into the West Bank and at great risk personally interviewed active and armed members of the Al-Aqsa, Fatah and Hamas terrorist groups [and]… families of suicide bombers, members of the Palestinian Authority, children’s television programmers at PA TV… and children imprisoned for attempting suicide missions or otherwise participating in armed activity against the IDF. Brooke has a fresh, on-the-ground perspective of why youth become suicide bombers, how those close to them react to these decisions, how communities encourage this kind of violent extremism, and what we can do to prevent this phenomenon from spreading.
Notice how she slides from violent extremism into children’s television programmers. I would remind American readers that when John Brown undertook violent resistance to slavery, he was funded by many upstanding New Englanders, including the transcendentalists Ralph Emerson and H.D. Thoreau, who came to believe that violence was necessary to break the slave power. As Brown told them, someone who is pushing slavery has “the perfect right to be shot.” I am not endorsing violence to end the occupation. But I am stressing that as Norman Finkelstein does in his Haaretz interview, violence against military targets in such circumstances is understood to be a legal response. And given our own history, we can understand why.
Writes Barbara Harvey of JVP who helped to organize the walkout: “The silent walk-out is a very powerful tactic. I’m not gonna dis mic-checking, but this tactic effectively shows contempt for the speaker without interrupting the presentation or the right of those still sitting in the room (usually almost none!) to hear it. It’s pure expressive conduct, totally protected by the First Amendment, that poses no risk of criminal prosecution. The silent walk-out has been used very powerfully at U of M and WSU, again and again, and it’s driving the other side nuts!”
U.S. school trip that doesn’t go to Yad Vashem is anti-Semitic, Foxman suggests
Apr 06, 2012
Philip Weiss
Abe Foxman at the Anti-Defamation League is upset that Gilad Atzmon was invited to perform at the Friends Seminary in New York. But Foxman’s principal concern in the complaint is a school trip to Israel and Palestine, focused on “the West Bank region” — Foxman can’t say Palestine. He is disturbed that these students will be hearing oral histories of Palestinians without the counterbalance of the Israeli narrative, the students going to Yad Vashem, the Holocaust memorial. Foxman is aware that the Israeli story is losing out among the young and enlightened now to a Palestinian story.
As I write this, a Friends Seminary group of six faculty and 19 high school students is visiting the Israel/West Bank region. It is what is taking place on this trip and, indeed, what goes on at the school regarding Israel and the Israeli-Palestinian conflict that make the decision to invite someone like Atzmon to speak to students so disturbing.
As we have come to learn, the participants will be spending most of their time in the West Bank meeting with Palestinians. The trip is billed as a cultural one and the youngsters will have overnight stays with Palestinian families over a five-day period. In addition, they will be developing oral histories of those families. There is, of course, nothing intrinsically wrong in doing these things. But because of the intensely personal nature of the home visits in the West Bank, which will expose the group only to a Palestinian perspective, these visits should be balanced by similar experiences with Israelis within Israel.
While we understand the students are also spending three days in Israel, they will not be meeting with Israeli families and they will not be visiting important venues like the Holocaust memorial Yad Vashem.
The imbalanced structure of the trip would be troubling enough on its own. When combined, however, with the fact that one of the faculty members leading the trip is a history teacher with well-known anti-Israel views, which he promotes at the school, the concerns grow exponentially. He is the main teacher of history at Friends for 10th grade students. By all accounts, he presents the students a completely biased and one-sided version of events in the Middle East.
A prime example of his approach has been related by some of his students: in his World History class, when he devotes one day to Israel, his two primary sources have been reported to be a speech by former Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat and a paper by the American Friends Service Committee. AFSC, as it is known, has a long history of one-sided advocacy against the State of Israel. For another example, he has said that the word “terrorist” is too subjective a word to describe a suicide bomber. We have been told similar examples abound.
It is clear, in talking to a number of parents, that the teacher’s approach is one that does not have a counter for impressionable high school students within the school curriculum. On the contrary, it is strongly reinforced by the kind of trip going on now, and by certain other teachers.
One would think that school administrators would ask some questions about taking high school kids to the Middle East and devising such a pro-Palestinian schedule. After all, Israel is America’s main ally in the region, a number of the students are Jewish, and balance is one of the school’s valued and oft-stated educational goals.
What seems to be happening therefore at Friends is a familiar and disturbing phenomenon. An institution gets so comfortable presenting a distorted, anti-Israel version of historical and current events in the Middle East that it does not or will not recognize how easily what seems like criticisms of Israel can veer into anti-Semitism.
The intellectual cowardice of Günter Grass’s critics
Apr 06, 2012
Paul Woodward
In his controversial new poem, “What Must Be Said,” Günter Grass felt obliged to anticipate the utterly predictable reaction: “the verdict ‘Anti-semitism’ falls easily.”
Jacob Heilbrunn describes Grass’s language as “wild and fevered and calumniatory,” though this is a more accurate description of his own commentary. Under a headline posing the question, Is Günter Grass An Antisemite?, Heilbrunn proceeds with passion and no reason to a foregone conclusion:
Now, anti-Semitism is a charge that is flung about too frequently against critics of Israel. Unfortunately, in this instance it is fully deserved. Here is what must be said: Grass has achieved the impossible. He has further besmirched his reputation.
The theatrical and logical contours of the performances of Israel’s mindless and rabid defenders should by now be perfectly familiar.
First comes the shock and outrage. When anyone in proximity to the trauma of the Holocaust gets upset they tend to solicit a human response. We don’t try and reason with them — we offer them sympathy and try and soothe their distraught emotions. But when the shock and outrage is contrived, it serves a purpose: it is designed to distract and pacify those who might otherwise pose awkward or challenging questions.
Then comes the defamation. Why must Grass be condemned and his words ignored? Because as a seventeen year-old he served for five months in the Waffen-SS. “[A] former member of the SS has no moral standing, to put it mildly, to criticize Israel.” Heilbrunn whips the SS line so hard and fast, he’s forced to drag up from his thesaurus the awkward phrase “quondam SS member.”
Then comes the logical sleight-of-hand: a criticism is rebuffed by being restated in a distorted form. And the distortion always involves the same shift: actions are treated as matters of identity.
Israel is attacked not because of what it does but because of what it is: a Jewish state. Actions demand accountability, but if the assault is treated as striking at the state’s very identity, then the victim can bask in its innocence.
This is how it works in Grass’s case. Grass has written that Israel poses the greatest threat to world peace. Read the headlines, listen to the politicians and commentators. How outrageous! Except there’s one small problem: that’s not what he wrote. He wrote this:
Why only now, grown old,
and with what ink remains, do I say:
Israel’s atomic power endangers
an already fragile world peace?
When there is a rush to war because of the mere fear that Iran might develop nuclear weapons, how can the world remain silent about the fact that Israel already possesses hundreds of these tools of genocide?
What is being described as an attack on Israel is no such thing. It is a demand that Israel’s own nuclear arsenal be recognized and acknowledged as a decisive element in the rising tension in the Middle East.
Perhaps there are those who believe that Israel’s existence utterly depends on its possession of nuclear weapons. If that’s the case then maybe we should no longer refer to it as a Jewish and democratic state, but as a nuclear-armed Jewish and democratic state, since retaining the ability to incinerate its neighbors is apparently an essential attribute of such a state.
If however the existence of a Jewish state and its possession of a nuclear arsenal are not inextricably intertwined, then it is perfectly legitimate for Günter Grass or anyone else to say that in the shadow of war, the world can no longer remain silent about Israel’s weapons of mass destruction.
This is cross-posted from Woodward’s site, War in Context.
Finkelstein ‘not going to be an Israel-basher anymore’ but remains ‘appalled and disgusted’
Apr 06, 2012
Henry Norr
Norman Finkelstein (AP via Haaretz)
For those who follow the saga of Norman Finkelstein, a new interview with him by Haaretz reporter Natasha Mozgovaya breaks no new ground but nicely sums up his current perspective. The headline it carries on the Haaretz website – “Norman Finkelstein bids farewell to Israel bashing” – may make most Israeli readers happy, but though it’s based on a quote from the interview, it’s actually quite misleading: While Finkelstein repeats his now-familiar criticisms of the BDS movement, he makes it clear that he hasn’t softened his critique of Israel. Some highlights:
On American public opinion:
“Nobody really defends Israel anymore…. They’ve lost the battle for public opinion,” he says. “They claim it’s because American Jews know too little – I claim it’s because they know too much about the conflict… The tide of public opinion is turning against Israel…. And the American Jewish community that for a long time was a huge obstacle to resolving the conflict is breaking up.”
On Walt and Mearsheimer:
“I accept that the lobby is very influential and shapes [U.S.] policy on Israel-Palestine. But when Walt and Mearsheimer start generalizing about the influence of the lobby on Iraq, Iran policy and elsewhere – that’s where I think they get it wrong. I just can’t find any evidence for it.”
On J Street:
Finkelstein describes the leadership of J Street as “hopeless”. “It’s simply the loyal opposition. Politically they identify themselves mostly with Kadima.”
On his feelings about Israel:
“I don’t feel particularly attached to Israel – nationalism, as Noam Chomsky said, is not my cup of tea – but I feel no particular need to demonize it. I do feel a certain amount of disgust, that’s for sure. If my focus was on any other country’s human rights violations, I would be as appalled and disgusted. It’s just unacceptable, and you can’t make excuses for that with ‘other people do it.'”
On Palestinian tactics:
“International law says people fighting for self-determination can use force in order to achieve their independence….They do not have the right to target the civilian population. But now more and more Palestinians are turning to various forms of civil resistance and civil disobedience. This tactic of fasting in prison is going to spread.”
On the future of the conflict:
“I do not see other reasonable basis for resolution of this conflict other then the international law. What else can you use? To say, I have the rights, and solve it by force? Or based on needs – but who decides what are the needs? Dennis Ross decided Israel needs whatever it says it needs – and the Palestinians get everything that is left over. It’s a political problem, so it’s up to the international community to apply sufficient pressure to Israel to accept this map that is fair, within the parameters of law – and reasonable. And then the conflict can be solved. With the regional changes, there will be pressure applied by Egypt and Turkey however things settle with the Arab Spring, there will be pressure applied by the Palestinians and the international community, that is weary of this conflict, to resolve it on the basis of international consensus.”
Finkelstein has two new books coming soon from OR Books. The first is a short (100-page) tract entitled What Gandhi Says: About Nonviolence, Resistance and Courage. Here’s some of thepublisher’s description:
There is much that will surprise in these pages: Gandhi was not a pacifist; he believed in the right of those being attacked to strike back and regarded inaction as a result of cowardice to be a greater sin than even the most ill-considered aggression. Gandhi’s calls for the sacrifice of lives in order to shame the oppressor into concessions can easily seem chilling and ruthless.
But Gandhi’s insistence that, in the end, peaceful resistance will always be less costly in human lives than armed opposition, and his understanding that the role of a protest movement is not primarily to persuade people of something new, but rather to get them to act on behalf of what they already accept as right – these principles have profound resonance in both the Israel-Palestine conflict and the wider movement for justice and democracy that began to sweep the world in 2011.
The second book, this one a hefty 470 pages, is entitled Knowing Too Much: Why the American Jewish Romance with Israel Is Coming to an End. From the website:
Despite Israel’s record of militarism, illegal settlements and human rights violations, American Jews have, stretching back to the 1960s, remained largely steadfast supporters of the Jewish “homeland.” But, as Norman Finkelstein explains in an elegantly-argued and richly-textured new book, this is now beginning to change….
In successive chapters that combine Finkelstein’s customary meticulous research with polemical brio, Knowing Too Much sets the work of defenders of Israel such as Jeffrey Goldberg, Michael Oren, Dennis Ross and Benny Morris against the historical record, showing their claims to be increasingly tendentious. As growing numbers of American Jews come to see the speciousness of the arguments behind such apologias and recognize Israel’s record as simply indefensible, Finkelstein points to the opening of new possibilities for political advancement in a region that for decades has been stuck fast in a gridlock of injustice and suffering.
According to the OR Books site, the official publication date for both books is June, but the Gandhi one is scheduled ship in mid-April and Knowing Too Much in late April. They’ll be available in both paperback and e-book format. You get a 15-percent discount if you pre-order now.
