Zionist panic!

The effervescent Tony Karon (I know, I cite him an awful lot, but if you read his priceless blog, you can see why.) observed more Zionist panic upon reading the Daniel Pipes entry that Zionism is in decline (that was posted here not long ago). Tony also quotes lengthy another favourite of mine, Philip Weiss, who was present at a CAMERA summit. Here's what Tony took out of Weiss' take on the Zionist gathering:

"The CAMERA people are losing and they know it. Near the end Cynthia Ozick was asked how we should go about delegitimizing the delegitimizers of the Jewish state and she sighed and said, “It’s hopeless.” Alvin Rosenfeld, the author of the disgraceful report on Jewish anti-Semitism put out by the American Jewish Committee, was mildly more optimistic. He said exactly what I say: “We are in a furious intellectual struggle. There is a war of ideas going on… it won’t end quickly…. It is steady work.” And it is “serious and worrisome” inasmuch as these ideas may now “enter the mainstream.” Amen.

…The reason It’s hopeless for the other side is that there was, in the basement of the synagogue, little to zero acknowledgement of the three great realities that are feeding Jewish post-Zionism.

1. the end of anti-Semitism. My old friend and I talked about a Jewish Daily News columnist who refused to hire Jews. That was 50 years ago. The injury is fresh. As the memories of anti-Semitism are for my parents. And they are virtually meaningless to young Americans. A panelist very briefly acknowledged this at the end, saying that Jews are so comfortable in America, how do we stir them?

2. the Israeli occupation of Arab lands and Israel’s brutal treatment of Palestinians were at no time acknowledged, but endlessly rationalized. The separate roadway system for settlers and Palestinian Arabs–rationalized. The incursion into Jenin–whitewashed. And so on. This sort of denial went on in South Africa during the campaign against apartheid. Young people don’t feel quite so defiant.

3. Not a word about Iraq. I have this feeling often in conservative Jewish gatherings. Iraq doesn’t touch them. It’s not a big deal to them, they are removed from it, they are for a hawkish policy in the Mideast and so they talk about Darfur/Sudan more than Baghdad..."

Weiss is then continued to be quoted:

"The heart of Levin’s concern was the American discourse. When Haaretz was just published in Israel, CAMERA didn’t care about its statements about the occupation and the destruction of Palestinian hopes and dreams and olive trees. “This all happened in Hebrew… causing little outward impact..”

Outward impact. She means: now Haaretz is affecting U.S. opinion and foreign policy. The most important statement Levin made was that she gets the brushoff from Amos Schocken, the Haaretz publisher, but with the American media, “there is an unwritten contract between them and us.” (Verbatim transcript to come later, when I have a little time…) An unwritten contract: to be fair to Israel, to print CAMERA members’ letters, to pick up the phone.

Isn’t that amazing and scandalous? Levin is explaining why there is a free debate in Israel and not here. Because of the lobby and its “unwritten contract.” Because U.S. support is crucial to Israel’s existence. And so Americans, who supposedly so love the Middle East democracy that they support it out of the goodness of their hearts, must not read the news from Israel."

And the final word is reserved for Tony himself:

"When the Zionist right in America “defends Israel” by going after one of Israel’s most respected newspapers which happens to tell the truth about the occupation and related matters, it’s not hard to see why Pipes & co. have little cause for optimism. The Zionist moment is over, because most Jews around the world (and even many in Israel) are not inclined to a nationalist view of their Jewishness. And remember, Zionism is not much more than 100 years old, arising along with the nationalist currents of late 19th century Europe that accompanied the breakup of the Hapsburg empire. It’s hardly surprising that in a 21st century where we have had a free choice, almost two thirds of us have chosen to live not in a “Jewish State” but wherever in the world we choose to. Many Israelis today are excercising the same choice. And Jews who are not prone to nationalism have no need to rationalize Israel’s abuses against others."

The allure of Zionism is lost to the younger generation, perhaps for the lucid fact that Semites are easily integrated into any society that they are found in. While Herzl argued that Anti-Semitism could not be fought and had to be accepted by the Jew so they could remove the illusion of assimilation into Europe, hence the need for a separate state for Jews, by today's standards this is too foreign to fathom. Most would identify themselves as American, Canadian, Australian, Polish, etc. first rather than Jewish. Entangled with this is the poor PR that Israel is continuely dogged by, and it is a recipe for estrangement from the Jewish State. Or maybe segragation is not the answer anymore to "Anti-Semitic" problems. I leave this from a quote from Sara Roy (who was quoting her mother):

"She told me many times during my life that her decision not to live in Israel was based on a belief, learned and reinforced by her experiences during the war, that tolerance, compassion, and justice cannot be practiced or extended when one lives only among one's own. “I could not live as a Jew among Jews alone,” she said. “For me, it wasn’t possible and it wasn’t what I wanted. I wanted to live as a Jew in a pluralist society, where my group remained important to me but where others were important to me, too."

And if it wasn't enough that Carter and Tutu say it...

What about those Israelis themselves? Bloody anti-Semites, the lot of them. Here's a nice post thanks to Mark Elf at Jews Sans Frontieres:

"Ha'aretz has editorialised that Israel has so 'normalised' the occupation that the state that has segregated Jews from Arabs since it's inception is 'becoming' an apartheid state."

The cat's out of the bag. Even an Jewish newspaper like Forward is not immune to the analogy of South Africa:

"Sure, there are similarities between the lives of Palestinians under Israeli occupation and those of black South Africans under apartheid. Indeed, in certain respects, the conditions Palestinians face are arguably even worse. But while the Palestinians’ circumstances may resemble those once faced by blacks in South Africa, the apartheid analogy ignores crucial context for why this is the case."

Elf says it best:

"The zionist movement never wanted the whole of Palestine but the Arabs goaded them into taking it all and more. And black South Africans never resisted apartheid by force of arms and were rewarded with the legal equality they have today. Except I ought to remind those on whom irony is lost, that the ANC did wage an armed struggle against apartheid and Nelson Mandela spent as long as he did in prison because he refused to renounce the armed struggle. And what did Lenni Brenner say? Forward is backward. He wasn't wrong."

We're all anti-Semites

Uri Avnery lays it down that if Walt and Mearsheimer are anti-Semites, then so is the rest of the peace movement that advocates a Two-State Solution:

"The political views of the two professors, which are briefly stated at the end of the book, are identical with the stand of the Israeli peace forces: the Two-State Solution, ending the occupation, borders based on the Green Line, and international support for the peace settlement.

If this is anti-Semitism, then we here are all anti-Semites. And only the Christian Zionists--those who openly demand the return of the Jews to this country but secretly prophesy the annihilation of the unconverted Jews at the Second Coming of Jesus Christ--are the true Lovers of Zion."

He also feels that the release of the book is perfectly timed, and that it could have a deepening impact that might afflict total change on how the US (and the West to a lesser extent) views the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and that The Israel Lobby and US Foreign Policy might have been the push that breaks through the barrier of progress.

"Most of the American public now opposes the Iraq war and considers it a disaster. This majority still does not connect the war with the actions of the pro-Israel lobby. No newspaper and no politician dares to hint at such a connection--yet. But if this taboo is broken, the result may be very dangerous for the Jews and for Israel.

Beneath the surface, a lot of anger directed against the Lobby is accumulating. The presidential candidates, who are compelled to grovel at the feet of AIPAC, the senators and congressmen, who have become slaves of the Lobby, the media people, who are forbidden to write what they really think-- all these secretly detest the Lobby. If this anger explodes, it may hurt us, too."

The tide may be turning, albeit slowly, and from the reaction we are getting from Israel's hardline supporters, Walt and Mearsheimer just may have burst the Lobby bubble for Americans.

After all, becoming a critic of Israel means you join the likes of an Archbishop, as Desmond Tutu was "banned from speaking at St. Thomas University at Minneapolis." It's a real shame when a true victim of a regime that segregated whites from blacks and exploited the latter for the good of the white economy gets a treatment worthy of a neo-Nazi or a Holocaust denier. Carefully left out is the history of Tutu and the black liberation movement that saw them allied with none other than dissident South African Jews but facts need not matter when it comes to defamation of the Israeli kind.

As far as I can tell, the trio of Tutu, Walt and Mearsheimer all seem to share the desire to see Israel have legitimate security and not the faux peace that sees Israel maintain total control over the movement, electricity, agriculture, holy shrines and the economy of the Palestinians. And Tutu could foresee that apartheid was going to be the undoing of South Africa, and the only way to save the morality of the state was to abolish the white supremacy. He maintains that Israel is facing the same dilemma:

"We should put out a clarion call to the government of the people of Israel, to the Palestinian people and say: peace is possible, peace based on justice is possible."

Now the strategy of character assassination of Walt and Mearsheimer is the necessary diversion from the topic at hand: the Israel Lobby. Contrary to all evidence, and as well as to the boasts of plenty of the Lobby's most notable members, Israel's supporters are still in denial that such a Lobby exists, and even if one does, it is far from an almighty entity. (And in Plaut's case, much tinier than the Arab Lobby.) That just does not hold water, and it is suggested that you pick up a copy of the book and check out all the footnotes, about 106 pages of them and the majority of them are Israeli sources. Avnery says it best:

"This wall cannot be torn down by reasoned argument. Nobody has tried, and nobody is going to. Instead, the authors are being smeared and accused of sinister motives. If the book could be ignored altogether, this would have been done--as has happened to other books which have been buried alive."

Because the book is airtight, we are inundated with the traditional smears. Carter got the treatment last year but without his book (and the causality of his lynching), the enlightenment that is slowly coming may not have been possible. And when more and more realists and pragmatists come around, or gain the courage to stand up and fight back against the Lobby, we can expect the usual. If so, who will be left out of the list of anti-Semites? Crying wolf will only work so many times.

Knee-Jerk Reaction

Only the best is saved for the critics of Israel. You'd think there was an army of Holocaust deniers out there spewing out their junk of anti-semitism on our young minds if Israel's supporters set the rules. The accusations against Finkelstein is remarkably similar to the ones directed at Stephen Walt, a tenured political scientist at Harvard, known to most Israel's apologists as the co-author of The Israel Lobby and their new book The Israel Lobby and US Foreign Policy.

Professor Richard Drake invited Stephen Walt to speak at University of Montana, only to be put under the kosh by pro-Israeli henchmen. Drake confesses about the assaults on himself and Walt:

"[F]our days before Walt's scheduled arrival, three full tenured professors... castigated Walt as the author of an ugly racist diatribe and demanded that the university invite Harvard University law professor Alan Dershowitz or some comparable defender of Israel to offer a rebuttal."

Similar "rebuttals" have been requested, as though listening to Mr Dershowitz would mean a total enlightenment to Israel's impeccable human rights record. Earlier this year, Brandeis University courted Professor Dershowitz so those righties could sit easy knowing that Carter had it all wrong because Dershowitz said so.

Although the assault was focused on Walt, Drake copped some flak of his own for having the audacity of "booking a critic of Israel". That equals anti-semitism in our world:

"One of my critics told me before startled witnesses that he would not rest until I had been stripped of my position of power, which manifestly had corrupted me. Someone as insensitive to Jewish issues as I was could no longer be entrusted to coordinate a university lecture series. He initiated a campaign to bring about my dismissal."

In accordance with Plaut's initiative against Finkelstein, the charges against Walt is uncanny:

"...individuals who had not attended either of his presentations to hear what he actually said called him a liar and likened him to a Holocaust denier and Ku Klux Klansman...

'It is much as if the university had brought a Holocaust denier to campus and accorded him the honors of a respected guest.'"

Our old buddy David Duke gets another mention. It's like a broken record:

"When questioned by the New York Sun about Duke’s endorsement of his article, Walt said, “I have always found Mr. Duke’s views reprehensible, and I am sorry that he sees this article as consistent with his view of the world.”"

Drake says it like it is:

"The attempt to group Walt and Mearsheimer with the likes of Faurisson and Duke reveals the real aims behind the campaign of denigration that began on my campus last September: to shut down critical inquiry into the activities of the Israel lobby and to blacken the name of anyone with the temerity to speak up about them."

Facing backlash such as this is not easy, especially for tenured professors like Walt and Mearsheimer. I distinctly remember reading an interview that featured both professors, and they decided to wait until they had tenureship before they wrote the essay on the Israel Lobby. The both of them have been speaking at numerous events thanks to the publication of their new book and they haven't been traveling alone. The usual suspects have been denouncing their every move. They've been adamant that their work is NOT anti-semitic, and that having this discussion in the open is the best thing for the Lobby.

But it's a reflex to most of Israel's supporters to slander anyone who dare speak negatively about the Jewish State and its affiliates. It comes so natural to them, probably because Israel's "humane" image has been increasingly more difficult to shape as of late.

Plaut never ceases to amaze

Of and on, sometimes I get the feeling that maybe all of this is not worth the trouble; that writing about the affair on Israel and Palestine is only reserved for the experts and the few who are better prepared to articulate the best criticisms of the Jewish State, and perhaps, that the side I am fighting for is losing so badly that it is easier to let the guns down and continue living a normal existence by raising my beautiful son and inundating myself with the trappings of every day problems such as bills and what is good on TV tonight. Because worrying about a conflict that really does not involve myself personally does not look like it's worth the trouble of reading and writing and researching on my own spare time for precious little to be given back. Looking around, it seems that the activism on behalf of the Palestinians is only resulting in the cesspool of nothingness and ineffectuality. Despite all the best efforts, the knocking on the door is not answered by most in the media and is given an oblique look, derided as petty partisan displays of "Jew mongering" and "anti-Semitism", in whatever form that word is meant to define nowadays anyway.

But then I run into the likes of Steven Plaut, one of the most pious of morons out there defending the regime of Israel and all its glorious actions that leaves bodies in its wake, and then I am adamant that I am doing the right thing and I'm on the correct path and that I should not be unnerved about what I do and what it all means with a bigger picture.

Plaut lost a libel suit against Neve Gordon last year, and had to fork out some money to compensate for accusing Gordon of being a "Holocaust Denier", amongst other smears with it. Do you think such a decision would stop Plaut in his tracks? You'd think maybe he would have learned a lesson after losing such a case. But not our Steven Plaut.

Check out the latest from the liar of liars. Having lost his battle with Gordon, he targets recently fired professor Norman Finkelstein and his supporters, claiming that no outside party had no bearing in the decision to deny Finkelstein tenureship. The article has to be read in its entirety to grasp how silly Plaut really is. Plaut never fails to find baseless lies to rely upon. (Here's another refutation of his repugnant statements on the Nakba.)

He has plenty to choose from in his latest rant:

• "Finkelstein had repeatedly proclaimed Holocaust Denier and pseudo-historian David Irving as his role model and hero"
• "Finkelstein physically threatened his own Dean"
• "[Depaul] has a long history of hosting pro-terror radical haters of America, from Ward Churchill to Tariq Ali"
• "It hosts and sponsors numerous Islamist pro-terror student groups and faculty members"
• "Finkelstein has yet to publish a single scholarly paper in a refereed bona fide academic journal"
• "And speaking of little white lies, much of the media were willing to accept at face value claims by the Finkelstein Lobby about "hundreds" of DePaul students rallying on campus in early September to back Finkelstein. A fast look at this news photo of the event shows that there were less than 25 people present, some of whom might have been DePaul students"
• "Finkelstein's "books" were almost universally dismissed by serious historians (meaning, those working for the something other than the annihilation of Israel) as fraud"
• "The bottom line is that "outside pressure" had little to do with Finkelstein getting turned down for tenure"
• "Exiled to rural Vermont, Hilberg was bitter and hostile towards a "Jewish establishment" that he felt granted him insufficient recognition, and was willing to praise a vicious anti-Semite in order to poke his finger in their eye"
• "The liberal media are overflowing with hatred of Israel, and the real endangered species on campus are the conservatives and Israel supporters"

It's all in a day's business for Plaut and his ilk. Typifying what tactics they use to discredit ANY dissenter of Israel, it is laden with smears here and another slander there. What really takes the cake is accusing Finkelstein of "physically threatening his Dean". There is no source given, no evidence, just a shameless display of bullplop. Where did he get this information from? This is the best of my search from the internet:

"Mr. Finkelstein physically held open elevator doors so he could confront a DePaul dean."

No corroboration from DePaul on anything close to this, nor charges being filed against Finkelstein. The fact that he held open an elevator door so he could "confront" the Dean is enough to expose Finkelstein as a man on a warpath. He may have been angry but didn't he have reason to be? I'm sure plenty will say alot about the memos that circulated around the campus, but nothing ever equated to a "physical threat". All credit goes to Plaut for his misconceptions and oversimplification to suit his own needs.

Some more refutations are mandatory here to expose how awful Plaut's lies are.

First, Finkelstein had not proclaimed Irving his "hero". Here's a clip courtesy of Holocaust Controversies (in which Finkelstein argues with Michele Renouf about the Holocaust). By using Irving, Plaut attempts to discredit Finkelstein's work by association, falsely. The sentence also suggests that Finkelstein sympathises with Holocaust Denier, removing the fact that Finkelstein himself is a victim of the Nazi Holocaust and explicitly states that fact. The sheer nonsense of this sentence from Plaut is unparalleled, until he writes more in his article.

DePaul's long record? Shouldn't universities invite speakers from all kinds of opinions? Didn't David Horowitz speak there too? What would Plaut's ideal university have? Would it be diverse enough to invite professors he excoriates? Did he omit purposely that DePaul is home to a Conservative Alliance? Yeah, it really is a shame he left that out.

Plaut then asserts that DePaul is a haven for "lumpen leftists" (his emphasis), ie critics of Israeli and US policy, and that no outside force was at play in the decision of Finkelstein's denial of tenure. He cites a number of staff members at DePaul to emphasise his point. But what he unknowingly proved is the exact opposite of what he claims is the truth. Logically, if DePaul is a hub of "bash-Israel and hate-America political extremism", and by Plaut's standards Finkelstein matches this description to a tee, if no there was no foul play, Finkelstein would have been not only granted tenure but hailed with more accolades considering DePaul approves of such "political extremism and vulgarity". Something made the "modest heroes" change their "liberal" minds or else there would not have been a furore.

Not having his fill with DePaul's staff, Plaut proceeds to denigrate Noam Chomsky and John Mearsheimer, the former for his appraisals of a "French Holocaust Denier" and the latter just for praising Finkelstein. He lambasts Professor Chomsky for his lack of credentials in political science (but not even mentioning Mearsheimer is a specialist in that field) in a vain attempt to minimise Chomsky's worldwide stature with his dissidence of American foreign policy. Noam Chomsky is revered in his field of linguistics, publishing a coterie of books and pioneering a theory still in use to date. But Plaut wants him to keep his opinions to himself, much like the rest he disagrees with, all because they don't specialise in PS. Curiously, Plaut includes himself as his profession is in business. Should he be barred from politics and stay in what he knows?

The Faurisson-Chomsky affair is decades old but is the one spectre (along with Pol Pot which is surprisingly absent in Plaut's characterisation of Chomsky) that is repeated over and over about him. Chomsky is decontextualised and misrepresented, the right maintains that he backtracks and never admits when he is wrong. It's really who you choose to believe here. Pierre Vidal-Naquet; Chomsky's rebuttal; Brad DeLong; Edward Herman. To me, Chomsky went over the top in an attempt to defend free speech, even to the likes of a person who was threatened with violence because he questioned the existence of gas chambers. Some may perceive this to be defending an anti-Semite, but Chomsky maintains that just because someone asks questions about the Nazi Holocaust doesn't mean they're an anti-Semite. "Similarly, numerous scholars deny that the Armenian genocide took place, and some people, like Elie Wiesel, make extraordinary efforts to prevent any commemoration or even discussion of it." Would that make Elie an anti-Armenian? Of course not.

Plaut was not content with just Finkelstein, Noam Chomsky, Mearsheimer and the DePaul staff, he included Ward Churchhill and evokes neo-Nazi favourites such as David Irving and KKK man David Duke while defending his buddies on the right like Alan Dershowitz and Thomas Klocek. While it is unclear what just transpired in the Klocek affair, two versions seems to have arisen in the matter so it is difficult to judge on what truly happened, (see Klocek's version here) but the ASU from DePaul states that "faced a harassment board which asked him to remedy certain issues, which he did not." Until more details are revealed, it is impossible for me to make a judgement on this issue, considering most of the support given to Klocek are from right-wing circles involved in the lynching of Finkelstein.

The abuse of Hilberg was a nice shot for a person who just recently passed away. Hillberg exiled? I recall he was appointed emeritus professor and was honoured with Germany's Order of Merit. Hilberg is still referenced by most historians and his work is unparalleled. Plaut's attempt to limit Hilberg's sanity for his support of Finkelstein is not appropriate. The only conclusion as to why is because Hilberg was the Dean of Holocaust Studies, and to get approval from him is a nice star on your work. I am not sure about how seriously other scholars take Finkelstein's work, some say yes, others say not at all, but the fact that Hilberg gave Finkelstein his blessing could not have been sitting well with Plaut, hence his slander.

The denial of the existence of an Israel Lobby is fascinating. Walt and Mearsheimer has done the work for me in this section. How much money does it receive? How much money does the Arab Lobby receive? It's leaves one scratching their head when Israel's leaders brag about a lobby in the US, and the US refuses to recognise that they have great power in Washington. (The National Journal listed AIPAC at #2.)

The accusation of a "liberal media" is the strategem of the right: be the victim. It's weird that Plaut can say such things without realising the irony that such an outrage against a man like Finkelstein happened at all. All apologists make a huff about the "liberal media". It's a fallback position that inverts who the true victim is. It's shameful that coverage of the Israel/Palestine conflict is deemed "leftist". (For numbers on bias, see If Americans Knew.)Plaut seems to forget that Dershowitz himself admits to playing a role in getting Finkelstein fired, and that the relationship is close to personal thanks to Finkelstein exposing the fraud of The Case For Israel. Why isn't Dershowitz being called to get fired for his role if the liberal media were so liberal? Where's David Horowitz calling for support for Finkelstein? In addition, I don't recall even seeing a major newspaper carrying a Finkelstein article. Since he's the Arab Lobby's poster boy, the "liberal media" has dropped the ball on this one. Wasn't there a major hubbub over Churchill's appearance at DePaul? In fact, hasn't there been plenty of coverage defaming Churchill? It's enough to make you sick. Save me "liberal media".

Truth be told the alternative media is gaining so much steam because the mainstream is so unreasonable.

I would love to know more about the Klocek affair and I can only hope people are subjective in that case, careful to not take it at "face value". The right seems to have elevated him to martyrdom, which they love to do because the playing field is so far to the left in academia.

The link to the photo is broken. The Chicago Tribune has removed it from its archives so I can not investigate further without seeing the photo in question.

I wanted to write something about the picture he claims to hold on 25 people, mostly students. I would be under the impression that most, if not, ALL who supported Finkelstein and showed up would be students of his or those who heard about the sit-ins. Many academics signed petitions for Finkelstein too. Norman Finkelstein Wordpress is up and running, along with a magnitude of praise from his peers and supporters. Scroll through and Plaut may be surprised that it isn't just students who part of Finkelstein Solidarity.

I'm sure many others would willingly express their solidarity with Professor Finkelstein but in the end there is no point to call attention to every single detail. Plaut will be Plaut. I may not even register to him but at least someone is onto him, and I hope more are easily dismissive of him as he is of his (perceived) enemies. Perhaps one day he will just be ignored; maybe not. Dershowitz still gets a say, not matter how much he depicts himself as an ignoramus, right Mr Sonypictures.com? (Queue Democracy Now! debate with Finkelstein.)

The stakes are high, and the players are willing to go to any lengths to win the propaganda game. We shouldn't be unphased by all of this. The right is trying, very hard, to keep Israel's bad name hidden from the mainstream. But slowly things may be pierced. We may be witnessing something good. Or something really terrible if we let it go under the radar. I'd report Plaut to the Anti-Defamation League but it looks like Abraham Foxman is a little busy denying genocides right about now.