Israel is a parliamentary democracy represented by a very large number of parties, with universal suffrage for all citizens, regardless of race, religion or sex …

— CIA World Fact Book, 2011

This week a sobering and highly informative closed door seminar was held on the plight of Palestinian Prisoners in the elegant surroundings of London’s Westminster Central Hall, a stone’s throw away from the Houses of Parliament and the 11th century Westminster Abbey, the all affirmation of stability and continuity — in starkest contrast to testimony at the proceedings of the meeting.

The seminar, hosted by Middle East Monitor, had been planned and organized at the height of the Palestinian prisoners’ hunger strike. Although most prisoners are reported to have ended their desperation-driven fasts following a deal with the Israeli authorities, the issues surrounding their shocking treatment and imprisonment are unchanged.

Sabah al Mukhtar, President of the Arab Lawyers Association, who chaired the gathering, opened by reminding that, “A basic right of a people under occupation is to resist.”

Further, that the Fourth Geneva Convention is specific as to the treatment of prisoners, with absolute outlawing of abuse and stipulation of legal conditions which must include humane treatment, being regarded as innocent until proven guilty and speedy access to legal representation — a far cry from the conditions for Palestinian prisoners in Israeli jails.

Lord Alf Dubs, who serves on the Parliamentary Committee on Human Rights, talked of a visit to the West Bank last year. Unable to visit a prison, he did attend an Israeli Military Court and was shocked at what he witnessed.

Remarking on security so tight that not even business cards were allowed in, he was struck by the age of the prisoners. Many were children, including one of fourteen. A fifteen year old was in tears in the dock, a sight Lord Dubs found profoundly disturbing.

The majority of children, he learned, were picked up in the early hours of the morning and incarcerated with no access by parents, no lawyer until they were in the dock, thus no explanation of procedures, discussion of case and, above all, semblance of reassurance. Handcuffs were taken off as they came through the door of the Court, but all were in shackles in the dock. Most defendants were: “just throwing stones.” The Court had no cctv; thus, no record of any miscarriage of justice.

Parents are often denied access to detained children for at least two months. Article 77 of the Geneva Convention states that: “Children shall be the object of special respect (and provided) with the care and aid they require.” The reality, concluded His Lordship, was “a stain” on the Israeli establishment.

Chairman of the UK-based charity, Lawyers for Palestinian Human Rights, Tareq Shrourou, stated that at every stage childrens’ rights are abused “from detention to incarceration, to release.” Sixteen and seventeen year olds are still treated as adults in detention. In the West Bank it is not the police, but the army who conduct arrests, whether of children or adults.

Children, as are adults, are blindfolded, in addition to being handcuffed and shackled. Blindfolding is also in defiance of the Geneva Convention.

“That the military might of Israel is threatened by children throwing stones is laughable”, commented al Mukhtar, adding that the whole concept of Military Children’s Courts were legally “outlandish.”

“In the past eleven years alone, around seven thousand five hundred children, some as young as twelve years, are estimated to have been detained, interrogated, and imprisoned …”¹

It should be noted that a Palestinian detainee can be interrogated for a period of one hundred and eighty days, during which he or she can be denied a lawyer for ninety days. During interrogation a detainee can be subject to varying levels of torture, physical and/or psychological.

This was graphically described by an urbane, quietly spoken man (name withheld by request) who described the reality of being detained for the first time at fifteen years old.

“I was imprisoned in 1987, 1988, 1990 and 1992 then deported to South Lebanon.”

In 1987, as a student, he had been one of a number who were taken from their school by the authorities, to a detention centre. He was, he said, punched, interrogated, beaten for two months, then released for lack of evidence of any wrongdoing.

In 1988, he stated, in the night, his home “was stormed.” Soldiers rushed to his bedroom pointing guns at him as he awoke and struggled up. He was taken, blindfolded, his hands tied with plastic cuffs.

In prison he was “put in a yard. There were eight rooms on one side and cells on the other. In each room there was a different torture. I visited all eight.”

His head, he said, was banged hard against the wall, on the table as he sat; he was near choked by extreme pressure on his throat; a ruler was banged hard on his nose “in a way that makes you lose control of your head.” Eventually he lost consciousness.

Made to raise his head, stunning blows under the chin resulted.

He described a “breaking chair fall” after which “you are punched whichever way you move.”  And, he recounted, “female soldiers practice sex in front of you. Even as a child I knew how to keep a blind eye.” Shades of Abu Ghraib.

Failure to confess resulted in threats of death, “But I had nothing to tell.” He was finally released after sixty-four days due to no evidence.

He was arrested and released without charge again in 1990. In 1992 he was deported to Lebanon.

He was just twenty years old, with a life’s horrors already lived and childhood’s chrysalis years of discovery and approaching adulthood lost to Israeli jail’s nightmares.

The UN Convention on the Rights of the Child, to which Israel is a signatory, is specific:

In all actions concerning children, whether undertaken by public or private social welfare institutions, courts of law, administrative authorities or legislative bodies, the best interests of the child shall be a primary consideration.

Article 37(b) of the Convention adds:

The arrest, detention or imprisonment of a child… shall be used only as a measure of last resort and for the shortest appropriate period of time.²

The anomaly of the uniqueness of the military court system in Israel was addressed in detail as “an exception under all laws. A military court must deal with military people, not civilians, not minors.” A further anomaly is that there is no legal appeal system. An appeal is “an administrative decision, made usually not by a judge, or even a lawyer.”

Khaled Almudallal, representing Ufree, the European network to support the rights of Palestinian Prisoners, reminded that, incredibly, there are twenty-seven Palestinian parliamentarians of the Palestinian Legislative Council and two Ministers being held in detention.

A near forgotten tragedy has an equally forgotten background:

As candidates prepared for elections to the Palestinian Legislative Council (PLC) in 2006, the Israeli authorities began a campaign of detention and imprisonment  … The 2006 Palestinian elections were overseen by international observers who declared them to be free and fair (thus) Hamas (became) the democratically elected Palestinian government.

Wrong kind of democracy, thus the democratically elected remain illegally detained by representatives of a people who, ironically, were given by James Arthur Balfour, a “national home” within “Palestine.” The famed letter has no mention of a “State”.  This “home”, it specifies, is conditional on:

 … it being clearly understood that nothing shall be done which may prejudice the civil and religious rights of existing non-Jewish communities in Palestine …

The injustices of historic enormity, legal and territorial, in violation of human rights under a swathe of international legislation, continue unabated – to be met by “the silence of the world”, commented al Mukhtar, adding, regarding the prisoners: “As far as I know, Middle East Peace Envoy Tony Blair, has been equally silent.”

However, the international community is not silent. The Boycott movement gains massive strength. Coincidentally, on the day of the Seminar, the Israeli Ambassador to South Africa had been due to address the University of KwaZulu-Natal. The event was cancelled by the University’s Deputy Vice Chancellor, Joseph Ayee, at twenty-four hour’s notice, due to the “likely reputational damage” it would bring the university.³

Politics Professor, Lubna Nadvi, said the university’s decision represented the general sentiment among students and staff. “Israel is fast becoming a pariah state, like Apartheid South Africa did, that no one really wants to be associated with, including academics and students,” the Professor is quoted as saying.

Yet destruction of Palestinian lives and history, sacred to all nations, is ongoing and six thousand prisoners remain in jail, and in beyond anything that would be recognized as a justice system in a functioning democracy.

In spite of the hunger strike agreement, there is so little progress from Israel, that there are fears that the only negotiating tool those held have – their lives – may be again put on the line.

Organizations represented at the Seminar are working closely with those involved in the Northern Ireland hunger strike to devise a way forward for both sides.

One suggestion, from British MP Jeremy Corbyn, is forming an international friendship network with prisoners, especially corresponding.

At a “Special Session on Children” at the United Nations on May 9. 2002, the Israeli Minister of Justice stated, in a lengthy address, Israel’s commitment to:

Extending the hope and promise of childhood to the millions of children that continue to suffer, even in an era of unprecedented global prosperity, means reducing poverty, protecting children from the scourge of war and violence … providing all children with adequate healthcare, clean water, basic education, and a nurturing and protective environment in which they can grow and thrive.

The yawning chasm between fine aspirational statements and reality on the ground could hardly be starker. For every child taken into custody, childhood dies at that moment.

For every parent arbitrarily held, they know not when they will see their children and family again. Some have shared none of their children’s formative years at all.

“Our revenge will be the laughter of our children”, wrote Ireland’s Bobby Sands, who died on the 66th day of his protest hunger strike, on May 5. 1981, four days short of his birthday. When there is nothing left to lose to achieve justice, those deprived will eventually sacrifice the last tragic bargaining tool in humanity’s creative box to achieve it.

Since the guests became occupiers, Palestine’s children and their parents have now waited sixty-four years to laugh freely.

1. Graham Peebles, “Confined cruelty: Israeli treatment of Palestinian minors“, Middle East Monitor, March 26, 2012
2. Shazia Arshad, “Child Prisoners“, Middle East Monitor, November 9, 2011
3. Raphael Ahren, “Jerusalem slams Pretoria’s ‘unbelievable ignorance’”, The Times of Israel, May 21, 2012

Some weeks back, I decided to look into one such group, Physicians for Human Rights (PHR), an organization I had long refrained from joining out of skepticism. But perhaps, I thought, PHR had sidestepped the dangers inherent in this work. So I joined to find out.

Some days later I received my first email from PHR. I was floored by the heading, “Protect Syrian Citizens: Help Make Sanctions Tougher.” The word “tougher” struck me. The email read in part: “Help us impose tougher sanctions on Pres. Assad’s brutal regime. The Syria Sanctions Act of 2011, S. 1472, will target Syria’s energy and financial sectors. Contact your Senators today and urge them to back S. 1472.” The sponsor of this bill was Kirsten Gillibrand, and among the 12 co-sponsors were two neocon leaders, John McCain and Joe Lieberman, the latter hardly a human rights stalwart when it comes to Palestinians. Did that not ring alarm bells at PHR?

Sanctions Target the Syrian People, Bringing Poverty and Hunger

PHR argues that the sanctions are “targeted” at the oil and financial sectors and therefore are of consequence only for the Syrian elite. Since 25% of the revenue of the Syrian government comes from oil revenues (according to the text of the bill), expenditures providing needed relief to the population, for example, the current price supports for food, will certainly be affected. But it is not only the revenues of the Syrian government that are affected. The Financial Times reports:

The most significant sanctions are on the oil industry, estimated by the International Monetary Fund to have accounted for almost a fifth of gross domestic product in 2010. Analysts estimate that they helped contribute to a contraction of 2-10 per cent to Syria’s economy last year (2011).

The results of the sanctions should be obvious with only a moment’s thought. If the Assad regime is as nefarious as PHR claims, then certainly it will put itself way ahead of the common people as sanctions bite. Such an attitude is the norm not the exception in the world today. But even if the leaders of the human rights community could not figure this out, the impact of the sanctions on ordinary Syrians is hardly a secret, even in the mainstream press. Thus in March the Washington Post ran an article entitled “Syria running out of cash as sanctions take toll, but Assad avoids economic pain.” One did not even need to read beyond the headline to get the point. The article reports as follows:

The financial hemorrhaging has forced Syrian officials to stop providing education, health care and other essential services in some parts of the country, and has prompted the government to seek more help from Iran to prop up the country’s sagging currency.… Revenue from Syrian oil, meanwhile, has almost dried up, with even China and India declining to accept the nation’s crude….. At the same time, President Bashar al-Assad appears to have shielded himself and his inner circle from much of the pain of the sanctions and trade embargoes, which are driving up food and fuel prices for many of the country’s 20 million residents…

The Washington Post is not alone in this assessment. The Financial Times tells us:

A murky broader picture (emerges) suggesting that while some sanctions are hurting the regime of Bashar al-Assad, the president, and its alleged associates, they are also hurting ordinary Syrians … David Butter, a Middle East economic expert, said: ‘If it’s a scrap for limited resources, the regime is still in a position to get the first rights, whether fuel or cash or food. It [the sanctions regime] hurts them but to really cripple them is going to take a long time.

And the effect desired by the U.S. is quite clear. Another article in the Washington Post with the headline “Amid Unrest, Syrians Struggle to Feed Their Families” reports that food prices have risen as the result of sanctions. As a result the Assad government in March “introduced a system of price-fixing for essential foods that has stabilized the cost of bread, sugar and meat — although they remain much higher than they were a year ago. ….. ‘ Despite efforts to mitigate the problem around half of Syrians may live in poverty, said Salman Shaikh of the Brookings Institute in Doha, who argued that this is increasing anti-government feeling.” Regime change is the point. And the pronouncements of Obama and Hillary make this abundantly clear.

The Empire in Desperation Pulls Out all the Stops to bring Syria to Heel

Since Russia and China drew a line in the sand to stop the overthrow of the Syrian regime by the West, the United States appears increasingly desperate. That desperation has grown since the UN-brokered cease-fire has terminated much of the fighting and killing, however imperfectly.

But is not the Assad government to blame for the failures of the cease-fire? If so, it is certainly not alone. Recently the NYT reported: “An explosion killed at least three people in Aleppo, and two blasts hit a Damascus highway on Saturday in further signs that rebels fighting to topple President Bashar al-Assad are shifting tactics toward homemade explosives. Syria’s state news agency said three people had been killed, one of them a child, and 21 had been wounded by a booby-trapped car in the northern city of Aleppo. The Syrian Observatory for Humans Rights, an opposition group based in Britain that relies on information from Syrian activists, said the blast destroyed a carwash in Tal al-Zarazeer, a poor suburb, and killed five people. A member of the rebel Free Syrian Army claimed responsibility for the bombing, saying that the carwash was used by members of a pro-Assad militia.”

A car wash is hardly a target that is focused on the military. And today The Guardian and others reported that a Syrian military convoy protecting the UN observer mission was hit by a roadside explosion, injuring six Syrian soldiers, three badly. When Russian officials accuse the Syrian opposition of “terrorist tactics,” it appears that they have a point.

PHR has certainly done some good things in the past; for example, documenting human rights violations and medical abuses in Gaza and the West Bank – although this work is now solidly in the hands of the Israeli division of PHR, meaning, among other things, that it will get less attention in the U.S. And at no point has PHR called for boycotts against Israel, a regime that has killed untold thousands of Palestinians in what amounts to a long slow genocide. In the eyes of PHR it would appear that official enemies of the U.S. Empire deserve sanctions, whereas allies who violate the most basic human rights get an investigation and a tongue lashing – at most.

In fact, sanctions are the work of our imperial government; and when a “human rights” organization gets into the business of supporting them, it is de facto in the business of supporting the Empire and its drive for domination. ¹ Token ruminations about human rights violations by U.S. “allies” or clients do not alter this fact. Such ruminations serve as little more than a cover for the real use of these groups to the Empire. Whether the PHR policy makers understand this or not makes little difference.

So what was this PHR member to do in the face of such a stance by his organization? This writer called the Boston office, the home office, to complain about the decision to back the Sanctions bill. I was given to understand by one staffer that I was not the only member to register dissatisfaction. I inquired who made this decision and how it was made. Initially I was told that such decisions were not made in the home office but at a smaller office in Washington, which works closely with Congress. In a subsequent email I was told that “the policy and program decisions are made by our Executive Management team.” Who is the “Executive Management Team”? This member does not know and has not been told. Furthermore the PHR web site does not contain any information about the Executive Management Team, as far as I can see. Are personnel of the U.S. government consulted in such deliberations? (The PHR membership clearly is not.) And should not such an important decision at least have some input from the members?

But PHR is not alone in providing cover for the designs of the Empire. They are but one example. Other human rights organizations appear to be jumping on the bandwagon. And, of course, the U.S. government is happy to have their support. Syria is clearly the gateway to Iran – and both countries have refused to one degree or another to submit to the will of the U.S. So regime change for both countries is high on the agenda of the West. That is the way of Empire.

PHR started out at its founding in 1978 documenting the abuses of the Pinochet government, a client of the Empire. Today it has descended into an instrument for justifying an attack on one of the official enemies of the U.S. That is the danger of a “human rights” approach if uninformed by an understanding of the designs and ruthlessness of the Empire.

The core of the physicians’ credo is “First do no harm.” Starving a people for the sake of “human rights” as part of a campaign that serves imperial machinations for regime change hardly fits into that injunction. And certainly PHR knows that diseases arising from privation and hunger fall most heavily on non-combatants, children and the elderly especially. That is no secret either. Perhaps PHR is echoing the judgment of Madeleine Albright on Iraq that the human carnage of the sanctions is “worth it.” However, from an ethical viewpoint, that judgment does not belong to citizens of the Empire living in comfort far from the victims in Syria.

1. It is interesting to read what is necessary for such sanctions to be lifted once imposed. The bill states the following:

   “Termination will occur “on the date the President submits to Congress a certification that the government of Syria is democratically elected and representative of the people of Syria and a certification under the Syria Accountability and Lebanese Sovereignty Restoration Act of 2003 that the Syrian government has:

   • ceased support for international terrorist groups;
   • ended its occupation of Lebanon;
   • ceased development and deployment of ballistic missiles and biological, chemical, or nuclear weapons and agreed to verification measures; and
   • ceased all support for, and facilitation of, terrorist activities in Iraq.”

   Given that one of the named “terrorist groups” is Hamas, which is the duly elected government in Gaza, and given the murkiness of the other requirements, this is a tall order indeed

Dan Freeman-Maloy: In your book, you describe the determination of Israeli planners to develop closer ties with the European Union. Has Israel’s traditional policy of trying to limit European diplomatic involvement in the Middle East changed?

David Cronin: Yes and no.

In recent years, there has been quite a bit of strategic thinking undertaken by the Israeli foreign ministry. This was particularly the case when Tzipi Livni was in charge of that ministry.

One of the conclusions of that thinking was that Israel should not rely entirely on the US to defend its indefensible actions. There was a realisation that while the US remains the only superpower at the moment, other powers are emerging. The decision to “reach out” more to the EU was taken in that context. Israel is similarly seeking to engage more with China, India and Brazil, particularly with regard to sales of weaponry and surveillance technology.

There is a perception in some circles that European diplomats are hostile to Israel. In the first few months of this year, a series of leaked reports from EU representatives in East Jerusalem and Ramallah expressed frustration with the expansion of Israeli settlements. Yet it’s significant that these reports were drawn up by people who witness the results of Israel’s activities “on the ground”. The EU also has representatives in Tel Aviv and Brussels, who see things very differently and have been beavering away to increase cooperation between Israel and the Union.

We occasionally see newspaper articles in which Israeli ministers accuse the EU of meddling in Israel’s affairs or suggesting that the EU is biased towards the Palestinians. Yet if you dig even a tiny bit beneath the surface, you will see that this apparent tension is at odds with the real picture. The real picture is one where the EU has become so close to Israel that, I would argue, it has become complicit in Israel’s crimes against humanity.

DF: Not long after Operation Cast Lead, then NATO Secretary General Jaap de Hoop Scheffer made a cordial visit to Israel (where his hosts drew a parallel between Israeli operations in Gaza and NATO operations in Afghanistan). You report that NATO-Israel relations may be set to deepen.

DC: We should never forget that in 2010, Israel killed eight Turkish citizens and one Turkish-American in international waters, while these activists were taking part in the Gaza Freedom Flotilla. I’m not an expert on these matters but my understanding is that this attack was tantamount to an act of war against Turkey, a member of NATO.

I think it’s fair to say that if Iran had done something comparable, NATO would have reacted forcefully. Yet Israel has a so-called “individual cooperation programme” with NATO since 2006, under which both sides share sensitive information; the scope of the programme was extended in 2008. Israel’s relationship with NATO has remained strong despite how the alliance condemned the flotilla attack. Shortly before Gabi Ashkenazi stepped down as head of the Israeli military last year, he was treated to a farewell dinner by senior NATO officers in Brussels. He also was called in to give NATO advice on how to fight the war in Afghanistan.

And Israel is taking part in a NATO operation in the Mediterranean called Active Endeavour. Originally, this was supposed to be an “anti-terrorism” initiative in response to the 11 September 2001 atrocities. But it has subsequently been broadened to cover immigration. What this means is that Israel is helping Western governments, especially Greece, to prevent vulnerable people fleeing poverty and persecution from reaching Europe’s shores. It’s quite disgusting.

DF: Turning back to the EU specifically, where does the recent Conformity Assessment and Acceptance of Industrial Products (ACAA) agreement fit in the broader struggle around Europe’s preferential trade ties with Israel?

DC: ACAA sounds dull and technical. But it is deeply political.

This is an agreement reached between the EU and Israel, whereby quality checks carried out by the Israeli authorities on manufactured goods would have the same status as similar checks carried out by authorities within the EU. At the moment, it’s limited to pharmaceutical products but it could easily be extended to other goods.

This agreement is a top priority for the Israelis because once it enters into force, Israel would take an important step towards being integrated into the EU’s single market.

To their credit, some members of the European Parliament (MEPs) have been asking difficult questions about ACAA for a few years. And this has meant that the Parliament has not yet approved the agreement. It’s not clear when the Parliament will make a final decision about the matter. There was a discussion at the Parliament’s foreign affairs committee in the past couple of weeks, where it was decided to delay holding a vote on the dossier until legal assurances are provided on the question of whether or not the agreement would apply to Israeli settlements in the West Bank.

It’s significant that the Israelis have hired a top public relations firm, Kreab Gavin Anderson, to help with their efforts to break the deadlock on ACAA. Kreab’s Brussels office is headed by a guy who used to be the chief adviser to MEPs with the Swedish Conservative Party. It cannot be a coincidence that one of the MEPs most vocal in supporting ACAA, Christoffer Fjellner, belongs to that party. He is arguing that if the agreement is not approved, Europeans will have less access to medicines. This is scaremongering, in my view, and is hypocritical because Fjellner is very supportive of the big players in the global pharmaceutical industry, who are actively seeking to use intellectual property issues to prevent the poor in Africa, Asia and Latin America from having access to affordable medicines.

DF: Even people writing for quasi-official EU publications have felt compelled to question ‘the sincerity of repeated declarations encouraging Palestinian unity’ from official spokespeople. How have EU donor and diplomatic policies contributed to fragmenting Palestinian politics?

DC: Those declarations have zero credibility.

The EU always claims that it wishes to promote democracy around the world. In 2006, an election took place in Palestine. The EU’s own observation team found the election to be free and fair and something of a model for the Arab world. And then the EU decided to ignore that election because in its eyes the “wrong” party – namely Hamas – won.

I’m personally not a fan of either Hamas nor Fatah but if Hamas won a democratic mandate, that should be respected.

It’s a classical colonial attitude for an imperial power to show preference for one side in an occupied territory over another. Divide and rule. That’s exactly what’s been happening in recent years. Mahmoud Abbas, the Palestinian Authority president, and Salam Fayyad, the so-called prime minister, lack any democratic mandate. Yet they are treated as real darlings by the EU and US. Why? Because rather than resisting the occupation, they accommodate it.

In particular, they are also happy to pursue the kind of neo-liberal economic policies that are treated as sacrosanct in Brussels and Washington. Salam Fayyad used to work for the International Monetary Fund and has clearly been inculcated with its ideology.

DF: Can you describe the EUPOL COPPS programme and its relationship to the US training of PA forces in the West Bank?

DC: This is another “divide and rule” case.

The EU’s police mission for Palestine (COPPS) was originally supposed to apply to both the West Bank and Gaza. But in practice it only applies to the West Bank because the Union refuses to deal with the Hamas administration in Gaza.

What has happened is that the EU is in charge of training civil police and the US has been charged of training more militarised police units in areas under control of the Palestinian Authority. We are told that this is helping the Palestinian Authority get ready to assume the responsibilities of statehood. This is nonsense. One of the key aims of the these training missions is to boost cooperation between the PA police and Israeli forces. So the EU is really helping Palestinians to police their own occupation.

Worse again, it has been documented that police loyal to Fatah have used brutal methods – including torture – against their political rivals. Even though these police are trained by the EU, the Union says nothing about these human rights abuses. This silence is shameful.

DF: Germany is reportedly in the process of selling Israel a sixth partially subsidized ‘Dolphin’ submarine. What’s the significance of these sales?

DC: I’d put these sales in the context of wider military cooperation between the EU and Israel.

As well as helping to arm Israel, Europe is helping Israel to sell its weaponry abroad. The British Army has been using Israeli unmanned warplanes, or drones as they are generally called, in Afghanistan, for example. The ethical question of using weapons that have been “battle-tested” in an obscene manner isn’t even broached in “polite society”. Drones were used extensively to kill and maim innocent civilians during Operation Cast Lead, Israel’s attack on Gaza in 2008 and 2009.

What’s also significant is that Israeli arms companies are receiving scientific research grants from the Union. These include Elbit and Israel Aerospace Industries, the two suppliers of drones used in Cast Lead. At the moment, Israel is taking part in 800 EU-financed research projects, which have a total value of 4 billion euros. This means that my tax is helping to subsidise Israel’s war industry.

DF: Historically, France has been seen as the European power most likely to challenge the US monopoly on diplomatic initiative in the Middle East. Is this reputation still deserved?

DC: Definitely not.

Jacques Chirac demonstrated occasionally that he could be independent of the US when he was president. But Nicolas Sarkozy has been much more of an “Atlanticist” – for example, he decided that France should participate more fully in NATO than it has for a number of decades.

I’m answering this question a few days before the second round of voting in France’s presidential election. If Francois Hollande wins, then I don’t predict any major changes in terms of France’s policy on Israel-Palestine. I hope, however, that I am proved wrong.

Hollande has been quite happy to pander to the Zionist lobby in France. Both he and Sarkozy turned up at the annual dinner of CRIF, the biggest pro-Israel lobby group in Paris, earlier this year. It was clear that Hollande wasn’t there to denounce Israel’s crimes.

DF: The Greek government brazenly cooperated with Israel in blocking the ‘Freedom Flotilla II’ from challenging the Gaza blockade last summer. You’ve suggested that specific US-Israeli pressure (‘possibly even financial blackmail’) was at work, but that the incident was also a ‘logical consequence of a process that was already underway’.

DC: Yeah. This is quite closely connected to the question you asked about NATO. Greece and Israel have been working together in NATO operations a lot recently.

George Papandreou, the former Greek prime minister, was quite happy to court Israel. When it became clear that relations between Israel and Turkey had soured, Papandreou sniffed an opportunity for Greece to replace Turkey as Israel’s key ally in the Mediterranean.

Even though Greece has been going through an economic nightmare, the Athens authorities have decided to take part in a series of military operations with Israel over the past few years. Let’s not forget that Greece has been spending more on the military as a proportion of national income than most countries in Europe. You can see why the Israeli arms industry would be interested in cultivating stronger links with Greece because, even though Greece is in the doldrums financially, it’s still spending much more than it should be on weapons, while cutting back drastically on essential services like healthcare.

DF: One of your recent articles notes that many of the British officers deployed in post-WWI Palestine were veterans of the Black and Tans, the colonial force infamous for its brutality in Ireland. How has the Irish anti-colonial experience affected Irish politics on the Palestine question?

DC: Among the Irish public, there is a huge amount of sympathy for the Palestinians. The Ireland Palestine Solidarity Campaign has been described by some Zionist watchdogs as the best organised Palestine solidarity group in the world. That’s very interesting because the IPSC relies almost entirely on volunteers.

The Dublin government is a different story. In the current Irish government, there are at least three strong supporters of Israel. These include the ministers for defence and education.

Last year, a number of Irish activists were abducted by Israel as they tried to sail to Gaza. The response of the Dublin government was extremely weak. The Irish foreign minister, Eamon Gilmore, even attended a ceremony film festival sponsored by the Israeli government soon after that incident. He appears to regard avoiding or minimising tension with Israel as a priority.

Furthermore, it should be borne in mind that it’s Ireland’s representative at the European Commission, Máire Geoghegan-Quinn, who is administering the research grants to Israeli arms companies I mentioned earlier. She won’t even acknowledge that giving money to firms profiting from human rights abuses is problematic.

DF: In 2010, the European Centre for Constitutional and Human Rights issued a report criticizing EU maintenance of ‘anti-terrorist’ blacklists that effectively function ‘as ideological and political tools for undermining the right to popular resistance and self-determination.’ How do these lists constrain European politics on Palestine, and are there active campaigns to get them overturned?

DC: This is an important issue.

Israel has lobbied successfully over the past decade to have both the political and military wings of Hamas placed on the EU’s “anti-terrorist” blacklist. EU officials and governments have, as a result, been able to say “we don’t talk to terrorists”, even when the “terrorists” have a democratic mandate. I note, however, that there have been press reports lately indicating that Hamas has had some contacts with European governments. So perhaps this is changing a little bit. But in general, there is an enormous double standard, when the EU is happy to embrace Israel, a state that uses violence and intimidation against civilians on a daily basis, yet brands those who resist Israeli oppression as “terrorists”.

DF: Finally, in recent years the gap between European government support for Israel and public opinion has sometimes been so wide that the EU leadership has issued official apologies to Israel for polling results. What opportunities does this gap provide for strategic Palestine solidarity?

DC: The European public is way more critical of Israel than our governments are. This offers real hope.

The Palestinian call for boycott, divestment and sanctions (BDS) against Israel was only launched in 2005. And it has made enormous progress. Veolia, the major French corporation, has ignominiously lost a number of major contracts around the world, for example. Why? Because of public outrage at how Veolia is involved in constructing a tramway that would effectively be reserved for Israeli settlers in East Jerusalem. This illustrates how supporting Israeli apartheid can prove bad for business if ordinary people monitor what corporations get up to and protest.

The BDS campaign is often compared to the one undertaken against South Africa. As it happens, the call for boycott was originally made by South African political activists in the 1950s. But it wasn’t until the 1980s that it had a major impact internationally. So the Palestinian BDS campaign has achieved in seven years what it took the South African campaign three decades to achieve.

The challenge now is to maintain the momentum – and intensify the pressure on Israel and its “corporate sponsors”.

1. Cronin maintains a blog.

Various members of the EU have already taken steps to boycott the state, heeding the position of Eugenia Tymoshenko, daughter of the imprisoned opposition leader.  “European leaders can’t be seen to support this repression by standing next to President (Viktor) Yanukovych”.

Secretary of State Hillary Clinton has added her voice to the chorus about the plight of the former Ukrainian leader.  Tymoshenko, in her eyes, is becoming something of a wounded, brutalised heroine – and one who has gone on a prolonged hunger strike.  She also has the bruises to show it.  “The photographs of Mrs. Tymoshenko released by the Ukrainian Human Rights Ombudsman further call into question the conditions of her confinement” (Voice of Russia, May 2).  Penal colonies have a habit of turning their inmates into luminary martyrs.

And the fuss? A cruelly administered seven year sentence, being served in Kharkov for Tymoshenko’s signing of a lucrative gas contract with Russia.  She has also been forced to pay an amount of around 1.51 billion hryvni (the equivalent of 200 million dollars) to Neftegaz Ukrainy.  Dealing in energy resources is a hazardous pastime in the former Soviet bloc.  The result of the treatment of the high profile inmate is that countries such as Austria and The Netherlands have refused to send government ministers to the tournament unless an improvement is made in the treatment of Tymoshenko.

The authorities in Kiev have taken the familiar view that such a sporting boycott unduly politicises the non-political.  The Ukrainian foreign ministry was even touching in its statement.  “We view as destructive attempts to politicise sporting events, which since ancient times have played a paramount role in improving understanding and agreement between nations”. (ABC, May 4).  This view might mimic the aching sounds of violins, but it hardly stands to reason.

The statement sees such politicisation as regressive, a well directed blow to development. This, in itself, would suggest that the authorities are aware of the potential sport has – far from being a hermetically pursued, self-indulgent escape from the political, it embraces it.  “An attack on this big dream undermines the chances of… all the former Socialist Bloc members to prove that their economic, human and scientific potential can turn them from the debtors of Europe to its engine of growth.” Sport is hardly going to put food on the table, but it may well feed the spirit.

Russia’s Vladimir Putin is similarly of the view that football and politics don’t mix. “Leave sports alone!” he exclaimed, citing the principle of the International Olympic Committee that sports is a province beyond the political.  This is a good vintage of nonsense.  The Cold War itself demonstrated that sports was yet another frontier in the culture wars between the West and the communist bloc. Far from being separate from the field of human conflict, it was integral to it.  Sporting boycotts are simply another weapon of war, as the old ostracised apartheid government of South Africa could attest to.

This stands to reason.  By 1930, the Spanish writer José Ortega y Gasset would state that modern life had “become universalised”, an age of the masses which made cultural and political phenomena an intertwined entity.  And that culture, whatever the merits of the EU’s position on football and the Ukraine, is here to stay

There is a higher Court than the Courts of Justice, that is the Court of Conscience. It supercedes all other Courts.

— Mahatma Ghandi, 1869-1948

Herr Stefan Hansen
CEO and Chairman of the Executive Board
Lufthansa Airlines

Dear Herr Hansen,

I write, to coin a phrase, more in sorrow than in anger, that your airline caved in to pressure from Israel and joined Air France, Alitalia, Turkish and Brussels Airlines, Jet2 and Easy Jet (mission statement: “ … to effect and offer a consistent and reliable product …”) in refusing “flytilla” passengers en route to Bethlehem in Palestine, with fully paid tickets, on to your flights to Israel’s Ben Gurion Airport.

My own experiences of flights to and from the Middle East on Lufthansa are numerous, each with heartwarming memories of conversations with crews, their kindness and their real love for the region, some with such affinity that they had moved there, embracing the complexities, uncertainties and above all the history and unique warmth of the people.

What makes Lufthansa’s stance so ironic is that as an airline, it was, for 45 years, isolated and unable to fly in to Germany, its home country, as you will know.  Thus, it is uniquely placed to understand Palestine’s isolation, its airport near destroyed and forbidden its own airline.

When Iraq was near equally isolated during the years of the embargo, Iraqi airways grounded by the terms of the UN freeze on the country’s access to just about anything, your crews and staff consistently expressed empathy, even outrage. It has to be wondered how they regard their company’s shoddy stance, adding to the siege and isolation of Palestine.

Lufthansa’s own isolation was also subject to deviant victors’ justice.  In 1945, at the end of the second World War when Germany was occupied by the Soviet Union, the US, France, and Britain, the Berlin Wall went up and, as with the Palestine – Israel wall, Germany was walled in — or walled out — depending on  the view point. Stark parallels.

British, French and US airlines had the monopoly of flights to West Germany and the Soviet Union to the East. Lufthansa, Germany’s national airline, was barred from flying to Germany.

In spite of the shameful arrogance of the restrictions, just ten years after the war ended, Lufthansa had expanded its long distance flights – to the Middle East and Americas. Yet it was not until 1990, when the Wall came down, dismantled by the people themselves, that Lufthansa’s distinctive colors finally landed back in Berlin for the first time since the Allied occupation.

I only learned this history a year before the Wall crumbled. I called Lufthansa to book a flight to Berlin. The booking agent said Lufthansa did not fly to Berlin.

“You don’t fly to your own country?”

I still recall the humiliation in his voice as he explained the chronology of a great and proud carrier, established in 1926, being barred from its homeland and capitol city’s airport.

Perhaps that was also the reason, when, on numerous visits to Iraq, traveling Lufthansa as far as Amman, Jordan and then on by road due to the embargo’s strictures, the crew would often talk the night away in the quiet hours in the galley, voicing outrage and concern at the plight of the people, the isolation. Lufthansa had flights to Iraq from 1956 until halted by the 1990 embargo.

Quite often the same crew would be operating the return flight.  They would beam, remember, welcome me back and then, invariably, ask the same question one heard throughout the Middle East: “How is Iraq? How are the people?” As if asking about a family.

Lufthansa transported 1.56 million passengers to the Middle East in just the first four months of 2010, up 41 percent from the previous year, “An expression of the historically good relationship between Germany and the Arab states”, commented analyst Juergen Pieper.

Germany’s flag carrier enjoining in barring passengers from a journey described as “a beacon of hope”, by Nobel Peace Prize Laureate Mairead Maguire, a gesture of solidarity with Palestinians, a people near forsaken by governments due to pressures from those now occupying Palestine’s land, is especially craven from your country which also has suffered the humiliation of occupation.

Lufthansa has joined in conspiring to scupper an initiative the world could well do with, one which Swedish writer, Henning Mankell, described of another sea borne initiative of solidarity as “a declaration of peace.”

Your company had not alone negated the rights enshrined in the founding charter of the United Nations and Vienna Convention of the right of all to travel freely, but validated the arresting of both Jewish and Palestinian welcomers of the visitors united at Ben Gurion airport, and incarcerated for holding cards of greetings – and in one case a drawing by a Palestinian child.

Perhaps Palestinian journalist Susan Abulhawa pinpoints the reason for a seemingly incomprehensible decision by the airlines, but additionally uncomfortably applicable to Lufthansa. She writes:

Everything – home, heritage, life, resources, hope – has been robbed from us to atone for Germany’s sins. To this day, we languish in refugee camps that are not fit for human beings so that every Jewish man and woman can have dual citizenship, one in their own country and one in mine.

We are the ones who find ourselves at the other end of the weapons that Germany supplies to Israel. It is Palestine that is being wiped off the map. It is our society that is being destroyed. Of course, Germany’s silence is easy and convenient, but ‘understandable’ it is not.

As one who has a deep affinity with Germany, her words make me infinitely sad.

Germany’s “Iron Curtain” has been jubilantly pulled down, whilst physically and aeronautically it now apparently endorses another one in the Middle East.

With the boycott movement ever gaining worldwide strength, it remains to be seen how it will impact on airlines complicit in sabotaging an international initiative conceived in humanity, in solidarity with a nation mourning  64 years of isolation and ever creeping dispossession, in the month that Israel celebrates Independence Day, its 64th birthday, in festivities world wide.

As for the profitability of future flights to Ben Gurion airport, in the words of an Israeli Foreign Ministry official: “We have insulted hundreds of foreign citizens … Direct damage has been done to tourism and to Israel’s good name”, he said.

Indeed, with 1500 potential extra passengers into the airport, what a dream chance for a charm offensive. Instead they were demonstrating with others against involved airlines and Israel in numerous airports in many countries.

An own goal all round it seems, Herr Hansen. And, yes, as many, I will, with sadness, be reconsidering my modest contributions to Lufthansa’s coffers in future travels.

In anticipation of your thoughts on this sorry saga,

Yours sincerely,
Felicity Arbuthnot (Dr.Hon., Phil.)

So it should not be surprising if the BDS movement itself experiences turmoil. For several years now, the UK Palestinian Soldarity Committee (PSC) has conducted a policy of calling leading activists such as Paul Eisen, Gilad Atzmon and Israel Shamir — all Jewish — anti-Semitic for daring to point out that those who persecute Arab Muslims and Christians are not just Zionists but are invariably Jewish. That the Jews who have opted to take Israeli citizenship are increasingly racist, belligerent settlers who use their new identity to dispossess, terrorise and murder Palestinians, with the intent of forcing them to leave even the remaining 12 per cent of the land once called Palestine.

These Jews have given Judaism a bad name, causing some “good Jews” to critique their own religious heritage and even disown it, such as American highschooler and winner of the 2012 Martin Luther King Jr Writing Award Jesse Lieberfeld, who came to realise, “I was grouped with the racial supremacists… I was part of a delusion.” For these Jews, Judaism today had been perverted by Zionism. Paying tribute to Jesse, ex-Israeli Gilad Atzmon said, “Journeying from choseness is a life-struggle. From time to time you may feel lonely but you are never alone. Humanity and humanism are there at your side — for all time.”

Atzmon, born and bred in Israel, with holocaust victims in his family, is the latest victim of the UK PSC, which earlier ostracised Eisen for his Der Yassin Remembered group honouring martyred Palestinian Muslims and Christians of the 1948 Nakba, when thousands of Palestinians were killed and hundreds of thousands made permanent refugees.

After being ostracised, Eisen and Shamir dismissed the “gatekeepers” in the movement, and carried on with their analysis and organising from the sidelines, sidelines which are growing just as fast as, if not faster than the mainstream and are now firmly centred on popularising a one-state solution to solve the Palestine-Israel problem.

Atzmon continued to lock horns with the UK PSC establishment, hoping to change it, though it is dominated by the likes of Tony Greenstein with his J-Big (Jews boycotting Israeli goods). No doubt Atzmon’s Sabra heritage steeled him for battle with those supporters of the Palestinians who see the movement as more a way to fight anti-Jewish sentiment (caused by Zionism) than to actually achieve victory for the Palestinians. He decided to write an analysis of his Jewish heritage and how it was transformed over the past century entitled The Wandering Who?¹ His book became a bestseller and he has been touring America and Europe regularly, speaking out bravely and making his gilad.co.uk a must read for all who care about both Palestine and “the plight of the Jews”.

Jewish intellectuals such as Ilan Pappe are following Atzmon’s footsteps and leaving Israel, disgusted with the cynicism and duplicity of the entire Israeli establishment. Atzmon has attracted many admirers — too many, it seems — from among the more mainstream critics of Israel. Richard Falk and John Mearsheimer — both Jewish — endorsed Atzmon’s book, Mearsheimer recommending that the book “should be widely read by Jews and non-Jews alike”.

On 13 March, near the end of Atzmon’s latest tour of the US speaking to pro-Palestinian groups, Electronic Intifada editor Ali Abunimah published a letter at the US Palestinian Community Network (PCN) signed by 23 Palestinian activists, including Columbia University professor Joseph Massad and Omar Barghouti, a founder of the Ramallah-based Palestinian Committee for the Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel and author of Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions: The Global Struggle for Palestinian Rights (currently doing an MA in philosophy at Tel Aviv University). The letter called for “the disavowal of the racism and anti-Semitism of Gilad Atzmon”. Abunimah effectively excommunicated Atzmon from participating in pro-Palestinian activities of the US PCN, as he was by the UK PSC. Atzmon wound up his tour the next day with an interview with (Jewish) history professor Norton Mezvinsky of Connecticut State University, at Washington’s Mount Vernon Place United Methodist Church, where he rebutted the charges against him.

But just as Muslims are loudly called on to disown Islamic terrorists such as Al-Qaeda, so must Jews disown their own Judaic terrorists, reasons Atzmon, who has been leading the way in this politically incorrect battle. Now that the dust has settled, and support for Atzmon has poured in, the letter in retrospect looks like an exercise in hasbara gone wrong. Conspicuous in their absence among signatories are leading Israel critics Noam Chomsky, Norman Finklestein, Democracy Now’s Amy Goodman, The Progressive’s Matt Rothschild, Tikkun’s Michael Lerner, OpEd’s Rob Kall, and US Congress hopeful Norman Solomon.

It is possible to critique Atzmon for downplaying the imperialism behind Israel’s founding and support, which Abunimah does: “Our struggle is with Zionism, a modern European settler colonial movement, similar to movements in many other parts of the world that aim to displace indigenous people and build new European societies on their lands.” However, there is nothing wrong with critiquing the problem from a cultural point of view, and the guilty culture just happens to be Jewish. Sadly, there is more than one way to skin the Palestinian cat.

Shamir took the debate a logical step further by posing the question, “To disavow or debate Abunimah”. He was attacked by Abunimah a decade ago, when he “hunted me out of the pro-Palestinian movement, saying that without Shamir, they will win sooner.” After a decade of unrelenting Israeli crimes, Shamir advised Massad, Barghouti and other Arab signatories, “Our Arab brothers will do well if they will stand out of this debate: let the Jews fight out the battle for their identity. As it happens, Gilad is their strongest champion on the Jewish side, they should cheer, not discourage him.”

Perhaps what prompted the letter was fear that BDS was just not mainstream enough. This was the implication behind a dismissal of BDS by Finkelstein, who just a few weeks before the Abunimah screed, called BDS a “cult” and admonished Palestinians to limit their struggle to the “two-state solution”. While himself exposing the “cult” of the holocaust, calling it an “industry” used to promote Israel’s aggressive colonial agenda, Finkelstein disappointed many admirers by suggesting that BDSers are conspirators intent on wiping poor Israel off the tattered old colonial map. “What is the result? There’s no Israel!”

But ironically, Atzmon and Finkelstein are on the same side this time. They are both pro-Palestinian activists and believers in free speech and open debate, not afraid to point the finger at machinations of their co-religionists. Before writing his ill-fated missive, Abunimah, author of One Country: A Bold Proposal to End the Israel-Palestine Conflict, would have done well to ponder Atzmon’s defence of Finkelstein’s criticism of BDSers for their cultishness. “Finkelstein’s criticism of the solidarity movement is largely valid. The recent expulsion of Palestinians and academics from the UK PSC proves that we aren’t just dealing with a ‘cult’ discourse as Finkelstein suggests, far worse, we are actually dealing with a rabbinical operation that exercises the most repulsive Judaic excommunication tactics.”

“Finkelstein is correct when he suggests that the achievements of the solidarity ‘cult’ operations are pretty limited,” continues Atzmon. He looks beyond the gatewatched BDSers and critics such as Chomsky, Finkelstein, and himself — two-state or one — and predicts “that the solidarity movement is already a mass movement … that the Palestinians and the Arabs will liberate themselves.”

The Lobby is no doubt patting itself on the back, having through obvious pressure on prominent activists helped to weaken its foes for the nth time. This tactic is part of the age-old strategy by those in power of “divide and conquer”. Just as Britian and then the US and Israel have worked to divide up the Muslim world to weaken and control it — even mobilising “Islamic terrorists” (not to mention “Judaic terrorists”) in their schemes — so the domestic representatives of imperialism do the same on the homefront, manipulating soft anti-Zionists.

The tactic was used in the Cold War, using liberals and ex-Communists to isolate Communists from movements critical of imperialism. Now as then, it is necessary not to boycott each other, but to work together without responding to provocation. It is to be expected that the bad guys are going to infiltrate progressive movements and try to split them.

When Saudi Prince Faisal grilled Hamas Chief Khaled Meshaal about his alliance with Iran, the Hamas chief explained: “Yes, we have relations with Iran and will do so with whoever supports us. We are a resistance movement, open to the Arabs, to the Muslims and to all countries in the world, and we are not part of any agenda for regional forces.” BDSers may have their differences, but the goal is the liberation of Palestine. Let a hundred flowers blossom.

1. See Al-Ahram Weekly “Jezebel’s Legacy”; Dissident Voice‘s “Into the Mentality of the Occupier/Oppressor” and “Who Is Gilad Atzmon… and, Who Are We?.”

The secret Interior Ministry Koenig Memorandum, written shortly after the 1976 Land Day rallies, called for “diluting existing Arab population concentrations” to “ensure the long-term Jewish national interests”. This officially marked the implementation of Ben Gurion’s plans of ethnic cleansing to make Israel a de facto Jewish state. Treatment of native Arab Muslims and Christians ever since merely confirms this policy, with forced Jewish loyalty oaths and second class services and laws for non-Jews.

This year’s 36th annual Land Day rallies saw Israeli security forces shooting dead a 20-year-old man, and wounding 37 stone-throwers in the Gaza Strip and around Jerusalem, using live ammunition, rubber bullets, tear gas and stun grenades. Israeli forces were put on high alert on the frontiers with Lebanon and Syria, but there were no reports of anyone nearing the frontier fences. In fact, the Israeli Defence Forces were relieved at the relatively small numbers of protesters.

But there is little for them to cheer about. Israeli Brigadier General Yoav Mordechai said, “The Nakba and Naksa days are ahead of us, and that is where the challenge will be.” Nakba (disaster) Day, the day after Israeli independence day, is 15 May, and Naksa (retreat) Day, when Israel took control of the West Bank and Gaza Strip, previously controlled by Jordan and Egypt, is 5 June.

During Nakba Day commemorations last year, thousands of Palestinian refugees from Lebanon, the West Bank, Gaza Strip and Syria marched towards the ceasefire borders with Israel. Fifteen Palestinians were killed and hundreds wounded, and more than a hundred protestors from Syria managed to breach the fence and enter the Golan Heights. One even made it all the way to Tel Aviv.

Land Day is now formally commemorated in a Global March to Jerusalem, protesting the Judaisation of East Jerusalem as Israel prepares to make Jerusalem its Jews-only capital. According to organisers, more than 600 institutions from 64 states were involved in planning the march. Protests also took place outside Israeli embassies in European and Arab countries. Backers of the march include former Malaysian Prime Minister Mahatir Mohammed and former Anglican Archbishop of South Africa Desmond Tutu. Organisers planned to send convoys of vehicles to Israel’s borders simultaneously from Jordan, Egypt, Syria and Lebanon.

Jordan’s demonstration attracted 15,000, and included four rabbis from Neturei Karta. “We want the world to know that the Jewish religion does not accept the occupation and the oppression of the Palestinian people. It is against the views of Jews around the world who are true to the Torah,” said Rabbi Yisroel Dovid Weiss. “We are here to mark Land Day, and tell the world not to blame Jewish people for the crimes of Zionism,” Rabbi Ahron Cohen said. “Judaism and Zionism are two different concepts.”

Numbers were smaller in Lebanon, as Lebanese security forces attempted to prevent a repeat of last year’s fatal border protests. About 200 foreign activists, including two more rabbis, arrived at Beaufort Castle to join the southern Lebanon rally. In Syria, despite the civil war, protesters rallied in Damascus in solidarity with both the Palestinians and Syrian President Bashar Al-Assad. Egypt had planned demonstrations, but they were called off due to heightened security and the tense political situation there.

To mark Land Day, Palestinian leader Marwan Barghouti, who is serving five life sentences in an Israeli prison for his role during the Second Intifada, called on Palestinians to launch a popular resistance campaign against Israel and for the Palestinian Authority to stop peace negotiations and all coordination with Israel in the economic and security realms.

Land Day, of course, is all about land. Appropriately, 30 March 2012 is the first anniversary of the Stop the Jewish National Fund (JNF) campaign aimed at ending the role of the JNF in expanding illegal settlements by displacing Palestinians, stealing their property, and then covering this up with tax-exempt donations from diaspora Jews. The JNF uses greenwash to advertise itself as an environmental movement, planting fast-growing non-native firs on razed Palestinian villages to hide Israeli crimes. Israeli parks include a Leisure corner at Nesher Park, Canada Park, American Independence Park, JF Kennedy Memorial, and Coretta Scott King Forest.

The Stop the JNF campaign fights this, even doing “flash” actions in the Israeli parks, nailing notices to trees to identify the destroyed Palestinian villages, as well as lobbying foreign governments to end the JNF’s tax-exempt status. British Prime Minister David Cameron was successfully pressured to end his status as “Honorary Patron” of the JNF last year. Stop the JNF also has a “Plant a Tree” programme in Palestine to replant indigenous trees.

In the build-up to Land Day, throughout February and early March, student solidarity groups marked the 8th Israeli Apartheid Week (IAW) at 120 universities in 40 cities around the world, from Al-Quds (Jerusalem) and Albuquerque to Yaffa and Zurich. At Boston-area universities Israeli activist and filmmaker Shai Carmeli-Pollak screened his 2006 documentary “Bilin Habibti” about Israel Defense Forces violence. Members of Brandeis University SJP marked their first annual Israeli Apartheid Week with a hunger strike to draw attention to Palestinian Khader Adnan’s 66-day hunger strike in protest of his detainment without charge. Good news: the international media spotlight on the case pushed Israeli officials to agree to free Adnan in April.

At the University of Amsterdam, Shir Hever, an Israeli economist at Jerusalem’s Alternative Information Centre, gave a series of lectures “Could the economic policies of Israel be considered a form of Apartheid?” At Glasgow University, Israeli anthropologist Jeff Halper, co-founder of the Israeli Committee Against House Demolitions, spoke on “Israeli Apartheid: The Case For BDS”. At the University of Liverpool, the Corporate Watch research group unveiled a new source book Targeting Israeli Apartheid. In London, a Beats Against Apartheid event included performances from hip-hop artists Lowkey, Mic Righteous and Awate.

British and Canadian politicians were furious. In Canada, the Ontario legislature unanimously condemned Israeli Apartheid Week. “If you’re going to label Israel as Apartheid, then you are also attacking Canadian values,” Conservative legislator Peter Shurman told Shalom Life. “The use of the phrase ‘Israeli Apartheid Week’ is about as close to hate speech as one can get without being arrested, and I’m not certain it doesn’t actually cross over that line.”

In the UK, thought police were called on to investigate comments made at Middlesex University’s Free Palestine Society IAW forum by Liberal Democrat Peer Jenny Tonge and former US marine Ken O’Keefe. O’Keefe is alleged to have incited racial hatred by comparing Jewish supporters of Israeli crimes to Nazis in their treatment of Jews. “The decent Germans of World War Two, what did they do when the Nazis came to power and instituted their policies? Did they do enough to stop the Nazis? No, they didn’t. What are the Jewish people doing right now? Are you doing enough to stop your racist, apartheid, genocidal state?” Baroness Tonge agreed with O’Keefe telling the audience that Israel would “not last forever” and would “lose support, and then they will reap what they have sown”.

You now hear something similar in regard to raising taxes on the very rich (even though a cursory examination reveals that federal income taxes are lower today than they’ve been in many decades).  You hear pundits say that if we did that, if we nudged those brackets any higher, we’d risk having these wealthy people close up shop and flee the country.  These armchair pundits deserve credit for being able to say something that stupid with a straight face.

However, instead of being cowed by those absurd threats—instead of being intimidated into abandoning plans for a fairer tax system and stricter regulations on the banking industry—we should greet such condescending arguments with delight.  In truth, not only would these defections rid us of the stench and the rot, they would give men and women on the lower rungs the opportunity to move into the top spots and test their mettle. It would be a welcome change.

Of course, there was a corollary to that replacement argument as well.  Wall Street also cautioned us that, should these financial prodigies, these “masters of the universe,” be forced to leave the industry (and, indeed, the country), the newbies who replaced them would be nowhere near as competent or reliable.

As effective as that line of reasoning might have been a decade ago, it doesn’t count for much today.  In fact, ever since we learned that it was those very same prodigies who precipitated the financial disaster that almost destroyed the world’s economy, and required a trillion-dollar taxpayer bailout just to keep us afloat, that old, “We’re too talented to be replaced” argument has pretty much lost its potency.

Unfortunately, despite the dire predictions, most of these Wall Street vultures aren’t going anywhere.  They can huff and puff all they like, but on Monday morning they’re going to show up for work just like the rest of us.  If these fund managers honestly believe that all they have to do to land a multi-million dollar a year banking gig is report to Zurich or London, briefcase in hand, they’re even more arrogant than we thought.  Sorry to disappoint you, boys, but those European banking jobs are already taken.  By Europeans.

Still, it would be wonderful if they all left.  While these soulless whores are, technically, U.S. citizens, in no way are they patriots.  They’re not even genuine Americans.  They are cultural eunuchs with no sense of honor, no sense of civic pride, and no sense of belonging to a “community.”  They live privileged lives in gated mansions and penthouses far, far away from the “herd.”  If given a choice, they would rather watch America’s great industrial cities fall into decay and despair than voluntarily part with so much as a nickel of their own money.

Those Wall Street executives who argued that we’d be losing valuable “expertise” if we allowed our financial wizards to move away are the same Wall Street execs who argue that if the very wealthy were to leave the United States (because of higher taxes), they would take their money with them, which, in turn, would damage our economy.  That’s a dumb argument.  It’s dumb because it’s already happened.

Wealthy people already have their money squirreled away in places believed to bring them the maximum return.  If one of those places happens to be the U.S., then lucky us, because that’s where they’ll probably keep it.  But they’re more likely to have that dough invested in sheltered off-shore bank accounts or high-yield foreign businesses.  And that’s where their money will remain, no matter where they live or work.

Let’s be clear.  If the very rich threaten to jump ship, we must do everything in our power to ensure they carry out that threat.  What a cathartic moment that would be!  The entrenched, inbred, self-perpetuating moneyed class being abruptly vacated—and new blood, new ideas, new faces, and new ethnicities rushing in to replace it.  Ain’t that what America is supposed to be all about?

Of course, this is more than a purely academic issue for Maher.  In June of 2002, his own ABC television show, Politically Incorrect, was yanked off the air for similar reasons.  When major sponsors (notably Sears and FedEx) withdrew their advertising in protest of Maher’s controversial remarks (interpreted to be “pro-terrorist), the Sinclair Broadcasting Group immediately pulled the plug on the show’s ABC affiliates, and Politically Incorrect was history.

Maher’s objections are interesting.  He argues that if advertisers can dictate what stays on the air and what doesn’t, we have, in effect, relinquished our right to free speech.  If media sponsors are given the final say as to which opinions are allowed to be expressed, and which opinions aren’t, it means we’ve handed over our precious, constitutional right of free expression to the corporations.  Not good.

But there’s a fine distinction here—a distinction between corporate cowardice and consumer muscle.  And the Limbaugh episode is a prime example of the latter.  Without any threat of boycotts, Rush’s advertisers nonetheless fled the show en masse, hypocritically pretending that his comments were so outrageous—so offensive, so repugnant—that they couldn’t bear to be associated with such a program, even though they’d have to be blind, deaf and dumb, and a presidential candidate not to realize this kind of material was the show’s stock in trade.  The only difference? This particular slur got some bad press–culminating in rats deserting a not-yet-sinking ship.

Frightened advertisers fleeing Limbaugh is reminiscent of the Hollywood blacklists of the 1950s, a phenomenon that, surprisingly, has been misunderstood by many.  You still hear people blame the blacklists on HUAC (House Un-American Activities Committee), declaring it was HUAC who forbade the studios to hire certain actors and writers suspected of subversive activities.  The opposite was true.  It was the studios themselves who voluntarily initiated the blacklists (ruining careers in the process), fearing that HUAC’s Commie smear campaign might damage their box office.

Boycotts are different.  Boycotts are manifestations of public outrage aimed at specific targets, for specific reasons, with the goal being to change specific policies or practices, with the weapon of choice being the threat of wreaking economic hardship.  While most boycotts fail, some actually do work.

Coors beer (the Coors family helped establish the Heritage Foundation) suffered a public relations setback a few decades ago when Paul Newman, among others, threatened a boycott.  In the late 1970s, an AWPPW-led west coast boycott of Scott Paper did considerable damage to sales (so much damage that some Scott facilities were forced to curtail operations, resulting in AWPPW production workers being laid off).  And wasn’t economic pressure largely responsible for South Africa abandoning apartheid?

Economic leverage isn’t the enemy of free expression; it’s a form of free expression.  Not to pick on Bill Maher (whom I enjoy and watch regularly on HBO), but if a labor union were to launch a successful boycott of a vehemently anti-union company’s products—a boycott that ultimately led to management negotiating a fair labor agreement—would Maher view this as an infringement of the company’s right to free speech?  An infringement of the company’s right to express its rabidly anti-union point of view?

Didn’t Ralph Nader say that the biggest and potentially most powerful lobby in the country—infinitely bigger and badder than the NRA, AIPAC, and U.S. Chamber of Commerce—was the American consumer?

If consumers chose not to buy new shoes for two months, the shoe business would collapse.  If consumers drank only tap water instead of Coke, Pepsi, etc, for two months, the beverage industry would go belly up.  Indeed, this is where the true power of the 99% resides, in our role as consumers.

Clearly, Limbaugh’s sponsors bailing out was an example of grandstanding and gutlessness, and once the smoke settles most of these advertisers can be expected to come crawling back.  But boycotts are different.  What’s wrong with trying to put the economic squeeze on sleaze radio?  For that matter, what’s wrong with trying to kill it? Limbaugh influences millions of people.  If the Acme Widget Company were his main sponsor, wouldn’t launching a national boycott of Acme products make eminent sense?

Let’s not conflate free speech with willful deceit, or political discourse with agitprop, or hate radio with healthy public debate.  They’re not equal.  And let’s not pretend that exerting economic leverage is unethical or off-limits, because it isn’t.  In fact, it may be the only arrow we have in our quiver.

In the aftermath of the Arab-Israeli Six-Day War of 1967, an upsurge of Jewish consciousness hit the campuses, and a new voice—what we call the ‘Jewish Left’—appeared. Young Jews began to make demands for ‘Jewish studies’ programs, to publish Jewish underground newspapers, to criticize Israeli policies while defending Zionism against Arab and pro-Arab attacks, and to confront the Jewish Establishment for ‘selling out’ to the ‘American dream’ while ignoring the needs of the Jewish community.¹

Thirty years later, journalist Esther Kaplan described “the old school of Jewish activism on Palestine…organizations from Breira in the 1970s to New Jewish Agenda, International Jewish Peace Union, the Road to Peace and Women in Black in the 1980s and early ’90s.”²

These activists followed “the star of identity politics”; they felt personally implicated by Israel’s deeds, saw a strategic role for themselves, and felt that changing the views of the US Jewish community was possible and necessary.³ After the second Intifada (Palestinian uprising) began in 2000, Kaplan found all this “anachronistic.”⁴ She described new organizations such as the International Solidarity Movement, and the boycott/divestment/sanctions movement (BDS), and concluded: “We Jews can join in—many of us will—but we don’t own this movement any more.”⁵

Yet the Jewish Left has thrived. It is not uniform, and exists in more and less sophisticated forms, but it is noticeable. It is the subject of a new book by David Landy, Jewish Identity and Palestinian Rights: Diaspora Jewish Opposition to Israel.⁶ Landy is the former head of the Ireland Palestine Solidarity Campaign, and earned his PhD at Trinity College, Dublin. Landy’s main focus is the British “Israel-critical diaspora Jewish movement,” in his careful phrase.⁷ He notes that the UK movement became important only after the second Intifada, while elsewhere in Europe and Australia, movements arose only after Israel’s assaults on Lebanon in 2006, and especially on Gaza in 2008-9. Obviously that is not true in the US, whose movements’ “size and dynamism” make them the most important case.⁸

In his introduction, Landy states that this movement seeks “to challenge Zionist hegemony among fellow Jews and to challenge Israel, speaking as Jews…who oppose Israel” so that we “do not conflate the two.”⁹ This formulation at once raises questions, beginning with the meaning of “Jew.” A religious definition is clear, as one who practices Judaism, but a secular definition is not; in fact, secular Jewish nationality is precisely what Zionism claims, and what many in Landy’s movement claim.

Landy’s background is Jewish, but he states that being a “movement activist is more important than shared Jewishness.”¹⁰ He also notes that many people of Jewish background are “active in society-wide groups…rather than specifically Jewish ones,” so that his study understates diaspora Jewish opposition to Israel. More important, the choice to work in “society-wide groups” sets a universalist benchmark to judge the choice to work in Jewish groups. The book is a sustained critique of identity politics, yet Landy does not fully comprehend his subject, in part because the UK movement, his main focus, is not the most illustrative example, which is in the US. Still, Landy’s rigor and honesty inevitably raise wider questions, and his book is a welcome contribution.

In his first chapter, “Understanding and researching the social movement,” Landy argues that the movement “seeks to re-cognize what it means to be a disapora Jew,” and also notes “the constraints and traps, as well as the opportunities that identity contestation offers.”¹¹ Landy defines the movement theoretically using Pierre Bourdieu’s formula of “[(Habitus)(capital)] + field = practice”. “Habitus” is “‘a system of durable, transposable dispositions’” acquired in upbringing from which an individual “generates schemata” in different spheres of life.¹² “Capital” is “‘good, services, knowledge, or status.’¹³ “‘Fields denote arenas of production, circulation, and appropriation’” of capital.¹⁴ Social life is a struggle over “field-dependent capital.”  Participating in a field means accepting its “doxaor realm of undiscussed and undisputed paradigms.”¹⁵ Thus while “the unnameability of Palestinians has been successfully challenged” within the Jewish field, “other silences, such as on the Palestinian right of return, have to an extent been reproduced.”

Landy’s second chapter discusses “The conflict over diaspora Jewish identity.” He notes that “identity has replaced ideology as the idiom of modern politics,” and that “diaspora identity is commonly deployed to create some sense of bounded racialized identity.”¹⁶ Diaspora identity is thus “a concession” to the “hegemonic language” and “illusio of the field.”  Diaspora is viewed “perhaps as thecondition of authentic Jewish existence and imbued with qualities of alterity, heterogeneity, hybridity and (usually) universalism.”¹⁷ This outlook, “while often critical of Israel, effaces Palestinian subjectivity,” and “creates a false symmetry with Palestinian refugees” by confusing “symbolic chosen exile and actual forced exile.”¹⁸

A claim that “Jews are uniquely univeralistic subjects” arises from concepts like Marxist Isaac Deutscher’s “non-Jewish Jew.”¹⁹ Landy “wonders what the term ‘non-Jewish Jew’ means absent these specific social connotations,” i.e., the traditional Polish Jewish upbringing that Deutscher rejected. Landy forgets today’s activists who choose to work in “society-wide groups” rather than Jewish ones, even as he finds them often as stifling as Deutscher’s traditional background. Landy notes the “link between Jews and justice,” citing the rabbinical injunction tikkun olam, conventionally interpreted as “heal the world.”²⁰ This leads to claims of pre-Zionist Jewish innocence, and that Zionism is actually assimilation to Christian values. He finds the term “Jewish prophetic” much over-used, a “flag of convenience” which becomes an “ideological and even racial construct.”²¹ Despite all this “diasporist ideas with all their problems are a motivating force for Jewish Israel-critical groups.”

Landy’s third chapter, “The Jewish field and its dissidents,” discusses “community” in the traditional “sense of community as a small-scale, organic, bounded arena.”²² Landy accepts today’s Jewish self-definition as “ethnic” even as he finds “ethnicity” a problematic concept, and finds Jews among the least “ethnic” in their societies. He refers to a “religiously linked ethnicity,” a “religio-cultural concept called Jewishness.”²³ He seeks to account for the power and patronage in organized Jewish life, and recalls Bourdieu’s notion of “field” in order to avoid making “assumptions about its authenticity or normativity.”

From this ambiguous foundation, Landy surveys the Jewish field, or fields. With national variations, he finds the inexorable forces of liberal society at work, and enduring Zionist allegiance, despite criticism. Jewish populations are declining more or less from assimilation and exogamy, with secular disaffiliation from religion, from communal organizations, and from other Jews. In religion, the center is outflanked by traditional Orthodoxy, syncretism of liberal Reform and Christianity, and non-denominational spirituality. A diasporist culture of “‘new forms of synagogue…festivals, books and films’” accompanies alienation from, and criticism of, Israel most strongly among the young. Yet “disillusion and disidentification” can lead “to withdrawal,” not change.²⁴ In Britain, it “is not true that most Jews aren’t ‘really’ Zionist.”²⁵ In the US, an “ageing Zionist leadership” still controls a “robust institutional framework.²⁶ However, former points of unity, Israel and Holocaust, are now points of dissension, allowing “Israel-critical movements” to arise in the “Jewish field.”

Landy surveys these movements, since the second (al-Aqsa) intifada began in September, 2000. In Britain, the conventional Jewish Israel-critical strategy of “reach[ing] out to the community” failed, being depicted as “one-sided,” which confirms “the success of Jewish communal controls at repressing dissent.”²⁷  Overall, the events of the past decade have radicalized the Israel-critical groups within the Jewish field, and institutionalized them in the general movement, following en bloc the Jewish individuals omitted from his study. Landy finds in the US “the most dynamic national Israel-critical Jewish movement.²⁸ Landy notes the limitations of J Street’s “community-based criticism,” and the past “pusillanimous position” on BDS of Jewish Voice for Peace.²⁹

Landy’s fourth chapter, “Activists between the universal and the community,” discusses the emergence of Israel-critical Jewish activists. “In the USA, this process of coming out against the Occupation or against Israel has been compared to, and sometimes experienced as more difficult than, coming out gay or lesbian.”³⁰ Human rights discourse is useful against Zionists, but also has “decontextualizing qualities” which undercut “the political aims of oppressed peoples and their struggles.³¹ Activists often adopt a position of “strategic Jewishness” and may even experience a “return to Judaism. ³² Most agree that “community is the locus of Jewishness” and it thus follows that interventions “should be done with respect.³³ Ultimately, “engagement with the community constrains as well as enables Israel-critical activism.”³⁴ Landy’s last two chapters seek to reconcile this tension.

In “The terrain of activism,” Landy acknowledges charges that Jewish Israel-critical groups want mainly to “feel good about themselves…or ‘heal the Jews’…rather than affect the outside world,” are perhaps “backdoor Zionists” or otherwise act in “bad faith.”³⁵ Landy argues that their concern is to be effective, and offers the debate over BDS (boycott/divestment/sanctions) as an example. Groups that feel that a reformed “community” can help Palestinians find boycott ineffective, for the opposition it arouses, while those who view the community as less important than the larger world find it successful and useful. Landy does not dispel suspicion of the opponents, who apparently oppose a broader, non-Jewish movement like that against apartheid South Africa.

A common view is that Jewish criticism of Israel discourages anti-semitism, but one activist questioned its importance in the Palestine solidarity movement. In support of one who did not, Landy could only cite Israeli ex-patriate jazz musician Gilad Atzmon, for comparing US organized Jewry to the Elders of Zion.³⁶ Atzmon was in good company, with comedian Jon Stewart, the late Israeli academic and activist Tanya Reinhart, and veteran Israeli politico Uri Avnery.³⁷ A related view is that speaking “as a Jew” breaks the link between Jews and Zionism. Landy notes that this can also “strengthen the idea of a primordial link” and make Jews “gatekeepers” of criticism, but in the end accepts such ploys. The view of one interviewee that “solidarity with Palestinians has to be taken out of that [Jewish] ghetto” is an outlier.³⁸

Landy’s final chapter is “Rooted cosmopolitans: participants and Palestinians.” His activists have adopted this position “to counter the characterization of an actor as being a rootless cosmopolitan,” with no “real stake in the local [Jewish] field and therefore…of no relevance.”³⁹ Landy’s concern is that this self-conception “leads to a lack of contact and denial of political subjectivity of Palestinians” which “hampers movement effectiveness in achieving change.⁴⁰ Landy argues that relating to Palestinians is a general problem for the Palestine solidarity movement; his chief example is western feminist criticism of Palestinian men and women.

Jewish activists have special difficulties. Some are jolted by political trips. “‘I felt bad for being so concerned with my own Jewishness…Here that concern feels selfishly stupid. The people of Gaza are persecuted. Full stop.’⁴¹ Jewish groups, however, are limited by heavy reliance on Israeli interlocutors, and their desire to appeal to Jewish diaspora public. They tend to cast Palestinians as victims without agency and in need of charity, even as they deprecate solidarity groups as uncritical.

Landy errs in chapter two when he labels Deutscher a “Eurocentric” who replayed “the Zionist-Bundist debates of his youth.”⁴² Deutscher was a Communist, never a Bundist, and implicitly shared the Palestine Communist Party’s struggle against Zionism and British imperialism in the 1930s. The international PCP was torn apart in 1943 by the rising Arab-Jewish struggle over Palestine; after the war Deutscher accepted Israel, but did not consider himself a Zionist, and was acutely critical until his death shortly after the June 1967 war. Landy also overlooks classical Reform Judaism’s strictly religious version of the “Jewish prophetic,” and Marc Ellis’s religious notion of exile, though he is surely correct about their secular misappropriation. While tikkun olam is now interpreted as a call for social justice, it began as a prescription for social order.⁴³

Landy is correct to qualify today’s Jewish “ethnic” self-description. A century ago, many cities in western Europe and North America had districts where life was scarcely distinguishable from cities in the Pale of Settlement in the Russian Empire. No amount of academic theorizing about ethnicity can equate Yiddish immigrant society and contemporary “Jewish identity.” A more fruitful branch of social theory is race theory, in the modern sense of race; e.g., “whiteness,” as a social construction.⁴⁴  Few social artifacts today are more wilfully and assiduously constructed than “Jewish identity,” beginning with Zionism.

Zionism is not “Jewish nationalism.” That term is reserved for political movements which arose in Jewish quasi-national conditions in the Pale of Settlement, where Jews spoke Yiddish, and were a high plurality, especially in the cities. Such movements included the socialist Bund, and the bourgeois Autonomist movement. Zionism, which proclaimed a “people” speaking a vernacular language that did not exist, in a land they did not inhabit, a people descended from biblical “history,” a people alien to their societies, no matter how acculturated or assimilated, is not nationalism, but race doctrine. “Because it defines Jew not by religious observance, language, place of birth, or culture, but by descent, Zionism is an ideology of race.”⁴⁵ Unsurprisingly, the biblical studies, archaeology and historiography that purport to show a “Jewish people” have been totally demolished.⁴⁶  In modern terms, the “Jewish” national group in Palestine can only be Israeli Hebrew, potentially a secular nationality open to all, as Boas Evron argued in Jewish State or Israeli Nation in 1986.⁴⁷

Diaspora Zionism, the “Zionism of Jewish peoplehood,” is also race doctrine, ipso facto, no less wilfully and assiduously constructed.

We Jews form a unique entity, neither wholly a nation, nor wholly a religion, though part of us share a common faith, and all of us derive from that faith. We are a group without a common language, and with little that binds us as a common culture. What makes us a group today? It is our international character and concern; we are men and women who care deeply about what happens to Jews throughout the world. It is our historical heritage; we are men and women who together come from somewhere. It is our destiny; we are men and women who share a common fate…We are made a group…by our fathers and mothers and theirs, who constituted a people on earth, and who brought us into the world to carry on the existence of that people.⁴⁸

Obviously, the racial construction of “Jewishness” excludes personal and family history. In principle it also excludes Judaism, the academic study of Jewish and Judaic subjects, and cultural and philanthropic activity. Racism begins when such activities are undertaken in the name of the Jewish people, in support of its social and political claims, or when such claims are opposed in the privileged terms of Jewish identity politics. This critique is immanent in Landy’s strained attribution of Jewish “ethnicity” to contemporary diaspora Jews, and in his critique of Jewish identity politics as, essentially, a regime of privilege. He cites one description of “ethnic community” as “an ideological claim: ‘a categorical identity that is premised on various forms of exclusion and construction of otherness.’”⁴⁹

The left Jewish field in the US maintains its own doxa and illusio, some that Landy criticizes and some he misses, as shown by the views of Jewish Voice for Peace, the largest US group. JVP’s web site states that “Jewish ethics guide us to a belief that Israeli Jews and Palestinian Arabs are of equal importance and deserve equal rights; members are inspired by Jewish tradition to work together for peace, social justice.”⁵⁰ The group has a new rabbinical council, but does not identify itself as religious. Landy criticizes this self-attribution of the universal on several grounds. One must add that in modern terms there is only Judaic religion, or secular citizenship; accepting secular “Jewish ethics” and “progressive Jewish tradition” as more than personal allusion and illusion, as collective social traits, lets identity politicians turn Jewish identity into a universal category, and claim identity prejudices as civil rights.

JVP claims that “[b]ecause we are Jews, we have a particular legitimacy in voicing an alternative view.” Moreover, “Israel claims to be acting in the name of the Jewish people, and it is up to us to make sure the world knows that many of us are opposed to their actions.”⁵¹ In Landy’s terms this “‘queers’ Jewish identity” from the Zionist norm, “enabling others to speak [critically] about Israel/Palestine.”⁵² He acknowledges that “such practices can strengthen the idea of a primordial link between Jews and the Jewish state…whether…through criticism or through support.” ⁵³ For JVP it makes “the community” the normative locus.

While Landy testifies to the Zionist obduracy of the Jewish field in Britain, and Esther Kaplan states that “no effort tough enough to overpower that [Israeli] government’s belligerence will ever emerge from the American Jewish community,” JVP national director Rebecca Vilkomerson states: “We are trying to create a space in the Jewish world where we can express our criticism as Jews without needing to apologize for ourselves.”⁵⁴ Deputy director Cecilie Surasky seems anguished most of all by the hostility of official Jewry. “‘It’s very painful to do this work and it’s very hard…I do not use the word McCarthyite lightly.’” “Jewish organizations in San Francisco have ‘banned us [JVP] from the Jewish public square.’”⁵⁵

JVP pursues a Potemkin politics of “Jewish debate,” notably by organizing debates on BDS, with interlocutors who advocate arming and funding and supporting Israel politically to the hilt. J Street, the “pro-peace, pro-Israel” lobby, advocates “maintaining Israel’s qualitative military edge” as “an important anchor for a peace process” along with “robust US foreign aid to Israel”.⁵⁶ JVP debated BDS with J Street at Princeton University, in defense of a campus BDS measure.⁵⁷ A second debate was organized at J Street’s annual meeting in 2010, for the express purpose of discrediting JVP.⁵⁸ A debate in Boston pitted Vilkomerson against a liberal hypocrite and a neoconservative, the range of Jewish communal opinion.⁵⁹ JVP’s first attempt was to invite the Jewish Federation of San Francisco to debate; naturally the Federation didn’t show.⁶⁰ This activity is like asking Murder, Inc. to plead guilty to manslaughter, when it commits first degree homicide with impunity. Posing the real question—should Israel be coerced by withholding US support—would reveal communal obduracy and dispel the illusion that it can be reformed.

Another disadvantage of Jewish sanction of criticism of Israel, according to Landy, is that it can lead to Jews determining what is and is not acceptable. Landy claims that activists “are alive to the problem of becoming ‘certifying authorities.’⁶¹ Again, JVP seems to regard this not as a problem, but an opportunity. On the origins of US policy, JVP states:

“Interest groups within the United States, such as the Christian Zionist lobby, the arms and aerospace industry lobbies, and right-leaning Jewish organizations, have a vested interest in maintaining the Occupation.”⁶²

This is narrowly true, but very misleading. Israel exists today because the nascent Zionist lobby captured US policy 1944-48 and secured official patronage for a Jewish state, over the opposition of the military and diplomatic establishments, and amidst elite concern that national security was being affected by partisan politics.⁶³ Today’s fundamentalist Christian supporters of Israel were far over the horizon, and US arms sales to Israel were proscribed.

John Mearsheimer and Stephen Walt, in The Israel Lobby and U.S. Foreign Policy, call Christian Zionists a “an important ‘junior partner’” for whom Israel is not the sole or most important issue, and who do not have the lobbying ability, policy analysis and financial resources of the American-Israel Public Affairs Committee.⁶⁴ Nor are Christian evangelicals united behind Israel. A film for this audience, With God on Our Side, looks “at the consequences Christian Zionism has on the local people in the Middle East, especially the Palestinians,” and leads thoughtful Christians “to question some of the things they had always just taken for granted.”⁶⁵ Mearsheimer and Walt also show that US military aid is designed to benefit Israel, often to the detriment of US arms manufacturers.⁶⁶ They further note that “American Jews are the lobby’s predominant constituency.”⁶⁷ All organizations represented in the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations strongly support the present US-Israel relationship, including arms sales, making all of them “right-wing.”

JVP’s constrained view of history is abetted by its “core principles,” including “human rights, and respect for international law.” Landy emphasizes the inadequacy of the rights and law discourse. “Palestinians need the right to seek redress within the framework of their loss, not futile demands by outsiders that their occupier acts illegally…‘a rights discourse entails the renunciation of the frame, the historical context.’”⁶⁸ That context is the conquest of Arab Palestine by Zionist Israel, now a century old. International law and human rights are important, but omitting Zionism is like describing the Nazi conquest of Poland and the Judeocide as violations of League of Nations collective security, and the minority rights clauses of the Versailles Treaty, without mentioning Nazism.

JVP’s liberalism does not include opposing Zionism. On Zionism, JVP only states that its “members hold a wide variety of views on many issues involved in the Israel-Palestine conflict. This diversity has been a great source of strength for JVP.”⁶⁹ It is also a source of confusion and ignorance. JVP’s “Israel-Palestine 101” material leads the reader carefully away from, not toward, insights like Boas Evron’s noted above, away from any fundamental critique of Zionism. One “primer” states: “Zionism, or Jewish nationalism, is a modern political movement. Its core beliefs are that all Jews constitute one nation (not simply a religious or ethnic community) and that the only solution to anti-Semitism is the concentration of as many Jews as possible in Palestine/Israel and the establishment of a Jewish state there.⁷⁰ The innocuous claim of “modernity” contradicts the common view of Zionism as reactionary and pre-modern because it opposes assimilation and integration of Jews. JVP accepts secular Jewish identity, and accepts Zionism as a “solution to anti-Semitism.” Yet that secular identity was also upheld by racialist anti-semitism, of which Zionism was a fraternal twin, a role which included major cooperation with Nazism.

Zionism’s antithesis, liberal society, has proven the overwhelmingly successful “solution to anti-Semitism,” but that doesn’t interest the authors, Joel Beinin and Lisa Hajjar, American academics in Middle East Studies. They present Zionist and Arab claims to Palestine as if they cannot be adjudicated. Zionist claims are based “on the biblical promise to Abraham and his descendants” and “on the fact that this was the historical site of the Jewish kingdom of Israel.” Arab claims are based on “continuous residence in the country for hundreds of years, and the fact that they represented the demographic majority.” They note that Arabs “reject the notion that a biblical-era kingdom constitutes the basis for a valid modern claim,” as if this were a partisan view, not international law and common sense.

Beinin and Hajjar argue that Jews needed “a haven from European anti-Semitism,” as if a Jewish state in Palestine would obviously and necessarily have prevented the Judeocide. The great majority of Jews in Germany and Austria managed to emigrate before war began.⁷¹ Most European Jews were not in Germany, but in Poland. One historian has estimated that “had the gates of Palestine been open in the 1930s…[i]nstead of 140,000 Polish olim during the entire [interwar] period, there would perhaps have been half a million who went to Palestine. (To be sure, even that figure would not have solved the Jewish question in Poland.)”⁷² Had the Nazis conquered Palestine, it would have been a death trap, not a refuge. The Judeocide happened because Hitler and Nazi Germany committed it, not because there was no Jewish state; the Zionist movement in any case always subordinated rescue of Jews to its political aims in Palestine.

Beinin and Hajjar acknowledge Orthodox religious anti-Zionism, but cannot name liberal, secular anti-Zionism. “Some Jews…opposed Zionism out of concern that their own position and rights as citizens in their countries would be at risk if Jews were recognized as a distinct national (as opposed to religious) group.” For Beinin and Hajjar liberalism was apparently only an obstacle to Jewish collective destiny, not a positive program. Overall, their “primer” concedes most of the critical history of Zionism in Palestine, while defending Zionism in subtle and unsubtle ways.

Even as Israel commits genocide and foments wars, it demands recognition as the state of the Jewish people. Rejecting Zionism, not merely “the occupation,” as bellicose racialism, is a moral imperative, not a debating point. A sovereign Jewish state in Arab Palestine is inherently violent and unnatural, as the record amply shows. Full peace will arrive only when the Israeli Hebrews become another minority in the Arab and Muslim world. The historic Jewish communities would naturally revive, and Hebrew Palestine would become a source of Jewish tradition, and of cosmopolitan detachment, for the Islamic world. That is the only moral future for Zionism, whatever the path.

The “strategic asset” view of the US-Israel relationship is a staple in left Jewish thought, as developed by Beinin and others.⁷³ The “asset” view, which denies or deprecates the relationship between US policy and organized US Jewry, is the most important example of the gatekeeper effect noted by Landy, the most important question of all, and must be considered at length. Mearsheimer and Walt deprecate Israel’s “asset value” even during the Cold War; Walt states that Israel has been a strategic nemesis, an instrument of imperial decline, from the 1990-1 Gulf War to today.⁷⁴ Israel’s US supporters were a decisive factor in the 1991 Gulf War. Israel had traditionally cultivated Iran against the Arab states, in its “periphery” doctrine, which did not change after the Iranian revolution overthrew the Shah in 1979. During the Iran-Iraq war, Israel’s US supporters tried assiduously to orient US policy against Iraq, most conspicuously in the Iran-contra affair. After Iraq invaded Kuwait in 1990, the congressional war vote—52 to 47 in the Senate, 250 to 183 in the House—was the closest since the War of 1812, amidst dire predictions of casualties, and deprecation of war aims.⁷⁵ “Some of the ten Democrats in the Senate and eight-six in the House who supported the use-of-force resolution did so because of their overriding concern for the fate of Israel.”⁷⁶ The ultras, chiefly Jewish neoconservatives, argued for attacking Baghdad and overthrowing Saddam Hussein, but were frustrated when Bush limited the campaign to expelling Iraqi forces from Kuwait. The overthrow of Saddam Hussein was elaborated in a 1996 study, “Clean Break: A New Strategy for Securing the Realm,” published by an Israeli think-tank, but written by US neoconservatives for the new Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.⁷⁷ The replacement of Saddam Hussein’s regime by a Hashemite monarchy was proposed, as part of a broad assault on Israel’s “enemies,” including Hizbollah in Lebanon, Syria and Iran.

When Clean Break was written, Iran had surpassed Iraq in Israel’s demonology. The US policy of “dual containment” of Iran and Iraq was an incentive for Israel to participate in the Oslo “peace process.”⁷⁸  Crippling sanctions were imposed on Iraq, over the opposition of the US oil companies.⁷⁹  US-Iran trade of $5 billion was first banned by executive order, then prohibited outright by legislation. Business interests protested vehemently and later organized unsuccessfully against the legislation.⁸⁰ Several Clean Break authors became part of the George W. Bush administration, making it then “a policy manifesto for the Israeli government penned by members of the current U.S. government.⁸¹ Afghanistan was targeted immediately after 9/11, but the invasion of Iraq followed in March, 2003, accompanied by fabrications about Iraqi weapons of mass destruction and a connection with al-Qaeda.

The 9/11 attacks themselves were directed above all against US patronage of Israel. The “notion of payback for injustices suffered by Palestinians is perhaps the most powerfully recurrent in bin Laden’s speeches.”⁸² Bin Laden’s concern for Palestine is attested by statements from his mother about his teenage years; by accounts after Israel invaded Lebanon in 1982, to drive out the Palestine Liberation Organization, and intimidate Palestinians in the occupied territories; and from his first public political statement in 1994. “Speaking just before the 2004 presidential elections, bin Laden himself voiced amazement that Americans, deceived, he supposed, by their government, had yet to understand that he had struck America because ‘things just went too far with the American-Israeli alliance’s oppression and atrocities against our people.’”⁸³ The perpetrators of the 1993 bombing of the World Trade Center garage, which killed 6, shared that view.⁸⁴

Israel’s long march to war on Iran is the ultimate strategic nemesis, a nightmare from which we cannot seem to awaken. AIPAC forced renewal of the Iran-Libya Sanctions Act in March 2001, over strenuous objection by business interests. Iran provided vital cooperation during the US attack on Afghanistan in late 2001, but the ultras spurned further contacts. After the US crushed Iraq in the spring of 2003, Iran proposed, through Swiss auspices, an extraordinary “grand bargain” of critical concessions, in return for improved relations, which the ultras also spurned. The ultras have also thwarted US “realist” initiatives, such as a 2004 study by the Council on Foreign Relations urging dialogue with Iran; the 2006 Iraq Study Group proposal of a gradual US withdrawal from Iraq, in consultation with Syria and Iran; and the December, 2007 National Intelligence Estimate, a consensus of the 16 US intelligence agencies, which deprecated Iran’s nuclear potential.

The ultras’ relentless campaign against Iran informs US policy in Afghanistan, Libya and Syria. The “major domestic supporters of an accelerated war in Afghanistan are the neoconservatives,” wrote Stephen Sniegoski in 2009. Stabilizing Afghanistan “would involve broadening Iran’s role in Afghanistan” making it “virtually impossible for the US to treat it as an enemy.⁸⁵ The ultras “will be advocating a hard-line interventionist position towards Libya, in large part, because they see that such an endeavor can facilitate U.S. military intervention in Iran.”⁸⁶  The US is presently attempting to overthrow the Assad regime in Syria, ally of Iran and patron of Hizbollah in Lebanon, by exploiting popular protest. Manifestos such as “Which Path to Persia?” and “Toward a Post-Assad Syria,” from many of the Clean Break authors, prepare the way.⁸⁷ Recent history is following 1982 proposals by Israeli strategist Oden Yinon to balkanize the entire Arab world into ethnic and religious statelets which Israel could easily dominate. Such ideas long predate Yinon’s article in Zionist thought.⁸⁸

The Iran campaign has entered a more ominous phase. AIPAC legislated sanctions on foreign firms dealing with Iran’s central bank, a requirement in oil sales.⁸⁹  Iran threatened to block the Strait of Hormuz, and held naval exercises.⁹⁰ Trita Parsi warns that the “temperature between the West and Iran has increased dramatically…military confrontation is a rising probability.”⁹¹ Iran has become an issue in the 2012 presidential campaign, while Netanyahu, US neoconservatives and GOP elements are plotting to prevent Obama’s re-election.⁹² Roger Cohen in the New York Timeswarned Netanyahu against attacking Iran to influence the election.⁹³  The US has cancelled military exercises with Israel and has warned Netanyahu against an attack.⁹⁴  Israel insists that any attack is “far off,” and things are hanging fire more precariously.⁹⁵

In the vulgar Marxism favored by the Jewish left, this is all a capitalist master plan to seize “oil” and “resources.” Yet the capitalists, including the oil industry, opposed sanctions; indeed the ultras vilify business for selling out Israel. Capitalism requires access, not sanctions, and enough peace for trade and investment. Politics and ideology are separate domains from economics, and capitalism is a protean system that can exist under different regimes. Capitalist Germany had interests in eastern Europe under the Kaiserreich, the Weimar Republic, the Third Reich, the Federal Republic during the Cold War, and in the unified Federal Republic of today. The Nazi period, and the invasion of the USSR, resulted not from a sudden interest in Russian oil and wheat, but because German elites embraced a dictatorship and its fanatical ideology, which led them to total war and genocide.

Zionism is playing that role for the US today; it is turning western Asia into the “eastern front” of the US empire, comparable to the eastern front of the Third Reich. Like the Nazi crusade against “Judeobolshevism” and the Judeocide, the US eastern front is the site of our most depraved ideologies and deeds—Islamophobia, the “war on terror,” the “clash of civilizations,” crushing attacks on Arab societies, beginning with Palestine, with more horrors threatening daily. As the 1930s wore on, Hitler consolidated his rule, outflanking elite conservatives. The struggle between the ultras and the realists over US foreign policy is like the struggle between Nazis and non-Nazi conservatives in the 1930s; it cannot be said that today’s realists are winning. The Zionist agenda of total war, which includes 9/11 and its disastrous blow to civil liberties, is the essential axis of the emerging US dictatorship.

Obviously, Israel did not invent the US empire and its military Moloch, which gave Osama bin Laden his start against the Soviets in Afghanistan. The empire also overthrew the elected government of Iran and installed the Shah in 1953, which led to the Islamic revolution 26 years later. Nor has Israel invented the rivalry of Iran and the Arab Gulf states, or the differences between Sunni and Shia Islam, or Arab monarchies, or other features of regional politics. However, Israel’s anti-gentile racialism, its boundless irredentism, and its overwhelming influence on the US government, have turned normal politics into an existential crisis, and national interest into an endless war for existence, with pyrrhic victories for winners and total destruction for losers.

Against this world-historical catastrophe, JVP offers ahistorical legalism and anti-occupation; strategic asset; and—the last refuge of the scoundrel on this topic—anti-anti-Semitism. “As Jews, we can make the distinction between real anti-Semitism and the cynical manipulation of that issue to shield Israel from legitimate criticism. [A]s long as even legitimate criticism of Israel is blocked by accusations of anti-Semitism, it is the responsibility of Jews to stand up for universal justice. [W]e also believe that actual anti-Semitism is alive and well and is mostly misunderstood both on the left and in the mainstream.”

JVP publishes an anti-anti-Semitism manifesto, its contribution to a literary genre on the Jewish left.⁹⁶

Reframing Anti-Semitism begins by discussing “the Holocaust” as the cardinal event in Jewish history and Jewish consciousness. “Holocaust” means “burnt offering,” as in a religious sacrifice; historians prefer non-emotional, descriptive terms such as “Judeocide.”⁹⁷ JVP has no interest in criticism like that of Marc Ellis, who discusses the “Holocaust and redemption” syndrome long used to defend Zionism, or of Norman Finkelstein, who describes how a rich “Holocaust industry” shakes down governments and financial institutions. JVP has its own use, to define “illegitimate” and “legitimate criticism of Israel,” and to trivialize and caricature claims of Zionist influence as “Jewish conspiracy theories,” and thus prima facie evidence of “anti-semitism on the left.” For US policy, JVP adduces the usual alternate suspects, Christian Zionism and the arms industry, and tragicomically compares the Jewish role to that of medieval Jews who were channeled into exploiting the peasantry while serving landowners and nobility.

One article charges the Allies with responsibility for the Final Solution for focusing on defeating the Nazis instead of saving Jews, as if there were a choice. “Arguably, the decision to do nothing else to save the victims’ lives can be seen as culpability akin to violence.”⁹⁸ Historian William Rubinstein, in The Myth of Rescue, doubts that more Jews could have been saved “by any action which the Allies could have taken at the time, given what was actually known about the Holocaust, what was actually proposed at the time, and what was realistically possible.”⁹⁹ He implies that the “failure to rescue” critique mainly expresses Jewish chauvinism after the June, 1967 war. “This great and profound change in the perception of the Allies and their leaders arose fairly abruptly between the late 1960s and mid-1980s.”¹⁰⁰ Rubinstein also reviews immigration policy and anti-Semitism in the democracies in the 1930s.

The JVP writers in Reframing Anti-Semitism generally concede that Jews live freely today, but still find pervasive anti-semitism in subtle and unique forms, and find it perpetually immanent in gentile attitudes. JVP holds an essentialist view of gentiles as inalienable anti-Semites, actual or potential, which is the inverse of anti-Semitic essentialism about Jews. Two thoughtful articles attempt to deal with Jewish chauvinism, in limited ways.

Rightward of JVP, the liberal temper is shown by the “pro-peace, pro-Israel” J Street, fulsome funders and armourers of Israel. Another example is Peter Beinart, whose widely cited 2010 article denounced “the failure of the Jewish establishment” to preserve “humane universalistic Zionism.”¹⁰¹  Beinart warned of the disaffection of young, liberal American Jews, and of the future domination of communal life by the blindly pro-Israel Orthodox. The “humane univeralist Zionism” has never existed, and pro-Israel fanaticism arrived long ago, seen today in the Iran war drive and the plotting of Obama’s defeat. Beinart is a step back from the late Tony Judt, who called for a unitary democratic state nearly a decade ago.¹⁰²  The danger is not anti-Semitism but the opposite, overweening Jewish power and confidence, which make the US-Israel relationship immutable.

JVP’s outlook expresses maximum Jewish advantage and minimum Jewish obligation, a lawyerly plea bargain on behalf of Jewish identity. This is due to an exaggerated sense of Jewish entitlements, and to anti-gentilism. Philip Weiss, co-editor of the influential web site Mondoweiss, has written candidly about the Jewishness of today’s establishment, about the anti-gentilism of his upbringing, and about anti-gentilism in the left. The “bastards, the goyim in power, they always received the full measure of our scorn…the bastards had unbroken pedigree in my family’s cultural/political memory from Coolidge to Hoover to Dulles to Eisenhower to Nixon to Reagan, right on up to the Bushes and the Koch brothers. These were the real powers in political life; and I think there is some bastard-ism in Chomsky’s analysis and in the New Yorker magazine’s.” Yet: “We are wealthy and privileged in America…we are not excluded from the real sources of power. To believe otherwise is a piece of nostalgic self-service.”¹⁰³

Anti-gentilism encourages the idea that gentile criticism is, or must inevitably be, about more than Israel. Endless repetition of the truism that it’s not anti-Semitic to criticize Israelmakes anti-Semitism the overriding concern, and conceals the mortal dangers of Zionism, come what may in Palestine, in the Gulf, in Washington, or on 9/11. JVP’s “Muzzlewatch” web site seeks to expose “pressure, intimidation, and outright censorship of critics of US-Israeli policy,” anodyne terms for fanatical attacks like those on 11th-grader Jesse Lieberfeld for his prize-winning essay criticizing Israel.¹⁰⁴  Perhaps the fact that they are Jewish, and are also directed at gentiles, prevents JVP from calling such attacks Jewish racism. Racism is instead reserved for gentile attacks on Jews.

Landy speaks of his UK subjects “‘queering’ Jewish identity.” JVP claims that “[b]ecause we are Jews, we have a particular legitimacy in voicing an alternative view,” and affirms the “responsibility of Jews to stand up for universal justice.” This accepts Zionist essentialism about “Jews.” Secular “Jewish identity” cannot be “queered” from the outside, nor can it be the basis for “universal justice,” because it is a Zionist invention, based on anti-gentilism. For Ahad Ha’am, one of its chief inventors a century ago, “assimilation, not antisemitism…threatened the Jewish people most compellingly.”¹⁰⁵ Thus Ahad Ha’am disowned one of his daughters when she married a gentile, despite the husband’s conversion, since “for nonreligious Jews like himself…‘a goy remains a goy’” who could not “‘change [by his conversion] his soul from within.’”¹⁰⁶ “The State has no daughters,’” Ahad Ha’am said sternly, and saw his daughter once in the remaining 15 years of his life.¹⁰⁷

Freedom is absolute and normative, not Jewish identity. The possible disappearance of the group through assimilation is a trifling price to pay for freedom and its benefits. While “Jewish Israel-critical activity” may have a role in assisting people of Jewish background to understand Israel and Zionism, mature awareness, and general public awareness, cannot be so limited. “Universal justice” cannot be achieved on Jewish terms, but only with the rest of humanity. JVP members should declare that Zionism has no claim on Jewish identity or gentile conscience, proclaim themselves liberal citizens, and join their fellow citizens in opposing Zionism, in the US and Palestine. Any Jewish Israel-critical activity must be subordinated to that. Any hypothetical anti-Semitism can be opposed only in concert with others, not by Jewish separatism. Precedents are the people in Landy’s study who work in “society-wide groups” and “the New York activist group JATO [Jews Against the Occupation]” which “now exists more or less as a paper organization, since many members have joined Adalah-NY, the wider boycott organization in New York.¹⁰⁸

The chief concern of US citizens must be the US-Israel relationship and its arming, funding and political support of Israel. BDS is adopted because the formal political process is owned by the “Israel lobby,” which precludes coercing Israel by reducing US support. A narrow legal focus on particular actions and companies may sometimes be useful in pressing BDS, but asking “who profits from the occupation” implies that profits of Motorola and the like are driving US policy. This is naive if not deliberate obfuscation. Broader BDS campaigns like cultural and academic boycott can stigmatize Israel, and US support for it, like apartheid South Africa. Whatever the approach, reliance on BDS cannot obscure the fact of US support for Israel and its sources.

The Washington-based US Campaign to End the Occupation says nothing about Zionism. It has never organized a demonstration against the annual AIPAC meeting, which the president and most of Congress attend, though it did showcase a small Jewish demonstration. This is due to the “strategic asset” and anti-anti-Semitism dogmas of JVP, which has shared personnel with the Campaign. It was up to scrappy Code Pink to organize Move Over AIPAC in 2011, which the Campaign, and JVP and others “endorsed” but did little about, except to oppose Helen Thomas’s presence.¹⁰⁹  Code Pink is organizing Occupy AIPAC in early March.¹¹⁰. Every year energetic and courageous campus activists organize “Israeli Apartheid Week,” which dramatizes the facts on the ground. Showing their origins requires Anti-Zionism Week.

Professors Mearsheimer and Walt, in The Israel Lobby and U.S. Foreign Policy, insist that the “Israel lobby” is just another interest group doing its job, when Grant Smith has shown that it has always operated on the margins of legality.¹¹¹ Mearsheimer and Walt accept Israel as a Jewish state, rather than discussing it as racist.¹¹² These emphases reflect in part their total lack of support from elsewhere in the culture, notably the left.

The tentativeness and limitations of criticism of Israel in the US show that a general movement against Zionism is the only way of even addressing the issues and marshaling such resources as we have.

Today, Jewish identity is made to seem as timeless and monumental as the Grand Canyon, but it is really a big sand dune blown up by chauvinist winds since 1967. In the 1940s, American Jews rallied to the Zionist call, established the state of Israel—and that was that. Ant-Semitism declined rapidly, and Jews began to enjoy their just desserts in liberal society. Holocaust and Israel were not the complexes they later became. Three historians of US Jewry have called the two postwar decades a “golden age.”¹¹³

The New Left, which began in the late 1950s, had many Jewish members, though not a majority. Nonetheless, “Jewish issues in these years…were publicly invisible.”¹¹⁴ Anti-Semitism was not a concern, Jews were prosperous, and Israel was neither threatened nor threatening. “The New Left was the most ‘American’ movement since the early Socialist party at around the turn of the century…made up almost entirely of native-born Americans,” and “also more American than its predecessors in terms of its ideology and dominant themes.”  This broad appeal was important to Jewish and non-Jewish members alike. Thus, like “their cosmopolitan Jewish predecessors in the pre-World War I Socialist party and in the student movement of the 1930s, the Jewish New Leftists did not desire to be tied to particularistic primordial groups and identities. They wanted instead to be part of a universalistic movement.”¹¹⁵ The contrast with today’s Jewish left could not be sharper, and compares unfavorably to the Jewish religious debate over the Judeocide in the 1960s and later.

One school in the debate held that the “‘Voice of Auschwitz… commands the survival of Jews and Judaism. Because Hitler was bent on the destruction of both, it is the duty of the Jews who survived Hitler to make sure that they do not do his work, that they do not, by assimilation, bring about the disappearance of what Hitler attempted, but ultimately failed to destroy.’”¹¹⁶ Another school ridiculed the substitution of “‘the commanding Voice of Auschwitz’ for the revelation of Sinai, and Hitler for Moses.”¹¹⁷ For this view, “‘the voices of the Prophets speak more loudly than Hitler,’” and “‘the divine promise sweeps over the crematoria and silences the voice of Auschwitz.’”¹¹⁸ “Jews find in the Holocaust no new definition of Jewish identity because we need none. Nothing has changed. The tradition endures.”¹¹⁹  The secular Jewish left in the US had no such debate and affirmation. The universalism of the New Left was swept away in a tsunami of identity politics, largely, if not entirely, due to the June, 1967 war.

At the same time, for older/non-American universalists, “the tradition endured.” Isaac Deutscher, the Polish Marxist, accepted Israel after World War II, but did not consider himself a Zionist. He died on August 19, 1967, a sharp critic of Israel and its role in the origins of the June war. Rabbi Elmer Berger, who co-led the American Council for Judaism in the 1940s, at age 60 in 1968, founded Jewish Alternatives to Zionism to continue the fight, and was resolute until his death in 1996. Maxime Rodinson, the French Marxist scholar of Near Eastern languages and sociologist of Islam, remained an acute critic of Zionism and Israel to his death in 2004.

Israel Shahak survived the Warsaw Ghetto, the Judeocide, Zionism and Israel, to discover what he called “the modern, secular Jewish tradition,” which he dated from Spinoza, the most rigorous of the 17th c. rationalist philosophers. He was a chemist at the Hebrew University and a leading human rights activist and critic of Zionism and Orthodox Judaism. The Israeli Socialist Organization, founded in 1962, attempted to rebuild internationalism from the wreckage of the 1940s. The ISO, known as Matzpen (compass) for its publication, included Arab members, and Matzpen had an Arabic edition which was, however, censored. Shahak and Matzpen came of age after the 1967 war, and put Israel’s occupation on the map from the Israeli side. Shahak died in 2001; senior Matzpen alumni are still active.

All these veteran universalists knew radical evil first hand, except for Berger, who was fortified by liberal upbringing and religious conviction. It never occurred to them that, once Nazism had been totally destroyed, they were threatened by gentiles. They expressly rejected Zionism, in terms of their respective outlooks; their criticism was generally more substantive and acute than the work of the American Jewish left, and richly repays study today.

In diametric contrast, the JVP school fails to confront Zionism, in Palestine or in the US. It invokes a chimerical, liberal Palestine Zionism, or buries the subject in ahistorical legalism and anti-occupation rhetoric. It conceals Jewish power in the US with the “strategic asset” dogma, or deprecates and dismisses it. This failure to oppose Zionism with its universalist antipodes is stupendous and unbelievable, comparable to the “treason of the intellectuals” described by Julien Benda in his 1927 book about the climate that preceded World War I.¹²⁰

Landy is well aware of the many problems of identity politics, but his UK focus makes him like a promising minor league pitcher, who must still face the major league sluggers. In the words of a pitcher who had all the moves:

What do you want with this particular suffering of the Jews? The poor victims on the rubber plantations in Putumayo, the Negroes in Africa with whose bodies the Europeans play a game of catch, are just as dear to me. Do you remember the words written on the work of the Great General Staff about Trotha’s campaign in the Kalahari desert? “And the death-rattles, the cries of those dying of thirst, faded away into the sublime silence of eternity.”

Oh, this “sublime silence of eternity” in which so many screams have faded away unheard. It rings within me so strongly that I have no special corner of my heart for the ghetto; I am at home wherever in the world there are clouds, bird and human tears.

— Rosa Luxemburg, writing to Mathilde Wurm, from jail in 1917.¹²¹

1. Jack Nusan Porter and Peter Dreier, eds., Jewish Radicalism: A Selected Anthology (New York: Grove Press, 1973), p. xv-xvi.
2. Tony Kushner and Alisa Solomon, eds. Wrestling with Zion. Progressive Jewish-American Responses to the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict (New York: Grove Press, 2003), p. 81.
3. ibid.
4. ibid., p. 82
5. ibid., p. 88
6. David Landy, Jewish Identity and Palestinian Rights: Diaspora Jewish Opposition to Israel, London: Zed Books, 2011
7. ibid., p. 6
8. ibid., p. 211
9. ibid., p. 5
10. ibid., p. 12
11. ibid., p. 21
12. ibid., p. 28, quoting Bourdieu
13. ibid, quoting Bourdieu
14. ibid., p. 29
15. ibid., pp. 31-2
16. ibid., pp. 44
17. ibid., p. 47
18. ibid., pp. 42, 47
19. ibid., p. 52
20. ibid., p. 53
21. ibid., p. 64
22. ibid., p. 66
23. ibid., p. 70
24. ibid., p. 85
25. ibid., p. 78, 80
26. ibid., p. 84, 85
27. ibid., p. 89
28. ibid., p. 103
29. ibid., p. 107, 110
30. ibid., p. 125
31. ibid., p. 138
32. ibid., pp. 140-1
33. ibid., pp. 144, 148
34. ibid., p. 148
35. ibid., p. 153-4
36. ibid., p. 167
37. Philip Weiss, “Jon Stewart Calls AIPAC ‘Elders of Zion’”,  June 6, 2008; Philip Weiss, “Late Tanya Reinhart Reportedly Likened Lobby to ‘Protocols of Elders of Zion’”, September 15, 2008; Uri Avnery, “The Charge of the New York Times”,  CounterPunch, July 22, 2011
38. Landy, Jewish Identity and Palestinian Rights, p. 169
39. ibid., p. 198
40. ibid., p. 182
41. ibid., p. 191
42. ibid., p. 59
43. Jill Jacobs, “The History of ‘Tikkun Olam’”, Zeek. A Jewish Journal of Thought and Culture. June 2007.  Jacobs points out that the term also has antecedents in an intolerant passage about the true god in a common Jewish prayer.
44. See David W. Roediger, The Wages of Whiteness. Race and the Making of the American Working Class, New York: Verso, 1991
45. Noel Ignatiev, “Zionism,” Encyclopedia of Race and Racism (New York: Macmillan Press, 2007), pp. 240-44. See also EAFORD and AJAZ (International Organization for the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination, and American Jewish Alternatives to Zionism), Judaism or Zionism: What Difference for the Middle East?(London: Zed Books, 1986
46. Shlomo Sand, The Invention of the Jewish People (New York: Verso, 2009); Gabriel Piterberg, The Returns of Zionism. Myth, Politics and Scholarship in Israel (New York: Verso, 2008); Israel Finkelstein and Neil Ascherman, The Bible Unearthed. Archaeology’s New Vision of Ancient Israel and the Origin of Its Sacred Texts,  New York: Free Press, 2001
47. Boas Evron, Jewish State or Israeli Nation (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1986). The Hebrew edition appeared in 1984.
48. Jacob Neusner, Stranger at Home. “The Holocaust,” Zionism and American Judaism (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1981), pp. 135-6, Neusner, a distinguished Judaic scholar, is a loyal critic of the “people,” who considers himself “on the margins of the group.” His “Zionism of Jewish peoplehood” is descriptive, not prescriptive.
49. ibid., p. 67
50. JVP Mission Statement,”;   “Frequently Asked Questions,”
51. Jewish Voice for Peace, “Frequently Asked Questions,”
52. Landy, Jewish Identity and Palestinian Rights, pp. 17, 168.
53. ibid., p.167
54. Kaplan, “‘Globalize the Intifada’”, Wrestling with Zion, p. 88; Gal Beckerman, “JVP, Harsh Critic Of Israel, Seeks a Seat at the Communal Table But Its Refusal To Support ‘Two States’ Prevents Acceptance,” Jewish Daily Forward, April 13, 2011; see http://forward.com/articles/137016/#ixzz1evMmyIIu
55. Philip Weiss, “‘JVP’ takes on the ‘epic battle’ inside the Jewish community,” Mondoweiss, March 5, 2010;
56. “The U.S.-Israel relationship and foreign aid,”
57. Max Blumenthal, “A BDS Debate at Princeton, with J Street, JVP, and me (this Wednesday)”;
58. Max Blumenthal, “JVP’s Rebecca Vilkomerson debates for BDS at J Street’s annual convention,” March 1, 2011; Philip Weiss, “J Street says it invited boycott advocate to its conference so as to pillory her,” Mondoweiss, February 10, 2011; Phil tries to say that Ben-Ami was covering his right flank, but any organization that advocates “maintaining Israel’s qualitative military edge” is the right flank.
59. Leah Burrows, “BDS backer in hot seat at shul forum,” Jewish Advocate (Boston), October 28, 2011 -  subscription only; Leonard Fein, who co-founded Moment magazine with Elie Wiesel, and Larry Lowenthal of the American Jewish Committee were the featured speakers. The AJC is a bastion of neo-conservatism, and Moment of liberal hypocrisy; also Fein’s columns
60. Cecile Surasky, “Omar Barghouti asks Jewish Federation to a debate on BDS,” March 4, 2010
61. ibid., p.166
62. ibid., Jewish Voice for Peace, ?
63. See Michael J. Cohen, Truman and Israel (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1990). On elite concern, see Walter Millis, with the collaboration of E. S. Duffield, The Forrestal Diaries (New York: Viking Press, 1951), pp. 322, 344-46, 356-65
64. John J. Mearsheimer and Stephen M. Walt The Israel Lobby and U.S. Foreign Policy (New York: Farar, Straus and Giroux, 2007), pp. 132-39
65. See the film’s web site;  Professor Stephen Walt introduced a showing of the film at Harvard and moderated a discussion afterward
66. ibid., pp. 31-4
67. ibid., p. 115
68. Landy, Jewish Identity and Palestinian Rights, p. 138, quoting Raef Zureik
69. “Frequently Asked Questions,”
70. Joel Beinin and Lisa Hajjar, “Palestine, Israel and the Arab-Israeli Conflict. A Primer,” The authors are academics, Beinin a historian at Stanford and past president of the Middle East Studies Association, Hajjar a sociologist at UC Santa Barbara.
71. William D. Rubinstein, The Myth of Rescue. Why the Democracies Could Not Have Saved More Jews from the Nazis (London: Routledge, 1997); see Chapter 2, “The Myth of Closed Doors”
72. Ezra Mendelssohn, “Zionist Success and Zionist Failure,” in Ruth Kozodoy, David Sidorksy and Kalman Sultanik, eds., Vision Confronts Reality. Historical Perspectives on the Contemporary Jewish Agenda (New York: Herzl Press, 1989), p. 205
73. Joel Beinin, “The United States-Israeli Alliance,” in Tony Kushner and Alisa Solomon, eds. Wrestling with Zion. Progressive Jewish-American Responses to the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict (New York: Grove Press, 2003).
74. Mearsheimer and Walt, The Israel Lobby and U.S. Foreign Policy, Chapter 2, “Israel: Strategic Asset or Liability?”; Stephen Walt, “When did the American empire start to decline?”
75. Geoffrey Wawro, Quicksand. America’s Pursuit of Power in the Middle East (New York: Penguin Press, 2010), pp. 405, 418-21; Stephen Sniegoski, The Transparent Cabal. The Neoconservative Agenda, War in the Middle East, and the National Interest of Israel (Norfolk, VA: Enigma Editions, 2008), pp. 62-3
76. Elizabeth Drew, “Letter from Washington,” New Yorker, February 4, 1991
77. “A Clean Break: A New Strategy for Securing the Realm,” Institute for Advanced Strategic and Political Studies;
78. Kenneth M. Pollack, The Persian Puzzle. The Conflict Between Iran and America (New York: Random House, 2004), p. 261
79. Stephen Sniegoski, The Transparent Cabal. The Neoconservative Agenda, War in the Middle East, and the National Interest of Israel (Norfolk, VA: Enigma Editions, 2008), pp. 335-6, part of Chapter 18, “Oil and Other Motives.”
80. Sasan Fayezmanesh, “The Politics of the U.S. Economic Sanctions against Iran”, Review of Radical Political Economics 35:3, Summer 2003, pp. 221-240
81. Sniegoski, The Transparent Cabal, p. 90.
82. Max Rodenbeck, “Their Master’s Voice,” New York Review of Books, March 9, 2006.
83. Rodenbeck, “Their Master’s Voice”
84. Mearsheimer and Walt, The Israel Lobby and U.S. Foreign Policy, pp. 65-5.
85. Stephen Sniegoski, “Afghanistan: Back Door to War on Iran,” September 7, 2009;   See also Stephen Sniegoski, “President Petraeus: The Neocons’ Choice,” July 14, 2010;  and  Stephen Sniegoski, “The Duel of the Machiavellians: Obama vs. Petraeus,” July 6, 2010
86. Stephen Sniegoski, “Neocons’ Goal: Iran by Way of Libya,” March 19, 2011
87. See “Which Path to Persia?” from the Haim Saban Center at the Brookings Institution; and and “Toward a Post-Assad Syria,” from the Foreign Policy Initiative
88. Oden Yinon, “A Strategy for Israel in the Nineteen Eighties,” from Directions, a Journal for Judaism and Zionism, Issue 14, Winter 5742, February, 1982, translated by Israel Shahak;
89. See Philip Weiss, “AIPAC posterizes Obama in Senate, 100-0,”
90. David E. Sanger and Annie Lowrey, “Iran Threatens to Block Oil Shipments, as U.S. Prepares Sanctions,” New York Times, December 28, 2011
91. Trita Parsi, “Reckless talk of war with Iran makes confrontation a probability,” The Independent, January 7, 2012;
92. Max Blumenthal, “The Bibi Connection,” January 12, 2012
93. Roger Cohen, “Don’t Do It, Bibi,” January 16, 2012
94. Gareth Porter and Jim Lobe, “Obama Delays U.S.-Israeli War Exercise,” January 17, 2012
95. Isabel Kershner and Rick Gladstone, “Decision to Attack Iran Is ‘Far Off,’ Israel Says” New York Times, January 18, 2012
96. Henri Piccioto and Mitchell Plitnick, eds., Reframing Anti-Semitism. Alternative Jewish Perspectives,  San Francisco: Jewish Voice for Peace, 2004
97. Arno Mayer, Why Did the Heavens not Darken? The “Final Solution” in History, New York: Harper and Row, 1988
98. ibid., p. 75
99. William D. Rubinstein, The Myth of Rescue. Why the Democracies Could Not Have Saved More Jews from the Nazis (London: Routledge, 1997), p. x.
100. ibid., p. 2. Franklin D. Roosevelt’s demotion from Jewish hero to anti-semite was unjust, according to Robert N. Rosen, Saving the Jews. Franklin D. Roosevelt and the Holocaust, New York: Thunder’s Mouth Press, 2006
101. Peter Beinart, “The Failure of the American Jewish Establishment,” New York Review of Books, June 10, 2010; see also “‘The Failure of the American Jewish Establishment’: An Exchange,” June 24, 2010, Abraham H. Foxman, reply by Peter Beinart
102. Tony Judt, “Israel: The Alternative,” New York Review of Books, October 23, 2003.  See also “An Alternative Future: An Exchange,” December 4, 2003, Amos Elon, Abraham H. Foxman, Michael Walzer, and Omer Bartov, reply by Tony Judt
103. Philip Weiss, “The Bastards,” April 27, 2011
104. Philip Weiss, “Jesse Lieberfeld is a, a fake, b, about to be swallowed by a whale, c, the Jewish future,” January 17, 2012
105. Steven J. Zipperstein, Elusive Prophet. Ahad Ha’am and the Origins of Zionism (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1993), p. 80
106. ibid., p. 289
107. ibid., p. x
108. Landy, Jewish Identity and Palestinian Rights, p. 105
109. Harry Clark, “Move Over AIPAC”
110. See Occupy AIPAC
111. Mearsheimer and Walt, The Israel Lobby and U.S. Foreign Policy, pp. 11-12. See the web site of the Institute for Research: Middle East Policy for Grant Smith’s writing, including articles and books based on documents unearthed with FOIA
112. ibid., p. 11
113. Arthur Goren, “A ‘Golden Decade’ for American Jews, 1945-1955” in Peter Y. Medding, ed., A New Jewry? America Since the Second World War. Studies in Contemporary Jewry. An Annual. VII (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1992), for the Institute for Contemporary Jewry, the Hebrew University; Goren cites on p. 3 a chapter in a work by Lucy Dawidowicz entitled, “The Golden Age in America,” referring to 1945-67. See also Chapter XVIII, “From Cold War to Belle Epoque,” in Howard M. Sachar, A History of the Jews in America, New York: Knopf, 1992.
114. Arthur Liebman, Jews and the Left (New York: John Wiley & Sons, 1979), p. 560. See the section “The New Left and Jewish Concerns,” in Chapter 9, “The New Left and the Jewish New Left in the 1960s and 1970s”
115. ibid., p. 561
116. Neusner, Stranger at Home, p. 73, citing a review of Emil Fackenheim by Michael Wyschogrod
117. ibid., p. 86
118. ibid., p. 77, quoting Wyschogrod.
119. ibid., p. 81
120. Julien Benda, The Treason of the Intellectuals (New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction Publishers, 2007). This book has been tendentiously misinterpreted by neoconservatives, and a recent reprint has an introduction by Roger Kimball, editor of The New Criterion, but the book transcends such misuse.
121. Paul Le Blanc, ed., Rosa Luxemburg (New York: Humanity Books, 1999), p. 19

A boycott bombshell in January was dropped by an 11th-grade American Jewish teenager, Jesse Lieberfeld, who won Dietrich College’s 2012 Martin Luther King, Jr Writing Award for his essay about his moral awakening when he realised his American Jewish culture was unavoidably identified with supporting Israel.

I once belonged to a wonderful religion,” says young Jesse. “I routinely heard about unexplained mass killings, attacks on medical bases, and other alarmingly violent actions for which I could see no possible reason. ‘Genocide’ almost seemed the more appropriate term… Whenever I brought up the subject, I was always given the answer that there were faults on both sides… I felt horrified at the realisation that I was by nature on the side of the oppressors. I was grouped with the racial supremacists.” Finally, at the synagogue, he asked, “I want to support Israel. But how can I when it lets its army commit so many killings?” and was told by the rabbi, “It is a terrible thing, isn’t it? But there’s nothing we can do. It’s just a fact of life.” “I thanked him and walked out shortly afterward. I never went back.

When American youth like Jesse are forced to give up being Jewish because of Israeli crimes, it cannot be long before Israel crumbles under the weight of its accumulated crimes.

2011 witnessed the rise of Internet attacks on Israeli government sites by public-spirited BDSers determined to enforce a kind of “cyber boycott”. While the Saudi government remains aloof from BDS support, an enterprising Saudi hacker disrupted several Israeli websites in January, prompting Israeli hacker Yoni (most likely a spin-off from the Israeli military’s IDF-TEAM, which brought down Saudi and Abu Dhabi financial exchange websites last year) to threaten war, including “mass credit card exposures, and denial-of-service attacks”.

“Yoni” piously told Ynet, “We do not operate against any specific nationality, and any person who operates against the group’s principles will be harmed, regardless of religion, creed or gender. In addition, I wish to note that the group regrets harm done to innocents and tries to avoid it as much as it possible.” Imagine if Israel adhered to such high standards in its relations with its neighbours — it would not need to hack and steal credit card information from anyone.

Another such anti-BDS feint is by the pro-Israeli Internet NGO Monitor, DPWatchDog and Israel’s Reut Institute, which called on Israeli government agencies to “sabotage” and “attack” the Palestine solidarity movement, and has claimed credit for “price tag” attacks on The Electronic Intifada by Dutch Foreign Minister Uri Rosenthal, the Palestine Return Centre, the persecution of the Olympia Food Co-op, the Berkeley Daily Planet and the “Irvine 11”. In “2011: The Year We Punched Back on the Assault on Israel’s legitimacy,” Reut lauds the emergence of “our network” and gives credit to the Israeli government and “the Jewish world’s mobilisation against the political assault on Israel”.

This conflation of “Jewish” and “Israeli” is the Israel-firsters’ trump card, perversely stoking anti-Jewish sentiment where none exists, the so-called “new anti-Semitism”, a direct result of Israeli crimes. “Price tagging” is usually associated with Israeli settler terrorism, vandalism, tree-felling, mosque burnings and murder. A particular zealous advocate, Andrew Adler, suggested in the Atlanta Jewish Times in January that US President Barack Obama could be on the hit list. That the Reut Institute associates itself with such criminal activity is yet another sign of Israel’s drift towards outright pariah status, and fuel for the anger of the Jesse Lieberfelds “regardless of religion, creed or gender”.

Boycott activities are not just confined to Israeli products abroad or visits by Westerners to Israel, but are now taking place regularly on land, at sea and in the air, as activists surround Israel and invent ever new ways to break its siege of the Occupied Territories.

The Global March to Jerusalem held a conference in Beirut in January confirming 30 March, the 36th anniversary of Palestinian Land Day, as the date for their land action: “From all continents we will converge and gather along the Palestinian borders with Jordan, Egypt, Syria and Lebanon in a peaceful march towards Palestine.”

Plans for “Sailing for Freedom” by French and other European activists are moving ahead, aiming for a September yachting regatta in the Mediterranean, starting in Marseilles and proceeding to Tunisia, Egypt and Gaza. Other flotilla organisers have been discussing a new strategy of sending isolated vessels from various ports instead of high-profile flotillas, with the intent of actually breaking the siege, as opposed to merely attracting world attention to Israel (and Greek and US) sabotaging of flotillas.

In April 2012 a Flytilla is scheduled to arrive at Ben Gurion Airport, to “again challenge the Israeli policy of isolating the West Bank”. “Welcome to Palestine” is a French-Belgian initiative, modeled on the Flytilla last July, when 500 people prepared to fly to Tel Aviv. Despite the nightmare that activists experienced both in European airports and in Ben Gurion Airport, 125 actually arrived, and this year, activists are determined to increase their numbers and continue to poke the Israeli watchdog.

“The Israelis have constructed enormous prisons for Palestinians. But prisoners have a right to visits,” says Adri Nieuwhof. The idea has spread to the UK, where towns are sponsoring people to risk Israeli wrath. European airlines are now more concerned with their image in the West than with Israeli authorities, and organisers predict that there will be less collusion to pre-screen flights arriving in Tel Aviv from Europe.

These particularly plucky activists continue the tradition begun in 2011 of a peaceful blitzkreig of Israel from all sides, risking life and limb, enforcing a kind of physical “citizens boycott” of Israel, complementing the spiritual one by the young Jesses. Their co-activists on the “homefront” are now combining the physical and spiritual by the now annual protest during the Israel lobby AIPAC’s annual conference in Washington DC. This year it is called OCCUPY AIPAC, scheduled for 2-6 March. Kalle Lasn, editor of Adbusters, declared: “The time has come for the Occupy Movement to demand an end to the Occupation of Palestine.” OCCUPY AIPAC will provide a sneak preview of “Roadmap to Apartheid” narrated by Alice Walker (roadmaptoapartheid.org).

Legal actions against BDSers continue to plague activists. But there are principled judges. Twelve French activists from Boycott 68 were acquitted 15 December on charges of “inciting discrimination and racial hatred” for calling on French shoppers at Carrefour supermarkets to boycott Israeli goods. The court judgment is expected to put the kibosh on further persecution of activists.

UK’s National Union of Students endorsed campaigns targeting divestment in Eden Springs and Veolia on 6 January. Veolia suffered considerably from a robust BDS campaign across Europe last year for its light-rail project in Jerusalem, but is defiant in expanding its activities in Israel without regard to their legality. Subsidiaries of Veolia own and operate Tovlan landfill which processes Israeli waste in the occupied Jordan Valley. To sweeten the tons of garbage it dumps illegally on Palestinian land, Veolia recently offered three containers for free waste collection to Palestinians in Jiftlik. Comments Omar Barghouti, “As Desmond Tutu said, we do not need anyone to polish our chains; we want to break them altogether. This is beyond humiliating; it is racist and criminal. Derail Veolia!”

Sanctions — and their removal, in the case of the Palestinians — require foreign governments to stare down the powerful world Zionist lobby. Few states dare to do this, but there are more and more cracks in the walls that Israel puts up.

Palestinian Prime Minister Ismael Haniya launched a historic tour of Egypt, Tunisia, Sudan, Turkey, Qatar and Bahrain in January, welcomed throughout the region as a David to the Israeli Goliath.

Three Hamas politicians also left Gaza via Egypt to attend a meeting of the Inter-Parliamentary Union in Switzerland in January, the first time since Hamas was democratically elected in 2006. Switzerland does not belong to the European Union, which put Hamas on its list of terrorist organisations to please Israel.

“We also met with the Red Cross in Geneva, the vice-mayor of Geneva and with Islamic organisations in different cantons,” Mushir Al-Masri said. A meeting at the University of Geneva to commemorate the anniversary of Operation Cast Lead, Israel’s attack on Gaza in December 2008, was attended by 500. “All persons who were complicit in the war crimes committed in Gaza should be taken to court,” Al-Masri told the packed hall. Socialist MP Carlo Sommaruga told the audience, “I was an activist against the racist apartheid regime in South Africa. Every person has a responsibility. Everyone can participate in the BDS movement.”

“To be internationalist is to pay our debt to humanity” says Fidel Castro and this can be read on many billboards in Cuba.

What is internationalism?—cooperation among people and nations, states my dictionary. The book of definitions maintains that internationalism is a principle of communism and socialism. It is the belief of ideological leaders such as Lenin, Fidel and Che.

Che wrote in his essay, “Socialism and Man”, that proletarian internationalism isn’t just a duty but a necessity. If revolutionary leaders forget this, Che wrote, the revolution will lose its inspiration and imperialism will benefit.

Che was also known for having severely criticized Soviet Union leadership for having lost its internationalism with the world’s proletariat and the Third World. Following up on Che’s critique, I find it important to criticize communist and socialist parties, and governments led by these parties, which let down people who are oppressed by, or invaded by, national or foreign powers.

Internationalism in action

1. Internationalists must support resistance fighters against invasions. Therefore, one must chastise political parties and groups that give political or moral support to those who call themselves the Iraq Communist Party as it is part of the Quisling government the USA terrorist state set in. ICP leaders live side by side the invaders in the Green Zone. That there are organizations in the United States, UK, Denmark and elsewhere, which call themselves communist or socialist parties and that cooperate with the world’s greatest terrorist state is incomprehensible, shameful, immoral and anti-internationalist.

2. The same applies to people who still support the Zionist state of Israel, which commits genocide against the Palestinian people. Millions of decent people have gotten together to support Palestinians in many ways, including Ships to Gaza. In Denmark, four groups of people have challenged the state’s terrorist laws by donating solidarity aid to the secular leftist PFLP which is part of the Palestinian resistance. Rebellion (Denmark), Fighters and Lovers, Horserød-Stuthoff Association (veterans of WWII resistance fighters imprisoned in Horserød and Stuthoff prisons), and TIB’s club (local carpenters near Copenhagen) have aided both PFLP and FARC, Colombian armed liberation movement.

3. Internationalist can not cooperate with US-NATO aggressive wars, which always have the goal of controlling that country’s economy and politics for capitalist profits. It is shameful that many experienced socialists and communists, as well as naïve progressive people, have backed up West’s big capitalist plans to take over Libya, and thus have bombed Libya back to the stone age. Denmark was one of only six countries that dropped tens of thousands of bombs on Libya, destroying much of it infrastructure, schools, hospitals…In fact, Denmark dropped more bombs on Libya than it has on any other country in its history, Afghanistan included. And the pilots were cowards as there was no resistance by Libya’s air force, already decimated.

This conflict has little to do with the Arab Spring movement. It is a conflict between internal war lords, with ordinary people involved who wished to increase democracy but who were misled by US-NATO whose forces seek to control Libya’s oil and avoid a gold-based currency that Gaddafi was promoting amongst all African countries. Now, US-NATO has placed a lackey government in Tripoli just as they did in Afghanistan and Iraq.

4. Internationalists must also criticize comrade governments, such as Cuba and ALBA governments in Latin America, when they make big mistakes regarding internationalism. We can’t be true comrades-solidarity activists by keeping our mouths shut when this occurs. Such is the case with their support of the brutal government of Sri Lanka, which practices genocide against the minority Tamil population. Ever since independence from Great Britain, in 1947, the majority Sinhalese governments and chauvinist Buddhist monk system has discriminated against Tamils. They have constantly been treated as second class citizens, their language and religions relegated to secondary status without national recognition. Even pogroms have been employed with the brutal murder of many thousands on various occasions. And since May 2009, following the end of a 26-year civil war, ethnic cleansing in the traditional Tamil homeland in the north and eastern areas is the rule of the day.

Cuba and ALBA have spoken only positively of their historic ties with the Non-Aligned Movement (NAM), to which Sri Lanka is a member, but so are 130 other nations. One cannot, in the name of protecting each nation’s sovereignty, avoid critique when one or more of these nations oppresses or conducts pogroms and genocide against part of the population. Nor can we accept as an excuse the immoral geo-political game that nearly all governments of whatever color play.

We shall also criticize Bolivia, Uruguay, Brazil and other Latin American progressive governments for helping the US and France in their ouster of the only decent and only democratically elected people’s president in Haiti’s history, Jean-Bertrand Aristide. These Latin American governments actually assist the US’s 2004 coup d´état against Aristide by placing occupying troops in the small country, seeking to dampen the people’s anger. These progressive governments should, instead, back up the people’s desire to bring their president back to state power, just as they sought to do for President Zelaya in Honduras where national capitalists and generals kicked him out of office, with background support once again by the United States government.

5. On the personal and organizational plain, internationalism operates when workers of a major firm ask people to boycott a product because of the mistreatment of the workers by the firm. This is the case with Coca-Cola whose workers in Colombia asked us to stop buying the “drink of the death squad” (David Rovics song), because it hires mercenaries to murder workers who seek to organize a union and struggle for collective bargaining. Workers in other countries, such as Guatemala, and farmers in India have asked the same.

It is with joy that I can state that here where we gather (carpenters’ hall in Valby, Denmark), this union is one of the few local unions and political or grass roots groups in Denmark that has boycotted Coca-Cola. This is something any and all individuals can do. It is just a soda drink. So drink something else. Boycotting Coca-Cola is just like boycotting all products from Israel and Sri Lanka. It is a simple act of solidarity, of internationalism.

Charlotte and I have just returned from a six week trip in India where two of my books (“Tamil Nation in Sri Lanka” and “Sounds of Venezuela”) were published by New Century Book House, Tamil Nadu. The Tamil book concerns the history and contemporary life of the Tamil people in that island-nation, and the need to act in solidarity with them. The Venezuela short book concerns this people’s efforts to create a better world for themselves and solidarity with all peoples. When people asked us where we are from we often replied that we are “internationalists”. Interestingly, many Indians understood our meaning and were pleased to think in terms of being brothers and sisters in the world.

This concept, and feeling, of brotherly love, of internationalism has taken off in a bigger way, in 2011, than in many decades. It started in Tunisia, and has expanded to the indignados in Spain, to the anti-capitalists in Wall Street and in hundreds of cities throughout the US and the West.

We have much to criticize and yet much to be glad for as 2012 opens. We must remember and appreciate those who set us off on this new anti-capitalist/anti-imperialist, non-violent and democratic revolution—from the martyr in Tunisia (street vendor Mohammed Bouazizi) and his Iraqi spiritual brother a bit earlier, shoe-thrower Muntazar al-Zaidi, to Occupy Wall Street protestors to Bradley Manning and Julian Assange and co-workers at Wikileaks, who helped spark it all by blowing the whistle on the war criminals. These modern-day Paris Commune resisters without arms—OWS and Occupy the World—are growing and they are presenting a vision and with it a program-in-discussion that must be studied and supported.

Internationalism is an endless struggle, an endless challenge. It does not end even when one or more of our political parties take over the governing reigns. We activists from the streets must always keep our wary eyes pinned on the leaders, regardless of their names, just as our clear eyes cast light upon humanity’s future.

In December 2011, when an Israeli soldier shot him from a short distance with a tear gas canister, half of Mustafa’s face went missing. More soldiers laughed as his horrified family tried to accompany him to a nearby hospital, according to activists present at the scene. Only the mother was finally able to obtain a special permit from the Israeli military, which allowed her to be with her son.

Mustafa’s crime? He, along with Palestinian, Israeli and international peace activists, protested the besiegement of Nabi Saleh by the illegal Jewish settlement of Halamish. Halamish has existed since 1977 and drastically grown in size and population ever since, taking over privately-owned Palestinian land. As of late, Nabi Saleh has been struggling for mere survival as its fresh water spring has also been seized by settlers under the watchful eye of the Israeli army.

Mustafa died so that the village of Nabi Saleh could live. The struggle will continue for years.

A young man may now be gone, but he also left behind a legacy which has become the cornerstone of the augmenting international solidarity with Palestinians around the globe.

The struggle for justice in Palestine is ultimately between a Palestinian — protesting, with a rock or rifle in hand — and an Israeli, often equipped with the latest killing technology the arms industry has to offer. The former fights for basic rights — land, water, freedom, equality and such – while the latter is determined to intimidate, silence, imprison, and, when compelled, commit murder or even large scale massacres to prolong Israeli occupation and military dominance over Palestinians.

Things are not always so clear-cut, of course. Some Palestinians have learned with time the benefits of co-existing with the occupation. Some Israelis have jointly struggled with Palestinians against the inhumanity of the occupation, the brutality of the military and the illegality of the land seizure.

One such Israeli is Tamar Fleishman, of Machsomwatch. She is simply indefatigable. Her mission is to document the daily violations committed by the Israeli army at a series of checkpoints extending between Ramallah (in the West Bank) and Jerusalem. Showing a complete disregard for international law, and even the official foreign policy of the United States, Israel has insisted that the entirety of Jerusalem is Israel’s eternal capital. But illegally occupied East Jerusalem — or al-Quds — has been the beating heart of Palestinian national, religious, and even intellectual identity for many generations. To split the heart from the body, Israel has been choking occupied East Jerusalem since 1967, encircling it with illegal Jewish settlements, Jewish-only bypass roads, and a dizzying checkpoint structure intended to create a permanent divorce between the West Bank and a city that Palestinians see as their future capital.

Armed with a camera and her own willpower, Tamar is relentless. She knows by name all the tired-looking children who sell tea in plastic cups, newspapers and gum at all the checkpoints. She narrates their stories of humiliation, pain and struggle. She tells of the people crammed between glass walls, barbed wire and blocks of cement. As long as these women and men keep the checkpoints populated, Jerusalem will maintain its historic attachment with the rest of Palestine.

And Tamar, the habitual visitor of these very spots, will resume her daily toil to convey the stories that capture the essence of this enduring conflict.

But without the numerous media outlets that challenge the inherent pro-Israeli bias, censorship and apathy of mainstream media, Mustafa’s story and Tamar’s photos would have remained confined to Nabi Saleh, or some checkpoint manned by cruel soldiers.

In fact, the story of Palestine is getting more than a good share of coverage in old and new alternative media outlets. More, 2011 has concluded on a positive note as far as media coverage of this conflict is concerned. In an article entitled, ‘The media consensus on Israel is collapsing’, Jordan Michael Smith reveals that “slowly but unmistakably, space is opening up among the commentariat for new, critical ideas about Israel and its relationship to the United States” (salon.com, December 21). While Smith rightly credits the academics Tony Judt, Stephen Walt and John Mearsheimer for “expanding the permissible,” the pressure on mainstream media has been obstinately championed by numerous individuals from all walks of life. It is they, who, for many years, refused to subscribe to the convenient narrative that venerates and vindicates Israel — not only at the expense of Palestinians, but also at the expense of the United States’ foreign policy.

The popular solidarity movement continues to score new victories with each passing day. Israel’s attempt at countering its gains seems to achieve little more than inviting controversy, which actually recruits more support for Palestinian rights.

One platform that has become very successful in recent years, and particularity so in 2011, was the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) movement.

“The BDS movement is growing relentless,” wrote Eric Walberg, author and editor at al-Ahram Weekly. His ‘BDS Updates’ regularly highlight the overwhelming success of the worldwide initiative that is partly modeled on the triumphant anti-Apartheid movement of South Africa. His year-ender updates for 2011 included the cancelation of an Israel tour by the famous musician Natacha Atlas (though sadly, not all artists were so principled). Walberg also reported that “in a wonderfully shocking divestment move, Israeli powers-that-be are furious at BNP Paribas for shutting down its operations in Israel. (They) believe the bank’s board of directors caved to pressure groups, in the first case in years of a foreign bank leaving Israel…” Such reports are now stable items crowding social media channels on a regular basis.

True, 2011 had its share of tragedy. Human lives were lost in Palestine. But hope was also sustained by the sacrifices of numerous ‘ordinary’ people who collectively managed to achieve many hard-earned feats. It is these numerous small victories that will make it difficult for Israel to continue with its futile campaign to occupy and dominate a people so determinately entrenched in their land — from the small village of Nabi Saleh to the proud Palestinian city of al-Quds.

Among depositions, the Palestinian Centre for Human Rights in Gaza cited the Fourth Geneva Convention and the 2002 Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court which prohibits “the transfer, directly or indirectly, by the Occupying Power of parts of its own civilian population into the territory it occupies.”

This was just in time to honour the UN-endorsed International Day of Solidarity with the Palestinian People, marked on 29 November to coincide with the anniversary of the UN vote for the Partition Plan, and first marked in 1976. Boycott Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) activists in 10 European countries staged more than 60 actions as part of a Day of Action calling on supermarkets and governments to “Take Apartheid off the Menu”.

In the UK, 26 November was declared a national BDS Day of Action targeting Britain’s largest supermarket chain Tesco, the only supermarket in the UK that is openly selling illegal settlement goods. Activities ranged from street protests, e-lobbying, re-labelling, flash protests and internet-working. While Agrexco may be kaput as Israel’s largest supplier of fresh produce to Europe, Mehadrin has taken its place and was the target of the European Day of Action Against Israeli Agricultural Produce Exporters.

Demonstrators in the US boarded buses run by Veolia to educate passengers about Israel’s apartheid policies. Boston activists launched a campaign challenging the Massachusetts Bay Commuter Rail Company’s contract with Veolia. In Baltimore, activists demonstrated at Penn Station during rush hour, singing a freedom song and drawing connections between the Palestinian and American struggles for equality, linking Veolia’s profiteering from racism and exploitation in Israel/Palestine to the City of Baltimore’s contracts with its own workers.

In a cynical rearguard bid to attract Christmas shoppers, Israel Lobby activists launched Buy Israel Week November 28, hastily put together to counter the growing BDS tide. Luke Akehurst, director of We Believe in Israel, called for two BUYcott days, featuring discount coupons, sponsored by StandWithUs, El-Al, the Jewish National Fund and other such pillars of Israeli apartheid.

While American sympathisers were politely tolerated in their protests against Veolia’s transport activities in Israel, their compatriots in Palestine proper were violently arrested for confronting Veolia and Egged, the two major culprits, and targets of BDS activists in Europe.

Inspired by their Western supporters, six Palestinian Freedom Riders emulated the legendary Freedom Riders of the American south of the 1960s, riding settler bus 148 near the illegal settlement of Psagot. Much like those courageous black and white Americans (including many Jews) of yesteryear, the Palestinians were forcibly removed and arrested.

This new generation of Freedom Riders will further inspire Westerners for whom “It is a moral duty to end complicity in this Israeli system of apartheid,” according to arrested Hebron resident Badee Dwak. Fellow arrestee Basel Al-Araj minced no words: “The settlers are to Israel what the KKK was to the Jim Crow South — an unruly, fanatic mob that has enormous influence in shaping Israeli policies today and that violently enforces these policies with extreme violence and utter impunity.”

Pulitzer Prize-winning author Alice Walker wrote:

Board the buses to Everywhere. Sit freely. Go into Jerusalem with my blessing. Like many of my country people, I have witnessed this scenario before and know where it can lead. To a straightening of the back and a full breath taken by the soul. Some of us have shed blood, others have shed tears. Some have shed both. All sacred to the cause of the dignity we deserve as beautifully fashioned citizens and Beings of this Universe.

Sadly, as he honoured the Freedom Riders of the 1960s for their courage and dedication fifty years ago, President Barack Obama had no such words for the equally brave ones in Israel today.

In the Arab world, 29 November activities took BDS the logical extra step, with 7,000 Jordanians gathering in the Jordan Valley and marching to the Israeli border to condemn Israel’s settlement expansion, calling for the liberation of Al-Quds (Jerusalem), home to the Al-Aqsa Mosque, which is the second holiest site for Muslims. “We sacrifice our souls and blood for Al-Aqsa Mosque and Al-Quds,” the Jordanians chanted after noon prayers, calling on Jordanian authorities to scrap its peace treaty with Israel.

Even as 100,000s of Cairenes gathered to defend the Egyptian revolution in Tahrir Square 26 November, a rally co-sponsored by Al-Azhar and the Union of Muslim Scholars attended by 5,000 called on Muslims to fight “Jerusalem’s Judaisation”. Al-Azhar Imam Ahmed Al-Tayeb said: “We are telling Israel and Europe that we shall not allow even one stone to be moved there.” Activists chanted: “Tel Aviv, Tel Aviv, judgment day has come.”

In other boycott news, a victory for a clutch of brave and principled tennis fans arrested for protesting at the New Zealand Women’s Tennis Open last December, which featured Israeli Shahar Peer. After a year of trials, they were finally exonerated in a landmark decision by High Court Justice Paul Heath, who said “Disruption of an individual’s enjoyment of a sporting event was not the same as disruption of public order.” Quipped a free John Minto, “Annoyance is not a crime, annoyance is part of being in democracy.” The judge said it was clear the protest was meant to convey to the tennis player the concerns at the way Israel treated the Palestinian Territories.

In contrast to the tidal wave of Western artists now boycotting Israel-linked events (the Yardbirds just cancelled a scheduled Tel Aviv show), iconic singer and actor Barbra Streisand performed at a fundraising gala in Los Angeles for Friends of the IDF. Streisand supports OneVoice, which promotes a two-state solution that fails to address structural injustices and has long been discredited. Guests of honour included media magnate Haim Saban and former Israeli Military Chief of Staff Gabi Ashkenazi, who commanded the attacks on Gaza in 2008-09 which killed 1,400 Palestinians. An Israeli propaganda video about Streisand’s appearance at the gala features armed Israeli soldiers running in a scenic sunset.  A shameful sunset in her own career.

In a wonderfully shocking divestment move, Israeli powers-that-be are furious at BNP Paribas for shutting down its operations in Israel. Bank of Israel Governor Stanley Fischer, Finance Minister Yuval Steinitz and Banks Supervisor David Zaken believe the bank’s board of directors caved to pressure groups, in the first case in years of a foreign bank leaving Israel. BNP Paribas has had operations in Israel since 2003. The bank claims it sustained serious damage from the Greek crisis, yet the only foreign branch it is closing is its Israeli one.

Unfortunately, as yet, no international governmental sanctions against Israel have been imposed in the past few months. On the contrary, the US continues to oppose attempts to boycott Israel, putting great pressure especially on Arab League states, which officially support BDS. Under US anti-boycott legislation enacted in 1978, US firms are prohibited from compliance with any such boycott directly or for a third party, and are required to report any such request to the US Department of Commerce. The WTO is an accomplice, as Israel is supposed to be treated as a Most Favoured Nation by member states.

This pressure has unfortunately had its effect. Morocco and Gulf Coordination Council members, especially Qatar, Bahrain and Oman, acceded to US arguments that boycotting Israel harmed the “peace process” and turn a blind eye to third-party economic relations with Israel and even quietly conduct direct trade.

But the Arab Spring is forcing these truant governments to wake up to their people’s demands. And the US showpiece for its vision of the new Middle East — Iraq — doesn’t dare end boycott activities, which were the hallmark of Iraqi politics prior to the US invasion.

Judaism.com sells what it calls “essential Judaica,” which includes items such as imprinted kippot (skullcaps) for weddings and bar mitzvahs, kosher wines and a small but amusing collection of “pet Judaica.” The site was completely inaccessible on Friday. On Saturday typing “Judaism” into your browser displayed a message claiming that the site was down because of “routine maintenance” and that Judaism.com would be operational on Sunday. The maintenance must have been more difficult than anticipated. The site was not restored until Tuesday afternoon. There was neither mention of Iran or hackers nor any indication of the four-day disappearance of Judaism from cyberspace.

I understand that I could be accused of taking pleasure in someone else’s troubles, but I found this incident risible. Could the cyber-attack on Mr. Perelman’s web site be a small part of a larger organized government campaign from Tehran to retaliate for the Stuxnet virus and various other assaults which are now generally recognized to be part of an American/Israeli effort to punish or overthrow the Iranian regime? Or could the attack have been perpetrated by a young Iranian seller of Islamic religious paraphernalia who erroneously believes harming Judaism.com is an appropriate Muslim response to the Israeli threats to bomb Teheran nuclear facilities? The possibility that my Hanukkah candle order could become collateral damage in a nasty covert war being waged between Israel and the United States against Iran made me laugh.

I have had three short telephone conversations with Mr. Perelman who refuses to be interviewed about the attack. He did tell me that he had informed the FBI and that they were currently attempting to find the culprit(s). I wonder what the Feds would be able to do if they located the hackers in Iran.

When I first heard Shlomo Perelman had called about the digital intrusion, I imagined newspaper headlines such as “Iranians Attack Judaism, Israel Vows It Will Retaliate.” Shlomo, not surprisingly, did not see the humor in the situation. Although his website was fully restored on Tuesday afternoon, December 6, and he indicated that the monetary lose incurred was not too bad, Shlomo Perelman still feared that if the cyber-attack became widely known it would somehow hurt business and the image of Judaism.

To my Jewish readers: Judaism.com actually has some nice stuff. Check out the menorahs and Jewish calendars. Just remember to observe the Palestinian boycott campaign and make sure nothing you buy is made in Israel or by settlers from the Occupied Territories.

Given that the governments of Greece and Italy are apparently being seized for direct political rule by the financial system, one might suggest that dispensing with democratic niceties is the international order of the day. Perhaps, then, Israel won’t find itself all that isolated after all. But it might. In any case, developments in Israel and the commentary that they have triggered should provide the opportunity to forcefully brush aside any lingering illusions about Israeli establishment ‘moderation’. Such illusions are little more than an unfortunate hangover from years gone by, when Israeli colonial rule found unlikely allies even among ostensible Western progressives.

The authoritarian challenge to Ariel Sharon’s democracy

The English-language webpage of Ha’aretz, Israel’s daily ‘newspaper of record’, offers an interesting view of the sinking ship that is liberal Israeli hypocrisy. The site currently features a section titled ‘Project Black Flag’, borrowing the imagery from the Israeli legislature’s Kadima opposition, whose representatives demonstratively waved black flags in the Knesset earlier this month in protest against the current wave of authoritarian legislation being pushed through by Israel’s governing coalition. (Kadima, recall, is the party launched in 2005 by Ariel Sharon and continuing to champion his legacy.) Below, I’ll turn to some of the noteworthy associated commentary. First, its ideological and strategic context deserves some sustained attention.

Historically, the ample Western arms, economic backing and political-diplomatic cover that have enabled Israeli actions were given to an Israel that was widely understood to ‘shoot and cry’. Wars were forced upon it by nefarious enemies, and whatever abuses occurred during Israel’s valiant self-defence were committed with a pained restraint. ‘We can forgive the Arabs for killing our children,’ Golda Meir is quoted, ad nauseam, as explaining to the world. ‘We cannot forgive them for forcing us to kill their children.’ Incidentally, that ‘the Arabs’ (or the IHH, or whatever other designated enemies of Israel) are to blame even for Israeli atrocities remains a familiar theme of Israeli diplomacy – and maddeningly, variations on this theme are often echoed by many people who really ought to know better. Israel, anyway, internally distraught at what it was being forced to do, featured in this story as a brave but enlightened character beset by difficult dilemmas, both strategic and moral.

An exaggerated and idealized projection of the pluralism internal to the Jewish Israeli political system has been internationally exploited to destructive effect for many decades. This has been widely observed by critical observers of the US and Israeli political scenes. In his 1983 tome concerning US policy and the Palestine question, Noam Chomsky, for example, expressed his usual understated disgust at this spectacle. In the aftermath of the horrendous massacres in 1982 Lebanon, Chomsky observed, US Congressional liberals leveraged signs of dissent within Israel (which were largely driven by the tactical opposition of the Israeli Labour Party) to justify further increases in US aid to finance Israeli military power and settlement construction.

Israel, so the logic went, was proving itself to be a vibrant democracy. Chomsky wrote: ‘Presumably there is … a lesson here as to how to obtain further victories in Congress. It would be interesting to know how the reported 400,000 people who demonstrated in Israel in protest over the massacres will react to the fact – and fact it is – that the practical outcome of these efforts, given the way things are in the United States, was to accelerate the militarization of Israeli society and its expansion into the occupied territories.’¹ Unfortunately, judging from recent Israeli ‘moderate’ commentary, there is reason to suspect some may have been quite satisfied.

Idealized exaggeration of Israeli pluralism has long been very widespread indeed, even in critical circles. For example: ‘One often hears statements,’ as the late Tanya Reinhart observed, interpreting the detailed accounts of state policy available in Israel’s press ‘as signifying that the Israeli media is more liberal and critical of Israel’s policies than other Western media. This, however, is not the explanation.’ More to the point, she explained, it has less reason to be inhibited: ‘Things that would look outrageous in the Western world are in Israel considered natural daily routine.’² Nonetheless, so suffocating are the terms of discussion of Palestine in the West that critics are sometimes tempted to latch on to even the most morally bankrupt tactical dissent within the Israeli establishment to legitimize their own opposition.

This reflex serves to build up unrealistic expectations concerning prospective challenges to Israeli colonial rule from within the Jewish Israeli political system, to derail serious analysis and principled strategy, and sometimes to downplay the need for international action. Worst of all, it can take the form of ‘moderate’ opinion in the West demanding that Palestinians simply try to partner with ‘moderate’ Israeli establishment opinion – in other words, demanding Palestinian acquiescence to colonial rule (in thinning ‘peace process’ packaging) in a spirit of false internationalism. Palestinian resistance politics can then be dismissed if they fail to orient themselves towards dialogue with the increasingly elusive force that is the Israeli ‘peace camp’.

For at least some leading Israeli intellectuals, the strategic value of such distortion is apparent. An Israel that appears to ‘shoot and cry’ is understood to be better positioned to keep receiving the arms, economic backing and diplomatic cover necessary to keep firing than one that shoots and cheers. Hence the current dilemma.

Ilan Pappé, identified from the late 1980s as one of the Israeli ‘new historians’ who challenged established Zionist orthodoxy, recounts an instructive exchange he had in the ’90s with a colleague at Haifa University, Arnon Sofer – a rather iconic ‘organic intellectual’ for the forces of racist Israeli demographic management. Pappé cites Sofer as explaining: ‘Between you and me, within four closed walls, you are one of us. But it is good that you are beautifying Israel’s image abroad.’³ In Pappé’s case, such exchanges were predictably and definitively cut off by his political record in the ensuing years. They nonetheless reveal much about the outlook of advocates (à la Sofer) of an internationally palatable Israeli colonialism.

The visible rightward shift of Israeli politics is causing considerable unease in such quarters (as expressed in the recent commentary of Ari Shavit, sampled below).

A fight that liberals can’t easily win

The political dynamics that have set Israel on its current political trajectory deserve serious consideration. Indeed, within the Jewish Israeli political arena, on purely logical grounds, one can understand why the contest between unapologetic ethno-religious chauvinism and liberal Zionist hypocrisy is gradually being resolved at the expense of democratic pretense.

People interested in this contest (and prepared to plug their noses while facing an icon from each side) ought to watch the 1985 debate, available online, between Harvard University’s Alan Dershowitz and Rabbi Meir Kahane. For those without the nose plugs or stomach for the video, I’ll review a few relevant highlights.

Dershowitz (now here’s a real shock) offers little of original interest. Kahane, on the other hand, represents an interesting phenomenon. Since this debate finds Kahane in what for him constitutes good form, and at what for him most closely approximates good behaviour, I feel compelled to emphasize that this is a man who really does personify caustic, fascist venom (videos where he quite transparently expresses a visceral, hateful glee at the mass killing of Palestinians are also widely available). An open advocate of theocracy, violent expulsions and indiscriminate killing of civilians, Kahane explicitly urged his adherents to carry out paramilitary attacks against Palestinians along these lines, and many did and do (for his part, Kahane was assassinated in late 1990).

What is interesting about Kahane for present purposes is the way, rare if not unique, in which he presents the unapologetic Zionist case against liberal hypocrisy to an English-speaking audience. Notably, one can see – not in Kahane’s career or organizational work, which I won’t dwell on here, but in the logical course of the argument – the way in which he uses the consensual political Zionist demand for a Jewish majority state in the former Palestine to undercut the principled political basis for any genuine democratic opposition. While I do not wish to simply conflate the two, it is precisely the congruence of Kahane’s politics with Israel’s established political mainstream that makes the former at once dangerous and revealing.

I’ll confine this brief review of Kahane’s comments to two issues: (1) the indiscriminate killing of Palestinian civilians and (2) the contradiction between democracy and the consensual political Zionist commitment to racist demographic management.

(1) Asked about instances in the preceding period in which his adherents indiscriminately killed Palestinians in the occupied West Bank, Kahane positions these actions within (albeit towards the right of) the established Zionist canon. He explains: ‘Innocent people? This is a picture of a man named David Raziel [Kahane shows a portrait of Raziel]. He’s a national hero in Israel. There is a village named after him, Ramat Raziel. Streets in Jerusalem, in Haifa, in Netanya, named after Raziel. Do you know who this hero was? There’s a stamp – a stamp! – in Israel with his picture on it. You know who David Raziel was? He was the head of the Irgun in the 1930s … David Raziel, the national hero of Israel, planted a bomb in the Arab marketplace in Jerusalem. It went off and it killed 27 Arabs.’ Those who continue in this tradition, Kahane later urges, should be fully supported by state forces: ‘it’s a tragedy that those Jews took the law into their own hands. It was the job of the government of Israel to do what they did. … those so-called “terrorists” were attempting to put the fear of God into the Arabs. Because the only thing that the Arab will ever understand is fear.’ (Consider: to what extent does this sentiment fundamentally differ from official ‘deterrence’ thinking?)

(2) More revealing, in many ways, are the exchanges between Kahane and Dershowitz on Arnon Sofer’s intellectual stomping ground: state management of the demographic balance in territory governed by Israel. This is among the central defining axes of Israeli politics, and its treatment during the debate is extremely illustrative.

In short, Dershowitz’s rhetorical flailing and Kahane’s forthright rebuttal stand together as a telling display of the pummeling that ostensible liberalism is likely to face in honest, principled debates that assume shared political Zionist premises (especially on the question of ‘demography’).

The debate moderator poses (1:00:49-) a basic question: Do ‘the Arabs’ have the right ‘to become the majority in Israel’ and ‘by democratic and peaceful means’ to challenge the state’s Jewish character?

Loathe to really admit Palestinians into such important ‘in-house’ debates, Dershowitz responds by immediately reframing the matter. Dershowitz begins: ‘We don’t even have to reach that issue: what if Jews decide by democratic principles to vote against principles that Rabbi Kahane holds sacred? What if Jews tomorrow were to vote to repeal the Law of Return [which guarantees any Jew defined as such by the state to gain immediate citizenship and residency rights]? I would fight tooth and nail against that … But Israel is a democracy. And if Rabbi Kahane and I, together, fail in our efforts to persuade Jews to maintain the Law of Return then we will have lost our fight for democracy. … We have to fight that [demographic] battle, we have to look at it as a challenge.’ In facing this challenge, Dershowitz suggests that it is actually Kahane who undermines the Judaization of Palestine by advocating a Halachic (Jewish theocratic) regime which will dissuade Jewish immigration and settlement from abroad. Thus, Dershowitz asserts, a liberal democratic Zionism provides the sturdier defense against the threat posed by indigenous Palestinian demography (i.e., resident existence).

Kahane replies: ‘I must say that was impressive. Dr Dershowitz took four minutes brilliantly not answering the question. The question wasn’t whether it was a challenge. Of course, it’s a challenge; agreed, it’s a challenge. The question was: Assuming the Arabs “beat” us, would you be willing to accept that? The question is, Do they have a right to be a majority, in theory? Under democracy, of course they have that right! Under Zionism – not religious Zionism, but the Zionism of a man named Herzl, who wrote a book called The Jewish State – of course they don’t have that right.’

Underpinning Kahane’s polemical strength are the basic points of contact between his caustic calls for anti-Palestinian action and the policies of Israel’s founding Labour Zionist mainstream. ‘We have,’ Kahane declares to the audience, ‘to face up to truth. We have to face up to so many truths. Among which is that Ben-Gurion, when he was the prime minister, didn’t allow an Arab to leave his village at night without a special pass [recall that Palestinian citizens of Israel faced military governance from 1948 through to 1966]. Which I think is a magnificent example of democracy.’

Likewise, albeit in a somewhat roundabout way, Kahane reminds the audience that debates about demography, ‘population transfer’ and exclusion of Palestinian refugees were not simply triggered by post-1967 Israeli policy in the West Bank and Gaza or the associated fundamentalist settler camp. ‘There’s not one Arab refugee living in Lebanon who comes from the West Bank,’ he emphasizes. ‘Every single one comes from the Galilee, from Haifa. There’s not one Arab refugee in Gaza who comes from the West Bank. Half of them come from Jaffa, and from Ramle, and from Lydda, and from Be’er Sheva, and from what is now Ashdod and Ashkelon [all locations from which Palestinians were ethnically cleansed in 1948].’ Kahane’s point, for all the nominally defensive rhetoric with which he packages these remarks, is that if Israel accepts liberal democratic premises ‘there will be a Law of Return for Arabs – and rightly so, under democracy.’ Therefore, pursuit of consensual political Zionist aims is taken to require a rejection of democratic norms.⁴

The relative coherence of Kahane’s politics in this debate when compared to the rearguard tactical arguments made by Dershowitz is, in strategic terms, more apparent than real. Kahane’s doctrinal rigidity (especially combined with articulate Brooklyn English) involved an assault on the enlightened liberal pretenses that have greased Israel’s arms procurement machinery in the West since the state’s inception. In an earlier era, Ben-Gurion famously derided the politics of the Zionist right – specifically, those of Ze’ev (Vladimir) Jabotinsky and his Revisionists – as ‘verbal maximalism’. To speak publicly of aggressive objectives at the expense of building the international support needed to realize them was, for Ben-Gurion, a novice move and a marker of political naivety.

Nowadays, concern for the possible ideological discomfort of Western patrons is apparently weakening as a constraint on the terms of Jewish Israeli political discussion, and the genuine sway of liberalism is eroding even more visibly.

‘Kahane is smiling’

Gideon Levy is one of those rare Israeli journalists who has staked out a position of genuine democratic opposition to state policies. Among his many periodic pieces with a standard unifying theme – ‘damn, mainstream Jewish Israeli politics are a disaster that just keeps getting worse’ (I paraphrase) – was an article published during Israel’s most recent elections and titled simply, ‘Kahane won’. A recent Ha’aretz news report (November 16) picks up on the same theme.

Describing this month’s Jerusalem rally marking the anniversary of Kahane’s assassination, where ‘euphoria gripp[ed] the massive crowd’, the reporter samples some of the video entertainment charging the ‘jubilant’ atmosphere:

Clip after clip that had aired on Israel’s commercial television stations over the last year was shown on the big screen of the Heichal David hall in Jerusalem’s Romema neighborhood. There was a report broadcast by Channel 10 just two days ago about Ariel Zilber’s new song, “Kahane was right.” A Channel 2 report that praised longtime [Kahanist] activist Itamar Ben-Gvir as a “skilled media machine and as “a kind of celeb” … Then back to Channel 2, which showed [National Union MK Michael] Ben-Ari explaining how he would respond to rocket fire from the Gaza Strip: “24 hours, and there would be no more Beit Hanun [a city in northern Gaza which has been especially hard hit by indiscriminate Israeli artillery fire].” The crowd went wild. “Today, Rabbi Kahane is sitting in heaven and smiling,” Ben-Gvir told the audience. … “Today, it isn’t just Ben-Ari,” Ben-Gvir noted. “In Yisrael Beitenu, in National Union, even in Likud they understand that Kahane was right.”

In earlier decades, the idealized international image of internal Israeli politics helped to colour perceptions of such displays. Consider the best known massacre of Palestinians by a follower of Kahane’s teachings: Israel Defense Forces (IDF) physician Baruch Goldstein’s February 1994 shooting spree in Hebron’s Ibrahimi mosque, which killed 29 Palestinians and wounded another 150. An important poll, relayed by an Israeli commentator in the immediate aftermath of the killings, ‘established that at least 50 per cent of Israeli Jews would approve of the massacre, provided that it was not referred to as a massacre but rather as a “Patriarch’s Cave Operation,” a nice-sounding term already being used by religious settlers.’ The commentator noted that this exposed as false mythology the notion that ‘with the exception of a few psychopaths, the entire nation, and its politicians included, has resolutely condemned Dr Goldstein, even though, luckily for us, all major television networks in the world were last week deluded by this untruth.’⁵ But crucially, the myth for the most part held.

Following the 1994 massacre, the Yitzhak Rabin government sealed the occupied West Bank and Gaza, repressed the ensuing wave of Palestinian protests (killing 33 Palestinians in the process), and put the Palestinian population of Hebron under a nearly six-week curfew to protect the settlement of Kiryat Arba (the messianic scourge which terrorizes Hebron, and in which Goldstein had resided); Rabin then moved on to join in accepting the 1994 Nobel Peace Prize.⁶ This is a balancing and juggling act for which the Israel of Binyamin Netanyahu is less well suited.
Today, the main organizations of the Jewish Israeli establishment ‘left’ are not only weak on principle (recall Labour Party leadership of the Defense Ministry that managed the assault on Gaza in 2008-9, and Meretz Party support for the Israel Air Force massacres that opened the campaign), but are also in disintegrating electoral freefall and facing a striking loss of their public influence. The implications of the possible collapse of the liberal Israeli establishment’s domestic political sway are too numerous to even try to list here. (Those interested in details can peruse Haaretz’s so-called ‘Project Black Flag’.) Here I’ll wrap up by sampling some strategic concerns expressed by veteran commentator and Ha’aretz editorial board member Ari Shavit.

Shavit, in his way, is attuned to global power relations and Israel’s place within them. Early this year, as Egyptian popular rebellion challenged the Hosni Mubarak dictatorship, Shavit mused: ‘Following half a century during which the Arab world has been governed by dictators, the rule of tyranny is cracking at the seams. The Arab masses are no longer willing to suffer.’ That the Obama administration did not rigidly support Mubarak’s rule in the face of this crisis was, for Shavit, a ‘betrayal’. ‘It could be that the American empire was evil’ in its reign over the past several decades, Shavit explained, but it has been beneficial for many and relied on a base of Third World ‘fear’ and ‘obedience’ that the US leadership is not doing a good enough job of maintaining.

Only time will tell whether the Obama administration’s attempt to maintain basic strategic military and political-economic continuity in Egypt without Mubarak’s personal participation will succeed in the face of the impressive popular resilience and courage on display in Egypt’s streets and factories, but one needs to be a truly callous hack to consider these developments from the vantage point of imperial strategy. Just to give a sense of where Shavit’s coming from.

This month, with the Israeli far right on a triumphant and internationally visible march through the Israeli mainstream, Shavit decries the fact that ‘Israel’s enlightened elite’ seems to have ‘lost its public hegemony’. While the forces of populist chauvinism may revel in this turn of events, Shavit pleas, their international implications cannot be ignored. ‘Israel’s alliance with the United States and Europe is based on shared values, and harming these values will erode the alliance.’

Shavit continues: ‘…without the elite of Rehavia, Ramat Aviv and Ra’anana, Israel would have no existence. Without left-wing scientists, left-wing intellectuals and left-wing high-tech entrepreneurs, Israel would be a backward country, weak and pathetic. It would not be able to rule over Judea and Samaria [the biblical designation for the West Bank], it would not be able to defend itself [!] against Iran, and it would not survive in the storms of the Middle East.’

Standing on such fine and noble principle, it’s no wonder that politics the likes of Shavit’s are facing a possible domestic collapse.

Conclusion

Internationally, we also need to face up to some obvious truths. One of which is that the problem is not merely the Meir Kahanes and Avigdor Liebermans. There exists a grim and ominous continuity running from the explicit articulation by legal representatives of Israel’s Kadima-Labour coalition of ‘economic warfare’ against the people of Gaza at the outset of 2008; through to the spoiling of 50,000 infant vaccines in April of that year, as even the general storage unit of Gaza’s Health Ministry was starved of fuel; and on to the deployment against Gaza at year’s end of soldiers among whom t-shirts soon circulated featuring a veiled, pregnant woman, her belly targeted in the crosshairs of a rifle, alongside the slogan ‘one shot, two kills’.⁷

That ongoing shifts in Jewish Israeli politics are increasing the clout of unabashedly genocidal political forces is very dangerous. The upsurge of democratic resistance to the regional order that has developed since the ‘Arab spring’ is, for its part, being variously interpreted in Israel (to take another pair of Ha’aretz articles from the past week as examples) as a deterrent to aggressive Israeli action and a possible trigger for it. But however these dynamics play themselves out, the burden of containing the Israeli threat cannot be forced solely upon those targeted by Israeli nuclear warheads. For Israeli planners, the prospect of an erosion of Israel’s base of support in the West continues to function as a deterrent to escalating crimes – albeit, for now, a fairly weak and unreliable one. For those of us in the West, ongoing efforts to attach tangible social costs to the current course of Israeli policy are thus the priority.

The movement for Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions has done much to expand and enrich efforts in this direction. I’ll not contribute much of substance here to the necessary accompanying strategic discussions, but will briefly point out a couple of political traps that should be avoided.

The first, in light of the above, is an exaggeration of the pluralism of the Jewish Israeli political scene or excessive reliance on the dissidents within it. In earlier decades, critics in the West often suggested that identification with Jewish Israeli peace forces was an advisable means of engaging with the Palestine question (a politics that partially overlapped with the prominent public role of high-ranking dovish veterans of the Israeli military establishment in countering right-wing opposition to the ‘peace process’, especially in the US). There are of course genuine democratic movements doing important work under difficult circumstances in the Jewish Israeli political arena, mostly outside of the established ‘peace camp’. But those oriented towards the deteriorating terms of Jewish Israeli political discussion are, in the main, not positioned to constructively set the tone for critical international debate.

The second possible trap is an unhealthy fixation on Jewish dissent in the West. This is an awkward issue which I will only touch on briefly here. But the flip side of ongoing attacks on Palestinian citizens of Israel as fundamentally external to the Israeli polity is the state’s orientation towards those, abroad as well as resident, whom it defines as Jewish. Whether or not the current proposed legislation codifying ‘Israel’s status as the nation-state of the Jewish people’ passes, this is part of the Israeli political system’s basic orientation. Some quick points: It is necessary to develop a political climate of organized opposition that challenges both established Israeli state structures and the international organizations attached to them (e.g., the Jewish Federations of North America). Such opposition needs to be guided by an understanding that these formations do not truly represent the constituencies in whose name they claim to act (i.e., Jews everywhere; in this regard the overlap between predominant Zionist and anti-Semitic doctrine is striking). However, while specifically ‘Jewish’ oppositional politics will be a necessary part of this process, they are best positioned as a very narrow part of the broader challenge that is required.

On principle, a careful approach here is necessary. If we reject, as we ought to, the idea that Jewish identity (as defined by whatever clerics) should bestow upon an individual social and political rights in Palestine/Israel that trump those of the country’s indigenous people, then we ought also to challenge the legitimacy of any political weight that accrues to an individual’s political positions by virtue of this definition. And anyway, for good reasons, this particular kind of identity-based oppositional politics suffers from some basic strategic weaknesses that will inevitably limit its strength. Fixation on Jewish dissident politics can thus simultaneously skew dynamics within our movements, limit the scope and integrity of oppositional work on the Palestine question, and reproduce a new dead end in the tradition of automatic deference to the Israeli ‘peace camp’. Discussion of how to avoid this trap needs to be pursued seriously, but elaboration of the issue is for another place.

The fundamental point is this. The ‘almost total silence about Zionism’s doctrines for and treatment of the native Palestinians’ in ostensibly enlightened Western circles was, as Edward Said put it, ‘one of the most frightening cultural episodes’ of the 20th century.⁸ Broad and coordinated effort will be required to overcome its effects. In the face of the ongoing surge of unapologetic chauvinism within Jewish Israeli politics, no illusions about Israel’s internal political scene should linger or be allowed to calm international concerns. Given the established character of the Israeli leadership, the character of the domestic pressure it faces, and the balance of power between Israeli state forces and the Palestinians, intense concern is called for. At the very least, this moment should prompt some left ‘house-keeping’ through which allied hesitation in challenging the Israeli political system, as a system, is cleared away.

There are hopeful signs that the growing movements against austerity and for an expansion of social and democratic rights are incorporating critical engagement with the Palestine question within their development. No advocate for equality can support an Israeli state drifting towards theocracy and employing battlefield techniques against civilian populations in ‘defense’ of an anachronistic colonialism. The international political space opened by the crumbling of liberal Israeli mythology should be filled with unflinching popular demands for equality, in Palestine as elsewhere.

1. Noam Chomsky, The Fateful Triangle: The United States, Israel and the Palestinians (Boston: South End Press, 1983 & 1999), p. 110.
2. Tanya Reinhart, The Road Map to Nowhere: Israel/Palestine Since 2003 (London: Verso Books, 2006), p. 9-10.
3. Ilan Pappé, Out of the Frame: The Struggle for Academic Freedom in Israel (London: Pluto Press, 2010), p. 30.
4. For context and details on the politics of ‘transfer’, in particular, see Nur Masalha, Expulsion of the Palestinians: The Concept of ‘Transfer’ in Zionist Political Thought, 1882-1928 (Washington: Institute for Palestine Studies, 1992) and A Land Without a People: Israel, Transfer and the Palestinians, 1949-96 (London: Faber & Faber, 1997); and Jonathan Cook, Blood and Religion: The Unmasking of the Jewish and Democratic State (London: Pluto Press, 2006).
5. For further citations and details see Israel Shahak and Norton Mezvinsky, Jewish Fundamentalism in Israel (London: Pluto Press, 1999), p. 99-108.
6. Graham Usher, Palestine in Crisis: The Struggle for Political Independence after Oslo (London: Pluto Press in association with the Transnational Institute and the Middle East Research & Information Project, 1995), p. 20.
7. Michele K. Esposito, ‘Quarterly Update on Conflict and Diplomacy, 16 February-15 May 2008’, Journal of Palestine Studies (vol. 47, no. 4), p. 124.
8. Edward Said, The Question of Palestine (New York: Vintage Books, 1979 & 1992), p. 113.

Freedom of expression is the Matrix, the indispensable condition of nearly every other form of freedom.

– Justice Benjamin Cardozo

The Press has the right to print or not print anything it wants. That right should be supported. There is, however, another issue — that of journalistic ethics. Since OWS began, there has been a deluge of misinformation, innuendo, and inflammatory speech in print in the nation’s newspapers. I defend the right of newspapers to misinform, but I also defend the rights of citizens to push back after being misrepresented in print. It should not be necessary to own a large printing press in order to respond to a news organization.

Sometimes economic issues are at play. Newspapers don’t want to offend the money/business interests in the community. Sometimes inaccurate reporting is the result of a lack of knowledge of journalists. After all, how many schools teach a course in ‘Anarchy’? Actually, there are some schools that do have such a course of study. Surprising as it might be, one school that has a history of offering a well-taught class in ‘Anarchy’ is Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute. RPI is a highly respected right-leaning institution in Troy, New York. RPI receives military contracts.

The article below is a response to an editorial. The response was submitted to the paper days ago, but has not been published. It probably won’t be. Across the country many do not have Internet connections. The only means of responding to an editorial is in the newspaper itself. A conundrum — a Catch 22.

A Response

The Editorial in the November 15, 2011 issue of the Bennington Banner deserves a reply. Thank you for recognizing OWS. As a fan of newspapers, I place great importance on the Press. It is the fabric that ties a community together. In many locations, it is the only means of mass communication. This places a heavy moral burden on the Press. I had my first newspaper job in 1952. In those days, The Big Story was a favorite TV program about newspapers. Journalism was a highly respected calling.

There are a couple of issues with the editorial about OWS. First is the use of the word “Anarchy”. It is used as a highly inflammatory, prejudicial term implying violence, often to misinform the reader. In my day, labeling — without explanation — even a small part of the movement as such would be called ‘sloppy journalism’. It is a label that paints all with the same brush. Christians, Jews, Democrats, Republicans all have members who exhibit violence. No one should ever condemn the entire group for the actions of a few.

… Professor Howard Zinn, author of the People’s History of the United States… describes anarchism in his book Declarations of Independence as following: “Anarchists, I discovered, did not believe in anarchy as it is usually defined — disorder, disorganization, chaos, confusion, and everyone doing as they like. On the contrary, they believed that society should be organized in a thousand different ways, that people had to cooperate in work and in play, to create a good society. But anarchists insisted, any organization must avoid hierarchy and command from the top; it must be democratic, consensual, reaching decisions through constant discussion and argument.”… What attracted me to anarchism was its rejection of any bullying authority — the authority of the state, of the church, or the employer. Anarchism believes that if we can create an egalitarian society without extremes of poverty and wealth, and join hands across all national boundaries, we will not need police forces, prisons, armies, or war, because the underlying causes of these will be gone.¹

”

Bennington OWS is organizationally much like Professor Zinn describes. Maybe the most important fact about OWS is that it is a horizontal movement. There is no hierarchy. No chain-of-command. No leaders. No followers. It is not only about money and banks. Yes, the misadventures of Wall Street are an issue – but only one of many issues. OWS is anything that the people want it to be – locally and globally. It is by far the most democratic organization that anyone could wish for.

It is about building sustainable communities. It is about organic farming. It is about justice for all. It is about transparency. It is about smart meters and dumb grids. It is about giving consumers choice. It is about advocating for victims of injustice. It is about hunger and homelessness. It is about home foreclosures. It is about the environment. It is about health care. It is about fracking. It is about war and peace. It is about drones. It is about the use of cluster bombs and land mines by the USA. And — my personal favorite — it is about the First Amendment. The First Amendment, as written, applies only to the Congress – but the spirit of the First Amendment applies to all. Why is censorship of political speech so common in Vermont? Why is there censorship of political books in Vermont? Why are public buildings allowed to be used for political debate, when some on the ballot are excluded — as in the Bennington Fire House? It might be legal, but it is not in keeping with the spirit of free political speech. It gets even worse. Dennis Steele, a Vermont Candidate for Governor being was arrested. His crime: he wanted to participate in a candidates’ forum.

One thing I know about Bennington OWS is that is it dedicated, passionate, empathetic, and altruistic. It is the most community oriented movement in the area. Imagine dedicating many hours every week to the community, for no money and no personal gain. Everyone is encouraged to join with us to build a fair, just, sustainable Vermont for all.

And finally, I thank the writer of the Editorial for mentioning boycotts. Many of us have been pushing for boycotts and strikes for decades. Bennington OWS is action oriented. You’ll be hearing from us. Stay tuned in.

1. An excerpt from Food Not Bombs.

Atlas, who grew up in Belgium, is of Egyptian, Moroccan and Palestinian ancestry and has Jewish roots. She was appointed a Goodwill Ambassador for the United Nations Conference Against Racism in 2001, which was boycotted by the United States and Israel, for raising issues about US treatment of African Americans and Israel’s treatment of Palestinians.

The flip side of cultural boycotts of Israel is to prevent Israeli cultural figures from presenting a false image of Israel abroad. Idan Raichel, “Israel’s most popular dread-locked musician,” according to the Israeli Ministry of Foreign Affairs, prominent in Masa (Journey) Israel tours to recruit young Jews from American and Europe to Israel, is more than just a musician, seeing Israel’s cultural icons as “ambassadors of Israel in the world, cultural ambassadors, hasbara ambassadors, also in regards to the political conflict”.

Raichel’s hasbara message prompted American Jews to protest a recent Masa “journey” across the US, using the Internet to coordinate leafletting at the concert tour sites. His recent album “Open Door” prompted signs at the demos entitled “Does ‘Open Door’ include Palestinians?” and “Don’t entertain apartheid.” “Idan Raichel can’t support apartheid,” countered one concert-goer, “He sleeps with a black woman!” Raichel is part of the Brand Israel campaign, which aims to bring arts to the world in order to, in the words of an Israeli foreign ministry official, “show Israel’s prettier face, so we are not thought of purely in the context of war”.

A Finnish campaign is under way to cancel a new deal to purchase Israeli drones. Like Canada, the US, Turkey and Russia, Finland has been attracted by Israeli know-how in lethal weapons. The Finnish Defence Ministry recently signed an agreement on drone purchases, in defiance of EU regulations. This prompted Foreign Minister Erkki Tuomioja to break ranks with his colleagues and declare, in reference to Israel, that “No apartheid state is justified or sustainable.” Earlier while in opposition, Tuomioja himself signed a petition calling for an end to the arms trade with Israel. As foreign minister, Tuomioja could demand the suspension of EU-Israel Association Agreement, which gives Israel special trade access to EU markets, but on condition that Israel respects human rights.

The EU’s “common foreign policy” has been a bitter disappointment, especially with respect to Israel, as consensus prevents principled nations within the EU from acting, and attempts to enforce EU regulations are easily buried in bureaucratese. For instance, the Seventh Framework Programme (FP7) provides research funds for universities and companies from Israel as a result of the Association Agreement. Despite Israel´s consistent violation of the Agreement’s human rights clause, Israeli companies such as Ahava, “academic” institutions such as Technion, and worse, Elbit Systems and Israeli Aerospace Industries receive European funding through FP7 on an equal footing with EU member states.

EU Scientific Commissioner Máire Geoghegan-Quinn insisted that there was no reason to exclude Israel’s Idan Raichel company from EU-related activities since she did not have “any information about any radar systems Motorola Israel might or might not have installed in the West Bank”. Geoghegan-Quinn is not reading her inbox, where she would have found reports to the European Commission by the Palestinian Campaign for the Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel and “Stop the Wall” documenting Motorola’s work in Israeli settlements in the West Bank.

An ambitious boycott-divestment effort by the newly launched KARAMA (Keep Alstom Rail And Metro Away) and the ongoing “Derail Veolia and Alstom” campaign, celebrated an important victory. Alstom lost the bid for the second phase of the Saudi Haramain Railway project linking Mecca with Medina, worth $10 billion, due to its involvement in Israel’s Jerusalem Light Rail (JLR) project. Alstom also suffered when the Dutch ASN Bank and the Swedish national pension fund AP7 excluded it from their investment portfolios. Veolia has lost more than $12 billion worth of contracts following boycott activism in Sweden, the UK, Ireland and elsewhere.

A national conference of Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP) took place from 14-16 October at New York’s Columbia University, bringing together 400 American student activists from a hundred campuses. SJP activists have made famous their mock checkpoints, walls, and die-ins on campus, to bring home the reality of Israeli persecution of Palestinians.

Delegates brainstormed about divestment campaigns and how to counter the power of AIPAC. Codepink’s Medea Benjamin, who gained world celebrity status for interrupting Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu’s speech to Congress in May, explained how to lodge a complaint with the Office of Congressional Ethics against the American Israel Education Foundation Congressional trips to Israel, which violate Congressional Ethics Rules.

Columbia University grad student Dina Omar said the conference helped create a “solid network and apparatus to help protect students from being systemically targeted by institutional power.” A week before the conference, the Anti-Defamation League (ADL) reported on the “growing strength” of SJP. Ironically, it was a 2010 ADL statement calling SJP one of the top 10 “anti-Israel” groups in the US that pushed 67 chapters to unite. Max Ajl said: “The timing was key – everywhere there was the buzz that we are part of a broader mobilisation, the Occupy Wall Street movement. There is now both the opportunity and the incentive to link these struggles.”

Interestingly, there is division in the anti-BDS ranks over how hard to crack down on BDSers by claiming that Jewish students might be made “uncomfortable”. While the ADL lauded the US Department of Education’s 2010 decision to expand the 1964 Civil Rights Act to include “anti-Israel and anti-Zionist sentiment that crosses the line into anti-Semitism”, the Jewish Council for Public Affairs (JCPA) cautions Jewish groups against suppressing free speech by invoking civil rights laws. “Lawsuits and threats of legal action” should only be used “for cases which evidence a systematic climate of fear and intimidation coupled with a failure of the university administration to respond with reasonable corrective measures.”

Ali Abunimah, co-founder of Electronic Intifada and author of One Country: A Bold Proposal to End the Israeli-Palestinian, argues that the ADL strategy is “inherently anti-Semitic because it assumes incorrectly and ahistorically that all criticism of Israel equals criticism of Jews”, and thus condemns all Jews for the racism practiced by Israel. “It seems that at least some in the pro-Israel community fear that this aggressive campaign of censorship and intimidation may do more to cast Israel’s defenders as thugs, than to improve Israel’s image on campuses.”

In interview with Time, Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan questioned why sanctions are promoted by the US when dealing with Iran and Sudan, but are taboo with regards to Israel. Sanctions imposed by the United Nations on Israel would have resolved the issue of Mideast peace long ago, he said. “Until today, the UN Security Council has issued more than 89 resolutions on prospective sanctions related to Israel, but they’ve never been executed.” The reason the international community had stood by without sanctioning Israel was that the Quartet – which includes Russia, the United States, the European Union, and the UN – was not genuinely interested in resolving the Mideast conflict or “they would have imposed certain issues on Israel.”

The UK’s Trades Union Congress voted to reconsider its ties with Israel’s national trade union federation Histadrut, reaffirming its policy to encourage affiliates, employers and pension funds to disinvest from, and boycott the goods of, companies who profit from illegal settlements, the Occupation and the construction of the Wall.

In a most unusual boycott move, on 1 September, London cultural activists from “Beethovians for Boycotting Israel” sang their own version of the Ode to Joy repeatedly during a concert by the Israeli Philharmonic at London’s Royal Albert Hall, finally bringing the live BBC broadcast to a halt. “Israel, end your occupation, There’s no peace on stolen land. We’ll sing out for liberation till you hear and understand.”

South African students endorsed a nationwide boycott against Israel, and South Africa’s Advertising Standards Authority dismissed complaints relating to a radio advert by the lead guitarist of Faithless in support of the South African Artists Against Apartheid: “Hi, I’m Dave Randall from Faithless. Twenty years ago I would not have played in apartheid South Africa; today I refuse to play in Israel. Be on the right side of history. Don’t entertain apartheid. Join the international boycott of Israel.”

Legendary NBA basketball player Kareem Abdul-Jabbar declined to appear in Israel due to “concerns arising from Nakba day violence.” Abdul-Jabbar was slated to show his new documentary film about racial segregation in basketball, On the Shoulders of Giants, and was due to compete for the “Spirit of Freedom Award” at the Jerusalem Film Festival.

Facing an intense Europe-wide boycott campaign, Israel’s largest produce exporter, Agrexco, which markets produce from Israel’s illegal settlements as “product of Israel”, filed for bankruptcy this summer. Its financial woes, however, pale next to those of French multinational Veolia, an urban systems corporation which provides light rail services that link West Jerusalem with illegal Israeli settlements in occupied East Jerusalem and the surrounding West Bank.

Since the beginning of the Palestinian-led campaign in 2005, Veolia has lost contracts worth more than $14 billion. A recent merger between Veolia’s transport division and a subsidiary of the main French state investment fund shows the French government’s solution to Veolia’s problems: let the taxpayers finance Veolia’s income losses. Veolia is cutting its activities from more than 40 countries, but not the one country — Israel — that is the main cause of its financial woes.

Involvement in the light rail project violates Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) guidelines. Considering that Paris is the seat of the OECD and Israel a new member, this is particularly ironic.

Meanwhile, Israel’s Sodastream took a direct hit in Sweden, its largest market, when the Coop supermarket chain announced it would stop all purchases of its products. The main production facilities for Sodastream are located at Mishor Adumim, Israel’s largest settlement in the occupied West Bank, where it profits from tax benefits enjoyed by companies in industrial parks in illegal settlements. Unilever has already bowed to BDS pressure, in July announcing plans to move its Bagel and Bagel pretzel factory to a location within the green line. Sodastream itself has shown signs it will probably comply, also announcing it will build a new factory within the green line, expected to begin operations in 2013, the same year the lease on the Mishor plant is due to expire.

The campaign against Sodastream has quickly spread around the world, including the US. In March, a petition calling on Bed Bath & Beyond to stop selling Sodastream products (as well as products from Ahava, the settlement-based cosmetics company) was delivered to 15 locations up and down the US West Coast, from Seattle to Los Angeles, and a group of activists dressed as brides held a mock wedding inside Bed Bath & Beyond in Los Angeles calling on concerned brides everywhere to strike Sodastream (and Ahava) off their bridal registries.

The struggles are uphill, especially in Australia. A peaceful BDS action against a Jericho cosmetics outlet, which sells Dead Sea salts, was attacked in July by the Victoria police, and 19 Melbourne activists face fines of $32,000. The attack followed the call by Victoria Jewish Community President John Searle for the police to “stamp down harder on aggressive protesters”. Currently in the US, France and Greece, hundreds of pro-Palestine activists are facing criminal charges for nonviolently standing up for Palestinian human rights.

Then there’s the herem law passed 11 July by the Knesset that allows “victims” to sue boycott promoters. This bill follows upon the Knesset’s recent Nakba law, which defunded any institution that acknowledged the ethnic cleansing of Palestine in 1948.

Israeli peace group Peace Now immediately set up a Facebook group “So Sue Me, I’m Boycotting the Settlements”. “We’ve never done a boycott of settlements. We are doing this now because of the boycott law,” Peace Now activist Etai Mizrav said. “The moment they decided to shut mouths, we decided it is time to tell the Israeli public that whoever supports settlements supports Israel’s isolation and harms the state.” A coalition of allied groups said they would ask Israel’s Supreme Court to overturn the law. “It is really absurd that victims of the occupation should be paying damages to the occupiers if they organise a boycott of settlement products,” coalition spokesman Idan Ring said.

A divestment victory this summer was the decision by Norway’s 450 billion euro Oil Fund to exclude two Israeli firms — Africa Israel Investments and its engineering subsidiary Danya Cebus — for their settlement activities.

As for sanctions, the big news this summer was the UN Palmer Report which criticised Israel’s attack on the Freedom Flotilla last year for its excessive use of violence, but nonetheless supported its siege of Gaza, despite an earlier UN Human Rights Commission report condemning it as illegal. The lack of any real sanctions against Israel by the world body prompted the Turkish government to send its Israeli ambassador packing. Israel’s killing of at least five Egyptian border guards this summer prompted Egyptian protesters to send their Israeli ambassador packing too, and the Israeli ambassador in Jordan fled amid worries over a similar protest there.

There was a setback for those trying to bring Israeli politicians to account. Last week Britain amended a law that allowed for issuing arrest warrants against Israeli politicians and military figures under terms of universal jurisdiction, which holds that some alleged crimes are so grave that they can be tried anywhere. Such a warrant was issued against Israeli opposition leader Tzipi Livni in 2009.

Despite opposition from the imperialist countries led by the US, the 2001 WCAR became a flashpoint for focusing international attention on two issues: reparations for slavery and the liberation of Palestine. It involved a convergence of several events: the official meeting of member states that adopted the DDPA; the NGO Forum that approved a substantially stronger document (the WCAR NGO Forum Declaration); a two-day general strike led by COSATU against the privatization of social services in South Africa/Azania; and daily protest marches outside the conference venue regarding land reform, Palestine, and reparations. The government meeting was marked by a walkout of the US, Canadian, and Israeli delegations.

A 2009 review conference took place in Geneva, Switzerland following the 2001 WCAR and reaffirmed the DDPA. The US, Canada, Israel, and seven other rich countries boycotted this meeting as well.

Now, ten years after the Durban conference, delegates representing the member states of the UN will discuss the DDPA again – this time in Midtown Manhattan. The Obama administration, along with the governments of Australia, Canada, the Czech Republic, Israel, Italy, and the Netherlands, have already announced plans to boycott the gathering. Combined with this boycott, the lackeys and mouthpieces of the US ruling class are already working to derail the conference with false charges of anti-Semitism and jingoistic references to the 9/11 attacks (see for example the 6/3 New York Daily News editorial “President Obama must organize an international boycott of obscene, anti-Semitic Durban III confab” which contains blatant falsehoods about the content of the DDPA).

Why Is the US Empire So Afraid?

The Obama administration’s decision to boycott the September 2011 conference in NYC was announced in a June letter from Joseph E. Macmanus, acting U.S. assistant secretary of state for legislative affairs, addressed to some members of Congress. The letter claimed that the US was boycotting, because the Durban and follow-up conferences have “included ugly displays of intolerance and anti-Semitism.”

Two years ago, the Obama administration released a more detailed press statement regarding its decision to boycott the 2009 review conference in Geneva. Titled “U.S. Posture Toward the Durban Review Conference and Participation in the UN Human Rights Council,” the statement opposed the reaffirmation of the DDPA and outlined the conditions for a document that would be tolerable to the US:

It must not single out any one country or conflict, nor embrace the troubling concept of “defamation of religion.” The U.S. also believes an acceptable document should not go further than the DDPA on the issue of reparations for slavery.

The Obama administration’s reasons for boycotting the September 2011 conference in NYC and the 2009 review conference in Geneva are pretenses for shutting down criticism of Israel. Out of 341 paragraphs, the DDPA contains four paragraphs on Palestine, hardly any “singling out” of the Zionist entity. To protect its attack dog in the Middle East, the US is once again resorting to the usual tactic of equating criticisms of Israeli settler-colonialism with anti-Semitism.

The Obama administration’s non-participation is not surprising or exceptional. It exposes the fact that this administration continues to carry out the strategic interests of the US ruling class in maintaining white supremacist national oppression inside the Empire and in dominating the people of the world.

The Bush administration deliberately sent a low-level delegation to the 2001 WCAR, which did not include secretary of state Colin Powell, and then recalled it in the middle of the conference. During the Carter and Reagan administrations respectively, the US boycotted the 1978 and 1983 World Conferences to Combat Racism and Racial Discrimination in Geneva, where UN member states condemned apartheid in South Africa/Azania as a crime against humanity and denounced Israel’s collaborative relationship with the apartheid regime.

Why is the US Empire so afraid of participating in UN-sponsored conferences on racism and racial discrimination? While the one-country-one-vote forum of the UN General Assembly is certainly more difficult to control than the UN Security Council or an exclusive gathering of the imperialist countries, most of the countries in the General Assembly are neocolonial states, run by local elites that play varying roles in administering imperialist relations. Thus, why does the US have such a record of non-participation?

First, there exist real contradictions in foreign policy between the US ruling class and certain dependent countries, even while the latter do not break fundamentally with the imperialist system and are not reliable allies of the peoples’ movements. Second, each of these UN-sponsored gatherings is a forum for shaping the views of people around the world, where peoples’ movements have the opportunity to influence international public opinion through militant street mobilizations outside conference venues.

Both of these factors contribute to the possibility of embarrassment and isolation at any UN function for the US ruling class, which sits at the head of a country with racism in its DNA. To paraphrase Mao, here is one arena where it is not the people who fear US imperialism, but it is US imperialism that fears the people of the world.

A Hard Look at the Text of the DDPA

The DDPA is not legally binding or enforceable under international law. It derives its authority from moral recognition and the commitment of UN member states to implement its provisions. As such, the struggle over the DDPA’s language is primarily an ideological struggle over how to understand history and our present conditions. Viewed in this way, it is a compromised text. The DDPA contains a few provisions that could be advances in the fight against racism if seized by the peoples’ movements, but embodies a capitulation to the imperialist countries in some other important ways.

The most important advance made in the text is the acknowledgement in Paragraph 13 that “slavery and the slave trade are a crime against humanity and should always have been so, especially the transatlantic slave trade.” The term “crime against humanity” carries weight under international law and the recognition of slavery as such may have given a boost to reparations litigation. Yet, at the same time, the DDPA does not contain any language advocating reparations for slavery. It only expresses profound “regret” for slavery and states in Paragraph 100 that “some States have taken the initiative to apologize and have paid reparation, where appropriate, for grave and massive violations committed.” Beyond that, there are only general provisions discussing the right of all victims of racism, racial discrimination, xenophobia, and related intolerance to seek “just and adequate reparation.” Furthermore, the DDPA fails to similarly characterize colonialism as a “crime against humanity.” There is much further to push.

The four paragraphs discussing Palestine in the DDPA are even more timid. Paragraph 65 discussing the right of refugees to return voluntarily to their homes and properties provides no indication that it is addressing Palestinian refugees in particular. This should be contrasted with the declaration and programme of action adopted at the 1978 World Conference to Combat Racism and Racial Discrimination which referred explicitly to the Nakba (Arabic for “catastrophe” – the name given to the 1948 mass expulsion): “the cruel tragedy which befell the Palestinian people 30 years ago and which the[y] continue to endure today – manifested in their being prevented from exercising their right to self-determination on the soil of their homeland, in the dispersal of hundreds of thousands of Palestinians, the prevention of their return to their homes, and the establishment therein of settlers from abroad.”

The leading provision Paragraph 63 simultaneously recognizes the Palestinian right to self-determination and to the establishment of an independent state alongside “the right to security for all States in the region, including Israel.” The previous declarations and programmes of action adopted at the 1978 and 1983 World Conferences to Combat Racism did not condition the Palestinian right to self-determination on Israel’s security. In that respect, the DDPA is a step backward. Further, note that the text discusses the right of States to “security,” not people or populations, in effect codifying the existing states in the region. This is a predictable gesture in a document adopted by the UN member states, yet ironic in light of the North African and Arab democratic revolts. Finally, of course, UN General Assembly Resolution 3379, which correctly identified Zionism as a form of racism and remained in place from 1975 to 1991, continues to set the bar in the struggle within the UN over the proper characterization of Israeli settler-colonialism and its ideology.

Build the People’s Movements; Isolate the US Imperialists

As September 22 approaches, working and oppressed people in the US Empire can draw lessons from past historic campaigns to bring the crimes of the US ruling classes before the UN. In 1951, Paul Robeson and William L. Patterson presented a petition to UN officials titled “We Charge Genocide” condemning the oppression of Black people in the US, reflected in the widespread practice of lynching. Malcolm X would again raise the call during the 1960s for Black people to use the UN as a forum to expose their oppression in the US. In 1970, the Young Lords and the Puerto Rican Student Union organized a march of 10,000 people to the UN demanding independence for Puerto Rico, the release of political prisoners, and an end to police violence. In 1979, the National Black Human Rights Coalition organized a 5,000-strong march to the UN, with the slogans “Black People Charge Genocide” and “Human Rights is the Right to Self-Determination.” There should be a renewed focus today on the UN as an important site of struggle for working and oppressed people in the US.

COSATU’s two-day general strike against neoliberal policies on the eve of the 2001 WCAR in Durban provides a powerful example of how peoples’ movements can utilize such international gatherings to their advantage. The September 22 meeting is taking place not only in the country that is the home base of the Empire, but in the city that is the heart of US finance capital. It is crucial for all working and oppressed people to mobilize for the Durban + 10 Coalition activities from September 18 through 22, especially any protest marches that are planned.

The movement for reparations in the US can broaden and deepen its forces by highlighting the survivals of slavery in the foundations of US society today and the failure of Reconstruction to fully uproot them. Mass incarceration. Racist policing. Schools that operate like jails. Disproportionate unemployment. Enduring Black poverty throughout the country and in the Black Belt south.

In the weeks leading up to the conference and during the days of scheduled activity, we must make clear that reparations for slavery, as well as one hundred years of semi-slave sharecropping and national oppression that continues to this day, is a just demand that exposes the true character of the US Empire. It is a demand that is central to the liberation of the Black nation and the right of Black people to self-determination everywhere. It is a demand for the global redistribution of wealth stolen by the Empire. Without it, socialism is impossible.