Index

Sunday, September 16, 2007

[wvns] Peaceniks Balk at Full Equality

Meet Zahir Ebrahim of Stanford, California argues strongly against the
Jewish peaceniks who baulk at full equality in Palestine.


The endless trail of red herrings
Zahir Ebrahim
http://humanbeingsfirst.blogspot.com/search/label/Phyllis%20Bennis


In reference to the interestingly titled and revealing commentary by
Israeli peace activist Uri Avnery, "Facing Mecca" published by Media
Monitors Network
(http://usa.mediamonitors.net/content/view/full/40967) and picked up
by several others including The Baltimore Chronicle on February 19,
2007, I wanted to pen my own humble thoughts down to suggest that the
trail of red herrings is long, endless, and quite distinguished.

"Impracticality" due to the "existent reality on the ground" is often
used as a fait accompli argument for any other resolution to the long
festering Israel-Palestine blot on humanity for the suffering that it
is needlessly inducing upon the indigenous peoples, except the much
articulated two state abstract solution as theoretically dictated by
the Israeli government and the key power brokers and vested interests
allied to it. And even in this constricted solutions space, it is
frequently used to nuance what is practicably realizable given the
"existent reality on the ground", and what isn't.

While the world silently spectates the immense suffering that the
occupation continues to bring upon an innocent peoples, the Israelis
keep seeding the land with new reality on the ground which too then
becomes "impractical" to undo and becomes new leveraging points in any
subsequent peace talks - take 10 and give back 1 if the Palestinians
behave, then repeat! This reality formally got constructed in 1948 and
is continually being constructed as we speak, at each turn becoming
impractical to undo requiring the victims to continually having to
accommodate to the new reality for peace settlement, because true
justice is now deemed "impractical".

An interesting argument, this "impracticality".

Or is it indeed also a deliberate deception and red herring of the
kind related by the "Israeli Patriot" in "Facing Mecca"?

"The British call this a "red herring" - a smelly fish that a fugitive
drags across the path in order to put the pursuing dogs off the trail.

WHEN I was young, Jewish people in Palestine used to talk about our
secret weapon: the Arab refusal. Every time somebody proposed some
peace plan, we relied on the Arab side to say "no". True, the Zionist
leadership was against any compromise that would have frozen the
existing situation and halted the momentum of the Zionist enterprise
of expansion and settlement. But the Zionist leaders used to say "yes"
and "we extend our hand for peace" - and rely on the Arabs to scuttle
the proposal.

That was successful for a hundred years, until Yasser Arafat changed
the rules, recognized Israel and signed the Oslo Accords, which
stipulated that the negotiations for the final borders between Israel
and Palestine must be concluded not later than 1999. To this very day,
those negotiations have not even started. Successive Israeli
governments have prevented it because they were not ready under any
circumstances to fix final borders. (The 2000 Camp David meeting was
not a real negotiation - Ehud Barak convened it without any
preparation, dictated his terms to the Palestinians and broke the
dialogue off when they were refused.) [...]

The panic had immediate results: "political circles" in Jerusalem
announced that they rejected the Mecca agreement out of hand. Then
second thoughts set in. Shimon Peres, long established master of the
"yes-but-no" method, convinced Olmert that the brazen "no" must be
replaced with a more subtle "no". For this purpose, the red herring
was again taken out of the freezer."

But while Uri Avnery exposes some red herrings very eloquently and
quite courageously in this article, he does not explain how the same
concept was still at play even at Oslo - an unacceptable proposal in
reality that no self-respecting people would have willing accepted -
and that despite its unacceptability, Yasser Arafat had indeed
accepted it, leading to the detachment of the late Edward Said from it
eventually as the realization dawned regarding the true nature of the
peace plan and he insisted that no justice could be had in peace talks
between unequals (see his own words here, here, here, here).

However, the observation of "yes-but-no" method of the disingenuous
Israeli peace making overtures is indeed based on empirical reality.
Should I applaud this courageous activist for outright admitting it
for the benefit of the American and Western audience? This reality of
duplicity is quite known to the recipients of its largess, but
unfortunately quite unknown to those who innocently ally themselves to
the cause of Israel in the West and wonder why the Palestinians are so
moronically recalcitrant to all the generous overtures by Israel and
don't want peace!

Are the arguments of "impracticality" also similar red herrings that
continually defy justice being brought to bear on the issue?

This is the purpose of my essay, to explore "impracticality" to
achieving justice and its concomitant harvest of peace, as opposed to
the continual mantra of peace with "impracticality" as impediments to
reaching fair and just solutions that are as obvious and as ignored by
the power brokers and their allied vested interests as a black African
elephant in the ivory white bridal suite sitting right in the middle
of the newlyweds' bed.

Indeed, why not apply "impracticality" to all issues of injustices?
It's indeed highly "impractical" to bring about a change in any status
quo! That did not stop South Africa to be abolished as an apartheid
state, nor did it stop severe punitive sanctions and boycotts and
divestments to be imposed on it, with South Africa perennially being
highlighted before the world in the press and media and by the
outspoken commentators and intellectuals as a pariah state, before the
abhorrent apartheid was forced to end there through the courageous
struggle of its own indigenous peoples directly supported by the
international community (with few exceptions, the most notable being
some in the United States - see incumbent US Vice President Dick
Cheney's voting record when he was in Congress on the resolution to
free Nelson Mandela); and nor did it prevent the tea from being thrown
overboard by a handful of patriots who are today venerated as the
founders of a superpower nation. All very impractical acts as seen
from the comfortable living rooms of the pundits. That is not to say
that ending Apartheid has ended poverty in South Africa, or
automatically created economic equity. The struggle still continues
on, as it even does in the United States of America itself to create a
fairer society, as one can glean from all the movements of the
preceding century, Civil Rights, Labor Rights, Women's Rights, etc.
But the key enabler is the tumultuous axiomatic construction of the
state which must precede any incremental changes in realizing economic
and social benefits. Such an axiomatic construction transpired for the
United States of America by the writing of its seeding Constitution
after the tea was thrown overboard, and for South Africa by outright
abolishing apartheid after a long struggle where the calls for its
dismantling preceded its abolishment by many decades, and most
vociferously by the first Statesman of the New South Africa, Nelson
Mandela.

One could argue that while one waits for the justice based
"impractical" solution to transpire, should one allow those suffering
the injustices of oppression and inhuman subjugation, to continue
doing so in the interim, or should one aim for any quick compromised
"practical" solution that alleviates their misery? One of the finest
red herrings thrown on the "fugitive .. trail" yet! When the question
is posited in this way, it wonderfully co-opts the preeminence of
morality over "impracticality" in intellectual thought by artificially
constructing a false either or choice in the best mold of "either you
are with us, or against us".

In reality, there are two rather straightforward truism responses to
this that must coexist concurrently. The first is the moral response
of the intellectual that is independent of the efficacy of its
realization. This moral response is essential for identifying 'the
right thing to do' space for the society as its moral compass.

The second is the "policy" response, so to speak. This is concerned
with the efficacy of the measures required to bring injustices to a
halt in any practical measure, while being cognizant of the path shown
by the moral compass of the nation, and perhaps also being influenced
by it rather than by some other distorted compass of the "high
priests" of the ruling elite. Bringing "policies" to bear upon the
problem space is a political advocacy process, a social activism
process, a grass-roots mobilization process, a revolutionary process,
and in a democratic country like the United States of America, it is
entirely a lobbying process, a seeding of the "right" thoughts in
"Foreign Affairs" process, getting hands and feet and souls dirty
process, and even waging an all out war on WMD pretexts to eradicate
oppression and injustices of ones' own vested interests process!

The twain, "moral compassing" and "policy making", are not mutually
exclusive. Indeed, the former must precede the latter in order to
create the desired "policy advocacy" in society in the first place
that can eventually seed the desired "policy making". Let me just
refer to this bit of rational commonsense that derives from a moral
sense of justice and fair play, as the principle of Moral-Activism.

And the same persons don't necessarily have to be doing both at the
same time, i.e. "moral compassing" and "policy making". For instance,
the abolitionists clamored largely theoretically in their intellectual
writings and speeches for the abolition of slavery a good thirty years
before an advocacy policy got crafted (due to whatever reasons of
expediency and political forces), and the latter drew upon the former
for the doctrinal motivations to create the momentum that launched the
American Civil War against slavery. The example of South Africa cited
earlier on the other hand is a more virtuous example of the principle
of Moral-Activism. It is one where "moral compassing" and the
ground-floor activism and protest manifested in many of the same
peoples simultaneously. Among them, Bishop Desmond Tutu, and the
incredibly famous and respected world Statesman, Nelson Mandela, who
spent 27 years in prison for his unequivocal advocacy on the firm
moral principles to end apartheid. During this tenure in the "Gulag",
he did not compromise because his people were suffering. Indeed, he
was offered many such compromises, and shown many "practical"
alternatives for being let out of Jail and for the temporary band aid
relief of his peoples if he'd only give up his unequivocal moral call
to end apartheid. Had he been co-opted at the time by this red-herring
of "practical", and had he not had firm moorings in the
moral-compassing of his own conscience that was the impetus behind his
Moral-Activism, there'd be no new South Africa today.

Knowing the 'right thing to do space' in order to pursue an advocacy
that is principled, even when the struggle may be long and arduous, is
a simple straightforward truism that somehow seems to get lost when it
comes to Israel-Palestine. I am sorry if the principle of
Moral-Activism escapes all the "dissenting priests" in the entire
Western Hemisphere. The red herrings they strew about with what's
"practical" without any moral foundations - perhaps unwittingly for
having followed their own compromised "super dissenting priests" who
never laid out the "moral compass" on this issue for their flock due
to their own reprehensible self-interests - has been the death of an
innocent peoples. Literally speaking. And I am sure they still sleep
soundly at night!

So why am I not enthusiastically applauding Uri Avnery, the prominent
and respected leader of Gush Shalom, Israel's peace activists, for
exposing Israel's hypocrisy before the West? The answer depends on why
is a similar argument for abolishing Israel as an apartheid state, as
was made for South Africa, conclusively ending its Zionist reign of
monumental terror and obscurantism (see here, here, here, here, here,
here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here,
here, here, here, and here), and making that country one uniform
nation with equal rights for all its inhabitants (and keeping any
name, even Israel, or in fairness and acceptance of a genuinely
contrite mea culpa, calling it Israel-Palestine or Palestine-Israel,
or indeed Palestine), not being brought up by Uri Avnery? Where is the
principled Moral-Activism in his advocacy?

The most apropos model for the reconstruction of this anachronistic
apartheid-racist Zionist state in the holy lands is indeed South
Africa. The incredible parallels have been discussed by many over the
years as cited above in the long reading list for those unfamiliar
with the subject matter, and need not be rehearsed again. Had these
moral calls been vociferously made 50 years ago, 40 years ago, 30
years ago, 20 years ago, 10 years ago, after 911, and had the
"dissenting priests" seeded the moral compass of the peoples by
unequivocally demanding divestment, demanding sanctions, and demanding
an end to the apartheid and racism ingrained in Zionism and hence in
its Zionist state, this moral compassing would have surely seeded an
activism that was principled, and we may have already seen the
Palestinian tragedy very pragmatically reversed.

Were it not for the vested interests of the high priests and their
various incantations that stayed mum, and are still mum on the
subject. It is one thing to expect the "high priests" of the ruling
elite to take these conscionable moralistic positions and be
disappointed. It is quite another to have the "dissenting priests"
also lead their flock to the same pastures, albeit through a more
curious route! These vested-interests from influence peddlers have to
be shoved aside to seed the roots of justice in any system of
injustices, as the history of the world informs us to this day!

Here are some additional counter perspectives to the two-state
solution from another Israeli Jew, Israel Shamir, who does not buy the
"impracticality" red herring, nor Ben Gurion's disingenuous "It is
true God promised it to us" nonsense, and argues a moral position
unequivocally, at http://www.israelshamir.net/.

I once met Israel Shamir, curious to learn if he was for real or just
another red-herring for clever deflection of conscionable peoples'
efforts. What little I discovered from his autobiographical and very
personal public speech that I attended at a local university a few
years ago where he noted "Jews need a homeland [in Palestine] as much
as fish need bicycles", made me realize that not all Israelis are
blind sighted - that moral traditions are still alive among them! Just
that there are too few of these outspoken precious gems (here is
another whose family even gave up their Israeli citizenship by choice
as victims of their own conscience when they woke up from their
Zionist slumber, once again demonstrating that actions speak louder
than laments)! Each of them often tends to acquire the magic instantly
affixing label of "self-hating Jew", and their political positions
conveniently labeled anti-Semitic. See here and here on how this label
is dexterously manufactured and deployed to discredit anyone who
disagrees with either the official position of Zionism, or presents
other milder variants of it, apportioning for themselves the vehemence
of the Zionists in commensurate amounts!

Why does Uri Avnery indeed stop short of suggesting dismantling of the
Israeli Zionist Apartheid state and making it one democratic equitable
state for all its inhabitants? Indeed, by the admission of Israel's
own founding patriots:

"Jewish villages were built in the place of Arab villages. You do not
even know the names of these Arab villages, and I do not blame you
because geography books no longer exist. Not only do the books not
exist, the Arab villages are not there either. Nahlal arose in the
place of Mahlul; Kibbutz Gvat in the place of Jibta; Kibbutz Sarid in
the place of Huneifis; and Kefar Yehushua in the place of Tal
al-Shuman. There is not a single place built in this country that did
not have a former Arab population." Moshe Dayan: Haaretz, April 4,
1969. (noted from the web, Dayan was probably quoting Ben Gurion from
the 'The Jewish Paradox')
Where are his moral stances? Is he confused about the "right thing to
do" as well? Doesn't seem likely, as unlike the American and other
European audience, he sees the reality and history on the ground from
ground zero itself. Perhaps he may be reminded that if he claims his
Jewish religion as a race, he may well be the inheritor of King
Solomon the wise! And if he claims it as his faith (and is not an
atheist like the majority of the European culturally Jewish immigrant
inhabitants of Israel, see confessional writings such as "My Holiday,
Their Tragedy"), then he is indeed the inheritor of the moral Ten
Commandments of his lofty faith. But if he is only informed by
cultural affiliation to the Jewish traditions, he is still a human
being first and still the inheritor of the genuine wisdom of all the
sages of the ages! Why this blindsight, especially being an activist
for peace? Is it not also activist for justice? If he can forget about
the crimes of his own founding fathers "I am prepared to leave the
history, ideology and theology of the matter to the theologians,
ideologues and historians.", and "If somebody is ready to make peace
with me, within borders and on conditions agreed upon in negotiations,
that is quite enough for me.", why stop short of full restitution and
all live in peace within the same borders within which they all
rightfully belong - Jews, Christians, and Muslims?

Indeed, if it were the victims who had made these conciliatory
statements, these lofty proclamations would surely have elevated
humanity to a new level of compassion and forgiveness in putting the
past behind them - a mighty indomitable peoples indeed, as resolute in
their suffering, as magnanimous in their victory. These statements
coming from the victimizers however, while to many in the West may be
commendable, to me, for a conscionable activist of peace whom I also
admire for his immense courage to continually speak out against the
crimes of his own peoples, are quite indefensible, and downright
disingenuous! Perhaps I may have missed something here, but it strikes
me as rather odd that the occupier is claiming he is prepared to live
amicably with the victims under secure borders. It is almost as if a
thief broke into my house, locked me up in the bathroom, then when I
made too much racket, he said he was willing to live peacefully in
some well defined rooms in the house! I am sorry if no one sees the
irony of this!

Uri Avnery's confessional "I am an Israeli patriot," explains this
enigma in as much clarity as the following gem from Baruch Kimmerling,
another Israeli Patriot who calls Israel his land when he wasn't born
there, and identifies himself in the oxymoronic category of "Jew,
atheist, and Zionist" where the latter two may be consistent, but how
does that pertain to being a Jew?

"As a Jew, an atheist and a Zionist, I have two memorial days in my
country, Israel. One for the Holocaust and one for soldiers who fell
in wars. I also have one day of celebration, the anniversary of the
day Israel declared its statehood. [...] Independence Day is a holiday
for me, but also an opportunity for intense self-introspection. A
person needs a state and land, and this is my land, my homeland,
despite the fact that I was not born here. I am proud of the
unprecedented accomplishments of this country, and feel personally
responsible for its failures, foolishness, injustice, evil, and its
oppression of its citizens and residents (Jewish, Arab, and others) as
well as of those who are defined and defined themselves as her
enemies. I know that my holiday, a day of joy and pride for me, is a
day of mourning and tragedy for some of Israel's citizens and, more
so, for members of the Palestinian people everywhere. I know that as
long as we, all Jews everywhere, do not acknowledge this, we will not
be able to live here in safety, every man and woman under their vine
and under their fig tree. Happy holidays, Israel." (My Holiday, Their
Tragedy, 2002.)

Disingenuous self interest once again? Neither calling unequivocally
for abolishing the apartheid state (as far as I am aware, and if they
have already done so elsewhere, I eat crow with pleasure). And neither
extending to the displaced Palestinians the privileges they apportion
for themselves in Israel - making it their home when not being born
there (although Uri Avnery may well have been I don't know, I have
never met him) when they don't accord it to those who indeed were and
were kicked out by the very founding of the state which Kimmerling is
so proudly calling his independence day. He does indeed magnanimously
calls for Jews acknowledging the suffering of the Palestinians so that
he can live in peace in Israel, but not for remedying the injustice in
the only just and moral way - but then, being an atheist, whence the
source of morality? God is dead, Nietzsche is alive, and so are his
mantle-bearing ubermensch! Witness it in his own essay the vacuous
words without the concomitant unequivocal call to abolish apartheid
and make it one homeland for those forcibly displaced by his
independence day:

"The transformation of the Holocaust into a solely Jewish tragedy, as
opposed to a universal event, only weakens its significance and its
legitimacy, tarnishing us and the memory of the victims. Likewise, its
unnecessary overuse by Jews in Israel and the rest of the world,
particularly political bodies, has made the Holocaust banal. Above
all, a provocative and dangerous approach has bought a place in our
hearts: that Jews, as the victims of the Holocaust, are permitted to
treat goyim however they want. Forceful and condescending,
"anti-gentile-ism" is identical to criminal anti-Semitism. ... What
can I do? A person is closer to his own friends, tribe, and people.
Along with that, however, I cannot forget or refrain from mourning the
victims of this bloody conflict and feel deep empathy with those who
have suffered and still suffer as a result of the fatal encounter
between Jews and Arabs in this land. I hope that the day will come
when we will commemorate together and mourn together, Jews and Arabs
alike, for all of the victims of the conflict. Only then will we be
able to live together in this place in safety. ... I know that as long
as we, all Jews everywhere, do not acknowledge this, we will not be
able to live here in safety, every man and woman under their vine and
under their fig tree."

I am sorry that I am less than impressed, despite the
self-flagellation. "What can I do?" Kimmerling asks? Here are three
immediate things a conscionable Israeli can do if he is a
Moral-Activist (see example here): 1) Start a campaign to demand
genuine justice - not mere words of contrition - by requiring the
apartheid nature of the state and the "Berlin Wall" to be
simultaneously demolished. 2) Stop paying taxes that contributes to
the maintenance of the apartheid state. 3) As a conscionable person,
leave Israel until such time that others who have more right to be
there, on account of having being born there, and were forcibly
evicted, are also allowed to return! To me, it appears that without
any of the concomitant actions for Moral-Activism, the only reason
Kimmerling calls for the recognition of the plight of the Palestinians
is so that he and Zionist Jews like him can live in peace.

Thus, what might any conscionable self-respecting Palestinian conclude
from this? Apart from the cynicism that is now ingrained in the Middle
East of this stereotype: they will first plan to kill you with a
design most brutal, and then come to your funeral lamenting "We can
forgive them for killing our children, we cannot forgive them for
making us kill theirs" as was noted by Israeli Prime Minister Golda
Meir, in order to win back their rights as human beings first from
their monstrous oppressors who only think of themselves first and not
of the abject suffering that is being unfolded right down the
Jews-only highway from them, and who continue to maintain that "A
person is closer to his own friends, tribe, and people." rather than
demonstrate any genuine sympathy towards the sufferings of others at
their own hands, they (the Palestinians) have to make the cost of
occupation so exorbitant, that the next clarion call from people like
Kimmerling would indeed have to be a demand for full restitution of
the Palestinians so that he could indeed live in peace!

Also, let's not be fooled either that simply declaring Israel as a
non-apartheid state with a change in its laws as well as national flag
will solve all the problems for the Palestinians, but it will be an
amazing welcoming start from the present day inhuman oppression that
the world silently spectates. The economic hegemony of the European
transplants into Israel and its high tech economy all in the hands of
the Jews, will likely stay the same - rights do not equate prosperity,
but is indeed an axiomatic start. Witness South Africa - its economy
and its lands are still largely in the hands of the tiny white
minority, and the majority black indigenous population still lives in
abject poverty. But one has to begin somewhere - the place to begin is
the laws on the books, the constitution, and the philosophy of equal
rights for all its citizens regardless of caste, creed, sex, religion,
and ethnicity. How can any nation, founded on these lofty principles
itself, befriend and support a nation that is its exact opposite? Only
politics and self-interests of its ruling elite - as in the case of
all cases of injustices in society since the very inception of society!

It is indeed interesting to identify all those "intellectuals",
"moralists", "historians", "scholars", and high profile pundits and
prolific exponents who argue either "impracticality" or "Palestinian
intransigence" or offer vacuous sympathy, to either continue to
propose the severely compromised for one side, the two-state
theoretical solution along 1967 borders as their gesture of "fairness"
and "compassion", or continue to argue for the occupation because of
docile unacceptability of occupation to those being occupied.

Identify all of these exponents of Israel, not very hard to do at all
in this information age, and examine their own vested interests and/or
affiliations because of which they shirk from taking the only
genuinely moral and just position of dismantling the apartheid state
of Israel into an equal state for all its denizens born there. If they
support open immigration based only on the Jewish "race" or "faith"
cards, and deny right of return, fair compensation (ask the Holocaust
survivors for a quote of what that might be and what Israel extracts
each year from Germany), and rehabilitation in their own ancestral
lands for the displaced and dispossessed indigenous Palestinians and
their children and grandchildren, and present themselves as
"objective" erudite observers of the matter, the question must be
asked by conscionable peoples on the morality and vested self
interests of this doublespeak that seems to be gathering roaring
applause in the liberal Left! It continually escapes everyones
imagination to keep the diabolical game of Zionism in perspective -
buy time to seed the land with birth rights, and continual small
incremental encroachments, and systematic depopulation through intense
oppression such that the victims would give up, die away, or become
abject slaves!

And similarly identify all those who prominently accept the 1967
border solution - crafted any which horrendous way as inhabitable
bantustans forming no semblance of an independent nation-state with
all the same rights and privileges as any other independent
nation-state, including having a well equipped modern army, navy, air
force, marines for self-defense, and own commerce and independent
ingress and egress trade and movement points in and out of their
nation-state for an independent economy and freedom of travel, just to
point out two major gaping holes in all two-state solution proposals
that have been put on the table - from the beleaguered side and ask
whether they do so because by choice, or because of having had no
choice in the matter and only wanting to just get to any peaceable
solution, justice or not, so that some beleaguered peoples may live in
some kind of semblance of peace as human beings first, and not as
trampled sub-species of some "cockroaches" under the watchful gun
turrets of Israeli sharp shooters mounted atop the 14-ft high
apartheid wall that runs through their bedrooms and backyards! This
sub-species classification for the Palestinians was created by the
Israelis themselves - shocking? Read for yourselves [1]:

"We declare openly that the Arabs have no right to settle on even one
centimeter of Eretz Israel ... Force is all they do or ever will
understand. We shall use the ultimate force until the Palestinians
come crawling to us on all fours." and "When we have settled the land,
all the Arabs will be able to do about it will be to scurry around
like drugged cockroaches in a bottle." Raphael Eitan, Chief of Staff
of the IDF: "New York Times 14 April 1983". (noted from the web)
Unless the vested interests are clearly and unmistakably
disambiguated, the red herrings will continue to be strewn along all
paths - deliberately or unwittingly makes no difference to one on the
"fugitive" trail - to constrict the solution space to the exclusive
benefit of one party and to the severe handicap of the other, until
either Ben Gurion's call is realized: "We must do everything to insure
they (the Palestinians) never do return ... The old will die and the
young will forget.", or General Shlomo Lahat's: "We have to kill all
the Palestinians unless they are resigned to live here as slaves". And
that is indeed the reality of Israel-Palestine today as it has always
been since its bloody and brutal inception 60 years ago, and intensely
accelerated after the 1967 military occupation of the West Bank and
Gaza strip.

Even the commonsensical proposition of why the Palestinians would ever
accept an occupier was echoed by the very founding father of this
Nakba for the victims (except at the barrel of a gun continuously held
to their lives to slowly wear them down while continually playing the
diabolical game of "yes but no" to mitigate international pressures as
the systematic task of squeezing the victims goes on in the background
seeding new realities daily that perforce must subsequently be
articulated as axiomatic "The Palestinians' return could be
implemented in ways that minimize, rather than exacerbate, the
disruption for Israelis living in the areas."):

"If I were an Arab leader, I would never sign an agreement with
Israel. It is normal; we have taken their country. It is true God
promised it to us, but how could that interest them? Our God is not
theirs. There has been Anti-Semitism, the Nazis, Hitler, Auschwitz,
but was that their fault? They see but one thing: we have come and we
have stolen their country. Why would they accept that?" (Ben Gurion in
"The Jewish Paradox")

"Let us not ignore the truth among ourselves ... politically we are
the aggressors and they defend themselves... The country is theirs,
because they inhabit it, whereas we want to come here and settle down,
and in their view we want to take away from them their country." (Ben
Gurion, presumably quoted by Noam Chomsky in Fateful Triangle, noted
from the web)
From the very conception of founding of Israel by Herzl in 1896 on the
banks of the river Rhine "In Basle I founded the Jewish state ...
Maybe in five years, certainly in fifty, everyone will realize it.",
to this very day, the battle cry of anti-Semitism has been
diabolically harvested (see here), and sometimes even criminally (see
here and here), to justify Zionism and its offspring Der Judenstat.
But in the reality of today, the Jewish state is an anachronism of
history, a perception that legitimized it in the minds of the
followers of this Zionist idea when indeed anti-Semitism was rampant
in Christian Europe. Today, never mind European anti-Semitism, there
are now laws appearing on the books in Europe that even criminalizes
the mere questioning of the history as related by the Zionists to the
world's public. Thus, the Zionist Jews are now pretty safe from any
further persecution from Christian Europe, and there is little reason
to maintain the Zionist character of the state in Palestine when it
comes at the expense of intense suffering and injustice to another
innocent peoples already living there. It would hardly matter to
anyone if Der Judenstat was moved to Europe somewhere, compensation
that it was for the pain and suffering imposed on the innocent Jews by
the fanatic Christians of the previous century - unfortunately, the
compensation was offered them at another's expense.

But today, it is high time to rectify and redress that blot on
humanity by the very European and Western nations who now proclaim
themselves as the emblem of civilization and morality and beacon of
human progress and learning. Perhaps they can spotlight this beacon
onto their own first sins and help redress the calamitous suffering
that is transpiring right under their very noses on an entirely
innocent peoples as a result of their own creation - both the first
innocent victims, and then as a result of their shoddy compensation
for their monumental crimes to those victims, the new innocent
victims. Some luminous civilization out to teach the rest of the world
how to live in civilized modernity as it continually constructs new
victims!

And it is indeed instructional to learn of the sorrows and calamitous
suffering from the perspective of the victims themselves, an oft
neglected sin in the West which prides itself in its own articulate
description of the World's victims and in unfurling the crimes of
their own hegemonic emperors by writing prolific books and touting
their much wonted freedom of speech - to absolutely zero degree of
efficacy except more books sold and more prominence gained - rather
than listen to the victims themselves with as much credibility lent to
their own suffering voices.

Somehow, the victim screaming in pain is considered biased, but their
victimizers' description of their plight is academic honesty and
intellectual brilliance! I don't think I really need to hear it from
Noam Chomsky to know how Palestinians are suffering, although his
conscionable exposure of their plight in the West is certainly very
important, and has been so for many years - but his half baked
two-state proposals for their solutions ain't.

When we give higher currency to conscionable dissent makers whose
prime cultural affiliations are with the victim makers themselves,
over those voices of anguish of the victims and those with cultural
and civilizational affiliations to the victims as their extended
family, we do both the victims and other well intentioned bystanders
longing to figure out how to make peace with justice, a great disservice!

Here is another example of this twisted view of justice even by well
intentioned exponents of the Palestinians' rights but civilizationally
and culturally allied with the victimizers: "Palestinians Have A Right
To Go Home" by the erstwhile, vocal, and conscionable Phyllis Bennis
of the Institute of Policy Studies. After passionately arguing the
Right of Return for the Palestinians in the abstract:

"Palestinians today make up one of every four refugees in the world.
Their right to return to their homes, despite more than a 52-year
delay in realizing that right, is no less compelling than the right to
return home of any other refugees from any other war. International
law is very clear: It doesn't matter which side wins or which side
loses, after a war, refugees have the right to go home. The United
Nations passed Resolution 194 (which the U.S. and every other U.N.
member state except Israel voted to reaffirm each year from 1949 till
1994) specifically to make sure that those made refugees by the
creation of Israel would be protected. And yet Israel specifically
rejects that right of return because of concern that allowing the
Palestinian refugees to come home would change the demographic balance
of the Jewish state."

But now look at the disigenuousness of the solution space. An absence
to any call to eliminate the main reason why the Right of Return is
not being implemented by Israel - it's apartheid nature of the Jewish
state which has been diabolically constructed on another peoples' land
where the indigenous population was predominantly non-Jewish! The
"just" solution escapes Phyllis Bennis even when she acknowledges the
cause of the problem in this case.

And she also surveys the various implementation attempts by others:

"Is compromise possible? Absolutely. But only if it is based on
recognition of the right of return as a real, fundamental right - not
if it is based on Israel's superior power. Israel's proposal during
the recent Camp David summit for a "humanitarian" family reunification
program that would benefit only a few tens of thousands, out of the
millions of stateless Palestinians, is one compromise that will surely
not work. Another sure-to-fail compromise is the proposal being
quietly bandied about in Washington and a variety of Middle Eastern
capitals. This plan envisions a quid pro quo in which Baghdad would
resettle many of the Palestinians (with or without their consent) from
refugee camps in Lebanon to Kurdish areas of Iraq (from which equally
unconsenting Kurds are already being expelled), in exchange for
lifting the crippling economic sanctions against Iraq. Publicly denied
by the relevant governments, the plan has in fact been discussed with
Iraqi officials by the representative of at least one member of the
U.S. Congress, and a number of Arab leaders are known to privately
support the idea. This is a non-starter too."

But then makes this statement as her own suggestion:

"Real compromise is possible in determining how, not whether, the
right of return will be realized. The Palestinians' return could be
implemented in ways that minimize, rather than exacerbate, the
disruption for Israelis living in the areas."

Why this axiomatic preference to minimize "the disruption for Israelis
living in the areas" - they are the victimizers to start with, aren't
they? [2]

Instead, why does the erstwhile author not make the only conscionable
call of Moral-Activism to abolish the apartheid state as the only just
first step in the right direction?

The same is true of Noam Chomsky - while he supported the sanctions on
Apartheid South Africa, he is against sanctions for Israel. Why should
the vested interests of those civilizationally, culturally, and
religio-historically allied with the victimizers, despite being
courageously vocal in bringing the plight of the innocent victims to
the attention of their own nations, be allowed to dictate, and
dominate the articulation of the solution space on behalf of the
victims? I am sorry if no one sees the irony in this!

Indeed, Chomsky has himself informed many victims themselves, as well
as the Western audience, of the pragmatic underpinnings of the terror
that was ruthlessly employed in creating the Jewish State. In his
"Western State Terrorism", in Chapter 2, Chomsky writes:

' In 1943, current Prime Minister Yitzhak Shamir wrote an article
entitled "Terror" for the journal of the terrorist organization he
headed (Lehi) in which he proposed to "dismiss all the 'phobia' and
babble against terror with simple, obvious arguments." "Neither Jewish
morality nor Jewish tradition can be used to disallow terror as a
means of war," he wrote, and "We are very far from any moral
hesitations when concerned with the national struggle." "First and
foremost, terror is for us a part of the political war appropriate for
the circumstances of today, and its task is a major one: it
demonstrates in the clearest language, heard throughout the world,
including by our unfortunate brethren outside the gates of this
country, our war against the occupier." '

Where the "occupier" was either the British, or the indigenous
Palestinian population, or both, I am not sure. Neither were however
spared the wrath of Jewish terror in the creation of the Jewish State,
and the Palestinians bearing the biggest brunt of it. So Chomsky is
not a stranger to the monumental crimes of Zionist Jews visiting the
Nakba upon the innocent local peoples of Palestine, that Kimmerling
proudly calls his "independence day". Neither is Chomsky any stranger
to how anti-Semitism was deftly harvested to populate the new Jewish
State, with the escaping Jews from Europe being cleverly diverted to
the intended Jewish State in Palestine all throughout the 1940s even
before the state was founded. As he has himself noted it somewhere in
his prolific writings, the affluent ones and the techno-scientists and
the Jewish social elite escaping from the Nazis were allowed onto the
shores of the United States, the rest were deliberately diverted to
Palestine.

And Chomsky's "pragmatic" response to this genocide and mayhem of the
local population during the founding of the Jewish State? All modern
nations are formed on the unfortunate bloodshed of millions, the
United States itself was formed on the blood of 10 million natives,
and so on. This is all faits accomplis. So we have to move on and live
among our internationally recognized secure borders according to
international norms. (Precis of private communication from a while back)

Great. And here is where the red herring begins. Higher the
priesthood, more tortuous the red herrings.

Chomsky does not distinguish between a crime that happened in the
distant past that we can do little about today in rectification, and
one that is occurring concurrently in our present epoch for which we
can most assuredly do something in rectification, and for which a just
and moral solution does indeed exist. It has not receded into dusty
pages of history far enough yet to have become a fait accompli that
cannot be practicably undone - such as returning California to Mexico.

Today, Israel is the only nation on earth as far as I know, with no
self-recognized borders except the entire 'land of Canaan', and where
the writ of this apartheid state is continually extending over
amorphous boundaries with new 14 ft walls being continually
constructed to create giant prisons to enclose the indigenous
population who refuse to "die", and whose "young" refuse to "forget",
and who refuse to be "resigned to live here as slaves", and who
miraculously escape "We have to kill all the Palestinians" call to
ethnically cleanse the beleaguered Palestinians from their own
homeland. Is there any other evidence of monumental terrorism even
possible in the present epoch? While all eyes have been diverted to
the "Islamic terrorists" and the "Bin Ladens" and "Orange alert" and
strip search at airports, the big monstrous Jewish elephant in the
Zionist state is blithely ignored - even as I write this today in
February 2007 - permitting them the ubermensch prerogative for Eretz
Yisrael, which according to Zionism's overtly stated ideological
underpinnings that entirely drives the political aspirations and its
execution in the apartheid state, is "from the Nile to the Euphrates".
Or it may be the other way around. It doesn't matter since it's a
scalar and an all encompassing open secret that no one wishes to say
out loud for some reason in the West, but surely, like Uri Avnery
mentions the "Arab refusal" premising all facades of peace talks, and
when that failing, the "yes but no" taking over, it is also much
openly discussed in the Hebrew society as the premise upon which
Israeli policies, its laws, and its visitation of brutal oppression
upon the indigenous peoples, are made. But the Western intellectual
exercising claims to "dissent chief priesthood" dare not base any
advocacy based upon these facts of the oppressive regime. That this
irony fails to strike the commonsense of many, is not surprising. For
priesthood in any domain, is merely the shepherd tending to his
respective sheep.

So why am I not enthusiastically applauding Noam Chomsky for his
courageous "dissent"? The answer entirely depends on why is a similar
argument for abolishing Israel as an apartheid state, as was made for
South Africa, and conclusively ending its Zionist reign of monumental
terror and obscurantism in the modernity of the 21st century, not
being courageously made by him. Where is the principled Moral-Activism
in his advocacy of a negotiated two-state solution? It isn't that the
distinguished professor isn't familiar with the diabolical plans of
the Zionist state - he is no ordinary intellectual - in the face of
Israel's "existent reality" of take 10 give back 1, "yes but no", and
the "Arab refusal" that has been their not so "secret weapon", nor is
he unfamiliar with the Machiavellian motto of the Zionist state "wage
war by way of deception" as its guiding principle, and nor is he
unaware of the underlying implementation philosophy that has
underscored the Zionist state's pragmatism of incremental faits
accomplis by initiating new crises starting from its very birth pangs
as was openly admitted by Ben Gurion himself: "what is inconceivable
in normal times is possible in revolutionary times"!

What indeed are the underlying reasons for his abstaining from making
the moral calls for a unified democratic Israel-Palestine for all the
inhabitants of Palestine? What restrains him from articulating an
unequivocal principled stance against the very root cause celebra of
apartheid and the "ubermensch" racism ingrained in Zionism itself that
makes Israel such a misconstruction of West's own cherished values of
democracy and equal rights for all? Just to refresh ones' failing
memory, for the 'Democratic' racism see here, the UN Anti-Zionist
Resolution 3379 see here here, and its timed revocation in 1991 to
officially assert 'Zionism is no longer racism' with the emerging new
world order see here and here as the "high priests" tell it, and here
as the "dissenting priest" tells it, and see here for how 3379 was
originally spinned by the "highest priest" in the land in the
influential Foreign Affairs magazine.

I do not hesitate to ask the following of such a distinguished
intellectual, for I gave up following "priests" when I woke up to the
presence of unexamined axioms in all "priestdom", and instead decided
to think for myself thus absolving all "priests" of being responsible
for either saving me from perdition or consigning me to it! But that
does not absolve the "priests" of their own greater responsibilities
of priesthood towards the rest of their flock who glibly accept
anything from "high pulpits". Higher the "pulpit", higher their
credibility, and greater the consequent responsibility. Has Noam
Chomsky relinquished his claims to moral imperatives and moral high
grounds of honest intellectualism that he previously asserted was the
responsibility of intellectuals (see here, here, and here):

"It is the responsibility of intellectuals to speak the truth and to
expose lies" and "the responsibility of a writer as a moral agent is
to try to bring the truth about matters of human significance to an
audience that can do something about them."?

It is inconceivable that Chomsky would not recognize that by not
providing this unequivocal moral compassing for his nation in blanket
uncompromising terms when it comes to Israel-Palestine, he unwittingly
lends his own intellectual support to the hegemonistic aspirations of
world's sole superpower nation which he fearlessly and
uncompromisingly calls the "rogue state" (see here, here, here, here)
every chance he gets. By inexplicably ignoring this "rogue state"
conveniently using (and abusing) a minority among the Jews themselves
to further its own hegemonistic interest of sustained indomitable
preeminence in the affairs of the world (see here) by financially and
politically maintaining Israel in its current abominable Zionist
construction as its private little Nuclear armed proxy hegemon in the
Middle East (see here, here, here, and here), and staying silent about
the role that Zionists themselves are currently playing in the
construction of his own nation's imperial foreign policies in a
tortuous collaboration of self-interests (see here and here and
compare authors here) which seems to be visible to all and sundry in
the world, except inexplicably to the "arguably the most important
intellectual alive", Chomsky is willingly co-opting himself to the
interests of the "ruling elite" that he has spent his entire life
sanity-checking. Indeed, Moral-Activism from intellectual supremos,
demands uncompromising moral compassing, as he had himself noted
during his earlier years of an idealist's dissent:

"Intellectuals are in a position to expose the lies of governments, to
analyze actions according to their causes and motives and often hidden
intentions. In the Western world, at least, they have the power that
comes from political liberty, from access to information and freedom
of expression. For a privileged minority, Western democracy provides
the leisure, the facilities, and the training to seek the truth lying
hidden behind the veil of distortion and misrepresentation, ideology
and class interest, through which the events of current history are
presented to us...." (Responsibility of Intellectuals)
In these "revolutionary times", I am unfortunately less than impressed
by Chomsky's supposed raison d'etre of Palestinians suffering under
the 'jackboots' of the Israelis being the basis of his "practical"
two-states "policy advocacy" and the legitimization of the forced
separation of an indigenous peoples from their own lands. The
beleaguered Palestinians have already been suffering for more than 40
years under the same 'jackboots' and continually losing their lives
and property to diabolically constructed faits accomplis that Chomsky
knows all too well about. This rationale of 'any tactic for
alleviating the misery of a defenseless peoples' for pushing various
and sundry advocacy plans by the well intentioned, in the absence of
Moral-Activism that is firmly seeded by a moral compass, ends up being
another gigantic stinking red-herring in the long term, bigger and
more deflecting, than all the obvious ones pointed out by Uri Avnery.

It is indeed but a truism that in every society there are always only
a tiny handful who are the illustrious vanguards of morality and
social justice. These handful tend to attract to themselves a majority
of the well intentioned and conscionable peoples from the larger
society to learn what is the 'right thing to do' space for their
activism to redress social and political injustices. They supposedly
rip apart the red herrings cleverly disseminated by the "high priests"
of the ruling elite, dexterously guiding their flock to see the
burdensome truth behind the lies and distortions inherent in
incantations of power, and thus apportion for themselves credit for
guiding their flock that is commensurate with their ranking in
priesthood, as commonsense might dictate. And this credit for Western
intellectuals on many issues of contemporary geopolitical concern is
surely overwhelmingly positive, which is why the New York Times cited
Noam Chomsky as "arguably the most important intellectual alive". All
likely apropos for sanity-checking his own nation's hegemonistic
foreign policies, including eloquently highlighting the fait accompli
of long past crimes (history) of Jewish terrorism while founding the
state of Israel upon the blood of the Palestinians. Except when it
comes to resolving a just solution space (contemporaneously) for his
already recognized Zionism's usurpation and coercive resettling of
Palestine, then this epithet suddenly and inexplicably fails to
deliver, in my humble (mis)perception.

It's almost as if unless the issue is already fait accompli, Chomsky
won't touch it when it's so close to his heart. But once fait
accompli, many books about it will be written delineating the
monstrosity of the crimes and the mendacity of power that enabled the
construction of such crimes, attracting a great following and great
prestige for speaking up on the crimes of his emperors. If I was an
emperor, I wouldn't mind having Chomsky on my tail either because he
will only be chasing faits accomplis leaving me free to create new
ones! And thus the New York Times epithet fails miserably on the
contemporaneousness of this matter, and only on account of Chomsky's
uncourageous silence in unequivocally articulating a moral compass on
this issue when something can actually be done about it rather than
courageously lament in history books after the fact. His
undistinguished silence has likely misled, or indeed not been the
prime mover of, many a movements that might have effectively called
for an end to the Israeli racism and apartheid, and thus postponed the
harbinger of justice to a suffering peoples. As the reality of faits
accomplis on the ground might suggest, justice delayed, is justice
denied, thus necessitating increasingly greater and more tumultuous
radical transformation in bringing it about. Can the increased
bloodshed be laid at the footsteps of the silently spectating world,
and in commensurate measure, upon the silence of their ranking priest
who claims "the responsibility of a writer as a moral agent is to try
to bring the truth about matters of human significance to an audience
that can do something about them"?

So we have the "high priests" of officialdom spinning their doctrines
in manifest truism to serving the interests of their ruling elite, and
we have the "dissenting priests" ostensibly sanity-checking and
unraveling their spin. But who sanity checks and unravels the
self-interests of the "dissenting priests" and the concomitant red
herrings?

Their inexplicable failure in providing a moral compass on this single
most momentous issue of our time, only succeeds in carving out the
entire solution space on Israel-Palestine in the West, between the
"high priests" of the ruling elite and the "dissenting priests" of the
conscionable flock, to the rather limited two-state axiomatic paradigm
forcing the beleaguered peoples to choose between the reality of a
brutal occupation, and the reality of continually shrinking buntustans
that has no parallel to statehood anywhere else on Earth today.

So let's tepidly examine Noam Chomsky's own objectivity in the light
of his own self proclaimed self-interests that might coherently
explain this odd blindsight in the most profound intellectual in the
West. Having openly declared himself a Zionist, and a Zionist youth
leader, albeit of the 1940s variety, whatever that might mean, I must
ask why the profound intellectual of the dissent space would not
conscionably recuse himself from bringing to bear his own
Zionist-aspiration driven personal advocacy on the Israel-Palestine
solution space due to his obvious conflict of interest, and focused
instead, as a conscionable intellectual must, on what the suffering
Palestinian victims themselves advocate as their desired solution
space? Just as he conscionably brings their miserable plight to the
attention of his Western audience by courageously setting aside his
personal Jewish affiliations when highlighting the monumental crimes
of the cruel Zionists upon the Palestinians, why would he not also
conscionably set aside his personal self-interests of his nuanced
"Labor-Zionism" aspirations, and bring the Palestinian victims' own
solutions - as the victims' natural right to demand their own
redressing - to the attention of the same audience?

This is a rather clear and unambiguous litmus test of objectivity for
anyone who claims to speaks out on behalf of any suffering peoples.
And it also provides a rational mechanism to anyone to enable them to
set aside their own self-interests. Just allow the victims to speak
for themselves and propagate their own claims before the world! In the
pungent stink of the gigantic red herring of what's "practical", as in
the "two-state solution", we see the "practical" slowly becoming faits
accomplis, as the good peoples in the West are continually deflected
from demanding the moral compass towards the 'right thing to do' space
by their prominent intellectuals co-opted by their own self-interests.

And this red herring of disingenuousness doesn't just end here. There
is even a finer shade that must still be unraveled. For an
intellectual laying claims to high morality of intellectualism, and
oft publicly teaching the Biblical Golden Rule "Do unto others as you
have others do unto you", indeed, even creating logical corollaries to
it which go something like this: "if it is good for me to do to you,
it should be good for you to do to me, and if it is bad for you to do
to me, it should be bad for me to do to you too", and continually
teaching the public how to disambiguate on complex emotional matters
that are typically steeped in hypocrisy due to self-interests, by
looking at the issues from the point of view of a detached being
sitting on Mars looking down upon the earthlings and employing the
(Biblical) Golden Rule of Morality, what does it mean to be a Zionist?
Chomsky has already recognized that nation states are formed on the
bloodshed of the innocent native peoples as the natural consequence of
the latter resisting the usurpation and resettling of their land by
invaders, which even Ben Gurion recognized, as noted above, as why
would the Palestinians ever accept the Zionist invaders peaceably thus
necessitating (in Gurion's own words) "We must expel Arabs and take
their places" and "We must do everything to insure they (the
Palestinians) never do return"!

Thus knowing full well that any Zionist aspiration for a land that is
already continuously inhabited by an indigenous population for
centuries will most assuredly continually lead to, and has already led
to, their displacement and bloodshed, upon what "ubermensch" principle
of morality is Chomsky's aspiration of Zionism based?

Is it what Golda Meir uttered:

"This country exists as the fulfillment of a promise made by God
Himself. It would be ridiculous to ask it to account for its
legitimacy." (Golda Meir, Le Monde, 15 October 1971, noted from the
web here).

Or is it what Menachem Begin uttered the day after the U.N. vote to
Partition Palestine:

"The Partition of Palestine is illegal. It will never be recognized
.... Jerusalem was and will for ever be our capital. Eretz Israel will
be restored to the people of Israel. All of it. And for Ever."
(Menachem Begin, noted from the web here)

Or is it based on the spirit, which for the nth time was candidly
asserted by Yitzhak Shamir in his own straightforward diction, and
Ariel Sharon in his characteristic bulldozing speak (and which is
unapologetically repeated ad nauseam by all Israeli statesmen and
Zionist protagonists in their own choicest diction with the spectating
world pretending to not notice):

"The settlement of the Land of Israel is the essence of Zionism.
Without settlement, we will not fulfill Zionism. It's that simple."
(Yitzhak Shamir, Maariv, 02/21/1997, noted from the web here)

"Israel may have the right to put others on trial, but certainly no
one has the right to put the Jewish people and the State of Israel on
trial." (Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, 25 March, 2001 quoted in
BBC News Online, noted from the web here)
While one is surely entitled to fantasize whatever one's mind may
conjure up, but when it becomes the unstated underpinning of one's
advocacy of a solution space that drowns out the echoes and
aspirations of the victims themselves, there are a lot of red herrings
on the ground. In any case, this is how I (mis)perceive Chomsky's
advocacy of the "practical". The best way to demonstrate that these
are indeed misperceptions and there are no vested self-interests at
play, is to loudly condemn Zionism in all its abhorrent nuanced shades
[3], to unequivocally call for an end to apartheid and "ubermensch"
racism in Israel [4] that is entirely seeded from the "ubermensch"
racism in Zionism itself, to designate Israel as a rogue state in
one's writings and to call for its boycott and for sanctions to be
imposed on it, and to actively engage in echoing the victims' own
demands for justice and not put forth ones' own (tainted) solutions
[5]. The little guy on Mars is still awaiting an unequivocal moral
compassing from "priestdom" on Israel-Palestine!

Indeed, I would be much more impressed if distinguished and prominent
intellectual dissenters and Jewish moralists like Noam Chomsky
outright condemned modern Zionism and its racist apartheid structure
on the principled position of Moral-Activism, as much as they
condemned Nazism and its National Socialist State that was also based
on the same Nietzsche-ian "ubermensch" philosophy and which once
engulfed the entire world in a world war to eradicate. Perhaps in the
present "World War IV" against "Islamic terrorism" - with the amazing
new doctrinal name of "Islamofascism" synthesized to seed all the
"doctrinal motivations" needed to sustain this new "policy" of
"perpetual war" mobilization - he can, faithful to his own
intellectual positions taken earlier on the responsibility of
intellectuals, himself being one, and not just a mere ordinary one,
but "arguably the most important intellectual alive" in the entire
Western Hemisphere, advocate its moral extension, or its real moral
commencement, against the "Jewish Fundamentalism" and "Jewish
Terrorism" and "Zionofascism" of his own peoples in Israel-Palestine
whose crimes he has amply documented himself (see here, here, here,
and here for a recap of what's already been shown conclusively above).

As a polite courtesy to the prominent intellectuals and peace
activists whose positions are illustratively dissected here to
demonstrate the endless trail of red herrings inherent in the very
premise of any allowable discourse on this subject in the West, even
in the so called dissent space, I sent them an earlier version of this
article for comment. Only the erstwhile Noam Chomsky responded. We
went back and forth a few times. I remained unconvinced of his
continued tortuous "practicality" arguments and suggested to him that
he might voice them publicly in response to my article vastly opening
up the discourse space. But he did put me in a temporary quandary by
suggesting that I would be doing a grave disservice to the cause of
the Palestinian peoples by making my views known in public as it will
unwittingly give the Israelis and their Zionist exponents further
excuse to increase their oppression as a pretext that 'see - they want
to dismantle us'. He also disconcerted me by saying why was I bringing
the illustrious name of Edward Said into this (by the fact of having
quoted Edward Said). That threw me off balance for several sleepless
nights and days delaying the publication of this article in much angst
fighting with my own conscience. Until I realized (yet once again)
that if I was right there under the 'jackboots' of the butchers, any
butchers, in any place, even as a Jew under the Nazis, I would want
some conscionable person on the outside to yell out my message loud
and clear to the world for me: 'I am a human being under the jackboots
of the Nazis - do the right thing for at least my children'. By not
honoring that call of anguish of the innocent victims when I perceive
the reality of their immeasurable suffering which is a "mystery whose
parallel may only be the one of Sinai when something was revealed", I
would not like to become the recipient of their curse:

"and I still curse the killers, their accomplices, the indifferent
spectators who knew and kept silent" (Ellie Wiesel in All Rivers Run
to the Sea)

That clinched it for me. The tyrants will do what the tyrants will do
in any case, and as they have been doing for decades. And the people
of conscience must do what the people of conscience must do,
regardless, to end despots reigns.

Moving right along disambiguating and dismantling the constricted
solution space of swiss cheese bantustans being offered the
Palestinians as new faits accomplis are carried out right before our
eyes as we stay wrapped up in the Ezra Pound's paradigm of deception
with multiple red herrings (invent two lies and have the public
energetically embroiled in which one of them might be true), the
question arises that why should the dialog, when it comes to the
Palestinians, begin with the 1948 construction of Israel through
superpower politics? As for instance, in Phyllis Bennis' article where
she passionately advocates justice for the refugees, she makes the
following statement:

"The United Nations welcomed Israel as its newest member with
Resolution 273, passed on May 11, 1949. The membership resolution
stated specifically that entry to the world body was based on Israel's
statements regarding its ability and willingness to implement the
earlier Resolution 194 of December 1948, and the rights it granted to
the Palestinians. Those were the right to return home and compensation
for their losses during the war."

Sounds great, except that when it is applied to the more fundamental
first cause question of why Der Judenstat was created in Palestine in
the first place on another indigenous peoples' continuously inhabited
land, three thousand year old history is drawn upon to show the
aspirations of the victimizers and what transpired in Europe through
the Holocaust as the final justification for its creation through the
victimizers' own official instrument of adjudication. Why should that
become so automatically axiomatic in one case, but the history and
real lives of the peoples continuously living there before 1948 who
are innocently victimized not be equally axiomatic? Does this have
anything at all to do with attempting to bring justice in the best way
possible to the tragedy unfolding on the ground, or the mere
preservation of self-interests by arguing "impracticality"?

All conscionable peoples' voices of protest must be brought to bear on
the plight of any innocent victims, for we are indeed one family in
humanity, and when we collectively stand up against tyranny, we are at
our finest in demonstrating that we have come a long ways from our
humble Neanderthal beginning. However, in principled Moral-Activism,
our conscionable voices can never be allowed to drown out the victims'
own anguished voices themselves, the victims' own notion of what
crimes are being heaped upon them, and the victims' own demands for
what is fair and just restitution! Especially since the victims are
still contemporaneous, and justice can still be afforded them. The
crimes invoked upon them have not become fodder for erudite works of
historical research as yet, as some like to pretend. The victims are
still howling and writhing in insufferable pain!

The voices of the victims themselves describing their own fate are as
potent, and as legitimate, as the Jewish moralist and Holocaust
survivor Elie Wiesel's description of what the Jewish victims faced at
the hands of another monumentally criminal oppressors. Just as the
victims' own description of their Holocaust outweighs any detractors
and revisionist historians claims to the contrary - indeed even laws
are being constructed in many Western nations to make it illegal to
challenge the victims stories and the victims suffering and the
victims version of what calamity befell them - so must the systematic
genocide and depopulation, terrorizing, and inhuman subjugation of an
innocent peoples in their own words must now replace the many Diaries
of Anne Frank. The past monumental crime is over but its memory is now
being devilishly employed to diabolically mask a new monumental crime
in progress by the former victims themselves - see here, here, and
here for how that's done, and here, here, and here to catch a glimpse
of it in action to quell any criticism of Israel by constantly drawing
upon allusions to the Holocaust "a hate-fest against Jews akin to a
Hitler rally in Nazi Germany" and "Islamic Mein Kampf" - one might
have thought that they may have known better, having suffered
themselves and being gods chosen people and all!

Denying any genuine victims' indescribable calamity is monumentally
shameful. The clarion call of "never again" however is not reserved to
only one class of victims as some have tried to do. And when those who
were once victims themselves create new victims of their own, and in a
manner of oppression and deception learnt from their past victimizers,
I tend to lose much sympathy for them. It is a factual statement that
one can even observe in themselves, and in any court room for similar
behavior exhibited by a past victim becoming the victimizer of a new
innocent victims. Indeed, in a rational and fair court, they would be
imperatively disarmed and locked up - for leaving weapons and power in
the hands of the criminally insane would be an even greater monumental
crime of any court!

Watching the Zionist operate, any Jewish person of conscience must
surely be upset at what "great name" (sic!) some of their brethren
have bestowed on the entire peoples of a high and moral tradition by
the mere association with the word Jew. But that does not appear to be
the case at all with rare exceptions (see here and here for some
examples of such rare and genuine human beings who are so offended
that they put their own lives on the line but remain largely unknown
and unmourned in the victimizers' own civilizations but are idolized
and immortalized as heroes by the victims themselves, and here for
fair justice). Israel seems to continue to enjoy widespread support
from the World Jewry, and most vocally from within the United States
of America. Indeed a lot of support for Zionist Israel comes from this
superpower nation's ordinary Christian Zionist ideological supporters
(see here and here), of which the mighty President of this "Roman
Nation" is himself an exponent.

And here comes the fundamental dichotomy in dialogs with the victims.
To the victims, the Zionists are monumental barbarians to be seen in
the same dock someday as Eichmann in Jerusalem, with the front rows
occupied by the new innocent victims who have as much right to succor
and restitution as their victimizers were for their own Holocaust! And
surely the new victims repeatedly, daily, hourly, every moment of
their breadth, invoke the same curse uttered by the former victims
"and I still curse the killers, their accomplices, the indifferent
spectators who knew and kept silent". To them too, their plight must
surely be an equal "mystery whose parallel may only be the one of
Sinai when something was revealed". And despite this daily inhuman
subjugation, they continue to make every attempt at civilized
existence despite burying their children daily, barely escaping from
under the roofs of demolished homes and the wrath of D9 bulldozers and
F16s, and having to kiss their beloved child with his or her eyes
precisely blown out by an Israeli 25 year old sharp shooter as if he
was "cockroach picking" and not go insane! In much vain and hollow
rings the call of the Jewish moralists themselves:

"Although the Holocaust inflicted horrible injustice upon us, it did
not grant us certificate of everlasting righteousness. The murderers
where amoral; the victims were not made moral. To be moral you must
behave ethically. The test of that is daily and constant."

One can read, hear, and see the Palestinian victims' scream in anguish
and call for justice from the bespectating world in their own voices
here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here,
here, here, here, here, ... just as few randomly chosen samples of how
the Palestinians themselves view their own calamity and how the
victims themselves perceive justice, but for the convenient ear plugs
in well intentioned peoples' ears. Compare the victims own call for
restitution to this articulation by Israeli Statesman Shimon Peres
(the master of the art of "yes but no") here, and examine the vested
interests of all those who echo it in all its nuanced shades!

And one can further watch how these screams are continually dismissed
in the West, especially in the United States of America, by well
organized shills for the Apartheid State continuing to strew their own
B grade quality of red herrings, considerably less abstruse in
disguising their obviousness in their on going attempt to continually
sew obfuscation any which way possible in order to continue to buy
time for Der Judenstat in seeding new "impracticalities" to justice
for their innocent victims. The following is only a random sample. The
very first comment for this book on Amazon.com "Refugees in Our Own
Land : Chronicles from a Palestinian Refugee Camp in Bethlehem" by a
commentator whose well known affiliations are noted here, and other
generous red herring droppings noted here, says the following:

" ... Had those things actually been perpetrated by Israel, I would be
first in line to condemn them. But even the United Nations has
concluded that Israel has not committed genocide, in Jenin, or
anywhere else. As for murder, it seems that the only murder is taking
place by Palestinians against Israeli civilians, and that whosoever
amongst Palestinians has been killed has died either in battle, in the
line of fire, or by accident, for which Israel has apologized. When,
on the other hand, was the last time a Palestinian leader actually
sought an end to suicide bombings, because they are evil, not because
they are inexpedient. "

And concludes by saying:

"My biggest problem with this book is that for most of the events that
Hamzeh reports, she relies on hearsay. There has been no scientific or
objective attempt to verify the information, much less the veracity of
the sources. Even that might be all right, had the reporter not
assumed an hysterical tone. But Hamzeh is so willing to believe
everything nasty she hears about Israel or Israelis, or Jews for that
matter, that nothing escapes unscathed. I want peace, but books like
this one--filled with blame and outright hatred--do nothing to promote
it."

Perhaps this commentator needs to be introduced to the "scientific or
objective attempt to verify the information" standards adopted by the
incumbent victimizers themselves to bring to the attention of the
world what monumental crimes were once heaped upon them, or
mandatorily be made to read the anguished words of Elie Wiesel in his
own highly acclaimed "hysterical tone" of the calamity that is now a
"mystery whose parallel may only be the one of Sinai when something
was revealed" for their own innocent victims. A conscionable reader
may perhaps inform the commentator, as well as all those allied with
her (begin here and here, then progress to here, here, here, here,
here) of this fact so that we may all endeavor together - for none of
us is perfect and many of us are easily misled, sometimes by blind
passion, sometimes by disinformation - to become human beings first!

It may be apropos to bring the late Edward W. Said's own rational
words - one who was indeed from among the victims and deeply
affiliated with their culture and civilization as both a spokesperson
and an anguished exponent of his peoples cause - for summation away
from my more emotional ones that synchronizes to the beat of Ellie
Wiesel perfectly but perhaps not as eloquently or credibly. Excerpted
from Edward Said's essay "The Mirage of Peace", October 16, 1995 in
The Nation:

"The deep tragedy of Palestine is that a whole people, their history
and aspirations have been under comprehensive assault--not only by
Israel (with the United States) but also by the Arab governments and,
since Oslo, by Arafat....

I do not pretend to have any quick solutions for the situation now
referred to as "the peace process," but I do know that for the vast
majority of Palestinian refugees, day laborers, peasants and town and
camp dwellers, those who cannot make a quick deal and those whose
voices are never heard, for them the process has made matters far
worse. Above all, they may have lost hope....

I have been particularly disheartened by the role played in all this
by liberal Americans, Jewish and non-Jewish alike. Silence is not a
response, and neither is some fairly tepid endorsement of a
Palestinian state, with Israeli settlements and the army more or less
still there, still in charge. The peace process must be demystified
and spoken about plainly. Palestine/Israel is no ordinary bit of
geography; it is more saturated in religious, historical and cultural
significance than any place on earth. It is also now the place where
two peoples, whether they like it or not, live together tied by
history, war, daily contact and suffering. To speak only in
geopolitical clichés (as the Clinton Administration does) or to speak
about "separating" them (as Rabin does) is to call forth more violence
and degradation. These two communities must be seen as equal to each
other in rights and expectations; only from such a beginning can
justice then proceed. "

And perhaps I may be allowed to offer my own much more modest rational
conclusions, as seen from the eyes of an ordinary person, with my own
personal biases and self-interests. Not being an intellectual, I am
mercifully spared their burden of claims to deep thoughts, and can
speak straightforwardly in ordinary human being first sense, the
common man's sense, or commonsense. It is but a concatenation of
obvious moral truisms for there isn't a whole lot to this summation
beyond that.

All of the discussion in this article is the view from the victims,
and/or from the civilizations sympathetic to the victims, and/or from
the courageous conscionable peoples in all civilizations who are human
beings first and can genuinely commiserate with the misery of other
suffering human beings without putting their own self-interests above
those of imperatives of morality, and what is fair and what is just,
as amazingly and quintessentially delineated in the Biblical Golden
Rule "do unto others as you have others do unto you". The victimizers'
and their exponents' view obviously is incongruent with this - another
wholly truism! But can there be no objectivity? How does a judge ever
make a ruling in any case? Is it only with victors' justice? No, not
among civilized conscionable peoples, and among rational and moral
civilizations. In these times of ease of access to information,
amazing search engines and document archives at finger tips, it may
indeed be deemed a moral crime, by the victims at the very least, to
feign ignorance of the state of the world, or to disingenuously claim
a different world view. But then it does require considerable skills
to disambiguate the spin doctoring and vested interests that surround
the information, especially for well intentioned bespectating peoples
removed from the conflicts themselves. How is one to discern fact from
fiction? Unless one is the victim of course - then one needs no
discernment! The victims know with certainty what crimes are visited
upon them and what is their demand for restitution and compensation.
Perhaps others might just ask the victims themselves? But that might
just be too much commonsense, the good lord of hypocrisy, the
ubermensch, forbid!

Do we need to define some standard agreed upon usage of words, i.e.
definitions, that are then applied to all sides of the arguments, ab
initio, in order to discern them unhypocritically? How important is it
to know the "first cause", and how appropriate is the principle of
"all the evil that follow" to apportion the blame for all crimes
stemming from the first cause? How far in history may one go? One
year? Ten Years? Fifty Years? 100 Years? Three Thousand Years? Ten
Thousand Years? To Adam? To Devil? To God? (To Big Bang in case one is
atheistic)? What key principle standard was employed at the conclusion
of World War II at the Nuremberg and Tokyo Trials to apportion blame
for the heinous war crimes committed by both sides of bombing civilian
centers and causing the deaths of up to 50 million peoples -
irrespective of whatever may have been the weaknesses in the execution
of these standards due to self-interests of the victors as some have
argued? (And we don't want to use these possible weaknesses in the
execution of these standards as arguments to deflect our attention
from the actual moral principles behind them which is the point of
discussion - but do watch for it as some will surely try to distract
attention from the actual moral principles themselves by bringing up
various compromises and poor implementation of moral principles in the
past as evidence for not following moral principles or not advocating
justice based on moral principles - wonderfully smelly things, these
red herrings, for some fishermen I am sure!)

Does the passage of time in the current epoch, as it blends into
history, favor the status quo? Are we doomed to remain caught in this
plight of the House of Zeus? Or is there a way to discern rationally,
logically, fairly, to understand the "right thing to do" space? Once
knowing that, it is always "impractical" to bring it about as the odds
are always against the underdogs - the victims, and in favor of the
topdogs - a truism. Arguing truisms like the 'impracticality" argument
to justify not articulating 'the right thing to do' is called what?

(In case one does not know how to answer this question, one may try
any of these for size and see which ones may fit: "hectoring
hegemons", "self-interest", "sophistry", "hypocrisy", "double
standards", "superpower's uncle tom", "a red herring manufacturing
factory that supplies whole sale to the consciousness of their nation
using the credibility of the power of their name", "intellectually
aiding and abetting in the conspiracy to perpetuate a monumental crime
through advocacy speech and actions not rooted in Moral-Activism and
thus deliberately enabling the continued perpetuation of the crime and
its concomitant new faits accomplis", et. al)

And the most obvious moral truism summation for last - the now visible
elephant dancing on the newlyweds' bed.

The most commonsensical solution that seems to be continually eluding
the luminous West that supports the misconstruction of Israel as an
apartheid state with various and sundry Western intellectuals
sheepishly apologizing for it by cleverly not talking about it in all
their fancy and refined punditry of high morality and responsibilities
of intellectuals, is the one nation state for all its inhabitants. In
that tight geography, two nations just cannot be constructed justly,
the one with the guns will always dictate the terms. And it is truly
no ordinary piece of geography. It is so steeped in the history and
intermingling cultures of all three Abrahamic religions that try as
the European Zionists may, to obliterate the vestiges of the other
two, the history and its affiliations cannot be divorced from that
geography. Abolishing apartheid and eliminating the racist Zionist
philosophy and replacing it with a civil society and civil laws for
all, is the only just solution. It is also the solution that the
Palestinian peoples themselves demand. One nation of Muslims,
Christians, and Jews, or stating it in another rational order, of
Jews, Christians, and Muslims, living amicably together in the holy
lands that all covet, equitably sharing the Land of Canaan. With the
passage of time, in a peace seeded with justice, all wounds of the
victims - the ones throwing the rocks and the stones at the tanks
besieging their homes, and the ones going berzeck in blowing
themselves up in a last ditched attempt to get back to their
tormentors responsible for their insanity and their shattered tabula
rasa - may be healed. The innocent Jewish victims of the Palestinians'
struggle to live as free human beings on their own continuously
inhabited ancestral lands against their inhuman oppressors, I hope
will heal too - an innocent people traumatized by the first Holocaust,
and then by the struggles against their own criminal oppression by
another innocent peoples whom they gratuitously victimized, have a
long and arduous self-healing process in front of them. It's time both
sides were allowed to start the process by vehemently and righteously
rejecting the insanely criminal and largely unexamined axioms, the
anachronistic first cause celebra of their entire modern misery and
the root cause of war mongering and suffering in the entire Middle
East, from their midst. There is no reason, in the modernity of the
21st century, to have an Apartheid pariah state in our midsts that has
co-opted the very definition of justice from the lexicon of Western
languages, and continues to create new innocent victims on a daily
basis and has been doing so since its very inception in 1896, when its
founder claimed along the banks of the Swiss Rhine: "In Basle I
founded the Jewish state ... Maybe in five years, certainly in fifty,
everyone will realize it". And most assuredly, there is no reason for
any people, be they well intentioned, or ideological, who may have
supported it in the past, to continue doing so in the present, except
with monumentally criminal intent of perpetuating crimes against a
beleaguered humanity.

If an EU can transpire after killing each other for centuries and upon
the ashes of 50 million dead just in the 20th century, with the
determined will and singular focus to do so, a unified
Palestine-Israel is a far more natural and historical reconstitution
except for the relative newcomer European Zionism parasite that has
hijacked the region, and continually prevents and distorts its
reseeding with red herrings up the wazoo. It's time to finally
endeavor creating the long cherished and elusive dream of a peaceful
and fairer future for all of our children by the construction of a
non-Apartheid equal and just state for all its inhabitants in
Israel-Palestine.

Indeed a true "Zion that will light up all the world", one that can
finally claim to be the genuine moral inheritor of the Ten
Commandments, and of the noble Prophet - whom all three faiths in the
region honor and respect, sharing in the same Abrahamic moral
traditions - who identified his flock as God's chosen peoples!


Thank you.


--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
The author, a minor justice activist, grew up in Pakistan, studied
EECS at MIT, engineered for a while in high-tech Silicon Valley
(patents here), and retired early to pursue other responsible
interests. He may be reached via humanbeingsfirst on gmail com.


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Footnotes

[1] An editor of the website "Dissident Voice" challenged this quote
with the following comment: "i submit that you need a first-hand
sourcing here; see http://ngo-monitor.org/archives/news/122304-1.htm".
The full quote, that I checked on the microfiche in a local public
library, where only the afternoon edition of the New York Times of 14
April 1983 was on the roll of microfiche, is as follows:

'Jerusalem, April 13 - ... There is a widespread conviction among
Palestinian Arabs that the Israelis want to make life miserable for
them and thereby drive them out of the territories.

This was reinforced by reported remarks Tuesday by the outgoing Chief
of Staff of the Israeli Army, Lieut. Gen. Rafael Eytan. Israeli radio,
television and newspapers quoted him as telling the Parliament's
Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee that for every incident of
stone-throwing by Arab youths, 10 settlements should be built. "When
we have settled the land," he was quoted as saying, "all the Arabs
will be able to do about it will be to scurry around like drugged
roaches in a bottle." ' (Emphasis added. New York Times, late edition,
Thursday 14 April 1983, page A3, story by David K. Shipler, titled
"Most West Bank Arabs Blaming U.S. for Impasse")

It is possible that the quote I have cited in the main text of the
essay from the web, was originally from the morning edition, or was
assembled from multiple stories as that edition contained many stories
on Israel-Palestine. Also see Wikipedia at
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rafael_Eitan, and the image at
http://uploaded.fresh.co.il/2004/11/28/27740072.jpg for presumably a
citation in original Hebrew. The similarity of wording and sentiments
expressed in both, only prove the main theme of this essay - the
endless trail of red herrings.

The "cockroach" peddler met his verminous fate of the Pharaoh as noted
at http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/middle_east/4034765.stm. The BBC
itself reported the quote in question in their own story as follows:

'Mr Eitan was politically right-wing and opposed the handing over of
land to Palestinians as part of peace talks.

He often used blunt language. He once said: "When we have settled the
land, all the Arabs will be able to do about it will be to scurry
around like drugged cockroaches in a bottle."

Mr Eitan was also criticised by the Kahan Commission, which
investigated the massacre of Palestinian refugees by an Israeli-allied
Christian militia during Israel's invasion of Lebanon in 1982.

The Commission said he should have anticipated the danger and opposed
sending the Christians into the camp.' (Emphasis added. BBC News,
Tuesday, 23 November, 2004, 10:07 GMT, "Former Israeli army chief drowns")

It made me intensely depressed to read-back to 24 years ago and to
reflect that the goodly American nation has continually permitted a
most monumental crime under its own watchful eyes with its full
budgetary support, while its supposedly democratic peoples busily
pursue their own "American Dreams". A genocide that can be so easily
averted by the world is allowed to continue, it seems, only for the
pleasure of future historians and moralists to make a good living
peddling history books and pontificating morality. Here is an
interesting quote from the same A3 page, just underneath the above
article, that shows that the only thing that's changed on the playing
field of fait accompli, is more faits accomplis, bigger holes in the
swiss cheese Buntustans, and a generation further besieged, through
the direct funding of a great populace democracy:

"Washington, April 13 - A House Foreign Affairs subcommittee has
quietly increased the amount of military and economic grants for
Israel by $365 million over the amount request by the Reagan
Administration for the 1984 fiscal year, committee members said today.

They said the Administration had requested $785 million in economic
grants and this was raised by $65 million to $850 million.

The Administration also had requested $1.7 billion in military aid, of
which $550 million would be in the form of grants and the rest in
loans. The committee, which is headed by Representative Lee H.
Hamilton, Democrat of Indiana, decided to allow $850 million to be in
the form of grants - an increase of $300 million - leaving just $850
million to be repaid, instead of more than $1.1 billion." (New York
Times, late edition, Thursday 14 April 1983, page A3, story titled
"Panel increases Grants for Israel")


[2] The distinguished Phyllis Bennis is in equally distinguished
company here. Let's witness former American President Jimmy Carter
selectively exercise his tender conscience with his serendipitous book
"Palestine, Peace Not Apartheid". In his speech at George Washington
University, as reported by the Associated Press and carried by Israeli
newspaper Haaretz at http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/834962.html,
he noted:

'He said he was not accusing Israel of racism nor referring to its
treatment of Arabs within the country. "I defined apartheid very
carefully as the forced segregation by one people of another on their
own land," he said. ...

On the West Bank, Carter said, Palestinians were victims of
oppression, their homes and land confiscated to make way for
subsidized Israeli settlers.

"The life of Palestinians is almost intolerable," he said. "And even
though Israel agreed to give up Gaza and remove Jewish settlers from
the territory, there is no freedom for the people of Gaza and no
access to the outside world."

"They have no real freedom of all," Carter said.

By apartheid, Carter said he meant the forced segregation of one
people by another. He said Israel's policies in the territories are
contrary to the tenets of the Jewish faith.

"There will be no peace until Israel agrees to withdraw from all
occupied Palestinian territory," he said, while leaving room for some
land swaps that would permit Jews to remain on part of the West Bank
in exchange for other Israeli-held land to be taken over by Palestinians.

"Withdrawal would dramatically reduce any threat to Israel," he said.'


The distinguished President Carter noted the definition of "all
occupied Palestinian territory" very carefully suggesting that 'he was
not accusing Israel of racism nor referring to its treatment of Arabs
within the country. "I defined apartheid very carefully as the forced
segregation by one people of another on their own land," he said'.
This might be forgivable oversight of memory or lack of geography
knowledge for an ordinary mortal, but for a 39th former president of a
superpower nation who is also a Nobel Peace Prize laureate, and who
dares to speak out serendipitously in favor of a beleaguered peoples,
but only goes part of the way as if some enormous invisible barrier is
blocking him, it is entirely inexplicable.

Perhaps despite being a president who once had all the secrets of the
State (and the world) at his finger tips, he hadn't rightly been
informed by the '14 members of the Carter Center's advisory board' who
resigned to protest his book, or by the 'Jewish groups and some fellow
Democrats' from whom he 'drew fire', of the Jews own history of
laments of the type disclosed in this essay, including this very
poignant one:

"The state of Israel founded in 1948 following a war which the
Israelis call the War of Independence, and the Palestinians call the
Nakba - the catastrophe. A haunted, persecuted people sought to find a
shelter and a state for itself, and did so at a horrible price to
another people. During the war of 1948, more than half of the
Palestinian population at the time - 1,380,000 people - were driven
off their homeland by the Israeli army. Though Israel officially
claimed that a majority of refugees fled and were not expelled, it
still refused to allow them to return, as a UN resolution demanded
shortly after 1948 war. Thus, the Israeli land was obtained through
ethnic cleansing of the indigenous Palestinian inhabitants. This is
not a process unfamiliar in history. Israel's actions remain
incomparable to the massive ethnic cleansing of Native Americans by
the settlers and government of the United states. Had Israel stopped
there, in 1948, I could probably live with it. As an Israeli, I grew
up believing that this primal sin our state was founded on may be
forgiven one day, because the founder's generation was driven by the
faith that this was the only way to save the Jewish people from the
danger of another holocaust." (Tanya Reinhart: "Israel/Palestine - How
to End the War of 1948", excerpt from very first page)


[3] There are obviously a minuscule number of "Kibbutz Zionists"
living in Israel, perhaps less than 1% as I am advised, who love to
live the Kibbutzim life style, toiling and soiling in a cooperative
whereby the community helps raise each others' children. A vast
majority of them supposedly are irreligious and "Leftist" by
inclination, and are also largely portrayed by their exponents as
non-violent peaceable peoples who settled in Palestine before 1948
(albeit the ones I know who have lived this life arrived in Galilee
much after the construction of the Apartheid state). Noam Chomsky
himself once noted on the public airwaves to Amy Goodman on her radio
talk show Democracy Now, that he too lived there in the 1950s for a
short period, and every time he would look out over the horizon, he
would feel immensely saddened that another peoples had been forcibly
and inhumanly deprived of their land in order to achieve Zion. He had
noted on the airwaves, as I recall, that he couldn't morally take the
incongruence of the situation and decided to return back to the United
States. To this humble plebeian, it appears that these intellectual
idealists, and others like them including those self-proclaimed
"dissenters" who continually express deep remorse and anguish at what
the Zionist founders perpetuated to create Der Judenstat in the midst
of an already continuously inhabited peoples living there for
millennia, must concede, if they indeed do not espouse a Nietzsche-ian
morality, that they should be able to live together in equitably
sharing the land of Canaan with all its indigenous peoples. Thus the
word "Zionism", without any qualification, predominantly refers to the
glaring monstrous elephant dancing on the newlywed's bed of racist
murderous Zionism that was unleashed by Theodor Herzl in 1896 when he
proclaimed "In Basle I founded the Jewish state ... Maybe in five
years, certainly in fifty, everyone will realize it.", and which was
subsequently orchestrated to create an exclusive "Jews-Only" state
with "Jews-Only-roads-and-suburbs-and-rights" in the heartland of
Palestine. See Lenni Brenner's incredible online book "Zionism in the
Age of Dictators" at
http://onlinebooks.library.upenn.edu/webbin/book/lookupid?key=olbp12752.

Given the manifest reality of deliberate and endless red herrings on
the ground, anyone not coming out loudly against Zionism itself as the
world silently spectates its global power-play, and not demanding its
immediate and outright dismantling and full restitution to its
victims, is complicit in the on going murder and genocide of an
innocent peoples, all their self-flagellation and words of remorse not
withstanding. Thus see for instance, "The complete text of The Origin
of the Palestine-Israel Conflict Published by Jews for Justice in the
Middle East" at: http://www.wrmea.com/jews_for_justice/index.html.
Also examine the former American President, Jimmy Carter's anemic
condemnation of Israel, and his restricting the critique in "Palestine
Peace not Apartheid" to the still ill-conceived two-state solution
space. A just and more forthright person might have produced a work
titled "Palestine, Justice not Apartheid"!

[4] It is rather bizarre that President Carter in the spirited defense
of his book against the Zionist exponents of Israel, should so
circumspectly state that 'He said he was not accusing Israel of racism
nor referring to its treatment of Arabs within the country.' Not
possessing the distinguished credentials of being a former President
of the lone superpower country in the universe, and not having won any
Nobel Peace prizes either, I must confess I cannot understand the
tepidity or wisdom of President Carter. As a mere plebeian, I must
rather straightforwardly ask him and the reader, why? Why is Jimmy
Carter not accusing Israel of racism, nor referring to her treatment
of Arabs within the country?

What is a courageous former President - guarded 24x7 by the Secret
Service, and possessing all that he may ever desire in the world
already in the back pockets of his accomplished and full life - so
fearful of, that he should go out of his way to assert his definition
of "Apartheid" in the title of his book to: "I defined apartheid very
carefully as the forced segregation by one people of another on their
own land", and deliberately restrain himself from not seeing the
direct and immediate parallels with South Africa? Did he come by this
arbitrary definition through whim, fear, or through some "ubermensch"
principle of morality?

Please permit this rather plebeian scribe to have the chutzpah to
remind a distinguished luminary-scholar-humanitarian-extraordinaire of
the modern political world of the words of Haim Cohen, former judge of
the Supreme Court of Israel (as noted by Tariq Ali in "To be
Intimidated is to be an Accomplice"
http://www.counterpunch.org/ali03042004.html):


` "The bitter irony of fate decreed that the same biological and
racist argument extended by the Nazis, and which inspired the
inflammatory laws of Nuremberg, serve as the basis for the official
definition of Jewishness in the bosom of the state of Israel" (quoted
in Joseph Badi, Fundamental Laws of the State of Israel NY, 1960, P.156)'


And all can easily glean the expansion of this statement by the former
judge of the Supreme Court of Israel, in "Zionism as Jewish National
Socialism":


"According to Halachah, classic Judaism's laws and customs, for
example "compassion towards others" extends to Jews only. Murder or
manslaughter is judged mildly when the perpetrator is Jewish and the
victim a non-Jew. Also according to Halachah, it is accepted for a Jew
to kill a non-Jew if he is laying claim to "eternal Jewish land". This
is what the settlers' religious organisations are alleging. There is
no corresponding law in Israel's judicial system but in effect it
influences the system as punishment of such crimes is very mild.
Israel's state terrorism, theft of land and occupation, demolition of
houses, the building of the Wall etc including the so called
'extra-judicial killings' (assassinations), are seen by Zionists as
legitimate defence of the Nation and therefore fall under
international law - which Israel ignores [..] Buber critisised Nazism
while commending the Jewish Religion (Hassidism) but keeping quiet
about its dehumanising of non-Jews (goyim). These double standards act
to increase Israel's chauvinism and hatred of all non-Jews." (Lasse
Wilhelmson "Zionism as Jewish National Socialism"
http://www.israelshamir.net/Contributors/wilhelmson.htm)


And we can trivially see empirical evidence of "These double standards
act to increase Israel's chauvinism and hatred of all non-Jews" in
despicable racist "ubermensch" statements like the following one by
Moshe Katsav, former President of Israel, that inexplicably seem to
remain incognizant among the powerful and distinguished critics' of
Israel-Palestine blot on humanity, including the author of "Palestine,
Peace not Apartheid":

"There is a huge gap between us (Jews) and our enemies not just in
ability but in morality, culture, sanctity of life, and conscience.
They are our neighbors here, but it seems as if at a distance of a few
hundred meters away, they are people who do not belong to our
continent, to our world, but actually belong to different galaxy."
(Moshe Katsav, President of Israel, The Jerusalem Post, May 10, 2001)

It is incredible how powerful the lapses of some short term memories
can be – perhaps Moshe Katsav has forgotten the Jewish Ghettos from
New York to Poland that the Jews inhabited not too long ago
themselves. Furthermore, this was their unfortunate 'state of being'
when they were free and no military occupying power was constricting
them to death. The beleaguered peoples whom the erstwhile former
President of Israel finds so easy to belittle as "not belong to our
continent, to our world, but actually belong to different galaxy" on
the other hand are living under a brutal Israeli military occupation
after they were already once evicted from their own lands when the
Zionist state was first constructed in their peaceful midst and forced
into the subsequently second whammy of military occupation of even
that small parcel of land – generations have been wasted under the
murderous occupiers watchful gun turrets. Shame! What has happened to
the humanity of these Israelis? Why should the world take any sympathy
on these peoples anymore for their holocaust? They are handing the
same systematic genocide to another innocent peoples – only spread out
across generations and in plain sight of the silently spectating
world. Witness the following comments of an American President Harry
S. Truman from his Diary July 21, 1947. Every word of it is reflected
in the Zionist Jews' own merciless actions in Palestine since the
founding of Israel in 1948:

"The Jews, I find are very, very selfish. They care not how many
Estonians, Latvians, Finns, Poles, Yugoslavs or Greeks get murdered or
mistreated as D[isplaced] P[ersons] as long as the Jews get special
treatment. Yet when they have power, physical, financial or political
neither Hitler not Stalin has anything on them for cruelty or
mistreatment to the under dog."

So upon which "ubermensch" principle of morality has the distinguished
President Carter come up with his definition of Apartheid? Hasn't he
even bothered to read the late Daniel Pearl's wife, Marriane Pearl's
touching autobiographical book in memory of her murdered husband "A
Mighty Heart", in which on page 15 she writes of the newest and latest
DNA technologies being employed in Israel for the ultimate in racism
and Apartheid that even far surpasses South Africa:

"Last October, at a film festival in Montreal, I won an award for a
controversial documentary I made for French and German public
television about Israel's use of genetic screening. Under Israel's Law
of Return, almost any Jew has the right to return to the ancient
homeland. But how do you make sure someone is actually Jewish? To
determine who qualifies, Israeli authorities have used DNA testing to
examine applicants' genetic makeup. My film explored the political and
sociological implications of this process, which are confusing and
disturbing." (Marriane Pearl "A Mighty Heart" page 15)

I am only assuming that the former President Carter does not receive
his daily briefings from the White House anymore, and therefore may
not have kept up with the latest news in racism of Israel's innate
makeup! Can some courageous reader put the afore asked questions
before the former American President publicly where he is compelled to
respond as the world continually fawns their oohs and aahs at just the
thought of a former President of the United States of America even
thinking of criticizing Israel?

I am sorry that I am less than impressed, credentials or no
credentials. One does not need to be in possession of the title of
"President" to see the difference between "good and evil" or to be
"beyond" it, or indeed, does one? Seems like all the moralist thinking
of people like Hannah Arendth in profound lamentary books such as
"Eichmann in Jerusalem - A Report on the Banality of Evil" is mainly
confined to the crimes committed against the mighty "ubermensch"
themselves! Also see comment (the first one) on Time Magazine's 'The
Middle East' blog in response to an amazing article by Phil Zabriskie
titled "Reading Between, Over, Around the Lines..." March 8, 2007, at
http://time-blog.com/middle_east/2007/03/between_over_around_the_lines.html,
comment reproduced below:

' "There might well be a fair number of people who think that a state
of conflict, marked often by violence and at times death, is the
natural state of things here, that endless cycles of mutual
antagonism, persecution, and victimization is how its supposed to be,
a kind of prophecy foretold."

I am not an expert on prophesy, but certainly commonsense suggests
that evil flourishes because many good people choose to remain silent,
and those who perpetuate it ["state of conflict"] are usually ordinary
peoples - as noted by Hannah Arendth in "Eichmann in Jerusalem - A
Report on the Banality of Evil". And when she observed the
"ordinaryness" of Adolph Eichmann, she was "reprimanded", putting it
charitably. Because we always like to perceive that horrible crimes
are only committed by super horrible peoples, and ordinary peoples
have no role in being "good Germans".

I would like to draw your kind attention to "the endless trail of red
herrings" on this topic that even conscionable and distinguished
writers, in mainstream, as well as dissentstream, keep perpetuating,
unable to see past the mythologies and red herrings with their own
good commonsense.

Please see my humble article on http://www.humanbeingsfirst.org with
the above title.

I hope you do publish my comment - it is very difficult to have an
ordinary person, a plebeian, have his voice heard - it's always the
special interests who get the airwaves/mainstream to themselves.
Perhaps Time can be courageous enough to change that - and run my
article as their cover story? A plebeian can dream of a time when
their own voices can inform the peoples, can't he?

Thank you
Zahir Ebrahim
Founder Project HumanbeingsfirstTM
c/o humanbeingsfirst at gmail com '

[5] Noam Chomsky had written to me 'Furthermore, you are apparently
unaware that I have, since childhood, been a very vocal advocate of a
binational state as part of a broader federation. But I stress the
word "advocate."' while he continued to justify the two-state solution
with "impracticality" and what appeared to me to be specious political
expediency arguments. Thus I had informed him that I was going to let
him respond publicly, and I eagerly look forward to him cogently
explaining his positions "loud and clear" in the light of this essay
in which I have, as a non-scholar, rather an ordinary plebeian,
challenged his profound wisdom based upon the moral imperatives that I
am compelled to humbly spell out in my essay "Responsibility of
Intellectuals - Redux".

I have to admit here of my own close sense of affinity to Noam Chomsky
as his lifelong student once upon a time, and as his nondescript
student at MIT while studying EECS, where I first learned about the
"real" US Foreign Policies. And as one who has benefited from
Chomsky's moral teachings and analytical techniques of news
deconstruction tremendously, some of the lessons learned I hope are
also exhibited in this essay. As I wrote to Chomsky, and which I
excerpt below, my humble effort to critically examine his positions in
public is as much a matter of my own conscience as that which compels
him to stand up to the tyranny of his own nation. I also have to admit
that I remained a covetous reader of Noam Chomsky's books and essays
throughout my life, until 2003, when new realizations dawned upon me
and I stopped being impressed by other peoples' ideas, including
Chomsky, and decided to start thinking for myself ab initio. Some of
these realizations are also mentioned in my very detailed essay
"Dialog Among Civilizations: Whytalksfail? - Part1" in the context of
911, wondering why, the two most notorious gadflies on the planet,
Noam Chomsky and Robert Fisk, suddenly found new trust and faith in
the Government's version of it. These essays are available at
http://www.humanbeingsfirst.org, in a feeble plebeian effort once
again to speak out against the new unprovoked impending war of "shock
and awe" upon another defenseless nation - "and I still curse the
killers, their accomplices, the indifferent spectators who knew [or
now know] and kept silent".

"First let me genuinely once again acknowledge the debt of gratitude
that I have for you being my teacher most of my adult life. We have a
saying in Urdu, loosely translated, it says - 'the cat is the auntie
of the lion'. It means the cat taught everything to the lion, except
to climb the tree. Obviously to save its own skin. In our culture, as
well as I am sure in other cultures, we often refer to experts and
teachers and other specialists who hold things back from their
students and under-studies, with similar phrases. Such a phrase, is
entirely unjust for you. You have indeed never held anything back as
far as teaching your mind to anyone and everyone who has wanted to
learn. And for this, I am most grateful. And to some tiny extent, I am
applying the skills learnt from you, to attempt to disarm you, and
other Zionists like you, intellectually speaking. I am not an
intellectual, nor an erudite scholar, but a mere ordinary person who
is now a minor social worker [..] and a small time grass-roots justice
activist. To the extent I succeed in checking you, it must surely make
you happy that you taught well. To the extent I fail, it is my own
shortcomings and a limitation of my own small mind."

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
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92: "Daniel Pipes' Website" http://www.danielpipes.org/
93: "AIPAC's Website" http://www.aipac.org/
94: "American Enterprise Institute Website" http://www.aei.org/
95: "Alan Dershowitz Website" http://www.alandershowitz.com/
96: "Anti-Defamation League Website" http://www.adl.org/
97: "Copyright Law of the United States of America, Chapter 5,
Copyright Infringement and Remedies"
http://www.copyright.gov/title17/92chap5.html
98: "US Code, Title 17, Chapter 1, § 107. Limitations on exclusive
rights: Fair use" http://www4.law.cornell.edu/uscode/17/107.html
99: "A Summary of United Nations Agreements on Human Rights"
http://www.hrweb.org/legal/undocs.html
100: "The Patriot Acts: Sneak Attack on Civil Liberties - Patriot Act
II Fact Sheet" http://www.pfaw.org/pfaw/general/default.aspx?oid=10786
101: "The Constitution of the United States of America"
http://www.law.cornell.edu/constitution/constitution.overview.html

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1 comment:

Ojalanpoika said...

Jeru-salaam, -shalom & -salem,

Could you kindly comment, whether my details are correct in a dissident essay in
http://www.helsinki.fi/~pjojala/Expelled-Jews-statistics.htm ?

E.g. "...Tel Aviv - The Silicon Wadi?
Tel Aviv (literally: Dumb-Hill of Spring) was plain desert at the beginning of the 20th century. Today, in the advent of her 100th year celebrations in 2009, it is the Silicon Wadi (Valley) of the Mediterranean since 1990's.

It is United States that profits from Israel, rather than the opposite. Israel gets nearly 3 billion USD from USA annually, but open brain drain is its prerequisite. Astonishing number of 25% of the Israeli researchers have moved to the United States - and this figure does not yet include the people with double citizenship. The next largest drain of researchers are 12.2% from Canada, 4.3% from Netherlands, and 4.2% from Italy.

Before the Second Intifada, there were nearly 200 Israeli companies listed in the Nasdaq, at the Intifada the count dropped to 70. (The number is still greater than from all the European countries combined). It is said that the dollars are green since the Americans pull them down from the tree raw and fresh. The start-ups are imported straight from the garage, and scaling up of production in the "conflict hotspot" has been considered impossible. But the new Millennium has brought a change in tide.

In Israel, 20% of citizens possess a higher decree from the university. Over half of the export from Israel are High tech products (32 $ billion in 2007), compared to the 25% average of the OECD countries. Israel's GDP is about $200 billion. She exhibits second highest output of new book per citizen and more patents per person than any other nation. Nobels, by definition, are awarded to the people who have made services to the whole world, and 21% of the prizes have gone to this population of less that 17 million, taking both Eretz Israel and galut (diaspora) into account.

The population of Arabs under the Israeli government increased ten-fold in only 57 years. Palestinian life expectancy increased from 48 to 72 years in 1967-95. The death rate decreased by over 2/3 in 1970-90 and the Israeli medical campaigns decreased the child death rate from a level of 60 per 1000 in 1968 to 15 per 1000 in 2000 at the Westbank. (An analogous figure was 64 in Iraq, 40 in Egypt, 23 in Jordan, and 22 in Syria in 2000). During 1967-88 the amount of comprehensive schoold and second level polytechnic institutes for the Arabs was increased by 35%. During 1970-86 the proportion of Palestinian women at the West Bank and Gaza not having gone to school decreased from 67 % to 32 %. The Gross Domestic Product (GDP) per capita in West Bank and Gaza increased in 1968-1991 from 165 US dollars to 1715 dollars (compare with 1630$ in Turkey, 1440$ in Tunis, 1050$ in Jordan, 800$ in Syria, 600$ in Egypt. and 400$ in Yemen).

Also, the biggest generic drug factory in the world was recently established in Israel. Generating US$7 billion in annual revenues, Israel's Teva Pharmaceutical Industries Ltd. (TEVA) is the world's largest generic pharmaceutical company. That is: to cure people with less money. TEVA makes generic versions of brand-name antibiotics, heart drugs, heartburn medications, and more - in all close to 200 global generic products, 700 compounds, and more than 2800 dosage forms and formulations. TEVA's pharmaceuticals are used in some 20% of U.S. generic drug prescriptions. Examples of TEVA's generics include lower-cost equivalents of such blockbusters as anti-depressant Prozac and cholesterol drug Mevacor. Nevertheless, in biotechnology and original drug development, about 400 experimental Israeli drugs have been approved or accepted in clinical phases.

As an example, the supranational Intel transferred the mass production of Centricon-processors to Israel, where ~20% of citizens possess university decrees (ranking 3rd in the world) but where the environment respects patents and are not plagiating every item they produce to others like the rocketting China. Intel was also offered an overall tax rate of 10%, which is about three times lower than that of US.

How has the United Nations reacted to such an impact especially in the field of medicine and health care? One-fourth of the judgements of the Human Rights Commission strike Israel.

There is a pious smoke screen on the industrial countries mediating peace to the Middle East. A collaboration between the Jews with their technology and science and Arabs with their oil and loyality has been a great nightmare for the Western countries. The intimate friendship between the cousin "races", as officially declared by Chaim Weizmann and Emir Feisal in Versailles peace conference, was deliberately mutilated. The Second Intifada could be called The Oslo War.

Aviv is Hebrew for "spring", symbolizing renewal, and tel is an archaeological site that reveals layers of civilization built one over the other. The Jewish population has been such a layer of native culture not only in the Palestine, and the expulsion of the native Sephardi and Mizrahi Jews from various Muslim countries since 1948 has been al nakba, catastrophe, for these societies..."

Recovering from hemorrhage in the left hemisphere of the brain,
Pauli.Ojala@gmail.com, evolutionary critic
Biochemist, drop-out (MSci-Master of Sciing)
Helsinki, Finland

PS. However, if you are only after Jihad against Eretz Israel by the means of media war after the conventional weapons were not succesful, please do not bother. I don't want to have anything to do with any holy war - wars are not holy. Jeshua ("Joshua") was the prophezied Prince of Peace of the Isaiah. The prince just isn't the king yet, in the city of peace.