When Israel was founded, there was hope among progressive Jews that the new country could rely on the best traditions of Judaism and teach the world how to navigate the shoals of bigotry and injustice, a vision that remains unfulfilled, as Lawrence Davidson describes.
By Lawrence Davidson
An ideologue is someone who sees the world in the limiting terms of a doctrine or dogma. It is limiting because the human world does not operate or evolve according to any one dogma. Therefore ideologues must wear blinders that result in tunnel vision – a tunnel which, like a Procrustean bed, tries to force the world to fit their chosen ideology.
There are hundreds of ideologies out there, both religious and secular, and in every case the resulting tunnel vision eventually results in absurdities – claims about the world that, seen from outside of the ideology, make little or no sense. So it is with the ideology of Zionism and the doctrinaire interpretations its adherents make about their own behavior and the behavior of others who oppose them.
An Israeli who joined a public campaign in 2012 to discourage an Israeli war against Iran.
One such proponent of Zionist ideology is David Harris, the Executive Director of the American Jewish Committee (AJC). The AJC describes its mission as “to enhance the well-being of the Jewish people and Israel.” This is a point of dogma for the Zionists – that the well-being of the Jewish people and Israel are bound together. I am often confronted with Harris’s ideological take on events because, curiously, he has me on his mailing list.
David Harris’s View
On Oct. 11, Harris posted an essay on the ongoing violence in Israel-Palestine. It is entitled “Attacks Against Israelis: The World’s Silence Is Deafening” and the entire piece can be found both on the Huffington Post and The Times of Israel. The essay seeks to promote a picture of Israeli victimhood. As such it opens up a clear window on the Zionist’s view of the present situation and therefore is worth taking a look at.
What I am going to do is take representative segments from Harris’s essay and show how the grievances he reserves for Israelis seem somehow wrong when considered from outside the Zionist perspective. Indeed, as Harris’s complaint about the “world’s silence” in the face of violence against Israelis suggests, for many people, his picture of Israeli victimhood is quite untenable. Because his ideology will not allow him to consider the possibility of Israel’s responsibility for the present violence, the world’s “silence” leaves him aggrieved and bewildered.
Here then are some representative parts of Mr. Harris’s essay. He starts this way: “For days now, I have been watching in dismay as Israeli citizens face random attacks, some deadly, by Palestinian assailants on the streets of their cities and towns. Children have been orphaned, parents have lost children, and some survivors are doubtless scarred for life.”
It is true that individual Israelis have been hurt or killed in the recent past in apparently random attacks by Palestinians. Unfortunately, this is as far as Harris’s understanding goes. Thus, his tunnel vision renders invisible other perspectives, such as the possibility that dead and injured Israeli Jews, like the Palestinians themselves, are victims of the aggressive Zionist society and culture they live in, the government and laws they obey, and the racist policies they tolerate.
Given this perspective the present Palestinian violence becomes understandable as a product of anger and frustration caused by Israeli occupation and long-standing discrimination against Israeli Arabs. There has been no need for an indoctrination of hate by Hamas or any other religiously inspired group (a favorite red herring of Zionist ideologues) to explain Palestinian actions. Israeli policies and practices in and of themselves are quite sufficient.
Harris cannot perceive, much less understand, this perspective. Yet, in ever greater numbers, the people outside of Israel can see that any portrayal of Israeli victimhood is in conflict with an objective reading of the history of the Israeli-Palestinian struggle.
David Harris continues, “And I’ve been wondering, not for the first time, what it would take for the world to wake up and acknowledge that Israel, the lone liberal democracy in the Middle East, is facing violence that must be condemned unequivocally, and that it, like any other nation, has the obligation to defend itself.”
This “wondering” is also a product of Mr. Harris’s constricted view. There has never been any Zionist complaint, from Harris in particular, about the world’s silence while the Palestinians experience “liberal” Israel’s ethnic bias and occupation. Nor did he and his fellows take note of the world’s silence when Palestine’s own 2006 democratic election was suppressed by Israel and its American ally.
It is exactly this silence in the face of Palestinian suffering that has left Israeli power in place and allowed for its oppressive use. Yet this particular silence has no place in Harris’s ideologically constructed world.
Harris goes on, “It’s striking how some otherwise intelligent and thoughtful people in government, media, or think tanks, just shut down their critical faculties. Instead, they resort to a Pavlovian response mechanism that essentially rejects any possible legitimacy for the Israeli position and blindly defends whatever Palestinian narrative comes along.”
As noted above, an ideological outlook usually leads to absurdities. The truth is that until recently the Zionist narrative on Israel-Palestine held a monopoly in the West. Now, finally, Israel’s consistent apartheid-like practices are being noticed and as a result that monopoly is crumbling.
The best Harris can do is evoke a fictional “Pavlovian mechanism” to explain the responses to Israeli policies. Nonetheless, the weakening of the Zionist narrative is at an early stage, which means that, even now, it is often not the Israeli narrative that has to fight its way into the media, think tanks and government councils. It is the Palestinian one.
There is much more to Harris’s missive, and almost every paragraph is shaped by the doctrinal demands of his ideology. The ersatz victimhood he claims for the Israelis is, in fact, a measure of the resulting distortion. For he, and his fellow Zionists, have stolen that depiction of suffering from their own victims, the Palestinians. Such is the power of ideological blinders.
To pull off this reversal of roles and posit the Israelis as victims of the Palestinians, Harris’s essay must leave out the seminal fact that for the past 67 years Israel has possessed overwhelming power. With this power Israel has oppressively controlled almost every aspect of Palestinian life. The inevitable result is the violence of resistance. Israelis who suffer from that violence should take this reality into consideration. But, few of them can do this.
The explanation for this inability brings us back to the problem of tunnel vision. Consider the following: many Palestinians can understand Western Jewish history, including the Holocaust, and recognize how it shapes, though ultimately cannot excuse, Zionist behavior. This ability to understand is facilitated by the fact that the Palestinians were not responsible for the suffering of Western Jewry.
Unfortunately, the Zionists can’t reciprocate by understanding the history that drives Palestinian behavior. They cannot do so because their ideology precludes the possibility that they are, in fact, responsible for Palestinian suffering. Ideologues are not known for their skill at self-criticism.
One of the most renowned Jewish journalists, I. F. Stone, once said, referring to his own Jewish brethren, “how we act toward the Arabs will determine what kind of people we become: either oppressors and racists in our turn like those from whom we have suffered, or a nobler race able to transcend the tribal xenophobias that afflict mankind.”
Well, the verdict is in, at least for those Jews who adhere to the Zionist ideology. For them “oppression and racism” has won out. And so has denial – just read David Harris.
Lawrence Davidson is a history professor at West Chester University in Pennsylvania. He is the author of Foreign Policy Inc.: Privatizing America’s National Interest;　America’s Palestine: Popular and Official Perceptions from Balfour to Israeli Statehood; and Islamic Fundamentalism.
Mr. Davidson, I’m wondering if it’s possible for Harris or someone connected to him to spy on your computer once you open his links.
We’re taught to say “Never again” to genocide, and rightly so.
But we’re not taught how dangerous self-righteous victimhood can be. And it is dangerous. Extremely so. It justifies, and sets in motion, some of the worst atrocities.
All groups in conflict have been victims, and every group has the potential to be a victimizer. We should remember both.
It must be nice to be an “investigative reporterâ€. To turn your attention from one part of the world to another, from one issue to another. To say things like “…for the past 67 years Israel has possessed overwhelming power†-without letting the facts get in the way. Yet giving the impression that you’ve studied the history of Israel “for the past 67 yearsâ€.
Fact is, when Israel was founded, in 1948, it was surrounded by hostile Arabs with overwhelming military power and a population many times the size of Israel. The fact that Israel was able to survive that period of its history was nothing short of a miracle.
Here’s yet another fact that the author knows NOTHING about. There is no such thing as a “Palestinian peopleâ€. This is in no way meant to denigrate Palestinians, it’s just a fact.
An overwhelming number of Palestinians, during Israel’s founding, consisted of people (and their relatives) who were forced out of their country of birth because of political problems with their own government. Namely, they were people who had written articles, or belonged to political organizations that were against the monarch or government of the country from which they were born and were forced to flee for their lives to Palestine rather than going to jail, or worse. Palestine, for a long period of time, was a kind of no-man’s land where you were banished if you disagreed with the “powers that be” in your Arab homeland.
Palestinian’s, regardless of their nation of birth, were then, very much as they are today, despised by their Arab neighbors because they were the most educated people in the Middle East and because they never missed an opportunity to let their neighbors know it.
Other Arab nations were fine with letting Palestinians live in squalor in refugee camps in Lebanon because they knew that they could use their “status†as refugees as a cudgel against the US Government, when the US wanted these Arab nations to implement democratic and social reforms.
When the author says: “Palestinians themselves, are victims of the aggressive Zionist society and culture they live in†has he unwittingly turned Hamas and Hezbollah into a pacifist, Gandhi-like organizations? Has he forgotten about Assad in Syria (not just the current version but his father, who was an even more ruthless ruler)?
When the author says: “any portrayal of Israeli victimhood is in conflict with an objective reading of the history of the Israeli-Palestinian struggle†did he live in Israel during the weekly, if not daily, terrorist bombings that forced Israel to construct walls to keep out the terrorists?
When the author says: “Now, finally, Israel’s consistent apartheid-like practices are being noticed and as a result that monopoly is crumbling†where is the “67 years of history†that he implies that he’s read?
If walls are the only way you can keep your neighbors from blowing up your people, well guess what – a society will build walls. If those walls are perceived as “apartheid-like practices†by Liberal, all-knowing, pretenders, like this “award-winner†pseudo-journalists, then so be it – we’ll put up with their crap and chalk it up our “free society†– like the one that Hamas created when it won an election in the Gaza Strip and threw off the tallest buildings the members of their rival political party, Fatah.
Mr. Hoffer, your telling of history, isn’t going to work here on this site. You partisan view of history starts with events beginning in 1948. Why, not start with the history of Palestine, say about 100 years earlier. This would be a time when not only Arabs occupied Palestine, but so did Christians and Jews. In fact, in the early beginnings, it appeared as though all of these varied people got a long pretty well. So, what went wrong.
As, you can read in my post above, I being of Italian decent am relieved and fine with renaming our American observant holiday of ‘Columbus Day’, to an more deserved observant day instead of the ‘Indigenous People Day’. These people of course are the one’s who lived, and worked this land, way before Christopher Columbus even set sail for the West Indies. Again, there were those who spoke about the Native American such, as describing them as uncivilized, and even calling them savages, because these Anglo’s were the so called western civilized men who came to conquer this great land. They talked about these truly Native American people, much the way you talk about the Palestinians. (Sorry I don’t know how else to reference these former residents of Palestine). So, by changing the narrative of this nationally celebrated day to ‘Indigenous People Day’, it gives me great pleasure, and a little less guilt by honoring our Native American people. Let’s just say, that is a nice starting place at least, in order for America to become more fair, and equal to all of it’s many citizens. Some call that feeling, healing.
On my mother’s side of the family, we go back about five generations. My great grandfather fought, and was wounded, serving in the Pennsylvania 26th Regiment, in America’s Civil War. You, might remember that was a war fought to free the slaves. The same slaves who Columbus’s family so wanted to sell, and earn a profit from. It gives me great pride to have had a great grandparent, whom I never knew, to know how he fought on the right side of history, to help free an enslaved people from the pains of their masters. My mother’s side of the family is German. My mother had three brothers who fought in Europe, and one of the brothers was among the American soldiers who freed one of the Holocaust camps. The only brother who didn’t serve, because of his age, went in business with a Jewish fellow. Apparently neither of them two fine people, held any grudges, or developed a deep racism over any bad past history their forefathers may have had.
I can understand your allegiance to your beliefs, or ethnicity, but let it go. Start anew. People, are people, no matter what. In the end, there is only so much space on this earth, and we should all try really hard, to live amongst each other. If Israel were to be a truly democratic place, then none of this horror would be happening. Help, make it heal.
Amigo, Just to set the record straight, the American Civil War was actually a war fought because the Confederate states wanted to secede from the Union, it was not fought to free the slaves. The North only agreed to make it about slavery because they were getting beaten.
In fact The American Civil War wasn’t actually even a civil war at all since the South never wanted to occupy the capital nor the territory of the North but just simply to separate politically from the Union. Like most wars it could have been easily avoided and more young people would have enjoyed fulfilling lives and the American people as a whole would have prospered more. They would have likely resolved the Union again at a later date anyway.
There you go… Some lernin’ for yuh…. and I’m not even a septic (yank).
Mr Hoffer,
I grew up a true believer in Israel, in its founding, in its creation and in its existence.The great narrative of returning to ones homeland after thousands of years of life in the diaspora…the centuries of anti-semitism culminating in the tragedy of the Holocaust….and for the Jewish people to rise from its ashes to return and recreate, their home. in the land of their ancestors….Israel.
It is one of the great narratives of the 20th century…..
One that I loved my whole life…
Unfortunately the narrative forgot to mention one detail….that when Israel was created there were already people living there…..
It was supposed to be ” a land without a people for a people without a land.”, at least that is what I was told….and i believed it…..for four decades….
I didn’t believe that after the Holocaust, it was possible for the Jewish people to commit the self same sin they suffered under the hands of Hitler….expulsion and ethnic cleansing…to another…
I did not believe it was possible…
It took many many years for me to realize what was done to the Palestinian people…that they were torn from their homes and forced out in the hundreds of thousands….to make way for the Jewish State….
I see it now….and I see why it happened.
Mr Hoffer, two wrongs can never make a right……no matter how much military force, wealth and propaganda is behind it….
If it was wrong to happen to the Jews.. and it was…..then it was wrong to have happened to the Palestinians.
We all, Mr Hoffer, have to take responsibility for our actions…at some point,
And make it right.
I don’t know how old are you Mr. Davinson, but you can’t be that young as not to remember the recent history.
To star, based on all investigations, the crimes of Palestine terrorism, are nothing but random, they have no common pattern of peoples, locations or targets, thing that specially define terrorism activity and in the same way, qualify Judeo/Israeli society as racist, dominant, aggressive and the Palestinian as subjugated is unsubstantiated in your article, I think you lost a good opportunity to elaborated on them – if there where the possibility –
But if we base your opinion on the idea that Palestine peoples have more rights on the land than the Judeo/Israeli peoples, that could be reasonable, like the case of South Africa or United States, where English force indigenes out and rob them from all rights and goods. But this is not the case here, on the contrary, is perfectly well historically documented, that Israel was forced out of their land.
But for the sole purpose of this analysis, we considered that Palestine may have a reason to be unhappy to be displaced and privates from their autonomy and to have neighbors from a different religion, language, culture and even folklore, because Palestine never had a government or unified land. It was during the first years of Israel Nation, that Palestine had water, power, proper houses, roads and paved streets, hospitals, schools, order, law; in short civilization. There was no discriminations, was no social differences other that the one the peoples create for themselves.
Maybe for you, this is Zionism, maybe this is for you a tunnel vision or wrong ideology, for us is simply, prosperity, freedom, and true autonomy.
And maybe here is the problem that we see them as attained goal, that we have the will to reach them, maybe we see that also before death are happiness, love, caring and FREEDOM but you and peoples that think like you, don’t see that possibility.
The problem in Israel, have only one name, CREED, one sector believe in life and other sector believe in death, a sector want to die martyr and other sector want to live –period-.
Who know, maybe you are right and we all should die, but I have the feeling, that all those peoples that encourage the martirysm, the fight and death for this or that reason, will not go outside with a knife, that all those peoples that find excuses and reasons, that live and live well with the sacrifice of those others young peoples… don’t want to die, no matter how many virgins are there waiting for them.
I am Spaniard, but I deeply respect Israel
I am an American who would like Israel to answer for, Johnathan Pollard, Rachael Corrie, the USS Libery attack, and for the disgraceful display of ignorance acted out in front of the American U.S. Congress this past year by Bibi Netanyahu. I look forward to your reply.
I read this piece by David Harris. I was so angry with him I wrote back: “You have to be either a completely blind ideologue or completely insane.” He has not written back!
Yeah, how smooth of you. If you wrote something to Mr. Harris, like what you stated to almost anyone, you would be a moron to expect a reply. Try the bees with honey thing, then get back to us. Have a great day, Mr. Brownrigg. BTW, I’m not being sarcastic, I really do want you to have a great day…from one Joe to another.
Dear Mr Davidson,
you have written so many excellent articles on this conflict in the past, I want to thank you and hope you keep up the great work.
Mr Harris and his commentary on the uptick in “Palestinian” violence that you critique calls to mind a statement recently made by Gideon Levy about Israel….that it is the only “occupier nation” in the entire world that demands to be perceived as the victim not the oppressor.
Understanding this is the equivalent of understanding the schoolyard bully who punches the scrawny little kid into a bloody pulp and then complains to everyone about the bruises on his fist.
Mr Harris seems very concerned about the “bruises” on Israels fist…but cannot (or chooses not)to see what he is doing or has done to the bloody pulp of emaciated Palestine.
Certainly Mr Netanyahu’s recent commentary conflating the Grand mufti of Palestine with Hitler as the ‘true” architect of the Holocaust underwrites another fraudulent attempt to justify Israels cruelty toward the Palestinians.
I think Mr Netanyahu would be happy as a clam to order the I.D.F. to tattoo a little black mustache on the face of every Palestinian child, boy or girl, to ingratiate the narrative with some form of physical evidence.
That way, when the bodies of the defenseless Palestinian children begin to pile up in the streets, everyone can look at them and see exactly what they wish to see..” lots of little Hitlers” .
It is , some would argue, the last gasp attempt to justify the extermination of Palestine…which is really what we are all witnessing whether we wish to say so or not.
Israel, having no plan for peace, and having no intention of ever honoring its international obligations to remove itself from the Golan Heights or the Occupied Palestinian Territories, (as required by international law.) is, in fact , acting like the true Hitler in the equation,……. using brute force, violence, and ” war” as a means of conquest, domination and the taking of ” lebensraum”(living space) from others.
Sad to say how few recognize it, but in striving towards its goal of a “Greater Israel” and swallowing “all” of Palestine in the process…..It is Mr Netanyahu’s Israel that has most in common with Hitler’s German today, not the Palestinians …..
and it is Israel, in succeeding at this task, that is becoming what it has most despised.
In a 1934 letter to the League of Nations, the Midis of Zionism, Edmond de Rothschild stated that “the struggle to put an end to the Wandering Jew, could not have as its result, the creation of the Wandering Arab.” After first reading this, I could not help but wonder where all of that Zionist compassion for the Arabs could have gone. Maybe, Edmond de Rothschild was just mouthing words, I don’t know. On, the other hand when I read Albert Einstein’s letters to his many friends, Einstein makes claims of how the arrival of the Zionist in (then) Palestine lifted all of the boats, including and especially the Arab population. Possibly Einstein was a very naive person, but by his words, his heart seemed to be in the right place.
I being of half Italian decent, was very happy and relieved to see that nine American cities declared ‘Columbus Day’ to be ‘Indigenous People Day’ this year. I was in Seattle having a coffee when a large group of Native-Americans held a very peaceful (& somewhat entertaining) demonstration against Colonization. I was happy for them, and support was easy for me to give, especially considering what all history has put them through. All, because some Italian discovered them, a longtime ago. The truth will set you free. So,now would be a good time for every Jewish person to display some humanity, and free the Palestinians. It will make you feel good.
Whether he’s right or wrong, Harris is far from the only one in the world who could complain about the world’s silence in standing up for something important.
It has been said that FDR was a great president because he was a sailor. A sailor knows that you have no control over the direction of the wind but you can get your boat to go in any direction you want it to go in by trimming the sails. It was probably a philosophical asset for JFK as well.
To be christian is to be pragmatic . Jesus is said to have told the fishermen that they should fish the opposite shore if the catch nothing on this side.The split in theology took place a long time ago. The only thing left is the kicking and the screaming.
As WG says,he’s lying through his teeth,or,he’s certifiably nuts.
Let the Zionists search their soul for a solution to this terrible occupation and suppression.Bing.times up.
And,as is the case with all bullies,they can dish it out but they can’t take it.
US neither.
The term “Light to the Nations” (Hebrew: ×ור ×œ×’×•×™×™× Or LaGoyim) originated from verses in the Book of Isaiah.
Israel’s vision of “Light to the Nations” was reflected in the words of the Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, in his address at the 2010 Herzliya Conference, Israel’s center stage for the articulation of national policy:
“You are dealing with our people’s fate because it is clear today that the fate of the Jewish people is the fate of the Jewish state. There is no demographic or practical existence for the Jewish people without a Jewish state. This doesn’t mean that the Jewish state does not face tremendous challenges, but our existence, our future, is here. The greatest change that came with the establishment of the Jewish state was that Jews became more than just a collection of individuals, communities and fragments of communities. They became a sovereign collective in their own territory. Our ability as a collective to determine our own destiny is what grants us the tools to shape our future—no longer as a ruled people, defeated and persecuted, but as a proud people with a magnificent country and one which always aspires to serve as ‘Light Unto the Nations’.”
Here’s the reality on the ground:
“The ultimate goal is to be a light for the gentiles”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7NMwohMhP10
[But don’t be fooled by VICE News, Rupert Murdoch’s alternative media sock puppets. From Ukraine to Syria to Gaza, VICE correspondents are busy producing “ain’t it a shame” hipster infomercials for the New World Order.]
ZIONISM AND “THE JEWISH PEOPLE”
This Zionist myth obscures the fact that for every Jew who
went to Palestine from 1890-to 1924 (when the US
with Zionist blessing closed off the possibility of entrance
to the US with its immigration quotas) for every Jew
27 went to the Western Hemisphere (other than Palestine).
“The Zionist dream was the utopian dream of a tiny minority,”
observed Gabriel Kolko.. Kolko states that “in the end, all that was to
unite Israel was a military ethic premised on a hatred
of others around them; Israel was to become a warrior-state,
a virtual Sparta dominated by its arms…”(Kolo : THE WORLD IN
CRISIS) p. 94
The extent of various collaborations between both the WZO and
its Revisionist faction have been well documented elsewhere.
These collaborations have not been acknowledged by Zionist
Israel which proclaims itself a “democracy”.
The Revisionist factions and their allies have long been in
power and Netanyahu is but an inheritor of much of the
Revisionist spirit (V. Jabotinky-M.Begin, Y Shamir etc.)
and its racism.
Perhaps the primary tragedy is how easily the world and others
have permitted permit Israel to repeat its myths.
I do not personally care to condone stabbings but see this as
an expression of despair along with Jonathan Cook in Counterpunch.
I only expect Secretary Kerry not to blame these victims and be
totally blind to the oppression by the Israelis supported by
the US government. Such words and policies deserve contempt.
When Washington has completely stopped all its spending, overt and
covert, to arm the oppressor perhaps one will be able to speak
of hope. Of course home demolitions, the wall, the
illegal settlements, the rapes, abductions etc. must also end.
But perhaps that is asking for too much.
—-Peter Loeb, Boston, MA USA
Thanks for your thoughtful article… Well said…
Jewish zionest victim-hood has evolved into a full-blown pathological complex:
“A complex becomes pathological only when we think we don’t have one. Be assured, however, a strong complex is easily noticed by others. All of us have complexes and if we don’t look inward and become conscious of them, we don’t have a complex, the complex has us.†Milhado
To validate some of the points written in this article, all we need to do is take a sober look at footage of the Goldstein Massacre – https://youtu.be/ZknF8rF7Wtw
Then watch the documentary Defamation – https://youtu.be/2_xGBU0ljUY
Russell
There is an alternative to your theory that Harris views the world through the distorted lens of Zionist ideology, perhaps he is fully aware of the realities on the ground in Israel and the occupied territories. He is fully aware and simply writes lies to further the cause he believes in.
Assuming the honesty and integrity of someone who consistently distorts the truth(at best) is far more trust than you should be willing to give him.
What you are saying is very possible… also true with Islam ideologies… the art of deception.
Excellent point. Even if true though, there are many in the Jewish American community for whom Davidson’s analysis applies. And that would contribute to the traction Harris’s analysis gets.
Another Consortium News analysis that goes where the MSM pundits fear to tread.
Absolutely. I’d like to believe that people are honest and when made aware of their mistaken assumptions will endeavour to correct them.
Is anyone aware of an author like Harris reversing course and admitting their views were misguided and wrong?
*fingers crossed*
Not really like Harris, but George Kenney was a US State Dept official who quit because the US wasn’t tough enough against the Serbs during the Bosnian War, and wrote an op-ed calling for Serbia to be bombed. He was lionized for pushing forward the Washington groupthink that blamed everything on the Serbs. But then he became more nuanced in his writings, and even wrote a major piece questioning the death tolls claimed by the nationalist Bosnian Muslim government. His erstwhile fans dropped him like a stone, and he ended up living in his parents’ basement. I have a tremendous amount of respect for him. But public intellectuals changing their opinions are rare (and he himself doesn’t agree with this characterization, I believe).
WHO REPRESENTS “WORLD JEWRY”?
This Zionist myth obscures the fact that for every Jew who went
to Palestine from 1890-1924 (when the US with blessings of
Zionist organizations closed off the possibility of into the US
via immigration quotas) 27 went elsewhere in the Western
Hemisphere. 1 to 27!!!
“The Zionist dream was the utopian dream of a tiny minority”
wrote Gabriel Kolko. Kolko states that “in the end, all that was
to unite Israel was a military ethic premised on a hatred of
others around them; Israel was to become a warrior state,
a virtual sparta, dominated by its arms…(Kolko: THE WORLD
IN CRISIS, p. 94)
The extent of various collaborations between both the WZO and
its Revisionis factions have been well-documented elsewhere.
These collaborations are not readily acknowledged by Zionist
Israel which proclaims itself a “democracy”.
The Revisionist factions and their allies have long been in power
power and Netanyahu is but an inheritor of musch of the Revisionist
spirit (V. Jabotinsky-M. Begin-Y. Shamir etc.) and its racism.
Perhaps the primary tagedy is how easily the world has permitted
Israel to repeat its myths.
I do not condone stabbings but instead se this as an expression of
despair along with Jonathan Cook in COUNTERPUNCH NEWS.
I only expect Secretary Kerry to blame these victims and remain
totally blind to the Israeli oppression supported by the US gov ernment.
Such words of Kerry, Netanyahu and others deserve contempt.
When Washington has completely stopped all its spending, overt
and covert, on arms to the oppressor, one may be able to speak of
hope. Of course home demolitions, the wall, illegal settlements,
abductions, Israeli state terror must end.
But perhaps that is asking for too much.
—-Peter Loeb, Boston, MA, USA