Rabbi Arthur Waskow : Israel, Hillel, and Idolatry

Harvard Hillel banned a speech by former Israeli Knesset Speaker Avraham Burg.

The spiritual issue:
Israel, Hillel, and idolatry

The Hillel International prohibitions make the State of Israel, and indeed only one version of it, into an idol.

By Rabbi Arthur Waskow / The Rag Blog / December 19, 2013

Recent controversies within Hillel International, the “home” for many Jewish college students of diverse backgrounds and beliefs, have made public in a sharper way a profound spiritual issue confronting American Jews and their “official” organizations.

The spiritual issue: When does strong support from many American Jews for the State of Israel and its Jewish citizens as an emergency refuge, as a creative culture, as a defender of Jewish interests, as a member of the Jewish family, become idolatry of the State?

First, the background of the Hillel controversy; then, an examination of what idolatry is:

The controversy surfaced most publicly when Swarthmore College Hillel announced they would refuse to abide by rules handed down by “Hillel International” that would limit what Jewish organizations and speakers were allowed to speak there. Hillel International then threatened to expel Swarthmore Hillel.

The debate within Hillel began in 2011 when its official managers adopted a policy that prohibited having speakers or partnering with organizations that “deny Israel’s right to exist as a Jewish and democratic state; delegitimize, demonize, or apply double standards to Israel; support boycott, divestment, and sanctions [BDS] efforts against Israel; or foster an atmosphere of incivility.”

Applying these rules, Harvard Hillel refused to allow a former Speaker of the Israeli Knesset, Avraham Burg, to speak at Hillel because co-sponsors of his speech included a group of pro-BDS students in the Palestinian Solidarity Committee along with J Street U, Students for Israel, and Progressive Jewish Alliance.

Responding to this exclusion of Burg, first Harvard students and then a growing band of Jewish students across the country created “Open Hillel,” arguing for a policy of welcoming broad debate and inclusion of Jews of varied views and action about Israel and about prayer, gender, sexuality, economic policy, political party, theology, and every other issue.

More recently, Hillel International announced it had become formal partners with AIPAC, an American lobbying group that almost always strongly supports Israeli government policies when it meets with and encourages campaign contributions to Members of Congress.

Open Hillel raised strong concerns about the effect of Hillel’s privileging AIPAC in this way, as against other Jewish organizations that strongly differ with Israeli government policy. Open Hillel urged that instead, AIPAC continue to be treated as one voice among many in the voices Hillel encourages to speak in its venues..

Then Swarthmore Hillel proclaimed itself an “Open Hillel.”


For me, all this raises some basic questions of the Spirit.

What is idolatry? Worshipping any being -- person, object, institution, community -- as if it were Divine. “Carving it out” and “bowing down to it” as the Ten Commandments describe and forbid. (Exod. 20: 4). Not only “carving out” a physical object, a statue, but carving out from the One Great Flow of Life a piece that must not be criticized, not be questioned. A piece not only to be loved and honored for its usefulness and beauty, not only to be seen as a temporary aspect in service to that Unity -- but treated as an Ultimate, Unchangeable good.

The Hillel International prohibitions make the State of Israel, and indeed only one version of it, into an idol.

I understand the urge to do this. The Rabbis told a tale in which they searched and searched for the yetzer hara (the evil impulse) toward idolatry, hoping to destroy it. They finally found it -- in the Holy of Holies! We most easily make an idol of something that has a lot of sacredness in it.

What is the alternative to idolatry of Israel? Idolatry of any thing?

The alternative is celebration of the God Whose Name is "Ehyeh Asher Ehyeh, I Will Be Who I Will Be." I am Becoming. Never stuck.

That was/is/will be the God of the Burning Bush, Who called Moses to resist Pharaoh and calls us to resist all pharaohs. (Exod. 4)

There is an intrinsic connection between Ehyeh Asher Ehyeh and freedom of work, restfulness, association, speech, conscience, politics, culture, sexuality.

Free speech is not only valuable because it treats individual conscience seriously; it is also valuable because from much debate emerges greater wisdom.

Does excluding Avraham Burg make sense? Does it work for or against a vibrant Jewish people, for or against wise policies toward Israel? Does refusing to allow Jewish groups and a pro-BDS pro-Palestinian group to co-sponsor a Hillel program make sense? Does that exclusion help Palestinians and Jews get to hear each other and begin to shape a relationship that could seek peace and pursue it? ?

A personal example: I have debated publicly against supporters of all-out BDS against Israel. As a result of those debates, people have written me that they have grown in their understanding of the flaws and dangers in such BDS. And I have grown in my own understanding as well, coming to see that a more limited and targeted boycott of products dependent on Israeli Occupation of the West Bank might be a reasonable instrument of nonviolent opposition. The debates have led to greater wisdom.

The danger is that because of its idolatry toward Israel, the Jewish establishment doesn’t want creative, independent-minded Jews around for the next generation to create a vibrant Judaism in tune with the God Whose Name is "Ehyeh Asher Ehyeh" -- a Judaism that would be threatening to those same established structures.

I prefer the intense debates that make the Torah and the Talmud, the Hassidim and their opponents the Misnagdim, full of life.

So I applaud the response of Open Hillel, which instead of walking away from Jewish life in disgust, seeks to shape not only new content but a new form of college Jewish life, and is using Internet connections to do it. You can access their website and sign their petitions at www.openhillel.org.

[Rabbi Arthur Waskow, Ph.D., directs The Shalom Center; the newest of his 22 books, Freedom Journeys: The Tale of Exodus and Wilderness Across Millennia, was co-authored with Rabbi Phyllis Berman (Jewish Lights Publishing, 2011). Read more articles by Rabbi Arthur Waskow on The Rag Blog].

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Robert Jensen : Peace Talks Are New Chapter in an Old Book

Peace talks: the players. Image from AP Graphics Bank.

Peace talks:
A new chapter in an old book

Discussions about the issue, whether among citizens or by officials at the negotiating table, must begin with an acknowledgement of the power wielded by Israel, backed by the United States.

By Robert Jensen / The Rag Blog / August 1, 2013

New negotiations between Israelis and Palestinians may begin next week, with much talk of a “new chapter” in the seemingly intractable conflict. A new chapter, perhaps, but who is writing the book?

Any public discussion about the “peace process” is tense, in part because there is no widely shared understanding of the history and politics of -- even an appropriate terminology for -- the conflict. That’s as true in the United States as in Palestine and Israel.

I never gave much thought to the question until I was 30 years old, in the late 1980s. Before that, I had a typical view of the conflict for an apolitical American: It was confusing, and everyone involved seemed a bit crazy.

With no understanding of the history of the region and no framework for analyzing U.S. policy in the Middle East, it was all a muddle, and so I ignored it. That’s one of the privileges of being in the comfortable classes in the United States -- you can remain comfortably ignorant.

But as a frustrated journalist with a newfound freedom to examine the politics of news media in graduate school, I began studying law and human rights, in the domestic and international arenas. I also started digging into the issues I had been avoiding. In the case of Palestine/Israel, I began reading about the roots of the conflict, how the United States was involved, and how U.S. journalists were presenting the issues.

I came to this inquiry with no firm allegiance to either side. As a white U.S. citizen from a centrist Protestant background but with no religious commitments, I felt no cultural or spiritual connection to either national group. I don’t speak Hebrew or Arabic, and I had never traveled to the Middle East. I had no personal relationships that predisposed me to favor one group over the other.

Like any human, I was not free of bias, of course. As a relatively unreflective white man rooted in a predominantly Christian culture, I was raised with some level of anti-Semitism and anti-Arab racism, for example, and no doubt that affected my perceptions. But based solely on my personal profile, I didn’t have a dog in that fight, or so I thought.

After a couple of years of studying the issues, I realized that the categories of “pro-Israeli” and “pro-Palestinian” didn’t fit me. When people asked me where I stood on the issue, I would say that I supported international law and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. As a U.S. citizen, I asserted that my primary obligation was to evaluate the legality and morality of my own country’s involvement in the conflict and the region.

The more I learned about all those things, the more I became opposed to my government’s policy on this issue, in the Middle East, and around the world. The more I learned, the more I realized I lived in the imperial power of the day, and it became clear to me that imperial policies are designed to enrich the few while ignoring the needs of the many, at home and abroad.

I became a critic of U.S. policy based on careful study that included, but was not limited to, mainstream sources. I could no longer accept the conventional story and the policies that flowed from that story.

Today, the situation in Palestine and Israel is as grim as ever. Decades of Israeli expansion and the Palestinian leadership’s failure to build a vibrant movement to challenge that expansion (or, perhaps, to let such a movement emerge on its own) have narrowed the prospects for a just peace. And in the background lurks the United States, still the major impediment to progress as long as it offers Israel nearly unconditional support for the occupation.

More than ever, the case for international law and human rights needs to be made clearly, but the conditions for that dialogue deteriorate. Despite recent efforts by U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry, there seems little basis for optimism, short or long term. As U.S. officials scramble to save an empire in decline, with its whole Middle East policy in disarray, it’s difficult to imagine a breakthrough.

I have no great insights into how to solve the conflict or deepen the dialogue. But as I think about the conflict, I’m drawn back to my roots in feminist intellectual and political life for some basic observations.

My return to graduate school has led me to inquire about many aspects of the world over the past two decades, but the first of those inquiries was into gender, with a focus on men’s violence against women. That led me to radical feminist theory, which has helped me understand not only the question of gender but offered a framework for understanding hierarchy.

Feminism taught me how to think not only about gender but also about power, and a central lesson of feminism that applies here is the problem of assuming false equivalency in analyzing conflict.

Take a classic example of a husband who physically assaults his wife. The problem is rooted in patriarchy, a system that gives men control over women in a hierarchy that is naturalized and normalized: Men rule, women submit. The man’s violence in this case is used to ensure the submission, but the physical violence typically is only one method of control; such relationships often include emotional abuse and sexual violence.

Within that dynamic, the woman may engage in all kinds of dysfunctional behavior herself, and she may strike out violently against the man at times. But feminist analyses of male power and men’s violence have made two things clear.

First, any specific incident can’t be understood outside the larger context, not only of that relationship but of the power dynamics of the culture. So, if we were drawn into a chaotic incident in the couple’s home, we might be tempted to assess the situation on the basis of what had just happened, but focusing only on the immediate occurrence would leave us ill-equipped to understand it. We need to know the couple’s history and understand the patriarchal context in which that history plays out.

Second, if we wanted to help resolve the conflict, it would be folly to assume that the man and woman were equally responsible and that a productive dialogue could go forward on that basis. Any claim that the man and woman should sit down as equals and talk would favor the man; without an acknowledgement of his greater power and a history of using that power to dominate, any “dialogue” would be a farce.

While some men react to any call for such conversation with force, other men pursue a more sophisticated strategy that continues the dialogue so long as his fundamental power, in the relationship or in society, is not challenged. Some men pursue both strategies, depending on the moment. Real dialogue is possible only when the discrepancy in power is addressed.

If there is to be progress toward a just and peaceful solution in Palestine/Israel, those two lessons are crucial. We must recognize the larger political context in which the conflict is set and not assume there’s a level playing field for dialogue.

That means acknowledging that since the end of World War II, the United States has pursued a policy of domination -- through diplomacy and force -- in the Middle East, and that for more than four decades a central component of that policy has been U.S. support for Israel’s expansionist policies in exchange for Israeli support of the U.S. project in the region (though not without disagreements and tension between the two countries).

It also means that discussions about the issue, whether among citizens or by officials at the negotiating table, must begin with an acknowledgement of the power wielded by Israel, backed by the United States.

For more than 20 years I have tried to recognize the many ways in which I live with unearned privilege and tried to support the struggles of marginalized and oppressed people to justice. That has led me to support the basic aims of Palestinian nationalism, even if I do not always support specific strategies or tactics of various Palestinian groups.

I also have criticized Israeli policy in public, in writing, and on film. But as a citizen of the United States, I have tried always to bring discussions on my home turf back to the responsibility of citizens to hold their own government accountable.

That is my dog in the fight. I live in a nation in which there is a tremendous gap between leaders’ rhetoric of freedom and justice, and the reality of imperial policies that perpetuate injustice. To close that gap, our public discussions must take account of the context and be honest about power. Nowhere is that more crucial that the intellectual and political engagements on the Palestine/Israel conflict.

[Robert Jensen is a professor in the School of Journalism at the University of Texas at Austin and board member of the Third Coast Activist Resource Center in Austin. His latest books are Arguing for Our Lives: A User’s Guide to Constructive Dialogue and We Are All Apocalyptic Now: On the Responsibilities of Teaching, Preaching, Reporting, Writing, and Speaking Out. His writing is published extensively in mainstream and alternative media. Robert Jensen can be reached at rjensen@austin.utexas.edu. Read more articles by Robert Jensen on The Rag Blog.]

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INTERVIEW / Jonah Raskin : American Jewish Poet Hilton Obenzinger on Israel, Zionism, and the Radical Sixties

Hilton Obenzinger with family photo. Photo courtesy of Stanford University.

Interview with Hilton Obenzinger:
Stanford professor, Sixties radical,  
and anti-Zionist American Jewish poet

“American Jews have been suckered into supporting Israel in unthinking ways. This has been changing, but not enough American Jews are yelling and screaming to stop Israel’s colonial expansion.” -- Hilton Obenzinger

By Jonah Raskin / The Rag Blog / March 7, 2013

Born in Brooklyn, New York, the borough that served as the homeland for millions of Jews for decades, Hilton Obenzinger carries Jewish history and lore around with him both mournfully and gleefully.

His many books draw attention to his own Jewish roots, including an oral history he conducted with his Aunt Zosia Goldberg entitled Running Through Fire: How I Survived the Holocaust. There’s also a collection of his poetry entitled This Passover Or The Next I Will Never Be in Jerusalem, which received the American Book Award of the Before Columbus Foundation.

More than 60 years after he celebrated his first Passover with his own family of origin, he’s getting ready to celebrate Passover again with the family he’s created with Estella Habal, an Associate Professor of Asian American Studies at San Jose State University.

With Passover 2013 on the horizon -- it starts March 25 -- I sent Obenzinger an email and took up a long-standing conversation that we’ve kept going through wars, occupations, Seders, and reunions of Sixties radicals.

Hilton Obenzinger, left on ledge, at Columbia University strike in 1968.  Photo by Tom Hurwitz.

Jonah Raskin: How will you celebrate Passover this year?

Hilton Obenzinger: We’ll have an extended family feast: my wife and I, our kids and grandkids. As usual, we’ll combine Passover, Easter, and the arrival of spring. It’s a raucous crowd: Jews, Filipinos, Chinese, and more. We use an illustrated Children’s Bible to tell the story of slavery and the escape of the Jews from Egypt, then move on to Jesus and the last Seder, and finish the Biblical story with the crucifixion and the resurrection. Eventually, we reach the Warsaw Ghetto uprising and sing “Let My People Go.”

We pour plenty of wine, shout good wishes for the Palestinians, Native Americans, and everyone else running for freedom. We end the evening with lines from a version of the Haggadah I wrote: “Next year in Jerusalem delivered from bondage.”

What makes you proud to be a Jew?

Jewish culture is rich and varied with a transnational sense of peoplehood. In Europe, my ancestors were everything from ultra-orthodox to Polish nationalists, to escape-to-America émigrés, to Zionist and Communist. The Nazis murdered almost all of them. In the face of that horror and other horrors of history, Jewish survival is astonishing.

I’m especially proud of the American Jewish experience that pushed me, and others, to join the civil rights and social justice movements. I’ve heard it said that support for equality and justice flows from Jewish ethics and from the history of Jewish persecution. I’d like to believe it.

What are you most ashamed about Jews as an ethnic group?

From my point of view, Zionism turned out to be a moral disaster for the Jews. American Jews have been suckered into supporting Israel in unthinking ways. This has been changing, but not enough American Jews are yelling and screaming to stop Israel’s expansion.

Have you been attacked at Stanford because of your beliefs?

After I began to teach at Stanford in the 1990s, a professor wrote a letter denouncing me as a “terrorist.” He was a very nice guy, very progressive -- except when it came to Israel. A switch would go off and he’d go bananas.

You have used the expression “Zionist crackpot.” What does it mean to you?

I don’t mean the typical supporter of Israel. I mean those people who fall into the extremist syndrome and who are motivated by a deep-rooted sense that Jews are always the victims and that Israel is always under attack even when it’s the aggressor.

Forty years ago, did you believe there would be a resolution to the conflict between Israel and the Palestinians?

Yes. And I still do.

Do you see a resolution to the conflict in your own lifetime?

Assuming I live another decade or two, probably not. But you never know. Who would have thought the Soviet Union would collapse? Or a black man would be president? I may not live to see it but it’s likely to happen.

Do you think that there can be a one-state solution to the conflicts between Palestinians and Israelis?

Of course, there can be -- which doesn’t mean it will happen, at least in the near future. The conflict is not at root religious and it hasn’t been going on for thousands of years, as many claim. It started about 130 years ago when Zionism, a Western political movement, called for the settlement of Palestine and the exclusion of the native people. It’s a conflict started by people, not by God; humans created it; humans can fix it.

What do you see happening now?

Israeli Jews are a nationality with their own language and culture, as are the Palestinians, so it would take a lot of good faith to fit all of them together, including the refugees. Good faith is not an abundant commodity nowadays. Meanwhile, the Israeli government has been doing all it can to prevent a two-state solution by expanding settlements and uprooting Palestinian communities.

One state may be inevitable, since the foundations for a viable Palestinian state have been greatly undermined. Israel might move further in its current colonialist direction, creating reservations for the natives and a large open-air prison in Gaza. I don’t care if there are one or four states, actually, just so long as equality and democratic rights are at the core of all of them.

What have you learned from studying the Holocaust?

When we protested the war in Vietnam many of us didn’t want to be “good Germans” -- people passively accepting evil and genocide. My family’s murder always weighs on my mind, so for me it’s imperative to speak out about injustice.

I produced my aunt’s oral testimony called Running through Fire about her escape from the Warsaw Ghetto. I learned from her that everything is muddy -- with some Germans acting morally and courageously and some Jews acting in a craven fashion. I also leaned that in a situation of utter horror, no matter how smart and skilled and, in her case, how beautiful you were, pure luck is a determining factor. I’ve also learned to keep my passport up-to-date.

What does it mean to you to be a Jew?

After my son’s birth I felt compelled to pass on to him a positive Jewish experience without the corruptions of anti-Arab racism, and the “Jewish Disneyland” kitsch that American Jews love. I wanted my son to laugh, to enjoy the bar mitzvah experience, to feel comfortable being Jewish and Filipino -- which is his mother’s ethnic identity.

What do you think Jews and Arabs have in common?

I told my aunt who survived the Nazis that if she could meet Palestinians in refugee camps she would like them, and that they were a lot like her. Palestinians, like Jews, value education and culture, and they insist on persisting. They, too, have historical memories that they won’t allow to be erased and that they act upon. Both Israeli Jews and Palestinians have also managed to drive each other insane. It’s painful watching two peoples destroy each other.

You’ve written about “the Holy Land.” Is it holy to you?

There’s so much blood and hatred there, that it’s hard to conceive of the place as holy.

At Stanford, where you teach, is there a visible Jewish population and a visible Arab population? What observations have you made about them?

Stanford gentility is strong and has its virtues. A lot of the Jewish students sympathize with the Palestinian cause nowadays and a Jewish critic of Israel is hardly an oddity.

You’re involved with Chinese Railroad Workers in North America Project? What is it?

2015 will be the 150th anniversary of the introduction of thousands of Chinese workers to build the first transcontinental railway across North America. The work culminated with Leland Stanford driving the famous “golden spike” to complete the line that connected East and West. Despite the photographs, drawings, and observers’ testimonies about the Chinese workers who labored from sunrise to sunset, not a single primary document -- not a letter or a notebook -- has been identified.

So there’s a real Stanford connection, isn’t there?

Construction of the railroad was central to creating the wealth that Leland Stanford used to found the university. Eventually, we’d like to build a monument to the Chinese railroad workers on campus.

What is it about your own experience as a Jew that might help you understand the experience of the Chinese railroad workers?

I remember my father’s experience as an immigrant having to work in dangerous factories. The Chinese in America suffered a lot of abuse -- racial violence, mass deportations, expulsions, and discrimination. Early Chinese immigrants were tenacious and ingenuous and determined to possess the country and be possessed by it -- just like anyone else.

The Columbia protest of 1968 took place 45 years ago. How do you remember it now? In fact, you wrote a book, Busy Dying, that’s in part about that experience. How did writing the book alter your sense of the past?

I have totally blanked out my graduation, but I remember sitting in Low Library in the president’s office in around-the-clock meetings to talk about negotiations and how to nonviolently defend ourselves.

Why did you write your book?

I read accounts of the Sixties and was disturbed by the distortions, stereotypes, and outright lies.

The title Busy Dying borrows from Dylan’s “Busy Being Born.” Did Dylan help shape your Sixties experience?

The line is from “It’s Alright, Ma (I’m Only Bleeding)." It goes, “he not busy being born is busy dying.” Dylan’s music provides much of the soundtrack of my memories. The lines “busy being born” and “busy dying” express the sense of urgency we faced in the Sixties.

When you look back at the Sixties does it seem like an era mostly of sex, drugs, and rock ‘n’ roll, or would you propose another trinity?

I got plenty of drugs but not enough of sex. I loved a lot of the rock ‘n’ roll, but I was also into country music, bluegrass, and Vivaldi. In 1968 we were “freaks” because we rebelled. The hippie part of the Sixties is too narrowly focused on middle class white kids, not the GIs fragging their officers, Freedom Riders, or Black Panthers.

At Stanford are you among the sons and daughters of the elite, who will go on to rule the Empire?

Half the undergraduates aren’t white and most aren’t rich. Of course, when Chelsea Clinton attended Stanford that pretty much defined the school’s reality. But I’ve also known students who joined the Zapatistas, organized unions, helped manage their pueblo’s casino to invest tribal funds wisely, restored native farming to the Big Island in Hawaii, develop educational programs in poor communities.

What about recent protest on campus?

In the fall of 2011, the Big Game between Berkeley and Stanford took place at Stanford right after the police attacks on Berkeley students occupying tents on campus. There was a joint rally of students from both schools -- something that I think has never happened before in their fierce rivalry -- to show solidarity against police brutality. It was one of the most astonishing moments in Stanford history. I don’t think I’ll ever forget it.

[Jonah Raskin, a regular contributor to The Rag Blog, is a professor Emeritus at Sonoma State University and the author of two books about American Jews, For the Hell of It: The Life and Times of Abbie Hoffman, and American Scream: Allen Ginsberg’s Howl and the making of the Beat Generation. Read more articles by Jonah Raskin on The Rag Blog.]

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David McReynolds : After the Truce in Gaza

Political cartoon by Paul Jamiol / Jamiol's World / Informed Comment.
EdgeLeft:
After the truce in Gaza

This was not only a victory for Hamas, but also for Israel, which achieved at one stroke a deep division between the two sides of the Palestinians.

By David McReynolds / The Rag Blog / November 28, 2012

Let me start this commentary with a note about an Israeli film which has opened in New York -- The Gatekeepers. It features six retired heads of Shin Bet, the Israeli security agency. These men can hardly be considered voices from the Israeli left -- but they are unanimous in their sense that the political scene in Israel is not good, and getting worse. I hope the film finds a wide audience.

We should be reminded, in looking at anything involving Netanyahu, that we are not dealing with an "ordinary" head of state, but with a man of the far right. His late father was an open racist whose comments about the Palestinians are fully the equal of the Nazi views of the Jews, and was a follower of the Jabotinsky movement -- the extreme right of the Zionist movement (Jabotinsky worked with Mussolini before WW II). The Israeli Prime Minister is truly his father's son.

It is ironic that the recent violence in Gaza comes just after the U.S. election, in which Netanyahu all but openly enlisted as a supporter of Romney, so that Obama owes the Israeli Prime Minister no favors. (To rebut the charge that Jewish money buys American elections, Sheldon Adelson, the Las Vegas billionaire -- with an estimated fortune of over $20 billion -- gave at least $30 million to the Republican Party in an effort to defeat Obama!)

From the Israeli point of view, the Israeli air strikes on Gaza, which not only resulted in a number of civilian deaths but also involved a deliberate Israeli attack on a clearly marked media car (see "Using War As Cover to Target Journalists," The New York Times, November 25) which killed Palestinian reporters, was no more than a response to "terrorist" attacks by Hamas in Gaza.

In fact, this was a military exchange which suited both Hamas and Israel. There was no special occasion for the Israeli air strikes except to provoke Hamas into sending vast numbers of rockets into Israel. Thus Israel was able to test its new "Iron Dome" defense against rockets -- something that will come in handy in the event of war with Iran or a conflict with Hezbollah in Lebanon. A kind of test run, at little cost to Israel.

And Hamas scored a clear win from its risky gamble. In a situation where the Palestinians are divided between Prime Minister Abbas in the West Bank, the man who is nominally head of the Palestinian Authority, and the more militant Hamas, which had won elections in Gaza, it was Abbas who was sidelined, while Hamas won its gamble by forcing the Egyptians to deal with Hamas directly.

As others have observed, this was not only a victory for Hamas, but also for Israel, which achieved at one stroke a deep division between the two sides of the Palestinians. Abbas, who had accepted the right of Israel to exist, who had curbed any attacks on Israel from the West Bank, who had shown his willingness to pursue a peaceful path to a two-state solution, is suddenly marginalized, and Israel can point to Hamas in Gaza as proof that there is no one with whom Israel can make peace.

The U.S., having ignored the Palestinian issue for the last four years, came to the negotiations with Hamas, via Egypt. (And in the process they strengthened the hand of Morsi, the Muslim Brotherhood leader of Egypt, who, as this is written, is trying to establish himself as a man with unlimited powers in Egypt; we will have to wait to see how that plays out.)

Israel has no interest whatever in a peaceful settlement. By provoking the attacks from Gaza, it is able once more to claim that Israeli civilians are threatened by the terrorism of the Palestinians. A word on "terrorism," which Israel and her American defenders use so lightly. If the Palestinians who fire rockets are terrorists, then so are the pilots of the Israeli jets which carry out targeted assassinations of Palestinian leaders. One cannot justify the violence of one side while terming the violence of those who resist as being "terrorism."

On both moral and pragmatic grounds I believe the best hope for the Palestinians lies in the nonviolent movements that have emerged in the West Bank (and to which the American media have paid almost no attention). But the Israeli actions are so cynical, and so illegal under international law, that violent resistance is justified and Netanyahu can expect no sympathy from those of us outside of Israel.

If this recent bloody exchange, in which both Israel and Hamas were willing to lose some innocent civilians in order to score political points, proves anything it is that Americans need to focus attention on the only thing which might move Israel to negotiate, and that is to cut off all economic and military aid to Israel.

Those who ask me why I focus on Israel more than on, for example, China over the issue of Tibet, or Russia on the issue of Chechnya, it is because the U.S. is not sending military and economic aid to China or Russia. It is because our tax money buys the military hardware for Israel, and because our political leadership, in fear of AIPAC, will not speak out for justice for the Palestinians.

We must speak out for the Palestinians, and we can do so knowing that American Jews no longer see Israel in the same way it was seen 10 and 20 years ago.

The issue of the Palestinian people can no longer be left to the Israelis and the Palestinians, nor can we assume that non-Jews have no moral obligation to speak out. All Americans share in the responsibility for the criminal actions of the State of Israel. The hope of Israel will not come from those who support it, but from those who demand that Israel be held to the standards of international law.

[David McReynolds was for nearly 40 years a member of the staff of the War Resisters League, and was twice the Socialist Party's candidate for President. He and the late Barbara Deming are the subjects of a dual biography, A Saving Remnant, by Martin Duberman, published by the New Press, and available in paperback. David retired in 1999, and lives on the Lower East Side of Manhattan with his two cats. He posts at Edge Left.org and can be reached at davidmcreynolds7@gmail.com. Read more articles by David McReynolds on The Rag Blog.]

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VERSE / Margery Parsons : Surfing in Gaza

Surfer in Gaza. Image from Common Dreams.
Surfing in Gaza

The children of Gaza
packed in camps
like anchovies in tin
go down to the beach
to swim, and to surf.
There is nothing timid about the way they take the waves
on their boards
home-made with scraps and stuff
and candlewax
because surfboard wax
like a million other dangerous things
can’t get in
to Gaza.
They struggle to stand up
fierce and brave
tasting a bit of freedom
with the salt spray.
Their faces turned towards the sun
and their proud bodies jeweled with water say
despite the guns, the bombs, the shelling
every night and day,
we are human
we are unbeaten.

Margery Parsons
The Rag Blog
November 2012

[Margery Parsons has been writing poetry since she was nine years old and has been a revolutionary since the 60s. She is a proud mom and a serious music lover who works in the arts.]

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Marilyn Katz : West Bank Diaries

Shuttered Palestinian shops along Shashuda Street in Hebron, West Bank. Photo by Marilyn Katz.
The separation is total:
West Bank Diaries

More than anything it appears that these fences are cages, locking people in, restricting their movement, and ultimately making them prisoners in their own land.

By Marilyn Katz / The Rag Blog / June 19, 2012

[In May, Marilyn Katz spent 10 days traveling around Israel, Palestine, and Jordan with the liberal pro-Israel advocacy organization J Street. What follows are excerpts from the journal she kept during her trip.]

Day 1: May 3, 2012

We leave Tel Aviv, a sun-drenched city filled with beaches, high rises, and casually-dressed Israelis, on the only road across the West Bank to Jerusalem. It’s a slick highway surrounded on all sides by a “fence” -- in some places cement and in other places barbed wire, dotted with armed checkpoints.

On the side of the road, Palestinian men walk through a narrow barbed wire pathway, some carrying bags, others carrying furniture. The road, I’m told, is for Israeli citizens only -- those Palestinians who have permission to work in Israel must park their vehicles elsewhere, pass through a check poin, and board buses that exit the road shortly thereafter.

What is the purpose of this fencing? The ostensible reason -- security -- is less than convincing. The fences are made of barbed wire; anyone wishing to damage a road or a village could easily shoot over or through it, or simply take the risk of being cut. My guides estimate that thousands of Palestinians “penetrate” these fences to reach Israel each day. More than anything it appears that these fences are cages, locking people in, restricting their movement, and ultimately making them prisoners in their own land.

On to Jerusalem. When I was here 10 years ago, I saw many Palestinians working throughout the city. Today, I am struck not only by the absence of Palestinians and Israeli Arabs, but by the massive numbers of Haredi and other Ultra-Orthodox Jews. With an average of eight children per family, the Haredi and other Ultra-Orthodox Jews are the fastest growing segment of the Israeli population, and they are a huge factor in Israeli politics and a huge drain on the economy and political life.

Some of the Ultra-Orthodox, particularly the Haredi men, do not work and have been exempted from military service so that they can “study.” They all receive a government stipend for each child born. Due to their growing numbers, they have a big influence in the parliament and in the military.

Impression: The separation is total. Despite the 3 million Palestinians living in the West Bank, it is totally possible for Israelis never to encounter Palestinians and for Palestinians never to encounter Israelis, except at checkpoints.


Day 2: May 4, 2012

Just returned from a day in the West Bank. Since the 1993 Oslo Accords (which were meant to be only an interim step), the West Bank has been divided into three areas: “Area A” (large cities under the full control of the Palestinian Authority), “Area B” (smaller cities and villages supposedly under Palestinian civil authority and Israel Defense Forces [IDF] military authority), and “Area C” (the rest of the West Bank, which includes farms, villages, and individual houses the Israelis claim to be uninhabited, and which is under the complete control of the IDF).

Today, visiting Kafr-a-Dik, a Palestinian village about 20 minutes from Tel Aviv, I got a pretty good sense of what occupation means. We had lunch in the hills outside the village at the site of a summer “tea house” that had been razed the week before by the IDF. The young children of the family who built the house, which they used for shelter and rest while tending their olive trees, told us they came here last week after school only to find their “shelter” gone. It turns out that while they were at school, hundreds of IDF soldiers descended on the spot with bulldozers, destroying the shelter and the 250-year-old well along with the walled terrace that had protected the olive trees for centuries.


Day 3: May 5, 2012

How to consider Israel? It is a land of more than one reality -- particularly since the Second Intifada of 2000, after which Palestinians could no longer travel freely through the country, and after which Israelis did not even go to East Jerusalem, which is like living in the New York’s East Village and never visiting the West Village.

Life in Jerusalem is pretty much like life in any urban center, except for the ever-visible presence of the Haredim, and their reflection in the larger society -- there are no billboards with women on them, many radio stations do not play songs in which women sing, and on some bus routes, women are relegated to the back of the bus, despite a Supreme Court ban on the practice.

What is different is the absolute absence of the Other. As Palestinians are barred from entry to Israel, people in general don’t have to think about them, and there is a generation of young Israelis who may have never seen or met one.

In some ways it is not so different from those who live in American suburbs or rural areas and who rarely see anyone who is not like themselves. The situation in Israel is more pronounced, and is true in the cities as well as the suburbs. Ironically, it is probably only the Jewish settlers in the West Bank who have any real continuous “contact” with Palestinians, and then only as occupier of the land or as employer of menial labor -- since Palestinians cannot enter Israeli cities, their only work is either in their villages for the Palestinian Authority, or as gardeners, etc., in settlers’ villages (with special work and travel permits, of course).


Day 4: May 6, 2012

After a fascinating morning meeting with the son of assassinated Israeli leader Yitzhak Rabin and other leaders across the political spectrum (with as many views as there were people in the room), we took an afternoon walk to Jaffa, the original Arab port just north of Tel Aviv, where most Jews landed when they came in the 1880s. An ancient city, Jaffa was home to 100,000 Arabs in 1948, before the war. Today, only 6,000 remain.

Dinner was at the sumptuous Tel Aviv home of an Israeli businessman. We were joined by four other “progressive” Israeli businessmen, the heads of hedge and equity funds, all of whom do business with Palestinians and with Arab countries. Three of the four, including the son of a former prime minister, are virtually uninvolved in politics and think that the market, with its lack of borders and its commitment to “innovation,” will simply take care of the issue. The most loquacious of them thinks the wall separating Palestinians from Israelis has actually helped both communities and that in separation, each population is beginning to thrive.

When I returned to my room, I wanted to see whether the most articulate and powerful speaker among these men, the one who stated that the wall has helped both Palestinians and Israelis, could have a point. The bottom line: GDP in Israel is $31,000 per capita; in the West Bank it is $2,900.

That’s all for my Sunday report.



Day 5: May 7, 2012

Today we traveled to Jordan, a stunningly beautiful country. Our first meeting was with King Abdullah, who turned out to be an exceedingly smart, thoughtful, and engaging man. Needless to say, the palace was gorgeous. What could be bad about sipping tea from a gold-embossed glass in a room that makes the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s exhibit on Middle Eastern decorative arts look shabby?

We met with the king and the prime minister for about an hour. On Israel, the king was probably the most optimistic person we spoke to all day -- and that wasn’t very optimistic. It is his opinion -- and pretty much everyone’s we talked to -- that the window for a possible two-state solution is closing fast, with Israel having totally rebuffed (to date) the Arab Peace Initiative, with Palestinians chaffing under accords that were meant to last two years, not two decades, and with the Arab Spring asserting itself as alternative mode of achieving change.

He thinks, as do others, that the growth of Jewish settlements in the occupied territories and of the Palestinian population under occupation is such that if we don’t reach a two-state solution by 2013, the only options will be a dual national state (untenable for the Israelis) or an apartheid state (simply untenable).

Then on to dinner at the home of a former Jordanian Ambassador, joined by 20 other ex-ambassadors, sitting senators and leaders of Jordanian society. It was a sobering conversation. Contrary to the happy talk of the Israeli businessmen about “joint endeavors with the Arab world,” these business and political leaders have pretty much given up on Israel (despite many years of investment in the prospects and endeavor to find peace).

They do not believe that the government in Israel is interested in peace, and they feel that the demographics of the West Bank settlements, which have brought more than 500,000 hard-line settlers to the occupied territories, will continue to give right-wingers the vote. They believe that the total separation of Israelis from Palestinians is breeding a new generation that could care less about peace, and that the Arab world and the Palestinians will just give up on Israel as a “member state of the region,” since it appears to them not to be interested in being one.

They are horrified by the occupation and actions of the Israelis, even while understanding Israel’s legitimate desire for a state. They also rue the retreat into fundamentalism and extremism in both the Jewish and Muslim communities.


Day 6: May 8, 2012

Started off with a gracious meeting at the Jordan Parliament with the Senate Foreign Relations Committee -- a self-selected group (all men) who spent about two hours with us giving their prognostications on the situation of the Middle East. All are cautious about the Arab Spring (although remember they are all friends of the King) and worry about the rise of Islamist states.

Their main point was that the Arab Spring is a wave, demanding human dignity and full citizenship rights, and that this tide will also affect Israel. Like all others from whom we heard, they believe that the window for a two-state solution -- which they all favor -- is short, and they do not see a negotiating partner in Israel.

We spent the afternoon in the West Bank looking at Jewish settlements -- all illegal, according to Article 49 of the Geneva Accords. Hundreds of thousands of settlers now live in the West Bank, and settlements and their “outposts” have been placed to totally surround Arab villages, confiscating Arab lands in the process and creating an internal colony.

(A note: I know when we think of settlements, we often think of the American West, where whole towns have grown. In the West Bank, settlements vary. In some cases they are huge, with thousands of residents, and resemble the gated communities of southern California or Florida. But in other places, settlements are one building on a street in East Jerusalem, or some cases whole blocks, where one or two lone Palestinian families remain.)


Day 7: May 9, 2012

Today was Israeli official politics day. We started off at the Knesset (the Israeli parliament) with a series of meetings with a variety of representatives of various parties -- Labor, Meretz (the socialist party) and Kadima, which is a center-left (more center than left) break-away from Labor.

It is a very tumultuous time for the Knesset. Last week, Netanyahu declared that the Knesset would be dissolved and that elections for a new parliament would be held in September. Then, on Monday night, Kadima’s leader made a radical u-turn and decided to join the Likud (Netanyahu) coalition, giving Netanyahu a 94-vote majority -- if the deal holds of course…

And there are reasons why it wouldn’t hold. Kadima, while not a strong party, represents the faction that in theory wants to freeze the settlements and pursue the peace process. Likud has shown little inclination to do so. There is much speculation among all about what will happen. All say they are committed to a two-state solution, and that there isn’t much time, but all doubt the political will of Netanyahu.



Day 8: May 10, 2012

We started our day off at Hebron, a large town in the Judean mountains. We were brought to Hebron by a group called Encounter, a Jewish organization that tries to expose Israelis, American Jews, and others to the realities of life in the West Bank, without commentary. Most of the Encounter members are rabbinical students, and quite lovely.

Some context: In 1929, during the Arab uprising against the British, 67 Jews in Hebron were killed by Palestinians (many, many more were sheltered and protected by their Palestinian neighbors). After that, Jews left Hebron, not to return until 1968 when they began to settle in an area just outside of the Old City’s downtown. The settlement they established grew into Kiryat Arba, which now has 7,500 residents. In 1979, a group of Hasidic families occupied an old, empty hospital in the Old City itself, creating another settlement.

After a 1994 shooting in which a settler killed 29 Palestinians (and injured dozens more), the government decided that Jews and Palestinians needed to be separated, and the barricading and death of the old Palestinian city began. Today, as you walk around the half-deserted streets of the Old City in which Palestinians still live and try to have shops, you see shuttered stores, their façades often graffitied with the Star of David.

Most disturbing is Shashuda Street, once a central street in the Palestinian community, where the vegetable and meat market stood. The remaining Palestinians’ homes are like hen’s teeth on the first blocks of the street, squeezed among the new settlements. Many Palestinians now put screening over their interior courtyards and over their stores to protect them from the feces and trash thrown down by settlers from their higher homes.

The next block is almost fully occupied by Israelis, and Palestinians are prohibited from driving on the street. Many are not allowed to exit their homes onto the street; rather, they must exit via the roof or an adjacent apartment onto the “Palestinian street” on the other side of the block.


Day 9: May 11, 2012

From the surreal experience of Hebron we went off to Ramallah, the seat of the Palestinian Authority (PA) and the Palestinian Liberation Organization (PLO), to meet with Salam Fayyad, the PA’s prime minister. Ramallah is a bustling, modern city, with cranes dotting the skyline and the same type of buildings that you see in Jerusalem. Israelis are not allowed to visit Ramallah or any other place in the West Bank designated an “Area A” without a special permit.

Fayyad, who got his degrees at the University of Texas at Austin, is responsible for the administration of the West Bank, while President Mahmoud Abbas is the political leader. A small, fairly quiet and compact man, he was engaged and engaging. He says that they are fully committed to a two-state solution, but feels a growing sense of despair due to the lack of response by the Israelis to the Arab Peace Initiative and the refusal of Israel to halt or freeze the settlements, which, if they continue, will make a contiguous Palestinian state impossible.

He talked with pride about the growth of Ramallah’s and the West Bank’s economy and the reduction of violence. But he fears that the delays in the peace process, the jailing of hundreds of Palestinians, the sense of hopelessness, the confiscation of Palestinian homes and lands, and the settler violence against Palestinians will once again lead to violence.

As for him, he is engaged in “constructive defiance.” For example, after the IDF bulldozed a road the Palestinian Authority had built in the West Bank to connect two villages, the PA rebuilt the road. After the IDF again bulldozed the road, the PA rebuilt it a third time, and for now, the road still stands.


Day 10: May 12, 2012

Lunch in Ramallah was hosted by the emerging young business and political leaders of Palestine. Among them were investment bankers, youth leaders and a number of entrepreneurs. All came back to Palestine -- from Harvard, MIT, Stanford and the like -- to nation-build, and all are frustrated, some only with the U.S., and others with the PLO and the Abbas leadership as well.

They speak of the degradation of being stopped at checkpoints on their way to business meetings in Israel (despite their permits). They speak about supplies and goods being held up by the Israelis for months at a time, and the impossibility of generating a real economy, as Israel controls the timing and the content of all imports and exports. While all believe in a two-state solution, they are really beyond that. Their demand, very simply, is that the occupation -- it’s walls, its rules -- be ended now.

The day ended with a trip to Neve Shalom, a community on a hilltop above the lush and fertile valley between the mountains and Tel Aviv, the green belt of Israel. Established more than 30 years ago, Neve Shalom is a “model village” where an equal number of Israeli Arabs and Israeli Jews have created a community committed to providing a model of integrated living.

We joined members of the Sulha Peace Project for an evening of “encounter” between Palestinians and Israelis. Founded by Palestinian and Jewish leaders, the organization regularly brings together Palestinians and Jews for song, talk, and sharing. Not exactly my cup of tea, yet I was moved and impressed nevertheless with this people-to-people grassroots attempt to envision a new way of being.

In the end, though, it isn’t enough. The two groups may break bread and sing together tonight, but their ability to even come together at all is dependent on the benevolence of more gracious occupiers who give out “get out of jail for a day” cards to the occupied. And at the end of the day, the occupied go back to their cages.

[An anti-war and civil rights organizer during the Vietnam War, Marilyn Katz helped organize security during the August 1968 protests at the Democratic National Convention. Katz has founded and led groups like the Chicago Women’s Union, Reproductive Rights National Network, and Chicago Women Organized for Reproductive Choice in the 1960s and 1970s, and Chicagoans Against War in Iraq in 2002. The founder and president of Chicago-based MK Communications, Katz can be contacted at mkatz@mkcpr.com. This article was also published at In These Times. Read more articles by Marilyn Katz on The Rag Blog.

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Marilyn Katz : Israel Needs a New Narrative

Israeli soldiers guard Palestinians protesting the relocation of an Israeli road gate in Beit Iksa in the occupied West Bank, on March 22, 2012. Photo by Ahmad Gharabli / AFP / Getty Images.
Israel needs a new narrative

Casting Jews as permanent victims is both outdated and counterproductive to the country’s well-being.

By Marilyn Katz / The Rag Blog / April 17, 2012

Fulfilling the promise of a Jewish state and safeguarding the country requires not only negotiations with Palestinian leaders. It also requires a new narrative to replace Israel's permanent victim/perpetual outcast story.

The first time I visited Israel I was shocked by many things. Most disturbing was the narrative of Masada-- the story of Jews in the 1st century A.D. who holed up on a mountain top while battling Rome’s Tenth Legion and committed what was essentially mass suicide rather than surrender or compromise their religion. I attended Jewish Day School until the age of eight, and Sunday school until the age of 18, but somehow hadn’t encountered this story before.

In late March, while attending a wonderful three-day J Street conference (titled “Making History”), I heard similar narratives -- some just as disturbing. In particular, Deputy Ambassador of Israel Barukh Binah used his time as a guest speaker to not only attack J Street and Zionist writer and journalist Peter Beinart -- whose new book is The Crisis of Zionism -- but to provide a worldview closely resembling the Masada story.

In Binah’s tale (obviously the official line of the Netanyahu government) Jews have gained little since the 1930s. We remain a beleaguered group, with an uncontested and sole right to the land on which the state (ever expanding as it is) is placed, beset on every side by those who would exterminate us, and where only strict and blind adherence to the official line of the state deem one worthy of being called a friend of Israel.

In fact, those who disagree with Israel’s strategy and tactics are considered just as worthy of attack as the states and governments that Israeli officials describe as existential threats.

Despite the fact that Israel is now a well-armed (nuclear) sovereign state, both narratives lock Israel and Jews into permanent victim status -- a lens that could lead to a self-fulfilling prophecy.

There are two ways Israel might be eliminated. One is by the actions of external forces; unlikely, given the consequences for any nation that would try to obliterate the country. The other is by the actions of its own leadership.

To its inhabitants and to Jews around the world, Israel has always been more than a piece of land. Rather, as dreamed of by Zionists, sought as a refuge in 1945 by the survivors of the Shoah, and as embedded in its Declaration of Independence in 1948, Israel was to be a Jewish and democratic state -- a homeland for all Jews guaranteeing that those who were not Jewish could also find equal treatment and opportunity there.

Today, that state is in danger. The occupation of the West Bank and the Gaza Strip that followed the 1967 Arab-Israeli War, combined with intrusive, less-than-legal settlements, have made non-Jewish Arabs a significant minority (one-third the population in Jerusalem, 20 percent of those living inside Israel’s original borders, and 50 percent of the population in Israel’s expanded footprint).

The only thing that keeps the assembled territory “Jewish” today is the fact that Arab citizens in the West Bank and Gaza Strip are denied citizenship -- unable to buy land inside Israel, denied passports, and unable to vote in national elections.

In other words, Israel is violating its commitment to democracy to maintain its Jewish character. Given existing territorial claims, should the state wish to live up to its pledge and commitment to democracy for all within its borders, Israel would no longer be a Jewish state. Israel’s status quo -- leading to either a nondemocratic state of a non-Jewish state -- is unsustainable.

The occupation not only flies in the face of the country’s democratic ideals, it serves to prop up demagogues in other places in the Middle East and increasingly subverts Israeli civil society -- from hostile legislation aimed at NGOs critical of state policy, to the growth of a roster of “enemies” that includes people and organizations in various countries, to the unholy alliance with ultra-orthodox Jews who are hardly outdone in their attempts to restrict women’s rights by mullahs in neighboring nations.

Only ending the occupation and endorsing the establishment of a Palestinian state can assure the fulfillment of the promise of a Jewish state and lessen the hostility and danger to Israel, both from Palestinians and despots who use current Israeli policy and actions to prop up their own regimes.

This solution, however, requires not only negotiations with Palestinian leaders. It also requires a new narrative to replace Israel’s permanent victim/perpetual outcast story.

What might that be? I would choose the narrative taught to me long ago by teachers who had been the first inhabitants of the young state of Israel. Their narrative was that a strong band of pioneers, powered by intellect, compassion, and the Jewish mandate “to always choose life,” left the ghettos of Europe behind and built a powerful state in the desert, making land and a new society flourish.

From this point of strength, and acknowledging Israel’s current military and economic power, this narrative would affirm that Israel has the self-confidence to recognize and honor the legitimate claims of others -- knowing from 5,000 years of history that without justice, there can be no lasting peace.

[An anti-war and civil rights organizer during the Vietnam War, Marilyn Katz helped organize security during the August 1968 protests at the Democratic National Convention. Katz has founded and led groups like the Chicago Women’s Union, Reproductive Rights National Network, and Chicago Women Organized for Reproductive Choice in the 1960s and 1970s, and Chicagoans Against War in Iraq in 2002. The founder and president of Chicago-based MK Communications, Katz can be contacted at mkatz@mkcpr.com. This article was also published at In These Times.]

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Marc Estrin : Light Unto the Nations

Israeli "Agronomic (sic) flashlight grip (T-GRIP)." (Get 'em while they're hot. Image from IsraelMilitary.com
Light unto the nations

By Marc Estrin / The Rag Blog / April 11, 2011

What is it? It doesn't seem to be a bird. Definitely not a plane. It's... an Israeli Defense Forces flashlight. For only 72 bucks plus shipping and handling, you can own this Agronomic [sic] Flashlight Grip (T-GRIP) Tactile Vertical Foregrip Weapon Lights Holder.

It "comes with a 1 inch flight Adaptor with special activity trigger, and also a place to store additional batteries, AND

• Three in one: special handgrip and a flashlight mount with a built in trigger that
• transform tactical light into a Vertical Fore grip Weapon Light
• This unique ergonomic fore grip will fit perfectly to your hand while holding in up to 1.
• diameter tactical light with Tail cap switch and allow trigger activation of the light
• Ergonomic designed grip, comfortable and natural to use “fighting stance."
• Designed to hold any 1" diameter flashlight and allow quick and easy operation
• Easy to fit and secured by 2 bolts
• Fits hand guards equipped with a Weaver or Picatinny rail system
• No gunsmithing is required
• Molded from reinforced polymer composite
• Super lightweight, Eliminate the need for a ymer compositer"

Now, I don't normally use my blog entries to sell Israeli military accessories, but this piece of equipment serves up much food for thought. As does the website on which you'll find it (search "flashlight"), the Israel Military Products Israeli Army Surplus Store.

I advise you to explore this site, watch the short slide show on the home page, and sift through the various gifts for sale. You don't have to be Jewish. Two of my favorite items are a sweatshirt reading " America Don't Worry. Israel Is Behind You." and a hoodie, reading "UZI DOES IT." With a nice Uzi graphic.

I was brought inadvertently to this page by my novelist's wondering about the details involved in a terse dispatch this week from the Palestinian Popular Committee Against the Wall and Settlements:

The Israeli army and police occupation forces stormed the village of Bil’in at 1:30 am on Monday 4th April, raiding the houses of Ali Ibrahim Bornat, and Khames Abo Rahma. They searched their houses and tampered with the contents under the pretext of search for solidarity foreigners.

Bil'in is a village of 1,800 people in the central West Bank, near Ramallah. It is famous for its six-plus years of weekly, nonviolent protests against the illegal (International Court of Justice) wall separating it from 60% of its farmland, and its peaceful protests have been met with increasing Israeli violence, now including live ammunition, and my favorite, Israeli trucks spraying human sewage collected from Modi'in Illit, an illegal Israeli settlement of 50,000, towering on the hill above.

Now, imagine this closely. You're asleep in your bed. It's still very dark. Into your tiny town roar not one, but two heavily armed convoys -- one from the military, one from the police. Doors, as normal, are banged on, kicked in with shouts and threats, children cry in fear. Flashlights -- likely those lovely "agronomic" ones, used in "fighting stance" -- search the rooms, peer into faces, blind the eyes.

What are they looking for? Weapons? Terrorists? No. Nonviolent activists, organizers of the weekly protests, and worst of all "solidarity foreigners" -- those peaceniks from abroad who come to witness, document, take part in peaceful demonstrations against the wall or home demolitions, occasionally help with harvests.

I suppose it could be worse. Rachel Corrie experienced being on the wrong end of a Military Bulldozer, and others have been blinded, brain-damaged, and killed by "non-lethal" weapons shot directly at their heads for their nonviolent protest.

Nevertheless -- harboring peace activists, are you? Take that, and that, and we're really sorry about the door and that laptop. See you soon.

I, the LORD, have called thee in righteousness, and will hold thy hand, and will keep thee, and will make you a covenant of the people, as a light unto the nations. (Isaiah 42:6)

There are extra batteries in the T-GRIP storage compartment.

[Marc Estrin is a writer, activist, and cellist, living in Burlington, Vermont. His novels, Insect Dreams, The Half Life of Gregor Samsa, The Education of Arnold Hitler, Golem Song, and The Lamentations of Julius Marantz have won critical acclaim. His memoir, Rehearsing With Gods: Photographs and Essays on the Bread & Puppet Theater (with Ron Simon, photographer) won a 2004 theater book of the year award. He is currently working on a novel about the dead Tchaikovsky.]

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Marc Estrin : Ian McEwan Speaks Half-Truths to Power

Image from webshots.
Ian McEwan:
Speaking half-truths to power

By Marc Estrin / The Rag Blog / February 23, 2011

The action

In the midst of cries for freedom in the Middle East and Africa, Ian McEwan claimed the Jerusalem Prize for Literature, in a sumptuous convention center in a city officially described as the eternal and undivided capital of Israel.

In his acceptance speech he addressed the president of Israel, the minister of culture, the mayor of Jerusalem, and the "Israeli and Palestinian citizens of this beautiful city," and thanked them for honoring him with a prize which "promotes the idea of the freedom of the individual in society." He then proceeded to schmooze with the literary celebrities and political and military enforcers that gather at such events.

His speech was gracefully written, a short lecture on the history and purpose of the novel as an exploration of the individual, along with some ruminations concerning the political "situation," and his acceptance of the prize. Haaretz headlined the speech as courageously "slamming" Israeli policies, while Britain's First Post described him as "hitting out" at Israel's "great injustice."

While I acknowledge McEwan's accurate listing of major Israeli crimes, and admire his courage in enumerating them to such an audience, I found the speech on the whole to be intellectually, and perhaps psychologically dishonest, calling up many frequent Zionist tropes to mask and distort the reality on the ground -- and in the hearts and minds of many of his listeners.


The words

First, in spite of his claiming disinterest in "arguments of equivalence," he repeatedly denounces "both sides," as if they were equivalent players in the ongoing tragedy.

He speaks of Hamas' "nihilism," which "has embraced the suicide bomber" -- though such tactics began only after intolerable Israeli provocations, and lasted for only a few years. They are not a current tactic, though McEwan describes them as if they are. Meantime, the Israelis have killed more than 3,000 Palestinians, without committing suicide.

He goes on to speak of the nihilism of "rockets fired blindly into towns." These home-made explosives, fired in the general direction of towns over the border, land mostly in empty fields without injury to person or place -- hardly equivalent to the high-tech weaponry targeted and used against the Palestinians.

He claims that Hamas has "embraced the nihilism of an extinctionist policy toward Israel" with no nod to its many-times offered long-term truce proposals, or the clear and oft-stated purposes of the Zionists to possess the land "between the river and the sea" by dispossessing its Palestinian inhabitants.

And while he fearlessly mentions Israeli killings in the occupied territories, evictions and demolitions, the "tsunami of concrete" poured in the West Bank, the "relentless purchases of Palestinian homes in East Jerusalem, and the right of return granted to Jews but not Arabs," I stand back from these "equivalent" listings of evil, and think they are not equivalent at all -- quantitatively or qualitatively, or with regard to their motivations. One side is the oppressor, one the oppressed. Would McEwan dispute which is which?

A second common trope for Israel apologists often surfaces in their descriptions of the Israeli project. McEwan contextualizes his evaluation in the rhetoric of the occasion:

Everybody knows this simple fact: once you've instituted a prize for philosophers and creative writers, you have embraced freedom of thought and open discourse, and I take the continued existence of the Jerusalem Prize as a tribute to the precious tradition of a democracy of ideas in Israel.

(These words, by the way, uttered in the same week as the Knesset passed a bill which calls for heavy fines to be imposed on Israeli citizens who initiate or incite boycotts against Israeli individuals, companies, factories, and organizations.)

This is shoddy, dishonest thinking, considering the history and rhetoric of Zionist thought. Even McEwan recognizes this, noting that while the Jerusalem prize "recognizes writing which promotes the idea of the freedom of the individual in society," that idea "sits so awkwardly" with the situation in Jerusalem. Part for the whole, perhaps, a writer's gambit, but it sits awkwardly in the West Bank and Gaza as well, the ganze geschichte.

And again, a false equivalence: "A great and self-evident injustice hangs in the air, people have been and are being displaced. On the other hand, a valuable democracy is threatened by unfriendly neighbours, even to the point of extinction by a state that could soon possess a nuclear bomb."

Actual displacements and killings taking place as he speaks -- versus some theoretical threat "even to the point of extinction," by I suppose Iran. Does he know the real translation of Amadinejad's "threat"? Is he aware of any Iranian nuclear arms program? Would Iran use a nuclear weapon against Israel even if it had one? These are all right-wing canards, embarrassing in the mouth of an informed, presumably progressive, person.

The final, show-stopping, conversation and thought-ending Zionist trope in McEwan's speech is the invocation of the, THE, Holocaust, "that industrialised cruelty which will remain always the ultimate measure of human depravity, of how far we can fall." Are there not other holocausts afoot, a main one planned and executed by the people in that very room? Are the billions spent, and the technological plans made for ever greater use of joystick drone and space warfare not a competitor on the human depravity scale?


The place

Granted, the ability to speak truth to power rides on getting access to that power. I don't know why the elite ever granted a ticket to Lewis Lapham to anything. And the politicos and their sycophant press were clearly blindsided by Stephen Colbert's still remarkable 2006 roast of George Bush at the Washington Press Club.

Once bitten, twice shy: anything like that will never happen again.

And so, by being "nice" and "balanced," Ian McEwan earned himself some reluctant ears to fleetingly assault with some nasty truths. But having been awarded the prize, would he not have had those same ears -- and more -- by turning the prize down? I understand his rationalization about art promoting freedom. But contrast his route to access, voice and freedom, with that of the people in the squares of North Africa. Is there not something more genuine about these which do not end in wine and cheese?


The effect

As McEwan traced the tradition of the novel, imagine a bulldozer audibly demolishing the building next door, the cries of the inhabitants leaking through the convention center windows. Oh, but that's on the other side of town.

This great writer admits that "whatever I believed about literature, its nobility and reach, I couldn't escape the politics of my decision. Reluctantly, sadly, I must concede that this is the case." Why reluctantly, and above all, why sadly? Is not the polis of politics a collection of those individuals he writes so sensitively about? Does collecting a prize concerned with "the freedom of the individual in society" annul its social aspects?

If there were any doubt, McEwan had only to listen to Mayor Nir Barkat's speech, asserting that while Jerusalem "has conflict, big-time," he could nevertheless boast of the city's "pluralism" and "openness," and of his conviction that the "renaissance of arts" taking place in the capital is acting to "mediate tensions."

Tell it to the Palestinians.

[Marc Estrin is a writer, activist, and cellist, living in Burlington, Vermont. His novels, Insect Dreams, The Half Life of Gregor Samsa, The Education of Arnold Hitler, Golem Song, and The Lamentations of Julius Marantz have won critical acclaim. His memoir, Rehearsing With Gods: Photographs and Essays on the Bread & Puppet Theater (with Ron Simon, photographer) won a 2004 theater book of the year award. He is currently working on a novel about the dead Tchaikovsky.]

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Marc Estrin : The Far-Reaching Effects of Child Abuse

Image from PsychCentral.
Child abuse:
Here, there, and likely everywhere

By Marc Estrin / The Rag Blog / August 15, 2010

There have been several large studies on the effects of occupation -- bombing, physical injury, house demolitions, tear gassing, house searches, etc. -- on Palestinian children in the West Bank and Gaza (Google palestine/children/trauma/). A few studies look at the rather smaller numbers of traumatized children in the southern Israeli towns bordering Gaza who experience occasional rocket attacks. (Google israel/children/trauma/.)

All studies demonstrate what might be expected from such direct and witnessed exposure: concentration and attention deficit, memory problems, and various levels of post-traumatic stress disorder. War, as they say, and as shows up in their drawings, is not good for children.

Yet there is another area of child abuse, not generally labeled as such, both here and in the middle east, with which we must also be concerned: educating children toward paranoia and retributive violence.

Whatever your position is on the Israel/Palestine situation, I heavily recommend that you watch these two 10-minute YouTube segments (here and here) by an Israeli filmmaker, documenting a state-sponsored high-school trip to Auschwitz.

Auschwitz/Birkenau is a hair-raising experience. Hair-graying, too. My companion assured me at the time, that I had a few gray hairs afterwards -- my first -- I hadn't had before that afternoon. The key question, however, is what does one understand and take from that experience.

My own feeling is that these Israeli children were battered and reduced in emotional capacity going from the before to the after. See what you think.

It's not hard to connect such an "educational" experience with such consequences reported here.

America's children have little direct experience of war, occupation, and lethally threatening violence, but their lives are full of virtual exposure via film, video, music, and electronic games. In a way, their cart precedes their horse: they are learning the response before the stimulus.

Consider this NPR piece on an Army Experience Center:

Your tax dollars at work, training children to deal with terrorists who -- the adults likely assure them -- hate us for our freedoms.

One Marine boot camp chant I've come across recently goes like this:

Throw some candy in the school yard,
Watch the children gather round .
Load a belt in your M-50,
Mow them little bastards down!”

Nice. I'm sure the indoctrination in the Experience Centers is not as strong or viscous as among the Semper Fi boys, but the subtler brain-washing may be more extensive and effective.

I don't know what kind of chants they use in the IDF, or in jihadist military training, but I assume it's all similar -- child abusing "education" preparing children for the abuse of children and others.

[Marc Estrin is a writer and activist, living in Burlington, Vermont. His novels, Insect Dreams, The Half Life of Gregor Samsa, The Education of Arnold Hitler, Golem Song, and The Lamentations of Julius Marantz have won critical acclaim. His memoir, Rehearsing With Gods: Photographs and Essays on the Bread & Puppet Theater (with Ron Simon, photographer) won a 2004 theater book of the year award. He is currently working on a novel about the dead Tchaikovsky.]

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Jack A. Smith : Israel and Palestine After the Flotilla / 4

The two wild cards. Iran’s Parliament Speaker Ali Larijani shown with Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan in 2009. Photo by Amir Kholoosi / ISNA.
Part 4: Two wild cards, Turkey and Iran
Israel and Palestine after the Flotilla

By Jack A. Smith / The Rag Blog / July 18, 2010

[This is the last in a four-part series in which Jack A. Smith assesses multiple aspects of the situation in Palestine, including the relations between Israel and the U.S., Israel and the Palestine National Authority, the Palestinian split between Fatah and Hamas, the action and inaction of the Arab states, the new role of Turkey, the key importance of Iran, and the future of Washington's hegemony in the Middle East.]

There are two wild cards in the region — neither of which are Arab — that are capable of complicating the U.S.-Israeli game in the Middle East.

One is Turkey, the militarily strong, largely Westernized, secular democratic republic of nearly 78 million people, with a large Sunni Muslim population. The other is Iran, a largely modernized Islamic republic of just over 67 million people, mostly Shi'ite Muslims. Both are mature societies that have at one time controlled empires -- Ottoman and Persian respectively. Both are strategically situated: Turkey between Europe and Asia, Iran between Central Asia and the Middle East.

Turkey, a NATO member and long time close ally of Israel and the United States, had kept to itself for many years. Then in early 2009 the Ankara government of Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan abruptly stormed onto the regional stage when Turkey sharply condemned Israel's calculatedly cruel invasion of Gaza.

A few months ago Turkey unexpectedly strode onto the international stage along with partner Brazil, announcing that they had obtained a nuclear fuel swap agreement with Iran that obviated the need for additional U.S.-UN sanctions. They believed, evidently correctly, that they had President Obama's backing for this independent mission. But when they brought back a deal that was virtually identical to what Obama originally sought, the White House backed off and treated the unofficial intermediaries like unwelcome busybodies.

In our view, what the Obama-Netanyahu cohort really wanted was intensified sanctions, not a nuclear agreement that would remove the pretext for demonizing Iran, probably in preparation for near-future aggression.

Last month -- after Israeli commandos cut down nine Turkish members of the humanitarian flotilla -- relations between Tel-Aviv and Ankara deteriorated further, and a furious Erdogan withdrew Turkey's ambassador but did not break diplomatic ties. He called on Israel to apologize for the killings and pay compensation to the nine families involved, but Tel-Aviv has refused, claiming the commandoes were defending themselves.

Erdogan announced that "If the entire world has turned its back on the Palestinians, Turkey will never turn its back on Jerusalem and the Palestinians," and took some modest steps such as banning Israeli military aircraft from its airspace.

An interview with Prime Minister Erdogan was aired June 29 on the PBS Charlie Rose program. He called Netanyahu "the biggest barrier to peace," an obvious truth about which the Obama Administration must be abundantly aware, though publicly silent. Most important, Erdogan also added that Turkey remained "a friend to Israel," but Ankara soon announced that it would break diplomatic relations with Israel unless Tel-Aviv apologized for the flotilla killings or accepted the conclusion of an international inquiry.

The next day, Foreign Minister Davutoglu met secretly in Zurich with Israeli Trade and Labor Minister Binyamin Ben-Eliezer to discuss reducing tensions. Notice of the meeting was leaked by an Israeli TV station. There was no report about the outcome of the conference. Recognizing that he was intentionally kept in the dark by Netanyahu about this important event where he logically should have presided, Foreign Minister Lieberman publicly excoriated his boss for excluding him.

Netanyahu is under pressure from Washington to seek a reconciliation with Erdogan in order to keep strategic Turkey in Washington's political enclosure. Loud mouth Lieberman probably would have exacerbated tensions had he met with Davutoglu. Netanyahu needs Lieberman's Yisrael Beiteinu party in his coalition to remain in office, which is the only reason such a hothead became Foreign Minister. Discussing the latest contretemps, the Jerusalem Post opined July 1 that "it is yet another indicator that Israeli diplomatic policy is dysfunctional."

At this point, no one really knows the extent of Ankara's geopolitical ambitions, which may determine how far Turkey will distance itself from Israel, and perhaps the U.S. as well. There's certainly a lack of dynamic leadership in the Middle East that Turkey, which seems to have good relations with all the Muslim countries, might seek to provide.

If Turkey confines itself to supporting the Palestinians and criticizing Israel, that will have an important regional impact -- perhaps sufficient to galvanize the Arab countries to take more action on Gaza's behalf, to give Tel-Aviv pause, and to induce Washington to finally get serious about ending the colonial status of the Palestinian people.

And if Turkey seeks a larger role in regional affairs beyond the Palestinian issue, perhaps in league with a couple of other regional players, this could possibly alter the balance of power in the Middle East, which is now tilted steeply toward the Washington/Tel-Aviv axis.

And where does the other wild card, Iran, fit into this scenario? Various commentators have speculated that the Islamic republic seeks to dominate the Middle East or that it wants to impose Shi'ite beliefs throughout the region, or that it seeks to destroy Israel, among other absurd speculations.

Any objective appraisal of the conditions confronting Teheran today would show that its first priority and nearly total preoccupation is national security, and its military strategy is defensive, not offensive, as Washington and Tel-Aviv are well aware. Consider this:

• According to news reports, an armada of 11 U.S. Navy warships and one Israeli ship, led by the USS Harry Truman aircraft carrier and its Strike Group of 60 fighter-bombers, passed through the Suez Canal June 18 heading for the Persian Gulf, where they will join other ships positioned near Iran. Navy battle fleets with Cruise and Tomahawk missiles and air wings roam the Arabian Sea, Mediterranean Sea, Gulf of Oman, and Indian Ocean, as well as the Persian Gulf.
• The immense U.S. base of Diego Garcia in the Indian Ocean is being stocked for possible war against Iran, including nearly 400 so-called bunker-busters for deep ground penetration.
• The U.S. Air Force is at the ready to quickly thrash Iran when the signal is given.
• Israel is continually threatening to attack Iran.
• The American military machine is camped on Iran's western border (Iraq), and on its eastern border (Afghanistan). The Pentagon's Special Forces troops have been probing Iran from both directions, looking for vulnerabilities, and getting the lay of the land.
• For several years during the Bush Administration, news analysts were predicting an imminent attack by the U.S. It didn't occur, probably because of the quagmire leading to a military stalemate in Iraq. But Teheran knows it likely faces a greater danger today than during the Bush years.
• Iran is under 24-hour surveillance from U.S. satellite spying and eavesdropping technologies throughout the country that can "see" every part of the country and "hear" every phone conversation, not to mention spies on the ground.
• Iran has been laboring under ever-tightening U.S. economic and trade sanctions for several decades after the Islamic revolution dispatched Washington's puppet potentate in Teheran, the dreaded Shah.
• Iran's big power friends, Russia and China, just joined the U.S. in imposing the latest UN sanctions, after diluting them (but knowing Washington would add additional sanctions of its own to compensate). This shocked and worried Teheran, though both countries are still considered allies and are not expected to abandon Iran.
• For the last decade -- at least -- Washington has been providing material support and encouragement to the anti-regime dissident movement, and the Obama government is no doubt continuing the practice.
• Washington is trying to create an anti-Iranian coalition composed of several Sunni Arab states, exacerbating ethnic and religious tensions in order to better divide and conquer.
• America's medium and long range missiles, with both conventional and nuclear warheads, are on the alert -- patiently awaiting the signal.

For its part, Teheran is continuing to support the Hezbollah Shi'ites in Lebanon and Sunni Hamas in Gaza. Hezbollah -- a political movement that leads the second largest electoral coalition in Lebanon -- criticizes Tel-Aviv as colonialist but its guerrilla defenders usually fight against Israel when it invades Lebanon. Hezbollah fighters were largely responsible for Israel's decision to withdraw its military forces in May 2000 after a nearly two-decade occupation of Lebanon, and for a second humiliation of the IDF when it returned in 2006 with guns ablaze.

Hamas is a political organization dedicated to liberating the Palestinian people from colonial domination. It is without heavy weapons, tanks, or planes to employ in its liberation struggle against the IDF so it propelled relatively primitive unguided rockets into Israel and killed up to 10 civilians over the last several years. Israel, of course, killed many thousands of Palestinians during that time.

The U.S. and Israel identify both groups as "terrorist" and Iran as "terrorist" for supporting them. In the opinion of many leftists and numbers of people in the developing (third) world, they are resistance fighters against colonial and imperialist oppression.

The government of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad denies building nuclear weapons and declares its efforts are directed at producing energy for peaceful purposes, not bombs. Even with all the spy techniques at Washington's command, there is still no evidence to convict Iran on this charge. Yet Israel -- which is said to possess some 200 nuclear weapons in defiance of the NPT -- poses as Iran's intended victim. Iran has not engaged in an aggressive war since the first half of the 1800s (a short-lived incursion over the Afghan border), and is absolutely in no position to do so now.

Neither the U.S. nor Israel is actually worried that Iran will in effect commit national suicide by preparing to attack, or actually attacking, the Jewish State -- thus triggering a preemptive offensive or instant mass retaliation from Tel-Aviv, with the U.S. near at hand to help out.

There are two other regional concerns for the U.S. and Israel to think about over the longer term:

• One is the possibility Shi'ite Iran and majority Shi'ite Iraq eventually may bloc together in one type of close relationship or another several years hence. They share a number of interests in addition to their compatible branch of Islam -- a minority often held down in Sunni-dominated lands. They both want to be independent of U.S. threats and violence and may conclude that unity enhances their defenses.
  
  As a team they could more profitably exploit their extraordinarily huge petroleum reserves. And they are both concerned about the Kurdish independence movement, among other factors. Washington will do its best to keep Baghdad and Teheran apart. It plans to retain considerable influence in Iraq after most of America's foreign legion departs for other battlefields, but the era of puppet governments and colonial masters, despite remnants here and there, is fading into history.


• The other, perhaps even more nettlesome long term concern for Uncle Sam, is the possibility Iran might bloc with Turkey and Syria to oppose U.S. domination of the Middle East. If Iraq joined in, the four countries would stretch some 2,200 miles from the Dardanelles in the Mediterranean to the Arabian Sea. This might even induce Egypt to get moving again. It's a long shot, of course, but a potential game changer in the Arab world -- which is due for a change.

The Middle East often looks static, with the Americans ruling the roost, but that's deceptive. No one knows what is going to happen in the next couple of decades with any of the many possibilities for change that are swirling around the Middle East today, particularly as other world nations rise while the U.S. engages in what appears to be the start of a long decline.

Those bold volunteers who took part in the recent humanitarian flotilla have through their deeds obliged Israel to weaken the blockade of Gaza. That's an important change. And their efforts focused a bright light on the misdeeds perpetrated upon the Palestinians by Israel and its superpower enabler.

That's a good start toward further change, and may become a transitional moment that in time results not only in fruitful outcomes for the oppressed Palestinian people, but also for the entire region.

[Jack A. Smith was editor of the Guardian -- for decades the nation's preeminent leftist newsweekly -- that closed shop in 1992. Smith now edits the Hudson Valley Activist Newsletter, where this series also appears.

• For the entire series, go here.

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