Mondoweiss

Israel Warns UN and Palestinians to Cleanse Their 'Lexicons' of a Word. Guess Which One

Haaretz reports that the UN Sec'y-General used the word "Nakba" yesterday, angering Israel.

The [UN's official] report said the UN chief telephoned Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas to express his solidarity with the Palestinians on the day they mark the "nakba," the Arabic word meaning "catastrophe" that is used in reference to the founding of the state of Israel.
 
Danny Carmon, Israel's deputy ambassador to the UN, told Israel Radio that the term "'nakba' is a tool of Arab propaganda used to undermine the legitimacy of the establishment of the State of Israel, and it must not be part of the lexicon of the UN."

Apparently it's the first time the UN has used the word, Nakba. Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni made the same point re Nakba in a speech yesterday, per Ynet:

"with the establishment of a Palestinian state, we wish to see the end of the conflict. The Palestinians will be able to celebrate their independence if on that same day they also strike the word 'Nakba' from their lexicon."

Now close your eyes and for just one second imagine how I'd feel if you told me not to use the word "pogrom" to describe what happened to my ancestors in Russia.

 

 

Peretz and Goldberg Get Obama to Renew the Balfour Declaration

I'm still mulling Marty Peretz's longish phone conversation with Obama about Israel, also Jeffrey Goldberg's longish interview with the candidate. One of the weird things about both conversations is the sense that Goldberg and Peretz are extracting a promise from Obama to the Jewish community. Indeed, Goldberg establishes himself as a Jew who is a guardian of Jewish "worry". In a sense, neither is that interested in what Obama really thinks--both men behave less like journalists than petitioners, trying to get Obama on the record expressing his support of the Jewish state as an answer to the Jewish problem. "I’m curious to hear you talk about the Zionist idea. Do you believe that it has justice on its side?" Goldberg asks. Then: "Do you think that justice is still on Israel’s side?"

The whole thing feels like a reprisal of the Balfour Declaration, 91 years on, with Peretz and Goldberg reenacting the roles of Chaim Weizmann and Lord Rothschild, and Obama playing the role of the British ruler. Here's why the analogy fits, and why it is actually helpful in understanding Israel/Palestine:

Jeffrey Goldberg Says American Politicians Can Say 'Whatever They Want About Israel'

Marty Peretz and Jeffrey Goldberg are powerful journalists; Obama lately talked to both of them about Israel. Peretz had a "longish" conversation, Goldberg did an interview. Why did Obama go to them? He obviously believes that they have the keys to the Jewish leadership, or a large segment thereof. Maybe they do. Joe Lieberman is inaccessible to Obama, so are Malcolm Hoenlein and Chuck Schumer, Anthony Weiner and Anne Lewis. Go where you can get it, as my guru likes to say.

I find the Goldberg conversation with Obama weird. There's a general atmosphere of Goldberg, a former Israeli soldier, vetting Obama in his capacity as a representative of Jews who are outsiders in American society and who "feel Jewish worry." No other people's interests or worries are invoked in this interview. Not the American interest, not a word about the life and suffering of the Palestinians (though yes a question about settlements). This is surely a sincere reflection of Goldberg's parochial concerns, but it makes you wonder why he gets to write for the New Yorker and the Atlantic about Middle East matters. Two years ago at Yivo, J.J. Goldberg, the Forward editor, said that Jeffrey Goldberg had distorted an aspect of  Palestinian politics in a piece to serve a rightwing agenda. (Bill Kristol stood up for Jeffrey Goldberg, and no wonder; these guys as much as anyone produced "the mindset" that gave us Iraq, which Obama is sworn to change.) I wish the Goldberg boys would have this out; it's the Iraq soul-searching the Jewish community needs.

Goldberg says here that Jimmy Carter said Israel was turning into an "apartheid" state. No, Carter only made this claim with respect to the West Bank. Goldberg says at the top that Obama is fighting to win over Jewish voters in Florida. Is that really why Obama is making obeisance to Jews? It's much broader than that. It's about money and media and cultural power; "Jewish voters in Florida" is now the media's euphemism for this larger sociological reality, and it's a form of disinformation.

Then there's Goldberg's requirement that politicians respond to Jews in their "kishkes," or guts:

if Jews know that you love them, then you can say whatever you want about Israel, but if we don’t know you –- Jim Baker, Zbigniew Brzezinski –- then everything is suspect. There seems to be in some quarters, in Florida and other places, a sense that you don’t feel Jewish worry the way a senator from New York would feel it.

This sounds like a tribal shibboleth. Goldberg is basically saying, So long as you say you love Israel,  you can say whatever you want about Israel. Can he point to one politician or official who says whatever he wants about Israel? I don't know what world he's living in. Jimmy Carter says whatever he wants and he's vilified by among others Goldberg. Nebraska Senator Chuck Hagel ventured recently that the Israel lobby "intimidates a lot of people" on Capitol Hill. Will that comment disqualify Hagel from being Obama's VP?

A Nakba Memorial, of Sorts

The Etzel Museum, commemorating the Irgun, is itself housed in a former Palestinian home in Jaffa.

And check this out: several demonstrations by No Time to Celebrate Jews, including 10 openly-identified "anti-Zionist" Jews outside a "birthright" event in New York. The great Hannah Mermelstein was there...

Bush Suggests Obama's an Appeaser at Knesset--the Israel Lobby Finally Enters Our Political Discourse

Today's a great day. George Bush's crazily craven speech at the Knesset, a naked obeisance to the Israel lobby, has caused Chris Matthews to charge that Bush and Hillary, with her "obliterate Iran" talk, are competing for a "domestic political" constituency. Why is Israel the "Hyde Park" of American politics? Why is this issue "the podium of American politics?" he asked.

Good questions. He cannot ask them seriouslywithout having John Mearsheimer and Steve Walt, who advanced this subject more bravely than anyone else, on his show. If not now, a year from now.

Oh and let's not forget Obama. He had a "longish" conversation with Marty Peretz on the telephone re Israel. And also provided slavish answers re Israel to Jeffrey Goldberg of the Atlantic. It's a party, come on down!

Wait-- not you, you're not invited.

P.S. Just now on NBC Nightly News, John Yang said the Bush speech was aimed at a "key" American "voting bloc."

Jaffa Is Still Contested Space (Even in Jewish Hearts and Minds)

Against Commentary Magazine, a reader has offered me this Jaffa blogger. Her name's Yudit, an artist. I want to believe she's Jewish. Oh my god, there are some beautiful Jews in the world! She says Jaffa, once  "bride of the sea" to the Arab population, is now a slummy suburb of Tel Aviv. She resists continuing efforts to push Arabs out, and describes a demonstration the other night at the Etzel Museum, a museum of the Irgun, right in historic Jaffa: 

At the etzel museum a small audience listens to a sound & light heroism performance,
We are kept at "a safe" distance, but using old pots and sticks as well as small flutes we raise a lot of noise. Banners tell the story of the naqbe in Jaffa, of the acts of terror carried out by Etzel against civilians. Sixty years ago, the naqbe.

Reuven Abergil tells the story of how that happened, while the Brits and the Hagana conveniently looked in the other direction. They controlled the road blocks on the way to Jaffa and the Etzel people dressed to look like local Arabs, passed through with their weapons and explosives. Bombs hidden inside a watermelon cart and a truck exploded in Jaffa's market. Children and women were murdered. The aim was to create terror and make the population want to flee away.

Neocons Don't Have Time for Golf. Or Didn't. Maybe Now They Do?

Scott McConnell comments on Bush's promise of giving-up golf while the war's on:

There’s also a more complicated sociological point to be made here: that the WASP establishment which ran the country’s foreign policy rather decently in the years after World War II has been nudged from the central halls of power, and one is now more likely to find its scions working on their handicaps or plotting elaborate middle age man getaways to this historic courses of Scotland than clawing their way up the ranks of the foreign affairs intelligentsia.

I agree, and wonder why there isn't any journalism on the subject of the new establishment. The answer, my friend, is: the fear of another Holocaust if we talk about Jewish power. So journalists betray their mission of informing the public on the grounds that the public is not to be trusted, and then tell themselves that the public is too stupid to notice this anyway. But people aren't too stupid. They know that significant changes have taken place in the sociocultural makeup of the establishment, especially the foreign-affairs branch; but they get little information about it, and the result is that commenters on my blog can claim that Jews run America, when obviously it's not that simple...

'Commentary' Ignores Palestinians' Eyewitness Testimony in Denying that Zionists Drove Arabs From Jaffa in '48

Last week I blogged about Commentary's piece denying the Nakba, which was underwritten by the chairman of the New-York Historical Society-- a landmark of Nakba denial, published in what was once a glory of Jewish intellectual tradition: Commentary, the magazine I grew up with, stacks of it, my parents didn't throw it away. The article demonstrates how fealty to Israel is eroding Jewish intelligence, as it has forced some of the smartest people on the planet to devote themselves to alchemy, coming up with elaborate proofs that black is white.

One paragraph that particularly disturbed me said that "huge numbers of Palestinian Arabs were being actively driven [Commentary's emphasis] from their homes by their own leaders and/or by Arab military forces.. In Jaffa, Palestine's largest Arab city, the [Arab] municipality organized the transfer of thousands of residents by land and sea..." In making this assertion, author Efraim Karsh denied the New Standard View, that the Zionists forced the Palestinians from Jaffa. He offered no evidence.

Having just attended a speech on the Nakba by Lila Abu-Lughod, an eminent anthropologist at Columbia University, in which she stated that her father had been "driven" out of Jaffa by Zionists, I posted about the Commentary piece, and a couple days later Commentary published an annotated version online, including the following footnote to support Karsh's claim re Jaffa:

One Cheer for Olbermann's Latest Bush/Iraq Tirade

Tonight I watched one of Keith Olbermann's trademark rants against George Bush. It went on for 15 minutes of vituperative outrage, generally surrounding Bush's politico interview, and his decision to give up golf while the Iraq War was going on...

The first thing you have to say is that it's completely impressive that Olbermann gets to hold forth with such fury, it's a proof that we still have a democracy, even on commercial TV. Good for him. He's surely ignored a lot of responsible people telling him to Cool it. The second thing is that Olbermann's analysis is a little cheap. He blames Bush for the Iraq War. Good, so do I. He says that Bush is a nincompoomp. Agreed. There are suggestions that Bush is doing it for business interests. There is anger that Bush overruled the "realists." If you're going to talk about realists, you have to talk about neocons, and you have to talk about ideas. This war was built on bad ideas. Yes George Bush showed the worst judgment in American history, but he is a nincompoop, he doesn't have time to read books. Guys who read books came up with this war and he was swayed by their arguments post-9/11. Of course it's his fault, but it's also the fault of the guys who read and wrote books.  Blame the intellectual agents of this horror, or you are going to have more like it.

Olbermann also gives a pass to the Congress, saying it was misled by mendacious Bush-fed intelligence. But Congress voted for this war; the Congress showed a disastrous lack of judgment when handed obviously-shaky intelligence. Barack Obama was a state senator then, in Chicago, and he knew it was a bad war, Lincoln Chafee knew it when he did the minimum and went to see the CIA guys. The weird thing about Olbermann's rant is that it's so focused on George Bush, and so trembling with operatic outrage, that it creates an odd sympathy for its nincompoop target. I'm glad MSNBC is airing this stuff. I just wish Olbermann was smarter.

Citing Israel and Obama, Chicago's Daley Quashes Anti-Iran-War Resolution

In '68, Mayor Daley's police force brutally broke up the antiwar demonstration in Chicago so as to preserve the dignity of the Democratic convention...

Forty years on, and Daley's son, Mayor Richard Daley of Chicago, has quashed a City Council resolution opposing war with Iran saying that it hurts  native son Obama. "Passing a resolution like that puts a... burden upon his candidacy and injects something that should not be injected” into the presidential campaign, Daley said. What's being injected? Daley brings up Israel. "Let's be realistic. The U.S. did [create Israel]," he says. I.e., we're joined at the hip. The resolution came after a hearing featuring realist John Mearsheimer and Scott Ritter. The Sun-Times account of course fails to point out the importance of Jewish votes in FL, let alone Jewish money to Obama...