a real memorial for the holocaust

Today, Friday the 6 of December, 2013, the Wall Street Journal features a front page story by Naftali Bendavid on the passing of the last of the holocaust survivors and how this puts the memory of the event at risk, a truly outlandish claim that called for a response, which I reproduce here...

Mr. Bendavid:

I have read your article on the last of the holocaust survivors dying of old age.

There is absolutely no danger the holocaust will be forgotten – there are dozens of holocaust memorials in the United States and in my state of Illinois it is a legal requirement that public school students be taught about the holocaust before they reach high school. Mention of the holocaust is frequent in the U.S. media.

A long term and current tragedy made possible by the holocaust is rarely, if ever, mentioned and that is the ethnic cleansing of the Palestinians and their more than 65 year abuse by the state of Israel, the foundation of which was made possible by leveraging the horror of the holocaust to deflect criticism of Jews who, as Israelis, deny equality to Arabs in Palestine.

The Knesset approved plan to evict tens of thousands of Bedouin (Israeli citizens!) from the Negev, forcing them into concentration towns while opening their lands up to Jews-only settlement is something I believe would horrify the great majority of those who were lost in the holocaust. I haven’t read about this in the WSJ. Nor have I read about the Nakba, the horrible expulsion of Arabs in 1947-48 that literally laid the groundwork for The Jewish State.

The promised land for Jews, as for any other ethnic group, is the United States, where we attempt to practice liberty and justice for all. In Israel, Prime Minister Netanyahu continually raises the specter of a “second holocaust” to excuse whatever he chooses to do in the name of the defense of Jews. For Israel, no non-Jews need apply for citizenship, a direct refutation of all the United States claims to hold dear.

I don’t know about you, but the Jews I know have no fears whatsoever of intolerance in the U.S. and, as is evident to all, there is no profession or occupation or way of life in America that is denied to Jews. Quite the contrary, it is the very success of Jews in the United States that provides the wealth and democratic participation that provides the clout of the Israel Lobby in Congress, protecting Israel from every UN sanction, including the incredible veto by the U.S. of its own policy against Israeli settlements in the UN last year.

To be faithful to those who perished in the holocaust, the correct course of action is to bring to public attention the fact that there are Jews behaving badly in the Middle East, rapidly approaching in Israel the kind of state that made the holocaust possible. Read Max Blumenthal’s “Goliath” for evidence. When Israel is held responsible for its ethnic-cleansing project, the project of Zionism from the start, only then will the holocaust be honored as it should be.

When innocent people are victims, as was the case in the holocaust, it in no way entitles those who claim them for relations, the Israelis, to victimize innocents anew. There is no more shameful evidence that the lesson of the holocaust has not been learned than the behavior of the State of Israel as I write. Benjamin Netanyahu’s tongue should burn as he leads yet another party through Yad Vachem.

Regards,

Clif Brown

John Kerry finally speaks honestly

A friend of mine on FB gave notice of a story in the Israel Times about the remarks of U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry to Israeli PM Netanyahu that floored me. What he said, in an interview on an Israeli TV station, is so candid and truthful, in such contrast to the continual empty statements about the "peace process" that it gives me hope exasperation in Washington is finally reaching the breaking point.

Interestingly, I saw nothing from the US media about this.

The headline: "FRUSTRATED KERRY'S PEACE CRITIQUE A HEAVY SLAP IN NETANYAHU'S FACE - A patently bitter secretary of state asks why Israel keeps taking Palestinian land and why the Israeli public doesn't seem to care about it."

Of course any American who follows events in Israel knows quite well the answer to Kerry's lament - it is because the United States continues to support Netanyahu and his policies with lots of money, weapons and never-ending supportive resolutions in Congress driven by the Israel lobby with its tremendously wealthy supporters who make lavish campaign donations.

An excerpt (boldface mine):

"In an extremely unusual joint interview with Israel’s Channel 2 and the Palestinian Broadcasting Corporation, a very frustrated Kerry basically blamed the Israeli government for stealing the Palestinians’ land and the Israeli public for living in bubble that prevents them from caring much about it. If that wasn’t enough, he railed against the untenability of the Israel Defense Forces staying “perpetually” in the West Bank. In warning that a violent Palestinian leadership might supplant Mahmoud Abbas if there was not sufficient progress at the peace table, he appeared to come perilously close to empathizing with potential Palestinian aggression against Israel.

“If we do not resolve the issues between Palestinians and Israelis,” Kerry warned early in the interview, “if we do not find a way to find peace, there will be an increasing isolation of Israel [and an] increasing campaign of delegitimization of Israel.

“If we do not resolve the question of settlements,” he continued more dramatically, “and the question of who lives where and how and what rights they have; if we don’t end the presence of Israeli soldiers perpetually within the West Bank, then there will be an increasing feeling that if we cannot get peace with a leadership that is committed to non-violence, you may wind up with leadership that is committed to violence.”

He later elaborated, expressing apparently growing dismay over continued Israeli settlement expansion: “How, if you say you’re working for peace and you want peace, and a Palestine that is a whole Palestine that belongs to the people who live there, how can you say we’re planning to build in a place that will eventually be Palestine? So it sends a message that perhaps you’re not really serious.” That was a critique that will have resonated widely among those many Israelis, and critics from outside, who have long argued that Israel should limit any settlement building to areas it envisages seeking to retain in a permanent accord."

what do Jews think? What do YOU think?

Max Blumenthal has come out with a new book, Goliath, that offers an unblinking look at how low things have sunk in Israel. I have yet to read it, but it is generating outrage by the ever-ready defenders of everything Israel is or does. As always, online discussions start about Zionism, how do Jews feel about it? Here is a comment I posted on Richard Silverstein's blog Tikkun Olam.

Harriet Beecher Stowe caused an uproar with the publication of Uncle Tom’s Cabin, an account, though fictional, of what was going on inside the Old South based on what she had been told by those who knew. Perhaps Max can accomplish something similar with his non-fiction, all the more powerful for that.

Absolute power corrupts and Israel shows how. Protected in every way (financially, politically, militarily) there is no even minimally effective check on Israeli power, Hezbollah and HAMAS notwithstanding, so it is running wild as would any country (or person) invincible to opposition, bulldozing, both literally and figuratively, its way as extremism morphs to the new norm.

I am weary of discussions of the varieties of Jewish thought on Zionism, because my concern is with the welfare of the United States. I am outraged that the world’s superpower of 300 million people is lead by the nose, starting with Harry Truman, interrupted briefly by Eisenhower, but in the last decades continually taking mincing steps so as not to offend zealotry at the head of a population the size of NYC on the other side of the world, zealotry that cares nothing for democracy or human rights and pursues openly, relentlessly, brazenly, a program of exclusion and expulsion, thumbing its nose at the world and then lecturing us all about what it will and will not do. It is not just the mouse that roared, it is the mouse that became overlord.

The behavior of the settlers, the ripping of the Palestinians, from 1947 onward, from their land are anathema to all that America claims to hold dear. The U.S. support of Israel is shameful as we play the hypocritical fool before the world. The sooner the invincible shield that slaps down every criticism of Israel is pierced, the better. You go, Max!

Max will be appearing nearby next month. I intend to go listen to what he has to say because of his courage and willingness to take the heat. I hope to see a packed room and to shake his hand at the conclusion. He puts religion to the side and looks at injustice, something we all can and should do. If my brother beats a man senseless, do I ignore it and rationalize it? We should all put greater or lesser family aside and look without blinking at what we do either actively, or as millions of American citizens are doing, passively, allowing the connected and wealthy to act in our names.

the Christian Science Monitor gets a little bolder

You know, of course, that the so-called "Peace Talks" that are continually sought by US administrations over the years are a sham, a cover for continuing Israeli settlement in the West Bank.

The Christian Science Monitor has come out with a series of very informative slides that detail the surges in settlement activity that occur when "Peace Talks" are supposedly being pursued. If only this kind of coverage of facts about Israel's actions were routine instead of rare.

the sweet sound of reason

Here is the first part of a wonderfully clear explanation of the origin of the problem in Palestine. A tutorial for Americans

Goodbye New York Times

I have subscribed to the New York Times for many years, but I am ending my subscription tomorrow.

I'm doing so because the NYT did not so much as mention the Edward Snowden revelation that the NSA has been systematically turning over all the intelligence it gathers on all Americans to Israel with no meaningful strings attached.

The NYT claims that this was because the story was insignificant! How foolish do they think people are to believe such a preposterous claim?

I've tolerated the pro-Israel spin given to stories from the middle east for as long as I can remember. In the last two years there have been signs of improvement. One, just this week, is Ian Lustick's spot-on opinion piece in the Sunday Review about the pointless "peace talks". But my tolerance has run out.

I'm going to subscribe to the Washington Post because I am hopeful that Jeff Bezos has a better idea of what journalism is than what has been the American newspaper of record, whose motto when it comes to Israel is to protect the views of the powerful.

Paul Craig Cobb, a modern day Ben Gurion

Today the NY Times published an article documenting a white supremacist buying up property in North Dakota to create a colony where white supremacy would be practiced and promoted free of interference; a safe haven for racism to thrive. Current residents are understandably worried.

Yet, this idea of creating a colony for one group to reign supreme by buying up land has worked wonderfully well in another place and it has moved on from buying land to simply taking it away from others. The United States backs the project with billions yearly and full protection by veto in the United Nation. This supremacist project is called the State of Israel.