Behind The Der Spiegel Tirades
Political Theatrics | January 17, 2010
At the beginning of the new year, German weekly magazine Der Spiegel ran a controversial report claiming that the Lebanese movement Hezbollah was involved in drug trafficking to finance its “terrorist operations against Israel”. The article proceeded to allege that individuals involved in the cartel had contacts with the central nexus of the resistance movement including its Secretary-General. Needless to state, no factual evidence was cited in support of the claims as in the case of a growing list of previous smear-campaigns.
In his widely acclaimed book, ‘Resistance is the Essence of the Islamist Revolution’, director of Conflicts Forum, Alastair Crooke, argues that the West not only suffers from a “blind spot” when it comes to comprehending ‘political Islam’, but that it regularly employs an historically potent association of Islam with violence to drive in a perception of “reason capsized into madness” when depicting present-day resistance groups. As such, these groups come to symbolise everything that an idealised West isn’t; a big-toothed bogeyman of sorts. The recent allegations made by Der Spiegel touch on these historical stereotypes, and in tune with age-old precedent, they aim to influence policy patterns in one form or another.
Before examining potential policy implications, a brief survey of Der Spiegel’s coverage of Hezbollah over recent years is instructive:
“Again and again [Nasrallah] seeks to provoke: No mention is made without any incitement against Jews.” (18.08.2006); “Hezbollah’s high-tech weapons endanger Germany Navy” (15.09.2006); “Hezbollah is not Suppenküche! It is a war party that wants to destroy Israel!” (23.03.2007); “Israel must adjust to a new wave of terrorist attacks against “Jewish targets” overseas … Hezbollah [has] activated its “sleeper” cells.” (21.07.2008), et al.
These brief snippets do not even begin to take into account the derogatory imagery – bordering on outright racist – resorted to when portraying supporters of Hezbollah. If you’re on planet Der Spiegel, these individuals are nonsensical maniacs with “crooked teeth” whose sole aptitude is sloganeering, whereas their fellow Lebanese are cultured beings whose women don “Fendi handbag[s]”.
To suggest the description ‘asinine’ fits well with this variety of journalism, far from sounding harsh, it would seem more like an understatement.
In the run-up to the June 2009 elections in Lebanon, Der Spiegel put together its most daring attack to-date against the Lebanese movement by linking it to the assassination of former PM Rafik Hariri. Less than two weeks from ballot day, the German magazine’s blinding front-page headline: “Breakthrough in Tribunal Investigation: New Evidence Points to Hezbollah in Hariri Murder”, had unmistakably clear motives. Despite the rapturous outburst, Der Spiegel was unbecomingly silent after the elections; the breakthrough that was glowingly pitched mere days earlier as an outcome of “serendipity à la Sherlock Holmes and the state-of-the-art technology used by cyber detectives” was deemed unworthy of further commentary. The story had satisfied its use.
Moving on to present, the timing for the explosive drug-cartel exposé is likewise edifying. In the US, the “Israel Lobby’s War on Al Manar TV” reflects a re-energised penchant on Capitol Hill to plaster the Lebanese movement with the dreaded “T” word. [1]
As with most, if not all, matters of relevance to the Middle East, one can trace the causes for Washington’s disposition to the not too distant Tel Aviv. The comments of Israeli Defense Minister, Ehud Barak, over the past week have heightened the possibility of a new war against Gaza, and increased the likelihood of another “July War” against Lebanon. Whilst the editors at Ha’aretz are making no secrets of an open-inclination towards an inevitable war path, their suggestion that the Israeli political-military complex calculates war decisions on the basis of whether and when all its citizens feasibly possess gas masks is rather inane, amongst other things. All in all, the prospect of war looms large over the Middle East with Hobbes’ caveat ringing loud and clear, “the nature of war, consisteth not in actual fighting; but in the known disposition thereto”. Within this context, smear-campaigns and fear-mongering have obvious ends in mind.
Far more importantly, however, Der Spiegel’s smear-campaign against Hezbollah is aimed at policy circles within the EU. Over recent months, there has been growing momentum to adopt “dialogue” as the preferred paradigm in coming to grips with resistance movements in the Middle East. Organisations that have consistently stressed the importance of mutual dialogue, such as the Conflicts Forum, will have been encouraged, no doubt, by the positive steps taken during 2009 to shift away from a “failed” policy. [2]
Of the more notable exchanges, former British Cabinet member MP Clare Short visited Damascus to hold talks with Khaled Meshal, as part of a small delegation of MPs after which she underlined the need to “talk to Hamas”. Later in the same month, MP Hussein Hajj Hassan from the Loyalty to the Resistance party affiliated to Hezbollah visited Britain to take part in a symposium dealing with issues concerning the Middle East. Three months later in June, EU foreign policy chief Javier Solana met with Hajj Hassan in Beirut, marking the first time a senior EU diplomat held talks with the political party.
The end of 2009 saw further drama for Israel. Towards the close of its rotating EU presidency role, Sweden proposed a resolution to recognize East Jerusalem as the capital of Palestine. By this time, Tel Aviv had simply seen enough. Pro-Israeli lobby groups and EU allies (primarily France and Germany) frantically pushed their weight around, and heavily watered down the draft resolution which eventually called for Jerusalem as “the future capital of the two states”. [3]
Meanwhile, Israel’s foreign ministry, which has unsurprisingly shed all considerations for diplomatic courtesy under Avigdor Lieberman, lashed out at Sweden for putting forward the resolution. “The peace process in the Middle East is not like IKEA furniture,” remarked a foreign ministry official, in reference to the Swedish furniture chain. “It takes more than a screw and a hammer, it takes a true understanding of the constraints and sensitivities of both sides, and in that Sweden failed miserably”, he sarcastically went on to add.
Israel’s take on the happenings in Brussels – putting aside the childish rattle – was manifestly clear. The obvious lesson to be derived from 2009 for Tel Aviv, as far as EU involvement in the Middle East is concerned, was similarly evident.
One must underline at this point that despite consistent pressures exerted by Israel and co., the positions adopted by a growing number of EU parliamentarians vis-à-vis the Arab-Israeli conflict has been very honourable. Earlier on Friday, a 60-member strong delegation made their way into Gaza to assess the wide-scale damage caused by Israel’s brutal war last year, as part of a bid to mount pressure for an end to the Siege.
For Israel, this sort of involvement is clearly not welcome. And hence, the appearance of baseless slander and smear-campaigns in leading European media outlets, which aim to cast resistance movements as erratic, lawless, mafia-like entities whose “sleeper cells” and “networks” pervade across the heart of Europe. Der Spiegel’s recent claims, apart from being the usual, old vituperations, should rather be viewed in the context of a wider agenda to curtail dialogue between resistance movements and western officials.
Evidently thus, there are certain stakeholders who wish to see the EU mutate into some variant of a collectivised imbecile, which keeps a measured silence on all subjects whose implicit or explicit implications reach Israeli shores. Der Spiegel’s recent tirades have set the new strategy in motion. However, if the most recent words from Gaza are any indication, Israel will need to try much, much harder.
Notes:
1. “The Israel Lobby’s War on Al Manar TV”, The Palestine Chronicle, 03 January 2010 http://palestinechronicle.com/view_article_details.php?id=15659
2. “Language – a tool to transform different into dangerous”, Conflicts Forum, 02 February 2008 http://conflictsforum.org/2008/language-a-tool-to-transform-different-into-dangerous/
3. “Jewish settlers: We’ll burn you all!”, ChamPress, 26 December 2009 http://www.champress.net/index.php?q=en/Article/view/50833
US tax-exempt organization seizes Jewish women that choose assimilation
By Yaniv Reich on January 16, 2010
Where to begin? Regular readers of this blog will undoubtedly know about the severe problem of Israeli racism against Arabs in general and Palestinians in particular. But this story leaves even me incredulous.
Meet Yad L’Achim (Hand to Brothers), a Jewish NGO whose goals, as described on their website, are to “fight with intensity for both the Russian Jewish immigrant who has become a regular at the missionary center in Afula and the Jewish woman who is married to an Arab. There are no ‘lost causes.’ Yad L’Achim will continue its rescue activities, together with its efforts at Jewish outreach, as long as the problem of missionaries and Jewish-Arab marriage persists.”
Founded by Rabbi Shalom Dov Lifshitz, this organization has a US branch, Yad L’Achim Peylei Israel, based in Brooklyn and listed with the IRS as a public charity to which one can give donations with 50% tax deductibility.
Lifshitz explains the organization’s motives in more detail on his chairman page:
“To our great sorrow, the phenomenon of Jewish girls getting involved with Arabs has reached startling proportions. . . . I’m sure you’ll find the information presented here to be eye-opening. It’s important that you not only become aware, but that you get involved. We must all raise our voices to demand legislation that puts an end to missionary activity and assimilation in Israel!
Jewish girls are not free for the taking and must not become enslaved to Arab men.”
The level of racist hatred on the website is simply mind-blowing.
The organization’s background page, for example, describes their focus on assimilation and their dedicated Anti-Assimilation Department.
This department deals with women and teenage girls who have become involved with Arab men. In most cases, these relationships lead to marriage, which then deteriorate into violence. Among the many serious problems that result from such relationships is the identity of the children. They are Jews, but are raised as Arabs. Thus, entire generations are being lost to the Jewish people.
[…]
Though it was once thought that this could not be a problem in a Jewish country, not even for the secular, the tragic facts show an increasing number of Jewish girls getting involved with foreign workers and, even more so, with Arab men. Indeed, Yad L’Achim gets some 1,000 calls a year reporting such cases.Our Anti-Assimilation department responds to all such calls.
Military adventurism to “rescue” Jewish girls from assimilation
A number of these thousand calls per year result in “military-like rescues from hostile Arab villages and setting the women up in ’safe’ houses around the country, where they can build new lives for themselves.”
In the description of these military methods, the website explains how “Yad L’Achim’s activists literally risk their lives to rescue the women from hostile villages. These operations are organized and run by veterans of elite IDF combat units and require careful planning.”
When we press [“H”, the head of Yad L’Ahim’s rescue unit] for some insight into what it’s like to enter hostile Arab villages to extract Jewish women, he prefers to speak of the team effort that contributes to Yad L’Achim’s success.
A: “I’m not alone in this,” says H., a former member of an elite combat unit in the Israeli army. “There’s a whole team of volunteers who work with me. Each member of the team plays a crucial role. In some cases they receive a just few hours’ notice. They leave their families and businesses and put all their energies into getting a Jewish woman out of an Arab village, at risk to their own lives.”
Q: What’s it like in the moments before they enter the village?
A: “Before we get to that point, I’ve sat with our staff and pored over updated maps of the area. We have to be able to get in and out of the village, together with a frightened Jewish woman who often has a child or two. We’ve got to know all the routes in and out of the village and be prepared for all eventualities. Only when we have all the answers do we embark on our mission.
“Many times these preparations take place under pressure, but we have to keep our cool and act responsibly.
“On the instructions of Harav Shalom Dov Lipshitz [founding chairman of Yad L’Achim], at the moment we enter the village we all say together, quietly, chapter 121 in Tehillim, which begins, ‘I raise my eyes upon the mountains; whence will come my help?’We say the last verse – ‘G-d will guard your departure and your arrival, from this time and forever’ – out loud. This gives us a feeling of confidence that we will succeed in our mission.”
Q: Does he have a recent story he can share with us?
“Two weeks ago, the hotline at our Jewish Women Rescue Division received a call from Umm el-Fahm, the Arab town in the Galilee. On the line was a hysterical young woman who had married an Israeli Arab and was desperate for a way out. She grew up in a town in central Israel, where she met the man and, against the advice of friends and family, married him and even converted to Islam. Once she took that fateful step, she was expected to be completely subservient to her husband, in keeping with Islamic practice.
“In the hospital, after giving birth to her baby, she met a Jewish woman who could see that she was in distress and slipped her a piece of paper with the number of Yad L’Achim’s hotline. One day, an opportunity presented itself and she called. During the course of the conversation, it emerged that she had one day a month when she was allowed to leave home – the 28th, when the National Insurance Institute deposited her welfare payment into her bank account. We decided that that would be the day of the rescue.
“On the designated day, we showed up at Umm el-Fahm in three cars, one to do the rescue, and the other two to provide back-up. Based on a predetermined signal we identified the young woman, dressed from head to toe in Arab garb, with her baby in her arms. In order not to raise suspicions, she had left home with nothing but several layers of clothes on the baby.
“She entered the rescue car and we sped out of town. We took her to an apartment in a secret location that was equipped with food and clothing for mother and child, as well as warm, supportive social workers.
“Despite the difficulties and dangers, the rescue is the easy part. Then comes the rehabilitation.”
Q: Why does H. continue to put himself in danger in these missions?
A: “It’s impossible to stand by when you see the kind of danger a young Jewish woman is in,” he answers, challenging the rest of us to do our part as well in rescuing these women in distress and their children.
Is this legal? According to Tsipora Gutman, the official in charge of Jewish-Arab marriages in Yad L’Achim headquarters in Bnei Brak, the answer is sensitive but everything gets approved by Yad L’Achim’s legal department.
‘Some thing worth knowing’, according to these racists
How serious of a problem is this (in the lunatic minds of these fundamentalists)?
The website’s “Some things worth knowing” provides their answer.
“It’ll never happen to me,” we like to say. But experience shows that it does happen, in the finest of families, and young girls should be made aware of the facts before they get involved in such relationships.
Blood is thicker than water, and if the man is Muslim or Christian, sooner or later he will seek to undermine the relationship.
It’s important to understand that the Koran relates to a husband’s treatment of his wife very differently from Western norms. What a western woman would regard as a breach of her rights, Muslim women find perfectly acceptable.
[…]
It should also be stressed that children who are born to a Jewish mother and a Muslim father suffer from a serious lack of basic identity. They are Jews in the eyes of the Arabs, and stigmatized, but have no knowledge of their Judaism.
Elsewhere, the website publishes an interview with Shifra, one of Yad L’Achim’s social workers. She explains to concerned Jewish parents how to prevent their lovely Jewish daughters from falling victim to predatory Arab men.
Q: Jewish outreach workers of ours who man a booth in a major city in Israel report seeing young Jewish girls regularly entering cars of Arabs and going with them into Arab villages. Can you help us understand what leads these girls to engage in such dangerous behavior?
A: They are in distress, mostly on an emotional level. Some were victims of abuse as children, others witnessed violence at home between their parents. Many are the “black sheep” of the family and have never felt accepted at home. They grew up feeling that their parents didn’t understand them and didn’t love them. Unfortunately, such girls have low self-esteem and little confidence.
Many come from a low socio-economic background; all their friends have the latest-generation cell phones and new clothes, while they have nothing. These girls connect up with Arab men who are seeking to “have a good time” in a way that isn’t acceptable in traditional Arab society.
Even so, the girls don’t understand the danger they’re getting into?
In the beginning there’s a lot of denial. They tell themselves, “Nothing will happen to me,” “He’s not like the others,” or “Why be racist?” Things are good for them at the start, and they don’t think about the long-term. Their Arab suitors pamper them, buy them things, drive them around in fancy cars and make their drab lives much more interesting.
Q: Give us an idea of the scope of the problem. How many girls in Israel are involved with Arab men?
A: At Yad L’Achim we’re getting more than 100 calls a month for help. The phenomenon, I’m sorry to say, is only getting worse. And we know that those who are crying out to us for help are just a drop in the bucket.
Q: Tell us about the rescue operations from Arab villages.
A: These rescues are coordinated with the army, police and welfare agencies. They don’t always involve extricating a girl from a remote Arab village. Sometimes it can be a girl or a woman trapped in an apartment in the center of Haifa or Tel Aviv-Jaffa, which have large Arab populations.
In the Arutz Sheva article on one of Yad L’Achim’s recent “rescues”, the recent story is told of a Jewish mother escaping from Gaza with her children, who would be re-given Hebrew names now that they live in Israel. The organization carefully coordinated this escape with the army and with Interior Minister Eli Yishai (Shas party).
One IDF official told Yad L’Achim: “I donate to your organization regularly and I feel that it is in that merit that I was privileged to be able to participate in this rescue today.”
Ending tax-deductible support for such overt racism
Although I am no expert on non-profit tax law, I would be willing to wager that the activities of this NGO fall well outside the acceptable range of activities granted charity status by the IRS. As always, I encourage people to conduct their own research into this organization and its shady activities. And if you find out anything interesting, please leave a comment and/or write me directly. I would love to know more about this disgusting group.
Related articles
- IDF soldier passes IDs of Jewish girls who socialize with Arabs to anti-assimilation NGO (theuglytruth.wordpress.com)
- Controlled Mass Media Ignore and Cover up Jewish Racism (therebel.org)
- Convincing Millennials to ‘Marry a Nice Jewish Boy’ (theatlantic.com)
- Suspicion and Hate: Racist Attacks On Arabs Increase in Israel
Turkish President, Prime Minister, Refuse To Meet Barak
January 17, 2010 | By Saed Bannoura | IMEMC & Agencies
Turkish media sources reported on Saturday that the Turkish President, Abdullah Gül, and Prime Minister, Receb Tayyip Erdogan, will not hold a meeting with Israel’s Defense Minister, Ehud Barak, who will be visiting the country on Sunday.
Barak officially requested to convene with the Turkish President and Prime Minister but they denied his request due to the strained relations between the two countries.
So far, Barak is scheduled to meet his Turkish counterpart, Decdi Gonul, and the Turkish Foreign Minister, Ahmet Davutoglu. He will be accompanied by Udi Shani, the director-general of the Defense Ministry, and the Ministry’s Political desk head, Amos Gilad, Israeli daily, Haaretz, reported.
Gül claimed that he cannot meet Barak because he is busy with the preparations for the activities of Istanbul as the capital of European Culture. But Turkish sources reported that the real reason is Israel’s recent mistreatment of the Turkish ambassador.
Israel’s vice-Foreign Minister, Danni Ayalon, from the fundamentalist extreme right-wing party, Yisrael Beiteinu party, threatened to kick the Turkish ambassador out of the country due to a Turkish TV show accusing the Israeli army of committing war crimes against the Palestinian people.
In an Interview with Israel’s TV, Channel 2, Ayalon threatened to kick out the ambassador of any country that criticized Israel and shows its soldiers as war criminals.
Last week, Ayalon summoned the Turkish Ambassador and humiliated him and also had him sit in a seat lawyer than his to look down on him while “criticizing the Turkish TV show”.
Ayalon later on apologized to the ambassador and claimed that he believed what he did was foolish, yet he said that the causes of this crisis are valid.
Iran’s “WWII compensation commission” meets in Tehran
Iranians are forced by occupying troops to load their own requisitioned trains during WWII
Press TV – January 17, 2010
A task force assigned by Iran’s president has begun their work in estimating the amount of damage inflicted on the Iranian nation during the Second World War.
The compensation commission, consisting of representatives from Iran’s main ministries and organizations, concluded their first meeting on the task in Tehran Saturday.
Earlier this month, President Ahmadinejad had called for the need to demand reparations from the West for the damages inflicted on Iran during the world war that raged between 1939 and 1945.
At the outbreak of the conflict, Iran, which had declared its neutrality, was simultaneously invaded by Britain and the Soviet Union on August 26, 1941.
Iran served as a source of oil and a transit route for American war materials to the Soviet Union — what the Allies came to call their “victory bridge” or the “Persian Corridor,” as it was known.
Britain, the Soviet Union, and the United States together managed to move over 5 million tons of munitions and other war materials across Iran to the Soviet Union.
The war had dire consequences for the ordinary citizens of Iran.
Thousands of Iranian civilians, from laborers and drivers to skilled mechanics, were forced to work the “little Detroit’s” truck assembly plants at Iran’s northern city of Andimeshk. In one year, 648,000 vehicles were built in Iran for shipment to the Soviet Union.
Severe inflation imposed great hardship on the lower and middle classes, while fortunes were made by individuals dealing in scarce items.
The country’s population also suffered food shortages, as the invading forces had bought up most of the grain intended for the Iranian marketplace.
US drone attack claims 20 lives in Pakistan
Press TV – January 17, 2010
At least 20 people have been killed in Pakistan in the latest US drone attacks that picked up pace after seven CIA agents were killed in late December.
The Sunday attack has reportedly targeted a militant compound in an area near Miranshah, the main town in the North Waziristan tribal region. However, the identity of those killed in the air raid has not been confirmed.
The number of CIA-operated drone strikes along the Pakistan-Afghanistan border has increased after a Jordanian double agent crossed into Afghanistan from the tribal lands and struck a US intelligence center in late 2009.
Over the weekend, eleven people were killed in two drone attacks in northwestern Pakistan.
The US has carried out dozens of missile strikes in northwestern Pakistan over the past twelve months. Washington claims it is targeting militants.
But reports say the attacks have repeatedly killed civilians. Last week, Pakistani officials warned US Special Envoy Richard Holbrooke that the US drone attacks could endanger ties.
There have been nationwide rallies in Pakistan against high civilian casualties inflicted by the US operations.
Pakistan Islami Jamiat-e Talaba staged an anti-American rally on Saturday to show strong resentment at US drone attacks in the country.
Demonstrators demanded that the government take a strong stand against the US presence in the country.
Ukraine’s opposition worried by inflow of “athletic” Georgian men
RIA NOVOSTI | January 17, 2010
Ukraine’s opposition Party of Regions has warned of a possible attempt to disrupt the country’s presidential vote as three charter flights from Georgia carrying over 400 “athletic men” landed in the country.
On Sunday Ukraine will hold presidential elections. With former premier Viktor Yanukovych expected to win the first round of voting, after which he is likely to face a run-off against current premier Yulia Tymoshenko, pro-Western incumbent Viktor Yushchenko’s time in office would seem to be over.
On Friday two charter flights from with of 297 Georgian men onboard landed in the eastern Ukrainian city of Donetsk. Some of them had lists of all polling stations in the region. The Georgians, aged from 25 to 40, told border guards that the purpose of their visit was to meet with Ukrainian girls they met on social networking sites.
On Saturday another charter flight from Georgia with some 120 male passengers landed in the capital Kiev. The official purpose of their visit is unknown.
The Georgians were to “interfere in the electoral process… with an aim to change the outcome of the elections and disrupt the vote,” party member Mykola Azarov told a news conference on Saturday.
Ukraine’s central election body had earlier refused to register over 3,000 observers, sent by Georgia to Sunday’s presidential polls, citing the absence of necessary documents. The number of monitors from the Caucasus state exceeded the total number of observers sent by other states and international organizations.
A source in the Georgian opposition told RIA Novosti the visitors were related to Georgian special services and the military.
“The vast majority of them are servicemen. Some have identity documents with other names, almost all had undergone special training and have close-combat skills,” the source said.
He said they were to receive bonuses ranging from $20,000 to $32,000.
Party of Regions said it would seek visa regime with Georgia if an attempt to interfere in the elections is proved.
Inviting David Brooks to My Class
M. Shahid Alam | Pulse Media | January 17, 2010
On January 12, the New York Times carried an article by David Brooks on Jews and Israel. It so caught my eye, I decided to bring its conservative author to my class on the economic history of the Middle East. I sent my students the link to this article, asked them to read it carefully, and come to the next class prepared to discuss and dissect its contents.
My students recalled various parts of the NYT article but no one could explain its substance. They recalled David Brooks’ focus on the singular intellectual achievements of American Jews, the enviable record of Israeli Jews as innovators and entrepreneurs, the mobility of Israel’s innovators, etc. One student even spoke of what was not in the article or in the history of Jews – centuries of Jewish struggle to create a Jewish state in Palestine.
But they offered no comments about Brooks’ motivation. Why had he decided to brag about Jewish achievements, a temptation normally eschewed by urbane Jews. In my previous class, while discussing Edward Said’s critique of Orientalism, I had discussed how knowledge is suborned by power, how it is perverted by tribalism, and how Western writers had crafted their writings about the Middle East to serve the interests of colonial powers. Not surprisingly, this critique had not yet sunk in.
I coaxed my students, asking them directly to explore if David Brooks had an axe (or more than one) to grind. Was there an elephant in the room they had missed? What was the subtext of the op-ed?
At last, one student moved in the direction of the missing elephant. David Brooks had not mentioned the ‘aid’ that Israel had received from the United States. Did my class know how much? Several eyebrows rose when I informed my students that Israel currently receives close to $3 billion in annual grants from the US, not counting official loan guarantees and tax-deductible contributions by private charities. Since its creation, Israel has received more than $240 billion in grants from the US alone.
We had grasped the elephant’s ear, but what about the rest of it, its head, belly, trunks, tail and tusks. My students did not have a clue – or so it appeared to me.
My students did not understand – or perhaps they did not show it – that no discussion about Israel, especially in the NYT, could be innocent of political motives. Israel is a contested fact, a colonial-settler state, founded on ethnic cleansing, a state of the world’s Jews but not of its Arab population, which continues to marginalize the Palestinians it calls its ‘citizens,’ to dispossess them in the West Bank and East Jerusalem, and strangulate them in Gaza. Supported and coddled by the United States and other Western powers, Israel now faces growing protests from diverse segments of Western civil society. Churches, labor unions, professors, students and other activist groups are calling on corporations and governments to divest from, boycott and sanction Israel. As always, but now more than ever, advocates of Israel continue to manufacture myths, opinions, and ‘facts’ that can cover for its crimes against the Palestinians and other Arabs in its neighborhood.
Isn’t that what David Brooks was doing, I asked my class, by painting Jews and Israel in the colors of pure glory?
I saw a few nods of recognition. But one student demurred. ‘Doesn’t everyone glorify his own country. The US too had engaged in ethnic cleansing. What is the difference?”
There are two differences, I submitted. David Brooks is glorifying Israel but he is not Israeli. More to the point, he is glorifying Israel to cover up for Israel’s present and projected crimes against Palestinians. He is covering up for Israeli apartheid that exists here and now.
At this point, many in my class gasped at what they heard. It was a voice dredged from the past. It was a defense of genocide quite frequently advanced in the previous centuries when white settlers were exterminating natives in the Americas, Oceania and Africa. ‘We had done so much better with the land than the natives.” Occasionally, such repugnant ideas from the past, which we think we have buried forever, leak into the public discourse. Perhaps, it is good that they do, to remind us that the past is not dead.
David Brooks starts his article with statistics to show that the Jews “are a famously accomplished group.” Do we need to be convinced of the accomplishments of the Jews? Is there anyone who contests this? So why does Brooks feel the need to support this with statistics? “They make up 0.2 percent of the world population,” he informs us, “but 54 percent of the world chess champions, 27 percent of the Nobel physics laureates and 31 percent of the medicine laureates.” Just in case, these comparisons failed to clinch the point, David Brooks offers more comparative statistics.
Does Brooks wish to rub in the point? Or is he saying, Look at all the great things we have done for you Gentiles. We are indispensable. Don’t you criticize what we do? Don’t you go against us? Or does he feel so personally inadequate, this forces him to seek comfort not in Jewish accomplishments – as he claims – but in Jewish superiority?
Alas, the Jews in Israel have not matched the achievements of the Jews in the Diaspora. The Jewish state contains close to 40 percent of the world’s Jewish population, but very few of the Jewish Nobel laureates are Israelis. Only nine Israelis in sixty-one years have won the Nobel prize. If we exclude the three ‘Peace’ laureates – wouldn’t you, if you knew who they are – that leaves six. Only three of these six were born in Israel, and one was born there while his parents were visiting relatives in Tel Aviv. Hardly a great total. Ireland, with a smaller population, has six Nobel laureates.
David Brooks knows this. “The odd thing,” he writes, “is that Israel has not traditionally been strongest where the Jews in the Diaspora were strongest.” Why has Israel fallen short? Blame it on the Palestinians and the Arabs. “Instead of research and commerce, Israelis were forced to devote their energies to fighting and politics.” Brook’s intent would have been clear even without my italics.
That was in the past, however. Israel is now bubbling over with innovation and entrepreneurship. Tel Aviv is now “one of the world’s foremost entrepreneurial hot spots.” Once again, statistics are offered to establish Israel’s leadership in civilian research and development. Israel’s more ominous leadership in military technology is not mentioned.
Moreover – and this is David Brooks’ point – this technological success “is the fruition of the Zionist dream.” Then follows another piece of chauvinism. Israel was “not founded so stray settlers could sit among thousands of angry Palestinians in Hebron. It was founded so Jews would have a safe place to come together and create things for the world.”
David Brooks disguises Israel’s second round of colonial expansion that began in June 1967 as a diversion from the main goal of Zionism, a distraction created by ‘stray’ settlers in Hebron. The close to half a million Jewish settlers in East Jerusalem and the West Bank, supported, financed, and protected by the world’s fourth most powerful military are minimized as ‘stray’ settlers in Hebron, who are a problem only because they are surrounded by ‘angry’ Palestinians.
Israel was founded – David Brooks asserts, invoking the language of Zionism – so Jews could have a “safe place” and create “things for the world.” Has Israel been a safe place for Jews? Safer than the United States, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, or even the Arab world before the Zionist movement became official in 1917? Plausibly, the answer is, No.
One must also ask, What ‘things’ has Israel created for the world? What ‘things’ has Israel given to the Arab world, other than wars, massacres, ethnic cleansings, occupations, war crimes, and alibis to its rulers to create repressive regimes. What has it given to that other world – the Western world – that Brooks probably has in mind? It has jeopardized their strategic interests in the Islamicate. On more than one occasion, it has brought the United States close to nuclear collision with the Soviet Union. The most valuable ‘things’ that Israelis provide to Western powers, to the United States in particular as an occupying power in Iraq and Afghanistan, are the technology and tactics they have been perfecting while crushing the Palestinian resistance. But David Brooks cannot talk about this.
Then comes the coup de grace. This is the blow aimed close to Brook’s primary target – the Arabs. Jewish and Israeli superiority must finally be placed against the terrible paucity of Arab creativity. Arabs are asked to declare the patents they have registered in the United States. The astronomical gap between Arab and Israeli patents can have only one cause. The Arabs do not have the “tradition of free intellectual exchange and technical creativity (my italics).” In true Orientalist style, blame Arab failures on Arab culture.
Ironically, the two countries Brooks picks to make his point – Egypt and Saudi Arabia – are the closest Arab allies of the United States. The US never wags its finger at the despotic monarchy in Saudi Arabia or the repressive dictatorship that has controlled Egypt for decades. The United States can only strive to bring ‘democracy’ to its enemies.
Yet for all its triumphalism and crude claims of superiority, the NYT op-ed ends on a disappointing note. Israel’s innovators – the sons of Zionist dreamers – bring no commitment to Israel. Just a little instability, and they will vote with their feet. “American Jews used to keep a foothold in Israel in case things got bad here. Now Israelis keep a foothold in the U.S.” As remarkable as it is, Israel’s success is “also highly mobile.”
Is David Brooks the great friend of Israel that he must believe he is? All that any one has to do to destroy Israel’s economy, he writes, is “to foment enough instability so the entrepreneurs decide they had better move to Palo Alto, where many of them [Israelis] already have contacts and homes.”
What sad and strange thinking. Perhaps, this is what happens when a person is imprisoned inside the nightmare that was sold to the Jews as the great Zionist dream. Brooks confirms that this nightmare cannot be saved by Israel’s technological prowess. Apparently, Israel’s greatest success story – its cutting-edge technology companies – are also footloose. They could be heading for the exits at the first sign of instability.
Technological prowess will not save Jewish apartheid – nothing will. But Jews can shore their lives and build a more promising future for themselves by discovering their common humanity with the Arabs, by making amends to the Palestinians, and learning to give back to the Palestinians what they have taken from them over the past nine decades.
The Zionists are prisoners of a bad dream: they must first free themselves, break free from the prison in which they can only play the part of tormentors, if they and especially their Palestinian victims are to live normal lives.
–M. Shahid Alam is professor of economics at Northeastern University, Boston. He is author of Israeli Exceptionalism: The Destabilizing Logic of Zionism (Palgrave Macmillan: 2009). You can reach him at alqalam02760@yahoo.com.
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Nine Covid Facts: A Pandemic of Fearmongering and Ignorance
By Jeff Harris | Ron Paul Institute | October 28, 2020
Ever since the alleged pandemic erupted this past March the mainstream media has spewed a non-stop stream of misinformation that appears to be laser focused on generating maximum fear among the citizenry. But the facts and the science simply don’t support the grave picture painted of a deadly virus sweeping the land.
Yes we do have a pandemic, but it’ a pandemic of ginned up pseudo-science masquerading as unbiased fact. Here are nine facts backed up with data, in many cases from the CDC itself that paints a very different picture from the fear and dread being relentlessly drummed into the brains of unsuspecting citizens. … continue
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