The phrase “right to exist” entered my consciousness in the 1990s just as the concept of the two-state solution became part of our collective lexicon. In any debate at university, when a Zionist was out of arguments, those three magic words were invoked to shut down the conversation with an outraged, “are you saying Israel doesn’t have the right to exist??”
Of course you couldn’t challenge Israel’s right to exist – that was like saying you were negating a fundamental Jewish right to have… rights, with all manner of Holocaust guilt thrown in for effect.
Except of course the Holocaust is not my fault – or that of Palestinians. The cold-blooded program of ethnically cleansing Europe of its Jewish population has been so callously and opportunistically utilized to justify the ethnic cleansing of the Palestinian Arab nation, that it leaves me utterly unmoved. I have even caught myself – shock – rolling my eyes when I hear Holocaust and Israel in the same sentence.
What moves me instead in this post-two-state era, is the sheer audacity of Israel even existing.
What a fantastical idea, this notion that a bunch of rank outsiders from another continent could appropriate an existing, populated nation for themselves – and convince the “global community” that it was the moral thing to do. I’d laugh at the chutzpah if this wasn’t so serious.
Even more brazen is the mass ethnic cleansing of the indigenous Palestinian population by persecuted Jews, newly arrived from their own experience of being ethnically cleansed.
But what is truly frightening is the psychological manipulation of the masses into believing that Palestinians are somehow dangerous – “terrorists” intent on “driving Jews into the sea.” As someone who makes a living through words, I find the use of language in creating perceptions to be intriguing. This practice – often termed “public diplomacy” has become an essential tool in the world of geopolitics. Words, after all, are the building blocks of our psychology.
Take, for example, the way we have come to view the Palestinian-Israeli “dispute” and any resolution of this enduring conflict. And here I borrow liberally from a previous article of mine…
The United States and Israel have created the global discourse on this issue, setting stringent parameters that grow increasingly narrow regarding the content and direction of this debate. Anything discussed outside the set parameters has, until recently, widely been viewed as unrealistic, unproductive and even subversive.
Participation in the debate is limited only to those who prescribe to its main tenets: the acceptance of Israel, its regional hegemony and its qualitative military edge; acceptance of the shaky logic upon which the Jewish state’s claim to Palestine is based; and acceptance of the inclusion and exclusion of certain regional parties, movements and governments in any solution to the conflict.
Words like dove, hawk, militant, extremist, moderates, terrorists, Islamo-fascists, rejectionists, existential threat, holocaust-denier, mad mullah determine the participation of solution partners — and are capable of instantly excluding others.
Then there is the language that preserves “Israel’s Right To Exist” unquestioningly: anything that invokes the Holocaust, anti-Semitism and the myths about historic Jewish rights to the land bequeathed to them by the Almighty – as though God was in the real-estate business. This language seeks not only to ensure that a Jewish connection to Palestine remains unquestioned, but importantly, seeks to punish and marginalize those who tackle the legitimacy of this modern colonial-settler experiment.
But this group-think has led us nowhere. It has obfuscated, distracted, deflected, ducked, and diminished, and we are no closer to a satisfactory conclusion… because the premise is wrong.
There is no fixing this problem. This is the kind of crisis in which you cut your losses, realize the error of your ways and reverse course. Israel is the problem. It is the last modern-day colonial-settler experiment, conducted at a time when these projects were being unraveled globally.
There is no “Palestinian-Israeli conflict” – that suggests some sort of equality in power, suffering, and negotiable tangibles, and there is no symmetry whatsoever in this equation. Israel is the Occupier and Oppressor; Palestinians are the Occupied and Oppressed. What is there to negotiate? Israel holds all the chips. They can give back some land, property, rights, but even that is an absurdity – what about everything else? What about ALL the land, property and rights? Why do they get to keep anything – how is the appropriation of land and property prior to 1948 fundamentally different from the appropriation of land and property on this arbitrary 1967 date?
Why are the colonial-settlers prior to 1948 any different from those who colonized and settled after 1967?
Let me correct myself. Palestinians do hold one chip that Israel salivates over – the one big demand at the negotiating table that seems to hold up everything else. Israel craves recognition of its “right to exist.”
But you do exist – don’t you, Israel?
Israel fears “delegitimization” more than anything else. Behind the velvet curtain lies a state built on myths and narratives, protected only by a military behemoth, billions of dollars in US assistance and a lone UN Security Council veto. Nothing else stands between the state and its dismantlement. Without these three things, Israelis would not live in an entity that has come to be known as the “least safe place for Jews in the world.”
Strip away the spin and the gloss, and you quickly realize that Israel doesn’t even have the basics of a normal state. After 64 years, it doesn’t have borders. After six decades, it has never been more isolated. Over half a century later, and it needs a gargantuan military just to stop Palestinians from walking home.
Israel is a failed experiment. It is on life-support – pull those three plugs and it is a cadaver, living only in the minds of some seriously deluded foreigners who thought they could pull off the heist of the century.
The most important thing we can do as we hover on the horizon of One State is to shed the old language rapidly. None of it was real anyway – it was just the parlance of that particular “game.” Grow a new vocabulary of possibilities – the new state will be the dawn of humanity’s great reconciliation. Muslims, Christians and Jews living together in Palestine as they once did.
Naysayers can take a hike. Our patience is wearing thinner than the walls of the hovels that Palestinian refugees have called “home” for three generations in their purgatory camps.
These universally exploited refugees are entitled to the nice apartments – the ones that have pools downstairs and a grove of palm trees outside the lobby. Because the kind of compensation owed for this failed western experiment will never be enough.
And no, nobody hates Jews. That is the fallback argument screeched in our ears – the one “firewall” remaining to protect this Israeli Frankenstein. I don’t even care enough to insert the caveats that are supposed to prove I don’t hate Jews. It is not a provable point, and frankly, it is a straw man of an argument. If Jews who didn’t live through the Holocaust still feel the pain of it, then take that up with the Germans. Demand a sizable plot of land in Germany – and good luck to you.
For anti-Semites salivating over an article that slams Israel, ply your trade elsewhere – you are part of the reason this problem exists.
Israelis who don’t want to share Palestine as equal citizens with the indigenous Palestinian population – the ones who don’t want to relinquish that which they demanded Palestinians relinquish 64 years ago – can take their second passports and go back home. Those remaining had better find a positive attitude – Palestinians have shown themselves to be a forgiving lot. The amount of carnage they have experienced at the hands of their oppressors – without proportional response – shows remarkable restraint and faith.
This is less the death of a Jewish state than it is the demise of the last remnants of modern-day colonialism. It is a rite of passage – we will get through it just fine. At this particular precipice in the 21st century, we are all, universally, Palestinian – undoing this wrong is a test of our collective humanity, and nobody has the right to sit this one out.
Israel has no right to exist. Break that mental barrier and just say it: “Israel has no right to exist.” Roll it around your tongue, tweet it, post it as your Facebook status update – do it before you think twice. Delegitimization is here – have no fear. Palestine will be less painful than Israel ever was.
Sharmine Narwani is a commentary writer and political analyst covering the Middle East. You can follow Sharmine on twitter @snarwani.
Compensation for chief executives at American companies grew 15 percent in 2011 after a 28 percent rise in 2010, part of a larger trend that has seen CEO pay skyrocket over the last three decades. Workers, on the other hand, have been left behind.
Since 1978, CEO pay at American firms has risen 725 percent, more than 127 times faster than worker pay over the same time period, according to new data from the Economic Policy Institute:
From 1978 to 2011, CEO compensation increased more than 725 percent, a rise substantially greater than stock market growth and the painfully slow 5.7 percent growth in worker compensation over the same period.
In 1978, CEOs took home 26.5 times more than the average worker. They now make roughly 206 times more than workers, EPI found. The pay isn’t always tied to the performance of their businesses – as ThinkProgress has noted, CEOs at companies like Bank of America often pocket huge pay increases even as the company’s stock price plummets and jobs are cut.
As a result, American income inequality has skyrocketed, growing worse than it is in countries like Pakistan and Ivory Coast. Wealth inequality is worse than it was even in Ancient Rome. And, as pay skyrockets and tax rates fall for the richest Americans, the rising inequality has left the bottom 95 percent of Americans saddled with more debt than ever before. – thinkprogress.org
Workers’ wages aren’t tied to productivity either. Despite substantial gains in productivity since the 1970s, worker pay has remained flat. According to Labor Department data cited by the Huffington Post, inflation-adjusted wages fell 2 percent in 2011. – thinkprogress.org
Working and middle-class Americans have seen their debt balloon since the 1980s. Today, Americans owe some $704 billion in credit card debt, and more than that in both auto loans and student borrowing. CNN
Social Security and Medicare are hugely important for the security of the non-rich population of the United States. For this reason, Robert Samuelson and the Washington Post hate them.
As we know, this is a question of basic political philosophy. In the view of Samuelson and the Post, a dollar that it is in the pocket of low or middle class people is a dollar that could be in the pocket of the rich. And Medicare and Social Security are keeping many dollars in the pockets of low and middle class people.
Today’s column by Robert Samuelson tries to tell us that Franklin Roosevelt would be appalled by the current state of the Social Security program. Of course, he produces not a single iota of evidence to support this position, although it is very clear that Samuelson doesn’t like Social Security.
Samuelson begins by telling us that:
“It [Social Security] has become what was then called ‘the dole’ and is now known as ‘welfare.’ This forgotten history clarifies why America’s budget problems are so intractable.”
He later adds:
“Millions of Americans believe (falsely) that their payroll taxes have been segregated to pay for their benefits and that, therefore, they ‘earned’ these benefits. To reduce them would be to take something that is rightfully theirs.”
Of course Samuelson is 100 percent wrong here. Payroll taxes have been segregated. That is the point of the Social Security trust fund and the Social Security trustees report. These institutions would make no sense if the funds were not segregated.
Samuelson is welcome to not like the way in which the funds were segregated, in the same way that I don’t like the Yankees, but that doesn’t change the fact that the Yankees have a very good baseball team. Since its beginnings, the government has maintained a separate Social Security account. Under the law, no money can be paid out in Social Security benefits unless the Trust Fund has the money to pay for them.
In this sense, the funds are absolutely segregated. Samuelson doesn’t like this, but why should any of the rest of us care? The rest of the piece shows the same dishonesty and lack of respect for facts.
Samuelson later tells readers:
“But now, demographics are unfriendly. In 1960, there were five workers per recipient; today, there are three, and by 2025 the ratio will approach two. Roosevelt’s fear has materialized. Paying all benefits requires higher taxes, cuts in other programs or large deficits.”
Okay, let’s think about this for a minute. We went from five workers per retiree in the 1960s to roughly three workers for each retiree in the 90s. This ratio is projected to fall to roughly two workers per retiree by 2030 (not 2025, as readers of the Trustees report know).
On average we were much richer in the 90s than in the sixties, in spite of the fall in the ratio of workers to retirees. The same will be true in 2030, even assuming that we see the projected decline in the ratio of workers to retirees.
A small fact that Samuelson never mentions in this piece is that the Congressional Budget Office projects the program to be fully funded through 2038, with no changes whatsoever (i.e. no new taxes, contra Samuelson). If we want to make the program fully solvent for the rest of the century, a tax increase that is equal to 5 percent of projected wage growth over the next three decades should be roughly sufficient to do the trick. Are you scared yet?
There is an issue that most workers have not shared in the economy’s growth over the last three decades. This is indeed a problem. If recent trends in inequality persist then any increase in Social Security taxes will be a burden, but the problem here are the policies that have brought about this upward redistribution of income, not Social Security.
Then Samuelson gives us his coup de grace:
“Although new recipients have paid payroll taxes higher and longer than their predecessors, their benefits still exceed taxes paid even assuming (again, fictitiously) that they had been invested. A two-earner couple with average wages retiring in 2010 would receive lifetime Social Security and Medicare benefits worth $906,000 compared with taxes of $704,000, estimate Steuerle and Rennane.”
Okay, this is a really nice trick. Remember we were talking about Social Security? Note that Samuelson refers to “lifetime Social Security and Medicare benefits.” It wasn’t an accident that he brought Medicare into this discussion. That is because Steuerle and Rennane’s calculations show that this average earning couple would get back less in Social Security benefits than what they paid in taxes. That would not fit well with Samuelson’s story, so he brings in Medicare (remember this is the Washington Post).
And, the high cost of Medicare benefits is not due to their great generosity. The high cost is due to the fact that we pay our doctors, our drug companies, and our medical equipment suppliers way more than do people in any other country, and we have no better outcomes. If our per person costs for health care were comparable to costs in Germany, Canada, the UK or any other wealthy country, then workers would be paying far more for their Medicare benefits than the cost of what they are getting in care.
The story here is that Samuelson wants to punish ordinary workers for the fact that we pay doctors and the other big winners in this story too much. That may not make sense, but they don’t call this paper “Fox on 15th Street” for nothing.
Leading Palestinian figures including prominent human rights advocates Dr. Eyad Sarraj, and Raji Sourani have boycotted a meeting with UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon in Gaza today over the latter’s refusal to meet with the families of Palestinian prisoners.
In an open letter explaining their decision to boycott the scheduled meeting, the civil society figures explained that they had “made intensive efforts to ensure that representatives of families of Palestinian prisoners in Israeli jails would be part of the delegation that would meet with the Secretary-General.”
But after being rebuffed by Ban, the leaders wrote, “we have regrettably decided to boycott the scheduled meeting with the Secretary-General.”
They added, “We express our strong dissatisfaction towards the Secretary-General’s position, especially as he repeatedly met with the family of the Israeli soldier Gilad Shalit.”
Highlighting the dire conditions faced by Palestinian prisoners, Amnesty International today issued an urgent action alert regarding Khader Adnan, who has been on hunger strike for 49 days continuously since he was detained by Israel on 17 December. He has been held since then without any charge or trial.
This is not the first time Ban operates double standards towards Palestinians, in favor of Israel. Ban has previously given legitimacy to Israel’s blockade of Gaza, even though UN bodies have declared it illegal.
Meeting of United Nations Secretary-General in Gaza Boycotted
At this time, we were supposed to meet with the United National Secretary-General Ban Ki-Moon who is visiting Gaza today. We were also supposed to deliver to him an open letter expressing our demands and expectations from him as a Secretary-General of the United Nations.
Over the past two days, we have made intensive efforts to ensure that representatives of families of Palestinian prisoners in Israeli jails would be part of the delegation that would meet with the Secretary-General.
However, during the preparatory meeting we conducted, with the participation of representatives of families of Palestinian prisoners in Israeli jails, we received an unjustified negative response indicating that the Secretary-General refused to meet with representatives of families of prisoners.
Therefore, we have regrettably decided to boycott the scheduled meeting with the Secretary-General.
We express our strong dissatisfaction towards the Secretary-General’s position, especially as he repeatedly met with the family of the Israeli soldier Gilad Shalit.
The suffering has not limits, and as the Secretary-General recognized the suffering the Shalit’s family, we expect him to demonstrate concern with the suffering of more than five thousand Palestinian prisoners in Israeli jails.
We will present to you the open letter that we were supposed to deliver to the Secretary-General.
Signatories:
Eyad Sarraj
Chairman of Gaza Community Mental Health Program
Raji Sourani
Director of the Palestinian Centre for Human Rights
Rawis Shawa
Member of the Palestinian Legislative Council
Mohsen Abu Ramadan
Chairman of the Board of Palestinian NGOs Network – Gaza
Ali Abu Shahla
Businessman
Faisal Shawa
Member of the Board of Bank of Palestine
Sharhabil Zaim
Lawyer
Hamdi Shaqqura
Deputy Director of the Palestinian Centre for Human Rights for Program Affairs
Jamal Khudari
Chairman of the Board of Trustees of the Islamic University of Gaza
February 02, 2012
Open Letter to United Nations Secretary-General Mr. Ban Ki-Moon
Dear Mr. Ban,
We would like to take this opportunity, first of all, to thank you for returning to the Gaza Strip. It is essential that you see the reality of life in Gaza – and the reality of the longstanding illegal closure – first hand. It is equally essential that you meet the victims of human rights violations, those individuals who look to you for support and protection. In doing so, it is important to note that your previous visits to the Gaza Strip raised high hopes and expectations among the civilian population. To-date, even the most limited of hopes have not been met, generating feelings of frustration and isolation.
As representatives of civil society and a variety of organizations and public figures dedicated to the promotion of human rights and the rule of law, we must take this opportunity to raise a number of issues occurring during your tenure as Secretary-General which have demonstrated a disregard for the fundamental principles of international law.
It is with regret that we express the belief that, in the view of Palestinian civil society, these actions have brought shame upon the United Nations.
The United Nations was founded on the desire to “save succeeding generations from the scourge of war”, to “reaffirm faith in human rights and the dignity and worth of the human person”, and “to establish conditions under which justice and respect for the obligations arising from treaties and other sources of international law can be maintained.” The UN is an Organization on which millions of individuals throughout the world – including the 1.7 million inhabitants of the Gaza Strip – depend, and which countless others trust to uphold international law and to protect human rights: to act in the best interests of individuals. The legitimacy of the UN is dependent on international law. Any action which is contrary to the purpose of the law undermines the legitimacy, the credibility and the effectiveness of the Organization as a whole.
As Secretary-General you are popularly recognized as the ‘guardian of international law’. As such, it is your duty to uphold and promote the rule of law, and to act in the best interests of the individual. Article 100(2) of the UN Charter prohibits Member States from seeking to influence the Secretary-General. This article guarantees to weaker nations and peoples that they will be treated fairly and equally. If this provision is to have any true meaning, it is equally important that, in all circumstances, the Secretary-General treat weaker nations and peoples on the basis of fairness and equality, and not prioritize the interests of the more powerful states. The Secretary-General is required to be neutral and impartial; to act towards the furtherance of the UN Charter and the principles of international law on which it is based.
We firmly believe that it is not the role of the Secretary-General to be ‘politically correct’, but rather to firmly ground all actions in international law – to uphold the principles and purposes of the United Nations, and the principle of universal, fundamental, human rights – no matter what the perceived political difficulties. Unfortunately, with respect to the Israel-Palestine conflict you have repeatedly acted, not to uphold international law and the best interests of victims, but in a manner which can only be described as subservient to the will of powerful States.
For example, in response to serious allegations regarding the perpetration of widespread international crimes during Israel’s 27 December 2008 – 18 January 2009 offensive on the Gaza Strip (Operation Cast Lead) – as documented by numerous UN mandated bodies – you have failed to steadfastly pursue accountability, despite the fact that many of the attacks potentially amounting to international crimes were directed against UN installations, and resulted in the death or injury of UN staff members. In response to the UN Board of Inquiry’s recommendations, which called for investigation into incidents “involving death or injury to UNRWA personnel … and/or physical damage to UNRWA premises that were not included in the Board’s Terms of Reference” and for an investigation into the wider allegations of international humanitarian law violations throughout the course of Israel’s military offensive, you unambiguously stated that “I do not plan any further inquiry.” Such action is simply inconsistent with both the mandate of your office, and a respect for the clear requirements of international law.
Your decision to accept compensation from the Israeli authorities, taken in conjunction with a refusal to pursue criminal accountability – despite the clear recommendations of numerous UN mandated bodies and international human rights organizations – also sends a dangerous message of indifference, both with respect to the lives and well-being of UN staff and the principles of international law. It sends the message that Israel is beyond the reach of accountability. It is noted that your predecessor, Mr. Kofi Anan, stated on the day after the entry into force of the Rome Statue of the International Criminal Court that: “[t]here must be no relenting in the fight against impunity.” This surely, must be a guiding principle of the United Nations.
Similarly, the continued involvement of the Secretary-General in the Quartet not only involves a disregard for the requirements of international law, but also raises question regarding potential complicity in such violations. Indeed, it is our belief that the role of the Quartet has contributed to the ‘institutionalization’ of the closure of Gaza – inter alia, through acceptance of the so-called ‘easing’ – in effect legitimizing the collective punishment of 1.7 million civilians.
In its current form this closure has now been in place for over four and a half years, and – as documented by numerous UN agencies – has resulted, inter alia, in the systematic violation of human rights, the de-development of the Gaza Strip, and the creation of a state of dependency. The closure is an unequivocal example of collective punishment – ‘economic warfare’ in the language of Israel’s Military Advocate General – and violates, amongst other provisions, Article 33 of the Fourth Geneva Convention. It is noted that, under the terms of the 2005 Agreement on Movement and Access, Israel agreed that the crossings “will operate continuously”. The Quartet’s acceptance of the institutionalization of the closure stands in conflict with the clear requirements of international law. The Secretary-General’s continued involvement in the Quartet under such a situation quite simply defies belief.
The Quartet’s decision to impose economic sanctions on the Palestinian Authority in the wake of free and fair elections held in January 2006 amounted to a denial of the fundamental right to self-determination. These sanctions constituted the collective punishment of a population for nothing more than the legitimate expression of democracy. As you can see, the consequences for the human rights situation have been nothing short of disastrous. The UN should have no part in such activity.
Recent developments in the UNRWA operations and presence in the Gaza Strip raise questions about the neutrality and potential political bias of the organization. The former UNRWA Commissioner-General, Karen Abu Zayd, and former UNRWA General Director, John Ging, had their main office in the Gaza Strip and established working contacts with the local government in order to provide the best humanitarian services possible. The current Commissioner-General, Filippo Grandi, however, moved his office to Jerusalem. Additionally, Mr. Grandi and the Acting Director of UNWRWA in Gaza, Christer Nordahl, have cut the existing ties with the government in Gaza. These two factors indicate a politicization of UNRWA’s role, and one which cannot assist in the fulfilment of their vital humanitarian mission.
Finally, we would like to take this opportunity to highlight the situation of Gazan prisoners detained in Israel. For over 5 years these prisoners have been denied family visitation rights, as well as being subject to treatment which in many instances amounts to torture, or cruel, inhuman, or degrading treatment. It is imperative that you send the clear message that these prisoners are entitled to the equal protection of universal human rights, and that the world will advocate on their behalf. We note that these prisoners have been subject to illegal collective punishment, enacted in response to the detention of Corporal Gilad Shalit. It is essential that you meet with these prisoners’ representatives and family, just as you met with those of Corporal Shalit, underlining the universality of human rights.
We remain committed to the principles of universal human rights, and the rule of law, and express our willingness to assist in any way possible in the pursuit of these goals.
We truly hope that this visit to the Gaza gives you the necessary incentive to stand firm in the quest to uphold the rule of international law. The collective punishment that is Israel’s closure of the Gaza Strip is an unambiguous violation of international law, and a stain on the international community, and in particular the Quartet. It is time for change.
Yours sincerely,
The undersigned;
Eyad Sarraj
Chairman of Gaza Community Mental Health Program
Raji Sourani
Director of the Palestinian Centre for Human Rights
Rawis Shawa
Member of the Palestinian Legislative Council
Mohsen Abu Ramadan
Chairman of the Board of Palestinian NGOs Network – Gaza
Ali Abu Shahla
Businessman
Faisal Shawa
Member of the Board of Bank of Palestine
Sharhabil Zaim
Lawyer
Hamdi Shaqqura
Deputy Director of the Palestinian Centre for Human Rights for Program Affairs
Jamal Khudari
Chairman of the Board of Trustees of the Islamic University of Gaza
Kuwait has decided to deport stateless people, who have joined demonstrators demanding their basic rights in the oil-rich emirate, reports say.
The decision targeting illegal residents or bidoons was taken at a meeting of the Central Agency for Illegal Residents chaired by Interior Minister Sheikh Ahmad al-Humud al-Sabah, local newspapers reported on Tuesday.
The government also decided to take other measures against them, which included dismissing all stateless people from the Army and the police force and take their houses away if they or their children had participated in anti-government protests.
In addition, the government chose to seize the protesting bidoons’ security IDs — their only document of identification — and cancel their applications for nationality.
According to activists, riot police used tear gas canisters, water cannons, and batons to disperse thousands of protesters, injuring dozens and arresting more than 100 during last Friday and Saturday.
The government claims that only 34,000 out of the 105,000 bidoons residing in the Persian Gulf country are eligible for citizenship, while 71,000 are citizens of other countries, who have to produce their original passports for the purpose of identification.
Demobilized soldiers will be able to study Asian cooking this year at the government’s expense, as part of an effort to reduce the number of foreign workers employed as cooks in Asian restaurants by training Israeli professionals to replace them.
It’s shocking for two reasons – one is the xenophobia that is rising to astonishing heights in Israel: not even the cooks of foreign cuisine can be foreign (I’ll come back to this) – but because of what it says about how Israel is using US military aid at a time of drastic cuts and austerity for American citizens. Haaretz says:
The cooking courses are estimated to cost about NIS 4.5 million a year, about NIS 1 million of which will come from the Defense Ministry budget.
That’s a few hundred thousands dollars – small change in the grand scheme of things – but not for the Israeli soldiers who will enroll in the course:
Six courses are scheduled for this year in the north, center and south, with a minimum of 25 students in each course.
Some recently demobilized soldiers taking the course may receive aid for housing and living expenses for the first few months. Though the NIS 30,000 tuition [about $8,000] is fully subsidized, students will have to pay NIS 1,800 each for clothing and equipment.
Is this what US aid is being used for?
Everyone knows that the US gives several billion dollars a year of taxpayer aid to Israel’s military – with few strings attached. The US in effect subsidizes sushi-making courses for Israelis, but at what price?
Last Autumn, as Congress was looking for ways to cut the US federal deficit by cutting spending and not raising taxes, Congress chose to cut $733 million from the Women Infants and Children (WIC) nutrition program – a move which, according to the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities would see 700,000 poor women and young children in the United States lose access to a basic nutrition program this year that has been shown to improve child outcomes.
Meanwhile, Israeli soldiers will be getting all-expenses paid sushi courses.
Recently Deborah Lipstadt – a leading Holocaust scholar and supporter of Israel – lashed out in a Haaretz interview against “over-the-top pandering” to Israel by US politicians. Lipstadt also said that abuse of the Holocaust by American politicians seeking the favor of Israel’s supporters amounted to “soft-core denial” of the Holocaust.
Lipstadt’s comments were directed at Republicans – who are having presidential primary elections unlike the Democrats – but could have just as easily been aimed at leading Democratic Party politicians as well.
One can only agree with Lipstadt that such pandering is “unhealthy” – so much so that we have absurdities such as today’s news: US-subsidized sushi-making courses for Israeli soldiers while American infants are to see cuts in nutrition and no one has the guts to object.
“Now that we’ve got the curry, is there really any reason for them to stay?”
As I mentioned, the xenophobia inherent in almost every aspect of Israeli policy – even to the point of objecting to sushi chefs from countries that invented sushi has reached the point where it out does satire.
It reminded me of a sketch from the BBC satirical show Not The Nine O’Clock News from the early 1980s. In it Rowan Atkinson (later of Mr. Bean fame) plays a politician of Mrs. Thatcher’s Conservative Party. Watch the whole sketch because you will see that what was political satire thirty years ago has now become real political discourse on a whole range of subjects.
In one line, Atkinson – satirizing anti-immigrant sentiments – says “Now, a lot of immigrants are Indians and Pakistanis, for instance, and I like curry. But now that we’ve got the recipe, is there really any need for them to stay?” The same now goes for sushi in Israel.
Oh, and don’t forget, that last year, just after the earthquake and tsunami in Japan, the reaction of Israel’s Ynet was, “Israelis fear sushi shortage after quake.” And here’s the Rowan Atkinson sketch.
It seems America’s bankers are tired of all the abuse. They’ve decided to speak out.
True, they’re doing it from behind the rope line, in front of friendly crowds at industry conferences and country clubs, meaning they don’t have to look the rest of America in the eye when they call us all imbeciles and complain that they shouldn’t have to apologize for being so successful.
But while they haven’t yet deigned to talk to protesting America face to face, they are willing to scribble out some complaints on notes and send them downstairs on silver trays. Courtesy of a remarkable story by Max Abelson at Bloomberg, we now get to hear some of those choice comments.
After Haifa University canceled a lecture on the book “King’s Torah” (Torat HaMelech)–which discusses religious regulations on killing non-Jews–the event will be held Monday, December 12, 2011 at Jerusalem’s Hebrew University.
The head of the Department of Jewish Philosophy, Avinoam Rosenak, will speak at the event as will Rabbi Israel Ariel of the Dorshei Yehudcha yeshiva, which was recently shut down on the advice of Israeli General Security Services (Shin Bet or Shabak). According to the Shin Bet, students of the yeshiva, which was located in the West Bank settlement of Yitzhar, “are involved in illegal and violent activities against Palestinians and the security forces.”
In addition to his affiliation with the closed yeshiva, Rabbi Ariel was also a Knesset candidate from the Kach Party, which was founded by right-wing extremist Meir Kahane and promoted the deportation of all Palestinian citizens of Israel and Palestinian residents of the Occupied Territories. Israel outlawed the Kach party and both the United States and Israel categorize it as a terrorist organization.
“King’s Torah” was written by Rabbi Yitzhak Shapira and Rabbi Yosef Elizur who also live in Yitzhar and who, according to Israel’s Channel 10, have recently joined Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s Likud party. The book discusses religious regulations related to killing of gentiles in both peace and war. For example, in Chapter Four, “Jewish and Gentile Souls,” the authors say that wherever the presence of a gentile threatens the life of Israel it is permitted to kill the gentile even if he is a righteous person and should not be blamed for the situation.
In the chapter regarding the killing of non-Jews during war, the authors claim that in Judaism it is permissible to kill enemy combatants, as well as those who help and support them and those who encourage them, because all of them are enemies of Israel. The chapter adds that it is permitted to hit enemy targets even if innocent gentiles will be harmed in those attacks.
Hebrew University claims that the event is not organized by the university, but by Beit Hillel. However, the invitation to the event includes the logos of the Hebrew University, the Faculty of Humanities, and the Department of Jewish Philosophy.
American-Israeli citizen Levi Yitzhak Rosenbaum, 60, an Orthodox (Haredi) Jew who resides in Brooklyn New York, plead guilty trafficking human organs. Rosenbaum was apprehended by the FBI two years ago.
The term Haredi or Charedi is used to describe the most conservative forms of Orthodox Judaism.
His confession came during his trial on Thursday in New Jersey where he admitted to three counts of brokering illegal kidney sales for customers in New Jersey, and received at least $120.000 in each sale, and also plead guilty to an account of conspiracy to broker another sale, Ynet News reported.
Ynet added that Rosenbaum confessed to brokering the illegal organ sales with people in Israel, who received only $10.000 each.
The prosecutors stated that this guilty plea is the first conviction in the United States related to charges of kidney trafficking in return for profit.
The crimes he confessed to carry a maximum prison term of five years for each count of the four cases brought against him, in addition to a fine that could reach $250.000. He will also be forfeiting his ownership of real or personal property valued by $420.000 acquired from his kidney trafficking business.
Britain’s Labor Party has been trying to rebrand itself lately after a 13-year spell in government. During an annual conference last month, the most memorable remark by its leader Ed Miliband was “I am not Tony Blair.”
This commitment to change does not appear to have affected Labor’s stance on the Middle East. John Spellar, a shadow Foreign Office minister, has an especially close relationship with London’s pro-Israel lobby.
An inspection of Spellar’s declaration of interests shows that he travelled to the Herzliya security conference, one of the key events on the Israeli political calendar, in February. His airfare and accommodation (estimated total: £1,970 or $3,170) was paid for by David Menton, a director of the Britain Israel Research Center (BICOM). In its own words, that lobby outfit is “dedicated to creating a more supportive environment for Israel in Britain.”
Thanks to a source who shall remain nameless, I also learned that Spellar’s researcher Linda Smith is a partner of BICOM staff member Luke Akehurst (a former spin doctor for the arms industry). Smith and Akehurst both serve as Labor members of Hackney Council, a local authority in London.
I emailed Smith earlier today, asking if her views on the Middle East differ from those of Akehurst but did not receive a reply. Spellar has also not responded to a request for comment.
Lobby at center of resignation scandal
This information about Spellar’s connection to BICOM appears all the more significant given the organization’s role in a controversy leading to the recent resignation of Liam Fox as Britain’s defense secretary. Fox, who belongs to the Conservative Party, was severely embarrassed over revelations that his close friend Adam Werritty was posing as his official adviser during foreign travels, when Werritty had been given no such job by the British government. The Guardian newspaper revealed that Werritty’s jet-set lifestyle was being bankrolled by three prosperous Zionists. They included Poju Zabludowicz, BICOM’s chairman. When Werritty attended the 2009 Herzilya conference, his expenses were covered by BICOM.
David Menton, the man who picked up the tab for Spellar’s trip to Israel earlier this year, is a business associate of Zabludowicz, a billionaire who owns a sizeable chunk of Las Vegas. Menton is a founder of Synova Capital, a private equity fund. According to Synova’s website, the fund’s “cornerstone investor” is the Tamares Group, which is led by Zabludowicz.
I was intrigued to read an article by Spellar, in which he bragged of Labor’s affinity with the poor. It is difficult to square that posture with his willingness to go on junkets funded by a wealthy supporter of Israel, a state that denies an entire people their most elementary rights.
If the signage at the Wall Street occupation site and its thousands of satellites around the country tells the tale, the dominant sentiment in the nascent movement is that finance capital be ejected from the commanding heights of power. True, there are myriad other issues in the churning mix of leaderless people power, but this is the tie that binds, without which centrifugal forces would have hurled the small, founding band of organizers into oblivion. Washington, DC’s Freedom Plaza, the other pole of the occupation force field, was established by significantly older, veteran activists, some of whom have wished Wall Street dead since the days before the bankers murdered and cannibalized (liquidated!) the last Titan of Industry.
Having challenged the plutocrats and all their minions – and gaining majority support of the American people in the process – the “movement” is called upon, from inside and out, to make specific demands. Of course, Old Fred taught us that power concedes nothing without a demand. But the wrong demands can undo a popular project, so this is not something to rush into. And, in many cases, there is no point in demanding anything from your enemy, except that he drop dead in a hurry.
It is by no means clear to me that all of the folks who claim to be bankster-slayers really want to kill the beast, or merely attempt to shrink or tame it. The logic of political economy, historical experience and common sense dictates that, if the vast wealth and power that flows from concentrated private capital is what allowed Wall Street to achieve hegemony over every important aspect of U.S. society, then concentrated capital must be vanquished; that it be given no space or opportunity to regroup to make further war on democracy.
Ah, democracy, the other dominant current in the occupation conversation. What does a movement of the 99% versus the 1% mean by democracy, when measured against the privileges of money? Is it acceptable that any human being wield a million times as much influence on society as the average Josephine, by virtue of his wealth or connections to money? What about the only somewhat rich, with a few thousand times as much societal clout? Would they be prevented, like parolees, from fraternizing with their peers, lest they combine to exercise mega-clout? And, what about when these rich guys put on their masks and call themselves “The Markets.” Will we allow them to run around freely, buying and selling stuff to make millions (and then billions and derivative trillions) for themselves while, as a byproduct, affecting the terms of life for all the rest of us, wholly outside the democratic process or any civilized notion of development?
Does anyone seriously believe that today’s Masters of the Universe will allow themselves to be shut out – as a class – of the electoral pathways to state power, without wreaking havoc on an impudent society through their current control of every lever of power and the sheer crush of their money? One cannot simply leave the hegemon intact, allowing him to retain all the powers of concentrated capital that made him Master, and expect him to accept the new limitations.
The idea that the plutocrats can be quarantined from power, while remaining plutocrats, is absurd. And no, there is no difference between Warren Buffet, the Koch brothers, Bill Gates, Michael Bloomberg, the Walton (Mal-Mart) family and the late Steven Jobs. Their very existence is an insult to any legitimate concept of democracy. Every one of them would kill a million people to preserve his billions. They already do.
A movement must be prepared to break the plutocrats’ power – confiscate his fortune or make it impossible to spend – or find themselves like Lilliputians trying to tie down a huge and vicious unchained Gulliver while he stomps on you like roaches.
There is a nostalgia and romanticism in some neighborhoods of the movement – understanding that anyone is welcome to wander in and claim membership – that has echoes in the Tea Party. A Washington Postcolumn by Barry Ritholtz, an author and head of a quantitative research firm, offers advice to the OWS movement. He wants to “bring back real capitalism,” with no bank bailouts. His closely related position is to end “too big to fail” banks in order to “restore competition.” None of this works, however, if the “real” finance capitalism at this stage in its development is exactly what we have experienced: an inherently unstable system that inexorably moves toward further consolidation, suborning every social institution along the way as a consequence of its very nature. If capitalism is in deep crisis – which is the case – and if the nature of that crisis compels finance capitalist institutions to search for ever-increasing returns through rigged markets, derivatives, systematic looting of vulnerable communities, overseas plunder under U.S. military protection and wholesale privatization of public assets in the developed capitalist countries, all of which requires massive corruption of the political and moral life of the home society, then we have simply experienced late-stage finance capitalism as it actually exists. Ritholtz would have us send the banks back to some previous era, where they will regain the vigor and moral uplift of youth.
Ritholtz clearly loves banks, or the idea of banks, and would never transfer their societal functions – which they no longer fulfill – to public entities under democratic direction. He thinks “competition” will solve the problem. However, Ritholtz does support a constitutional amendment to keep corporate money out of congressional elections, which I suppose gets his nose under the broad OWS tent, so to speak.
What about bringing back Glass-Steagall, the 1932 law that separated investment banking from commercial banking, but was repealed in 1999 under President Bill Clinton? Would reinstatement of Glass-Steagall fit the bill for meaningful reform worthy of OWS? I don’t think so. If the power of Wall Street was such in 1999 that a Democratic administration would collaborate in repeal of a foundational New Deal economic pillar, then finance capital was already hegemonic. Well before 1999, Wall Street power had passed the point where it could be controlled by conventional regulation. Rather, the struggle is to free society from its fatal embrace. There is no reforming Wall Street, only its dismantling and simultaneous replacement by public institutions for allocating capital for human needs and development.
The crisis of capitalism is the hegemony of finance capital, which is beyond repair. $16 trillion dollars in infusions from the public sector under President Obama – more than the gross domestic product of the United States – have failed to cause Wall Street to function as a social asset of the nation or the global economy. Quite the opposite; finance capital preys on the real economy and is most responsible for devouring and privatizing the public sector, leaving the people naked to the predations of a dying and parasitic system.
People can choose to be ruled by rich men who call themselves “markets” or they can trust themselves to erect public institutions that are responsive to human needs. For four weeks now, the swelling OWS movement has claimed to be contemplating how to harness democracy and end plutocracy. Since it is patently clear that plutocrats and democracy cannot coexist, the project is to rid us of the plutocrats, while there’s still time to save our world. Once that’s understood, the rest is in the details.
BAR executive editor Glen Ford can be contacted at Glen.Ford@BlackAgendaReport.com.
Gilad Atzmon captures the essence of his book, The Wandering Who? A Study of Jewish Identity Politics, on the first page of his foreword. The book is about the conundrums of Jewish identity—what is it; why is it special, if it is in fact special; why do the rest of us so often celebrate it; what does the fixation on it mean for Israel and for its neighbors? He wastes no time getting to the core of the issue—which is the politics these identity issues create. On page 1, he cites his own very rightwing grandfather, who he says knew perfectly well that “tribalism can never live in peace with humanism and universalism.” His grandfather was an unapologetic tribal Jewish nationalist, as were virtually all of the early Zionists in Israel, and none of them had any truck with humanism or universalist notions of coexistence with Arabs or Jewish-Palestinian equality in Palestine.
It is Zionism’s tribal exclusivism that has killed Palestinian aspirations to freedom and a national identity. And it is the widespread liberal Jewish—and Western—failure from the beginning to recognize the realities of Zionism that has silenced the Palestinian voice for 60-plus years and prevented any just resolution of the Palestinian-Israeli conflict. As a self-defined Jewish state, Israel is by definition non-democratic and tribal and, whether innocently or not, its supporters have been perpetuating its exclusivist, anti-universalist mandate since the days, well before 1948, when Zionists conceived the notion of dispossessing and dispersing the Palestinians so that Jews could have exclusive access to Palestine, and then carried through with this massive injustice.
Atzmon—a born-and-bred Israeli, now an expatriate, a citizen of the UK, and a renowned jazz musician—describes his own journey from tribalism to universalism by describing how his emerging devotion to jazz and his connection to music lovers gradually superseded his Jewish nationalism. It was because of his love of music, he realized, which linked him to people “concerned with beauty and spirit rather than land, mammon and occupation” that he ceased being a Zionist nationalist. “It was probably then and there,” he says, “that I left Chosen-ness behind to become an ordinary human being.”
He was still a teenager. Only later, after military service and more years of music, did Atzmon learn the facts of Israel’s ethnic cleansing of the Palestinians and come to understand something about the Palestinians and what Zionism meant for them. After a struggle to understand the “elusive Oriental sound” of Arab music, he learned finally to listen. “[I]t is listening,” he writes, “that stands at the core of deep comprehension. Ethical behaviour comes into play when the eyes are shut and the echoes of conscience can form a tune within one’s soul. To empathise is to accept the primacy of the ear.”
Atzmon’s statement about having left chosenness behind and becoming an ordinary (and empathetic) human being speaks volumes not just about his own awakening, but about the very essence of Zionism—and also the continued ignorance of most of the Western world about Zionism’s fundamental objectives. Few Israelis and few Israeli supporters anywhere in the world focus on or have any real understanding that Zionism is an ideology whose basic value is promoting the superiority of Jews and Jewishness and that it is thus irreconcilable with universalist concepts of human rights, equality, and democracy. Zionism has from the beginning elevated Jewishness above all as “the fundamental characteristic of one’s being,” as Atzmon says, and as the basis for its national claims. Atzmon cites Chaim Weizmann and other early Zionist leaders who pronounced that Jewishness is a “primary quality”: “there are no English, French, German or American Jews,” Weizmann said, “but only Jews living in England, France, Germany or America.”
There was never any expectation among the early Zionists that Jews in Palestine would have to accommodate Palestine’s native population. Thus does Zionism have no concern or sense of remorse for having imposed a Jewish state on a land that was until 1948 home to a Palestinian Arab people. And thus has the world come to accept that Jewish ascendancy in this land that was formerly non-Jewish is the natural order of things. In the wake of the Holocaust and the perception that Jews needed a refuge from persecution, the displacement of Palestine’s natural inhabitants came to be seen—and is still seen—as entirely acceptable. The human, humanitarian consequences of this philosophy for Palestinians have long since been forgotten, and the world ignores that this injustice in the name of Jewish chosenness was Zionism’s goal from the start.
Atzmon sets out his argument by clearly defining the ways in which Jews self-identify. He puts forth three categories: those who follow Judaism as a religious and ethical belief system; those who regard themselves primarily as human beings who happen to be of Jewish origin, for whom Jewishness is secondary; and those who turn the two identifiers, human being and Jew, around and, a la Chaim Weizmann, place their Jewishness above all other traits. Those in this third category feel a loyalty to and solidarity with the tribe over any other identity.
Atzmon has no argument with those in the first two categories. It is the third category and what he sees as “the Jewish ideological inclination toward sameness” that raise his ire. Noting that early Zionism rejected the Diaspora and tried to gather the exiles into Israel, he says that with the rise of the right since 1967 and the glorification of the Israeli settler who is reclaiming “Greater Israel,” there has been a bonding between Eretz Yisrael, the so-called whole land of Israel, and the Diaspora that has united most of world Jewry behind Zionism and has had the effect of uniting Jews against the world, setting them “apart from their surrounding social reality.” Jews have again become members of a separate tribe.
It is the secular Jewish Zionists who profess universalist values while existing in solidarity with the Jewish tribe—who seem to straddle the second and third categories but give far too much primacy to their Jewishness to fit easily into the category of “ordinary human being”—who particularly irk Atzmon. It is these people, Atzmon believes, who by continuing to identify primarily as Jews, even when professing to be anti-Zionist, actually enable worldwide Zionism to maintain its power and its role as the voice of world Jewry. They actually embody, he contends, a continuum between hardcore rightwing Zionism and Jewish anti-Zionism, ultimately totally undermining the impact and significance of their anti-Zionism.
To illustrate his case, he cites the example of a Jewish couple in London profiled in a local Jewish paper, who are described as socialists who belong to no synagogue, do not believe in God, and are “antagonistic towards Zionism.” Yet they “feel passionately” about Jewish history, have strong Jewish connections in their social lives, helped form a specifically Jewish socialist organization, love Hebrew and Yiddish culture, hold a Seder at Passover, and have circumcised and bar mitzvahed their sons. They “want to remain Jewish,” according to the article, and “prove that there is a way of being Jewish that doesn’t involve saying prayers to a God you don’t believe in.” They clearly want acceptance inside the Jewish community, whose preservation is vitally important to them; they are concerned to prevent Jewish assimilation. (This couple identifies their Jewishness as ethnic. Atzmon—along with Israeli historian Shlomo Sand whose 2009 book The Invention of the Jewish People argued that Jews are not a unique nation, only a religion—challenge the existence of a Jewish ethnicity, on strong historical and evidentiary grounds.)
Atzmon’s point is that, whether the identification is secular and ethnic or religious, the need to identify primarily as Jewish is tribal and anti-universalist and essentially negates any pretense of anti-Zionism. “Why don’t they just ‘get on’ with their ‘socialist agenda’ and join the human family as ordinary people?” he wonders. Many people around the world have left their faith and ceased believing in God, but they exist in multi-cultural, multi-faith societies and do not insist on being identified first as Catholics, Hindus, or Muslims or on socializing primarily with their own co-religionists or on forming organizations exclusive to their ethnicity or religious preference. His objection is to Jews who profess to be anti-Zionist but form what he calls “ethnocentric, separatist, peace-loving” organizations of Jews: Jews for Peace, Jews for Justice in Palestine, “Jews for this and Jews for that.” This kind of “exclusive, ethnocentric Jewish discourse” is not something one sees from Germans or Aryans or Caucasians, he points out wryly.
Whether or not they realize that they are actually pushing Zionism, Atzmon says, they ultimately carry out a Zionist agenda by being so tribally focused. The result continues to be—as Atzmon himself and many other non-tribal anti-Zionists have sadly discovered—that those who criticize Zionism for its fundamental objectives and for what it has done to the Palestinian nation are frequently vilified as anti-Semitic. Solidarity with Jews tends to create—even in Jewish anti-Zionists, whom he calls “Jewish ethnic campaigners”—solidarity against anyone identified, however baselessly, as an enemy of the Jews. In this loose, emotional world of tribal loyalty, because Israel is “the Jewish state,” critics of Zionism can easily be made out to be “enemies of the Jewish people.”
There is much more in this rich book. Although it is not a scholarly book, it is deeply thoughtful and thought-provoking. It is impossible to capture all its nuances without reading it carefully, and perhaps more than once. Atzmon describes how Zionism has accrued its global political and financial power. He also discusses at length, and quite perceptively, the role of the Holocaust in unifying Jews throughout the world, in inducing a “dialectic of fear” that governs the Jewish political and ideological mindset, and in leading to a trauma that he terms “Pre-Traumatic Stress Syndrome, in which stress and emotional terror result from fear of an imaginary episode, such as a supposed attack by Iran, that might occur in an imaginary future—something in this case that grows out of the real horror of the Holocaust but that is manipulated to unite Jews and becomes a part of Jewish identity.
It goes without saying that this book will be extremely controversial, indeed already has become controversial. But the truth often is. The tribal anti-Zionists whose principal concern is “what’s good for the Jews” have attacked Atzmon—generally not for what he says in the book but for what they claim he said in past writings (all of which claims are refuted precisely by this book). But Atzmon’s analysis is exactly on point, and it cannot be dismissed simply because the mirror it holds up to Zionists and “Jewish ethnic campaigners” is undoubtedly uncomfortable for them to look at.
~
KATHLEEN CHRISTISON is a former CIA political analyst and the author of several books on the Palestinian situation, including Palestine in Pieces, co-authored with her late husband Bill Christison. She can be reached at kb.christison@earthlink.net.
By Kurt Nimmo | Another Day in the Empire | April 20, 2026
In 2025, Alex Karp, the CEO of government and military tech contractor Palantir, published The New York Times best-seller, The Technological Republic: Hard Power, Soft Belief, and the Future of the West. The Wall Street Journalpraised the book as a cri de coeur, a passionate appeal “that takes aim at the tech industry for abandoning its history of helping America and its allies,” while Wired praised the book as a “readable polemic that skewers Silicon Valley for insufficient patriotism.”
On April 18, 2026, Palantir posted twenty-two points to social media summarizing the book. In addition to taking Silicon Valley to task for insufficient patriotism, advocating a role for AI in forever war, and denouncing the “psychologization of modern politics,” the Palantir post on X declares: “National service should be a universal duty. We should, as a society, seriously consider moving away from an all-volunteer force and only fight the next war if everyone shares in the risk and the cost.”
National conscription, a form of involuntary servitude, and the wars it portends, is good for business, especially for corporations within the orbit of the Pentagon, the CIA, and the national security state. Palantir fits comfortably within this amalgamation. … continue
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