While Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is “the world’s most influential Jew”, Bernard Henri Levy is number 45, according to an article published in the Israeli rightwing newspaper the Jerusalem Post, on May 21, 2010.
Levy, per the Post’s standards, came only two spots behind Irving Moskowitz, a “Florida-based tycoon (who) is considered the leading supporter of Jewish construction in east Jerusalem and hands out a prize for Zionism to settler leaders.”
To claim that at best Levy is an intellectual fraud is to miss a clear logic that seems to unite much of the man’s activities, work and writings. He seems to be obsessed with ‘liberating’ Muslims from Bosnia to Pakistan, to Libya and elsewhere. However, it is not the kind that one could qualify as a healthy obsession, stemming from for instance, overt love and fascination of their religion, culture and myriad ways of life. It is unhealthy obsession. Throughout his oddly defined career, he has done so much harm, as he at times served the role of lackey for those in power, and at others, seemed to lead his own crusades. He is a big fan of military intervention, and his profile is dotted with references to Muslim countries and military intervention from Afghanistan to Sudan … and finally to Libya.
Writing in the New York Magazine on Dec 26, 2011, Benjamin Wallace-Wells spoke of the French ‘philosopher’ as if he were referencing a messiah that was not afraid to promote violence for the greater good of mankind. In “European Superhero Quashes Libyan Dictator,” Wallace-Wells wrote of the “philosopher (who) managed to goad the world into vanquishing an evil villain.” The ‘evil villain’ in question is, of course, Muammar Qaddafi, the Libyan leader who was ousted and brutally murdered after reportedly being sodomized by rebels following his capture in October 2011. The detailed analysis by Global Post of the sexual assault of the leader of one of Africa’s most prominent countries was published in CBS news and other media. Cases of rape have sharply increased in Libya as 1,700 militia (per BBC estimation) groups now operate in that shattered Arab country.
Levy, who at times appeared to be the West’s most visible war-on-Libya advocate, has largely disappeared from view within the Libyan context. He is perhaps off stirring trouble in some other place in the name of his dubious philosophy. His mission in Libya, which is now in a much worse state than it has ever reached during the reign of Qaddafi, has been accomplished. ‘The evil dictator’ has been defeated, and that’s that. Never mind that the country is now divided between tribes and militias, and that the ‘post-democracy’ Prime Minister Ali Zeidan was recently kidnapped by one unruly militia to be freed by another.
In March 2011, Levy took it upon himself to fly to Benghazi to ‘engage’ Libya’s insurgents. It was a defining moment, for it was that type of mediation that empowered armed groups to transform a regional uprising into an all-out war involving NATO. Armed with what was a willful misinterpretation of UN resolution 1973, of March 17, 2011, NATO led a major military offensive on a country armed with primitive air-defensives and a poorly equipped army. Western countries channeled massive shipments of weapons to Libyan groups in the name of preventing massacres allegedly about to be carried out by Qaddafi’s loyalists. Massacres were indeed carried out but not in the way western ‘humanitarian interventionists’ suggested. The last of which was merely days ago (Nov 15) when 31 people were reportedly killed and 235 were wounded as trigger happy militiamen opened fire on peaceful protesters in Tripoli that were simply demanding Misrata militants leave their city.
These are the very people that Levy and his ilk spent numerous hours lobbying in support of. One of Levy’s greatest achievements in Libya was to muster international recognition of the National Transitional Council (NTC). France and other countries lead a campaign to promote the NTC as an alternative to Qaddafi’s state institution, which NATO had systematically destroyed.
In his New York Magazine interview, Levy was quoted as saying “sometimes you are inhabited by intuitions that are not clear to you.” The statement was sourced in reference to the supposed epiphany the ‘philosopher’ had on Feb 23, 2011, watching TV images of Qaddafi’s forces threatening to drown Benghazi with ‘rivers of blood.’
Far from unclear intuitions, Levy’s agenda is that of the calculated politician-ideologue, more like a French version of the US’s neoconservatives who packaged their country’s devastating war on Iraq with all sorts of moral, philosophical and other fraudulent reasoning. For them, it was first and foremost a war for Israel’s ‘security’, with supposed other practical perks, little of which has actualized. Levy’s legacy is indeed loaded with unmistakable references to that same agenda.
Israel’s right-wingers are fascinated with Levy. The Post’s celebration of his global influence was summed up in this quote: “A French philosopher and one of the leaders of the Nouvelle Philosophie movement who said that Jews ought to provide a unique moral voice in the world.” But morality has nothing to do with it. The man’s philosophical exploits seem to exclusively target Muslims and their cultures. “The veil is an invitation to rape”, he told the Jewish Chronicle in 2006.
Philosophy for Levy seems to be perfectly tailored to fit a political agenda promoting military interventions. His advocacy helped destroy Libya, but still didn’t stop him from writing a book on Libya’s ‘spring.’ He spoke of the veil as an invitation for rape, while saying nothing of the numerous cases of rape reported in Libya after the NATO war. In May 2011, he was one of few people who defended IMF chief Dominique Strauss-Kahn, when the latter was accused of raping a chambermaid in New York City. It was a ‘conspiracy’ he said, in which the maid was taking part.
One could perhaps understand Levy’s hate for dictators and war criminals; after all, Qaddafi was no human rights champion. But Levy is no philosopher. A fundamental element of any genuine philosophy is moral consistency. Levy has none. A week after the Jerusalem Post celebrated Levy’s world influence, the Israeli daily Haaretz wrote of his support of the Israeli army.
“Bernard Henri Levy: I have never seen an army as democratic as the IDF” was the title of an article on May 30, 2010, reporting on the “Democracy and Its Challenges” Conference in Tel Aviv. “I have never seen such a democratic army, which asks itself so many moral questions. There is something unusually vital about Israeli democracy.” Considering the wars and massacres conducted by the Israeli army against Gaza in 2008-9 and 2012, one cannot find appropriate phrases to describe Levy’s moral blindness and misguided philosophy. In fact, it is safe to argue that neither morality nor philosophy has much to do with Levy and his unending quest for war.
November 20, 2013
Posted by aletho |
Deception, Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Militarism, Timeless or most popular, Wars for Israel | Africa, Ali Zeidan, Bernard Henri Lévy, Irving Moskowitz, Israel, Libya, Muammar Gaddafi, NATO, Zionism |
Leave a comment
Israel’s Supreme Court ruled on Monday that a prominent Palestinian family could not claim ownership of a landmark and now derelict building in East Jerusalem.
The Husseini family said the Shepherd Hotel, now partially demolished, is a symbol of the Palestinian rights to their land and to East Jerusalem, and strongly criticized the court ruling.
The Shepherd Hotel was built in the 1930s and served as the home of Jerusalem grand mufti Haj Amin Husseini.
It was declared “absentee property” by Israel after it was captured and annexed to East Jerusalem in 1967. The title was transferred to an Israeli firm, which sold it in 1985 to Irving Moskowitz, a Florida businessman and patron of Jewish settlers.
The “absentee property” law has been enforced by Israel since 1948 which allowed the Israeli authorities to confiscate land and property of Palestinians who were prohibited to return to their land and property after 1948.
April 2, 2012
Posted by aletho |
Civil Liberties, Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Illegal Occupation | East Jerusalem, International Middle East Media Center, Irving Moskowitz, Israel, Israeli settlement, Jerusalem, Shepherd Hotel |
Leave a comment
Ankara – Once again Israel demonstrates its contempt for the world. This time the location is the Jerusalem quarter of Sheikh Jarrah and this time the occasion is the demolition of the Shepherd Hotel, the latest target in a process of demolition and rebuilding in the Zionist image that has been going on for the past six decades in all of Palestine.
The first actions of the occupying regime in East Jerusalem in 1967 was the destruction of the medieval Magharibah quarter, founded in the 12th century by a son of the great warrior Salah al Din al Ayyubi (Saladin), to make way for a ‘plaza’ in front of the western wall of the Haram al Sharif. Soon after it was the turn of the Fakhriya compound, the home of the sheikh of the Shafi’i school of Islamic law. A section of the Mamilla century, where the remains include the bones of the Companions of the Prophet Muhammad, was bulldozed to make way for a garden, a car park and lavatories. The rest has since been built over to make way for a ‘Museum of Tolerance’. The destroyed buildings were part of Jerusalem’s architectural and historical heritage. The people who lived there were driven into the street and left to fend for themselves as best as they could, a precedent for thousands of similar situations which were to follow. Had the awful chief rabbi of the Israeli ‘defence’ forces, Shlomo Goren, had his way, the destruction would have included the Aqsa mosque. Israel’s intention is to destroy Arab Jerusalem and replace it with Jewish Jerusalem. The difference is that Arab Jerusalem was a tolerant city. Jewish Jerusalem is not. It is a city of religious and secular fanatics, who have no consideration for any interests, laws or rights other than their own. The city has not known a worse period of history since it was captured by the Crusaders in the 11th century.
Now we have the destruction of the Shepherd Hotel, a landmark in Jerusalem since early in the 20th century. It was built as a home for the mufti of Jerusalem, Haj Amin al Hussein, before he escaped from the British in 1937. He never lived there. The building was the home of Katy and George Antonius, the celebrated Palestinian Arab historian, and then was used as a base for British soldiers before being converted into a hotel. In 1967 the government of Israel declared the hotel ‘absentee property’ and used it for its own purposes before ‘selling it’ in 1985 to the American Jewish billionaire Irving Moskowitz, who made his money from casinos and gives a sizeable percentage of it to the Ateret Kohanim settler organisation. The US government theoretically opposes settlements but has never even attempted to put a spoke in Moskowitz’s wheel, which it could have done by removing the tax-free status of his ‘philanthropic’ donations to Israel. Of course, the Shepherd hotel was never sold. It could not be, seeing that it was not the property of the state of Israel in the first place. It remains the property of the Husseini family. The property which was ‘sold’ was stolen and under any laws except those of Israel’s, it remains the property of the original owner (ask your friendly local policeman for confirmation).
Beyond all of this, everything Israel has done in East Jerusalem since 1967 to bring about permanent change is illegal under international law. The movement of civilians into occupied territory is specifically prohibited under article 49 of the 4th Geneva Convention (1949), one of many articles of the convention which Israel has violated. The declaration of the Greater Jerusalem municipality in 1967 is an inherent violation of international law. Nir Barkat has no more right to call himself the mayor of Jerusalem than any official administering any occupied territory anywhere at any time. Laws and regulations changing the status quo in East Jerusalem represent breaches of international law enabled by the government of Israel. Those of Barkat’s voters who live in East Jerusalem have no right to be there and therefore no right to vote. They are civilians who have been transferred into occupied territory. The whole situation is quite mad, but at least consistently mad.
The purpose of pulling down the Shepherd Hotel, all but the facade, which will be maintained to give the new structure some semblance of historical authenticity, is to built 20 luxury apartments for Jews only. This could not happen nowhere elsewhere without being described as open racism but in Israel it is no more than par for the course. Racism seeps out of the state and society more overtly and openly and defiantly every day. It is not accidental but structural. It is embedded in the ideology of Zionism and in the laws and regulations of the state and it is encouraged right from the top. Notwithstanding Netanyahu and his equally repugnant Foreign Minister are driving forward the whole ugly process. They are the head on the body of the stinking fish. Opinion polls show that Jews don’t want to live in the same street or apartment block as ‘Arabs’. Hundreds of fanatical rabbis sign petitions prohibiting the sale or rental of property to ‘Arabs’. Again, we should not be surprised, seeing that this was the principal article of the Jewish National Fund when it began trying to purchase land in Palestine early in the 20th century. ‘Arabs’ in East Jerusalem are beaten up by marauding gangs of Jewish youth. ‘Arab’ students in Safad – a Palestinian city taken over by the Zionists in 1948 as all other cities were – are threatened and abused by Jewish fundamentalists. Demonstrators protest against Jewish women going out with ‘Arab’ men. Even love cannot deflect their hate. Inside and outside the Knesset members of this less than august body threaten the ‘Arabs’ and threaten the Jews whose conscience does not allow them to remain silent witnesses any longer to the brutality and the racism of the state. So why should anyone be surprised by the decision to pull down a Palestinian-owned hotel and replace it with an apartment in which only Jews can live.
The only positive sign in this ugly climate is that the EU finally seems to be getting its act together. A document has been prepared calling on representatives of all EU governments to refuse to have anything to do with representatives of the government of Israel east of the so-called ‘green line’. They would not deal with them, they would not acknowledge them, they would not visit their offices, they would not use Israeli travel and tourist offices when making their plans and they would not accept to be protected under Israeli ‘security’ arrangements. The reasoning behind this document is that if there is ever to be a settlement, East Jerusalem must be the Palestinian capital, and that option is fast disappearing in the dust of Israeli bulldozers. Israel will be trying to work on the EU directly and through the US to compel it to drop this plan. Let’s hope that for once, the EU sticks to its guns and actually does something that opens up a little sliver of light in this gloomy situation.
– Jeremy Salt is associate professor in Middle Eastern History and Politics at Bilkent University in Ankara, Turkey. Previously, he taught at Bosporus University in Istanbul and the University of Melbourne in the Departments of Middle Eastern Studies and Political Science. Professor Salt has written many articles on Middle East issues, particularly Palestine, and was a journalist for The Age newspaper when he lived in Melbourne.
January 11, 2011
Posted by aletho |
Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Illegal Occupation, Timeless or most popular | Irving Moskowitz, Jerusalem, Nir Barkat, Palestine, Shepherd Hotel, Zionism |
1 Comment
Aletho News
Aletho News 