Kerry's "Jewish" and "Democratic" State

In his remarks on December 28, 2016, John Kerry, United States Secretary of State addressed the Arab-Israel conflict and the lack the the achievement of peace.

Paying close attention to his words, I noticed that he mentioned the term "Jewish" twelve times and "democratic" nine times and together, as the "Jewish and democratic state", twice and once as "Jewish democratic".

I picked them out:

That’s what we were standing up for: Israel’s future as a Jewish and democratic state

if the choice is one state, Israel can either be Jewish or democratic – it cannot be both – and it won’t ever really be at peace. 

Is ours the generation that gives up on the dream of a Jewish democratic state of Israel living in peace and security with its neighbors? Because that is really what is at stake.

And here are mention of Israel's Jewish identity:

Israelis are fully justified in decrying attempts to legitimize [sic. that should be delegitimize'] their state and question the right of a Jewish state to exist.

Nearly 70 years ago, United Nations General Assembly Resolution 181 finally paved the way to making the State of Israel a reality. The concept was simple: to create two states for two peoples – one Jewish, one Arab – to realize the national aspirations of both Jews and Palestinians. 

Principle two: Fulfill the vision of the UN General Assembly Resolution 181 of two states for two peoples, one Jewish and one Arab

Recognition of Israel as a Jewish state has been the U.S. position for years

That’s why it is so important that in recognizing each other’s homeland – Israel for the Jewish people and Palestine for the Palestinian people – both sides reaffirm their commitment to upholding full equal rights for all of their respective citizens.

There is one odd, even strange, use of 'democratic':

And we understand that in a final status agreement, certain settlements would become part of Israel to account for the changes that have taken place over the last 49 years – we understand that – including the new democratic demographic realities that exist on the ground. 

That, I think could be a result of Kerry's meandering of mind and tongue although it could indicate that Kerry is quite well aware that the decisions to revitalize Jewish life in the historic regions of the Jewish homeland was done through a very democratic process in that election after election, governments were established, except in very short time periods, that all supported, encouraged and engaged in activities that increased the Jewish population in Judea and Samaria and, until 2005, in Gaza as well.

Incidentally, refugees are mentioned in a formulation that actually disengages the issue from the existence of Israel in this way:

Provide for a just, agreed, fair, and realistic solution to the Palestinian refugee issue, with international assistance, that includes compensation, options and assistance in finding permanent homes, acknowledgment of suffering, and other measures necessary for a comprehensive resolution consistent with two states for two peoples...The international community can provide significant support and assistance. I know we are prepared to do that, including in raising money to help ensure the compensation and other needs of the refugees

That set off the PLO's Executive Committee member Hanan Ashrawi who declared on television: 

"The six principles that [US Secretary of State John] Kerry presented are undeniable Zionist principles that serve Israeli interests...he said 'a Jewish state,' giving them [Israel] a great prize. We have refused and still refuse to say that Israel is a Jewish state... Even on the issue of the refugees, he [Kerry] automatically denied them the right of return, and said that it is necessary to reach a just solution of compensation and resettling and the like. In other words, there is no right of return."  [Official PA TV, State of Politics, Jan. 3, 2017]

Of course, Jewish refugees were not included in his speech.

But getting back to the issue of Kerry deciding for Israel what "Jewish" and "democratic" mean and why they are important, we can note there also her words

he said 'a Jewish state,' giving them [Israel] a great prize

Prize?  Or a simple recognition of what Israel is?

On January 6, in an interview, Kerry returned to that matter and expounded:

I believe in the state of Israel’s dream to be the democracy and the Jewish state it wants to be. But the simple reality is you cannot be a unitary, one state, with more non-Jews than Jews and remain a democracy or a Jewish state. It’s impossible. You can’t do it. David, Ben Gurion, the first president of Israel, said that. Rabin said it... moving towards a single state without resolving this two-state issue, which is why everybody has supported it until today, is leading Israel to a very dangerous place of perpetual conflict and it will not be a Jewish state.

Besides being contradicted by Ashrawi, I would wish to point out the chutzpah of someone defining for us Jews what is 'Jewish" and how that state is to be as a 'democratic' one.  I am sure Kerry is predicating himself of J Street's ideology, among other left-wing Jewish groups, as well as Peter Beinart's thinking, most more radical than the next.

I could argue that the demographic outlook is not as Kerry thinks it is and that his projected minority status or threatened minority status are in error.

But is think it could be summed up so:

Dear American Jewish Liberal-Progressives:

You Can Be Either Jewish

or Liberal.

You Cannot Be Both.

Let's make that a poster:

Of course, that is as true as they intend their slogan of "Israel can either be Jewish or democratic – it cannot be both" is.  They cannot have it both ways.

They have moved far off the Jewish quotient scale and have supplanted their liberalism, what is actually a universal assimilationist progressivism, as have Jews before them, for a foreign ideology which is destructive to Zionism, the Jewish national movement.

Those who join them risk losing their Judaism, no matter how they define it in practical religious terms.  They are 'lost at sea'.  They do not realize, or refuse to do so or worse, reject, that Israel and its Zionism is their anchor.

______________

Tangentally, here is Melanie Phillips on "Real liberals must shun Palestinian colonialism".

And something similar.

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Graphic Zionism on Gideon Levy

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Find The Difference

Find the difference between this item

Ferguson Anti-Police Brutality Protesters Take Historic Trip To Palestine

“The goals were primarily to allow for the group members to experience and see first hand the occupation, ethnic cleansing and brutality Israel has levied against Palestinians, but also to build real relationships with those on the ground leading the fight for liberation.”

January 13, 2015 - Recently, a number of representatives from the Dream Defenders, Black Lives Matter and various Ferguson anti-police brutality protesters made history through a solidarity trip to Palestine.  The purpose of last week’s trip was to connect with activists living under Israeli occupation.

The 10-day trip to the occupied Palestinian Territories, specifically in the West Bank, was organized to show a link between oppression emanating from the Israeli State as well as that which victims of police brutality are experiencing in America.
Ahmad Abuznaid, the legal and policy director of the Dream Defenders, as well as the co-organizer of the delegation, explained that the trip was all about making connections, and seeing beyond single-issue causes.

“The goals were primarily to allow for the group members to experience and see first hand the occupation, ethnic cleansing and brutality Israel has levied against Palestinians, but also to build real relationships with those on the ground leading the fight for liberation,” Abuznaid said.  “In the spirit of Malcolm X, Angela Davis, Stokely Carmichael and many others, we thought the connections between the African American leadership of the movement in the US and those on the ground in Palestine needed to be reestablished and fortified.”  Furthermore, he said that the American activists hoped to collaborate and teach organizing and protest strategies that have worked well in the United States, to their Palestinian brothers and sisters.
“As a Palestinian who has learned a great deal about struggle, movement, militancy and liberation from African Americans in the US, I dreamt of the day where I could bring that power back to my people in Palestine. This trip is a part of that process.”
The co-founder of the Black Lives Matter movement, Patrisse Cullors commented that the first thing that came to mind when she saw the divisions between Israelis and Palestinians was apartheid.  “This is an apartheid state. We can’t deny that and if we do deny it we are apart of the Zionist violence. There are two different systems here in occupied Palestine. Two completely different systems. Folks are unable to go to parts of their own country. Folks are barred from their own country.”

Activist Cherrell Brown said there are numerous parallels between the violence perpetrated by the State of Israel against Palestinians and the police violence from the U.S. government which has taken so many African American lives.  “So many parallels exist between how the US polices, incarcerates, and perpetuates violence on the black community and how the Zionist state that exists in Israel perpetuates the same on Palestinians.  “This is not to say there aren’t vast differences and nuances that need to always be named, but our oppressors are literally collaborating together, learning from one another – and as oppressed people we have to do the same,” she concluded.

A complete list of the delegates who made this trip include five Dream Defenders (Phillip Agnew, Ciara Taylor, Steven Pargett, Sherika Shaw, Ahmad Abuznaid); Tef Poe and Tara Thompson from Ferguson/Hands Up United; journalist Marc Lamont Hill, Cherrell Brown and Carmen Perez of Justice League NYC; Charlene Carruthers from the Black Youth Project; as well as poet and artist Aja Monet; Patrisse Cullors of Black Lives Matter; and USC doctoral student Maytha Alhassen.

And this item

Coalition of more than 40 NYC community groups calls on City Council to cancel delegation to IsraelJanuary 12, 2015

A coalition of more than 40 New York City community groups held a press conference outside City Hall on Monday calling for the City Council to cancel a planned delegation to Israel. A diverse group of speakers addressed the city’s progressive politicians, asking how they could reconcile their opposition to racism and state violence at home with support for Israel’s policies against the Palestinians.

Around 50 people gathered in the near-freezing rain for the event, which was introduced by Brandon Davis of Jewish Voice for Peace. Davis denounced the “flagrant disregard for justice” displayed by the delegation, “in our streets” as well as in Palestine. A recurring theme of the remarks that followed was the link between the current movement to end racist policing in U.S. cities and the struggle against Israel’s apartheid in Palestine. Connections were mentioned between the New York Police Department and the Israeli security establishment, including the opening of an NYPD branch in the Sharon District police headquarters at Kfar Saba.

Organizations that have joined the campaign include the Committee Against Anti-Asian Violence, the Malcolm X Grassroots Movement, the Direct Action Front for Palestine, and Jews Against Islamophobia. The Council’s nine-day trip, scheduled to begin on February 15, is sponsored by the Jewish Community Relations Council (JCRC) and the United Jewish Appeal (UJA) Federation of New York.

City Council members participating in the delegation to Israel are Council Speaker Melissa Mark-Viverito, Mark Treyger, Brad Lander, Antonio Reynoso, David Greenfield, Rafael Espinal, Darlene Mealy, Mark Levine, Helen Rosenthal, Corey Johnson, Ritchie Torres, Andrew Cohen, Donovan Richards, Eric Ulrich, and James Van Bramer...

Speakers at the press conference wondered how informative such a visit could really be. Would the Council tour the West Bank separation barrier, asked criminal defense attorney Bina Ahmad, or Gaza’s ruined homes and schools? How could those who have taken a stance against domestic discrimination, she demanded to know, go on to contribute to normalizing systematic racism against an entire people — “gross hypocrisy,” in her words. Ahmad, who works with the Legal Aid Society in Staten Island and represented police chokehold victim Eric Garner, analogized Israel’s occupation of Palestine to the NYPD’s presence in communities of color.

Donna Nevel of Jews Against Islamophobia criticized Council members for publicly opposing anti-Muslim discrimination and then visiting Israel under the auspices of the JCRC, which fervently backed Police Comissioner Ray Kelly after the revelation of NYPD spying on Muslim communities. “It is clear that the JCRC has helped undermine the basic civil rights and liberties of our city’s Muslim residents,” according to a letter from the anti-Islamophobia coalition to the Council, “and we hope that you agree with us that it is a most inappropriate organization to lead such a trip.”

Other speakers emphasized the unprogressive nature of a trip that would entail crossing an international picket line. CUNY activist Conor Tomás Reed mentioned labor groups around the world that have heeded Palestinian civil society’s call for a boycott.

My answer:

There is no difference as both represent dangerous, extremist and irrational progressive revolutionary subversionist activity.

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Quotable Words of Wisdom

From a comment on Zadie Smith and British leftists, relevant to the lib/prog critique of Zionism & Israel:-

...what worries me more is that she, who you would imagine is adept at social observation, doesn’t seem to have noticed that the Left has taken over from the Right when it comes to nastiness.

...The Left likes to pretend it is motivated by compassion, when it is actually fuelled by hatred...Demented by their hatred, indeed...I well remember being shown around Millbank, the Labour headquarters, during the 1997 election and seeing on a poster, handwritten in large letters, two motivational words: “HATE TORIES”. It must be exhausting being them. This tradition of hatred can be traced even further back to Aneurin Bevan, who described Conservatives as “lower than vermin”. And it isn’t just the leaders. Lily Allen summed up Left-wing attitudes to the Right in song: “We hate what you do and we hate your whole crew”. And what about the crowd who booed George Osborne at the Paralympics (and with him the Paralympian to whom he was presenting a medal)? Might they have been a bit Left-wing, too?

Source

The New York Times "Divides" the Jewish People

Here are the two letters-to-the-editor published by the NYTimes in response to its fear-mongering editorial responding to the Levy Report on Construction in Judea and Samaria:

A Divide Over the Settlements in the West Bank

Published: July 18, 2012

To the Editor:

“Wrong Time for New Settlements” (editorial, July 11) rightly criticizes the Levy commission report, which asserts that Israel is not occupying the West Bank and that all Israeli settlements there are legal. Israel’s continued ruling of 2.5 million Palestinians is, as you say, “damaging to Israel’s security and regional peace.”

This report pushes the envelope of legal arguments and in a pointless exercise denies the illegality of settlements. If the report is endorsed, Israel would dig itself into an even deeper hole. Like the proverbial ostrich, it would avoid this reality: Israel cannot remain a secure Jewish democracy without disengaging from the Palestinians. From an Israeli perspective, the two-state solution is imperative and vital.

This report would set back that objective, and the ostrich hole could well become the grave of the Zionist enterprise. Instead, Israel should responsibly prepare to relocate and fairly compensate settlers living outside the settlement blocs, and create a reality of two states for two people.

GILEAD SHER, Tel Aviv, July 11, 2012
The writer, co-chairman of Blue White Future in Israel, was a peace negotiator and chief of staff to Israel’s prime minister from 1999 to 2001. He is a senior research fellow at the Institute for National Security Studies.

*

To the Editor:

We write as former chairmen of the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations in the early 1980s. The subject of Israeli “settlements” in the West Bank was not a new issue even then.

It has been a subject of wide, intense discussion in the Jewish community in the United States. It was then, as now, the position of the State Department and administration (Ronald Reagan at the time) that the settlements were an obstacle to peace.

To try to establish a policy that would represent the entire Jewish community (to the extent that it can ever be said that any particular policy statement can be regarded as the policy of the overall community), the Conference of Presidents and its members had many discussions on the subject.

At a plenary meeting during that period it was determined that, while there were varying opinions regarding Israel’s settlement policies, the consensus was that the settlements were not illegal and were not an obstacle to peace.
To our knowledge, that position has never been changed and remains the consensus view of the Jewish community.

JULIUS BERMAN
KENNETH J. BIALKIN, New York, July 12, 2012

Sher also recently published in April an op-ed on the subject.

In any case, it is one Israeli, a Barak team member and one who has started his own initiative with a Russian immigrant's money versus former heads of the Conference of Presidents.  That's a divide?

The NYT stacks the deck.  It will only publish anti-Jewish residency op-eds but will not do so if authored by those living there or support it.  And it will repeat and reinforce those who are anti.

NYT liberalism.

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Beinart vs. Medad (and Gordis)

Peter Beinart attacks me, along with Daniel Gordis.

As I do not think his site is allowing me to log in (or maybe my office computer is not compatible; I'll try later from home), I wouldn't want his post to go unreplied to so here's my comment that I wished to post there now:


As for the main hit on me - "Medad and Gordis’s claim that they will become more compliant if Israel eats away more of their future state is so absurd. One might even say that by claiming they support the two state solution while supporting policies that drive nails in its coffin, Medad and Gordis are playing us for suckers.", - while I cannot speak for Daniel, I, for one, don't think I expressed an unreserved support for the Two State Solution.  In fact, I have expressed support for the Three State Solution which, of course, demands that the territory of Jordan must be included in the land mass to be re-subdivided (not that partition ever worked or ever will).  While I am not a progressive liberal - although I have bled in my lifetime - I do think myself a liberal democrat and one who desires fairness.

It is grossly unfair for the territory of the former original Mandate for Palestine, which included TransJordan (see 1919 Versailles Peace Conference; 1920 San Remo Conference; and the 1922 League of Nations decision), to evolve into three states, two of which are Arab which ban Jews owning property or residing in them - apartheid, by the way - or perhaps even three Arabs states: Jordan, a kingdom of sorts, whose first monarch basically fled Saudi Arabia in 1920 to come assist rethrone his brother over Syria but ended up getting a Emirate from Winston Churchill while the brother was transferred to Iraq; Hamastan in Gaza and Fatahland in Judea and Samaria and one is Israel which must permit Arabs to reside therein (in "settlements"?), not pay full taxes, not serve in the Army or even a National Service program - all of which may contribute to the unjust, yes, discrimination they suffer, not to speak of Nakba Day festivities, rampant support for subversive Islamist elements, some stone throwing, et al.

And I certainly am upset that a Professor of Journalism would misquote me and thereby mispresent me in writing:

Yisrael Medad took a shot: He called Dershowitz a “freyer” or sucker. “Would you play chess in that fashion? Gamble even?” Medad asked.

What I did write about Dershowitz's suggestion was in terms of

...naive and even irrational. And not clever at all...To be generous, this is fairly amusing and at the same time, disappointing. One would have presumed a true defender of Israel to be more imaginative and, at the same time, more cognizant of the political realities of the conflict.

I think that's clear and English-understandable enough to be fathomed by a former editor of The New Republic and stands on its own as a political criticism of a bad idea.


I hope to take this up with Beinart next week.  In person.  In Jerusalem.

____________


Just now saw this from yesterday at the State Dept. briefing:

QUESTION: Yeah. Can we talk about --
MR. TONER: Yeah.
QUESTION: -- the Palestinian issue?
MR. TONER: Sure.
QUESTION: Today, one of the staunchest supporters of the Likud, Alan Dershowitz, a great legal mind, American legal mind, suggested that settlements ought to be frozen while talks are ongoing. Would you support such a proposition?
MR. TONER: Again, I think our focus remains on getting both sides back to the negotiating table as soon as possible. Again, we had this exchange of letters that was very positive.
QUESTION: Right.
MR. TONER: We want to see this back, but in terms of that specific proposal, what’s important for us is that both sides get back to the negotiating table where they can discuss all of these issues.

So, they really agree with Dershowitz either.

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Is It To Be 'By-bye Beinart?

I entered a Steimatzky book store off of Zion Square (the real, live, Zionist-pulsating one in Jerusalem) to leaf through Peter Beinart's "Crisis of Zionism" - which I have previously noted is actually Beinart's and American liberal Jews' crisis with themselves.

I searched for the pages on Jabotinsky and found them repulsive, factually incorrect, lacking any attempt to contextualize and downright plain ignorant of the subject.  In a word, Jabotinsky was a racist.

And this morning I read this by Jason Zengerle and understood:

...But while Beinart’s Army still exists, its future recruits may be more likely to come from the anti-Zionist wing of the American Jewish intellectual world. The hub of that world is the website Mondoweiss, which is run by Philip Weiss, a veteran journalist (and occasional New York contributor who has largely put aside his career as a generalist writer to become an intellectual godfather to a coterie of younger anti-Zionist Jewish intellectuals, who don’t believe Israel must remain a Jewish state. In some ways, Weiss admires Beinart. “There’s a kind of nobility, or a romance anyway, in what he’s doing,” Weiss says. Though their current projects are of course incompatible—“My belief is we have to save Jews from Zionism,” Weiss says; “he thinks you can save Zionism”—Weiss holds out hope that one day they might not be. “The interesting question to me is, What is the crisis of Peter Beinart? Those of us in the anti-Zionist camp wonder if this rude reception, this bum’s rush he’s getting, is going to send him into our arms.”

Bye-bye Beinart?

Is it to be the ultimate slide into a spasm of self-denial and the 'cross over to the other side'?

P.S.  I left this comment there:

The observation that what we witness is Beinart's crisis is almost there. Better, it is the crisis of American Jewish liberal/progressives who seek to define Zionism not on the basis of what the Jewish people have defined their national feeling for the past 3000 years (nor what the League of Nations decided teritorially and denial of Arab political rights), not on what the political-military experience vis a vis the Arabs over the past 9 decades has been, not the record of faithless peace negotiations, not the reality on ongoing Arab terror (from Mufti to fedayeen to Fatah to Hamas), not the incitement of the Palestinian Authority nor even the simple fact that before 1967 there was no "occupation" nor any "settlements" and yet there was no peace and just the opposite - but on what they need: the feel goodness of self-righteousness and favor in the eyes of the non-Jewish beholder. They care for themselves not for the future of Israel, its citizens and its vision based of the Biblical prophetic morality of Jewish humanism (see J. Klausner, and also Jabotinsky although the latter is derided by Beinart based on a misreading, misrepresentation and inability or unwillingness to understand). In the name of democracy and liberalism they would have established another dictatorship that oppresses its own population and seeks to kill Jews. That is what Beinart is facilitating by weakening Israel's support.

Oh, and you've read Martin Sherman's Part I?
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A Very Wrong "Raday Right"

Did you read this?

Although Finance Committee Chairman Moshe Gafni (United Torah Judaism ) expressed support for the legislation [35% tax credits for donations up to 2 million NIS for "settling the land" enterprises], he acknowledged that he recently received a legal opinion from Hebrew University legal scholar Frances Raday, who urged that it not be put to a vote as long as the bill did not exclude the West Bank from the tax credits, saying that providing the tax credits in support of West Bank settlement activity would be contrary to international law.  Gafni said, however, that the concerns were not relevant, and donations for all settlement were entitled to tax breaks.

Source


As for Professor Raday, she has much feminist legal experience.  She's even on the outstanding human rights body, the UN Human Rights Council.  And is a Member, International Council, New Israel Fund and has spoken out in defense of Israel's democracy.

But it's a critical defense, one that feeds Beinartism:

The recognition of a Palestinian state is as important to Israel as to the Palestinians. For Israel to continue to function as a democratic and Jewish state, it must bring about a symmetrical right of self-determination for the Palestinians.

She has written another article that presents the

"structuring a basic analytical framework, incorporating both Israeli and Palestinian perspectives, and will try to show the symmetries and asymmetries between them. This involves discussion of the rights of two peoples to self-determination and the means by which such parallel rights can be implemented. It also involves discussing differences in the means of implementation of the right to self-determination for Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza, and minority rights for Palestinian-Israelis living in Israel within the 1948 Armistice Lines."

And she goes further:

Israel's character as a state for self-determination of the Jewish people was only expressed in the General Assembly partition plan, whose intention was to create a Jewish state alongside an Arab state.

And by the way, she uses the "disease" metaphor, a big no-no in liberal circles:

"There is an abundance of tools in jurisprudence to oppose discrimination of women; the problem is that people are dealing with symptoms, and not the disease," said Raday

But to return: that proposition "only expressed" - only - is anti-Zionist, seeks to freeze Israel as a 1948 creation - one that makes Israel dependent on UN recognition (rather than the other way around: the UN acknowledged the historic, legal, cultural, religious and natural right of the Jews to reconstitute the Jewish national home in the area the nations of the world termed "Palestine", a right awarded by international law bodies from Balfour to Versailles, from San Remo to the League of Nations) and attempts to Siamese-twin Israel to "Palestine" in the Beinartism-model.

There is no symmetry.

Note that Jews will have no minority rights in "Palestine" which means she seems to support the proposed apartheid Arab regime that exliudes Jews from achieveing residency rights therein.  Could there be Jewish-Palestinians?  I mean not theoretically but practically.

She writes there:

...the only way to create a meaningful human rights regime of self-determination for Israeli-Jews and Palestinians is by peaceful separation into two States - one for Israeli-Jews and Israeli-Palestinians, and the other for Palestinians - and by preferably ensuring cooperation between them.

In other words, what is fair - and legal - is Arabs get to live in three states there were once "Palestine", that is, Jordan, "Palestine" and Israel.  But Jews?  Only Israel.

Does that sound like a "right" to you?

It's a "Raday right", I guess.

Well, it's immoral, incorrect and just plain wrong.

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What Beinart Is Spawning: Brave New "Zionism"

Is this becoming the new Brave Beinart World?

From a NYTimes oped:-

Yes, there are risks for Israel in allowing a Palestinian state. But as Jews, we cannot tolerate a Jewish state that ignores its own Declaration of Independence and the teachings of our sages over thousands of years. A state that persecutes, deprives and denies its neighbors in a manner so similar to what our tormentors did to us cannot be acceptable.

That was from Stephen Robert, formerly a principal owner of the investment bank Oppenheimer & Co. and chancellor of Brown University, who currently chairman and cofounder of the Source of Hope Foundation. In Israel, it supports Hand-in-Hand, a center for Jewish-Arab education in Israel:-

Hand-in-Hand's mission is to build a network of integrated schools in Israel bringing together Arab and Jewish children for an education that spans both culture and languages. Classes are taught both in Hebrew and in Arabic...The organization's vision "Learning together – Living together", reflects the goal of creating a more peaceful, pluralistic and democratic society in Israel.

And in "Palestine", supports three programs:

...helping Palestinian trained engineers develop a software outsourcing industry similar to the Indian model...a sports group which helps disabled Palestinian athletes. This endeavor has sent Palestinian athletes to the International Para-Olympics competition...The Parent's Circle...

Peter Beinart seems to have let loose all the devils pent up in liberal, humanist, progressive Jews who now are making common cause with Israel's enemies. Robert also thinks:-

...can the Jewish people segue from deeply ingrained victimhood to the moral and practical dictates of being a major power?...Israel is losing the moral high ground through much of the world.  How can a people persecuted for so long act so brutally when finally attaining power? Will we continuously see the world as 1938, or can we use the strength of our new power to forgive, while never forgetting the lessons of our past?

Much of the world, of course, just like in 1938, couldn't care about the Jews.  And how could Israel be "brutal"?  Well, a 90-year old Arab terror campaign, continuing today, refusal to accept diplomatic overtures, specifically targeting civilians, mendacious propaganda, et al., could be the cause.  Mr. Robert, the Arabs are the primary cause and it is their responsibility to right it.  But for someone who thinks like this:

Palestinians will have to recognize Israel as a Jewish state, essentially abandoning the right of return...Ideally, Fatah and Hamas will form a unity government and Hamas will rewrite its untenable charter.

and presume it will happen is someone who is ideologically lost.

And is Beinart to blame?   Well, at Mondoweiss they think so:

I keep underestimating the Beinart effect. Three recent developments show Beinart's power. 1, Huffpo ripping off Beinart's Open Zion blog at the Daily Beast, 2, Stephen Robert's "God help an infant born in Palestine" op-ed in the IHT yesterday, and 3, Paul Krugman's support for Beinart in the Times. The liberal Zionists are having their moment...The Stephen Robert piece in the IHT, "A Reset in Jewish Thinking," borrows a lot from Beinart: for a start, the Hail Mary pass for the two-state solution. And also the idea that Jews are powerful in a way we've never been before...Beinart's book is allowing Jews to come out in a way they refused to do when Walt and Mearsheimer said it, because Walt and Mearsheimer made the mistake of being goyim.

And we learn that Robert had published an earlier version of his op-ed piece in The Nation which includes this:

...What I witnessed in the West Bank—home to about 2.5 million Palestinians and 400,000 Israeli settlers—exceeded my worst expectations. While the world’s statesmen have dithered, Israel has created a system of apartheid on steroids, a horrifying prison...How can Jews, who have been persecuted for centuries, tolerate this inhumanity? Where is their moral compass? How can this situation be acceptable to Judaism’s spiritual and political leaders? I don’t have that answer; except to say that Israel’s biggest enemy has become itself...That Israel has the upper hand now portends nothing about the future. A small state of 7 million holding 4 million neighbors in prison, without opportunity, sufficient medical care, food, water and equal justice is not a sustainable situation. When, eventually, stasis gives way to unimaginable change, it will be too late to alter course. Israel, “right or wrong,” a position taken by many, will lead to a catastrophe. It represents a suspension of critical thought; characteristic of many radical ideologies. Friends of Israel would serve it better to know the true facts and then drive Israel toward a moral and practical solution...Israel must regain the moral imperative, to disarm its enemies and secure its friends. Many believe there is an international campaign to delegitimize the Jewish state. At this point Israel is delegitimizing itself.

Yes, Beinart's Brave New Zionism is a rerun of Jewish anti-Zionism.  It ignores the threats even while noting them but dismissing them.  It promotes a liberalism that seeks to install a decidely undemocratic and oppressive regime in power.  It subverts the true demands of morality in international relations.  It derides any authentic expression of the rights of Jewish nationhood. 

In short, it is embarrassed by Jewish bravery and seeks the 'comfort' of the traditional Jewish postion amongst the nations which only can lead to a repeat of attempts to destroy the state of Israel and annihilate Jews by promoting the "it's the Jews' fault" calumny.

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Jeffrey Goldberg: Settlers = Hamas

Jeffrey Goldberg equalizes and equates the Hamas with the Jewish residents of Judea and Samaria (in an attack on Peter Beinart k/t=LK):-

In other news from Happyland, the number-two of Hamas, Moussa Abu Marzook, gave an interview to the Forward in which he -- and this will be very surprising to people who aren't paying attention, and to Peter Beinart -- rules out recognizing Israel, and says that the most Hamas could offer Israel is a long-term truce. "We will not recognize Israel as a state. It will be like the relationship between Lebanon and Israel or Syria and Israel."


And those are excellent relationships!
I mention Peter because he has argued for quite a while that Hamas is actually moderating, and that we should not pay too much attention to the group's charter (which calls for, you know, killing a lot of Israelis and destroying their country). One of the irksome qualities of Peter's benign interpretation of Hamas is that he doesn't extend the same benefit of the doubt to another group of bearded fundamentalists, the Jewish settlers. For Peter, settler ideology is deadly and should be treated as such; Hamas, on the other hand, is just waiting for the right moment to emerge as a moderate, non-anti-Semitic force. I think it's better to take all religious fundamentalists at their word, which is why I worry incessantly about the willingness of some settlers to bring about the apocalypse, as I wrote here.

Two liberals fight each other and both dump on the Jews.

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Medad Contra Beinart

My new JPost "Green-Lined" blog post:

Peter's Pernicious Paradox

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How Liberal Is Peter Beinart's Zionism?

David Gerstman on Beinart:

I have three questions for Beinart.

If Beinart believes that the acquisition of territory by force is wrong, how does he feel about the Jewish presence in Hebron (driven out by force in 1929) or the Etzion Bloc or the Old City of Jerusalem? [actually, how did he feel about the Arab presence there after the violent expulsion of Jews - YM]

Since he postulates that "settlements" render Zionism immoral, in his opinion what would render Palestinian nationalism immoral? Terrorism? Refusal to accept the legitimacy of a Jewish state? Refusal to make a deal that would end up creating a Palestinian state? [and let us recall that up until the Mandate period there were Jewish residency locations in Judea, Samaria and Gaza, see above. it is not as if all of a sudden, "settlements" appeared there. - YM]

Finally, Beinart protests the illegitimacy of Zionism on account settlements which somehow deprive Palestinians of their rights. Yet his solution is to force more Jews from their homes, which would seem to be a deprivation of Jewish rights. Either Beinart has principles that he applies universally, or his arguments are simply thinly disguised justifications for his opposition to Israel and Zionism.

I guess liberalism can be quite "liberal".

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Of the Halevi-Beinart Debate

Picked this up at one of the most anti-Israel, anti-Zionist sites around (you needn't go there but I have to link the source)

It seems that the American Jewish Committee held its annual Global Forum in Washington, April 27-29, and hosted a debate on Friday, April 29, 10:30 am – 12:00 pm entitled "The Great Debate II: Is Liberal Zionism an Oxymoron?": Do young, liberally-oriented American Jews feel politically estranged from Israel or are these concerns overblown? More fundamentally, at a time when many left and liberal constituencies are condemning Israel, can Zionism be reclaimed as a progressive cause? between Peter Beinart, Senior Political Writer, The Daily Beast; Senior Fellow, New America Foundation; author and Yossi Klein Halevi, Senior fellow, Shalem Center; contributing editor, The New Republic; author.  The video is here.

Mondo's notes, in part:-

Beinart: "The settlement of Ariel makes functional Palestinian contiguity extremely difficult..." And failing to give it up with [sic. will] "move the Palestinians to demand a one state solution, in which case we will all be in worse shape than we are today."

Halevi says that settlements are not an issue.
Beinart insists on a recognition of "my right of return to greater Israel in exchange for Palestinian right of return to greater Palestine.. this is the goal and this is the vision." And in order to achieve that goal, Israel must "declare an open and unequivocal settlement freeze.... to take the issue of settlements off the table..." and thereby deal with "the real obstacle to peace... the continued Paletinian insistence on refugee return to greater Palestine, which means the state of Israel." 100,000 refugees returning to Israel over 10 years is "a price worth paying. When the alternative is either apartheid or a non-Jewish state."

"I would absolutely oppose any refugee return that I believe would threaten Israel's character as a Jewish state. I believe that history shows that we have a right to a Jewish and a democratic state."

Halevi: "[In the Palestine papers, you will see a] deep Palestinian commitment to right of return." It must be made clear to them: "Not one refugee to return to Israel, not one descendant of a refugee to return to Israel, as a matter of principle.... even as we pull our settlers out from our right to greater Israel." And diminish "the right of Jewish people to sovereignty" in their own land.

...Halevi challenges Beinart to be more fearful:  "I wish we could hear from you some sense of the anxieties and fears that we're going through in Israel [over the prospect of a Palestinian state]."

...Beinart says that "in the marrow of their soul," Palestinians "need a recognition of the horror of what happened to them in 1948. And for them it was a horror, even though for us it was an enormous enormous blessing" leading to an "extraordinary accomplishment, I would say miracle that is the creation of Israeli democracy."

Halevi refers to the 1948 "trauma" then later the "Nakba." "One of the crucial psychological barriers to peace is the Arab world's refusal to accept even partial responsibility for what happened in 1948... They led what Azzam Pasha [head of the Arab League] declared as a war of extermination....

"I agree there is partial Jewish responsibility. we need to own up to it, but by no means to take exclusive blame..."


...Halevi says that the two state solution is regarded by Palestinians as a "preliminary agreement, the first step toward an eventual beautiful one state solution." This is "very much the thinking of the Palestinian leadership." If you leave Salam Fayyad out of it, and Sari Nusseibeh. "It is the normative thinking within the Palestinian national movement... [two states is an] interim agreement, and then as we say in the Middle East, god is great."

It is so obvious watching the debate that Beinart has adopted classic Arab propaganda methods including lying, presenting facts not as they are, twistiong reality, leaving out background, etc.

Yossi was, well, inadequate. You cannot pit a "liberal" against a Beinart liberal.

Oh well.

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Offsetting a Potential Obama Tyranny

Reported

House Speaker John A. Boehner lashed out against efforts to regulate Internet traffic before an audience of evangelical Christian media leaders...In a speech to religious broadcasters that received a sustained ovation at his conclusion, he said free expression is under attack by a power structure in Washington populated with regulators who have never set foot inside a radio station or a television studio.

“We see this threat in how the FCC is creeping further into the free market by trying to regulate the Internet,” Mr. Boehner said.

“The last thing we need, in my view, is the FCC serving as Internet traffic controller, and potentially running roughshod over local broadcasters who have been serving their communities with free content for decades,” he said to loud applause from members of the National Religious Broadcasters, a trade group holding its annual convention here.

...Mr. Boehner also inveighed against any effort to reinstate the so-called “Fairness Doctrine,” whose 1987 elimination led to the rise of a vibrant talk-radio industry.

“Our new majority is committed to seeing that the government does not reinstate the Fairness Doctrine,” he said.

Mr. Boehner said Rep. Greg Walden, Oregon Republican, “has teamed up with another former broadcaster, Congressman Mike Pence of Indiana, to introduce legislation to help keep the airwaves free. I expect the House to act on this measure as well.”

Liberalism is alive in the right plac es.

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Lisa Threatens Me: "Be Quiet or Be Blocked"

Evidence A:

The opening, she tweets

and then mentions:

lisang Lisa Goldman


RT @JessicaMontell: "Stability is a pernicious word" says @ElBaradei, debunks fear of Muslim Brotherhood bogeyman http://goo.gl/m89CX #Jan25

Evidence B:

"Today is 2011".   ???
"A big day". ???
And then the threat.

Don't you just love progressive liberal radicals?

She is awarded the Monkfish award:

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The 'Professional Left'

Obama does not like the "professional left".

Like in:

During an interview with The Hill in his West Wing office, White House press secretary Robert Gibbs blasted liberal naysayers, whom he said would never regard anything the president did as good enough.

“I hear these people saying he’s like George Bush. Those people ought to be drug tested,” Gibbs said. “I mean, it’s crazy.”

The press secretary dismissed the “professional left” in terms very similar to those used by their opponents on the ideological right, saying, “They will be satisfied when we have Canadian healthcare and we’ve eliminated the Pentagon. That’s not reality.

Professional? Like they make a living out of this?


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More On Liberal Fascism

Denis is good against the bad:-

...You're probably all aware that anti-Israel activists, when told they are anti-Semites, hotly deny the charge, saying they are just opposed to Israel and its policies. I don't believe them, any of them...People on the left became pro-Jewish and, for a time, pro-Israeli.

But gradually, mainly in the past twenty years or so, there came a point when people couldn't keep their hatred of Jews pent up any longer. These weren't fascist thugs any longer so much as self-proclaimed liberals and leftists. They became infected with anti-Semitism because they wanted someone to pity and the Jews were no longer pitiable...they still don't like to be called anti-Semites, because anti-Semitism is a form of racism, and they aren't racists.

They think they aren't racists because anti-racism is the keystone of modern right-on politics. But they are racists, so they have a problem...[so] they have employed a range of lies that cast a spell on the media and most of the general public. It goes something like this. The Jews are no longer suffering, but someone must be suffering in order to deserve our pity, and the obvious candidates for victimhood are the Palestinians, because those nice Arabs I met at our conference tell me they are. This must mean that the Jews are...

Next, if there's to be some sort of equivalence, there has to be a Holocaust. What? you say. What? But it's obvious, they reply. There has been a Holocaust of the Palestinians...As a result of this warped style of thinking, we are living in a fantasy world. It doesn't matter how many rockets Hamas fire, they are some sort of friendly prank. The separation fence isn't a fence but an 'apartheid wall'. And it doesn't matter how racially mixed and free and democratic Israel is, it is, as we all know, an apartheid state...

...Nobody wants to think any more, least of all about Israel. They hate Israel with a viciousness that can only originate in dark psychological problems with Jews. I don't know why that is, and I don't know how to solve it, but it's the most dangerous single thing in the world today. I mean it. Hatred of Israel is going to provoke another war in the Middle East, and that war is capable of spreading to Europe, America and beyond. Iran is in the hands of lunatics, and other lunatics have made hatred of Israel the only political issue of any importance in the world. If we don't do something to stop this, a lot of people are going to die. And they won't all be Israelis.

(Kippah tip: BT)



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Intellectual Liberalism Hides Evil

Extracted from a book review on Paul Berman's THE FLIGHT OF THE INTELLECTUALS wh9ch criticizes those, especially Islamists, who desire:-

...a return to a distant age, one characterized by religious purity, in which all dissent will necessarily be absent. It is an imagined past, of course, and an impossible political program. And it supposes the ideal intellectual posture to be “supine.” Furthermore, “in a modern political world shaped by the rise of the Islamists,” Berman writes, “even some of the most attractive of thinkers tend, if they have come under an Islamist influence, to have a soft spot for suicide terrorism. And a soft spot for anti-Semitism.”

On the question of anti-Semitism, Berman writes about [Tariq] Ramadan’s “brief and angry essay” of 2003 in which he attacked a group of intellectuals he designated as Jewish, criticizing them for forsaking their vocation as intellectuals in favor of support for Israel, and of Zionism. Berman demonstrates that the criticism is bogus, three times over.

First, Ramadan went looking for Jews and made mistakes — not all the named intellectuals were in fact Jewish. Second, he muddled support for Israel with the recognition of a growing contemporary anti-Semitism, a “new Judeo­phobia.” And third, since he is not himself a Benda-style intellectual, but rather the spokesman for a specific community, it is not open to him to adopt Benda’s universalist perspective.

Actually, it is far worse than that. Ramadan’s own “commitment to ethical thinking,” Berman concludes, “turns out to be worthless.” “What is surprising,” remarked one of the intellectuals Ramadan attacked, “is not that Mr. Ramadan is anti-Semitic, but that he dares to proclaim it openly.” (Ramadan would no doubt say in response that he has spoken out against anti-­Semitism before both Western and Muslim audiences.)

See here too.

Have You Read Melanie Phillips "Liberal Fascism"?

This piece is important.

Liberal fascism


It's about

...the now common analogy that is drawn between Israel and the Nazis, or Gaza and the Warsaw Ghetto, as used by such Israel-haters...It is used for very specific political purposes. Since Nazism is totally beyond the pale – and since the Israel-haters believe, falsely, that Israel’s legitimacy rests upon the Holocaust – tarring it as a Nazi state delegitimises it and thus advances the agenda of its destruction.

...I would also make a further point that Rich does not make. Calling Israel a Nazi state retrospectively sanitises the Holocaust and lets complicit Europe off the hook – Britain too. After all, Britain was partly responsible for the murder of thousands of Jews to whom it refused entry to Palestine -- in order to appease the Arabs of Palestine who were in league with the Nazis – and who perished in the Holocaust as a result. If the Jews have become Nazis, then their victimisation at the hands of the Nazis stops being the crime of crimes.

It also allows people safely to hate the Jews once again...

Read it all.