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Today's
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March 4, 2004
Tariq Ali
Notes on Anti-Semitism, Zionism and
Palestine
March 3, 2004
Jack McCarthy
Guy's
Our Guy: "I am the Chief. My Hero is Pinochet."
Robert Sandels
The
Purloined Label: The Struggle Over the Havana Club Trademark
Juliana Fredman / James Davis
Israeli Organized Crime
JG
The Yuppie Silence on Haiti
Emilio Sardi
The
Colombia/US Free Trade Deal: It's About More Than Trade
Alan Farago
Swimming in Sewage
Mike Whitney
"Blood
Will Have Blood": 143 Murdered in Liberated Iraq
CounterPunch Wire
Nader's Legislative Record in the 1960s
Steve Perry
Kerry
Advisory: Remember Lena Guerrero
Nelson George/ Marcus Miller
Miles Davis & Hip Hop: a Conversation
Website of the Day
$10,000 Is Yours for the Taking: The USS Liberty Challenge
March 2, 2004
William Blum
If Kerry's
the Answer, What's the Question?
Conn Hallinan
Haiti:
the Dangerous Muddle
JoAnn Wypijewski
The Bravo
H-Bomb Test: One WMD They Couldn't Hide
Mike Whitney
Regime Change in Haiti: the Bush Dominos Keep Falling
Ra Ravishankar
Afghanistan, the Liberation That Isn't: an Interview with Mariam
from RAWA
Dan Bacher
Merle Haggard & the Politics of Salmon: "Clearcutting
is Rape"
Greg Moses
Oscar White
Brandy Baker
Mel Gibson's Minstrelsy Show
Little Tucker Carlson
What I Did on My Vacation
Robert Fisk
All This
Talk of Civil War, Now This
Merle Haggard
Kern River
Website of the Day
Rebel Edit
March 1, 2004
Alexander Cockburn
Morris
Thanks War Criminal in Front of Billions
Richard Oxman
Oscar's
Obit: Thanking Bob McNamara
Elaine Cassel
Writing and Reading as "Terrorism"
Mickey Z
Thomas Friedman's Education
Mike Whitney
George Will and Anti-Semitism: a Cul-de-Sac of Prejudice
Heather Williams
Haiti
as Target Practice: How the US Press Missed the Story
Cathy Crosson
Chanson d'amour haïtienne
Website of the Day
God Hates Shrimp
February 28 / 29, 2004
Stephen Green
Serving
Two Flags: Neo-Cons, Israel and the Bush Team
Gary Leupp
Another Senseless Bush Battle: Defining and Protecting Marriage
William A. Cook
Israel:
America's Albatross
Ron Jacobs
Kucinich: Good Fight; Wrong Battlefield
Ben Tripp
A Nosegay of Posies: Queer Weddings at Last!
Leilla Matsui
Dances with Crucifixes
Mike Whitney
Dismantle
the Military Goliath
Yoel Marcus
Down and Out in the Hague
Uri Avnery
The Dancing Bear
Linda S. Heard
Britons and Americans Condemned to a Hobson's Choice
Al Krebs
Unmasking a Secret American Empire: Land, Water & Cotton
Stan Cox
Life (Pat. Pend.): Genetic Commandeering
JG
The Haiti Boomerang: "After The Looting & Pillaging,
Your Hunger Will Remain"
Rick Giombetti
Censorship at the Seattle P-I on Forced Psychiatry
Keith Hoeller
The Bankruptcy of Mental Health Insurance Parity
Dave Zirin
Colorado Football: Buffalo Swill
NADERAMA
Alan Maass
Nader and the Politics of Lesser
Evils
Michael Donnelly
Regime
Rotation: Anybody But Bush...Again?
Niranjan Ramakrishnan
Exeunt Serenaders; Enter Nader
Doug Giebel
So Nader's Running? Get Over It
Bruce Jackson
An Open Letter to Naderites
CounterPunch Wire
Stalinists for Kerry! and Other Roars from the Crowd
Poets' Basement
Davies, Scarr, Kearney & Albert
February 27, 2004
Thomas C. Mountain
A
White Jesus During Black History Month?
Laura Carlsen
Americans
Abroad: Bush is Persona Non Grata
John B. Anderson
Nader's Campaign Brings Back Memories: Creating an Open Electoral
Process
Jason Leopold
Spying
on Kofi Annan
John Chuckman
Nader,
Risk and Hope
Standard Schaefer
An
Interview with Michael Hudson on Putin's Russia
Ray McGovern
Punished
for Honest Intelligence
Saul Landau
The
Haiti Redux
Website of the Day
Bush: Why I'm Running for Re-election
February 26, 2004
Brandy Baker
Is Nader
on to Something?
Jacques Kinau
AEI
to Colombia: "Can't Give You Anything But Guns, Baby"
Norman Solomon
Bugging Kofi Annan: UN Spying
and the Evasions of US Journalism
Greg Weiher
A Purloined Letter: the Zarqawi Gambit
Walt Brasch
Janet Jackson, Bush & No. 542: There are No Halftime Shows
in War
Shadi Hamid
The Music World Explodes in Anger
Norman Madarasz
As Canadian as Corruption
Chris Floyd
Bullets and Ballots
Virginia Tilly
The
Deeper Meaning of the Wall
Amy Goodman / Jeremy
Scahill
Haiti's
Lawyer Says US is Arming Haiti's Anti-Aristide Paramilitaries
Website of the Day
Clear Channel Sucks
February 25, 2004
Dr. Susan Block
Saddam's
Sex Therapist and the Rape of Free Speech
Bruce Anderson
Treacherous Bastards: The Greens and the Dems and Nader
Ron Jacobs
Our Power is on the Streets and
in Our Hearts
Mike Whitney
Bush
and Gay America: the Politics of Duplicity
Sam Husseini
Jesus in 100 Words
John L. Hess
Kick Off or Flub?
Sam Hamod
Bush's Newest Red Herring
Cockburn / St. Clair
Winning
with Nader
Website of the Day
VotePact
February 24, 2004
Ralph Nader
Why
I'm Running for President
Greg Moses
Rally
the Mob! Bush, Gay Marriage and the Constitution
Douglas O'Hara
The
Merchants of Fear: Smearing Nader
Phillip Cryan
Frozen in Time: The WSJ's Paranoid
Lens on Latin America
David Lindorff
John Kerry's China Connection
Jason Leopold
Cheney's Shame: Halliburton Faces New Charges
Gary Younge
Haiti: Throttled by History
Kromm, Masri & Purohit
Why No Democracy in Iraq?
Steve Perry
Tangled Up in Red and Blue: Beware the Electoral College
February 23, 2004
Neve Gordon
Israel's Apartheid Wall on Trial
at The Hague
Kurt Nimmo
Richard Perle, Executioner: "Heads Should Roll"
Jonathan Franklin
US Soldier Seeks Refugee Status in Canada
Al Krebs
The Liberal "Intelligentsia" v. Nader
Josh Frank
Nader's Nadir? Not a Chance
Bruce Jackson
Nader, Another View: "He's as Evil as Bush"
Gary Leupp
A Misguided
Attack, The Passion, Rabbi Lerner and the Gospels
February 20 / 22, 2004
Cockburn / St. Clair
Kerry:
He's Peaking Already!
Derek Seidman
Chasing
Judith Miller from the Stage: Watch Her Run!
Ghada Karmi
Sharon is not the Problem
Vanessa Jones
This Week in Redfern, a Boy Dies, Chased by Cops
Ben Granby
Anatomy of a Night Raid on Balad, Iraq
John Holt
An Air That Kills: Greed, Apathy, Dead People
Saul Landau
Entry from a White House Diary
Tom Jackson
Why They Couldn't Wait to Invade Iraq
Frederick B. Hudson
Slave Power and the Constitution: Jefferson, Slaves, Haiti and
Hypocrisy
Roger Burbach
Argentina Fights Back
Kate Doyle
Lessons on Justice from Guatemala
Mike Whitney
Operation Enduring Misery: the Afghanistan Debacle
Greg Moses
What Gives Texas A&M the Right to Trample the Civil Rights
Act?
David Krieger
US Elections: an Opportunity to Debate Nuclear Weapons
Sam Bahour
Palestinian Issue Riddles Bush's Budget
David Grenier
You Could Get 10 Years in Prison Just for Reading This
Charles Sullivan
Corporatism vs. Single Party Politics
Poet's Basement
Hilda White, Larry Kearney & Stew Albert
Website of the Weekend
The Rumsfeld Fighting Technique
February 19, 2004
Cecilie Surasky
Anti-Semitism
at the World Social Forum? That's Not What I Saw
Ray McGovern
Iraq
Hawks and Deceptive Intelligence: Did They Really Think They'd
Get Away With It?
Tariq Ali
How Far
Will Bush Go in Iraq?
Ralph Nader
Whither
the Nation?
Wayne Madsen
Would Kerry Purge the Neo-Cons?
Norman Solomon
The Collapse of Dean's Cyber-Bubble
Christopher Brauchli
Cheney, Halliburton and the NYT
Mike Whitney
Bush's Iraq Strategy: "I Hope They Kill Each Other"
Lewis Carroll
Bush the Mighty Helmsman from Yale
Website of the Day
Sex Toy Horoscope
February 18, 2004
William Wilgus
Bush:
AWOL and Dereliction of Duty
William Blum
Mush-Minded
Liberals
Dave Lindorff
Bush's China Syndrome
Greg Weiher
Why
is Kerry Getting a Pass?
Mike Griffin
Killing the Messenger: the AFL-CIO's Attack on Harry Kelber
Mark Hand
Kerry Tells Peace Movement to "Move On"
February 17, 2004
Mike Ferner
The
Countryside Murders in Iraq
Mokhiber / Weissman
Corporation
as Psychopath
Marjorie Cohn
DrakeGate:
a Victory for Free Speech
Kurt Nimmo
Bush's
Endgame: a Review of Chalmers Johnson's "Sorrows of Empire"
Greg Bates
Nader Ambush: a New Low for The
Nation
Ximena Ortiz
A Bush
Doctrine, of Sorts
Gary Leupp
Whatever Happened to Gen. Khazraji?
Sen. John Kerry
"The Cause of Israel is the Cause of America"
Steve Perry
Kerry
1, Drudge 0
February 16, 2004
James Johnston
Huddling
with the Cheeseheads in a NASCAR World
Sara Eltantawi
To
Wear the Hijab or Not
Bruce Anderson
Kevin
Cooper and the Midnight Needle
Elaine Cassel
Feds
on Campus: the Drake Subpoenas
Rahul Mahajan
Bush,
Is the Tide Finally Turning?
Kevin Cooper
The Ritual of Death
Stan Cox
Goodbye, Howard Dean
Larry David
My War
Steve Perry
Bush and the Guard: the Cover-Up's the Thing
Website of the Day
Prison Patriots: Help This Vital Film Get Made
Hot Stories
Alexander Cockburn
Behold,
the Head of a Neo-Con!
Subcomandante Marcos
The
Death Train of the WTO
Norman Finkelstein
Hitchens
as Model Apostate
Steve Niva
Israel's
Assassination Policy: the Trigger for Suicide Bombings?
Dardagan,
Slobodo and Williams
CounterPunch Exclusive:
20,000 Wounded Iraqi Civilians
Steve
J.B.
Prison Bitch
Sheldon
Rampton and John Stauber
True Lies: the Use of Propaganda
in the Iraq War
Wendell
Berry
Small Destructions Add Up
CounterPunch
Wire
WMD: Who Said What When
Cindy
Corrie
A Mother's Day Talk: the Daughter
I Can't Hear From
Gore Vidal
The
Erosion of the American Dream
Francis Boyle
Impeach
Bush: A Draft Resolution
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March
4, 2004
To be Intimidated
is to be an Accomplice
Notes
on Anti-Semitism, Zionism and Palestine
By TARIQ ALI
1. Anti-semitism is a racist ideology directed
against the Jews. It has old roots.
In his classic work, The Jewish Question,
A Marxist Interpretation, that was published posthumously
in France in 1946, the Belgian Marxist, Abram Leon, (active in
the resistance during the Second World War, he was captured and
executed by the Gestapo in 1944) invented the category of a 'people-class'
for the role of the Jews who managed to preserve their linguistic,
ethnic and religious characteristics through many centuries without
becoming assimilated. This was not unique to the Jews, but could
apply just as strongly to many ethnic minorities: diaspora Armenians,
Copts, Chinese merchants in South East Asia, Muslims in China,
etc. The defining characteristic common to these groups is that
they became middlemen in a pre-capitalist world, resented alike
by rich and poor.
Twentieth century anti-semitism, usually
instigated from above by priests (Russia, Poland), politicians/intellectuals
(Germany, France and, after 1938, Italy), big business (USA,
Britain), played on the fears and insecurity of a deprived population.
Hence August Bebel's reference to anti-semitism as 'the socialism
of fools'. The roots of anti-semitism like other forms of racism
are social, political, ideological and economic. The judeocide
of the Second World War, carried out by the political-military-industrial
complex of German imperialism, was one of the worst crimes of
the twentieth century, but not the only one. The Belgian massacres
in the Congo had led to between 10-12 million deaths before the
First World War. The uniqueness of the judeocide was that it
took place in Europe (the heart of Christian civilization) and
was carried out systematically--- by Germans, Poles, Ukrainians,
Lithuanians, French and Italians--- as if it was the most normal
thing in the world. Hence Hannah Arendt's phrase, 'the banality
of evil.' Since the end of the Second World War popular anti-Semitism
of the old variety declined in Western Europe, restricted largely
to remnants of fascist or neo-fascist organisations.
In Poland, a country where virtually
all the Jews were killed, it remained strong, as it did in Hungary.
In the Arab world there were well-integrated Jewish minorities
in Cairo, Baghdad and Damascus. They did not suffer at the time
of the European judeocide. Historically, Muslims and Jews have
been much closer to each other than either to Christianity. Even
after 1948 when tensions rose between the two communities throughout
the Arab east it was Zionist provocations, such as the bombing
of Jewish cafes in Baghdad that helped to drive Arab Jews out
of their native countries into Israel.
2. Non-Jewish Zionism has an old pedigree
and permeates European culture. It dates back to the birth of
Christian fundamentalist sects of the 16th and 17th centuries
who took the Old Testament literally. They included Oliver Cromwell
and John Milton. Later, for other reasons, Rousseau, Locke and
Pascal joined the Zionist bandwagon. And then for vile reasons
the Third Reich, too, supported a Jewish homeland. The introduction
to the Nuremburg Laws of 15 September 1935 state:
"If the Jews had a state of their
own in which the bulk of the people were at home, the Jewish
question could already be considered solved today, even for the
Jews themselves. The ardent Zionists of all people have objected
least to the basic ideas of the Nuremberg Laws, because they
know that these laws are the only correct solution for the Jewish
people."
Many years later, Haim Cohen, a former judge of the Supreme Court
of Israel stated:
"The bitter irony of fate decreed
that the same biological and racist argument extended by the
Nazis, and which inspired the inflammatory laws of Nuremberg,
serve as the basis for the official definition of Jewishness
in the bosom of the state of Israel" (quoted in Joseph Badi,
Fundamental Laws of the State of Israel NY, 1960, P.156)
And Zionist leaders often negotiated
with anti-semites to attain their objectives: Theodor Herzl talked
openly with Von Plehve, the chief organiser of pogroms in Tsarist
Russia; Jabotinsky collaborated with Petlura the Ukrainian hangman
of the Jews; 'revisionist' Zionists were friendly with Mussolini
and Pilsudski; the Haavara agreements between the Zionists organisations
and the Third Reich agreed the evacuation of German-Jewish property.
Modern zionism is the ideology of secular
Jewish nationalism. It has little to do with Judaism as a religion
and many orthodox Jews to this day have remained hostile to Zionism,
like the Hassidic sect which joined a Palestinian march in Washington
in April 2002 carrying placards which said: "ZIONISM SUCKS"
and "SHARON: PALESTINIAN BLOOD IS NOT WATER". Zionism
was born in the 19th Century as a direct response to the vicious
anti-semitism that pervaded Austria. The first Jewish immigrants
to Palestine arrived in 1882 and many of them were interested
only in maintaining a cultural presence. There is no such thing
as the 'historical rights' of Jews to Palestine. This grotesque
myth (already in the 17th century, Baruch Spinoza referred to
the old testament as ' a collection of fairy-tales', denounced
the prophets and was excommunicated by the Amsterdam synagogue
as a result) ignores real history. Long before the Roman conquest
of Judea in 70 AD, a large majority of the Jewish population
lived outside Palestine. The native Jews were gradually assimilated
into neighbouring groups such as the Phoenicians, Philistines,
etc. Palestinians are, in most cases, descended from the old
Hebrew tribes and genetic science has recently confirmed this,
much to the annoyance of Zionists.
Israel was created in 1948 by the British
Empire and sustained by its American successor. It was a European
settler-state. Its early leaders proclaimed the myth of a 'A
Land without People for a People without Land', thus denying
the presence of the Palestinians. Four weeks ago the Zionist
historian Benny Morris in a chilling interview with Haaretz (reprinted
as a document in English in the New Left Review, Mar/Apr 2004)admitted
the whole truth. 700,000 Palestinians had been driven out of
their villages by the Zionist army in 1948. There were numerous
incidents of rape, etc. He described it accurately as 'ethnic
cleansing' not genocide and went on to defend ethnic cleansing
if carried out by a superior civilization, comparing it to the
killing of native Americans by the European settlers in North
America. That too, for Morris, was justified. Anti-semites and
Zionists shared one thing in common: the view that Jews were
a special race that could not be integrated in European societies
and needed its own large ghetto or homeland. The fact that this
is false is proved by the realities of today. The majority of
the world's Jews do not live in Israel, but in Western Europe
and North America.
3. Anti-Zionism was a struggle that began
against the Zionist colonisation project and intellectuals of
Jewish origin played an important part in this campaign and do
so to this day inside Israel itself. Most of my knowledge of
Zionism and anti-Zionism comes from the writings and speeches
of anti-Zionist jews: Akiva Orr, Moshe Machover,Haim Hanegbi,
Isaac Deutscher, Ygael Gluckstein (Tony Cliff), Ernest Mandel,
Maxime Rodinson, Nathan Weinstock, to name but a few. They argued
that Zionism and the structures of the Jewish state offered no
real future to the Jewish people settled in Israel. All they
offered was infinite war. After 1967, there was a revival of
the Palestinian national movement and many different groups arose,
most of whom were careful to distinguish between anti-Zionism
and anti-semitism. Nonetheless the role played by Israel undoubtedly
fuelled popular anti-semitism in the Arab world. But these are
not old roots and a sovereign Palestinian homeland or a democrat
single state would soon bring this to an end. Historically, there
have been very few clashes between Jews and Muslims in the Arab
Empires.
4. The campaign against the supposed
new 'anti-semitism' in Europe today is basicly a cynical ploy
on the part of the Israeli Government to seal off the Zionist
state from any criticism of its regular and consistent brutality
against the Palestinians. The daily hits carried out by the IDF
have wrecked the towns and villages of Palestine, killed thousands
of civilians (especially children) and European citizens are
aware of this fact. Criticism of Israel can not and should not
be equated with anti-semitism. The fact is that Israel is not
a weak, defenceless state. It is the strongest state in the region.
It possesses real, not imaginary, weapons of mass destruction.
It possesses more tanks and bomber jets and pilots than the rest
of the Arab world put together. To say that the Zionist state
is threatened by any Arab country is pure demagogy. It is Israel
that creates the conditions, which produce suicide bombers. Even
a few staunch Zionists are beginning to realise that this is
a fact.. That is why we know that as long as Palestine remains
oppressed there will be no peace in the region.
5. The daily suffering of the Palestinians
does not excite the liberal conscience of Europe, guilt-ridden
(and for good reason) by its past inability to defend the Jews
of central Europe against extinction. But the judeocide should
not be used as a cover to commit crimes against the Palestinian
people. European and American voices should be heard loud and
clear on this question. To be intimidated by Zionist blackmail
is to become an accomplice of war-crimes.
Originally published in il
manifesto. 26 Febbraio 2004.
Tariq Ali's
latest book, Bush
in Babylon: The Re-colonisation of Iraq, is published by
Verso. He can be reached at: tariq.ali3@btinternet.com
Weekend
Edition Features for February 28 / 29, 2004
Stephen Green
Serving
Two Flags: Neo-Cons, Israel and the Bush Team
Gary Leupp
Another Senseless Bush Battle: Defining and Protecting Marriage
William A. Cook
Israel:
America's Albatross
Ron Jacobs
Kucinich: Good Fight; Wrong Battlefield
Ben Tripp
A Nosegay of Posies: Queer Weddings at Last!
Leilla Matsui
Dances with Crucifixes
Mike Whitney
Dismantle
the Military Goliath
Yoel Marcus
Down and Out in the Hague
Uri Avnery
The Dancing Bear
Linda S. Heard
Britons and Americans Condemned to a Hobson's Choice
Al Krebs
Unmasking a Secret American Empire: Land, Water & Cotton
Stan Cox
Life (Pat. Pend.): Genetic Commandeering
JG
The Haiti Boomerang: "After The Looting & Pillaging,
Your Hunger Will Remain"
Rick Giombetti
Censorship at the Seattle P-I on Forced Psychiatry
Keith Hoeller
The Bankruptcy of Mental Health Insurance Parity
Dave Zirin
Colorado Football: Buffalo Swill
NADERAMA
Alan Maass
Nader and the Politics of Lesser
Evils
Michael Donnelly
Regime
Rotation: Anybody But Bush...Again?
Niranjan Ramakrishnan
Exeunt Serenaders; Enter Nader
Doug Giebel
So Nader's Running? Get Over It
Bruce Jackson
An Open Letter to Naderites
CounterPunch Wire
Stalinists for Kerry! and Other Roars from the Crowd
Poets' Basement
Davies, Scarr, Kearney & Albert
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