Tikun Olam-תקון עולם: Make the World a Better Place

I just noticed this Google ad at the NYTimes.com site. Talk about ambulance chasers! The Dallas-based law firm, Sayles Werbner is trolling the internet looking for Israeli victims of terror. How low can you go?? Can you imagine a law firm after 9/11 doing the same looking for victims’ families willing to sue on behalf of their loved ones?

I should make clear that I don’t deny anyone the right to their day in court if they think they deserve one. But doing so in this way strikes me as beneath contempt.

I reviewed the firm’s case and evidence and it is dubious at best. They claim that Arab Bank funneled money to support Palestinian victims of the Israeli Occupation and families of dead militants. Of course, they gussy it up by adding lots of incendiary rhetoric about the Bank supporting terrorist organizations in order to make it appear that it actually provides financing to actual terrorist acts which it doesn’t. But that’s far too much nuance for the Google ad-ambulance chasers at Sayles Werbner.

I ask you to put the shoe on the other foot: if this were 1948 and the Haganah and Irgun were resisting the British Mandate and defending Israeli territory against Arab attack would you denounce an Israeli bank for providing financial support to Israeli victims of British or Arab military attack or the families of Israeli Jews who died engaging in attacks against Israel’s enemies?

Don’t get me wrong. I don’t support Palestinian terror. I wouldn’t give a dime to support a shahid or a shahid’s family. The way I support Israeli and Palestinian victims of terror is through Parent’s Circle. But to deny a Palestinian the right to support their own seems hypocritical at best.

tags google-ads-solicit-israeli-victims-of-palestinian-terro, sayles-werbner-lawsuit-against-arab-bank

Writing this blog, especially when I first began in 2003 was an often lonely venture. I knew what I wanted to say. But I didn’t know who was reading and how to encourage more people to read it. I didn’t know whether I was having any impact on anything or anyone; though I’d come to the realization that while this mattered a lot, it was secondary to my burning need to say what I had to say about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

So I began to develop an idea to create an online forum that would allow progressives to discuss the conflict in what I hoped would be a supportive community environment. I pitched this idea to Brit Tzedek as an organizational project for its members. They weren’t interested. I thought that was a mistake, but hey it’s not my organization and they have to decide what their priorities are.

In talking about this with online blogging friends I discovered that Andrew Schamess of Semitism.net shared my vision. So we began developing Israel Palestine Forum. Originally, I conceived of the site as both a blog aggregator for Israel-Palestine peace blogs, an archive of important news and commentary about the conflict, and a discussion forum. Andrew, being an MD, had to drop out of the project for lack of time but I carried on.

After devoting hundreds of hours to the project, I decided that it was perhaps too ambitious and too complicated for people to get their minds around. It just didn’t have a threshold of support or interest in the online community. I worked hard as well at the discussion forum. But initially the debate was extremely contentious between anti-Zionists and a few right-wing pro-Israel types and I felt caught in the middle. It got to the point where I was thankful when a few particular members either lost interest or decided to move elsewhere. I knew my feelings of relief weren’t a generally good sign. I didn’t seem able to recruit the right people who would create the right balance of discussion, debate and sharing. So I basically let the discussion forum run itself and left it to its own devices. Until last week.

For the past year or so I’ve been contributing to Democratic Underground, which has one of the most active Israel-Palestine discussion forums. I see participating there as a good way both to inform the site’s members about my views of the conflict and to enable members to become more aware of my blogs.

Then Violet Crumble, an active DU member, wrote me an e-mail asking what I thought of the idea of creating a progressive Israel-Palestine discussion forum. She felt frustrated with the level of vitriol in the debate directed at progressives there by the right-wing participants.

I replied: “Don’t re-invent the wheel, take my site.” We decided to jointly operate the forum and try to revive interest in it. So if you haven’t ever visited Israel Palestine Forum’s discussion board please do. Please consider joining. And if you ever did visit but didn’t join consider doing so now. If after visiting you have any thoughts about either the conflict or what your vision of the forum could be please share that either on the boards or directly with me. Violet and I welcome your participation.

Personally, I am a progressive Zionist who supports a two state solution. But there is no litmus test defining who is welcome to join the site. But generally we’re looking for people who embrace the notion that there are two legitimate sides to this conflict and that the national rights and needs of both sides must be guaranteed and recognized. We’re especially looking for progressive Palestinians, Arabs and Israeli Jews to join us to represent their personal experience on the boards. We’re definitely not looking for people who believe that the fault for the conflict lies completely on one side or the other. And we’re not looking for people who have a dogged need to persuade us of the fact that their side is wholly right and the other wholly wrong.

And since there are alas right-wing trolls who seem to read this blog religiously, I warn them that we will moderate the blog intensively. Trolls will be banned.

tags israeli-palestine-forum, mideast-peace-discussion-group

This story gets curiouser and curiouser. Based on a Jerusalem Post article, I wrote yesterday that Peace Now UK managed to get Norman Finkelstein banned from an Oxford Union debate in which he was to represent the side favoring a two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. It just goes to show that you should never believe anything from the Jerusalem Post until positively confirmed by other sources. It appears the Post, in this article, was attempting to credit Peace Now UK with Finkelstein’s removal when the real culprit was somewhere else.

Today, Jerry Haber pointed me to a comment by Peter Tatchell (scroll most of the way down the page) at Harry’s Place. He was meant to debate alongside Finkelstein. This throws an entirely new light on the matter and supports charges originally levelled against Dershowitz in a Guardian Comment is Free post:

This is the inside story about the Oxford Union debate from people involved in the Oxford Union, as relayed to me and rechecked by me…

I am told by the Oxford Union that the original line-up opposing the motion was Alan Dershowitz, Lord Trimble and myself.

Despite our different perspectives, we were ALL opposed to the idea that one-state is the ONLY solution. We ALL supported the idea of a two-state solution.

This would have made for a very illuminating, complex and sophisticated debate – avoiding the usual clichés.

I am told that Alan Dershowitz refused to participate unless he could write the motion and choose the speakers. If this is true, it sounds like he was trying to rig the debate.

The Oxford Union could not accept such terms. So Alan Dershowitz pulled out of the debate. He was replaced by Norman Finkelstein. Alan went beserk and attacked the Oxford Union for inviting Norman. This is a bit rich. Norman would not have been invited if Alan had not pulled out.

Under pressure from Dershowitz and pro-Israelis, the Oxford Union say they dropped Norman from the line up and replaced him with a pro-Israel speaker.

Alan and others seem to have misread the debate as a debate about Israel, when it was about a one-state versus a two-state solution. It is quite possible for pro-Israelis to support either side. A right-wing ultra Israeli could favour a one-state solution based on Israel’s control of the whole region. A left-wing (or right-wing) Israeli could favour two-states as the most likely path to peace and security.

…This debate was NOT about the pros or cons of Israeli or Palestinian policy. That debate has been done to death.

The Oxford Union has assured me that there will be a new Israel-Palestine debate in the New Year. The original supporters of the motion, such as Ghada Karmi, will be reinvited. To oppose the motion, the invitees will be Alan Dershowitz, Norman Finkelstein, Lord Trimble and myself.

Now this WILL be a very interesting, positive debate. To have Alan and Norman on the same side, both arguing for a two-state solution, is exactly the kind of breaking down of enmities, barriers and fixed positions that we need, in order to work towards a solution to the Israel-Palestine conflict.

I hope Alan will accept the invitation and contribute to the debate.

PS: This is what I have been told by insiders at the Oxford Union. I cannot say for certain that it is the truth but I have no reason to doubt that they have given me a truthful account.

If the Oxford Union does hold true to its word and reinvite Finkelstein then I will withdraw my negative comments about them. We’ll have to see whether that happens. But the following makes me doubt the Union’s sincerity unless the president has had a change of heart.

And Jerry again comes up with the goods in this e mail he published at his blog from the Oxford Union president to Finkelstein explaining why he felt compelled to rescind the invitation:

“Many people expressed concern that the debate as it stood was imbalanced and people felt that as someone who had apparently expressed anti-zionist sentiments that you might not be appropriate for this debate. I tried to convince them otherwise but was accused of putting forward an imbalanced debate and various groups put pressure on me. I received numerous emails attacking the debate and Alan Dershowitz threatened to write an Oped attacking the Union. What is more he apparently attacked me personally in a televised lecture to Yale.

“I hope that you understand my position, this is not ideal and I would be happy to welcome you as an individual speaker to the Union in a forthcoming term. I know that the President-Elect Emily Partington would be keen to host you in Hilary. I just did not want to see the debate compromised and given the Irving Griffin Controversy I couldn’t fight a battle on all fronts.”

So Alan Dershowitz is the not-so-hidden hand behind this brouhaha and he’s mugged Norman Finkelstein yet again. But just as when he succeeded in persuading DePaul to can Finkelstein, in doing so he made himself look like an ass and Finkelstein the victim.

It is indeed delicious to read Dershowitz’s attack on the Oxford Union from Frontpagemagazine as featured at Finkelstein’s site. For every lie Dershowitz levels at him, Finkelstein provides a link that disproves it or shows Dershowitz’s utter hypocrisy. Read the text and follow the links as Finkelstein demolishes him through the fine web art of cross-linking–it’s very entertaining. And by the way, next time someone tries to tell you the Jerusalem Post is not a right-wing shmate just ask them why they republish (or should I say, regurgitate) garbage like this from Frontpagemagazine.

The same Harry’s Place comment thread provides confirmation for Jerry’s contention that Finkelstein IS a supporter of a two-state solution:

The following is a rough trancript of his Sept. 4, 2003 debate with Dershowitz on Democracy Now:

Norman Finkelstein: Mr. Dershowitz then throws in another lie. He says oh, Finkelstein, he’s an extremist, he doesn’t support the two-state settlement.

My entire adult life I’ve been involved in the Israel-Palestine conflict. I started publishing on the topic in 1984. I wrote my doctoral dissertation on the topic in 1988. I lecture about 2-3 times a week on the topic. I’d like you to show me a statement where I say I don’t support the two-state settlement. You said I don’t support a two-state settlement, can you provide the evidence to that?

You can see this at 2:00 in the first video at this link

What this entire debate has taught me is that you can consider yourself opposed to the notion of a Jewish State (in other words, anti-Zionist) while still supporting the two state position as the most pragmatic and viable considering the political circumstances in which almost all Israelis would never accept a solution involving a single state. This is a notion that’s far too nuanced for the Alan Dershowitz’s brittle brain.

To my queries of Peace Now UK about their participation in this imbroglio, I received these churlish non-responses from co-chair Paul Usiskin:

As I have no idea who you are, I am not prepared to simply blindly respond, particularly to someone who claimes to be a progressive Zionist, but who at the same time appears to be perfectly willing to accept carte blanche what the Jerusalem Post would say about the Oxford Union debate, or anything else for that matter…

You haven’t given me the courtesy of revealing your identity [ed., this despite the fact that all my e-mails were clearly marked with my first and last name as sender] As I still have no idea who you are, what you write and what you think, but sense someone ready to jump to instant and outrageous conclusions…I don’t think I’ll go any further with this…

How low can Peace Now go, really?

tags dershowitz-attacks, finkelstein-oxford-debate-invitation-cancelled, finkelstein-supports-two-state-solution, Oxford-Union-Is-Dead-frontpagemagazine

FEMA must’ve been watching a little too much Jon Stewart and Steven Colbert and the fake news concept must’ve appealed to them a little too much:

The Federal Emergency Management Agency staged a fake news conference this week, with agency staff officials, pretending to be reporters, peppering one of their own bosses with decidedly friendly questions about the response to the California fires, the Department of Homeland Security acknowledged Friday.

The action, first reported on Friday in The Washington Post, drew a rebuke from the White House and Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff, and an apology from the agency official who was at the lectern, Harvey E. Johnson, the deputy director.

“We have made it clear that such a stunt will never be tolerated or repeated,” a spokeswoman for the department, Laura C. Keehner, said on behalf of Mr. Chertoff.

I’d have thought poor Mr. Johnson would’ve been out the door if there was any such thing as accountability; especially after the sorry-assed performance of Michael ‘Brownie’ Brown during Katrina. Does FEMA need more of this clownishness?

I can’t wait to see what Stewart and Colbert will do with this story. It’s simply TOO delicious. Kinda like what they call in baseball a ‘hanging curve’ just waiting to be belted out of the park. Sadly, No could do a good job with it too.

tags fema-stages-fake-press-conference

The Boston Globe is the latest mainstream media source to be taken in by the CAMERA-David Project-Campus Watch propaganda machine. They’ve allowed Dexter Van Zile, CAMERA “Christian media analyst” (what exactly does this mean?) to accuse SABEEL of in effect hanging nooses around the necks of Jews via the group’s alleged anti-Israel positions.

First, a word about SABEEL: it is the leading Palestinian Christian anti-Occupation organization. Its leader, Naim Ateek, is a close friend and ally of Archbishop Desmond Tutu, who had spoken controversially at several SABEEL national conferences. SABEEL stands for non-violent resistance to the Occupation and a two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. To be candid, I would say that SABEEL does not embrace a two-state solution because it thinks this is the most moral position available. But rather it accepts this position because it seems the most viable and pragmatic given the circumstances (that neither Israel nor Israelis would accept any other resolution).

To get the true hysteria of Van Zile’s diatribe, read how he likens SABEEL’s views on Israel to the recent hanging noose incidents in Louisiana and at Columbia University’s Teacher’s College:

IF A church in Boston announced that it was renting space to a self-described peace group whose leader hung nooses from trees in former slave-holding states, the interfaith community would be outraged, the church would be condemned, and the wisdom of its pastor and governing council would be called into question, with good reason.

Any organization led by someone who would display an image with such a bloody and violent history would immediately be repudiated by people of good will. Virtually everyone knows that a noose hanging from a tree is a prelude to a lynching. Its display is a vile act intended to intimidate African-Americans and other minorities into submission. It is a vestige of the Old South that has been discarded by all but the irredeemably racist.

Now, go and read the entire column and tell me where he remotely proves that SABEEL holds such racist views of either Jews or Israel. In fact, you won’t find more than a few words actually quoted from SABEEL in the entire piece. So how does Van Zile have the audacity to make such a preposterous claim and how does the Globe justifying printing such meretricious nonsense?

Here is Van Zile’s second outrageous trope–SABEEL allegedly sees Israelis as “Christ-killers:”

the leader of the group in question - the Rev. Dr. Naim Ateek, founder of Sabeel Ecumenical Liberation Theology Center - invoked the anti-Semitic trope of Jews as Christ-killers during the second intifada, when Palestinian suicide bombers were murdering citizens of Israel…

The portrayal of Jews as Christ-killers has contributed to untold violence and hostility toward the Jewish people, but for some reason, Old South Church is allowing Sabeel and Ateek, an Anglican priest from Jerusalem, the use of its worship space…

For example, his 2000 Christmas message portrayed Israeli officials as Herod, who, according to the Christian gospel, murdered all the infants of Bethlehem in an attempt to kill the infant Jesus.

Again, where is the evidence? Not here, certainly. Ateek did NOT “portray Israeli officials as Herod” nor did he claim they “murder infants in Bethlehem.” In truth, SABEEL is quoted (in Wikipedia, and again through the veil of Van Zile’s truncated quotations of what he claims as SABEEL-Ateek statements–I would be grateful if a reader could find the original SABEEL sources for these elided quotations) as likening the Occupation to a Palestinian crucifixion:

“In this season of Lent, it seems to many of us that Jesus is on the cross again with thousands of crucified Palestinians around Him …The Israeli government crucifixion system is operating daily.” Similarly, in a February 2001 sermon, Ateek likened the occupation to the “stone placed on the entrance of Jesus’ tomb. … This boulder has shut in the Palestinians within and built structures of domination to keep them in. We have a name for this boulder. It is called the occupation.”

Thanks to Rick Charnes for finding the original source at the SABEEL site:

As we approach Holy Week and Easter, the suffering of Jesus Christ at the hands of evil political and religious powers two thousand years ago is lived out again in Palestine. The number of innocent Palestinians and Israelis that have fallen victim to Israeli state policy is increasing.

Here in Palestine Jesus is again walking the via dolorosa. Jesus is the powerless Palestinian humiliated at a checkpoint, the woman trying to get through to the hospital for treatment, the young man whose dignity is trampled, the young student who cannot get to the university to study, the unemployed father who needs to find bread to feed his family; the list is tragically getting longer, and Jesus is there in their midst suffering with them. He is with them when their homes are shelled by tanks and helicopter gunships. He is with them in their towns and villages, in their pains and sorrows.

In this season of Lent, it seems to many of us that Jesus is on the cross again with thousands of crucified Palestinians around him. It only takes people of insight to see the hundreds of thousands of crosses throughout the land, Palestinian men, women, and children being crucified. Palestine has become one huge golgotha. The Israeli government crucifixion system is operating daily. Palestine has become the place of the skull.

…Four things are clear today. Jerusalem still does not know what makes for peace; Jesus is weeping and his tears are mixed with many other people’s tears; the number of people who are carrying their crosses is multiplying phenomenally; and the women of Palestine as well as many Jewish women are weeping over the many killed and wounded innocents. This is the reality of life today.

In the midst of this hopeless and confusing situation, inundated with injustice and death, we refuse to give in to despair. We want to affirm the power of resurrection and life…The day will come, and we pray soon, when joy will replace grief, trust will remove fear, justice will triumph over oppression, and reconciliation will supplant alienation…We will, therefore, continue in our struggle against the evil structures that dominate and oppress. Our hope is in God. The resurrection is coming, and it will bring with it the promise of a new life and liberation for all the people of our land.

Nary a mention of “Christ-killers.”

Returning to Van Zile’s journalistic travesty, here again he does violence to the truth:

With these…images, Ateek has figuratively blamed Israel for the attempted murder of the infant Jesus, the crucifixion of Jesus the prophet, and for blocking the resurrection of Christ the Savior

Notice he says “Ateek has FIGURATIVELY blamed Israel.” That word is important. He cannot claim that Ateek actually made such a claim because he didn’t. So he uses the vague and essentially meaningless term “figuratively.”

It is a characteristic tactic of the Frontpagemagazine-CAMPUS Watch-CAMERA crowd to take a truncated version of a statement you DID make and claim that you made a much larger, more damning statement–but which you haven’t made at all. In this case, they’ve INFERRED from Ateek’s statement that the Occupation is a crucifixion that Israelis must be Herod and the Roman crucifiers of Jesus. But there is a difference between inference and explicit reference. Neither Van Zile nor anyone else has ever quoted Ateek as saying that Israelis ARE Herod or Christ-killers. The message simply isn’t there. But that doesn’t stop the Van Ziles of the world in their sacred vocation of protecting Israel from the so-called demonizers like SABEEL.

Here is the clincher-whopper paragraph:

In the context of Christian-Jewish relations, language like this - which has preceded and justified the killing of Jews for nearly two millennia - is the equivalent of a noose hanging from a tree in the Old South. Its use during a time of violence can only serve to justify continued violence against Israeli civilians. Sadly, Ateek’s defenders have said that he is merely using the “language of the cross” to describe Palestinian suffering, but in fact, he is describing Israeli behavior.

So in effect, Ateek has exhorted Arabs to kill Jews because of “figurative” statements which he never actually made. It’s a beautiful sort of twisted, fantastical logic like something out of Goebbels, 1984 or Alice in Wonderland (take your pick). There is no ‘noose.’ There is no ‘tree.’ There is no ‘Old South.’ There is no ‘Christ-killer’ in SABEEL’s writings. There is only the fevered imagination of a poor sot who thinks he’s doing the Lord’s work when he’s really doing the devil’s.

There is a small problem with this method. If in your zeal to do right by Israel you do violence to truth and fact you have done Israel no service at all. In fact, you’ve harmed not only your own reputation, but Israel’s. Not to mention the harm you do to worthy individuals like Tutu and Ateek who, while controversial, have done nothing to warrant the smears mounted against them.

Thanks to reader Rick Charnes of the Boston Tikkun Community for alerting me to this story.

tags campus-watch, david-project-smear-against-naim-ateek, Hate-at-the-altar, israelis-as-alleged-christ-killer, palestinian-christians-opposed-to-occupation, van-zile-smear-attack-on-naim-ateek-sabeel

Every so often a group you thought was a political ally does something so bone-headed you half wonder who's side they think they're on. Peace Now UK is such a group. Their co-chair, one Paul Usiskin, got wind of an Oxford Union debate that was to feature Avi Shlaim and Ilan Pappe supporting the proposition that a one-state solution was the only fair way to resolve the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Pappe and Shlaim had arranged for Norman Finkelstein and David Trimble (former Northern Ireland first minister), to argue the contrary position, that the two-state solution was the only proper way to resolve the conflict. Usiskin began complaining to the Oxford Union that Finkelstein was an enemy of ...

Don't get me wrong. He NYT IS the newspaper of record so it's great that they've outed Giuliani's neocon pro-Israel stack of Mideast policy advisers including Daniel Pipes and Norman "WWIV" Podhoretz. It's a great story. But why didn't they note that Ken Silverstein at Harper's has been reporting the story for months (as have I, but Ken was there first)? In fact, Ken's first story came out on August 27th in which he reported that Giuliani's team of advisers included Podhoretz, Martin Kramer and Charles Hill. He also published a subsequent story about Pipes joining the team and another about Pipes' support for the war crimes notion of razing entire ...

One of my informants provides the welcome news that Masada2000 is down once again. And it couldn't have happened to a more deserving hate site. Unfortunately, I can't tell whether his web host or his domain registrar took him down. Two rabbis in a tub: M2K's homophobic attack on Michael Lerner and Zalman Schachter, who ordained him Doing some research the other day, I discovered that the site owner actually threatened and harassed Michael Lerner according to In These Times: In May [2001]...Masada2000 listed Lerner as one of "the five most dangerous Jewish enemies of the Jewish people," and posted detailed driving directions to his home address. Draped in ...

The Justice Department lost another major terror trial today when a federal jury refused to convict any of the five Holy Land Foundation defendants charged by the government with promoting terror by raising funds to support Hamas social service projects: The decision today is “a stunning setback for the government, there’s no other way of looking at it,” said Matthew D. Orwig, a partner at Sonnenschein Nath & Rosenthal here who was, until recently, United States Attorney for the Eastern District of Texas. “This is a message, a two-by-four in the middle of the forehead,” Mr. Orwig said. “If this doesn’t get their attention, they are just in complete denial,” he said of Justice Department officials, whom he said ...

I'm all for the underdog including in the realm of technology, and especially if they have a better mousetrap. That's why I was an early adopter of Firefox over IE. It's why I like the Open Content Alliance's attempt, reported in Libraries Shun Deals to Place Books on Web, to open up the process of digitizing the world's library collections: Several major research libraries have rebuffed offers from Google and Microsoft to scan their books into computer databases, saying they are put off by restrictions these companies want to place on the new digital collections. The research libraries, including a large consortium in the Boston ...