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Bibi’s Speech a Non-Starter

Sunday, June 14th, 2009

Bibi’s slightly-anticipated speech to the Israeli public in response to Obama’s Cairo speech surprised in a few minor ways. But it didn’t surprise much overall and ended up being essentially a non-starter. The biggest news is that Bibi has finally managed to utter the T-word: two-state solution. But that’s with so many caveats that the concept becomes virtually meaningless.

The problem isn’t the demand that it be demilitarized. That’s probably workable as long as their are international monitors to protect Palestinian borders. The real problem is Bibi’s foolhardy demand that Jerusalem remain “undivided.” So where would you put the capital of a putative Palestinian state? In Ramallah? Please. Would Bibi agree to housing Israel’s capital in Ashdod or Pardes Hana?

The other non-starter in the speech was his clinging to the notion of “natural growth” being permitted in the settlements. That, of course, leaves a hole big enough for a Mack truck to drive through. Since 1993 there has been a virtual settlement freeze throughout the West Bank and yet population has grown from 111,000 just after Oslo to nearly 300,000 now (and that’s excluding Jerusalem which contains about another 100,000 over the Green line Jewish residents).

Netanyahu also laid down a marker for future negotiations in which he put the U.S. on notice that he would reject any demand for settlement withdrawals:

Israel would not accept any situation in which it was forced to exist beside a terrorist state. Every withdrawal from settlement territories would contribute to such terror, said Netanyahu.

Yet another non-starter demand is that the Palestinians essentially sing Hatikvah on bended knee:

The prime minister also said that Palestinians must accept Israel as a Jewish state, and cited the root of the regional conflict to “even moderate” Palestinian elements’ refusal to do so.

“When Palestinians are ready to recognize Israel as a Jewish state, we will be ready for a true final settlement,” the prime minister said.

We should remember that no such demands were made of the PLO before the two sides negotiated & recognized each other. So Bibi’s new condition is nothing more than a wrench introduced into the works to wreck the plumbing of a potential agreement.

Bibi also rejected the Right of Return, even the mild formulation of it offered in the Geneva Accords:

He emphasized that the Jewish people have been linked to the land of Israel for over 3,000 years and ruled out the option of granting Palestinians refugees the right to settle within Israeli borders.

Someone will have to explain to me why a Jewish link to the land of Israel precludes an Arab link to it as well. Clearly, one doesn’t negate the other except in the mind of Jewish/Israeli nationalist/rightists.

And Hamas? Fuhgedabodit:

Netanyahu said that Israel would not negotiate with terrorist who wish to destroy it, and said that Palestinians must choose between path of peace and Hamas.

What’s also laughable here is this statement from Bibi:

“I call on you, our Palestinian neighbors, and to the leadership of the Palestinian Authority: Let us begin peace negotiations immediately, without preconditions.”

So what preconditions HAS he demanded? Undivided Jerusalem, natural settlement growth, recognition of the Jewish state, no to Hamas, no to Right of Return. If that’s what he calls “without preconditions” then what would he call conditioned negotiations?

Some of my readers might argue that he was calling for negotiations at which these issues could be discussed. Well, what use would that be. He’s said that these are non-negotiable. That’s what I call a precondition.

This speech was literally a no-brainer and a non-starter.

Tags: bibi netanyahu, jewish-state
Posted in Mideast Peace, Politics & Society | 29 Comments »

Iran’s Presidential Farce: ‘Death to the Dictator’

Sunday, June 14th, 2009

Mahmoud Ahmadinejad was already the laughingstock of much of the world with his farcical denial of the Holocaust and his statements urging that Israel disappear from history. His domestic policies were basically voodoo economics enabled by a big assist from a glut of petro-dollars based on astronomically high oil prices.

But at least Ahmadinejad could claim one thing, he was more or less democratically elected president. He can no longer even make this claim. In an election so patently fraudulent it would put Richard Daley and Boss Tweed to shame, the national election commission announced barely two hours after polls closed not only who the winner was, but by what percentage he won. And when they announced the final results earlier today the margin of victory was virtually the same as it had been two hours after polls closed. How’s that for neat and tidy?

If we can believe government claims, the reformist candidate, Hossein Moussavi, who had hosted massive election rallies for days leading up to the election, and who was enjoying a terrific spike in popularity due to Ahamdinejad’s hysterical performance in television debates, sputtered to barely 34% of the vote. Ahmadinejad won even in his opponent’s hometowns for Pete’s sake! Here is what one Iranian wrote on the FiveThirtyEight website (as reported in the Lede) about this:

How could it have been possible for Moussavi to lose Tabriz (his hometown) when he is from Iranian Azerbaijan and Ahmadinejad has abysmal approval ratings amongst Turkic speaking Iranians?

It simply beggars belief.

I was prepared to write a post that held out hope that Iran might experience a People Power type upsurge a la the Philippines. But the Times coverage indicates that the Grand Ayatollah has released a statement calling the election a fait accompli. Apparently, within the current Iranian system this is like our Supreme Court declaring George Bush the victor in 2000. There is simply no recourse and no appeal.

A Daily Kos blogger, quoting an Iranian Farsi-language blog reports that Moussavi has been placed under house arrest (the site seems to be blocked as of this writing) and Hashemi Rafsanjani, a former president and implacable foe of Ahmadinejad, has resigned his seat on the Expediency Council, which validates presidential elections. An Iranian-American blog features this plaintive call for help from a Moussavi supporter in Teheran:

“I am in Tehran. Its 3:40 in the morning. I’ve connected with you [by hacking past the government filter]. It’s a big mess here. People are yelling from their houses – ‘death to the dictator.’ They are setting up a military government. No one dares to go out. No one has seen Mousavi today. Rumor has it that they have arrested him.

What next? We simply do not know what will happen in Iran. Perhaps Moussavi will fight. Perhaps a coherent opposition will rise up to combat this outrage. Gary Sick presents these two possibilities:

The Iranian opposition, which includes some very powerful individuals and institutions, has an agonizing decision to make. If they are intimidated and silenced by the show of force (as they have been in the past), they will lose all credibility in the future with even their most devoted followers. But if they choose to confront their ruthless colleagues forcefully, not only is it likely to be messy but it could risk running out of control and potentially bring down the entire existing power structure, of which they are participants and beneficiaries.

If Ahmadinejad’s “victory” stands, the hardliners have just given the nation’s enemies precisely what they wanted: a sham Ahmadinejad victory offers them a tool with which to beat Iran on the world stage.

Israel has to be delighted with this outcome. One of the techniques of suppression which it learned from imperial Britain is divide and conquer. But Israel has taken things one step better by devising ways to demoralize and defang its opponents. A bitter, divided Iran led by a deranged authoritarian ruler who retained power through a virtual coup d’etat couldn’t fit Israel’s desired scenario better.

But not many other nations will be so delighted to dance on the grave of Iranian democracy. The Obama administration has to be incredibly disheartened especially after the tremendous strides made in the Arab world via his Cairo speech. Clearly, one of the next steps on Obama’s agenda would’ve been a serious appeal for negotiations with the Iranian regime. Now, such negotiations are either impossible or will be nothing but a joke.

This in turn may mean that Obama’s pressure on Israel to end settlements and negotiate toward creating an independent Palestinian state will be harder to sustain. Since such pressure was predicated on a sort of grand bargain that included resolving the Iranian nuclear stalemate in return for a Palestinian state, this scenario begins to seem far-fetched. It will mean that Obama will quickly have to delink the two if there is ever to be progress on the Israeli-Palestinian track.

But one thing Obama and Congressional leaders MUST DO: they must back off the draconian legislative proposals to tighten the screws on Iran unless it abandons nuclear research. Such U.S. legislation, strongly backed by Israel and her Congressional allies, will serve no purpose but to legitimate the illegitimate in the eyes of Iranians themselves.

We must let Iranians sort out this mess. To intervene as the neocons and their friends in Israeli intelligence and the diplomatic corps would have us do through punishing Iran in Congress, is simply nuts. If we want to get rid of Ahmadinejad or Iranian nukes, this will not be the way to do it. This will be the way to rouse Iran against us (and Israel) for the next generation.

This is apparently the path that Bibi Netanyahu has chosen for himself and Israel. He wants war with Iran. He plans to take another step down that path tomorrow when he speaks to the Israeli people about his “vision” (such as it is) for peace with the Palestinian people. Well, at least that was supposed to be his agenda until he started reading the same headlines we’re reading. Then the theme of the speech quickly pivoted to Iran.

Would I be wrong if I suspected that Iran is the gift that keeps on giving as far as Israeli rightists are concerned? Got a problem with an American president kicking you in the shins over restless Palestinian natives? What better way to change the subject than to shrei to the world about the “Iranian menace?” What better way to change the channel as far as Israelis themselves are concerned? When there appears to be an Iranian bogeyman over the horizon holding a nuke aloft and threatening to rain it down on you, who has time to worry about Palestinians? After all, what did they ever do for us (Israelis, that is)?

Tags: iran
Posted in Mideast Peace | 13 Comments »

U.S. Envoy Calls Bibi’s Speech ‘Inadequate’ Before He Delivers It

Saturday, June 13th, 2009

Man, George Mitchell is all over Bibi Netanyahu like white on rice (can you still say that?). The poor Israeli PM hasn’t even delivered his much-touted speech setting out his vision for the Palestinians, when Mitchell’s folks have already shot it down:

The proposals to be outlined in Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s speech on Sunday will not be enough to satisfy the Obama administration, a senior U.S. official was quoted as saying on Friday.

The official said Netanyahu told U.S. envoy George Mitchell this week what he planned to say in the speech and that it was “not adequate” to satisfy Washington, who is pushing for an immediate resumption of talks on Palestinian statehood.

Bibi’s ill-conceived speech originated in his supporters fit of pique at the glorious reception afforded Pres. Obama’s Cairo speech. They realized that Obama had stolen a march on them and set the terms of the debate in ways that Israel could not escape. The PM’s counter-speech was the result. But no speech that Bibi delivers can provide the boost he’s looking for because he doesn’t have a viable vision of how to make peace with the Palestinians. Hence, Mitchell’s a priori rejection of it.

Another thing to point out about this…Mitchell has shed the prior politesse the U.S. used to observe with Israel. In the past, no U.S. president would’ve dissed an Israeli PM in the way the U.S. envoy has, with such a dismissal of his speech. I keep saying this–but we’re in a new day. Bibi keeps digging that hole and eventually he’s going to fall in. And then maybe we can make some real progress if Israel can formulate a more pragmatic government.

I was humored by the statement I read from the PM after his grueling White House session with the president: “What does he want? That my government should fall?” Imagine the chutzpah for him to think that Obama gives a flying f(^k about whether his government falls or not. In fact, the only one who cares is Bibi himself and his rightist cohorts.

Posted in Mideast Peace, Politics & Society | 14 Comments »

How Did Holocaust Shooter Get His Guns?

Friday, June 12th, 2009

Where does a convicted felon manage to find the guns to kill?

In our gun happy culture, it’s no surprise that a convicted felon would gain access to guns and use them to kill someone. That’s precisely what James Von Brunn, who attacked the U.S Holocaust Museum earlier this week and killed an African-American security guard, did. As such, he had no legal right to own any weapon (as I understand the law). So how did he do it?

Thanks to M.J. Rosenberg for pointing me to this CNN report that reveals he used a Winchester rifle (!) made sometime between 1908 and 1920. How’s that for an antique? We shouldn’t be surprised that a man who served in World War II and who espoused views that would make him at home in Nazi Germany circa 1933, owned a weapon about as dusty as his ideas. Clearly von Brunn, at least in this particular, managed to circumvent the law.

But he also owned another weapon:

Mr. von Brunn brought a .22-caliber rifle and a .30-30 rifle when he moved into an apartment in Annapolis, Md., two years ago, according to the affidavit. The police recovered the .30-30 as well as ammunition for a .22 from his bedroom after the museum attack.

While it seems hopeless to topple the gun lobby in this country, at least we can demand that authorities trace these weapons and punish anyone stupid enough to sell one to a violent thug and felon like von Brunn.

I’m also distressed to find that embarrassed websites and web hosts are erasing many vestiges of von Brunn’s sojourn online. His website, Holy Western Empire, has been taken down by its host. von Brunn’s Wikipedia account and biography have been scrubbed clean. In these instances all I can say is thank God for the Internet Archive and Wikileaks. TPM Cafe has also uploaded many of his writings for the record.

It is interesting that before someone commits murder you can’t get a web host to do a thing about the hate they post to websites (we’ve had that problem with Masada2000 and its webhost, Dreamhost). Nor can you get the police to investigate their threats and other activities (just ask the Seattle Police Department and FBI about defenestration and genital mutilation threats sent to me which they refuse to investigate). But then after haters do strike and the damage is done, they rush to obliterate the killer’s identity and existence. A bit hypocritical I think.

Some Comment is Free commenters noted that Abe Foxman did not, as I predicted, tie the shooting to Iran or the vast Islamist conspiracy. No, that honor goes to Jennifer Lazlo Mizrahi, director of the Israel Project who actually had the self-promotional cahones to write a press release in which she claimed that the Maryland police would’ve stopped von Brunn had they only investigated him when he allegedly distributed hate flyers on her doorstep. She goes on:

Today we are talking about Iran – and the possible re-election of a man who denies the Holocaust and has said he wants to see Israel wiped off the map.

We need to keep the lessons of history in our minds. Even if that memory is from just yesterday – when an innocent man was murdered in cold blood.

I am pleased that President Obama has spoken out forcefully about the culture of hate in the Arab world – and the senseless act from yesterday.

Thanks to Ali Gharib for catching this. Abe, I owe you an apology on this one. We’ll catch you another time. The credit for such sky-is-falling exploitation of tragedy for political advantage goes to the Israel Project this time.

And if we want to go even farther afield in the universe, we can always catch Debbie Schlussel orbiting out there somewhere around planet [Pam] Geller. Here’s what Deb writes:

…The shooter…at the U.S. Holocaust Museum is not a Muslim but a White guy, James W. Von Brunn, who is a neo-Nazi.

But that is a distinction without a difference. In fact, it is because of Muslims–who are the biggest contributor to the worldwide rise in anti-Semitism to Holocaust-eve levels–that neo-Nazis feel comfortable–far more comfortable!–manifesting their views about Jews. Until 9/11 and our resulting new tolerance for Islam, the neo-Nazi types were marginalized and howling at the wind. We know who has been targeting Jewish museums and centers affiliated with Jews in recent years. And it hasn’t been, in general, 89-year-old White guys…

Can you imagine there are actually people in the world who admire this woman? In my opinion, she von Brunn and bin Laden were made for each other. The views of one are more paranoiac and pathological than the other.

Tags: the-israel-project
Posted in Jews & Judaism, Mideast Peace, Politics & Society | 9 Comments »

Iran’s Moderate Surge, Dissonance to Israel’s Ears

Friday, June 12th, 2009

In less than 24 hours, we will know the winner of Iran’s presidential election–whether Hussein Moussavi, the pragmatic moderate candidate has defeated Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, the darling of Iran’s conservative clergy and rural poor. The understatement of the year is that there is a lot riding on this bout. If Ahmadinejad wins, then Pres. Obama will face mounting pressure from Israel and Iran hawks within his own administration to attack. And if the U.S. will not, then the door is open for Israel to do the job itself.

A victory by the conservative candidate will continue Iran down the road to economic ruin and nationalist bluff and bluster. It will sentence Iran to continued exile from the ranks of normal world states. More Holocaust denial. More dead-end support for Middle East troublemaking in Lebanon and Gaza.

Female supporters of Hussein Moussavi at a campaign rally (Majid/Getty Images)

A victory by Moussavi does not assure a radical break from the past four years, but if there is not one then the millions of Iranians celebrating on the streets of the capital every night for the past few weeks will feel deeply betrayed and wonder who they voted for and why. One has to wonder why a candidate would take the extraordinary step in this conservative Muslim country of making his wife practically a co-candidate, if he didn’t seek to set out in a new direction.

Listening to To the Point today enabled me to realize how complex the political situation in Iran is. The campaign is so fraught and overwrought that things aren’t what they appear to be. For instance, Ahmadinejad, in a desperate effort to regain momentum, has ratcheted up his accusations against some of the pillars of the clerical establishment to a fever pitch. Iran is a society in which the mullahs have exercised such control that rarely are such figures questioned, let alone sullied with such charges.

The current president saved his most savage attacks for former president Rafsanjani, an intimate of Ayatollah Khomeini, a billionaire and one of the country’s richest men. Most Iranians would concede that Rafsanjani is totally corrupt, but never in a public setting as Ahmadinejad has done. This is the Revolution devouring itself.

So you have the entirely unlikely scenario of a conservative populist candidate savagely attacking the country’s fatcats and thereby stirring Moussavi’s followers to clamor for the freedoms and transparency they’ve been denied since 1979 and before that under the Shah as well.

Many in the west have been waiting and hoping for the day when pragmatism would prevail in Iran. This is why we were so gratified when Obama won the U.S. election. It might mean that pragmatism from our side could meet pragmatism from the other side. With a Moussavi win, such a dream is possible. It is by no means guaranteed, but it is at least possible.

Who will be the losers if Moussavi wins? Possibly the extremist clerical dead-enders eager for endless confrontation with the west. And definitely the Israelis. One indication of just how tone deaf the anti-Iranian campaign has been was Haaretz’s story fed to it by the foreign ministry, of an orchestrated effort to demean the Iranian election as a sham by western standards. One of the tactics was to consist of rallies outside Iranians embassies at which mock executions of gays and women would take place–all meant to show the country as a medieval backwater.

But the actual presidential election has given the lie to this notion. Observers on the scene have recorded the celebratory nature of campaigning lasting into the wee hours of every morning. They’ve covered the rallies of hundreds of thousands of supporters of both candidates. They’ve noted the amazing level of freedom and openness for at least this interval of time, a period not seen in Iran for decades.

Iran is an imperfect democracy at best. But no democracy stands still. Iran, with a Moussavi win, could head in the right direction and gradually become a more democratic state. Or it could continue on the bankrupt road it has been following with an Ahmadinejad victory. The fate of a nation and a region hangs in the balance.

Tags: ahmadinejad, iran, iran-nuclear-program
Posted in Mideast Peace | 27 Comments »

iPride: Stand With Us’ Pro-Israel Gay Fraud

Thursday, June 11th, 2009

Stand With Us is the new Chabad. The difference is that while Chabad inveigles secular Jews to return to their religion, SWU evangelizes a pro-Israel message to Jewish gays otherwise ignorant on the subject. For those not in the know, SWU is a militantly pro-Israel propaganda group here in the U.S. A member of the board of its local Seattle chapter sent me an e-mail saying I should be publicly spanked for my views. And this guy is also a board member of my synagogue, and a social worker at the local Jewish old age home, if you can believe it!

The Jerusalem Post features a mind-boggling story about a new SWU program tied to Israel’s Gay Pride rally which will bring thousands of Jews from abroad to mingle with Israel’s gay community. Roz Rothstein and her fellow SWU Politburo members must’ve thought: “Hey, what better time to convert some of those ignorant, sexually-starved Galut gays to pro-Israelism than this??” Out of this came iPride, which is meant to join the notion of gay pride with pro-Israel pride.

As part of the campaign, SWU is taking a page from the Aipac playbook, bringing 15 key gay opinion-molders to Israel for a round of indoctrination in the guise of studying Israel’s gay culture:

A group of prominent gay opinion-shapers from around the world are to visit Israel to grapple with the country’s sexuality issues on a five-day seminar centering around Tel Aviv’s gay pride parade, scheduled for Friday.

iPride, a project created by international Israel advocacy organization Stand With Us, will begin on Wednesday and focus on showing participants a side to Israel that does not revolve around “conflict” in the traditional military sense.

Instead, the group will hear from speakers discussing the issue of sexuality within Israeli institutions such as government, the IDF and Israeli film, and discover more about Israel’s lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) community.

The event will bring together around 15 magazine editors, reporters, academics and activists from Harvard, Berlin, the UK, Spain and Italy, including Queer Eye for the Straight Guy presenter Brian Kelly. Speakers at the seminar will include influential figures from Israel’s LGBT community, such as Meretz MK Nitzan Horowitz and movie producer and Kochav Nolad (“A Star is Born”) TV judge Gal Uchovsky.

The idea is to improve Israel’s image across the globe, according to Noa Meir, coordinator of iPride.

In addition to the gay Israel mission, SWU has created a fellowship program to groom Israeli leaders of tomorrow to be mouthpieces in the campaign on behalf of Israel’s image at home and abroad:

Meir is participating in the Stand With Us fellowship program, which recruits 20 people on the Tel Aviv University campus and 150 students from around Israel in an effort to groom the country’s future leaders.

Why is SWU doing this? Because they truly want to paint Israel as a shining example of western liberalism and sexual tolerance? Maybe, though I’ve never before known SWU to take any role in issues of gay rights. I think rather, there is a more sinister motive that goes a lot farther in explaining the group’s motivation.

These gay pro-Israel Manchurian Candidates will not merely speak nicely of Israel, they will also, at key junctures, help Israel advance its policy agenda abroad. A perfect example is the current campaign to smear Iranian democracy in the run up to tomorrow’s presidential election. The Israeli foreign ministry is staging mock executions of women and gays out side Iranian embassies in order to point out that the country is a sham democracy and absolutely medieval compared to the west. All this helps Israel soften public sentiment for war. Two key constituencies Israel seeks to draw on board are gays and feminists who they’d love to see leading these demonstrations.

So the SWU project is perfectly timed to that end. Another thing should be pointed out here. SWU, as with other pro-Israel lobbying groups like the Israel Project and Aipac, is not simply a movement of good-hearted volunteers dedicated to Israel. It is a group of professional propagandists whose agenda is closely coordinated with the Israeli diplomatic, military and intelligence communities.

To give you an idea how they fudge when it comes to their true mission, here is what they write at the iPride website about “who we are:”

iPride is an Israeli project under the auspices of StandWithUS – an international, non-profit organization that promotes a better understanding of Israel, through examination of diverse issues.

The StandWithUs fellowship gives Israeli students the opportunity to be active in areas that are close to their hearts, and promote social activism on various levels.

This is rhetoric meant to pull the wool over the eyes of unsuspecting Jewish gays unschooled in the ways of hasbara. It’s precisely the same as the Chabadnik who stops you on Venice Beach and asks you if you’ve laid tefillin that day. They begin with the soft pitch. Later they get to the hard stuff.

iPride supposedly doesn’t touch the hard stuff (has v’halilah) like the Israeli-Arab conflict. Where is the need? They can program that once they’ve reeled you in as a convert:

Although the event deliberately avoids the Israeli-Palestinian issue, the idea for the project was partly inspired by reactions to Operation Cast Lead – specifically one incident in San Francisco which saw a gay group identifying with the Palestinian cause and publicly calling to “free the gays in Israel.”

“We know that gays around the world are liberal usually and they tend to identify with the Palestinians,” explained Meir, “and we find it a bit ironic because you can’t really be gay in the Palestinian territories.”

Meir’s gonna have to tell that to the tens of thousands of gay Palestinians. Tell me: just what the hell does this guy know about Palestinians, gay or otherwise? Gornisht, that’s what.

Let’s close with this delightful paean to the fraudulent dream of Israeli multiculturalism:

“We’re hoping to show that Israel is a liberal country, a multicultural, pluralistic country,” emphasized Meir. “That is a side of Israel we are very proud of and that we think should be shown around the world.

“Unfortunately it’s a side that doesn’t get enough attention… As far as a lot of people are concerned, Israel is Gaza and the West Bank and tanks, and they don’t see the beautiful culture and the liberal side.”

Let me ask one itty-bitty question: how can Jewish gays be truly free at the expense of 20% of the inhabitants who are even less free than they? Not to mention the 700,000 expelled in 1948? Can gays celebrate their alleged freedom to be themselves when millions of other Israelis and Palestinians are disenfranchised? I hope everyone reading this will ponder Michael Levin’s masterful poster above.

Tags: hasbara, stand-with-us
Posted in Mideast Peace, Politics & Society | 21 Comments »

D.C. Shooting: Ultimate Holocaust Denial

Thursday, June 11th, 2009

A slightly different version of this post was published earlier today at Comment is Free.

Earlier this afternoon, an 88 year old white supremacist, James W. von Brunn, stepped through the doors of the U.S. Holocaust Museum in Washington, D.C. and lowered his gun at a security guard and opened fire. Stephen T. Johns, an African-American who had worked for the museum for six years, fell fatally wounded. Other security guards returned fire and critically wounded the shooter, who is now in a hospital.

James von Brunn: "wanted to die with his boots on."

von Brunn, is a hard-core hater of Jews and African-Americans. He also denies the Holocaust and spent six years in federal prison in the 1980s when he entered the Federal Reserve offices armed with the intent of kidnapping board members, holding them hostage, and charging them with treason. At his trial, he explained that his goal was to deport Jews and blacks from “all white nations.”

Here is von Brunn’s biography as presented at his own site (yes, of course a homocidal racist has his own website!), Holy Western Empire:

James W. von Brunn holds a BachSci Journalism degree from a mid-Western university where he was president of SAE and played varsity football.

During WWII he served as PT-Boat captain, Lt. USNR, receiving a Commendation and four battle stars. For twenty years he was an advertising executive and film-producer in New York City. He is a member of Mensa, the high-IQ society.

In 1981 Von Brunn attempted to place the treasonous Federal Reserve Board of Governors under legal, non-violent, citizens arrest. He was tried in a Washington, D.C. Superior Court; convicted by a Negro jury, Jew/Negro attorneys, and sentenced to prison for eleven years by a Jew judge. A Jew/Negro/White Court of Appeals denied his appeal. He served 6.5 years in federal prison. (Read about von Brunn’s “Federal Reserve Caper” HERE.) He is now an artist and author and lives on Maryland’s Eastern Shore.

von Brunn's book: mangled command of reality and the Hebrew language

And yes, of course, the murderer has written his own book, Kill the Best Gentiles, though I doubt you’ll find it offered via Amazon or Barnes & Noble. TPM Cafe offers the first six chapters of his book in case you want to explore the mind of an aging racist killer.

The Washington Post offers this short reflection of an aggrieved psychopathic mind:

“Over my years of adversity, it became clear to me that a JEW strategy had emerged: ‘Kill the Best Gentiles!’ The tactics were WAR & DEBT . . . I was chased from one job to another for not genuflecting before God’s Chosen.”

Another Post article interviews another white supremacist acquaintance of the killer who adds some interesting background to the latter’s political beliefs:

Von Brunn sometimes spoke of having fought for the wrong side in World War II, Blodgett said, and the two men sometimes attended meetings in Arlington County of the American Friends of the British National Party, which raised funds for the British white supremacist group.

This ADL profile notes a chilling foreshadowing of his attack on the Holocaust Museum:

To Von Brunn, the Holocaust was another Jewish sleight-of-hand; in 2004, he wrote to an Australian Holocaust denial e-mail list that it was “time to FLUSH all ‘Holocaust’ Memorials…” Von Brunn was fond of repeating the mantra “Hitler’s Worst Mistake: He Didn’t Gas the Jews.”

His ex-wife divorced him 30 years ago when she could no longer stand his extremist rantings. She adds that he once boasted he would “go out with his boots on.”

One of the murderer’s other white supremacist friends added this piece of unintentional and black “humor:”

De Nugent…described the shooting as the act of “a loner and a hothead.”

“The responsible white separatist community condemns this,” he said. “It makes us look bad.”

Gee, d’ya think?

We know how the usual suspects among the Jewish leadership will line up on this. Instead of describing this incident as the lone act of a desperate, mentally unstable creature who sought, like Slim Pickens character at the end of Dr. Strangelove, to go out in a blaze of racist glory–they will seek to parlay this incident into a much wider anti-Semitic conspiracy. People like Abe Foxman live for tragedies like this. You wait. Tomorrow or the next day he’ll be holding a press conference with the security guard’s wife telling the world that African-Americans and Jews must make common cause against the vast anti-Semitic conspiracy. If he’s really feeling his oats that day he might even work in a reference to an evil Iranian president who denies the Holocaust as well. Mark my words, it’s coming.

The lesson I draw from all of this is remembering the lost opportunity that 9/11 presented for this country. Instead of embracing our common humanity and uniting to combat Islamist extremism and the reasons it thrived, we raced for the bottom and the lowest common denominator. We became an inflamed people and allowed the tragedy to reinforce our worst impulses. Hysteria replaced due deliberation and careful consideration of what our response to the attack should be. Out of this came not just the U.S. attack against Afghanistan (an arguably reasonable response) and the toppling of Saddam Hussein (not).

Let’s not do that now. Let’s acknowledge the danger that white supremacists and all violent forms of racism pose for our society (not just Jews). Let’s join with groups like CAIR, which denounced the shooting, to make common cause to fight this hatred. Let’s not, as groups like the ADL would have it, retreat into our shell and cry the victim. Some American Jews and especially their leaders will learn precisely the wrong lessons from the Holocaust Museum attack. They will lapse into “I told you so” mode, warning the world that this is what happens when you don’t fight Islamist terror or Iranian Holocaust denial.

Before crying too many tears in our beer, let’s remember the racists among us as well: Jews like Baruch Goldstein willing to take up arms against their alleged enemies, and Jews drunkenly spewing their verbal hate in videos.

Instead of playing the victim card, let’s tell the world that we can turn this tragedy into an opportunity to embrace love and tolerance. Imagine the symbolic power of an African-American man giving his life to protect a Holocaust Museum. Some time ago, I wrote about a Jew being attacked by a French soccer mob whose life was saved by a black policeman. This is what we should emphasize. Our interdependence, our solidarity.

Tags: anti-Arab, holocaust
Posted in Jews & Judaism, Mideast Peace, Politics & Society | 28 Comments »

Newhouse’s New Jewish Online Magazine, The Tablet

Wednesday, June 10th, 2009

Alana Newhouse, former culture editor at the Forward, has transformed the Nextbook website into an online Jewish magazine, The Tablet. The site covers culture, religion and politics and offers a wide range of intellectual and political discourse. In fact, the diversity can get a little schizophrenic at times. You’ll find Victor Navasky, Adam Lebor, David Margolick, Ellen Umansky and Robert Pinsky on the one hand. And Ruth Wisse, Jeffrey Goldberg, Leon Wieseltier and Michael Weiss on the other. I’m not quite sure how writers with such disparate views can coexist in one site. But if anyone can make it work Newhouse can. (Disclaimer: Alana commissioned the only piece I’ve ever written for the Forward.)

Weiss’ presence in particular gives me pause. When he worked as an editor at Jewcy, he offered me a place as a blogger at Jewcy before it lost its funding, then after weeks of inaction never produced a contract. Furthermore, this occured during the Gaza war and I suggested to Weiss that Jewcy’s coverage of the war slanted heavily toward a right-wing pro-Israel perspective. That was the end of my Jewcy blogging venture.

To give you a sense of Weiss’ current political proclivities, his latest piece is Purple Prose of Cairo. Unfortunately, with Weiss as politics editor, one may question whether the site will have the diversity on Jewish politics one finds in the pages of The Forward, from which Newhouse recruited many of her other editors and contributors.

Despite all these quibbles, the entry of a new Jewish face on the web is entirely welcome. There is not enough intelligent and articulate discussion of Jewish issues online and The Tablet promises to deliver such discourse at a high level.

Tags: michael weiss
Posted in Jews & Judaism, Politics & Society | 7 Comments »