Comments on: Henry Waxman Israel-Baits Jane Harman Opponent

By: Richard Silverstein

Richard Silverstein — Sat, 16 Jan 2010 01:17:57 +0000

You’ve got it wrong. “Israel-baiting” in the context I use it refers to those who bait Jews by claiming their views are anti-Israel or anti-Zionist when they are not. The baiting that the Waxmans of the world engage in has the same purpose, function & origin that the red-baiting of the McCarthys had in the 50s.

By: The BRAD BLOG : Zionism & Israeli 'State Terrorism' - Political Third Rail or Long Overdue Debate?

Fri, 15 Jan 2010 16:52:36 +0000

[...] has drawn the ire of progressives, especially Richard Silverstein, a prominent Jewish writer, who accused Waxman of a McCarthy-like "Israel-baiting," which Silverstein asserts is "the Jewish equivalent of [...]

By: tom

tom — Fri, 15 Jan 2010 15:14:41 +0000

just a minor point: the coinage “Israel-bating” is confusing. The original red-baiting was used to describe people who were (1) opposed to “reds” and (2) exaggerated the extent of their influence. So “Israel baiting” would apply to a regime like Abdul Nasser’s, that eventually treated all Jews as potential spies for Israel. The phenomenon you’re describing is more like Hamas-baiting, or something of the sort.

By: Warren

Warren — Wed, 13 Jan 2010 00:46:21 +0000

Shirin, sometimes the way the threads are it’s hard to tell who’s responding to whom, but my above comment was in reply to your question.

By: Warren

Warren — Wed, 13 Jan 2010 00:38:54 +0000

I actually have a lot of contempt for the contemporary Democratic party (at least the establishment bulk of it, there are a handful of genuinely good people at the edges), particularly the way it has behaved the last 25 years or so. I’ve remained a registered Democrat since I first was able/of age to vote in ’92, but it’s not remotely in any way a (strong) ‘identity’ frame for me. The whole sense of the political spectrum is so pinched and narrow in establishment American discourse that I don’t frankly find anywhere, at least any established venue, to call ‘home’; I guess politically I consider myself a progressive left social democrat in the wider European sense, which for the establishment American media would put me way out Left field almost off the radar screen—if I had to label myself. My ‘time and time again’ sentence above I think made it clear I’ve been aware of how corrupt, hypocritical and genuinely bad the Democrats have been for quite a long time. And you’re right, the establishment center (I don’t like the term ‘mainstream’ because there’s the connotation that that’s where most of ‘the people’ are, which I think is misleading) of the party that wields decisive power is not substantively better than the Republicans.

Being registered in a political party in the U.S. allows you to vote in that party’s primaries. So, relating to this post, if I was in Jane Harman’s district (which unfortunately I’m not) I could vote in the Congressional Democratic primary for her challenger, Marcy Winograd. Our de facto two-party system is so tough to break out of because of the institutional power constraints at play, that I still think the best hope is for a “progressive take-over” of the Democratic party, however remote and far-fetched such a future possibility may be (especially given how rigged and money-dominated the American system is). That’s probably totally deluded on my part, but that’s what’s kept me “in”, also, I suppose nostalgia for my sense of American history from the 30′s, Roosevelt, the New Deal and so on, really more related to domestic than foreign policy (though I think we needed to fight WWII and stop Hitler & imperial Japan—one of the very few American foreign policy ‘decisions’ in our history I agree with, not that I agree with every aspect of the way that war was fought… )

Perhaps the only thing that will fundamentally change American foreign and domestic policy is a real bona fide Revolution, but us Americans are heavily indoctrinated to steer away from such ‘radical’, untidy concepts. Heck, this ain’t France!

Vive la Revolution!!

By: Andrew

Andrew — Tue, 12 Jan 2010 07:53:18 +0000

Some degree of land exchange is likely inevitable, unless a prospective Palestinian state was willing to be dependent on Israel and the surrounding Arab states for the capability to transit between Gaza and the West Bank.

By: Richard Silverstein

Richard Silverstein — Tue, 12 Jan 2010 02:23:08 +0000

Shirin: It’s not up to me to negotiate the territorial outcome. All I know is that various Palestinian leaders & groups have negotiated serious proposals with Israelis that would provide for land swaps so that much of the Israeli W Bank population would transfer to Israel. If this is a result satisfactory to Palestinians then it’s satisfactory to me. If it’s not satisfactory to Palestinians then I guess it won’t work. But I think it is, perhaps reluctantly, satisfactory to most Palestinians. The figures I have read say that Israel should be able to return about 95% of the W Bank to the Palestinians while retaining most of the Israeli population. I’m not sure where you’re getting the number 90%. That doesn’t reflect the Geneva Accord or any other agreement I’ve ever heard.

I don’t see any reason why Israeli settlers should stay in the Golan unless Syria was willing to give them citizenship & they wanted to remain.

The land Israel would exchange would be in the Negev which would not have many, if any, Israeli Palestinian citizens. Avigdor Lieberman is not the one who will negotiate the exchange nor will he have an opportunity to surreptitiously implement his own transfer program via this method.

By: andrew r

andrew r — Tue, 12 Jan 2010 00:31:59 +0000

You underlined what makes the two-state solution so ridiculous. All the Israelis who support the 2ss I’ve met don’t want it implemented without first looting all the built-up areas, to be signed away by the Palestinian authority, natch. They think the 1949 territory swapped away should be left to the govt., so, yeah. And since Israel has no intention of a negotiated solution anyway, it will probably find another mechanism of doing that land swap. I don’t see why it couldn’t be accomplished using a fig-leaf styled after the Oslo “self-government” accords.