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New York Public Library

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Sarajevo Haggadah

Mah Nishtanah

Sarajevo haggadah

Antaea Darom

Israeli women's art

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Torah as music

Ben Heine

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ceramic bowl

Mohammad Said Kalash, "Offering Reconciliation" exhibit (photo: Ilan Amihai)

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Punch and Judy/Pinchas and Jamila

Avi Katz

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David Grossman

Ben Heine

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Eldrige Street shul

Lower East Side

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Dove

Ben Heine

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Two birds

Hoda Jamal

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Israeli and Palestinian boys

from documentary, Promises

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Cat in the Hat

Yiddish version

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Daylight through the Wall

Banksy: graffiti art on Separation Wall

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Maurice Sendak's Brundibar set

New Victory Theater (photo: Nan Melville/NYT)

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Daniel Barenboim, West-Eastern Divan Orchestra

Palestinian-Israeli musical ensemble (photo: Kerstin Joensson/AP)

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Great Day on Eldrige Street

N.Y.'s klezmer greats celebrate shul rededication (photo: Leo Sorel)

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Joint Appeal for Peace

(Avi Katz)

Joint Appeal for Peace

Ketubah, Ancona, Italy (1772)

(Jewish Theological Seminary library)

Ancona ketubah

Archive for August, 2011

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IDF Kills 14 in Gaza, Hamas Renounces Ceasefire, IDF Disagrees With Netanyahu on Responsibility for Eilat Attack

Friday, August 19th, 2011
child killed in gaza

2 year old doctor's son murdered by Israeli drone (Allvoices)

This is exactly the sort of gift that Israeli rightists like Bibi Netanyahu love.  Faced with a mounting internal crisis in the form of the J14 movement, Palestinian rejectionists have handed him his “Get Out of Political Crisis Free” card.  Yesterday’s attack in Eilat has fueled an Israeli reaction that can be described as uncontrollable fury, which has killed 14 including three children.  Today, an Israeli drone performed heroically for the fatherland by incinerating a car (or in other reports a motorcycle) carrying a Palestinian doctor and his family to hospital seeking treatment for a sick child.  The doctor, his brother, and the doctor’s little boy were killed in the attack.  Ynet announced: Oops, we missed.  The drone was aiming for a terrorist cell traveling nearby.  WAFA says the doctor’s brother was an Al Quds commander, which would mean that the IDF is willing to kill sick 2 year old children in order to get alleged terrorists as well.

It might be fitting to ship the boy’s coffin to the prime minister’s residence and let it sit outside his door for a few days for him to think about the blood he is shedding.  Oh but I forgot, Palestinian blood is less red than Jewish blood.

Hamas has called off the ceasefire it had been honoring since the end of Operation Cast Lead in 2009.  Now, either we will have another war or somehow someone will patch things up so Israel and Palestine can continue to limp along like the cripples they are.

Egypt has pulled its ambassador in light of Israel’s killing of two Egyptian police officers yesterday on the Gaza border.  If I were Israel I’d wake up and smell the fresh coffee brewing in Cairo.  It’s no more Mr. Nice Guy in its relations with Egypt.  If you break the china you’ll pay the price unlike under Israel’s pliant friend, Mubarak.  This report says five Egyptian police were killed yesterday by Israeli fire, but earlier reports said two died.  Two deaths may be a mistake, but five begins to look like a massacre, which may explain the withdrawal of their ambassador.

Egypt is also demanding an official Israeli apology, which now makes two Muslim countries insisting Israel apologize for killing their citizens.  Before you know it every country in the region may want one!  The Foreign Ministry may want to save time and effort by preparing a formal ‘Apology template’ in which they leave blank spaces to fill in the particular details of the atrocity for which Israel is apologizing.

Lia Tarachansky has exposed a potentially very important disagreement among senior Israeli officials about who is responsible for the attack.  Bibi Netanyahu very specifically blamed the Popular Resistance Committees for the attack.  But in her interview with IDF spokesperson Avital Leibowitz, the latter refuses to say that the PRC is responsible.  In fact, she says specifically that she “isn’t prime minister Netanyahu,” implicitly rejecting her boss’ claim.  I think this is a major break in the story.  It appears that Israel wanted to assassinate the leadership of PRC and took advantage of the terror attack to do so, all the while lying in implicating the group in the attack.  All that Leibowitz will say on tape is that someone from Gaza is responsible, which is a little like saying that someone from Saudi Arabia was responsible for the 9/11 attacks.

Unlike the Palestinian news agency Maan, Israeli media can’t seem to acknowledge readily Palestinians were killed today in Gaza.  The Haaretz main headline is Rockets Hit Ashdod in Southern Israel and Ynet’s is Rocket Salvo Hits South.  Only in the fourth paragraph of this story do you learn the IDF has killed 15 Palestinians.

Finally, Pres. Obama–is anyone home?  Where is Dan Shapiro, your ambassador to Israel?  Are you going to celebrate the birth pangs of democracy as Condi Rice did during the Lebanon War?  Or are you going to do something before the Israeli landlord truly goes insane (baal ha-bayit hishtageah)?  Oh, why waste my breath.  Obama is simply going to continue the same limp policy he’s always followed regarding Israel.

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Posted in Mideast Peace | 84 Comments »

Court Dismisses Neuwirth Libel Claim

Friday, August 19th, 2011

This is the day the Lord has made; let us rejoice and be glad in it.

–Psalms

I’m not sure the Lord made or brought this day.  But I do share the joy of this Biblical passage.  Today, Los Angeles Superior Court Judge Linda Lefkowitz dismissed Rachel Neuwirth’s libel claim against me.  This is a day that has been over four years coming.  During that time there were moments when I truly didn’t know what would happen and what sort of jeopardy my family and I might be in.  There were “well-wishers,” friends of Neuwirth who celebrated in comments they attempted to publish here, that I would lose my home and face financial ruin.  Even when I blithely assumed that the American justice system couldn’t possibly vindicate such a case and such a charge, my lawyers warned me that anything was possible and that I could assume nothing.

But thank God, reason and reasonableness prevailed.  I should also add that Prof. Joel Beinin, who was also sued by Neuwirth as part of the same legal action, had Neuwirth’s claim against him dismissed several months ago.  Both of us have been vindicated.  Now we know that when we have a good faith belief that someone holds Jewish extremist views we’re allowed to say it and the law will uphold our right to do so.  The justice system may not do with the alacrity I would’ve wished.  But it finally did so.

I should add that Neuwirth can still appeal this decision to the Court of Appeal and so we could be doing another round of this in the future.

My lawyers performed stellar service to me and the cause of freedom of speech.  They did so despite the mounting legal costs absorbed by their law firm over the years the case dragged on.  I thank them for standing by me.

The only sadness I have is for the many others charged similarly with insulting or defaming a public figure who couldn’t muster the terrific pro bono legal defense provided to me by my attorneys.  There are so many faced with such legal intimidation who must fold in the face of it.

For bloggers, I wanted to mention the Berkman Center sponsors a terrific legal clinic, the Online Legal Media Clinic, which offers legal representation to bloggers like me accused of various offenses.  Unfortunately, it didn’t exist when my case began.  I’m glad it does now.

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Posted in Blogs-Tech-Science, Mideast Peace, Politics & Society | 18 Comments »

Terror Attack on Eilat, 8 Israeli and 6 Gazan Dead

Thursday, August 18th, 2011
charred bus from eilat terror attack

Charred remains of bus attacked by Gaza terrorists (Ariel Harmoni/Defense Ministry)

Correction: The first title for this post was “Palestinian Attack on Eilat…”  That was when most of the world believed that the attack had been perpetrated by Palestinian militants.  Subsequently, through research, Egyptian sources, and anomalies in the Israeli response to the attack, I’ve become convinced that the attack was the responsibility of Egyptian militants based in Sinai.  I have not seen any convincing evidence that Palestinians were responsible.

For anyone who hasn’t read Huck Finn, you must.  Tonight calls to mind the harrowing section of that novel about the feud till death of the Hatfield and McCoys (called the Grangerfords and Sheperdsons in the novel).  In American parlance, since the publication of the book, the phrase has come to mean any sort of family feud.  But go back and re-read it and you’ll see that this was anything but a mere feud.  It was pure blood lust and vengeance ending with the decimation of two entire families along with all the dreams of even the most innocent and peaceful among them.  That is what the Israeli-Palestinian conflict calls to mind on this sorrowful day.

What can one say?  That the Palestinian attack was atrocious (despite the fact that some of those attacked were Israeli soldiers–a distinction some of my Palestinian friends may make, but which feels especially hollow today)?  That the Israeli revenge response was equally heinous since it killed two innocent children?  Yes, to both of these.

One thing my friend Dena Shunra pointed out to me earlier today when we commiserated about the day’s events was Ehud Barak’s adoption of the language of the Jewish terror underground.  He stated that today’s terror attack would merit a “price tag” (read, “blood vengeance”) response.  For any who don’t know the phrase, it’s used by the most radical of the settlers and Hilltop Youth to denote their policy of pogrom-like attacks against Palestinian civilians whenever the Israeli government or Palestinians themselves commit an act which they feel threatens their hegemony over the Occupied Territories.  This includes shooting elderly Palestinians, poisoning and burning their olive groves, killing their farm animals, beating up young Palestinian shepherds, poisoning water wells, and burning mosques.

This hooliganism is bad enough.  But to think that the defense minister of the State of Israel is adopting the same language (and the same tactics apparently, writ large) is beyond horrifying.  Every time I read something like this I think that these people don’t understand that there WILL be an accounting both for their language and deeds.  ”Price tag” is, of course, collective punishment, which is illegal under international law.  But it’s worse than that.  Because “price tag” is deeply integrated into the Israeli consciousness as a strategy of the most odious, homicidal members of its society.  So now, the defense minister has become the same as a masked settler gunmen trolling for Palestinians to whack.  Is this what Zionism has come to for these people?

And at this point, lest the anti-Zionists among us cheer too loudly, I should make clear that this is blood lust Zionism, one that I reject in favor of a Zionism that rejects any violence as a way to resolve this conflict; a Zionism that says that two peoples can live together on this land without one dominating or murdering the other.

But finally, I think the only thing that one can say is that any Israeli government that refuses to negotiate a final end to this conflict on terms that just about everyone knows, will reap many more such attacks.  Before some of my right-wing pro-Israel readers jump down my throat (they’re firing up their keyboards as they read these words), I am not condoning Palestinian terrorism (or “resistance” or whatever you wish to call it).  I deplore it just as I deplore what amounts to Israeli terrorism in response.  But it is a simple fact that the terror will never end until there is a settlement (no, not that kind of settlement!).  And everyone except the Israeli far-right (within which I include Netanyahu and virtually his entire government) knows this or should know it.

I should add that at this point I’ve given up hope on the Israeli political system to produce an answer.  Neither the far-right nor the center (Kadima, Labor) are capable of doing it.  Peace can only be imposed from the outside.  Not that I credit much hope that the world community will have the courage or vision to intervene. No, I’m afraid there will have to be more wars, more killings.  The Hatfields and McCoys haven’t shed enough blood yet to move the world’s conscience.  I’m afraid that one must almost commit genocide against the other before action is taken.  I hope to God I’m wrong and my bleak vision is too pessimistic.  Prove me wrong, that’s all I can ask of Obama, the EU, NATO or the Quartet: prove me wrong.

Israel claims to have killed the top leadership of the Armed Resistance Committees, the Gaza group which supposedly orchestrated the attack.  I don’t know whether elements of this claim are true or not.  I don’t know whether this group was responsible and I don’t know whether those killed were the authors of the crime.  But one thing strikes me as strange.  If you were a Gazan who planned a major terror attack would you hide out in the same house with the other top leaders of your group?  It doesn’t sound plausible to me.  If I were a terrorist (thank God, I’m not) I’d hightail it outa there to Egypt; or else I’d separate from my comrades and say: “it’s each man for himself.”  Coming days will perhaps uncover some of these mysteries.

Netanyahu announced with smug satisfaction that the authors of the crime were no longer among the living.  But how or why does this matter?  Are terror attacks such specialized operations that they can’t be planned and executed by any reasonably intelligent individual or group?  So what if you kill one or three or a battalion of terrorists.  There will be 10 to take the place of every one you kill.  And who knows, the one you kill may be replaced by someone truly brilliant at his job who will cause you ten times the suffering of the one you murdered.  Such happened when Hassan Nasrallah took over from the Hezbollah leader Israel murdered.

Israel’s strategy seems to be to inflict so much pain upon the other side that eventually it will be forced to concede to superior numbers and power.  But what the Syrian opposition and Palestinian resistance has shown for decades is that there is no threshold of pain beyond which they will yield.  The same cannot be said for Israel, which has often withdrew from supposedly ironclad military positions in south Lebanon, Gaza, etc.  But if there are any Palestinians who think they can win a war of attrition, they too are foolhardy because they may have to exhaust their entire supply of male fighters in order to finally wear Israel out.  And what benefit is there in this if four out of every five (say) male Palestinians is dead?  Would that be a victory?

Israel blames Hamas for the attack though pointedly it hasn’t yet struck specifically Hamas targets.  It claims that there is virtually no difference between the Armed Resistance Committees and the Islamist movement.  That may be true or it may not.  But there is one intriguing recent development which may (or may not) have borne on the attack itself.  Yesterday, the Egyptians announced they were at an impasse in the Gilad Shalit negotiations and that each side refused to budge from their positions in order to achieve compromise.  Could it be that either Hamas saw this as an opportunity to punish Israel for failure of the negotiation; or the Armed Resistance Committees, without Hamas’ blessings, took advantage of the deadlock to strike its own blow for Palestinian resistance?  Who knows.

To complicate matters even further, Al Jazeera relays a report by Egyptian state media that an IDF Apache attach helicopter purusing armed men from Egypt into Gaza fired on and killed two Egyptian policemen:

…Two Egyptian policemen were killed when the Israeli aircraft opened fire near the Rafah border town with the Palestinian Gaza Strip, the official MENA news agency quoted an Egyptian military official as saying.

“An Israeli plane was pursuing infiltrators on the other side of the border until they reached Rafah and fired at them. There were several Central Security members there and they were hit by the gunfire,” the official told MENA.

This could be why Israel has been extraordinarily careful in not ascribing blame to Egypt for the terror incident though it appears the Gazan attackers trekked through the Sinai from Gaza to Eilat to carry out their assault.  In the light of the possible IDF cock-up and killing of Egyptian police, it wouldn’t take much to inflame Israeli-Egyptian relations, which are in a very delicate stage after the overthrow of Israel’s main-man, Hosni Mubarak.

The moral of the tale as far as this attack is concerned is that when there is stalemate it does not mean maintenance of the status quo.  It means the gremlin-demons on each side take charge and make their own statements in blood.  This happened after Rabin’s assassination when the Palestinian’s launched repeated terror attacks against Israel which torpedoed Shimon Peres’ chances of winning the elections.  This in turn brought Bibi to power the first time.

So in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict stasis doesn’t equal status quo, it equals death.

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Posted in Mideast Peace | 129 Comments »

Whorin’ and Schnorrin’ Jesse Jackson Jr.-Style

Thursday, August 18th, 2011

I’ve been keepin’ a list and checkin’ it twice to find out whose been especially naughty in joining the Aipac junket to Israel.  81 Congress members participated, marking the participation of an unprecedented 20% of the entire body in a single month’s worth of trips to the Holyland.

With the help of readers and other activists I’ve now identified 52 junket-goers with another 29 left to go.  If you know of any new names please add them in the thread below.

Tonight, I especially wanted to focus on participation of the Congressional Black Caucus in the trip.  At least six members went including Jesse Jackson Jr.  One of them, Hank Johnson, ran against and defeated one of Aipac’s nemeses, Cynthia McKinney, largely with the help of funds from pro-Israel Jewish donors.  You can be damn sure the only reason these people are on this trip is because they lust for the campaign cash that will be coming their way from donors affiliated with Aipac.

Jesse Jackson Jr. is richly repaying the $8,000 Aipac invested in his trip with this fawning pro-Israel op-ed published in today’s Jerusalem Post.  It’s so fulsome in its praise of the Jewish state that one even questions whether it could’ve been drafted for him by an Aipac staffer.  I note that Jackson eschews terms like “junket” to describe his Israel visit.  It was, instead, a “fact-finding trip.”  I can tell him a few facts he missed: he never visited Gaza or spoke with anyone from Hamas.  I seriously doubt he met with any Israeli-Palestinians either; or any leaders of the J14 social justice movement which has swept Israeli society of late.  Can you imagine the son of one of America’s greatest civil rights leaders visits Israel and misses out on that country’s foremost social justice movement?  How could Jackson let that happen?

The gist of the JPost piece is that the only way for the Palestinians to gain true success in their quest for justice is to swear off violence and embrace non-violence.  Which is all well and good if you’re fighting for civil rights in Alabama in 1967, since the only weapons used against you were German shepherds and fire hoses (with the rare assassination thrown in for purposes of intimidation).  Martin Luther King and Jesse Jackson’s dad never had to face F-16 jets and Apache attack helicopters in their day.  If they had, I’d guess they’d have had to adopt a different set of tactics to gain their freedom.

Jackson Jr. argues that the Palestinian aim of bringing its call for statehood to the United Nations will not only fail due to a U.S. veto (a particularly wrong-headed conclusion on his part), it will lead to violence, which can only harm the Palestinian cause.  A funny thing though–I never heard Jesse Jackson offer any help, support or advice to the Palestinians before he took this little junket on Aipac’s dime.

Astonishingly, Jackson levels his gunsite at one of Fatah’s most significant leaders, Marwan Barghouti, singling him out for criticism because he has warned the U.S. it will be making a big mistake if it rejects Palestinian statehood (and we should keep in mind that a two-state solution is a centerpiece of U.S. policy).  Further, Barghouti has the ultimate chutzpah of co-opting the rhetoric of the U.S. civil rights movement in calling for a “million man march” by Palestinians and their supporters against Israel after statehood is rejected.

Here is Jackson maligning the Fatah leader’s credibility in particularly hollow terms:

Does a convicted terrorist who has used violence in the past, and has not ruled out its use in the future, really have the moral authority and credibility to advocate a nonviolent march and be believable?

Jesse Jackson Jr. is certainly not an ironist.  Were he, he’d notice that Marwan Barghouti is in a prison cell much like the one Martin Luther King sat in in Birmingham in 1962.  And just as MLK and Jackson’s father faced persecution by the FBI and other bastions of white power in the south, so Palestinian leaders like Barghouti suffer fates even harsher.  Besides, what does a Black politician from Chicago know about Palestine or Palestinians?  The answer: he knows what he’s told to know.  And you know who tells him what he knows?  His rich pro-Israel Jewish friends in Chicago who are filling his campaign coffers.

An even deeper irony is this passage from the Black Congressmember’s op-ed, quoting one of Israel’s true heroes of the civil rights struggle:

…According to Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman, the PA is preparing for unprecedented “bloodshed on a scale we haven’t yet seen.”

Since when does Jesse Jackson Jr. quote the Israeli equivalent of David Duke with a straight face?  Does anyone find this as repulsive as I do?  Not to mention, how the hell does Avigdor Lieberman know what will happen in September?  How does he know whether the Palestinians will storm the Qalandiya checkpoint as he foretells?

The writer heralds the courage of Bibi Netanyahu’s going to extra mile for peace in this ‘touching’ passage:

In our meeting with Netanyahu – and remembering the risk for peace that Anwar Sadat and Menachem Begin took, that Yitzhak Rabin and Yasser Arafat took – I asked him what he was willing to risk for peace. He said it would make his security very uncomfortable, but that he was willing to go to Ramallah to talk with Abbas.

What was Bibi willing to risk for peace?  Return to 67 borders?  Sharing Jerusalem?  Right of Return?  Nah.  He was willing to take a ride to Ramallah to chew the fat with his good friend Mahmoud.  That’s it.  And Jackson believes this is–what?  Serious?  Apparently so, as he calls Bibi’s willingness to talk a “nonviolent step for peace.”

The sheer ignorance of the following passage will certainly drive Palestinian human rights activists around the bend:

…If the Palestinians abandoned violence, launched a nonviolent active resistance movement and established a demonstrated history of nonviolent struggle against their occupation, it would inevitability change the view of the Palestinian struggle in the court of world opinion, strengthen the cause of Palestinian statehood and speed up the day of its realization…

If they abandoned violence?  What does he think the average Palestinian is doing?  Sitting in his basement making IEDs?  Has Jackson ever heard of Bilin?  Why didn’t he take a trip to join their non-violent struggle against Israel’s Separation Wall?  Where is this champion of human rights and dignity when you need him?  Sitting in a fancy Tel Aviv conference room getting snowed by Bibi, that’s where.

When I read the phrase “speed up the day of its realization” it recalled the gradualists of the civil rights eras who urged Blacks to go slow, wait patiently for their betters to straighten things out on their behalf.  Did Jesse Jackson Sr. or MLK stand for such bulls(^t?  No, they rejected it out of hand.  Yet Jesse Jackson Jr. gives Palestinians precisely such advice, and with a straight face.

Can you tell me where in this statement is there any recognition of the furious onslaught of the Israeli military machine against Palestinians:

Clearly the historical and ongoing bad experiences of African Americans in the US, and the past experiences and continuing occupation of Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza by Israel, are both wrong, but the path of hate, terrorism, rockets, missiles and even throwing rocks in hatred is not the path to a lasting peace or greater justice, or the path to statehood in the relatively near future.

Where is there any demand that the Israelis do anything for peace, let alone adopt non-violence?  Can Jackson point me to a single statement he made asking the IDF to forswear its weapons of violence and hate used every day against Palestinians, many of them civilians?

All I can say is:  Jesse Jackson Jr., you are an embarrassment to every principle held dear by your people for the past 60 years of struggle for human dignity.  You are an example of the barrenness and bankruptcy of the leaders like you who’ve abandoned the dream in return for Aipac lucre.  What do you stand for?  How can you be so abysmally ignorant of the Palestinian cause and write such Aipac-scripted junk?

The following is the most up to date list I have of those participating in Aipac’s Israel junket:

Mo Brooks R-5 AL
Eric Cantor R-7 VA
Russ Carnahan D-3 MO
Tim Scott R-1 SC
Gus Bilirakis R-9 FL
Dennis A. Ross R-12 FL
Steve Chabot R-1 OH (went last month)
David Cicilline D-1 RI
Jeff Duncan R-3 SC
Stephen Fincher R-8 TN
Erik Paulsen R-MN
J Randy Forbes R-VA
Yvette Clarke D-11 NY
Mark Critz D- 12 PA
Scott DesJarlais R- 4 TN
Chuck Fleischman R-3 TN
John Garamendi D-10 CA
Ron Kind D-3 WI
Kay Granger R-12 TX
Michael Grimm NY-13
Janice Hahn D-36 CA
Jaime Herrera Buetler R-3 WA
Mazie Hirono D- 2 HI (unconfirmed)
Steny Hoyer D-5 MD
Jesse Jackson Jr. D-2 IL
Patrick Meehan D-7 PA
Kevin McCarthy CA-22
Gwen Moore D-4 WI
Bill Owens D-23 NY
Steven Palazzo R-4 MS
Ed Perlmutter D-7 CO
Tom Price R-6 GA
Peter Roskam R-6 IL
Loretta Sanchez D-47 CA
David Schweikert R-5 AZ
Adam Smith D-9 WA
Steve Southerland R-2 FLA
Betty Sutton D-13 OH
Scott Tipton R-3 CO
Allen West R-22 FL
Frederica Wilson D-17 FL
Kevin Yoder R-3 KS
Kathy Castor D-11 FL
Terri Sewell D-7 AL (not confirmed)
Anne Marie Buerkle R-25 NY
Judy Chu D-32 CA
Hank Johnson D-4 GA
Bob Dold R-10 IL (unconfirmed)
Blake Farenthold R-27 TX
Mike Fitzpatrick R-8 PA
Tom Reed R-29 NY
Kevin McCarthy R-22 CA

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Posted in Mideast Peace | 48 Comments »

‘That’s How Every Empire Falls’

Wednesday, August 17th, 2011

Way back in the dark ages when I first began writing this blog, I called it an mp3 blog and featured some of my favorite music from around the world.  Those posts and songs are still here, though they’ve been subsumed under thousands of posts about the daily horrors of the Israeli Occupation.

But in honor of the wonder, beauty and power of song, I’d like to take you back to those days of yesteryear and feature one of the most wonderful pieces of songwriting I’ve heard in years.  I first heard this song a few weeks ago on my local roots radio station, KBCS.  I knew it was Marianne Faithfull singing and I knew the lyrics were killer.  But you know how it is: I was in the car, only heard a few snatches of lyrics, didn’t hear the song credits, meant to look it up in the program playlist.  Never got around to it.

Tonight, for some reason I started looking for it.  Couldn’t find anything digging through old program playlists.  Then, thinking perhaps the DJ may’ve been playing something from Faithfull’s most recent album, I hit pay dirt.  The song is That’s How Every Empire Falls.  It was written by a hitherto unknown Knoxville singer-songwriter, R.B. Morris (website), and appears on his Spies, Lies and Burning Eyes.  John Prine recorded a masterful, haunting (as only John can do) cover in 2008 on his Fair and Square EP.

Finally, Faithfull recorded her own cover of the song for her new album, Vagabond Ways.

The lyrics are a haunting allegory in which the frailties of the human heart are woven into the decline of an empire.  It seems, at least for me, that the best songs are the ones that somehow connect the heart with the deeper truths of human society.  First, listen to the song and as you hear the last words (lyrics here), read these words and think of the 9/11 attacks, all those miserable years under George Bush, and all the lost opportunities we’ve had as a great nation humbled by our own hubris:

A bitter wind blows through the country
A hard rain falls on the sea
If terror comes without a warning
There must be something we don’t see
What fire begets this fire?
Like torches thrown into the straw
If no one asks, then no one answers
That’s how every empire falls.

What is it about such a song that distills human experience in such a primal, powerful way? It’s something like the role prayer and religion served at one time (and still for some) in human society.

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Posted in Folk & World Music | 4 Comments »

Pres. Perry’s First Two Executive Orders: Convert Jews and Hang Fed Governors

Tuesday, August 16th, 2011
rick perry

Don't get on Rick Perry's bad side if you want to leave Texas in one piece (Tom Pennington/Getty)

When I read about Rick Perry’s prayer service in which he invited a faux–or “messianic”–rabbi to urge the conversion of Jews to Christianity, I knew I was gonna have to take this jackass on someday (and maybe more than once, depending on how far he goes in the primaries).  But today is his lucky day.  He really hit the jackpot when he accused Federal Reserve chair Ben Bernanke of “treason” and threatened him with lynching if he ever stepped foot in Texas:

Gov. Rick Perry…suggest[ed] that the monetary policies of the Federal Reserve were potentially “treasonous” and could warrant “ugly” treatment should the Fed chairman, Ben S. Bernanke, ever pay a visit to Texas.

“Printing more money to play politics at this particular time in American history is almost treacherous — or treasonous in my opinion,” Mr. Perry said Monday…criticizing the possibility of the central bank’s taking further steps between now and the election to keep interest rates low.

He added, “I don’t know what y’all would do to him in Iowa, but we would treat him pretty ugly down in Texas.”

I swear there are more dingbats running for president on the Republican side than there are residents in some towns in Texas.  Of one thing you can be sure, given his record in the race so far–upon election, his first two presidential orders will direct Jews to convert and the Justice Department to arrest Ben Bernanke for treason.  Should they convict the latter and should any Jews fail to accept Perry’s gracious offer, he could have himself a ‘twofer’ by hanging them en masse in Lafayette Park.  It’d make quite a spectacle and start his presidency off with quite a bang so to speak.  Next, he’d make Michael Ledeen his defense secretary and find a few puny countries to knock the shit out of, to show the world who’s boss.  That’s surely get things off to a flying start, don’t you think?

As for an economic policy, who needs one when you can just take a few economists and fed governors out and shoot ‘em at sunrise?  Between the lunacy of Michelle Bachman, Rick Perry, Herman Cain and the rest of that lot, there’s gonna be lots of fun before this primary season is over.  Stay tuned.

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Posted in Humor, Jews & Judaism, Politics & Society | 9 Comments »

Aipac 81: Whoring and Schnorring

Tuesday, August 16th, 2011

There’s an old country saying, “If I’m lyin’ I’m cryin’,” which isn’t at all the same as the Israeli satiric saying “shooting and crying.”  But Antony Loewenstein retweeted my post about the 81 shining Congressional stars who took Aipac’s gelt and joined its recent Israel junket.  In response to his tweet that called them “whores” (a tad too strong perhaps), I’ve coined a new term which perhaps we can call “Jewish-country”: “If I’m whorin’ I’m schnorrin’.”   Long may it reign.

In ancient days, vassal states used to send their king to pay his respects at the court of the imperial ruler.  During such visits it was customary for the vassal to bring gifts for the Big Cheese to curry his favor: perhaps pigs, sheep and other animals or gold amulets or merely taxes (i.e. a payoff).  This is what Aipac has done.  It has brought Congressional vassals to Israel to pay their respects in the Court of Bibi (something like the Court of St. James, only more unruly).  But these obsequious, servile ninnies didn’t need to bring gifts, their mere presence indicated that they would deliver for Israel back in the halls of Congress when they were called upon to do so.  That is gift enough.

I’m up to thirty-nine ID’ed Congress members.  There are still 43 little piggies hiding from the wrath of the public.  Looks like six members of the Black Caucus also participated.

I’m happy to report that CODEPINK has filed a complaint with the Office of Congressional Ethics.  It may be that in its hubris, Aipac has finally overplayed its hand by bringing such a massive vassal visit.

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Glenn Beck: J14 Protesters ‘Communists’

Monday, August 15th, 2011

beck restoring courage buttonGlenn Beck, once again proving he’s one of the biggest idiots on the planet (barring genuine monsters like Moamar Qaddafi, Kim Jong Il and Bashar Assad), has called the J14 tent protesters who’ve been demonstrating in massive waves of hundreds of thousands around the country, “Communists:”

The conservative pundit…scoffed at the protesters’ list of demands, comparing many of their calls for increased social benefits to those of the former Soviet Union.

When he heard that the protest leaders were calling for higher taxation for the Israeli upper-classes, Beck laughed derisively, saying “ah, hate the rich.”

How idiotic is he?  Let me count the ways.  First, these protesters are the middle class, not the élite and not the highly educated who are likely to be left-wing activists of the sort Beck detests.  There are Orthodox Jews among their number and certainly a huge cross-section of demonstrators have served in the IDF.  Has Beck similarly served his country?  Nooooo!  So look who’s calling the kettle black.

Protesters are deploring the destruction of social benefits like public education and health care.  Naturally, Beck’s millions entitle him to private schools and the finest medical care money can buy.  Not so those involved in J14.  They’re just average people with average jobs who’re mad as hell about what Bibi’s taken away from them.  In reality, the J14 movement is the Tea Party in reverse.  It has all the magnetism among Israelis that the Tea Party has had for right-wing Republicans over the past year or so; yet J14′s values are diametrically opposite.  So I’d suggest that smearing J14 is the equivalent within Israel of smearing motherhood and apple pie.

Further, Beck claims (with no proof, natch) that J14 protestors are in cahoots with Islamists (a viewpoint certainly shared with Anders Breivik):

Beck also insinuated a possible collaboration between socialists and Islamists, pointing out historical instances in which the two movements went hand in hand.

And echoing the views of the extreme settler movement who he ardently supports, Beck called for stealing more “empty” Palestinian land on which Israel should build new settlements to “solve” the housing crisis:

Beck then went on to suggest that the housing crisis could be solved by simply building up empty land in the West Bank. The right-wing commentator emphasized that the area, biblically referred to as “Judea and Samaria”, is “Judea – like Jews”.

No, not “Judea–like Jews,” but Judea–like settlers; or Judea like Judeans who lived a millennium or so ago and no longer exist.

By the way, the “Restoring Courage” moniker is more rock band tour slogan than anything relevant to the Israeli scene.  The only thing Beck is trying to ‘restore’ is the Davidic monarchy (in the guise of a settler theocracy); or possibly the political hegemony of Likud and settler-religious parties even farther to its right.  Instead of all this nonsense, I wish Beck would talk to Bibi about ‘restoring’ some of the Israeli social safety net which he’s cut bit by bit to shreads over the years.

Beck’s making a big deal of visiting Itamar, the home of the murdered Fogel family.  One Fogel he’ll never visit is the father’s brother, Motti, who is a committed peace activist.

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