Mahzor

New York Public Library

Churches

Sarajevo Haggadah

Mah Nishtanah

Sarajevo haggadah

Antaea Darom

Israeli women's art

Action

Torah as music

Ben Heine

Action

ceramic bowl

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

Action

Punch and Judy/Pinchas and Jamila

Avi Katz

Action

David Grossman

Ben Heine

Action

Eldrige Street shul

Lower East Side

Action

Dove

Ben Heine

Action

Two birds

Hoda Jamal

Action

Israeli and Palestinian boys

from documentary, Promises

Action

Cat in the Hat

Yiddish version

Action

Daylight through the Wall

Banksy: graffiti art on Separation Wall

Action

Maurice Sendak's Brundibar set

New Victory Theater (photo: Nan Melville/NYT)

Action

Daniel Barenboim, West-Eastern Divan Orchestra

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

Action

Great Day on Eldrige Street

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

Action

Joint Appeal for Peace

(Avi Katz)

Joint Appeal for Peace

Ketubah, Ancona, Italy (1772)

(Jewish Theological Seminary library)

Ancona ketubah

Posts Tagged ‘Alan Dershowitz’

« Older Entries
Newer Entries »

Dershowitz’ Climate of Incitement: Pro-Israel Hooligans Vandalize Michael Lerner’s Home

Monday, May 3rd, 2010
alan dershowitz

Alan Dershowitz: inciter of hate and violence against fellow Jews

It is absolutely no accident that Alan Dershowitz singled Rabbi Michael Lerner out for special opprobrium in his most recent Jerusalem Post and Huffington Post columns and that local Bay Area Jewish pogromists decided shortly thereafter to “party” at Lerner’s home.  They defaced it with the slogans and themes they could’ve learned at Dersh’s knee:

Berkeley police today confirmed that the attack on Rabbi Lerner’s home late Sunday June 2nd or early morning Sunday July 3rd [the correct dates were May 2d or May 3rd] was in fact a crime and was being investigated.

The attackers used a powerful form of glue to attach posters to his door and around the property of his home attacking Lerner personally, and attacking liberals and progressives as being supporters of terrorism and “Islamo-fascism.” They posted a printed bumper sticker saying “fight terror–support Israel” next to a caricature of Judge Goldstone whose UN report on Israel’s human rights violations in its attack on Gaza last year has been denounced as anti-Semitic and pro-terror by right wingers in Israel and the U.S.. The caricature has Goldstone talking about his being kept from his grandson’s bar mitzvah, and the caricature of Rabbi Lerner responds by saying “any enemy of Israel is a friend of mine.”

…In the 24 years of Tikkun’s operation, we have received many death threats and vicious hate mail, including phone calls to our office announcing that “Rabbi Lerner is dead” and others saying “We will kill all of you.” This particular attack has two worrisome elements not previously there:

1. They attack Rabbi Lerner’s home. As law enforcement people told us, this is a way of conveying the message to Lerner: “We know where you live, we know your house is vulnerable, so don’t ignore our threats.”

2. By linking Lerner to alleged terrorism, they provide for themselves and other extremists a “right-wing justification” to use violence against Lerner

Here are some of the salient passages of Dershowitz’ recent rave, which denounced a group of rabbis, including Lerner, who I had urged to make a Jewish moral statement supporting Richard Goldstone in response to his treatment at the hands of the South African Jewish community.  Note the terms of incitement therein and think how they might impact the type of deranged, violent mind that carried out the mini-pogrom at Lerner’s home:

A group of rabbis, many of whom have long records of anti-Israel activism, authored a “Rabbinic letter” to Goldstone congratulating him on his grandson’s bar mitzvah and using the occasion to make virulently anti-Israel claims, including the blood libel that Israel deliberately targeted innocent Palestinian civilians without any military purpose. These ignorant rabbis…

These bigoted rabbis…

These “rabbis for Hamas” have no shame and no credibility. They exploit their rabbinical status to support any conclusion that undercuts self defense Israeli actions…

…The worst of these rabbis (and that’s saying a lot), Michael Lerner, after attempting to politicize the bar mitzvah by offering his anti-Israel synagogue for the event, has decided to honor Richard Goldstone with Tikkun Magazine‘s “Ethics Award.” I guess all it takes to be honored by Tikkun is to pass Lerner’s litmus test of lying about Israel. That’s Lerner’s definition of “ethics.” There are some good people on the advisory board of Tikkun Magazine. They now have an obligation to reconsider their membership unless they wish to be associated with a rabbi who is prepared to accuse Israel, in the absence of any evidence, of deliberately setting out to murder Palestinian civilians without any military purpose.

Someone ought to summon this intellectual hooligan to a beyt din for the use of such odious language.  I have no problem with anyone disagreeing with the sentiments in the rabbinic letter and saying so.  But to use the language above is to beg for the sociopathic among us to take action.  In effect, Dershowitz’s words here are the equivalent of “Will no one rid me of this meddlesome priest?”  Of course, there are those willing to act upon Dershowitz’s rhetoric.  He, of course is too slick to be caught anywhere near a real act of violence.  He would rather use rhetorical violence to impugn the morals of his enemies and gin up real violence by others.

I am younger than Alan Dershowitz, but when I was younger no Jew I knew would dare speak of any rabbi, whether they agreed with them politically or not, in the terms Dersh uses here.  Rabbis deserved and received respect because of their learning and their service to the Jewish people.  There are many rabbis who I don’t like either personally or politically.  But I would never go anywhere near using the terms Dershowitz does.

To be clear, there are Orthodox settler rabbis who have advocated actual acts of violence and murder against fellow Jews and Palestinians.  For them, I reserve no respect and have written about them in very strong language.  But there is no possible way the Harvard professor can argue the rabbis signing the Goldstone letter are anywhere near such status.

roy cohn

Alan Dershowitz, the Roy Cohn of this generation (Robert Mappelthorpe)

This is not the first time he has incited against a respected Jewish figure: on Israeli radio he called Richard Goldstone a moser, a betrayer of Jews, someone whom the tradition finds worthy of death for such a crime.

So what Alan Dershowitz does is to poison Jewish discourse, to debase the values of our community which show honor to rabbinic leaders, to spread calumny and plants the seeds of violence.  He’s this generation’s Roy Cohn, a scummy, truculent, trash-talking hater.  Mazel tov, Alan.  Your ancestors are hopefully spinning in their graves unless they too had no moral compass.

There is one other troubling aspect of this case outlined here by Tikkun staff:

The police say that this is not a “hate crime” because the attackers were not attacking Rabbi Lerner for his religion, but for his politics.

What the police do not understand is that for these rightist Jews their brand of Zionism IS a religion.  This is not stam politics.  This is bloody fratricidal civil war inside the Jewish body politic.  Make no mistake, this is a hate crime.  I’d like someone to tell me whether the assassination of Rabbi Meir Kahane was a hate crime.  If it was, this is too.  The only difference is that a Muslim killed Kahane and a Jew vandalized Lerner’s home.  These Jews hate Lerner no less than Kahane’s assassin hated him.

Finally, I should say that Alan Dershowitz isn’t the only person who hates Michael Lerner.  There are other sterling representatives of the Jewish spirit like Victor Vancier who runs the Masada2000 site who has actually physically threatened Lerner:

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 guillotines, nooses and racist language, the site repeatedly stated: “If you’re ever in the San Francisco area, drop in on him at his home.”

Predictably, the death threats and hate e-mails started pouring in–more than 60 to date. Late-night calls also drastically increased. “Both my wife and I were extremely scared,” Lerner says.

So if it wasn’t Dershowitz it could be someone else.  The difference is that Alan Dershowitz has a respected platform from which to launch his hate.  Others have dark, dank websites no one ever visits.  Speaking of respected platforms, can anyone tell me why Dersh is given such a perch at HuffPo?  I can understand JPost since they’re a Jewish neocon publication.  But HuffPo?  Is Arianna chummy with the guy?  Otherwise, I don’t get it.  You’d think now with Dersh using the website to preach hate that results directly or indirectly in violence they might reconsider.

Reblog this post [with Zemanta]

Tags: ,
Posted in Mideast Peace | 14 Comments »

If J Street Wants the Political Center, Why Not Join Aipac?

Sunday, May 2nd, 2010

The first time I heard Alan Dershowitz lecture Hadar Susskind at the Aipac conference telling him that J Street should join Aipac, I thought it was typical grandstanding by the right-wing pro-Israel huckster (I still think that).  But the longer I think about what he said and J Street’s pronounced move from the left to the political center, the more sense he makes.

I can also remember how J Street, when it began, ran like the plague from any notion, at least publicly, of criticizing Aipac or setting itself up as an alternative to Aipac.  To most of us on the left, it was clear that if J Street was ever to represent anything it would have to take on Aipac and beat it at its own game.  It turns out though, that we should have read the tea leaves and understood that the J Street leadership’s allergy to criticizing Aipac was not a tactic, but a strategy genuinely expressed.

Now, Shmuel Rosner, aping Dersh, wonders if J Street feels so cozy with the Israel government why doesn’t it join Aipac. He wrote this on the subject:

An Israeli familiar with the content of J Street’s meetings in Israel this week had said that “they sounded not much different from the visitors we have in AIPAC delegations”…It raises an old question: Why can’t they just join AIPAC instead of competing with them?…But there’s another way of looking at it: Maybe as a separate organization with more credibility on the left J Street can help Israel more by way of helping curb the wacky initiatives of the far left (like divestment in Berkeley).

I’d never quite thought of the fact that J Street either intentionally or unintentionally may serve to co-opt the political energy of the American Jewish peace movement.  Progressives funnel their energy into the organization which transmutes it in turn into  faintly liberal pro-Israel substance that bears only a slight resemblance to the actual political values of many of those progressives.  In this way, J Street contributes to the dumbing down of progressive Jewish politics.

Before I note some more of Rosner’s portrayals of Ben-Ami’s statements, I should add that Rosner is a terrible journalist, totally incapable of allowing his own right-wing prejudices from distorting everything he reports.  So it’s possible that the characterizations below of Ben-Ami’s opinion, none of which are actual quotations of anything Ben-Ami says, may be less than accurate.  Not to mention that it is in Rosner’s political interest to paint J Street as deviating from its original progressive political agenda and drifting farther right.  But given what I’ve read of Ben-Ami’s views elsewhere, and the lack of complaint by Ben Ami about misconstruing his views, we’ll take them as more or less accurate:

He seems quite happy about the bettering of relations with Israeli officialdom. My interpretation: He’d like this to continue, and is willing to pay a price for it.

Not once in the conversation – not once! – was there a word of criticism regarding Israeli policies. The only word of criticism I heard from Ben Ami this week was directed at the Palestinian leadership and its reluctance to go back to negotiations.

Is Netanyahu serious about negotiations? Ben Ami says he was convinced that Netanyahu is serious…

this is significant: Ben Ami doesn’t criticize Netanyahu and says he is serious about negotiations. Some J Street enthusiasts back home aren’t going to be happy – and Ben Ami knows this, and doesn’t seem to care much.

Ben Ami emphasized that J Street will not support boycott or divestment. Such position will also drive the more radical elements of the Jewish-sphere away from the organization.

In a related story, J Street’s national spokesperson scolded a local Brandeis chapter leader who criticized neocon University President Yehudah Reinharz’s choice of Israeli Ambassador Michael Oren as commencement speaker.  She said her organization “welcomed” Oren as commencement speaker.

There was a time when I might chalk all this up to the organizational leadership allowing itself to get boxed in or outmaneuvered on issues.  But the logic of having a sulha with Michael Oren, and breaking bread with Shimon Peres, and expressing a willingness to meet with settler leaders seems to be a deliberate move to the center.  And this move to the center precisely mirrors the Labor party’s gradual movement away from its founding principles under the tutelage of none other than Shimon Peres (till he was moved by Sharon’s blandishments and abandoned Labor for Kadima) and now Ehud Barak.

Many of us over many years held out hope for the Israeli liberal Zionist parties that they could represent a distinct political voice for peace and justice.  That same romance some of us may have had with J Street before it began and up until its national conference seems to be cooling rapidly.

Related articles by Zemanta
Reblog this post [with Zemanta]

Tags: , , , , ,
Posted in Mideast Peace, Politics & Society | 22 Comments »

Dershowitz: Keep Those Lies Comin’

Monday, March 22nd, 2010


Those of you who remember the Canadian Jewish film, Lies My Father Told Me, might think of Alan Dershowitz virtually whenever he opens his mouth.  And regrettably he did so (lied, that is) once again at the Aipac national conference.  Dersh couldn’t resist the impulse to chew out Hadar Susskind, J Street’s policy director, who was crashing (by invitation I presume) the Aipac event.  Unfortunately for Aipac, there was a French camera crew that recorded the imbroglio (Aipac’s PR flack Josh Bloch threw them out for their trouble). Aipac can’t be happy that Dersh went “off message” and gave J Street such great YouTube coverage on their big day.

Among the lies Dersh unloaded on Susskind:

“You should ask yourself why Norman Finkelstein loves you.”

The only problem: Norman Finkelstein doesn’t “love” J Street.  He doesn’t even support J Street.  If anything Finkelstein would despise the group as being insufficiently strong in its views about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

Dersh also accuses J Street of having Zbigniew Brezinski speak at its national conference. Though Amy Spitalnick and Susskind immediately point out his error he blusters through it all and maintains his lie with a straight face.

In the next breath, Dershowitz says:

I’ll speak to anybody. I’ll speak to Hamas, I’ll speak to Hezbollah.

I’m going to go out on a limb and out Dershowitz Dershowitz. I’ll pay him real money if he can prove he has any substantive contact with any representative of Hamas or Hezbollah in the next six months. Put your money where your mouth is, Al.

Another lie:

Some of Israel’s worst enemies have signed on in support of J Street.

But the problem with Dershowitz’s lies is that they sound just credible enough when he utters them that you’re hoodwinked for just the amount of time it takes for him to escape to utter the next lie.  By the time you’ve cottoned onto him he’s three lies down the line from where you caught him.

What’s truly comic and idiotic about Dershowitz is that he actually attempts to advance the argument that if J Street was really serious about being pro-Israel they would join Aipac and attempt to turn it into the kind of organization they (J Street) would like it to be. Seriously. Dersh actually tells the J Street staff member:

What we do is resolve our differences internally and we speak with one voice. And we put out a consensus statement on [sic] one voice.

Folks, these are the Jewish dinosaurs speaking. And you remember what happened to T-Rex? The Dershes of the Jewish world will have some impact for some time. But the longer they try to get away with sclerotic thinking like this the less impact and credibility they will have on anyone.

Dersh also tells Susskind rather incredulously that: “You know there are those who think that Aipac is too far left.” As if the fact that Sheldon Adelson thinks Aipac is a bunch of Jewish commies has any significance whatsoever to anyone but Shelly Adelson & Alan Dershowitz and Howard Kohr. Inside Jewish baseball, Al. Who cares?

Dersh lets Susskind know that he doesn’t think Aipac is “too far right” or “too far right” but “neutral on these issues!” Neutral! What universe is he living in?

Ron Kampeas should spend more time reading Steve Clemons and he would learn that the faux Aipac press release distributed today supporting a settlement freeze was written in jest by Clemons.  Or at least if it wasn’t written by him, it was inspired by a mock Aipac press release he did write.

Reblog this post [with Zemanta]

Tags: , , ,
Posted in Mideast Peace | 5 Comments »

Jerusalem Post: Profiting from Mossad Murder

Tuesday, March 2nd, 2010

Jerusalem Post earning shekels from Mossad murder

The rest of the world may be troubled by the Mossad’s flagrant violation of national sovereignty in the assassination of Mahmoud al-Mabouh.  They may be angry that their passports were cloned or the financial system jiggered to support Israeli terror.  But that’s not stopping from Israelis from flaunting their pride at such mayhem.  Not to mention making a shekel or two in the process.

Mossad's Operation Dubai: what fun, what adventure, what intrigue!

The N.Y. Times prominently advertises historic photos in its pages.  Imagine if instead the Times replaced this revenue enhancing feature with T-shirt promotions like this.  You can’t conceive of this?  Well, that should tell  you quite a bit about the relative quality of each publication.  At least, the Times has standards and doesn’t believe in profiting from murder.  There are clearly Americans who’d be happy to do so (though I haven’t yet seen any t-shirts boasting of the CIA’s drone assassinations of Taliban militants).  But does that mean we need to promote them in the pages of our major newspapers.

As one of my readers said about the Jerusalem Post’s involvement in this trade: putting the sh-ande in shmateh (“the shame in newsrag;” shmateh also refers to the “rag trade,” hence t-shirts ).

This is the same rag that allowed Alan Dershowitz to smear me by inferring that I published my work at a website whose author is a Holocaust Revisionist.  The same newspaper which ignored my request that they correct the record.  I should add that the Huffington Post at least had some compunctions about Dershowitz’s distortions and edited his false claim.

This is the same Jerusalem Post which published a full page ad picturing New Israel Fund chair, Naomi Chazan as an Israel-goring rhinoceros a la Der Shturmer.  The same Post which fired her as a columnist when she politely requested that they not run the ad and then threatened she would sue them.

No one should be surprised at this execrable taste.  The Post is the home of the most noxious of right-wing Likudist fanatics including Caroline Glick and Isi Liebler among others.  Alan Dershowitz finds a cozy home there as well.

I don’t expect much from the Post.  But this is a new low.

Related articles by Zemanta
Reblog this post [with Zemanta]

Tags: , , ,
Posted in Mideast Peace | 21 Comments »

Goldstone Report Video Interview

Wednesday, February 24th, 2010


Watch Goldstone: the Report That Won’t Die


My latest video interview for Bill Alford’s Moral Politics TV program concerns the Goldstone Report and Israel’s all-out smear on Justice Goldstone and the report.  The interview ranges far and wide, discussing the role of Elie Wiesel and Alan Dershowitz in the latest onslaught.  We also go far afield to discuss the nature of Zionism, Jewish identity, and the “religion” that Israel and the Holocaust have become for many Diaspora Jews.  And we cover the negative role that figures like Wiesel have played in ginning up anti-Iran fever in the Jewish community.  Finally, we discuss the likelihood of an Israeli attack on Iran and how this might impact the region.

Reblog this post [with Zemanta]

Tags: , , , ,
Posted in Film-TV-Media, Mideast Peace, Politics & Society | 3 Comments »

Abitbol Calls Me ‘Moser,’ Claims Goldstone Would Approve of Dubai Assassination

Thursday, February 18th, 2010

To some of you this may seem like inside Jewish baseball, but to me it’s deadly serious both because it involves a perversion of Jewish law and a personal calumny.  The perpetrator is David Abitbol, purveyor of lies and smears at Jewlicious who stated I was a moser because I advocated the capture and trial of the Mossad agents who assassinated Mahmoud al-Mabouh in Dubai last month.

A moser is a Jew who informs on a fellow Jew usually out of spite or hope for material gain.  In the 19th century, such betrayals could mean imprisonment or death for those Jews nabbed by the Czar’s police (as happened to Shneyer Zalman of Liyadi the first Lubavitcher rebbe).  For this reason, msirah is a grave offense in Jewish law.  Lately, Alan Dershowitz has levelled such a heinous charge against Justice Goldstone, accusing him of betraying Israel over his Gaza war crimes report.  Afterward, Dershowitz backpedaled saying he didn’t wish any physical harm to befall the judge.  But the damage was done.

Now comes that most excellent Jewish theologian, David Abitbol, spewing Torah and halacha as he goes and making a mockery of it in the process.  By my wish that the Mossad agents face justice for their murder, I’ve apparently betrayed them to the non-Jews of the world.  Further, even Justice Goldstone might approve of the murder of al-Mabouh.  I kid you not:

Are the people that committed this killing Israelis? We don’t absolutely know. Are they murderers? Is killing an enemy combatant, with blood on his hands, actively engaged in plotting the deaths of civilians, a murder? Or is it the sort of measured response to terrorism originating in Gaza, urged for by no less than Justice Goldstone in his infamous Report?

Let’s make some important distinctions that are clearly irrelevant to Abitbol but may be to the rest of us.  First, al-Mabouh admitted responsibility for capturing and killing two Israeli soldiers, not civilians.  I’m not in favor of what al-Mabouh did.  But we must keep in mind that Israel killed 1,100 Gaza civilians last year in the war.  The way I look at it if the IDF can engage in this sort of behavior, I have a hard time making moral distinctions between what al-Mabouh did and what the IDF does.  In my opinion, they’re both reprehensible with the difference being the IDF is far more lethal than al-Mabouh ever was.   The latter was reputed to be Hamas’ chief arms buyer with the Iranians.  I remind us all that all of Hamas’ rockets have killed well short of 50 Israelis since the Gaza withdrawal in 2004.  In spite of the fact that killing Israeli civilians is inexcusable, so is killing roughly 100 times as many Palestinian civilians in that same interval.

So, if Abitbol wishes to justify killing al-Mabouh will he also justify any potential future killings of Israeli leaders that might happen if Israel gives Hamas, Hezbollah, Iran or the Syrians enough justification to do so?  After all as I’ve been writing all too often lately, what’s good for the goose…

Perhaps the most bizarre claim here is that Justice Goldstone would somehow approve of the “measured response” of the Mossad in killing al-Mabouh.  In fact, this is a perversion of Goldstone and only a over-wrought hasbarist mind could conceive of such a claim.

Another halachic nit-pick with my learned rabbinic colleague, Abitbol.  A moser is someone who affirmatively betrays a fellow Jew to the authorities, not someone who writes a blog post calling for a Jew to be held accountable for his and her deeds.  Even more broadly, is killing a Palestinian leader like al-Mabouh something that no Jew is allowed to denounce because killing him somehow saved Jewish lives?

Jerry Haber of the Magnes Zionist, takes Abitbol to task from Jerry’s vantage point as a professor of Jewish philosophy, an Orthodox Jew, and dual Israeli-American citizen:

…It doesn’t take a stretch of the imagination to describe the Dubai assassination as an extra-judicial killing that a) violates norms of law, b) violates Dubai’s sovereignty, c) leads to reprisals against Israelis and Jews, and d) desecrates God’s name because civilized countries don’t send out hit squads in hotels…It is not only not mesirah to call for their arrest and trial, but it would be a mitzvah.

Now I don’t expect you, or anybody else with a tribal morality that belittles the rule of international law,  to agree with this. Fine…But what does mesirah have to do with it? You are deliberately using a charged term just to take potshots.

Returning to Abitbol’s argument in favor of targeted assassination: we can also argue about the ultimate utility of this notion: does targeted killing really weaken Israel’s enemies?  I argue, no.  Those who’ve read yesterday’s post will remember that Israel assassinated Hezbollah’s leader, which brought us an even fiercer current one.  Israel assassinated Hamas’ top leaders twice and is Hamas any less formidable a foe?  Does anyone doubt there will be plenty of resourceful candidates lining up to take al-Mabouh’s place?  That is the ultimate fallacy of Abitbol’s logic such as it is.

Besides being a Talmudic authority, Abitbol fancies himself an expert on international law.  At least he’d have to be to make this statement (which is utterly false):

…This sort of operation falls outside the ambit of the ICC

Of course, since Abitbol typically provides no proof or explanation for this contention, I can’t argue as to the specific fallacy, but this crime is certainly within the ICC’s jurisdiction.  Though international law requires that the nation within which the crime is committed must be given the opportunity to prosecute first.  That’s why I’ve suggested that Dubai ask the ICC to take on the case in order to give justice an international imprimatur.

I’ve often mentioned during the vendetta Abitbol has pursued against me that he’s a blatant liar, and he doesn’t disappoint here as well.  He claims that I’ve expressed “unbridled hatred” against a fellow Jew (that would be the Mossad killers):

…For a Jew to express such unbridled hatred against another Jew, and to actively urge people to turn them in, one has to wonder how the law of Moser ought to apply…

Sanctions against Moserim [sic] range from death to excommunication….I would never suggest that Richard Silverstein be killed for his opinions and he excommunicated himself from Klal Yisrael a long time ago.

…Richard Silverstein has proven himself to be a world-class douche bag.

First, I did not express hatred against the individual murderers.  I expressed disgust for their crime.  There is a difference and Abitbol typically does not understand what it is.  And as for “hatred,” I’d say Abitbol is a lot closer to expressing hatred of me here than I.  Second, the Mossad agents acted not as Jews, but as Israelis.  There is no religious element to this crime.  It is a national crime.  So for Abitbol to introduce theology into the discussion is yet another red herring.  Third, Abitbol has done to me precisely what Alan Dershowitz did to Richard Goldstone.  He has placed me in a category of someone who it is permissible to kill because they violate a grave injunction and endanger the Jewish people.  And like Dershowitz, with whom there are many similarities except that Abitbol is more of a wannabe than anything else, he has attempted to retract the poison from the statement by claiming he doesn’t wish me dead.  Of course, the rightist pro-settler forces who might target mosrim might not take his distinction to heart and restrain themselves.  Fourth, I would like my Jewish readers to tell me whether it is David Abitbol or I who have excommunicated ourselves from Klal Yisrael.  Is David Abitbol the type of Jew of which you are proud?  Fifth, a Hebrew correction: the plural of moser is mosrim, not moserim.

Speaking of Dershowitz, he too has penned a disgusting defense of the Dubai assassinations.  It is on a par with his defense of the killing of Lebanese civilians during the Israel-Lebanon war and of torture.

Abitbol is not someone who understands the consequences of his words.  He’s like a slightly precocious teenager full of himself who enjoys the sound of his own voice and his cleverness.  He enjoys the pseudo rapier wit (or what passes for it) of calling someone a “douchebag.”  I note with pride the other wonderful Jews whom he’s labelled similarly, among them Avrum Burg.

One of the things I value highly about Jewish tradition is that it emphasizes the importance of words.  Words have consequences.  For Abitbol, words are a game.  He is clever, oh so clever.  It’s all a game to him.  But when you call someone a moser you have put them in danger from all the right wing pro settler crazies out there, and even more importantly you are announcing to the world what type of person and Jew you are.  David Abitbol has engaged in hillul ha-shem, a grave desecration of God’s name.  He has exposed himself for what he is.  I leave it to you to judge for yourself.

Another correction of Abitbol’s sloppiness.  Al-Mabouh was not “the leader of Hamas’ military wing.”  He was the founder of the military wing, but not its current leader.Reblog this post [with Zemanta]

Tags: , ,
Posted in Blogs-Tech-Science, Mideast Peace | No Comments »

Burston on Gaza War as Root of All Israeli Evil

Sunday, February 14th, 2010

Brad Burston, Haaretz’s columnist can be a helluva fine writer.  I’ve written at least one laudatory post about him.  After doing so, I read pieces by Burston which seemed almost to be written by a different person.  They were churlish pieces attacking Israel’s Jewish critics.  I chalked it up to a journalist feeling that it was his duty to show he could criticize both the right and left.  I thought I would never find a reason to write about his work again, till tonight.

Burston has written one of the most powerful, cogent and hard-hitting critiques–not only of the Gaza war, but of the current mess in which Israel finds itself in–I’ve ever read.  Seemingly every Israeli NGO or peace activist is under savage attack.  At the present moment, Israel faces a civil liberties crisis as dire as the U.S. faced during the McCarthy era.  The New Israel Fund, a classical Zionist NGO if there ever was one, is under mortal threat.  Its leader, Naomi Hazan has been publicly and graphically attacked in terms that would’ve made Goebbels proud.  Richard Goldstone has been called a traitor to his people.  Alan Dershowitz as much as put a price on his head.  Jewish women have been arrested for trying to leyn Torah at the Wall.

So it is like a balm in Gilead to read such graceful, soaring language from Burston:

This is about fear of the dark. Of the monstrous. In this case, the terror of finally uncovering what we ourselves are really made of.

This is about the lengths we will go, and the depths, in order to protect what we so desperately need to believe about ourselves. This is about how many others we will need to blame, vilify, assault, scapegoat and smear, before we actually take one wholly honest long look in the mirror.

This is about the war we made in Gaza, and what it did to Israel. This is about how Israel’s conduct of the war has done more damage to the Jewish state than all the thousands and thousands of Palestinian rockets and mortar shells put together. It has been a year and more since a truce was called in Gaza, and – thanks in no small part to Israel’s freely admitted policy of hamstringing and stonewalling UN investigators – the world is still at war with Israel.

The result is only now becoming felt. In a thousand ways, in new ways every single day, we have brought the war home.

Israel’s battle plan, which effectively called for bludgeoning Hamas and the whole of Gaza into a state of shock, had the further effect, intentional or not, of inducing shock in Israel itself.

Here Burston presents a daring thesis for an Israeli audience–that Goldstone was right:

In some cases, shock expresses itself in combativeness. A lashing out even at those who are trying to help.

In our state of shock, we were unable to see that Richard Goldstone was trying to save us. And that the Goldstone Report is exactly what Israel needs. We fought him every step of the way, convincing ourselves – just as in Gaza – that the unfolding catastrophe was the best of the available scenarios.

Had Israel cooperated with the panel, it might have begun to learn how to prevent another war like this one, and how to fight future wars entirely differently. Only now, with the shock beginning to subside, have Israeli military and legal officials begun publicly to concede that battling the Goldstone panel was a colossal blunder.

Burston here also propounds an unpopular idea in Israeli circles, that the Gaza siege is as much a blunder as the war itself was.  And this argument segues into the most important point of his column–that the war has led inexorably to the current attack on Israeli democracy and the peace movement:

And it is this Israeli government, in continuing its siege of Gaza, in denying Gazans access to concrete and other materials needed to rebuild homes destroyed by Israeli fire during Cast Lead, that lends further credence to the Goldstone Report’s suspicions that Israel’s policy has been and continues to be one of collective punishment of a civilian population.

Despite the nightmarish numbers of civilians killed in Gaza, the right has argued again and again that the problem with the war was that it was not pursued aggressively enough. Now, at home, they are getting their way. Finally, the war is being pressed to the full – with peace activists and human rights workers as the primary targets.

The Dahiya Doctrine of overkill and unimaginable, unremitting force, is being applied against the elements of Israeli society most strongly defending democracy and elemental rights. Finally, the war at home is being run the way the right wants. No holds barred. A fresh new onslaught on democracy every single day.

And if his thundering column had ended with the following passage I would’ve called it a masterwork of decency and humanity:

The Goldstone Report is, indeed, deeply flawed. But it is exactly what Israel needs. A deeply flawed report for a deeply flawed country. A country which will not, and cannot, begin to heal itself, repair itself, right itself, unless it faces with honesty and courage the issues and allegations raised by the report.

As long as Israel ducks the report, and keeps buried the whole truth about Cast Lead, it will not recover from this state of shock. Israel will be more vulnerable than ever to destruction from within.

But alas, he didn’t.  And this goes to my criticism of Burston, where he seems to lose the courage of his convictions and lapses into standard anti-Palestinian rhetoric:

Gaza, ruled by a Hamas which wants to see Israel exterminated – and which has only grown richer, better armed, and more popular as a result of the Israeli embargo – will continue to hold the whole of Israel in a crippling, withering, ultimately destructive state of siege.

The notion that Hamas wants Israel exterminated is a beloved trope of the very Israeli right Burston has spent this entire column deriding.  I have no problem with criticizing Hamas.  But if you want to do that you have a responsibility to do it accurately and precisely.  And this anti-Hamas slur is neither accurate nor fair.  But I do very much like Burston’s closing image of a Hamas which, by the very nature of Israel’s siege of Gaza, holds Israel under siege as well.

Related articles by Zemanta
Reblog this post [with Zemanta]

Tags: , , , , , , ,
Posted in Mideast Peace | 37 Comments »

Dershowitz Calls Goldstone ‘Evil,’ ‘Traitor to Jews;’ Shin Bet Urges NIF Investigation

Sunday, January 31st, 2010

Israeli far-right goes 'Der Shturmer' on Naomi Hazan in Jerusalem Post ad.

I’ve never felt this more than tonight.  There is deep evil afoot among elements of the IDF, Shin Bet, and in the halls of hasbara represented by Alan Dershowitz and the like.  Much of it revolves around the hysterical reaction by the Israeli military and political elite to the Goldstone Report.  We knew all this before.  But the attacks have never been so vicious as those of the past few days, bordering on incitement to violence.  The phrases being voiced remind me of the environment just before Yitzchak Rabin was assassinated by the same type of rabid Israeli nationalist as the ones calling for blood from Israeli peace activists.  I know many of us have been critical of the Israeli left and the peace movement.  I remain so.  But it is now time to pick whichever portion of the Israeli left we can most support and do so wholeheartedly.  The Israeli left is under attack as never before.

Two developments in particular have chilled me to the bone, and I thank Jerry Haber for posting about Dershowitz’s latest eruption and Didi Remez for posting about the IDF’s machinations against Prof. Naomi Hazan and New Israel Fund.  And I urge you after reading this to do everything in your power to support the forces under assault.  Make contributions to New Israel Fund.  Send messages of support to Prof. Hazan.  Call your local Israeli consulate to complain about the assaults on her and Justice Goldstone.  This must stop.

I do not have a problem with anyone whether right or left expressing their views on the issues.  It is good to criticize Goldstone or New Israel Fund if you feel they’ve got things wrong.  But it is dead wrong to call your opponent “evil” or use Der Sturmer tactics to turn your opponent into a subhuman (note the rhino horn on Prof. Hazan’s head in the graphic I’ve posted here–the Hebrew word for “Fund” is the same as “horn,” which explains the rather foolish-looking horn on her head).

We MUST turn the conversation away from this assault and back on the substance of the Goldstone Report.  We must support the UN process outlined in Goldstone which could bring the report for consideration by the Security Council and International Court of Justice if the Israelis and Hamas refuse to investigate their misdeeds.  This is where attention needs to be.  And not on accusations of treason and other McCarthyite red herrings.

Please spend time reading the articles linked here and listening to the Dershowitz radio interview and disseminate this as widely as possible with the added message that we will not take our eyes off the ball that is Goldstone.  We will stand by our allies in Israel and outside it when they are under attack.

Alan Dershowitz gave a radio interview to Israeli army radio, Galey Tzahal, in which he launched a full frontal attack on Justice Goldstone.  Keep in mind that the Israeli officials discussing whether and how to create the least effective investigative panel that would satisfy the Goldstone conditions have bandied about the name of this thug as a potential member of the panel.  Here are some of the interview’s key passages:

D: The Goldstone Report is a defamation written by an evil, evil man.  Goldstone is an evil man.  No one should mince words about it.  He allowed his Jewishness, the fact that his name is Goldstone, and that he has connections to Israel–he allowed himself to be used to give…a heksher, a certification of purity to a defamation.

It would be as if the Czar when he wrote the Protocols of the Elders of Zion he asked a prominent to Jew to edit the report and sign the Protocols in order to show that it had credibility.

Galey Tzahal: Do you hint Prof. Dershowitz that he is a moser, someone who betrays his own people?

D: Absolutely.  There is a prayer that is said every day for people like him: La-malshinim al t’hi tikvah (“there shall be no hope for the betrayers”).  He is a man who uses his language, his words against the Jewish people.  I regarded him as a friend.  I now regard his as an absolute traitor.

Eyal Nir, on my Facebook page makes a perceptive comment (Hebrew) about the Protocols: either Dershowitz is claiming that the Protocols were based on true testimony or he’s claiming that Goldstone is the same type of fraud as the Protocols.  Perhaps Dersh wants us the believe Cast Lead never happened or all those Gazan civilians didn’t die?  Can anyone doubt this man is a charlatan?

Later in the interview Dershowitz says he hasn’t been asked to serve on the committee.  With mock modesty he ventured Justice Aharon Barak as a better candidate for the panel.  Jerry Haber points out that when the Goldstone Report was first issued Defense Minister Barak approached Dershowitz and Barak to spearhead the campaign in Israel’s defense.  You can see what Dersh’s reply was.  Barak refused.  And given this performance, how likely does anyone think it will be for Aharon Barak to answer this tainted call to serve?

If you understand Hebrew, also listen to the remainder of the interview with Shulamit Aloni who savages Dershowitz, calling him a “patriot nutcase” and Ehud Barak, saying she believes he deliberately wanted to kill Gaza civilians during Cast Lead.  She also calls him “the most dangerous man in Israel” and a “Napoleon” (which is rendered even funnier by the fact that Barak is quite short).

Didi Remez translates part of the story by Maariv’s Ben Caspit which reveals that the Knesset’s foreign affairs and security committee will deliberate about New Israel Fund’s alleged role in collaborating with the Goldstone Report by passing incriminating IDF documents to it, thereby blackening Israel’s name in the process.  These documents were forwarded to the Attorney General by the Shin Bet, requesting an investigation be launched.

In an earlier story on the affair, Caspit writes this incendiary claptrap about NIF (as reported in Noam Sheizaf’s blog post):

“Israel’s image is at an all-times low. International pressure is mounting, and with it the calls for boycott. All this was fueled by the Goldstone report, which was in itself fueled by Israeli sources. The funding for these sources is provided by, amongst others, the NIF. The question is whether the New Israeli Fund is indeed for Israel.”

Caspit mentions 300 grassroots and social organizations receiving funds through the NIF, and asks: “is all this activity just intended to serve as a front for radical subversive activity, acting against the very foundations of the state?”

Other Knesset members are proposing ending cooperation between all government agencies and NIF grantees (NIF funds various social justice, human rights and anti-poverty NGOs and initiatives in Israeli Jewish and Arab communities).

Far-right Israeli nationalists protest outside Naomi Hazan's home. Placards say: "Love Naomi--Hate Tzahal" (Flash 90)

The far-right nationalist group, Im Tirtzu, is campaigning against NIF and Naomi Hazan, its Israeli chair, placing the ad displayed here in the Jerusalem Post.  The Israeli right have demonstrated outside Hazan’s home dressed in in mock Hamas kefiyes and thanking her for her support.

Here are some of the shenanigans the Israeli right and intelligence services have planned for NIF:

..The materials exposed…are familiar to the IDF authorities and the legal authorities in Israel. Some of them were given half a year ago to the Military Advocate General Brig. Gen. Avichai Mandelblit.He checked the material and gave it to the Atty. Gen., with a recommendation to open an official investigation. No such investigation has been made so far. The Shin Bet is also familiar with the material and the sensitive issue. Taking action against this is not simple because NIF is a registered association in the US. Also, it is noteworthy that a large part of the fund’s activities in Israel are devoted to social and public issues of the first order.

“It will be hard to connect this activity to political subversion,” said a security source, who is well familiar with the affair. “But on the other hand, there is clearly a worrisome pattern here that is causing Israel serious damage and helping its worst critics tie the IDF’s hands and undermine the legitimacy of the Jewish state in general and its right to defend itself in particular.”

Im Tirtzu is now planning to launch a large public campaign, both against the New Israel Fund in general and personally against its head, Prof. Naomi Hazan. Dozens of movement activists demonstrated last night in front of Hazan’s house dressed up as Hamas activists and carried signs thanking Hazan and the fund.

For the past few months and until tonight, I’d broken off contact and support for NIF over the treatment of fellow blogger, Shamai Leibowitz several years ago.  Since Ben Caspit played an instrumental role in this affair as a conduit of the Shin Bet in smearing Shamai, it’s appropriate to bring it up now.  Shamai came to the U.S. to study international human rights and receive a law degree from George Washington University.  He came with the support of an NIF fellowship.  Leibowitz taught a State Department language, culture and politics course for new U.S. diplomats being sent to Israel.  That is, he taught the course until Aipac found out about it and conveyed this information to the Israeli government, which in turn leaked the information to Caspit, who published it as a juicy piece of gossip: defender of convicted terrorist Marwan Barghouti teaching U.S. diplomats about Israeli culture.  You get the drift.  Shamai lost the job.

Later, Shamai made a speech endorsing the BDS movement in Cambridge which was also reported back to the powers that be in Israel.  Such pressure was exerted that NIF dropped Shamai from the program.  When I learned of this I was so angry I wrote to the then NIF director, Larry Garber, berating him for his betrayal of Shamai.  He never responded.  That’s when I cut my ties to NIF.

But as far as I’m concerned, the Israeli power structure is out to castrate NIF and I simply won’t allow it to happen.  It’s all hands on deck.  Do not let this ship go down.

Those of you who follow the Israeli media closely should note the role that Ben Caspit is playing in this little escapade.  Some journalists’ interests are so closely allied with the security services their salaries might as well be paid by them.  Caspit is one such.

Related articles by Zemanta
Reblog this post [with Zemanta]

Tags: , , , , , , , ,
Posted in Jews & Judaism, Mideast Peace | 7 Comments »

« Older Entries
Newer Entries »
Performance Optimization WordPress Plugins by W3 EDGE