Part I – The Death Knell of the Two State Solution　

Over the past month Palestinian leaders have begun to publicly acknowledge that continuing actions by the Israeli government, and corresponding inaction by the “international community,” have destroyed any reasonable hope of a viable and independent Palestinian state.　

Listen to Ahmed Qurei, who held high office in the Palestinian Authority under Yasser Arafat: “It is probably no longer possible to create the kind of state that we want. Now we must choose between two stark choices: either we settle for a worthless state made of hapless ghettoes and miserable slums…or struggle for one unitary and democratic state where Jews and Arabs can live equally in all of Mandate Palestine…”　

Among many Palestinian Islamic leaders, hope for the future now exists only in the form of a Quranic prophecy, which tells of Islam’s divinely inspired victory over the Jews in Palestine as punishment for the unholy behavior of the Israeli state. This might be compared to the Christian Zionist’s prophecy of the triumph of Israel presaging the second coming of Christ.　

Either way it goes, a unitary secular and democratic state or God’s intervention, Israel as a “Jewish State” is seen as terminal. Of course, that is not how the politically minded Zionists, led by Benjamin Netanyahu and his Likud party, see it. Netanyahu has recently formed a “unity” government with the major opposition party, Kadima, and by doing so appears to have secured his political leadership for some time to come. So, what sort of scenario do these Zionists seek to realize now and in the future?　

Part II – The Zionist Scenario:

How do Zionist leaders see the future? As far as I understand the situation, here is their projected scenario:　

1. The Zionist leadership sees victory (Israel’s sovereign possession of all the land of Palestine from the Mediterranean to the Jordan River – some even covet Jordan) as inevitable. It is just a matter of time. This assessment is based on power relations. On the one hand, the Israelis have vast military superiority over the Palestinians and have defeated all the Arab forces sent against them. On the other, they have the United States and a good portion of Europe in their political pockets. So how can they lose?　

2. Victory means ethnically cleansing the land of most of the Palestinians–a process that is on-going. Every effort is being made to force as many as possible into exile. This is being done by an on-going policy of making life as miserable as possible for all non-Jewish natives of Israeli controlled territory. For instance, it is public knowledge in Israel (if not the U.S.) that “police brutality against Palestinians has been routine for decades.” Those who, despite all, refuse to leave, are being territorially restricted and economically marginalized. It is often speculated that the model for the latter situation is the Indian reservations in the U.S. as they existed circa 1870. And indeed, for Zionists this model can be more easily rationalized than the ghettos of old Europe. 

2a. In the process of this ethnic cleansing, the number of Palestinians who die is irrelevant to the Zionist leadership. The Palestinians, like the American Indians, are seen as hardly human. If the Zionists could make them all disappear without serious international repercussions they would do so.　

3. All this having been accomplished, Zionist leaders plan to simply maintain the status quo and wait. They believe that, just as was the case of the American Indians, the world will eventually forget the fate of the Palestinians, and this forgetting will seal Israel’s dominion over the land. At least from the Zionist point of view, that is the end of the story.　

By the way, Zionists are not the only ones betting on this sort of scenario. The Chinese in Tibet, and the Sinhalese in Sri Lanka, are also counting on the world forgetting their victims. And, in each case they might be right. However, it is the Zionists who are running the greatest risks pursuing this strategy of conquest. Why is that the case?　

Part III – Problems For The Zionist Scenario　

1. Israel is not a great power like China, and does not occupy a half-forgotten spot on the globe like Sri Lanka. It is very much on the map as far as vast numbers of people are concerned, both supporters and opponents. Of course, Israel continues to enjoy the patronage and protection of a great power, the U.S. But, as unlikely as it might seem at present, this can change. 

2. It is not the 18^th and 19^th centuries anymore and outright colonial domination is no longer in favor. The only way Israel can commit crimes with impunity is by: (a) playing the holocaust card and (b) sustaining the political clout of its lobbies. The first practice is rapidly wearing thin almost everywhere one looks. The second, on the other hand, is the key to their patronage and protection. Yet counter lobbies are even now evolving, and an increasingly vocal international Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement is on-going. The past 95 years of solid Western backing of Zionist political goals (counting from the Balfour Declaration) does not make the future a sure thing for the Israelis and their ideological supporters. 

3. As they conquer Palestine they destroy Judaism. Here is the greatest irony: ultimate success of the Zionist strategy marks the ultimate corruption of official, organized Judaism. This is so because such success seals the devil’s bargain that ties the organized aspect of this religion to the racist and anti-human goals of Zionist ideology. With the death knell of the Palestinian state comes the death knell of official Judaism.　

3a. Do you want to know why anti-Semitism appears to be on the rise? Because the Zionists have changed the definition of the term. The traditional definition tells us that anti-Semitism is hatred for Jews as Jews. The new, Zionist inspired definition, includes opposition to anything the “Jewish state” of Israel does. Oppose the political goals of Zionism and you allegedly oppose Jews and Judaism. Ergo, you’re an anti-Semite.　

3b. This assertion on the part of Zionists is, of course, a modern innovation. Yet it gains popularity based on the premise laid down by Joseph Goebbels that “if you tell a lie big enough and keep repeating it, people will eventually come to believe it.” Nonetheless, the truth is that Zionism and Israel have never been synonymous with Judaism. All Jews are not and never have been Zionists and all Zionists have never been just Jews. That being the case, the claim by Zionists that Israel and its government represent Jewry en masse is false. Yet the lie is stated over and again. The Jews who object to this false claim are now labeled “self-hating Jews.” This too is nonsense.　

Part IV – What of Palestinian Resistance?　

The most striking thing about the list of obstacles given above is that Palestinian resistance in places like the West Bank, Gaza and Israel proper, is not on it. Why? Again, it has to do with power relations. When, during the Second World War, resistance manifested itself against Nazi occupation, the cost was remarkably high. Partisans might shoot a German soldier, but then the German Army would shoot 50 civilians as punishment. Nonetheless, the Germans lost the war and most of the Nazis from that time have been hunted down and given their own punishment.　

The Israelis have employed the Nazi strategy of disproportionate revenge and collective punishment from the very inception of the Israeli state. If anything, the kill ratio they exact from the Palestinians is even higher than the Nazi average. But the same powers that once brought low the Nazis now either support or turn a blind eye to the savagery of the Israelis. 

Under these circumstances the Palestinians have indeed been worn down. In Gaza they are confined to the world’s largest open air prison and in the West Bank most of their leaders are either in prison or have been turned into collaborators. It has gotten to the point where the most effective act of resistance they can muster is the threat that over a thousand of them, locked away in Israeli prisons without charge or trial, will starve themselves to death.　

Part V – Conclusion　

The death knell of the two state solution and its corresponding corruption of official Judaism is not the end of the story. But, the final chapter can no longer be written by the Palestinians alone. The West began the present horror in the “Holy Land” when it sought to pay for the sin of European anti-Semitism by allowing the destruction of the Palestinian people. Ultimately, it is only with help from the West that the situation can be put right. However, as long as they are under the corrupting influence of Zionism, most governments will not seek to do so. So this corrective effort has to be undertaken by a movement of civil society – Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions. And the Jews of the world better hope and pray for its success. For it is not just the fate of the Palestinians that rides on the outcome. It is the fate of the Jews as well.

 

Part I – Health Care in the USA

On 7 May 2012 a new study came out on healthcare in the United States. Based on research carried out by the Urban Institute, the report is published in the journal Health Affairs. Here are some of its findings:

– There is a prevailing “trend toward private insurance policies with larger deductibles and higher co-payments…”

– “Employers [are] shifting more [heath care] costs onto workers.”

– “Poor and uninsured adults [there are presently 41 million such people in the U.S.] had greater difficulties not just with health care costs, but finding doctors who would see them.” In addition, “too few providers are taking Medicaid” patients.

– One consequence of this trend is that “one in five American adults under 65 had an ‘unmet medical need’ because of costs in 2010, compared with one in eight in 2000.”

What all this means is that health care in the U.S. has deteriorated in the first decade of the 21^st century. That was also reflected in a 2005 study by the World Health Organization that ranked the United States (supposedly the richest of nations) as 141^st in government spending on health. Perhaps not unrelated, the U.S. ranks number 1 in the world when it comes to anxiety disorders.

Part II – The Philosophy Behind the Decline

This situation reflects a culture-shaping philosophy that has persisted in this country, with but brief interludes, since its founding. That philosophy teaches that we all are, or should be, rugged individuals. We should take care of ourselves and not rely on others. That is our responsibility in life and if someone can not measure up its their problem, not society’s.

Where does this attitude come from? There are no doubt multiple roots, but one source is an historically deep-seated national dislike of taxation. From the first moment of revolution against Great Britain, freedom meant escaping imperial taxes. Americans of that day claimed that only elected local legislatures could rightly lay down taxes. The claim was made, in part, because within such a localized system taxes could be kept to an absolute minimum.

This attitude toward taxation is, in turn, at the heart of the original capitalist outlook as it evolved in the 18^th century. According to this perspective there are only three things for which the government can rightly tax its citizens: national defense, internal security (including the court system) and the enforcement of contracts. Beyond that the government must leave people alone and that includes not “over taxing” them and not regulating any of their business affairs.

This philosophy has caused untold misery since its inception. For the first century of the industrial revolution when the government of Great Britain (the original industrializing nation) was controlled by people who wanted minimal taxation and no business regulation, working class people lived in dire poverty, environmental pollution was rampant, industrial safety was non-existent, and health care for the poor was the concern of private charity only. Why? Because for the government to address any of these concerns would cost money and that would mean raising the taxes of the folks who had money.

It took over one hundred years of labor organizing, strikes, riots, outbreaks of preventable diseases, and the incessant pestering of elected officials by that small minority of the population who thought all this was a scandal (mostly women and religious folks), to force politicians (kicking and screaming) to address social needs and enforce health and safety related regulations. The Great Depression beginning in 1929 forced the issue with a vengeance and led to larger government and the “welfare state.” In other words, it led to a sense of social responsibility on the part of Western governments–most reluctantly the U.S. government. In America, that lasted through the 1970s and then the situation reversed.

One would think that memory would serve us for more than a mere forty odd years. That after suffering all the misery brought on by 19^th and early 20^th century capitalism we would have learned that to achieve social peace and a modicum of general prosperity, the government must perform important community functions including supplying all its citizens with decent and affordable health care.

But no it hasn’t worked that way. In 1981 Ronald Reagan became president. He started the process of deregulation and shifting taxation away from the rich. Others, including Democrats like Bill Clinton, followed along. When recently Barack Obama proposed health care reform he was labeled a socialist. Now, just listen to Mitt Romney and his Republican cohorts. Just listen to the Tea Party cabal. Just listen to Fox News. All of them want to go back to the “good old days” of minimalist government and minimum taxes. By the way, in the midst of those good old days, about the year 1843, the median age of death in the industrial city of Manchester England was 17.

Part III – What Kind of Society Do Americans Want?

This leads us to the question, just what sort of society do Americans want? Indeed, do they want a meaningful society at all?. Why not just stick to family units or small tribes drifting about in a state of nature? Well, in a sense that is what we chose to do. The tribes have become larger and today we call them nation states. But in the American version, localism makes for myriad sub-tribes. In the state of Pennsylvania, where I live, the people in the relatively rural center of the state as well as those in the urban suburbs, not only care little for those living in cities such as Philadelphia and Pittsburgh, they actively dislike them. They don’t feel like they live in the same society. And they certainly don’t want to be taxed to help an urban population with a lot of poor folks. In others words, whatever sense of social solidarity rural and suburban Pennsylvanians feel, it does go not much beyond their own local community (or “tribe”). And Pennsylvanians are by no means unique in this country

The fact is that, in terms of social conscience, the U.S. is still quite a primitive place. And this primitiveness is sustained by a philosophy of selfishness. Among other things, that prevailing philosophy is making an ever greater number of us unhealthy. Is this acceptable to most Americans? Is this the kind of society they want? The political practice since 1981 seems to answer, yes.

 

Part I – Slander

On 24 April 2012 the New York Times (NYT) lent its editorial page to the propaganda of right- wing Zionist David Horowitz, thereby taking the “newspaper of record” down into the gutter for only the price of a quarter-page advertisement. The ad , which was placed “as a public service” by the David Horowitz Freedom Center, told the following libelous story:　

“The Holocaust began with boycotts of Jewish stores and ended with death camps. The calls for a new Holocaust can be heard throughout the Middle East and Europe as well. In the wake of the murders of a rabbi and three children in Toulouse, it is time for the supporters of the Boycott, Divest and Sanction Israel movement (BDS) to ask themselves what they did to contribute to the atmosphere of hate that spawned these and other murders of Jews.”　

What is wrong with this story?　

1. The analogy of BDS with “boycotts of Jewish stores” is (no doubt purposely) misleading. The Boycott movement is directed against Israel as a racist state and the economic and social agents (Jewish and non-Jewish) who support it. If you want a proper analogy to BDS, it is the effort by Jewish and other groups before and during World War II to organize boycotts of Nazi Germany. The notion that the BDS boycotts lead to death camps is fantasy. Whatever the crazy logic of the Nazis on the one hand and David Horowitz on the other, the BDS movement is an effort to prevent persecution and not to promote it.　

2. The notion that the BDS movement either “calls for a new Holocaust” or is associated with those supposedly doing so, is nonsense. In reality it is the right-wing Israeli fanatics who are not only calling for, but actually carrying out their own version of a holocaust against the Palestinians. In the place of concentration camps they have created ghettos and Bantustans. In place of gas chambers they have promoted homelessness, cultural genocide and periodic pogroms. Indeed, the same week Mr. Horowitz placed his ad, Israel launched 57 military raids into Palestinian territory resulting in multiple injuries and death, destroyed at least 13 Palestinian shelters while beginning construction on 20 illegal settler houses. Yet the perpetrators of these crimes persist in portraying themselves as victims because once, under completely different historical circumstances, their ancestors were victims. But that was in the past. In the present the Zionists are the culprits and BDS seeks to bring out this tragic and ironic fact.　

3. It is a gross misrepresentation to accuse those supporting BDS of contributing to “the atmosphere of hate that spawned…murder of Jews.” The BDS campaign has nothing to do with this atmosphere, but the actions of the Israeli leadership has everything to do with it. With the Zionist persecution of the Palestinians on-going one needs no boycott movement to explain the upswing of anger. Some may unfortunately fail to make the proper distinction between political Zionists and Jews in general, just like Horowitz and his ilk fail to make the distinction between terrorists and Palestinians in general. Yet, if the Israeli leaders and their supporters want to know where this anger is coming from, they need look no further than their own behavior.　

However, they refuse to look. Instead they attempt to confuse matters and shift the blame from fanatic Zionist settlers and racist Israeli politicians onto those who would publicly expose the viciousness of Israeli policies. That is the aim of the Horowitz ad in the New York Times and it pursues it in very specific ad hominem fashion. When in November 1938 the Nazis launched the pogroms which became known as Kristallnacht, they painted Jewish stars on the sites to be attacked. In a similar way Horowitz seeks to identify and label those he wishes to be “publically shamed and condemned.” What does that mean? Should they lose their jobs just like the Jews who were forced from their occupations by the Nazis? Should they be segregated out and impoverished like Palestinians? Perhaps Mr Horowitz would applaud physical attacks? Just how Nazi-like does he wish the situation to get?　

Part II – The New York Times 

William Thomson of the University of Michigan, one of fourteen academics slandered by the Horowitz advertisement, notes that “groups and individuals will resort to unfounded character assassination and ad hominem attacks when reasoned discussion is beyond their abilities.” However, the country’s major national newspaper is not suppose to be an accomplice in such attacks. Yet, that is the case.　

Ali Abunimah has pointed out that the New York Times has “advertising acceptability guidelines” which require advertisements to “comply with its (the NYT’s) standards of decency and dignity” and not be “misleading, inaccurate or fraudulent.” Horowitz’s offering is blatantly all of this. Yet there it was, in the April 24^th edition of the “paper of record.” Of course Horowitz’s propaganda was placed on the editorial page and not identified as an ad. What are we to make of this? It seems clear that the editors actually believe that the piece passes the their standards of acceptability. But is the NYT also telling us that this libel is an acceptable editorial? The entire affair calls into question (not for the first time) the judgment of the people who run this famous newspaper.　

Paper IV – Conclusion　

David Horowitz probably wrote this propaganda piece not only to shift blame, but also to scare people. To frighten those named and scare off others from getting involved in the BDS movement. Yet he may well have overstepped and made himself the subject of critical attention rather than those he rails against. That is what happens when your message reflects a viewpoint that is ideologically driven and fanatical. Cast this viewpoint in a more normal light and it looks weird and distorted.　

The 19^th century English essayist William Hazlitt once remarked that “prejudice is never easy unless it can pass itself off for reason.” That is also what David Horowitz tries to do here. He displays the prejudice of a fanatic and tries to pass it off as reason. Hopefully, when it comes to Israel/Palestine, it is too late for that sort of gambit to work.

 

Part I – Liberal Games

On 10 April 2012 the journalist Charles Davis did a guest posting on Glenn Greenwald’s website, Salon. The title of the piece is “The Liberal Betrayal of Bradley Manning.” Davis’s argument is that President Obama acts much like George Bush Jr. when it comes to “security” issues. He has, for instance, “institutionalized the practice of indefinite imprisonment” and in several other ways undermined the nation’s civil liberties. The difference is that, unlike Bush, Obama has not experienced vocal opposition from most liberals to this process of despoilment. Chase Madar, a New York civil rights attorney puts it this way, “Obama and the Democrats being in power in Washington defangs a lot of liberal criticism.”

Davis’s case in point is that of Bradley Manning, the Iraq war veteran accused of leaking a large number of Pentagon and State Department files to Wikileaks. Some of these leaked files clearly document actions that can be deemed war crimes. Manning made the mistake of confiding in a stateside blogger. He asked this person: “If you…saw incredible things, awful things…things that belonged in the public domain, and not on some server stored in a dark room in Washington DC…what would you do?” Manning’s answer was to make those facts public which, in my opinion, was the action of a hero. His erstwhile confidant’s answer was to turn the hero in to authorities.

Manning is now in a military prison awaiting a trial that, almost certainly, will keep him “in a dark room” for the rest of his life. Our “liberal” President seems to find this prospect fitting for someone “who broke the law” (a public judgment that Obama made before Manning was given over for trial). Most of the liberal establishment has joined in by demeaning Manning as a “troubled young man” who, as the New York Times put it, had both a “desperate need for acceptance” and “delusions of grandeur.” Alyssa Rosenberg, who represents the Center for American Progress, has declared that Manning “has pretty serious emotional problems” and the “Democratic [Party] pundit Joy Reid claimed that Manning is “a gay guy seeking anarchy as a salve for his own personal psychological torment.” That he exposed blatant murder, among other dubious behaviors, seems not to resonate at all with these liberals.

Both Davis and Chase Madar conclude that liberals really do not oppose the violation of civil or human rights, be they those of Americans, Iraqis or anybody else. What they do consider unacceptable are violations carried out in an “uncouth” and “vulgar” manner that, they believe, characterizes conservative practice. Liberals are, allegedly, more sophisticated in their practice of double standards and that is why they can and do support Barack Obama when he does, in a more “professional” way, the same things that George Bush Jr. did. Manning’s exposure of the crimes of the U.S. military is, of course, anathema to both liberals and conservatives. In this regard both groups are equally unethical. They just express their lack of ethics differently.

Part II – Situational Ethics

Davis and Madar might be on to something here, but it needs to be understood against a broader background and its real implications brought out. Here are some thoughts that might help us move in that direction:

1. For the vast majority of people ethics are not “universal,” but rather are situational. In theory the majority might profess to follow a definitive code of behavior. In practice, however, they will adjust those convictions to the demands of their community. In other words, people normally act as their neighbors act, as the local law tells them to act and in ways that are approved by their group leaders. The number of people who consistently practice an ethical code even when it goes against the point of view of their local community are very few. Maybe Bradley Manning is one of this rare breed.

2. Ethical behavior is also relative to institutional affiliation. The military (and not just the U.S. version) has values and principles all its own and they often not only condone, but also encourage, extreme violence. If you don’t believe me just ask your typical Drill Sargent. As far as I know almost all of the 1,430,895 people in the U.S. military have conformed to the parochial behavioral codes of their institution. Almost, but not quite all. Bradley Manning did not conform.

3. Given that there are a small number of people whose ethical behavior defies local and institutional demands, the claim that Bradley Manning acted as he did because of “emotional problems” can be seen as a gambit to deflect attention away from the real criminals. If, like Manning, you discovered definitive evidence of the outright murder of a dozen unarmed people in an American neighborhood and then ran off to the authorities to report the incident, no one would say you did so because you were mentally unstable. However, move the incident to Baghdad and put on a uniform, and things change. Now you know that, given “military ethics,” those in charge are likely to just suppress any evidence. Also, as far as your affiliated institution is concerned, it is going public with your evidence that “breaks the law.” What does one do when you can’t shake your more principled ethical view and adapt to the corrupt situational one of your group? In Manning’s case, you muster the courage to do what you think is right. As a consequence both liberals and conservatives now say you are not only a criminal, you’re also crazy. But Bradley Manning is not crazy. He is sane. However, he is a sane man in a crazy community.

Part III – Conclusion

It seems clear that liberals have no more sense of “universal” ethics than do conservatives. All they have is their self-serving situational values and an allegedly slick way of expressing them. And, in the long run, it seems to make little difference to the public at large if human rights are compromised by “vulgar” conservative opportunists or “sophisticated” liberal ones. Maybe this indifference has something to do with the fact that almost everyone else on the planet also lives by ethical standards that are situational. That is why the struggle to make the world a better place in terms of “universal” ethics never seems to be quite realized.

Regardless, we can take heart from those few truly principled people, like Bradley Manning, whose actions teach us that hypocrisy, even if commonplace, is not inevitable. Such people seem never to give up and their struggle to make things better is, in fact, a tiny peek at what a better world might look like. In each society there are a relatively small number of such people and they keep hope alive. They are the real heroes.

 

 

Part I – Wealth and Ideology

In the early 1500s the Spanish Conquistadors came to the shores of what is now known as Florida (Flowery Land in Spanish). At that time the area was populated by groups of Paleo-Indians whose lives were about to change drastically for the worse. The Conquistadores were out for gold and other riches to which purpose the natives were often enslaved. Along with them came Spanish priests whose goal was strictly ideological: the conversion of the natives to Catholicism. About this the natives would also have no choice. From that time onward the sunny and flowery land of Florida proved a place both of wealth and ideological intolerance.

Even when the Spanish lost control of the territory, first to the British and then to the United States, this duality persisted. In the 19^th century, for instance, what stood in the way of Florida’s ideological purity was the perseverance of those pesky Indians. Andrew Jackson, a rigid minded fellow if there ever was one, thought he had the answer to this problem when he waged war against the Seminole Indians who had the audacity to both resist white settlement and harbor runaway black slaves. Eventually he was proved correct. Well-armed racism won the day and from the1830s into the 1850s the process of forced eviction cum slaughter of the natives proceeded. By 1845, when Florida became the 27^th state of the Union, things were relatively in hand and most of the remaining Seminoles pushed back into the Everglades.

Over the years the gold that the conquistadors sought transformed itself into citrus fruit and tourism. Today the tourist business brings in over 77 million people a year to Florida and is worth over $57 billion annually to the state’s economy. Three quarters of U.S. oranges are from Florida, as is 40% of the world’s orange juice. Yet, overlaying all this wealth, just like an unhealthy tan, is the persistence of Florida’s ideological obsessions. In contemporary terms, there are two that stand out and we will begin by looking at the one most recently in the news.

Part II – Obsessions

1. Cuba – Florida has a very high percentage of Cuban Americans. One third of the population of Miami has Cuban roots and in at least 18 other cities and large towns in the state the percentage approaches half. A high number of these people are staunchly anti-Castro. Among the older generation this attitude borders on fanaticism. One can see this reflected in the behavior of the state’s political representatives in Congress who fight tooth and nail against any moderation of U.S. sanctions against the Cuban nation–despite the fact that those sanctions help impoverish the country’s people, a state of being Cuban Americans then blame on the Castro government.

For this point of view to be maintained right-wing Cuban Americans have had to approach history in a highly selective way. When Castro took over in Cuba in 1959 the country was an economic and social wreck. It was ruled by the dictator Fulgenacio Batista who had established ties with U.S. mafia families. Gambling and prostitution were major growth industries under this regime. Poverty deepened, illiteracy was widespread, crime was rampant but nonetheless Batista was seen as an ally of Washington. That is because he ran an anti-communist secret police, trained and armed by the U.S., which acted as the regime’s Gestapo and SS combined.

When Castro took over in 1959 these conditions changed. But to do this he had to nationalize resources and this step was opposed by a small upper class and a portion of the middle class. It was this group who initially fled to the U.S. Subsequently, they have chosen to forget most of Cuban history prior to Castro’s victorious revolution. They also have a deadly resentment of those who take a different attitude and regularly attempt to ruin anyone who has the audacity to publically disagree with them. That is how fanatics behave.

Take the recent case of Ozzie Guillen, the outspoken manager of the Miami Marlins baseball team. Guillen made the mistake of saying that he respected Fidel Castro in a recent interview with Time magazine. The result was a “political firestorm” in Miami. Within hours the politicos of south Florida (sounding like the priests of the conquistadors) were calling for his head. The team suspended him for five games and Guillen himself publically apologized for “betraying the Latin community” and begged forgiveness in a most groveling way. Nonetheless, elements of the area’s Cuban-American community entered into an orgy of hate and threatened to “boicot” (and therefore economically destroy) Miami’s baseball team unless Guillen was fired.

2. Israel – Florida, and particularly the southern part of the state, has the second highest Jewish population in the U.S. (the first is in New York). Notably, most of them are elderly retirees of passionate Zionist persuasion. One of Miami’s main streets is Yitzhak Rabin Boulevard. Next to the issue of pensions, Israel is what commands their interest. That is why all the Republican primary candidates (except Ron Paul) who visited the state fell over backwards in their support for Israel.

No prominent Florida Jewish resident has yet been silly enough, or brave enough, to go public with anti-Zionist declarations, or statements of admiration for Yasir Arafat. And after an example has been made of Ozzie Guillen, the probability of anyone doing so has to have diminished. This is because the right-wing elements of these two communities are allied and feed off of each other.

Back in the 1980s, when the Cuban American community leaders decided to set up their lobby, originally known as the Cuban American National Foundation, they went to the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, otherwise know as AIPAC, for advice and guidance. That relationship has continued ever since. For more information on this please see my book Foreign Policy Inc (Kentucky U. Press 2009). A living representation of this on-going alliance is Ileana Ros-Lehtinen, U.S. Representative for Florida’s 18^th Congressional District and currently the longest serving woman in Congress. That status has also made her chairwoman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee. Ros-Lehtinen describes herself as a “strong supporter of Israel” including its illegal settlements, and has worked hard to cut funds for any United Nations agency that recognizes Palestinian statehood. Of course, she also hates Fidel Castro.

Part III – Conclusion

Over-exposure to the “sunshine state” can obviously get you a bad burn, particularly if you are of an open mind and value the principle of free speech. But that is the way it goes when communities form around repugnant ideological cores that then come to characterize their very identity. For many of the Cuban Americans in Florida, to have something good to say about the Castro regime, even if it can be historically substantiated, is the same as betraying their community. For many Jewish Americans in the same state, having something critical to say about Israel and Zionism, even if it is fact based, is the same as declaring yourself an anti-Semite or perhaps a “self-hating Jew.”

What is particularly scary about all of this is that the entire prejudicial mind-set is carried forth unquestionably and in lock step by millions of people. Americans often would point fingers at the Soviet Union, the Chinese communists, and now the “Muslim world” for this sort of totalitarian thinking. And all the while, it was right here in our own sunny backyard.

 

 

                           John Hagee

 

Pastor John Hagee’s Christians United For Israel (CUFI) announced the “registration of their millionth member” on 18 March 2012. This organization, founded in 2006, with the goal of “realizing the political potential of tens of millions of evangelical Americans who support Israel” can also be said to have the goal of destroying, in the name of God no less, the legitimate political aspiration of Palestinian statehood. And, the CUFI now has as much influence with our Republican Congress as does the Jewish Zionist lobby, AIPAC.

Why should the devout Mr. Hagee and his one million followers be so enamored of Israel? Actually, they have no rational reasons to offer. However, they do have a number of non-rational ones. For example, “We support Israel because all other nations were created by an act of man, but Israel was created by an act of God.”

Hagee and his followers do not know that this is so. They just ardently believe it is so. Yet there is a difference between demonstrable fact and belief. As to subject, ardent belief, or what might be called faith, is widely variable and changes over time. Thus, for a considerably longer period of time than the life of Hagee’s particular brand of Christianity (in fact for thousands of years) vast numbers of people ardently believed in the reality of the Olympian Gods. For almost 1200 years, countless individuals, every bit as assured of their faith as Pastor Hagee, came to the shrine at Delphi to prey to Apollo and, through his oracle, the Sibyl, petition for the God’s advice and favor.

There is no more hard evidence for Hagee’s faith than that of the Sibyl. Think of the lottery. Despite people’s belief in their “lucky number,” every number has an equal probability of turning up. In the same way, when John Hagee dies he has an equal chance of finding himself on the shore of the River Styx as he does at the gates of heaven or hell. Of course, this comparison is not completely accurate. Here there is also the equal chance that no number turns up at all, and Mr Hagee simply dissolves into worm food.

Just so there is no hard evidence for the claim that Israel was created “by an act of God.” (As to modern Israel there is no historical doubt that the deed was done by a combination of Zionist militias, the British Empire, and the General Assembly of the United Nations.) The Bible stories are just that, stories, and quoting them as if they constituted evidence beyond the realm of faith just won’t do.

No one credits the stories told in Hesiod’s Theogony (the story of the origin of the Olympian Gods) as proof positive of the existence of Zeus and Apollo. Pastor Hagee would counter that the Theogony was “created by an act of man”while the Bible is, allegedly, the divinely inspired words of God. And, indeed, it appears that up to one-third of the adults in the United States agree with him.  Unfortunately, it is quite possible that as many people now believe in the literal, divine truth of the Bible (and therefore the divine origin of Israel) as once believed in the reality of Zeus and his Olympian clan.

However, it is worth repeating that belief no matter how ardently held, does not make something true. And, it does not matter if it is the belief of one person or a million. The situation is the same. Faith is not the same as fact.

Unfortunately, this does not put an end to our subject. Faith may not move mountains but it can move the masses. It can move Hagee’s million and many others as well to actions that are very real indeed. It can move people to empty their wallets in an effort to financially support their alleged certainties. Worse yet, it can move them to take up arms and slaughter their neighbors–or at least cheer on others who do so.

I have a strong suspicion that if the Israelis some day evict every last Palestinian from Pastor Hagee’s “Holy Land,” killing thousands in the process, the pastor will shout Hallelujah and salivate in anticipation of the second coming of Christ. It is just a personal opinion, mind you, but if you believe so strongly that you are willing to underwrite murder and mayhem you constitute a real danger to world peace. As such you should be preaching your defense before the International Criminal Court rather than preaching to the multitude.

 

Part I – Friedman’s Frustrations

In a piece entitled “A Festival of Lies” published in the New York Times last Sunday, the 25^th of March, editorialist Thomas Friedman expressed his frustration with American foreign policy in the Middle East. “It’s time to rethink everything we are doing out there” he proclaimed. To be sure he is not the only one frustrated by this situation, but in Friedman’s case it is best to ask just what it is he finds disconcerting about U.S. behavior?

Actually, he doesn’t formulate a list of his own, but instead latches on to one put together by the historian Victor Davis Hanson (a military historian whose specialty is ancient warfare) and published in the National Review. This is neither here nor there because Friedman tells us that Hanson is correct in all his particulars. So here are some examples of what Friedman via Hanson find frustrating about U.S. policy in the region:

1. Giving all that military assistance (when we really should be helping the Arabs build schools)

2. Mounting punitive attacks (but then letting the results fade away because we “fail to follow through”)

3. “Keeping clear of maniacal regimes” (which then allows these regimes to either acquire nuclear capabilities, commit genocide, or create “16 acres of rubble in Manhattan”)

4. Propping up dictators (which is “odious and counterproductive”)

Friedman notes the obvious: these sort of “policy options” cannot change the Middle East for the better. According to both him and Hanson the region is a perpetual “mix of tribalism, Shiite-Sunni Sectarianism, fundamentalism and oil – oil that constantly tempts us to intervene or to prop up dictators.”

All this might make sense to some readers of the New York Times, but it seems superficial and confused to me. And after all I am an historian too. My speciality is the development of U.S. foreign policy in the Middle East. So what do I find frustrating about Friedman’s frustrations?

Part II -  Frustrating Frustrations

1. To reduce the Middle East to tribalism, sectarianism, fundamentalism and oil is just stereotyping and inappropriate reductionism. You might as well reduce the U.S. to Christian fundamentalism, tea-party fanaticism, south-west-east sectional animosity and gas guzzling pick- up trucks. Are they there? Yes. Are they the sum total of the U.S.A.? No. It is the same for the Middle East.

2. It is certainly a very good idea to stop giving so many of the region’s armies American weapons and training, but before you go using the savings to build “community colleges across Egypt” as Friedman suggests, you better consider that Egypt and many other nations in the region are awash in college graduates who cannot find employment. The economies of the Middle East suffer from structural problems, part of which have to do with their ties to a Western controlled world economy.

3. I can only imagine what Hanson and Friedman mean by “punitive interference without follow-up” being bad policy.

– Maybe they mean that when Ronald Reagan put troops in Lebanon in 1982 in support of the minority Maronite Christian attempt to subvert the country’s constitution there should have been sufficient military follow-up to decimate their rivals, the majority Lebanese Shiites. Keep in mind that a similar follow-up in Iraq in 2003 killed up to a million people.

– Or perhaps when that same president (darling of all neo-cons) attacked the home of Muammar Gaddafi in 1986, killing the man’s adopted baby daughter and setting in motion a chain of events that two years later led to the Pan Am bombing over Lockerbie Scotland,  he should have immediately followed through with a full scale invasion of Lybia.

– Or when George Bush Sr. chased Saddam Hussein out of Kuwait in 1991 he should of followed-up with an invasion of the country then and there instead of following through with draconian sanctions that eventually helped kill up to a million Iraqi poor children.

Supposedly all of these “follow-ups” represent policy options that would have resulted in a better, happier and more American friendly Middle East.  This sounds doubtful to me.

4. And what about the supposed mistake of “staying clear of maniacal regimes” which in turn allows for “nuclear acquisition or genocide–or 16 acres of rubble in Manhattan.” What the heck does this mean? It was not a “maniacal regime” that launched the 9/11 attacks; the U.S. did not stay clear of the “maniacal regime” of Saddam Hussein but instead sold it the poison gas used against the Kurds; and the Iranians (who are arguably less “maniacal” than the Israelis) have no nuclear weapons program.

What all this points out is that Thomas Friedman, one of the most widely read editorial writers in the country, is confused and unreliable when it comes to the Middle East. And, his relying on a conservative military historian venting in the National Review does nothing to sharpen his perception. What is worse is that none of this prevents Friedman from telling us that the U.S. government, which he has just accused of utter failure for decades, now has the responsibility to tell the people of the Middle East some “hard truths.” And what might they be?

Part III – Hard Truths

1. Tell the Afghans that the Karzai government is corrupt and will be abandoned by most of its troops as soon as we stop paying them. Alas, the Afghans already know this. What Friedman actually should be suggesting is that the U.S. government tell the U.S. people this hard truth.

2. Tell the Pakistanis that they are “two-faced” and the only reason that their military is not “totally against us” is because, again, we pay them. Alas, the Pakistanis know this. What Friedman actually should be suggesting is that the U.S. government tell the U.S. people this hard truth.

3. Tell the Saudis that they are a bunch of Wahhabi religious fanatics and dictators and that we don’t want their oil. But wait, it is not the U.S. that should be telling the Saudis this. It should be the European and Japanese governments because they are the ones who buy Saudi oil. We get most of ours from Mexico and Canada.

4. Tell the Israelis that they are a bunch of Jewish fundamentalist fanatics who are putting their (alleged) democracy in danger with all that settlement building on the West Bank. Before you can tell the Israelis that,  you will have to tell the U.S. Congress to forego the largess of certain special interests, or even better, tell the American people that they must change the lobby based nature of their government.

Part IV – Conclusion

Friedman ends by lamenting that the U.S. government has chosen to tell the easy lie that all is OK to the Middle Eastern regimes it supports rather than tell them the hard truth. However, he has it wrong. Sure we haven’t gone around telling the corrupt, dictatorial, fanatical leaders of those regimes that they have made a mess of the place–largely because we helped them do it. The people of the Middle East know this. It is the people of the U.S. who do not. We have not been lying to those in the Middle East so much as to ourselves.

And it appears that Thomas Friedman also doesn’t know this particulat hard truth. Hence his contradictory conclusion: “…we must stop wanting good government [for them] more than they do, looking the other way at bad behavior….” It is a contradiction to say that you want good government for this region while simultaneously turning a blind eye to bad governmental behavior that you yourself have underwritten. But the contradiction is there only in Friedman’s version of history. In truth the U.S. has not and does not give a damn for either good government or good behavior in the Middle East. What it cares about are governments that cooperate with us in terms of trade, acceptance of Israel and now hostility toward Iran.

One has to wonder about Thomas Friedman.  He seems to have periodic problems thinking straight. But in an oblique fashion he is on to something. There are lies aplenty when it comes to U.S. actions in the Middle East. However, they are not lies we tell to others but rather to ourselves. And from that,  nothing good can come.

 

 

Part I – The “Locally Normal”

The vast majority of people in any given society are “locally normal.” By this I mean that they conform to the accepted outlooks and behaviors of their local society. They fit comfortably with their neighbors who fit comfortably with them. Their opinions are majority opinions that reflect local societal norms. Those norms may or may not espouse racism and a wide variety of other prejudices. It does not matter. They will be adhered to just the same because the are culturally imbedded. The “locally normal” will also adhere to their country’s standard history and mythology. Collectively, all these traits are what produce “good” citizens and so act as the glue that maintains social solidarity.

The fact that most people are “normal” in this fashion is not a mistake. There is probably a genetic inclination for such behavior. After all, if most people did not behave this way you could not maintain stable societies.

Still, there are drawbacks to being “locally normal.” For one thing, the more “normal” you are the less independent a thinker you are (at least in socio-political terms). The strange thing is that the “locally normal” would not agree that thinking outside the community box is a legitimate act of independence. Such a stance would appear, from inside the box, as not being independent so much as being antisocial and perhaps unpatriotic. And, such behavior is going to make “normal” folks suspicious and fearful. That is the genetic impulse again. Stay with the group and you stay safe. Safe from what? Safe from people on the outside, of course. If you are really looking for a “locally normal” definition of independence it is going to be an economic one: having a good job, paying your own bills, and not living with their parents.

Part II – Refuseniks – The “Locally Abnormal”

It is against this background that we might consider the plight of Israel’s refuseniks. These are Israeli Jewish citizens who are “locally abnormal” either because they refuse to serve beyond the 1967 borders (that is they refuse to go into the Palestinian Occupied Territories) or refuse induction into the Israeli military altogether. There are only between one and two thousand individuals in this group–a figure small enough to make them rare.

While there is evidence of some sympathy for the refuseniks on the far left side of the Israeli political spectrum, nothing but condemnation can be found in other quarters. Almost all Israeli politicians have labeled the refuseniks “dangerous” and some have described their behavior as treasonous and “helping the enemy.” The Israeli courts, of course, have declared that refusal to serve in the military (by all but the Ultra Orthodox) for any reason other than conscientious objection is illegal. Interestingly, one of the reasons used by the Israeli high court to condemn the actions of those who refuse to serve in the Occupied Territories is that such behavior “weakens the ties that bind us as a nation.” Thus Refuseniks are so “locally abnormal” that they usually get thrown into jail.

Nonetheless, the refuseniks continue to pop up, albeit at slow intervals. The most recent one is Noam Gur (the first refusenik in 2012). She is an 18 year old Israeli Jew who has just announced that she will refuse mandatory military service. In an open letter she announced that “I refuse to join an army that has, since it was established, been engaged in dominating another nation, in plundering and terrorizing a civilian population that is under its control.”

Ms Gur is not sure how she came by these (for Israel) “abnormal” sentiments. At the age of 15 she started trying to make sense of the Nakba of 1948. This led her to join the small number of other “abnormal” Israeli Jews taking part in Palestinian led protests in the West Bank, thus “seeing what was going on with my own eyes.” By 16 she knew that she could not “take part in these [Israeli] crimes [against Palestinians]” and that meant she could not go into the army. She has gotten plenty of negative feedback from “locally normal” Israelis securely situated within their community box, yet Ms Nur does not find this response intimidating. “I am following what I believe in,” she says, “I don’t really care what other people might have to say about it.”

Though she has little faith that Israeli society can change from within, she still urges her peers to “look into what they are doing.” As it stands now, “most 18 year olds” bound for military service “don’t really know what they’re going into. They don’t really know what is going on in the [West Bank and Gaza Strip]. They only…see Palestinians for the first time…once they are soldiers.” The vast majority of “normal” military age Israelis refuse to look before they leap into the army.

What Gur is describing is a closed Israeli society. Much like the U.S., it doesn’t matter if there is freedom of the press and speech because education and personal interaction reinforces a broad set of perceptual norms which, over time, literally come to dictate the parameters of thought. These parameters define “normality” within the nation’s local space. If, for whatever reason you find yourself outside of the box, you’re a social mistake.

Part III – Reversing the Perceptual Frame

Is it possible to defy the socially constructed definition of “local normality” that exists in Israel, or any other state for that matter, and declare on the basis of good evidence criteria for a “universal civilized normality”? Perhaps one way to do this is to play that old religious card and “appeal to a higher power.” But in this case we do not have to look to the heavens or some divine source. All we have to do is draw our criteria of behavior from sources such as the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR).

Here are some criteria for “universal civilized normality” taken from the UDHR:

1. A society’s citizens are normal and civilized when they do not support their government’s practice of “torture or cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment.” (UDHR, Article 5)

2. A society’s citizens are normal and civilized when they do not support their government’s practice of “arbitrary arrest, detention or exile.” (UDHR Article 9)

3. A society’s citizens are normal and civilized when they accord all elements of their population “the right to freedom of movement and residence…. (UDHR Article 13)

4. A society’s citizens are normal and civilized when they accord all “men and women of full age,” residing within their country “the right to marry and found a family” “without any “limitation due to race, nationality or religion.” (UDHR Artical 16)

5. A society’s citizens are normal and civilized when they do not support the “arbitrarily taking of [another resident’s] property.” (UDHR Artical 17)

6. A society’s citizens are normal and civilized when they demand that all residents have “the right to a standard of living adequate for health and well-being….including food, clothing, housing and medical care and necessary social services, and the right to security in the event of unemployment, sickness, disability, widowhood, old age…”. (UDHR Article 25).

Part IV – Conclusion

Considering this sampling of criteria for “normal, civilized behavior,” where would we rank the citizens and supporters of the Israeli state? Well, a recent poll of Israeli high school students found that fully half of them “opposed equal rights for Arabs.” Another video poll revealed that “racism is rampant among Israeli youth.” As it turns out, many Israelis do support the state’s use of torture, arbitrary arrest, restriction of movement, the arbitrary confiscation of property, placing barriers in the way of marriage, and the purposeful maintenance of less than adequate standards of living for the Palestinians under their jurisdiction. Thus, one must conclude that there is a wide gap between what we might consider to be “universal standards for civilized normality” and those standards of “local normality” in place in Israel. Therefore, it turns out that Noam Gur and other Israeli Jews like her must actually defy the majority in order to preserve “civilized normality”

Maybe it is a thousand years of stress culminating in the Holocaust that turned today’s Jewish Zionists into such obsessively insecure people that they cannot accurately judge their own national interests. Maybe it is a variant on “the battered child syndrome” that has led the Israelis to batter the Palestinians and then, when they resist, call them anti-Semites. Maybe the problem is that they have allowed religious fanatics and political bigots to run their country (hardly a problem unique to Israel). Whatever is going on in the heart of the “Holy Land” it certainly has not produced a majority of “normal and civilized” people. But it has allowed for a small minority of them. And with this minority lies whatever hope there might be for a “normal and civilized” future for Israel.