From The Inside Looking Out

From The Inside Looking Out: Report 84

2009-06-16T10:51:00.000-07:00

Rejection Slips II

Introductory comment: I am copying in below two more OP-EDs that were submitted and rejected by major U.S. dailies this year having to do with an alternative path to ending instability, insecurity and intolerable living conditions with respect to equal collective and individual rights and justice for all inhabitants of Israel and Palestine. The approach would be the dismantling the de jure and de facto apartheid practices inside the Jewish supremacist State of Israel. Without such a change reminiscent of the changes in practices that defeated racial supremicism in South Africa and the U.S. during the late 1950s and 60s, it is not, in my opinion, logical to conclude that there will be any kind of government in place in Israel that will be willing to pursue a transparently ingenuous peace process.

There is repetition in the two rejections copied below, but I am passing them on to illustrate again how even trying to give the submissions a hook that connects my analysis to current events still has not been enough to interest their editors.
Once again, I am asking that if these reports resonate favorably with you please forward them to your personal lists with the assurance that I will be very grateful if your contacts forward them on to their lists. And please also let them know that feed back is always welcome and helpful.

Finally, if you think that your home town daily, or weekly, for that matter, would possibly be interested in OP-EDs such as these from an out of Towner, please let me know the specifics with respect as to how and to whom to submit then.
Or if you think a group or groups in your community might be interested in sponsoring a personal appearance to pursue this theme more fully, please get in touch, because, as always, I have Power Point will travel.

Thanks.

OP-ED submitted to and rejected by the Los Angeles Times 4-24-09

Democracy is not alive and well in the Jewish State of Israel

Ardent apologists for both the idea and the reality of a Jewish State of Israel have worked exhaustively for decades to perpetrate a politically pristine democratic identity for it that does not square with the facts. Specifically they have been astonishingly successful in creating an image of Israel as the “only democracy in the Middle East.” The truth is, however, there are no democracies in the Middle East.

Nevertheless they have been terrifically adept at making the case for the Jewish State’s faux democratic credentials in the U. S. by disingenuously using such powerful U. S. surrogates as the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC), the Anti-Defamation League (ADL), and a myriad of local Jewish federations to proudly propagate the truth that non Jews in its midst are citizens. But what their argument obscures is the demeaning fact that Jewish nationality counts for far more with respect to rights and privileges in the Jewish State than Israeli citizenship

In a nation where there is no constitution and no bill of rights, Jewish majority rule has mandated second class citizenship on Arabs living in their midst while reserving first class rights and perquisites for themselves. When it comes to civil rights, collective privileges such as the right to protest the treatment of their Palestinian neighbors in the West Bank and Gaza without fear of official reprisal, as well as unequal access to public funds for education, health, infrastructure maintenance and improvement, and the ability to live anywhere they want, Israel’s Arabs have a legal status vastly inferior to Israel’s Jews. Think South Africa before Mandela, or the United States before King. Yet Americans have been conditioned into accepting that contrary assessments such as this one are examples of anti-Semitic sour grapes.

Supporters of this geopolitical destabilizing status quo have found it amazingly easy to float the disingenuous notion inside the Beltway that it is in our national interest to support that mythical Jewish Camelot even though they know very well that Israel is only a pretend or at best limited democracy. As a result Israel’s military/industrial/political/theological establishment on both the left and the right have been able to persist in its discriminatory ethnically intolerant domestic and occupation policies. For generations U. S. economic and military support has allowed the Jewish State to put off coming to grips with the issue of reversing its abusive and predatory treatment of non Jews living inside Israel or its non Jewish subjects hanging on in the West Bank and Gaza.

To accept the self serving semantic fabrication that the Jewish State is a democracy in the Jeffersonian egalitarian inclusive inalienable rights sense means concurring with a diminished concept of “democracy.” But public recognition of the human and civil rights short comings of the Jewish State have been an elephant in the room that have been avoided in the United States for generations. Of course Christian and Muslim Palestinians and their supporters here have but with little effect.

It is true that militant Hamas leaders behind the reprehensible indiscriminate sometimes lethal rocket attacks on Israeli noncombatants seem to be calling for violent regime change, but most Palestinians including politically oriented Hamas leaders favor one achieved through peaceful internal reform. In fact, while trying to call into question the moral and ethical legitimacy of Israel’s current elitist Jewish political regime, Christian and Muslim Palestinians except that extremist fringe remain nonviolent. When they challenge “Israel’s right to exist“ or when they talk of the “destruction of Israel,” what they mean is benign but radical political reform from exclusion to inclusion, not the vindictive slaughter or expulsion of all of Israel’s Jews.

In addition there are Jews in the United States and Israel who support the modification of the exclusivist Jewish State to a truly democratic society that would not be prey to any sectarian, ethnic, gender, or racial interests. But they have no traction in Washington, not much in the academic arena or main street and very little in the largest media outlets. A notable exception was the Los Angeles Times editorial, “Israeli’s Identity Crisis,” February 14, 2009. [See directly following this essay]

Yet were they to be successful in helping to promote the establishment of a truly pluralist society in one state or two, it would be a monumental step in creating a political climate for stability in the Middle East that has been so tragically elusive until now. It certainly would be worthy of U.S. support and protection.

(The L.A. Times editorial mentioned above, unusual for such candor in a major daily, is copied directly below.)

LA Times Editorial
Israel's identity crisis
Respecting, not rescinding, the rights of its Arab citizens is more likely to earn their loyalty
February 14, 2009

From 1948 on, the Arabs still living in Israel -- those who didn't flee or weren't driven out when the state was established -- were allowed to become citizens. They could vote in free elections, criticize the government and run for public office, privileges denied to many of their Arab brethren elsewhere in the region. An Arab was elected to the first Knesset in 1949, and today there are 12 serving in the 120-member body.

But don't conclude that life for Arabs in Israel has been easy. They've been second-class citizens from the start -- a bit like African Americans before the civil rights movement. Today, 20% of Israel's citizens are Arab (about 1.3 million people), but their roads generally aren't paved as fast as those in Jewish neighborhoods, and their schools and healthcare institutions don't get equal funding. Worse, they've faced impediments to their ability to buy property and limitations on where they can live. Not surprisingly, the number of Arabs living in poverty is triple that of Jews.
This is deplorable, of course. Yet the news of recent weeks suggests that the situation may be moving backward rather than forward.

First, there was a vote by Israel's Central Elections Committee in January to disqualify the two biggest Arab parties from this week's elections because of their alleged support for terrorism and refusal to recognize Israel as a Jewish state. Fortunately, that decision was overturned by the Israeli Supreme Court.

Then, Avigdor Lieberman, leader of the right-wing Yisrael Beiteinu party, campaigned on a platform of "no loyalty, no citizenship," arguing that Arabs in Israel should be required to sign loyalty oaths and accept its flag and national anthem. If they refused, he said, they should be stripped of their citizenship. Lieberman also wants to transfer Israel's Arabs into the jurisdiction of a future Palestinian state, and has proposed the death penalty for Arab politicians who talk with Hamas. In Tuesday's election, Yisrael Beiteinu became the third-largest party in the Knesset and a likely member of the next governing coalition.
These developments present very basic and very obvious civil rights concerns. But they also raise a deeper, fundamental question that Israelis generally prefer to avoid: Is it possible to be both a Jewish state and a democratic state? Or, put another way: Can a nation founded as a Jewish homeland -- with a "right of return" for diaspora Jews but no one else, a Star of David on the flag and a national anthem that evokes the "yearning" of Jews for Zion -- ever treat non-Jews as true, equal citizens?

Israel has tried to balance these conflicting ideas since the state was created. Its Declaration of Statehood, issued on May 14, 1948, asserted the "right of the Jewish people to be masters of their own fate ... in their own sovereign state," while also promising "complete equality of social and political rights to all its inhabitants irrespective of religion, race or sex." But today, although Israel has a vibrant democracy in many ways, that tension remains, especially as the Arab population grows faster than the Jewish population. What would happen to the Jewish state, Israeli leaders worry, if Arabs outnumbered Jews?

These are complicated questions that go to the heart of Israel's very identity, and we don't pretend to have all the answers. Nor are we naive: We realize that Arabs in Israel are growing more radical, more identified with the Palestinian national movement, and that many are more sympathetic to Hamas than in the past. But weakening the country's democracy is not the solution. A better approach, we believe, would be fewer restrictions, more equality and the creation of a sovereign Palestinian state in the West Bank and Gaza, which would ease the pressure between Jews and Arabs everywhere.

No one ever said democracy was easy, especially not for a country facing existential challenges and internal disaffection, but history suggests that Israel may be moving in an unhelpful direction. The United States was wrong in 1940 when, fearing left-wing subversion, it declared it a crime to advocate the overthrow of the government. And it was wrong again when, fearing a fifth column in its midst, it interned American citizens of Japanese descent during World War II. Israel should expand, not rescind, the basic democratic rights of its Arab minority if it wants to ensure loyalty and good citizenship.

With respect to the above L. A. Times editorial, need I say more? Jerry

From The Inside Looking Out: Report 83

2009-06-15T21:16:00.000-07:00

Rejection Slips

Introductory comment: In keeping with my recent commitment, I am copying in two OP-EDs submitted to and rejected by the New York Times, which narrated the theme I am continuing to pursue, the consequences for peace of an undemocratic Jewish State. One was submitted in February, one in May. You can see that trying to tie this argument to a specific event still didn’t work. OP-EDs from the usual suspects were run instead to mark the occasion.

I keep forgetting to suggest and ask that if these reports resonate favorably with you, please forward them to your personal lists with the assurance that I will be very grateful if your contacts forward them on to their lists. And please also let them know that feed back is always welcome and helpful.

Finally, if you think that your home town daily, or weekly, for that matter, would possibly be interested in an OP-ED such as these from an out of Towner, please let me know the specifics with respect as to how and to whom to submit.

Or if you think a group or groups in your community might be interested in sponsoring a personal appearance to pursue this theme more fully, please get in touch, because, as always, have Power Point will travel.

Thanks.

OP-ED submitted to and rejected by the New York Times 2-12-09

The Jewish State: An Elephant in the Room

For too long the Jewish state of Israel has been getting a bye mostly in the west with respect to its democratic bona fides. So as W.C. Fields once said, “It’s time to take the bull by the tail and face the situation.”

For starters, I ask: If the concept of an Islamic state ruled by either theocratic, monarchical or secular elites is not compatible with American political ideas, then what is so acceptable about the notion of a Jewish State in which nationality has always counted for far more than citizenship. This has especially been true when it comes to Palestinian civil rights and collective privileges? The fact is that neither the Islamic nor the Israeli variety squares with an egalitarian view of what constitutes “democracy” and the Jeffersonian concept of inclusive inalienable rights. Both are pretend democracies.

Yet until now publicly questioning that aspect of the exclusionary Jewish State has been an elephant in the room that has been avoided by U.S policy makers for generations. Instead they have rationalized our massive economic and military support by giving disingenuous lip service to the myth that Israel is the only “true democracy” in the Middle East. That fabrication makes a mockery of the definition of “true” and the concept of “democracy.”

Moreover that kind of support has enabled Jewish Israelis to put off reversing the lower caste status of Palestinians living inside Israel. But even more crucial it has enabled Israel to put off ending the onerous effects of its occupation and domination of the West Bank and Gaza. It has enabled it to put off coming to grips fairly and decently with Palestinian aspirations for political, economic, and internal territorial integrity; control of its borders with Jordan and Egypt, as well as its airspace and coastline; and ownership of all of its resources, especially water. Still a succession of U. S. administrations has participated in the rejection of any arguments that challenge the “right” of an exclusivist Jewish State “to exist” and persist with those policies.

Except for a violent extremist Islamic fringe that does not speak for all Palestinians, all that most Palestinians are calling into question, when they dispute the Jewish State’s right to exist, is the moral and ethical legitimacy of Israel’s current legally elitist discriminatory and dominating Jewish political regime.

So what most Palestinians mean by the” destruction of Israel” is benign regime change from exclusion to inclusion, not the vindictive slaughter or expulsion of Israel’s Jews. Although some militant Hamas leaders behind the unconscionable indiscriminate sometimes lethal rocket attacks on noncombatants seem to be calling for violent regime change, most Palestinians including politically oriented Hamas leaders favor one achieved through peaceful internal reform.

However, no statement or actions by our new President or anyone in his administration indicates that the diplomacy it will pursue will be on behalf of anything more than a one and a three quarters to one quarter solution. President. Bush set the stage for that in 2004 when he unilaterally acquiesced to the relabeling of the largest settlements in the West Bank as “population centers.”

So removing them, he additionally asserted, ought to be nonstarters in any future negotiations. There is no hint that this Bush doctrine will be reversed, even though such a fundamental assault on territorial integrity makes the concept of Palestinian viability an inside joke.

Yet Palestinians still hope, as I do, that President Obama may yet encourage political change inside the Green Line that will result in the modification of the exclusivist Jewish state to a wholly pluralist society that would not be prey to any sectarian, ethnic, gender, or racial interests. Such a regime, whether comprised of two states or one, could go far in creating the political climate for stability in the Middle East that has been so tragically elusive until now. It certainly would be one that would be entirely worthy of U.S. support and protection.

OP-ED submitted to and rejected by the New York Times 4-15-09

Israel’s Faulty Democratic Credentials

As the annual celebrations in connection with the anniversary of Israel’s Independence approaches here are some thoughts rarely expressed publicly to consider.

If the idea of an Islamic republic, monarchy, or theocratic regime seems inimical to American political sensibilities, than why doesn’t the idea of a Jewish State affect them the same way? The answer, of course, is because the Arab regimes don’t really pretend to be anything than what they are. Israel and its supporters on the other hand have worked exhaustively for decades to perpetrate a politically pristine democratic identity that, however, does not square with reality. They have been wildly successful in creating an image of Israel as the “only democracy in the Middle East,” when the truth is, there are no democracies in the Middle East.

This consequential semantic fabrication makes a mockery of the definition of “true” and the concept of “democracy.” It certainly doesn’t compute with an egalitarian view of what constitutes a truly democratic polity and the Jeffersonian concept of inclusive inalienable rights. However, public discussions of the human and civil rights short comings of the Jewish State have been an elephant in the room that has been avoided by U.S policy makers for generations. Instead they have rationalized our massive economic and military support by giving disingenuous lip service to the notion that it is in our national interest to support that mythical “only democracy” in the Middle East even though they know very well Israel is only a pretend or at best a limited democracy.

Yet successive U. S. administrations have actively participated in the rejection of any arguments that challenge the “right” of the exclusivist Jewish State “to exist” and to persist with its discriminatory ethnically intolerant policies. As a result, the Jewish State’s exaggerated depictions of its democratic bone fides have gained astounding acceptance in U.S administrative and legislative circles. This has permitted its military/industrial/political/theological establishment on both the left and the right to put off coming to grips with the pressing humanitarian obligation to reverse its abusive and predatory treatment of non Jews living inside Israel or its non Jewish subjects hanging on in the West Bank and Gaza. The Jewish State continues to put off coming to grips with those issues in the way that South Africa finally came to grips with apartheid and the United States finally began to do several decades ago about legal segregation.

In a tenacious use of double think, the Jewish State continues to be flagrantly successful in the United States in making the case on behalf of its faux democratic credentials by disingenuously reminding that non Jews in its midst are citizens. But what that argument obscures is the demeaning fact that Jewish nationality counts for far more Israeli citizenship. In a land where there is no Constitution and no Bill of Rights, Jewish majority rule has legally conferred second class citizenship on Arabs living in their midst. When it comes to civil rights, collective privileges such as the right to assemble nonviolently to protest the treatment of their Palestinian neighbors in the West Bank and Gaza without fear of legal violent reprisal, as well as equal access to public funds for infrastructure maintenance and improvement, and the ability to live anywhere they want, Israel’s Arabs rights are vastly inferior to its Jews. Unhesitant U.S. aid has also permitted Israel to put of getting humanely serious about Palestinian yearnings in the West Bank and Gaza for political freedom, economic independence, internal territorial integrity, control of its airspace, coastline and borders with Jordan and Egypt, and ownership of all of its resources, especially water.

It is true that because of the tensions and mutual unconscionable violent outbursts in connection with the Jewish State’s occupation and segmentation of the West Bank and ghettoizing of Gaza, and by persisting with its counterproductive status quo Israel is struggling to protect its noncombatant citizens from potentially deadly rocket attacks by its the militant wing of Hamas. But that violent extremist Islamic fringe does not speak for all Palestinians. In fact what most Palestinians are calling into question is the moral and ethical legitimacy of Israel’s current legally elitist discriminatory and dominating Jewish political regime. What the majority of Christian and Muslim Palestinians mean by the “destruction of Israel” is benign regime change from exclusion to inclusion, not the vindictive slaughter or expulsion of all of Israel’s Jews. So although some militant Hamas leaders behind the reprehensible indiscriminate sometimes lethal rocket attacks on noncombatants seem to be calling for violent regime change, most Palestinians including politically oriented Hamas leaders favor one achieved through peaceful internal reform.

However, no statement or actions by our new President or anyone in his administration indicates that the diplomacy it will pursue will be on behalf of anything more than a one and a three quarters to one quarter state solution. It appears that the President is firmly in the grip of Machiavellian neocons undeterred by party.

Yet Palestinians and their supporters many of them who are Jewish still hope, as I do, that President Obama may yet encourage constructive political change inside the Green Line. We hope that such support, if only it will come, will result in the modification of the exclusivist Jewish state to a wholly pluralist society that would not be prey to any sectarian, ethnic, gender, or racial interests. Such a regime, whether comprised of two states or one, could go far in creating the political climate for stability in the Middle East that has been so tragically elusive until now. It certainly would be one that would be entirely worthy of U.S. support and protection.

From The Inside Looking Out: Report 82

2009-06-15T20:43:00.000-07:00

The consequences for peace with the demonstrably

undemocratic Jewish State

Introductory comment: My home base newspaper the Birmingham News, has once again taken the lead among larger daily newspapers in the U.S. in being hospitable to long over due critiques of the implications of false claims by apologists for a Jewish State that Israel is democratic in the Middle East in a way that none of the Islamic nations are. After the first OP-ED, “Israel is not a democracy,” ran in early April, I submitted updated reworkings of the same thesis: twice to the New York Times and the Washington Post, and once to the Los Angeles Times and USA today. All were summarily rejected without comment.

I wasn’t surprised. But, of course, hope does spring eternal. But that only emphasizes even more the importance I think, if you feel so inclined, e-mailing your appreciation to the News’ Editor Tom Scaritt at tscarritt@bhamnews.com with a copy to Viewpoints Editor, Joey Kennedy at jkennedy@bhamnews.com for being willing to give exposure to my currently counter-intuitive argument.

In subsequent reports I will pass on some of the pieces rejected by the big majors because the critiques remain as current as the Israeli government’s latest public statements, and will continue to amplify my argument.

Specifically my argument is that it is illogical to expect any constructive action to take place in the Israel Palestine region unless crucial reforms take place inside Israel State first in the form of dismantling all the dejure apartheid laws and regulations making life for non-Jews there as almost egregiously miserable as life for non-Jews in the occupied territories…minus the retail violence meted out by the Jewish States internal security forces. But, of course, it continues to be meted out wholesale, as for instance, the thirteen non-Jews shot dead in October 2000 protesting nonviolently in their villages the ferocious Army violence being meted in the West Bank and Gaza at beginning of the second uprising. So after reading this second OP-ED in the Birmingham News and the brief explanation above honk twice if they resonate constructively with you.

Thanks.

Sunday June 14^th Birmingham News OP-ED follows:

There’s Inequality in Israel too.

There are serious omissions in President Obama’s historic speech in Cairo having to do with the Israel Palestine conflict. For instance when Obama said that he has an unyielding belief that all people yearn for the ability to speak their minds in how they are governed and the need to have confidence in the rule of law and the equal administration of justice, he needed to make that clear by admitting to the following:

That he knows those rights are lacking not only in the occupied territories but in the State of Israel too. Arab Christian and Muslims and other non-Jews living inside Israel do not enjoy the same rights, privileges and individual freedom as do its Jews.

That Obama knows that serious restrictions are embedded in Israeli laws and governmental regulations that were enacted to ensure that Jewish nationality counts for considerably more than it does for Israel’s non-Jewish citizens. When it comes to collective legal rights and individual dignity, Israel’s non-Jews, despite the fact that they are citizens, have been subjected to oppressive confiscatory second class citizenship since 1948.

That Obama knows apartheid is alive and well not just in the occupied territories but also inside Israel. Because of apartheid laws, non-Jews living inside Israel are not legally eligible, to state just two examples, for equal distribution of public funds for such vital social programs as education and health; or for the freedom to build a home anywhere outside of Arab villages and towns. Jews, of course, may live anywhere.

That Obama knows that because of these facts, Israel is neither a pervasively humane nor real democracy in the best sense of that word. The effect of its internal discrimination is not much different from the kinds of oppression the President alluded to that currently exists in some Islamic nations. So it would have been monumentally historic had he called on Israel to live up to the human and civil rights needs of its non-Jewish citizens.

Obama knows that many Israeli Jews and American Jews are demanding that too. But currently they are outnumbered, so it would have been helpful for him to have encouraged them to keep at it because he like they know that such demands are precisely similar to those cited in the November 1947 United Nation resolution which enabled creation of a “Jewish State” and “Arab State.” In it, the UN meticulously directed the establishment of constitutional rights in both states guaranteeing for “all persons… equal and nondiscriminatory rights in civil, political, economic and religious matters and the enjoyment of human rights and fundamental freedoms including freedom of religion, language, speech and publication, education, assembly and association.”

Moreover he as well as they know that Israel's leaders failed to live up to the formal affirmation of the UN’s directives even though they were agreed to by its founders in the May 1948 Declaration that announced the establishment of the ”State of Israel.” That Declaration proclaimed that the “Jewish State” will “ensure complete equality of social and political rights to all its inhabitants irrespective of religion, race or sex.”

When Obama ended the speech, it would have been reassuring to all those who want to believe that the United States stands for impartial democracy for him to have pledged that the United States will start holding Israel up to the same high standards of rule and governance that it is holding up to Islam.

Those omissions notwithstanding, and to give credit when it is due, it was encouraging to hear the President declare it is time for the “settlements to stop," that Palestinians who are being obliged to “endure the daily humiliations - large and small - that come with occupation,” are deserving of his sympathy, that “America will not turn its backs on the legitimate Palestinian aspiration for dignity, opportunity, and a state of their own. It was also appropriate for him to warn Hamas “to put an end to violence.”

That above was the latest OP-ED run in the news. I’m copying in below for those, new to my list serv, the first OP-ED run by the news, which kicked off my subsequent analysis of the implications for peace of the demonstrably undemocratic Jewish State.

Sunday April 12^th Birmingham News OP-ED follows:

In truth, Israel is not a democracy.

Birmingham Jewish Federation Executive Director, Richard Friedman in recent writings in the Birmingham News continues to claim that “the Jewish State” of Israel is a “tiny and humane democracy struggling against Islamic fanaticism in the Middle East [and so] deserves our support and admiration.” As the anniversary of Israel’s momentous, violent and controversial establishment nears, I am challenging those assertions.

It is true that tiny Israel is struggling to protect its noncombatant citizens from potentially deadly rocket attacks by its tinier violent opponent, the militant wing of Hamas, as well it should.

But what Mr. Friedman’s arguments on behalf of Israel obscure is the Jewish State’s historic and violently abusive and predatory treatment of non-Jewish citizens living inside Israel or its non Jewish subjects hanging on in the West Bank and Gaza.

Until now, however, publicly questioning the Jewish State’s exclusionary conduct has been an elephant in the room that has been avoided by U.S policy and opinion makers for generations. Apparently believing it not to be particularly relevant with respect to our interests in that part of the world, a succession of U. S. administrations have rationalized their massive economic and military support by giving disingenuous lip service to Mr. Friedman’s eyes wide shut claim that Israel is the only “true democracy in the Middle East.”

Israel has no constitution and no bill of rights. In addition its history of legislating apartheid, unequal civil rights, privileges and access to public funds make a disqualifying mockery of the definition of “true” and the concept of “democracy.” The truth is there are no true democracies in the Middle East.

Amazingly while the concept of an Islamic state ruled by either authoritarian theocratic, monarchical or secular elites is not compatible with American political values, the notion of a Jewish defiantly ethnically exclusionary state continues to be o.k. The sensibilities of the strongest supporters of Israel do not seem to be offended by the second class status Israel’s Jewish majority has legally imposed on its Christian and Arab Muslim populations even though doing that does not square with an egalitarian view of what constitutes “democracy” and the Jeffersonian concept of equal inalienable rights for “all men.”

It is true those living in Israel have citizenship; but it is even truer that Jewish nationality still counts the most. Nevertheless Israel’s exaggerated democratic characterizations of itself have gained such astounding credibility that its government has been able to put off reversing the inferior civil and human rights status of Palestinians living in Israel or under its control in the West Bank and Gaza.

Meanwhile the kind of effective massive few strings attached support Israel continues to receive from especially the United States is enabling its military/industrial/theocratic ruling establishment to put off coming to grips fairly and decently with West Bank and Gazan Christian and Muslim Palestinians’ aspirations for political, economic, and territorial integrity. Still a succession of U. S. administrations has participated in the scornful rejection of any persons or parties who challenge the “right” of the exclusivist Jewish State “to exist.”

Except for a violent extremist Islamic fringe that does not speak for all Palestinians, what most Palestinians are calling into question when they dispute “Israel’s right to exist,” is not the right of Jews to continue living there. What they are still futilely disputing is the moral and ethical legitimacy of Israel’s current legally discriminating militantly elitist ethnically pure governing establishment. Also contrary to the kind of negative stereotyping rhetoric still prevalent in the United States, what Christian and Muslim Palestinians in the street mean when they talk about ”the destruction of Israel” is a radical but nonviolent change of government orientation from political and social exclusion to inclusion. In other words, what they want to have established at last is the first true democracy in the Middle East.

Moreover, even though some militant Hamas leaders behind the unconscionable indiscriminate sometimes lethal rocket attacks on Israeli noncombatants do call for violent upheaval, most Palestinians including politically oriented Hamas leaders do not. They favor one achieved by the kind of dramatic internal political reform in Israel that I have been describing.

At this moment it does not seem likely that President Obama’s policy includes encouraging the kind of political change in Israel that will result in an end to the current exclusivist Jewish state and the beginning of a truly democratic pluralist equalitarian society that would not be prey to any sectarian, ethnic, gender, or racial interests. Too bad because such nonviolent regime change could set the stage for the establishment of two side by side similar truly democratic states, one in Israel and one in Palestine, that could go far in creating political stability in the Middle East that has been so tragically elusive until now.

From The Inside Looking Out: Report 81

2009-06-11T08:14:00.000-07:00

Reflections on the Holocaust Museum shooting and history

In the mid 1980s when we were living in Washington, DC, my wife and several friends discovered an empty government building that they were convinced would be perfect for housing a new museum devoted to nonviolent peace seeking, peace building, and peacemaking. So they began to seek support for a congressional resolution that would set the wheels in motion for making the building available to her group and provide considerable financial start up support.

But then something entirely unforeseen happened. Powerful and well heeled apologists for the discriminatory and colonialist Jewish State of Israel got wind of the building’s availability and the attempt by Sis and her friends to secure it. Very quickly their effort to create a museum celebrating nonviolence was hijacked by that powerful group. In a few years the Washington DC Holocaust Museum opened to great fanfare.

Since then there have been a number of protests outside the museum complaining about its proprietors’ obvious xenophobia with respect to Palestinians and other non-Jews living inside Israel and the occupied territories. Until June 10th, those vigils were disciplined, peaceful and, in particular, nonviolent.

The unconscionable attack on the Holocaust Museum that took place that day indicates how serious the issue of homegrown hate killing still is in the United States. This is not the first time that domestic hate killers have gone so far as to murder in order to defend their unwillingness to look history in the face. However, it is ironic that the killer sought reprisal against an institution that also has been failing to provide an entirely impartial view of history.

The museum, like every Holocaust museum in the United States, has a book store in which publications are offered that tell in detail about other recent world wide genocidal ethnic cleansing catastrophes, such as Bosnia and Rwanda. But some do not offer publications concerning the genocide perpetrated by the Turkish government against Armenia in the early twentieth century. The reason clearly is because Israel and its apologists in the United States do not want to offend the sensibilities of the Turkish government, which has never admitted that the genocide took place. Turkey is one of the few Islamic nations with which Israel has full diplomatic relations.

Nor is there anything in any Holocaust museum store concerning the Palestinian Nakba, the several decades long often deadly ethnic cleansing of non-Jews from Israel that began in 1947 and still continues in one form or another in both the occupied territories and inside Israel. The Nakba is sadly similar to the pogroms in Eastern Europe in the 19th and early 20th century that forced millions of Jews to flee. It is also precisely similar to the treatment Native Americans suffered at the hands of the United States from its colonial beginning well into the 20th century.

It is sadly ironic to think that perhaps the murder in the Holocaust Museum might never have taken place had its proprietors been willing to look history in the face and make available publications concerning the disgraceful events connected with the slaughter of Armenians and the Nakba too.

So, a tragic lesson connected with this mindless historically heedless murder is that picking and choosing what to admit with respect to the facts of history can be dangerously provocative. A partial application of "never again," may well ensure that such awful violence may well happen again.

From The Inside Looking Out: Report 80

2009-02-01T10:06:00.000-08:00

The Jewish State

Recent events in Palestine-Israel have made me so “mad” that I simply don’t want to take it anymore; so I have created this blog to make available views that I have been sharing for a number of years in my JerryLevin Yahoo group mail in a more open fashion. Following this initial commentary is a short biography.

To begin with I want to share with you my letter to the editor of the Birmingham News that was published on January 11th.

“Despite widespread concerns about Israel’s continuing expropriation of Palestinian land and assaults on Palestinian farmers in the West Bank, the creation of the Gaza ghetto, and Israel’s Army’s blitzkrieg tactics being used to throttle Hamas’ rocket fire, the violently militant Palestinian militia is not justified in the indiscriminate lethal manner it is carrying on its protests and promotion of regime change in Israel.

“Last summer President-elect Obama said that he would expect Israel to do ‘everything’ in its power to stop Hamas rocket attacks on Israeli civilians. But his statement was ambiguous enough to hope that ‘everything’ means that Israel’s military-industrial-theocratic establishment should cease the relentless provocations that are providing Hamas with its grisly rational for killing Israeli civilians.

I too favor a regime change in Israel, but not to an exclusivist authoritarian Islamic state [some] Hamas leaders seem to be intending. The one I favor and the one I hope our next President will tactfully encourage would encompass a change from the current Jewish state to a truly democratic pluralist equalitarian society whose polity would not be prey to any sectarian, ethnic or racial interest.”

I wrote that letter because I saw once again how little effect the massive outpouring of worldwide rage with respect to this latest Israeli massive military retaliatory onslaught in its war of aggression and attrition on Palestine land and resolve was having on official western governmental sensibilities (and, of course, the sensibilities of the current Israeli regime). As usual it has not inspired an enlightened response. So, I decided, it was time for me as W. C. Fields once said to “Grab the bull by the tail and face the situation,” and try to reframe the argument in terms of the current State of Israel’s moral and ethical illegitimacy. There I said it, “the current State of Israel’s moral and ethical illegitimacy,” and I will not take it back.

Until now publicly questioning the so called moral and ethical authenticity of the avowedly exclusionary Jewish State has been an elephant in the room that has been avoided for too long by those of us who have an egalitarian view of what sovereign legitimacy should entail in the post modern world. So now that I have raised it and I hope before it’s too late, although it already may be that, I think Americans, especially Americans, need to start questioning assertively in public not just the Jewish State’s credibility but its legitimacy as well. For instance we need to be asking: if the concept of an Islamic state ruled by either theocratic, monarchical or secular elites is not acceptable to our egalitarian political sensibilities honed and shaped as they have been by the Jeffersonian concept (and later by the United Nations concept) of inalienable rights for all humans, then what is acceptable about the notion of a Jewish State when there is hardly a dime's worth of difference between it and the predominant Islamic variety?

Both types:most Islamic states, but not quite all, and the Jewish State are pretend democracies or pretend republics. The inhabitants of either are ruled by strong-arm anti-pluralist plutocratic or aristocratic elites. These autocratic dominators thrive on instilling often self-fulfilling fear in their subjects in order to 1) rationalize the denial of segments of the population from certain national privileges, benefits, and rights in order to perpetuate the exclusivity and power of a variety of ruling castes, classes, and cliques, and 2) to legitimize the use of brute force in order to keep the demonized classes in their place. Because of its long running nonstop oppressive actions on behalf of those aims, the Jewish State, it seems to me, is undeserving of the legal legitimacy that was bestowed by western factions in the United Nations in 1947-48, and in retrospect bestowed unwisely. It is undeserving just as Serbia was undeserving of its sovereign legitimacy because of its massive brutality against the Muslims in its midst. These are the critiques, statements and questions whose time I strongly believe has come and needs to be vigorously pursued by many others besides me.

The question and the answer we in the free democratic world need to start persistently and relentlessly pursuing in the fashion that South Africa was called to account is: what is so wrong about the idea of a patronizing Islamic theocratic state or Islamic republic, which suppresses many of its inhabitants, that is obtusely considered so right about the state that is avowedly "Jewish" but which is equally patronizing and suppressive of many of its Palestinian inhabitants, as well as the Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza? The answer, of course, is: there is nothing spiritually or existentially right about either when it comes to human and civil rights. Here in the west our own government, in particular, has for too long insisted that there is a laudable and supportable qualitative difference: the autocratic Islamic versions are wrong; the dominating Jewish version is right. So it has not dealt with the issue either fairly or honestly and instead has vilified scornfully any persons or parties who challenge the Jewish State's right to exist. In so doing, however, a series of U. S. governing elites have been engaged long term and big time in the worst kind of delegitimizing sophistry where Palestine is concerned. They have understood and, in fact have clearly known, that Muslims, Christian Arabs, and their mainstream supporters elsewhere, who talk about the destruction of Israel do not mean that the Jewish inhabitants of the Jewish national exclusionary political entity should in a genocidal putsch be ethnically destroyed (murdered, assassinated, cleansed) or pushed (transferred) into the sea. What they, what we are calling for specifically is destruction of the present undemocratic political institution that is the State of Israel not its people. And that is regime change, not the deaths or exiling of anyone living within the regime.

Putting it another way, when the Jewish state's human and civil rights critics talk about the destruction of Israel, except for the scandalous demagogic extremist fringe in the Islamic world who do not speak for most Palestinians or most of their supporters elsewhere in the world, including those living in Israel, they are not talking about killing or driving out its Jews. They are simply voicing their support of the destruction, replacement, dissolution, if you will, of the present Jewish State in favor of a sovereign political entity that embraces and is emblematic of unlimited constitutional democracy. That's the regime change I, we favor: not that pretend democracy I mentioned earlier, a pretend democracy which continues to masquerade with official United States collusion as the only democracy in the Middle East. Tell that to the Indians…I mean Christian and Muslim Palestinians.

Sadly there is nothing that I have heard so far from anyone in the new Obama administration that leads me to think that what the United States will try to encourage will be anything more than a new millennium warmed over peace process holdover from the 1990s. It will be nothing more than the return of Oslo I and II. That’s bad, of course, because the Oslo agreements provided the framework for Israel’s subsequent decade and a half U.S. abetted relentless racist process of territorial, economic, and political diminution of Palestine. Having declared that, I am mindful that the withdrawal of Israeli squatter-settlers from Gaza is being used by some to disingenuously refute that charge. The answer, of course, is that through economic strangulation by means of territorial blockade, Israel began to insure that conditions in Gaza’s latter day Warsaw Ghetto would begin to deteriorate precipitously the moment the squatter-settlers left. Conditions there are now worse than ever.

Oslo was nothing more than a piece[sic] process designed to give the Palestinians precisely what they have never wanted, permanent puppet status as a client state of Israel and U.S. penny ante largess in a shrinking land area. There is nothing that I have heard so far from anyone in the new Obama administration that leads me to think that the United States has any intention of “encouraging” a turning back of the Bush clock. In 2004 he endorsed the unilateral annexation of the hugest squatter-settler settlements, which since then have continued their encroachments onto Palestinian land. There is nothing that I have heard so far from the Obama administration that would negate the Bush administration’s official position about that example of egregious unilateralism which simply stated is, what President Bush agreed should be torn asunder let no man put back together.

There is nothing that I have heard so far from anyone in the new Obama administration that leads me not to think that what the United States will try to encourage in the new millennium will be nothing more than son of Oslo. So the result of this administration’s efforts, I sadly predict, will not be a viable two state solution, but will be no better than a one and a half to half state solution in which the lack of Palestinian viability with respect to complete independence and territorial integrity will be an inside joke. Finally there is nothing that I have heard so far from anyone in the new Obama administration that leads me not to think that the Palestinians, as always victimized by western and Israeli intentions and cynical pressures, will once again be obliged to smilingly play along with a U.S. enabled charade and accept it.

Biography

In 1984, when Jerry Levin was Cable News Network (CNN) Middle East Bureau Chief based in Beirut Lebanon, he was kidnapped by Hezbollah and was hidden away in chains in solitary confinement. After eleven and a half months he was able to escape. While in captivity, Levin had a profound religious and philosophical conversion. After a sudden insight about what he calls “the futility of violence,” he moved from paying lip service to the belief that at times violence has its uses to becoming an activist on behalf of unconditional nonviolent living. Reflections on my first Noel” is his account of his conversion to that understanding.

Since become an activist for nonviolence, Jerry Levin has worked with a number of international violence reduction organizations. Since 2001, he has been a member of the Christian Peacemaker Teams (CPT) based in Israeli occupied Hebron, one of the most persistently violent areas in the West Bank. A collection of his observations and experiences there and also during the time he was with CPT in Baghdad during the first few months of the second Gulf War have been published under the title, West Bank Diary: Middle East Violence as Reported by a Former American Hostage.

His wife Dr. Lucille (Sis) Levin received the Dalai Lama’s 2009 Unsung Heroes of Compassion award that is bestowed every four or five years.