Boycotting Zionism

vimothy

vimothy

yurp
Well said that man:

Recently Prof. Steven Weinberg of the University of Texas, a Nobel Prize winner in physics, canceled a speaking engagement at Imperial College in London. He said, referring to the move to boycott Israel by Britain’s National Union of Journalists, that “given the history of the attacks on Israel and the oppressiveness and aggressiveness of other countries in the Middle East and elsewhere, boycotting Israel indicate a moral blindness for which it is hard to find any explanation other than anti-Semitism.”

The UCU resolution, however, states that “passivity or neutrality is unacceptable and criticism of Israel cannot be construed as anti-semitic.”

No, perish the thought. Apart from the evasive use of “criticism”—what is at stake is not criticism, but boycotts—it is of course not anti-Semitic to make Israel the sole and obsessive focus of efforts at condemnation and excommunication by academics, journalists, doctors, architects, clergy, and ordinary workers at a time of ongoing genocide in Sudan and constant severe human rights abuses in the likes of Iran, Saudi Arabia, Syria, and the Palestinian Authority itself—to go no further than the Muslim Middle East.

It is not anti-Semitism, it is just that the Jews, in their not-quite sixty years of statehood after two millennia of dispersion, have managed to create the world’s most evil society and the only one so repugnant that even its academics need to be silenced and ostracized. It is not anti-Semitism, it is just that all the problems of Arab and Muslim aggression the world over stem from that one primal sin of “Israeli occupation”; just that the Jews have somehow once again managed to poison the wells and be at the root of all evil.
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- http://frontpagemag.com/Articles/ReadArticle.asp?ID=28628

How is it that Israel has managed to make such a mess of the Middle East? I mean, we are regualrly told that all the conflicts involving that region originate in the Israel-Palestine conflict, that that conflict is the main cause of friction between East and West (e.g. the Palestinian PM in yesterday's Guardian) and that without its resolution there will be no peace in the Middle East. Israel has caused such freakish levels of havok given its relatively small size and youth, that there must be an explanation which addresses the uniquely disproportionate mess Israel has created.

[Oh and btw, Dershowitz was appellate advisor for Simpson and the trial never actually went to appeal.]
 
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vimothy

vimothy

yurp
This forum's most pro-tyrant "Jews are Evil" nutter:

...the Zionist, Apartheid state of Israel continues...
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Anyone who points to the fact that Israel is a terrorist, apartheid state which occupies Palestinian land against the will of the indigenous people, ignores UN resolutions, flouts international law, persecutes minorities, stockpiles huge arsenals of nuclear, biological and chemical weapons, systematically tortures political prisoners, disregards the Geneva conventions, invades neighboring countries killing thousands of innocent men, women and children, along with reporting its more recent attacks on Gaza and the open kidnapping of Palestinian ministers, and the US-Israeli financed and armed 'civil war', is immediately accused of being anti-Semitic (this is so tiresome that by now it is as dispicable and as comparable as Nazis accusing those who were critical of German fascism of being "anti-Aryan racists").
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It is a slur that is only advanced by Zionists and their defenders (and which only serves to delight actual neo-fascist anti-semites, which is hardly surprising given the close historical collaboration between Zionists and Nazis before and during WWII).
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It's not anti-semitic to criticise Israel, or to compare it to rascist regimes like South Africa, or even to the totalitarians like the Nazis. After all comparing Israel to the Nazis comes easy to a lot of people - and so many people couldn't possibly be anti-semitic - it practically leaps off one's tongue with a flourish. "The Nazis dehumanised and murdered the Jews, so the Jews have done the same to the Palestinains." It's all so simple.
Jews = Nazis, Nazis = Jews, nya-nya
Killing people is what Jews do best. And they've been doing it for years, right?
Zionists helped the Nazis, naturally, because Nazism is ultimately an extension of Zionism.
The problems and struggles of the Middle East (inc events like 9/11) find their origins in the actions of the Israeli state, and no solution to the Middle East's problems is possible without Israel's destruction.
Etceterra....
 
vimothy

vimothy

yurp
“As late as 1941, the Zionist group LEHI, one of whose leaders, Yitzhak
Shamir, was later to become a prime minister of Israel, approached the Nazis,
using the name of its parent organization, the Irgun (NMO)…[Their proposal
stated:] ‘The establishment of the historical Jewish state on a national and
totalitarian basis and bound by a treaty with the German Reich would be in
the interests of strengthening the future German nation of power in the Near
East… The NMO in Palestine offers to take an active part in the war on
Germany’s side’….The Nazis rejected this proposal for an alliance because, it
is reported, they considered LEHI’s military power ‘negligable.’ ” Allan
Brownfield, “The Washington Report on Middle Eastern Affairs”, July/August 1998.
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Lehi did contact the Nazis, believing as they did that the Nazis were only anti-semites (true of many nations at that time) not enemies of Israel (like the British). Contact was made by the group with a german official in Beruit, January, 1941. That's 1941. Get it? Good.

Also, Lehi (surely your ideological fellows, hmlt) was a very small organisation, numbering les than one hunderd men. It did not represent the more mainstream Irgun, who sided with the British to fight the Nazis, whose members fought in the Jewish Brigade, among other units, and assisted the Allies in Eastern Europe, the Middle East and North Africa.
 
Mr. Tea

Mr. Tea

Let's Talk About Ceps
hundredmillionlifetimes said:
" ... calls for boycotting Coca-Cola (not that there might not be other good reasons for doing this, but anyway) ....
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*sigh*

Once again, words that are apparently visible on my computer screen are mysteriously rendered invisible on the screen of a certain other forum member...
 
C

crackerjack

Well-known member
vimothy said:
Honest question: Are there actually any good left wing sites or blogs that are not hysterical pomo apologists for fascism?
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All depends on your definition of left wing. If pro-Labour, even at its most Blairite right, qualifies (oops, there goes HMLT's Red Bull all over the monitor), then Harry's Place was extremely good, though the comments boxes have been going downhill of late.

Marc Cooper in the US is meant to be a good representation of the anti-war, anti-apologist left.

There are plenty of others in the pro-war leftish camp (Drink-soaked former trotskyist popinjays being one). Sometimes it's difficult to know where the line is between conviction and party loyalism though.
 
vimothy

vimothy

yurp
crackerjack said:
All depends on your definition of left wing. If pro-Labour, even at its most Blairite right, qualifies (oops, there goes HMLT's Red Bull all over the monitor), then Harry's Place was extremely good, though the comments boxes have been going downhill of late.

Marc Cooper in the US is meant to be a good representation of the anti-war, anti-apologist left.

There are plenty of others in the pro-war leftish camp (Drink-soaked former trotskyist popinjays being one). Sometimes it's difficult to know where the line is between conviction and party loyalism though.
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Yeah I'm familar with Harry's Place. I think that it's a good site, but appreciate that some people don't consider it very left wing (because of its support for the war?).

Don't think that Hitch is on the left any more, but I can think of plenty of other British leftists who are anti-totalitarian.

Was thinking more along the lines of leftists not already disowned by their own comrades.

Thanks for the Marc Cooper tip though, I'll check him out.
 
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crackerjack

Well-known member
Yeah I'm familar with Harry's Place. I think that it's a good site, but appreciate that some people don't consider it very left wing (because of its support for the war?).
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Principally I guess. I think the posters are fairly consistent in their lib-left pro-war stance. What troubles me about them is the alacrity with which they weigh into Trot opponents while giving right-wing nutjobs (and they attract a lot of them) a relatively easy ride. Mind you, the Chomskyite types do, on the whole, invite it by being that much more obnoxious.
 
vimothy

vimothy

yurp
Principally I guess. I think the posters are fairly consistent in their lib-left pro-war stance. What troubles me about them is the alacrity with which they weigh into Trot opponents while giving right-wing nutjobs (and they attract a lot of them) a relatively easy ride. Mind you, the Chomskyite types do, on the whole, invite it by being that much more obnoxious.
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Why is that? The harder lefty-types generally (but not always) seem really rude, as if anyone disagreeing with them is somehow personally responsible for all of the bad things that happen in the world. Is it because they know that they are right and that only a vast and well-funded conspiracy keeps humanity from utopia in a state of inslavement to a vampiric capitalist death machine, maybe? Is it that the modern "pomo left" (I don't know how to describe it) only appeals to some sort of Kleinian paranoid-schizoid personality unable to separate beliefs from the people espousing them?
 
craner

craner

Beast of Burden
The boys writing Harry's Place (at least the Brits) are Labour activists, and certainly among the most loyal Blairites in the rank and file membership. (A lot of the Blairites do tend to be around the age of 25-40. They certainly were in BG&B where they took full charge of Oona's doomed campaign. All very nice people; bright and good looking and so on. But, I remember noticing, they all had very empty eyes. It was a sort of rigid, delusional, numbed commitment, like late Bolshevism or something.)

One of the problems with Harry's Place is that they cannot write.
 
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gek-opel

entered apprentice
crackerjack said:
Principally I guess. I think the posters are fairly consistent in their lib-left pro-war stance. What troubles me about them is the alacrity with which they weigh into Trot opponents while giving right-wing nutjobs (and they attract a lot of them) a relatively easy ride.
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There's a ve-e-e-ery simple reason for this- they are simply the replication of the status quo, the continuation of the establishment. I wouldn't describe Harry's Place as anything other than Blairite centre-right.
 
C

crackerjack

Well-known member
One of the problems with Harry's Place is that they cannot write.
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I'd disagree with that. They're not particularly fluent, or even always correctly spelt, but for the most part they're quite witty and get the point across well.

There's a ve-e-e-ery simple reason for this- they are simply the replication of the status quo, the continuation of the establishment. I wouldn't describe Harry's Place as anything other than Blairite centre-right.
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I'm not really interested in a row about whther Nu Lab is centre-left or centre-right (it's significantly to the right of where I'd like it to be), but I disagree with this. I think it's primarily a hangover from sectarian left politics. And the fact that Trots are, almost always, knobheads.
 
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gek-opel

entered apprentice
Well both groups are in certain senses intellectually conservative. But does Harry's place not exist to some extent for the very purpose of berating those to the left of themselves-- which is entirely of a piece with the tenor of Nu-Lab politics of the last ten years- that constant disavowal of the left wing other- that constant need to define themselves against that, to PROVE that they will never return to such territory etc etc...

I can't see how Harry's Place isn't simply the aggressive re-presentation of the status quo.
 
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crackerjack

Well-known member
gek-opel said:
Well both groups are in certain senses intellectually conservative. But does Harry's place not exist to some extent for the very purpose of berating those to the left of themselves-- which is entirely of a piece with the tenor of Nu-Lab politics of the last ten years- that constant disavowal of the left wing other- that constant need to define themselves against that, to PROVE that they will never return to such territory etc etc...

I can't see how Harry's Place isn't simply the aggressive re-presentation of the status quo.
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Sorry, my last comment was posted in haste cos I was cooking.

To the extent they're Blairites and Blairites currently run the country, then yes, they are the establishment. But anyone who lived through 18 years of Tory rule can't help but be scarred by it - the damage done to Labour by the far left took more than a decade and a re-branding to undo. And yes, if you're a Labour activist whose aim is government rather than ideological purity then you may well see them as 'the left wing other'.

The far left also has profoundly undemocratic tendencies, as borne out by the advent of Respect and STWC's siding with any old fascist who detonates a bomb near Americans. If Harry's Place has a raison d'etre (beyond their support of that idiot war) then I'd guess it's to highlight that.
 
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gek-opel

entered apprentice
Ignoring my issues with democracy (another time perhaps) I just think that nu-lab has spent far to much time disentangling itself from the left- to the extent that it has become the major operating principle of the regime. The focus on obtaining power which underlies this being the obvious raison d'etre of Blair. But this is now the major psychological condition for "politics" in Britain, the same narrative being deemed necessary for the conservatives now... functioning as a parallel to the classic celebrity fiction of drug addiction-recovery-comeback... as if politics has to "grow up" from such messy juvenalia as disagreement and conviction, though the form if not the content of both live on as a kind of half hearted charade of course...

I also think the word "fascist" has been bandied about way too liberally, and lacking in specificity in relation to so-called "islamo-fascists".
 
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hundredmillionlifetimes

Banned
gek-opel said:
There's a ve-e-e-ery simple reason for this- they are simply the replication of the status quo, the continuation of the establishment. I wouldn't describe Harry's Place as anything other than Blairite centre-right.
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Which, of course, is why the other right-wing posters here criticize it: the centre-right isn't sufficiently right ... [nor sufficiently smug as to be capable of confidently spouting irrational ravings in the guise of a passive, complacent, and 'reasonable' "liberalism"].

Crackerjack: "the Chomskyite types do"

You forgot to echo Vimothy by declaring Chomsky as a "Jews are evil" anti-semite, along with Albert Einstein, Woody Allen, Daniel Barenbohn, Bob Dylan ... indeed, the vast majority of the world population of Jews, given that they question Israeli policies, are anti-Zionist.

Craner: "I remember noticing, they all had very empty eyes."

Like their Fearless Leader? No need to poke them out, so, Mr Craner.

But maybe you could do a Dali-Bunuel on them:
Un%20Chien%20Andalou.jpg


[intrigued by what precious agalma resides in, 'fills up', Mr Craner's eyes]

Crackerjack: "(oops, there goes HMLT's Red Bull all over the monitor), "

Châteauneuf du Pape '68, actually, appropriately thick, harsh, ruthless and densely blood-red. You're confusing me with the caffeine-addicted tea-drinking posters here; understandable, there's no shortage of them, but you're not one obviously. Obviously ...
 
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hundredmillionlifetimes

Banned
Crackerjack: "But anyone who lived through 18 years of Tory rule can't help but be scarred by it - the damage done to Labour by the far left took more than a decade and a re-branding to undo".

Politics as marketing, as branding. All the time forgetting that Blairism took Thatherism to the next level: it institutionalized it, normalizing what had been inconveniently perceived as an over-assertive abberation into seamless ideological dogma. What is feared by the present centre-right status quo is that they might once again become marginal, a Thatcherite or Reaganite abberation.

And gek-opel is absolutely right when articulating the unquestioned assumption of this hegemony: "as if politics has to "grow up" from such messy juvenalia as disagreement and conviction." Yes, its as if at the very moment when, from the righteously-reactionary perspective of this predominant centre-right 'liberal' ideology, we are finally leaving behind the "immature" political passions (the regime of the "political": class struggle and other "out-dated" divisive antagonisms) for the post-ideological "mature" pragmatic universe of rational administration and negotiated consensus, for the universe, free of utopian impulses, in which the dispassionate administration of social affairs goes hand in hand with the aestheticized hedonism (the pluralism of "lifestyles" and a repressively 'tolerant' multiculturalism), — at this very moment, the foreclosed political is disavowedlycelebrating a triumphant comeback in its most archaic form of pure, undistilled racist hatred of the Other [Muslims, among others, in the case of many posters on this forum: "I'm not anti-Muslim, its just that they're all potential terrorists" etc] which renders the rational tolerant attitude utterly impotent.
 
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gek-opel

entered apprentice
hundredmillionlifetimes said:
Politics as marketing, as branding. All the time forgetting that Blairism took Thatherism to the next level: it institutionalized it, normalizing what had been inconveniently perceived as an over-assertive abberation into seamless ideological dogma. What is feared by the present centre-right status quo is that they might once again become marginal, a Thatcherite or Reaganite abberation.
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And with just the correct level of amelioration of certain visible ravages of neo-lib capitalism to render its advances all the more fundamentally rapacious and intractable.

hundredmillionlifetimes said:
Yes, its as if at the very moment when, from the righteously-reactionary perspective of this predominant centre-right 'liberal' ideology, we are finally leaving behind the "immature" political passions (the regime of the "political": class struggle and other "out-dated" divisive antagonisms) for the post-ideological "mature" pragmatic universe of rational administration and negotiated consensus, for the universe, free of utopian impulses, in which the dispassionate administration of social affairs goes hand in hand with the aestheticized hedonism (the pluralism of "lifestyles" and a repressively 'tolerant' multiculturalism), — at this very moment, the foreclosed political is disavowedlycelebrating a triumphant comeback in its most archaic form of pure, undistilled racist hatred of the Other [Muslims, among others, in the case of many posters on this forum: "I'm not anti-Muslim, its just that they're all potential terrorists" etc] which renders the rational tolerant attitude utterly impotent.
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And where Badiou's properly political subject is dropped for the "politics" of management, where nothing can ever change, merely different managers installed to implement the same essential policy. Efficacy, rather than ideology (or indeed, ideas of any kind asides from the status quo).
 
craner

craner

Beast of Burden
Châteauneuf du Pape '68, actually, appropriately thick, harsh, ruthless and densely blood-red. You're confusing me with the caffeine-addicted tea-drinking posters here; understandable, there's no shortage of them, but you're not one obviously.

Ha!

That's the first time I've really liked you Padraig.
 
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