Boycotting Zionism

vimothy

yurp
My viewpoint does not exclude such possibilities. Examples please? I mean we could look at Soviet interventions pre 1990s. Or perhaps China today? (whatever we take China to be politically-- totalitarian capitalist perhaps?) But the interesting point is the way in which China intervene- softly softly, don't show/don't tell, they market their economic interventionism and investment strategies as entirely "other" to that of the West. For obvious reasons, obviously.

No - I mean involved in Western governments, and therefore in actions taken by Western governments. Or are all politicians "Neo-Lib" by default?
 
Israel's Hyperreal

"Friday lunchtime in the upmarket strip of Dizengoff Street, Tel Aviv, is like walking onto the set of a Vogue shoot. Every girl strutting by looks like Nicole Scherzinger, reminiscent of the restaurant scene in Being John Malkovich where the entire room is filled with clones of the balding actor, and seeing and being seen is the only thing on their minds. People sprawl on sofas outside cafes, eyes hidden behind aviator lenses and mobiles perma-clamped to their ears as they while away the opening act of another weekend's laconic performance."


As Tony Blair sets up shop - as the near-invisible 'representative' of the Quartet group of Middle East peacemakers - for the next five years (with a UN-funded budget of $8m in his pocket) in East Jerusalem's American Colony hotel, we can expect to witness nothing more than the virtualized diplomacy of copiously eager smiling and 'let me feel your pain' posturing: "He asked very smart questions, though I did think that someone who was prime minister for so long should already have known these facts." ... "Mr Blair was appalled by what we told him," said Mats Lignell, spokesman for the international observers stationed here "temporarily" in 1994 after a Jewish extremist from the nearby settlement of Kiryat Arba massacred 29 Palestinians praying in the Ibrahimi Mosque."

I'm sure this will please and titillate without end all of the "fashionable residents of Tel Aviv ... detached from the ongoing conflict on their doorstep", their having no need to even be bothered to have any awareness of it:

"And you sip your Napoleon brandy, But you never get your lips wet, no you don't ... He sent you a racehorse for Christmas, And you keep it just for fun, for a laugh a-ha-ha-ha "

------

Not a care in the world

It's alarming that fashionable residents of Tel Aviv can remain so detached from the ongoing conflict on their doorstep.

Seth Freedman, The Guardian, October 13, 2007


Friday lunchtime in the upmarket strip of Dizengoff Street, Tel Aviv, is like walking onto the set of a Vogue shoot. Every girl strutting by looks like Nicole Scherzinger, reminiscent of the restaurant scene in Being John Malkovich where the entire room is filled with clones of the balding actor, and seeing and being seen is the only thing on their minds. People sprawl on sofas outside cafes, eyes hidden behind aviator lenses and mobiles perma-clamped to their ears as they while away the opening act of another weekend's laconic performance.

Today, right in the heart of the whole show, a small group of earnest activists gathered around a cluster of olive trees on the corner of Ben Gurion and Dizengoff, hoping to draw the masses' attention to their heartfelt protest. Organised by the Coalition of Women for Peace, they were marking the opening of the olive harvest season by performing a symbolic reaping in the heart of Tel Aviv from trees they claim were stolen from Palestinians.

Their cause was just, their aims were true, but they never stood a chance when it came to waking the beautiful people from their apathetic slumber. Part of the problem was that they were hidden from view by exactly the trees that formed the centrepiece of their demonstration, meaning most of the passers-by didn't have a clue that any kind of action was taking place yards from where they walked.

However, even those who sat eating their lunch at the outdoor tables on the same strip of the boulevard were utterly uninterested in what was going on next to them. Turning their noses up at the flyers being proffered by the hopeful protesters, they went straight back to admiring one another's clothes and fawning over their latest partners. They were, as Alex put it, "far too busy being agonisingly beautiful to worry about Palestinians' trees being nicked."

I went olive picking with a similar group in the West Bank last year, and I'm full of admiration for those dedicated to aiding the Palestinian farmers. At the same time, however, they must have known today's exercise was doomed to fail in terms of rallying public support for their cause. This generation of bourgeois Tel Aviv residents just doesn't care - and the lack of interest is endemic the length and breadth of Israel.

For a country that used to brim over with political activists and protestors, the speed with which the youth have turned indifferent and lethargic is as alarming as it is dangerous. Alarming, because it shows how swiftly a state founded on zealousness and enthusiasm can morph into just another lackadaisical westernised country. Dangerous, because the majority's ennui leaves a vacuum in the political sphere which the extremists are only too eager to fill with their own beliefs.

In Israel's case, it is the right wing who have seized on the opportunity quickest and most effectively. I said as much in a recent piece when considering whether anything was likely to stop the settlement juggernaut, and - on the strength of today's performance - the malaise has set in deeper than I first thought. Watching the complete disdain with which the public treated a serious political protest shocked me, given the gravity of the conflict that has engulfed these Israelis their whole lives.

If they were forced to think about the issue of the IDF wantonly destroying Palestinian olive groves in order to annex their land, most of the Dizengoff diners would likely express some sympathy for the farmers' plight on a humane level. However, it's precisely because they're too busy with their cappuccinos and tuna salads that they don't ever get made to address what's happening on their own doorstep.

The right wing knows this, and capitalises on it in spades. When they put on a protest - such as the incendiary march I went on during the summer - they do so knowing full well there won't be a counter protest by their opponents. They're also gradually wresting control of the army too, with 45% of officers now coming from the "knitted kippa" religious Zionist camp.

And, like it or not, their ability to play the game is paying off big time. As reported in the Guardian this week, the expansionist policies of the government are continuing unchecked; the stranglehold of the security wall is still firmly in effect; and the punitive measures taken against the Gazans are barely opposed by the people on the Israeli street.

That doesn't mean to say that the left wing isn't alive and kicking. It is - all of today's protestors will doubtless spend much time over the next few months getting their hands dirty as they help the Palestinians gather their crops. Likewise, the grassroots projects of the likes of Machsom Watch, Yesh Gvul and their counterparts will continue at their usual pace, helping the people who really matter at the heart of the issue.

But the dispiriting spectacle I witnessed today in the heart of uptown Tel Aviv leaves a bitter taste in my mouth. The silence of the majority leaves the field wide open for the fervent and dedicated minority to impose their will on the political course that the country charts. I genuinely don't believe that most of Israel's citizens want to pursue a path of war, intolerance, expansionism and injustice, regardless of how many times readers tell me just that on the threads.

What I do believe, instead, is that too many Israelis - especially amongst the younger generation - have just stopped caring. The post-army opium-trail through the far east quickly detaches them from what they've witnessed during their national service, and by the time they come back to reality they're too busy with their own career and bettering their own status to care about the conflict. And when the only olives they care about are the ones adorning their fettucine alfredo, all the flyers in the world aren't going to paper over the cracks in their consciences.​
 

craner

Beast of Burden
Padraig was on top form in this thread. Half way through, Woebot closed it for a week to allow everybody to calm down. It made absolutely no difference. Classic material.
 

craner

Beast of Burden
Padraig nails Vimothy:
Clearly, the problem with Vimothy is that his racism is ontological: Islam, Arabs, Muslims are inherently evil, are crazed sub-humans hell-bent on destroying all of humanity, including themselves, and as such have no right to exist, but must be collectively punished and, where necessary, ultimately exterminated.
 

Mr. Tea

Let's Talk About Ceps
Just had a look back for old times' sake. I noticed HMLT at one point used "philistine" in the traditional derogatory way to mean an uncultured or distasteful person (referring to Damien Hirst, as it happens, so I can hardly fault him for that). But somewhat ironic given the at least notional identity of the historical Philistines with the present-day Palestinians...
 

craner

Beast of Burden
Also, one of the other revelations of this engrossing thread is that you were pro-war in 2003, you mad, genocidal racist. Also, Vim got seriously disciplined by Sufi. Even I've never had such a spanking!
 

Mr. Tea

Let's Talk About Ceps
Well who wasn't pro-war in 2003? It was like Adam Curtis or The Libertines, it was de rigeur. We didn't have the benefit of hindsight.
 

Mr. Tea

Let's Talk About Ceps
Actually that's a ludicrous thing to say. I'm glad to say I have never liked The Libertines.
 

Mr. Tea

Let's Talk About Ceps
Looking back through these old HMLT threads, it's funny to see how his name for me goes from "Teabag" to "Teaboy" and perhaps a few other iterations, before he eventually just loses it and I become "Teafucker".
 

luka

Well-known member
I and the public know
What all schoolchildren learn,
Those to whom evil is done
Do Evil in return.

- - - W H Auden​

Joseph Weitz was the director of the Jewish National Land Fund… On
December 19, 1940, he wrote: ‘It must be clear that there is no room for both
peoples in this country… The Zionist enterprise so far… has been fine and
good in its own time, and could do with ‘land buying’—but this will not bring
about the State of Israel; that must come all at once, in the manner of a Salvation
(this is the secret of the Messianic idea); and there is no way besides
transferring the Arabs from here to the neighboring countries, to transfer them
all; except maybe for Bethlehem, Nazareth and Old Jerusalem, we must not
leave a single village, not a single tribe’
…There were literally hundreds of
such statements made by Zionists
. ” ---Edward Said, “The Question of Palestine.”

For me, this business called the state of Israel is finished…I can’t bear to
see it anymore, the injustice that is done to the Arabs, to the Beduins. All
kinds of scum coming from America and as soon as they get off the plane
taking over lands in the territories and claiming them for their own… I can’t
do anything to change it. I can only go away and let the whole lot go to hell
without me
.” --Israeli actress (and household name) Rivka Michaeli, quoted in Israeli
peace movement periodical, “The Other Israel”, August 1998.



It seems some posters here need a little history lesson, and from a Jewish perspective.

Via Jews For Justice at If America Knew
origcover.jpg


The Holocaust is often used as the final argument in favor of Zionism, but
is this connection justified? There are several aspects to consider in answering
that question honestly. First, we will examine the historical record of what the
Zionist movement actually did to help save European Jewry from the Nazis.

Shamir proposes an alliance with the Nazis

“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.

Wasn’t the main goal of Zionism to save Jews from the Holocaust?

“In 1938 a thirty-one nation conference was held in Evian, France, on re-settlement
of the victims of Nazism. The World Zionist Organization refused
to participate, fearing that resettlement of Jews in other states would reduce
the number available for Palestine.” John Quigley, “Palestine and Israel: A Chal-lenge
to Justice.”

Main goal of Zionism – continued

“It was summed up in the meeting [of the Jewish Agency’s Executive on
June 26, 1938] that the Zionist thing to do ‘is belittle the [Evian] Conference
as far as possible and to cause it to decide nothing…We are particularly wor-ried
that it would move Jewish organizations to collect large sums of money for
aid to Jewish refugees, and these collections could interfere with our collection
efforts’…Ben-Gurion’s statement at the same meeting: ‘No rationalization can
turn the conference from a harmful to a useful one. What can and should be
done is to limit the damage as far as possible.’ ” Israeli author Boas Evron, “Jew-ish
State or Israeli Nation?”

Main goal of Zionism – continued

“[Ben-Gurion stated,] ‘If I knew that it was possible to save all the children
in Germany by transporting them to England, but only half of them by trans-porting
them to Palestine, I would choose the second—because we face not
only the reckoning of those children, but the historical reckoning of the Jew-ish
people.’ In the wake of the Kristallnacht pogroms, Ben-Gurion commented
that ‘the human conscience’ might bring various countries to open their doors
to Jewish refugees from Germany. He saw this as a threat and warned: ‘Zionism
is in danger.’ ” Israeli historian, Tom Segev, “The Seventh Million.”

Main goal of Zionism – continued

“The Zionist movement…interfered with and hindered other organizations,
Jewish and non-Jewish, whenever it imagined that their activity, political or
humanitarian, was at variance with Zionist aims or in competition with them,
even when these might be helpful to Jews, even when it was a question of life
and death…Beit Zvi documents the Zionist leadership’s indifference to saving
Jews from the Nazi menace except in cases in which the Jews could be brought
to Palestine…[e.g.] the readiness of the dictator of the Dominican Republic,
Rafael Trujillo, to absorb one hundred thousand refugees and the sabotaging of
this idea—as well as others, like proposals to settle the Jews in Alaska and the
Philippines—by the Zionist movement…

“The obtuseness of the Zionist movement toward the fate of European Jewry
did not prevent it, of course, from later hurling accusations against the whole
world for its indifference toward the Jewish catastrophe or from pressing mate-rial,
political, and moral demands on the world because of that indifference.”
Israeli author Boas Evron, “Jewish State or Israeli Nation?”

Main goal of Zionism - continued

“Even David Ben-Gurion’s sympathetic biographer acknowledges that Ben-Gurion
did nothing practical for rescue, devoting his energies to post-war prospects. He
delegated rescue work to Yitzak Gruenbam, who [stated]. . . ‘They
will say that I am anti-Semitic, that I don’t want to save the Exile, that I don’t
a varm Yiddish hartz. . . Let them say what they want. I will not demand that the
Jewish Agency allocate a sum of 300,000 or 100,000 pounds sterling to help
European Jewry. And I think that whoever demands such things is performing
an anti-Zionist act.’

“Zionists in America. . . took the same position. At a May 1943 meeting of
the American Emergency Committee for Zionist Affairs, Nahum Goldmann
argued, ‘If a drive is opened against the White Paper (the British policy of
restricting Jewish immigration to Palestine) the mass meetings of protest against
the murder of European Jewry will have to be dropped. We do not have suffi-cient
manpower for both campaigns.’ ” Peter Novick, “The Holocaust in American
Life

Main goal of Zionism – continued

“I have already gone exhaustively into the reason for our being here, rea-sons
that I as a pioneer of 1906 can affirm have nothing to do with the
Nazis!…We are here because this land is ours. And we are here because we
have again made it ours in this time with the work we have put into it. Nazism
and our history of martyrdom abroad do not concern our presence in Israel
directly.” David Ben-Gurion, “Memoirs.”

In hindsight, it is easy to say that the millions of Jews who were murdered in
the Holocaust could have been saved if Palestine had been available for unlimited
immigration. The history of this period is not so simple, however. First,
keep in mind that other realistic resettlement plans were proposed but actively
opposed by the Zionist movement. Second, the great majority of Jews in Eu-rope
were not Zionists and did not try to emigrate to Palestine before 1939.
Third, after the start of the war, as the Nazis occupied various countries, they
refused to let the Jews leave, making emigration virtually impossible. And Palestine,
as we have shown, was already occupied; the indigenous Arabs had
more valid reasons than any other country for wanting to limit Jewish immigration.​


all those years and we never realised padrag was ken livingstone
 

luka

Well-known member
BREAKING NEWS

KEN LIVINGSTONE IS SAT OUTSIDE CAFE NERO IN WEST HAMPSTEAD RIGHT NOW DRINKING HELLES WITH HIS ASSOCIATES
SITTING ON NERO PROPERTY DRINKING HELLES
 

woops

is not like other people
im in the crown and castle now on my 5th guinness. theyve got trapppistes rochefort gonna get that in next
 
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