NOVANEWS
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Bronner lets his hair down– will appear w/ Perle and Bolton on Iran-scare panel hosted by Islamophobic shop
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Soviet-style ‘Foreign Affairs’ stages ‘debate’ on Israel between ’2 senior Israeli officials’ and ‘liberal American Zionist’
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J Street presses division inside Jewish community, blaming neocons for leading ‘charge to war in Iraq’
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Palestine in Oakland
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Jennifer Rubin’s fast track to intolerance
Bronner lets his hair down– will appear w/ Perle and Bolton on Iran-scare panel hosted by Islamophobic shop
Oct 26, 2011
Philip Weiss
Eli Clifton reports at Think Progress:
an announcement on the 92nd St. Y’s website shows that [New York Times Jerusalem bureau chief Ethan] Bronner is now scheduled to appear on a panel hosted by the Clarion Fund, an Islamophobic organization, to discuss the “threat of a nuclear Iran.”
The invitation, as it appears on the Clarion Fund’s website, reads:
On Monday, November 7, 2011, at 7:30 PM, the 92nd Street Y in Manhattan, NY will host a panel discussion about the threat of a nuclear Iran, interspersed with clips from the award-winning documentary Iranium. The panel will be moderated by the film’s director, Alex Traiman, and will be simultaneously broadcasted in over 20 communities throughout the U.S. (details below).
Panelists include:
John R. Bolton, former U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations
Ethan Bronner, Jerusalem Bureau Chief, The New York Times
Nazie Eftekhari, Director, Iran Democratic Union
Richard Green, Executive Director, Clarion Fund
Richard Perle, former Chairman of the Defense Policy Board, Bush administration
Soviet-style ‘Foreign Affairs’ stages ‘debate’ on Israel between ’2 senior Israeli officials’ and ‘liberal American Zionist’
Oct 26, 2011
Philip Weiss
I wish this was a joke, but it’s not. Here’s a portion of an email promoting the November/December issue of Foreign Affairs. The actual articles are here. The email promotion (emphasis mine):
“The Problem is Palestinian Rejectionism” by Yosef Kuperwasser and Shalom Lipner and “Israel’s Bunker Mentality” by Ronald Krebs A heated debate over the source of Israel’s greatest threat, pitting two senior Israeli officials against a liberal American Zionist, as they lock horns over whether hard-line Palestinians or hard-line Israelis are to blame for the impasse in the peace process.
Isn’t this like ‘pitting’ a ram and a ewe? P.S. Foreign Affairs is edited by Gideon Rose, son of Zionist philanthropist Daniel Rose.
J Street presses division inside Jewish community, blaming neocons for leading ‘charge to war in Iraq’
Oct 26, 2011
Philip Weiss
The other day we reported on an effort by the American Jewish Committee and the Anti-Defamation League to maintain a Jewish political monolith on Israel– essentially, don’t argue in front of the goyim because it could fracture American support for Israel.
Well interestingly, neither “the left” nor the right in the Jewish community is buying the pledge. They want the fight! This is something I have long pushed for. Unfortunately, it’s a political battle over How Zionist the Jewish Community Will Be– extreme or mild. But it does portend a battle over Zionism itself.
And good for J Street, the “left” in this battle, for foregrounding the right wing’s support for the Iraq war.
J Street has now issued two statements in this battle, lately taking on the neoconservatives as the faction in the Jewish community that pushed the Iraq war and wants a Greater Israel:
There’s a part of our community – represented by the Emergency Committee for Israel – whose supporters led the charge to war in Iraq, who ally with the Christian Zionist movement, and who affiliate with the Tea Party. This part of the community sees nothing wrong with unlimited settlement expansion and no need to actively pursue a two-state resolution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. They seem perfectly content to affiliate with those who engage in hate-filled harangues and to demonize Palestinians – and Arabs and Muslims generally – without reservation and to engage in campaigns of smears against their opponents.
There’s another part of our community – for which J Street speaks – that believes that Israel’s security and survival depends on ending the Israeli-Palestinian conflict in a two-state solution and that is deeply committed to American leadership in helping that to happen
And here is the rightwing also declining the pledge, reported by Haaretz:
A couple of days after the pledge landed in the mailboxes of the Jewish activists, Republican Jewish Coalition (RJC) Executive Director Matt Brooks issued a combative response, saying: “This effort to stifle debate on U.S. policy toward Israel runs counter to this American tradition. Accordingly, the RJC will not be silenced on this or any issue.”
“An open and vigorous debate on the questions confronting our country is the cornerstone of the American electoral process. Allowing the American people to see where candidates stand, pro and con, on critical issues, is the hallmark of our free and democratic political system. For this reason, the RJC will not be a signer to this pledge,” he concluded.
Emergency Committee for Israel joined the opposition to the pledge with a blunt opening: “You must be kidding” and promised that “this attempt to silence those of us who have “questioned the current administration’s foreign policy approach vis-a-vis Israel” will re-energize us… Directors Harris and Foxman need a refresher course on the virtues of free speech and robust debate in a democracy. Their effort to stifle discussion and debate is unworthy of the best traditions of America, and of Israel.”
Palestine in Oakland
Oct 26, 2011
Adam Horowitz
Woman in a wheelchair tries to escape the tear gas the Oakland Police Department launched upon the protesters. (Photo: Occupy Together)
Last night police in Oakland, California cracked down on protesters in the Occupy Oakland movement in a possibly ominous sign of things to come. Mother Jones reports that law enforcement used rubber bullets, tear gas, and flash-bang grenades to attack the protesters. The tactical similarities to Israel’s treatment of nonviolent Palestinian protesters were obvious to many, but they go deeper than that. Max Blumenthal writes the Oakland police used many of the same weapons:
The police repression on display in Oakland reminded me of tactics I witnessed the Israeli army employ against Palestinian popular struggle demonstrations in occupied West Bank villages like Nabi Saleh, Ni’lin and Bilin. So I was not surprised when I learned that the same company that supplies the Israeli army with teargas rounds and other weapons of mass suppression is selling its dangerous wares to the Oakland police. The company is Defense Technology, a Casper, Wyoming based arms firm that claims to “specialize in less lethal technology” and other “crowd management products.” Defense Tech sells everything from rubber-coated teargas rounds that bounce in order to maximize gas dispersal to 40 millimeter “direct impact” sponge rounds to “specialty impact” 12 gauge rubber bullets.
Poet Amirah Mizrahi made a similar connection in a piece she wrote for the Occupy Writersseries:
oakland, 25 october 2011
I. second person present
when you are there
nothing else
is real.
tear gas makes you calm
clear-headed
surprisingly
a warm comfortable room
is disorienting
the shaking you feel
is each cell rising up
to protest with you
each person marching
is a cell
in the blood stream
of resistance flowing
steadily
broadway
is a vein
II. first person past
today
i was wadi salib 1959
i was musrara 1971
i was palestine in oakland
like never before i was
all the places
in all the radical histories
i know and don’t know
i heard a trumpet in a marching band
play a tune i recognized
bella ciao, bella ciao, bella ciao ciao ciao
clapping hands marching feet i gave
away shirts as scarves
to shield faces
today i was a time
place comma date
that some day some one will be
when she is again marching
in the streets and
knowing history
holding it
making
it.
III. future perfect
there is a moment of realization
that a new world
is on the horizon we
work hard for her
slowly, painfully we
recognize
that there is still work
to be done tomorrow we
go home, wash
tear gas out
of our hair
clean our wounds
each other’s wounds
we remind each other:
love yourself
& build
for tomorrow.
How far will these connections resonate with the broader Occupy Together movement? Blumenthal ends:
Some Occupy Wall Street activists have argued that Palestine must remain segregated from the movement’s agenda. It is a distraction from the essential economic issues that drive the protests, they say, and turns the majority of Americans off. But the issue is becoming increasingly difficult to avoid now that the protesters are confronted with the very same weapons Israel uses to crush unarmed Palestinian resistance.
Jennifer Rubin’s fast track to intolerance
Oct 26, 2011
Philip Weiss
At Politico, here is a Ben Smith profile of Jennifer Rubin, the intolerant neoconservative blogger at the Washington Post. She is 49 and never worked in journalism till 2007. Fast track. Before then she worked for Hollywood studios. And then, of course, she worked for Commentary. Smith doesn’t mention that part. He does have this. Helpful:
She planned to be the perfect suburban PTA mom, if with an intense and combative interest in foreign affairs and politics in general, and in Israel in particular – the sole bumper sticker on her gray Honda Pilot reads, “JERUSALEM IS NOT A SETTLEMENT. It’s Israel’s Eternal And Undivided Capital.” …
She emerged as a leading voice, in particular, of pro-Israel Republicans like Standard editor Bill Kristol and his protegés who view the interests of the United States and of Israel’s hawkish government as almost identical and who view any public suggestion of difference between them as a dangerous.