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Palestine: U.S. Negotiator Asks For Third Intifada
Kerry had fooled himself believing that Netanyahoo would ever allow for a Palestinian state. One hundred meetings later he finally admitted that such will never happen. Without robust U.S. pressure, unlikely to happen due to U.S. domestic politics, Netanyahoo and other right wing Israelis will never move from their absolutist position.
There is something to learn about self-illusion and the painful process of recognizing it in the Ynetnews interview with the U.S. negotiating team members, Inside the talks' failure: US officials open up. This line though stands out:
And then one of them added bitterly: "I guess we need another intifada to create the circumstances that would allow progress."
Maybe. Maybe a third intifada could help move the U.S. towards some serious pressure on Israel. I doubt it though. The Palestinians have better options. Join all possible international clubs including the International Court system, sue Israel, threaten to dissolve the Palestinian Authority, other steps. What is needed is unity and better, more decisive leaders. When will those evolve?
So the ICC declines to hear cases where one party is absent and the like. Russia and China can use those precedents, by widening their tactics against US client states in their vicinity. Then let the ICC whine, and let the media organs owned by and/or sympathetic to Russia and China (and Iran, etc.) show the original dismissals with a sour face, mock the ICC as a tool of NATO and US/Israel, contemptuous of claimed precedent, etc.
Basically show the general NATO populace that there is no substance. And keep on bringing up Nicaragua (given the ICJ’s ruling, if the ICJ continues to be roughly honest). Remind NATO citizens of the actual conduct of the Contras*, so that ICJ has to squeal and really pick sides (raise the cost of their honesty). Try to get the NATO countries to play games with the ICJ, and expose their games. Bring the terrorist conduct of the NATO and NATO allied countries to the ICJ (I’m thinking them coups—start with Latin America, as the evidence is massive), then run to the ICC, and make them betray their position. One way would be for China and Russia to bring a case to ICC, as the opposing parties, on a given act of NATO terrorism, with alternative proposals of how to deal with the NATO/allied terrorism.
Destroying the aura of international law will force several issues. As to Palestine, I disagree with Finkelstein’s claimed approach of running with a legal judgment to change US/Israeli conduct, even if these courts give brutally honest repeat judgments… Instead, as they serve criminal organizations, e.g. NATO, their judgments will probably be hypocritical, so use that.
But as activists in NATO/allied states, we should be pushing this IMAO—why do they go after small time thugs, e.g. Kony, while doing nothing against genocidal thugs like Museveni, Kagame, Clinton, Blair etc? This is an educational responsibility for serious anti-imperialists.
Another game to play is ‘subliminal’ messaging—make posters of various crimes, and include visually subtle swastikas made of nato stars, and the like, while explicitly stating the obvious as well. Ditto e.g. with Israeli and US flags.
Demoralize NATO country civil servants, e.g. by bringing terrorism charges against the local state or against another NATO state, as perpetrated against citizens of other states, and run with it. Add enough graphic and legal evidence, and make the legal pretense painstakingly obvious to the magistrates and prosecutors. Bring funding of terrorism wrt Israel. If the civil servants don’t want to take it, put it on public blogs—Zionist activists have become somewhat agitated in their claustrophobic ‘the world hates us’ framework, so they’ll make plenty of mistakes.
And run with every fake legal pretense, showing all its hypocrisy. Explain to normal small-time criminal defendants awaiting their hearings how the precedents affect them, so that embarrassing questions keep on being brought up in open court.
And thanks for showing my muddle-headedness wrt ICJ versus ICC.
*The contras would round up peasant families, and with the children present, castrate the father, cut the mother’s breasts off, then slit the father’s face and peel his facial skin off. Out of boredom, they’d occasionally swap the parents’ and the children’s roles.
Posted by: Johan Meyer | May 4 2014 22:11 utc | 119
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Blankfort claims that the left opposed linking Israel to Apartheid (Fateful triangle, pages 35, 483, etc. thank you google books). Oops. All page references are from the online google books version of Fateful Triangle, 1999 Black Rose edition.
Then he claims that the left specifies what the acceptable parameters are for criticism of Israel without being labled anti-semitic. Which he could have pulled off had he not made the mistake of citing the Democracy Now interview with Chomsky that he falsely alleges was about Mearsheimer and Walt (see below—it’s kind of funny).
Anyhow. He (Blankfort) speaks of the Chomsky parameters, which he lists as
1. US tells Israel what to do in major policy decisions. He gives as a counterexample the Israeli invasion of Lebanon. Now I recall that the US was in Lebanon around the same time—surely, if they disapproved of the Israeli presence, they’d have taken action against the Israelis, rather than shelling Muslim areas. This doesn’t exclude Israeli control of US policy, but it sure doesn’t demonstrate it either.
2. US supports Israeli settlements and opposes peace. This Blankfort describes as a plain falsehood, but doesn’t elaborate.
In the following sentence (around 4:06), he says something that sounds like “Israeli soldiers haven’t shed a drop of blood on America’s behalf; both Bushes, father and son, have paid off Israel in both Gulf wars, hasn’t dissuaded Chomsky, or his followers, from that position.”
Well, gee, I recall the Israeli support for Apartheid, which he recalls earlier in the video, and of course their support for all manner of thugs especially in Latin America and Africa, and more recently in Ukraine (Svoboda, Pravyy Sektor et alia)—I presume that is not in support of the US cabinet. The mind boggles. Perhaps Mr Blankfort has Israeli blood in mind. One is left to wonder how much of their own blood other client states shed on US behalf.
Next he claims that the left allowed Democrats to go unchallenged on Israel, as long as they were ‘good’ on other issues. Ahem. Allowing for argument’s sake that it was Israeli rather than US interest to genocide in Iraq (I’m agnostic on this point), what then of all the other issues? Where is the left’s implied (by Mr Blankfort) power on questions like labour rights, Latin American policy, African policy, and so forth? The left has been losing battles for a long time, and the identity politics drive didn’t exactly help either. I’m particularly interested in Democrat candidates who were elected from the early 80s onward on labour issues and the like.
He mentions that there is no mention of AIPAC in Fateful Triangle. The reason might have had something to do with Chomsky’s modus operandi, namely using others’ research, were the claim accurate. The earliest MSM reference that I found to AIPAC was in 1987, several years after the first publication. But as luck would have it, google books has a copy online: Reference 45, page 36. So Blankfort lies. The other reference is on page 465. Meh. And it is kind of funny in terms of the Goldmann quote below (which I found while looking for the Naqbah in the book).
Then he claims that the Zionists conducted their ethnic cleansing without imperial backing. Now that’s a half-truth. Without all the prior imperial backing up to that point, they wouldn’t have been able to pull it off—I refer to the Ottoman and British support. This does not of course affect Zionist moral responsibility. But there is a further issue—how does it relate to Chomsky, who is in fact the focus of his attack? But let’s put that aside, as you cite a book (and a video relating to said book) that would seem to contradict Blankfort, to wit, that they had (albeit self-organised, i.e. Lobby) US imperial support. Ahem.
He then says that Chomsky fits the 1967 war into his analysis as being against Nasserism. This is a most interesting statement, for what it implies is that Chomsky says the US supported Israel in 67 to undermine Nasser, which is a plain reversal of what Chomsky said, namely that Israel showed its worth as a potential client state by defeating Nasser. Again, whether Chomsky is right or wrong on this issue is one matter, but mr Blankfort is equivocating.
Next he says that Chomsky says that the founding of Israel was ‘as legitimate as any other state,’ and that the Palestinians should accept it, i.e. the theft of half their country. Again, google to the rescue (page 382): “States are recognised because they exist and function, not because they are ‘legitimate,’ or ‘have a right to exist.’ I’m curious where Mr Blankfort gets his information.
Then he brings up the Naqbah, in a sentence where he is careful not to accuse Chomsky of denying Jewish culpability, but just comes and goes. Of course, chapter 4 is clear enough, and describes the Naqbah in some detail, e.g. 700k fled/forced to flee in the face of Zionist terror, the fraudulence of the Zionist claim of the radio broadcasts. Some major Naqbah denial there, to be sure.
Next, Mr Blankfort claims that Chomsky and Massad attacked Mearsheimer and company (as opposed to disagreeing with their conclusion). This is doubly amusing, when one actually bothers to find out what Massad and Chomsky say on Zionist versus US responsibility for Zionist crimes:
Massad: “Are they primarily responsible for U.S. policies towards the Palestinians and the Arab world? Absolutely not.” [The lobby is not responsible for Israeli or American crimes. This leaves open whether the US state or the Zionist state is responsible for each others’ crimes, or whether they are only responsible for their own respective crimes.]
Chomsky, quoting Goldmann (p98) “What Israel is doing in this regard is very bad,” he added, “and equally bad is the effect of the screams uttered by American Jewry.” [The lobby is responsible for Israeli crimes. Though in fairness, this isn’t necessarily Chomsky’s view—he lists it as a view of a high-ranking Zionist government personnel, with a source.]
Some confluence of arguments.
Meh. Next he claims that Chomsky was invited to Democracy Now to discuss Mearsheimer and Walt’s book. This is at best a very interesting interpretation. While Goodman did fail to invite Mearsheimer and Walt, she asked the question about Mearsheimer and Walt, in the course of an interview on Chomsky’s book, Failed States, to illustrate the abuse that people suffer when criticising Israel, and while disagreeing with their conclusion [stated rather subtly], Chomsky praised their work. Some damage control. Note also that in this interview, which Blankfort clearly watched, we find the actual reference for the self-hating Jew/antisemitism story, namely an Israeli diplomat. Oops.
http://www.democracynow.org/2006/3/31/exclusive_noam_chomsky_on_failed_states
Then he tells another lie, namely that Goodman never reports on sanctions against Israel’s enemies. Google to the rescue—earliest coverage of sanctions on their website relating to Iraq was in 1998, and to Iran in 2003. Next!
Next: A factual but misleading claim, namely that she doesn’t report on AIPAC conferences. This is hilarious—her reporting of AIPAC personnel caught spying predates Mearsheimer and Walt, by two years. Then a complaint that there was minimal coverage of a conflict between Obama and AIPAC—sure, he’s such a peacenik, but that’s just my covering for the lobby. Ahem. OK that takes us to 9 minutes into the video. I’d like my two hours back.
I was hoping to learn about actual deficiencies in Chomsky, that I’d missed. Here’s my list:
1. He relies too much on other peoples’ research, which leads him to take seriously some questionable work, and thus makes him trust authorities too much. Case in point being the Mumia and MOVE cases, which are hilarious (if grotesque) violations of conservation of momentum; ditto the official coup version of the sniping on the Maidan. Until an established authority goes and publishes a mickey mouse article on the BS nature of these claims, he will be blind to them, because he lacks the basics in these fields.
2. He is overly conservative, and neglects very personal dirty tricks of authorities in his writings. One example is the Canadian spying in North Vietnam to support the US bombing. In the references he gives for that (I think for that co-authored book, Indespensible, which borders on hero worship, yuck), the one actual reference mentions that Canada Post opened the mail from the US government, and replaced the damning documents with Canadian Tire catalogues. Finally, the guy had to get the documents delivered to the embassy, through a diplomatic bag. Chomsky would have had a tad nicer book had he mentioned these details. The whole ‘tell no lies, hide no difficulties’ shindig.
3. There is a real cult that has grown around him. Citing him, for them, is more valuable than citing actual sources. They are more interested in defending him than his claims (or worse yet, checking his claims). But this problem has an associated problem, namely the anti-Chomsky cult, which uses the same tactics against him. And this video that you linked is a prime example of the latter.
Maybe I’ll give that last video a look in the coming week. And I’ll try to get a copy of that book.
Posted by: Johan Meyer | May 5 2014 6:22 utc | 125
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