THE ABSURD TIMES
RED & BLACK == BIRD FLU
THE WORLD TODAY
BIRDS WITH FLU
The bird flu pandemic is the most covered up story today. In the upper illustration you can seen all the areas infected with the vile disease, threatening our little children. Birds migrate, you know, Whooping Cranes, Ostriches, all sorts of birds can catch this disease, and if the black areas you can see where it has been transmitted to humans. Yet not one word about it this election cycle. I suggest you warn all of your friends to keep on the lookout for sneezing birds, especially chickens, because this threatens us all. The press has covered it all up under the pretense of doing "investigative journalism" on more important topics (see on Obama, below). I urge all of you to call all superdelegates you can and tell them to support whichever candidate first mentions bird flu!! This is life and death and our media ignores it.
OBAMA: The New York Times has investigated Omama's revelation that he once used illegal drugs, pot, drinking, and some cocaine, or "blow," but say how he was going down the wrong path and quit. Well, it turns out that nobody they could find who knew him at the time could confirm this one bit. In fact, some even denied it! The Times speculated that he made it all up! Imagine, running for the Presidency of the United States and never taking dope? Intolerable!! The Decider did and is an alcoholic (in a dry drunk). Bill Clinton at least smelled pot once. Al Gore said he had smoked it. Obama, don't try to cover it up. You are not a drug user and no use claiming to be. I'm endorsing McCain because he was given morphine upon return from Viet Nam, but that has never been proven, so I take it back, I DON'T endorse McCain. Hillary? She was a Goldwater Republican of all things -- how square can you get? Huckabee? It could explain why he supports a geo-centric solar system, but I doubt it. It would be interesting and quite amusing to hear him explain epicycles.
Despite all of the above, Obama won all three primaries last night by very large margins. He will win Wisconsin. Her daughter was there last week "pimping" for her mom, but did not make any sale. She did the same in mid-Missouri, but MSNBC's David Schuster was suspended for saying that. I was there at the time, and he was right -- just he used to word in a slang sense, so he has been suspended. Naughty Schuster, "Pimping, indeed!"
*****************************************************
Here is a pretty good review of a book on the Mideast problems. Thanks to the sender:
Michael Neumann's /The Case Against Israel/
by Gilles d'Aymery
Book Review
/(Swans - December 19, 2005)/ The British essayist and novelist Edward
Morgan Forster (1879-1970), author of /A Room With A View/ and /A
Passage To India,/ wrote in his 1951 collection of essays, /Two Cheers
for Democracy,/ "I suspect that the only books that influence us are
those for which we are ready, and which have gone a little further down
our particular path than we have yet gone ourselves." Amidst the one
hundred-plus books I've read on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, none
fits Forster's sentiment better than Michael Neumann's /The Case Against
Israel./ This is simply the most cogent, reasoned, and lucid
argumentation I have ever read in support of a two-state solution to the
century-old conflict. Short (220 pages); to the point but not in your
face; impeccably researched with 26 pages of references including a list
of 28 important works, 188 endnotes, and a full index; there is no stone
left unturned and practically no issue left unexplained in this highly
condensed, unadulterated, and coherent analysis.
The book's title should not mislead readers. Those who follow the
horrific tribulations of that small real estate with its strategic and
religious confluences will obviously recognize that the title is a play
on, or a response to, Harvard Law Professor Alan Dershowitz's /The Case
for Israel/ (John Wiley & Sons, August 2003). The argumentation is by
and large a refutation of Dershowitz's case though it is not a
point-by-point rebuttal of the 32 questions Dershowitz attempted
(poorly) to answer. In actuality, Dershowitz is only mentioned once in
the entire book. Instead of rebutting a lawyerly discourse based on
polemical diatribes, crass emotionalism, and the repetitive
regurgitation of falsities, Michael Neumann focuses on what has been
lost in our recent historical travails: reality-based analysis --
historical facts, formal logic, ethics, behavioral rationality,
philosophy, morality, and politics (Neumann is a professor of moral and
political philosophy at Trent University, Peterborough, Ontario,
Canada). While he does not posit that he's an expert or historian,
history is no stranger to him: his father, Franz Neumann, was the author
of /Behemoth: the structure and practice of national socialism,
1933-1944,/ the classic history of Nazi Germany. (And, for what it's
worth, his stepfather was Herbert Marcuse.)
Indeed, Neumann convincingly debunks the old canards, myths, and
fallacies advanced by Dershowitz and the legions of Israeli apologetics:
The Zionist project was about redeeming the land or creating a
"homeland" for the Jews, the bible says god gave the land to the Jews;
the Palestinians did not /really/ exist (they're only /Arabs/), their
actual state is Jordan; they hate the Jews; they want to throw them to
the sea; they never did and don't want to compromise (they are
/jusqu'au-boutistes/); they are terrorists; there is no moral
equivalence between Palestinian and Israeli violence (the former is
terroristic, the latter sheer self defense); Israel is a "beacon of
light" (of democracy, Western values) judged by a "double standard";
critics of Israel are anti-Semites, etc.
The last point -- opposition to Israel is anti-Semitic -- is quickly
dismissed by the author. First, he has already addressed the charge in a
brilliant essay, "What Is Anti-Semitism?", published in /The Politics of
Anti-Semitism/ (CounterPunch/AK Press, 2004), also reviewed in these
pages. <../art10/ga176.html> Second, "since not all Jews are Israelis or
supporters of Israel, to be against all Israelis or Israel, is not to be
against all Jews." Third, most criticisms are directed against the
policies of Israel toward the Palestinians, not the existence of Israel;
and lastly, as he states, "[N]o doubt many anti-Semites oppose Israel,
and do so for anti-Semitic reasons, and conceal their motives. [But]
none of this is relevant to whether or not Israel is in fact in the
wrong." "No doubt," he concludes, "many people opposed Japanese fascism
for racist reasons. It does not follow that such opposition was
mistaken." End of discussion. Michael Neumann shows little patience with
irrelevancies and false arguments.
Furthermore, he does not make a legal disputation against Israel but
confines his attention to a "moral and political argument," in search of
"what /ought/ to occur in Palestine, what solution to the conflict
/should/ be adopted," and he relies on three widely accepted views in
political philosophy: That "there is some basic right of self-defense
that on occasion permits a violent response"; that "one group can't
normally acquire the power of life and death over another group without
their consent"; and that one is responsible for the foreseeable
consequences of one's action whatever the intentions that motivated it.
Then he lays out his claim in two parts and dispassionately demonstrates
that the Zionists and Israel with their allies /du jour/ have mostly
been in the wrong in their dealings with the Palestinians, and that the
end of the conflict necessitates the unilateral end of the occupation
and the recognition of the Palestinian people within the sovereign
borders of the West Bank and the Gaza Strip. His case is not so much
/against/ Israel that it is /in favor of/ a Palestinian state.
"/The central fact of the conflict is that Zionists sought sovereignty
in Palestine./ From this, all else follows: the Arab response and all
that came after." (emphasis in the book) "Israel is the illegitimate
child of ethnic nationalism." These are the two statements that best
summarize "Zionism and the Birth of Israel," the first part of /The Case
Against Israel./ They are reinforced by a methodical, logical, and
historical narrative. From the inception of the Zionist project in the
late 19th century, Zionism was not about a safe heaven (the "saving
Jews" advocacy line would come much later, in the ashes of the
Holocaust, and is not even convincing, as Neumann shows), or having a
"homeland," or redeeming ancestors' territories -- all contentions that
keep being rehashed to this day. It was about taking sovereignty over a
foreign land, a land inhabited by a people who had no interest or reason
to be dominated in matters of life and death by Jews. From Theodore
Herzl to David Ben Gurion, Zionists were about creating a state in
Palestine -- a state, with its monopoly on power, of the Jews, by the
Jews, and for the Jews. It matters not whether the Zionists were
enlightened socialists, or idealists, or racists. What matters is that a
group of people, foreign to the land, wanted to impose their sovereignty
through expropriation -- and we now know, through expulsion too -- on
another group of people that inhabited that land. This, contends
Neumann, was the first mortal threat to the Palestinians -- a threat
they could not but oppose and resist through violent or non-violent
means. It surely began in non-violence with the pleas from Palestinian
notables to the European powers to stop the influx of Jews in Palestine,
but the pleas were not heeded and blood began to flow as early as the
1920s. It went downhill from then on.
Neumann notes that at the very moment Europeans were turning their backs
on ethnic nationalism that had been so devastating, Zionists were
imposing their own ethno-nationalism in Palestine. The establishment of
sovereignty by one ethnic group over another has quite logically -- and
sadly -- led to the consequences that we've witnessed for so long. For him,
Zionism always was, despite strategically motivated denials and
brief flirtations with other objectives [e.g., bi-nationalism], an
attempt to establish Jewish sovereignty over Palestine. This project
was illegitimate. Neither history nor religion, nor the sufferings
of Jews in the Nazi era, sufficed to justify it. It posed a mortal
threat to the Palestinians, and it left no room for meaningful
compromise. Given that the Palestinians had no way to overcome
Zionism peacefully, it also justified some form of violent resistance.
By 1948 the Jewish state in Palestine was a /fait accompli,/ and its
existence quickly earned international legitimacy. By the early 1970s,
following Israel's wars (1948, 1956, 1967, and 1973) and the military
supremacy of the Jewish state, the existence of Israel was assured and
secured. But, this /fait accompli/ was not enough for the Zionists.
Sovereignty within the 1948 borders was a tactical step in the direction
of wider ambitions that went back all the way to early Zionism: Greater
Israel. In the next part of his exposé, "The Current Situation," Michael
Neumann examines the second mortal threat to the Palestinians -- the
continuation of the occupation of the West Bank and the Gaza Strip, and,
even more threatening to their existence, the settlement of these
occupied territories -- that has resulted in the predictable, and
understandable, violence that continues to this day.
The policies undertaken by the Israeli governments (both Labor and
Likud) following the pre-emptive Six-Day War in 1967 -- occupation and
settlement of the West Bank and Gaza -- will quite possibly be recorded
by historians as the single most damaging political calculation ever
made by this small state. Their consequences have now become a threat to
its existence; not its physical existence, which is quite secure, but
its moral existence -- a threat to the moral fabric of Israeli society.
The opprobrium Israel faces in the entire world, with the lonely
exception of the United States, to which one could add the Marshall
Islands and Micronesia, can only be traced to the implacable
continuation of these policies. This young country so endeared and
admired in the 1950s and 1960s even though it was born out of the
expropriation, partial expulsion, and imposition of a foreign
sovereignty over the remaining indigenous population, the Palestinians,
has become an international pariah. The time has long passed since one
could speak of "a land without people, waiting for a people without
land," or, as Golda Meir stated in 1969, "It was not as though there was
a Palestinian people and we came and threw them out and took their
country away from them. They did not exist."
It turns out that they did exist, were largely dispossessed, and became
the subjects of an alien sovereignty; and they still exist, are still
being dispossessed, and remain subjugated to a violent and humiliating
occupation. The outcome could have been quite different. In the wake of
the Six-Day War, the Palestinians hoped for an independent state and
regarded the Israeli victory as a means to free themselves from
Jordanian rule. This is not a well-known historical fact, but Neumann
documents that for a short flimsy period the Palestinians felt that the
Israelis were their liberators. The Palestinians let the Israelis know
that they were ready to negotiate an immediate settlement to establish
their own sovereign state alongside Israel. Their calls were not
answered or, to put it slightly differently, the answer was loud and
clear. Israel annexed East Jerusalem and started its settlement policy.
It's worth quoting a citation from a speech by Israeli Defense Minister
Moshe Dayan:
This is what used to be called 'Jew after Jew'... It meant
expansion, more Jews, more villages, more settlements. Twenty years
ago we were 600,000; today we are near three million. There should
be no Jew who says 'that's enough,' no one who says 'we are nearing
the end of the road.' ...It is the same with the land. ...there will
be complaints against you if you come and say: 'up to here.' Your
duty is to not stop; it is to keep your sword unsheathed, to have
faith, to keep the flag flying. You must not call a halt - heaven
forbid - and say 'that's all; up there, up to Degania, to
Musfallasim, to Nabal Oz!' For that is not all.
Which brings Michael Neumann to comment on "the comparison with fascist
ideologies of 'blood and soil'"...and leads him to cover the deliberate
ethnic cleansing of the Palestinians that has taken place ever since, as
well as the inevitable violent resistance from the Palestinians. Their
only choice was, and remains, to leave the territories or to resist.
What's so infuriating here, and well documented by the author, is that
Israeli leaders have consistently acknowledged -- not so much in public,
for it is yet another argument used in the propaganda war to appropriate
the Occupied Territories -- the uselessness of these territories for the
strategic defense of Israel. The Palestinians have no alternative but to
resist, when Israel has an obvious one, recommended by many Israeli
military experts: unilateral withdrawal.
Yet again, it is the Palestinians that are accused of violent actions
and faulted for not resorting to non-violence. But, as Neumann
convincingly establishes, "non-violence has never 'worked' in any
politically relevant sense of the word, and there is no reason it ever
will." His demonstration, using the examples of Gandhi (Indian
independence), Martin Luther King (US Civil Rights), and South Africa
(the end of Apartheid), may be resisted by the partisans of non-violence
but I strongly recommend they read his analysis. A non-violent advocate
myself, I must admit that Neumann makes a compelling case. Non-violence
can only work when the powers-that-be are on the side of the struggle.
Israel, evidently, has not been on the side of the Palestinian struggle
for independence! It should also be noted that the Palestinians have
gone through periods of substantial calm with little or no violence, to
no avail. Suffice it to look at the current Israeli response to the
non-violent resistance and demonstrations against the massive wall of
separation that Israel is slowly completing. It does not make the news
in the U.S. but its harshness is obvious to anyone who cares to look.
So, we are left with the old hatred. "They" hate us...always
have...always will. How, then, can we have a Palestinian state next door
that will forever be Israel's enemy and never accept its existence?
Neumann answers this old hogwash with the precision of a surgeon. Hatred
comes from war. Hatred comes from occupation and from being treated
worse than dogs. Hatred slowly rescinds with peace. And is not peace
with Egypt (and Jordan) proof that the existence of the state of Israel
is accepted by its former enemies? Even the latest bombastic comments
originating in Iran cannot hide the actuality: Israel is a fully secured
country whose legitimacy, within its 1948 boundaries, is a fact, fully
recognized by the overwhelming majority of the world.
Neumann then turns his attention to terror and terrorism, which he
dissects in both practical and moral terms. He also examines how Israel
became an ally of the USA ("a child of the Cold War") and the role of US
Evangelical Christians in the support of Greater Israel; why the
alliance should end, for the benefit of all -- Israelis, Jews,
Americans, Palestinians... -- and whether Israel is judged by a double
standard, or "higher standard," as well it should be since, as the
narrative goes, the country is deemed by its proselytizers a /Great
Beacon of Light./
But I can't get into his rationale further; this review is already too
long. I must confess that having a natural contrariant propensity, I was
humbled by Michael Neumann as I could find nothing to object to in the
case he makes. Perhaps he could have covered the importance of the West
Bank aquifers in Israel's decision to hold tight to the Occupied
Territories and colonize them; but I suspect he would dismiss this point
as yet another irrelevancy that besieges this sorry state of
affairs...and, darn, he would be correct.
To close: I very much appreciate the even-handedness of Neumann's
precise, thought through, and well-documented rationale. Very few people
have the capability and the character to be intellectually relevant and
to address this divisive subject so objectively. Yet, I sensed a
subterraneous emotional thread in his faultless, short, yet exhaustive,
dissertation: A call for justice. People from all backgrounds, Jews and
non-Jews alike, are clamoring with quiet certitude: Enough is enough. A
growing number of Israeli and Jewish people all over the world,
including the U.S., are courageously raising their voices in favor of
the end of the occupation. Michael Neumann is one of these voices. He
deserves to be heard and widely disseminated. Please buy the book, read
it, and if you feel like it, prove me wrong.
· · · · · ·
You can also purchase it from your local independent bookstore
through Booksense <http://www.booksense.com/>.
Simply enter your Zip code and click on "Go" to find all local
independent bookstores near you (in the U.S.):
· · · · · ·
Internal Resources
Book Reviews on /Swans/ <../subjects/books.html#2>
Israel-Palestine <../subjects/israpal.html>
Patterns which Connect <../subjects/patterns.html>
About the Author
*Gilles d'Aymery* is /Swans'/ publisher and co-editor.
Legalese
Please, feel free to *insert a link* to this work on your Web site or to
disseminate its *URL* on your favorite lists, quoting the first
paragraph or providing a summary. However, *please DO NOT steal,
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Inlining, mirroring, and framing are expressly prohibited. Pulp
re-publishing is welcome -- please contact the publisher.
<mailto:aymery@ix.netcom.com> This material is copyrighted, © Gilles
d'Aymery 2005. All rights reserved.
Have your say
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This Edition's Internal Links
Reflections On 2005 And The Future <./herman15.html> - Edward S. Herman
After The 2004 Elections <./lproy32.html> - Louis Proyect
2005: Navigating The Doldrums...An Unprogressive, Sulking Year
<./ga202.html> - Gilles d'Aymery
2005: Annus Propagandus <./jeb151.html> - Jan Baughman
2005: A Look Back In Anger <./cmarow34.html> - Charles Marowitz
2005: Earth Responds, Illusions Crumble, Vision Needed <./elib023.html>
- Eli Beckerman
2005: A Lamentable Year <./wrubel08.html> - Robert Wrubel
2005 And Its Possible Impact <./pgreen78.html> - Philip Greenspan
The Good Gardener <./gsmith60.html> - Gerard Donnelly Smith
2005: Pessimism Unleashed <./mgc172.html> - Milo Clark
Resistance Is No Longer A Choice <./joedav14.html> - Joe Davison
Blips #31 <./desk031.html> - From the Editor's desk
Letters to the Editor <./letter80.html>
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