January 14, 2005

• Topic: Quick things

  
  

  1) In today’s Democracy Now! news report, there was a special on Social Security.  They showed how if you call the Social Security hotline for questions, and you get put on hold, the message you listen is telling you all about the looming Social Security crisis.  That’s tax payer money going for propaganda, but that wouldn’t be the first time, as just this week it was reported that Bush officials had given $240,000 of tax payer money to a news commentator, to promote Bush’s No Child Left Behind Policy, which, like Bush’s plans to save Social Security by destroying it, is an attempt to help public schools by cutting back funding.

  
  

  2) The Israeli-Palestinian situation is coming a bit more in focus.  Despite hating history growing up, it’s becoming more and more important to understand.  Two years are coming into focus.  The first in 1948, the year Israel became a Jewish state.  That year, a large number of Arab-Palestinians became refugees.  The debate between some scholars has been, were they forced out as part of a transfer/expulsion/ethnic cleansing, or did they leave on their own will as told by the Arab armies.  Another debate is, was the refugee situation created by Arab agression in the ’48 war, or, was it preceeded by a Zionist ideology that recognized the need to remove Arab-Palestinians from what was to be a Jewish state.  The second debate that arises surrounds the year ’67, and the 6-day war.  I’m still looking into that.

  
  

  What’s interesting to note, are the first controversies I mention surrounding ’48.  Depending on your view of history, will have a dramatic effect on how you view the State of Israel and the Palestinian situation today.  I’ve recently been reading much of Noam Chomsky, and my roommate just introduced me to Alan Dershowitz, who is a staunch critic of Chomsky, and makes links to Chomsky being an anti-Semite.  Learning more about Chomsky, I’ve found those accusations to be false, but, I struggled to understand what would lead Dershowitz to so strongly attack Chomsky’s views on Israel.

  
  

  It turns out, there’s others out there who are highly critical of Dershowitz’s recent book, “The case for Israel”.  Several writers have criticized Dershowitz’s book for relying heavily on another book, “Time in Immemorial,” by Joan Peters.  This book was widely criticized in both Europe and Israel, although praised by many in the States.  The issue at hand with this book are its claims regarding Palestine leading up to 1948, for example, claims of the land being largely inhabited.  Many claim that the facts in this book were used as Israeli propaganda, and most serious scholars regard it as bunk, as a result.  Democracy Now! showed a debate between Dershowitz and Norman Finkelstein, who was one of the scholars who debunked Joan Peters’ book, and since Dershowitz relied so heavily on her book, he was out to debunk Dershowitz as well.

  
  

  Chomsky lived on a Kubbutz in Israel in the 1950′s, and believed in a bi-national state with Jews and Palestinians living together.  That dream may now not be a reality because of the anger between the two sides (although South Africa did manage to end apartheid and blacks and whites not have equal rights and live in relative peace, it would be hard to imagine the same happening in Israel).  So, the anti-Zionist cause was against the original establishment of a Jewish-only homeland, but today, it seems we will see both a Zionist state, as well as a Palestinian state, living side-by-side. 

  
  

  Question: Since it is now a moot point about Israel becoming a bi-national state, any claims today of anti-Zionism, are esentially claims to destroy Israel, and may be seen as anti-Semetic.  This is unlike criticism of white-ruled South Africa, where criticism of white-power ultimately led to the sharing of power between blacks and whites.  If South Africa looked like Israel, and the only plausible solution was to have a white South Africa, and a Black South Africa, then continued criticism of white South Africa would also be calling for the end of whites (which in Africa, isn’t so ridiculous, as Zimbabwe has taken actions to intimidate and murder white farmers).  So…rather than continuing to oppose Zionism because it oppresses Palestinians, isn’t is more practical to be both pro-Zionist and pro-Palestinian, and leave anti-Zionist claims in the past (that is assuming, we are moving towards a Palestinian state). 

  • 2:32 pm
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