Feb. 2009
"According to a CIA Study currently being shown to selected staff members on the US Senate Intelligence Committee and the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence, Israel’s survival in its present form beyond the next 20 years is doubtful.
The Report predicts “an inexorable movement away from a two-state to a one-state solution, as the most viable model based on democratic principles of full equality that sheds the looming specter of colonial Apartheid while allowing for the return of the 1947/1948 and 1967 refugees. The latter being the precondition for sustainable peace in the region.”
To President Peres’ chagrin, the Executive Summary states that “during the next fifteen years more than two million Israelis, including some 500,000 Israeli citizens who currently hold US green cards or passports, will move to the United States. Most Israelis not in possession of these documents will receive ‘expedited waivers.’ The Report claims that, “Alongside a decline in Jewish births and a rise in Palestinian fertility, approximately 1.6 million Israelis are likely to return to their forefather’s lands in Russia and Eastern and Western Europe with scores of thousands electing to stay, depending on the nature of the transition.”
--
The days of Zionism are numbered. A “Jewish state” may have been viable a thousand years ago, but appears as a monstrosity in the 21st century.
How will Israeli citizens and Zionists in other countries deal with the inevitable? According to recent polls, a large majority of Israeli citizens supported the slaughter in Gaza.
A disturbing possibility is the “Samson Option”. "Samson" was the first suicide bomber: facing death, he took everyone else with him.
“The Samson Option” is a term used to describe Israel’s alleged deterrence strategy of massive retaliation with nuclear weapons as a “last resort” against nations whose military attacks threaten its existence, and possibly against other targets as well.[1] Israel refuses to admit it has nuclear weapons or to describe how it would use them, an official policy of nuclear ambiguity, also known as "nuclear opacity." This has made it difficult for anyone outside the Israeli government to definitively describe its true nuclear policy, while still allowing Israel to influence the perceptions, strategies and actions of other governments.[2]
As early as 1976, the CIA believed that Israel possessed 10 to 20 nuclear weapons.[3] By 2002 it was estimated that the number had increased to between 75 and 200 nuclear weapons.[4] Kenneth S. Brower has estimated as many as 400 nuclear weapons.[5] These can be launched from land, sea and air.[6] This gives Israel a second strike option even if much of the country is destroyed.[7]”
--
Another possibility is reconciliation, understanding and peace.
I’ve read a number of books on Israel-Palestine. Not enough to qualify me as an expert but enough to have a general grasp of the situation. If you’re interested in learning more about the subject I recommend the following:
The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine by Ilan Pappe
Fateful Triangle: The United States, Israel, and the Palestinians by Noam Chomsky
Image and Reality of the Israel-Palestine Conflict by Norman Finkelstein.
51 Documents: Zionist Collaboration With the Nazis by Lenni Brenner
The Hidden History of Zinoism by Ralph Schoenman
Jewish Fundamentalism in Israel by Israel Shahak
One Country: A Bold Proposal to End the Israeli-Palestinian Impasse by Ali Abunimah
And
Overcoming Zionism: Creating a Single Democratic State in Israel/Palestine by Joel Kovel.
If you only have time to read one, make it the last.
I just finished reading Kovel’s book and it is by far the most insightful, touching, personal and visionary of the bunch.
An eco-socialist and member of the Green Party, Kovel is also Jewish by birth.
He describes being repulsed by the supremacist concept of “chosen” and “goyim” from a very young age. At the same time he recognizes the unique contributions Jews have made over the centuries to the concept of universality. He presents Jewish identity as a paradox:
The very “separateness” that Jews attempted to preserve over the centuries gave birth to the most radical advocates of its antithesis. This, Kovel believes, is where the pride of the Jews should truly lie. He identifies with the Jewish heretics who transcended Jewry, but who are nonetheless part of the Jewish tradition, "...starting with Spinoza, then Marx, Freud, Proust, Einstein, Kafka, Wittgenstein and Rosa Luxemburg.”
Kovel doesn’t shy away from the atrocities of Zionism. Rather he outlines the ethnic cleansing of Palestine in excruciating detail. Quite obviously colonial projects – by their very definition – are predicated on displacement, enslavement and mass murder. Conservative historians now acknowledge the scale of Zionist atrocities in establishing the state of Israel. “Liberals” too. Benny Morris, a highly respected Israeli scholar, acknowledges the ethnic cleansing of Palestine with one caveat: the founders of Zion didn’t go far enough.
Unlike every other book mentioned above (save Schoenman’s), “Overcoming Zionism” does not shy away from the deep state: Kovel posits that certain bombings of Jewish centers in Iraq (ironically, the birthplace of Abraham) were probably committed by Zionists in order to engender fear of a new pogrom. He states that it is intellectually “delinquent” not to acknowledge such probabilities. The USS Liberty and the “Dancing Israelis” are afforded liberal coverage in the chapter dealing with the complex relationship between Zion and “The Godfather”: that great bastion of capitalism known as the United States.
The chapter on Rachel Corrie, a fiercely independent, fiercely humanitarian woman who refused to back down in the face of a gigantic Caterpillar bulldozer, brought tears to my eyes. Abandoned by her own government, she will live on as a testament to the human spirit.
The following isn’t mentioned in the book, but I find it interesting that Winston Churchill was one of the first men to advocate a macro Jewish conspiracy a la the Protocols of Zion. Churchill wrote:
“From the days of Spartacus-Weishaupt to those of Karl Marx, and down to Trotsky (Russia), Bela Kun (Hungary), Rosa Luxembourg (Germany), and Emma Goldman (United States), this world-wide conspiracy for the overthrow of civilization and for the reconstitution of society on the basis of arrested development, of envious malevolence, and impossible equality, has been steadily growing.”
Churchill is not condemning Judaic supremacists (now known as Zionists) but the exact opposite: Jews who overcame this primitive tribalism to embrace universality. Indeed, one of the most interesting sections of Kovel’s book deals with the concept of “Judeo-Bolshevism”. For Hitler, it wasn’t so much about Jews per se but the large number of Jews who embraced socialism, including (unfortunately) its Leninist variant. This is why the internment of Jews came AFTER the internment of “political radicals”, regardless of race, culture or creed. It was precisely the negation of tribalism (which easily translates into nationalism) that made “Jews” dangerous.
The macro Jewish conspiracy advocated by Churchill has gained renewed force in the wake of the increasingly barbaric behavior of Israel as well as the apparent involvement of Mossad in the events of 911. If you read the comments on any ICH posting you will find Churchill’s philosophy (in so many words) repeated ad nauseum. So for example, Marx is alleged to have been part of a “Jewish conspiracy” to overthrow Christendom and Western Civilization so that “Jewish rulers” could ascend the throne of world government.
Yet Marx rejected Jewish tribalism. He wrote:
“You Jews are egoists if you demand a special emancipation for yourselves as Jews. As Germans, you ought to work for the political emancipation of Germany, and as human beings, for the emancipation of mankind, and you should feel the particular kind of your oppression and your shame not as an exception to the rule, but on the contrary as a confirmation of the rule.”
Similarly, Rosa Luxembourg (another villain in Churchill’s Jewish conspiracy) wrote:
“What do you want with this particular suffering of the Jews? The poor victims on the rubber plantations in Putamayo, the Negroes in Africa with whose bodies the Europeans play a game of catch, are just as near to me. Do you remember the words written on the work of the Great General Staff about Trotha's campaign in the Kalahari desert? 'And the death-rattles, the mad cries of those dying of thirst, faded away into the sublime silence of eternity.'
Oh, this 'sublime silence of eternity' in which so many screams have faded away unheard! It rings within me so strongly that I have no special corner of my heart reserved for the ghetto: I am at home wherever in the world there are clouds, birds and human tears...”
Finally we come to Emma Goldman – a personal hero of mine – and the arch-villain in Churchill’s Jewish conspiracy. What was Goldman’s sin? Her sin, once again, was to advocate universality:
I pledge allegiance to no flag,
and issue no one a moral blank check.
With confidence in my conscious judgment,
on which I stand,
one individual fighting,
for liberty and justice for all.
How is it that Neo-Nazis are able to reconcile supremacist Zionism with socialist Jews who embrace all of mankind? The answer is simple: they are socialists BECAUSE they are Jews, involved in a cunning mass conspiracy to attain world domination. There is no room for humanity here, because like the Zionist supremacist the neo-Nazi cannot think in terms of the individual. Human beings are abstracted into tribes (of which “we” are, naturally, the best).
I think it possible – indeed likely – that we are in store for a new wave of false flag operations. Not because of Obama the man but because of Obama the coward. Let’s imagine, for a second, that a “dirty bomb” is detonated on US soil. What’s Obama supposed to do? Acknowledge that it was intended as a false flag operation? Bring down the military industrial complex? Bring down Zion? Not. Bloody. Likely.
You didn't elect Cynthia McKinney. You elected a tool of the big banks. What did you expect?
I interviewed three prominent former spooks for my upcoming documentary series and they were equally appalled at the increasingly incestuous relationship between America and Israel. I have a sneaking suspicion that their opinions are widely shared throughout CIA, if not the entire "intelligence" bureaucracy.
But the CIA isn’t what it used to be. This is another factor they stressed. There are over a dozen alphabet agencies and the CIA stopped being big dog before the cold war was even over.
The very concept of “National Interest” – or the “neo-realism” of traditional “conservatives” – has been sacrificed in the name of profit. What right libertarians don't understand is that this was inevitable: capitalism relies on endless growth. Virtue is its own reward, and power its own prerogative.
Obama is a wimp. His appointments, policies and pandering to the right wing aptly demonstrate this. A far more ballsy character has achieved the government of Zion. He did not talk about peace with Palestine during his acceptance speech; rather, he talked about the “threat” of Iran -- meaning the "threat" if Iran in deterring Israeli hegemony throughout the region. His father advocated a “Greater Israel” extending all the way to Iraq. Netanyahu will have Obama for lunch.
Unless we do something about it.
Postscript:
The author of Overcoming Zionism, Joel Kovel, has been fired.
Here is his response, courtesy of Norman Finkelstein:
When conspiracies are not imagined
STATEMENT OF JOEL KOVEL REGARDING HIS TERMINATION BY BARD COLLEGE
2009 | joelkovel.org
_Introduction_
In January, 1988, I was appointed to the Alger Hiss Chair of Social Studies at Bard College. As this was a Presidential appointment outside the tenure system, I have served under a series of contracts. The last of these was half-time (one semester on, one off, with half salary and full benefits year-round), effective from July 1, 2004, to June 30, 2009. On February 7 I received a letter from Michèle Dominy, Dean of the College, informing me that my contract would not be renewed this July 1 and that I would be moved to emeritus status as of that day. She wrote that this decision was made by President Botstein, Executive Vice-President Papadimitriou and herself, in consultation with members of the Faculty Senate.
This document argues that this termination of service is prejudicial and motivated neither by intellectual nor pedagogic considerations, but by political values, principally stemming from differences between myself and the Bard administration on the issue of Zionism. There is of course much more to my years at Bard than this, including another controversial subject, my work on ecosocialism (/The Enemy of Nature/). However, the evidence shows a pattern of conflict over Zionism only too reminiscent of innumerable instances in this country in which critics of Israel have been made to pay, often with their careers, for speaking out. In this instance the process culminated in a deeply flawed evaluation process which was used to justify my termination from the faculty.
_A brief chronology_
* 2002. This was the first year I spoke out nationally about Zionism. In October, my article, “Zionism’s Bad Conscience,” appeared in /Tikkun/. Three or four weeks later, I was called into President Leon Botstein’s office, to be told my Hiss Chair was being taken away. Botstein said that he had nothing to do with the decision, then gratuitously added that it had not been made because of what I had just published about Zionism, and hastened to tell me that his views were diametrically opposed to mine.
* 2003. In January I published a second article in /Tikkun/, “’Left-Anti-Semitism’ and the Special Status of Israel,” which argued for a One-State solution to the dilemmas posed by Zionism. A few weeks later, I received a phone call at home from Dean Dominy, who suggested, on behalf of Executive Vice-President Dimitri Papadimitriou, that perhaps it was time for me to retire from Bard. I declined. The result of this was an evaluation of my work and the inception, in 2004, of the current half-time contract as “Distinguished Professor.”
* 2006. I finished a draft of /Overcoming Zionism/. In January, while I was on a Fellowship in South Africa, President Botstein conducted a concert on campus of the Jerusalem Symphony Orchestra, which he has directed since 2003. In a stunning departure from traditional concert practice, this began with the playing of the national anthems of the United States and Israel, after each of which the audience rose. Except for a handful of protestors, the event went unnoticed. I regarded it, however, as paradigmatic of the "special relationship" between the United States and Israel, one that has conduced to war in Iraq and massive human rights violations in Israel/Palestine. In December, I organized a public lecture at Bard (with Mazin Qumsiyeh) to call attention to this problem. Only one faculty person attended; the rest were students and community people; and the issue was never taken up on campus.
* 2007. /Overcoming Zionism/ was now on the market, arguing for a One-State solution (and sharply criticizing, among others, Martin Peretz for a scurrilous op-ed piece against Rachel Corrie in the /Los Angeles Times/. Peretz is an official in AIPAC’s foreign policy think-tank, and at the time a Bard Trustee—though this latter fact was not pointed out in the book). In August, /Overcoming Zionism/ was attacked by a watchdog Zionist group, StandWithUs/Michigan, which succeeded in pressuring the book’s United States distributor, the University of Michigan Press, to remove it from circulation. An extraordinary outpouring of support (650 letters to U of M) succeeded in reversing this frank episode of book-burning. I was disturbed, however, by the fact that, with the exception of two non-tenure track faculty, there was no support from Bard in response to this egregious violation of the speech rights of a professor. When I asked President Botstein in an email why this was so, he replied that he felt I was doing quite well at taking care of myself. This was irrelevant to the obligation of a college to protect its faculty from violation of their rights of free expression—all the more so, a college such as Bard with a carefully honed reputation as a bastion of academic freedom, and which indeed defines such freedom in its Faculty Handbook as a "right . . . to search for truth and understanding without interference and to disseminate his [sic] findings without intimidation."
* 2008. Despite some reservations by the faculty, I was able to teach a course on Zionism. In my view, and that of most of the students, it was carried off successfully. Concurrently with this, another evaluation of my work at Bard was underway. Unlike previous evaluations, in 1996 and 2003, this was unenthusiastic. It was cited by Dean Dominy as instrumental in the decision to let me go.
_Irregularities in the Evaluation Process_
The evaluation committee included Professor Bruce Chilton, along with Professors Mark Lambert and Kyle Gann. Professor Chilton is a member of the Social Studies division, a distinguished theologian, and the campus’ Protestant chaplain. He is also active in Zionist circles, as chair of the Episcopal–Jewish Relations Committee in the Episcopal Diocese of New York, and a member of the Executive Committee of Christians for Fair Witness on the Middle East. In this capacity he campaigns vigorously against Protestant efforts to promote divestment and sanctions against the State of Israel. Professor Chilton is particularly antagonistic to the Palestinian liberation theology movement, Sabeel, and its leader, Rev. Naim Ateek, also an Episcopal. This places him on the other side of the divide from myself, who attended a Sabeel Conference in Birmingham, MI, in October, 2008, as an invited speaker, where I met Rev. Ateek, and expressed admiration for his position. It should also be observed that Professor Chilton was active this past January in supporting Israeli aggression in Gaza. He may be heard on a national radio program on WABC, “Religion on the Line,” (January 11, 2009) arguing from the Doctrine of Just War and claiming that it is anti-Semitic to criticize Israel for human rights violations—this despite the fact that large numbers of Jews have been in the forefront of protesting Israeli crimes in Gaza.
Of course, Professor Chilton has the right to his opinion as an academic and a citizen. Nonetheless, the presence of such a voice on the committee whose conclusion was instrumental in the decision to remove me from the Bard faculty is highly dubious. Most definitely, Professor Chilton should have recused himself from this position. His failure to do so, combined with the fact that the decision as a whole was made in context of adversity between myself and the Bard administration, renders the process of my termination invalid as an instance of what the College’s Faculty Handbook calls a procedure “designed to evaluate each faculty member fairly and in good faith.”
I still strove to make my future at Bard the subject of reasonable negotiation. However, my efforts in this direction were rudely denied by Dean Dominy’s curt and dismissive letter (at the urging, according to her, of Vice-President Papadimitriou), which plainly asserted that there was nothing to talk over and that I was being handed a /fait accompli/. In view of this I considered myself left with no other option than the release of this document.
_On the responsibililty of intellectuals_
Bard has effectively crafted for itself an image as a bastion of progressive thought. Its efforts were crowned with being anointed in 2005 by the /Princeton Review /as the second-most progressive college in the United States, the journal adding that Bard "puts the 'liberal' in 'liberal arts.'" But “liberal” thought evidently has its limits; and my work against Zionism has encountered these.
A fundamental principle of mine is that the educator must criticize the injustices of the world, whether or not this involves him or her in conflict with the powers that be. The systematic failure of the academy to do so plays no small role in the perpetuation of injustice and state violence. In no sphere of political action does this principle apply more vigorously than with the question of Zionism; and in no country is this issue more strategically important than in the United States, given the fact that United States support is necessary for Israel’s behavior. The worse this behavior, the more strenuous must be the suppression of criticism. I take the view, then, that Israeli human rights abuses are deeply engrained in a culture of impunity granted chiefly, though not exclusively, in the United States—which culture arises from suppression of debate and open inquiry within those institutions, such as colleges, whose social role it is to enlighten the public. Therefore, if the world stands outraged at Israeli aggression in Gaza, it should also be outraged at institutions in the United States that grant Israel impunity. In my view, Bard College is one such institution. It has suppressed critical engagement with Israel and Zionism, and therefore has enabled abuses such as have occurred and are occurring in Gaza. This notion is of course, not just descriptive of a place like Bard. It is also the context within which the critic of such a place and the Zionist ideology it enables becomes marginalized, and then removed. For further information:
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