On the next Your Call we'll be joined by Joel Schalit, author of Israel Versus Utopia, to discuss the future of Israel. Israel is the number one recipient of U.S. economic and military aid, but its right-wing Likud government has bristled at Obama Administration calls for an end to illegal settlements. Meanwhile, the J Street Project is setting a new course for the Jewish-American relationship with Israel. Could a new U.S.-Israeli relationship emerge? And will any of it make real change for the Palestinians?
Join us live at 11 or drop us an email at feedback@yourcallradio.org. What's the future of US-Israel relations? It's Your Call, with Sandip Roy and you.
Guest:
Joel Schalit, author of Israel Vs. Utopia
Click to Listen: Wednesday: Are U.S.-Israel Relations at a Turning Point?
Joel Schalit (I don't care what he's passing himself off as) is best summed up by the last (email) comment-question today:
ReplyDeleteIs Joel saying that Israeli and other Zionist/Zionist-apologist Jews -- [including this no-better-than-"liberal", supposedly, "new course" by "J Street"] -- are just implacably *Zionist* -- [i.e., *racist*, but *liberal racists* (like, alternately, back in the day, *liberal* slavemasters), to make themselves feel better about their racial oppression]? And that they too just want their "Jewish state" because they just want their Jewish state -- but in just *MOST*, 85%, instead of *ALL*, of historic Palestine, another people's native land -- only this "new course" represents smarter Zionist Jews? There used to be a wry saying about such liberals: "Why, *thank* you..., that's mighty *white* of you."
And, anyone, Joel Schalit says, who intellectually and morally rejects an inherently and ideologically racist state -- any *true anti-racist* -- is "a purist", to be *scoffed* at.
Schalit, like Chomsky, supposedly is an *Anarchist*!! -- and "anti-imperialist" -- but *not* when it comes to *his own* (religio-)ethnic/racialized group! -- like all those other (even liberal/"Left") Zionist Jewish HISTÖRY'S GREATEST HYPÖCRITES-Я-ÜS!
As Martin Luther King said about liberal racists in his "Letter From A Birmingham Jail", "Shallow understanding from people of supposedly 'good will' is more frustrating than absolute misunderstanding from people of ill will." King -- and Israel actually represents every kind of racism that King opposed -- also spoke about "an obnoxious negative peace...", which is what liberal racists, like "J Street" Zionist Jews, always propose: in fact, they propose "a negative peace" (with its inherent immorality deliberately frozen in time, as the *liberal* solution) to a positive justice. King said that, "True peace is not merely the absence of violence, but the presence of *justice*."
Malcolm X would, to the point (as he always was), call J Street (like Akiva Eldar, J Street rep, on yesterday's, 11.10.09, The Charlie Rose Show on PBS) just another kind of wolf in lamb's clothing.
I think that we should squeeze all the Zionist American Jews into a tiny crowded rump state trapped in the American desert badlands (similar to much of the 10% of historic Palestine that Israeli Jews have left for the Palestinians in the Occupied Territories) and see how the former like *that* plan and ideology.
Joseph Anderson
Berkeley, CA
It just explicitly came to my thoughts (I don't know why it took so long), after listening to Joel Schalit, again, on the audio archive of the Your Call, KALW, radio show: just like the U.S. Democrats and the Republicans play "Good Cop, Bad Cop" (like Obama vs. W. Bush; or Bill Clinton vs. daddy Bush) on the world imperialist stage, those JVP/"J Street" types, on Israel's/Zionism's colonial stage, play "Good Cop" vs. the Likudnik types "Bad Cops". It's a tag team and A _RUSE_ where they all actually want the same thing: an ideologically Zionist/"Jewish" state on nearly all of historic Palestine, never mind that it's on another people's native land -- it's just a matter of "are we talking on 85%, 90%, or 95% of historic Palestine?", with the Palestinian people held, indefinitely stateless (certainly in any real meaning of the word) on their own land. Or, as one Black friend of mine once said, "Often the only difference between white, racist, so-called, "liberals" and, otherwise, racist conservatives is only where they want to draw the line."
ReplyDeleteJoseph Anderson
Berkeley, CA
I just wanted to add this, about Joel Schalit (one of J Street's "leftist" ambassadors [propagandists]) after an email exchange with a Jewish friend of mine:
ReplyDeleteYou see, J Street may be calling itself a counter to AIPAC, etc. -- without nearrrly the mmillions of dollars -- but J Street is merely trying to be the *OTHER*, and smarter, Israel lobby -- but just another self-delusional set of liberals thinking they will 'have Obama's ear' -- short of Israel being *forced* to change due to any external, geo-political circumstances and/or an anti-Apartheid style international boycotts, divestment and sanctions campaign. And, among the "Left", J Street Jews will be trying to set and limit, gate-keeper and regiment the parameters and bounds of (just like Chomsky and Finkelstein do) the discourse/debate -- but in their job as "liberals" or even ('posing as') "Leftists" on the Left -- just like the regular Israel lobby. J Street is just playing "Good Cops" to AIPAC's "Bad Cop" Zionists: the role of both is to break their victims.
As Malcolm X would say [and here about J Street], that's like sticking a knife in someone's body, [and, tryingly, J Street] pulling it out *jussst a little*, leaving it there, and calling that lasting progress [or justice].
And as Malcolm X would also say, such white people just *want the (others') land* -- and that's all there's to it! The rest is just rationalized window-dressing.
Joseph Anderson
Berkeley, CA
ONE MORE TIMMME (excerpted from an email exchange)...:
ReplyDeleteSo, Joel Shalit's basic answer -- to put it clearly -- was to say (just like Finkelstein and Chomsky, except they always begin/include, "Wwwelll, if you really want to *help* the Palestinians..." -- an implicitly ad homimen, HYPOCRITICAL 'Great White Hope/Hype' way of saying "my way is the *only* way" and "you can't publicly disagree with *mmeee*"), 'You're [I'm] an extremist and you're not helping because you're just antagonizing even the [so-called] liberal Zionists, because they'll never support that, and there'll be no common ground because, *of course*, they want a Zionist/"Jewish" state (even thought that state itself is at least 20% Palestinian) in *most* (at least 85%) of historic Palestine (which is still at least about 50% Palestinian, in spite of all of Israel's continued immigration of masses of even fictive "Jews", like centuries-/generations-long Russian Christians [literally or socioculturally] and Peruvian Indians, of course they all have to 'convert'), plus or minus a few adjustments."
Then, of course, Joel Schalit, the (like Chomsky) "Anarchist" (or Finkelstein, the "Communist"), has to engage in the usual strawman argument tactics of accusing me of saying stuff that I *didn't* say, in order to 'win' his argument and reinforce the idea that I'm an irrational, implicitly Jew-hating extremist (his saying that I'm against *any* Jewish presence in historic Palestine) and that my anti-racist position is "being a purist" (Chomsky and Finkelstein say the same thing). Now, who --except when it comes to the 'racial' privileges of his religio-"ethnic" group-- is more of a "purist" than an *Anarchist*!!? But, those double standards is how deep racism can go.
Joseph Anderson
Berkeley, CA
I'm just about to listen to another interesting Your Call radio show today - their Friday Media Roundtable show, and I thank Your Call for having had another very interesting show on Palestine/Israel this past Wednesday (and for audio archiving their shows).
ReplyDeleteAmong other logically irrational, morally contradictory statements that Joel Schalit said on the radio today near the end of the show in response to an email question - asking if even liberal "J Street" Zionist Jews were just implacably racist (albeit white liberal racists) and just wanted "a Jewish/Zionist state" no matter how immoral it fundamentally is - was that, "Even anyone who's an anti-Zionist has an investment in Israel as a Zionist state." [!!!???]
Did people who OPPOSED the South African Apartheid system, or American "Jim Crow" Segregation system, or the French/U.S. neo/colonial war in Vietnam identify with or have an emotional "investment" in perpetuating those racist systems, institutions or wars and their respective ideologies? Did, then, anti-racist and anti-war activists emotionally, politically, and morally identify with South African Apartheid, or the American Jim Crow South and Constitutional Segregation and discrimination, or the French/U.S. war in Vietnam, as Schalit says that even anti-Zionist activists should identify with "the Zionist/Jewish state", and "for social justice reasons"[!!!]?
One, like Schalit, has to do a lot of 'logical', 'moral' and psychological contortions to defend any racist ideology, including Zionism and its system, against a true, non-double standard moral analysis and debate.