Neither Washington nor Morsi...

Here's a letter from Tony Greenstein to The Independent:

The silence of western leaders in the face of the Egyptian massacres is deafening. It is proof, if any were needed, that western foreign policy uses “democracy” as a figleaf for the control of resources and other states.

If it were China or Zimbabwe under Mugabe which had murdered 2,000 unarmed demonstrators, firing machine guns to disperse protesters, Obama and his poodle Cameron would have been the first to wax lyrical about the benefits of western democracy.Instead Obama can’t decide whether or not a military overthrow of an elected government constitutes a coup!

Absurdly, General Sisi considers himself another Gamal Abdel Nasser, forgetting that Nasser took on British and French imperialism by nationalising the Suez Canal. Sisi’s regime murders its own citizens instead.

None of this is to exonerate the government of Mohammed Morsi. The Muslim Brotherhood is a backward, reactionary party, which is opposed to freedom for women or workers. It sought to make Sharia law the law governing Egypt and Morsi an unaccountable dictator. However it was for the Egyptian people to remove the Brotherhood’s government, not the army.

Tony Greenstein, Brighton

There you go, neither Washington nor Morsi.

Tony Greenstein expands on his points on his own blog here.

Reminder - SOAS Palestine Society 9th Annual Conference – Self-critique Two Decades After Oslo – 2013

On 5-6 October 2013, the Palestine Society at the School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS) in London will hold its ninth annual conference, Self-Critique Two Decades After Oslo.

Twenty years after the signing of the Oslo Accords, much continues to be written about the structural and subsequent failings of the Accords to achieve justice for the Palestinian people. While conventional views still regard Oslo as a winning formula that only suffered from a lack of implementation, critical analysis of the Oslo process agrees that the Accords only accelerated the Zionist settler colonial project, allowing Israel to lay siege and further expand its grip on Palestinian land, while expelling and destroying the lives of more Palestinians. This conference aims to move beyond this critical consensus and identify the internal failures prior to, and at the moment of, the conception of the Oslo Accords, as well as in its aftermath. In doing so, we will attempt to understand how Oslo has transformed Palestinian life and struggle. The conference situates itself within a long history of self-criticism after defeat – a self-criticism aimed at assessing the strategic failures of the movement, and formulating the necessary steps ahead. This is a self-criticism premised on a commitment to the political rebuilding of the Palestinian liberation movement, and the struggle against settler colonialism.

In its embrace of self-criticism, the conference will focus on the ways Palestinian leadership and elites have become embedded in the logic of settler colonialism, embraced neoliberal capitalism, and reproduced social and political accommodation of the Oslo process. However, it also aims to widen our lens, and examine the growing socialisation and reproduction of Oslo logics in Palestinian political and social life, and the ways in which Palestinian resistance against Oslo and Israel, and international solidarity with that resistance, has reproduced the very conditions it seeks to overturn. In particular, we hope to highlight the context and consequences of the re-orientation of the liberation struggle into a legal and rights-based approach; the political, geographical, and social separation of the Palestinian body politic in movement discourse and strategy; the proliferation of an unaccountable “political solution/vision market” and unchecked practices of solidarity; and growing alienation and distancing of Palestinians from others engaged in similar struggles against settler-colonialism.

With this conference, SOAS Palestine Society hopes to build on its long-standing commitment to rigorous movement thought and analysis in an emancipatory space.

Check the Conference Programme here: soaspalsoc.org/conference/programme/

 Illustration by Nidal El-Khairy (http://nidalelkhairy.blogspot.be/)

Will Self on what should never happen to an Englishman

Here's a bizarre piece by Will Self in yesterday's Daily Mail.  It's about being stopped by the police in the UK countryside because he had been reported as a suspected paedophile whilst on a walk with his 11 year old son.

The bizarre thing is the way he writes the piece and the things he chooses to emphasise.  Having said that, any emphases are added by me.  In the Daily Mail everything is said so emphatically they never need to add emphases.

See this:

No 11-year-old child should have to see his parent treated like a criminal for no reason whatsoever. And no Englishman enjoying a ramble with his son should face examination by police at the roadside on suspicion of being a sexual predator.

No Englishman?  What about non-Englishmen?  Or what about any women? Of course Will Self wouldn't think any of those would be ok but why then did he mention the Englishman thing at all?  I'm guessing it was for his Daily Mail readership.

Any more?

From the quintessence of a blamelessly British pursuit to an invitation to step inside a squad car, complete with WPC specially selected in case my boy had to be taken into protective custody, all following a ‘tip-off’ from a high-vis jacketed private security guard; can there be a more disturbing parable of the Britain we have become?

Has whatever it is that happened to him really been made worse by the fact that what he was actually doing was quintessentially British?

And when was the last time you heard a police officer who happened to be a woman referred to as a WPC (ie Woman Police Constable)?  I just did a google search for WPC.  I eventually found it on Wikipedia tucked away on an alphabetically ordered list.  Following the link I found that:

The prefix "Woman" in front of female officers' ranks has been obsolete since 1999.

As it happens what happened to Will Self wasn't very nice.  He was effectively accused of being a paedophile in front of his son and there was a woman police officer there to take the child into custody.

I'm not entirely comfortable with the fact that Self has used the Daily Mail for what was a personal beef with the officious high-vis clad official who got the police onto him but even if he did have a point -

You may, quite reasonably, think I’m getting too hot and bothered about this – but I don’t think so. In two full weeks of walking through the beautiful English countryside, experiencing the joy of its nature and the goodwill of its inhabitants, this episode remains an ugly blot.

The time was that you could live your whole life in Britain having no more contact with the government than buying a stamp at the local post office.

did he really have to lapse into full blown Daily Mail mode to vent it:?  Or was it edited in Daily Mail mode?  I'd like to think it's the latter because I like a good Will Self piece.

Listen to What Marcus Dysch of the Jewish Chronicle calls Nigel Kennedy's Rant

Have a click on this: http://palestinejournal.net/nigel-kennedy_palstrings_apartheid_aug-8-2013.mp3

Then have a wonder at how the Jewish Chronicle's Marcus Dysch can tweet this:

Another #BDSfail - BBC to cut Nigel Kennedy's anti-Israel rant from Proms broadcast: http://t.co/eUST25DQkB @BaronessDeech
— Marcus Dysch (@MarcusDysch) August 16, 2013

Did it sound like a rant to you? And have another wonder about how he can consider the censorship of Nigel Kennedy's words - together with the applause they won and the noting by the commentator of the standing ovation Kennedy got from the orchestra - a #BDSfail. He's actually proud of the zionists' influence at the BBC but not content with the censorship, he lied about Nigel Kennedy's delivery and that's without getting into whether or not BBC censorship of a prominent voice of Palestine solidarity amounts to a #BDSfail.

H/Ts to Mondoweiss and Palestine Journal.

By the way, Mondoweiss notes that the recording on the Palestine Journal increased the volume of Nigel Kennedy's voice for clarity's sake. Some rant!

US to Islamists: Elections are for chumps. Go get your AK-47.

Here's a not too bad article from Peter Beinart in the Daily Beast.  Titled Obama's Greatest Failure, it's a criticism of Obama for not calling the Egyptian coup a coup and thereby encouraging what the Egyptian military is now doing.  Obviously by contrasting any aspect of Obama's foreign policy with any other indicates support for Obama but it does have some interesting insights and useful turns of phrase.  An example is that in the heading above.  Here it is again:

To anyone in the Muslim world who needed convincing, it now looks unmistakably clear that the United States favors democracy in the Middle East when, and only when, our side wins. If you’re an Islamist who has now watched the United States wink at coups against democratically elected Islamist governments in Algeria and Egypt, and sought to foment one among the Palestinians after Hamas’ democratic election in 2006, the message is clear: Elections are for chumps. Go get your AK-47.

He then spoils the whole thing by making out that Obama is basically wellmeaning and that he has presidential antecedents for that wellmeaningness:

By historical standards, the Obama administration has presided over few genuine foreign-policy disasters. That’s no accident. Its self-consciously Hippocratic approach—modeled on world-weary pragmatists like Dwight Eisenhower and George H.W. Bush—is designed to avoid them.

Hippocratic?  Hmm, bit of a typo that.

I think Mr Beinart is missing the point here that there is nothing happening in Egypt that's hurting the USA in standard foreign policy terms.  Earlier in the piece we have this:

There’s a reasonable argument that nothing Obama did would have mattered. The Persian Gulf states, which adored the coup, quickly offered Egypt far more money than the U.S. could have withheld.

Ah, there's a possible error by Obama. The coup he wants could have happened and remained in place and the US could have even saved itself some money. Beinart obviously doesn't see it that way.
And there's more:  

it’s not as if the administration remained passive. Deputy Secretary of State William Burns worked hard to bring the Brotherhood and the military together. The White House even sent two of its domestic tormenters, John McCain and Lindsey Graham, to Cairo to try to hatch a deal.

So they could have saved money and still looked like they were making nice.

Obviously Obama is not quite my cup of tea.  He's had lots of people killed and he still keeps lots of people in Guantanamo and yet he claims his biggest moral failing was smoking a joint as a teenager or some such. I also don't like the way phony liberals make him out to be somehow to the left of George W. Bush.  Anyway, Peter Beinart here is noting, possibly inadvertently, that there are bigger moral failings than taking drugs as a youngster. Give the man a prize!

Yitzhak Shamir on Spitting Image back in the day

I found this on youtube just now. It's Spitting Image doing Yitzhak Shamir, the former Israeli Prime Minister, on BBC's Mastermind where contestants choose a specialist subject to answer questions on.

The programme ran from 1984 to 1996 and Shamir was Israel's PM from 1983 to 1984 and then again from 1986 to 1992.  I'm guessing this programme went out some time in the early 1990s when apartheid still ruled in South Africa and the intifada was in full swing in Palestine.

Spitting Image was enormously popular in the UK and it's not surprising it has a lengthy Wikipedia entry. What is surprising is that this Shamir Mastermind appearance doesn't warrant a mention in the Spitting Image entry's International Politicians section:

Spitting Image lampooned US President Ronald Reagan (voiced by Frank Welker in the Ronnie and Nancy special) as a bumbling, nuke-obsessed fool in comparison with his advisors Edwin Meese andCaspar Weinberger. Next to his bed were red buttons labelled 'Nuke' and 'Nurse'. His wife Nancy was the butt of cosmetic surgery jokes.

Mikhail Gorbachev had his forehead birthmark in the shape of hammer and sickle. All other Russians looked like Leonid Brezhnev, often said "da" ("yes") and talked about potatoes. In Russia it was snowing even indoors and the Soviet television had extremely low-tech visual effects.

François Mitterrand was wearing a beret and a garlic wreath. P. W. Botha was shown as a racist cleverly disguising his views (once he had a badge "anti-anti-apartheid"). Adolf Hitler incognito had a house at9 Downing Street. Some appearances were also made by Idi Amin, Robert Mugabe, Ferdinand and Imelda Marcos, Ruhollah Khomeini, Saddam Hussein and Muammar Gaddafi.

Other international caricatures included Richard Nixon and Henry Kissinger; George H. W. Bush and Dan Quayle; Konstantin Chernenko, Raisa Gorbachova and Boris Yeltsin.

No mention of Shamir. As it happens I couldn't imagine that piece appearing on UK mainstream television today what with comparing Israel unfavourably to apartheid South Africa and all but surely that makes it even more worthy of mention.

Hey AIPAC, why the long face?

It's because they like Kerry but they're keeping it quiet. See this from the Jewish Telegraphic Agency:

AIPAC’s support for the renewed Israeli-Palestinian talks is at this link on its website. Three sentences:

AIPAC welcomes the resumption of direct talks between Israelis and Palestinians. AIPAC has been supportive of Secretary Kerry’s efforts to achieve direct bilateral talks, and we commend his determined hard work and commitment. We hope that these discussions will lead to successful negotiations.

It’s not on AIPAC’s front page. Nor is it on the peace process page.

It is on its press page, which can be accessed from a link at the top of the organization’s home page.

I found out about the link, dated July 19, when I asked AIPAC on Tuesday for a statement on the renewed talks. The statement seems never to have been emailed to reporters or to congressional staffers, although other major Jewish groups published endorsements of the renewed talks, and AIPAC routinely emails its press releases. I’ve received every one on this page except for the peace talks endorsement.

I’ve confirmed the non-receipt with six other people, both on the Hill and in the media. A source close to AIPAC insists to me that the statement was widely emailed.

To be clear, AIPAC has strongly endorsed the renewed talks behind closed doors. This June 26 story about an off-the-record meeting with Democrats in the Senate, took place before the July 19 renewal of the talks, but well into Kerry’s efforts to get them started. At that point, the hearty endorsement conveyed by AIPAC was even more critical.

Which begs the question of why its July 19 statement is ostensibly only released upon request.

And what's for AIPAC not to like about Kerry? The plan is that with the Arab states in complete disarray, Morsi out of the way in Egypt and Hamas severely weakened by the deposing of Morsi, Abbas will give Israel everything it wants. Ok he has no legitimacy but then nor does Israel. But the last thing AIPAC wants to do is spoil things by going all triumphalistic and it can't really feign complaint lest the more amateurish groups in the lobby misread the signals. So AIPAC likes the long face of Kerry but doesn't want to shout about it.

Tony Greenstein on Hirsh on Hitler

Tony Greenstein left a comment on my previous post, Hirsh on Hitler, and went on to do a very informative post of his own which I reproduce here:

David Hirsh – the Fake & Ignorant 'Leftist'

Apparently the Nazis were anti-nationalist, left wing univeralists!

Apparently David Hirsh, vehement figurehead of Engage and fierce opponent of all boycotts of Israel, is a leftist!  Well for 'socialist Zionists' he might be but by most other peoples' definition he is a conservative imperialist.

Hirsh pontificating about things he knows nothing about

I first saw this article on Jewssansfrontiers  and I posted the comment beneath.  Although I haven’t posted for some time, I couldn’t resist the temptation to deal with the pretend academic Hirsh, who went down with Yale’s Initiative for the Interdisciplinary Study of Antisemitism, which was deemed by the authorities to be more concerned with political advocacy than scholarship.   Even as ardent a Zionist as Prof. Deborah Lipstadt, of Daving Irving v Penguin fame, wrote in an article ‘How To Study Anti-Semitism’  that:

‘The university defended itself against charges of having succumbed to Muslim pressure by listing the Jewish studies courses taught at the school and stressing its extensive library holdings in the field. (Yale, admittedly, does have an excellent Jewish studies program, and its libraries have one of the best collections in Jewish studies world-wide.) …

There is, however, another side to this story. Apparently, there were people on the Yale campus who were associated with YIISA and who were eager to have it succeed. These friends of YIISA counseled the institute’s leadership that some of its efforts had migrated to the world of advocacy from that of scholarship. They warned YIISA that it was providing fodder to the critics’ claim that it was not a truly academic endeavor.

The anti-nationalist socialist surrounded by Israeli flags!

I have twice participated in YIISA’s activities. I gave a paper at one of its weekly seminar sessions on Holocaust denial and attended its conference last August. While serious scholars who work in this field gave the vast majority of the papers  - They were passionate and well argued. But they were not scholarly in nature.

Two lessons can be drawn from this imbroglio. First, there is a real need for serious academic institutions to facilitate and encourage the highest-level research on anti-Semitism….

Second, this struggle also demonstrates the necessity of differentiating between those who do advocacy and those who do scholarship. Both are critical — but entirely different — endeavors.

The horrors that Ford found so appealing

 But I digress.  In his talk Hirsh  argued that:

'The Nazis are usually thought of as right wing.  But in some ways, they were also similar to the left.  They were radical, they wanted profound change.  They didn’t like nationalism, they had a global programme for changing the whole world.  They were hostile to British and American imperialism and democracy.  They put their big political ambitions before the ‘pursuit of happiness’.  Hitler claimed to be the universalist and he said it was the Jews who wrecked society for everybody by following only their own selfish interests.

But by and large, the left opposed Hitler and his antisemitism….
When Israel was first established, it was supported by most people on the left.  They liked the socialist experiment of the kibbutzim and the Labour Party which ran Israel in its first decades.  They admired Israel as an anti-imperialist movement which defeated the British.  They supported Israel as the underdogs, the survivors of the Holocaust.

The Nazis were univeralists, who ‘were not so much right-wing as radical had a global programme for changing the whole world.  They were hostile to British and American imperialism and democracy’ Whilst conceding that ‘’by and large, the left opposed Hitler and his antisemitism.’

Some of this is just pig ignorant and shows how Hirsh is a master of the superficial and unacquaintted with the history of the Nazi Party.   Calling anti-Zionists 'anti-Semites' is the limit of his knowledge of racism.  As an example of Hitler's opposition to the British Empire one could quote from Mein Kampf:

Germany should not try to take advantage of turbulence in the British Empire, and link its destiny with racially inferior oppressed peoples.  An alliance with Russia against England and France was no substitute for an alliance with England.  An alliance with England and Italy would give Germany the initiative in Europe (Mein Kampf pp. 601-7)….

Inmates of Auschwitz

It is remarkable how, up to two decades later, Hitler’s views had changed very little since the publication of Mein Kampf.  He was to retain this opinion of Britain until he realised that it would not grant him the free hand in Eastern Europe which he craved, and even then, he repeatedly stressed his ambition to come to terms with Britain.  During the Second World War, the last pre-war British ambassador to Berlin, Sir Neville Henderson, wrote that Hitler “combined … admiration for the British race with envy of their achievements and hatred of their opposition to Germany’s excessive aspirations” [Failure of a Mission, Sir Neville Henderson, p.266]

Hitler repeatedly remarked to Albert Speer that the English were “our brothers.  Why fight our brothers?” [Albert Speer: His Battle with the Truth, Gitta Sereny, p.218]

The idea that the Nazis were universalist is laughable.  Hitler consistently talked of the German Volk (people) and saw everything from that absurd perspective.  Jews and the mentally handicapped were not of course part of his racial comradeship.  He was not so much a supporter of German nationalism, as per the Equality, Fraternity and Liberty of the French revolution, as a nationalist.  These sentiments were codified in the 1935 Nuremburg laws.  In this he was one with the Zionists who also derided the 'assimilationists' and the idea that you could be a German Jew as opposed to a Jew residing in Germany, witness the obsession with a Jewish demographic majority in Israel.  There were no ideas or principles that the Nazis had that could be applied world-wide and nor did they make any such claim.  Unless of course world conquest is a form of universalism!

Ford too was a socialist

As for being ‘left-wing’.  Only particularly stupid conservatives makes this claim.  He was funded by the Iron and Coal barons such as Thyssen and Emil Kordof and the other leaders of German heavy industry in particular.  He was  put in power by the German military, led by President Hindenberg.  One of his first acts was the abolition of the unions and its replacement by the German Labour Front led by Robert Ley.  Its purpose was not to organise workers and strikes (which were made illegal) as to spy on workers and ensure they did not form new unions.  A strange form of socialism. The fact that people like Henry Ford supported Hitler, until a Jewish and trade union boycott forced him to distance himself from the Nazis, should tell Hirsh something.  Then again he probably didn't know of the use Ford made of his newspapers such as The Dearborn Independent from 1921-27.  

The American Jewish Historical Society described the ideas in the paper as "anti-immigrant, anti-labor, anti-liquor, and anti-Semitic.  In Henry Ford, Adolph Hitler's Inspiration For Treatment Of Jews - How Henry Ford Helped To Create Auschwitz that Hitler talked of how "I regard Henry Ford as my inspiration" - Adolph Hitler, 1931.   Hitler even had a picture of Ford on his wall.  Perhaps Hirsh considers Ford too as left-wing?

On 30 July 1938, Ford celebrated his 75th birthday by receiving the Grand Cross of the German Eagle, the most important honor that Germany might offer a non-citizen.   He received the award -- a golden Maltese cross embraced by four swastikas -- in his office, joined by the German consuls from Cleveland and Detroit. 

A longtime admirer of Ford's, Adolf Hitler sent a personal note of gratitude to be delivered at the ceremony. Signed on July 7, the parchment scroll warmly thanked Ford for his "humanitarian ideals" and his devotion, along with the German Chancellor, to "the cause of peace." No doubt Ford too was a universalist!

Hitler was also an imperialist, not something normally associated with socialism.  The 'socialist' part of his ‘national socialism’ was a sop to the plebeian element in the Nazi Party, around the SA stormtroopers, who believed that the Jews were the embodiment of capitalism and once they were got rid of then they would take control of industry, the ‘second revolution’.  The Night of the Long Knives settled that particular dream when Ernst Rohm and the unofficial leader of the Nazis ‘left-wing’ Gregor Strasser and hundreds more were murdered at the behest of the Army and the capitalists in June 1934.  Hitler believed in elites, not just racial, but within the Aryan nation, with capitalists and the leaders of industry and finance being at the top of the racial ladder. 

Left wing?  Not unless your definition of socialism includes Israel and the Kibbutz.  But then Hirsh does see the Kibbutzim as socialist rather than as stockade and watch tower settlements, the outposts of the future Israeli state.  A socialism that excluded the Arabs from membership, in other words ones of racial exclusivity is Hirsh's idea of socialism!

David Hirsh was the leader of the Engage group of Zionists who in 2005 decided to oppose the Boycott of Israeli universities.  Engage was later found to be partly funded by the Board of Deputies of British Jews, who are anything but leftists – fake or otherwise.  No doubt the Israeli state contributed to the financing of Engage.

Hirsh is someone who gives lectures about subjects he knows nothing about.  He is a junk academic dealing in cliches and trivia.  Anyone acquainted with Mein Kampf would know of Hitler's oft-expressed comments that he was an admirer of the British Empire and explained how one must never align oneself with those whose countries were under colonial domination.  It was simply that he wanted to replicate it in Eastern Europe.  For example he gave no support to the General Strike and Arab rebellion in Palestine from 1936-9. 

The rest of Hirsch's points such as universalism have been dealt with above and of course Hirsh compared the left and the Nazis whilst denying that the Nazis were right wing.  That I suppose is why on May 2nd he abolished all unions and sent socialists and trade unionists to Dachau.  That is why the Nazi party was given massive support by the capitalists, especially the Iron and Steel barons of the Ruhr.  And oh yes, the old Prussian army generals who put him in power did so because Hitler was such an ardent socialist!!

What Hirsh does is betray his own ignorance of the development and politics of the Nazi party and also the function that anti-Semitism played within it.

That is not to say that Hitler wasn't contemptuous of the conservative parties (DNVP, DVP, Centre Party).  They were gentle folk who would never win over the workers, whom they despised.  They were unable to work amongst the masses and they even purported to believe in democraacy.  In that he was right.  The Nazis organised their plebeian followers and the lumpen proletariat whereas the Conservatives confined their work to the middle classes and rich.  What the industrialists and army feared came to pass.  In exchange for attacking the left, outlawing the KPD (Communists), abolishing the unions they made a deal with the devil.  They surrendered political power to the Nazis and Thyssen ended up in a concentration camp and the army leaders of the attempted putsch were hanged with piano wire.  It was an experience the bourgeoisie are not keen to repeat.

One can only suggest that Hirsh go back to school!

Tony Greenstein

Got to admire Tony. I suppose anyone can find the time to do a good bit of debunking but who has the patience?

I should mention that out of 33 comments to Hirsh's post not one criticised the compliment he paid to the nazi regime.

Hirsh on Hitler

I noticed a bizarre post on Engage recently which was a write up of a speech Engage's Dr David Hirsh gave to 6th formers at the Jews' Free School.  The talk was titled The Left and Israel and the stand out bit was this:

The Nazis are usually thought of as right wing.  But in some ways, they were also similar to the left.  They were radical, they wanted profound change.  They didn't like nationalism, they had a global programme for changing the whole world.  They were hostile to British and American imperialism and democracy.  They put their big political ambitions before the ‘pursuit of happiness’.  Hitler claimed to be the universalist and he said it was the Jews who wrecked society for everybody by following only  their own selfish interests.

I missed a trick here and thought this simply compared to Hirsh's likening of Joseph Massad to David Duke but Discredited Andrew in the Hasbara Four-Step post noticed something worse:

This is nuttier and more disturbing though, he's actually partially rehabilitating Nazism in order to make the comparison. There should be a special reward for going that bit further and saying something unnecessarily mad. Bad hasbara awards 2013?

I suppose to try to determine what Hirsh actually means by "nationalism", as in "The Nazis.....didn't like nationalism", would be an exercise in futility.  He claims himself to not be a zionist but I'm not aware of his ever offering a definition of zionism beyond "Israeli nationalism".

The Return of Moose Hall - Low on Politics, High on Life or er something

He's too modest is Mooser.   He had a blog some years ago which he abandoned for reasons known only to himself and his lawyer.  Well he's straightened out his legal issues, mostly, and he's back.  For a frequenter of and commenter at various political blogs there's not much politics going on at Moose Hall but he's been a good comrade and friend to Jews sans frontieres over the years and he gave us a nice little plug in his the first post on the resurrected Moose Hall:

Moosehall is Open!!!!

As anyone can plainly see, I am in the throes of another episode of scribenzi furiouso and have decided to re-open Moosehall.
It's probably the worst decision I have the capacity make at this time, which should be at least some reassurance to anybody who knows me.
Allow me to introduce myself (That voice! Where have I heard that voice?): I am Derbig Mooser.  And I might, nay, I will, add: none bigger around here!

Now, let us review the story of the first reincarnation  ("rein" is a light pink) of Moosehall, which took place as George Bush was about to invade Iraq:  Moosehall was bravely opened, and flew its freak flag high. I said many profound, insightful, intelligent and humorous things. Than I lost the password, than Blogger became part of Google. So I did the only sensible thing, and forgot all about it.  But that was 2003, and now it's 2013! What does that tell you?  That a kiss, is still a kiss? A sigh, still a sigh?  Well, podner, around here we think moonlight and love songs are never out of date!
And so Moosehall is officially open.  Let's upload.
Oh, wait, it's a blog, there's comment, I need a comment policy.  Ho-kay!  I can't do any better than adopt the one which has served  Mark Elf so well at his blog, the august and indispensable Jewes sans Frontieres  at which I am a barely-tolerated commenter:

No liars, time-wasters, or bigots!  Works for me. All right, start the presses!

That's a straight copy and paste so the eccentric spelling, typos and spelling mistakes are all Mooser's own.

Now, why did I say "He's too modest"?  That first post of the second incarnation was back in April and he's only just got round to telling us here.

Well, a belated welcome back, Mooser, but the belatedness is all your fault.

Solidarity with Palestinian Day of Rage - Demonstration in London Today 1 August 2013

Hope you will be able to come to this important protest – the JNF’s (Jewish National Fund) $4 billion "Blueprint Negev" project is central to the Prawer Plan: to ethnically cleanse Palestinian Bedouin from the area. For more on the Stop the JNF Campaign see www.stopthejnf.org. Solidarity with Palestinian Day of Rage against the ethnic cleansing Prawer Plan 1 August, 6pm, the Apartheid Israeli Embassy Kensington High Street, W8 5EDhttps://www.facebook.com/events/499609743448821/ Protest at the London Apartheid Israeli Embassy in solidarity with Palestinians on their next "Day of Rage" against the Prawer Plan to ethnically cleanse them.  On 1st August Palestinians will protest again against this racist plan, which was passed its first reading in the Knesset on 25th June. ·         The Plan aims to: confiscate 800,000 dunums of land in the Naqab desert ·         expel over 50,000 Palestinian Bedouins ·         demolish 35 unrecognized villages ·         confine 30% of Palestinian Bedouins in the Naqab to 1% of the land
This London protest was at the request of Palestinian citizens of Israel who are organising this day of action: "We call on international solidarity activists to organize demonstrations on the same day in their own cities, and to spread awareness of the biggest impending ethnic cleansing campaign against Palestinians by Israel since 1948 through writing petitions, sharing information on the Naqab and Prawer Plan, or by any other show of activism." www.alternativenews.org/english/index.php/politics/ activism/6787--call-for-action-stop-prawer-plan-.html
On July 15 Palestinians demonstrated from Bir Sabe’ to Jerusalem, West Bank to the Galilee, Haifa to Gaza. Dozens of Palestinians were either injured or arrested since July 15 by the Israeli forces. Throughout the past week protests have been constant within Palestine, with Beirut in Lebanon and Cairo in Egypt also joining in. For further details about the Day of Rage see: https://www.facebook.com/StopPrawerPlan Twitter: #AugustRage #StopPrawerPlan #الغضب_آب  #ريم_لن_برافر For further info on the London protest please contact: 07880 731 865 For further info on the Prawer Plan: "Demolition and Eviction of Bedouin Citizens of Israel in the Naqab(Negev) - The Prawer Plan" http://adalah.org/eng/?mod=articles&ID=1589

Who said "Land swap...precludes any possibility of a Palestinian State"?

Well it was Norman Finkelstein finding his old form in an interview with Jamie Stern-Weiner at the New Left Project:

Jeremy Ben-Ami, who heads J Street, the main liberal Zionist lobby in the U.S., welcomes renewed peace talks as a potentially "historic opportunity" to reach a two-state settlement. You've been a close observer of the peace process for more than two decades. Can renewed talks produce a "historic" moment, or should we expect more of the same?

When folks like Jeremy Ben-Ami speak of the "two-state solution", they are talking about two states divided by the pre-June 1967 border, with, they are always careful to add, land swaps. By "land swaps", they mean Israel’s annexation of the major settlement blocs and giving Palestinians some territory in return.  In fact the delineation of their proposed border is very clear. It's the route of the Wall. Israelis speak fairly openly of the Wall as the "future border", to quote Israel's current Minister of Justice Tzipi Livni.

That kind of two-state settlement precludes any possibility of a Palestinian state. Israeli retention of the settlement blocs of Ariel, Karnei Shomron and Ma'ale Adumim would trisect the West Bank, appropriate some of its most valuable land and resources and cut off East Jerusalem. When people talk about the terms of a final settlement they often focus on percentages—what percentage of the West Bank will Israel retain, and so on—which misses the point made by the Palestinian delegation to the Annapolis talks: it's not just about percentages. East Jerusalem comprises just 1% of the West Bank, but a Palestinian state in its absence is unthinkable. Greater East Jerusalem—the triangle going from East Jerusalem to Ramallah to Bethlehem—accounts for 40% of the Palestinian economy.

However, I agree with Ben-Ami that we are approaching a potentially historic moment. Why? Because Palestinians are now the weakest they have ever been.

Finkelstein identifies four factors colluding to put the Palestinians in their weakest ever position and he is withering in his criticism of the PA which is nice.  For me the most interesting bit is where he speaks of the fickle and therefore unpredictable nature of public opinion and behaviour in responding to events.  He uses two contrasting examples of the civil rights in the American South in the 1960s and Egypt today:

Anyone who predicts these things with any degree of confidence is a charlatan. The Montgomerybus boycott was completely spontaneous, as were the original student sit-ins in Greensboro. When Rosa Parks refused to give up her seat, the NAACP’s plan was to go through the legal system to get a favourable court ruling. What happened—a mass popular boycott—was spontaneous. Imagine these working people, walking to work or going in makeshift car pools for a year.  A year, getting up in the wee hours of the morning.  Who could have guessed that they would find the inner moral resources to make that kind of sacrifice?

So you can never predict these things. But we should also be careful to avoid predicting in the other direction. When I was speaking about changes in the Middle East the past couple of years, I always described developments in Egypt and Turkey as irreversible except in the event of a military coup in Egypt, which—I always added—I considered highly improbable. Why improbable? Because who would ever have thought that there would a popularly mandated military coup in Egypt? I could not, in my wildest imagination, predict that the secular liberal-left in Egypt would support a military coup. That's a shocker. The inaugural act of the putschists in Egypt was to shoot dead dozens of worshippers at 3.30am during morning prayers.  The secular liberal-left uttered not a word. Nothing. Who would have guessed that a year ago?

Insightful stuff. The whole thing is worth a read here.

SOAS Palestine Society 9th Annual Conference – Self-critique Two Decades After Oslo – 2013

On 5-6 October 2013, the Palestine Society at the School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS) in London will hold its ninth annual conference, Self-Critique Two Decades After Oslo.

Twenty years after the signing of the Oslo Accords, much continues to be written about the structural and subsequent failings of the Accords to achieve justice for the Palestinian people. While conventional views still regard Oslo as a winning formula that only suffered from a lack of implementation, critical analysis of the Oslo process agrees that the Accords only accelerated the Zionist settler colonial project, allowing Israel to lay siege and further expand its grip on Palestinian land, while expelling and destroying the lives of more Palestinians. This conference aims to move beyond this critical consensus and identify the internal failures prior to, and at the moment of, the conception of the Oslo Accords, as well as in its aftermath. In doing so, we will attempt to understand how Oslo has transformed Palestinian life and struggle. The conference situates itself within a long history of self-criticism after defeat – a self-criticism aimed at assessing the strategic failures of the movement, and formulating the necessary steps ahead. This is a self-criticism premised on a commitment to the political rebuilding of the Palestinian liberation movement, and the struggle against settler colonialism.

In its embrace of self-criticism, the conference will focus on the ways Palestinian leadership and elites have become embedded in the logic of settler colonialism, embraced neoliberal capitalism, and reproduced social and political accommodation of the Oslo process. However, it also aims to widen our lens, and examine the growing socialisation and reproduction of Oslo logics in Palestinian political and social life, and the ways in which Palestinian resistance against Oslo and Israel, and international solidarity with that resistance, has reproduced the very conditions it seeks to overturn. In particular, we hope to highlight the context and consequences of the re-orientation of the liberation struggle into a legal and rights-based approach; the political, geographical, and social separation of the Palestinian body politic in movement discourse and strategy; the proliferation of an unaccountable “political solution/vision market” and unchecked practices of solidarity; and growing alienation and distancing of Palestinians from others engaged in similar struggles against settler-colonialism.

With this conference, SOAS Palestine Society hopes to build on its long-standing commitment to rigorous movement thought and analysis in an emancipatory space.

Check the Conference Programme here: soaspalsoc.org/conference/programme/

 Illustration by Nidal El-Khairy (http://nidalelkhairy.blogspot.be/)

Four Step Hasbara - Fifth Anniversary

Well apologies to readers, especially those who said there should be a celebration on the fifth anniversary of the publication of Evildoer, Gabriel Ash's guide to the permanently vexed, How to make the case for Israel and win.  The publication date itself was 18th July 2008 - how time flies - so I missed the anniversary by a week.  Apologies again but here it is, again:

July 18, 2008

How to make the case for Israel and win

To the benefit of the many not-very-bright zionist wannabe apologists who read this blog assiduously, I decided to offer a clear and simple method of arguing the case for Israel. This clear and simple method has been distilled from a life spent listening to and reading Zionist propaganda. It is easy to follow and results are guaranteed or your money back.

So don't hesitate! Take advantage NOW of this revolutionary rhetorical system that will make YOU a great apologist for Israel in less time than it takes to shoot a Palestinian toddler in the eye.

Ready? 1..2..3..GO!

You need to understand just one principle:

The case for Israel is made of four propositions that should always be presented in the correct escalating order.

1. We rock
2. They suck
3. You suck
4. Everything sucks

That's it. Now you know everything that it took me a lifetime to learn. The rest is details; filling in the dotted lines.

You begin by saying how great Israel is. Israel want peace; Israel is the only democracy in the Middle East; the desert blooms; kibutz; Israelis invented antibiotics, the wheel, the E minor scale; thanks to the occupation Palestinians no longer live in caves; Israel liberates Arab women; Israel has the most moral army in the world, etc.

This will win over 50% of your listeners immediately. Don't worry about the factual content. This is about brand identity, not writing a PhD. Do you really think BP is 'beyond petroleum'?

Then you go into the second point: They suck. Here you talk about the legal system of Saudi Arabia, gay rights in Iran, slave trade in the Sudan, Mohammad Atta, the burqa, Palestinians dancing after 9/11, Arafat's facial hair, etc.

There is only one additional principle you need to understand here. It will separate you from the amateurs. You need to know your audience. If you've got a crowd already disposed to racist logic, go for it with everything you have. But if you get a liberal crowd, you need to sugar coat the racism a bit. Focus on women rights, human rights, religious tolerance, "clash of civilizations", terrorism, they teach their children to hate, etc. Deep down your audience WANTS to enjoy racism and feel superior. They just need the proper encouragement so they can keep their sophisticated self-image. Give them what they crave and they'll adore you! But be careful not to 'mix n match,' because it will cost you credibility.

When you're done, there will always be dead-enders insisting that abuse of gays in Iran does not justify ethnic cleansing in Palestine. Take a deep breath, and pull the doomsday weapon: You suck!

You're a Jew-hater, Arab-lover, anti-Semite, you're a pinko, a commie, a dreamer, a naive, a self-hater, you have issues, your mother worked for the Nazis, Prince Bandar buys you cookies, you forgot you were responsible for the holocaust, etc. The more the merrier. By the time you end this barrage, only a handful would be left standing. For mopping them up, you use the ultimate postmodern wisdom: Everything sucks.

War, genocide, racism, oppression are everywhere. From the Roma in Italy to the Native-Americans in the U.S., the weak are victimized. Why pick on Israel? It's the way of the world. Look! Right is only in question between equals in power; the strong do what they can and the weak suffer what they must. Ethics, schmethics. Life is a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing. Eat, drink! Carpe diem! The Palestinians would throw us into the sea if they could. Ha ha!

Trust me, that's as far as words can go. If you followed this method faithfully, you've done your work. You should leave the few who are still unconvinced to the forces of order.

Congratulations!
You are now ready to 
apologize for Israel like a pro.

Note that there was no update necessary for the hasbarules haven't changed a bit.

BDS, Threats and the Burdon of Proof

I posted a couple of days ago on Eric Burdon's cancellation of a gig in Israel. According to his management people they had "been receiving mounting pressure, including numerous threatening emails, daily" and said that "The last thing I intend do is put Eric in jeopardy.”

Well the hasbara machine had gone into overdrive with the Jewish Agency touting the notion that the BDS movement revolves around threatening behaviour.

In my post I mentioned that "I don't understand why these management people haven't published the threats or complained to the police." Now Electronic Intifada is making the same point but after some investigation:

The Electronic Intifada reached Elizabeth Freund, Burdon’s New York based press agent, by telephone this morning to ask about the nature of the threats and whether they had been reported to any law enforcement agency.

Freund told The Electronic Intifada she had no information and referred further inquiries to Burdon’s “management.” Freund said that she would forward The Electronic Intifada’s emailed inquiry to Burdon’s manager.

Two additional emails sent to Marianna Burdon, at an address posted on Eric Burdon’s official website, have received no response.

 It's sad that Eric Burdon would rather have people believe that he didn't make a moral decision to boycott the last of colonial settler states but where's the evidence that he was threatened with anything other than a stain on his reputation?

Most Israelis support whatever Netanyahu supports

Here's a ludicrous report in The Jewish Chronicle headed, Majority of Israelis back any peace deal.  Wow! They're so yearning for peace those Israelis.  So what's all this about?

Over 50 per cent of Israelis would support any peace agreement submitted to a referendum by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, a recent poll has found.

Out of the 511 participants, 39 per cent said they would be in favour of any plan, 16 per cent said they would probably be in favour and 20 per cent were undecided. Twenty per cent would vote against the plan and 5 per cent would be likely to vote against a plan.

Do you have to look closely to see that the poll is actually about peace per se? It's about whatever peace deal Netanyahu might come up with.

That's presumably not peace according to most people's reckoning. So what's the JC on about? This appears to be one of those zionist briefings where the faithful are being encouraged to promote the zionist "no partners for peace" line.

To the Wizard of Oz, a Son?

I just saw the following Thomas Paine quote:

“something kept behind a curtain, about which there is a great deal of bustle and fuss, and a wonderful air of seeming solemnity; but when, by any accident, the curtain happens to be open and the company see what it is, they burst into laughter.”

It's actually from Mike Marqusee's post titled, Thomas Pain on the "master fraud" of monarchy.

I assumed that, L.Frank Baum, the writer of The Wonderful Wizard of Oz must have been influenced by Thomas Paine but apparently not, not according to two Wikipedia entries here and here, anyway.

Eric Burdon cancels Israel gig but why?

The Independent is reporting that Eric Burdon has cancelled an appearance in Israel because of "threats".

 in a statement, Mr Burdon’s management, said: “We’ve been receiving mounting pressure, including numerous threatening emails, daily. The last thing I intend do is put Eric in jeopardy.” The nature of the threats is unclear, but according to Israel Radio this morning, Mr Burdon was not willing to risk his life to come to Israel.

 I can understand a person fearing for their safety given the reporting on Israel but I don't understand why these management people haven't published the threats or complained to the police.

Also, The Independent managed to open its article with a major howler.

He once sang, ‘You Gotta Get Outta This Place,’ but now Eric Burdon is not even turning up at all having deciding to withdraw from a planned concert in Israel

The song was We Gotta Get Out of This Place . Maybe the word "we" got nabbed for all that Royal nonsense.

Eric Burdon was just about to be on BBC Radio Scotland but not a word about Israel. Maybe they were too scared.

California Prisoners' Hunger Strike

Here's a statement from the International Jewish Anti-Zionist Network:

As California prisoners' massive hunger strike against long-term solitary confinement, group punishment, and other cruel and inhuman policies of the CDCR (California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation) enters its second week, Governor Jerry Brown is on a two-week vacation to Germany and Ireland.  To add insult to injury, it includes a visit to the Dachau concentration camp.

It is shocking for the Governor to have chosen this time to go on vacation while the CDCR refuses to meet the hunger strikers' five just demands that would end the torture of prisoners in the state he is supposed to be responsible for governing.  The International Jewish Anti-Zionist Network is outraged that Brown dares to exploit the Nazi genocide to distract from his complicity in the repression and racism against prisoners, disproportionately people of color and low income people, women and transgender people, in order to make money for the lucrative prison industry in California. 

The racism that allows Brown to be silent about a massive hunger strike is the same racism that allows for the massive and disproportionate incarceration of Black and Brown people in California and nationwide. "No other country in the world imprisons so many of its racial or ethnic minorities. The United States imprisons a larger percentage of its Black population than South Africa did at the height of apartheid." To bring these statistics closer to home, "In Washington, D.C. ... it is estimated that three out of four young black men (and nearly all those in the poorest neighborhoods) can expect to serve time in prison."

The rest of the statement is on the IJAN site.

Blair's Hypocrisy and the Riddle of the Sphinx

From Private Eye magazine number 1344:

The same page (5) has a brief summary of Blair's love affair with democracy in Egypt:

Who better to offer a hopeful sermon to strife-torn Egypt than roving Middle East vicar, Tony Blair?

"I am a strong supporter of democracy," the great peacemaker wrote in Sunday's Observer.  "This struggle matters to us.  The good news is that there are millions of modern and open-minded people out there.   They need to know we are on their side, their allies, prepared to pay the price to be there with them."

The former PM knows Egypt well, of course.  As we pointed out after the 2011 revolution that toppled president Hosni Mubarak, Blair was happy to take his Christmas hols in the country no fewer than five times between 2000 and 2005 when the Egyptian dictator's regime was at its zenith.  At the first of those visits, Blair was "a guest of the Egyptian government at two private government villas at Sharm-el-Sheikh", according to his entry in the register of MPs' interests, while on at least one subsequent trip Mubarak paid for the flights.  Can this be what the vicar means about showing pro-democracy Egyptians that "we are on their side" and, er, "prepared to pay the price to be there"?

Of course as neoconservatism's ambassador at large, indeed, the man who puts the Con in NeoCon, Blair can excuse anything that doesn't quite tally with his professed commitment to democracy.  And here's a little nugget reported in The Observer (Guardian online)  that the Eye missed out:

"I am a strong supporter of democracy. But democratic government doesn't on its own mean effective government. Today efficacy is the challenge." 

Leaving it to The Observer to note:

Having taken this country to war in Iraq in 2003 despite huge public opposition, including a march by more than a million people through London, Blair now argues that shows of public unrest such as that in Egypt – fuelled and organised through social media – cannot be ignored.

I don't know, maybe there is a certain consistency there.  Lots of people on the streets in Egypt, send in the army.  Lots of people on the streets of the UK, send in the army...to Iraq.

PS: I was looking on google for a quote about Blair from former Tory MP, Matthew Parris.  I couldn't find it but here's Parris on Blair from Wikipedia:

I believe Tony Blair is an out-and-out rascal, terminally untrustworthy and close to being unhinged. I said from the start that there was something wrong in his head, and each passing year convinces me more strongly that this man is a pathological confidence-trickster. To the extent that he ever believes what he says, he is delusional. To the extent that he does not, he is an actor whose first invention — himself — has been his only interesting role.

What I find interesting about this quote in the Matthew Parris Wikipedia entry is that the quote itself says nothing specific about Parris though it does sum up Blair.  It would be more appropriate for Blair's own entry.  It appears that hatred of Blair is so widespread some people will use any outlet to vent it.