Israel’s botched raid against the Gaza-bound humanitarian flotilla on May 31 is the latest sign that Israel is on a disastrous course that it seems incapable of reversing. The attack also highlights the extent to which Israel has become a strategic liability for the United States. This situation is likely to get worse over time, which will cause major problems for Americans who have a deep attachment to the Jewish state. Read more »
[Schumer's] talk covered several foreign policy issues, including Iran and Israel/Palestine. When the topic turned to the Israeli attack on the Gaza aid flotilla Schumer began by explaining that the “Palestinian people still don’t believe in the Jewish state, in a two-state solution”. But that is not all, he continued: “They don’t believe in the Torah, in David.”
IOA Editor: In a more-or-less decent society, free of racism, where basic concepts of justice form the foundation of thought and public speech of political leaders – none of this could happen without public apologies and resignation. Not so in the US, guardian of the “Free World” and champion of “Democracy.” Read more »
What to make of the rush of Jewish leaders — from AIPAC to a Los Angeles city councilman — coming forward in the past few weeks to divulge their role in genocide denial? … How to account for these sudden confessions? A pang of remorse? A cleansing of the soul? I’m afraid not. These aren’t confessions, at all. Rather, they are reminders of the debt Turkey owes Israel — and they come with teeth bared.
MORE: US Jewish groups skip meet with Turkish officials Read more »
Fifty five percent of Jewish Israelis said they believe a two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is essential to the survival of Israel as a Jewish democratic state. However, 49 percent disagreed that settlements pose a threat to Israel and “feed the delegitimization process” that Israel currently faces. Read more »
If a people who so recently experienced such unspeakable inhumanities cannot understand the injustice and suffering its territorial ambitions are inflicting, what hope is there for the rest of us?
IOA Editor: While Israel’s morality (inherent, past, other?) is a figment of Siegman’s imagination, this is an important article in that it makes a powerful connection between the Holocaust and Israel’s Occupation and Gaza crimes. Read more »
One of this country’s most important and courageous journalists said something terribly wrong, was massively criticized, apologized for it, and was forced into retirement. Exactly the way it should be, right? Wrong. It’s hard to even chart out the hypocrisy of the whole affair. Read more »
The main source of Jewish hatred and bigotry against Arabs today comes from the orthodox, and especially the modern orthodox… The Israeli religious Zionism that has produced the settler movement is unaffected by universal moral values…
IOA Editor: Despite the sentimentalist views on historical Orthodox Judaism, important criticism of the US Orthodox Jewish community, pointing to it as the source of Arab hate. Surprisingly, the writer doesn’t mention that this is not an ‘argument’ but an outright attack on a Palestinian woman whose Sheikh-Jarrah house has been occupied by Jewish settlers. Read more »
[F]rom a military and intelligence-sharing perspective, the Obama administration is the best U.S. administration Israel has ever had. Administration critics were trying to distort that, he said, and Obama and his Jewish supporters in Congress needed to set the record straight.
IOA Editor: The more things change, the more they remain the same. So much for “Hope,” so much for “Change”. Read more »
A well-known American Jewish attorney who worked to deport former Nazis from the US is urging American officials to bar former judge Richard Goldstone from entering the country over his rulings during South Africa’s apartheid regime.
IOA Editor: Revenge… He was allowed to attend his grandson’s Bar-Mitzva, but we’ll block his entry to the US. Read more »
Dershowitz accused anarchist Jewish linguist Noam Chomsky of creating a hostile atmosphere among many groups in the United States and in its academic campuses. They are creating a narrative which always presents Israel as a Nazi occupier, he said, while shutting their eyes to facts contradicting those same claims, like the ties between Jerusalem’s Grand Mufti Haj Muhammed Amin al-Husseini and Nazi leader Adolf Hitler during World War II.
IOA Editor: At no time did Noam Chomsky refer to Israel as a “Nazi occupier.” As the record amply shows, “Israeli occupier” is sufficiently cruel. Linking the Jerusalem Mufti to Hitler does not logically contradict any characterization of the Israeli occupation. On the Mufti-Hitler issue, see Gilbert Achcar: Israel’s Propaganda War – Blame the Grand Mufti.
Dershowitz’ desperately warped arguments are interesting: “legal terror,” for example. As a prominent lawyer, one would expect him to appreciate that “terrorism” is generally understood to mean “violent acts which are intended to create fear (terror), are perpetrated for an ideological goal… and deliberately target or disregard the safety of non-combatants (civilians)” (Wikipedia). This definition is sufficiently broad to cover both the bombing of Gaza residential neighborhoods and the blowing up of Tel Aviv buses. On the other hand, legal challenges, unpleasant as they might be to the receiving party, are designed to be countered and resolved, in a civilized manner, in a court of law – something which an army of Israeli lawyers, and international supporters like Dershowitz, are working hard to block.
On “Delegitimization:” Conveniently, Israel’s ‘supporters’ equate criticism of Israeli actions — mostly, directly connected to the Occupation, and the Occupation itself — with denial of its right to exist. This is an old Hasbara trick: You criticize us, you’re really saying Israel has no right to exist. Left out of the discussion is “The right to exist as what?” As an occupying state? An Apartheid state? The term “delegitimization” is actually turned on its head: It is the Israelis who are attempting to delegitimize their critics by calling them “delegitimizers,” trying to blur the distinctions between “delegitimizers” and anti-Semites, consistent with old Israeli propaganda practices: If you criticize us, you’re either an anti-Semite — and Dershowitz’ reference to Nazism is designed to do just that — or you’re a sick, “self-hating” Jew. Chomsky, Finkelstein, and this writer, born to Jewish mothers, must be the latter.
For more on the important question of legitimacy of the state, and how it applies to Israel and other nation-states, see Noam Chomsky, Gilbert Achcar: On the Legitimacy of the State. More on “Delegitimization“ Read more »
