Zionists Out of the Peace Movement

There were other voices in the days of the prophets. The prophets Amos, Elijah, Isaiah, and Jeremiah, and all the rest, were opposed, generation after generation, by prophets who belonged to the royal courts, who assured the king that his conduct was beyond reproach. The biblical prophets were harassed as traitors ... While the official soothsayers denounced the enemies of the king, the prophets whom we revere followed after Nathan, who dared to confront King David with murdering Uriah and stealing his wife. Nathan defended this Hittite stranger ... "You are the man," he said to David: you are morally responsible.


Though you pray at length,
I will not listen.
Your hands are full of blood.

--The Book of Isaiah, Chapter 1.

Just less than a year after Israel launched its deadly Hanukkah Massacre against the densely populated open-air prison that is Gaza, leading lights of Ann Arbor's Jewish community once again felt compelled to show themselves as bloody-handed prophets of the "royal courts" by mounting another effort to disparage truly prophetic voices in their midst.

I'm referring here to Art Aisner's front-page story in this month's issue of the Washtenaw Jewish News: "False witnesses." You may find evidence in Aisner's story that members of Jewish Witnesses for Peace and Friends (JWPF) are flawed and frail human beings--as are we all--but you will search in vain in Aisner's 3400-word piece to find any conclusive evidence that JWPF's witness is false.

For instance, Aisner claims: "the core of the group remains committed to a belief that not just Israelis, but all Jews who support a Jewish national home, are responsible for inflicting tragedy upon tragedy on Palestinians." Assuming Aisner is correct, it is unclear how that marks JWPF members as false witnesses. Would Aisner make the same claim about Rabbi Abraham Heschel?

In The Prophets, Heschel wrote: "Above all, the prophets remind us of the moral state of a people: Few are guilty, but all are responsible. ... In a community not indifferent to suffering, uncompromisingly impatient with cruelty and falsehood, continually concerned for God and every man, crime would be infrequent rather than common" (emphasis added). Who can deny that if the American Jewish community was not actively complicit in Palestinian suffering and did not enable and engage in Zionist cruelty and falsehood that the daily crimes perpetrated by and on behalf of the Jewish State would soon cease?

In 1971, Richard Nixon's "Plumbers" broke into the offices of the psychiatrist of Pentagon whistleblower Daniel Ellsberg "to get a 'mother lode' of information about Mr. Ellsberg's mental state, to discredit him." I imagine that Aisner wishes he had that type of 'access' because a significant part of his article smacks of "Plumber" journalism. For example, there's this: "Herskovitz acknowledges regularly attending sessions with a therapist over the years, but insists he isn't crazy."

Like Ellsberg and Herskovitz, tens of millions of Americans have sought out the aid of a psychotherapist; undoubtedly, many have done so for extended periods of time. So, what kind of person is Aisner that he resorts to innuendo to reinforce the "cruelty and falsehoods" of someone like Stephen Pastner whose "caricature depictions of the protesters ... honestly [sic] question some members' sanity?"

To his credit though Aisner lets Herskovitz take a crack at this "cheap diversion of the public's attention." The purpose of this, Herskovitz notes, is to send the message: "Pay no attention to the Israeli atrocities, but focus on Henry so nobody wants to take up the issue."

Aisner also resorts to innuendo when it comes to Herskovitz's name and attendance at Beth Israel Congregation (BIC). Aisner writes: "Although he claims to have attended services at the synagogue he now pickets, an initial search revealed no member by that name. Perhaps it is because for much of his time in Ann Arbor the Pittsburg [sic] native was known by his given [sic] name, Henry Henry." Perhaps, it's because of Aisner's sleight-of-hand of slipping from attending services to membership, as if they were same. Further, the surname Herskovitz received when he was born was "Herskovitz." It shouldn't have been too hard for Aisner to sleuth this out but it must have better suited his purposes to raise rather than dispel doubts.

The discerning reader is also left to wonder why Aisner searched BIC records for "Henry Herskovitz" but, apparently, not for "Henry Henry." It's seems reasonable to conclude that, if it were true, Aisner would dutifully report that there was no "Henry Henry" in the records, either. So, did Aisner find (and fail to report) what he didn't want to find--a record that Herskovitz attended BIC's services when his name was Henry Henry?

As part of his effort to call into question Herskovitz's "true motives," Aisner also quotes BIC member Dan Cutler: " 'I've heard a pretty wide range of opinions about the Middle East [in the congregation] including no lack of people very critical of the Israeli government' ... But the picketers don't care about actual opinions among real people in the congregation, he contends." This reminded me of the bit from the first Blues Brothers movie when Elwood asks the proprietress of an establishment he hopes will book his band, "What kind of music do you usually have here?" The woman proudly replies: "Oh, we got both kinds. We got country and western." BIC is just as diverse: They have Zionists who are critical of Israel and Zionists who are not-so-much critical of Israel. Vive la différence!

If Rabbi Rob Dobrusin is to be believed, it is precisely because of the "actual opinions among real people in the congregation" that BIC is a fitting site for a protest. As Dobrusin writes in the Ann Arbor News in 2007: "there is one general statement which I can make on behalf of the Congregation - Beth Israel Congregation affirms without any hesitation or equivocation the legitimacy of the existence of the State of Israel as a Jewish State ... No matter how long the protests continue, this will never change." Anyone else hear echoes of George Wallace: "Segregation now, segregation tomorrow, segregation forever"?

In Aisner's piece, Stephen Pastner also complains: "The thing that twinges me is that it's the impropriety of doing it in front of a place of worship". Would Pastner hesitate to protest outside a local church that advocated stripping Americans Jews of their US citizenship? How about one that supported the dissolution of Israel? I doubt Pastner would bleat much about the "impropriety" of protest then.

Arguably, institutions and individuals who claim to deal in values and ethics deserve to be held to a higher standard of conduct. Nor are such protests inconsistent with religious tradition. The Old Testament tells us that Jeremiah stood "in the gate of the LORD'S house" and rebuked Israel. As Abraham Heschel explains:

The prophet knew that religion could distort what the Lord demanded ... To the people, religion was Temple, priesthood, incense: "This is the Temple of the Lord, the Temple of the Lord, the Temple of the Lord" (Jer. 7:4). Such piety Jeremiah brands as fraud and illusion. "Behold you trust in deceptive words to no avail," he calls (Jer. 7:8). Worship preceded or followed by evil acts becomes an absurdity. The holy place is doomed when people indulge in unholy deeds.

BIC's support of Jewish supremacism in Palestine is indeed an evil act and an unholy deed. In 2006, as Israel devastated Lebanon, killing hundreds and wounding thousands, BIC waved the flag (Israeli, that is) and prayed "for those who defend Israel." BIC attendees have assaulted JWPF members because of their criticism of Israel (in his search of official records Aisner somehow missed this). BIC spreads falsehoods about the vigils. They send their children to Israel and pose them with armed Israeli soldiers. And Rabbi Dobrusin has offered a halachic justification of torture from the bima. Yet, none of this "twinges" Stephen Pastner or interests Art Aisner.

Speaking of records, Aisner went so far as to get records of Sol Metz's divorce, as if this information was somehow relevant to Metz's position on Israel. He brings it up, in part at least, to tag Metz as a hypocrite for protesting the pro-Israel activities of the Jewish Federation but Aisner, apparently, has to invent some of his "facts" in order to accomplish that.

Aisner has Metz going "to the local Jewish Federation for help with clothing and other needs for his family" after the divorce. But in an e-mail sent to Aisner after the publication of his story, Metz makes it clear that "I did not go anywhere for help with clothing during that or any other time. Rosemary [his ex-wife] did go with my opposition." Commenting on Aisner's assertion that Metz is "aware of the hypocrisy, but remains unfazed by it," Metz wrote, "I guess that your lie [about seeking help from the Jewish Federation] was an attempt to set up this whopper."

Marcia Federbush's divorce of twenty years ago is also grist for Aisner's mill as is a very abbreviated account of Katherine [sic] Wilkerson's criminal trial and firing from Packard Community Clinic (PCC). Aisner writes: "Wilkerson was acquitted by a jury in 2007, but she was fired a year later over a contract dispute."

In fact, Dr. Wilkerson was fired about two months after her acquittal because she refused to consent to a gag rule. In a letter to PCC Executive Director Kim Kratz from the Legal Director of the American Civil Liberties Union of Michigan, Michael Steinberg characterizes the gag rule as "extremely broad" and said it "poses serious civil liberties implications for the free expression rights of employees" and "could prevent an [employee] from participating in virtually any political demonstration outside of work that has nothing to do with work."

The ACLU urged the PCC to remove the offending contract provision and stated that any employees no longer working at the clinic because of refusing to agree to the gag rule should be "given the opportunity to return to work upon signing a revised agreement." Wilkerson was never given this opportunity.

Steinberg also writes, "I understand that individuals were threatening to withhold contributions or patient referrals because of the controversial speech of one of your doctors, Catherine Wilkerson, about Israel and Palestine." Now, what kind of people would cut off funding and patients for a non-profit community medical clinic that was founded to serve needy, vulnerable people? What kind of cowards would quietly submit to such blackmail? These are not questions Aisner is interested in.

Aisner is interested in the Greens though--when it fits his agenda, that is. Although Aimee Smith and Michelle Kinnucan were duly elected, he characterizes their ascension "to leadership positions in the local Green Party" as an example of JWPF's ability "to disrupt a few Ann Arbor institutions where you'd least expect." It shouldn't have been too unexpected or much of a disruption though since the Green Party of the United States went on record in 2005 (before the alleged Smith-Kinnucan coup) as calling "for divestment from and boycott of the State of Israel until such time as the full individual and collective rights of the Palestinian people are realized."

Aisner implies that under Smith and Kinnucan "issues like the environment, instant run-off voting, and domestic social justice" were sidelined as the "the party quickly became laser focused on Palestinian rights." It's funny then that during this time the local party did such things as supporting the United ENDA campaign and maintaining a presence at Ann Arbor's annual environmental Green Fair.

You can also read Smith's 2006 interview with Ann Arbor's own (but not-so-homeless) "Homeless Dave." There, she speaks articulately about Palestine but also about things such as depleted uranium, food localism, Bahro's concept of "exterminism," and the "Green Revolution." All in all, not a very laser-like focus on Palestine, I'm afraid.

On the local Greens, Aisner also quotes Peter Schermerhorn of the sour grapes brigade: "It was very difficult for the Greens to get any traction locally since we were blamed for losing the 2000 election for Gore and we were building it back ... But it's gone, and it's been gone ever since they [Smith and Kinnucan] were put in charge." Schermerhorn fails to mention that the Huron Valley Greens were moribund and not even meeting regularly when Smith, Kinnucan, and others revived the local organization in late 2005. Schermerhorn seemed to acknowledge this in an Ann Arbor News article by Aisner's former colleague, Tom Gantert. In the July 1, 2006 piece, Schermerhorn is quoted as saying: "Some joined recently ... Some have been members for years. They've definitely perked up the energy level and, to some degree, redirected it.''

It bears mentioning that Aisner's article also has a photo of Smith (who is not a Muslim, as Aisner ever so helpfully points out, and has never claimed to be one, as Aisner does not point out) wearing hijab while, according to the caption, scolding "the [Celebrate Israel Day] crowd, 'Stop pretending you're from Arabia. Be proud of your European roots.' " To get his apparent point across that Smith is a hypocrite for wearing the hijab while taking Jews to task for pretending to be a Semitic people, Aisner depends upon the inability or unwillingness of his readers to distinguish between solidarity and theft/appropriation.

On the subject of Jewish theft/appropriation it will suffice for present purposes to quote Columbia University associate professor Joseph Massad, citing Original Sins: Reflections on the History of Zionism and Israel by Israeli scholar Benjamin Beit-Hallahmi:

The naming of the new Jew (Beit-Hallahmi refers to the new Jew as the "anti-Jew") Sabra is consistent with Zionism's interest in nature and geography. Not only is the new Jew a hard fruit to pick, but he also grows in the desert, the product of a new geography. His mother is nature and the land of Israel. His name is part and parcel of the geographic, historical and cultural appropriation of Palestine by Zionism. That the very name of the new Jew is Arabic is no more of an inconsistency than the future Israeli cultural theft and appropriation of falafil and hummus (traditional Palestinian and Levantine Arab dishes) as Israeli Jewish dishes or dabkah (traditional Palestinian and Levantine Arab line dancing) as Israeli Jewish folk dancing.

I have by no means addressed every omission, distortion, factual error, or hare-brained notion expressed by JWPF opponents in Aisner's piece but before I end I want to take on one of David Shtulman's inanities. Herr Shtulman whines: "There's a sense of entitlement they have that everything they want to do is okay, and I don't think the Jewish community needs to accept it."

As the article makes clear, the relevant "everything they want to do" is to speak out against the organized Jewish community's support for Israel. And it must aggravate poor Shtulman and his ilk that there is an "entitlement" to that, it's called the First Amendment and Zionists haven't succeeded in killing it off yet. Until they do, the bloody-handed prophets of the "royal courts" will undoubtedly continue to wail and gnash their teeth as long as someone has the courage and integrity to criticize Israel's evil acts and unholy deeds and those who are complicit in them.

Labels: Beth Israel, Jewish Witnesses for Peace and Friends, Zionism

Below are two excerpts from a recent Atlantic Monthly interview with Jeremy Ben-Ami, executive director of J Street, which bills itself as "the political arm of the pro-Israel, pro-peace movement." "JG" is interviewer Jeffrey Goldberg and Ben-Ami is "JB".

JG: Are you a Zionist?

JB: I am a Zionist personally. I am deeply committed to a Jewish home, to a democratic home, to a Jewish Israel. I'm deeply committed to that and you know my family background.

JG: Ben-Ami is a Jewish name, I think.

JB: Exactly. My great-grandparents were in the First Aliyah, my grandparents founded Tel Aviv, my father was in the Irgun. I've lived in Israel myself. I have 500 cousins there. I'm deeply committed to the safety, the sanctity and the security of a Jewish home in the state of Israel.

JG: Is J Street a Zionist organization?

JB: Well, we are unabashedly for a Jewish home in the land of Israel, that there should be a Jewish home that is a democracy, that has a Jewish character and a Jewish flavor and where the law of return is a fact -- I know you're having a disagreement with Bernie (Avishai) right now. I don't even know what he said about the right of return.

JG: That he wants it repealed.

JB: Well I don't agree with that, I certainly don't agree with that. I think that the notion is that there should be a homeland that is a Jewish homeland. That is the founding principle of J Street. The question is, how do we preserve it? That's where we seem to be getting attacked. Our view is that in order to preserve this, there just simply has to be an independent state for the Palestinians next door, and that's where they will live. And we live in Israel and we live there and there's always going to be a minority in Israel that is not Jewish and we need to treat them like equal citizens and value their participation in our democracy, but it is a Jewish home. This is the Jewish homeland. ...

JB: J Street officially will not use the term "One-State Solution." That is an oxymoron because it is a one-state nightmare. That is the thing we are most opposed to -- moving in a one-state direction.

JG: A nightmare for practical reasons or a nightmare for moral reasons?

JB: A nightmare for the Jewish people. There would be no more Israel. One state is not a solution, one state is a dissolution.

JG: The thing I'm worried about with the conference is that I think most of your supporters are well-meaning, left-of-center Jews who love Israel and are tortured by the various dilemmas, who do stay awake at night worrying about this. But there are others who are glomming on to you guys as a cover, just using you to advance another agenda entirely.

JB: I hope that we have a very strong left flank that attacks us, that Jewish Voice for Peace and other groups that are consistently upset with us for backing Howard Berman's sanctions plan and for refusing to embrace the Goldstone report and for standing up for the right of Israel to defend itself or for its military aid -- I hope we get attacked from the left because I would characterize J Street as the mainstream of the American Jewish community.

JG: You believe that you're at the center of American Jewish thought?

JB: I believe that we are at the center. The Marty Peretzes and the Michael Goldfarbs and the Lenny Ben-Davids are on the right, to the far right, and there are people to our left, and we are in the middle trying to put forward a thoughtful, moderate, mainstream point of view about how to save Israel as a Jewish home.

Labels: Israel, Jewish supremacism, US politics, Zionism

I recently looked at the archived version of the Chicago Tribune article, "Barack Obama: The First Jewish President?" and decided to Google the title. Below are links to two of the articles that came up.

• "Some Chicago Jews say Obama is actually the 'first Jewish president' " by Natasha Mozgovaya in Haaretz.
• "Barack Obama: 'America’s First Jewish President' " by James Petras.

Labels: Jews, Obama, US politics

This post was gathering cobwebs in the drafts folder. I last worked on it on January 20, 2009. Wadad Abed did not support or attend the Batsheva Dance Company protest.

Dear Wadad Abed:

You joined a group of Zionist Jewish women in a Hasbara operation called Zeitouna. As a result of that experience you rejected your old notion "that the Holocaust was ... used to justify taking away" Palestine and you, instead, embraced tenets of the Holocaust Industry and told the Detroit Jewish News that, as a result, you "now accept[ed] Israel's right to exist."

Perhaps emboldened by your conversion to the Zionist cause, you teamed up with Zionist Aaron Ahuvia, the national secretary of Brit Tzedek v'Shalom, as the sole Palestinian in the Interfaith Council for Peace and Justice's "Imagine Process" and gave the thugs in the organization's leadership cover to make permanent the "suspension" of its Middle East Task Force and the ouster of the task force Chair, a fellow Palestinian.

In 2007, you became, literally, the voice of Zionist propagandist Laurie White at the Ann Arbor premiere of the Zeitouna movie. In 2008, you were reelected to the Board of Directors of the University Musical Society (UMS), when interviewed on the radio in connection with a concert hosted by the UMS you identified yourself not as a Palestinian, nor as a refugee but merely as "an immigrant [who] came here forty years ago." Shortly thereafter when local activists and the Palestinian Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions National Committee (BNC) called for a boycott and protest of the Jerusalem Symphony Orchestra, hosted by the UMS, you were silent and missing-in-action.

After weeks of relentless Israeli bombing in the Gaza strip that has already killed hundreds of people, most of them civilians or policemen, and injured thousands more, many of whom may yet die for lack of medical supplies and facilities, your words and actions have never stung more painfully. And yet, now, you have signed an open letter to Barack Obama where, among other things, you say: "Almost certainly, the only hope of a lasting solution is a single state in Israel/Palestine, committed to the civil and human rights of all peoples within its boundaries, irrespective of religion or ethnicity" and "It is time for constructive disengagement from Israel, financial, diplomatic, military. What worked in the case of South Africa, divestment and pressure, may finally work in the Middle East."

Does this mean that you have trimmed your sails and, for the sake of mere appearences you are acting like you care about the people in your homeland more than friendships with Zionists? Does this mean that, unlike Dr. King, your sense of justice is adjustable to the tenor of the times?

Or does it mean you have finally cast off the blinders that prevented you from seeing or acknowledging the harm you have done to the Palestinian liberation struggle and the people you have hurt? Will you now speak loudly and work conscientiously in support of Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions against Israel and in particular, the boycott and protest of the Israeli apartheid Batsheva Dance Company, which is to be hosted by the UMS next month? Or will you find excuses to nurse old grievances and to continue to collaborate with Zionists?

Update: It turns that Wadad Abed also donated $250 to John D. Dingell For Congress Committee on March 24, 2006. This is the same Dingell who has openly bragged: "I yield to no man in my support for Israel. I have voted for hundreds of billions of dollars for it over the years I have served here" and "... during my 50 years in Congress, I have proudly supported more than $300 billion dollars in aid for the State of Israel."

See also

• "The Long Decline of Wadad Abed"
• "Israel vs. South Africa: Reflecting on cultural boycott" by Omar Barghouti
• "Some Important Developments in the Movement for a Cultural Boycott Against South Africa" by the United Nations Centre against Apartheid

Labels: BDS, Interfaith Council for Peace and Justice, Obama, Palestine, Wadad Abed, Zionism

Writing to the Ann Arbor Peace list, one of the (mis)leaders of the local peace biz, Chuck Warpehoski, takes a jab at JWPF leader Henry Herskovitz regarding last week's vigil report. Warpehoski writes:

1. Checking whether or not Temple Beth Emeth displayed a "torture is wrong" banner does take doing a bit more work than sitting at a computer, but it's not hard to verify. All it takes is a walk or drive to the building. As of today, the "torture is wrong" banner is still hanging at Temple Beth Emeth/St. Clare's Episcopal Church.

2. Regarding Beth Israel Congregation's opposition to torture, I see no reason to believe that a survey of citizens of Israel would have the same results as a survey of American Jews in general or Beth Israel Congregation members in particular. In fact, last year Beth Israel Congregation participated in the Rabbis for Human Rights "Honor the image of God: Stop Torture Now" campaign. This year, Rabbi Dobrusin has submitted a joint Op-Ed column to the Detroit Free Press along with Imam Dawud Walid and Bishop Wendell Gibbs calling for an investigation of U.S.-sponsored torture since 9/11 as well as stronger U.S. laws banning torture.

This year the Jewish community has had the highest participation in Torture Awareness Month activities of any faith tradition. A much higher participation of the synagogues have participated than the churches, sanghas, mosques, or other congregations.

But hey, since when has Henry let a few facts stand in the way of a good rant?

In reality, simply walking by Genesis--the name of the building shared by TBE and St. Clare's--is not sufficient to verify that TBE rather than St. Clare's put up a banner. In his report, Henry doesn't dispute that there is a banner present in front of Genesis but claims that TBE is apparently not on any NRCAT endorsement list accessible by Google. As of Tuesday, that was still true. Eleven Ann Arbor congregations are listed from last year but none of them are Jewish. JWPF, however, comes up as a member of NRCAT and is listed on the 2008 participating congregations list of 5/29/08.

As for "facts," Warpehoski claims that "This year the Jewish community has had the highest participation in Torture Awareness Month activities of any faith tradition" but he doesn't offer any evidence for this. Is he including JWPF? Even if his assertion is true, it doesn't erase the fact that last year Rabbi Dobrusin, from the bima, made a case for justifying torture as self-defense under Jewish religious law. Nor does it change the fact that the only anti-torture banner that has ever flown outside Beth Israel Congregation--'spiritual' (I use the term loosely) home of ICPJ president Ruth Kraut--is the one carried by JWPF members.

Warpehoski claims to see no reason to suppose that American Jewish support of torture parallels Israeli Jewish support. Consider the following points that Warpehoski can't see:

• When, in Senate confirmation hearings, former Republican attorney general Michael Mukasey, "a believer and devout Jew," refused to declare waterboarding illegal under US law, his nomination was was rescued by two Jewish Democrats on the Senate Judiciary Committee, Diane Feinstein and Charles Schumer, who voted with Republicans to send the nomination to the full Senate. They were joined there by Joseph Lieberman, another Jew who voted against his caucus. Mukasey was confirmed by a 53-40 vote--"the narrowest margin to confirm an attorney general in more than 50 years."
• Alan Dershowitz is one of the world's foremost apologists for torture and for Israel. Need I say he is Jewish?
  
• Leaders of Reform Judaism movement admit: "Jewish law presents some conflicting principles that effect how Jews view torture."
• In December 2007, Marc Perelman, wrote an article entitled "As Torture Debate Heats Up, Jewish Groups Stay Mum." Here are a few select passages from that article:

The American Jewish Committee last week became the first, and to date only, mainstream Jewish group to give strong public backing to proposed legislation that would ban the use of torture by American military, intelligence and law-enforcement personnel ...

Most other Jewish organizations with prominent advocacy efforts in Washington, however, have been noticeably absent from efforts to push through the anti-torture legislation ...

"There was a shocking silence of the Jewish community on the issue of torture, and there is still a lacuna on this vital issue, to my eye," said Felice Gaer, director of the AJCommittee’s Jacob Blaustein Institute for the Advancement of Human Rights. ...

The executive director of Rabbis for Human Rights-North America, Rabbi Brian Walt, said that the reluctance of a large segment of the organized Jewish community to speak out against harsh interrogation techniques [sic] stems partly from the belief that torture may help to prevent terrorist attacks, as well as from concern that heightened scrutiny of American security forces’ methods could draw increased attention to Israel’s own interrogation practices.

Of course, Chuck Warpehoski sees none of this. Indeed, one wonders if Warpehoski can see anything that his paymasters don't want him to see, let alone speak about.

Labels: Interfaith Council for Peace and Justice, Jewish Witnesses for Peace and Friends, torture, Warpehoski

There's an old labor song by Florence Reece called "Which Side Are You On?" Sometimes self-styled Palestinian solidarity activists bring this tune to mind. For example, not long ago I attended a presentation at the Washtenaw Community College on the Michigan Peace Team by a designated representative of that organization. One of the low points of the talk was when the presenter flashed an anti-Jewish quote attributed to King Abdul Aziz Al Saud of Saudi Arabia from 1937. As I recall, it was some portion (I think just the first paragraph) of the passage below:

'Our hatred for the Jews dates from God's condemnation of them for their persecution and rejection of Isa (Jesus Christ), and their subsequent rejection later of His chosen Prophet. It is beyond our understanding how your Government, representing the first Christian power in the world today, can wish to assist and reward these very same Jews who maltreated your Isa (Jesus).

''We Arabs have been the traditional friends of Great Britain for many years, and I, Bin Sa'ud, in particular have been your Government's firm friend all my life, what madness then is this which is leading on our Government to destroy this friendship of centuries, all for the sake of an accursed and stiffnecked race which has always bitten the hand of everyone who has helped it since the world began.^*

What is the purpose of this? It was given in the context of Jewish Zionist statements about Palestinians but don't Palestinians/Arabs/Muslims already get enough bad press in the West as it is and isn't the Jews-as-victims drum banged loudly and often enough without "friends of Palestine" joining in? Doesn't this kind of stuff stem from genuflecting at the false idol of neutrality/objectivity?

In any case, I'm always skeptical of these kind of quotes. I mean, haven't we learned anything from the Zionist manipulation of the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King's legacy? The quote was presented with no source citation but it's all over the Internet on mainly Zionist sites. The source appears to be a book, Islam in the modern world and other studies, by Elie Kedourie (pp. 69-74). Kedourie cites a British Foreign Office file as his source.

Unless another secondary source can be found confirming the existence of Kedourie's primary source and his accurate usage of it, it is certainly worth wondering if Kedourie hasn't fabricated the report. I say this because Kedourie was an ardent Zionist and an Orientalist. As Israel Shahak wrote:

... Israeli policies bear the easily recognizable imprint of Orientalist ‘expertise’ abounding in militarist and racist ideological prejudices. This 'expertise' is readily available in English, since its harbingers were the Jewish Orientalists living in English-speaking countries, like Bernard Lewis or the late Elie Kedourie who had visited Israel regularly for hobnobbing on the best of terms with the Israeli Security System. It was Kedourie who performed a particularly seminal role in fathering the assumptions on which Israeli policies rest and who consequently had in Israel a lot of influence. In Kedourie’s view, the peoples of the Middle East, with the 'self-evident' exception of Israel, would be best off if ruled by foreign imperial powers with a natural capacity to rule for a long time yet.

Kedourie was also reportedly a fan of Likud and the terrorist Menachem Begin. Kedourie was a frequent contributor to the American Jewish Committee's Zionist, neoconservative house rag, Commentary.

Even assuming the Foreign Office record actually exists and Kedourie has quoted it accurately there are still grounds for questions about it. First, it is the record of a retired British diplomat and colonial adminstrator very evidently still in service to the Empire, Colonel H. R. P. Dickson. The report was duly submitted to George W. Rendel of the British Foreign Office. Dickson allegedly spoke with Abdul Aziz Al Saud in 1937 in the context of the great Palestinian uprising of 1936-1939, twenty years after the British commited itself, however ambiguously, to the Zionist project with the Balfour Declaration. In his report, Dickson indicates that the Saudi monarch did not permit anyone else to listen to his words and that Dickson did not have a stenographer standing by or tape recorder running--his report is a post hoc paraphrase of a lengthy monologue. Dickson is no disinterested party, and there is, apparently, no independent confirmation of the British diplomat's account.

One other point worth making is that if the Dickson report is accurate and authentic it would tend to undermine a claim Kedourie makes later in his book. On page 116, he says: "There had never been a 'special connexion' between the Arabs in and outside Palestine, much less a 'special connexion' between Palestine and Saudi Arabia." But consider this excerpt from Dickson's report:

His Majesty early on turned to the subject obviously close to his heart, namely the Palestine tangle, and for close on an hour and a half delivered himself as follows. He spoke for the most part in low earnest voice ...

'We are most anxious that the British Government should send us every eight months or so an experienced officer whom they trust, or equally well an ex-official like yourself, who can listen personally to what we have on our minds, and what troubles our hearts, for times are deeply serious and full of danger these days. ...

'Today we and our subjects are deeply troubled over this Palestine question ...

But why should Kedourie care about what an Arab says? And why should peace activists leave off bashing Arabs with questionable quotes when it serves their own purposes?

Note:
* To see the text in its larger context go to http://www.mideastweb.org/Saud-Dickson.htm and scroll down to "Report of Conversation of Col H.R.P. Dickson, with HRH Abd al Aziz ib Sa'ud, king of Saudi Arabia October 28, 1937". I haven't checked it real carefully but this appears to be an accurate rendition of the text in Kedourie's book.

Labels: critical thinking, Jews, Orientalism, Palestine

This is a follow-up post to "David A. Wesley: Information or Obfuscation?" I went to hear Wesley when he was in Ann Arbor on March 20, 2009 and I took notes but never got around to writing about what he said. Now, through reliable intermediaries, come e-mail messages from Wesley's wife, Elana, and one "Jeanie Shaterian, Bay Area coordinator and host, 2009 Wesley book tour."

Ms. Shaterian's message was posted to a list but some of her comments were addressed directly to another list member named Steve, who posted to the same list a somewhat altered text of "David A. Wesley: Information or Obfuscation?." Shaterian calls the piece "a total misrepresentation" and chastises Steve for circulating "that old piece of inaccurate innuendo." But when it comes specific criticisms of the +3,000 word post, Shaterian's message is predictably lacking.

Specifically, on May 23, 2009, Shaterian writes:

Dear Steve,

Thanks for copying the article Nader sent out [link added by PM].

That article on David Wesley is a total misrepresentation. Although he has a deep attachment to his adopted homeland (he emigrated to Israel in 1955), and that deep attachment can be called Zionism, he sees his homeland's only viable future as a nation for all its citizens, a nation whose name will no longer be Israel. His book tour was sponsored by no organizations, least of all the IATF. He was, however keen to speak to people of all political persuasions, especially those outside of the usual bunch who come to Palestine solidarity events. How else do you open minds? David traveled with his wife Elana. They stayed with friends, many of them Palestinian Americans (no hotel bills for nasty organizations to foot), and their airfare came from honoraria at academic and community events. I'm sure he'd be glad to address any concerns you have. He did not come as part of an Israeli PR or hasbara campaign. I'm sure plenty of ISMers can vouch for his integrity.

I'm very sad that you're circulating that old piece of inaccurate innuendo.

Jeanie

Jeanie Shaterian, Bay Area coordinator and host, 2009 Wesley book tour

The same day, responding to Shaterian, Elana Wesley takes up the cudgel against Henry Herskovitz of Jewish Witnesses for Peace and Friends:

Dear Jeanie,
I can't locate the article in Newsweek that is mentioned here. Do you know what is being referred to here?

When Henry first decided that David's trip and talks were being sponsored by the IATF, he stated such an assumption as fact and promptly circulated that totally untrue assumption as fact. The only thing he did to try to clarify - let alone correct - after the fact of that distribution and treatment of his false assumption as fact - was to finally put his assumption as a question at the time of one of David's talks in Ann Arbor which he attended. David responded to his question on the spot, succinctly and unequivocally that the IATF had not sponsored or organized his trip or his talks, and that in his single meeting with Jessica Balaban [link added by PM], who heads that powerful US Jewish conglomeration of organizations, since they have national connections, his only request was that publicity be given to his impending talks, since her affiliated groups exist throughout the US. Jessica willingly agreed to that. David has no bone to pick with that group of organizations, but he does want it made clear that there was no discussion whatsoever of the IATF financing his trip, talks, research, or anything connected with him and his work. He was able to hand Ms. Balaban a copy of his entire US itinerary. Although the answer Henry received was totally clear, Henry never apologized for spreading that false and misleading word, never retracted his words, and never made it clear to his misled readers that he had been mistaken. Henry who envelops himself in a seemingly moral cloak is very quick to accuse and falsely attribute totally inaccurate suppositions as if they were facts, but he is obviously in no hurry to attempt to undo his own irresponsible actions. Based on this contact and experience with Henry and his 'reports' to his readers, I would not trust anything he writes in his 'reports' as if they were facts.

Our overseas airfare was offered to us by a Jewish philanthropist from Los Angeles. No conditions or limitations whatsoever were placed on David or me as to the length, content, geography, audiences, or any other aspect of that trip. We asked to borrow the internal costs of transportation between US cities, intending to use honoraria to return these costs to our benefactor when we arrived in LA. Our benefactor asked us what sum we would need, and when we told him, he immediately and unexpectedly undertook to fund the entire cost of the internal travel as well. The only sponsor of our trip was that lone philanthropist, and we will be eternally grateful to him and his family for their generosity and belief in us both.

No one except Henry on the occasion of one public talk in Ann Arbor has directly confronted David about sponsorship of his trip and his talks. I, as the person who did the overall planning of the trip from coast-to-coast, including insisting that we stay only in private homes and that all those helping us did so on a totally voluntary basis, am in a position to know exactly what happened and what the true situation was.

Since this vitriol and unjustified attempt to place David's work into total disrepute is still making the rounds, might it be necessary to bring Henry to court for libel? Why has he not long since neutralized the lie he disseminated and thus limited the damage he has done?

I would like to make use of the good offices of Anne to pass this notice on to Henry along with all the accompanying comments and articles (including Jeanie's clarification).... Anne, if you have comments of your own to add, please feel free to do so. I would like to also separately receive a copy of what goes to Henry.

David has not yet discussed this situation with me or anyone else, but I take the liberty of giving Henry this one possibility of a public retraction and apology.

My love and blessings to you both,
Elana

There are several revealing things to note in these messages. First, Henry Herskovitz did not write most of the blog post in question. The only thing authored by Herskovitz is the 254-word letter, written on behalf of the Middle East Task Force, to David Wesley at the very end of the post. Elana Wesley did not bother to inquire about this, though, and Herskovitz informs me that the Wesleys have still not responded to the letter.

Second, Shaterian asserts David Wesley's "deep attachment to his adopted homeland (he emigrated to Israel in 1955)... can be called Zionism ..." Elana Wesley does not dispute this.

Third, the substance of Elana Wesley's and Jeanie Shaterian's criticism is seemingly focused on the nature of his problematic relationship with the IATF. So, what did David Wesley say when questioned in Ann Arbor about the IATF? My notes of his response paint a slightly different picture than the one presented by his wife and Shaterian. David Wesley said the assistance of the IATF had been "very valuable" and that "one accepts one's allies" though he indicated that he was the one who initiated contact with the IATF. He acknowledged the IATF was promoting his tour and said he "welcomes that much sponsorship."

So, while there is no evidence I aware of that the IATF "organized" Wesley's book tour (and that has been corrected in the original post), he did seek and receive their "very valuable" assistance. The original error, if error it was (and that now seems to be the case), was based on the fact that the IATF had listed Wesley's book tour as an IATF event on their web site. I provided a link to the relevant page in the original post but that link no longer works.

It would be interesting to know the identity of the mysterious "Jewish philanthropist from Los Angeles" who, contra Shaterian, bankrolled the air fare for the entire trip (David Wesley said it was fifty speeches in three months) to the tune of at least several thousand dollars. What are the connections of the Wesleys' "benefactor" to the IATF, its constituent organizations, and the rest of the US Zionist terrorist infrastructure?

Fourth, and this is probably the most telling point, neither of the messages from Elana Wesley or Shaterian addresses the substance of my or Nimer Sultany's critiques of Wesley's book. After all, he is on a book tour and these critiques makes up the bulk of the post.

In closing, I will address a couple more issues from my notes of Wesley's talk. At one point Wesley addressed the issue of how one identifies the indigenous people of Israeli-occupied Palestine. Wesley said that "out of convenience, probably" he would refer to them as "Arabs" instead of Palestinians. This, of course, disregards the evident preference of Palestinian citizens of Israel to identify as Palestinians. But then why should an American-born Jewish Israeli social scientist concern himself with the preferences of Palestinians?

• "A 1984 survey found that an overwhelming 75 per cent of Israeli Arabs identified themselves as 'Palestinian Arab', 'Palestinian', or 'Arab' and only 24 per cent as 'Israeli Arab' or 'Israeli Palestinian'." Source: Peacemaking in a divided society by Sasson Sofer, p. 124.
• "Israeli Arabs are beginning to see themselves more as Palestinians ... Forty-six percent described themselves as Palestinians or Arab-Palestinians in Israel, while 21 percent opted for the description of Palestinian Arabs, 9 percent as Arabs and just over 3 percent as Palestinians." Source: "Poll shows Israeli Arabs feel more like Palestinians" Jweekly.com.
• "The intifada had inevitably served to strengthen people's Palestinian identity. The outcome was that today the majority of Israeli Arabs identify themselves as Palestinians by nationality and Israeli by citizenship." Source: "Israeli Arabs: 'Unequal citizens' " by Jonathan Marcus.
• "Virtually all political parties, movements and non-governmental organisations from within the Arab community use the word 'Palestinian' somewhere in their description – at times failing to make any reference to Israel." Source: "Identity Crisis: Israel and its Arab Citizens" by the International Crisis Group.
  

Consciously or not, Wesley's usage harks back to the words of Irgun terrorist-cum-Israeli Prime Minister Menachem Begin. To paraphrase Begin's 1969 warning to an Israeli audience: If these are Palestinians then this is Palestine and not the land of Israel, and you are conquerors, not tillers of the land. You are invaders. If these are Palestinians, then this is Palestine and it belongs to a people who lived here before you came.

Wesley described the research behind his book as an "attempt to uncover" the source of pervasive anti-Palestinian discrimination in Israel. He found it "puzzling" that the price charged to Palestinians for land in Israel was three-and-one-half times more than the price charged to Jews. "How could that be?", he wondered. One imagines poor, befuddled Dr. Wesley stumbling around like Mr. Magoo until he suddenly "discovered [sic] the Zionist discourse in Israel." Oh, Wesley, you've done it again!

If only Wesley and his project were as benign as Magoo. As I indicated in my notes, Wesley is a living testament to pervasive anti-Palestinian racism in the so-called peace movement in that so many people (there were 50-60 in attendance when I heard him) would eagerly come to hear a lackluster Jewish scholar who voluntarily left the land of his birth to occupy Jaffa, an ethnically-cleansed city in Israel, talk about something that Palestinians have been complaining about for decades, as even Wesley acknowledges.

During the Q&A, an Arab woman suggested that Wesley was trying to put lipstick on the pig of Zionism and challenged Wesley's notion that foreign-born Jews like himself had an equal claim to the land of Palestine. In true Zionist fashion, Wesley responded that Palestinians only became Palestinians in the encounter with Zionist Jews. This is an idea debunked by Rashid Khalidi in Palestinian Identity: The Construction of Modern National Consciousness. As Khalidi writes, "it is a serious mistake to suggest that Palestinian identity emerged mainly as a response to Zionism" (p. 20). But then why should an American-born Jewish Israeli social scientist concern himself with the work of a Palestinian-American scholar?

Labels: critical thinking, David A. Wesley, Israel, Palestine, Zionism

Below is the text of an opinion piece by Michelle J. Kinnucan on last November's Morikawa Conference. It was submitted and accepted for publication in the Ann Arbor News before the conference. But the opinion page editor later contacted Michelle and told her it wouldn't be published except as a 250-word letter. That was unworkable and it was distributed to some of the conferees as a leaflet. Click here to download the leaflet.

On "Taking Sides" and the 2008 Morikawa Conference

by Michelle J. Kinnucan

The thematic question of this year's Morikawa Conference is: "In the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, how can Jews, Christians, and Muslims make religion part of the solution, instead of part of the problem?"

Just weeks after September 11, 2001, one of this year's three keynote speakers, Rabbi Marc Gopin, wrote an article entitled, "This War Is About Religion, And Cannot Be Won Without It." The main religion to which Rabbi Gopin refers is Islam and in the article he writes, "The time has come for a war for the soul of Islam."

While I disagree with Rabbi Gopin's diagnosis and prescription (as the late Edward Said observed in 1995, "the best response to terrorism is justice"), I share his assumption that religions are fair game for criticism even by outsiders, such as Gopin is to Islam. Jews, Christians, and Muslims can be "part of the solution" by bringing their universalistic justice traditions to bear upon the conflict. To do this, though, everyone will have to abandon particularistic notions of justice and make all of the narratives and supporting ideologies subject to forthright but fair criticism.

This will require Christians to courageously reject what Jewish theologian Marc H. Ellis calls an "ecumenical deal" requiring "eternal repentance for Christian anti-Jewishness unencumbered by any substantive criticism of Israel." Ellis adds, "Substantive criticism of Israel means, at least from the Jewish side, the reemergence of Christian anti-Jewishness."

Under the terms of the deal, Ellis says, "the main energy of ecumenical gatherings is spent on diverting the question that hovers over all discussions of Jews and Christians: the oppression of the Palestinian people by Jewish Israelis with the support, by commission or omission, of Jewish and Christian partners in the ecumenical dialogue." It is this situation that the late the Rev. Dr. Michael Prior had in mind when he lamented how "thoroughly Zionized Judaism infects the so-called Jewish-Christian dialogue."As Dr. Rosemary Radford Ruether states:

... [Western] Christians evade knowing and hence having to speak about [Palestinians] in order not to be denounced as anti-Semitic by those Jews with whom they wish to cultivate 'ecumenical relations.'

Christian repentance for the Holocaust and anti-Semitism have been effectively distorted into a silencing of Western Christians in regard to Palestinian human and civil rights, a view carefully nurtured and reinforced by the Jewish establishment, especially in North America. Any effort to break through this wall of self-censorship of Western Christians in regard to injustice to Palestinians ... encounters built-in walls of ignorance and self-censorship among Christians.

This year's Morikawa Conference could mark the beginning of a break with this sad history. But in promotional materials it is stressed: "This Conference is about religion and enhancing the human condition. It is not about taking sides." This signals, before the Conference has even begun, a profound betrayal of justice, one of the most vital principles of the best of our faith traditions. Justice requires us to takes sides.

In 1993, in its "Declaration Toward a Global Ethic," the Parliament of the World's Religions affirmed: "that a common set of core values is found in the teachings of the [world's] religions, and that these form the basis of a global ethic." It declared, "No person should ever be considered or treated as a second-class citizen, or be exploited in any way whatsoever. ... We must put behind us all forms of domination or abuse."

Mainstream American Judaism is committed to supporting Israel, the "Jewish state." Israel is built upon past and ongoing domination, abuse, and violence facilitated by decisive American financial, diplomatic, and military support. The Rev. Naim Ateek, the Palestinian founder of the Sabeel Ecumenical Liberation Theology Center, eloquently describes the resulting situation on the ground in his 2001 Easter message:

Here in Palestine Jesus is again walking the Via Dolorosa. Jesus is the powerless Palestinian humiliated at a checkpoint, the woman trying to get through to the hospital for treatment, the young man whose dignity is trampled, the young student who cannot get to the university to study, the unemployed father who needs to find bread to feed his family; the list is tragically getting longer, and Jesus is there in their midst suffering with them. He is with them when their homes are shelled by tanks and helicopter gunships. He is with them in their towns and villages, in their pains and sorrows.

In this season of Lent, it seems to many of us that Jesus is on the cross again with thousands of crucified Palestinians around him. It only takes people of insight to see the hundreds of thousands of crosses throughout the land, Palestinian men, women, and children being crucified. Palestine has become one huge Golgotha. The Israeli government crucifixion system is operating daily. Palestine has become the place of the skull.

To look at it less metaphorically, in 2008 alone, according to the Israeli human rights organization B'Tselem, Israelis have, thus far, killed 434 Palestinians, 86 of whom were minors. The respective figures for Israelis killed by Palestinians are 30 and 4.

Just as people of conscience and faith opposed militarized, state-identified religion in the service of South African apartheid and today oppose it in the service of the US "War on Terror," they must also today oppose such religion in the service of Israel and Zionism. As the "Declaration Toward a Global Ethic" concludes: "Let no one be deceived: There is no survival for humanity without global peace! ... Let no one be deceived: There is no global peace without global justice!"

Contra the call of the Morikawa Conference, both faithfulness and justice demand that we do "take sides." As the Rev. Allan Boesak, a Black South African anti-apartheid activist, wrote in 1977: "Neutrality, as you know, is the most abominable demonstration of partiality because it means choosing the side of power and injustice without assuming responsibility for them." As Elie Wiesel, put it in his 1986 Nobel Prize acceptance speech: "We must always take sides. Neutrality helps the oppressor, never the victim. Silence encourages the tormentor, never the tormented. Sometimes we must interfere."

Christians and other people of faith and conscience would do well to consider the example of this year's University of Michigan Wallenberg Endowment honoree. Archbishop Desmond Tutu came to prominence as a result of his active opposition to South African apartheid but the disappearance of that racist state has not silenced him. On April 13, 2002, he told a Boston audience:

... the Israeli government is placed on a pedestal, and to criticize it is to be immediately dubbed anti-Semitic, as if the Palestinians were not Semitic. ...

People are scared in this country to say wrong is wrong because the Jewish lobby is powerful–very powerful. Well, so what? This is God's world. For goodness sake, this is God's world! We live in a moral universe. The apartheid government was very powerful, but today it no longer exists. Hitler, Mussolini, Stalin, Pinochet, Milosovic, and Idi Amin were all powerful, but in the end they bit the dust.

This is, indeed, God's world and as the Psalmist reminds us "The Lord works vindication and justice for all who are oppressed." Fortified by Tutu's inspiring words and example let us go forth confidently "to say wrong is wrong," to challenge Zionism—Christian and Jewish, and to do our part to work for justice and to toss Israeli apartheid onto the dust heap of history. The Morikawa Conference is as good a place as any to start.

About the author: Michelle J. Kinnucan is a member of St. Andrew's Episcopal Church in Ann Arbor and she can be contacted [via http://michellejkinnucan.myopenid.com/]. Her writing has previously appeared in CommonDreams.org, Critical Moment, Palestine Chronicle, Arab American News, and elsewhere. Her 2004 investigative report on the Global Intelligence Working Group was featured in Censored 2005: The Top 25 Censored Stories (Seven Stories Pr., 2004) and she contributed a chapter to Finding the Force of the Star Wars Franchise (Peter Lang, 2006).

Labels: Christianity, critical thinking, Islam, Judaism, Palestine, Zionism

... anti-Zionists would be hard put to find any affirmatively identifying Jew who would not view them as mortal enemies. Studies and opinion polls have shown that 99 percent of American Jewry identifies with the right of Jews to the Jewish state.

For religious Jews, as we have seen, Israel and Jewish nationhood are part of their religious creed. An anti-Zionist is therefore an enemy of religious Jews. As for secular Jews, anti-Zionists oppose the one aspect of Judaism which they passionately affirm--Israel. The only Jews who could see anti-Zionism as anything other than an expression of antisemitism affirm neither Jewish nationhood nor the Jewish religion.

Source: Dennis Prager and Joseph Telushkin. The Nine Questions People Ask About Judaism. (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1986) p. 125.

Notice that Prager and Telushkin use the ambiguous phrase "identifies with." I actually think this speaks to a certain mindset among some American Jews. While they may not be full blown Zionists themselves, they give prime consideration not to questions of right or wrong but to the well-being of Jews.

To cite one prominent example, although typically characterized as an anti-Zionist, in 1914, Henry Morgenthau, Sr. used his position as the US ambassador to the Ottoman Empire to have an American warship, the USS Tennessee, sent to Alexandria, Egypt "ostensibly to protect American citizens. In fact, it made possible the evacuation of many impoverished Jewish refugees, including about one hundred prominent Zionists who had been released from prison. Among them were the young David Ben-Gurion and Yitzhak Ben-Zvi, who were destined to become, respectively, Israel's first prime minister and second president."

Ben-Gurion was no impoverished refugee but a commited Zionist who voluntarily migrated to Palestine to participate in the Jewish takeover. In a memoir, Ben-Gurion said he "never suffered anti-Semitic persecution" in his native Poland.

Earlier, Morgenthau had arranged for the another American warship, the USS North Carolina, to ferry $50,000 in gold from Jewish financier Jacob Schiff to "Zionist authorities" in Palestine. This same Schiff, another "anti-Zionist," used his financial power to, among other things, help bring about the defeat of the Russians in the 1904-05 Russo-Japanese War.

Addendum: In the incident involving the USS North Carolina, Morgenthau made the arrangements "through the good offices of his friend, Secretary of the Navy Josephus Daniels." According to the final report of the 1898 Wilmington Race Riot Commission, prior to his Navy appointment, Josephus Daniels was "a hearty supporter of the Democratic Party's white supremacy platform" and was "enlisted ... as editor of the Raleigh News and Observer to be the 'militant voice of White Supremacy.' " Inasmuch as Zionism is run through with strong elements of Jewish-White supremacism it is not surprising that Morgenthau would befriend a known racist like Daniels. Birds of a feather ...

See also: "Israeli Ambassador: We're White Europeans"

Last revised: 24 October 2009

Labels: history, Israel, Jews, Zionism

Weeks ago, the impending visit of David A. Wesley, PhD to our fair city was brought to my attention and I decided to see what I could find out about him. Below is some of what I discovered.

Wesley was born in the United States and left Detroit to move to Israel in 1955. He currently lives in Jaffa ("Yafa" is the Arabic transliteration). Dr. Wesley has written a book entitled State Practices and Zionist Images: Shaping Economic Development in Arab Towns in Israel (Berghahn Books, 2006) and he is currently on a US book tour organized and promoted by the Inter-Agency Task Force on Israeli Arab Issues (IATF).

The IATF bills itself as a "diverse, broad-based coalition composed of 80 North American Jewish organizations, foundations, federations and private philanthropists, who are committed to the welfare of Israel and support the Jewish state's right to a secure and peaceful existence." It counts Abraham Foxman as one of its more infamous Executive Committee members. The rest of the IATF's leadership reads like a Who's Who of American Jewish Zionism.

It follows then that on the major issues, Wesley's book is an obscurantist work and consciously so. Wesley justifies his approach by invoking the work of Michel Foucault but his reading of Foucault is faulty. While it is true that in analyzing power Foucault eschewed the simplistic notion of "a binary structure with 'dominators' on one side and 'dominated' on the other" ("Power and Strategies," 1977), Foucault never used complexity to obscure domination or excuse power exercised unjustly.

In place of a simplistic binary, Foucault argued that "domination is organised into a more-or-less coherent and unitary strategic form ("Power and Strategies," 1977). In the context of Palestine, the "unitary strategic form" is Israeli Jewish society, of which the state is an important part, and indigenous Palestinians are embedded within it. In 1982 (Afterword to "The Subject and Power"), Foucault argued for a "new economy of power relations" which "consists of taking the forms of resistance against different forms of power as a starting point." He suggested, "As a starting point, let us take a series of oppositions which have developed over the last few years: opposition to the power of men over women, of parents over children, of psychiatry over the mentally ill, of medicine over the population, of administration over the ways people live."

Clearly, resistance/opposition to the power of Jews over Palestinians falls within this schema but that is not an "opposition" that Dr. Wesley cares to explore in such terms. No, Wesley has a different agenda. Emanuel Marx wrote the Foreword to Wesley's book, he says:

[Wesley] makes it quite clear that violence plays only a limited role in the transactions he describes, and that it certainly does not underlie the countless other forms of power. [p. xi]

I take Marx's Foreword as an accurate characterization of Wesley's book. I agree Wesley is obscuring and downplaying violence in the creation and maintenance of Israel. This is curious on at least two levels. First, Israel is one of the most militarized societies in the world.

Second, as I mentioned earlier, his book tour is sponsored by the IATF, which came into being as a Zionist public relations operation in the aftermath of the Or Commission report. The Or Commission being the Israeli government commission created to deal with the brutality of Israel police to Palestinian Israelis in October 2000, as described below in this excerpt from a report by Adalah: The Legal Center for Arab Minority Rights in Israel:

In early October 2000, Palestinian citizens of Israel staged mass demonstrations in towns and villages throughout the country to protest the government's oppressive policies against Palestinians in the 1967 Occupied Territories. These protests erupted soon after al-Aqsa Intifada began in the Occupied Territories, during which the Israeli army and security forces killed and injured scores of Palestinians. The protests in Israel developed and were directed shortly thereafter in opposition to the use of lethal force by the police against Palestinian citizens in Israel.

During these demonstrations in Israel, the police and special police sniper units killed 13 unarmed Palestinian citizens of Israel and injured hundreds more using live ammunition, rubber-coated steel bullets ("rubber bullets"), and tear gas. The firing of live ammunition and rubber bullets at protestors, including the use of snipers, are all prohibited by law and even violate internal police regulations. Israeli Jewish citizens also attacked Palestinian citizens of Israel, their property and their holy sites in early October 2000. Close to 700 Palestinian citizens of Israel were arrested in connection with these events, and hundreds, including scores of minors, were indicted and detained without bond until the end of trial.

In 2005, another Palestinian Israeli human rights organization weighed-in: "The Mossawa Center says that the only recommendations of the Or Commission that have been implemented were the ones going against Arab citizens. More than 500 Arabs were taken to court and Arab political leaders, including two mayors of the Um El-Fahm municipalities and leaders of the Islamic movement." In January, 2008, the Israeli Attorney General, Menachem Mazuz, issued a final decision announcing that none of the police officers or commanders involved in the fatal shootings of Palestinian citizens of Israel in October 2000 would face criminal indictment.

If Wesley mentions the Or Commission or the police killings in October 2000 in his book then I have missed them. Wesley has nothing to say about the violence involved in putting Jews in control of his adopted hometown of Jaffa. The story is worth a long excerpt from "Jaffa: from eminence to ethnic cleansing":

Jaffa was the largest city in historic Palestine during the years of the British mandate, with a population of more than 80,000 Palestinians in addition to the 40,000 persons living in the towns and villages in its immediate vicinity. In the period between the UN Partition resolution (UNGA 181) of 29 November 1947, and the declaration of the establishment of the State of Israel, Zionist military forces displaced 95 percent of Jaffa's indigenous Arab Palestinian population. Jaffa's refugees accounted for 15 percent of Palestinian refugees in that fateful year, and today they are dispersed across the globe, still banned from returning by the state responsible for their displacement. ...

Zionist forces initiated a cruel siege on the city of Jaffa in March 1948. The youth of the city formed popular resistance committees to confront the assault. On 14 May 1948, the Bride of the Sea fell to the Zionist military forces; that same evening the leaders of the Zionist movement in Palestine declared the establishment of the state of Israel. Approximately 4,000 of the 120,000 Palestinians managed to remain in their city after it was militarily occupied. They were all rounded up and ghettoized in al-Ajami neighborhood which was sealed off from the rest of the city and administered as essentially a military prison for two subsequent years; the military regime under which Israel governed them lasted until 1966. During this period, al-Ajami was completely surrounded by barbed wire fencing that was patrolled by Israeli soldiers and guard dogs. It was not long before the new Jewish residents of Jaffa, and based on their experience under Nazism in Europe, began to refer to the Palestinian neighborhood as the "ghetto."

In addition to being ghettoized, the Palestinians who remained in Jaffa had lost everything overnight: their city, their friends, their families, their property and their entire physical and social environment. Most had lost their homes as the Israeli military forced them into al-Ajami. Legislator, judge and executioner in the Ajami ghetto was the military commander; without his permission one could not enter or leave the ghetto, and rights to things like education and work were among those rights that Palestinians were denied. Arab states were classified as enemy states, and so making contact with the expelled family and friends, the refugees, was strictly prohibited. This was the nightmare lived by the Palestinians of Jaffa after the 1948 Nakba.

In the early 1950s, Jaffa was administratively engulfed by the Tel Aviv municipality that became known as Tel Aviv-Yafo; the Palestinians of Jaffa went from being a majority in their city and homeland to the two-percent "enemies of the state," a minority of Israel's main metropolis. The municipality immediately began drawing up plans for what they called the "Judaization" of the city, renaming the Arabic streets of the city after Zionist leaders, demolishing much of the old Arab architecture, and completely destroying the buildings in the surrounding neighborhoods and villages that were depopulated during the 1948 Nakba. The new curriculum introduced in Palestinian schools denied that the place had any Arab-Palestinian history at all, a facet of the Israeli education system that continues until today.

The largest armed robbery of the 20th century

After expelling most of Jaffa's residents, militarily occupying the city and ghettoizing the remaining original inhabitants, Israeli authorities passed the Absentee Property Law (1950) through which it seized the property of all Palestinians who were not in possession of their immovable properties after the Nakba. Through the implementation of this unjust law, the state of Israel sent its operatives to all corners of the land, surveying the properties left behind by the expelled refugees, the internally displaced Palestinians banned from returning to their lands, and those relocated to the ghettos of Palestine's cities. Title to these lands, buildings, homes, factories, farms and religious sites were then transferred to the state's "Custodian of Absentee Property." This is how the Palestinians of Jaffa, the refugees and the ghettoized, had their properties "legally" stolen by the State of Israel.

As a Jewish American immigrant, David A. Wesley was the beneficiary of this exercise of power, the violence of the Nakba but he obscures it.

Below are some excerpts from Wesley's book with my comments in italics.

Rosenfeld, writing from a class approach, attributed the underdevelopment of the Arab village economy to Israeli state policy, which "fosters a Jewish state-nation ethos and economy ... and regards development as relating specifically to Jews" (400). Zureik (1979) argued that the economic situation of the Arabs in Israel is a manifestation of internal colonialism, that is, the domination and exploitation of a native population by a colonial settler. Lustick (1980) described economic dependence as a major component of the system of control to which the Israeli Arab minority has been subject. [p. 4]

PM: These are the approaches that Wesley, in the main, rejects in developing the arguments presented in his book.

It should be emphasized that it is not collective identity that concerns me here -- neither the mobilization of identity, in the case of the Arabs in Israel, nor the state as an instrument of collective will, in the case of the Jews. The view of representation as exterior to either individual or collective consciousness is one of the conceptual elements that make it possible to sidestep the ultimately futile question, Who is the oppressor? and to focus instead on how power relations work themselves out in practice. [p. 6]

PM: In a society consciously constructed around identity, downplaying "collective identity" seems to me a luxury that comes with Jewish privilege. And how self-serving is it to argue that "Who is the oppressor?" is a "futile question."

The problem of the Palestinian refugees and appropriate compensation is, of course, a serious issue in its own right. That is not my subject, however. [p. 109]

PM: Okay, Wesley is not writing a book about the ten 6.4 million Palestinian refugees, fair enough. But it is interesting to note that he characterizes them and their rights under international law as a "problem" and while "compensation" figures in his remarks, repatriation does not.

But struggle for change is itself a discursive space, and one may choose to take one's stand within it: what I would present here is the challenge of an attempt to imagine a world in which Jews and Arabs, to paraphrase the prominent Israeli planner I cited near the end of chapter 1, share this land as the homeland of each.

I close with a personal note in the register of Jewish self-interest. It is my sense that, by and large, the Jewish people in Israel has, at least since the advent of the state, been embarked on a course of closing in on itself in ever narrowing circles. That way, I feel, lies not existence but eventual suffocation. Part of our constriction inheres in our attempt to exclude those others, our Palestinian fellow citizens, who, like us, may claim this land as their homeland. To share the land would mean to choose, instead, breath and life. [p. 197]

PM: Notice here that Wesley, a man born and raised in America posits an equal claim to Palestine as the homeland of himself and, presumably, all Jews. Does he propose to share this homeland with the ten 6.4 million Palestinian refugees or only his "Palestinian fellow citizens"?

I am going to wrap up this discussion of Wesley's book with two excerpts from Nimer Sultany. Sultany reviewed State Practices and Zionist Images for the Journal of Palestine Studies (Vol. 37, No. 1, pp. 115–116). He writes:

The book is an important contribution to current scholarship on the Arab economy inside Israel. By taking into account administrative practices (including outline plans, municipal jurisdictions, industrial areas, national priority areas, and foreign investment) and their accompanying rationalizing discourses, the book sheds light on a vital area that has a crucial effect on impeding Arab development.

The author confines himself, however, to the domain of distributive justice and does not address questions of redistributive, let alone corrective, justice. While Wesley acknowledges that politics always plays a role in planning and bureaucracy, his conclusions remain limited to the domain of planning and bureaucratic access.

Would an inclusion of Arab representatives in planning bodies change the inferior citizenship granted to Palestinian citizens in a Jewish and Zionist state? This approach takes the ethnic order as a fait accompli and aspires only to mitigate its discriminatory effects, rather than, say, to annul or alter the order altogether. Demands for inclusion and participation fall short of resolving the predicament of the indigenous Palestinian minority. So long as the macro-order is in place, inclusion will be conducted on the order's own terms, complying with prevalent discourses and traditions and performing through well-established institutions. Save for some adjustments, the flawed design remains unquestioned.

In a letter responding to Wesley, Sultany reiterates:

My critique of Wesley's book is that it does not go far enough in criticizing the "regime of truth." The book emphasizes the demands of distributive justice, and in doing so, it falls short of understanding how current predicaments can be overcome. One can see this approach in the author's choice of terminology (how he refers to the Palestinian citizens of Israel, for example) where he again chooses not to challenge the orthodoxy. The book's desire is to analyze administrative practice while "bracket[ing] the issue of identity" (p. 16). This choice, however, does not really bracket identity; it merely leaves identity politics unchallenged.

While he provides a historical narrative of dispossession, he underestimates the foundational role of violence, as well as its role in maintaining the ethnic order and the planning system as the main beneficiary of the spoils of violence. Demands for inclusion and distribution might be a "fundamental change," to use the phrase that appears in the author's letter, from the point of view of Zionist supremacy, but it certainly does not redress the historical injustice. Wesley frames the question of Palestine as one of homeland versus homeland and right versus right (p. 197); at another point he might be understood as referring to Zionism as colonialism (p. 195) without telling us what this entails.

The author's interest in understanding and analyzing the dynamics of power is of course commendable and appropriate. Yet this move is lacking if it is not combined with an analytical framework that tells us why these power relations and their effects are wrong or unjust. At times it seems to me that scholars who are interested in these questions tend to lose sight of the forest (ethnic macro-order by a colonial project) while gazing at the infinite trees (techniques of power).

Henry Herskovitz, founder and leader of Jewish Witnesses for Peace and Friends also made some inquiries of Wesley via the Middle East Task Force. Henry has been the point person on the Middle East Task Force concerning a letter sent to Wesley. In his vigil report for the last Saturday of February, Henry writes, in part:

A speaker is planning on addressing Ann Arbor's peace community later on this month, and since this person has just received a few questions from METF, this Report will keep the name confidential until the speaker has enough time to provide METF with answers. This speaker shares some common ground with other speakers that have appeared in Ann Arbor, in that they are members of a privileged population which enabled them to make Aliyah to Palestine. The Middle East Task Force does not wish to censor speakers, or alter their prepared messages. On the contrary, many members of the group are eagerly awaiting the information this speaker has to offer.

But METF feels that listeners should have the right to know where any given speaker who had US citizenship, then moved to the Jewish State and acquired Israeli citizenship, stands on issues at the core of the colonialist project in Palestine. Excerpts from the letter, which are applicable to any Israeli citizen born in the US, follow:

• Do you feel that as one who partook of Jewish privilege in [year] and "made Aliyah", that it is correct to identify you as a Zionist?
• Do you support Israel's claimed "right" to exist as a Jewish (supremacist) state in Palestine?
• While you still maintain an Israeli address, are there actions you could do to repudiate your participation in the Zionist project in Palestine?
• Is there any way the Middle East Task Force can assist you in determining and/or carrying out these actions?

Henry, who knows David Wesley personally and has stayed in his home in Israel, made his inquiry via electronic and postal mail. As of this writing, Wesley has not responded.

See also: Update on David A. Wesley

Labels: critical thinking, David A. Wesley, Israel, Palestine, Zionism