secularavatar

2009-05-15T05:17:00.000-07:00

The Protestant Boycott of the UN Conference on Racism, 2009

“The West wants a Jewish state”. – Canon Naim Ateek

The Canon’s puzzled he just can’t dig
Western commitment’s old, it’s big
They “want” a Jewish State for sure
Palestinians must endure

An ancient and religious quirk
Covenant holy (God’s the clerk)
He granted thus the sacred deed
To real estate, the West’s agreed

Included in the print so fine
Just Jews and Protestants (don’t you whine!)
The land is theirs, there’s no dispute
So suck it up! Bow down, salute!

It’s no surprise they’ve lined a-row
Protestant states have got the dough
(At least for now, but who can tell
What’s down the road? Financial hell?)

Israel blew the opening whistle
At all reluctance they did bristle
“Let’s go, line up, don’t hesitate!
We’ll smear you with the brush of hate!”

The US led the snarling pack
(Even with a Prez who’s black)
Germany cried out “Jawohl!”
And joined the Protestant patrol

Snubbing thus Durban II
Along came Swedes, New Zealand too
Australia and Canadians
Fell into line, got with the plan

Eager Dutch did tag along
Calvinism shared, they all belong
Except for dear orange Silvio
The odd man out, what does that show?

A teenager longing to be cool
Italy’s exception proves the rule
And the rule is that the West doth want,
A Jewish State, their faith they flaunt

Enlightenment they recommend
To black and brown they condescend
But they themselves do hope and pray
The “Holy Land” is theirs each day

Racism? Nah, it ain’t important
Gaza genocide doesn’t daunt
These WASPs unite behind their creed
With Johnny Calvin they’re agreed

Amalekites are who they fear
They tremble lest they draw too near
And property is their core measure
Toxic assets they dearly treasure

God did give them Palestine
Eternally, decree divine
Tough luck you folks indigenous
You’re the Other, you’re Unblest

And so we now can clearly see
Judeo-Protestant solidarity
The boycott shows without a doubt
Politics driv’n by the devout

2009-05-12T10:04:00.000-07:00

Voldemort in Gaza

Operation “Cast Lead”

He went down to Gaza to play games
Spinning a dreidel that spits bullets
Into brains, a children’s toy
That kills children
In the Locked Kindergarten

Lo! The Pureblood Flight of Death is airborne
His word is law; you are nothing, Ay-rabs
Starving infants clinging to a mother’s corpse
Drugged cockroaches
Disobey him? He’ll cast lead wrath at you

Happy Hanukkah!

He chose the dreidel with care
As his holy symbol of madness and death
Activating dark marks everywhere
Tingling, burning
Commanding utter obedience

“Hey! Step into line, I mean YOU!
Blood is thicker than water
Thicker than the blood of The Other
Omerta binds us
Back me up on this one or else”

Each time he looks from the window of your house
And sees your eyes, watches you
Tending a garden, carrying your child
Fury washes over him
The enormity plucks at his skin, pricks his sanity

So he spins the dreidel in a burning white cloud
He walls you out, expels you and kills you so he can forget
Eighty long years of theft and murder
Soothed with leaden gelt
That’s a whole lot of guilt

He was the Death Wish sprung from spurious texts
Disguised as rosy-cheeked Pioneer
Long before the Holocaust
He lurked under a stone
Lusted after your groves and your fields

Loyal to your foolish ancient code of hospitality
You invited him into your homes
With forked tongue he lapped at your coffee
Inventoried your furniture
Adding photos and maps: The Village Files

He noted down the names of those
Who had resistance in their hearts
Sorted in order of priority to be dealt with later
(They were)
He’s still making a list and checking it twice

With malice aforethought he planned the heist
How many commandments violated?
A sullen Charleton Heston holds stone tablets
Like tombstones
In front of a Mississippi court house

Thou shalt not steal, lie or covet
Oh man, did he ever covet: Cities, villages, houses
Wells, herds, crops, shrines, arbors, stones, your very lifeblood
Stole a whole country
For he is the Jealous God

See how smooth he is, his mouth gaping with lies?
Crying and shooting is what he does best
Bokhim ve-yorim; another children’s game
Boo-hoo, I’m a victim!
Bang-bang, you’re dead!

Amiri Baraka knows what is required:
Assassin poems
Poems that wrestle cops into alleys
Poems that shoot guns
Put it on him, poem!

So I aim a poem at Voldemort and his minions
O dreidel-spinners in Gaza!
Remorse has moved beyond your reach
O criminals! O sons of criminals!
The bullets of this poet* are surely coming for you:

“Here upon your chests we shall remain
Like the glass and the cactus in your throats
A fiery whirlwind in your eyes
Our roots are entrenched deep in the earth
Like twenty impossibles
We shall remain
We shall remain”

*Tawfiq Zayyad, Here We Will Stay

Something there is that doesn't love a wall

2008-01-24T12:37:00.000-08:00

*

First out went the kids
and women (of course)
To the wall down at Rafah
They were met there with force

That night came the sappers
to cut and explode
The wall crashed right down
They opened a road

Straight out of Gaza
A prison forsooth!
The siege was thus broken
Exposing the truth

That long have the Zios
Been enamored with walls
Which remind them of ghettos
And how cozy they were all

As G-d’s Chosen People
Hidden safely within
No taint from the outside
Was ever let in

So much so that Herzl
Appealed to the Brits:
"We’ll build you wall
Please, I beg you! Commit!

"To a walled state for Jews
The ramparts we’ll man
Protecting white Europe
From hordes barbarian

"An outpost against
Those niggers unwashed
We’ll serve you with zeal
All resistance we’ll quash"

In swaggered Jabotinsky
With a sneer and smirk
"A bayonetted Jewish wall
Will hasten G-d’s work!"

Sharon capped this fond dream
Of the ghetto complete
A cement Apartheid wall
The Palestinians to cheat

Of their land, of their homes
Of their olives and herds
All freedom and justice
In Bantustans interred

But the wall’s now been breached
The precedent’s set
Licking wounds from ‘06
Zios starting to fret

Those walls are now cracking
The Lobby exposed
They’re desperate for two states
Else the Zios'll get hosed

Bobby Frost from New England
Knew whereof he spake
Repellant, inhuman
In the end walls do break

"Human Beings of Another People"

2007-10-03T12:04:00.000-07:00

Neo-Zionist Babble in Babel

People always send me articles by Uri Avnery. I never ever post them. Never was a fan — and I didn’t admire his war years [in Lebanon] on behalf of the Israel occupation forces…Avnery reproduces generalizations from The Arab Mind — almost word-for-word.

– As’ad Abu Khalil, The Orientalism of Uri Avnery

Casing the joint
Uri Avnery has long aired his commentary on progressive and pro-Palestinian websites with scarcely a demurral. His generally unchallenged presence on such venues has been puzzling since his commitment to Zionism has been unwavering throughout his long career.[1] In fact, Avnery’s ideology was put in its proper place back in 1971 by Camille Mansour in a PLO publication entitled: Uri Afniri wal-sahyuniyah al-mustahdatha ("Uri Avnery and Neo-Zionism"), published in response to Avnery’s promotion of a two-state solution.

Ah but those were the good old days — before resistance was redefined as terrorism — when there was vigorous discussion amongst Palestinians and Arabs about a single secular democratic state in Palestine, the stated aim of the PLO in 1969. But this bracing discourse was soon buried in a relentless wave of Zionist violence and hasbara that continues unabated to this day to which we must add — sorry folks — the efforts of Avnery and his fellow neo-Zionists so plentiful among western progressives. Although the idea of a single democratic state has recently been oh-so-timidly resurrected the concept has always been viewed with the gravest alarm by Zionists of all religious and political persuasions. And as some of you young ‘uns may not know, in 1975 the U.N. General Assembly passed resolution 3379 that concluded:

"Zionism is a form of racism and racial discrimination." [2]

Full post available on Dissident Voice on September 17, 2007

Sidi Yahya's Nightmares

2007-07-02T06:02:00.000-07:00

* * *

O Ward! O Norman!
From across five hundred years
I heard of your woes
It comes from having a patron you know
I had a patron
Powerful and rich, a big shot in Timbuktu
And beyond
On the payroll I wrote jurisprudence, history, poetry
Influencing society in the city
And beyond
But argent fetters bound me
(I heard you call it tenure)
And nightmares came to me, needling and buzzing
(like your tormentors)
Sleep came not
My family wearied of my affliction
“Sidi Yahya!” they cried, “What is to be done?”
But I had to feed them, provide shelter
They were so many
I strove to tame my rampant nightmares
But could not
Vorant, they grew stronger
Until fed up
I began to trade on my own account
Became a merchant
Bought and sold
Slabs of salt, dried pomegranates across the desert
To and from the Maghreb
But never ceased writing jurisprudence, history, poetry
The fetters loosened then fell away
My family fed, the nightmares vanished
I left my patron
Became a scholar-trader
Sorry boss
Centuries later the conundrum unchanged
Bread and integrity
My brothers!
I wish that you may tame your nightmares

Sidi Yahya Tadulsi was a sixteenth-century Muslim scholar in Timbuktu who banished his “apparitions” in exactly the manner described.

Published on the Palestine Chronicle website, June 29, 2007

Jimmy the Blurter

2007-01-25T01:24:00.000-08:00

"I've looked on a lot of women with lust. I've committed adultery in my heart many times. This is something that God recognizes I will do -- and I have done it -- and God forgives me for it."

-- Jimmy Carter, November 1976

"[T]he overwhelming bias for Israel comes from among Christians like me who have been taught since childhood to honor and protect God's chosen people from among whom came our own savior, Jesus Christ."

-- Jimmy Carter, December 2006

Jimmy Carter has long cultivated an irritating public persona of the sanctimonious-yet-humble parson. Almost thirty years to the day after he famously owned up to the inner workings of his lustful heart, Carter has blurted out something far more significant and in the process has thrown a welcome shaft of light -- albeit a tiny one -- on the dirtiest secret in the West: that the long and deafening western silence that has greeted Zionist crimes in Palestine is caused by an overwhelming religious bias for Israel among American Protestants.

Mind you, Carter’s Christianity is a fairly garden-variety or at least so it seems in these fevered days of raging monotheistic fundamentalism. Way back in 1976 the born-agains were just getting revved up, our 38th president was their first real public face. Although it seems hard to believe, born-againism in those days was generally regarded as rather outré. Today however Carter’s brand of Christianity seems positively benign and the constant public airing by American politicians of their personal religiosity has become benumbingly commonplace. Thus has the general religious climate degraded these past thirty years. In hindsight Carter’s early and open flogging of his piety may be viewed as an ominous herald of where things were headed.

Complete essay available on Dissident Voice, Dec. 30 2006.

On the occasion of the 89th anniversary of the Balfour Declaration

2006-11-02T08:24:00.000-08:00

Cyrus and the denizens of hell

It becomes, therefore, specially important to foster and develop any strongly-marked Jewish movement which leads directly away from these fatal [socialist] associations. And it is here that Zionism has such a deep significance for the whole world at the present time.....The struggle which is now beginning between the Zionist and Bolshevik Jews is little less than a struggle for the soul of the Jewish people.
---Winston Churchill, 1920

They own the [Holy] land, just the mere land, and that's all they do own; but it was our folks, our Jews and Christians, that made it holy, and so they haven't any business to be there defiling it. It's a shame and we ought not to stand it a minute. We ought to march against them and take it away from them.
--- Mark Twain, Tom Sawyer Abroad, 1894

The dual purpose declaration

Some time ago I attended a workshop on the Palestine conflict held in a nearby Protestant church. You know the sort of church; a liberal American congregation made up largely of aging worshippers who gamely troop off to construct community centers in Central America or cluster bedraggled and clutching flickering candles in ever-diminishing numbers at anti-war vigils.

For the opening act the organizers trundled out an employee from a nearby institution of higher learning who delivered an Introduction to the History of the Conflict in sepulchral tones. When he had done with his twenty minutes of erudition, the professor smirked round at the audience and opened the floor for questions. An elderly Palestinian woman in the audience stood up with considerable dignity and asked why he had dwelt on the secret Sykes-Picot agreement to divide imperial spoils between Britain and France but altogether omitted any mention of the Balfour Declaration which is universally regarded by Palestinians as the founding document of the crime against them. [1] The answer came apologetically vague but the damage had been done. The timeline as delivered no doubt retained its Balfour-less authority with much of the audience by virtue of the subtle relief provided by the insinuation that at least those cheese-eating Roman Catholic surrender monkeys shared some of the blame.

Alas, the good professor is not alone in regarding the Balfour Declaration as insignificant. A majority of the learned interlocutors of the “problem” tend to spin Balfour’s promise as the product of the exigencies of WWI or else evidence of a pottering British eccentricity. Imagine those silly Brits thinking they could give away land not belonging to them: What a good joke! But by trivializing or censoring Balfour yet another layer of cover to the illegality of Israel is provided, a service long and eagerly rendered gratis by western academicians. It is instructive at this point to note that the proclamation establishing British Mandate rule in Palestine and ratified by the League of Nations in 1922 included every single syllable of the Balfour declaration and nary a one from Sykes-Picot.

The drear winter of 2006 is underway, the trees outside my window are now bare and through the still smoldering ruins of Gaza, Iraq and Lebanon we are staring down the 90th year since Balfour put the west’s larcenous intentions in writing. And although our local representative of the American intelligentsia expunged Balfour from his narrative the Arabs were perfectly aware from the outset that Bloody Balfour -- as he was known to the Irish who had felt the sting of his lash -- was no charming British lord but rather the author of a colonial document of cold and malign intent. During Balfour’s 1925 tour of Egypt, Palestine and Syria demonstrations, strikes and editorial denunciation hounded him every step of the way and after spending only a single day in Damascus in which he dared not to leave his hotel room his lordship was bundled hastily and in secret out of town ahead of a furious citizenry. [2]

The timing of his declaration on 11/2/1917 -- those early heady days of the Russian Revolution -- indicates Balfour certainly had red reduction on his mind. Indeed, Zionists both Christian and Jewish had long flogged their ideology as a foil for a disturbing Jewish affinity for socialism. As Herzl made the rounds in Europe searching for a patron he not only adopted the anti-Semitic line that the Jews were the “problem” but eagerly offered Zionism as the solution as he “explained that we were taking the Jews away from the revolutionary parties”. [3]

Touting their ideology as a revolution substitute the early Zionists engineered an ingenious bait-and-switch operation by veiling the messianic-cum-imperialist ideology behind the veneer of a faux secularist labor movement in order to co-opt and divert Jewish revolutionary energies while simultaneously pandering to the anti-Semites. In Palestine the relentless squeezing out of any residual impulse for worker solidarity was embodied in the ominous Zionist slogan of “the conquest of labor” with its promise of violence and exclusion and which complimented the goal of “redemption” of the land.

Not long after the Balfour declaration was promulgated, that well-known warlord Winston Churchill put it rather more plainly in the Sunday Herald op ed piece quoted above which article was appropriately accompanied by a grainy photo of a morose and bejowled Churchill inspecting those doughty defenders of empire, the 4th Hussars at Aldershot. [4] Although Balfour rushed the declaration into print just as the Russian revolution was triumphing the colonies were never far from his sights. In addition to undercutting socialism Balfour hoped to insert a reliable settler European base in Palestine thereby taking up Herzl on his offer of Jewish readiness to "form a part of a wall of defense for Europe in Asia, an outpost of civilization against barbarism". [5] Thus it was that Herzl first introduced the wall motif which was to become so integral to Zionism, a motif later expanded ferrously and ferociously by Jabotinsky and ultimately made tangible in the concrete monstrosity erected by Sharon.

At the same time Churchill was professing concern for Jewish souls he was busily extinguishing Muslim ones as he presided over the first ever aerial bombardment of a colonial rebellion in his role as titular head of the newly-minted Ministry of Air and War. The resistance subjected to this first test of airpower’s efficacy was led by the Somali poet-warrior and dervish commander Muhammad Ibn ‘Abdallah Hassan a.k.a. the “Mad Mullah” regarded by the British in those days in much the same manner Americans regard Hassan Nasrallah or Muqtada Sadr today. The Mullah had inflicted a humiliating defeat on the British at Dulmadoba in the eastern Somalia in 1913 in which the British commander was killed. Hassan impudently memorialized the event in a poem entitled “The Death of Richard Corfield”:

O Corfield, you are a traveler who
Will not stay long here below
You will follow the path where there is no rest
You are among the denizens of Hell [6]

After twenty years of resistance however, Hassan’s lightly-armed forces proved no match for airpower even in its nascent form. A lethal combination of British aerial bombardment and smallpox decimated the Somali resistance in 1920. As one of the pilots who flew in imperialism’s maiden bombing runs laconically observed, the airplane was a “convenient weapon to bomb the old villain out of hiding place”. [7] The Somali experiment was so murderously successful that an enthusiastic Churchill advocated the use of airpower to subdue a newly conquered Iraq arguing that using air power against the Iraqi rebellion would allow a cutback British ground troops by more than 80%. Spurred by Churchill’s cost-effectiveness analysis, an RAF air campaign was launched and 97 tons of bombs were dropped killing 9,000 Iraqis. [8] Plus ça change, plus c’est la meme chose. The airborne spirit of Churchill today animates the vicious American and Zionist air campaigns in Iraq, Palestine and Lebanon. Although nearly a century apart, in each instance the goal was to remotely impose destruction, misery and discipline upon an obstreperous Islam.

I am Cyrus! I am Cyrus!

Balfour’s two-pronged imperial goal of crushing impetus for social and economic equity from within and bludgeoning indigenous resistance in the colonies succeeded even beyond his Lordship’s wildest dreams. The spectacular and continuous success of the declaration is due, I submit, to the innovation contained within it, one which has immeasurably enhanced its lethality and indeed ensured its longevity: The introduction of Old Testament religion as the justification for the crimes under consideration.

Each year that has passed since that dark November day in 1917 has seen the minor and crack-brained ideology of Zionism -- with only a few million official adherents worldwide --going from strength to strength while other ideologies with millions more followers have withered and died leaving not a wrack behind. The persistence of Zionism in spite of its brutal racist underpinnings has puzzled many. In addition to a near universal tolerance and support for its crimes from a plurality of Western governments Zionism has also enjoyed almost complete immunity from effective assault by the left. The continued silence of western progressives in the face of the Iraq and Lebanon wars – let alone the fifty-year war in Palestine – are I believe directly related to the Old Testament-based religious Zionism that originated centuries ago in Protestant Europe and which Balfour finally set down as official imperial policy.

Anyone who has labored in western progressive and antiwar movements has met the energetic and endemic gatekeeping by western progressives on behalf of Israel’s half century of crime. Following the Balfour template, Zionism’s resilience is directly attributable to its proven abilities in combating secularism and social/racial/economic equity that it has executed with a single-minded dedication to assisting the west in its domination of the Muslim Other. The other less understood but even more powerful component of its staying power derives from Zionism’s entirely Christian origins, a subject on which I have expanded in some detail elsewhere. [9]

Although Zionism’s zealousness in furthering the forces of reaction is unexcelled, the left has been unable to combat it precisely because of the ideology’s Christian origins and the deeply ingrained belief held by many in the west, avowed atheists included, that Palestine is somehow legal property of the Jews and Christians. Martin Buber, that premier Zionist bait-and-switch artist put it quite plainly when he wrote: “Where a command and a faith are present, in certain historical situations conquest need not be robbery.” [10] Zionism’s vigor has been ensured by this very fusion of larceny and religion. As product of a country that produced the world’s original Christian Zionists in the 17th century, Balfour finally succeeded in turning the religious formula into official policy.

Hundreds of years of Old Testament delirium overlays nearly all of western Christianity and its influence in enabling Israel to continue in its death’s head trajectory cannot be underestimated. Mark Twain got it in one when in Tom Sawyer Abroad he had Tom -- exasperated by Huck’s inability to grasp the concept of land theft in the name of religion -- state loftily: “[You can’t] try to reason out a thing that’s pure theology by the laws that protect real estate”! Indeed you cannot as Bill Clinton would agree. The ex-President pulled an all-nighter on Sept. 12, 1993, poring over the retributive and genocidal Book of Joshua in preparation for his speech on the occasion of the “historic” Rabin-Arafat handshake. [11] Like a pair of sanctimonious parsons, both Rabin and Clinton quoted the Bible at Arafat in their respective speeches the next day, putting the Palestinians on notice yet again that not only would they not relinquish Jewish and Christian claims of an ownership stake in Palestinian real estate but that they had in hand the legal paperwork to back it up.

The derangement engendered by using Old Testamentary justification for crime cannot be underestimated. Perhaps the finest display of this sort was provided by none other than Harry Truman who in 1953 was introduced at the Jewish Theological Seminary in New York as the “man who helped create the state of Israel”. In as splendid a display of egomania suffused with biblical intoxication you could ever wish to see, an indignant Truman is reported to have shouted, “What do you mean ‘helped create’? I am Cyrus! I am Cyrus!” [12] As a beneficiary of an English public school education steeped in biblical and ancient history no doubt Balfour fantasized himself in much the same role – or perchance in one even more Exalted -- as he penned his declaration that has in keeping with its author’s nickname spilled so much blood for so long.

Notes:

[1] The text of the Balfour Declaration can be found at
Wikipedia

[2] A Balfour curse, al-Ahram Weekly, Oct-Nov, 2000.

[3] See Chapter 1 of Lenni Brenner’s excellent Zionism in the Age of Dictators.

[4] Illustrated Sunday Herald, February 8, 1920, p. 5

[5] Gideon Shimoni, Historiographical issues in conveying Herzl's legacy.

[6] Stanza from The Death of Richard Corfield

[7] S. Samatar, The art of oblique communication in somali cultureM

[8] J. Glancey Our last occupation, The Guardian, 4/19/2003.

[9] See Monotheism and Madness and Home court advantage

[10] Martin Buber, On Zion: The History of an Idea, 1974, p. 146

[11] Michael Prior. The Bible and Colonialism, 1997, p.40

[12] Moshe Davis, With Eyes on Zion, 1977, p. 25

Olmert and Omerta

2006-08-08T12:29:00.000-07:00

*

Olmert has gone wild with Peretz at his side
They’ve unleashed their bombers, sent death far and wide
The blood freely flows, kids scream out in pain
Olmert sneers, "No problem! We’ve got lots to gain!"

The cement wall grows higher and longer each day
The ghetto's near done! Hallelujah! Hooray!
"Our own Jewish capsule armed up to the teeth"
Olmert's joy is boundless, it's almost complete

Inside its so cozy, well-to-do and so pure
BBQs on the beach, it's an asset for sure
(Oh yeah it's been stolen, but that's yesterday's news
It was in a good cause, to be used just for Jews)

But a fly's in the ointment come to spoil Olmert's show
Hezbollah fights back dealing blow after blow
And way down in Gaza, out of mind out of sight
In spite of the odds, Palestinians do fight

On and on, they'll both go, they never will stop
For justice and freedom, they never will drop
their demands non-negotiable, consistent and just
There's no option before them; they must, yes they must

And what of those alleged US antiwar folks?
Where are they now? Do they care? Have they spoke?
Ah no, my dear friends, they are gelded and mute
In the face of this war, so bloody, so brute

War crimes abounding, increasing each day
Overtly (Olmert-ly) they cause no dismay
Amongst so-called lefties o'er here in the west
They're worried but silent, but they can't pass the test

Of principles, of morals and of dignity too
They've succumbed to omerta, don't care who they screw
It's far more important the silence to keep
"They're like us, protect them! Let bereft mothers weep!"

Race and religion, white privilege doth flow
Through veins hypocritical, a covert quid pro quo
Except that there's nothing to be got in return
For a complicit silence while Palestine burns

Olmert and omerta went out in a boat
To make some real headway, to see if they'd float
But, lo! Out on the horizon, just there 'round the bend
A cloud small but dark; the start of the end

Home court advantage: Religion and the Israel Lobby

2006-08-03T10:29:00.000-07:00

I submit for your consideration that the real secret to the sensational success of the Israel Lobby is the religious home court advantage it enjoys in the west and most particularly in America. This advantage is diffused effectively throughout the generality of western society but nowhere is it more damaging than among ranks of the so-called progressive groups. The religious factor is avoided plague-like by progressives because they are singularly loathe to consider religion as a factor in any issue, preferring instead the safer waters of political, class or economic terms. They shift uncomfortably in their seats and their eyes dart back and forth nervously when the issue of religion comes up unless of course they are called upon to excoriate Muslim treatment of women or decry Falwellian dispensationalism in which case they breathe a sign of relief and heave to. This willingness to castigate “unenlightened” theologies not only smacks of racism and elitism but it also neatly frees progressives from examining their own theologies and how they might skew their ability to think and act in a principled manner.....Full essay available at Dissident Voice

John Calvin explains Zionist genocide in Palestine

2006-07-11T04:43:00.000-07:00

Poor Dan is wondering why the West yawns and looks the other way while the Zionist entity carries out its slow but sure genocide in Gaza and now Lebanon.

Let us listen to John Calvin explicate why the Judeo-Protestant world in particular -- including most damnably the so-called progressives and peace movements among them -- remains mute in the face of these ongoing war crimes:

The indiscriminate and promiscuous slaughter [of Joshua in Jericho], making no distinction of age or sex, but including alike women and children, the aged and decrepit, may seem an inhuman massacre, had it not been executed by the command of God. But as he, in whose hands are life and death, had justly doomed those nations to destruction, this puts an end to all discussion. We may add, that they had been borne with for four hundred years, until their iniquity was complete. Who will now presume to complain of excessive rigor, after God had so long delayed to execute judgment? If any one object that children, at least, were still free from fault, it is easy to answer, that they perished justly, as the race was accursed and reprobated. Here then it ought always to be remembered, that it would have been barbarous and atrocious cruelty had the Israelites gratified their own lust and rage, in slaughtering mothers and their children, but that they are justly praised for their active piety and holy zeal, in executing the command of God, who was pleased in this way to purge the land of Canaan of the foul and loathsome defilements by which it had long been polluted.
-- John Calvin Commentaries, c. 1533

MADNESS AND MONOTHEISM

2006-05-28T15:49:00.000-07:00

Palestine as Psych Ward for the West

Jerusalem attracts all kinds of people. Religious fanatics and cranks of different degrees of mental derangement seemed drawn as by a magnet to the Holy City, men and women who thought themselves the reincarnation of saints, prophets, priests, messiahs and kings.
--Bertha Vester, Our Jerusalem

Hechler had a touch of madness, and so did Herzl…It would seem that such is the rule today for the ones, Jews or Christians, who believe in the unique destiny of the capital of Israel – Jerusalem – as the place of spiritual espousals and salvation for the entire world. Blessed is the madness which hungers for the absolute…
--Andre Chouraqui, The Prince and the Prophet

Of all crotchets in the world the most mischievous…are religious crotchets.
--Edward Wilmot Blyden

A Christian Madhouse

Accursed is a land that has been lumbered with the title of "The Holy Land". The sole geographic entity on the planet that bears this dubious distinction is Palestine. To be sure there are numerous cities around the globe called "holy"-- Rome, Mecca, Karbala, Lhasa and Lourdes to name but a few. But once outside the city limits of such a municipality at least the visitor can take a deep breath, loosen the collar and pull out a hip flask for a quick restorative. But to place at the very fulcrum of religious belief a holy land, where the vast majority of that religion’s adherents do not live?

Where every rock, every scrap of a ruin, every town, every mountain or rill, every shard is heavy with perceived significance for millions of people not resident in that land? To have the bad fortune to be the native of such a land, a map of which can be found on every Protestant Sunday school wall in the United States which displays the land’s ownership attributed to the so-called tribes of Israel? Green for Gad, pink for Asher, yellow for Judah: God’s real estate plat in tasteful pastels, confirming a sense of ownership in the minds of young congregants from the very beginning of their religious instruction.

The cultural resonance of this embedded concept is incalculable; its impact on Palestine’s original inhabitants is immense. A land that a heavily armed and righteously powerful portion of the outside world has long deemed holy in its entirety and over which accordingly it has asserted ownership rights both conscious and unconscious. A land about which the Archbishop of York smirked in 1875, a year when Teddy Herzl was barely out of knee pants: "Our reason for turning to Palestine is that Palestine is our country. I have used that expression before and I refuse to adopt any other". [1] To the natives of such a land, born in innocence of western Judeo-Christian crotchets -- for crotchets they are -- this is misfortune indeed.

Complete essay available on StateofNature, Spring 2006.

Gnome Chomsky

2006-04-07T05:43:00.000-07:00

I am opposed and have been opposed for many years, in fact,
I’ve probably been the leading opponent for years of the
campaign for divestment from Israel and of the campaign
about academic boycotts.
-- Noam Chomsky

Paracelsus said of old
The gnomic race do dwell below
Earth’s surface where on guard they stand
O’er treasures dear to them, and grand

Stubborn, cunning they won't budge
One inch from guarding, they begrudge
Attempts to breach their vigilance,
Their hyper state of fixed defense

Their weakness though, a ray of sun
The Aten’s fingers they do shun
If just one shaft's upon them shone
Directly they turn into stone

Behold our modern leftist Gnome!
Progressive author! Countless tomes!
Clever, adamant sentry he
The treasure safe, his guarantee

Gnome's Wall constructed 'round the prize
Israel safe from blaming eyes
From guilt or culpability
Zionists remain rap-free

Apache 'copters? US-made
Americans promptly obeyed
By Zionist pilots taking orders
From DC their true headquarters

Pilots of those F-16s?
Doesn’t matter, it’s routine
Americans do call the shots
They’re masterminds and don’t get caught

Israel Lobby? Ain't no such thing!
Your imagination's taken wing
Stop your whining, cease your cryin'
You been readin' Elders of Zion?

Your critiques will all be improper
Your efforts will all come a cropper
They must be directed at DC
America the only guilty party

(Didn’t we hear that one before?
Back in nineteen forty-four?
When Allies crossed the German borders
The cry went up: "I followed orders!")

Thus sayeth Gnome, alert on guard
By US lefties he's adored
With gnomic, steady, tough deflection
Israel earns his true protection

If you ask him, "What’s with that?"
Retort contemptuous comes straight at
you from behind his groupie shield
Safe from critics Gnome is sealed

Lo! Comes Jeff and Jim and Noah brave
Fearless paladins all, they've
Wielded sun-ray'd lances twain
Faulty gnomic logic slain

'Tis but little but 'tis a start
Timid lefties must take heart
Unsheath their tongues, their logic too
Zionist force-fields to subdue

These fields are found most everywhere
Where leftists gather, few do dare
To challenge Gnome and Zionism
It's time to start to breach that chasm

Show some spine, your courage stout
Consistency's what it's about
Principles? You can't be mute
Zionism = Racism, there's no dispute

This just in: Huck Finn pro-Palestinian Terrorist!

2006-04-05T03:41:00.000-07:00

Religion Trumps Real Estate Laws

"...[You can't] try to reason out a thing that's pure theology by the laws that protect real estate!".
---Tom Sawyer

Tom: "A crusade is a war to recover the Holy Land from the paynim."

Huck: "Which Holy Land?"

Tom: Why, the Holy Land -- there ain't but one."

Huck: "What do we want of it?"

Tom: "Why, can't you understand? It's in the hands of the paynim, and it's our duty to take it away from them."

Huck: "How did we come to let them git hold of it?"

Tom: "Why we didn't let them git hold of it. They always had it."

Huck: "Why, Tom, then it must belong to them, don't it?"

Tom: "Why of course it does. Who said it didn't?"

Huck (narrating): I studied it over, but couldn't seem to git at the right of it, no way. I says:

Huck: "It's too many for me, Tom Sawyer. If I had a farm and it was mine, and another person wanted it, would it be right for him to--"

Tom (interrupting): "Oh, shucks! You don't know enough to come in when it rains, Huck Finn. It ain't a farm, it's entirely different. You see, it's like this. They own the land, just the mere land, and that's all they do own; but it was our folks, our Jews and Christians, that made it holy, and so they haven't any business to be there defiling it. It's a shame and we ought not to stand it a minute. We ought to march against them and take it away from them".

Huck: Why, it does seem to me it's the most mixed-up thing I ever see! Now if I had a farm and another person--"

Tom (interrupting again): "Don't I tell you it hasn't got anything to do with farming? Farming is business, just common low-down business: that's all it is, it's all you can say for it, but this is highter, this is religious, and totally different".

Huck: "Religious to go and take the land away from people that owns it?"

Tom: "Certainly: it's always been considered so."

Huck (narrating): "I am peaceable, and don't get up rows with people that ain't doing nothing to me. I allowed if the paynim was satisfied I was, and we would let it stand at that.

"Now Tom he got all that notion out of Walter Scott's book, which he was always reading. And it was a wild notion, because in my opinion he never could've raised the men, and if he did, as like as not he would've got licked. I took the book and read all about it, and as near as I could make it out, most of the folks that shook farming to go crusading had a mighty rocky time of it."

--Dialogue from Mark Twain's Tom Sawyer Abroad, NY, 1894. Published a full three years before Herzl's First Zionist Congress in Basle.

Omerta Violated by the Realists

2006-03-24T12:08:00.000-08:00

Divestment fear and loathing at both ends of Mass Ave

The recent publication of the "expose" of AIPAC and the Israeli lobby by two so-called realists -- John Mearsheimer and Stephen Walt -- under the aegis of the Kennedy School of Government appears to be occasioning a burgeoning fit of vapors. CounterPunch accorded the document “website of the weekend” billing on 3/18 and since then commentary and excoriation has begun to flow in both virtual and print venues. Whether the information contained in the piece will propagate to a wider audience is yet to be seen.

The first and most glaring effect of the piece is that the American left has been embarrassingly rumbled. For years Jeff Blankfort has been valiantly documenting the activities and reach of the Israeli lobby industriously calling out the legion of "gatekeepers" within the American left who have maintained resistance to broaching the subject. Down at the other end of Massachusetts Avenue Noam Chomsky complacently perched atop his progressive throne has been leading the effort to fend off Blankfort’s sallies. Chomsky worshippers who are legion within the American left have modeled his behavior unquestioningly unable to violate the dread omerta veiling the subject in these United States.

The nub of Chomky’s argument is that Israel is but an automaton acting entirely at the behest of American foreign policy directives; a favorite image is that of Israelis piloting American aircraft following operational plans drawn up in Washington. Presumably this representation insures Israeli innocence conjuring up as it does the old refrain "I was only following orders". Well-known progressive scholars -- Phyllis Bennis, Joel Beinin and Stephen Zunes – likewise toe the line regarding the Israel lobby. Bennis once sniffily responded to a public effort by Blankfort to raise the subject, "The issue is dead and has been dead" which rejoinder’s curious combination of tenses suggests a double and therefore final death with no hope of resuscitation. Within the rank-and-file of leftist organizations this widespread attitude has resulted in a long and damaging marginalization of the entire issue of Palestine. Suddenly a couple of liberal establishment elites broke the ice.

The question remains: Why is this "expose" being trundled out now? The revelations contained therein are -- quite frankly -- a big yawn. The information upon which the authors base their premise has long been available for those with the eyes to see it. The only real novelty is that elites are writing about the subject and under the august Kennedy School logo to boot. A KSG grad informs us that Walt coyly hinted several years ago that he was working on a paper about "the Lobby" that would cause an uproar when published. If this is the bombshell alluded to why did it take so long? Certainly the research portion could not have been that time-consuming. Our interlocutor suggests that perhaps now that anti-Semitism vigilante Larry Summers has tendered his resignation the authors felt sufficiently free to air the subject. But the underlying reason as to why Walt and Mearscheimer felt compelled to go public at all with America’s dirty little public policy secret is contained in a single sentence in the penultimate summary paragraph:

This course [of AIPAC behavior] raises the awful specter of Israel one day occupying the pariah status once reserved for apartheid states like South Africa. [emphasis added]

Ah, so now it is revealed why a couple of liberal elites have dared to so expose themselves. Throughout their paper the pair assert "Israel’s right to exist" and call for American "even-handedness" thereby frantically signaling to Zionist snipers in the underbrush, "See guys, we’re really, really on your side". That single sentence reveals the authors’ true concern that AIPAC activities will ultimately damage Israel and its right to exist as a Jewish state: Like the specter that once haunted Europe, the awfulness of equating Israel and apartheid South Africa is a nightmare which has begun to keep liberal elites up at night (although apparently it has kept some progressives tossing and turning for years). The divestment and boycott movement has begun to register gains and the result of its final success will be inevitable: As in the case of South Africa, the end of the Israeli brand of apartheid – for apartheid it is – will mean an end to the underlying racist nature of the Israeli state which, alas, is regarded as sacrosanct by multitudes of Bible-besotted westerners, progressives and liberal elites included.

Even without sleep the authors are sufficiently nimble to engage in a bit of mitigation, their propensity for spin nigh instinctive. Lo, with a single 'S' the authors magically increase the number of states qualifying for apartheid status to an unknown plurality! Israel will not be the sole nation equivalent to apartheid South Africa but will join a contrived group of apartheid entities in which the Zionist state will be one of the crowd. Still, strong measures are in order to avert this awful outcome and thus AIPAC shenanigans have become fair game. The authors' desperation to rescue Israel as a Jewish state, to save Israel from itself drives them to hurl themselves on the altar of anti-Semitic smear-mongering.

The divestment/boycott movement – urgently requested of the world last summer by Palestinian civil society -- presents a considerable threat to Israel's continued existence as a racist apartheid state and thus all hands are on deck to thwart its success from the halls of academe to FrontPage ravers and burrowing moles in the Green Party. Oh-so-tentative church-based divestment resolutions have faced incoming flack and pressure. British architects have been threatened with projects withdrawn and fees snatched unless they recant and beg forgiveness. An AUT boycott in Britain was instituted last year but collapsed in one month under Zionist pressure. The Somerville (MA) Divestment Project has launched repeated efforts to pass a town divestment resolution only to meet a well-oiled aggressive opposition which included the spectacle of an Israeli consul general – obligingly furnished with a town police escort -- testifying at a public hearing on the subject of the disposition of US taxpayer dollars. The ACLU recently took up the case of SDP’s exclusion from a town-sponsored arts festival last summer because of unspecified "complaints" while other political action groups were free to flog their issues at the same event.

November last the Green Party of the United States endorsed Proposition 190 which called "for a comprehensive strategy of boycott and divestment that would pressure the government of Israel to guarantee human rights for Palestinians". Although the GPUS had previously adopted a platform plank supporting Palestinian right of return suggesting that a single democratic state might be the optimal green solution, Prop 190 has occasioned a more virulent response. Oregon businessman Gary Acheatel was so exercised by such impertinence he joined the party for the express purpose of defeating the divestment proposition and established a blue-and-white themed website devoted to the campaign. Phyllis Chesler, shill for the "new Anti-Semitism", was pleased to declare that the party had been hijacked by a team of Islamists and Marxists. And Lorna Salzman, a former GPUS presidential candidate who has made no secret of her racist view of Arabs, chimed in declaring that the "US Green Party has given aid and comfort to both anti-Semites and terrorist organizations". The divestment movement is regarded as such a danger that even a statement by a very minor political party is a menace to be stamped out with full force.

As my dear old granddad the unrepentant Hungarian socialist used to say, "If they’re screaming, you’re getting near the truth". The Israeli divestment and boycott movement has touched a raw nerve among rightwingers, progressives and liberals alike. The forbidden, nay awful, equation of apartheid South Africa and Israel looms as a nightmare for all of those with a political/religious stake in maintaining the exclusivist nature of the Israeli state. However, with this official outing of "the Lobby" we may hope that more progressives will regain their bottle and -- thus emboldened –- properly put their shoulders to the wheel of Israeli divestment and boycott and heave to.

The levees come down and the Apartheid wall goes up:

2006-03-23T07:42:00.000-08:00

Katrina, Mardi Gras and Palestine

"Every savage can dance"
During the 1994 World Cup an enterprising reporter in search of local color ventured into a nearby Brazilian immigrant community where the punters were celebrating Brazil’s shootout victory. How, inquired the wondering reporter of one of the celebrants, does such an exuberant and boozing crowd manage to celebrate so long and hard without resorting to fisticuffs? That, replied the Brazilian cheerfully, is because we Brazilians have a drink, dance for an hour, have another drink and dance for another hour and so on. You Anglos just knock back one drink after another until you’re blind drunk and then start fighting.

The cultural and class delineation of dancing and celebration provided by our unnamed Brazilian succinctly encompasses the indigenous Mardi Gras paradigm. The insufferable Mr. Darcy of Pride and Prejudice sums up the view from the other side of the class divide. Upon being pressed by Sir William to join in dancing a jig (with its suspect Irish connotations) Darcy declines, brutally abrupt: "Every savage can dance".

The New Orleans version of Mardi Gras kicks off the Lenten period yet has wonderful, subversive origins in fabled Congo Square, the New Orleans landmark where African-American slaves and Gulf Shore Native Americans hooked up to share drumming, dancing and singing. The value of the cultural cross-fertilization that went down in the Square is incalculable: The roots of blues, jazz, funk and zydeco (said to be a corruption of the Atakapa words for youth dance) all sprang from the fertile soil of Congo Square to our eternal gratitude. Picture, if you will, an America informed solely by pinched and gloomy Calvinists. It doesn’t bear thinking about.

One year before Katrina, Louisiana State University sponsored a what-if scenario called "Hurricane Pam" that eerily portended what was to come: 120 mph winds, a majority of buildings damaged by a massive storm surge and refugees awaiting rescue on rooftops. Ivor Van Heerden, the LSU researcher who ran the exercise, reported that attending FEMA officials were unresponsive and the Army Corps of Engineers "giggled" in the back of the room at the suggestion that tent cities be planned near New Orleans to house the anticipated homeless. The disdainful rejoinder was that "Americans don’t live in tents" exhibiting not only blatant disregard for lives of the poor but also an empathetic inability to imagine oneself obliged to live in a tent. The Corps, authors of more than one engineering blunder, along with their incompetent FEMA colleagues were not only short on empathy; they may also have instinctively understood that massing large numbers of largely poor black refugees in nearby locations would be a recipe for ease of return and possible social ferment. Confusion and dispersal allows greater scope for control.

The aftermath of Katrina brought us nothing less than an ethnic cleansing in plain sight yet it passed with scarcely a murmur in the wider American landscape. A few mainstream journalists became momentarily exercised but quickly subsided to routine lapdoggery. Yet the sorrowful image of mainly poor African-American refugees trudging along the highways of New Orleans has not dissipated and the majority of them are still scattered far and wide while our rulers plot to remake New Orleans in a blanched and Disneyfied version of the real, the soulful, the so very necessary thing. Glen Ford of www.blackcommentator.com gets it exactly right:

Displacement based on race is a form of genocide, as recognized under the Geneva Conventions. Destruction of a people’s culture, by official action or depraved inaction, is an offense against humanity, under international law. New Orleans – the whole city, and its people – is an indispensable component of African American culture and history. It is clear that the displaced people of New Orleans are being outsourced – to everywhere, and nowhere. They are not nowhere people. They are citizens of the United States, which is obligated to right the wrongs of the Bush regime, and its unnatural disaster. Charity is fine. Rights are better. The people of New Orleans have the Right to Return – on Uncle Sam’s tab.

The Right to Return
In December last, hundreds of Katrina survivors demonstrated in New Orleans with jazz music and offerings to – significantly enough - the gods. Hoisting signs reading "We have the right to return" and chanting "We’re Back!' the protesters voiced a growing fear that New Orleans mostly black poor would remain permanently displaced by design. They marched to City Hall from Congo Square accompanied by drumming and a brass band to demand their rights with a Mardi Gras-esque esprit. "Right of return', so evocative of the Palestinian struggle for justice, is now the shared demand and right of both the Palestian and Katrina diasporas.

The right of refugees to return to their homes and lands is enshrined in international law and in the case of the Palestinians supported by UN resolutions. Katrina refugees may wish to consider the UN as a venue to achieve their own human right to return to their homes. Meanwhile wealthy white residents of New Orleans are returning to their villas and businesses (many never left), some reportedly under the paid protection of Israeli and Iraq-honed American security firms no doubt selected because of their especial expertise in thuggery against people of color as alluded to by the shamelessly violent name of one of the Israeli companies: Instinctive Shooting International (ISI).

The Katrina-Palestine linkage continues when we learn that in order to avoid a PR scandal Israel deferred its July 2005 request for a special $2.2 billion aid package (over and above its usual dole) out of deference to unexpected expenses from Katrina reconstruction. This generous baksheesh in return for the so-called Gaza disengagement was to be earmarked for “development“ in the Negev and Galilee which terminology is barely concealed code for the Judaization of those two critical areas of pre-1967 lands still containing large Arab populations. In a word, completing with US taxpayer assistance any ethnic cleansing left unfinished in 1948.

Shortly after the new year however the Israelis felt sufficiently confident to shed their uncharacteristic reticence and renew their application for the funds. The now-comatose Sharon had set the direction: The main effort post-Gaza disengagement should be to insure Jewish dominance "in Galilee and the Negev, Greater Jerusalem, the settlement blocs and the security zones". Like their white coconspirators in the United States who consider a black New Orleans as a danger to crackerism rampant, the Israelis have long regarded the large concentration of Arabs in both the Galilee and Negev as dangerous to a parallel Jewish crackerism necessary to maintain the genetic requirements of a Jewish state. Blut und boden sleight of hand: Underwritten by lavishing your tax dollars in the first instance and withholding them in the second.

The levees come down and the Apartheid wall goes up
In terms of barrier characteristics and costs, the despicable Apartheid wall when complete will be 225 miles long, 25 feet high and will cost an estimated $1 billion. The levee system is a longer barrier at 350 miles but of varying heights and construction and in some places mere earthen dams. Rebuilding the levees to pre-Katrina strength alone is estimated at $1.6 billion much less than the special package for which Israel has resumed touting. Let us therefore compare structural outcomes: The levees keep out water and protect the lives and properties of all residents whereas the Apartheid wall imprisons residents with undesirable DNA and transfers lands thus confiscated into the hands of those with desirable DNA.

Aside from the aforementioned special package, US annual aid to Israel siphons off enormous sums that could be used for the US public weal. In light of the American Society of Civil Engineers 2005 report that US infrastructure is rapidly crumbling to third world levels (which Katrina promptly demonstrated) US aid to Israel is a drain that sucks away money at rates all the more astounding given that Israel’s ranking by nominal GDP is comparable to Spain, Cyprus, Greece and New Zealand. With a miniscule .001% of the world’s population Israel nevertheless has become accustomed to an annual entitlement comprising a hefty one third of the entire US foreign aid budget or around $3-4 billion. And that’s just what is auditable.

Still more US funding to Israel is buried in budgets for the Pentagon and other federal agencies, to say nothing of the private remittances by Jewish and Christian groups. Furthermore because Israel has been granted a unique status by Congress it receives its yearly largesse in a lump sum the first month of each fiscal year rather than under the quarterly installment plan other recipients are obliged to follow. Richard Curtiss explains the ramifications of this singular sweetheart deal: "That means that the U.S., which has to borrow the money it gives to Israel, pays interest on the money it has granted to Israel in advance, while at the same time Israel is collecting interest on the money". To further personalize this massive outflow; between the years of 1949-1996 the US matched every $1 of aid spent per capita in Africa with $251 spent per capita in Israel.

While Israel was basking in this yearly deluge of dollars it industriously established an intimate collaboration with Apartheid South Africa. Balthazar Vorster, South Africa's Prime Minister during the height of Apartheid, minced no words in describing their shared racial values: "Israel and South Africa have one thing above all else in common: they are both situated in a predominantly hostile world inhabited by dark peoples". The profitable armament development and security connections established under this repellant mutual admiration society led to tools and techniques both countries used internally for control as well as for export to other countries where dark-skinned people were in need of salutary violence and surveillance that they might learn the error of their ways.

And in a particularly evocative parallel Israel is planning a new cost-effective pattern of settlement in the Negev whereby single settler families or small groups rather than populous settlement blocs will control large swaths of land in a manner redolent of the model of sturdy white American pioneers scattered on individual homesteads throughout Native American territory. It is not for nothing that US soldiers in Iraq, Afghanistan and other outposts of Empire refer to the countries they are molesting as "Injun country".

The monotheists weigh in
Katrina provided an ideal theme for the deranged monotheists currently so influential both here and abroad. Hostility to any targeted Other comes quite easily to monotheists drugged with Jealous God-ordained exclusivity. The US variety saw fetuses swirling in satellite maps of the approaching hurricane and gleefully proclaimed that "Providence punishes national sins by national calamities". Others declared it divine punishment for countenancing the Gaza settlement pullout: "…the implementation of His judgment on the nation most responsible for endangering the land and people of Israel." A Kuwaiti official who pontificated about the "terrorist Katrina" as a soldier of Allah was bookended neatly by convicted felon Chuck Colson speculating that Yahweh had sent Katrina to remind Americans of the importance of winning the war on terror. And the Chief Gnome of the 700 Club cited Leviticus as proof that Katrina was divine retribution for legalizing abortion.

Not to be outdone, the spiritual leader of the Shas Party Rabbi Ovadia Yosef was more explicit in laying the blame for Katrina directly on African-American shoulders. Not only was Katrina punishment for supporting the Gaza pullout but also because black residents of New Orleans neglected to study the Torah and therefore "they have no God". Yosef continued instructing his congregants: "It was God's retribution. God does not short-change anyone,…There was a tsunami and there are terrible natural disasters, because there isn't enough Torah study.... Black people reside there. Blacks will study the Torah? (God said:) let’s bring a tsunami and drown them…." Israeli officials discounted the raving Rabbi but the late Israel Shahak knew better when he rumbled the Talmudic racism permeating the Israeli legal, military and educational systems.

"I’m mighty proud he don’t bow down"
The Mardi Gras Indians whose Congo Square origins are so joyously celebrated in the Wild Magnolias’ Brother John is Gone - possibly the greatest funeral song ever - emerged in the late 19th century with beaded, feathered costumes that, like their driving percussion drumming and call-and-response songs, are a glorious fusion of Native American and African cultures. We fervently trust that the Tribes have gathered in force for Mardi Gras this year, in spite of the loss of many of their painstakingly sewn costumes to Katrina’s fury and FEMA mismanagement. Affirming the presence of the true inhabitants of New Orleans with their music and drumming the Tribes will perchance help to dispel the clouds of coffin flies plaguing New Orleans, not only the ones that live off decomposing human remains but also the vicious human variety circling the desolate Ninth Ward plotting ways to keep the refugees from returning. Drumming has ever been regarded with alarm by imperial British sahibs, southern plantation owners and the DC Park Service alike.

As Mardi Gras commences this year and the Tribes gather to drum, dance and sing, let us paraphrase the Magnolias and say to Cynthia McKinney, Malik Rahim, Khalid Mash’al, Ward Churchill, Hugo Chavez, Gilad Atzmon and the countless brothers and sisters around the globe who labor mightily each day with their deeds, their words and their art to defy Empire from both within and without, "I’m mighty proud you don’t bow down. You don’t bow down and you don’t know how".

References:
WRMEA
JTA
Sharon's Speech
ADALAH
UK Guardian One
UK Guardian Two
Washington Post
Media Matters
YNET NEWS
Israel's 2.2 billion dollar baksheesh

2005-07-06T08:10:00.000-07:00

Of Red Herrings and Soft Zionists

Re: Uri Avnery's recent Counterpunch piece entitled "Red Herring: Condi and Hamas"

Now Uri Avnery is a chap who means well. He has had a long career combating some of the more vicious aspects of Zionism as they have manifested themselves over the years. But he is at base a soft Zionist, unable to think outside of the box or rather the walled ghetto concept inherent in a religiously-based political entity, always finding ways to subtly justify the continuance of that ghetto. I found the first three sentences of his article particularly striking, as Avnery describes a Hamas meeting that he addressed:

"The experience was almost surrealistic: I was in a hall in the centre of Gaza, facing some 500 people, all of them bearded men, nearly all of them Hamas militants.

The Hamas movement officially opposes the very existence of the State of Israel, and here I stand on the podium speaking in Hebrew about peace between Israel and the future State of Palestine.

Did they protest? On the contrary, they applauded, and after the event I was invited to lunch with the respected sheikhs."

It occurred to me that a quick word substitution in these sentences would produce a genuinely surreal depiction, far surpassing what Avnery deemed "surreal":

"The experience was almost surrealistic: I was in a hall in the centre of Kiryat Arba, facing some 500 people, all of them bearded men, nearly all of them settler militants.

The settler movement officially opposes the very existence of Palestinians and here I stand on the podium speaking in Arabic about a single, secular democratic state in Palestine.

Did they protest? On the contrary, they applauded, and after the event I was invited to lunch with the respected rabbis."

The utter impossibility of these edited opening sentences juxtaposed against the actual event about which Avnery writes is instructive on several levels, but most particularly it highlights the complete failure of progressive or "soft" Zionists like Avnery to comprehend the deep racism of Zionist ideologues upon whose behalf they expend considerable effort in mitigation.

2005-06-07T07:51:00.000-07:00

And now for a bit of fun with the oxymoronic progressive Zionists:

The Moral Philosopher’s Dating Service

If you want to make it easier to support Israel,
you know, date a Zionist tonight.

-- Alan Dershowitz

If there were any lies to be told, they were best
left to the Professor of Moral Philosophy,
who might be even better at it.

-- Horace Rumpole

Dersh has said "It's just not cool
to be a Zionist at school"
The girls all run away a-screamin'
when they find you're Gush Emunim

How to get a date, asks Dersh
Without the Zionistic curse?
The remedy is bold for sure
Discourse gridlock is the cure

Both sides thereof we’ll firmly seize
Stop all discussion in a freeze
The right wing side’s already ours
Likud, Falwell, Dov Lior

No need to give those dudes assistance
The US admin’s in a trance
But academia? Now here’s an opp-
ortunity to really stop

Those lefty profs, all anti-Semites
Pro-divestment, suchlike blight
They won’t support, they won’t assist
Israel’s G-d-given right to exist

It’s critical we get a grip
Become pro-Pal and make it hip
As Zionists we’ll say "Tsk tsk
The occupation’s such a risk"

All those gays in Palestine?
Oppressed, repressed by fundie swine
Crocodile tears we’ll weep
Pretending that we care (it’s cheap)

Kinder, gentler, we’ll array
In leftish terms so to defray
The rightward thrust of comrades meet
Controlling both sides of this street

Iron gripp’d, the discourse dies
It matters not the use of lies
Palestinians? Who gives a shit
Their DNA, it just don’t fit

Hark! Here comes Ted with mincing smirk
I’m the chap to do this work
Progressive, moi? I’ve got the props
Suave and glib, I sure won’t flop

I’ll state right off that I’m a Zionist
Tough luck to those who might get pissed
T’was quite the moral thing to do
Founding Israel post-WW2

Facts on the ground now firmly there
So put up, shut up, what’s fair is fair
And moral too, their privilege now
Racist apartheid (and how!)

I’ll wax outraged at the sight
Of Palestinians and their plight
(but only 'neath the occupation)
Then commence terror conflation

Hammer on their "right" to terror
(the repetition’s not an error)
Again and yet once more repeat
A subtle way to scam and cheat

Palestinians of their right
To resist, to return and so to fight
(As enshrined in law international
For everyone a right quite rational)

Cementing in the public mind
Palestinians/terror thus entwined
Paired forever and evermore
‘Til endeth the endless terror war

So we respond: Thou hypocrite!
You don’t fool us, not one whit
Criminalizing resistance here
We reject the terror smear

And as for solving problems moral
Amd muting the religious chorale
The answer true, fair and just
There is just one in which to trust

For all the folks on either side
The time has come, it must be tried
A single state, not theocratic
But secular and democratic

(Just see who howls the loudest now
The sweat breaks out on guess who's brow?
The single state’s a bitter curse
Anathema, Z’nists averse)

So cease pretentious moralizing
And drop your terror stigmatizing
You want moral without dilution?
One man/one vote, the just solution

Note:
A bit of doggerel in the manner of the Burma Shave
poetry from the roadsides of my youth. Poetry (and most
particularly doggerel) generally comes unreferenced,
but the words of Dershowitz, Honderich and the actions
of the Columbia University Journal of Human Immunology
are such that the citations have been indicated with hypertext
for those readers who may wish to verify for themselves
that Atty Dershowitz did indeed make the cited dating
recommendation, that the editor of the Journal of
of Immunology did indeed exhort subscribers to tear out
and destroy the offending journal pages and that the Moral
Philosopher did indeed whine publicly about being censored
by the Palestinian Student Union only to be rumbled shortly
thereafter.

2005-05-23T06:33:00.000-07:00

A Musical Red Herring - The Myth Ain't Dead Yet, Uri

Long-time Israeli peace activist Uri Avnery published an article on 5/12/05 in CounterPunch about the recent uproar in Israel over a "stolen song" The key word in the article's theme is not the noun "song" as Avnery would have us believe, but rather the verb "stolen". As is typical with cases of psychological denial, Avnery's narrative simultaneously reveals and conceals the truth.

The late Naomi Shemer's deathbed confession of her theft of a Basque lullaby is but a musical red herring meant to divert attention from the real theft that all Israelis and Zionists are hiding, buried so deep they cannot own up to it without experiencing considerable psychic pain. Moreover, although Israelis and Zionists are currently unable to admit to the secret it nevertheless continues to gnaw away at them, all of them. Avnery’s breathless reporting of the contretemps over the song indicates that he himself has also internalized this denial as have all "progressive Zionists" (which nomenclature is viewed by many, including this writer, as an oxymoron).

In a word, the stolen song is simply a metaphor for the stolen land of Palestine. Shemer was simply engaging in good old PR-style spin in her confession. She declared she did not steal the song "consciously" but had "absorbed it into her subconscious" in what she felicitiously downgraded to the status of "work accident". Even facing death Shemer was unable to admit the real secret so she confessed instead to petty theft, hoping to thereby find some psychic relief but remain immune to being rumbled over the real crime. Although she deflected inquiry away from the big theft she still left an important clue to what was really eating away at her. The guilty are well-known to harbor a desire to be caught out in their lies.

Shemer’s "confession" further reveals that Israelis justify the theft of Palestine as "unconscious", a mere "work accident". Moreover, they plaintively insist that because they changed a mere "eight notes" of the melody (reducing the 418+ Palestinian villages razed and hundreds of thousands of Palestinians ethnically cleansed to the status of a "work accident" ), they "have every right" to the royalties (land ownership).

This secret of this theft is so monumental, so opposed by every world moral value system that exists, that it requires elaborate psychological and real life walls to be erected around it with a draping of religious mythology over the whole construct to further veil the truth and justify its continuance. The fourth largest army in the world is ever on guard with its panoply of violent weaponry and violent ideology ready to kill or imprison anyone who tries to bare the secret. Loyal spin doctors are at the ready in this country to attack anyone who tries to talk about the secret or bare even a portion of it to the light of day. The secret of the big theft has obtained an almost magical quality whereby any words uttered by anyone, anywhere that give lie to it must be opposed by any means necessary, to prevent the spell from being broken.

Western progressives must assist in breaking the spell by taking courage and call out the theft for what it is, by speaking about the racism, apartheid and theocracy that constitute the Israeli state. When Israelis and Zionists are able to face and admit the secret of the big theft which they all carry within them peace will be possible.

Saudi Israelia

2005-05-18T06:22:00.000-07:00

Bart, having sex on prom night is as American as our
fifty-first state, Saudi Israelia!
--Bart Simpson’s girlfriend, ten years hence

Saudi Israelia, Saudi Israelia
Stronger, more potent than even Australia
Writers of Simpsons doth dreamt up that quip
Conscious or not, a great Freudian slip

Accurate too, long allies in secret
Cartoonish veracity which they won't admit
True character of twin theocracies
A perfect alliance, they match to a tee

Taliban to left and the right of us too
Fundies each one, Muslim and Jew
(Don’t forget Christians, they’re in on the game
"The Devil is secular!" they wail and complain)

Tel Aviv and Riyadh, then on to DC
Mono-theocracies fill them with glee
A figment you say, for laughs that are cheap?
Sorry to say folks, read 'em and weep

Published then perished one time in Beirut
Documents surfaced their content acute
A green light was flashed from the House of Sa’ud
Straight to Tel Aviv (the Arabs got screwed)

Yallah! said Faisal, Just go right ahead!
Take Gaza! The West Bank! Fill Nasser with dread!
A war will secure the oil trove for me
As well as my family (and also DC)

You'll get the land and we'll get the oil
Progressive forces thus completely embroiled
Those Palestinians? A troublesome crew
Leftist and secular, they must be subdued

Printed quite plainly in black and in white
Faisal gave Israel an eager green light
Just for one day published there in full view
The next day – poof! - gone, the subject taboo

But we all got the picture, the hand in the glove
Israel and Saudi a deep, secret love
How sweetly Abdullah holds hands with the prez
(Arik wished he were there to add his caress)

Tripartite alliance of monotheists
Beating back justice with their bloody fists
A cartoon on Fox, ironic forsooth!
Bart’s prescient prom date has blurted the truth

The Cults of the Jealous God

2005-05-16T07:41:00.000-07:00

Foreign Office
November 2, 1917

Dear Lord Rothschild,

I have much pleasure in conveying to you, on behalf of His Majesty's Government, the following declaration of sympathy with Jewish Zionist aspirations which has been submitted to, and approved by, the Cabinet.

"His Majesty's Government view with favour the establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people, and will use their best endeavours to facilitate the achievement of this object, it being clearly understood that nothing shall be done which may prejudice the civil and religious rights of existing non-Jewish communities in Palestine, or the rights and political status enjoyed by Jews in any other country."

I should be grateful if you would bring this declaration to the knowledge of the Zionist Federation.

Yours sincerely,

Arthur James Balfour

* * * * * * * *

"God is on your side!" Zbigniew Brzezinski exhorting anti-Soviet Mujahideen on the border of Afghanistan, 1979

* * * * * * *

On the 87th anniversary of the Balfour declaration [11/2/04], the time has come to talk about the elephant in the living room. The ceiling plaster in the basement is cracked and sifting down a choking dust. A good deal of crockery has been shattered. And I don't know if we'll ever get the carpeting clean. More than three years have passed since September 11, 2001 and the media, both mainstream and alternative, have scarcely mentioned the elephant. If the subject was broached at all, the tones were qualified, hushed. Of late, the subject is starting to appear with more frequency, yet still with the approach oblique. But speak we must about that elephant, and its name is Religion.

Marx famously wrote in 1844 that religion is the opiate of the masses. How quaint that statement now seems conjuring up, as it does, sepia-toned scenes of slaves in the old South, barefoot and hookworm-infested, caroling that, beyond the grave at least, footwear would be available to all God's chillun. Or perhaps the scene described by numerous 19th century European travelers to Palestine of devout Russian peasants inching on their knees, along miles of rough, unpaved road from Jaffa to Jerusalem, bleeding and in pain, sustained in their self-flagellating pilgrimage by visions of heavenly reward in the next life.

More than 100 years has passed since these images were registered. No longer does Marx's maxim seem even remotely apposite: Religion has ceased to be the opiate of the masses. Retaining the pharmaceutical metaphor, it would seem rather that religion has morphed into an amphetamine for masses, a sort of political speed, if you will. No longer does religion sedate, inuring people to poverty and oppression, making them malleable and resigned to worldly misery. Instead religion now functions as a political-cum-psychotropic drug, hopping believers up, inciting them to crash jets into buildings, mow down latter-day Amalekites with an Uzi, swathe women behind impenetrable drapery, justify land theft and civilian murder based on a toxic combination of ancient texts and genetics, drown small children in bathtubs or smash their skulls with bricks to wash away their "sins". And the religion behind such ghastly acts is almost always monotheism. Tawhid and Jihad indeed.

So, what exactly is going on here? It seems a fair question to ask. Why then is no one asking the question direct? No real probing of the ever-strengthening link between monotheistic religion and right wing political ideology seems to be taking place among progressives. Given the current dire state of affairs, it seems to me critical that the light of frank discussion be brought to bear on the subject with all due speed. I invite all progressives, religious or otherwise, to join the debate.

For my part, I would submit that in the several hundred years since the much-ballyhooed and highly overrated Enlightenment, any advances that had been taken towards secularism and freethinking have been steadily and brutally rolled back, deliberately and with malice aforethought. And a prime non-military bludgeon used in this process has been the three monotheistic religions or, as I prefer to call them, the three Cults of the Jealous God. The chief executors of this rollback have been the western capitalist elites and lately the American branch thereof, whose manipulation of monotheism has been unexcelled.[See Samir Amin's brilliant dissection of the origins and continued strength of the monotheistic imperative in American political culture published in the Egyptian newspaper al-Ahram weekly.]

Monotheism by its very nature lends itself particularly well to this template of political control, exclusivism and fear. A single bullying God who trumpets his jealous nature, institutes a myriad of regulating laws threatening followers for any misbehavior or unfaithfulness and sits glowering atop a hierarchy like a violent husband in need of a restraining order, demanding utter obedience from believers with an impunity rivaling any totalitarian regime. Transferring that religious fear and obedience to a temporal ruler is a natural segue. "Thou shalt have no other God before me" is but hairsbreadth away from images of The Leader proliferating on walls and TV screens everywhere. Being warned that criticism of The Leader is "unpatriotic" is directly related to having no other leaders before The Leader. It is no accident that the Hasidim, whose very name is related to the verb "to envy, to be jealous" are the prime cultic bulwark of the Likud and the violent and rapacious settler movement. Likewise, the rapture-besotted Christian religious right provides the very bedrock of support for Bush and his murderous policies.

Islam, although somewhat of a latecomer to modern fundamentalism, has made up for lost time with a vengeance. The earliest appearance of regressive Islam in the Arabian peninsula, the Wahhabi movement, was soundly defeated by the modernizing pasha of Egypt, Muhammad Ali in 1818 and it remained circumscribed until brought out of retirement and revitalized by partnering first with the British in expelling the Ottomans and then with the Americans in exploiting oil. In 1969 I sat in an introductory class on the history of the Arab East at the American University of Beirut, where the Muslim professor dismissed the Hanbali school of Islamic law with a sneer, comparing its adherents to American Puritans, intolerant and intolerable, and announced with some satisfaction that at least they had been restricted in influence to the Arabian Peninsula. Look now, 35 years later, what the Wahhabis and their patrons have wrought.

So how did monotheism become an instrument of public policy, and such an effective one at that? How did the distinction between church/synagogue/mosque and state become blurred? It is my contention that the most effective shot fired across the bow of modern secularism was the Balfour Declaration, promulgated 87 years ago this election day. The significance of this declaration has long been obfuscated by historians, either deliberately or subconsciously, who tend to view it as an interesting but minor historical footnote. However, the importance of the declaration in underpinning the current bloody times in which we live should not be underestimated.

An obscure essay published in Arabic in 1970 by I.N. Saad posited that the main impulse behind the Balfour Declaration was not to win Russian/European/Jewish support for allied war efforts as is commonly held, but rather was a calculated attempt by the British ruling class who, recognizing that many of the supporters and leaders of the October revolution were Jewish, sought to undermine Bolshevism by luring Jewish supporters away from the alarming ideology of communism with a heady mix of religion, racially-based nationalism, free real estate in a pleasant climate and a chance to kick around the native population. The publication of the Balfour Declaration on November 2, 1917, just days before success of the revolution in Russia, was no coincidence.

Lord Balfour, aristocratic and eccentric, rejoiced in the nickname of "Miss Nancy" derived from his affectation of continually taking his own temperature during lengthy parliamentary sittings. But during the days of empire, this trademark British eccentricity often came paired with a mean streak. Arthur's other nickname "Bloody Balfour" (in honor of his brutal application of the repressive Irish Crimes Act) is perhaps the more revealing moniker of the two. Faced with the Red Menace, the Bloody Lord intuitively grasped the efficacy of monotheism to manage people and events. In authoring the infamous declaration, Miss Nancy succeeded beyond his wildest dreams. Repercussions from the Balfour Declaration have echoed down over these hundred years, leaving a trail of blood and misery in its wake, snowballing into increasing fanaticism on all sides which culminated in the spectacular events of 9/11 and beyond. The concept behind the Balfour Declaration – active enlistment of monotheism to combat socialism - became clarified and refined as the century progressed and its insidious application morphed into a malignant force which has brought little else to mankind but hatred, injustice and destruction.

Examples of the applied concept are legion. Meir Kahane successfully incubated the Judeo-Taliban concept as early as the 1960s, and the Gush Emunim followed suit, manifesting the militant Jewish fundamentalism thus released by Bloody Balfour's promise. "Save Soviet Jewry" signs sprouted on American synagogue lawns throughout the 1980's, in bold consonance with the US project to undermine the Evil Empire, an effective religious contribution to the cold war effort. Christianity likewise performed yeoman service for the anti-communist crusade since the end of WWII. From pledges of allegiance and opposition to abortion to the sudden election of a Polish pope and the felicitous subsequent appearance of Solidarinosc, all contributed mightily to weakening socialism's grip and appeal.

The most recent application of the Balfour principle is the diabolical American-Wahhabi axis, pioneered by the unrepentant and strutting Brzezinski, which created the mujahideen and enabled their campaign against socialism in Central Asia and elsewhere, with what results we have seen. Sincerely flattering the U.S., Israel generated an imitative spin-off by strengthening Hamas against the secular PLO. The fall of communism accelerated the whole process while the relentless American monotheistic campaign continued internally throughout: Media derision of "secular humanism", promotion of school vouchers, school prayer and faith-based initiatives, abortion doctor harassment and murder, a sitting president who acknowledges in public (with nary a murmur of protest) that he consults and receives instructions from a Higher Father. The list is endless, and the trend is clear: Monotheism has been a spectacularly successful tool in combating the specter that once haunted Europe.

The inability of progressives to uncritically face and identify the political component of religious fundamentalism sometimes beggars belief. A recent article, published on Counterpunch is but one example. In a "reflective" piece on 9/20/04, peace activist Uri Avnery lays blame for the extremist "mutation" in Judaism squarely on its "connection with the territory [of Palestine], the soil". This barefaced apologetic attempts to absolve both the people and the religion of any wrongdoing and, instead, lays the blame on the land, nay, the very soil of Palestine! Bizarrely anthropomorphizing a piece of territory, Avnery would have readers believe that some kind of mystical and perhaps cancerous vapors arise from Palestinian earth that cause normal people to go quite mad and decent religion to corrode. Prof. Michael Neumann, took another approach recently on this same venue, proposing the "scholarly" view that fundamentalism is a symptom, not a cause. These pronouncements by otherwise intelligent, progressive thinkers, if left unchallenged, have the effect of deflecting critical examination away from the active role of monotheism as a tool wielded by oppressive governments to maintain and strengthen their grip. Until progressives, both atheists and believers alike, can squarely face the capacity of monotheism and its followers to function as a prime emotional "enforcer" of an imperial status quo against secularist and social justice movements and work to strip religion of its public policy role, more death and destruction will ensue.

In addition calling for debate about the regressive role of monotheism, I hereby propose that the single most important blow that can be struck against the advancing tide of monotheistic fundamentalism that threatens us all is to boldly and without qualification support the creation of a single secular, democratic state in Israel/Palestine. The Green Party of the United States has already made this a platform plank, albeit in an overly timid and qualified fashion. Repudiating the racism and religious exclusivity inherent in a political entity based on some kind of genetic/religious criteria would be a splendid opening shot in a progressive effort to roll back the long assault on secularism. I contend that taking this liberating step would free progressives everywhere, but most particularly in the United States, where they have been hogtied in their activist efforts, as Jeffrey Blankfort has cogently argued, by their inability to properly address this issue.

Quite frankly, the notion of a secular democratic state in Palestine/Israel and anywhere else in the Middle East scares the pants off of the Israeli ruling class and its American co-conspirators, not to mention their faithful, silent ally, the Saudi monarchy. Few American progressives understand the critical fact that Saudi Arabia and Israel have been the indispensable twin theocratic pillars of American foreign policy in the Middle East for more than a half-century. If one of those pillars should become secular and democratic, the trough at which all the complicit partners have gorged all these years would be soon shuttered.

At this point of my peroration, no doubt many readers will fume and sputter, "But what about _____?" And the blank here can be filled in any one of the numerous instances of sincere, religious individuals or groups who have initiated or otherwise struggled for progressive causes, in the name of their faith. The examples such groups and individuals are legion and their efforts are indeed laudable. But this is not what is at issue. Rather, what is at issue is the importance of understanding and criticizing the ways in which monotheism has functioned as an enabler and enhancer of reactionary policy both historically and in the present moment. Any efforts that monotheists of good will make to work for progressive outcomes, (which is their right and is always welcome) are but a drop in the bucket towards repairing the damage wrought over the years by monotheism rampant. The close connection between theology and public policy can and must be effectively severed.

Progressives everywhere must fight back against the endarkenment which has gradually but inexorably crept upon us. To do this effectively, they must understand and accept the role that monotheism has played in this deadly process. Further, they must face and publish unapologetically the bitter truth that Zionism has been a constant motif in the whole sordid process from its very inception. To deny this reality is to be complicit. It is time to openly call for the disengagement of religion from public policy, to disconnect religion from state. It is high time to prize the elephant out of the living room and shove it out into the back yard, nay, the back forty, where it can graze harmlessly and in peace.

We must begin to roll back the assault on secularism now and the first order of business, on this the anniversary of the Balfour Declaration, is a vigorous, unambiguous advocacy by progressives everywhere of the Palestinian right of return and creation of a single, secular and democratic state in Israel/Palestine. This is where the process started in 1917 and this is where it will be stopped.

This article originally appeared in the Weekend Edition of Counterpunch for November 6-7, 2004.