Joel Kovel, author of Overcoming Zionism, talks with Amy Goodman about Zionist pressure which caused University of Michigan Press to drop his book from distribution. Only after fellow academics and civil libertarians led a campaign to get the book published did University of Michigan Press overturn their decision and agree to continue the distribution of Kovel's book.
Joel Kovel, author of Overcoming Zionism, said, "What we don’t have is any kind of real debate on this subject in our country at this time ... basically these Zionist repression groups have had pretty much a free hand ... that’s why I wrote the book. I mean, I wanted to -- I disregarded all the taboos, that you're not supposed to talk about Israel in any depth in this country."
[The distributor dropped his book after receiving threatening emails from a Zionist pressure group.] "They panicked this summer when they dropped my book. I mean, they were pressured by this Zionist watchdog team." [But the Committee for Open Discussion of Zionism was able to convince them to continue distributing it.] "We have a committee forming, Committee for Open Discussion of Zionism, codz.org. And we’re planning a conference and all. But the committee leapt into action, and we were amazed at just how eloquent and, you know, basically fed up a lot of people were with being intimidated by these kinds of tactics. They just want to suppress an open discussion of this subject. ... I grew up in a very conventional Jewish home, except for the fact that there was a lot of division on this subject, so I think from an early age I learned to take a certain distance from it and to think critically about it."
"The Jewish people have been, you know, very largely deprived of a real opportunity to look at what’s going on in the state of Israel."
"The notion of Zionism, as that there is this kind of destiny of the Jewish people to have their own state, is just the wrong idea. And it’s an idea that requires signing onto imperialism. It means signing onto ethnic cleansing. It means -- despite everything that has been said about it, it means basically becoming a racist situation, where you’re oppressing an indigenous population and depriving them of their right to existence ... I join hands with those people who feel that the time has come to basically think of Israel in the same category as South Africa, as a state that just has gone wrong and needs replacement ... the comparison was interesting, because Tutu and other leaders of the freedom struggle in South Africa who visited Palestine have always been asked, well, how does it compare? And he says, well, it’s not the same thing, Israel is actually worse. He actually said, Israel is a worse place than Apartheid South Africa was."
"This is much worse than apartheid." - Archbishop Desmond Tutu
UPDATE: There are people here on DailyKos who are working overtime to suppress comments they don't like to keep their agenda and their tactics from being exposed. Here is a comment I saved my comment to MBNYC before the suppressors got it hidden. Judge for yourself, this is my response to his comment "Why do I make fun of you?":
"the supposed suppression of anti-Israel views by the Zionists."
So you are backtracking from your anti-Semitic comment to me. Your original comment to me was, "Wow. We haven't had a 'the Jews are oppressing my freedom of speech' diaries in a while." So you now see that the dairy is about some Zionists (NOT "the Zionists") and their "supposed suppression" (supposed? take that up with Joel and Amy) and NOT about "the Jews" as you had falsely claimed.
I'll take this as your apology to me. Next time use your head and think before you spread anti-Semitic comments on the Internet. The next step is for you to see that the diary was about the actions of A Zionist group, and NOT "THE Zionists." Again, think before you write.