MR. MOULITSAS: It's called democracy. If you don't like regular people--hundreds of thousands of people...
Because I don't control hundreds of thousands of voices. You and your organization have a few dozen people. You can control that message. And you don't need to attack Democrats.
Yes, democracy; how strikingly unremarkable that on a site which receives thousands, if not hundreds of thousands of hits a day, that there will be a wide range of discussions, positions and ideas present. Some may think Cindy Sheehan should run against Pelosi (like me, and I do hope she wins as well), others may not. Some feel that the Democratic Party's policy on Israel/Palestine is just fine, and others (like me) are not pleased with said policy and want to discuss it, and god forbid, change it. Really, how controversial is that?
Well, when one has a profound disregard for democracy and discussion, it's pretty clear what one does; you follow the right-wing attack machine tactics of smearing and silencing your 'enemy.' Like Ford and O'Reilly, you just go on the attack, personal attacks especially, while doing your best to steer clear of the actual topic, ideas and issues being discussed. You get this on Fox, on CNN, and on the blogospehere as well, particularly when the discussion of Israel/Palestine comes up.
That's why it is more important than ever to make sure that open, fair discussion and commentary on US Middle East foreign policy, particularly as it pertains to Israel/Palestine continues and develops further, here on DKos and elsewhere, among Democrats and Republicans, because there are those who wish for nothing more than silence on this issue;
The Chicago Council on Global Affairs has canceled a September speech on U.S.-Israel relations and Washington’s pro-Israel lobby by two prominent U.S. political scientists.
John Mearsheimer and Stephen Walt were scheduled to use the Sept. 27 address to outline their upcoming book, "The Israel Lobby and U.S. Foreign Policy," which is expected to be released by Farrar, Straus & Giroux early next month. But the president of the Chicago Council, Marshall Bouton, canceled the event under pressure from critics who were uncomfortable with the academics’ arguments, according to a letter drafted by Mearsheimer and Walt to the Council’s board.
These opponents of the event argued that the two political scientists could only address the Chicago Council if someone from the opposing side, "such as Abraham Foxman of the Anti-Defamation League, concurrently appeared on stage with the authors.
So, with that in mind, I'd like to sample a number of articles written recently, all written by Jewish Israelis whose views need to be heard and known by others, and in particular, by Americans (who pay for the crimes of the Israeli government, among other crimes paid for and committed by our government), by Jewish people (in whose name the state of Israel acts), and in the end by all human beings, who have even the merest pretense in caring about the fate of their fellow brothers and sisters.
The first is a recent article by Amira Hass of Haaretz, and if you have not read her books yet (Drinking the Sea at Gaza: Days and Nights in a Land Under Siege and Reporting from Ramallah: An Israeli Journalist in an Occupied Land), then I highly recommend that you do so.
And here is part of The Hebron Tactic
racist, violent graffiti written in a Palestinian girls school (recently victim of an arson attack) in Hebron by Israeli settlers; I believe one of them says death to the headmistress of the school, but help with the translation is welcomed
The tactic is one that is well-known from Hebron, the same tactic that helped to cleanse the Old City of most of its Palestinian residents: Jews harass and bully and then threaten to lodge complaints against their victims with the Israeli police. Harassment and sabotage of a much more serious nature than what we experienced has become routine for the Palestinian shepherds and farmers in the area. As a result, about 850 of the 3,500 or so inhabitants of the area known as Masafer Yatta (Yatta's periphery) have left their habitations, in caves and tent encampments. Sometimes it is their access to water sources that is damaged, sometimes their herds, other times themselves. They have piles of papers attesting to the police complaints they have submitted. Until they stopped filing complaints.It is easy to blame the two men, or those like them. But they practice terrorizing Palestinians because Israeli authorities let them do so. In their own way, they do the same thing the "legitimate" occupation authorities do: They drive the Palestinians off their land to make room for Jews. In other words, they are following orders.
destroyed homes in the South Hebron Hills (Yatta's periphery)
Another voice on the matter of Hebron and the settlers, from Gideon Levy, who states in response to the recent evacuation of settlers from a Hebron market building, that they in fact, should not be evacuated;
No to evacuation
We must also apologize to the families for expelling them: They should not have been discriminated against in comparison with the city's other settlers. There is no difference between their act of robbery and the other acts of robbery in the city...It would also have been better had the self-righteous evacuation performance, which incorporated a very large force, 3,000 soldiers and policemen, never taken place - including the staged acts of refusal and violence that are a hallmark of the well-timed show. These absurd acts of evacuation don't help anyone, they only cause damage. In Hebron there should be one rule: all or nothing. Either the government has the courage to uproot the entire abscess, or it should allow it to grow unabated.
There is no other place in the territories where the essence of the truth and the evil of the settlement enterprise is revealed, without camouflage, as in the City of the Patriarchs. Here the violence, dispossession and terror against a helpless population are a daily routine diabolically taught from birth. So the failure to uproot the Hebron settlers is the real crime, and we will pay for it. Nothing has changed in Hebron after the evacuation. Thousands of Palestinians who lost their property and their chance for a decent life, the victims of genuine ethnic cleansing, are doomed to a life of poverty and humiliation, and no one can help them. The settlers' celebration continues in full force, and most Israelis continue to stare at what is happening with horrifying indifference. They are shocked only at the highly publicized refusal of a handful of soldiers and are clicking their tongues: We will never be able to evacuate the settlers.
More racist violent graffiti from Hebron's settlers on Palestinian homes
Al-Shuhada Street closed to Palestinian business & driving due to military orders & settler violence; notice the doors covered with stars of david an dother graffiti.
In the Levy article, he goes further into the nature of the evacuation and it's sham-like spin for the media,making this very important comparison to the way that the Israeli military conducts itself with Palestinians as opposed to Jewish Israelis;"An evacuation that could have been carried out in minutes, in the middle of the night and by surprise, as is done to the Palestinians whose homes are demolished, was carried out in the spotlight, with several weeks' advance warning, to allow the settlers to produce their big show and benefit with pictures of it. In another article the title alone makes it very clear the racist divide that separates Jewish Israelis from the occupied and oppressed Palestinians, and it is a piece that hits home for me personally. I have visited my relatives there a number of times, and my cousin's son will be turning 18 in the coming years. Then I spoke with her strongly of my hope that he refuses to join the Israeli military, like many other brave refuseniks, but I am not so sure that she will allow him to do so, or that he will even know that it is an option. It truly breaks my heart, because he is a very sweet young boy, and I can only imagine how the experience of becoming a soldier and having to serve in an army of occupation will change him.
Soldiers in Bil'in village; who is afraid of whom?
A Palestinian beaten in Aboud, carried by his father and the writer
An occupied Palestinian talking to Israeli soldiers on occupied Palestinian land
Let's hope his mother becomes as brave as Nurit Peled-Elhanan
IDF Soldiers Never Go to Jail for Killing Palestinian. Never.
The Murder of Abir Aramin, Nine Years Old
The soldiers of Israel are called upon to sacrifice children, parents, volunteers, and sometimes themselves on the altar of the megalomania of the insolent and corrupt leaders of the state of Israel, who have succeeded in converting this whole country into an altar on which they sacrifice other people’s children to the god of death. And no one is guilty of their deaths; no one is ever punished for the murder of a Palestinian child. The state takes care of those who serve it, sometimes. Other times it sacrifices even them, with the same cold-bloodedness and for the same reasons.
And the murderers? What about them? Do they know that they committed crimes? Do they toss and turn in their beds at night? Are they tormented by images of the small bodies that convulse and fall under their rifles, bombs and shells? Probably not. We know of no case in which any soldier turned himself in and expressed remorse for his actions. That is the biggest success of Israeli education: the distinction between blood and blood, between dead child and dead child, and the inculcation of the firm belief that the murder of Palestinians and their friends is not a crime.
And if my son Yigal really does want to participate in the military programs that they impose on high school students starting in grade 10, or God forbid, to enlist in the army of occupation and torment, I will see it as a dreadful educational failure. A terrible maternal failure. And if I do not do everything I can to prevent him from becoming a murderer or a corpse at the age of 18 I will know that I betrayed him and my vocation as a mother.
Israeli soldiers beating and detaining an Israeli demonstrating with Palestinians in the village of Aboud
Israelis demonstrating with Palestinians in the village of Bil'in
And finally, we have the voice of Uri Avnery; I don't always agree with him, but when I do, I do. Here are some snippets from a Gush Shalom article on Wolfowitz and Wolfensohn, and other political observations;
But beyond personal traits, there is a profound ideological chasm between them. To me, they personify the two opposite extremes of contemporary Jewish reality. Wolfensohn belongs to the humanist, universal, optimistic, world-embracing trend in Judaism, a man of peace and compromise, an heir to the wisdom of generations. Wolfowitz, at the other end, belongs to the fanatical Judaism that has grown up in the State of Israel and the communities connected with it, a man of overbearing arrogance, hatred and intoxication of power. He is a radical nationalist, even if it is not quite clear whether it is American or Israeli nationalism, or if he even distinguishes between the two.
In the eyes of Wolfensohn, both sides are to blame for the current situation, but he clearly blames Israel more, since it is the stronger and more active party. No doubt, Israel is very important for him. He had a lot of sympathy for it (In World War I, his father was a soldier in the Jewish battalions which were set up by the British army and sent to Palestine.) He gave the interview to the Israeli paper in order to voice a severe warning: time is not working for us. The demographic clock is ticking. Today, Israel is surrounded by some 350 million Arabs. In another 15 years, it will be surrounded by 700 million. "I don't see any argument that supports the idea the Israel's situation will get better."
All that is happening now is theater. Olmert pretends that he really wants to "save Abu Mazen", while doing the opposite. At Bush's request, he allowed the transfer of a thousand rifles, with a lot of fanfare, from Jordan to Abbas, so he can fight Hamas - understanding full well that to an ordinary Palestinian this will look like collaboration with the occupier against the resistance. He enlarges the settlements, keeps the "illegal outposts" and closes his eyes while the army is helping the settlers to put up more outposts. That is a foolproof recipe for a Hamas takeover in the West Bank, too.
Everybody knows that there is only one way to strengthen Abu Mazen: immediately to start rapid and practical negotiations for the establishment of the State of Palestine in all the occupied territories, with its capital in East Jerusalem. Not more discussions about abstract ideas, as proposed by Olmert, not another plan (No. 1001), not a "peace process" that will lead to "new political horizons", and certainly not another hollow fantasy of that grand master of sanctimonious hypocrisy, President Shimon Peres.
I will end with the words of Jackson Browne, on what it takes to find out the truth, and act on it. The lyrics are from a song about America, but it can just as easily be used in reference to Israel, and the dogged determination to silence the discussion that we need to continue;
As if freedom was a question of might
As if loyalty was black and white
You hear people say it all the time-
My country wrong or right
I want to know what thats got to do
With what it takes to find out whats true
With everyone from the president on down
Trying to keep it from you
(from For America, Jackson Browne, album title Lives in the Balance)
