Those of you who are so supportive of Iran's Green Movement: How do you suppose Iranian reformers feel when they see that two of their scientists have been assassinated?
Do you suppose vast swathes of Iran's population says, "Oh, wonderful! How grateful we are that the cream of our intelligentsia is being killed! More, please, more: if you kill more of our best and brightest, we will be so much more impressed with Western values, and so strive to imitate you!
Think, people, not just with your trigger fingers or your limbic system but with your brains and your values and with the declarations and intentions of America's Founding Fathers firmly in mind.
Jabotinsky is NOT an American founding father, and for that Americans should be eternally grateful: he was a mean and damaged man whose means of solving problems was by killing and oppressing. Americans owe no allegiance to his style of being-in-the-world and should do all in their power to repudiate -- even refudiate -- his influence in our opinion leaders and lawmakers.
Cecile Surasky is one of a growing number of young American Jews who value their Jewish identity but seek to disassociate it from right-wing zionism and the actions of Israel. Ms. Surasky is Communications Director for Jewish Voice for Peace, and publishes "Muzzlewatch," which "Track[ing]s efforts to stifle open debate about US-Israeli foreign policy."
Recently, Muzzlewatch sent out an email blast with this very important bit of old news:
Back in 1952, The US, Arabs, and Iran were on friendly terms. However, American perfidy in reneging on promises made to Arabs and Iran, by Harry Truman, on behalf of Israel, caused fissures to form in those friendly relations.
Kossack xaxado fleshed out the competition for oil that was behind much of that struggle: xaxado wrote:
very important information regarding Israel's history in the oil industry. Interesting to note the involvement of the Rothschilds -- they were co-founders of the modern oil industry in the 1800's (Azerbaijani deposits, delivered by sea through the Bosporus to Mediterranean ports). One of their chief competitors was Shell oil, founded by a Jewish trader in London who invented the tanker, Marcus Samuel (Indonesian oil routed through Suez and to Japan).
Currently the Ashkelon/Red Sea pipeline corridor is used primarily by the Russians to bypass the Suez canal for transit of oil passing to Asia. Based on this, Israel has found pipeline management to be a major profit center for its economy. Shortly after the Iraq war began there were active talks, well-publicized, regarding reconstruction of the Mosul/Haifa pipeline with multiple 42 inch pipes. Access of right of way for that route seems to be continuing but with no public discussion.
Jordan would be profoundly enriched by this development, but has already stated that progress toward resolution of the Israel/Palestinian conflict would be a precondition of their involvement. In that context, Bush's abrupt change of policy last week is notable.
The Mosul/Hiafa route through the Iraqi desert joins a southern branch coming from Basra at Haditha. Basra, as the only Iraqi port on the Persian Gulf, has unique access to vast reserves of oil and gas, which could be distributed to Europe most securely through a Mediterranean port.
A pipeline joining the Persian Gulf to the Mediterranean would have enormous geopolitical consequences in view of the vulnerability of the Strait of Hormuz to short or long term blockage in case of war. And the impact reaches far beyond oil. The Iranian province of Khuzestan, adjacent to Basra, contains the world's #2 reserves of natural gas, most of Iran's oil, large reservoirs of pure mountain water, and hydroelectric power, all easily routable across Iraq to the Med through a pipeline corridor.
But Haifa is not the only option for a Mediterranean terminus. Last July Iraq's President signed agreements with both Syria and Iran to build pipelines that would connect major Iranian refineries on the Persian Gulf with a new Mediterranean port on the Syrian coast. Not coincidentally, Russia is moving a large contingent of its Black Sea fleet to the Syrian cost near the future tanker port.
Completing the pipeline though Syria would give Russia an alternative to the route transiting Israel, forestalling the potential for interruption of flow due to American influence. Turkey has their own pipeline agreement with Israel, for an undersea route that would pass near the new Russian/Syrian naval base. So there are many opposing interest here and many forces in play.
It could well be that the neocons expected Haifa to become, as many were saying at one point, the "Rotterdam of the Middle East". But the delays in pacifying Iraq have given other forces a chance to react, and the likelihood of that outcome is waning. War with Iran will have much to do with resource distribution. All routes from the Persian Gulf to the Mediterranean are potentially viable, but conflict may bias the result.
Back to Cecile Surasky's narrative in the Muzzlewatch article.
Amplifying an item from Pulse Media in which M. Shahid Alam uncovered a "fascinating tidbit from Time magazine, 1952," concerning Time's designation of Mohammed Mossadegh as Time's Man of the Year for 1951, Surasky notes:
This sobering analysis is striking because of the way in which it speaks from the perspective of Arabs. It’s exactly the kind of analysis we simply don’t see anymore in the MSM (mainstream media) here in the United States, thanks, in no small part, to the growth of the Israel lobby which obscures not just Israel’s responsibility, but even more damning, the United States’.
Surasky continues, quoting relevant portions of the Time magazine article:
Here the Time magazine writer makes the case for why the Palestinian "problem" is the United States’ problem.
"The word "American" no longer has a good sound in that part of the world [the Middle East]. To catch the Jewish vote in the U.S., President Truman in 1946 demanded that the British admit 100,000 Jewish refugees to Palestine, in violation of British promises to the Arabs. Since then, the Arab nations surrounding Israel have regarded that state as a U.S. creation, and the U.S., therefore, as an enemy. The Israeli-Arab war created nearly a million Arab refugees, who have been huddled for three years in wretched camps. These refugees, for whom neither the U.S. nor Israel will take the slightest responsibility, keep alive the hatred of U.S. perfidy.
"No enmity for the Arabs, no selfish national design motivated the clumsy U.S. support of Israel. The American crime was not to help the Jews, but to help them at the expense of the Arabs. Today, the Arab world fears and expects a further Israeli expansion. The Arabs are well aware that Alben Barkley, Vice President of the U.S., tours his country making speeches for the half-billion-dollar Israeli bond issue, the largest ever offered to the U.S. public. Nobody, they note bitterly, is raising that kind of money for them."
Imagine a magazine like Time writing such a frank assessment today, when facts on the ground present irrefutable facts and evidence to which neither journalist nor politician nor academic nor peace activist (ie. Rachel Corrie, Furkan Dogan, Emily Henochowicz) nor rank-and-file taxpayer dare give voice.
The Muzzlewatch item continues:
Arab fears that Ben Gurion’s real plans were to expand were not unfounded. In 1937, before he became Israel’s first Prime Minister, Ben Gurion wrote to his son:
"A partial Jewish state is not the end, but only the beginning. The establishment of such a Jewish State will serve as a means in our historical efforts to redeem the country in its entirety....We shall organize a modern defense force...and then I am certain that we will not be prevented from settling in other parts of the country, either by mutual agreement with our Arab neighbors or by some other means....We will expel the Arabs and take their places...with the force at our disposal."
Surasky concludes:
Of course, the US did much more to win the Arab and Persian world’s enmity than simply support the creation of the State of Israel. Mossadegh nationalized Iran’s valuable oil industry and paid the price with his freedom thanks to a US CIA sponsored coup which led to his imprisonment. He was later put under house arrest until his death in 1967. Iran, or more accurately, Iran’s citizens, have been paying the price ever since.
That was then, this is now.
In 1952, Americans were capable of assessing reality and criticizing it. Today, Americans stand by dumb and impotent, but no less complicit, as voices that speak and act predominantly in Israel's interest, and AGAINST American interests, impose even more brutal conditions on both Palestinians and Iranians, and American lawmakers and policy shapers and enforcers express ghoulish glee at the harm they are imposing on those Others.
That was Dec. 1, 2010, this is two days after Israel has beat back flames that, but for the assistance of the international community, could have crept into Haifa.
Max Blumenthal, another young Jew fed up with Israel's outrageous behavior, posted this remarkable piece at Electronic Intifada, an "independent publication committed to comprehensive public education on the question of Palestine, the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, and the economic, political, legal, and human dimensions of Israel's 40-year occupation of Palestinian territories." Blumenthal wrote from New York City about The Carmel wildfire [that] is burning all illusions in Israel. The focal point of Blumenthal's piece was the Palestinian villages in Haifa's environs that had already been disappeared and re-possessed by Israelis, carrying out Ben Gurion's vision.
Blumenthal wrote:
Over the last four days, more than 12,300 acres have burned in the Mount Carmel area, a devastating swath of destruction in a country the size of New Jersey. While the cause of the fire has not been established, it has laid bare the myths of Israel's foundation.
Israelis are treating the fire as one of their greatest tragedies in recent years. A friend who grew up in the Haifa area told me over the weekend that he was devastated by the images of destruction he saw on TV.
But Israel was incapable of protecting its people against this "greatest of tragedies."
To beat back the blaze, Bibi has had to beg for assistance from his counterpart in Turkey, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, the Western-backed Palestinian Authority and Israel's American and British patrons. Israel is a wealthy country which boasts to the world about its innovative spirit -- its US-based lobbyists market it as a "Start-Up Nation" -- but its performance during the forest fire revealed the sad truth: its government has prioritized offensive military capacity and occupation maintenance so extensively that it has completely neglected the country's infrastructure, emergency preparedness and most of all, the general welfare of its citizens.
But the "greatest tragedy" revealed even more than Israel's tragically misguided priorities; it opened up a window on the people and lives that were dispossessed by the Jews whose lives in Haifa were momentarily in danger.
the fire exposed a terrible history that had been concealed by layers of official mythology and piles of fallen pine needles.
"There are no facts"
Among the towns that have been evacuated is Ein Hod, a bohemian artists' colony nestled in the hills to the north and east of Haifa. This is not the first time Ein Hod was evacuated, however. The first time was in 1948, when the town's original Palestinian inhabitants were driven from their homes by a manmade disaster known as the Nakba.
Most of the original inhabitants of Ein Hod, which was called Ayn Hawd prior to the expulsions of '48, and was continuously populated since the 12th century, were expelled to refugee camps in Jordan and Jenin in the West Bank. But a small and exceptionally resilient band of residents fled to the hills, set up a makeshift camp and watched as Jewish foreigners moved into their homes.
In 1953, a Romanian Dadaist sculptor named Marcel Janco convinced the army not to bulldoze Ein Hod as it did the scores of nearby Palestinian towns it had ethnically cleansed five years prior. He proposed establishing an art commune to generate tourism and contribute to the culture of Zionism. Today, the rustic stone homes that once belonged to Palestinians are quaint artist studios, while the village mosque has been converted into an airy bar called Bonanza. Visitors to the town are greeted at the entrance by Benjamin Levy's "The Modest Couple in a Sardine Can," a sculpture depicting a nude woman and a suited gentleman in a sardine can, which was unveiled by Israeli President Shimon Peres in 2001.
More on Ein Hod below*
After the catastrophe of 1948, the original Palestinians of Ayn Hawd set up their own village three kilometers away from what is today known as Eid Hod. For decades the villagers resisted attempts to dispossess them and were surrounded by a fence during the 1970s to prevent them from expanding according to natural growth. But they finally won official recognition in 2005. This meant that for the first time since the establishment of Israel they could receive electricity and trash service. Meanwhile, more than forty other Palestinian villages inside Israel remain "unrecognized." The 80,000 or so residents of the villages, which lay mostly in the Negev desert, are tax-paying citizens of Israel. However, they have few rights; their homes are routinely demolished to make way for Jewish settlements and they are deprived of basic services.
It's hard to say more.
Where will Israel's intransigence end? The international community rallied to Israel's aid to beat back a fire that threatened homes that Israelis had stolen from Palestinians.
Israel's oppression of Palestinian Arabs has a history at least since the unilateral declaration of the Jewish state in 1948. Gilad Atzmon discussed how the Arab village Ayn Aawd was erased and Jewish settlement Ein Hod planted in its place:
*Ein Hod: see Ayn Aawd and the Israeli Sin
Yet, there is something Israelis may prefer to hide. Ein Hod’s new artistic habitants are far from being innocent. Ein Hod is in fact Ayn Aawd, a 1948 ethnically cleansed Palestinian village. Unlike very many other Palestinian villages Ayn Awad was not destroyed. Though its habitants were brutally expelled, most of the houses remained intact. The Israeli Artists, are basically a bunch of plunders. They also turned the village mosque into a restaurant/bar, the "Bonanza". It is obviously clear that the Israeli artist community participated actively in the Zionist crime.
Those few uprooted Palestinian villagers who survived the 1948 invasion built a new village near by, also called Ayn Hawd. Far from being surprising, the new village is not legally recognized by the Israeli government. It is denied all municipal services (including water, electricity, and roads). In the 1970s the Israeli government erected a fence around this new village in order to prevent it from expanding. As it happens, Israeli artists dwell in Palestinian homes while the dispossessed indigenous owners are living in poverty around the corner with no running water or electricity.
In the last six decades the JNF planted millions of pine trees around Israeli villages and towns. These newly planted forests were there to hide traces of Palestinian civilization and the 1948 Nakba. Ein Hod also surrounded itself with pine trees. It helped the Artists to concentrate on creative matters and to evade the misery in Ayn Hawd. It allows the artists to engage with ‘beauty’ and avoid the sin they are entangled with. Seemingly, the forest between Ein Hod and Ayn Hawd is now burned. Nature found its way to confront the Israelis with his and her past and present. Yet, I am far from being convinced whether the Israelis can be morally awaken to the disastrous reality they are complicit in.
Ein Hod is just a symbol of Israeli morbidity. It is a symbol of ethical blindness. But it is also a symptom of Israeli hopelessness.
In spite of its military might, its ‘technological superiority’, its air force, its nuclear capacity and AIPAC, Israel doesn’t know how to deal with fire. It fails to deal with the most banal domestic issues. Israel has been caught begging the world to come to its rescue. Zionism that was there to bring to life an authentic, self-sufficient, civilized and ethical Jew has failed all the way through.
Ilean Ros-Lehtinen has been named chair of the House Foreign Affairs Committee. On Dec. 1, 2010, that Committee convened to hear testimony from William Burns and Stuart Levey on "Iran Sanctions." In her opening remarks, Ros-Lehtinen said, "History repeats itself."
It does indeed.
In the course of their meeting, Howard Berman, Ros-Lehtinen, Gary Ackerman, Ed Royce, Stuart Levey, etc. discussed the progress of their AIPAC-driven agenda to starve and dispossess Iran and Iranians of their sovereign rights to their own government, their own financial and economic relationships, their rights to trade with other states in the world community.
A very small expenditure of critical listening and thinking applied to Ros-Lehtinen's comments reveals her Israel-first bias, and her -- as well as the rest of that committee and of WINEP-anointed Stuart Levey -- jaw-dropping failure to recognize the extent to which the activities that group is carrying out against Iran, for the sake of Israel and Israel's continued oppression of Palestinians, is hurting the American people.
In November, the American people were motivated by a panic induced by rising unemployment, issues swirling around energy, and soaring national debt. The election of a Republican majority that resulted from that panic eventuated Ros-Lehtinen's acquisition of the chair of the foreign affairs committee.
In her comments in the hearing, Ros Lehtinen emphasized that US was working very hard to cripple Iran's energy industry, an achievement in which Ros-Lehtinen and the rest of the group derived a great deal of satisfaction. Further, Ros-Lehtinen listed the states that, based on her ideological bias, were failing to cooperate with US demands to strangle Iran but were instead continuing and even expanding trade with Iran. Those states include Russia, China, Brazil, Turkey, and Armenia.
Analyze this situation: In order to sustain America's "special relationship" with Israel, a state undefined by borders and which defies US constraints on targeted assassinations and has waged numerous wars of aggression in the past decades, resulting in the deaths of untold thousands of innocent civilians.
According to an entry in the Nov. 24, 2010 CIA Factbook, Israel carries a debt burden of 77% of its GDP (most of which debt is borrowed from US); additional economic information from the CIA Factbook about Israel is as follows:
Israel population: 7 million* GDP purch power $207 billion
In order to cement America's special relationship with that one state, Ros-Lehtinen, her fellow committee members and Stuart Levey are actively engaged in jeopardizing American relationships, with all their potential for trade, cultural exchange, and future development with:
Russia population: 139 million GDP purch power $2.1 trillion
China population: 1.33 billion GDP purch power 8.8 trillion
Brazil population: 201 million GDP purch power 2.01 trillion
Turkey population: 77.8 million GDP purch power 880 billion
Armenia population: 3 million GDP purch power 16.25 billion
plus Iran:
Iran population: 76.9 million GDP purch power $826 billion
For a total of 1.797 billion men, women, and children, with total purchasing power GDP of $14.79 trillion.
Look at that up close:
In exchange for sustaining a 'special relationship' with
Israel, pop. 7 million, GDP ppp $207 billion,
the US House Foreign Affairs Committee and Stuart Levey are actively working to jeopardize US relationships with five of the world's up-and-coming economies with a
combined population of 1.797 billion people,
and combined GDP ppp of $14.79 trillion.
Is it GOP logic or skewed ideology or the goal of enhancement of Israel's oil opportunities that induces the House Foreign Affairs committee to believe that constraining the flow of energy to and from a major energy resource state is a wise and prudent plan for America's future?
Why is the international community allowing Israel to get away with assassinating civilians, dispossessing Palestinians, waging wars of aggression?
Why are Americans allowing persons who appear to have Israel's interests, but not American interests, at heart, permitted to hold seats of power to determine the future prosperity of the American people?
*************
UPDATE:
This diary was HRd for statements of "dual loyalty."
Here's how Ros-Lehtinen indicted herself as having Israel's interests first and foremost:
Ros-Lehtinen: "Over 14 years since the passage of the Iran Sanctions Act . . .We've wasted enough time -- 14 years."
Keith Weissman appears on a video of a conference held in Seattle, Washington, in Dec. 2009, stating that he was an AIPAC agent, that HE helped draft the Iran Sanctions Act, that the Iran Sanctions Act functioned to HARM American interests http://www.richardsilverstein.com/...
This past October, in a discussion of his recently released book, "The Arab Lobby," Mitchell Bard stated that "The Israel lobby [of which AIPAC is, obviously, a key element] works to advance the goals of the government of Israel." http://www.c-spanvideo.org/...
connect the dots.
Actions of Israel lobby created Iran Sanctions
Iran Sanctions harm American interests
Israel lobby works to advance Israel government goals
Ros Lehtinen works to advance Iran sanctions, rails that US State Department is not sufficiently compliant.
___
UPDATE II.
Nospincus posted this comment:
There is so much wrong with this diary
that I don't know where to begin.
For starters:
Back in 1952, The US, Arabs, and Iran were on friendly terms.
The so-called "friendly terms" led to the 1956 Israeli/Arab war with two more wars to follow in subsequest years.
Nospinicus
by Nospinicus on Thu Dec 09, 2010 at 07:25:28 AM PST
My responses were hidden.
First, I pointed out to Nospinicus that my statement referred to US-Arab relations; his statement referred to Arab-Israel relations.
I posted several passages quoting US ambassadors and leaders of the time (h/t Citizen):
1949:
Truman’s Ambassador Mark Etheridge to the Lausanne Conference to get
Israel to accept two U.N. Resolutions: `181 (Partition of Palestine)
and 194 (Right of Return of Palestinian Refugees to their homeland):
From the conference he wrote President Truman.
""Since we gave Israel birth we are blamed for her belligerence and
her arrogance and for the cold-bloodedness of her attitude toward
refugees...what I can see is an abortion of justice and humanity to what
I do not want to be a midwife... Israel must accept responsibility....her
attitude toward refugees is morally reprehensible....Her position as
conqueror demanding more does not make for peace."
–Quote from former Time Magazine’s Jerusalem Correspondent Donald
Neff’s book, "Fifty Years of Israel", p.79
1957:
"I am aware how almost impossible it is in this country to carry out a
foreign policy [in the Middle East] not approved by the Jews.....
terrific control the Jews have over the news media and the barrage the
Jews have built up on congressmen .... I am very much concerned over the
fact that the Jewish influence here is completely dominating the scene
and making it almost impossible to get congress to do anything they
don’t approve of. The Israeli embassy is practically dictating to the
congress through influential Jewish people in the country"
–Secretary of State John Foster Dulles in February, 1957 quoted on
p.99 of "Fallen Pillars" by Donald Neff
1973
against the possibility of further acts of censorship, this response to a comment by Jonathan in TelAviv is repeated here. It represents a core argument of this diary:
Look at the numbers: why are members of United States House of Representatives Committee on Foreign Affairs willing to piss off 1.8 billion people, with nearly 15 trillion dollars to spend, at a time when Americans are experiencing the worst economic crisis in 80 years?
UPDATE: Jonathan in TelAviv posted a question (to the effect) "Whose interests do you serve, Persian Jesus; the Islamic Republic of Iran?"
I posted a reply stating that in my opinion (and in the opinions of analysts such as Chas Freeman, John Tirman, Flynt and Hillary Leverett,) that a good relationship between the US and Iran is in the best interest of the people of the United States. Then I traced some of the fact pattern showing how Israel acts to disrupt acts on the part of Iran or of the US that might lead to a stronger US-Iran relationship. Specifically, I stated that the 1995-96 Iran Sanctions act that Ros Lehtinen referenced, were put in place by AIPAC (per Keith Weissman), which Mitchell Bard stated works to advance the agenda of the Israeli government. The Act was pressed forward at just that time because Iran had accepted the bid of CONOCO to develop oil fields in Iran. The CONOCO proposal was NOT the most advantageous offer Iran could have accepted; Iran accepted the less favorable bid as a gesture of good will toward the US. (Robin Wright is on record on the Wilson Center website, stating that the loss of the CONOCO contract cost Americans tens of thousands of jobs.)
Whenever relations between Iran and the US show signs of a thaw, Israel pulls some stunt, kills Iranians, assassinates Iranians, something, to derail the possibility that US and Iran can form the friendship that is in the best interest of the American people.
___________
UPDATE
Jonathan in TelAviv asked Why Iran-Israel relations went sour; they had been good until 1979.
Persian Jesus responded:
Haggai Ram explains part of this in
Iranophobia: The Logic of an Israeli Obsession
Ram is a professor at Ben Gurion Univ. One of the elements of his thesis is that Israeli Ashkenazi Jews see in Iranians/Mizrahi Jews a mirror of themselves as Jews perceived of themselves in Europe: as the disdained "Oriental", on the bottom of the totem pole.
Another factor is economic: in that situation, Israel profited from its relationship with Iran through the Iraq-Iran war: Israel sold (usually defective) weapons to Iran at inflated prices; Iran paid, Israel realized a revenue stream. Life was good. That dried up in about 1989; a few years later, Iran's lawsuit against Israel on the oil transshipment company looked like it was going to be decided in Iran's favor, which it was. By 1992, Israel was looking for ways to depict Iran as a boogeyman; Ephraim Sneh sold to Knesset the strategy of Iran's nuclear projects, and the game was on.
Ashkenazi Jews had an attitude in Germany that they knew better how Germany should run its affairs. Israeli Jews have a similar attitude toward Iran, and are passionately eager to once again be in the center of Iranian government and financial affairs, as Israelis were during the reign of the shah, because the relaltionship was lucrative for Israel.
_________________________________
Carboloaded posted some drivel accusing Persian Jesus of fraud. PJ responded:
Merriam Webster is your friend, Carbo
a : deceit, trickery; specifically : intentional perversion of truth in order to induce another to part with something of value or to surrender a legal right b : an act of deceiving or misrepresenting : trick
2
a : a person who is not what he or she pretends to be : impostor; also : one who defrauds : cheat b : one that is not what it seems or is represented to be
I did not attempt to "deceive" -- I stated quite openly that I support Palestinian rights and also the rights of Iran.
Your accusation of "fraud" is off base; I suspect what you really mean is that I do not support Israel in its acts of dispossession of the Palestinian people, nor do I support US functionaries who seek to economically strangle Iran, based on false information and propaganda. In that, I am guilty as charged. But that's not fraud. Rare, on this forum, perhaps, but not fraud.
___
Jonathan in TelAviv taunted, Why do you think some of your comments are hidden. Persian Jesus responded:
The larger question is
Why is a site committed
to principles of the Democratic Party NOT howling that a committee as powerful as the House Foreign Affairs committee, is acting so obviously AGAINST the best interests of American workers?
________________
UPDATE
Volleyball weighed in with this delightful repartee:
I have another poll to answer the one (0+ / 0-)
above:
Should anti-Semitic Shitballs be banned:
__ Yes all the time
__ Yes for the 121st time
__ Yes because they are lying sacks
__ Yes for all of the above.
I vote yes for all of the above.
I'm not a little giant... I'm a freakin' leprechaun
by volleyboy1 on Thu Dec 09, 2010 at 10:17:31 AM PST
To which Persian Jesus responded:
A pattern I've noticed in irrational
commenters is that when they can't come up with a good argument or can't refute the facts, they devolve to obscenities, name-calling, slurs, you name it.
says more about the intellectual inadequacies and personal insecurities of the speaker than of the target of their invective.
Other irrational commenters on this magnificent site that Markos Moulitsos hosts and where the momentous events of the day are discussed with a view to advancing the agenda of the Democratic Party include unfounded accusations of fraud; labelling others as whores, haters of 'joos;' discussion of ways to eat salami; and general reprise of behavior most often found among 5th graders in a really bad school.
Well done.
____________
several commenters have accused the diarist of antisemitism for noting the superior-inferior relationship between Ashkenazi and Mizrahi Jews. I have repeated that the concept comes from Haggain Ram's "Iranophobia."
Here are pertinent passages from that book:
p. 62: "We have seen that Israel's enchantment with the Shah regime derived from a complex web of sources. Among these was a hiteerto unexplored, albeit it highly critical, commonsense world, which encompassed the idea of "inviting the sub-men to become human, and to take as their prototype Western humanity as incarnated in the Western bourgeoisie," .. .
p. 62 . . .in Israel . . ."the media, academia and public were overwhelmed by the vision of a modernizing and pro-Western monarchy being overthrown by a mass movement under the leadership of men whose image matched the most deeply entrenched Orientalist stereotypes. From then on, Israelis saw the revolution as a "terrible detour" from the trajectory toward progress and civilization and hence (re)consigned the Iranians to static backwardness, regardless of how the revolution was shaped by interaction with Euro-America. Accordingly, for the past three decades the Jewish state has been keen on imputing the radical alterity of the Iranian polity, canceling out pre-1979 notions of shared histories and intertwined destinies. . . .
p 63 "Still, even if the revolution and its aftermath were instrumental in the endeavor to reinforce constructions of Israel as "the West," they also unearthed and, in turn, radicalized the tensions and contradictions inherent in the very process of demarcating and safeguarding the Western character of the Israeli polity. I argue that Israelis went about to set Iran apart as eccentrically Oriental, fanatically religious, and outrageously hostile precisely because they have come to see in it the "strangers from within," the Oriental and religious "folk devils" threatening their own identity. Rebecca L. Stein has shown the ways in which Palestinian violence in 2002 against Israeli cafes -- which she renders as a "defining feature of Tel Aviv's urban, Ashkenazi centers" -- militated against the construction of Israel as a Western society, "a nation state that, given both its Palestinian and Mizrahi histories, had never been." I suggest that the 1979 revolution adn its aftermath have equally shown the fallacy of such constructions.
To fully understand this point it is necessary to situate the revolution not, as one might expect, in its immediate Iranian context but rather in the context of Israeli domestic politics since the 1970s. Indeed, it is crucial to remember that the 1979 revolution happened to unfold in the streets of Iran at a particular moment when the Isrwseli ethnocentric regime, which historically had bttressed the dominance of the Ashkenazi (European) Jewish ethno-class, was coming under direct attack from various directions. Two years before, in 1977, the Likud party had won the national election, ending nearly thirty years of Labor party rule. Personifying the antithesis to Labor's quasi-socialist ethos, Likud appealed to many Mizrahi Israelis, mostly first-aand second generation Jewish immigrants from Muslim countries, who were continuously being treated by members of Israaeli ethnocracy as second-class citizens."
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