Antony Loewenstein

A BBC interview with Noam Chomsky:

Guess who?

“Blowing up Iran. I say we nuke the bastards. In fact, it doesn’t have to be Iran, it can be everywhere, anyplace that disagrees with me.” 

This and other “highlights” from 2006.

Amira Hass, Haaretz, December 27:

Until Enaya Samara, who has been living in forced exile for the past eight months returns to her village near Ramallah, and until Someida Abbas, who was banished from his home 10 months ago accompanies his children to kindergarten again, it will not be possible to believe the defense establishment’s promise to change its policy. So long as American, Brazilian and German citizens whose name is not Cohen but Abdullah, are refused entry at the borders, we will know that the policy is still in effect – the policy of causing tens of thousands of Palestinian families to break up, or to leave their homes and emigrate. This is not a new policy in the West Bank and Gaza Strip. Since 1967, Israel has been carrying out demographic manipulations which should actually be called expulsion. Military edicts have caused some 100,000 people to lose their status as permanent residents in the occupied territories and to remain exiles in the countries to which they went to study or work. These manipulations have turned 240,000 people who were born in the West bank and Gaza and left the territories because of the 1967 war, and another 60,000 who were abroad when it broke out, to become new refugees. 

More than one year after Hurricane Katrina, residents of New Orleans have been forgotten. That’s the conclusion of rampaging investigative journalist Greg Palast in his documentary, Big Easy to Big Empty:

It’s unbelievably ugly. You will see in the film mile after mile of destroyed houses. The 9th Ward looks worse than Berlin after the war because there’s hardly a building standing. And this was just filmed a couple months ago! This was filmed one year after the flood. In Indonesia, they have rebuilt after the tsunami. The only thing they are rebuilding here is a Disneyland on the Mississippi to recreate a new, white, conservative city.

Look to New Orleans. Golly gee, the black folks haven’t come back. There are no labor unions anymore in New Orleans. There are no public schools. It’s all vouchers. Worker wages have gone down. It’s “Mission Accomplished.” This is the plan. This is the program.

Welcome to the world’s only superpower.

Jon Stewart takes apart war-monger Bill Kristol:

Fox News comedian Bill O’Reilly recently travelled to Iraq – “the Bob Hope of his generation”, according to one serviceman – and signed some of his books. The purpose of his trip? Er, to sign some books and promote himself. Did he meet any Iraqis? Did he leave the Green Zone? Not that he cares:

Noam Chomsky, Japan Focus, December 26:

There was a meeting on the weekend of December 9-10 in Cochabamba in Bolivia of major South American leaders. It was a very important meeting. One index of its importance is that it was unreported, virtually unreported apart from the wire services. So every editor knew about it. Since I suspect you didn’t read that wire service report, I’ll read a few things from it to indicate why it was so important.

There is one – has been one point of hostility in South America. That’s Peru, Venezuela. But the article points out that Chavez and Peruvian President Alan Garcia took advantage of the summit to bury the hatchet, after having exchanged insults earlier in the year. And that is the only real conflict in South America at this time. So that seems to have been smoothed over. 

Top Ten Myths about Iraq in 2006 by Juan Cole.

(Suffice to say, “victory” is thankfully never going to happen.)

Lawyer and amateur historian Alan Dershowitz is clearly a scared man. The trajectory of his rhetoric is directly related to the misbehaviour of Israel. In other words, whenever Israel commits even greater crimes in the occupied territories, Dershowtiz can be relied upon to increase his hatred towards anybody who dares challenge the Jewish state’s actions.

The recent Holocaust conference in Iran is a case in point. While rightly chastising the presence of fundamentalist Jews, the Neturei Karta, he goes on:

By this time, everyone knows that Jews for Jesus are not really Jews. They are Christians using the cover of their Jewish origin to fool people into coming to their proselytizing services. But many people still think that the seven bearded enemies of Israel – members of an extreme cult called Neturei Karta – who accepted an invitation from Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad to come to Iran’s Holocaust denial festival, are also real Jews.

Still others believe that supporters of Hizbullah and Holocaust minimizers like Norman Finkelstein – who uses his Jewish birth to cover for his anti-Semitism – are real Jews. Nothing could be further from the truth, and I now propose a new vocabulary for describing these imposters. From now on, the Neturei Karta should be known as Jews for Ahmadinejad, and Norman Finkelstein and his ilk should be known now as Jews for Hizbullah…

Noam Chomsky probably deserves a category all his own. In light of his having written an introduction to a book by Holocaust denier Robert Faurisson – who also spoke at the Iranian hate-fest – Chomsky should now be known as a Jew for Holocaust Deniers. Chomsky has claimed that he was only defending Faurisson’s freedom of speech, but that defense rings hollow.

In the first place, Chomsky is not remotely a civil libertarian. Civil libertarians defend everyone’s freedom of speech and conscience, whether they agree with the content of that speech or not. Chomsky, on the other hand, defends only those with whom he agrees…

Finkelstein’s wholehearted hatred of Jews and support for Hizbullah is well documented and easily accessible. He is a denouncer of all Holocaust victims -calling survivors “frauds” and “hucksters” – while appropriating Nazi language himself when he characterizes American Jews as “parasites.” He wears his vileness on his sleeve. For a quick overview of his positions, please see a chapter of my book The Case for Peace.

Just like consumers of food and tobacco products must be warned by labels, so too, consumers of propaganda should be warned by appropriate labeling. And just as a person can renounce his citizenship by deed or word, so too can a person renounce his ethnicity in the same manner. I hope my labeling of anti-Semites of Jewish heritage will put to rest any misconceptions that these fringe hate-mongers are representative of or speak for anyone but themselves.

Dershowitz’s position would be humorous if it wasn’t so tragic. In his worldview, only good, loyal, pro-Israeli Jews are worthy. Anybody else is self-hating and dangerous. He knows, and many Zionists know, that world public opinion is turning against Israel. So what to do? Shoot the messenger. When my book, My Israel Question, was released, I was also accused of being part of a pro-Hizbollah cheer-squad by the local Zionist clown, Ted Lapkin. Even the Murdoch broadsheet editorialised that such name-calling was counter-productive. Dershowitz and Lapkin have clearly been media trained by the same IDF spokesperson.

As long as the illegal occupation remains, Zionism will remain mired in sin (not that ending the occupation will cleanse the ideology.)

The Godfather of Soul lives:

A Jew, a Christmas party in LA, Jimmy Carter, Jewish chauvinism and Israel.

If only more Jews were able to articulate the contradictions.

Firas Aridah, International Herald Tribune, December 22:

For the 39th consecutive year, Palestinian Christians in towns and villages like Bethlehem, Jerusalem, Ramallah and Aboud will celebrate Christmas under Israeli military occupation. In Aboud, our hardships increased in October 2005, when the Israeli military issued confiscation orders to seize land owned by village residents to build Israel’s security barrier, or wall. The orders were given without consultation with the land owners, contradicting what is expected from a democratic government.

Local tradition holds that Aboud’s residents received the Christian faith from Jesus himself, who is said to have preached here.