Daily Archives: December 5, 2009

The Invention of the Jewish People

Shlomo Sand interviewed on Al Jazeera, speaking about The Invention of the Jewish People

Book review: Shlomo Sand’s The Invention of the Jewish People
By Raymond Deane, Electronic Intifada, October 22, 2009

Sand traces how Zionist ideology drove the project of Jewish nationalism by turning Judaism “into something hermetic, like the German Volk …” (255). He argues that history and biology were enlisted “to bind together the frangible secular Jewish identity.” Together, these engendered an “ethnonationalist historiography” which was typified by the mid-19th century German Jewish historian Heinricht Graetz and his friend Moses Hess, who “needed a good deal of racial theory to dream up the Jewish people” (256).

According to Sand, the destruction by the Romans of the Second Temple in 70 AD left the indigenous Jewish population of Judea and Samaria in place. “[T]he Romans never deported entire peoples. It did not pay to uproot the people of the land, the cultivators of produce, the taxpayers” (130). Furthermore, at that time there were already Jewish communities numbering up to four million persons in Persia, Egypt, Asia Minor and elsewhere (145). Palestine’s status as the unique “ancestral homeland” of the Jews collapses together with the myth of David and Solomon’s imposing kingdom.

Against the ethno-biological concept of a Jewish people — a “race” — whose linear descendants returned from exile to (re)found today’s Israel, Sand posits a religious community proliferating throughout and beyond the Mediterranean region by means of proselytism and conversion. He offers a detailed rebuttal of the conventional wisdom whereby “Judaism was never a proselytizing religion,” a view disseminated by historian Martin Goodman and others (150, note 42).

Most importantly, he concentrates attention on Khazaria, that “Strange Empire” that flourished in the Caspian region between the seventh and tenth centuries AD. By the eighth century the Khazars had adopted Hebrew as their sacred and written tongue, and “[a]t some stage between the mid-eighth and mid-ninth centuries, the[y] … adopted Jewish monotheism” (221). Sand speculates that this conversion was calculated to save them from absorption into either the Roman or the Islamic empires. The Khazars, he contends, engendered those Askhenazi Jews of central and eastern Europe who would later invent the myths of Zionism to justify their colonization of Palestine, a land to which they had no “ethnic” connection and where they remain the dominant elite. [continued…]

Facebooktwittermail

Ethnic cleansing of Jerusalem while Israel implements a fake settlement freeze

Ethnic cleansing of Jerusalem while Israel implements a fake settlement freeze
By Paul Woodward, War in Context, December 3, 2009

Ever since Hillary Clinton officially declared the peace process dead and buried — well, her precise words were that Israel was making “unprecedented” concessions on the issue of settlements — the settlement freeze-hoax has hardly seemed worth tracking. Still, a couple of items from the last few days are noteworthy.

First, Benjamin Netanyahu’s reassurance offered to leaders of Jewish communities in “Judea and Samaria” (the Israeli occupied West Bank): “This order [to freeze new housing construction] is one-time only and it limits the duration of the suspension. There are nine months and three weeks left. Once the suspension has expired, we will continue to build.”

Then, the Jerusalem Post reported:

Strategic Affairs Minister Moshe Ya’alon, who voted in favor of the freeze last week as a member of the security cabinet, warned Thursday that if it continued beyond the 10-month period, ministers would begin to resign.

Ya’alon’s comments reflected earlier claims by Minister-without-Portfolio Bennie Begin, in which Begin promised that at the end of the 10-month period, building would begin “at a faster pace than before the freeze.”

Meanwhile, Haaretz reported on the massive increase in the pace of the ethnic cleansing of Jerusalem — part of the effort to solidify Israel’s claim to the city as an “undivided” Jewish capital.

Last year set an all-time record for the number of Arab residents of East Jerusalem who were stripped of residency rights by the Interior Ministry. Altogether, the ministry revoked the residency of 4,577 East Jerusalemites in 2008 – 21 times the average of the previous 40 years.

In the first 40 years of Israeli rule over East Jerusalem combined, from 1967 to 2007, the ministry deprived only 8,558 Arabs of their residency rights – less than double the number who lost their permits last year alone. Thus of all the East Jerusalem Arabs who have lost their residency rights since 1967, about 35 percent did so in 2008.

According to the ministry, last year’s sharp increase stemmed from its decision to investigate the legal status of thousands of East Jerusalem residents in March and April, 2008. The probe was the brainchild of former interior minister Meir Sheetrit (Kadima) and Yaakov Ganot, who headed the ministry’s Population Administration.

The ministry said the probe uncovered thousands of people listed as East Jerusalem residents but were no longer living in Israel, and were therefore stripped of their residency. Most of those who lost their residency for this reason did not just move from Jerusalem to the West Bank, but were actually living in other countries, the ministry’s data shows.

Those deprived of their residency included 99 minors under the age of 18.

Attorney Yotam Ben-Hillel of Hamoked: Center for the Defense of the Individual said the 250,000 Arab residents of East Jerusalem have the same legal status as people who immigrated to Israel legally but are not entitled to citizenship under the Law of Return.

“They are treated as if they were immigrants to Israel, despite the fact that it is Israel that came to them in 1967,” he said.

A resident, unlike a citizen, can be stripped of his status relatively easily. All he has to do is leave the country for seven years or obtain citizenship, permanent residency or some other form of legal status in another country, and he loses his Israeli residency automatically.

Once a Palestinian has lost his residency, even returning to Jerusalem for a family visit can be impossible, Ben-Hillel said. Moreover, he said, some of those whose residency Israel revoked may not have legal status in any other country, meaning they have been made stateless.

“The list may include students who went for a few years to study in another country, and can now no longer return to their homes,” he said.

Officials at Hamoked, which obtained the ministry data via the Freedom of Information Act, said they were concerned that some of those who lost their residency rights may not even know it.

“The phenomenon of revoking people’s residency has reached frightening dimensions,” said Dalia Kerstein, Hamoked’s executive director. “The Interior Ministry operation in 2008 is just part of a general policy whose goal is to restrict the size of the Palestinian population and maintain a Jewish majority in Jerusalem. The Palestinians are natives of this city, not Johnny-come-latelys.”

Sheetrit, however, insisted that the operation was necessary. “What we discovered is just the tip of the iceberg,” he said. “The State of Israel pays billions of shekels a year in stipends to people who don’t even live here. We sent notices to every one of them about the intention to revoke their residency; we gave them time to appeal. Those who appealed weren’t touched.”

The ministry data shows that 89 Palestinians got their residency back after appealing. Sheetrit said the probe revealed very serious offenses – such as 32 people listed as living at a single address that did not even exist.

Facebooktwittermail

There is a tremendous struggle to be waged, to force Israeli introspection, and change

There is a tremendous struggle to be waged, to force Israeli introspection, and change
By Ali Abunimah, Hampshire College (via Mondoweiss), November 21, 2009

I want to talk about a little bit of history, not too much, and then I want to talk about where I think BDS fits in to where we’re going in the struggle for justice, and why I think it’s going to work.

If you look at the history of Palestine over the past 62 years, ever since the destruction of much of Palestine and the establishment of the state of Israel on its ashes, I think it can be divided roughly into three phases of roughly 20 years. The first phase was from 1948 to 1967, that was the establishment of Israel, the ethnic cleansing of 90 percent of the population from inside the boundaries of what became Israel, the systematic destrucitoin of 500 towns and villages, and the exile of the indigenous population of the country. And of course the remaining Palestinians inside Israel subjected to military rule and to continued ethnic cleansing and removal from their land.

The second phase, beginning in 1967 with Israel’s 3-fold expansion, its conquest of Egypts’ Sinai peninsula, of southwest Syria, of the West Bank and Gaza Strip, was really the heyday, the era of maximum Israeli confidence, and the moment in which Zionism as we know it today became rooted in the American Jewish community. Before 1967 American Jews had for the most part not been captured by this ideology of Zionism and the virulent and racist nationalism that accompanies it. For Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza Strip, it was the beginning of long occupation and colonization that continues to this day. It was also, from Israel’s perspective, a period of what I call a luxury occupation. The Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza Strip were relatively quiescent, they were a source of cheap labor, Israelis allowed themselves to travel freely throughout the occupied territories, and it was bliss, it was a situation where Israelis said well, this is fine, we can stay like this as we build settlements, there’s no pressure on us to do anything, we don’t have to formally annex the West Bank and Gaza Strip, which would require us to give civil rights and voting rights to the Palestinians living there, so we just keep things as they are. [continued…]

Facebooktwittermail

Imposing idiot sanctions on Iran is a direct route to war

Imposing idiot sanctions on Iran is a direct route to war
By Simon Jenkins, The Guardian, December 1, 2009

What is the difference between Iraq, Afghanistan and Iran? The answer, future historians may relate, is none. At the dawn of the 21st century, all three states were ruled by nasty undemocratic regimes to which America and its allies took exception. Antagonism began with hectoring ostracism. This led to economic sanctions, diplomatic isolation and bloodcurdling threats of “other measures”. Finally a pretext was drummed up for military intervention, for bombing, invasion, occupation and appalling destruction.

Will Iran really be on this list? At present the west, covered in blood and expense, is trying to leave Iraq and Afghanistan, yet at the same time it stumbles into an identical trap in Iran.

The casus belli is the same. There is a declared ongoing threat and this is inextricably linked to a “humanitarian” need for regime change. In Afghanistan the trigger was the harbouring of Osama bin Laden. In Iraq it was a tenuous claim that Saddam possessed a nuclear capability and was preparing to use missiles against western targets. [continued…]

Facebooktwittermail

Hizbollah’s new manifesto

Hizbollah’s new manifesto
By Paul Woodward, The National, December 2, 2009

Hizbollah noted that the previous administration in Washington had made no distinction between terrorism and national resistance movements.

The document said: “the Bush administration sought to establish a conformity between terrorism and resistance to remove the latter’s legitimacy and therefore justify wars against its movements, seeking to remove the fundamental right of the nations of defending their right to live with dignity and national sovereignty.”

In presenting its vision of Lebanon, Hizbollah did so in terms encompassing the goals of a secular, pluralistic democracy.

“Our vision for the state that we should build together in Lebanon is represented in the state that preserves public freedoms, the state that is keen on national unity, the state that protects its land, people, and sovereignty, the state that has a national, strong and prepared army, the state that is structured under the base of modern, effective and cooperative institutions, the state that is committed to the application of laws on all its citizens without differentiation, the state that guarantees a correct and right parliamentary representation based on a modern election law that allows the voters of choosing their representative away from pressures, the state that depends on qualified people regardless of their religious beliefs and that defines mechanisms to fight corruption in administration, the state that enjoys an independent and non-politicized justice authority, the state that establishes its economy mainly according to the producing sectors and works on consolidating them especially the agriculture and industry ones, the state that applies the principle of balanced development between all regions, the state that cares for its people and works to provide them with appropriate services, that state that takes care of the youth generation and help young people to develop their energies and talents, the state that works to consolidate the role of women at all levels, the state that care for education and work to strengthen the official schools and university alongside applying the principle of obligatory teaching, the state that adopts a decentralised system, the state that works hard to stop emigration and the state that guards its people all over the world and protects them and benefits from their positions to serve the national causes.” [continued…]

Facebooktwittermail

‘People woke up, and they were gone’

‘People woke up, and they were gone’
By Anthony Shadid, Washington Post, December 4, 2009

The U.S. military called it shock and awe, and it began on March 21, 2003 — 8:09 p.m., to be exact. It concluded here with a sigh. No one quite remembers when the Americans withdrew from Forward Operating Base Summers.

“One morning they left, and they never came back,” said Osama Majid, a vendor on the road to the base, as he hovered over his shelves of Iranian and Turkish packaged sweets. “People woke up, and they were gone.”

Occupations probably never really end. Even after the last of the 115,000 U.S. soldiers leave, this one will live on in the national psyche, in the bearing of Iraq’s military, in cowboy boots, tattoos and, of course, language. “Badjat,” demand Iraqi sentries at Summers’ gates, waiting for a visitor’s identity card. Sometimes occupations leave behind the banal.

Summers is like an archaeological dig.

Perched 30 miles southeast of Baghdad, the former U.S. base — known before the Americans arrived and after they departed as Suwayrah Airport — often strikes the pose of a post-apocalyptic outcast, the posture of much of the country. The land around it is austere, possessed of beauty only at the gloaming, when loneliness becomes serene. Its outskirts were looted of everything years ago, down to the tan brick that once lined buildings’ walls. The compound itself feels forlorn and deserted, the doors of its buildings barricaded by plywood, its windows sealed by cinder block. [continued…]

Facebooktwittermail

Palestinian deemed ‘terrorist’ in ‘Bruno’ sues NBC, Baron Cohen

Palestinian deemed ‘terrorist’ in ‘Bruno’ sues NBC, Baron Cohen
By Amir Efrati, Wall Street Journal, December 2, 2009

We’ll have to admit that before the movie “Brüno” premiered earlier this year, we watched and chuckled as its star, British comedian Sacha Baron Cohen, promoted the film on David Letterman’s late-night show. In what quickly became a viral clip on the Web, Baron Cohen, who played a fictional gay, Austrian TV show host, described a scene in the film in which he interviews an “actual” Palestinian terrorist in a “secret location” in the Israeli-occupied West Bank.

In the scene, a caption identifies the man, Ayman Abu Aita, as a “terrorist group leader, al-aqsa martyrs brigade,” and Baron Cohen unsuccessfully tries to convince Abu Aita to kidnap him in a bid to get famous. Palestinian terrorists, Brüno said, are the “best in the business” and that “al-Qaeda is so 2001.”

Since the film was released, Abu Aita has fought back. He went on a media blitz to counter Baron Cohen’s claims in the film that he works for the al-Aqsa Martyrs’ Brigade, which was once an offshoot of a Palestinian political party to which Abu Aita currently belongs.

Today Abu Aita is in the U.S. with his lawyer, Joseph Peter Drennan, to announce the filing of a libel and slander lawsuit against Baron Cohen and NBC Universal, which released “Bruno.” (Click here for the complaint.) In the suit, filed in federal court in the District of Columbia, Abu Aita, who is Christian and owns a grocery store near Bethlehem, says Baron Cohen led him to believe he was a German filmmaker doing a film about the Palestinian cause. He then met him for an interview at a hotel near Bethlehem that is next door to an Israeli military facility. [continued…]

Facebooktwittermail