Opportunism makes strange bedfellows. How else can Jeff Blankfort’s prominence in what is supposedly a Palestinian solidarity movement be explained?
The Lobby Hypothesis
Blankfort’s basic claim is that a Jewish Lobby has absolute control over US policy in the Middle East. This is hardly a novel claim – it’s been advanced by various congressional Republicans and mainstream hawks like Walt and Mearsheimer, who claim that The Lobby is the reason that the US deviate from their general foreign policy of support for “democracy” when it comes to the Middle East, and that the Lobby is harming “national interests”.
There are, however, some obvious problems with this theory, which I will outline only briefly, as they have been discussed in great detail elsewhere. If we are to assume that The Lobby is the driving force behind US Mid-East policy, in particular of US support for the occupation and ethnic cleansing of Palestine, it is useful to ask a few basic questions:
- Does US policy in the Middle East differ in any fundamental, qualitative way from US policy anywhere else in the world (i.e., is US policy towards Israel, Palestine, and the rest of the region unique in the annals of US foreign policy)?
- Are there any other interests within the US that might benefit from US support for Israeli militarism?
- What happens when Israeli policies conflict with US strategic interests?
- Based on the overall US record, could we reasonably expect the US to pursue a policy of supporting the human rights of Palestinians if it were not for The Lobby?
One might further ask how one defines “national interests”, and whether a discourse of “national interests” is necessarily a good thing for Palestinian rights.
The answer to the first question is a resounding NO. The essentials of US Middle East policy – supporting murderous dictators, racist regimes, illegal military occupations, rampant violations of human rights and international law, and acts of aggression and genocide – characterise not only US policy in the Middle East, but US policy virtually everywhere else. The US installed and decisively supported the genocidal Suharto regime in Indonesia, which celebrated its inauguration by slaughtering between half a million and a million Indonesian peasants (often based on US-supplied hit lists), and went on to invade and occupy East Timor, carrying out a decades-long bloodbath (politely ignored in the US corporate media) that killed as much as one fifth of the population of that small, defenceless country. US support for genocidal regimes includes decisive support for Saddam Hussein’s slaughter of Iraqi Kurds in the 1980s, Turkey’s ethnic cleansing of Kurds in the 1980s and 1990s, the mass slaughter of the indigenous people of Guatemala (lasting almost half a century), and its own genocidal warfare against Indochina, from which that region has yet to recover. Clearly, then, US policy towards Israel and Palestine is best characterised as highly consistent with US policy elsewhere. It is hard to sustain the idea that the dark machinations of an all-powerful lobby are the driving force behind a policy of doing basically the same thing everywhere in the world.
The answer to the second question is an obvious YES. Certainly, the US has an interest – going beyond the obvious commercial benefits – in controlling the Middle East’s oil reserves, which have been deemed by US planners to be the key to world domination going back to the end of the Second World War. Obviously, US oil corporations aren’t exactly hurting from this arrangement, either. Additionally, US military aid to Israel – 75% of which ends up in the pockets of US arms manufacturers – helps spur on a regional arms race, ensuring constant demand, and thus constant profits. Moreover, Israel is virtually the only state in the region that has little to no danger of being “infected” by “radical [i.e., independent] Arab nationalism”. Mubbarak & Co. might be overthrown tomorrow, but there’s no chance of Israel being a base for resurgent Nasserism.
As for the third question, when US interests conflict with Israeli policies, US interests consistently prevail. It is first important to remember that US interests do not include “ideological slogans about human rights”, as George Kennan put it half a century ago. From a strategic standpoint, the US couldn’t really care less what happens to the Palestinians. However, the US does care – to name just one example – about whether the Chinese government get their hands on classified US technology, and when Israel tried to make a deal to do just that, the US put a stop to it with a few phone calls and a well-timed snubbing. A deal like this is not a small matter for Israel. Israeli strategists have long been ambivalent about the exclusivity of the US-Israeli “special relationship”, and Israel certainly has a long-term interest in reducing its dependency on US armaments in order to ensure maximum manoeuvring room on policy. Losing the China deal, thus, was a real blow. One might have expected The Lobby to attack the US government for doing such harm to Israeli interests. One would have been wrong.
If The Lobby is truly the driving force behind US support for the oppression and dispossession of Palestinians, the answer to the fourth question – whether the US would truly support Palestinian human rights if it weren’t for The Lobby – would have to be YES. This does not rise to the level of a bad joke, as even a cursory glance at US policy elsewhere demonstrates. The US has enthusiastically supported and engaged in genocide and ethnic cleansing all over the world, from the Kurds in Turkey and Iraq, to the Timorese, to the Mayas of Guatemala, to the indigenous peoples of Paraguay, to the people of Indochina, and, last but not least, the genocide by which ‘The West [not to mention the East, South, North, and Midwest] Was Won’. Proponents of the Lobby Hypothesis do not even attempt to explain why the US would care more about Palestinians than about the millions of others whose slaughter they have supported.
As for “national interests”, the first problem is conceptual. Can we really claim, with any validity, that all people within “the nation” have the same interests, that unemployed auto workers have the same interests as the owners of auto companies, that the working class base of the US military has the same interests as the CEO of Halliburton? Of course not. “National interests” is a meaningless, obfuscatory concept. However, even if it were not, a discourse of “national interests” would be of little help to the Palestinians. What benefit do they confer on “the nation”? Moreover, if we accept “national interests” as the basis of the Palestinian solidarity movement, the movement would, by definition, have to end if it were ever conclusively proven that “national interests” are harmed by enforcing the human rights of Palestinians. Clearly, the Palestinians cannot hope to find reliable friends amongst those who base their advocacy on imagined “national interests”.
In other words, in order to sustain the Lobby Hypothesis, we must essentially forget all we know about US history and foreign policy. This sort of willful ignorance, while not particularly helpful to the Palestinians, is quite useful for those who simply want to improve the effectiveness of US imperialism. By placing all of the blame on an all-powerful lobby, they give US planners a ready-made alibi for their crimes against the Palestinian people: “The lobby made me do it!” Moreover, this hypothesis ensures that activism will miss one of the most important targets: the US government, and focus instead narrowly on Israel. This would be a serious tactical error – if activism is aimed solely at increasing the cost of the occupation for Israel, the US can easily find ways of counteracting those costs through extensive aid. Only by targeting not only Israel, but also the US government – without which none of these crimes would be possible – and US institutions that profit directly from the oppression of Palestinians can we hope to be effective in our work for Palestinian rights.
Blankfort’s Dishonesty
And yet, Blankfort is given a forum by blogs that otherwise seem to have some degree of quality control. MondoWeiss, for example, which often publishes quality material on the Israel-Palestine conflict (apart from Weiss’ obsession with “dual loyalty” and the Lobby Hypothesis) even went so far as to suggest that an interview between Ali Abunimah and Blankfort signified “a sense of a torch being passed here, or of the older left not being suited for the new conversation about Israel/Palestine.”
It is perhaps worthwhile to ask to whom this metaphorical torch is being passed.
Blankfort has made attacking Chomsky his life’s work. By this, I do not mean criticising Chomsky’s views, but actively, consistently, and knowingly misrepresenting them. In the torch-passing interview, for example, Blankfort claimed that Chomsky had never written about the role of US trade unions in calling for US support for Israeli militarism. This claim, as anyone who has read up to page 30 of The Fateful Triangle will know, is patently false. In that 1983 book, Chomsky discusses the role of trade unions at some length, and points out the flaws in the Lobby Hypothesis, which Blankfort also claimed Chomsky hasn’t written about. In other words, there are only two possibilities: Either Blankfort makes claims despite being ignorant of the facts, or he makes claims knowing full well that they contradict the facts.
Since this was my first encounter with Blankfort, I became curious, and discovered that his misrepresentations in the Abunimah interview were not isolated. Jeremy Hammond – whose masochism in delving into the Blankfort Bog greatly outstrips my own – has documented extensive distortions of Chomsky’s actual record that Blankfort demonstrably knows to be false. For example, that Blankfort has distorted Chomsky’s statements about Salam Fayyad’s pursuit of “sound and sensible policies” that seek to lay the groundwork for a de facto Palestinian state (something Chomsky describes, using a popular Zionist expression, as “creating facts on the ground”) to claim that Fayyad is “a favorite of both Washington and Israel and, it would appear, Chomsky”.
What is the proof that Blankfort knew that he was misrepresenting Chomsky’s statement in the interview? ‘Blankfort himself participated [in the interview in question] as well, having called in to the live program.’
In order to support his claims that Chomsky is involved in ‘damage control’ for Israel, Blankfort has quoted that statement by Chomsky in an interview on Israeli TV that ‘I don’t regard myself as a critic of Israel. I regard myself as a supporter of Israel.’ When Hammond noted in comments to a piece defending Blankfort on Dissident Voice that “Chomsky means he is opposed to Israeli crimes against Palestinians when he says he is “a supporter of Israel”, Blankfort’s terse response, in its entirety, was:
“DON’T AGREE. HE DID NOT QUALIFY HIS STATEMENT TO THE ISRAELI INTERVIWER [sic] BY SAYING THAT WHEN HE COULD HAVE.”
The problem is that Chomsky did qualify it, in the very next sentence:
“The people who are harming Israel, in my opinion, it’s what I’ve said many times, are those who claim to be supporting it. They are helping [to] drive Israel towards moral degeneration and possible ultimate destruction. I think support for Israel should be support for policies which are for its benefit.”
This distinction, of which Blankfort must certainly be aware if he is as familiar with Chomsky’s work as he claims to be, dates back at least to a passage in the first chapter of The Fateful Triangle (p. 4 of the 1999 updated edition), which merits quoting in full:
These remarks will be critical of Israel’s policies: its consistent rejection of any political settlement that accommodates the national rights of the indigenous population; its repression and state terrorism over many years; its propaganda efforts, which have been remarkably successful – much to Israel’s detriment in my view – in the United States. But this presentation may be misleading, in two respects. In the first place, this is not an attempt at a general history; the focus is on what I think is and has been wrong and what should be changed, not on what I think has been right. Secondly, the focus on Israeli actions and initiatives may obscure the fact that my real concern is the policies that have been pursued by the U.S. government and our responsibility in shaping or tolerating these policies. To a remarkable extent, articulate opinion and attitudes in the U.S. have been dominated by people who describe themselves as “supporters of Israel,” a term that I will also adopt, though with much reluctance, since I think they should more properly be called “supporters of the moral degeneration and ultimate destruction of Israel,” and not Israel alone. Given this ideological climate and the concrete U.S. actions that it has helped to engender, it is natural enough that Israeli policies have evolved in their predictable way. Perpetuation of these tendencies within the U.S. and in U.S.-Israel relations portends a rather gloomy future, in my view, for reasons that I hope will become clearer as we proceed. If so, a large measure of responsibility lies right here, as in the recent past.
(emphasis supplied, footnote omitted).
In other words, Chomsky’s distinction between what he considers real supporters of Israel (i.e., critics of criminal Israeli policies) and those who “should more properly be called ‘supporters of the moral degeneration and ultimate destruction of Israel’ is not a new point. Just to hammer this home, Chomsky puts the phrases ‘support for/supporters of Israel’ in inverted commas throughout the book.
Now, it is certainly possible that Blankfort is simply not as familiar with Chomsky’s writings as he holds himself out to be, and that he was just unaware of Chomsky’s deconstruction of the notion of ‘support for Israel’ at the very beginning of his best-known book on the subject, but the fact remains that Chomsky made the very same point, albeit more briefly, in the very next sentence in the very interview that Blankfort quotes. Thus, Blankfort’s claim that Chomsky “DID NOT QUALIFY HIS STATEMENT” can only be characterised as a lie.
Why, then, to return to the initial question, do people who otherwise show some discernment in their editorial decisions, associate themselves with the likes of Blankfort? Blankfort’s writings contain nothing novel, original, unique, or even intellectually honest. He has an irrational vendetta against Chomsky for reasons unknown, and is willing to lie outright in order to discredit him. One of Blankfort’s most common responses to criticism is to make insinuations about his critics’ ancestry, deflecting, for example, from Jeremy Hammond’s questions about obvious contradictions in Blankfort’s claims with the following remarks:
You know how it is with names. Hammond could be Protestant, Quaker, Methodist, Catholic, or, in this case, I suspect Jewish. And why? It seems that only Jews, thus far, have become hysterical over my critique of Chomsky which will come back to haunt them when they wish people to take them seriously.
Blankfort is, to be blunt, an asshole, and arguably a racist one at that. The only explanation why an unoriginal, dishonest, racist asshole like Blankfort is allowed to bring discredit on the Palestinian solidarity movement is that the movement (or at least some segments of it) has developed something of a habit of embracing assholes. When you’re already embracing imperialists like Walt and Mearsheimer, as well as racists like Pat Buchanan (who regularly excoriated opponents of original-flavour apartheid), Gilad Atzmon, and Paul Craig Roberts, what’s one more addition to the list? The response one invariably gets when this issue is raised is that “We may not agree on everything, but [whoever it is] opposes the occupation, and that’s all that matters”.
No, it bloody well isn’t. It’s one thing to encourage a healthy pluralism within a movement; it’s quite another to align oneself with people whose goals and ideologies (one hopes, anyway!) are diametrically opposed to one’s own, just because of an agreement-in-principle on one part of an overall issue. While this is quite beneficial to people like Blankfort and Buchanan, who would much prefer to be thought of as supporters of human rights than as proto-fascist reactionaries, it is toxic to a movement that is based on human rights and opposition to racism. While Buchanan, Roberts, Blankfort et al. get a reputation upgrade by association with the movement for Palestinian human rights, the movement itself can only be harmed by association with people like Buchanan, Blankfort, and Roberts. Assholes get legitimised, the movement gets delegitimised, everybody – especially the Palestinians – loses. That is the danger of opportunism.
Élise Hendrick is a translator, writer, and editor based in Cincinnati, OH, US.
Elise write, “Opportunism makes strange bedfellows. How else can Jeff Blankfort’s prominence in what is supposedly a Palestinian solidarity movement be explained?”
While I do have many supporters in virtually every community involved in the struggle for justice for Palestine, Elise was the first to describe me as “prominent.” If she didn’t follow with an ad hominem attack I might even thank her. The highest rank I have achieved publicly is that of a “Limited Purpose Public Figure” which the 9th District Court in California declared me to be in my suit against the Anti-Defamation League for spying me and others. 20 years ago As for some of what I have done on behalf of Palestine for close to 40 years you might consult the ADL or Google my name.
She then writes, “Blankfort’s basic claim is that a Jewish Lobby has absolute control over US policy in the Middle East. This is hardly a novel claim – it’s been advanced by various congressional Republicans and mainstream hawks like Walt and Mearsheimer, who claim that The Lobby is the reason that the US deviate from their general foreign policy of support for “democracy” when it comes to the Middle East, and that the Lobby is harming “national interests”.
First, neither I nor Mearsheimer and Walt have claimed any such thing. Although we disagree on certain points, I think they would acknowledge that if the pro-Israel lobby, as they and I refer to it, had complete control over US Middle East policy the US would have long ago bombed Iran. Taking down Iran has been the number one item on the The Lobby’s agenda since its most right-wing elements pushed us into the war with Iraq.That it has not been able to get its way with Iran, as of this moment, is because of resistance within the Pentagon and the intelligence community which are well aware of the global catastrophe such an attack would engender.
I’ll skip most of the rest since it represents regurgitated Chomsky–and not a bit of original thinking on her part which I have rebutted in the first article linked below– down to this:
She writes, “Blankfort has made attacking Chomsky his life’s work. By this, I do not mean criticising Chomsky’s views, but actively, consistently, and knowingly misrepresenting them. In the torch-passing interview, for example, Blankfort claimed that Chomsky had never written about the role of US trade unions in calling for US support for Israeli militarism. This claim, as anyone who has read up to page 30 of The Fateful Triangle will know, is patently false. In that 1983 book, Chomsky discusses the role of trade unions at some length, and points out the flaws in the Lobby Hypothesis, which Blankfort also claimed Chomsky hasn’t written about. In other words, there are only two possibilities: Either Blankfort makes claims despite being ignorant of the facts, or he makes claims knowing full well that they contradict the facts.”
First, of all, I am 76 years old and have been a political activist since I was ten. In that time I have written many articles but exactly two on Chomsky, for neither of which she had the courtesy to provide the links, so I will do it. So dear readers, if you wish, you can see my arguments and my refutations of Chomsky. The first, in 2005: http://www.leftcurve.org/LC29WebPages/Chomsky.html and the second,last month: http://pulsemedia.org/2010/07/20/chomsky-and-palestine-asset-or-liability/
Now, as for Elise’s statement that by p.30 in Chomsky’s Fateful Triangle, he discusses the role of US Labor unions at some length. I have the same edition and I am unable to find such a discussion of any length or any mention of the AFL-COP until p. 507 and there is not much there. The book is shabbily indexed so there may be something else there but not in the first 30 pages.
Now what is also curious is that Elise fails to mention the subject of the most recent article and that is Chomsky’s opposition to boycott,divestment and sanctions targeting Israel, on the basis that he believes that they are harmful to the Palestinians (who have called for such sanctions) and that those in the US and presumably elsewhere who call for them are “hypocritical”since, he says, they should be sanctioning the US instead.
Since mounting such a campaign within the US would not only hurt support for the Palestinians but would be totally unworkable–since no country can boycott itself–Chomsky is essentially telling those of us to support sanctioning Israel to drop the subject or limit our campaign to either goods produced in the West Bank or to US companies that invest in Israel. But why should Israel itself be considered off-limits and who is Chomsky, after all, to set the moral limits on what Palestinians and their supporters wish to do? (And, yes, he has suggested that sanctioning Israel is immoral).
Elise complains that I make “insinuations” about my critics’ ancestry and she’s right. I do. I do not think it a coincidence that all of those who have launched attacks on me for my most recent article, thus far, just happen to be Jewish (as I am myself, although that is not the part of my identity that it once was). I am not sure at the moment is whether their overheated attacks on me which, in Elise’s case, leads her to call me an “asshole” and a “racist asshole” several times is because I have had the temerity to challenge their icon, or because their connection to the tribe supersedes their intellectual honesty.
It is quite likely both. That Elise chose to launch an attack on me on her site and not the ones where the article appeared would seem to be an example of intellectual dishonesty. That is the thread that connects Chomsky to his admirers. That will be the subject of another article.
As a person who has worked inside the beltway and in politics for 40 years, I find the arguments of those who oppose Blankfort, Walt and Mersheimer woefully apolitical. How do they think the American electoral system works? How do they find space within the American Empire to oppose its hegemonic control, destruction and oppression? It is one thing to sit comfortably in an academic tower tossing the entire Israeli-Palestinian conflict into the cauldron of American Hegemonic Empire Building, portraying poor Israel as being used by American Elite’s interest.
It is quite another to understand that space does exist within all the classes of the American electorate. It is the goal of activists to widen those spaces, and the BDS movement is certainly doing that.
What the opponents of Blankfort seem to gloss over was the consistent opposition from a significant section of elected officials to intervene in the relentless human rights tragedies in Latin America, in Southeast Asia, and South Africa.
I suspect that Blankfort’s opponents have never engaged in a political campaign, not been inside the legislative halls in their states or in their Congress, nor attempted to find out how all that works. Why can’t we find the Tip O’neil’s who took on El Salvador’s killers supporting Palestinians? Why are there no Senator Church’s introducing legislation similar to his legislation on Vietnam? Where is the Black Caucus speaking about BDS as they spoke on South African Aparthied? The answer is not so much the money that the Lobby has, it is the ability and technology to conduct elections nationally backed up by coordinated national financial support. Oh, you don’t know what that is? Well, I have conducted and worked in campaigns, worked in the legislative halls of the State and the US Congress since 1968, and believe me, the lobby is there at every turn, every utterance, every nuance, campaign firm, and PR firm.
No one is denying that the US is a vast Capitalistic Empire, what I am saying that there are few ways to struggle against that empire, and to have any spokesperson glibly dismiss focused work to open space among the electorate, to open space within the elected, as “feeling good” (as Noam Chomsky referred to the BDS movement) is destructive, plain and simple.
If you want to know more about the expensive technology that elects members to congress, and how dozens of campaign firms have mastered the art and their clients, I’ll send you my book when it is finished.
Peg McCormack
Chico, California
Emma, Noam Chomsky’s picture may adorn the web page of the Palestine Chronicle but this article from the site will not sit well with him, nor I am sure with loyal Chomskyites:
At an anti-war conference in NY last month with 850 attending, a resolution was passed that included the following text:
– To endorse the call of Palestinian Civil Society, as expressed in its July, 2005 Call, signed by hundreds of Palestinian refugees, human rights and cultural organizations and unions, to support a world-wide campaign of “Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) against Israel Until it Complies with International Law and Universal Principles of Human Rights”.
http://www.palestinechronicle.com/view_article_details.php?id=16174
In the exchanges with Hammond, he also, as he has been doing for years, openly calls me an ADL agent, of course with no proof and against common sense.
His prominence and the fact he gets awaywith such behavior is not complicated to explain: He’s Jewish….first of all…and wired into an informal but nonetheless well organized network of activists who dominate MECA, ANSWER, UFPJ, etc. etc… and while many of them privately echo what you say abut Blankfort, they are Jewish first of all and won’t speak in public.
Not an accident that you are, judging by your name, not Jewish…
My guess was wrong about you’re being Jewish. (ed- i believe he’s referring to elise, the writer of the article, not the blogger, emma rosenthal, both of whom are actually jewish.) Actually, I should amend my statement, now that I think about it.
Your article would not likely have seen the light of day on nearly ANY blog or discussion site if you WEREN’T Jewish, actually. (ed. that’s not true– certainly not on this blog, which has published other commentary that focuses on neo-liberalism and neo-colonialism. why wouldn’t non-jews have a voice on this? and on blogs? jews don’t control blogs!!!! the main stream media doesn’t control blogs! just start a damn blog, and feel free to write to your hearts’ content!)
If we follow the logic of the position that the US is the cause of all the problems that Israel is creating, then what action follows this notion? That we basically sit back and pontificate about US Empire Building. What tactics and strategies for meaningful action results from such a position? Just curious to know if large, and basically meaningless antiwar demonstrations are the major action, or what? Just want to hear back from you.
Peggy
I said ALMOST any blog..yes, you’re to be commended for posting this, Cafe Intifada. I should have said that first!
PULSE for example refused to post Jeremy Hammond’s rejoinder to Bfort’s latest smear on Chomsky. Two days ago Bfort said Chomsky was the ‘2010 version of the Jewish Defence League.’
I have been prevented myself from writing comments on either PULSE or Dissident Voice on this article.
But I’m sorry I really believe Hendrick’s article wouldn’t have been posted by you or almost anyone else if the author–you’re right, that’s who I meant–was not Jewish herself.
I wish I were wrong about that, but…
I took your advice long ago and started not a blog, but an open discussion list, USQuagmire@yahoogroups.com. Anyone at Cafe Intifada that gives UNQUALIFIED support to the Palestinian right of return is welcome there.
WE are half Arab out of 375 currently, the largest such forum in Egnlish that isn’t mostly limited to the ARab communities,
The censorship of any criticism of pundits like Blankfort extends beyond just blogs that might be openly ‘Jewish controlled’, although there are plenty of those.
PULSE, for example, where Jeremy Hammond’s rejoinder to Blankfort was suppressed..is without doubt run by Arab people or Arab-Americans for the most part.
But the liberal zionist network of ANSWER-MECA-JVP, etc. etc. has for years carefully cultivated ‘Arab’ quislings, usually tied to the Democratic Party as this informal network mostly is.
Exactly as their big brothers in Israel systematically cultivate Palestinian informers…
Some of theese ‘Arabs’ are leaders in Arab organizations such as Al-Awda (I could name examples but I don’t think it would be appropriate here), Arab Americans who want liberal zionist approval, and/or are ambitious politically themselves and know who they have to placate.
These ‘Arabs’ are often seen appearing with Blankfort at ANSWER sponsored events, etc. etc.
Sorry to write so much, but since usually I’m prevented from commenting anywhere but on USQuagmire..
I will name one ‘Arab’ stooge for the liberal zionists, married to a non Palestinian, Mazin Qumsiyeh. Some years ago he reprinted on his blog, verbatim, Blankfort’s rant about how I am an ADL agent.
Blankfort cleverly cites that whenever challenged.
Now, I don’t know Qumsiyeh personally, have never met him, have never exchanged e mails to any extent, never had any big disagreement with him personally. qumsiyeh didn’t live in the San Francisco area and has NO knowledge of any of the narrative in Bfort’s rant,
Yet with ZERO knowledge of any of the past history, he reprints verbatim whatever Prince sends him!
Blankfort is too smart to believe this himself, it’s just a smear and a veiled threat, since he also knows the libby zionist milieu has many nutpies who might well take this as open season on me personally… SOO clever, naturally it wouldn’t be his fault if I were to be assaulted…
I believe Qumsiyeh has long since taken that off his blog, but he has never apologized to me for it.
The liberal zionist network has several such Arab Americans who will pretty much do and say whatever they are told by MECA or ANSWER or the rest…
Ok, one more and I’ll go quiet for at least 48 hours, I promise.
Alison Weir is part of the informal zion-coddling media mavenhood as well as Blankfort, and she’s also from the San Francisco area and has been on many radio programs with him.
The interview of Chomsky (!) on wihich Hendrick bases part of her analysis of Blankfort’s dishoensty, was clearly in part a ‘set up’ by Weir and Blankfort. Other callers to the program by her own admission on air were someow cut off so that Blankfort was the ONLY call-in voice.
Blankfort asked NO question, but delivered a long rambling monologue about the lobby, etc., longer than Chomsky was allowed to speak, and only ended when Weir was forced to go to a commercial break.
Then Chomsky himself was cut off at the end and WEir gave the last several minutes again over to Blankfort, who obviously had another prepared statement which took the last several minutes of the air time.
In addition, Weir herself often interrupted Chomsky’s answers to her questions to the point whee the usually polite Chomsky threatened to end the interview!
Weir’s conduct was totally unprofessional as well as politically suspect and manipulative, and clearly all arranged with Blankfort beforehend.
Listen to it yourself if you wish…
Chomsky himself was somehow cut off at the end of theinter
Weir is the President of CNI–you can see how influential and far reaching the informal MECA-ANSWER etc etc liberal zionist, nearly all Jewish network is, and how much they control what passes for ‘movement’ media.
This is a big part of the answer to Hendrick’s question on how someone like Blankfort becomes prominent.
The ‘public’ radio stations in the San Francisco area are a small club of people who have worked at more than one the various stations, and a tiny clique controls most of them–the people in charge of news and foreign policy programs, nearly all Jewish liberals, are mostly part of this network, often old friends.
OK, 48 hours, I promise.
“Elise complains that I make “insinuations” about my critics’ ancestry and she’s right. I do. I do not think it a coincidence that all of those who have launched attacks on me for my most recent article, thus far, just happen to be Jewish (as I am myself, although that is not the part of my identity that it once was).”
It’s hilarious that Blankfort, rather than responding substantively to my points of fact and logic, first assumes that not only am I Jewish, but raised in a Zionist household, and now asserts his assumption as fact.
I am not Jewish.
Yet again, Blankfort is incapable of getting his facts straight.
This is instructive.
Jeremty, Blankfort is so used to blanket endorsement on ‘pwog’ blogs with is network of hacks…that it doesn’t occur to him anyone would check on his facts, so he just makes them up.
Most of us who criticize him are censored on most sites..Pulse, Dissident Voice, etc. While he has friends in high places, Alison Weir, MECA, ANSWER, etc. etc.. ‘public radio’ zionists…
my wordpress account is set to have me approve comments, but many comments seem to be getting posted without my approval. how is this happening?
As to the SUBSTANCE of the article, the first priority in reducing US destruction of Palestine and other still-resisting Middle East populations would be to make protests as effective as possible by addressing the most glaring moral weak-spot(s) in the US-Israeli juggernaut.
The openly-declared racist violence inherent in forcing an expressly “Jewish” state into a multi-ethnic region allows no real moral debate at all, and is immediately obvious to ordinary Americans – absolutely unlike the issues involved in any other example of US-sponsored atrocities and racism anywhere else in the world. In fact, so perfectly obvious a wrong – so plain a violation of our Constitution – such overt negation of what ordinary Americans think they believe and teach their children to believe – could be muddled from recognition by nothing less than the pervasive presence of millions of influential US citizens who very actively WANT the US to continue sponsoring the erasure of Palestine and who quietly do all they can to conceal this fact and to disrupt any discussion which begins to reveal the most flagrant campaign of ethnic violence demanded by any significant portion of the US population since Southern slavery.
The need to awaken ordinary Americans to that reality – which very few would be willing to continue financing with their taxes, if only it were brought to their attention – remains a primary moral obligation of those who DO recognize it. Treating OPENLY-DECLARED Zionist Israeli racism with the same primary emphasis and zero tolerance that applies in all other instances of openly-declared racist violence remains by far the most effective strategy for opposing Zionism: regardless of whether we can identify AIPAC (the combined interests of millions of Zionist Americans) or US corporate-imperial interests as the most influential body of interests. That debate is an afterthought.
The real problem is overcoming WHATEVER influences have for decades prevented sincere progressives and anti-war interests from REALIZING how simple the wrong of Zionst Israel actually is – overcoming whatever interests have prevented a viable anti-war movement from emerging around the dream argument of an anti-war lifetime: the relentless ethnic-cleansing of Palestine in broad daylight, the process of forcing an ever-expanding ethnic-supremacist state into a multi-ethnic region, through constant new ethnically exclusive condo-developments on ethnically-cleansed territory.
Unfortunately, for decades, those “pro-Palestine” or “pro-peace” factions which argue that the corporate-imperial interests are even more influential than the organized millions of US Zionists who determine the outcome of every election and demand every foreign policy of belligerence to Palestine and the Middle East have – inadvertently or OTHERWISE – used their “imperialist” emphasis to displace and eliminate attention to the obvious racism of the Jewish state: the only anti-war and pro-Palestine argument the Zionists can’t stand to hear. For decades, we have been told by the “blame imperialism” factions that the simple egalitarian, anti-racist argument would “alienate the Jews in the movement” and would thus “divide the movement” and should therefore be avoided and the “anti-imperialist” argument given center stage. The Zionists love to see that.
Of course, even if Israel actually were a mere pawn in the larger corporate-imperial scheme, the overreaches of Israel’s OPENLY-DECLARED racist supremacy would still provide by far the most obvious moral Achilles Heel in the entire juggernaut: there is no excuse for protecting Israel from the absolute rejection of racism which applies in all other cases. If the corporations are behind it all, then the special protections Israel enjoys are what ENABLE them to commit more blatant racist atrocities than they could get away with anywhere else – and enjoy the applause of the best-organized factions of US voters and campaign-donors.
It has never been corporate goons or corporate media censorship which has prevented the pro-Palestine organizations and peace organizations and ordinary Americans from undertaking the ordinary discussions which would produce a really effective front against US-Israeli-corporate belligerence in the Middle East: it has always been Zionists “in the movement” including Palestinian “two-state” Zionists and the Jewish friends they try to cultivate by endorsing that “realistic” (albeit openly racist and patently Zionist) position. The “progressive” or “pro-Palestine” or “anti-imperialist” or “anti-war” elements of modern society have failed preposterously by their inability to carry on a decent discussion of these points – a discussion which should proceed DESPITE the obscenities and hissy-fits which always emanate from Zionists, and from a few others who apparently know of no better method.
And while it is true that Jeffrey Blankfort has taken a leadership role in using slander and other personality-problems to disrupt any discussion which begins to bypass his elaborate but ineffectual criticisms of Israel, the constructive approach would be to simply continue emphasizing the simple, bulletproof emphasis on Zionist racism: the position he constantly erases by omission and disruption. While it may be idiomatically accurate to dismiss him as an “asshole,” it is not at all constructive to sink to his name-calling level.
The patent racism of Israel’s policies should SIMPLY be given the same primary emphasis and zero tolerance that is applied to all other cases of plain, openly-declared racist violence – and no Zionist or anti-Zionist arguments should be allowed to distract us from that one and only argument which the Zionists cannot answer and hate to hear. The solution is equally obvious: Americans should simply be urged to honor their most basic moral obligation – to OBJECT to financing or otherwise supporting any and all policies of official prejudice by anyone involved in the Israel-Palestine conflict. Countless Americans, upon hearing this for the first time respond by asking “Why doesn’t anyone ever SAY that?!” The answer it that the Zionists among us – and not the police or corporate stockholders among us – do all they can to prevent that from being said. It should not be necessary to point out that, if everyone who does not WANT to finance openly-declared racism would vote and donate accordingly, we would see the first recognizable setbacks in the Zionist (or corporate-imperialist) juggernaut. And, of course, if any and all official racism in the Israel-Palestine conflict were denied US and European support, the natural emergence of a primarily Arab but egalitarian single state would be inevitable, and the legitimate population of Palestine could decide what to do with any lingering war-criminals and interlopers.
D. Kersting states: “Why doesn’t anyone ever SAY that?!” The answer it (sic) that the Zionists among us – and not the police or corporate stockholders among us – do all they can to prevent that from being said.”
Cafe Intifada: of course the police and corporate stockholders prevent the free flow of ideas– the media, which, contrary to racist stereotypes, ARE run by their stockholders, not THE JEWS!. the police, as agents of the state also do their part to limit protests, intimidate activists and support the interests of the state. it is also the stockholders of the major corporations that assure that the political process in the u.s. is under their control. they oppose any real campaign finance reform that would make for a more democratic system of govt. HOW ELSE DOES THE LOBBY WIELD ITS POWER? BY VIRTUE OF THE INIQUITIES WITHIN THE SYSTEM ITSELF. it’s not magic, and the u.s. isn’t the benevolent victim of foreign invasion. it is the universal perpetrator.
the u.s. role, as elise points out, in (all of) occupied palestine, is not unique. the u.s. is itself a settler colonial entity and amerikans know that. amerikans know that native americans are among the poorest, on the worst land, with the worst education system, health care, mortality rates. if abject racism were really NOT an amerikan value, and if amerikans were really likely to take action based on core values, these conditions would be unacceptable.
u.s. foreign policy runs rampant on every continent, and indignation of israeli offenses as separate and distinct from u.s. offenses, and assertions of some foreign influence on our “core values” lacks accountability, honesty and integrity, and stinks of amerikan entitlement and the assumption of the rightness of amerikan global hegemony.
replacing the zionist regime with a neo-liberal puppet regime (with the mandatory 2 state solution, which is the elite global consensus) will make little or no difference to the larger palestinian population. amerikans might feel better, and a new palestinian elite, beholden to the great amerikan imperial entity, will emerge and live a uniquely privileged existence as long as they serve empire and not their own population.
there are no short cuts to social justice. there is no excuse for making up lies simply so that white amerikans can sleep at night, their children gently tucked into the myth of the amerikan dream, pretending that lives don’t continue to be lost to pay for multinational profits and u.s hegemony.
I would like to kindly advise Ms. Rosenthal – and any serious peace activist who sees her reply to my statement – that a constructive discussion requires replies to fairly address what is actually written by the person to whom they are directed. Anything less is pretty useless at best and intentional obfuscation at worst. Successful organization requires people to work together – and that requires us to understand each other, not autocratically dodge and misrepresent each other’s contributions.
Saying “Of course the police and corporate stockholders prevent the free flow of ideas” does not touch the reality to which my statement refers – a reality which Ms. Rosenthal inadvertently obscures, when she should be pursuing better understanding of it. In reality, the inadmissibly racist nature of any official Jewish supremacy anywhere in Palestine, and the readiness of many ordinary Americans to object to financing it, has been systematically obscured by openly-declared “two-state peace” Zionists throughout the anti-war movement, and it is obscured by the ever-present Zionist, whenever the Palestine issue comes up, at the workplace, market, anti-war demonstration, etc. Everyone knows that everyone is afraid to talk about Israel-Palestine, and it’s not police surveillance we’re worried about.
The simplicity and vulnerability of Zionist wrong is obscured by corporate media of course. We all expect that. But no such cover-up has ever been so vulnerable. The front-line problem is that the Zionist perspective is PERPETUATED within the anti-war movement and even in much of the Palestinian resistance itself, by undue Zionist influence. My point was that, no matter what else is said, those who want peace and justice must overcome “WHATEVER” is preventing the basic wrong of Zionism from being recognized and sufficiently addressed by pro-Palestine, pro-peace, and anti-imperialist activists. Ms. Rosenthal’s response glosses over that point, restores its apparent non-existence, and would keep anti-Zionist energies diffused and wasted against faceless, perpetual imperialism, rather than focused on the crucial wrong of Israel’s relationship to Palestine – the openly racist wrong of creating or perpetuating ANY Jewish state in multi-ethnic Palestine – nothing less than the one point most readily recognized by the greatest number of Americans and most feared by Zionists.
There are essentially two sides to the Israel-Palestine conflict – those who recognize Jewish supremacy as overtly racist and inadmissible, and who therefore naturally apply the same primary emphasis and zero tolerance that is commonplace in all other cases of openly-declared racist supremacy, versus those who find various reasons to oppose or obscure that bulletproof, most-effective, and time-honored approach.
The factual data regarding the array of appertaining realities would fill dozens of pages, but the above sentence is sufficient, and it’s important to avoid getting entangled in endless discussion and brouhaha, as the Zionists prefer.
dave, 1. you have not familiarized yourself with this blog, on which, i remind you, you are a guest. if, as a guest, you write a lengthy position paper which i allow to be published in this venue (i don’t have access to the broader leftist or msm) and i chose to focus on one aspect of it, when the rest of this blog has amply covered much of the rest of those points, it is quite rude of you (stated politely or otherwise–or is that one of those prefaces that precedes the exact opposite of what they claim to intend, like “i don’t want to be rude…. BUT..” OR ” i’ll be honest..” –) to demand that the host answer you on your terms when you have not been responsible enough to take the time to read what has already been part of the ongoing dialogue of this venue. i quoted you word for word– cut and pasted!, and made my commentary based on those words. to say that i misquoted you is your dishonesty.
i advise you to take the time, and at the very least, check out the categories covered throughout this blog, and at best, familiarize yourself with what we have been working on for quite some time. you look very foolish accusing me and cafe intifada for not recognizing the impact of THE LOBBY on free speech and public discourse, for not recognizing zionism and israeli settler colonialism. you also expose your own sheltered existence when you state that activists need not fear police surveillance or interference. –again, read the blog. we not only fear it, we’ve been awakened by it– 14 cops, search warrant, guns, flashlights in our eyes, etc. maybe you live with the rest of “ordinary” amerika, but i live in the rampart division of los angeles. the men in my community have all been criminalized. we are constantly abused and harassed by the lapd, their cars, their questions and their low flying helicopters. the urban warfare practiced in jenin and gaza is the laboratory for the methods brought home to the urban landscape of “extraordinary” amerikans.
i am not going to pose my arguments in a racist context so “ordinary” amerikans can vent their outrage (only to replace settler colonialism with neo-liberalism and neo-colonialism) at jewish racism, –racism that is bought and paid for by and is only possible due to amerikan racism, simply because they can’t see how god damn OPENLY racist the rest of u.s. domestic and foreign policy is!
it would be a betrayal to a life long calling and to the people i live and work with, many of whose lives have no value to those “ordinary” amerikans you believe your “time-honored approach” appeals to.
I had given Jeremy more than several days to respond as to whether or not he was Jewish and despite the abundance of messages he did send, he did not until now deny being Jewish as if whether or not one is Jewish when discussion the Israel-Palestine issue is irrelevant. Would those who believe it is, and there are many, mostly Jews, who do so, say it is also irrelevant whether one is white or black in discussing race relations or whether someone was a woman or man in discussing gender equality? I doubt it. It is not that the “other” in each of these situations might not have something worthwhile to say, it is that what they say can not be divorced from who and what they are. One thing he most certainly has proved to be is a loyal Chomskyite.
Jeff, don’t blame me when you make false assumptions and assert your fantasies as fact. I am not responsible for your dishonesty.
policy on comments:
the use of this space is not limitless we have guidelines. if they are not followed, your posts will not be approved. also, it seems someone not affiliated with cafe intifada has hacked into this site and approved messages.
to see our policy on comments go to:
https://cafeintifada.wordpress.com/wp-admin/post.php?post=1020&action=edit&message=6
to “ordinary” amerikkkans, this is not racism:
http://www.cnn.com/2010/POLITICS/08/10/house.border.security/index.html?hpt=T2
http://www.orangejuiceblog.com/2010/07/arizona-governor-jan-brewer-under-investigation-for-ties-to-private-prisons-that-could-benefit-from-sb-1070/
http://www.google.com/#hl=en&source=hp&q=rampart+scandal&aq=0&aqi=g10&aql=&oq=rampart+&gs_rfai=C2jUiFu9kTNHdE4GgjgO3jYmQCQAAAKoEBU_Q4vku&fp=eb25b226ce9fcffe
http://www.google.com/#q=lapd+may+day&hl=en&prmd=v&source=univ&tbs=vid:1&tbo=u&ei=MO9kTO2uFImosQO6g9yRDQ&sa=X&oi=video_result_group&ct=title&resnum=4&ved=0CC8QqwQwAw&fp=eb25b226ce9fcffe
http://www.hrw.org/backgrounder/usa/incarceration/
http://articles.latimes.com/2010/may/12/nation/la-na-ethnic-studies-20100512
etc. etc. etc. etc.
On my radio program, I frequently refer to Washington as Israel Occupied Territory or Israel’s most important occupied territory. Yesterday, I provided my listeners with some direct evidence. After the program, I opened the phones for their calls and they agreed. Give a listen:
http://www.radio4all.net/index.php/program/44851
amerikkka IS occupied. strange how both the israelis and amerikkans think THEY’RE the victims! it’s the settler colonial narrative: the myth of essential goodness of the occupier.
of course the lobby is powerful. but that power comes from within the constructs of the amerikan political system, not from some mythical power or mystery.
and yet, the people who harp about how the u.s. is israel’s bitch don’t make issue of campaign finance, the two party system, the power of money over the power of the populace, privatization, the revolving door between industry and govt. etc etc etc
Since you elected to use the term, Emma,I would say that Obama’s is Bibi’s bitch. I would also say our government is owned by the insurance companies and the Wall Street bankers, by the arms manufacturers and the oil companies. But they are internal enemies. Israel is a foreign occupier and unlike those other “special interest” whose power is readily acknowledged by what passes for the Left, that of the Israel Lobby is denied or dismissed and therefore has no significant opposition. But give a listen to the speech of Andrew Shapiro, Asst. Sec of State for Military and Political Affairs and lifted off CSPAN and used it instead of doing my usual interview.
Yes, Emma – the zionist lobby operates within well-established US corporate and political lobbying parameters, along with subscribing to a shared fairy story of outrageous entitlement and colonial/mercantilist exploitation. In adopting the habits of the west, Israel aspires to be identified with it, not with the middle east. It clutched the reprehensible US preemptive doctrine to its bosom. It pretends like the US to be ‘good’, sharing the slimy bigotry of ‘protecting western values and interests’, and like the US, shuns the decent restrictions of international law.
Has the US relinquished its imperial full spectrum dominance ambit? Is it no longer the case that the world’s energy supplies must be commandeered as much as possible in the service of western capital? Is it not so that nearly every state in the US hosts significant defence and allied industries? the zionist lobby may influence politicians and enmesh christian fundamentalists in the shared mythology whilst engaging in witchhunts of its critics, but loss of jobs and economic suicide is germane to any electoral campaign, never mind the comparatively massive campaign funds provided by unions, defence and allied corporations and domestic corporations generally to US candidates. [See http://www.opensecrets.org/orgs/list.php%5D
The US electorate gets what is paid for – representation of those who pay for it – and it’s this venal anti-democratic corruption which the US spreads globally, belying its sickening heroic guise.
The maudlin song of US domestic interests, of those with most to benefit from employment or profits or electorally from those with interests in defence related corporations and the Pentagon, who populate and subsidise a plethora of established think tanks dedicated to imperial ‘peace through strength’, all with an investment in continuance of ever-present danger and the spoils and trappings of empire, should be distinguished from the sweet, plaintive tune the Israel lobby plays to them.
In a region flush with ready petrodollars to hand over for the latest weaponry, and with sad US legislation guaranteeing it a ‘qualitative edge’ (there’s that confluence of ‘western values’ again) Israel conveniently keeps regional threats on the boil. For example, Saudi Arabia pays out more than it earns for defence acquisitions. Without belligerence provided by Israeli propaganda orchestrated in tandem with US noises about commitment to Israeli security (as presently with illusory thrusts toward Iran) would the region be as desperate to trump up for latest western-supplied weaponry, to continue to participate routinely in the regional arms race?
While the Pentagon (and thus the US taxpayer) is by far the largest subsidiser of US defence corporations, US defence exports are the largest after tourism, and may even have overtaken those by now. Wars are expensive to run, and in a defence led economy with a workforce largely reliant on defence employment, the beast demands to be fed. The latest monstrosities also require a theatre in which to model them. Israel provides such a convenient military laboratory for joint projects with mutual benefit at arms length, with added plausible deniability for empire.
As Elise pointed out, 75% of US subsidies to Israel, a tiny fraction of the gargantuan US defence budget, must be spent on US purchases. Israel also acquaints the US with its modifications, miltech and inteltech so the US additionally benefits from its investment.
Whilst Petraeus’s staff report submitted that Israel is a strategic liability to the US, I’ve yet to hear any US defence corporation moaning about Israel threatening their profits or the Pentagon wailing that Israel is a liability to the maintenance of its obscene budget.
When the long-established tradition of US global predation is submerged in favour of casting blame on one particular foreign interest group, those who seek justice are likely to tilt at windmills whose sails are fanned by the winds of racism, with the added danger of coopting nasty bedfellows who erode the credibility of any human liberation movement.
I’m appalled by the racism and facetious US powerless victim mythology demonstrated in this thread – and before Blankfort requests obligatory racial identification credentials, no, I am not Jewish.
Over on Elise Hendrick’s blog Blankfort has called ALL his critics the 2010 version of the Jewish Defense League.
I guess that’ why he tries so hard to label them all as Jewish
I left out the URL for Andrew Shapiro’s speech on US -Israel Security Relationships at the Saban Center at the Brooking Inst. which was the last “independent” Washington think tank until Israeli Haim Saban gave it to $12.3 million dollars to set up the Saban Center in 2002, the same year he also gave $12.3 million to the Democratic Party. which was just a slightly more than a million less than the arms manufacturing PACs gave to BOTH political parties.
At the end of the speech, during the question period, Medea Benjamin of Global Exchange and Code Pink, stood up and told Shaipro he sounded like an agent for Israel. She was right. He is and the White House and the government is riddled with them.
Here it is: http://www.radio4all.net/index.php/program/44851
Shapiro comes on after my tribute to Marilyn Buck, a US political prisoner and a friend of mine who died from cancer on August 3, three weeks after she was released after serving 33 years. Like other US political prisoners from the 60s and 70s, she was largely forgotten by all but a handful of activists.
In 2000, the last time it kept such a list, Mother Jones published a list of the top 400 contributors to both political parties. Seven of the top 10, 12 of the top 20 and at least 125 of the top 250 were Jewish (at which point I stopped counting) and 75% of their money went to the Democrats.
Now the myopic Left, such as it is (and one needs a microscope to see it these days) may not think that information is relevant and may even suggest it is “anti-semitic” to even raise it, but it is a political reality that is every well known and understood in Washington, an arena whose operations often seem to be a total mystery to some of its harshest critics.
Amen, Dave. What we find when we speak out on this issue is not US government or commercial media censorship that much..generally we can get letters to the editors printed..
But in organizations or blogs, discussion lists, I found that if I spoke out criticizng anyone in this informal network of MECA-ANWER-JVP-UFPJ…etc. etc., that I was not just criticized, but excluded not only from organizations but even from discussion sites. Even those nominally ‘Arab’ like al-Awda’s are efffectively censored by the Jewish ‘helpers’ that largely control the outreach of these US organizations…I’m still excluded to this day even from the al Awda NEWS list!
And I am the mdoerator on the largest English language soldarity list that isn’t mostly limited to the Arab communities…USQuagmire!
This sort of systematic censorship and clique network media control on the ‘left’ is why we started USQuagmire in the first place!
The beginnings of the nexus between Christian Zionism and Zionism explained – the Great White Christian Conservative Brotherhood’s puritanical vision preceded zionism then moved in lockstep with it.
‘The Politics of Christian Zionism 1891-1948 by Paul C. Merkley provides startling evidence that the poisoned theology of Christian Zionism predates Herzl, long considered the father of Zionism. In fact, Herzl received a tremendous amount of support from William Hechler, the son of Anglican missionaries and author of an 1893 pamphlet entitled “The Restoration of the Jews to Palestine According to Prophecy.” It was Hechler who arranged meetings between Herzl and Kaiser Wilhelm II, promoting the Zionist ambition to usurp Palestine among world leaders.’
http://commonsensefromthecornfield.blogspot.com/2010/08/roots-of-christian-zionism.html
assuming your numbers are correct, jeff, if 250 people make the most contributions and many of them are jewish.
why doesn’t anyone else contribute? there are surely 250 wealthy members of any of a number of other ethnic groups (white anglo saxons include!)
are their interests being met without money? begging the question: why do jews have to pay to play when no one else does? assuming your numbers are correct, of course.
truth is, u.s. intervention in palestine is very much in the interest of the u.s. ruling class even the neo-liberals– findley, meirsheimer, walt, carter, etc. all reiterate the importance of a jewish israel with secure borders, and u.s. interests. in my opinion, it’s a battle between the interests of the mic/security and construction industries (haliburton, bectel, g.e. boeing, caterpillar,etc.) , vs the marketing and production industries. a lot of people are gonna make a lot of money on exploiting palestinians, regardless of which model the u.s. comes up with.
blaming the jews just obscures that slight of hand.
at the very least, can we all admit, the lobby gets its power from within the structures of the amerikan political system itself? why are all those people who resent the power of THE LOBBY and claim it is controlling washington, not calling for massive campaign finance?
THE LOBBY is the excuse they give for why they don’t speak up. maxine waters gave me that line. now who would ever stand a chance running against her? NO ONE. but as long as people excuse those in power by blaming the lobby, those in power will never be held accountable.
not that the lobby isn’t powerful. their attacks against me and cafe itifada were considerable and devastating. but that power isn’t foreign. it’s as amerikan as apple pie. it derives its power because of the interests of the ruling class, not despite it.
Emma R writes:
assuming your numbers are correct, jeff, if 250 people make the most contributions and many of them are jewish.
why doesn’t anyone else contribute? there are surely 250 wealthy members of any of a number of other ethnic groups (white anglo saxons include!)
JB: They do but not so much individually. That list was of the TOP donors and that’s where Jews have consistently outpaced the field
ER: are their interests being met without money? begging the question: why do jews have to pay to play when no one else does? assuming your numbers are correct, of course.
JB: My numbers come from Mother Jones who got them from Open Secrets who got them from the FEC who got them from the candidates. The interests of the wealthy Anglo-Saxons are generally keeping with the overall goals of US capitalism and the the case of the multi-nationals, with US imperialism. The number of state department officials and foreign policy scholars who consider Israel to be more a liability to the US far outnumber those who consider it to be an asset. Were this not the case and the US alliance with Israel was unquestionably an asset, Jews would not have had to organize and terrrorize Congress and the media to go along with that fiction. Try and find ONE single expert, apart from the Jewish neocons and their allies ( who are not experts) who believe that Israel serves the US as an asset. Good luck! Chomsky never has. The best he can do was former US Senator Scoop Jackson, who was heavily funded by Jews, who pushed the his amendment with Rep. Charles Vanik that the put the rights of Russian Jews to immigrate over the efforts of Nixon and Kissinger to establish a detente with the USSR. Chomsky claimed that Jackson was “an oil expert,” which, for those who knew the record of the senator, was little more than a joke.
ER:truth is, u.s. intervention in palestine is very much in the interest of the u.s. ruling class even the neo-liberals– findley, meirsheimer, walt, carter, etc. all reiterate the importance of a jewish israel with secure borders, and u.s. interests. in my opinion, it’s a battle between the interests of the mic/security and construction industries (haliburton, bectel, g.e. boeing, caterpillar,etc.) , vs the marketing and production industries. a lot of people are gonna make a lot of money on exploiting palestinians, regardless of which model the u.s. comes up with.
JB: I’m not sure what you mean by “u.s. intervention in palestine.” That having an Israel in peace with secure borders would most definitely fit it with the perceived US interest and the same applied to every other country in the region. The argument is whether Israeli settlement expansion and maintaining the status quo is in the US interest, which Chomsky believes it is, and every expert in the field disagrees with him.
ER:blaming the jews just obscures that slight of hand.
JB:Not “the Jews” but Jews. It wasn’t Irish Catholics who came and settled in Palestine, buying land from absentee Arab landlords and evicting the peasantry. It was Jews,in the UK and the US, who pressured the British and negotiated with Balfour over recognition of Palestine as a Jewish homeland and were rewarded with the Balfour Declaration for helping (most notably Brandeis) push Wilson into WW1 on the side of Britain as it was on the verge of defeat by the Germans. And it has been the organized Jewish community in the US and every other Western country that have brought political and economic pressure on their respective governments to back Israel to the bloody hilt. Is the responsibility and the guilt for what has happened to the Palestinians predominantly Jewish? Damn right! Had had not been for Jewish Zionists and their Jewish supporters in the diaspora it would have happened.
ER:at the very least, can we all admit, the lobby gets its power from within the structures of the amerikan political system itself? why are all those people who resent the power of THE LOBBY and claim it is controlling washington, not calling for massive campaign finance?
JB: The laws that allow for virtually unlimited political donations predate political Zionism and they, of course, have not been alone in taking full advantage of it. Any crackdown on campaign finance would affect all the lobbies, and the others have no reason to concern themselves with Israel. In the one instance when Israel and AIPAC went up against major corporations such as Monsanto and Dow, who opposed the Israel-US Free Trade Agreement in 1985, Israel and AIPAC one. The oil companies long ago quit going head to head with the Zionist Lobby. It hasn’t helped that the Jewish Left has followed the Chomsky line, thereby abandoning the field of play to the Zionists,
ER:THE LOBBY is the excuse they give for why they don’t speak up. maxine waters gave me that line. now who would ever stand a chance running against her? NO ONE. but as long as people excuse those in power by blaming the lobby, those in power will never be held accountable.
JB: She’s not the only one and this was not a line from Waters but the truth. Why is she being targeted? It just maybe because she has started t u.s. intervention in palestineo take votes that AIPAC doesn’t like and back in 2004 she came to Atlanta to campaign for Cynthia McKinney where I interviewed her.
McKinney was, of course, a victim of speaking out against Israel, so was Earl Hilliard, in Alabama,Gus Savage, in Illinois, and other members of the CBC were pushed out in other ways. During that time, the Jewish Left looked the other way and made excuses. At no time did the Jewish Left ever call for stopping aid to Israel or even speak of AIPAC let alone protesting against it. The first Congressional victim was Sen.Fulbright and there were others besides Findley and McCloske, and Charles Percy. Jim Moran, of W Va, accused the Jewish community of being responsible for allowing the war in Iraq to happen. They didn’t beat him but they not only got him to back down, he now votes the straight AIPAC ticket. It’s the Jewish version of COINTELPRO but left Jews, like yourself, refuse to recognize it, making your position in the movement, like Chomsky’s, a liability rather than an asset.
ER: not that the lobby isn’t powerful. their attacks against me and cafe itifada were considerable and devastating. but that power isn’t foreign. it’s as amerikan as apple pie. it derives its power because of the interests of the ruling class, not despite it.
JB: I had not heard of your website until you ran the critique of my article, and I am not sure how you define “considerable” or “devastating.” You may not think the power isn’t foreign but if it is based on support for a foreign country, Emma, than it’s foreign. I see no line between Israel and its hardline supporters in the US and neither does Israel. I see the domestic operation as a Fifth Column, not only bent on eliminating any possibilities of justice for the Palestinians but not giving a damn about what they have done to what is left of American democracy while doing it.
Finally, I am curious. Do you support the call by Palestinian civil society for the BDS campaign directed against Israel? That question is a moment of truth for a website hosted by an American Jewish woman that calls itself Cafe Intifada.
i will not be approving posts that are basically ad hominem attacks. please limit your comments to the issues at hand.
the position of cafe intifada (and by extension myself) on BDS is not only covered in this blog, but also in this thread.
the specific campaign against both cafe intifada and myself are not only documented in this blog, but also can be found throughout the internet with simple google searches.
I have neither the time nor inclination to find the answers to my questions. I was only expressing my curiosity which has it limits. The only reason that I have commented on your blog because you saw fit to run an ubsubstantiated piece by Elise Hendrick attacking me that contained not a single citation to anything I had written and was nothing more than an ad hominem attack on me by your friend, Elise, starting with the title, and ending with referring to be not only as an “asshole” but a “racist asshole.” Other sites, with higher standards, rejected the article.
As for my critique of Chomsky and the lobby being an example of opportunism, it was when I began to criticize the latter more than 20 years ago that I started being marginalized by most of the Jewish Left and monitored in recent years by JVP which considers me to be an “anti-semite” and whose leadership, like Chomsky, refused to debate me on the issue. Would you be interested in doing so on KPFK?
I’ll debate you, Jeff. Happily. I would be more than happy to host our debate at the Foreign Policy Journal forum, a platform that would conveniently grant an equal voice and opportunity to both of us to outline our opposing viewpoints and arguments:
http://www.foreignpolicyjournal.com/forum/
I look forward it. Afterward, I’d also be happy to compile the complete and unedited points/counterpoints into an article and publish it at FPJ.
You can’t complain if criticism gets personal when you delbierately make false accusations that those who disagree with you are ADL agents, the 2010 version of the JDL, etc.
These accusations are really veiled threats and incitements to violence to the extent they’re taken seriously.
As for the ‘racist’ part of Elise’s comments, hey, we all know you can get away with this behavior in ‘pwog’ circles ONLY because you are Jewish, and until now no one who ‘counts’ in the ‘left’, such as it is, will say a word against you publicly.
Your takking advantage of this is racist, thoroughly.
Not that they haven’t been whispering what Elise said privately, in corners, for a long time.
Apparently, Blankfort didn’t read my piece. I have linked to a number of things that he has written, and quoted them at length.
@elise– either that, or he’s living up to your thesis!
The beat goes on! Apparently all of you don’t think Chomsky’s reputation is solid enough to withstand my criticisms, using his own words to make my point. Curiously,I was not the first to take him on for his interview with Israel’s Channel 2. There were at least two other articles by Middle Eastern critics which did not raise any rumbles from you folks and I only decided to write my piece after Chomsky had the audacity to accuse those of us who support the Palestinian-based call for BDS against Israel as being “hypocritical” and that we (!) were harming the Palestinian cause.
As for quoting what I have written about Chomsky at length, I couldn’t find that in your article.
And the challenge to debate was made to you, Emma, since you have access to the KPFK airwaves, as I recall, not to one-note Jeremy who has made a fool out of himself on ChomskyWatch by trying to reinterpret Chomsky’s comments to make them appear as if he hadn’t said them. Even the site administrator, trying to play the peacemaker, noted that I had cited Chomsky correctly.
So, Emma, are you willing to try and arrange a debate? Perhaps, Sherna Gluck will be willing to moderate.
I’ll make it easy for you – it’s throughout the article, with one of the best examples towards the end (the one where you claimed that Chomsky didn’t qualify his statement about being a “supporter of Israel”, even though he actually did qualify it in the very next sentence).
Blankfort refuses to debate Jeremy Hammond. The rest is just excuses.
He’ll only debate YOU, Emma, in a forum where his friends wouldn’t be ‘moderating’…meaning let him interrupt whenever he wants to, and generally prevent any coherent exchange of views.
As his friend Alison Weir did when she dropped other callers and Chomsky himself to let him have unlimited and unanswered time on what was SUPPOSED to be an interview with Chomsky.
sorry, I meant to say, he wouldn’t debate you, Emma, in a forum where his friends weren’t facilitating his usual rudeness and interruptions.
“Apparently all of you don’t think Chomsky’s reputation is solid enough to withstand my criticisms, using his own words to make my point.”
There you go again Jeff with your delusions of grandeur.
Why do you oppose BDS against the U.S. Jeff?
Interestingly, the thread on Chomskywatch mentioned above reveals additional evidence of obsfucation by Blankfort.
http://chomskywatch.wordpress.com/2010/08/10/a-rejoinder-to-kim-petersen%E2%80%99s-%E2%80%98the-legitimacy-of-boycotting-as-a-tactic%E2%80%99-jeremy-r-hammond/#comment-193
I was unimpressed by Blankfort’s repeated slagging off the Palestinian Solidarity Movement therein – is this a deliberate attempt at disempowerment?
I notice Blankfort is still attempting above to slur Chomsky on BDS with another of his ubiquitous strawmen.
Jeremy R. Hammond dealt with this misbehaviour in his original criticism of Blankfort’s ‘Chomsky: Asset or Liability?’ article here:
Blankfort won’t debate Jeremy Hammond. The rest if just excuses.
He won’t debate anyone except in his ‘public radio’ zionist sandbox where his friends will let him interrupt the other persona and evade difficult questions all he wants!
I would happily debate ANYONE on this issue, not only Hammond, and especially you,
[Portions of this post, deleted due to accusations that are unsubstantiated. -ed.]
Hammond wants me to “debate” him on his site. I want to do it in public, on the air, where a moderator can tell Jeremy that he is simply repeating himself over and over.
BTW, Jeremy, I not only have nothing against BDS against the US, it would be wonderful, and all of us can begin practicing it by not buying any American made products and then by setting this example we can then tell our fellow Americans to show their solidarity for the Palestinians by also not buying American products. Now anyone in the US who subscribes to that would either be a horse’s ass or an Israeli agent. So which one are you Jeremy, take your pick?
Jin, when I write that the Palestine solidarity movement has been an utter failure I write from close to 40 years of experience in it and recall when it had a chance to be something different. Unfortunately it has been sabotaged and in a few days you will be reading on more widely read blogs than this one, who are the guilty parties.
Now, Emma, how about that debate I suggested with you on KPFK?
Cafe Intifada will not publish comments that make unsubstantiated accusations. It is one thing to identify certain behavior as being that of provocateurs and infiltrators and actually accusing someone of being an agent and naming the organization for which they are allegedly working, with no proof, documentation or evidence.
We will not be a venue for such attacks and accusations.
Jeff, I am not interested in debating you on KPFK at this time, though your suggestion of Sherna as moderator is a welcome proposal. I have never felt that radio debates provide enough time for much more than sound bites of time to deconstruct simplistic racist statements and assumptions. simplicity is always in the interests of racists. Anti-racism requires a much more nuanced debate and explorations of the factors at play. Furthermore, I am offended at your demands and sense of entitlement to other people’s time and energy, your unsubstantiated insults and your unwillingness to address points raised by those who differ with you. I have no desire to collaborate on such an effort with this alpha male behavior. Thus just isn’t my knife fight.
It is often said “where there’s smoke there’s a fire” which is an easy smokescreen for racism. Determining what is actually burning and who actually ignited the flames takes much more disciplined and in depth considerations.
I don’t understand why a debate on a blog as Hammond has challenged you, (as you have indulged us all, here, on my blog) is so unacceptable to you., except that it might be harder for you to hurl accusations and dominate the discussion.
Also, given how insignificant you consider my blog, my opinions (you have asked questions and then told me you aren’t even concerned with my answers!!!) I would wonder why you haven’t considered (or found) a more worthy opponent than myself.
Emma, I was not the one who initiated the personal attacks and name calling which has been directed my way on a number of blogs since I had the temerity to question Chomsky’s positions on behalf of the Palestine cause.
If nothing else these attacks validate what I had to say about the reluctance on the part of even self-proclaimed “anti-zionist” Jews to place the blame for the plight of the Palestinians primarily on the doorsteps of the Jews in Palestine who carried out the ethnic cleansing in 1948 and those in the Jewish community, primarily the Jewish establishments, who have supported Israel and its wars to the bloody hilt ever since.
While those who have been involved in this outside of Israel represent a minority of the overall Jewish population, that those who haven’t been involved, such as yourself, who have spoken up for Palestinian rights,nevertheless, are willing to protect the reputation of those Jews who have been primarily responsible for the Nakba and what has followed afterward.
By pretending that it is the US and before that France and before that Britain who are the imperial bad guys that made or encouraged them to do it is a false reading of history that is overwhelmed by evidence to the contrary. This deception requires those making it to deny the power and influence of the pro-Israel establishment in influencing policy despite, again, overwhelming evidence to the contrary.
This is what I would present in a moderated debate and explains to me why neither you or any other Jew who takes the same position and who I have asked to debate me has been willing to do so.
Stephen Zunes, who is not Jewish, has been willing to do so twice and both of these debates are available on line.
As for debating Hammond on his blog, it is no different than debating you on yours. What is required is a moderator who would stop the participants from repeating themselves as the Administrator of ChomskyWatch unsuccessfully tried to to curtail Hammond’s harping on what he called my “dishonesty.” He can call me that all day but I want a live radio audience to hear it and my response. So c’mon, Emma, be the first and set a good example. If you respect Sherna, as I do, what’s your problem?
As for blocking my comments about [name deleted- ed)], I would find that noble if not misplaced. I have submitted and have had published on other blogs a longer piece providing the evidence for my accusations which I would be happy to send you and would have earlier if I had had your email.
Your position reminds me of the attitude that was taken by pro-Palestinian and left groups back in the 80s when I told them that [name deleted -ed.], who had infiltrated the ADC and other pro-Palestinian and ant-apartheid groups was an ADL agent. Socialist Action even gave him the job of running the office of the Spring Mobilization for a major march in 1988, unbeknown to me,which gave him the opportunity to add some 3000 names to the ADL “pinko” files as “members” of the Emergency Committee for Palestine that were taken from petitions that I had sent to the Mobe office calling for a demand be added to the march call that demonstrated support for the first Intifada, then in its fourth month. Inside the ADC, [name deleted -ed.] had been a buddy of [name deleted -ed.] but that’s part of the story you don’t want to print.
(1) Jeff wants to debate, but only on his own terms. Notice his presumption that were I to debate him I would be “simply repeating [myself] over and over”, which would warrant “a moderator” of Jeff’s choosing interupting me.
I think that pretty much says it all. I offered to host a public debate on my site, where there could be “an equal voice and opportunity to both of us to outline our opposing viewpoints and arguments”, without any “moderator” cutting one or the other of us off.
Now, if I knew I would have an equal voice if I debated Jeff on his radio show, I would gladly accept. But since he’s already projected his intention to not allow me an equal voice, I must decline. I reiterate my offer to debate him in a forum where we would have an equal voice and opportunity. I don’t care where, my site or elsewhere, so long as we have equal voice and opportunity, which, clearly, would not be the case on Jeff’s show.
The fact that Jeff constantly reiterates that he has repeatedly invited people to debate him, and nobody accepts his invitation, while insisting on using his own show, where obviously he would have the upper hand, as he himself just indicated, is highly instructive. A debate — but only on Jeff’s terms. Well, it’s no wonder Chomsky, et al, have rejected his invitation. Who would accept Jeff’s terms for a debate?
(2) Now, then, Jeff said that Chomsky considers him a hypocrite for supporting BDS against Israel. Chomsky’s position on that is it’s hypocritical to support BDS against Israel but not against the U.S., which materially supports Israeli crimes. This is an elementary moral observation. Logically, Chomsky’s criticism wouldn’t apply to Jeff, as Jeff himself said it does, if Jeff wasn’t opposed to BDS against the U.S. Hence my question as to why Jeff opposes BDS against the U.S.
Notice the contradictory response. First, Jeff says “I not only have nothing against BDS against the US, it would be wonderful…” Then he says, “Now anyone in the US who subscribes to that would either be a horse’s ass or an Israeli agent.”
Presuming Jeff does not believe himself to be a horse’s ass or an Israeli agent, we must conclude that this is a confirmation that Jeff is opposed to BDS against the U.S. AS a further corollary, Jeff is correct to say Chomsky’s criticism applies to him, that he is a hypocrite.
Now, as a final observation, notice that Jeff did not answer the question, but instead employed an ad hominem argument (if you support BDS against the US, then you’re either a horse’s ass or an Israeli agent). This is highly instructive.
Since it remains unanswered, I’ll repeat the question: Jeff, why are you opposed to BDS against the U.S.?
To that I’ll add a further question: Jeff, why do you reject the elementary moral truism of the principle of universality (that one should apply to oneself an equal (or more stringent) standard than one applies to others)?
(3) Jeff said: “…Jeremy who has made a fool out of himself on ChomskyWatch by trying to reinterpret Chomsky’s comments to make them appear as if he hadn’t said them. Even the site administrator, trying to play the peacemaker, noted that I had cited Chomsky correctly.”
Jeff is being dishonest. I invite people to go to ChomskyWatch and see for themselves. Jeff would have you believe I argued that Chomsky never said the words in question, and/or that I argued that Jeff cited Chomsky incorrectly. Neither is true.
What I observed is that Jeff dishonestly quotes Chomsky out of context. Jeff constantly quotes Chomsky saying, “In fact, I don’t regard myself as a critic of Israel. I regard myself as a supporter of Israel.”
Yet he omits Chomsky’s explanation for that remark, which he offered in his very next breath: “The people who are harming Israel, in my opinion, it’s what I’ve said many times, are those who claim to be supporting it. They are helping [to] drive Israel towards moral degeneration and possible ultimate destruction. I think support for Israel should be support for policies which are for its benefit.”
Jeff’s response to this is: “I don’t care how he qualifies it, he admits to being a supporter of Israel.”
That’s not very honest of Jeff, is it? No more honest than his above characterization of my discussion with him and the admin at Chomsky Watch.
Jeff, I’ve declined to debate you, and yet you insist, demand my acquiescence despite my answer. you have asked me questions, that i have already answered within this thread and this blog, and your response to my request that you reread the thread and familiarize yourself with the blog was met with your stated disinterest in the answers to your questions. then you list as your only concern in a debate that your opponent might repeat themselves unless the debate be moderated. HA! so first you ask me questions i’ve already answered, then you refuse to reread those answers, then you demand that people not repeat themselves.
this is why people consider you so dishonest, you don’t fight fair or honorably, and you are certainly not either a gentleman nor a post feminist leftist; no means no!
i’m not going to indulge your arguments because to do so would require repeating myself. i’m just NOT falling into that trap. though it is a clever one. in other debates, i’ve been accused of saying something i didn’t say, or not having said something i did say, forcing me over and over again to repeat the same assertion. but this is new— pretend the person didn’t make an argument, then accuse them of repeating themselves when they do. clever clever clever.
As for the amerikan left, your position re “jewish power” seems to have quite a bit of play, also among the neo-liberals and white supremacists.
i will qualify one point, lest i be misrepresented: guilt belongs to those who commit the crimes, regardless of ethnicity or nationality. the u.s. govt and ruling class is responsible for its global hegemony and israel’s elite is responsible for its crimes and genocide against the palestinians. the former is responsible for the myriad ways it supports and bankrolls the latter, and the latter is responsible for all the ways it allows itself to be a tool and a pawn of the larger imperial entity.
i don’t believe in excuse making. surely members of congress could speak up. they simply don’t want the consequences: risks everyone on this thread take every day.
i suppose the foot soldiers are the innocent perpetrators (that’s a term phrased by deena metzger). but war crimes are war crimes, and for these, they too need to be held accountable.
Smart to see through the debate offer…of course it would consist of sound biteaccusation you or Hammond wouldn’t be allowed to deconstruct..
Thanks, Emma, for not allowing Blankfort to post what he knows himself are false accusations..much like his points against Chomsky are deliberate lies…after 20 years of repetiton, common sense says they are really just smears and, even more..
‘Cleverly’ disguised threats
There is no evidence or ‘proof’ in anything he has ever sent about this, but he has used pliable ‘Palestinian’ voices to get them reprinted in ‘Palestinian’ blogs to give himself ‘cover.’
SOO clever. Just as the Israelis have their stable of ‘Palestinian’ media stooges..
The Palestinian involved long ago deleted it from his blog, but this MECA-public radio network always brings it up when challenged. I’ve been excluded from several discussion sites based on these allegations.
SOO clever..but SOOO dishonest. The people in the ANSWER milieu who repeat them also know they violate common sense, of course, and are just as dishonest as Blankfort.
Notice how openly mendacious he is on this debate, even admitting himself ‘his’ public radio !! ‘moderator’ would allow him to run amuck, but silence the other person…
The entire ‘public’ radio network here in Northern California, at least the international and political desks, are run by this informal old-friends network and can be counted on to facilitate interruption and slander in any ‘debate’ with Blankfort.
This is the only time I have seem Blankfort not be able to ‘get over’ with his slanders against me in any ‘left’ forum. Which says much about the state of the ‘left’, largely dominated by this informal MECA-ANSWER-etc. network.
Thank you once again, Emma
JEREMY HAMMOND WRITES: (1) Jeff wants to debate, but only on his own terms. Notice his presumption that were I to debate him I would be “simply repeating [myself] over and over”, which would warrant “a moderator” of Jeff’s choosing interupting me.
I think that pretty much says it all. I offered to host a public debate on my site, where there could be “an equal voice and opportunity to both of us to outline our opposing viewpoints and arguments”, without any “moderator” cutting one or the other of us off.
BLANKFORT: Debates have a long and a wonderful history and generally require moderation that requires each participant to make her or his point in a given time and equal time to rebut the other person’s statement. Why those rules seem to bother you is your problem but it speaks for itself. If I am going to have a debate which I have had in the past I want it on an independent, respected public site that would attract an audience that would make it worthwhile. Your website doesn’t qualify on either count.
HAMMOND: Now, if I knew I would have an equal voice if I debated Jeff on his radio show, I would gladly accept. But since he’s already projected his intention to not allow me an equal voice, I must decline. I reiterate my offer to debate him in a forum where we would have an equal voice and opportunity. I don’t care where, my site or elsewhere, so long as we have equal voice and opportunity, which, clearly, would not be the case on Jeff’s show.
The fact that Jeff constantly reiterates that he has repeatedly invited people to debate him, and nobody accepts his invitation, while insisting on using his own show, where obviously he would have the upper hand, as he himself just indicated, is highly instructive. A debate — but only on Jeff’s terms. Well, it’s no wonder Chomsky, et al, have rejected his invitation. Who would accept Jeff’s terms for a debate?
BLANKFORT: The only people I have invited to debate me on my show were three Zionist listeners who had complained to the station management about me and who I invited to come on all at once or individually. True to form they all refused.
I have not suggested debating Jeremy or anyone else on my program. The requests that Chomsky debate me came the first two times from a friend in NY (one of a thousand Jewish children that FDR had allowed in the US at the beginning of WW2) who thought we should debate the issue of The Lobby at the Socialist Scholars Conference and Chomsky’s responses were, respectively, “it wouldn’t be useful,” and that it was my obsession, “I don’t write or talk about.”
When Chomsky refused me in 1991, I then asked Prof. Joel Beinin, who was and remains a friend who took the same position as Chomsky and Joel’s reply was that “it wouldn’t be useful.” Ditto Phyllis Bennis when former Israeli Elias Daviddson asked her if she would debate me. In January, after he had been interviewed on KPFA’s Voices of the Middle East in December, the host,Khalil Bendib asked Chomsky if he would come back on the air to debate either me or Ali Abunimah on BDS. When Chomsky refused, Khalil created a virtual debate with Khalil playing portions of Chomsky’s comments and Ali responding in the first part of the program and me in the second part. After that I did write to Chomsky and suggested we do it in person. He refused and it never got further than that.I have no special terms other than what is generally considered the normal criteria for a debate.
HAMMONDA: (2) Now, then, Jeff said that Chomsky considers him a hypocrite for supporting BDS against Israel. Chomsky’s position on that is it’s hypocritical to support BDS against Israel but not against the U.S., which materially supports Israeli crimes. This is an elementary moral observation. Logically, Chomsky’s criticism wouldn’t apply to Jeff, as Jeff himself said it does, if Jeff wasn’t opposed to BDS against the U.S. Hence my question as to why Jeff opposes BDS against the U.S.
Notice the contradictory response. First, Jeff says “I not only have nothing against BDS against the US, it would be wonderful…” Then he says, “Now anyone in the US who subscribes to that would either be a horse’s ass or an Israeli agent.”
Presuming Jeff does not believe himself to be a horse’s ass or an Israeli agent, we must conclude that this is a confirmation that Jeff is opposed to BDS against the U.S. AS a further corollary, Jeff is correct to say Chomsky’s criticism applies to him, that he is a hypocrite.
Now, as a final observation, notice that Jeff did not answer the question, but instead employed an ad hominem argument (if you support BDS against the US, then you’re either a horse’s ass or an Israeli agent). This is highly instructive.
Since it remains unanswered, I’ll repeat the question: Jeff, why are you opposed to BDS against the U.S.?
BLANKFORT: On ChomskyWatch I had suggested that you need a remedial class in reading comprehension. It’s either that or you are simply intellectually dishonest. Maybe both. But when you pick only part of what I had to say about a BDS campaign against the US which totally distorts it, your total agenda becomes suspect in my book. Here’s what I actually wrote:
“I not only have nothing against BDS against the US, it would be wonderful, and all of us can begin practicing it by not buying any American made products and then by setting this example we can then tell our fellow Americans to show their solidarity for the Palestinians by also not buying American products. Now anyone in the US who subscribes to that would either be a horse’s ass or an Israeli agent. So which one are you Jeremy, take your pick?”
Do you really think that Americans would begin not buying American products to show their solidarity with the Palestinians and do you think, seriously, that calling for such a campaign here in the US would benefit the Palestinian cause? DO YOU? A boycott called internationally against the US for its war crimes in Iraq and Afghanistan is long overdue, but it is Israel that is the prime perp when it comes to the Palestinians and anyone who opposes boycotting it needs to have her or his credentials checked at the door.DO YOU SUPPORT BDS AGAINST ISRAEL? From what you have written lo these many days I find no evidence that you do.
HAMMOND/CHOMSKY: To that I’ll add a further question: Jeff, why do you reject the elementary moral truism of the principle of universality (that one should apply to oneself an equal (or more stringent) standard than one applies to others)?
BLANKFORT: You’re channeling the great man. That’s almost a direct quote. I do accept the standard but it is the Jews that became Israelis that ethnically cleansed Palestine, not the US. It was the Israelis who attacked Egypt, Syria and Jordan in 1967 and occupied their lands. The US had nothing to do with it. Since then, the US may have provided Israel with the weapons but it is the Israeli Jews who have been using them. Both countries are guilty but their guilt is not equal. Are you olda enough to recall the anti-apartheid movement? Do you recall anyone objecting to the BDS against South Africa by saying it was hypocritical not to boycott the countries that armed them, the main one of which happened to be Israel? The answer, of course, is no.
HAMMOND(3) Jeff said: “…Jeremy who has made a fool out of himself on ChomskyWatch by trying to reinterpret Chomsky’s comments to make them appear as if he hadn’t said them. Even the site administrator, trying to play the peacemaker, noted that I had cited Chomsky correctly.”
Jeff is being dishonest. I invite people to go to ChomskyWatch and see for themselves. Jeff would have you believe I argued that Chomsky never said the words in question, and/or that I argued that Jeff cited Chomsky incorrectly. Neither is true.
What I observed is that Jeff dishonestly quotes Chomsky out of context. Jeff constantly quotes Chomsky saying, “In fact, I don’t regard myself as a critic of Israel. I regard myself as a supporter of Israel.”
Yet he omits Chomsky’s explanation for that remark, which he offered in his very next breath: “The people who are harming Israel, in my opinion, it’s what I’ve said many times, are those who claim to be supporting it. They are helping [to] drive Israel towards moral degeneration and possible ultimate destruction. I think support for Israel should be support for policies which are for its benefit.”
Jeff’s response to this is: “I don’t care how he qualifies it, he admits to being a supporter of Israel.”
That’s not very honest of Jeff, is it? No more honest than his above characterization of my discussion with him and the admin at Chomsky Watch.
BLANKFORT: I am glad you repeated Chomsky’s comment because it saves me the trouble. CHOMSKY NOT ONLY DID NOT QUALIFY IT, WHAT HE SAID AFTERWARD SOLIDIFIED HIS SUPPORT FOR ISRAEL. It is clear that you are simply unable to understand the English language. But your efforts, I have to admit are amusing.
Emma,as you see I find it necessary to respond to your comment separately.
You wrote:
Jeff, I’ve declined to debate you, and yet you insist, demand my acquiescence despite my answer. you have asked me questions, that i have already answered within this thread and this blog, and your response to my request that you reread the thread and familiarize yourself with the blog was met with your stated disinterest in the answers to your questions. then you list as your only concern in a debate that your opponent might repeat themselves unless the debate be moderated. HA! so first you ask me questions i’ve already answered, then you refuse to reread those answers, then you demand that people not repeat
themselves.
BLANKFORT: The reference to repeating himself applied only to Jeremy. While I disagree with you, at least you have something to say that has content. If we were to have a debate on KPFK I would familiarize myself with what else you have written.
ROSENTHAL:this is why people consider you so dishonest, you don’t fight fair or honorably, and you are certainly not either a gentleman nor a post feminist leftist; no means no!
BLANKFORT:Believe me, Emma, until this episode no one in all the years I have been active has ever called me either unfair or dishonorable and I have friends and political allies all over the world
ROSENTHAL: i’m not going to indulge your arguments because to do so would require repeating myself. i’m just NOT falling into that trap. though it is a clever one. in other debates, i’ve been accused of saying something i didn’t say, or not having said something i did say, forcing me over and over again to repeat the same assertion. but this is new— pretend the person didn’t make an argument, then accuse them of repeating themselves when they do. clever clever clever.
BLANKFORT: Fill me in. I have no idea what you are referring to. In any case, the debate would be recorded and transcribed. What’s to worry about>
ROSENTHAL: As for the amerikan left, your position re “jewish power” seems to have quite a bit of play, also among the neo-liberals and white supremacists.
BLANKFORT: If the neo-liberals and white supremacists said today was Monday, would they be wrong. That you deny the extent of Jewish political and economic power in the US is, frankly, baffling, given the overwhelming evidence of its existence. Have you read, JJ Goldberg’s (of the Forward) “Jewish Power,” written in 1994 or Benjamin Ginzberg’s “The Fatal Embrace: Jews and the State”? Please do if you haven’t, and then get back to me.
ROSENTHAL: i will qualify one point, lest i be misrepresented: guilt belongs to those who commit the crimes, regardless of ethnicity or nationality. the u.s. govt and ruling class is responsible for its global hegemony and israel’s elite is responsible for its crimes and genocide against the palestinians. the former is responsible for the myriad ways it supports and bankrolls the latter, and the latter is responsible for all the ways it allows itself to be a tool and a pawn of the larger imperial entity.
BLANKFORT: i will repeat with modification what I wrote to Jeremy. The ethnic cleansing of the Palestinians was not the work of Israel’s elite but of all the Jews who participated in it. Because of the fact that Israel has always been a functioning participatory democracy for its Jews and because of the fact that every able man, except the ultra orthodox, is required to serve in the IDF and then the reserves until the age of 55, and since no one is coerced under the fear of death or prolonged imprisonment into serving in the army, there has probably never been a country whose people are more collectively guilty for what their country has done than the Israeli Jews, 94% of whom endorsed the slaughter of Gaza and who elected one war criminal after another to be their prime minister.
Believing the notion that Israel is “a pawn of the larger imperial entity” may make you and other Jews who think like you comfortable but it doesn’t stand up to even the slightest scrutiny. Whose pawn was it in 1948 when it cleared out 750,000 Palestinians and destroyed 400 Palestinian villages? Whose pawn was it when it attacked Egypt (against the wishes of France which had provided it with the weapons) when it launched the 1967 war? Whose pawn was it when it invaded Lebanon in 1978 and again in 1982?
ROSENTHAL: i don’t believe in excuse making. surely members of congress could speak up. they simply don’t want the consequences: risks everyone on this thread take every day.
BLANKFORT: No one on this thread, me included, takes any risks compared to what a member of Congress would take if she or he would speak the truth about the Israel Lobby. Have you ever spoken with Cynthia McKinney? Or Maxine Waters who is now paying the price for having flown to Atlanta to campaign for McKinney in 2004 and then this past year took several votes that AIPAC didn’t like. Have you ever read Paul Findley’s “They Dare to Speak Out?” and see what has happened to those who challenged the Zionist Lobby? Are you aware that Senator Fulbright was its first victim after he held hearings exposing the illegal funding by the Jewish Agency of the American Zionist Council?
ROSENTHAL: i suppose the foot soldiers are the innocent perpetrators (that’s a term phrased by deena metzger). but war crimes are war crimes, and for these, they too need to be held accountable.
BLANKFORT: Some are innocent others not. When soldiers are indoctrinated from birth with a racist ideology it is no surprise when this racism manifests itself in practice. This is true in Israel and a significant segment of white America and we see it reflected not only on the battlefield but how they treat civilian populations they have been brought up to detest.
@ jeff– what part of NO don’t you understand? really glad i never was in a position to go on a first date with you!
as for the suffering members of the ruling class who take on the lobby– reminds me of that soap opera title “los ricos tambien lloran”. no, losing one’s place in congress is not the worse consequence of having a backbone. not even close. israeli refusniks spend years in prison and are locked out of college and jobs. american academics risk losing their jobs, years of investigations, campaigns, in some cases, imprisonment, etc. college presidents risk losing their endowments, american activists risk their lives, jobs, police investigation, search and seizure, death threats, blacklisting, planted evidence, privatized espionage, character assassination campaigns, financial ruin.
don’t read my blog, and keep making statements that show you have no idea who you are talking to or what my family and i have been through at the hands of the zionists.
My challenge to Jeff to debate him remains on the table, the only condition being that it take place in a forum where we would have equal voice and opportuntiy (something, as Jeff himself has already indicated, would not be the case on his own radio program).
I would also observe that Jeff continues to refuse to answer my questions: (1) Why are you opposed to BDS against the U.S.? (2) Why do you reject the elementary moral truism of the principle of universality (that one should apply to oneself an equal (or more stringent) standard than one applies to others)?
Now, Jeff suggested to me, “you pick only part of what I had to say about a BDS campaign against the US which totally distorts it”, yet offers no actual argument to support his claim that I in any way “distorted” his words.
Now, notice Jeff is asserting that “CHOMSKY NOT ONLY DID NOT QUALIFY” his statement that he is a “supporter of Israel”, but “WHAT HE SAID AFTERWARD SOLIDIFIED HIS SUPPORT FOR ISRAEL”. Here again is Chomsky’s full statement:
Thus, when Chomsky says he is “a supporter of Israel”, what he means is that he opposes Israel’s “moral degeneration”, which is to say he opposes its immoral and criminal policies — precisely the opposite of the effective meaning of most others “who claim to be supporting” Israel, and thus precisely the opposite of what Jeff would have his readers belief Chomsky meant.
Again, Blankfort is simply incapable of being honest. First he quotes Chomsky out of context. Then when I demonstrate his fallacy by providing the full statement, in context, with Chomsky’s own explanation as to his meaning, Jeff responds by saying “I don’t care how he qualifies it, he admits to being a supporter of Israel”, which is clearly demonstrative of his intellectual dishonesty and lack of good faith. And now he changes his story once again and declares that Chomsky “DID NOT QUALIFY” his statement, and insults people’s intelligence by suggesting that if you consider Chomsky’s explanation for his statement, you must be “unable to understand the English language”. The fact that Jeff feels it necessary to insult people’s intelligence and employ ad hominem arguments is further demonstrative of his incapacity to be honest.
I take Chomsky at his word, Jeremy. I am curious why you don’t? There is nothing in his explanation that suggests that he is a critic of Israel. He is critical only of its supporters.
I am now counting the days that you have been obessed with my article on Chomsky. You had better save your energy for what is coming next.
How can you “take Chomsky at his word”, Jeff, when you “don’t care how he qualifies” his statements? Such as, for instance, how when he says he is “a supporter of Israel” and he qualifies that to mean he is opposed to its “moral degeneration”, which is to say he is opposed to Israel’s immoral and illegal policies — precisely the opposite of what you would have your readers believe when you quote him out of context, with total disregard for the explanation he gives.
I find it interesting that you suggest his qualification only further demonstrates your point. This begs a question: Then why don’t you ever quote his entire statement? How very odd, indeed.
I won’t bother counting the days that you have been obsessed with willfully and deliberately mischaracterizing his views.
Jeremy, if Chomsky opposes Israel’s “moral degeneration,” one would assume that it at some point in time was moral, for it it was not moral at some point in time, there would be no morality could not to . That’s seems pretty simple, no?
Then the question must be asked of Chomsky and his acoloytes, at what point in time was Israel EVER moral?
It does not follow from Chomsky’s comment that he ever believed Israel was perfectly moral, and his work demonstrates the blatantness of your non sequitur. If you want to try to put words in Chomsky’s mouth, perhaps you should follow your own advice and ask him whatever questions you think “must be asked” of him, so he can clarify to you his meaning.
You know, like I did in the case where I e-mailed him to clarify his criticism of “hypocrisy”, his unambiguous response to which demonstrated how you had once again misrepresented him.
If you are sincere, try to understand what his actual views are before you try to characterize them to others, Jeff. The fact that you make such comments as “I don’t care how he qualifies it” and such would seem to demonstrate that you are not sincere in the least bit.
Jeremy,
Before I wrote my first article on Chomsky, I sent him a letter my email and snail mail informing him that I was about to write a critique of his work and offered him an opportunity to elaborate on a number of statements that he had made which I found subject to question. Since I committed myself not to circulate his responses on the internet and confine what I used to answers that he gave to specific questions, a commitment which I have honored, I can only tell you that he was not very forthcoming and, as I recall, only answered one of the questions, and not very satisfactorily, which can be found in my first article: Damage Control: Noam Chomsky and the Israel-Palestine Conflict. Here’s the excerpt:
“The main task,” he [Chomsky]says, “is to bring the opinions and attitudes of the large majority of the US population into the arena of policy. As compared with other tasks facing activists, this is, and has long been a relatively simple one.” [15] Simple? Who, we must ask, is on Mars? Of course, as noted previously, he offers no suggestions as how to accomplish this.
Although he doesn’t advertise it publicly, Chomsky did sign a petition calling for the suspension of US military aid to Israel, but it has received little publicity and Sustain, the organization initiating the campaign has done little to promote it. It is not a demand that Chomsky raises in his books or interviews. When I pointed this out, he responded:
“That is totally false. I’ve always supported the call of Human Rights Watch and others to stop ‘aid’ to Israel until it meets minimal human rights conditions. I’ve also gone out of way to publicize the fact that the majority of the population is in favor of cutting all aid to Israel until it agrees to serious negotiations (with my approval)…” [16]
Given the probable nature and outcome of previous “serious negotiations” and the relative strength in the power relationship, this would present no problem for Israel as was demonstrated at Oslo and since. Chomsky’s claim to have supported Human Rights Watch’s call for stopping aid to Israel, however, was a figment of his imagination. This was confirmed by an HRW official who explained that HRW had only asked that the amount of money spent on the occupied territories be deducted from the last round of loan guarantees. [17] That is hardly the same thing. When I pointed this out to Chomsky, he replied:
“To take only one example, consider ‘HRW, Israel’s Interrogation of Palestinians from the Occupied Territories,’ p. xv, which states that US law prohibits sending any military or economic aid to Israel because of its practice of systematic torture.” [18]
To my objection that this did not exactly constitute what would be described as a “campaign,” he testily responded:
“Calling actions illegal is sufficient basis for a reference to a call that the actions should be terminated. If you prefer not to join HRW and me in calling the aid illegal, implying directly that it should be terminated, that’s up to you. Not very impressive… [19]” (Emphasis added)
I will leave it to the reader to decide whether describing US aid to Israel as illegal in a single document is the same as conducting a campaign to stop it.
16 email, Nov. 26, 2004
17 Leila Hull, HRW, email, Nov. 27, 2004
18 email, Nov. 25, 2004
19 email, Nov. 26, 2004
By now Chomsky has said he doesn’t respond to your e mails. I wouldn’t either, since you are so dishonest in portraying his responses, as here.
Yes, calling something illegal is saying they should be stopped..that’s just linear thinking.
One question that hasn’t been discussed in this thread, either here on on PULSE, not to mention Dissident Voice where most critics of Blankfort are simply excluded from posting, is what will happen if the BDS campaign ever advances beyond the mainly symbolic victories it has achieved so far.
Is there any doubt the zionists would immediately punish the Palestinian population with even more limitations on water, power, and public services, and whatever else their Hitlerite imaginations can invent?
Why do Blankfort and his public radio clique object somuch when Chomsky mentions boycotting as potentially hurting Palestinians? In the context of apartheid, isn’t that just common sense?
Relevance to our discussion?