Month: January 2010

Tony Judt’s remarkable journey

Tony Judt

UPDATE: the Guardian has a good piece by Ed Pilkington and a video of Judt speaking about his condition. He calls it ‘one of the worst diseases on the Earth’.

Tony Judt, the acclaimed English historian and author, has made a remarkable journey from his days as a volunteer for the IDF during the 1967 war to his recent transformation into one of the staunchest critics of Israel and its lobby. He outraged many old associates from his Zionist days when in 2003 he penned an eloquent call for a bi-national state in 2003. (His friendship with the late Edward Said must have likely played a part in this transformation.) He was dropped from The New Republic‘s editorial board shortly afterwards. Shortly after the Iraq war, he wrote a scathing attack on what he called Bush’s Useful Idiots — the liberal interventionists who argued for war using the language of humanitarianism and liberal values.

In 2006, when John Mearsheimer and Stephen Walt wrote their ground-breaking essay on the Israel lobby, he was one of the very few progressive Jewish voices to come to their defence, even as self-proclaimed ‘radicals’ demurred. Shortly afterwards he wrote a brilliant essay for Ha’aretz calling Israel ‘the country that wouldn’t grow up‘. He later joined John Mearsheimer in a debate organized by the London Review of Books in which they argued against apologists for the lobby. In the same year an event organized by Network 20/20 at which Judt was slated to speak was cancelled following pressure from the ADL and AJC. This prompted Mark Lilla and 114 writers and intellectuals to write a letter of protest to the ADL. Judt later recounted this incident in his appearance in an excellent Dutch documentary on the lobby. All his writings and his reflections on his journey from Zionism to universalism are collected in his 2008 book Reappraisals: Reflections on the Forgotten Twentieth Century.

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Death By Sanctions

Guernica
M. Shahid Alam

“Iraq deaths double under UN sanctions.”
New York Times, Feb.17, 2000

Sleep my child, do not wake now.
The portents in the sky foretell
a searing death for you.

The couriers of death have come,
stealth in their cyber gaze:
they scour the land for Saddam.

They poison every river, creek and well.
They darken school and hospital.
They warp the words you spell.

For star, for oil and cross they fly.
They will not cease to tyrannize
your dying days and hellish nights.

They will not cease their deathly watch.
Their mission is to fossilize
your bones, your heart, your eyes.

Sweet my child, do not wake now.
Your eyes once soft are hard
as rock: your hair is white as snow.

– M. Shahid Alam is professor of economics at Northeastern University. He is author of Challenging the New Orientalism (IPI: 2000). You can reach him at alqalam02760@yahoo.com.

On Mads Gilbert’s North American Tour

Dr. Mads Gilbert treating a wounded Palestinian child during Israel's December 2008 assault on Gaza.

During Israel’s assault on Gaza in December 2008, two doctors working from the frontline attempted to bring attention to the imbalance of power that exists at the heart of this conflict — an imbalance which weighs heavily towards the Israeli side.  While Israeli media spokespeople used airtime to argue that Israel was only targeting Hamas militants, Dr. Mads Gilbert and Dr. Erik Fosse of the Norwegian Aid Committee attempted to bring attention to just how many women and children were being wheeled in to be treated for shrapnel and bullet wounds, and how many families they were treating all at once.  They have since written a book about the event and Gilbert will be touring North America to spread their message. 

The following was written by Fatemah Meghji, the national co-ordinator of Solidarity for Palestinian Human Rights and a university student who has been organizing a nation-wide tour for Gilbert.  Below her piece you will find a listing of tour dates and locations — be sure to attend an event if you can, I know I will. 

by Fatemah Meghji

From Dr. Mads Gilbert & Dr. Erik Fosse’s Eyes in Gaza:

The boy with the destroyed brain did not need anaesthetic; he could no longer feel anything. The other lay in an artificial coma with intravenous anaesthetic agents to soften the pain and allow the ventilator to work without resistance from the boy’s own breathing. A large bandage covered both his eyes. He could not see anyway. He was already blind. 

Where could I cry out the despair and rage I felt for all this terrible fate we saw at such close quarters? Would the heavens hear? Will the world hear? They know that this is happening, after all. The numbers tick into the West every single afternoon, to the news agencies, to the intelligence services and to the diplomatic missions of the world’s most powerful nations, who do not even make an attempt to pull in the reins and control the wildness of the Israeli war machine.

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Surveillance Society?

On January 5th, the Obama administration announced new security measures where passengers entering the United States from 14 nations – including Iraq, Iran, Pakistan, Yemen, Afghanistan, Saudi Arabia, and Lebanon – will be subjected to pat downs, extra luggage checks, and full body scans.

Earlier this week in a segment focused on the new security checks, Riz Khan of Al Jazeera asks:  “Do the new U.S. airport policies discriminate against Muslims, or are they simply ‘security measures’, as the Obama administration suggests?”

Joining Khan in the interview are Christopher Calabrese, a lawyer working for the American Civil Liberties Union, and Zohra Atmar, an Afghan-American consultant working for the U.S. Department of Defense on issues concerning Afghanistan and Pakistan.

Will these procedures make America any safer? Can these measures be described as profiling? What kinds of rights do these policies sacrifice in terms of civil liberties and privacy? The interview with Riz Khan, which aired on Al Jazeera on Jan 7th, ‘attempts’ (albeit dissatisfactorily) to get at some of these issues:   

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Israeli Exceptionalism: A Grim Prognosis

Cover Image GIFIn the coming weeks we’ll be publishing reviews and responses to M. Shahid Alam’s new book Israeli Exceptionalism: The Destabilizing Logic of Zionism (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2009). Following is the first from political scientist Ahrar Ahmad.

Dr. Shahid Alam is primarily an economist and an educator.  But, he is also a public intellectual, and often a lively polemicist, who writes with insight and conviction on issues dealing with culture, identity, religion, globalization, imperialism, and terrorism.  But nothing stirs his passions as intensely as the issue of the Palestinians – their dispossession, marginalization, despair.  His feelings are ardent, his language combative, his intellectual engagement prickly and zealous.  It is largely this pre-occupation that has earned him a place in David Horowitz’s book on the Hundred Most Dangerous Academics in the US (an ignominy that he probably wears as a badge of honor).  His latest book distills, clarifies and deepens much of his previous thinking on Zionism, the creation of the state of Israel, and the injustices inflicted on the Palestinians.

The trope along which this book is organized is the concept of “Exceptionalism” that is often claimed by the state of Israel, and sometimes by Jews themselves.  To Alam this is nothing other than a rhetorical device, and a moral posture, to ensure the West’s indulgence and support, to protect Israelis from any criticism, and exempt them from standards and behavioral norms that apply to other peoples.  This “exceptionalism” is derived from their Biblical covenants and the belief in their inherent “chosen-ness”, their wrenching history of suffering and persecution, their considerable achievements in science, philosophy and philanthropy, and their current status as a people allegedly besieged by Islamic fundamentalists, anti-Semitic bigots, and the barbaric and self-destructive Arabs.  To question anything about Israel is tantamount to denigrating every aspect of its special status.

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Speaking Truth to Power

Students in Lahore, Pakistan, protest against the visit of U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton. (K.M. Chaudary/AP Photo/October 29, 2009)

by Kathy Kelly

There’s a phrase originating with the peace activism of the American Quaker movement: “Speak Truth to Power.”  One can hardly speak more directly to power than addressing the Presidential Administration of the United States. This past October, students at Islamabad’s Islamic International University had a message for Secretary of State Hillary Clinton.  One student summed up many of her colleagues’ frustration. “We don’t need America,” she said. “Things were better before they came here.”

The students were mourning loss of life at their University where, a week earlier, two suicide bombers walked onto the campus wearing explosive devices and left seven students dead and dozens of others seriously injured. Since the spring of 2009, under pressure from U.S. leaders to “do more” to dislodge militant Taliban groups, the Pakistani government has been waging military offensives throughout the northwest of the country.  These bombing attacks have displaced millions and the Pakistani government has apparently given open permission for similar attacks by unmanned U.S. aerial drones.   Every week, Pakistani militant groups have launched a new retaliatory atrocity in Pakistan, killing hundreds more civilians in markets, schools, government buildings, mosques and sports facilities.  Who can blame the student who believed that her family and friends were better off before the U.S. began insisting that Pakistan cooperate with U.S. military goals in the region?

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Gaza’s Forgotten Children

The 1990 United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child delineates children’s civil, political, social, economic and cultural rights. Every country in the world has ratified the Convention except of course for the United States and Somalia.

In article 6, it is stated that a child has the right to life. Governments should “ensure that children survive and develop healthily.” Article 19 states that governments should “ensure that children are properly cared for, and protect them from violence, abuse and neglect by their parents or anyone else who looks after them.” Article 27 declares that a child has a “right to a standard of living that is good enough to meet its physical and mental needs.” Finally, article 38 concerns the right to receive “special protection” in war zones.

In 1991, Israel ratified the Convention. It is therefore bound to respect and promote the rights of all children in Israel and in the occupied Palestinian territories.

This moving video speaks for itself. You are not alone, dear children of Gaza.

Eyeless in Tehran

Press TV should be ashamed of running such crude and embarrassing propaganda. The channel couldn’t have found a better way to insult its audience. Neda Agha Soltan’s killing was an outrage; to try to cover it up in such a shoddy manner merely adds insult to the injury. Press TV has provided excellent coverage in Gaza and elsewhere. If it is to remain credible, it will have to assert its independence and put a distance between itself and its sponsors.

Viva Palestina breaks Gaza siege

The Viva Palestina aid convoy has broken the siege of Gaza despite Egyptian attempts to violently disrupt their progress.

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Moshe Halbertal and the Goldstone Report

Jerome Slater refutes Moshe Halbertal’s attack on the Goldstone Report published in The New Republic, an Israel Lobby mouthpiece.

Judge Goldstone in Gaza

As an academic of nearly fifty years, I take seriously that the core principle and highest calling of our profession is to seek and tell the truth, as best as one can. For those who know the full historical facts about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, one of the most shocking and depressing phenomena is the extent to which many leading Israeli and American Jewish intellectuals and academicians ignore, conceal, or willfully deny them.

I am not speaking here of ordinary citizens, who might simply be unaware that many of the most cherished Israeli mythologies are historically unsustainable; rather I refer only to the media commentators, political scientists, historians, and even moral philosophers who regularly write about the conflict and whose distortions or outright falsifications cannot be explained away by ignorance.

What, then, does explain this situation? For some, their ideology is simply so impenetrable that the facts can’t get through. For others, I assume that they knowingly, or at least semi-knowingly, conceal the truth because they fear that revealing it will harm Israel. If so, they are also wrong about the consequences — over sixty years of Israeli repression of the Palestinians has done incalculable harm to Israel’s own best interests. In any case, no matter what their motives, the academics who seek to defend Israel against the most reasonable criticisms betray their calling.

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