Sorry but a discussion of cultural differences is not the same thing as racism. The Israelis have been remarkably adept at assassination, selective, and effective. They could have taken Arafat out anytime they wanted to.
But when, back in 1987 or so (the exact year not written in my memory bank) I was on a PLO "Ship of Return" project, which was to bring a ship to Athens, at which point a load of us - in my case the modest title as Chair of War Resisters International, but others included members of Bishops, members of Parliament, courageous young Jews, etc. - were to board the ship, and sail to the coast of Israel, duplicating the original Zionist ships, I got a good luck at how the PLO operates.
When they had a hard time getting a ship, aside from not dealing squarely with us, they substituted a couple of rallies with speeches and we sat in Athens for days. I was grateful to see Athens - I would probably have never seen it otherwise. But if the organizers had been Israelis they would have done what I would have done - break our groups down into discussions groups, teach-ins, contact groups, etc., a thousand routine, but concrete organizational things.
In the end, while the PLO dithered and talked, Mossad sent agents to the docks where the rented ship was waiting to leave for Athens, killed two or three of the PLO folks guarding it, and blew a hole in the ship.
That is what I mean by a cultural difference. One can talk with those involved in support work for the Palestinian people and find deep hostility to the crowd around Arafat (and I'm not talking about the Hamas group).
To compare the final futile but heroic armed uprising in Warsaw against armed Nazi troops with the blowing up of kids at a dance in Israel, someone is blind and perhaps it is me. If so perhaps blindness of this kind is a blessing.
If Carrol is a decade or two older than me, he is bordering on senility, or so I judge from this post. I would not have written Waskow's statement precisely as he wrote it. But it seemed then and now important to speak out against terrorism - which is clearly where we differ. In the past I have been on pretty lonely ground in the US in pointing out that Israeli air strikes are terrorist.
Fraternally, David
<< Subj: Fwd: McReynolds and Palestine, was Should Peace Movements CriticizeTerrorism?/socialfascist?
Date: 6/11/01 2:54:58 PM Eastern Daylight Time
From: dhenwood at panix.com (Doug Henwood)
To: DavidMcR at aol.com (David McReynolds)
X-From_: owner-lbo-talk at dont.panix.com Mon Jun 11 14:34:38 2001
Date: Mon, 11 Jun 2001 13:34:28 -0500
From: Carrol Cox <cbcox at ilstu.edu>
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To: lbo-talk at lists.panix.com
Subject: McReynolds and Palestine, was Should Peace Movements
CriticizeTerrorism?/socialfascist?
Sender: owner-lbo-talk at lists.panix.com
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Reply-To: lbo-talk at lists.panix.com
Doug Henwood wrote:
>
> From: DavidMcR at aol.com
>
> Ah me, always makes a man feel he is doing something right!
>
> First, I have absolutely no idea what I wrote to suggest Palestinians had a
> propensity to violence - it would be a service to me if I could find out.
I'll try to do you that service. Here is what you wrote in your
first reply to me:
"It is not the Israelis who have made it impossible for the Palestinians
to organize a "center" (though certainly they have tried), but the
tendency of the Palestinians to substitute rhetoric for organization
and, in the present case, suicide bombings for more effective actions."
How do you construe this syntax? Ordinarily with this construction "to
substitute rhetoric" and "[to substitute] suicide bombings" would be
parallel constructions dependent on "tendency of." If this means what it
says, it is crudely racist. It is a tendency of Palestinians to
substitute "rhetoric for organisation" and "suicide bombings for
effective action."
>
> Second, most of the time I'm attacked as an anti-Semite for my support for
> the Palestian people and their struggle, and my sharp criticism of Israel.
I should have focused more on what you said, less on you. Whatever your
intentions or general habits may be, in this instance the post you wrote
is racist.
> However, partly because at my age
Oh come now, I'm probably a decade or two older than you. Let's not get
into competing memories.
> one remember the Holocaust without waves of
> TV specials, remembers it and knows what it meant to Jews (including the
> guilt of some in the Jewish community in this country who knew and did little
> or nothing at all - fearing a wave of East European immigrants would start an
> anti-Semitic backlash), I am not prepared to ignore Jewish feelings about
> terrorism.
Blast it -- you're just mumbling. Among other things you're a
professional writer. Act like it.
>
> Third, I do indeed condemn all terrorism,
You have not met my argument. I claim that the Palestinians are _not_
committing terrorism -- they are fighting back with whatever weapons a
captive population has at its disposal. To compare a man who in despair
commits suicide to strike back at his oppressors -- despair because thw
whole world is ignoring him -- to compare such a man to the Stern Gang
is grotesque. The Stern Gang was systematically and calculatingly using
terror to create the illusion that Palestine was a land without a
people. They were a criminal organization. If you can't see the
difference, then I am sorry for you as a person.
> even if I can understand why it is
> being done.
Your posts (and the original post by Arthur Waskow) certainly do not
show such understanding. Do the situations and purposes of the Stern
Gang and the dead man make no difference at all to you? Is "violence" so
powerful a category as to wipe out all other distinctions?
> The irony of my comparing the PLO actions to the Stern gang, and
> my suggestion that the Likkud Party has been led by "former" terrorists, or
> my statements that if you condemn the terrorism of the suicide bomber at
> least the bomber had the courage (or insanity) to die in the act, while
> Israeli jet planes risk nothing, but their bombing raids are absolutely as
> terrorist as any act by the Palestinians.
Listen to what you are saying: "their bombing raids are absolutely as
terrorist as any act by the Palestinians." This is irony? The difference
is so great that it is a corruption of English to label both by the same
word.
>
> I don't like actions where old men send young men to die, whether it is that
> criminal. Sharon, or the religious leaders in the Palestinian community who
> applaud the youth who go forth to die.
>
> So as far as I know that is what the fuss is about. As for the issue of
> thinking Palestinians more likely to be terrorist, I'd like the source - if I
> said it it means some words must have gotten left out of something I sent by
> email, because it isn't my view.
I have not read you before on Palestine. I have no way of comparing or
contrasting these posts to your total position. But on the basis of
these posts, I do not see how you are operating on any other basis than
a metaphysical conception of violence as the ultimate evil. Such
heavy-handed and crude moral filters almost always confuse political
debate.
Carrol
>
> Best,
> David
David is responding directly to the following brief post from me. In it
of course I do not explain the "tendency to terrorism" because I was
urging Doug to read the posts, not repeating them.
>
> >Doug, read McReynolds on the Palestinian struggle, and read them
> >forgetting everything else you know about the man. Taken by themselves,
> >"prick" seems a mild designation for their author. He not only equates
> >isolated Palestinian violence (including suicide bombings) with the
> >Stern Gang but ascribes to the Palestinians a _tendency_ to terrorism. I
> >had always thought highly of him too, but that post made me gag.
> >
> >Carrol
> >
> >> Doug
>>