Divide and Conquer Re: Cockburn: Israel and "Anti-Semitism"

Micheal Ellis onyxmirr at earthlink.net
Mon May 20 13:27:53 PDT 2002



>
>Pragmatic and principled advocacy of affirmative action ain't the
>same as hypocrisy, in my opinion. Affirmative action in this case is
>not only just but also expedient, and the fact that it is expedient
>does not take away from the fact that it is just.
>
>Jewish critics of the Israeli government are excluded from or
>marginalized in the dominant discourse on Jewry and Israel. They are
>often made invisible by the Right, who want to pretend that all but
>"self-hating Jews" support the Israeli government policy toward
>Palestinians _no matter what_. Leftists should support dissident
>Jews (of various political persuasions), by making them visible.
>Check out the section titled "News Jews Can Use" (@
><http://www.maxspeak.org/Hot_Buttons/middle_east.htm>) from
>MaxSpeak.Org (@ <http://www.maxspeak.org/>):
>
>***** MaxSpeak.Org | Middle East
>
>Jews in the U.S. are pitifully ignorant of what goes on in the Middle
>East, and particularly so with respect to political debates in
>Israel. The result is a solid, politically sophisticated, and
>influential core of support for fundamentally awful policies in
>Israel and the U.S. The links below provide kosher, heterodox
>sources of information. I limit these to Jewish sources so that in
>debates, the serious student of Middle East affairs can better cope
>with efforts to debunk arguments and deny facts by the
>religious/ethnic equivalent of "playing the race card." Suggestions
>for new links are always welcome. Some of the sites are Hebrew-only,
>as indicated.
>

is doing so though kind of shooting yourself in the foot? this sort of thing by nature practically discredits any non "jewish" criticisms of Israel. you might as well start off the debate by saying "only jews are qualified to criticise zionism etc." the pragmatisim of the situation is that is the fix....further more it won't even work as it is practically silencing a majority of dissent over these matters. who cares what black or arabs have to say about all this....you can't trust them anyway. it's always good to encourage this type of behavior........


>As Max says, it's important to deny the Right the religious/ethnic
>equivalent of "the race card."

one is not going to accomplish this by accepting as a given what the 'race card' implies. one would essentially be agreeing to the fix of false assumptions of power. i personally wouldn't even hint at the thinking that the victims opinions don't matter. as far as a strategy did focusing on the white criticisisms (while it was happening) of the native american genocide help the native americans much? why not enhance all opposing voices equally?


>Notice also that Max doesn't limit the list above to only the
>perspectives with which he is in precise agreement. That's
>important. Max gets the Good Political Housekeeping Seal on the Left
>from me, whether he wants it or not. ;-> At this point in history,
>leftists need to work the hardest on making the Leftist Political Pie
>larger,

make it larger by alienating all the non jews? or leaving them out of the debate alltogether?

rather than trying to gobble up the biggest piece of an as
>yet too small Leftist Political Pie; leftists who prefer the latter
>to the former spend most of their time dissing other leftists, (in
>contrast to rightists who know how to concentrate their fire on their
>enemies, whatever they do to one another in private and in their
>spare time), with the result that their sectarianism makes _all_
>leftists (including themselves) unattractive. This applies to not
>just the question of Palestine but any other question.

Stalin was pretty good at "focusing on the enemy"...are you sugesting aspects of the left shouldn't have "dissed" him so much? if that is being "sectarian" then i'm a sectarian then.... like Malcom X said "you can't stop the rooster from crowing once the sun comes up". i would be extremely suspicious of a universally "attractive" leftist. the various dissings of the left are a source of strength i think. the unified "right front" is looking pretty weak despite their signifigant "power".

~M.E.



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