> >What you two object to -- the idea that the US government has
>>already resorted to do in Iraq what the state of Israel has been
>>doing -- is not so much Brad's own take as the headline and main
>>argument of the top front-page article in the _New York Times_ today.
>
>No. I read the Times piece and thought it was quite good. The
>Israeli parallels are all over the article. What I objected to in
>Brad's subject heading was the use of the word "disease," which
>sounds too much like classic slurs against Jews being a foreign
>body, an infectious agent
What Brad wrote was "Israel Disease," not "Jewish Disease." Of course, Zionists want you to hear "Jewish" whenever the word "Israel" or "Israeli" gets mentioned, but why should we succumb to the same hearing distortion?
I personally think that it's inadvisable to apply disease metaphors to politico-economic practices, but using such terms as "Israel Disease" basically falls into the same category as using such terms as "British Disease" (e.g., <http://www.bbc.co.uk/history/timelines/britain/post_brit_disease.shtml>, <http://econpapers.hhs.se/paper/cepcepdps/0260.htm>, <http://observer.guardian.co.uk/tories/story/0,10475,508033,00.html>), "Dutch Disease" (e.g., <http://www.investorwords.com/cgi-bin/getword.cgi?1604>, <http://ideas.repec.org/p/nst/samfok/2703.html>, <http://ideas.repec.org/p/wpa/wuwpit/0305001.html>, <http://econpapers.hhs.se/paper/wopyalegr/795.htm>), etc. Unless you think, as Zionists and anti-Semites do, that Israel is unlike any other state. . . .
>and also that it located the source of the problem in Israel and not
>in U.S. imperialism (rather like that creepy Counterpunch collection
>on anti-Semitism, which dismisses the idea that Israel serves U.S.
>imperial interests in favor of the notion that the Jewish lobby has
>hijacked U.S. policy for its own ends).
I almost begin to think that U.S. imperialism exists on LBO-talk only when it comes to discussions of Israel and its discrimination against Palestinians. For all other purposes, it's Negri's decentered "Empire" of multitudes, the utopian world beyond imperialism, states, nations, classes, etc.; worse, if anyone is to hold U.S. imperialism mainly responsible for tyrannies in the Middle East, Latin America, Asia, and Africa, s/he is labeled a "Third Worldist," an uncritical supporter of Third-World dictators. Why the double standard?
>"The Arab mind," "we really hammered the place," "the fence is here
>for your protection," "a heavy dose of fear and violence," and "we
>are here to help them" all evoke very American ideas of applying
>overwhelming power under the cover of charitable operations. A
>phrase like "the Israeli disease" obscures that.
I doubt, as I said in my previous posting, that the Israeli power elite say to Palestinians in the Occupied Territories that they are "here for your protection" and "here to help them." You hear the echo of the same claim to benevolence when it comes to the Israeli treatment of Palestinian "citizens" of Israel, though. If you get a chance, watch Rachel Leah Jones' _500 Dunam on the Moon_ (see <http://www.500dunam.com/>) and listen to her interview with Jewish artists in the Jewish artist colony of Ein Hod, which used to be a Palestinian village of Ayn Hawd before the founding of Israel. -- Yoshie
* Bring Them Home Now! <http://www.bringthemhomenow.org/> * Calendars of Events in Columbus: <http://www.osu.edu/students/sif/calendar.html>, <http://www.freepress.org/calendar.php>, & <http://www.cpanews.org/> * Student International Forum: <http://www.osu.edu/students/sif/> * Committee for Justice in Palestine: <http://www.osudivest.org/> * Al-Awda-Ohio: <http://groups.yahoo.com/group/Al-Awda-Ohio> * Solidarity: <http://www.solidarity-us.org/>