Ah, Carrol is McReynolds still a "social fascist, " racist running dog, in your book?
(The right-wing of DSA (the late Jim Chapin always argued w/ David, in the Maurice Isserman bio of Michael Harrington, David is dissed as a ,"dilettante, "Leo Casey always will argue bitterly w/ him, Bogdan Denitch and Itzhak Epstein blow hot and cold on David, Jason Schulman keeps on telling David to read more neo-marxism, I told him to read some more Lenin when it was clear he wasn't getting the insults directed at him from Leninists from WWP and ex-SWP'ers, and ex-Maoist now CCDS'er Carl Davidson was quite rough w/ him here http://www.geocities.com/stuart323_99/carl_davidson.htm debating on the Afghanistan war.)
You said as much a few years ago here, http://squawk.ca/lbo- talk/0106/0761.html
Subject: McReynolds and Palestine, was Should Peace Movements Criticize Terrorism?/socialfascist? From: Carrol Cox (cbcox at ilstu.edu) Date: Mon Jun 11 2001 - 14:34:28 EDT
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
==========
DOCUMENT 03: McReynold's First Reply (to Carrol) (Fwd by Pugliese?)
From: <davidmcr at aol.com> To: <asdnet at igc.topica.com> Sent: Monday, June 04, 2001 2:10 PM Subject: Re: Fw; [ASDnet] Should Peace Movements Criticize Terrorism??
I don't know who Carrol is, but since he/she starts with a basic assumption that the two key problems facing us are people who believe in nonviolence and those who don't, it does simplify reality in a charming way!
Of course the terrorism of the Palestinians is no different from that of the Stern Gang, of the foundes of Likkud, etc. and since that terrorism should have been condemned, and was, I don't see why one should hesitate to make clear we are apalled at suicide bombers who target civilians.
However I'd also make it clear, as I have many times, that Israelis air strikes are terrorist by nature, they are not precise, they are often collective punishment - an odious tactic - and should be as sharply condemned as any other form of terrorism. (And what is one to say of the recent Israeli attack on a Palestinian police outpost in which, without any provocation, they shot and killed four Palestinian police?).
The real problem here is with Carrol, who too easily exempts the Palestinians from effective organization, an effective center. The PLO isn't behind these terror bombings - or I greatly doubt it - but the PLO itself isn't very much in charge of things. 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.
That the suicide bombings are NOT a result of PLO decisions seems clear to me - they are undermining the PLO, they are aimed against the peace process, they are welcome by precisely those within Israel who, jointly with the extremists in the Palestinian community, want the peace process to fail - though with two quite different goals in mind.
Alas, if the peace process fails, the settlers will not win, nor will the Palestinians. The suicide bombings are not an effective part of a political process but an evasion of it.
David McReynolds
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