Well and good. You support a unitary, secular state, repatriation and reparations. And I support revolutionary socialism, mutual aid and hanging the last capitalist with the entrails of the last priest. I do! No sarcasm intended. Wanna join me? But in the meantime I'm trying to put out a minimally used and useful labor union newspaper, elect enough Democrats to the NYS Senate to shift control away from the Republicans and maybe see some antiwar candidates win in the midterm elections. I don't expect to see my long-run preferences happen in my lifetime--Maynard Keynes' observation that in the long run we're all dead is instructive. I'm no Zionist. I do argue that the creation of a Jewish statement was a huge mistake, one enough good people said was a mistake at the time, and that we are all paying the price for what some once saw as a necessary expedient. But that perspective has only a faint connection to politics, to really existing politics. Think the US will drop Israel? It will sooner drop the Saudi ruling families, which won't happen, either. So who, our egos aside, really cares what "we" support. Politics, then, isn't about "you." It's about what "we" can reasonably do with others. Being correct on Israel, like being correct on ridding the earth of religious obscurantists (and I like the sound of that one), is a self-congratulatory luxury I can no longer afford. Perhaps you have deeper pockets.
On 12/5/05, Travis Fast <tfast at yorku.ca> wrote:
>
> Joanna, I agree with the principles of what you have written but it
> would be a cold day in hell before the power bloc would contemplate a
> single state even sans US funding. Perhaps after two decades of
> sanctions like the south African case would change their minds but there
> does not seem to be any unified stomach for this on the part of the
> international community. So Chomsky's recognition of this is different
> from Dershowitz' celebration. Lumping Chomsky in with the KKK is just
> nonsense.
>
> Travis
>
> joanna wrote:
>
> >
> > I support a unitary secular state. I think this becomes much more
> > realistic when the economic and military support for Israel by the
> > U.S. comes to an end. I think the uprooted and oppressed Palestinians
> > deserve full citizenship in a Palestine that includes both former
> > Israelis and Palestinians. They also deserve reparations on the scale
> > that the Jews received following WWII. Those reparations to be paid by
> > the U.S. and Israel. That's what I support.
> >
> > The reality of a Middle Eastern peace will not happen so long as the
> > Zionist, blood-based state of Israel continues. (Oh, and in case we
> > need to establish credentials, I am the daughter of a Jew who was in a
> > labor camp, lost his entire (and considerable) family fortune to the
> > nazis, and I have relatives who live in Israel.)
> >
> > Joanna
> >
> > Michael Hirsch wrote:
> >
> >> Joanna:
> >>
> >> What exactly do you support? The ideal of a unitary secular state or
> >> the reality of a Middle Eastern peace? If I thought for a moment that
> >> a secular bi-or multi-national state were possible in Palestine, I'd
> >> jettison any support for a two-state solution. It cannot happen. Not
> >> in our lifetimes. The author's airy talk about KKK politics is
> >> gallery rhetoric and beside the point. Populations are routinely
> >> routed in wars. It's lousy; it must stop. And it's the outcome of
> >> military conflict, which must stop. Want to make any peace settlement
> >> contingent on the right of return? Want to resettle the Sudeten
> >> Germans, too? How about the pro-fascist Crimean Tatars. Or is it just
> >> the uprooted and oppressed Palestinians who deserve an ancestral
> >> homeland? Chomsky hasn't become a Zionist cats paw and it's a dumb,
> >> self-congratulatory if not self-referential argument to say he has.
> >> So I ask again, what's to agree with?
> >>
> >> Mike Hirsch
> >>
> >
> >
> > ___________________________________
> > http://mailman.lbo-talk.org/mailman/listinfo/lbo-talk
> >
>
>
> ___________________________________
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>
-- ________________________________________ `And these words shall then become Like oppression's thundered doom Ringing through each heart and brain, Heard again -- again -- again-- `Rise like Lions after slumber In unvanquishable number-- Shake your chains to earth like dew Which in sleep had fallen on you-- Ye are many -- they are few.' --------Shelley, "The Mask of Anarchy: Written on the Occasion of the Massacre at Manchester" [1819] -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: <../attachments/20051205/2329f31b/attachment.htm>