On Jun 14, 2010, at 2:39 PM, Joseph Catron cited:
>
> http://www.dsausa.org/pdf/MideastRes.pdf
>>
>
> Wow, that's rather distressingly "even-handed," in a situation where one
> side has about 95% of the guns.
>
It also contains a significant degree of objective misinformation:
"But there was a ceasefire in 2008, and if indirect negotiations with Hamas had not been abandoned by Israel it is quite likely the cease-fire would have been maintained without the Israeli military escalation."
I don't even know what that sentence is supposed to mean, but aside from appearing flatly nonsensical, it also seems to contradict this one:
"Re-opening the border crossings would also eliminate the Hamas rationale for abandoning the previously successful cease-fire."
Of course Hamas' "rationale for abandoning the previously successful[!] ceasefire" was Israel's invasion of Gaza on November 4, 2008. In this, they proved far more patient than I; the siege alone was incompatible with my understanding of a bilateral ceasefire.
http://www.lrb.co.uk/v31/n02/henry-siegman/israels-lies
Elsewhere, we find:
"The Israeli state has a right to defend its people, but after more than 60 years of self-defense and 40 years of an unjust occupation of the West Bank and Gaza, it should be self-evident that peace and security for Israel cannot be achieved by injustice towards another people."
As opposed to the ethnic cleansing of Palestine (as so carefully outlined by Ilan pappe in his book of the same name); occurring, as it did, before the 1967 war, that was merely self-defense.
"Neither will a Hamas-led state whose main goal is reversing the Nakba."
Scare words (perfectly formulated to separate aging Upper West Siders from their money) aside, apparently DSA either doesn't realize that "reversing the Nakba" - that is, exercising the right of return - has been a non-negotiable demand of the Palestine liberation movement since 1948, or simply doesn't care.
Nothing personal, Bhaskar, but when a political organization's line on Zionism is a confused mess of apologetic nonsense like that, I don't know how inclined most of us will be to sit up and pay careful attention when a member/officer of that organization seems to have a great deal to say about the enemies of Zionism.
To quote your quotation of Bob Dylan:
*"And everybody’s shouting 'Which Side Are You On?'" * And, more to the point, your own words:
"It doesn’t take a tremendous appreciation of the dialectic to grasp this contradiction: some of the groups with the most stridently 'revolutionary' and 'anti-imperialist' politics are, in practice, reactionary and orientalist."
Indeed, and how.
-- "Hige sceal þe heardra, heorte þe cenre, mod sceal þe mare, þe ure mægen lytlað."