Stop Sending Military Aid to Israel! (My letter to Congress)

We must stop sending military aid to Israel until it honors its obligations under international law, including not attacking hospitals, UN refugee centers, and civilians in Gaza.  Israel must  lift the blockade on Gaza--itself a brutal act of war, and remove all settlements, walls, checkpoints, water theft projects, and all other structures past the internationally recognized border in the West Bank.

Until Israel honors its obligations, it must be considered a military aggressor, and all puny rockets and other violent actions by Palestinians should be considered justifiable self-defense.

From 1948 when Harry Truman mistakenly made the USA the first country to recognize the State of Israel without seeking Arab approval as FDR had committed himself to, Israel has continued to block fair negotiations over final status with Palestine, and when it has negotiated, it has negotiated in bad faith, continuing to expand settlements in Palestine and brutalize the Palestinians under its control.  I have spoken with Zionists, and have heard Netanyahu, and it is clear that the end they seek is Greater Israel all the way to the Jordan River and the dispersion if not annihilation of what once was a majority arab population in the original area.

This is not a project that the USA should ever have been a part of.  The brutality and bad faith of Israel has become our brutality and bad faith, and as Israel's military and political backer, and it will continue to make US citizens and lands targets for the justifiable asymmetric warfare frequently called terrorism.

Long overdue, the USA should recognize the state of Palestine in the West Bank and Gaza.  Whatever illegal actions they have taken pale in comparison with what Israel has done and continues doing.

Chomsky on BDS and right of return

http://www.thenation.com/article/180492/israel-palestine-and-bds?page=0,0

Among other things, he dismisses the Right of Return:

"The opening call of the BDS movement…demanded that Israel fully comply with international law by ""…(3) Respecting, protecting, and promoting the rights of Palestinian refugees to return to their homes and properties as stipulated in UN Resolution 194."" "

[…]

"While there is universal support for for (1), there is virtually no meaningful support for (3) beyond the the BDS movement itself.  Nor is (3) dictated by international law.  The text of UN General Assembly Resolution 194 is conditional, and in any event it is a recommendation, without the legal force of the Security Council resolutions that Israel regularly violates.  Insistence on (3) is a virtual guarantee of failure."

I suspect Chomsky's assessment of the international support, law, possibility of success and optimal strategy (see first paragraph of my congressional letter in later post following Chomsky's advice) here for the liberation of the State of Palestine may be accurate (though misleading on the "only support coming from BDS movement"…the causality is rather that supporters of Right of Return support BDS also…and Right of Return has had huge popular support in the world).  On the law, I think it depends on the judge.  Wikipedia makes interesting reading on the Right of Return, there does appear to be a lot of support for it, but then also, just as Chomsky says, the support is advisory.

However the Right of Return is an obvious ethical standard for illegal dispossession, and if not a non-negotiable demand, it should not be excluded from negotiation--since it most clearly is the obvious ethical standard, it should be the starting point.  True, given that starting point, it's not easy to negotiate something else acceptable.  But that is and should be the way it is…national dispossession is a huge loss to the dispossessed!  A loss comparable to the output of many generations!  How much would your
people sacrifice to hold on to their lovely homeland between the Sea and the River!  That is the loss that has been imposed, and likely the only remotely just outcome would in fact be right of return.  And that wouldn't even be counting the generations of suffering that has been caused by the Zionist project.

[Which was also not done as Herzl said.  If only the Zionists of the 1940's had created a state with mutual respect, occupancy and fair deals at the time rather than terrorist operations and imperialist manipulation and collaboration, decades of suffering and perhaps ultimate failure could have been avoided.  Modern Zionism betrayed its founders.  It also betrayed and corrupted its alleged religion, Judaism.  In Judaism, respect for the other is mandatory.  Failure to respect others was the crime of Sodom.  I don't know if the modern Zionist project will fail.  Many terrible things have succeeded to the present.  Sometimes things get better.]

I find that many people unfamiliar with how Israel was created--by non-regional dictates (such a UN vote, but no Arab states voting yes or self determination of the locals), violent Zionist ethnic cleansing*, and war--when the first hear about the ethnic cleansing--neighborhoods being driven out--they find the Right of Return is intuitively the right and moral thing to require in a just peace settlement.  And I think intuition would be shared with many people already fully familiar with how Israel was created as well.

{Zionists point out that Jews had been ethnically cleansed from arabic countries.  True, but the crimes of other states should not be used to justify ethnic cleansing done on Palestinians.  I would favor civil settlement--even right of return--for involuntary Jewish resettlement from arabic countries.)

Furthermore, the pre-recognition that the Right of Return be ruled out gives Israel another opportunity to forestall negotiation indefinitely and continue the annexation of Greater Israel with ethnic cleansing and war.  Just as Zionists in the 1970's created the trumped up claim that Palestinians wouldn't pre-recognize a "Right of Israel to Exist" (a right no state has, as I quoted Chomsky as aptly arguing in an earlier post) and therefore they just couldn't even talk to them because of that, now they might (? perhaps they explicitly insist on this already ?) a pre-recognition that there can be no Right of Return as well?

Even if you accept, as I do, that a universal right of return would be practically impossible, it hardly seems to be the thing that must be pre-disavowed prior to negotiation would be the very thing that would be most ethical to do under the circumstances.  It would seem rather that should be The starting point of negotiation, and if the Israelis can't make a compensation offer high enough to satisfy each displaced Palestinian family, they should give up possession of such properties which were "ethnically cleansed."  That was in fact prescribed by UN Resolution 194, which said displaced persons get their property back, unless they chose compensation instead.

Resolves that the refugees wishing to return to their homes and live at peace with their neighbours should be permitted to do so at the earliest practicable date, and that compensation should be paid for the property of those choosing not to return and for loss of or damage to property which, under principles of international law or in equity, should be made good by the Governments or authorities responsible.

Now about here any Zionist and perhaps many others as well would say that Israel cannot accept self-destruction, and that would mean a state such as Israel could not exist, as the land would become majority Arab and they would not accept a "Jewish State" as Jews need and Israel is intended to be.

So here it becomes clear that "The Right of Israel to Exist" as Zionists and many others insist is in direct contradiction of the "Right of Return," which seems the obviously ethical thing to require.

Since no state should have a "right to exist" but rather exist to serve it's population, region, and world, and since people should have a right to reclaim property which was taken by force, it's pretty clear to me which right should prevail ethically.

Now lets consider the question of what kind of compensation for losing one's fine life, work, possessions, village, community, and society.  Only 66 years or so later being able to restart somewhere else with compensation for the loss (if not the time lost suffering, and deaths).

We're certainly talking about generations of income, at least seven.  That's not even considering the suffering, but the key property, society, etc., which might take generations to rebuild somewhere else, if it wouldn't be fundamentally inferior somehow even after many generations.

So anyone thinking about this problem would realize, widespread "compensation" to a standard of justice is just unthinkable.  I wouldn't propose people being made slaves for seven generations.

So return is and can be the only answer, unless the individual chooses otherwise, just as Res 194 says.

Chomsky: States have no "right to exist"

Beautiful, concise, and correct analysis by Chomsky, discussed at Mondoweiss.

[…] No state demands a ‘right to exist,’ nor is any such right accorded to any state, nor should it be.  Mexico recognizes the US, but not its ‘right to exist’ sitting on half of Mexico, acquired by aggression. The same generalizes. 

To my knowledge, the concept ‘right to exist’ was invented by US-Israeli propaganda in the 1970s, when the Arab states (with the support of the PLO) formally recognized Israel’s right to exist within secure and recognized borders (citing the wording of UN 242). It was therefore necessary to raise the bars to prevent the negotiations that the US and Israel alone (among significant actors) were blocking, as they still are.  They understood, of course, that there is no reason why Palestinians should recognize the legitimacy of their dispossession — and the point generalizes, as noted, to just about every state; maybe not Andorra. 

Noam Chomsky

Now I can see that many Americans might find part of this hard to swallow…the fact that it was US and Israel who were blocking negotiations.  Certainly the view portrayed in US media during the 1970's (and since) was that it was the Palestinians who were blocking negotiations by their silly refusal not to recognize Israel's "right to exist," as of course they had to be expected to.  And their allegedly mindless terrorist violence, along with a strong racist suggestion that Arabs were just like that.  Palestinian violence was always portrayed as mindless terrorism while the much more successful Israeli violence was, of course, self defense.

But Chomsky, who has long bypassed the corrupt US media by reading directly from the more honest Israeli media, as well as official documents, is correct.  It was and has been the US and Israel all along who have been blocking honest negotiation.  And the claim that Palestinians must first recognize Israel's "right to exist," a "right" which no state actually has, was part of how they did it.  Blocking negotiation has made it possible for Israel to continue annexing more and more of Palestine by state violence, continuing the ethnic cleansing which created Israel in the first place.

Indeed, it has been by putting the focus on this desired "right to exist" which has taken the focus off of the original and continuing ethnic cleansing done by Israel, and kept it off.  If honest negotiations were ever to have started, more people might have become aware of how many Palestinians lost their homes and neighborhoods to make the State of Israel possible.  If those Palestinians and their descendants were to return to their homes and neighborhoods, Israel would become a minority Jewish state.

Capitalism Falls Over

Traveling the Massachusetts Turpike, looking at traffic and rusty bridges,  brought this to mind.  The bicycle effct was recently described by Paul Krugman.  But he didn't say this... Unless it can keep destroying the planet at accelerating rate, capitalism falls over.

So I wouldn't look to a capitalist model, as neoliberalism always does,  as a way to make anything better, as was claimed by some in a recent debate I participated in regarding how to make education better. All the assumptions of classical economics, and all of its successors, are fundamentally wrong because they take too narrow a focus, among other things.

What is the correct way to finance infraatructure and everything else?  From each according to their ability of course.

A self-described Marxist reviews Piketty

Marxist Charles Andrews reviews Piketty.  Mostly on what a good book it is, but he says the book lacks the deep Marxist analysis that reform--while good and needed now--will never be completed or sustained under Capitalism.  The capitalist mode of production must ultimately be overthrown--that's what Piketty tries as hard as an American Liberal to deny.  But what Piketty does provide is impressive data which may lead others, who were not trained to hate state capitalism aka Communism as he was, to see how necessary reform, and ultimately overthrow, are.

David Barsamian Alternative Radio

More great radio!  Where have I been?

I've known David Barsamian because he's the interviewer on a large number of Chomsky interviews I've heard.  Little did I think that all along these interviews of Chomsky were actually radio programs on Alternative Radio, which could have been (though never in my locales, it would appear) radio programs on Public Radio affiliates or other noncommercial stations.  Alternative Radio is a one hour weekly program with great speakers like Chomsky, Scahill, and Alperowitz.

The website immediately brings you to the page where you can purchase past programs.  Dig a bit deeper and you can get find a fairly large number of free programs, often featuring David Barsamian himself.  Then you can find the Affiliate Stations.  One of those I can just barely get over the air (need better antenna anyway).  And it occurs to me that I might be able to get many of them over internet radio.

The problem is not so much that great radio isn't available.  People sometimes talk about The Media in that sort of sense.  The problem is that you have to dig just a little to find the good stuff, and most people don't.  They expect to be able to hear all they need by just turning on their radio to the loudest station (likely Fox), or if their taste is a bit more refined, NPR.  Often NPR is hailed as "the liberal voice" when in reality it has been at least as much controlled by Republicans as Democrats, and simply doesn't present leftist views at all (though it gives much attention to right wing views…).  NPR only goes so far to the left, maybe 1pm on the clock face.  It's just slightly better than the others, on which even centrist views are forbidden.

Oswald doesn't matter, the Empire does

Lee Harvey Oswald was not a Castro fan.  His pro-Castro stuff is fake stuff.  Oswald's assignment was to create anti-Castro sentiment by making it look as if a pro-Castro partisan was attempting to assassinate the US President.  He had a poor enough rifle that he couldn't actually harm the President.  That wasn't his assignment or his intent.  He was anti-Communist, not especially anti-Constitution.  He had been a CIA asset.  But his assigners weren't telling him the full story.  That's how it's done.

Who assigned him this task?  Likely the same mega rich oil and war bucks men, mafia dons, CIA assets, former and off duty agents of several kinds (CIA, FBI), and a few on-lines, likely stringing all the way back to J Edgar Hoover (who managed the coverup perfectly--pure genius), who were responsible for actually killing Kennedy, and including GHW Bush, LB Johnson, Gerald Ford, probably Nixon too.  It was not an official CIA Finding signed by the Kennedy that led through directly through chain of command to his own murder…  But there may be a whole community of partisans of war through the on and off duty ranks, and reaching into the aforementioned parts of society, including secret societies we may not even know about.  The ultimate promoters of the need for Cold War and crushing Communism, who have ruled the USA ever since, actually ever since FDR, and overlapping with those who wanted to topple FDR, but asked the wrong muscle to do so.

If there is such a conspiracy, or anything close to it, does it matter who actually fired the fatal shot?  Not much now, for all the conspirators bear as much if not more responsibility than the shooter.  The greatest responsibility might even be assigned the perpetrators of the coverup.  It's the conspiracy or not that is the first big question, then who it involved.  And the single bullet theory makes no sense, and there had to be a conspiracy (so Congress itself resolved in the 1970's).  Recently I've been looking at the stuff by William Dankebar, who has all the angles, plus, ultimately, for what it's worth, the shooter, James Files.

And should this be seen, then, as an internal coup by insiders?  Yes!  And there only might have been a change in national history…if Kennedy had lived.  That was the problem, Kennedy was growing weaker and weaker on empire, and that couldn't be tolerated.  What was needed was someone to keep the Cold War going, full tilt, as it had been since…the day FDR died, and Truman was persuaded to play the Superpower bully his backers wanted (see Oliver Stone's Untold History of the USA).

So really all that we see here is the hope, that Empire would have been rolled back a bit…and maybe a slightly better future built, though Kennedy wasn't having much luck then with his actual future building, and a Republican would probably have won in 1964, so there could only have been a brief springtime for freedom.  There's just a glimmer of a hope, say, if Kennedy had survived a shooting…he might have won re-election too.  Then there might have been a lot of differences.  Kennedy had been expected to be a good Empire man, he campaigned on the phony "missile gap"--always good to call for more guns, he started his assignments from the secret super imperialist Eisenhower, but backed down on Cuba, and now it was appearing he was doing the same on Vietnam, those were two of Eisenhower's most important continuing projects, given uncertainty over Indonesia and elsewhere.

Even the chance of a chance of empire ending, or a temporary erosion, couldn't be tolerated.  Plus there were some with axes already being ground.  Like the oil men who might have lost the depletion allowance had Kennedy lived.  Including H.L. Hunt, who lived near Dallas, who figures in many theories, and certainly the Bush family would have been hit hard by the end of the depletion allowance too, and many other such.   Meanwhile, rich oil men who were pacifists, and could have figured it all out, may have been disappearing.

Only in the public imagination was there a rollback during or after Vietnam.  The Vietnam War was known to US planners to be unnecessary after Suharto crushed Indonesian leftists.  The dominos thusly fortified, Vietnam was a paperweight.  But it was personal, Lyndon Johnson didn't want to lose a war on his watch, and Nixon wanted to show Republicans were better.  But it was all personal face saving for the '63 coup leaders.  The real empire stuff was going on in Chile and other places south of the US border.  And in the middle east.  That never wavered, and Carter stepped up to the plate funding the mujahadeen in Afghanistan, militarily challenging and ultimately defeating the Soviet Union's efforts there.

So there was no break, and has been no break, in Empire.  It goes on under Obama (Obombem), with wars, major military attacks, backing right wing thug take overs (e.g. Ukraine) which assemble themselves into West subservient governments remarkably quickly, and drone bombing multiple generations down to the kids.  Imperialists have no reason to complain about Obama, but with a Democratic President, they always do, and often under Republicans too.