The Right to Defend

I am not trying to convince anyone that Israel has no right to defend itself against attack. It does. All countries do. That is why we are in trouble in Iraq and Afghanistan, though we have refused to admit it (and continue to do so). Nor am I particularly defending Hamas, but I am defending the Palestinians' rights to defend themselves against aggression. After all, if Israel has a right, doesn't the Palestinian state, as politically inchoate as it is, also have a right?

Someone took it a step further and mentioned Israel's right to "total war." And what exactly does that mean? Bomb them back into the stone age? Annihilate them all? I mean, genocide? Isn't that in fact getting a bit too close to Rwanda, say, or (dare I bring it up?) the final solution?

I mean, we do have International laws about occupying the other country's land, and I don't think that "total war" is one of the allowable actions. For sixty years now, documented Israeli aggression has been the case. The facts don't lie. Be assigned a major portion of a country and move the inhabitants under the auspices of a world governing body; do it violently and with well-planned ethnic cleaning and population transfer, then occupy the rest and continue to get a pass on violations of Geneva Conventions, and whenever you are put at the point of really serious negotiations, start a war . . . well, no wonder Israel continues to get bitten.

Knowing what I do about that history from both sides I am more and more impressed with the persistence of most of the Palestinians to keep on demanding justice apart from any violence that their more radical groups have committed. They protest like hell non-violently all the time. Moderate Israel's problem is that they keep hoping the Palestinians will pack up and leave. Radical Israel's problem is they can't finish the ethnic cleansing, population transfer, and total takeover neatly and without really pissing off the rest of the Middle East. You would think that 60 years would have taught them.

Any one of us Americans, if we were Palestinians, would have gone over the deep end by now if we found ourselves getting reamed with the settlements, olive tree uprootings, house demolitions, arrests without charges, destruction of farmland, checkpoints, military violence or military inaction when violence takes place, a separate set of laws applied, appropriations of land, the illegal blockades, the collective punishments and that's off the top of my head and excludes extreme military actions, assassinations, and violence that never gets justice.

As an exercise in empathy, anyone who wants to educate himself should watch this short movie called "Ex-Communicated: Enclosure Landscapes in Palestine," produced by a Professor of Communications down at UC San Diego, Gary Fields. It is not a screamer, just a well-documented report. Fields is calm and careful and unemotional and presents facts you can see for yourself. And believe me, most Israelis and almost all Americans don't know about this. Walk a mile in their shoes. Imagine trying to live as if you were a Palestinian. Empathize, please.

I can guarantee that if you empathize at all with any folks who get screwed by all kinds of powerful people, you will be as pissed as anyone can be about oil prices. I seriously think you will not find an Israeli documentary trying to justify the settlements, the ecological damage, the settlers' violent behavior, the midnight digs to cover a third rate road or the "flying check points." Try to carry on a business or send your kids to school under those conditions. We are trained through repetition and severe omission to empathize with the Israelis, but very little empathy for Palestinians is expressed in the mainstream media.

As the death toll nears 1,000 from this stupid violence from Israel, peace be with you. I devoutly wish for a ceasefire and peace, but I think Israel has unleashed the dogs of war and will not, in the long run, win.

Well-Meaning Peace Proposals, alas . . .

In a well-intentioned but in the end, historically deficient article, "Obama and Gaza: Exiting the Vortex of Violence," Bernard Weiner proposes that the incoming Obama Administration act as an interlocutor and "honest broker" then admits to skepticism on that account. He then proceeds to offer a peace program led by "a respected outside force"--the EU? the Obama Administration? And despite his skepticism, appears to settle on President-elect Obama, for he ends his proposal with the statement that "The candidate of 'change' and 'hope,' and love of children, simply cannot let that happen."


I laud any efforts and arguments for peace, but the actual practicalities of the matter and the history should be telling Mr. Weiner that he needs to rethink his position. Otherwise, his proposal falls into the same bucket as the hopeful dreams of some Obama supporters as early as a year ago that their candidate would be a champion for solving the essence of all of our problems in the Middle East. In other words, his hope triumphs over experience and is sadly another example of muddle-headed thinking.


The article was originally presented on Mr. Weiner's website, The Crisis Papers and was reprinted, where I found it, on OpEd News. Some laudable refinements were offered by a commentator, William H. White. I urge my readers to go to the the OpEd site so they can read the comments by Mr. White.


For me, it is a frustrating example of good intentions nullified by acceptance of many of the assertions of the Israeli and AIPAC-dominated US Government position. So while I appreciated the sentiments and the desire for a solution and a relatively fair solution at that, I could not let the article go without attempting to point to the overwhelming evidence. The obstacle to peace and justice is not the intransigence or insanity of "both sides" but clearly the Israeli government. I commented on the article with the following post: "Obama and Gaza: a Reply."

The sincerity of your proposal is touching and there is little wrong with it--or with Mr. White's excellent refinements including the plebiscite. But unfortunately you have bought into the notion that both sides are equal here.

You are forgetting, for example, that a proposal to recognize Israel and provide for security and economic consideration has been on the table from the surrounding Arab states since 2002. One of its central points--in addition to that regarding Jerusalem--is that Israel retreat to the 1967 line (note, NOT the 1948 Green Line). Israel has rejected that Arab states' proposal. You forget that Israel is the occupying and asymmetrically much stronger military and technological power of the two.

You also buy into the Israeli version of the Palestinians' government, forgetting that the PLO is not the Democratically elected government: Hamas is. The dissolution of the Hamas dominated government by Mr. Abbas was in violation of the rules of procedure of the government. You fail to mention that Israel agreed, under this recently expired ceasefire, to stop the embargo and blockade, which it failed to do. In addition Israel took advantage of our US elections to attack within Gaza on November 4th, 2008. So if Hamas violated the ceasefire, the facts clearly indicate that Israel violated it as well, and arguably even more severely. You also forget that Hamas has in fact accepted--though they do not like it--the fact that the legitimate representatives of the Palestinians did accept the existence of the state of Israel, and in fact proposed long term (10, 25, 100 year) ceasefires provided that Israel withdraw to the 67 borders, remove the settlements, and open the borders of Gaza for free commerce. Further, while the firing of the rockets from Hamas or rebel elements is in fact a crime, it is also a fact that even international law says that a country under occupation can in fact fight back against the occupier. And make no mistake about it, since 1948, Israel has been the occupier and has considerably expanded its occupation and aggrandizement of Palestinian territory and resources.

Finally, you must understand that most of what you are proposing here reinvents the wheel, so to speak, and reinvents it In FAVOR OF PALESTINIAN POSITIONS. If Israel has consistently rejected these or ignored them in the past, what naïvété suggests to you that they will accept yours now, no matter how sane, moderate, logical, or just? What makes you think that some outside force--the bald eagle of justice, perhaps--can assist both sides into seeing the logic and justice of your proposals? Or that this outside agency will keep Israel from continuing and expanding its brutal, demeaning, violent occupation and stranglehold, and now murder of residents of occupied territory?

All of these things you propose are in fact tending to a just settlement, but the problem is that: 1)Israel refuses to recognize the Palestinian state or the injustice of their occupation of the severely diminished territory of that Palestinian state; 2) has slowly and surely occupied much of the valued land and water rights belonging to another people; 3) will extend a "right of return" to anyone in the world who claims and proves Jewish descent, while refusing to accept the "right of return" of the Palestinian people or their descendants who lived there to begin with. With the final bit of irony, this includes the nearly 1 million ethnically cleansed Palestinians (or their descendants) in the Gaza strip, now being murdered and wounded, those who originally inhabited towns now re-named Ashkalon and Sderot after the purges of 1948 and 1967.

After 60 years of this occupation and state violence, one can only assume that Israel does not want anything for the Palestinian people except what they accuse the Palestinians of wanting: to force the other people off the land.

Only the United States, by denying its foreign aid to Israel and acting in concert with the common will of the community of nations, can bring the slightest leverage on this problem. Given that it will veto security council resolutions calling for a ceasefire, we are at an impasse. The United States government--and I fear its next administration as well as its outgoing--has no wisdom in this matter. If it did, it would communicate at the very least to Israel that the current violent murder of Palestinian citizens will do nothing but perpetuate the hatred of and threats to Israel for many years to come.

I praise the points of your proposals, but have to bring you face to face with reality: the rejection of similar proposals over the past two decades and intransigence of the overwhelmingly stronger party in the conflict. That party is Israel, which insists on defending itself by claiming victim hood. It is understandable that the Israeli government might live under that delusion, though I think that its motives are cynical and aggrandizing, not defensive or delusional. If we Americans are truly for peace and justice, we should not live under that propagandist delusion ourselves. Boycotting Israel, and threatening to stop foreign aid and arms shipments is the only way to make Israel realize that it must take some enormous first steps to ensure its peace and security.

Upcoming information on the National Debt

Though the attention to the accelerating (not just accumulating) national debt is not misplaced, non-partisan attention might be useful. My own problem with the attention is that Medicare and Social Security--as the despicable Lawrence Summers insists on doing--become the targets of the concern. That means that the real drivers of the deficit are ignored: the bloated, unaudited, pork-barrel military/security/industrial budget, the decline in corporate income taxes particularly for the largest corporations, and the movement away from producing real wealth and into a casino economy, just to name ones that come immediately to mind.

So I suggest you take time to watch "I.O.U.S.A" this weekend. Information from the email announcement follows: CNN/U.S. will air the broadcast premiere of the acclaimed documentary I.O.U.S.A. on on Saturday, January 10 at 2:00 p.m. EST and on Sunday, January 11 at 3:00 p.m. EST. Accompanying the documentary will be an unscripted panel discussion with policy leaders about various economic solutions currently under consideration. Panelists are: Pete Peterson, Chairman of the Peter G. Peterson Foundation and former U.S. Commerce Secretary; Dave Walker, President and CEO of the Peter G. Peterson Foundation and former U.S. Comptroller General; Alice Rivlin, noted economist and former Director of the Office of Management and Budget; and Bill Bradley, a Managing Director of Allen & Company and former U.S. Senator and Democratic presidential candidate, in discussions about issues raised in the film and their ties to current economic events. You can watch a 30 second version of the movie at IOUSAthe Movie.com and get further information about the creators.

Some Back Story on Recent Palestinian History

I have been beset with some very annoying nerve and eye problems over the past week--probably eyestrain—that have limited my time severely on the computer and in my library.

Tonight I am trying a foray onto the computer once again. So I apologize that I have been unable to post some more in the debate on Best of Bloggers that has apparently been touched off by my first post. I am also sorry about some of the virulence that has appeared. Unfortunately, in this political climate, the virulence will out. I am for peace above all, and will continue writing letters to my foolish representatives and continuing to demonstrate here in the area, probably tomorrow and certainly Wednesday as part of a silent candle light vigil in front of the Israeli consulate.

Let me try to refer you to some interesting pieces of background and commentary.

First, let me recall Josh's original entry which I responded to in my first post. In that, Josh suggested that Israel was acting by using the tail-end of George Bush's presidency to cover their actions. With the recent revelations in Ha'aretz that UN Ambassador Khalilzad has been explicitly instructed by the State Department to "torpedo" any Arab bloc resolutions calling for a cease fire, it appears not only that Israel is using Bush, but that the Bush administration in its last days is allowing Israel to continue its aggression. It is the same pattern shown in Lebanon in 2007; the world cries out for a cease fire and the US and the UK did nothing for days but buy time for Israel to strike all over Lebanon, not just in the south.

Josh also suggested that Israel wanted to "clean the slate" and that Obama might well respond negatively to actions carried out by Israel after he takes office. I still hold to that bet with Josh. I don't think the Obama policy will bring the "Change We Can Believe In" to the Middle east. Obama has commented on the Mumbai attacks and on other domestic issues, but he has been hiding behind the catchphrase that there is only one President. His silence, I am afraid, is becoming, in a classic way, complicity.

You may find Gareth Porter's post on the history of the PLO and Hamas since the 2006 election to be of interest. I post it here because we need to keep the background in mind as we are witnessing this continuing onslaught of the Israeli Army into Gaza.

Briefly, Porter reminds us, that Hamas' victory in the Palestinian elections in January of 2006 was met immediately with resistance by the United States, and that rather than trying to work with the government we got, regime change was our tactic. The article is especially interesting because it brings up once again a hot potato of news (that broke in Vanity Fair) that Hamas took over the Gaza strip after it discovered US, Israeli (and probably Egyptian) support for a coup against Hamas. Discovery of that led to Hamas' violent takeover of the Gaza strip and also for Mahmoud Abbas's unconstitutional dissolution of the government.

But that is just history. I have been rereading Gandhi recently, and think of his famous saying, "An eye for an eye makes the whole world blind." If in fact you agree with the forces for peace, ceasefire, and negotiation at this point, you will find Norman Solomon's take on this Gandhian saying logical and laudable: "What about a hundred eyes for an eye?" Solomon's piece starts with a reference back to one of my heroes, I.F. Stone, at the time of the 1967 war:


Israelis and Arabs "feel that only force can assure justice," I. F. Stone noted soon after the Six-Day War in 1967. And he wrote: "A certain moral imbecility marks all ethnocentric movements. The Others are always either less than human, and thus their interests may be ignored, or more than human and therefore so dangerous that it is right to destroy them."

In this regard, you may find the analysis of Paul Woodward at War in Context also relevant and stimulating:

Once this is over, will the residents of Sderot be able to slumber peacefully knowing that they live on the doorstep of anarchy?

And when Hamas has finished counting its dead, will those in its ranks who until recently were voices of pragmatism, favoring political engagement, be capable of or even willing to try and make themselves heard?

Let us wish very hard and work very hard for the patience to convince our new American leaders to step in for once, as peacemakers, demand an end to the violence, insist on real negotiations, and begin by insisting that both Hamas and Israel take seriously the Arab State's proposal that has been on the table since 2002, and spurned by Israel and Hamas both.

Israel Attacks Gaza, Demonstrations in Los Angeles

This week I was invited to blog over at The Best of the Blogs, and put up my first post there after returning yesterday from the protest demonstrations in Los Angeles at the Federal Building in Westwood and on Wilshire Boulevard across from the Israeli Consulate. The piece is entitled "Los Angeles Protests Against Israel's Attacks on Gaza." I will also add Best of Blogs to the sidebar. Check out the site. In future I will cross link when I put up a post there, but for today, here's the essay:

Los Angeles Protests Against Israel's Attacks on Gaza

I just returned from two demonstrations this afternoon and evening down in Los Angeles, the first, at the site of the 17 story Federal Building a few blocks from the UCLA campus brought out about 150-200 protesters at one of the country's busiest intersections, received some media coverage from local stations, and, since Mike Farrell was there, an on-site interview. Thousands of cars pass the corner every rush hour. I was disappointed that more horns weren't sounded. Some people looked absolutely dumbfounded.

The second demonstration, near the edge of Beverly Hills, on the south side of Wilshire Blvd. across from the Israeli Consulate, was loud, raucous, full of energy and chanting, Palestinian flags waving, a few lighted votive candles in plastic cups, red and black kafiyehs (almost as many worn as scarves by non-Muslim women as by the men) and women with head covering--I would estimate at least two thousand protesters. Many teenagers and small kids, families, grandfathers and grandmothers.

On the north side of Wilshire about a hundred counter protesters waved Israeli flags and--to their credit, also held some signs calling for Peace Now and a Ceasefire. Los Angeles police had closed off this extremely long block of Wilshire and were out in full force. (Beverly Hills cops had a contingent stationed on their border about a quarter of a mile away, night sticks at the ready, no doubt anticipating some violence. They were disappointed and joking with each other when I walked back to my car after nearly three hours of protest--and the protest was still going on.)

I want to make sure that the contrast between the two is held in mind, because it says something very important about the our perception, here in the US and especially here in California, of the Palestinian-Israeli situation. At the end of this post, I will return to this matter.

In full disclosure, I have connections with both Jews and Palestinians. I have old friends who are strong believers in Israel's right to exist and who will reject out of hand any criticism of its actions. Their adherence to Israel has a dark underside, however, as I have discovered over the years. I also know and am good friends with Jews who are strongly against and critical of the policies and actions of the Israeli government. They are also set firmly against the US's unblinking, uncritical, and unwavering support for all Israeli actions. My Palestinian friends are mostly Christian Palestinians, which I have found gives me some interesting insight into the situation.

Yesterday, when Jerry and Josh extended their invitation to me to post on Best of the Blogs, I was attempting to prepare--unsuccessfully, as it turned out--a sign for today's protests. Had all gone well, I would have transferred to a large Styrofoam poster board images from Picasso's "Guernica" and the slogan "No More Guernicas." Since the Israeli attacks on Gaza, Picasso's image of that devastated Basque village has been haunting more people than I.

The Picasso images are etched into our collective consciousness. The Palestinian images will not be unless you take the time to search for them. They won't appear in the mainstream media. Check out Al Jazeera English if you want to be "fair and balanced." I know a little bit about the circumstances of Picasso's protest, and I feel quite sure that for Picasso the monumental painting probably flowed from similar outrage I had been feeling over the past few days. (As it turned out, I couldn't finish the poster, but there was a fellow about my age sitting at the first protest who carried a sign, "Guernica, Srebeniça, now Gaza! When will it End?" So the point was made at least verbally.)

I was stewing in my anger and glad for the opportunity to join in some public protest when I checked out Josh's post, "Is Israel Using Bush for Cover This Time?" and so the rest of my comments respond to his post--with more information about today's protest actions:

Josh's post inspired a few thoughts while I was contemplating Picasso's "Guernica":

The Gaza=Guernica analogy is not an original comparison--the Guernica air massacre as well as the destruction of the Warsaw Ghetto-- comes from Ali Abunimeh on the Monday, December 29, 2008 Democracy Now! broadcast. I encourage you to listen to the eye-witness accounts and Abunimeh's and Gideon Levy's comments. I myself haven't felt rage like this since the first images of civilian casualties came across the internet after the first "shock and awe" attacks on Iraq in March of 2003. I feel the intrinsic truth of Abunimeh's analogies and find it hard to fault the reasoning:

--Guernica for the bombing of civilians with the partial intention of testing munitions and techniques (the Israelis are using the latest US ordinance including mini-bunker busters).

--Warsaw for the compression of the resistance into a small space, the starving and the closing of escape routes and then the systematic invasion and house to house massacres. For unless there is a cease-fire, I suspect that tanks and armored foot soldiers from the IDF will follow through the fences. Of course, the implicit analogy with the perpetrators of both mid twentieth century catastrophes leaves the completion of the IDF=Luftwaffe/SS equation unstated, but in this case, I think it's well-deserved. Such extensive killings have not been done by Israel since 1967, perhaps 1948.

It is clear, if you follow the actual historical events since the start of the ceasefire, that Israel has been successfully goading Hamas through its embargoes, restrictions, closures, collective punishment and actual attacks, hoping for the rockets to come in response. The cease-fire was always fragile, but Israel of course, was the first to violate the cease-fire with the November 4th attack on a tunnel, killing six (and using the US Elections as a partial press cover). And of course, along with the continuing humanitarian crimes from the border closure and refusal to let food and medicine into Gaza, the Kassams come in retaliation.

The Palestinian people have not been well-served by their officials, though indeed enough betrayals and concessions by their leaders have been made over two decades that I now truly believe that Israel has not received these concession in good faith. The Israeli leaders and conservative political parties have other aims in mind, going back to the late thirties: how to gain possession of all of Palestine. The departing moral coward Ehud Olmert made a revealing speech to that effect last month when he referred to the actions as a "pogrom." If Israel had acted in good faith twenty years ago, thirty years ago, today we might be celebrating the third decade of a wary or an uneasy economic relationship in a two-state solution, rather than despairing at the cruelty of the Israeli government, the bankrupt morality of the United States foreign policy, the collusion of Egypt, and the absolutely knee-jerk predictability of the most radical and violent factions of Palestinian resistance.

Josh, your comments on the situation in Gaza are perceptive (though I would argue that your use of the word "stunt" is perhaps too lightly chosen given what's going on) and is probably an accurate read, but as Gideon Levy has said to Amy Goodman, the calculations in terms of the Israeli domestic politics are a pretty complicated part of the equation that we know little about.

I do think you give Obama and his foreign policy team too much leeway. I am willing to bet you a good bottle of California wine that after he takes office his public position will be in line with the Bushites' of yesterday and today. That is, it will be just as dilatory and morally reprehensible a response as was the Bushites' and the Brits' response to Lebanon II in 2007, failing to condemn and call for a cessation of violence on both sides and failing even to comment on Israel's overwhelmingly disproportional aggression. As of Tuesday afternoon over three hundred Palestinians have been killed, over 600 wounded.

I will gladly lose the bet on the wine; but I think I will not. My reasoning? Obama set a little noted pattern in his response to the Georgian invasion of South Ossetia this past August. He at first called for both sides to cool down and to get the UN involved. Very statesmanlike, I thought. Then he backtracked and eventually fell in line with John McCain and the US State Department, in condemning Russia and completely ignoring the facts, which were that Georgia had miscalculated, started the war, and then got their ass kicked. The REAL sequence of events has been conclusively documented by now, but anyone who watched the foreign press knew immediately that Sakashvili was the culprit, probably goaded on by Randy Scheuneman, McCain's Senior foreign policy adviser and lobbyist for the Georgian Government itself. With Hillary Clinton as Obama's appointment to the State department (and if she is confirmed, can the blinkered and morally crippled Dennis Ross and Martin Indyk be far behind?) and Rahm Emanuel (Israeli and American citizen both) as the chief of staff, I will be very surprised if Obama exhibits any of his earlier sympathies for the Palestinian friends he had in Chicago before he started running for office.

It would be nice to think that he consults at least once a year with his old friend Rashid Khalidi, but I wouldn't hold my breath. (If only someone consulted with Khalidi once a decade!)

Yet, as we all know, these politicians who blindly support Israel, no matter how horrific the action, really know what's going on. They know what Israel is doing to both the Hamas members and the grandmas and babies and young teenagers. They know how out of proportion it is. "Speaking truth to power" as the misty-eyed liberals pride themselves on doing, is not something to be proud of. The powerful ones know what the truth is. They don't care, or if they care they just don't have the political guts or the moral courage even to let on that they know or that there is another side to the argument.

You would search for a long time to find any mention in the American press of these initial recent Israeli attacks as being made when children were coming home from the first shift at school, or that since then the University, mosques, hospitals and markets have been targets as well (the rubric is to call them all "Hamas targets" or "terrorist targets," and the robotic American Press dances to the rubric). In the mean time, if you want to see the truth, check out the International Press, or Al Jazeera English, or go on You-Tube and look at some videos.

That ain't lipstick on a pig, folks, that's real blood coming from the head of the little boy (see the original picture on the Democracy Now! link). And back to the videos, that little 8 year old girl looks gray because she lost a lot of blood. The baby's shrapnel wound is real and bleeding into the tiny shirt. Of course, according to Tzipi Livni's and Ehud Barak's and Bibi Netanyahu's logic just prior to becoming collateral damage these little terrorist brats set off Kassam rockets, didn't they? Need a little Marlon Brando in Apocalypse Now here, do we? The horror, the horror!

My favorite from today is that Bibi observed how at least a million Israelis were threatened by the Kassams, without the slightest nod to the truth that 1.5 million Palestinians are crammed into a 139 square miles, the densest population on the earth, and are being hit pretty viciously with rockets and shells hundreds of times more accurate than Kassams. Those of you from gun-toting backgrounds will probably know the phrase about shooting fish in a barrel. It's applicable here. It's also wonderful to know that we citizens of the US are paying a good bit of cash for those weapons and helicopters and jets.

There was a tiny demonstration in Anaheim on Sunday to protest the Israeli aggression (Anaheim is about 40 miles away in Orange County which has a very large Muslim and Arabic population). I didn't check emails until late Sunday evening and missed the information and couldn't drive down. Word was it was a feeble demonstration. So I am glad I got to both demonstrations in Los Angeles. They weren't feeble.

An interesting observation--local Muslim and Palestinian groups (also ANSWER and the Campaign to End Israeli Apartheid-Los Angeles--radical Israeli citizens and Jewish American Anti-Zionists, in favor, as am I, of boycotts against Israel), demonstrate in front of the Israeli consulate at 4:30 and asked for signs and flags in solidarity, while the LA Jews for Peace and ICAHD folks demonstrate out in Westwood at the Federal Building at 3:30 and specifically ask for "NO FLAGS please since our message is internationalism and humanism, not nationalism." Unfortunately, the Palestinian flags showed up, one of them waved by a new acquaintance--a Nigerian woman who was just made an American Citizen last Friday. She was so mad that she hadn't able to vote, so after I congratulated her, I told her she'd have a real choice in four years.

The two demonstrations show a major split in the protest. My heart is with the anti-Zionists and the boycott and the loud and impassioned demonstration across from the Consulate, where I spent most of my protest time--though I knew more people at the humanism rally out near the monolith of the Federal building, the stone side wall windowless and towering 17 stories high, the perfect image for this blank-faced government that won't acknowledge, not to mention respond to, the case for the overwhelming majority of the Palestinians who suffer the indignities and violence of subjugated life under the Occupation. My heart used to be with the humanists and internationalists, but I have spent too long watching the news and reading the history.

Many of the humanist people--Jewish and non-Jewish alike--but less so this past year, still cling to the idea of a "two state solution." The more one despairs of Israel ever accepting the proposals that have been made, the more one watches the settlements expand and replicate with no disapproval from our government, the more one sees the appropriations of territory in Jerusalem, the house demolition, the settler on Palestinian violence, the less one believes in a two-state solution. Of course, that is the problem--some members of the Jewish groups asking for partisan politics are justifiably afraid to be branded as being "pro-Palestinian"or "anti-Semitic" if they criticize Israel and lose what they hope is their "leverage" on the majority (and quite silent) Jewish community in the US. The pro-Zionist community in Los Angeles is very strong and probably duplicates the AIPAC-dominated climate in Washington, DC or New York City. Or perhaps the advocates of the non-political stance hope to "make a point" with this corrupt and cynical outgoing government as if it gave a good goddamn.

On the Palestinian side of the boulevard, as far back from the curb and the waving Palestinian flags as he could get, stood a thin and slight fellow wearing a yarmulke and holding a sign with this message: "Here is one Jew who supports justice for the Palestinians against a murderous Zionist State." And as I found out earlier in the day, on the other side of Wilshire Boulevard, though I could not identify him in the darkness, was one of my oldest and dearest friends, former mentor and colleague, at whose house my family attended Seder, and who told me on the phone he didn't have time to see me at his office this afternoon. He was headed out to an appointment, he said, to counter-demonstrate in front of the Israeli Consulate. He hoped I would be safe and not get hurt. I hope he was the one holding the sign calling for a ceasefire.

Christmas Eve Wishes and Memories

I am having family over for a tradition Polish Vigil dinner. Have a great Christmas and best wishes for the New year! let's hope things begin to turn this ponderous USA barge around toward justice, peace, right commonwealth, universal health and recovery from the destructive greed of the plutocrats.

During my childhood, we always celebrated with a non-meat dinner--in that sense very similar to the traditional Italian Christmas eve seafood dinner--called Wygilia, the "vigil"; I have forgotten some of the symbolism, but there is supposed to be at least 13 ingredients (for the 12 apostles and Christ, she said, though how that got dragged into a Christmas vigil I don't know; sort of like instant "future shock"? As in Joseph to himself: "I don't think he'll be a cabinet maker, from all of this portentous stuff; stock broker? rabbi? start his own business . . . ?

I remember my mom spending days in the kitchen to prepare dozens of pierogi, and while I don't have her original recipes (or her skill), I have taken my recipes from a Polish cookbook I bought years ago in a second hand shop (The Art of Polish Cooking by Alina Żerańska, Doubleday: 1968). Here's the menu we have been doing for a number of years since my wife and I decided to restart the tradition after moving to California.

Appetizer: Pickled Herring in sour cream served with boiled, buttered, and parsleyed small red potatoes and pickled beets on the side.

First Course: Mushroom and barley soup (I make it with a combination of white mushrooms and dried wild mushrooms. Broth is made from celery, parsley root, carrots and onions) Finish with sour cream and fresh dill.

Second: Kapusta (stewed sauerkraut--finely sliced onions cooked in a little oil, then button mushrooms (criminis if you can get them, and one year I used shiitakes) and s-kraut added; stew for two hours. I always add a little vermouth.)

Third: breaded fish fillets--sauteed in butter--flounder was always traditional--my Dad loved to go flounder fishing in the winter.

Fourth:Pierogi (I always forget to order ahead from our little Polish restaurant in the area ["You must give us three weeks!" the owners always lament when I try to wheedle them at the last minute], so I end up, as I will this year, using Mrs. T's potato and onion.) My mom used to make them by hand in batches: homemade dough and fillings of egg-yolk and farmer's cheese; mashed potatoes and onion; prune. After she boiled them and they came to the surface, she'd finish them in a big pan of slow cooked, thin-sliced and caramelized onions.)

Fifth: Compote (dried fruits: prunes, pears, apricots, apples, raisins boiled with sugar and water; I usually add a cinnamon stick, some nutmeg, vanilla, cognac or armagnac, lemon slices and orange peel.) Poppyseed roll or Christmas Babka (large golden raisins inside and cinnamon sugared crust) served on the side. I'm afraid I can't bake like my wife could when she was here with us, so I settle for a Pannetone from Trader Joe's.

Tea and/or coffee.

I usually serve a freezer-chilled Riesling with the dinner. My maternal grandparents (this was back in the fifties) used to drink shots of krupnik or prune vodka or Four Roses (!) for toasts.

Oh, and then the ritual toasts: because it was Catholic, of course, we used to obtain sheets of the Eucharistic unleavened bread wafers, though I've forgotten the name. (We have a Polish church here in the area, but I stopped getting it from them years ago--they still send around holiday fliers for orders.) Everyone got a square, and starting with the oldest down to the youngest (kids excepted--they always got confused) a wish or a toast or a blessing, followed by an exchange of a small piece of the bread, kisses on the cheek or lips (depending, of course . . .). And usually drinks aplenty, with mom rushing back and forth to make sure all was in order.

The compote I made last night. I'll buy the fish fillets today and be cooking all afternoon-- oh if only I had remembered to order the pierogi!

Have a wonderful holiday. Don't watch any version of A Christmas Carol except the one with Alistair Sim.

How Casual and Matter-of-Fact the Insanity

You really have to read these things out loud sometimes and wonder how any one sleeps without nightmares. There is an analysis in Ha'aretz on line by Aluf Benn, "Budget will decide whether Israel attacks Iran."

Here's the nut graph:

The budget will decide whether Israel will seriously consider a military option against Iran. A decision focusing on defense and deterrance will mean that Israel has given up on attacking Iran. The dilemma becomes more serious in the context of economic recession, which limits the government's ability to expand the defense budget.

You really have to read it to get the dry and serious flavor, like first year business school comes to world holocaust to do a case study. It's a paragraph from a Pinter play. The ultimate bean-counter's insanity. These are the people--the Israelis--with, it is estimated 200 nuclear weapons ready to be dropped on Iran, which is apparently struggling to make its first--or at least suicidally wants to give the impression it is.


And even if they do, does Israel really think that Iran will attack with only one bomb? There, that'll show you, you evil Zionist louts, you are toast! Like, Iran wasn't even capable of calculating that if once they used the one bomb, they would be incinerated completely? Like, you would think that someone there in Tel Aviv is thinking to himself, maybe we should think about this a bit more . . . ? Or maybe, you know, it might be good if we talked this over some more, maybe in a town meeting or in a logic and ethics class . . . ?

It's at moments like this, contemplating the bean counting about nuclear war as if it were a monthly report to the executive committee that I understand that human beings--almost all men and more women than I want to believe--are essentially mad.

Solve the economic crisis--letter to The Whiner

Cut the interest rate by law on all loans in effect to 4%.

Distribute, in 100 Billion chunks, the remaining bailout money to every citizen in the United States either as unemployment checks and/or in the form of US Treasury currency warrants to be spent only at grocery stores, farmers' markets, local restaurants, second-hand clothing stores, and other non-chain stores. That will give a kick to the economy, freeing up money for paying other bills.

Finally, provide single payer health care for all residents of the United States.

No recovery can start at the top. The rich will only hoard. The poor, the working class and the middle class will feel free to spend, thereby creating demand. We'll deal with the artificial social welfare of the war on drugs problem and the military-industrial-congressional complex next fiscal year.

The Real News Network: Check it out

If you are thinking of making an end-of-the-year contribution to NPR or PBS, consider shifting some of that money to The Real News. The hyperlink will bring you to the home page. Sample the stories. The editing is sharp, the video quality is excellent.

Started by Canadian (!) broadcaster Paul Jay--an excellent interviewer, by the way--it's an attempt to provide context for news stories. It's based totally on listener support--no corporate sponsors, no commercials, no government support. Many of us have have watched Public Television and Radio over the years becoming less hard hitting as more and more "soft" and "humane" commercials have begun to seep into the breaks between programs. My favorite example is "Washington Week" on PBS with Gwen Ifil. You will be hard pressed to hear any reporting in this Friday evening round table about the influence of lobbyists, or environmental damage and lax EPA oversight since major support for the program comes from the National Mining Association.

Like Pacifica, it will be seen as "left wing" but I'd like to think of it as "independent"--see for yourself how Jay came up with the name for this listener-supported network in this interview.

Contribute if you can. This looks like a worthy enterprise. In addition to my continuing support for Pacifica, I have decided to shift my contributions to them and have attached a letter with my contribution forms to the local PBS and NPR stations telling them why I have decided to switch:

Dear (General Manager):

For a number of years now--well over a decade--I have become very dissatisfied with coverage of national and foreign news on your station. It is obvious to me that as you rely more and more on corporate sponsorship, your capacity to report fully and accurately has diminished, and that you no longer seek viewpoints and information from sources that provide information that might contradict or modify the corporatist and official viewpoints.

A recent example has been the coverage of the invasion of South Ossetia by Georgia in early August, 2008, or the current failure to cover the international outcry against Israel's continuing violence against and collective punishment of the Palestinian people. The viewpoint of labor or minorities is rarely, if ever, presented to balance the corporate viewpoint, and your reliance upon conservative think tanks has increased.

Now I can take some action against your failure to uphold journalistic standards. Effective immediately I will no longer be contributing to your station. I will instead contribute to a new listener- and viewer-supported internet enterprise, The Real News. This excellent group was founded by--ironically--a Canadian broadcaster, Paul Jay. I urge you to begin viewing The Real News to bolster your own coverage of national and international stories.

Immediately remove my name from your mailing and subscriber lists. You can be sure I will continue to listen or to watch (station call letters) for signs of improvement, and if improvement ever comes, perhaps I may even subscribe once again. You have my best wishes for a full recovery.

Sincerely yours,

The Great Paralysis in its 61rst Year

Some good advice for the president-elect was published Thursday in the Financial Times. In an article entitled "Obama Urged to Prioritise Mideast," Rouala Khalaf reports how the Saudi Foreign Minister urged Barack Obama to get to work right away on the Palestinian-Israeli conflict.

Saud al-Feisal said: "The issue of the Middle East is of paramount importance to all the problems in the region."

It sure would be nice right about now if Obama called his old pal Rashid Khalidi to ask him what he thought. I don't think that's going to happen. I do hope Obama understands that the Foreign Minister from Saudi Arabia is speaking the truth. He probably does know it. But I doubt seriously if he will try to tackle that problem directly. He's now trapped in the metaphysics of American Destiny and American Loyalty and American Allies. Before we know it, the Annapolis conference will be two years dead and nothing much will have happened during the first Obama year just as it didn't happen during the last Bush year. . . .and so it goes. Oh, Kurt Vonnegut, once more cynicism overcomes optimism.

It's a terrible madness, this refusal to act with skill and insight and humanity on a deadly and dangerous problem that has been around for 60 years. See you next November, 2009. Mission Unaccomplished. Year 61 of the Great Paralysis.

Send a message to Change.gov

I have never been so pleased by an election before. However, I am 64 years old, and my life has paralleled the long and terrible situation in Palestine. Before I die I hope to see some version of peace, equality, and real justice come to that land.


The choices being made by the new President indicate, sadly, that he will probably not seek justice in Palestine, that he will continue the bankrupt policies of the outgoing administration, which is essentially to allow Israel to continue its violations of international law.


Unless the work of peace is pursued, there will be no justice, there will be no peace in our time, there will be no humane governing of the area. The old man Ehud Olmert--better late than never, as my departed mother used to say--has decided to speak now that he knows he has no more to lose. The man was a moral coward before he spoke and should not be given credit for speaking the truth. Where is his apology to the Palestinian people? Where is his charge to the negotiators to act in the spirit of peace and reconciliation?


In a perfect world, our new President must speak the truth to Israel and bring equity to the oppressed people f Palestine. Immediately he should threaten to withhold all funding for the State of Israel unless it begins steps to withdraw the illegal settlers and stop the siege of Gaza.


The spirit of Martin Luther King is pointing the way, but I am quite sure that President-elect Obama is not following in that direction.

Robert Parry: "Beware the Lessons of '93"

This is really important, I think, and anyone who was a strong Obama supporter should keep this in mind. The President-elect tends to look for compromise and to "reach across the aisle." He--and we-- should not forget the lessons from the early Clinton years of what the other side always will do to the reach across the aisle: they will spurn it.


This is excellent historical reporting from Robert Parry:

Can the Republicans Change? Amid the global euphoria surrounding Barack Obama’s victory – and the hopeful talk about a new bipartisanship in Washington – the Democrats are forgetting a powerful truth: modern Republicans are tied inextricably to slash-and-burn politics. Even if some Republicans did want to shift toward a more bipartisan approach – after more than three decades of successfully using "wedge" tactics and armed with a right-wing media infrastructure built to destroy opponents – such a change might be impossible. The idea of transforming modern Republicanism into some less partisan form might be like trying to train a boa constrictor which fork to use at the dinner table. (continued at http://www.consortiumnews.com/2008/111108.html)

YIPPEEEEEE!!!

My good friend in Sacramento writes very late on election night: YIPPEEEEEE!!! What a wonderful night for this country, heh?

You know it! (I almost said You betcha!) I was at a party up in Republican territory in La Canada/Flintridge and the 10 of us went out on the lawn at 8:03 and yelled our heads off! I had been there since about 4:30 watching the returns with the host and another fellow, and as the momentum kept building and the other party goers arrived it was incredible. Then the polls closed at 8 PM and in 30 seconds the announcement came across.

McCain had a very commendable speech, I thought--like the old McCain from the 90's--and Obama's was superb. I will never forget for the rest of my life seeing Jessie Jackson in the audience crying with the knowledge of what had taken place. Now all we have to do is wait for the other 25% of the hard core bastards to shrivel up and melt away. I rarely indulge in schadenfreude, but the thought of George W Bush having to live in denial about his crimes and misdemeanors for the rest of his life is almost delicious in irony. He's a dry drunk. He'll show the same behavior towards his presidency and be as unrepentant as Nixon. I visited a couple of conservative websites today and already they are gearing up for the attack. See below #2 which I received from a political acquaintance today:

#1. Matt Taibbi in Rolling Stone, "My Campaign Memories"

What makes the Obama story so powerful isn't just the fact that as a half-white, half-black man, his public journey to the top visibly tied together some of the more painful frayed ends of our past. It's that he ran his race with dignity and honor against people who didn't return the favor, facing a succession of opponents who feared losing more than shame and gave in to pretty much every possible temptation to go low and appeal to the worst in us.

I didn't always see it at the time. But thinking back on it now, I realize what an extraordinary accomplishment his getting this far has been. A man who wasn't great would have blown this a hundred times along the way. So would a person who wasn't extremely lucky. The historical seas literally parted for this Obama guy, with inconceivable idiocy and villainy littering the political shores on either side of him as he ascended to the pantheon of all-time American heroes simply by walking straight ahead and not being a dick. [snip]

Year after year, even the president of our country has been consistently too small and too cheap to stand up and face his problems like a grown-up, forever passing the buck to this or that group of Americans. If it wasn't Reagan crying about "freeloaders" or George H.W. Bush blasting the "apologize for America" crowd, it was the Clintons whining about the "vast right-wing conspiracy." [snip]

Let's hope that it says as much about us as it does about the presidency.

The full article has a great illustration of Obama as a Zen master with his eyes closed and forefinger and thumb touching.

2. Email from Bob Meltzer

Last night we won a major battle. The fight, however, continues. The right wing still has far too much power in this country.

Most of us are old enough to remember 1994. That is the year when, after being the minority party in Congress for forty years, the Republicans swept into power. Not only did they sweep into power, they came in with the most ideologically right wing group this country has ever seen. They stayed in power for a dozen years, successfully imposing much of their right wing agenda on the rest of us.

Why did this happen? The year 1994 was a year of peace and prosperity.
There was no catastrophe anywhere in the world to warrant such a legislative change.

What happened was the election of centrist Democratic Bill Clinton in 1992. The right wing responded by using their control of the media to bash Clinton day and night. Dittoheads with fire in their eyes took over the water coolers in all offices around the country and ceaselessly expounded their hate of Bill Clinton.

Yet the progressives were complacent. There was no major grassroots movement behind President Clinton, while the Democrats in Congress were
weak and fearful (sound familiar?) Could something like this happen to Barack Obama? It WILL happen if we let it.

So today we party and celebrate. Tomorrow we take a reality check and prepare for the next battle. We must keep up the momentum. In the coming
years, President Obama will need us more than ever.

Gary Younge on the Problem of Voting

Gary Younge is a journalist for the Guardian (UK) born in Barbados, and writes out of New York. I agree about the recent email about the young Obama workers trying to pull a fast one and voting not in their home districts, but where they were registering voters, though I have not had a chance to follow up on it and see what the penalty was was. Gary Younge, however, writes of my greatest fear, presented more eloquently than I could ever do.

You would think that a country that can put a man on the moon and have the greatest military technology in the world would have figured out a way to run a true democratic vote, but it's not happening. Even the Election Assistance Commission which was supposed to look into this stuff failed to report the entire story, and we know conclusively now that most of the 12 US attorneys were fired because they looked into voter fraud and found nothing there. And that's a from a Republican who supports McCain: David Iglesias, from New Mexico, one of the fired US attorneys.

After reminiscing about the problems with the franchise in South Africa, Younge then turns to the anticipated long lines in our upcoming election. Here are some selections from Younge's article, "Black America may get a president before black Americans get to vote," published in The Guardian on October 27, 2008:

In Jackson County, West Virginia, people have been hitting the touch-screen for Barack Obama and finding they have voted for John McCain. In Florida they are testdriving the third ballot system in three election cycles. Election workers are struggling. Those who thought they would vote early and avoid the queues are waiting in line for three hours.

Added to the technological flaws with machines and lack of technical training for those operating them are technocratic electoral laws that aren't fair, don't work and in any case aren't being heeded. According to the New York Times, tens of thousands of eligible voters in six battleground states have been illegally removed from voter rolls or will be prevented from voting in ways that violate federal law. In Wisconsin, one in five voters' names on the registration database did not completely match names on other state records, including four of the six former judges charged with overseeing the elections. Both presidential candidates may have been wasting their time wooing Samuel Joseph Wurzelbacher - aka Joe the plumber - at the last debate. He is registered as Worzelbacher, and therefore may find himself ineligible to vote.

[snip]

While this is happening everywhere [snip], it is compounded by a protracted Republican effort to disenfranchise Democratic voters under the guise of combating voter fraud. Voter fraud is a serious issue. The trouble is it barely exists. In the six years since the Bush administration has made it a priority, barely 100 people have been convicted and fewer than 200 have been charged. The overwhelming majority were either people who thought they were eligible but weren't (immigrants, felons etc) or those registering fictitious people.

"If they found a single case of a conspiracy to affect the outcome of a Congressional election or a statewide election, that would be significant," Richard Hasen, election law expert at the Loyola Law School, told the New York Times last year. "But what we see is isolated, small- scale activities that often have not shown any kind of criminal intent."

But that hasn't stopped Republicans trying. Five of the 12 US attorneys who were fired last year, in the scandal that led to the resignation of US attorney general Alberto Gonzales, were axed because they refused to pursue the issue of voter fraud with sufficient vigour. It also explains the Republican attacks on the community group Acorn, which pays people to register voters in low income and minority areas. Some of Acorn's workers made up names. That should be and has been condemned. But there is no evidence that it has resulted in a single fraudulent vote ever being cast since Acorn began its large-scale voter registration drives four years ago.

[snip]

The practical consequences of this interference, manipulation and, at times, intimidation is twofold. It disenfranchises people who either don't have the time, inclination or wherewithal to stand up to officialdom. And it creates huge lines while others stay and fight. A Democratic party survey from 2004 found half of the state's African-American voters in Ohio reported some problems at the polls on election day. On average, black voters waited in longer lines than whites, were more likely to be asked for identification when they got there and felt more intimidated.

It remains one of the paradoxes of this election that black America may yet get a president before black Americans have fully secured their right to vote.

Even if Obama succeeds, who can tell whether the votes have been accurately counted? Perhaps a majority will really have been a significant majority? There was so much gaming of the elections in 2006, who knows if the Democratic majority in the House wasn't really under counted? If McCain wins, will we really know for sure that he did? Either side's victory is lessened by the inconsistency of voting laws, the unreliability and secrecy of computer systems, and the efforts to deny the franchise to people. There is much to be done in this country, and making the voting systems uniform, transparent, non-partisan, and just is one of the structural constitutional issues we must address.

As always, this matter will be put on the back of the top shelf after the election.