John Chuckman

COMMENT POSTED TO AN ARTICLE IN THE INDEPENDENT

 

I find this no surprise at all, although in any important matter, it’s nice to have confirmation.

Israel has had slow-motion ethnic cleansing going on for years.

And someone as important as former House Majority Leader, Dick Armey – a long time recipient of pro-Israel money and a rather crass man in general – said a few years back it would be fine with him if Israel just removed all Palestinians.

Israel, I believe, faces its collapse in not many years, and the collapse will come because this utterly failed enterprise resembles in many of its characteristics the old Soviet Union.

It builds walls, it limits who can come and go, its military is a Frankenstein for the size of the place, its security forces are the equivalent in every way of the KBG or Stasi, it holds millions against their will, it steals private property regularly, it has more than one class of citizen, its economy is terrible and it only keeps up appearances by huge subsidies from outside, it claims to be a democracy but behaves as anything but one, it is a place seething with hatreds and discontent, and many of its acts break all international law and convention.

Founding the new Israel was a great historical mistake, especially founding it on someone else’s property, a sure way to create endless conflict.

Moreover this modern effort at reconstruction of Israel is by a people with almost no connection to the Middle East other than sentimental associations through religion. The Ashkenazi people are a European people largely, indeed, a Germanic people.

The whole thing has become pretty much a disaster for human rights and rule of law, much as the Soviet Union.

John Chuckman

COMMENT POSTED TO AN ARICLE IN THE INDEPENDENT

 

This is foolish.

First, being related to Anne Frank qualifies someone with absolutely no expertise or even knowledge of this or any other political matter.

She’s entitled to her view, of course, but it means not a jot more than the views of 7 billion other humans who will not receive publicity in The Guardian.

Second, for any informed person her assertion is close to ridiculous.

I reject most of Trump’s views, but I would never compare them to Hitler’s.

I don’t even understand how anyone who knows anything can say this. Just read one of the better biographies of Hitler – Allan Bullock or Joachim Fest, for example – and you will quickly understand why I say this.

Confusing unpleasantness and unacceptable views with monomania and nihilism shows pretty poor judgement.

In fact, in a few areas, Trump is exactly Hitler’s opposite. He tends to be anti-imperial wars, and he voices a sensible view about Russia and China.

These are the areas where Trump does bring something new to American national politics. Our political systems, unfortunately, are such that any national candidate comes with a bundle of views and issues. If you buy into one part of the bundle, you must take, willy-nilly, the rest. No one comes with a platform completely satisfying to most voters.

Trump comes with some very heavy baggage, yet he does have the potential to bring some welcome change to international affairs, an end to decades of pointless war in which the U.S. has been engaged.

I utterly reject ideas like his wall with Mexico, and further I don’t believe it would prove doable. But it does seem to me that criticism of him is highly selective. How is his wall proposal any different than Israel’s walls? It isn’t, and indeed Israel is building still more walls, but they don’t receive the publicity that Trump’s proposal does.

Again, I utterly oppose selecting a kind of immigrant who is unacceptable, especially Muslims who are in my personal experience excellent people.

Yet Trump has not proposed a ban or an end, he has proposed a pause, and that is a very different thing. There can be no question that massive Muslim – or any other specific, culturally different – migration over a short time can cause huge social adjustment problems, as it very much is doing today in Europe.

However, please think about the absolute root cause of this sudden massive migration: it is America’s violent tear through the Middle East, upsetting old societies, killing tens of thousands, destroying countless homes and institutions. Libya, Iraq, Syria, Yemen, and others. That American savagery is source of all our headlines today, and this consideration takes us back to the importance of changing American foreign policy.

I think it worth noting, too, that Israel has a permanent ban on many, many kinds of immigrants. For some recent poor black refugees it did not want to accept, given embarrassing public outrages over black migrants, it actually bribed some African states to take them, where I’m sure their future, given the circumstances of their arrival, will be bleak.

Israel truly grants full citizenship to only one kind of people, its million or so Arab citizens being both an accident of 1948 history and a people who live under constant shadows and threats of expulsion as well as a set of laws which do not treat them equally in almost any matter.

Of course, then there are the five million or so Palestinians – some of whom are Christian and some Muslim – who live under illegal occupation with daily abuse, no rights, no votes, no hopes, and not even secure ownership of homes or farms. I haven’t heard Trump advocating anything resembling that ghastly reality which has endured in Israel for half a century.

So, if you are of a mind to criticize Trump’s more extreme ideas, then you should be in the forefront of doing the same for, not just a dismal prospect, but a dismal reality in Israel.

“We haven’t really learnt anything—I’m depressed by the current situation.” I can at least say amen to Eva Schloss on that, but I’m sure we are not talking about the same situation.

 

 

 

 

 

 

JOHN CHUCKMAN

POSTED RESPONSES TO A COLUMN IN TORONTO’S GLOBE AND MAIL

Gingrich reaches new levels of the ridiculous here, reminding me a bit of the time some years ago when apologists for Israel insisted no one should use the accepted term, suicide-bomber, inducing George Bush to give a speech in which he used the non-existent term, homicide-bombers. Of course, it sounded ridiculous, but no more so than much of what George Bush said.

Gingrich has always, always been a two-faced politician, a slimy manipulator, and a man who has served various special interests for a large enough wad of money.

Here he claims what is, is not.

Even the Bible speaks of the Philistines, albeit with a negative perspective.

And why does he do this?

To attract large campaign donations from The Lobby.

There is no other explanation, because Gingrich has always been a man of shallow and rather easily altered convictions.

What an absurd business to inject into the political debate in America, especially considering here is a nation with scores of serious problems, but that’s what a politician without ethics is willing to do.

And one has to believe The Lobby is desperate to the point of insanity to invite this kind of garbage.

The world is becoming totally disillusioned with Israel: its behavior is consistently aggressive, unethical, and malevolent, and no ignorant, shallow words from Newt Gingrich or anyone else is going to convince them that what they see daily is not the truth.

Israel’s credibility with people all over the world keeps falling, and indeed has not much further down to go.

All that rather than just make peace and treat its neighbors with respect. It does say something very unpleasant about Israel that no blind insistence by manipulated American politicians can overcome
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“. . . despite what some folks say, it turns out that Christians are VERY open-minded. Doing whatever you want is perfectly OK with them … as long as once in awhile you say that you’ve sinned but have now — SHAZAM ! like MAGIC ! — been forgiven by God.”

It’s an aspect of one of America’s favorite continuing themes: eternal youth and being born again.

Redemption is a concept repeated in America to the point of being sickening, day after day.

You can do anything – and Newt has done some disgusting stuff – and have redemption.

The popular culture is replete with stories of drunken or drugged hillbilly singers who find redemption, along with endless tedious stories of sports figures and politicians.

There’s always a new prospect for everyone so long as they just believe.

Believe in what?

Essentially believe that you are special, going to live forever, and truly cannot do anything wrong.

By the way, Newt is not just a serial adulterer, one of his egregious stupidities was announcing to his past wife, dying in a bed of cancer, that he was divorcing her.

Doesn’t that just say something profound about this man’s character? I do believe we are dealing with a psychopath here, a relatively mild one but a psychopath.

That being understood, how easy for him to deeply cut and hurt millions of people already suffering decades of abuse from his campaign-fund paymaster.
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“…Palestine Liberation Organization executive committee member Zahir Muhsein. Here’s what he said:

“The Palestinian people does not exist. The creation of a Palestinian state is only a means for continuing our struggle against the state of Israel for our Arab unity.”

What an abysmal comment.

First, how in God’s name can you honestly quote one man as representing the truth on so profound a matter and speaking for millions of people? You cannot.

You might as well quote Mordechai Vanunu on the nature of Israel.

You are just repeating an immensely tiresome and deeply dishonest idea that Jordan is where Palestinians belong.

Jordan does not want millions of Palestinians.

Millions of Palestinians do not want Jordan.

No, the Palestinians just want the homes and farms they have resided in for centuries and centuries.

And they don’t want the migrants from Europe and America who pretty well define the establishment of Israel stealing any more of their homes and farms.

And what does Israel and apologists for Israel’s abuse, like yourself, want?

To ethnically-cleanse millions of people, stealing all their homes and farms.

In a futile effort to make that palatable, you spew nonsense like this about there being no Palestinians.

The existing apartheid situation in Israel and occupied Palestine is only intended by Israel’s establishment as a temporary one, intended to make these poor people get up and go from endless abuse and deprivation.

Go where? Go anywhere so long as it is not in the territory of what has now become that malevolent fantasy of Greater Israel.

As all apologists for Israel’s abuse, you conveniently forget that all the countries of the Middle East, including Jordan, have no long history, but that does not render any of them invalid.

The shape of the modern Middle East arose out of matters like the decline of the Ottoman Empire and the imperial adventures of Britain and France.

And the bottom-line truth is that all nationalism is pretty much a child of the 19th century. National states, as we know them today, virtually did not exist before then.

Europe and other parts of the world were divided into princedoms and empires everywhere, entities which included a polyglot of languages, religions, and ethnic identities – the Austro-Hungarian Empire being perhaps the most obvious example with its Germans, Tyroleans, Italians, Hungarians, and many others.

Nationalism is almost a virus that infected Europe in the 19th century with the idea that Germany should be for German-speakers and Italy for Italian-speakers, etc.

We saw where that virus led: in the limit, Hitler’s Reich with its absurd racial theories is where blind nationalism goes.

The early Zionists were infected with exactly the virus of nationalism sweeping Europe, and today in few places of the world is there a more backward-looking sense of identity than in Israel.

Israel for Jews. No room for others.

That sounds terrifyingly familiar.
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“It seems that the Jews of modern Israel are the invented people; not the Palestinians.”

Indeed.

A fine Israeli academic has written a serious and scholarly book on the Jewish people and Israel’s identity.

Everyone concerned about the Middle East should read it.

You’ll find my book review here:

http://chuckmanmiscellanea.blogspot.com/2011/10/review-of-shlomo-sands-invention-of.html

But even were the findings of this research to prove inaccurate, there still would be no excuse for Israel’s abuse and oppression.
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“ Clearly, the anti-Israel posters here have no real notion of the history of the region and are simply parroting Palestinian talking points.”

I would be willing to match my knowledge of the region’s background with you or any other apologist here for Israel’s interests.

There is nothing more intellectually dishonest than repeating endlessly the same technically true but trite observation, an observation which is meaningless.

Again, no country in the Middle East has less historical basis than Israel, a place largely founded and governed by Europeans and Americans.

And modern scholarship seriously questions whether these founders and rulers even have any legitimate connection with the place called Israel because they are likely not descendants of the ancient Hebrews.

The Palestinian people most likely include most of the direct descendants of the ancient Hebrews.

The Romans were known not to throw all the population out of their conquests, and there is no record of them doing so despite the modern notion that the Jews have been wanderers since being thrown out.

Both the Biblical stories and some Jewish notions of ancient history we know to be incorrect.

There is for instance no record – and this among some of the world’s great past record-keepers, the Egyptians – of Israelis being enslaved or even living in Egypt.

Moses is an Egyptian-origin name, not Hebrew.

And somehow or other I have doubts about Jonah living in the whale.

You don’t base boundaries and world affairs on myths and superstitions, but if you do you get just the kind of mess we see today in Israel.

JOHN CHUCKMAN

 

POSTED RESPONSE TO A COLUMN IN TORONTO’S GLOBE AND MAIL

This does seem a tremendous waste of time.

Israel clearly has its own agenda, and that agenda does not include what any fair-minded person calls peace.

How can you have “peace” while you continue daily to steal the farms and homes and water of those with whom you are supposed to be making peace?

Of course, there’s also Israel’s re-creation of South African apartheid in all its unrelenting fury, treating millions as less than equal humans.

And what additionally do we have in Gaza?

A brutal blockade stopping assistance to a people who have done nothing other than elect a government Israel doesn’t like, and that act of war (for so blockades are considered in international diplomacy) comes after a savage attack, killing hundreds and hundreds of civilians, including a great many children.

Israel insists it is a victim, but the claim is ridiculous on the face of it.

Israel is unrelentingly aggressive, and demonstrates no guiding principles of democracy and human rights towards others.

That ugly Israeli stance can only change if the United States finally shows some courage and stops sending a gigantic annual subsidy to a state that takes its money and then sneers back that it will do exactly as it pleases.

And, considering Israel’s supporters’ fine-tuned art of constantly lobbying Congress with targeted contributions, what does any realistic person believe are the chances of that?