Reading Tea Leaves

It is highly embarrassing for the left supporters of Barack Obama to be feverishly searching for good works from his administration. One friend of mine sees minor nuances in Obama's statements about Israel/Palestine as signs of hope rather than seeing the backing of the most fascist Israeli government to date as a sign of the same old policy. It's very much like reading tea leaves. If it weren't for the animal rights movement, they would probably be reading entrails. The problem is that there is nothing there to point to. Health care? Looks like Obama will make it worse. The environment? No substance. The economy? Total capitulation to finance capital. I call this Obama denial. The longer they take to awake from it, the longer it will take to rally the millions who really do want progressive chance and believe that we can. The Obama administration is a cul de sac, a dead end. Time to do a U-turn and face reality.

Obama's Peace Prize

Awarding the Nobel Peace Prize to Barak Obama makes about as much sense as awarding it to Teddy Roosevelt (who never met a war he didn't like) and to Woodrow Wilson (who played such a decisive role in shoring up white supremacy in the United States).

It is particularly galling for it to be awarded now, as the United States fails to take a strong stand against the coup regime in Honduras and as the United States pressured the Palestinian Authority into abandoning the Goldstone Report. Add to that the continuation of the wars of occupation in Iraq and Afghanistan, the totally irrational focus on Iran, the continuation of petty measures against Cuba, and a whole litany of "business as usual" affronts to peace and justice, and the prize is just a bitter joke.

Since the deadline for Obama's nomination came about 2 weeks after he took office, it is clear that awarding the prize to him is a totally political act and one devoid of any real content. As Naomi Klein said on "Democracy Now," it cheapens the prize and drains it of significance.

RadicalFocus

I chose RadicalFocus as the address of this blog because Radical means to get to the root of things and Focus is to not lose sight of important details. That is what I will try to do. I'll begin with an example. Last week, I saw someone advocate a democratic Jewish state in Israel side-by-side with a Palestinian state. To many people, that is a reasonable and moderate point of view. But when you analyze it, it is actually a very confused position. A Jewish state is a state which gives special privileges to those that it defines as Jews. In other words, it can only be an apartheid state. So, a state could be democratic or it could claim to be Jewish, but it cannot be both at the same time. That is the kind of radical analysis that I mean. When you get to the root of the issue, a so-called Jewish state (as a Jew, I will dispute that any state can claim to be the state of all Jews at another time) can only be an apartheid state.

If we focus on its origins, the Zionists who founded Israel, particularly the most rightwing of them, were firmly rooted in the fascist movements in Europe from which they sprang. One of their leaders, Jabotinsky, was based in Mussolini's Italy with his full support. Yitzhak Shamir signed a letter in 1941 offering to fight with Hitler against his British enemies. Shamir was elected prime minister by an Israeli electorate which knew all about his history. Israel was also one of the closest allies of apartheid South Africa, not only in trade, military cooperation--including join development of nuclear weapons and counterinsurgency--and diplomatic ties but also in very close political sympathy because of the closeness of the two settler colonial states and their practices.

Let's look at another bit of political nonsense which is rarely questioned. Palestinians and Arab governments are demanded to accept the right of the state of Israel to exist. Let's examine that. Since when do states have a right to exist independent of their behavior? Certainly not in the US Declaration of Independence. Would anyone argue that the apartheid South African state had a "right to exist." Human beings do have a right to exist. But the right of a state to exist is conditional on its behavior and on whether those who live under its rule accept its existence and want it to exist. In other words, this demand is totally illogical.

To conclude this first blog, I want to comment on what I consider to be one of the greatest intellectual crimes of the 20th century: the repeal by the United Nations of its resolution recognizing political Zionism as a form of racism. The central idea of political Zionism is that Jews do not belong in the countries where they live but should instead emigrate to another place. This is precisely what European anti-Semites were saying when this political movement began. This position is thus profoundly anti-Jewish and thus racist. Of course, we could also discuss the racism which led European settlers to act as though nobody was living in Palestine with any rights worth respecting, but that flows directly from the central idea using what I call the logic of settler colonialism. Once a group decides it will take over territory occupied by someone else, it defines the indigenous inhabitants as a threat to their security. Of course, there is a kind of twisted self-fulfilling prophecy in that since most people do resist the takeover of the native land. To be sure, there are always those within the settler community who stand up against the worst outrages and sometimes even side with the colonized peoples. I salute them for their heroism. But the overwhelming majority surrender to the logic of settlers, dismiss the very notion that the displaced have rights, and willingly perform the most horrible crimes against them. In the case of Israel, they even describe themselves as honorable, humane, and civilized when they are nothing of the sort. So, this first blog concludes with the promise of more to come.