In 2014, as the Ukrainian people rose up and drove out their corrupt rulers, I posted a brief history of Ukraine in a blog here. Few Americans know much, if anything, about the history or contemporary affairs in Ukraine. I have studied that history and followed those affairs partly because one of my grandmothers was born in Ukraine and because her husband, my grandfather, was born in Odessa, which was then part of Russia but which was given to Ukraine in 1920 after the Bolshevik Revolution. I have also been to Ukraine, including a week's vacation in Crimea.
In 2019, Ukraine is back in the news as a major part of high crimes and misdemeanors committed by Donald J. Trump. I doubt that mosts Americans have learned much about Ukraine since 2014. I doubt that they understand that the Ukrainian people have their own agenda which makes no concessions to the agendas of the USA or Russia. Thus, what happens in Ukraine cannot simply be understood as a product of great power rivalry. I doubt that they understand that Russia, the USA, and the UK guaranteed Ukrainian territorial integrity in a 1994 treaty in which Ukraine agreed to send all its nuclear weapons to Russia. Nobody seems to want to talk about that treaty. I doubt that most Americans understand how deep is the poverty and lack of opportunity for the vast majority of Ukrainians. I doubt that they appreciate how dysfunctional is the Ukrainian economy, which has not recovered from the division of production inherited from the Soviet Union and which, like Russia, is encumbered by the de facto theft of so many resources by the oligarchs who run that economy. I doubt that they understand how Putin looks with fear at the aspirations of the Ukrainian people which are remarkably similar to the aspirations of the Russian people.
I tell my Ukrainian friends that corruption goes much deeper in the USA even than in Ukraine because it goes to the heart of our political and economic systems. In Ukraine, bribing the police and stealing public money and property are typical forms of corruption, but those forms of corruption, though they cripple the hope of economic development, are petty compared to the kind of systemic corruption we live with in the USA.
Widespread American ignorance of Ukrainian reality fuels the ability of demagogues to spread lies and distortions about Ukraine. Those who discuss Ukraine owe it to themselves and the rest of us to educate themselves about this subject.
Wednesday, October 30, 2019
Wednesday, May 1, 2019
The Anti-Jewish State: Chapter 1: The Early Zionists
Chapter 1: The Early Zionists
The material which follows in this
chapter was first published by me in five blogs in 2010 under the
title “Political Zionism: The Ideology of Jewish Self-Hatred.”
Leo Pinsker from Auto-Emancipation: An Appeal to His People by a Russian Jew (1882) in Arthur Hertzberg's The Zionist Idea (Atheneum 1972). Pinsker was an assimilated Russian Jew. I call this the vampire theory of anti-Semitism.
The eternal problem presented by the Jewish question stirs men today as it did ages ago. It remains unsolved, like the squaring of the circle, but unlike it, it is still a burning question. This is due to the fact that it is not merely a problem of theoretic interest, but one of practical interest, which renews its youth from day to day, as it were, and presses more and more urgently for a solution.
The essence of the problem, as we see it, lies in the fact that, in the midst of the nations among whom the Jews reside, they form a distinctive element which cannot be assimilated, which cannot be readily digested by any nation. Hence the problem is to find means of so adjusting the relations of this exclusive element to the whole body of the nations that there shall never be any further basis for the Jewish question.
We cannot, of course, think of establishing perfect harmony. Such harmony has probably never existed, even among other nations. The millennium in which national differences will disappear, and the nations will merge into humanity, is still invisible in the distance. Until it is realized, the desires and ideals of the nations must be limited to establishing a tolerable modus vivendi.
....[The Jewish people] lacks most of those attributes which are the hallmark of a nation. It lacks that characteristic national life which is inconceivable without a common language, common customs, and a common land. The Jewish people has no fatherland of its own, though many motherlands; it has no rallying point, no center of gravity, no government of its own, no accredited representatives. It is everywhere a guest, and nowhere at home.
The nations never have to deal with a Jewish nation but always mere Jews. The Jews are not a nation because they lack a certain distinctive national character, possessed by every other nation, a character which is determined by living in one country, under one rule. ....
The strongest factor, however, operating to prevent the Jews from striving after an independent national existence is the fact that they do not feel the need for such an existence. Not only do they feel no need for it, but they go so far as to deny the reasonableness of such a need.
In a sick man, the absence of desire for food and drink is a very serious symptom.....
The Jews are in the unhappy condition of such a patient.... We must prove that the misfortunes of the Jews are due, above all, to their lack of desire for national independence; and that this desire must be aroused and maintained in them if they do not wish to exist forever in a disgraceful state--in a word, we must prove that they must become a nation.
This one apparently insignificant fact, that the Jews are not considered a separate nation by the other nations, is, to a great extent the hidden cause of their anomalous position and of their endless misery. The mere fact of belonging to this people is a mark of Cain on one's forehead, an indelible stigma which repels non-Jews and is painful to the Jews themselves....
Among the living nations of the earth the Jews occupy the position of a nation long since dead. With the loss of their fatherland, the Jews lost their independence and fell into a state of decay which is incompatible with the existence of a whole and vital organism. The state was crushed by the Roman conquerors and vanished from the world's view. But after the Jewish people had yielded up its existence as an actual state, as a political entity, it could nevertheless not submit to total destruction--it did not cease to exist as a spiritual nation. Thus, the world saw in this people the frightening form of one of the dead walking among the living. This ghostlike apparition of a people without unity or organization, without land or other bond of union, no longer alive, and yet moving among the living--this eerie form scarcely paralleled in history, unlike anything that preceded or followed it, could not fail to make a strange and peculiar impression upon the imagination of the nations. And if the fear of ghosts is something inborn, and has a certain justification in the psychic life of humanity, is it any wonder that it asserted itself powerfully at the sight of this dead and yet living nation?
Fear of the Jewish ghost has been handed down and strengthened for generations and centuries. It led to a prejudice which, in its turn, in connection with other forces to be discussed later, paved the way for Judeophobia.
Along with a number of other subconscious and superstitious ideas, instincts, and idiosyncrasies, Judeophobia, too, has become rooted and naturalized among all the peoples of the earth with whom the Jews have had intercourse. Judeophobia is a form of demonopathy, with the distinction that the Jewish ghost has become known to the whole race of mankind, not merely to certain races, and that it is not disembodies, like other ghosts, but is a being of flesh and blood, and suffers the most excrutiating pain from the wounds inflicted upon it by the fearful mob who imagine it threatens them.
Judeophobia is a psychic aberration. As a psychic aberration, it is hereditary; as a disease transmitted for two thousand years, it is incurable.
Theodor Herzl was born in Budapest of the
Austro-Hungarian empire. He was also assimilated and a journalist. It
was his coverage of the Dreyfus trial in France which sparked him to
want to deal with the Jewish question. Dreyfus was a French officer
falsely accused of espionage and convicted because he was Jewish.
Herzl addressed his piece, "The Jewish State," to "my
dear Lord Rothschild." In that sense, he was writing a funding
proposal.
Theodor Herzl, The Jewish State (1896) in Arthur Hertzberg's The Zionist Idea
The idea which I have developed in this pamphlet is an ancient one: It is the restoration of the Jewish State.
The world resounds with clamor against the Jews, and this has revived the dormant idea.
....
The understand of economics among men actively engaged in business is often astonishingly slight. This seems to be the only explanation for the fact that even Jews faithfully parrot the catchword of the anti-Semites: "We live off 'Host-nations'; and if we had no 'Host-nation' to sustain us we should starve to death." This is one case in point of the undermining of our self-respect through unjust accusations....
The Jewish question still exists. It would be foolish to deny it. It is a misplaced piece of medievalism which civilized nations do not even yet seem able to shake off, try as they will. They proved they had this high-minded desire when they emancipated us. The Jewish question persists wherever Jews live in appreciable numbers. Wherever it does not exist, it is brought in together with Jewish immigrants. We are naturally drawn into those places where we are not persecuted, and our appearance there gives rise to persecution. This is the case, and will inevitably be so, everywhere, even in highly civilized countries--see, for instance, France--so long as the Jewish question is not solved on the political level. The unfortunate Jews are now carrying the seeds of anti-Semitism into England; they have already introduced it into America.
Anti-Semitism is a highly complex movement, which I think I understand. I approach this movement as a Jew, yet without fear or hatred. I believe that I can see in it the elements of cruel sport, of common commercial rivalry, of inherited prejudice, or religious intolerance--but also of a supposed need for self-defense. I consider the Jewish question neither a social nor a religious one, even though it sometimes takes these and other forms. It is a national question, and to solve it we must first of all establish it as an international political problem to be discussed and settled by the civilized nations of the world in council.
We are a people--one people.
We have sincerely tried everywhere to merge with the national communities in which we live, seeking only to preserve the faith of our fathers. It is not permitted us. In vain are we loyal patriots, sometimes superloyal; in vain do we make the same sacrifices of life and property as our fellow citizens; in vain do we strive to enhance the fame of our native lands in the arts and sciences, or her wealth by trade and commerce. In our native lands where we have lived for centuries we are still decried as aliens, often by men whose ancestors had not yet come at a time when Jewish sighs had long been heard in the country. The majority decide who the "alien" is; this, and all else in the relations between peoples, is a matter of power. I do not surrender any part of our prescriptive right when I make this statement merely in my own name,, as an individual. In the world as it now is and will probably remain, for an indefinite period, might takes precedence over right. It is without avail, therefore, for us to be loyal patriots, as were the Huguenots, who were forced to emigrate. If we were left in peace . . .
But I think we shall not be left in peace.
Oppression and persecution cannot exterminate us. No nation on earth has endured such struggles and sufferings as we have. Jew-baiting has merely winnowed out our weakings; the strong among us defiantly return to their own whenever persecution breaks out. This was most clearly apparent in the period immediately following the emancipation of the Jews. Those Jews who rose highest intellectually and materially entirely lost the sense of unity with their people. Wherever we remain politically secure for any length of time, we assimilate. I think this is not praiseworthy. Hence, the statesman who would wish to see a Jewish strain added to his nation must see to it that we continue politically secure. But even a Bismarck could never achieve that.
....
No one can deny the gravity of the Jewish situation. Wherever they live in appreciable number, Jews are persecuted in greater or lesser measure. Their equality before the law, granted by statute, has become practically a dead letter. They are debarred from filling even moderate high offices in the army, or in any public or private institutions. And attempts are being made to thrust them out of business also: "Don't buy from Jews!"
Attacks in parliaments, in assemblies, in the press, in the pulpit, in the street, on journey--for example, their exclusion from certain hotels--even in places of recreation are increasing from day to day. The forms of persecution vary according to country and social circle. In Russia, special taxes are levied on Jewish villages; in Romania, a few persons are put to death; in Germany, they get a good beating occasionally; in Austria, anti-Semites exercise their terrorism over all public life; in Algeria, there are traveling agitators; in Paris, the Jews are shut out of the so-called best social circles and excluded from clubs. The varieties of anti-Jewish expression are innumerable. But this is not the occasion to attempt the sorry catalogue of Jewish hardships. We shall not dwell on particular cases, however painful.
....
The common people have not, and indeed cannot have, any comprehension of history. They do not know that the sins of the Middle Ages are now being visited on the nations of Europe. We are what the ghetto made us. We have without a doubt attained pre-eminence in finance because medieval conditions drove us to it. The same process is now being repeated. We are again being forced into moneylending--now named stock exchange--by being kept out of other occupations. But once on the stock exchange, we are again objects of contempt. At the same time we continue to produce an abundance of mediocre intellectuals who find no outlet, and this endangers our social position as much as does our increasing wealth. Educated Jews without means are now rapidly becoming socialists. Hence we are certain to suffer acutely in the struggle between the classes, because we stand in the most exposed position in both the capitalist and socialist camps.
....
Palestine or Argentina?
Is Palestine or Argentina preferable? The Society will take whatever it is given and whatever Jewish public opinion favors. The Society will determine both these points.
[paragraph on the advantages of Argentina] ....
Palestine is our unforgettable historic homeland. The very name would be a marvelously effective rallying cry. If His Majesty the Sultan were to give us Palestine, we could in return undertake the complete management of the finances of Turkey. We should there form a part of a wall of defense for Europe in Asia, an outpost of civilization against barbarism. We should as a neutral state remain in contactl with all of Europe, which would have to guarantee our existence.
Ber Borochov would be only a footnote in history if his ideas had
not inspired the founders of the Israeli Labour Party.Theodor Herzl, The Jewish State (1896) in Arthur Hertzberg's The Zionist Idea
The idea which I have developed in this pamphlet is an ancient one: It is the restoration of the Jewish State.
The world resounds with clamor against the Jews, and this has revived the dormant idea.
....
The understand of economics among men actively engaged in business is often astonishingly slight. This seems to be the only explanation for the fact that even Jews faithfully parrot the catchword of the anti-Semites: "We live off 'Host-nations'; and if we had no 'Host-nation' to sustain us we should starve to death." This is one case in point of the undermining of our self-respect through unjust accusations....
The Jewish question still exists. It would be foolish to deny it. It is a misplaced piece of medievalism which civilized nations do not even yet seem able to shake off, try as they will. They proved they had this high-minded desire when they emancipated us. The Jewish question persists wherever Jews live in appreciable numbers. Wherever it does not exist, it is brought in together with Jewish immigrants. We are naturally drawn into those places where we are not persecuted, and our appearance there gives rise to persecution. This is the case, and will inevitably be so, everywhere, even in highly civilized countries--see, for instance, France--so long as the Jewish question is not solved on the political level. The unfortunate Jews are now carrying the seeds of anti-Semitism into England; they have already introduced it into America.
Anti-Semitism is a highly complex movement, which I think I understand. I approach this movement as a Jew, yet without fear or hatred. I believe that I can see in it the elements of cruel sport, of common commercial rivalry, of inherited prejudice, or religious intolerance--but also of a supposed need for self-defense. I consider the Jewish question neither a social nor a religious one, even though it sometimes takes these and other forms. It is a national question, and to solve it we must first of all establish it as an international political problem to be discussed and settled by the civilized nations of the world in council.
We are a people--one people.
We have sincerely tried everywhere to merge with the national communities in which we live, seeking only to preserve the faith of our fathers. It is not permitted us. In vain are we loyal patriots, sometimes superloyal; in vain do we make the same sacrifices of life and property as our fellow citizens; in vain do we strive to enhance the fame of our native lands in the arts and sciences, or her wealth by trade and commerce. In our native lands where we have lived for centuries we are still decried as aliens, often by men whose ancestors had not yet come at a time when Jewish sighs had long been heard in the country. The majority decide who the "alien" is; this, and all else in the relations between peoples, is a matter of power. I do not surrender any part of our prescriptive right when I make this statement merely in my own name,, as an individual. In the world as it now is and will probably remain, for an indefinite period, might takes precedence over right. It is without avail, therefore, for us to be loyal patriots, as were the Huguenots, who were forced to emigrate. If we were left in peace . . .
But I think we shall not be left in peace.
Oppression and persecution cannot exterminate us. No nation on earth has endured such struggles and sufferings as we have. Jew-baiting has merely winnowed out our weakings; the strong among us defiantly return to their own whenever persecution breaks out. This was most clearly apparent in the period immediately following the emancipation of the Jews. Those Jews who rose highest intellectually and materially entirely lost the sense of unity with their people. Wherever we remain politically secure for any length of time, we assimilate. I think this is not praiseworthy. Hence, the statesman who would wish to see a Jewish strain added to his nation must see to it that we continue politically secure. But even a Bismarck could never achieve that.
....
No one can deny the gravity of the Jewish situation. Wherever they live in appreciable number, Jews are persecuted in greater or lesser measure. Their equality before the law, granted by statute, has become practically a dead letter. They are debarred from filling even moderate high offices in the army, or in any public or private institutions. And attempts are being made to thrust them out of business also: "Don't buy from Jews!"
Attacks in parliaments, in assemblies, in the press, in the pulpit, in the street, on journey--for example, their exclusion from certain hotels--even in places of recreation are increasing from day to day. The forms of persecution vary according to country and social circle. In Russia, special taxes are levied on Jewish villages; in Romania, a few persons are put to death; in Germany, they get a good beating occasionally; in Austria, anti-Semites exercise their terrorism over all public life; in Algeria, there are traveling agitators; in Paris, the Jews are shut out of the so-called best social circles and excluded from clubs. The varieties of anti-Jewish expression are innumerable. But this is not the occasion to attempt the sorry catalogue of Jewish hardships. We shall not dwell on particular cases, however painful.
....
The common people have not, and indeed cannot have, any comprehension of history. They do not know that the sins of the Middle Ages are now being visited on the nations of Europe. We are what the ghetto made us. We have without a doubt attained pre-eminence in finance because medieval conditions drove us to it. The same process is now being repeated. We are again being forced into moneylending--now named stock exchange--by being kept out of other occupations. But once on the stock exchange, we are again objects of contempt. At the same time we continue to produce an abundance of mediocre intellectuals who find no outlet, and this endangers our social position as much as does our increasing wealth. Educated Jews without means are now rapidly becoming socialists. Hence we are certain to suffer acutely in the struggle between the classes, because we stand in the most exposed position in both the capitalist and socialist camps.
....
Palestine or Argentina?
Is Palestine or Argentina preferable? The Society will take whatever it is given and whatever Jewish public opinion favors. The Society will determine both these points.
[paragraph on the advantages of Argentina] ....
Palestine is our unforgettable historic homeland. The very name would be a marvelously effective rallying cry. If His Majesty the Sultan were to give us Palestine, we could in return undertake the complete management of the finances of Turkey. We should there form a part of a wall of defense for Europe in Asia, an outpost of civilization against barbarism. We should as a neutral state remain in contactl with all of Europe, which would have to guarantee our existence.
Our Platform (1906) in Hertzberg.
....
Since the Jewish nation has no peasantry, our analysis of its national problem deals with urban classes: the upper, middle, and petty bourgeoisie; the masses who are being proletarized; and the proletariat.
....
The Jewish problem migrates with the Jews. Thus a universal Jewish problem is created which involves not only Jewish philanthropists but also the political powers of the civilized nations . . .
....
Proletarian Zionism is possible only if its aims can be achieved through the class struggle; Zionism can be realized only if proletarian Zionism is realized.
. . . The Jewish proletariat is in need of revolution more than any other. ....
....
Political territorial autonomy in Palestine is the ultimate aim of Zionism. For proletarian Zionists, this is also a step toward socialism.
....
Vladimir Jabotinsky is the intellectual father of the Likud Party in Israel. He was based in Mussolini's Italy (they were ideologically close) until Hitler demand that he be expelled.
Evidence Submitted to the Palestine Royal Commission (1937) in Hertzberg
Three generations of Jewish thinkers and Zionists, among whom there were many great minds--I am not going to fatigue you by quoting them--three generations have given much thought to analyzing the Jewish position and have come to the conclusion that the cause of our suffering is the very fact of the Diaspora, the bedrock fact that we are everywhere a minority. It is not the anti-Semitism of men; it is above all, the anti-Semitism of things, the inherent xenophobia of the body social or the body economic under which we suffer....
We are not free agents. We cannot "concede" anything. Whenever I hear the Zionist, most often my own Party, accused of asking for too much--Gentlemen, I really cannot understand it. Yes, we do want a State; every nation on earth, every normal nation, beginning with the smallest and the humblest who do not claim merit, any role in humanity's development, they all have States of their own. That is the normal condition for a people. Yet, when we, the most abnormal of peoples and therefore the most unfortunate, ask only for the same condition as the Albanians enjoy, to say nothing of the French and the English, then it is called too much. I should understand it if the answer were, "It is impossible," but when the answer is, "It is too much," I cannot understand it.....
I am going to make a "terrible" confession. Our demand for a Jewish majority is not our maximum--it is our minimum: it is just an inevitable stage if only we are allowed to go on salvaging our people....
There is only one way of compromise. Tell the Arabs the truth, and then you will see the Arab is reasonable, the Arab is clever, the Arab is just; the Arab can realize that since there are three or four or five wholly Arab states, then it is a thing of justice which Great Britain is doing if Palestine is transformed into a Jewish state. Then there will be a change of mind among the Arabs, then there will be room for compromise and there will be peace.
Chaim
Weizmann led the establishment Zionist movement in the first half of
the 20th century and was the first president of Israel.
Zionism Needs a Living Content (1914) in Hertzberg
In its initial stage, Zionism was conceived by its pioneers as a movement wholly depending on mechanical factors: there is a country which happens to be called Palestine, a country without a people, and, on the other hand, there exists the Jewish people, and it has no country. What else is necessary, then, than to fit the gem into the ring, to unite this people with this country. The owners of the country must, therefore, be persuaded and convinced that this marriage is advantageous, not only for the people and for the country, but also for themselves. On this basis grew Zionism. First, we must sell many shekalim to show the Turks how strong we are, in the meantime, the leaders will discuss the question of the marriage....
It is the Zionists' good fortune that they are considered mad; if we were normal, we would not think of going to Palestine, but stay put, like all normal people. Who does not believe in taking a hard road and thinks that a dangerous road should not be taken had better stay at home. With fear and timidity the permanent home of the nation cannot be established. Never has a people freed itself by profitable investments, but by energy and sacrifice. And we Jews have not made many sacrifices yet, and that is why we own only 2 per cent of the Palestinian soil.
What value there is in real sacrifice, the example of a Jew from Kiev will show you; his name is Barski. One of his sons, a worker, was killed on Palestinian soil, at Degania; the bereaved father writes a letter of comfort to the workers in Palestine and send his second son into this most dangerous life to take the place of the fallen one. This is the continuation, writes the bereaved father. And it is this Jew who is the greatest political Zionist after Herzl.
Reminiscences in Hertzberg (1937)
We Jews got the Balfour Declaration quite unexpectedly, or in other words, we are the greatest war profiteers. We never dreamed of the Balfour Declaration; to be quite frank, it came to us overnight. But--"What you have inherited from your father you must earn it anew to really possess it!" (Goethe) The Balfour Declaration of 1917 was built on air, and a foundation had to be laid for it through years of exacting work; every day and every hour of these last ten years, when opening the newspapers, I thought: Whence will the next blow come? I trembled lest the British Government would call me and ask: "Tell us, what is this Zionist Organization? Where are they, your Zionists?" For these people think in terms different from ours. The Jews, they knew, were against us; we stood alone on a little island, a tiny group of Jews with a foreign past.
David Ben-Gurion was a founder of the Histadrut and the first prime minister of Israel.
The Imperatives of the Jewish Revolution (1944) in Hertzberg
.... The separatist tendency that has manifested itself in our land uses the empty phrase "of proletarian origin" as its slogan. This doctrine is totally foreign to the spirit and essence of the Jewish revolution. Not the origin but the mission, not "whence" but "whither," is what will decide the fate of our revolution. The Jewish people is not a proletarian people and there are no sons of the proletariat to assure the success of its revolution. The mission of the Jewish revolution is to transform the Jewish people into a laboring people....
Zionism Needs a Living Content (1914) in Hertzberg
In its initial stage, Zionism was conceived by its pioneers as a movement wholly depending on mechanical factors: there is a country which happens to be called Palestine, a country without a people, and, on the other hand, there exists the Jewish people, and it has no country. What else is necessary, then, than to fit the gem into the ring, to unite this people with this country. The owners of the country must, therefore, be persuaded and convinced that this marriage is advantageous, not only for the people and for the country, but also for themselves. On this basis grew Zionism. First, we must sell many shekalim to show the Turks how strong we are, in the meantime, the leaders will discuss the question of the marriage....
It is the Zionists' good fortune that they are considered mad; if we were normal, we would not think of going to Palestine, but stay put, like all normal people. Who does not believe in taking a hard road and thinks that a dangerous road should not be taken had better stay at home. With fear and timidity the permanent home of the nation cannot be established. Never has a people freed itself by profitable investments, but by energy and sacrifice. And we Jews have not made many sacrifices yet, and that is why we own only 2 per cent of the Palestinian soil.
What value there is in real sacrifice, the example of a Jew from Kiev will show you; his name is Barski. One of his sons, a worker, was killed on Palestinian soil, at Degania; the bereaved father writes a letter of comfort to the workers in Palestine and send his second son into this most dangerous life to take the place of the fallen one. This is the continuation, writes the bereaved father. And it is this Jew who is the greatest political Zionist after Herzl.
Reminiscences in Hertzberg (1937)
We Jews got the Balfour Declaration quite unexpectedly, or in other words, we are the greatest war profiteers. We never dreamed of the Balfour Declaration; to be quite frank, it came to us overnight. But--"What you have inherited from your father you must earn it anew to really possess it!" (Goethe) The Balfour Declaration of 1917 was built on air, and a foundation had to be laid for it through years of exacting work; every day and every hour of these last ten years, when opening the newspapers, I thought: Whence will the next blow come? I trembled lest the British Government would call me and ask: "Tell us, what is this Zionist Organization? Where are they, your Zionists?" For these people think in terms different from ours. The Jews, they knew, were against us; we stood alone on a little island, a tiny group of Jews with a foreign past.
David Ben-Gurion was a founder of the Histadrut and the first prime minister of Israel.
The Imperatives of the Jewish Revolution (1944) in Hertzberg
.... The separatist tendency that has manifested itself in our land uses the empty phrase "of proletarian origin" as its slogan. This doctrine is totally foreign to the spirit and essence of the Jewish revolution. Not the origin but the mission, not "whence" but "whither," is what will decide the fate of our revolution. The Jewish people is not a proletarian people and there are no sons of the proletariat to assure the success of its revolution. The mission of the Jewish revolution is to transform the Jewish people into a laboring people....
What do these early
Zionists have in common? They all blame the victim. They agree that
the cause of anti-Semitism is the lack of a Jewish state. Herzl also
mentions other material causes, but he comes around to that one. He
and Pinsker clearly assert that Jews bring anti-Semitism with them
wherever they go. Let's point out that anti-Semitism of the sort they
were dealing with was a purely European phenomenon. Algeria was
mentioned, but it was a French colony. Europeans exported it to some
of their colonies. But this skewed European focus obscures the fact
that there was nothing like that phenomenon anywhere else, including
in the Turkish, Arab, and Persian countries of the Middle East, even
though there were very sizable Jewish populations in those countries.
Second, they all agree that there is something called a Jewish people
with origins in Palestine even though Pinsker states quite well the
reasons that no such entity existed.
On this point, I refer
you to the excellent book, The Invention of
the Jewish People (2009) by Shlomo Sand, who
is a professor of history at the University of Tel Aviv. Sand's
entirely scholarly and well-sourced book shows that the vast majority
of modern Jews descend from converts and that the mostly likely
concentration of descendants of the ancient Hebrews who lived in
ancient Israel is precisely among the modern Palestinians who first
became Christians and then Muslims under foreign conquest. Thus
political Zionism (we use that term to distinguish this largely
secular movement from religious Zionism which prophesies the return
of Jews to Palestine along with a messiah) is founded on at least two
premises easily shown to be false. Further, political Zionism, which
these writings clearly demonstrate grew in the same soil as
non-Jewish anti-Semitism, xenophobic nationalism, and fascism which
culminated in the slaughters of Jews, Gypsies, leftists, homosexuals,
and many others during World War II, incorporated some of the same
ideas into their ideology. The anti-Semites said that Jews did not
belong in their home countries. The Zionists agreed with them. The
anti-Semites promoted stereotypes about Jewish behavior; the Zionists
said that there is truth to the stereotypes because Jews do not have
their own nation.
The testimony of these
early Zionists confirms that the vast majority of Jews rejected their
ideas and their project to colonize Palestine. They were considered
crazy kooks. Why would a self-respecting Jew embrace an ideology
which teaches her or him to hate him or herself and blames her or him
for the acts of anti-Semites? Why would a self-loving Jew agree to
leave instead of to fight? That is why I indict political Zionism as
a form of racial discrimination as the United Nations once held; it
is racism first and foremost against Jews. The project of the Zionist
movement, which was to create an apartheid state in Palestine, leads
to the second expression of racial discrimination, which aimed to
remove the indigenous inhabitants of Palestine using a variety of
actions which are clearly war crimes. The best book on that is Ilan
Pappé's The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine.
Pappé is another Israeli historian. There are many, many books on
these subjects, but I will recommend one more if you can find it.
Abram Leon, a Polish Jew who died in Auschwitz in 1944, wrote an
excellent study, The Jewish Question: A
Marxist Interpretation. Leon presented some
of the same material that Sand presents on Jewish history, but he
also shows that anti-Semitism was a specifically European phenomenon
derived from the role that Jewish moneylenders played under feudalism
and then magnified by the collapse of feudalism in Eastern
Europe.
So, the next time that a Zionist defender of Israel makes the anti-Semite or self-hating Jew attack, I counsel him or her to look inward. To be sure, there are still lots of non-Jewish anti-Semites in the world, but some of them are allies of Israel. Consider the Argentinian regime which tortured Jacobo Timerman and was armed by Israel. And consider the contemporary alliances—in the age of Trump—of Israel and some of its supporters with the extreme right, including white and Christian supremacists, and neo-Nazis.
Zionism is now a much more immediate threat to Jews and to the world than non-Jewish anti-Semitism. Just as African-Americans had to confront those who internalized racism, Jews have to confront Zionists and challenge all of the historically inaccurate and morally decrepit elements of their ideology. And this is not only the responsibility of Jews but of all interested in justice, peace, and world survival.
The Anti-Jewish State: Introduction
For some time, I have been working on a book with the working title, The Anti-Jewish State. I have decided to start posting here so that it is available even if I never finish it. This first post is the Introduction. Most of Chapter 1 is in another blog, but I'll repost it in the next post.
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The Anti-Jewish State
By Steve Goldfield
Introduction
From the title, you might think I am
writing about Saudi Arabia or ISIS, but this is a book about the
anti-Jewish nature of the state of Israel. My ideas have developed on
this topic over the more than 40 years I have studied, written, and
acted on the conflict between Palestinians and the Jewish settlers who
conquered their homeland. One of my early influences was Abram Leon,
a Polish Jew who died in Auschwitz after writing a book called The
Jewish Question. Leon introduced the material basis for European
anti-Semitism, the specific role that Jewish moneylenders and
peddlers (not all Jews were peddlers and moneylenders, but Christians
were not allowed to lend money) played under feudalism. European
nobles would organize pogroms to drive out moneylenders so that they
would not have to repay loans. It was in the anti-Semitic environment
of 19th century Europe that political Zionism started and
grew. I read Arthur Hertzberg's collection of early Zionist writings
and saw that many of these Zionist writers internalized the
anti-Semitism of their environment. I have to thank Stephen Pinker
for bringing me this realization. I read Pinker's book, The Blank
Slate, in the hope that I would learn something about how the
human brain works. There's a bit of that at the beginning, but then
Pinker uses his scientific notions to promote ridiculous, mostly
conservative, ideas which do not at all follow from his discussion of
the brain. One of those concerned the Zionist “pioneers” who came
to Palestine. I Emailed Pinker to challenge what he said. He replied,
and I commented on his reply that these pioneers had developed their
ideas in the hotbed of anti-Semitic Europe and that their ideas were
totally imbued with that racism.
The early Zionists agreed with
anti-Semites who said that Jews did not belong in Europe. When some
Zionists called me a self-hating Jew, they started me thinking about
who really embodies self-hatred. An early book which revealed what
nonsense that was was The New Anti-Semitism in America by Ruth
and Nathan Perlmutter. They argued that to oppose US policy in
Central America was anti-Semitic because it hurt Israel. They also
said that they preferred to ally themselves with the religious right
because the right to choose is less important than is Israel. Nathan
Perlmutter had been a high official in the Anti-Defamation Committee
of B'nai B'rith. You can see this position promoted strongly by Israel and its supporters who are passing laws to define criticism and boycott of Israel as anti-Semitic.
The fundamental evidence of racism in
Zionism, however, is its central premise. What does it mean to tell a
Jew that he or she does not belong in the country of their birth,
that to fulfill themselves as a human being they have to go to
another country. That is a very pure form of racism, and it is
precisely analogous to what many Israelis openly say to Palestinians,
especially in recent years.
I read and met (and sometimes
interviewed) earlier anti-Zionist Jews such as Rabbi Elmer Berger and
Alfred Lilienthal (who described himself as a Wilkie Republican), and
they inspired me, too. I also met many anti-Zionist Israelis, but it
was the many Palestinians I met and worked with who inspired me even
more to get to the bottom of the issue. I read books by Palestinians,
Israelis, and many others. I published a book entitled Garrison
State: Israel's Role in US Foreign Policy at a time when Israel
was very active in Central and South America, in Africa, and in Asia.
I also published a paper on Israel's close ties with apartheid South
Africa in a scholarly journal. It was to be the first chapter of a
book I planned to write, but I was never able to complete that.
I began this journey in about 1970 when
I began working against apartheid in South Africa. I had just joined
a small organization with the name Liberation Support Movement. As a
chemistry graduate student at UC Berkeley, I was invited to a meeting
of the Organization of Arab Students, at which the members debated
whether to be politically active or just be a social organization.
The friend who invited me had met me at the antiapartheid committee
at Cal. The OAS voted 2 to 1 for activism. Not long after that, when I
was working in an anti-imperialist coalition in the San Francisco Bay
Area, I had a meeting with one of their Palestinian leaders, who told
me that they had decided to work with Americans. They asked us to
make one small change in our unity statement, which we did, and they
joined our coalition. Ironically, in the late 1970s, local
Palestinians had decided to focus on their own community, but in
1981, they said they were ready to work with Americans again. That
led to the November 29th Committee which morphed into the
Palestine Solidarity Committee. That start in 1970 began decades of
political work on my part. At first, I worked on Iran and the
revolution in Oman, and I had to educate myself about those countries
and eventually the entire Arabian peninsula and the region. The same
was true of Southern Africa and Guiné Bissau and later East Timor. I
remember writing, with an Iranian friend, an article in late 1978
which predicted that the days of the Shah were numbered. In fact, we
were very surprised to be proven right so soon.
In 1978, I spent 3 months in southern
Africa in Tanzania, Zambia, and Mozambique. It was in Mozambique that
I first met Johnny Makatini, head of international affairs for the
ANC. I interviewed him in Geneva in 1983 at the UN International
Conference on the Question of Palestine. I did many other interviews,
including one with Edward Said. I remember pointing out to Johnny
that speaking out against Israel would cost some support in the
United States. He was offended. He said that Palestine was a matter
of principle for South Africans since Israel and South Africa shared
apartheid systems as well as being very close allies. Another South
African who influenced me a lot was Fred Dube, also an ANC member,
and a professor of psychology. He lost his teaching position in New
York because he devoted half of one lecture in a class on racism with
20 lectures to a discussion of Zionism. Fred clarified for me how
arbitrary race definitions are. They can be total nonsense—as they
were in South Africa—but they can still be enforced and shape a
society. That made clear how Israel could be a classic racist state.
Meanwhile, under very heavy US pressure, the United Nations General Assembly repealed its
resolution that Zionism was a form of racism. I have always
considered that one of the great intellectual crimes of the 20th
century.
Much of this was published in a
newspaper that I coedited with the Palestine Solidary Committee,
Palestine Focus. Three of the interviews that I did in Geneva,
including the one with Johnny Makatini of the ANC, were also printed
at the end of my book, Garrison State.
So, I have these influences and
experiences and I am an incurable intellectual, which just means that
I am always thinking about things. This led me to reconsider the
nature of Zionism and Israel. I wrote a blog about Zionism, in which
I concluded that it is profoundly anti-Jewish. Since Israel is
founded on and imbued with political Zionism, that means that Israel
is very anti-Jewish, too. That is how I got to the point where I
decided to write this book.
Friday, January 18, 2019
Fake News and Propaganda
In the last few years, the phrase "fake news" has become very common and is used by both the right, the left, and those in between. Another term, "propaganda," has been in use for much longer as a synonym, although these are not synonyms. Propaganda derives from the word propagate, and what it actually means is simply material developed to spread a point of view. In other words, it is neutral. Propaganda can be developed to educate honestly and to spread real facts. I often heard the word used in that sense by organizations describing their published materials. However, in wider usage, it came to acquire a connotation similar to fake news.
I have lived in the USA now for 72 years, and I've seen lots of fake propaganda. I was very young during the fake propaganda of the McCarthy period. Anybody with any direct experience of the Communist Party USA (and I have had a lot) knows that they never plotted the overthrow of the US government. In its period of most strength in the 1930s and early 1940s, it focused its efforts on labor organizing and civil rights. After that, it was a much smaller organization with similar priorities and absolutely no threat to any government. Yet US government propaganda continued to portray it as a dangerous enemy for a long time. They jailed and blacklisted many communists, and they tried to purge them from the labor movement. There was also tremendous, and often false or inaccurate, US propaganda against the Soviet Union.
In the 1960s, we saw massive US propaganda to "justify" the war in Vietnam. Lyndon Johnson's phony Gulf of Tonkin incident was used as a pretext to send hundreds of thousands of US troops to try to bolster the corrupt and undemocratic government of South Vietnam. People my age will vividly remember the so-called Domino Theory, by which the loss of Vietnam would lead to the spread of communism to neighboring countries. Ironically, it was precisely US intervention which accomplished that.
The state of Israel is a very active purveyor of what they call Hasbara, which is Hebrew for phony propaganda. Israel portrays itself as a peace-loving, honorable, democratic state when it initiated all but one of its wars (1973), rejected countless peace offers from its neighbors and from the Palestinians, engages in systematic torture and genocide, and denies full democratic and political rights even to Palestinians who hold Israeli citizenship, let alone those who live under the jackboot of Israeli occupation. As Israel's political mainstream as moved to the ultra-right, it teaches its children that Palestinians are foreigners who must be driven out of all of Palestine or simply exterminated. I could go on at much greater length about Israeli propaganda and falsification of Jewish history, but that is for another time.
My main point is that in my 72 years I have learned to question propaganda, to investigate its claims, and to refute it when it proves to be false. I'm sure I have been taken in at times, too, but refusing to be swayed by false propaganda is essential to critical thinking and critical thinking is essential to that refusal. In the present period there are many blatant examples of false propaganda or fake news. The US (and Israeli and Saudi) claims about Iran are largely false. It is not a very significant actor outside its borders, whether in Syria or Yemen. It is not a threat to anyone other than its own citizens. Nicaragua is also not a threat, nor is Venezuela or Cuba. All those countries have functioning institutions of democracy. Most of what passes for news about those countries in the United States is demonstrably false. The contemporary major purveyors of this false propaganda include John Bolton, Mike Pompeo, Mike Pence, and Trump himself, but we also hear this fakery from the major media and from many Democrats. Exactly the same is true about the so-called threat to our southern border, which is demonstrably non-existent.
I would be remiss if I only discussed US government and media propaganda. Since the 2014 uprising in Ukraine and the illegal Russian annexation of Crimea and invasion of Eastern Ukraine, there has been massive and incessant Russian propaganda about Ukraine, which invents a fascist threat (Ukrainian fascists are a tiny percentage of the population as demonstrated by their ability to only get 3.1 percent of the votes in the last election, far less than in Poland, Hungary, France, Austria, Sweden, or in Russia itself). There is a very good Ukrainian website called Stop Fake, which investigates this wide stream of propaganda and exposes its lies. Many leftist commentators have been taken in by those lies.
As citizens, we have a responsibility to educate ourselves and learn enough to expose all this phony propaganda. What did we learn from George W. Bush's blatant lies about weapons of mass destruction and Iraqi involvement in the September 11, 2001 attacks which led us into a destructive and dangerous war in Iraq? That experience ought to have taught us to be skeptical, to investigate our government's claims. But has it? The most important phony propaganda is that which targets us right now, propaganda intended to justify an unnecessary war against Iran or a totally unwarranted coup in Venezuela. The time for skepticism and critical thinking is always right now.
I have lived in the USA now for 72 years, and I've seen lots of fake propaganda. I was very young during the fake propaganda of the McCarthy period. Anybody with any direct experience of the Communist Party USA (and I have had a lot) knows that they never plotted the overthrow of the US government. In its period of most strength in the 1930s and early 1940s, it focused its efforts on labor organizing and civil rights. After that, it was a much smaller organization with similar priorities and absolutely no threat to any government. Yet US government propaganda continued to portray it as a dangerous enemy for a long time. They jailed and blacklisted many communists, and they tried to purge them from the labor movement. There was also tremendous, and often false or inaccurate, US propaganda against the Soviet Union.
In the 1960s, we saw massive US propaganda to "justify" the war in Vietnam. Lyndon Johnson's phony Gulf of Tonkin incident was used as a pretext to send hundreds of thousands of US troops to try to bolster the corrupt and undemocratic government of South Vietnam. People my age will vividly remember the so-called Domino Theory, by which the loss of Vietnam would lead to the spread of communism to neighboring countries. Ironically, it was precisely US intervention which accomplished that.
The state of Israel is a very active purveyor of what they call Hasbara, which is Hebrew for phony propaganda. Israel portrays itself as a peace-loving, honorable, democratic state when it initiated all but one of its wars (1973), rejected countless peace offers from its neighbors and from the Palestinians, engages in systematic torture and genocide, and denies full democratic and political rights even to Palestinians who hold Israeli citizenship, let alone those who live under the jackboot of Israeli occupation. As Israel's political mainstream as moved to the ultra-right, it teaches its children that Palestinians are foreigners who must be driven out of all of Palestine or simply exterminated. I could go on at much greater length about Israeli propaganda and falsification of Jewish history, but that is for another time.
My main point is that in my 72 years I have learned to question propaganda, to investigate its claims, and to refute it when it proves to be false. I'm sure I have been taken in at times, too, but refusing to be swayed by false propaganda is essential to critical thinking and critical thinking is essential to that refusal. In the present period there are many blatant examples of false propaganda or fake news. The US (and Israeli and Saudi) claims about Iran are largely false. It is not a very significant actor outside its borders, whether in Syria or Yemen. It is not a threat to anyone other than its own citizens. Nicaragua is also not a threat, nor is Venezuela or Cuba. All those countries have functioning institutions of democracy. Most of what passes for news about those countries in the United States is demonstrably false. The contemporary major purveyors of this false propaganda include John Bolton, Mike Pompeo, Mike Pence, and Trump himself, but we also hear this fakery from the major media and from many Democrats. Exactly the same is true about the so-called threat to our southern border, which is demonstrably non-existent.
I would be remiss if I only discussed US government and media propaganda. Since the 2014 uprising in Ukraine and the illegal Russian annexation of Crimea and invasion of Eastern Ukraine, there has been massive and incessant Russian propaganda about Ukraine, which invents a fascist threat (Ukrainian fascists are a tiny percentage of the population as demonstrated by their ability to only get 3.1 percent of the votes in the last election, far less than in Poland, Hungary, France, Austria, Sweden, or in Russia itself). There is a very good Ukrainian website called Stop Fake, which investigates this wide stream of propaganda and exposes its lies. Many leftist commentators have been taken in by those lies.
As citizens, we have a responsibility to educate ourselves and learn enough to expose all this phony propaganda. What did we learn from George W. Bush's blatant lies about weapons of mass destruction and Iraqi involvement in the September 11, 2001 attacks which led us into a destructive and dangerous war in Iraq? That experience ought to have taught us to be skeptical, to investigate our government's claims. But has it? The most important phony propaganda is that which targets us right now, propaganda intended to justify an unnecessary war against Iran or a totally unwarranted coup in Venezuela. The time for skepticism and critical thinking is always right now.
Thursday, November 29, 2018
Brief Primer on the Arabian Peninsula and Iran
To understand the war in Yemen and Saudi Arabia requires at least some knowledge of the history of that region, knowledge that I doubt is shared by very many people. Thus I am writing this piece to help plug those holes. I'm not going to write a long volume. I'm going to skip over a lot. But I will try to cover the essential knowledge that you need to understand recent and current events. I have been studying and writing about this region since the early 1970s when I became active in supporting a revolutionary movement in Oman, and I spent a week in February 1979 in a country which no longer exists, the People's Democratic Republic of Yemen, around its capital of Aden.
The Arabian Peninsula is on a separate geological plate which pushed up against Europe and Asia. You can read more about it and its four regions, the Hijaz, the Najd, the Hadhramaut, and Eastern Arabia at this link wikipedia. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arabian_Peninsula Suffice it to say that the Najd is a central plateau which is fertile and used mainly for grazing herd animals. There are some very large deserts, the Nefud, which borders on the Syrian desert, and the Empty Quarter in the south. Between them is the Dahna. The Hijaz on the western edge next to the Red Sea and the southern edge is mountainous. The highest mountains are as high as the Sierra and Rocky Mountains are are in Yemen. Most of the rainfall on the peninsula falls in the Hijaz, and, for that reason, most of the population has always lived there. This is one of the ancient coffee growing areas, and one of Yemen's ports is Mocha. If you have heard of the queen of Sheba (Saba), she ruled over the mountains of Yemen. On the east, near the Gulf, there are oases and marshes.
We know that when the human species first left Africa many tens of thousands of years ago, our ancestors crossed what is now the Red Sea, perhaps on a land bridge to the north, and spread in all directions. The Arabian Peninsula was probably one of the early places where they settled. The Hijaz played a very important role in the beginnings of Islam. Mecca and Medina are there, for example. In the time of the prophet Mohamed, his people were, in his view, very licentious with heavy drinking and polygamy. His movement reacted against those practices and eventually prevailed based on the book of his teachings, the Koran. Mohamed acknowledged that he borrowed a lot from Judaism and Christianity and taught his followers to respect the people of the book, as he called them. The origin of the Sunni/Shi'a split was also in the Hijaz. When Mohamed died, there was a dispute over who would become the new religious leader. The Shi'a followed Mohamed's nephew and son-in-law, Ali, who was the governor of Yemen. The Sunni chose other leaders. Yemen has always been predomimnantly Shi'a since then. Islam and the Arabic language spread mainly through conquest into north Africa and the eastern Mediterranean. Islam, but not Arabic, spread into Turkey. The same happened in Persia, now Iran, which is almost entirely Shi'a. Islam grew into a political as well as a religious system with a Caliphate ruled from Turkey. That became the Ottoman empire. The Ottoman empire, which was Sunni, controlled most of the Arabian Peninsula until the end of World War I with some important exceptions. The British colonized southern Yemen in 1728 and build a huge seaport and naval base in Aden. With Singapore and Gibraltar, it was one of their main bases. Of course, Islam spread into Europe as well, notably in Spain, Albania, and part of Bulgaria.
During World I, the British signed two treaties. One was public, the Hussein-McMahon treaty, by which Britain promised independence to the Arabs if they fought with them against Germany. The other was the secret Sykes-Picot treaty in which Britain and France decided to divide up the Arab countries according to where each of them had built railroad lines. When the Bolsheviks came to power in 1917, they found the Sykes-Picot treaty in the Czar's archives and published it. At first, the British and French denied it. After World War I, Britain took Palestine, Jordan, and Iraq while France took Lebanon and Syria. Starting in 1918 and until 1935, ibn Saud conquered what became Saudi Arabia and became its king. He was ruthless and slaughtered many men and took their women and herd animals. He also took the town of Najran at the foot on the mountains from Yemen. When he took Mecca, the traditional rulers, the Hashemites, were driven out and Britain gave them Jordan and Iraq as kingdoms.
The northern part of Yemen was ruled by a very backward Imam. Southern Yemen remained a British colony. To the east of Yemen along the coast is Oman. Oman had a huge shipping empire which reached down to Zanzibar and across the Indian Ocean. It was ruled by a sultan and divided between his two sons in 1854, one in what is now Oman and one in Zanzibar. British steamships eventually displayed Omani shipping. On the Gulf coast, there were numerous fairly democratic settlements which made their living by diving for pearls and by piracy. These settlements grew into Kuwait, Bahrain, Qatar, and six smaller emirates. The British wanted to stop the piracy and used its military force to impose treaties. Those were called truces, and the six emirates were known as the Trucial States. In exchange for stopping piracy, the British promised to maintain those in rule at the time. The six emirates later merged into the United Arab Emirates. In Kuwait, as in Saudi Arabia and Iran, tremendous oil fields were discovered. Much later oil was also discovered in Oman and Yemen. The British controlled Iran and formed the Anglo-Iranian Petroleum Company to exploit its oil. The British government owned the company, and the profits went into the British treasury. The British were not interested in Saudi oil, and an American named William D'Arcy arrived in the 1930s and arranged deals between ibn Saud and three American oil companies. Another American oil company later got the franchise in Kuwait. The traditional ibn Saud had modest needs and was paid about $1 million a year to support his port.
During World War II, the Germans blockaded oil exports from the Gulf. The US government wanted to subsidize ibn Saud until oil revenues could resume, but they were too embarrassed to fund a monarch directly. So, they gave the money to Britain which gave it to him. Meanwhile, the British deposed the Shah in Iran because he was pro-German, and a democratic government emerged in Iran. In 1953, the progressive but not communist prime minister Mohamed Mossadegh was elected, and he nationalized Iran's oil. Britain did not have the military strength to prevent that so the British asked Eisenhower's Secretary of State John Foster Dulles to help overthrow Mossadegh. Dulles' brother Allen, who was CIA director sent Kermit Roosevelt (grandson of Theodore) to Iran to organize a coup. Roosevelt hired thugs to riot against Mossadegh and cultivated ties with the Iranian military. His first attempt failed, and he was told to give up. He ignored those orders and made a second attempt, which succeeded. In place of the formerly democratic government, he installed the son of the Shah who had been deposed. He ruled with a very heavy hand until he was overthrown in 1979.
Also in 1953, ibn Saud, the founder of Saudi Arabia, died. His successor, one of his sons, decided to follow Mossadegh's example and announced that he was going to nationalize Saudi oil. Under pressure from the US government, his family had him deposed and installed a new king. In 1957, Omanis launched a revolution against the sultan on a mountain in the north of the country. Initially, those rebels had Saudi support because there was oil on the Saudi-Omani border. But in 1958, the King of Iraq was overthrown and replaced by a secular Ba'athist government. About a decade later, Saddam Hussein seized control of Iraq. The Saudis no longer wanted to support an anti-royalist movement in Oman, and that rebellion collapsed in 1959. In 1962, Yemeni military officers deposed the Imam and declared a republic. The Saudis gave support to the Imam's descendants, and Egyptian president Nasser supported the new republic. The Saud family was so unpopular in their own country that some Saudi air force pilots defected and flew their planes to Cairo. Indeed, the Sauds did not trust their own army and had to form another force to defend the royal family. A civil war was fought in northern Yemen until 1967 when Israel destroyed the Egyptian air force on the ground. Meanwhile, in the south of Yemen, former oil workers and the Yemeni army revolted against the British and forced them to withdraw in 1967. At this point, the British had built a huge oil refinery in Aden in response to Mossadegh. Just as the People's Democratic Republic of Yemen got its independence, Israel closed the Suez Canal which cut into Yemeni port revenue and the British reneged on a $50 million grant they had pledged to give. The PDRY declared itself a socialist country and had strong ties to the USSR and China.
Another more leftist revolution started in southern Oman's mountains adjacent to south Yemen. The Shah of Iran sent troops to help the sultan defeat them.
In February 1979, the Shah was overthrown, and the Islamic Republic was declared. The two Yemens engaged in armed border conflicts but, eventually, they merged into one republic. The Saudis continued to interfere and dominate Yemen.
That is the background to the present conflict. Iran plays a very minor role in Yemen, and that is used by the Saudis as a pretext for their brutal attempt to reimpose their control over Yemen. There is no Iranian threat in the region, though Iran also has ties to Syria and to Hezbolleh, which is the Shi'a party in Lebanon. Yemenis are fighting against Saudi control, and the Saudis are bombing them to death with no regard for the massive human suffering this is causing. The US government has been aiding the Saudis with weapons, intelligence, and other forms of support and ignoring the reign of terror the Saudis have imposed on Yemen.
The Arabian Peninsula is on a separate geological plate which pushed up against Europe and Asia. You can read more about it and its four regions, the Hijaz, the Najd, the Hadhramaut, and Eastern Arabia at this link wikipedia. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arabian_Peninsula Suffice it to say that the Najd is a central plateau which is fertile and used mainly for grazing herd animals. There are some very large deserts, the Nefud, which borders on the Syrian desert, and the Empty Quarter in the south. Between them is the Dahna. The Hijaz on the western edge next to the Red Sea and the southern edge is mountainous. The highest mountains are as high as the Sierra and Rocky Mountains are are in Yemen. Most of the rainfall on the peninsula falls in the Hijaz, and, for that reason, most of the population has always lived there. This is one of the ancient coffee growing areas, and one of Yemen's ports is Mocha. If you have heard of the queen of Sheba (Saba), she ruled over the mountains of Yemen. On the east, near the Gulf, there are oases and marshes.
We know that when the human species first left Africa many tens of thousands of years ago, our ancestors crossed what is now the Red Sea, perhaps on a land bridge to the north, and spread in all directions. The Arabian Peninsula was probably one of the early places where they settled. The Hijaz played a very important role in the beginnings of Islam. Mecca and Medina are there, for example. In the time of the prophet Mohamed, his people were, in his view, very licentious with heavy drinking and polygamy. His movement reacted against those practices and eventually prevailed based on the book of his teachings, the Koran. Mohamed acknowledged that he borrowed a lot from Judaism and Christianity and taught his followers to respect the people of the book, as he called them. The origin of the Sunni/Shi'a split was also in the Hijaz. When Mohamed died, there was a dispute over who would become the new religious leader. The Shi'a followed Mohamed's nephew and son-in-law, Ali, who was the governor of Yemen. The Sunni chose other leaders. Yemen has always been predomimnantly Shi'a since then. Islam and the Arabic language spread mainly through conquest into north Africa and the eastern Mediterranean. Islam, but not Arabic, spread into Turkey. The same happened in Persia, now Iran, which is almost entirely Shi'a. Islam grew into a political as well as a religious system with a Caliphate ruled from Turkey. That became the Ottoman empire. The Ottoman empire, which was Sunni, controlled most of the Arabian Peninsula until the end of World War I with some important exceptions. The British colonized southern Yemen in 1728 and build a huge seaport and naval base in Aden. With Singapore and Gibraltar, it was one of their main bases. Of course, Islam spread into Europe as well, notably in Spain, Albania, and part of Bulgaria.
During World I, the British signed two treaties. One was public, the Hussein-McMahon treaty, by which Britain promised independence to the Arabs if they fought with them against Germany. The other was the secret Sykes-Picot treaty in which Britain and France decided to divide up the Arab countries according to where each of them had built railroad lines. When the Bolsheviks came to power in 1917, they found the Sykes-Picot treaty in the Czar's archives and published it. At first, the British and French denied it. After World War I, Britain took Palestine, Jordan, and Iraq while France took Lebanon and Syria. Starting in 1918 and until 1935, ibn Saud conquered what became Saudi Arabia and became its king. He was ruthless and slaughtered many men and took their women and herd animals. He also took the town of Najran at the foot on the mountains from Yemen. When he took Mecca, the traditional rulers, the Hashemites, were driven out and Britain gave them Jordan and Iraq as kingdoms.
The northern part of Yemen was ruled by a very backward Imam. Southern Yemen remained a British colony. To the east of Yemen along the coast is Oman. Oman had a huge shipping empire which reached down to Zanzibar and across the Indian Ocean. It was ruled by a sultan and divided between his two sons in 1854, one in what is now Oman and one in Zanzibar. British steamships eventually displayed Omani shipping. On the Gulf coast, there were numerous fairly democratic settlements which made their living by diving for pearls and by piracy. These settlements grew into Kuwait, Bahrain, Qatar, and six smaller emirates. The British wanted to stop the piracy and used its military force to impose treaties. Those were called truces, and the six emirates were known as the Trucial States. In exchange for stopping piracy, the British promised to maintain those in rule at the time. The six emirates later merged into the United Arab Emirates. In Kuwait, as in Saudi Arabia and Iran, tremendous oil fields were discovered. Much later oil was also discovered in Oman and Yemen. The British controlled Iran and formed the Anglo-Iranian Petroleum Company to exploit its oil. The British government owned the company, and the profits went into the British treasury. The British were not interested in Saudi oil, and an American named William D'Arcy arrived in the 1930s and arranged deals between ibn Saud and three American oil companies. Another American oil company later got the franchise in Kuwait. The traditional ibn Saud had modest needs and was paid about $1 million a year to support his port.
During World War II, the Germans blockaded oil exports from the Gulf. The US government wanted to subsidize ibn Saud until oil revenues could resume, but they were too embarrassed to fund a monarch directly. So, they gave the money to Britain which gave it to him. Meanwhile, the British deposed the Shah in Iran because he was pro-German, and a democratic government emerged in Iran. In 1953, the progressive but not communist prime minister Mohamed Mossadegh was elected, and he nationalized Iran's oil. Britain did not have the military strength to prevent that so the British asked Eisenhower's Secretary of State John Foster Dulles to help overthrow Mossadegh. Dulles' brother Allen, who was CIA director sent Kermit Roosevelt (grandson of Theodore) to Iran to organize a coup. Roosevelt hired thugs to riot against Mossadegh and cultivated ties with the Iranian military. His first attempt failed, and he was told to give up. He ignored those orders and made a second attempt, which succeeded. In place of the formerly democratic government, he installed the son of the Shah who had been deposed. He ruled with a very heavy hand until he was overthrown in 1979.
Also in 1953, ibn Saud, the founder of Saudi Arabia, died. His successor, one of his sons, decided to follow Mossadegh's example and announced that he was going to nationalize Saudi oil. Under pressure from the US government, his family had him deposed and installed a new king. In 1957, Omanis launched a revolution against the sultan on a mountain in the north of the country. Initially, those rebels had Saudi support because there was oil on the Saudi-Omani border. But in 1958, the King of Iraq was overthrown and replaced by a secular Ba'athist government. About a decade later, Saddam Hussein seized control of Iraq. The Saudis no longer wanted to support an anti-royalist movement in Oman, and that rebellion collapsed in 1959. In 1962, Yemeni military officers deposed the Imam and declared a republic. The Saudis gave support to the Imam's descendants, and Egyptian president Nasser supported the new republic. The Saud family was so unpopular in their own country that some Saudi air force pilots defected and flew their planes to Cairo. Indeed, the Sauds did not trust their own army and had to form another force to defend the royal family. A civil war was fought in northern Yemen until 1967 when Israel destroyed the Egyptian air force on the ground. Meanwhile, in the south of Yemen, former oil workers and the Yemeni army revolted against the British and forced them to withdraw in 1967. At this point, the British had built a huge oil refinery in Aden in response to Mossadegh. Just as the People's Democratic Republic of Yemen got its independence, Israel closed the Suez Canal which cut into Yemeni port revenue and the British reneged on a $50 million grant they had pledged to give. The PDRY declared itself a socialist country and had strong ties to the USSR and China.
Another more leftist revolution started in southern Oman's mountains adjacent to south Yemen. The Shah of Iran sent troops to help the sultan defeat them.
In February 1979, the Shah was overthrown, and the Islamic Republic was declared. The two Yemens engaged in armed border conflicts but, eventually, they merged into one republic. The Saudis continued to interfere and dominate Yemen.
That is the background to the present conflict. Iran plays a very minor role in Yemen, and that is used by the Saudis as a pretext for their brutal attempt to reimpose their control over Yemen. There is no Iranian threat in the region, though Iran also has ties to Syria and to Hezbolleh, which is the Shi'a party in Lebanon. Yemenis are fighting against Saudi control, and the Saudis are bombing them to death with no regard for the massive human suffering this is causing. The US government has been aiding the Saudis with weapons, intelligence, and other forms of support and ignoring the reign of terror the Saudis have imposed on Yemen.
Friday, November 9, 2018
The Anti-Semitic Nature of Attempts to Outlaw BDS and Criticism of Israel in the USA
As a Jew, I have written on this subject before, but after watching the four-part Al Jazeera film on the pro-Israel lobby in the USA, censored under pressure by AIPAC because it exposes their abhorrent methods and objectives, I feel a need to go much deeper. Many Jews, and I am one, have never supported political Zionism or the claim that Israel is a "state of the Jewish people" and, therefore, our state just as many people of European descent never accepted slavery, Jim Crow, and segregation in the USA or apartheid in South Africa. I have blogged elsewhere (and Israeli history professor Shlomo Sand has published an entire book) on the easily disproven myth that there is such an entity as "The Jewish People." Jews are composed of many disparate groups, often with little in common. As a Jew, I lay claim to an absolute right to oppose political Zionism, which is a blatant form of anti-Semitism because it totally incorporates the position of European anti-Semites that Jews do not belong in the countries where they were born. Zionism is thus fundamentally anti-Jewish, and Israel is equally anti-Jewish because political Zionism is the root ideology of Israel. For any one to pass a law making it illegal to question the right of Israel to exist or to oppose Israeli apartheid is to try to deny me (and others) the right to fight back against this pernicious attack on us as Jews, especially when it comes from other Jews. All the same arguments affirm our right to speak out for Palestinian human, civil, and democratic rights in all of historic Palestine. And they affirm our right to participate in and promote the non-violent BDS movement for boycott, divestment, and sanctions against Israeli apartheid and settler colonialism. I call out those behind these ridiculous attempts to redefine anti-Semitism to include criticism of political Zionism, Israel or our assertion that the right of any state to exist is conditional on its behavior, especially toward those it rules. Apartheid states have no right to exist. Therefore, I say unequivocally that AIPAC is anti-Semitic. The Canary Project is anti-Semitic. The many other organizations with the mission of spreading pro-Israel propaganda in the USA and of smearing activists for Palestinian rights are all anti-Semitic. They are the real hate groups, just as the Israeli government and army are the real terrorists. It is past time to set things right side up, and to stand for what is right.
Wednesday, December 27, 2017
Humans and Gods
I listened to an interview with Reza Aslan, his new book is entitled God a human history, on KPFA radio in Berkeley. I heard so many assertions that I consider to be unfounded that I was amazed that the interviewer, Brian Edwards-Tiechert didn't challenge them. Aslan argues, ineffectively in my opinion, that humans have an innate belief in a separation between the material and the spiritual, the body and the mind (brain) and thus an innate need to create gods. I am reminded of two books by Sigmund Freud on this subject. In the first book, The Future of an Illusion, Freud presents his hypothesis (one I share) that all forms of faith/religion are mental illnesses, neuroses or psychoses. The distinction is that belief in an illusion (something which cannot be proved) is a source of neurosis, whereas belief in a delusion (something which can be proved to be false) is a source of psychosis. In that book, Freud presents these ideas with elegant logic, and unlike some of his clinical work (interpretation of dreams, alleged female fantasy of parental rape), his ideas on faith and religion hold up well in my opinion.
In the second book, Civilization and Its Discontents, Dr. Freud discusses the many social problems, such as wars, which these mistaken beliefs can cause. However, I want to focus on the introduction. Freud says that friends of his said to him that they could appreciate his ideas in the first book, but what about the "oceanic feeling" that there is something greater than us in the universe. Freud's response was that he feels no such oceanic feeling and therefore it must be something which is planted in the human brain by society. That is where I think Aslan drops the ball, in my opinion. Are there false beliefs which go back far into human history? Of course there are. Many humans believed that the earth is flat and that the sun revolves around the earth. Indeed, you could be severely punished by the medieval Roman Catholic church if you questioned those views. We now know that both ideas are false and can be proven to be false.
Is the universe much more complex than we can perceive? Of course, it is. We see and hear, for example, in a fairly narrow range of frequencies. Other species have wider ranges of frequencies which they can perceive. We have invented devices to perceive way beyond the frequencies we can directly perceive. Add to that the strange architecture of our brains and their mechanisms of cognition and storage of information (for example, we use the same mechanisms to store and retrieve information, and we often overwrite older information). We also have half a dozen processes that operate in our brains and negotiate the thoughts which make up our consciousness. It is a miracle, of sorts, that we have learned and achieved as much as we have with such poorly constructed mental faculties. None of that, however, in any way means that there has to be a nonmaterial part of the universe, for which, by definition, there can be no evidence whatsoever. I reject the notion that there is a spiritual component of the universe precisely for that reason.
Aslan also makes other strange claims. He says that fundamentalism is only about a century old. Galileo would have questioned that, as would the many victims of the inquisition. So would the victims of the Crusades. He says that the predominance of nonreligious beliefs among millennials is a new phenomenon. Has he never heard that many of the founders of the USA were deists, which is precisely a belief in a supreme being without the trappings of religion. Of course, it is also possible that some of them were atheists since Deism was often used as a protective cover by atheists. Openly asserting atheism could be very dangerous to one's personal safety.
Modern cognitive research has revealed a number of innate capabilities in our brains. We are born with a fully formed visual cortex with the ability to interpret the photons that fall on our retinas. We are born with the ability to learn language; Noam Chomsky did pioneering work on that. We are not a blank slate. But the development of our brains is also profoundly influenced by our experiences. Through experience we form neural pathways. I would like to see any evidence which proves that the tendency to form irrational beliefs (faith, religion, flat earth) is innate in our human brains. Arslan speculates that such a tendency evolved either because of a direct advantage or because it is linked to another train which does give us an advantage, but he asserts that the tendency is there in every human. On that, I give the same answer as Freud. I was not born with that tendency and do not have that tendency. Therefore, it is much more likely something introduced socially, i.e., by the interaction with other humans. The tendency of religious social groups to demand belief and to punish disbelief
would have played no small role in propagating and maintaining nonrational beliefs.
In conclusion, I think what most offends me about Arslan is that he tries to lay a scientific basis for something which is precisely non-scientific. He uses the language of science but not the tools of scientific inquiry. Faith and religion have unquestionably played large roles in human history and society. They should, therefore, be studied, but they should not be elevated into something which they are not.
In the second book, Civilization and Its Discontents, Dr. Freud discusses the many social problems, such as wars, which these mistaken beliefs can cause. However, I want to focus on the introduction. Freud says that friends of his said to him that they could appreciate his ideas in the first book, but what about the "oceanic feeling" that there is something greater than us in the universe. Freud's response was that he feels no such oceanic feeling and therefore it must be something which is planted in the human brain by society. That is where I think Aslan drops the ball, in my opinion. Are there false beliefs which go back far into human history? Of course there are. Many humans believed that the earth is flat and that the sun revolves around the earth. Indeed, you could be severely punished by the medieval Roman Catholic church if you questioned those views. We now know that both ideas are false and can be proven to be false.
Is the universe much more complex than we can perceive? Of course, it is. We see and hear, for example, in a fairly narrow range of frequencies. Other species have wider ranges of frequencies which they can perceive. We have invented devices to perceive way beyond the frequencies we can directly perceive. Add to that the strange architecture of our brains and their mechanisms of cognition and storage of information (for example, we use the same mechanisms to store and retrieve information, and we often overwrite older information). We also have half a dozen processes that operate in our brains and negotiate the thoughts which make up our consciousness. It is a miracle, of sorts, that we have learned and achieved as much as we have with such poorly constructed mental faculties. None of that, however, in any way means that there has to be a nonmaterial part of the universe, for which, by definition, there can be no evidence whatsoever. I reject the notion that there is a spiritual component of the universe precisely for that reason.
Aslan also makes other strange claims. He says that fundamentalism is only about a century old. Galileo would have questioned that, as would the many victims of the inquisition. So would the victims of the Crusades. He says that the predominance of nonreligious beliefs among millennials is a new phenomenon. Has he never heard that many of the founders of the USA were deists, which is precisely a belief in a supreme being without the trappings of religion. Of course, it is also possible that some of them were atheists since Deism was often used as a protective cover by atheists. Openly asserting atheism could be very dangerous to one's personal safety.
Modern cognitive research has revealed a number of innate capabilities in our brains. We are born with a fully formed visual cortex with the ability to interpret the photons that fall on our retinas. We are born with the ability to learn language; Noam Chomsky did pioneering work on that. We are not a blank slate. But the development of our brains is also profoundly influenced by our experiences. Through experience we form neural pathways. I would like to see any evidence which proves that the tendency to form irrational beliefs (faith, religion, flat earth) is innate in our human brains. Arslan speculates that such a tendency evolved either because of a direct advantage or because it is linked to another train which does give us an advantage, but he asserts that the tendency is there in every human. On that, I give the same answer as Freud. I was not born with that tendency and do not have that tendency. Therefore, it is much more likely something introduced socially, i.e., by the interaction with other humans. The tendency of religious social groups to demand belief and to punish disbelief
would have played no small role in propagating and maintaining nonrational beliefs.
In conclusion, I think what most offends me about Arslan is that he tries to lay a scientific basis for something which is precisely non-scientific. He uses the language of science but not the tools of scientific inquiry. Faith and religion have unquestionably played large roles in human history and society. They should, therefore, be studied, but they should not be elevated into something which they are not.
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