Dissenting at your own risk

From: http://karmalised.com/?p=2455
Last year, I agreed to speak to a Jewish youth group about my organization, Jewish Voice for Peace, and our opposition to Israel’s occupation. My talk was to follow one from a member of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, which calls itself “America’s pro-Israel Lobby.”

A week before, a shaken program leader said the AIPAC staffer had threatened to get the entire youth program’s funding canceled if I was allowed in the door. The threat worked, and in disgust, they canceled the whole talk.

Pundits will surely argue for years about professors Stephen Walt and John Mearsheimer’s explosive new book, The Israel Lobby, which blames poor U.S. policy in the Middle East on a loose network of individuals and pro-Israel advocacy groups.

But the book, and the response to it, opens up another controversy: the stifling of debate about unconditional U.S. support for Israeli policies.

Why is Israel’s increasingly brutal 40-year occupation of Palestinian land regularly debated in the mainstream media abroad, including in Israel, but not here? And why is there an almost total lack of discussion among presidential candidates about the dollars that subsidize this occupation and the American diplomatic support that makes it possible?

In a society built on the free exchange of ideas, as Walt and Mearsheimer point out, one answer can be found by looking at the many self-appointed gatekeepers, such as Abraham Foxman and the Anti-Defamation League, or Harvard law professor Alan Dershowitz, who use their Jewish identity as both a shield and cudgel. They work diligently to silence those who question ill-conceived policies of the Israeli and U.S. governments.


Non-Jewish critics, even former President Carter, are denounced as anti-Semites. Special ire is reserved for Jewish dissenters, who are branded as “self-hating” or “marginal,” while Muslim and Arab-Americans are easily smeared and even criminalized with charges of supporting terrorism.

Stunned by the stifling of dissent, we decided to start a Web site, Muzzlewatch, to track the incidents. Just as we launched, Stanford Middle East Studies Professor Joel Beinin was disinvited from a speaking engagement at a high school with just 24 hours’ notice.

After an unprecedented campaign of outside interference waged by Dershowitz, Professor Norman Finkelstein was refused tenure by DePaul University because of his criticism of U.S.-Israeli policy. Palestinian-American anthropologist Nadia Abu El-Haj is fighting a political campaign to deny her tenure at Barnard.

Even Walt and Mearsheimer, who are getting plenty of exposure, couldn’t have asked for better proof of their point that the lobby works to stifle dissent when an embarrassed head of the Chicago Council on Global Affairs told them that their scheduled speech was canceled. (They did speak before the World Affairs Council of Dallas/Fort Worth on Sept. 17.) This was apparently because Foxman was not available that day to “balance” their talk.

(They had initially been booked by themselves. The talk was not rescheduled.)

Many groups that started with the important work of fighting real anti-Semitism now rely on anti-Semitism to insist that to show one’s love of Jews, one must offer uncritical support to Israel. They are especially displeased by Jews who believe that enabling Israeli violations of Palestinian human rights is not good for anyone.

Unless this atmosphere of intimidation is confronted, Americans will continue to lack access to information and perspectives necessary to formulate effective Middle East policies, virtually ensuring that Israel and the United States will be at war for many years to come.

‘The Israel Lobby’

A podcast of Walt and Mearsheimer’s presentation is available at http://podcast.dfwworld.org/

2007_09-17_The_Israel_Lobby.MP3.

Cecilie Surasky is communications director for the Oakland-based Jewish Voice for Peace
Don't know if its been discussed before but the site they mentioned is muzzlewatch.org. Why is there no criticism of Israel in the U.S, our blood-curtling psycho-pal Ariel Sharon knows:
Ariel Sharon said:
[D]on't worry about American pressure, we the Jewish people control America.
and the equally disturbing
"Israel may have the right to put others on trial, but certainly no one has the right to put the Jewish people and the State of Israel on trial" --March 25, 2001 [9]
 
I`ve just watched the dutch tv documentary "The Israel Lobby - AIPAC- A Danger to The World" (51 min., to be found on googlevideo), which follows up on the Mearsheimer controversy and also contains interviews with Mearsheimer, Lord Of Darkness Richard Perle, historian Tony Judt and Colonel Wikerson, former staf chef of Colin Powell whose statements are especially revealing.
Highly recommended!
Having said this, I checked on german newspaper reviews of the Mearsheimer book. On a positive side it is noted that the book finally opens a discussion on a much tabooed subject. But it is also heavily criticized on the fact that Mearsheimer and his colleague pretty much ignore other powerful lobbies like f.ex. the oil or weapons lobbies. It seems unfortunate that their book is very propably highly biased, making it therefore too easy to dismiss it completely. Personally I don`t understand how these two political scientists knowingly damaged their academic careers without bending over backwards to make absolutely clear that, as dangerous and influential the Israel Lobby is, there are other very dangerous and influential lobbies out there, who also happily supported the war in iraq
(well, any kind of war). This would have boosted the credibility of their book.
Two good companio pieces to above mentioned docu are "The War Party" (BBC) and "War Made Easy" (narrated by Sean Penn), available on googlevideo.
 
nemo said:
But it is also heavily criticized on the fact that Mearsheimer and his colleague pretty much ignore other powerful lobbies like f.ex. the oil or weapons lobbies.
That's a "straw man" argument. Why should they talk about other powerful lobbies when their book is not about those other powerful lobbies?
 
Here's a related article that challenges the picture that the Israel Lobby and media would have us all believe -- that all Jewish people present a "united front" on the issue of Israel and Zionism:


We Aren’t One: American Jewish Voices for Peace
by Murray Polner, Nov.1/07
LewRockwell.com

Back in the 1980s the major American Jewish welfare organization adopted as its fundraising slogan "We are One." The implication was that American Jews were a united bloc. But we are not "one" and never have been. Ideologically, we are everything from anarchists to Zionists, working people to the gilded rich. Noam Chomsky is as Jewish as Irving Kristol, and Norman Finkelstein as Jewish as Alan Dershowitz. We are neither angels nor saints. And we are certainly not monolithic, despite perennial efforts to paint anyone critical of various aspects of Israeli policies as "self-hating" Jews.

The truth is that the overwhelming number of America’s estimated 6 million Jews is opposed to the Cheney-Bush-neocon regime as their voting patterns have shown time and again. In 2000 and 2004 the overwhelming majority of us voted for Gore and Kerry. In the 2006 congressional elections 80% of the Jewish vote went Democratic. And repeated surveys of Jewish college students show them to be overwhelmingly liberal to moderate. Tikkun Olam or "saving the world" remains our true heritage and legacy.

In a new book I recently edited with Stefan Merken (Peace, Justice, & Jews: Reclaiming Our Tradition), we differed with those Jewish organizations that are silent – about Israel and the Palestinians, about Iraq, about Iran. The overwhelming majority of American Jews has supported a negotiated "land for peace" settlement between Israel and Palestinians and has no interest in pursuing this or any Administration’s fantasies of perpetual war.

Indeed, one of the shrewdest American Jewish commentators, M. J. Rosenberg of the Israel Policy Forum, has rightly written: "There is nothing pro-Israel about supporting policies that promise only that Israeli mothers will continue to dread their sons’ 18th birthdays for another generation."

American Jewish peace voices do not genuflect before the Israel Lobby. See, for example, Brit Tzedek v’Shalom – the Jewish Peace Alliance for Justice and Peace – which is said to have more than 15,000 members, the Jewish Voice for Peace, and Meretz USA an affiliate of Israel’s Meretz bloc; Americans for Peace Now, which reportedly has 25,000 members, Rabbis for Human Rights, the Jewish Peace Fellowship, and the Shalom Center. Prolific writers abound too: Rabbis Arthur Waskow of the Shalom Center, Michael Lerner of Tikkun magazine and Henry Siegman, former head of the American Jewish Congress when it was still liberal and now President of the U.S./ Middle East Project, Michael Massing at the New York Review of Books, Tony Karon, Philip Weiss, Norman Birnbaum, and many more who will never be silent.

Unlike Israel, where free speech and public debate thus far remains sacred, a number of so-called major American Jewish organizations (many of whom have few if any paid members) have sought mightily to stifle critics. The publication of John Mearsheimer and Stephen Walt’s book (The Israeli Lobby and U.S. Foreign Policy), flaws and insights all, has been treated as the second coming of pogromists and saber-wielding Cossacks.

Tony Judt, the distinguished New York University historian and critic, was prevented from speaking at the Polish Consulate in New York City because of ADL’s pressure. Judt, who is Jewish, was scheduled to speak about "The Israel Lobby & U.S. Foreign Policy." A protest, with more than one hundred signatories, many of them Jewish, soon appeared (The Case of Tony Judt: An Open Letter to the ADL, New York Review of Books, November 16, 2006), denouncing the "climate of intimidation." This suppression of alternative views, this scotching of debate, this silencing of differing views, is nothing less than a sign of frightened men and women creating a new blacklist.

Jimmy Carter, who accomplished more for Middle Eastern peace than any other president, was bitterly denounced earlier this year for daring to use the word "Apartheid" in describing Israel’s domination of Palestinians, a word often heard and read in Israeli newspapers. (See his book Palestine: Peace Not Apartheid).) Israel may or may not practice South African-style "apartheid" – as some leftists insist – but when he spoke at Brandeis University after the true believers had publicly excoriated him, most of the students at the meeting (which was aired on C-Span) stood and applauded. (The squelching of debate isn’t limited to the U.S. Danny Rubinstein, a veteran Israeli journalist for the Israeli daily Ha’aretz was invited and then disinvited by the British Zionist Federation because he, like other Israelis, had dared to use the forbidden word). Two Catholic colleges also caved in to pressure. St. Thomas College in Minneapolis (barring Bishop Tutu, it was forced to back down in the face of protests) and De Paul University in Chicago, which denied tenure to critic Norman Finkelstein after the faculty had overwhelmingly supported him.

Jewish neoconservatives on the other hand (and there are lots of non-Jewish neocons as well) get a free ride. Yet they do not speak as Jews and they certainly don’t represent the rest of us. But because so many of them are Jewish, the rest of us are often held responsible for their epic blunders. Indeed, some of the guilt-by-association allegations against all Jews are nothing less than classic anti-Semitism.

Neocons are in reality very well paid home front warriors and publicists for the new American Empire. Callow ideologues, they played a crucial role in getting the U.S. into Iraq and are now desperate to take on Iran but from afar (please don’t count on they or their close family members ever ending up in combat units in Iran). Some are probably motivated by right-wing Israeli sympathies; most, however, are drawn to rigid Manichean geopolitical doctrines of preemptive war. Now they are clinging as "national security" advisors to the bellicose Rudolph Giuliani, once again hoping for another "cakewalk" against Iran.

The truth, though, is that the primary responsibility for the massive bloodletting in the Middle East rests with the President, Vice-President, Donald Rumsfeld, their Congressional sycophants, a mass media that serves as a willing transmission belt, and the mighty oil, munitions and yes, Israel Lobby, which also includes Christian fundamentalists and Christian Zionists, desperate to welcome Armageddon.

Let me be very clear. No American Jewish peace voice or group questions the right of Israel to exist as an independent sovereign state. Nor, I hope, should any non-Jewish critic though Israel is no more immune to criticism than any other country. And not to be overlooked is that within Israel many courageous and principled Jewish critics of any number of Israeli policies are active, among them the feminist center for peace and justice Batshaolm; the leftist peace bloc opposed to the occupation of the West Bank Gush-Shalom; the anti-militarist New Profile; Meretz; Peacewatch; the Israeli daily Haaretz, B’Tselem, the Israeli Information Center for Human Rights in the Occupied Territories, Yesh Gvul, an organization supporting Israeli soldiers refusing to serve in the Occupied Territories, Shalom Achschav/Peace Now, which favors Palestinian self-determination, the Israel-Palestine Center for Research & Information, a joint organization working for a "two-state, two-people" resolution and many more.

The same thing is happening among more and more American Jews right now.
 
How embarrassing. Just found out I unknowingly pressed the "submit" button yesterday!
Laura said:
That's a "straw man" argument
I agree with you, Laura. It`s a "straw man" argument.
I point I`d like to make though is the importance of presenting controversial information in an acceptable way, acceptable to a mainstream audience, that is.
I believe that had Mearsheimer included the general danger of other big lobbies and the role of public relations firms in an introductery chapter and in that way embedded their justified critizism
in a wider context, the book would have been better received and would therefore been more likely to inspire an open debate about this problem. Mearsheimer and his collegue knew exactly in
what political climate their book would be published. Considering the fact that criticism of Israel/Zionism seems to be a big no no in western society, they should have wrapped their "product" up more attractively/diplomatically. (spoken from a marketing/PC perspective)
So from that viewpoint the main critizism refers less to the content of the book as to its presentation.

The other day I`ve read a 2o page interview on Vanity Fair (Germany) online (for those few german reader, have fun with this one: www(dot)vanityfair(dot)de/articles/agenda/horst-mahler/2007/11/01/04423/) with Horst Mahler, an ex-left wing lawyer who supported the RAF(german anti-capitalist terrorist group of 70ies), later defended german terrorists, went to prison for a few
years and is now one of the most prominent neo-nazi "intellectuals"!!! Mahler greets his jewish interviewer with "Heil Hitler, Herr Friedmann." The rest of the interview is mindboggingly crazy.
He sprouts incredibly racist polarizing crap mixed in with weird new agey belief systems.

In Germany it is pc to be critical of Israel (israelkritisch), but being critical of Zionism smacks of anti-semitism. As a result anti-zionism is reserved for the neo-nazis.
My thinking is, if you`d be able to have an open unbiased debate about zionism, you take the only legitimate argument away from the nazis, therfore undermining their credibility further.
As long as the neo-nazis have the monopoly on anti-zionism, the latter will always be associated with anti-semtism.
That`s why I think you have to tackle this problem with satin gloves to really start a discussion.
 
Policing truth by Ramzy Baroud
In spite of the indignity, the US Zionist lobby continues to go after anyone who holds a differing view to its ideology.

The last time I spoke publicly in the United States before my current tour was nearly four years ago. During that time I travelled the world, passing my message to people in nearly 20 countries. Wherever I went, my calls for justice for the Palestinian people and for global alternatives to racism and war were well received. However, my latest talks in the US have made me realise that the witch-hunt on intellectuals that escalated rapidly since 11 September 2001 is nowhere near over.

Doubtless, the US has long served as a focal site for intellectual freedom, from which groundbreaking ideas have developed and spread throughout the world. And despite incessant attempts to circumvent this historic reality, most Americans still remain committed to their country's founding principles. It is this commitment that causes those interested in stifling undesirable viewpoints to resort to the most disingenuous tactics, half-truths and downright fabrication.

Norfolk, Virginia, was the first leg of the tour for my last book, The Second Palestinian Intifada. Co- existing with the town's 14 military bases is an energetic and hugely inspiring anti-war community. To be able to stand among and share my views on peace and justice with these activists was a truly heartening experience for me.

At Virginia Wesleyan University, I spoke about a myriad of topics, including Palestine, Iraq, Venezuela and Nicaragua. I tend towards a cross- cultural perspective to help my audience assess their relationship to issues beyond geopolitical limitations, national arrogances and ethnocentricities.

On Palestine, I preached co-existence without prescribing any easy recipes. Instead, I outlined basic prerequisites. To achieve co-existence, justice is a must, and to achieve justice, Israel needs to acknowledge its historic injustices against the Palestinian people and make a commitment to redressing them. Palestine cannot be single-handedly expected to extract peace from a belligerent Israeli government that has done its utmost to undermine it.

I discussed suicide bombings in a context usually missing from mainstream discourse, trying to delineate that such heinous acts are not a lifestyle choice. One must be courageous enough to examine the roots of violence in order to eliminate it; for Palestinian violence to end, the much more costly, systematic and state-initiated Israeli violence and illegal occupation must also stop. Palestinian suffering cannot be expected to magically vanish for the sake of Israel's security. To base one nation's security on the depravation of another's is nothing short of illegal, irrational and inhumane.

In my talk, I praised Palestinians for their courage in living up to the diktats of democracy, and chastised those who ensured the demise of the once promising Palestinian democratic experience, which could have served as a model for democracies in the entire region. Palestinians should not be starved and a civil war should not have been provoked to punish the Palestinian people for electing a government that insists on the respect of their people's rights.

I contested that Hamas's Islamic ideas were hardly the reason behind the US-Israeli violent response to their advent, and that "extremism" and "moderation" are not categories defined on liberal ideals, but are used to distinguish between those who are willing to serve as client regimes and those who opt otherwise. I tried to imagine a future in which Palestinians and Israelis can work together to escape the dark abyss brought about by the Israeli and US governments, stressing that such a future cannot be guaranteed with hollow lip service to "peace"; it requires real justice and equality.

Apparently my words did not impress local Rabbi Israel Zoberman and his comrades. They attended my talk after a local Jewish newspaper highlighted the upcoming event on their front page: a "Pro-Palestinian journalist to speak at Virginia Wesleyan". They came armed and ready to attack my integrity before even hearing me speak. One after the other, they hijacked the questions; one alleged that in 1880 there were more Jews than Christians and Muslims in Palestine. How does one respond to such a falsehood? Another claimed that Israel has never ethnically cleansed one Palestinian. Not one? A third claimed that by trying to contextualise suicide bombings, no matter how well intended I might be, I am justifying the horrific terrorism of 9/11.

This accusation was by far the most devious. Zoberman himself accused me of being a "Hamas sympathiser", and since Hamas is on the US State Department list of terrorist groups, well, you can do the math.

Infuriated by the fact that I refused compromise at a following event, Zoberman began a campaign of letter writing and phoning the university and local newspaper, describing my message as "poisonous". He also chastised the university for hosting my talk and demanded a change of course.The campaign of defamation is yet to end.

Although this is not my first experience of such unfair and dishonest smearing, the last few years have witnessed an increase in Zionist attempts to curb free debate on the Middle East in this country, from such respected figures and intellectuals as Jimmy Carter, Desmond Tutu, Norman Finkelstein, John Mearsheimer and Stephen Walt. In short, anyone who dares question the US government's Middle East policy or even recognise the rights of the Palestinian people is a candidate for senseless attacks and (often) of accusations of anti-Semitism. Fortunately, this time, I was spared the latter.

The truth is, the greater the intimidation campaign, the more determined many US intellectuals become in exposing the destructive role that Israel has played in shaping US foreign policy. What Zionists in the US wish to overlook is the fact that some of the most ardent supporters of Palestinian rights are themselves Jewish, and that is simply because the question of justice and peace is not hostage to ethnic or religious identities.

Intimidation may break the will of the weak, but the human spirit is too strong to be shattered by smearing and arm-twisting. The truth will always manage to find its way out to the people; in fact, in many respects, it already has.
* The writer is editor of PalestineChronicle.com.


http://www.iranian.com/main/2007/2-million-lawsuit-against-me
Israeli-Lobby backed Khalaji files 2 million suit against Hoder Derakhshan

Mehdi Khalaji, an Iranian 'expert' at the Washington Institute for the Near East Policy (WINEP) has now officially filed a libel and defamation lawsuit against me in Canada and has claimed $2,000,000 damages. َQuite a modest champion of free speech, isn't he?

Why? Because I've been very critical about him serving the likes of Richard Perle, Paul Wolfowitz, James Woosley and the rest of those filthy warmongers at the Washington Institute for the Near East Policy (WINEP), which was established by and is strongly associated with the Israeli Lobby's in the United States, according to Mearsheimer and Walt.

As a result, I have written that Khalaji, an advoacte of the economic warfare against Iran, is a traitor to his people and his country, as a result.
The new claims are again based on the same mistranslation of my writings on him which I exposed and refuted in length a while ago, when he threatened my hosting company (Florida-based Hosting Matters) that led them to promptly terminate the accounts I had with them.

Now apparently, with the backing of his friends at the Israeli lobby's think-tank, he is trying to bankrupt me by starting this silly legal procedure.
I would appreciate it if you could spread the word in your blogs or websites and also if you've got any tips on the right organisation or lawyer to approach. One way would be obviously Digging it.
[...]
 
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