#usa

APPELLONS #UN_CHAT_UN_CHAT

#ISRAEL N’A PLUS RIEN A VOIR AVEC LES « #JUIFS »

ISRAEL EST UN #ETAT_FASCISTE #AU_SERVICE DES #USA

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#politique #monde #tartufferie #guignolade #changement #seenthis #vangauguin

Absage Chinas an US-Staatsanleihen : Die siamesischen Zwillinge werden getrennt
▻https://www.telepolis.de/features/Absage-Chinas-an-US-Staatsanleihen-Die-siamesischen-Zwillinge-werden-getre

Le désengagement du capital états-unien des marchés chinois pose plusieurs problëmes. D’abord une guerre entre la super-puissance militaire et le géant économique est de moins en moins risqué pour le capital américain. En même temps les économies des anciens partenaires ne soutiennent plus leur croissance mutuelle. Où investiront-ils alors ?

Le défi est lancé, la lutte pour la domination des régions avec la plus grande probabilité de croissance a commencé il y a un bon moment. Et l’Europe alors, quel rôle pourrat-elle encore jouer ?

29.1.2014 von Wolfgang Pomrehn - Beijings Zentralbank trennt sich Schritt für Schritt von ihren Treasuries. US-Firmen ziehen wiederum ihre Investitionen aus China ab. Eine Entkopplungsgeschichte.

Es gab Zeiten – gerade zehn Jahre ist es her –, da waren die Volkswirtschaften der USA und Chinas sowie ihre Finanzsphären so eng miteinander verknüpft, dass sie siamesischen Zwillingen glichen, wenn auch sehr ungleichen. Manchem Beobachter erschienen die großen wechselseitigen Abhängigkeiten gar als Garant für ein friedliches Miteinander.

Rund ein Drittel aller chinesischen Exporte gingen in die USA, die diese vor allem mit einer wachsenden Auslandsverschuldung finanzierten, mit Kredit, den nicht zuletzt China selbst gab. Zeitweise hielt die chinesische Zentralbank 2011 US-Staatsanleihen (Treasuries) im Wert von bis zu 1,3 Billionen US-Dollar. 2013 wurde dieser Höchstwert noch einmal erreicht.
Entkopplung nimmt Fahrt auf

Doch während sich die USA in der Zwischenzeit immer weiter im Ausland verschuldete – die Funktion des US-Dollars macht es möglich –, hat China in den vergangenen Jahren seinen Treasury-Bestand abgebaut.

Zuletzt hatte er noch einen Wert von 782 Milliarden US-Dollar. Und während der chinesische Staat 2011 noch 14 Prozent aller ausgegebenen US-Staatsanleihen hielt, sind es derzeit nur noch drei Prozent, wie die Nachrichtenagentur Reuters meldet.

Chinas Währungsreserven belaufen sich insgesamt auf 3,24 Billionen US-Dollar, wovon noch immer über diverse Kanäle schätzungsweise 60 Prozent in US-Dollar gehalten werden und der Rest in anderen Währungen wie dem Euro, dem Schweizer Franken oder dem japanischen Yen. Aber die finanzielle Entkoppelung hat parallel zur entsprechenden Entwicklung im Warenaustausch Fahrt aufgenommen, und sie verläuft nicht einseitig.

US-Firmen und -Fonds haben in den letzten Jahren massiv Investitionen aus China abgezogen und einige Beobachter meinen, das könnte einer der Gründe für die derzeitigen Berg- und Talfahrten der chinesischen Aktienmärkte sein. Im dritten Quartal 2023 verlor die Volksrepublik zum ersten Mal seit Beginn der Öffnungspolitik Anfang der 1980er-Jahre mehr ausländische Direktinvestitionen als zugleich ins Land flossen, und zwar 12 Milliarden US-Dollar. Das Kapital flösse aus China ab und der USA zu, meint Reuters.

Ansonsten ist China aber nicht der einzige Staat, der sich aus den einst bei Zentralbanken sehr beliebten Treasuries zurückzieht. Einerseits strebt die US-Staatsverschuldung immer neuen Rekorden entgegen. Die Schuldverschreibungen haben inzwischen den sagenhaften Umfang von 26 Billionen US-Dollar (93 Prozent des US-Bruttoinlandsprodukts). Das ist immerhin das Fünffache des Standes vor dem Beginn der großen Immobilien- und Börsenkrise 2007.

Andererseits wird das Gros jedoch von Privatpersonen und privaten Gesellschaften gehalten. Ausländische Zentralbanken haben in ihren Portfolios Treasuries mit einem Wert von nur noch 3,8 Billionen US-Dollar. Weitere gut drei Billionen US-Dollar werden von Privaten im Ausland gehalten, und mit fast 20 Billionen US-Dollar ist der US-Staat im Inland verschuldet.

#Chine #USA #Europe #économie #impérialisme

Thread by MouinRabbani on Thread Reader App – Thread Reader App
▻https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1751803165216010536.html

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THREAD: There have been a number of important developments over the weekend.

Three US soldiers were killed, and several dozen wounded, in a drone attack on a US military/intelligence base known as Tower 22 in northeastern Jordan, the region where the borders of Jordan, Syria, and Iraq meet.

The Jordanian authorities continue to insist that the attack was in fact directed at the US base in Tanf in southeastern Syria rather than Tower 22, because it does not want to draw unnecessary attention to the highly unpopular US military presence on Jordanian territory.

The US deployment is regulated by the 2022 US-Jordan Memorandum of Understanding on Strategic Partnership, which gives Washington virtually unlimited rights to use Jordanian territory for US military purposes, and the Jordanian treasury USD 1.45 billion per year for seven years.

The attack is significant for a number of reasons. Although there have been numerous attacks on US bases and forces in the Middle East since 7 October 2023, including in Iraq, Syria, in the Red Sea off Yemen, and according to unconfirmed reports Israel as well, these are the first confirmed killings of US soldiers in the region since that date. (Two Navy SEALS died off Yemen’s coast recently, but it was reported as an accident). It is also the first confirmed attack on or from Jordanian territory since 7 October.

Responsibility for the attack was claimed by the Islamic Resistance in Iraq, a coalition of groups aligned with the Axis of Resistance, itself a coalition of states and movements in the region opposed to US-Israeli hegemony in the Middle East.

According to the statement of responsibility the attack, apparently launched from Syrian rather than Iraqi territory, is intended to raise the cost of Israel’s genocidal onslaught on the Gaza Strip and US support for Israel’s mass killings.

“If the US keeps supporting Israel, there will be escalations. All US interests in the region are legitimate targets and we don’t care about US threats to respond.” The expulsion of US forces from Iraq and Syria is an additional, unspoken objective.

In his own statement about the incident, US President Joe Biden blamed “radical Iran-backed militant groups operating in Syria and Iraq”.
White House spokesperson John Kirby will probably be trotted out to deny any connection whatsoever between developments in Jordan and Gaza, much as he has done in relation to attacks by Ansar Allah off Yemen’s coast, which even more explicitly reference the Gaza Strip.

Given US casualties, Washington is virtually certain to respond to this escalation with a significant escalation of its own. This in turn brings direct conflict between the US and Iran one big step closer, from plausible but unlikely to plausible and possible.

Powerful forces in both the US and Israel have been agitating for such a scenario since 7 October, and will now see a new opportunity to make this a reality.

The broader significance is that US forces are now dying in defense of Israel. Throughout this war Washington has had a clear choice: put an end to Israel’s genocidal onslaught on the Gaza Strip, or engage in conflict with regional forces determined to do so themselves.

Given Israel’s extraordinary level of military and political dependence on the US, so visibly demonstrated these past several months, it would take only a brief phone call to achieve the former. But the Biden administration has consistently chosen for the latter.

In the words of @asadabukhalil : “The US does not want a cease-fire in Gaza and objects to the regional repercussions of its rejection of the ceasefire.”

That’s not how the US-Israeli relationship is supposed to work. Israel is the designated proxy, assigned to defend Western interests in the Middle East. A “stationary aircraft carrier”, in the words of former US Secretary of State Alexander Haig.

Instead, the US is functioning as Israel’s proxy, now fighting on multiple fronts, its soldiers dying to defend Israel and protect its ability to continue fighting in the Gaza Strip. This is because for more than 100 days, Israel’s longest war since 1948-1949, it has proven incapable of defeating Hamas, a second-order guerilla movement that doesn’t possess a single aircraft, tank, warship, or anti-aircraft defense system. Its long-range missiles basically need to make a direct impact on an individual’s forehead to achieve a kill.

As previously argued, Israel’s military incompetence and mediocre performance will have long-lasting consequences for its strategic relationship with its Western sponsors.

To put it simply, t-shirts emblazoned with an Israeli fighter jet and the slogan “Don’t Worry America, Israeli is Behind You!” used to popular among visiting tourists. I suspect they can now be obtained at a steep discount.

Related to this, a rally was held in Jerusalem today to promote the expulsion of Palestinians from the Gaza Strip and renewal of Israeli settlements in that occupied territory. It was attended by no less than 12 of Israel’s 37 government ministers (almost a third), including several leaders of parties represented in that state’s genocidal coalition. Two of Israel’s most senior leaders, Minister of National Security Itamar Ben-Gvir and Minister of Finance Bezalel Smotrich, addressed the raucous and adoring crowd of several thousand.

Ben-Gvir leads Otzma Yehudit (“Jewish Power”), a Kahanist party that is Israel’s equivalent of Germany’s Nazis. Bezalel Smotrich is the leader of Tkuma (Religious Zionist Party), also Israel’s equivalent of Germany’s Nazis.

One thing that distinguishes these parties (and a few others) from others in Israel is their insistence that Israel is sufficiently powerful to act unilaterally and do as it pleases, and sufficiently independent to give the world, including Israel’s sponsors in the US and Europe, the middle finger. That’s why they convened this meeting within 48 hours of the International Court of Justice session indicating that Israel has plausibly been accused of genocide.

The above notwithstanding Ben-Gvir and Smotrich have the mannerisms of spoiled children more than seasoned gangsters. Insufferable kids who feel free to grab or break anything they want at the store because they know Mummy and Daddy are there to take care of things, and clean up any resulting mess. In other words, they talk big but know they can only do so because Biden and Brussels have their back. And on this score they’re right.

Which brings me to UNRWA. Several of Israel’s sponsors, including the US and UK, have suspended their funding of the UN refugee agency for Palestine refugees in response to unproven allegations that several of its employees participated in the attacks on Israel on 7 October. It’s a bit like cutting off aid to a foreign country because a dozen of its civil servants have been charged (but not yet tried) for participation in criminal activity.

There’s much going on here, including a long-term campaign to liquidate the Palestinian refugee question, in which UNRWA serves as a primary surrogate for US-Israeli hysteria. And a history of previous Israeli allegations against UNRWA subsequently exposed as fraudulent. (For example, a 2014 drone video released by Israel of two UNRWA medics purportedly using an ambulance to transport Hamas missiles was later revealed to be two UNRWA medics transporting a stretcher into an ambulance.)

But when it comes to UNRWA, a rush to judgement is obligatory, the agency is guilty until proven innocent, and then still guilty.

The Israeli allegations were transparently released to divert from the ICJ ruling. The response of multiple Western governments should also be seen as a response to the ICJ.

In their rules-based international order, it is a violation of international law to apply international law to Israel or Western states.

South Africa dares to hold Israel accountable for genocide? Let’s see what it thinks when we deliberately intensify hunger and famine in the Gaza Strip.

I’ll conclude by citing the comment of @sarahleah1, former head of MENA at Human Rights Watch and currently Executive Director of Democracy for the Arab World Now (DAWN): “It took Blinken about 3 seconds to suspend UNRWA aid based on mere allegations that 12 employees linked to Hamas attack, but despite evidence that IDF has indiscriminately & deliberately massacred tens of thousands of Palestinians – plausibly a genocide ICJ said – zero suspension of military aid”. END

Ikone des Widerstands - Rosen für Angela
▻https://www.jungewelt.de/artikel/468226.ikone-des-widerstands-rosen-f%C3%BCr-angela.html

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27.1.2024 von Nick Brauns - Am 26. Januar 1971 starten die Freie Deutsche Jugend und die Junge Welt die Kampagne »Eine Million Rosen für Angela Davis« zum 27. Geburtstag der Kommunistin. Die Philosophiedozentin war mit dem konstruierten Vorwurf der Terrorunterstützung inhaftiert worden. Ihr drohte unter Kaliforniens Gouverneur Ronald Reagan die Todesstrafe. Nicht nur aus der DDR trafen körbeweise Postkarten im Gefängnis ein, weltweit kämpften Millionen für die junge Afroamerikanerin. Mit Erfolg. Davis wurde 1972 in allen Anklagepunkten freigesprochen.

Die erfahrene Solidarität war für ihr politisches Leben ebenso prägend wie die Erfahrung rassistischen Terrors durch den Ku-Klux-Klan und Apartheid in ihrer Kindheit in Alabama. Nach kurzer Mitgliedschaft bei den Black Panthers trat sie 1968 der kommunistischen Partei bei. Anstatt Identitäts- gegen Klassenpolitik zu stellen, zeigte sie in ihrem Buch »Women, Race & Class« (1981) den Zusammenhang zwischen verschiedenen Unterdrückungs- und Ausbeutungsformen auf und plädierte für entsprechende politische Koalitionen.

Bis heute ist Angela Davis politisch aktiv – etwa gegen das Gefängnissystem, in der »Black Lives Matter«-Bewegung und für die Freiheit von Palästina. Am Freitag ist sie 80 Jahre alt geworden. Junge Welt gratuliert und wünscht noch viele gesunde und kämpferische Jahre.

#USA #communistes #féminisme

Tesla needs graphite. #Alaska has plenty. But mining it raises fears in nearby villages.

https://media.alaskapublic.org/wp-content/uploads/2023/09/79b4f8-20230925-a-map-of-the-traditional-inupiaq-village-of-teller-1000.jpg

Ducks and swans flew overhead as Sylvester Ayek, 82, and his daughter Kimberly, 35, hauled rocks to anchor their small salmon net on the bank of a deep, tidal channel — 25 miles inland from the open Bering Sea coast.

Nearby on that July day, MaryJane Litchard, Ayek’s partner, picked wild celery and set out a lunch of past subsistence harvests: a blue-shelled seabird egg, dried beluga whale meat and red salmon dipped in seal oil.

Then, as they waited for fish to fill the net, the family motored Ayek’s skiff up the channel, known as the Tuksuk, spotting birds and seals and passing family fish camps where drying salmon hung on racks. Soon, the steep channel walls gave way to a huge estuary: the Imuruk Basin, flanked by the snow-dotted peaks of the Kigluaik Mountains.

Ayek describes the basin as a “traditional hunting and gathering place” for the local Iñupiat, who have long sustained themselves on the area’s bounty of fish, berries and wildlife.

But despite a long Indigenous history, and a brief settler boom during the Gold Rush more than a century ago, a couple of weather-beaten cabins were the only obvious signs of human impact as Ayek’s boat idled — save for a set of tiny, beige specks at the foot of the mountains.

Those specks were a camp run by a Canadian exploration company, Graphite One. And they marked the prospective site of a mile-wide open pit mine that could reach deep below the tundra — into the largest known deposit of graphite in the U.S.

The mine could help power America’s electric vehicle revolution, and it’s drawing enthusiastic support from powerful government officials in both Alaska and Washington, D.C. That includes the Biden administration, which recently announced up to $37.5 million in subsidies for Graphite One through the U.S. Department of Defense.

So far, the announcements from the project’s politically connected boosters have received far more attention than the several hundred Alaskans whose lives would be affected directly by Graphite One’s mine.

While opinions in the nearby Alaska Native villages of Brevig Mission and Teller are mixed, there are significant pockets of opposition, particularly among the area’s tribal leaders. Many residents worry the project will harm the subsistence harvests that make life possible in a place where the nearest well-stocked grocery store is a two-hour drive away, in Nome.

“The further they go with the mine, our subsistence will just move further and further away from us,” Gilbert Tocktoo, president of Brevig Mission’s tribal government, said over a dinner of boiled salmon at his home. “And sooner or later, it’s going to become a question of: Do I want to live here anymore?”

Despite those concerns, Graphite One is gathering local support: Earlier this month, the board of the region’s Indigenous-owned, for-profit corporation unanimously endorsed the project.

The Nome-based corporation, Bering Straits Native Corp., also agreed to invest $2 million in Graphite One, in return for commitments related to jobs and scholarships for shareholders.

The tensions surrounding Graphite One’s project underscore how the rush to bolster domestic manufacturing of electric vehicles threatens a new round of disruption to tribal communities and landscapes that have already borne huge costs from past mining booms.

Across the American West, companies are vying to extract the minerals needed to power electric vehicles and other green technologies. Proposed mines for lithium, antimony and copper are chasing some of the same generous federal tax credits as Graphite One — and some are advancing in spite of objections from Indigenous people who have already seen their lands taken and resources diminished over more than a century of mining.

The Seward Peninsula’s history is a case in point: Thousands of non-Native prospectors came here during the Gold Rush, which began in 1898. The era brought devastating bouts of pandemic disease and displacement for the Iñupiat, and today, that history weighs on some as they consider how Graphite One could affect their lives.

“A lot of people like to say that our culture is lost. But we didn’t just go out there and lose it: It was taken from us,” said Taluvaaq Qiñuġana, a 24-year-old Iñupiaq resident of Brevig Mission. A new mining project in her people’s traditional harvesting grounds, she said, “feels like continuous colonization.”

But other Indigenous residents of Brevig Mission and Teller say the villages would benefit from well-paying jobs that could come with the mine. Cash income could help people sustain their households in the two communities, where full-time work is otherwise scarce.

Graphite One executives say one of their highest priorities, as they advance their project toward permitting and construction, is protecting village residents’ harvests of fish, wildlife and berries. They say they fully appreciate the essential nature of that food supply.

“This is very real to them,” said Mike Schaffner, Graphite One’s senior vice president of mining. “We completely understand that we can’t come in there and hurt the subsistence, and we can’t hurt how their lifestyle is.”

U.S. produces no domestic graphite

Graphite is simply carbon — like a diamond but far softer, because of its different crystal structure. Graphite is used as a lubricant, in industrial steelmaking, for brake linings in automobiles and as pencil lead.

It’s also a key component of the high-powered lithium batteries that propel electric cars.

Once mined and concentrated, graphite is processed into a powder that’s mixed with a binder, then rolled flat and curled into the hundreds of AA-battery-sized cylinders that make up the battery pack.

America hasn’t mined any graphite in decades, having been undercut by countries where it’s extracted at a lower cost.

China currently produces more than half of the world’s mined graphite and nearly all of the highly processed type needed for batteries. The country so dominates the supply chain that global prices typically rise each winter when cold temperatures force a single region, Heilongjiang, to shut down production, said Tony Alderson, an analyst at a price tracking firm called Benchmark Mineral Intelligence.

Some forecasts say graphite demand, driven by growth in electric vehicles, could rise 25-fold by 2040. Amid growing U.S.-China political tensions, supply chain experts have warned about the need to diversify America’s sources of graphite.

Last year’s climate-focused Inflation Reduction Act, written in part to wrest control of electric vehicle manufacturing from China, is accelerating that search.

For new electric cars to qualify for a $3,750 tax credit under the act, at least 40% of the value of the “critical minerals” that go into their batteries must be extracted or processed domestically, or in countries such as Canada or Mexico that have free-trade agreements with the United States.

That fraction rises to 80% in four years.

Graphite One is one of just three companies currently advancing graphite mining projects in the United States, according to the U.S. Geological Survey. And company officials are already marketing their graphite to global electric vehicle makers.

But when they presented their preliminary plans to Tesla, “they said, ‘That’s great, we are interested in buying them, but we would need to write 40 contracts of this size to meet our need,’” Schaffner, the Graphite One vice president, said at a community meeting this year, according to the Nome Nugget.

In response, Graphite One is now studying a mine that could be substantially larger than its original proposal.

It’s too early to know how, exactly, the mine’s construction could affect the surrounding watershed. One reason is that the level of risk it poses is linked to its size, and Graphite One has not yet determined how big its project will be.

While graphite itself is nontoxic and inert, the company also hasn’t finished studying the acid-generating potential of the rock that its mine could expose — another key indicator of the project’s level of risk. Stronger acid is more likely to release toxic metals into water that Graphite One would have to contain and treat before releasing back into the environment.

One fish biologist in the region has also said he fears the mine’s construction could negatively affect streams flowing out of the Kigluaik Mountains, though Graphite One officials disagree. The streams’ cool water, according to Charlie Lean, keeps temperatures in the shallow Imuruk Basin low enough to sustain spawning salmon — a critical source of abundant, healthy food for Brevig Mission and Teller residents.

Graphite One plans to store its waste rock and depleted ore in what’s known as a “dry stack,” on top of the ground — rather than in a pond behind a dam, a common industry practice that can risk a major breach if the dam fails.

But experts say smaller-scale spills or leaks from the mine could still drain into the basin and harm fish and wildlife.

“There is always a possibility for some sort of catastrophic failure. But that doesn’t happen very often,” said Dave Chambers, president of the nonprofit Center for Science in Public Participation, which advises advocacy and tribal groups across the country on mining and water quality. “There’s also a possibility there will be no impact. That doesn’t happen very often, either.”

Anthony Huston, Graphite One’s chief executive, said his project will incorporate local knowledge and protect residents’ subsistence harvests.

“We are completely focused on making sure that we create a stronger economy, and the entire Bering Straits region, and all of Alaska, for that matter. And that’s something that this project will bring,” he said in an interview. “But it will never bring it at the expense of the traditional lifestyle of Alaska Native people.

A way of life at stake

There are no Teslas in Brevig Mission or Teller, the two Alaska Native villages closest to the proposed mine.

To get to the communities from the nearest American Tesla dealership, you’d first board a jet in Seattle. Then, you’d fly 1,400 miles to Anchorage, where you’d climb on to another jet and fly 500 more miles northwest to Nome, the former Gold Rush town known as the finish line of the Iditarod sled dog race.

A 70-mile gravel road winds northwest through tundra and mountains before dipping back down to a narrow spit on the Bering Sea coast. The road ends in Teller, population 235, where most residents lack in-home plumbing — let alone own electric cars.

If you need a bathroom here, you’ll use what’s known as a honey bucket.

Brevig Mission, population 435, is even more remote than Teller. It sits across a narrow strait and is accessible only by boat or plane.

The region’s Indigenous history is memorialized in the 1973 book “People of Kauwerak,” written by local elder William Oquilluk. It documents the founding of Kauwerak, an Iñupiaq village by a sandbar near the Imuruk Basin’s innermost reaches.

The area was chosen, according to the book, for the same reasons it’s treasured now: abundant fish and birds, berries and moose, even beluga whales. Kauwerak became one of the Seward Peninsula’s largest villages before it was abandoned in the 19th century, as residents left for jobs and schools.

Whalers, then gold miners, brought profound changes to the Indigenous way of life on the Seward Peninsula, especially through the introduction of pandemic diseases. One outbreak of measles and flu, in 1900, is thought to have killed up to one-third of residents in one of the region’s villages. In Brevig Mission, 72 of 80 Native residents died from the 1918 Spanish flu.

Today, the miners and whalers are gone. In Teller, the population of 250 is 99% Alaska Native.

Four in 10 residents there live below the poverty level, and a typical household, with an average of three people, survives on just $32,000 a year, according to census data.

At the community’s main store, the shelves are completely barren of fresh fruits and vegetables. A box of Corn Chex costs $9.55, and a bottle of Coffee-Mate runs $11.85 — more than twice the Anchorage price.

Residents can buy cheaper groceries in Nome. But gas for the 70-mile drive costs $6.30 a gallon, down from $7 in July.

The high cost of goods combined with the few available jobs helps explain why some Teller and Brevig Mission residents are open to Graphite One’s planned mine, and the cash income it could generate.

As Ayek, the 82-year-old subsistence fisherman, pulled his skiff back into Teller with a cooler of fish, another man was slicing fresh sides of salmon a little ways down the beach.

Nick Topkok, 56, has worked as a contractor for Graphite One, taking workers out in his boat. As he hung his fish to dry on a wood rack, he said few people in the area can find steady jobs.

“The rest are living off welfare,” Topkok said. The mine, he said, would generate money for decades, and it also might help get the village water and sewer systems.

“I’ll be dead by then, but it’ll impact my kids, financially,” he said. “If it’s good and clean, so be it.”

Topkok also acknowledged, however, that a catastrophic accident would “impact us all.”

Many village residents’ summer fishing camps sit along the Tuksuk Channel, below the mine site. Harvests from the basin and its surroundings feed families in Brevig Mission and Teller year-round.

“It’s my freezer,” said Dolly Kugzruk, president of Teller’s tribal government and an opponent of the mine.

Researchers have found all five species of Pacific salmon in and around the Imuruk Basin. Harvests in the area have hit 20,000 fish in some years — roughly 30 per fishing family, according to state data.

At a legislative hearing several years ago on a proposal to support Graphite One’s project, one Teller resident, Tanya Ablowaluk, neatly summed up opponents’ fears: “Will the state keep our freezers full in the event of a spill?”

Gold Rush prospector’s descendants would reap royalties

Elsewhere in rural Alaska, Indigenous people have consented to resource extraction on their ancestral lands on the basis of compromise: They accept environmental risks in exchange for a direct stake in the profits.

Two hundred miles north of the Imuruk Basin, zinc and lead unearthed at Red Dog Mine have generated more than $1 billion in royalties for local Native residents and their descendants, including $172 million last year. On the North Slope, the regional Iñupiat-owned corporation receives oil worth tens of millions of dollars a year from developments on its traditional land.

The new Manh Choh mine in Alaska’s Interior will also pay royalties to Native landowners, as would the proposed Donlin mine in Southwest Alaska.

No such royalties would go to the Iñupiaq residents of Brevig Mission and Teller, based on the way Graphite One’s project is currently structured.

The proposed mine sits exclusively on state land. And Graphite One would pay royalties to the descendants of a Gold Rush-era prospector — a legacy of the not-so-distant American past when white settlers could freely claim land and resources that had been used for thousands of years by Indigenous people.

Nicholas Tweet was a 23-year-old fortune seeker when he left Minnesota for Alaska in the late 1800s. His quest for gold, over several years, took him hiking over mountain ranges, floating down the Yukon River by steamboat, walking hundreds miles across beaches and, finally, rowing more than 100 miles from Nome in a boat he built himself.

Tweet settled in Teller with his family, initially prospecting for gold.

As graphite demand spiked during World War I, Tweet staked claims along the Kigluaik Mountains, and he worked with a company that shipped the mineral to San Francisco until the war ended and demand dried up.

Today, Tweet’s descendants are still in the mining business on the Seward Peninsula. And they still controlled graphite claims in the area a little more than a decade ago. That’s when Huston, a Vancouver entrepreneur, was drawn into the global graphite trade through his interest in Tesla and his own graphite-based golf clubs.

News of a possible deal with Huston’s company arrived at one of the Tweets’ remote mining operations via a note dropped by a bush plane. They reached an agreement after months of discussions — sometimes, according to Huston, with 16 relatives in the room.

So far, the Tweet family, whose members did not respond to requests for comment, has received $370,000 in lease fees. If the project is built, the family would receive additional payments tied to the value of graphite mined by Graphite One, and members could ultimately collect millions of dollars.

Bering Straits Native Corp., owned by more than 8,000 Indigenous shareholders with ties to the region, recently acquired a stake Graphite One’s project — but only by buying its way in.

The company announced its $2 million investment this month. The deal includes commitments by Graphite One to support scholarships, hire Bering Straits’ shareholders and give opportunities to the Native-owned corporation’s subsidiary companies, according to Dan Graham, Bering Straits’ interim chief executive. He declined to release details, saying they have not yet been finalized.

As it considered the investment, Bering Straits board members held meetings with Brevig Mission and Teller residents, where they heard “a lot of concerns,” Graham said. Those concerns “were very well thought through at the board level” before the corporation offered its support for the project, he added.

“Graphite One is very committed to employing local workers from those villages, to being as transparent as possible on what the development is,” Graham said.

Graphite One officials say they have work to do to ensure the region’s residents are trained for mining jobs in time for the start of construction. The company had a maximum of 71 people working at its camp this summer, but Graphite One and its contractors hired just eight people from Teller and Brevig Mission. Sixteen more were from Nome and other villages in the region, according to Graphite One.

Company officials say they have no choice but to develop a local workforce. Because of graphite’s relatively low value in raw form, compared to gold or copper, they say the company can’t afford to fly workers in from outside the region.

Graphite One says it’s also taking direction from members of a committee of local residents it’s appointed to provide advice on environmental issues. In response to the committee’s feedback, the company chose not to barge its fuel through the Imuruk Basin earlier this year; instead, it flew it in, at an added cost of $4 a gallon.

Since Graphite One acquired the Tweets’ graphite claims, progress on the development has been slow. But now, escalating tensions with China and the national push to Americanize the electric vehicle supply chain are putting Huston’s project on the political fast track.

‘We don’t have a choice’

In July, U.S. Sen. Lisa Murkowski boarded a helicopter in Nome and flew to Graphite One’s remote exploration camp overlooking the Imuruk Basin.

A few days later, the Alaska Republican stood on the Senate floor and brandished what she described as a hunk of graphite from an “absolutely massive,” world-class deposit.

“After my site visit there on Saturday, I’m convinced that this is a project that every one of us — those of us here in the Congress, the Biden administration — all of us need to support,” she said. “This project will give us a significant domestic supply, breaking our wholesale dependence on imports.”

U.S. Sen. Dan Sullivan, R-Alaska, U.S. Rep. Mary Peltola, D-Alaska, and GOP Gov. Mike Dunleavy have all expressed support for the project.

Graphite One has enlisted consultants and lobbyists to advance its interests, according to disclosure filings and emails obtained through public records requests.

They include Clark Penney, an Anchorage-based consultant and financial advisor with ties to the Dunleavy administration, and Nate Adams, a former employee of Murkowski and Sullivan who’s worked as a lobbyist in Washington, D.C.

Murkowski has said the mine will reduce dependence on foreign countries that lack America’s environmental and human rights safeguards.

“Security of supply would be assured from day one, and the standards for the mine’s development and operation would be both exceedingly high and fully transparent,” Murkowski wrote in a letter to the Biden administration in 2022.

The Defense Department, meanwhile, announced its grant of up to $37.5 million for Graphite One in July. This month, the company also announced it had received a $4.7 million Defense Department contract to develop a graphite-based firefighting foam.

In a statement, a department spokesman said the July agreement “aims to strengthen the domestic industrial base to make a secure, U.S.-based supply of graphite available for both Department of Defense and consumer markets.”

In Teller and Brevig Mission, Graphite One’s opponents have noticed how the electrical vehicle transition seems to be driving interest in the mine planned for nearby.

As the project gathers outside political support, some village residents said that local attitudes have been shifting, too, in response to the company’s offers of jobs and perks.

Tocktoo, the chief of Brevig Mission’s tribal council, said resistance in his community has diminished as Graphite One “tries to buy their way in.”

The company awards door prizes at meetings and distributes free turkeys, he said. Two years ago, the company gave each household in Brevig Mission and Teller a $50 credit on their electrical bills.

The project, though, remains years away from construction, with production starting no earlier than 2029.

Before it can be built, Graphite One will have to obtain an array of permits, including a major authorization under the federal Clean Water Act that will allow it to do construction around wetlands.

And the project also faces geopolitical and economic uncertainties.

At least last year, Graphite One was tight on cash. It had to slightly shorten its summer exploration season because it didn’t have the money to finish it, company officials said at a public meeting this year.

And while Graphite One is counting on a partnership with a Chinese business to help set up its graphite processing and manufacturing infrastructure, the partner company’s top executive has said publicly that U.S.-China political tensions may thwart the transfer of necessary technologies.

Murkowski, in an interview at the Nome airport on her way home from her visit to Graphite One’s camp, stressed that the project is still in its very early stages.

The permitting process and the substantial environmental reviews that will accompany it, she added, will give concerned residents a chance to pose questions and raise objections.

“There’s no process right now for the public to weigh in. And it’s all so preliminary,” she said. “When you don’t know, the default position is, ‘I don’t think this should happen.’”

But opponents of the project in Brevig Mission and Teller say they fear their objections won’t be heard. Lucy Oquilluk, head of a Teller-based tribal government, said she feels a sense of inevitability.

“It just feels like we have nothing to say about it. We don’t have a choice,” Oquilluk said. “They’re going to do it anyways, no matter what we say.”

▻https://alaskapublic.org/2023/09/29/tesla-needs-graphite-alaska-has-plenty-but-mining-it-raises-fears-in-n

#Tesla #graphite #extractivisme #terres_rares #voitures_électriques #mines #peuples_autochtones #USA #Etats-Unis #Canada #Graphite_One #Brevig_Mission #Teller

Trump the Terminator?
▻https://tomdispatch.com/trump-the-terminator

14.1.2024 by Alfred McCoy - How His Second Presidency Could Signal the End of American Global Power

With recent polls giving Donald Trump a reasonable chance of defeating President Biden in the November elections, commentators have begun predicting what his second presidency might mean for domestic politics. In a dismally detailed Washington Post analysis, historian Robert Kagan argued that a second Trump term would feature his “deep thirst for vengeance” against what the ex-president has called the “radical Left thugs that live like vermin within the confines of our Country,” thereby launching what Kagan calls “a regime of political persecution” leading to “an irreversible descent into dictatorship.”

So far, however, Trump and the media that follow his every word have been largely silent about what his reelection would mean for U.S. foreign policy. Citing his recent promise of “a four-year plan to phase out all Chinese imports of essential goods,” the New York Times did recently conclude that a renewed trade war with China “would significantly disrupt the U.S. economy,” leading to a loss of 744,000 jobs and $1.6 trillion in gross domestic product. Economic relations with China are, however, but one piece of a far larger puzzle when it comes to future American global power, a subject on which media reporting and commentary have been surprisingly reticent.

So let me take the plunge by starting with a prediction I made in a December 2010 TomDispatch piece that “the demise of the United States as the global superpower could come far more quickly than anyone imagines.” I added then that a “realistic assessment of domestic and global trends suggests that in 2025, just 15 years from now, it could be all over except for the shouting.”

I also offered a scenario hinged on — yes! — next November’s elections. “Riding a political tide of disillusionment and despair,” I wrote then, “a far-right patriot captures the presidency with thundering rhetoric, demanding respect for American authority and threatening military retaliation or economic reprisal. The world pays next to no attention as the American Century ends in silence.”

Back then, of course, 2025 was so far off that any prediction should have been a safe bet. After all, 15 years ago, I was already in my mid-60s, which should have given me a “get-out-of-jail-free” card — that is, a reasonable chance of dying before I could be held accountable. But with 2025 now less than a year away, I’m still here (unlike all too many of my old friends) and still responsible for that prediction.

So, let’s imagine that “a far-right patriot,” one Donald Trump, does indeed “capture the presidency with thundering rhetoric” next November. Let me then don the seven-league boots of the historical imagination and, drawing on Trump’s previous presidential record, offer some thoughts about how his second shot at an America-first foreign policy — one based on “demanding respect for American authority” — might affect this country’s global power, already distinctly on the decline.

As our Lonely Planet Guide to a country called the future, let’s take along a classic study former National Security Adviser Zbigniew Brzezinski wrote in retirement in 1997. Drawing on his view that Eurasia remained the “central basis for global primacy,” he argued that Washington had to do just three things to maintain world leadership: first, preserve its position in Western Europe through the NATO alliance; second, maintain its military bases along the Pacific littoral to check China; and finally, prevent any “assertive single entity” like China or Russia from controlling the critical “middle space” of Central Asia and the Middle East. Given his past record and current statements, it seems all too likely that Trump will indeed badly damage, if not destroy, those very pillars of American global power.

Wrecking the NATO Alliance

Trump’s hostility to alliances in general and the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) in particular is a matter of historical record. His hostility to NATO’s crucial mutual-defense clause (Article 5) — requiring all signatories to respond if one were attacked — could prove fatal. Just days after his 2018 sycophantic summit with Russian leader Vladimir Putin, Fox News host Tucker Carlson asked Trump, “Why should my son go to Montenegro to defend it from attack?”

Weighing his words with uncharacteristic care, Trump replied: “I understand what you’re saying. I’ve asked the same question.” He then offered what could, in a second term, prove a virtual death sentence for NATO. “Montenegro,” he said, “is a tiny country with very strong people…They’re very aggressive people. They may get aggressive, and congratulations, you’re in World War Three.”

Since then, of course, Putin has invaded Ukraine and the Biden White House has rallied NATO to defend that frontline European state. Although Congress approved a massive $111 billion in aid (including $67 billion in military aid) for Ukraine in the war’s first 18 months, the Republican-led House has recently stalled President Biden’s request for an additional $67 billion critical to Kyiv’s continued resistance. As the campaign for his party’s nomination gathers momentum, Trump’s pro-Putin sentiments have helped persuade Republican legislators to break with our NATO allies on this critical issue.

Keep in mind that, right after Russia invaded in February 2022, Trump labeled Putin’s move “genius,” adding, “I mean, he’s taking over a country for $2 worth of sanctions. I’d say that’s pretty smart.” Last September, after Putin thanked him for claiming that, were he still president, he could end the war in 24 hours, Trump assured Meet the Press: “I would get him into a room. I’d get Zelensky into a room. Then I’d bring them together. And I’d have a deal worked out.”

In reality, a reelected Trump would undoubtedly simply abandon Ukraine, at best forcing it into negotiations that would be tantamount to surrender. As formerly neutral nations Finland and Sweden have rallied to NATO and alliance stalwarts like Britain and Germany make major arms deliveries to Ukraine, Europe has clearly labeled Russia’s invasion and war an existential threat. Under such circumstances, a future Trump tilt toward Putin could swing a wrecking ball through the NATO alliance, which, for the past 75 years, has served as a singular pillar in the architecture of U.S. global power.

Alienating Allies on the Pacific Littoral

Just as NATO has long served as a strategic pillar at the western end of the vast Eurasian land mass, so four bilateral alliances along the Pacific littoral from Japan to the Philippines have proven a geopolitical fulcrum for dominance over the eastern end of Eurasia and the defense of North America. Here, the record of the first Trump administration was, at best, mixed. On the credit side of history’s ledger, he did revive “the Quad,” a loose alliance with Australia, India, and Japan, which has gained greater coherence under President Biden.

But only time spared Trump’s overall Asian diplomacy from utter disaster. His obsessive personal courtship of North Korean dictator Kim Jong-un, marked by two meaningless meetings and the exchange of 27 mash notes, failed to produce any sign of Pyongyang’s (nuclear) disarmament, while weakening America’s alliance with long-standing ally South Korea. Although Japan’s prime minister obsequiously paid court to Trump, he battered that classic bilateral alliance with constant complaints about its cost, even slapping a punitive 25% duty on Japanese steel imports.

Ignoring the pleas of close Asian allies, Trump also cancelled the Trans-Pacific Partnership, leaving the door open for China to conclude its own Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership with 15 Asia-Pacific countries that now account for nearly a third of Beijing’s foreign trade. Another four years of Trump’s “America first” diplomacy in the Pacific could do irreparable damage to those key strategic alliances.

Further south, by using Taiwan to both confront and court Chinese President Xi Jinping, while letting the Philippines drift toward Beijing’s orbit and launching a misbegotten trade war with China, Trump’s version of Asian “diplomacy” allowed Beijing to make some real diplomatic, economic, and military gains, while distinctly weakening the American position in the region. Biden, by contrast, has at least partially restored it, a strengthening reflected in a surprisingly amicable San Francisco summit last November with President Xi.

In South Asia, where the bitter rivalry between India and Pakistan dominates all diplomacy, President Trump trashed a 70-year military alliance with Pakistan with a single New Year’s Day message. “The United States has foolishly given Pakistan more than 33 billion dollars in aid over the last 15 years,” Trump tweeted, “and they have given us nothing but lies & deceit, thinking of our leaders as fools… No more!” Since then, Pakistan has shifted decisively into Beijing’s orbit, while India now plays Moscow and Washington off against each other to its economic advantage.

Just as Trump’s posture toward Europe could swing a wrecking ball through the NATO alliance in a second term, so his mix of economic nationalism and strategic myopia could destabilize the array of alliances along the Pacific littoral, toppling that second of Brzezinski’s three pillars for American global power.

That “Assertive Single Entity” in Central Asia

And when it comes to that third pillar of U.S. global power –- preventing any “assertive single entity” from controlling the “middle space” of Eurasia — President Trump failed woefully (as, in fact, had his predecessors). After announcing China’s trillion-dollar Belt & Road Initiative in 2013, President Xi has spent billions building a steel grid of roads, rails, and pipelines that crisscross the middle space of that vast Eurasian landmass, an enormous new infrastructure that has led to a chain of alliances stretching across central Asia.

The power of China’s position was manifested in 2021 when Beijing helped push the U.S. military out of Afghanistan in a deft geopolitical squeeze-play. More recently, Beijing also brokered a breathtaking diplomatic entente between Shi’a Iran and Sunni Saudi Arabia, stunning Washington and many Western diplomats.

Trump’s Middle East policy during his first term in office was focused solely on backing Israel’s right-wing Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu — recognizing Jerusalem as Israel’s capital, cancelling a nuclear agreement with Iran, seconding his marginalization of the Palestinians, and promoting Arab recognition of Israel. Since the Hamas terrorist attack of October 7th and Netanyahu’s devastating assault on Gaza’s civilian population, President Biden’s reaction was skewed in an almost Trumpian fashion toward Israel, with a consequent loss of influence in the wider region. And count on one thing: an incoming Trump administration would only compound the damage.

In short, Beijing is already toppling the third pillar of American global power in that critical “middle space” of Eurasia. In a second Trump term, an unchecked Chinese diplomatic and economic juggernaut could arguably grind that pillar into rubble.

Africa in the “World Island”

In fact, however, no matter what Brzezinski might have thought, there are other pillars of world power beyond Eurasia — above all, Africa. Indeed, Sir Halford Mackinder, the author of the global geopolitical analysis that deeply influenced the former national security adviser, argued over a century ago that the locus of global power lay in a tri-continental combination of Europe, Asia, and Africa that he dubbed “the world island.”

In the age of high imperialism, Europe found Africa a fertile field for colonial exploitation and, during the Cold War, Washington added to that continent’s suffering by making it a superpower surrogate battleground. But Beijing grasped the human potential of Africa and, in the 1970s, began building lasting economic alliances with its emerging nations. By 2015, its trade with Africa had climbed to $222 billion, three times America’s. Its investments there were then projected to reach a trillion dollars by 2025.

Recognizing the strategic threat, President Barack Obama convened a 2014 summit with 51 African leaders at the White House. Trump, however, dismissed the entire continent, during a 2018 Oval Office meeting, as so many “shithole countries.” The Trump administration tried to repair the damage by sending First Lady Melania off on a solo trip to Africa, but her bizarre colonial outfits and ill-timed administration cuts in foreign aid to the continent only added to the damage.

In addition to a storehouse of natural resources, Africa’s chief asset is its growing pool of human talent. Africa’s median age is 19 (compared to 38 for both China and the U.S.), meaning that, by 2050, that continent will be home to a full one-third of the world’s young. Given his fraught record with the region, Trump’s second term would likely do little more than hand the whole continent to China on a gold-plated platter.

South of the Border

Even in Latin America, the situation has been changing in a complex fashion. As a region informally incorporated into the American imperium for more than a century and suffering all the slights of an asymmetric alliance, its increasingly nationalist leaders welcomed China’s interest in this century. By 2017, in fact, Chinese trade with Latin America had hit a substantial $244 billion, making it — yes! — the region’s largest trading partner. Simultaneously, Beijing’s loans to Caribbean countries had reached a hefty $62 billion by the end of the Trump administration.

Except for drug interdiction and economic sanctions against leftist regimes in Cuba and Venezuela, the Trump White House generally ignored Latin America, doing nothing to slow China’s commercial juggernaut. Although the Biden administration made some diplomatic gestures toward the region, China’s trade rose relentlessly to $450 billion by 2022.

Reflecting a bipartisan indifference in this century, a reelected President Trump would likely do little to check China’s growing commercial hegemony over Latin America. And the region would undoubtedly welcome such indifference, since the alternative — along with draconian moves at the U.S.-Mexican border — might involve plans to fire missiles at or send troops to knock out drug labs in Mexico. The backlash to such unilateral intervention amid panic over immigration could cripple U.S. relations with the region for decades to come.

Fading American Hegemony

In the world that a second Trump term might face in 2025, American global power will probably be far less imposing than it was when he came into office in 2016. The problem won’t be that this time around he’s already appointing advisers determined to let Trump be Trump or, as the New York Times put it recently, who are “forging plans for an even more extreme agenda than his first term.” By every significant metric — economic, diplomatic, and even military — U.S. power has been on a downward slide for at least a decade. In the more unipolar world of 2016, Trump’s impulsive, individualized version of diplomacy was often deeply damaging, but on at least a small number of occasions modestly successful. In the more multipolar world he would have to manage nearly a decade later, his version of a unilateral approach could prove deeply disastrous.

After taking his second oath of office in January of 2025, President Trump’s “thundering rhetoric, demanding respect for American authority and threatening military retaliation or economic reprisal,” might indeed fulfill the prediction I made some 15 years ago: “The world pays next to no attention as the American Century ends in silence.”

#USA #impérialisme

Spannungen zwischen Nato-Staaten und China : Analyse einer zunehmenden Rivalität
▻https://www.telepolis.de/features/Spannungen-zwischen-Nato-Staaten-und-China-Analyse-einer-zunehmenden-Rival

https://heise.cloudimg.io/width/1280/q75.png-lossy-75.webp-lossy-75.foil1/_www-heise-de_/imgs/18/4/5/2/7/5/5/6/95cd758fa78d8573.jpeg

Dans une série d’articles bien documentés Norman Paech vérifie le bien fondé des accusations de génocide contre la Chine. Il confirme l’impression que j’ai depuis le début : Il y a sans doute beaucoup de pratiques du pouvoir chinois qu’on peut critiquer dans le détail, mais les reproches d’actes et de volonté génocidaires contre la Chine sont des fabrications des milieux islamistes et anticommunistes états-uniens, allemands et ouïgours.

17.1.2024 - China gewinnt an Bedeutung, doch auch der Widerstand wächst. Vorwürfe vor allem aus Nato-Staaten. Wie sich der Konflikt auswirkt. Eine Analyse in drei Teilen. (Teil 1)

Völkerrechtliche Perspektiven auf die Situation der Uiguren in China
▻https://www.telepolis.de/features/Voelkerrechtliche-Perspektiven-auf-die-Situation-der-Uiguren-in-China-9600

20.1.2024 - UN-Hochkommissariat sieht Menschenrechtslage in Xinjiang kritisch. Chinas Vorgehen stehen zur Debatte. Was sagen Völkerrecht und UNO? Eine Analyse in drei Teilen. (Teil 2)

China und Xinjiang : Anschuldigungen wegen Völkermordes im Realitätscheck
▻https://www.telepolis.de/features/China-und-Xinjiang-Anschuldigungen-wegen-Voelkermordes-im-Realitaetscheck-

21.1.2024 - Überwachungsapparat in Xinjiang. Leben der Uiguren tiefgreifend verändert. Wird aber die uigurische Kultur zerstört? Eine Analyse in drei Teilen. (Teil 3 und Schluss)

#USA #Chine #minorités_nationales #terrorisme #islamisme #impérialusme #génocide

A Detroit, les Arabes-Américains soudés derrière les Palestiniens et en colère contre Joe Biden
▻https://www.lemonde.fr/m-le-mag/article/2024/01/20/a-detroit-la-colere-des-arabes-americains_6211873_4500055.html

Le journal local, « The Arab American News », soutien des démocrates en 2020, appelle à lâcher Joe Biden, jugé complice d’Israël. Quitte à livrer le pays à Donald Trump.

#paywall

Der Tod eines US-amerikanischen Bloggers im ukrainischen Gefängnis und die Doppelmoral
▻https://www.nachdenkseiten.de/?p=109594

En temps de guerre tous les états ressemblent aux régimes fascistes. L’Ukraine ne fait pas exception de cette règle. Un blogeur états-unien en est mort. Dans nos pays si démocratiques une situation comparable est en train de se préparer. Il nous reste encore un peu de temps pour défendre nos libertés. Comment faire ? C’est simple : il ne faut jamais se taire.

17.1.2024 von Gábor Stier - Der US-amerikanische Journalist Gonzalo Lira ist in einem ukrainischen Gefängnis gestorben. Sein „Verbrechen“ bestand darin, dass er mit der Politik der Ukraine und der Vereinigten Staaten nicht einverstanden war. Washington hat keinen Finger gerührt, um ihn zu befreien, obwohl es hätte es tun können. Der Fall lässt daran zweifeln, wie aufrichtig die Empörung und die Besorgnis des Weißen Hauses über die russischen Gesetze ist, die diejenigen betreffen, die sich gegen den Krieg und die Verhaftung von US-Journalisten in Russland aussprechen. Von Gábor Stier, Übersetzung von Éva Péli.

„In fast keinem Punkt stimmte ich mit ihm überein, aber er hätte nicht in einem ukrainischen Gefängnis sterben sollen!“, schrieb Kit Klarenberg von The Grayzone, als er die Nachricht von Gonzalo Liras Tod auf X verkündete. Über den Tod des 55-jährigen chilenisch-US-amerikanischen Bloggers und Journalisten mit doppelter Staatsbürgerschaft war auch Tucker Carlson schockiert, der ebenfalls als einer der Ersten darüber berichtete und das Weiße Haus der Komplizenschaft bei der Inhaftierung und Folterung von Lira beschuldigte. Der bekannte US-amerikanische Fernsehjournalist sprach mit dem Vater von Gonzalo Lira, der sich über die Geschehnisse empörte: „Ich kann nicht akzeptieren, wie mein Sohn gestorben ist. Er wurde gefoltert, erpresst, monatelang festgehalten und die US-Botschaft hat nichts für ihn getan. Diktator Selenskyj ist für diese Tragödie verantwortlich, mit dem Einverständnis des senilen US-Präsidenten Joe Biden.“

Das US-Außenministerium bestätigte den Tod von Gonzalo Lira, weitere Auskünfte wurden unter Berufung auf die Interessen der Familie des Verstorbenen verweigert. Auch Elon Musk, der noch Ende des Jahres die Freilassung von Gonzalo Lira forderte, schrieb dazu auf X:

„Das ist absolut gegen das Gesetz“, und kommentierte damit einen Artikel des US-Unternehmers David Sacks. Sacks wies darauf hin, dass die Biden-Regierung Lira mit einem Telefonanruf hätte zurückholen können, aber sie blieb untätig. Die ukrainische Regierung wusste also, dass sie ungestraft handeln konnte. Auch der Sohn von Donald Trump kommentierte die Todesnachricht des Journalisten und merkte sarkastisch an, man warte vergeblich darauf, dass sich die US-amerikanischen Medien empören.

Wenn die Empörung ausbleibt

Im Gegensatz zu früheren ähnlichen Fällen in Russland sind dieses Mal weder die westlichen Mainstream-Medien noch die westlichen Politiker wirklich empört. Natürlich wurde der Fall inmitten des Informationskriegs sofort von der russischen Presse und Politik aufgegriffen. Der Tod des Journalisten wurde vom russischen UN-Diplomaten Dmitri Poljanskij als ein schreckliches Verbrechen bezeichnet.

Gonzalo Angel Quintilio Lira Lopez wurde in den Vereinigten Staaten geboren und besitzt auch die chilenische Staatsbürgerschaft. In Videos, die er in den sozialen Medien veröffentlichte, kritisierte er die NATO, die Regierung von US-Präsident Joe Biden und Wolodymyr Selenskyj. Außerdem bezeichnete er den Krieg als einen Krieg zwischen den USA und Russland. Der 55-jährige Lira lebte früher in Charkow und bloggte unter dem Namen „CoachRedPill“. Nach der Eskalation des Konflikts mit Russland im Februar 2022 wechselte er zu YouTube-Videos. Sein Kanal hatte mehr als 140.000 Follower. Im Mai 2023 wurde er von dem ukrainischen Sicherheitsdienst (SBU) verhaftet und beschuldigt, die ukrainische Führung und Armee diskreditiert zu haben.

Der Blogger tauchte Ende Juli mit einer Reihe von Beiträgen auf X wieder auf. Darin enthüllte er seine Folter im Gefängnis und schilderte, wie der SBU versuchte, ihn mit Geld zu erpressen. Er postete auch über seinen Versuch, nach Ungarn zu fliehen und dort Asyl zu beantragen. Nach Angaben des SBU versuchte daraufhin Lira, der zu diesem Zeitpunkt gegen Kaution unter Hausarrest stand, die Grenze auf seinem Motorrad zu überqueren, wurde erneut festgenommen und in das Gefängnis von Charkiw gebracht. Danach verschwand er aus den sozialen Medien und kürzlich erhielt die Familie eine Nachricht über seine ernsthaften gesundheitlichen Probleme. Er hatte im Oktober eine Lungenentzündung und seine Lunge kollabierte. Der Nachricht zufolge ignorierten die Gefängnisbehörden dies und erkannten das Problem erst am 22. Dezember an, als er operiert werden sollte, aber er starb im Krankenhaus in Charkiw.

Wenn der Hilferuf ignoriert wird

Während der mehr als achtmonatigen Haft verweigerten die ukrainischen Behörden dem Journalisten nicht nur lange Zeit die medizinische Versorgung, sondern folterten ihn, verlangten von ihm 70.000 US-Dollar und verweigerten ihm den Kontakt zu seinen Anwälten. Seine Familie wandte sich daher an das US-Außenministerium, um Hilfe zu erhalten – ohne Erfolg. Ende des Jahres forderte Elon Musk von den ukrainischen Behörden eine Erklärung für die Inhaftierung von Lira, woraufhin der SBU erklärte, der Blogger habe regelmäßig die russische Aggression gerechtfertigt, in den sozialen Medien prorussische Thesen verbreitet und damit gegen ukrainisches Recht verstoßen. Auch der russische Journalistenverband sprach sich für Lira aus und machte Journalisten in aller Welt darauf aufmerksam, was mit ihrem Kollegen geschehen war.

Zunächst einmal wirft der Tod von Gonzalo Lira die Frage auf, wie man mit Meinungsfreiheit und Menschenrechten in Kriegszeiten umgehen soll. Wie wir sehen: selektiv. Und das nicht nur in Kriegszeiten. Wenn es um Russland geht, um die Verhaftung derjenigen, die den Krieg verurteilen, die russische Armee kritisieren oder sie diffamieren, dann sind die westlichen Mainstream-Medien schnell empört und diskutieren ausführlich über das Wesen des russischen „Regimes“ und die Haftbedingungen. Doch wenn die Ukraine dasselbe tut, dann folgt ein tiefes Schweigen. Dann wird über den Fall berichtet, aber die Empörung bleibt aus – Respekt für die Ausnahmen. Stattdessen wird darüber sinniert, dass in Kriegszeiten die Rechte eingeschränkt und der Meinungskorridor schmaler werden.

Aber der Tod des US-amerikanischen Bloggers wirft auch die Frage nach der Doppelmoral in einem anderen Sinne auf. Vergessen wir nicht, dass es sich um einen US-amerikanischen Staatsbürger handelt, von dessen Geschichte die zuständigen US-Behörden wussten, die jedoch keinen Finger rührten. Das liegt daran, dass Lira die Regierung kritisierte, er war mit diesem Krieg nicht einverstanden. Er stellte sich gegen den Mainstream, deshalb war sein Tod nicht von Bedeutung. Er verdiente keinen Schutz, und jetzt gibt es keine Empörung. Anders als im Fall von Evan Gershkovich – ein Journalist des Wall Street Journal, der wegen Spionageverdachts in russischer Haft sitzt und für dessen Freilassung die US-Diplomatie Himmel und Hölle in Bewegung setzt.

Wenn jemand aus der Reihe tanzt

Dies zeigt: Die allgemein akzeptierte These, wonach, wenn ein US-amerikanischer Bürger irgendwo in der Welt Unrecht erleidet, kommt die US-amerikanische Kriegsflotte zu Hilfe, weil die Vereinigten Staaten ihre Bürger und natürlich auch ihre Verbündeten schützen, differenzierter betrachtet werden muss. Gibt es womöglich US-Bürger erster und zweiter Klasse? Durchaus! Wie wir sehen, schützt der US-Pass nicht jede und jeden. Nur diejenigen, die „richtig“ denken. Doch angesichts der Geschehnisse stellt sich die Frage: Können die Vereinigten Staaten das Vertrauen ihrer Verbündeten genießen, wenn die USA selbst mit ihren eigenen Bürgern so selektiv umgeht? Von wegen! Jeder sollte sich darüber im Klaren sein, dass jeder, der ausschert, keinen Anspruch auf Schutz hat! Nicht im Geringsten!

Wie wir in diesem Fall sehen können, sind diejenigen, die aus der Reihe tanzen, die sich gegen den Mainstream stellen, gefährliche Elemente, die auf die eine oder andere Weise beiseitegeschoben werden müssen, um den Fortschritt nicht zu verhindern.

Gonzalo Lira wurde ins Abseits gedrängt, indem dem Kiewer Regime das Mandat erteilt wurde, mit ihm zu machen, was es für richtig hält. In Washington war es sehr wohl bekannt, dass den Blogger in der Ukraine nicht viel Gutes erwartet. Natürlich musste Lira das selbst gewusst haben, denn er kannte das Land gut. Aber das entbindet die Ukraine nicht von der Verantwortung, einen Mann wegen seiner Ansichten sterben zu lassen. Es hat sie auch nicht gestört, dass er ein ausländischer Staatsbürger war. Stellen Sie sich das Schicksal vor, das Ukrainerinnen oder Ukrainer erwartet, die ihre Meinung äußern, wenn ein Mensch aus den USA so behandelt wird. Der übrigens keine Bedrohung für die nationalen Sicherheitsinteressen der Ukraine darstellte, lediglich die Situation anders sah. Und lassen wir lieber außen vor, was für ein Bollwerk der Demokratie die Ukraine ist und wie viel demokratischer das ukrainische System ist als das russische. Nun, der Tod von Gonzalo Lira zeugt nicht davon, dass das System demokratischer sei.

Aber wir dürfen nicht vergessen, dass Kiew all dies mit dem Wissen und sogar der Unterstützung der westlichen Welt tut. Denn der Antirussismus überlagert und verblendet alles. Wir leben in einer Welt, in der zwar von demokratischen Werten die Rede ist, in der aber scheinheilig mit zweierlei Maß gemessen wird.

Der Artikel ist ursprünglich auf dem ungarischen Portal Moszkvater erschienen.

#USA #Ukraine #guerre #torture

Blinne Ní Ghrálaigh: Lawyer’s closing statement in ICJ case against Israel praised

https://www.thenational.scot/resources/images/17634889.jpg

This was the powerful closing statement in South Africa’s genocide case against Israel.

Senior advocate #Blinne_Ní_Ghrálaigh addressed the International Court of Justice on day one of the hearing.

ICJ: Blinne Ní Ghrálaigh’s powerful closing statement in South Africa case against Israel
▻https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ttrJd2aWF-Y&embeds_referring_euri=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.thenational.sco

▻https://www.thenational.scot/news/24042943.blinne-ni-ghralaigh-lawyers-closing-statement-icj-case-israel

#Cour_internationale_de_justice (#CIJ) #Israël #Palestine #Afrique_du_Sud #justice #génocide

There Was an Iron Wall in Gaza
▻https://jacobin.com/2024/01/iron-wall-gaza-israel-defense-forces-realpolitik-palestine-history

Dans cet article nous apprenons l’histoire du mouvement palestinien, du développement de la politique sioniste et des approches égyptiennes au problème introduit dans la région par la fondation de l’état d’Israël. C’est une lecture obligatoire pour chacune et chacun qui ne sait pas expliquer dans le détail les événements depuis 1945 et le rôle des acteurs historiques. Attention, l’article contient quelques déscriptions d’atrocités qu’on préfère ne pas lire juste avant de prendre son petit déjeuner.

4.1.2024 byy Seth Ackerman - In a 1948 essay, “The Twilight of International Morality,” the international relations theorist Hans Morgenthau looked back at the bygone style of diplomacy practiced by the old aristocratic states of Europe — what might be called “traditional Realpolitik” — and ventured a contrarian argument: that behind its amoral facade and despite its reputation for cynicism and duplicity, it was always grounded in an inviolable ethical code.

He considered Otto von Bismarck, the German avatar of nineteenth-century Realpolitik, and contrasted him with Adolf Hitler. Both men had faced the same stubborn problem: the fact of Germany’s “encirclement” by dangerous neighbors, France to the west and Russia to the east.

But whereas Bismarck “accepted the inevitability of that fact and endeavored to turn it to Germany’s advantage,” through an intricate and sometimes devious Realpolitik diplomacy, Hitler, being “free of the moral scruples which had compelled Bismarck to accept the existence of France and Russia,” set out, quite simply, to annihilate them both.

Whether this difference was really attributable to “moral scruple” or not can be debated; Bismarck’s foreign policy was a practical success, after all, while Hitler’s obviously wasn’t. But Morgenthau had put his finger on a useful and important distinction.

The “Bismarck method” and the “Hitler method” can be thought of as two alternative ways of dealing with danger in the world. The first is the method of Realpolitik, which accepts power realities for what they are; assumes coexistence with enemies to be, for better or worse, permanent and unavoidable; and for that reason prefers, wherever possible, to defuse threats by searching for areas of common interest, employing the minimum quantum of violence necessary to achieve vital objectives.

The second method is animated by an ideologically driven demonology of one type or another — an obsession with monsters that must be destroyed — coupled with an insatiable craving for what Henry Kissinger, in a well-known aphorism, called “absolute security”: “The desire of one power for absolute security,” he wrote in his 1954 doctoral dissertation on the diplomacy of Austrian diplomat Klemens von Metternich, “means absolute insecurity for all the others.”
United Behind Israel

Since October 7, every voice of authority in the West, from Joe Biden on down — in the foreign ministries, the think tanks, the major media — has united behind Israel’s declared objective to “crush and eliminate” Hamas. Its commando strike through Israel’s Gaza “iron wall” and the spree of atrocities against civilians that accompanied it are said to have voided whatever legitimacy the group might once have been accorded. A demand for Hamas’s total defeat and eradication is — for now, anyway — official policy in the United States, the European Union, and the other G7 nations.

The problem, however, is that Hamas, which won 44 percent of the vote in the last Palestinian legislative elections, is a mass political party, not just an armed group, and neither can in fact be eradicated “militarily.” As long as Hamas exists, attempting to permanently exclude it from Palestinian politics by foreign diktat is guaranteed not only to fail but to sow unending chaos.

Because the Hamas-must-go policy is unachievable and unsustainable, it is fated to be temporary, and the only question is how long it will take the world’s leaders to recognize their mistake and how much damage will be done in the meantime.

In Afghanistan it took the United States twenty years, across three administrations, to summon the nerve to admit that it couldn’t defeat the Taliban. Despite the nearly three thousand who died on American soil at the hands of the Taliban’s al-Qaeda “guests,” the US realized in the end that it had no better option than to talk to the group and make a deal. When an accommodation was finally reached, in 2020, it was — in classic Realpolitik fashion — based on a common interest in defeating a mutual enemy, namely ISIS. In exchange for a commitment from the Taliban not to allow its territory to be used as a base for foreign terrorist operations, the United States withdrew its forces in 2021 and the Taliban is now in power in Kabul.

But Gaza can’t afford to wait twenty years for Biden and company to come to their senses; given the pace of Israel’s killing machine, the last surviving Palestinian there will be long dead by then.

All his life, Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu has spoken publicly and privately of his dream that Israel might someday get an opportunity to finish the job of 1948 and rid the Land of Israel of its masses of Palestinian interlopers. He expounded on this theme one evening in Jerusalem in the late 1970s to an appalled dinner guest, the military historian Max Hastings, who recounted the conversation in his memoirs; and he returned to the theme on the floor of the Knesset a decade later, after the Tiananmen Square massacre, when he lamented Israel’s failure to have seized the moment while the world’s attention was focused on China, to carry out a “mass expulsion of the Arabs.”

Now, thanks to a fortuitous convergence of circumstances — a vengeful public, a far-right governing coalition, and, most importantly, a compliant US president — Netanyahu has been given another chance, and he’s not letting the opportunity slip away.

Israel has explained what it’s doing in plain language. No one can claim they didn’t know. Through a combination of mass-casualty terror bombing — what Robert Pape of the University of Chicago, a leading scholar of coercive air power, has called “one of the most intense civilian punishment campaigns in history” — the destruction of hospitals and other critical infrastructure, and a near-total blockade of humanitarian supplies, it is working “to create conditions where life in Gaza becomes unsustainable,” in the words of Major General (Ret.) Giora Eiland, an adviser to the current defense minister.

Israel, in other words, is grimly marching Morgenthau’s argument to its logical conclusion — proving, before the eyes of the world, that the final and most fundamental alternative to Realpolitik is genocide.
Speak of the Devil

In a 2008 article published by the Israel Council on Foreign Relations, Efraim Halevy, one of the more pragmatic Realpolitikers in Israel’s security establishment, aired his qualms about the prevailing Israeli approach to dealing with Gaza and its rulers.

A former head of the Mossad, director of Israel’s national security council, and ambassador to the European Union, Halevy had worked on the Hamas file for many years, and his message was blunt: Hamas wasn’t going away anytime soon. Israel would therefore do well to find a way to make the group “a factor in a solution” rather than a perpetually “insurmountable problem.”

Since the notion of Hamas as a solution to anything was bound to jar the reader’s preconceptions, Halevy took care to lay out a few relevant facts.

He explained, first, that whatever the group’s founding documents might say, twenty years of contact with real-world politics had educated Hamas in the realities of power, and it was now “more than obvious to Hamas that they have no chance in the world to witness the destruction of the State of Israel.”

Consequently, the group’s leaders had reverted to a more achievable goal: rather than Israel’s destruction, they sought its withdrawal to its 1967 borders, in exchange for which Hamas would agree to an extended armistice — “a thirty-year truce,” Halevy called it — which the group said it would respect and even help enforce, and which could eventually be made permanent if the parties so desired.

Second, although Hamas’s leaders were adamant that Hamas would not recognize Israel or talk to it directly, they didn’t object to Mahmoud Abbas doing so, and they declared themselves ready, according to Halevy, “to accept a solution negotiated [by Abbas] with Israel if it were approved in a national Palestinian referendum.”

Two years earlier, Hamas had prevailed in Palestinian elections by emphasizing its pragmatism and willingness to respect the two-state center-ground of Palestinian public opinion. That decision had represented a victory for the moderates within the organization. One of them, Riad Mustafa, a Hamas parliamentary deputy representing Nablus, explained the group’s position in a 2006 interview:

I say unambiguously: Hamas does not and never will recognize Israel. Recognition is an act conferred by states, not movements or governments, and Palestine is not a state. Nevertheless, the [Hamas-led] government’s program calls for the end of the occupation, not the destruction of Israel, and Hamas has proposed ending the occupation and a long-term truce to bring peace to this region.

That is Hamas’ own position. The government has also recognized President Abbas’ right to conduct political negotiations with Israel. If he were to produce a peace agreement, and if this agreement was endorsed by our national institutions and a popular referendum, then — even if it includes Palestinian recognition of Israel — we would of course accept their verdict. Because respecting the will of the people and their democratic choice is also one of our principles.

According to Halevy, Hamas had conveyed these ideas to the Israeli leadership as far back as 1997 — but it never got a response. “Israel rejected this approach out of hand,” he wrote, “viewing it as a honey trap that would allow Hamas to consolidate its strength and status until such time as it would be capable of confronting Israel in battle, with a chance of winning.”

Halevy regarded this as a serious mistake. “Is the current approach of Hamas genuine or is it a honey trap?” he asked. “Who can say?” Everything would depend on the details — but “such details cannot be pursued unless Hamas is engaged in meaningful discussion.”

Finally — and presciently, it’s now clear — he reminded his readers that refusing to talk brought risks of its own:

The Hamas leadership is by no means unanimous concerning the policies it should adopt. There are the pragmatists, the die-hard ideologues, the politicians, and the commanders in the field. All are now locked in serious debate over the future.

As long as the door to dialogue is closed, there is no doubt as to who will prevail in this continuous deliberation and soul-searching.

Organized Inhumanity

Instead of taking Halevy’s Realpolitik advice, Israel and the United States doubled down on their monster-slaying crusade. Following Hamas’s election victory, they cut off aid to the Palestinian Authority, boycotted its new government, and tried to foment an anti-Hamas coup in Gaza, using forces loyal to elements of Fatah. The coup backfired, however, and when the dust cleared in early 2007, Fatah’s forces in Gaza had been routed, leaving Hamas in full control of the Strip.

In response to that fiasco, Israel’s cabinet designated Gaza a “hostile entity” and prescribed an unprecedented tightening of its blockade, a measure officially referred to as the “closure” — an elaborate system of controls over the movement of people and goods into and out of the enclave, made possible by Israel’s continued grip over Gaza’s borders.
Prime Minister Ismail Haniya, of Hamas (L), and Palestinian president Mahmoud Abbas, of Fatah, chair the first meeting of the previously attempted Palestinian unity government, on March 18, 2007, in the Gaza Strip.
(Abid Katib / Getty Images)

The closure of Gaza was a unique experiment — a pioneering innovation in organized inhumanity. The United Nations (UN) human rights jurist John Dugard has called it “possibly the most rigorous form of international sanctions imposed in modern times.”

To make it sustainable, the closure was crafted to allow Israel to fine-tune the level of suffering Gazans experienced. The goal, as an adviser to Prime Minister Ehud Olmert put it, was “to put the Palestinians on a diet, but not to make them die of hunger.” Thus, on the one hand, the productive economy was comprehensively wiped out by denying it materials, fuel, and machinery. But on the other hand, Israel would try to estimate how many truckloads of food deliveries per day it would need to approve in order for the minimum caloric requirements of Gaza’s population to be met without producing famine conditions.

The phrase that Israel’s closure administrators used among themselves to summarize their objective was, “No prosperity, no development, no humanitarian crisis.” By October 7, this policy had been in place for sixteen years, and a majority of Gaza’s population could not remember a time before it.

Jamie Stern-Weiner has summarized the effects:

The unemployment rate soared to “probably the highest in the world,” four-fifths of the population were forced to rely on humanitarian assistance, three-quarters became dependent on food aid, more than half faced “acute food insecurity,” one in ten children were stunted by malnutrition, and over 96 percent of potable water became unsafe for human consumption.

The head of the United Nations (UN) agency for Palestinian refugees, UNRWA, observed in 2008 that “Gaza is on the threshold of becoming the first territory to be intentionally reduced to a state of abject destitution, with the knowledge, acquiescence and — some would say — encouragement of the international community.”

The UN warned in 2015 that the cumulative impact of this induced “humanitarian implosion” might render Gaza “unlivable” within a half-decade. Israeli military intelligence agreed.

As time went on, Israel under Netanyahu tried to turn the closure into a tool of coercive statecraft. When Hamas was being cooperative, the restrictions were minutely eased and Gazans’ misery would ever so slightly subside. When Hamas was recalcitrant, Israel would, so to speak, put the Palestinians on a more stringent diet.

But even in the most convivial moments of the Israel-Hamas relationship, conditions in Gaza were maintained at a level of deprivation that, anywhere else, would be considered catastrophic. In the period just prior to October 7, Gazans had electricity for only half the day. Eighty percent of the population relied on humanitarian relief for basic needs, 40 percent suffered from a “severe” lack of food, and 75 percent of the population lacked access to water fit for human consumption.

That was the bad news. The good news was that Israel had recently hinted it might permit repairs to Gaza’s water desalination plants — depending on how Hamas behaved.
Bismarck in Zion

It would be wrong to compare this situation to old-style, nineteenth-century colonialism. It was much worse than that. It was more like a grotesque parody of colonialism — “no prosperity, no development, no humanitarian crisis” — a cartoonishly malevolent version of the kind of foreign domination against which “wars of national liberation” have been fought by people on every continent and in every era — and by the most gruesome means.

One can debate this or that aspect of the academic left’s discourse about Israel as a settler-colonial state. But the colonial dynamic that lies at the root of Israel’s conflict with the Palestinians is not a matter of debate; it’s a fact of history, recognized as such not just by campus social-justice activists but by the leading figures of modern Zionism.

Vladimir Jabotinsky, the erudite and much misunderstood Zionist leader who posthumously became the founding father of the Israeli right (one of his closest aides, Benzion Netanyahu, was the father of the current prime minister) sought to drive home just this point in his famous 1923 essay “The Iron Wall.”

At the time, many on the Zionist left still clung to the pretense that Zionism posed no threat to the Palestinians. They dissembled in public about the movement’s ultimate aims — the creation of a state “as Jewish as England is English,” in the words of Chaim Weizmann — and, even in private, some of them professed to believe that the Jewish presence in Palestine would bring such wondrous economic blessings that the Palestinians themselves would someday be won over to the Zionist cause.

This combination of deception and self-deception put the whole Zionist venture at risk, Jabotinsky believed, and in “The Iron Wall” he set out, in exceptionally lucid and unforgiving prose, to strip away the Left’s illusions.

It’s worth quoting him at length:

My readers have a general idea of the history of colonization in other countries. I suggest that they consider all the precedents with which they are acquainted, and see whether there is one solitary instance of any colonization being carried on with the consent of the native population. There is no such precedent.

The native populations, civilized or uncivilized, have always stubbornly resisted the colonists, irrespective of whether they were civilized or savage.

And it made no difference whatever whether the colonists behaved decently or not. The companions of Cortez and Pizzaro or (as some people will remind us) our own ancestors under Joshua Ben Nun, behaved like brigands; but the Pilgrim Fathers, the first real pioneers of North America, were people of the highest morality, who did not want to do harm to anyone, least of all to the Red Indians, and they honestly believed that there was room enough in the prairies both for the Paleface and the Redskin. Yet the native population fought with the same ferocity against the good colonists as against the bad.

Every native population, civilized or not, regards its lands as its national home, of which it is the sole master, and it wants to retain that mastery always; it will refuse to admit not only new masters but even new partners or collaborators.

This is equally true of the Arabs. Our peace-mongers are trying to persuade us that the Arabs are either fools, whom we can deceive by masking our real aims, or that they are corrupt and can be bribed to abandon to us their claim to priority in Palestine, in return for cultural and economic advantages. I repudiate this conception of the Palestinian Arabs. Culturally they are five hundred years behind us, they have neither our endurance nor our determination; but they are just as good psychologists as we are, and their minds have been sharpened like ours by centuries of fine-spun logomachy.

We may tell them whatever we like about the innocence of our aims, watering them down and sweetening them with honeyed words to make them palatable, but they know what we want, as well as we know what they do not want. They feel at least the same instinctive jealous love of Palestine, as the old Aztecs felt for ancient Mexico, and the Sioux for their rolling Prairies.

To imagine, as our Arabophiles do, that they will voluntarily consent to the realization of Zionism in return for the moral and material conveniences which the Jewish colonist brings with him, is a childish notion, which has at bottom a kind of contempt for the Arab people; it means that they despise the Arab race, which they regard as a corrupt mob that can be bought and sold, and are willing to give up their fatherland for a good railway system.

There is no justification for such a belief. It may be that some individual Arabs take bribes. But that does not mean that the Arab people of Palestine as a whole will sell that fervent patriotism that they guard so jealously, and which even the Papuans will never sell. Every native population in the world resists colonists as long as it has the slightest hope of being able to rid itself of the danger of being colonized.

That is what the Arabs in Palestine are doing, and what they will persist in doing as long as there remains a solitary spark of hope that they will be able to prevent the transformation of “Palestine” into the “Land of Israel.”

What should the Zionists do, then, according to Jabotinsky? First, and most important, he urged the movement to build up its military strength — the “iron wall” of the essay’s title.

Second, under the shield of its armed forces, the Zionists should speed ahead with the colonization of Palestine, against the will of the indigenous Arab majority, by securing a maximum of Jewish immigration in a minimum span of time.

Once a Jewish majority had become a fait accompli (in 1923, Jews still made up only about 11 percent of Palestine’s population), it would only be a matter of time, Jabotinsky thought, before it finally penetrated the minds of the Arabs that the Jews were not going to be chased out of Palestine. Then they would see that they had no better option than to come to terms with Zionism.

And at that point, Jabotinsky concluded, “I am convinced that we Jews will be found ready to give them satisfactory guarantees” — guarantees of extensive civil, political, even national rights, within a Jewish state — “so that both peoples can live together in peace, like good neighbors.”

Whatever one thinks of the morality — or the sincerity — of Jabotinsky’s strategy in “The Iron Wall,” as Realpolitik it made eminent sense. It started from a realistic appraisal of the problem: that the Palestinians could not be expected to give up the fight to preserve their homeland. It proposed a program of focused coercive violence to frustrate their resistance. And it held out a set of assurances safeguarding key Palestinian interests in the context of an overall settlement in which the main Zionist objective would be achieved.

Whether this Bismarckian program could have “worked” (from the Zionist perspective) will never be known, however. For in the years that followed, a very different sort of scenario gained prominence in the thinking of the Zionist leadership.

This was what was known as “transfer”: a euphemism meaning the “voluntary” or involuntary physical removal of the Palestinian population from the “Land of Israel.”

In 1923, when he wrote “The Iron Wall,” Jabotinsky was firmly opposed to transfer. “I consider it utterly impossible to eject the Arabs from Palestine,” he wrote. “There will always be two nations in Palestine.” He maintained this stance quite adamantly until the final years of his life, holding firm even as support for the concept steadily spread through both the mainstream Zionist left and among his own increasingly radicalized right-wing followers.

The Israeli historian Benny Morris chronicled this doctrinal shift in his The Birth of the Palestinian Refugee Problem. He summarized it this way:

As Arab opposition, including violent resistance, to Zionism grew in the 1920s and 1930s, and as this opposition resulted in periodic British clampdowns on Jewish immigration, a consensus or near-consensus formed among the Zionist leaders around the idea of transfer as the natural, efficient and even moral solution to the demographic dilemma.

Thus, by 1948, Morris concluded, “transfer was in the air.”
We Will Attack and Smite the Enemy

In the early morning hours of Friday, April 9, 1948, during the conflict that Israelis call the War of Independence, 132 armed men — mostly from the Irgun, the right-wing paramilitary group that Jabotinsky had led until his death in 1940, but also a few others from a splinter-group offshoot called Lehi — entered a Palestinian village near Jerusalem with the intention of capturing it and requisitioning supplies from its inhabitants.

Six months earlier, the UN had announced its decision to partition Palestine into a Jewish state, which was to be allocated 55 percent of the territory, and a Palestinian Arab state, on the remaining 45 percent. (At the time, there were about 600,000 Jews and 1.3 million Arabs in Palestine.)

The Zionists were delighted to gain such a prize, while the Palestinians — in shock at the prospect of having more than half their homeland torn away from them — rejected the plan in its totality. In response to the announcement, a wave of civil strife between Jews and Arabs erupted, shortly escalating into all-out war.

Amid this violence, the village in question, Deir Yassin, had been faithfully respecting a truce with nearby Jewish settlements. “There was not even one incident between Deir Yassin and the Jews,” according to the local commander of the Haganah, the mainstream Zionist militia that would soon become the core of the newly created Israel Defense Forces (IDF).

Despite this, the rightist paramilitaries had made a decision to carry out the “liquidation of all the men in the village and any other force that opposed us, whether it be old people, women, or children,” according to an Irgun officer, Ben-Zion Cohen, who participated in the operation’s planning. The stated reason for this decision was that it would “show the Arabs what happens” when Jews were united and determined to fight.

(Cohen’s recollections of the operation, as well as those of several other Deir Yassin veterans, were recorded and deposited with the Jabotinsky Institute archives in Tel Aviv in the mid-1950s, where they were discovered decades later by an Israeli journalist.)

That morning, the inhabitants of Deir Yassin awoke to the sound of grenades and gunfire. Some began fleeing in their nightclothes; others scrambled for their weapons or took refuge in the homes of neighbors. The attackers’ initial battle plan quickly fell apart amid equipment failures and communication problems, and they took unexpectedly heavy casualties from the local men armed with rifles. After a few hours of fighting, a decision was made to call a retreat.

Cowering inside their homes at that moment were the Palestinian families who’d been unable to flee in time. As soon as the paramilitary commanders ordered the retreat, these villagers became the targets of the Jewish fighters’ frustrations.

What happened next was recounted by survivors to British police investigators from the Palestine Mandate’s civil administration. Twenty years later, the records of the investigation were obtained by two journalists, Larry Collins and Dominique Lapierre, for their bestselling 1972 book, O Jerusalem!

The survivors described scenes like the following.

Fahimi Zeidan, a twelve-year-old girl, recalled the door to her house being blasted open as she and her family hid along with members of a neighboring family. The paramilitaries took them outside. “The Jews ordered all our family to line up against the wall and they started shooting us.” After they shot an already wounded man, “one of his daughters screamed, they shot her too. They then called my brother Mahmoud and shot him in our presence, and when my mother screamed and bent over my brother (she was carrying my little sister Khadra who was still being breastfed) they shot my mother too.”

Haleem Eid, a thirty-year-old woman, testified that she saw “a man shoot a bullet into the neck of my sister Salhiyeh who was nine months pregnant. Then he cut her stomach open with a butcher’s knife.” When another village woman, Aiesch Radwas, tried to extricate the fetus from the dead mother’s womb, she was shot, too.

Zeinab Akkel recalled that she tried to save her younger brother’s life by offering the Jewish attackers all her money (about $400). One of them took the money and “then he just knocked my brother over and shot him in the head with five bullets.”

Sixteen-year-old Naaneh Khalil said she saw a man take “a kind of sword and slash my neighbor Jamil Hish from head to toe then do the same thing on the steps to my house to my cousin Fathi.”

Meir Pa’il, a Jewish Agency intelligence official who was on the scene, later described the sight of Irgun and Lehi fighters running frantically through the village, “their eyes glazed over, full of lust for murder.”

When some Irgunists discovered a house that had earlier been the source of fatal gunfire for one of their fallen comrades, they assaulted it, and nine civilians emerged in surrender. One of the paramilitaries shouted: “This is for Yiftach!” and machine-gunned them all to death.

Prisoners were loaded onto trucks and driven through the streets of Jerusalem in a “victory parade.” After a group of male villagers was paraded in this way, they were unloaded from the trucks and executed. Meir Pa’il recalled photographing roughly twenty-five men shot in firing squad formation.

According to Haganah intelligence documents, some of the villagers were taken to a nearby paramilitary base, where Lehi fighters killed one of the babies and then, when its mother fainted in shock, finished off the mother as well.

One of the British officers from the Criminal Investigation Division attached the following note to the investigation file:

I interviewed many of the women folk in order to glean some information on any atrocities committed in Deir Yassin but the majority of those women are very shy and reluctant to relate their experiences especially in matters concerning sexual assault and they need great coaxing before they will divulge any information. The recording of statements is hampered also by the hysterical state of the women who often break down many times whilst the statement is being recorded.

There is, however, no doubt that many sexual atrocities were committed by the attacking Jews. Many young school girls were raped and later slaughtered. Old women were also molested. One story is current concerning a case in which a young girl was literally torn in two. Many infants were also butchered and killed. I also saw one old woman who gave her age as one hundred and four who had been severely beaten about the head by rifle butts. Women had bracelets torn from their arms and rings from their fingers and parts of some of the women’s ears were severed in order to remove earrings.”

The next day, when Haganah forces inspected the village, one of them was shocked to find Jewish guerrillas “eating with gusto next to the bodies.” A doctor who accompanied the detachment noted that “it was clear that the attackers had gone from house to house and shot the people at close range,” adding: “I had been a doctor in the German Army for five years in World War I, but I never saw such a horrifying spectacle.”

The commander of the Jewish youth brigade sent to assist in the cleanup operation entered a number of the houses and reported finding several bodies “sexually mutilated.” A female brigade member went into shock upon discovering the corpse of a pregnant woman whose abdomen appeared to have been crushed.

The cleanup crew burned and buried the bodies in a quarry, later filling it with dirt.

As they did so, a radio broadcast could be heard in Jerusalem delivering the following message:

Accept my congratulations on this splendid act of conquest.

Convey my regards to all the commanders and soldiers. We shake your hands.

We are all proud of the excellent leadership and the fighting spirit in this great attack.

We stand to attention in memory of the slain.

We lovingly shake the hands of the wounded.

Tell the soldiers: you have made history in Israel with your attack and your conquest. Continue thus until victory.

As in Deir Yassin, so everywhere, we will attack and smite the enemy. God, God, Thou hast chosen us for conquest.

The voice delivering the message belonged to the Irgun’s chief commander — the future Nobel Peace Prize winner and prime minister of Israel, Menachem Begin.
Saying No to Yes

“More than any single occurrence in my memory of that difficult period, it was Deir Yassin that stood out in all its awful and intentional fearsomeness,” the late Palestinian American literary scholar Edward Said, who was twelve at the time and living in Cairo, later recalled — “the stories of rape, of children with their throats slit, mothers disemboweled, and the like. They gripped the imagination, as they were designed to do, and they impressed a young boy many miles away with the mystery of such bloodthirsty and seemingly gratuitous violence against Palestinians whose only crime seemed to be that they were there.”

A different memory of Deir Yassin was conveyed by Yaacov Meridor, a former Irgun commander, during a 1949 debate in the Israeli Knesset: to a disapproving mention of the massacre by a left-wing deputy, he retorted: “Thanks to Deir Yassin we won the war, sir!”

Because of the wide publicity it received, Deir Yassin contributed disproportionately to the terrified panic that spurred the Palestinians’ flight in 1948–49. But it was only one of several dozen massacres perpetrated by Jewish forces, most of which had been the work of the mainstream Haganah/IDF. In a few cases, the IDF appears to have matched or even exceeded the depravity of the Irgun in Deir Yassin (as, for example, at al-Dawayima in October 1948).
Palestinian refugees fleeing in October–November 1948. (Wikimedia Commons)

The radicalized heirs of Jabotinsky delighted in reminding the Left of these details. “How many Deir Yassins have you [the Left] been responsible for?” another rightist deputy interjected. “If you don’t know, you can ask the Minister of Defense.” (The minister of defense was David Ben-Gurion, who’d been kept abreast of the atrocities perpetrated by his troops during the war.)

The result was that, by mid-1949, the majority of the Palestinian population had fled for their lives or been expelled from their homes by Jewish forces and were living now as refugees beyond the borders of Palestine. Their abandoned villages would be bulldozed, and they would never be allowed to return. Israel, meanwhile, had expanded its control in Palestine from the 55 percent of the land awarded to it in 1947 by the UN to the 78 percent of the 1949 armistice lines.

Throughout the 1950s and 1960s, the Arab states and Palestinian organizations were unanimous in declaring Israel an illegitimate “Zionist entity” that would be dismantled and destroyed when Palestine was finally liberated. Until then, Arab governments were to have no contacts with Israel of any kind — even purely economic — on penalty of ostracism from the rest of the Arab world. This stance was affirmed and reaffirmed, year after year, in speeches, diplomatic texts, and Arab League communiqués.

But Israel spent these years patiently tending to its iron wall, so that by 1967, when a second general Arab-Israeli war arrived, the wall was so impregnable that Israel was able to defeat the combined forces of all its adversaries in less than a week, conquering vast expanses of Egyptian, Jordanian, and Syrian territory.

From that moment on, the rules of the conflict changed. There was only one feasible way for the Arab states to regain their conquered territories, and that was by coming to terms with the conqueror. Moshe Dayan, Israel’s defense minister, captured the essence of the situation in a laconic remark made three days after the war’s end. “We are quite pleased with what we have now. If the Arabs desire any change, they should call us.”

With the brute physics of military compulsion now forcing the Arabs to rethink their long-held attitude toward the Jewish state, Israel had a unique opportunity to finally pursue the Bismarckian type of settlement that Jabotinsky had advocated fifty years earlier (albeit in a very different context).

But for reasons originating in both the traumas of Jewish history and the political circumstances of the post-1967 world, Israel was unable to do it. Since the war, its political culture — on the Left and the Right, among the secular as well as the religious — had become suffused with a messianic belief in the imperative of Jewish territorial expansion and the illegitimacy of territorial compromise. Israelis clung to a concept of “absolute security” (in Kissinger’s sense) that over the years would drive them into a series of military disasters, most notably the 1982 “incursion” into Lebanon, which was supposed to last a few weeks but ended up dragging on for almost two decades. And a grossly distorted mental image of Israel’s Arab neighbors was cultivated in the nation’s collective psyche, based on the self-fulfilling prophecy of eternal enmity driven by a timeless hatred of Jews.

The mentality was acutely captured by Joshua Cohen in his 2021 novel, The Netanyahus, a fictionalized account of a 1960 sojourn by Benzion Netanyahu and his young family (including a teenage Binyamin) to a bucolic American college town for a faculty job interview.

At one point in the book, a fellow Israeli academic assesses the work of Netanyahu père, who was a scholar of medieval Jewish history:

[There] comes a point in nearly every text he produces where it emerges that the true phenomenon under discussion is not anti-Semitism in Early Medieval Lorraine or Late Medieval Iberia but rather anti-Semitism in twentieth-century Nazi Germany; and suddenly a description of how a specific tragedy affected a specific diaspora becomes a diatribe about the general tragedy of the Jewish Diaspora, and how that Diaspora must end — as if history should not describe, but prescribe — in the founding of the State of Israel.

I am not certain whether this politicization of Jewish suffering would have the same impact on American academia as it had on ours, but, in any milieu, connecting Crusader-era pogroms with the Iberian Inquisitions with the Nazi Reich must be adjudged as exceeding the bounds of sloppy analogy, to assert a cyclicity of Jewish history that approaches dangerously close to the mystical.

The paradoxical result of all this was that the more powerful Israel became, the more power it felt it needed, and the more concessions it extracted from its enemies, the more concessions it required. Jabotinsky had advised the Zionist movement to build up its military strength in order to frustrate its adversaries’ attacks — and Israel became quite adept at this. But absent external duress, it could never bring itself to clinch the culminating step of Jabotinsky’s Bismarckian program: the ultimate accommodation with the defeated enemy.

Put another way, Israel couldn’t take yes for an answer.

In February 1971, Anwar Sadat, the new president of Egypt, the largest and most powerful Arab state, became the first Arab leader to declare his willingness to sign a peace treaty with Israel. He would do so, he said, if Israel committed to withdraw from Egypt’s Sinai Peninsula and agree to a negotiated resolution of the Palestinian issue.

Eventually, Sadat’s persistence in seeking an agreement with Israel paid off: through the good offices of Jimmy Carter, an Egyptian-Israeli agreement on the terms of a peace treaty was signed at Camp David in 1978 — for which Sadat shared the 1978 Nobel Peace Prize — and Israel handed back Egypt’s Sinai Peninsula in stages, ending in 1982.

But it would take eight years, a region-wide war, a US-Soviet standoff that brought the world close to nuclear Armageddon, and a spectacular diplomatic gesture on Sadat’s part — his astonishing 1977 visit to Jerusalem, which led directly to his assassination by Islamic extremists four years later — to overcome Israeli obstructionism and make an Egyptian-Israeli agreement a reality.

For two years following his February 1971 initiative, Sadat fruitlessly tried to advance his peace proposal in the face of Israel’s contemptuous rejection. (In those days, the Israeli sociologist Uri Ben-Eliezer writes, Sadat was still “depicted in Israel as an ignorant Egyptian peasant and a target for mockery.”) By spring 1973, he’d decided that his diplomatic avenues were exhausted, and he resolved to go to war to recover Egypt’s lost territory.

Sadat knew that Egypt couldn’t reconquer the territories in battle. His plan, in essence, was a barroom brawler’s stratagem: he would start a fight with his stronger opponent, quickly get in a few good blows, and then count on onlookers — in this case the United States and the Soviet Union — to step in and break up the scuffle before too much damage could be done. By creating a Cold War crisis, he intended to force the United States, the only power with any leverage over Israel, to drag the Israelis to the negotiating table.

His brilliantly executed surprise attack of October 6, 1973, secretly coordinated with Syria, served its purpose. It caught Israel unaware and unprepared, triggering a national crisis of confidence whose reverberations would be felt throughout Israeli society for years to come. It led to a US-Soviet confrontation that came close to the point of nuclear escalation. And it forced the United States to begin the process of nudging Israel in the direction of a settlement.

Looking back on this sequence of events in his memoirs decades later, the Israeli elder statesman Shimon Peres, not wanting to cast judgment on the decisions of his former colleagues (he’d been a junior minister in government in 1971–73), wrote cautiously about Sadat’s rejected prewar peace terms: “It is hard to judge today whether peace with Sadat might have been possible at that time on the terms that were eventually agreed to five years later.”

But other officials from that era have been less reserved. “I truly believe that it was a historic mistake” to have spurned Sadat’s 1971 overture, wrote Eytan Bentsur, a top aide to then foreign minister Abba Eban, in a judgment now echoed by many Israeli and American analysts. “History will judge if an opportunity had not been missed — one which would have prevented the Yom Kippur War and foreshadowed the peace with Egypt” at Camp David.
“Do Not Be Fooled by Wily Sadat”

If Sadat’s 1971 proposal was killed by negatives quietly conveyed via confidential diplomatic channels, it also fell victim, in the public sphere, to a deeply entrenched mental tic in Western discourse on the Middle East: the reflex of construing any given Arab peace proposal as a trick secretly designed to achieve not peace but the destruction of Israel.

How a peace initiative can even be a trick, and what anyone could hope to gain by announcing a “trick peace proposal,” are questions that lack obvious answers. But to this day, the legend of the “fake Arab peace initiative” continues to exert a powerful psychological hold over many Western and Israeli observers.

For example, shortly after Sadat publicized his 1971 peace offer, the diplomatic historian A. J. P. Taylor — the most famous British historian of his time — warned in a newspaper commentary that the Egyptian leader was attempting an elaborate ruse. “Do not be fooled by wily Sadat,” Taylor cautioned. The telltale clue that exposed Sadat’s real intentions, according to the scholar, was his insistence on the return of all occupied Egyptian territory, including the strategically important city of Sharm e-Shaikh.

Taylor was certain that Sharm el-Shaikh was “a place of no use or importance to Egypt” aside from its dominating position at the mouth of the Gulf of Aqaba. If Sadat wanted it back so badly, that could only mean one thing: he wasn’t really seeking peace; he “merely wants to be in a position to strangle Israel again.”

Obviously, history has not been kind to that conjecture. Fifty-two years later, Sharm el-Shaikh is an upscale resort town, the jewel of Egypt’s tourism industry. An Egyptian-Israeli peace treaty has been in force for more than four decades and has never been breached, by either side. Israel, needless to say, remains unstrangled.

The mentality of Israel’s Western publicists grew more and more detached from reality in this way, with world events interpreted through the increasingly distorted lens of Zionist demonology. A 1973 editorial in what was then the largest-circulation Jewish newspaper in the United States, New York Jewish Week, is illustrative. At that moment, a UN Middle East peace conference was getting underway in Geneva, and there had recently been a spate of press commentary cautiously suggesting that perhaps Sadat might really want peace with Israel after all.

The editorialists of Jewish Week had a question for such naïfs: Had they learned nothing from Hitler?

The Arab leaders have told us that their aims are quite limited. They say they merely want to regain the territories that Israel conquered in 1967. Then they will be satisfied and recognize Israel, to live in peace forever after.

Had Chamberlain and Daladier read “Mein Kampf” and heeded its warnings, they would have known that Hitler was dissembling [about] his real aims.

Were the gullible editors and statesmen who believe the Arab protestations of limited war objectives to read the unrepudiated war aims of the Arab leaders who now profess moderation, they would know that the Yom Kippur War and the subsequent Arab peace offensive were right out of the Munich betrayal.

With the benefit of hindsight and the enormous condescension of posterity, it’s all too easy to laugh at this kind of hysteria. Surely, after fifty years, the jury is in, and we can now say with certainty that no Middle Eastern Czechoslovakia has fallen victim to the battalions of the Egyptian Wehrmacht.

But exactly the same reasoning and rhetoric are routinely deployed today, only now with Hamas replacing Anwar Sadat’s Egypt as the epicenter of the looming Fourth Reich — a dream-logic montage of history in which an interchangeable chorus of Hitlerian Arabs “professes moderation” at an uncannily Munich-like Geneva (or is it a Geneva-like Oslo?) in order to dupe gullible Westerners about their genocidal intentions.

In fairness to the editorialists of Jewish Week, it should be recalled that Sadat — whose saintly memory as a peacemaker is venerated today by everyone in official Washington, from earnest White House speechwriters to flag-pinned congressional yahoos — routinely indulged in antisemitic invective of a virulence that would never be heard from the top leaders of Hamas today.

In a 1972 speech, he called the Jews “a nation of liars and traitors, contrivers of plots, a people born for deeds of treachery” and said that “the most splendid thing that the Prophet Mohammad did was to drive them out of the whole of the Arabian peninsula.” For good measure, he promised that he would “never conduct direct negotiations” with the Jews. (As seen, he soon did just that.)

Nor did Sadat hesitate to verbally evoke the “destruction of Israel” when it suited him; he did so routinely, including in a speech to his ruling Arab Socialist Union party just four months after his February 1971 peace initiative. In that June address, he spoke of his eagerness for the coming battle to destroy the “Zionist intrusion.”

There were two contrasting ways of interpreting this sort of rhetoric from Sadat. On the one hand, there was the approach taken by the editorialists of the English-language Jerusalem Post — a publication deeply in thrall to the legend of the Arab peace fake-out — who gleefully declared that Sadat’s speech had “pulled off the mask of the peace-seeker, to show the true face of the warmonger.” His peace initiative of four months earlier had thereby been exposed as “a calculated fraud.”

But how did the editorialists know it was the February peace proposal that was the fraud and not the June war threat? And if the peace proposal was a “calculated fraud,” why would Sadat expose his own calculated fraud? The Arab-peace-fake-out theory has always had this tendency to run itself into a logical ditch.

An alternative interpretation could be found in a rival Israeli newspaper, Al HaMishmar, the organ of the small, far-left Mapam party, which proposed a much more believable explanation for Sadat’s bellicose rhetoric. The paper simply pointed out that his oration had been an election speech, delivered at a party conference. Most likely, the paper suggested — in the skeptical spirit of clear-eyed Realpolitik — it had just been a bit of electioneering.

Al HaMishmar was right, of course, and the Jerusalem Post was wrong. Sadat’s peace proposal was not a fraud, and the theory of the Sadat peace fake-out had no truth to it.

But more importantly, it was the opposite of the truth.

Recall that Sadat’s position was that he was willing to make peace with Israel, but only on the condition that Israel withdraw from the occupied territories and accept a just solution to the Palestinian question. To Arab audiences, he promised again and again that he would always insist on both — that he would never stoop to anything so dishonorable, so treacherous, as making a separate peace with Israel that failed to address the plight of the suffering Palestinians.

However, in the end, that’s exactly what he did. At Camp David in 1978, when he found himself unable to extract any substantive concessions from Israel on the Palestine file, he yielded to the superior force of Israel’s iron wall and signed an agreement that restored Egypt’s lost territory while offering little more than a fig-leaf gesture toward the Palestinians. (The agreement pledged that Egypt and Israel would continue negotiations on Palestinian “autonomy” under Israeli sovereignty; the brief trickle of pro forma negotiations that followed quickly petered out, as expected.)
President Jimmy Carter shaking hands with Anwar Sadat and Menachem Begin at the signing of the Egyptian-Israeli Peace Treaty at the White House, 1979. (Wikimedia Commons)

The defection of Egypt, the strongest Arab state, from the Arab coalition was a historic disaster for the Palestinian movement, from which it arguably never recovered.

Which means that if Sadat had, in fact, been harboring any dark thoughts in the back of his mind when he put forward his 1971 peace proposal, what they amounted to was not a secret plan to bring about the destruction of the Jewish state, as erroneously proclaimed by Taylor and the American Jewish press and a cavalcade of witting and unwitting propagandists from the pages of Reader’s Digest to the platforms of Meet the Press.

What Sadat was actually concealing was his shamefaced readiness to countenance the defeat of the Palestinian cause — which is how it came to be that Menachem Begin, thirty years after proclaiming, “As in Deir Yassin, so everywhere, we will attack and smite the enemy,” and Sadat, seven years after declaring that he would “never conduct direct negotiations” with Israel but would strive to bring about its “complete destruction,” could stand together on the White House lawn and warmly shake hands while a beaming Jimmy Carter looked on.

That was Realpolitik in action.
“The Language of Lies and Treason”

At that moment, the man who would become the moving spirit behind the creation of Hamas — a forty-three-year-old quadriplegic Gazan named Ahmed Yassin — was on the cusp of an astonishing political ascendancy.

At the time of the Camp David Accords, politics in Israeli-occupied Gaza revolved around two poles. On the Left, there was a constellation of forces grouped around the physician Haidar Abdel-Shafi, a former communist, and his local branch of the Palestinian Red Crescent Society. These included the feminist and labor leader Yusra al-Barbari of the General Union of Palestinian Women; Fayez Abu Rahmeh of the Gaza Bar Association, which aided Gazan political prisoners; and Mousa Saba, the head of the Gaza chapter of the YMCA (Young Men’s Christian Association), which hosted summer camps and discussion seminars for Palestinians of all faiths. Abdel-Shafi, who’d been a founding member of the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) in the 1960s, was an early proponent of a two-state settlement in which an independent Palestinian state would coexist alongside Israel.

The other pole centered on the Gaza branch of the Muslim Brotherhood, which had been founded in 1946. Yassin, a pious schoolteacher with a thin voice who’d been paralyzed in a sports accident as a child, joined the Brotherhood early on and in the 1960s began attracting a devoted local following for his charismatic lay preaching.

At the end of the 1960s, the local Brotherhood was at a low ebb, its membership no more than a few dozen. But over the course of the 1970s, Yassin and his band of followers would embark on an energetic organizing campaign whose institutional expression was what they called the “Mujama al-Islamiya” (the Islamic “Center,” or “Collective”), a network of religious schools, community centers, children’s nurseries, and the like.

Throughout this process of institution-building, Yassin and his followers rigorously kept their distance from anti-Israel violence — or indeed nationalist agitation of any kind. Jean-Pierre Filiu, a French Arabist scholar and author of a magisterial history of Gaza, writes that Yassin “adhered to the Brotherhood’s moralizing line that prioritized spiritual revival over active militancy.” In Yassin’s view, “the Palestinians had lost Palestine because they were not sufficiently Muslim — it was only by returning to the sources of their faith and to their daily duties as Muslims that they would ultimately be able to recover their land and their rights.”

In a significant political gesture, the Israeli military governor in Gaza attended the 1973 inauguration ceremony of the Jura al-Shams mosque, the central hub and showpiece of the Mujama. As late as 1986, an Israeli governor of Gaza, General Yitzhak Segev, could explain that Israel was giving “financial aid to Islamic groups via mosques and religious schools in order to help create a force that would stand against the leftist forces which support the PLO.”

Occasionally, these connections attracted accusations from PLO partisans that Yassin and his men were puppets or stooges of the Israelis. But the Islamists’ tacit nonaggression pact with the occupier was not the product of manipulation; it reflected a coincidence of interests — an expression of Realpolitik on both sides.

What really drove Yassin and his followers, above all else, was their vision of “Islamization from below”: the creation of a society in which every individual could choose to be a good Muslim and be surrounded by institutions that would nurture that choice. That was the essence of the Muslim Brotherhood’s ideology everywhere, and like the US religious right, its exponents were highly adaptable when it came to the means by which to advance it. American fundamentalists might alternately burn Beatles records or sponsor Christian rock festivals, build suburban megachurches or preach with long hair in hippie conventicles. The Islamists of Gaza would approach their mission with a similar flexibility.

In the 1970s and 1980s, the ethos of the Mujama was defined by a vehement rejection of all politics (“the language of lies and treason,” they liked to say) in favor of priorities like family, education, and a return to traditional mores. Hence the Islamists’ adamancy about abstaining from the national struggle — a choice that had the added benefit of shielding their project from harassment by the Israeli military authorities.

The men of the Mujama were not above using violence against other Palestinians in pursuit of their objectives: in a moment of hubris amid the wave of Arab revulsion at Sadat’s peace treaty, Yassin’s forces tried to take on the local left — “the communists,” “the atheists,” as they contemptuously called all their left-wing rivals — by running a candidate against Abdel-Shafi in elections to the presidency of the Red Crescent Society.

When the Islamist candidate lost in a landslide, “several hundred Islamist demonstrators expressed their anger on 7 January 1980 by ransacking the Red Crescent offices, before moving on to cafés, cinemas, and drinking establishments in the town center,” Filiu reports. (The Israeli army conspicuously refrained from intervening.) In the 1980s, Gaza would be the scene of a vicious and at times violent campaign by the Islamists to impose “modest” dress on women.

It was only after the outbreak of the First Intifada at the very end of 1987 — a spontaneous and massive popular uprising over which PLO cadres quickly assumed leadership — that Yassin overruled his divided advisers and made a strategic decision to join the struggle against Israel.

Amid the explosion of mass strikes and boycotts, stone-throwing demonstrations and confrontations with Israeli soldiers, the men of the Mujama saw which way the wind was blowing. They had a product to sell, and it was obvious what their target market wanted. In contradiction to everything they had preached over the previous decade, they began issuing anonymous leaflets calling on the faithful to resist the occupation. Soon they started signing the leaflets “the Islamic Resistance Movement,” whose Arabic initials spell “Hamas.”

Almost overnight, the notorious quietists of Gaza’s religious right, once ridiculed and condemned by Palestinian nationalists for sitting out the anti-Israel struggle, transformed themselves into armed guerrillas.

By the time of the 1993 Oslo Accords, they had become the unlikely standard-bearers of uncompromising Palestinian nationalism.
Arafat Says Uncle

If the Oslo Accords signing ceremony in 1993 looked like a restaging of the earlier handshake on the White House lawn — a new production of an old play, with Yasser Arafat and Yitzhak Rabin in the Sadat and Begin roles, and Bill Clinton typecast as the new Jimmy Carter — that was not the only resemblance between Camp David and Oslo.

Both agreements were by-products of Israel’s congenital inability to take yes for an answer.

If the “yes” in Egypt’s case came in 1971, when Sadat first signaled his willingness to recognize Israel, the “yes” of Yasser Arafat’s PLO was first delivered in December 1973, just before the Geneva peace conference, when Arafat sent a secret message to Washington:

The Palestine Liberation Organization in no way seeks the destruction of Israel, but accepts its existence as a sovereign state; the PLO’s main aim at the Geneva conference will be the creation of a Palestinian state out of the “Palestinian part of Jordan” [i.e., the West Bank and East Jerusalem] plus Gaza.

But Arafat’s private declaration brought no change in the PLO’s formal, public position: officially, the group remained committed, in the words of the 1968 PLO charter, to “the elimination of Zionism in Palestine.”

The reason for this discrepancy stemmed from the fact that “recognizing Israel” meant something very different for the Palestinians than it had for Egypt.

Sadat’s peace initiative had proposed trading recognition of Israel for a full restoration of Egypt’s territorial integrity. For the Palestinians, by contrast, recognition of Israel was tantamount in and of itself to a signing away of their right to 78 percent of their homeland’s territory. What for Egypt had been merely a humbling political concession to a regional military rival was, for the Palestinians, an existential act of renunciation.

Arafat believed the Palestinian masses would nevertheless support such a sacrifice — but only as part of a historic compromise in which recognition of the loss of 78 percent of Palestine would be compensated by assurances that the remaining 22 percent would become a Palestine state.

He therefore adopted what might be called his “American strategy.” For the next fifteen years, Arafat chased the prize of a dialogue with the United States, hoping to strike a deal: in exchange for a formal, public PLO commitment to recognize Israel, Washington would publicly commit to work for Palestinian statehood and apply the necessary pressure on Israel.

The PLO leader pitched this concept to any American who would listen. In a 1976 conversation with a visiting US senator in Beirut, Arafat “said that before he was able to acknowledge Israel’s right to exist as an independent state he must have something to show his people,” a US embassy dispatch reported to State Department headquarters in Washington. “This something could be Israeli withdrawal of a ‘few kilometers’ in the Gaza Strip and on the West Bank,” with a UN force taking control of the evacuated territory.

Israel acted quickly to foil Arafat’s strategy. In 1975, it extracted from Secretary of State Henry Kissinger a signed memorandum of agreement in which Kissinger pledged that the United States would not “negotiate with the Palestine Liberation Organization so long as the Palestine Liberation Organization does not recognize Israel’s right to exist.” By making PLO recognition of Israel a precondition for dialogue with the United States, the agreement ruled out any scenario in which recognition might be granted in exchange for US commitments.

Kissinger had no qualms about signing away his ability to talk to the PLO. He was convinced that nothing could come of such talks — not because the Palestinians were rejectionists, but because the Israelis were. “Once [the PLO] are in the peace process,” he told a meeting of US Middle East ambassadors in June 1976, “they’ll raise all the issues the Israelis can’t handle” — the issues of the West Bank, Gaza, and East Jerusalem.

According to Kissinger, anyone foolish enough to think a US administration could use its leverage to force Israel to concede on those issues “totally underestimates what it involves in taking on the [Israel] lobby. They never hit you on the issue; you have to fight ten other issues — your credibility, everything.” In short, “We cannot deliver the minimum demands of the PLO, so why talk to them?”

As soon as Kissinger’s memorandum was signed, Israel’s fixers and propagandists went to work transforming it from a mere understanding between foreign ministers into a sacrosanct totem of domestic politics, to which every ambitious US politician had to genuflect. In the 1980 presidential election, all four major candidates — Ted Kennedy, Jimmy Carter, John Anderson, and Ronald Reagan — tried to outdo one another in anathematizing the PLO and promising not to talk to it.

This time the ideological Wurlitzer had to be cranked up to eleven: it wasn’t enough to portray the PLO as a group that currently rejected Israel’s existence (which, if anything, might serve as an argument in favor of US contacts with the group — to try to persuade it to change its stance).

Rather, the PLO had to be depicted as incapable of accepting Israel’s existence, or coexisting with Jews at all. In the popular phrase of the time, endlessly repeated or paraphrased by ostensibly factual news organizations like the Associated Press and the New York Times, the PLO was an organization “sworn to Israel’s destruction.” Or, as Exodus author Leon Uris — the Homer of American Zionism, its bard and ur-mythologist — put it in a 1976 open letter: the PLO was “emotionally and constitutionally bound to the liquidation of Jewish existence in the Middle East.”

Top US officials were forced to ritually repeat this fiction — that the PLO was bent on Israel’s destruction — even though they knew firsthand that it wasn’t true. “We have to consider what the parties’ position is,” Jimmy Carter’s secretary of state, Edmund Muskie, said in June 1980, defending the United States’ increasingly isolated stance opposing PLO involvement in peace talks, “and the PLO’s position is that it is not interested in a negotiated settlement with Israel. It is interested only in Israel’s extinction.”

Meanwhile, privately, the CIA was telling the State Department that, far from refusing to recognize Israel, the PLO was internally debating what to demand in exchange for recognition: “Despite efforts by Fatah moderates [such as Arafat] to convince the rest of the [PLO] leadership that a dialogue with the US entails sufficient long range benefits to justify [recognizing Israel], the PLO leadership remains largely convinced that it must demand more than just talks with the US before giving up what it considers to be its only major ‘card’ in the negotiating process.”
Prime Minister Ehud Barak of Israel and Chairman Yasser Arafat of the Palestinian Authority shake hands at a trilateral meeting at the US ambassador’s residence in Oslo, Norway, November 1999. (Wikimedia Commons)

Like A. J. P. Taylor’s musings about Anwar Sadat, the assessments of the PLO that prevailed in that era have aged poorly. Far from proving “emotionally and constitutionally bound to the liquidation of Jewish existence in the Middle East,” the PLO today not only recognizes Israel, it has a leader, Mahmoud Abbas, whose policy of “security coordination” with the occupation authorities is considered so indispensable to the Israeli army that the country’s lobbyists and diplomats have to periodically remind confused right-wing Republicans that they actually want the United States to keep funding the Palestinian security forces.

Abbas, whose endless concessions to Israel have consigned him to political irrelevance among his own people, has spent the past decade begging for a NATO occupation of the West Bank — an odd way to go about pursuing the “liquidation of Jewish existence in the Middle East.”

Finally, in 1988, Arafat caved. In exile in Tunisia following the PLO’s bloody expulsion from Lebanon, he pushed the Palestinian National Council (PNC) for a unilateral recognition of Israel with no assurance that any movement toward a Palestinian state would be forthcoming. In his memoirs, then Secretary of State George Shultz gleefully summed up the episode this way: “Arafat finally said ‘Uncle.’”

Israel had at last received its “yes” from the Palestinians, signed, witnessed, and notarized. But it had no effect whatsoever on either the United States or the Israeli attitude toward Palestinian statehood.

More than thirty years later, the Palestinian decision of 1988 — which called for peace between an Israel on 78 percent of the land and a Palestinian state on 22 percent — remains an offer on the table, one that no Israeli government has ever expressed a willingness to touch.

Had Arafat stopped there, the Palestinians, in diplomatic terms, would have been positioned as advantageously as could be expected given the circumstances.

Instead, he made a tragic, historic error. He went further than “yes.”

In 1992, fearful of being sidelined from the post–Gulf War flurry of Middle East diplomacy, Arafat secretly authorized back-channel talks in Oslo with representatives of the newly elected Israeli government of Yitzhak Rabin, in the course of which he agreed to concessions that, once made public, were met with outrage and disbelief by the most alert Palestinian observers.

In the Oslo Accords, Arafat not only reaffirmed the PLO’s recognition of Israel without any reciprocal Israeli recognition of Palestinian statehood — or even any mention of the possibility of statehood — he conceded to Israel a veto over Palestinian statehood (“The PLO . . . declares that all outstanding issues relating to permanent status will be resolved through negotiations”).

Not only did Arafat renounce the use of force against Israel — unilaterally, with no reciprocation — and agree to suppress resistance to the occupation on Israel’s behalf, he did so with no commitment from the occupiers to stop confiscating Palestinian land to expand Jewish settlements, roads, or military installations.

The Palestinian-American historian Rashid Khalidi has called Arafat’s move “a resounding, historic mistake, one with grave consequences for the Palestinian people.” Edward Said labeled it “an instrument of Palestinian surrender, a Palestinian Versailles.” Haidar Abdel-Shafi, who headed the official Palestinian delegation to the US-sponsored post–Gulf War peace talks, condemned the deal and its “terrible sacrifices,” calling it “in itself an indication of the terrible disarray in which the Palestinians find themselves.” Mahmoud Darwish, the Palestinian national poet and author of the 1988 Declaration of Independence, resigned from the PLO leadership in protest.

One of the most underappreciated facts about the Oslo agreement, as the quotes above attest, is that among its most vehement Palestinian critics were not just the opponents of the two-state solution but its most committed and long-standing supporters — those like Khalidi, Said, Darwish, or Shafi, who as far back as the early 1970s had taken what was then the lonely step of urging a Palestinian reckoning with the bitter verdict of 1948.
Truth and Consequences

“We learned the lesson of Oslo,” Khaled Meshaal, the Qatar-based head of Hamas’s external politburo, told a reporter from the French daily Le Figaro late last month. “In 1993 Arafat recognized Israel, which gave him nothing in return.”

He contrasted Arafat’s blunder with what he portrayed as Hamas’s shrewder balancing act. In 2017, the group adopted a new charter — a project Meshaal personally spearheaded — which embraced a two-state solution and excised the antisemitic language and apocalyptic bellicosity of the original 1988 founding statement.

But, it did so, he stressed, “without mention of recognition of Israel by Hamas.”

Meshaal “suggests that when the ‘time comes’ — that is, with the creation of a Palestinian state — the question of recognizing Israel will be examined,” Le Figaro reported. “But since not everyone in Hamas is in agreement, he doesn’t want to go any further.”

Hamas’s top political leadership had spent the years leading up to October 7 trying to position Hamas as a respectable diplomatic interlocutor, one that could someday succeed where Arafat had failed in clinching Palestinian statehood. All of that came crashing down with the atrocities of October 7, leaving observers perplexed about what exactly had happened, and why.

Almost immediately there were murmurings among diplomats, journalists, and intelligence officials about some kind of split within Hamas. But only occasionally was the case stated as bluntly as it was by Hugh Lovatt, an expert on Palestinian politics at the European Council on Foreign Relations, who was quoted in late October saying: “The brutal violence deployed by Hamas against Israeli civilians represents a power grab by radicals in the military wing, cornering political moderates who advocated dialogue and compromise.”

Over the last two weeks, more details have surfaced.

In a report late last month for the pro-Israel Washington Institute for Near East Policy, Ehud Yaari, an Israeli specialist on Arab politics with close ties to the country’s security establishment, wrote about “Growing Internal Tensions Between Hamas Leaders,” citing “extensive private conversations with numerous regional sources.”

“The specific details of the [October 7] attack,” Yaari reported, “appear to have come as a complete surprise to [Hamas chairman Ismail] Haniyeh and the rest of the external leadership.” They had given approval for a cross-border attack, but not like the one that ended up being carried out.

Only a “core group of commanders” had been involved in the detailed planning for October 7, Yaari reported. These included Hamas’s Gaza strongman Yahya Sinwar, plus two top commanders of the military wing (known as the Izz ad-Din al-Qassam Brigades), one of whom is Sinwar’s brother Mohammed.

It was this group, Yaari alleges, that at the last minute inserted new orders — to “murder as many civilians as possible, capture hostages, and destroy Israeli towns” — into the battle plan. The plan was withheld from Hamas’s field commanders “until a few hours before the operation.” (The October 7 operation was a joint action carried out by a coalition of forces from a number of different Palestinian armed factions, not just Hamas.)

“The scope and brutality of the attack triggered criticism from external leaders” of Hamas, Yaari wrote, some of whom “sharply condemned Sinwar’s ‘megalomaniac’ search for grandeur” in “private conversations.”

The last-minute changes to the battle plan might help to explain the surprising variation in victims’ testimonies about the attackers’ behavior. In an article published in Haaretz last month, for example, a resident of the Nahal Oz kibbutz, Lishay Idan, recounted her family’s ordeal and told of how, at Nahal Oz, “very strange things happened.”

“A terrorist wearing camouflage and a green headband, who looked like he was in charge, told the hostages he was from Hamas’ military wing and it didn’t harm civilians. ‘They said they were only looking for soldiers and they didn’t harm women and children,’ Idan said.” Even as acts of extreme brutality were being committed against civilians by other attackers in the area, she explained, these particular fighters behaved differently.

“It’s no simple thing for me to say this,” she concluded, “but it seems the cells that came to our kibbutz were better focused. In some cases they took humanitarian considerations into account.” They “brought us a blanket and pillows and told us to put the children to sleep,” and when her child needed to be fed, they “asked me to write down exactly where [a bottle of baby formula] was in the house” next door. “Lishay wrote it in Hebrew,” the article recounts, “the terrorists used Google Translate, and off they went.”

A few other October 7 victims have recounted similarly discordant testimonies.

Currently, top Hamas leaders are engaged in intensive “day-after” discussions with counterparts from Mahmoud Abbas’s Fatah party about the prospects for a national unity agreement — possibly including the long-discussed scenario of Hamas’s accession to the PLO, the recognized international representative body of the Palestinian people.

According to Yaari, these talks are now exacerbating the split between Sinwar and the rest of the Hamas leadership:

When reports of these talks reached Sinwar, he told Haniyeh that he considers this conduct “outrageous,” demanded that all contacts with the PLO and dissident Fatah factions be discontinued, and insisted that no consultations or statements on the “morning after” take place until a permanent ceasefire is reached.

The external leadership has ignored Sinwar’s directive, however.

A source who spoke to Le Figaro — a knowledgeable “Gazan notable” — went even further, claiming that “Israel isn’t alone in wanting [Sinwar] to lose. His friends in the political wing in Qatar and the Qataris themselves wouldn’t be unhappy if he were killed by Israel.”

In a different world — a world where Israel preferred peace to conquest — one could imagine some devious Bismarck-like leader in Jerusalem watching over these machinations like a chess player, plotting to split Hamas, isolate the irreconcilables, and make a deal with a Palestinian national unity front.

Or one could imagine, perhaps, some international mediator coming along to propose an agreement in which Israel would withdraw to its 1967 borders in exchange for, say, Hamas consenting to the destruction of its Gaza tunnels under UN supervision.

Would Hamas agree to such a plan? Who can say? But it’s easy to guess what Netanyahu’s response would be.

A decade ago, US Secretary of State John Kerry dispatched a team of US military advisers to Jerusalem to work out a plan that might satisfy Israel’s security concerns in the event of a peace agreement with the Palestinians and an Israeli withdrawal from the West Bank.

Netanyahu refused to let his generals cooperate with the American visitors.

“You understand the significance of an American security plan that is acceptable to us?” Netanyahu asked his defense minister. “At that moment we’ll have to start talking borders.”

Such are the consequences of Israel’s decades-long quest for Lebensraum. Repelled by the thought of security without conquest, terrified of “talking borders,” and encircled by enemies of its own making, a cornered Israel has finally absolved itself of its last moral obligation. It no longer feels bound to accept its neighbors’ physical existence. Whatever happens next, Israel will share responsibility with its accomplices.

#Israël #Palestine #USA #histoire #OLP #Hamas #Irgun #sionisme #islam

Workers at a Boeing Supplier Raised Issues About Defects. The Company Didn’t Listen.
▻https://jacobin.com/2024/01/alaska-airlines-boeing-parts-malfunction-workers-spirit-aerosystems

https://images.jacobinmag.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/01/09102419/GettyImages-1910724132-420x315.jpg

La sous-traitance et le licenciement de techniciens expérimentés menace la sécurité des avions Boeing. Ces problèmes touchent toutee les entreprises et organisations qui sont gérées dans le but d’optimisation financière. Là c’est la vie des passagers qui est mise en danger, ailleurs on détruit des structures d’entraide et on oblige des millions d’employés à travailler pour un salair de misère. Les dégats se sentent partout, dans tous les pays capitalistes. Il n’y a que les symdicats et le mouvement ouvrier qui peuvent nous protéger contre.

9.1.2024 by Katya Schwenk, David Sirota , Lucy Dean Stockton, Joel Warner - Less than a month before a catastrophic aircraft failure prompted the grounding of more than 150 of Boeing’s commercial aircraft, documents were filed in federal court alleging that former employees at the company’s subcontractor repeatedly warned corporate officials about safety problems and were told to falsify records.

One of the employees at Spirit AeroSystems, which reportedly manufactured the door plug that blew out of an Alaska Airlines flight over Portland, Oregon, allegedly told company officials about an “excessive amount of defects,” according to the federal complaint and corresponding internal corporate documents reviewed by us.

According to the court documents, the employee told a colleague that “he believed it was just a matter of time until a major defect escaped to a customer.”

The allegations come from a federal securities lawsuit accusing Spirit of deliberately covering up systematic quality-control problems, encouraging workers to undercount defects, and retaliating against those who raised safety concerns. Read the full complaint here.

Although the cause of the Boeing airplane’s failure is still unclear, some aviation experts say the allegations against Spirit are emblematic of how brand-name manufacturers’ practice of outsourcing aerospace construction has led to worrisome safety issues.

They argue that the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) has failed to properly regulate companies like Spirit, which was given a $75 million public subsidy from Pete Buttigieg’s Transportation Department in 2021, reported more than $5 billion in revenues in 2022, and bills itself as “one of the world’s largest manufacturers of aerostructures for commercial airplanes.”

“The FAA’s chronic, systemic, and longtime funding gap is a key problem in having the staffing, resources, and travel budgets to provide proper oversight,” said William McGee, a senior fellow for aviation and travel at the American Economic Liberties Project, who has served on a panel advising the US Transportation Department. “Ultimately, the FAA has failed to provide adequate policing of outsourced work, both at aircraft manufacturing facilities and at airline maintenance facilities.”

David Sidman, a spokesperson for Boeing, declined to comment on the allegations raised in the lawsuit. “We defer to Spirit for any comment,” he wrote in an email to us.

Spirit AeroSystems did not respond to multiple requests for comment on the federal lawsuit’s allegations. The company has not yet filed a response to the complaint in court.

“At Spirit AeroSystems, our primary focus is the quality and product integrity of the aircraft structures we deliver,” the company said in a written statement after the Alaska Airlines episode.

The FAA did not immediately respond to a request for comment on its oversight of Spirit.
“Business Depends Largely on Sales of Components for a Single Aircraft”

Spirit was established in 2005 as a spin-off company from Boeing. The publicly traded firm remains heavily reliant on Boeing, which has lobbied to delay federal safety mandates. According to Spirit’s own Securities and Exchange Commission filings, the company’s “business depends largely on sales of components for a single aircraft program, the B737,” the latest version of which — the 737 Max 9 — has now been temporarily grounded, pending inspections by operators.

Spirit and Boeing are closely intertwined. Spirit’s new CEO Patrick Shanahan was a Trump administration Pentagon official who previously worked at Boeing for more than thirty years, serving as the company’s vice president of various programs, including supply chain and operations, all while the company reported lobbying federal officials on airline safety issues. Spirit’s senior vice president Terry George, in charge of operations engineering, tooling, and facilities, also previously served as Boeing’s manager on the 737 program.

Last week’s high-altitude debacle — which forced an Alaska Airlines 737 Max 9’s emergency landing in Portland — came just a few years after Spirit was named in FAA actions against Boeing. In 2019 and 2020, the agency alleged that Spirit delivered parts to Boeing that did not comply with safety standards, then “proposed that Boeing accept the parts as delivered” — and “Boeing subsequently presented [the parts] as ready for airworthiness certification” on hundreds of aircraft.

Then came the class-action lawsuit: In May 2023, a group of Spirit AeroSystems’ shareholders filed a complaint against the company, claiming it made misleading statements and withheld information about production troubles and quality-control issues before media reports of the problems led to a major drop in Spirit’s market value.

An amended version of the complaint, filed on December 19, provides more expansive charges against the company, citing detailed accounts by former employees alleging extensive quality-control problems at Spirit.

Company executives “concealed from investors that Spirit suffered from widespread and sustained quality failures,” the complaint alleges. “These failures included defects such as the routine presence of foreign object debris (‘FOD’) in Spirit products, missing fasteners, peeling paint, and poor skin quality. Such constant quality failures resulted in part from Spirit’s culture which prioritized production numbers and short-term financial outcomes over product quality, and Spirit’s related failure to hire sufficient personnel to deliver quality products at the rates demanded by Spirit and its customers including Boeing.”
“We Are Being Asked to Purposely Record Inaccurate Information”

The court documents allege that on Feruary 22, 2022, one Spirit inspection worker explicitly told company management that he was being instructed to misrepresent the number of defects he was working on.

“You are asking us to record in a inaccurately [sic] way the number of defects,” he wrote in an email to a company official. “This make [sic] us and put us in a very uncomfortable situation.”

The worker, who is unnamed in the federal court case, submitted an ethics complaint to the company detailing what had occurred, writing in it that the inspection team had “been put on [sic] a very unethical place,” and emphasizing the “excessive amount of defects” workers were encountering.

“We are being asked to purposely record inaccurate information,” the inspection worker wrote in the ethics complaint.

He then sent an email to Spirit’s then CEO, Tom Gentile, attaching the ethics complaint and detailing his concerns, saying it was his “last resort.”

When the employee had first expressed concerns to his supervisor about the mandate, the supervisor responded “that if he refused to do as he was told, [the supervisor] would fire him on the spot,” the court documents allege.

After the worker sent the first email, he was allegedly demoted from his position by management, and the rest of the inspection team was told to continue using the new system of logging defects.

Ultimately, the worker’s complaint was sustained, and he was restored to his prior position with back pay, according to the complaint. He quit several months later, however, and claimed that other inspection team members he had worked with had been moved to new positions when, according to management, they documented “too many defects.”
“Spirit Concealed the Defect”

In August 2023, news broke that Boeing had discovered a defect in its MAX 737s, delaying rollout of the four hundred planes it had set to deliver this year. Spirit had incorrectly manufactured key equipment for the fuselage system, as the company acknowledged in a press statement.

But these defects had been discovered by Spirit months before they became public, according to the December court filings.

The court documents claim that a former quality auditor with Spirit, Joshua Dean, identified the manufacturing defects — bulkhead holes that were improperly drilled — in October 2022, nearly a year before Boeing first said that the defect had been discovered. Dean identified the issue and sent his findings to supervisors on multiple occasions, telling management at one point that it was “the worst finding” he had encountered during his time as an auditor.

“The aft pressure bulkhead is a critical part of an airplane, which is necessary to maintain cabin pressure during flight,” the complaint says. “Dean reported this defect to multiple Spirit employees over a period of several months, including submitting formal written findings to his manager. However, Spirit concealed the defect.”

In April 2023, after Dean continued to raise concerns about the defects, Spirit fired him, the complaint says.

In October 2023, Boeing and Spirit announced they were expanding the scope of their inspections. The FAA has said it is monitoring the inspections, but said in October there was “no immediate safety concern” as a result of the bulkhead defects.
“Emphasis on Pushing Out Product Over Quality”

Workers cited in the federal complaint attributed the alleged problems at Spirit to a culture that prioritized moving products down the factory line as quickly as possible — at any cost. The company has been under pressure from Boeing to ramp up production, and in earnings calls, Spirit’s shareholders have pressed the company’s executives about its production rates.

According to the Financial Times, after the extended grounding of Boeing’s entire fleet of 737 Max airlines following two major crashes in 2018 and 2019, “the plane maker has sought to increase its output rate and gain back market share it lost to Airbus,” its European rival.

Spirit, which also produces airframe components for Airbus, has felt the pressure of that demand. As Shanahan noted in Spirit’s third-quarter earnings call on November 1, “When you look at the demand for commercial airplanes, having two of the biggest customers in the world and not being able to satisfy the demand, it should command our full attention.”

According to the court records, workers believed Spirit placed an “emphasis on pushing out product over quality.” Inspection workers were allegedly told to overlook defects on final walkthroughs, as Spirit “just wanted to ship its completed products as quickly as possible.”

Dean claimed to have noticed a significant deterioration in Spirit’s workforce after Spirit went through several rounds of mass layoffs in the early days of the COVID-19 pandemic, despite the huge influx in government funding they received.

According to court documents, Dean said that “Spirit laid off or voluntarily retired a large number of senior engineers and mechanics, leaving a disproportionate number of new and less experienced personnel.”
“Over-Tightening or Under-Tightening That Could Threaten the Structural Integrity”

After the Alaska Airlines plane was grounded, United Airlines launched an independent inspection of its planes. Initial reporting shows that inspectors found multiple loose bolts throughout several Boeing 737 Max 9 planes. Alaska Airlines is currently conducting an audit of its aircraft.

Concerns about properly tightened equipment were detailed in the federal complaint.

“Auditors repeatedly found torque wrenches in mechanics’ toolboxes that were not properly calibrated,” said the complaint, citing another former Spirit employee. “This was potentially a serious problem, as a torque wrench that is out of calibration may not torque fasteners to the correct levels, resulting in over-tightening or under-tightening that could threaten the structural integrity of the parts in question.”

According to former employees cited in the court documents, in a company-wide “toolbox audit,” more than one hundred of up to 1,400 wrenches were found out of alignment.

On Spirit’s November earnings call, after investors pressed the company’s new CEO about its quality-control problems, Shanahan promised that the company was working to fix the issues — and its reputation.

“The mindset I have is that we can be zero defects,” he said. “We can eliminate all defects. . . . But every day, we have to put time and attention to that.”

#USA #aviation #sécurité #syndicalisme #travail #sous-traitance #salaire

ONLY VICTIMS: A Study of Show Business Blacklisting
▻https://www.kirkusreviews.com/book-reviews/a/robert-f-vaughn/only-victims-a-study-of-show-business-blacklist

https://d3myrwj42s63no.cloudfront.net/300/087/910/081/8/0879100818.jpg

by Robert F. Vaughn ‧ RELEASE DATE: March 14, 1972

Robert Vaughn, the TV-movie actor best known as the Man from U.N.C.L.E., is also a Ph.D. from USC and this is his doctoral dissertation. It suffers from most of the defects associated with academic thesis writing (turgid prose, factual glut, excessive footnoting, ponderous quotations), but those interested in the methodology of extralegal censorship or the specifics of the entertainment industry’s blacklisting practices in the ’40’s and ’50’s should be willing to overlook these faults. Because lodged among the scholarly impedimenta is some genuinely intriguing and new material which enhances both our understanding of the blacklist technique and our perspective of the particular history involved. Vaughn summarizes and evaluates the House Committee on Un-American Activities’ investigations conducted between 1938 and 1958 into alleged Communist influence in Hollywood, television programming, and the legitimate theater — hearings which produced no legislation, only sensational headlines for politicians like Martin Dies, J. Parnell Thomas, and Francis Walter and ""personalized persecution of entertainment people."" Some of the ""friendly"" witnesses were cowed; others cheerfully cooperated, supplying lists of names; a few of the unfriendly First Amendment types were jailed for contempt (i.e., the Hollywood Ten); and many of those who relied on the Fifth Amendment were blacklisted by their respective industries. What is most useful here, however, is Vaughn’s original research — questionnaire and interview data elicited from selected uncooperative HUAC witnesses — which serves as the basis for some definitive conclusions about the retrospective effects of blacklisting, e.g., motion picture and TV actors were hit hardest (theater performers were hardly affected at all and many writers were able to continue producing under pseudonyms). In sum, what we have here is the most complete and intelligent treatment of the virulent practice of blacklisting now available.

Pub Date: March 14, 1972
ISBN: 0879100818
Publisher: Putnam
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 1972

Robert Vaughn
►https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Vaughn

Vaughn was a longtime member of the Democratic Party.[7] His family was also Democratic and was involved in politics in Minneapolis.[53] Early in his career, he was described as a “liberal Democrat”.[54][55][56][57][58] He was opposed to the Hollywood Blacklist of suspected Communists on freedom of speech principles, but Vaughn also was opposed to Communism as a totalitarian system.[59] Vaughn campaigned for John F. Kennedy in the 1960 United States presidential election.[38] He was the chair of the California Democratic State Central Committee speakers bureau and actively campaigned for candidates in the 1960s.[38][53]

Vaughn was the first popular American actor to take a public stand against the Vietnam War and was active in the peace group Another Mother for Peace.[4] Vaughn debated with William F. Buckley Jr. on his program Firing Line on the Vietnam War.[60] With Dick Van Dyke and Carl Reiner, he was a founder of Dissenting Democrats.[61] Early in the 1968 presidential election, they supported the candidacy of Minnesota Senator Eugene McCarthy, who was running for president as an alternative to Vice President Hubert Humphrey, who had supported President Lyndon Johnson’s escalation of the war in Vietnam.[61]

Vaughn was reported to have political ambitions of his own,[62] but in a 1973 interview, he denied having had any political aspirations.[63] In a conversation with historian Jack Sanders, he stated that after the assassination of Robert F. Kennedy in 1968, "I lost heart for the battle.

House Un-American Activities Committee
►https://fr.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/House_Un-American_Activities_Committee

En 1947, les dirigeants des studios demandent à la commission de reconnaître que certains films sortis sur les écrans pendant la Seconde Guerre mondiale, comme Mission à Moscou (Mission to Moscow), L’Étoile du Nord (The North Star) et Song of Russia, peuvent en fait être considérés comme de la propagande pro-soviétique, mais que ces films étaient précieux dans le contexte de l’effort de guerre allié, et ont été tournés, dans certains cas, à la demande de représentants officiels de la Maison Blanche.

#USA #maccarthysme #histoire #culture #cinéma #listes_noires #cancel_culture

Why did Hezbollah strike the Israeli ’Meron’ intel, airforce base? | Al Mayadeen English
▻https://english.almayadeen.net/news/politics/why-did-hezbollah-strike-the-israeli--meron--intelligence--a

A report by a specialized research group based in the US state of Texas, which was brought to light by Israeli media months ago, revealed problems in pinpointing the locations of some civilian aircraft in the region, particularly over southern Lebanon and northern occupied Palestine.

After precise monitoring of jamming signals disrupting receivers’ ability to detect satellite waves, “Mount Meron” was determined as the source of interference against civilian GPS devices.

Indeed, satellite-based location systems were entirely disrupted during the first week following the Al-Aqsa Flood operation. Israeli media reported that the disruption was aimed at preventing the Resistance in Lebanon from using devices for precise missile or drone strikes against the entity.

The targeting of “Meron” by Hezbollah holds strategic significance of disrupting, or even with later operations potentially hindering, “Israel’s” ability to conduct precise military strikes.

A center for aerial operations against Lebanon and Syria

Historically, the high-base served as the command center for Israeli aerial operations and surveillance on the northern front of the occupation.

Its geographical position offers direct surveillance of a substantial portion of Lebanese territory and complete oversight, including broadcasting and receiving capabilities. This provides the base with powerful control and communication abilities towards Lebanon. Moreover, for hostile operations against Syria, “Meron” Base is complemented by radar and broadcasting facilities located on the occupied Mount Hermon, overlooking Syrian territories.

In recent years, the base has gained increased significance, especially with the expanded use of military drones.

As “Israel” increasingly relies on UAVs for intelligence gathering in Lebanon and Syria on a nearly daily basis, the base has emerged as the primary command center for aerial operations against both countries. It facilitates direct communication with the drones, ensuring uninterrupted connectivity and making it more challenging to disrupt their signals. The base also streamlines military operations due to the concentration of communication devices, command centers, and radars on “Mount Meron.”

Thanks to its extensive geographical oversight of Lebanese territory, the base can receive and broadcast various wireless communications directly to and from Lebanon. This makes it a critical communication component with informants and a central hub for tracking and monitoring wireless communications, including espionage activities.

The base’s giant advanced cameras and modern monitoring devices provide strategic oversight over a large portion of the line between Lebanon and occupied Palestine. It also covers Israeli sites and their corresponding locations in Lebanon.

Consequently, “Meron” Base plays a pivotal role in intelligence gathering that was previously concentrated in locations in proximity with the Lebanese borders, many of which have been targeted and destroyed by the Resistance in recent weeks.

The strategic base has not been immune to threats since the beginning of the military escalation in southern Lebanon.

Many Israeli analysts have spoken about the possible evolution of the Resistance’s targets list. This is particularly relevant given that Hezbollah previously repeatedly struck the base during the 2006 July war, which resulted in the death of two settlers and the injury of five others, as acknowledged by Israelis.

However, attacking the base today during a period below the threshold of an all-out war constitutes a heavy blow to the entity. Its implications go beyond direct consequences.

The Resistance has meticulously chosen the nature of its targets throughout this period as part of its precise management of the escalation ladder with the Israelis.

Over the past three months, Hezbollah has effectively controlled the pace and general course of events, compelling the Israelis to adhere to its equations.

This applies to the military operations zone, the nature of the strikes within Lebanon, and the deterrence of the occupation from targeting Lebanese civilians within the equation of reciprocity.

However, “Israel’s” assassination of Palestinian Resistance leader Sheikh Saleh Al-Arouri and a number of his comrades in Beirut’s southern suburb (Dahyeh) with missile strikes, prompted Hezbollah to opt for an escalation.

Today’s strike was described by Hezbollah as an “Initial Response” to the assassination of al-Arouri, leaving the door open for potential confrontations should the occupation entity decide to respond to this escalation in kind.
Historical and religious significance

In addition to the military and intelligence critical role it provides to the Israeli entity, the “Meron” Base holds special importance for Zionist Jews, as they consider the mountain itself to be mentioned in the Torah

(...)
A severe response

Striking the “Meron” Base with precision-guided missiles marks Hezbollah’s confirmation that it has introduced the latest-generation Kornet E-M missiles into the battle.

These missiles have a range of up to 10 kilometers and were most likely used in the accurate targeting of the base, as indicated by footage recorded by one of the Zionist settlers during the strike today.

The precision targeting of a base of such importance, housing command centers and equipment worth hundreds of millions of dollars and regularly hosting leaders of the occupation’s military, in addition to specialized and elite personnel, is indicative of the base now serving as a prime target for the Resistance. It also signifies that the Israeli entity is facing a genuine predicament.

While its main headquarters in the north is now under imminent threat from Hezbollah, the occupation entity cannot evacuate the base, pushing “Israel” into a very difficult dilemma. Additionally, the Resistance has effectively pushed the front line with the Israeli entity to 8 kilometers inside the occupied Palestinian borders.

Furthermore, Israeli generals had believed that their main headquarters were largely out of the Resistance’s reach and that their war against it was mostly remote, relying on aircraft and drones. This has changed after the operation today.

Most importantly, given the base’s role in operating and coordinating air strikes, the base is a central target to respond to the occupation army for assassinating al-Arouri earlier this week.

Therefore, it can be concluded that the “calamity of the occupation is great” today, as the military leadership’s headquarters in the north has been targeted. This means that the Resistance has placed the ball in the court of the Israeli army and its government.

Israelis must choose between remaining silent in the face of this humiliating and perilous strike, or heading toward a response, the repercussions and limits of which they do not know.

Year Of The Dragon 10.02.2024 - 28.01.2025
▻https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z9mj8iPmWT4

Yáng 木 Holz 龍 Drache 甲辰 jiǎchén

▻https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Holz-Drache

Bonne année !

#cinéma #USA #Vietnam #Chine #triades #film_policier

Why America fell out of love with its Army
▻https://responsiblestatecraft.org/us-army-recruitment
Elle était si belle, the Army, toutes nos mères tombaient amoureuses des jeunes et beaux GIs stationnés dans ma ville natale pour la défendre contre les méchants russes et leur armée rouge fémicidaire. Aujourd’hui méme les américains ne veulent plus der leur « Army of Excellence ». C’est triste le déclin de l’empire.

Jan 04, 2024 by Justin Overbaugh - A lack of truth and accountability tends to have a bad effect on trust, and as it turns out, recruitment, too

For the past several years now, a phalanx of defense officials and retired senior officers have been lamenting the dearth of people willing to serve in the U.S. military.

The problem is particularly acute for the Army, the largest of the U.S. forces, which fell short of its target by 25,000 recruits over the past two years. The situation is so grave that experts claim it imperils the all-volunteer force, an institution that has provided manpower for the American military for half a century.

Why does the Army, an organization that prides itself on achievement, fail at this fundamental task? Excuses tend to focus on market dynamics such as shrinking recruiting pools, lack of knowledge among American youth about service opportunities, and impacts from COVID 19. These factors are undoubtedly relevant, but are they the actual cause of the Army’s failure?

Current officials seem to think so. After failing in 2022, the Army increased its efforts to convince young people to serve. This, combined with a campaign to overcome “misperceptions” about life in the military, was a primary focus of the branch’s $104 million advertising budget in 2023.

Additionally, the Army estimated it invested over $119 million in the future soldier preparatory course. This new program enabled young Americans, initially disqualified because of low aptitude scores or high body-fat results, the opportunity to improve their marks. The Army claimed over 8,800 recruits completed the course and moved on to basic combat training. In the end, however, none of these initiatives enabled the force to achieve its quotas.

If market dynamics are not the underlying cause of the crisis, what is? I believe that the Army fails to meet its recruiting goals not because of a challenging market environment, but rather because a sizable portion of the American public has lost trust in it and no longer sees it as an institution worthy of personal investment.

Professor of sociology Piotr Sztompka defines trust as “a bet about the future contingent actions of others.” He presents the concept of trust in two components: beliefs and commitment. Essentially, a person trusts when they believe something about the future and they act in accordance with this belief. This is directly relevant to recruiting: in a high trust environment, people are more likely to enlist because they have a reasonable expectation of future benefit.

Unfortunately, anyone considering service today can look to myriad examples of the Army failing to meet their end of the bargain. Whether it is a lack of adequate and safe housing for soldiers and their families, the persistence of sexual assault, an inability to address suicide rates or to accurately account for property and funds — or even to develop a comprehensive physical fitness test — the Army, and the Department of Defense more broadly, consistently fail to achieve results.

But these shortcomings, while disastrous, pale in comparison to the Army’s ultimate failure: the failure to win wars.

In his book, “Why America Loses Wars,” Donald Stoker reminds us that winning in war means, “the achievement of the political purpose for which the war is being fought.” Judging by this standard, the Army has clearly failed at its raison d’être, to fight and win the nation’s wars, over the past two decades. This failure has come at catastrophic cost: the loss of over 900,000 lives, the death of over 7000 U.S. service members, and the depletion of eight trillion dollars. Additionally, on the international scene, the U.S. has bled influence, and levels of violence are on the rise.

Considering the wreckage listed above, it is little wonder that the American people have markedly lost confidence in the institution and its leaders in recent years and could explain the unwillingness to volunteer for service. Essentially, signing up for the military is starting to look like a really bad bet.

Adding insult to injury, a recent survey of military members indicates their enthusiasm to recommend military service has also declined significantly. While quality of life issues are highlighted as a concern, one cannot ignore the impact of failed wars on this trend. The 2021 Afghanistan withdrawal, leaving the Taliban in control of the country after 20 years, has left veterans feeling betrayed and humiliated, and naturally, unlikely to encourage others to follow their path in life.

Instead of flailing about trying to overcome challenging market dynamics, therefore, the Army should immediately commit to fixing itself. It can start by admitting its significant failures and its baffling inability to be honest with the American public about them. There are plenty of retired officers who have had public epiphanies about these systematic failures, but this kind of candor and responsibility needs to propagate among currently serving senior officials across the defense enterprise and the political establishment.

Once honesty is re-established as a core value, and the Army has come to grips with the fact that it failed, it can then begin to explore the reason why.

Simply put, the Army fails because it is set up to fail. It was asked to accomplish objectives in Afghanistan and Iraq that it could not possibly hope to achieve. Professors Leo Blanken and Jason Lapore point out what every senior defense official should clearly understand by now: that despite its impressive capabilities, the U.S. military is of limited utility in the type of non-existential conflicts we have fought in the past two decades. This is because the U.S. military is built for and excels at “battlefield dominance,” yet it was saddled with conducting counterinsurgency, reconstruction and building democratic institutions, tasks it was not trained for or prepared to accomplish.

These revelations are not new, senior defense officials should have understood these dynamics all along, and speaking frankly, they did. From General Shinseki’s ignored warnings about the number of troops at the beginning of the Iraq invasion, to ongoing assessments throughout both the Iraq and Afghanistan wars, it seems that it was clear throughout the defense establishment (at least behind closed doors) that the U.S. military could not and would not achieve the nation’s political objectives.

Yet despite this, top defense officials assured the American public that the U.S. military was “making progress” towards its goals, right up to the point that it was manifestly evident that they were not. And yet, at precisely the moment the American public is looking for accountability, many of the same senior officials who failed to achieve results for the nation, are instead rewarded with lucrative positions in the defense industry and with foreign countries.

Seeing that the military refuses to hold itself accountable, it is unsurprising that by withholding their most precious resources, their sons and daughters, the American public is.

The service’s leadership handbook states that “trust is the foundation of the Army’s relationship with the American people, who rely on the Army to ethically, effectively and efficiently serve the Nation.”

To earn back the trust of the American people and solve the recruiting crisis, the Army is going to have to do what everyone else has to do when relationships are broken: accept responsibility and begin to show, by deeds not words, a commitment to change.

Senior Army officials could immediately improve by critically examining the “unquestioned assumptions that form the basis of…American grand strategy,” reevaluating military officer professional development models, and understanding how misaligned military incentive structures work against achieving policy goals. Regardless of the approach, it should be laser-focused on delivering the ethical, effective and efficient service to the nation mentioned above.

If the Army lets this opportunity pass them by, however, claims that the military and the broader defense establishment are in a position to decisively win the nation’s wars lack credibility, as the American public will understandably remain uneasy about making a personal investment in the Army.

Justin Overbaugh is a Colonel in the U.S. Army with experience in Combat Arms, Special Operations, Intelligence, and Talent Acquisition. In his 25-year career, he led operations in Afghanistan, Iraq and across Europe and he commanded the Tampa Recruiting Battalion from 2017-2019. This article reflects his own personal views which are not necessarily endorsed by the United States Army or the Department of Defense.
The views expressed by authors on Responsible Statecraft do not necessarily reflect those of the Quincy Institute or its associates.

#USA #armée #soldats #crise

„Israelism“ : Ein sensibler Dokumentarfilm, der Israels Unterstützer erzürnt
▻https://www.wsws.org/de/articles/2024/01/03/ajki-j03.html

Voilà le commentaire des gars avec la bonne position de classe, et alors ?

In den letzten zwei Monaten haben sich verschiedene Universitäten in den USA bemüht, die Vorführung des preisgekrönten Dokumentarfilms „Israelism“ zu unterdrücken. Sie haben die Vorführung verzögert oder abgesagt und Studierende, die den Film zeigten, mit Disziplinarmaßnahmen bedroht. Warum eine so feindselige Reaktion?

Die Bemühungen sind Teil der McCarthy-ähnlichen Kampagne zur Unterstützung des Tel Aviver Regimes, das Tag und Nacht in Gaza mordet. Der Film ist für Israel-Befürworter alarmierend, weil er unter anderem die Behauptung als Lüge entlarvt, eine antizionistische Haltung sei „antisemitisch“. Bemerkenswert ist, dass „Israelism“ bei jüdischem wie nichtjüdischem Publikum gleich gut ankommt. Der Film erhielt unter anderem den Publikumspreis auf dem kürzlich stattgefundenen San Francisco Jewish Film Festival und den Preis für den besten Dokumentarfilm auf dem Arizona International Film Festival.

„Israelism“, produziert von den Dokumentarfilmemachern Erin Axelman und Sam Eilertsen, ist einfühlsam und nachdenklich. Er wird in erster Linie aus der Perspektive zweier jüdisch-amerikanischer junger Erwachsener erzählt. Sie sind mit einer starken Pro-Israel-Affinität aufgewachsen, doch ihre Ansichten ändern sich, als sie mit der Realität der brutalen Behandlung der Palästinenser durch Israel konfrontiert werden.

Dass ein solches Werk entstanden ist, hat eine objektive Bedeutung. Es zeugt von wichtigen Veränderungen in der politischen Einstellung und der gesellschaftlichen Orientierung. Die alten Unwahrheiten und Mythen sind einfach nicht mehr wirksam.

Der Dokumentarfilm ist zwar nicht ohne Schwächen, entlarvt aber Israel - die angeblich „einzige Demokratie im Nahen Osten“ - als diktatorischen Garnisonsstaat. Lügen und Gewalt sind allgegenwärtig. Ebenso ist für die Palästinenser das Militär allgegenwärtig: Kontrollpunkte, Straßensperren, Soldaten auf Patrouille. Sie sind eingezäunt und können nirgendwo hingehen.

Anhand von Videoclips, Interviews und Gesprächen mit den beiden Hauptdarstellern von „Israelism“ (Simone Zimmerman und einem jungen Mann namens Eitan), sowie mit Palästinensern aus dem Westjordanland erleben wir hautnah die täglichen Demütigungen und Grausamkeiten, denen die Palästinenser durch eine Regierung ausgesetzt sind, die sie hasst, ihr Existenzrecht ablehnt und sie zu einem staatenlosen Volk gemacht hat. Israel agiert mit faschistischen Methoden, und die Filmemacher stellen dies objektiv und sachlich dar.

Ein palästinensischer Händler erzählt von der täglichen stundenlangen Reise, die er auf sich nehmen muss, um seine Waren in Jerusalem zu verkaufen, und er weist auf die Risiken hin, die mit der Überquerung der militärischen Kontrollpunkte verbunden sind. Zwei Einwohner von Bethlehem, Baha Hilo und Sami Awad, erinnern sich der 750.000 Palästinenser, die während der Nakba („Katastrophe“) im Jahr 1948 vertrieben wurden. Ihre Familien können nicht in ihre Heimat zurückkehren. Eine palästinensische Familie sagt einem jüdischen Siedler, dass er ihr Land stiehlt, woraufhin dieser antwortet, das sei ihm egal: Wenn er es sich nicht nimmt, wird es ein anderer tun. Es gibt keinen Ausweg.

Einige besonders bewegende Momente in „Israelism“ sind diejenigen, die zeigen, wie Kinder verprügelt werden und selbst mit ansehen müssen, wie ihre Eltern, Familien und andere Erwachsene verprügelt werden. Eine Gesellschaft, die die zartesten und wehrlosesten Geschöpfe solchen Taten aussetzt, hat etwas fatal Krankhaftes an sich.

Der Dokumentarfilm erzählt die Geschichte von Zimmerman und Eitan (jüdischen Amerikanern, die ihre prägenden Jahre in jüdischen Privatschulen, Jugendgruppen und Sommerlagern verbrachten), die mit diesen Realitäten konfrontiert werden. Von klein auf wurde ihnen die bedingungslose Liebe zu Israel beigebracht. Ihre Erziehung schloss entweder jede Erwähnung der Palästinenser aus – Israel war das „Land ohne Volk für ein Volk ohne Land“ – oder, wenn sie doch vorkamen, wurden sie als Feinde behandelt, deren Ziel es war, die Juden ihrer hart erkämpften und lang verdienten Zuflucht zu berauben.
Simone Zimmerman

Der Cutter des Films, der Emmy-Preisträger Tony Hale, stellt diese frühkindlichen Erfahrungen gekonnt in ihren Kontext mit Aufnahmen von Kindern, die singen, skandieren und ihre Unterstützung für Israel herausschreien. Zimmerman hält Bilder der Pro-Israel-Kunstwerke hoch, die sie in ihrer Jugend gemalt hat. Wir sehen Sommerreisen nach Israel mit Waffentraining und Kriegssimulation, komplett in Uniform. Eitan erzählt, wie er nach all diesen Jahren nach Abschluss der High School begeistert den israelischen Verteidigungsstreitkräften (IDF) beitrat.

In einem Interview erklären die Filmemacher Axelman und Eilertsen, dass sie mit 80 Personen gesprochen haben, bevor sie sich für diese beiden Personen entschieden. Ihr Lebensweg spiegelt die Hauptziele der Pro-Israel-Indoktrinationskampagne wider: zionistische Aktivisten und Führungspersönlichkeiten in den USA auszubilden und neue Soldaten und Einwanderer für Israel zu rekrutieren. Das Leben von Zimmerman und Eitan ist ein besonderes Beispiel für ein breiteres soziopolitisches Phänomen.

„Israelism“ lenkt den Blick des Zuschauers auf die Pro-Israel-Lobby. Es gibt Diskussionen mit Mitgliedern der Hillel-Gruppen auf dem Campus, die ihren Zionismus selbstgefällig und selbstsicher zur Schau tragen, und Universitätsveranstaltungen, für die den pro-zionistischen Studenten im Vorfeld schriftliche Argumentationsunterhilfe ausgehändigt wird. Sie werden angewiesen, auf Versammlungen, bei denen angeblich anti-israelische Resolutionen verabschiedet werden, zu weinen und emotional hysterisch aufzutreten. Interviewausschnitte mit Abe Foxman, dem ehemaligen Chef der Anti-Defamation League, machen deutlich, dass jeder Jude, der Israel in Frage stellt, als Feind betrachtet wird.

Um aufzuzeigen, wie der zionistische Staat in den USA agiert, werfen die Dokumentaristen einen Blick auf die Birthright Foundation, eine Organisation, die mehrtägige Reisen für jüdisch-amerikanische Jugendliche finanziert, um ihr „Geburtsrecht-Heimatland“ zu besuchen. Zu Beginn des Films sehen wir eine Kundgebung für diese Reisenden, wenn sie in Israel ankommen. Die Kundgebung wird von ohrenbetäubender Partymusik, rockkonzertartigem Geschrei und Israel-Fetischismus beherrscht. Kritisches Denken ist bei dieser finanziell extrem gut gepolsterten Veranstaltung, gelinde gesagt, weder gewünscht noch naheliegend. Sie ist eine von vielen Ausgangspunkten für die weit verbreitete Rekrutierung jüdischer Amerikaner in die IDF, die ihre Soldaten als „heiß und super“ beschreibt.

Eitan fällt auf diesen nationalchauvinistischen Rummel herein und tritt dem israelischen Militär bei. Die Folgen wirken sich letztlich radikalisierend auf seine Einstellung aus. Als er einen festgenommenen Palästinenser aus dem Westjordanland in eine Haftanstalt eskortiert, wird er Zeuge, wie andere Soldaten den Mann zu Boden wirft und ihn unter den schweigenden Blicken des Kommandanten und der Militärpolizei gnadenlos schlägt. Eitan empört sich über seinen Status als Besatzer.

Zimmermans Wandlung von einer Pro-Zionistin zu einer eindringlichen Kritikerin Israels wird durch eine Reihe von Ereignissen vorangetrieben. Es beunruhigt sie, dass ihre Fragen über Palästina und das, was sich hinter den Gaza umgebenden Mauern befindet, nicht beantwortet werden. „Warum kann ich es nicht sehen?“ fragt sie. Als sie es schließlich sieht, versteht sie, warum es verschleiert wird.

„Israelism“ ist in seiner Darstellung antizionistischer Juden eindringlich: Sie wehren sich gegen Völkermord und antipalästinensischen Hass. Der Dokumentarfilm wurde über einen Zeitraum von sieben Jahren produziert, nicht als Reaktion auf die Ereignisse des 7. Oktober. Aber die Protestszenen wirken so, als seien sie bei den jüngsten Anti-Kriegs-Aktionen auf dem College-Campus in Washington D.C. oder bei den Sitzstreiks an der Grand Central Station in New York City gedreht worden. Es sind allesamt Demonstrationen, an denen antizionistische Juden maßgeblich beteiligt waren, aber heute sind sie um ein Vielfaches größer.
„Israelism“ (2023)

Allerdings bietet „Israelism“, dieser intelligent und einfühlsam aufgebaute Film, insgesamt wenig Einblick in die Hintergründe der Ereignisse, die er dokumentiert. Die Filmemacher, wie auch Zimmerman und Eitan, vermeiden es, die Geschichte der Entstehung des Staates Israel und seine Beziehung zu den imperialistischen Mächten zu diskutieren. Sie scheuen sogar vor dem Begriff Zionismus zurück und bevorzugen das von ihnen erfundene Wort „Israelismus“.

So erklärt Zimmerman die Bösartigkeit des israelischen Staates als eine Art missratenes Produkt des „ererbten Traumas“, das die Juden heute als Folge des Holocausts erleiden. Doch diese sozialpsychologische Terminologie kann nicht erklären, warum die industrielle Ausrottung der Juden durch die Nazis zu einem neuen jüdischen Völkermord geführt hat - diesmal mit den Juden als Täter. Warum sollte die Vernichtung des eigenen Volkes dazu führen, dass dieses Volk ein anderes vernichtet? Der Völkermord an den Juden und der Völkermord an den Palästinensern sind nicht von Natur aus kausal miteinander verbunden.

Die Verbindung der beiden Phänomene besteht vielmehr über den Imperialismus. Die zionistische Bewegung, die von Anfang an den Vorrang der „Rasse“ vor der Klasse vertrat, feierte die Tugenden des Nationalstaates. Sie stand einer Assimilation des jüdischen Volkes an die europäische Kultur und Gesellschaft zutiefst pessimistisch gegenüber und glaubte, dass ein jüdischer Staat in Palästina nur durch die Unterstützung der einen oder anderen Großmacht entstehen könne. Der Zionismus war antisozialistisch und lehnte die Idee ab, dass die Freiheit und Sicherheit des jüdischen Volkes erreicht werden könne, indem die internationale Arbeiterklasse im Kampf gegen jede Form der Unterdrückung den Kapitalismus stürzen werde.

Ze’ev Jabotinsky, der Anführer des faschistischen Flügels des Zionismus, schrieb 1934, dass die allgegenwärtige Feindseligkeit zwischen Juden und Arabern „fast wie eine Vorsehung“ sei, da sie ein Bündnis zwischen Israel und einem starken Imperialismus erzwingen werde:

Ein überwiegend jüdisches Palästina, Palästina als jüdischer Staat, der von allen Seiten von arabischen Ländern umgeben ist, wird im Interesse seiner eigenen Erhaltung immer versuchen, sich auf ein mächtiges Reich zu stützen, das nicht arabisch und nicht mohammedanisch ist.

Dies erforderte zwei Dinge: Erstens musste ein imperialistischer Gönner gefunden werden, den die zionistische Bewegung nach dem Zweiten Weltkrieg in den Vereinigten Staaten fand; Israel ist Washingtons Stellvertreter im Nahen Osten. Zweitens führte es zur ethnischen Säuberung Palästinas, die Israel ebenfalls durchgeführt hat und heute fortsetzt. Jabotinskys Schützlinge in der Herut-Bewegung, angeführt vom späteren Likud-Gründer und israelischen Premierminister Menachem Begin, verübten während der Nakba einige der schlimmsten Gräueltaten.

„Israelism“ geht all dem aus dem Weg und stolpert dann in den Versuch, sein Publikum auf einen Mischmasch aus Wahlrecht, der Demokratischen Partei, pseudolinker Politik und progressivem jüdischen Spiritualismus zu lenken.

Zimmerman selbst nahm zunächst eine Stelle bei der Bernie-Sanders-Kampagne als jüdische Outreach-Koordinatorin an. Zwei Tage später wurde sie auf Druck unter anderem von Foxman, dem ehemaligen Präsidenten der Anti-Defamation League, kurzerhand entlassen. Man muss ihr zugutehalten, dass sie vor der Pro-Israel-Lobby nicht kapituliert hat und in keiner Form zu Kreuze kroch. Aber sie und die Filmemacher schieben die Schuld auf Foxman. Was dabei mit keinem Wort erwähnt wird, ist Sanders‘ klägliches Einknicken oder, noch wichtiger, seine jahrzehntelange Unterstützung des amerikanischen Imperialismus und Israels.

Der Film zeigt ominöse Aufnahmen von Donald Trump, sagt aber nichts über die Demokratische Partei. Cornel West und Noam Chomsky treten in dem Dokumentarfilm auf: Das sind zwei Pseudolinke, die mit ihrer Kapitalismuskritik Karriere gemacht haben - um die Menschen wieder unter die Fittiche der Demokraten zu führen. Nichts wird über Barack Obama oder Joe Biden gesagt, wobei letzterer der Topverbrecher ist, wenn es um die Geschehnisse in Gaza geht.

„Israelism“ schließt mit einem Appell für ein anderes Judentum, das fortschrittlich und friedlich ist und sich gegen Hass und Unterdrückung wendet. Zweifellos ist der gewalttätige, faschistische zionistische Staat nicht aus der Geschichte des Judentums hervorgegangen. Noch weniger repräsentiert er die Gesamtheit des jüdischen Volkes, aus dem einige der größten Revolutionäre der Geschichte hervorgegangen sind, und das zur kulturellen und wissenschaftlichen Entwicklung der Menschheit beigetragen hat.

Viele Zehntausende jüdische Menschen hassen die entsetzlichen Verbrechen, die derzeit in Gaza und im Westjordanland verübt werden, und protestieren dagegen. Seit Jahren wächst die jüdisch-amerikanische Kritik an der zionistischen Politik. Eine Umfrage aus dem Jahr 2020 ergab, dass 57 Prozent der Juden die US-Militärhilfe für Israel an ein Verbot der Verwendung von Geldern für die „Annexion des Westjordanlandes“ geknüpft sehen möchten. Und eine Umfrage aus dem Jahr 2021 ergab, dass ein Viertel der amerikanischen Juden Israel für einen Apartheidstaat hält, wobei die Zahlen unter jüngeren Geburtsjahrgängen steigen. Jüngste Umfragen zeigen, dass die Hälfte der jungen jüdischen Amerikaner die israelische Politik ablehnt.

Menschen wie Zimmerman und Eitan haben Prinzipien und eine nicht geringe Portion Mut. Sie haben ihren Arbeitsplatz verloren, mussten ihre Beziehung zu Familie und Freunden abbrechen und sind jeder Art von Beschimpfungen ausgesetzt.

Das anti-zionistische Judentum allein wird jedoch die Katastrophe des Staates Israel weder für das jüdische Volk noch für die Palästinenser oder irgendjemanden anderen lösen. Dazu ist eine Mobilisierung breiter Massen der weltweiten Arbeiterklasse gegen Kapitalismus und Imperialismus erforderlich, die den Schrecken hervorgerufen haben, der sich heute abspielt.

#sionisme #israelisme #USA #film_documentaire

‘Israelism’ documentary focuses on young Jews’ change of heart
▻https://mondoweiss.net/2023/06/israelism-documentary-focuses-on-young-jews-change-of-heart

The Times They Are a-Changin’ Mister Zimmerman, aren’t they?

18.6.2023 by David Samel - A new documentary unpacks the confluence of Judaism and pro-Israel fervor in the American Jewish community and the young Jews who are coming to reject it.
By David Samel June 18, 2023 11
Still from the film “Israelism” (Image: israelismfilm.com)
Still from the film “Israelism” (Image: israelismfilm.com)

ISRAELISM
directed by Eric Axelman and Sam Eilertsen
84 min. Tikkun Olam Productions, 2023

The growing disenchantment and disaffection with Israel among young American Jews has long been evident. This development is the subject of a new documentary, Israelism, directed by Eric Axelman and Sam Eilertsen, which had sold-out premieres in New York and LA this past week.

The documentary explores the awakening of two 30-ish Jewish Americans, both thoroughly steeped in pro-Israel propaganda throughout their childhoods, to the harsh realities of the Israeli Occupation. Simone Zimmerman, co-founder of IfNotNow and “Eitan” (who withheld his last name) recount their personal journeys from enthusiastic supporters of Israel to pro-Palestinian activism.

The film’s first section gives voice and exposure to the fervor of pro-Israel feelings still common among a shrinking number of Jewish Americans. Simone and Eitan offer detailed recollections of their upbringing where love for all things Israel was integral to their Jewish identity. Simone exhibits Israel-themed memorabilia from her childhood, and Eitan recounts how he was impatient to finish high school so that he could move to Israel and join the IDF.
Poster for Israelism

This early part of the film also includes interviews with Abe Foxman, former director of the Anti-Defamation League, and Jacqui Schulefand of the University of Connecticut Hillel staff. Schulefand is accompanied by a group of about a half dozen students whose zeal for Israel mirrors that of Simone and Eitan at the same age. While neither Foxman nor Schulefand appears to have been aware of the perspective of the filmmakers, both are allowed to candidly express their passion for Israel, and neither interview appears unfairly edited to invite ridicule. Indeed, the same interview excerpts might easily find their way into a pro-Israel documentary.

The film thus establishes the meaning of its title, a reference to the unsettling confluence of Judaism and pro-Israel fervor that has created a new quasi-religion, Israelism. Schulefand sums up this passion precisely: “Israel is Judaism and Judaism is Israel, and that’s who I am.” This succinct quote goes hand-in-hand with the now oft-made but disingenuous claim that Jews’ support for Israel is such a core part of their Jewish identity that pro-Palestinian activism can be seen as anti-Jewish discrimination that warrants suppression and/or disciplinary sanctions.

Once this groundwork is laid, the realizations and misgivings of the two young protagonists take center stage. For Simone, her pro-Israel advocacy in her college years at UC Berkeley exposed her for the first time to the Palestinian counter-narrative in which Zionism meant dispossession, subjugation, and exile. She remembers her genuine shock when none of her more experienced colleagues could offer effective rebuttals.

Eitan, who followed his childhood dream to join the IDF, discussed his gradual recognition of the cruelty he and other recruits were trained to inflict, such as establishing a highly armed presence in occupied Palestinian territory to intimidate ordinary civilians simply trying to navigate their daily lives. One particular event that led to an epiphany was when Eitan escorted and delivered a bound and blindfolded Palestinian detainee to other soldiers, who then knocked the defenseless man to the ground, kicking and stomping him while superior officers looked on in casual indifference.

The sea-change in U.S. Jewish opinion, particularly among the young, is a nightmare scenario for those who seek permanent Jewish domination over the native population of Palestine. Last Tuesday’s Brooklyn premiere of Isaelism encountered little opposition or protest, but pro-Israel enthusiasts were more organized to confront Wednesday’s showing at UCLA. An NGO called “Stop Antisemitism” tweeted in advance: “Dozens of students have contacted us begging to cancel this screening, fearing for their safety!” Apparently, they feared that impressionable college students exposed to a film about young Jews questioning their pro-Israel indoctrination would lash out by randomly inflicting violence against Jewish students. Some of these anxious students nevertheless risked life and limb to attend the screening, as they peppered Eric Axelman, one of the film’s directors, with several challenging questions in a post-film q-and-a.

Bertrand Russell wisely counseled, “In all affairs it’s a healthy thing now and then to hang a question mark on the things you have long taken for granted.” It isn’t easy to follow that guidance, but Simone Zimmerman and Eitan have practiced it with intelligence and compassion for the victims of an ideology they formerly embraced. The Abe Foxman generation will be left to despair about its collective failure to sufficiently inoculate Jewish youth against the “corrupting” influences that have led to questioning and rejection of the most sacred tenets of Israelism.

#sionisme #israelisme #USA #film_documentaire

Die faschistische Ideologie des israelischen Staats und der Genozid in Gaza
▻https://www.wsws.org/de/articles/2023/12/20/pylj-d20.html

Diesen Vortrag hielt David North, Leiter der internationalen Redaktion der World Socialist Web Site, am 14. Dezember 2023 an der Humboldt-Universität in Berlin.

Wer an der Humboldt-Universität ankommt und die Eingangshalle des Gebäudes betritt, erblickt das berühmte Zitat von Marx: „Die Philosophen haben die Welt nur verschieden interpretiert, es kommt aber darauf an, sie zu verändern.“ Dieser grundlegende Aufruf von Marx sollte jeden Redner leiten, wenn er vor einer Versammlung spricht. Wie wird das, was er sagt, dazu beitragen, die Welt zu verändern?

Zunächst möchte ich meinen Genossinnen und Genossen von der deutschen Sektion der International Youth and Students for Social Equality (IYSSE) dafür danken, dass sie mich eingeladen haben, heute Abend an der Humboldt-Universität zu sprechen. Soweit ich weiß, gab es gewisse Probleme bei der Festlegung des Vortragsthemas, und sie wurden darüber informiert, dass der Titel keinen Hinweis auf den derzeitigen Völkermord durch die israelische Regierung in Gaza enthalten darf. Nun, sie haben sich an diese Regel gehalten, und im Titel findet sich kein Hinweis auf dieses immens wichtige Ereignis. Diese offenkundige Einschränkung der Meinungsfreiheit ist Teil der Bestrebungen der deutschen Regierung, der Medien und der unterwürfigen akademischen Einrichtungen, Widerstand gegen die Verbrechen der Netanjahu-Regierung zu unterbinden und zu diskreditieren.

Nachdem wir uns nun an die Auflagen zum Vortragstitel gehalten haben, werde ich dennoch über die Ereignisse in Gaza sprechen. Wie wäre es möglich, dies nicht zu tun?

In den letzten zwei Monaten hat die Welt miterlebt, wie die israelische Regierung mit ungeheurer Brutalität Krieg gegen eine wehrlose Bevölkerung führt. Die Zahl der Todesopfer nähert sich der Marke von 20.000 oder hat sie vielleicht schon überschritten. Mehr als die Hälfte der Getöteten sind Frauen und Kinder. Die Gesamtzahl der Opfer beträgt ein Vielfaches dieser Zahl. In den ersten sechs Wochen dieses Krieges hat Israel 22.000 von den Vereinigten Staaten gelieferte Bomben auf Gaza abgeworfen. Das war nur in den ersten sechs Wochen, seitdem ist eine beträchtliche Zeitspanne vergangen. Um eine Vorstellung vom Ausmaß dieses Angriffs zu gewinnen, sollte man bedenken, dass der Gazastreifen insgesamt 365 Quadratkilometer groß ist, also weniger als die Hälfte der Fläche Berlins (891,3 Quadratkilometer).
Aufsteigender Rauch nach einem israelischen Bombardement im Gazastreifen, 16. Dezember 2023 [AP Photo/Ariel Schalit]

Die israelischen Streitkräfte verschonen keinen Teil des Gazastreifens und keinen Teil seiner Bevölkerung. Krankenhäuser, Schulen, Bibliotheken, Flüchtlingslager und andere öffentliche Gebäude werden bombardiert. Journalisten, Ärzte, Lehrer, Schriftsteller und Künstler werden gezielt ins Visier genommen. Der Mord an dem Dichter Refaat Al-Ar’eer ist nur das bekannteste Beispiel für die Tötungen, die auf Geheiß der israelischen Regierung verübt werden.

Dieses Gemetzel muss gestoppt werden. Und alle, die für die Verbrechen gegen die Bevölkerung im Gazastreifen und gegen die gesamte palästinensische Bevölkerung, die unter der Besatzung lebt, verantwortlich sind, müssen gemäß den in den Nürnberger Prozessen von 1945–1946 aufgestellten Grundsätzen in vollem Umfang zur Rechenschaft gezogen werden. Und wenn es dabei nach mir ginge, würden sie die gleichen Strafen erhalten.

Die Einschränkung für den Titel dieses Vortrags enthält ein Element der Ironie. Vor fast genau zehn Jahren, im Februar 2014, wurde ich von Sicherheitskräften daran gehindert, an einem Kolloquium teilzunehmen, auf dem der Geschichtsprofessor Jörg Baberowski hier an der Humboldt-Universität eine neue Biografie über Leo Trotzki vorstellen wollte, die Professor Robert Service von der Universität Oxford verfasst hatte. In der Einladung zu der öffentlichen Veranstaltung hieß es, dass Service die Fragen der Teilnehmer beantworten werde.
Baberowski (olivfarbene Jacke, Hintergrund) und seine Sicherheitsleute versperren David North 2014 den Zutritt zu einem Kolloquium

Services Trotzki-Biografie ist eine schamlose Geschichtsfälschung. Die Verleumdungen gegen Trotzki darin sind so eklatant, dass führende deutsche Historiker öffentlich dagegen protestierten, weshalb die deutsche Ausgabe erst mit einem Jahr Verzögerung erscheinen konnte.

Einer meiner Einwände gegen Services Biografie, die ich in mehreren Rezensionen detailliert dargelegt habe, bezog sich auf die antisemitischen Stereotypen, deren sich der britische Historiker in seiner Denunziation von Trotzki ausdrücklich bediente. Dazu gehörten unter anderem Anspielungen auf die Form von Trotzkis Nase und die Änderung seines russischen Vornamens von „Lew“ in „Leiba“ – eine jiddische Variante, die ausschließlich von antisemitischen Feinden des jüdischstämmigen Trotzki verwendet wurde.

Wie sich bald herausstellte, beruhte das Bündnis der Professoren Baberowski und Service auf einer gemeinsamen antikommunistischen Agenda. Genau an dem Tag, an dem ich von dem Kolloquium an der Humboldt-Universität ausgeschlossen wurde, brachte Der Spiegel in seiner neuesten Ausgabe einen langen Essay, in dem die Verbrechen der Nazis mit dem Argument gerechtfertigt wurden, dass Hitlers Politik eine legitime Antwort auf die „Barbarei“ der bolschewistischen Revolution gewesen sei.

Neben anderen Interviewpartnern zitierte der Spiegel in diesem Beitrag auch Baberowski, der erklärte: „Hitler war kein Psychopath, er war nicht grausam. Er wollte nicht, dass an seinem Tisch über die Judenvernichtung geredet wird.“[1] Im Weiteren verteidigte Baberowski die nazifreundlichen Ansichten des inzwischen verstorbenen Professors Ernst Nolte, der damals Deutschlands führender Hitler-Apologet war.

Während die Studierenden der Humboldt-Universität über die Aussagen im Spiegel entsetzt waren, stellten sich die Verwaltung der Humboldt-Universität und die Medien hinter Baberowski. Dies änderte sich auch nicht, nachdem ein deutsches Gericht entschieden hatte, dass Baberowski als Rechtsextremist bezeichnet werden darf. Baberowski genoss und genießt die uneingeschränkte Rückendeckung der Humboldt-Universität. Deshalb konnte er auch einen wissenschaftlichen Mitarbeiter an den Lehrstuhl für die Geschichte Osteuropas berufen, der vor seiner Berufung an die Humboldt-Universität an einer Neonazi-Demonstration gegen die Aufdeckung von Gräueltaten der Wehrmacht im Zweiten Weltkrieg teilgenommen hatte.

Vor zehn Jahren wurde ich von der Teilnahme an einem Kolloquium an der Humboldt-Universität ausgeschlossen, weil ich beabsichtigte, die Fälschungen von Service und seine Verwendung antisemitischer Verunglimpfungen zu anzuprangern. Heute verbietet die Universität, die sich als unversöhnlicher Gegner des Antisemitismus aufspielt, im Namen der Bekämpfung des Antisemitismus die Erwähnung des Völkermords in Gaza.

Ich erinnere an diesen Vorfall aus der nicht allzu fernen Vergangenheit, weil er beispielhaft ist für den Zynismus, die Heuchelei, die Demagogie und die hemmungslose Verlogenheit hinter der Kampagne, Opposition gegen Israels Angriff auf Gaza als „antisemitisch“ zu diskreditieren. Diese Verleumdung ist eine wichtige Waffe in den Bemühungen Israels und seiner imperialistischen Komplizen, all diejenigen einzuschüchtern und zu isolieren, die gegen den Völkermord an den Palästinensern protestieren.

Plötzlich und von vielen überraschenden Seiten sind Kämpfer gegen Antisemitismus aufgetaucht. Letzte Woche wurden in den Vereinigten Staaten Universitätspräsidentinnen nach Washington D.C. vorgeladen, weil sie es versäumt hatten, angeblich antisemitische Proteste auf amerikanischen College-Campussen zu unterbinden. Angeführt wurde die inquisitorische Befragung von der Kongressabgeordneten Elise Stefanik, einer Republikanerin aus einem Bezirk im Bundesstaat New York. Sie wollte wissen, warum die Präsidentinnen der University of Pennsylvania, von Harvard, des Massachusetts Institute of Technology und anderer großer Universitäten Aufrufe zum „Völkermord“ dulden würden – worunter die Kongressabgeordnete jeden Studentenprotest versteht, der ein Ende des Apartheidregimes fordert, das den Palästinensern demokratische Rechte vorenthält.
Die Abgeordnete Elise Stefanik, eine Anhängerin der faschistischen „Bevölkerungstausch-These“ und Unterstützerin des Aufstands vom 6. Januar 2021, ist auch eine führende Vertreterin der Behauptung, Antizionismus sei Antisemitismus [AP Photo/Mark Schiefelbein]

Aber was sind die Referenzen von Frau Stefanik als Kämpferin gegen Antisemitismus? Sie ist eine bekannte Verfechterin der so genannten „Bevölkerungsaustausch-Theorie“, wonach die Juden die Vernichtung der weißen Christen planen, um die Weltherrschaft zu übernehmen. Mit anderen Worten, sie ist eine ausgewiesene Antisemitin, im klassischen Sinne des Wortes.

Das Bündnis von Kräften der extremen Rechten mit dem israelischen Regime ist ein internationales politisches Phänomen. Wie ihr wisst, hat sich die Alternative für Deutschland (AfD), in der ein Politiker den Holocaust als „Vogelschiss“ in der Geschichte abtut, dem Kreuzzug gegen den Antisemitismus angeschlossen. Und würde er noch leben, würde sich zweifellos auch der Führer anschließen.

Eine Delegation der ukrainischen Asow-Brigade, deren Kämpfer vielfach Nazi-Symbole als Tattoos tragen, besuchte im vergangenen Dezember Israel, um ihre Solidarität mit dem Netanjahu-Regime zu bekunden. All dies sind keine vereinzelten und abstrusen Zerrbilder ansonsten legitimer Bemühungen zur Bekämpfung des Antisemitismus. Vielmehr basiert die gesamte Kampagne auf einer Verfälschung der historischen Ursprünge und der politischen Funktion des Antisemitismus. Die aktuelle Kampagne steht für einen Prozess, den man als „semantische Umkehrung“ bezeichnen könnte. Hierbei wird ein Wort auf eine Weise und in einem Kontext verwendet, die das genaue Gegenteil seiner eigentlichen und seit langem akzeptierten Bedeutung sind.

Durch die schiere Kraft der Wiederholung, verstärkt durch alle dem Staat und den Leitmedien zur Verfügung stehenden Mittel, wird die Bedeutung eines Begriffs grundlegend verändert. Das angestrebte Ergebnis dieser Verfälschung besteht darin, das politische Bewusstsein in der Bevölkerung zu senken und die Fähigkeit zur Erkenntnis der Realität zu mindern.

Ein bezeichnendes Beispiel dafür, wie der Begriff „Antisemitismus“ zur Verfälschung der Geschichte, zur Verzerrung der politischen Realität und zur Desorientierung des öffentlichen Bewusstseins verwendet wird, findet sich in der jüngsten Ansprache des überaus redegewandten Robert Habeck, Vizekanzler der Ampel-Regierung in Berlin. In einer Schlüsselpassage erklärte dieser politische Tartuffe:

Sorge macht mir aber auch der Antisemitismus in Teilen der politischen Linken und zwar leider auch bei jungen Aktivistinnen und Aktivisten. Anti-Kolonialismus darf nicht zu Antisemitismus führen.

Kann jemand auch nur ansatzweise erklären, wie Anti-Kolonialismus einen antisemitischen Charakter annehmen soll? Habeck weiter:

Insofern sollte dieser Teil der politischen Linken seine Argumente prüfen und der großen Widerstandserzählung misstrauen.[2]

In dieser Passage offenbart sich der zentrale Zweck der semantischen Umkehrung des Wortes Antisemitismus. Ein Phänomen, das historisch mit der politischen Rechten assoziiert wurde, wird in ein zentrales Attribut der politischen Linken umgewandelt. Der reaktionäre Zweck dieses Verfälschungsverfahrens zeigte sich in der politischen Vernichtung von Jeremy Corbyn in Großbritannien. Ich bin kein Anhänger von Herrn Corbyn, dessen auffälligster politischer Charakterzug das Fehlen eines Rückgrats ist. Aber ungeachtet aller opportunistischen Sünden, die er begangen hat, ist der Vorwurf des Antisemitismus gegen Corbyn und seine Anhänger in der britischen Labour Party eine üble Verleumdung, die von seinen rechten Gegnern ausgeheckt wurde, um ihn politisch zu vernichten.

Ein weiteres, noch schmutzigeres Beispiel für diese Verleumdung ist die bösartige Hexenjagd auf Roger Waters. Ein Künstler, der sein Leben und seine Kunst der Verteidigung der Menschenrechte gewidmet hat, wird in einer international orchestrierten Kampagne verfolgt, um ihn als Antisemiten abzustempeln. Hier in Deutschland, in Frankfurt und Berlin, wurden Versuche unternommen, seine Konzerte abzusagen. Und was ist die Motivation für seine Verfolgung? Roger Waters setzt sich für die demokratischen Grundrechte der Palästinenser ein und spricht sich gegen deren Unterdrückung aus.

Die völlige Entkopplung des Begriffs „Antisemitismus“ von seiner eigentlichen historischen und politischen Bedeutung ist erreicht, wenn er gegen jüdische Menschen gerichtet wird, die zu Tausenden gegen die verbrecherische Politik des israelischen Regimes protestieren. Gegen sie wird ein besonders abscheulicher Ausdruck verwendet: „jüdischer Selbsthass“. Der Kern dieser Beleidigung besteht darin, dass Widerstand von Jüdinnen und Juden gegen die israelische Politik und gegen das gesamte zionistische Projekt nur als Ausdruck eines psychologischen Problems erklärt werden könne, einer pathologischen Ablehnung der eigenen Identität.

Diese Diagnose geht von der Voraussetzung aus, dass das Judentum als besondere religiöse Identität vollständig im israelischen Staat und der nationalistischen Ideologie des Zionismus aufgegangen ist. Die religiöse Zugehörigkeit eines Individuums – die im Leben des einen oder anderen jüdischen Menschen eine geringe oder gar keine besondere Rolle spielen mag – wird mit einer enormen metaphysischen Bedeutung aufgeladen.

Dieses ideologische Gebräu beruht nicht auf der Geschichte, sondern auf der biblischen Mythologie. Tatsächlich beruht die Legitimität des zionistischen Projekts auf der Behauptung, dass die Gründung Israels vor gerade einmal 75 Jahren die so genannte „Rückkehr“ des jüdischen Volkes nach 2.000 Jahren Exil in die ihm „von Gott versprochene“ Heimat seiner Vorfahren markiert.

Dieser mythologische Unsinn entbehrt jeder Grundlage in der historischen Realität. Mehr als 350 Jahre sind vergangen, seit Spinoza in seiner theologisch-politischen Abhandlung die Behauptung widerlegt hat, der Pentateuch sei Moses von Gott diktiert worden. Die Bibel war das Werk vieler Autoren. Wie der Historiker Steven Nadler, eine Autorität in Sachen Spinoza, erklärt:

Spinoza bestreitet, dass Moses die gesamte oder auch nur den größten Teil der Thora geschrieben hat. Die Verweise im Pentateuch auf Moses in der dritten Person, die Schilderung seines Todes und die Tatsache, dass einige Orte mit Namen benannt werden, die sie zur Zeit Moses nicht trugen, machen ‚ohne jeden Zweifel deutlich‘, dass die Schriften, die gemeinhin als ‚die fünf Bücher Mose‘ bezeichnet werden, in Wirklichkeit von jemandem geschrieben wurden, der viele Generationen nach Mose lebte.[3]

Ausgehend von seiner Missachtung der Autorität der Bibel erzürnte Spinoza die oberste Geistlichkeit der Rabbiner von Amsterdam weiter und provozierte seine Exkommunikation, indem er die für das Judentum als Religion und den Zionismus als politische Ideologie zentrale Behauptung leugnete, die Juden seien das „auserwählte Volk“. Nadler schreibt:

Wenn die Ursprünge und die Autorität der Heiligen Schrift heute in Zweifel gezogen werden, dann gilt das auch für ihre vollmundigen Behauptungen über die ‚Berufung‘ der Hebräer. Es ist ‚kindisch‘, so Spinoza, wenn jemand sein Glück auf die Einzigartigkeit seiner Gaben gründet; im Falle der Juden wäre es die Einzigartigkeit ihrer Auserwähltheit unter allen Menschen. In der Tat übertrafen die alten Hebräer andere Völker weder in ihrer Weisheit noch in ihrer Nähe zu Gott. Sie waren den anderen Völkern weder geistig noch moralisch überlegen.

Spinozas Abtrünnigkeit war durch den rasanten Fortschritt der Wissenschaft im 17. Jahrhundert geprägt und im philosophischen Materialismus verwurzelt. Er ebnete den Weg für die fortschrittlichsten und radikalsten politischen Tendenzen. Damit zog er den Zorn der rabbinischen Hüter der Orthodoxie auf sich. Die Exkommunikation Spinozas wurde in einer Sprache verkündet, die in ihrer Schärfe ohne Beispiel war. Die Exkommunikation lautete auszugsweise:

Verflucht sei er bei Tag und verflucht sei er bei Nacht; verflucht sei er, wenn er sich niederlegt, und verflucht sei er, wenn er sich erhebt. Verflucht sei er, wenn er hinausgeht, und verflucht sei er, wenn er hereinkommt. Der Herr wird ihn nicht verschonen, sondern dann wird der Zorn des Herrn und sein Eifer über diesen Menschen rauchen, und alle Flüche, die in diesem Buch geschrieben sind, werden auf ihm liegen, und der Herr wird seinen Namen auslöschen unter dem Himmel.[4]

„Exkommunizierter Spinoza“, Gemälde von Samuel Hirszenberg, 1907 [Photo: Samuel Hirszenberg]

Obwohl Spinoza auf diese Weise gebrandmarkt wurde, konnte sein Name nicht ausgelöscht werden. Der Einfluss seiner ketzerischen Ideen hat Jahrhunderte überdauert und wesentlich zur Entwicklung des aufklärerischen Denkens – einschließlich der als Haskala bekannten jüdischen Aufklärung – und ihrer revolutionären politischen Folgen im 18., 19. und sogar 20. Jahrhundert beigetragen.

Die politische Theologie des heutigen Zionismus ist die extreme konterrevolutionäre Antithese und Zurückweisung der fortschrittlichen, demokratischen und sozialistischen Tradition, die sich aus dem an Spinoza und später am Marxismus angelehnten Denken von Generationen jüdischer Arbeiter und Intellektueller herleitet. Durch die Neuinterpretation des religiösen Mythos im Geiste eines extremen Nationalchauvinismus verleiht die zeitgenössische zionistische Theologie der Vorstellung des „auserwählten Volks“ einen durch und durch rassistischen und faschistischen Charakter.

Die Tatsache, dass sich die israelische Regierung aus Parteien der extremen Rechten zusammensetzt, wird zwar weithin anerkannt, wird jedoch als nebensächliches Detail behandelt, das keinen besonderen Bezug zu den Ereignissen des 7. Oktober und der Reaktion des israelischen Staates hat. Der Einfluss einer apokalyptischen „Theologie der Rache“, die ausdrücklich die Vernichtung aller Feinde Israels fordert, auf die Politik der Netanjahu-Regierung wird in der politischen Berichterstattung über den Krieg praktisch nicht erwähnt.

Eine zentrale Figur in der Entwicklung der „Theologie der Rache“ war Meir Kahane, der 1932 in Brooklyn geboren wurde und mittlerweile verstorben ist. Sein Vater, Charles Kahane, war ein Freund und Mitarbeiter von Zeev Jabotinsky, dem Führer eines erklärtermaßen faschistischen Flügels der zionistischen Bewegung. Meir Kahane wurde zunächst als Gründer der neofaschistischen Jewish Defense League (JDL) in den Vereinigten Staaten berüchtigt. Die JDL hatte es auf schwarze Organisationen in New York abgesehen, die Kahane als Bedrohung für die Juden verteufelte.

1971 siedelte Kahane nach Israel über und gründete die vehement anti-arabische Kach-Partei. Seine Anhänger in den Vereinigten Staaten blieben aktiv. Die Workers League, die Vorgängerin der Socialist Equality Party in den Vereinigten Staaten, wurde zur Zielscheibe der JDL, die 1978 in Los Angeles durch einen Bombenanschlag versuchte, eine vom Internationalen Komitee organisierte Vorführung des Dokumentarfilms „The Palestinian“ zu stören.
Meir Kahane im Jahr 1984 [Photo: Gotfryd, Bernard]

Kahanes Rolle und Einfluss in Israel wird in einem Essay mit dem Titel „Meir Kahane and Contemporary Jewish Theology of Revenge“ analysiert, der 2015 veröffentlicht wurde. Die Autoren sind zwei israelische Wissenschaftler, Adam und Gedaliah Afterman. Sie erklären, dass die Theologie Kahanes

um die Behauptung kreiste, dass der Staat Israel von Gott gegründet wurde, als Racheakt gegen die Ungläubigen für deren Verfolgung der Juden, insbesondere für die systematische Ermordung der Juden während des Holocausts.

Kahanes Kach-Partei forderte die Annexion aller im Krieg von 1967 von Israel eroberten Gebiete und die gewaltsame Vertreibung der palästinensischen Bevölkerung. Kahane wurde 1984 in die Knesset, das israelische Parlament, gewählt. Die Kach-Partei wurde bei den Wahlen von 1988 verboten, doch ihr Einfluss dauerte an, obwohl Kahane im Jahr 1990 während einer Reise nach New York ermordet wurde.

Das Essay der Aftermans fasst die drei Grundpfeiler von Kahanes Rachetheorie zusammen.

Erstens:

Das Volk Israel ist ein kollektives mythisches Wesen, das ontologisch in der Göttlichkeit verwurzelt ist und sich seit frühesten Tagen zusammen mit Gott einem mythischen Feind gegenübersah. Dieser mythische Feind, „Amalek“, wird im Laufe der jüdischen Geschichte durch verschiedene tatsächliche Feinde verkörpert, und die verschiedenen Verfolgungen und Qualen, die die Juden im Laufe der Geschichte erlitten haben, sind Ausdruck ein und desselben mythischen Kampfes. Darüber hinaus gibt es einen ontologischen Unterschied zwischen der mythischen Nation Israel und den Ungläubigen, insbesondere den Feinden Israels. Der ontologische Unterschied zwischen der jüdischen und der nichtjüdischen Seele setzt den jüdischen Grundsatz außer Kraft, dass die gesamte Menschheit nach dem Bild Gottes geschaffen wurde. Der Glaube, dass Nichtjuden minderwertig seien und die dämonischen Mächte der Geschichte verkörpern, rechtfertigt tödliche Gewalt und Racheakte.

Zweitens:

...Daher, so die Argumentation, trägt das Volk Israel eine religiöse Pflicht, alle möglichen Mittel einzusetzen, um sich an seinen gemeinsamen Feinden zu rächen und seinen gemeinsamen Stolz und Status zu rehabilitieren. Ob sie sich dessen bewusst sind oder nicht, die Palästinenser und andere Kräfte, die Israel bekämpfen, sind Teil eines mythischen, religiösen Kampfes, der die Zerstörung des Volkes Israel und seines Gottes zum Ziel hat. Diese Faktoren erlauben den Einsatz aller Mittel, um die Feinde zu besiegen.

Drittens:

Die Gründung des Staates Israel im Jahr 1948, kurz nach dem Holocaust, muss einem einzigen Zweck dienen: die erlösende Rache an den Ungläubigen zu ermöglichen. Die Gründung des modernen jüdischen Staates im historischen Land Israel ist eher ein Instrument, den Erlösungsprozess in Gang zu setzen, als ein Ergebnis oder ein Zeichen eines solchen Prozesses.

Die drei Säulen zusammenfassend, erklären die Aftermans:

...Kahane argumentiert, dass die Ausübung von Rache an dem metaphysischen Feind ‚Amalek‘ (feindliche Ungläubige) von grundlegender Bedeutung ist, um Gott und sein Volk zu erretten, die beide infolge des Holocausts beinahe umgekommen wären. Die Gründung des jüdischen Staates mit seiner institutionalisierten Macht und militärischen Stärke sollte nach Kahanes Ansicht in den Dienst der Erlösung versprechenden Rache gestellt werden. Kahane geht so weit, dass er Racheakte auch an unschuldigen Menschen mit dem Argument rechtfertigt, sie gehörten zum mythischen Feind, der als Voraussetzung für die Erlösung Israels und seines Gottes ausgerottet werden müsse. Seiner Ansicht nach ist der Verlust von unschuldigem Leben, wenn nötig, ein gerechtfertigtes Opfer.[5]

Kahane interpretierte die Doktrin des „auserwählten Volkes“ so, dass jegliche Verbindung mit traditionellen westlichen Werten völlig abgelehnt wird. In seinem Buch Or Ha’Raayon schrieb er:

Dies ist ein jüdischer Staat. Er verneigt sich vor dem Judentum und widerspricht ihm nicht. Er handelt nach jüdischen Werten und jüdischen Geboten, auch wenn diese dem Völkerrecht und der Diplomatie widersprechen, auch wenn sie im Gegensatz zum normalen westlichen und demokratischen Lebensstil stehen; dies ist so, auch wenn es seine Interessen gefährdet und ihn von den zivilisierten Nichtjuden zu isolieren droht … Die Aufgabe des Judentums ist es, getrennt, einzigartig, anders und auserwählt zu sein. Dies ist die Rolle des jüdischen Volkes und seines Instruments, des Staates … Wir haben keinen Anteil an den normierten Werten der Nationen. Assimilation beginnt nicht mit Mischehen, sondern mit dem Kopieren und Übernehmen fremder Werte, fremder und nicht-jüdischer Begriffe und Ideen.

Kahanes Theorie der Rache wurde im Hebräischen mit dem Konzept dessen identifiziert, was er Kiddusch Haschem nannte. Er schrieb:

Eine jüdische Faust im Gesicht einer verblüfften ungläubigen Welt, die sie seit zwei Jahrtausenden nicht mehr gesehen hat, das ist Kiddusch Haschem. Jüdische Herrschaft über die christlichen heiligen Stätten, während die Kirche, die unser Blut gesaugt hat, ihre Wut und Frustration erbricht – das ist Kiddusch Haschem.

Tatsächlich kann man Kahanes Kiddusch Haschem – trotz seiner halbherzigen Beschwörung einer angeblich einzigartigen jüdischen Philosophie – als eine hebräischsprachige Variante der Philosophie von Adolf Hitlers Mein Kampf bezeichnen, wobei der Hauptunterschied darin besteht, dass Kahanes hasserfüllte und rassistische Hetzschrift auf Hebräisch von rechts nach links und nicht von links nach rechts geschrieben wurde.

Kahanes Einfluss blieb auch nach seiner Ermordung in dem zunehmend reaktionären politischen Umfeld Israels bestehen. Am 25. Februar 1994 ermordete einer von Kahanes Studenten, Baruch Goldstein, bei einem Anschlag auf eine Moschee in Hebron 29 Palästinenser und verwundete 150 weitere. Dieses Verbrechen wurde von Kahanes Anhängern gepriesen – darunter der äußerst einflussreiche Rabbiner Yitzchak Ginsburgh, der verkündete, dass der von Goldstein verübte Massenmord ein Akt des Kiddusch Haschem sei.

Was hat das nun mit heute zu tun? Itamar Ben-Gvir, der Führer der fremdenfeindlichen Partei Otzma Jehudit, ist jetzt Minister für nationale Sicherheit in Netanjahus Koalitionsregierung. Er war Mitglied der Kach-Partei, bevor diese verboten wurde. Er ist nach wie vor ein entschiedener Verfechter der faschistischen Theologie und Politik von Meir Kahane. Im April dieses Jahres hielt Ben-Gvir – flankiert von einem Sicherheitsdienst aus dem Büro des Ministerpräsidenten – eine Rede, in der er sowohl Kahane als auch Baruch Goldstein lobte.
Präsident Joe Biden (links) und der israelische Premierminister Benjamin Netanjahu auf dem internationalen Flughafen Ben Gurion, Tel Aviv, 18. Oktober 2023 (AP Photo/Evan Vucci)

Seit Beginn des Krieges kommt es immer häufiger vor, dass israelische Führer sich auf Kahanes Doktrin der Rache berufen. Letzten Monat erklärte Netanjahu in einer öffentlichen Rede: „Ihr müsst euch daran erinnern, was Amalek euch angetan hat, sagt unsere Heilige Bibel. Und wir erinnern uns.“ Die Tragweite von Netanjahus Verweis auf Amalek wurde in einer Erklärung des israelischen Verteidigungsministers Yoav Gallant deutlich gemacht: „Wir kämpfen gegen menschliche Tiere, und wir handeln entsprechend. Wir werden alles eliminieren – sie werden es bereuen.“ Seit Beginn des Krieges haben führende israelische Politiker zahlreiche Erklärungen gleichen Inhalts abgegeben, die in den genozidalen Taten der israelischen Regierung und des Militärs ihren Ausdruck gefunden haben.

Inmitten der Verbrechen, die das israelische Regime begeht, gibt es keine größere und heimtückischere Lüge als die Behauptung, dass Widerstand gegen den Zionismus antisemitisch sei und sein müsse. Diese Lüge wird durch die lange Geschichte der Opposition gegen den Zionismus vor 1948 widerlegt. Zigtausende jüdische Arbeiter und Intellektuelle leisteten diesen Kampf über mehrere Generationen hinweg und wiesen den auf einem Mythos beruhenden Ruf nach einer Rückkehr nach Palästina zurück.

Die Opposition gegen den Zionismus wurde mit größter politischer Klarheit von der sozialistischen Bewegung zum Ausdruck gebracht, die den politisch reaktionären Charakter der Perspektive, einen jüdischen Staat in Palästina zu errichten, erkannte und verurteilte. Man verstand, dass dieses Projekt ein kolonialistisches Unterfangen war, das nur im Bündnis mit dem Imperialismus und auf Kosten der palästinensisch-arabischen Bevölkerung verwirklicht werden konnte, die seit 2.000 Jahren in diesem Gebiet lebt.

Darüber hinaus strebte die große Mehrheit der Jüdinnen und Juden in ihrem Kampf gegen die traditionelle religiöse Verfolgung und den seit dem späten 19. Jahrhundert aufkommenden politischen Antisemitismus nach politischer und sozialer Gleichberechtigung innerhalb der Länder, in denen sie lebten. Das war vor allem in Deutschland eine wahrhaftige Tatsache. Sie wollten Teil der Massenbewegung gegen Unterdrückung sein. Bei den politisch bewusstesten Teilen der jüdischen Jugend, der Arbeiter und Intellektuellen führte dieses Streben dazu, dass sie aktiv an der sozialistischen Bewegung teilnahmen.

Die heutige Behauptung, wonach der Zionismus der notwendige und wahre Ausdruck der jüdischen Identität sei, entbehrt jeder historischen Grundlage. Das Fortbestehen demokratischer Überzeugungen und ein Mitgefühl für die Unterdrückten, das in der Erfahrung antisemitischer Vorurteile und Verfolgung wurzelt, kommt auch in der großen Zahl jüdischer Jugendlicher zum Ausdruck, die sich an den Demonstrationen gegen den israelischen Angriff auf die Bewohner des Gazastreifens beteiligen.

Aller Propaganda zum Trotz wecken die Bilder der Massentötung wehrloser Palästinenser zwangsläufig historische und familiäre Erinnerungen an das Schicksal der Juden unter den Händen der Nazis. Der Krieg gegen die Bevölkerung des Gazastreifens ruft damit nicht nur ein Gefühl der Solidarität mit den Opfern der israelischen Gräueltaten hervor, sondern auch tiefen Zorn, dass die Tragödie des Holocausts für die Rechtfertigung dieses Krieges missbraucht wird.

Natürlich werden die Zionisten und ihre Apologeten behaupten, dass alles, was ich gesagt habe, nur ein Beweis für meinen eigenen tief verwurzelten Antisemitismus ist, den sie – wie ich bereits erklärt habe – als ein in der sozialistischen Bewegung weit verbreitetes Vorurteil bezeichnen. Je weiter links jemand steht, je nachdrücklicher er oder sie sich gegen Kapitalismus und Imperialismus ausspricht, desto unversöhnlicher ist die Ablehnung des jüdischen Staates und damit der Antisemitismus dieser Person.

Diese Behauptung ist ebenso absurd wie politisch reaktionär. Da ich seit mehr als einem halben Jahrhundert in der sozialistischen Bewegung aktiv bin, bin ich persönlich wahrhaftig nicht verpflichtet, auf die Behauptung zu antworten, dass ich oder meine Genossen in der trotzkistischen Bewegung Antisemiten seien. Wie man so schön sagt, spricht meine Laufbahn für sich selbst.

Doch leider trifft das nicht immer zu. Der Vorwurf des Antisemitismus erfordert, dass der politische Werdegang der angegriffenen Person ignoriert und verzerrt werden muss.

Daher werde ich zum ersten Mal auf diesen Vorwurf reagieren, indem ich meiner bekannten öffentlichen politischen Bilanz Informationen über meinen persönlichen Hintergrund hinzufüge. Da ich nun ein eher fortgeschrittenes Alter erreicht habe und in etwas mehr als einem Jahr meinen 75. Geburtstag feiern werde, halte ich die Zeit für gekommen, dies zu tun. Und zwar nicht, weil es irgendeine Wirkung auf die Verleumder haben würde, sondern weil es in meiner persönlichen Erfahrung Elemente gibt, die bei einer jüngeren Generation Widerhall finden und sie ermutigen könnten, ihren Kampf zur Verteidigung der Palästinenser und gegen alle Formen der Unterdrückung zu verstärken.

Der prägende Faktor in der Entwicklung eines jeden Menschen ist das soziale und politische Umfeld seiner Zeit, das auf der grundlegendsten Ebene durch die sozioökonomischen Strukturen der Gesellschaft, in die er hineingeboren wurde, bestimmt wird. Die Persönlichkeit eines Menschen wird durch das geformt, was Marx als „Ensemble der gesellschaftlichen Verhältnisse“ bezeichnet hat. Aber diese gesellschaftlichen Verhältnisse werden durch persönliche Erfahrungen gebrochen, sowohl durch eigene als auch durch solche, die durch Familie, Freunde, Lehrer, Bekannte usw. vermittelt werden.

Ich bin ein Amerikaner der ersten Generation, geboren 1950. Der Ort meiner Geburt – ja, meine Existenz – wurde durch die Ereignisse bestimmt, die zum Zweiten Weltkrieg geführt hatten, der nur viereinhalb Jahre zuvor zu Ende gegangen war. Meine Eltern waren beide aus Europa geflohen, um der Verfolgung der Juden durch die Nazis zu entgehen. Meine Mutter Beatrice wurde am 18. Dezember 1913 in Wilmersdorf geboren – genau am selben Tag, an dem Herbert Frahm, auch Willy Brandt genannt, geboren wurde. Das Wohnhaus, in dem sie zur Welt kam, steht noch heute in der Konstanzer Straße. Ihr Vater – mein Großvater – nahm eine bedeutende Stellung im kulturellen Leben Berlins ein. Sein Name war Ignatz Waghalter. 1881 in Warschau in eine sehr arme Musikerfamilie hineingeboren, machte sich Waghalter im Alter von 17 Jahren auf den Weg nach Berlin, um eine ordentliche musikalische Ausbildung zu erhalten.
Die Familie Waghalter 1889 in Warschau

Mein Großvater war das 15. von 20 Kindern. Von diesen 20 Kindern starben 13 im Kindesalter, vier davon an einem Tag während der Typhusepidemie von 1888. Von den 20 Kindern überlebten sieben – vier Jungen und drei Mädchen. Mein Großvater war von frühester Kindheit an musikalisch sehr begabt. Im Alter von sechs Jahren trat er bereits im Warschauer Zirkus auf. Im Alter von acht Jahren schrieb und komponierte er eine Revolutionshymne, die so beliebt war, dass die Polizei nach dem Namen und der Identität des rebellischen Musikers forschte. Die Polizei war ziemlich schockiert, als sie feststellte, dass es sich um einen Achtjährigen handelte. Die Familie Waghalter hatte tiefe Wurzeln im revolutionären demokratischen Kampf des polnischen Volkes. Kürzlich entdeckte ich in einer Bibliothek einen revolutionären Marsch, den der Großvater meines Großvaters im Jahr 1848 komponiert hatte.

Mein Großvater wollte eine echte Ausbildung erhalten. Er wollte nicht nur ein Wandermusiker sein, er wollte in die musikalische Welthauptstadt Berlin ziehen und lernen, wie man ein richtiger Komponist wird. Im Jahr 1897 wurde er mittellos über die Grenze geschmuggelt. Er lebte unter großen Entbehrungen, als der große Geiger und Freund von Johannes Brahms, Joseph Joachim, auf ihn aufmerksam wurde. Auf Joachims Empfehlung wurde mein Großvater in die Akademie der Künste aufgenommen. Im Jahr 1902 wurde seine Sonate für Violine und Klavier mit dem begehrten Mendelssohn-Preis ausgezeichnet. Zwei Jahre später wurde Ignatz‘ jüngerer Bruder Wladyslaw, der ihm nach Berlin gefolgt war, mit demselben Preis für seine Leistungen als Geiger ausgezeichnet.

Nach dem Studienabschluss erhielt Ignatz eine Stelle als Kapellmeister an der Komischen Oper. Einige Jahre später folgte eine Berufung an das Essener Opernhaus. Der entscheidende Wendepunkt in seiner musikalischen Laufbahn kam jedoch 1912, als er zum Ersten Kapellmeister am neu erbauten Deutschen Opernhaus in der Bismarckstraße in Charlottenburg berufen wurde, heute als Deutsche Oper bekannt. Das ursprüngliche Gebäude wurde natürlich im Zweiten Weltkrieg zerstört und später wieder aufgebaut, befindet sich aber heute noch in derselben Straße. Wladyslaw Waghalter wurde zum Konzertmeister des neuen Opernhauses ernannt, das am 7. November 1912 mit einer Aufführung von Beethovens „Fidelio“ eröffnet wurde. Trotz des lautstarken Widerstands von Antisemiten und zahlreicher Morddrohungen dirigierte Ignatz Waghalter die Uraufführung.

In den folgenden zehn Jahren behielt mein Großvater seine Position als Erster Kapellmeister am Deutschen Opernhaus. Drei seiner Opern, „Mandragola“, „Jugend“ und „Sataniel“, wurden am Opernhaus uraufgeführt. Waghalter war bekannt dafür, dass er sich für die Opern von Giacomo Puccini einsetzte, dessen Musik ein auf Richard Wagner fixierter Musikbetrieb zuvor abgelehnt hatte. Waghalter dirigierte im März 1913 die deutsche Uraufführung von Puccinis „La Fanciulla del West“ [Das Mädchen aus dem goldenen Westen], bei der Puccini selbst anwesend war. Es war ein Triumph, der Puccinis Ruf als großer Komponist in Deutschland begründete.
Ignatz Waghalter mit Giacomo Puccini, Berlin, März 1913

Während seiner langjährigen Tätigkeit am Deutschen Opernhaus hatte Waghalter mit antipolnischen und antisemitischen Vorurteilen zu kämpfen. Obwohl er selbst keine religiösen Rituale pflegte und keine Synagoge besuchte, weigerte sich Waghalter – im Gegensatz zu vielen anderen jüdischstämmigen Dirigenten – zum Christentum zu konvertieren. Der Gedanke, seine Religion zu wechseln, um seine Karriere zu fördern und sich damit den antisemitischen Vorurteilen anzupassen, war ihm zuwider.

1914, bei Ausbruch des Ersten Weltkriegs, erhielt Waghalter ein Dirigierverbot, weil er im Russischen Reich geboren war, mit dem sich das kaiserliche Deutschland im Krieg befand. Proteste des opernbegeisterten Publikums in Charlottenburg führten jedoch zu seiner Wiedereinstellung.

Waghalter blieb am Deutschen Opernhaus, bis dieses 1923 inmitten der katastrophalen Inflationskrise in Konkurs ging. Er verbrachte ein Jahr in den Vereinigten Staaten als Leiter des New York State Symphony Orchestra. Anschließend kehrte er nach Deutschland zurück, wo er zum Generalmusikmeister der Filmgesellschaft UFA ernannt wurde. Eine Rückkehr an die Städtische Oper, wie das reorganisierte und wiedereröffnete Deutsche Opernhaus damals hieß, war für ihn jedoch nicht möglich.

Die Machtergreifung Hitlers beendete seine Karriere und die seines Bruders als Musiker in Deutschland. Meine Mutter, damals noch keine 20 Jahre alt, hatte eine Vorahnung, dass das Dritte Reich Juden nicht nur die Karriere, sondern auch das Leben kosten könnte. Beatrice drängte ihre Eltern, Deutschland zu verlassen, ehe eine Flucht nicht mehr möglich sein würde. Sie folgten ihrem Rat und verließen Deutschland, reisten zunächst in die Tschechoslowakei und dann nach Österreich.

Meine Mutter, eine hochbegabte Musikerin, blieb in Deutschland. Sie trat dem Jüdischen Kulturbund bei, wo sie als Sängerin in jüdischen Privathäusern in ganz Deutschland auftrat. Im Jahr 1937 erhielt sie ein Visum für die Einreise in die Vereinigten Staaten. Es gelang ihr, Einreisevisa auch für ihre Eltern zu besorgen. Meine Großeltern trafen im Mai 1937 in New York ein. Schon wenige Tage nach ihrer Ankunft initiierte Ignatz ein Projekt von historischer Bedeutung: die Gründung des ersten klassischen Musikorchesters, das aus afroamerikanischen Musikern bestand.

Dieses radikale Projekt stieß in dem rassistischen Umfeld der damaligen Zeit auf erbitterten Widerstand. Waghalter lud häufig schwarze Musiker zu Proben in seine Wohnung ein. Dies führte dazu, dass eine Petition in Umlauf gebracht wurde, die von fast allen weißen Bewohnern des Appartementhauses unterzeichnet wurde, und in der sie forderten, Waghalter aus der Wohnung zu werfen , falls er dieses Gebahren fortsetzte.
Ignatz Waghalter bei einer Probe mit dem Nego Symphony Orchestra. Rechts ein Artikel darüber: „Musik kennt weder Glaubensbekenntnis noch Nationalität“

Mein Großvater wurde von der afroamerikanischen Zeitung von Baltimore interviewt. Er drückte die Überzeugung aus, die ihn zur Gründung des Symphonieorchesters inspiriert hatte: „Musik, die stärkste Festung der universellen Demokratie, kennt weder Hautfarbe noch Glaube oder Nationalität.“

Trotz Waghalters immenser Bemühungen machte das reaktionäre Umfeld es unmöglich, das Orchester aufrechtzuerhalten. In den letzten zehn Jahren seines Lebens wurde Waghalter zusehends isoliert. Er verlor den Kontakt zu seiner Familie. Erst nach dem Krieg erfuhr er, dass sein Bruder Wladyslaw (der Deutschland nicht hatte verlassen können) 1940 nach einem Besuch im Gestapo-Hauptquartier plötzlich verstorben war. Seine Frau und eine Tochter kamen 1943 in Auschwitz ums Leben. In der Brandenburgerstraße 49, der Adresse, an der mein Großonkel Wladyslaw gewohnt hatte, sind Stolpersteine eingelassen, die an das Leben und den Tod Wladyslaws und seiner Familie erinnern.
Stolpersteine für Wladyslaw Waghalter und seine Familie an der Brandenburgerstraße 49, Berlin

Glücklicherweise gelang einer Tochter Wladyslaws, Yolanda, die Flucht. Sie schaffte es nach Südamerika, lebte in Peru, wo sie erste Geigerin im Symphonieorchester von Lima wurde. Ihr Sohn Carlos, mein Cousin zweiten Grades, lebt heute in New Orleans, und wir sind, praktisch seit wir erwachsen sind, eng befreundet. Ignatz‘ Bruder Joseph starb im Warschauer Ghetto. Zwei der drei Schwestern kamen ebenfalls in Polen ums Leben. Nur sein ältester Bruder, der große polnische Cellist Henryk Waghalter, überlebte den Krieg. Mein Großvater starb unerwartet im April 1949 in New York, im Alter von 68 Jahren.
Portrait von Toni und Ignatz Waghalter, April 1949. Links: Nachruf der New York Times für Waghalter, 8. April 1949

Während seines kurzen Exils in der Tschechoslowakei in den Jahren 1935–1936 schrieb mein Großvater seine Memoiren, die mit einem Bekenntnis seine Ideale als Künstler schließen. Er wusste, dass die Nazis eine tödliche Bedrohung für die Juden darstellten, aber er gab seiner Überzeugung Ausdruck, dass die Verbrecher des Dritten Reiches nicht über das ethische und moralische Engagement des jüdischen Volks für Gerechtigkeit siegen würden. Waghalter gab zu, dass er noch nicht wusste, wo er Zuflucht finden würde. Und so beendete er seine Memoiren mit den Worten:

Wo immer es auch sein mag, ich möchte der Kunst und der Menschheit dienen, gemäß den Worten von Moses: „Du bist aus der Sklaverei befreit worden, um deinen Brüdern zu dienen.“

Die Auffassung meines Großvaters von der jüdischen Ethik unterschied sich eindeutig von derjenigen, die in der Netanjahu-Regierung und dem heutigen zionistischen Staat vorherrscht. Er wäre entsetzt und erschüttert, wenn er wüsste, was im Namen des jüdischen Volks getan wird. Es gibt keine größere Verleumdung, kein größeres Geschenk an die wahren Antisemiten, als das jüdische Volk mit den Verbrechen in Verbindung zu bringen, die gegenwärtig jeden Tag gegen das unterdrückte palästinensische Volk begangen werden.

Die Geschichte von meines Großvaters Leben und seiner Beziehung zu der Katastrophe, die das europäische Judentum überrollt hatte, war ein ständiges Gesprächsthema in meinem Elternhaus. Meine Großmutter, Ignatz‘ Witwe, die wir Omi nannten, lebte bei uns. Ich verbrachte unzählige Stunden in ihrem Zimmer, wo sie mir vom Leben in Berlin erzählte, von den Freundschaften mit so vielen großen Künstlern, davon, dass Giacomo Puccini sie in den Hintern gekniffen hatte, von all den Freunden, die sie kannte, von den Schriftstellern und sogar von Wissenschaftlern wie Albert Einstein, der häufig in der Wohnung in der Konstanzerstraße zu Gast war. Gern spielte er dort mit seiner Geige in einem Streichquartett mit. Die Mitbewohner hatten nichts dagegen.

Die Geschichten meiner Großmutter wurden durch die Erzählungen meiner Mutter ergänzt, die ein besonders enges Verhältnis zu ihrem Vater gehabt hatte. Die meisten Geschichten wurden auf Deutsch erzählt, das bei uns zu Hause gleichberechtigt neben dem Englischen stand.

Zumindest in der Straße, in der ich wohnte, war das nicht ungewöhnlich. Viele unserer Nachbarn waren Flüchtlinge: Dr. Jakobius, Frau London, Frau Spitzer, Frau Rehfisch, Walter und Uschi Bergen, Dr. Hartmann und Dr. Gutfeld. Es gab noch andere, an deren Namen ich mich nicht erinnere, aber es war, als ob ein beträchtlicher Teil Charlottenburgs in einem Vorort von New York City neu entstanden wäre. Und dann waren da noch die vielen Freunde, die in anderen Teilen der Stadt lebten, aber häufig zu Besuch kamen: Greta Westman, Dela Schleger, Kurt Stern ...

Viele der Gespräche, in denen das Leben in Berlin geschildert wurde, endeten mit dem Satz: „Und dann kam Hitler.“ Das war das Ereignis, das alles veränderte. In meinem jungen Kopf führte das zu vielen Fragen. „Wie kam Hitler?“ „Warum kam Hitler?“ „Hat ihn jemand vor 1933 kommen sehen?“ „Wann haben meine Großeltern und meine Mutter zum ersten Mal von Hitler gehört und erkannt, dass er kommen könnte?“ Und schließlich die wichtigste Frage von allen: „Warum haben die Menschen Hitlers Kommen nicht verhindert?“

Das war eine Frage, auf die niemand, den ich kannte, eine vollständige und überzeugende Antwort hatte. Immerhin waren die Antworten, die ich zu Hause erhielt, in einigen Punkten hilfreich. Erstens wurden die Nazis eindeutig als rechtsgerichtete Bewegung gekennzeichnet. Die Trennlinie zwischen Gut und Böse verlief in meiner Familie also nicht zwischen Deutschen und Juden, sondern zwischen links und rechts. Diese Trennung, so betonte meine Mutter, gab es nicht nur in Deutschland, sondern auf der ganzen Welt und natürlich auch in den Vereinigten Staaten. Gelegentlich schaute sie sich bestimmte amerikanische Politiker an und sagte: „Ich traue dieser Bande nicht.“

In diesem Punkt war meine Mutter besonders nachdrücklich. Sie hasste den Faschismus. Wenn sie eine bestimmte, besonders anstößige soziale und politische Haltung feststellte oder ihr begegnete, neigte sie dazu, die betreffende Person als „einen echten Faschisten“ zu bezeichnen.

Sie war sich der Existenz von Antisemitismus in Deutschland vor Hitler durchaus bewusst. Solchen Tendenzen begegnete sie schon vor Hitlers Aufstieg unter den Lehrern ihrer Schule. Aber über diese Tendenzen sagte sie oft, dass sie nie geglaubt hätte, dass sie sich zwangsläufig bis zum Massenmord entwickeln würden. Sie glaubte nicht an eine solche Unvermeidbarkeit. Außerdem hat sie nie eine Spur von Hass oder Bitterkeit gegenüber den Deutschen gezeigt. Sie war stolz darauf, dass ihre Kenntnisse der deutschen Sprache auch 60 Jahre nach ihrer Flucht aus Deutschland nicht verblasst waren.

Es sollte noch viele Jahre dauern, bis ich eine politisch überzeugende Antwort finden konnte, die erklärte, wie der Faschismus in Deutschland an die Macht gekommen war. Wie viele meiner Generation habe ich die Bürgerrechtsbewegung, die Ghettoaufstände und den Vietnamkrieg miterlebt. Die explosiven Ereignisse der 1960er Jahre regten mich zum Geschichtsstudium an und förderten mein Bedürfnis, aktuelle Ereignisse in einen größeren zeitlichen Rahmen einzuordnen. Darüber hinaus trieben mich die Wut über den nicht enden wollenden Vietnamkrieg und die stetig wachsende Desillusionierung über die Demokratische Partei und den amerikanischen Liberalismus weiter in Richtung Sozialismus. Dieser Prozess führte schließlich dazu, dass ich im Herbst 1969 erstmals die Schriften von Leo Trotzki entdeckte.

Ich vertiefte mich in das Studium seiner verfügbaren Schriften: seine monumentale „Geschichte der Russischen Revolution“, seine Autobiographie „Mein Leben“, „Der neue Kurs“, „Die Lehren des Oktober“ und „Die verratene Revolution“. Alle diese Werke bildeten die Grundlage für meine Entscheidung, mich der trotzkistischen Bewegung anzuschließen. Aber der Band, der mich am meisten beeindruckte, war eine Sammlung von Trotzkis Schriften, die dem Kampf gegen die Machtergreifung der Nazis zwischen 1930 und 1933 gewidmet waren.

Während dieser entscheidenden Jahre lebte Trotzki im Exil auf der Insel Prinkipo, vor der Küste Istanbuls. Das stalinistische Regime hatte ihn dorthin verbannt. Von dort, aus einer Entfernung von über 2.000 Kilometern, verfolgte er die Ereignisse in Deutschland. Seine Artikel, seine Warnungen vor der Gefahr, die von Hitler und der Nazipartei ausging, sind in der politischen Literatur ohne Beispiel.
Leo Trotzki an seinem Schreibtisch in Prinkipo

Trotzki erläuterte nicht nur das Wesen des Faschismus – seine Klassenbasis und seine wesentliche Funktion als Instrument des politischen Terrors gegen die sozialistische und die Arbeiterbewegung –, sondern er erklärte auch, wie die Nazis besiegt werden könnten. Er entlarvte die Politik der stalinistischen Kommunistischen Partei, der so genannten Dritten Periode, die behauptete, dass Sozialdemokratie und Faschismus identisch seien. Dieser bankrotten ultralinken Politik setzte er den Aufruf zu einer Einheitsfront aller Parteien der Arbeiterklasse entgegen, um die faschistische Gefahr zu besiegen. Seine Warnungen wurden ignoriert. Der Stalinismus und der Verrat der Sozialdemokratie machten den Sieg der Nazis möglich.

Aber Hitlers Aufstieg zur Macht, die darauf folgende Katastrophe des Zweiten Weltkriegs und der Holocaust waren nicht unvermeidlich. Sie waren das Ergebnis des politischen Verrats der reformistischen und stalinistischen Führungen der Arbeiterklasse. Das zu verstehen, zu begreifen, was Faschismus war – und, wenn ich daran zurückdenke, die Erkenntnis, dass ich nur wenige Jahrzehnte nach all dem aufgewachsen bin – hatte eine tiefgreifende Wirkung auf mich. Die Überzeugung, dass es nie wieder Faschismus geben darf, und die Einsicht, dass es möglich ist, diesen politischen Horror zu besiegen, verpflichteten mich, in der sozialistischen Bewegung aktiv zu werden, insbesondere in jener politischen Organisation, die die größte Bedrohung der Menschheit richtig analysiert und eine Antwort darauf gegeben hatte.

Trotzki sah den Grund für den Aufstieg des Faschismus nicht in der deutschen Psyche, sondern in der historischen Krise des Kapitalismus und des Nationalstaatensystems. Hitler und das faschistische Regime stellten letztlich den verzweifelten Versuch des deutschen Kapitalismus dar, durch Krieg und Massenmord eine Lösung für die Schranken zu finden, die ihm durch das bestehende nationalstaatliche System auferlegt worden waren. Er war gezwungen, „Europa neu zu ordnen“. Aber dies war kein ausschließlich deutsches Problem. Die Krise hat den amerikanischen Imperialismus vor eine noch größere Herausforderung gestellt, die ihn bis heute beschäftigt: die Aufgabe, die Welt neu zu ordnen.

In späteren Schriften, die er nach Hitlers Machtübernahme verfasste, warnte Trotzki davor, dass dem europäischen Judentum durch den Sieg des Faschismus und den Ausbruch des Zweiten Weltkriegs die Vernichtung drohte. Diese Gefahr, so schrieb er, könne der Zionismus nicht abwenden, weil er eine nationale Lösung für ein Problem anstrebe, das in den globalen Widersprüchen des kapitalistischen Systems wurzelt.

Nach dem Sieg der Nazis betonte Trotzki, dass das Schicksal der Juden mehr denn je mit dem Schicksal des Sozialismus verbunden sei. In einem Brief vom 28. Januar 1934 schrieb er:

Die jüdische Frage ist nun, als Ergebnis des ganzen historischen Schicksals des Judentums, eine internationale Frage geworden. Sie kann nicht durch den „Sozialismus in einem Land“ gelöst werden. Unter den gegenwärtigen Bedingungen der übelsten und niederträchtigsten antisemitischen Verfolgungen und Pogrome können und müssen die jüdischen Arbeiter revolutionären Stolz aus dem Bewusstsein schöpfen, dass die Tragik des jüdischen Volkes nur durch einen vollständigen und endgültigen Sieg des Proletariats überwunden werden kann.[6]

Diese Perspektive hat sich in der Geschichte bestätigt. Diejenigen, die behaupten, die Gründung Israels sei ein politischer Triumph gewesen, haben eine merkwürdige Vorstellung davon, was ein politischer Triumph ist. Die Schaffung eines Staates, der auf dem unverhohlenen Diebstahl von fremdem Land beruht, der auf rein rassistischer Grundlage die demokratischen Grundrechte, die allen Bürgern zustehen sollten, verweigert, der Hass und Rache als Grundlage der Staatspolitik etabliert, der seine eigenen Bürger systematisch darauf abrichtet, die Menschen zu töten und zu quälen, denen er das Land gestohlen hat, und der sich zum meistgehassten Staat der Welt gemacht hat – das kann kaum als „politischer Triumph“ bezeichnet werden. Es ist eine politische Degradierung.

Der anhaltende Krieg hat trotz all seiner Schrecken einen wichtigen politischen Beitrag geleistet. Er hat die Jugend wachgerüttelt. Er hat der Welt die Augen geöffnet. Er hat das zionistische Regime und seine imperialistischen Komplizen als die Verbrecher entlarvt, die sie sind. Er hat eine Flutwelle der Empörung in Bewegung gesetzt, die sich weltweit ausbreitet. Sie wird auch die Verantwortlichen für diesen Völkermord überschwemmen.

Aber die große Herausforderung, vor der unsere Bewegung steht, besteht darin, die Empörung mit einem revolutionären sozialistischen Programm zu verbinden, das die globale Arbeiterklasse in einem gemeinsamen Kampf gegen die imperialistische Barbarei vereinen kann. Unsere Bewegung – und nur unsere Bewegung – ist in der Lage, diese Herausforderung zu meistern. Sie verkörpert eine große politische Geschichte und eine große politische Erfahrung, die nun ein ganzes Jahrhundert umspannt. Es gibt keine andere Partei, die in einer Krise, wie wir sie jetzt erleben, ein Verständnis für ihre Dynamik und eine Perspektive vorlegen kann, um in die Situation einzugreifen und sie im Interesse der Arbeiterklasse zu ändern.

Auch wenn dieser Vortrag kein formeller Bericht über den 100. Jahrestag des Trotzkismus war, hoffe ich doch, dass er zum Verständnis dessen beigetragen hat, was die trotzkistische Bewegung ist und in welchem Verhältnis sie zu den aktuellen Kämpfen steht, mit denen wir konfrontiert sind.

#Pologme #USA #Israël #Palestine #Allemagne #Berlin #Charlottenburg #Konstanzer_Straße #Bismarckstraße #opéra #musique #nazis #antisemitisme #sionisme #fascisme #auf_deutsch

The Israeli state’s fascist ideology and the genocide in Gaza
▻https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2023/12/19/pers-d19.html

Dans ce discours David North avance quelques arguments pour la thèse que le sionisme est un fascisme.

Il souligne ces arguments d’actualité par le récit de son hisoire familiale marquée par l’ascension de pauvres musicients ambulants juifs en Pologne à la direction de l’opéra de Charlottenburg, ville indépendante intégrée dans la ville de Berlin en 1920. Après 1933 une partie de sa famille a émigré aux États Unis pendant que les autres ont péri dans les camps nazis.

This lecture was given by World Socialist Web Site International Editorial Board Chairman David North at Humboldt University in Berlin, Germany on December 14, 2023.

When one arrives at Humboldt University and one comes into the entrance of the building, one sees the famous quotation from Marx, “The philosophers have only interpreted the world; the point is to change it.” That basic invocation by Marx is one that should always guide speakers when they address a meeting. How is what they say going to contribute to changing the world?

First of all, I want to thank my comrades in the German section of the International Youth and Students for Social Equality (IYSSE) for inviting me to lecture this evening at Humboldt University. I understand that they encountered certain problems in establishing the topic of this lecture, and they were informed that the title of my lecture could not include a reference to the ongoing genocide by the Israeli government in Gaza. Well, they have observed this rule and there is nothing in the title which references this immensely significant event. This obvious restriction on free speech is part of the efforts of the German government, the media and subservient academic institutions to forbid and discredit opposition to the crimes being carried out by the Netanyahu government.

Nevertheless, now that we have observed the restriction on the title of the lecture, I will proceed to speak about the events in Gaza. Is it possible not to?

During the last two months, the world has been witnessing the Israeli government wage a war of staggering brutality against a defenseless population. The death toll is approaching, and may exceed, 20,000. More than half of those killed are women and children. The total number of casualties is a multiple of that number. During the first six weeks of this war, Israel dropped 22,000 bombs, supplied by the United States, on Gaza. That was just in the first six weeks; a substantial period of time has passed since then. To have some sense of the scale of the assault, bear in mind that the total size of Gaza is 365 square kilometers, which is less than half the area of Berlin (891.3 square kilometers).
Smoke rises following an Israeli bombardment in the Gaza Strip, as seen from southern Israel, Saturday, December 16, 2023. [AP Photo/Ariel Schalit]

No section of Gaza and no segment of the Gazan population is being spared by the Israeli military forces. Hospitals, schools, libraries, refugee camps and other public buildings are being bombed. Journalists, doctors, teachers, writers and artists are being deliberately targeted. The murder of the poet Refaat Al-Ar’eer is only the most prominent of the assassinations being carried out at the instructions of the Israeli government.

This slaughter must be stopped and all those responsible for the crimes that are being committed against the Gazan population, and against all the Palestinian people living under occupation, must be held fully responsible, in accordance with the principles established at the Nuremberg Trials in 1945-46. And if I had any say in the matter, the same penalties would be applied.

The restriction placed on the title of my lecture contains an element of irony. It is almost exactly one decade ago, in February 2014, that I was physically barred by security guards, summoned by Professor of History Jörg Baberowski, here at Humboldt, from attending a seminar that he had organized to discuss a new biography of Leon Trotsky by Professor Robert Service of Oxford University. In his announcement of the public seminar, it was stated that Service would answer questions from the attendees.
Baberowski (in green jacket) and his security detail bar David North from entering the seminar in 2014

Service’s biography was a shameless exercise in historical falsification. Its slanders against Trotsky were so blatant as to evoke a public protest from leading German historians, which resulted in a one-year delay in the release of the biography’s German-language edition.

Among my objections to Service’s biography, which were detailed in several review essays, was the British historian’s explicit use of stereotypical antisemitic tropes in his denunciation of Trotsky. They included, among many other things, references to the shape of Trotsky’s nose and the changing of his actual Russian first name from “Lev” to “Leiba,” a Yiddish variant of the name used exclusively by antisemitic enemies of the Jewish-born Trotsky.

As was soon to emerge, the alliance of Professors Baberowski and Service was based on a shared anti-communist political agenda. On the very day that I was barred from the Humboldt seminar, a new issue of Der Spiegel was published featuring a lengthy essay justifying Nazi crimes by arguing that Hitler’s policies were a legitimate response to the “barbarism” of the Bolshevik Revolution.

Among those who were interviewed by Der Spiegel was Baberowski, who stated: “Hitler was not cruel. He didn’t like to hear of the extermination of the Jews at his table.” Baberowski went on to defend the pro-Nazi views of the now deceased Professor Ernst Nolte, who was at that time Germany’s leading Hitler apologist.

In the face of the outrage among Humboldt students that followed the publication of Der Spiegel’ s essay, the administration of Humboldt University and the media stood behind Baberowski. This did not change even after a legal ruling by a German court that Baberowski can be referred to as a right-wing extremist. Baberowski enjoyed and continues to enjoy unlimited backing from Humboldt, which enabled him to appoint to the teaching staff of the Department of Eastern European Studies a certain Fabian Thunemann, whose curriculum vitae prior to his Humboldt appointment included participation in a neo-Nazi demonstration protesting the exposure of atrocities committed by the Wehrmacht during World War II.

Ten years ago, I was barred from attending a seminar at Humboldt because I intended to challenge Service’s falsifications and his use of antisemitic slurs. Now the university, posturing as an irreconcilable opponent of antisemitism, forbids the inclusion of a reference to the Gaza genocide in the name of fighting antisemitism.

I recall this incident from the not-so-distant past because it exemplifies the cynicism, hypocrisy, demagogy and unrestrained lying that drives the campaign to discredit opposition to Israel’s onslaught against Gaza as “antisemitic.” The use of this slur has become a critical weapon in the efforts of Israel and its imperialist accomplices to intimidate and isolate all those who are protesting the genocide of Palestinians.

Suddenly, and from so many surprising quarters, warriors against antisemitism have emerged. Last week, in the United States, university presidents were summoned to Washington D.C. and questioned on their failure to suppress allegedly antisemitic protests on American college campuses. Leading the inquisitorial questioning was Congresswoman Elise Stefanik, a Republican from a district in New York State. She demanded to know why the presidents of the University of Pennsylvania, Harvard, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and other major universities were tolerating calls for “genocide”—which the congresswoman identifies as any student protest that demands an end to the apartheid regime that deprives Palestinians of their democratic rights.
Rep. Elise Stefanik, an advocate of the fascist “Great Replacement Theory” and supporter of the January 6 insurrection, is a leading proponent of the claim that “Anti-Zionism is antisemitism.” [AP Photo/Mark Schiefelbein]

But what are Ms. Stefanik’s credentials as a fighter against antisemitism? She is a well-known advocate of what is known as the “Great Replacement Theory,” which claims that Jews are planning the elimination of white Christians in a plot to take over the world. In other words, she is an out-and-out antisemite, in the most classical definition of the term.

The alliance of forces from the extreme right with the Israeli regime is an international political phenomenon. As you know, the Alternative für Deutschland (AfD), one of whose leaders dismissed the Holocaust as nothing more than a piece of “birdshit” in history, has joined the crusade against antisemitism. And, no doubt, were he still alive, the Führer would join it.

Last December, a delegation from the Ukrainian Azov Battalion, many of whose members tattoo themselves with Nazi symbols, visited Israel to express its solidarity with the Netanyahu regime. These are not merely isolated and bizarre distortions of what is otherwise a legitimate effort to combat antisemitism. Rather, the entire campaign is based on the falsification of the historical origins and political function of antisemitism. The current campaign exemplifies a process which might be called “semantic inversion,” in which a word is utilized in a manner and within a context that is the exact opposite of its real and long-accepted meaning.

Through sheer force of repetition, amplified by all the powers at the disposal of the state and the corporate media, the meaning of a term is fundamentally altered. The intended outcome of the falsification is the degrading of popular consciousness and its ability to understand reality.

A significant example of how the term “antisemitism” is being used to falsify history, distort political reality and disorient popular consciousness is to be found in the recent speech by the silver-tongued Robert Habeck, the vice-chancellor in the present German coalition government. In a key passage, this political Tartuffe stated:

However, I am also concerned about antisemitism in parts of the political left and unfortunately also among young activists. Anti-colonialism must not lead to antisemitism.

Can anyone even begin to explain how anti-colonialism would acquire an antisemitic character? He goes on to say:

In this respect, this part of the political left should examine its arguments and distrust the great resistance narrative.

I’ll read this in German so that everyone can get the full weight of it:

Sorge macht mir aber auch der Antisemitismus in Teilen der politischen linken und zwar leider auch bei jungen Aktivistinnen und Aktivisten. Anti-Kolonialismus darf nicht zu Antisemitismus führen.

Insofern sollte dieser Teil der politischen Linken seine Argumente prüfen und der großen Widerstand Erzählung mistrauen.

Revealed in this passage is the central purpose of the application of semantic inversion to the word antisemitism. A phenomenon historically associated with the political right is transformed into a central attribute of the political left. The reactionary purpose of this process of falsification was demonstrated in the destruction of Jeremy Corbyn in Britain. I am hardly an admirer of Mr. Corbyn, whose most conspicuous political trait is the absence of a backbone. But for all his opportunist sins, the allegation of antisemitism against Corbyn and his supporters in the British Labour Party is a vicious smear, concocted by his right-wing opponents to destroy him politically.

Another and even filthier example of the use of the slur is the vicious witch-hunt of Roger Waters. An artist who has devoted his life and art to the defense of human rights is being hounded in an internationally orchestrated campaign to label him an antisemite. Here in Germany, in Frankfurt and Berlin, attempts were made to have his concerts canceled. And what is the motivation for his persecution? Roger Waters defends the basic democratic rights of Palestinians and speaks out against their oppression.

The complete separation of the term “antisemitism” from its actual historical and political meaning is fully achieved in its use against those who are Jewish who have protested in their thousands against the criminal policies of the Israeli regime. A particularly vile phrase is used against them: “self-hating Jews.” The gist of this insult is that opposition by those who are Jewish to Israeli policies, and to the entire Zionist project, can only be explained as the manifestation of some sort of psychological problem, a pathological rejection of one’s own identity.

This diagnosis proceeds from the complete dissolution of Judaism as a specific religious identity into the Israeli state and the nationalist ideology of Zionism. An individual’s religious affiliation—which may, in the life of one or another Jewish person, be of limited or even no special importance—is endowed with a vast metaphysical significance.

This ideological concoction is based not on history, but on biblical mythology. Indeed, the legitimacy of the Zionist project proceeds from the claim that the creation of Israel just 75 years ago marked the so-called “return” of the Jewish people after 2,000 years of exile to their ancestral home “promised” to them by God.

This mythological nonsense has no basis in historical reality. More than 350 years have passed since Spinoza demolished, in his Theological-Political Treatise, the claim that the Pentateuch was dictated by God to Moses. The Bible was the work of many authors. As the historian Steven Nadler, an authority on Spinoza, has explained:

Spinoza denies that Moses wrote all, or even most, of the Torah. The references in the Pentateuch to Moses in the third person; the narration of his death; and the fact that some places are called by names that they did not bear in the time of Moses all “make it clear beyond a shadow of doubt” that the writings commonly referred to as “the Five Books of Moses” were, in fact, written by someone who lived many generations after Moses.

Proceeding from his repudiation of the authority of the Bible, Spinoza further enraged the elders of Amsterdam and provoked his excommunication by denying the claim—which was central to Judaism as a religion and Zionism as a political ideology—that Jews are a “chosen people.” As Nadler writes:

If the origins and authority of Scripture are now suspect, then so must its grand claims about the “vocation” of the Hebrews. It is “childish,” Spinoza insists, for anyone to base their happiness on the uniqueness of their gifts; in the case of the Jews, it would be the uniqueness of their being chosen among all people. The ancient Hebrews, in fact, did not surpass other nations in their wisdom or in their proximity to God. They were neither intellectually nor morally superior to other peoples.

Spinoza’s apostasy was informed by the rapid advance of science in the 17th century and rooted in philosophical materialism, and cleared the path for the most progressive and radical political tendencies. It brought down upon his head the wrath of the rabbinical enforcers of orthodoxy. The excommunication of Spinoza was proclaimed in language that was without precedent in its harshness. The excommunication read in part:

Cursed be he by day and cursed be he by night; cursed be he when he lies down and cursed be he when he rises up. Cursed be he when he goes out and cursed be he when he comes in. The Lord will not spare him, but then the anger of the Lord and his jealousy will smoke against that man, and all the curses that are written in this book shall lie upon him, and the Lord shall blot out his name from under heaven.

“Excommunicated Spinoza,” 1907 painting by Samuel Hirszenberg [Photo: Samuel Hirszenberg]

Notwithstanding this denunciation, the name of Spinoza could not be blotted out. The influence of his heretical conceptions has persisted over centuries, contributing profoundly to the development of Enlightenment thought—including the Jewish Enlightenment known as the Haskalah—and its revolutionary political consequences in the 18th, 19th and even 20th centuries.

The political theology of contemporary Zionism represents the extreme counterrevolutionary antithesis and repudiation of the progressive, democratic and socialist tradition derived from Spinozist and, later, Marxist thought among generations of Jewish workers and intellectuals. Reinterpreting religious myth in the spirit of extreme national chauvinism, contemporary Zionist theology imparts to the concept of a “chosen people” a thoroughly racist and fascistic character.

While it is widely acknowledged that the Israeli government is composed of parties of the extreme right, this political fact is treated as a minor detail that has no particular relation to the events of October 7 and the Israeli state’s response. Virtually no reference is to be found in political coverage of the war to the influence of an apocalyptic “Theology of Revenge,” which explicitly demands the annihilation of all enemies of Israel, on the policies of the Netanyahu government.

A central figure in the development of the “Theology of Revenge” was the late Meir Kahane. Born in Brooklyn in 1932, his father, Rabbi Charles Kahane, was a friend and associate of Ze’ev Jabotinsky, the leader of an avowedly fascist wing of the Zionist movement. Meir Kahane initially achieved public notoriety in the United States as the founder of the neo-fascist Jewish Defense League. The JDL targeted black organizations in New York, which Kahane denounced as a threat to Jews.

In 1971, Kahane relocated to Israel and founded the virulently anti-Arab Kach party. His followers in the United States remained active. The Workers League, the predecessor of the Socialist Equality Party in the United States, became a target of the JDL in 1978 when it sought to disrupt through a bomb attack a showing in Los Angeles of the documentary titled The Palestinian, that had been sponsored by the International Committee.
Meir Kahane in 1984 [Photo: Gotfryd, Bernard]

Kahane’s role and influence in Israel is analyzed in an essay titled “Meir Kahane and Contemporary Jewish Theology of Revenge.” Published in 2015, its authors are two Israeli scholars, Adam and Gedaliah Afterman. They explain that Kahane’s theology

centred on the claim that the State of Israel was established by God as an act of revenge against the Gentiles for their persecution of Jews, especially the systematic killing of Jews during the Holocaust.

Kahane’s Kach party called for the annexation of all territory seized by Israel in the 1967 war and the violent expulsion of the Palestinian population. Kahane was elected to the Israeli parliament, the Knesset, in 1984. The Kach party was banned from running in the 1988 elections, but its influence continued despite Kahane’s assassination during a trip to New York in 1990.

The Aftermans’ essay summarizes the three fundamental pillars of Kahane’s theory of revenge.

First:

The people of Israel are a collective mythical being ontologically rooted in divinity, that together with God faced a mythical enemy from its early days. This mythical enemy, “Amalek,” is embodied in different actual enemies throughout Jewish history, and the various persecutions and ordeals the Jews have suffered throughout history are manifestations of the same mythical struggle. Furthermore, there is an ontological difference between the mythical nation of Israel and the Gentiles, especially Israel’s enemies. The ontological difference between the Jewish and Gentile soul overrides the Jewish principle that all of humanity was created in the image of God. The belief that Gentiles are inferior and embody the demonic powers of history justifies acts of deadly violence and revenge.

Second:

…Thus, the argument proceeds, the people of Israel are religiously obliged to use all means possible to take revenge against their mutual enemies and to rehabilitate their mutual pride and status. Whether or not they realize it, the Palestinians and other forces fighting Israel are part of a mythical, religious battle that seeks the destruction of the people of Israel and its God. These factors permit the use of any and all measures to overcome the enemies.

Third:

The establishment of the State of Israel in 1948, shortly after the Holocaust, must serve one purpose: to facilitate redemptive revenge against the Gentiles. The establishment of the modern Jewish state in the historical land of Israel is an instrument for activating the redemptive process, rather than a result or a sign of such a process.

Summing up the three pillars, the Aftermans explain that

…Kahane argues that carrying out vengeance against the metaphysical enemy “Amalek” (hostile Gentiles) is fundamental to saving God and his people, both of whom almost ceased to exist as a result of the Holocaust. The establishment of the Jewish state, with its institutionalized power and military might, should, in Kahane’s view, be placed at the service of redemption-bound revenge. Kahane goes so far as to justify acts of vengeance even against innocent people by arguing that they belong to the mythical enemy that must be eradicated as a condition for the redemption of Israel and its God. In his view, the loss of innocent lives, if necessary, is a justifiable sacrifice.

Kahane interpreted the doctrine of the “chosen people” as a comprehensive repudiation of all association with traditional Western values. He wrote in his book, Or Ha’Raayon:

This is a Jewish state. It bows in front of Judaism and does not contradict it. It acts in accordance with Jewish values and Jewish commandments even if these contradict international law and diplomacy, even if they contrast the normal Western and democratic lifestyle; this is so even if this puts its interests under risk and threatens to isolate it from the civilized gentiles. … The duty of Judaism is to be separate, unique, different and chosen. This is the role of the Jewish people and their instrument, the State … We have no part in the standard values of the nations. Assimilation does not begin with mixed marriages, but in copying and adopting foreign values, alien and non-Jewish concepts and ideas.

Kahane’s theory of revenge was identified in Hebrew as the concept of what he called Kiddush Hashem. He wrote:

A Jewish fist in the face of an astonished gentile world that had not seen it for two millennia, this is Kiddush Hashem. Jewish dominion over the Christian holy places while the Church that sucked our blood vomits its rage and frustration, this is Kiddush Hashem.

Actually, notwithstanding its semi-deranged invocation of a supposedly unique Jewish philosophy, Kahane’s Kiddush Hashem can be described as a Hebrew-language variant of the philosophy of Adolf Hitler’s Mein Kampf, the main difference being that Kahane’s hate-filled and racist diatribe was written in Hebrew from right to left rather than from left to right.

Kahane’s influence persisted after his assassination in the increasingly right-wing political environment of Israel. On February 25, 1994, one of Kahane’s students, Baruch Goldstein, murdered 29 Palestinians and wounded another 150 in an attack on a Mosque in Hebron. This crime was praised by Kahane’s followers, including the extremely influential Rabbi Yitzchak Ginsburgh, who proclaimed that the mass murder carried out by Goldstein was an act of Kiddush Hashem.

Now what does this have to do with today? Itamar Ben-Gvir, the leader of the xenophobic Otzmah Yehudet party, is now the Minister of National Security in Netanyahu’s coalition government. He was a member of the Kach party before it was outlawed. He remains an outspoken defender of the fascist theology and politics of Meir Kahane. This past April, Ben-Gvir, flanked by a security detail provided by the office of the prime minister, delivered a speech in which he praised both Kahane and Baruch Goldstein.
President Joe Biden is greeted by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu after arriving at Ben Gurion International Airport, Wednesday, Oct. 18, 2023, in Tel Aviv. (AP Photo/Evan Vucci)

The invocation of Kahane’s doctrine of revenge by Israeli leaders has become increasingly common since the war began. Last month, Netanyahu declared in a public speech, “You must remember what Amalek has done to you, says our Holy Bible. And we do remember.” The implications of Netanyahu’s reference to Amalek was made explicit in a statement by Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant: “We are fighting human animals, and we are acting accordingly. We will eliminate everything—they will regret it.” Many statements of an identical character have been made by Israeli leaders since the beginning of the war, and these statements have been actualized in the genocidal actions of the Israeli government and military.

In the midst of the crimes being committed by the Israeli regime, there is no greater and more insidious lie than the claim that opposition to Zionism is, and must be, antisemitic. This is a lie that is refuted by the long history of pre-1948 opposition to Zionism among countless thousands of Jewish workers and intellectuals, spanning several generations, who rejected the myth-based call for a return to Palestine.

The opposition to Zionism was expressed with the greatest political clarity by the socialist movement, which identified and denounced the politically reactionary character of the perspective of establishing a Jewish state in Palestine. It was understood that this project was a colonialist enterprise, which could only be achieved in alliance with imperialism and at the expense of the Palestinian Arab population that had lived in the territory for 2,000 years.

Moreover, in their struggle against traditional religious persecution and the emergence, beginning in the late 19th century, of political antisemitism, the great mass of Jews sought to achieve political and social equality within the countries in which they lived. That was of profound truth especially in Germany. They wished to be part of the mass movement against oppression. For the most politically conscious section of Jewish youth, workers and intellectuals, this striving led to active involvement in the socialist movement.

The present-day claim that Zionism is the necessary and genuine expression of Jewish identity has no basis in history. Moreover, the persistence of democratic convictions and a sympathy for the oppressed rooted in the experience of antisemitic prejudice and persecution finds expression in the large number of Jewish youth who have been involved in demonstrations opposing the Israeli onslaught against the Gazans.

Despite all the propaganda, the images of the mass killing of defenseless Palestinians cannot help but evoke historical and familial recollections of the fate of the Jews at the hands of the Nazis. Thus, the war against the Gazan people evokes not only a sense of solidarity with the victims of Israeli atrocities, but also a deep anger against the exploitation of the tragedy of the Holocaust to justify the war.

Of course, the Zionists and their apologists will claim that all that I have said is simply evidence of my deeply rooted antisemitism, which they claim—as I have already explained—is a prejudice widely held within the socialist movement. The more left an individual, the more emphatic his or her opposition to capitalism and imperialism, the more irreconcilable their opposition to the Jewish state and, therefore, their antisemitism.

This allegation is as absurd as it is politically reactionary. Having been involved in the socialist movement for more than a half century, I really do not have any personal obligation to answer the claim that I and my comrades in the Trotskyist movement are antisemites. As the saying goes, my record speaks for itself.

But, unfortunately, that is not generally true. The accusation of antisemitism requires the ignoring and distortion of a given individual’s political record.

So I will, for the first time, respond to the accusation, by adding to my well-known public political record information relating to my personal background. Now having reached a somewhat more advanced age, just a little more than a year away from what will be my 75th birthday, I think the time has come to do this. I do not do so because it will have any effect on the slanderers, but because there are elements of my personal experience that may resonate with a younger generation and encourage them to intensify their struggle in defense of the Palestinians and against all forms of oppression.

The dominant factor in the development of all individuals is the social and political environment of their time, conditioned at the most fundamental level by the prevailing socioeconomic structures of the societies into which they were born. The personalities of human beings are shaped by what Marx referred to as “an ensemble of social relations.” But these social relations are refracted through personal experiences, both one’s own and those transmitted through family, friends, teachers, acquaintances, and so on.

I am a first generation American, born in 1950. The location of my birth—in fact, my existence—was determined by the events that had led to the Second World War, which had ended only four and a half years earlier. Both my parents had fled Europe to escape the Nazi persecution of the Jews. My mother, Beatrice, was born in Wilmersdorf on December 18, 1913—the exact same day Herbert Frahm, aka Willy Brandt, was born. The apartment building in which she was born, located on Konstanzer Strasse, still stands. Her father—my grandfather—occupied a significant position in the cultural life of Berlin. His name was Ignatz Waghalter. Born in Warsaw in 1881 into a very poor family of musicians, Waghalter made his way to Berlin at the age of 17 with the intention of receiving a proper musical education.

My grandfather was the 15th of 20 children. Of those 20 children, 13 died in childhood, four in one day during the typhus epidemic of 1888. Of the 20 children, seven survived—four boys and three girls. My grandfather, from his earliest years, exhibited immense musical talent. By the age of six, he was already performing in the Warsaw circus. At the age of eight, he wrote and composed a revolutionary anthem that was so popular that a search began by the police to discover the name and identity of the insurrectionary musician. They were quite shocked when they discovered that it was an eight-year-old. The Waghalter family had deep roots in the revolutionary democratic struggle of the Polish people. In fact, I recently discovered in a library a revolutionary march written by my grandfather’s grandfather that had been composed in 1848.

My grandfather wanted to obtain a genuine education. He didn’t want to be just an itinerant musician, he wanted to go to the musical capital of the world—Berlin—and learn how to become a serious composer. He was smuggled across the border in 1897 without any money. He endured great hardship, but eventually came to the attention of the great violinist and friend of Brahms, Joseph Joachim. Upon the recommendation of Joachim, my grandfather was admitted to the Akademie der Kunste. In 1902, his Sonata for Violin and Piano was awarded the coveted Mendelssohn Prize. Two years later, Ignatz’s younger brother Wladyslaw, who had followed him to Berlin, was awarded the same prize for his achievements as a violinist.

Following his graduation, Ignatz obtained a post as a conductor at the Komische Oper. An appointment to the Essen Opera house followed several years later. But the decisive turning point in his musical career came in 1912, when he was appointed first conductor at the newly constructed Deutsches Opernhaus on Bismarck Strasse in Charlottenburg, known today as the Deutsche Oper. Of course, the original building was destroyed in the course of the Second World War and rebuilt, though it’s located on the same street today. Wladyslaw Waghalter was appointed concertmaster of the new opera house, which opened on November 7, 1912 with a performance of Beethoven’s Fidelio. Despite vocal opposition from antisemites and numerous death threats, Ignatz Waghalter conducted the premier performance.

For the next 10 years, my grandfather maintained his position as first conductor at the Deutsches Opernhaus. Three of his operas, Mandragola, Jugend and Sataniel, had their premier at the opera house. Waghalter was known for his championing of the operas of Giacomo Puccini, whose music had been previously dismissed by a musical establishment obsessed with Richard Wagner. Waghalter conducted the German premier of Puccini’s La Fanciulla del West [Das Mädchen aus dem goldenen Westen] in March 1913, with Puccini in attendance. It was a triumph that established Puccini’s reputation as a great master in Germany.

Throughout his lengthy tenure at the Deutsches Opernhaus, Waghalter had to contend with both anti-Polish and antisemitic prejudice. Though he himself did not observe any religious rituals or attend synagogue, Waghalter refused—in contrast to many other Jewish-born conductors—to convert to Christianity. The thought of changing one’s religion for the purpose of advancing one’s career, thereby adapting to antisemitic prejudice, was abhorrent to him.

In 1914, upon the outbreak of World War I, Waghalter was forbidden to conduct because he had been born in the Russian Empire, with which Imperial Germany was at war. Protests by the opera-loving public of Charlottenburg led to his reinstatement.

Waghalter remained at the Deutsches Opernhaus until 1923, when it went bankrupt in the midst of the catastrophic inflationary crisis. He spent a year in the United States as head of the New York State Symphony Orchestra. He then returned to Germany, where he was appointed musical director of the film company, Ufa. But he was unable to return to the Städtische Oper, as the reorganized and reopened Deutsches Opernhaus was then known.

The coming to power of Hitler effectively ended his career, and that of his brother, as musicians in Germany. My mother, not yet 20, had a premonition that the Third Reich would cost Jews not only their careers, but also their lives. Beatrice urged her parents to leave Germany before it became impossible to escape. They followed her advice and left Germany, traveling first to Czechoslovakia and then to Austria.

My mother, a highly gifted musician, remained in Germany. She joined the Jüdische Kultur Bund, where she performed as a singer at private homes of Jews throughout Germany. In 1937, she obtained a visa to enter the United States. She managed to secure entry visas for her parents. My grandparents arrived in New York in May 1937. Within days of arriving, Ignatz initiated a project of historic significance, the creation of the first classical music orchestra composed of African American musicians.

This radical project encountered bitter opposition in the racist environment of the time. Waghalter frequently invited black musicians to rehearse at his apartment. This resulted in the circulation of a petition, signed by virtually all the white residents of the apartment building, demanding Waghalter’s eviction if he continued this practice.

My grandfather was interviewed by the African American newspaper of Baltimore. He expressed the convictions that had inspired his creation of the symphony orchestra, stating, “Music, the strongest citadel of universal democracy, knows neither color, creed nor nationality.”

Despite Waghalter’s immense efforts, the reactionary environment made it impossible to sustain the orchestra. During the final decade of his life, Waghalter became increasingly isolated. He lost contact with his family. Only after the war did he learn that his brother Wladyslaw—who had not been able to leave Germany—died suddenly in 1940 after a visit to Gestapo headquarters. His wife and one daughter perished in Auschwitz in 1943. In fact, on Brandenburgerstrasse 49, the location and address of my great uncle Wladyslaw, you can see Stolpersteine in which the life and death of Wladyslaw and his family are memorialized.

Fortunately, one daughter of Wladyslaw, Yolanda, managed to escape. She made it to South America, lived in Peru, where she became first violinist in the Lima Symphony Orchestra, and her son Carlos, my second cousin, now lives in New Orleans, and we have been close friends for most of our adult lives. Ignatz’s brother Joseph died in the Warsaw Ghetto. Two of the three sisters also perished in Poland. Only his oldest brother, the great Polish cellist Henryk Waghalter, managed to survive the war. My grandfather died suddenly in New York at the age of 68 in April 1949.

During his brief exile in Czechoslovakia in 1935-36, my grandfather wrote a brief memoir, which concludes with a statement of his ideals as an artist. He recognized that the Nazis represented a mortal threat to the Jews, but he expressed the conviction that the criminals of the Third Reich would not emerge victorious over the ethical and moral commitment of the Jewish people to justice. Waghalter acknowledged that he did not yet know where he would be able to find refuge. And so he ended his memoir with the words:

Wherever it may be, I wish to serve art and humanity in accordance with the words of Moses, “You were freed from slavery in order to serve your brothers.”

Clearly, my grandfather’s conception of Jewish ethics was very different from that which prevails in the Netanyahu government and the present-day Zionist state. He would be appalled and horrified if he knew what was being done in the name of the Jewish people. There could be no greater slander, no greater gift to the real antisemites, than to associate the Jewish people with the crimes that are being presently committed each day against the oppressed Palestinian people.

The story of my grandfather’s life and its relation to the catastrophe that had overwhelmed European Jewry was a constant topic of discussion in my childhood home. My grandmother, Ignatz’s widow, whom we called Omi, lived with us. I spent countless hours in her room, where she told me of life in Berlin, the friendships with so many great artists, being pinched on her backside by Giacomo Puccini, all the friends she knew, the writers, and even scientists, including Albert Einstein, who frequently visited the apartment on Konstanzerstrasse, where he enjoyed playing his violin as part of a string quartet. The apartment residents did not object.

The stories of my grandmother were supplemented by those told by my mother, who had enjoyed an especially close relationship with her father. Most of the stories were told in German, which enjoyed equal status with English in our home.

At least on the street where I lived, this was not unusual. Many of our neighbors were refugees: Dr. Jakobius, Frau London, Frau Spitzer, Frau Rehfisch, Walter and Uschi Bergen, Dr. Hartmann and Dr. Gutfeld. There were others whose names I do not remember, but it was as if a substantial portion of Charlottenburg had been reassembled in a New York City suburb. And then there were the many friends who lived in other parts of the city but were frequent vistors: Greta Westman, Dela Schleger and Kurt Stern.

So many of the discussions describing life in Berlin led to the phrase: “Und dann kam Hitler.” Then came Hitler. That was the event that changed everything. And this, in my young mind, led to so many questions. “How did Hitler come?” “Why did Hitler come?” “Did anyone, before 1933, see him coming?” “When did my grandparents and mother first hear of Hitler and realize that he might come?” And, finally, the most important question of all, “Why didn’t people stop Hitler from coming?”

This was a question for which no one I knew had any fully formed and convincing answers. But there were certain elements of the answers that I received at home that were helpful. First, the Nazis were clearly identified as a right-wing movement. The dividing line, therefore, in my family between good and evil had not been between German and Jew, but between left and right. This division, my mother insisted, existed not only in Germany, but throughout the world, and, of course, within the United States. She would occasionally look at some American politicians and she would say, “Ich traue nicht dieser Bande” (“I don’t trust this gang.”)

My mother was especially emphatic on this point. She hated fascism. When she noticed or encountered certain exceptionally objectionable social and political attitudes, she was inclined to describe the offending individual as “ein echter Fascist,” a real fascist.

She was certainly aware of the existence of antisemitism in Germany prior to Hitler. She encountered such tendencies even before Hitler began to come, among teachers at her school. But she often made the point about these tendencies, that she would never have believed, and did not believe, that they would develop inevitably into mass murder. She did not believe in such an inevitability. Moreover, she never expressed a trace of hatred or bitterness towards Germans. She was proud that her command of the German language had not diminished even 60 years after her flight from Germany.

It would take many years before I could find a politically convincing answer that explained how fascism had come to power in Germany. Like many of my generation, I passed through the experience of the Civil Rights movement, the ghetto uprisings and the Vietnam War. The explosive events of the 1960s stimulated my study of history, and encouraged the tendency to situate contemporary events in a broader temporal framework. Moreover, anger over the never-ending Vietnam War and steadily increasingly disillusionment with the Democratic Party and American liberalism impelled me further toward socialism. This process led finally toward my initial discovery, in the autumn of 1969, of the writings of Leon Trotsky.

I immersed myself in the study of his available writings: his monumental History of the Russian Revolution, his autobiography My Life, The New Course, Lessons of October, and The Revolution Betrayed. All of these works served as the foundation of my decision to join the Trotskyist movement. But the volume that had the greatest impact upon me was a collection of Trotsky’s writings devoted to the struggle against the rise of the Nazis to power between 1930 and 1933.

During those critical years, Trotsky lived in exile on the island of Prinkipo, off the coast of Istanbul. He had been exiled there by the Stalinist regime. Nearly 2,000 miles away from Germany, he followed the events that were unfolding. His articles, the warnings he made of the danger posed by Hitler and the Nazi party, are unequalled in political literature.
Leon Trotsky at his desk in Prinkipo

Trotsky not only explained the nature of fascism—its class basis and essential function as an instrument of political terror against the socialist and working class movement—but he also explained how the Nazis could be defeated. He exposed the policies of the Stalinist Communist Party, of the so-called Third Period, which declared that Social Democracy and fascism were identical. He countered this bankrupt ultra-left policy with a call for a united front of all the working class parties to defeat the Nazi threat. His warnings were ignored. Stalinism, as well as the betrayals of Social Democracy, made possible the victory of the Nazis.

But Hitler’s rise to power and the ensuing catastrophe of World War II and the Holocaust were not inevitable. They were the outcome of the political betrayals of the reformist and Stalinist leaderships of the working class. To understand that, to understand what fascism was—and, when I think back on it, realizing that I was growing up only a few decades after this all had happened—had upon me a profound effect. Realizing that there must never again be fascism, and coming to understand that it was possible to defeat this political horror, one was obligated to become active in the socialist movement, and particularly in that political organization which had correctly analyzed and provided an answer to the greatest threat that humanity confronted.

Trotsky rooted the rise of fascism not in the German psyche, but in the historical crisis of capitalism and the nation-state system. Hitler and the fascist regime represented, in the final analysis, the desperate attempt of German capitalism to find a solution, through war and mass murder, to the restraints imposed upon it by the existing nation-state system. It was compelled to “reorganize Europe.” But this was not an exclusively German problem. The crisis imposed upon American imperialism an even greater challenge, in which it is engaged today: the task of reorganizing the world.

In subsequent writings, written after Hitler had come to power, Trotsky warned that fascism and the outbreak of World War II would confront European Jewry with the danger of extermination. The danger, he wrote, could not be averted by Zionism, which advanced a national solution to a problem rooted in the global contradictions of the capitalist system.

Following the victory of the Nazis, Trotsky insisted that the fate of the Jews was more than ever bound up with the fate of socialism. He wrote, in a letter dated January 28, 1934:

The entire Jewish historical fate being what it is, the Jewish question is an international one. It cannot be solved through “socialism in a separate country.” Under the circumstances of the present vile and detestable anti-Semitic persecutions and pogroms, the Jewish workers can and should derive revolutionary pride from the knowledge that the fate of the Jewish people can only be solved through the full and final victory of the proletariat.

This perspective has been vindicated by history. Those who claim that the founding of Israel was a political triumph have a peculiar idea of what a political triumph consists of. The creation of a state that is founded on the blatant theft of other people’s land, that denies on a purely racialist basis the basic democratic rights that should be afforded to all citizens, that sanctifies hate and revenge as a basis of state policy, that systematically conditions its own citizens to kill and torment the people it has stolen from, and which has turned the country into the most hated in the world—this can hardly be described as a “political triumph.” It is a political degradation.

The ongoing war, for all its horrors, has made one significant political contribution. It has awakened the youth. It has opened the eyes of the world. It has exposed the Zionist regime and its imperialist accomplices for the criminals they are. It has set into motion a tidal wave of outrage that is sweeping across the world and will sweep across those responsible for this genocide.

But the great challenge that confronts our movement is to imbue the outrage with a revolutionary socialist program that can unify the global working class in a common struggle against imperialist barbarism. Our movement and only our movement is equipped to meet this challenge. It embodies a vast political history and a vast political experience that spans now an entire century. There is no other party which can bring to bear, in a crisis such as that which we now face, an understanding of its dynamic and a perspective to intervene in the situation and change it in the interests of the working class.

So while this lecture was not a formal report on the centenary of Trotskyism, apart from present day events, I hope that it has contributed to your understanding of what the Trotskyist movement is and its relationship to the present-day struggles which we confront.

#Pologme #USA #Israël #Palestine #Allemagne #Berlin #Charlottenburg #Konstanzer_Straße #Bismarckstraße #opéra #musique #nazis #antisemitisme #sionisme #fascisme

Micky Maus wird gemeinfrei – aber wohl nicht in Deutschland
▻https://www.heise.de/news/Steamboat-Willie-Disney-verliert-in-den-USA-Urheberrecht-an-Micky-Maus-9584890

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Le droit d’auteur international est kaputt .

2.1.2024 von Daniel Herbig - Disneys Urheberrecht an „Steamboat Willie“ und damit Micky Maus ist in den USA ausgelaufen. Doch in Deutschland ist die Disney-Maus wohl noch nicht gemeinfrei.

Nach langem Kampf verliert Disney in den USA das Urheberrecht an der frühen Fassung seiner wohl bekanntesten Figur: Die 1928 im Trickfilm „Steamboat Willie“ gezeigte Version von Micky Maus ist seit dem 1. Januar in den USA gemeinfrei. „Steamboat Willie“ und die darin enthaltene Version von Micky Maus können also von jedem verbreitet und verändert werden.

Doch es gibt Einschränkungen: Einerseits betrifft das abgelaufene Copyright nur die alte Version von Micky Maus, die beispielsweise keine Handschuhe trägt. Zudem behält Disney weiterhin das Markenrecht an der berühmten Comic-Maus. Das soll vorrangig Verwirrung beim Publikum verhindern, erklärt Jennifer Jenkins, die Direktorin des Duke Center for the Study of the Public Domain, in einem Artikel. Demnach dürfe bei unabhängigen Werken mit Micky Maus nicht der Eindruck entstehen, dass Disney selbst an der Produktion beteiligt war.

Disney behält Urheberrecht in Deutschland wohl

Das Copyright an Micky Maus läuft zudem grundsätzlich nur in den USA aus. Etwa in Deutschland behält Disney wohl weiterhin das Urheberrecht an Micky Maus, schätzt der Medienrechtler Nicolas John in einem Beitrag im Infobrief Recht des DFN-Vereins (pdf) die Rechtslage ein.

In vielen Ländern, darunter auch Deutschland, gilt das Urheberrecht bis 70 Jahre nach dem Tod des zuletzt gestorbenen Beteiligten. Im Fall von „Steamboat Willie“ ist das Ub Iwerks, der bis 1971 gelebt hat. Der Völkerrechtsvertrag Berner Übereinkunft lege zwar fest, dass ein Werk maximal so lange wie im Ursprungsland geschützt sein kann. Allerdings haben Deutschland und die USA bereits 1892 ein bilaterales Urheberrechtsabkommen unterzeichnet, das laut John Vorrang genießt – und keine Klauseln enthält, die die Schutzfrist in Deutschland mit der in den USA gleichsetzen.

In der Praxis würde das bedeuten, dass von US-Bürgern oder -Unternehmen geschaffene Werke in Deutschland auch dann noch geschützt bleiben können, wenn die Urheberrechte in den USA bereits abgelaufen sind. Es müsste dann die normale deutsche Schutzfrist gelten. Demnach wären „Steamboat Willie“ und Micky Maus in Deutschland noch bis 2041 geschützt – 70 Jahre nach Ub Iwerks’ Tod. „Ein Urteil könnte für Klarheit in dieser Rechtsfrage sorgen“, sagte John auf Nachfrage von heise online.
Mickys dritter Film

In den USA hätte das Urheberrecht an „Steamboat Willie“ bereits mehrfach ablaufen sollen, wogegen Disney sich erfolgreich wehrte: Nach Lobbyarbeit von Disney und anderen Unternehmen erhöhten die USA zuletzt 1998 den Urheberrechtsschutz für Werke von Unternehmen, die vor 1978 erschaffen wurden, auf 95 Jahre. Nun ist auch diese Frist verstrichen. Die Schutzrechte an einer anderen Figur hat Disney bereits verloren: 2022 endete in den USA das Copyright an Winnie Puh.

„Steamboat Willie“ war zumindest nach Produktionsreihenfolge der dritte Film der heute so kultigen Comic-Maus, die vorher bereits in den Stummfilmen „Plane Crazy“ und „The Gallopin’ Gaucho“ vertreten war. Das Copyright am ersten Micky-Film „Plane Crazy“ ist in den USA ebenfalls am 1. Januar abgelaufen. „The Gallopin’ Gaucho“ wurde zwar vor „Steamboat Willie“ produziert, allerdings erst danach veröffentlicht. Laut dem Center for the Study of the Public Domain endet das Urheberrecht an dem Stummfilm in den USA erst 2025.

#USA #Allemagne #droit_d_auteur #disney #public_domain #wtf

La #censure_littéraire s’accentue aux États-Unis

Quelque 3362 références de livres ont été interdites et retirées des établissements publics. Du jamais-vu en vingt ans.

(#paywall, mais quelques titres ici :
figurent « Tricks », d’Ellen Hopkins, ..., « L’œil le plus bleu », de la Prix Nobel Toni Morrison,..., le roman dystopique « 1984 », de George Orwell, « Les cerfs-volants de Kaboul », de Khaled Hosseini, ou encore « Ne tirez pas sur l’oiseau moqueur », de Harper Lee.
▻https://tooting.ch/@Swiss_Pepita/111682913813083498)

▻https://www.tdg.ch/phenomene-inquietant-la-censure-litteraire-s-accentue-aux-etats-unis-22109189427

#censure #livres #USA #Etats-Unis #littérature #interdiction

‘Our country has lost its moral compass’ : #Arundhati_Roy

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From Arundhati Roy’s acceptance speech at the P. Govinda Pillai award function held in Thiruvananthapuram on December 13.

Thank you for bestowing this honour on me in the name of P. Govinda Pillai, one of Kerala’s most outstanding scholars of Marxist theory. And thank you for asking N. Ram to be the person who graces this occasion. I know he won this prize last year, but he also in many ways shares the honour of this one with me. In 1998 he, as the editor of Frontline—along with Vinod Mehta, the editor of Outlook—published my first political essay, “The End of Imagination”, about India’s nuclear tests. For years after that he published my work, and the fact that there was an editor like him—precise, incisive, but fearless—gave me the confidence to become the writer that I am.

I am not going to speak about the demise of the free press in India. All of us gathered here know all about that. Nor am I going to speak of what has happened to all the institutions that are meant to act as checks and balances in the functioning of our democracy. I have been doing that for 20 years and I am sure all of you gathered here are familiar with my views.

Coming from north India to Kerala, or to almost any of the southern States, I feel by turns reassured and anxious about the fact that the dread that many of us up north live with every day seems far away when I am here. It is not as far away as we imagine. If the current regime returns to power next year, in 2026 the exercise of delimitation is likely to disempower all of South India by reducing the number of MPs we send to Parliament. Delimitation is not the only threat we face. Federalism, the lifeblood of our diverse country is under the hammer too. As the central government gives itself sweeping powers, we are witnessing the sorry sight of proudly elected chief ministers of opposition-ruled States having to literally beg for their States’ share of public funds. The latest blow to federalism is the recent Supreme Court judgment upholding the striking down of Section 370 which gave the State of Jammu and Kashmir semi-autonomous status. It isn’t the only State in India to have special status. It is a serious error to imagine that this judgment concerns Kashmir alone. It affects the fundamental structure of our polity.

But today I want to speak of something more urgent. Our country has lost its moral compass. The most heinous crimes, the most horrible declarations calling for genocide and ethnic cleansing are greeted with applause and political reward. While wealth is concentrated in fewer and fewer hands, throwing crumbs to the poor manages to garner support to the very powers that are further impoverishing them.

The most bewildering conundrum of our times is that all over the world people seem to be voting to disempower themselves. They do this based on the information they receive. What that information is and who controls it—that is the modern world’s poisoned chalice. Who controls the technology controls the world. But eventually, I believe that people cannot and will not be controlled. I believe that a new generation will rise in revolt. There will be a revolution. Sorry, let me rephrase that. There will be revolutions. Plural.

I said we, as a country, have lost our moral compass. Across the world millions of people—Jewish, Muslim, Christian, Hindu, Communist, Atheist, Agnostic—are marching, calling for an immediate ceasefire in Gaza. But the streets of our country, which once was a true friend of colonised people, a true friend of Palestine, which once would have seen millions marching, too, are silent today. Most of our writers and public intellectuals, all but a few, are also silent. What a terrible shame. And what a sad display of a lack of foresight. As we watch the structures of our democracy being systematically dismantled, and our land of incredible diversity being shoe-horned into a spurious, narrow idea of one-size-fits-all nationalism, at least those who call themselves intellectuals should know that our country too, could explode.

If we say nothing about Israel’s brazen slaughter of Palestinians, even as it is livestreamed into the most private recesses of our personal lives, we are complicit in it. Something in our moral selves will be altered forever. Are we going to simply stand by and watch while homes, hospitals, refugee camps, schools, universities, archives are bombed, a million people displaced, and dead children pulled out from under the rubble? The borders of Gaza are sealed. People have nowhere to go. They have no shelter, no food, no water. The United Nations says more than half the population is starving. And still they are being bombed relentlessly. Are we going to once again watch a whole people being dehumanised to the point where their annihilation does not matter?

The project of dehumanising Palestinians did not begin with #Benyamin_Netanyahu and his crew—it began decades ago.

In 2002, on the first anniversary of September 11 2001, I delivered a lecture called “Come September” in the United States in which I spoke about other anniversaries of September 11—the 1973 CIA-backed coup against President Salvador Allende in Chile on that auspicious date, and then the speech on September 11, 1990, of George W. Bush, Sr., then US President, to a joint session of Congress, announcing his government’s decision to go to war against Iraq. And then I spoke about Palestine. I will read this section out and you will see that if I hadn’t told you it was written 21 years ago, you’d think it was about today.

—> September 11th has a tragic resonance in the Middle East, too. On the 11th of September 1922, ignoring Arab outrage, the British government proclaimed a mandate in Palestine, a follow-up to the 1917 Balfour Declaration which imperial Britain issued, with its army massed outside the gates of Gaza. The Balfour Declaration promised European Zionists a national home for Jewish people. (At the time, the Empire on which the Sun Never Set was free to snatch and bequeath national homelands like a school bully distributes marbles.) How carelessly imperial power vivisected ancient civilisations. Palestine and Kashmir are imperial Britain’s festering, blood-drenched gifts to the modern world. Both are fault lines in the raging international conflicts of today.
–-> In 1937, Winston Churchill said of the Palestinians, I quote, “I do not agree that the dog in a manger has the final right to the manger even though he may have lain there for a very long time. I do not admit that right. I do not admit for instance, that a great wrong has been done to the Red Indians of America or the black people of Australia. I do not admit that a wrong has been done to these people by the fact that a stronger race, a higher-grade race, a more worldly wise race to put it that way, has come in and taken their place.” That set the trend for the Israeli State’s attitude towards the Palestinians. In 1969, Israeli Prime Minister Golda Meir said, “Palestinians do not exist.” Her successor, Prime Minister Levi Eschol said, “What are Palestinians? When I came here (to Palestine), there were 250,000 non-Jews, mainly Arabs and Bedouins. It was a desert, more than underdeveloped. Nothing.” Prime Minister Menachem Begin called Palestinians “two-legged beasts”. Prime Minister Yitzhak Shamir called them “grasshoppers” who could be crushed. This is the language of Heads of State, not the words of ordinary people.

Thus began that terrible myth about the Land without a People for a People without a Land.

–-> In 1947, the U.N. formally partitioned Palestine and allotted 55 per cent of Palestine’s land to the Zionists. Within a year, they had captured 76 per cent. On the 14th of May 1948 the State of Israel was declared. Minutes after the declaration, the United States recognized Israel. The West Bank was annexed by Jordan. The Gaza Strip came under Egyptian military control, and Palestine formally ceased to exist except in the minds and hearts of the hundreds of thousands of Palestinian people who became refugees. In 1967, Israel occupied the West Bank and the Gaza Strip. Over the decades there have been uprisings, wars, intifadas. Tens of thousands have lost their lives. Accords and treaties have been signed. Cease-fires declared and violated. But the bloodshed doesn’t end. Palestine still remains illegally occupied. Its people live in inhuman conditions, in virtual Bantustans, where they are subjected to collective punishments, 24-hour curfews, where they are humiliated and brutalized on a daily basis. They never know when their homes will be demolished, when their children will be shot, when their precious trees will be cut, when their roads will be closed, when they will be allowed to walk down to the market to buy food and medicine. And when they will not. They live with no semblance of dignity. With not much hope in sight. They have no control over their lands, their security, their movement, their communication, their water supply. So when accords are signed, and words like “autonomy” and even “statehood” bandied about, it’s always worth asking: What sort of autonomy? What sort of State? What sort of rights will its citizens have? Young Palestinians who cannot control their anger turn themselves into human bombs and haunt Israel’s streets and public places, blowing themselves up, killing ordinary people, injecting terror into daily life, and eventually hardening both societies’ suspicion and mutual hatred of each other. Each bombing invites merciless reprisal and even more hardship on Palestinian people. But then suicide bombing is an act of individual despair, not a revolutionary tactic. Although Palestinian attacks strike terror into Israeli citizens, they provide the perfect cover for the Israeli government’s daily incursions into Palestinian territory, the perfect excuse for old-fashioned, nineteenth-century colonialism, dressed up as a new-fashioned, 21st century “war”. Israel’s staunchest political and military ally is and always has been the US.
–-> The US government has blocked, along with Israel, almost every UN resolution that sought a peaceful, equitable solution to the conflict. It has supported almost every war that Israel has fought. When Israel attacks Palestine, it is American missiles that smash through Palestinian homes. And every year Israel receives several billion dollars from the United States—taxpayers’ money.

Today every bomb that is dropped by Israel on the civilian population, every tank, and every bullet has the United States’ name on it. None of this would happen if the US wasn’t backing it wholeheartedly. All of us saw what happened at the meeting of the UN Security Council on December 8 when 13 member states voted for a ceasefire and the US voted against it. The disturbing video of the US Deputy Ambassador, a Black American, raising his hand to veto the resolution is burned into our brains. Some bitter commentators on the social media have called it Intersectional Imperialism.

Reading through the bureaucratese, what the US seemed to be saying is: Finish the Job. But Do it Kindly.

—> What lessons should we draw from this tragic conflict? Is it really impossible for Jewish people who suffered so cruelly themselves—more cruelly perhaps than any other people in history—to understand the vulnerability and the yearning of those whom they have displaced? Does extreme suffering always kindle cruelty? What hope does this leave the human race with? What will happen to the Palestinian people in the event of a victory? When a nation without a state eventually proclaims a state, what kind of state will it be? What horrors will be perpetrated under its flag? Is it a separate state that we should be fighting for or, the rights to a life of liberty and dignity for everyone regardless of their ethnicity or religion? Palestine was once a secular bulwark in the Middle East. But now the weak, undemocratic, by all accounts corrupt but avowedly nonsectarian PLO, is losing ground to Hamas, which espouses an overtly sectarian ideology and fights in the name of Islam. To quote from their manifesto: “we will be its soldiers and the firewood of its fire, which will burn the enemies”. The world is called upon to condemn suicide bombers. But can we ignore the long road they have journeyed on before they have arrived at this destination? September 11, 1922 to September 11, 2002—80 years is a long time to have been waging war. Is there some advice the world can give the people of Palestine? Should they just take Golda Meir’s suggestion and make a real effort not to exist?”

The idea of the erasure, the annihilation, of Palestinians is being clearly articulated by Israeli political and military officials. A US lawyer who has brought a case against the Biden administration for its “failure to prevent genocide”—which is a crime, too—spoke of how rare it is for genocidal intent to be so clearly and publicly articulated. Once they have achieved that goal, perhaps the plan is to have museums showcasing Palestinian culture and handicrafts, restaurants serving ethnic Palestinian food, maybe a Sound and Light show of how lively Old Gaza used to be—in the new Gaza Harbour at the head of the Ben Gurion canal project, which is supposedly being planned to rival the Suez Canal. Allegedly contracts for offshore drilling are already being signed.

Twenty-one years ago, when I delivered “Come September” in New Mexico, there was a kind of omertà in the US around Palestine. Those who spoke about it paid a huge price for doing so. Today the young are on the streets, led from the front by Jews as well as Palestinians, raging about what their government, the US government, is doing. Universities, including the most elite campuses, are on the boil. Capitalism is moving fast to shut them down. Donors are threatening to withhold funds, thereby deciding what American students may or may not say, and how they may or may not think. A shot to the heart of the foundational principles of a so-called liberal education. Gone is any pretense of post-colonialism, multiculturalism, international law, the Geneva Conventions, the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Gone is any pretence of Free Speech or public morality. A “war” that lawyers and scholars of international law say meets all the legal criterion of a genocide is taking place in which the perpetrators have cast themselves as victims, the colonisers who run an apartheid state have cast themselves as the oppressed. In the US, to question this is to be charged with anti-Semitism, even if those questioning it are Jewish themselves. It’s mind-bending. Even Israel—where dissident Israeli citizens like Gideon Levy are the most knowledgeable and incisive critics of Israeli actions—does not police speech in the way the US does (although that is rapidly changing, too). In the US, to speak of Intifada—uprising, resistance—in this case against genocide, against your own erasure—is considered to be a call for the genocide of Jews. The only moral thing Palestinian civilians can do apparently is to die. The only legal thing the rest of us can do is to watch them die. And be silent. If not, we risk our scholarships, grants, lecture fees and livelihoods.

Post 9/11, the US War on Terror gave cover to regimes across the world to dismantle civil rights and to construct an elaborate, invasive surveillance apparatus in which our governments know everything about us and we know nothing about them. Similarly, under the umbrella of the US’ new McCarthyism, monstrous things will grow and flourish in countries all over the world. In our country, of course, it began years ago. But unless we speak out, it will gather momentum and sweep us all away. Yesterday’s news is that Jawaharlal Nehru University in Delhi, once among India’s top universities, has issued new rules of conduct for students. A fine of Rs.20,000 for any student who stages a dharna or hunger strike. And Rs 10,000 for “anti-national slogans”. There is no list yet about what those slogans are—but we can be reasonably sure that calling for the genocide and ethnic cleansing of Muslims will not be on it. So, the battle in Palestine is ours, too.

What remains to be said must be said—repeated—clearly.

The Israeli occupation of the West Bank and the siege of Gaza are crimes against humanity. The United States and other countries that bankroll the occupation are parties to the crime. The horror we are witnessing right now, the unconscionable slaughter of civilians by Hamas as well as by Israel, are a consequence of the siege and occupation.

No amount of commentary about the cruelty, no amount of condemnation of the excesses committed by either side—and no amount of false equivalence about the scale of these atrocities—will lead to a solution.

It is the occupation that is breeding this monstrosity. It is doing violence to both perpetrators and victims. The victims are dead. The perpetrators will have to live with what they have done. So will their children. For generations.

The solution cannot be a militaristic one. It can only be a political one in which both Israelis and Palestinians live together or side by side in dignity, with equal rights. The world must intervene. The occupation must end. Palestinians must have a viable homeland. And Palestinian refugees must have the right to return.

If not, then the moral architecture of Western liberalism will cease to exist. It was always hypocritical, we know. But even this provided some sort of shelter. That shelter is disappearing before our eyes.

So please—for the sake of Palestine and Israel, for the sake of the living and in the name of the dead, for the sake of the hostages being held by Hamas and the Palestinians in Israel’s prisons—for the sake of all of humanity—stop this slaughter.

Thank you once more for choosing me for this honour. Thank you too for the Rs 3 lakhs which comes with this prize. It will not remain with me. It will go towards helping activists and journalists who continue to stand up at huge cost to themselves.

▻https://frontline.thehindu.com/the-nation/india-has-lost-its-moral-compass-arundhati-roy-on-israel-palestian-gaza-war/article67639421.ece

#Gaza #à_lire #Palestine #Israel #boussole_morale #déshumanisation #11_septembre_1922 #responsabilité #occupation #Cisjordanie #USA #Etats-Unis #effacement #anéantissement #génocide #crime_contre_l'humanité #abattage

ARD Dokumentation - Doku am Montag die story : Deckname Artischocke
▻https://web.archive.org/web/20021019195230/http://www.wdr.de/tv/dokumentation/artischocke.html

https://frankolsonproject.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/01/232J-012-024.jpg

L’assassinat de Frank Olson était une action couverte de la CIA qui considérait sa connaissance du programme de torture et lavage de cerveau MKULTRA comme un risque pour l’agence.

Montag, 12. August 2002, 21.45 Uhr

In den fünfziger Jahren führte die amerikanische CIA geheime Experimente zur Gehirnwäsche durch. Die Opfer wurden mit Drogen wie LSD vollgepumpt, unter Hypnose gesetzt und auch gefoltert. Ziel der grausamen Menschenversuche war es, den menschlichen Willen zu brechen und sowjetische Agenten gegen ihren Willen zur Preisgabe von Geheimnissen zu zwingen. Einige der Experimente verliefen tödlich. Deckname der Operation: Artischocke.

Einer der beteiligten CIA-Wissenschaftler war Dr. Frank Olson. Im November 1953 stürzte er aus dem Fenster eines New Yorker Hotels. Sein Tod wurde von der CIA als Selbstmord deklariert. Doch als dessen Sohn Eric nach mehr als 40 Jahren den Leichnam exhumieren und obduzieren ließ, stellte sich heraus, dass Frank Olson wahrscheinlich einem Gewaltverbrechen zum Opfer gefallen war.

Warum musste Frank Olson sterben?

Die WDR-Autoren Egmont R. Koch und Michael Wech gehen in ihrer Dokumentation den Spuren des CIA-Forschers nach, der zunächst mit der Erprobung biologischer Waffen beschäftigt war, darunter Anthrax (Milzbrand); sie stoßen auf Zeugen, die erstmals über die Hintergründe seiner streng geheimen Tätigkeit sprechen; und sie finden in Olsons Nachlass Amateurfilme und Dias, die der CIA-Wissenschaftler in den letzten Jahren seines Lebens machte und die faszinierende Einblicke in die Welt des US-Geheimdienstes während des Kalten Krieges gewähren.

Ein Verdacht, der sich immer mehr aufdrängt: Frank Olson war schockiert über die grauenhaften Verhöre der CIA, die größtenteils in Deutschland stattfanden - an Kriegesgefangenen, an Flüchtlingen aus Osteuropa, die man für Spione hielt, und an eigenen Landsleuten. Auf seiner letzten Europareise im August 1953 sah er in Berlin, wie Menschen so lange gequält wurden, bis sie starben. Nach seiner Rückkehr wollte Olson aussteigen, seinen Dienst quittieren. Das konnte die CIA nicht zulassen. Denn Frank Olson kannte Staatsgeheimnisse auf dem Gebiet der biologischen Kriegsführung, die um keinen Preis bekannt werden durften.

Links zum Thema

Über das Buch „Deckname Artischocke“
„Frank Olson Project“ (Website seines Sohnes Eric;engl.)
„What Did the C.I.A. Do to Eric Olson’s Father?“ ("New York Times"; mit weiteren Artikeln und Dokumenten zum Thema)
Homepage der CIA
Zur Geschichte der CIA
John Marks: The Search for the Manchurian Candidate. The CIA and Mind Control (Online-Version des Buches von 1979; u.a. mit einem Kapitel über Frank Olson)
CIA und LSD
CIA und MKUltra (Informationen über die Menschenversuche der CIA; engl.)
Human Radiation Experiments (Homepage des „Office of Human Radiation Experiments“)
Biologische Waffen (ein Dossier der „Neuen Zürcher Zeitung“)
Biologische Waffen (Informationen des „Katalyse“-Umweltlexikons)
The Biological Weapons Convention (Hintergrundinformation zur Entstehung der Konvention, offizieller Vertragstext sowie einige Abschlusserklärungen zu Folgekonferenzen; UNO)
Milzbrand (Informationen, Nachrichten, Videos und Links zum Thema bei „wdr.de“)
Milzbrand: Bilanz einer Hysterie ("Monitor", 17.1.2002)
Der Kalte Krieg (mit weiterführenden Links und Buchtipps)
Cold War (ein interaktives Angebot von CNN mit zahlreichen Artikeln zum Thema „CIA im Kalten Krieg“; engl.)

Bücher zum Thema in Auswahl

Egmont R. Koch, Michael Wech: Deckname Artischocke. Die geheimen Menschenversuche der CIA
Bertelsmann Verlag, September 2002
ISBN: 357000662X, Preis: 23,90 Euro

George Bailey; Sergej A. Kondraschow; David E. Murphy: Die unsichtbare Front. Der Krieg der Geheimdienste im geteilten Berlin
Ullstein Bücher Nr. 26569, 2000
ISBN: 3-548-26569-3, Preis: 16 Euro

Wendy Barnaby: Biowaffen. Die unsichtbare Gefahr
Goldmann Sachbuch/Ratgeber Bd. 15197, 2002
ISBN: 3-442-15197-X, Preis: 10 Euro

Klaus Eichner; Andreas Dobbert: Headquarters Germany. Die USA-Geheimdienste in Deutschland
Edition Ost 2001
ISBN: 3-360-01024-8, Preis: 14,90 Euro

Erhard Geißler: Krieg mit Pest und Milzbrand. Die Geschichte der biologischen Waffen und das Versagen der Geheimdienste
Links Verlag Oktober 2002
ISBN: 3-86153-255-7, Preis: 19,90 Euro

Alexander Kelle: Chemische und biologische Waffen. Risiken und Kontrollmöglichkeiten zu Beginn des 21. Jahrhunderts
Leske & Budrich 2002
ISBN: 3-8100-2974-2, Preis: 20 Euro

Martin A. Lee; Bruce Shlain: Acid Dreams. The Complete Social History of LSD, the CIA, the Sixties and Beyond
Pan Books 2001
ISBN: 0-330-48481-8, Preis: 17,60 Euro

Frank Olson
▻https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frank_Olson

Documents – Frank Olson Project
▻https://frankolsonproject.com/documents

President Ford invited the Olsons to the White House, where he apologized on behalf of the federal government and set in motion a Congress approved compensation of $750,000. CIA director William Colby also felt compelled to offer an apology, and in the summer of 1975 he met the three grown Olson children in his office on the seventh floor of the agency’s headquarters.

Document package provided to the Olson family by CIA Director William Colby, during their meeting with him in his 7th floor office at CIA headquarters in Langley, Virginia on July 24, 1975. (165 page PDF – 33MB)

#USA #guerre_froide #CIA #MKULTRA #torture

Im Uber: Ex-Botschaftergattin Shawne Fielding zusammengeschlagen
▻https://www.berliner-zeitung.de/panorama/im-uber-ex-botschafter-gattin-shawne-fielding-zusammengeschlagen-li

https://berliner-zeitung.imgix.net/2023/12/26/24a4e4f7-9f80-41ac-b4ec-e60bb0348668.jpeg?auto=format&fit=max&w=940&auto=compress&rect=63,0,2835,1890

Es trifft die Reichen und Schönen nur, wenn sie unmittelbar von Armut und Ausbeutung profitiren wollen. Es gibt gute Gründe dafür, dass die Angehörigen der Oberklassen eigene Limousinen und Chauffeure haben. Jetzt wissen ein paar mehr : Mit Uber fahren ist gefährlich, weil man nie weiß, wer wirklich am Steuer sitzt.

26.12.2023 Marcus Weingärtner - Shawne Fielding, die Ex-Frau des ehemaligen Schweizer Botschafters Thomas Borer, wurde in Dallas Opfer einer Gewalttat.

Berlinerinnen und Berlinern ist Shawne Fielding ein Begriff: In den 2000ern brachten der Schweizer Botschafter Thomas Borer und seine Ehefrau Fielding den lang vermissten Glamour in die deutsche Hauptstadt. Sie unterhielten Berlin mit ihren Auftritten und dem einen oder anderen Skandälchen um angebliche Affären und Abnehmpülverchen.
Opfer einer Gewalttat

Shawne Fielding und Thomas Borer waren von 1999 bis 2014 verheiratet. Die beiden haben zwei gemeinsame Kinder. Danach war die gebürtige Texanerin sieben Jahre mit dem Eishockey-Spieler Patrick Schöpf (56) zusammen. Das Paar nahm 2018 an der Sendung „Sommerhaus der Stars“ teil. Nun wurde Fielding in ihrer Heimat Dallas/Texas Opfer einer Gewalttat, wie die Bild-Zeitung berichtete.

Offenbar wurde Fielding während einer Uber-Fahrt in Dallas angegriffen und geschlagen, wie die Ex-Botschaftergattin in den sozialen Medien mitteilte:

„Heiligabend mit der Unterstützung meiner Familie und meiner Freunde. Ich wurde gestern in einem Uber brutal angegriffen und für tot geglaubt zurückgelassen. Jeder Knöchel an meiner rechten Hand wurde genäht. Ich bin dankbar für das Weihnachtswunder, am Leben zu sein. Bitte sag den Leuten jeden Tag, wie sehr du sie liebst. Danke, Weihnachtsmann, was auch immer mir Kraft gab, zu kämpfen. Das geschah am helllichten Tag – ich hatte keine Einkaufstaschen, war aber alleine. #neveragain“

#USA #Texas #Dallas #Uber #Kriminalität