(Let this be an open thread on Israel, Zionism, one-state-two-state solutions (I’m agnostic in my ignorance), the apparently indelible client-state existing between Israel and the US, both the BDS and anti-BDS ‘punishment’ movements, the consequences of moving the US Embassy to Jerusalem (jeezum crow), and so on. Teach me/us what you know or believe is so.)
AIPAC speakers say the enemy is BDS, while ‘biggest Jewish-led protest’ surges outside’, by Philip Weiss, March 27, 2017, mondoweiss.net
“This morning, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu spoke by video to the Israel lobby group AIPAC (the American Israel Public Affairs Committee) in Washington. He bragged about his warm relationship with President Trump to great applause, and said that many states in his region were turning to Israel in the fight of modernism against medievalism. He said it was time for Palestinian Authority to “above all, once and for all, recognize the Jewish state.”
Netanyahu also addressed the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions, or BDS, movement aimed at Israel, saying Israel will defend itself on the “moral battlefield… We’ll defend ourselves against slander and boycotts.”
Last night Vice President Mike Pence was introduced as an enemy of BDS. He told the AIPAC conference, “The president of the United States is giving serious consideration to moving the United States Embassy from Tel Aviv,” to huge applause. He then called on the next ambassador to Israel, David Friedman, a supporter of settlements, to stand. He also got a warm reception.” [snip]
“Democratic political consultant Paul Begala said this morning on the AIPAC stage that he was thinking of making “aliyah” to Israel because of political developments in Washington but affirmed: “I have never worked for someone who is anti-Israel and I never will… How could I and be true to my progressive values?”
This video speaks for itself.
RT’s March 27 coverage was mainly by Storify, many like this:
but a few more on this order:
“A protest organized by If Not Now, a Jewish movement lobbying to end the American Jewish community’s support for the occupation, took place outside the center. Protesters formed a human blockade, preventing access at both entrances of the convention center after marching from Franklin Square.
“US Vice President Mike Pence and former Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper are due to address the conference later in the evening, and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is also confirmed to speak at the event.
Democratic leaders Nancy Pelosi and Chuck Schumer as well as Republicans Mitch McConnell and Paul Ryan will address AIPAC later in the week.”
From HuffPo: ‘Protesters Take On Settlements In ‘Biggest Ever Jewish-Led Protest’ Of AIPAC’
“Sunday’s protests are symbolic stands against not only Israel’s half century-long settlement stance, but policies of President Donald Trump’s nascent administration.
Earlier this year when the Israeli government approved the construction of thousands of new settlement homes in the West Bank and East Jerusalem, despite Palestinian opposition and widespread international condemnation, Trump’s administration took a more amiable stance on the development than those of previous administrations ― which flatly opposed any construction of settler homes.”
[wd here: but they didn’t do much about it, did they? they kept pumpin’ money to Israels’ ‘security state’.]
“The Trump administration’s closer alignment to the Israeli government was confirmed at AIPAC by Ron Dermer, Israel’s ambassador to the U.S., during Sunday’s conference.
“For the first time in many years, perhaps even many decades, there is no daylight between our two governments,” Dermer said.”
In her ‘Israel’s African Darling: Paul Kagame: An Interview with Robin Philpot’ Ann Garrison at BAR opens with:
“On Sunday morning, March 26, Rwandan President Paul Kagame became the first African president to address the annual conference of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC), which also identifies itself as “America’s Pro-Israel Lobby.” Kagame was also the only foreign head of state to address this year’s conference besides Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu himself.
On the same day, a full-page ad for the Champions of Jewish Values Gala in NYC at the end of May appeared in the Washington Post. The event, it said, will celebrate “the 50th anniversary of the reunification of Jerusalem,” meaning the Israel Defense Force’s seizure of Temple Mount — a holy site to Muslims, Christians, and Jews — during the 1967 Six Day War. Ron Dermer and Alan Dershowitz will be among the presenters and awards will go to Martin Luther King III, David Friedman, Jose Maria Aznar and others. Paul Kagame will receive the Dr. Miriam and Sheldon G. Adelson Prize for Outstanding Friendship with the Jewish People.
I spoke to Robin Philpot, author of “Rwanda and the New Scramble for Africa, from Tragedy to Useful Imperial Fiction,” about the special relationship between Israel and Rwanda.”
(again, the rest of the skin-crawling Kagame history Philpot narrates is here.)
Billed at the Washington Examiner on 3/17 as ‘A win for Haley: UN official resigns over report condemning ‘apartheid’ Israel’:
“A senior United Nations official resigned over a report labeling Israel an “apartheid regime” that dominates the Palestinians in violation of international law.
Rima Khalaf, a Jordanian diplomat who leads the UN panel of Arab states that produced the report, resigned rather than retract the accusation. Her ouster is a victory for U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Nikki Haley, who condemned the report as “anti-Israel propaganda” on Wednesday and called for the UN to withdraw the charge.
“When someone issues a false and defamatory report in the name of the UN, it is appropriate that the person resign,” Haley said Friday. “UN agencies must do a better job of eliminating false and biased work, and I applaud the Secretary-General’s decision to distance his good office from it.”
Well done, Miz Khalaf! And may I politely suggest to Paul Ryan, et.al. that they fuck themseves?
first performed in 1982 at Carnegie Hall; how long, oh how long?
Light one candle for the strength that we need
To never become our own foe
And light one candle for those who are suffering
Pain we learned so long ago
Light one candle for all we believe in
That anger not tear us apart
And light one candle to find us together
With peace as the song in our hearts
davidly
Greyson Smythe
LeMoyne
juliania2
ohiobarbarian
stephenadavis1
wendyedavis
café babylon 
ruptly: they dare not show that stuff on US TV. nor do any anti-AIPAC jews get a chance to speak in any, any MSM venues. ever.
the west supports Israel, inter alia, as Israel represents the right of dispossession of the natives. the European right.
Zionist nationalism was born from the same race-based BS that we associate esp. w/Nazism but is of course the legacy of all of colonial western history. all of it. French, Belgian, british, Portuguese, etc. the Nazis sure as hell didn’t invent labor & death camps.
Zionist collaboration w/the Nazis:
http://www.counterpunch.org/2002/12/23/51-documents/
what does unflagging support for Ft. Zion say about leaders *actual* beliefs about racial superiority? is it all reducible to the geo-politics of oil & the like? i’m kind of w/orwell in his depiction of Big Brother: the inner party is not actually racist any more, though racism still abounds b/c it’s so useful. & then along comes Israel…and I think maybe the deep racism at the top is just better hidden now. I don’t know. maybe it doesn’t matter.
bless your heart, will the meek inherit ha’aretz?. i’d wanted to say on your most recent comment on BigAg that your mind is so adept in so many directions that you leave me (and mine) in the dust.
but for now, given that how crazily time-consuming constructing this diary, and moving links from the 10-page big ag word document, i gotta say that i’m so tired, i haven’t slept a wink…well, maybe three winks, but whooosh. only the wicked lie awake at night? f, i sure hope not.
but i need to go beg off until tomorrow a score of emails in my inbox. sleep well if you can, meek inherit.
that’s bipolarity for ya! neurons firing this way & that. if google, has its way, each spark of neuronal activity will have an advertisement attached. heaven help the epileptics. “this seizure brought to you by Car Max.”
I tried to find this quote, not very hard, penned by justice Robert h. Jackson (?) in the Nuremberg trials:
crimes against the peace are the supreme crime b/c they contain w/in them ALL OTHER CRIMES. (Tolstoy in W/P explicitly affirms this statement.)
per the gang at wsws, this is a specific referent to the holocaust, inter alia. the external enemy manufactured by imperialism also produces the internal enemy. of necessity.
now get those damn messicans out my country. I got some invading to do!
sorry, ha’aretz, but i wasn’t able to understand much of bremmer’s thesis; you’re obviously familiar w/ him and it, and it makes sense to you. meaning: i failed your first sharing, arrgh. would you, could you, sum it up for me?
but at least i can understand your reminder of ‘the legacy of all colonial western history’. it’s the key reason that black lives matter movements here and in the UK were so in solidarity w/ palestinians.
but you’re musing more about zionism at the top being racist/racialist than religious/cultural? in apartheid israel, are palestinians and jews allowed to marry? (i’,m thinking of the roots of the ‘horrors’ of miscegenation.
but i just wondered if anyone from CUFI had spoken, if not john hagee himself. i’ll go look.
let me review the brenner. been a while. I don’t know the answer about jews & Palestinians (the natives, that is) but my understanding is that there is an ambiguity in the citizenship laws of ft. zion, not accidental: does religion make one a jew? or race (i.e, birth)? well, if the angry arab is any guide, ft. zion treats African (and Sephardim generally) jews about the same way the US treats its black populace: like crap. so whatever the actual law states, the jews from Ethiopia qualify. and it doesn’t matter.
to your paraphrasing the angry arab, this was from 2010, common dreams, but may still be applicable:
“The goal of this week’s court ruling (and of Israeli laws governing
marriage, adoption and surrogacy) is to prevent Jews and
Palestinians from forming intimate or family relationships. In the West
Bank, this degree of separation is ensured by a giant concrete wall
that runs through much of the territory. But where there is no wall,
the state will rely on other forms of power to maintain strict
separation between the two peoples of this land. By the way, the
Afrikaans word for separation is Apartheid.”
as for anyone from CUFI speaking, all i could find was this:
“The Israeli American Council, principally backed by Sheldon Adelson, the casino billionaire who in 2007 fell out with AIPAC in part over its embrace of the two-state outcome, has attempted to position itself as the more conservative-friendly Israel lobby. The right-leaning Christians United for Israel is similarly assuming a higher profile on the Hill.” [snip]
“Notably absent from the agenda is any item that robustly declares support for a two-state outcome. AIPAC officials say the longtime U.S. policy remains very much on their agenda, but the lobby’s apparent soft pedaling of the issue is notable at a time when other mainstream groups, including the American Jewish Committee and the Anti-Defamation League, have been assertive in urging the U.S. and Israeli governments to preserve it.” (i’ve already mislaid the link)
it may be the CUFI biblical quotes that they interpret as meaning: ‘when israel stands alone, christ will come again’; the cufi website features this one a lot: “But I will restore you to health and heal your wounds,’ declares the LORD, ‘because you are called an outcast, Zion for whom no one cares.'”
and their web page has shout-outs to herr T to ‘yes! move the embassy to jerusalem’, which is another translation: “I will give you back your health and heal your wounds,” says the LORD. “For you are called an outcast–‘Jerusalem for whom no one cares.'”
but first i looked at the #aipac2017 hashtag, and man alive, is war criminal paul kagame gettin’ a lotta love in tweet after tweet. he’d even said something like: the existence of israel doesn’t impinge on anyone else’s freedom…and here’s chuckie’s dual purpose political fukkery:
March 31, 2017 ‘The Next Phase in the War on BDS: Why Israel Detained Omar Barghouti’ by Ramzy Baroud at CP…. a few snippets:
“The Israeli state has violated international law more than any other country, yet has rarely, if ever, been held accountable for its crimes and misconduct.
(the ‘violated international law goes to http://ifamericaknew.org/stat/neff-un.html , but of course: amerika wouldn’t care)
“Israel’s successful public relation campaigns through the ever-willing western media partners, coupled with the relentless work and pressure carried out by its powerful backers in Washington DC, London, Paris and elsewhere, has borne stupendous results.
For a while, it seemed that Israel was capable of maintaining its occupation and denying Palestinians their rights indefinitely, while promoting itself as ‘the only democracy in the Middle East’.
“All that Israeli leaders needed to do was to adhere to the script: Palestinians are terrorists, we have no peace partner, Israel is a democracy, our wars are all carried out in self-defense and so on. The media repeated such misleading notions in unison. Palestinians, oppressed, occupied and disowned were duly demonized. Those who knew the truth about the situation either faced the risk of speaking out – and suffered the consequences – or remained silent.”
(He then chronicles some of the history of the BDS movement, the ‘punishment’ laws enacted in the US, UK, Canada, and israel’s intimidation acts, barghouti’s case, etc.)
“Israel will soon realize that its war on BDS, freedom of speech and expression is unwinnable. It is a futile attempt to muzzle a global community that now works in unison from Cape Town, South Africa to Uppsala, Sweden.”
pretty much anything one needs to know about a politician can be determined from their stance on Israel. make that a litmus test, and don’t waste time on any other BS they say.
i expect you’re exactly right, jews for jeebus, except there may be a few other tests as well: single payer, military expenditures, same for DHS and the po-po, yanno?
“…Proceeding from these considerations, the NMO [national military org] in Palestine, under the condition the above-mentioned national aspirations of the Israeli freedom movement are recognized on the side of the German Reich, offers to actively take part in the war on Germany’s side.”
They hanged people all over Europe after WW II for notes to the Nazis like these. But these treasons against the Jews were virtually unknown in the run up to the creation of the Zionist state in May 1948. Ninety percent of America’s Jews suddenly became emotional pro-Zionists. With Democrats, Republicans and even the Communist-organized Progressive Party competing for Jewish votes in the November Presidential election, Harry Truman’s monetary aid bought arms from pro-Soviet Czechoslovakia, and an Israel was born, run by the German Zionists’ cothinkers in Jerusalem. (quote from brenner’s cp article. the point being Zionism was established in Palestine by Nazi collaborators.)
I disagree about the litmus test. you can’t lie about Israel, unlike single-payer. looking at you Bernie. what he really believes is found in his statements on Israel. everything else is political expediency. moreover, if a politico isn’t adamantly anti-Israel, I don’t really care about what else they say they “believe.” uttering anti-Zionist sentiment costs something. blubbering about health insurance does not.
i have an epic hegg-ache, so reading’s hard, but yes, i’ll gladly yield my litmus thinking. i’d grabbed this from dissident voice yesterday (as i’d grabbed a link about the 5th ice detainee dying in custody: he hanged himself after he was refused relocating to another part of the ice pen.) but i hadn’t wanted to hog all the comment spaces, plus i was worn to a frazzle.
again, jonathan cook: “The ongoing Ken Livingstone (“Get Corbyn!”) saga grows yet more preposterous. After outrage that the former London mayor had said Hitler was a Zionist (when he clearly hadn’t, as I pointed out at the time here and here), Labour suspended Livingstone amid accusations that he had made anti-semitic, offensive and false historical claims.
Now as Livingstone fights to avoid expulsion before a closed hearing of the party’s national constitutional committee, it emerges that Labour’s general secretary, Iain McNicol, has written to Livingstone saying that the hearing is not interested in the historical accuracy of his statements or whether what he said was anti-semitic. Rather, it is about whether his conduct has been “grossly detrimental” to the party.”
iirc, one of the hyperlinks mentioned brenner. but also this from today:
‘Thousands Protest in Jerusalem Against 50 Years of Occupation’, telesur today; A number of diverse protests sprung up against the illegal Israeli occupation of Palestine.
“A string of protests took place in the cities of Jerusalem and Tel Aviv on the 50-year anniversary of the illegal Israeli occupation, with crowds that drew thousands. Jerusalem saw thousands march to the Jaffa Gate entrance to the Old City, in opposition to the ongoing occupation.”