Boot, human face, forever

Eternal threats and an unending series of enemies - these were clearly a permanent feature of the world as Maria saw it.

-- from a BBC report by Paul Moss

An overview of Zionism by Geoffrey Wheatcroft published in Feb last year is still useful.

Rage and occupation

In a comment on the new cipher-President of Russia, Dmitry Medvedev, David Remnick quotes Mikhail Delyagin saying that Putin (unlike Medvedev) "understands that rage is a big part of the Russian nature and aptly manages this knowledge."

No two countries are alike, of course, and Russia is unique (although framing political dissent as a pathology is not unique to the Russian-Soviet mindset). But deeply embedded historical rage is quite common. The example taking most media space in the West at present may be Israeli-US actions in Gaza (see Milne), and its consequences (see NGO report). A long view such as that of the historian Ilan Pappe may be helpful. In The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine (2006), he asked:

The window of opportunity will not stay open forever. Israel may still be doomed to remain a country full of anger, its actions and behaviour dictated by religious fanaticism, the features of its people distorted by a quest for retribution. How long can we go on asking, let alone expecting, our Palestinian brothers and sisters to keep faith with us, and not to succumb totally to the despair and sorrow into which their lives were transformed the year Israel erected its Fortress over their destroyed villages and towns?

Yesterday Pappe wrote:

The 21st century Jewish state is about to complete the construction of two mega prisons, the largest of their kind in human history.

'The Lobby'

Taming the influence of lobbies, if that is what Mearsheimer and Walt desire, is a matter of reforming the lobbying and campaign-finance laws. But that is clearly not the source of the hysteria surrounding their arguments. “The Israel Lobby” is a phenomenon of its moment. The duplicitous and manipulative arguments for invading Iraq put forward by the Bush Administration, the general inability of the press to upend those duplicities, the triumphalist illusions, the miserable performance of the military strategists, the arrogance of the Pentagon, the stifling of dissent within the military and the government, the moral disaster of Abu Ghraib and Guantánamo, the rise of an intractable civil war, and now an incapacity to deal with the singular winner of the war, Iran—all of this has left Americans furious and demanding explanations. Mearsheimer and Walt provide one: the Israel lobby. In this respect, their account is not so much a diagnosis of our polarized era as a symptom of it.

-- from The Lobby by David Remnick

One nation, indivisible

The AIPAC defendants weren’t spies, they were merely ahead of the curve, anticipating the day when a distinction is no longer being made between American and Israeli interests. That is the line we are hearing, as the curtain goes up on the trial of Rosen and Weissman. Whether the jury or the public falls for it remains to be seen.

-- from AIPAC on trial by Justin Raimondo

Soros takes on AIPAC

I took a stand against President Bush when he said that those who don't support his policies are supporting the terrorists. I cannot remain silent now when the pro-Israel lobby is one of the last unexposed redoubts of this dogmatic way of thinking. I speak out with some trepidation because I am exposing myself to further attacks that are likely to render me less effective in pursuing many other causes in which I am engaged; but dissidents I have supported have taken far greater risks.

-- George Soros on Israel, America and AIPAC