Last Friday, renowned physicist Stephen Hawking wrote to the organizers of an upcoming conference in Jerusalem, telling them he was backing out of a commitment to participate, in solidarity with Palestinian academics who had asked him to reconsider attending.  Here is part of his letter:

I have received a number of emails from Palestinian academics. They are unanimous that I should respect the boycott. In view of this, I must withdraw from the conference. Had I attended I would have stated my opinion that the policy of the present Israeli government is likely to lead to disaster.

The story of his cancellation broke Wednesday morning in the Guardian:

Professor Stephen Hawking is backing the academic boycott of Israel by pulling out of a conference hosted by Israeli president Shimon Peres in Jerusalem as a protest at Israel’s treatment of Palestinians.

Hawking, 71, the world-renowned theoretical physicist and former Lucasian Professor of Mathematics at the University of Cambridge, had accepted an invitation to headline the fifth annual president’s conference, Facing Tomorrow, in June, which features major international personalities, attracts thousands of participants and this year will celebrate Peres’s 90th birthday.

Hawking is in very poor health, but last week he wrote a brief letter to the Israeli president to say he had changed his mind. He has not announced his decision publicly, but a statement published by the British Committee for the Universities of Palestine with Hawking’s approval described it as “his independent decision to respect the boycott, based upon his knowledge of Palestine, and on the unanimous advice of his own academic contacts there”.

Hawking’s decision marks another victory in the campaign for boycott, divestment and sanctions targeting Israeli academic institutions.

Although the Guardian article appeared to be authoritative when it was published, it was soon questioned, based on a statement emanating from the communication office of his employer, Cambridge University:

Tim Holt, media director at the University of Cambridge spokesman, said Hawking’s decision was based strictly on health concerns.

“For health reasons, his doctors said he should not be flying at the moment so he’s decided not to attend,” said Holt. “He is 71-years-old. He’s fine, but he has to be sensible about what he can do.”

A University of Cambridge statement released earlier Wednesday cited “personal reasons” for his decision. Hawking, who has ALS, or Lou Gehrig’s disease, cannot move his body and uses a wheelchair. He communicates through a computerized voice system.

The story of Hawking’s cancellation, carried by the Guardian had little traction Wednesday morning, but the story of the Guardian having blown the real reason for Hawking’s backing out got it up into major news aggregators, such as memeorandum.  Throughout Wednesday morning, there was confusion.  Hawking was attacked severely on facebook and elsewhere, savaged for being ungrateful to Israelis for creating technology that helps him continue to communicate, and for not  being that good of a scientist:

if one decides to Boycott Israel, then one must be consistent, if Mr. Hawking decides to boycott us he should also refrain from using his means of communications as he is using products that were invented and produced in Israel. it is very interesting though that we continue to hear him isn’t it.

and (I like this one):

Who cares? He hasn’t been coherent since he wrote that the universe was capable of creating itself. His kind of “reason” fits neither science nor sociology…but it’s perfectly suited to politics.

and:

Given that much of his work is based on Israeli scientists’ work. I guess it was fine to use Jacob Bekenstein’s research to further his own fame (after previously deriding his ideas), but heavens forbid he visit the man’s homeland! Why, that would just be WRONG!

and:

An Israeli company made a medicine that cures ALS, so go ahead Mr. Genius Idiot, Boycott Israel.

When the contrary statement from Cambridge claiming health reasons as being the real motivator came out Wednesday morning, some pro-Zionist blogs strutted Cambridge communicator Holt’s obfuscation out as proof of the Guardian‘s anti-Israel agenda:

The Guardian, which broke the story late last night, claimed that Hawking was due to boycott Israel after receiving an erroneous statement from the British Committee for the Universities of Palestine (BRICUP), apparently with Hawking’s approval.

The statement said that the move was “his independent decision to respect the boycott, based upon his knowledge of Palestine, and on the unanimous advice of his own academic contacts there”.

However, a Cambridge university spokesperson has confirmed to The Commentator that there was a “misunderstanding” this past weekend, and that Prof. Hawking had pulled out of the conference for medical reasons.

In comments to the feuding articles, inevitable comparisons between Hawking and Albert Einstein were made.  Soon after the formation of Israel, the great physicist was invited to go to Israel to become President.  He declined:

When [Israeli] President Chaim Weizmann died in 1952, Einstein was asked to be Israel’s second president, but he declined, stating that he had “neither the natural ability nor the experience to deal with human beings.” He wrote: “I am deeply moved by the offer from our State of Israel, and at once saddened and ashamed that I cannot accept it.”

Carefully chosen words. Four years ago, I compiled the most authoritative web version I know of Einstein’s April 17th, 1938 Commodore Hotel speech.  All others leave out the last two sentences, which I here emphasize:

I should much rather see reasonable agreement with the Arabs on the basis of living together in peace than the creation of a Jewish State. Apart from practical considerations, my awareness of the essential nature of Judaism resists the idea of a Jewish State, with borders, an army, and a measure of temporal power, no matter how modest. I am afraid of the inner damage Judaism will sustain – especially from the development of a narrow nationalism within our own ranks, against which we have already had to fight strongly, even without a Jewish State. We are no longer the Jews of the Maccabee period.

A return to a nation in the political sense of the word, would be equivalent to turning away from the spiritualization of our community which we owe to the genius of our prophets.

Einstein uttered this profound declaration before the horrors of World War II, which left over 60 million dead, 10% of them Jewish.  After the war, and during the very early years of Israeli existence, he could be conflicted regarding his support for the new Levantine crusader state, created largely by colonists from north central Europe.

Hawking is a non-Jewish atheist, apparently appalled by his encounters with what Einstein feared, “the development of a narrow nationalism within our own ranks.”  Einstein believed deeply in the existence of something beyond what he or we might readily explain through scientific method – “God,” if you will.

Hawking’s reaching out to pleas from Palestinian academics and scientists is motivated more by his well-known penchant for not wanting to put up with bullshit.

I wish Prof. Hawking had decided to attend.  As he wrote to the guy who cannot claim to be Einstein’s successor to a failing dream, “Had I attended I would have stated my opinion that the policy of the present Israeli government is likely to lead to disaster.”

It already has.  Einstein, was a true Jewish prophet along the lines of  Ezekiel, Elisha and Elijah, among others.  Had he accepted the offer to become Israel’s president, a largely symbolic office, it may have changed the course of human events on the Levant.  He predicted the ongoing disaster’s inevitability.  Hawking, like Einstein, questions the charade.

Who will be next?

Next Saturday, March 16th, will mark the tenth anniversary of the death in Gaza, of Rachel Corrie.  Rachel, then a senior at Evergreen State College in Olympia, Washington, had gone to Gaza at the beginning of 2003, to fulfill aspects of her senior thesis.  While there, she became active in efforts by the International Solidarity Movement (ISM), to protect Palestinians from outrages of the Israeli occupation forces.

She was killed by an Israeli Army D-9 armored bulldozer, with two people aboard in the cockpit, one there to drive, the other, to observe.  During the same time period, Israeli forces in Gaza shot and mortally wounded Tom Hurndall, a British photographer, also working with the ISM (April 11th), and mutilated Brian Avery (April 5th), another American ISM activist, in Jenin in the West Bank.  This time period coincided with the American invasion of Iraq – March 19th to May 1st.

A notable aspect of Rachel Corrie’s legacy is the sheer volume of art her life and sacrifice evoked.  Between March 19th 2003 and April 24th 2004, I collected over 160 poems written in the young woman’s honor, and posted on the web, in the English language.  I used two of them in my 2003-2004 cantata, The Skies Are Weeping.  California composer, Paul Crabtree composed another cantata about Corrie, American Persephone.

Corrie’s journals and emails from Gaza became the basis of the most widely viewed and highly regarded work of art about Corrie, My Name is Rachel Corrie.  Written by Katharine Viner and Alan Rickman, the play premiered in London on April 5, 2005, in a highly evocative solo performance by actress Megan Dodds.  Premiered in a very small theatre, it was revived in the 2005 fall London theatre season in a larger venue, and proceeded to win many awards.

The first attempt to produce My Name is Rachel Corrie in the USA, at the New York Theatre Workshop resulted in a cancellation, when the NYTW caved to threats from militant Zionist expansionists. (Incidentally – the article about the cancellation in The Nation, by writer Philip Weiss, and the pushback that writer got in the publishing world for having written so sympathetically about Corrie, and critically about the NYTW, was one of the epiphanies Weiss underwent that led him into new directions, now expressed most fully at his web site, Mondoweiss).

The play has gone on to be performed on every continent save Antarctica, in many languages.

The play was derived from Corrie’s written material with cooperation of the slain activist’s family.  Some of Corrie’s writings had been posted on the web soon after her death.  Some soon became the basis of poems or lyrics.  For instance, the concluding lyric in The Skies are Weeping is my editing (with the Corrie family’s approval) of one of her last emails home: Read the rest of this entry →

Photo: Ron Almog / Flickr

The response to the October 5th letter to Congress from fifteen mainline, somewhat liberal, and very large Christian denominations or groups, by various Zionist Jewish organizations, is rapidly escalating into something serious.  In an article at the Jewish Telegraph Agency, posted an hour ago, Ethan Felson,vice president and general counsel of the Jewish Council for Public Affairs, appears to be threatening to have Congress investigate the Churches, or the signatories of the letter:

Felson said JCPA is considering as a response asking Congress to investigate delegitimizers of Israel and to issue a resolution against their efforts. He said he has not yet decided if he will attend the roundtable.

“We feel strongly that if you want the parties to reconcile, we should model reconciliation,” Felson said. “But that’s difficult to do when we’re up against this brand of antipathy.”

Suggesting that American Jewish groups could retaliate by advocating against U.S. aid to the Palestinians, Felson said the signers of the letter are “opening up a Pandora’s box.” [emphases added]

In an op-ed, posted an hour ago in the Jerusalem Post, commentator Isi Leibler invokes some pretty serious imagery:

The signatories include leaders of the Lutheran, Presbyterian, Methodist and National Council of Churches. Although many of the rank-and-file members of these churches are supporters of Israel and unaware of these activities, their radical anti-Israel leaders were obviously not inhibited from taking such action despite being aware of the role of their churches in demonizing, persecuting and murdering Jews over the past 2,000 years.

One is tempted to suggest that some of the current Lutheran leaders have inherited the anti-Semitic poison of their 16th-century founder, Martin Luther, who after failing to convert the Jews called on his followers to murder these “poisonous envenomed worms” and set fire to their synagogues and schools. [emphasis added]

They have simply redirected his anti-Semitic obsessions toward the Jewish state in lieu of individual Jews.

Leibler is referring to this 1543 pamphlet by Luther:  Von den Juden und ihren Lügen

In the JTA article, there is no reference to this morning’s action by the Rabbinical Council of Jewish Voice for Peace (disclaimer – my wife is a member of JVP), in support of the stance of the Christian leaders who wrote to Congress:

Read the rest of this entry →

As violence against illegal and legal African migrants to Israel has escalated this past week in and around Tel Aviv, so has the rhetoric coming out of recently elevated figures in Netanyahu’s new coalition power structure:

Following Wednesday’s violent protest against African migrants in Tel Aviv, Likud MK Danny Dannon called to remove African asylum seekers from population centers in Israel.

Speaking to Haaretz, Dannon said that the immediate solution for calming the situation and for putting a stop to the violence requires the evacuation of the African migrants from south Tel Aviv.

“The infiltrators must be distanced immediately,” he said. “We must expedite the construction of temporary detention facilities and remove Africans from population centers.”

He doesn’t seem to mean “some” Africans.  He means all of them.

Signs that the country almost 100% of America’s national legislators claim to love even more than our own is becoming increasingly racist at an alarming rate are growing.  The meme that the ultra-Orthodox of Jerusalem and the illegal settlements are the problematic ones in respect to racism and eliminationist rhetoric, and that places like Tel Aviv are much more like the USA, is being revealed in these demonstrations to be nothing more than bullshit.  In the run-up to this week’s rampage in south Tel Aviv, there was this encounter:

The violence began escalating in April, with a series of fire bombings of  dwellings and shops of African migrants and refugees.  As it has gotten more out of hand, some politicians seem to be participating in feeding the violence.  Here is Interior Minister Eli Yishai, speaking at  conference in April:

And here is more from extremist MK members:

Earlier, Knesset members spoke at the event. Some blamed government inaction for the “infiltration problem,” while others heaped accusations on human rights organizations helping the refugees. Knesset Member Miri Regev called the refugees “a cancer in our body.” Regev, a member of Netanyahu’s Likud party, said that “leftists” are preventing the state from deporting the refugees back to Africa. Knesset Member Danny Danon (Likud), who also spoke at the event, wrote in a Facebook status tonight that “Israel is at war. An enemy state of infiltrators was established in Israel, and its capital is south Tel Aviv.”

According to one of the eyewitnesses, the most inflammatory speaker was MK Michael Ben-Ari, a former member of Meir Kahane’s racist Kach party, who was a resident of south Tel Aviv himself before moving to a settlement. “The police commissioner wants to give the African jobs,” said Ben-Ari, referring to a statement by Chief of Police Yochanan Danino, who recently urged the government to allow the refugees to work in Israel, in order to prevent the crime rate from rising. “This will bring another 50,000 people here,” said Ben Ari.

The growing evidence of racist violence by Israelis may be what finally brings American liberals who have somehow managed to keep their faith in that country warm, away from support for the Zionist cause.  Back in mid-2009, when author and videographer Max Blumenthal produced the controversial video, Feeling the Hate in Jerusalem, many were shocked at the open racism, particularly toward Obama:

In the 35 months since Blumenthal posted the video, the examples of virulent racism in Israeli society have multiplied.  Yet can anyone name an American politician who has spoken up about this, even an African American one?

In that sense, the hard-right Zionists and their blind supporters here in the USA seem to never miss an opportunity to miss an opportunity.  More than the rantings pushing for a war against Iran, more than the struggle for Palestinian rights, more than the billions upon billions we give away to Israel every year, the almost daily mushrooming of racial hatred by Israelis may be what finally disgusts us out of our stupor.

[emphases in quotes added by author]

In the last few days before the ABC News GOP candidate debate this weekend, Newt Gingrich managed to get the most prominent headlines from among the set of them, with his statement Friday to the Jewish Channel Cable TV Network:

“Remember, there was no Palestine as a state,” he said. “I think we have an invented Palestinian people who are in fact Arabs and historically part of the Arab community and they had the chance to go many places.”

In a diary here Saturday about this, I speculated:

The goal of these candidates, in bringing up Israel, is not so much designed to court Jewish Republican voters, but to court Christian Zionists.  78% of American Jews voted for Obama in 2008, and most will vote for him again. Fundamentalist Christians who believe in the necessity of repopulating the “Holy Land” with Jews to facilitate the coming of the end times represent a high percentage of the GOP voters who will determine their party’s candidate in the caucuses and primaries.

In a post-debate panel discussion Saturday on Current TV, Cenk Uygur pressed his panel on this same point:

Uygur seemed more animated in bringing this up than any of his panelists.  But he was able to do that.  I doubt he would have been cleared to go down this line if he was still at MSNBC.

After the Palestine issue came up during the debate, while it was still happening, Max Blumenthal tweeted:

Sawyer & Stephanapoulos smile & avoid pointed follow-up questions to racist and ahistorical invective against Palestinians

“Racist and ahistorical invective” it was.  Though Sawyer and Stephanapoulos (and Al Gore on Cenk’s panel) were far beyond merely glib, other news sources did follow-up.

The Washington Post fact-checked Gingrich’s debate claim about Palestinian textbooks:

“These people are terrorists. They teach terrorism in their schools. They have textbooks that say, ‘If there are 13 Jews and nine Jews are killed, how many Jews are left?’ We pay for those textbooks through our aid money. ”

–Gingrich

During the debate, Gingrich reiterated his controversial claim the Palestinians are an “invented people,” which has been criticized in some Republican quarters. But he also raised a new charge about Palestinian textbooks, which he said the United States pays for “through our aid money.”

This funding claim is correct only in an indirect sense: The United States is the largest single-state donor for the U.N. Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA), providing nearly $250 million in 2011. As a recent Congressional Research Service report made clear, this funding is closely scrutinized by Congress. But UNRWA underwrites the schooling of Palestinian refugees and thus provides money for textbooks

The issue of Palestinian textbooks is controversial, one the Palestinian Authority says it is addressing. We cannot immediately find evidence of the statement claimed by Gingrich, and it is not clear if he is referring to a statement in one of the newer textbooks.

There have been a number of reports by pro-Israel groups that say the textbooks in Palestinian schools reinforce hatred of Jews. But one Palestinian expert has argued that studies in English that claim to show such bias in Palestinian textbooks are “based on innuendo, exaggeration, and downright lies.”

Here is what the State Department’s human rights report said about the new Palestinian text books:

The PA Ministry of Education and Higher Education completed the revision of its primary and secondary textbooks in 2006. International academics concluded the textbooks did not incite violence against Jews, but showed imbalance, bias, and inaccuracy. Some maps in Palestinian textbooks did not depict the current political reality, showing neither Israel nor the settlements. Palestinian textbooks, used in Palestinian schools, as well as in Jerusalem municipality-administered schools in East Jerusalem, inconsistently defined the 1967 borders and failed to label areas and cities with both Arabic and Hebrew names.

But the Israeli media has reported that Israeli educational system “is hardly better than the Palestinian one when it comes to inserting political messages in textbooks.”

The WaPo story didn’t address the issues of Palestinian authenticity, the “rocket every day” canard, or unwillingness of Palestinians to cut a fair deal with the Israelis, because, Newt alleges, they instead want that ” not a single Jew will remain.”

Let’s examine the authenticity issue.  On Friday, in the JCCTV interview, Gingrich said:

“Remember there was no Palestine as a state. It was part of the Ottoman empire.” He added that Palestinians were “an invented Palestinian people who are in fact Arabs”.

Give that historian an “F-minus.”

The most authentic early mention of Palestine that has come down to us from an author outside of the Levant, is that of Herodotus, in his 420BCE book, the Histories.  He described “Syria Palaistine” several times.  But no Israel.  The earliest local authentic description of a word used elsewhere to identify the geographic area known more recently as Palestine, was about 700 years earlier, with the use by the XX Dynasty of Egypt (c. 1150 BCE) of the term “Peleset.” But no Israel.  That term did not exist to define a physical place until later.

1150 to 420 BCE were important times in the history of Judaism, and fundamentalist Christianity.  But a lot of what has and has not been found archeologically, that might show evidence of a strong state in the area of Palestine, that was predominantly or solely Jewish in a sense we might recognize, leaves immense holes in any assertion that accepts much of what early-date Biblical material fundamentalists believe as fact.  Many of these supposed historical events that fundamentalists accept as fact are not.  They are myths.

Since Herodotus called the area Syria Palaistine, the area now comprising Israel, Gaza and the occupied West Bank, has been called something like that by post-Alexandrian Greeks, Romans, Byzantines, Caliphs, Crusaders, Ottomans and British.  They have called the place “Palestine.”

So many tribes have moved into and out of the place over the thousands of years, that the political constructs of Arab and Jew, or Palestinian and Israeli are just that – political.  In countries that call themselves Muslim states or Jewish states, politics IS religion all too often.

The argument Gingrich is attempting to bring to the fore here isn’t just calculated to gain a few fundamentalist votes in Iowa and elsewhere.  It is a conscious effort by an experienced candidate to dig down into the lower reaches of the ideologies of GOP primary likely voters, to begin bringing out the same enthusiasm Palin could pull off in 2008.

Gingrich’s main inroads right now may be among Christian Zionists who were supporting Cain, and from a peeling away of evangelicals who were trying to digest Romney.  Maybe somebody reliable is polling that.

We’ll see if he can pull it off.  Maybe having Franklin Graham re-convert him to fundamentalism after Newt carries Pennsylvania (April 24th) would help cinch the deal.  After all, this is the most cynical and desperate set of major candidates many of us have ever witnessed.

This past week GOP presidential candidate hopeful Newt Gingrich, from his new perch as alleged frontrunner, made two controversial statements regarding Israel and the Palestinians.  Here was Wednesday:

Newt Gingrich told a gathering of Jewish Republicans Wednesday that he would name former United Nations Ambassador John Bolton to be his secretary of state if elected president, and would immediately move the U.S. embassy in Israel from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem.

Mr. Gingrich showed his trademark flare for provocation as he spoke at a presidential candidates’ forum sponsored by the Republican Jewish Coalition, pledging not to let President Barack Obama dodge his invitation to debate and invoking Mr. Bolton, who advocates an interventionist foreign policy and hawkish stance toward Iran, a longtime antagonist of Israel.

On Friday, Gingrich claimed that the Palestinians are an “invented” people, in an interview with the Jewish Channel Cable Network:

“Remember, there was no Palestine as a state,” he said. “I think we have an invented Palestinian people who are in fact Arabs and historically part of the Arab community and they had the chance to go many places.”

The promise on Bolton prompted some to question whether or not Gingrich may have violated some law by offering up Bolton’s name.  He had not.  He’s not the first presidential candidate to promise to move the U.S. embassy in Israel from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem, either.  Both Bill Clinton and George W. Bush made the same campaign promise, only to forget about it once elected.

Gingrich’s statement regarding the Palestinian peoples’ authenticity has elicited some severe criticism from Palestinians in the occupied territories:

The Palestinian Prime Minister, Salam Fayyad, demanded that Gingrich “review history.”

“From the beginning, our people have been determined to stay on their land,” Fayyad said in comments reported by the Palestinian news agency Wafa. “This, certainly, is denying historical truths.”

Saeb Erekat, the chief Palestinian negotiator, accused Gingrich of incitement. “Mark my words … these statements of Gingrich’s will be the ammunitions and weapons of the bin Ladens and the extremists for a long, long time,” Erekat told CNN.

Palestinian legislator Hanan Ashrawi, a top official in the PLO, said that Gingrich was seeking a “cheap way” to win Jewish and pro-Israel voters in next year’s election.

Sen. Carl Levin, from Michigan, a state with many relocated Palestinians, was critical:

[Levin] said “Gingrich’s cynical efforts to attract attention to himself with divisive and destructive statements will not help his presidential ambitions since they are aimed at putting the peace between Israel and the Palestinians that Americans yearn for even further out of reach than it is today.”

The presidential hopeful, Levin said, “offered no solutions — just a can of gasoline and a match.”

The reactions prompted his campaign to have to issue a clarification today:

Mr. Gingrich’s spokesman issued a clarification Saturday afternoon. “Newt Gingrich supports a negotiated peace agreement between Israel and the Palestinians, which will necessarily include agreement between Israel and the Palestinians over the borders of a Palestinian state,” the spokesman, R.C. Hammond, said in a statement.

“However, to understand what is being proposed and negotiated you have to understand decades of complex history, which is exactly what Gingrich was referencing during the recent interview with The Jewish Channel.”

The competition among GOP presidential race candidates to show who is most loyal to the Jewish State is keen.  Remarking on how ridiculous some GOP statements of fealty to Zionism have been, one @chucktodd tweeted:

Will someone one-up Romney and pledge to give their inaugural address FROM Israel?

Israel has come up more in these debates than it did in the 2004 and 2008 national election cycles. Many have predicted this would happen, as the GOP candidates seem to feel compelled to outdo each other in criticism of Obama’s policies regarding this conflict.

The goal of these candidates, in bringing up Israel, is not so much designed to court Jewish Republican voters, but to court Christian Zionists.  78% of American Jews voted for Obama in 2008, and most will vote for him again. Fundamentalist Christians who believe in the necessity of repopulating the “Holy Land” with Jews to facilitate the coming of the end times represent a high percentage of the GOP voters who will determine their party’s candidate in the caucuses and primaries.

I’m wondering if Gingrich is going to get off scott free on his statements and misstatements this past week.  Ron Paul, who was banished from the Republican Jewish Coalition debate, for having been critical of Israeli policies in the past, will probably lead attacks on Gingrich, but may steer clear of this set of issues.

Gingrich really is a target-rich candidate for a host of reasons.

Almost two years ago, author, journalist, blogger, videographer and expert on fundamentalisms, Max Blumenthal, was a guest for the firedoglake Book Salon, when his book Republican Gomorrah, came out.  I wrote an introductory diary for The Seminal (the predecessor here of My firedoglake), titled Watching Max Blumenthal Grow to Be a Major American Writer.  In it, I made some observations about this young writer that have held well since.

I met Max when he came to Wasilla, investigating Sarah Palin’s religious beliefs and those of her close followers.  I live in Wasilla, so he stayed with Ms. ET and me.  As I wrote in 2009, our son had just left for college in California, and we were empty-nesters for the first time.  We took him in like a son, and would have loved it if he had stayed for weeks instead of days.

Since  2008, when I got to know this incredibly committed young researcher, we’ve kept in intermittent touch, and I headed the efforts to fund his return to Alaska in September, 2009, for talks about Republican Gomorrah.

Blumenthal’s efforts are phenomenally broad.  Over the past few months he has interviewed Jewish citizens in Turkey about their lives there, dealt in detail with the background of Anders Breivik, investigated racism and eliminationism in the teachings, writings and activities of West Bank settler rabbis, helped bust the people in the behind-the-scenes activities to deter the 2011 Gaza flotilla from succeeding, continued his longstanding battle to expose Andrew Breitbart, covered AIPAC’s 2011 convention, continued his documentation of Pastor James Hagee’s weird Christianist Zionism, and has been in and out of Lebanon through most of August, where he has interviewed longtime Palestinian refugees there:

I recently spent three weeks in Lebanon to research the Palestinian refugee situation and the effects of the uprising in Syria on the region. I will be writing extensively about my trip when I return from Israel-Palestine later this month. For now, I have posted my appearance on Transit, a current affairs/political interview program on Lebanon’s Future TV (the official network of the Hariri family’s Future Party). To my complete surprise, the producers decided to air the complete, uncensored “Feeling the Hate in Jerusalem” video in the middle of the interview. The video punctuated a lengthy discussion of issues ranging from AIPAC to the Tea Party to the Palestinian statehood resolution to Barack Obama’s disappointing presidency.

In London, last week, Max was interviewed by sternchenproductions.  These interviews provide examples of why Blumenthal may be one of the most important young people covering global issues at this time.  The producers divided their output into separate subjects that Max discusses.

What is most important about the three clips from the interview posted below is perhaps the depth Blumenthal’s sense of what journalism is deeply informs his approach to his craft, and his comments on the dilemma so many other journalists have failed to solve creatively. The three clips are fairly long, adding up to a half hour. It is well worth the time to watch, though.

The Role of the Media in the Israel Palestine Conflict:

Blumenthal’s reference to his being cut off from mainstream media access for being unwilling to be “collegial” resonates with Cenk Uyger’s piece on his withdrawal from MSNBC.

Christian Zionism in the USA:

“A figure of Jesus appearing in a deodorant stick.” Nobody explains the cynical relationship between Christian Zionists and settlement expansionists better than Max. The cynicism of this is more and more implicit in Max’s work over these past three years. Max’s take on an aspect of the cognitive dissonance of Israeli rightwing support of Glen Beck is almost poetry – “A symphony of anti-Semitic dogwhistles.”

Citizen Journalism:

As Blumenthal describes the MO of opposition to his work, fdl devotees might find a helluva lot to identify with.  In the beginning of his summation, Max challenges NPR‘s Terry Gross to give his upcoming book, which will be about Palestine and Israel, the same time she gave his last one.

Max Blumenthal’s ability to look inward and outward about what he is looking at, learning, writing about, and taking to the next level, deserves a far wider audience than has been the case.

Bookmark his site.

Rep. Howard Berman (CA-28) is secretly circulating a House Resolution that seeks to force Palestinian leaders to:

cease all efforts at circumventing the negotiation process, including efforts to gain recognition of a Palestinian state from other nations, within the United Nations, and in other international forums prior to achievement of a final agreement between Israel and the Palestinians, and calls upon foreign governments not to extend such recognition.

It also seeks to force the Obama administration to:

lead a diplomatic effort to persuade other nations to oppose a unilateral declaration of a Palestinian state and to oppose recognition of a Palestinian state by other nations, within the United Nations, and in other international forums prior to achievement of a final agreement between Israel and the Palestinians.

The organization U.S. Campaign to End the Occupation created a petition addressed to Berman late yesterday, to be hand-delivered to Berman should it obtain 5,000 signatures.  This morning and early afternoon it has easily gotten that many signers.

Their petition simply reads:

Dear Rep. Berman,

I oppose your resolution condemning Palestinian efforts to achieve statehood. As Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. wrote in his famous “Letter from a Birmingham Jail,” the worst stumbling block to freedom’s advance is the person who “paternalistically believes he can set the timetable for another man’s [or woman’s] freedom.” It is a shame that you have decided to push through Congress a resolution setting a timeline on Palestinian freedom.

Here’s a link to the petition.

As some here may know, last month three Latin American countries, Argentina, Uruguay and Brazil, recognized a Palestinian State with borders marked by the pre-1967 War line, the so-called Green Line. This caused consternation in the U.S. and Israeli governments:

In rapid succession, Brazil, Argentina, and Uruguay have officially recognized a free and independent Palestinian state, adding an unexpected twist to the U.S.-backed push for Middle East peace. The South American neighbors said that the Palestinian state should be based on the borders of the West Bank and Gaza before Israel took control of the territories in the 1967 Six-Day War. Palestinians welcomed the news, Israel called it “regrettable,” and the U.S. said it could be a “counterproductive” distraction from peace negotiations.

Berman, who stated at the time of his appointment to the chair of the House Foreign Affairs Committee that “[e]ven before I was a Democrat, I was a Zionist,”  has been one of the strongest backers of going to war against Iran.  He has made a number of false statements regarding Iranian nuclear capabilities and intentions.

The House Foreign Affairs Committee (soon to be renamed the House Committee on Sanctions and Accountability /s) has a history of being led by hawks who are willing to lie us into wars.  Berman was preceded by the late Tom Lantos, co-creator of the fictitious “Nurse Nariya” during the first Gulf War.  Berman will be succeeded by GOP Representative Ileana Ros-Lehtinen, who last week had a hand in Rep. Ron Klein’s HR 1751, which, while “list[ing] by name 22 countries that offered/sent help to fight the fire  ….. omits any mention of the fact that the Palestinian Authority” sent key equipment and trained firefighters to the devastating wildfires in Israel.

Berman’s Resolution, like many Israeli-designed House and Senate resolutions, is designed to limit both the power of the president, and to send a message to the European Union, where there is growing momentum for that body to follow the leads of Brazil, Argentina and Uruguay.

Please go here and sign the U.S. Campaign to End the Occupation’s petition.

UPDATE:
No longer a “secret” resolution.  From M. J.Rosenberg at TPM Cafe (emphases added):

At last the United States is responding to Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu’s refusal to freeze settlements and re-start negotiations with the Palestinians.

Congressman Howard Berman (D-CA), chair of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, is today rushing to the House floor with an AIPAC-drafted resolution condemning the Palestinians for publicly suggesting that, in the wake of Netanyahu’s refusal to freeze settlements and negotiate, they will consider a unilateral declaration of statehood. (As is usual with Berman, his resolution exclusively blames Palestinians for the collapse of peace talks; not a word of criticism of Israel appears.)

The Berman bill, drafted only yesterday, will be voted on today because when it comes to pleasing AIPAC there are simply no limits. (This remains true even though AIPAC is embroiled in an espionage/sex scandal that has it scrambling to find $20 million to pay off a former top employee who is threatening to produce documents exposing the lobby.)

The Berman bill will pass overwhelmingly because that is how things work in a city where policy is driven by campaign contributions – and not just on this issue.

The only difference between how AIPAC lobbyists dictate U.S. Middle East policy and pretty much every other major lobby is that AIPAC works to advance the interests of a foreign country. In other words, comparisons to the National Rifle Association would only be applicable if the gun owners that the NRA claims to represent lived in, say, Greece. Oh, and NRA-backed bills usually take longer than a day to get to the House floor.

The concluding portion of the wrongful death civil suit brought against the Israeli Defense Forces and the Israeli Defense Ministry, by the family of Rachel Corrie, begins this Thursday, in Haifa. Sessions are scheduled for October 7th, 17th, 18th and 21st. The family of the young American activist, killed in March 2003, hopes for justice. So far, the trial has revealed neglect, ineptitude and probable criminal activity of IDF members, both in Corrie’s death, and in its coverup.

Among the horrific details to emerge, perhaps the most disturbing was the role of the notorious Dr. Yehuda Hiss in Rachel Corrie’s autopsy. Here’s Max Blumenthal’s description:

Corrie’s body was transported to the Abu Kabir Forensic Institute in Tel Aviv where the notorious Dr. Yehuda Hiss autopsied her.

Who is Dr. Hiss? The chief pathologist of Israel for a decade and a half, Hiss was implicated by a 2001 investigation by the Israeli Health Ministry of stealing body parts ranging from legs to testicles to ovaries from bodies without permission from family members then selling them to research institutes. Bodies plundered by Hiss included those of Palestinians and Israeli soldiers. He was finally removed from his post in 2004 when the body of a teenage boy killed in a traffic accident was discovered to have been thoroughly gnawed on by a rat in Hiss’s laboratory. In an interview with researcher Nancy Schepper-Hughes, Hiss admitted that he harvested organs if he was confident relatives would not discover that they were missing. He added that he often used glue to close eyelids to hide missing corneas.

When Craig and Cindy Corrie learned that Hiss would perform an autopsy on their daughter, they stipulated that they would only allow the doctor to go forward if an official from the American consulate was present throughout the entire procedure. An Israeli military police report stated that an American official did indeed witness the autopsy. However, when the Corries asked American diplomatic officials including former US Ambassador to Israel Daniel Kurtzner if the report was true, they were informed that no American was present at all. The Israelis had lied to them, and apparently fixed their own report to deceive the American government.

I’ll be compiling a list of items of interest that have come up so far in trial for Thursday. But now it might be important to take a quick glimpse of the progress of the most important work of art dedicated to Corrie to yet emerge, the one-woman play, My Name is Rachel Corrie. It opened on September 24th in Portland, Oregon, and will continue there at the Stark Street Theater through October 30th. The production is getting excellent reviews:

perhaps inevitably, and aptly, it is Corrie’s own way with words — at times witty, self-aware, sparkling with idiosyncratic metaphors; at others grave and righteous — that gives this portrait such vividness. It’s the voice of someone trying to find a path to doing the right thing. And whether or not Corrie got far enough down that path, that’s a voice we all could stand to hear.

As is always the case with productions of the play in the USA, there have been demonstrators and pamphleteers outside the theater before each performance. And like other US performances of the play, editorial space was offered soon after the production began, to a representative from the Zionist expansionist point of view. In this case, to Bob Horenstein, community relations director for the Jewish Federation of Greater Portland, in Oregon Live.com:

Corrie was killed after unlawfully entering an area where Israeli forces — seeking to protect Israeli civilians who had been terrorized by repeated rocket attacks — were destroying tunnels used by Palestinian terrorists to smuggle arms illegally from Egypt into Gaza. Corrie wasn’t shielding innocent civilians; rather, she was interfering with the Israeli army’s efforts to demolish an empty house used to conceal one of these tunnels. According to an autopsy report, Corrie wasn’t crushed by a bulldozer, as widely alleged; she was killed (no less tragically) by falling debris.

While Corrie’s death garners much of the attention, there are other fallen Rachels whose stories are also tragic. British journalist Tom Gross, a former Jerusalem correspondent for the Sunday Telegraph, has referred to these as the "Forgotten Rachels," victims of the so-called "armed resistance" supported by Corrie’s ISM. They belong in this discussion, too: Rachel Levy, 17, blown up in a Jerusalem grocery store; Rachel Thaler, 16, blown up in an Israeli pizzeria; Rachel Levi, 19, shot to death while waiting for a bus; Rachel Gavish, 50, killed at home celebrating a Passover meal; Rachel Charhi, 36, blown up in a Tel Aviv cafe, leaving three young children; Rachel Shabo, 40, murdered with her three young sons while at home; Rachel Ben Abu, 16, blown up outside the entrance of a Netanya shopping mall.

Rachel Corrie’s death was unfortunate, but she had to have known of the risks of entering a military zone off-limits to civilians. In other words, she chose to put her life in danger for a cause in which she believed. By contrast, the forgotten Rachels — and Sarahs and Rivkahs and Devorahs — didn’t choose to have their lives cut short by Palestinian terrorists.

When will we ever see a play to commemorate any of their lives?

Regarding Corrie, Mr. Horenstein’s op-ed is so full of lies and distortions, I’ll turn them over to a page titled Rachel Corrie: Myths and Facts.

Regarding the question, "When will we ever see a play to commemorate any of their lives?" I agree totally with Horenstein. This meme started in early 2004, when I first attempted to perform The Skies Are Weeping in Anchorage. The meme about the Rachels was created by an Israeli blogger. At the time, when I was asked, "Why not write music about the OTHER Rachels?" I decided to find out if any of these women’s families were interested in me writing music about their tragically killed loved one. None were.

So, since then, my reply to questions posed by people such as Bob Horenstein has been, "Write it, compose it, commission it! I’ll help you produce it."

Meanwhile, the play that militant Zionist expansionists tried to stop from being performed in the USA has now been produced almost countless times, even at colleges. It has been performed in English, Swedish, German, Arabic, Hebrew, Spanish and other languages.

Sarah Palin said " I believe that the Jewish settlements should be allowed to be expanded upon, because that population of Israel is, is going to grow. More and more Jewish people will be flocking to Israel in the days and weeks and months ahead. And I don’t think that the Obama administration has any right to tell Israel that the Jewish settlements cannot expand."

Helen Thomas said, "Tell them to get the hell out of Palestine. Remember these people are occupied and it’s their land, not German and not Poland. They can go home, Poland, Germany, and America and everywhere else."

Later, Palin did not apologize. She’s still mucking things up.

Thomas, however, did apologize. She has now retired. As I wrote, at the time Thomas’ comment was read to me, "Helen really fucked up, didn’t she." So did Palin.

When it comes to militant Zionist expansionism, if you support the theft of Palestinian land, water, life, dignity or whatever, you are supported by the American political meat grinder. If you lash out at that meat grinder, you yourself often get ground up. That’s the way the process works.

I’m not defending Thomas. In a way, she was wrong. So was Palin. Why was Palin wrong?

Simple. Jewish people are not "flocking to Israel." Since Palin made that statement, last November, a lot of Jews have left Israel. Many – and this might surprise both Palin and Thomas – are flocking to – hang on, Sarah – Germany!

[M]ore Jews immigrated to Germany in 2005 than to Israel. Four-fifths of them are Russian Jews who prefer Berlin to Beersheva. And, there are some Israelis among them who have similar preferences. In further evidence of how Israel can actually be bad for Jews, the Israeli government lobbied Germany in 2004 to restrict Jewish immigration. But there are now more Jews in Germany than there were in 1939 before the Holocaust. (True, there are not more than in the Weimar Republic, but that is where the trend line is going despite Israeli attempts to foment discriminatory immigration policies toward Jews.)

Germany, with many immigrants from non-Germanic nations, is changing rapidly, in terms of demography. So is Israel, with very large ultra-orthodox families outstripping the often very small families of secular Jews there.

A number of great articles have been written lately about how the exodus of secular Jews from Israel, combined with the growth of the ultra Orthodox segment of the population there, is turning Israel into a nation that is nothing like what American Jews feel comfortable with or comfortable about. Thomas’ discomfort, portrayed from the viewpoint of a non-Jew is less imprecatory than that of many liberal Jewish Israelis, quoted in the Israeli press on a day-to-day basis.

Although I’ve written what might be volumes about how Sarah Palin came to her views on chasing Palestinians out of Palestine (she wants Israel to fill up with Jews, who, when the machinery of the Apocalypse begins, will either convert to Palin’s faith immediately, or roast, roast, roast – you betcha!), I’ve written little about Helen Thomas.

Thomas’ Lebanese heritage has been noted by some who have come to her defense. Lebanese have wanted Israelis to leave, on and off, for years. Israelis have killed tens of thousands of Lebanese, devastated the Lebanese economy, fouled the beaches of the entire Lebanese coast with a gratuitous oil spill, and sowed millions of land mines and cluster bombs on Lebanese soil.

In an odd Palin-Thomas juxtaposition, the person who has been – at least in the past – reputed to having written most of Palin’s facebook posts, Rebecca Mansour, posted this recently on her twitter page:

Helen Thomas is a total embarrassment to my fellow Lebanese-Americans and to the Maronites. Shame on you, Helen.
about 15 hours ago via web

RAMansour
Rebecca Mansour

That’s considerably different from the views Mansour shared with me last summer, as I sought to get her to come to dinner with the progressive Alaska bloggers. She expressed anger very much along the same lines as that expressed this weekend by Thomas.

There are hundreds, if not thousands of articles that assert Palestinians should leave Palestine, or Israel, or Samaria, or Judea – whatever they want to call it, and just, well – just fucking go away. When’s the last time you heard of somebody having to retire for saying that?

How about Mike Huckabee, for instance:

[T]he Palestinians can create their homeland in many other places in the Middle East, outside Israel."

Come on, Ari Fleisher, when are you going to demand Huckabee be fired?

Not holding my breath.