Stephen Shenfield

January 30, 2016, 6:38 pm

There were really two distinct “cultural Zionisms.” The first was the “Love of Zion” movement, which arose in Russia in the 1850s, long before Herzl and organized political Zionism. The revival of Hebrew as a modern literary language began with them. Was Abraham Mapu’s Hebrew contaminated with the Yiddish and Slavic substratum that marked the Hebrew that began to develop in Palestine half a century later? I don’t know but I would guess not. The earlier cultural Zionism was more distinct from political Zionism and could provide a more genuine Hebrew alternative for those Israeli Jews who feel a need for one as they struggle to wean themselves off political Zionism.

in Cultural Zionism good, political Zionism bad

JLewisDickerson

January 30, 2016, 6:10 pm

RE: “But political Zionism–the idea that the state belongs to Jews and everyone is there at their pleasure—this has got to go.” ~ Roland Nikles

MY COMMENT: Meanwhile, the Likudniks are Whistlin’ Dixie like the devil! Seemingly with the full support of the Jewish-American establishment. Not to mention that the U.S. Congress unquestioningly has the Likudniks’ backs no matter what they do. And, as to the GOP, it is so thoroughly enraptured by Likudnik Israel’s white-like supremacism that the Israeli flag is sometimes used in leiu of the Stars and Bars.

■ TWEET:

Chemi Shalev
@ChemiShalev

Making the rounds (and turning stomachs) 2012 Netanyahu appeal in English to support proto-fascist Im Tirzu https://youtu.be/4nSxRPGCRew

[YouTube VIDEO*]

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2:48 AM – 29 Jan 2016

* PM Netanyahu’s message to ‘Im Tirtzu’ supporters

Uploaded on Jan 26, 2012
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s message to ‘Im Tirtzu’ Supporters

in Cultural Zionism good, political Zionism bad

Shmuel

January 30, 2016, 5:38 pm

But Feldman’s real problem with Netanyahu is that he supported Republicans?

in 'I cannot support Israel as long as Netanyahu is in office'-- many American Jews are saying

irishmoses

January 30, 2016, 5:00 pm

I agree, scream-inducing.

Wonderful irony at the very end: The radio is playing Amazing Grace and the soldier says, “That’s one of those Negro prayer songs, isn’t it?” The irony escapes him.

in Jewish West Bank settlers are as smug as white South Africans in 1980

Keith

January 30, 2016, 4:43 pm

PHIL- (Feldman quote)- “I still support it wholly and completely, but don’t agree with many of the things that are going on there.”

Why does he support Israel wholly and completely? Does this sound like a split with Israel or discontent with Netanyahu? In the video Feldman says that God gave the land to the Jews. Is this your idea of liberalism? Feldman is a Zionist to the core and is not going to change.

OBAMA QUOTE (to Jews)- “I know you support Israel. But I also know that you love and support the United States.”

Yes, Zionist Jews are loyal supporters of empire as well. How could they not be, what with Israel’s dependence upon imperial support?

Let me add that what Zionist Jews like Feldman would like to see is a corporate run Jewish State of Israel that replaces obvious apartheid with comfortable legal fictions like South Africa where transnational capital and white businessmen continue to rule behind a Black veneer.

in 'I cannot support Israel as long as Netanyahu is in office'-- many American Jews are saying

Krauss

January 30, 2016, 3:52 pm

Even though I am an anti-Zionist, I largely agree with your thesis. This whole “coming break” isn’t coming.

It’s another episode of shoot-and-cry Zionism; we’ve seen this movie countless times.

When the chips are down, all these “liberal” Zionists line up behind Apartheid. If Netanyahu would lose the next election and a Labour leader would take over, soften the rhetoric but continue the fundamental project, all these shoot-and-cry Zionists would stop their bleating and attack anyone who dares to criticise Jewish apartheid as “anti-Semitic” and so on.

I’m tired of seeing these delusional posts from Phil. He does them as therapy, because he himself does not want to believe just how firmly Zionist the Jewish community(at least his generation) truly is. He does not want to accept that so many of them are total hypocrites on the issue of race and nationalism, that they are only holding their positions in the U.S. because it benefits them as a minority community but that Israel is what exposes their true political leanings.

We were supposed to see I/P become an election issue this primary as well. Didn’t happen, as many of us warned. I repeat: if white Apartheid had even 10% of the support that Jewish apartheid has today in the media/donor class, Mandela would have been assassinated a long time ago and Afrikaaners would still be in power today.

It’s becoming increasingly clear that Jewish apartheid has much wider support than white Apartheid ever managed to have, and that Jewish support for Apartheid is almost unbreakable in comparison. Phil may not like that, but that’s the reality.

in 'I cannot support Israel as long as Netanyahu is in office'-- many American Jews are saying

Annie Robbins

January 30, 2016, 3:32 pm

thanks genesto.

in After 'tepid' welcome at Israeli Embassy, Obama's pro-Israel speech brought down the house

echinococcus

January 30, 2016, 3:20 pm

Rabbi Shmuel Eliyahu is Mizrahi. His grandfather was an Iraqi Jew. His father, Mordecai, who had similar genocidal views, was the Chief Sephardic Rabbi in Israel

Wow, these Zionist geniuses can’t even keep straight their Jewish nomenclature! And they’re supposed to be Jewish, even high Rabbies etc?

His granpa is Mizrahi, Iraqi, i.e an Arab Jew, while that Arab’s son becomes a Sefardí, i.e. a Spanish-speaking Western Jew. Some metamorphosis, I tell ya. Except, of course, if the mother was a Sefardí and the father’s contribution was deemed insignificant, but that’s not how Rabbies usually work.

in The Israeli government is as responsible for Duma murders as those who threw the firebomb

Donald

January 30, 2016, 3:08 pm

I think you’re being such a purist on this one issue you won’t acknowledge degrees of difference. Probably no politician is good on all issues and sometimes none of them are good on one particular issue, but we can still make distinctions. It seems clear to me that Sanders isn’t great on the I-P issue. Obviously his main interest is domestic policy and for him foreign policy is a distraction. Frankly, I’ll take that– he isn’t nearly the warmonger Clinton is, even if he isn’t a hero. And your dismissal of Larison lacked content.

I think Sanders is to Obama’s left– I fell for Obama for about two weeks, when I heard his pastor Jeremiah Wright on Moyers’s show. But Obama soon made it very clear he wanted to be seen as mainstream and not at all like Wright. I couldn’t understand where the progressive illusions about him came from. Sanders isn’t my hero either– the whole concept of a political hero is silly. But I think you go too far the other way. If I rated every candidate on all important issues the way you rate politicians on this one particular issue, I’d never vote for anyone.

in In his war on Sanders supporters, Krugman forgets about Iraq

ahadhaadam

January 30, 2016, 3:07 pm

It sounds like you created a thesis and then you to force all evidence to confirm to your prejudice.

I don’t see any break coming any time soon. There are disagreements as there have always been and Israel is a more contentious issue these days, but at the end of the day, it is part of the identity of those secular Jews and without Israel, they simply have no identity, which is what the goal of Zionism was all along: to provide an identity to “secular Jews” as an ethno-nationalism, where Judaism is secondary and a belief in God is optional.

in 'I cannot support Israel as long as Netanyahu is in office'-- many American Jews are saying

Keith

January 30, 2016, 2:48 pm

MOOSER- “Okay, ‘be nice to Israel, or we will shoot Palestinians’ is one thing, but ‘be nice to Israel, ‘or we will shoot each other’? Now there’s a threat!”

That reminded me of the scene in “Blazing Saddles” where Cleavon Little takes himself hostage and threatens to shoot if he doesn’t get his way.

in Jewish West Bank settlers are as smug as white South Africans in 1980

RoHa

January 30, 2016, 2:47 pm

“Or New Zealand.”

If they are really, really, desperate.

in Jewish West Bank settlers are as smug as white South Africans in 1980

genesto

January 30, 2016, 2:45 pm

Very well put, Annie. I completely agree with your take on this.

in After 'tepid' welcome at Israeli Embassy, Obama's pro-Israel speech brought down the house

Annie Robbins

January 30, 2016, 2:34 pm

Arabs like George Clooney also can be white

george is not arab although his wife is. according to wiki “Clooney has Irish, German, and English ancestry”

in The Israeli government is as responsible for Duma murders as those who threw the firebomb

echinococcus

January 30, 2016, 2:29 pm

It’s in the text, up there.
For your convenience:
“I am referring not only to the heyday of Stalinism but also to the so-called thaw of Khrushchev’s period, when Joseph Brodsky stood trial for “parasitism” and was condemned for hard labor in Siberia. Along with, before, and after Brodsky, who will later on go on to win the Nobel Prize for Literature, many other Jewish writers and artists suffered at the hands of political authorities they did not please. In Nazi Germany, for instance, Jewish art and thought were labeled degenerate as a stand-in for all the innovative, avant-garde trends of modernism.

In the face of the painful—indeed, tragic—historical experience of Jewish artists, their freedom within the State of Israel should have been sacrosanct. Similarly inviolable in the eyes of the state should have been the artistic freedom and freedom of thought of non-Jewish residents, given the clear resemblance between their position and that of countless diasporic Jews…”

I particularly like the reason given for accepting “similarly inviolable” rights for non-Jews in the Zionist entity.
That’s a keeper.

in Can there be poetry after Netanyahu?

Annie Robbins

January 30, 2016, 2:18 pm

I am getting typist’s cramps from repeating the same discussion with each one of the Bernie-Sistersandbrothers, multiple times for each, without any response

this reminds me of the last election season. there were long long threads about ron paul, generally making the same arguments in each one. certain posters, they could go on forever.

for me, i gave my opinion (the same one) a few times over and then just stopped engaging because it became redundant repeating myself. and then if i had a new opinion i would post that. but i very much hope (for the sake of moderations) we don’t have endless reiterations of the same argument all the way thru the primary season. and then if he wins the primary, on thru november. just saying — in case those typist cramps get to you… i think everyone here understands your point.

in In his war on Sanders supporters, Krugman forgets about Iraq

Annie Robbins

January 30, 2016, 2:12 pm

Call me the eternal optimist

a man after my own heart. me too — fingers crossed. i know it may be naive but i can’t help it.

in After 'tepid' welcome at Israeli Embassy, Obama's pro-Israel speech brought down the house

echinococcus

January 30, 2016, 2:04 pm

“Jon66”,

my preferred choice would be an end to the occupation through a negotiated settlement. Israel and Egypt agreed on withdrawal from the occupied Sinai but only after a peace agreement. I don’t think there is any good from the occupation and that’s why it should end.

Finally a Zionist after my heart! Of course I approve your exceptional, peaceful approach and the occupation must end, sure.

So when are you signing the papers and getting out of all Palestine?

Now that you mentioned it, I suppose the Palestinians won’t object to your taking all your science and technology with you, back to wherever you came from.

in The world the settlers made

Misterioso

January 30, 2016, 1:54 pm

Annie

Excellent response. I agree with you.

Call me the eternal optimist, but I think Obama will come down hard on Israel before his presidency ends. The madness cannot continue. The consequences would be horrific.

I suggest we keep our eyes on the UN. If sanity prevails, the US will not veto a UNSC resolution condemning Israel. Fingers crossed.

in After 'tepid' welcome at Israeli Embassy, Obama's pro-Israel speech brought down the house

echinococcus

January 30, 2016, 1:48 pm

Well, if you are the Membership Committee of the “Progressives” you should then give a clear definition of the term. In my world, no imperialist or warmonger can be considered “progressive” and Mr. Sanders has a record of supporting imperialism and inciting for war long like my arm.
As for “realism”, there are many different ways of being realistic and you again seem to ha