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Ms. Weir Goes to Washington (excerpt)
[Excerpt by Jan Leary, co-founder of the New England Network for Justice for Palestine, from Harry Clark's article published on CounterPunch September 9, 2016.] The scurrilous attack in summer, 2015 on Alison Weir and If Americans Knew by Jewish Voice for Peace and US Campaign to End the Occupation, has threatened Weir and her audiences with violence. On March 30, Weir spoke at the Walnut Creek, CA public library, about her book Against Our Better Judgment, about Zionist influence on foreign policy. A few weeks before, Weir had been warned by Walnut Creek police of hateful on-line incitement to disrupt the talk; the threat referred to the JVP-USC material against Weir. The Walnut Creek Parks and Recreation Department received phone calls from people planning to protest the talk. The talk, sponsored by the Mount Diablo Peace and Justice Center and Rossmoor Voices for Justice in Palestine, was well-attended, including by members of Stand With Us, an Israel propaganda outfit. They protested with signs and handed out fliers, also referring to the JVP/USC material. At the talk, five protestors seated themselves in the front row, and more stood at the back of the hall holding signs. During the talk, SWU protestors shouted repeatedly at Weir, prompting some audience members to call for them to stop. Only by speaking loudly, directly into the microphone, could Weir make herself heard. Helen Lowenstein of SWU, a significant donor to pro-Israel organizations, according to Weir, was escorted from the hall by Walnut Creek police. She “swiped at” an audience member who was recording her, and was arrested and taken away in handcuffs. The Bay Area Jewish press decried an outbreak of anti-Semitism in their version of events.(1) As of this writing, the Contra Costa County district attorney’s office has not prosecuted Lowenstein. One supporter later wrote to Weir, “Alison, your equanimity was extremely impressive—I think that really strengthened the message, because it made clear that facts and reason are on our side and the Zionists are nasty bullies.” Weir said that she didn’t actually feel calm, but was glad it seemed that way. Weir, a journalist in the Bay Area, became interested in the Palestine question upon the outbreak of the second Palestinian intifada, uprising against Israeli occupation, in fall, 2000. She became an activist and founded If Americans Knew (2), dedicated to informing the public, following her return to the Bay Area from a two-month trip to Palestine in early 2001. JVP was at that time also based in the Bay Area, and Weir felt some of them were from the outset whispering accusations of anti-Semitism, for her endorsement of the Palestinian right of return and a single democratic state. For a decade and more, Weir and IAK published studies of the media, reports on Israeli human rights violations, historical articles, and videos, about many aspects of the Palestine issue, in Palestine and the US. Weir traveled and spoke extensively, gaining a wide following. At the same the time attacks on Weir by left Jewish groups and individuals continued. (3) In 2014, Weir published independently a book, Against Our Better Judgment. How the U.S. was used to Create Israel (4), 93 pages of dry prose and 135 of footnotes and bibliography, which has sold an extraordinary 27,000 copies, according to Weir. (5) None of her facts are new, but many are obscure, and their sum acutely depicts Zionist influence in the US from before World War I to Israel’s establishment.** (see below) Many facts in Weir’s book doubtless aroused JVP, whose chief objection to Weir is her emphasis on the Israel Lobby, mainly Jewish institutions, as the chief reason for unconditional US support for Israel. JVP claims, after Noam Chomsky and others, that the US-Israel relationship is due to Israel’s value as a US “strategic asset,” and that the Lobby is powerful only when it supports US interests. The first article in JVP’s 2004 book Reframing Anti-Semitism. Alternative Jewish Perspectives bemoaned “the Jewish conspiracy theories of some on the left,” those for whom “a Jewish conspiracy is much simpler” than the “complexity” that belies any decisive Jewish influence. (8) The US Campaign to End the Occupation shares that aversion to the Israel Lobby critique. In 2011, Medea Benjamin and Code Pink called for a national demonstration against the annual meeting of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, AIPAC, at which the top of the federal government and half of Congress make obeisance. (9) US Campaign and JVP have never attempted to organize such a demonstration, and they carefully “endorsed” it, while doing nothing to encourage turnout. Phyllis Bennis, a perennial figure at the US Campaign, and a minor writer on “strategic asset,” has long opposed efforts to disseminate the Israel Lobby critique. (10) She refused to debate the Israel Lobby with Jeffrey Blankfort, on the grounds that it “wouldn’t be useful,” echoing verbatim the demurrals of Chomsky, Beinin and JVPer Mitchell Plitnick. (11) Somehow, despite her “strategic asset” advocacy, Bennis presided over the program of talks about the Israel Lobby at the Code Pink AIPAC protest. Bennis was a “board-nominated” candidate for the JVP board of directors election in August, 2016. A “board-nominated” candidate is the JVP leadership’s way of instructing the membership how to vote, and Bennis was duly elected. The nomination may have been in view of services rendered over the years. Speculation in Washington last summer focused on Bennis as the éminence grise of the attack on Weir, though details were scarce. Professors John Mearsheimer and Stephen Walt, authors of the celebrated The Israel Lobby and U.S. Foreign Policy, were featured in the plenary sessions, while Stephen Sniegoski, author of The Transparent Cabal, The Neoconservative Agenda, War in the Middle East, and the National Interest of Israel was proposed, but rejected. Alison Weir and other writer-activists, including Jeff Blankfort, photographer (12) and journalist, (13) Janet McMahon of Washington Report on Middle East Affairs (14) and Grant Smith of Institute for Research: Middle East Policy (15) were relegated to a workshop in the basement, which was very well attended. Code Pink repeated the event in 2012, but the Israel Lobby critics were allowed only to hold an event in the hall afterward, with the hall stripped of all Code Pink identifying material, and the audience invited to further events scheduled elsewhere at the same time. One hundred twenty-five attendees remained in the hall to hear the Lobby critics. In 2013, the critics were banned from the program altogether. All of the candidates for the JVP board save one were board-nominated or incumbent, as in earlier elections; the first-ever “self-nominated” candidate lost. The election required a quorum of 20% (1250) of the JVP membership, which was achieved only in the final hours of a 10-day period of on-line voting. This gives the impression of an organization run by and for an autocratic leadership, licensed by a small minority willing to select among the list of approved candidates, a democratic facade common on the authoritarian left. It would appear that the JVP leadership is accountable mainly to itself and its donors, while presuming to define the collective decisions. JVP claims great importance as “a national organization closely connected to a growing grassroots base. We have 200,000 supporters on our email list, 10,000 individual donors, over 60 chapters across the United States, a staff of 25… ” After twenty years of existence, JVP is only about 1300 people nationwide, less than 5% of the number who purchased Alison Weir’s book within two years of publication. JVP’s donor base is less than 40% of the readership Weir garnered in two years. If Americans Knew has 16,000 on their email list, and 175,000 Facebook followers, all as a byproduct of Weir’s research, publication and speaking, with minimal attention to organization building. The programs, literature and outreach of JVP suggest that building the organization is their main task. Like the rest of the Israel Lobby, JVP has little to do with the views of the American people, but imposes itself by being relentless, highly organized, and well funded. [Information about JVP funding is expanded in the full article.] The JVP membership was not consulted by the leadership over their blacklisting against Weir. Criticism erupted within the ranks when the attack on Weir became public in the spring of 2015. The online JVP member forum (which in early July replaced an email list) was full of discussion, many opposed to blacklisting Weir. In mid-July Stanford professor Joel Beinin, historian of the modern Middle East and founding member of JVP, then contributed his own attack on Weir. At the end of August, after two months of JVP member dissension, the forum was taken off-line for a month, with stern warnings about “civility”. That term is a familiar censor’s ploy, and at least one person was ejected from the forum discussion. When the forum reopened again in October, there was no further discussion of Alison Weir. (This writer had access to the forum as a dues-paying JVP member. The forum guidelines state that material should not be used without permission, but also state that material should be considered public. JVP’s attack on Alison Weir is a public matter.) Joel Beinin wrote:
The nominal causes of JVP’s “disassociation” and US Campaign to End the Occupation’s expulsion of If Americans Knew were interviews she gave to right-wing journalists, among hundreds given to others, such as Clay Douglas, an obscure figure with a tiny audience. The version of Douglas’s web page from last summer, when the attack on Weir became public, is available on the ‘Wayback Machine internet archive’. (39) … Douglas’s web pages also detail interests in Donald Trump, chem trails, Bitcoin, survivalism and other popular obsessions. The pages are crude, obviously made by a self-taught programmer. JVP was especially incensed that Clay Douglas cited the Protocols of the Elders of Zion, the Russian anti-Semitic forgery, among other anti-Semitic references on his pages. Douglas is not the only critic of Israel to cite the Protocols. The late activist and scholar Tanya Reinhart referred to the “present situation with the US lobby- as if the Protocols of the Elders of Zion had come to life.” (41) TV comedian Jon Stewart referred to the “elders of AIPAC” in a piece on presidential candidate pandering. (42) Whether one views Douglas as an anti-Semite, or someone with a crude, ugly misapprehension of the real problem of Jewish power, perhaps depends on whether one views the Israel Lobby thesis as either “objective anti-Semitism” or basically valid. JVP and End the Occupation collapse the complex, contradictory personality of Douglas into a “hate” figure in order to smear Weir. Beinin uses vague, menacing show-trial language such as “associating with” and “consorting with” to make Weir’s granting interviews seem sinister and ominous. Rather than being blacklisted, it is better that far right audiences hear about distinctions between the Jewish public and organized Jewish leadership, as Weir presented. It is important to note that Douglas, and other right-wing outlets that interviewed Weir, such as American Free Press and Mark Dankof, have also interviewed Jewish critics of Zionism like Ilan Pappe, Jennifer Loewenstein and even Rebecca Vilkomerson of JVP, as well as many non-Jewish critics. But those people were not attacked as anti-Semitic by JVP and US Campaign. The “most fundamental question that any movement must ask” is what it stands for. It appears that JVP stands for, among other things, Jewish control of the Palestine movement, behavior as old as “the occupation” itself. A generation ago the New Jewish Agenda sought to remove from progressive politics the goal of reducing US aid to Israel. (44) Today JVP seeks to suppress the Israel Lobby critique, and uses the charge of anti-Semitism for its ends, as does mainstream Jewish groups. Weir was accused of violating the “anti-racism principles” of the US Campaign to End the Occupation by unnamed member organizations (45). The “anti-racism” principles claim to “oppose Islamophobia, anti-Semitism, all forms of racism, and any other expressions of bigotry directed at any person or group.” JVP also claims that “our central tenet is opposition to racism in all its forms.” (46) The “anti-racism principles” were drawn up in 2013, likely as part of a long-term vendetta against Weir. The “principles” mention only anti-Semitism and Islamophobia, which was protested (47). Islamophobia has no followers in Palestine ranks, and “anti-racism principles” are unnecessary to oppose it. The “principles” ignore the history and literature of Zionism as a form of racism (48) and of Jewish anti-gentilism in the “diaspora.” This suggests that the purpose of the “anti-racism principles” is to support accusations of anti-Semitism, a common gambit of “anti-racist” politics world-wide. The insistence of US Campaign and JVP that they “oppose all forms of racism” while they use “anti-racism principles” that omit Zionism to mount a show trial over anti-Semitism calls to mind Lewis Carroll’s Through the Looking Glass:
This was so egregious that, last summer, when the campaign against Alison Weir was at its height, the JVP leadership promised a “Zionism study group” to which members could “apply,” which would formulate a position on Zionism. Unsurprisingly and unfortunately, the idea died until one member raised the question again this spring, and was seconded by eight other members. Facing another mutiny within the JVP ranks, Joel Beinin again wrote to explain why taking a position on Zionism was inadvisable. Unlike younger JVP members, Beinin understands that examining Zionism would expose the racialism and racism on which JVP is based. As with any mature discussion regarding the JVP attack on Alison Weir, the Zionism study group discussion was disallowed. The attack on Alison Weir shows, among many things, JVP’s “Jewish politics” as power and privilege. “Jewish identity” can only be a personal, individual matter. Beyond and outside a religious congregation, collectively it is a form of Zionism. As Peter Beinart observed, “privately, American Jews revel in Jewish power. But publicly, we often avoid discussing it for fear of feeding anti-Semitic myths.” (49) Such reveling has for 50 years suppressed the critical tasks of the left:
The ‘left’ includes classical Reform Judaism, which rejected Jewish peoplehood and affirmed the position of Jews as a religious minority. Marxist internationalism viewed nationalism as an impediment to the unity of the working class and Zionism as colonialism. The late Israel Shahak dated “the modern secular [non-] Jewish tradition” from Spinoza, the greatest of the 17th c rationalist philosophers, who was expelled from his Amsterdam synagogue for his modern ideas; Shahak rejected Zionism as pre-modern recidivism. These traditions are the antipode to Zionism, and also to anti-Semitism, rather than backroom slanders about “objective anti-Semitism.” Alison Weir entered politics to address her fellow citizens, and was attacked by the left Jewish establishment not unlike Jefferson Smith’s reception in the Frank Capra movie, Mr Smith Goes to Washington. The liberal foundations of the modern world remain the only way of addressing the issues raised by Zionism and the state of Israel, as Weir understands, if the Jewish left obviously does not. ### We encourage people to also read Clark's full article for important information on the history of the neocons, Israel's long-term plan for the fragmentation of the Middle East, and an analysis of the claim that discussion of the Israel lobby constitutes, as Joel Beinin suggests,"objective anti-Semitism." ** Note: She notes the formulation in 1913 of the Parushim, Hebrew for “Pharisees,” a secret society of elite US Jews, dedicated to the advancement of Zionism. The Parushim took an oath of secrecy, and were told to regard their commitment “as greater than any other in your life—dearer than that of family, of school, of nation.” (6) Many Parushim were also publicly Zionist; the oath and secrecy reveal their fanaticism. The Parushim were founded by Horace Kallen, an academic who devised the idea of “cultural pluralism” as an alternative to the “melting pot” model of American liberalism. Pluralism allowed liberalism to accommodate a degree of ethnic identification. The Parushim were the least “ethnic” of American Jews, their backgrounds assimilated German Jewish, not the ethnically distinct Yiddish of the immigrants who arrived by the million starting in 1880. The “Jewish distinction” to which they aspired was Zionist racialism, the myths of the “Jewish people” and “land of Israel,” not the actual (non-racialist) Yiddish culture. Kallen’s “cultural pluralism” exploited liberalism in order to advance Jewish separatism, exploited Jewish success under liberalism in order to subvert it, showing how insidious Zionism is, how tempting and corrupting to Jewish intellectuals. (7) The eminent jurist Louis Brandeis was a member of the Parushim, and he resigned his public affiliations upon his appointment to the Supreme Court by President Wilson in 1916. Yet Brandeis remained covertly active for Zionism and other causes through a network of associates and proteges, notably Felix Frankfurter, who was also appointed to the Supreme Court, in 1939, and carried on the pattern. This was was highly unethical, later scholarship has argued. As early as November, 1915, Kallen suggested to a well-placed British friend that Britain declare support for Zionism in order to encourage US Jewish support for US entry into World War I, an idea that gained wide currency, and may have played some role in the US decision. Certainly, it produced the Balfour Declaration of November, 1917, by which Britain promised to facilitate creation of “a Jewish national home” in Palestine. Zionists were in the US delegation at the postwar peace conference at Versailles, as well as represented by their official delegation, and the Balfour Declaration became part of the postwar settlement in the Middle East. References(1) http://www.jweekly.com/article (2) http://ifamericansknew.org/ (3) http://www.ifamericansknew.org (4) https://ww.amazon.com/Against- (5) http://www.againstourbetterjud (6) Weir, Against Our Better Judgment, 12 (7) Naomi Cohen, The Americanization of Zionism, 1897-1948, 73-4, for a debate between Kallen and a Jewish critic (8) Jewish Voice for Peace, Reframing Anti-Semitism. An Alternative Jewish Perspective, 5 (9) http://www.counterpunch.org/20 (10) http://www.palestinechronicle. (11) http://www.gilad.co.uk/writing (12) http://www.jeffblankfortphotog (13) http://www.radio4all.net/index (14) http://www.wrmea.org (15) http://www.irmep.org (39) https://web.archive.org/web/20 (42) http://www.cc.com/video-clips/ (44) http://student.cs.ucc.ie/cs106 (45) , http://www.endtheoccupation.or (46) https://jewishvoiceforpeace.or (47) http://www.counterpunch.org/20 (48) http://eaford.org/publications http://www.press.uchicago.edu/ (49) Peter Beinart, The Crisis of Zionism, 5 Harry Clark can be reached at his web site http://questionofpalestine.net See full article here. |
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