#whether you view that as support or not you are uncritically boosting their messaging which serves their interests

[notaplaceofhonour]

for the sake of responding, i will choose to take you at your word that you don’t believe jews or israelis should be displaced or harmed (idk you & i don’t know that that is the case, but for the sake of argument, i’ll take it as given). okay, good.

(for the moment, i’m going to ignore the “anti-zionist” label you’re using to get at the substance of your argument, but I really think you should consider the degree to which, even in the best of circumstances, choosing to define yourself as “anti-[the thing someone is]” might be at odds with your desire to not be perceived as saying you are in fact their enemy, as well as to what degree choosing the term that means “self-determination for jews in the jewish homeland” to the people who define themselves by it might be contributing the perception that you are opposed to their self-determination in their homeland)

you say israel shouldn’t be the only safe rock for jews to cling to. 100% seconded. absolutely agree with that statement as written. i personally do not describe myself as a zionist (as much as that label has been forcibly applied by antisemites)—i am a non-zionist—but idk why you perceive this as an argument against zionism. i’ve never seen a single zionist argue that israel should be the only safe rock for jews, only that it is (or that it is one of them). because it’s the only country on earth where jewish self-sovereignty is not only allowed but legally sanctioned. and that self-determination is what has allowed it to be one of the last safe rocks that jews can cling to.

there are certain things you’re saying that in theory—taken at face value in a vacuum—i don’t think non-zionists & zionists would necessarily take that much issue with, even if they disagree on certain other points. but the problem is you have bought into and are expressing so many narratives & pieces of rhetoric whose logical conclusion in practice does not respect the self-determination of either Palestinians or Israelis as a whole, and has historically and continues in the present to stochastically incite people to hatred & terrorism against israelis in particular, jews in general, and anyone that coexists with them.

no matter how much it may be your stated belief that no jew should be expelled or oppressed, there isn’t really a meaningful path in the material world we all live in towards what you are arguing for (if I understand correctly, that is a 1 State 2 Peoples solution Greater Palestine, right?) that will not leave Israeli Jews (as well as Palestinian citizens of Israel and diaspora Jews) in a position where they would be vulnerable to that in practice.

i think you and i (and most Jews i know, non-zionist & zionist alike) would agree, any 1S1P solution—whether a Greater Palestine with no Jews or a Greater Israel with no Palestinians—is immoral & undesirable. we have common ground there. but i think your position fails to contend with many realities on the ground, only the first of which is this: any option that does not draw from Israeli & Palestinian movements on the ground is not one that respects & upholds self-determination for either people.

even taking as a given that a Greater Palestine 1S2P could theoretically be a decent, equitable solution if we could all just start over and israelis & palestinians all got together in a sandbox version of Eretz Israel-Palestine to build a new nation from the ground up… we don’t live in that tabula rasa world.

and there just aren’t substantial political factions or movements in either Israel or Palestine that even wants that. The PA supports a 2S2P Solution; Hamas & their allies are fighting for a 1S1P Final Solution to create a Greater Palestine; the Israeli Right opposes Palestinian Statehood (opting for either a 1S1P or 1S2P Greater Israel) and the Israeli Left supports a 2S2P Solution. those are the options on the ground.

in reality, the only faction in the land that wants a Greater Palestine & has any substantive backing from people in the land or power to force the issue is the one that wants to genocide Jews. in reality, the factions that are even considering coexistence with any substantive backing from people living in the land are the ones that support a 2 State 2 Peoples Solution or a Greater Israel 1 State 2 Peoples Solution that annexes Palestine & its population.

If you are balking at that last one and thinking “well, annexation wouldn’t turn out well for Palestinians”, Jewish Israelis have zero reason not to have the exact same reaction to any suggestion that Palestine—a country where Jews cannot safely live—annexing Israel or Israel being dissolved & replaced with a Greater Palestine, would be safe for them.

There’s also, in your assertion that Zionism or Israel is uniquely founded on displacement or violence against another people (in a way that Palestine & the Palestinian National Movement somehow is not), just a deeply problematic failure to understand the invasion by the Arab Nations that started the 1948 war and mass violence/displacement of Jews from any part of Palestine outside of Israel came before the Nakba (Plan Dalet was late in the war, and a response to this Palestinian violence against Jews, not the other way around), that anti-Jewish riots in Palestine & the Palestinian leadership including Nazi sympathizers/allies like Amin al-Husseini & Fawzi al-Qawuqji predates any Jews removing Palestinians from their homes or land, and that more Palestinians lived in Israel after the 48 war than Jews did in Palestine—which is true to this day.

That isn’t to suggest anti-Palestinian violence & displacement didn’t happen or was justified or acceptable. It happened, and it’s not okay. But this framing is an erasure of anti-Jewish violence in the past, and motivates people to sympathize with—and at best handle with kid gloves if not openly support—pro-genocide/ethnic-cleansing terrorist organizations like Hamas or the PFLP.

You specifically display a level of pragmatic acceptance towards terrorist organizations like Hamas and the PFLP (both of which have stated goals ranging from ethnic cleansing to genocide—goals for which they put their money where their mouth is) via the “well Palestinians have no other choice” argument that you don’t seem to be willing to grant to Israel & Israelis, despite being surrounded by countries that are actively trying to wipe Jews off the map & have been trying to destroy Israel since the moment it declared independence—before Israel displaced even a single Arab.

You talk about hating Israel in a way I doubt you would hear as anything short of bigoted and inherently violent (if not genocidal) against the people living there if it were directed at Palestine (I know I would be incredibly uncomfortable with people talking about it the way you’re talking about Israel)—yet you don’t seem to understand how saying exactly the same thing about Israel is bigoted or inherently violent (if not genocidal) against the people living there.

This double standard of talking about Israel in a way that would be unacceptable towards other nations like Palestine is antisemitic. The reversal of facts to position Israel as “being created by destroying Palestinian homes” is ahistorical (not denying that Israel has destroyed Palestinian homes, but again with the order of events, that has nothing to do with its creation, & asserting that it does serves to demonize its existence) & is antisemitic.

anti-zionism does not mean i believe jewish people should be expelled from anywhere; i am not blaming jewish people for the actions of the state of israel; the jewish people are not my enemies

my “for you” page is absolutely flooded with people rightfully upset about antisemitism

and it’s always lumped in with the idea that anyone who is anti-zionist is also antisemitic, that anyone calling for an end to genocide is also calling for the expulsion of jewish people, or that believing the state of israel is evil also means you believe that all jewish people are evil or control the world

and theyre RIGHT to be upset by this, anti-zionism IS being used as a cover for the rising right-wing reactionary explosion that’s happening in western countries

so more people on the left need to be cautious about who theyre associating with and what they’re saying

anyone who claims that jewish people can’t be oppressed, that they are always the aggressor or that they control the world, those people are NOT leftists, they are NOT populists, they are NOT your allies, and you need to tell them so

the jewish people are not genociding anyone; the state of israel is doing it, the IDF is doing it. if you can understand that america and britain and other colonial powers have blood on their hands, but the actual people of those countries are not your enemies, you can extend the same understanding to the people of israel

anti-zionism is NOT antisemitism, and antisemitism needs to be rooted out, on both the right AND the left

don’t let the right wing control the narrative, and make you believe for one second that their “no foreign intervention” ideas mean they believe the same thing you do; they DON’T

the people are our allies, the governments are our enemies, all of ours

this goes for hamas as well as israel

[clubofinfo]

Expert: Western media and Democratic Party politicians have made a major campaign accusing Russia of “meddling” in the U.S. election, colluding with and helping Trump win the Presidency. The charges began as “allegations” but now are routinely asserted as facts. The Washington Post recently ran a long article claiming all the above plus saying the operation was directed by Russian President Putin himself and implying not enough has been done to “punish” Russia. The July-August 2017 edition of Mother Jones magazine features an article headlined “The Russian Connection: Collusion? Maybe. Active Enablers? Definitely. Trump Knew the Truth, but he Remained on the Side of the Enemy.” Is this campaign based on facts or political opportunism? Does it help or hurt the progressive cause of peace with justice?  Following are major problems with the “anti-Russia” theme, starting with the lack of clear evidence. 1) Evidence from Crowdstrike is dubious.  Accusations that Russia stole and released the Democratic National Committee (DNC) emails are based on the findings of the private company Crowdstrike.  The DNC did not allow the FBI to scan the computers but relied on a hired private company which claims to have found telltale Russian alphabet characters (cyrrilic) in the computer memory. However, Crowdstrike is known to be political biased, connected to the Clintons and to make false accusations such as this one documented by Voice of America. Recently the Wikileaks “Vault7” findings reveal that the CIA has developed software which purposely leaves foreign language characters in memory, casting further doubt on the Crowdstrike evidence. 2) The Steele Dossier looks fictitious. The accusations of Trump-Russia collusion, Putin direction etc are significantly based on the so-called “Steele Dossier”. This is the 35 page compilation of “intelligence reports” produced by a former MI6 officer, Robert Steele. The research and reports by Steele were contracted by anti-Trump Republicans in the primary race, then by the Clinton campaign in the presidential race. There is no supporting evidence or verification of the claims; the reports are essentially that a Kremlin source says such-and-such. It has since been revealed that Steele was not in direct contact but collected the information via Russians in the UK who in turn received it from Kremlin insiders. The reports were viewed skeptically by media, politicians and the intelligence community through the summer and fall of 2016. But then, just prior to the election, the dossier was leaked to the public with sensational stories of “golden showers” by prostitutes urinating at Trump’s request to “defile” the bed where the Obamas previously slept. Is the Steele dossier accurate or was it a PR dirty trick designed to damage Trump? The latter seems at least if not more likely. This Newsweek article, “Thirteen things that don’t add up in the Russia-Trump intelligence dossier“, lists some of the reasons to be skeptical. 3) The “assessment” from Intel Agencies gives no evidence and seems politically biased.  On 6 January 2017 the office of the Director of National Intelligence (DNI) released a 14 page document titled “Background to ‘Assessing Russian Activities and Intentions in Recent US Elections”. The report says Russian President Putin ordered a campaign including cyber activity along with “overt efforts” to influence the election through official media (RT) and social media. Half of the report (7 pages) is devoted to describing the effectiveness and growth of Russian sponsored media known as “RT”. The report gives no evidence, acknowledging that is “does not and cannot include the full supporting information, including specific intelligence and sources and methods”. Should this report be accepted uncritically? Not if you consider past performance. The CIA has a long history of deception and disinformation. ���Intelligence” is sometimes directed to support political goals. One clear example is the false claims about Iraq that led to the U.S. invasion in 2003. In addition, the intelligence leadership is known to lie under oath. For example, DNI Director James Clapper lied in his testimony before Congress regarding the extent of monitoring and recording private communications of American citizens. The truth was later revealed by Edward Snowden. In short, there is no good reason to uncritically accept the statements and assertions of the U.S. intelligence community. There is every reason to be skeptical and require credible and verifiable evidence. This is compounded by the conflict between Trump and the intelligence agencies where they may be seeking retribution against him. Even Democratic Senator Schumer warned Trump about the dangers of bucking the CIA and other agencies: “They have seven ways to Sunday to get back at you.” What better way than shining a bright light on the Steele dossier and giving credence to the third hand accusations? It has recently been acknowledged by the NY Times that the assessment was made by four not seventeen intelligence agencies. DNI Director Clapper has admitted the assessment was by a hand picked group of analysts. Finally, it is significant that the NSA would only grant “moderate confidence” to the accusation that “Putin and the Russian Government aspired to help President-elect Trump’s election chances”. By their own definition on page 13, moderate confidence means that the information is “plausible but not of sufficient quality or corroborated sufficiently to warrant a higher level of confidence.” 4) The counter-evidence seems stronger and more factual.  Veteran intelligence professionals, including a former technical director of the NSA, say the DNC email release was caused by a leak not a “hack”. The distinction is important: a hack is done over the internet; a leak is done transferring files onto a memory stick with little or no record. VIPS believes the emails were taken by an insider who transferred the files onto a thumb drive. If the files had been transferred over the internet, the National Security Agency (NSA) would have a record of that since virtually every packet is stored. In addition, the publisher of the DNC and Podesta emails, Wikileaks, says they did not receive the emails from Russia. Wikileaks founder Julian Assange has offered a reward for the discovery of the murderer of Seth Rich, the young DNC Director of Voter Expansion who was mysteriously murdered on July 22. When asked if Seth Rich was the source of the DNC emails, he does not reply directly but it is implied. In addition, the former UK Ambassador Craig Murray has suggested that he was involved in a later (Podesta) transfer of the files from Washington DC to Wikileaks. Meanwhile, there appears to be an effort to discredit and denigrate research or investigation into the Seth Rich theory. If DNC insiders such as Seth Rich transferred the emails to Wikileaks, the anti-Russia campaign collapses. Since Trump’s November victory, there have been accusations of “Russian interference” in European elections. But in each case, subsequent investigation shows the opposite. In Germany, France and the UK, security services found no evidence in contrast with the reports. The French security chief dismissed the claims of the Macron campaign saying the hack“was so generic and simple that it could have been practically anyone.” 5) The purported “crimes” have been wildly inflated.  The leaking of DNC and Podesta emails has been inflated into an “attack on US democracy” and “act of war”. Not to be outdone in the hyperbole department, the Washington Post article calls this “the crime of the century”. It’s quite astounding; even if Russia was guilty of hacking the DNC servers and promoting anti-Clinton campaign on social media, which is debatable, the notion that this was an “act of war” is preposterous. These events were secondary problems for the Clinton campaign. The FBI closing and then re-opening the criminal investigation of Clinton’s use of her private computers for public work was a bigger factor. There are many real problems with the democratic process in the USA and talking about them, whether on RT or elsewhere, is good not bad. Even a former U.S. President, Jimmy Carter, questions whether the U.S. is a democracy saying: Now it’s just an oligarchy, with unlimited political bribery being the essence… 6) The anti-Russia hysteria has reduced resistance to reactionary changes in domestic policy. There is an immediate need to build maximum opposition to Trump policies including the loss of net neutrality, increase in military spending, reductions in environmental protection, education and health care budgets, etc.. The anti-Russia and “hate Trump” campaigns have reduced the credibility of liberals and progressives with conservatives and make it harder to build resistance to changes which hurt the working class and poor. 7) The DNC and Podesta leaks were not bad; they were good. Far from being an “attack on democracy”, the leaks of DNC and Podesta emails were positive. They exposed that the DNC itself was preventing the will of Democratic Party members in choosing their candidate. The releases exposed how the Democratic National Committee (DNC) leadership conspired and acted to boost Clinton and prevent a successful challenge by Sanders. If there was an “attack on democracy” it was by the DNC leadership itself not the public release of authentic emails. 8) Social media criticizing Clinton was not bad; much of the criticism was accurate. The intelligence agency assessment blames Russia for undermining “public faith in the US democratic process”, denigrating Secretary Clinton and harming “her electability and potential presidency”. They suggest Russia was responsible for anti-Clinton online messages, tweets, facebook posts, etc.. This is silly. It was predictable that Hillary Clinton would generate a lot of opposition during the Presidential campaign. She is a magnet for right and left wing criticism. She is strongly disliked by many progressives for good and real reasons. From her aggressive and warlike foreign policy to the horrible role of the Clinton Foundation in Haiti, there are many deep and profound things to criticize. Social media was alive with tweets, pages, posts and campaigns against Clinton. It is self-deception to think this was initiated or controlled in any substantial way by Moscow. The criticism and opposition to Hillary Clinton was sincere and home grown. While some criticism may have been undeserved, much of the criticism of Clinton was accurate and well founded. 9) The anti-Russia hysteria distracts from an objective evaluation of why the Democratic Party lost. Instead of doing an honest and objective assessment of the election failure, the Democratic Party has invested enormous time and resources in promoting the narrative of Russian “meddling” and collusion with Trump. If they want to regain popularity, they need to review their leadership which has changed very little in over 15 years. They need to re-assess unpopular policies and their prioritization of Wall Street. If the DNC had run a clean primary race, Sanders probably would have prevailed over Clinton in the primary race and gone on to beat Donald Trump for president. The Democratic Party leadership has nobody to blame but themselves for their defeat. 10) The anti-Russia hysteria reduces resistance to neoconservative forces pushing for more war. Neoconservatives and the military industrial complex are campaigning for another war in the Middle East. The immediate flashpoint is Syria where the Syrian government and allies are making slow but steady progress defeating tens of thousands of foreign funded extremists. In response, the US and allies are escalating intervention and aggression trying to prolong the conflict and/or grab territory to block a Syrian victory. The situation is potentially disastrous with the neocons threatening war on Iran and even Russia. The Democratic and liberal hysteria around Russia has confused huge numbers of people about the situation who now think Russia is the ‘enemy’. The anti-Russia hysteria is leading liberals to ally with the CIA and war hawks instead of confronting them as the danger of confrontation keeps rising. Conclusion Democrats and liberals in the U.S. are making a huge mistake uncritically accepting and promoting the anti-Russia demonization. The accusations of Russian “meddling” are either exaggerated or false. There is an urgent need to resist Trump’s assault on positive domestic policies and oppose the slide towards a new war in the Middle East. If this is not stopped, there is a real risk of global and possibly nuclear war. http://clubof.info/