Richard Siverstein: Fox Guards the Henhouse
An associate passed along an invitation to hear Richard Silverstein speak in Seattle this week. Silverstein operates a blog called Tikkun Olam, meaning “to heal the world“, although it appeared through our email exchange that Richard, with many other Jewish leaders in the Palestinian solidarity movement, refuses to countenance the single method to truly bring some healing to the Middle East: the end of the Jewish supremacist state in Palestine.
Not knowing this at the time, I asked this associate, “Does Richard support Israel’s claimed right to exist as a Jewish state in Palestine?”, and rather than answer my question, the associate passed it along to Richard, who did answer the question: “The short answer is that I support Israel’s right to exist”
The answer was wrapped in obfuscating jargon, including criticism of my alleged use of “complicated terms which can’t be unraveled in one sentence”. Now what is so complicated about rejecting Benjamin Netanyahu’s demand that Palestinians accept Israel’s right to exist as a Jewish state?
I thanked Richard for answering the question but suggested that the answer wasn’t very satisfactory. He wants Israel to exist, but not necessarily as a state that “privilege[s] Judaism over non-Jewish religions”. But how can Richard overlook the fact that Israel defines itself as a Jewish state as Zionist forefather Theodore Herzl envisioned in his book The Jewish State (Der Judenstadt)?
Well, that opened some wounds that Richard quickly started dressing. He transmuted my word “elimination” into “bloodshed” and physical destruction. Then came the name calling: My “extreme position” of eliminating a state that didn’t even exist when I (and Richard?) were born; the “hubris” of my critical thinking; his ability to be “humored by people like you who know best” [challenging my call for Israel’s elimination]. He found my original question “irrelevant” to the issue of the Syrian crisis. He objected to my use of the term “Jewish power” and my assertion that its influence on US foreign policy can help us understand the Syrian crisis.
But Richard was clear: “No, I don’t call for the elimination of Israel,” he writes, and we imagine a slave-owner who has attained a following in the abolitionist movement and proclaims that he “does not call for an end to slavery.”
What credibility would we offer such a Trojan Horse? Wouldn’t we expect him to be thrown out of the abolitionist movement in a heartbeat? Yet here, in the thoroughly Judaized Palestine solidarity movement, we have opinion leaders such as Silverstein who openly support the continued existence of a Jewish supremacist state in Palestine.
And after, in Joel Finkel fashion assuring me that “But whatever [the solution] will be, Israel will exist in some form”, Richard makes it clear: “I am a Zionist and not afraid of the label”.
And there we have it: A Zionist in the peace movement. How many Zionist shills like him, and before him, have helped weaken the movement to liberate Palestine? How much longer will we tolerate these apologists for the role that Jewish identity politics play in Israel’s war crimes and human rights violations?
Comments?
4 Vigilers
“Israel” exists because Jews want the land
Henry Herskovitz
Jewish Witnesses for Peace and Friends
July 21st, 2013 - 8:03 pm
How exactly would dismantling the Jewish state bring any healing to the Middle East? What does Israel have to do with the conflicts in Syria, Egypt, Lebanon, Yemen, Bahrain, etc? The war between the Sunnis and the Shias is over 1000 years old. What does it have to do with the modern State of Israel?
July 23rd, 2013 - 11:49 pm
The Jewish state is an apartheid state. Its dismantlement will parallel the justice served as the Apartheid government of South Africa was dismantled. It will end US financial and military support for non-existent “Israel” and also end US fighting wars for the Jewish state.
Israel has violently attacked at least three of the other countries named in the second question, and the three final questions serve to distract from a larger one: what exactly are European Jews doing in the middle east? If “Israel” has no right to exist in the middle east, why are faux activist leaders like Silverstein refusing to even countenance the question?
July 24th, 2013 - 7:18 pm
Henry,
Mr. Silverstein can speak for himself. I am merely attempting to understand the point you are trying to make. You made the following statement: “…the single method to truly bring some healing to the Middle East: the end of the Jewish supremacist state in Palestine.†The necessary implication here is that Israel is responsible for most or all suffering in the Middle East. Do you really believe that? My questions serve precisely to clarify this very point. The ancient conflict between the Sunnis and Shias, whose latest manifestations we can observe in Syria, Iraq, Lebanon, Bahrain, Yemen and even Egypt, began way before Israel and the US came into being. Are either of them responsible for a conflict that is over 1000 years old?
You state: “It will end US financial and military support for non-existent “Israel†and also end US fighting wars for the Jewish state.†That sounds like a logical fallacy. How can the US support something that is non-existent?
You state: “Israel has violently attacked at least three of the other countries named in the second question, and the three final questions serve to distract from a larger one: what exactly are European Jews doing in the middle east?â€
Israel was violently attacked by at least 3 countries named in the second question in 1948. That is not disputed by even most virulently anti-Israel scholars. All subsequent wars and skirmishes came as a result of the 1948 war. If I shared your ideology I would surely accuse you of racism for your “larger†question. By the same token one can ask: What are Asian, African and Middle Eastern immigrants doing in Europe? Unlike the European Jews in the Land of Israel, they can claim no historical or ancestral ties to the continent.
August 8th, 2013 - 5:13 pm
Mr Czar is either ignorant of the fact that European Jews have no “historical or ancestral ties” to Palestine, or is whistling past that graveyard. They don’t. Arab voices have been telling us that for years, as have others like Benjamin Freedman, but of course we only listen when Jewish scholars tell us the same thing. Now the cat is officially out of the bag, being released by Shlomo Sand in “The Invention of the Jewish People”.
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Also Mr. Czar continues the falsehood that Israel was attacked by three (or was it five?) Arab countries following the announcement of Jewish statehood. Zionist Jews had initiated their Plan Dalet many moons before this “attack” and this attack was poorly funded, armed and had little energy.
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If he wants to accuse me of racism (anti-Semitism, Czar?) then he should call the cops. But wait! Anti-Semitism isn’t against law, and good laws reflect good morals. Also, while anti-Semitism used to mean hatred of Jews, it now means someone Jews hate. Ergo …
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Czar asks:
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The necessary implication here is that Israel is responsible for most or all suffering in the Middle East. Do you really believe that?
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Henry says: Yep.
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And quotes the humorous Fr. John Sheehan of the Jesuit order:
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“Every time anyone says that Israel is our only friend in the Middle East, I can’t help but think that, before Israel, we had no enemies in the Middle East”.
August 17th, 2013 - 9:12 pm
Dear Henry,
If you honestly feel you kicked Czar’s ass on your response, then I honestly feel sorry for you.