Zionism who claim anti-Zionism equals anti-Semitism are themselves conflating Zionism and Judaism

This past Saturday, May 15, 2021, The Wife and I attended a pro-Palestinian protest in Albuquerque. It was a friendly and communal atmosphere, and we are honored to know two of the speakers at the rally, Samia Assed and Alan Wagman, the latter my closest friend in New Mexico. We also had a chance to catch up with another friend, and political activist here in New Mexico, Steve Cabeides, who was doing video work at the rally, which video is here. I am guessing there were about 500 or so people altogether who appeared.

Do I agree with every speaker's point and every shouted slogan? No. However, I do strongly believe we must end the nonsense about the Israeli-Palestinian issue being a "conflict," instead of saying what it is, which is Israeli oppression and displacement of Palestinians. I strongly believe it is past time for the United States to stop enabling Israeli oppression of Palestinians. We as Americans should first and foremost demand the US end all military and economic aid to Israel. All of it. And also demand an end to Israeli Defense Force cooperation with local police departments throughout the US, as the US local police don't need any additional tips on how to treat a domestic population as enemies in a war. Our local police departments have shown they are already quite capable of such misconduct and abuse.

We need to be clear the US, and the corporate powers-that-be in our nation, use Israel as its attack dog and first-use testers for advanced technological weaponry, as part of the US military-industrial complex. It is not in our interest as regular Americans, and as human beings, and is not even in Israel's interest to have such a relationship between Israel and the US. Israel has become more and more identified with forces and ideologies that are anathema to Jewish Rabbinic tradition since the Romans dispersed many Jews following Jesus' crucifixion and the Roman-Judean wars. The Israeli Jews are increasingly a people who believe in a land-based Judaism, which is more Maccabean than anything else. Rabbinic Judaism, since the first centuries after the Roman dispersal of Jews, has been a universalist religion, whose logic led to ultimately supporting a society based upon not imposing one primary religious belief nor one primary ethnicity over another--and does not rely on holding a particular piece of land based upon its religious beliefs. 

It is an irony of the Zionist project that many Jews would never have embraced Zionism at all, but for the European Christian centered anti-Semitism and eventually the Holocaust. Judaism should never be conflated with Zionism, as Zionism is merely a Euro-centric political movement reacting to European anti-Semitism, and Zionism's most successful leaders, Ben-Gurion, Weizmann, and Jabotinsky, were suffused with European racist and settler-colonialist tendencies in their private journals and sometimes their public speeches and interviews. Zionism is a political-nationalist movement, not a movement based in theology.  As Reb Saunders says late in The Chosen book, and I believe the film, the Messiah was supposed to lead the Jews to Judea (Palestine), not Ben-Gurion. Reb Saunders says: "God will build the land, not Ben-Gurion and his goyim." Ironic, considering how Evangelical Christians are primarily the Zionists leading on the apartheid Netanyahu is in the process of completing--and ironic for me to quote a culturally backwards, anti-feminist and anti-homosexual mind such as Reb Saunders.

I have posted my historically based views regarding Zionism before, starting here, here, here, and here. I also believe it would be useful for a lot of American Jews, who themselves are continuing to confuse their religion with a foreign nation behaving badly, to watch or re-watch Thor: Ragnarok for an allegory relevant to our current historical moment. I would not say Israelis will or should lose their land, as did Thor's people. I would say those Israeli Jews who truly have goodwill may find many Palestinian Arabs who share their goodwill, and that, Netanyahu and the majority of Israeli voters who have destroyed the two-state solution as a practical solution, should seek to embrace the bi-national state Herzl envisioned in his novel, New Old Land, and prominent American Rabbi Judah Menges also embraced during the 1920s and 1930s.  

Finally, there are two Jewish Currents magazine essays well worth reading.  The first is from Peter Beinart, who has completed his journey from Iraq War II advocate and near zealot Zionism to a post- and even anti-Zionist position, this time eloquently writing about the Palestinian right of return/compensation issues. The second Jewish Currents magazine essay is about the US Communist Party, Zionism and the creation of Israel, which is surprising even to me.

Postscript: Last night, I finished what may be A.B. Yehoshua's final novel, The Tunnel, now thankfully translated into English.  It is another wonderful and thoughtful book from Yehosuha. As I survey the tragedy of Zionism, I see more than ever why many US centric literary critics compare Yehoshua to William Faulkner, a novelist who wrote movingly about people within a tragic, racist southern American society. I admit I have never been a Faulkner fan, but I am seeing, more than ever, how that comparison has persuasive merit.  As I joke, I have been saying for the past couple of years I have been completing my reading of Yehoshua and Amos Oz as a sort of shiva I sit for Zionism and what Israel has become.

There should really be no controversy over Critical Race Theory

So the new flavor of the past year for right wingers who wish to talk about anything but climate change and class- and race- based systemic economic inequality is Critical Race Theory (CRT), which I have been reading about since the 1980s, starting most famously with the now late, often great Derrick Bell (who has been dead for nearly a decade now), and Mari Matsuda, who I have some vague memory of being critical about something she did or said many years ago--but I can't remember what, and is frankly, at this point, irrelevant.  I decided this morning to look up CRT in Wiki to see what I am missing in this recent media generated controversy, as I just can't get much excited about this controversy beyond seeing the current controversy over CRT as another right wing diversion tactic. 

CRT is already in many curricula in history textbooks I am seeing, and most importantly for my claim-of-authority here, using. I see today's textbooks as an immense improvement over textbooks used in the early 1970s when I was in high school. What I see in CRT is a demand that we recognize how law was used in our society to create racial stratification, and how culture created and reinforced that stratification, in a manner which directly led to depriving those with darker skin of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness--and, over centuries, ensured those with darker skin had far less access to money and power, which reverberates into today. In short, it ain't just about slavery, folks. 

To the extent the textbooks use personal stories, i.e. "storytelling," the personal stories in the textbooks reinforce, or a part of, informative factual details and evidence-based conclusions. I don't see any essential falseness in the stories, though we know an individual person's perspective may include information that is not able to be verified or can be outright wrong (I recall how my late Aunt Rose and still living Uncle Jack argued, often with anger, over whether the jail building the Polish pro-Nazi police forced them into during WWII, with the intent to execute them the next morning, was a one story or two story building. They escaped, because the building was new, and they used a spoon to push out a couple of large bricks to get out. However, their argument over their memory, and the destruction of that jail before the war was over, leave the singular fact about the building highly uncertain). We also know when a Holocaust survivor is interrogated by a lawyer for a Holocaust denier, the facts of a particular incident can become hazy and inconsistencies arise. Does that mean the Holocaust didn't happen, or that the entire testimony of so many should be disregarded?  Of course not.  Also, the fact we whose families hail from southern and eastern Europe and Russia, and who arrived here 120 years ago, have had far more success in American society than those brought in chains from Africa two and three hundred years ago, is a continuing issue, NOT one that is ancient history with far less relevance to day to day life today.

Too often, too many of us want to assume conservative critics are litigating the arguments against CRT in good faith. Too often, such critics are not. CRT critics often describe some minor anecdotal story of some teacher at some school (which is funny, because the critics are so concerned with "storytelling" overwhelming fact-based analysis) and then use that anecdotal story to present an argument based upon a "parade of horribles" style against CRT as a whole.  What conservatives most appear to fear is that we who are white skinned are taught to better come to grips with how our nation got to where it is, how white people, individually, had certain advantages available as long as the people were deemed white, and how our history is not one steady, inevitable movement toward progress--nor is our history largely based upon a benign or neutral intent, design, and procedure. 

I tend to be harsh against flabby thinking, which means I will definitely have criticisms of how CRT is taught, who teaches it, and what language and evidence is used in describing past events or how our society functions. However, I find the idea that CRT should be deemed dangerous or controversial is little more than a ginned-up media debate designed to divide and divert us from the macro economic and climate change issues--and how our institutional and cultural racism causes a disproportionately negative effect on those who are not, again, deemed white. It is not those using CRT in history or literature classes who are the dividers, as much as those who think CRT is some existential issue being foisted upon our nation to undermine our society. We do need to be critical with regard to understanding and evaluating the extent to which structural racism plays a continuing role in our society. We must not sweep systemic and historical racism under a rug of feel-good "we're all equal" rhetoric, which is where conservatives' rhetoric is at, which is ironic on top of being cynical. Remember MLK, Jr.'s most famous portion of his 1963 speech was about his "dream," which for much of conservative rhetoric is converted into some objective fact based upon passage of the 1964 Civil Rights Act. If we read the conservatives' arguments, they often wax rhetorically that anyone talking about continued systemic and cultural racism is somehow the divider. 

This is why I am not against CRT in the abstract, or how it is often used.  Yet, I would like to think even Mari Matsuda can remain critical of CRT in particulars. And heck, from what I have seen in various world history textbooks about US actions against Korea and Vietnam, or how they discuss Karl Marx, and the rise of capitalist power in British and other societies, we need more critical theories and evidence based evaluations. History is a continuing argument, but we should demand more good faith from those participating in the argument. Those arguing against CRT, particularly politicians and corporate media commentators, are too often not arguing in good faith.

UPDATE May 11, 2021: Read this article in The Atlantic in this context over the controversy over CRT, and realize, again, how right wingers, particularly from the southern region of the United States, prefer storytelling from perspectives with far more lies than truth, and yet have the audacity to criticize CRT.  It is almost as if these apologists for the Confederacy are racist. :)

UPDATE: May 29, 2021: Irami Osei-Frimpong has a slightly different take, in that he is saying CRT is dangerous and controversial precisely because it upends the myths white folks have told themselves about the history of the United States of America.  He appears to be saying, "Yeah, white man!  This is the truth you hide!  You better be afraid!  Be very afraid!"  For me, I guess I am more hopeful that we are only providing higher levels of truth, and owe it to ourselves, as a society with so many different people, to finally come to grips with our racist legacies, and help each other.  I had a quibble with him, too, about the extent to which slavery played a role in the American Revolutionary period of 1774-1776, which I largely based my view on Sean Wilentz's essays in The Atlantic and New York Review of Books, with Wilentz's partial criticisms of The NY Times' 1619 Project. God knows I have, over the past decade or more, had my disagreements with Wilentz's Neo-liberalism and professional-managerial-class assumptions, but I found him fairly compelling here.  I posted this at Irami's YouTube page and he kindly responded, accepting my argument the coalition was diverse, and cited to Robin Einhorn's American Taxation, American Slavery (2008). Einhorn's book posits the hostility to taxation is rooted in wanting to maintain the right to own slaves, which again is focused more southward than in Massachusetts, where anti-tax fervor was more about commerce and trade, and how British taxes were operating in a manner that undermined freedom and power of colonists. I do agree with Einhorn that there is a definite connection between the slaveocracy and its descendants who are highly anti-tax in philosophy.  Another person responded by citing to the highly polemical The Counterrevolution of 1776 by the great Gerald Horne. I am a major overall fan of Horne's work on a variety of subjects, but I again found that particular book much more polemical than it should have been because, once one moves north of New Jersey, the argument about the centrality of slavery becomes far more difficult to sustain as a thesis.

Please do not be fooled by the Biden admin seeming reversal on COVID vaccine patent rights for Big Pharma

This seeming reversal of Biden's position is a great development. David Doel, at the Rational National, is excited, at least at first. However, remember our nation's post-WWII history. Ambassador Tai (who Ryan Grim tweeted is a progressive, with nothing in her history showing that; Grim is awful in his tweets, as he practices access journalism/sucking up on Twitter) may have pushed Biden to seemingly reverse course. However, Doel's report from two days ago shows Big Pharma interests remain well represented among White House advisors. 

So, what happened here? What happened here is the US wants to control negotiations at the WTO and outside the WTO, as there was pressure from over 100 nations pushing the US, UK, and Canada. Tai apparently helped Biden and his corrupt Big Pharma White House aides to see that if the US says it is totally against lifting patents, the US can't be part of negotiations--and the US will have other problems when the US wants to push for other trade deals that will continue to help US corporations. This press release Doel refers to is not from the White House. It is from Tai's office. Here is what it says:

This is a global health crisis, and the extraordinary circumstances of the COVID-19 pandemic call for extraordinary measures. The Administration believes strongly in intellectual property protections, but in service of ending this pandemic, supports the waiver of those protections for COVID-19 vaccines. We will actively participate in text-based negotiations at the World Trade Organization (WTO) needed to make that happen. Those negotiations will take time given the consensus-based nature of the institution and the complexity of the issues involved. 

The Administration’s aim is to get as many safe and effective vaccines to as many people as fast as possible. As our vaccine supply for the American people is secured, the Administration will continue to ramp up its efforts – working with the private sector and all possible partners – to expand vaccine manufacturing and distribution. It will also work to increase the raw materials needed to produce those vaccines.

The key is in the "text-based" and "active participation" language, as that is code for the US wants to ensure Big Pharma interests are strongly protected and promoted at the discussions inside the WTO. We also know the language about "text-based" is deadly because, well, just ask the dolphins. 

Then there is the kicker sentence, showing how Biden's White House is going to slow things down and avoid any real solution that will help these nations--unless Big Pharma is paid off: "Those negotiations will take time given the consensus-based nature of the institution and the complexity of the issues involved." 

Uh-oh. There is no "complexity" here. None--except Big Pharma's corruption that envelops the White House, and will be well protected by the language and structure of the World Trade Organization. Also, the "consensus" already exists among the majority of nations around the world, so why would there be any delay--again, unless "complexity" means negotiating with Big Pharma where Big Pharma holds the power cards. 

Remember, too: There was only US, UK, and Canada blocking the governmental consensus. Will Joe Biden use Canada (yeah, it is past time to get over your love-fest with the Trudeau fellow) and the fascistic-Boris Johnson in the UK the way he used Manchin to kill the $15 minimum wage? That move is less likely. Instead, what I think is, after three months of negotiations, there will be an agreement to further enrich Big Pharma with government money subsidies, and allow for the poor nations to borrow more money from the World Bank and IMF to get "access" to the vaccines. And the distribution will end up being part of an overall slog, all during a time when the pandemic is raging in these developing nations. 

In short, David Doel's celebration is premature, and he appears to realize it toward the end of his short video. And, again, Doel is wrong to say the domestic American Left pushed Biden Left. The American Left is still divided. Those progressives closer to power, and those of our fellow citizens who bow to MSNBC and CNN every day, are still in the "cut Biden some slack" mode. This change came from Tai having to deal with the pushback from over 100 nations while she works to try and repair American corporate and governmental power in the post-Trump world--during a pandemic raging through a variety of nations. We as regular citizens don't count with the Biden administration. That is why anyone who doesn't want to push Biden Left is at best an uncertain ally. They are not comrades. Not a bit.