Remembering Israel Shahak
Whenever people start complaining about the scandalously biased press coverage of Israel's conduct towards Palestinians, by way of cheering them up, I remind them that 20 years ago the coverage was even worse.
Back then, remember, reviewers gave a respectful welcome to Joan Peters' book From Times Immemorial, which purported to argue that Palestinians had no claims on the land of Canaan, and that they had snuck into Israel from Saudi Arabia in comparatively recent times. The New York Times lavished praise on this nonsense which was duly exposed as fraudulent from start to finish. Back then, newspapers gave similarly polite coverage to prime minister Golda Meir's pronouncement that there were no such people as Palestinians. To write, as I often did, about Palestinians' just claims, as represented by the PLO, was to invite torrents of abuse. In New York particularly it was virtually impossible to have a rational political discussion on the topic.
If today the coverage is fractionally more honest, credit should go in part to a quirky, cantankerous professor of organic chemistry, born in a cultivated Jewish family in Warsaw, who died last week in his apartment in Jerusalem, his body worn out at the early age of 68, thanks in no small measure to the two years he spent as a boy in the German concentration camp at Bergen Belsen.
Year after year those on Shahak's mailing list would get, every few weeks, a package containing six or so single-space typewritten foolscap pages of his translations from the Hebrew-language press in Israel, studded with his own acerbic and often eruditely amusing comments. Each package would usually address a theme, such as housing demolitions of Palestinians by the Israelis, or corruption in the IDF and Mossad.
To read them was not only to learn facts entirely inaccessible in any English-language publication, but also to realize that in Hebrew-language newspapers such as Ha'aretz and Yediot Ahronot there were honorable reporters and editors without any qualms about writing and publishing material extraordinarily discreditable to Israel's "official truths," as diligently recycled by the western press corps in Jerusalem and Tel Aviv. Of course, these journalists could have hired translators or even learned Hebrew, but they didn't. They relied on the Jerusalem Post which, precisely because it was accessible in English, was wholly dedicated to "official truths."
I first met Shahak in 1980 in New York. I'd been reading his communiqués and conveying their import as best I could to an American audience, and wasn't quite sure what sort of person this tireless translator and erudite footnoter would turn out to be.
He was on the short side and looked older than the 47 years he carried at that time. With accented English, he leapt from the travails of Palestinian farmers to learned exposition of the famous affair of Sabbatai Sevi, the mystical Messiah who transfixed seventeenth-century Jewry. In our very first conversation he drew a line between the credulity of Sevi's followers and the Gush Emunim or "block of the faithful" who organized settlers on the West Bank.
He was a singular man, an original. His loathing of hypocrisy rendered social democracy unappetizing to him. Politically he always seemed to me to be a nineteenth-century liberal in the best sense of the term. He was above all a rationalist, who had reviewed the evidence for God's existence at the age of 13 and found it wanting. This was a year after he had been freed from Bergen Belsen and was deciding to migrate to the Palestine of the British Mandate. Just over 20 years later, after the Six Day war he took an unsparing look at Israel's brutal treatment of Palestinians and decided that Israel was not a democracy and that the system of racist oppression bore many elements that were reminiscent of Nazism. "Nazi-like" was a much used epithet in Shahak's notations, and it incensed many. In 1968 he began, as he put it, "to act."
Back at the start of the 1980s the image of Israel as a rational exercise in social democracy flourished mightily and thus it was all the more startling to hear Shahak's expositions of the racist, mystical strains in Israel's religio-political culture.
"This mysticism," he told me, "is extremely dangerous. If you accept religiously the validity of 16th and 17th century mysticism, then you have the basis for their conclusions. It has parallels to Christian fundamentalism. If you accept the idea that Jonathan Edwards was right in the 17th century, many things that Jerry Falwell says now follow. In normal Judaism the messiah will redeem Israel; the Jewish people will conquer the land of Israel, build the temple and that is all. There will be a Jewish state and the world will go on as before. In Jewish mysticism the coming of the messiah is a cosmic event. The messiah redeems the fall of Adam and Eve. The world is full of the power of Satan ? I don't have to give you the parallels ? and Satan prevents cosmic salvation. It will be the messiah, with the help of mystic contemplation of right-thinking Jews, who will redeem the whole world. No sacrifice is too great to achieve this goal." He paused. "The right-wing religious fanatics compose the most dangerous group, socially and politically, that has existed in the entire history of Israel."
Looking back at my record of that first session with Shahak, I see that our conversation started with a typical Shahakian comparison: "It would be a good thing, I think, for Americans to ask themselves once a year whether the USA was a democracy before 1865; that is, before the constitutional abolition of slavery. The situation of the state of Israel and of the territories occupied by it is quite analogous. Just as the situation of the occupied territories resembles that of the pre-1865 South, so the situation inside the state of Israel resembles that of many states of the USA some 50 or 60 years ago when racism was popular, and when the really influential Ku Klux Klan made and unmade politicians, just as Gush Emunim now does in Israel."
Shahak was full of unexpected learning. He delighted in ironies. Though they had virtually no imperial tradition, the Danes, he told me, had imposed in their tiny colony of St. Croix one of the most ferocious labor codes in history. A moment later he was discoursing on a strange international tribunal of judges that toured through the Congo in full ceremonial judicial regalia in the early twentieth century, interviewing people about the horrors of their subjugation by King Leopold. Then he embarked on a discourse on Jewish jokes, a topic on which he claimed to be a great authority. We agreed that I should come to Israel and he would show me around, outlining his views on Jewish jokes as he did so. Alas, I never found time to take him up on the offer.
What effects did Shahak's unsparing explications of the situation in Israel have on public opinion? I would say, over the years, that he exercised great influence, ripples from his bulletins and, later, from his books, spreading slowly, often imperceptibly out through the pond. He didn't always get things right. For years he prophesied a war between Israel and Syria that never came. He could be volcanic in his disputes. He was a great man, a great conscience, because he understood not only the broad outlines and historical origins of systems of oppression and racism, he understood the sting of these oppressions and racisms in all their pettiest details, like a military bureaucrat in the Territories bullying a Palestinian tomato farmer because his permit for sale was torn.
"Here is a practical proposal to you," he said to me at the end of our first meeting. "Discuss the basic facts of the oppression of the Palestinians by Israel as much as you can, going right down to the basics of everyday racism. Point out the obvious contradiction between what the majority of American Jews demand for themselves in the USA and what they defend in Israel. Do not be intimidated in the struggle against racism and for human dignity, equality and freedom by any demagoguery about peace and democracy, if they are used in the cause of discrimination, and perhaps the words of the prophet (Amos, 5.15) will come true. ?Hate the evil and love the good and establish judgment in the gate, it may be that the Lord God of hosts will be gracious to the remnant of Joseph.'"
b.150m.com http://www.b.150m.com/ http://www.geocities.com/individualistanarchist/ geocities.com/individualistanarchist anarchy individualist anarchism individualist anarchist individualist anarchists libertarianism libertarian libertarians individual individualism individualists individualistanarchist@yahoo.com haarp tesla coils echelon tempest van eck hacking tools hackers hacker kevin mitnick crypto cryptographic decss software downloads denial of service attack cypherpunks cypherpunk crackers open source code linux bsd unix computer security network hong kong blondes laurie holden drool brigade blondie wong secret cells serialz death by ping cryptography exploits phreaking virus viruses herf emp electromagentic pulse electro-magnetic pulse phreaking digital millenium copy-right act copy right copy rights copyright copyrights copy-rights copy left copyleft copy-left patent patents intellectual property rights ip html computer languages personal privacy internet privacy encrypt encryption anonymity anonymous terrorism hijacking pentagon world trade center new york city anti war anti-war antiwar isolation isolationism isolationsist isolationists neutral neutrality peace du depleted uranium lysander spooner benjamin tucker mark austin murray rothbard george orwell max stirner david friedman nessie mikhail bakunan pierre-joseph proudhon william godwin josiah warren wendy mcelroy walter block thomas szasz brian caplan albert henry david thoreau j nock ayn rand ludwig von mises henry hazlitt milton friedman adam smith john locke frederic bastiat aristotle aristotelian aristotelians lao tsu patrick henry thomas jefferson george mason samuel adams george washington barry goldwater charles beard karl marx aldolf hitler nazi nazis nazism pol national socialism national socialist national socialists anti communism anti communist infiltration anti communists marxism marxist marxists anticommunist anticommunists anticommunism anti-communism anti-communist anti-communists altruism altrist altruists collectivism collectivist collectivists racist racism racists state statism statist statists liberalism liberal liberals liberalist neo-liberal neo-liberalism neo-liberals conservatism conservative conservatives neo-conservativism neo-conservative neo-conservatives national nation nations nationalism nationalist nationalists tradition traditions traditionalism traditionalist traditionalists revolution revolutions revolutionary revolutionaries reaction reactionary reactionaries democracy democracies democratic democrat democrats republic republics republican republicans republicanism progressive progressives progressivism progress radical radicals radicalism extreme extremism extremist extremists new right old right far right new left right wing fabian socialism fabian socialist fabian socialists fabian society fabians utilitarianism utilitarianist utilitarianists pragmatism pragmatist pragmatists pragmatic utopia utopias utopian utopians utopianism politics political party partiesenvironment environmental environmentalism environmentalist environmentalists ecology ecological ecologist ecologists global warming greenhouse green-house green house effect carbon dioxide cfc cfs ozone layer ozone hole science scientist scientists scientific physics sociology sociologist sociologists sociological psychology psychologist psychologists psychological anthropology debate debating discuss discussion discussing argue argues arguing argument arguments argumentation news papers individual rights individual freedom right natural rights natural law common law natural laws legal system private property personal property civil liberty civil liberties human right human rights constitution constituional right constitutional rights constitutionalism constitutionalist constituitionalists injustice injustices justice bill of rights free market free-market freemarket free-trade free trade commerce laissez-faire laissez faire economics economic economical economist austrian school of economics ethic ethics ethical moral morals morality virtue philosophy philospher philosophers ancient classical modern post-modern modernism subjective subjectivity subjectivism subjectivist subjectivists real reality realism realist realists ontology ontologies ontological epistemology epistemologies epistemological meta-physics meta physics meta physical meta-phyisical cosmology cosmologies cosmological analytic synthetic logic logical facts factual a priori a posteriori emperical empericism rational rationalism tabula rasa causality proposition propositions plato idea ideas ideal idealism idealist idealists ideology ideologist ideologists ideological theory theories theorist theorists religion religions atheism atheist atheists marijuana cannabis hemp lsd drugs drug war drug prohibition minarchism minarchist minarachists capital capitalism capitalist capitalists robert bob murphy jeremy sapienza rob moody justin raimondo alan bock brad edmonds lew rockwell lewrockwell lewrockwell.com gene callahan stephan kinsella david dieteman john stossel harry browne joseph sobran charley reese vin suprynowicz joseph farah world net daily alexander cockburn ralph raico paul craig roberts hans-hermann hoppe thomas sowell gore vidal joel miller ego egoism egoist egoists atlas shrugged the fountain head anthem john galt objective objectivism objectivist objectivists self selfish virtue of selfishness right to bear arms 2nd amendment second amendment militia citizen miltias gun control gun rights guns rifles firearms arms weapons m-16 sks ar-15 m-16 m-60 ak-47 pro anti abortion abortions pro-abortion anti-abortion pro-choice anti-choice choice woman womans rights fetus feteus unborn children unborn babies illuminatti cia central inteligence agency nsa national security agency fbi batf atf mi5 twa flight 800 crash waco janet reno bill clinton al gore george w bush jr alan greenspan jfk assassination politics david rockefeller henry kissinger zbigniew brzezinski cfr council on foreign relations trilateral commission secret societies bilderberg round table carroll quigley new world order world government un united nations wto world trade organization world band imf nato federal reserve central banking gold standard fiat currency fractional reserve banking fed cointelpro conspiracy theories government conspriracies undercover covert operations government secrecy infiltrate infiltrates infiltration weather warfare mind control microchip implants secret experimentation information disinformation john birch society new american senator joseph mccarthy joe mccarthy okc bombing ok city bombing tim mcveigh conspiracy? the oklahoma city bombing timmothy mveigh tyranny oppression emergency rule martial law fema federal emergency management federal government executive dictatorship police state military rule oppressive government posse comitatus act pcivil disobedience pearl harbor ron brown why anarchy requires private property the problem with socialist anarchism
