Thursday, December 12, 2019

the top leadership of American Zionism has refused to campaign against Begin's efforts, or even to expose to its own constituents the dangers to Israel from support to Begin

I don't see the guile of the clueless Kushner in Trump's dishonest executive order redefining Jewishness, I see the FOX style PR distraction of the scumbag lawyer, Dershowitz.

Anyone who tries to understand Trump's motives in anything to do with Jews or even Israel is making a mistake.  Dershowitz might have gotten something for the disaster that Israel has become, but he's only using the resource that is the black hole of Trump's self-interest.  Trump gets: 

A. and most important to him, distraction from his imminent impeachment.

B. Something he hopes will divide Democrats.

C. Something he hopes will help him in Florida.

D. Something Alan Dershowitz and the rest of his stable of designated bull shitters will endlessly use on FOX and NPR and CNN and elsewhere.  I'm sure the New York Times will carry "balanced" coverage of it, especially in the op-ed and the "features," as Walter Benjamin said in his essay on the great and forgotten Karl Krauss,  

“Journalism,is betrayal of the literary life, of mind, of the demon. Idle chatter is its true substance, and every feuilleton poses anew the insoluble question of the relationship between the forces of stupidity and malice, whose expression is gossip”

The likes of Dershowitz and, to an extent, the show-biz created Trump operate in that relationship between "the forces of stupidity and malice, whose espression is,"  today, Twitter.   We're chumps to put our faith in the "free press," who lie with impunity.   They only serve egalitarian democracy the extent to which they are punished for lying. 

For those who want to suppress the divestment movement, this might be temporarily satisfying but in the long run, it's going to cost the a lot more than they believe they get out of it.  Israeli politics are rapidly devolving into outright Apartheid style fascism, as was predicted by a number of the most eminent Jewish intellectuals of 1948 who warned about the consequences of American support for the fascist Menachem Begin.  They were prophetic, we're seeing that coming true seventy years later.  This paragraph from their letter is as relevant to today's politics in both countries as it was that year. 

In the light of the foregoing considerations, it is imperative that the truth about Mr. Begin and his movement be made known in this country  It is all the more tragic that the top leadership of American Zionism has refused to campaign against Begin's efforts, or even to expose to its own constituents the dangers to Israel from support to Begin.

Updated:  Imagine that, me, an Irish Catholic of the traditional American liberal persuasion knows who Walter Benjamin was AND KNOWS HE WAS A MAJOR SECULAR-JEWISH INTELLECTUAL OF THE PRE-WAR PERIOD, and you don't.  If I didn't know that everything you knew you learned from TV before you were 13 I'd advise you to read him on Karl Krauss, I learned a lot about the idiocy of having faith in the "free press" freed to lie with impunity from reading him. 

His committing suicide on his party of Jews being stopped on the Spanish border by Franco's fascists would, if told honestly, make a gripping drama.  I will note that he was, despite being Jewish and having committed suicide, buried in consecrated ground in a Catholic cemetery, I believe an act of charity in violation of cannon law.  It's speculated that his suicide led to the authorities allowing his party to cross to relative safety the day after.  I think it's a rare case in which it might be asked if his suicide was, after all, in its ultimate meaning, a selfless act of sacrifice that led to others living.  One of whom was, as I recall, Arthur Koestler.   Truth is so much more dramatic than Hollywood make-believe.  Certainly more so than anything you're going to see in the ephemera of American-TV, even the crap that comes from the "quality" for-pay channels. 

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