Category Archives: Politics

FTAC – On the Soviet Contribution to Contemporary Left-Side Anti-Semitism

07 Saturday May 2016

Posted by in 21st Century Feudal, Anti-Semitism, Conflict - Culture - Language - Psychology, Great Britain and United Kingdom, Politics

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Masked off by our own reading and research habits as well as general busyness with information is the history of Russian and Soviet anti-Semitism and its influence throughout the political campus of the Left and Far Left to this day.

There are many portals today through which to pick up on the history of Soviet anti-Semitism, Soviet-supported terrorism, and the relationship of the Soviet to the International and Palestinian Solidarity organizations and their radical movements. I usually — and here may — blog such links as the following:

https://www.marxists.org/history/etol/revhist/backiss/vol3/no4/revcamp.html

http://www.jta.org/1968/05/24/archive/students-around-world-hit-soviet-anti-semitism-non-jews-leftists-among-them

Where the focus is narrowed to influence of the Soviet on Middle Eastern politics and on Islam, one will find reported by Pacepa the Soviet’s massive promotion of anti-Semitism in the Arab sphere.

Although Putin’s stance has been steadily (and may be described as) “anti- anti-Semitism”, the seeds sown by the Soviet and latent in much of the Arab world but perhaps less than imagined have brought us to this day where a professed moderate candidate has nonetheless some history with immoderate souls.

The circulation of Sohrab Ahmari’s May 4 piece in The Wall Street Journal on London mayor Sadiq Khan provided inspiration for the comment.  Conservative ranks questioned the prudence of electing a leftward winging candidate with radical acquaintance, at least, in his past:

The former lawyer has vowed to be “the British Muslim who takes the fight to extremists.” Yet the Labour Party under leader Jeremy Corbyn has veered sharply to the left on these matters, and Mr. Khan has been an enabler of that transformation.

Ahmari, Sohrab.  “Labour’s Radical ‘Moderate’: The party’s mayoral candidate in London gladly shared a stage with extremists.”  The Wall Street Journal, May 4, 2016.

Today, Sadiq Khan is Mayor of London.

What lives today on the less moderate Left side?

Abdel-Al—who lives in occupied East Jerusalem—is visiting Chicago this week at the invitation of the United Electrical Workers (UE), the U.S. Palestinian Community Network, and Jewish Voice for Peace to enlist the support of the U.S. labor movement in the Palestinian liberation struggle. He addressed standing-room-only audiences of rank-and-file unionists at last weekend’s Labor Notes conference and again on Tuesday night at the local UE Hall.

Schuhrke, Jeff.  “American and Palestinian Unionists Build International Solidarity to Win ‘Freedom’ for Palestine.”  In These Times, April 6, 2016.

The campaign for ‘Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions’ (BDS) against the Israeli government gains ground every day while defenders of the Palestinian Occupation seem to be able to do no more that trot out the same tired charges of anti-Semitism against its proponents!

As George Bisharat points out in the article below, the charge of anti-Semitism is completely without substance. Indeed there has been a tragic history of persecution of Jewish people for which all of us Europeans rightly feel a sense of shame. Even so, for Zionist politicians to manipulate this shame to justify the persecution of Palestinian people is reprehensible, and it’s a tactic that is becoming increasingly transparent to the Western public.

Perhaps the most significant thing about Bisharat’s article is that it appeared in the Chicago Tribune. Indeed the BDS is going mainstream!

Father Dave.  “The ever-increasing isolation of Israel seems irreversible!”  Israel and Palestine, February 8, 2014.

The above paragraph had been posted as prelude to “Applause for the academic boycott of Israel” by George Bisharat (the two are on the same page, i.e., same link).

Those who read across publications may find similar claims, tropes, and strategies in play.  The picture is generally stark with the charge of brutality always leveled on the Jews:

U.S. enabling of Israel, particularly in its colonial expansion into the West Bank, has voided the two-state option and fostered a single functioning state there in which only Jews enjoy relative security, prosperity, and full political rights, while Palestinians suffer gradations of oppression.

Bisharat, George.  “Applause for the academic boycott of Israel.”  Israel and Palestine, February 8, 2014.

Never mind the Soviet KGB-invented Arafat and the Palestinian Liberation Organization, today’s Palestinian Authority; and never mind the genocidal — and Palestinian plundering — Hamas.  The presence of the two disappears when Israelis / Zionists / Jews seem much preferred in the target sites.

Corey Gil-Shuster has been video interviewing Israelis and Palestinians — and anyone else within range — for years on the widest variety of questions having to do with the middle east conflict and justice in Israel.  Here’s a short example from 2012:

Posted to YouTube May 9, 2012.

Finally about the promotion of impoverished Palestinians beneath the “brutal occupation” — there’s a lot more to that story that includes Hamas billionaires, but this may suffice for a glimpse into the reality of luxury development in Gaza: PRICO Real Estate Development Company.

Additional Reference

Anti-Defamation League (ADL).  “The Top Ten Anti-Israel Groups in America.”  PDF.  2012.

BackChannels.  “BDS (Cult) Modules.”  March 8, 2016.

BackChannels.  “Reference — Two Articles — BDS on Campus — BDS and Related Networks, Undercover Investigative Reporting.”  April 24, 2016.

BackChannels Lookup.  “Soviet, anti-Semitism”.

BBC, Election 2016.  “Elections: Labour’s Sadiq Khan elected London mayor.”  May 7, 2016.

Discover the Networks.  “The Left and Anti-Semitism.”

Kirchick, James.  “The Derangement of the British Left.”  The American Interest, November 23, 2015.

Kirchick, James.  “Who is Responsible for Anti-Semitism in the Labour Party?  Jeremy Corbyn.” Tablet, May 10, 2016.

Stop the ISM

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Reference – Two Articles – BDS on Campus – BDS and Related Networks, Undercover Investigative Reporting

24 Sunday Apr 2016

Posted by in 21st Century Feudal, Anti-Semitism, Conflict - Culture - Language - Psychology, Politics

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The university campus is becoming increasingly hostile to both Jews and Israel. From what I have witnessed and experienced, it is no side effect, but rather part of a deliberate and well-planned strategy. We are witnessing an entry operation.

The Planned Palestinian Invasion of the University

Arab-American college radicals such as Jess Ghannam (a professor of psychiatry today at UC San Francisco), Zahi Damuni ( a biochemist, formerly of St. James University in Canada), and Mazen Qumsiyeh (a geneticist from Yale, fired for anti-Semitic emails), some of whom were born in the West Bank, went on to graduate university and with their professional incomes started the group Al Awda (Arabic for “the Return”), an organization set up to promote PLO and later Hamas goals against Israel’s existence.

During this time, Al Qaeda was also founded by a Palestinian named Abdullah Azzam, the mentor for Osama Bin Laden. This was the Muslim jihadist link behind the BDS Movement to this day.

Today, the leadership of Al Awda helps promote BDS along with myriad other groups and clubs that have sprung up to promote starving out the Jews in the Middle East and, by extension, linking to the worldwide jihad. Al Awda is still very active in the USA and in promoting BDS.

BDS was launched in Israel in 2005 by Palestinian Jamal Juma and later Omar Barghouti, an Arab student from Kuwait attending Tel Aviv University helped to specifically launch the academic boycott in Israel and worldwide with the help of Jess Ghannam, Manzar Foroohar (an Iranian Muslim) and some other Arab professors in the USA in 2007 that comprised a steering committee.

http://israelbehindthenews.com/exclusive-undercover-investigative-films-expose-inner-workings-of-bds/14626/ (paragraphing added for readability on BackChannels).

David Collier’s investigative piece in The Algemeiner (April 21, 2016) details the methods used to find and fund Palestinian students specifically to stir up BDS-related anti-Semitic sentiment on the campuses of the United Kingdom.

Lee Kaplan, who has made a career of investigating the International Solidarity Movement (in BackChannels’ opinion, too many themes lead back to Moscow, Soviet Era and Feudal Revanch), has produced a sprawling tour de force in investigative journalism, videos included, as regards connections between Islamist movements and the BDS Movement.  It’s difficult reading for the wall of verbage presented to the eyes online, but, for the patient, it’s rich with BDS Movement links back to the history of Palestinian terrorism, and it affords insight into the greater politics leading into the progressive circles that unwittingly — or, if otherwise, less innocently — sustain suffering throughout the middle east.

Cited and Additional Reference

BackChannels.  “BDS (Cult) Modules.”  March 8, 2016.

Collier, David.  “The Planned Palestinian Invasion of the University.”  The Algemeiner, April 21, 2016.

Kaplan, Lee.  “Does the Pro-Terror Left Violate U.S. Tax Laws?”  Frontpage Magazine, September 26. 2005.

Kaplan, Lee.  “Exclusive Undercover Investigative Films Expose Inner Workings of BDS.”  Israel Behind the News, April 14, 2016.

Kaplan, Lee.  Stop the ISM.

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FTAC — Strongmen vs Strong Societies

11 Monday Apr 2016

Posted by in 21st Century Feudal, Conflict - Culture - Language - Psychology, FTAC - From The Awesome Conversation, Politics

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This blog’s editor got off on a little bit of a roll this morning, but will ease off on pontification.  🙂

The challenge is setting off and managing a transition from the medieval mode in governance toward modern features.

Europe itself continues to support at least a dozen monarchies, and they would be no different as centers of power and sources of patronage than the Saudi Kingdom or the Islamic Republic of Iran were it not for the leveraging of power out of exclusive hands.

Much of the world contesting the authority of the west (basically: Russia vs NATO) has either to press forward with “political absolutism” or turn toward “classical liberalism”. In Moscow, Putin has chosen a feudal, neo-imperial course. In Riyadh, such a luminary as Prince Al-Waleed has found ways to blend — at least for himself and those to whom he extends patronage — the best of both worlds.

What Moscow, again using that proper noun to represent Putin, the “New Nobility” (FSB), and the Oligarchs, appears to want is greater chaos in the world to which it then may respond as a provider of greater stability!

Moscow plays a deeply manipulating script over and over and over.

Let’s try this Matryoshka doll method of nesting from the larger to the smaller:

Moscow vs NATO

Tehran vs Riyadh (Shiite vs Sunni Islam)

Damascus vs Split Proto-Democratic | Proto-islamist Forces

Hamas | Hezbollah vs Tel Aviv

From the big conflict-containing political doll down to the smallest:

Medieval Autocratic Power vs Modern Distributed Power

From my desktop experience and perspective, the principle as regards the architecture of the most notable “conflict set” — we should stop calling it “East vs West” at this point — doesn’t change.

Moscow appears to want a world of vast feudal estates managed by “strongmen”.

Washington may appreciate and produce wealth fit for kings, but its system prefers the presence of a meaningful electorate, then politicians, then the Chief Administrator we call a President, lesser administrators, and then appointed judges, all of its political machinery governed by a stable Constitution and a host of legal codes upheld from township to Federal region.

That’s the “different kind of war” seen from the BackChannels’ desktop.  It has great stability — “Medieval Autocratic Power vs Modern Distributed Power” — but also some variance within (and the Rolling Stones have conquered only popular Cuba).

In that parenthesis is another conflict that involves the discrepancy  between the rule of the strong (anywhere) and the popular will (anywhere).  Although both Moscow and Washington — and all the others — support vast internal security campuses, the differences may be at least superficially marked (e.g., KGB/FSB vs FBI / CIA / U.S. Homeland Security) but with depth immediately beyond this blog’s interest, reach, and scope.

As regards the binary “Medieval vs Modern”, change on the side of the good — universally compassionate and reparative — involves myriad elements in transition.  Perhaps when President Obama has counseled patience or refused to demonize Islam in its totality — a common complaint from the extreme wings of western nationalists — it has been to both compel but manage a global and gradual political greening.  Whether the Administration has done far too little at a mosey may be subject for another post.

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FTAC — A Wrap-Up on Mentality — Malignant/Medieval and Reparative/Modern Narcissism

11 Monday Apr 2016

Posted by in 21st Century Feudal, Conflict - Culture - Language - Psychology, FTAC - From The Awesome Conversation, Political Psychology, Politics, Psychology, Russia, Syndicate Red Brown Green

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In our common malignancy, perhaps, our narcissism lends repair to psychological damage to self concept. Life’s rough and in part insults us, less or more, but, again perhaps, the greater the insult to esteem — the heavier the hand — the more passionate the want of self-aggrandizement, security, and wealth.

In the healthy, it’s good having basic and somewhat above good circumstance in freedom, money, and general security. In the malignant, the same wants get Up There and Out There. On Back-Channels, I’ve likened such qualities to the recognized psychological pathologies that are bipolar disorder and narcissistic personality disorder. In our general political psychology and related sociology, we aspire and trade up in comfort and prestige, and we do that through laws an practices that accommodate a healthy general development with concern spanning the distance from penthouse to street.

The malignant do things quite differently.

Muammar Qaddafi’s Mullah Shweyga story (easily looked up) tells the difference. Such leaders take full advantage of the possession of the power to visit suffering on others with impunity. All of the crimes that may be visited on one may as well be extended to others: capricious “justice” or detainments, imprisonments, hangings, tortures. Each dictator asks: “who is going to stop me?” And off each goes into the high life on the backs of the hungry, the powerless, and vulnerable.

I’m always happy to share the Reuters piece on Khamenei (“Assets of the Ayatollah”), but I think it better that others embark on similar journeys as regards the entire host of figures whose power has proven malignant and resides in the brutalities and related fears and levers (e.g., bribery and patronage; intimidation and murder) known more to the medieval mind than the modern one.

Yes, this may be the only blog on earth suggesting the reader continue doing the research.

🙂

Here’s a related comment on Moscow’s role in managing conflicts in a manner fit to destroy those it manages to manipulate and prize from the same conflict-related income and, at least in its own hive-mind, power and prestige.

Moscow, representing Putin’s political police, himself, and the oligarchs, may be a greater power than Tehran. It may barely be keeping its political image clean — remember: officially, Moscow is helping Damascus fight “The Terrorists” — but it may have the habit of manipulating political situations to its advantage.

From Somali General Galal, who is still alive, here’s a densely compacted recap of the Somali vs Ethiopian war over the Ogaden: http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p03pk9c1

In the PROCESS of that war, Moscow apparently manipulated Somali leaders into laying claim or reclaiming the Ogaden, pitting first guerrilla then regular forces against Ethiopian control of the space. As advances pushed Ethiopia out of the contested space, Soviet Russia stepped in to arm Ethiopian forces, who then pushed back the Somalis. The Ogaden continues to host some related “low-intensity conflict”.

Who won?

Getting away from one’s own interests, in this instance Syria, and venturing to overview Moscow’s involvements in conflicts worldwide across time may help us more brightly resolve (accurately perceive) states of affairs in Syria and the Middle East Conflict.

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Hef & Holly – A Note on Malignant and Reparative Narcissism

30 Wednesday Mar 2016

Posted by in 21st Century Feudal, Conflict - Culture - Language - Psychology, Political Psychology, Politics, Psychology

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PERHAPS —

The Malignant controls, discourages, manipulates

&

The Reparative liberates, encourages, and grows

_____

Attempt to escape as he may, the editor of BackChannels returns to his themes even while journeying out to Hollywood between the pages of a hardcover, i.e., celebrity Holly Madison’s Down the Rabbit Hole: Curious Adventures and Cautionary Tales of a Former Playboy Bunny (New York: Harper Collins, Dey Street imprint, 2015).

As ladies men go, some peacocks appear to have an image both to create and maintain, and not infrequently that at high cost to the cheerleaders seduced into hanging on to their elbows.

Now how different is that from the global politics — and the themes attending those “leaders and their followers in a dangerous world” written about by Jerrold Post (2004)  — visited here by way of the pack of contemporary autocrats?

🙂

I have seen the term “state capitalism” applied to Putin’s medieval revanch in the creation of the post-Soviet neo-feudal Russia now wrapped around his own “vertical of power”.  The idea has its appeal (and many related posts break into a BackChannels’ category ne “21st Century Feudal“).

In the American Wildness, distributed business-borne capitalism, which in North America could not be otherwise, appears to produce in part feudal competitions and related private environs as part of the nature of power arrayed between chairmen and presidents, members of the board, and shareholders and other stakeholders.  The degree to which those at the top embrace their own “vertical of power” and effectively promote their own cultural fascism around and beneath them needs must vary, but overarched by democratic governance, such private feudal behaviors have only the boundaries of a few legal papers (noncompete and nondisclosure agreements, for a start), the discipline of their accounting departments (no workee, no checkee), and their doors for fending off equally private but solitary revolutions: employees belittled, degraded, demeaned, denigrated, enslaved by their environments can, do, will outgrow their my-way-or-the-highway keepers — and walk across the street or do that highway thing and move one big town, state, or country over.

It’s a big world, and life’s too short to tolerate a capricious and irrational subjugation forever.

Of course, with governments operated as private businesses for authoritarian elites, the same problems are much, much greater for those suffering — and not individually: en masse — beneath them.

Additional Reference

BackChannels.  “Malignant Narcissism”.

Odell, Amy.  “The 14 Worst Things About Hugh Hefner, as Revealed in Holly Madison’s New Book: From his incessant mansplaining to the constant infighting he created among girlfriends, Madison describes her life in the mansion as anything but happy.” Cosmopolitan, June 22, 2015. 

Wikipedia.  “Presidency of Vladimir Putin”: About the same time, Vladimir Ryzhkov pointed out that a bill Medvedev had sent to the State Duma in late January 2009, when signed into law, will allow Kremlin-friendly regional legislatures to remove opposition mayors who were elected by popular vote: “It is no coincidence that Medvedev has taken aim at the country’s mayors. Mayoral elections were the last bastion of direct elections after the Duma cancelled the popular vote for governors in 2005. Independent mayors were the only source of political competition against governors who were loyal to the Kremlin and United Russia. Now one of the few remaining checks and balances against the monopoly on executive power in the regions will be removed. After the law is signed by Medvedev, the power vertical will be extended one step further to reach every mayor in the country.

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FTAC – Syria – Medieval vs Modern

23 Wednesday Mar 2016

Posted by in 21st Century Feudal, Conflict - Culture - Language - Psychology, FTAC - From The Awesome Conversation, Politics

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Natural ethnolinguistic cultural separation, survival, and co-evolution should be, imho, a global standard in the understanding of the foundations of the peace. Viewed through that prism, Baloch, Hebrews, Kurds, and Pashtun have claim to the lands that bore them into being, culture and language themselves representing a People’s struggle confined to living with themselves and their ecological environment.

The politics in play in Syria have pitted the medieval worldview promoted by despots intent on keeping themselves in “absolute power” against the power-distributing and checking forces of the west in its post-Enlightenment phases. The same has also pitted as post-Soviet neo-feudal Russia against the arc of NATO or westward-moving states. The once Arab and Soviet-promoted anti-Semitism cultivated in Syria has probably contributed to impeding efforts to get in the way of the creation of the tragedy.

In fact, the good of the western world certainly do pray for Syrians. Whether by way of Judaic, Judeo-Christian, and perhaps (or soon) Judeo-Christian-Islamic “Ethical Monotheism” or by way of “Ethical Humanism” or “Secular Humanism”, western ideals involving mankind tend toward egalitarianism (none are supreme by virtue of birth) and universalism (our values and principles are accessible to all).

It is important to see Putin, Assad, and Khamenei or “Syndicate Red Brown Green” or “Post-Soviet Neo-Feudal” Russia as expressive of a medieval worldview now long superseded by arrangements attached to functioning international conventions and law and trade.

Posting to this blog has slowed quite a bit as its editor wishes not to keep saying the same things over and over and over and over . . . again.  Certain criminal behaviors involving “non-state transnational actors” and certain state leaders and their followers fit medieval concepts involving their own legitimacy and the concomitant development and sustaining of the immense power and wealth they’re able to personally amass or commandeer.  Whatever the superficial banner representing the character of the enclave of a dictator or “malignant narcissist”, the range may be better noted by scale (start with the pirate’s cove and work on up to the national socialist dictatorship) than by nominal affinity with some system of mystical belief.  The name of the eternal game for those committed to the latest fascisms: money.

On BackChannels, the concept “Syndicate Red Brown Green” reflects elements from movements within the communist / post-communist worlds, the worldview of the New Nationalists (Orban, Erdogan, among others), and, of course, that of the hipster “Islamists” so devoted to general destruction and the destruction of Israel and Jewry worldwide in particular, and it attaches to the leadership, which cleans up (makes a lot of loot) on what it can “put over” on followers and marks while maintaining vast systems of patronage.

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BDS (Cult) Modules

08 Tuesday Mar 2016

Posted by in 21st Century Feudal, Anti-Semitism, Conflict - Culture - Language - Psychology, Political Psychology, Politics

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This page may turn out a work in civilizational regress as so many leftward and youthful peacocks climb the virtual barricades “in solidarity” with the Palestinians, eliminating economic development and jobs, fostering Arab apartheid politics (check out those holding pens called “camps” in Egypt, Jordan, Lebanon, and Syria), and serving Hamas billionaires, among others, along their disinformed way (ah, but that’s what youth is for).

++++++

Founder: Omar Barghouti, M.A., Tel Aviv University.

“Norman Finkelstein on BDS” — Posted to YouTube February 15, 2012.

“Noam Chomsky 2014 The BDS Movement and Tactics” — Posted to YouTube July 13, 2015.

“SodaStream Palestinian Employees Farewell” — Posted to YouTube March 2, 2016.

On BackChannels, “FTAC — Tip to the KGB’s Amplification of Middle Eastern Anti-Semitism” (October 12, 2015); “FTAC — Approaching Anti-Semitism and the Medieval Revanch” (October 22, 2015); Syndicate Red Brown Green; Paranoid Delusional Narcissistic Reflection of Motivation.

Hamas

Blake, Matthew.  “Hamas admits it DID use schools and hospitals in Gaza Strip as ‘human shields’ to launch rocket attacks on Israel – but claims it was ‘mistake’.”  Daily Mail, September 12, 2014.

Danan, Deborah.  “Gaza’s Millionaires and Billionaires — How Hamas’s Leaders Got Rich Quick.”  The Algemeiner, July 28, 2014.

Freimann, Myer.  “Hamas Killed 160 Palestinian Children to Build Tunnels.”  Tablet, July 25, 2014.

Greenfield, Daniel.  “Palestinian Authority: 1,700 Hamas Millionaires in Gaza.”  Frontpage, March 24, 2014.

Levy-Weinrib, Ella.  “Meet the Hamas billionaires.”  Globes, July 24, 2014.

Peskin, Doron.  “Hamas got rich as Gaza was plunged into poverty.”  YNet News, July 15, 2014.

Borschel-Dan, Amanda.  “10 years later, how BDS became the politically correct way to delegitimize Israel.”  The Times of Israel, July 9, 2015.

Greenfield, Daniel.  “S-BDS: The Rise of Stealth BDS.”  FrontPage, April 29, 2016.

Horowitz, Adam and Philip Weiss.  “The BDS Movement at 10: An Interview with Omar Barghouti.”  Mondoweiss, July 9, 2015.

Israel & Judaism Studies (IJS).  “Zionism — Its Origins and Aspirations”.

Jacobson, William A.  “Vassar student gov’t passes anti-Israel BDS Resolution.”  Legal Insurrection, March 6, 2016.

JTA.  “Students at Canada’s McGill University Reject BDS Motion.”  Haaretz, February 29, 2016.

JTA.  “Vassar College student government passes BDS resolution.”  March 7, 2016.

Kaplan, Lee.  “An ISM Volunteer Activist Learns the Truth About the ISM: Human Shields for Terrorists Out to Destroy Israel.”  Stop the ISM, n.d.

NGO Monitor.  “BDS (Boycotts, Divestment, and Sanctions)”.

Rothstein, Annika Hernroth-, “I Love Adolph Hitler”: BDS at South African Universities.”  The Tower, 31 (October 2015).

Sorin, Gerald.  “Academic Boycott: Free Speech or Sordid Vilification of Israel?” Haaretz, March 20, 2015.

Vassar BDS.  “Vassar Boycott Divestments, Sanctions (BDS) Resolution.”  February 1, 2016 by Vassar BDS Coalition.

Updates

http://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/50-us-governors-join-ajc-initiative-to-support-israel-fight-bds-300459614.html – 5/17/2017.

 

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FTAC – On the Meaning of Al Aqsa

04 Friday Mar 2016

Posted by in 21st Century Feudal, A Little Wisdom, Anti-Semitism, Conflict - Culture - Language - Psychology, FTAC - From The Awesome Conversation, Islamic Small Wars, Political Psychology, Politics, Religion, Syndicate Red Brown Green

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I can’t endorse the sentiment, ______, having taken a moderate course, but I hope that more and more Arabs will take note of the abuse of the refugees at the hands of their leaders and the medieval disinformation and manipulation campaigns that have led to The Preoccupation not only with the Jews but their own self-concept and status in the world. Too many fathers like al-Husseini have put them on the worst imaginable track, i.e., the emulation of Hitler and the Nazis. Some who have embraced that most may be due to wake up from the nightmare within them that has long masqueraded as their dream.

BackChannels now has plenty of information as to how the Israelis, the west, the refugees of 1948 and their generations, got to this unpretty pass.  The themes erupting in WWII — that Stalin-Hitler thing — have been sustained in the middle east conflict; the Soviet promotion of anti-Semitism in the middle east and the concomitant terrorism of the PLO and PFLP have been similarly and perhaps exhaustively covered; the formation and presence of what has been referred to here as “Syndicate Red Brown Green”; the self-dissolve of the Soviet on December 26, 1991 also has been remarked in these virtual pages, as have the feudal kleptocracies kept floating along in its place and around it; less has been remarked as regards the post-Cold War Era around the world, but BackChannels believes we’re in that realm as this is being posted.

All in all, and with Khamenei pressing for Israel’s destruction while a smattering of Sunni-majority states brand Hezbollah as a terrorist organization (that move took a while plus some “war by proxy” on Iran’s part), the world, even in one of its most medieval appearances, appears to want to move forward, not backward — and forward would seem toward the classical liberalism of the west.

The comment to which the excerpt responds called for the realization al-Husseini’s manipulative lie: the Jews haven’t any desire to “take over” Al Aqsa Mosque — never did and never will — because while being Jewish involves attending to self defense, it also involves being about and for others, and that includes the Arab brother and sister.

Two of Hillel the Elder’s most famous statements ring down through the ages: “That which is distasteful to thee, do not do to another.”  That is an idea predicated on the concept of human self-restraint.  Israel may produce harm when harmed itself, but it does not have to prove its power through making others suffer with impunity.  If met with the force that would do that to people, including its own people, then it may answer in kind.

The second of Hillel’s language-based corrals:  “If I am not for myself, who will be for me?  If I am not for others, what am I?  If not now, when?”

Some Palestinians may be surprised to find Israelis for them in peace, but peace is needed as part of a sea change in the character of our humanity.

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