[Salon] Tell me what’s untrue in Amnesty’s report on Israel - Opinion - Haaretz.com

[Todd Pierce <tepierce@outlook.com>]

>> (I know there is an aversion to reading long emails from me, especially when I’m critical of Trumpism, but this is balanced by criticism of the other party, and directed for the benefit of a couple friends, so with this advance warning, just send it to “Trash,” is my suggestion. And note that this is in keeping with Clausewitz’s treatment of “Theory,” and “History,” as necessary to understand “War,” which I believe our present crisis calls for.)

>> Speaking of “Cognitive Campaigns,” our full partner in global war and cognitive campaigns is going all-out in attacking Amnesty’s honest report, just as the US, UK, and Israel went, and are going, all-out to destroy Julian Assange who heroically undermined the aforementioned country’s Cognitive Campaign for our collective Perpetual War we’re waging as a team. “Undermined” it by telling the truth: of the war crimes of waging aggressive war, torturing prisoners, etc. But don’t compare our American Exceptionlism to anything like fascism and the fascist wars which began in the 1930s: we speak English, not German, Italian, or Japanese. 

Open this link for a frameable picture many here may want to hang on their wall: https://mondoweiss.net/2022/01/pompeo-at-zoa-gala-israel-is-not-an-occupier/?utm_source=mailpoet&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=daily-email-mailpoet
>> 
>> Pompeo at ZOA gala: “Israel is not an occupier”
>> 
>> January 3, 2022

BLUF: "At the Zionist Organization of America’s (ZOA) annual gala last month, former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo criticized the Biden administration’s Middle East policy and declared that Israel does not occupy any Palestinian land. Pompeo delivered remarks at the virtual event after receiving the Dr. Miriam and Sheldon Adelson Defender of Israel Award.

"Pompeo touted the Trump administration’s record on Israel during the speech, citing the Abraham Accords, Golan Heights recognition, and violating the Iran nuclear deal as major accomplishments.”



That is a list of major accomplishments! For which the Republican/Likudniks are suitably proud, as it is their “Champion,” the radical right-wing Donald Trump, who took them to such heights! 

On that note though, let me share a method of analysis which I believe would greatly enhance the ability of Americans to see our political system for what it is, to include “right-wing (militarist) Democrats, from the book THE TRIUMPH OF ISRAEL’S RADICAL RIGHT, by Ami Pedahzur - Oxford University Press 2012, if you will pardon me this long block quote. But this is what Clausewitz would consider the appropriate method of analysis for a society, and I mean the United States, which is in what the DOD gleefully calls “Perpetual War:"

p. 9- "Political networks are a subcategory of social networks. Due to the lack of an agreed upon definition for this concept, which only recently made its mark in the academic literature, I define the political network as a “a loose and dynamic composite of political actors whose worldview on various issues overlaps and who frequently come together for the purpose of shaping policies in the spirit of their shared ideology.”
pp. 210-211-"The ways by which the Israeli radical-Right managed to achieve so much in such little time prompt questions that should help in delineating and understanding political processes in other countries as well. First, does the scholarly focus on traditional units of analysis such as political parties, parliamentary caucuses, interest groups, social movements, and individuals of separate units of analysis really provide us with the full scope of the phenomenon? Maybe it is time to move forward, expand our perspective, and relate to these groups and individuals as pieces of a bigger puzzle, namely the political network. Such a transition and focus requires tremendous theoretical and methodological efforts. Political networks are elusive and dynamic, and studying them presents a long list of challenges. This task falls beyond the objective at this book and is likely outside my set of skills. I hope that the emerging group of talented political scientists (TP-that’s dubious) who are interested in such networks will expand their scope of research to include the radical Right phenomenon. Second, it has already been established that the ideology of the radical Right cannot be reduced to a single issue. Yet, since most of the scholarship on the radical Right is still focused on Europe, the ideological overlap between right-wing radicalism and religious fundamentalism, which seems to be prevalent in other parts of the world, is yet to be explored. Third, after fifteen years of research of the Israeli radical Right using theoretical frameworks developed elsewhere, I became skeptical regarding the potential of broad theoretical frameworks to explain various aspects of the phenomenon across regions and historical periods. I believe that should be replaced with less ambitious theories. Most importantly, we have to acknowledge the fact that context matters. Thus, we are faced with the challenge of incorporating elements, which many political scientists consider idiosyncratic. These include (1) the unique history of the country; (2) its social makeup, political culture, the pace in which its demography changes, and its impact on ethnic, religious, and materialistic divisions; (3) the challenges that the nation faces at any given point in time; (4) the formal and informal divisions of power between the masses and the elite (as well as within these groups); and (5) even the personality traits of the men and women who make the decisions and implement them. End Quote

The book references a couple Americans: Meir Kahane, whose name and party has now been “sanitized” amongst the other Israeli fascists and parties, finding such favor today to include US Republicans who are only, at most, one degree away from Kahanists by way of Trump and Netanyahu, and Arthur Finkelstein, who played such a large role in both Israel’s and the U.S. radical Right parties aligned with each other, the Likud/Republican coaltions. Finkelstein’s “Six-Party Theory” (https://www.nationalreview.com/2017/01/arthur-finkelstein-republican-political-consultant-strategit-conservative-libertarian/) can be seen to be an applied “network analysis,” and how to target each individual “network,” even when the message contradicts that directed toward another network in the Party. So Trump/Finkelstein targeted Ron Paul Republicans with “he will end the endless wars,” and the Republican Hawks with a message that he would restore torture to US policy, build the Greatest Military” the world has ever seen, and relentlessly attack China, and Iran, and left unspoken, build up US forces on Russia’s perimeter for when he got around to attacking them if for no other reason than that they’re allied with China and Iran. Of a different party but a similar militaristic network, combining with Republicans on mutual interests of war, are the pro-war Democrats, making up the left-wing, of America’s “radical Right,” and making more US wars inescapable. 

So who is our “Radical Right,” by name? Certainly Trump, though the Greatest Military Ever wasn’t quite ready when he "had the election stole from him” so he wasn’t yet able to attack Russia and China as one can see in his preparations were his plans. And certainly Pompeo, so celebrated by these genuine fascists: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xPfwLh5pyy4, and also the people who put the US on the brink of a nuclear war, which even should the “diplomacy of violence” which Biden and his thugs have been exercising (which Pompeo, et al., would fit in with so well) avoid war this time, will still leave the world irreparably altered, just like the Cuban Missile Crisis did, so that we can look forward to more hostilities, and budgets which will hasten our collapse. A friend said to me, in effect, don’t worry, be happy (“relax” actually), and assured me how “diplomacy" had started, like 10 days ago. Regardless of the outcome, the world will never be the same and we can look forward to even large military budgets now, with full bi-partisan agreement on that by our “Radical Right.” 
 

> https://www.haaretz.com/opinion/.premium.HIGHLIGHT-tell-me-what-s-untrue-in-amnesty-s-report-on-israel-1.10587114?utm_source=mailchimp&utm_medium=email&utm_content=author-alert&utm_campaign=Gideon%2520Levy&utm_term=20220203-03:08 <https://www.haaretz.com/opinion/.premium.HIGHLIGHT-tell-me-what-s-untrue-in-amnesty-s-report-on-israel-1.10587114?utm_source=mailchimp&utm_medium=email&utm_content=author-alert&utm_campaign=Gideon%2520Levy&utm_term=20220203-03:08>
> 
> Tell Me What’s Untrue in Amnesty’s Report on Israel
> 
> Gideon Levy </misc/writers/WRITER-1.4968119>Feb. 3, 2022 2:44 AM
> 
> As the curses and screeches subside – Amnesty are antisemites, the report is full of lies, the methodology is absurd – one must ask: What, precisely, is incorrect in the apartheid report?
> 
> Was Israel not founded on an explicit policy of maintaining Jewish demographic hegemony, while reducing the number of Palestinians within its boundaries? Yes or no? True or false? Does this policy not exist to this day? Yes or no? True or false? Does Israel not maintain a regime of oppression and control of Palestinians <https://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/.premium-sharp-increase-in-anti-palestinian-settler-violence-amid-israel-s-hands-off-policy-1.10260260> in Israel and in the occupied territories for the benefit of Israeli Jews? Yes or no? True or false? Do the rules of engagement with Palestinians not reflect a policy of shoot to kill, or at least maim? Yes or no? True or false? Are the evictions of Palestinians from their homes and the denial of construction permits not part of Israeli policy? Yes or no? True or false?
> 
> Is Sheikh Jarrah <https://www.haaretz.com/opinion/.premium-three-families-three-histories-and-sheikh-jarrah-1.10497557> not apartheid? Is the nation-state law not apartheid? And the denial of family reunification? And the unrecognized villages? And the “Judaization”? Is there a single sphere, in Israel or the territories, in which there is true, absolute equality, except in name?
> 
> To read the report is to despair. It’s everything we knew, but condensed. Yet no despair or remorse was felt in Israel. Most of the media marginalized and blurred it, and the hasbara choir batted it away. The propaganda minister, Yair Lapid, recited his lines and went on the attack even before the report was published. Diaspora Affairs Minister Nachman Shai was quick to follow. The international report has yet to be born that Israel won’t denounce while neglecting to respond to a single point it makes. One organization after another, some of them important and honest, call it apartheid, and Israel says: antisemitism.
> 
> Please, prove Amnesty wrong. That there aren’t two systems of justice in the territories, two sets of rights and two formulas for the distribution of resources. That the legitimization of Evyatar  <https://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/.premium-explained-israel-s-compromise-evacuation-of-evyatar-what-the-settler-1.9952498/>is not apartheid. That Jews being able to reclaim their pre-1948 property while Palestinians are denied the same right is not apartheid. That a verdant settlement right next to a shepherd’s community with no power or running water is not apartheid. That Israel’s Arab citizens aren’t discriminated against systematically, institutionally. That the Green Line has not been erased. What’s not true?
> 
> Even Mordechai Kremnitzer was frightened by the report and attacked it <https://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/.premium.HIGHLIGHT-the-missed-opportunity-in-amnesty-s-israeli-apartheid-report-1.10585538>. His arguments: The report does not distinguish the occupied territories from Israel, and it treats the past as if it were the present. That’s how it goes when even leftist academia enlists in defense of Zionist propaganda. Accusing Israel of the sins of 1948 and calling it apartheid is like accusing the United States of apartheid because of the Jim Crow past, he wrote in Wednesday’s Haaretz.
> 
> The difference is that institutionalized racism in the United States has gradually disappeared, whereas in Israel it’s alive and kicking as strong as ever. The Green Line has been obliterated too. It’s been one state for a while now. Why should Amnesty make the distinction? 1948 goes on. The Nakba goes on. A straight line connects Tantura and Jiljilya. In Tantura they massacred <https://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/.premium.HIGHLIGHT.MAGAZINE-there-s-a-mass-palestinian-grave-at-a-popular-israeli-beach-veterans-confess-1.10553968>, in Jiljilya they caused an 80-year-old man to die, and in both cases Palestinian lives aren’t worth a thing.
> 
> Israel’s hysterical response to Amnesty’s ‘apartheid’ report </israel-news/.premium.HIGHLIGHT-hysterical-response-to-amnesty-s-apartheid-report-is-a-typical-hasbara-fail-1.10581770>
> U.S. Jewish groups slam Amnesty International's 'Israeli apartheid’ report </us-news/.premium-u-s-jewish-groups-slam-amnesty-s-israeli-apartheid-report-1.10579147>
> Amnesty report accuses Israel of apartheid against Palestinians, including its own citizens </israel-news/.premium-amnesty-accuses-israel-of-apartheid-against-palestinians-including-its-own-citizens-1.10581775>
> There is, of course, no propaganda without accolades for the justice system. “The important contribution of the government’s legal counsel and the courts, which, against a large political majority, prevented the banning of Arab candidates and lists for Knesset … An Arab party joining the coalition immediately puts the accusation of apartheid to ridicule,” wrote Kremnitzer.
> 
> It’s so good to wave the High Court of Justice, which has not prevented a single occupation iniquity, and Mansour Abbas to prove there’s no apartheid. Seventy-four years of statehood without a new Arab city, without an Arab university or a train station in an Arab city are all dwarfed by the great whitewasher of the occupation, the High Court of Justice, and a minor Arab coalition partner, and even that one considered illegitimate.
> 
> The world will continue to hurl the invective, Israel will continue to ignore it. The world will say apartheid, Israel will say antisemitism. But the evidence will keep piling up. What is written in the report does not stem from antisemitism, but will help strengthen it. Israel is the greatest motivator of antisemitic urges in the world today.