turkishny.com: On your Web site, there is an argument that the grandchildren of Holocaust survivors are doing to the Palestinians exactly what was done to them by the Nazis. Do you agree with that?
Norman Finkelstein: I think Israel, as a number of commentators pointed out, is becoming an insane state. And we have to be honest about that. While the rest of the world wants peace, Europe wants peace, the US wants peace, but this state wants war, war and war. In the first week of the massacres, there were reports in the Israeli press that Israel did not want to put all its ground forces in Gaza because it was preparing attacks on Iran. Then there were reports it was planning attacks on Lebanon. It is a lunatic state.
turkishny.com: But do you agree with the characterization?
Norman Finkelstein: Look at the pictures and decide for yourself. I am not going to tell people what they should think about it. But what I say is they should look at the pictures and decide for themselves. (For the pictures go to:
![](/img/extlink.gif)
BUILDING WALLS & FENCES TO KEEP PEOPLE IN PRISONS
BUILDING WALLS & FENCES TO KEEP PEOPLE IN PRISONS
BUILDING WALLS & FENCES TO KEEP PEOPLE IN PRISONS
BUILDING WALLS & FENCES TO KEEP PEOPLE IN PRISONS
BUILDING WALLS & FENCES TO KEEP PEOPLE IN PRISONS
BUILDING WALLS & FENCES TO KEEP PEOPLE IN PRISONS
BUILDING WALLS & FENCES TO KEEP PEOPLE IN PRISONS
BUILDING WALLS & FENCES TO KEEP PEOPLE IN PRISONS
BUILDING WALLS & FENCES TO KEEP PEOPLE IN PRISONS
CHECK POINTS NOT TO ALLOW PEOPLE BASIC FREEDOM OF MOVEMENT
CHECK POINTS NOT TO ALLOW PEOPLE BASIC FREEDOM OF MOVEMENT
CHECK POINTS NOT TO ALLOW PEOPLE BASIC FREEDOM OF MOVEMENT
CHECK POINTS NOT TO ALLOW PEOPLE BASIC FREEDOM OF MOVEMENT
CHECK POINTS NOT TO ALLOW PEOPLE BASIC FREEDOM OF MOVEMENT
CHECK POINTS NOT TO ALLOW PEOPLE BASIC FREEDOM OF MOVEMENT
CHECK POINTS NOT TO ALLOW PEOPLE BASIC FREEDOM OF MOVEMENT
CHECK POINTS NOT TO ALLOW PEOPLE BASIC FREEDOM OF MOVEMENT
CHECK POINTS NOT TO ALLOW PEOPLE BASIC FREEDOM OF MOVEMENT
DESTROYING HOMES & LIVELIHOODS
DESTROYING HOMES & LIVELIHOODS
DESTROYING HOMES & LIVELIHOODS
GIFTS (WITH LOVE) FROM THE CHILDREN OF PEACE-LOVING & CIVILIZED COUNTRIES
GIFTS (WITH LOVE) FROM THE CHILDREN OF PEACE-LOVING & CIVILIZED COUNTRIES
GIFTS (WITH LOVE) FROM THE CHILDREN OF PEACE-LOVING & CIVILIZED COUNTRIES
GIFTS (WITH LOVE) FROM THE CHILDREN OF PEACE-LOVING & CIVILIZED COUNTRIES
GIFTS (WITH LOVE) FROM THE CHILDREN OF PEACE-LOVING & CIVILIZED COUNTRIES
GIFTS (WITH LOVE) FROM THE CHILDREN OF PEACE-LOVING & CIVILIZED COUNTRIES
GIFTS (WITH LOVE) FROM THE CHILDREN OF PEACE-LOVING & CIVILIZED COUNTRIES
GIFTS (WITH LOVE) FROM THE CHILDREN OF PEACE-LOVING & CIVILIZED COUNTRIES
GIFTS (WITH LOVE) FROM THE CHILDREN OF PEACE-LOVING & CIVILIZED COUNTRIES
GIFTS (WITH LOVE) FROM THE CHILDREN OF PEACE-LOVING & CIVILIZED COUNTRIES
GIFTS (WITH LOVE) FROM THE CHILDREN OF PEACE-LOVING & CIVILIZED COUNTRIES
GIFTS (WITH LOVE) FROM THE CHILDREN OF PEACE-LOVING & CIVILIZED COUNTRIES
THE ISRAELIS PRACTICE THE SAME TACTICS
Comments
Hide the following 19 comments
superb comparison
20.01.2009 00:56
Only faults are that you've duplicated a few pictures and the use of all capitals for the text is never a good thing.
antifash
powerful collage
20.01.2009 03:12
Krop
Joseph Anderson, Berkeley, California, USA
20.01.2009 12:04
I say that Finkelstein (and Chomsky) talk an awfully good game (and Chomsky in particular has fooled a lot of people for decades), because that's all they want to do: *talk* a good game. *BUT*, they don't want to lift one finger (well, maybe, effectively, one) to actually give the Palestinian people any *PRACTICAL*, nonviolent support. They are *opposed* to any boycotts, divestment and sanctions against Israeli apartheid (Chomsky has, upon occasion, apparently gone back and forth on this). They are *opposed* to taking on the American Israel lobby and exposing how it works as the #1 organized domestic Zionist Jewish opposition to rights for the Palestinian people. They are opposed to right-of-return for the *indigenous* Palestinians as upsetting Israel's demographic balance, but not for *non-indigenous* Jews. In other words, they advocate and support an ideologically "Jewish State". Finkelstein (and Chomsky) are *opposed* to a *re-unified* secular, democratic Palestine with absolutely equal rights for ALL people regardless of ethncity/race or religion -- and they ridicule even Palestinians (the victims themselves of Zionism) who talk about a *re-unified* historic Palestine.
Finkelstein and Chomsky are even *opposed* to anyone critcizing the repugnant racist ideology of *Zionism* itself -- and Finkelstein says that we shouldn't even mention the word Zionism! They even want to take away the *practical* verbal tools of intellectual/political analysis! And, actually, they *NEVER* hold Zionist Israeli Jews *themselves* directly responsible for Zionist *Jews* OWN ACTIONS in Israel/Palestine (or Jews in the American Israel lobby); they place the *real* blame on WHITE GENTILES in the U.S. government.
Would Finkelstein have said that black-Americans shouldn't have mentioned American "Jim Crow" Segregation and white-supremacy (well, actually he *did*! -- not that any black person would even listen to him about that), or that black South Africans shouldn't have ever mentioned apartheid, or that, especially, Nazi era Jews shouldn't have even mentioned Nazism (of course not!)?
IT WAS JUST ONE YEAR AGO that Finkelstein, in a public argument with me (we know each other well), was shouting that "victory for the Palestinian people was just within reach!" -- and *ridiculed* those (even Palestinians), who speak of boycotts or criticize the Israel lobby or Zionism, as rocking the boat of victory at hand, to put even Israel's worst atrocities in check! And "the peace process" (I've always called it "the decades-long continuous Israeli & American *STALL* process) has continued to go nowhere but *downhill* (as intended by Israel and the U.S.), as the American government now continues to prop up yet another corrupt Arab leader (Mahmoud Abbas and his West Bank government, Fateh).
I wonder how Finkelstein feels *NOW* about saying such a ridiculous thing?
For supporting references see:
Audio of Norman Finkelstein & John Dugard at UC Berkeley, 10/15/08
by Joseph Anderson
Thursday Oct 23rd, 2008
An Open Letter to Norman Finkelstein, and Barbara Lubin of MECA in Berkeley, et al
by Joseph Anderson, Berkeley, CA
Friday Feb 15th, 2008
The Left and the Israel Lobby
Joseph Anderson
June 8, 2006
The Chomsky/Blankfort Polemic
Interview with Jeffrey Blankfort (anti-Zionist Jewish-American journalist)
February 20, 2006
[Zionist] Damage Control: Noam Chomsky and the Israel-Palestine Conflict
by Jeffrey Blankfort
Norman Finkelstein *talks* a good game, but has turned Zionist apologist!
re: Joseph Anderson
20.01.2009 21:11
Why would he compare Nazi war crimes with Israeli war crimes if he were a Zionist?
I think they are right to "place the *real* blame on WHITE GENTILES in the U.S. government." There is no Jewish conspiracy - it's plain greed and power that motivates the evil people who run things, and religions are just used as a pawn in this game.
@non
The worst kind of hero worship is *blind* hero worship.
21.01.2009 10:51
@non: "Why would he [Finkelstein] compare Nazi war crimes with Israeli war crimes if he were a Zionist?"
They say that when the Devil shows up in his *best* beguiling disguise, he shows up as a *saint* or *prophet*, reading *scriptures*.
Or, as the Bible says, "Beware of false prophets".
(Like Norman Finkelstein: "Don't rock the boat! Victory is nearly at hand!" Ironically and 'funny', Finkelstein, a year ago, was saying the same thing as George Bush was saying, a year ago -- and do you think that George Bush was ever seriously going to support a viable Palestinian state, contiguous in even the West Bank? If you did, I can't intellectually help you.)
I'm not white, so I don't have any *white emotional investment* in those white "progressive / leftist" lecture circuit "saints & prophets", icons like Chomsky, Finkelstein, etc..
Furthermore, since, my being Black, I have to be more *practical*, when I see that one of those icons is leading the social/global justice and human rights movement to a practical *DEAD END*, and is denying the movement the *practical* tools of resistance (and even analysis), then *I* stop following them. Or, as one of my Palestinian professor friends once told me, "Do you ever see me mentioning Chomsky?"
In light of that, here's something you can check out:
"Gnome Chomsky" -- a *GREAT* little poem!
A Zionist apologist -- by definition -- *cannot* make the world "a much better place".
I used to support Noam Chomsky and Norman Finkelstein (I even signed NF's national online petition for his tenure, ~#1376?), but when I discovered that ALL THEY DO IS *TALK* A GOOD GAME, when I discovered that they seem to use their "leftism" as a *COVER*, as a covert *means* to underhandedly *support* an ideologically "Jewish/Zionist State", then I *STOPPED* supporting them.
First, anyone who is really more than just "a liberale" (or merely "a fashionable leftist/@narchist") can see through Noam Chomsky without too much intellectual trouble. I saw through Chomsky years ago. For one, how can someone -- Chomsky -- who's written and spoken *billions* of words -- CHOMSKY WHO *CLAIMS* TO BE AN "ANARCHIST" -- never oppose the repugnant racist Jewish-supremacist ideology of *Zionism*? -- and never speak a word against Zionism?
(And, otherwise, Chomsky has basically been getting rich -- he's a multimillionaire -- turning out a leftist-best-selling book about every 1-1/2 to 2 years (sometimes year after year) basically saying the same thing over and over again -- just substituting Country X for Country A, and talking about how the U.S. uses it to commit evil. But, did any of his books *ever* mention THE AMERICAN ISRAEL LOBBY's role, or THE AMERICAN JEWISH NEOCONS' roles in any of the Middle Eastern countries and wars?: *NO*. Chomsky even talks the American Israel lobby line about Iran "supporting terrorism"!)
Chomsky claims to be "an anarchist", and Finkelstein claims to be "a communist": so, neither one are supposed to have any use and support for separate races, classes, racial-/ethnic-supremacy, religio-ethnic states, and borders (let alone *26-46 foot high CONCRETE WALLS*, which Chomsky says that Israel has a perfect moral right to build "on its 1967 borders") -- and Chomsky and Finkelstein, in a backdoor way, *advocate* an ideologically "Jewish State".
Second, the minute I saw that Chomsky, Finkelstein, and these other American leftist icons *OPPOSE* any kind of boycotts (and certainly any organized boycotts, divestments and international sanctions) to at least put Israel's atrocities in check against the Palestinian people, I opposed them.
I once read that the "great" Albert Schweitzer, while posing as "The Great Humanitarian" in Africa, actually had rather *patronizing*, *COLONIALIST*, *superior* (read, *racist*) attitudes himself against black Africans -- and that he did as much to hold black Africans down, even as he constantly *TALKED* of elevating them. That, even as he administered his medical practice to blacks, he never trained them to administer medical practice for *themselves*. I.e., he was posing as "The Great White Hope".
So -- *so-called* "anarchist" -- "@non", you obviously *jumped* to Chomsky's and Finkelstein's defense without even bothering to *challenge* your *blind* hero worship of them by reading *any* of the references I provided. So, that really tells me all I need to know about you.
As for your saying, "I think they [Chomsky, Finkelstein et al] are right to "place the *real* blame on WHITE GENTILES in the U.S. government", then maybe you should blame *THE UNITED STATES* for Hitler and the Nazis' atrocities -- because conservative political and industrial elements in the U.S. (and for that matter, England and France) actually greatly help *boost* Hitler's power -- and later even protected Hitler's concentration camps, even sending escaped European refugees *back* to Nazi Germany. For one example, Hitler gave Henry Ford the highest German award that Hitler could give, at least to a non-German citizen. Other conservative political and industrial elements in the U.S. *loved* Hitler's attitudes about regimenting society (an especially against labor unions).
So, according to your apologist rationale, *so-called* "@non", Jews should stop blaming *Hitler* for the Jewish holocaust, and Jews should start running documentaries over and over and over on American (Western) TV, blaming the *Americans* (the *British* and the *French*) -- who never lifted a finger to provide any *practical* support for the anti-Nazi resistance *WITHIN* Nazi Germany (until it was too late) -- for the Jewish holocaust -- and instead of Jews racistly saying that any German, _who wasn't even *born* during the Nazi era_, has a congenital seed for "genetic evil", start calling *white Americans* (British and French) "genetically evil". Why not say that Hitler and Nazis weren't the blame for the Jewish holocaust -- that the *Americans* -- or even *world capitalism* -- were really the blame (not the people *who actually commited* the atrocities and ethnic elimination)!?
So, it's *very 'conveeenient'* for Chomsky *NOT* to want to blame Zionism, Zionists and Israeli Jews -- and that in itself is *racist* (just like you "@non" for the same thing) -- as though (Zionist) Jews [sociopolitically constructed as a separate "race"] can't ever be racist, fascist, or even Naziesque themselves, just like Gentiles could, were and, in many cases, are.
As for your, "@non", anti-Semitic pre-emption that, "There is no Jewish conspiracy", since no one *else* here mentioned any "Jewish conspiracy", I *wonder* what made *you*, "@non", mention it: something you think you know that the rest of us *don't*? And is your defense of Israeli Jews that they are "merrrely folllowing orrrders" (from the white Gentiles) -- and, if so, WHERE HAVE WE HEARD *THAT* EXCUSE BEFORE?
Joseph Anderson, Berkeley, California, USA
addendum re Chomsky, Zionism, and Israel
21.01.2009 11:32
The late great Harold Pinter and other *anti-Zionist* Jews always put the *primary* blame on Israel's atrocities on the Israeli Jews who were *commitng* them, in Palestine or Lebanon, and even the Israeli Mossad and special forces squads in Iraq.
Harold Pinter (specifically, on The Charlie Rose Show, a very popular, late night, primarily national public affairs interview show in the U.S. -- see charlierose.com, searchable) called Israeli officials and the Israeli military _"A BUNCH OF *THUGS*"_.
Noam Chomsky has *never* even come close to calling Israeli officials and the Israeli military that.
-
JA
Hollow comparisons
21.01.2009 14:05
TA
TA
21.01.2009 18:40
Perhaps it suggests that actually, many governments, all around the world, are as morally bankrupt as the NAZIs, though perhaps on a different scale. In relation to Isreal, there are many ways to compare NAZI Germany and Israel - Palestinian "cockroaches" / Jewish "rats"; Gaza / Warsaw Ghetto; Hamas / Polish Freedom Fighters. ad infinitum. Again, look at the substantive evidence above.
I do hope that we are not allowed by you to make any comparison between any country and NAZI Germany until such a time as another state begins an industrial scale execution programme with Zyklon B?
Of course not.
To say otherwise is as stupid as calling everyone who isn't a member of the SWP a "fascist".
Krop
1 more
21.01.2009 18:44
Krop
Wrong, on reflection
21.01.2009 19:28
I know the thinking goes (I think) that Jewish people were brutally abused and murdered under Hitler, and now their relatives? successors? representatives? appear to be behaving with similar viciousness towards the Palestinian people. The "they're like the Nazis" outrage is based on the fact that these people (whoever they are) have learned nothing from history, one presumes.
But not only (I think) does this have the subliminal effect of turning the Palestinians into passive, hopeless victims, which by nature they are not. It also madly and dangerously ignores the reality of the Nazi regime.
Jewish scientists are not experimenting on Palestinians. The Jewish military are not rounding up gypsies, trade unionists, activists, journalists, writers, musicians, disabled people and gay people, and killing them. You may say that their behaviour proves they would, given half a chance, but that's empty rhetoric. Not even the US administration, in its darkest hour, went to anywhere near that place.
The photos tell their own awful, tragic story, but that story is not the cold, conscienceless, numbing, terrible horror of Buchenwald or Belsen. It is quite sick to suggest it is, I think.
A
re: blind worship
21.01.2009 21:31
You'll be glad to hear I'm not a "hero worshipper" of Chomsky or Finkelstein, in fact I'm not even sure I'd ever heard of Finkelstein before. I've read some of what Chomsky has written, and it made a lot of sense, but I by no means have an in-depth knowledge of his views.
All I'm saying is, I think you are better off attacking the real enemy, rather than people who are much more on our side, even if we do have disagreements.
I've just googled Chomsky's views on the Israeli boycott, and it seems he opposes it for tactical reasons rather than because of any moral support for Israel's policies. Not sure if I agree or not, but I wouldn't call him a Zionist over it.
I only mentioned the "Jewish Conspiracy" because I know that it exists as a popular conspiracy theory. Here's my conspiracy theory: the leaders of the world promote this theory because it has a divide and rule effect on the people, and takes the heat off them? Israel is a shitty state, sure, but the USA is ten times worse.
I thought the images were a very powerful comparison. Maybe the comparison of Israel's to the Nazis is more a comparison to the Nazis during the early days of their rule, before all the death camps were set up?
@non
Sounds Nazi, *yet*?
21.01.2009 22:41
21.01.2009 14:05 :
"I always find these equations of Nazism and Zionism tawdry to say the least."
In fact, the similarities and parallels are completely unavoidable by any moral person. And Zionists/Israel should be ASHAMED that the comparisons are so unavoidable and come so readily. Only a Zionist could refuse to see it.
Any number of anti-Zionist Jews have made the comparison.
Here's one:
"It would be my greatest sadness to see Jews do to Palestine's Arabs MUCH of what Nazis did to Jews." -- ALBERT EINSTEIN
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Also see an excellent article post at UK Indymedia:
20 PARALLELS OF ZIONISM WITH NAZISM
(And I would characterize the continuous racial/ethnic push for "labensraum" under parallel # 16. Furthermore, I compare Israel wanting to wipe historic Palestine off the map with Nazi Germany wanting to wipe Poland off the map.)
This article post *documents* how the Israeli military even directly studied *NAZI methods* for urban warfare for use in West Bank Palestinian towns! -- and how at least one Israeli military commander (according to an Israeli refusenik) yelled, "Let's be Judeo-Nazis!"
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TA: "It is the equivalent of 80s students denouncing everyone and everything as "fascists!""
Maybe you compare what Zionists/Israel has done in historic Palestine with the superficial rants of "80's students" (actually Finkelstein used this exact same escape/diversionary argument, but said it was *him* in the '60's/'70's), but the rest of us -- and any morally conscious person -- sees something much more tragically profound in what Zionists/Israel have been doing to the Palestinian people for over the past ~70 or more years.
The ironic thing to your argument, TA, is that Zionists/Israel/Israelis are *always* calling *others* "Nazi/Hitler": they call Hezbollah "Nazi", they call Hamas "Nazi", they call Iran "Nazi", they called Saddam Hussein "Nazi/Hitler", they call anyone who criticizes Zionism or Israel "Nazi". So it's *Zionists/Israel/Israelis* themselves who are rather fast and loose with the label.
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"A": "I'm sure pictures from Iraq would tell an equally terrible story."
I'm sure from places like Fallujah and Najaf and others. (As well as, before, places like Vietnam.) But, people of moral conscious all over the world opposed that too, as well as the over-all war itself, sometimes in HUGE demonstrations.
But, the Americans didn't go to Iraq to claim they were resurrecting some glorious ancient American kingdom, based on some ancient founding mythology, to obsess and complain aobut "too many Iraqis", to drive out as many Iraqis that the Americans could get away with at any particular time, to try to culturally and physically wipe Iraq off the map, and eternally to establish "a national homeland" for white gentiles from all over the world.
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"A": Jewish scientists are not experimenting on Palestinians. The Jewish military are not rounding up gypsies, trade unionists, activists, journalists, writers, musicians, disabled people and gay people, and killing them. You may say that their behaviour proves they would, given half a chance, but that's empty rhetoric."
Actually, the *Israeli* military *HAS* rounded up plenty of Palestinians -- activists, trade unionists, writers, musicians, artists, journalists, disabled, and presumably even gay -- and either shipped them off to Gaza for punishment, as the world's largest and most densely populated concentration camp (and plenty of people, including anti-Zionist Jews have made that comparison). And Israel has directly exiled many Palestinians and, especially, charismatic leaders (even the nonviolent "Palestinian MLK", Awad -- I forgot his first name). Israel has created Palestinian ghettos that would make the Nazis blush or *awe* -- what with Israel's 26-46 foot high thick reinforced concrete walls with armored towers and, in many cases, "no man's lands" and double-electrified barriers.
And, indeed, in 1947 and 1948, when Israel was incepted, Zionists rounded up entire villages full of Palestinians and either drove them off or, in some cases, massacred them (men, women and children), to scare other Palestinians into running off. At least 400 Palestinian towns and villages were razed to the ground.
In addition, Israel has, of course, experimented not only with new torture techniques on Palestinians, but new weapons -- including gas and other chemical weapons -- on Palestinians.
SOUNDS NAZI, *YET*?
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And I think that "Krop" made an excellent point:
"I do hope that we are not allowed by you to make any [further!] comparison between any country and NAZI Germany until such a time as another state begins an industrial scale execution programme with Zyklon B?"
Most Israeli *Jews* already actually advocate the total expulsion of ALL Palestinians from ALL of historic Palestine (and many say by *whatever* it takes!) -- and most Israeli *Jews* said that Gaza and Gazan Palestinians should be *completely obliterated* from the face of the earth! Yes, that's how most *Jews* are thinking in Israel!
-
Joseph Anderson, Berkeley, California, USA
re: re: blind hero worship [and "5th column Zionists / apologists"]
22.01.2009 01:29
- by @non
21.01.2009 21:31 :
"whew, that was quite a detailed response, Joseph!"
I've intellectually and morally been at this for a while.
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@non: "You'll be glad to hear I'm not a "hero worshipper" of Chomsky or Finkelstein, in fact I'm not even sure I'd ever heard of Finkelstein before. I've read some of what Chomsky has written, and it made a lot of sense, but I by no means have an in-depth knowledge of his views."
I've, in a previous post, provided you with an excellent article by, and also an interview with, Jeffrey Blankfort (anti-Zionist Jewish-American) who calls people like Chomsky "5th column Zionists". Other prominent anti-Zionist Jews have also called Chomsky "a functional Zionist".
(Furthermore, I've just discovered that where Chomsky has supported any kind of boycotts, he's supported a watered-down, totally ineffectual version of BDS -- so that informationally clears that up -- just like liberal posers would only accede to against then apartheid South Africa.)
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@non: "All I'm saying is, I think you are better off attacking the real enemy, rather than people who are much more on our side, even if we do have disagreements."
Chomsky, now Finkelstein, and other 5th column Zionists (or Zionist apologists) are *NOT* on the pro-Palestinian human rights and liberation side -- they are *not* our real allies -- because they give us nothing but smooth leftist-sounding rhetoric and dead-end *busy* work, and THEY WORK TO *UNDERMINE* THE PRACTICAL RESISTANCE for justice for the Palestinians.
Chomsky's position in 2001 when he told the Harvard Crimson newspaper, “I’ve probably been the leading opponent of the campaign for divestment from Israel and of the campaign about academic boycotts”.
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@non: "I've just googled Chomsky's views on the Israeli boycott, and it seems he opposes it for tactical reasons rather than because of any moral support for Israel's policies. Not sure if I agree or not, but I wouldn't call him a Zionist over it."
Such people *always* oppose boycotts, divestments and sanctions "for tactical [read, *pretextual*] reasons [read, *EXCUSES*]". Opponents of BDS against then apartheid South Africa *also* said this.
Chomsky's reasons for opposing BDS against Israel exactly mirrors that of people, often posing as white liberals (but, of course, even white conservatives too), who opposed reasons for BDS against then apartheid South Africa:
Chomsky, reason #1, "You'll hurt the very people you're trying to help", even though the *victims* of Christian white-supremacist South African apartheid were *calling* for BDS, just like the *victims* of Jewish white-supremacist Israeli apartheid.
Chomsky, reason #2, like opponents to BDS against then apartheid South Africa, said, "It'll be a gift to the right-wing!"
Chomsky, reason #3, like opponents to BDS against then apartheid South Africa, said, "It'll be seen as anti-Semitism!" (even tho Palestinians are far more Semitic than European Jews) -- just like (believe it or not) opponents to BDS against apartheid South Africa said, "It'll be seen as anti-white racism!"
Chomsky, reason #4, "We'll lose our influence with the Israeli government." Like progressives/leftists *have any* "influence" to lose with the hard-right-wing Israeli government! This rhetorically defensive, bankrupt position was called "Constructive Engagement" back during South African apartheid. "Progressives/leftists" were supposed to merely *talk* apartheid South Africa into giving up its apartheid state ideology.
Chomsky, reason #5, "You shouldn't have BDS unless the majority of the people in Israel agree to it"! SINCE *WHEN* DO WE *ASK* THE *OPPRESSORS* IF *THEY* WILL AGREE TO OUR MEASURES AGAINST THEIR OPPRESSION!!???
And if Chomsky took those positions opposing BDS against apartheid South Africa, and never condemned its white-supremacist ideology, he'd have long ago been dropped as "the darling -- or, rather, *guru* -- of the white progressives/leftists".
What do you think people like Chomsky are going to openly say?: "I just don't want to see boycotts, divestment and sanction against my old (previously admitted!) Zionist friends in Israel. I don't want to do anything to hurt Israel. Ethnicity is more important than morality." Do you think that others like them just openly said, "I just don't want to BDS against my old friends in apartheid South Africa. I just don't want to hurt apartheid South Africa."?
_READ_ what Jeffrey Blankfort says in this interview about Chomsky's opposition to BDS:
Damage Control: Noam Chomsky and the Israel-Palestine Conflict
by Jeffrey Blankfort
(to get directly to Blankfort's criticicism of Chomsky's opposition, just put the word "opponent" in an edit-find command)
What Blankfort calls "5th column Zionists" are merely *smarter*, *stealthier* Zionists -- and they work, especially, on the *left*. Blankfort also calls them "Zionism's rear guard".
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@non: "I only mentioned the "Jewish Conspiracy" because I know that it exists as a popular conspiracy theory."
Well, apparently, it's "popular" with *you* -- because *you're* the only person here who immediately brought it up!
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@non: "Here's my conspiracy theory: the leaders of the world promote this theory because it has a divide and rule effect on the people, and takes the heat off them?"
So, your conspiracy theories only apply to *NON_JEWS* -- and you believe that only *NON-JEWS* can engage in conspiracies. Is that right? You don't see your position as rather *rrracist*?
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@non: "Israel is a shitty state, sure, but the USA is ten times worse."
There have been huge worldwide demos against the U.S. over its wars too (current and former imperialist and racist wars).
Does that mean that Israel should get a moral pass?
Well, it may have been American bombs, missiles, shells, and phosphorus munitions, but it was *Israeli Jews* who were pushing the buttons and dropping or launching them in wanton atrocities targeting civilians (even children, as when Israel bombed the gradeschool, or the IDF elsewhere and before targeted children).
(If a gangster friend of mine gives me a gun and says go shoot @non and his entire family -- and I did, as you and your family were desperately pleading and begging me not to, as I ruthlessly and viciously hunted you all down throughout your house, even targeting and shooting the children -- who would you blame first [if you lived to tell the story], me or my gangster friend?)
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@non: "I thought the images were a very powerful comparison".
Good. They should greatly disturb any moral person and the Nazi comparisons/parallels should be obvious.
But, what's that warning about ancient Greeks bearing 'gifts'? -- no offense to today's Greeks. I'm just warning people about Finkelstein -- and Chomsky. Now maybe NF's had a change of heart from his recent, *post*-university termination, adamant Zionist apologist days -- and when he publicly ridiculed people like me for disputing his then saying at least a year ago that "Victory for the Palestinian people is nearly at hand!: don't criticize Zionism!" -- or maybe he's using this profound Nazi comparison as further cover: he's hardly the first person to make this comparison, so it's not like he's being original. I was probably making the comparison *longgg* before he did, and way back when he was criticizing *others* for doing so. Finkelstein had to wait until *now*, and it was already *this* clear to most people? By the time Finkelstein finally *completely* wakes up (although he used to be an intellectually braver person, ironically *before* his DePaul university termination), there won't be any Palestinian left in Palestine at all.
(I wonder what Chomsky has to say.)
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@non: "Maybe the comparison of Israel's to the Nazis is more a comparison to the Nazis during the early days of their rule, before all the death camps were set up?"
Actually the Nazi extermination camps were set up in the last years -- from 1942/1943 to 1945 -- of their 13-year (from 1932 to 1945) rule. And Zionism started well before Nazi rule, and even much longer before the Jewish holocaust. Furthermore, Zionists *agreed* with Hitler's racialization of the Jews and that, "Jews were a distinct human being, totally unassimilable into normal society." Zionists tried to *collaborate* with the Nazis and even offered to fight on the *Nazi* side!! (See the book, _51 Documents: Zionist Collaboration with the Nazis_, by Lenni Brenner, anti-Zionist Jewish-American, living in New York city, and the world's foremost scholar, authority, and author on the history of Zionism.)
Jewish friends of mine say that Zionists/Israelis treat the Palestinian people much like the Nazis treated Jews from 1932-1942. And Israel has had its ethnic expulsions, its walled ghettofications (slow death inside, quick death outside), and its 'Kristallnacht'-style rampages too, against the Palestinians, as well as its 'Nuremburg'-style racial, economic and residency laws meant to exclude Israel's unwanted and vilified ethnic group, its total war blitzkriegs against civilian populations, and its attempt to destroy Palestinian society as a society itself (a form of genocide, a form of cultural genocide, sometimes called _sociocide_).
So..., do we have to wait for *ISRAEL'S* "FINAL SOLUTION" for the Palestinian people?
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Joseph Anderson, Berkeley, California, USA
No, it doesn't sound Nazi yet
22.01.2009 13:26
A
Jewish MP compares IDF to Nazis:
22.01.2009 13:35
Jewish MP compares IDF to Nazis
15.01.2009 23:14
"My grandmother was ill in bed when the Nazis came to her home town, a German soldier shot her dead in her bed. My grandmother did not die to provide cover for Israeli soldiers murdering Palestinian grandmothers in Gaza. The current Israeli government ruthlessly and cynically exploit the continuing guilt among gentiles over the slaughter of Jews in the Holocaust as justification for their murder of Palestinians.
On Sky News a few days ago, the spokeswoman for the Israeli army, Major Leibovich, was asked about the Israeli killing of, at that time, 800 Palestinians. The total is now 1,000. She replied instantly that '500 of them were militants'. That was the reply of a Nazi. I suppose the Jews fighting for their lives in the Warsaw ghetto could have been dismissed as militants." -- Gerald Kaufmann
Daniel
crosspost
@A
22.01.2009 14:35
What we are saying is that there are very uncomfortable parralels between the ideology and practice of the Israeli state, and the NAZI German state of the 1930s, and to a lesser extent, the 1940s.
One of the key components of this for me appears to be a calling to higher or historical sources (justified or not), for a certain defined segment of a population to have the given right to piece of land, regardless of the other people living there.
To deal with your argument directly, it is incredibly stupid to say that one cannot compare different governmental regimes.
Amongst quite a few scientific tools at a social scientist's (and arguably a historian's) disposal, comparison remains a well used, and trusted method of analysis.
The photos, the quotes, the pieces of information provided on this page, and background reading and research over the past 10 years, indicate to me, as a trained and qualified social researcher, that there are many parralels between these two states.
This is very, very sad, considering that one of a key raison d'etre of the Israeli state, is the dreadful treatment handed out to Jews and other opponents and targets of the fascist NAZI regime during the 1930s and 1940s.
Krop
wrong, TA:
22.01.2009 15:13
Wrong, TA. There have been numerous other genocidal totalitarian regimes:
The U.S. was totalitarian against its Native and slave populations (for centuries, ruthlessly genocidal and certainly totalitarian against the numerous Native American nations, not to mention the U.S. holding of tens of millions of black slaves) was far more successful in exterminating its Native Americans than Hitler ultimately was against the world's Jews. Most of the remaining Native Americans -- originally many millions more than Jews, now millions less than Jews -- today are still oppressed and kept very poor on most reservations. Of the millions upon millions of continental Native Americans before American genocide, less than 250,000 is reported to have survived genocide by the turn of the 20th century. Today, of about 300 million Americans today, there are only about 1-2 million (depending on how they are counted) Native Americans.
The U.S. was totalitarian in the Philippines in the colonialist Philippino-American war, where the U.S. genocided about 1 million Philippinos (and this was around the turn of the 20th century) -- especially, at one time during the war, any male over the age of 10 years-old!
The U.S. has been historically totalitarian (up to this day) in Haiti and has commited a form of genocide there. (We'll see what the new President Obama is going to do about this.)
WWI Turkey commited genocide against the Armenians; and heavily oppresses (engaging in cultural genocide against) the Kurds today.
Fascist Japan (especially its genocides in China).
Fascist Croatia (that genocided Serbs).
Joseph Stalin's regime (he targeted both certain ethnic minorities, as well as, politically, ethnic Russians).
Dictatorial South Korea (the U.S. supported what amounted to political genocide there against leftists and, at times, ironically, pro-democracy Koreans.)
The Khmer Rouge regime.
Fascist Chile (supported by the U.S. & Thatcher's UK).
Fascist Argentina (supported by the U.S.).
Dictatorial Nicaragua (supported by the U.S.).
Dictatorial Guatemala (supported by the U.S.).
Dictatorial Indonesia in East Timor (supported by the U.S.).
Dictatorial Myanmar/Burma).
Several Western European colonial regimes in Africa mass murdered millions more people than the Nazis.
These are just the ones that I can mention off-hand. Nazi Germany just used industrial methods, not only because it was considered more efficient and more modern, but Hitler actually considered gas chambers more humane than, for example, the methods the U.S. used to massacre Native Americans.
And ISRAEL certainy is a 'fascist' and totalitarian regime as far as Palestinian Christian and Muslims -- anyone non-Jewish -- have been concerned. Israel/Zionism has certainly been historically 'NAZI' against the Palestinians. I would say that ZIONIST JEWISH-SUPREMACIST ISRAEL has all the psychological and political elements and compositions of "AN EVIL SOCIETY" that Nazi Germany had, and Israel's vicious wanton onslaught against Gaza is just the latest, most visible, example.
The Jewish humanitarian philosoher Hannah Arendt pointed out that there was nothing "unique" about the evil in Nazi Germany. In fact, she wrote about what she called "the _banality_ of evil", and she said that any number of societies -- including those, which, like Nazi Germany, consider themselves socially, culturally and technologically advanced, civilized nations -- are potentially capable of such evil. And at different times and different places in the world, many European societies have commited such evils.
read history!
Well, then *no one* can intellectually or morally *help* you, "A".
22.01.2009 15:50
22.01.2009 13:26
I'm (only rhetorically) *curious* as to *WHY* you *strain* so *RESISTANTly* against the obvious comparisons and parallels that, especially, anti-Zionist Jews have also made?
ARE YOU SOME CLOSET *ZIONIST*, "A"? -- posing as some "A"narchist?
Is that what the "A" is for?
Because, I know that Chomsky too *"calls"* himself an "anarchist", but I've already explained why his actual Jewish tribalist (as some anti-Zionist Jews call him) beliefs are actually fundamentally opposite to anarchist philosophy. And other anarchists (including Jewish anarchists) that I know don't consider Chomsky to be an anarchist at all, but a *fake* anarchist.
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"A":"Also you are using this strange platform to discredit people like Chomsky, who happens to be both Jewish and an absolute outspoken critic of the Israeli regime. Whether you agree/disagree about a boycott or not, why would you do this?"
I've already extensively explained this in my prior posts (and so has Jeffrey Blankfort, who is also Jewish, but anti-Zionist) -- but you refuse to *read* -- so I get that no one can intellectually and morally help you any further there too.
So, you and I are *done*.
Anyway, you're not going to stop *anyone* else from making the intellectual and moral comparison, so who cares about you in this respect if you don't want to. Go ahead: stay behind the moral curve (history is littered with cowardly &/or morally milquetoast people like you: it's how evil exists, survives or recurs).
I remember the days when people like you (including Zionists and the state of Israel) opposed moral people calling Zionism racism (like the U.S. forced the UN to reverse the UN's resolution calling Zionism racism). Now no liberal, progressive, leftist opposes calling Zionism racism.
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Joseph Anderson
butcher
25.02.2009 08:41
hongda