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berniesrevolution · 1 year

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CATALYST JOURNAL

There has been a shift in American discourse around Israel and Palestine triggered by recent events, against a background of questioning of Israel’s oppression of the Palestinians. Since the strategic arguments for the alliance with Israel have diminished in importance, the supposed “shared values” that sustain it are called into question by Israel’s discriminatory treatment of the Palestinians.

The limits of permissible debate on Israel are changing. In terms of the media, what has occurred over the last couple of months must be seen in two contexts. The first is a swing away from an idyllic depiction of Israel and toward a more realistic depiction of the Palestinians. Such swings have occurred repeatedly in the past, at moments when it was impossible to completely ignore the brutal nature of Israel’s actions. The old media saying is that “when it bleeds, it leads,” and at times the blood shed by Israel was so copious that it could not be ignored. This happened during the invasion of Lebanon and the siege of Beirut in 1982. It happened again during Israel’s fierce repression of the first intifada, starting in 1987. And it happened after Israel’s assaults on Gaza in 2008–9, 2012, and 2014. What happened in Beirut in 1982 couldn’t be hidden because of seventeen thousand Palestinian and Lebanese people being murdered and entire buildings being brought down by Israeli bombs. Some things in the public consciousness changed as a result, but eventually the media coverage went on as before. A leading NBC News broadcaster, John Chancellor, said during the siege of Beirut, “This is not the Israel we knew.” Each time, there was a swing away from an almost entirely false depiction of Israel, and the media was obliged to describe accurately the atrocities taking place before its reporters’ eyes and the lenses of their cameras. But soon afterward, news reporting returned to the status quo, in part because of the Israel lobby’s extremely effective backlash against the media that had told the truth. The late historian Amy Kaplan was the first to fully explain this dynamic in her brilliant book Our American Israel.

The events of May 2021 are different, however. The reason this coverage has had such impact is linked to the second context, which is that this media shift takes place against a background of questioning fundamental issues about Zionism, Israel, and the Palestinians: the settler-colonial nature of the state, inequality, racial discrimination, and injustice. Because this escalation, and media coverage of it, started in Sheikh Jarrah — because it started with Jerusalem, and then went on to escalate over Gaza — those aspects of the situation came out in unprecedented ways. In other words, there was finally attention to the fundamentally discriminatory nature of Israeli law and of the Israeli system of control over the Palestinians, inside Israel and in the occupied territories, and to the profound injustices that result. The fact that Palestinians cannot legally recover property on one side of a line, and Jewish organizations can claim property on the other, as was shown in Sheikh Jarrah, is a fundamental injustice that can’t be unlearned once you’ve learned it. The fact that a synagogue is sacrosanct but tear gas can be fired into the holiest Muslim site in Palestine, the al-Aqsa Mosque, during Ramadan, during prayers — things are now understood that cannot be forgotten.

May does appear different, and it has to do with those aspects. Israel’s kill rate in Gaza in 2014 was far higher than in 2021: they murdered over 2,200 people, of whom the overwhelming majority were civilians: women, children, old people, the disabled. This time, at least 250 people were killed, with the same high proportion of women, children, and the elderly. So the difference was not based on the barbarity of what Israel did in Gaza, or the attack on the al-Aqsa Mosque, or the ongoing theft of Palestinian property in and of themselves, but on the fact that these things are beginning to be understood in terms of basic inequality and the fundamental settler-colonial nature of Zionism, and of the Israeli state, and of its flaws. That makes this distinct.

The scathing reports by B’Tselem and Human Rights Watch, which made it more acceptable to consider Israel to be practicing a form of apartheid, provide the background. The average consumers of the news were not fully aware of these reports, if they knew of them at all, but during coverage of the carnage of May, the reports clearly showed fundamental discrimination: Jews in one place, Arabs in another place.

There are two other important background aspects to this conjunction. One is the rise of Bernie Sanders, and the second is Benjamin Netanyahu’s alienation of the Democratic Party. Within the Bernie Sanders coalition, people half or a third of the age of Sanders are playing a key role. But it’s not just their youth — the United States has been shaken by upheavals over racial discrimination, and over indigenous rights, to a lesser extent, from Standing Rock on, that, in juxtaposition with Palestine, cause people to make connections between these similar forms of injustice.

The Netanyahu factor has had an impact on at least two important constituencies. The first is the Democratic Party. Netanyahu made a strategic decision to link Israel’s future to the Republican Party and its base — the evangelicals, the white supremacists, the uber-hawks. He decided that those were Israel’s core supporters in the United States and acted on that belief. That offended Democrats, and they’ll never forgive him, because he’s done enormous harm: for example, he almost torpedoed Barack Obama’s Iran deal.

The second constituency is the American Jewish community, which is liberal overall. The leadership of the institutions that claim to represent it is quite conservative, but the community as a whole, including its intellectual elite, is liberal, or sees itself as liberal. The overwhelming majority are Reform, Conservative, or unaffiliated, and about 10 percent are Orthodox. Most of the community, even some of the Modern Orthodox, are offended by Netanyahu’s alliance with the fundamentalist religious establishment in Israel and the political parties that represent it. Why? Because they are systematically treated as second-class citizens in Israel; their marriages, their conversions, their very Judaism, are not recognized in Israel by the Orthodox rabbinate. And Netanyahu is politically wedded to the Orthodox parties that take their marching orders from the rabbis. He’s at odds with an overwhelming majority of the American Jewish community in terms of his actions, his policies, and his attitudes. On the surface, it hasn’t affected the community’s bigger institutions, but the fact that groups like J Street, Jewish Voice for Peace, and IfNotNow are growing is evidence that students, as well as much of the upper-middle class, intellectual elite, and professionals, are affected.

There are more strategic issues to consider. In order to determine whether the media occasionally using words like “apartheid,” “segregation,” and “inequality” to describe Israel indicates deeper forces at work or an elite split over the strategic significance of Israel as part of a gradual adjustment to a new reality where Israel is not as important to the United States, the media itself is not the place to look. The media has already shifted back to its customary position. There are already fewer critical media analyses of Israel being published than there were for a few weeks in May.

This has to do with more fundamental things than the media. First, Israel’s strategic value was the basis of the American-Israeli relationship only at certain points. The Cold War and George W. Bush’s “War on Terror” in the wake of 9/11 were the two high points of Israel’s diplomatic relevance. In other words, Israel was a useful and successful proxy against Soviet-aligned forces from the 1962 Yemen “civil war” (which was actually that plus a regional proxy war, like Lebanon 1975–90, and like the wars in Libya, Yemen, and Syria today) onward. The 1967 and 1973 wars were the best example of its strategic value. That continued until the end of the Cold War, even though by then the Soviet Union was no longer the regional factor it had been from the 1950s through the 1970s.

After 9/11, Ariel Sharon resurrected a strategic importance for Israel during the “War on Terror” through a shrewd but utterly specious argument, one that Netanyahu mastered. He was, in effect, saying: “The United States was attacked by terrorists; we are being attacked by terrorists. Terrorism is terrorism; it’s all the same. Hamas is the same as al-Qaeda. We are allies, and this is strategic — indeed, it is existential for both of us, and you will learn from us. We will give you technology and methods; our experts are your experts, and our expertise is your expertise.” This was a ludicrous strategic basis for an alliance — more fragile, in fact, than the Cold War alliance — but in the fevered atmosphere of Washington after 9/11, it worked brilliantly.

Besides those considerations during the Cold War and the “War on Terror,” Israel has little strategic value to the United States. Israel did not help the United States in the Gulf, as was perfectly apparent during the 1990–91 Gulf War, when the Iraqi regime fired missiles at Israel and the United States had to send Patriot missiles to defend it. Israel was a liability for the United States then. That was also demonstrated during the Obama administration, when Israel undermined American policy in the Gulf, and it’s true today. Indeed, Israel has embarrassed the United States globally with its aggressiveness and its treatment of the Palestinians.

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#politics #the leftist cooks #isreal #Palestine #israeli occupation #apartheid #neocolonialism #free palestine #progressive #progressive movement #democratic party #bernie sanders

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slimethought · 3 months

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Is this a video about Breadtube? Is it a reaction video to Philosophy Tube / Abigail Thorn and her video about coming out as trans? Is it a reaction video to myself? Is there such a thing as objectivity? Is there hope for joy in the wake of postmodernism? Can YouTubers really fill the role of educators? If not, can I still join in the party of making fun of conservative nonsense from Ben Shapiro and PragerU? Please?

Watch to find out! Then tell us because we have no idea.

The Leftist Cooks are Neil Farrell and Sarah Oeffler

I’m on PATREON! Join the community ►► / theleftistcooks SUBSCRIBE why not! ►► https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC358... One time payment in my tip jar? ►► https://www.paypal.com/paypalme/neilf...

↓↓↓Vegan Scones with Jam↓↓↓

500g (4 cups) of self raising flour 100g (1/2 cup) coconut oil 100g (1/2 cup) of sugar 200ml (7/8 cup) cashew milk Add 125gms (1 cup) dark chocolate

Bake for 15 - 20 minutes at 180°C (350°F)

Heat 250g (1 1/2 cups) frozen berries 100g sugar (1/2 cup) on a low setting on your hob

↓↓↓ CITATIONS↓↓↓

Rozenblit, L., & Keil, F. (2002). The misunderstood limits of folk science: An illusion of explanatory depth. Cognitive science, 26(5), 521-562.

Fernbach, P. M., Rogers, T., Fox, C. R., & Sloman, S. A. (2013). Political extremism is supported by an illusion of understanding. Psychological science, 24(6), 939-946.

Kruger, J., & Dunning, D. (1999). Unskilled and unaware of it: how difficulties in recognizing one's own incompetence lead to inflated self-assessments. Journal of personality and social psychology, 77(6), 1121.

Drescher, J. (2015). Out of DSM: Depathologizing homosexuality. Behavioral sciences, 5(4), 565-575.

Lindholm, C. (1997). ‘The Swat Pukhtum family as a political training ground’, in R.J. Casstillo (ed.) The Meaning of Madness. Pacific Grove, CA: Brooks/Cole.

Heine, S. J., Kitayama, S., Lehman, D. R., Takata, T., Ide, E., Leung, C., & Matsumoto, H. (2001). Divergent consequences of success and failure in japan and north america: an investigation of self-improving motivations and malleable selves. Journal of personality and social psychology, 81(4), 599.

Park, S. W., Tignor, S. M., Joo, M. J., & Heo, Y. H. (2016). Accuracy and bias in self-perception of performance: Narcissism matters in Korea as well. Korean Social Science Journal, 43(2), 29-43.

↓↓↓ CREATIVE COMMONS RESOURCES↓↓↓

ESO/spaceengine.org/L.Calçada RoyaltyFreeTube

Link to Philosophy Tube / Abigail Thorne's little public statement: • Coming Out As Trans - A Little Public... (I'm aware that this isn't actually the coming out video but it was the one she gave express permission to play with and use for making art and spreading positive messages)

↓↓↓ LYRICS↓↓↓ (and highly recommend all of these YouTubers)

Tom Scott, Adam Neely, Lonerbox and Michael Stephens T1J, Folding Ideas, Nerdwriter, Kevin Lieber Legal Eagle, Lindsay Ellis, Jay Foreman, Rowan Ellis David Bennet Piano, Innuendo Studios Every Frame a Painting, Lessons from the Screenplay, Matt Gray, Patrick Willems, We’re in Hell, Khadija Mbowe PBS Eons, Veritasium, Hank Green Animalogic, Numberphile and… John Green It’s Okay to Be Smart, & Today I Found Out Langfocus, Tom Nicholas, Jake Roper (opted out) Thought Slime, Jessica Kellgren Fozzard, Jessie Gender and Cogito, Ordinary Things and Hbomber...man Big Joel, Little Joel, Medium-sized Joel Plenty of others -- (YaadPikni, Verilybitchie, Flavorlab, Paul Morrin, Renegade Cut, Zoe Bee...) but how was I supposed to know? Some of these people might be absolutely full of sh*t And it’s an English-speaking young white guy list Edutaintment isn’t bad Nobody’s a perfect Dad Some of them are really smart And some of them just make Art Some of them created a whole new art form Like Natalie Wynn and Abigail Thorn.

And check out our special guest Matthew Tallon here: / tallonmatthew He's the funniest person on the Internet.

Thanks to All My Patrons: Lacey Eberl Unoriginal Junglist Lou Grath Misfit Unicorn Melinda Hristo Kolev Finola Mohan

#Eyeball Zone #The Leftist Cooks #YouTubers #content #Internet #Video Essay #ideas #knowledge #stories #TED Talks #comedy #breadtube #objectivity #education #bias #Youtube

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