Israel: ‘Hizbullah has 60,000 rockets’

Posted on May 24, 2012 |

Brig. Gen. Itay Baron, head of Israel Occupation Forces (IOF) Military Intelligence research section told Knesset Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee on Tuesday that Lebanese Islamic Resistance Hizbullah has 60,000 rockets and missiles as compared to 6,000 during the 34-day war in 2006. Baron also claimed Hizbullah is developing drones and sea-to-air missiles.

I bet Israel Lobby must have told its lapdogs in Congress and Senate to start pulling Obama’s strings for more cash for Israel’s ‘Iron Dome’ meant to protect all those foreign Jews occupying Arab land from Hizbullah, Hamas, Syria and Iran. Israel has already received $205 million from Uncle Sam for this purpose and last week Panetta promised additional $70 million.

According to Israel daily Ha’aretz (May 23, 2012), Itay Baron told the paranoid Knesset members that “some 3500 missiles in Syria and Iran are currently aimed at Israel“.

Israeli deputy Chief of General Staff Maj. Gen. Yair Naveh, on Tuesday said at a defense forum that Israeli army needs many hours to neutralize Hizbullah’s air defense systems before targeting civilian infrastructure.

“Hizbollah seeks to turn the quantity into quality; if they can wreak havoc on the Israeli homefront, they will be within striking distance of a ‘victory photo’ that would influence decision-making among Israeli political echelons,” he said.

In other words, the Israeli generals are expecting another military humiliation at the hands of Hizbullah, as they received in 2006.

Hizbullah has no military or commercial planes, no tanks, no helicopters and no ships or submarines – and ofcourse no nuclear bombs (Israel has estimated 400 nuclear bombs). In fact, even Lebanese army has none of those arms which make IOF world’s fifth most powerful army.

Anyone knows that Israeli military has been milking US taxpayers to the tune of $3 billion per year since 1980s? Israel’s current military budget stands at $13.9 billion as compared to Iran’s $6 billion.
Watch a video recording Hizbullah’s military operations against Jewish occupation of Lebanese territories, below.

River to Sea Uprooted Palestinian  
The views expressed in this article are the sole responsibility of the author and do not necessarily reflect those of this Blog!

French Fraud Behind Libya War Drive

Fake ‘intellectual’ with delusions of grandeur: Bernard Henri-Lévy

by Justin Raimondo, April 06, 2011

Antiwar Forum

The Libyan war has the French, of all people, in the forefront, with President Nicolas Sarkozy’s smug, self-satisfied face mugging for the camera as French fighter jets scream in the skies over Tripoli. The French, who sat out the Iraq war with haughty disdain, are now even more eager than the Americans to get into the thick of it: Sarkozy, in trouble at home, is hoping to distract critics from France’s ever-worsening domestic economic woes and his own party’s diminishing electoral prospects, with a good old-fashioned dollop of Napoleonic tonic. France – once again thrusting into North Africa in search of its former imperial glory! It’s enough to make one nostalgic for the Ugly American.

If the insufferable Sarkozy isn’t enough to make you vow never to eat French fries again, then the man behind Sarkozy’s grandstanding, Bernard Henri-Lévy, the French “public intellectual” and renowned phony, will push you over the edge into outright Francophobia. As the New York Times reports:

“It was Mr. Lévy, by his own still undisputed account, who brought top members of the Libyan opposition — the Interim Transitional National Council — from Benghazi to Paris to meet President Nicolas Sarkozy on March 10, who suggested the unprecedented French recognition of the council as the legitimate government of Libya and who warned Mr. Sarkozy that unless he acted, ‘there will be a massacre in Benghazi, a bloodbath, and the blood of the people of Benghazi will stain the flag of France.’”

Henri-Lévy is famous for … well, it’s not exactly clear. During the 1980s, he and a few of his French commie-socialist comrades excitedly announced that Marxism – which they had previously upheld as a glorious human experiment in idealism – was a Bad Thing. What Stalin’s crimes, committed half a century earlier, hadn’t revealed, the dictates of intellectual fashion and economic opportunity readily unveiled.

Yes, the French have their neocons, too, with BHL—as he’s known – leading the pack. Like his American brethren, BHL combines political polemics with entrepreneurship and has wound up the world’s richest “philosopher,” with inherited assets of his own to which he greatly added to thanks to his political connections.

As questions are raised about the wisdom of Western intervention, the Pepe Le Pew of the War Party is perturbed, and he’s taken to the pages of the Huffington Post – home base for practically all the world’s phony “intellectuals” and empty-headed celebrities – to defend his baby:

“Ah yes. This war began less than a month ago, and already the Norpois, the leaden-footed proponents of salon diplomacy, well-versed in Munich-speak, have raised their heads again and, once over their initial astonishment, have taken up their favorite refrain: what are we doing, involved in this business?”

Leaving aside the pretentious allusion to Proust – the signature conceit of the “literary” French intellectual – notice how easily he reverts to the familiar lexicon of the neocons: “Munich-speak”? We’re not two weeks into this war, and already the War Party’s myrmidons are likening Gadhafi to Hitler! To the neocons, whatever their national origin, it’s always 1939: there’s always a Hitler somewhere in the world, and it’s our responsibility to stop him – which is why we need to spend more on the military than all other nations on earth combined. And if a target country just happens to be strategically located, or sits atop considerable oil reserves, well then who are we to look a gift horse in the mouth?

That’s a good point, however, about our “initial astonishment” at the Libyan intervention: I have to admit to being taken by surprise, because, as low as my opinion may be of President Obama, it was never that low. I never thought he would fall for Henri-Lévy’s line of guff, as regurgitated by the Three Harpies of the Libyan Apocalypse.

Well, then, what are we doing involved in this business?

“First of all, war aims. The ‘true’ aims of this war. And what if the allies had a ‘secret agenda’ and, in particular, “oil”. The imbeciles! The too-clever-for-their-own-good who, eternally seeking the hidden side of things, ultimately fail to see what is right there under their own eyes! Namely, that, oil for oil, there was one simple means to ensure control over Libyan oil, and that means was to touch nothing, to change nothing, and to go on dealing with Gadhafi, as they have for decades. Sarkozy, Cameron, Obama may be capable, like all politicians, of all the cynicism one likes. But concerning this affair, why not have the elementary honesty to recognize their share of sincerity?”

This is nonsensical. BHL may know his Proust, but he likely failed Economics 101. Go here and look at this map of foreign oil concessions in Libya, which are heavily concentrated in the rebellious eastern half of the country. Gadhafi made the British pay a huge price for their oil concessions: as British planes bomb Libyan air defenses – and a few civilians, too – does anyone think the rebels won’t give British Petroleum a better deal than Gadhafi ever would? And the French, who seem to have been largely left out of the Libyan oil rush, will certainly demand their share of the spoils.

Economics is not BHL’s strong point: you know how those French intellectuals are! Well, then, perhaps he’s better at military strategy, a favorite pastime of our neocon laptop bombardiers. On second thought, maybe not:

“Then, the length of this war. The way it has of ‘getting stuck’ in the sands of the Libyan desert, when we had hoped it would be short and sweet. Once again, grotesque. Unutterable bad faith. For–quite apart from the fact that four weeks is nothing compared to the decade of the Afghan war or the ten weeks of that of Kosovo–there is a reason, only one, that operations are lasting beyond the successful rescue of Benghazi. And this reason is the strategy of a Gadhafi who has hunkered down in the bunkers of his other cities, turning their inhabitants into human shields.”

A favorite neocon strategy: hyperbole. The opposition is not merely wrong, it is “grotesque.” These are not victims of error, but purveyors of “unutterable bad faith.” All for asking why it’s taking so long! BHL isn’t quite himself, it seems, unless he’s in a state of High Moral Dudgeon, but his passion let slip a telling detail. That he’s comparing an operation that was supposed to continue for “days, not weeks,” as the President put it, to the decade-long Afghan conflict merely confirms our worst fears about this latest adventure in world-saving: that an ambiguously defined mission, which is already expanding well beyond its original mandate, has every prospect of becoming a long term commitment.

“At that point, there are two strategies possible. Either blow up the crowd, in which case, yes, things will go swiftly (and it’s no surprise to see the butcher of Chechnya, Vladimir Putin, in the front ranks of those who think things are dragging on). Or else look out for the lives of civilians, not losing sight of the fact that the international community has provided a mandate to protect them, the civilians, and that it will take the time it will take. (To deny that, one must be drugged on quick solutions, drunk with the urge for immediacy, or, worse, irresponsible.)”

BHL never acknowledges what is apparent to even a casual observer of the Libyan events: that Gadhafi has real support in the country, especially in the area around Tripoli. After all, it isn’t just mercenaries fighting on his behalf: his fellow tribesmen and their allies, as well as Gadhafi’s personal followers and the beneficiaries of the regime, are apparently rallying to his cause. This is the reason why it hasn’t been a quick victory for the rebels. But to BHL, the “literary” intellectual, who references Proust instead of anything related to the reality of Libya, this is inadmissible because it ruins the narrative, the tall tale he’s telling himself and his audience about the demonic despot versus the virtuous rebels.

His third argument is just another neocon ploy: the old “straw man” strategem. BHL tells us that some people are criticizing the rebels for their “amateurism,” and then goes on for a good paragraph using this “criticism” to valorize them and make the case for arming and training them. “Indigent bastards!, they say. Good for nothings! Short hitters!” Who is the author of such slanderous epithets? Perhaps he means Defense Secretary Robert Gates, who, when asked, didn’t put very much store in the rebels’ military prowess – but so what?

“Fourth objection, the National Council of Transition. After all, what do we know of this Council of ‘nebulous’ outlines? And wasn’t France jumping the gun a bit in recognizing it? There again, it takes a lot of nerve to think so. And there’s something profoundly perverse in this way of depicting who knows what occult power–an Angkar as in Cambodia, the black box of a Libya not as free as it professes to be–and in this way of spreading doubt and insinuating, in reality, the worst. For the members of the Council are well known. Their biographies are transparent. They are either those who have earned a price on their heads in Tripoli for rallying to the cause, whose respective political itineraries are known to all, or men who are new but who speak to whomever openly. But it’s true that, to set this supposed mystery to rest, one must take the trouble to go to Benghazi….”

Emtting clouds of obfuscatory rhetoric like a squid under attack, BHL resorts to the familiar abuse of his opponents: they aren’t just “perverse,” they are “profoundly perverse.” Those ingrates “have a lot of nerve” to even ask questions about just who the UN and the NATO powers are throwing their weight behind. Because, after all, “the members of the Council are well-known.” To whom are they well-known, exactly? Well, it turns out, “to set this supposed mystery to rest one must take the trouble to go to Benghazi”!

Now that’s a dirty trick. He makes us read all the way to the end of that tortured paragraph before getting to the punchline – some “humanitarian”!

Reality, however, once again departs from BHL’s preferred narrative, because the biography of, say, Col. Khalifa Haftar, the US-supported self-proclaimed “commander” of the Libyan rebel forces, is far from “transparent” – especially regarding his capture during the war with Chad, an event which seems to have conicided with his remarkable political turnaround. The most well known rebel leaders are former officials of the Gadhafi regime, who supported him loyally for many years and only saw the light when it looked like the regime was finished – a record that may indeed be transparent, but is hardly admirable.

“And then, Al-Qaeda. Ah! Al-Qaeda. On the pretext that, among the foreign jihadis who once left to fight in Iraq were a small majority of Libyans, one concludes that there would be a majority of jihadis at the heart of today’s Free Libya. The sophism, in this case, is not only perverse, it is despicable. And it’s the same abjectness, by the way, that, fifteen years ago at Sarajevo, inferred the probable birth of a fundamentalist State in the heart of Europe–and therefore the necessity to let Bosnia in its entirety die–from the presence of a handful of Iranians in the 7th corps of the Bosnian army. In this case, the truth is simple. It is possible that a few jihadis have infiltrated Derna or Benghazi. It is probably a rule that such sleeper agents profit from the chaos of war to reinforce their position. But it is a lie, accredited for the time being only by hazy statements backed by a Gaddafism which is in dire straits and fresh out of arguments, that they have a significant role in the ranks of the insurgents.”

Getting past the name-calling – his opponents are, once again, “perverse,” and even “despicable” – the fact-free nature of BHL’s “argument” is readily apparent. To begin with, it wasn’t just the Iranians who were fighting on the side of the Bosnians and Kosovars during the Balkan wars: al-Qaeda sent a brigade to fight for the KLA during the Kosovo war, and continues to be a presence in the region. Furthermore, BHL doesn’t even mention the ample evidence that Al-Qaeda had its best recruiting success in Libya, although he does mention the town of Derna, where many fighters who fought US troops in Iraq hailed from.

Aside from this, however, to say that bin Laden’s boys do not now play a significant role in the Libyan insurgency is not to rule it out as a distinct possibility. As the only seasoned fighters, except for defecting Libyan soldiers, they are bound to acquire some renown and authority on account of their military experience. I am not one who believes, as some do, that the rebellion is the brainchild of Osama bin Laden. Yet, given the evidence, it is rational to raise the question of al-Qaeda’s influence – unless you’re a myth-maker, a spinner of ready-to-wear narratives, in which case it’s better not to ask too many questions.

“I would add,” says BHL, that

“The best way of delivering Libya into the hands of chaos would be to abandon in mid-river those we have encouraged to ford it, giving in, at the last minute, to the sirens who would convince us to save what can be saved of the Gadhafi regime. He, really, is not only a butcher of civilians, a patent hater of the West and of democratic values, the declared enemy of the Arab–and, tomorrow, the African–spring, but a world class champion, all categories included, of terrorism. More than ever, this man should beat it.”

“This man should beat it”?

Either the Huffington Post needs to get a new translator, or else BHL is going all “cool” and “trendy” on us by riffing on a Michael Jackson tune.

The author’s stylistic idiosyncrasies aside, however, his arguments are oddly familiar: now that we’ve already gotten involved, the West can’t just leave. The neocons made – and continue to make – the same argument when it comes to Iraq and Afghanistan. Heck, they sang the same song as the Vietnam war came to a bloody and chaotic close: we can’t leave our heroic allies in the lurch!

Ho Chi Minh was, no doubt, a butcher of civilians – although the US surpassed him in that regard – and also “a patent hater of the West and of democratic values,” but that war was a mistake from the beginning – just like this one. In that conflict, too, we helped one side in a civil war which had divided the country into two de facto independent states, one totalitarian and the other “free.” That war, too, started out small, with military aid and “advisers,” eventually expanding into a presence of hundreds of thousands of troops and a long drawn out conflict that ended in disaster – as this one will if we follow the course laid out by BHL and the War Party.

A word about BHL: this guy is supposed to be a “public intellectual,” but what kind of “intellectual” gets bamboozled by an obvious hoax such as this? Read and laugh at the pretensions of this champion phony.

River to Sea Uprooted Palestinian

Will IJAN Challenge Jewish Power?

PeaceMonger, Commenting on Nahida's great piece, wrote:

On IJAN, please see "Will IJAN Challenge Jewish Power?" on the Palestine Think Tank. Nahida, what happened to your article from last year on Palestine Think Tank?

4:45 AM, May 29, 2010

The Article was posted at  PTT without the name of the wtiter, hopefully I found it at peacemonger's site.
The Writer of the article is Heny Herskovitz, who placed a great comment on Nahida's piece.

Henry Herskovitz said...

Great writing, with the possible exception that you've granted IJAN more than it deserves. The last point of their "unity" is all about protecting jewish sensibilities. It reads: "Rejection of alliances with anti-Jewish racists, white supremacist and Nazi holocaust deniers in our Palestinian solidarity work."

As you've said beautifully, "The road to Palestine does not pass either through Nazi-Germany or through Auschwitz for that matter."

So why is IJAN so concerned with blocking the voice of holocaust revisionists from their group? Because they too are intent on protecting jewish sensibilities, and to date have yet to challenge jewish power in the US. If jews form groups to offer solidarity with Palestinians and label themselves as jews (e.g. IJAN), yet DO NOT challenge their own community, they should get out of the business.

Thank you, nahida. You rock!

3:54 PM, May 28, 2010

Will IJAN Challenge Jewish Power?

Below is the analysis of Henry Herskovitz (with Michelle J. Kinnucan) of Jewish Witnesses for Peace and Friends to a recent op-ed by Rebecca Tumposky on the International Jewish Anti-Zionist Network (IJAN).

There are many problems with IJAN, which lead me to doubt the purposes of the group. I first question whether they are a Palestinian solidarity group or yet another group that seeks to shield and preserve Jewish power both in Palestine and in the U.S.

In this writer's opinion, Jews - if they are acting in a group that represents Jews in the peace movement - should first and foremost challenge what Akiva Eldar and J. J. Goldberg, among others, call the "Jewish lobby" - the powerful people and institutions (and their rank-and-file supporters) who dominate the US discourse and policy regarding Jews and Israel. Often, these are the very people behind the charge of "self-hating Jews" (and for non-Jews, "anti-Semites") about whom Rebecca Tumposky, national organizer with the International Jewish Anti-Zionist Network, complains. Yet, nowhere in her article does Ms. Tumposky show a disposition to directly do that.

It is perhaps worth mentioning that three originators of IJAN who live in southeast Michigan, including "Invincible," declined the invitation to stand vigil with us at our Global Vigil Day in 2007 or at any other time. They refused to expose and challenge Beth Israel Congregation--a local institutional bastion of open, unabashed Jewish support for Israel--when they had the opportunity. And yes, I'm the first to admit that standing in front of a synagogue is not the only way to challenge Jewish power, but at the same time ask where does IJAN directly challenge this power using another tactic?

In Tumposky's op-ed she says IJAN "seeks to challenge the violence and injustice of Israeli apartheid" but she and IJAN are US-based. So, where is her mention, let alone challenge, of the Jewish supremacism/power that allows Jews - less than two percent of the US population - to so effectively steer US policy and resources into underwriting Jewish apartheid in Palestine?

Right out of the box, she shows her hand - Tumposky's and IJAN's opposition to apartheid is rooted not in universalistic notions of justice and human rights but in Jewish chauvinism/exceptionalism. Thus, they appeal to Jews on the grounds of "our varied traditions of social justice." And Tumposky wants to make sure - absolutely certain - that fighting anti-Semitism is prioritized in any work on freeing Palestine from the genocide brought on by the Jewish state. Thus, she writes, "We challenge anti-Jewish prejudice while standing in solidarity with organizations that support Palestinian liberation and historic justice ..." In short, IJAN enters the Palestinian solidarity movement with an explicit agenda of highlighting, if not foregrounding, the concerns of Jews, the very people who enjoy Jewish privilege here and in Israel.

Her opposition to Zionism is carefully couched as a subset of opposing colonialism and imperialism, in general: "We share a commitment to participation in struggles against colonialism and imperialism. We therefore oppose Zionism ... IJAN, in fact, opposes all imperialist aggression". She refuses to take notice of the peculiar situation of Zionism - Jewish imperialism - in that Jews lacked a nation-state of their own and, thus, Zionists commandeered other countries, namely Britain and the US, to realize their goals.

Tumposky beats up one or two carefully placed straw men along the way: "We will say it again and again, despite accusations of being 'self-hating Jews': Zionism is not Judaism and the Jewish community." Just who is it that equates Zionism with "Judaism and the Jewish community"? And why is this point so essential for "anti-Zionists" like the IJAN folks? What would Tumposky say to the 757 rabbis - "the largest number of rabbis whose signatures are attached to a public pronouncement in all Jewish history" - who in 1942 stated that Zionism is an "Affirmation of Judaism" and "Anti-Zionism, not Zionism, is a departure from the Jewish religion"?

She also plays a Left Zionist game when she attempts to distinguish the 'types' of Zionism, claiming that "the Zionism we oppose is not a longstanding cultural or religious expression". She conveniently ignores the fact that when push came to shove, all the Zionists - Left, Right and Center - gave their blessings to destroying Palestine.

In the first chapter of his book Image and Reality of the Israel-Palestine Conflict, Norman Finkelstein challenged the myth that any of the Zionist tendencies (Labor, Religious, etc.) were ever benign. In short, the only thing about Zionism that really matters is that it "is a form of racism and racial discrimination," as the UN General Assembly correctly identified in 1975.

Tumposky's definition of Zionism is also problematic - "the 19th century ideology that led European Jews to work with imperialist powers to displace and ethnically cleanse the Palestinian people, which continues today." It is folly to imply that Jews were passive objects of that "ideology". Zionism was created, implemented, and popularized by Jews. Are readers supposed to believe that it was the imperialist powers that Jews only "worked with" that committed this crime? Isn't it more accurate to say that Jews led these imperialist powers by the nose - as they still do today - to have non-Jews die for the Jewish state?

When she writes "Israel and its U.S. lobby helped pushed us toward the Iraq war and are exerting similar pressure to attack Iran", readers need to be cognizant of what she omits - EVERY major constituent group of the organized Jewish community pressed for war on Iraq, and there's a list of at least two dozen Jewish individuals - in powerful government or media positions - who also pressed strongly for war.

Tumposky touts "Jewish visions of collective liberation and traditions of social justice", but doesn't give us any proof that this tradition ever existed, other than in the minds of Jews who want their image spit-shined, if not outright falsified. More than 300 years ago, Benedictus de Spinoza, who is often upheld as a great Jewish intellectual, observed that Jews had in fact nothing to commend themselves as superior to others, had acted in such a way as to "incur the hatred of all", and that this hatred was the glue that bound Jews together. Other than, perhaps, a few years during the Civil Rights struggle (and Benjamin Ginsberg casts doubt on even this), Jews collectively have acted in concert NOT for universal well-being, but for the benefit of Jews. IJAN does not seem to be an exception.

Distinguishing IJAN from AIPAC, J-Street and Tikkun, might make good reading, but doesn't let them off the hook. Once again, I'm reminded of Paul Eisen's words: "The crime against the Palestinian people is being committed by a Jewish state with Jewish soldiers using weapons displaying Jewish religious symbols, and with the full support and complicity of the overwhelming mass of organized Jews worldwide. But to name Jews as responsible for this crime seems impossible to do." It seems obvious to me that IJAN and similar organizations exist, in no small part, to prevent the naming of Jews as responsible for the Jewish-led genocide against the Palestinian people.

Labels: anti-Zionism, Israel, Jewish Witnesses for Peace and Friends

// posted by PeaceMonger @ 2/27/2010 03:16:00 PM

River to Sea Uprooted Palestinian

Symbolic Identifiers and Jewish Stereotypes by Gilad Atzmon

Sunday, April 18, 2010 at 10:26PM Gilad Atzmon

Jews are usually proud to define themselves as Jews. Some Jews may, for instance, proudly carry the Jewish banner (Jews for Peace, Jews for Justice, Jews for Jesus and so on) as if they believe that the ‘J’ word contains special righteous attributions. However, they also will be gravely offended if they are called a ‘Jew’ by others. Suggesting to a Jew that “he is a Jew” or “behaves like a Jew” can be regarded as a serious ‘racist’ offence.
It is linguistically noticeable that the symbolic identifier ‘Jew’ or ‘Jewish’ operates as both noun and as an adjective. As much as the term points to a ‘thing’ it is also descriptive. However, I assume that symbolic identifiers associated with ideological and identity politics tend to function in a dual grammatical mode. The words ‘feminist’, ‘socialist’, ‘Nazi’ and ‘white supremacist’ can point to a human subject but they can also be descriptive. I guess, for instance, that a feminist who proudly carries the feminist flag may also accept that being called ‘a feminist’ will also assign some particular characteristics and ideological beliefs. Crucially, we also accept that being a feminist, a socialist, a Nazi or a white supremacist are matters of political choice. People are not born feminists or as socialists. They adopt those ideologies or identities later in life.
From this perspective the ‘Jew’ signifier or symbolic identifier is slightly different for the Jews who are born into a collective identity. Almost like any case of biologically determined conditions such as ‘women’, ‘men’ or ‘blacks’, some people are born Jews However, here we are clearly setting ourselves into an interesting twist. First, European Jews can easily disappear into a white Western crowd by means of assimilation and integration and leave their Jewish identity behind, where as black people and women have to live their life accepting and enjoying who they are. Second, the duality between the noun and the adjective in the case of ‘black’ and ‘women’ is not necessarily realised as a gulf. Neither black people nor women are offended being called ‘black’ or ‘women’.
To a certain extent the manner in which ‘Jew’ as a signifier, operates within the discourse may be similar to the case of the ‘gay’ symbolic identifier. While many gay people are proud to exhibit their gay identity, many gays are also offended when being labeled as ‘gays’ by others. In different cases of identity and marginal politics we can notice a parallel and simultaneous tendency to ‘own’ and ‘disown’, a clear inclination to ‘identify’ with a collective yet a refusal to be ‘identified’ as such by others.
In multicultural reality we tend to believe that this contradictory mode of behavior is something to do with the usage and misusage of stereotypes.

A stereotype is commonly defined as a public or common belief about specific social groups, or types of individuals. It is often a product of an essentialist generalization by the means of induction: it involves a nonscientific assumption about the properties of a class of subjects based on an accumulation of observations or anecdotal encounters which become reinforced with time and repetition.

The concept of ‘stereotype’ is often confused with the notion of ‘prejudice’. Rather often we notice that a stereotype attached to ethnicity, class or any group are a means of performing an opinion, usually an unfavorable one, based on insufficient knowledge and irrational feelings.

On the face of it, it would seem as if Jews are over sensitive to the ‘racial’ discriminatory implication of the ‘J’ word. However most Jews are not that concerned when being associated collectively with some great minds, adorable violin players or conductors. In short to safely apply the ‘Jew’ category, you just have to make sure you say the right things. No one will ever cause you any trouble for mentioning Albert Einstein in reference to Jewish intelligence or even bringing up Anne Frank as an exemplary motif of Jewish innocence but you may get into some serious trouble once you mention the following list of real and fictional characters: Bernie Madoff, Fagin, Wolfowitz, Lord Levy, Shylock, Alan Greenspan, Netanyahu and Nathan Rothschild without even identifying them as Jews.

All of the above depicts a very obscure, yet far from surprising picture. As it seems, Jews, largely do not mind stereotypes or collective categories. They do not mind racial generalizations and essentialist stigmas as long as they are positive.

Fagin Vs Anne Frank
It occurred to me recently that by juxtaposing Jewish stereotypes (those Jews seem to hate versus those Jewish ethnic campaigners try to promote) may throw some crucial light over issues to do with Jewish collective identity. It would also suggest to us how Jews might see themselves and even more importantly, it may also help us to grasp how they prefer to be seen.

It is rather obvious that some Jews are rather unhappy with Charles Dickens’ Fagin and Shakespeare’s Shylock who they regard as ‘anti Semitic’. I get the impression that the prominent Zionist enthusiast and London Barrister Anthony Julius would like to see these cultural iconic characters diminished from popular discourse. On the other hand, the British Holocaust Education Trust (HET) already managed to plant Anne Frank within the British curriculum.

It doesn’t take a genius to gather why Julius and others are concerned with Fagin or Shylock. Fagin is the ultimate plunderer, a child exploiter and usurer. Shylock is the blood-thirsty merchant. With Fagin and Shylock in mind Israeli barbarism and organ trafficking seem to be just other events in an endless hellish continuum. However, it is also obvious why the HET is so thrilled by Anne Frank. On the face of it, and for obvious reasons, Frank is there to convey an image of innocence. And indeed not a single moral system could ever justify the ordeal this young girl went through along with many others.

Yet, Anne Frank wasn’t exactly a literary genius. Her diary is not a valuable piece of literature. She wasn’t an exceptionally clever either. She was in fact a very ordinary girl and this is exactly her power within the post WWII Western cultural discourse. She was just an innocent average girl. In fact, the attempt to make Anne Frank into a cultural hero may be a genuine reflection of the Zionist inclination towards sameness. Frank mirrors the desperate Zionist attempt to prove to the world that ‘we the Jews’ are people like other people. Moreover, the success of Anne Frank’s Diary is there to suggest the West’s willingness to accept Jews as people amongst peoples.

Yet, once again, the Jewish discourse is caught in a limbo. Jewish people can never achieve their task. They can never be like ‘other people’ for no other people aim to be like other people. In fact, those who demand to be seen as equal must feel inherently and categorically different. Once again we face a repetition of the Jewish identity’s collective unresolved chasm between ‘who one claims to be’ and ‘what one happens to be.’

In his latest book Trials of The Diaspora, Anthony Julius renews his attack on those whom he labels as ‘anti Semites’ for being anti Zionists. The problem with anti Zionism, says Julius, is that “it denies the Jews the right that it upholds for other comparable people, it adheres to the right of self determination except in the Jews’ case…. It affirms international law. Except in Israel’s case. It regards Jewish nationalism (i.e. Zionism) as uniquely pernicious, rather than merely another nationalism” (Trials of The Diaspora, Anthony Julius pg Xl, Oxford University Press). The cry for legitimacy and sameness in Julius’ text is pretty embarrassing, especially due to the fact that the Jewish ‘right of self determination’ is celebrated at the expense of someone else (the Palestinians). Zionism is uniquely pernicious at least for being devastatingly sinister to the indigenous population of the holy land. It is apparent in Julius’ text that the London barrister somehow prefers to evade engaging with the notion or the meaning of ethical thinking.

For Hasbara (propaganda) to win a debate and for Julius to win his argument, Jews have to prove that they are truly the same rather than demand to be seen as similar. Surely Julius must know that winning a moral argument is very different from winning a court case.

Presumably Julius is familiar enough with Kant’s ‘categorical imperative’ that suggests that to behave ethically is to ‘act in such a way that the maxim of one’s actions can be willed as a universal law’. Julius may fail to grasp that ethnically cleansing the vast majority of the Palestinian population cannot be ‘willed as a universal law’. Locking millions in concentration camps such as Gaza is not exactly a maxim of profound ethical standing. Dropping white phosphorous on people hiding in a UN shelter doesn’t make the Jewish state look like every other state. In fact, it doesn’t make Jews look like other people either. Watching Jewish lobbies around the world push for a war against Iran doesn’t make Jews look like ordinary people. And this is something that even Anne Frank cannot change.

As much as Julius and others would like to remove some crucial stereotypes from our collective cultural discourse, they can actually expect the complete opposite. Fagin and Shylock are now more popular than ever before. Devastatingly enough, it is Fagin and Shylock who shed light over the Jewish state and its lobbies around the world. Fagin is neither alone nor is he an isolated fictional episode. The list of Zionist crimes is emerging so rapidly that it is almost impossible for us to keep up.

I am reluctant to suggest to Julius that his attempt is in vain. The world out there is turning rapidly against Israel, Jewish nationalism and Jewish supremacy. Removing Fagin, Shylock and TS Eliot won’t stop the word ‘Jew’ from being an adjective and a negative descriptive emblem. For that to change, or for Jews to be genuinely respected, self-reflection is of the essence. Instead of pointing out what is so wrong with the Goyim, Jews may want to consider looking in the mirror. I tried it once many years ago. I have never recovered. It transformed me into a profound self-hater.