Author: KPSC

What’s lacking from the Times is appropriate shock at Alice Walker’s bigotry and its own refusal to admit a mistake.

By Richard Cohen | The Washington Post | Dec 24, 2018

[NY Times Book Review Editor Pamela Paul] surely does not mean to, but she manages to treat anti-Semitism as just another point of view — not a hatred with a unique and appalling pedigree that has led to unending slaughter

Over the centuries, anti-Semitism has been many things — a religious conviction, an ideology, a national ethic, an unadorned expression of hate and, in more recent times, evidence of sturdy insanity. Now thanks to a New York Times interview with Alice Walker, it’s been reduced to merely a point of view. To cite the Times’s own motto, this interview was definitely not “news that’s fit to print.”

Walker, of course, is a highly praised novelist best known for “The Color Purple,” for which she won a Pulitzer Prize. Her renown is great, and it was no doubt on this basis that the Times interviewed her for its “By the Book” feature that runs in the Sunday Book Review. The trouble started with the first question.

“What books are on your nightstand?” the Times asked. The second book Walker named was “And the Truth Shall Set You Free” by the British conspiracy theorist David Icke. The book is so repellently anti-Semitic that Icke’s usual publisher wouldn’t touch it. Among other things, it endorses that hoary anti-Semitic forgery “The Protocols of the Elders of Zion,” which blames evil Jews for much of the world’s ills. The book also suggests that schools ought to balance lessons on the Holocaust with some questioning whether it ever even happened, and it reveals that the world is run by a cabal of giant, shape-shifting lizards, many of whom just happen to be Jewish.

Continue reading “Anti-Semitism is not just a point of view. The NY Times should know better.”

Ultimately defeating anti-Jewish and anti-Black prejudice in our communities depends on principled solidarity and rejection of the tropes created by white supremacy.

By Rebecca Pierce | Forward | Dec 19, 2018

The anti-Jewish tropes found in Icke’s writings are steeped in the ideology of white supremacy and white power, which casts Jews as simultaneously a perennial social other, a communist scourge and somehow in control of world banking, politics and media.

Every generation that struggles against oppression stands on the shoulders of those who came before us. But even as we honor those who taught us, we must also challenge them when they stray from the path of fighting for justice, and fall into the trap of stigmatizing one community to uplift another.

For Black feminists, The Color Purple author and activist Alice Walker has long been a luminary and leader, guiding us on a path towards personal and collective liberation through her work. Unfortunately, this week many of us find ourselves in the painful but necessary position of having to push back on anti-Jewish words and endorsements that are especially harmful coming from someone so influential in the fight against patriarchy and white supremacy.

In an interview with The New York Times Book Review this week, Walker recommended “And the Truth Shall Set You Free” by British conspiracy theorist David Icke, a book that alleges the existence of a Jewish-influenced cabal set on world domination and positively cites notorious anti-Jewish forgery The Protocols of the Elders of Zion.

Continue reading “Alice Walker’s conspiracy theories aren’t just anti-Semitic — they’re anti-Black”

The book, recommended by author Alice Walker, repeatedly cites the “Protocols of the Elders of Zion,” dubs the Talmud “among the most appallingly racist documents on the planet,” and says Jews funded the Holocaust and control the KKK.

By Yair Rosenberg | Tablet | Dec 17, 2018

That a celebrated cultural figure like Walker would promote such a self-evidently unhinged bigot might seem surprising at first glance. But this is only because the cultural establishment has spent years studiously looking away from Walker’s praise of Icke and his work, and her repeated expressions of anti-Semitism.

Over the weekend, the New York Times Book Review published a full-length interview with Alice Walker, the Pulitzer Prize-winning author of The Color Purple. The very first question: “What books are on your nightstand?”

Walker replied with four, the second of which was And the Truth Shall Set You Free by David Icke. “In Icke’s books there is the whole of existence, on this planet and several others, to think about. A curious person’s dream come true.”

This passed without comment from the New York Times interviewer, and the publication passed it on to readers without qualification. This is rather remarkable because the book is an unhinged anti-Semitic conspiracy tract written by one of Britain’s most notorious anti-Semites.

Continue reading “The NY Times published an unqualified recommendation for an insanely anti-Semitic book”

The Alliance for Israel Advocacy has been working quietly to pitch its plan to the White House and key donors.

By Lee Fang | The Intercept | Dec 16, 2018

If there are any Palestinian residents who wish to leave, we will provide funds for you to leave, with the hopes that over 10 years to change the demography of the West Bank towards an eventual annexation.
— Paul Liberman, executive director of the Alliance for Israel Advocacy

A pro-Israel activist group is quietly pushing lawmakers on Capitol Hill and key officials in the White House to embrace a plan that would entail paying Palestinian residents in the West Bank to move abroad. The plan is a bid to reshape the ethnic and religious population of territories controlled by Israel, according to the head of the group, called the Alliance for Israel Advocacy.

If all goes according to the group’s plan, legislation will be released in January, when the new Congress convenes, that will redirect U.S. funds once dedicated to the United Nations for Palestinian humanitarian assistance into a voucher program administered by the Israeli government. A draft summary of the proposal states that the money will help finance the permanent relocation of Palestinians from the West Bank to countries such as Turkey, Sweden, the United Arab Emirates, or the United States.

The effort is being championed by the Alliance for Israel Advocacy, a lobbying group formed by the Messianic Jewish Alliance of America, a nonprofit that represents Jews who have converted to Christianity but who still practice some Jewish customs. The so-called Messianic Jews broadly share many spiritual beliefs of modern born-again evangelicals. . . .

Continue reading “Messianic lobby builds support for US-funded ethnic cleansing in Palestine”

We thought this 15-year-old essay worthy of a second reading. — Eds.

By Tony Judt | The New York Review of Books | Oct 23, 2003 [sic]

The problem with Israel, in short, is not — as is sometimes suggested — that it is a European “enclave” in the Arab world; but rather that it arrived too late. It has imported a characteristically late-Nineteenth-Century separatist project into a world that has moved on, a world of individual rights, open frontiers, and international law. The very idea of a “Jewish state” — a state in which Jews and the Jewish religion have exclusive privileges from which non-Jewish citizens are forever excluded — is rooted in another time and place. Israel, in short, is an anachronism.

. . . At the dawn of the twentieth century, in the twilight of the continental empires, Europe’s subject peoples dreamed of forming “nation-states,” territorial homelands where Poles, Czechs, Serbs, Armenians, and others might live free, masters of their own fate. When the Habsburg and Romanov empires collapsed after World War I, their leaders seized the opportunity. A flurry of new states emerged; and the first thing they did was set about privileging their national, “ethnic” majority — defined by language, or religion, or antiquity, or all three — at the expense of inconvenient local minorities, who were consigned to second-class status: permanently resident strangers in their own home.

But one nationalist movement, Zionism, was frustrated in its ambitions. The dream of an appropriately sited Jewish national home in the middle of the defunct Turkish Empire had to wait upon the retreat of imperial Britain: a process that took three more decades and a second world war. And thus it was only in 1948 that a Jewish nation-state was established in formerly Ottoman Palestine. But the founders of the Jewish state had been influenced by the same concepts and categories as their fin-de-siècle contemporaries back in Warsaw, or Odessa, or Bucharest; not surprisingly, Israel’s ethno-religious self-definition, and its discrimination against internal “foreigners,” has always had more in common with, say, the practices of post-Habsburg Romania than either party might care to acknowledge. . . .

Continue reading “Israel: The alternative”

Nobody who claims to be a defender of free speech or free expression — on the right, the left, or anything in between — can possibly justify silence in the face of such a coordinated and pure assault on these most basic rights of free speech and association.

By Glenn Greenwald | The Intercept | Dec 17, 2018

In order to continue to work, Amawi would be perfectly free to engage in any political activism against her own country, participate in an economic boycott of any state or city within the U.S., or work against the policies of any other government in the world — except Israel.

A children’s speech pathologist who has worked for the last nine years with developmentally disabled, autistic, and speech-impaired elementary school students in Austin, Texas, has been told that she can no longer work with the public school district, after she refused to sign an oath vowing that she “does not” and “will not” engage in a boycott of Israel or “otherwise tak[e] any action that is intended to inflict economic harm” on that foreign nation. A lawsuit on her behalf was filed early Monday morning in a federal court in the Western District of Texas, alleging a violation of her First Amendment right of free speech.

The child language specialist, Bahia Amawi, is a U.S. citizen who received a master’s degree in speech pathology in 1999 and, since then, has specialized in evaluations for young children with language difficulties (see video below). Amawi was born in Austria and has lived in the US for the last 30 years, fluently speaks three languages (English, German, and Arabic), and has four U.S.-born American children of her own.

Continue reading “A Texas elementary school speech pathologist refused to sign a pro-Israel oath — so she lost her job”

As Americans, we are committed to the First Amendment — and as Jews, we know that criticizing Israel is sometimes the most Jewish thing you can do.

By Batya Ungar-Sargon | Forward | Dec 18, 2018

The entire point of the First Amendment is to protect the speech of people we despise (you don’t need the law to protect the speech of people you like). It’s something we Americans hold dear, and something we seem to recognize as crucial to our identity in all areas but Israel. It’s nothing short of a shonda for Israel to be the one topic where Americans forget about their most dearly held values.

The movement to boycott, divest from and sanction Israel, known as BDS, is in the news this week, thanks to a harrowing tale reported in The Intercept about a Muslim speech therapist in Austin, Texas named Bahia Amawi. Amawi was told she could no longer work in the Texas public school system unless she signed an oath promising that she does not and will not boycott Israel or “an Israeli-controlled territory.”

In other words, Texas’s anti-BDS bill doesn’t only impinge on the free speech rights of a US citizen in a bizarre attempt to “stand with Israel;” it turns every potential contractor with the state of Texas into a literalization of the anti-Semitic canard of dual loyalty. Texas citizens are now literally more loyal to Israel than they are to the US, insofar as they may say and do things to their own country that they may not engage in vis-à-vis Israel.

Continue reading “Why don’t Jews realize how dangerous anti-BDS laws are?”

The American and Israeli governments alike should stand up for, rather than stand in the way of, open and vibrant academic debate on Israel–Palestine, just as they should for debate about any contentious subject essential to democracy.

By Katherine Franke | The New York Review of Books | Dec 12, 2018

New policies adopted by the US and Israeli governments are intended to eliminate any rigorous discussion of Israeli–Palestinian politics in university settings. Not since the McCarthyite anti-Communist purges have we seen such an aggressive effort to censor teaching and learning on topics the government disfavors.

There are signs that we’ve reached a tipping point in US public recognition of Israel’s suppression of the rights of Palestinians as a legitimate human rights concern. Increasingly, students on campuses across the country are calling on their universities to divest from companies that do business in Israel. Newly elected members of Congress are saying what was once unsayable: that perhaps the US should question its unqualified diplomatic and financial support for Israel, our closest ally in the Middle East, and hold it to the same human rights scrutiny we apply to other nations around the globe. Global companies such as Airbnb have recognized that their business practices must reflect international condemnation of the illegality of Israeli settlements in the West Bank. Natalie Portman, Lorde, and other celebrities have declined appearances in Israel, acknowledging the call to boycott the Israeli government on account of its human rights violations. And The New York Times published a column arguing, with unprecedented forthrightness, that criticism of ethno-nationalism in Israel (for example, defining Israel exclusively as a “Jewish state”) isn’t necessarily anti-Semitic.

At the same time, discussions on college campuses about the complexities of freedom, history, and belonging in Israel and Palestine are under increasing pressure and potential censorship from right-wing entities. In fact, new policies adopted by the US and Israeli governments are intended to eliminate any rigorous discussion of Israeli–Palestinian politics in university settings. Not since the McCarthyite anti-Communist purges have we seen such an aggressive effort to censor teaching and learning on topics the government disfavors.

Continue reading “The pro-Israel push to purge US campus critics”

Those who undermine peace, democracy, and human rights are distracting us with legislation that takes our leaders’ precious time away from actually fighting for the values and actions that our country so desperately needs right now.

By Joel Rubin | Forward | Dec 19, 2018

If we have learned anything from the past two years, it’s that we cannot take our democracy for granted and that we must instead continually speak out against injustice, intolerance, and hate. That should be the standard against which any legislation affecting America’s relationship towards Israel is judged. In an era of rising intolerance and authoritarianism both at home and abroad, Congress should not facilitate further erosions of our civil liberties.

A major bill affecting American civil liberties and US foreign policy towards Israel is being debated behind the scenes in Congress and may be attached in the dark of night to the end of year Omnibus spending package. This bill — S.720, the Israel Anti-Boycott Act (IABA) — is fundamentally flawed at its core in a manner that should offend progressives and conservatives alike: it violates the First Amendment right to political free speech.

As a progressive Jewish Democrat with a strong personal connection to Israel and a professional national security background, I have been fortunate to have helped form two of the country’s leading organizations working on Israel-related political issues, as the founding Political Director of J Street and a founding Board Member of the Jewish Democratic Council of America. I believe in the mission of these organizations, as they are focused on promoting peace, human rights, and democracy — values that are central to both the United States and Israel.

Continue reading “Congress shouldn’t take the anti-BDS bait”

Many noted the ferocity of the border guard’s response to our prayerful, nonviolent demonstration. We gained a stronger understanding of the toxic effects of militarization on our border communities.

By Rabbi Brant Rosen | Shalom Rav | Dec 15, 2018

What has stuck with me most in the last 24 hours is a deeply uncomfortable sense of what that border surely looks like when the witnesses are gone, the journalists are not taking pictures, and the encounters are with migrants instead of documented (and often white) community leaders. Because what we saw yesterday looks like a police state.
— Elaine Waxman, JVP member

I‘ve just returned from the San Diego-Tijuana border where I had the honor of participating in “Love Knows No Borders” — an interfaith action sponsored by the American Friends Service Committee (AFSC) and co-sponsored by a myriad of faith organizations from across the country. As a staffer for AFSC and a member of Jewish Voice for Peace (one of the many co-sponsoring organizations), I took a special pride in this interfaith mobilization, in which more than 400 people from across the country gathered to take a moral stand against our nation’s sacrilegious immigration system. I’m particularly gratified that the extensive media from our action could shine a light on the brutal reality at our increasingly militarized southern border.

The date of the action (December 10) was symbolically chosen to take place on the anniversary of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and served as the kick off to a nationwide week of action that will conclude on December 18, International Migrant’s Day. The action set three basic demands before the US government: to respect people’s human right to migrate, to end the militarization of border communities, and to end the detention and deportation of immigrants.

Continue reading “I witnessed the horror of border militarization, and vow to fight it”