Roundup, tips from readers
Posted on April 18 2007 by Cecilie Surasky under Alan Dershowitz , Educational Institutions , Free speech , Norman Finkelstein.There’s a new Dutch television documentary on YouTube about the Israel Lobby and muzzling. While the interstitial narration is in Dutch, all those interviewed– John Meirsheimer, former Colin Powell chief of staff Colonel Lawrence Wilkerson, Representative Earl Hilliard Jr., Tony Judt, Human Rights Watch’s Kenneth Roth and more, speak, of course, in English. (I’ve only seen the first 20 minutes or so, and while I don’t agree with everything I saw, it features captivating, forthright interviews with primary sources.)
Further, as I have said here before, at Jewish Voice for Peace we don’t believe the evidence supports the Walt/Mearsheimer thesis that the Israel Lobby is so strong that it categorically forces the US to go against its own interests. Nonetheless, their analysis of the muzzling tactics of the Israel Lobby is right on mark, and they’ve done exactly what they set out to do-start a global dialogue.
And speaking of Kenneth Roth, here, as one reader put it, is a humorous case of the “pot calling the kettle black” in which Ford Foundation, Amnesty International, BTselem critic Gerald Steinberg takes Human Rights Watch head Kenneth Roth to task for Abusing the Holocaust.
The Denver Post writes ADL chief decries muzzling debate.
An appeals court ruled against Amiri Baraka, former New Jersey poet laureate, who lost his job after he wrote Somebody Blew Up America, a poem that included the lines “Who knew the World Trade Center was gonna get bombed/Who told 4,000 Israeli workers at the Twin Towers to stay home that day?/Why did Sharon stay away?”
Stanford tried to ban media from seeing self-described ex-terrorist Walid Shoebat.
Olympia looks at Rafah for sister city, reports the Olympian. Expect sparks.
Wondering what Robert Fisk has to say about the Dershowitz-Finkelstein tenure affair? How about Noam Chomsky who weighed in on Democracy Now this morning? My colleague Mitchell Plitnick reminds us that, even if we disagree with some of Finkelstein’s conclusions, his Israel-Palestine scholarship is solid, and Dershowitz has no standing as a Middle East scholar. There is a petition supporting Finkelstein, and a full dossier of documents at the Finkelstein solidarity campaign website.
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April 19th, 2007 at 7:38 am
excellent report on the jewish lobby…not too difficult to follow.
i started out just being curious about this jewish zionist belief system by supposed loyal americans….but the more i discover about the oppression with which these zionist mobilize their hordes to threaten americans into submission the more i can sincerely say that i detest this type of behaviour. You all better hope that this doesnt take wing, and america discovers the full story…momentum is hard to stop once it changes.
as an american i am growing to hate your movement.
i realize that not all jews in america are part of this mindset, but it seems that the majority are.
April 19th, 2007 at 8:09 am
http://www.thejewishadvocate.com/this_weeks_issue/letters_to_the_editor/
Chomsky Gets In The Way
I just wanted to note in regards to Noam Chomsky: I am editing a
collection of essays by Christopher Hitchens and his critics, on
terrorism, war and Iraq. I asked through the Nation magazine to
reprint a Chomsky-Hitchens debate, and was granted permission, and
then Chomsky intervened with the Nation to block this permission. He
also tried to block the entire project at the University of California
Press by intimidating some editors there (I have documentary evidence
for both assertions). In fact, Chomsky himself is one of the great
ideological censors of free and open debate in America, and to see him
portrayed as being muzzled is ironically disgusting to me, since I
myself (and Christopher-Hitchens) am a victim of his own censorious
machinations.
Thomas Cushman
Professor, Wellesley College
Wellesley
April 20th, 2007 at 3:03 pm
Goodness, seven new news items in this one piece along (not to mention the 40 or so odd items that were posted in the last month) and still not a single explanation regarding JVP’s joining a lawsuit in Boston to censor critics of the ISB. I thought this delay was due to time constraints, but the moderators clearly have had time to address this issue. All that seems to be lacking is will.
April 21st, 2007 at 6:47 pm
who let the dogs out?