In case anyone had missed the message, the cause of and movement for Palestinian rights is flatly incompatible with anti-Semitism. Put differently, there is no justifiable way of being in favor of Palestinian rights on anti-Semitic grounds or for anti-Semitic ends. When anti-Semites try to appropriate the Palestinian cause for their own purposes, or hijack the cause by attacking innocent Jews, consistent defenders of Palestinian rights are among the first–and loudest and clearest–to call them out. Here’s a piece from CommonDreams for anyone who still has doubts about the supposed “connection” between anti-Semitism and Palestinian rights (ht: Kevin Carson). There is no connection, just the wholehearted disavowal of one.
Continue readingTag Archives: Palestine
Woke Conspiracies and Zionist Ones
People on the American Right sincerely seem to believe that “woke” ideology is so terrible and pervasive a phenomenon that it can be compared to a conspiratorial form of totalitarianism sweeping the country.
David Brooks, in The New York Times:
Continue readingMy friend Rod Dreher recently had a blog post for The American Conservative called “Why Are Conservatives in Despair?” He explained that conservatives are in despair because a hostile ideology — wokeness or social justice or critical race theory — is sweeping across America the way Bolshevism swept across the Russian Empire before the October Revolution in 1917.
A Welcome Tension: AOC, the Democrats, and Palestine
So it looks like decades of activism are finally, very gradually, starting to pay off in the form of polarization within the Democratic Party over Israel and Palestine. This didn’t happen by activists’ genuflecting before the prevarications and dogmatism of the mindlessly pro-Israel wing of the party, including Joe Biden. It happened through open, unapologetic confrontation.
Thanksgiving, Gratitude, and the Flower of Life
Today is Thanksgiving, a day on which it’s appropriate to give public thanks for the gifts we’ve received from life itself. Until recently, I had great disdain for Thanksgiving–just last year, I wrote a bitchy attack on it–mostly because until recently, bitterness and resentment were my favorite go-to emotions.
Paradoxically, I had to lose a lot in the past few months to appreciate what I have, and to grasp the true meaning of gratitude: a job, a marriage, a house, a car, tens of thousands of dollars, hundreds of hours of labor, and a large handful of illusions, for starters. I sold the house, but stand to make very little from it, so I count it as a loss. I sold the car for a ridiculously lowball figure, so I regard that as a loss. I’m in litigation, make a nominal wage at a dirty job doing hard physical labor, and lack permanent housing or the means to pay for it. I have temporary housing, but it lacks running water. So there are challenges. And yet, life has never been better. Last year, I had everything I now lack, and made sure to get up bright and early “to take a crap on Thanksgiving.” Now I’m writing a paean to gratitude. What a difference a year makes. Continue reading
Who Is Sheldon Richman, and Why Does He Hate the Constitution and American Greatness? and Why Does He Love Jihadis, French Communism, Godless Atheism, and Weird-Ass Epistemology?
In Part 1 of this 2-part interview, I chat with Sheldon Richman about his youthful enthusiasm for the Swamp Fox and his guerilla fighters; the Constitution as a betrayal of the American Revolution and the Articles of Confederation; defying YAF with Karl Hess at the March to the Arch; the positive externalities achievable by sitting next to Dave Barry; using Koch money to fight big business; Robert Bidinotto’s dark anarchist past; the perils of publishing Kevin Carson; going crazy for Thomas Szasz; the identity of Filthy Pierre; how to smoke like Gandalf; an atheist’s favourite Bishop; and which prominent Austrian economist experimented on Sheldon’s newborn infant.
In Part 2, we chat about the Israeli occupation of Palestine; u.s. intervention in the Middle East; the meaning of Jewish identity; the relation between libertarian individualism and social cooperation; the communistic theories of Frédéric Bastiat; the theologico-political merits of Spinoza; Nathaniel Branden and George H. Smith on atheism; Thomas Paine and Lysander Spooner on deism; the philosophical failings of the New Atheists; rehabilitating the cost-of-production theory of value; the uses of coherentist epistemology for both theists and atheists; reading Wittgenstein for relaxation; the advantages and disadvantages of Randian approaches to knowledge and concepts; the sordid truth behind the special effects in Roderick’s videos (and in particular, what the deal is with Roderick’s hair); Sheldon’s case against open Borders; and the shocking misuse of libertarian think tank resources to photocopy body parts (but who did it, Sheldon or Roderick? and which body parts? watch and learn!).
Pompeo and Circumstance
This morning, I made my third attempt at watching the RNC proceedings. My first was a minute-long foray into Kimberly Guilfoyle’s speech, which ended when I found it impossible to listen to a speech that described Puerto Ricans as immigrants. My second was an attempt to listen to Donald Trump, Jr., aborted about 30 seconds in, after he described a bunch of hapless virus-carrying bats as members of the Chinese Communist Party. This morning, I managed to make it all the way through Mike Pompeo’s speech from Jerusalem–a bittersweet event for me, because as an “ordinary citizen,” like Mike, I too had planned to go to Jerusalem this summer, but couldn’t, when I was mysteriously “struck” by unemployment in the best economy (with the best employment rate) the world has ever seen. Continue reading
The ABC’s of Occupation
This article in The New York Times is typical of a distinctive genre of American journalism on Israel and Palestine: vaguely pro-Palestinian in tone, vaguely critical of Israel by intention, but notably weak on the alphabet-level basics–literally the ABCs–of occupation. Continue reading
Coronavirus Diary (11): Avuncularity in the Time of Coronavirus
I just had an hour-long conversation with my brother Suleman, a doctor on the front lines of the fight against COVID-19 at Valley Hospital in Ridgewood, New Jersey. Ridgewood is located in Bergen County, the epicenter of the COVID-19 pandemic in New Jersey. Bergen County is also where my university happens to be located. Continue reading
Albert Aghazarian, RIP
Many of us are mourning the loss of the Palestinian historian Albert Aghazarian, a Jerusalem native long associated with Bir Zeit University, near Ramallah. I met him briefly but memorably in 2013, on my first trip to Palestine; he provided simultaneous translation of the three lectures I gave at Al Quds University on my first trip there in June of that year. The lectures were on Lockean political philosophy and its relevance to Palestine. Without him, there wouldn’t have been any lectures. Continue reading
An Open Letter to the IDF Maglan Unit in Englewood, New Jersey
Victim-blaming and aggressor-valorization are two sides of the same maudlin, propagandistic coin. From a piece in The Jewish Standard (Teaneck, New Jersey): Continue reading