Max
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12 years ago @ Max Ajl - Norman Finkelstein on ... · 0 replies · +1 points
On the other hand, watching the damned of MW gives me the feeling of watching someone pick their nose when they think no one is watching.
12 years ago @ Max Ajl - Norman Finkelstein on ... · 0 replies · +1 points
12 years ago @ Max Ajl - Norman Finkelstein on ... · 0 replies · +1 points
12 years ago @ MRZine - mrzine.monthlyreview.o... · 0 replies · +1 points
But speaking more directly to my point, if there were one state, even one bi-national state (and I am not a one stater anyway, I think a better political resolution would be regional) a lot of the Ashkenazi would leave. I believe 70 percent have dual citizenship.
12 years ago @ MRZine - mrzine.monthlyreview.o... · 0 replies · +1 points
12 years ago @ MRZine - mrzine.monthlyreview.o... · 2 replies · +1 points
12 years ago @ MRZine - mrzine.monthlyreview.o... · 3 replies · +1 points
Again, international law is a framework for mobilization. Who is Finkelstein's social movement, and how do you expect it to put in place a solution that complies with minimal Palestinian national demands? Did you read the Palestine Papers? You saw what the PA was willing to concede even when the Israeli counter-offer was not serious. Imagine Israel made a serious counter-offer, and the Palestinians "get" something between the Israeli and Palestinian negotiating positions at Annapolis. Do you think all these committed troops that Finkelstein has mobilized on the basis of the "two-state settlement" will notice that what is on offer is not Finkelstein's solution but something far short of it? Are you aware that the key Palestinian issue in the West Bank and Gaza is not the right of return but the question of whether the future state will be militarized or not? And do you expect Finkelstein's liberals to act to secure that Palestinian demand, or simply brush it under the table when the issue has been "settled" in accord with the charity they mistake as solidarity?
This is why the radicals in the US and Palestine have moved on from two-states to BDS, because when we don't control the airwaves, there is no other way to sidestep the fact that the "consensus" you piously invoke includes a range of positions. Some of them are far short of Palestinian minimal demands. Those positions are held by those who we intend to pressure. Those who understand the consensus as full withdrawal have no power to implement their understanding of the consensus. The consensus is not "overwhelming" because political action is not a numbers game settled by UN GA votes.
Now either the entire Palestine solidarity movement and Palestinian civil society is wrong, ultra-left, wordy, and whatever term of abuse you haul in to obfuscate the issues, or Finkelstein is wrong for the reasons I laid out above. I leave it to MRZine readers to wonder which is the case.
Now, you haven't taken up these arguments, maybe because doing so would take words. And in return for this quite crappy resolution -- much crappier than what Finkelstein envisions -- you want Palestinians in the US and elsewhere to give up that which fuels their commitment to the land and their people and become solidarity activists who devote a year or three to the cause and then drop out. Good luck.
12 years ago @ MRZine - mrzine.monthlyreview.o... · 0 replies · +1 points
And who is pressuring the US? The EU? The Gulf States? What will they do, stop selling oil? Like the lobby fetishists, you pay much attention to the performance and little attention to the size of the substantive rift that lies beneath the performances. Inside that rift fits a demilitarized un-sovereign Palestinian state with Ariel smack in the middle of it, and no amount of hot air will convince me let alone the Palestinians and Arabs who increasingly represent the core of the American solidarity movement otherwise.
12 years ago @ MRZine - mrzine.monthlyreview.o... · 5 replies · +1 points
Perhaps I am reading "public opinion" wrong, but it does not strike me that it is attuned to the differences between the Geneva Plan-style state, a demilitarized state, a state with only partial sovereignty, and the plan Finkelstein envisions. Both the former and the latter plans are part of the "consensus" he constantly refers to, which is exactly what makes it so misleading. If you have a plan to turn this object of polling known as "public opinion" into political action in favor of a full withdrawal to the pre-67 borders -- action which will have to overcome the rejectionism which is not only Israeli but also American ruling class policy -- put it on the table.
12 years ago @ MRZine - mrzine.monthlyreview.o... · 0 replies · +1 points