gdp's Comments

Max Ajl : Norman Finkelstein on BDS and Palestinian Strategy

Sun, 26 Feb 2012 00:49:11 +0000

It was in the Jewish Week too. Very bad. 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.

Max Ajl : Norman Finkelstein on BDS and Palestinian Strategy

Sun, 26 Feb 2012 00:43:20 +0000

No. And?

Max Ajl : Norman Finkelstein on BDS and Palestinian Strategy

Sun, 19 Feb 2012 21:21:52 +0000

I believe he asked for it to be taken down exactly under the circumstances that described...

MRZine :

Sat, 4 Feb 2012 01:23:36 +0000

There are no reliable numbers, the Israeli government has no interest in counting how many of its citizens live outside Israel. The best estimates are that there is rough parity between Arab Palestinians and Jews in Palestine/Israel. 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.

MRZine :

Sat, 4 Feb 2012 01:21:10 +0000

I did not say the right of return would never be implemented, I said it would require revolutionary change to be implemented. And then I wrote that even if one assumed for the sake of argument (with Finkelstein) that the regional revolution is impossible, his demand that Palestinians drop the demand for RoR makes no sense.

MRZine :

Wed, 1 Feb 2012 15:28:15 +0000

Of course we can bring about revolutionary change. But it will only happen with a revolutionary social movement, minimally in the Arab world, and it would help in the US and also Israel.

MRZine :

Wed, 1 Feb 2012 15:26:54 +0000

You are not making "Fink" look good here. If one word will more than suffice, then zero should be sufficient. That being the case, we are dealing not with argument but with faith, which sounds about what your position reduces to. 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.

MRZine :

Tue, 31 Jan 2012 22:18:36 +0000

Again, how does one turn the ideas represented by the "legal situation" and the "international consensus" into the political solution Finkelstein advocates? 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.

MRZine :

Tue, 31 Jan 2012 22:14:48 +0000

Neither you nor your friend below have offered a way to turn "public opinion" into a political outcome, specifically the political outcome Finkelstein has opted for: a two-state settlement with full Palestinian sovereignty and minimal and mutual land swaps. "Public opinion" is meaningless until it is turned into collective action oriented towards a common goal. As I wrote, Finkelstein wants to drop maximal demands not as part of a final settlement but in order to create a movement that can create pressure for a final settlement. 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.

MRZine :

Sun, 29 Jan 2012 16:55:48 +0000

The road to freedom in Palestine lies in a regional social transformation. That doesn't necessarily mean pan-Arabism, although it could take on a modified form of that, but it does mean an international articulation of struggles along class lines. Matzpen and PFLP knew this decades ago, but that language and more importantly the communist horizon towards which it oriented those using that language is at best a subdued current in the movement -- although again I think it's latent in the BDS call. I think we would be strengthened were it to be recovered. This does not make where Palestinians are any less dark. But nor should we ignore what is going on around Palestine, both to its North and South. The degree to which people both surrounding Palestine, within them, and very importantly in my opinion within Israeli Jewish society are able to organize along class based cleavages will be the degree to which a relatively peaceful transformation of the region is possible.

MRZine :

Fri, 27 Jan 2012 13:25:44 +0000

I don't think that's quite what Behar says in the article you cite, which is that a war with Iran is more likely than either the 1ss or the 2ss, and that war's partner will be renewed ethnic cleansing. I agree that the war with Iran is more likely than 1ss/2ss -- renewed ethnic cleansing I am not so sure about. Even the right-wingers in Israel would be seriously apprehensive about the Hezbollah and especially the Egyptian reaction. Thus far Egypt has been contained and becalmed from the Israeli perspective, posturing to the contrary. They know this. Is that a boat that they want to rock? Nevertheless obviously I mostly agree with his pessimistic take. But a pessimistic take is not a guide for action. And even he contextualizes that take in an essay that came out before the one you link to. There, he lays out an analysis leading to the need for an internationalization of the issue along the lines laid out by the PFLP and Matzpen, given what is currently occurring below: namely the waves of revolt in Egypt (like the 30,000 people marching through Giza a block from my window). Latent in the BDS strategy is also a call for internationalization. The question isn't if Behar's analysis is right. It's close enough to being right. The question as you ask is, how can we "invest" our energies in the project of preventing war with Iran? I think doing so will require a deepening of the revolt spreading around the world as well as the channeling of some of that energy along clear anti-war lines in the US.

Max Ajl : Another Mark Perry Exclusive

Sun, 22 Jan 2012 19:59:17 +0000

Yes, that's right, and this is exactly my concern with the Pal. solidarity movement + the lobby: what it does (if anyone took it seriously and activists don't take the strategic implications of the lobby theory seriously) is creates a constituency and a social movement for renovating the system within very narrowly defined parameters. its self-conscious horizon is reform, and not transitional reforms or structural reforms, but reforms that will stabilize the system in a different configuration. I think your point that the realists aren't winning domestically or in foreign policy must suggest that by now the executive, independently of a political groundswell, has very little effective real autonomy, and so a comparison with Roosevelt might be instructive.

Max Ajl : Another Mark Perry Exclusive

Thu, 19 Jan 2012 19:09:26 +0000

I think it is not clear why this is getting so much attention. Is it a question of plausible deniability? Is it a question of if the escalation in Iran goes awry, the US being able to blame Israel? I am not sure. Of course, for the US ruling class, ultimately Israel is expendable (even for the Zionists among them) in a way that US capitalism is not. But the article raises far more questions than it answers, some of which I myself tried to answer, probably in too telegraphic a fashion. What I think is that Foreign Policy had adopted the realist position that some sources of American capital accumulation have to be tamped down. Perhaps Iran can't be penetrated by the empire, and we have to let it go its own way. Perhaps we need to allow space for more capitalist development in the third world. Whatever the case may be, they are arguing that there is a need for change in imperial policy in the Middle East. The nature of that change is not clear. It seems they'd like a de-militarized Palestinian state as one part of it. But what does seem clear to me is that the imperial culture is obdurate as hell, just as much as the capitalists whose interests it basically reflects, and I am not sure what it will take to convince the rulers to lay off of Iran and other kindred countries and simply let them be. The Leveretts are totally suspicious and think that the aggression against Iran is a core imperial policy, emanating straight from Obama. They can't afford to think wishfully about what is going on. So indeed there is a debate going on within the empire, but the realists are not winning it. They are mostly losing it, and even that debate won't accommodate Palestinian liberation, and I think we all need to understand that that is the case.

Max Ajl : Another Mark Perry Exclusive

Sun, 15 Jan 2012 11:47:35 +0000

I agree that it sounds like plausible deniability, especially as the intelligence officers documented numerous instances of Israelis proposing cockamamie plans and getting them rejected. If anything, it is a tiff about appearances -- Bush administration unlike Obama administration was fourquare behind Israel rejectionism and low-level aggression against Iran. Obama is in support of the low-level aggression, not all of the rejectionism. And of course even within Israel there is a high-level debate about Iran with the usual senior intelligence officers saying that a nuclear Iran would not imperil Israel, which I agree with. I am not sure it would even imperil Israel's occupation, frankly.

Max Ajl : Another Mark Perry Exclusive

Sun, 15 Jan 2012 11:44:25 +0000

Unfortunately, it is not my site that has the reach to affect the thinking of regular Americans. However, this is very heartening: http://www.raceforiran.com/who%E2%80%99s-running-...

Max Ajl : A little over a year ago a Tunisian immolation set it all off

Sat, 14 Jan 2012 18:35:57 +0000

Thanks

Max Ajl : On the silence

Thu, 29 Dec 2011 13:13:39 +0000

absolutely. keep keeping us posted about Oakland.

Max Ajl : Egypt, Syria, and the Dynamics of Counter-revolution

Tue, 22 Nov 2011 17:13:22 +0000

who called in that bombardment?

Max Ajl : Egypt, Syria, and the Dynamics of Counter-revolution

Tue, 22 Nov 2011 02:57:26 +0000

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2011/oct/... http://www.hrw.org/news/2011/10/24/libya-apparent... you ask who is doing the math. given who is now running the country, don't expect the math to ever be done.

Max Ajl : Egypt, Syria, and the Dynamics of Counter-revolution

Mon, 21 Nov 2011 17:09:20 +0000

I think Assad is a much nastier piece of work than Gaddafi actually, but the collapse of the regime was not overnight, it took massive outside support, which is basically off-shoring the entire government apparatus (read Hugh Roberts's piece in the current LRB) and in the course of "liberating" the major cities the "revolutionaries" slaughtered tens of thousands of people. In fact like I said, I don't care about his social base of support anyway. I think leftists should oppose sanctions and outside intervention, which includes regional outside intervention, especially because it is precisely those factors that can lead to both a hardening of support for the regime (in the case of Iran, if the state/society are sufficiently strong) or a weakening of the society such that outside actors can impose their own agenda on the internal process. I mean whatever we disagree on we should be able to agree on that.