It looks as though I shall be teaching a noncredit semester long study group at Harvard next semester on volume 1 of Capital. The participants will be faculty, graduate students and some undergraduates. I am really looking forward to this. It is a good way to begin my 90s!
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Is the Zoom conversation you had with the Soc. Stud. undergrads going to be posted on the Soc Stud home page or elsewhere, or will it remain private? (If the latter, that is understandable.)
I do not know whether it was recorded. I will ask and get back to you
thanks
Very cool! It’s a warmup for what you’ll do when you hit 100.
Tom C.
Will this be open to any Harvard graduate students, or is the list already fixed/constrained? Thanks!
I think nothing has been decided yet. You might contact Adaner Usmnani or Bo-Mi Choi, two members of the faculty teaching social studies who are arranging the study group.
To LFC, I checked and the session was not recorded – the idea was to encourage students to speak more freely.
Right -- thank you for checking.
It may be a tad premature, but it is always best to lay some groundwork: begin negotiating with Harvard officials on an academic super plash centennial celebratory lecture to coincide with your 100th birthday.
That is a lovely idea, Jerry, but if they were to do it I am afraid I would feel the need to protest it.
You should protest it, but make sure your lecture is published.
sorry if this is inappropriate given the current posting but I think it is generallly relevant given our discussion and the current situation.
Peter Bohmer is a Jew, a professor,and a long time very good friend who was imprisoned for his opposition to the Vietnam War. He worked with Marcuse at San Diego State in the early 70s. Received his PhD from UMass Amherst around 1980 from the Econ Department, studying with Sam Bowles. While at MIT as an undergrad he studied with Chomsky. He also lost family members in the holocaust.
The Jewish Case for Palestine:A Jewish anti-Zionist Perspective
Peter G Bohmer
I want to share how my background causes me to support the Palestinian struggle against the Israeli occupation of all of Palestine including Gaza, the West Bank and East Jerusalem. Since 1967, I have actively opposed the U.S. military aid and ideological support for Israel, and in solidarity with Palestine.
I mourn the deaths of 9500 people murdered in southern Israel and Gaza over the last three weeks (as of October 29th) over 1400 in Israel, mainly Israeli civilians by Hamas and over 8000 Palestinians in Gaza and growing numbers in the West Bank by the Israeli military, the IDF. Let us take a moment to reflect on this death of human life and the injuries of many more.
My parents and grandparents were Jewish from Central Europe, my parents grew up in Vienna, Austria. The German military and Nazis were welcomed by much of the Austrian population when they invaded in spring 1938. Germany immediately annexed Austria. My dad was 22 when he was incarcerated in Vienna by the Austrian Nazis and frequently beaten. According to Nazi records, he was imprisoned for being “political” and Jewish. He was released after four months. My parents escaped a few days later to France.
They wanted to leave Europe because they expected an imminent Nazi invasion of France. They were denied visas to Australia and Canada because of these countries’ antisemitic immigration policies. After a few rejections, my parents were admitted to the U.S. in June 1939. My grandfather and at least four other relatives were gassed to death in concentration camps.
Antisemitism, as anti-Jewishness, has been prevalent all over Europe and to a lesser but real extent in the U.S. It continues today although less systemic. Many Jewish people as a response have seen their liberation and fair treatment as integrally connected with the liberation of all people, e.g., Karl Marx, Rosa Luxemburg, the many socialist Jews, in the civil rights and anti-apartheid movement and in the Palestine Solidarity movement.
Because of this history of oppression, I grew up believing Jewish people would not oppress others. I was naïve. A majority of Jewish people in Israel and around the world support a Jewish dominated state. A Jewish state where Palestinians are systematically displaced from their land and are treated less than equal within the Israeli state formed in 1948; and less than human on the land Israel seized in 1967: the West Bank Gaza, and East Jerusalem. When you take someone’s land or enslave them, as what also happened in the U.S. there is a strong tendency for the dominant group to justify it.
continued below
(continuing)
Since 1967, the U.S. has unconditionally supported the illegal, immoral occupation of the West Bank, the annexation of East Jerusalem, and made more than a dozen vetoes in the UN security council of resolutions critical of Israel. The U.S. just vetoed a UN resolution calling for a cease fire and negotiations. The U.S. provides $3.8 billion dollars of military aid annually and has committed to continue this through 2029. Biden just proposed an additional $14 billion of military aid to Israel, and it is sure to be passed by Congress.
Rather than supporting a cease fire, negotiations and opposing the massive Israeli bombing and invasion of Gaza, the Biden administration is sending Israel additional weapons and military advisers. The U.S, has sent since October 7th, two aircraft carriers and 2000 marines to the Middle East in support of Israel, and has given Israel carte blanche to invade Gaza and commit the murders of tens of thousands and further ethnic cleansing.
The more we actively support the end of the Israeli occupation and U.S. support for Israel, the more we have the right to criticize the Hamas killings and taking of more than 200 hostages. I differ from the few groups and individuals who justify the October 7th murder of Israeli civilians by the Hamas led attack. They claim because the Palestinian struggle is anti-colonial and for self-determination all actions are justified. The killing of Israeli civilians, especially those and their descendants who fled the Nazi control of Europe is wrong. Many of them were not granted permission to immigrate to Great Britain, the U.S., Canada, Australia and other countries because of antisemitism and had no place else to go but Palestine. This does not justify the forced displacement of Palestinians but makes their situation somewhat different from other settler colonialists.
I am also critical of those who ignore or even worse, support the mass killing by Israel in Gaza, directly by bombing and the ongoing military invasion. But also, indirectly by blocking most food, water, electricity, fuel and medical supplies from getting in. To defend Israel’s increasingly genocidal policies by calling it self-defense is horrendous.
Israel claims a Zionist State is the only security for Jews around the world. Long run security cannot be based on the oppression and domination of another people. People will rise up. Israel is developing formal relations with and recognition by some of the conservative Arab states in the Abraham Accords. That will not further security in the long run, as the population in Egypt, Morocco, the UAE, etc. strongly support the Palestinian struggle.
The Hamas attack of October 7th shows the limits of this immoral strategy of Israel. Even if Israel destroys Hamas, oppression breeds resistance and Israel will eventually be defeated. Moreover, this security state strategy moves Israelis further to the right.
(continuing)
For moral and political reasons, the security of Jewish people and Palestinian people requires the end of the Israeli occupation, the end of U.S. support for Israel, and justice for all Palestinians.
The goal of a Palestinian socialist organization, the Democratic Front for the Liberation of Palestine, DFLP, is, “a people’s democratic Palestine, where Arabs and Jews live without discrimination, a state without classes and national oppression, which allows Jews and Arabs to develop their national culture together”.
Let us do what we can in the streets, in letters and by lobbying politicians to oppose U.S. military aid to Israel including the massive, proposed increases and for ending U.S. support for Israeli aggression. . Expose and challenge US corporations like Boeing and Raytheon that have sent billions of dollars of weapons to Israel, paid for by our taxes. Support the Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions (BDS) Movement against Israel.
Educate yourselves, friends, and family about the colonization of Palestine. It is a horrible situation for Palestinians, especially in Gaza and it is our responsibility to do what we can to change U.S. policy so that it is more in line with popular sentiment all over the world including declining U.S. support for the Israeli occupation. A minimal demand is for an immediate cease fire and an end to the Israeli siege of Gaza
I often hear that Palestine-Israel is too complicated to take a position on, or there is no solution because Israelis and Palestinians are equally victims. An insightful response in a talk at Evergreen by Khader Hamide, a leading Palestinian activist who the U.S unsuccessfully tried to deport for 20 years: “Palestinians are losing their land, and their lives and Israelis are losing their humanity.”
A common slogan among Jewish people and Israeli leaders is “Never Again”, which they usually restrict to Jewish people. The holocaust against Jewish people is horrendous but so is the holocaust against African people, Native and indigenous people, and others. Let us mean by “Never Again” for All People. That is both the moral and strategic position.
Thank You!
peterbohmer@gmail.com
Jerry,
As I've said previously, the state of Israel has been incredibly successful at convincing Jews that they represent all Jews and that any criticism of Israel is anti-semitism and that all Jews who criticize Israeli policies are self-hating Jews.
I was sent to Jewish school every Saturday from the second grade on. There they presented history as one long sequence of anti-semitism and anti-Jewish persecution beginning with the Pharaoh who enslaved us in Israel (according to the Bible), continuing with the Babylonians and Assyrians, then whoever it was that the Maccabees rebeled against, then the Romans, then the Medieval Catholic Church, then the Inquisition, then the Dreyfus case and finally Hitler who culminated the sequence.
If for Hegel, history is the development of the Absolute Idea, for my Jewish school history was one long sequence of anti-semitism and hatred of Jews.
The solution: Israel.
They never even mentioned the Palestinians, who didn't even exist in that world picture.
David Zimmerman,
Your comment, which I received by email, does not appear here. Here it is:
The Zionist refrain: "A land without people for a people without land."
That is so true. My sister went to Israel twice to work on a Kibbutz, spending about a year there both times when we were growing up. She's progressive, anti-racist, but seemingly did not notice the Palestinians in her accounts of her time spent there.
In my freshman year at college in the room next to mine in the dorms there was a kid who had lived in Israel for several years and now lived in Connecticut. Once again, progressive, anti-racist, open-minded and he depicted Israel to me in glowing terms as a socialist society based on the kibbutz, which was a non-Stalinist form of collective life. He never mentioned the Palestinians either.
They just did not exist.
Zionism is (or was) actually a multifaceted movement with one strain that supported a state in which Jews and Palestinians would have genuinely equal rights. Obviously that strain of Zionism is, and has been for a while, in eclipse, but it did exist. (People here might want to read something, or something more than they have, about the history of Zionism.)
s.w. wrote:
"the state of Israel has been incredibly successful at convincing Jews that they represent all Jews and that any criticism of Israel is anti-semitism and that all Jews who criticize Israeli policies are self-hating Jews."
The Israeli government has rarely, afaik, taken the position that *all* or *any* criticism of Israel or a particular Israeli government's policies is anti-Semitism, although certain groups in the U.S. seem to have taken that position. But the Israeli govt, if it has indeed tried to convince Jews that any criticism of Israel is out-of-bounds, has clearly failed in that mission. If it had succeeded, then groups such as JVP or (the more 'moderate' but still critical) J Street would not exist, and someone with views like those of Peter Bohmer would not exist either. However, Bohmer does exist (unless Jerry F. is making him up, which I assume is not the case). Bohmer's existence means that the Israeli government has failed in its supposed aim to convince all Jews that any criticism of Israel is out-of-bounds. Ditto for Chomsky's existence, s.w.'s existence, N. Finkelstein's existence, P. Beinart's existence, etc etc etc etc.
LFC,
The situation I describe above has been changing and will change even more if Israel keeps bombing ambulances and refugee camps in Gaza.
One nephew and niece in the U.S., now in their 30's, are as critical of what Israel is doing in Gaza as I am and I believe that they are typical of many young, well-educated progressive Jews.
In Chile the official Jewish community (with which I have no contact whatsoever) are totally Zionist and seem to work closely with the Israeli embassy. The current Israeli ambassador is incredibly arrogant, insults in twitter Chilean political figures who question Israeli policies and generally behaves like the White Man in an underdeveloped third world country talking down to the "native savages."
Gabriel Boric, the Chilean president, condemned both the Hamas attacks and the Israeli murderous bombings and invasion of Gaza and called the Chilean ambassador in Israel to return to Chile for consultations after the attack on the refugee camp in Gaza, which
is a diplomatic gesture of protest. By the way, before the usual suspects accuse Boric of anti-semitism, the Chilean foreign minister who handles these matters is, yes, Jewish.
Jerry Fresia,
Thanks for sharing those thoughts from Prof Bohmer.
Nurit Peled-Elhanan is a professor of language and education at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem, and a winner of the European Parliament Sakharov Prize for Freedom of Thought. (She is also a member of a very prominent Israeli family, and is the older sister of Miko Peled.)
In this interview from circa 2011, she describes her research that showed how the Israeli government ensures that the textbooks Israeli students learn from treat Palestinians in stereotypical and racist ways, and are intended to prepare Jewish Israeli students to serve in the military on graduation from high school. (While the textbooks are not actually written by the government officials, all proposed textbooks must be given the government's imprimatur before they can be adopted for classrooms.)
"Most books when they show the map of Israel, they don't show the real border of Israel. They show you Palestine in it.... I think we have like three generations of students who don't even know what the borders [of the state of Israel] are.... The people who live in the territories [who are not Jews] are always labeled 'non-Jews.' So this is another racist way to label people as 'not us'—not what they are, but what they are not...."
"There are population maps in geography textbooks where the whole, what is usually called Palestine is a blank spot, no color, nothing. And they tell you, 'For this area we have no data.' So, in a population map, if there are no data, that means there are no people there. And if it's colorless, it means it is not inhabited. It's waiting to be inhabited. Right?"
She also describes how textbooks that do not properly portray Zionism as "the redemption of the Jewish people," or that are deemed too sympathetic to the Palestinian point of view, are physically destroyed ('ground')."
"Every time a Labour ministry is replaced by a right-wing ministry, they grind some books. One at least."
"There was this book that was published, and according to the curriculum, they had to give two points of view.... Now, this book really brought the Palestinian point of view [in addition to the Israeli Jewish point of view]. It was completely deauthorized immediately. Collected off the shelves. Ground."
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pWKPRC-_oSg
LFC: The Israeli government has rarely, afaik, taken the position that *all* or *any* criticism of Israel or a particular Israeli government's policies is anti-Semitism
Perhaps not, but the Israeli government have made very clear that they take the position that anti-Zionism is antisemitism. And they have passed a law prohibiting support for BDS, even if that support is limited to advocating boycotts of products produced by settlers in the occupied territories.
https://www.jpost.com/Israel-News/Politics-And-Diplomacy/High-Court-rules-on-boycott-law-398206
They have also passed a law that authorizes cutting off state funding to any institution or group that denies the existence of the state of Israel "as a Jewish and democratic state" or that commemorates the date of the founding of Israel as a day of mourning (a measure which critics say is intended to keep Palestinians from speaking about the Nakba).
Netanyahu in remarks to the President of France in 2018:
"You rightfully said that anti-Zionism is anti-Semitism. You can say: Well, I have nothing against Jews but I don’t think there should be a Jewish state, which is basically what the anti-Zionists are saying. We understand that this is hypocrisy and I'm glad that you took a clear stand against it."
Netanyahu in a tweet in 2019:
"Today Americans celebrate Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. We in Israel greatly appreciate Dr. King and his efforts to stamp out bigotry, including hatred against the Jewish people and the Jewish State. We remember his moral clarity when he said that anti-Zionism is antisemitism."
Netanyahu in another tweet in 2019:
"The decision by the International Criminal Court to probe Israel constitutes pure antisemitism. The ICC believes Jews do not have a right to settle in our historic Jewish homeland or to defend ourselves against enemies seeking our annihilation."
The Israeli Embassy to the US has issued similar statements.
In late 1947, Ben-Gurion, speaking to a meeting of Mapai, said, among other things, that the Israeli state should ensure "full and real equality, de jure and de facto, of all the state's citizens...."
Walzer, who quotes this, goes on to write: "The invasion of the new state in 1948 by five Arab armies must count as one of the reasons, perhaps the crucial reason, why none of the governments over which Ben-Gurion presided lived up to the commitments he described. The equality he promised has never been realized in ... Israel's history. But it is a matter of real importance that equality was for Ben-Gurion, as it was for the Algerian authors of the Soummam Platform, consistent with and even required by national liberation. For it is not required by, nor is it consistent with, the traditional religion or the religious nationalism that came later." (The Paradox of Liberation [2015], pp.99-100)
The Nation has a recent article on Netanyahu's covert campaign in the U.S. to subvert the BDS movement and to label any criticism of Israel as anti-Semitic: https://www.thenation.com/article/world/israel-gaza-intelligence-cyber-shield/?fbclid=IwAR3RoGJOLX_DRSPDVUYTgax4Z9xq5sJBAcNQsYqDkuamlEJ8jlFofbvaTqQ
LFC: Zionism is (or was) actually a multifaceted movement with one strain that supported a state in which Jews and Palestinians would have genuinely equal rights.
It seems it would be a mistake to think that that strain was ever very influential among the the early leaders of Zionism or, in later years, among the general population.
Robert Eisen (George Wash U. Prof of Religion & Judaic Studies) writes in "The Peace and Violence of Judaism" (2011):
"We should also mention the groups that were to the left of mainstream Labor Zionism and emphasized peaceful coexistence with Palestinians. The most prominent of these in early Zionism was Berit Shalom (Covenant of Peace) which was established in 1925.... They believed that Jewish settlement in Palestine had to proceed without the use of force. Some were pacifists, but most were not, because they believed that violence could be used for self-defense. Central to their platform was the belief that Jews and Arabs in Palestine should join together to form a binational state in which the two groups would have equal rights regardless of which was in the majority. Berit Shalom suggested a constitutional arrangement guaranteeing that power was shared equally by the two groups.... Neither Berit Shalom [nor its successor group] won much popular support.... [But] their legacy has been carried on in some respects by the many peace groups that have arisen in Israel, especially since the 1967 war." (p196-7)
An article on the Jewish Virtual Library website says, "Berit Shalom never numbered more than 200 members.... Berit Shalom was attacked by most of the Zionist parties, who viewed its members as defeatists at best and traitors and worst. By 1933, it had virtually ceased to exist, after many of its members deserted it, and it ran out of funds."
LFC: In late 1947, Ben-Gurion, speaking to a meeting of Mapai, said, among other things, that the Israeli state should ensure "full and real equality, de jure and de facto, of all the state's citizens...."
To the extent that Ben-Gurion actually believed what he was saying, and wasn't just giving lip-service to a rosy ideal, it was predicated on his assumption that the Israeli Jews would by hook or crook establish and maintain a majority in Palestine. Equal rights only gets you so far if you are persistently in the minority.
There are many statements from Ben-Gurion, public and private, indicating his support for transfer (expulsion) of the resident Arabs from the land that Ben-Gurion envisioned for Israel. Eg: "With compulsory transfer we would have a vast area for settlement ... I support compulsory transfer. I don't see anything immoral in it."
In the event they didn't end up w a "vast area," but with the area that the UN partition plan allotted. (That said, the quote from B-G is interesting, not in a good way.)
The previously linked Fleischacker piece provides some nuance to BG's 1938 remark.
Nuance in what way?
A late follow up to John Rapko @ 12:22 on November 5.
Although you have to read quite far down in the piece, there’s an account that puts Project Butterfly in a larger and perhaps even more worrying context:
https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2019/02/18/private-mossad-for-hire
As to Israeli disinformation projects, it seems pretty clear to me they’ve worked all too well in the UK. Much of the Labour Party, for one, has become quite a subsidiary of the Isareli state.
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