… in the form of the whole (PDF) text of the “Not for distribution or publication” real Hasbara Handbook from “The Israel Project”.
For anyone who’s followed the various interventions of Israel’s ever-eager army of international hasbaristas (propagandists) here or elsewhere, the actual handbook for their efforts that’s produced by TIP makes hilarious reading.
My main take on the portions I’ve read of the 116-page tome– full name “The Israel Project’s 2009 GLOBAL LANGUAGE DICTIONARY”– is that the authors seem fully aware they have new challenges to face in trying to justify Israel’s actions to (predominantly) a US audience. Hence, such advice as (p.7) “Don’t pretend that Israel is without mistakes or fault.”
Their reasoning for the advice they give on p.12 not to talk about religion is also interesting:
- Americans who see the bible as their sourcebook on foreign affairs are already supporters of Israel. Religious fundamentalists are Israel’s “Amen Choir” and they make up approximately one-fourth of the American public and Israel’s strongest friends in the world. However, some of those who are most likely to believe that Israel is a religious state are most hostile towards Israel (“they’re just as extreme as those religious Arab countries they criticize”). Unfortunately, virtually any discussion of religion will only reinforce this perception.
Therefore, even the mention of the word “Jew” is many Israel contexts is going to elicit a negative reaction—and the defense of Israel as a “Jewish State” or “Zionist State” will be received quite poorly. This may be hard for the Jewish community to accept but this is how most Americans and Europeans feel.
These people are fairly smart in the way they advise their supporters to work to bend the public discourse in a pro-Israel direction.
Anyway, big thanks to the friends at Newsweek who brought us this gem.
With any colonies, they come to market and influence the public view for their benefits.
Helena, you are talking about new challenges to face in trying to justify Israel’s actions to (predominantly) a US audience. … “Don’t pretend that Israel is without mistakes or fault.”!
What we saw with US lead invasion and occupation of Iraq still running till now is as same as “The Israel Project’s 2009 GLOBAL LANGUAGE DICTIONARY” if not more.
If the case of Israelis to influence portion of US which more important than the other world, US did far from Israelis in this path.
Helena you did too by using term “insurgency” for those humans/citizens in Iraq who simply defends and fighting invader and occupier of their land, so your action isn’t some sort what you call it “(propagandists)”.?
‘The Axis of Idiots”
Jimmy Carter, you are the father of the Islamic Nazi movement. You threw the Shah under the bus, welcomed the Ayatollah home, and then lacked the spine to confront the terrorists when they took our embassy and our people hostage. You’re the runner-in-chief…
[Snip. Recycled hate-speech from this J.D. Pendry, as also previously trolled here. HT for that: Salah. ~HC]
with the sub-human pieces of camel
The US takes to the shadows in Iraq
Unfortunately, not just for the Iraqis, but for the American public, it’s what’s happening in “the dark” – beyond the glare of lights and TV cameras – that counts. While many critics of the Iraq War have been willing to cut the Obama administration some slack as its foreign policy team and the US military gear up for that definitive withdrawal, something else – something more unsettling – appears to be going on.
Obama’s key officials seem to be opting not for blunt-edged, former president George W Bush-style militarism, but for what might be thought of as an administrative push in Iraq, what Vice President Joe Biden has called “a much more aggressive program vis-a-vis the Iraqi government to push it to political reconciliation”.
An anonymous senior State Department official described this new “dark of night” policy to Christian Science Monitor reporter Jane Arraf in this way: “One of the challenges of that new relationship is how the US can continue to wield influence on key decisions without being seen to do so.”
Without being seen to do so. On this General Odierno and the unnamed official are in agreement. And so, it seems, is Washington. As a result, the crucial thing you can say about the Obama administration’s military and civilian planning so far is this: ignore the headlines, the fireworks, and the briefly cheering crowds of Iraqis on your TV screen. Put all that talk of withdrawal aside for a moment and – if you take a closer look, letting your eyes adjust to the darkness – what is vaguely visible is the silhouette of a new American posture in Iraq. Think of it as the Obama Doctrine. And what it doesn’t look like is the posture of an occupying power preparing to close up shop and head for home.
The challenge for the columnists, rather than the reporters, is how to make Barack Obama appear to be other than the unapologetic proponent of Manifest Destiny that he is, wihout being seen to do so.
The article by Michael Shwartz is not “news”, but it is a fresh look at Iraq without the rose colored glasses. I wrote asking if he is aware of a blog that writes from that point of view…
Interesting article on the Israeli Foreign Ministry recruiting and paying talkbackers to go on blog sites to spin the Israeli message.
http://www.commondreams.org/view/2009/07/10-10
JES, better get in on the lucre if you are not already.
Influence & Lobbying
One Example here
is how to make Barack Obama appear to be other than the unapologetic proponent of Manifest Destiny that he is, wihout being seen to do so.
John Docker is a cultural theorist working at the Australian National University.
“Bend public opinion”, what should they be doing? This only shows they care about what people think of Israel, and are willing to educate their people on how to do it well.
I can not believe you object to this document in such a condescending manner. It teaches modern media techniques. It also states many facts and supports items with polling data (the question could be asked if the data is accurate? this is a legitimate journalistic approach! One of us calls themselves a journalist right? Editorialists are journalists aren’t they?)
Your comments may expose your bias, as I think the Palestinians should develop one of their own books like this. They could use it! Perhaps when they do they can use some of the same data points. The book says: “do not misstate facts, use them!”
“The truth will set you free” amen.
Perhaps writings that represent people should be a discussion you present. If I can recall, I do not see many from the Palestinians. I could use some good examples. One of the greatest travesties to the Palestinian cause is the Hamas Charter, which I was also introduced via this site. Wow… which document would you rather have represent you?
I have read the Charter and could find very little positive about it, I found it racist, anti-Semitic and clearly incites violence. I found none of these items in the portion of the Israeli piece and will take time to read it all.
John R,
Do you find the Israeli charter racist? Anti-Palestinian?
People act like the Palestinians have all the fire power. Not so, no army, navy, marines or air force.
I have not seen the document Helena points nor I intend to read it…
[Snip. Titus continues with childish ad-feminam attacks; and is evidently determined not to deal with the topic of the post. ~HC]
The socalled hasbaristas according to several observers have been quite active and in some instances quite successful participants on the Forum provided by the Asia Times on Line.
To give credi where credit is due. The plans and strategies still “operational in the Middle East” were developed, promoted and executed by chickenhawk/neocons in the US.
At the present the Iraq “regime change/shock and awe” adventure is costing some US $ 270 million a day and the Afghanistan democracy crusade is estimated to be US $ 70 million a day every day of the year.
In addition to US casualties an estimated 1.4 million Iraqis have been killed. Media reports that US drones kill 20/30 Afghan men, women and children.
JD Pendry’s neurotic comments above attest to the effectiveness of some hasbarists.
John R says: “Perhaps writings that represent people should be a discussion you present. If I can recall, I do not see many from the Palestinians”; and he goes on to demonstrate his unfortunate selection of reading in that regard.
So why not let’s “present” that discussion. Here is an example, published within the last 24 hours:
http://www.counterpunch.org/atzmon07102009.html
This article, called “Thinking Outside of the Secular Box”, is by Gilad Atzmon. Be warned: Atzmon always cops high-volume ad hominem from the hasbaras, so we must expect that here, and will have to discount it if we are going to have the discussion that John R wants, or says he wants.
The article approaches things partly from the angle of John R’s question, if I am not mistaken about John R’s point of view. In other words it asks why one is not hearing Palestinian voices in “Western” fora. (The word “Western” becomes even more absurdly euphemistic when one is referring to the Internet, does it not?)
Atzmon’s article also addresses the nature and proper basis of solidarity itself, and at some considerable length, it addresses the question of religion as it applies to the whole matter. For me this is all, taken together, a good potential synthesis, but I don’t necessarily completely agree with Atzmon’s version of that synthesis. I don’t want to say why, yet. I would rather wait and hope that somebody else reads Atzmon’s article and comments on it here in a serious way.
So here it is, John R: A discussion presented. Go for it, mate. Let’s hear your contribution.
Thank your Domza
Prior to reading the article I was going to say “Unfortunately for everyone the selection I referenced was an extreme reference (intentionally) and comes from the elected and ruling party representing a good portion of the Palestinian people.” But my selection is not unfortunate due to articles reference of Hamas in the article you offered and it’s broader theme of accepting people for who they are, and why people (western liberals for my purpose) are against Hamas. Here is one more likely. Secularism and the separations it provides between religion and government protects those that are to be “put under the wing” of an expanding Islam (the idea of an expanding Islam is real in the West … see below for the root)…
Islam (as Hamas defines it, as extremists define it) portends to be the protector of other religions but in political practice appears to produce the opposite. This radical view needs to be separated from the mainstream – it is a recurring goal of the Israeli dictionary… to isolate and remove Jewish extreme language from the discussion and to promote the mainstream positives (remove it especially if you are extreme… as the ends justifies the means).
Funny- Protector of all peoples and religions is actually stated in the Israeli dictionary. It is a ringing theme within the Israeli dictionary and yet it resonates with western audiences…. “Israel has Islamic parties in the government, it has mosques, it has Christian churches……” but this rings a bell too and resonates when we look into the introduction of the idea that the data that suggests the inverse must be the case and is more likely in the Islamic States. (True or not… the idea is now real).
(Americans) can separate the Palestinians from the government (Hamas).
Well stated in the dictionary. So if this is true, I repeat… a dictionary of Palestinian origin should by drafted, not just to counter the document, but to counter the ideas. Controlling the language is to control ideas (Orwell). Perhaps the real struggle of Palestine is defining a Big Brother I can “Truly Love”.
Top of the morning to you John.
We did have a document called the Freedom Charter, passed at a mass event in 1955 in Johannesburg. We still revere that document today. Our opponents did not distribute it.
In the case of the alleged Hamas Charter it has only ever been referred to by Hamas’ opponents, such as yourself. This makes me suspicious of it, I have to say. I will believe in it more if I get it from Hamas, or from a Hamas web site.
Be that as it may, Atzmon is saying that one should understand people in their own terms, or, as he puts it, “listen to what others believe in”.
One of the reasons for coming to this site, JWN, is because Helena Cobban does listen, including to Hamas, and that’s good.
You, John, on the other hand, are determined to say that Hamas is a priori “extremist” and I think you are saying that all Palestinians and all Muslims are extremist.
Whereas Atzmon says: “Both [Islam and Judaism] stand as systems that provide thorough answers in terms of spiritual, civil, cultural and day-to-day matters.” I’m sure that is true, and it means that the very idea of “extremism” is inadequate and inappropriate to describe either Islam or Judaism.
I wonder if you read Atzmon’s article?
I’ve read it again this morning and I like it better than ever. I don’t think I have much to quarrel with Atzmon about, after all.
Well the Israel Project wasted money on Luntz, anyone on the internet could have told them for free what he did….and more.
And the more is…there isn’t any arguement that works for Israel no matter what the langauge..because there is no legitimate defense Israel or their minons can put up for Israel. There just isn’t any.
Beside which the MSM and the jewish zionist orgs have lost control of the narrative and spin on Israel. The truth has seeped out thru the net and even small town papers like mine front paged the dead children in Gaza. It’s out on the American street now and even the previously uninformed and indifferent Joe Lunchboxes don’t like what they hear and see about Israel.
There isn’t enough lipstick in the world to cover this pig.
Ja, well, no, fine, Carroll, as we say here in South Africa.
But Atzmon is pointing out that the solidarity movement for Palestine is far too small to be effective.
If you missed it, see his article here: http://www.counterpunch.org/atzmon07102009.html
I don’t think small-town newspapers and Joe Lunchbox, or even a hundred million Joe Lunchboxes are enough unless a lot of them are organised into a movement, and this is what has so far seemed impossible to do.
Whereas the Israel lobby has many organisations, of which the hasbara network is only one, and a minor one at that, because decisive politics is not simply a matter of arguments, but more crucially, of organisation.
Failure of organisation has roots and Atzmon explores some of them. It is not enough to rage against the other side.
In the case of the alleged Hamas Charter it has only ever been referred to by Hamas’ opponents, such as yourself. This makes me suspicious of it, I have to say. I will believe in it more if I get it from Hamas, or from a Hamas web site.
Dominic, this is a highly original argument. Apart from the fact that the translation of the Charter appears on a highly reliable and non-biased source – the Yale Avalon Project – there is the little fact that Hamas has never denied the existence or content of the Charter.
As far as Atzmon’s article goes it’s a bit late in the development of global culture for his solopsistic and relativistic argument, however well intentioned. Weapons, of all types, are simplly too easily acquired for us to sit back and say “I don’t really understand what’s going on in your head, but I truly have empathy for you.”
Shame, you can’t give us a URL for this document, JES; and nor can John R.
I bet you haven’t got a URL for the non-denial of its existence by Hamas, either. It would be hard for them to deny the existences of a document that cannot be produced. Perhaps you e-mailed it to them and got one back saying “we do not deny the existence of this document”? It would be nice to know such details.
Otherwise, Hamas becomes like Plato’s cave, with the light show on the back of the cave being put on by a constant relay of hasbaristas.
I’m sure from your post that you did not read Gilad Atzmon’s article, or even my remarks about his article.
Too bad. When BB remarked about my Catholic-Protestant “sensibility” being incongruous for a “Marxist” I became more than ever convinced that religion has to be unpacked as well as everything else about Israel/Palestine. And not only their religion, but also ours.
So when I read Atzmon’s remark that “Both [Islam and Judaism] stand as systems that provide thorough answers in terms of spiritual, civil, cultural and day-to-day matters”, I thought it could be the basis of a good discussion.
Jeez Dominic, you really are a provincial rube, aren’t you. ROFLMAO. Here’s the URL (which you could have found by simply searching for “Avalon Yale”):
http://avalon.law.yale.edu/20th_century/hamas.asp
You should try reading it.
And how can I give the URL for something that doesn’t exist (viz. a Hamas denial). (Do you still beat your wife or your significant other, Dominic?)
And yes Dominic, I assure you that I did read Gilad Atzmon’s piece – twice. I am also formulating a response, which I will probably post on my blog. I’m just not as fortunate as you are to be blessed with a great intellect (and an even greater opinion of one’s self).
What is a rube? Is a rube somebody who would accept a document without any attribution or source? I am not that kind of rube, JES.
This web page you have linked is bare of any reference. It only has a date: 18 August 1988. It could have been made up by a rube, a tube or a lube, for all anyone can know. It could have been done in Vladivostock or Langley, Virginia, or anywhere.
If that is the best available evidence, then I’m afraid we are all going to have to flush the bogus Hamas Charter a.k.a. Covenant down the toilet-pan of history to follow Ossian, the Zinoviev Letter, and the Hitler Diaries.
Here’s another URL for you, Dominic. Note that this translation was done by Muhammad Maqdsi on behalf of the Islamic Association for Palestine, and organization co-founded by Mousa Mohammed Abu Marzook, who today resides in Damascus and is second in command to Khaled Meshal. You don’t get much more official than that!
Sorry, I left out the URL:
http://www.nefafoundation.org/miscellaneous/FeaturedDocs/HamasCharterIAPtransl.pdf
JES for all we know the “nefa foundation” is another CIA psyop, like so much else we see on the internet. Can you produce something from a more neutral source perhaps (like say, Counterpunch?) Thanks in advance.
http://joshualandis.com/blog/?p=2519
In particular, Mishal refuses to entertain rewriting Hamas’ offensive charter, despite the chance that such a move could alter perceptions of the movement at the same time as it might serve to protect the movement’s underbelly from sniping by its critics.
what charter? I don’t see a charter. lol.
Where is that URL, JES? You write about it but you do not give it.
Meanwhile, I would like to tell JWN about South Africa’s famous Freedom Charter, so as to make a point about the alleged Hamas Charter.
The idea of a Charter was canvassed around the country in the months preceding the Congress, called the Congress of the People, in Kliptown, next to Soweto, Johannesburg, on 26 June 1955. The canvassing was done by thousands of volunteers (amavolontiya), many of whom wore a sort of ANC uniform, all over the country, and they collected suggestions that were brought back and used as the basis of the drafting of the Freedom Charter. The Congress of the People brought together black, white, coloured and Indian organisations plus the non-racial trade union centre, called SACTU.
A document (Call to the Congress of the People) went out before the congress, and then afterwards the Charter was published all over the world, including by the United Nations, and is still the basic document of the ANC and the alliance of which the ANC is the centre, and which once again won the national elections on 22 April 2009 by a landslide, even though it was opposed by a sham, splitting, opportunist party called “Congress of the People” (COPE).
What authenticates the Freedom Charter and gives it its unique status as compared to any other ANC document is all of the above, plus the rest of the story (Huddlestone, Luthuli, Dadoo, Treason Trial &c), which is too much to recall here.
So to a South African, knowing about the Freedom Charter, what is immediately striking about the alleged Hamas Charter is that there is none of this surrounding detail at all. All you get is that is was “issued” on a certain day in 1988. Nothing about who issued it, or the process that created it. It has nothing of what authenticates the Freedom Charter.
The alleged Hamas Charter as it appears on the Internet does not even have a signature under it, whereas the signatories of the Freedom Charter are well known. At least one of them, Leon Levy, who signed on behalf of SACTU, and who I have met, is still alive.
Well, aren’t you, Leon Levy and the ANC special. But not all “liberation” movements can, or do operate in the same way. At any rate, I suggest you go to the link I cited, as well to the Joshua Landis blog that Vadim cited and read them carefully before commenting further.
1. On the Hamas Charter:
[H]e urged outsiders to ignore the Hamas charter, which calls for the obliteration of Israel through jihad and cites as fact the infamous anti-Semitic forgery, “The Protocols of the Elders of Zion.” Mr. Meshal did not offer to revoke the charter, but said it was 20 years old, adding, “We are shaped by our experiences.”
Hey Dominic, guess where this is from?
Well, thanks, JES, we are all special, but of course I am not pointing to how special we South Africans are, but in fact pointing to what is normal about Charters, from at least the People’s Charter of 1837 (of the “Chartists” in Britain) to the present time.
The idea of a Charter is that people identify themselves with it, so that it builds support, which with the alleged Hamas Charter is not the case.
This is also clear from the PDF version that you have now linked, JES. Only the translator’s covering note, dated a year and a half later, is signed, and by somebody from a different organisation.
So I don’t yet see what status this document has other than a dead letter, and I have read the link that Vadim gave to the journalist’s interview with Khalid Mishal. Interesting that the comments under the article also make comparisons between Palestine and South Africa. An article like that is not the same thing as an original Hamas statement, of course.
In fact this surprises me, and it goes back to Helena Cobban’s original post about the Hasbara Handbook. Where is the Hamas English-language propaganda? Where can you find it? Who does media relations for Hamas? How can I get on the Hamas mailing list?
Helena Cobban wrote:
‘Meshaal spelled out [in another journalists’s interview published in the NYT] more clearly than ever before that he does not consider the “Charter” promulgated by Hamas when it was founded in 1987 to be a currently operational document.’
Your point, JES?
This is no advance on what Vadim has linked. It tells us, again, that when journalists have asked Meshaal/Mishal about this document, he has shown himself not to have any interest in promoting it. Nor does Hamas propagate it on any other occasions. Rather, it is propagatede by Hamas’s opponents.
It is by no means the equivalent of the Freedom Charter or any other Charter that I can think of.
Weaseling out, eh Dominic? First you deny that the Charter exists, because it “has only ever been referred to by Hamas’ opponents”. Then when confronted by an obvious reference (actually two reference) by the head of the Hamas politburo, you backpeddle and say that Meshal “has shown himself not to have any interest in promoting it. Nor does Hamas propagate it on any other occasions. Rather, it is propagatede by Hamas’s opponents.” Got any more bull to sling?
Your comparison of Hamas with the “Chartrists” in Britain appears to fly in the face of Atzmon’s article that you previously raved about. If you want me to explain that to you in more detail, just ask, and perhaps I’ll be accomodating. In the meantime, go out and play with your friends.
The Foreign Ministry unveiled a new plan this week: Paying talkbackers to post pro-Israel responses on websites worldwide. A total of NIS 600,000 (roughly $150,000)will be earmarked to the establishment of an “Internet warfare” squad.
Let’s see Jack. At that rate, the MFA wouldn’t even be able to hire two of me! Maybe they could hire 10 or 20 students part time at minimum wage. That’s hardly going to “bend” public opinion. It’s time that y’all figure out that I’m not here to change the opinion of the hand full of malcontents who read JWN and hang on Helena’s every word. If you really believe that we’re all “hasbaristas” following the “Hasbara Handbook”, then we would probably be taking Frank Luntz’s recommendation:
don’t waste time and money fooling yourself that newspaper ads and campus lectures alone will bring large numbers of new supporters to
Israel. Research repeatedly shows that the people who come to these events have largely
made up their minds, pro and con, so they are about leadership development, not mass communications.” (pg. 14)
BTW Jack, as a Hizbalobbyist or PP (Palywood Publicist) you might find this article interesting. It tells how a number of youths were involved in placing Internet calls from Gaza in support of Obama last summer.
JES.
Why are you so rude?
It really is unnecessary you know and, certainly from my own point of view, is enormously damaging to your arguments.
Steve
They are not references to the head of anything, JES.
They are two interviews by journalists who are at least not Hamas sympathisers, or else are positively hostile to Hamas, where the journalists trailed this document in front of Mishal/Meshaal and drew a negative response. He didn’t want to know. The document is a dead letter.
This “Charter” was never the document you say it is, nor what John R says it is, JES. This is not and never was the flagship document of Hamas. At most it may be one among other early documents, drafted by who knows who, adopted or not by who knows what assembly, unsigned, and unwanted.
I thank you for pressing me on with this thing, while I was doing other stuff, because I am settled now about the Hamas so-called Charter.
I am not comparing Hamas with the British Chartists, of course, but I do know what a Charter is, and I am also interested in how Hamas does its business. Obviously Hamas does NOT do things the Chartist way, nor the ANC way.
This alleged “Charter” that you keep thrusting forward tells us nothing at all about how Hamas does its business, and that is why it becomes a bore. It is a waste of time. By the way, I am not Hamas. Therefore it is hard enough for me to know what Hamas is without people chucking dust in the air around it.
But at least now I know the status of this document, which is zilch.
Steve,
Have you been following Dominic’s (Domza)posts for any length of time?
Regards,
JES
Dom,
where’s the HAMASbara? You’re soaking in it!
Steve, you’re soaking in it too. Rudeness, that is. “JES get in on the lucre” etc. Miss that?
Yes I have. He is always polite and willing to engage in discussion. Disagreeing with his points of view is one thing, responding with aggressive rudeness is quite another. I’m not trying to single you out here (there are a number of people who come on here and do the same kind of thing) but these personal attacks (“Jeez Dominic, you really are a provincial rube, aren’t you. ROFLMAO”) are not taking anybody anywhere.
Best
Steve
Sorry Vadim, I’m not following you. What are you talking about?
Steve
Dominic, if no one cares about the charter then HAMAS should have no problem publicly disavowing it. But its leadership (such leadership as is publicly known) has affirmed it in toto on multiple occasions.
http://www.pbs.org/frontlineworld/stories/palestine503/interviews_zahar.html
q: Will you revise your charter?
No. This charter is not the Qu’ran, but it should not be changed because it is implementing the views of every Muslim everywhere.
This is not and never was the flagship document of Hamas. At most it may be one among other early documents, drafted by who knows who[sic], adopted or not by who[sic] knows what assembly, unsigned, and unwanted.
And you know that for a fact, Dominic? Perhaps you could share a URL with us?
Dominic, I managed to dig up a copy of the charter on HAMAS’ own website. I hope this is authoritative enough a source for you.
http://www.alqassam.ps/arabic/special_files/entelaqa/02/main.htm
Posted by Domza at July 12, 2009 02:32 AM
>>>>>>>>>>
I was pointing out only the fact that no one who isn’t already an Israel supporter is going to buy
their arguement no matter what language they use.
Israelis kept misunderstanding and underestimating even the simplest among the US public. The US public, the average citizen has certain “ideas” implanted that they cling to whether it be about guns or freedom or underdogs or land ownership or taxes or etc..
The language isn’t going to work because it’s still about the same “Israel idea”.. which many in the public don’t like…not compatible with their own ideas.
It’s good for their own echo chamber but not much else.
Domza,
Thank you but I am not painting you one color, but your reference about me could have the effect of isolating me and painting me as someone in opposition to “all” Palestinians (they do not, I am not). This proves the point of the dictionary!
You can be right, but this won’t matter if the audience you are trying to reach does not understand you or hear you in empathetic terms! The tool needed to reach audiences uses the techniques and data to communicate this. Painting me as in opposition is exactly what the Israeli dictionary wants you to do…. Did you read it? Understanding the long term and gradual process of this document is what you should be analyzing, not the visceral feelings it generates inside you (as you are in opposition to it’s goal, I understand that).
Atzmon’s Communist references are not going to change the mainstreams mind or convince them of the argument (yes i read it). I would suggest that these be omitted in any Palestinian dictionary aimed at western audiences (this should be stated clearly early in it, unless talking to a western Communist). I would argue to most (Communists and the very open minded excepted) the opposite would be more likely……. and do Palestinians aspire to be the western liberals new “save the whale/seal/tree poster child?” Equality is what they deserve. Equal rights and equal responsibility and accountability! Dignity of cause and culture. Recognition.
Communicate this. Expose those things that prevent this. If you deny the extremists on either side you might be in denial (Hamas would be more extreme than some parties, Israel has theirs)…. The extremes pull the politics away from the middle that have the greatest ability to communicate and bridge the greatest compromise agreements. This is exactly the intent of the extremes of both parties. They may be getting some of their way for now. If one does not believe in compromise (appropriate type)then opposition is what they will get.
I am not in opposition of either party to the discussion, I am against the violence and the arguments used to support it. I hear less and less about that in an even handed way.
How can you help me understand what you know and feel? May God Bless us.
God bless you, John R!
I must confess, at once, that I am that communist that you would prefer to work around. I would also say at once that I don’t think that Gilad Atzmon is a communist, neither by conviction nor by affiliation. I could be wrong about that, but I don’t think so. His argument in the article is not a communist argument.
One must also say that quoting Karl Marx does not make one a communist. In addition, the particular passage quoted by Atzmon, which is the first page of Marx’s “Introduction to a Critique of Hegel’s Philosophy of Right”, was written right at the beginning of Marx’s career, when he was about 25 or 26. It is vivid and profoundly poetic, and it is endlessly quoted by all sorts of people for all sorts of reasons.
Karl Marx and we communists generally are not atheists. We don’t make war on God. That is not our purpose. Our dialectical communist purpose is what the rest of Marx’s great output was about.
The first line of the quoted book says: “For Germany, the criticism of religion has been essentially completed, and the criticism of religion is the prerequisite of all criticism.” Marx never wrote directly about religion again (although he often quoted from the Bible and from classical mythology).
Thank you for going back to Atzmon, even if you are only doing so to make a “direct negative”. You are saying that things must be kept in compartments, and that separate dictionaries should even be maintained for talking with different sorts of people. Atzmon has already said that this compartmentalised approach of yours is the problem, and not the solution, if I understand him properly.
If I am not mistaken, Atzmon is saying that the Israel problem is not intractable by accident of geopolitics, or of Arabs, Muslims, or oil, or because of the Holocaust and the special history of the Jews, or because Israel has nuclear weapons. Rather, the problem is a general one that challenges people spiritually and phlosophically wherever they may be. It is a crisis for humanity, no less than was the crisis that propelled, for example, dissenting Christians across the Atlantic in the seventeenth century, thereby changing the history of the world and indirectly preparing the global ground for the present crisis.
This site is a very good place to have some of this discussion. It needs to go deeper than liberalism, and deeper than Gilad Atzmon’s own kind of liberalism which reifies “empathy”, or yours which reifies “equality” and “violence” as opposites.
It needs to go at least as deep as what in South Africa is called “ubuntu”, meaning that “people are people because of each other”.
On the Hamas Charter
Let See this “The Likud charter from 1999”
The Jewish communities in Judea, Samaria and Gaza are the realization of Zionist values. Settlement of the land is a clear expression of the unassailable right of the Jewish people to the Land of Israel and constitutes an important asset in the defense of the vital interests of the State of Israel. The Likud will continue to strengthen and develop these communities and will prevent their uprooting.
…
The Government of Israel flatly rejects the establishment of a Palestinian Arab state west of the Jordan river.
Judea and Samaria are the West Bank.
So when Israeli drop her charter then you can tell Hamas to drop their one isn’t our “delusional” JES?
Salah,
Israel is a state with a Declaration of Independence and Basic Laws. The Likud, whose Programme you’ve cut from and pasted here, is a political party that leads a coalition government operating under that Declaration of Independence and those Basic Laws. The Likud Party is not bound by its Programme.
Further, the Likud Programme does not contain the highly racist, or equivalent of the anti-Semitic passages (e.g. one from the notorious “Protocols of the Learned Elders of Zion”) that the Hamas Charter does. That is what we are discussing here, not whether Hamas needs to change its Charter as a precondition to negotiations. The preconditions to negotiations are:
A renunciation of violence
Recognition of Israel
Respect for past agreements
“delusional” JES,
This is your history, telling loudly what your successive governments of Israel doing in accordance of party charters:
Reflections in a Mirror: Hamas and the Israeli Politik
Apologies for long post Helena, and all our friends here.
A renunciation of violence
Recognition of Israel
Respect for past agreements
JES, one question for you, did your country Respect for past agreements with respect to illegal settlements, the illegal wall, and its repeated breaches of international human rights and international humanitarian law.?
Tell us JES?
So, Salah, you support Hamas. Good for you. I’m not going to convince you otherwise.
Yab, the RAT run from CAT now!!!!
JES, don’t be pathetic, come forward and answer for sake of discussion.
Reread my post again, next time learn not putting your pathetic words in my mouth, I did not said I support Hamas show us here
You replied I replied to your claims answer what you asked?
Btw, I did not asked you “to convince” me dude?
it have nothing to do with me JES? your say
We waiting Answers here…
Yawwwn. Salah, I will respectfully ignore you from now on.
Salah, I will respectfully ignore you from now on?
Yab, very very “honest” man?
JES show us your honesty..answer the the question do not run this not for me here, this is for the Sack of discussion and the respect of this board.
Dominic, you asked about HAMAS english language propaganda. Aside from those run by unpaid hasbara volunteers, you can find the official HAMAS propaganda bureau here:
http://www.alqassam.ps/
for your guide “Zionist Entity” is Israel. Have fun.
By the way, you havent commented on the charter. Did you get it translated? or are we still clinging to the idea that it’s fake?
Thanks Vadim.
I had to adjust the URL before I got it in English with:
http://www.alqassam.ps/english/
The most newsy part seems to be at:
http://www.alqassam.ps/english/?action=articles
It’s very useful. I’m much obliged to you.
Glad to help. The funny thing is if we only read the english language portion we would never see the charter, which required an arabic site search.
http://www.alqassam.ps/arabic/special_files/entelaqa/
2nd button down on the right.
What this tells me is that it isn’t addressed to us. Just like Meshaal said, our job as outsiders is to ignore it. This doesn’t mean they ignore it or that it’s yesterdays news — the website itself is less than a year old!
Well, Vadim, your opinion is your opinion. I guess that the alleged charter is an itch that you will have to keep on scratching. You already have my settled opinion, and the reasons for it, on this thread, of which there is no point in repeating.
thats a shame. You said you’d revisit your opinion if you saw the charter on HAMAS’ website.
Yes, Vadim, in English. I don’t have the means or the time to learn Arabic to find out whether the site is authentic or whether the document is authenticated in Arabic, as it is not in the English translation that you and JES have provided. I am not convinced by your argument that says the document is not on the English version of the web site because “it isn’t addressed to us”. The fact that it is not there is consistent with my way of thinking about this alleged charter, and my way of thinking about it is not part of our common ground. My way of thinking about it comes from political theory and practice that you do not share with me and which you will not discuss or even acknowledge, although I have explained it well enough.
I will not go uphill on this thing for you. Let me remind you that this is not the discussion I personally wanted to have here on this thread, as I said before, several times, which you have ignored as you ploughed on with your alleged-charter story at such enormous length. It’s enough of that already. I thank Helena for extending the more interesting part of the discussion on other threads.
Hey Vadim, you gotta hand it to these Commies like Dominic. He’s slippery as an eel. He pulls all sorts of verbal “sleight-of-hand” so that he wins each argument. I guess that if he says that he’s wrong about one thing, the whole house of cards he’s built up over the years comes crashing down. Pathetic, I think.
Dominic, stuff like this is why supporters of Israel eventually give up on “hasbara.” If you REALLY cannot trust Google Translate and Khaled Mishal himself–and Arabic, especially the literary standard Palestinian used in the Charter, is a world language of which translators are easily found–then the only recourse is to point out that you are doing dirt on Palestinian Islamism, which is–at least in Arabic, which can be read from Dunquerque to Tamanrasset, from Rabat to Islamabad–proud of its methods and its goals, including “the stones cry out.”
SRSLY.
Either outside pressure on Israel is sufficient to force it to negotiate with Hamas despite Hamas’s unchanged goals, or it is not. If it is, either Hamas is strong enough to continue that war at a later date and reach those unchanged goals, or it is not. Basically, very little of the situation depends on Israel, unless and until Israel decides to destroy Hamas as a coherent movement, and Palestinian society with it, in all probability, as ’36-’38 laid the ground for the Nakba.
I’ve actually discussed Hamas and Islamism and their special challenges with Albie Sachs, and one of the things that cropped up is a certain very South African refusal to believe that one’s opponents are willing to behave barbarously as a political program, with absolute barbarism the end in itself. We are not talking about groups like MK or even the AWB, but rather people whose worldview is sufficiently apocalyptic to remove them from the realm of normal statecraft. I think SA got a bye with its diversity and with its collective memory of imperialism and statism as a mess for everyone, equally (the Zulu Empire, the British Empire, the Orange Free State, the Transvaal) whereas Palestinians of Hamas are still nostalgic, to a greater extent than Moroccans, for example, for an Islamic Empire and its dealings with Jews.
Thank you very much Eurosabra, for stating the case for the opposition so clearly. That case is called “exceptionalism” in my book, meaning exceptional Israel, exceptional Hamas, exceptional South Africa, et cetera.
I can’t speak for Albie Sachs, but what I do know is that we have an idea in South Africa called Ubuntu, which means that we are all members of each other, or that people are people because of each other. This idea is no different from the humanism of Hegel, Spinoza, the Italian Renaissance, some of the ancient Romans and Greeks, and the Bhagavad Gita. It is an idea that is inseparable from the idea of free will. Karl Marx put it most completely when he wrote that “the free development of each is the condition for the free development of all”.
Gilad Atzmon thinks that there are two kinds of people in this world, the individualists and the collectivists, and that the key to peace is empathy between these camps and within each camp. Obviously I do not think like that. I think that what binds me to the Israelis and to the Palestinians is ubuntu, which is also a kind of legitimate self-interest, and a lot more than just empathy.
By the way, ubuntu in South Africa is closely associated with religion, as it should be.
In my experience, the solidarity that is based on a strong sense of self-interest is the kind of solidarity that is effective, whereas empathy is not by itself effective, as we have seen time and again, and not least in Israel.
Ubuntu means we all win. Exceptionalism means we fight. Israel is only defined by exceptionalism. It is the flagship of exceptionalism in the world. To survive, Israel must impose exceptionalism on the entire world as a principle, and must therefore snuff out ubuntu.
That’s why I say that this period is a major out-sorting of the world that is comparable to the institution-building of the 17th century. It has analogous religious dimensions to that period, as well as colonial ones. Barack Obama’s speech in Ghana is partly an acknowledgement of this crisis, and a claim for leadership of it, tainted, I am afraid, with Imperialism. Israel/Palestine is another part of this world crisis.
Isreal/Palestine is all of our business.
The fact that it is not there is consistent with my way of thinking about this alleged charter, and my way of thinking about it is not part of our common ground.
That’s a shame, because your decision not to read the charter is consistent with my theory that you’re an ideologue terrified to challenge his own theories with facts. I guess dialogue with you is pointless, if we can’t learn to work around each other’s theories! Sorry I tried.
As far as “going uphill” goes, we’ve been pushing you uphill for this entire conversation, only to have the boulder come crashing down just as it seems progress may be at hand. While we’ve been running around sourcing links to satisfy your bottomless skepticism, you’ve sat on your butt, offering NO evidence for your theories (what is “normal” for charters eg) or outright fibs such as that the charter “can’t be produced”, that it’s “unwanted”, a forgery etc.
Your astonishing final word is that since HAMAS has not bothered to translate the charter into Lord Dominic’s mother tongue (why not Urdu?), it must not exist or be important! How magnificently arrogant, if not solipsistic.
Sorry, old chap. I just can’t help you this time.
In the context of Palestinian political Islamism, Israel *is* an exception, an intolerable affront, an error to be corrected, until Islamic sovereignty over all Palestine is restored. Certainly all Middle Eastern governments are inheritors of the “millet” system, to the extent that top-down government is the norm, and even tolerant, cosmopolitan states like Morocco sustain themselves in the context of pretty rigorous Othering, where government is in the hands of a straight, male, Arabic-native-language-speaking, ethnic Arab Sunni Muslim, by right and by design, by the Grace of God, etc. etc. And that’s not even to speak of the class elements, much of the Iraqi and Moroccan Communist Parties, under the monarchies, were Jews. For Zionism (which has a shorter path to a universal Israeli identity, contingent on an Israeli identity as such) and Islamism (which has a longer one, given that it does not identify Jews as Palestinians and has no concept of doing so, ever) to become like South Africa, everyone will have to rework his/her system of thinking about collective identities, national identity, and so forth.
Ironically, the joint Palestine Railway Union and a few explicitly marxisant-around-the-edges organizations of the pre-state period came close to doing that, possibly because of the mix of British and Yiddish influence. But Palestinian society is different enough from South Africa that trade union approaches to interdependence have faltered, whether within Palestinian society or across national-communal lines. (And of course the Marxist-Left-Zionist cross-communal approach, which bordered on non-nationalism, got Trojan Horsed by Ben Gurion. Gabriel Piterberg’s _The Ends of Zionism_ is very good on that particular set of issues.)
One other interesting thing is the forced or feigned agnosticism of Israeli Islamism with respect to the State of Israel, where the party (Ra’am-Ta’al, which is a front for the Islamic Movement) hems and haws enough in the Charter to govern municipally in a Jewish State. In contrast, Hamas is pretty clear about its intention to govern all Palestine under Sharia.
What you are saying, Eurosabra, is that it is not you, it’s the others.
But it is in fact you, because you are eclectic, and you are insisting on your desperate eclectic world-view. You are an encyclopaedist and a post-modernist, and an anti-humanist. You don’t like ubuntu.
You are saying that the world is arbitrary and it can only be described in your way. You are saying that the search for wisdom is a race towards the receding periphery of an ever-growing mass of detail and specificity. You are a wise guy because you have a big head, like the Mekon. Your understanding of the world is at the level of a hard-disk-drive, the second one that is, the one without any operating system or programs on it, but only masses of data.
For you, the subject is alway the object, and the only kind of object, at that. Your world is upside down and non-sequitur. In your world free will is used to prove that there is no free will and cannot be. The substitute for the demiurge is a kind of an accountant. Your universe is not Bridge, it’s Canasta.
Please forgive my figures of speech. No offence intended. I hope you see what I mean.
You are entitled to your way of thinking but you are not entitled to lay the blame for it on others.
Domza: don’t think I don’t know the history, Hillel Cohen’s _Army of Shadows_ points up the local/national splits. Heck, Neturei Karta even volunteered a member to be Arafat’s Minister of Jewish Affairs. The problem is that that was in the context of a traditional, Islam-inflected dhimmi relationship, rather than any secular interdependence, of which there is plenty, from Ta’ayush upwards. The top-down systems on both sides are reinforcing traditional national and religious identities and the power of push-back from below is limited (Ta’ayush, Btselem, Palestinian National Theater, etc.) You cannot have a theater troupe with a monopoly on the legitimate use of force, and currently the State of Israel is a Zionist state, and the PA is, functionally, an Arab-nationalist one, with an explicitly Islamist one waiting in the wings. And you need states to make peace between states.
Don’t think, either, that I don’t know the extent to which the State of Israel and Jewish-Israelis are manufacturing that kind of rigid identity as well, but with a bit more flexibility–the category of “Palestinian Jew”, which was a reality in Atarot and Nabi Samwil as late as 1948, is gone, whereas Israeli-Palestinian exists. In terms of functional interdependence, much of the medical system in rural Northern Israel is top-to-bottom Arab, and Gaza Palestinians used to have access to Be’ersheva’s Soroka Hospital, while Israeli-citizen Bedouin still do. I don’t think the medical system and a few past trade unions can be the basis for a radical, society-transforming one-state solution.