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Fredy Perlman: ANTI-SEMITISM & THE BEIRUT POGROM
| Message Board > Controversy and Quarantine > Fredy Perlman: ANTI-SEMITISM & THE BEIRUT POGROM |
| Lordpatch User Info... | ANTI-SEMITISM & THE BEIRUT POGROM Fredy Perlman Escape from death in a gas chamber or a Pogrom, or incarceration in a concentration camp, may give a thoughtful and capable writer, Solzhenitsyn for example, profound insights into many of the central elements of contemporary existence, but such an experience does not, in itself, make Solzhenitsyn a thinker, a writer, or even a critic of concentration camps; it does not, in itself, confer any special powers. In another person the experience might lie dormant as a potentiality, or remain forever meaningless, or it might contribute to making the person an ogre. In short, the experience is an indelible part of the individual’s past but it does not determine his future; the individual is free to choose his future; he is even free to choose to abolish his freedom, in which case he chooses in bad faith and is a Salaud (J.P. Sartre’s precise philosophical term for a person who makes such a choice [The usual English translation is “Bastard”]). My observations are borrowed from Sartre; I’d like to apply them, not to Solzhenitsyn, but to myself, as a specific individual, and to the American cheerleaders rooting for the State of Israel, as a specific choice. *** I was one of three small children removed by our elders from a Central European country a month before the Nazis invaded the country and began rounding up Jews. Only part of my extended family left; the rest remained and were all rounded up; of these, all my cousins, aunts, and grandparents died in Nazi concentration camps or gas chambers except two uncles, whom I’ll mention later. A month more and I, too, would have been one of those who actually underwent the rationally-planned scientific extermination of human beings, the central experience of so many people in an age of highly developed science and productive forces, but I wouldn’t have been able to write about it. I was one of those who escaped. I spent my childhood among Quechua-speaking people of the Andean highlands, but I didn’t learn to speak Quechua and I didn’t ask myself why; I spoke to a Quechua in a language foreign to both of us, the Conquistador’s language. I wasn’t aware of myself as a refugee nor of the Quechuas as refugees in their own land; I knew no more about the terrors — the expropriations, persecutions and pogroms, the annihilation of an ancient culture — experienced by their ancestors than I knew about the terrors experienced by mine. To me the Quechuas were generous hospitable, guileless, and I thought more of an aunt who respected and liked them than of a relative who cheated them and was contemptuous of them and called them dirty and primitive. My relative’s cheating was my first contact with the double standard, the fleecing of outsiders to enrich insiders, the moral adage that said: It’s all right if it’s We who do it. My relative’s contempt was my first experience with racism, which gave this relative an affinity with the Pogromists she had fled from; her narrow escape from them did not make her a critic of Pogromists; the experience probably contributed nothing to her personality, not even her identification with the Conquistador, since this was shared by Europeans who did not share my relative’s experience of narrowly escaping from a concentration camp. Oppressed European peasants had identified with Conquistadores who carried a more vicious oppression to non-Europeans already before my relative’s experience. My relative did make use of her experience years later, when she chose to be a rooter for the State of Israel, at which time she did not renounce her contempt toward the Quechuas; on the contrary, she then applied her contempt toward people in other parts of the world, people she had never met or been among. But I wasn’t concerned with the character of her choice at the time; I was more concerned with the chocolates she brought me. *** In my teens I was brought to America, which was a synonym for New York even to people already in America among the Quechuas; it was a synonym for much else, as I was very slowly to learn. Shortly after my arrival in America, the state power of the Central European country of my origin was seized by a well-organized gang of egalitarians who thought they could bring about universal emancipation by occupying State offices and becoming policemen, and the new State of Israel fought its first successful war and turned an indigenous population of Semites into internal refugees like the Quechuas and exiled refugees like the Central European Jews. I should have wondered why the Semitic refugees and the European refugees who claimed to be Semitic, two peoples with so much in common, did not make common cause against common oppressors, but I was far too occupied trying to find my way in America. ... The State of Israel was not interesting to me during that decade, although I heard talk of it. My relatives spoke with a certain pride of the existence of a State with Jewish policemen, a Jewish army, Jewish judges and factory managers, in short a State totally unlike Nazi Germany and just like America, My relatives, whatever their personal situations, identified with the Jewish policemen and not with the policed, with the factory owners and not the Jewish workers, with the Jewish hustlers and not the suckers, an identification which was understandable among people who wanted to forget their close encounter with labor camps. But none of them wanted to go there; they were already in America. My relatives gave grudgingly to the Zionist cause and were baffled — all except my racist relative — by the unqualified enthusiasm of second to nth generation Americans for a distant State with Jewish policemen and teachers and managers, since these people were already policemen and teachers and managers in America, My racist relative understood what the enthusiasm was based on: racial solidarity. But I wasn’t aware of this at the time. I was not an overbright American high-schooler and I thought racial solidarity was something confined to Nazis, Afrikaaners and American Southerners. full article: http://recollectionbooks.com/bleed/Encyclopedia/PerlmanFredy/antisemitism.htm - Thu, 14 Sep 2006 6:44pm | ||
| Lordpatch User Info... |  By Ashahed Muhammad FinalCall.com Correspondent Updated Sep 14, 2006, 01:37 am http://www.finalcall.com/artman/publish/article_2917.shtml Book Review: In The Path of Hizbullah by Ahmad Nizar Hamzeh, 196 pages * British MP George Galloway on Israel and Hezbollah (Web Video) http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article14391.htm * Al Manar TV (Lebanon Television) http://www.manartv.com.lb/NewsSite/News.aspx?language=en (FinalCall.com) - Although classified by many Western nations as a terrorist organization, Hezbollah is a Shi’ite Islamic movement that also acts as a social services agency with a strong cultural influence for the people of Lebanon. While many believe the recent war between Israel and Hezbollah began a little over a month ago, Hezbollah actually formed in 1982 in response to the violent Israeli invasion and occupation of south Lebanon that year. In the recent war, the international community witnessed Hezbollah as a guerilla army whose abilities were misjudged and whose determination was underestimated in withstanding the Israeli Defense Force. In the book, “In The Path of Hizbullah,” Ahmad Nizar Hamzeh, an associate professor in Political Science at the American University of Beirut, offers a political analysis and comprehensive study of Hezbollah. The book deals with all facets of its structure such as the circumstances surrounding its formation and sources of its ideology, leadership and organizational structure, its emergence as an influential political power in Lebanon and establishment of Islamic jurisprudence. The book describes the ascendancy of Hezbollah’s Secretary General Sheikh Sayeed Hassan Nasrallah, who took the reins at the age of 32. Nasrallah is hailed by friends and foes alike as a shrewd political pragmatist successfully transforming the group from a loosely knit volunteer militia by carefully orchestrating its emergence as a popular political and social services agency supported by the masses of the Lebanese people. Hezbollah consistently and successfully battled the Israeli Defense Force from 1982-2000, which eventually led to Israel’s swift withdrawal from southern Lebanon in 2000. However, the author does not focus simply on the military capabilities of Hezbollah. He also includes charts, diagrams and carefully researched documentation chronicling the critical moments of advancement in the development of the party. Prof. Hamzeh points out that while it is the desire of Hezbollah to establish an Islamic order, nowhere does it insist that this Islamic order must be established by force. Another compelling bit of information involved the author’s definition and analysis of the often misunderstood concept of jihad. Readers interested in delving deeply beneath the surface will appreciate the explanation of Hezbollah’s decentralized framework of unity, which maintains ideological consistency and enables Hezbollah to establish operational unity with others who do not share the same religion, political worldview or strategy; which has been effective in increasing their influence beyond Lebanese borders. After successfully fending off the most recent Israeli aggression, Hezbollah has emerged as an example of successful resistance against the rapacious Israeli government’s formidable military machine that included indiscriminate missile bombing of Lebanon’s civilian infrastructure and a restricted ground offensive. This victory by Hezbollah must be seen in a larger context. More governments are rebelling against the attempted global dominance of the United States government and their proxy Israel. They are losing allies and the friendship of nations. Observe President Hugo Chavez of Venezuela, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad in Iran, the ongoing military resistance in Iraq and the landslide victory of Hamas in Palestine. These are all signs pointing to the self-determination of nations and nation-states with the goal of shattering the iron grip and ubiquitous control of the United States/Israel alliance of global supremacy. “In The Path of Hizbullah” by Ahmad Nizar Hamzeh 196 pages 2006 FCN Publishing, FinalCall.com and Iran's nuclear program gets strong backing from NAM leaders 17/09/2006 Interim Cuban leader Raoul Castro, Fidel's brother, concluded the Non Aligned Movement (NAM) summit, stressing the meeting was excellent. Iran drew strong backing in the dispute over its nuclear program, as developing-world leaders agreed in Havana that Tehran had the right to use atomic energy. National leaders of the 118-state (NAM) adopted a statement in which they "reaffirmed the basic and inalienable right of all states to develop research, production and use of atomic energy for peaceful purposes." They also said "the only way to resolve the issue is to resume negotiations without any preconditions." "They recognized the need for a comprehensive multilaterally negotiated instrument, prohibiting attacks, or threat of attacks on nuclear facilities devoted to peaceful uses of nuclear energy." The heads of state and government pointed out that the International Atomic Energy Agency found that all nuclear material declared by Iran had been accounted for, and urged Iran to continue cooperating fully with the IAEA. They warned that any attack or threat against a nuclear facility used for peaceful purposes posed serious risks and was a violation of international law. The statement adopted on Saturday reiterates calls for the establishment of a zone free of nuclear weapons in the Middle East, and demands that Israel accede to the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty until that can be achieved. Meanwhile, North Korea said that US threats drove it to acquire deterrent atomic weapons. On the sidelines, nuclear powers India and Pakistan held historic talks, deciding to re-launch peace negotiations that had been frozen since deadly bombings in Mumbai in July. National leaders also agreed on the need to counter overwhelming US influence. The next NAM summit will be held in 2009 in Egypt. Many of the summit participants headed from Havavna to New York, where they will take part next week in the UN General Assembly. http://www.manartv.com.lb/NewsSite/NewsDetails.aspx?id=3226 - Sun, 17 Sep 2006 10:23am Edited: Sun, 17 Sep 2006 10:29am | ||
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