[Marxism] in the eternal war against anti Semitism, Palestinians = nazis

[Dbachmozart at aol.com]

[The psychology behind "Israel, right or wrong" that  Zionists use to brow 
beat doubters into submission - DB] 
Israel's Actions Are Irrational, No Matter How Much U.S.  Politicians Try to 
Cast Them As Normal 
By _Wallace Shawn_ (http://www.alternet.org/authors/10240/) , _The Nation_ 
(http://www.thenation.com/) .  Posted _December  31, 2008_ 
(http://www.alternet.org/ts/archives/?date[F]=12&date[Y]=2008&date[d]=31&act=Go/) . 
 
It is not rational to think that the Palestinians will be  terrorized by 
force, starvation or slaughter into a docile acceptance of the  occupation.
 

Jews, historically, have been irrationally feared, hated and killed. Given  
that background, it's not surprising that the irrationality which surrounded  
them for so long, the fire of irrationality in which they were almost  
extinguished, has jumped across and taken hold of the soul of many Jews and  indeed 
dominates the thinking of today's Israeli leaders and their American  
supporters. 
Recent history shows that the Jews, as a people, have found few friends who  
are honest and true. During World War II, when Hitler's anti-Semitism was  
responsible for the murdering of the millions of Jews, the world and the United  
States expressed their own anti-Semitism by refusing to house and welcome the  
tortured race, preferring instead to let it be exterminated if need be. After 
 the war, the world felt it owed the Jews something -- but then showed its 
lack  of true regard for the tormented group by "giving" them a piece of land  
populated and surrounded by another people -- an act of European imperialism  
carried out exactly at the moment when non-European peoples all over the world  
were finally concluding that European imperialism was completely unacceptable 
 and had to be resisted. And now we have the spectacle of American 
politicians  encouraging and financing Israeli policies which will ultimately lead to 
more  disaster and destruction for Jews. 
It is not rational to believe that the Palestinians in the occupied  
territories will be terrorized by force and violence, by cruelty, by starvation  or by 
slaughter into a docile acceptance of the Israeli occupation. There is no  
evidence that that could possibly happen and mountains of evidence to the  
contrary. 
Many right-wing Israelis and American Jews clearly believe that Jews have  
always had enemies and always will have enemies -- and who can be shocked that  
certain Jews might think that? To these individuals, a Palestinian throwing  
stones at an Israeli soldier, even if his life has perhaps been destroyed by 
the  Israeli occupation, is simply part of an eternal mob of anti-Semites, a mob 
made  up principally of people to whom the Jews have done no harm at all, as 
they did  no harm to Hitler. The logical consequence of this view of the world 
is that in  the face of such massive and eternal opposition, Jews are morally 
justified in  taking any measures they can think of to protect themselves. 
They are involved  in one long eternal war, and a few hundred Palestinians 
killed today must be  measured against many millions of Jews who were killed in the 
past. The agony  the Israelis might inflict on a Palestinian family today 
must be seen in the  perspective of Jewish families in agony all over the world 
in the past. 
It is irrational for the Israeli leaders to imagine that the Palestinians  
will understand this particular point of view -- will understand why Jews might  
find it appropriate, let us say, to retaliate for the death of one Jew by  
killing a hundred Palestinians. If a Palestinian killed a hundred Jews to  
retaliate for the killing of one Palestinian -- for that matter, if a Thai  killed 
a hundred Cambodians to retaliate for the killing of one Thai -- which,  from 
the point of view of the Israeli leaders, would of course be unjust, that  
would be racist, as if one Palestinian or one Thai were worth a hundred Israelis  
or a hundred Cambodians. But if a Jew does it, it's not unjust and it's not  
racist, because it's part of an eternal struggle in which the Jews have lost 
and  lost and lost -- they've already lost more people than there are 
Palestinians.  Well, it's not surprising that certain Jews would feel this way, but no  
Palestinian will ever share that feeling or be willing to accept it. What the 
 Palestinians see is an implacable and heartless enemy, one that considers 
itself  un-bound by any rules or principles, an enemy that can't be reasoned 
with but  can only be feared, hated and, if possible, killed. 
As poor and oppressed people around the world are very well aware of the  
events in the occupied territories, and as they strongly identify with the  
Palestinian struggle and point of view, the future of the Jews looks  increasingly 
dim. 
Consequently it is disgraceful and vile and no favor to the Jews for American 
 politicians -- for narrow, short-term political advantage, for narrow,  
short-term global-strategic reasons and, yes, also in expiation of the residual  
guilt they feel over what happened to the Jews in the past -- to pander to the  
irrationality of the most irrational Jews. 
Actions based on irrational premises inevitably fail in their purposes --  
they fail, and if the premises don't change, then the actions are inevitably  
repeated, in forms which are more and more grotesque. It is unbearable to think  
that the new American administration would begin with more American dollars  
being poured into what is unjustifiable. It is also unbearable to think that  
among the first words we would hear from our new, clearly rational president  
would be preposterous sentences trying to persuade us that Israeli policies  
which seem to be appalling are actually quite normal and acceptable. Certainly  
nothing our new president could do would be of greater value to the world -- 
and  greater value to the Jews -- than to abruptly end the sickeningly 
patronizing  habit of supporting an irrationality which was born in tragedy and will 
end in  more tragedy. 
_http://www.alternet.org/rights/116386/_ 
(http://www.alternet.org/rights/116386/)  
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