Playing Politics with Human Rights: Thoughts on the Recent Anti-BDS House Bill

Shalom Rav

A Blog by Rabbi Brant Rosen

Playing Politics with Human Rights: Thoughts on the Recent Anti-BDS House Bill

photo: Mohammed Asad/Middle East Monito

Sat 27 Jul 2019

by Rabbi Brant Rosen, Shalom Rav

Last Tuesday, the House voted overwhelmingly to pass an anti-BDS bill with the strong support of progressive democrats (including “squad” member Ayanna Pressley). I know there are many who are asking how and why did this happen? As I see it, the answer, as always, is pure politics.

Just a bit of history: the genesis of the bill known as HR 246 dates back to the AIPAC convention last March, when a number of liberal Jewish groups, including  J Street, Ameinu, National Council of Jewish Women, Partners for Progressive Israel and Reconstructing Judaism (my own denomination), met informally to give their preliminary approval to this prospective bill. As they saw it, this was a strategic move. The bill was designed to give cover to liberal Democrats who had previously voted against anti-constitutional bills that virtually criminalized BDS. This new bill would allow them to vote on the record for a non-binding bill that criticized BDS without curtailing freedom of speech or labeling it as antisemitic. It would also give Democrats aligned with liberal Zionist groups the opportunity to reaffirm their support for the two state solution.

Like I said, pure politics.

Still, no matter how much liberal Democrats might rationalize their support for HR 246, (Rep. Pressley explained on Twitter that her vote affirmed to her “constituents raised in the Jewish faith Israel’s right to exist”) no amount of explaining can wash away the fact that this resolution is a cynical political move that unfairly and incorrectly attacks a genuine non-violent movement for human rights – and will do little to advance the cause of real justice in Israel/Palestine.

Just a few responses to the actual text of the resolution:

• While the resolution mentions “rising anti-Semitism,” it is completely silent on anti-Palestinian oppression and the threat of Islamophobia. Even the simple term “occupation” is nowhere to be found.

• The resolution claims that the BDS “seeks to exclude the State of Israel and the Israeli people from the economic, cultural, and academic life of the rest of the world.” In fact, this is not the goal of BDS; the very suggestion reduces the entire movement to an essentially nefarious aim. Rather, the Palestinian civil society call for BDS advocates for non-violent economic activism as a tactic toward three rights-based goals: an end to the occupation, equal rights for Palestinian citizens of Israel, and a recognition of the right of return for Palestinian refugees.

• The resolution claims that BDS “undermines the possibility for a negotiated solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict by demanding concessions of one party alone and encouraging the Palestinians to reject negotiations.” The three goals of BDS above are not “concessions” – they are basic rights enshrined in international law that have been patently ignored or denied in previous negotiations. There is nothing in the BDS call that “rejects negotiations.”

• The resolution quotes BDS leader Omar Barghouti (who addressed Tzedek Chicago on the eve of Passover this year) thus: “We oppose a Jewish state in any part of Palestine. No Palestinian, rational Palestinian, not a sell-out Palestinian, will ever accept a Jewish state in Palestine.” While this quote is genuine, it crucially omits the first part of his statement: “A Jewish state cannot but contravene the basic rights of the land’s indigenous Palestinian population and perpetuate a system of racial discrimination that ought to be opposed categorically, as we would opposed a Muslim state or a Christian state or any kind of exclusionary state…”

Here, Barghouti calls into question whether an exclusively Jewish state – as opposed to one state of all its citizens – can ever be truly democratic. This is an important question that deserves genuine consideration and debate. This egregiously truncated quote, however, only serves to imply Barghouti and the BDS movement seeks nothing more than the “destruction of the Jewish state.”

• The resolution states that the BDS movement ” targets … individual Israeli citizens of all political persuasions, religions, and ethnicities, and in some cases even Jews of other nationalities who support Israel.” This is a false and spurious accusation that the resolution offers with no evidence whatsoever. 

The targets of BDS campaigns have always been institutions, not individuals. (The government of Israel and Israel advocacy organizations, however, routinely target individuals, by blacklisting websites such as Canary Mission and by barring entry of Palestine solidarity activists into the country.)

• The resolution states “BDS does not recognize the right of the Jewish people to self-determination.” There is no universal consensus that self-determination for any group of people must ipso facto mean the establishment of an independent nation state on a particular piece of land. 

Self-determination goes by many definitions and takes many forms. There are millions of Jews around the world who are happy to enjoy individual self determination in the nations in which they live. (Interestingly enough, the resolution is silent on the issue of Palestinian self-determination.)

• The resolution states that BDS “leads to the intimidation and harassment of Jewish students and others who support Israel.” Here again, the resolution is putting out a damaging claim without offering any evidence whatsoever. 

What can be stated however, is that however uncomfortable some Jewish students may be made to feel by pro-divestment campaigns on their campuses, pro-Israel activist students enjoy significant support from college and university administrations. 

By contrast, Palestine solidarity activists (including many Jewish students) experience routine suppression of their freedom of speech. Palestine Legal reports that “seventy-six percent of the incidents Palestine Legal responded to in 2018 were campus related” and that they “responded to 51 administrative complaints against Palestine activists, double the number from 2017.”

• The resolution states “in contrast to protest movements that have sought racial justice and social change, the Global Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions Movement targeting Israel is not about promoting coexistence, civil rights, and political reconciliation but about questioning and undermining the very legitimacy of the country and its people.” To this, I can only say, see bullet point #2 above. 

In fact, the BDS call is actually very much akin to “protest movements that have sought racial justice and social change.” Nowhere does it “delegitimize” the state of Israel. Anyone who take the time to read the actual call will see it focuses exclusively on the basic, essential rights that Israel routinely denies Palestinians.

To this final point, it was quite sobering to contemplate that on the very day that the House voted to condemn a nonviolent Palestinian call for human rights, House members were notably silent in response to Israel’s massive demolition of homes in East Jerusalem that took place at the very same moment.

In the end, despite the cynical politics behind this particular bill, I cannot personally view this as merely a political issue alone. As a Jew and a person of faith, I view the BDS call as nothing short of a religious imperative. I said as much in an address I was honored to deliver at the American Academy of Religion two years ago:

I realize there may be some in this room who cannot bear to hear me say these words, but I – and increasing numbers of people around the world – believe them to be true, no matter how painful it feels to hear them. Israel is oppressing Palestinians. And when a people are oppressed, they will inevitably resist their oppression – yes sometimes violently.

In this case, however, a nonviolent call for popular resistance has been placed before us. Thus, for those of us that believe God hears the cry of the oppressed and demands that we do the same, the BDS call represents a direct challenge to our faith. Will we be like God, and hearken to their cries, or will we be like Pharaoh and ignore them?

As a Jew, as an American, as a person of conscience, I would suggest this call presents us with nothing less than the most consequential spiritual challenge of our time.

Blessed are the ones who hearken to the cry of the oppressed.

https://rabbibrant.com/2019/07/26/playing-politics-with-human-rights-thoughts-on-the-recent-anti-bds-house-bill/

[the Dulles Brothers] Overt and Covert

Overt and Covert

By Adam LeBor

• Nov. 8, 2013

Anyone wanting to know why the United States is hated across much of the world need look no farther than this book. “The Brothers” is a riveting chronicle of government-sanctioned murder, casual elimination of “inconvenient” regimes, relentless prioritization of American corporate interests and cynical arrogance on the part of two men who were once among the most powerful in the world.

John Foster Dulles and his brother, Allen, were scions of the American establishment. Their grandfather John Watson Foster served as secretary of state, as had their uncle Robert Lansing. Both brothers were lawyers, partners in the immensely powerful firm of Sullivan & Cromwell, whose New York offices were for decades an important link between big business and American policy making.

John Foster Dulles served as secretary of state from 1953 to 1959; his brother ran the C.I.A. from 1953 to 1961. But their influence was felt long before these official appointments. In his detailed, well-­constructed and highly readable book, Stephen Kinzer, formerly a foreign correspondent for The New York Times and now a columnist for The Guardian, shows how the brothers drove America’s interventionist foreign policy.

Kinzer highlights John Foster Dulles’s central role in channeling funds from the United States to Nazi Germany in the 1930s. Indeed, his friendship with Hjalmar Schacht, the Reichsbank president and Hitler’s minister of economics, was crucial to the rebuilding of the German economy. Sullivan & Cromwell floated bonds for Krupp A. G., the arms manufacturer, and also worked for I. G. Farben, the chemicals conglomerate that later manufactured Zyklon B, the gas used to murder millions of Jews. Of course, the Dulles brothers’ law firm was hardly alone in its eagerness to do business with the Nazis — many on Wall Street and numerous American corporations, including Standard Oil and General Electric, had “interests” in Berlin. And Allen Dulles at least had qualms about operating in Nazi Germany, pushing through the closure of the Sullivan & Cromwell office there in 1935, a move his brother opposed.

Allen Dulles spent much of World War II working for the Office of Strategic Services, running the American intelligence operation out of the United States Embassy in Bern, Switzerland. His shadowy networks extended across Europe, and his assets included his old friend Thomas McKittrick, the American president of the Bank for International Settlements in Basel, a key point in the transnational money network that helped keep Germany in business during the war.

The O.S.S. was dissolved in 1945 by President Truman, but was soon reborn as the C.I.A. Kinzer notes that Truman did not support plots against foreign leaders but his successor, Dwight Eisenhower, had no such scruples. By 1953, with Allen Dulles running the C.I.A. and his brother in charge of the State Department, the interventionists’ dreams could come to fruition. Kinzer lists what he calls the “six monsters” that the Dulles brothers believed had to be brought down: Mohammed Mossadegh in Iran, Jacobo Arbenz in Guatemala, Ho Chi Minh in Vietnam, Sukarno in Indonesia, Patrice Lumumba in the Congo and Fidel Castro in Cuba. Only two of these, Ho Chi Minh and Castro, were hard-core Communists. The rest were nationalist leaders seeking independence for their countries and a measure of control over their natural resources.

Image

Brotherhood: Allen Dulles, left, and John Foster Dulles, 1948.CreditBettmann/Corbis

Ironically, Ho Chi Minh and Castro, strengthened perhaps by their Marxist faith, proved the most resilient. But the world still lives with the consequences of bringing down Mossadegh, who might have guided Iran, and thus world history, along a very different path. The 1953 C.I.A.-sponsored coup that brought Shah Mohammed Reza Pahlavi to power was seared into Iran’s national consciousness, fueling a reservoir of fury that was released with the Islamic revolution of 1979.

The Iranian section of Kinzer’s book is especially strong. Here he calls attention to the cancellation by the Iranian Parliament of a contract for what was said to be “the largest overseas development project in modern history” with Overseas Consultants Inc., an American engineering conglomerate. But it seems likely that it was the Iranian Parliament’s vote to nationalize the oil industry that sealed Mossadegh’s fate. (Allen Dulles represented the J. Henry Schroder Banking Corporation, one of whose clients was the Anglo-­Iranian Oil Company.)

The Dulles brothers’ defenders argue that they and their legacy must be evaluated in the context of their era — the height of the Cold War, a time when the Soviet threat was real and growing, when Eastern Europe languished under Communist dictatorships sponsored by Moscow, and China had been “lost” to the Reds (although that term itself implies a curious claim of prior ownership). Moscow’s proxies were advancing in Africa, Asia, Latin America and the Middle East.

The brothers’ Manichaean worldview proved to be a poor tool for dealing with the complexities of the postcolonial era. Leaders like Lumumba and Mossadegh might well have been open to cooperation with the United States, seeing it as a natural ally for enemies of colonialism. However, for the Dulles brothers, and for much of the American government, threats to corporate interests were categorized as support for communism. “For us,” John Foster Dulles once explained, “there are two kinds of people in the world. There are those who are Christians and support free enterprise, and there are the others.” Rejected by the United States, the new leaders turned to Moscow.

The brothers’ accomplishments in the geopolitical arena were not mirrored in their personal lives. Although Allen Dulles was a flagrant womanizer and John Foster remained devoted to his wife, they were, Kinzer observes, “strikingly similar in their relationships with their children. Both were distant, uncomfortable fathers.” John Foster’s three children were raised by nannies “and discouraged from intruding on their parents’ world.” Allen’s only son joined the Marines in a vain effort to impress his father, who “never found him ‘tough’ enough.” He was sent to Korea and almost died when shrapnel tore out part of his skull. He spent years being treated for his wounds. Allen’s older daughter suffered from depression throughout her life. Neither John Foster nor Allen attended the wedding of their “independent-­minded” sister, Eleanor, when she married a divorced older man who came from an Orthodox Jewish family.

There are also reminders in Kinzer’s book of dark events in the history of American intelligence. Sixty years ago, Frank Olson, a C.I.A. officer, was reported to have jumped to his death during mind-­control experiments “in which psychoactive drugs were administered to unknowing victims.” But last year, Kinzer reports, Olson’s family filed suit, claiming he had actually been murdered after visiting secret C.I.A. prisons in Europe. More detailed archival references here and elsewhere would have been useful. Although Kinzer provides a lengthy bibliography and extensive notes on books, articles and other materials available on the Internet, the references for the primary sources, which should detail archives, collections and precise file numbers, are meager.

Eventually, the United States government tired of Allen Dulles’s schemes. President Johnson privately complained that the C.I.A. had been running “a goddamn Murder Inc. in the Caribbean,” an entirely accurate assessment — except the beneficiaries were American corporations rather than organized crime. Nowadays, the Dulles brothers have faded from America’s collective memory. The bust of John Foster, once on view at the airport west of Washington that bears his name, has been relocated to a private conference room. Outside the world of intelligence aficionados, Allen Dulles is little known. Yet both these men shaped our modern world and America’s sense of its “exceptionalism.” They should be remembered, Kinzer argues, precisely because of their failures: “They are us. We are them.”

THE BROTHERS

John Foster Dulles, Allen Dulles, and Their Secret World War

By Stephen Kinzer

https://www.nytimes.com/2013/11/10/books/review/the-brothers-by-stephen-kinzer.html

The Guardian - Back to home  

This is no normal transition of power. It’s a hard Brexit coup

Martin Kettle


The rise of Boris Johnson marks an unprecedented partisan takeover by the radical wing of the Conservative party

Thu 25 Jul 2019 06.32 EDTLast 

 ‘Johnson waffled breathlessly about all the domestic policy changes he intends to make.’ Boris Johnson after giving his first speech as prime minister outside No 10 Downing Street. Photograph: Tolga Akmen/AFP/Getty Images

modified on Thu 25 Jul 2019 11.40 EDT

T

he passing of Theresa May and the ascension of Boris Johnson may have appeared to the casual observer as a colourful but nevertheless essentially conventional piece of British political continuity. The public decencies, insofar as such words can ever be used in connection with Johnson, were in place. The dignified but hapless former prime minister departed to the echo of the now traditional round of applause from MPs. The outgoing leader’s car entered Buckingham Palace to the solemn lilt of Huw Edwards’s commentary as her successor waited in the wings to kiss hands. On the face of things, these were the familiar rituals of peaceful transition in British politics.

Yet no one should have been taken in by the show this time. For this is a political transition unlike any other. It is a massive rupture, not a seamless progression. Its outcome is dark-clouded in uncertainty. Any idea that the events of 24 July 2019 embody the same timeless magic of the peaceful passing of parliamentary power that constitutional experts like to celebrate is for the birds. For this is an unprecedented partisan seizure of power by the radical part of the Conservative party that seeks Brexit whatever the cost. It is a hard Brexit coup dressed up as politics as usual.

It is a very particular coup, with very particular implications. It has happened because May failed to deliver Britain’s withdrawal from the EU on terms that command a majority in parliament. Most of that failure was due to the minority of her own party that always wanted a sharper break with the EU. That minority eventually succeeded in its aim of forcing May out after the collapse of Tory support in the European elections. Fear of the Brexit party, along with the connivance of an untrustworthy backbench Tory chair, Graham Brady, sealed May’s fate, to the decisive advantage of Johnson, who was not only the favourite to win but who had thrown in his lot with the party right.

This in itself might not quite justify the word coup. May’s time, after all, was up. But two further factors help to clinch the argument. The first is the time factor. On Wednesday Johnson waffled breathlessly about all the domestic policy changes he intends to make. The reality, though, is that he knows his government has only one task: to deliver Brexit by 31 October. But he has boxed himself in on Brexit. He must choose between a withdrawal deal similar to May’s, which will take time, which the EU is reluctant to concede and which many of his backers and cabinet will oppose, and no deal, which many of his supporters crave, in part because it might destroy the threat from the Brexit party.

Everything suggests Johnson will choose no deal. That is certainly the takeaway from the second factor, the evidence of the new Johnson cabinet. This is an unbalanced cabinet of mostly second-rate ideologues, many of them with negligible records of ministerial achievement and several of them with very dubious political ethics. All the positions of power are held by Brexit extremists. The rest are political hostages to the hard Brexiters.

Sign up to our Brexit weekly briefing

Read more

Johnson is not going to repeat May’s error of allowing his enemies to block his Brexit policy or to destabilise his government by resigning. His new cabinet is an explicit rejection of May’s attempt to hold the Tory party together to deliver Brexit. No deal is thus the logical outcome of May’s overthrow and of Johnson’s victory. But it is not what the nation wants. No deal is opposed both by a majority in parliament, including a significant number of Tories, and by a majority of the public. That is why it is right to call this a hard Brexit coup.

In the 1790s the French revolution was radicalised by reactionary Europe’s war on the new republic. Johnson and the hard Brexiters today are in something of the position that Danton and Robespierre were in then. They have brought their desperation on themselves by what happened under May. To achieve Brexit, they must be audacious. They would prefer emergency politics, not politics as usual.

Play Video

1:04

 Boris Johnson chairs first cabinet as prime minister – video

May’s ousting and Johnson’s victory involve an imposed radicalisation of government not unlike the radicalisation of war. The lopsided shape of Johnson’s cabinet, which met for the first time on Thursday, and the deeply tarnished characters of many of its members from the prime minister downwards, ought to illuminate the huge seriousness of the radicalisation that has been imposed on the country ever since May was forced out.

Britain has its own experience of the radicalisation of government caused by war. In 1916 and 1940 the danger to the nation meant that politics as usual gave way to emergency government. But those radical war governments were national governments, reaching out to other parties, including Labour, in the national interest. Today, though, Britons are not dying on the beaches. They are preparing to go and play on them for the next six weeks.

The Johnson government embodies the exact opposite impulse to those national governments that ruled in war. It rests on a rejection of consensus and cooperation in favour of narrowing of the government’s own party base and of its support in parliament. Not only is Labour not part of this emergency government. Nor are large parts of the Conservative party itself. The majority of Tory MPs and the third of Tory members who did not vote for Johnson are disenfranchised now.

Ordinarily this ought to mean that the Johnson government cannot survive. There are not enough Conservative, DUP and pro-Brexit Labour MPs to give it a majority for what it wants to do. Last week there was a majority of 41against a no-deal Brexit. Next week the Liberal Democrats may win the Brecon and Radnorshire byelection from the Tories. The Tory ranks are full of angry casualties from the Johnson coup. Though the moderate Tories have a poor record of standing up to be counted, it seems inconceivable that this parliament could give Johnson’s Brexit strategy a mandate.

This inescapably puts Johnson on a collision course with parliament. That is precisely why he has taken over as parliament departs for its summer recess, to give him time to govern without accountability. When parliament returns in the autumn, however, there will be nowhere to hide. Johnson may want to govern without parliament. He may have brought Dominic Cummings into his team to help him run against parliament. But in the end, the parliamentary numbers still apply unless and until Johnson takes the risk of trying to change them by calling a general election or, like Oliver Cromwell, he dismisses parliament altogether.

• Martin Kettle is a Guardian columnist

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2019/jul/25/power-brexit-boris-johnson-radical-conservative-party

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

My Comments  :

This is no normal transition of power. It’s a hard Brexit coup

25 Jul 2019 15:14

Martin Kettle : This is no normal transition of power. It’s a hard Brexit coup

I could not agree more with Kettle, not in the least, when one does compare the comment that I wrote only 5 weeks ago :

"Tory leadership candidates rule out pre-Brexit election in BBC debate – as it happened"

18 Jun 2019 10:41

Boris Johnson gets fresh boost as Leadsom backs his campaign

1. Since the forcefully muted Boris at this stage already, has collected enough votes to potentially win - this inner-circle Tory leadership battle for the outer-circle post of PM - by a landslide, we have to ask the all too legitimate question : Are we really observing a very British coup taking place before our very eyes.!

2. A very British coup by the extreme-right ERG I would suggest (ideologically speaking), which doomsday horror-scenario however, in my opinion hardly anybody voted for during the highly ill-advised, highly ill-prepared and highly ill-executed ADVISORY) 2016 EU-UK referendum...

------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 

This is no normal transition of power. It’s a hard Brexit coup

25 Jul 2019 15:55

1. Speaking of a (very British) Coup : The democracy factor has never ever been close to the populist theatre that had been referred to as a (ADVISORY) referendum.

2. Not even close, for democracy is all about decision-making on the base of the right (valid) information.

3. This (totally ignored) informative VALIDATING dimension of the 2016 UK-EU decision making process has been even more important, since the decision to be made at the time, has been of an existential nature, meant to be determining the UK social, political and economic future for a number of decennia to come.

4. This self-evidently UK-EU referendum has been a decision that has been taken totally without the proper knowledge-level - because the proper knowledge had either been hidden by the populist pro-Brexiteers, or had been missing altogether, and has been established only AFTER the referendum - so this 'show-trial' could never have been called a democratic decision (making process) in the first place.

5. At this stage of the Brexit debacle, the only thing that can be done, to (more or less) legitimise the (close) outcome of the first referendum, is to organise a second referendum, all over the same subject again.

6. This second referendum however, should be both. a binding referendum and a referendum with a number of qualified majority criteria, such as a. a minimum percentage of voters to come to the ballad box and b. a minimum difference (of say ten percent) between the Remain and Brexit outcome.

7. Having said all that, one can not deny that the devastating effect on the overall moral of the UK people has already been well 'achieved' by the army of hard Brexiteers, because the ultra-nationalist / racist extreme-right has had an enormous boost, and will prosper and relish in that boost for the years to come.

8. In this very respect, I elsewhere already mentioned the organisational effort of the extreme-right activist Stephen Bannon and his like-minded billionaire financiers, who - after having delivered Trump and Johnson on their respective thrones - are frenetically planning for the entire western world to ultimately navigate on the ultra-nationalist White supremacist course.

9. In that world there will be no room for science or international institutions, upholding universal human rights, such as equal rights for everyone on earth and a basic right on a sustainable natural habitat.

10. So the people of good will and good faith, will have to wake up and resolve to resolutely and effectively resist these dangerous trends of autocracy, racism and anti-AGW, to mention just a few of the hazards that the extreme-right has in store for humanity.