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Yoshie Furuhashi | 1 Aug 2006 01:06
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Psychology (What Non-Jewish Leftists Owe Jewish Leftists)

On 7/31/06, Ian Pace <ian <at> ianpace.com> wrote:
> > How
> > may we repay them?  By not tolerating real anti-Semitism wherever we
> > see it, even if it arises among those whom we continue to defend in
> > all ways that matter.
>
> Sure - but that means being pretty strongly condemnatory of fundamental
> aspects of Hezbollah/Hamas ideology. It's not easy to do that if lending
> some sympathy.

I do not think that anti-Semitism is essential to the ideologies of
Hamas, Hizbullah, and the like.  What is fundamental to them is the
desire to end the occupation.  Anti-Semitism is quite incidental to
it, a spillover of their fierce anti-Zionism.

But the spillover is damaging, not just to Jews but also to
Palestinians and other Arabs, and it has to be combated in its own
right.

It's all too common for Western leftists, though, to go easy on vices
like anti-Semitism of resistance movements like Hamas and Hizbullah
and Third World governments like Iran that are up against the
multinational empire even while treating them as enemies.  I recommend
we do the opposite: condemn their vices forthrightly and preemptively
(before our enemies attack them) -- which goes hand in hand with
correcting any factual misrepresentations or exaggerations of them --
while recognizing that they are in effect our strategic allies,
whether they or we like it or not, so much so that our asses _can_ go
down when their asses go down, given what the greed and arrogance of
the Tel Aviv-Washington axis and the ruthless terrorism of sectarian
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Steffie Brooks | 1 Aug 2006 01:11
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Re: Re: How to answer these questions?

"I write this article for the same reason Iwrote my book: to tell the
American people, and especially American Jews, that Jews from Islamic lands
did not emigrate willingly to Israel; that, to force them to leave, Jews killed
Jews; and that, to buy time to confiscate ever more Arab lands, Jews
on numerous
occasions rejected genuine peace initiatives from their Arab neighbors.
"I write about what the first prime minister of Israel called 'cruel
Zionism.'

-- Naeim Giladi, an Iraq

On 7/31/06, Mike Friedman <mikedf <at> amnh.org> wrote:
>
> A tough nut to crack, this one, at least if Franz Fanon was correct. I
> think David's view of the issue is right. Palestinian people may well have
> internalized the lessons that Zionism so ably teaches: That
> Zionism=Judaism, and that Arabs can expect no justice from that quarter.
> In other words that Jews are the oppressors. I can't see Palestinians
> making a fine distinction between Jews and Israelis as long as there is an
> occupation, and I don't think criticism of the resistance is in order for
> failing to make that distinction. And, after the triumph, say, of the Arab
> people, let's say for argument's sake, according to our maximum program --
> a socialist, democratic Palestine, much depends on the persistence of
> racism and how reconciliation is handled. Would reconciliation mean a
> papering-over of crimes, as was done in South Africa? How would demands
> for reparations be handled? As African American reparation demands are
> handled here? I don't think for a minute that criticisms by the anti-war
> forces in imperialist countries of resistance groups for alleged
> anti-semitic views will do ANYTHING to help current Palestinian struggles
> or future harmony. The ONLY thing that might have such an impact would be
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Mike Alewitz | 1 Aug 2006 01:06

AGITPROP NEWS: Demons & Monsters


Please Post and Distribute:

LaBOR aRT & MuRAL PRoJECT
AGITPROP NEWS: 7.31.6

In this issue: 

Demons & Monsters

Demons & Monsters

One of the most powerful military machines on the face of the planet, backed
by the world¹s mightiest superpower, has managed to attack and kill a group
of sleeping children. The brutal attack on the village of Qana is not the
first such atrocity - but not even the US media¹s sanitized images and
unabashed cheerleading for Israel can mask this savagery.

Israeli bombs have turned much of Lebanon into rubble.  The ferocious
bombing has blackened beaches with spilled and burning oil, released toxic
materials, threatened cultural and artistic treasures and destroyed enormous
amounts of plant and wildlife. Fires burn out of control, uncollected
garbage spreads disease and people cannot get food, water medical care,
because emergency workers are targeted for air attack.

Hundreds of thousands of Lebanese have lost all their belongings and become
refugees. Meanwhile, in the midst of this human catastrophe, and with little
press coverage, the assault on Gaza has continued unabated.

* * *
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Steffie Brooks | 1 Aug 2006 01:19
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Re: Re: How to answer these questions?

Apologies to everyone. I pushed "send" too soon.

The article below is good ammunition in the debate about how Jews do NOT
equal Zionism, even in the Middle East.

It's called "The Jews of Iraq" and here's the link:
www.ameu.org/uploads/vol31_issue2_1998.pdf

On 7/31/06, Steffie Brooks <steffie.brooks <at> gmail.com> wrote:
>
>  "I write this article for the same reason Iwrote my book: to tell the
> American people, and especially American Jews, that Jews from Islamic
> lands did not emigrate willingly to Israel; that, to force them to leave,
> Jews killed Jews; and that, to buy time to confiscate ever more Arab
> lands, Jews on numerous occasions rejected genuine peace initiatives from
> their Arab neighbors.
> "I write about what the first prime minister of Israel called 'cruel
> Zionism.'
>
> -- Naeim Giladi, an Iraqi Jew in the Zionist Underground
>
>
> On 7/31/06, Mike Friedman <mikedf <at> amnh.org> wrote:
> >
> > A tough nut to crack, this one, at least if Franz Fanon was correct. I
> > think David's view of the issue is right. Palestinian people may well
> > have
> > internalized the lessons that Zionism so ably teaches: That
> > Zionism=Judaism, and that Arabs can expect no justice from that quarter.
> > In other words that Jews are the oppressors. I can't see Palestinians
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Ian Pace | 1 Aug 2006 01:31

Re: Re: How to answer these questions?


----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Steffie Brooks" <steffie.brooks <at> gmail.com>
To: "Activists and scholars in Marxist tradition" 
<marxism <at> lists.econ.utah.edu>
Sent: Tuesday, August 01, 2006 12:19 AM
Subject: Re: [Marxism] Re: How to answer these questions?

> Apologies to everyone. I pushed "send" too soon.
>
> The article below is good ammunition in the debate about how Jews do NOT
> equal Zionism, even in the Middle East.
>
> It's called "The Jews of Iraq" and here's the link:
> www.ameu.org/uploads/vol31_issue2_1998.pdf
>
That looks excellent - just to say that there's a very good section on what 
really happened in Baghdad in the early 1950s in David Hirst's' The Gun and 
The Olive Branch' (a book worth reading in all respects, one of the best on 
the real history of the Arab-Israeli conflict). It was all a contrivance on 
the part of Mossad agents to scare the Iraqi Jews into emigrating.

Solidarity,
Ian 

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Yoshie Furuhashi | 1 Aug 2006 02:13
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Secular Chauvinism (was How to answer these questions?)

On 7/31/06, www.leninology. blogspot.com <leninology <at> hotmail.com> wrote:
>> Louis wrote:> Iran suffers from Persian chauvinism not just
>> against the Kurds, but against Azaris and Arabs as well.
>
>Well, this is far more true of the exiles than of the Islamic Republic,
>not least because the Persian chauvanists are usually anti-Muslim
>racist exiles (and often poetasters of Zoroaster).The repression of
> the Ahwazis in Iran (which is certainly very real) is not to do with
>Persian chauvanism, or even Shi'ite chauvanism (since the Ahwazis
> are also Shi'ites): it is a classic national question.

Yes, but that's not the point.  The point is for us to question a very
common vice among Western leftists: secular chauvinism, an automatic
assumption that secular nationalism and secular socialism of any
variety is better than Islam of any variety in any respect.  The
assumption is false, and we have to get rid of our chauvinism.

It is the militantly secular and Westernized Turkish government -- not
the anti-Western Islamic Republic -- that stands accused of having
committed massacres that some call a genocide against a minority, the
Armenians.

It is the militantly secular and Westernized Turkish government -- not
the anti-Western Islamic Republic -- that has denied a national
minority, the Kurds, their language and other cultural rights.

It is the puppet government of Nuri as-Said ("fanatically pro-Western"
in the words of Juan Cole and pro-Zionist) -- not the anti-Western and
anti-Zionist Islamic Republic -- that saw the largest proportion of
Jews flee from the country (about 125,000 Iraqi Jews had fled to
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Mike Friedman | 1 Aug 2006 02:14
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Re: Iranian leader calls Chavez a 'trench mate'

Sorry about forgetting to "trim"!

I, too, think Walter can over-post. But this information was timely and
useful. It is important news.

Mike

> Date: Sun, 30 Jul 2006 17:28:21 -0400
> From: Louis Proyect <lnp3 <at> panix.com>
> Subject: Re: [Marxism] Iranian leader calls Chavez a 'trench mate' To:
Activists and scholars in Marxist tradition
> 	<marxism <at> lists.econ.utah.edu>
> Walter Lippmann wrote:
>
>>Iran's president, Mahmoud Ahmedinejad, said he saw in the Venezuelan
president a kindred spirit. "I feel I have met a brother and trench mate
after meeting Chavez," the state-run Iranian television quoted
>> Ahmedinejad.
>
> Walter, were you cut off from Internet access when I said that this
thread was ended?
>
> In case you were:
>

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Louis Proyect | 1 Aug 2006 02:25
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Moderator's note

Yoshie:
>Yes, but that's not the point.  The point is for us to question a very
>common vice among Western leftists: secular chauvinism, an automatic
>assumption that secular nationalism and secular socialism of any
>variety is better than Islam of any variety in any respect.  The
>assumption is false, and we have to get rid of our chauvinism.

I am now putting Yoshie Furuhashi on moderation. After repeated requests to 
her to stick within five posts per day, she continues to ignore me. This is 
not only her tenth post today, it is a return to the same thread that I 
said was exhausted. If there are comrades who are intent on discussing 
these issues, I would be happy to set up a Yahoo list just as I did for 
people who wanted to discuss the American SWP. Yoshie might want to do this 
herself. Yoshie will be allowed to post up to five times a day, just as 
long as it is not about Marxism and the Islamic Republic of Iran, etc.

If anybody has complaints about this, please do not take it up on the list 
and write me directly instead. 

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Steffie Brooks | 1 Aug 2006 02:33
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How Class is Gendered -- Caliban and the Witch is a "Must Read"

I agree with Karl (Kersplebedeb) below. This book by Silvia Federici is the
most exciting book I've read in years. She documents and illustrates how the
enclosure of the peasantry in the transitional period in Europe's history
was also an enclosure of the female body and the female role in traditional
economies. The European witch hunts, which destroyed a million or more
women, was the Holocaust through which women were turned into "the other"
and tamed.

Steffie

---------------------------
*Caliban and the Witch* is one of the most exciting books i have read all
year. In many ways similar to Maria Mies' *Patriarchy and Accumulation on a
World Scale*, *Caliban and the Witch* focuses much more on Europe, while
bringing Federici's own autonomous Marxist perspective to bear on the
subject at hand. This book is very much a history of the making of the
European working class, a re-telling of the birth of capitalism, with women
at the center of the story.
http://www.kersplebedeb.com/caliban/index.html
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kersplebedeb | 1 Aug 2006 03:30

Re: Friends and Enemies (was How to answer these questions?)

Well, Yoshie, we agree on some, we disagree on some, but it is always
nice to have the exchange.

Yoshie Furuhashi wrote:

> I'd venture that Hizbullah,
> Hamas, the Iranian government, and the type of Muslims who belong to
> roughly those currents of Islam are our friends, or, more precisely,
> our protectors.  

Protection? Only in that same unsatisfying "realpolitik" way that has
imperialism posing as the "protector" of women and queers in the Muslim
world...

> Why?  Because we are in the midst of a three-front
> war against:
>
> * the Tel Aviv-Washington axis
>
> * the Arab power elites allied with the Tel Aviv-Washington Axis
> (Saudi Arabia, Jordan, and Egypt -- in that order)
>
> and
>
> * the type of international jihadists who behead people like Daniel
> Pearl and slit the throats of people like Tom Fox (a Christian
> peacemaker), take schoolchildren hostage and kill them at Beslan, bomb
> a Shia mosque in Samarra (one of the turning points in the dramatic
> increase in sectarian murders in Iraq), and so on.
>
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