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Calling All CounterPunchers!
Heading Into the Home StretchWe are now entering our third week of fundraising. As you can see from the donation gauge there on
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Today's Stories November 14 / 16, 2008 Mike Whitney Sasan Fayazmanesh Jean Bricmont Sheldon Rampton Douglas Valentine Tom Barry Joseph Nevins / Sherry Wolf Peter Cervantes-Gautschi Jacob Hornberger Lance Selfa Benjamin Dangl Russell Mokhiber Richard Rhames
November 13, 2008 Pam Martens Vijay Prashad Patrick Cockburn Jonathan Cook Ralph Nader Bill Quigley Lee Sustar Omar Barghouti Steve Conn Howard Lisnoff Jeff Cohen Website of the Day November 12, 2008 Johanna Berrigan Steve Conn Patrick Bond Bokar Ture / Alan Farago Dave Lindorff Karl Grossman David Macaray George Wuerthner Susie Day Website of the Day November 11, 2008 James G. Abourezk Allan J. Lichtman Eric Toussaint Ron Jacobs Peter Montague Corporate Crime Reporter Laura Carlsen Col. Dan Smith Morton Skorodin David Michael Green Charles R. Larson Website of the Day November 10, 2008 David Roediger Paul Craig Roberts Peter Lee Corey D. B. Walker Jeff Halper Bill Hatch Andy Worthington Bill Quigley Peter Morici Anthony Olszewski Kim Nicolini Cpt. Paul Watson Website of the Day November 7 / 9, 2008 Alexander Cockburn Jeffrey St. Clair Vijay Prashad Tariq Ali Jean Bricmont John V. Whitbeck Saul Landau Peter Morici Lawrence Velvel Karyn Strickler Nativo V. Lopez Christopher Fons Alan Farago David Yearsley Christopher Brauchli Samah Sabawi Dave Lindorff Deepak Tripathi Beth Sherouse Patrick Irelan Stephen Martin Richard Rhames J. Murray Lorenzo Wolff Kim Nicolini Poets' Basement Website of the Day
November 6, 2008 Frank J. Menetrez John Chuckman P. Sainath Joshua Frank Edna Canetti John Ross Norman Solomon Fawzia Afzal-Khan Robert Weissman Harvey Wasserman Website of the Day
November 5, 2008 Cockburn / St. Clair Chuck Spinney Ishmael Reed Chris Floyd Binoy Kampmark Michael Donnelly David Macaray Peter Morici Manuel Garcia, Jr. William Willers Website of the Day November 4, 2008 Kathleen Christison James Ridgeway Winslow T. Wheeler Mike Whitney Conn Hallinan Holly M. Barker Ashley Smith Andy Worthington Martha Rosenberg Stephen Martin Doug Lummis Carlos Fierro Website of the Day November 3, 2008 Patrick Cockburn John Kennedy O'Hara Peter Montague Steve Conn Andrew Gebhardt Ron Jacobs Ralph Nader Niranjan Ramakrishnan Uri Avnery Dave Lindorff Fred Gardner DC Larson David Michael Green Val Strange Tuli Kupferberg / Website of the Day
October 31 , 2008 Alexander Cockburn Jeffrey St. Clair Douglas Valentine Ismael Hossein-Zadeh Dr. Ignacy Nowopolski Alan Maass William P. O’Connor Patrick Irelan Brian Cloughley Mats Svensson Binoy Kampmark Steve Conn Alan Farago Morton Skorodin Robert Bryce Wajahat Ali David Yearsley Dennis Loo Pam Martens Stephen Martin Richard Rhames Ramzy Baroud Missy Beattie Howard Lisnoff Richard Neville Saul Landau / Kim Nicolini Lorenzo Wolff Poets' Basement Website of the Weekend October 30, 2008 Cockburn / St. Clair Vijay Prashad Paul Craig Roberts Glen Ford Stanley Heller William Loren Katz Joshua Frank James McEnteer Felice Pace Jonathan Cook Reza Fiyouzat Website of the Day
October 29, 2008 Arno J. Mayer Eric Toussaint Matt Gonzalez Steven Conn Jonathan Cook Patrick Bond Ramzi Kysia Douglas Valentine Stephen Martin Margaret Dooley-Sammuli Amee Chew Website of the Day
October 28, 2008 James G. Abourezk Andy Worthington Gary Leupp Paul Craig Roberts Mike Whitney Gregory V. Button Ralph Nader P. Sainath Martha Rosenberg Charles R. Larson Website of the Day October 27, 2008 Michael Hudson Barbara Rose Johnston John Dinges Mike Whitney Mary Lynn Cramer Greenspan's Higher Power Alan Farago David Michael Green Andy Worthington George Wuerthner Niranjan Ramakrishnan Website of the Day October 24 / 26, 2008 Alexander Cockburn Ishmael Reed Mike Whitney Don Santina Scott Boehm Saul Landau Ron Jacobs Binoy Kampmark Linn Washington Jr. Nicole Colson Bernard Chazelle Brian Jones Christopher Brauchli Benjamin Dangl Val Strange Steve Early David Macaray Allison Kilkenny Richard Rhames Jim Bell Kris De Welde Barry Clemson Adam Engel Mark Scaramella Tuli Kupferberg Lorenzo Wolff Poets' Basement Website of the Weekend October 23, 2008 Allan J. Lichtman Todd Chretien John Ross Peter Morici Mats Svensson Marlene Martin Robert Jensen / Margaret Kimberley Deepak Tripathi David Morris Website of the Day October 22, 2008 Brian Cloughley Heather Gray Jeff Birkenstein Ralph Nader DC Larson David Swanson Keeanga-Yamatta Taylor Race and the Election: When the "Real" America Enters the Voting Booth Larry Everest Robert Fantina Martha Rosenberg Stephen Martin Website of the Day October 21, 2008 Vijay Prashad Paul Craig Roberts Corey D. B. Walker Steve Breyman Eric Toussaint Wajahat Ali Robert Weitzel Brendan Cooney Dave Lindorff Marqueece Harris-Dawson / Bob Wing Patrick B. Barr Omar Barghouti Website of the Day October 20, 2008 Michael Hudson Anthony DiMaggio Tariq Ali Uri Avnery Bill Quigley Ben Rosenfeld David Michael Green William S. Lind Chris Genovali Stephen Martin Howard Lisnoff David Yearsley Website of the Day October 17 / 19, 2008 Alexander Cockburn Jeffrey St. Clair Pam Martens Paul Craig Roberts Mike Whtney Michael D. Yates Suzanne Smith Carl Boggs Ralph Nader Fidel Castro Dave Marsh Saul Landau Jo Guldi Kevin Zeese Larry Everest Steve Early David Macaray Ben Terrall Missy Beattie Don Monkerud Helen Redmond Dan Bacher Wajahat Ali Farzana Versey Vladimir Frolov Kim Nicolini Poets Basement Website of the Day
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Weekend Edition Amos Kolleks’s "Restless"The State of the Israeli State and the Return of the Wandering JewBy LARRY PORTIS Israel is the eye of an ethnic hurricane, sucking in fanaticized Jews thanks to its iniquitous “Law of Return” and spewing out its most sensitive souls in reaction to the racist culture engendered there. Amos Kollek is a director who combines the sensibilities of New Yorker John Cassavetes and his fellow Israeli Amos Gitaï in one of the most powerful films I saw this year at the Mediterranean film festival in Montpellier, France. In doing so, he poses a fundamental question: is there any resolution to the conflicts inherent in a society controlled by a theocratic state founded upon racist premises? This is the question that advocates of “peace” between Israelis and Palestinians find difficult to face. Moreover, they find it especially difficult to even ask the question, much less offer a realistic solution to it. This is why Amos Kollek’s new film, Restless, is so powerful: it goes to the heart of the problem posed by the creation and continued existence of the state called Israel. Kollek does not offer any solutions, but he draws no punches in the assessment of a society and culture that merits Frank Zappa’s characterization (speaking of the United States) as “a scab of a nation, driven insane”. In the film, the great Israeli actor Moshe Ivgy plays the role of Moshe, an ageing writer in self-imposed exile in New York barely surviving as a hustler. His many scams are built on imaginative deceptions and they lead only violent retaliation and bitterness. It is as if you can take the Israeli out of Israel, but you can’t take Israel out of the Israeli. At least, this is what Kollek, through Moshe’s experience, suggests to me. Here is the situation: Moshe, author of a moderately successful novel in Israel, left the country for New York twenty years ago because of his disgust with both Israel and himself. He left behind a wife and young son. The wife eventually died of depression and drugs, and the son entered obligatory military service, becoming a very talented sniper, a specialist in extralegal executions of Palestinian militants in the occupied territories. An important part of this story involves the conflict between the absent father and his abandoned son, who says at one point: “I always think of my father before I pull the trigger.” After years of hustling in New York, Moshe’s drinking and failed deals have pushed him close to the bottom. At this point a friendly bar owner offers the drunken Moshe the chance to work off his bar tab by reciting his poetry on stage to the customers. To general surprise Moshe’s verses provoke both hilarity and respect by the mostly Jewish patrons of the bar. His impassioned words express something profoundly honest couched in a crudely naked, provocative style recalling Lenny Bruce. Infused with the feedback from the audience, Moshe is inspired and becomes a featured performer with a small but loyal following. Near the end of the film, we learn that Moshe produced a compact disc of his recitations and that a book of his poetry, Poems of a Restless Man, is about to come out. Although a Zionist shareholder in the bar has had Moshe removed from the bar’s tiny stage, Moshe was immediately offered another gig in Greenwich Village. For Moshe, Israel is a country where racist ideology serves to disguise social class domination and military occupation.
After this first recitation, a man who turns out to be his former commanding officer verbally attacks Moshe: “Why didn’t you stay there?” he asks, “What the fuck are you doing in New York?” Moshe’s response is laconic, yet pointed: “I was disappointed in the country. You killed Palestinian women and children as a service to the Nation.” To which the Zionist retorts, less pointedly: “No. I’m hi-tech.” As if technologically sophisticated means of human destruction excuse killing, and “homemade” methods are more reprehensible. No reason here to pontificate about the difference between state terrorism and insurrectionary violence. In “asymmetrical warfare” the mighty have the moral advantage. After all, isn’t Israel a democracy? He begins by reading the Miranda rights, as Lenny Bruce once did. Like Bruce’s, Moshe’s talent is using wit and common sense to break taboos. In baring his own guilt, he reveals the hypocrisy of others. This time his words run on in the manner of Allen Ginsberg:
In Kollek’s film, the “children of Israel” are screaming because of the false promise of the Zionist state. People like Moshe are Israelis; they are no longer Zionist pioneers driven by a utopian vision, a nationalist delirium that blinded them to the realities of ethnic cleansing. Moshe is the new “wandering Jew”, wandering because he cannot exist in the land where he was born. His realization of the horrors produced by the Zionist dream, that perverted offshoot of the “American Dream” — the first “New Jerusalem” —, is a form of the internalization of state violence. Israel was to be the home of the “new Jew,” it became the trap in which identity is bound up with the systematic denial of the other, a denial requiring racist inhumanity. The existential suffering caused by the Zionist project is symbolized by the estrangement of Moshe and his son, Trach, who was refused reenlistment in the Israeli army because of his overly pronounced pleasure in executing Palestinians from ambush. Trach also experienced another sort of emotional trauma after he shot, accidentally, a Palestinian child. When Trach travels to New York to confront, and perhaps kill, his prodigal father, the scene is set for a rather classic clash between father and son, but one that juxtaposes two generations of Israelis whose personal problems are conditioned by the state of permanent militarization and racist hatred necessary for the maintenance of the Zionist state. There is a kind of resolution is this film. Moshe and his son are drawn together by their respective grief and rootless-ness, but it occurs outside Israel, in the relatively neutral zone of New York where Jewish-ness is accepted as a normal social and personal condition that does not imply the oppression of other groups. At the same time, Moshe is given a new chance to reconstruct his self-esteem, not only by his new success as a performing poet, but also by a new relationship. Symbolically, he found as female companion a tough, former professional soldier who served as an officer in Iraq (and now as bartender in the Jewish establishment!). A self-styled “army brat”, this strong woman, with a young son, has likewise fled a world of racist violence and inhumanity and has taken refuge in a marginal world where, at least, she can reconcile herself to herself, without dominating or exploiting others. In his final performance at the bar, Moshe speaks in Hebrew saying
Irony from a “self-hating Jew”? Maybe. But Moshe’s self-loathing and guilt are clearly entwined with his identity as an Israeli. It is not because he is a Jew that he has been emotionally lost and artistically unfulfilled. It is because he is an Israeli, a citizen of an imperialistic “national security” state relentless in its pursuit of territorial domination and the exploitation of other people’s resources. In New York, on the contrary, as a Jew and as an artist, he has found refuge, and then solace (in the arms and heart of a “gentile”). In New York he was able to reunite with his son and come to grips with his guilt. Only in New York was resolution possible. Can Israel continue to be a “national project”? Can Jewish people afford to cultivate “nationalist aspirations”? Is ethnic cleansing and national chauvinism still the political modernity, the cutting edge of social progress, as it was generally believed to be in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries? Will a “globalized” planet become a collection of elite-ridden ghettoes — such as Israel and the United States represent — or will a truly democratic and cosmopolitan society and culture emerge from the disaster of capitalism and its ideological pathologies? Larry Portis is an historian and writer living in France who has recently published a history of fascism in the United States (Histoire du fascisme aux Etats-Unis, Paris, Editions CNT-RP, 2008). He may be reached at larry.portis@orange.fr
New in the Print Edition of CounterPunch For his 20-year stretch as Fed chairman, they all fawned on him – presidents, Congress, the press. Only a handful of left economists said he was pushing the economy over the cliff. Now Greenspan admits it in a humiliating confession. As the world’s financial structure tumbles in ruins, guess what? “I found a flaw in the model… To the extent that I figure out where it happened and why, I will change my views.” Read Frederic Claremont’s savage assessment of the fool who has plunged millions into misery. Also in our new issue: Bill Hatch on the story of one foreclosure; Kristian Williams on police torture in Chicago. Only in CounterPunch newsletter! Get your copy today by subscribing online or calling 1-800-840-3683 Contributions to CounterPunch are tax-deductible. Click here to make a donation. If you find our site useful please: Subscribe Now! CounterPunch books and gear make great presents. Order CounterPunch By Email For Only $35 a Year !
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New in the CP Print Edition! For his 20-year stretch as Fed chairman, they all fawned on him – presidents, Congress, the press. Only a handful of left economists said he was pushing the economy over the cliff. Now Greenspan admits it in a humiliating confession. As the world’s financial structure tumbles in ruins, guess what? “I found a flaw in the model… To the extent that I figure out where it happened and why, I will change my views.” Read Frederic Claremont’s savage assessment of the fool who has plunged millions into misery. Also in our new issue: Bill Hatch on the story of one foreclosure; and Kristian Williams on police torture in Chicago. Only in CounterPunch newsletter! Get your copy today by subscribing online or calling 1-800-840-3683 Now Available from CounterPunch Books! Waiting for Lightning
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