person:joseph massad

Après avoir publié quelques articles témoignant d’un malaise quant à l’article de Joseph Massad (censuré puis réintégré par Al Jazeera), Mondoweiss publie maintenant un témoignage à charge contre le mouvement sioniste durant la seconde guerre mondiale (qui va donc sur le même terrain que Mondoweiss semblait trouver très glissant la semaine dernière) : Hannah Arendt and the Hungarian Jews.
http://mondoweiss.net/2013/06/hannah-arendt-hungarian.html

In point of fact, members of the Zionist movement actively collaborated with Nazism from the beginning. The World Zionist Organization sabotaged world Jewry’s attempt to boycott the Nazi economy in order to be allowed to send money from Germany to Palestine. They fought against liberalization of U.S. immigration laws, for they wanted European Jews to go to Palestine, notAmerica. As Ralph Schoenman wrote in The Hidden History of Zionism, “This obsession with colonizing Palestine and overwhelming the Arabs led the Zionist movement to oppose any rescue of the Jews facing extermination, because the ability to deflect manpower to Palestine would be impeded.”

David Ben-Gurion summarized to a meeting of “left” Zionists in 1938 in England, “If I knew that it would be possible to save all the children in Germany by bringing them over to England and only half of them by transporting them to Eretz Israel, then I opt for the second alternative.”

My cousin was one of several thousand Hungarian Jews who survived the fire: 800,000 died. A pact was signed by Dr. Rudolph Kastner of the Jewish Agency Rescue Committee and Nazi exterminator Adolph Eichmann in 1944 allowing 600 prominent Jews to leave in exchange for Zionist silence on the fate of the remainder.

[…]

Former Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Shamir’s organization proposed on Janurary 11, 1941, a formal military pact between his Irgun — a Zionist military organization — and the Third Reich. In offering to enter the war on the side of Germany, the Irgun proposed that, “The establishment of the historical Jewish State on a national and totalitarianbasis, and bound by a treaty with the German Reich, would be in the interest of a maintained and strengthened future German position of power in the Near East.” (see Lenni Brenner, “Zionism in the Age of the Dictators”, p. 49)

La valse hésitation d’Al-Jazira au sujet d’un article anti-israélien - MÉDIAS - FRANCE 24
http://www.france24.com/fr/20130522-al-jazira-article-last-semite-polemique-joseph-massad-israel-crit

Le site internet anglophone de la chaîne qatarie Al-Jazira a publié, puis supprimé et enfin remis en ligne un texte très virulent à l’égard d’Israël. Un cafouillage éditorial qui a valu à la chaîne une volée de critiques.

#média

Vif débat sur les questions d’identités sexuelles « occidentales » considéré comme une norme universelle par Joseph Massad professeur à l’université de Columbia New-York http://www.revuedeslivres.fr/l’empire-de-«-la-sexualite-»-ou-peut-on-ne-pas-etre-homosexuel-ou-het

De prime abord, rien de commun entre les politiques réactionnaires et criminelles des organisations qui promeuvent l’abstinence avant le mariage pour lutter contre le sida, et les revendications d’égalité des droits pour les homosexuels au Moyen-Orient. Mais, nous dit Joseph Massad, cette première appréhension masque le fait que les deux camps, aussi opposés soient-ils, ont en commun d’universaliser une certaine conception de la sexualité et de naturaliser le dualisme homo/hétéro. En participant ainsi à l’exportation impérialiste d’un cadre de pensée, ils invisibilisent et détruisent les formes de vie singulières des pays dont l’histoire n’a été celle ni de l’Europe ni des États-Unis.

#Sexualité #identité #Norme #Occident #Islam #Impérialisme #Capitalisme

Je ne suis pas totalement convaincu par cette analyse, mais il y a plusieurs choses intéressantes là-dedans : Exile and the Prophetic : Disappearing Massad, disappearing Palestine | Marc H. Ellis
http://mondoweiss.net/2013/05/prophetic-disappearing-palestine.html

Read Massad carefully.  Though his criticism of the Palestinian Authority and Arab governments are often one-liners, they’re tough ones.  It’s bound to ruffle feathers. 

This could be another reason for Massad’s disappearing article.  With the recent Arab League land swap agreement, it seems that the Arab countries are all-in on Israel being integrated into the Middle East military security structure.  What they don’t need are Palestinian intellectuals and activists messing with their political alliances, especially those sponsored by the United States.  Al Jazeera is policing its own.

If you remember, Said was merciless on the Palestinian Authority and the Arab governments after the Oslo Accords were signed.  As his health deteriorated, Said went ballistic.  Again, the differences between Massad and Said are instructive here.  Is Massad the inheritor of Said’s mantle in these changing times?

Massad and other Palestinian intellectuals and activists want to prevent the Palestinian Authority and the Arab governments from signing away their birthright.  Hitting at Jews and Jewish history, making Jewishness invisible in the movement to free Palestinians, is partly a strategic ploy to regain traction in the context of an agreed upon disappearing Palestine.

Al Jazeera management orders Joseph Massad article pulled in act of pro-Israel censorship | The Electronic Intifada
http://electronicintifada.net/blogs/ali-abunimah/al-jazeera-management-orders-joseph-massad-article-pulled-act-pr

Le dernier article de Joseph Massad sur Al-Jazeera english retiré.

Explication:

Although Qatar-based Al Jazeera receives much criticism, and often deserved for reflecting Qatar’s foreign policy, the censorship of Massad’s article for political reasons is unprecedented because the English-language website had, until now, enjoyed complete editorial independence.

It is well understood that Al Jazeera’s red lines have always been criticism of Qatar or its Emir, and yet, Massad has even published several articles on Al Jazeera English that harshly criticized both Qatari foreign policy (See here, here and here) and the Emir himself without ever being censored.

And Massad has written plenty of articles that have enraged Zionists.

This indicates, without doubt, that the decision to remove Massad’s article today was taken at the highest level.

But why would this happen now?

One reasonable interpretation would be that the removal of Massad’s article reflects a tightening of the editorial line as the Qatar-based network launches its new channel, Al Jazeera America, which will rely – for access to cable systems, and “mainstream” credibility – on forging good relations with US elites.

An illustration of what this process might look like was on display when Ehab Al Shihabi, executive director of Al Jazeera’s international operations and the official responsible for setting up Al Jazeera America, recently visited Chicago – which will be home to a major Al Jazeera bureau.

...

Sur Israël et la notion de boycott, par Joseph Massad. Attention, c’est assez terrifiant… Israel and the politics of boycott
http://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/opinion/2013/03/201331884943284526.html

As a racially separatist Jewish economy and colony established on the lands of the Palestinians continued to be the primary goal of Zionism, the principle of boycott of Palestinian labour and products would become more aggressive as time passed. Like its parent Zionist movement before it, which used the tactic of boycott to effect racial separation and discrimination rather than end it, the Zionist labour Federation, the Histadrut, would begin in 1927 to use the time-honoured act of picketing. Picketing is traditionally used by workers and unions to end practices involving the exploitation and unfair treatment of workers. In the case of the Jewish colonists, they used picketing to bring about discrimination against Palestinian workers and to deny them employment in their own country. The Zionist picketing campaign sought to boycott Jewish businesses which continued to employ Palestinian labour as well as the goods the Palestinians produced. This was not only confined to the agricultural Jewish colonies in the Palestinian countryside, but also included urban settings where Jewish businesses employed Palestinians in the area of construction.

De la fluidité des catégories pour penser le monde et de l’impérialisme occidental : la sexualité et les produits laitiers

L’empire de la sexualité, ou Peut-on ne pas être homosexuel (ou hétérosexuel) ? Entretien avec Joseph Massad* | RdL La Revue des Livres
http://www.revuedeslivres.fr/l%e2%80%99empire-de-%c2%ab-la-sexualite-%c2%bb-ou-peut-on-ne-pas-etre

Dans l’entretien reproduit ci-dessous, d’abord publié dans les pages de la RdL n° 9 (janv.-fév. 2012), Joseph Massad dénonce le projet impérialiste d’universalisation des normes occidentales de la sexualité – à travers notamment l’imposition au monde non-occidental du dualisme homo/hétéro – et il critique l’action des ONG LGBT qui relaient selon lui ce projet. Ces analyses ont suscité de vives discussions au sein du collectif éditorial de la RdL et au-delà. Comme chaque fois que l’on touche aux ressorts profonds de nos engagements, le risque d’une hystérisation du débat menaçait ! Nous avons donc choisi d’organiser un échange polémique entre, d’une part, Philippe Colomb et Stéphane Lavignotte et, d’autre part, Joseph Massad, échange que nos lecteurs pourront découvrir dans la RdL n° 10 qui vient de paraître. Nous espérons que le problème soulevé aura trouvé à travers cet échange une formulation plus exigeante et plus rigoureuse, loin des simplifications et des interprétations abusives.

En contrepoint, voir le brillant pastiche sur Karlremarks :
The Empire of Cheese : An Interview with Joseph Massad

Following his colossal interview ‘The Empire of Sexuality’, we arranged to interview the most prominent Arab intellectual in the post-Fatimid era, Joseph Massad, about another problematic concept at the intersection of late capitalism and Euro-American hegemony, cheese. We were intrigued by Massad’s comments about western culture’s tendency to label the various stages of milk into clear-cut ‘categories’, such as butter, cheese and ice cream, so we dispatched Alex Osman Fassbinder and Mga Mga Mawali Mxmachk (the x is silent) to talk to him. The interview below promises to radically transform how we understand and conceptualise dairy products.

http://www.karlremarks.com/2013/03/the-empire-of-cheese-interview-with.html

http://pixhost.me/avaxhome/a7/0f/000e0fa7.jpeg

« Cette chasse nouvelle aux sexualités périphériques entraîne une incorporation des perversions et une spécification nouvelle des individus. La sodomie - celle des anciens droits, civil ou canonique - était un type d’actes interdits ; leur auteur n’en était que le sujet juridique. L’homosexuel du XIXe siècle est devenu un personnage : un passé, une histoire et une enfance, un caractère, une forme de vie ; une morphologie aussi, avec une anatomie indiscrète et peut-être une physiologie mystérieuse. Rien de ce qu’il est au total n’échappe à sa sexualité. Partout en lui, elle est présente : sous-jacente à toutes ses conduites parce qu’elle en est le principe insidieux et indéfiniment actif ; inscrite sans pudeur sur son visage et sur son corps parce qu’elle est un secret qui se trahit toujours. Elle lui est consubstantielle, moins comme un péché d’habitude que comme une nature singulière. Il ne faut pas oublier que la catégorie psychologique, psychiatrique, médicale de l’homosexualité s’est constituée du jour où on l’a caractérisée – le fameux article de Westphal en 1870, sur les « sensations sexuelles contraires », peut valoir comme date de naissance - moins par un type de relations sexuelles que par une certaine qualité de la sensibilité sexuelle, une certaine manière d’intervertir en soi-même le masculin et le féminin. L’homosexualité est apparue comme une des figures de la sexualité lorsqu’elle a été rabattue de la pratique de la sodomie sur une sorte d’androgynie intérieure, un hermaphrodisme de l’âme. Le sodomite était un relaps, l’homosexuel est maintenant une espèce. »

(Michel #Foucault, Histoire de la sexualité, , Tome 1 : la volonté de savoir)

http://www.revue-ganymede.fr/pour-une-strategie-nouvelle-reflexion-sur-les-termes-homosexualite-ho

Sionisme, antisémitisme et colonialisme
Joseph Massad / 24 décembre 2012 - Al Jazeera - traduction : Info-Palestine/JPP
http://www.info-palestine.eu/spip.php?article13121

L’antisémitisme d’État s’avéra très utile pour le sionisme. En effet, les dirigeants sionistes reconnurent consciemment que l’antisémitisme d’État était essentiel à leur projet colonial. Herzl ne mâche pas ses mots à ce sujet. Il déclare dans son livre fondateur, « les gouvernements de tous les pays ravagés par l’antisémitisme seront vivement intéressés pour nous aider à obtenir (la) souveraineté que nous voulons » ; et en effet, ce ne sont pas « seulement les pauvres Juifs » qui vont contribuer au financement d’une immigration des Juifs d’Europe, « mais aussi les Chrétiens qui veulent s’en débarrasser » .

Herzl conclut dans ses Diaries (son journal), « les antisémites seront nos amis les plus dévoués et les pays antisémites nos alliés » . Il ne s’agit pas de fautes d’étourderie ou d’erreurs, mais bien d’une stratégie à long terme que le sionisme et Israël continuent de déployer encore de nos jours.

Qu’Arthur Balfour, qui était un antisémite protestant notoire, ait parrainé en 1905 un projet de loi (Aliens Act – Loi sur les étrangers) pour empêcher les Juifs d’Europe de l’Est fuyant les pogroms d’immigrer en Angleterre n’est pas étranger au fait que les sionistes se précipitèrent pour le courtiser, et encore moins à son propre soutien du projet sioniste avec la « Déclaration Balfour », qui allait rediriger les Juifs hors d’Angleterre.

Quand les Nazis prirent le pouvoir en Allemagne, les sionistes, partageant la compréhension de Herzl que l’antisémitisme est l’allié du sionisme, furent le seul groupe juif à collaborer avec eux. En fait, à l’inverse de tous les autres Juifs allemands (et de toute personne à l’intérieur comme à l’extérieur de l’Allemagne) qui reconnaissaient le nazisme comme le pire ennemi des Juifs, le sionisme le vit comme une opportunité pour renforcer sa colonisation de la Palestine.

cité dans la version anglaise par @george
http://seenthis.net/messages/105454

Palestine : Le vote de reconnaissance de la Palestine à l’ONU légitime un statu quo raciste - Joseph Massad
http://www.ism-france.org/analyses/Le-vote-de-reconnaissance-de-la-Palestine-a-l-ONU-legitime-un-statu-quo-

http://www.ism-france.org/photos/massad-021212.jpg Bethléem, 29.11.2012 - Des centaines de Palestiniens écoutent le discours de M. Abbas aux Nations Unies, dont les images sont projetées sur le mur construit par l’entité sioniste en plein milieu de la ville (Photo Ryan Rodrick Beiler/Activestills.org)

The ’Arab Spring’ and other American seasons - Joseph Massad
http://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/opinion/2012/08/201282972539153865.html

Hence, unlike the rest of the Arab world where the US and its West European allies quickly moved from sponsoring the dictators to sponsoring the counter-revolutions to restore them or a similar regime in their stead (Yemen) and then later moved to establish a new alliance with the victorious Islamists (in Egypt and Tunisia), they opted to support the uprisings in Libya and Syria and take them over rapidly to ensure an outcome that serves their interests (France, Italy and the United Kingdom secure the oil while the US hopes to move its AFRICOM military command headquarters from Stuttgart to Libya once the dust settles).

While in Libya, the takeover was quick and successfully executed, in Syria, it ran into trouble on account of the differing nature of the regime and the opposition and the class coalitions that support them.

What the US and the new regimes in Tunisia and Egypt are debating at the moment is how much representativity and accountability the new system should have and whether granting certain measures of representativity and accountability could lead to future unpredictable demands for economic rights by the majority of the people in both countries, which could further threaten the interests of the US and its local regime and class allies.

The recent visit by the head of the International Monetary Fund to Cairo to discuss Egypt’s request for $4.8bn could result, as in the South African precedent, in introducing further contractual and legal bans on improving the lives of the poor in the country. The next few months will clarify the final arrangement of governance in both countries, especially in light of the increasing and mobilised popular opposition to any anti-democratic measures in both of them.

Passionnant éditorial de Joseph Massad : Hamas and the old/new American crescent. Il décrit notamment la toute récente compatibilité, promue par le Qatar, d’une partie des islamistes avec les intérêts de l’impérialisme américain (Libye, Tunisie, Égypte, Syrie… et maintenant Palestine). Un article qui permet notamment de comprendre la soudaine défense d’un certain islamisme américano-compatible de la part d’un BHL (« il y a charia et charia »).
http://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/opinion/2012/08/20128217513887730.html

The competition is now on as to who will prove to be more effective in serving US interests in Jordan, Fateh or Hamas. As Qatar has been reassuring the Americans, increasingly successfully, that the takeover of political power by Islamist forces, specifically the Muslim Brothers and kindred groups, is the best option for the US to stabilise the region for decades to come without its imperial strategy being threatened, its push to bring Hamas into the fold of US strategy may soon prove successful.

This is in line with Qatar’s support of the Muslim Brothers in Egypt and the Ennahda party in Tunisia, as well as its support of the Muslim Brothers in Syria and assorted Islamist forces in Libya.

Lire l’article complet :
– parce que c’est nettement plus subtile que l’extrait ci-dessus (il interroge notamment les limites de cette compatibilité),
– parce que le passage sur la Jordanie est vraiment édifiant,
– parce que la compatibilité de partis islamistes avec les intérêts réactionnaires et contre-révolutionnaires, et l’impérialisme américain est un sujet vital mais rarement abordé (on préfère continuer à se focaliser sur l’incompatibilité réelle ou fantasmée de l’islamisme avec la démocratie ou avec… « nos valeurs »). L’article de Joseph Massad rend ce genre de débat obsolète et propose une lecture plus pertinente.

American lessons in (in)tolerance | Joseph Massad (Al Jazeera English)
►http://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/opinion/2012/08/201282134633756703.html

In the last week, officials of the Obama administration have been visiting Egypt and issuing instructions to the new Egyptian president regarding the question of religious tolerance and Egyptian Christians, demanding and insisting that they be included in the new administration in certain capacities or else. This concern of American government officials about Muslim tolerance of Christians, however, is hardly a new concern. More than a century ago, in March 1910, while on a visit to British-occupied Egypt, former US President Theodore Roosevelt, who had just left office, addressed Egyptians at the then recently established Egyptian University (later Cairo University) on the question of self-government. (...) Source: Al Jazeera English

Passionnant article de Joseph Massad: American lessons in (in)tolerance
►http://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/opinion/2012/08/201282134633756703.html

Obama had lived in Indonesia from 1967 to 1971, in the wake of the massive US-sponsored massacres of almost one million Indonesians following the US-supported coup of General Suharto. Yet, while Obama remembers well Muslim “tolerance” towards Christians, he seems to remember little of the US-imposed terror and American sponsorship of right-wing Indonesian Muslim groups to kill communists in the wake of the 1965 Suharto coup, an intolerance the US had engineered and called for since the 1950s, and which would expand later to Afghanistan and spill over to right-wing Islamist groups’ intolerance of Christians in places like Egypt (many of whose right-wing sectarian Islamists were recruited by the US for its anti-Soviet war in Afghanistan) to which Obama was now counselling tolerance. 

Indeed, it is this same US-induced and supported intolerance that feeds the ongoing sectarian right-wing Islamist attacks on non-Sunni Muslims in Iraq (attacks that are depicted in the US media as an expression not of the US policy of sectarian agitation in Iraq, but on account of the indigenous “parochial” identities of Iraqis, which seem to have been unfortunately released by US-imposed “freedom”) and in Syria as well (in the latter case at least, with the full complicity of the Western press, if not Western governments, where sectarian attacks are being represented as part of the struggle for “democracy”). 

The US has continued to be the hegemon over Indonesia for the last 47 years, not only under the murderous regime of Suharto which it helped bring to power in 1965, but also and especially during the post-Suharto “democratic” phase where neoliberal former army generals would be elected to the presidency in accords with US interests. The current President Susilo Bambana Yudhoyono (a retired army general trained in the United States and an accused war criminal for his military role during Indonesia’s US-supported genocidal occupation of East Timor), and his vice-president Boediono (former governor of the Bank of Indonesia and a Wharton School graduate), are the crowning efforts of US policy in the country. With such examples of tolerance, like the United States and Indonesia under US tutelage, Muslim-majority countries indeed have much to learn about tolerance and more so about intolerance.

Ah, une nouvelle incarnation de Captain Israël :
http://www.villagevoice.com/2012-06-20/news/gay-inc-free-speech-rights

But when gay-porn king Michael Lucas got wind of the group’s plans, he vowed to keep them (or anyone else) from criticizing Israel within the Center’s walls. Lucas is primarily known for his puffy lips, his nine-inch custom dildo in the shape of his manhood, and his shameless self-promotion. Increasingly, he’s also known for his Zionism and open hatred of Muslims. And so, Lucas went about getting the Center to eject Siege Busters.

#pink_washing (mais pas seulement)

The Realpolitik of armchair anti-imperialists
ince the revolt in Syria started, many have been convinced that it has been an American-Zionist conspiracy that has been behind the scenes, directing the uprising. They say that the majority of Syrians still support Bashar al-Assad. They say that the living is still good in Syria and that the life conditions were better than in the other Arab states where the revolts broke out. They say that the activists of the opposition and the mainstream media that support them exaggerate the number of victims. They say that right from the start it was an insurrection armed by the United States and Gulf countries. They say that Syria is the last secular State and especially that it is the last bastion, together with Iran, against the policies of the United States and their allies in the region. Expressing this vision of what is happening in Syria since last March are persons who see themselves as belonging to the so-called Anti-imperialist camp. It is difficult to identify with precision those who belong to it: more than anything else, it is with a way of thinking, which emerges when one finds himself in discussion with human rights activists, those who sympathise with the Palestinian cause, anarchists, exponents of social centres (translator’s note, leftist student groups) and many others. In general, those who are against the world order that has the stamp of the United States. But it is a reading that at times also finds its expression in more official ways. In Italy, an example is il manifesto, which since the start had an attitude regarding Syria that can be called ambiguous at best. Any argument seems valid as long as it deviates the attention from the repression of the regime regarding the protests: the geo-political interests at play, the lack of precision in the count of the victims, the armed character of the revolt, the infiltration by al Qaeda and Iraqi Jihadists.

to read more
http://wewritewhatwelike.com/2012/02/29/the-realpolitik-of-armchair-anti-imperialists
http://wewritewhatwelike.files.wordpress.com/2012/02/enrico-3.jpg

À lire absolument: Imperialism, despotism, and democracy in Syria -
Joseph Massad
http://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/opinion/2012/02/2012269456491274.html

It was in this context that the Iraqi exile opposition in London and Washington, especially the irrepressible Kanan Makiya, who were calling for a US ground invasion and for more bombings of Baghdad by US forces, began to attack all those who oppose the US invasion, including the late Edward Said, as apologists for Saddam. […]

The Iraqi exile opposition insisted along with its US imperial sponsors and the chorus of pro-war American intellectuals that people should make one of two choices: for or against Saddam. While the US and its Iraqi partners had their way, the subsequent destruction of Iraq, the dismantling of its state structures, and the destruction of its societal cohesion is the clearest illustration of what such a choice entailed for the Iraqi people and their country.

In 2011, we were treated to a repeat performance of the very same scenario. The Libyan exile opposition and those inside the liberated parts of the country, consisting mostly of erstwhile servants of the Qaddafi regime, began to call for a NATO invasion of Libya to help the Libyan people in their uprising against Qaddafi. […]

It would seem then, as Marx put it, that history repeats itself twice - the first time as tragedy, the second time as farce. But does it repeat itself a third time?

Arab revolts - past and present | Joseph Massad (Al Jazeera English)
►http://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/opinion/2011/11/2011111810259215940.html

The US-British-Saudi-Israeli alliance in the region today is following the same strategies they followed in late 1960s and early 1970s and continuing the strategy they followed with the PLO in the early 1990s. They are crushing those uprisings they can crush and are co-opting those they cannot. The efforts to fully co-opt the Tunisian and Egyptian uprisings have made great strides over the last few months, though they have not been successful in silencing or demobilising the populations. On the other side, Bahrain’s uprising was the first to be crushed with the efforts to crush the Yemenis continuing afoot without respite. It was in Libya and in Syria where the axis fully hijacked the revolts and took them over completely. While Syrians, like Libyans before them, continue their valiant uprising against their brutal regime demanding democracy and social justice, their quest is already doomed unless they are able to dislodge the US-British-Saudi-Qatari axis that has fully taken over their struggle - which is very unlikely. (...) Source: Al Jazeera English

The struggle for Syria - Joseph Massad - Al Jazeera English
http://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/opinion/2011/11/2011111555722772798.html

It was the United States that destroyed Syrian democracy in 1949 when the CIA sponsored the first coup d’état in the country ending democratic rule. It is again the United States that has destroyed the possibility of a democratic outcome of the current popular uprising. My deep condolences to the Syrian people.

Le dernier billet de Joseph Massad, à lire absolument (comme toujours) :
Arab revolts - past and present - Opinion - Al Jazeera English
►http://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/opinion/2011/11/2011111810259215940.html

As for the larger Arab context, those who call what has unfolded in the last year in the Arab World as an Arab “awakening” are not only ignorant of the history of the last century, but also deploy Orientalist arguments in their depiction of Arabs as a quiescent people who put up with dictatorship for decades and are finally waking up from their torpor. Across the Arab world, Arabs have revolted against colonial and local tyranny every decade since World War I. It has been the European colonial powers and their American heir who have stood in their way every step of the way and allied themselves with local dictators and their families (and in many cases handpicking such dictators and putting them on the throne).

The US-European sponsorship of the on-going counterrevolutions across the Arab world today is a continuation of a time-honoured imperial tradition, but so is continued Arab resistance to imperialism and domestic tyranny. The uprisings that started in Tunisia in December 2010 continue afoot despite major setbacks to all of them. This is not to say that things have not changed and are not changing significantly, it is to say, however, that many of the changes are reversible and that the counterrevolution has already reversed a significant amount and is working hard to reverse more. Vigilance is mandatory on the part of those struggling for democratic change and social justice, especially in these times of upheaval and massive imperial mobilisation. Some of the battles may have been lost but the Arab peoples’ war against imperialism and for democracy and social justice continues across the Arab world.

Truths, facts and facts on the ground - Joseph Massad - Opinion - Al Jazeera English
http://english.aljazeera.net/indepth/opinion/2011/10/2011102583358314280.html

Now, this insistence that the first fact, nay the first truth, that Palestine is the historic homeland of modern European Jews who resided in Europe and not of the Palestinian people who lived in it for millennia, turns out to be neither factual nor truthful, though it indeed remains the primary and first claim made by Zionism and anti-Semitism.

The claim relies on anti-Semitic notions propagated initially by the Protestant Reformation in the sixteenth century and later by secular anti-Semitism, both of which insisted that modern European Jews were blood and genetic descendants of the ancient Hebrews respectively, which is precisely how eighteenth century European philology’s reference to Jews as “Semites” would soon be transformed in the hand of political and racial anti-Semitism by the late nineteenth century from a “linguistic” category into a “racial” and biological one.

It is based on these anti-Semitic claims - that millenarian Protestants, secular anti-Semites, and Zionists called for the “restoration” of European Jews to the alleged homeland of their alleged ancestors.

The uncontroversial academic and historical facts that European Jews are descendants of European converts to Judaism from the centuries before Christianity was adopted as the religion of the Roman Empire in the fourth century are unquestionable axioms in academic scholarship, including by Zionist historians.

No respected historian of European Jewry has ever argued that European Jews, or for that matter Moroccan, or Iraqi, or Yemeni Jews, were descendants of the ancient Hebrews. All respected scholars recognise them as descendants of converts to Judaism.

But even if the wildest genetic fantasies of anti-Semites and Zionists of Jews as a “race” were “proven”, would this make ancient Palestine, where the ancient Hebrews cohabited with other ancient peoples, the historic land of modern European Jews?

And even if one were to commit oneself to the science-fiction of Christian biblical archaeology which accompanied European colonialism in the nineteenth century and on which Israeli archaeology continues to be based, would that mean that modern Jews, now posited as direct genetic and biological descendants of the ancient Hebrews could claim the land where the ancient Hebrews lived with the Canaanites among other myriad groups as their own exclusive national domain and take it from its inhabitants who lived in it for millennia?

Could anyone today, except genocidal racists, link Germanic populations to an Aryan origin that started in northern India and based on that link, argue that northern India is the ancient homeland of all German-speaking people to which they must return and evict the current inhabitants of the land as nothing but recent interlopers in the land of the White Aryans?

These fantastical scenarios are precisely what Obama and Netanyahu tell us are undeniable facts and truths.

State of recognition | Joseph Massad (Al Jazeera English)
►http://english.aljazeera.net/indepth/opinion/2011/09/20119158427939481.html

Whether the UN grants the PA status as a state or refuses to do so, either outcome will be in Israel’s interest. (...)

Cet article de référence de Joseph Massad aborde les différents problèmes et risques liés à l’admission d’un État palestinien à l’ONU.

State of recognition - Opinion - Al Jazeera English
►http://english.aljazeera.net/indepth/opinion/2011/09/20119158427939481.html

All of these six outcomes will advance Israeli interests immeasurably, while the only inconvenience to Israel would be the ability of the PA to demand that international law and legal jurisdiction be applied to Israel so as to exact more concessions from that country. However, at every turn the US will block and will shield Israel from its effects. In short, Israeli interests will be maximised at the cost of some serious but not detrimental inconvenience.

The second possible outcome, a US veto, and/or the ability of the US to pressure and twist the arms of tens of countries around the world to reject the bid of the PA in the General Assembly, resulting in failure to recognise PA statehood, will also be to the benefit of Israel. The unending “peace process” will continue with more stringent conditions and an angry US, upset at the PA challenge, will go back to exactly where the PA is today, if not to a weaker position. President Obama and future US administrations will continue to push for PA and Arab recognition of Israel as a “Jewish state” that has the right to discriminate by law against non-Jews in exchange for an ever-deferred recognition of a Palestinian Bantustan as an “economically viable” Palestinian state - a place where Palestinian neoliberal businessmen can make profits off international aid and investment.

Either outcome will keep the Palestinian people colonised, discriminated against, oppressed, and exiled. This entire brouhaha over the UN vote is ultimately about which of the two scenarios is better for Israeli interests. The Palestinian people and their interests are not even part of this equation.

The question on the table before the UN, then, is not whether the UN should recognise the right of the Palestinian people to a state in accordance with the 1947 UN Partition Plan, which would grant them 45 per cent of historic Palestine, nor of a Palestinian state within the June 5, 1967 borders along the Green Line, which would grant them 22 per cent of historic Palestine. A UN recognition ultimately means the negation of the rights of the majority of the Palestinian people in Israel, in the diaspora, in East Jerusalem, and even in Gaza, and the recognition of the rights of some West Bank Palestinians to a Bantustan on a fraction of West Bank territory amounting to less than 10 per cent of historic Palestine. Israel will be celebrating either outcome.

Long live Egypt’s Supreme Council | Joseph Massad (Al Jazeera English)
►http://english.aljazeera.net/indepth/opinion/2011/07/201172885752615193.html

Many Egyptians are expressing concerns about the deployment by the ruling Egyptian Supreme Council of the Armed Forces (SCAF) of the very same political rhetoric previously employed by the Mubarak regime, despite the SCAF’s claim that it is maintaining “neutrality” between “popular” forces; a “neutrality” that it has failed to demonstrate on all fronts.
Indeed, Egyptians who want to transform their uprising into a veritable revolution have responded to the ruling SCAF by refining their definition of the identity of the armed forces. (...)

Après les événements d’Oslo, je pense qu’il est urgent de relire l’enquête menée par Max Blumenthal il y a plus de six mois. Parce que l’idéologie haineuse et paranoïaque du meurtrier n’est pas tombée du ciel, elle a été façonnée et sa promotion a été soutenue financièrement.

J’avais référencé cette enquête à l’époque ici :
http://seenthis.net/messages/6496

#Max_Blumenthal expose l’influence directe des réseaux israéliens dans la montée des thèmes et des politiciens hystériquement islamophobes aux #États-Unis. Je crois que c’est un article très important.

The Great Islamophobic Crusade - Max Blumenthal
►http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2010/12/19/opinion/main7166626.shtml

Little of recent American Islamophobia (with a strong emphasis on the “phobia”) is sheer happenstance.  Years before Tea Party shock troops massed for angry protests outside the proposed site of an Islamic community center in lower Manhattan, representatives of the Israel lobby and the Jewish-American establishment launched a campaign against pro-Palestinian campus activism that would prove a seedbed for everything to come. That campaign quickly — and perhaps predictably — morphed into a series of crusades against mosques and Islamic schools which, in turn, attracted an assortment of shady but exceptionally energetic militants into the network’s ranks.

Besides providing the initial energy for the Islamophobic crusade, conservative elements from within the pro-Israel lobby bankrolled the network’s apparatus, enabling it to influence the national debate. One philanthropist in particular has provided the beneficence to propel the campaign ahead. He is a little-known Los Angeles-area software security entrepreneur named Aubrey Chernick, who operates out of a security consulting firm blandly named the National Center for Crisis and Continuity Coordination. A former trustee of the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, which has served as a think tank for the American Israel Policy Action Committee (AIPAC), a frontline lobbying group for Israel, Chernick is said to be worth $750 million.

Chernick’s fortune is puny compared to that of the billionaire Koch Brothers, extraction industry titans who fund Tea Party-related groups like Americans for Prosperity, and it is dwarfed by the financial empire of Haim Saban, the Israeli-American media baron who is one of the largest private donors to the Democratic party and recently matched $9 million raised for the Friends of the Israeli Defense Forces in a single night. However, by injecting his money into a small but influential constellation of groups and individuals with a narrow agenda, Chernick has had a considerable impact.

Through the Fairbrook Foundation, a private entity he and his wife Joyce control, Chernick has provided funding to groups ranging from the Anti-Defamation League (ADL) and CAMERA, a right-wing, pro-Israel, media-watchdog outfit, to violent Israeli settlers living on Palestinian lands and figures like the pseudo-academic author Robert Spencer, who is largely responsible for popularizing conspiracy theories about the coming conquest of the West by Muslim fanatics seeking to establish a worldwide caliphate. Together, these groups spread hysteria about Muslims into Middle American communities where immigrants from the Middle East have recently settled, and they watched with glee as likely Republican presidential frontrunners from Mike Huckabee to Sarah Palin promoted their cause and parroted their tropes. Perhaps the only thing more surprising than the increasingly widespread appeal of Islamophobia is that, just a few years ago, the phenomenon was confined to a few college campuses and an inner city neighborhood, and that it seemed like a fleeting fad that would soon pass from the American political landscape.

She also benefited from close alliances with leading Islamophobes from Europe. Among Geller’s allies was Andrew Gravers, a Danish activist who formed the group Stop the Islamicization of Europe, and gave it the unusually blunt motto: “Racism is the lowest form of human stupidity, but Islamophobia is the height of common sense.” Gravers’ group inspired Geller’s own U.S.-based outfit, Stop the Islamicization of America, which she formed with her friend Robert Spencer, a pseudo-scholar from Great Britain whose bestselling books, including The Truth About Muhammad, Founder of the World’s Most Intolerant Religion, prompted former advisor to President Richard Nixon and Muslim activist Robert Crane to call him, “the principal leader… in the new academic field of Muslim bashing.” (According to the website Politico, almost $1 million in donations from Chernick has been steered to Spencer’s Jihad Watch group through David Horowitz’s Freedom Center.)

Inspiration from Israel

It was evident from the involvement of figures like Gravers and Spencer that the Islamophobic network in the United States represented a trans-Atlantic expansion of simmering resentment in Europe.  There, the far-right was storming to victories in parliamentary elections across the continent in part by appealing to the simmering anti-Muslim sentiments of voters in rural and working-class communities. The extent of the collaboration between European and American Islamophobes has only continued to grow with Geller, Spencer, and even Gingrich standing beside Europe’s most prominent anti-Muslim figure, Dutch parliamentarian Geert Wilders, at a rally against Cordoba House.  In the meantime, Geller was issuing statements of support for the English Defense League, a band of unreconstructed neo-Nazis and former members of the whites-only British National Party who intimidate Muslims in the streets of cities like Birmingham and London.

In addition, the trans-Atlantic Islamophobic crusade has stretched into Israel, a country that has come to symbolize the network’s fight against the Muslim menace. As Geller told the New York Times’ Alan Feuer, Israel is “a very good guide because, like I said, in the war between the civilized man and the savage, you side with the civilized man.”