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person:jeffrey goldberg

  • @alaingresh
    Nouvelles d’Orient
    2
    @orientxxi
    @loutre
    2

    Keep it up, Ilhan Omar - Opinion

    Neither Hamas nor a black day, but a glimmer of hope on Capitol Hill
    Gideon Levy
    Mar 07, 2019

    ▻https://www.haaretz.com/opinion/.premium-keep-it-up-ilhan-omar-1.6999623

    https://www.haaretz.com/polopoly_fs/1.6999660.1551927496!/image/3661982762.jpg_gen/derivatives/headline_1200x630/3661982762.jpg

    Maybe Mogadishu will turn out to be the source of hope. This war-torn city was the birthplace of the most promising U.S. congresswoman today.

    Ilhan Omar is not only one of the first two female Muslim members of the House of Representatives, she may herald a dramatic change in that body. “Hamas has entered the House,” Roseanne Barr was quick to cry out; “A black day for Israel,” tweeted Donald Trump. Neither Hamas nor a black day, but a glimmer of hope on Capitol Hill.

    Maybe, for the first time in history, someone will dare tell the truth to the American people, absorbing scathing accusations of anti-Semitism, without bowing her head. The chances of this happening aren’t great; the savage engine of the Jewish lobby and of Israel’s “friends” is already doing everything it can to trample her.

    The president mentioned removing her from the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, and Congress was set to pass a resolution, the second in one month, against uttering “anti-Semitic expressions,” specifically aimed at Omar’s statements.

    >> We support you, Ilhan the heroine | Opinion

    When will Americans and Europeans stop running scared every time someone screams “anti-Semitism”? Until when will Israel and the Jewish establishment succeed in exploiting (the existing) anti-Semitism as a shield against criticism? When will the world dare to distinguish between legitimate criticism of an illegitimate reality and anti-Semitism?

    The gap between these two is great. There is anti-Semitism one must fight, and there is criticism of Israel and the Jewish establishment it is imperative to support. Manipulations exercised by the Israeli propaganda machine and the Jewish establishment have managed to make the two issues identical.

    This is the greatest success of the Israeli government’s hasbara: Say one critical word about Israel and you’re labeled an anti-Semite. And labeled an anti-Semite, your fate is obvious. Omar has to break this cursed cycle. Is the young representative from Minnesota up for it? Can she withstand the power centers that have already mobilized against her in full force?

    Maybe it’s important that she knows there are people in Israel crossing fingers for her?

    Her success and that of her congressional colleagues, Rashida Tlaib from Michigan and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez from New York, could be the first swallows that herald the coming of spring. This is the spring of freely expressing opinions about Israel in America. Cortez already asked this week why isn’t bigotry aimed at other groups condemned just like statements against Israel are.

    >> As an American-Israeli, I am thrilled for the Palestinians and for Rashida Tlaib | Opinion

    What, after all, has Omar said? That pro-Israel activists demand “allegiance to a foreign country”; that U.S. politicians support Israel because of money they receive from the pro-Israel lobby group AIPAC, and that “Israel hypnotized the world.” What is incorrect in these statements? Why is describing reality considered anti-Semitic?

    Jews have immense power in the U.S., far beyond the relative size of their community, and the blind support given by their establishment to Israel raises legitimate questions regarding dual loyalty. Their power derives from their economic success, their organizational skills and the political pressure they exert. Omar dared to speak about this.
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    Just imagine what Israelis and Jews would feel if Muslim Americans had the same political, economic and cultural power Jews have. Such power, above all the intoxication with power that has seized hold of the Jewish establishment, comes with a price. Omar and her colleagues are trying to collect on it.

    Due to the Israel lobby, the U.S. does not know the truth about what is happening here. Congress members, senators and shapers of public opinion who are flown here ad nauseam see only Israeli victimhood and Palestinian terror, which apparently emerged out of nowhere. Islamists, Qassam rockets and incendiary balloons – not a word about occupation, expropriation, refugees and military tyranny. Questions such as where the money goes and whether it serves American interests are considered heresy. When talking about Israel one must not ask questions or raise doubts.

    This cycle has to be broken as well. It’s not right and it’s not good for the Jews. Omar is now trying to introduce a new discourse to Congress and to public opinion. Thanks to her and her colleagues there is a chance for a change in America. From Israel we send her our wishes for success.

    When will the world dare to distinguish between legitimate criticism of an illegitimate Israeli reality and anti-Semitism?

    Nouvelles d’Orient
    • @loutre
      Loutre

      We Support You, Ilhan the Heroine

      Congresswoman Ilhan Omar thought she was living in a democratic country, and that she could report to the public about what she sees: how naive!
      Odeh Bisharat Feb 18, 2019 5:12 AM
      ▻https://www.haaretz.com/opinion/.premium-we-support-you-ilhan-the-heroine-1.6941386

      Why attack Congresswoman Ilhan Omar, who said that Congressional support for Israel has been bought by money from the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, at a time when someone who is very familiar with the lobby attests to its tremendous power. On the online news publication The Intercept, journalist Mehdi Hassan describes a meeting between Steven Rosen, a former president of AIPAC, and journalist Jeffrey Goldberg in 2005. “You see this napkin?” asked Rosen. “In 24 hours, we could have the signatures of 70 senators on this napkin.”

      That’s corrupting power, which should cause any decent Jew to lose sleep. After all, we’re not talking about a poor country, to which policy can be dictated, whether by force or with money. We’re talking about the world’s biggest superpower. We’re also talking about 70 senators out of 100 – 70 percent of the Senate is in AIPAC’s pocket.

      So what would happen if the situation were reversed, and neo-Nazism, which according to U.S. President Donald Trump also includes good people, were to assume senior positions? Would the Jews then be blamed for all the ills of the United States?

      At the moment I feel for Congresswoman Ilhan, who thought she was living in a democratic country, and that she could report to the public about what she sees. We can assume that a few years ago Omar was able to observe Republican candidates knocking on the door of far-right mogul Sheldon Adelson, asking for his support – his monetary support, of course.

      I assume that Omar also noticed the strange phenomenon which, with the exception of Gideon Levy, almost nobody in Israel noticed: that all the senior members of the White House Middle East team are Jews, and not leftist, Peace Now Jews, God forbid, but right-wing, Habayit Hayehudi Jews. The poor Palestinians were unable to comment on that for fear of AIPAC, which is responsible for putting “anti-Semite” stickers on anyone who dares criticize Israel.

      Now President Trump is angry at Omar. “I think she should be ashamed of herself. I think it was a terrible statement,” he said. But Trump has apparently forgotten that on the eve of his election in 2015 he told the participants at a convention of the Republican Jewish Coalition: “You’re not going to support me because I don’t want your money.”

      Trump’s statement included the two most benighted elements that anti-Semites have attributed to Jews for hundreds of years: money and control. That statement, about which Chemi Shalev wrote at the time: “As though the Jews are incapable of supporting a candidate whom they can’t buy,” was met here by almost total silence. How do they say it in Arabic: “The blows of the beloved are like raisins.”

      Now Omar, after the witch hunt surrounding her, has retreated from her tweet. She will have to work hard to prove that she’s not anti-Semitic, and that what she sees is actually an illusion. The truth must be told: Her retreat is a mark of Cain on the forehead of reasonable Jews, both in Israel and the United States. After all, cleaning the stables of the ills of the Israeli right is mainly the job of reasonable Jews.

      Why impose that job on Omar? Why outsource the dirty work to the gentiles, instead of buckling down and taking action. And starting, for example, by sending tens of thousands of signatures on postcards saying: We support you, Ilhan the heroine.

      And if not, Ilhan will yet say to herself: Why do I need another headache? And retreat to her home. Whereas you, Jewish democrats, will continue to obey the orders of the insane alliance of the Israeli and American right, and continue to send your sons on terrible missions in the occupied territories. And if TV news anchor Oshrat Kotler says that it’s because of the occupation – you’ll stone her, instead of stoning the occupation. Only the occupation could produce such genius.

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  • @nidal
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    Bret Stephens’s greatest hits
    ▻http://mondoweiss.net/2017/04/bret-stephenss-greatest

    I was shocked last night when I learned that Bret Stephens has been hired as an op-ed columnist by the New York Times. Being an idealist, I’ve always believed that the Times is going to begin to reflect progressive opinion on Israel and Palestine; but this hire told me I’m dreamin. It goes to show, there really is a neoconservative bloc at the Times. That’s why Jodi Rudoren was Jerusalem bureau chief (and told readers about “a sliver of opportunity” in Gaza). It’s why Bill Kristol was a columnist for a while. It’s why editors always let through stupid headlines about Jerusalem. It’s why the op-ed page is all Zionist, from Roger Cohen to David Brooks to waffling Tom Friedman. And why the paper slags the boycott movement against Israel without rejoinder from pro-BDS voices.

    But let’s hear from the temperamental Stephens himself; let’s see why I think this hire is so problematic. What characterizes Stephens’s speech is an irritable callowness that easily flares into prejudice. That prejudice is conventional neoconservative, and Jewish-centric with a boyish gloss. A former editor of the Jerusalem Post— the launching pad for Wolf Blitzer and Jeffrey Goldberg — Stephens is often Islamophobic.

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  • @nidal
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    @baroug
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    The Lessons of Henry Kissinger: Trump [may] react to a terror attack in a way that suits their purposes
    ►http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2016/12/the-lessons-of-henry-kissinger/505868

    HK: But at some point, events will necessitate decision making once more. The only exception to this rule may be nonstate groups; they may have an incentive to provoke an American reaction that undermines our global position.

    JG: The threat from isis is more serious now?

    HK: Nonstate groups may make the assessment that Trump will react to a terror attack in a way that suits their purposes.

    C’est Jeffrey Goldberg qui explicite “ISIS”. Kissinger répète “nonstate groups”.

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  • @alaingresh
    Nouvelles d’Orient
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    @orientxxi
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    The Dangerous Fantasies of Jeffrey Goldberg -
    So, the American liberal says he’s ’taking a break’ from Haaretz. The Palestinians are far more tired of the occupation. They’d also like a break.

    Gideon Levy Aug 03, 2016 7

    Jeffrey Goldberg has a fantasy. Like every fantasy, it’s only loosely connected to reality. But don’t dare try to spoil it – he’s enjoying it too much.
    Goldberg is an enlightened liberal, representing progressive American Jewry. He’s liberal, intellectual, Zionist (of course), a friend of Israel (of course), close to U.S. President Barack Obama and a highly regarded journalist. He is critical of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu (who isn’t?) and has liberal, enlightened Israeli friends just like him.

    In Goldberg’s fantasy, Israel is as enlightened as he is: liberal, democratic and just. Don’t you dare try casting doubt on that – Goldberg’s liberalism won’t tolerate it. He will praise freedom of expression in Israel, as he did at a Haaretz conference in Palo Alto last November, and will say that Israelis’ freedom of the press and lively public debate is what makes Israel so popular in America. But from now on, it will have to be without Haaretz and the lively public debate it fosters about Zionism among Jewish Americans.
    According to Goldberg, Haaretz is doing something unforgiveable: it’s shattering his fantasy. Because of an op-ed piece in which two American-Jewish historians explain why they’ve abandoned Zionism, as well as a piece of my own (“Yes, Israel is an evil state,” July 31), the liberal Goldberg has decided he’s had enough of Haaretz. He tweeted to his 107,000 Twitter followers that these sort of pieces make him sick. Neo-Nazis, he said, have been distributing my op-ed, so he was going to have to “take a break” from Haaretz.
    I would love to know who those neo-Nazis are. After all, neo-Nazis and the radical right are now some of Israel’s best friends. Did Goldberg mean to say that BDS advocates are neo-Nazis? And besides, I’m not sure I understand. What, the pieces are true, but it’s only the way they’re used that angers Goldberg? Should they not be published because neo-Nazis disseminate them? Or are the articles not actually true?
    Behind this lies the greatest boorishness of all: the rather primitive idea that Israel’s critics are the ones giving it a bad name, not its actions and policies. That criticism of Israel was born of articles in Haaretz, not the crimes of the occupation. The video footage released Tuesday showing a Border Policeman throwing the bike of a terrified Palestinian girl into the bushes in Hebron did more damage to Israel than all of my pieces in Haaretz combined. Goldberg probably thought it should never have been posted, because of the neo-Nazis.

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    • @nidal
      Nidal CC BY

      @intempestive oui, c’est bien ça :
      ▻http://motherboard.vice.com/read/jews-are-taking-back-echoes-from-the-neo-nazis

      Après, il y a un petit côté Louis de Funès assez ridicule dans ces articles (il ne faut jamais passer à côté du ridicule de situation) :

      After Rosenberg and Goldberg tweeted about changing their names, dozens of other people on Twitter followed suit.

      et dans ton article :

      Par exemple, les noms de famille Cohen ou Rosenberg étaient réécrits pour apparaître comme (((Cohen))) et (((Rosenberg))).

      ▻https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D1cJpcn3t-o

      Plus sérieusement, ce n’est pas l’aspect « religieux » en tant que tel que je considère comme débile. Je suis même persuadé qu’une bonne proportion de ceux qui mettent le noun ou les triples parenthèses sont des gens peu religieux, voire pas du tout.

      (1) Avant tout, il s’agit d’accepter la logique de l’ennemi : les propriétés des chrétiens marquées d’un noun par ISIS, les personnes de confession juive signalées d’une triple parenthèse par les antisémites. En le faisant, je ne vois pas qu’on fasse autre chose que ce pour quoi ces symboles ont été conçus par nos ennemis.

      (2) L’aspect « solidarité au-delà des confessions » de ces symboles est, en pratique, extrêmement faible. Je suppose qu’on peut toujours trouver trois contre-exemples, mais ce sont bien des chrétiens qui s’identifient d’un noun, et des juifs qui s’identifient avec les parenthèses. Si le motif politique est généralement mis en avant, dans la pratique on reste dans des marqueurs qui restent très confessionnels.

      (3) Wikipédia est déjà le meilleur outil pour, depuis des années, établir des listes de juifs, de chrétiens, de sunnites, de chiites… La religion des gens est systématiquement signalées dès la première phrase de leur biographie. Alors qu’on se signale maintenant soi-même en polluant Twitter de marqueurs confessionnels, c’est vraiment un sacré progrès de l’internet…

      (4) Puisque la justification prétend être un marqueur de solidarité avec les personnes persécutées (par ISIS, par les néo-nazis), on accepte bien l’idée de mettre en avant à chaque message posté une solidarité sur une base confessionnelle. Avec le noun j’annonce ma solidarité prioritaire avec les Chrétiens d’Orient (pas les Sunnites ni les Yazidis, pas les Syriens ni les Irakiens en général, etc.) Je ne vois pas plus terrible moyen de renforcer l’impression de classification et de concurrence confessionnelle des victimes et des solidarités. Quand on verra apparaître un marqueur de ce genre strictement sunnite et un marqueur strictement chiite, je pense qu’il ne fera aucun doute que l’effet est catastrophique, et enfin on verra des gens s’indigner d’une pratique dont la conséquence est, de manière tout à fait évidente, de provoquer cette catastrophe.

      (5) Et je pense qu’on a aussi besoin de se méfier des logiques politiques qui sous-tendent certaines de ces mises en avant (même si les causes affichées sont parfaitement légitimes). Le soutien affiché aux Chrétiens d’Orient n’est généralement pas neutre :
      ▻http://orientxxi.info/magazine/une-compassion-tres-politique-pour-les-chretiens-d-orient,1300,1300
      et que Jeffrey Goldberg et Yair Rosenberg prétendent se sentir persécutés en tant que juifs, c’est tout de même un vieux thème sioniste, et ces deux personnes sont justement des acteurs politiques de cette cause (encore une fois, même si le refus de l’antisémitisme est légitime)... Tiens, pour être bien clair, qui associe systématiquement l’identité juive des gens à leurs activités politiques ?
      ▻http://www.tabletmag.com/scroll/111297/natalie-portman-and-scarlett-johansson-at-dnc

      While some commentators have already suggested that these picks are a clear attempt to appeal to young women voters, they’ve neglected another demographic being pandered to: Jews.

      After all, Portman and Johansson are two of Hollywood’s most prominent Jewish starlets. And both are renowned for their Jewish literacy and commitment. While an undergraduate, Portman served as a research assistant on Harvard Law Professor Alan Dershowitz’s bestseller, The Case for Israel (she is credited under her real name, Natalie Hershlag). And Johansson is famed for her wide knowledge of Jewish ethnic foods and willingness to sing the Dreidel Song on MTV.

      C’est un des nombreux articles de Yair Rosenberg sur Tablet magazine (un magazine qui fait ça absolument tout le temps…).

      Nidal CC BY
    • @nidal
      Nidal CC BY

      @intempestive : oui et non. Je vois bien l’idée de l’inversion, c’est un peu mon point (1).

      (a) Mais je pense qu’en l’occurence, on joue sur une confusion entre identity politics et geste de solidarité. Je suis solidaire des racisés et des gays, mais je n’ai aucune légitimité par exemple à dire « nègre », « bougnoule » ou « pédé ». Or les chrétiens ne sont pas persécutés en occident (où s’affiche lourdement le noun).

      (b) Quant à évoquer la persécution des juifs pour jouer d’une identity politics qu’on prétend juive américaine (persécutée ?), alors qu’on est avant tout connu pour être un militant politique sioniste, ce n’est malheureusement ni nouveau ni original.

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  • @nidal
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    @simplicissimus
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    Clinton campaign is ’nervous’ Sanders will push ’divisive’ battle over Democratic platform on Israel
    ▻http://mondoweiss.net/2016/05/divisive-democratic-platform

    Then Bernie Sanders pulled the rug out from under her in that “contentious” April 14 debate in NY, saying that Netanyahu is not always right and that Israel used disproportionate force against Gaza in 2014, when it killed 500 children, and the audience cheered. They cheered because this is the Democratic base’s position, fairness toward Palestinians.

    We’ve said again and again here that Israel can divide the Democrats, grassroots versus establishment, and it should divide the Democrats, it’s that important an issue. And the media will break up over this issue, as they should; and Dana Milbank and Jonathan Chait and Jodi Rudoren will go right with Jeffrey Goldberg and the Atlantic and New York Magazine, and Jake Tapper and David Corn will go left and bring scores with them. Looks like we’re going to meet our rendezvous with destiny before long.

    Why is Clinton worried about divisive? Because of fundraising. Remember that when President Obama pushed through a platform position at the Democratic convention in 2012 saying Jerusalem was the forever capital of Israel, there was a floor demonstration by the grass roots (and this was before the 2014 Gaza slaughter) to try and defeat the plank, and the chair of the convention said that Obama was “absolutely livid” that the platform hadn’t included the language originally. Maintaining a rigid pro-Israel stance is essential to fundraising. And Clinton’s position is surely based on what Haim Saban, her megadonor, wants.

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  • @souriyam
    Souriyâm
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    @02myseenthis01
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    Quelques réactions à l’article de Goldberg #Obama_doctrine qui a été perçu par certains comme l’expression publique de la doctrine stratégique d’Obama pour les quelques mois restant de la fin de son mandat :
    ►http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2016/04/the-obama-doctrine/471525

    A noter, par exemple un article de Patrick Cockburn dans The Independent titré « Comment Barack Obama a tourné le dos à l’Arabie saoudite et à ses alliés sunnites » manifestement content du tournant que cela semble annoncer dans la politique étrangère américaine :
    ▻http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/middle-east/barack-obama-saudi-arabia-us-foreign-policy-syria-jihadism-isis-a6927

    Commentators have missed the significance of President Barack Obama’s acerbic criticism of Saudi Arabia and Sunni states long allied to the US for fomenting sectarian hatred and seeking to lure the US into fighting regional wars on their behalf. In a series of lengthy interviews with Jeffrey Goldberg published in The Atlantic magazine, Mr Obama explains why it is not in the US’s interests to continue the tradition of the US foreign policy establishment, whose views he privately disdains, by giving automatic support to the Saudis and their allies.

    Et la conclusion :

    It will become clearer after November’s presidential election how far Obama’s realistic take on Saudi Arabia, Turkey, Pakistan and other US allies and his scepticism about the US foreign policy establishment will be shared by the new administration. The omens are not very good since Hillary Clinton supported the invasion of Iraq in 2003, intervention in Libya in 2011 and bombing Syria in 2013. If she wins the White House, then the Saudis and the US foreign policy establishment will breathe more easily.

    Et puis une réaction pour le moins agacée, celle du prince Turki bin Faysal, en personne, ancien chef des services de renseignement saoudiens et ex-ambassadeur de l’A.S. aux USA qui proteste de sa fidélité comme allié des USA et de la lutte implacable des saoudiens contre le terrorisme et tout ça et tout ça puisqu’il a armé les « combattants de la liberté » qui luttent contre Da’ich :
    ▻http://www.arabnews.com/news/894826

    No, Mr. Obama. We are not “free riders.” We shared with you our intelligence that prevented deadly terrorist attacks on America.
    We initiated the meetings that led to the coalition that is fighting Fahish (ISIL), and we train and fund the Syrian freedom fighters, who fight the biggest terrorist, Bashar Assad and the other terrorists, Al-Nusrah and Fahish (ISIL). We offered boots on the ground to make that coalition more effective in eliminating the terrorists.
    We initiated the support — military, political and humanitarian — that is helping the Yemeni people reclaim their country from the murderous militia, the Houthis, who, with the support of the Iranian leadership, tried to occupy Yemen; without calling for American forces. We established a coalition of more than thirty Muslim countries to fight all shades of terrorism in the world.
    We are the biggest contributors to the humanitarian relief efforts to help refugees from Syria, Yemen and Iraq. We combat extremist ideology that attempts to hijack our religion, on all levels. We are the sole funders of the United Nations Counter-terrorism Center, which pools intelligence, political, economic, and human resources, worldwide. We buy US treasury bonds, with small interest returns, that help your country’s economy.

    Avec un jeu de mots « Da’ish »/"fahish" ("obscène" ai-je trouvé, mais les arabisants me corrigeront).

    Souriyâm
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  • @dedefensa
    dedefensa [RSS] CC BY-NC-SA

    L’oracle Goldberg
    ▻http://www.dedefensa.org/article/loracle-goldberg

    L’oracle Goldberg

    Jeffrey Goldberg est un journaliste israélo-américain assez représentatif de ce qu’est un tâcheron fabricant d’opinion dans la presse du système dominant.

    Ce néoconservateur, gratifié par plusieurs prix décernés par ses confrères de la presse, avait quitté les Usa avant d’avoir achevé ses études pour faire son service militaire comme gardien de prison en Israël, au moment de la première Intifada.

    Parmi ses hauts faits d’armes, il a commis en particulier un article dans le New Yorker en 2002 dans lequel il affirmait un lien possible entre les services de Renseignements irakiens et Al Qaïda. La collusion y est présentée comme une hypothèse forte. Le tout était développé sur fond d’entretiens avec des Kurdes de la région de Halabja. Ils avaient subi en 1988 un massacre à l’arme chimique en (...)

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  • @kassem
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    The Obama Doctrine
    ►http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2016/04/the-obama-doctrine/471525

    Dans cet article Israel ce n’est pas « les Juifs » mais Israel et c’est très bien ainsi, mais pourquoi les pays du Golfe c’est « les Arabes » ?
    Parce que c’est #Jeffrey_Goldberg

    “A widely held sentiment inside the White House is that many of the most prominent foreign-policy #think_tanks in Washington are doing the bidding of their Arab and pro-Israel funders. I’ve heard one administration official refer to Massachusetts Avenue, the home of many of these think tanks, as “Arab-occupied territory.””

    Via angry arab

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    • @nidal
      Nidal CC BY

      Though he has argued, controversially, that the Middle East’s conflicts “date back millennia,” he also believes that the intensified Muslim fury of recent years was encouraged by countries considered friends of the U.S. In a meeting during apec with Malcolm Turnbull, the new prime minister of Australia, Obama described how he has watched Indonesia gradually move from a relaxed, syncretistic Islam to a more fundamentalist, unforgiving interpretation; large numbers of Indonesian women, he observed, have now adopted the hijab, the Muslim head covering.

      Why, Turnbull asked, was this happening?

      Because, Obama answered, the Saudis and other Gulf Arabs have funneled money, and large numbers of imams and teachers, into the country. In the 1990s, the Saudis heavily funded Wahhabist madrassas, seminaries that teach the fundamentalist version of Islam favored by the Saudi ruling family, Obama told Turnbull. Today, Islam in Indonesia is much more Arab in orientation than it was when he lived there, he said.

      “Aren’t the Saudis your friends?,” Turnbull asked.

      Obama smiled. “It’s complicated,” he said.

      Obama’s patience with Saudi Arabia has always been limited. In his first foreign-policy commentary of note, that 2002 speech at the antiwar rally in Chicago, he said, “You want a fight, President Bush? Let’s fight to make sure our so-called allies in the Middle East—the Saudis and the Egyptians—stop oppressing their own people, and suppressing dissent, and tolerating corruption and inequality.” In the White House these days, one occasionally hears Obama’s National Security Council officials pointedly reminding visitors that the large majority of 9/11 hijackers were not Iranian, but Saudi—and Obama himself rails against Saudi Arabia’s state-sanctioned misogyny, arguing in private that “a country cannot function in the modern world when it is repressing half of its population.” In meetings with foreign leaders, Obama has said, “You can gauge the success of a society by how it treats its women.”

      His frustration with the Saudis informs his analysis of Middle Eastern power politics. At one point I observed to him that he is less likely than previous presidents to axiomatically side with Saudi Arabia in its dispute with its archrival, Iran. He didn’t disagree.

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    • @souriyam
      Souriyâm

      Je pense, étant donné la densité et l’intérêt de cette interview qu’il pourrait être utile qu’un certain nombre de seen thissiens anglicisants et intéressés par le Proche-Orient et la géopolitique mondiale s’assignent la tâche d’en extraire les passages les plus dignes d’intérêt, de les résumer et de les commenter sous le tag #Obama_doctrine.
      Moon of Alabama a déjà fait un commentaire en s’intéressant au côté blanchiment qu’opère Obama de sa politique : ▻http://www.moonofalabama.org/2016/03/the-obama-doctrine-is-to-whitewash-his-foreign-policy.html

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  • @nidal
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    Why is Brookings Institution holding a secret panel to counter BDS?
    ▻http://mondoweiss.net/2015/12/brookings-institution-counter

    Last June, Haim Saban and Sheldon Adelson held a secret summit in Las Vegas to come up with ways of fighting the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions campaign on college campuses. They raised a reported $50 million to do so.

    Well now that secret process seems to have moved on to far more influential turf, to Washington, D.C., and a leading liberal thinktank: last week the Brookings Institution held a secret panel on BDS, sponsored by Haim Saban. By all appearances, the intent of the panel was to counter the BDS campaign.

    The panel took place during the weekend-long annual Saban Forum, which brings Israeli leaders and US leaders together to talk about “the future for Israelis and Palestinians”–without any Palestinians in attendance. The BDS panel was among many meetings December 4-6 not mentioned on the Saban Forum’s public agenda.

    On Saturday night, journalist Jeffrey Goldberg said at a public panel: “This morning at the BDS panel–” But he was promptly hushed.

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    Obama must end support for Israeli apartheid against Palestinian scholars
    4 septembre | Radhika Balakrishnan et al |Tribunes

    US President Barack Obama, in a recent interview with Jeffrey Goldberg in The Atlantic, reaffirmed his support and love for Israel because, as he claims, “it is a genuine democracy and you can express your opinions.”

    He further expressed his commitment to protecting Israel as a “Jewish state” by ensuring a “Jewish majority.”

    The US government’s support for the “Jewish state” has always been far more than rhetorical, backed by billions of dollars of military funding and consistent pro-Israel vetoes at the UN Security Council.

    We are a group of US-based academics, representing diverse ethnic, racial and cultural backgrounds, as well as a range of national origins, who recently visited Palestine. We were able to gain firsthand exposure to what Obama described in the interview as Israel’s “Jewish democracy” and to what kinds of infrastructure our tax dollars help to support — walls, checkpoints and modern weaponry.

    We had the privilege of traveling through part of the occupied Palestinian territories — the West Bank, including East Jerusalem — where we met with Palestinians.

    Double standards

    We feel compelled to share a few examples of what we witnessed during our visit with Palestinian scholars, policy makers, activists, artists and others working in the West Bank. We observed numerous double standards with regard to Palestinians’ rights that prompt us to question the claim that Israel is a genuine democracy.

    We believe that our government’s assertions that Israel is a democracy obscures the conditions it imposes on the Palestinian people through the occupation and beyond with conditions that amount to apartheid under settler colonialism.

    Our concerns began even before we arrived, as a search of the US State Department website for information about travel to Israel returned sobering results.

    The US government warns travelers to back up their computers because Israeli border control officials can erase anything at will. This indeed happened to one of us upon leaving Tel Aviv to return to the US.

    The site also warns travelers that their personal email or social media accounts may be searched, and so travelers “should have no expectation of privacy for any data stored on such devices or in their accounts.” Equipment may also be confiscated.

    The State Department further acknowledges that US citizens who are Muslim and/or of Palestinian or other Arab descent may have considerable trouble entering or exiting through Israeli-controlled frontiers. And this too happened to one of us who had mobile phone contacts searched immediately on entering Tel Aviv.

    Profiling

    Concerns in entering and exiting pale in comparison to the restrictions placed on US citizens of Palestinian origin, along with all other Palestinians who hold identification documents from the occupied West Bank and Gaza.

    Before traveling, most of us did not understand that for Palestinians under occupation, there are several types of identification and profiling and each comes with its own restrictions on mobility.

    Palestinians from Jerusalem have identification cards they must carry in a blue booklet while those living in the rest of the occupied West Bank hold an ID card in a green booklet, issued to them from the Palestinian Authority with the permission of the Israeli government.

    People possessing that identification generally cannot enter Jerusalem or present-day Israel without prior permission, even for a visa interview to attend an academic meeting in the US. Many people we met had only visited Jerusalem, home to many holy sites, once in their lives despite being mere minutes away by car.

    In the rest of the West Bank, a US citizen of Palestinian origin who wants to live there long term has to obtain a visa that says West Bank only. They are not allowed to travel in and out of the West Bank and are subject to the same checkpoints as other Palestinians. They cannot leave the occupied territories as a US citizen, as the State Department warns on its website.

    A Palestinian in the West Bank who holds US citizenship cannot simply catch a plane from Tel Aviv like any other US citizen simply because he or she is Palestinian and holds a Palestinian ID card. This fact is stamped into the US passport.

    They are not allowed to enter the checkpoints into Jerusalem or any other checkpoints as other people with a US passport can. This restriction is not at all applied to the Jewish settlers who are growing in number — thousands of them US citizens who are choosing to live in the occupied West Bank inside illegal settlements financed in part by US tax-exempt organizations.

    Academic freedom

    As scholars, among the many disturbing things we witnessed was the limited academic freedom and freedom of speech imposed on Palestinians (and many Israelis, whose travel in the West Bank is restricted) by the Israeli government.

    We learned that there is a prohibition on most books published in Syria, Iran and Lebanon even though Beirut is a central publishing hub of Arabic literary materials in the region. Regardless, banning books is, in our view, a profoundly anti-democratic act.

    Israel’s wall that surrounds the West Bank including Jerusalem — and which snakes deep inside the West Bank in many locations — also functions to limit academic freedom.

    One of the starkest examples is in Bethlehem, where the wall cuts through the city, making access to education at Bethlehem University very difficult for those who happen to be on the wrong side of the wall’s many twists and turns.

    Additionally, the Abu Dis campus of Al-Quds University is completely surrounded by the wall, making travel to and from the campus incredibly arduous despite it being in Jerusalem.

    An academic colleague described to us the difficulties she experiences getting to campus on a typical day. She must pass through roadblocks and endure searches and myriad forms of harassment by Israeli soldiers. In the West Bank, we were shocked to witness separate roads for Palestinians and Israelis based on the color of one’s license plate and identity card.

    In theory, these roads exist for the protection of Israeli settlers living on settlements built in the West Bank illegally according to international law. In practice, these roads create an apartheid travel system where Palestinians encounter several checkpoints on a given day, some of which may be mobile, unpredictably placed “flying checkpoints.”

    As our colleague explained to us, what used to be a very short trip between her village and the university now often takes more than an hour and a half and she is expected to cross through at least three checkpoints. She is often late to teach her classes and some days she is unable to make it to work or back home at all.

    Her students are often arrested and jailed using the legal cover of administrative detention — detention without charge or trial for an indefinite amount of time — for their participation in any political activities, or simply for being in the wrong place at the wrong time. We heard that this process is intensified at exam periods.

    This creates an extraordinarily stressful academic environment when on any given day Israeli soldiers might detain students and faculty who are simply traveling to class.

    Impunity

    We recognize every people’s desire to be secure — and Israel’s supporters will defend its policies and actions in the name of its national security. What we witnessed during our visit is that “security” was offered as a rationale for almost any troubling behavior or policy.

    What we witnessed was a slow but deliberate expansion of Israel’s occupation, increased settlements, the taking over of agricultural land and the spread of industrial parks in the West Bank including substantial parts of East Jerusalem — all in the name of “security.”

    The United States, as a settler colonial state with its own occupations, police violence, carceral injustice, de facto apartheid and its own brand of border brutality — certainly has its own failings as a democracy, failings we continue to address in our intellectual and political work.

    We thus claim no moral high ground. But an ethnocracy is not a democracy ; the State of Israel imposes violent domination of the Palestinian people through colonialism, occupation and apartheid — three prongs of brutal oppression that are the very antithesis of democracy.

    As academics, watching attempts to stifle criticism of Israel — as in the case of our colleague, Professor Steven Salaita — and visiting the West Bank has prompted us to speak out publicly about Israel’s injustices. Doing so is imperative.

    We implore President Obama to reconsider his rhetoric and policies — and budget appropriations — that support Israel with impunity.

    Radhika Balakrishnan is professor of Women’s and Gender Studies at Rutgers University.

    Karma R. Chávez is associate professor of Communication Arts at the University of Wisconsin, Madison.

    Ira Dworkin is assistant professor of English at Texas A&M University.

    Erica Caple James is associate professor of Anthropology at Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

    J. Kēhaulani Kauanui is associate professor of American Studies and Anthropology at Wesleyan University.

    Doug Kiel is assistant professor of American Studies at Williams College.

    Barbara Lewis is associate professor of English at the University of Massachusetts, Boston.

    Soraya Mekerta is director of the African Diaspora and the World Program, and associate professor of French and Francophone Studies at Spelman College.

    ▻http://www.aurdip.fr/obama-must-end-support-for-israeli.html

    L’AURDIP (Association des Universitaires pour le Respect du Droit International en Palestine) est une organisation française d’universitaires créée en liaison avec la Campagne Palestinienne pour le Boycott Académique et Culturel d’Israël PACBI et avec l’organisation britannique BRICUP.

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    Obama: Like Israelis, Palestinians have right to be free on their land | By Haaretz| May 22, 2015
    ▻http://www.haaretz.com/jewish-world/jewish-world-news/1.657739

    In a speech at Adas Israel synagogue in Washington, president reaffirms ’unshakeable’ commitment to Israel’s security, but says two-state solution is the way to safeguard it.
    (...)

    Obama’s visit comes a day after he gave an extensive interview to The Atlantic, in which he talked about the new Israeli government, his relations with the American Jewish community and U.S. support for Israel.

    Obama told Jeffrey Goldberg that despite the confrontations with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu over the past number of years, most of the American Jewish community still voted for him in the 2012 presidential election.

    “What I also think is that there has been a very concerted effort on the part of some political forces to equate being pro-Israel, and hence being supportive of the Jewish people, with a rubber stamp on a particular set of policies coming out of the Israeli government,” he said. “So if you are questioning settlement policy, that indicates you’re anti-Israeli, or that indicates you’re anti-Jewish. If you express compassion or empathy towards Palestinian youth, who are dealing with checkpoints or restrictions on their ability to travel, then you are suspect in terms of your support of Israel. If you are willing to get into public disagreements with the Israeli government, then the notion is that you are being anti-Israel, and by extension, anti-Jewish. I completely reject that.”

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    Obama Met Privately With Top Journalists Before ISIS War Speech
    ▻http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/09/13/obama-journalists-isis-speech_n_5816494.html?1410651263

    NEW YORK –- President Barack Obama met with over a dozen prominent columnists and magazine writers Wednesday afternoon before calling for an escalation of the war against the Islamic State, or ISIS, in a primetime address that same night.

    The group, which met in the Roosevelt Room of the White House in an off-the-record session, included New York Times columnists #David_Brooks, #Tom_Friedman and #Frank_Bruni and editorial writer #Carol_Giacomo; The Washington Post’s #David_Ignatius, #Eugene_Robinson and #Ruth_Marcus; The New Yorker’s #Dexter_Filkins and #George_Packer; The Atlantic’s #Jeffrey_Goldberg and #Peter_Beinart; The New Republic’s #Julia_Ioffe; #Columbia_Journalism_School Dean #Steve_Coll; The Wall Street Journal’s #Jerry_Seib; and The Daily Beast’s #Michael_Tomasky, a source familiar with the meeting told The Huffington Post.

    National Security Advisor Susan Rice, Deputy National Security Advisor Ben Rhodes and White House Chief of Staff Denis McDonough also attended the meeting, according to the source.

    Kassem CC BY-NC-SA
    • @kassem
      Kassem CC BY-NC-SA

      Off-the-Record Session With the President on ISIS Raises Concerns
      By MARGARET SULLIVAN SEPTEMBER 17, 2014 3:15 PMSeptember 17, 2014 4:03 pm 3 Comments
      ▻http://publiceditor.blogs.nytimes.com/2014/09/17/off-the-record-session-with-the-president-on-isis-raises

      Tom English of Jackson Heights wrote, “to me, it really looks like the meeting was held to run talking/propaganda points by the media to see how best to sell the war.” Judith Abrams of Newton, Mass., asked, “how can I have confidence in the reporting in the Times when the government and the journalists appear to have such a symbiotic relationship?” And Eric Kodish, chairman of the bioethics department at the Cleveland Clinic, wondered about the ethics of using information from those who were not supposed to talk about what they had heard.

      (...)

      As I noted above, Mr. Obama didn’t invent these off-the-record sessions, not by a long shot. But such meetings shouldn’t be a substitute for allowing news reporters, on behalf of the public, to grill the president on the record – especially on a subject as weighty and important as impending military action. But increasingly, they seem to be just that. Readers are right to be troubled about the implications.

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    Iran Is Playing Obama, Says Savvy Saudi Prince - Bloomberg
    ►http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2013-11-22/iran-is-playing-obama-says-savvy-saudi-prince.html

    Walid Ben Talal (d’après Jeffrey Goldberg):

    “Look, Iran is a huge threat, historically speaking," he said. "The Persian empire was always against the Muslim Arabes empire, especially against the Sunnis. The threat is from Persia, not from Israel.

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    Islamist Threat Constrains Jordan’s Syria Policy - Al-Monitor: the Pulse of the Middle East

    ▻http://www.al-monitor.com/pulse/originals/2013/05/jordan-islamists-syria-civil-war.html

    King Abdullah II is no longer hiding his worries about the fate of post-Assad Syria and the danger of it falling into the hands of Islamists, specifically the Muslim Brotherhood, the king’s discomfort toward whom is locally and regionally well known. American journalist Jeffrey Goldberg wrote in The Atlantic, quoting the Jordanian monarch’s criticism of Egyptian President Mohammed Morsi and Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan, who are brought together by a background of political Islam. Despite the king’s position stemming from foreign concerns, it also figures into the domestic equation.

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    Jordanian king: Ties with Netanyahu very strong, may be too late for two-state solution - Diplomacy & Defense - Israel News | Haaretz Daily Newspaper
    ▻http://www.haaretz.com/news/diplomacy-defense/jordanian-king-ties-with-netanyahu-very-strong-may-be-too-late-for-two-stat

    Jordanian King Abdullah II has said that his relationship with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has improved and that the latter has contributed to the stability of the Hashemite government, in an interview with The Atlantic’s Jeffrey Goldberg published Tuesday.

    Abdullah would not give details to Goldberg about the nature of his relationship with Netanyahu, whom he has met with repeatedly recently, saying only that it was “very strong. Our discussions have really improved.”

    The Jordanian king stressed in his interview with Goldberg that his country’s peace treaty with Israel was a “red line” that must not be crossed by any successive government in Amman: “I don’t want a government to come in and say, ’We repudiate the peace treaty with Israel.’"

    The king’s remarks to Goldberg come after years of tension with Netanyahu. The two met only twice in the first three years of Netanyahu’s recent tenure. Over the last three months, however, Netanyahu has met Abdullah in Amman at least twice to discuss the crisis in Syria and the stalled peace process with the Palestinians.

    Neither of those recent meetings were publicized in Israel, and emerged in Arab media only days after they occurred.

    Goldberg reported in December that Israel had asked Jordan at least twice for a green light to attack chemical weapons facilities in Syria. Netanyahu sent representatives of the Mossad intelligence agency to Amman twice already, to coordinate the matter with the Jordanians and receive their “permission” for the operation, Goldberg wrote.

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    Rise of the Annexers - By Larry Derfner | Foreign Policy

    Signalé par Charles Enderlin

    ▻http://www.foreignpolicy.com/articles/2013/01/18/israel_election_benjamin_netanyahu_naftali_bennett?fb_action_ids=1015

    BY LARRY DERFNER | JANUARY 18, 2013

    JERUSALEM — The top story in the Israeli media right now is Barack Obama’s blunt warning, transmitted through American journalist Jeffrey Goldberg, to the Israeli political class. “Israel doesn’t know what its own best interests are,” the U.S. president has said repeatedly, warning that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s unyielding stance toward the Palestinians was leading the country toward suicidal isolation.

    With an election less than a week away, it’s safe to say that Israelis disagree. The most ubiquitous campaign banners on billboards and highways are Netanyahu’s “A strong prime minister means a strong Israel” and rising star Naftali Bennett’s “No to a Palestinian state, yes to The Jewish Home,” which is the name of Bennett’s extreme right-wing party.

    #israël #palestine #colonisation #annexion

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  • @nidal
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    On the Middle East : What we’re reading | The Economist
    ►http://www.economist.com/blogs/newsbook/2011/07/middle-east?fsrc=scn/tw/te/bl/whatwerereading

    The second piece, from Jeffrey Goldberg over at The Atlantic, reflects the outrage sweeping liberal circles both inside Israel and in the Jewish diaspora over the passage in the Knesset last week of an “anti-boycott law”. This measure, extraordinary given Israel’s history of free speech and constitutional protections, outlaws any call to boycott the settlements on the West Bank. Since these settlements are at the centre of the Israeli political divide (and the Israeli-Palestinian conflict), the law in effect seeks to silence opposition to the central thrust of the government’s policy. Mr Netnyahu, who was “paired” in the vote on the law, appeared in the Knesset two days later declaring proudly that he had backed the bill in the behind-the-scenes deliberations and that, indeed, without his backing it would not have passed. The Forward, a liberal Jewish paper, also comments on the subject with an amusing editorial protesting the new boycott law as an attack on basic rights of free speech.

    @baroug a aussi noté :
    ►http://seenthis.net/messages/28292

    L’affaire démontre assez bien ce qu’est un « sioniste de gauche » :
    – Israël emprisonne, bombarde, flingue, massacre, toute l’année, des enfants, des femmes et des hommes arabes (surtout palestiniens, mais pas que), en toute impunité ; et autres crimes internationaux ;
    – mais il suffit qu’Israël limite la « liberté d’expression » des juifs israéliens pour que les hypocrites se mobilisent.

    Nidal CC BY
    • @baroug
      baroug

      Ce sont des critiques US, et j’ai l’impression que la « liberté d’expression » à l’américaine fait partie des totems sacrés, surtout (Mais à The Atlantic ils sont supposés être libéraux ?)

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    An Important Irony in the Bin Laden Story - Jeffrey Goldberg - International - The Atlantic
    ►http://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2011/05/an-important-irony-in-the-bin-laden-story/238131

    Intelligence officials have said for some time that one of the difficulties in capturing Osama bin Laden was that he was off the communications grid, that he would not get on the phone, that he only spoke to his organization through couriers. This made it difficult, of course, to zero-in on his location. But suspicions were raised by the mansion in which Bin Laden lived precisely because it received no Internet or phone service, a strange circumstance for a million-dollar home in a relatively-advanced city.

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    C’est pas souvent que les néocons et les israéliens sont pas d’accord…

    The #Neocons Split with #Israel Over #Egypt - Jeffrey Goldberg - International - The Atlantic
    ►http://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2011/02/the-neocons-split-with-israel-over-egypt/70636

    Well, this is interesting. The neoconservative (or liberal interventionist) wing of American Jewish political thought (not that all neocons are Jewish, God forbid anyone should think that!) is cheering on the revolution in Egypt, while the Israeli government, and much of Israel’s pundit class, is seeing the apocalypse in Mubarak’s apparent downfall.

    baroug
    • @nidal
      Nidal CC BY

      La (grosse) difficulté d’un tel article, c’est qu’il se base sur des déclarations pour conclure qu’ils ne sont pas d’accord. Or :
      – le gouvernement israélien ment ; c’est pathologique ;
      – les néocons mentent ; c’est pathologique.

      Les deux ont même un talent exceptionnel : mentir ouvertement de façon à limiter le « débat » à un mensonge tellement gros qu’il permet de circonscrire le débat à ce seul mensonge.

      Exemple historique : l’Irak a-t-elle déjà des armes de destruction massive, ou est-elle seulement en train d’essayer de s’en procurer ? (La réponse « il n’y a pas de WMD et il n’essaie pas de s’en procurer » étant disqualifiée par le simple fait que le débat est déjà balisé par la formulation de la question.)

      Les Israéliens crient au loup islamiste ? Mais évidemment. Et ils n’ont pas besoin d’y croire, ni de croire que c’est mauvais pour eux, ni encore de croire que c’est leur propre politique qui fabrique la situation. Ils ont toujours eu intérêt à promouvoir la théorie de la catastrophe (Hamas veut jeter les juifs à la mer, Hezbollah va envahir Israël, l’Iran a déjà promis de faire disparaître Israël à coup d’armes atomiques...) :
      – usage interne, politique de la peur,
      – usage levée de fonds : Chomsky a déjà raconté comment les périodes de « tension » permettent des levées de fond aux États-Unis en faveur d’Israël absolument stupéfiantes ;
      – usage pression diplomatique : les « occidentaux » vont tout faire pour « rassurer » leur partenaire israélien, même si les « craintes » sont irrationnelles ; par définition, on essaie toujours de rassurer un malade mental doté d’un gros pouvoir de nuisance ; donc concessions supplémentaires ;
      – usage alibi : qui se souvient actuellement que le gouvernement israélien est à tendance fascistoïde avec notamment un ministre des affaires étrangères raciste, xénophone et dangereux ?

      En clair : quoi qu’ils pensent réellement, les israéliens n’ont rigoureusement aucune raison de ne pas communiquer largement sur leurs craintes d’un « scénario à l’iranienne ». De leur part, ça serait même idiot de s’en priver (tellement ça marche bien : 3 articles le même jour sur le sujet sur le site du Monde).

      Quant aux néocons, juste remarquer qu’il est facile de prétendre « promouvoir la démocratie » quand ils ne sont pas directement au pouvoir : dans la pratique, la dernière fois qu’ils ont promu la démocratie en Irak (et libéré les femmes en Afghanistan), tout le monde a compris ce que ça signifiait vraiment.

      Nidal CC BY
    • @baroug
      baroug

      Tout ce que tu dis est vrai, mais je pense que dans le cas d’espèce, il y a un réel désaccord. Les néocons pensent vraiment que la "démocratie" (après on peut discuter de ce qu’ils entendent par là) sont favorable au libéralisme et à long terme aux intérêts américains ; les israéliens préfèrent rester (ou prétendre être) « LA » démocratie du proche-orient et ont raison de penser que les dictature sont plus susceptibles de signer des accords qui leur sont favorables sous pressions américaines.

      Et au final, les néocons ont une vision du monde hallucinante, mais ils ne mentent pas tant que ça. Ils l’ont effectivement fait dans le cas des WDM, mais déjà à cette époque, quand on lisait le weekly standart ou L’American entreprise institute, les mecs disaient que les WDM c’était secondaire et que ce qu’il fallait c’était faire tomber Saddam, point final. Non, globalement, ils sont dangereux, mais plutôt honnêtes.

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  • @nidal
    Nidal CC BY

    Jeffrey Goldberg’s innuendo belied by history
    ►http://www.hybridstates.com/2011/01/jeffrey-goldbergs-innuendo-belied-by-history

    There is no doubt that conspiracy theories loom large in the Middle East [...], but Goldberg’s big problem is that in order to make his point he so often has to ignore: (1) reality, (2) counter-evidence (like here), or (3) meaningful complexities that render his ideological hack jobs less clear than he seems to believe.

    In recent blog posts titled “The Mossad Did It”, he implies that believing Mossad would bomb targets in Egypt in order to raise ethnic tension is so far afield that only an anti-Semite could possibly believe it. But of course, the historical record is filled with examples of precisely this thing, of which the Lavon Affair was one of the most famous. In 1954, Israel was worried about Egypt’s relatively strong relationship with the US, and so decided to bomb American and British targets in Egypt and try to undermine the US-Egyptian relationship. Of course, the whole psychotic effort failed miserably, earning the euphemism “The Unfortunate Affair”, but not due to lack of effort or intention.

    Given such an ugly history, Goldberg’s innuendos speak only of his ignorance and ideological attachments, not anti-Semitism.

    #Israël #Égypte #Lavon

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