Responding to 'The Atlantic' Smear on Mondoweiss

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Jul 23, 2012 Israel
[Image from mondoweiss.net] [Image from mondoweiss.net]

Responding to "The Atlantic" Smear on Mondoweiss

By : Alex Kane, Adam Horowtiz, and Philip Weiss

Armin Rosen`s attack on Mondoweiss on the Atlantic website is about nothing more than policing the discourse on Israel. Rosen’s article on alleged anti-Semitism is a shoddy attempt at smearing Alex Kane, Mondoweiss and Peter Beinart. It was sparked by the fact that a mainstream publication, The Daily Beast(on Beinart’s Open Zion blog), had the audacity to publish two articles by Alex that speak in favor of the boycott, divestment and sanctions movement. 

Rosen argues The Daily Beast should never publish someone associated with Mondoweiss (or, we`re sure, with the Electronic Intifada, or any other website that pushes the boundaries of our lacking discourse on the Middle East). Why? Because Mondoweiss "often gives the appearance of an anti-Semitic enterprise," and thus "by vilifying and dehumanizing one side of the conflict, the poison of anti-Semitism makes a constructive, forward-looking discourse far more difficult to achieve." This coming from someone who defended the term "Islamo-facism." Usually we’d ignore the kind of shallow and unsubstantiated attack on this website, but the piece appeared in the Atlantic, and Rosen is an Atlantic fellow, so we will meet fire from this quarter with a strong defense.

On Twitter, Rosen promised the "definitive bitch-smacking of Mondoweiss." You’d think that in order to characterize someone as anti-Semitic (which is actually a libelous accusation, when unsupported), you’d have to really bring the goods. Here are Rosen’s charges as to why Alex Kane should not be published by The Daily Beast:

  • Phil Weiss wrote an article for the American Conservative which has been associated with Pat Buchanan 
  • Phil Weiss writes about the Israel Lobby
  • Mondoweiss published a piece from Refaat Alareer a writer in Gaza that questioned the role the Israeli government could have played in the death of Vittorio Arrigoni
  • Mondoweiss published a piece by Max Ajl which puts the deaths of the Fogel family in the Itamar settlement in the context of the violence of the occupation
  • Mondoweiss published a piece by Jack Ross (who Rosen implies is a Holocaust denying Nazi sympathizer)
  • Mondoweiss claims "Iran has never officially denied the Holocaust," which Rosen admits is factually true
  • Phil Weiss writes about the role of American Jews in the establishment

Notice any criticism of Alex? No? Well, Rosen still holds Alex responsible because "publicly he does not challenge the site`s lunacy." If that is not the epitome of  McCarthyite guilt by association, then we don`t know what it. 

This isn`t the first time Rosen has offered himself as an attack dog. He distinguished himself during his time in a joint Jewish Theological Seminary/Columbia University program by being an especially shrill voice in the campaigns to deny Joseph Massad tenure at Columbia  Although Massad was far from the only professor Rosen disapproved of. He also had issues with Mahmoud Mamdani and Hamid Dabashi -- notice a trend?

Rosen’s conduct toward Massad is similar to his conduct with us. He’s namecalling in an effort to establish a redline in the discourse. He doesn’t want our voices granted any legitimacy. And the reason is obvious. We are unremitting critics of what Israel looks like today and what Zionism had produced for Palestine, the US and American Jewish life; and because Americans are opening themselves up to these ideas, we are getting more attention from the mainstream. Rosen is doing his utmost to shut the door on us. 

Alex Kane`s work stands on its own. While Rosen admits he is not responsible for what other people write, his entire article is based on that very premise. He should actually take the time to read Alex`s work--in The Daily Beast, in Mondoweiss and in other publications. Alex has an extensive record by now of writing on this issue, and anyone who wants to show that he`s an “anti-Semite” has material to comb through. But there’s nothing anti-Semitic about his work.

Ultimately, this is not about Alex or Mondoweiss. It is about the larger issue of policing the discourse on Israel in this country. It is about the routine use of smears to discredit your opposition. It is about the tired use of the word “anti-Semitism” to shut down debate over Israel--a use that has cheapened that word to mean “anyone who critiques Israel.” And as for Rosen`s issue with Phil`s examination of Jewish privilege, read Marc Ellis’s meditation on Jewish empowerment, or Liz Shulman on the issue of male Jewish privilege, or Avraham Burg on Jewish wealth and access and of course Peter Beinart who grounds his critique in the admission "we live in an age not of Jewish weakness, but of Jewish power." We live in an unprecedented moment of Jewish history; our intellectuals, and not just Jewish ones, have a right and responsibility to reflect on these questions.

[This response was originally published on Mondoweiss on 16 July 2012.]
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Feb 16, 2011 Lebanon
Jadaliyya Reports By :
Jadaliyya Reports

Past is Present: Settler Colonialism Matters!

On 5-6 March 2011, the Palestine Society at the School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS) in London will hold its seventh annual conference, "Past is Present: Settler Colonialism in Palestine." This year`s conference aims to understand Zionism as a settler colonial project which has, for more than a century, subjected Palestine and Palestinians to a structural and violent form of destruction, dispossession, land appropriation and erasure in the pursuit of a new Jewish Israeli society. By organizing this conference, we hope to reclaim and revive the settler colonial paradigm and to outline its potential to inform and guide political strategy and mobilization.

The Israeli-Palestinian conflict is often described as unique and exceptional with little resemblance to other historical or ongoing colonial conflicts. Yet, for Zionism, like other settler colonial projects such as the British colonization of Ireland or European settlement of North America, South Africa or Australia, the imperative is to control the land and its resources -- and to displace the original inhabitants. Indeed, as conference keynote speaker Patrick Wolfe, one of the foremost scholars on settler colonialism and professor at La Trobe University in Victoria, Australia, argues, "the logic of this project, a sustained institutional tendency to eliminate the Indigenous population, informs a range of historical practices that might otherwise appear distinct--invasion is a structure not an event."[i]

Therefore, the classification of the Zionist movement as a settler colonial project, and the Israeli state as its manifestation, is not merely intended as a statement on the historical origins of Israel, nor as a rhetorical or polemical device. Rather, the aim is to highlight Zionism`s structural continuities and the ideology which informs Israeli policies and practices in Palestine and toward Palestinians everywhere. Thus, the Nakba -- whether viewed as a spontaneous, violent episode in war, or the implementation of a preconceived master plan -- should be understood as both the precondition for the creation of Israel and the logical outcome of Zionist settlement in Palestine.

Moreover, it is this same logic that sustains the continuation of the Nakba today. As remarked by Benny Morris, “had he [David Ben Gurion] carried out full expulsion--rather than partial--he would have stabilised the State of Israel for generations.”[ii] Yet, plagued by an “instability”--defined by the very existence of the Palestinian nation--Israel continues its daily state practices in its quest to fulfill Zionism’s logic to maximize the amount of land under its control with the minimum number of Palestinians on it. These practices take a painful array of manifestations: aerial and maritime bombardment, massacre and invasion, house demolitions, land theft, identity card confiscation, racist laws and loyalty tests, the wall, the siege on Gaza, cultural appropriation, and the dependence on willing (or unwilling) native collaboration and security arrangements, all with the continued support and backing of imperial power. 

Despite these enduring practices however, the settler colonial paradigm has largely fallen into disuse. As a paradigm, it once served as a primary ideological and political framework for all Palestinian political factions and trends, and informed the intellectual work of committed academics and revolutionary scholars, both Palestinians and Jews.

The conference thus asks where and why the settler colonial paradigm was lost, both in scholarship on Palestine and in politics; how do current analyses and theoretical trends that have arisen in its place address present and historical realities? While acknowledging the creativity of these new interpretations, we must nonetheless ask: when exactly did Palestinian natives find themselves in a "post-colonial" condition? When did the ongoing struggle over land become a "post-conflict" situation? When did Israel become a "post-Zionist" society? And when did the fortification of Palestinian ghettos and reservations become "state-building"?

In outlining settler colonialism as a central paradigm from which to understand Palestine, this conference re-invigorates it as a tool by which to analyze the present situation. In doing so, it contests solutions which accommodate Zionism, and more significantly, builds settler colonialism as a political analysis that can embolden and inform a strategy of active, mutual, and principled Palestinian alignment with the Arab struggle for self-determination, and indigenous struggles in the US, Latin America, Oceania, and elsewhere.

Such an alignment would expand the tools available to Palestinians and their solidarity movement, and reconnect the struggle to its own history of anti-colonial internationalism. At its core, this internationalism asserts that the Palestinian struggle against Zionist settler colonialism can only be won when it is embedded within, and empowered by, the broader Arab movement for emancipation and the indigenous, anti-racist and anti-colonial movement--from Arizona to Auckland.

SOAS Palestine Society invites everyone to join us at what promises to be a significant intervention in Palestine activism and scholarship.

For over 30 years, SOAS Palestine Society has heightened awareness and understanding of the Palestinian people, their rights, culture, and struggle for self-determination, amongst students, faculty, staff, and the broader public. SOAS Palestine society aims to continuously push the frontiers of discourse in an effort to make provocative arguments and to stimulate debate and organizing for justice in Palestine through relevant conferences, and events ranging from the intellectual and political impact of Edward Said`s life and work (2004), international law and the Palestine question (2005), the economy of Palestine and its occupation (2006), the one state (2007), 60 Years of Nakba, 60 Years of Resistance (2009), and most recently, the Left in Palestine (2010).

For more information on the SOAS Palestine Society 7th annual conference, Past is Present: Settler Colonialism in Palestine: www.soaspalsoc.org

SOAS Palestine Society Organizing Collective is a group of committed students that has undertaken to organize annual academic conferences on Palestine since 2003.

 

[i] Patrick Wolfe, Settler Colonialism and the Transformation of Anthropology: The Politics and Poetics of an Ethnographic Event, Cassell, London, p. 163

[ii] Interview with Benny Morris, Survival of the Fittest, Haaretz, 9. January 2004, http://cosmos.ucc.ie/cs1064/jabowen/IPSC/php/art.php?aid=5412