Saturday, October 31, 2009

Bill Moyers bought?

Subsequent to Bill Moyer's interview with Judge Goldstone, his blog erupted with criticism of perceived pro-Israel bias.

Personally I was inclined to allow Bill the benefit of the doubt and assume he was acting devil's advocate, an acceptable journalistic technique. This despite my unease that he had neglected to mention the truce that Hamas had observed (despite the Israeli blockade and continued hostility):

The debate on Bill's blog soon became a troll-fest with the usual memes being trotted out. In response to one particularly offensive poster, I wrote a rebuttal of an entry maligning the activities of the Mufti - an evergreen and (in my view unsupported) theme of the hasbara. The site did not post it. I tried again a few days later and found the post blocked again.
Here is what I wrote:

Despite the fact that I do not condone the slanging match that this conversation has become, I cannot let phil's smear of Husseini go unchallenged. It is, at the least, a contested issue and probably historically inaccurate. The accusations against the Mufti stem from the evidence of one Dieter Wisliceny:

"Hannah Arendt, who attended the complete Eichmann trial, concluded in her book Eichmann in Jerusalem: A Report on the Banality of Evil that, "The trial revealed only that all rumours about Eichmann's connection with Haj Amin el Husseini, the former Mufti of Jerusalem, were unfounded."[124] Rafael Medoff concludes that "actually there is no evidence that the Mufti's presence was a factor at all; the Wisliceny hearsay is not merely uncorroborated, but conflicts with everything else that is known about the origins of the Final Solution."[125] Bernard Lewis also called Wisliceny's testimony into doubt: "There is no independent documentary confirmation of Wisliceny's statements, and it seems unlikely that the Nazis needed any such additional encouragement from the outside."[126]"
-Wikipedia.

The simple fact is that Husseini, facing arrest by the British, took sanctuary with Britain's enemy and continued resistance to Zionism from there. Lenni Brenner has this to say:

"The Mufti gained nothing, then or later, from his collaboration with either Rome or Berlin, nor could the Palestinian interest ever have been served by the two dictators.... The Mufti was an incompetent reactionary who was driven into his anti-Semitism by the Zionists. It was Zionism itself, in its blatant attempt to turn Palestine from an Arab land into a Jewish state, and then use it for the yet further exploitation of the Arab nation, that generated Palestinian Jew-hatred."
(Chapter 8, Zionism in the Age of the Dictators.)

The Germans had a dollar each way. On one hand, they accomodated Husseini but they also encouraged Zionism - even setting up training farms for Jews to fit them for emigration to Israel.
See:
http://muse.jhu.edu/login?uri=/journals/holocaust_and_genocide_studies/v019/19.3nicosia.html
http://www1.yadvashem.org/yv/en/exhibitions/this_month/september/05.asp

Hannah Arendt (Eichmann in Jerusalem, pp. 59-61.) says this:
"Of greater importance for Eichmann were the emissaries from Palestine, who would approach the Gestapo and the S.S. on their own initiative, without taking orders from either the German Zionists or the Jewish Agency for Palestine. They came in order to enlist help for the illegal immigration of Jews into British-ruled Palestine, and both the Gestapo and the S.S were helpful.
They negotiated with Eichmann in Vienna, and they reported that he was ‘polite’, ‘not the shouting type’, and that he even provided them with farms and facilities for setting up vocational training camps for prospective immigrants. (‘On one occasion, he expelled a group of nuns from a convent to provide a training farm for young Jews’, and on another ‘a special train was made available and Nazi officials accompanied’ a group of emigrants, ostensibly headed for Zionist training farms in Yugoslavia, to see them safely across the border.) "

Here is an extract from the offer made to Germany by, among others, Yitzak Shamir:

"The solving in this manner of the Jewish problem, thus bringing with it once and for all the liberation of the Jewish people, is the objective of the political activity and the years-long struggle of the Israeli freedom movement, the National Military Organization (Irgun Zvai Leumi) in Palestine.

The NMO, which is well-acquainted with the goodwill of the German Reich government and its authorities towards Zionist activity inside Germany and towards Zionist emigration plans, is of the opinion that:

1. Common interests could exist between the establishment of a new order in Europe in conformity with the German concept, and the true national aspirations of the Jewish people as they are embodied by the NMO.
2. Cooperation between the new Germany and a renewed folkish-national Hebraium would be possible and,
3. The establishment of the historic Jewish state on a national and totalitarian basis, 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.

Proceeding from these considerations, the NMO in Palestine, under the condition the above-mentioned national aspirations of the Israeli freedom movement are recognized on the side of the German Reich, offers to actively lake part in the war on Germany’s side."
Lenni Brenner: The Iron Wall. Appendix II.

I invite Bill or his gatekeeper to explain what is objectionable about this post.

10 comments:

ChasE said...

I'm one of those "trolls" you mention. In order to fight an offensive foe like a pro-Israeli shill, one must take off the gloves and hit just as hard, if not harder, with facts, facts that put your opponent on the ropes. If you noticed on that board, the pro-Israeli trolls (no doubt paid for by the Israeli ministry) tried to deflect attention away from the charges of the Goldstone report by shouting anti-semitism, invoking the holocaust, and pointing fingers in the direction of others who have violated others' lands, ie. settlers stealing land from the Native Americans. Using this as a means to justify their own actions as being acceptable. You need to get dirty with dirty people. Santizing it and sugar coating it doesn't work. Their arguments folded, and they discontinued with their posts.

Brewerstroupe said...

Thanks for the post Chas. I agree with everything up to the "get dirty" technique.
There are so many facts in the historical record now that Historians like Shlaim, Pappe, Shlomo Sand etc have published that it is not necessary to descend to the level of most Israeli trolls.

I have never seen an Israel-booster ever concede even one small point so, when I engage them, my object is not to "win", it is to inform other readers and direct them to credible sources that debunk the old myths.
If I can inspire a reader or two to investigate further, the historical record will do the rest because, stripped of the hasbara-inspired myths, Zionism is exposed for what it is, a plain old-fashioned racist/colonialist enterprise dedicated to the elimination of indigenous land rights.

Anonymous said...

I was glad to read that I am not the only one who has figured out the Bill Moyers is a true left gatekeeper, one of the very smoothest. I had stopped watching his program after he made a comment how "Israel is our great alli" but my husband turned this on the night he did the Goldstone interview. The more I listened to Moyers the sicker I felt. I also figured out Democracy Now about a year ago, another left gatekeeper, in my opinion.

Anonymous said...

I'm ever amazed that from fairly intelligent people comes the "I never realized until recently" line. WTF!
I'm just a high school graduate and I've "realized" for oh, about 45 years now. Long about the time I figured out how to tie my shoes.

Here's another thing I've realized, a great quote from a friend of mine....

"when you have usury, who needs alchemy"

Brewerstroupe said...

I have referenced Hannah Arendt, (Eichmann in Jerusalem: A Report on the Banality of Evil) in the piece above.
By coincidence, an article just appeared in Slate Magazine:
http://www.slate.com/id/2234010/
... in which "Ron Rosenbaum" purports to show that Arendt became so deeply immersed in the philosophy of Heidegger and her research that she became tainted with Nazi ideology.

The article is a farcical hit piece piggy-backing on something "the distinguished British scholar Bernard Wasserstein" wrote in the Times Literary Supplement.

It seems that Hannah Arendt is no longer sufficiently rigorous in her depiction of Jewish victimhood and German guilt.

ChasE said...

If you go back and look on the Moyers website, you will see "Phil" cite examples of Jewish superiority, yet he still has not offered any explanation why Jews are expelled from every where they go.

Never again, unless you are Palestinian.

hANOVER fIST said...

I posit that Israel's spying efforts are not relegated only to embassies and government offices; rather, they are spying on business efforts and innovations. Just as PROMIS was used to backdoor into every intelligence agecy in the world, and CALEA used to wiretap the law enforcement agencies, the JIZ (go to xymphora for this acronym) steal intellectual properties from others and tout them as their own. I discussed this with the tools on a site called CounterKnowledge, but as you yourself said, the zombies won't budge a micrometer; faced with irrefutable facts, they deal in sophistry.

Of course...my constant haranguing of these nimrods only exposed the flimsiness of their platform, and I'm glad to do so.

Good blog...thought, in accordance with the filthy Talmud, that last line should read, "Never again...unless you are GOYIM."

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