"In the Gaza case, we can do everything about it, since we're responsible for it, we can stop it, tomorrow." --- Noam Chomsky-MIT-University of Arizona
Started with an open mind. No patience for his approach. Underneath, he is a sweet talking Zionist who believes Israel is legitimate. It is not, period, and belongs to Palestinians in the eyes of the world and by historical evidence.
I understand why someone might say that Israel is not legitimate. It’s something like what might happen if a Mohawk told me my house was not legitimately sited because I have no legitimate right to live here without her welcome. Of course, the analogy would be better if it was 1640 and the ratio of indigenous peoples to English speakers were less lopsided. The analogy is still not perfect because in the case of New England, we know what happened. One of the peoples with a claim to what Europeans called “land rights” was pretty much exterminated. This is the fear, the reason crushing FEAR of both sides in Israel Palestine.
If the world (and it will take the international community including much of the Jewish diaspora) does not insist that both Israelis and Palestinians have an equally valid claim to live between the river and the sea and practice whatever religion they choose, the result could be catastrophic (not only for both parties there, but for the world). This means marginalizing the extremists on both sides. It means accepting responsibility for the terrorism, war crimes, and crimes against humanity that have been committed by both sides. It also means that Israel must accept responsibility for how its terrorism, war crimes, and crimes against humanity have metastasized into an ongoing genocide. And… there’s the rub!
The rub is that Israel is conducting a campaign of genocide out of fear (a legitimate fear, by the way) that they will once again be victims of a concerted program of genocide. This is why it is so unhelpful to say that Israel is not legitimate. If Israel is not legitimate, what does that mean for all the Jews living there? What you may well MEAN to say is that Israel as a state that makes Arabs second class citizens is both not legitimate and impossible to sustain. But that is more difficult to say and almost as difficult for many accept because even if they might agree in principle, they are deathly fearful of how it could work out in practice. Israelis and Palestinians can never work this out on their own. Unfortunately, the US has been very irresponsible regarding this situation since 1948, especially since 1967, indefensibly since 10/7, and insanely since Trump reoccupied the White House.
As private citizens we need to try to be more responsible with our rhetoric and recognize that what may seem either reasonable (or at least to be justified outrage) to us is incendiary to a traumatized swath of humanity and catnip to those who want to throw crude oil on the flames.
Legitimate fear is poppycock. The Jewish state gins up fear and exaggerates the threats to justify their rapacious ethnic cleansing snd genocide. It's all about greed and taking other people's property, and let's be honest, Jews from Europe have been stealing property from Palestinians for decades and continue to do it. Ethnic cleansing is always about greed whether the perpetrators wave religious, national, or in the case of Israel, victimhood flags. It's not as if Nazis didn't steal from the people they targeted for genocide, right?
Using antisemitic language ONLY plays into the hands of illegitimate forms of Zionism that is now subsumed in genocidal international fascism. Keep in mind that no one here is saying Jews should be expelled from Palestine which is about as unrealistic and immoral as saying English speakers should be expelled from North America. I was raised as a Catholic and was taught early on that Hitler had been also. Nobody ever says that a Catholic inspired the murder of six million Jews. Why not? (People don’t say that because it would be offensive or hurtful to Catholics. They don’t say it because there is no similar history of hostility and vilification of Jews, normalized by millennia of tradition and centuries of atrocity.)
I don’t think any person is a racist or an antisemite unless they want to overtly proclaim themselves so. Self avowed racists and anti-semites (since WWII and especially the 60s) became relatively rare (or at least quiet) until recently. Even now self avowed racists and anti-semites are not the most important problem. It actually can cause more problems in fighting antisemitism and racism to hurl the epithet at individuals who are hurt, shamed, or performatively outraged by it. More dangerous is the racism and antisemitism that is baked into our language, culture and technology. The same is true of misogyny if you consider that only recently has medical research even begun to study women’s health in a targeted systematic way.
My grandmother was a Sicilian Catholic (very superstitious). But her mother’s mother who was revered in her memory was likely a converted (forcibly?) Jew. My grandmother always spoke well of Jews and had Jewish friends. She and her son (my father) would react with pleasure to the credit sequence of that show “Bewitched” which always featured a mute, but prominent, menorah. She loved to bargain and would proudly promise to “Chew someone down” on their price or brag about it afterward. I think I was out of my teens and she had passed before I realized that the more common expression was to “Jew someone down” and I remember blanching when suggested to a Jewish friend that he should try to ‘chew someone down” on their price, but he just laughed and let it pass and I was not courageous enough to ask if he had heard the “ch” or a “j”.
When it comes to making enemies all over the world and causing destruction and pain all over the world, we might remember that Martin Luther King (rightly in my opinion) referred to US as the “greatest purveyor of violence” of all time. What does it mean “not to accept” that??? We have to work against it, but it is so easy for us to work against ourselves with the careless use of rhetoric. The road ahead is long and dangerous enough without shooting ourselves in the foot before we have even made a good start.
I disagree with some of what you said. I understand the sentiment but Israel is not legitimate. The comparison with the Indigenous Peoples in this land is appropriate because it is the final objective of the Israeli government. IS that what we should expect, the reduction of Palestinians to a forgotten group, or small villages without rights or resources? If they can do that, more will come. Maybe Trump invading Greenland in our name, who knows?
Israel is not legitimate because the US and the UK decided that that land was "available" to them. The Palestinians didn't cause the Jewish holocaust. Germany did. There are jews in Palestinian land, in the State created by superpowers, because of a religious belief that that land was given to them by god. It is imposition of a belief on the rest of the world.
Hamas exists because the resistance exists, and Israel is very happy for the scapegoat. Most Israeli Jewish don't believe Palestinians have the right to exist in their land.
As much as I appreciate the guest and what he said, I still would like to hear why should everyone feel that 10/07/23 was an aberration, when the same type of attacks happen everyday to Palestinians. Why is an attack on the Jewish people living in occupied land so abhorrent, when the same thing happening to Palestinians is just another day? Shouldn't any attack on civilians be considered terror? Besides, we now know that a lot of the dead were killed by the Israeli Forces. Jeremy Scahill interviewed a Hamas official and things get much clearer. The Electronic Intifada also has excellent analysis daily
The genocidal actions of the Israeli government are not legitimate. The idea that a government gives any group (religious, ethnic, linguistic, economic, etc) the right to collectively deprive others, humiliate them or randomly kill them intermittently or relentlessly is not legitimate. The Israeli government has been abusing and undermining its legitimacy ever since it was formally granted by the UN.
So perhaps what you mean to say (which I would agree with) is that Israel is not providing a legitimate government to Arab Palestinians (only a small fraction of which are effectively second class “citizens”) and that those living in the occupied territories have a legitimate right to resist.
When someone says only that “Israel has no right to exist.” or “Israel is not legitimate,” they are falling into a deadly trap set by an illegitimate and ultimately self destructive form of Zionism. You are obviously a serious, thoughtful, and caring person. I doubt when you say “Israel is not legitimate.” that you mean to say “Jews have no right to live between the Jordan and the Mediterranean.” But whether you mean that or not, when you say “Israel is not legitimate.” too many people will hear (and others will megaphone this message) that Jews must be driven out or be killed the way Israel is killing Arabs in an illegitimate attempt to drive them from the occupied territories where Israeli settlements are illegitimate.
The truth is that even if you WANTED (I’m sure you don’t) Jews in Palestine to be killed or driven out, simply saying “Israel is not legitimate.” would be a very bad and stupid tactic. Now of course, SAYING something like that is nearly infinitely less bad and stupid than what Israel is actually DOING (war crimes, crimes against humanity, and GENOCIDE, etc). By the way “stupidity” as I am using the term here does not mean a lack of intelligence. I use it to mean the emotionally corrupted or motivated misuse of intelligence in ways that run counter to wellbeing. All humans are stupid (more or less) most of the time because using intelligence wisely is extremely difficult for us both as individuals and in collectives given evolutionary imperatives to dispense with both higher cognitive faculties and participatory (non selfish) emotions when under threat — given that our higher cognitive faculties mean we live in our imagination so much of the time and that our imaginations are easily manipulated by others even when they are not being bombarded with our own emotions.
Right now what had been UNIMAGINABLE (and still remains so for so many of us so much of the time) is actually HAPPENING. People occupying legitimate and constitutional offices in Israel and the United States are using their power stupidly, insanely, criminally, self destructively AND illegitimately.The US is as guilty of genocide as Israel. Not only that, the cabal (MAGA) in control of all three branches of the US government is busy dismantling the legitimate state. In the US (as in the occupied territories in Palestine) people have a legitimate right as well as a DUTY to resist.
That raises the question of violence and force. I would argue that the use of violence and force is ONLY legitimate in immanent circumstances of self defense or defense against an ongoing or immanent threat to others. Any other use of violence and force is illegitimate and unwise (even though it happens all the time. Again remember, stupidity is endemic to humanity.). In the case of Arab Palestinians and Hamas (or whatever replaces it), using violence against Israel backed by the US is about as stupid and self destructive as the Jewish zealots who repeatedly employed violence against the Roman Empire between the years 4 and 136 CE.
We need to be working towards an international solution that grants Israelis and Arabs the means to live in peace in that little strip of seaside territory west of the Jordan River. That’s a long term process given that the US has begun sliding into being a failed state.
I said Israel is not legitimate but I am very aware that the solution is not to expel the people living there. The solution is not clear and I will not pretend that I know. Still, the State of Israel creation was an illegal occupation, therefore, the country is illegitimate. Not having a solution, knowing that preventing Jews to live there is not possible does not conflict with the facts of its creation.
As of how people will perceive, that'a an old adage and it has become a trope. I cannot force people to think in a certain way and continuing to avoid speaking up will just reinforce that. I don't know how else to say things that require critical thinking and some will get it, some will not. That's not on me, I cannot control that.
As for Hamas, I put it in the same category as the IDF and the American government. Terror is terror, I will not simply accept designations of a country that only makes enemies all over the world, causing destruction and pain
Peter Beinart gave an excellent assessment of what it is like to be Jewish during the eradication... the genocide... of the Palestinian people in the Gaza Strip and the West Bank. Jews who are against this genocide are labelled as either self-hating or antisemitic. These are often applied in an ad hominem manner and not given the discussion required. I’ve been writing for decades in support of the Palestinian people and I'm acquainted with these kinds of attacks. The Boston Globe carries an article this AM about a Lebanese-American physician associated with Brown University, who also does organ donor work, and was kept from returning to the US after visiting her family in Lebanon. That is the bestiality that has infected the Trump doctrine for the Middle East. Please read my article in Wednesday’s issue of CounterPunch: "Kent State to Pro-Palestinian Protest".
Lori Wallach makes economic issues, and especially trade issues, comprehensible for the ordinary listener. Trump, again the bull in the China shop, will not address economic issues in a comprehensible way. I travel through the hollowed-out parts of US cities and towns and can’t see how Trump will help this situation in any meaningful manner. I can’t see the Trump administration creating industries where they don’t exist, or helping ordinary people.
I needed to write that the doctor from Brown University is a Lebanese citizen with a visa and not a US citizen. In terms of the doctor’s right to be in the US, the difference is not significant.
I have become very impressed with Mr. Beinart over the last couple of months. The book is, indeed, excellent. I noticed one comment below that thought he was still an apologist for some form of Zionism. I do not think that is the case. He does not go so far as to say what he thinks the solution is, from what I have heard. He thinks they all (Israelis and Palestinians) need to decide together. That line of thinking leads to a one state solution, one secular state with rights for all people.
It seems to me there is no other solution, and that this is hardly surprising. South Africa has not solved all of its problems but it clearly shows the political science truth that if people share power the over all level of violence goes down. One line of apologist for the status qua argues this power sharing is impossible because of the history, but again South Africa proves that is utter nonsense. One state is the solution.
The logic is simple. Apartheid systems require violent repression. Repression naturally leads to resistance; and the more violent the repression the more violent the resistance is likely to be. No Apartheid = No Security Problem. It is that simple, conceptually. Getting entrenched powers to accept this is the hard part.
It seems to me that the reason that Trump is always destructing the American people, despite all of his promises for good, is that he doesn't really mean to do good. I mean, maybe one tiny part of his schizophrenic personality wants to believe that he will deliver good for the American people, but the greater portion of his personality is extremely narcissistic which doesn't even say it. And this explains his attraction to Monarchy. Because he is the center of his universe, and he has made his universe the center of our universe, Monarchy naturally arises. And when has monarchy ever delivered wealth to the majority of the people? We can clearly see what he is doing. He's wrecking the economy that has provided wealth to the aristocracy, and faux wealth to the poor, so they can joyously shop at Walmart, Target, and dollar store thinking they are rich, and instead, is concentrating all power in himself. And he has the supreme court, who is supposed to be the ultimate arbiter of our democracy, in his pocket. The supreme court is helping him become a king. And some Kings in the past have known that It is beneficial to control all of the members of his court, at least as much as possible, even to taking their money and inheritance and distributing it to others, or just putting it in his own personal treasury. And most of us poor Americans just can't figure out how we could have elected a President who is a traitor to all of our American values. But this toxic philosophy does exist, especially among the elite who think they are better than everyone else. And that is the path that Trump and the american people is on. Because our people are also schizophrenic, not knowing The extreme differences between monarchy and democracy comma because they're so damn Ignorant. They didn't go to school, but instead have been working really low paying jobs their whole lives. You can't have a democracy when you defund education. That's number one, and the number to anywhere good.
There’s no antisemitic language in my comment. It simply states that greed is behind ethnic cleansing and genocide, as the perpetrators always have the motive of taking property and resources from those they have targeted. It was true in the case of Nazis and it’s true in the case of Israelis. Nazis stole from Jews, and European Jewish colonizers and their descendants in Palestine have been stealing from native Palestinians whose property they covet for decades. Recognizing greed as a motive may not be appreciated by the Jewish perpetrators and enablers of these crimes, but it doesn’t make it antisemitic anymore than recognizing the greed of Nazis makes someone anti-German.
Israelis have been attacking American free speech for decades. They're not much of an ally-- Israeli is an ally when it comes to taking billions from American taxpayers but an enemy when it comes to attacking the rights of Americans.
Hello, I am having a real problem with something stated on Page 1 of the Capitol Hill Citizen of Feb/Mar. The article is about the Democratic party apologizing to America.
Here's the part I am having a real problem with: "twelve unchallenged Senate seats from four mountain and two prairie states..."
Unchallenged? ... Which states / which Senate races went unchallenged? I do NOT believe it was twelve, but I would love to be corrected on that.
I wanted to cite this in discussions with my network of political allies, but I do not believe the statement is accurate.
Thank you for your important inquiry. The mountain and prairie states are as follows. North Dakota, South Dakota, Montana, Idaho, Wyoming, and Utah. As you may know, they used to have Democratic Senators—two for ND (Dorgan and Conrad) two from SD (McGovern and Abourezk and later Daschle) and two from Montana [Baucus and Tester] and believe it or not even some Democratic Senators from Wyoming and Idaho (Senator Frank Church) and Utah. Those states are almost totally conceded to the Republicans by a vanishing Democratic Party presence. It’s not a smart way to try to achieve a Senate Majority every two years. I hope this answers your question. Thank you for spreading the word about the Capitol Hill Citizen and reading it so closely.
Thank you VERY much for responding. I'm 71 and can't tell you how proud I am to be in this fight with you all.
Picking North Dakota for an example, I note that there was a Democratic candidate in 2022 against the incumbent, John Hoeven, and in 2024 against Kevin Cramer. It happened to be the same person, Katrina Christiansen.
So, Ralph, I have to be very careful not to use the word "unchallenged." Far be it beyond me to put words to you, but I will need to modify this for my own purposes to say: "Unsupported by the national Democratic Party." I think we can agree that when the national party leaves you out to dry, the opponent has a clear path -- almost as if there was no challenger to them at all. I can run with this. I just wanted to make sure I wasn't missing anything.
Last point -- on lack of national support. Incredibly, Ralph and team, I am seeing this in the two House races in Florida. We've got two candidates -- Gay Valimont (FL-1) and Josh Weil (FL-6) -- who the party elites have consigned to defeat. Tomorrow night, Gay has a "Veterans Town Hall" in Pensacola. I've asked Bernie Sanders' office to consider holding a rally there before April 1. That first district has two major bases and lots of active and retired military.
Secretly everyone wishes they were Jewish because they have all the money. ( Of the 10 top billionaires in America 5 are Jewish) . The problem is you just can't pray to become one, to be a member of the club you need to be like that little old lady that elbows her way to the head of the lines at the airport, or you have your picture on the walls at Sardis in NYC, or if not,, stand tall when others feel the emotional impact of a recession or depression. Have you ever heard two Jews talking and saying, " it's not about the money" .
If you have ever worked for a Jew and if they liked you, you can both get rich ,,, let me rephrase that , you get rich they get wealth.
Will everyone having lots of money solve all our problems ? It didn't work out so well for the Jews, why would it you ? Lichtiger Hanukkah !
The segment with Lori Wallach about trade, and economic matters generally, is certainly welcomed and necessary. Wallach brings up several good points, and her work in opposing neoliberal trade agreements should be lauded, but there are some aspects to her narrative which I believe will leave many listeners with incorrect assumptions about matters. Perhaps the most salient issue I question is that Wallach seems to imply that there is a causal relationship between deindustrialization and subsequent widening income inequality and relative poverty.
I believe it is inappropriate to infer such a relationship when industrial and trade policy are just parts of neoliberal orthodoxy. The issue isn’t so much about deindustrialization itself, but rather that the neoliberal mindset led to a circumstance where industrialization was replaced with a service-industry focus centered on the FIRE sectors, especially finance, and McJobs...and ‘gig economy’ jobs which are even worse than McJobs. This is not the natural result of deindustrialization though. The federal government could have continued to fund R&D spending at a high level, as they did prior to the neoliberal era, and subsequent university and vocational education to help enhance socially-beneficial economic sectors. Full employment could have been guaranteed rather than move towards systematic unemployment via the NAIRU concept. Instead, social and developmental spending was cut, finance and labor were deregulated, privatization was encouraged, trade policies shifted, and so we see the natural results of that neoliberalism.
Wallach focus on trade balances is probably also going to mislead the listeners. Imports represent a real benefit. Exports are a real cost. However, we must understand that the improvements in quality of life via imports here often come via neocolonial policies (unofficial tariffs of sorts) the developed nations impose on developing nations. Foreign debt and edicts imposed by the likes of the IMF and other international organizations force developing nations to export their national wealth, using cheap labor and other labor and environmental standards well-below US standards, to the developed world while forcing such nations to have to import food, energy, medicine, and other finished industrial products made with the exported materials at inflated costs. Then there are countries such as China and Germany which aren’t under the thumb of the IMF so much, but their export-oriented economies, and Germany’s ordoliberal economy is a great example of this, are a detriment to their citizens even aside from issues concerning dumping.
So what are the practical implications of all of this?
The current trade agenda being pursued must be evaluated on a case-by-case basis. In the case of Canada, for example (though this also applies to many other countries, including China), multiple US administrations have opposed government subsidization of industries. This is something opposed by international neoliberal organizations, including in the European Union where member states are not permitted to have nationalized industries even where it would make sense to have them (for example, European national postal systems have been privatized, unlike ours here in the US). In the case of multiple US administrations opposing Canadian timber subsidies, the US is, to a certain degree, using tariffs to try to uphold international ‘free trade’ standards. Clearly, saying Trump or Biden (both have imposed tariffs on Canadian lumber) are opposed to ‘free trade’ then is a bit problematic. These are complex issues and there is plenty of hypocrisy involved as nations who oppose other countries subsidizing their industries have no problem doing it themselves, and the US is certainly an example of that.
On the exports as a real cost side, does it really make sense for Canada to subsidize reduced construction costs in the US when maybe a less neoliberal approach would be to emphasize using that same lumber (and the labor behind it) domestically in Canada to promote affordable housing? Perhaps our Canadian neighbors should be asking this question to their deficit hawk neoliberal party heads rather than buying the narratives from those party heads. I suppose their neoliberal failures could be our benefit here in the US. Who wouldn’t want Canadian provincial governments to subsidize our US housing costs? Well, Trump and Biden are two such people it seems.
Just to close this comment, I believe the narratives here should focus on national priorities and then applying our most precious resource, labor, to those priorities. I don’t believe universal re-industrialization and protectionism are great solutions, though it might make great sense in certain sectors. We must also be cognizant of environmental, labor, and other neocolonial aspects when negotiating trade policy. We need labor, both white and blue-collar labor, to be fully-employed to address our many needs in healthcare, education, infrastructure, and the R&D needed to advance national productivity. Putting the majority of labor into industrial causes probably works against that, as does putting a large amount of labor into low-productivity sectors such as the FIRE sectors which only serves to raise costs and income inequality without any public benefit. There are areas where it does make sense for the US to be self-sufficient. Mr. Nader mentioned essential medications and that is certainly a good example of something which should be made here and it likely wouldn’t require a significant amount of labor as I suspect those operations are quite automated similar to many modern industrial processes.
My my my. Why, the question arises, do you constantly have Jewish "intellectuals" or what have you to discuss the Occupied Palestine by the Murdering Raping Starving Maiming Poisoning Thieving Jewish State of a Faux Country, Isra-hell?
My my my.
This statement below by PB is absurd, and oh, there are codes inside each word.
Victims? Oh, Jews are not VICTIMIZERS. Hmmm. Read Atzmon, "The Wandering WHO?"
We are not history’s permanent virtuous victims. We are not hardwired to forever endure evil but never commit it. That false innocence, which pervades contemporary Jewish life, camouflages domination as self-defense. It exempts Jews from external judgment. It offers infinite license to fallible human beings.
Judaism is a white supremacy "religion," elitest and, well, certainly throughout the rabbincal land, truly perverse and anti-human, or in their minds, Goy/Goyim/Gentiles.
So, Ellison, Fink, Schwarzman, Altman, Zuckerberg, Aldeson, Stephen Miller, and, darn, just look at these people's common lineage really determines their misathropy.
Oh, that Ukraine? Oh, those Jews who started that terrorist project, Zionism:
On the rest of the show, Wallach is clearly brilliant but what does the orange fascist's tariff obsession have to do with industrial policy? It could if he had one. And yes those gullible enough to believe him might think this is somehow about bringing jobs back. But that is transparent nonsense. I thought it was blatantly obvious the point of tariffs is to make up tax revenue so he can extend his tax cuts. He wants the rich to pay no income tax and so someone else has to pay, ie the working class. The idea that there is anything to do with jobs here is theater, clearly because he has no policy ideas.
"I thought it was blatantly obvious the point of tariffs is to make up tax revenue so he can extend his tax cuts."
The Trump Administration might be trying to sell the idea of increasing tax revenue through tariffs as if that means anything, but it does not. The US government does not need to increase tax revenue to fund anything, including income tax cuts as the US federal government is a currency-issuing entity.
The biggest concerns with the tax cuts are if they have any impact on inflation (probably not much since the wealthiest will benefit the most from it and it likely won't impact their discretionary spending much, previous tax cuts have not caused inflationary problems) and also the matter of wealth distribution. The wealth distribution aspect is where there should be scrutiny because the tax cuts will continue the already very uneven distribution. Of relevance to Mr. Nader's listeners then is the impact this uneven wealth distribution has on democracy with the extremely wealthy citizens having an over-sized influence on the democratic process.
"In the Gaza case, we can do everything about it, since we're responsible for it, we can stop it, tomorrow." --- Noam Chomsky-MIT-University of Arizona
Started with an open mind. No patience for his approach. Underneath, he is a sweet talking Zionist who believes Israel is legitimate. It is not, period, and belongs to Palestinians in the eyes of the world and by historical evidence.
I understand why someone might say that Israel is not legitimate. It’s something like what might happen if a Mohawk told me my house was not legitimately sited because I have no legitimate right to live here without her welcome. Of course, the analogy would be better if it was 1640 and the ratio of indigenous peoples to English speakers were less lopsided. The analogy is still not perfect because in the case of New England, we know what happened. One of the peoples with a claim to what Europeans called “land rights” was pretty much exterminated. This is the fear, the reason crushing FEAR of both sides in Israel Palestine.
If the world (and it will take the international community including much of the Jewish diaspora) does not insist that both Israelis and Palestinians have an equally valid claim to live between the river and the sea and practice whatever religion they choose, the result could be catastrophic (not only for both parties there, but for the world). This means marginalizing the extremists on both sides. It means accepting responsibility for the terrorism, war crimes, and crimes against humanity that have been committed by both sides. It also means that Israel must accept responsibility for how its terrorism, war crimes, and crimes against humanity have metastasized into an ongoing genocide. And… there’s the rub!
The rub is that Israel is conducting a campaign of genocide out of fear (a legitimate fear, by the way) that they will once again be victims of a concerted program of genocide. This is why it is so unhelpful to say that Israel is not legitimate. If Israel is not legitimate, what does that mean for all the Jews living there? What you may well MEAN to say is that Israel as a state that makes Arabs second class citizens is both not legitimate and impossible to sustain. But that is more difficult to say and almost as difficult for many accept because even if they might agree in principle, they are deathly fearful of how it could work out in practice. Israelis and Palestinians can never work this out on their own. Unfortunately, the US has been very irresponsible regarding this situation since 1948, especially since 1967, indefensibly since 10/7, and insanely since Trump reoccupied the White House.
As private citizens we need to try to be more responsible with our rhetoric and recognize that what may seem either reasonable (or at least to be justified outrage) to us is incendiary to a traumatized swath of humanity and catnip to those who want to throw crude oil on the flames.
Legitimate fear is poppycock. The Jewish state gins up fear and exaggerates the threats to justify their rapacious ethnic cleansing snd genocide. It's all about greed and taking other people's property, and let's be honest, Jews from Europe have been stealing property from Palestinians for decades and continue to do it. Ethnic cleansing is always about greed whether the perpetrators wave religious, national, or in the case of Israel, victimhood flags. It's not as if Nazis didn't steal from the people they targeted for genocide, right?
Using antisemitic language ONLY plays into the hands of illegitimate forms of Zionism that is now subsumed in genocidal international fascism. Keep in mind that no one here is saying Jews should be expelled from Palestine which is about as unrealistic and immoral as saying English speakers should be expelled from North America. I was raised as a Catholic and was taught early on that Hitler had been also. Nobody ever says that a Catholic inspired the murder of six million Jews. Why not? (People don’t say that because it would be offensive or hurtful to Catholics. They don’t say it because there is no similar history of hostility and vilification of Jews, normalized by millennia of tradition and centuries of atrocity.)
I don’t think any person is a racist or an antisemite unless they want to overtly proclaim themselves so. Self avowed racists and anti-semites (since WWII and especially the 60s) became relatively rare (or at least quiet) until recently. Even now self avowed racists and anti-semites are not the most important problem. It actually can cause more problems in fighting antisemitism and racism to hurl the epithet at individuals who are hurt, shamed, or performatively outraged by it. More dangerous is the racism and antisemitism that is baked into our language, culture and technology. The same is true of misogyny if you consider that only recently has medical research even begun to study women’s health in a targeted systematic way.
My grandmother was a Sicilian Catholic (very superstitious). But her mother’s mother who was revered in her memory was likely a converted (forcibly?) Jew. My grandmother always spoke well of Jews and had Jewish friends. She and her son (my father) would react with pleasure to the credit sequence of that show “Bewitched” which always featured a mute, but prominent, menorah. She loved to bargain and would proudly promise to “Chew someone down” on their price or brag about it afterward. I think I was out of my teens and she had passed before I realized that the more common expression was to “Jew someone down” and I remember blanching when suggested to a Jewish friend that he should try to ‘chew someone down” on their price, but he just laughed and let it pass and I was not courageous enough to ask if he had heard the “ch” or a “j”.
When it comes to making enemies all over the world and causing destruction and pain all over the world, we might remember that Martin Luther King (rightly in my opinion) referred to US as the “greatest purveyor of violence” of all time. What does it mean “not to accept” that??? We have to work against it, but it is so easy for us to work against ourselves with the careless use of rhetoric. The road ahead is long and dangerous enough without shooting ourselves in the foot before we have even made a good start.
I disagree with some of what you said. I understand the sentiment but Israel is not legitimate. The comparison with the Indigenous Peoples in this land is appropriate because it is the final objective of the Israeli government. IS that what we should expect, the reduction of Palestinians to a forgotten group, or small villages without rights or resources? If they can do that, more will come. Maybe Trump invading Greenland in our name, who knows?
Israel is not legitimate because the US and the UK decided that that land was "available" to them. The Palestinians didn't cause the Jewish holocaust. Germany did. There are jews in Palestinian land, in the State created by superpowers, because of a religious belief that that land was given to them by god. It is imposition of a belief on the rest of the world.
Hamas exists because the resistance exists, and Israel is very happy for the scapegoat. Most Israeli Jewish don't believe Palestinians have the right to exist in their land.
As much as I appreciate the guest and what he said, I still would like to hear why should everyone feel that 10/07/23 was an aberration, when the same type of attacks happen everyday to Palestinians. Why is an attack on the Jewish people living in occupied land so abhorrent, when the same thing happening to Palestinians is just another day? Shouldn't any attack on civilians be considered terror? Besides, we now know that a lot of the dead were killed by the Israeli Forces. Jeremy Scahill interviewed a Hamas official and things get much clearer. The Electronic Intifada also has excellent analysis daily
No sentimental confluence is required.
The genocidal actions of the Israeli government are not legitimate. The idea that a government gives any group (religious, ethnic, linguistic, economic, etc) the right to collectively deprive others, humiliate them or randomly kill them intermittently or relentlessly is not legitimate. The Israeli government has been abusing and undermining its legitimacy ever since it was formally granted by the UN.
So perhaps what you mean to say (which I would agree with) is that Israel is not providing a legitimate government to Arab Palestinians (only a small fraction of which are effectively second class “citizens”) and that those living in the occupied territories have a legitimate right to resist.
When someone says only that “Israel has no right to exist.” or “Israel is not legitimate,” they are falling into a deadly trap set by an illegitimate and ultimately self destructive form of Zionism. You are obviously a serious, thoughtful, and caring person. I doubt when you say “Israel is not legitimate.” that you mean to say “Jews have no right to live between the Jordan and the Mediterranean.” But whether you mean that or not, when you say “Israel is not legitimate.” too many people will hear (and others will megaphone this message) that Jews must be driven out or be killed the way Israel is killing Arabs in an illegitimate attempt to drive them from the occupied territories where Israeli settlements are illegitimate.
The truth is that even if you WANTED (I’m sure you don’t) Jews in Palestine to be killed or driven out, simply saying “Israel is not legitimate.” would be a very bad and stupid tactic. Now of course, SAYING something like that is nearly infinitely less bad and stupid than what Israel is actually DOING (war crimes, crimes against humanity, and GENOCIDE, etc). By the way “stupidity” as I am using the term here does not mean a lack of intelligence. I use it to mean the emotionally corrupted or motivated misuse of intelligence in ways that run counter to wellbeing. All humans are stupid (more or less) most of the time because using intelligence wisely is extremely difficult for us both as individuals and in collectives given evolutionary imperatives to dispense with both higher cognitive faculties and participatory (non selfish) emotions when under threat — given that our higher cognitive faculties mean we live in our imagination so much of the time and that our imaginations are easily manipulated by others even when they are not being bombarded with our own emotions.
Right now what had been UNIMAGINABLE (and still remains so for so many of us so much of the time) is actually HAPPENING. People occupying legitimate and constitutional offices in Israel and the United States are using their power stupidly, insanely, criminally, self destructively AND illegitimately.The US is as guilty of genocide as Israel. Not only that, the cabal (MAGA) in control of all three branches of the US government is busy dismantling the legitimate state. In the US (as in the occupied territories in Palestine) people have a legitimate right as well as a DUTY to resist.
That raises the question of violence and force. I would argue that the use of violence and force is ONLY legitimate in immanent circumstances of self defense or defense against an ongoing or immanent threat to others. Any other use of violence and force is illegitimate and unwise (even though it happens all the time. Again remember, stupidity is endemic to humanity.). In the case of Arab Palestinians and Hamas (or whatever replaces it), using violence against Israel backed by the US is about as stupid and self destructive as the Jewish zealots who repeatedly employed violence against the Roman Empire between the years 4 and 136 CE.
We need to be working towards an international solution that grants Israelis and Arabs the means to live in peace in that little strip of seaside territory west of the Jordan River. That’s a long term process given that the US has begun sliding into being a failed state.
I said Israel is not legitimate but I am very aware that the solution is not to expel the people living there. The solution is not clear and I will not pretend that I know. Still, the State of Israel creation was an illegal occupation, therefore, the country is illegitimate. Not having a solution, knowing that preventing Jews to live there is not possible does not conflict with the facts of its creation.
As of how people will perceive, that'a an old adage and it has become a trope. I cannot force people to think in a certain way and continuing to avoid speaking up will just reinforce that. I don't know how else to say things that require critical thinking and some will get it, some will not. That's not on me, I cannot control that.
As for Hamas, I put it in the same category as the IDF and the American government. Terror is terror, I will not simply accept designations of a country that only makes enemies all over the world, causing destruction and pain
Peter Beinart gave an excellent assessment of what it is like to be Jewish during the eradication... the genocide... of the Palestinian people in the Gaza Strip and the West Bank. Jews who are against this genocide are labelled as either self-hating or antisemitic. These are often applied in an ad hominem manner and not given the discussion required. I’ve been writing for decades in support of the Palestinian people and I'm acquainted with these kinds of attacks. The Boston Globe carries an article this AM about a Lebanese-American physician associated with Brown University, who also does organ donor work, and was kept from returning to the US after visiting her family in Lebanon. That is the bestiality that has infected the Trump doctrine for the Middle East. Please read my article in Wednesday’s issue of CounterPunch: "Kent State to Pro-Palestinian Protest".
Lori Wallach makes economic issues, and especially trade issues, comprehensible for the ordinary listener. Trump, again the bull in the China shop, will not address economic issues in a comprehensible way. I travel through the hollowed-out parts of US cities and towns and can’t see how Trump will help this situation in any meaningful manner. I can’t see the Trump administration creating industries where they don’t exist, or helping ordinary people.
I needed to write that the doctor from Brown University is a Lebanese citizen with a visa and not a US citizen. In terms of the doctor’s right to be in the US, the difference is not significant.
Get OTHER people on your show, Rlaph: Sharif? He will blow you away.
Israel is Denying Doctors and International Aid Workers Entry to Gaza at Unprecedented Rates
Amid a total blockade of Gaza, Israel imposed sweeping new restrictions on international aid
Sharif Abdel Kouddous --
https://www.dropsitenews.com/p/israel-gaza-new-restrictions-aid
I have become very impressed with Mr. Beinart over the last couple of months. The book is, indeed, excellent. I noticed one comment below that thought he was still an apologist for some form of Zionism. I do not think that is the case. He does not go so far as to say what he thinks the solution is, from what I have heard. He thinks they all (Israelis and Palestinians) need to decide together. That line of thinking leads to a one state solution, one secular state with rights for all people.
It seems to me there is no other solution, and that this is hardly surprising. South Africa has not solved all of its problems but it clearly shows the political science truth that if people share power the over all level of violence goes down. One line of apologist for the status qua argues this power sharing is impossible because of the history, but again South Africa proves that is utter nonsense. One state is the solution.
The logic is simple. Apartheid systems require violent repression. Repression naturally leads to resistance; and the more violent the repression the more violent the resistance is likely to be. No Apartheid = No Security Problem. It is that simple, conceptually. Getting entrenched powers to accept this is the hard part.
It seems to me that the reason that Trump is always destructing the American people, despite all of his promises for good, is that he doesn't really mean to do good. I mean, maybe one tiny part of his schizophrenic personality wants to believe that he will deliver good for the American people, but the greater portion of his personality is extremely narcissistic which doesn't even say it. And this explains his attraction to Monarchy. Because he is the center of his universe, and he has made his universe the center of our universe, Monarchy naturally arises. And when has monarchy ever delivered wealth to the majority of the people? We can clearly see what he is doing. He's wrecking the economy that has provided wealth to the aristocracy, and faux wealth to the poor, so they can joyously shop at Walmart, Target, and dollar store thinking they are rich, and instead, is concentrating all power in himself. And he has the supreme court, who is supposed to be the ultimate arbiter of our democracy, in his pocket. The supreme court is helping him become a king. And some Kings in the past have known that It is beneficial to control all of the members of his court, at least as much as possible, even to taking their money and inheritance and distributing it to others, or just putting it in his own personal treasury. And most of us poor Americans just can't figure out how we could have elected a President who is a traitor to all of our American values. But this toxic philosophy does exist, especially among the elite who think they are better than everyone else. And that is the path that Trump and the american people is on. Because our people are also schizophrenic, not knowing The extreme differences between monarchy and democracy comma because they're so damn Ignorant. They didn't go to school, but instead have been working really low paying jobs their whole lives. You can't have a democracy when you defund education. That's number one, and the number to anywhere good.
There’s no antisemitic language in my comment. It simply states that greed is behind ethnic cleansing and genocide, as the perpetrators always have the motive of taking property and resources from those they have targeted. It was true in the case of Nazis and it’s true in the case of Israelis. Nazis stole from Jews, and European Jewish colonizers and their descendants in Palestine have been stealing from native Palestinians whose property they covet for decades. Recognizing greed as a motive may not be appreciated by the Jewish perpetrators and enablers of these crimes, but it doesn’t make it antisemitic anymore than recognizing the greed of Nazis makes someone anti-German.
Israelis have been attacking American free speech for decades. They're not much of an ally-- Israeli is an ally when it comes to taking billions from American taxpayers but an enemy when it comes to attacking the rights of Americans.
Hello, I am having a real problem with something stated on Page 1 of the Capitol Hill Citizen of Feb/Mar. The article is about the Democratic party apologizing to America.
Here's the part I am having a real problem with: "twelve unchallenged Senate seats from four mountain and two prairie states..."
Unchallenged? ... Which states / which Senate races went unchallenged? I do NOT believe it was twelve, but I would love to be corrected on that.
I wanted to cite this in discussions with my network of political allies, but I do not believe the statement is accurate.
Thank you.
Dear Thomas,
Thank you for your important inquiry. The mountain and prairie states are as follows. North Dakota, South Dakota, Montana, Idaho, Wyoming, and Utah. As you may know, they used to have Democratic Senators—two for ND (Dorgan and Conrad) two from SD (McGovern and Abourezk and later Daschle) and two from Montana [Baucus and Tester] and believe it or not even some Democratic Senators from Wyoming and Idaho (Senator Frank Church) and Utah. Those states are almost totally conceded to the Republicans by a vanishing Democratic Party presence. It’s not a smart way to try to achieve a Senate Majority every two years. I hope this answers your question. Thank you for spreading the word about the Capitol Hill Citizen and reading it so closely.
Best regards,
Ralph Nader
Dear Ralph and team at Capitol Hill Citizen.
Thank you VERY much for responding. I'm 71 and can't tell you how proud I am to be in this fight with you all.
Picking North Dakota for an example, I note that there was a Democratic candidate in 2022 against the incumbent, John Hoeven, and in 2024 against Kevin Cramer. It happened to be the same person, Katrina Christiansen.
So, Ralph, I have to be very careful not to use the word "unchallenged." Far be it beyond me to put words to you, but I will need to modify this for my own purposes to say: "Unsupported by the national Democratic Party." I think we can agree that when the national party leaves you out to dry, the opponent has a clear path -- almost as if there was no challenger to them at all. I can run with this. I just wanted to make sure I wasn't missing anything.
Last point -- on lack of national support. Incredibly, Ralph and team, I am seeing this in the two House races in Florida. We've got two candidates -- Gay Valimont (FL-1) and Josh Weil (FL-6) -- who the party elites have consigned to defeat. Tomorrow night, Gay has a "Veterans Town Hall" in Pensacola. I've asked Bernie Sanders' office to consider holding a rally there before April 1. That first district has two major bases and lots of active and retired military.
Again... thank you for your kind reply.
Howdy everyone,
I’ve been listening to Ralph for years. I think my Mom voted for him. So I started Town Hall Citizen.
Here’s the site.
https://www.townhallcitizen.com/
We’ll be in Denver this Friday for Bernie’s rally. If you’re going to be there please contact me on the site. Would love to say hello.
People Have the Power!
Secretly everyone wishes they were Jewish because they have all the money. ( Of the 10 top billionaires in America 5 are Jewish) . The problem is you just can't pray to become one, to be a member of the club you need to be like that little old lady that elbows her way to the head of the lines at the airport, or you have your picture on the walls at Sardis in NYC, or if not,, stand tall when others feel the emotional impact of a recession or depression. Have you ever heard two Jews talking and saying, " it's not about the money" .
If you have ever worked for a Jew and if they liked you, you can both get rich ,,, let me rephrase that , you get rich they get wealth.
Will everyone having lots of money solve all our problems ? It didn't work out so well for the Jews, why would it you ? Lichtiger Hanukkah !
Good luck America, have a great day my friends
A lightweight program, strange with government and regulatory heavyweights like Ralph Nader. You could have had Norman Finkelstein or Chris Hedges on: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k0PfzWbxuIQ&t=12939s
The segment with Lori Wallach about trade, and economic matters generally, is certainly welcomed and necessary. Wallach brings up several good points, and her work in opposing neoliberal trade agreements should be lauded, but there are some aspects to her narrative which I believe will leave many listeners with incorrect assumptions about matters. Perhaps the most salient issue I question is that Wallach seems to imply that there is a causal relationship between deindustrialization and subsequent widening income inequality and relative poverty.
I believe it is inappropriate to infer such a relationship when industrial and trade policy are just parts of neoliberal orthodoxy. The issue isn’t so much about deindustrialization itself, but rather that the neoliberal mindset led to a circumstance where industrialization was replaced with a service-industry focus centered on the FIRE sectors, especially finance, and McJobs...and ‘gig economy’ jobs which are even worse than McJobs. This is not the natural result of deindustrialization though. The federal government could have continued to fund R&D spending at a high level, as they did prior to the neoliberal era, and subsequent university and vocational education to help enhance socially-beneficial economic sectors. Full employment could have been guaranteed rather than move towards systematic unemployment via the NAIRU concept. Instead, social and developmental spending was cut, finance and labor were deregulated, privatization was encouraged, trade policies shifted, and so we see the natural results of that neoliberalism.
Wallach focus on trade balances is probably also going to mislead the listeners. Imports represent a real benefit. Exports are a real cost. However, we must understand that the improvements in quality of life via imports here often come via neocolonial policies (unofficial tariffs of sorts) the developed nations impose on developing nations. Foreign debt and edicts imposed by the likes of the IMF and other international organizations force developing nations to export their national wealth, using cheap labor and other labor and environmental standards well-below US standards, to the developed world while forcing such nations to have to import food, energy, medicine, and other finished industrial products made with the exported materials at inflated costs. Then there are countries such as China and Germany which aren’t under the thumb of the IMF so much, but their export-oriented economies, and Germany’s ordoliberal economy is a great example of this, are a detriment to their citizens even aside from issues concerning dumping.
So what are the practical implications of all of this?
The current trade agenda being pursued must be evaluated on a case-by-case basis. In the case of Canada, for example (though this also applies to many other countries, including China), multiple US administrations have opposed government subsidization of industries. This is something opposed by international neoliberal organizations, including in the European Union where member states are not permitted to have nationalized industries even where it would make sense to have them (for example, European national postal systems have been privatized, unlike ours here in the US). In the case of multiple US administrations opposing Canadian timber subsidies, the US is, to a certain degree, using tariffs to try to uphold international ‘free trade’ standards. Clearly, saying Trump or Biden (both have imposed tariffs on Canadian lumber) are opposed to ‘free trade’ then is a bit problematic. These are complex issues and there is plenty of hypocrisy involved as nations who oppose other countries subsidizing their industries have no problem doing it themselves, and the US is certainly an example of that.
On the exports as a real cost side, does it really make sense for Canada to subsidize reduced construction costs in the US when maybe a less neoliberal approach would be to emphasize using that same lumber (and the labor behind it) domestically in Canada to promote affordable housing? Perhaps our Canadian neighbors should be asking this question to their deficit hawk neoliberal party heads rather than buying the narratives from those party heads. I suppose their neoliberal failures could be our benefit here in the US. Who wouldn’t want Canadian provincial governments to subsidize our US housing costs? Well, Trump and Biden are two such people it seems.
Just to close this comment, I believe the narratives here should focus on national priorities and then applying our most precious resource, labor, to those priorities. I don’t believe universal re-industrialization and protectionism are great solutions, though it might make great sense in certain sectors. We must also be cognizant of environmental, labor, and other neocolonial aspects when negotiating trade policy. We need labor, both white and blue-collar labor, to be fully-employed to address our many needs in healthcare, education, infrastructure, and the R&D needed to advance national productivity. Putting the majority of labor into industrial causes probably works against that, as does putting a large amount of labor into low-productivity sectors such as the FIRE sectors which only serves to raise costs and income inequality without any public benefit. There are areas where it does make sense for the US to be self-sufficient. Mr. Nader mentioned essential medications and that is certainly a good example of something which should be made here and it likely wouldn’t require a significant amount of labor as I suspect those operations are quite automated similar to many modern industrial processes.
My my my. Why, the question arises, do you constantly have Jewish "intellectuals" or what have you to discuss the Occupied Palestine by the Murdering Raping Starving Maiming Poisoning Thieving Jewish State of a Faux Country, Isra-hell?
My my my.
This statement below by PB is absurd, and oh, there are codes inside each word.
Victims? Oh, Jews are not VICTIMIZERS. Hmmm. Read Atzmon, "The Wandering WHO?"
We are not history’s permanent virtuous victims. We are not hardwired to forever endure evil but never commit it. That false innocence, which pervades contemporary Jewish life, camouflages domination as self-defense. It exempts Jews from external judgment. It offers infinite license to fallible human beings.
Judaism is a white supremacy "religion," elitest and, well, certainly throughout the rabbincal land, truly perverse and anti-human, or in their minds, Goy/Goyim/Gentiles.
So, Ellison, Fink, Schwarzman, Altman, Zuckerberg, Aldeson, Stephen Miller, and, darn, just look at these people's common lineage really determines their misathropy.
Oh, that Ukraine? Oh, those Jews who started that terrorist project, Zionism:
https://paulokirk.substack.com/p/no-no-no-never-ever-support-zelensky
Never every trust a Ukrainian? Or Ukrainian Jew? Is that verboten?
Tip of the spear with Jewish Values: Shalom, the occupation's home
https://www.youtube.com/live/xUgHg1AsnIQ?si=9Iwh6bYYR0LEr5GF
On the rest of the show, Wallach is clearly brilliant but what does the orange fascist's tariff obsession have to do with industrial policy? It could if he had one. And yes those gullible enough to believe him might think this is somehow about bringing jobs back. But that is transparent nonsense. I thought it was blatantly obvious the point of tariffs is to make up tax revenue so he can extend his tax cuts. He wants the rich to pay no income tax and so someone else has to pay, ie the working class. The idea that there is anything to do with jobs here is theater, clearly because he has no policy ideas.
"I thought it was blatantly obvious the point of tariffs is to make up tax revenue so he can extend his tax cuts."
The Trump Administration might be trying to sell the idea of increasing tax revenue through tariffs as if that means anything, but it does not. The US government does not need to increase tax revenue to fund anything, including income tax cuts as the US federal government is a currency-issuing entity.
The biggest concerns with the tax cuts are if they have any impact on inflation (probably not much since the wealthiest will benefit the most from it and it likely won't impact their discretionary spending much, previous tax cuts have not caused inflationary problems) and also the matter of wealth distribution. The wealth distribution aspect is where there should be scrutiny because the tax cuts will continue the already very uneven distribution. Of relevance to Mr. Nader's listeners then is the impact this uneven wealth distribution has on democracy with the extremely wealthy citizens having an over-sized influence on the democratic process.