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> Eli mused: > > I wonder if this article partly stems from "working the refs" which is > something the right-wing has been so effective at. Bronner and the Times > have been under pressure (e.g., > http://electronicintifada.net/v2/article11031.shtml) because of his son's > serving in the Israeli Army, challenged as an inherently biased source with > demands for his resignation. Perhaps this is his (and the Times') conscious > or subconscious response to those charges > > My comment: Impossible to say of course. But my speculation rests within the parameters that USA is top dog and the Zionists do as they are told when the chips are down. they never have more than relative autonomy. But Zionism is a complex formation. It is a late colonialism and that is one of its weaknesses. It arose near the end of the colonial era, when ideological justification for colonialism was becoming more difficult to articulate and rendere credible. In practical terms the Zionists have always known that they needed to partner with a major Imperialist power - Britain, France and now the USA. But it is crucial to the ideology of Zionism that they act as if they have and strive for autonomy. They see themselves as returning to the Mother-country, not carrying the flag or taking up the white man's burden for her to dwell in a distant land among the savages. However as reliance on the USA grows there is I (tentatively) think a tendency for the relationship between Israel and the USA to morph into the traditional settler-mother country relationship or in other words for Israel to become more and more of a colony of the USA.words The tensions between the Obama administration and the Netanyahu government, ad I feel they are real but no more than "tensions", has to do with fitting Israel into the wider plans that the USA has for the region and indeed the world. I see Netanyahu as the iron logic of Zionism. I have read many of Avnery's and Gideon Levy's critiques carefully here. Bibi Netanyahu and Avigdor Lieberman and Ehud Barak are an offence to the respectable Zionists. I see the latter as locked into a dreaming of a holy and decent Zionism, where happy boys and girls toil in the equality of the Kibbutz and shine out as a light unto the nations. But that dream has been crushed by the imperatives of neo-liberalism and above all by the necessity to resort continuously to dirty business -torture, arrest without trial, assassinations, collective punishment, endless war etc to complete the Zionist project. So in some ways the Zionists have to be brought to heel in order for even a botched up two-state solution to work. And I think that is the impasse where we are in at the moment. What would break this however is an uprising in Cairo. Then we would see and very swiftly so, the Zionists brought to heel. comradely Gary . ________________________________________________ Send list submissions to: Marxism@lists.econ.utah.edu Set your options at: http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/options/marxism/archive%40mail-archive.com
