Re: [Marxism] Uri Avnery about Greater Libanon and Greater Israel
== Rule #1: YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. == Hi Luko Avnery aspires to be the respectable face of Zionism. But that is no longer an option. The most significant statement made on the current crisis was the Israeli fear of the outbreak of Arab democracy. How can they be a light unto the nations if they fear democracy for their neighbours? 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
Re: [Marxism] Uri Avnery about Greater Libanon and Greater Israel
== Rule #1: YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. == Gary MacLennan (gary.maclenn...@gmail.com) wrote on 2011-01-17 at 22:03:43 in about Re: [Marxism] Uri Avnery about Greater Libanon and Greater Israel: Avnery aspires to be the respectable face of Zionism. To be more precise, at the center of his strategy is that the conquests of the colonial war of 1948/49 and its ethnic cleansing can only be safeguarded by being content with that, and to go not further than that. Avnery thinks that Israel can be a democracy, if it resolves to be a secular state which allows its citizens to identify as Israeli by nationality instead of Jew, Muslim, Druse etc (wich is in a certain way the continuation of the Osman milli system, where each religious community had a certain amount of self-administration), but that the Arabs being driven out by fire and sword from what is now the state of Israel shall not have the right to return, instead for a token number selected by the state of Israel. But that is no longer an option. It has never really been an option, instead of by bloody repression. One can't convince a whole people to hobble all their life on their knees as Untermenschen. Avnery avoids Abraham Lincoln's famous formular from is Gettysburg address: Government of the people, by the people, and for the people. The state of Israel was formed by this bloody war explicitly as a rejection of this democracy, to establish government of the colonial settlers, by the colonial settlers, and for the colonial settlers. As long as that is not done away, here can't be peace in Palestina, in the Arab East and all the Arab nation in general. And the colonial settler state can't exist without expanding -- Avnery's dream is an illusion. This is like the slave states in the USA - they could not be satisfied with what they had, but they had to extend slavery to more territories, if they did not want to end slavery once and for all. But while the industrial capital in the USA could live with having slavery in the South, it could not tolerate an expansion of slavery to new territories, since it has to rely on free labor, i.e. labor free not only of the chains of medieval fiefdom or of slavery, but free of all means of subsistence other than the labor power to be sold to a capitalist. The most significant statement made on the current crisis was the Israeli fear of the outbreak of Arab democracy. How can they be a light unto the nations if they fear democracy for their neighbours? Your words are my words. You are so right. I have always said against this ignomious propaganda of Israel as the only democracy in the Middle East that this racist colonial settler state actually fears nothing more than democracy in the Arab countries, governments of the people, by the people, and for the people. Since that would be the end of the bridge head of the judeo-christian West, as the official bourgeois German propaganda now goes. But Néstor Gorojovsky is also right in pointing out that Avnery is a permanent nuisance to the Zionist establishment, a thorn in their flesh. One of the internal contradictions of Zionism, this colonial adventure which has turned Palestine into the most dangerous place a Jew can live. Actually, the interesting piece in my previous contribution is what Avnery tells about the history of the sectarian setup of Libanon, which is -- in my opinion -- really worth reading. Cheers, Lüko Willms Frankfurt, Germany visit http://www.mlwerke.de Marx, Engels, Luxemburg, Lenin, Trotzki in German 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
Re: [Marxism] Uri Avnery about Greater Libanon and Greater Israel
== Rule #1: YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. == 2011/1/17 Lüko Willms lueko.wil...@t-online.de: Avnery is a permanent nuisance to the Zionist establishment, a thorn in their flesh. One of the internal contradictions of Zionism, this colonial adventure which has turned Palestine into the most dangerous place a Jew can live. The very idea that there can be an Israeli nationality is, whether Avneri knows this or not, a torpedo against the Zionist theses. That is what, IMHO, Arafat saw so clearly. It is not important, for the time being, whether Avnery wants the expelled Arabs to remain outside Israel or not. In fact, if equal citizenship were awarded to every Israeli SUBJECT (not citizen in the French Revolution, that is fully bourgeois, political sense), sooner or later there would be a majority of Arab citizens, and then -end of story. It is not a matter of chance that Avnery began his political carreer during the first half of the 60s by suggesting the Canaanite option EXACTLY AT THE SAME TIME when Ben Gurion expressed fears that Israel would Orientalize itself, e.g. end assimilated to its neighbors. I always cherish the Austro Hungarian example on these issues, among other reasons because Hertzl´s solution to the Jewish problem in Europe was tailored exactly in the Austro Hungarian model. What would have happened to that Empire if one day EVERY CITIZEN IN THE EMPIRE HAD BEEN CONSIDERED JUST THAT, AN AHE CITIZEN AND NOT A SUBJECT OF ONE OF THE MANY NATIONALITIES THAT FORMED IT? It would have dissolved into nothingness. And of course if the AHE had had the time, then the Eastern nationalities, a majority in the population, would have drowned the German nationality in an ocean of Oriental peasantry-based new national AHE bourgeoisie as against German aristocrats of Imperial privilege. Actually, the interesting piece in my previous contribution is what Avnery tells about the history of the sectarian setup of Libanon, which is -- in my opinion -- really worth reading. Cheers, Lüko Willms Frankfurt, Germany visit http://www.mlwerke.de Marx, Engels, Luxemburg, Lenin, Trotzki in German Send list submissions to: Marxism@lists.econ.utah.edu Set your options at: http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/options/marxism/nmgoro%40gmail.com -- Néstor Gorojovsky El texto principal de este correo puede no ser de mi autoría 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
Re: [Marxism] Uri Avnery about Greater Libanon and Greater Israel
== Rule #1: YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. == Luko wrote: And the colonial settler state can't exist without expanding -- Avnery's dream is an illusion. This is like the slave states in the USA - they could not be satisfied with what they had, but they had to extend slavery to more territories, if they did not want to end slavery once and for all. But while the industrial capital in the USA could live with having slavery in the South, it could not tolerate an expansion of slavery to new territories, since it has to rely on free labor, i.e. labor free not only of the chains of medieval fiefdom or of slavery, but free of all means of subsistence other than the labor power to be sold to a capitalist. This for me is the key Luko. Absolutely so. But to be frank I have struggled to understand fully the mechanism that drives the urge to expand. Yet it is simple. If the colonists do not grow in number and territory they will remain an isolated and vulnerable bulkhead. After WW2 when Japan gave Australia an existential scare of the first dimension, the slogan 'populate or perish' took centre stage. Japan gave concrete form to all those fears of the 'yellow peril' coming to destroy the 'great white nation' (i.e. Australia). So after 1945 Australia's population grew threefold.. But the dialectic is remorseless and in the case of Israel the imperative to expand means that one is for ever creating more enemies. Israel's defense perimeter of Arab dictators has now been breached by the Tunisian revolution. Another breach could see the end of it. 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
