Harry’s Place

Wow.

Diarmuid, you lost on the UCU spat. Now please either discuss the matter in hand or naff kindly off.

Titanic

I lost on the UCU spat!!! I thought you were ignoring me, anyway?

Having posted on this I do wonder about the validity of this Buchanan stuff. I have searched several databases and the only tie up between Palin and Buchanan from about 1985 to 2004 is the single AP report The Nation found. Is that enough evidence?

Did McCain vet this

Surely this isn’t something they missed?

Neil, that’s what blogging is for. Post something and, if you are completely rubbered, apologize. Hell, Gene did so with that thing about John Pilger and Martha Gellhorn.

On the post, there is very little to go on in the 14 sec clip. The Wonk Room gives little more than a string of open questions. Maybe something will develop.

I’m sure her past was picked over by packs of specially-trained Republican attack lawyers. I’m gonna hold my fire on this a day or two.

I’m gonna hold my fire on this a day or two.
I can almost hear Palin sigh with relief.

For most Americans, Buchanan is either seen as a true conservative, which will win her votes, or a former-Republican leftist, which will add to her maverick charm. It is hardly as if Buchanan is a pariah figure - he’s a television pundit on MSNBC for gawdsake!

You’re deluded if you think this is going to lose Palin votes in the US.

They’re deluded whatever they think.

Oh dear, looks as if this story has no legs.

Palin was a Steve Forbes supporter in 1996.

Move on deluded ones. How about a thread on Todd Palin’s trade union membership?

No, Buchanan is seen as a crazy, old, and very racist palo-con.

Palin was wearing a Buchanan button when he came to speak at the town she was mayor of. And this was before it became clear exactly how evil Buchanan is.

So…are you opposed to evil people…or just some evil people?

“Are you Now or Have you ever Been a Supporter of Pat Buchanon?”
Never thought that HP would morph into a liberal version of Joe McCarthy & Co!

Do not know what is more ridiculus, Gene & Neil D going all hyper over some past, more then 8 years ago, possible association between Sarah Palin and Pat Buchanon or the netroot kids at Daily Kos getting all hyper over Palin being a member of the Assemblies of God like millions of other Americans means she is part of some sort of sinister far-right paramilitary religious organization! See “Sarah Palin: Dominionist Stalking Horse” at http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2008/8/29/163234/559/495/579213

What makes this really hyprocritical is both Gene’s & Kos’ ignoring of Obama’s 20 year tie with the Afro-Centric (a polite code word for anti-white) Rev, Wright (”God-Damm America”) who has been full of praise for the non-borderline anti-Semitic bigot, Farakahan.

Note: Before Gene & Neil made their Palin was supporter of Pat Buchanan charges, they might have checked out Buchanan’s praise of Obama’s acceptance speech. See the Liberal-bashing Islamphobes of Little Green Footballs article, “Buchanan Hearts Obama” at http://littlegreenfootballs.com/article/31087_Buchanan_Hearts_Obama/comments/#ctop

Gene & Neil D: Remember old saying:
Look before you Leap!

Yes, Gene, what do you think about Sarah Palin’s husband being a geniune blue collar trade union member?

Buchanan loves Obama because of his hatred for the Republican party which rejected him. Hence his job as an MSNBC pundit. He would do anything to sabotage the GOP campaign.

old Labour, thanks for the link. Having recently read “The Yiddish Policeman’s Union” and recalling the 1990s TV series, “Northern Exposure” in which a rather arrogant young Jewish doctor from New York City spends his medical internship in a small Alaska town, I was curious to how many Jews Alaska actually has.

Yeah…it’s this kind of information that needs to be out there, David. Along with those specifics that nobody ever mentions…

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U9rZkJfKoEU

Buchanan really seems to believe she was part of his “Bridgade.” And he describes her as a “rebel reformer.”

Tsch! It just goes to show, doesn’t it? Whatever next? Imean, you expect this from some people. But Sarah Freaking Palin?

I am sooooo disappointed in her. She’s a disgrace to the title of Miss Alaska.

David All, it appears Palin was not a supporter of Buchanan in 2000, as I acknowledged in my update (although the fact she wore a Buchanan button is enough to make me queasy). The question of whether she supported him in 1996 is still open. If she did, I stand by my post. At the very least, she would then owe us an explanation of how much she knew about Buchanan’s views on Israel, Jews, gays, immigration, etc. She wasn’t a kid at the time.

As for her union-member husband: good for him. I hope he and she will convince McCain to change his opposition to the Employee Free Choice Act.

“She’s a disgrace to the title of Miss Alaska.”

In fairness she was only runner up in Miss Alaska. So she’s a disgrace to the title of Miss Wasilla.

Yeah, you go girl! Because if there’s some woman who’s blabbing on about how women shouldn’t be allowed to have abortions, you better pray that they’re not wearing any Pukeanan badges (geddit???).

Tip for the top…don’t go bringing Israel and Jews into the matter…it doesn’t seem to go down well. Next thing they’ll be labelling you a weirdo…

Miss Wasilla

Well, that’s a different kettle of fish altogether. Perhaps I was being too hard on her?

ins team know what they’re doing here?

Sorry that should have read.
Buchanan confirms she was a supporteter in 1996, does McCains team know what they’re doing here?

[Palin] promptly responded to the [AP] story in a letter to the editor, that “the article may have left your readers with the perception that I am endorsing this candidate, as opposed to welcoming his visit to Wasilla. As mayor, I will welcome all the candidates in Wasilla.”

How many Presidential candidates have visted Wasilla? Hell, if Dennis Kucinich stopped in my town, I’d wear his button that day.

Mesquito.
Are you happy with McCains choice?

It would seem to me that this could go horribly wrong.

Seems Palin isn’t quite as fast at airbrushing history as the average Republican, but she’s trying to get there.

http://tpmelectioncentral.talkingpointsmemo.com/2008/08/palin_ad_starring_ted_stevens.php

very year since 2002 the University and College Union (UCU), the largest trade union and professional association for academics working in further and higher education throughout the UK, has attempted to implement some form of boycott of Israeli academic institutions that have been shown to be complicit in the ongoing persecution of the Palestinian people. And each year, amid much acrimony and cries of “anti-semitism”, boycotters meet with significant resistance from pro-Israeli members of British academia, and other institutions.
This year however, lowly Sott.net has inadvertently become involved in the melee.
In 2007, the congress of the UCU voted by 158 votes to 99 on Motion 30, which called for the UCU to circulate a boycott request by Palestinian trade unions to all branches for information and discussion. It called on lecturers to “consider the moral implications of existing and proposed links with Israeli academic institutions.”
Motion 30 was amended:

Congress notes that Israel’s 40-year occupation has seriously damaged the fabric of Palestinian society through annexation, illegal settlement, collective punishment and restriction of movement.
Congress deplores the denial of educational rights for Palestinians by invasions, closures, checkpoints, curfews, and shootings and arrests of teachers, lecturers and students.
Congress condemns the complicity of Israeli academia in the occupation, which has provoked a call from Palestinian trade unions for a comprehensive and consistent international boycott of all Israeli academic institutions.
Congress believes that in these circumstances passivity or neutrality is unacceptable and criticism of Israel cannot be construed as anti-semitic.
Congress instructs the NEC to:
circulate the full text of the Palestinian boycott call to all branches for information and discussion;
encourage members to consider the moral implications of existing and proposed links with Israeli academic institutions;
organise a UK-wide campus tour for Palestinian academic/educational trade unionists;
issue guidance to members on appropriate forms of action.
actively encourage and support branches to create direct links with Palestinian educational institutions and to help set up nationally sponsored programs for teacher exchanges, sabbatical placements, and research.

In the end however, and after much pressure being brought to bear, the boycott effort was dropped on legal advice that it would be unlawful and could not be implemented, despite the fact that the motion merely called for individual branches to inform their members and debate the pros and cons of a boycott and decide for themselves how or if to proceed.
In May this year, a similar motion was tabled and passed at the UCU annual conference that again called on members to: “consider the moral and political implications of educational links with Israeli institutions, and to discuss the occupation with individuals and institutions concerned, including Israeli colleagues with whom they are collaborating.”
What this amounts to is basically a call for UCU members to just think about the implications of ties with Israeli academic institutions that are involved in supporting Israeli government oppression of Palestinians. Once again however, the pro-Israel camp came out in force.
The point of a boycott of Israeli academic institutions is eminently defensible because its primary goal is to put pressure on the Israeli government to cease its brutal treatment of the Palestinian people and to adhere to international law. It has absolutely nothing to do with any anti-semitism among the supporters of the boycott in British academia. Of course, this does not stop the anti-boycott pro-Israel camp from repeatedly using the slur of “anti-semite” in an effort to intimidate those calling for a boycott.
Since the beginning of the boycott movement, several anti-boycott websites have sprung up, the most prominent of which seems to be engageonline.org.uk, operated by David Hirsh, lecturer at University of London’s Goldsmiths College.
Engage was:

“created to arm people with arguments and facts that they could use to counter the propaganda of the boycott campaign within the Association of University Teachers. Engage grew from a being a resource for that particular and successful campaign into being a resource that aims to help people counter the boycott Israel campaign in general, as well as the assumptions and misrepresentations that lie behind it.

That’s the background, now comes the unsavory part.
For the past few months, debate for and against the boycott has been raging on a private UCU member email discussion list (about 700 members) with the majority of members coming out in favor of the boycott. A selection of these private email exchanges were leaked to the Engage website (many can be read here), but one in particular must have seemed like a godsend to the anti-boycott pro-Israel camp.
Three days ago, in her defense of a colleague who was arguing for the boycott on the private discussion list, UCU member and lecturer Jenna Delich wrote the following:

John,
In support to your link this may be a long but also an interesting reading: 
http://www.davidduke.com/general/humanitarian-disaster_595.html 
No comment necessary. The facts are speaking for themselves.
Jenna 
Jenna Delich

The article that Ms. Delich referenced was written by me in 2006 and entitled “Racism, not Defence, at the heart of Israeli politics” (original here). However, the link was to the web site of infamous white supremacist David Duke. Someone at Duke’s site (or Duke himself) had apparently republished the article, without my permission or knowledge.
Unsurprisingly, the anti-boycott camp immediately pounced and, ignoring the most obvious explanation (that Ms Denlich had never heard of Duke and was simply posting a link to the article and not his website) decried the “obvious link” between the UCU and “perhaps the most notorious racist and anti-semite in the world”.
[Note: the second link above is from a blog called "Harry's place", which appears to be run by someone who is either a member of the UCU or is closely associated with someone who is. "Harry" claims that his site offers a "democratic-left perspective". To get an idea of what "democratic-left" means to 'Harry', see this link
I can't speak for Ms. Delich (although I strongly suspect my hypothesis above is accurate), but all contributors toSott.net deplore racism and everything that Duke stands for. A careful reading of our published works makes our position on Israel, Judaism etc. very clear to any normal, rational person, and nowhere will you find the merest hint of any real anti-semitism, racism, holocaust denial, white supremacy, or KKK membership for that matter. In fact, Sott.net was founded on solidly humanitarian ground and in response to the increasingly extremist beliefs and policies infecting the halls of power and the minds of far too many otherwise well-meaning people.
It is natural therefore that we would seek to speak out against Israeli government and military human rights abuses against Palestinians, and that we would strongly support the UCU boycott of certain Israeli academic institutions as a way to put pressure on the Israeli government to change its ways.
The best known case of a similar international boycott occurred during the Apartheid regime in South Africa when dozens of nations around the world implemented various types of sanctions and boycotts (including academic boycotts) that played an important role in the ultimate fall of the unjust system.
So if a broad boycott of South Africa was almost universally agreed to be righteous, why does the mere proposal of a simple boycott of Israeli academic institutions meet with such resistance? After all, the similarities between the Israeli government's treatment of Palestinians and South African Apartheid have already been made clear:

"This is like apartheid": ANC veterans visit the West Bank
Veterans of the anti-apartheid struggle said last night that the segregation endured by Palestinians in the Israeli-occupied territories was in some respects worse than that imposed on the black majority under white rule in South Africa.
Members of a 23-strong human-rights team of prominent South Africans cited the impact of the Israeli military's separation barrier, checkpoints, the permit system for Palestinian travel, and the extent to which Palestinians are barred from using roads in the West Bank.
After a five-day visit to Israel and the Occupied Territories, some delegates expressed shock and dismay at conditions in the Israeli-controlled heart of Hebron. Uniquely among West Bank cities, 800 settlers now live there and segregation has seen the closure of nearly 3,000 Palestinian businesses and housing units. Palestinian cars (and in some sections pedestrians) are prohibited from using the once busy streets.
"Even with the system of permits, even with the limits of movement to South Africa, we never had as much restriction on movement as I see for the people here," said an ANC parliamentarian, Nozizwe Madlala-Routledge of the West Bank. "There are areas in which people would live their whole lifetime without visiting because it's impossible." [...]
Fatima Hassan, a leading South African human rights lawyer, said: “The issue of separate roads, [different registration] of cars driven by different nationalities, the indignity of producing a permit any time a soldier asks for it, and of waiting in long queues in the boiling sun at checkpoints just to enter your own city, I think is worse than what we experienced during apartheid.” She was speaking after the tour, which included a visit to the Holocaust Museum at Yad Vashem and a meeting with Israel’s Chief Justice, Dorit Beinisch.
One prominent member of the delegation, who declined to be named, said South Africa had been “much poorer” both during and after apartheid than the Palestinian territories. But he added: “The daily indignity to which the Palestinian population is subjected far outstrips the apartheid regime.And the effectiveness with which the bureaucracy implements the repressive measures far exceed that of the apartheid regime.” [...]
In Hebron’s main Shuhada Street, the South African delegation was plunged into a confrontation after one of the local settlers’ leaders disrupted the tour by unleashing a barrage of abuse through a megaphone at one of the Israeli guides. Amid angry arguments, police arrested three of the Israeli guides.
Mrs Madlala Routledge exclaimed: “This is ridiculous. Why are they arresting our guides and leaving the man with the megaphone?”
Dennis Davis, a high court judge and one of the South African delegation’s several Jewish members, told the extreme right-wing Hebron settlers’ leader Baruch Marzel: “These provocations didn’t come from us. I’m Jewish and I look at this and I say to myself, how can I feel fear from other Jews?”
Andrew Feinstein, a former ANC parliament member, said that the visit to Yad Vashem had been “extremely moving” because his mother had been a Holocaust survivor who lost many members of her family. “As you walk into Yad Vashem you see a quote that says in effect you should know a country not only by what it does but what it tolerates,” he said. “So I found it very shocking to then come and here and see footage of teenagers heaping abuse on Palestinian children as they come out of school, and throwing stones at them. And that this should be done in the name of Judaism I find totally reprehensible.
“What the Holocaust teaches us more than anything else is that we must never turn our heads away in the face of injustice.”
See also Gideon Levy’s, Twilight Zone/’Worse than apartheid’ in Haaretz

From the UK Guardian:

In October 2005, 13-year-old Iman al-Hams was shot and wounded by an Israeli army unit in the southern Gaza Strip town of Rafah, despite being identified as a little girl, and wearing a school uniform. Iman was machine-gunned by the unit’s commander. She had 17 bullets in her body, and three in her head, a Palestinian doctor told the Guardian. Iman is one of 654 Palestinian children to have been killed in the occupied territories since September 2000. Several were killed as they sat at their desks in class. Three and a half thousand children have been wounded. Over 300 are in Israeli prisons.
In South Africa’s state of emergency of the mid-1980s, declared in response to a nationwide campaign of protest, 312 children were killed, over 1,000 wounded, 2,000 children under 16 were detained without trial, thousands more arrested, hundreds fled into exile, and a generation was marked for life. Noble Peace Prize winner Desmond Tutu wrote about one child, Johnny, whom he saw after some time in police custody: “I wanted to cry, I was filled with a blazing anger against a system that could do this to a child … Johnny’s case alone ought to be enough to fill any decent person … with revulsion and indignation.”
Iman’s is such a case, 20 years on. Archbishop Tutu has described the situation of the Palestinians under occupation as worse than South Africa under apartheid. In July 2004, the international court of justice ruled that Israel’s 280 mile wall, the latest burden on Palestinians, was illegal. But Israel, like the old South Africa faced with international disapproval, simply ignored it.
Twenty years ago, 496 British academics responded to an appeal from the African National Congress leaders in exile after two academics were served with banning orders. They signed a letter calling for an academic boycott of South Africa. Today, some in the new generation of British academics feel they cannot accept Israel’s occupation of East Jerusalem, the West Bank and Gaza, the policies that brought the wall, and a new generation of children suffering like those South African children whose wounds of mind and body never healed.
Iman and Johnny will never go to college. But some of the Israeli soldiers implicated in crimes like the one that killed the little girl are university lecturers who serve in the occupation army reserve forces every year, and who otherwise go about their academic “business as usual” for the rest of the year. No Israeli academic institution has ever severed its organic ties with the military-security establishment in protest. None has issued a public statement condemning the grave violations of Palestinian human rights. This is part of the reason why Palestinians have called upon the world to boycott Israeli academic institutions.

And that is precisely the goal of the repeated attempts by the UCU to institute an academic boycott (of some nature) against Israeli institutions - to make a public statement condemning the Israeli government for its human rights abuses. Yet somehow, the debate is always twisted and turned around to allegations of “anti-semitism” - that if you support the boycott you are somehow motivated by a ‘hatred of Jews because they are Jews’. The contention is clearly ridiculous. Those supporting the boycott and the vast majority of those that condemn the situation in Palestine and Israel are well aware that the Israeli government and the Jews of Israel and elsewhere are far from synonymous. Events leading up the Iraqi invasion, when Tony Blair ignored the mass public demonstrations and not only joined the US-led invasion but fabricated evidence to justify it gave the British public a stark reminder of just how impotent they are to influence government policy on the most important matters.
In Israel the situation is no different. A majority of Israeli citizens want peace (who wouldn’t?) but their government continues its aggressive policies towards Israel’s Arab neighbors, placing the lives of Israelis at risk, and public opinion be damned. How then can the anti-boycott camp in the UK and elsewhere reasonably insist that exerting academic, political or economic pressure on the Israeli government is tantamount to hatred of Jews? Clearly the boycott seeks to achieve the very same thing that a majority of ordinary Jews (at least in Israel) want - an end to the violence and peaceful cohabitation. The answer of course is that they cannot ‘reasonably’ make such a claim, and there is nothing reasonable about the tactics they use to silence the boycott campaign.
Jenna Delich posted a link to my 2006 article. She was unaware that the link was not to the original Sott.net article but to a reproduction (now removed at my request) on David Duke’s site. She sought to share the content of the article, not the content of the site on which it appeared. The content of my article is in no way anti-semitic. My article draws conclusions that are backed by mainstream press reports (which I cite). My article attacks the Israeli government and its institutions and warns that (in my opinion) in the not too distant future the actions of the Israeli government may prove to be as much of a threat to the lives of Israeli Jews as they are now to the lives of Palestinians and Arabs in the Middle East. Clearly this is not anti-semitic.
Is anything that I say in my article actually wrong? Not in my opinion. However, if someone at Engage or Harry’s Place, can point out the errors, I will be happy to accept them and make the necessary corrections/retractions. But I seriously doubt that this will ever happen, because such people are not interested in reasoned argument backed up with objective facts. Writers at Harry’s place continue to claim that my article is “racist diatribe” and that “Jews were the target”, despite the fact that the word “Jew” or “Jews” or “Jewish” do not appear in the article. My article is clearly directed at the Israeli government and its institutions, yet the anti-boycotters are determined to convince everyone, me included, that I, and anyone who agrees with my points, are attacking the Jews! Well, I’m sorry but I’m not buying it, because it is unmitigated nonsense. I don’t care how much they try to convince me that I hate Jews, I will always reject such a charge. Why would I hate people I don’t even know? Why would I hate people I DO know and love? I have several close friends of Jewish background, people I consider brothers and sisters. Are the anti-boycotters saying that the fact that I wrote an article that was critical of the Israeli government, means that I now hate my close friends?!
Jenna Delich is clearly not a racist, she is moved by the plight of oppressed people everywhere. This much is clear from her messages to the UCU list and support for the boycott of Israeli academic institutions. The anti-boycotters and Israel-firsters at sites like Harry’s place are undoubtedly aware of this yet they choose to slander and defame Delich, casting her as a racist and “Neo-Nazi”. They posted her picture on the Harry’s place website and started a blog called the Jenna Delich archives at jennadelich.blogspot.com, which they state is:

“a repository of posts concerning the Sheffield-based UCU member who posts links to articles on the website of neo-Nazi and former Ku Klux Klan member, David Duke”

One mistake, one unintentional posting of a link to Duke’s site, and Delich is now apparently someone who “posts links to articles on the website of neo-Nazi and former Ku Klux Klan member, David Duke.” How’s that for a smear job on an innocent woman? Do these seem like the actions of people who are interested in open and honest discourse on the plight of the Palestinian and Israeli people? Or are they the actions of people who, having no reasonable argument to put forth, resort to ad-homimen attacks and the blunt force instrument that is the cry of “anti-semitism”. In doing so, are these people not in fact working against the expressed desire of the Israeli people for peace with their Palestinian and Arab neighbors? In thwarting the efforts to pressure the Israeli government to fulfill the wishes of the Israeli people for a peaceful settlement (which is being forestalled by continued Israeli oppression of Palestinians), how can these people claim to be defending Jewish interests? Clearly they are not, but they are certainly defending the interests of the corrupt Israeli government, in precisely the same way that the pro-war rantings of right-wing American ‘patriots’ defend only the interests of the corrupt Bush government and their lackeys.
If I criticize the US government (which I do, often) does that mean that I hate the American people? If I criticize the Irish government (which I do, often), does that mean that I hate the Irish people? Do I hate myself? Am I a ’self-hating Irishman’? Am I permitted to deny any association with, or that I am influenced by the real anti-semitism of the Nazi era on the basis that I was born many years later in a country many miles away with no exposure to anti-Jewish sentiment? If so, can I then claim immunity from the threat of being made guilty of anti-semitism by virtue of non-Jewishness and expect that my criticism of the Israeli government will be understood as just that - criticism is of the Israeli government - and not hatred of the disenfranchised Jewish people? Is it possible for a person to criticize or otherwise democratically agitate for the removal of a government without also wishing the demise of an entire population?
Is it possible that the vast majority of critics of the Israeli government are motivated by a sense of empathy with the suffering of the Palestinians, and outrage at the Israeli government as the source of that suffering, rather than a bizarre and unrelated hatred of Jews? And is it possible that those who refuse to accept this contention and instead condemn government critics as “anti-semites” do so because they themselves simply do not, or cannot feel such empathy for the oppressed? Is the problem here that we are essentially talking different ‘languages’? If this is the case, and my own experience suggests that it is, then perhaps we should recognise it and ‘draw the line’. Let the anti-boycott and pro-Israel camp continue to prevaricate and excuse the abuse of the innocent, and let the rest of continue to fight for justice.
Of course, that fight for justice will not be easy, mainly because of the biased nature of the mainstream media. Did I just say that?? Yes I did, in fact, I already said it my infamous article:

“Yet the Israeli government does a very good job of convincing the whole world that it is the victim in the conflict. How can this be? Israeli control of the press? Could that ubiquitous “conspiracy theory” actually be closer to a conspiracy fact? I don’t really care, all I want is for someone to explain to me how, in a situation where there is massive evidence that 1.4 million completely isolated Palestinian civilians in the Gaza strip are being systematically murdered and starved by the state of Israel with its shiny 21st century military and all the tax dollars and support America can muster, somehow the entire world believes that those 1.4 million dispossessed are “evil terrorists” and “only have themselves to blame”.
Somebody, please tell me how it comes to pass, if not by control of the mainstream press, and very significant control at that.”

Now, are the above comments anti-Semitic? If they are backed up by mainstream sources that show a clear bias towards Israel in the mainstream press, are they still anti-Semitic? If a meticulously researched scholarly paper by two eminent U.S. professors provides ample evidence for the existence of a very powerful Israel lobby in the US and in other nations, is it anti-Semitic to infer that said lobby could exert control over mainstream press corporations that report on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, and that said lobby could have some connection to the Israeli government?
Can someone please explain to me how, if I draw this conclusion, it is evidence that I ‘hate Jews because they are Jews’. How does making logical and reasonable deductions from verifiable facts make me anti-semitic? Or perhaps I am anti-semitic because I am challenging the logic of those supporters of Israel that want to label me anti-semitic?
Since we are on the topic of the mainstream press, I should note that the fracas over Jenna Delich’s posting of a link to my article was picked up by the Jerusalem Post:

UK union posts link to anti-Semitic article
August 26 2008 
Jonny Paul, London
A member of the British academic union that voted to reintroduce a boycott of Israeli academia has posted a link on the union’s Web site to an anti-Semitic article on the Web site of former Klu Klux Klan leader David Duke.
Jenna Delich, a member of the University and College Union, posted a message on the UCU Web site’s activist list with a link to the article.
Delich’s message was in support of a colleague who backs the boycott call. It reads: “John, in support to your link this may be a long but also an interesting reading: http://www.davidduke.com/general/humanitarian-disaster-595.html. No comment necessary. The facts are speaking for themselves, Jenna.”

Note the title of the piece. Mr. Paul is apparently in agreement with the anti-boycott camp in the UK that critcism of the Israeli government in order to pressure it to end the human rights abuses in Palestine is “anti-Semitic”.

The article, “Racism, not Defense, at the Heart of Israeli Politics,” is an attack on the “Israeli oligarchs” and was circulated to hundreds of the union’s active members. It was written by a 9/11 conspiracy theorist named Joe Quinn.

“9/11 conspriacy theorist”? Well, ok, I can accept that. I am of the opinion that the 9/11 attacks involved a group of people conspiring together.

In the article he writes: “There is much evidence to warrant an in-depth investigation of the role played by agents of Israel in the 9/11 attacks. Yet the ubiquitous, tiresome and completely baseless threat of being labelled “anti-Semitic,” for criticizing the actions of the Israeli government effectively prevents all but the most courageous from following the leads. Coincidence? We think not…

I am not entirely certain whether Mr. Paul quoted this paragraph because he agrees with me that to label those who criticise the Israeli government as “anti-Semitic” is a baseless accusation, or if he thinks this paragraph is evidence of my alleged hatred of Jews.

“Just what level of power do Israeli interests wield in the halls of power in the US that any investigation into Israeli spying activities on US soil against US intelligence agencies can be so completely quashed? Would this constitute a level of power and control that would allow those interests to carry off a terrorist attack like 9/11 and have it blamed on ‘Arab terrorists?’”

Again, I am not sure why Mr Paul chose this paragraph. Maybe he thinks I have a point. Maybe he read Walt and Mearsheimer’s The Israel Lobby and U.S. Foreign Policy, or maybe he read the Washington Post article of September 10th 2001 entitled, U.S. troops would enforce peace under Army study, and where it is stated:

Located at Fort Leavenworth, Kan., the School for Advanced Military Studies is both a training ground and a think tank for some of the Army’s brightest officers. Officials say the Army chief of staff, and sometimes the Joint Chiefs of Staff, ask SAMS to develop contingency plans for future military operations. During the 1991 Persian Gulf war, SAMS personnel helped plan the coalition ground attack that avoided a strike up the middle of Iraqi positions and instead executed a “left hook” that routed the enemy in 100 hours.
The cover page for the recent SAMS project said it was done for the Joint Chiefs of Staff. But Maj. Chris Garver, a Fort Leavenworth spokesman, said the study was not requested by Washington.
“This was just an academic exercise,” said Maj. Garver. “They were trying to take a current situation and get some training out of it.”
The exercise was done by 60 officers dubbed “Jedi Knights,” as all second-year SAMS students are nicknamed.
The SAMS paper attempts to predict events in the first year of a peace-enforcement operation, and sees possible dangers for U.S. troops from both sides.
It calls Israel’s armed forces a “500-pound gorilla in Israel. Well armed and trained. Operates in both Gaza [and the West Bank]. Known to disregard international law to accomplish mission. Very unlikely to fire on American forces. Fratricide a concern especially in air space management.”
Of the Mossad, the Israeli intelligence service, the SAMS officers say: “Wildcard. Ruthless and cunning. Has capability to target U.S. forces and make it look like a Palestinian/Arab act.”

Of course, if Mr Paul is aware of this report by the elite of US military intelligence, I hope that he would agree with me that the Mossad is an Israeli government institution, and any criticism of it does not imply a concomitant hatred of Jewish people.

Quinn links to the Web site of convicted Holocaust-denier David Irving saying: “On the morning of 9/11 and just as the WTC towers were crumbling, the five Israelis were caught doing the ‘happy dance’ as they videotaped the Twin Towers fall.” The piece closes with the claim: “Either someone does something about these sick psychopaths, or they, and their kind in Washington and around the world, will destroy us all.”

Now here is where Mr. Paul snuggles up close to the defamers at Engage and Harry’s Place and at the same time engages in some real sloppy journalism. All Mr. Paul had to do was click on the link on Duke’s website to see that there is not and never has been a link to Duke’s website on my original Sott.net article (or anywhere else on Sott.net). It should not have been difficult therefore for Mr. Paul to deduce that Duke reproduced my article rather than me “linking” to his site. Furthermore, if Mr. Paul had indulged in some responsible journalism he could easily have contacted me to verify whether or not I had given permission for the article to be posted by Duke or if I even knew that he had done so (I did not). So for some reason, I am not shocked that the Jerusalem Post went for the easy option of a poorly researched hit piece that supports the dubious claim that anti-semitism is on the rise in British academia.
Paul continues:

The link was discovered by Engage, a group of left-wing trade unionists and academics active in the anti-boycott campaign.

Now, the idea that Engage is “left-wing” has me perplexed. I thought that left-wingers were traditionally anti-war, bleeding heart liberal, humanitarian types. Engage was established to opposed the boycott which puts it firmly in the pro-Israeli government camp, with all that entails. Unless of course by “left-wing” Engage means Tony Blair’s ‘New Labour’ type of ‘left-wingism’, in which case I fully understand, but I’m going to have to redefine my political ‘isms.

Dr. David Hirsh, lecturer at University of London’s Goldsmiths College and editor of the Engage Web site, said: “Since 2003 academic unions have been dominated by a campaign to exclude Israelis, and nobody else, from UK campuses. We have warned the [UCU] general-secretary on numerous occasions that this campaign has imported anti-Semitic ways of thinking into our union, she either didn’t understand or didn’t care. That the union is now circulating racist material should be understood as a manifestation of its institutional anti-Semitism; it cannot be written off as yet another random accident.”

It is again unsurprising that Mr. Paul chose to quote from the Engage web site and its owner (I presume) David Hirsh. It was Hirsh who first revealed Ms. Delich’s message and kicked off the sweeping generalisations that “the UCU is circulating links to David Duke’s website on behalf of Delich.”

Hirsh said Delich’s e-mails on the activist list had already been the subject of two formal complaints to the union. However, the UCU judged that the evidence was unpersuasive.

And why might the UCU have judged that the evidence was unpersuasive? Could it possibly be that the evidence for Ms. Delich’s racism or anti-Semitism was unpersuasive?

Dr. Jon Pike, a member of the UCU national executive but speaking in a personal capacity, said: “I’m not surprised that anti-Semitic material has again dropped into my inbox from the union activists’ list. What is shocking is the failure of the union’s internal procedures to do anything about this. UCU prides itself on being an anti-racist union. In fact, it is probably the most complacent public institution in Britain in relation to increasing anti-Semitism and the leadership turns a blind eye, or worse, to the racism in the union. Behind all this is the campaign of discrimination against Israeli academics which is fostered by some in the union and encouraged by the leadership.”
Eve Garrard, senior Lecturer in Philosophy at Keele University in Staffordshire, said: “This is precisely the kind of thing which drove me recently to resign from the UCU. It has become a union which is complacent about anti-Semitism: It regards prejudicial hostility toward Jews, from within the union itself, as something too unimportant for it to bother with. I didn’t feel able to remain in an institution which treats anti-Semitism indulgently, as a special exception to a generally anti-racist stance.”

Below is one email that Ms. Delich posted to the activist list in April this year. (emphasis mine):

Like quite a lot of others I feel tired from getting bulks of messages on an hourly basis with this endless discussion going on, and have very rarely felt the need to say something. However, I now feel that I might add a few words.
First, I find the whole talk about anti-semitism as an attempt to shift the focus from attacking the IDEA of Zionism and the Israeli politics inspired by it, and subsequent terror it has brought on the Palestinian people. Not all people (in this case Jews) buy into one and the same idea (as we know, it wasn’t even the case in WWII). Therefore, I don’t [think] we could comfortably say that Zionism=Judaism, and therefore, all Jews are Zionists. We know that it isn’t either true or correct. So, I can’t see how attacking an idea may equate to attacking an entire nation or one people. I personally would strongly oppose if a member of my people spoke on my behalf trying to represent me if I did not agree with him. Nobody could have a carte blanche to speak in the name and on behalf of the entire nation. Thus, I don’t think that we can box all Jewish people in a package labelled Zionism, and therefore consider one’s opposition to the idea of Zionism as an attack on the ‘entire package’.
So, why not try to focus on the real essence of the entire discussion:
Zionism and the official politics of Israel, and its effects on innocent Palestinian civilians who have been denied the basic human rights as a result of such a politics?
As to the boycott, I simply see the point of the boycott and similar actions as a way of political pressure to try and change the official politics of one government. We are all familiar with sanctions and even bombing of parts of the world (e.g. Libya, Iraq) that were endorsed by the International community in order to remove oppressive regimes and a certain politics that had far more severe/devastating effects on the entire civilian population of those countries (children, women, elderly etc.) than a boycott would have on Israel.
But how do you change one politics if you do not put pressure on the people of that country to make them stand against their government? And are you (or anybody in their right mind) prepared to support building a College on settlements that were once legally the Palestinian land? Would you allow anyone to come and build a shed in your garden, driving you out of there (although it would be only a very tiny piece of land), and them pride myself in having the most beautiful shed in the neighbourhood expecting others to admire its beauty, and praise and applaud the perpetrator? And what would you think of those neighbours who would dare applaud someone invading you garden?
As to the bullying, I could never see a political discussion to be deemed as bullying. However, for those who claim this to have been so it would be interesting to invite them to state the exact quotes that they find to constitute bullying. I always believe that claims have to be substantiated by hard facts (what, where, when,and who).
Regards 
JENNA DELICH

You can read a few more of the “racist” emails from Ms. Delich at this link (search for ‘JENNA’). In all of them she comes across as a reasonable person who is motivated by the suffering of innocent people and anger at the Israeli government for meting it out. So where is the anti-semitism? Mr Hirsh explains:

“Anti-Semitism is routinely tolerated on the activist list when it is expressed in the language of hostility to Israel,” Hirsh said. “Only a small group of Jews and anti-racists have been standing up against this culture on the list. Some have been excluded from the list on trumped up charges; others have been driven off the list by continual accusations of bad faith. Some have left the union because they cannot bear to pay their dues to what they consider to be an anti-Semitic organization.”

So anti-semitism is “hostility to Israel”. To be more specific, in the context of the debate within the UCU, for Mr Hirsh and the rest of the anti-boycott camp, “anti-semitism” is hostility to the Israeli government and it’s policies towards Palestinians. This definition however diverges sharply from the working definition of the European Union Agency for Fundamental Rights which states:
“…criticism of Israel similar to that leveled against any other country cannot be regarded as anti-semitic.”
The International Court of justice ruled in 2004 that the ’separation fence’ is illegal, should be dismantled, and Palestinians should be compensated for damages. The Israeli government ignored the ruling and continued to build the wall, so the Israeli government is today in clear violation of international law and as a result is causing suffering to millions of people.
Would any other nation be criticized for similar flagrant disregard for international law and human rights? More importantly, has any other nation been criticized for similar flagrant disregard for international law and human rights? The answer is an emphatic ‘yes’. Can we therefore criticize the Israeli government and bring pressure to bear on it by way of boycotts without being labeled anti-Semitic? The European Union Agency for Fundamental Rights and therefore EU law says that we can. As such, for all those who abhor the Israeli government’s continuing brutal treatment of defenseless Palestinians, understand that you are not only legally entitled to criticize the Israeli government, you are also morally bound to do so.
Comment: Update: Within a few hours of posting the link to the mailing list, Ms. Delich responded:

I didn’t realise who David Duke was nor did I hear of him. I just looked at the article not the website where it appeared. Apologies for picking up that website as I personallly am strongly against any racists, anti-semitists and the likes of them. I just found the article quite powerful, and none are saying that Joe Quinn (the author of the article) is a racist or anti-semitist, and the article is quite interesting. So, perhaps we should focus on the article itself and not where it appeared (if we look at it in a broader sense, the website itself appeard on Google and so did the article)? Anyone can put anything on their website… Sincere apologies once again though for picking the wrong website, but it’s the article that I found interesting as it gives some amazing facts and it was not written by David Duke (who, I most certainly agree, has no place in UCU but is the author of the website and not the article).

Mr Hirsh at Engage and all of the other “left-wing” anti-boycott, pro-Israeli government defamation artists were surely aware of Ms. Delich’s response, yet they chose to pursue their opportunistic and scurrilous manipulation of Ms. Delich’s simple mistake in their efforts to perpetuate the Israeli government’s continued persecution of the Palestinian people.
By their fruits you shall know them.
very year since 2002 the University and College Union (UCU), the largest trade union and professional association for academics working in further and higher education throughout the UK, has attempted to implement some form of boycott of Israeli academic institutions that have been shown to be complicit in the ongoing persecution of the Palestinian people. And each year, amid much acrimony and cries of “anti-semitism”, boycotters meet with significant resistance from pro-Israeli members of British academia, and other institutions.
This year however, lowly Sott.net has inadvertently become involved in the melee.
In 2007, the congress of the UCU voted by 158 votes to 99 on Motion 30, which called for the UCU to circulate a boycott request by Palestinian trade unions to all branches for information and discussion. It called on lecturers to “consider the moral implications of existing and proposed links with Israeli academic institutions.”
Motion 30 was amended:

Congress notes that Israel’s 40-year occupation has seriously damaged the fabric of Palestinian society through annexation, illegal settlement, collective punishment and restriction of movement.
Congress deplores the denial of educational rights for Palestinians by invasions, closures, checkpoints, curfews, and shootings and arrests of teachers, lecturers and students.
Congress condemns the complicity of Israeli academia in the occupation, which has provoked a call from Palestinian trade unions for a comprehensive and consistent international boycott of all Israeli academic institutions.
Congress believes that in these circumstances passivity or neutrality is unacceptable and criticism of Israel cannot be construed as anti-semitic.
Congress instructs the NEC to:
circulate the full text of the Palestinian boycott call to all branches for information and discussion;
encourage members to consider the moral implications of existing and proposed links with Israeli academic institutions;
organise a UK-wide campus tour for Palestinian academic/educational trade unionists;
issue guidance to members on appropriate forms of action.
actively encourage and support branches to create direct links with Palestinian educational institutions and to help set up nationally sponsored programs for teacher exchanges, sabbatical placements, and research.

In the end however, and after much pressure being brought to bear, the boycott effort was dropped on legal advice that it would be unlawful and could not be implemented, despite the fact that the motion merely called for individual branches to inform their members and debate the pros and cons of a boycott and decide for themselves how or if to proceed.
In May this year, a similar motion was tabled and passed at the UCU annual conference that again called on members to: “consider the moral and political implications of educational links with Israeli institutions, and to discuss the occupation with individuals and institutions concerned, including Israeli colleagues with whom they are collaborating.”
What this amounts to is basically a call for UCU members to just think about the implications of ties with Israeli academic institutions that are involved in supporting Israeli government oppression of Palestinians. Once again however, the pro-Israel camp came out in force.
The point of a boycott of Israeli academic institutions is eminently defensible because its primary goal is to put pressure on the Israeli government to cease its brutal treatment of the Palestinian people and to adhere to international law. It has absolutely nothing to do with any anti-semitism among the supporters of the boycott in British academia. Of course, this does not stop the anti-boycott pro-Israel camp from repeatedly using the slur of “anti-semite” in an effort to intimidate those calling for a boycott.
Since the beginning of the boycott movement, several anti-boycott websites have sprung up, the most prominent of which seems to be engageonline.org.uk, operated by David Hirsh, lecturer at University of London’s Goldsmiths College.
Engage was:

“created to arm people with arguments and facts that they could use to counter the propaganda of the boycott campaign within the Association of University Teachers. Engage grew from a being a resource for that particular and successful campaign into being a resource that aims to help people counter the boycott Israel campaign in general, as well as the assumptions and misrepresentations that lie behind it.

That’s the background, now comes the unsavory part.
For the past few months, debate for and against the boycott has been raging on a private UCU member email discussion list (about 700 members) with the majority of members coming out in favor of the boycott. A selection of these private email exchanges were leaked to the Engage website (many can be read here), but one in particular must have seemed like a godsend to the anti-boycott pro-Israel camp.
Three days ago, in her defense of a colleague who was arguing for the boycott on the private discussion list, UCU member and lecturer Jenna Delich wrote the following:

John,
In support to your link this may be a long but also an interesting reading: 
http://www.davidduke.com/general/humanitarian-disaster_595.html 
No comment necessary. The facts are speaking for themselves.
Jenna 
Jenna Delich

The article that Ms. Delich referenced was written by me in 2006 and entitled “Racism, not Defence, at the heart of Israeli politics” (original here). However, the link was to the web site of infamous white supremacist David Duke. Someone at Duke’s site (or Duke himself) had apparently republished the article, without my permission or knowledge.
Unsurprisingly, the anti-boycott camp immediately pounced and, ignoring the most obvious explanation (that Ms Denlich had never heard of Duke and was simply posting a link to the article and not his website) decried the “obvious link” between the UCU and “perhaps the most notorious racist and anti-semite in the world”.
[Note: the second link above is from a blog called "Harry's place", which appears to be run by someone who is either a member of the UCU or is closely associated with someone who is. "Harry" claims that his site offers a "democratic-left perspective". To get an idea of what "democratic-left" means to 'Harry', see this link
I can't speak for Ms. Delich (although I strongly suspect my hypothesis above is accurate), but all contributors toSott.net deplore racism and everything that Duke stands for. A careful reading of our published works makes our position on Israel, Judaism etc. very clear to any normal, rational person, and nowhere will you find the merest hint of any real anti-semitism, racism, holocaust denial, white supremacy, or KKK membership for that matter. In fact, Sott.net was founded on solidly humanitarian ground and in response to the increasingly extremist beliefs and policies infecting the halls of power and the minds of far too many otherwise well-meaning people.
It is natural therefore that we would seek to speak out against Israeli government and military human rights abuses against Palestinians, and that we would strongly support the UCU boycott of certain Israeli academic institutions as a way to put pressure on the Israeli government to change its ways.
The best known case of a similar international boycott occurred during the Apartheid regime in South Africa when dozens of nations around the world implemented various types of sanctions and boycotts (including academic boycotts) that played an important role in the ultimate fall of the unjust system.
So if a broad boycott of South Africa was almost universally agreed to be righteous, why does the mere proposal of a simple boycott of Israeli academic institutions meet with such resistance? After all, the similarities between the Israeli government's treatment of Palestinians and South African Apartheid have already been made clear:

"This is like apartheid": ANC veterans visit the West Bank
Veterans of the anti-apartheid struggle said last night that the segregation endured by Palestinians in the Israeli-occupied territories was in some respects worse than that imposed on the black majority under white rule in South Africa.
Members of a 23-strong human-rights team of prominent South Africans cited the impact of the Israeli military's separation barrier, checkpoints, the permit system for Palestinian travel, and the extent to which Palestinians are barred from using roads in the West Bank.
After a five-day visit to Israel and the Occupied Territories, some delegates expressed shock and dismay at conditions in the Israeli-controlled heart of Hebron. Uniquely among West Bank cities, 800 settlers now live there and segregation has seen the closure of nearly 3,000 Palestinian businesses and housing units. Palestinian cars (and in some sections pedestrians) are prohibited from using the once busy streets.
"Even with the system of permits, even with the limits of movement to South Africa, we never had as much restriction on movement as I see for the people here," said an ANC parliamentarian, Nozizwe Madlala-Routledge of the West Bank. "There are areas in which people would live their whole lifetime without visiting because it's impossible." [...]
Fatima Hassan, a leading South African human rights lawyer, said: “The issue of separate roads, [different registration] of cars driven by different nationalities, the indignity of producing a permit any time a soldier asks for it, and of waiting in long queues in the boiling sun at checkpoints just to enter your own city, I think is worse than what we experienced during apartheid.” She was speaking after the tour, which included a visit to the Holocaust Museum at Yad Vashem and a meeting with Israel’s Chief Justice, Dorit Beinisch.
One prominent member of the delegation, who declined to be named, said South Africa had been “much poorer” both during and after apartheid than the Palestinian territories. But he added: “The daily indignity to which the Palestinian population is subjected far outstrips the apartheid regime.And the effectiveness with which the bureaucracy implements the repressive measures far exceed that of the apartheid regime.” [...]
In Hebron’s main Shuhada Street, the South African delegation was plunged into a confrontation after one of the local settlers’ leaders disrupted the tour by unleashing a barrage of abuse through a megaphone at one of the Israeli guides. Amid angry arguments, police arrested three of the Israeli guides.
Mrs Madlala Routledge exclaimed: “This is ridiculous. Why are they arresting our guides and leaving the man with the megaphone?”
Dennis Davis, a high court judge and one of the South African delegation’s several Jewish members, told the extreme right-wing Hebron settlers’ leader Baruch Marzel: “These provocations didn’t come from us. I’m Jewish and I look at this and I say to myself, how can I feel fear from other Jews?”
Andrew Feinstein, a former ANC parliament member, said that the visit to Yad Vashem had been “extremely moving” because his mother had been a Holocaust survivor who lost many members of her family. “As you walk into Yad Vashem you see a quote that says in effect you should know a country not only by what it does but what it tolerates,” he said. “So I found it very shocking to then come and here and see footage of teenagers heaping abuse on Palestinian children as they come out of school, and throwing stones at them. And that this should be done in the name of Judaism I find totally reprehensible.
“What the Holocaust teaches us more than anything else is that we must never turn our heads away in the face of injustice.”
See also Gideon Levy’s, Twilight Zone/’Worse than apartheid’ in Haaretz

From the UK Guardian:

In October 2005, 13-year-old Iman al-Hams was shot and wounded by an Israeli army unit in the southern Gaza Strip town of Rafah, despite being identified as a little girl, and wearing a school uniform. Iman was machine-gunned by the unit’s commander. She had 17 bullets in her body, and three in her head, a Palestinian doctor told the Guardian. Iman is one of 654 Palestinian children to have been killed in the occupied territories since September 2000. Several were killed as they sat at their desks in class. Three and a half thousand children have been wounded. Over 300 are in Israeli prisons.
In South Africa’s state of emergency of the mid-1980s, declared in response to a nationwide campaign of protest, 312 children were killed, over 1,000 wounded, 2,000 children under 16 were detained without trial, thousands more arrested, hundreds fled into exile, and a generation was marked for life. Noble Peace Prize winner Desmond Tutu wrote about one child, Johnny, whom he saw after some time in police custody: “I wanted to cry, I was filled with a blazing anger against a system that could do this to a child … Johnny’s case alone ought to be enough to fill any decent person … with revulsion and indignation.”
Iman’s is such a case, 20 years on. Archbishop Tutu has described the situation of the Palestinians under occupation as worse than South Africa under apartheid. In July 2004, the international court of justice ruled that Israel’s 280 mile wall, the latest burden on Palestinians, was illegal. But Israel, like the old South Africa faced with international disapproval, simply ignored it.
Twenty years ago, 496 British academics responded to an appeal from the African National Congress leaders in exile after two academics were served with banning orders. They signed a letter calling for an academic boycott of South Africa. Today, some in the new generation of British academics feel they cannot accept Israel’s occupation of East Jerusalem, the West Bank and Gaza, the policies that brought the wall, and a new generation of children suffering like those South African children whose wounds of mind and body never healed.
Iman and Johnny will never go to college. But some of the Israeli soldiers implicated in crimes like the one that killed the little girl are university lecturers who serve in the occupation army reserve forces every year, and who otherwise go about their academic “business as usual” for the rest of the year. No Israeli academic institution has ever severed its organic ties with the military-security establishment in protest. None has issued a public statement condemning the grave violations of Palestinian human rights. This is part of the reason why Palestinians have called upon the world to boycott Israeli academic institutions.

And that is precisely the goal of the repeated attempts by the UCU to institute an academic boycott (of some nature) against Israeli institutions - to make a public statement condemning the Israeli government for its human rights abuses. Yet somehow, the debate is always twisted and turned around to allegations of “anti-semitism” - that if you support the boycott you are somehow motivated by a ‘hatred of Jews because they are Jews’. The contention is clearly ridiculous. Those supporting the boycott and the vast majority of those that condemn the situation in Palestine and Israel are well aware that the Israeli government and the Jews of Israel and elsewhere are far from synonymous. Events leading up the Iraqi invasion, when Tony Blair ignored the mass public demonstrations and not only joined the US-led invasion but fabricated evidence to justify it gave the British public a stark reminder of just how impotent they are to influence government policy on the most important matters.
In Israel the situation is no different. A majority of Israeli citizens want peace (who wouldn’t?) but their government continues its aggressive policies towards Israel’s Arab neighbors, placing the lives of Israelis at risk, and public opinion be damned. How then can the anti-boycott camp in the UK and elsewhere reasonably insist that exerting academic, political or economic pressure on the Israeli government is tantamount to hatred of Jews? Clearly the boycott seeks to achieve the very same thing that a majority of ordinary Jews (at least in Israel) want - an end to the violence and peaceful cohabitation. The answer of course is that they cannot ‘reasonably’ make such a claim, and there is nothing reasonable about the tactics they use to silence the boycott campaign.
Jenna Delich posted a link to my 2006 article. She was unaware that the link was not to the original Sott.net article but to a reproduction (now removed at my request) on David Duke’s site. She sought to share the content of the article, not the content of the site on which it appeared. The content of my article is in no way anti-semitic. My article draws conclusions that are backed by mainstream press reports (which I cite). My article attacks the Israeli government and its institutions and warns that (in my opinion) in the not too distant future the actions of the Israeli government may prove to be as much of a threat to the lives of Israeli Jews as they are now to the lives of Palestinians and Arabs in the Middle East. Clearly this is not anti-semitic.
Is anything that I say in my article actually wrong? Not in my opinion. However, if someone at Engage or Harry’s Place, can point out the errors, I will be happy to accept them and make the necessary corrections/retractions. But I seriously doubt that this will ever happen, because such people are not interested in reasoned argument backed up with objective facts. Writers at Harry’s place continue to claim that my article is “racist diatribe” and that “Jews were the target”, despite the fact that the word “Jew” or “Jews” or “Jewish” do not appear in the article. My article is clearly directed at the Israeli government and its institutions, yet the anti-boycotters are determined to convince everyone, me included, that I, and anyone who agrees with my points, are attacking the Jews! Well, I’m sorry but I’m not buying it, because it is unmitigated nonsense. I don’t care how much they try to convince me that I hate Jews, I will always reject such a charge. Why would I hate people I don’t even know? Why would I hate people I DO know and love? I have several close friends of Jewish background, people I consider brothers and sisters. Are the anti-boycotters saying that the fact that I wrote an article that was critical of the Israeli government, means that I now hate my close friends?!
Jenna Delich is clearly not a racist, she is moved by the plight of oppressed people everywhere. This much is clear from her messages to the UCU list and support for the boycott of Israeli academic institutions. The anti-boycotters and Israel-firsters at sites like Harry’s place are undoubtedly aware of this yet they choose to slander and defame Delich, casting her as a racist and “Neo-Nazi”. They posted her picture on the Harry’s place website and started a blog called the Jenna Delich archives at jennadelich.blogspot.com, which they state is:

“a repository of posts concerning the Sheffield-based UCU member who posts links to articles on the website of neo-Nazi and former Ku Klux Klan member, David Duke”

One mistake, one unintentional posting of a link to Duke’s site, and Delich is now apparently someone who “posts links to articles on the website of neo-Nazi and former Ku Klux Klan member, David Duke.” How’s that for a smear job on an innocent woman? Do these seem like the actions of people who are interested in open and honest discourse on the plight of the Palestinian and Israeli people? Or are they the actions of people who, having no reasonable argument to put forth, resort to ad-homimen attacks and the blunt force instrument that is the cry of “anti-semitism”. In doing so, are these people not in fact working against the expressed desire of the Israeli people for peace with their Palestinian and Arab neighbors? In thwarting the efforts to pressure the Israeli government to fulfill the wishes of the Israeli people for a peaceful settlement (which is being forestalled by continued Israeli oppression of Palestinians), how can these people claim to be defending Jewish interests? Clearly they are not, but they are certainly defending the interests of the corrupt Israeli government, in precisely the same way that the pro-war rantings of right-wing American ‘patriots’ defend only the interests of the corrupt Bush government and their lackeys.
If I criticize the US government (which I do, often) does that mean that I hate the American people? If I criticize the Irish government (which I do, often), does that mean that I hate the Irish people? Do I hate myself? Am I a ’self-hating Irishman’? Am I permitted to deny any association with, or that I am influenced by the real anti-semitism of the Nazi era on the basis that I was born many years later in a country many miles away with no exposure to anti-Jewish sentiment? If so, can I then claim immunity from the threat of being made guilty of anti-semitism by virtue of non-Jewishness and expect that my criticism of the Israeli government will be understood as just that - criticism is of the Israeli government - and not hatred of the disenfranchised Jewish people? Is it possible for a person to criticize or otherwise democratically agitate for the removal of a government without also wishing the demise of an entire population?
Is it possible that the vast majority of critics of the Israeli government are motivated by a sense of empathy with the suffering of the Palestinians, and outrage at the Israeli government as the source of that suffering, rather than a bizarre and unrelated hatred of Jews? And is it possible that those who refuse to accept this contention and instead condemn government critics as “anti-semites” do so because they themselves simply do not, or cannot feel such empathy for the oppressed? Is the problem here that we are essentially talking different ‘languages’? If this is the case, and my own experience suggests that it is, then perhaps we should recognise it and ‘draw the line’. Let the anti-boycott and pro-Israel camp continue to prevaricate and excuse the abuse of the innocent, and let the rest of continue to fight for justice.
Of course, that fight for justice will not be easy, mainly because of the biased nature of the mainstream media. Did I just say that?? Yes I did, in fact, I already said it my infamous article:

“Yet the Israeli government does a very good job of convincing the whole world that it is the victim in the conflict. How can this be? Israeli control of the press? Could that ubiquitous “conspiracy theory” actually be closer to a conspiracy fact? I don’t really care, all I want is for someone to explain to me how, in a situation where there is massive evidence that 1.4 million completely isolated Palestinian civilians in the Gaza strip are being systematically murdered and starved by the state of Israel with its shiny 21st century military and all the tax dollars and support America can muster, somehow the entire world believes that those 1.4 million dispossessed are “evil terrorists” and “only have themselves to blame”.
Somebody, please tell me how it comes to pass, if not by control of the mainstream press, and very significant control at that.”

Now, are the above comments anti-Semitic? If they are backed up by mainstream sources that show a clear bias towards Israel in the mainstream press, are they still anti-Semitic? If a meticulously researched scholarly paper by two eminent U.S. professors provides ample evidence for the existence of a very powerful Israel lobby in the US and in other nations, is it anti-Semitic to infer that said lobby could exert control over mainstream press corporations that report on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, and that said lobby could have some connection to the Israeli government?
Can someone please explain to me how, if I draw this conclusion, it is evidence that I ‘hate Jews because they are Jews’. How does making logical and reasonable deductions from verifiable facts make me anti-semitic? Or perhaps I am anti-semitic because I am challenging the logic of those supporters of Israel that want to label me anti-semitic?
Since we are on the topic of the mainstream press, I should note that the fracas over Jenna Delich’s posting of a link to my article was picked up by the Jerusalem Post:

UK union posts link to anti-Semitic article
August 26 2008 
Jonny Paul, London
A member of the British academic union that voted to reintroduce a boycott of Israeli academia has posted a link on the union’s Web site to an anti-Semitic article on the Web site of former Klu Klux Klan leader David Duke.
Jenna Delich, a member of the University and College Union, posted a message on the UCU Web site’s activist list with a link to the article.
Delich’s message was in support of a colleague who backs the boycott

Gene: “As for her (Sarah Palin’s) union-member husband: good for him. I hope he and she will convince McCain to change his opposition to the Employee Free Choice Act.”

Touche, Gene, good comeback.

As for the Employee Free Choice Act, it would be great if Sarah & Todd could convince McCain to support it, but I would not bet on it!

I’m surprised, and quite happy. Hell, I might have supported Buchanan in ‘96. I’m trying to remember. (Texas really doesn’t have much of a role in picking nominees, so its always a academic and abstract question.) By all accounts she has bulldogged her way through the Alaska Republican establishment and remained very popular. That last point speaks to a certain toughness.

Presumably, she can read and digest briefing books. She certainly looked fine today speaking in Ohio. Somehow, the McCain campaign thinks she can handle the role of running-mate, so I’ll gonna wait for a week or two to decide if she can.

I suspect, also, that her husband and family will be assets.

Who cares? It’s not like being a member of a neo-Nazi church or anything. Anyway, she has nothing against Jews or Israel:

http://www.politico.com/blogs/bensmith/0808/Palin_on_Israel.html

Interesting photo for it’s not just a venue she turned up at because she wants to become a President.

One retaining secret ballots for union elections, I stand with John McCain and George McGovern, and against Barack Obama.

Accident?

I mean, “ON retaining…”

Arf:

http://wonkette.com/402363/your-first-look-at-mccain-palins-america

P.

Tim H,
Seen this?

http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=vPTMcs8wpHc

” At the very least, she would then owe us an explanation of how much she knew about Buchanan’s views on Israel, Jews, gays, immigration, etc ”

I doubt if Buchanans views on immigration, or Gays are very much out of line with most conservatives, certainly immigration - the statistics show that most Americans would curtail illegal immigration. On Buchanan’s views on Israel and “Jews” ( by which you also mean criticism of Israel) certain nutty pro-zionist neo-cons, and zionist-christians might be put out were McCain not Israels very best friend ever - what it does mean is that paelo-conservatives now have somewhere to go. And as for her husband being a real life blue collar worker - rare for the left these days but could well impress the Clinton democrats - the blue collar ( and frankly poor white collar) working class. A very good move really, I think, as I write this), as would the buchanan link.

Good chess move.

The University and College Union annual congress last week voted by a two-thirds majority to organise a campus tour for Palestinian academic trade unionists to explain why they had called for an academic and cultural boycott of Israel, and to encourage UCU members to consider the moral implications of links with Israeli universities. Not surprisingly, this overwhelming vote met with a roar of hostility from what we have learned to call the Israel lobby.

Our government, long accustomed to sitting on its hands when any serious attempt to censure Israel is made, predictably joined the chorus. More surprisingly, the Independent’s editorialist and its columnist Joan Smith followed along. The boycott, we are told, damages academic freedom, picks on Israel, and encourages anti-Semitism on British campuses.

Entirely suppressed in this harrumphing has been any thought about why Palestinian university teachers and their union, as well as all the NGOs in the Occupied Territories, have called for a boycott. Academic freedom, it appears, applies to Israelis but not Palestinians, whose universities have been arbitrarily closed, Bir Zeit for a full four years. Students and teachers have been killed or imprisoned. Attendance at university is made hazardous or impossible by the everyday imposition of checkpoints. Research is blocked by Israeli refusal to allow books or equipment to be imported.

Even within Israel itself, some universities sit on illegally expropriated land, Arab student unions are not recognised and there are increasing covert restrictions on Arab-Israelis (20 per cent of the population) entering university at all. No Israeli academic trade union or professional association has expressed solidarity with their Palestinian colleagues a few kilometres away across the wall, though the boycott call may finally encourage them to do so.

When challenged, Israelis cite examples of collaboration with Palestinians: bridges, not borders. Fine, but because Palestinian academics from Gaza or the West bank are not permitted to enter pre-1967 Israel, how real can such collaborations be? If academic freedom means anything, it must be indivisible. And what are Palestinians to make of the uncensured insistence by senior Israeli academics that their family size constitutes a demographic threat to the Jewish state?

But why should academics, culture workers, architects and doctors in the UK, who have all in recent months called for forms of boycott of Israel, take such action? Why pick on Israel, we are asked. After all, as Joan Smith points out, there are lots of ugly regimes around. How about boycotting the UK until troops are removed from Iraq? But boycott is merely a specific tactic, a non-violent weapon available to individual members of civil society. It is only one form of protest: many boycott supporters are at least as actively involved in the various campaigns against the UK’s illegal war in Iraq as in any boycott of Israel.

No one asks those campaigning against China’s occupation of Tibet why not Israel or Darfur? If opponents of our boycott call want to make a case for boycotting Cuba (one boycott that Israel, following its American paymaster at the UN, habitually supports) they are free to do so. The issue is not “Why Israel?” but “Why not Israel?” Yet the secular western press, so willing to express discomfort with states that describe themselves as “Islamic Republics” is seemingly untroubled by the ethnic assumptions underlying the claims of a Jewish republic.

Further, it is precisely because Israel prides itself on its academic prowess (just as South Africa did of its sporting prowess) that the idea of an academic boycott is so painful. Israel has uniquely strong academic links with Europe, and despite its Middle-East location and constant breaches of European legislation on human rights, receives considerable financial research support from the EU. That’s why the Israeli cabinet felt it necessary to set up an anti-boycott committee under that well-known campaigner for a greater Israel, Binyamin Netanyahu, and why teams of Israeli academics toured the UK before the UCU vote to try to block the boycott call.

Lurking behind the thinking of even well-meaning opponents of the boycott is that it is in some way anti-Semitic. This ignores the fact that the boycott is of Israeli institutions, not individuals (so it would affect the tiny number of Palestinian academics in Israeli institutions, but not a Jewish Israeli working in the UK or US). Second, it ignores the fact that the British Jewish community is itself intensely divided over Israel, between those who will defend Israel at all costs, and the increasingly vocal critics who insist “not in our name”. Even a cursory look at the signatories of the various boycott calls will show the large number of prominent Jewish figures among them. It really isn’t good enough to attack the messenger as anti-Semitic or a self-hating Jew rather than deal with the message itself, that Israel’s conduct is unacceptable.

What could be a more democratic way of bringing debate on to university campuses than the instruction to the UCU to organise a campus tour for Palestinian academic trade unionists to engage in discussion before UCU members decide whether to support their call for a boycott? Those who cherish the idea of the university as the house of reason will surely welcome the opportunity for calm discussion of a controversial issue.

Pat Buchanan in his own words, he sounds like a regular “anti-imperialist” I am surprised he hasn’t been offered a free UCU membership and posting rights on the UCU activist list! It is probably in the mail :(

Pat Buchanan: In His Own Words
As an author, media figure, and political commentator, Patrick Buchanan publicly espouses racist, anti-Semitic, anti-Israel and anti-immigrant views. At one time an influential staff member in the Nixon and Reagan Administrations, Buchanan has gone on to write a number of books and articles that focus on the decline of Western civilization due to what he refers to as the “invasion” of non-European immigrants in the United States and Europe. His books, along with his weekly appearances on NBC’s The McLaughlin Group, have given him substantial mainstream exposure. Buchanan has affiliated himself with extremists in the United States and abroad, including deceased racist Sam Francis and the leaders of the Vlaams Belang, a xenophobic, racist political party in Belgium.
On American Jews and the Pro-Israel Lobby

2008: “Israel and its Fifth Column in this city seek to stampede us into war with Iran. Bush should rebuff them, and the American people should tell their congressmen: You vote for 362, we don’t vote for you.”
– Column, “A Phony Crisis — and a Real One,” July 15, 2008

2007: “If you want to know ethnicity and power in the United States Senate, 13 members of the Senate are Jewish folks who are from 2 percent of the population. That is where real power is at….”
– On The McLaughlin Group, February 2, 2007

2005: “Neocons say we attack them because they are Jewish. We do not. We attack them because their warmongering threatens our country, even as it finds a reliable echo in Ariel Sharon.”
– Neo-Conned! Just War Principles: A Condemnation of War in Iraq, P.136

2005: “They charge us with anti-Semitism…The truth is, those hurling these charges harbor a ‘passionate attachment’ to a nation not our own that causes them to subordinate the interests of their own country and to act on an assumption that, somehow, what’s good for Israel is good for America.”
– Neo-Conned! Just War Principles: A Condemnation of War in Iraq, P.137

2005: “Who would benefit from a war of civilizations between the West and Islam? Answer: one nation, one leader, one party. Israel, Sharon, Likud.”
– Neo-Conned! Just War Principles: A Condemnation of War in Iraq, P.142

2004: “[Richard] Perle’s depiction of his delight at first meeting the future president reads like Fagin relating his initial encounter with the young Oliver Twist.”
– Where the Right Went Wrong: How Neoconservatives Subverted the Reagan Revolution and Hijacked the Bush Presidency, P.42

2004: “Who would benefit from these endless wars in a region that holds nothing vital to America-save oil…Who would benefit from a ‘war of civilizations’ with Islam? Who other than these neoconservatives and Ariel Sharon? Indeed, Sharon was everywhere the echo of his American auxiliary….”
– Where the Right Went Wrong: How Neoconservatives Subverted the Reagan Revolution and Hijacked the Bush Presidency, P.52

2004: “Israel is in an existential crisis. It can wall itself off and annex what it wants on the West Bank, and leave Palestinians in tiny truncated, nonviable bantustans that will become the spawning pools of terror. Or it can give the Palestinians what Oslo, Camp David, Taba and the ‘roadmap’ promised; a homeland, a nation and a state of their own. Israel is free to choose. But American needs a Middle East policy made in the USA, not in Tel Aviv, or at AIPAC or AEI.”
– Where the Right Went Wrong: How Neoconservatives Subverted the Reagan Revolution and Hijacked the Bush Presidency, P.241

2004: “America has given up its role as ‘honest broker.’ President Bush no longer sits at the head of the negotiating table, but directly behind Sharon.”
– Where the Right Went Wrong: How Neoconservatives Subverted the Reagan Revolution and Hijacked the Bush Presidency, P.242

2004: “Dissent to the neocon line on Iraq or Israel has come to be equated with treason.”
– Where the Right Went Wrong: How Neoconservatives Subverted the Reagan Revolution and Hijacked the Bush Presidency, P.248

2004: BUCHANAN: [N]eoconservatives…Perle and Wolfowitz and Wurmser and the others, working with Netanyahu, had an agenda for war with Iraq that was going nowhere.

9/11 happens, and they put this agenda before a president, who in my judgment was untutored, as his father was not. Reagan would not have done this. I don’t think his father would have done this.

They captured Rumsfeld, and they captured Cheney, and I think they captured the president…

BLITZER: Did you think of the Jewish line of Fagan [sic] when you wrote that and Richard Perle being Jewish?

BUCHANAN: Well, I mean, obviously Fagan was Jewish. But the thing about it is he was a leader of pick-pockets in a fictional book. Why is it unacceptable for me to use a literary allusion when I am called routinely Father Charles Coughlin of the modern era who was alleged to be an anti-Semitic priest? That is an outrage because that’s a real character.

But I’ll tell you this. Look, my views with regard to the security of this country - I disagree with Sharon’s agenda. I think we have outsourced Middle East policy to Ariel Sharon. I think that’s a disaster for this country. It’s damaging our relations over the world.

And we cannot allow ourselves to be silenced because people call us names. My objection to the neoconservatives is not their ethnicity, Wolf. It is their war-mongering.

– CNN Late Edition with Wolf Blitzer, September 12,2004

2004: “Washington today is rife with reports the FBI has been investigating whether or not a nest of Pollardites in the Pentagon has been transmitting American secrets, through the Israeli lobby AIPAC, to the Reno Road embassy and to Sharon…

“AIPAC and the Israelis deny any spying. Cooperation between the Bush and Sharon governments is so close, they insist, there is no need to commit espionage or thieve U.S. documents. Perhaps, but the men about whom the FBI is inquiring have old, deep and questionable ties to Israel and the Likud Party of Ariel Sharon…

“Having promised him a cakewalk to Baghdad and a rose garden thereafter, neoconservatives misled President Bush. He should have fired the lot of them. Having failed to do so, he ought now, in his own interests, as well as our nation’s, name Patrick “Bulldog” Fitzgerald, now heading up the investigation into the Valerie Plame leak, to head up the investigation of Israeli espionage, and possible treason, against the United States. If there has been a recurrence of Pollardism at the Pentagon, we need to know and the president needs to act, as Truman did not with Alger Hiss and Harry Dexter White.”

– “Pollardites in the Pentagon,” Creators Syndicate, September 12,2004

2004: “We also need to investigate whether there is a nest of Pollardites in the Pentagon who have been transmitting American secrets through APAC, the Israeli lobby, over to Reno Road, the Israeli embassy, to be transferred to Mr. Sharon. Now, I did not know until this weekend’s stories in The Washington Post that this is exactly what is being talked about; that certain individuals over there in Mr. Feith’s shop or beneath him have been transmitting these secrets.

“Now, the FBI have been asking questions. There are no conclusions. No one should assume guilt on anyone’s part. But if this has been going on, Tim, we are getting dangerously close to the T-word.”

– Meet the Press, September 5,2004

2004: “I believe the mistake the president is making is outsourcing American Middle East policy to Ariel Sharon.”

– Real Time with Bill Maher, September 3, 2004

2003: “Tony Blair has assured his countrymen the United States does not intend to attack Syria or Iran. Colin Powell has assured the Muslim world the United States does not intend to attack Syria or Iran.

“But did the British prime minister or U.S. secretary of state clear their statements with Richard Perle? For the War Party has blood in its nostrils and is headed for Damascus….

“We are fighting ‘World War IV,’ said [former CIA Director James] Woolsey….

“’World War IV’ is a term popularized by militant Zionist Norman Podhoretz, who has been shrieking for war on no fewer than six or seven Arab countries. But why should anyone care what Woolsey says?

“Because James Woolsey is slated for a position of power in the U.S. reconstruction of Iraq. Moreover, Woolsey echoes John Bolton at State and Israel’s Ariel Sharon, who has also been howling for the United States to take down Iran and Syria, as soon as Baghdad falls.

“This is the neocons’ hour of power, and they do not intend to lose this chance to remake the Middle East in their own image.”

– Column, “On to Damascus?”, April 9, 2003
2003: “The War Party may have gotten its war. But it has also gotten something it did not bargain for. Its membership lists and associations have been exposed and its motives challenged.”

“Suddenly, the Israeli connection is on the table, and the War Party is not amused. Finding themselves in an unanticipated firefight, our neoconservative friends are doing what comes naturally, seeking student deferments from political combat by claiming the status of a persecuted minority group.”

“We charge that a cabal of polemicists and public officials seek to ensnare our country in a series of wars that are not in America’s interests. We charge them with colluding with Israel to ignite those wars and destroy the Oslo Accords. We charge them with deliberately damaging U.S. relations with every state in the Arab world that defies Israel or supports the Palestinian people’s right to a homeland of their own. We charge that they have alienated friends and allies all over the Islamic and Western world through their arrogance, hubris, and bellicosity.”

“A list of the Middle East regimes that Podhoretz, Bennett, Ledeen, Netanyahu, and the Wall Street Journal regard as targets for destruction includes Algeria, Libya, Egypt, Sudan, Lebanon, Syria, Iraq, Saudi Arabia, Iran, Hezbollah, Hamas, the Palestinian Authority, and ‘militant Islam.’

“Cui bono? For whose benefit these endless wars in a region that holds nothing vital to America save oil, which the Arabs must sell us to survive? Who would benefit from a war of civilizations between the West and Islam?

“Answer: one nation, one leader, one party. Israel, Sharon, Likud.”
“What these neoconservatives seek is to conscript American blood to make the world safe for Israel. They want the peace of the sword imposed on Islam and American soldiers to die if necessary to impose it.”

“The principal draftsman is Richard Perle….In 1996, with Douglas Feith and David Wurmser, Perle wrote “A Clean Break: A New Strategy for Securing the Realm,” for Prime Minister Netanyahu….In the Perle-Feith-Wurmser strategy, Israel’s enemy remains Syria, but the road to Damascus runs through Baghdad. Their plan, which urged Israel to re-establish ‘the principle of preemption,’ has now been imposed by Perle, Feith, Wurmser & Co. on the United States.”

“President Bush is on notice: Should he pressure Israel to trade land for peace, the Oslo formula in which his father and Yitzak Rabin believed, he will, as was his father, be denounced as an anti-Semite and a Munich-style appeaser by both Israelis and their neoconservative allies inside his own Big Tent.”

“Though we have said repeatedly that we admire much of what this president has done, he will not deserve re-election if he does not jettison the neoconservatives’ agenda of endless wars on the Islamic world that serve only the interests of a country other than the one he was elected to preserve and protect.”

– “Whose War? The Loudest Clique Behind the President’s Policy,” The American Conservative, March 24, 2003.
2003: “Sharon was first elected on a pledge to ditch the Camp David and Barak plans. His new cabinet contains militant Zionists who consider the West Bank sacred Jewish land. They will not give it up. They will not permit Jerusalem to become the capital of a Palestinian state even if Bush, triumphant in Iraq, tells them it must be done. They will fight him as they fought his father. And they will have the War Party in their corner….

“Where will…President Bush go after Baghdad? If he seeks to pressure Israel into what the Israeli Right and the War Party think are premature and foolish negotiations, he will court a savage backlash in an election year, and fail. If he embraces the Sharon Doctrine and puts military pressure on Syria and Iran, he will do so without Tony Blair, without NATO and without U.N. backing, and he will be seen world wide as the leader of a rogue superpower.”

–”After Baghdad, where do we go?”
townhall.com, March 3, 2003.
2003: “Israel, recipient of $100 billion in U.S. aid, is demanding another $15 billion to hold our coat as we fight her war against Iraq.”

–”With friends like these,”
townhall.com, February 24, 2003.

1999: “After World War II, Jewish influence over foreign policy became almost an obsession with American leaders.”

- A Republic, Not an Empire. P. 336.

1999: “I know the power of the Israeli lobby and the other lobbies, but we need a foreign policy that puts our own country first.”

- Meet the Press Interview. September 12, 1999.

1991: “Even if his veto of the (loan) guarantees is overridden, he will have won high marks for his courage, and exposed congress for what it has become, a Parliament of Whores incapable of standing up for U.S. national interests, if AIPAC is on the other end of the line.”

- Syndicated column, December 18, 1991

1990: In an August 25,1990, column, Buchanan criticized commentators urging military intervention in Iraq, naming Abe Rosenthal, Richard Perle, Charles Krauthamer and Henry Kissinger. On August 29th, he wrote the following:

“’The civilized world must win this fight,’ the editors thunder. But, if it comes to war, it will not be the ‘civilized world’ humping up that bloody road to Baghdad; it will be American kids with names like McAllister, Murphy, Gonzales, and Leroy Brown.”

- Washington Times, August 29, 1990

1990: “There are only two groups that are beating the drums for war in The Middle East – the Israeli Defense Ministry and its amen corner in the United States.”

- The McLaughlin Group, Aug 26, 1990

1990: “Capitol Hill is Israeli occupied territory.”

- McLaughlin Group, June 15, 1990

1990: “That the United States would sit still for anything was brought home to the Israelis, long ago, on the third day of the Six-Day War, when Lyndon Johnson ordered a coverup of an Israeli rocket-and-machine gun attack on the U.S. intelligence ship Liberty off the Sinai, an attack costing the lives of 37 brave American soldiers.

When it suits them, our Israeli allies launch air strikes on Tunis, Baghdad or Beirut; they invade Lebanon; they even enlist U.S. traitors, like the Pollards, to loot the secrets of a nation that has manifested toward them an extraordinary indulgence.”

- January, 1990

http://www.adl.org/special_reports/buchanan_own_words/buchanan_intro.asp

Pat Buchanan: the redneck’s George Galloway.

Pat Buchanan is all but supporting Barack Obama this year, precisely because he thinks that Obama will seek out and destroy the Israel Lobby.
And who’s to say he’s wrong?
See http://littlegreenfootballs.com/article/31087_Buchanan_Hearts_Obama#rss

They are certainly an odd couple. He’s old enough to be her father. I think its pretty absurd though; it doesn’t say much about the sincerity of politics.

Its like a psephologist made the pick after looking at the demographics.

“Okay, guys, listen up. We got an old, slightly slow white bloke running for the top job against a slick young black guy who has just defeated a woman in the primary; er… let’s see… I know, lets pick a young, slim brunette as his running mate. That’ll work!”

It’s like painting by numbers.

(They could not have picked a young, black woman - that would have been just too hilarious!)

Pat Buchanan is all but supporting Barack Obama this year, precisely because he thinks that Obama will seek out and destroy the Israel Lobby.
And who’s to say he’s wrong?

Who’s to say he’s wrong? Er, let’s see…. Anybody with more than two brain cells to rub together?

Which does not include Pat Buchanan or the LGF crowd.

It would seem to me that this could go horribly wrong.

Yep. For the Democrats. The misogyny, sexism, and smears are already going strong on Kos and HuffPo. And Gene brings it here to Harry’s Place. Bad move, Gene, but a welcome harbinger of the coming Democratic stumbles.

I don’t think Gene has engaged in misogyny. As for her past, that seems likely to be examined as she’s a public figure running for the vice presidency.

Its great that a woman is running for the vice presidency. However, does it have to be an occasion of such obvious artifice? McCain barely knows her. Its quite obvious this was dreamed up in strategy meeting on a Sunday afternoon. There is nothing genuine about this.

I agree, the one drawback to McCain/Palin is that folks will think that it is great McCain’s daughter is doing so much campaigning for him!

Two false headlines now standing at HP. After the maliciousness of the Jenna Delich business, HP decides to stoop to the same level.

Palin backed Buchanan in 1999. Oops. False. All candidates who visited the town were welcomed in the same way.

Palin was Pat Buchanan’s 1996 State Director? oops. False. She has never donated any money to any of Buchanan’s campaigns. Palin became a Steve Forbes campaigner. For the dunce who wrote the headline: Attending a fundraiser, which is all the Obama-supporting Buchanan can remember, does not equal ‘State Director’!

These stories are non-starters. Try harder, Pseudo-libs.

Its quite obvious this was dreamed up in strategy meeting on a Sunday afternoon. There is nothing genuine about this.

Heh. It’s a trap, Benjamin, and you just stepped in it. Palin and McCain share plenty: fighting corruption, straight shooting, and a maverick reputation of reaching across the aisle to get things done. If you know Alaska even a little bit, you will also recognize Palin as a true daughter of the state, and her family arrangements fit the type: wife works, husband does commercial fishing in summer, takes care of the kids or works in the oil fields in winter. And it doesn’t hurt that Palin is better qualified to be president than Obama. This is going to be an interesting election.

I agree, HP should be more careful with their headlines.

Its pretty weird though. If Buchanan supports Obama, but is saying he had links to Palin, he his using himself as a smear for Obama’s benefit!

Now that’s innovative!

Palin and McCain share plenty: fighting corruption, straight shooting, and a maverick reputation of reaching across the aisle to get things done.

Yeah, yeah, but I was suggesting they barely know one another.

The problem with America is not the illegal corruption, its the legal sort of stitch ups. The Commission on Presidential Debates is an example. What a cosy affair that is!

Its pretty weird though. If Buchanan supports Obama, but is saying he had links to Palin, he his using himself as a smear for Obama’s benefit!

Now that’s innovative!

Vide George Galloway and the Labour party.

Got a tough job, has Buchanan. Selling Obama to his constituency! All very odd. This political cross-dressing has just got weirder.

As an instructive example of what the progressive left can produce, I exhibit the following:

I’d like to retract some of the thoughts of her qualifications that are stirring in my head. Sarah Palin is, likely, qualified to wash my dishes, even moreso to fetch a Big Wheel from my driveway. I was thinking she wasn’t, but those are just exaggerated thoughts.

What a bimbo!

Way to go! That’s how to bring those Hillary supporters back into the fold. And HuffPo’s lead picture is Palin playing basketball. How many young women play soccer, do you suppose? Is that going to disqualify them from political office?

It’s for the children! Mother Jones: “Will Palin Bring A Breast Pump On The Campaign Trail?”

If I went and cherry picked racist comments about Obama from the conservative right and pasted them as instructive examples, wouldn’t I be accused of trying to brand all of Obama’s critics as racist or something?

According to Palin herself, she only met McCain once or twice previously. I hope they get to know each other better now.

“According to Politico, McCain “spoke with her just once on the phone about the position before offering it in person earlier this week.” (Political Wire).

Damn, this slice and dice consumer politics can be just so transparent.

By the way, Palin only owns three homes, so obviously a pauper.

However, I say be radical this cycle. Vote for the guy who makes do with just one (expensive) home :-)

Michael Tomasky’s video response:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/michaeltomasky/2008/aug/30/uselections2008.johnmccain

I am sure he says that John McCain is 72 and “has cancer”. Has cancer? Present tense?

There’s a question that is bugging me. Does anyone think that Sarah Palin would have been McCain’s pick ahead of the likes of Romney, Huckabee, Pawlenty, Ridge, and all the others talked about, if she was a man instead of a woman? Does anyone believe McCain has made his choice based on merit rather than electoral strategy?

By the way, Palin only owns three homes

one is residential and the other two are used for recreation.

Where I live it isn’t unusual for working folks have a cabin up in the hills. Many also own boats, snowmobiles, and off road vehicles. I don’t know what it’s like in Old Blighty, but out in flyover country and Alaska that sort of thing isn’t unusual. Alaska in particular is still a bit of the frontier. I recall one family who moved up and spent the first winter at Fort Yukon living in a tent. Mind, the temperatures go down to -50 F there in winter, plastic shatters when dropped, and the aurora glimmers overhead during the long nights. You ought to give it a shot, you might learn something.

Correct me if I am wrong, but didn’t Buchanan run on an ultra-social conservative platform in 1996? That would fit with her own take on social conservatism, especially in the dark days of the Republican Ascendency in the mid 1990s when the conservative wing of the Republicans went nuts.
Also please remember that until 2001 the Republicans were the isolationist party. A lot of things changed on Sept 11th.

tim H: good point.

this looks like a soap opera and this woman looks like the kind of woman who directly benefits from the fact that politics is mainly a man’s world.

that men’s world needs a few women to show they are not really womanophobic.

this kind of conservative women is the kind that only shines because there are not many other women they could be compared to.

it is interesting to notice that conservative women with her type of profile seem to be more successful in politics than progressive women.

would she have been chosen if she was a childless divorced woman?

still, tactically it was a clever choice, she embodies the figure of the woman-hero, the good mother and wife with a supporting husband, who can tell, look, I did it…

she is an exception, but one of those exceptions are produced by the mainstream system because of the need to get a plural appearance.

… real women are not that perfect.

one of those exceptions who are then used to deny the fact that life is much harder for women than it is for men, therefore putting the blame of most women’s de facto inferior status on their shoulders.

still, once again, and here I am generalising to other cases of conservative women who succed in male-dominated environments, it does not cease to impress me how the right is much more clever in the way they play this game than the left is

Sarah I hardly knew ya. Let’s help the national media. First, as of the 2000 census, the population of the city of Wasilla was 5,469. Not 9,000 or any other number. When she was mayor it was smaller. Second, Sarah has not been Governor for two years-Sarah Palin made history on Dec. 4, 2006, when she took office that was 20 months ago and part of that time she was being interviewed by Vogue so that does not count as governing. Barack Obama was elected to the Senate in November 2004. Let’s try to help the national media with their dates and numbers and some facts about Alaska. OK?

What’s got Benjamin popping up like a morning stiffy?

Mind, the temperatures go down to -50 F there in winter, plastic shatters when dropped, and the aurora glimmers overhead during the long nights. You ought to give it a shot, you might learn something.

No thanks, chuck. :D

You’d better know what the fuck you’re doing by even setting foot in Alaska. I freaked when I saw 2 Degrees in St Louis! :D

Did Obama give a speech recently? Scoured the news and can’t see much about it. Anything we ought to know about?

“Did Obama give a speech recently? Scoured the news and can’t see much about it.”

You might like to try news sources other than Fox News. You’ll find it quite easily then, right above all those articles headlined “Sarah who?”

“Anything we ought to know about?”

Could be. It seems to have given him an 8 point lead in the polls.

Could be. It seems to have given him an 8 point lead in the polls.

Actually, it gave him an 8-point lead in one poll. Not nearly what they were hoping for, and nowhere near what Gore managed in 2000. Obama could have helped himself by saying something news-y and interesting in his speech. Instead, all people will remember is the megalomaniacal setting.

I wonder how Palins association with Buchanan will play out?

Perhaps Rep. Robert Wexler’s instincts were right here, and the Obama campaign will likely drive this one home with the Jewish community in Florida and Ohio: Palin (along with her husband), says former presidential candidate Pat Buchanan, was a “brigader for me in 1996.”

Buchanan has his own page on the website of the Anti-Defamation League, which says he has “racist, anti-Semitic, anti-Israel and anti-immigrant views” and offers quotes going back well before 1996, including his 1990 description of Capitol Hill as “Israeli-occupied territory.”

“and part of that time she was being interviewed by Vogue so that does not count as governing. ”

someone from daily kos? she cant really govern 24 hours a day, and talking to press is part of the office. she probably has done other stuff unrelated to office too: like peeing, eating and sleeping. Crazy woman.

Does anyone believe McCain has made his choice based on merit rather than electoral strategy?

Absolutely absurd to chide McCain for thinking about electoral strategy - are you seriously imagining that Biden or any other VP wasn’t selected while thinking of the same?

But yes, actually, merit was a key reason McCain made this inspired choice:

Palin is, in a way, Pawlenty with a ferocious record of reform. She went after her own party’s state chair and exposed his corruption at the Oil and Natural Gas Commission. Palin defied Ted Stevens and Don Young in refusing to accept the Bridge to Nowhere and told them that Alaska can build its own bridges. Otherwise, like Pawlenty, she enjoys and excels in sports, has a young family, and prior to entering the governor’s mansion lived in a solidly blue-collar home. Palin is, as Pawlenty often points out, more Sam’s Club than country club.

For a candidate who wants to run on a platform of change and reform, Palin fills the prescription perfectly. Not only has she not spent more than three decades immersed in Washington politics, she already has a proven track record of attacking corruption wherever she finds it — even in her own party. As Time says, Palin provides everything McCain needs in a partner for his mission of reform.

Compare that with Obama, who has spent most of his short political life patronising local felons like Tony Rezko, rabid racist preachers like Jeremiah Wright, and domestic terrorists such as Bill Ayers. Most American voters here I’ve met, particuarly women, seem to be thrilled with the pick, and some have said they will now vote GOP. Look forward to seeing the polls next weekend.

I think the best thing the Obama is not to attack her.
Just let the press ask her questions.

if her comments on CO2 emissions and evolution are anything to go by its just a matter of time before she becomes Dan Quayle with a Bible.

Sarah Palin made history on Dec. 4, 2006, when she took office that was 20 months ago and part of that time she was being interviewed by Vogue so that does not count as governing. Barack Obama was elected to the Senate in November 2004.

Corrections:

The 109th Congress, to which Barack Obama was elected, only began sitting in session on 4 January 2005. Of the past three years Barack Obama has spent two not in the Senate doing his job but running for President. Before starting his bid, he had a grand total of less than 150 days in session in the Senate, less than half a year of senior experience. Palin, on the other hand, has been runing the largest state in the Union for considerably more than triple that time.

Unfortunately, it is Obama who is trying to run for President. If elected, he would be the most unqualified to take that office in American history.

Dan Quayle won.

Taki’s Magazine is not too impressed: “People seem to be missing the fact that this is a classic, Rovian appease-the-base choice.”

Well, I sincerely hope that either party is America still has a “base” which, like Buchanan, sees the neocons for what they are (old Trots, simply going about it by different means), and says so.

A “base” which, like Buchanan, is right about family values (strongly shared by Obama’s black base, and by the rural and blue-collar whites who rallied to Clinton), right about strictly limited and strictly legal immigration (strongly shared by Obama’s black base, and by the rural and blue-collar whites who rallied to Clinton), right about “free” trade (strongly shared by Obama’s black base, and by the rural and blue-collar whites who rallied to Clinton), right about constitutional checks and balances (strongly shared by Obama’s black base), right about real national security (strongly shared by the rural and blue-collar whites who rallied to Clinton), right about energy independence (strongly shared by the rural and blue-collar whites who rallied to Clinton), right about real environmental responsibility, right about Second Amendment rights and responsibilities (strongly shared by the rural and blue-collar whites who rallied to Clinton), right about Civil Rights (not “affirmative action”, and in those terms (strongly shared by the rural and blue-collar whites who rallied to Clinton, as well as by a growing number of blacks who see the Hispanics getting AA these days), right about America as an English-speaking country (very, very strongly shared by Obama’s black base, and by the rural and blue-collar whites who rallied to Clinton), right about foreign policy realism, and at least open to the Biblico-Patristic critique of Americanism itself.

But not a “base” which, like Buchanan, is wrong about the protection of workers and consumers (although he is not terribly badly wrong on that one these days), wrong about fair tax (likewise), wrong about universal health care, wrong about Social Security, and wrong about Civil Rights (in the sense that he still makes occasional rhetorical flourishes towards the remaining George Wallace Tendency, not they are ever going to get anywhere now).

And you can’t be a “fiscal conservative” in Alaska. It’s Alaska. Where Palin has also been a good friend of the indigineous peoples.

I’m still backing Obama, but Palin, though certainly not McCain, is looking better and better, not least for the Democratic Party in the long run: it needs to become one again the party that reaches out to, and represents, those who will be and are being attracted to Palin.

Lindsay - you’re at it again, repeatedly spamming threads with entries from your appalling blog.

Is this because no-one reads them in situ, or is it because you are mentally incapable of writing more than one post in a day?

you guys are getting desperate. pathetic. Palin is gonna wipe the floor with you people..

Pat Buchanan is an honest politician, if there ever was one. So many prominent GOP and conservative leaders endorsed and campaigned for Pat Buchanan in 1996 (some in 1999 and 2000 as well, though it was far less, due to him having left the Republican Party).

Go Pat Go!!