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Jan 24, 2011

Palestinian negotiatiors 'offered Israel sovereignty over almost all of Jerusalem'

 


The Telegraph


Palestinian negotiatiors 'offered Israel sovereignty over almost all of Jerusalem'
The Palestinian Authority was facing a backlash from its own people last night after leaked documents showed that it secretly offered Israel sovereignty over nearly all the Jewish settlements in East Jerusalem.
Jerusalem_1809580c.jpg
The Palestinian Authority offered of concessions on areas such as the Haram al-Sharif/Temple Mount holy sites in Jerusalem Photo: REUTERS

By Adrian Blomfield, Jerusalem 11:10PM GMT 23 Jan 2011

The proposal, which amounts to the biggest Palestinian concession ever made over the future of Jerusalem, was floated but rejected by Israel during peace talks in 2008.
Kept secret until now because of its sensitivity, details of the offer were disclosed in a trove of nearly 1,700 secret Palestinian documents that were leaked to al-Jazeera, the Qatar-based satellite television channel.
The papers, which include diplomatic communiques and transcripts of private high-level meetings, provide a rare glimpse of the Palestinian approach to peace talks from the failed Camp David summit of 1999 until last year.
They detail the extent to which Palestinian negotiators were prepared to compromise on the most divisive issues preventing a peace deal with Israel, some of which ordinary Palestinians are likely to find galling.
Among the most sensitive subjects to be addressed, ones which both sides have often avoided in public, were the fate of East Jerusalem, captured by Israel in 1967, and of religious sites in the city's Holy Basin, a particularly noxious issue.
One transcript shows that Palestinian negotiators were prepared to allow Israel to annex all of the Jewish settlements build in East Jerusalem after 1967 with the exception of Har Homa, because it was the most recently-built settlement.
"This is the first time in history that we made such a proposition," Ahmed Qurei, the former lead Palestinian negotiator is shown as saying in 2008. "We refused to do so at Camp David."
In a separate document, Saeb Erakat, the present chief negotiator, said the offer represented "the biggest Yerushalayim in history", using the Hebrew word for Jerusalem.
That such an offer should be made is not entirely surprising - under an initiative driven by President Bill Clinton after the collapse of the Camp David talks, the United States proposed that Jewish settlements in East Jerusalem become part of Israel while Arab suburbs be included in a new Palestinian state.
The so-called "Clinton Parameters", which address all major outstanding issues, are widely accepted to be the basis of any Middle East peace deal. Because it fell short of the parameters, it is also not a surprise that Israel rejected the Palestinian offer.
But Mahmoud Abbas, the Palestinian leader, and his government have always had to address peace talks in a different way, acting more pragmatically with the Israelis and Americans but promising Palestinians they will be uncompromising in their defence of Jerusalem.
Palestinians are likely to be dismayed that Mr Erekat told US envoys that there were "creative ways" of dealing with the issue of sovereignty over Jerusalem's holy sites, even though this too is broadly in line with the Clinton Parameters.
Of all Palestinian officials, however, Mr Erekat is likely to face the most profound embarrassment after the papers showed that he described Ariel Sharon, the former Israeli prime minister, as "a friend" and told Tzipi Livni, the opposition leader, that he would vote for her, if he could, before an election in 2009.
Mrs Livni lost out in the election to Benjamin Netanyahu, the hawkish present prime minister.
Mr Erekat dismissed the documents as "a bunch of lies" during an appearance on Al Jazeera shortly after the documents were released.
More worryingly for Mr Abbas, al Jazeera is promising to disclose additional documents whose impact could be much severer.
They are said to include details of the close cooperation between Israeli and Palestinian security forces in operations against Hamas in the West Bank and disclosures that the Abbas leadership had been tipped off in advance about Israel's war in Gaza in 2008.

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Leaked documents show Palestinian peace concessions
January 24, 2011

JERUSALEM (JTA) -- Palestinian peace negotiators were willing to turn over nearly all of the Jewish neighborhoods in eastern Jerusalem and accept a shared authority of the Temple Mount, leaked Palestinian documents reveal.

More than 1,600 Palestinian documents about the peace process with Israel were leaked to the Qatar-based Al Jazeera network, which shared them with Britain's The Guardian newspaper. They began appearing Sunday night in the two media outlets.

According to the documents, Palestinian chief negotiator Saeb Erekat told U.S. officials that the Palestinians were giving Israel "the biggest Yerushalayim in history," The Guardian reported.

They show that during negotiations in 2008 and 2009, Palestinian negotiators offered Israel all of the Jewish neighborhoods in eastern Jerusalem, with the exception of Har Homa, which now has 20,000 residents. PLO leaders also suggested trading parts of the eastern Jerusalem neighborhood of Sheikh Jarrah for land located elsewhere, according to The Guardian.

The Palestinian negotiators also proposed a joint committee to take over the Jewish and Palestinian holy sites on the Temple Mount in Jerusalem.

The documents show that the Palestinians agreed that Israel would take 10,000 Palestinians refugees under the right of return and that they would recognize Israel as a Jewish state. In addition, Israel offered to transfer Israeli Arabs to the Palestinian state.

They also reveal that Palestinian Authority leaders in the West Bank, including President Mahmoud Abbas, were warned in advance about the Gaza war, which began in December 2008 and lasted for one month.

The documents reportedly were leaked over several months from more than one source, according to a Guardian editors' statement. The identity of the leakers is being protected by Al Jazeera and The Guardian.

On Monday, Erekat called the report on the documents "lies and half truths."

Ahmed Qureia, who led the negotiations in 2008, told The Associated Press that "many parts of the documents were fabricated, as part of the incitement against the Palestinian Authority and the Palestinian leadership." Abbas said that nothing reported in the documents is secret, and that the PLO was updated on all offered concessions.

Abbas also rejected the report that said the number of Palestinians being allowed to return to Israel would be severely limited. 
 




Peace.
Michael Santomauro 
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What sort of TRUTH is it that crushes the freedom to seek the truth?

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"Palestine Papers" Expose U.S. As Dishonest Peace Broker

 

Council for the National Interest Foundation

Council for the National Interest:

"Palestine Papers" Expose U.S. As Dishonest Peace Broker

Any remaining illusion that the United States has ever been an honest broker in Israel-Palestine peace talks vanished yesterday. The Arab news outlet Al-Jazeera released a nearly 1700 document dump on the negotiations for a two state solution with a promise of more to come over the next few days. It's disappointing, but too often the case, that the U.S. mainstream media has not extensively covered the story. But the explosive facts are now out there, visible for everyone to see. The papers include background memos and reports of meetings and negotiating positions focused on the time period 2008-9. Britain's Guardian newspaper describes the documents as a chronicle of "the slow death of the Middle East peace process."

The Palestinian negotiators, it is now clear, offered far more both at Annapolis and at Taba Egypt peace talks than anyone not directly involved in the process believed at that time. They were willing to cede control over most of East Jerusalem as well as nearly all the ground on the West Bank on which the major Israeli settlements contiguous to Jerusalem were located. The major Muslim holy site the al-Aqsa mosque, Harm al'Sharif, would have been subject to what chief PLO negotiator Saeb Erekat described as a "creative" solution, possibly being placed under control of a special commission. Erekat described the concessions as creating the "largest Jerusalem in history" under Jewish control.

The Palestinian diaspora would have no right of return to their former homes in Israel and Israel even floated the idea of expelling its Arab citizens and resettling them on the West Bank. It was virtually a complete capitulation, the result of a powerless illegitimate entity that does not reflect the will of its people having to deal with a very powerful opponent totally supported by the world's superpower. The Israeli negotiator Tzipi Livni declared that the Palestinian concessions were not enough as the Palestinians had balked at conceding one major settlement Har Homa that blocked their access to their rump portion of Jerusalem from the West Bank. Livni wanted 100% and was supported in her obduracy by President George W. Bush and his staff.

The Palestinian people have rightly been shocked by the concessions being considered in their name, but it is a sign of the desperation of their negotiators striving for a settlement at nearly any price as they watch continuing acquisitions of land and settlement building on the West Bank by the Israeli government. 

If the Palestinian people believe they have been betrayed by their leadership that is something they will have to deal with themselves. But the American people have also been betrayed by a phony process that has dragged on for years at great cost to the taxpayer while inflicting terrible damage on the international standing of the United States. Israel continues to receive $7 million a day directly from the U.S. Treasury plus much more in earmarks and tax deductible donations used to fund illegal settlements. Throw in the billions that have gone to Egypt and Jordan to keep the peace with Israel and the total costs to the United States have been staggering.

The Council for the National Interest believes that the unconscionable posturing and blank check granted to successive Israeli regimes by both Democratic and Republican U.S. Administrations acting under pressure from the Israel lobby has effectively destroyed any conceivable peace process. The United States has an interest in encouraging a just settlement for the Palestinians and Israelis but it has instead frittered away its opportunity to serve as an arbiter of the situation by consistently throwing vast sums or money at the problem while simultaneously embracing Israeli "security" positions. Security is genuinely an issue, but it is the security of the American people, who are targeted by terrorists as a result of Washington's embrace of Tel Aviv. American soldiers overseas are likewise the targets of militant groups who use the repression of the Palestinians as a recruiting tool and morale booster. Enough is enough. Israel is not part of the United States and the damage deriving from the relationship should be suggesting to everyone in congress and in the media that it is time for a change of course.  

We are witnessing the collapse of the misguided American project in the Middle East and the specter of irreparable harm to U.S. security and international standing. The Council for the National Interest is calling for a new and rational direction. U.S. interests must come first and they demand a settlement of the Israeli-Palestinian question that is rooted first and foremost in International law and consistent with American professed respect for human rights. Anything less would be another of a series of profound errors by successive U.S. administrations.


Alison Weir
Alison Weir,
President
Council for the National Interest


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“The Complete Guide for Killing Gentiles” - by Rev. Ted Pike

 

"THE COMPLETE GUIDE FOR KILLING GENTILES"

By Rev. Ted Pike

newsletter@truthtellers.org
24 Jan 2011

In November 2009, the world was stunned to learn of a shockingly popular book in Israel, The King's Torah. It advocates murder of non-Jews and even their babies, claiming such infants would only grow up to become enemies of Israel. Ha'aretz says the book received "wide dissemination and the enthusiastic endorsement of prominent rabbis." Some rabbinic authorities have condemned it, but many influential Orthodox leaders have chosen to remain noncommittal. (Ha'aretz, March 23, 2010, "The King's Torah: A Rabbinic Text or a Call to Terror?") They recognize that anti-Arab sentiment and sympathy, even with violent militancy against Palestinians, continues its dramatic upswing in Israel.

The book's primary author, Yitzhak Shapira, was arrested in February 2010 for violating Israel's law against incitement to religious hatred. However, he is reported not to fear imprisonment because of his influence and stature as a prominent head of the ultra-Orthodox settler movement. That confidence has been vindicated by lack of significant prosecution of Shapira for nearly a year.

Recently, a poll in Israel found a majority of Israelis approve the racist rights of Jewish property owners who refuse to sell or rent to Arabs. (See, Most Israelis Approve Racist Rabbis) Just as significantly, the government of Israel itself seems outwardly divided between bland expressions of tolerance by Prime Minister Netanyahu versus "inflammatory statements" and "unbridled incitement" of the ultra-Orthodox by Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman (Ha'aretz, January 12, 2011, "The Extreme Right's Incitement Will End in Murder").

As Israel descends into ultra-Orthodoxy, increasingly violent solutions to the "Arab problem" are proposed. A recent Ha'aretz editorial describes an ultra-Orthodox video that recommends killing authorities and police who aid Palestinians attacked by settlers. Factions in the highest levels of Israel's government, including the cabinet and Knesset, are sympathetic to the militant far right. Ha'aretz: "Scarcely a day goes by… without the coalition joining hands with the extreme right in order to depict non-Jews as hostile elements – and Israeli Human Rights groups protecting Arab rights, as enemies of the state."

Rising Anti-Arab Militancy

Foreign Minister Lieberman embodies the new anti-Arab militancy. Ha'aretz says he "accused organizations that defend human and civil rights of abetting terror and undermining the Israel Defense forces." He even claimed "the terror being waged against us from within is more dangerous than the terror being waged against us from without." Ha'aretz says that if indeed those who defend Arab rights in Israel are now to be viewed as complicit with terrorists then Israel is no longer a democracy. "People who abet terror belong behind bars."

Especially since last year's "settlement freeze," many Haredi call for violence against any governmental authority that restrains Jewish attacks upon Arabs. A December 2009 bulletin from West Bank settlers said, "We'll expel the soldiers from the settlements." Their internet-distributed pamphlet, The Jewish Voice, includes a call to "execute targeted operations against the evildoers, invade Civil Administration offices and ransack them, as well as operate violently against the Palestinians, deepen the refusal to serve in the army and not recognize Israeli courts."

The article was written by co-author of The King's Torah, Rabbi Yosef Elitzur. Ha'aretz has reported that the Yeshiva (Talmudic training school) he helps preside over at Yitzhar was generously funded by the government of Israel (about $250,000 in 2007-08). A similar announcement by Elitzur says "we remember that the war is over Judaism, and the main enemies are the Gentiles in our country who are trying to conquer it and confusing the minds in crooked Jews who are far from the Torah…the Jews will win by violence against Arabs." Elitzur is smug that the ultra-Orthodox can back down even the government of Israel, allowing settlers to establish virtually autonomous bastions of violence against Arabs. Elitzur:

To this day, administration inspectors have not managed to enter Yitzhar since the freeze decree. That is because the experience and the heat at Yitzhar make every entrance by hostile elements require large forces and end with much damage to IDF and police property, even more damage to Arab property and persons, and a sector burning on all sides for a few days. When in every settlement a police patrol car becomes an unwanted presence, and administration inspectors understand they have ten minutes to run away before their tires are punctured, the government's ability to enforce its decrees will drop sharply. (Coteret.com, December 6, 2009, "Document: Settlers Prep to Terrorize West Bank")

With such incendiary rhetoric, it's not surprising that violence by Jewish settlers against Palestinian farmers and communities continues, with increasing reluctance by authorities to intervene or prosecute.

Haredi, particularly in the West Bank and southern Israel, also constantly harass Messianic Christians (sometimes violently), virtually unrestrained by local police or the government of Israel. (See, Israel's Increasing Anti-Christianity)

Calls for Murder Come from Talmud

The groundswell of possibly homicidal activism against Arabs and even Jews who defend them is especially dangerous for a powerful reason: It derives its authority from Orthodox Judaism's most sacred Scriptures, the Talmud and its mystical/revolutionary companion, the Zohar, or Kabbalah, written by the fathers of modern Judaism, the ancient Pharisees.

Perhaps the most highly esteemed Pharisee in the history of Judaism is the "great" Maimonides. He said concerning the "Akum," or Gentiles: "Do not have any pity on them, for it is said…Show no mercy with them. Therefore, if you see an Akum in difficulty or drowning, do not go to his help. And if he is in danger of death, do not save him from death."

Speaking of idolaters (those who worship the false prophet Jesus), Maimonides decreed: "Do not eat with idolaters, nor permit them to worship their idols…Either turn them away from their idols, or kill them" (Hilkoth Akum (X, 1)). (1.) Such venerable Judaic authority underlies The King's Torah. Its homicidal sentiments are literal interpretations of the 2,000-year-old Talmud and Zohar, the highest ethical and spiritual authorities of Judaism.

Israel's second largest newspaper, Maariv, quotes some of The King's Torah, whose homicidal recommendations (which the book claims are "halakah," binding Jewish law) continue for 230 pages.

In any situation in which a non-Jew's presence endangers Jewish lives, the non-Jew may be killed even if he is a righteous Gentile and not at all guilty for the situation that has been created… when a non-Jew assists a murderer of Jews and causes the death of one, he may be killed, and in any case where a non-Jew's presence causes danger to Jews, the non-Jew may be killed. The dispensation applies even when the pursuer is not threatening to kill directly, but only indirectly… even a civilian who assists combat fighters is considered a pursuer and may be killed. Anyone who assists the army of the wicked in any way is strengthening murderers and is considered a pursuer. A civilian who encourages the war gives the king and his soldiers the strength to continue. Therefore, any citizen of the state that opposes us, encourages the combat soldiers or expresses satisfaction over their actions is considered a pursuer and may be killed. Also, anyone who weakens our own state by word or similar action is considered a pursuer… Hindrances – babies are found many times in this situation. They block the way to rescue by their presence and do so completely by force. Nevertheless, they may be killed, because their presence aids murder. There is justification for killing babies if it is clear they will grow up to harm us (emphasis mine). And in such a situation they may be harmed deliberately and not only in conflict with adults.

Echoing Maimonides, this work extensively clarifies that "idolaters" who violate the Talmud's Noahide laws (Christians) must also be executed: "When we approach a non-Jew who has violated the seven Noahide laws and kill him out of concern for upholding these seven laws, no prohibition has been violated."

Readers who would like to become familiar with rabbinical passages teaching the Jewish right to murder both Gentiles and Christians may read my articles "The Talmud: Scalpel That Bleeds the Mideast" and "The Jewish Kabbalah: Root of Mideast Violence" at Truthtellers.org. Ultra-Orthodox fanatics are not inventing a new Judaism. They are only returning to a literal interpretation of the Talmud/Kabbalah and applying it in the modern anti-Arab, anti-Christian context.

Maariv concludes:

One student of the Od Yosef Hai yeshiva in Yitzhar explained, from his point of view, where Rabbi Shapira and Elitzur got the courage to speak so freely on subjects such as the killing of non-Jews. 'The rabbis aren't afraid of prosecution, because in that case, Maimonides [Rabbi Moses ben Maimon, 1135–1204] and Nahmanides [Rabbi Moses ben Nahman, 1194–1270] would have to stand trial too, and anyway, this is research on religious law,' the yeshiva student said. 'In a Jewish state, nobody sits in jail for studying Torah.'

How correct that student is. The modern ultra-Orthodox movement has behind it 2,000 years of rabbinic hate of Gentiles (and Christians) as well as possibly hundreds of Israeli rabbis presently supporting it. It is authentic pharisaic Judaism. Such genuine Talmudism bears little resemblance to modern derivatives of Judaism (so popular in the West), such as the Conservative and Reform movements. They "spiritualize" and rationalize away the Talmud's actual teachings in order to make Judaism amenable to civilized society. That is why such theological "liberals" are loathed and largely boycotted by the Orthodox establishment in Israel.

The government of Israel, maintaining the Orthodox position through its Chief Rabbinate, is founded on the same sacred rabbinic scriptures which give the ultra-Orthodox license to kill. For this reason, stringent repression of ultra-Orthodox terror is unlikely.

Thus, we see that a religion and nation founded upon the depraved teachings of the Pharisees is not bringing forth the fruits of high-mindedness, tolerance, and peace in the way evangelicals have eagerly anticipated for more than a century. Instead, this apostate system, "Babylon the Great," (See, 'Babylon the Great' is Israel) whose forebears tried to extirpate the infant church 2,000 years ago, produces the same bitter fruit: persecution.

This persecution may manifest itself in Israel against Arabs or Messianic believers -- or internationally through Jewish-created, Christian-persecuting ADL "anti-hate" laws.

But make no mistake. Persecution from Jewish sources is the wave of the future. Judao-Pharisaism threatens freedom everywhere.


Endnote:
(1.)
Pranaitis, Rev. I. B., The Talmud Unmasked (pg. 76, 83)


~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Rev. Ted Pike is director of the National Prayer Network, a Christian/conservative watchdog organization.

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Glenn Beck, Jeffrey Goldberg, And The Dog-Whistle That Wasn't

 


VDARE.COMhttp://vdare.com/sailer/110123_goldberg.htm

January 23, 2011

Glenn Beck, Jeffrey Goldberg, And The Dog-Whistle That Wasn't

By Steve Sailer

A benefit of the growing Israeli influence on American politics, as I've mentioned before, is that brusque Israelis are less likely to disguise their inner thoughts to conform to the rules of politesse.

Jeffrey Goldberg, national correspondent for The Atlantic, was born and bred in America. Yet, having enlisted in the Israeli Defense Force, he seems to have picked up some of the Jewish state's characteristic frankness. So, while much of the rest of the MainStream Media was flailing about trying to concoct new rationalizations for their furious attempt to pin that Arizona psycho's rampage on mass-market Republican spokespeople like Sarah Palin, Bill O'Reilly, and Glenn Beck, Goldberg cut to the chase. In Glenn Beck's Jewish Problem (January 18, 2011), Goldberg simply accused Beck, the autodidactic Fox News talker, of anti-Semitism.

Now, Beck might strike a neutral observer as wildly pro-Semitic. But, you see, Goldberg has a list. He wrote:

"This is a post about Beck's recent naming of nine people—eight of them Jews—as enemies of America and humanity. … "

According to Goldberg, Beck denounced billionaire George Soros, psychoanalyst Sigmund Freud, 1920s' PR man Edward Bernays, 1920s pundit Walter Lippmann, Obama Administration official Cass Sunstein, National Welfare Rights Organization co-founder Frances Fox Piven, former Philadelphia mayor Ed Rendell, former SEIU labor boss Andy Stern, along with one unnamed gentile, as "enemies of America and humanity."

Goldberg is willing to concede:

"That said, Beck has not crossed a certain line, by identifying his targets openly as Jewish."

But Goldberg can just tell that Beck is guilty anyway:

"Nevertheless, this, to me, is a classic case of anti-Semitic dog-whistling. … My modest suggestion to those Jews who fear the building of mosques iAmerican cities is that they look elsewherefor threats that seem to be gathering against them." [Links added]

The first question is whether there's actually any story here at all. Did Beck announce a list of enemies of America and humanity? Or is Goldberg just overexcited?

Goldberg doesn't link to any page on the Web to support his claim. This lack of documentation should have made me immediately suspicious, since it's easy to put in a link … if you have one. (The large number of links in VDARE.com articles are often accused of being hard on the eyes, but at least we show you exactly where we get our facts.)

After poking around through scores of websites credulously repeating Goldberg's accusation that Beck is anti-Semitic, I think I've found Goldberg's uncited Cliff Notes: a January 14, 2011 Media Matters article by Ned Resnikoff coyly entitled Why Are There So Many Jews in Beck's Rogues Gallery?

(Media Matters was funded by billionaire George Soros, a frequent target of Beck. Perhaps not surprisingly, Media Matters attacks Beck at perhaps even vaster length than Beck attacks Media Matters' meal ticket.)

Resnikoff wrote:

"So who are these nefarious figures from government, finance, media, and academia who believe they can and should control everyone's choices, 'not just in politics, but everywhere'? In tonight's episode, Beck singles out nine of them. One is AFL-CIO president Richard Trumka."

 Trumka? He's a Catholic former coal miner who is a dead ringer for the Chicago Bear's ex-coach Mike Ditka. If that's a dog whistle, it's a deeply confusing one.

But never mind that—Resnikoff goes on:

"Eagle-eyed readers might notice what all eight of these people have in common. Yes, eight out of the nine villians Beck identified tonight are Jewish.

Probably just a coincidence, right? "

Well, is it a coincidence?

Following Resnikoff's links to various dead ends, it becomes clear that, in sharp contrast to the impression I got from Goldberg's posting, Beck hasn't actually put forward his Official Enemies of America and Humanity List.

What really happened was that on January 13, 2011, as he does on every single weekday, Beck put on his professorial-looking glasses and went off on one of his televised rambles through history. Resnikoff decided that Beck had insulted nine people the night before, of whom eight were Jewish.

What are the odds?!?

Well, the laws of probability suggest that over the many scores of shows that Beck has done over the years, the probability that one single show would feature a high proportion of Jews is awfully high.

In other words, there's no story here.

And that raises the question: What is the penalty for falsely accusing somebody of anti-Semitism these days?

Not much, I suspect.

Goldberg surely realized that his J'accuse against Beck logically depends upon the assumption that the talkative TV host knows the biographical details of everybody he happens to mention.

But that's preposterous.

I wouldn't have known the backgrounds of all these people—and I'm reasonably well-informed. For instance, 35 years ago, I read a book co-authored by one of the nine, sociologist Frances Fox Piven. Her The Politics of Turmoil argued that the Left could benefit politically by stoking feelings of anger and entitlement among poor blacks to make sure they all sign up for every bit of welfare they can get their hands on.

If ghetto-dwellers have to mau-mau some flak catchers (as Tom Wolfe put it in his hilarious 1970 book), all the better.

In the 1960s and 1970s, Piven and her late husband, Columbia sociologist Richard Cloward, had been the most prestigious advocates for the idea that encouraging self-destructively irresponsible attitudes toward welfare among poor blacks was a winning political strategy for the Left. (Not surprisingly, NWRO spawned ACORN, which Obama was closely associated with during the 1990s.)

But even though I'd been aware of Piven's historical importance for all those years, when Goldberg brought it up, I had no idea whatsoever about whether Piven was Jewish or not. After reading Goldberg's item, I then spent an hour trying to find out on Google. I drew a blank.

So why would anybody expect Beck to know?

(A reader finally tracked Piven's ethnicity down to a 1999 interview: yes, her parents were Russian Jewish immigrants.)

Nevertheless, Goldberg stomped onward:

"But Beck is a smart person, and has researchers at hand with access to Wikipedia. Further, most of these people on Beck's 'big lie" list are already the targets of straightforward attacks in the dark, anti-Semitic corners of the Web, so an extended Google search, in some cases, would show that much of the opposition to some of these people is motivated by anti-Semitism."[Links added]

Yet did Goldberg do an "extended Google search" himself before he accused Beck of anti-Semitism?

If he had, he would have found an interview with Piven in Democracy NOW! on January 14, 2011, just four days before his Atlantic posting. In it, Piven blames Beck's attacks on her not on anti-Semitism, but on … David HorowitzFred Siegel, Jim Sleeper, Ron Radosh, and (at interviewer Amy Goodman's suggestion) Stanley Kurtz.

Hmmhmmhmm ... putting on the Jeffrey Goldberg All-Purpose Anti-Semite Detector Goggles, one must ask: didn't Dr. Piven know that most (all?) of these intellectuals are Jewish?

Using Goldberg's infallible mathematical logic, Dr. Piven must be guilty, just like Beck, of "a classic case of anti-Semitic dog-whistling."

From Piven's January 14th interview:

JUAN GONZALEZ: What would trigger [Glenn Beck] to suddenly zero in on you?

FRANCES FOX PIVEN: Well, I think that there's a certain amount of just accident that he picked me or picked Richard [Cloward] and me, partly accident, partly not so accidental, because there were at the time, in the late 1960s, early 1970s, there were a number of people who had moved from being on the left, further to the left than me, who were moving to the right, where the pay is better. And in making that move, they sort of took with them their familiarity with the work that we had done and then exaggerated, demonized it. You know, I think that—

JUAN GONZALEZ: And who were some of those people?

FRANCES FOX PIVEN: Well, it includes David Horowitz, Fred Siegel, Jim Sleeper, Ron Radosh, who recently headlined his blog The Second Time is Farce: Piven Calls for Violent and Bloody Revolution. That was just a few days ago, because I had written a little article in The Nation talking about the problems in organizing the unemployed, so the unemployed can have an impact, a voice, in American politics. But most of the article was about how hard it is to do."

(In Mobilizing the Jobless in The Nation (January 10/17, 2011), Piven wrote:

"So where are the angry crowds, the demonstrations, sit-ins and unruly mobs? … An effective movement of the unemployed will have to look something like the strikes and riots that have spread across Greece … We should hope for another American social movement from the bottom—and then join it."

(And what did these Greek riots look like? From Reuters on May 6, 2010:

"Greek protesters set fire to a bank, killing three people, on Wednesday in the most violent reaction to date to the government's austerity plan."

(Nice.)

So Beck getting his ideas about the deleterious impact of the career of this important but obscure Jewish intellectual from other Jewish intellectuals—such as anthropologist Stanley Kurtz:

AMY GOODMAN: Professor Piven, Glenn Beck has also put forward a theory that you directly inspired the politics of President Obama. On his show, Beck recently aired an extended interview with Stanley Kurtz, author of the Radical-in-Chief, that claims Obama's a secret socialist.

STANLEY KURTZ: We know that Obama, for example, attended a very important socialist scholars conference at the Cooper Union in New York in 1983. That conference was addressed by Frances Fox Piven in its opening plenary. He would have heard her again in 1984. If he had attended the conference in 1985, which he quite possibly did, Piven would have been there. So, Obama would have had many, many opportunities to learn about Cloward and Piven and their theories.

Seriously, there is a conspiracy here, a conspiracy to ... promote anthropologist Stanley Kurtz's recent book!

Looking in the index of Kurtz's book, I see 31 references on 34 separate pages to "Piven, Frances Fox."

Another of those quick Google searches would have shown Goldberg that Beck has been interviewing Kurtz since 2008.

To track Obama's connections, Kurtz has done exhaustive research in library archives of leftist organizations. The result, Radical-in-Chief, is a long, somewhat dry book that perhaps told me more about the ideologies of community organizers in Chicago than I care to know! (Although it seems to reach similar conclusions to my own America's Half-Blood Prince: Barack Obama's "Story Of Race And Inheritance")

Yet Kurtz's findings are reasonably persuasive that Obama's ideology in the 1980s and 1990s—to the extent that he had one other than personal ambition, about which I'm less convinced than Kurtz—was roughly that of the democratic socialist extreme, and that he has taken extraordinary pains to cover this up.

Kurtz engages in some extremely close reading of Obama's Dreams from My Father, and shows how Obama crafted his memoir to serve as a Goldbergian dog-whistle to Hyde Park leftist insiders, while gently lulling any other readers into a daze.

Obama's self-appointed role was to play Good Cop in league with the Bad Cop mobs of Piven's "Politics of Turmoil," just as more professional leftist organizations such as the Greenlining Institute shouldered ACORN away from the prime spots at the mortgage market trough.

There's no question that Piven was a major figure in the leftist circles that Obama traveled in. You can see the influence of her line of thought indirectly in Obama's Dreams from My FatherDespite writing many tens of thousands of words about the state of the black community in Chicago in 1985-88, he doesn't utter one word of criticism of welfare.

But it eventually became clear that Piven's brand of out of the closet radicalism is a loser in America. And Barack Obama, while he may have his ideological preferences, isn't a loser.

In his State of the Union address, Obama will announce various pro-corporate policies. That's much of what Presidents do on policy: stab their bases in the back.

Nevertheless, personnel are policy, too. Let's leave the last word to Piven:

"Obama has done some good things as president. Most of us don't notice those things because he has done them under the radarThey don't get public attention. … He has made appointments. Usually below the radar screen to the Federal bureaucracy, that the Bush Administration decimated."

[Steve Sailer (email him) is movie critic for The American Conservative. His website www.iSteve.blogspot.com features his daily blog. His new book, AMERICA'S HALF-BLOOD PRINCE: BARACK OBAMA'S "STORY OF RACE AND INHERITANCE", is available here.]



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Thank you and remember: 

Peace is patriotic!

Michael Santomauro
253 W. 72nd Street
New York, NY 10023

Call anytime: 917-974-6367

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