Dissident Veteran For Peace

Addendum

From the Jewish Voice for Peace FAQ page with my comments in bold:

Q: Are you Zionist, anti-Zionist, post-Zionist or something else?

A: JVP is an organization with a wide spectrum of ideological diversity. Our members hold a wide variety of views on many issues involved in the Israel-Palestine conflict. This diversity has been a great source of strength for JVP. The organization welcomes people from many different political points of view, asking only that they hold to our core principles. Those political points of connection include the following:

JVP dodges the question and the points they outline below are consistent with Zionist thinking that suggests the maintenance of the Jewish supremacist state occupying the 78% of Palestine seized in 1948 (a.k.a. Israel) is at risk due to the continuing occupation of the 22% of Palestine seized in 1967.

• We are committed to an end to the Occupation of the West Bank, Gaza and East Jerusalem. We see ending the Occupation as the beginning, not the end, of peace between Israelis and Palestinians.
• The root of ending the Occupation is here in the United States, not in Israel, and we work for an end to US military aid to Israel until the Occupation ends.
• Interest groups within the United States, such as the Christian Zionist lobby, the arms and aerospace industry lobbies, and right-leaning Jewish organizations, have a vested interest in maintaining the Occupation. But since the Occupation threatens the peace and security of the Middle East, the true interests of the United States, as well as those of Palestinians and Israelis, lie in ending the Occupation.

No explicit mention here of the Israel lobby or the Jewish Zionist lobby.

• We support a solution to the Palestinian refugee crisis that will also preserve the right of the Israeli people to self-determination. International law calls for the rights of nations to self-determination and a right of return for all refugees. We believe these two important principles of international law must be balanced to find a workable and just resolution to this long-time crisis.

It is outrageous for JVP to invoke the right of self-determination in order to sustain Israel--a nation-state created by immigrants and as a result of clear violations of the Palestinian right of self-determination in the forms of the British mandate, the UN Partition resolution, and the Zionist war of 1947-1949. The Zionists at JVP have turned the right of self-determination on its head in order to justify keeping millions of Palestinian refugees in exile so that Jewish supremacy can be maintained in the 78% of Palestine violently seized in 1948.

• We firmly state that it is not anti-Semitic to criticize the policies of the government of the State of Israel or the policies of the Jewish establishment in the US. But we also believe that actual anti-Semitism is alive and well and is mostly misunderstood both on the left and in the mainstream.

If as JVP admits "it is not anti-Semitic to criticize the policies of the government of the State of Israel or the policies of the Jewish establishment in the US" then just what is it that is "misunderstood"?

• We stand against all violence against civilians. We believe that the Occupation is the root cause of the violence, and that the Occupation itself, with its checkpoints, harassment, and dispossession of Palestinians is itself an act of violence. We believe that all attacks on civilians, whether by the Israeli army or Palestinian militias, are war crimes.

Zionism is at the root of the "Occupation" and all of the atrocities committed to maintain it but JVP has conveniently taken Zionism off the table.

• We believe that when the Occupation ends, it will then become possible to consider all the different ideas for a permanent and sustainable peace in the Middle East. We believe that an open dialogue that includes all different formulations of such a permanent solution are legitimate, as long as they each respect the individual and collective rights of both Israelis and Palestinians.

This is clearly Zionist doubletalk, JVP welcomes "an open dialogue that includes all different formulations" but not any that would question Jewish supremacy in the 78% of Palestine seized in 1948.

JVP's "core principles" follow a long line of deliberate Zionist use of language for the purposes of deception. Zionists use ambiguous language to trick the lazy and the careless into supporting them or at least dropping their guard. The 1917 Balfour Declaration provides another prominent example:

The term Heimstatte ("national home") was coined by Max Nordau, with a view to disarming suspicion about any larger intentions for statehood. Writing to fellow Zionist who needed persuading, he described it as "a circumlocution that would express all we meant, but would say it in a way that would avoid provoking the Turkish rulers of the coveted land. ... I suggested it," he went on, "as a synonym for 'State.' This is the history of the much commented expression. It was equivocal, but we all understood what it meant. To us it signified Judenstaat then and it signifies the same now."*

*Source: Kenneth Cragg. The Arab Christian: A History in the Middle East. (Lousiville, Ky.: Westminster/John Knox Pr., 1991) p. 255, n. 2 citing Christopher Sykes. Two Studies in Virtues. (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1953), p. 100. Der Judenstaat ("The Jewish State") was the title of Theodor Herzl's pivotal 1896 book articulating the Zionist dream which became a Palestinian nightmare.

# posted by PeaceMonger @ 8/04/2006 12:51:00 AM