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05.02 Common Pesticide “Disturbs” the Brains of Children

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05.16 Is the filibuster unconstitutional?

05.15 MONEY UNLIMITED

05.11 How the Corporate Right Hijacked America's Courts to Enrich the Top 1 Percent

05.03 Supreme Court Favorability Reaches New Low

05.01 Eliot Spitzer’s challenge to DOJ as it investigates Wall Street: ‘Bring some cases’ - video

05.01 Laissez-faire with strip-searches: America's two-faced liberalism

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05.16 5 Ways Conservatives are Destroying the Institution of Marriage

05.16 Congress: The TSA Is Wasting Hundreds Of Millions In Taxpayer Dollars

05.16 The Economic Case for Same-Sex Marriage

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05.16 “What Scares Me Isn’t $2 Billion Loss JP Morgan Made, What Scares Me is the Record $19 Billion in Profits” [video]

05.16 Accidentally Released - and Incredibly Embarrassing - Documents Show How Goldman et al Engaged in 'Naked Short Selling'

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05.16 Weisbrot and Krugman are Wrong: Greece cannot pull off an Argentina

05.15 Greek deadlock heightens fears of full European economic crisis

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05.11 Indentured Servitude for Seniors: Social Security Garnished for Student Debts

05.11 Breaking Up Four Big Banks

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05.11 How Wall Street Killed Financial Reform

05.11 Michael Hudson: From the Democratic Party to European "Socialists", they manage crisis in the interests of finance [video]

05.10 Real Estate 4 Ransom -- locking up the Great American Dream

05.10 Quelle Surprise! Fed Defends Incompetent Bank Management Against Investors

05.10 Europe’s Problems Multiply

05.10 Michael Hastings & Glenn Greenwald on how media hype about ‘melodramatic’ terrorist plots helps sustain the [profitable] U.S. ‘War on Terror’ [video]

05.09 Ryan Shrugs: Overlooked GOP Budget Provision Would Fuel Offshoring With New Tax Incentives

05.09 Top 1% Fills Gov. Scott Walker’s Recall War Chest With $25 Million

05.09 ALEC Affiliated Corporations

05.09 Teachers’ Board Becomes Fifteenth Group To Drop ALEC

05.09 ALEC’s Top Five Anti-Environment ‘Model’ Laws

05.09 Special Rights for ALEC: Three States Exempt Stealth Corporate Lobbying Group From Lobbying Rules

05.09 A web of privilege supports this so-called meritocracy

05.03 How Wall Street Drives Up Gas Prices -- Ripping Us Off and Killing Jobs

05.03 Paul Krugman on How to Fix the Economy - and Why It's Easier Than You Think

05.02 There is an alternative to austerity

05.01 Under Catholic pressure Paul Ryan backs away from Rand, Objectivism

05.01 Tax Me, for F@%&’s Sake!

05.01 Tea Party Congressmen Accept Cash From Bailed-Out Bankers

05.01 Paul Krugman and Ron Paul discuss economics – as it happened

05.01 No alternative to austerity

International

05.15 IDF closes Palestinian school to make way for West Bank training zone

05.14 Noam Chomsky on:
WikiLeaks, Obama’s Targeted Assassinations and Latin America’s Break From the U.S. [video]
Occupy Wall Street "Has Created Something That Didn’t Really Exist" in U.S. — Solidarity [video]
Palestinian Hunger Strike a Protest Against "Violations of Elementary Human Rights" [video]

05.14 INFOGRAPHIC: Gas Spending Around The World

05.14 Graphic: Products of Slavery

05.14 Israel warned of volatile situation as Palestinian hunger strikers near death

05.14 How Right-Wing Extremists and Islamists Are the Same

05.14 Guatemala's land grab and massacre

05.11 U.S. Military Taught Officers: Use ‘Hiroshima’ Tactics for ‘Total War’ on Islam

05.11 Thousands of British police join anti-austerity protest

05.10 China Investment Corp. Stops Buying Europe Government Debt on Crisis Concern

05.09 Inside Syria's crackdown: 'I found my boys burning in the street'

05.03 “We Did Not Choose This War” and Other Hypocrisies

05.03 Jobless Rate Reaches New High in Euro Zone

05.02 Ken Vogel and Joel Rubin consider implications of Obama’s Afghanistan pact in terms of 2012 race [video]

05.02 Collapsing Afghanistan & Pakistan Refuse to Cooperate with Obama Photo Op

05.02 Free the torture report

05.01 What Did You Do In The War, Daddy?

05.01 Quebec students ignite the popular imagination

05.01 Occupy Wall Street Plans Global Protests in Resurgence

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  Why Carter is "Good for the Jews"
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OPEN LETTER TO MY BROTHER:

Why Carter is "Good for the Jews"

Carter is my hero for speaking out, and we should listen to him.

by DEBORAH REICH
My job is not to fix what the other party is doing wrong, but what my group is doing wrong in my name, and with my tax dollars.
Hi Jon,

Any possible inaccuracies in Carter's book (I haven't read it) pale immediately beside the huge service he has done to Jews everywhere, in spite of the abuse heaped on him by mainstream Jewish organizations etc., by opening up the debate in the USA and making it somewhat respectable (finally) to look honestly at what is going on in Israel/Palestine. This is not the movie "Exodus" anymore, folks--if it ever was! I think not! --any more than the "taming" of the American West was really like a John Wayne movie. (Ask a Native American. Listen to some Buffy Ste. Marie songs!)

In years to come, we as Jews will be terribly ashamed--we will be humbled and dishonored and ashamed and full of an unbearable regret--that we remained in denial so long of the reality on the ground in Palestine, both today, and in history. It's not about motives and intentions, past or present; it's about the dire consequences in real time, today. We are willfully refusing to see what is being perpetrated in our name. Come and visit the Wall, a few checkpoints, etc., and see for yourselves, people. I can get you a guided reality check tour here. Don't talk to me about "Palestinians are..." until you have met some actual Palestinians personally. They will shatter your stereotypes forever. They are people just like us. No different. Even their stupid leaders are no stupider than our stupid leaders!

"You killed and then you inherited" is forbidden in Judaism. Go ask the ghost of Rabin.
The paramount priority right now is not what the motives were in creating Israel, nor how the Holocaust figures in, nor any policies Israel has pursued in the past. All of that debate is beside the point right now. The paramount priority right now is to put a stop to the phased genocide taking place at this moment in the West Bank and Gaza. The eventual "cleansed" (of Palestinians) state that the Israeli army and successive governments of Israel are in the process of achieving for us will be an abomination to any morally normal person, but by then it will be too late. One thing for sure: a "Jewish" state it will not be. "You killed and then you inherited" is forbidden in Judaism. Go ask the ghost of Rabin.

People ask me why I don't talk about the evil stuff that (some) Palestinians do. I answer that my job is not to fix what the other party is doing wrong, but what my group is doing wrong in my name, and with my tax dollars. The folks like me on the other side are struggling heroically to pursue their own agenda of civic repair in their own society and they deserve full international support (but don't get much).

There is no argument over here anymore, among reasonable people, that abominations are being perpetrated every hour of every day by Israeli armed forces on ordinary innocent Palestinian civilians. Everyone in Israel knows this, although they have no clue what to do about it. People admit it--even cab drivers and other street pundits who are usually right-wing. The Cheneys and Rumsfelds and Wolfowitzes of Israel are running the army and the "civil administration" in the West Bank, etc. Their regime is out of control. The hard-core "settlers" (read: vicious thugs) are out of control. The Border Police are out of control. Units of Border Police hunt down and shoot Palestinian kids for fun; how sick is that? I am not making this up; it's in the papers. Anyone can read it.

Carter is my hero for speaking out, and we should listen to him. I truly hope (for his own sake) that deep-down he is not anti-Jewish or anti-Israel; but even if he were, it wouldn't invalidate what he is trying to make us do: to open our eyes, look past the sacred fairy tale of what Israel is, and see what Israel is doing. Love us or not, he seems to be trying to save us from ourselves. Maybe we should give him a hand?

Hope this answers your question!

P.S.: My new slogan: I am not a self-hating Jew. I'm a self-loving human.


Deb Reich is a writer and translator in Israel/Palestine. Contact her at debmail@alum.barnard.edu. © Deborah Reich 2006. Reproduction with attribution is encouraged.


Copyright © 2007 The Baltimore Chronicle. All rights reserved.

Republication or redistribution of Baltimore Chronicle content is expressly prohibited without their prior written consent.

This story was published on January 22, 2007.
 


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