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Open Letter to Leslie Cagan, National Coordinator, United for Peace and Justice

By Lenni Brenner

Hi Leslie, 8/10/06

Congratulations. It was a major step forward for you and others from United for Peace and Justice to build the 7/18 demo at the Israeli consulate in New York. The political range present was impressive. Palestinians, Lebanese and other Arabs, supporters of Israel's Women in Black, the Orthodox anti-Zionist Jews of the Neturei Karta, Christians, Muslims, leftists from ANSWER, the International Action Center, UFPJ, etc.

UN Secretary General Kofi Annan agrees with Zbigniew Brzezinski. Jimmy Carter's National Security Advisor says that "it is becoming increasingly difficult to separate the Israeli-Palestinian problem, the Iraq problem and Iran from each other." Indeed it took the slaughter of Lebanese, Palestinians and Israelis to bring even the broad antiwar movement together. But now we must stay united until we get every US soldier and weapon out of the Middle East, from Mauritania to Afghanistan.

America is watching the carnage with concern. But, as in Jonah's Nineveh, the citizenry "cannot discern between their right hand and their left hand" about American politics, much less ME affairs. According to a 2003 Gallup poll, 53% don't know that the Bill of Rights is another name for the 1st 10 Amendments to their Constitution. Another 2003 Gallup showed 79% of Republicans and 67% of Democrats believing in a devil. Gallup is noted for piety but it had to remind us that

"Science has been able to explain many phenomena that once seemed supernatural .... So we might expect belief in the devil to have largely evaporated. It hasn't. Regardless of political belief, religious inclination, education, or region, most Americans believe that the devil exists."

This poll defines the difference between average Democrats and Republicans: Most Democrats have nit sized brains, typical Republicans have nat sized brains. Or its the other way around? In either case, these theological wizards are the bulk of US voters. Fortunately, James Madison, author of the Bill of Rights, the guardian of separation of religion and state that most poor Americans haven't looked at since high school, gave us the prescription for curing the popular political illiteracy that ends up as official Washington's corrupt and demagogic bipartisan capitalist politics:

"A popular government, without popular information, or the means of acquiring it, is but a prologue to a farce or a tragedy; or perhaps both. Knowledge will forever govern ignorance: And a people who mean to be their own governors, must arm themselves with the power which knowledge gives."

Indeed the spreading catastrophes have opened many to doubting our politicians. Unfortunately, what can most antiwar activists tell them? The Middle East is full of fanatics, Islamic, Jewish, Christian, plus equally crazed atheist Zionists and atheist Arab nationalists & Co. But how much do most activists know about Zionism, the Syrian Baath Party, Lebanon's Shia Hizbollah or the Palestine Liberation Organization or Sunni Hamas?

Unless we heed Madison's commandment and build a movement simultaneously educating itself and the public, we will simply "run in circles, scream and shout." Scholarly teach-ins on Vietnam were major factors bringing hundreds of thousands of students, workers and combat military into the 60s antiwar groundswell. Today there are scholars available on all ME forces. We have to systematically organize such teach-ins and send video tapes and CDs of them around the country and indeed the world.

Those scholars aren't of one mind on any issue. For example, the antiwar movement is divided between those who believe in replacing Israel and the Palestine Authority with one democratic secular bi-national state called Palestine/Israel, and those for a Palestinian state side by side with Israel. That's OK as long as both sides march together. "Good soup draws chairs to it." Serious intra-movement debate would fill a whole lot of chairs with a whole lot of ordinary folks wanting to know what the issues are. Indeed debates with Zionists and Bush supporters would do even more. They would come to cheer for their side and have to listen to our orators.

I propose a conference of major antiwar groups for the specific purpose of structuring such lectures and debates on the broad ME. Are you interested in co-sponsoring it?

WARS AND ELECTIONS

November brings Congressional elections. We can't endorse any candidates without fighting amongst ourselves. But we can educate the public about all of them via questionnaires. Cindy Sheehan says that she "cannot wrap my mind around the fanatical rhetoric coming out of DC ... and the mindless and seemingly overwhelming support of Israel's right to 'defend itself.'" We must ask all candidates the same questions: What's your party's Middle East record? What's its attitude towards the Lebanon war? Do you approve of its positions? Are you interested in co-sponsoring such a questionnaire?

We demonstrated on the 18th. Zionists, with their well-financed Democrats and Republicans in tow, marched to the UN on the 17th. Hillary and endless other Democrats swore undying loyalty to Israel. Ohio Representative Dennis Kucinich's H. Con. Res. 450 calls for an immediate cease fire, multi-party negotiations and an international peacekeeping force. But beyond him and 23 cosponsors, congressional Democrats divide into two camps: When Israel kills 100 civilians, 1/2 say 'that's wonderful' and 1/2 say 'Israel should have killed 101.'

That most so-called anti-Iraq war Democrats are homicidal re Lebanon has enormous implications. Worse, several figures identified with peace demos have willfully made themselves part of their cabal. Ned Lamont is running against Connecticut's hawk Senator, Joe Lieberman. But Lamont, an Episcopalian multimillionaire, says we must "unambiguously stand with our ally." He disagreed with the European Union's criticism of Israel's invasion as a "disproportionate" response.

"When we're dealing with Hezbollah and Hamas, who are both dedicated to the elimination of Israel, it's a little presumptuous of us to say what's proportionate and what's not .... I don't think it's for the United States to dictate how Israel tactically defends itself."

Now guess which 'antiwar' figures are campaigning for this classic demagogue? If you picked Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton, you are 100% correct. However, there is another antiwar candidate running in the New York Democratic primary against Hillary Clinton. Jonathan Tasini is an avowed Zionist. But he declares that Israel has "committed many acts of brutality and violations of human rights and torture." Asked if Israel was a terror state, he proclaimed that

"terrorism is a very heavily laden word. But to me, what the key thing is, what are you doing? Are your actions in violation of the international norms of the Geneva convention, and so on? And I think it's sad to say, but it's clear, yeah."

Now guess which two antiwar figures are not campaigning for an opponent of the Israeli invasion? The explanation for their choice of candidates to back is simple. Both nonstop personal careerists know that they can go nowhere in their party if they back candidates denouncing Israel. Some national Democratic leaders backed Lieberman, others Lamont. But all back homicidal Hillary. Were Jackson or Sharpton to say a word in favor of her opponent, they could can say farewell to their chances of a cabinet post or a roving ambassador's job in the next Democratic administration.

As you know, the central Black cause in the 1980s was the destruction of South African apartheid. Israel was that criminal regime's prime ally. Ariel Sharon, then Israel's defense minister, accompanied the South African army in its invasion of Namibia. "South Africa Needs More Arms, Israeli Says," reported the 12/14/81 NY Times. "Sharon, in company with many American and NATO military analysts, reported that South Africa needed more modern weapons if it is to fight successfully against Soviet-Supplied troops."

But that didn't stop Jackson from cuddling up close to his party's Zionists. In 1992, he spoke at the World Jewish Congress in Belgium:

"Zionism by its soundest definition [is] a liberation movement whose object is to secure a state for its people. It must be seen as that, and not with negative connotations attached to it." (Newsday, 7/8/92)

In January 2006 he went further. The mother of Michael Goodman, murdered in 1964 by the Klan, was honored by the Religious Action Center for Reform Judaism, at a ceremony in Israel's Washington embassy. Do I have to tell you that Jackson was a featured speaker? Or that Israel and most US Zionists did nothing for the American civil rights movement?

Jackson heralding apartheid's ally as the Jewish national liberation movement is grotesque, given what Jews have said about Israel, Zionism and Judaism.

In 1969, Arthur Ochs Sulzberger, Jr., the present publisher of the NY Times, visited Israel. His father was Jewish but his mother was Episcopalian and he was raised as such. "The Family," a 4/19/99 New Yorker article, told of his

"challenging a senior official of the Israeli government who suggested that, no matter what happened in the world, everyone around the table would always have a homeland in Israel. 'Excuse me, but I'm an Episcopalian! Is this still my country?,' Arthur Jr. said loudly. Thirty years later, he continues to regard the Israeli's comment as racist."

In 1995, before he thought of running for public office, New York's presently raging 'anti-terrrorist' Mayor, Mike Bloomberg, was interviewed by Jerusalem Report, an Israeli magazine. It informed its readers that "he does have firm views on Israel, and on Jewish philanthropy: 'I won't give too much money to the U[nited] J[ewish] A[ppeal],' he says, 'because of the hold the religious have on Israel. I have one wish: Shoot all the clerics.'"

In 2004, multimillionaire Edgar Bronfman, presently the president of the WJC before which Jackson bowed and scraped, was reported in the 10/8 London Jewish Chronicle as feeling that "the whole concept of Jewish peoplehood, and the lines being pure, begins to sound a little like Nazism, meaning racism."

Having read their statements, can anyone look me dead in the eye and say that there was even a speck of honesty or intelligence in Jackson's claims for Zionism? But Sharpton is even more outrageous. NY's 11/30/01 Forward reported that he was "expected next month to visit with Jonathan Pollard in his North Carolina prison. Mr. Pollard's wife ... said the visit would be sponsored by the Israeli consulate."

Pollard is an Israeli spy. The Pentagon insists that he does every second of his sentence. Did Sharpton seriously think that he could get an early release for Pollard? Or was he pandering to the US Jewish establishment? They've seen him operate before. But they are increasingly isolated amongst Americans. They felt they had no choice but to use him for their purposes, knowing he was using them for his.

Many, perhaps most, people between certain ages in the American peace camp supported Jackson in his runs for the Democratic presidential nomination. Some, black and white, came to see him as self-centered, broke with him, critiqued themselves and moved on. With others, having him speak at rallies is still their artless way of convincing themselves that they are fighting the good fight against racism. Never mind that today's American imperialism is integrated. Never mind that Colin Powell and Condolezza Rice are as much war criminals as George Bush. Never mind that the Democratic Party is full of black pols who said little and did less while Democratic administrations funded Israel as it armed South Africa. But now UFPJ has firmed up its stand against Israel's deeds. It can't continue to go forth with anyone more Zionist than most Jews. No one in the ME or here will respect any organization trying to run with the fox and hunt with the hounds.

We all want more popular Black antiwar movement involvement. Fraudulent token Black Democratic speakers at rallies isn't the way to get it. I'm on Pacifica radio talk shows with journalist Playthell Benjamin and professor Gerald Horne. We're doing in depth studies of Zionism and US policy. I've worked on ME demos with Rev. Matt Jones, Elombe Brath of the Patrice Lumumba Coalition and Nellie Hester of the Harlem Tenants Council. They have outstanding US civil rights and anti-apartheid histories. Matt was jailed 29 times, etc. Put such as them on UFPJ platforms and they will build such demos in their communities.

GOD'S VERY OWN LEFT PROPHETS' VERY OWN PEACE PLAN

An ad in the 7/31 NY Times, signed by Michael Lerner and Cornell West, Co-chairs of the Network of Spiritual Progressives, must also be dealt with by the entire antiwar movement. Unlike Jackson and Sharpton, NSP people are sincere. But they likewise are an obstacle to developing a reality based antiwar campaign.

Their ad says the US and other governments should

"call on Israel, Hezbollah and Hamas to observe an immediate ceasefire, place an immediate embargo on all shipments of weapons to all parties in the war (including Syria and Iran), and join an international conference to provide security on the border between Israel and Lebanon."

The conference must

"impose a fair and lasting solution on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict .... Why do we say 'impose'? There are too many forces in each country in the region who are committed to continuing this struggle forever."

Their peace plan includes a

"Palestinian state (roughly on the pre-1967 borders with minor modifications mutually agreed upon between Israel and Palestine) and simultaneously the full and unequivocal recognition by Palestinians and the State of Palestine and all surrounding Arab states of the right of Israel to exist as a Jewish state offering full and equal rights to all of its non-Jewish citizens."

They call for "reparations for Palestinians who have lost homes or property from 1947 to the present" and "a long-term international peacekeeping force to separate Hezbollah and Israel in southern Lebanon and to protect Israel and Palestine from each other."

Lerner, editor/publisher of Tikkun magazine, is a free lance rabbi, unaffiliated to the three major American Judaic sects. Cornell West is a professor of African American studies and Religion at Princeton. They and Jim Wallis, white progressive Evangelical editor of Sojourners magazine and author of 'God's Politics,' are NSP's theological heavy thinkers. They set it up

"to challenge the religio-phobia and hostility toward religious and spiritual people that appears in some sections of liberal and progressive culture, and to help the Left distinguish between reactionary forms of religion and the progressives forms that it took with Martin Luther King, Jr., William Sloan Coffin, Abraham Joshua Heschel and many others, and to build a new spiritual progressive politics not only for religious people, but also for those who do not believe in God but are "spiritual but NOT religious."

Except that "no one's religion is better than their politics" is the operating proverb when judging 'spirituality.' The Confederate constitution invoked "the favor and guidance of Almighty God." But when we think of Confederate President Jefferson Davis, worthless Democrat better describes him than pious Christian.

In 2004, I publicly confronted Lerner re his supporting John Kerry. I joked that many Kerryites were upset because he didn't support gay marriage. But they forgot his same-sex political marriage with murderous Sharon. Lerner laughed and announced that, for the 1st time, he agreed with me. He promised to get on Kerry's case - after helping elect him. Now Kerry trumpets that "we have to destroy Hezbollah."

Just before the Lebanese invasion, I queried him again:

"[Y]ou voted for Kerry, knowing that .... a vote for Kerry was, in all but name, a vote for Sharon. Do you have 2nd thoughts on this?"

He replied:

"As I'm sure you know, I made these same arguments about voting in 2000. But I now think that it did in fact make a difference that it was Bush who became president and not Gore, and that all things considered the country would have been better off and there would have been less murder, less deaths, less destruction of the environment had Gore won.... Now, if there had been a candidate and political party that actually embodied the vision of the Network of Spiritual Progressives, or if there were one now, then I'd have a more complicated assessment to make. But in general, I don't support the 'more suffering the better' view of how to make social change."

I responded, taking this to mean that

"you now think that voting for Gore would have been the true embodiment of the network's spirituality or at least your own. In other words, you presume that Gore would have murdered. If so, aren't you de facto saying that 999 murders are always better than 1000 murders and that spiritual progressives are duty bound to vote for a candidate that they know, in advance, would kill 999 innocent people, and to tell other people to do so?"

Now look again at these spiritual Democrats' peace plan. Bush's US, maybe the UN, put troops between Israel, Hamas and Hisbollah. They then agree on "the pre-1967 borders with minor modifications." But the Sharon-Olmert 'peace plan' is that Israel intends to keep the overwhelming majority of its 'Jews-only' settlements on the West Bank. Within that context, Olmert is prepared to give up an inch or two to round out the new borders. What happens if Olmert say no to retreating to "the pre-1967 borders with minor modifications"? Can anyone expect the NSP to then call for the withdrawal of those foreign troops, who would then be protecting an Olmert-sized Israel? But isn't that, at the very least, a likely scenario, if Bush agreed to their plan?

Our pious Democratic four, Jackson, Sharpton, Lerner and West, signed on to an 8/3 ad in the NY Times, calling for "a day of mass resistance" on October 5th. The ad was placed by The World Can't Wait, apparently an outgrowth of the Not In Our Name antiwar outfit. As James Abourezk, Harry Belafonte, Daniel Ellsberg and other signers have more integrity than these characters, I support the call and urge UFPJ and everyone else to organize demos on that day. But be certain that I will send out critiques of these four and others to my contacts in the peace movement and media. That will be part of my contribution to the development of a systematic justice and peace program of debating each other but marching together. Will you and UFPJ help organize this?

***

RESPONSE FROM MICHAEL LERNER

Re: Open Letter to Leslie Cagan, Coordinator, United for Peace and Justice

Fuck you, asshole. You publicly attack our integrity and then expect cooperation?

> From: "BrennerL21@aol.com" > Date: Thu, 10 Aug 2006 05:30:52 EDT > To: , > Subject: Open Letter to Leslie Cagan, Coordinator, United for Peace and > Justice ***

Lenni Brenner is the editor of Jefferson & Madison on Separation of Church and State: Writings on Religion and Secularism. He also edited 51 Documents: Zionist Collaboration with the Nazis.

BrennerL21@aol.com www.smithbowen.net/linfame/brenner

***

"South Africa Needs More Arms, Israeli Says" By Drew Middleton NY Times, 12/14/81:

The military relationship between South Africa and Israel, never fully acknowledged by either country, has assumed a new significance with the recent 10 day visit by Israel's Defense Minister, Ariel Sharon, to South African forces in Namibia along the border with Angola.

In an interview during his recent visit to the United States, Mr. Sharon made several points concerning the South African position.

First, he said that South Africa is one of the few countries in Africa and southwestern Asia that is trying to resist Soviet military infiltration in the area.

He added that there had been a steady flow of increasingly sophisticated Soviet weapons to Angola and other African nations, and that as a result of this, and Moscow's political and economic leverage, the Soviet Union was "gaining ground daily" throughout the region.

U.N. ARMS EMBARGO

Mr. Sharon, in company with many American and NATO military analysts, reported that South Africa needed more modern weapons if it is to fight successfully against Soviet-Supplied troops. The United Nations arms embargo, imposed in November 1977, cut off established weapons sources such as Britain, France and Israel, and forced South Africa into under-the-table deals.

Under these arrangements, weapons and spare parts are sold by major European arms producers to nongovernmental middlemen. The latter sell the arms to South Africa, usually shipping them in secret, either through a country that is nonaligned or one where customs inspectors are prepared to look the other way for a bribe.

Israel, which has a small but flourishing arms export industry, benefited from South African military trade before the 1977 embargo.

According to The Military Balance, the annual publication of the International Institute for Strategic Studies in London, the South African Navy includes seven Israeli-built fast attack craft armed with Israeli missiles. The publication noted that seven more such vessels are under order. Presumably the order was placed before the 1977 embargo was imposed.

SHORTAGE OF SPARE PARTS

Because of the embargo, South Africa faces an acute shortage of spare parts. Some spare parts for its British-made centurion tanks have arrived in South Africa via the Channel Islands, according to British sources. There are other reports that South Africa has purchased 41 Centurions and the Tiger cat missile system from Jordan.

With some surreptitious help from foreign friends, South Africa has also managed to deploy the Entac antitank missile, manufactured in France, and a modern radar system covering its northern frontiers.

South Africa's arms industry has so far made the country self-sufficient in a number of areas including small arms, bombs, mortars and armored cars, according to the British source. South Africa is also producing on license the French designed Mirage fighter.

South Africa, in the view of NATO analysts, is superior militarily and will remain so for some years in the air and at sea. The air force with its 239 combat aircraft, including 48 Mirage fighters, is quantitatively and qualitatively superior to any other air force or combination of air forces south of the Sahara.

Mr. Sharon said Moscow and its allies had made sizable gains in Central Africa and had established "corridors of power," such as one connecting Libya and Chad. He said that Mozambique was under Soviet control and that Soviet influence was growing in Zimbabwe.

The Israeli official, a successful commander of armored forces in two wars with the Arabs, saw the placement of Soviet weapons, particularly tanks, throughout the area as another danger.

South Africa's military policy of maintaining adequate reserves, Mr. Sharon said, will enable it to keep forces in the field in the foreseeable future but he warned that in time the country may be faced by more powerful weapons and better armed and trained soldiers.