Opinion Editorials, February 2010

  Zinn, WEF, and Abuse of the Jewish Holocaust

By Mazin Qumsiyeh

ccun.org, February 1, 2010

We lost the good voice of historian, intellectual and activist, Prof. Howard Zinn.  I met Zinn twice while in the US.  I read two of his books and hope to have time some day to read the others.  Zinn was not happy with Zionism and frequently criticized the Zionist atrocities, from massacres in Lebanon in 1982 to those in Gaza last year.  But, like many leftists, prefererd to challenge US imperialism over challenging the destructive Israel-first lobby in the US.  In this, I disagreed with him because I believe Zionism sits at the table of power in Washington DC and is not merely a tool of "US Imperialism". His statements about the misuse of the Nazi atrocities (e.g. http://www.tokyoprogressive.org/~tpgn/japan/10zinn.htm) were not as strong as those of other Jews who addressed the issue (e.g. Joel Kovel, Lenni Brenner, Norman Finkelstein, Gilad Azmon etc). But Zinn was so perceptive on so many areas, it is hard to quibble about these points.  Zinn's intellect, activism, honesty and positive spirit have  inspired three generations.  He cut short his last lecture when he retired and urged his students to join him in the demonstration and 100 of them did so.  I always thought thatthis  is how I hope to end my last lecture too.  In my 2004 book "Sharing the Land of Canaan", I cited the following statement from Zinn which I also shared two times with listserves:
 
"To be hopeful in bad times is not just foolishly romantic. It is based on the fact that human history is a history not only of cruelty, but also of compassion, sacrifice, courage, kindness. What we choose to emphasize in this complex history will determine our lives. If we see only the worst, it destroys our capacity to do something. If we remember those times and places - and there are so many - where people have behaved magnificently, this gives us the energy to act, and at least the possibility of sending this spinning top of a world in a different direction. And if we do act, in however small a way, we don't have to wait for some grand utopian future. The future is an infinite succession of presents, and to live now as we think human beings should live, in defiance of all that is bad around us, is itself a marvelous victory." You Can't Be Neutral on a Moving Train: A personal history of our times, p. 208. (More on Zinn at http://www.howardzinn.org)
 
The World Economic Forum (WEF) at Davos is still going on.  This time it is subtitled "Rethink, Redesign, Rebuild".  I guess the elites in attendance will talk about rebuilding what they destroyed (Gaza, Iraq, Afghanistan, world economies, the value of the US dollar etc), redesigning the systems of corruption, control, domination that they created, and rethink idiotic ideas like ethnocentric chauvinistic nationalism (e.g. Zionism, giving corporations more righst to move around and settle anywhere they want whiel denying these righst to tehir citizens).  But then again, these elites have been meeting for four decades in Davos, enjoying the good ski resort, the beautifully decorated hotel expensive hotel rooms, great food, shopping, and more while getting us deeper in trouble.  They keep trying to get new ideas from the same folks who prosper and profit from recycling old ideas. 

Does anyone think new ideas to "enhance security and promote world economy" will come from the likes of Larry Summers (Zionist economist who has racist ideologies and ideologies of rich can design strategies to help alleviate unemployment) or Shimon Peres (Zionist politicians well known for Israel's atomic weapon arsenal and for massacres and ethnic cleansing of Palestinians over six decades)?  But over the years, the WEF has started to invite token progressives to provide "balance" to politicians and rich CEOs of big multinational corporations.  But my inside information tells me those guys are under threat of exclusion if they step over known boundaries (like questioning privilege or power or colonialism or occupation etc).  While I never attended the WEF meetings and would not attend if invited, I did manage to get an article titled "Boycott Israel" in the WEF official magazine which caused uproar four years ago). The official magazine has not been published since! see http://www.qumsiyeh.org/theworldeconomicsforumcontroversy/
 
Holocaust remembrance is a boon for Israeli propaganda By Gideon Levy, Haaretz
http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/1145670.html
 
Worth watching Video on Anti-Semitism: Defamation by Yoav Shamir
http://pulsemedia.org/2010/01/26/yoav-shamirs-defamation/
 
[There is little media coverage of the fact that two of the five on the Chilcot inquiry team are Israeli-apologists/Israel-firsters who will ensure that no mention of eth fact that Zionists are the ones who pushed Blair and Bush to go to war on Iraq]
Israel’s voice on Britain's Iraq Inquiry accuses critics of “anti-Semitism”
http://www.redress.cc/stooges/redress20100129
 
Mazin Qumsiyeh, PhD
A Bedouin in Cyberspace, a villager at home
http://www.qumsiyeh.org  
http://www.pcr.ps