<html><head></head><body style="word-wrap: break-word; -webkit-nbsp-mode: space; -webkit-line-break: after-white-space; ">It's useful to to read Mazin. He praises Zinn here, but thinks he could have been stronger in criticizing Israeli policy and its apologists. I'm not sure that I agree with him in this. It's useful in this regard to read what Zinn said about the holocausts, cited below by Qumsiyeh. [<a href="http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/1145670.html]">http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/1145670.html]</a><div><br></div><div>--mkb</div><div><br><div><br><div>Begin forwarded message:</div><br class="Apple-interchange-newline"><blockquote type="cite"><div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px;"><span style="font-family:'Helvetica'; font-size:medium; color:rgba(0, 0, 0, 1);"><b>From: </b></span><span style="font-family:'Helvetica'; font-size:medium;">"Mazin Qumsiyeh" <mazin@qumsiyeh.org><br></span></div><div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px;"><span style="font-family:'Helvetica'; font-size:medium; color:rgba(0, 0, 0, 1);"><b>Date: </b></span><span style="font-family:'Helvetica'; font-size:medium;">January 30, 2010 3:21:27 PM CST<br></span></div><div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px;"><span style="font-family:'Helvetica'; font-size:medium; color:rgba(0, 0, 0, 1);"><b>To: </b></span><span style="font-family:'Helvetica'; font-size:medium;">brussel@uiuc.edu<br></span></div><div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px;"><span style="font-family:'Helvetica'; font-size:medium; color:rgba(0, 0, 0, 1);"><b>Cc: </b></span><span style="font-family:'Helvetica'; font-size:medium;">Human Rights Newsletter <humanrights@lists.qumsiyeh.org><br></span></div><div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px;"><span style="font-family:'Helvetica'; font-size:medium; color:rgba(0, 0, 0, 1);"><b>Subject: </b></span><span style="font-family:'Helvetica'; font-size:medium;"><b>[HumanRights] Zinn, WEF, abuse of the Jewish holocaust..</b><br></span></div><br><div>We lost the good voice of historian, intellectual and activist, Prof. Howard<br>Zinn. I met Zinn twice while in the US. I read two of his books and hope<br>to have time some day to read the others. Zinn was not happy with Zionism<br>and frequently criticized the Zionist atrocities, from massacres in Lebanon<br>in 1982 to those in Gaza last year. But, like many leftists, prefererd to<br>challenge US imperialism over challenging the destructive Israel-first lobby<br>in the US. In this, I disagreed with him because I believe Zionism sits at<br>the table of power in Washington DC and is not merely a tool of "US<br>Imperialism". His statements about the misuse of the Nazi atrocities (e.g. <br> <http://www.tokyoprogressive.org/~tpgn/japan/10zinn.htm><br>http://www.tokyoprogressive.org/~tpgn/japan/10zinn.htm) were not as strong<br>as those of other Jews who addressed the issue (e.g. Joel Kovel, Lenni<br>Brenner, Norman Finkelstein, Gilad Azmon etc). But Zinn was so perceptive on<br>so many areas, it is hard to quibble about these points. Zinn's intellect,<br>activism, honesty and positive spirit have inspired three generations. He<br>cut short his last lecture when he retired and urged his students to join<br>him in the demonstration and 100 of them did so. I always thought thatthis<br>is how I hope to end my last lecture too. In my 2004 book "Sharing the Land<br>of Canaan", I cited the following statement from Zinn which I also shared<br>two times with listserves:<br><br>"To be hopeful in bad times is not just foolishly romantic. It is based on<br>the fact that human history is a history not only of cruelty, but also of<br>compassion, sacrifice, courage, kindness. What we choose to emphasize in<br>this complex history will determine our lives. If we see only the worst, it<br>destroys our capacity to do something. If we remember those times and places<br>- and there are so many - where people have behaved magnificently, this<br>gives us the energy to act, and at least the possibility of sending this<br>spinning top of a world in a different direction. And if we do act, in<br>however small a way, we don't have to wait for some grand utopian future.<br>The future is an infinite succession of presents, and to live now as we<br>think human beings should live, in defiance of all that is bad around us, is<br>itself a marvelous victory." You Can't Be Neutral on a Moving Train: A<br>personal history of our times, p. 208. (More on Zinn at<br>http://www.howardzinn.org <http://www.howardzinn.org/> )<br><br>The World Economic Forum (WEF) at Davos is still going on. This time it is<br>subtitled "Rethink, Redesign, Rebuild". I guess the elites in attendance<br>will talk about rebuilding what they destroyed (Gaza, Iraq, Afghanistan,<br>world economies, the value of the US dollar etc), redesigning the systems of<br>corruption, control, domination that they created, and rethink idiotic ideas<br>like ethnocentric chauvinistic nationalism (e.g. Zionism, giving<br>corporations more righst to move around and settle anywhere they want whiel<br>denying these righst to tehir citizens). But then again, these elites have<br>been meeting for four decades in Davos, enjoying the good ski resort, the<br>beautifully decorated hotel expensive hotel rooms, great food, shopping, and<br>more while getting us deeper in trouble. They keep trying to get new ideas<br>from the same folks who prosper and profit from recycling old ideas. Does<br>anyone think new ideas to "enhance security and promote world economy" will<br>come from the likes of Larry Summers (Zionist economist who has racist<br>ideologies and ideologies of rich can design strategies to help alleviate<br>unemployment) or Shimon Peres (Zionist politicians well known for Israel's<br>atomic weapon arsenal and for massacres and ethnic cleansing of Palestinians<br>over six decades)? But over the years, the WEF has started to invite token<br>progressives to provide "balance" to politicians and rich CEOs of big<br>multinational corporations. But my inside information tells me those guys<br>are under threat of exclusion if they step over known boundaries (like<br>questioning privilege or power or colonialism or occupation etc). While I<br>never attended the WEF meetings and would not attend if invited, I did<br>manage to get an article titled "Boycott Israel" in the WEF official<br>magazine which caused uproar four years ago). The official magazine has not<br>been published since! see<br><http://www.qumsiyeh.org/theworldeconomicsforumcontroversy/><br>http://www.qumsiyeh.org/theworldeconomicsforumcontroversy/ <br><br>Holocaust remembrance is a boon for Israeli propaganda By Gideon Levy,<br>Haaretz<br> <http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/1145670.html><br>http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/1145670.html<br><br>Worth watching Video on Anti-Semitism: Defamation by Yoav Shamir<br> <http://pulsemedia.org/2010/01/26/yoav-shamirs-defamation/><br>http://pulsemedia.org/2010/01/26/yoav-shamirs-defamation/ <br><br>[There is little media coverage of the fact that two of the five on the<br>Chilcot inquiry team are Israeli-apologists/Israel-firsters who will ensure<br>that no mention of the fact that Zionists are the ones who pushed Blair and<br>Bush to go to war on Iraq]<br>Israel's voice on Britain's Iraq Inquiry accuses critics of "anti-Semitism" <br> <http://www.redress.cc/stooges/redress20100129><br>http://www.redress.cc/stooges/redress20100129<br><br>Mazin Qumsiyeh, PhD<br>A Bedouin in Cyberspace, a villager at home<br> <http://www.qumsiyeh.org/> http://www.qumsiyeh.org <br>http://www.pcr.ps <http://www.pcr.ps/> <br><br>-------------- next part --------------<br>An HTML attachment was scrubbed...<br>URL: <http://lists.qumsiyeh.org/pipermail/humanrights/attachments/20100130/d9dfa68a/attachment.htm><br>_______________________________________________<br>HumanRights newsletter<br>http://lists.qumsiyeh.org/mailman/listinfo/humanrights<br>This message was sent to brussel@uiuc.edu. To unsubscribe, visit:<br>http://lists.qumsiyeh.org/mailman/options/humanrights/brussel%40uiuc.edu<br></div></blockquote></div><br></div><br />--
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