Doug DowdA Letter from Bologna
2008-12-31 (and a P.S. 2009-01-01)
Doug Dowd
Bologna, Italia
Dear old friends,
I would like to say “Happy New Year!” without wincing. I'm sorry — non posso farlo — I can’t do it.
But except for Obama’s winning, this isn’t a time to expect happiness (except in one’s loving home). Hooray that Obama won. But what comes next won’t be easy or pleasant, given the horde of status quo types he has surrounded himself with. (In case you hadn’t heard, this was both before and after the election.) And what comes next won’t be easy or pleasant because of a burgeoning economic crisis that will only get worse in 2009. Plus, the coming horrors from the military scene may well surpass all responsible predictions. Unpleasant at best.
Regarding this last deadly topic, Iraq and Afghanistan are bad enough at present. And that's plenty bad. But Afghanistan is bound to get worse month by month. Our (the U.S.) response? Our new U.S. president has consistently indicated that he will work to exacerbate the already dreadful situation. (You did vote “hope”?)
So that's one can of worms. But the worst of the worst is Israel-Palestine, and most particularly Gaza. In terms of what has been, what is, and what may follow, this is a poignant example of what inhumanity, brutality, and hypocrisy, the human race is capable of — capable as individuals, as groups, as military organizations, as States. And this is a small massacre (so far). Israel, you see, thinks it has a problem, which is how to dispose of 1.5 million politically-geographically inconvenient goyim.
It is this conflict that has impelled me to add what follows, which is a brief analysis and some personal comments...
To begin with, I hope I am wrong, but I fear at least three likely developments regarding the current Israeli aggression:
1. For the near future, it’s going to become bloodier.
2. By the time Obama is in the White House, it will have become much bloodier still.
3. In or out of office, except for a few verbal crumbs and meaningless exhortations, Obama will support Israel (and put the entire blame on the [largely peaceful] Palestinians.
He has pressure on him to side with the Israelis because his Emmanuel, his main advisor, is a passionate supporter of Israel no matterwhat (his father was with Irgun). Emmanuel has his ear — all the time. That's important.
Obama also inherits half a century of institutionalized U.S. coddling of militaristic Israel; and his advisors are sufficiently mainstream not to dare to stray off that path. Indeed, because of its strategic location regarding both oil and the Russian giant, Israel makes a very convenient U.S.surrogate in the Middle East.
Then there’s the ultra-right Miami Cuban-like vigilance of AIPAC, to which Obama will certainly kowtow (as he already has done before the election).
And Israel, a miniscule country with a minuscule land mass and population, will remain the No. 1 recipient of U.S. foreign aid. That's No. 1 in the entire world.
Here I insert a personal note...
It might seem that a guy with an Irish-Catholic father would hate Israel. It might. But this guy also had a Jewish mother. And this guy had grandparents who emigrated to the USA to escape the murderous pogroms of Russia. So — this guy has a serious Jewish background. As a matter of fact, my first political involvement in my native San Francisco was work with Jewish groups, who — if only for their own interests — created the first anti-racist outfit in the entire city.
Of course, the Jews who went to Palestine had every reason to want a country of their own, well before Hitler. And it is entirely possible that they could have had a safe place in Palestine. Except for one thing: It was already inhabited. It wasn't vacant land. As a result, it probably wasn’t going to be safe to occupy if the occupation was to be at the expense of the Palestinians.
Yet that’s what happened. The occupying Zionists looked at the Palestinians as so many bothersome trees to be uprooted and transplanted. Or maybe just uprooted. Every year since, the Palestinians have paid a rising price — in lands stolen, in blood, in what are uncannily close to concentration camps (complete with guard towers!), in utter poverty, near starvation, denial of medical care, in loss of dignity and hope. Many reasonably conclude Israel's treatment of the Palestinians is a policy of slow-motion genocide.
As you may know, in 1919 Veblen wrote “On the Intellectual Pre-eminence of the Jews in Modern Europe.” Veblen explained the scientific and other achievements of the Jews as resulting in large part from their having been persecuted and forced to live in ghettoes for centuries. While the cities were “modernizing,” the main source of Jewish thought was a changeless religion. As the world around them changed, Veblen argued, that contrast between the new and "eternal verities" made skeptics of generation after generation of Jews; and that skepticism is the basis of both modern science and culture. That is, how do I know what and whom to believe, what to accept? This questioning attitude put the Jews in the forefront of all thinkers.
Then in his essay, Veblen dropped the bomb. He declared that if the Jews ever did achieve a State of their own, they would become just as militaristic and just as dangerous as every other nation. And let's recall that he was writing was in 1919.
Veblen was (characteristically) prescient. Israel has continuously demonstrated his thesis. It is just as militaristic (and in fact more so than almost every other country) and quite dangerous. It has also been a key partner of the militaristic USA in its aggressive efforts in the Middle East and neighboring Central Asia. And did I mention it's dangerous? Israel has about 200 nukes at its (and our?) disposal.
If and when World War III occurs, the initial conflicts (whether with Iran or Russia-Georgia or Pakistan-India) are likely to be offshoots of that set of countries and their troubles. All of them have or are seeking to have nuclear weapons.
(Thanks to long-suffering Mordecai Vanunu, we know that Israel is in the club. In spades.)
In conclusion, in sum, I forsee that the year 2009 will be significant for the history of the human race. And I predict it won't be a very pleasant year. At best. Hold onto your hats...or your–
I hope very much that I am utterly wrong. If so, it could be a Happy New Year.
If not, we can only hope for the best...and organize!
Doug
P.S. January 1, 2009
Dear friends,
It’s me again. In the Letter from Bologna I wrote yesterday, I said something about my having worked with the first anti-racist organization in SF. True enough, and it was created by a group of prominent SF Jews. Most of you who read this were not born in SF and many are too young to know what was going on there in the pre-1945 years when that group was created. This is to fill in that blank.
The organization I worked for was called the Council for Civic Unity. It was led by a small group Jews who were among the leading merchants in SF. I was just out of high school and did this and that for them — distributing pamphlets and such. But why the need?
Because racism in SF had been rampant for some time, and (given what was happening in Germany), the Council people thought it wise to do something. Rampant racism in liberal, libertine SF? Here some of the facts.
Racism was built in, accepted, and acceptable. It was worst against the large number of Chinese “left over” from their years of enslavement building the railroads. They were many and they were poor. Some SF workers saw them as dangerous to their own jobs and wages; so they lynched them — often and without punishment — even as late as the 1920s.
To my knowledge blacks were never lynched in SF, but they were ghetto-ized in the area between Fillmore and Octavia, McAllister and Post (also the jazz and blues center of SF), with other ghettos in adjoining streets, ghettos of Jews (my grandparents included) and of Japanese.
I was pretty much a loner as a kid. My mother was a high-school teacher (no dad; he had skipped), and she got my brother and me into the very best public grammar school, which was Grant, in Pacific Heights. All the kids were rich (except us), and of course, all were “white” — except for my one friend Seiko Yakahi. His ghetto was south of Pacific Heights, with the black neighbors on one side and Jews on the other .
The Chinese ghetto was where Chinatown now is. After World War II, the better-off Chinese centered in the Richmond, surrounded by Jews, non-Jewish Russians, and just plain others.
That pre-World War II mess in SF gave birth to the Council for Civic Unity — rich guys, with a little good sense hammered into them by Hitler & Co.
End of postscript. Happy New Year.
