Woodrow Wilson: The Power Of Mankind
"There is only one power to put behind the liberation of mankind, and that is the power of mankind.
It is the power of the united moral forces of the world, and in the Covenant of the League of Nations the moral forces of the world are mobilized. For what purpose? Reflect, my fellow citizens, that the membership of this great League is going to include all the great fighting nations of the world, as well as the weak ones. It is not for the present going to include Germany, but for the time being Germany is not a great fighting country. All the nations that have power that can be mobilized are going to be members of this League, including the United States. And what do they unite for? They enter into a solemn promise to one another that they will never use their power against one anther for aggression; that they never will impair the territorial integrity of a neighbor; that they never will interfere with the political independence of a neighbor; that they will abide by the principle that great populations are entitled to determine their own destiny and that they will not interfere with that destiny; and that no matter what differences arise amongst them they will never resort to war..." (League of Nations, 25-9-1919)
"We are provincials no longer. The tragic events of the thirty months of vital turmoil through which we have just passed have made us citizens of the world. There can be no turning back." (Speech, 5-3-1917)
Wilson & De Nieuwe Wereldorde
Woodrow Wilson was de geestelijke vader van de volkerenbond gedachte ('The League of Nations'), die via het indammen van imperialistische machtspelletjes en het scheppen van een samenwerkingsverband waarin grote en kleine naties gelijke rechten zouden bezitten een nieuwe eeuw van vrede diende in te luiden.
Wanneer Wilson zijn zin had gekregen was de vernederende 'vrede van Versailles' die van Duitsland een failliet, verpauperd land maakte - dat een ideale voedingsbodem vormde voor extremistische sociale bewegingen, zoals het Nationaal-Socialisme - nooit tot stand gekomen. De realisatie van zijn plannen werd echter tegengewerkt door de Amerikaanse volksvertegenwoordiging, die de kleinburgerlijke provinciementaliteit boven de geestelijke vrijheid van het wereldburgerschap plaatste. (Klik voor bron)
Albert Schweitzer: "We Are All Guilty Of Inhumanity"
What really matters is that we should all of us realize that we are guilty of inhumanity. The horror of this realization should shake us out of our lethargy so that we can direct our hopes and our intentions to the coming of an era in which war will have no place.
This hope and this will can have but one aim: to attain, through a change in spirit, that superior reason which will dissuade us from misusing the power at our disposal.
The first to have the courage to advance purely ethical arguments against war and to stress the necessity for reason governed by an ethical will was the great humanist Erasmus of Rotterdam in his Querela pacis (The Complaint of Peace) which appeared in 15175. In this book he depicts Peace on stage seeking an audience.
Erasmus found few adherents to his way of thinking. To expect the affirmation of an ethical necessity to point the way to peace was considered a utopian ideal. Kant shared this opinion. In his essay on "Perpetual Peace", which appeared in 1795, and in other publications in which he touches upon the problem of peace, he states his belief that peace will come only with the increasing authority of an international code of law, in accordance with which an international court of arbitration would settle disputes between nations. This authority, he maintains, should be based entirely on the increasing respect which in time, and for purely practical motives, men will hold for the law as such. (Albert Schweitzer, Nobel Lecture, 4-11-1954)
Louis Michel: Recht Plaatsen Boven Macht En Geld
We moeten het humanisme opnieuw zijn juiste plaats geven in onze internationale betrekkingen. Opdat deze strijd tegen de armoede en voor emancipatie vruchten zou afwerpen, moeten we bereid zijn om de mechanismen kritisch te bestuderen, die aan de basis liggen van de economische fluctuaties en financiële spanningen en hun sociale gevolgen, die een uitbuiting toelaten van de zwaksten door de sterksten door vaak onpersoonlijke en moeilijk of niet te identificeren krachten.
Om die redenen zijn we er diep van overtuigd dat het in onze gemondialiseerde samenleving belangrijk is om de voorrang van de politiek te herstellen. Vandaag moeten we zonder bijgedachten werken aan de organisatie van een nieuwe internationale politieke orde. We hebben nood aan een krachtiger Organisatie van de Verenigde Naties, die een coherent beleid voert voor economische en sociale ontwikkeling.
Dit impliceert een horizontaal beleid dat alle globale instrumenten benut, zowel op economisch, financieel als commercieel vlak. Dit veronderstelt ook een meer vastberaden wil om de voorrang van de politiek te herstellen en niet langer te aanvaarden dat de democratische legitimiteit wordt omzeild of met de voeten getreden omwille van particuliere of speculatieve belangen. De rechten van de mens moeten voorrang hebben op de macht van het geld. (Belgium UN, 25-9-1999)
It is time to stop pretending that Europeans and Americans share a common view of the world, or even that they occupy the same world. On the all-important question of power - the efficacy of power, the morality of power, the desirability of power - American and European perspectives are diverging. Europe is turning away from power, or to put it a little differently, it is moving beyond power into a self-contained world of laws and rules and transnational negotiation and cooperation. It is entering a post-historical paradise of peace and relative prosperity, the realization of Kant's "Perpetual Peace." The United States, meanwhile, remains mired in history, exercising power in the anarchic Hobbesian world where international laws and rules are unreliable and where true security and the defense and promotion of a liberal order still depend on the possession and use of military might. That is why on major strategic and international questions today, Americans are from Mars and Europeans are from Venus: They agree on little and understand one another less and less. And this state of affairs is not transitory - the product of one American election or one catastrophic event. The reasons for the transatlantic divide are deep, long in development, and likely to endure. When it comes to setting national priorities, determining threats, defining challenges, and fashioning and implementing foreign and defense policies, the United States and Europe have parted ways.
Wie waarde hecht aan de astrologische benadering van de werkelijkheid zal onmiddelijk inzien dat het agressieve beeld dat Robert Kagan schetst van de Amerikaanse politiek de ontkenning is van het karakter van George W. Bush, dat in sterke mate wordt bepaald door de tekens Kreeft en Weegschaal - uitgesproken vrouwelijke tekens die alleen maar daarom niet een verandering van het gedrag van Amerika bewerkstelligen omdat Amerika momenteel een presidentsloos land is, waarin het volstrekt niet uitmaakt wie de leider is. Dat Amerika komt niet van Mars maar van Pluto: de liefdeloze wereld van de onderwerping en de slavernij, waarin Venus weinig meer mag zijn dan een hoer die op een kille, berekenende wijze wordt gebruikt en misbruikt.
The star in my
Hand is falling
All the uniforms know what's no use
May I bow to Necessity not
To her hirelings
W.S. Merwin
Dr. Mohamed Khodr: "What If...?"
What if Muslims adopted democracies in their lands, what if Muslims wisely spent and invested the trillions of dollars from oil revenues on their people and institutions instead of investing it in the west; what if Muslims learned the modern language of influence: public relations; what if Muslims were truly united as demanded by Islam into a brotherhood of mutual benefit and defense, what if Muslims stopped spending the largest share of their income on weapons meant for oppression and mutual destruction (the Middle East is the largest importer of weapons worldwide) and instead spent it on education and health; what if they dissolved the impotent Arab League of Summits and Lies and the irrelevant Islamic Conference of Organizations (I.O.C.).
What if Muslim nations had a better understanding of western politics and culture; what if they coordinated their opposition to war with western anti-war groups; what if they understood that civil disobedience has a more powerful impact on world public opinion than hyperbolic speeches and hollow threats; what if they hired professional public relation firms to present their case and issues to the west; what if Muslims used reason as demanded by the Qur'an rather than emotionality re-electing dictators with 100% of the votes; what if Muslim leaders would trust their own people and do away with secret police and intimidation tactics; what if Muslim nations were led by well educated civilians rather than autocratic military regimes; what if true moderate Islam was the ruling ideology in all Muslim nations: WHAT IF, WHAT IF.....?
Palestine Chronicle, 19-12-2002
2002: Het Jaar Van De Grote Verloedering
As for the other doves, no one talks about them any longer: they are good at making ardent speeches abroad, in universities or to Jewish left-wing groups, and their talent is even more blatant in their ability to hint about the wonders they are going to perform. But when the time comes to fight for one's principles in the Israeli marketplace, the vintage wine turns out to be diluted by turgid waters and is served with second-class food.
Therefore, today more than ever before, we would do well to consider the nature of true national responsibility. Indeed, national responsibility obliges us to say first of all that the agreed social policy of the two major parties is tearing the social fabric to ribbons, while the total war that Prime Minister Ariel Sharon and his defense minister, Shaul Mofaz, have declared on the Palestinian people, with the tacit consent of the Labor Party, is undermining the foundations on which the Jewish state stands.
Israeli society was never made of saints, and the IDF never consisted solely of ministering angels. However, the level of insensitivity we are now witnessing did not exist in the past. There was a time when we were ashamed of the poverty that began to spread in the country and when we found the sight of children living below the decent subsistence level agonizing. Today we look with equanimity at the deepening distress of those sections of the society that are considered unproductive.
The same pattern can be found in other spheres, too. Not so long ago we did not treat the enemy cruelly and did not kill members of its civilian population without batting an eyelash. We never turned the exploitation of the foreigners who sought haven here in the face of economic distress into an accepted norm; and we never abused nonconformist elements, such as conscientious objectors.
The new norms, By Ze'ev Sternhell
Ha'aretz, 20-12-2002
2002 was the “worst ever from the moral view point.”
Shulamit Aloni, former Minister of Education, was quoted by the Israeli newspaper Yedeot Ahranot Wednesday as saying the year 2002 was “the worst in Israel’s history.”
“The year 2002 was the worst in the state’s history, not because of problems related to security, economy and corruption; it was the year of moral degeneration during which we became an apartheid state, it was the year in which the government’s legal advisor began burying the democratic system.”
Aloni especially lambasted the Israeli government for adopting conspicuously-brazen discriminatory actions against Israel’s growing Arab community.
“In the year 2002, Israel sought to negate the rights of the Arab community, they censored a film on Jenin, they closed down an Arab newspaper and they barred an Arab political party from taking part in the elections.”
Aloni argued that the year 2002 was the “worst ever from the moral view point.” (Palestine Chronicle, 3-1-2003)
The End Of Zionist Ideology?
Israeli and American Zionisms have met where the means become all and ends are negated. What this ultimately signifies is the triumph of right wing Zionism – a triumph prepared by the Labor Zionists. With this triumph the State qua State becomes an object of worship, nationalism runs rampant, and there is no place for a critical Zionism.
A vibrant, critical Zionism is but a survival today, somewhere in watertight compartments in the minds of a few. Shall it suffocate or break out and breathe? Here then is one task for thinking Zionists: an intellectual guerrilla war against the Zionism of today. Before Zionism’s future lies the question of finding a form of itself relevant to the conditions of the times. (Mitchell Cohen)
Joodse macht & Amerikaanse passiviteit
The real culprits in the story of Jewish influence in America are the people who let it all happen. These are the non-Jewish Americans who, in their opposition to Israel, are so timid that a couple of words from Alan Dershowitz would send them all scuttling like cockroaches back to their dark corners. The few who go further are not 'silenced' by Jewish power. One hears from them all the time: ask a Chinese or Iraqi or former Chilean dissident what 'silenced' means. They are ineffective because they haven't even tried to organize themselves, shrinking from the unpleasantness of offending the 'courageous' Jewish left. One thinks of the immortal words of George Carlin: "Take a fucking risk, for Christ's sake..." (Michael Neumann, professor of philosophy at Trent University in Ontario, Canada)
Wachten Op De Derde Weg
"We always believed that the fall of those regimes would immediately open opportunities for a “third way" – a socialism that didn’t rely on the state but encompassed a decentralized and highly participative form of democratic politics, with workers’ control of factories and new social movements like feminism and environmentalism.
But instead of opening this new path, 1989 unexpectedly brought a crisis of faith in any sort of radical alternative. The stories of more just societies now sound like utopian fantasies. (Michael Walzer)
De Kinderen van de Derde Wereld
Today, the children of Iraq face a catastrophe. It does not come in the form of a natural disaster such as an earthquake, or flood or drought…it comes in the form of a man-made disaster: a famine supported- and imposed- by the world in general, and the United States and Britain, specifically, a crippling economic blockade specially designed to affect the most vulnerable faction of society: our children.
By keeping the children of the third world and Arab countries busy with war and famine, in other words, survival, their education and mental health become secondary concerns. While the world advances with new technological and medical discoveries, the small worlds of our children grow dimmer with hunger, poverty and war.
Dr. Fahad S. Al-Shagra - Iraqi (Ba'ath) Minister of Education
A return to honest language
Ariel Sharon once said, "A lie should be tried in a place where it will attract the attention of the world." And so it has been: throughout the media and the U.S. political scene, on CNN in the personage of Benjamin Netanyahu, and in the pages of the New York Times.
And in my Hebrew School, where we were taught that Jews were to be "a light unto the nations," instead of this dim bulb, this flickering nightlight, this barely visible spark whose radiance is only sufficient to make visible the death-rattle of the more noble aspects of the Jewish tradition.
Unless we who are Jews insist on a return to honest language, and an end to the hijacking of our culture and faith by madmen, racists and liars, I fear that the light may be extinguished forever.
(Tim Wise, 17-5-2002)
The end of Jewish history
In Rabbinic Judaism the practice of Judaism, or we might say more precisely, the practice of the covenant, occurred without power and in the face of power. This was its peculiar strength. In a time of power, in the shadow of Constantinian Judaism, Rabbinic Judaism is a shadow of itself, as are the rabbis.
As a Jewish thinker who has taken Jewish history seriously, it is sad to report this fateful transposition, as it means that Jewish history as we have known and inherited it has come to an end. As an ordinary Jew who was born into the faith and has consciously embraced it, who has a Jewish home and children who are being raised as Jews, the sadness is more personal. For what future is carried by helicopter gunships?
What kind of Jewish life is constructed around the displacement and humiliation of another people? Marc H. Ellis, 5-6-2001
Marc H. Ellis is a Professor of American and Jewish Studies, and Director of the Center for American and Jewish Studies at Baylor University.
Wat Is Zionisme?
In het artikel "Like Being Autistic With Power", dat een weergave is van een gesprek dat KATHLEEN en BILL CHRISTISON voerden met de Israelische vredesactivist JEFF HALPER wordt het zionisme als volgt omschreven:
Zionism “is a very compelling narrative, but it is totally self-contained, a bubble in which Israelis separate themselves from all others.” Israelis regard everyone else as irrelevant. When it is suggested that fear motivates this self-absorption, Halper disagrees. “It’s not so much fear,” he says; Israelis “just don’t give a damn. They make everyone else a non-issue. They see themselves as the victim, and if you’re the victim, you’re not responsible for anything you do.”
Anything goes if you are the victim, he explains: you don’t care about the consequences of your actions for other people, you need not take any responsibility for the effect of your policies on others, you don’t care about how others feel. Israelis always think they’re right, he says. They believe everything they do is right because the Jewish nation is “right,” because they are only responding to what others do to them, only retaliating. “If you combine three elements: the idea that we are right, with the notion that we’re the victim, and with our great military power,” he says, you have a lethal combination. “It’s like being autistic with power. You don’t care about other people because you’ve cast the others as the aggressors. You create a situation where Israel is off the hook.” Israel can act with brutality, but the responsibility, the fault, lies elsewhere.(CounterPunch 29-3-2003)
"Today, Judaism is the only major world religion totally programmed by a political ideology, Zionism. In fact, Zionism itself has become the religion of many Jews. Only a century ago, Zionists made up just three percent of the Jewish population. Now, it is non-Zionist Jews who make up the minority three percent among Jews." (Mohamed Elmasry)
Israel Shamir & Het Harmonieprincipe
Millennia before the Great Cultural Revolution, the Chinese knew the secret of harmony: the non-Manichean balance of opposing ideas, the principles of Ying and Yang. Properly balanced, Jewish ideas can be beneficial: anti-Christian zeal would limit Church excesses, just as materialism and egoism can keep the feet of Man on the ground while his head is in heaven, feminism can balance male chauvinism, and the sex obsession of Freud can balance the asceticism of spiritualists. Balanced, even Zionism will shrink to the humane proportions of Jewish love for Palestine. But balanced it should be. (Israel Shamir, 11-3-2003)
Zionisme & herschrijving van de geschiedenis
Zionisten proberen de wereld via een systematisch proces van geschiedvervalsing 'wijs' te maken dat de Zionistische kijk op de wereld de enig mogelijke is. Alles wat niet in het leugenbeeld van het Zionisme past dient verwijderd te worden, hetgeen ertoe leidt dat kritische geluiden, die aantonen dat Zionisten met behulp van brute macht de geschiedenis (in hun voordeel) willen herschrijven (geschiedvervalsing dus), domweg niet aan het woord worden gelaten. Vandaar dat hieronder wordt gewezen op de 'Joodse Hervormersbeweging', die - in tegenstelling tot het Zionisme - zich distantieerde van de fascistisch-nationalistische leiderschapsgedachte binnen het jodendom. Het spreekt vanzelf dat hervormers, waarvan het ACJ (American Council for Judaism) de moderne vertegenwoordiger is, een geheel andere kijk op de geschiedenis hadden en hebben dan de Zionisten. Dat de hervormingsbeweging op zijn retour is en overgenomen dreigt te worden door het Zionisme bewijst de negatieve behandeling van het (relatief) moderne ACJ door conservatieve vertegenwoordigers van het Amerikaans-joodse establishment.
Reform Jews: "Away From Traditional Practice"
Reform Jews in America rejected Jewish nationalism long before the appearance of Theodor Herzl’s Der Judenstaat in 1896. As early as 1841, at the dedication ceremony of Temple Beth Elohim in Charleston, South Carolina, Rabbi Gustav Posnanski declared that "this country is our Palestine, this city our Jerusalem, this house of God our Temple."
The most important advocate and organizer of the American Reform movement was Isaac Mayer Wise (1819-1900). Wise was born in a small Orthodox community in Bohemia and studied for certification as a rabbi both in traditional rabbinic schools and at the universities of Prague and Vienna. He came to the U.S. in 1846 and accepted the spiritual leadership of the Orthodox Congregation Beth-El in Albany, New York, where he began almost immediately to institute reforms which led in 1850 to a division of the congregation.
Later, Wise Became rabbi of Congregation Bene Yeshurun in Cincinnati, where he founded the English and German weekly papers, The American Israelite and Die Deborah. Three years later, having led his congregation almost entirely away from traditional practices, he published his revolutionary Minhag America (American Ritual). In 1873 he founded the Union of American Hebrew Congregations, a body which by 1880 was described by Nathan Glazer in American Judaism, as "closer to being the dominant organization in American Jewish life than any other organization has ever been."
Reform Judaism was designed to eliminate from Judaism those secondary aspects which promoted a separatistic concept of "Jewish peoplehood." It emphasized the universal ethical and spiritual principles of the Prophetic tradition and sought to end the notion of Jews as "a people apart." (American Council for Judaism)
Transcending Nationalism
If we Jews have anything significant to say to humanity in this hour of darkness, it is surely this threefold teaching of the Prophets: that righteousness is everything; that it is universal, transcending nationalism; and that what is morally right will ultimately prove to have been politically expedient. If we wish to be a light to the nations, that must be our message. And if the message is heeded, a time will surely come when ‘the people that walked in darkness will see a great light’ (Isa. 9:1) Rabbi John D. Rayner, in: A light to the nations
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