George Salzman

Israeli Zionist Nazi Culture

A report from Rabbis for Human Rights

by George Salzman

Noga Eitan is a spokeswoman for the Israeli group Rabbis for Human Rights. She wrote about the conversation she heard between soldiers on a train in Israel the evening before the start of the Jewish high holidays, the days of Passover (seven in Israel, eight in the Diaspora). The executive director of the group, Rabbi Arik W. Ascherman, says in his introductory statement on the conversation Noga reports, “It is not quite as awful as the ‘disproved’ incidents alleged by the soldiers from the Rabin Academy, but awful enough”.[1] His introductory comments, which I omit, are of course within the framwork of his overall religious outlook. He is well-intentioned, a good person, a humane Zionist who so far as I can tell has not resolved in his mind the fundamental contradictions at the base of the Zionist conquest of the Palestinians. All religions, regardless of their particular dogma, always muddle what ought to be clear, critical thinking. A real intellectual curse.

On being human

Inspired by David Shulman

by George Salzman

I'm interrupting myself, temporarily setting aside my rereading of the terrifying chapter in Robert Fisk's The Great War for Civilization [1] in which he writes about the unbelievable atrocities against Algerians carried out by Algerians 'in the name of God'. It's a mammoth chapter (pp. 631-719) that horrified me some years ago when I first read it, because of the supposedly 'principled' killing of children. I love children. To me they are sacred, all of them, regardless of the ethnicities and nationalities that society forces on them. This note is different from my usual stuff -- nothing about capitalism, socialism, competition, greed -- just about love, real love. I'm reprinting an essay from a man I'd never heard of until a few days ago, David Shulman. When I read his essay, it recalled to me the almost final words of the great writer and human being, Bruno Traven, who, three weeks before his death forty years ago, in 1969, wrote:[2] 

This world, with all its troubles, shortcomings, disappointments, pains, problems, unwelcome events, occasional hailstorms is after all, still too beautiful to abandon even if you are sick, tired of life or close to a hopeless end. Stick it out. Keep on fighting, don't give up. Spit Death in its face and turn the other way. The sun is still in the sky surrounded by stars.[3]