I havw unfeatured this blog because the video in question is no longer on the homepage. Thanks to everyone for your participaton.
(The first part of this blog is about New York Jews in general and the second part is about how that relates to me and this website at this time).
This blog concerns a video with a textual explanation of it that is posted at the top of the home page. It is about how certain monied Jews in New York are pushing for war on Iran. In fact the video is talking about wealthy Jews. They are affiliated with AIPAC and the author interviewed in the video stresses that. This submission has been titled “New York Jews Pushing for War.”
The author interviewed is a New York Jew. He has written several anti-war books and books exposing Bush and the Neo-Cons. Although the title “New York Jews Pushing For War” is in quotation marks, I think it is a bad choice because it is right on top of the homepage and many people who “drop by” and just glance over the homepage will see only that, and believe that most New York Jews are warmongers. So it is potentially incendiary and damaging.
Naturally the people who are pushing for war in Iran are also in favor of Israel’s actions. I am a New York Jew. I am a non-Zionist and a pacifist and you know where I stand as regards Iran. All of my close Jewish friends are non-Zionists or at least strongly against the Israeli regime and they protest it. One of them has been traveling back and forth between New York and Palestine for years to expose Israel’s wrongdoings to the press. My mother is 82 years old and spent much of her time even though her eyesight is failing and has arthritis writng letters to newspapers asking for Bush’s impeachment ever since the invasion of Iraq. We are peace-loving people.
Manattan along with Berkeley is in by voters the most progressive district in the country. Many many Jews here are against the actions of the state of Israel, against war period here. We had large anti-war demonstrations immediately following the destruction of the World Trade Center when Bush first discussed the invasion of Afghanistan and the most popular slogan was “Not in My NAme.” Many of the activist leaders were Jewish. Yes, we are peace-loving people.
I am also concerned about the title at this point in the website’s history because (until the other day) I took myself seriously as a peace activist and I have always tried to bring that to the website, in encouraging Iranians of my generation to arrive at Truth and Reconciliaton between the warriry politcal factions. I had some success and people thanked me for it. I came back to the website when Gaza exploded because of my unusual status here as a (here) well-known non-Zionist and non-Iranian Jew to help make peace because I believe peace in the world begins with individuals and this is as good a place as any to start, actually better because of its vast outreach.
However I did something that was so disgraceful the other day that it was very damaging to the peace of the website, particularly painful to me because I’d had a few conversatons with people here who admitted to me that they had been suspicious of Jews and I’d helped them to understand that this cruel Zionist regime and Israel itself are not representative of the Jewish people or even many Israelis by our nature, although many have become psychologically ill due to the trauma of our recent histo, and I encouraged those people to dialogue with Zionists, to influence voters so that there could be hope.
What happened the other day has completely undermined my credibility on and undone any work I did here toward peace, especially concerning Gaza. I have probably become for those particular people as much a negative representative of the Jewish people as our beloved Zion, because at least Zion isn’t a hypocrite. Those people who I had achieved positive dialog with mocked me. And this title could reinforce that perception. I’d planned to blog on all this soon anyway to explain that because of all this it will be necessary for me to leave the website permanently. This isn’t like last time which I explained was due to a personal situation, When you are a public figure and you are implicated in a scandal you have to step down.
I am also afraid that due to what I did, there is even a possiblity that subconscously this title might plant even one tiny seed subconsciously in someone’s head who never felt that way before that we New York Jews and Jews in general are warmongers. And that is a very dangerous thing because as I said peace begins with individuals and you can’t have peace over there where real blood is being shed until you have it here. So for the peace movement to lose even one person is a tragedy.
Please change title, Jahanshah, to: AiPAC PUSHING FOR WAR ON IRAN.
