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I have so much I could say about Ray Taliaferro when his knowledge is weak: I hardly know where to start. Sorry, Davey D, I'm going to have to intellectually take Ray Taliafero to task.

• Let me first preface my comments here with a little background thoughts on sociopolitical "icons" like Ray Taliaferro:

I guess first of all, Taliaferro doesn't know -- or won't even acknowledge -- when his knowledge is weak and/or when his commentary is weak on certain subjects. This is because, like many of our progressive local, regional and/or national "icons", who have, in some areas, earned our considerable respect, they come to believe that they should be experts and to be able to pontificate profoundly (whether or not it's always knowledgeably) on anything and EVERYTHING!

Sadly, I've found, after coming to the Bay Area, where there is more of a progressive political culture and political ferment than in most other areas of the country, that many of "our" icons, suffer this 'affliction' -- and woe is you, if you even politely, as well as competently, question their intellectual knowledge or moral position on some issue under discussion.

Oh, you'd be quite surprised at how many of those "icons" -- especially the ones talking about sistahly & brothaly "lovvve" all the time -- which inlcudes a certain iconic preacher -- will verbally rear-up on you, and either try to, suddenly, blatantly ignore, verbally play your point off with some b.s. (using their microphone advantage at a lecture event or on the radio), or get all majorly huffy on you: it's their inordinate human ego! And being an icon doesn't prevent anyone from having that affliction: ...in fact, that's often as much our fault for our American cult of unexamined celebrityism (even on the left).

(Ron Dellums is a perfect example -- always bragging about what he did *40* years ago -- remote, aloof, all puffed up, and full of himself -- and as I recently said on Hard Knock Radio, this is, sadly, exactly just what I expected of him, as mayor of Oakland, over the massive public outrage of the BART police execution of Oscar Grant. Whatever Dellums once was that was admirable, he's long been little of that anymore.)

Extremely few of those icons will say, "You know what, I hadn't thought about that..." -- or heaven forbid they should ever say, "You know what, I haven't studied that enough" -- followed by, "but you raise good/compelling points." Now wouldn't that be intellectually encouraging, rather than intellectually discouraging?

These are the icons always talking about how sistah's and brotha's need to read books more often and learn something, but then, instead, those icons use their star status to verbal punish people who do read, and do personal research, and do try to intellectually develop themselves and elevate their minds, who do want to learn something -- and either want to share what they've learned and come to understand on some critical point, or they have a critical question to ask, however civilly. I could mention some of those iconic names, but you just wouldn't believe me.


Well, even Tupac faced this (so I guess I shouldn't feel so bad) when he said in "Words of Wisdom":

"I don't get it... / so many questions went through my mind;
I get sweated... / they act like asking questions is a crime."


Or, as, so thankfully to me, just a grassroots intellectual and activist, Michael Eric Dyson said it at greater length in his book, _Debating Race_ (pg 54, pgh 2):

"And let me say this. If we're gon' get real about it, many of the leaders I know -- you were right to challenge us; let me challenge the leaders. Half the leaders I know are insecure. A Negro come up here with some intelligence, they go, 'Oh, hell, who is he? I'm not going to get the glory anymore because now that person is here." Insecure [leaders], incapable of accepting intelligent, articulate people who just want to help. So, it goes both ways. More analysts would be involved in action if the Negroes leading the action weren't insecure about the [their] analysis."

AAAmen! Thank you..., Brotha Dyson!

• But, on the issue of the Palestinian colonization by European (later including American) Zionist (i.e., religio-ethno-supremacist) Jews, Taliaferro shouldn't be so weak.

A person involved in social justice and political commentary for as long as Taliaferro has, and the times he's lived through, he should have long ago educated himself, and brought himself up to speed, on the history and issue of Palestine. (Like some of his Black political contemporaries way back in the day, like Kwame Ture [Stokely Carmichael] and Malcolm X, to name a couple of the admitedly intellectual giants, and other anti-racist, anti-imperialist, anti-colonialist activists, did. It was Malcom X who said that, "European colonialism is the perpetration that tries to make the WOLF look like the lamb, and the lamb look like the wolf.)

Now, getting to the issue of Israel -- before I get to the immediate (diversionary) topic brought up by Taliafero, that U.S. was formed from stolen land:

Anyway, you can tell when Taliaferro doesn't really know about something, because he'll just give a really general vague response and quickly move on, instead of just responding with one of those replies above. He'll just brush off an intelligent criticism of Israel with THAT BIG DEEP VOICE OF HIS, "Ohhhh, that problem's been going onnn for 2,000 years..., and those people have been hating each other for 1,000's of years [that shows how uneducated he is on this issue]..., and I just don't see how it'll ever be solved...!"

On the subject of Israel and Zionism and apartheid, Taliafero becomes anywhere from somewhat nervous to really touchy. There's Israel: a European-founded, primarily European Jewish colony forced down right there in the middle of the Arab world, upon the heads of the indigenous people. A few high officials in the British and American state departments warned that this would create problems in the Mideast for at least the next half-century. (By the way, those high officials underestimated.)

The starter, center, or reason (in the case of both U.S.-Iraq wars, or constantly threatened U.S. war against Iran) of numerous -- just about ALL Mideast wars in its region -- is Israel. Israel started ALL of its wars (always on some pretext), except *one* (when Egypt tried to militarily get land back stolen by Israel in the previous Israeli-started war, yet another Israeli pretextual war started primarily for the purpose of stealing more land from its neighbors and eliminating them as a potential military power). And Israel has stolen land from every one of its neighboring countries.

• Back when the 2nd U.S.-Iraq war first started (the first war was a bait-&-destroy operation), and when there were discussions on Taliaferro's show about the Mideast, quite naturally, I might, as often as not, raise or mention the issue of Israel.

Well, after about the 3rd time I did, Taliaferro, indeed, blasted me: "YOU REALLY JUST DON'T LIKE ISRAEL, DO YOU!!? ...EVERY TIME YOU CALL, YOU PUT DOWN ISRAEL!!" Of course, that was a damn lie, and usually the Zionist kind of intimidation and silencing tactic: to directly or indirectly accuse any incisive critic of Israel of being "anti-Semitic".

I asked Taliafero: "May I explain?"

(I was going to explain that Israel is an apartheid state and that I opposed any apartheid state. Israel is Jim Crow inside Israel itself, and apartheid outside Israel itself. Actually, Israel is, in some respects, worse than Jim Crow on the inside, and Black South Africans say that Israel is worse than apartheid. The wry one-line joke some white South Africans have about Israel is, "Wait a minute: don't go giving apartheid a bad name!")

Taliaferro blasted again: "NO YOU CAN'T!! AND I'M GOING TO INSTRUCT MY OPERATORS NOT TO TAKE YOUR CALLS AGAIN!!! .....I WON'T HAVE THAT KIND OF TALK ON MY SHOW!!..."

(At least rhetorically speaking, I'm 'sure' the Israel lobby rewarded Ray with an all-expenses-paid trip to Israel and back for his next vacation -- or some other substantive reward.)

But, let a backward political moron call in about any subject, and Ray will go on and on and on (even when I strongly agree with Ray), even past a couple of commercial breaks with that person, to not only show that the person is wrong, but to show off how smart he (Ray) is.

Then, I immediately realized how much THE BIG, BAD, SONNNOROUS, RAY TALIAFERRO WAS *SCARED*!! ...We got new masters now!

He probably got a call from the local head Zionist organization (and they do make calls): 'Ray...?, what's all these reports I'm getting, from our media monitor interns, that you're allowing, especially, intelligent, incisive critcism of Israel, that you can't politically handle and put down, on your show? You better do something about that, ya heeyah...?'

You see, as one Palestinian professor once told me, the Israel lobby will let people of high public status be as progressive and kick-ass as you want to be, and the lobby will leave you alone -- except on the subject of Israel.

Taliaferro once hosted a Zionist Jews vs. anti-Zionist Jews & Palestinians panel at the Commonwealth Club in San Francisco. He let the Zionist Jews in the in the audience sometimes hiss, shout & even boo when they didn't like something they heard from the anti-Zionist panelists. But, he abruptly and sharply warned the anti-Zionists (Jews, Palestinians/Arabs and others of every ethnicity) in the audience to respect decorum when they didn't even shout or boo, but just expressed disapproval (like a collective sigh and murmured words) at some really outrageously racist comment or wickedly shameless lie that a Zionist panelist might say about the Palestinians (the kind of stuff that Zionists are used to getting away with in our mainstream media, even on PBS).

• So, Ray Taliaferro's got a job to do: he's got his general assignment marching orders when it comes to Israel.

And, apparently, this job includes intellectual or moral diversion -- exactly the kind of tactic that Zionists polemically like to engage in -- in a real intellectual or moral pinch, or in the case of some particularly heinous period of Israel's overwhelming atrocities (whether in Gaza, the West Bank, or Lebanon), it's called "changing the subject"!!

You see?: and Ray abruptly changed the subject(!!) during someone's call-in to his radio show, this during Israel's latest attempt not only to destroy the largest and strongest major armed resistance and communitry service organization left among the Palestinians, but to totally destroy every single institution of Gazan society. Not only Hamas organizations, but every societal organization of any kind: governmental, civic, institutional, academic, cultural (both artifactual and artistic), journalistic, and even repositories of records -- every kind of institution one would need to have a society, almost at all. Everything, except for some hospitals, only because not even Israel could get away with bombing all the hospitals -- so Israel just starves them (that's much less visible) of medical supplies.

The term for this is called _sociocide_. It's a scorched earth form of cultural genocide. If the state of Israel can not yet erase the Palestinian people, Israel will try to effectively and functionally erase Palestinian society. The anti-Zionist Jewish human rights philosopher, Hannah Arendt, called this "creating holes of oblivion", when the Nazis tried to do this to the ethnic groups and nationalities they tried to wipe out.

• First of all, although it's sometimes questionable, many more parts of humanity have morally evolved since the days of American slavery and Indian removal and extermination practices perpetrated by the Europeans who first came here.

At least white people now -- most white people -- don't believe, anymore, in direct chattel slavery, and direct removal and/or extermination, and near-complete supplanting, of indigenous so-called 3rd World people. (Well, considering how 1st civilizations started, culturally advanced, and it's stages of propagation, it's the Europeans who are actually more "3rd World" people, but that's another intellectual and cultural issue.)

That being said, the Palestinians are an indigenous non-European people, resisting colonialism, apartheid, and a generally white racist religio-ethnic-supremacist fundamentalist ideology -- this time Jewish instead of Christian -- by an overwhelmingly non-indigenous invading population (mostly from Europe and the U.S.) who claimed they found "an empty land". European Jews came to Palestine, also toting the Bible and the gun (like European Christian sects elsewhere), claiming historical discrimination or oppression back home in Europe, but, in turn, oppressing another people: the Palestinians. After, then, apartheid South Africa, Israel is the last officially segregated, white-supremacist, colonial apartheid state (but with no fixed borders) of its kind left in the world.

So, Hamas is a Palestinian, anti-colonial, armed resistance and social service organization, as are several others. And I publicly and openly support even their armed resistance -- as I do for Hezbollah, an anti-imperialist, armed resistance organization. There is no moral equivalency between oppressor and oppressed, between the colonizer and the colonized, between the imperialist and the imperialized. But, it is important to know that both armed and nonviolent Palestinian resistance are illegalized by the state of Israel, and are often met with the same Israeli bullets.

Now ironically Hamas was the only Palestinian armed struggle organization that Israel originally allowed to build up, because Israel wanted to pit Hamas and the old PLO to destroy each other. The other irony of this is that Israel itself was created by Zionist Jewish terrorism. Zionist Jewish terrorists gangs and militias did the same thing back then that they've been doing ever since then: massacring the indigenous people, stealing their land, destroying their homes, farms and orchards, blowing up high-rise buildings, attacking refugee camps, taking parts of neighboring countries, even assassinating the chief UN peace envoy (can you imagine what would happen if even just one Palestinian ever did that)!

So, as I put it, the European/American Zionist Jews didn't invade historic Palestine nonviolently; so, the indigenous Palestinians have no moral obligation to resist nonviolently. In fact, the Palestinians have been engaging in exactly the same moral right in their own land that the Europeans hold for themselves in Europe -- even against other Europeans (let alone against a non-European foreign invader): the right to armed self-defense.

The ancestors of the Palestinians didn't kick the religious ancestors of today's European Jews out of ancient Palestine: another group of Europeans -- the Romans -- did. And the ancient Hebrews weren't even the first to settle in and be in political control -- and only parts of it at that -- and not even continuously then -- of ancient Palestine.

No One(!!) has a so-called "right of self-determination", or "right-of-return", to "go back", from thousands of miles away, to entirely another continent, at that, and take over the land of their ancient religious ancestors from *2,000 years* ago (because, supposedly, "God" promised it to them *5,000 years* ago!) where people already live!

What if we ALL (6 billion people) tried to reverse 2,000 years of human migration to the continent where our ancient ethnic or religious ancestors started from? As Malcolm X said, "the Zionist argument...has no intelligent or legal basis in history." The "ancient presence" argument of today's European/American Zionist Jews is literally worse than medieval! And yet the Palestinians are called "fanatical"? Can you imagine how stunned they were at the Zionist claim, some 60-70 years ago?: "Hey, this is our land: God promised it to us 5,000 years ago. You must leave or die." The irony is that the 3-6% of indigenous Jews in Palestine, around the turn of the 20th century, never called for a Zionist/Jewish state, and the racist invading European Jews even treated (to this day) the brown-skin indigenous Jews (and other non-European Jews) like, distinctly, 2nd class Jews -- indigenous Jews who had lived in peace with Christian and Muslim Palestinian Arabs. What did Gandhi reportedly say about European civilization?: "I think it would be a good idea."

• Okay, let's finally get closer to dealing with Taliaferro's diversionary argument.

Now, you know, white racists (either European Christian or European Jewish racists) always want to start in the middle of the story or, preferably, at the end of the story: "Israel is just defending itself by stopping all the Palestinian rocket attacks!" (They don't tell you that Gaza was under Israeli starvation seige for about 19 months; and that Israel just keeps bombing Palestinians and assassinating Palestinian leaders whenever the Palestinians agree to a truce, until the Palestinians have no choice but to try to defend themselves or retaliate again with arms; that Western powers put sanctions on the Palestinians, but never on Israel; that, since Israel's founding, "Israel never misses an opportunity to destroy an opportunity" for peace.) But, it's critical to have some background and to have some history (or, rather ourstory): the stuff the racists leave out. And that's why I covered some of that first.

First of all, generations upon generations of millions upon millions of us, we Black folks didn't come here by choice: we were stolen from our own land and families and brought here in chains -- and many more generations of many more millions of us were killed and died in the Black holocaust (perpetrated in American colonialism here and, later, European colonialism back in Africa) lasting over 100 times more years than the European Jewish holocaust. So, as an African American who also comes from a people who have been oppressed by European Christians for centuries, I can say that no amount of suffering entitles one people to dispossess, take, or be given the land of another (3rd party!) people who, as a people, had done the invaders no harm back where the invaders came from.

(Arabs perpetrated no Jewish holocaust. Historically, Arabs treated Jews far better than the European Christians did. In fact, French and North African Arabs once saved many European Jews in France from the holocaust. Once, Armenians came to Palestine to escape a holocaust, but they didn't try to take the place over, and they were welcomed! If European Christians wanted to atone for European sins against European Jews -- like the holocaust, although Zionism started long before the Nazi regime -- then European Christians should have given European Jews land in Europe.)

There's no practical (including economic) way that over 40 million Black folks can all go back: we don't know specifically what country (today) or village we came from, if those villages even still exists. And many of us (like my family) have historical Native American blood too (from some of the original Southeastern tribes): my great-grandmother on my father's side looks more Native American than she does typically African American.

Second, many of us were already here, like what we call the Latinos of the Southwest. As they say, "we didn't cross the border, the border crossed us!"

Third, unlike Israel, in the United States, for all the U.S.'s major human rights shortcomings, our former apartheid system has been legally and Constitutionally abolished: it damn ain't what it should be, but it ain't what it was. Israel officially and ideologically declares itself to be "The Jewish State", where every aspect of society is fixed for the supremacy of Jews -- and Palestinian people are legally oppressed.

The U.S. does not officially and ideologically declare itself to be "The White Christian State". But, do we need to do much more for most Native Americans, who's average life span is only 45 years on the poorest reservations (some of them smaller than national parks or California bird, or other wildlife, sanctuaries)?: Of course! (And the U.S. should be doing more for every underprivileged or traditionally oppressed minority group that it used for one form of slavery, semi-slavery or another. But, people of color here aren't stopping that from happening. I know most Black people here aren't cheering on U.S. trillion-dollar wars.)

It is said that everywhere else in the world, especially in the West, Zionist Jews demand ethnic/racial equality; but in Palestine, Zionist Jews demand ethnic-/racial-supremacy.

• Finally, to specifically answer Ray Taliaferro's stupid, morally diversionary argument:

No one -- here, "hypocritically", or there, to speak of -- is demanding that all 4.7 million Israeli Jews leave historic Palestine (although I could certainly understand the sentiment) -- and neither did the woman caller that Taliafero used his big booming, aggressive tone, his microphone monopoly advantage, and his intimidating mannerism, to impose such a stupid, diversionary question, and insist on an answer to that. That's Ray Taliaferro just being _a bully -- against a woman who's situationally at an inherent disadvantage, trying to browbeat her with stupid, silly little pointless, debate club, debating points (like something Ron Dellums would do too). Abstract parlor debate: this, while maybe well over 1,000 Palestinians (mostly Israeli-targeted civilians: men, women, children, babies, the elderly, the infirmed, entire families) will have been slaughtered, and 1,000's more maimed, by the time this is posted -- because Ray doesn't want to have a real discourse. If I called in and said that *I* could answer his question, his telephone screeners wouldn't even let me get on the air...: 'Ray can't look like he doesn't know-it-all.'

Furthermore, I don't know of any Native Americans who demand that, nominally, almost 300 million non-indigenous Americans leave.

Gandhi called Zionism, "a crime against humanity". Albert Einstein said, _"It would be my greatest sadness to see Jews do to Palestine's Arabs much of what Nazis did to Jews."_ Einstein also said, _"Should we [Jews] be unable to find a way to honest cooperation and honest pacts with the [Palestinian] Arabs, then we have learned absolutely nothing during our 2,000 years of suffering and deserve ALL that will come to us."_ Einstein, and other anti-racist Jews, believed that just as others shouldn't oppress Jews, Jews shouldn't oppress others.

What people of moral conscience are demanding -- including many (though not nearly enough) Jews, including holocaust survivors and/or their surviving family, former anti-Nazi resistance fighters, and even some Israeli Jews, some very prominent -- is that THE RACIST, ZIONIST, JEWISH-FUNDAMENTALIST, JEWISH-SUPREMACIST, APARTHEID REGIME IN PALESTINE MUST BE ABOLISHED! ...Not, from Jews, that, 'After Hitler, our turn.'

Jewish people who wish to live in peace and justice have an inherent moral right to exist. The colonialist, mass homicidal state of Israel (only 60 years old) has no inherent moral right to exist. And certainly the morally repugnant racist ideology of Zionism has no right to exist at all, where European/American Jews, who's families had or have never even seen Palestine, have a, so-called, "right to return", but Palestinian exiles, who's very families had even home deeds there for centuries, forced out by Israel, don't. That is the state and regime that has no inherent right to exist and whose existence Hamas rightly refuses to morally and politically recognize. Palestinians want Israel to be officially decolonized of the Zionists' officially racist regime (just like black South Africans wanted in their own land, for it to be decolonized of the Afrikaners' officially racist regime -- and blacks didn't demand that all whites leave).

So, what's the answer?: Zionist Jews are stunned when I simply say, how about a secular democratic state with absolutely equal national, legal, civil and citizenship rights for ALL people, regardless of ethnicity, race, sex, or religion.

And when that happens, hopefully most of the worst racist Zionist Jews in Israel will just leave Palestine of their own accord -- just please don't come here! (Maybe they can go settle a part of Antarctica.)


Joseph Anderson,
Berkeley, California

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