The "Letter to the Editor:" In These Times Refused to Print

 I wrote a highly critical "Letter to the Editor" of the left newsmagazine In These Times on an article it published in its November 2024 issue, Shane Burley's "Jewish Institutions Are Purging Their Staffs of Anti-Zionists and Cease-Fire Activists," which can be found here:  https://inthesetimes.com/article/anti-zionist-israel-gaza-jewish-institutions.  In These Times refused to publish my "Letter," which is not surprising, since In These Times does not publish, it seems, anything critical of its magazine.

Here is my "Letter to the Editor":

To the Editor:

 

Shane Burley’s article in the November 2024 In These Times, “Jewish Institutions Are Purging Their Staffs of Anti-Zionists and Cease-Fire Activists,” elicits the following reaction as a longtime democratic socialist subscriber and contributor to ITT:

 

First, I think that these “pro-Palestine” former staffers at mainstream Jewish institutions are trying to have their proverbial cake and eat it too.  They want to work there as anti-Zionists and pro-Palestinian activists when much of the other staff, the leadership, and even much of the clientele of these mainstream Jewish institutions are going to see them as hostile pro-Hamas infiltrators into these very Jewish spaces, not as genuine, if critical, Jews.  I think a good example of this is the person Burley first documents in his article, Dan Fischer, who was fired for attending an “All Out for Palestine” rally on October11, 2023, a mere four days after Hamas’s violent killings, mutilations, rapes, and taking of hostages in Israel, and well before the Israeli government launched its campaign against Hamas in Gaza.  The leadership of the synagogue where Fischer worked rightly saw this participation as hostile and pro-Hamas, and said so openly to Fischer.  Also, Fischer stated at the rally he attended that he was “proud to be in solidarity with the people of Gaza and Palestine,” not even mentioning Hamas, and in fact, de facto conflating the civilian people of Gaza and Palestine with blood-stained Islamist Hamas!  Being “in solidarity with” the murderers, mutilators, and rapists of Jews is hardly a “Jewish value” that commends itself to employment in a Jewish synagogue!

 

Second, it’s the same with all these people who were fired, all of them, tellingly, after October 7, 2023, a “day in infamy” that ranks with Pearl Harbor and 9/11.  All of them will protest, no doubt, that they stand for “inclusiveness,” yet they deliberately “other” all those Jews and Israelis who were murdered, raped, or taken hostage, along with their families, friends, and those who cared deeply about people being victims of such atrocities—be they either Israelis or Jews of the Diaspora.

 

As for wearing the keffiyeh, it, too, changed its meaning after October 7, 2023, and became not just a symbol of solidarity with Palestine, but, since the Hamas butchers themselves wore the keffiyeh while committing their atrocities in Israel, it became as well as a symbol of support for Hamas.  But none of those fired have even one word to say against Hamas!  Not one!  No, they all implicitly conflate support for Palestinians with support for Hamas—and their silence on this very important issue speaks loudly and in volumes!  Keeping on staff those who cannot even condemn Hamas would indeed be difficult for any mainstream Jewish institution—it would be akin to employing someone who cannot condemn the Holocaust!

 

As for a ceasefire, I’m all for it; but it cannot be, as so many pro-Palestinian activists want it to be—a unilateral move on the Israeli side, with no reciprocity from Hamas.  While Netanyahu certainly deserves much blame for there not being a ceasefire, much more blame goes to Hamas, in my opinion.  Hamas’s intransigence in the face of every ceasefire offer proffered is what has prevented a ceasefire to date.  And when there was one, a brief ceasefire and hostage exchange in November 2023, Hamas unilaterally broke it.

 

Last, almost all states have Work at Will labor laws—in the absence of a labor contract, an employee can be fired for any reason, or no reason at all.  Similarly, many employers also have dress codes, which one is expected to conform to as part of employment.  A ban on wearing a keffiyeh would fall under such a code.  Same as, where I work, I was formerly banned from wearing jeans, and had to wear only a company shirt and either black or tan slacks.  One may not like such rules, but they’re there.  And no, wearing a Magen David, or Star of David, necklace around one’s neck is not “political clothing.”  It’s cultural clothing, indicating solely that one is proudly Jewish.  The Magen David existed long before the state of Israel, and was also used by the—Nazis—as a mandatory badge to be worn to mark oneself as Jewish!  If the Magen David means Zionism, then why doesn’t it also mean Nazism?

 

Those are some of my thoughts on Burley’s article from the vantage point of a socialist internationalist upholding the socialist values of secularism and humanism, opposing all right-wing religious fanaticism such as that which animates Hamas, and a democratic, as opposed to an authoritarian, socialist.

 

George Fish,

ITT long-time

subscriber and

several times

published ITT

contributor,

Indianapolis, IN 

 

   

 

 

I Am Angry, Sick and Tired

 I wrote this poem on November 1, 2023, in response to Hamas's unconscionable attack on Israel, October 7, 2023--GF

 

Of the incessant, ongoing carnage

in the Middle East, this time in

the latest round of violence

between Hamas and Israel,

violence first promulgated by

the atrocities of Hamas against

Israelis on October 7, 2023, and

inevitably followed by the

retaliatory violence inflicted

against the Hamas stronghold of

Gaza, where innocent civilians are

held hostage by this Islamofascist

nightmare of an organization,

same as innocent Israeli Jews and

Arabs had murderous violence inflicted

on them by Hamas in the first place.

Hamas started it, Israel will finish it,

and well-meaning public opinion

calling for a cessation of hostilities

be damned and cast into hell!  

Cast there by intransigence on both sides,

each side held openly captive

by fanatical religious belief

that sees only righteousness on its

side, and regards the other side as

subhuman—as if further proof

were needed that religion poisons everything,

that men (and women) are not good because

of religion, but in spite of religion! 

The whole thing explodes as

an ongoing Greek tragedy, where

impersonal Fate triumphs over the wishes

and caprices of mere humans, whether

they like it or not—because impersonal Fate

cares not what the wishes and caprices of

mere mortals are.  Once again, an endless

spinning wheel of hate, carnage and bloodshed,

all of which leads not to a resolution, but only

to further cyclical irresolution.  “Enough!”

I cry out angrily, but in despair; cry out

in the name of a common humanity

once again thwarted and rendered

powerless in the face of it.  So, thus does it

seem once again, forever, and forever,

                                                world without end, Amen.  Fuck

Letter to the Comrades of Central Indiana DSA (CINDSA)

 

Comrades,

 

The strength of Central Indiana DSA (CINDSA) has lain in its positive, non-ideological, pragmatic approach that has concentrated on such vitals as housing and union organizing, items that directly

affect the working and personal lives of ordinary working people.  This has enabled CINDSA to reach out positively into the Indianapolis community, and draw support from people who would not ordinarily be drawn to an organization espousing socialism.  With good results, as we’ve seen in the recent campaigns for seats on the Indianapolis City-County Council for its new term that starts in 2024.  While CINDSA members may not be “thoroughly informed” on the often arcane left ideological causes of DSA at the national level and in the key national chapters, and where CINDSA has also been blessed by not having warring national caucuses who are roiled on these issues, its non-ideological, pragmatic approach has paid off and enabled CINDSA to do good work, from what I can see from my limited vantage point of not being able to participate much in CINDSA.

 

I have of necessity to work a political life-killing second-shift job at Kroger, which, because it is in retail, also means not having weekends available either.  (However, politically I’m able to somewhat make up for this by being a member of my union at Kroger, UFCW Local 700, and participating in the movement to build a strong reform caucus within this union.)  I participate somewhat more at the national level through Facebook, through a network of left Friends there, and I keep abreast of what national DSA is doing.  Although I am not a formal member, politically I’m aligned with the traditional social-democratic caucus within national DSA, North Star, and a strong adherent of DSA founder Michael Harrington’s “left wing of the feasible.”  I too am essentially pragmatic, and strongly believe that positive results, far more than “correct” ideology, are what are crucial and draw ordinary working people to support DSA politics and proposals.  However, I will say bluntly that much of what comes out of national DSA and its leading chapters is ultraleft, often drivel, and is even a throwback to neo-Stalinism. 

 

CINDSA has not become embroiled on issues such as Ukraine and the Israel-Hamas War, which are very much dividing points for DSA at the national and key local levels.  That is in fitting with CINDSA’s pragmatic approach.  For myself, I do not believe the struggle in Ukraine is a “proxy war” between Russia and the US and NATO.  I support the Ukrainian drive to preserve its independence, and achieve national self-determination.  This is, to me, consistent with the Marxist principle of, above all, the right of small nations to self-determination, even independence, and to be free of Great Power bullying.  For this same reason, I support (support which is only theoretical at this time) the rights of Xinjiang, Hong Kong, Tibet, and Taiwan to their own rights of self-determination, and to be independent of China should their peoples wish.  I wrote this up in an article published earlier this year by the excellent left group, the British Trotskyist Alliance for Workers Liberty, which is linked here, and which I hope CINDSA comrades will read.  (https://workersliberty.org/story/2023-06-26/marxist-case-tibet-xinjiang-hong-kong-and-taiwan-independence; see also, published as an addendum to my post here, https://workersliberty.org/story/2023-06-26/stalin-1913-and-national-question-note) On Hamas-Israel, I consider what Hamas did on October 7, 2023 to be atrocious and reprehensible, and although I am not at all an automatic pro-Israel supporter, I do defend Israel’s right to defend itself (which Sen. Bernie Sanders also supports), and believe Hamas must be extirpated, as it is an Islamofascist entity.  I know I differ from some comrades here, as the issue came up with two of them on Facebook, and they defriended me over my views, but that’s no matter—friendships often come and go on Facebook.  What was appalling to me was DSA’s support of the antisemitic “Free Palestine” rally in support of what Hamas did that occurred the very next day, October 8, in New York City, and which both New York DSA and national DSA doubled down in support of.  No, comrades, terroristic attacks on civilians are not, decidedly not, “resistance” and “decolonization,” and anybody who asserts so has lost both moral compass and intellectual bearing!  Some things are just simply beyond the pale; so atrocious there is no way to ever justify or excuse them.  Examples are the Pearl Harbor attack of December 7, 1941; 9/11; and the October 7 attacks by Hamas.  No one, now matter how grievous it is alleged they acted (and in the case of the October 7 attacks, all the Israeli victims did was be in the wrong place at the wrong time), certain things are never, ever justified.  We must be morally and intellectually clear on that, in my opinion.  It is to the great discredit of both national DSA and certain key DSA chapters that justified or even celebrated the Hamas attack that they did so.  Such is to be rooting for, act as cheerleaders for, unconscionable mass murderers, and far too many in DSA were simply, egregiously, wrong here.

 

Comrades of CINDSA, you are youthful for the most part, far younger than am I, 77 years old now.  I am a veteran of the 1960s left, an active left force that existed long before many of you were born, and which also petered out from both an onslaught from the right (Nixon, Reagan) and, just as tellingly, from its own inadequacies, principally its substitution of moral indignation for concrete political programs.  Comrades, the great US early 20^th Century philosopher, Santayana, tells us so well:  “Those who do not remember history are condemned to relive it.”  So, please, Comrades, I urge you—learn the history of earlier left movements, both for the positive lessons they can give us, as well as for the negative ones.

 

On a positive note, youth is a time of vitality and questioning; however, it is also a time of know-it-all arrogance and stupidity.  Be willing to learn from older comrades, many of whom are resigning now in disgust from DSA, despite being members for decades, because of DSA’s present de facto pro-Hamas attitude.  This, Comrades, is no time for “Good riddance!” flippancy.  One of the great failures of the 1960s New Left was the great youth of its activists and leadership.  We of the New Left were young and arrogant, and so we made a lot of mistakes we needn’t make.  And in the end, following the fiasco of the 1969 SDS National Convention, literally went “poof!” overnight—from an organization 100,000 members strong to nothing!  That could happen too easily to DSA too—already it has lost 20% of its membership.  The youthful enthusiasm of those under 35 who are now drawn to DSA because of Israel-Hamas are not enough to make DSA grow if DSA alienates those of the population 35 and older, who are far more pro-Israel than those younger, with ignorance notable among the young, I’m sad to say.  A recent poll indicated that 20% of Gen Zers believe the Holocaust was a hoax!  67% believe that Jews as a class are “oppressors.”  Far too much of the US public believes there was an independent country called Palestine before the creation of Israel (as a fact, there was no such entity).  Comrades of CINDSA, “left” antisemitism is a big problem, every bit as significant, or even more significant, as Islamophobia. 

 

Which brings one more point.  What can I do now to participate well in CINDSA given my work limitations?  Well, for one thing, I could serve as an intellectual resource.  I’m well read on left literature, am a university graduate, am an extensively published writer in left magazines and on left websites, and have also taught adult education courses on China after Mao, Marxism, and the Communist Manifesto.  I also have a BlogSpot blog, “Politically Incorrect Leftist,” (politicallyincorrectleftist.blogspot.com), which I urge all of you to check out.  This Letter will also be posted there.

 

Finally, to end on a positive note, you Comrades of CINDSA are so much better than the hidebound, tired old leadership you replaced!  A leadership that no longer gave a damn about DSA, and certainly didn’t give a damn about you, young Comrades who wanted to carry on the organization.  You will be interested to know that these hidebound oldsters also were against me too.  Even though they had participated positively in my Marxism and Communist Manifesto classes, and was not the ogre I had been portrayed as being by the equally hidebound “peaceable religious progressives” of Indianapolis (with whom several of these old DSAers overlapped), I had committed the “unpardonable sin” of criticizing one of their cronies for designing and installing for Indianapolis DSA a most inadequate website.  In Indiana, overgrown high school clique that it is, one just does not criticize cronies!  And so, these hidebound “leaders” plotted against me.  I’ve published two blogs on what happened with them on my “Politically Incorrect Leftist” blog, the first one on August 14, 2010, “Dregs” (linked here:  https://politicallyincorrectleftist.blogspot.com/2010/08/dregs_14.html), and a second one that drew on the critical testimony of a lifetime resident of Indianapolis pointedly noting he’d never even heard of DSA here before meeting me.  This second blog, published on February 17, 2011, with the pointed subtitle, “Letter from One of ‘the Masses’” is linked here:  https://politicallyincorrectleftist.blogspot.com/2011/02/dregs-aftermath1-letter-from-one-of.html, I bring up this old history not to re-fight old sectarian battles, but to let you know, much younger Comrades, that roiling conflicts with the hidebound “old ‘progressives’” are nothing new here in Indianapolis, or in Indiana, truly a State of Mediocrity!  (Which the dictionary tellingly defines as “not good enough.”)  I hope you young Comrades will check out these blogs of mine, and realize the fight for a good, effective left confronts many obstacles, some of them even internal.  So, thank you, Comrades, good luck, and keep up the good fight!

 

In solidarity with you,

Comrades of CINDSA! 

 George Fish,

DSA member

since 1996

A "Letter to the Editor" In These Times Declined to Print

In the January 2016 issue, the democratic socialist newsmagazine In These Times (ITT) published two whiny, hand-wringing articles on Islamophobia that were filled with "leftist" anti-Western masochism that I felt compelled to responsd to through the "Letter to the Editor" posted below.  These two articles, Saqib Bhatti's "Our Best and Bigoted," and Jane Miller's "Paris and Provocation" [both of which are linked below], were just too much typically "politiclly correct" (PC) masochistic beating of breast, as well as too much beating up on fellow citizens for alleged "insensitivity" to persons of color generally, and Muslims in particular, despite three murderous, cold-blooded atrocities perpetrated in the name of a particularly vengeful, bloodthirsty version of Islam itself--the 9/11 attack on the World Towers by suicide operatives crashing planes into these buildings' sides and thus killing not only the perpetrators, but thousands of others who had nothing to do with the wars in the Middle East; and the late 2015 terrorist attacks in Paris that followed the murder the editorial staff of the French satirical magazine Charlie Hedbo nearly a year earlier for allegedly "insulting the prophet Mohammed."  The gist of these two articles was, "What do you expect?  the West caused all this, on all three counts!" something I profoundly disagreed with--as a socialist opposed to all real forms of racism and discrimination, certainly, but also as a civil libertarian of the political left upholding the rights of free speech, including "offensive" speech, and the right of persons to be "safe and secure in their persons" despite the foreign policy of their government, over which they have very limited, if any real, control.  However, ITT evidently disagreed that this was a "legitimate" political position for a left publication to publicize in a "Letter to the Editor" concerning articles it itself published.  Joel Bleifuss, Editor and Publisher of In These Times, finally responded to numerous einquiries abbout my "Letter" with a terse "In These Times doesn't publish every letter submitted," nothing more.  Yes, I suppose not--especially, comrades of In These Times, a publication/website which has published several articles of mine in the past it had no ideological quarrel with, but somehow can't find within itself the intellectual honesty to published a concerned editorial letter critical of two articles it did publish? Or is the purpose of  ITT's readers' forum only to publicize "Letters to the Editor" that it agrees with, or which praise what it does publish?  Yes, oftentimes the left does indeed have a very selective understanding of "free speech," notably on topics such as "Islamophobia," where properly adhering to PC guidelines is very important.  Be that as it may, my "Letter" below was very fulsomely praised by a prominent extensively-published socialist writer of my acquaintance, and I still believe, was indeed worthy of publication by ITT.  Whose decline to publish I can only see as PC self-censorship.--GF

To the Editor:

Jane Miller's and Saqib Bhatti's whiny articles in the January 2016 In These Times  do a disservice to ITT, to leftist and socialist values, and to true religious tolerance and fighting honest simply because they are Muslim, and does not mean refraining from criticism of Islam or Islamic organized groups). [Miller’s article can be accessed on the Internet at http://inthesetimes.com/article/18646/Syria_ISIS_Paris_UK-Parliament, Bhatti’s at http://inthesetimes.com/article/18647/why-race-relations-on-campus-must-be-challenged-and-transformed.]  Both authors conveniently overlook that al-Qaeda and ISIS openly bragged about their complicity in 9/11 and the Paris attacks, along w the bragging and complicity of self-identified Muslims in other terrorist attacks, all the way from the murder of the Charlie Hedbo cartoonists of a year ago right up to the celebration by ISIS of the lone-wolf but Islam-inspired killings in San Bernardino.  Tellingly, while professed Muslim Bhatti has nothing to say about direct Islamic complicity in 9/11, as admitted at the time by al-Qaeda itself, and while also refusing, same as Jane Miller, to admit that al-Qaeda, ISIS, the Taliban, the Muslim Brotherhood, Hamas, Hezbollah, the repressive authoritarian regimes of both Iran and Saudi Arabia are, in fact, just as Islamic as Pat Robertson is Christian (both reprehensible, of course, but both equally supported by direct reference to their respective Holy Books, the Qu'ran and the Bible, both of which I have read completely, without cherry-picking only for the "good parts"), and while Bhatti does properly denounce and make us aware of the individual acts of bigotry and intimidation that followed in the wake of 9/11, he would rather lecture Westerners on Islamophobia after 9/11, despite clear Islamist gloating over this despicable terrorist attack.  Further, while I certainly have no interest in justifying in any regard the acts of blatant racism he scores, I also have no interest in being, like so much of the "regressive left," silent about the clear links to 9/11 and other acts of Islamist terrorism deliberately promulgated in the name of Islam itself.  Now, if Bhatti and Miller wish to blame such atrocities on a rogue Islam, a dangerous deviant from "mainstream" Islam, they need to say so directly, and not somehow backhandedly support or justify such actions committed in the name of Islam.   Because, frankly, as one of those supposedly benighted Western socialists and upholder of Enlightenment ideals, I am sick and tired of all the cant promulgated by Ben Affleck and others about "devout" Muslims who wish only to be left in peace and who are supposedly foes, not silent partners of, Islamist terror, correctly called Islamofascism--by, among others, persons of Muslim background themselves!  (Such as ex-Muslims of distinction as British humanist, socialist and atheist Maryam Namazie, author Salman Rushdie, the American Muslim magazine, and many others).   I do not apologize in the least for regarding Affleck's "devout" but silent Muslims as every bit as complicit in the spread of Islamofascism as were all the "good Germans" who were also noticeably silent about the Nazis and their atrocities, and were thus at least de facto collaborators with the Nazis rather than resistance fighters against it.   (But of course, all too many of these "devout" European Christians actively collaborated with the Nazis and informed on the whereabouts of their Jewish and other "undesirable" neighbors, so that they could be carted off to the Final Solution.)

Jane Miller is equally disingenuous in her tortured attempt to somehow paint some sort of "moral equivalence" between aggressive acts in the Middle East by US and other Western forces and the targeting of individuals or groups of individuals by Islamist-inspired terrorists.  She is simply committing the logical fallacy of comparing apples and oranges here, and though she tries to justify this somehow by the same tortured logic that the Weathermen used in the 1970s to defend their bombing of unconnected, or only vaguely-connected, groups of individuals to the foreign policy of the US and its allies in Vietnam, it simply doesn't hold--it didn't hold then, and it doesn't hold now.  That somehow, rock concert attendees and restaurant patrons are as "complicit" in the foreign policies of the US and France in the Middle East same as their governments, and have no more claim of innocence than direct Islamist repressive, terroristic organizations as ISIS, al-Qaeda, and their devotees are internationally, and as Hamas, the Muslim Brotherhood and the Taliban are in their national homes. No, I do not see the bombing or ISIS headquarters in Raqqa and Europeans and others willingly, even eagerly, travelling to join ISIS as the "moral equivalent" of Islamist terrorism in the West.  The unfortunate fact of modern warfare is that the doctrine of "total war" in which civilians are as "justifiably" attacked as are military forces has prevailed everywhere ever since the Civil War; but no, that does not make Sherman's March to the Sea, or the firebombing of Tokyo and Dresden, or even the dropping of nuclear bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, the "moral equivalent" of the Confederacy's war to preserve and extend slavery, the Rape of Nanking and Japanese atrocities in the Philippines and elsewhere, or the Nazi death camps and puppet governments such as Vichy France, all to be "equally condemned."  There are obvious moral differences, despite the atrocious nature of the first five, and in defense of "benighted" Western values, I would pointedly note that while groups such as ISIS, al-Qaeda, the Taliban and other Islamists have arms and territories, not to mention--Yazidi and other "non-Muslim" sex slaves!--the "benighted" Enlightenment-inspired secularism of the West grants to the likes of Pat Robertson and his ilk only TV stations, or the ability to run for office and publish in print and social media, despite the wishes of his (and their) rabidly religious followers to be able to do what ISIS and others do, not only to non-Muslims, but to what they consider to be "bad Muslims" in their controlled territories!

Last, I would extend to Jane Miller and Saqib Bhatti my eager hand in building a truly socialist movement that would extirpate the likes of ISIS, Al-Qaeda, the Taliban, the Muslim Brotherhood, Hamas, and other Islamofascists of the East as thoroughly as an earlier generation of socialists, Communists, and democrats extirpated the threat of state-controlling Western and Japanese fascism.  Are they game for it, or will they shamefacedly refrain from such a necessary task in our time?  Same, I might add, as the Quaker socialist I know here in Indianapolis who stated that "It would "have been all right with me" if Hitler had conquered the world rather than have fought World War II, conveniently overlooking the fact that, had Hiller prevailed, he wouldn't have been talking such to me, but would, instead, have been a casualty of the Final Solution to the Quaker/Pacifist Problem! 

George Fish,

Indianapolis, Indiana

[Author's note:  I am a contributor to both ITT in print form and to its website since the 1990s, most recently having published on its website two articles on social justice advocate Roy Bourgeois, in September 2012's "Boy Bourgeois' Journey" and August 2011's "The Rebel Feminist Priest."]