Aletho News

ΑΛΗΘΩΣ

Obama and the myth of the public opinion excuse

By Glenn Greenwald | May 18, 2010

Writing about my post from last week on the diversion of civil liberties erosions from non-citizens to citizens, the University of Massachusetts-Amherst’s Charli Carpenter asks what (if anything) can be done to combat this trend:

[I]s it too late for dissent to make a difference? I welcome readers’ ideas. I think many voters thought they’d already taken the appropriate step by electing a progressive, pro-civil liberties leader. With the writing on the wall, what now?

In replying to her question, Matt Yglesias attempts to re-direct blame away from Obama by invoking the Public Opinion Excuse:

I don’t think the answer to her question is particularly difficult — people who want to halt the erosion of civil liberties need to do a better job of persuading people that the erosion of civil liberties would be a bad thing. If you have an incumbent administration being urged by the opposition to seize more power, and the public wants the administration to seize more power, then you get what we have today. People on the good team are sometimes in denial about opinion on this subject, but read the numbers — the public wants Guantanamo Bay open, wants suspects tried in military courts, and thinks we should give up more civil liberties in order to enhance security.

Public opinion on these issues is much more mixed than Matt suggests (the very first poll cited in his link shows the public almost evenly divided — 45-47% — on whether the alleged Times Square bomber should be tried in a civilian court or a military commission).  And if public opinion were really as clear and decisive in favor of those policies, it’s hard to explain how Barack Obama — who ran on a platform of reversing them, not as a side issue but as a central plank in his campaign — could have possibly won the election.  But let’s assume for the sake of argument that Matt’s right about the state of public opinion.  His claim — that Presidents in general merely follow what public opinion dictates, and Obama is continuing the erosion of civil liberties because public opinion desires that — is as common as it is mythical, for multiple reasons.

First, Presidents often insist on polices which public opinion rejects.  Bush continued and even escalated in Iraq when large majorities opposed the war, and Obama has done the same in Afghanistan (with less pervasive though, at least at times, substantial majoritarian opposition).  Obama fought for passage of a health care reform bill in the face of overwhelming public sentiment against it, and he favored the Wall Street bailout under the same circumstances.  Obama has strongly condemned, and threatened to take action against, the Arizona immigration law despite widespread public support for it.  Clearly, when a President believes a policy is sufficiently important, he’ll insist on it (often successfully) despite public opposition; conversely, when he genuinely opposes a policy, he’ll reject it despite public sentiment in favor.  That, I believe, is called leadership.

Second, if Presidents do nothing more than slavishly follow public opinion, then what difference do elections make?  If majority sentiment dictates policy outcomes, then who cares who does the implementing?

Third, if Matt is right — that the public favors civil liberties erosions and therefore Obama is eroding civil liberties — doesn’t that absolve Bush and Cheney of blame for what they did?  After all, majorities favored the invasion of Iraq, torture, Guantanamo and related policies; isn’t it fair to say that Bush officials were merely following public sentiment?

Fourth, Matt’s argument assumes that Obama really wishes he could restore civil liberties but is simply constrained by public opinion, a proposition for which there is no evidence (and there’s evidence to the contrary, beginning with Obama’s refusal to reverse Bush/Cheney policies regardless of public opinion, contrasted with his pursuit of other unpopular policies, as well as his early opposition to investigations of Bush crimes even in the face of public support for such investigations).  There are a litany of factors unrelated to public opinion that could easily be driving Obama to do what he is doing, including a fear of alienating the military and intelligence communities and/or a genuine desire for the powers he has preserved and is enhancing.  If that’s true, as it appears to be, then favorable changes in public opinion would have little effect on Obama’s conduct.

Fifth, Obama’s anti-civil-liberties record has extended far beyond what public opinion has called for.  I don’t recall any public outcry for a program to assassinate American citizens without due process, or the invocation of new secrecy and immunity claims to protect Bush crimes from judicial review, or the maintenace of secret prisons in Afghanistan.  One would be hard-pressed to claim that the public even knows about, let alone is agitating for, such extremist policies, yet Obama vigorously embraces them.  He must be doing so for reasons other than public opinion.

Finally, and most important:  this Public Opinion Excuse ignores the substantial agency which Obama possesses in shaping our political debates.  Presidents have numerous tools for influencing public opinion, and Obama has used none for the purpose of fortifying support for the new Terrorism policies he vowed during the campaign to pursue.  He’s actually done the opposite:  by advocating for the continuation of so many Bush/Cheney policies, he’s weakened opposition to that approach.  In that regard, Matt has it backward:  Obama isn’t following public opinion on these questions; public opinion is following Obama.

Our mainstream political debates are invariably framed as Republican v. Democrat.  If neither of the two parties’ leadership advocates a particular view, that view will barely be heard (as we saw in the run-up to the Iraq War).  When a party occupies the Oval Office, its position is determined almost exclusively by the President and his administration.  Here, Republicans have been vehement in their demand for the continuation of Bush/Cheney Terrorism policies.  Because the Obama White House has largely been unwilling to engage that debate, and has often affirmatively endorsed the Republicans’ central claims, there has been no real “debate” on these issues.  If both political parties are seen as endorsing a particular view (or, at best, if one party is seen as vehemently supporting it and the other party is seen as indifferent or afraid to engage), is it really surprising that public opinion will support the view that is most aggressively and clearly defended?

Even if one assumes that Obama secretly wishes he could do more on the civil liberties front, the problem is of his own making.  How can an administration that endorses and maintains military commissions possibly make a stirring case in favor of civilian courts?  How can a President who repeatedly invokes secrecy to shield Terrorism policies from judicial review possibly convince the public of the need for transparency?  Or how could he possibly persuade Americans of the grave evils of Guantanamo when he himself proposes a system of indefinite detention and merely wants to relocate its defining attributes to a new locale?  Or how could he convincingly justify the need for oversight when he supports oversight-free eavesdropping, detentions and even assassinations?  As is true for any debate, where one side is firm and emphatic in its view, and the other side is, at best, muddled, fearful and largely acquiescent in response, the side that appears to believe in its views and is willing to defend them will easily triumph.

Then there is the even more significant fact that what were once viewed as controversial right-wing, Bush/Cheney Terrorism policies have been transformed, under Obama, into bipartisan consensus.  Whereas the vast majority of Democrats spent the last eight years claiming to vehemently oppose policies such as indefinite detention, military commissions, and secrecy claims, they now actively defend them or (at best) remain meekly silent because it’s now their political party, rather than the GOP, that is responsible for them.  By embracing as his own many of the very policies he vowed to uproot, Obama has gutted the core of public opposition to those policies. Is it really a surprise, then, that public opinion on these questions has worsened under Obama [as but one example, compare the CNN poll on whether Guantanamo should be closed:  before Obama’s inauguration, a majority wanted the camp to be closed (51-47%); now, a year into Obama’s presidency and yet another year removed from the 9/11 attacks, a large majority (60-39%) wants it to remain open]?

Of course it would be desirable if public opinion more strongly supported pro-civil-liberties policies.  But the reality is that the two political parties have a virtual monopoly on how political debates are conducted, and with few exceptions (such as the Wall Street bailout), if both parties generally support a particular view, then the public will, too, because they will hear so little challenge and opposition to it.  Democrats haven’t abandoned civil liberties because the public has; the public (which was clearly prepared to reject the Bush/Cheney approach) has abandoned civil liberties because the Democrats, now that they’re in power, have joined the GOP in doing so.

That’s why I believe that the most promising course of action is to do everything possible to force a change in position by the Democratic Party (through primary challenges, intra-party disputes, and vocal criticisms of the President), as well as by making common cause on an issue-by-issue basis with non-Democrats (as Al Gore did in 2006 with his partnership with Bob Barr) when the opportunity presents itself (witness the newfound and extremely hypocritical though potentially useful GOP concern for civil liberties now that they’re out of power, a trend that could accelerate with a victory today by the war-questioning Rand Paul in Kentucky over his GOP establishment opponent).  It shouldn’t be the case, but the two political parties possess a virtual monopoly on the views that are aired in mainstream public debates.

To pretend that Barack Obama is a helpless captive of public opinion rather than one of the principal forces which shape it is the opposite of reality.  It would be good if public opinion more strongly supported civil liberties, but as long as Obama joins the GOP in opposing them, hordes of Democrats who once supported such liberties will reflexively follow Obama, making that improvement extremely difficult to achieve.

May 18, 2010 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Progressive Hypocrite | Leave a comment

Israel charged with 14 cases of sexual assault and threats to children

Defence for Children International | May 18, 2010

On 18 May 2010, DCI-Palestine submitted 14 cases to the UN Special Rapporteur on Torture for investigation. The submission relates to the sexual assault, or threat of sexual assault, of Palestinian children at the hands of Israeli soldiers, interogators and police between January 2009 and April 2010. The ages of the children range from 13 to 16 years.

DCI-Palestine is becoming increasingly alarmed at reports contained in sworn affidavits received from children that they are being subjected to sexual assault, or threat of sexual assault, in order to obtain confessions.

DCI-Palestine has reviewed 100 sworn affidavits collected from children in 2009, and in four percent of cases, children report being sexually assaulted, whilst in 12 percent of cases, the children report being threatened with sexual assault. The sexual assault and threats of sexual assault documented by DCI-Palestine include grabbing boys by the testicles until they confess and threatening boys as young as 13 years with rape unless they confess to throwing stones at Israeli settler vehicles in the occupied West Bank. DCI-Palestine suspects that these figures may understate the extent of the problem.

In one of the cases documented by DCI-Palestine, a 15 year-old boy recalls his experience after being arrested by Israeli soldiers from his family home at 2am, in September 2009:

‘While sitting on the ground near the truck, a person speaking Arabic approached me and grabbed my hands and ordered me to stand up and accompany him. He grabbed me so violently and pulled me. He forced me to walk with him for about 20 metres and I could see from under the blindfold that we stopped behind a military jeep. He slapped me hard twice and grabbed my testicles so hard and started pressing them. Then, he asked me whether I threw stones and Molotov cocktails and I said I did not. He started shouting and saying ‘liar, your mother’s a c**t.’ He started beating me all over my body and once again he grabbed my testicles and started pressing hard. “I won’t let go of your testicles unless you confess,” he said to me. I felt so much pain and kept shouting. I had no other choice but to confess to throwing stones.’

Each year around 700 Palestinian children are arrested, interrogated and prosecuted in the Israeli military courts. The most common charge is for throwing stones. The children are interrogated in the absence of a lawyer and family members and in 2009, over 80 percent of these children provided confessions after a coercive interrogation, of which 32 percent were written in Hebrew, a language few Palestinian children understand. Following their conviction in the military courts, the majority of these children are incarcerated inside Israel in contravention of Article 76 of the Fourth Geneva Convention.

DCI-Palestine is requesting that the Special Rapporteur investigates these and other reports relating to the apparent widespread and systematic ill-treatment of Palestinian children by Israeli authorities in the Occupied Palestinian Territory and to publish the findings.

For further information please see DCI-Palestine’s latest report on Palestinian child prisoners.

May 18, 2010 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Subjugation - Torture | 1 Comment

Assad: Peres Offered Us ‘Golan for Iran and Resistance Movements’

Al-Manar TV – 18/05/2010

Syrian President Bashar Assad says his Russian counterpart, Dmitry Medvedev, relayed a message from Israeli President Shimon Peres last week that the Zionist entity was willing to withdraw from the Golan Heights in exchange for Syria cutting its ties with Iran and the “resistance movements”.

Assad made the remark in an interview published Tuesday in Lebanese daily as-Safir.

Last week, Peres took part in ceremonies marking the 65th anniversary of the Nazi defeat in Moscow. He asked Medvedev to relay a message to Assad, with whom the Russian leader met two days later.

On the backdrop of the recent tensions and the calming messages, Assad replied: “Our answer is clear. Reality proves that Israel is not working for peace, so talks will not help.”

Peres told Medvedev, “We are reaching our hand out for peace with Syria, but peace cannot exist without a basic condition: You cannot reach a hand out for peace while continuing to support terror groups.”

He explained that “Israel has no other interpretation for the transfer of arms from Syria to Hezbollah. The transfer of long-range, precise missiles to the organization is an incitement to war.”

Assad was asked in the interview whether Syria would join a war in the event of an Israeli attack on Lebanon.

“I believe that the Israelis hope to hear the answer to this question, but I won’t fulfill their wish,” the Syrian president replied. “These are military matters which we shall not reveal. We shall not reveal our cards or plans.”

He also addressed claims that his country transferred Scud missiles to Hezbollah. “All the public sights of war and peace are imaginary. I say we must worry if the Israelis are silent, not if they talk. The threats you hear and the Scud missiles they talk about have nothing to do with the conditions of war and the possibility that it will take place, just like all the calm attempts which follow do not mean that the chances of peace have grown stronger.”

“We don’t believe the Israelis,” Assad added. “We act based on the assumption that we must be prepared for war and peace at any minute. There are those who made a mistake and erased the resistance option, becoming hostage to the peace option. We must be prepared for both options at the same time.”

The Israeli president’s associates said that a situation in which the Syrians have the Golan but continue to maintain relations with Iran is inconceivable.

May 18, 2010 Posted by | Illegal Occupation, Solidarity and Activism | 1 Comment

Remarkable Urgency

By Eva Bartlett | In Gaza | May 18, 2010

*wheat crops bulldozed in a roughly 15 metre wide track clawed into the land by Israeli military bulldozers and tanks.

A dry winter with very late rains –at the end of January, the last possible time for planting, the farmers said –followed by a dry spring evolved into the beginnings of a dry summer.

Called yesterday to accompany farmers in the Faraheen and Khoza’a regions, each east of Khan Younis, we were suddenly busy again.  So it goes with the farmers who’ve been forced to give up high-maintenance agriculture and try for the lowest-maintenance crops possible: wheat, rye, lentils.  No more trees, they’ve all been bulldozed too many times.  Not so many potatoes, nor much parsley–they require more water than the sparse rains provided or the destroyed water cisterns, wells and piping allowed for.

Whereas before the heightened Israeli army aggressions against these visibly unarmed farmers they would live on their land, at the very least daily visit and work on it, they are now resigned to rushed attempts at sowing and harvesting some of Gaza’s richest soils, under the thud and whiz of Israeli army bullets.

We were to join Leila Abu Dagga’s sister to harvest 5 dunams of lentils.  But when we arrived were told, “it’s gone, the Israelis bulldozed it all”. [The land in question is near where the young, deaf farmer was shot by an Israeli soldier last year.  Over 500 metres from the border, I remember it well (and remember the shock of the Israeli soldiers having shot around us to reach this unarmed farmer just trying to earn 20 shekels a day. The horror: shit, is he dead? The disbelief: but they saw us farming for over 2 hours… why shoot now? The disgust: this kid is just trying to add to his large family’s small income)]

*a roughly 15 metre wide track clawed into the land by Israeli military bulldozers and tanks.

So we moved to Abu Tabbash land, roughly 12 dunams of wheat which we had accompanied the elderly farmer on four months ago. Then, the Israeli army jeeps had lorded atop earth mounds just across the Green Line border fence as Abu Khader walked the length of his accessible land, back and forth, hand-spraying wheat seeds.

*Faraheen farmland [photo: Rada Daniell]

As we arrive, shortly after 7 am, he tells us “we started at 5 am.  The jeeps were there, but no shooting yet”.  He is neither surprised nor grateful, just matter of fact.  Matter of fact is the Israeli soldiers can appear at any moment and shoot at any moment, any whim.  There is no pattern, no predictability, and the only seeming reason, quite obviously, is pure harrassment with the intent of driving Palestinians off their land and destroying the agricultural sector.

So farmers like Abu Khader risk working on their land, abadoning the tens, hundreds for some families, of dunams lost to within and near the Israeli-imposed “buffer zone”.  But they do so at frantic paces, determined to work even the smallest section of their land.

“It’s quite remarkable,” says Adie, one of us accompanying the farmers. “It’s unbelievable that the Israeli army would fire on a scene like this.  It’s one of the most tranquil things you could be doing, this hand-harvesting.”

Abu Khader has the bearing, humility, and cracked heels of someone who has toiled the land all his life.  His dignity shines, as does his sense of urgency to harvest the crop, and he wastes no time with small-talk or breaks.

Working with three other family members, he hand-plucks the wheat from its earth, noting “it’s so meagre this year.  It should be up to here,” gesturing near head level.

They rip, pile and bundle wheat and the dry hay-grass which will serve as animal feed.  The bundles are stuffed into large sacs or piled on too-small donkey carts and hauled off.

Day one they’ve harvested from 5 am to 10 am and call it a day.  Day two –”there was shooting this morning,” we are told, and an hour and a half another round of shots at visibly unarmed farmers –they work roughly the same, with same intensity, saying “tomorrow we’ll finish, just need an hour and a half”.

We leave, some of the plucked wheat still in small piles to be collected the next morning.

We learn hours later that after farmers and accompaniers left the land, Israeli bulldozers crushed in and lit afire by incendiary devices the land in and along the “buffer zone” including Abu Khader Abu Tabbash’s remaining wheat.

May 18, 2010 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Subjugation - Torture | 1 Comment

Expert: Israel steals Gaza water to supply its settlements

Palestinian Information Center | May 17, 2010

GAZA — Dr. Akram Al-Hallaq, a professor of geography at the Aqsa university in Gaza, said that Israel is persistent in stealing and exhausting Gaza water resources in order to supply its nearby settlements.

In an academic study titled “The Israeli policies of depleting fresh groundwater in the Gaza Strip,” Hallaq affirmed that Israel had drilled a number of wells during the years of its occupation of Gaza along the northern and eastern border areas and since then it has been pumping water from these areas into its territory.

He added that this process reduced the leakage of groundwater of these areas into the coastal aquifer of Gaza

The professor underlined that the Israel’s systematic theft of water resources constitute a threat to the national security of Palestinians and Arabs alike.

His study also pointed out that the Israeli blockade on Gaza played a major role in preventing the development of water and sanitation projects, the thing which adversely affected the services in these two sectors as a result of the ban imposed on the entry of equipment needed for maintaining and rehabilitating water installations there.

May 18, 2010 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism | 1 Comment

Israel to Europe: Stop your citizens from sailing to Gaza with aid

By Jack Khoury and Barak Ravid | Haaretz | May 17, 2010

Israel warned a number of European states that it would not permit leftist-organizations planning to sail to the Gaza Strip with international aid to complete their mission.

The director of European affairs for the Foreign Ministry, Naor Gilon, met separately with envoys from Turkey, Greece, Ireland and Sweden to convey the message that any of their citizens intending to set sail for Gaza would be stopped before they could reach the coastal territory.

Describing such mission as provocative and in violation of Israeli law, Gilon told the diplomats: “Israel has not intention of allowing these sailboats in Gaza.”

The Foreign Ministry message essentially entails that anybody who tries to sail to Gaza with aid, or who tries to transfer goods into the Hamas-ruled territory, must do so in accordance with procedure.

The diplomats promised to pass the message along to the appropriate sources, said the Foreign Ministry, with some even offering to help prevent their citizens from attempting the mission.

Earlier Monday, Israeli security forces released a Turkish national arrested this month for allegedly belonging to an outlawed Islamic group, and were set to deport him later in the day.

Izzet Shahin, a volunteer for the Turkish NGO Foundation for Human Rights and Freedoms and Humanitarian Relief (IHH), was arrested in the West Bank by the Israel Defense Forces and was then transferred to the Shin Bet for investigation.

IHH, who had been organizing a Gaza aid boat planned to depart at the end of the month, was outlawed in Israel a few years ago.

According to the IHH website, the organization had been organizing a “major initiative…to deliver aid via the sea to the Gaza Strip, which has been under an embargo for over three years.”

“Hundreds of concerned people will set out on 10 ships in May to take over 5,000 tons of relief aid and materials to Gaza,” the website statement said,

May 18, 2010 Posted by | Illegal Occupation, Subjugation - Torture | 1 Comment

Obama Czar Wants Mandatory Government Propaganda On Political Websites

Paul Joseph Watson | Prison Planet.com | May 17, 2010

Disturbing audio has emerged of White House information czar Cass Sunstein, who in a previous white paper called for banning “conspiracy theories,” demanding that websites be mandated by law to link to opposing information or that pop ups containing government propaganda be forcibly included on political blogs.

In an audio excerpt of an interview which was posted on the Breitbart.tv website today, Sunstein discusses how conservative websites should provide links to liberal websites and vice versa or even how political blogs should be made to include pop ups that show “a quick argument for a competing view”.

Sunstein said that if this system couldn’t be implemented voluntarily, “Congress should hold hearings about mandates,” which would legally force people to dilute their own free speech. The Harvard Professor also said that blogs should be forced to list a random draw of 25 popular websites, such as CNN.com.

“The best would be for this to be done voluntarily,” said Sunstein, “But the word voluntary is a little complicated and people sometimes don’t do what’s best for our society,” he added (emphasis mine).

“The idea would be to have a legal mandate as the last resort….an ultimate weapon designed to encourage people to do better,” Sunstein concluded.

As we previously reported, in a January 2008 white paper entitled “Conspiracy Theories,” the Harvard Professor who is currently President Obama’s head of information technology in the White House called for “conspiracy theories,” that is any political opinion which didn’t concur with the establishment view, to be taxed or even banned outright.

In a set of proposals designed to counter “dangerous” ideas, Sunstein suggested that the government could, “ban conspiracy theorizing,” or “impose some kind of tax, financial or otherwise, on those who disseminate such theories”.

So-called “conspiracy theories that Sunstein said could be subject to government censorship included beliefs held by the vast majority of Americans, such as the notion that the JFK assassination occurred as part of a wider plot.

In his white paper, Sunstein also cited the belief that “global warming is a deliberate fraud” as another marginal conspiracy theory to be countered by government censorship.

Ludicrously, the Harvard Professor even characterized as “false and dangerous” the idea that exposure to sunlight is healthy, despite the fact that top medical experts agree prolonged exposure to sunlight reduces the risk of developing certain cancers.

Essentially, Sunstein wants it to be written into law that the government can dictate the very nature of reality to Americans and that their opinions can only be voiced at best when accompanied by mandatory federal propaganda or at worst that Americans can be silenced entirely by federal decree.

This callous disregard for the First Amendment represents a fundamental threat the very fabric of the country and is even more alarming considering the position of Obama’s Supreme Court nominee Elena Kagan with regard to free speech. During the Citizens United vs. FEC case, Kagan’s office argued that the government can ban books and political pamphlets. In separate writings, Kagan argued that the government could “disappear” free speech it deemed to be offensive.

May 17, 2010 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Full Spectrum Dominance | Leave a comment

Iraq, China, Turkey ink oilfield deal

Press TV – May 17, 2010

Iraq’s oil minister says that his country has signed a deal with China’s CNOOC and Turkey’s TPAO firms to develop a major southern oilfield complex.

“Today is a very important day in the history of Iraqi oil production, with the development of very important fields in Maysan province,” Hussein al-Shahristani was quoted as saying by AFP on Monday.

The two companies agreed to be paid $2.30 per barrel of oil extracted from the Maysan fields, which has proven reserves of 2.6 billion barrels of oil, the report said.

Under the deal, output is projected to be ramped up to 450,000 barrels per day (bpd), compared to current production of around 100,000 bpd.

Iraq will have a 25-percent stake in the overall project. The remaining 75 percent will be shared in a 85 to 15 percent ration between the Chinese firm and TPAO respectively.

Since last year, Iraq has signed a total of eleven agreements with international oil companies to develop its vast oil reserves.

Once competed, the projects will allow Iraq to have crude production capacity of 12 million barrels per day in six to seven years.

May 17, 2010 Posted by | Wars for Israel | Leave a comment

A force more powerful

Ewa Jasiewicz, The Electronic Intifada, 17 May 2010
The MV Rachel Corrie will carry tons of cement and other materials to Gaza. (Free Gaza)

Later this month, ships from all over the world will converge in the Mediterranean and set sail for the occupied and besieged Gaza Strip. This international coalition is called the Freedom Flotilla.

The Free Gaza Movement has sailed eight missions to Gaza in the past three years, five of them successful. The last three were violently stopped by the Israeli Navy; the boat Dignity was rammed three times and the Spirit of Humanity turned back in January 2009, then seized and all aboard arrested.

This time the Freedom Flotilla is upping the ante and instead of one- and two-vessel challenges, will be breaking Israel’s siege with an eight-boat front.

In the past, the Israel Navy could pick us off as individual boats. Now [our challenge is more substantial], including Free Gaza’s four ships, 700 passengers and some 5,000 tons of reconstruction materials and medical equipment. This includes Free Gaza’s MV Rachel Corrie, which was purchased through generous donations from Malaysia’s Perdana Global Peace Foundation.

The Israeli government has responded to the “sea intifada” coming its way with saber rattling and accusations of serving Hamas. Israel has proscribed the Turkish human rights and relief group Insani Vardim Vakafi (IHH). IHH is responsible for sending a cargo ship and passenger ship in the Freedom Flotilla. Israel has accused it and Free Gaza of “supporting terrorism.” Half the Israeli navy is set to challenge the mission, with Israeli Defense Minister Ehud Barak at the helm commanding the operation in person. The air force is on standby and “diplomatic pressure” is being applied behind the scenes. The message is clear from Israel: “We will stop you and we will use force to stop you.”

At no point does the Freedom Flotilla enter Israeli territorial waters. The journey starts in local European or Turkish waters, courses through international waters and ends in Gaza’s territorial waters. No checkpoints interrupt us. No walls daunt our sight. We’ve proven that it’s possible to sail a clear line with no borders, as we want the world to be, until we get to Gaza.

Free Gaza is best described as a tactic but in practice, a tactic within a score of tactics active in the global solidarity movement. But it is an expensive one — and many have criticized the hundreds of thousands of dollars that have been spent on the missions for boats and finding boats, flagging, registration, legal costs, management costs, port fees, crew pay, mooring fees, repairs, renovation, GPS, warehouses for cargo, crane and forklift hire. Collectively the cost of the Flotilla runs literally into the millions of euros. Some ask: “Isn’t that money better spent on ‘aid’?”

Every Palestinian family we met in Gaza, particularly after Israel’s invasion last winter kept saying to us: “We don’t want aid, we need a political solution; we need our rights. Our issue cannot be reduced or swapped into bags of flour or food parcels. Palestine is not a humanitarian issue — it is a political one.” This reality, of the need for justice, tests the aid industry in Palestine, and the false “objectivity” and lack of political will in the face of human suffering with the claim: “We don’t take sides. We want to continue to keep giving our humanitarian aid.”

Well, we do take sides — that of direct democracy over occupation and apartheid.

This flotilla is an interruption to a discourse of power that says — governments know best, leave it to us to negotiate new “freedoms” and realities; a continuation of not even top-down but top-to-top processes of keeping power out of the hands of ordinary people. Leaders fly from continent to continent, round table discussions go round and round, elephants in the room stamp their feet and roar ignored. This flotilla puts that power back into our hands — to interrupt this ongoing Nakba.

We will not stop. From 1948 until now, history keeps repeating itself, colonies keep expanding, corporations keep reaping the rewards of reproducing repression; daily dispossession and casual killing is normalized, and alienation from the consequences of our work and actions keeps us compartmentalized. The occupation is reproduced on a daily basis in factories, classrooms, courtrooms, cinemas, art galleries, supermarkets and holiday resorts. Radical refusal, radical transgressions can make change happen. Refusing to be alienated from our brothers and sisters and recognizing our community is the essence of solidarity.

This flotilla represents radical solidarity and a force that can be realized when people from all over the world act on their conscience. It’s a force made real through stepping out onto the streets or into occupation-supporting businesses, through speaking out, through fundraising in mosques, churches, synagogues, schools; through writing, singing, sharing, relaying and promoting, and packing and driving boxes of materials and cement, and cheering on and praying for and protesting any attack.

Israel may well succeed in stopping us — but this is an unknown and there is power in that. We can affect that which hasn’t happened yet.

When Rachel Corrie stood in front of the bulldozer driver that killed her, she acted on radical trust — that the soldier would see her humanity. She lost, because the soldier had lost his humanity. Yet Rachel’s faith abides in each of us. Because if our oppressors are losing their humanity then we must never stop showing them that we have it. We are undertaking this mission in the spirit of those who have fought and sacrificed their lives for our collective humanity, and to remind everyone who can see of the need to act on it.

Ewa Jasiewicz is a coordinator with the Free Gaza Movement (http://www.freegaza.org/).

May 17, 2010 Posted by | Solidarity and Activism | Leave a comment

“Israel” calls for expelling anyone marking Nakba from occupied Palestinian lands

Palestine Information Center | May 17, 2010

NAZARETH – Israeli minister of finance Yuval Steinitz called for withdrawing the nationality from everyone inciting against Israel and commemorating the 62nd anniversary of the Palestinian Nakba (catastrophe).

During the weekly cabinet meeting on Sunday, Steinitz said it was intolerable and unforgivable to see Arabs and some Jews challenging the mere existence of Israel.

The Israeli minister also condemned the recent remarks made by head of the Islamic Movement Sheikh Ra’ed Salah in which he highlighted the Arab identity of occupied Jerusalem and the Aqsa Mosque and defended the right of return.

For its part, the right-wing party of Yisrael Beiteinu led by foreign minister Avigdor Lieberman called for opening investigation with Arab Knesset member Jamal Zahalka for his participation in a march organized to mark the Nakba anniversary.

In a separate incident, Israeli minister of education Gideon Sa’ar declared his intention to force the Palestinian high school students in the 1948 occupied lands to study the Nazi holocaust as of next year.

Yedioth Ahronoth on Sunday reported that Sa’ar also intends to send a delegation of Arab teachers and school principals to Poland to visit the alleged Nazi extermination camp in order to qualify them to teach this subject efficiently.

In the same context relating to Nakba, Palestinian officials and politicians called Sunday for pooling the efforts to protect the right of return and confront attempts to dilute this right and twist its concept into the idea of resettling Palestinian refugees in their current residential countries and compensating them.

They stressed during their participation in a conference on the Nakba held in Gaza the need for raising the awareness of the Arab nation about the right of return so as to sustain it.

Dr. Ahmed Bahar, the first deputy speaker of the Palestinian legislative council, stated in his speech that the right of return is a sacred right that belongs to all Palestinians and anyone waiving it is considered an apostate from the Palestinian national rank as stipulated by the right of return law.

Dr. Bahar stressed that the Palestinian people reject being resettled in alternative homelands and insist on returning to their homes which they were expelled from, adding that this right can come true only through the option of resistance and national unity.

May 17, 2010 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Full Spectrum Dominance, Subjugation - Torture | 8 Comments

TO GAZA, WITH LOVE, FROM IRELAND: Video

Mickey Joe Harte sings “Israelity” – March 2, 2009

Tip of the hat to – irish4palestine

May 17, 2010 Posted by | Timeless or most popular, Video, War Crimes | 5 Comments

Grapes withering on the vine

International Solidarity Movement | 17 May 2010
Souad has lost access to the land that provides her livelihood

Souad has lost access to the land that provides her livelihood

Souad lives in the beautiful village of Safa, south west of Bethlehem, close by the path of the apartheid wall. From her house in the village it is only a short walk to her land – an entire, rolling hillside, the summit of which has been stolen by the Israeli colony/settlement of Bat Eyn. No fence separates her fields and terraces from the settlement: Bat Ayn is one of only two colonies without such a fence in the entire West Bank, designed to make it easier, without a defining border, to make future land grabs.

The title deeds to Souad’s hillside have been in her family for over 100 years. Not that it does her any good – she cannot even graze her sheep without risking being fired upon by the settlers. She can only watch from a nearby hill while her peaches and grapes, soon ready for harvest, wither and rot on the vines and trees, or are stolen by settlers. She needs to work the land, to ensure the proof of continuing ownership and to keep the soil in good condition, but fears for her life if she was to venture there. She has watched helplessly as hundreds of fruit trees, replanted with help from international donors after the original trees were torched by settlers, were dug up and taken back to the settlement to be planted there.

Our presence on this nearby hill was soon noticed by Israeli soldiers patrolling nearby roads and we decided to move back to the village, lest the soldiers enter and fire tear-gas into the village as punishment for the presence of international observers. As we left Souad ruefully remarked, “My hill is gone. Where we are standing may be next.”

It is difficult to see how villagers such as Souad can carry on. She may say, “With God’s help we will survive”, but, dependent wholly for her livelihood on what her land produces, her future is precarious in the extreme. From these hillsides it is possible, on a clear day, to see well beyond the Green Line and, they say, to Tel Aviv. Such a beautiful land. The Stolen Land. And the disappearing land.

May 17, 2010 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Illegal Occupation | Leave a comment

« Previous Entries     Next Entries »