November 29, 1947: War, Ethnic Cleaning Unleashed
‘One thing is certain: Israel is not the victim.’ (Nakba archive/file)
By William James Martin | Palestine Chronicle | November 29, 2011
November 29, 1947 was the date the UN passed the Partition Resolution partitioning Palestine, more or less equally, into a Jewish and an Arab state.
In fact, the ethnic cleansing commenced the very next morning when the 75,000 Arab citizens of Haifa were subjected to a campaign of terror jointly by the terrorist group, the Irgun, under Manachem Begin, and the Haganah, the regular militia under David Ben Gurion. The Jewish settlers who had arrived during the previous decade had built their homes higher up the mountain and thus occupied a higher topographical space. From the superior height, they could snipe at the villagers at will. They began doing this while the Jewish troops rolled barrels of burning oil down their roads and then ignited them. When the terrified residents came out to try to extinguish the rivers of fire, they were sprayed with machine gun fire. Another technique was to deliver cars filled with explosives to Arab garages to be repaired, and then to detonate the cars in the garages.
On its website, the official historian of the Palmach (a special unit of the Haganah) states, “The Palestinians [in Haifa] were from December onwards under siege and intimidation.”
This was the beginning of the ethnic cleansing and occurred six months before the first regular soldier from a surrounding Arab state entered Palestine, which was on May 15, 1948.
I remind you that the Deir Yassin massacre occurred on April 9, 1948, and also that by May 15, all of the major cities of Palestine had been cleansed of Arabs and about one half of the 750,000 to 800,000 Palestinian refugees had been ethnically cleansed.
This was the beginning of the expulsion of the Palestinians Arabs from Haifa and from Palestine. The ending for Haifa’s Arabs came on Passover evening of April 21, when the British commander, Stockwell, called four Arab community leaders in to his office to inform them that the British army would be evacuating the city and advised the Arabs that they could not be protected. As Ilan Pappe puts it:
“Previous correspondence between them and Stockwell shows that they trusted him as the keeper of law and order in the city. The British officer now advised them that it would be better for their people to leave the city, where they and most of their families had lived and worked ever since the mid-eighteenth century, when Haifa came to prominence as a modern town. “ – (Pappe, The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine, p 94)
Pappe continues:
“[I]t was Mordechai Maklef, the operation officer of the Carmel Brigade … who called the shots. Maklef orchestrated the cleansing campaign, and the orders he issued to his troops were plain and simple: ‘Kill any Arab you encounter; torch all inflammable objects and force doors open with explosives.’
“When these orders were executed promptly within the 1.5 square kilometers where thousands of Haifa’s defenseless Palestinians were still residing , the shock and terror were such that, without packing any of their belongings or even knowing what they were doing, people began leaving en masse. In panic they headed towards the port where they hoped to find a ship or boat to take them away from the city. As soon as they had fled, Jewish troops broke into and looted their houses. …
“In the early hours of dawn on 22 April, the people began streaming to the harbor. As the streets in that part of the city were already overcrowded with people seeking escape, the Arab community’s self-appointed leadership tried to instill some order in the chaotic scene. Loudspeakers could be heard, urging the people to gather in the old marketplace next to the port, and seek shelter there until an orderly evacuation by sea could be organized. ‘the Jews had occupied Stanton road and are on their way’, the loudspeakers blared.
“The Carmeli Brigade’s war book, chronicling its action in the war, shows little compunction about what followed thereafter. The brigade’s officers, aware that people had been advised to gather near the port’s gate, ordered their men to station three-inch mortars on the mountain slopes overlooking the market and the port – where the Rothschild Hospital stands today – and to bombard the gathering crowds below. The plan was to make sure the people would have no second thoughts, and to guarantee that the flight would be in one direction only. Once the Palestinians were gathered in the marketplace – an architectural gem dating back to the Ottoman period, covered with white arched canopies, but destroyed beyond recognition after the creation of the State of Israel – they were an easy target for the Jewish marksmen.
“Haifa’s market was less than one hundred yards from what was then the main gate to the port. When the shelling began, this was the natural destination for the panic-stricken Palestinians. The crowd now broke into the port, pushing aside the policemen who guarded the gate. Scores of people stormed the boats that were moored there, and began to flee the city. We can learn what happened next from the horrifying recollections of some of the survivors, published recently. Here is one of them:
‘Men stepped on their friends and women on their own children. The boats in the port were soon filled with living cargo. The overcrowding in them was horrible. Many turned over and sank with all their passengers.’” (Pappe p 96)
Thus it was the Jews who pushed the Palestinians into the sea, and not vice versa.
In March of 1948, a month earlier than the events described above, the so-called ‘Plan D’ or ‘Plan Dalet’, as a further crystallization of Plans A, B and C, was finalized by David Ben Gurion, and those who were continually in consultation with him, and distributed to the Haganah commanders. This document was a blueprint for the destruction of Arab villages and expulsion of their residents, within the 78% of Palestine coveted by Ben Gurion, not the 55% apportioned to the Jewish state by the UN General Assembly. By this time 30 Arab villages had been either destroyed or depopulated. By the year’s end, 531 Arab villages would be destroyed, and 11 Arab neighborhoods in urban areas.
One revealing paragraph of this document states:
“These operations can be carried out in the following manner: either by destroying villages (by setting fire to them, by blowing them up, and by planting mines in their rubble), and especially those populations centers that are difficult to control permanently; or by mounting combing and control operations according to the following guidelines: encirclement of the villages, conducting a search inside them. In case of resistance, the armed forces must be wiped out and the population expelled outside the borders of the state.”
Between the time that Israel declared itself a state in May of 1948 and the summer of 2005, Israel killed 50,000 Palestinians, according to Israeli Historian Ilan Pappe, writing in Foreign Policy, in the summer of 2005. And since October of 2000, Israel has killed 6430 Palestinians, according to the web site, If American Knew. The latter figure averages to about 2 Palestinians killed per day by Israel (1.932, by my calculation.)
According to the Israeli Committee Against House Demolition, Israel has destroyed 34,000 Palestinian homes in the West Bank, and East Jerusalem since 1967, and, in the same period, about 800,000 olive and citrus trees in the west Bank and Gaza resulting in a loss to the Palestinian economy of $55 million, according to a recent estimate by the international humanitarian relief agency Oxfam. And in Israel’s winter assault on Gaza in 2009, Israel destroyed between 4 and 5,000 homes and either damaged destroyed as many as 50,000. Many Gaza families spent the winter of 2010 living in caves dug out of the rubble of their destroyed homes because the area is under siege with building material not allow to enter.
Because of the siege of Gaza, babies are frequently born with anemia because their mothers are not getting enough nutrition and because of the lack of food allowed into Gaza and because of the destruction of agricultural areas inside Gaza. The stunting of growth because of the lack of nutrition of Gaza’s children is prevalent, and I have seen this figure put at 14%.
Israel, a state which had never clearly defined its boundaries, invites Jews from all over the world to immigrate to Israel and expand it ranks, along with its boundaries into Arab lands.
One thing is certain: Israel is not the victim, as it is constantly screaming, but the victimizer.
~
– William James Martin taught at Louisiana State University in Baton Rouge. He may be contacted at: wjm20@caa.columbia.edu
PCHR Strongly Condemns WHO’s Decision to Conduct a Conference in Jerusalem
Palestinian Centre for Human Rights | 28 November 2011
The Palestinian Centre for Human Rights (PCHR) condemns in the strongest possible terms the decision of WHO Europe to conduct an official conference in Jerusalem, hosted by Israel. The first World Health Organisation (WHO) European Conference on the New European Policy for Health is to take place on the 28–29 November 2011.
By conducting a Conference hosted by Israel in the city of Jerusalem the UN Agency WHO sends an implicit recognition of Israel’s annexation of the city and gives implied legitimization to Israel’s illegal actions in Jerusalem over the past decades.
The Israeli Knesset’s decision on 28 June 1967 to annex East Jerusalem to the Israeli territories, the Knesset’s declaration on 30 July 1980 that “the whole united Jerusalem is the capital of Israel” and policy of expanding Jerusalem’s municipal boundaries constitute grave violations of international law and United Nations Resolutions which explicitly recognise East Jerusalem as the future capital of a Palestinian state.
The city of Jerusalem is a central issue in the conflict between Israel and the Palestinian people. It touches upon Palestinian right to self-determination as well as civil and political rights. The Palestinian people have made clear their desire for East Jerusalem as the capital of a future Palestinian state based on 1967 borders. The WHO’s decision to conduct the Israeli hosted upcoming conference in Jerusalem does not respect Palestinian’s legitimate aspirations for East Jerusalem as their capital.
– The continued displacement of the native Palestinian population through forced population transfer;
– Illegal house demolitions;
– Palestinians within the West Bank and Gaza being withheld access to Jerusalem holy sites:
– The building of illegal Israel settlements as a means of irreversibly changing the demographic balance of the city in favour of Jewish Israeli’s;
– The Judaization of the city through public works such as the “The City of David”, to be constructed in the Palestinian district of Silwan, as well as the destruction of Palestinian heritage sites within the city;
– The discriminatory targeting and mistreatment of Palestinians by Israeli occupation forces;
The unequal access of Palestinians in Jerusalem to public services;
– Such discrimination against Palestinians in Jerusalem is part of a broader regime of apartheid imposed by Israel on all Palestinians living in Israel/Palestine historic 1948 borders as outlined recently by The Russell Tribunal in South Africa.
PCHR call on the conference organisers to adhere to UN resolutions respecting East Jerusalem as Palestinian territory and the rightful capital of a Palestinian state by cancelling plans to hold the upcoming WHO meeting in Jerusalem.
Israel Apologizes To Pregnant U.S. Reporter Strip-Searched By Soldiers
By Saed Bannoura | IMEMC & Agencies | November 29, 2011
Israeli sources reported that the Israeli Defense Ministry issued an apology for a pregnant American reporter who was forced to be strip searched, humiliated, and forced into a X-Ray search machine, at a military roadblock while heading to Israel from Gaza.
Israel,s Ynet News reported that the reporter, identified as Lynsey Addario, who works for the New York Times, asked the soldiers not to force her to go through the X-Ray search machine because she is pregnant.
In a letter sent to the Israeli Defense Ministry, the reporter said that, despite her pleads, the soldiers forced her through the X-ray machine three times while laughing at her.
After the search, female soldiers took her to another room, and forced her to strip down to her underwear, Ynet News added.
The reporter, winner of a Pulitzer Prize, wrote her letter on October 25, and stated in it that she was never humiliated like this when she worked in more than 60 countries around the globe.
Ynet said that the Defense Ministry investigated the incident and found out that Addario made an official request not to go through the X-ray machine due to her pregnancy before she arrived at the terminal, “but the request was not properly relayed”.
The Israeli Defense Ministry issued an official apology to the reporter for what it described as “the mishap in coordination and the trouble it may have caused”.
The Ministry tried to excuse the behavior of the soldiers by stating that security measures are very tight on the border with Gaza in order “to prevent terrorist attacks from taking place in Israel”, but never explained the motive behind humiliating her.
Ethan Bronner, New York Times Bureau Chief in Israel, said that he is shocked by the way Addario was treated, and how long it took Israel to investigate the incident.
It is worth mentioning that Bronner, known for his support to Israel, has a son who joined the Israeli Army.
Single truckload of strawberries leaves Gaza
Ma’an – 29/11/2011
GAZA CITY – One truckload of strawberries left the Gaza Strip on Tuesday for export to Europe, crossings officials said.
Farmers in Gaza started to export limited amounts of produce to Europe via the Kerem Shalom crossing on Sunday, said crossings liaison officer Raed Fattouh.
The strawberries and carnations were the first produce to leave the coastal enclave in six months due to an Israeli ban on exports which has crippled the Gaza economy.
The agricultural goods are exported under an agreement between Israel and the Dutch government to allow five trucks of farm produce to leave Gaza each day.
The Israeli legal rights organization Gisha notes that if Israel fully implements the agreement, the exports represent just 1 percent of the exports Israel agreed to in 2005.
Under the 2005 agreement, Israel pledged to allow 400 trucks of Gaza produce to be exported every day.
“This exception to the ban is helpful for select growers, but it fails to address the manufacturing shut-down and massive unemployment caused by the export ban,” Gisha said in a statement released Monday.
Before 2007, 85 percent of Gazan produce was sold to Israel or the West Bank, Gisha said, adding that exporting to Europe was expensive due to high shipping costs and low demand.
Gaza farmer Monthar al-Boudi told Gisha he exported 1,500 tons of strawberries annually before Israel banned exports from Gaza to Israel and the West Bank in 2007.
In 2010, al-Boudi was only allowed to sell seven tons of strawberries to Europe.
Gisha director Sari Bashi said: “It is not clear how preventing producers in Gaza from selling eggplants, school desks, and oranges to the West Bank enhances Israeli security, but the ban is clearly harming Palestinians trying to engage in productive, dignified work.”
Indefinite Domestic Military Detentions
By Stephen Lendman | The People’s Voice | November 28th, 2011
Congress is now considering legislative language to mandate indefinite military detentions of US citizens suspected of present or past associations with alleged terrorist groups, with or without evidence to prove it. More on that below.
The 2006 Military Commissions Act authorized torture and sweeping unconstitutional powers to detain, interrogate, and prosecute alleged suspects and collaborators (including US citizens), hold them (without evidence) indefinitely in military prisons, and deny them habeas and other constitutional protections.
Section 1031 of the FY 2010 Defense Authorization Act contained the 2009 Military Commissions Act (MCA). The phrase “unprivileged enemy belligerent” replaced “unlawful enemy combatant.”
Language changed but not intent or lawlessness. Obama embraces the same Bush agenda, including keeping Guantanamo open after promising to close it, allowing torture there and abroad, and treating US citizens as lawlessly as foreign nationals.
MCA grants sweeping police state powers, including that “no court, justice, or judge shall have jurisdiction to hear or consider any claim or cause for action whatsoever….relating to the prosecution, trial, or judgment of a military commission (including) challenges to the lawfulness of (its) procedures….”
MCA scraped habeas protection (dating back to the 1215 Magna Carta) for domestic and foreign state enemies, citizens and non-citizens alike.
It says “Any person is punishable… who….aids, abets, counsels, commands, or procures,” and in so doing helps a foreign enemy, provide “material support” to alleged terrorist groups, engages in spying, or commits other offenses previously handled in civil courts. No evidence is needed. Those charged are guilty by accusation.
Other key provisions include:
- legalizing torture against anyone, letting the president decide what procedures can be used on his own authority;
- denying detainees international law protection;
- letting the executive interpret or ignore international and US law;
- letting the president convene “military commissions” at his discretion to try anyone he designates an “unprivileged enemy belligerent,” detaining them indefinitely in secret;
- denying speedy trials or none at all;
- letting torture coerced confessions be used as evidence in trial proceedings, despite US and international law prohibiting cruel and inhuman treatment at all times, under all conditions, with no allowed exceptions;
- letting hearsay and secret evidence be used; and
- denying due process and judicial fairness overall.
On May 21, 2009, Obama addressed national security and civil liberties issues, including Guantanamo detainees, military commissions, and torture.
Saying his “single most important responsibility as president is to keep the American people safe,” he bogusly claimed Al Qaeda “is actively planning to attack us again (and) this threat will be with us for a long time….”
He added that uncharged detainees “who cannot be prosecuted yet who pose a clear danger to the American people” (with or without evidence to prove it) will be held indefinitely without trial.
Obama’s March 7, 2011 Executive Order authorized military commission trials for Guantanamo detainees with revamped procedures, despite pledging to close the prison.
Congress Considers New Freedom-Stripping Legislation
On October 17, 2011, the ACLU addressed Section 1031 of S. 1253: National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2012, saying it “significantly curtails existing protections against indefinite detention without charge or trial.”
It goes beyond previous laws by hardening them extrajudicially.
The last time Congress authorized indefinite detentions for uncharged US citizens without trial was in 1950. The Emergency Detention Act provision of the Internal Security Act authorized incarceration for those considered likely to commit espionage or sabotage.
It was never used, then repealed by the 1971 Non-Detenton Act, stating:
“No citizen shall be imprisoned or otherwise detained by the United States except pursuant to an Act of Congress.”
At issue was never again subjecting US citizens to lawless internment the way Japanese Americans were treated in 1942, forcing loyal citizens into War Relocation Camps.
Section 1031 of S. 1253 “would be the first exception to the statute’s protections.” Subsection (d) provides US citizens “little or no” indefinite detention protections domestically or abroad.
The provision refers solely to “citizens or lawful resident aliens of the United States.” However, the Constitution fully protects them.
“Section 1031 could cause cleared naturalized United States citizens and cleared immigrants to be sent to a foreign country, even in the absence of any wrongdoing.”
Subsection (c) provides four options:
- indefinite detention without charge;
- military commission trials;
- trial by another tribunal; or
- transfer “to the custody or control of the person’s country of origin, any other foreign country, or any other foreign entity.”
Even someone erroneously arrested and cleared of wrongdoing could be held indefinitely without charge, given non-civil trials, or sent abroad.
Post-9/11, Arab and/or Muslim Americans lawlessly experienced “roundups” because of their faith and ethnicity. Latino immigrants face similar abuse.
Section 1031 would authorize similar practices. Military forces could be used. US citizens would be terrorized, detained and held indefinitely without charge or trial, based solely on suspicions, baseless allegations or none at all.
No reasonable proof is required, just suspicions that those detained pose threats. Under subsection (b)(1), indefinite detentions can follow mere membership or support for suspect organizations.
US citizens at home and abroad could be detained. Presidents would have unchecked authority to arrest, interrogate and indefinitely detain law-abiding citizens if accused of potentially posing a threat.
Constitutional, statute and international law won’t apply. Martial law will replace it. As a result, anyone for any reason or none at all could be indefinitely detained for life without charges or trial.
Section 1031 exceeds the laws of war. Its ambiguities and excesses would institute extrajudicial national security state terror. No one anywhere would be safe.
It calls “covered persons” anyone captured or detained, even unconnected to hostilities. In other words, the executive could order anyone indefinitely incarcerated on his say alone. The provision would exceed current presidential authority.
Like the companion House bill, detention would be authorized based on alleged prior associations with suspect groups. US military personnel anywhere in the world would be able to seize US citizens and others.
Anyone could be incarcerated for life with no possibility for redress. Section 1032 requires suspects held in military custody, outside constitutionally mandated civil protections.
Due process and judicial review won’t apply. Police state lawlessness could terrorize anyone suspected of terrorist group ties without proof.
In other words, presidents could order anyone imprisoned for life without cause. Despotic regimes operate this way. So would America more extrajudicially than ever.
Tyranny will replace constitutional law. Middle of the night arrests could become common. No one anywhere would be safe, including unjustly accused citizens.
The ACLU calls indefinite detention without judicial review “an appalling abuse of power. We know that our government has already mistakenly detained hundreds of people on suspicion of terrorism over the past 10 years.”
“Many have languished in custody for years with no way to even assert their innocence or address the evidence against them. All people are entitled to due process.”
Imagine new likely power abuses, including claiming OWS protesters threaten America.
Imagine human and civil rights workers, as well as anti-war activists targeted.
Imagine anyone challenging wealth and power interests at risk.
Imagine an America more than ever not fit to live in, and nowhere to hide.
Stephen Lendman lives in Chicago and can be reached at lendmanstephen@sbcglobal.net.
Also visit his blog site at sjlendman.blogspot.com
NYT Befuddled on Cluster Bomb Ban?
Which Side Are We On? NYT, U.S and Cluster Bombs
By Peter Hart – FAIR – 11/28/2011
International efforts to ban cluster bombs fell apart late last week. If you were reading about this in the New York Times, you might have been led to believe that the United States was pushing to get rid of the weapons–instead of the opposite.
Here’s the lead sentence from a story in Saturday’s paper (11/26/11):
GENEVA — Despite last-minute attempts to broker a compromise, American-led efforts to conclude an international treaty restricting use of cluster munitions collapsed on Friday in the face of opposition from countries that said it did not address their humanitarian concerns and would undermine existing international law.
This “American-led effort,” readers were told, “reflected the increasing stigmatization of a weapon recognized as causing unacceptable harm to civilians and seen as having lasting effects on development for decades after conflicts have ended.”
Well, who opposes such efforts? It takes a little while to understand that the other side is taking a much tougher stance to eliminate cluster bombs, as outlined at an Oslo conference in 2008:
But countries and disarmament groups opposing the draft treaty said the humanitarian impact of the proposed protocol would be minimal and would legitimize continued use of other cluster munitions that are recognized to cause unacceptable harm.
These countries, together with the International Committee of the Red Cross and United Nations agencies dealing with development and human rights, also argued that the adoption of a legal instrument that was weaker than the Oslo agreement would set a dangerous precedent.
The Times’ confused account is in stark contrast to other reporting. This Reuters piece, for example, does a much better job of explaining things in its lead:
GENEVA (Reuters) — A U.S.-led push to regulate, rather than ban, cluster munitions failed Friday after 50 countries objected, following humanitarian campaigners’ claims that anything less than a outright ban would be an unprecedented reversal of human rights law.
Something tells me the Times story would look a little differently if the United States weren’t on the pro-cluster bomb side of this argument.
‘It’s time to stop the bully’: Adbusters editor Kalle Lasn on Occupy Wall Street, the Israel lobby and the New York Times
By Alex Kane | Mondoweiss | November 28, 2011
When the Occupy Wall Street protests began to attract attention in the fall, everyone wanted to know where the idea to set up a permanent protest at the heart of Manhattan’s financial district came from. The answer was the mind of Kalle Lasn, the co-editor (along with Micah White) of the anti-consumerist “culture jamming” magazine Adbusters. It was Adbusters, calling for an American “Tahrir moment,” that originally put out the call to occupy Wall Street on September 17.
But not all the attention Lasn and his magazine received was positive, though. It was the New York Times coverage of Adbusters and Lasn’s role in the Occupy movement that caused him the most grief by smearing them as anti-Semitic.
“For me, the New York Times is really important right now, because it was one of the most ugly experiences of my year, where they took a couple of quick swipes at my magazine and me personally,” Lasn told Mondoweiss in a recent phone interview. “I have such huge respect for the New York Times and I subscribe to it and I’ve been reading it every morning for the last ten years of my life.”
Now, Lasn is speaking out about the New York Times‘ refusal to print his response to two articles in the newspaper that alleged Adbusters was anti-Semitic. (Read more about the controversy here, and read this New Yorker article on the origins and future of Occupy Wall Street for more about Lasn and White.)
Mondoweiss recently caught up with Lasn for an extended interview with the sixty-nine year old activist to discuss Occupy Wall Street, Palestine, the Israel lobby and more.
Alex Kane: Tell me about yourself, I’ve read some, but details about your life and what you’re doing at Adbusters.
Kalle Lasn: Well, I don’t think my history’s all that fascinating, but I think the really fascinating thing about Adbusters magazine and what I’m doing right now is this Occupy movement that we helped to spark a couple of months ago and the possibilities for where this movement could—the possibility it could fizzle out, but it could also blossom into this powerful kind of force on the political left that could change not just the way we think about financial speculators and fat cats on Wall Street, but all kinds of arenas as well, including the political and foreign policy arenas. So, yeah, that’s sort of the big thing in my life right now, just thinking about that and trying to infuse our magazine and our website and our tactical briefings with this spirit of this youthful revolt that the Occupy movement represents.
AK: How do you see Adbusters’ role in the Occupy movement?
KL: Well you know, we were the people who were lucky enough to sort of spark the whole thing just at the right moment with some of the posters we came up with and that hashtag Occupy Wall Street [#occupywallstreet], choosing that magical date, September 17th, that seemed to absolutely be the right moment. When a movement is ripe, then all it takes is one spark, and I think that spark did happen on September the 17th, and after that of course, the movement started to have a life of its own, and all we’ve really been doing is churning out our tactical briefings and trying to, to the extent that it’s possible, to sort of have influence on a movement like this, to infuse our Adbusters’ tactical ideas into the movement and trying to keep our finger in the pie, so to speak.
AK: Obviously, Adbusters’ role in this has been distorted, which has led to the charges of anti-Semitism. I know you have the right of reply campaign going on, but what’s your general take?
KL: Let me enlarge the conversation a little bit. I think one of the interesting things about this Occupy movement is that I think it will come back, after hibernating for the winter, it will come back next spring and it will get involved in more than just economics. It will start playing around with politics and possibly launching third political parties and all kinds of political energy will come out of this movement. And one of the arenas that I think it may have some influence on is this—kind of a, what Adbusters long ago started calling the United States of Amnesia—this fact that most of the people in America actually aren’t getting the information that they need to make wise decisions about foreign policy and political matters. I think from my perspective, it seems like American political thinking is being distorted by a number of bubbles, and one of those bubbles is that AIPAC bubble, which is a very powerful, probably the most powerful lobby in America, and it has the power to intimidate politicians and get them to never say anything negative about Israel, and it’s got to the point where even the president of the United States is intimidated by this lobby and forced to do all kinds of things that he wouldn’t normally do.
I think another one of the bubbles is a media bubble, because there’s a special sensitivity to this issue, and the Holocaust, and it’s such an emotionally charged thing, and I think the media is quite often pro-Israeli in a knee-jerk way. For example, when Ehud Barak visited the United States of America last week, he went on the Charlie Rose Show, and with Fareed Zakaria, and he basically blitzed the media, and he left the impression that somehow it would be absolutely perfectly okay for us to attack Iran. Some of the other ways of looking at it—like this idea that Israel also has nukes, and that maybe a smarter strategy would be to fight for a nuclear-free Middle East rather than bomb the hell out of Iran, and some of the historical nuances about American CIA involvement back there a long time ago that started this unholy business that has been unfolding these past 30, 40, 50 years—those things were completely missing from the media. And then even newspapers like the New York Times, which is one of the great newspapers of the world, has Ethan Bronner and Isabel Kershner, a couple of their main people who write about the Middle East and Israeli/Palestine matters, and these two people are so obviously biased in favor of Israel, that it’s really disheartening to see the New York Times not mixing it up a little bit more and allowing more of a Palestinian perspective into what they write.
And David Brooks had a quick swipe at Adbusters, and then Joseph Berger took an even more vicious anti-Semitic swipe at Adbusters, and when we wrote them back a letter demanding a right of reply, they wouldn’t even print it, because we weren’t just talking about Ethan Bronner and Isabel Kershner and David Brooks, but we actually pointed out in our letter that the New York Times has got an anti-Palestinian bias to it, and they didn’t want to run that letter, I don’t know why. I hope you can phone them up and ask them. I did send an envelope to everybody at the New York Times giving them this back and forth e-mail exchange that I had fighting for my right of reply.
So there’s an AIPAC bubble, there’s a media bubble, but I think one of the even more powerful bubbles that exists in America in addition, is what I call the neocon bubble, and this is a very powerful, quite often very highly pro-Israeli bunch of intellectuals who have sort of been keeping all of us on our toes and they were instrumental in pushing a lot of policies, very heavily pro-Israeli policies, they were instrumental in pushing for the Iraq War and now they’re also instrumental in pushing for an attack on Iran. We have three big bubbles in America, and this is what we here at Adbusters have been kind of fighting against for the last 15 years.
AK: Right. It’s interesting, because what connects all those bubbles, really, is a devotion to Israel. But the article that David Brooks and Commentary criticized Adbusters for was pointing out the very simple fact that many neoconservatives are Jewish, and it’s a sensitive subject for many reasons obviously. But what are your thoughts on how all these questions relate to Jewish privilege and influence in the United States?
KL: Well, I’m not quite sure what you’re asking here, I mean, as I pointed out in my right of reply letter, David Brooks wrote an article last year where he pointed out that x percent of Pulitzer Prize winners were Jewish, and he had sort of a litany of a half-dozen percentages that all pointed out how intellectually powerful and creative the Jewish people are. And in my right of reply letter, I wanted to ask David Brooks, well, if he can quote those percentages, then why can’t Adbusters point out that a percentage of the neocons are also Jewish?
But for me, I think the really big point is, that article we wrote—that was written seven years ago. It was a half-page article in a copy of Adbusters seven years ago, and it has caused us a lot of grief—grief because we were attacked for being anti-Semitic, because if you start defending yourself against anti-Semitism, I found, then it’s a losing proposition. It’s like defending yourself against rabies; it’s like defending yourself against smallpox. The more you defend yourself, the more excited you get about defending yourself against it, the more people think, well this is suspicious, maybe the guy does have rabies, maybe the guy does have smallpox, maybe he is anti-Semitic.
So defending yourself against anti-Semitism is really a game, and I played that game for the first few months, and years after that article came out, I always lost. So I’ve decided I’m not going to play that game anymore. I would like to now go on the offensive, and I would like to talk about AIPAC, and I’d like to talk about the New York Times and Ethan Bronner and Isabel Kershner and David Brooks, and I’d like to, above all, start popping these three bubbles. The people who feel that American foreign policy has been distorted by the neocons, by the media and by AIPAC, it’s time for us to stop arguing about it and start going on the offensive. Stop defending yourself and go on the offensive right now and start popping those three bubbles. And I’m hoping that a lot of people of like mind from this Occupy movement will move into this area, and we will be as aggressive as AIPAC, as aggressive as some of these neocons have been, and fighting back against them. What I’m saying is, we need a hashtag, #occupytheneocons, we need a hashtag, #occupyAIPAC.
AK: You said the charges of anti-Semitism caused you at Adbusters a lot of grief. Was this personal grief, was this professional grief? Obviously, the charge of anti-Semitism can be a powerful one, and it can be career wrecking for some people.
KL: Oh yeah, it has ruined a lot of careers. And it’s damaged many of them. I really sympathize with people like Norman Finkelstein and even President Carter, who dare to use words like apartheid, or who dare to speak back against these neocons, and suddenly found themselves vilified, they found themselves pilloried in the media, and so it is a very, very dangerous thing to stand up and speak the way that Adbusters and many other people have done, because it can be career destroying, for a politician it could mean you’re not going to get elected next time around, and it’s for a lot of people, it’s just like a lose-lose proposition. It takes a lot of courage, and I hope that from now on the political left will have more of that courage, because why we’ve been losing these political battles for so long, and why American foreign policy has been so distorted by the dual-loyalties of many neocons. It’s because we’re always on the defensive, we’re scared to go on the offensive and we’re scared to actually expose one by one these neocons and actually point out where their loyalties lie and so on. And we’re scared to really rabidly go after AIPAC because it’s such a huge, big opponent that can do us in. So yes, I think we need more courage on the political left.
AK: You live in Canada, correct?
KL: Yes.
AK: And you know, Palestine, when it comes up in the Occupy movement, in New York at least, there’s been some controversy about it—kind of the old dividing line in left and anti-war movements. Where you live—I know Canada has become extremely right-wing in its support for Israel—but is the discourse the same where you live, or is it different?
KL: I think it’s very similar. Especially right now, we have a prime minister who is very right-wing and the discourse is very, very similar, I think it’s kind of a North American discourse, and I don’t think there’s a huge different between the Canadian discourse and the U.S. discourse. It’s just very, very similar, and the situation here is the same. Like for example, when we published an article that Canadian Jewish groups here found disturbing or offensive, then they were instrumental in convincing the biggest magazine distributor in Canada to pull 3,000 issues of Adbusters and not to allow Adbusters to distribute our magazine in their hundreds of stores around Canada. So this is the sort of power they have and this is the grief that they can cause for people. Quite apart from some people getting offended and canceling their subscription, which is just par for the course when you run a magazine, but the Jewish lobby, the pro-Israeli lobby in Canada and the U.S., has this power to really make magazines like us pay a price for speaking back.
AK: What do you make of the fact that there has been controversy, at least some and obviously Palestine doesn’t play a big part in the Occupy movement, but the fact that there has been at least some online controversy about Palestine in the Occupy movement. What does that say to you?
KL: Oh, I haven’t thought too much about that, I don’t really think about stuff like that. I mean, for me, it’s a more simple kind of situation, I don’t really bother with smaller skirmishes. I mean, for me, it’s about Israel behaving badly, and it’s about the Palestinian freedom fight, which I really believe in. I believe that the Palestinian freedom fight is one of the great freedom fights of our time, and I want to support it in any way that I can.
AK: And you were saying before, as the Occupy movement expands, you want and you think and you’re interested in seeing whether the Occupy movements take on U.S. foreign policy. Can you talk more about that?
KL: You know, well, I think that the political left has been whining and complaining and being kind of useless, in the sense that the Berlin Wall fell back in 1989, and we basically have been very ineffectual. And here at Adbusters we have been saying for a long, long time that we have to jump over the dead body of the old left, and we’ve been trying to do that but now with this Occupy movement I think it is finally possible to jump over the dead body of the old left, and for some of these Young Turks who are coming out of the Occupy movement, for us to start having our own powerful, kind of a, intellectual group of people that can stand up to the neocons, and can infuse the American media with different perspectives than what we’re getting right now and we can sort of engage with AIPAC in a way where they don’t always win. So I think that many of the occupiers will not agree with me that the Palestinian freedom fight is one of the great freedom fights of all time and they should be supported, I mean they will have their own perspective, but I think, and do feel, that now that it’s kind of “cool” to be left again, there will be some powerful lefty political discourse starting to come out of this movement. And I think it has the power to start popping some of these bubbles that I’ve been talking about and giving the people of America more information to make wise decisions about whether we should support an attack on Iran, or whether we should cut off the money supply to the Palestinians, or whether we should allow Netanyahu to build more settlements, and stuff like that.
AK: I know you said your personal background wasn’t pertinent, but I was reading that you were born in Estonia. Is that correct?
KL: That’s correct. If you’re looking for some sort of, bit of a hint from my history for where I’m coming from, is that, yeah, I was born in Estonia and when the Russians came in my family caught the last [way] out and spent the next five years in various displaced persons’ camps in Europe and Germany, and I remember the first few years of my life were full of emotional, political discourse. I went to sleep every night listening to the adults argue about the Nazis and the Russians and so I’m a highly politicized human being right from the start. And I’ve always believed in, I’ve always taken the side of, I hate bullies. I hate bullies and I love freedom fights.
AK: How has that experience shaped your politics on Israel/Palestine?
KL: Yeah. When I see Israel acting so arrogant and so tough—here’s one of the most powerful military forces in the world, they have nukes—and when I see them cordoning off Gaza the way they do and when they attack Gaza the way they did, it just fills me with rage because this is a powerful bully that is basically turning Gaza into kind of a turkey shoot. I really see it in this kind of very visceral way, like how could they possibly get away with doing this? For me, it’s almost a very black and white battle where, let’s stop arguing about who’s right and who’s wrong, let’s just take sides and start fighting for the human rights and the other rights that the Palestinians should have, and let’s not allow the bully to always win. I mean, it’s time to stop the bully.
Israeli forces arrest 6 people, mayor of Nablus village
Ma’an – 28/11/2011
NABLUS – Israeli troops detained six people on Monday, including the mayor of a Nablus village, the army and Ma’an’s correspondent said.
Soldiers stormed the Nablus village of Osarin at dawn on Monday, ransacking the home of Mayor Mahir Fawzi Adeli, 39, before arresting him, witnesses told Ma’an.
Israeli troops also detained Diyaa Omar Adeli, 16, his brother Fadil, 15, Azzam Rasmi Adeli, 20 and Muhammad Raslan Adeli, 17.
Locals said that several other homes were ransacked and that the five detainees were taken to Huwwara military base near Nablus.
One man was also detained in the Jenin village of Jaba.
An Israeli army spokeswoman said that the men were taken for security questioning.
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Mossad behind Italian ‘blackmail’ spying scandal
The Cradle | November 1, 2024
An Italian private intelligence firm that allegedly hacked government databases to collect information on thousands of prominent people, including politicians, entrepreneurs, and celebrities, is accused of working for Israeli intelligence and the Vatican, media reported on 30 October.
Police wiretaps leaked to Italian media show that Equalize, which employs former members of Italian intelligence, is accused of breaching the servers of government ministries and the police between 2019 and 2024 to collect information.
Yedioth Ahronoth reported that Equalize allegedly collected numerous classified files that contain sensitive information about prominent Italians to sell to clients – including major companies and law firms seeking information to gain an advantage over competitors, win court cases, or for blackmail and extortion.
Prime Minister Meloni described the alleged scheme as “unacceptable” and “a threat to democracy.” … continue
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