Durham Becomes First US City to Ban Police Exchanges with Israel
Palestine Chronicle – April 18, 2018
On Monday, April 16, 2018, the Durham city council in the US, became the first US city council to ban police exchanges with the Israeli policy.
“After 3.5 hours and 50 powerful and inspiring testimonies, the Durham city council has just unanimously passed a resolution to end Durham police training in Israel,” said Eran Efrati, one of the organizers of the Demilitarize from Durham2Palestine campaign, which stood behind the vote, in a Facebook post.
“After years of hard work, Durham becomes the first city in the US to ban American police forces exchanges with the Israeli military and police,” he added.
The campaign has launched a petition which was signed by 1,394 people, calling on the council to ban police exchanges with Israel.
The petition read,
“The Israeli Defense Forces and the Israel Police have a long history of violence and harm against Palestinian people and Jews of Color. They persist in using tactics of extrajudicial killing, excessive force, racial profiling, and repression of social justice movements. Such tactics have been condemned by international human rights organizations for violating the human rights of Palestinians.”
The petition added,
“These tactics further militarize U.S. police forces that train in Israel, and this training helps the police terrorize Black and Brown communities here in the US. Additionally, such practices erode our constitutional rights to due process, freedom of speech, and freedom of assembly. Durham officials — including former Chief Lopez and current Chief Davis — have participated in these racist police exchange programs.”
The Palestine solidarity among minorities and marginalized communities has seen a growth in the last few years, with minorities and people of color joining the global Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions Movement against Israel.
Reports of Monday night attack on Syrian base blamed on false alarm
RT | April 17, 2018
Several sources in Syria said the overnight deployment of anti-aircraft weapons at a military base was triggered by a false alarm, not an actual missile attack, as previously claimed by some media outlets.
Syrian TV earlier reported a missile attack on Shayrat Airbase in Homs governorate, while a Lebanese media outlet with links to militant group Hezbollah said a separate attack targeted Al-Dumair base northeast of Damascus. Multiple sources now show the reports were inaccurate.
The Syrian news agency SANA cited a military source, who said anti-aircraft missiles were fired overnight after a false intrusion alarm. It was consequently established that no new attacks on Al-Dumair base happened.
A similar report came from a Reuters source in the regional pro-government military alliance. The commander, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said the false alarm was caused by an Israeli-US cyber warfare operation, but didn’t provide any proof.
Meanwhile, a Russian military source told Interfax news agency that there was no night incident at Shayrat Airbase. … Full article
Remembering Ireland’s Great Famine
A review of Black ’47 a soon to be released film about the famine in Ireland
By Caoimhghin Ó Croidheáin | Dissident Voice | April 13, 2018
Weary men, what reap ye?—Golden corn for the stranger.
What sow ye?— human corpses that wait for the avenger.
Fainting forms, hunger–stricken, what see you in the offing?
Stately ships to bear our food away, amid the stranger’s scoffing.
There’s a proud array of soldiers — what do they round your door?
They guard our masters’ granaries from the thin hands of the poor.
Pale mothers, wherefore weeping— would to God that we were dead;
Our children swoon before us, and we cannot give them bread.”
— “Speranza” (Jane Wilde, mother of Oscar Wilde)
Last Wednesday I attended a preview for a forthcoming Irish film, Black 47 (Director Lance Daly), about the worst year of the catastrophic Irish famine and is set in the west of Ireland in 1847.
The story centers around an Irish soldier, Feeney (James Frecheville), returning from serving the British Army in Afghanistan only to find most of his family have perished in the Famine or An Gorta Mor (the Great Hunger) as it is known in Gaelic.
The English and Irish terms for Ireland’s greatest tragedy are infused with different ideological approaches to the disaster. By emphasising the failure of the potato crop only, the impression is given that there was no food to be had on the island when the opposite was true – there were many other crops which did not fail but were not accessible to the vast majority of the people – hence, the Great Hunger.
Feeney (James Frecheville), Black 47 (Director Lance Daly)
In Black 47, the colonised fight back as Feeney puts the skills he has learned abroad with the British army to effective use in Ireland. He kills or executes the various people involved in the British colonial system he blames for the starvation and death of his family: from the bailiff to the judge to the colonial landlord. Moreover, Feeney goes a step further as he refuses to speak English to those in power before he kills them, reflecting back to them an immediate understanding of the powerlessness of those without the linguistic tools to negotiate compromises (as was seen in the film when a monolingual Irish speaker gets tough justice for ‘refusing’ to speak English in court).
Back in the late 1980s a book entitled ‘The Empire Writes Back: Theory and Practice in Post-Colonial Literatures‘ [1989] showed how the language and literature of the empire, English, was used by colonised peoples in the creation of a radical culture to aid their resistance to the hegemony of imperial power. However, now with many of his family dead, Feeney has ceased to be a Caliban profiting on the language of his masters and becomes a powerfully drawn hero who is uncompromising in his insistence that the Irish language and culture will be a respected equal to the imposed English language and culture of the colonists.
In the film the ruling class and their hierarchy of supporters are flush with food and the army is used to transport harvested crops to the coast and exportation. This fact is displayed symbolically when one of Feeney’s victims is literally ‘drowned’ in food, as he is found head first in a sack of wheat.
The international aspect of the Black 47 narrative hints at the geopolitics of the day with Feeney’s return from Afghanistan and the concurrent mass emigration to the United States from Ireland. Feeney’s indignation at finding out how his masters have treated his own family and compatriots as he risked his life for them abroad is similar to the treatment of the African-American soldiers of the Vietnam war on their return to the United States.
But this is not a black and white, Irish versus the Brits, movie. There is complexity as some of the British show empathy for the desperate Irish and pay the ultimate price or go on the run.
Revenge is a kind of wild justice, which the more a man’s nature runs to, the more ought law to weed it out.
— Francis Bacon
Black 47 is a revenge movie which is cathartic for an audience feeling the utter helplessness of the victims living in a brutal system without real justice, where what should have been their protectors (the law, the state, the army, etc.) became their attackers and betrayed them. In previous food crises, according to Christine Kenealy:
The closure of ports was a traditional, short-term response to food shortages. It had been used to great effect during the subsistence crisis of 1782-4 when, despite the opposition of the grain merchants, ports had been closed and bounties offered to merchants who imported food to the country. During the subsistence crisis of 1799-1800, the government had placed a temporary embargo on the export of potatoes from Ireland. In 1816 and 1821, the British government had organised the shipment of grain into areas in the west of Ireland where there were food shortages. The grain was then sold on at low prices. Similar intervention and market regulation occurred in Britain.
Unfortunately for Ireland, Sir Charles Edward Trevelyan (2 April 1807 – 19 June 1886), a British civil servant and colonial administrator, was put in charge of administering famine relief. Trevelyan was a student of the economist Thomas Malthus and a believer in laissez faire economics and the free hand of the market. Trevelyan described the famine as an “effective mechanism for reducing surplus population” as well as “the judgement of God”.
Famine Memorial in Dublin by artist Rowan Gillespie
With this change in attitude on the part of the British government towards food shortages, the crisis was doomed from the beginning. Kinealy states:
In 1847 alone, the worst year of the Famine, almost 4,000 vessels carried food from Ireland to the major ports of Britain, that is, Bristol, Glasgow, Liverpool and London. Over half of these ships went to Liverpool, the main port both for emigration and for cargo.
Ultimately, one million people starved to death and one million emigrated reducing the population by about 20% – 25%.
Black 47 is an uncompromising film that depicts the harrowing results of a crop failure combined with an ultra exploitative system that knew no moral or legal boundaries. Sure, attempts were made by well-meaning people to alleviate the crisis but the failure of the state to end the crisis on a macro level resulted in an unprecedented disaster for the Irish people. It will go on general release in September.
Further research:
For those interested in finding out more about the Great Hunger, here is a select list of material covering different aspects.
Art
The preview showing of Black 47 was to complement a concurrent exhibtion of art in Dublin Castle showing at the Coach House Gallery until June 30. The exhibition, titled ‘Coming Home: Art and the Great Hunger‘, is an exhibition of the world’s largest collection of Famine-related art.
Belfast mural
Music:
Sinéad O’Connor – ‘Famine‘
Damien Dempsey – ‘Colony‘
Christy Moore – ‘On a Single Day‘
Books:
The Great Hunger by Cecil Woodham-Smith
The Famine Plot: England’s Role in Ireland’s Greatest Tragedy by Tim Pat Coogan
The Graves are Walking by John Kelly
Atlas of the Great Irish Famine edited by J. Crowley, W. J. Smith and M.Murphy.
(Massive hardback volume covering almost all aspects of the famine throughout Ireland, lavishly illustrated.)
National Famine Commemoration Committee
The National Famine Commemoration Committee was first established in 2008 following a Government decision to commemorate the Great Irish Famine with an annual national famine memorial day.
Film
Ireland 1848 – ‘An experimental documentary of the Great Irish Famine. Shot as a film might have been shot in 1848 fifty years before the cinema was invented.’
Caoimhghin Ó Croidheáin is an Irish artist, lecturer and writer. His artwork consists of paintings based on contemporary geopolitical themes as well as Irish history and cityscapes of Dublin. His blog of critical writing based on cinema, art and politics along with research on a database of Realist and Social Realist art from around the world can be viewed country by country at http://gaelart.blogspot.ie/.
MK proposes 10 years prison sentence for anyone filming Israeli soldiers
Palestine Information Center – April 13, 2018
OCCUPIED JERUSALEM – In a step aimed at covering up Israeli crimes, MK Robert Ilatov (Yisrael Beytenu) has called for introducing a new bill punishing anyone who photographs or video-records soldiers while performing their duties in order to undermine their morale.
He made his proposal after a video went viral on the internet showing an Israeli soldier shooting at a Palestinian on Gaza border as other follow soldiers were verbally attacking other protesters.
According to the Hebrew newspaper Israel Hayom, the proposed bill calls for imposing a five-year prison punishment on anyone exposing on-duty soldiers’ behavior.
It also calls for jailing for 10 years anyone who does so with the intention of harming Israel’s national security.
The proposed bill mentions NGOs such as B’Tselem, Machsom Watch and Breaking the Silence, calling them “anti-Israel and pro-Palestinian… and BDS organizations.”
It claims that “for many years, there has been a disturbing phenomenon in Israel of documenting soldiers through videos, stills and voice recordings,” and that some NGOs have people follow soldiers all day long to try to “document them in a biased and slanted way… while sometimes accusing and insulting them.”
Ilatov said the time came to put an end to what he called “anarchy.” “It cannot be that any left-wing activist or organization, supported by foreign entities, can get free access and document, undisturbed, soldiers on duty.”
“We have the responsibility to give soldiers the optimal conditions to do their jobs, without them having to be worried about a left-wing activist or organization sending out their photo and trying to shame them.”
Congress’s “Never Again Education Act” should call for ‘never again’ against anyone, including Palestinians
By Alison Weir | If Americans Knew | April 10, 2018
A new bill entitled “The Never Again Education Act” is reportedly about to be introduced in the U.S. House of Representatives. According to JTA and other reports, the legislation will fund Holocaust education programs in schools. JTA reports:
A bipartisan slate of House members is set to introduce a bill that would grant money to Holocaust education in schools.
The Never Again Education Act would establish the Holocaust Education Assistance Program Fund in the U.S. Treasury. A 12-member board would disburse the money to schools.
A draft of the bill, which is to be introduced Tuesday in the U.S. House of Representatives, says the fund would be privately funded.
Rep. Carolyn Maloney, D-N.Y., is the lead sponsor of the measure.
“Today, those who deny that the Holocaust occurred or distort the true nature of the Holocaust continue to find forums, especially online; this denial and distortion dishonors those who were persecuted, and murdered,” the draft of the bill says. “This makes it even more of a national imperative to educate students in the United States so that they may explore the lessons that the Holocaust provides for all people, sensitize communities to the circumstances that gave rise to the Holocaust, and help youth be less susceptible to the falsehood of Holocaust denial and distortion and to the destructive messages of hate that arise from Holocaust denial and distortion.”
The bill would also create a website that would include Holocaust education resources.
Maloney will launch the bill on Tuesday at the Olga Lengyel Institute for Holocaust Studies and Human Rights in New York City, accompanied by representatives of Hadassah, B’nai B’rith International and the Association of Holocaust Organizations. The Anti-Defamation League endorsed the bill.
Also sponsoring the bill are Reps. Peter Roskam, R-Ill.; Ted Deutch, D-Fla.; Ileana Ros-Lehtinen, R-Fla.; Eliot Engel, D-N.Y.; Kay Granger, R-Texas; Nita Lowey, D-N.Y.; and Dan Donovan, R-N.Y. Lowey and Granger are top House appropriators, which suggests the bill likely will pass.
A draft of the bill is not yet available, so we don’t yet know what it contains.
I hope the new law will fund full and accurate educational programs about all holocausts that have occurred throughout human history – slavery, past and ongoing genocides aimed at diverse populations, the ethnic cleansing of Palestinians, and many other cases of violence and cruelty around the world.
A case of oppression that has gone on for almost 70 years is acutely visible right now in Gaza.
Thousands of men, women, and children are participating in a massive “March of Return” against the theft of their homes, their virtual imprisonment in Gaza, and the periodic onslaughts against them by Israeli forces.
Israeli soldiers with “shoot to kill” orders against these unarmed marchers have shot hundreds of the demonstrators, some in the head and many in the back, including women, children, journalists, and medics.
I believe that “never again” should apply to everyone, everywhere.
I suggest that people phone their Congressional representatives (202-224-3121) and ask them if this bill addresses all instances of oppression, or just one that, thankfully, ended almost three-quarters of a century ago.
Congress has voted to give Israel over $10 million per day. Our representatives are responsible for how Israel is using this money.
Alison Weir is executive director of If Americans Knew and author of Against Our Better Judgment: The Hidden History of How the U.S. Was Used to Create Israel.
The Bipartisan Pandering To Jewish Interests
By Philip Giraldi | American Herald Tribune | April 9, 2018
Most Americans are certainly unaware of the many provisions benefiting Israeli and broader Jewish interests which are inserted into U.S. government legislation and procedural guidelines. Holocaust survivors, which include any Jews who were alive in Europe in 1945, for example, are exempt from the requirement to pay taxes on reparations received from Germany. All other Americans are subject to income taxes on all income, no matter what the source. As the reparations don’t count as income, they are also not included in the calculation of benefits like Medicaid, meaning that a Jewish survivor can have a relatively high income and still receive benefits actually intended for those who are indigent.
In January 2014 the Obama Administration appointed Aviva Sufian to be the Administration’s first Special Envoy for U.S. Holocaust Survivor Services. Her task was to implement policy establishing “… that Holocaust survivors should age in place and avoid the institutional care that health providers and government services generally recommend for the infirm.” That means providing special benefits for survivors that other Americans do not receive, to include expensive in-home care paid for by the taxpayer. The State Department also has a Special Envoy to Identify and Combat Anti-Semitism, which “advances U.S. foreign policy on Anti-Semitism,” whatever that is supposed to mean, as combating anti-Semitism is not a foreign policy and would not appear to be a vital national interest of the United States.
The pandering to Jewish interests is widespread in the federal government and is bipartisan. Israel runs a large trade surplus with the United States because it has free access to the U.S. market and can also bid on government contracts, a privilege normally afforded only to NATO allies. Plus Washington foots the bill for more than 20% of Israeli defense spending, even allowing Israel to use American taxpayer provided dollars to buy weapons from its own defense industry, which competes with that of the U.S.
Indeed, in the past year there has been a virtual flood of legislation that has been favorable to Israel and some Jewish-related issues even though there is no actual interest in play for other Americans. On the contrary, much of the legislation actually denies to citizens and residents the Constitutional rights to free speech and freedom of association. The most recent legislation benefiting Israel and punishing Israel’s host of enemies was rolled into the omnibus spending bill that was signed into law on March 23rd. Israel received additional money for its “defense” while the Palestinians saw money going both to the Palestinian Authority as well as to the United Nations to help refugees in the Middle East cut dramatically.
Twenty-four states are now requiring statements pledging not to boycott Israel from those citizens and organizations that receive government funding or even seek local government employment. Two bills in Congress also seek to define as anti-Semitism any criticism of Israel. On December 12th 2017 the Anti-Semitism Awareness Act was approved by the House of Representatives with 402 affirmative votes and only two libertarian-leaning congressmen voting “no.” The Israel Anti-Boycott Act that is also currently making its way through the Congress would far exceed what is happening at the state level and would set a new standard for deference to Israeli interests on the part of the national government. It would criminalize any U.S. citizen “engaged in interstate or foreign commerce” who supports a boycott of Israel or who even goes about “requesting the furnishing of information” regarding it, with penalties enforced through amendments of two existing laws, the Export Administration Act of 1979 and the Export-Import Act of 1945, that include potential fines of between $250,000 and $1 million and up to 20 years in prison.
Accustomed as I am to learning about the latest Israeli tricks to gain additional money and other forms of support from the American taxpayer, I was recently shocked to read about a case in which a U.S. government employee was actually fired for revealing information that might embarrass the Jewish state. Grant Smith of the Institute for Research Middle Eastern Policy (IRMEP) is reporting how former Los Alamos National Lab nuclear policy specialist James Doyle was fired after he wrote in an article for the International Institute for Strategic Studies journal stating that “Nuclear weapons did not deter… Iraq from attacking Israel during the 1991 Gulf War.” The article had been cleared for publication but an unnamed congressional staffer spotted it and complained. A second review was made and “Doyle’s pay was cut, his home computer searched and he was fired.”
Doyle’s crime was to break the “legislative rule” that no federal government employee can confirm that Israel has nuclear weapons. The rule is ridiculous as the existence of the Israeli nuclear arsenal is well attested, including by Colin Powell, who confirmed that “Israel had over 200 nuclear weapons pointed at Iran.” Powell made the statement when he was out of office but even prominent Israel-firster Senator Chuck Schumer has confirmed the existence of the arsenal without consequence.
The reason for acute Israeli sensitivity on its nukes is the Symington Amendment in Section 101 of the U.S. Arms Export Control Act of 1976 which bans foreign aid to any country that has nuclear weapons and has not signed the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty. Which means that Israel’s annual $3.1 billion in aid might be in jeopardy if Washington were to enforce its own laws, though one cannot imagine that President Donald Trump or the Attorney General will take the necessary steps to do so.
Another sticky bit of law consists of the so-called Leahy Amendments, which prohibit the U.S. Department of State and Department of Defense from providing military assistance to foreign security force units that violate human rights “with impunity.” Israel’s numerous brutal assaults on Gaza, including the current one in which it is shooting dead unarmed demonstrators, is a textbook case for when the Leahy Amendments should be applied, but, of course, they never will be. Even Senator Patrick Leahy, who sponsored the bill they are based on, has been silent when it comes to Israel, as is the entire United States government and the Zionist-dominated mainstream media.
B’Tselem under Investigation for urging Israeli Soldiers Not to Kill Gaza Protesters
IMEMC News & Agencies – April 8, 2018
Israeli Defense Minister Avigdor Lieberman has asked Israeli Attorney-General Avichai Mandelblit to investigate rights group B’Tselem for asking Israeli soldiers not to kill Gaza protesters.
In a tweet, Liberman urged the state to “probe the heads of B’Tselem for incitement to disobedience after their call for soldiers to refuse orders in defending the border.”
“This subversive and impermanent organisation, together with those who hate Israel and the international media who are trying to delegitimize our soldiers who are acting in a legal and moral manner in a complicated situation,” he says. “We will put an end to this.”
B’Tselem hit back at Lieberman, stressing that live fire to disperse demonstrators is illegal under Israeli law.
In a statement, the human rights group said that the order violates Section 110 of Israel’s penal code, and Lieberman’s efforts to have the group investigated are without merit.
“The defense minister is the one inciting to break the law, and it’s good that the attorney general will now have the opportunity to officially determine this,” B’Tselem says, according to Days of Palestine.
(Al Ray archive image)
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From the Archives
USS Liberty Massacre: A Pivotal Moment in the Hostile Takeover of America
By Kevin Barrett | Crescent | Dhu al-Qa’dah 24, 1445
In corporate America, hostile takeovers are commonplace. They occur when an aggressor—a larger corporation or rich individuals—seizes control of a smaller corporation without asking permission.
What few recognize is that the United States itself has been subjected to a hostile takeover. Since the aggressor, the illegitimate settler colony known as “Israel,” is much smaller than the US, the takeover has necessarily been surreptitious.
As of June, 2024, Israel’s gradual takeover of the US has become obvious and undeniable—a proverbial “elephant in the living room.” … continue
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