Solidarity and Activism

Defending Privacy at the Israeli Border: Information for Travelers Carrying Digital Devices

By Jillian C. York and Jonathan Klinger | EFF | June 25, 2012

As we’ve acknowledged before, our lives are increasingly contained on our digital devices, which makes travel—and the decisions we make about what to carry with us—increasingly complicated.

A recent case in which two young travelers to Israel were requested not simply to provide their laptops for arbitrary searches, but to log in to their e-mail accounts and allow Israeli officials to search through their e-mail for specific strings and correspondence highlights the increasing obstacles to privacy that travelers face, as well as the increasingly global nature of security theatre.

In that particular case, the two young women—both of Palestinian origin—complied with officials’ requests but were nonetheless detained overnight before being deported. In another, similar case, a U.S. citizen who refused access to her email was told she was probably hiding something and was refused entry to the country. Israeli security (Shin Bet) told a reporter that “the actions taken by the agents during questioning were within the organization’s authority according to Israeli law.”

Not unlike travelers to the U.S., travelers to Israel face serious privacy challenges at the border. The government generally has broad authority to search through your personal possessions, including your laptop, for any reason at all. When you cross the border to Israel, the Israeli government retains the authority to question you and examine your belongings, which it interprets as also allowing it to go through your electronic devices and computer files. More recently, authorities have also been known to demand user passwords to online accounts.

As we state in our guide to U.S. border searches:

For doctors, lawyers, and many business professionals, these border searches can compromise the privacy of sensitive professional information, including trade secrets, attorney-client and doctor-patient communications, research and business strategies, some of which a traveler has legal and contractual obligations to protect. For the rest of us, searches that can reach our personal correspondence, health information, and financial records are reasonably viewed as an affront to privacy and dignity and inconsistent with the values of a free society.

EFF recently asked Jonathan Klinger, an Israeli attorney, for his thoughts on the law and government practices that apply to searches at the Israeli border, and here is his analysis.

The Situation at the Israeli Border

At the Israeli border, there are some limited legal protections against the search itself. Based on a collection of experiences, however, it seems that mentioning these protections to border officials can be considered antagonism, and can limit your ability to enter Israel. Those concerned about the security and privacy of the information on their devices at the border should therefore use technological measures in an effort to protect their data. They can also choose not to take private data across the border with them at all, and then use technical measures to retrieve it from abroad.

There is, however, little to prevent a scenario in which one’s email is searched, as refusal to allow the search may result in deportation. With that in mind, concerned travelers should think ahead and review their online accounts before traveling.

Why Can My Devices Be Searched at the Border?

Article 7 of Israel’s Basic Statute of Human Dignity and Freedom1 states that every person is entitled to his privacy, and that his property may not be searched, apart from where it is required under legal authority. This generally means that the government has to show probable cause that a crime has been committed and get a warrant before it can search a location or item in which you have a reasonable expectation of privacy; moreover, a recent Supreme Court ruling stated that there is no such thing called consensual search,2 and where there is no probable cause, the state cannot rely on a person’s consent in order to search in his possessions. But searches at places where people enter or leave Israel are subject to different statutes. The two applicable statutes are the Aviation Act (Security in Civil Aviation), 19773and the General Security Service Act, 20024; the two acts altogether provide two different state authorities the right to search on a person’s body and in his property. However, they do not refer to computer searches at all.

The Aviation Act allows security personnel, police officers, soldiers and members of the civil defense forces to search at border crossings if “the search is required, in [the officer’s] opinion, to keep the public’s safety or if he suspects that the person unlawfully carries weapons or explosives, or that the vehicle, the plane or the goods has weapons or explosives.”

Similarly, the General Security Service Act states that in order to prevent unlawful activities, secure persons or any other activity that the government authorized with the approval of the Knesset committee for the Shin Bet5 to perform, any employee of the Shin Bet (the service) may search a person’s body, property, baggage or other goods and collect information, as long as the person is present.

Only in extreme cases, where there is an object that needs to be seized for a vital role in the Shin Bet’s activity, can the Shin Bet also search without a person’s presence.

However, nothing in these acts authorizes computer searches. Recently, the Israeli Justice office proposed a new anti-terror bill,6 which is yet to pass through the legislative process. This Anti-Terror bill does request to correct the current General Security Service act to specifically state that computers may be searched.

How the Government Searches Devices at the Border

There are three government agencies primarily responsible for inspecting travelers and items entering Israel: the General Security Service (Shin Bet), The Customs Authority and the Immigration authority.

The law gives the Shin Bet and other officials a great deal of discretion to inspect items coming into the country. There is no official policy published in respect to border search of electronic devices and accounts. And when recently requested to comment, the Shin Bet stated that its acts are “according to law.”

Recently, the Israeli Foreign Ministry admitted that it used Facebook in order to create a blacklist of activists who were then—along with a number of uninvolved and mistakenly identified individuals—banned entry to the country amidst the Flytilla events. If you are active on one or more social networks and express opinions about Israel, you carry a greater risk of being profiled and selected for search.

Keep in mind that the Shin Bet can keep your computer or copies of your data for “the time required for the seizure.” There is no specific consideration regarding forensic practices and the ways that your computer files may be copied during the seizure. This is unlike the Israeli Criminal Procedure Order (Arrest and Search), 1969,7 which deals specifically with the forensic procedures of copying computer materials and requires two witnesses for any file duplication.

The Israeli Customs Authority, under Article 184,8 allows any customs official to search every person for contraband or drugs given probable cause. Moreover, the customs official may also request urine, blood or saliva samples and request persons to undress. However, nothing in the law allows them to search through computer materials.

In short, border agents have a lot of latitude to search electronic devices at the border or take them elsewhere for further inspection for a short period of time, whether or not they suspect a traveler has done anything wrong.

We do not have the exact numbers or methods of how such searches are handled, and the Shin Bet is exempt from the Israeli Freedom of Information Act.9; However, the frequency of technology-oriented searches at the border may increase in the future. Researchers and vendors are creating tools to make forensic analysis faster and more effective, and, over time, forensic analysis will require less skill and training. Law enforcement agencies may be tempted to use these tools more often and in more circumstances as their use becomes easier.

Travelers should consider taking the same precautions outlined in EFF’s guide to carrying digital devices across the United States border.

June 25, 2012 Posted by aletho | Civil Liberties, Full Spectrum Dominance, Solidarity and Activism, Timeless or most popular | Electronic Frontier Foundation, General Security Service Act, Israel, Israeli Border, Jillian C. York, Jonathan Klinger, Shin Bet | Leave a comment

Samah Sabawi responds to Liberal Zionists

By Samah Sabwai | June 23, 2012

Leading Liberal Zionists have come out in impressive numbers calling for the boycott of settlements. But I have to warn you there is something to dread; they want you to buy Israeli products instead. They say they want to save Israel from a dangerous extremist threat. Namely: the Israeli gov’t and the BDS! Yes, they’ve lumped us together as two extreme versions calling for one state. Both? Extreme?

In other words, liberal Zionists are telling us that Palestinian resistance, boycott sanctions and divestments that calls for equality between Palestinians and Jews is as extreme as Netanyahu’s plan for erasing the green line and colonizing all of historic Palestine.

In such deranged twisted views, Palestinians demanding to be equal to Jews are perceived to be as extreme as the Jews who uproot olive trees, scorch Palestinian fields and demolish Palestinian homes forcing entire families to live in fear of being exiled.

In this absurd reality BDS’s call for equality is apparently as extreme as ethnic cleansing. In what world is this convincing?

They demand we, the Palestinians support a two state solution. Too little! Too late! Where were they for 45 years as their democratically elected governments destroyed any prospects of a Palestinian state? Where are they today as Palestinian prisoners fight for their lives as they try to end the policy of Administrative detention? Is it beyond their comprehension? They have never taken any decisive action because ending this dichotomy between oppressed and oppressor does not fall within their agenda of fulfilling their aspiration for a Jewish nation. This is their priority.

In their grand hypocrisy they want us to fortify the Green line that supposedly separates a Jewish state from a future Palestine but without ever supporting Palestinian resistance. Is it then a matter of a state of mind? If we think it, the settlements will go? What tools can we use and where are these liberal Zionists when nonviolent protestors are shot in the face with gas canisters? They want us to be as delusional as they are. They want us to be docile. They want us to exonerate Israel of all its past crime or God forbid, we would be accused of clinging to victimhood.

They want us to march alongside the spin doctors and bleeding hearts and to chant ‘The settlers are to blame for the erosion of Israel’s democracy. The settlers are to blame! The settlers are to blame for the erosion of Israel’s democracy. ‘The settlers are to blame’ for the destruction of a Zionist fantasy! As if settlers exist in a vacuum. As if settlers have come from some far away planet, landed on a hill in the West Bank and without any help from congress, the Knesset or the senate, they began to build their colonies on our land.

‘The settlers are to blame’ as if Israel was not built on the ruins of Palestinian villages long before the settlers came to the West Bank. Long before the checkpoints and the wall, long before it all, long before there was an occupation, there was a total devastation, a ruthless destruction of an entire nation.

‘The settlers are to blame’ but as far back as 1948 villages were erased, Palestinians were massacred, to make way for the establishment of this state.

‘The settlers are to blame’ but go on and ask this soil you tread, whose ancestral flesh has fed this earth for centuries? Whose blood runs in the sap of the olive trees? Whose stories are written between the cracks of these old stones?

‘The settlers are to blame’. Close your eyes and search your soul. Dig deep. Those nightmares in your sleep are the voices that once filled this Arab home you have occupied with laughter. Look beneath your bed. Did they leave their slippers when they ran barefoot down the street and into exile? Did they leave behind the tea-kettle warm on the kitchen table before they wore an eternal label ‘refugees’?

‘The settlers are to blame’ but who shoots the gas canisters and live bullets at the protestors in the West Bank? Who enables these settlers to steal Palestinian land?

‘The settlers are to blame’. Who is responsible for the death of thousands in Gaza?

Was it settlers riding on their F16 fighter jets who dropped the phosphorus bombs on schools, houses and mosques? Or was it a state army, your army, wearing a uniform that supposedly represents all of Israel that killed and maimed at will?

The best part is when Liberal Zionists like Beinart suggest calling the West Bank ‘undemocratic Israel’. ‘Undemocratic’ as opposed to what? The democratic Israel on the other side of the Green line where Palestinians who survived the Nakba and hold Israeli citizenships have dozens of laws that single them out and discriminate against them?

‘The settlers are to blame’ but how are the settlers alone responsible for the systematic racism of a state that defines all non-Jews as second-class citizens? And pray tell, who set the Eritrean migrants’ house on fire in Jerusalem and demanded the deportation of Africans seeking asylum? If we boycott settlements and buy Israeli goods will the Jews in Israel become more accepting of non-Jews in their neighborhoods?

Let’s put an end to this grand deviation. Settlers wouldn’t exist if not for the support of an ethnocentric nation, dedicated by any means necessary to driving out the indigenous population.

Yes, Boycott the settlements, but don’t stop at the green line because they did not. Boycott the settlements but also boycott ethnic superiority. Boycott discrimination against Palestinians who are second-class citizens in their own country. Boycott Israel’s academic institutions for their complicity. Boycott Israel’s culture for its duplicity.

Boycott Israeli industries. Boycott Israeli institutions for supporting war crimes. Boycott Israel’s apartheid policies on both sides of the green line until all of this changes and we are all free, living together Palestinians and Jews in equality.

Boycott Israel and I promise you, this day will come.

The Palestinians Must Just Be (alethonews.wordpress.com)
Countering the Israel Lobby’s Dominance (alethonews.wordpress.com)
Still Jews only (alethonews.wordpress.com)

June 25, 2012 Posted by aletho | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Solidarity and Activism, Timeless or most popular, Video | Israel, Jewish State, Palestine, Zionism | Leave a comment

Jordan Valley: Palestinian family’s water confiscated, internationals arrested

25 June 2012 | International Solidarity Movement, West Bank

On Thursday, June 21, Israeli forces confiscated a water tank from a Bedouin Palestinian family in the Jordan Valley, leaving them with no access to water. Three Swedish women were arrested for standing in solidarity with Palestinian women and children who peacefully protested by standing in between the Israeli military and the water tank at risk of theft.

Israeli soldiers deal violently with a Palestinian woman peacefully protesting the theft of her water tank

The Jordan valley is a fertile area ideal for agricultural production. When Israel took control of the West Bank, it immediately took hold of water resources and began to target Palestinian communities and empty them from the Jordan Valley. The villages left are isolated from each other not only by distance but by Israeli checkpoints, closed military zones, and other restrictions on movement. The Israeli military performs military training in proximity to many communities, putting them at constant risk.

The illegal occupation of water resources has made water access an urgent problem. The United Nations declares water a basic human right. The World Health Organization has declared that each individual needs access to 100 litres of water per day, but Palestinians use on average between 50 to 70 litres per day. Many Palestinians in the Jordan Valley however, receive as little as 10-20 litres per day. This is a figure lower than the absolute minimum daily consumption required to avoid ‘mass health epidemics.’ Families in the Jordan Valley are forced to buy water at incredibly inflated prices. Some households spend 40-50% of their income to buy water from Israeli companies.

“When we came to the Bedouin camp, children were crying and there were a lot of soldiers trying to drag them away from the tractor that they tried to block. There were no men, only women and children, and around 60 soldiers and policemen. The Bedouin men were scared to show any resistance because of the risk of administrative detention,” says Rosa Andersson, one of the women who was later arrested.
The Swedish women were released after 30 hours of arrest and they are now prohibited from being in the West Bank. No one, Palestinian or International, showed any violence. The Palestinian family dependent on the confiscated water tank now has no access to water as the driest season of the year has just begun.

18 year old shepherd shot by Israeli soldiers in Jordan Valley (alethonews.wordpress.com)
Palestinian farmland exploited for Israeli military exercises (alethonews.wordpress.com)
The Forcible Transfer of the Palestinian People from the Jordan Valley (alethonews.wordpress.com)
Israeli Forces Destroy Tents, Shacks in Jordan Valley (occupiedpalestine.wordpress.com)
Susiya: Another Casualty of Israeli Occupation? (alethonews.wordpress.com)
Bedouin Community Demolished, Thirty People Displaced (altahrir.wordpress.com)
Israelis Stop Palestinians from Getting Drinking Water (altahrir.wordpress.com)
IOA serves demolition notices in occupied Jerusalem, Jordan Valley (occupiedpalestine.wordpress.com)

June 25, 2012 Posted by aletho | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Solidarity and Activism, Subjugation - Torture | Bedouin, International Solidarity Movement, Israel, Jordan Valley, West Bank, World Health Organization | Leave a comment

US: No justice for terminated scholar

Failure of North Carolina courts to remedy suppression of academic freedom part of troubling nationwide trend

By Rima Najjar Kapitan | Aletho News | June 23, 2012

The North Carolina Supreme Court decided in conference on June 13 to deny a Petition for Discretionary Review filed last December by film scholar Terri Ginsberg. The Petition asked the Court to reconsider a North Carolina Court of Appeals decision affirming a November 2010 lower court dismissal of Dr. Ginsberg’s lawsuit against North Carolina State University (NCSU). In October 2009, Dr. Ginsberg filed a complaint alleging violation of her right to academic freedom under the North Carolina constitution. Dr. Ginsberg had been denied a tenure-track position because of the University’s discomfort with her scholarly speech and writing critical of Israeli policy and Zionism and favoring Palestinian rights and self-determination. The Court’s Order to deny Dr. Ginsberg’s Petition offers neither an opinion nor a reason for the decision.

Dr. Ginsberg’s Petition was supported by an Open Letter sponsored by several national and international human rights organizations and delivered on February 7, 2012 to both the North Carolina Supreme Court and NCSU Chancellor Randy Woodson. As of its closure on June 22, the Open Letter had accrued 1274 signatures. Dr. Ginsberg states in both of these documents that by ignoring her voluminous evidence of an academic freedom violation, the Court of Appeals set a dangerous precedent by which academic employers have been given carte blanche to suppress the politically unpopular speech of their faculty, to the detriment of North Carolina students and to public discourse generally.

Dr. Ginsberg’s appeal was rejected despite direct and circumstantial evidence that NCSU took employment actions against her for unconstitutional reasons. During depositions held in June 2010, NCSU’s witnesses, including Prof. Marsha Orgeron, director of the Film Studies Program, and Prof. Akram Khater, director of the Middle East Studies Program, admitted to having reacted negatively to Ginsberg’s supportive statements at a screening of a Palestinian film, Ticket to Jerusalem, during which she thanked the audience for attending and thereby supporting the airing of Palestinian liberation perspectives such as the views displayed in the film. Profs. Orgeron and Khater stated that Dr. Ginsberg’s comments caused them to worry that members of the audience would perceive the Film Studies and Middle East Studies programs as “biased.” Shortly thereafter, Dr. Ginsberg was forced to resign from the Middle East screening series that she had helped curate; NCSU then chose not to interview or hire her for a tenure-track position for which she had previously been ranked as the top candidate. She was rejected despite NCSU’s admission that she was more qualified than the candidate NCSU eventually hired, because her scholarship had “too much focus on Jewish/Israel,” in the words of one search committee member. The Film Studies Program did not purchase Palestinian films for her Spring 2008 course on Israeli–Palestinian conflict cinema, and she was shunned from further extra-curricular and departmental activities until her termination that May.

The Court’s dismissal is particularly troubling in the wake of Arizona’s recent outlawing of Chicano/a studies curricula in that state’s educational system, and as pro-Zionist groups in California are attempting to force California State University–Northridge to forbid mathematics professor David Klein from posting to his faculty website information about the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) movement in support of human rights for Palestinians.

Dr. Ginsberg says she has not given up on her quest for justice from North Carolina State University and encourages supporters to e-mail letters of protest to Chancellor Woodson (see sample letter) requesting that she be permitted a long-overdue campus grievance hearing (mail to: chancellor@ncsu.edu). Dr. Ginsberg also plans to approach BDS about issuing a boycott of NCSU. For more information about Dr. Ginsberg’s case, please visit the website Ginsberg vs. NCSU.

For more information, contact:
Rima Najjar Kapitan, Esq.
Kapitan Law Office, Ltd.
+1 (312) 566-9590
rima@kapitanlaw.net

June 24, 2012 Posted by aletho | Civil Liberties, Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Full Spectrum Dominance, Solidarity and Activism | Film Studies, Israel, NCSU, North Carolina, North Carolina State University, North Carolina Supreme Court, Palestine, Randy Woodson, United States, Zionism | Leave a comment

Paraguay faces expulsion from Mercosur/Unasur, economic isolation

MercoPress | June 23, 2012

President Cristina Fernández assured on Friday night that “Argentina does not condone the coup in Paraguay” and anticipated that “appropriate measures” will be taken at next week’s Mercosur Summit, scheduled to take place in Mendoza.

The Argentine leader also said that Unasur expressed a unanimous voice regarding the impeachment process that removed President Fernando Lugo from office on Friday.

Brazilian president Dilma Rousseff also suggested that Paraguay could be expulsed from Mercosur and Unasur since the two organizations have clauses in support of democratic rules and governance.

Speaking at a press conference before addressing the UN Rio+20 summit Rousseff said there “are anticipated sanctions for those who do not comply with the principles that characterize democracy” but admitted Paraguay was going through “a complicated situation”.

When a country violates the democratic clause the sanction is “non participation in multilateral bodies; that is expulsion from Mercosur and Unasur”.

Ecuadorean president Rafael Correa anticipated that his government “will not recognize any other Paraguayan president but Fernando Lugo”, and independently of the decisions from Lugo and Unasur “Ecuador will not recognize the new president”, Federico Franco, named by Congress.

“We are not going to remain idle to the advance of these type of issues in our region because what happened in Paraguay is absolutely illegitimate” and recalled the democratic clause from Unasur which enables the regional block to act when against the rupture of democratic order in any member country.

“What has happened in Paraguay is a big farce disguised as legality but it is totally unacceptable that the decision to oust a president was taken in 24 hours ignoring his right to due process and defence”, added Correa.

Venezuelan Foreign minister Nicolas Maduro said in Asuncion that a meeting of Unasur heads of state will take place soon to decide on the Paraguayan case, which he described as “absolutely shameful”.

Maduro is in Paraguay as one of the Unasur Foreign ministers’ delegation sent to try and mediate in the political crisis.

Unasur ministers cautioned that if due process was not respected “this would mean the rupture of cooperation of Unasur, Mercosur and Celac with Paraguay” which involves among other things cutting of subsidized fuel, limiting communications and commercial dealings.

Unasur Secretary General Ali Rodriguez said in a release that country members “will assess how it can be possible to continue cooperation with Paraguay in the framework of South American integration”, if the impeachment process ignores due process and the right to defence.

“The foreign ministers mission reaffirms its total solidarity with the Paraguayan people and its support for constitutional president Fernando Lugo”, underlined Ali Rodrigues.

Venezuela’s Maduro said that “we came (to Paraguay) with the best of willingness and open minds to help but disappointingly we were not listened by those making the decision”.

“There is an evident breaking down of constitutional order” pointed out Maduro who added the delegation arrived in Asunción “to support Paraguayan democracy, the Paraguayan people and the constitutional president Fernando Lugo”.

Maduro claims lawmakers listened in “silence and with indifference” to the Unasur request for respect to due process in the impeachment of the head of state.

See also:

Argentina recalls ambassador

Brazilian embargo could impact 60% of Paraguay’s exports

Rousseff suggests expulsion of Paraguay’s Mercosur and Unasur (ireport.cnn.com)
Paraguayan Senate impeaches leftist president, causing international uproar (weeklyintercept.blogspot.com)

June 23, 2012 Posted by aletho | Economics, Solidarity and Activism | Dilma Rousseff, Federico Franco, Fernando Lugo, Mercosur, Paraguay, Rafael Correa, Unasur, Union of South American Nations | Leave a comment

A Tale From a Time of Heroes

Leila Khaled and the Struggle for Palestinian Liberation

By RON JACOBS | CounterPunch | June 22, 2012

There was once a time not so long ago when the world seemed to be full of revolutionary heroes. These heroes were both men and women. The actions and accompanying commitment of these individuals inspired millions of others to join movements and organizations dedicated to a vision of social justice and freedom that understood colonialism and racism to be their primary opposition. From Martin Luther King, Jr. to Rosa Parks; from Huey Newton to Assata Shakur; and Che Guevara to Leila Khaled, the list of such individuals is too great to recount here. Their enemies included secret and not-so-secret police, intelligence agencies dedicated to their murder, and governments both liberal and reactionary whose lot lay with the imperial powers in Washington, London and elsewhere in the North. The presence of such men and women made them targets for those opposed to their vision. Simultaneously, the fact of their stature provided them with a media presence created a public awareness of their cause which helped recruit adherents and supporters.

During the first Gulf war I worked with an antiwar group in Olympia, WA. There was a young woman named Leila of Syrian heritage in the group. It was during a conversation about the Palestinians that the subject of Leila Khaled came up. After five minutes of conversation or so, Leila mentioned that she was named after Khaled. I knew that Khaled’s youth, beauty and media savvy had made her a media favorite during the hijackings and other actions she had participated in. I also remembered the spray painted silhouettes of Khaled that appeared on the walls of squats and at the Goethe Universitat in Frankfurt. However, this young woman was the first person I had met who was named in her honor.

Recently, Pluto Press published a small biography of Leila Khaled as part of its Revolutionary Lives Series. It is titled Leila Khaled: Icon of Palestinian Liberation. Authored by Sarah Irving, a freelancer who has written about environmental and Palestinian issues, this biography looks at Khaled’s life from its beginnings in a Palestinian village occupied by the Israelis to her current activism. Culling information from her biography My People Shall Live, newspaper and journal articles spanning her life and recent interviews, Irving’s book takes a comprehensive look at a life fully-lived.

For those who remember the hijackings Khaled participated in, Leila Khaled: Icon of Palestinian Liberation brings those events back to life. In addition, she provides the reader with Khaled’s insights and descriptions of how those hijackings unfolded. Khaled also touches briefly on her emotions during those actions. Irving describes the determination of Khaled’s enemies to kill her, a determination that resulted in her sister and sister’s fiancée being murdered by mistake. She also describes the life of Khaled’s family as refugees and relatives of a revolutionary wanted by Israel and a myriad of other governments. The Palestinian movement Khaled first entered was quite different than that which exists now. Religious elements had minimal influence. Indeed, the primary divisions in the movement arose in the political/economic arena. The primary organization, Al Fatah, was what was then termed a bourgeois nationalist movement, while the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP) defined itself as a Marxist one. Khaled was (and is) a member of the latter, but seems to have been only minimally involved in the internecine warfare that occasionally erupted between the factions. Her discussion of the influence of Muslim culture in the Palestinian movement and how it effects the role of women in the Palestinian struggle is an important part of this book and worthy of further exploration. This is especially true given Khaled’s long history in the movement and her lifelong insistence on the need for women to be involved. A sidebar to this discussion is her telling about incidents where some of the men pretending to be strict enforcers of the hijab in Gaza following Hamas’ victory turned out to be informers for the Israeli military. This story points out the potentially reactionary nature of a nationalism that depends on cultural elements to define it while rejecting anticapitalist economic analyses.

Khaled discusses the current situation in Palestine. In her opinion, the Oslo accords should never have been signed. The continued control of Palestinian economic, social and daily life by Israelis and their paid police insures the perpetuation of the Occupation. Her opposition to the Accords is often characterized by her enemies as being an opposition to peace. Khaled’s response is simple. When there are no more Israeli soldiers, police, and other agents of the Tel Aviv government occupying the territories, then there will be peace. Until then, the struggle continues. As if to emphasize this, some events arranged by Irving’s publisher to announce the book to the British reading public have been cancelled because of threats of violence. This fact proves Khaled’s continuing relevance, while also intensifying the need to publicize the book.

The struggle of the Palestinians is a different looking struggle than it was when Leila Khaled’s name first became known to the world. Yet, it is the same struggle. Heroic figures like those mentioned above do not seem to be part of that struggle right now. However, their stories are important and need to be told. Leila Khaled: Icon of Palestinian Liberation does a great job of telling one such story.

Ron Jacobs is the author of The Way the Wind Blew: a History of the Weather Underground and Short Order Frame Up.

Attempted Ethnocide in Palestine (windowintopalestine.blogspot.com)

June 23, 2012 Posted by aletho | Book Review, Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Solidarity and Activism, Timeless or most popular | Israel, Leila Khaled | Leave a comment

Penalizing Protest Action

By Anna Majavu · The South African Civil Society Information Service · 19 Jun 2012

Increased police brutality and the prospect of conservative politicians using public money to sue and bankrupt organizations they ideologically oppose – these are the likely outcomes of last week’s Constitutional Court judgment against protest organisers.

In a judgment which upheld a repressive clause in the apartheid-era 1993 Regulation of Gatherings Act, Chief Justice Mogoeng Mogoeng ruled that members of the public who suffer damages from protestors have the right to recoup their losses from whoever hosted the protest – whether the damages were caused by members of the organisation, or not.

There is no onus on the person suing the organisation to prove that the damages were caused by members of the protesting organisation – the mere fact that the damage happened during the march is enough in the way of proof for anyone to be able to claim damages from the organisers.

In May 2006, after a security guards’ strike by the South African Transport and Allied Workers Union (Satawu) turned violent, then Cape Town mayor Helen Zille decided to sue for damages on behalf of individuals who had suffered losses from the strike.

Ever since then, the DA has been trying to get Parliament to pass their private members’ bill aimed at “holding unions liable for strike damages”. The Constitutional Court has now done their job for them, supported by ANC police minister Nathi Mthethwa who also weighed in on the side of the DA.

However, the judgment has a far broader reach. The head of the Freedom of Expression Institute’s law clinic, Mbalenhle Cele pointed out “assemblies, with all their potential for disruption, are often the only way for individuals to give voice to their grievances, and to do so effectively.” This is primarily because politicians only listen to the language of disruption. While unions normally follow the correct channels and apply for permission to hold marches, making their leaders easily identifiable as organisers, social movements and communities often protest spontaneously or together with other small organisation. If a small non-profit organisation or a refugee rights group happens to support one of these protests, will they be held responsible for damages as the easily identifiable party?

Unions survive off their members’ subscription fees and while some have made shady forays into the murky world of union investment companies, many unions have little reserve funds, using the bulk of member fees to cover legal costs and maintain basic offices. The DA’s hostility to organised labour and protestors in general is no secret.

The conservative opposition party has been unable to mount any effective propaganda campaign against the unions, which continue to organise high numbers of workers. Having failed to find a working class audience willing to adopt failed free market ideas, it is unsurprising that the DA would resort to finding means to financially cripple the unions – effectively the only way of silencing them.

The process of financially crippling the unions can now be accelerated by anyone with an interest in doing this – the DA, big business, some factions of the ANC and the intelligence services. Any of these groups can land unions with a R2 million damages bill simply by inserting undercover agents into a march with an instruction to cause damage to property. This is not a far-fetched notion – it has happened before and indeed, with a judgment like this already working in their favour, anti-union groups would be foolish not to use dirty tricks to finish the unions off altogether. The DA, big business, some factions of the ANC and the intelligence services are all aware that in marches of over five thousand workers, it would be difficult for participants to identify non-union members in their ranks, especially since the trade unions have a tradition of inviting supporters ranging from family members, neighbours, churchgoers, priests, and assorted leftists to their marches.

The judgment ignores the police track record of deliberately sparking violence during protests. In the judgment, Mogoeng said unions would not be held liable in the event of a policeman discharging his gun “by accident” into a crowd, causing a stampede. However, he made no mention of violent police who regularly go on the attack – deliberately and not accidentally – against protestors. The case of Andries Tatane, slain by police last year, is an example. The well-publicised case of the residents of Hangberg is another example.

When the people of this hillside community in Cape Town’s Hout Bay stood together to protect their long-standing community from gentrification, the police broke their own regulations by firing rubber bullets at close range into the residents’ faces, taking out the eyes of four people, and provoking pandemonium.

It is well-known that peaceful union marches are unlikely to end quietly because police normally attack the tail end of a march, or pick off a group of people on their way home who have become separated from the crowd. At a union march two years ago in Cape Town, police became extremely annoyed after workers burnt tyres across the road – even though there was no damage to property or person. The police later embarked on a chaotic armed, hunt of workers through the taxi rank – with the workers running for their lives and the police in hot pursuit, firing rubber bullets as they ran. The current culture of police brutality is likely to worsen as a result of this judgment.

The judgment also opens the way for politicians to use public money to promote their own political agendas. Mogoeng made much of the need to protect innocent bystanders who did not choose for their property or persons to be damaged. Yet in the SATAWU case, Zille said she herself instructed lawyers to sue the union on behalf of individuals whose cars and other property had been damaged during the march. These individuals received the assistance of the DA because the case dovetailed with the bill the DA was trying to push unsuccessfully through Parliament. Zille has never made a similar offer to pay for lawyers for the blinded residents of Hangberg to sue the police who shot their eyes out, and this was clearly an ideologically skewed use of public funds rather than a genuine defence of ordinary people.

The judgment also opens the way for politicians to attempt to claim damages even where nothing has been damaged. Zille was furious five years ago when 93 Cape metro police protested by travelling in a pre-planned convoy for two hours along the N2 highway, bringing traffic to a standstill. The protest was entirely peaceful yet if it happened today, the city could make an attempt to quantify the time spent by commuters in the traffic jam as money, and sue for these costs.

A similar scenario is already unfolding in Australia where unions are fined for every day of an unprotected strike. Under the guise of saving the public from “havoc and turmoil”, political leaders in New South Wales are currently seeking to fine unions the equivalent of R1.5 million for every day of a wildcat strike – raising the fine from the current R150 000 a day.

In Australia, workers are individually fined if they embark on unprotected strikes. Earlier this year, 13 companies that claimed to have been affected by a seven-day strike at a construction company sued more than 1000 Australian workers for striking. These workers were fined a total of R56 million, suspended for seven years – as long as they didn’t strike again during that time. In this case, private companies were able to argue that the strike had “disrupted work on a site of economic significance to the Australian economy”, the Australian newspaper reported last month.

The Mogoeng judgment in favour of the DA and police minister Nathi Mthethwa has clearly started South Africa down a similarly slippery slope.

Majavu is a writer concentrating on the rights of workers, oppressed people, the environment, anti-militarism and what makes a better world.

Palestinian Nationalism, Alive Despite Israeli Instruments of Control

(Artwork: Sauda Camo)

By Hasan Afif El Hasan | Palestine Chronicle | June 18, 2012

From day one after the 1967 war, Israel’s actions in the West Bank, Gaza Strip and Jerusalem suggest the occupation was not temporary and underscore Israel’s desire to erase the concept of the Palestinian nation by undermining the connection between the people and their land or history. In an effort to incorporate as much as possible of the occupied lands, Israel governed the occupied lands by making distinction between the land and its Palestinian inhabitants and referred to the Palestinians only as ‘Arabs’. The Israelis wanted to weaken the Palestinians’ claim to their country and suggest they belong to other Arab countries. A politically powerful segment of Israelis, perhaps a majority, perceive the occupied lands as biblical territory and the indigenous Palestinians as ‘hostile aliens’ or as “part of nature’s hardship to be conquered and removed.”

The concept of cleansing and transferring the Palestinians has been deeply rooted in the colonial Zionists political and military planning. It was practiced on a large scale in 1948 when top-ranking officers of the future leaders of Israel prepared and executed ethnic cleansing of half Palestine’s native population, and the cleansing is being practiced today especially in Jerusalem. Israeli plans to expropriate land were developed, and other tools and practices were created to manage the lives of the people without integrating them into Israel’s citizenry. Israel used its own legal system to annex East Jerusalem immediately after the 1967 war; and in the West Bank, it carried out piecemeal confiscation by issuing orders from military commanders and employing Ottoman and British Mandatory laws and regulations from the Jordanian legal system.

Shaping the daily life of the people under occupation is one of Israel’s means of control to manage the population. Besides sealing the borders of the West Bank and Gaza Strip to crush internal resistance, Israel imposes curfews, arrests, deports, restricts movement, demolishes homes, and shuts down businesses and schools. The controlling system has manifested itself in legal regulations, permits and bureaucratic rules dictating forms of correct conduct everywhere. Thousands of orders have been issued by the Israeli military that deal with anything and everything as controlling apparatuses.

Within a few weeks of Israel’s swift success in capturing the West Bank and Gaza, the West Bank Palestinians began using strikes and demonstrations, and in Gaza, the opposition to the occupation assumed a violent character. Israel responded with military orders categorizing all forms of resistance as insurgency, including peaceful protests, political meetings, waving flags, displaying national symbols, even singing or listening to national songs.

Israel removed all activist leaders who showed opposition to the occupation, used administrative detentions and deported thousands suspected of supporting acts of resistance. Among the deportees were Abdel-Hamid a-Sayegh, the chief Islamic judge (Kadi) of the West Bank, and Nadim Al-Zaro, the mayor of Ramallah. In March 1982, the mayors of nine West Bank cities and Gaza were dismissed and military officers replaced them. The mayors’ dismissal, detention and deportation of community leaders failed to contain the Palestinian drive for emancipation and national opposition had to go underground. The Israeli journalists and authors Ze’ev Schiff and Ehud Ya’ari described the relationship between the Palestinians and the Israelis in their book ‘Intifada’ as “the relationship between a horse and its rider.”

Israel tried power-sharing agreement with Jordan, the military government, the village leagues and the civil administration to control the Palestinians, but it recognized that the methods it had employed to normalize the occupation and suppress Palestinian nationalism were not working. If anything, Palestinian nationalism resurged. Then Israel came up with the ingenious idea of outsourcing the responsibility for the population while continuing the occupation and colonization. Self-rule for the residents of the West Bank and Gaza Strip under a Palestinian authority (PA) without renouncing Israel’s sovereignty over the two regions was the answer. The PA was a product of the occupation to control the population and reduce its economic and political cost on Israel. Noam Chomsky pointed out that the PA was not intended as an instrument of decolonization but rather a framework that changed the means of Israel’s control in order to perpetuate the occupation. According to Chomsky, Prime Minister Yitzchak Rabin noted in an interview that the PA would be able to control the population “without all the difficulties arising from Supreme Court appeals, human rights organizations like B’Tselem, and all kinds of leftist fathers and mothers.”

Since the establishment of the PA, especially after the second intifada, Israel has been operating primarily to downgrade the value of the Palestinians to people whose lives can be taken with impunity, enforcing laws that legalize the incarceration and torture of political prisoners, permitted deportations, house demolitions, and curfews. The executive and judicial branches of government coordinated to rationalize the inhumane Israeli policies.

After the establishment of the PA, the Palestinians have even less autonomy in the economic field than in security. Constraints and restrictions enforced by the Israeli military hinder the development of an independent Palestinian economy and have transformed it into a captive market for Israeli producers. The leaders of the PA promised economic growth based on the assumption that productive economy would slowly be established, there would be large investments in infrastructure and industry and that the Palestinians would enjoy freedom of movement for themselves and their goods. They promised that the Gaza Strip would be transformed into “the Middle East’s Singapore” and the Palestinians would enjoy the fruits of their agreements with the Israelis. Ironically, these agreements have been reasons the wishful promises did not materialize.

The 1994 “Paris Protocol on Economic Relations” that was signed by the PA leaders replicated Israel’s colonial economic management of the occupied lands that had existed since 1967. It guaranteed that Israel would preserve its control of the occupied land’s economy and prevented the Palestinians from choosing their own trade policies according to their own interests. It has prevented the creation of an internal economic base with its own productive capacity and increased the Palestinians’ dependency on laborers who commute to Israel despite Israel’s use of the entry-permits and internal closures as an effective form of control weapon. Israel uses its power over the flow of laborers to collectively punish the public for any form of resistance. It was used to pressure the PA to clamp down on Hamas, Islamic Jihad, PFLP and other groups that resist the occupation. Professor Sara Roy wrote in her book ‘Gaza Strip’ that Israel was able to reorient a large percentage of the Palestinian labor force away from domestic agriculture and industry and integrate it in Israel’s labor force. The productive capacity of the Palestinians is diminished because Israel has restricted the development of a viable infrastructure capable of stimulating development in the West Bank. And in the Gaza Strip Israel has destroyed the infrastructure and the people’s means for survival.

The “Agreement on Preparatory Transfer of Powers and Responsibilities [to the PA]” of 1994 outlined the reorganization of PA power in many spheres including jurisdiction, secondary legislation, the judicial and security. The agreement states that the PA does not have jurisdiction over Jerusalem, the settlements and the military locations. It gave Israel a veto power over any regulation or legislation enacted by the PA that Israel considers exceeding the PA powers or inconsistent with other agreements. Israel must approve all employees authorized by the PA to inspect and monitor compliance with the laws and regulations. The PA agreed not to have authority over settlers or any non-Palestinian residing or travelling within the occupied territory.

In order to repress all forms of Palestinian nationalism, the Israeli occupation authority took over the educational system immediately after the 1967 war. Officers in charge of education became responsible for licensing private and public schools, hiring and firing teachers, the curricula and text books. They wanted the text books to adopt the Zionist historical narrative on Palestine and systematically erase any reference to Palestinian nationalism and identity. The word ‘Palestinians’ was replaced with ‘Arabs’ and the word ‘Nakbah’ was not allowed in any textbook. ‘Nakbah’ was the displacement of the vast majority of the indigenous Palestinians in 1948. “More than 1,700 titles were banned over the years including history, geography, political, literature and poetry books.” The occupation authority issued instructions for teachers not to teach their students extracurricular material for fear that they might adopt a historical narrative depicting a national Palestinian past. When the Israeli civil administration surrendered the management of the school system including the higher education institutions and vocation schools to the PA, it was on condition that they refrain from incitement against Israel.

Efforts by the Israelis to repress Palestinian nationalism failed because the Palestinian youth learn who they are and where they came from in their daily life as non-persons in the refugee camps, or in disconnected enclaves under the shadows of the Jewish only settlements, dehumanized and humiliated by the occupation soldiers at the blockaded roads, or in Jerusalem under the threat of home-demolition and deportation, or living in Israel as second class citizens or in besieged and impoverished Gaza.

– Hasan Afif El-Hasan is a political analyst. His latest book, Is The Two-State Solution Already Dead? (Algora Publishing, New York), now available on Amazon.com and Barnes & Noble.

Residency Of 240,000 Palestinians Revoked By Israel Since 1967 (alethonews.wordpress.com)

June 20, 2012 Posted by aletho | Economics, Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Full Spectrum Dominance, Solidarity and Activism, Subjugation - Torture, Timeless or most popular | Gaza, Israel, Palestinian National Authority, Sara Roy, West Bank | Leave a comment

The Future Direction of Egypt’s Revolution

By ESAM AL-AMIN | CounterPunch | June 19, 2012

Against all odds the Muslim Brotherhood’s (MB) candidate, Dr. Muhammad Mursi won Egypt’s first presidential election since the ouster of dictator Hosni Mubarak… but barely. Although the official results will not be announced until Thursday, the final tally shows that Mursi received 13.3 million votes (52 percent) while Mubarak’s last prime minister and the candidate of the military and the regime remnants, Gen. Ahmad Shafiq, garnered 12.4 million votes (48 percent).

It should never have been that close. Countless people wonder how a popular revolution that united millions of Egyptians against a corrupt regime and earned the world’s admiration, could have resulted in that same loathed regime on the brink of reclaiming power after little more than a year. Of course, the direct answer to this question is the ominous role played by the Supreme Council of the Armed Forces (SCAF), which took control of the country after Mubarak’s downfall, as well as the institutions of Egypt’s deep security state.

Their tactics included the direct manipulations of the elections process, the inexplicably favorable decisions by the Mubarak-era Presidential Elections Commission, the use of state media as well as private media outlets controlled by Mubarak-era corrupt businessmen to frighten the public about the specter of an impending theocracy, the clever ability to play the pro-revolution groups against each other, and the SCAF-appointed government’s deliberate disruption of the daily lives of ordinary Egyptians through the constriction of key staples and a lack of security in the street. Soon the public associated the revolution with instability, shortages and chaos. Dejected, many wished for the days of the old regime.

Throughout last year and aided by the Muslim Brotherhood’s missteps and behind-the-scenes dalliances with the generals, SCAF was able to create acute alienation and sow real mistrust between the MB, the country’s largest organized movement, and the rest of the pro-revolution and youth groups. By the end of March 2012, SCAF felt so emboldened by the success of its plan that it began to openly challenge and threaten the now alienated MB, despite the fact that the group was by that time firmly in charge of both chambers of parliament.

By the end of the first round of the presidential elections, SCAF succeeded in propelling its preferred candidate to second place behind the MB candidate. Ironically, both sides calculated that their chances of capturing the presidency would be greatly enhanced if they faced each other. The military’s candidate believed that he would then reinvent the old regime by presenting to the confused and frightened public with the stark choices between the civil state represented by himself and a menacing religious state epitomized by his opponent. On the other hand, the MB believed that its best chance would be to face a candidate from the loathed Mubarak era so as to force the pro-revolution groups to support its candidate despite the ill feelings generated towards the Islamic group (especially when it abandoned the youth groups during their confrontations with SCAF during much of last year).

After the first round of the presidential elections, the pro-revolution groups garnered almost 15 million votes (with Mursi receiving 5.8 million). On the other hand, Mubarak-era affiliated candidates received 8 million votes (led by Shafiq’s 5.5 million votes.) But the two major (though defeated) candidates supported by the pro-revolution groups in the first round were Hamdein Sabahi and Dr. Abdel Moneim Abol Fotouh, receiving 4.8M and 4.1M votes respectively.

Although Abol Fotouh promptly threw his support behind Mursi, citing the threat to the revolution if the military man won, Sabahi asked his supporters to invalidate their votes or boycott the elections, hoping to create a dynamic where both candidates could somehow lose in the court of public opinion. This would set the stage for his comeback as the pro-revolution and pro-civil state candidate. Quietly, SCAF’s candidate hoped that enough of Sabahi’s supporters would boycott the elections or invalidate their votes so that the numerical advantage of the pro-revolution groups would be neutralized.

As the military’s scheme was in full force relying on media offensive, bribes, and scare tactics, several polls conducted by state-sponsored institutions confirmed to SCAF that Shafiq had the momentum. The support of the military and the institutions of the deep state became even bolder, so much so that many political analysts thought the elections were practically over. To push this sentiment of inevitability, SCAF threw caution to the wind and committed a major error in judgment. In fact, it might have actually cost Shafiq the election.

Since the standoff between SCAF and the MB in March, it was widely known that SCAF could push for the dissolution of the elected parliament at any time in order to check the MB’s rise to power. The argument advanced by many pro-revolution groups that had reservations in supporting Mursi was that they did not want the MB to have unchecked control over both branches of government, the legislative and the executive. So when the High Constitutional Court dissolved the parliament two days before the elections, this brazen act of disregard for the electoral will of the Egyptian people actually backfired. A major segment of the Egyptian electorate, who intended to boycott or invalidate their votes, were so infuriated that they decided to vote for Mursi even if they initially did not intend to cast a vote at all (in the final count, less than 1 percent of the electorate invalidated their votes by checking both names on the ballot). Had a half million people out of over 25 million votes cast flipped their votes, the military’s candidate would have won.)

Last winter, in a moment of candor President Jimmy Carter said after meeting with SCAF’s leaders that the military had no intention of relinquishing power. In recent weeks it became quite clear what that observation meant. First, SCAF would utilize the instruments of power of the deep state to install its candidate. If such a scheme did not materialize, SCAF had a back-up plan. In such a case, it would not only take several actions that strip the real powers of the elected president (if he comes from the revolutionary camp), but also usurp all the legislative and executive powers from the newly empowered groups.

Many political figures including former presidential candidate Abol Fotouh called SCAF’s blatant acts “a soft military coup d’état.” Here are a few examples of the power grab measures taken by SCAF in a matter of days:

1) On June 14, SCAF sent the army to occupy the parliamentary building in anticipation of the dissolution of parliament by the High Court. Within days it issued its own decree to dissolve the parliament and reclaimed all legislative powers to itself. Typically when the parliament is dissolved, the president would be granted temporary legislative powers, to be reviewed later by the parliament when it is reconstituted.

2) On the same day the Justice Minister made a mockery of the repealed martial laws by effectively restoring the emergency laws and empowering the military and security agencies to arrest and detain anyone indefinitely, as well as to try in military courts any person deemed a threat to public order.

3) Within two hours of the closing of the polls on June 17, SCAF unilaterally issued a sweeping amended constitutional declaration that effectively transferred much of the presidential powers to itself. For example, it stripped the president of his role as commander-in-chief of the armed forces and gave it to SCAF’s top general, Field Marshall Hussein Tantawi. It prevented the president from promoting or dismissing any military personnel. It also granted itself veto power over any decision by the president related to any military matter including the declaration of war or any domestic use of the armed forces.

Now instead of the military working under the country’s president, the new declaration places the democratically elected president under the thumb of the military. It must be noted that such incredible measures are not dissimilar to the infamous and disastrous 1997 Turkish military coup d’état against the late Prime Minister Necmttin Erbakan.

4) SCAF stripped the president and the executive branch from any matters related to the state budget. It even declared its own budget secret and not subject to any accountability while providing itself total immunity.

5) Further, SCAF imposed its will on the new president by effectively retaining for itself the appointment of the most senior cabinet positions such as defense, foreign, and interior ministries, police, finance, justice, and intelligence.

6) SCAF also started the process of dissolving the one-hundred member constitution-writing committee, appointed delicately by the parliament last week from across all the spectrum of Egyptian political and civil society. In the new constitutional declaration, SCAF gave itself the right to reappoint the one-hundred committee members in a direct violation of the constitutional amendments passed by the people in the March 2011 referendum.

Moreover, if that committee refused to give the military its coveted special status in the new constitution, SCAF claimed a veto power over any articles written in the draft. If the committee then overrides SCAF’s veto, the declaration empowers Mubarak’s appointed judges in the High Court to decide the dispute between the two parties, in an incredible attempt to impose the military’s dictates on the country.

7) One day after the elections, as it became apparent that SCAF’s candidate was defeated, SCAF issued another decree that revived the National Defense Council (NDC), a body that has been dormant since the late 1980s. The function of this council is to make decisions on all strategic, defense, and national security matters. In another affront to the first-ever civilian (not to mention democratically elected) president, the NDC’s members comprise eleven generals (all from SCAF) and only five civilians, including the president. It decides all matters by a majority vote, thus tying the hands of the president regardless of where he stands on a particular issue.

8) Not content with its sweeping power grab, SCAF’s head, Tantawi, then issued another decree appointing one of his assistants, another military general, as the chief of staff of the new elected president to act as the eyes and ears of SCAF over the new president before he even took office. In the eyes of the military the new (read puppet) president would not even be allowed to appoint his own chief of staff.

As expected this wholesale usurpation of power by the military was universally condemned not only by the new elected president, the MB, and the rest of the revolutionary groups, but also by most civil society groups and public figures. Meanwhile, counting on a business as usual with the MB, SCAF has quietly started another tactic to pressure the MB into submission. It revived a court case seeking the dissolution of the MB, declaring it an illegal group and confiscating its assets. A decision on the matter is expected soon.

One of the reasons that SCAF hopes to get its way this time is because it relies on its experience during the last year of making behind-the-scenes deals with the MB. In fact, just a week before the elections, MB deputy leader and strongman Khairat El-Shater met with senior SCAF leaders, offering them a deal that would have granted the military generals many (but not all) of their requests in return for an accommodation of the MB candidate. SCAF’s response was cold and aloof, believing that their candidate was a shoe-in in the elections without the need to compromise. Little did El-Shater know, they were in fact preparing not only to defeat the Islamic candidate but also to dissolve the Muslim Brotherhood-led parliament.

But after the dissolution of parliament and the anticipated disbanding of the constitution-writing committee, as well as the usurpation of legislative and executive powers by SCAF, the MB decided to re-join the other pro-revolution and civil society groups in challenging the military’s suffocating control over the country, taking to the streets in massive numbers in all of this week.

This showdown between SCAF and the deep state on one hand, and the pro-revolution forces (newly empowered by the defeat of the military’s candidate) promises to engulf the country for the days and weeks ahead. If the Islamic parties led by the MB and the other pro-revolution supporters led by the youth groups, as well as many respected judges across the country such as Judge Husam El-Gheryani (head of the Supreme Judiciary Council as well as the chairman of the constitution-writing committee) join together and take a firm stand against the military, then it might be very difficult for SCAF to have its way.

The demands of the revolutionary groups should be clear: the return of the military to its barracks without any interference of the political or civilian affairs of the state. SCAF must immediately rescind its unconstitutional declaration usurping the legislative and executive powers from the democratically elected parliament and president. It should also cease all efforts to dissolve the constitution-writing committee and allow the political process as negotiated by all various political parties to take place. It should finally halt its behind-the-scenes manipulation of the judiciary to interfere in political matters.

The pro-revolution forces have fortunately dodged a bullet by defeating the military’s candidate. But the struggle to reclaim their revolution must continue to persist. This time all pro-revolution and pro-democracy groups must realize that they will have to swim or drown together as they face the last battle to dismantle the military and security state. No more making behind-closed-doors deals or giving the benefit of the doubt in a tacit understanding between the military and some political groups. The MB must realize that it gained more than 7.5M votes (for a total of 13.3M) from the pro-revolution forces in the second round, after reaching its peak in the first round with 5.8M votes. It must show respect and offer real partnership to these groups.

Hall of fame baseball player Yogi Berra once said, “In theory there is no difference between theory and practice. But in practice there is.” In theory, pro-revolution supporters should put all their disagreements aside and unite until their remarkable revolution prevails as all counter-revolutionary elements within the state are purged and all the obstacles to its ultimate success are eradicated. It is indeed prudent to think that all such groups could set aside their differences (whether perceived or real) once they realize how hard and to what extent their opponents are determined to break their spirit for real change.

Revolutions are ultimately about the simultaneous act of a great number of people who decide to stand up for the greater good of society over self-interest. Such selfless conduct is often accompanied with the willingness to sacrifice whatever it takes to fulfill the genuine desire for public good and human progress.

Esam Al-Amin can be contacted at alamin1919@gmail.com

The True Face of Egypt’s Military (alethonews.wordpress.com)

June 20, 2012 Posted by aletho | Civil Liberties, Solidarity and Activism | Egypt, Jimmy Carter, Muslim Brotherhood, SCAF, Supreme Council of Armed Forces | Leave a comment

Issa Amro, coordinator of Youth Against Settlements, arrested at border on way to speaking tour

15 June 2012 | Popular Struggle Coordination Committee

Issa Amro, Coordinator of Youth Against Settlements, was stopped last night by Israeli authorities at the Allenby Bridge. He was arrested and taken to Hebron police station, where he was interrogated for hours on suspicion of involvement in organizing the women’s action that took place in Hebron last Wednesday, at the segregated Shuhada Street.

Amro, was traveling to Italy for a speaking tour organized by the Italian Peace Association to meet Members of the Italian Parliament and Senate, and municipality representatives from different Italian cities.

Issa Amro, a prominent popular resistance activist in Hebron, was arrested several times in the past by the Israeli army for participating in activities to protest the occupation practices in Hebron. Throughout the past few years, Youth Against Settlements has been leading the global campaign to re-open Shuhada street, Hebron’s main commerce center that was closed to Palestinian movement in 1994.

Last Wednesday, approximately 15 Israeli and International women dressed in Palestinian traditional clothing walked through Shuhada Street in silence protesting the policy of preventing Palestinian women from accessing the street. The women were shortly stopped by Israeli soldiers and attacked by both soldiers and settlers. Five activists and one journalist were arrested during the action. Later that day, a Palestinian man was also arrested on suspicion of “conspiracy” related to the same action. All seven were released throughout the next 24 hours, three on condition of a 90 day restraining order from area A and the Hebron area.

6 Arrested at Women’s Movement Walk in Hebron (occupiedpalestine.wordpress.com)
Israeli Brutality: Violent arrests of Palestinians in Hebron and disappearance of Dutch volunteer (alethonews.wordpress.com)
Settlers set fire to ancient tree in Hebron (alethonews.wordpress.com)
Israeli forces detain Hebron journalist (alethonews.wordpress.com)

June 15, 2012 Posted by aletho | Civil Liberties, Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Full Spectrum Dominance, Solidarity and Activism, Subjugation - Torture | Allenby Bridge, Hebron, Israel | Leave a comment

Can Zionism Fool All of the People All of the Time?

By Tariq Shadid | Palestine Chronicle | June 10, 2012

The Israeli colonization of Palestine continues unabated, and the political show that protects and enables it has become a boring and repetitive charade. At the same time, it serves to feed the agendas, wallets and speeches of politicians and others who like to pretend that they believe in a ‘negotiated solution’. It doesn’t take a genius to see how this deceptive game works, but it may be helpful to those whose eyes are filled with the sand that routinely gets sprinkled into them by Zionist spin doctors and their supporters around the world, to have the scenario spelled out in a clear and unambiguous way.

First of all, let us have a look at the cast, as well as the audience, in this theater of deceit. Of course, first of all there are Israelis and Palestinians; then there is the Arab world, the United States, the so-called ‘Quartet’ and the International Community. Each play their own role in making sure that the charade continues, effectively resulting in the continuing theft and colonization of more and more Palestinian land. This is what we have seen, and this is what we will continue to see if nothing changes. Nowadays, the ‘debate’ centers around ‘settlements’ and ‘settlers’. Let’s have a look at what this is really about.

‘Settlers’: Trained and Armed Terrorist Militia

The first deception that needs to be exposed for what it is, is the fake distinction between ‘Israelis’ on the one hand, and ‘settlers’ on the other. If you follow mainstream media, you would be tempted to believe that Israelis are ordinary citizens in a democracy that is similar to the democracies of Europe or the American continent, while settlers are religious extremist fanatics who often are at odds with the Israeli establishment.

If you believe this, you are actually wrong twice, since the Israelis are not ordinary citizens but themselves settlers or their offspring, who all – men and women – have served their mandatory time in the military for training. Those who are called ‘settlers’ are Israelis from that same population, who are further armed, financed and trained by that same Israeli establishment, and showered in luxury in order to tempt them to populate the new Zionist colonies on stolen Palestinian land.

Those they call ‘Israeli citizens’ live in the older Zionist colonies, that were established by the expulsion of the indigenous Palestinians and the destruction of their villages and cities in 1948. The so-called ‘settlers’ live in the newer colonies, established in a similar way on lands occupied in 1967. If you wish to be confused and misled, go ahead and fall for that deceptive distinction, and you will fail to see that the settlements are the outposts of the Israeli colonization of Palestine, populated by their armed terrorist militia that works closely with the Israeli army. This cooperation is illustrated most clearly by the way that the Israeli army protects the settlers when they conduct their destructive rampages through Palestinian villages and farmlands.

Financing Disunity

As for the Palestinians, they are tied down by the harsh circumstances of the occupation, as well as by their own flaws. One of the reasons for the complexity of their situation is of their own doing, namely their faction-inspired disunity. It lays the perfect groundwork for the Israelis to practice ‘divide and conquer’.

Being dependent on money from the West is the main factor that keeps the Palestinian Authority toeing the line in this sordid game. It is to be hoped that they realize what staying in the game means for the future of the Palestinians, but their lamenting ritual usually steers away from criticizing the most essential deceptions of the charade. On June 8th, the PA complained about Israel’s settlement policies with the following words: “This Israeli government’s priority is to appease the settlers, not to resolve the conflict.”

Keeping what was commented on previously in mind, they have it all wrong; Israel’s priority is to tighten their grip on Palestinian land which they plan to never return. The ‘settlers’ are the armed terrorist militia that they have deployed for this goal. Settlement debates, even in Israeli parliament, are just part of the show.

Good Cop, Bad Cop

This leads us to one of the main actors that enable this show to keep its Palestinian-land-devouring momentum: the United States of America. Under the deceptive layers of theatrical grime and costumes, it basically boils down to a ‘good cop, bad cop’ routine, with the USA posing as the ‘good cop’. A quick overview of almost two decades of ‘Oslo’ negotiations clearly displays that the United States support Israel’s settlement policies as much as they support the Israeli occupation itself, in spite of their efforts at claiming the opposite. The USA ‘condemns’ Israeli settlement expansion in words, while at the same time funding it with millions of American taxpayers’ dollars. Even in this ‘era of communication’, action still speaks louder than words.

On June 7th, Ariel Attias, Israeli Housing Minister, summed up the US-Israeli charade on settlement expansion.”They need to condemn. We need to build.” Does it come any clearer than that?

Crocodile Tears

No show is any good without an audience, and even that is something that has been well-provided for. Since the beginning of this century, the world has been introduced to a new player at the table, namely the ‘Quartet’. This basically non-existent entity is said to be comprised of the United States, the European Union, Russia and the United Nations, and supposedly plays the role of a more objective force that has the capability of representing the International Community. In fact, what it truly serves as is a neutralizing chip that is meant to create a semblance of this representation, with as its main objective to render the International Community passive and inactive. This is why this so-called Quartet is barely ever mentioned, unless there is an issue that seems to require the opinion of the ‘outside world’. When the ‘Quartet’ does speak, all it does is shed a few crocodile tears about the ‘tragedy of the ongoing conflict’.

This should be no surprise, since at least 50 % of this group entails two main pro-Israeli forces: Europe, birthplace, trading partner and moral hostage of ‘Israel’, and the United States, the big bulldog that is sworn to protect Israel’s interests at whatever financial, military or strategic cost. If the idea was to have this balanced into impartiality by the presence of the United Nations (which has both these forces strongly represented in it as well, including American veto power) and by Russia, which has lost all interest in the Israeli question ever since it threw off Communism, we only deserve the title of gullible fools if we buy into this. You would think no one would, but the sad fact is that many in the International Community do, even while knowing better than to do so.

Arabs: No Fingers to Make a Fist

Motivated by selfishness, lack of principle, and a cocktail of moral, economical and strategic weakness, this last group is most visibly represented by the Arab nations. We can’t even blame the so-called ‘Arab Spring’ for this, since all these factors have been rendering the Arab voice – and even more so the Arab fist – impotent in the face of Zionism at least since the 70’s.

What we do see however, is how ‘Israel’ plays its cards comfortably to the backdrop of increased Arab disarray in this period of revolution. At times it appeals to the West for sympathy when it depicts potentially successful Arab revolutions as a threat to its existence. At other times it uses human rights violations in Arab states in revolutionary turmoil as an excuse to boost its own deceitful image as ‘the only democracy in the Middle East’, while making gestures of benevolence (like its fake utterances of sympathy for Syrian civilian victims) that attempt to mask its deeply and inherently racist anti-Arab ideology.

Will We Be Fooled All of the Time?

Having seen all of this, the question remains: isn’t there anyone who sees through this ridiculously dirty setup? Why has this deceitful theater show been allowed to continue for two decades, resulting in nothing but a tightened Israeli grip on territories it occupies in violation of International Law and United Nations resolutions? The answer to this question is not as far-fetched as it may seem at first sight.

In a world run by governments that manage to confuse their citizens by instigating as much bickering as possible over domestic issues, while drawing unwarranted mandates from these populations to manage their foreign policies in any way they please to, it is not to be marveled at that governments and main stream media are doing everything they can to keep up appearances. In other words, it is not because they themselves fail to see through the charade, but because they have a stake in it.

And the rest of us? Ordinary citizens, with an inquisitive mind of our own, who do not enjoy being taken for fools? We see through it, and we search for tools to unmask it, to oppose it, and to defuse it. Keeping in mind that many Palestinian family incomes depend directly upon the existence of a Palestinian Authority, there are not many Palestinians who truly believe that the words used in those charades actually have any meaning. The same goes for many of those who inhabit the Arab World and other ex-colonies of the West, many of them recognizing the patterns of these deceptive political games. As for the populations of the United States and Europe, awareness of the situation is on a steady increase thanks to the courageous efforts of pro-Palestinian activists and writers, despite desperate attempts by Zionist ‘sayanim’ and other (often paid) protagonists of Zionism to flood social media with their propaganda.

The words of Abraham Lincoln spring to mind: “You can fool some of the people all of the time, and all of the people some of the time, but you cannot fool all of the people all of the time.” Two decades is quite a lot of time, and the hour is nearing when we must prove that Lincoln was right. Soon enough, the curtain on this political charade must fall, and the show must be over.

– Tariq Shadid is a Palestinian surgeon living in the Middle East, and has written numerous essays about the Palestinian issue over the years.

850 new settler flats to replace 30 slated for demolition (morningstaronline.co.uk)
Israeli violations of international law (24 – 30 May 2012) (occupiedpalestine.wordpress.com)
Settlers Set Fire to Palestinian Agricultural Land in Hebron (altahrir.wordpress.com)

June 11, 2012 Posted by aletho | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Illegal Occupation, Solidarity and Activism, Timeless or most popular | Arab, Israel, Israeli settlement, United States, Zionism | Leave a comment

Colombia and Guatemala Again Ranked 1st and 2nd in Murders of Trade Unionists

USLeap | June 6, 2012

In its 2012 Annual Survey of Violations of Trade Union Rights released June 6, 2012, the International Trade Union Confederation found that Latin America remains the most dangerous region of the world for trade unionists, with Colombia again leading the world, followed by Guatemala.

The ITUC says 29 trade unionists were reported murdered in Colombia in 2011, with 10 more in Guatemala, together accounting for a bit over half of the 76 trade unionists reported murdered in 2011. Colombia’s share of total murders dropped significantly, however, reflecting a decreased in 2010 murders of 51, representing 55% of the 92 trade unionists murdered in 2010.

Ironically, Colombia and Guatemala are also the two countries in Latin America that have been at the heart of U.S. policy on worker rights and Free Trade Agreements, with the Obama Administration pushing forward with implementation of the Colombia FTA in mid-May despite insufficient progress on worker rights while continuing to deal with a CAFTA (Central America Free Trade Agreement) labor complaint on Guatemala filed over four years ago that has yielded little progress even as violence against Guatemala unionists has escalated.

In a welcome and some say historic development, the conservative Guatemalan agribusiness sector has called on its own government to investigate and prosecute those responsible for the violence that has been directed at the country’s largest union, Sitrabi, which represents Del Monte banana workers and is a filer of the CAFTA labor complaint. Sitrabi reports that seven members of its union members have been murdered since April 2011. The Camara del Agro released its remarkable letter [ English translation here] in late May; no response from the government has been reported as yet.

Colombia: Obama’s Bloodiest Betrayal? (alethonews.wordpress.com)
Progress or Promises? Free Trade and Labor Rights in Colombia (alethonews.wordpress.com)

June 8, 2012 Posted by aletho | Civil Liberties, Economics, Solidarity and Activism, Subjugation - Torture | Colombia, Free trade area, Guatemala, International Trade Union Confederation, Labor rights, Latin America, Murder, Trade union | Leave a comment

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