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US Palestinians organize as government renews threats to indict solidarity activists

By Maureen Clare Murphy – The Electronic Intifada – 02/06/2012

The US Palestinian Community Network (USPCN) is asking supporters to sign a pledge to defend civil and human rights as it was revealed last week that the lead government prosecutor of the Holy Land Five has been assigned to the ongoing secret investigation against anti-war and international solidarity activists across the US.

USPCN is a Palestinian formation aimed at unifying Palestinians in the Shatat (exile) in support of self-determination and the right of return and ending the Zionist occupation and colonization of Palestine.

USPCN has rallied around Palestine solidarity and anti-war activists who are being targeted as part of an investigation into material support for foreign terrorist organizations. I am one of almost two dozen activists in Chicago and the Minneapolis/St.Paul areas who have been subpoenaed to a federal grand jury as part of this investigation.

The FBI and other federal agencies, in a coordinated raid in September 2010, burst into the homes of prominent organizers in the Midwest and harassed activists across the country. In the following months, subpoenas were delivered to a total of 23 activists; all of us have refused to testify, saying that we are being targeted because of our political work which is protected by the First Amendment of the US Constitution.

Veteran Chicano liberation, anti-war and immigrant rights activist Carlos Montes was also raided by the Los Angeles County Sheriff Department last May. Montes is named in one of the search warrants served in Minneapolis in September 2010, and when he was in custody the FBI questioned him about his political associations.

He was charged with trumped-up technical firearms code violations related to his participation in protests decades ago. (For more information about Montes and this attack on him, see this good backgrounder by Chris Hedges: “Carlos Montes and the Security State: A Cautionary Tale.”)

Readying for national day of action

The USPCN’s pledge in support of the activists reads:

In solidarity with the 23, we will defend our constitutional rights of freedom of speech and assembly. We will stand up to any escalation of the attacks on human rights activists.

We will join in the National Day of Protest when any of the 23 human rights activists are ordered to appear in front of the Chicago Grand Jury or indicted.

The Committee to Stop FBI Repression, which formed in the wake of the September 2010 raids, also has a petition that has already been signed by thousands of individuals. There is also a national petition in support of Carlos Montes.

Lead prosecutor of Holy Land Five now part of secret investigation

It was revealed last week that not only is the the investigation into the anti-war and solidarity activists ongoing, but Barry Jonas, the lead prosecutor of five men associated with the Holy Land Foundation, is now working on the investigation under US District Attorney Patrick Fitzgerald in Chicago.

The Holy Land Foundation for Relief and Development (HLF), once the largest Islamic charity in the US, was shut down by the Bush administration in December 2001 and indictments came down a few years later. After a first trial resulted in a hung jury that favored toward acquittal, a second trial resulted in the conviction of the five men, who were given sentences ranging from 15 to 65 years in prison.

The US government alleged that the HLF was providing material support to Hamas, a Palestinian political party on the US State Department’s designated foreign terrorist organization list. As is summarized in Alia Malek’s excellent book Patriot Acts: Narratives of Post-9/11 Injustice:

The HLF was not accused of directly financing terrorist violence, but of supplying funds to Hamas-controlled charitable societies and committees. The US government has argued that providing humanitarian aid to victims of war or natural disasters is a crime if provided to or coordinated with a group labeled as a foreign terrorist organization.

The charitable groups, known as Zakat Committees, identified in the indictment have been funded by the US and the defense denied that the committees are controled by Hamas. The Hamas party won a majority of seats in the 2006 Palestinian Legislative Council elections and the Gaza Strip has been subjected to a devastating siege of collective punishment following the Hamas government’s takeover of the territory’s internal affairs.

All of the major Palestinian political parties, except for Fatah, is on the State Department’s terrorist organization list, essentially criminalizing an entire people. Of course I don’t have to point out the hypocrisy of criminalizing Palestinian political groups while the US funds the Israeli occupation to the tune of $3 billion a year and provides Israel with diplomatic cover at the United Nations.

Charity treated as “local face of terrorism”

Holy Land Foundation co-founder Ghassan Elashi is currently serving a 65-year sentence in a Communications Management Unit — self-contained detention centers where communication is severely restricted and monitored, and which are disproportionately populated by Arabs and Muslims. He provides a revealing testimony in Patriot Acts, describing how the HLF and his family company, InfoCom, which was raided days before the 11 September 2001 attacks, became the “local faces of terrorism.” It was at one point even speculated whether the 11 September attacks were in reprisal for the raid on the company.

Elashi also describes how the government agencies who raided the HLF’s offices in December 2001 had neither a search warrant or a court order to seize its contents.

The injustices against the HLF continued during the trials. During the first trial, Elashi recounts, “the prosecutors focused on the killing of Israeli soldiers and civilians by Palestinian elements, and specifically Hamas, as opposed to the actions of the HLF or the defendants themselves.”

Elashi adds:

One government witness testified in detail about suicide bombings claimed by Hamas, and prosecutors were also allowed to present to the jury numerous images and statements made by individuals other than us. For example, they showed pictures of the aftermath of suicide bombs, and videos of Palestinian school ceremonies in which children played the roles of suicide bombers, complete with suicide belts. None of the videos came from the HLF’s files. The videos depicted events that happened years after the HLF closed, and there is no evidence that the defendants attended these ceremonies.

Yet all attempts by our attorney to show the jury fundraising videos demonstrating the HLF’s charity work were met with objections from prosecutors and the judge. The judge even deemed the evidence irrelevant.

Like in the Chicago trial of US Palestinians Muhammad Salah and Dr. Abdelhaleem Ashqar a few years back, the prosecution’s star witness in the HLF trial was an “anonymous expert who worked with the Israeli secret intelligence.” His real name was not revealed to the court and the defense attorneys were severely limited in what they were allowed to ask during cross-examination. “This is the first time in history the US court had allowed an expert witness to testify with an anonymous name,” Elashi recounts in Patriot Acts.

Elashi also recalls that after the first trial, none of the defendants were found guilty of any of the 197 counts against them. However, the prosecution had more tricks up its sleeve, as Elashi recalls:

Prosecutors then asked the judge to poll the jurors. The judge agreed, and one of the jurors changed their mind. Suddenly there was confusion in the court. Some of the marshals told us that they had never seen such a thing in their lives. The judge then ordered the jurors to go back to the deliberation room and come out with a final verdict … This time one of the jurors changed their minds … the final verdict was a hung jury on all counts for all defendants, except [Mohammad] Elmezain, who was acquitted on all counts, with a hung jury on one count. The judge then announced a mistrial. A mistrial meant of course that prosecutors decided to retry the case.

A second trial resulted in guilty verdicts on all counts and lengthy prison sentences for the five men.

Palestine solidarity construed as material support for terrorism

The injustice of the trial, convictions and sentencing of the Holy Land Foundation five gives an idea of what anti-war and international solidarity activists are in for should they be put on trial.

The American Civil Liberties Union of Massachusetts’ Privacy Matters blog published a spot-on analysis last week on “International solidarity and the First Amendment in the crosshairs,” saying that government prosecutor Barry Jonas’ involvement “suggests that criminalizing support for Palestine could be at the top of the grand jury’s agenda.”

The post also states:

Since the Holy Land Foundation case was decided, prosecutors have obtained a new weapon to use against international solidarity activists like those at the receiving end of grand jury subpoenas. The Supreme Court ruling in June 2010 in the case of Holder v. the Humanitarian Law Project was the culmination of 12 years of litigation over the interpretation of the “material support to terrorism” provision of the 1996 Anti Terrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act, which was expanded by the USA PATRIOT Act to include the categories of giving “expert advice or assistance,” training, service and personnel.

The case revolved around groups that were helping the PKK (Kurdistan Workers Party) develop non violent ways of getting its message across and an organization that maintained that the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Ealam (LTTE) should be the recipient of aid for northern Sri Lanka in the aftermath of the deadly tsunami.

In a 6-3 decision written by Chief Justice John Roberts, the Court in June 2010 carved out a frightening new exception to the First Amendment. Basically it says that if a person or organization has carried out some kind of activity that was somehow “coordinated” with a group that has been listed by the Secretary of State as a terrorist organization, then that person or organization can be prosecuted for giving “material support” to terrorists. That activity can be wholly peaceful, have peacemaking or humanitarian relief as its goal, and involve nothing more than words.

The Supreme Court’s constitutionally vague decision gives the government a powerful tool to prosecute international solidarity activists. As the ACLU-Mass blog notes:

If the African National Congress were still on the State Department’s list — it was taken off by an Act of Congress as a 90th birthday present to Nelson Mandela in 2008 — then, theoretically at any rate, anyone from this country who worked with Mandela, or enabled Mandela’s voice to be heard could have faced criminal charges.

While in its June 2010 decision the Supreme Court declared that it was not criminalizing independent advocacy of ideas or opinions, ACLU-Mass notes that this was “overlooked in Boston where, in December 2011, a federal jury found Tarek Mehanna guilty of conspiracy to provide material support to terrorists without any kind of demonstrated link being made to a terrorist organization.”

Ideological war

The (mis)application of anti-terror legislation is something that I have been scrutinizing on my blog, focusing on the case of three young North Carolina Muslim men who were indicted, convicted of and received decades-long sentences for conspiracy to provide material support for foreign terrorist organizations and, in two of their cases, for conspiracy to kill, kidnap, harm or maim persons in a foreign country.

However, the government did not identify which specific groups the men were plotting to provide material support for. The indictment instead uses the word jihad over and over again, as though that was a specific crime codified in US law, and refers to generic mujahideen (repeatedly mis-transliterated from Arabic as mujihadeen in the indictment, revealing US attorneys’ complete ignorance with the subject matter). Mujahideen roughly translates to “holy warrior” but does not refer to any specific group of people.

During the sentencing hearings for the three young North Carolina men, which I covered for The Electronic Intifada, statements made by government prosecutors suggested that it was ideology on trial. One of the defendants’ sympathies with Iraqis resisting US occupation forces in Fallujah was treated as evidence of him being sympathetic with terrorism. In one of the other men’s hearing, a US attorney referred to the US military as the “arm by which we have fought radical Islam all over the world.”

The North Carolina defendants were conflated with parties fighting the US military overseas, suggesting that the US government views the prosecution of US Muslims as the “domestic” front of the war on terror, and that ideological opposition to US foreign policy is “evidence” of “terrorist” leanings.

Never-ending “war on terror”

The dangers posed to civil liberties by the indefinite, ideological “war on terrorism,” which has no geographic boundaries, have been particularly felt by Arab and Muslim communities in the US. Environmental and animal liberation activists have also been treated as domestic terrorists, and now Palestine solidarity activists are under threat of being prosecuted under anti-terrorism legislation. (Of course, Palestine activism in the US has been criminalized for decades — see this story I co-authored with my colleague Nora Barrows-Friedman for a bit of that history.)

The US State Department has said more than once that organizers with the US Boat to Gaza may be investigated for violations of material support to foreign terrorist organizations. US Congress late last year introduced a bill seeking to investigate the US Boat to Gaza.

Meanwhile the flow of money and arms to Israel goes unabated, and groups raising money to fund Israeli settlements enjoy tax-exempt status, just to identify but some of the double standards of what constitutes material support for “terror.”

The situation on the ground grows ever worse in Palestine, and Arab and Muslim communities face increased injustice in the US. It’s our job to raise our voices both in support for boycott, divestment and sanctions measures on Israel — including cutting off US aid — and in support of the civil liberties of those being repressed in the US.

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February 6, 2012 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Solidarity and Activism, Timeless or most popular, Wars for Israel | , , , | Leave a comment

Anti-war activists in Munich protest major security confab

Press TV – February 5, 2012
German policemen block demonstrators trying to approach Munich’s Bayerischer Hof Hotel, where the 48th Munich Security Conference is held.

Hundreds of anti-war activists have taken to the streets in the southern German city of Munich to protest against an annual, high-profile security conference.

Some 800 demonstrators marched on Saturday toward the Bayerischer Hof Hotel in Munich where the 48th Munich Security Conference is being held.

The three-day event brings together foreign and defense ministers and military experts from around the world.

The activists said that they were demonstrating against global arms deals, calling for a genuine global peace. The anti-war protesters also condemned the conference for ‘only paving the way for future conflicts.’

The event gathers the world’s major weapons producers who seek to invent wars and move profit backwards and forwards with certain countries, they said.

The 48th Munich Security Conference, focusing on Europe’s debt crisis and strategies for global security, was held with security provisions that were not as tight as the previous years, with police presence at a 3,100-strong low.

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February 5, 2012 Posted by | Militarism, Solidarity and Activism | , , | Leave a comment

US ‘most notorious police chief’ trains Bahraini forces

Press TV – February 4, 2012

A former U.S. police chief – whose “horrific” crackdown on protesters in Miami in 2003 drew condemnation from the Amnesty International- is now on the ground in Bahrain to train the security forces in the Persian Gulf nation, a human rights activist says.

The Bahraini government which has been repressing anti-regime protesters since mid-February last year now has one of America’s “most notorious police chiefs” to train its security forces, Mohammed Malik, who is also an organizer of Occupy Miami, told Press TV’s U.S. Desk.

“We continue to see the crackdown and this is an embarrassment to be an American and see that,” Malik said.

John Timoney was chief of the Miami Police for seven years and his heavy-handed policing of protests around the Republican National Convention in Philadelphia in 2000 and the Free Trade Area of the Americas summit meeting in Miami in 2003 has made him controversial.

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February 4, 2012 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Solidarity and Activism, Subjugation - Torture, Timeless or most popular | , , | Leave a comment

Kufr ad-Dik and Burqin march against boars, pollution, and violence by Israelis

International Solidarity Movement, West Bank | 3 February 2012

Burqin and Kufr Ad-Dik face daily obstructions in justice as nearby illegal Zionist settlements encroach on the livelihood of local Palestinians. The villages are surrounded by several hilltop illegal settlements and industrial sites with polluting factories and an army base.

“This is a microcosm of Palestinian suffering” stated a resident upon the arrival of International Solidarity Movement volunteers.

Burqin and Kufr Ad-Dik are under siege by settlers and soldiers. The villages are situated in Areas B and C as stipulated by the Oslo Agreement and sit dangerously close to the 1948 Green Line. Burqin has approximately 4000 residents which include many refugees from Al Nakba, or the Catastrophe, known to Palestinians when they faced exile from their villages in 1948 at the creation of Israel.


Kufr ad-Dik face to face with their oppressor

The village relies on small scale agriculture for its existence. The Israelis from the illegal settlements know this and routinely destroy Palestinian crops often by burning olive trees as part of the extremist “Price Tag Campaign.” They have also released wild boars from their settlements which eat Palestinian crops and are very dangerous, especially to the young of the villages. In an act of callousness the settlers destroyed a newly bought piece of farm machinery about two weeks ago. During this attack they also burned a car and unsuccessfully firebombed the local mosque, leaving threatening graffiti that they will be back.

While a local place of worship, graffiti, and vandalism seem like small offenses, one must keep in mind that these are systematically done to pressure the villages into abandoning what is left of their homes.

As with many of the Palestinian villages who have suffered the injustice of having their lands stolen by Israel in order to build illegal settlements, which continue to expand, Burqin and Kufr Ad-Dik are forced to endure regular attacks from the illegal occupants of their land as well as harassment by the Israeli military. The settlers, soldiers and Israeli government, which is benefiting from and funding the existence of these illegal settlements work cooperatively to forcibly remove Palestinians from their land.

There is an industrial estate, situated on top of a hill, which houses several severely polluting factories. These factories could not gain a license to be constructed inside of Israel due to the pollution that will be created, but they were granted permission by the Israeli government to be built within the West Bank illegally under international law. The waste from these factories is channeled in an open sewer through the villages.

Since the factories began polluting there has been a sharp rise in health problems within the village including an anomaly in cancer cases. A German charity volunteered to pay for the sewer to be covered and managed.

Permission to build this cover was flatly denied by the Israelis. The pollution from the factories has severely affected the surrounding land causing trees to die, crops to fail, and the meat from animals grazed on the land cannot be sold due to fear of contamination.

According to an article published by the Baheth Center for Strategic and Palestinian Studies, information on the size and power of these factories is not available to local Palestinians. In an article published by the Baheth center, they describe the extent of the factory waste:

The waste water and solid waste these industries produce,  provide important clues about the type and extent of industrial activity… Clear evidence that Israeli factories operating in the Occupied Territories do not follow pollution prevention measures is provided by the Barqan industrial zone, which houses factories producing aluminum, fiberglass, plastic, electroplating, and military items. Industrial waste water from this zone flows untreated to the nearby valley, damaging agricultural land belonging to the Palestinian villages of Sarta, Kufr Al-Deek, and Burqin, and polluting the groundwater with heavy metals.

Unemployment is now very high in the villages since much of the land has been taken by settlers and the military. To add insult to the pollution inflicted on the villages, the Palestinians are banned from working the factories surrounding them. With more land being taken away every day, unemployment and poverty continue to rise. Yesterday an army order was issued to take another 60 dunums (1000m squared = 1 dunum) for “military purposes.”  Farmers are now collating deeds to their lands in an attempt to argue their case in court.

Burqin has lost over 8000 dunums to the illegal occupation, most of which was stolen in the last 10 years. The land theft is sharply on the increase. The farm land that is left is still extremely dangerous to farm due to settler attacks and the threat of wild boars.

Not satisfied with attacking the food production, the Israelis have destroyed several wells, which are vital to the well-being of the villagers. The illegal settlers have commandeered most of the water supply leaving the Palestinians with critically low access to clean water. A recent study found that the average settler uses 18 times that of one Palestinian villager.

In addition to the destruction of wells several homes have been demolished including a home that the owner worked for 30 years to save enough to build.

Leaving or reentering the villages is high risk as settlers will often throw rocks at Palestinian cars. If the villagers successfully run the gauntlet they then have to pass through harassing Israeli Army checkpoints.

The villages have just started a weekly protest against their oppression in Kufr Ad-Dik. This was met last week with tear gas and steel bullets thinly coated with rubber leaving 10 villagers wounded.

The protest will continue every Friday.

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February 3, 2012 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Solidarity and Activism, Subjugation - Torture | | Leave a comment

13 injured in Nabi Saleh demonstration

Ma’an – 03/02/2012

BETHLEHEM – Israeli forces injured 13 people in the village of Nabi Saleh, near Ramallah, during a Friday demonstration against Israeli land confiscation, witnesses said.

A French national sustained an injury from a tear-gas canister, activists said. She was taken to a hospital in Ramallah and her injury was described as moderate, they said.

Maj. Peter Lerner of the Israeli army suggested the injury was actually caused by a Palestinian stone-thrower. Israeli border police were injured at the same “riot,” he wrote on Twitter.

Palestinian residents of Nabi Saleh and their local and international supporters demonstrate each week against a nearby settlement’s encroachment toward lands owned by the village.

In December 2011, a tear-gas canister killed Mustafa Tamimi, a resident of the village.

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February 3, 2012 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Solidarity and Activism, Subjugation - Torture | | Leave a comment

As anti-BDS attacks mount, students feel unsafe but U of Penn President maintains shameful silence

By Ali Abunimah – The Electronic Intifada –  02/02/2012

Yesterday I wrote to University of Pennsylvania President Amy Gutmann, asking her to condemn a vile and inflammatory attack by Professor Ruben Gur on the University’s own students.

Gur likened those participating in this weekend’s conference on boycott, divestment and sanctions (BDS) (at which I will speak) to Nazis, and Omar Barghouti to Hitler.

The unchecked inflammatory rhetoric by opponents of the conference, especially Professor Gur, is making students and conference participants feel unsafe.

Most disturbingly, Gur singled out Jewish students and speakers, calling them “capos” at Nazi extermination camps. “Capo” or “kapo” is the term for a concentration or death camp inmate who collaborated with the Nazis.

It would seem that Gutmann has no problem with such anti-Semitic attacks as long as the Jews being singled out in this despicable manner are deemed to be supporters of equal rights for Palestinians.

And Gutmann has failed to speak out even as pro-Israel groups are bringing a violence and torture advocate to campus to counter the BDS conference.

Failing to stand up to violent rhetoric

While I’ve had no response to my letter – 24 hours after sending it and confirming it was received by telephone – Gutmann wrote a public letter in the campus newspaper The Daily Pennsylvanian reiterating her opposition to BDS and adding this weak sauce:

Since its founding more than 270 years ago, Penn has stood for the free exchange of ideas. That concept is central to our mission, and is one that cannot be compromised if we are to uphold our standing as a great university.

Amid the passion that many feel around this weekend’s events, we urge you to focus on the one thing we cannot afford to lose: the great tradition and enduring gift of Penn’s founders – the chance to speak our minds freely.

These banalaties are an inadequate response to one of Penn’s faculty members denouncing Jewish students as “capos” and Nazis just because he disagrees with them.

Members of PennBDS, the campus group organizing the conference, responded to Gur’s hate speech in a letter of their own:

We read with some shock the opinion piece you published yesterday by Penn Professor Ruben Gur. With no evidence whatsoever, and in direct contradiction to everything we’ve ever said or written, Gur designates our student group “genocidal” and equates our upcoming conference with Nazi anti-Semitism. He labels our Jewish participants and organizers “Capos” and (in the same breath that he scolds us for describing Alan Dershowitz as an “Israel apologist”) compares Palestinian human-rights activist Omar Barghouti with Adolf Hitler.

Gutmann too should condemn Gur’s inciteful hate speech in clear terms. Instead, on that point, she has so far chosen silence.

Perhaps people should email or call President Gutmann (215-898-7221) to make sure she gets the message that she needs to stand up for her students against vile and discriminatory rhetoric from professors, and ensure the campus is safe for them to exercise their rights.

And yet President Gutmann and the University of Pennsylvania administration seem to take a surprisingly lax view.

A question that should perhaps be investigated is whether Gutmann’s failure to protect students – especially Jewish students – against the kind of intimidation and hate speech by Professor Gur amounts to a violation of their civil rights under Title VI of the 1964 Civil Rights Act.

Singling out Jews

Professor Gur is not the only one attacking the BDS conference and singling out Jews for special opprobrium. In The Jewish Exponent, Bryan Schwartzman writes:

More than a third of the listed speakers are Jewish, including Rebecca Vilkomerson, executive director of Jewish Voice for Peace.

This ominous sentence – where Schwartzman ‘counts the Jews’ – echoes Gur’s singling out of Jews as “capos.”

Bringing a violence advocate to campus

Not only is the University of Pennsylvania failing to stand up for its students rights, but increasing the heated atmosphere by bringing a notorious advocate of violence and torture onto campus to speak against the BDS conference. His name is Alan Dershowitz.

Max Blumenthal, a University of Pennsylvania alumnus wrote an op-ed in The Daily Pennsylvanian, abhoring Dershowitz’s incitement to violence. Here’s an excerpt:

To counter the Penn BDS event, local pro-Israel groups including Hillel and the Philadelphia Jewish Federation have summoned the famed trial lawyer and Harvard University professor of law Alan Dershowitz to campus to keynote a Feb. 2 event: “Why Israel Matters to You, Me, and Penn: A conversation with Alan Dershowitz.” Penn’s Political Science department – which has pointedly refused to co-sponsor the BDS conference – will co-host Dershowitz’s lecture, where the professor has vowed to explain why he considers BDS to be one of the most “immoral, illegal and despicable concepts around academia today.”

The support Dershowitz received from the university and from pro-Israel groups that claim to abhor violence is ironic in light of Dershowitz’s record. Indeed, Dershowitz is an open advocate of torture who has urged Israel to destroy entire Palestinian villages, attack civilians and bulldoze their homes.

It’s really past time for the University of Pennyslvania to show some responsibility, stop pandering to the political agendas of outside groups, and stand up for the safety and rights of its own students.

~

David Horowitz Spreading his hate on campus:

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February 2, 2012 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Solidarity and Activism, Video | , , , , , | Leave a comment

European MPs call on Israel to release Palestinian lawmakers

Ma’an – 02/02/2012

BETHLEHEM – A group of European Parliamentarians on Wednesday called on Israel to release 26 imprisoned Palestinian lawmakers, official news agency Wafa reported.

The group, composed of 26 members of the European Parliament, urged “the EU and its Member States to take immediate action” to release all imprisoned members of the Palestinian Legislative Council, a letter said.

“A strong and determined demand by the international community to free all Palestinian parliamentarians is long overdue and must become a priority,” the group said.

The EU lawmakers condemned the recent arrest of Palestinian parliamentary speaker Aziz Dweik, who was seized by Israeli forces at a Ramallah checkpoint on Jan. 19.

They also criticized the arrest of Palestinian MP Mohammad Tawtah and former Jerusalem affairs’ minister Khalid Abu Arafa, who were detained on January 23. during a raid on the Jerusalem headquarters of the International Red Cross.

“The most recent arrests aim clearly at undermining the prospect of Palestinian reconciliation and preventing the resumption of parliamentary life. They also jeopardize peace efforts,” said the letter written by EU parliamentarians.

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February 2, 2012 Posted by | Full Spectrum Dominance, Solidarity and Activism | , , | Leave a comment

Four injured as Beit Ommar marks anniversary of Yousef Ikhlayl’s murder

31 January 2012 | Palestine Solidarity Project

On Tuesday, January 31st, 2012, Beit Ommar villagers demonstrated near Route 60 at the entrance of the village to commemorate the one year anniversary of the murder of Yousef Ikhlayl, a 17-year-old Beit Ommar youth who was murdered by Israeli settlers on January 28th, 2011. The demonstration was organized by the Popular Committee in Beit Ommar and was supported by the Palestine Solidarity Project, the Popular Committee in Yatta, and several other Palestinian organizations.

As the demonstrators approached Route 60 at the entrance of the village, dozens of Israeli soldiers blocked their path and attacked the gathering with tear gas, sound bombs, and beatings. Israeli Forces used wooden clubs to strike at activists, and four demonstrators were injured. Yousef Abu Maria had his nose broken, Emad Abu Hashem was hit in the forehead with a club, Ahmad Abu Hashem was hit in the head with a soldier’s rifle butt, and Jamil Shuhada, an Executive Committee member for the PLO, was beaten with clubs and rifle butts.

The demonstrators remembered Yousef’s murder with the following demands:

  1. Try the murderers of Yousef Ikhlayl (the settlers came from Bat Ayn, one of five Israeli settlements built on land stolen from Beit Ommar villagers. To date, no settler has been arrested, let alone investigated, for Yousef’s murder.)
  2. Dismantle the Bay Ayn settlement
  3. Open the closed military roads around Beit Ommar which prevent farmers from reaching and cultivating their lands.
  4. Free all Palestinian political prisoners.
  5. Remove the Israeli military watchtower and checkpoint at the entrance of Beit Ommar and allow area residents freedom of movement.
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February 1, 2012 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Solidarity and Activism, Subjugation - Torture | , , , | Leave a comment

Arab participation at Israeli security summit enrages BDS activists

Al Akhbar | January 30, 2012

The participation of Arab officials and institutions at a major Israeli security conference has drawn staunch criticism from Palestinian and human rights activists.

The annual Herzliya conference, which includes high-profile guest speakers focusing on Israel’s major security challenges, invited a number of key Arab speakers, including Jordan’s Prince el Hassan bin Talal and senior Palestinian official Saeb Erekat.

Omar Barghouti of the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) campaign against Israel slammed Arab involvement at the conference as “an act of complicity in the promotion of Israeli occupation and apartheid.”

The conference, which is being held for the 12th year, aims at enhancing Israel’s national security through developing the country’s military and intelligence fields.

“The participation of any Arab speaker…[is] a move that undermines our struggle for freedom and our right to return and self-determination,” Barghouti said.

The conference is being held under the name of “In the Eye of the Storm: Israel and the Middle East” and will be attended by Israeli and international speakers as well as several Arab political, business and academic figures.

Some of the most prominent participants also include Salman Shaikh, Director of the Brookings Doha Center, and Riad al-Khouri, a member of the International Council of Quest-scope in Amman as well as others.

“The Palestinian civil society calls on all Arab participants to immediately withdraw from the Herzliya conference and respect the demands of the majority of the Palestinians who fully support the BDS campaign,” Barghouti added.

Herzliya’s website listed Saeb Erekat, the Palestine Liberation Organization’s (PLO) chief negotiator, as a speaker at the conference, but an official source told al-Akhbar that he was never invited to the conference and therefore will not be attending it.

The official, who wished to remain anonymous, said Yasser Abed Rabbo, a senior Palestinian official was the only member of the PLO to be invited to the Israeli conference, but declined the invitation.

A spokesperson for the Palestinian Embassy in Lebanon – who also wished to remain anonymous – declined to confirm who of the PLO was invited and would attend.

However, sources in Ramallah told Barghouti that Erekat had been invited to the conference, but withdrew following pressure from the Palestinian civil society.

“If true, this would crucially deny other Arab participants their Palestinian excuse,” Barghouti said.

“We hope that all Arab – and international – participants will withdraw from this shameful conference. Raising awareness about this form of Arab complicity is a key goal of our campaign.”

BDS campaigners aim to increase Israel’s international isolation and raise awareness of the plight of Palestinians suffering under Israeli military occupation.

“Our campaign for a boycott of the Herzliya conference is based on this meeting’s singular importance in building Israel’s strategy, especially in the security and military fields, to enhance its oppressive system of settler-colonialism, occupation and apartheid,” he explained.

Barghouti said Israel is “keen to display” the Arab officials and figures at the conference since it “boosts its propaganda efforts and cover up its increasingly isolated regime.”

The BDS activist also condemned the participation of the Brookings Doha Center, whose director is participating in the event despite the institution working to cement itself in the Arab world.

An “academic endeavor should never justify complicity in covering up grave violations of human rights and international law,” Barghouti said.

“At a time when BDS is achieving spectacular successes and turning Israel into a world pariah, these Arab participants are knowingly colluding in Israeli propaganda efforts, siding with the wrong side of history.”

Salman Shaikh of the Brookings Doha Center failed to respond to an interview request before this story was published.

~

Arabs declared as participants in the Herzliya Conference:

1. Prince al-Hassan Bin Talal: the Regent of Jordan since 1965 until his discharge on the 25th of January, 1999, and the youngest son of King Talal and Queen Zein ash-Sharaf. Western institutes describe him as “an outstanding Arab economist and intellect” as he is actively involved in international forums and conferences for economy and intellect, which twin with the Western ideology. He is making a direct speech via video-link in the opening of “the Herzliya Conference”.

2. Dr. Saeb Erekat: Chief Palestinian Negotiator for “the Process of Settlement” with the Zionist entity since 1996 and senior member of the Palestinian-“Israeli” negotiations, which accomplished “the Oslo Accords” in 1993. On the 12th of February, 2011, he made his resignation to the President of the Palestinian Authority Mahmoud Abbas after “the Process of Settlement” had reached a dead end. Seldom has Erekat missed membership in the negotiations of Palestinian delegations with the representatives of the “Israeli” Occupation. In the Conference he is addressing the recent developments of the Palestinian-“Israeli” relations entitled:

“NO PEACE, NO PROCESS: “ISRAEL”-PALESTINIAN RELATIONSHIPS”
3. Riad el-Khouri: Jordanian economist “specialized” in Middle East and Africa affairs; previously participated in “the Herzliya Conference”; a former member of “the Carnegie Middle East Center”; a professor at the American University of Beirut (AUB) and the Lebanese-American University (LAU); consultant for the European Commission, the World Bank, the Economic and Social Commission for Western Asia (ESCWA), the United Nations Development Program (UNDP), and the US Aid Program (USAID); member of the International Council of “Questscope” in Amman, Jordan, a British organization involved in “changing and merging” communities. El-Khouri is lecturing on these topics:
“SHORT-TERM SCENARIOS FOR THE MIDDLE EAST”
“THE RISE OF POLITICAL ISLAM ACROSS THE MIDDLE EAST: ARAB SPRING OR ISLAMIST WINTER?”
4. Salman Sheikh: a Qatari researcher; Director of “the Brookings Doha Center” and Fellow at the corresponding “Saban Center for Middle East Policy”. Sheikh’s researches involve “settlement” issues and “solutions” for the Middle East struggle. Among his researches is “A Chance for Hamas to Seek Friends outside Damascus”. He has held several earlier positions, including: the Personal Representative of the Secretary General for Lebanon; the UN the Special Advisor to the UN Secretary General on the Middle East; the UN Special Coordinator for the Middle East “Peace Process”; and “the Director for Policy and Research at the office of Sheikha Mozah Bint Nasser el-Missned”. Currently he is the Special Representative to the European “Muslim West Facts Project”; he is also “the Counselor of Oxford Research Group for Middle East Affairs”. Sheikh is lecturing on:
“THE RISE OF POLITICAL ISLAM ACROSS THE MIDDLE EAST: ARAB SPRING OR ISLMAIST WINTER?”
5. Tony Badran: Lebanese-American Research Fellow at “the Foundation for Defense of Democracies” (FDD) in Washington DC, which is sponsored by the “Israeli” Lobby and the Neo-Conservatives of the US; whereby he is specialized in the Lebanese and Syrian political affairs. He is known for his extremism and discrimination against Arabs; yet, he is in contact with the Lebanese “Future Party” (of “the March 14 Alliance”) and has been considered to be “the foreign secretary of the Future Party” for many US lobbies. Previously he joined “the Lebanese Forces”, and he has actually acknowledged this when interviewed by several US media, including “Fox News”; whereby he bragged about taking part in the perpetration of “the Sabra and Shatila Massacre” against the Palestinian refugees in Lebanon (in 1982). Actually, even some “Israeli” associations refrain from inviting him to their conferences as he has called for killing Muslims – even American Muslims. Badran is lecturing on:
“POST ASSAD: WHAT NEXT FOR SYRIA AND LEBANON?”
6. Sherif el-Diwany: an Egyptian economist and Director of “al-Marsad Incorporation”. He has held the position of the Director of “the Middle East and North Africa for the World Economic Forum Annual Meeting in Davos”, the policies of which are quite known. Though el-Diwany has no publicity or post in Egypt, he’s going to lecture on:
“THE SHIFTING BALANCE OF POWER: SAUDI ARABIA, IRAN, EGYPT, AND TURKEY IN THE MIDDLE EAST”
“MIDDLE EAST 2020: SCENARIOS FOR THE COMING DECADE”.
7. Advocate Basha’er Fahoum Jayoussi: a Palestinian of the lands occupied in 1948, one of the founders and the Chairwoman of “the Jewish-Arab Center” at the University of Haifa, which concentrates on “merging Arabs with the “Israeli” community” and establishing “common actualities” between Jewish and Arab students; whereby the Center offers awards and scholarships to students doing researches on the issue of “common Arab-Jewish livelihood”, as well as to students reinforcing this “common livelihood” in appreciation for their “social activity”. Most of Jayoussi’s activities focus on the normalization between Palestine and “Israel”. She is lecturing on:
“GOVERNING “ISRAEL’S” ECONOMY: SOCIAL JUSTICE VS CAPITALISM”

8. Nahed Khazem: Mayor of the Shafa Amr (Shfaram) Municipality in the Western al-Jalil (Galilee) in the north of occupied Palestine; is well known for his cooperation and good terms with the Zionist-government ministers, particularly with the Culture Minister Gideon Saer. Khazem also participates in merging Arabs with “the “Israeli” community” in the Galilee Region. He is lecturing on:

“GALILEE: SETTING PRIORITIES FOR REGIONAL DEVELOPMENT”
Here are epitomes of the prominent Arab attendees of “the Herzliya Conference”:
1. Muhammad Darawshe: a Palestinian of the lands occupied in 1948; Fellow Member at “the Abraham Fund”, an “Israeli” foundation; has held the position of the Foreign Affairs Director of “the Abraham Fund Initiatives” since 1996, of which he and Amnon Be’eri-Sulitzeanu have been the Co-Executive Directors since 2004. The foundation actually aims at eliminating the Arab presence in occupied Palestine; claiming the conduct of a “Merging and Equality Policy” targeting the Jews and Arabs in occupied Palestine. For more than twenty years, Darawshe has been significantly involved in the field of “Jewish-Arab co-existence”.
2. Masad Barhoum: a Palestinian of the lands occupied in 1948; the M.D. Director General of “the Nahariya Governmental Hospital” in Western al-Jalil (Galilee). Barhoum is known for his activity and cooperation with the “Histadrut” (“the “Israeli” General Federation of Laborers”), as well as his outstanding relations with the consecutive governments of the Zionist entity, particularly with the Zionist health ministers.
3. Ayman Seif: the Director of “the Center for the Development of the Arab Minority” at the office of the Zionist Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. In 1996 through 2008, he was in charge of “the “Israeli” Financial Committee” of the Prime Ministry, an economist at the Economy and Planning Ministry, and a member of “the Governmental Committee” in charge of securing the backgrounds of Arabs, claiming “Convenient Representation of Arab Scholars at Governmental Centers” as a policy; also a member of “the Special Committee for Promoting Work Opportunities and Initiatives in the Arab Mainstream”.
4. Dr. Khaled Abu Asbah: a Palestinian of the lands occupied in 1948; the Director of “the Massar Institute for Research, Planning, and Educational Counseling”; a Sociology-Department Lecturer at the Zionist “Beit Berl Academic College” in “the Third Sector” in occupied Palestine. He received his Sociology and Anthropology PhD from “the Bar Ilan University” in occupied Palestine. His dissertation addressed “Family and School Perceptions: Indicators for Arab-“Israeli” Students’ Involvement in Violence”. Abu Asbah is a pioneer as to merging Palestinians with the Zionist entity; whereby he is in charge of “the Strategy for the Advancement of Arab-“Israeli” Citizens in “Israel””, a project regarding which he has made studies at “the Van Leer Jerusalem Institute”.
Source: Al Intiqad Online Newspaper, Translated and Edited by moqawama.org
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January 31, 2012 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Solidarity and Activism | , , , , , | Leave a comment

We Are Nabi Saleh, a new film capturing people’s struggle, Mustafa Tamimi

By on January 26, 2012

The trailer of the documentary We are Nabi Saleh!
Check out http://www.wearenabisaleh.com/ for more info.
Stay tuned: https://www.facebook.com/pages/Jan-Beddegenoodts/211554788917904
We are Nabi Saleh is still looking for Co-funding, screening places and help with translation: Arabic-English. If you wan’t to collaborate, write an email to jan.beddegenoodts@hotmail.com. We can make it real together. Bless.

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January 30, 2012 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Illegal Occupation, Solidarity and Activism, Subjugation - Torture, Timeless or most popular, Video | , | Leave a comment

Israel losing the PR battle

By Yousef M. Aljamal | Centre for Political and Development Studies | 30 January 2012
Huwaida at the Port before departure

Huwaida Arraf - image via Wikipedia

For the third week in a row, the Centre for Political and Development Studies (CPDS), a Gaza-based think tank, held a video link to explore issues related to the Palestinian cause, with the presence of Palestinian and international activists. Huwaida Arraf, the co-founder of  the International Solidarity Movement, chair of the Free Gaza Movement, and a prominent Palestinian-American activist, talked to Gaza activists about “The Palestine solidarity movement: Countering Zionist propaganda globally.”

Choosing discourse to communicate with others is one of the basic requirements to get one’s voice heard. Zionists have mastered this, while Palestinians have been misrepresented in the West. Ironically, Palestine’s just story isn’t getting out. “Through the years we have not done a very good job of conveying our plight, and that’s largely because telling our story was left to our ‘official spokespeople’ who didn’t know how to communicate well with the western media”, said Arraf. “On the other side, Israel depends largely on PR, a fundamental part of its strategy. One of the biggest propaganda projects is The Israel Project. Its annual budget for last year alone was eleven million dollars. This is not counting the official support of the Israeli government, companies, and AIPAC”.

“Israel is losing the PR battle for various reasons: law and justice are on our side, there is an increasing awareness among Palestinians, the growth of alternative media like Facebook and Twitter, and, I believe, the effect of the International Solidarity Movement”, Arraf continued.

The second Palestinian Intifada, which was characterized by Israel’s aggression against Palestinian civilians and the role of the media in covering it, pushed Arraf, with the help of other colleagues, to found ISM. It grew to include 8,000 activists, who have worked hard to expose Israel’s grievous and vivid violations of human rights in Occupied Palestine.

“One of the reasons we founded ISM was because we noticed what was happening in terms of Israel’s massive use of violence”, said Arraf. “The media was not portraying the truth of what was happening. We realised that the Palestinian civil society, and Palestinians as a whole, especially after Oslo, needed a resource to be able to stand up and confront what Israel is doing”.

ISM turned out to be something practical, not merely a plan on paper. Its first campaign included 50 people. Since then, over 8,000 activists have actively worked on the ground to help the Palestinian people.

“The first campaign started in August, 2001”, said Arraf. “Fifty people came. We started another campaign. We tried to say the conflict is not about a religion against another. It’s about freedom versus occupation. It’s not Muslims against Jews. We wanted the mass media to know this. ISM aimed at forming advocacy groups and helping the Palestinian people sustain their struggle and get their stories heard”.

Palestinians share values with all other nations, based on tolerance, understanding, and working together for the good of humankind.

“Once, I organised a meeting between a Palestinian farmer from Bodrous village in the West Bank, named Ayed Murra, and a Vermont senator on Capitol Hill”, said Arraf. “We talked about how the wall affects farmers in the West Bank. We spent an hour talking to the senator, who lives in an area full of farmers”.

Israel tries to tell the world that the entire Palestinian movement is Hamas. They play on an anti-Islamic atmosphere in the West. This clearly distorts history and the facts on the grounds.

“Hamas was founded in 1987” said Arraf. “What about the ethnic cleansing in 1948 and 1967? Op-eds and articles were written on Hamas accepting a truce with Israel.  In 2003, the late Palestinian president, Yasser Arrafat, arranged a ceasefire included all Palestinian factions. In the first two-and-a-half months, Israel killed 74 Palestinians and destroyed 480 Palestinian homes”.

Absence of leadership is one of the things Palestinians are discussing today. “The current leadership does not represent the Palestinian people, particularly who live in the Diaspora”, said Arraf. Elections should be held to represent the Palestinian people as a whole. This will help them win representation for their aspirations and dreams.

“The Palestinian leadership is gone, of course”, said Arraf. “Direct elections to Palestinian National Council should be held. After years of not having a strong Palestinian official voice to be able to refer to in terms of what to do abroad, there came the unification of the Palestinian civil society in the form of BDS”.

“CPDS is looking forward to work hand-in-hand with ISM to help the Palestinian people get heard”, said Dr. Mahmoud Alhirthani, CPDS chairman. “It would be a good idea to organize lectures and courses with your help to make this idea a success”.

Next Sunday, the General Union of Palestinian Students (GUPS) in the United Kingdom will talk with Gaza activists at CPDS on how to be a good ambassador of Palestine when in the U.K. This link is part of a programme named “For you, Palestine”, aiming at drawing Palestinian people’s attention to global issues that can help them represent their cause.

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January 30, 2012 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Solidarity and Activism | , , , | Leave a comment

Anti-Zionism in the 21st Century

By Tariq Shadid | Palestine Chronicle | January 29, 2012

The essence of the Palestinian struggle is the battle against Zionism. It is a battle against its racism, against its murderous war crimes, against its insatiable territorial hunger, against its disdain for non-Jewish human rights, and against its devoted attempts to destroy Palestinian national identity. As voices of normalization are on the rise, and social media is invaded by paid pro-Zionist bloggers, there is an increased need for anti-Zionists to draw attention to the crimes committed by ‘Israel’, and to speak up against the ongoing media silence and the apologist activities of those misleadingly portraying themselves as ‘peace doves’. Let us first look briefly at the history of the anti-Zionist struggle, and then see where we stand today.

The Ideology of Zionism

Years before the creation of the state of ‘Israel’, there was already a full-blown battle going on against Zionism. On one side, the Palestinians were resisting against the usurpation of their land, having grown aware of the far-stretching implications of the Balfour declaration of 1917, which laid the foundation for the mass-immigration of European Jews into Palestine. In those same decades, there was also an ongoing struggle within the Jewish communities in Europe, where many were opposed to the tenets of Zionism either on a religious basis, or on the realization that colonizing an inhabited land would inevitably cause an injustice that would continue to reverberate for many years to come. A famous example of this in that period of time was the famous genius Albert Einstein, who in 1938 already expressed his opposition to the creation of a ‘Jewish state’, and in a letter to the New York Times that he wrote together with a number of prominent Jews in 1948, strongly denounced the horrendous Deir Yassin massacre.

The ongoing struggle of the Palestinians against Zionism and the continuing expropriation of their land is well-known, but not everyone is aware that within Jewish ranks, true ideological opposition against Zionism still exists. The most well-known group among these is Neturei Karta (‘Guardians of the City’), an organization of international Jews united against Zionism. On another note, within the current framework of the Zionist state, a coalition of groups that call themselves ‘Campus Watchdogs’ recently went as far as labeling 10 % of Israeli academics as ‘anti-Zionist’. It is likely that this number is highly overrated, since this McCarthyism-like approach can be expected to have lumped together a wide variety of people who expressed criticism at their government’s actions. In a similar way that outside criticism of ‘Israel’ quickly gets labeled as ‘anti-Semitism’, many of the one thousand mentioned academics, publicists and journalists are likely to have received the label of ‘anti-Zionist’ despite adhering to many of Zionism’s principles.

Tribal, Religious, or Ideological?

For some, the ongoing misery is a war between two peoples, basically a ‘tribal war’. Others prefer seeing it as a war between religions, with Judaism on one side and Muslims on the other side. Those who adopt this view are ignoring the pluralistic ethnic and religious composition of the Palestinian people, and are for instance ignoring the fact that many Palestinians are Christians, who have not been spared the gruesome fate of their Muslim compatriots. Thirdly, there are those who view the struggle as a battle between ideologies: Zionism on one side, and anti-Zionism on the other.

As the original PLO manifesto (28 May 1964) stated, the organization declared that “Palestine with its boundaries that existed at the time of the British mandate is an integral regional unit”  and that it sought to “prohibit the existence and activity of Zionism”. It also contained statements calling for a right of return and self-determination for the Palestinians. When reading the manifesto, it becomes clear that the PLO, the first more officially organized Palestinian movement against the land theft and expulsion committed by the Zionist terrorist organizations that later declared the Zionist state, was an explicitly anti-Zionist movement. The PLO incorporated the various existing political movements in one body, and was declared to be the legitimate representative of the Palestinian people. This was widely accepted by an overwhelming majority of Palestinians.

The Oslo Disaster

As illustrated above, the foundations of the Palestinian struggle were based on the territorial integrity of Palestine (i.e. the one state solution) and the right of return of all expelled Palestinians. These original foundations became embedded in an entire generation of Palestinians worldwide. In 1993, the leadership under Yaser Arafat adopted the two-state solution instead, which largely happened in a top-down manner and led to the Oslo accords, However, it soon became clear to all that the Oslo accords were only accepted by ‘Israel’ as a deceptive method to hypnotize the Palestinians as well as the masses of the world into an illusion of Israeli willingness for territorial concessions, while in truth confiscating huge swathes of land, building a separation wall and almost tripling the settler population (from 250,000 to 700,000). It should be no surprise that even early on, as the scam became blatantly clear to all except seemingly to the leadership of the newly created Palestinian Authority, the original tenets of the struggle were yet again embraced by many Palestinians inside of Palestine as well as in the diaspora.

Return to the Struggle

As the state of confusion created by the Oslo accords lingered on, some defeatist voices however also turned to normalization, instead of returning to the basics of the struggle. It is not to be wondered at that disillusion and opportunism play their role in such a complex situation, wherein many lose hope when faced with the overwhelming military, economical and strategic dominance of the Zionist state. Nevertheless, youth movements that are currently active in keeping the struggle for Palestinian rights alive, predominantly see anti-normalization as one of their main strategic goals. They adhere to the above-mentioned basic tenets of the struggle, and reject the failed formula of negotiations that is still pursued by the Palestinian Authority, despite its lack of popular mandate for it. For most Palestinians it is blatantly clear, that the so-called ‘Peace Process’ has only caused damage to their cause and has not brought even the slightest prospects of a better future, let alone of self-determination or independence.

Internationally, pro-Palestinian activists also largely adhere to the basic tenets of the Palestinian struggle, namely the one-state solution and the right of return of the Palestinian refugees.  There are other issues as well that are deemed non-negotiable to the majority of Palestinians, such as strong opposition against the Judaization of Jerusalem (Al Quds) which is projected as the future capital of liberated Palestine, and the release of all thousands of Palestinian political prisoners.

There is definitely also a group of ‘two-staters’, but their numbers are dwindling fast, and they rarely engage in activism since their views are largely represented by the Palestinian Authority. The strongest cure for the fallacy of the two-state solution was seeing the Palestinian side of that solution being gobbled up by the Zionist state over the years, faster than one could issue statements of protest against them.

New Shape of the Struggle: Back to Anti-Zionism

It is clear nowadays that the Palestinian Authority is not a useful apparatus for waging any form of struggle, but an administrative body that functions mainly as an extension of the Israeli security apparatus, in a framework inherited directly from the Oslo agreements. This does not mean that the people have stopped struggling. The modern Palestinian struggle has moved towards preferring popular resistance over armed struggle, and employing BDS (Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions) as a main strategy of generating pressure against the Zionist state. What has also changed, is that this struggle has gained large numbers of international supporters all over the world, who support the Palestinians in their pursuit of freedom from Zionist oppression.

These changes have also brought anti-Zionism back to the forefront, and this has far-reaching implications. Whereas a two-state solution almost automatically implies the undertaking of steps towards normalization, since it implies an acceptance of Zionism and relinquishing the claim of 78 % of Palestinian territory to it, a one-state solution which aims to create a state for all of its inhabitants that does not discriminate on the basis of race of religion, requires a strong and uncompromising return to anti-Zionism as a unifying strategy.

Anti-Zionism versus Normalization

In a struggle that aims to achieve this, normalization is an extremely damaging concession that can never be combined with the dismantling of Zionism, which is the ultimate goal of its strategy. After all, a struggle against racism cannot be successful if the inherently racist tenets of Zionism are accepted. The ‘Oslo-period’ has however sown its sorrowful seeds in more places than may directly become apparent. The vast majority of the Arab masses have not accepted Zionism in their midst, but there are stubborn strands of normalization that seem to be enjoying an increasing momentum within ‘progressive’ ranks of various Arab communities.

Two Egyptian examples can be mentioned in this context. One is Mona Eltahawy, who seems to consider ‘Israel’ to be a civilized state and refused to condemn the genocidal massacre in Gaza that claimed the lives of 1,400 Palestinians (including at least 300 children) by massive attacks from drones, tanks, Apaches and F-16’s – on a population that possesses no bombing shelters or anti-aircraft artillery. Another even more mind-blowing example is Maikel Nabil, an Egyptian blogger who enjoyed wide campaigns for his release when he was arrested for criticizing the SCAF military junta of post-Mubarak Egypt. He expressed his love for Israel on his blog and in Israeli media with an enthusiasm rarely ever seen before in the Arab world. There are other examples too, such as Arab-American comedian Ray Hanania of Palestinian origin, who proclaimed himself a candidate for Palestinian presidency in a video that he posted on Youtube, wherein he called for an acceptance of Israeli settlements, and an end to the Right of Return.

The Only Ziocracy in the Middle East

It is true that these examples do not represent the sentiments of the majority of Palestinians and other Arabs, whether in the Arab world or outside of it, but these voices cannot be ignored either. The main reason for this is that voices of normalization like the ones mentioned above often receive disproportionate attention in Western-dominated mass-media, and thereby have a number of insidious destructive effects upon the struggle.

First of all, they make those who are true to the anti-racist struggle against Zionism seem extremist, by offering alternatives that at first sight strike the general public as being more inspired by peaceful motives. This is a distortion of reality: support for ‘Israel’, the most belligerent state in the Middle East, the only state in the region in possession of (over 300) nuclear arms, and the only ‘Ziocracy’ where ones ethnic background automatically categorizes one as having less rights than others, can never be truthfully designated as ‘peace-loving’.

Secondly, the apparently human inclination of the masses to flock around the famous without delving deeply into their philosophies, brings multitudes of people close to positive truth-distorting evaluations of the Zionist state. For example, progressive Arabs who embrace Mona Eltahawy’s feminist activities, are inclined to also automatically defend their idol’s views on ‘Israel’, simply because they are already in a state of adoration of her person. Another example involves Maikel Nabil: when progressive activists rallied for him due to his unjust incarceration by SCAF, his shocking pro-Israel views seemed to be lumped together with his anti-SCAF views under the label of ‘freedom of speech’, effectively paving the way for the perceived ‘right’ of Egyptians to view ‘Israel’ in an undeservingly positive and gruesomely distorted loving manner.

The Struggle Goes on

The true and original struggle of the Palestinians is a struggle against Zionism, and this is entirely incompatible with the views mentioned above. Normalization must therefore be opposed, vocally, directly, loudly and clearly. There is definitely a need for increased activity on this front, since anti-normalization and BDS do not enjoy the support of mass media, unlike the voices of normalization.

If this means that these voices need to be confronted even on a personal level, then so be it. It may not be a pleasant thing to do, and some might argue that it distracts from calling attention to the continuing atrocities that the Zionist state is inflicting on a daily basis upon the defenseless Palestinians living under Israeli occupation. However, as has been argued in the article “Anti-normalization: an necessary part of BDS campaigning”, calling attention to these injustices will remain highly ineffective if the public is simultaneously exposed by mass media to Arab voices that aim to paint a misleading image of ‘Israel’ as if it were a beacon of civilization, and a saviour for mankind.

In other words: if you value BDS and wish it to be effective, and if you believe in opposing the racist ideology of Zionism, one of your tasks is also to confront those who suck up to power for their own personal gain. And since their number is increasing, it looks like you have work to do.

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

January 30, 2012 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Solidarity and Activism, Timeless or most popular | , , | Leave a comment

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