American political scientist and author of the “Holocaust Industry,” Norman Finkelstein – known for his outspoken criticism of Israel and advocacy of Palestinian rights – showed his own fear of the paradigm shift in discourse on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict when he called the BDS movement a ‘cult’ last week
The interview with Norman Finkelstein that circulated all over the web on Wednesday, in which he calls the boycott, divestment and sanctions (BDS) movement against Israel a “cult” and compares it to Maoism is, I think, a milestone of sorts. Or, more accurately, the symptom of a milestone – a sign that the ground is shifting on Israel/Palestine issues.
Normal Finkelstein has made a career out of being the son of holocaust survivors who doesn’t shy away from picking a fight with Israel’s backers, and who unabashedly defends the rights of Palestinians. At times his controversial positions have set his career back, as when he was denied tenure at DePaul University. However, on balance he has certainly benefited, as a less combative scholar would today likely be simply one of thousands of obscure political science professors.
Everything about the interview is classic Finkelstein: his demeanor, his tendency to raise his voice, his adversarial, passionate approach, everything, that is, except for the things he’s saying. In a bizarre turn of events, he comes off as a Zionist bully, or for that matter, any other angry right wing pundit. He accuses activists for Palestinian civil rights of having a secret agenda, that of destroying Israel. He seems obsessed with some overarching concept of the Law as final arbiter in all matters, as though in this case we weren’t talking about a variety of laws, many of which at times contradict each other, and as though there isn’t a history of the law being written, enforced, and misinterpreted by political actors at the expense of the weak. His complaint that solidarity movement activists want to cherry pick which laws they respect is reminiscent of the claims made by white religious leaders that Dr. Martin Luther King so famously refuted in his “Letter from a Birmingham Jail.”
Moreover, Finkelstein conveniently ignores the fact that international law recognizes refugees as having a right to return to their homeland. When the law is inconvenient, Finkelstein employs another classic conservative tactic, insisting that the public simply won’t accept the demands of the activists, that they need to be more pragmatic. Again, see “Letter from a Birmingham Jail” for an eloquent refutation of such logic.
Finkelstein even resorts to the desperate tactic of denial. When the interviewer puts forth his contention that the BDS movement is growing in popularity, Finkelstein rejects the idea out of hand, comparing the movement to some Maoist group he apparently was affiliated with at some point in his more idealistic youth.
I recently witnessed BDS’s growing clout at a meeting I attended with a woman working with an Israeli artist helping set up a series of salons in New York to explore and question the Birthright Israel programs, and the idea of a “birthright” in general. The project sounds very interesting, but the woman was visibly frustrated at their inability to find people willing to work with them in the city. They are partially funded by the Israeli Consulate, and as a result have had the proverbial door shut on them by activists, artists, and professors, Arab and Jew alike. This would have been incomprehensible five years ago, when I first heard of the BDS movement at the annual Bil’in conference and it was, at that point, divisive even among conference attendees.
Here is where things stand now. There is a paradigm shift in the works in how the Israel/Palestine conflict is understood and approached. There is an increasing consensus among Israel’s critics to see the issue as one of civil rights, rather than a conflict between two nations. Indeed, some BDS activists harbor a desire to see the end of the Jewish state, and others believe this is the inevitable outcome of a civil rights movement, whether they desire it or not. But many others, I would argue most Palestinians among them, simply don’t care about this abstract One State v. Two State argument. They just don’t think civil rights – indeed human rights – can be trumped by someone’s nationalist claims.
Finkelstein’s sudden hostility to the solidarity movement is a symptom of this paradigm shift. It is easy to rail against Israel when the existence of a Jewish nation-state seems guaranteed in perpetuity. But that guarantee seems to have eroded a bit. For some this will be scary. But then change always is. It was scary in South Africa. It was scary in the Jim Crow American South. For others it is liberating, and you can count among these an increasing number of Israelis who see coexistence – real coexistence, not the tenuous kind that reigns in Jaffa, among other places – as a more attractive guarantee to their security than the ethnocratic state. As the ground continues to shift, some of those who are afraid will flinch, and retreat to safer, more moderate arguments. Finkelstein flinched.
Sean O’Neill worked for Christian Peacemaker Teams from 2006-2009 in the South Hebron Hills supporting Palestinian-led nonviolent resistance to Israeli occupation and continued settlement expansion. He is currently an MA candidate at New York University in Near Eastern Studies and Journalism.
Raymond McCartney, the former Irish hunger striker and current Member of Northern Ireland’s Legislative Assembly for Sinn Féin is the latest from Ireland to send a message of solidarity to Palestinian political prisoner Khader Adnan, who is entering his 63rd day of hunger strike protesting administrative detention, a policy started by the British and which is illegal under international law.
McCartney, along with six other prisoners (Brendan Hughes, Tom McFeeley, John Nixon, Sean McKenna, Tommy McKearney and Leo Green) participated in what became known as the First Hunger Strike in 1980 in order to attain political status under the British occupation.
After weeks of delays by the British in implementing the promised changes, and confusion among the prisoners and their supporters, it became apparent in January 1981 that political status was not to be granted. The prisoners, faced with no alternative, would be forced to embark on a new fast that would have widespread repercussions in Ireland and abroad.
The Second Hunger Strike is the more famous one, with ten Irish prisoners hunger striking until death.
Oliver Hughes, the brother of Francis Hughes who died in 1981 after 59 days of hunger strike, had sent his message of support a few days earlier. Tommy McKearney, mentioned above, was the first of the former hunger strikers to record a message of solidarity.
Raymond McCartney, who was on hunger strike for 53 days, says that he “understands what [Khader] is feeling at this particular moment in time, so our thoughts are with him and his family.”
He goes on to say:
”All of us here in Ireland in particular those elected representatives should be doing all what we can to put pressure on the Israeli government to release this man. He’s been held by a form of internment, again a tactic well known and understood by people in Ireland. We need to have this man released and we need to ensure that we don’t have a death in present of this Palestinian who is struggling for his human dignity and the dignity for all Palestinians.”
Khader Adnan was arrested from his home at 3:30am in front of his pregnant wife and two young daughters on December 17th. He has not been charged with anything, and as a result has embarked on a hunger strike since December 18th, using his stomach to protest the immoral administrative detention that the incongruent Israeli Prison System characterizes itself with.
Administrative detention is a procedure under which detainees are held without charge or trial for periods of up to six months, which can be renewed repeatedly. Under administrative detention, detainees’ rights to a fair trial as guaranteed by Article 14 of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR) are consistently violated.
Khader Adnan is one of 309 Palestinians currently held in administrative detention by the Israeli authorities, including one man held for over five years and 24 Palestinian Legislative Council members. Hundreds of other Palestinian detainees and prisoners have joined Khader Adnan’s hunger strike.
After 62 days of Khader Adnan hunger striking, the international community’s silence has been duly noted. Khader Adnan is a living legend, an icon of resistance and is determined to carry through with his hunger strike until he his released or charged, declaring that “My dignity is more precious than my food.”
Hezbollah leader Hasan Nasrallah said his party was not involved in recent bombings that took place in India, Georgia, and Thailand earlier this month, while reiterating the party’s intention to avenge the killing of its leader Imad Mughniyeh four years ago.
“It is insulting for Hezbollah to avenge its great leader by killing ordinary Israelis, as for those who are our target, they know who they are and they are taking measures and I tell them to remain doing so for we shall avenge Imad Mughniyeh in an honorable way,” Nasrallah said.
Nasrallah was speaking during a televised speech Thursday evening to commemorate the martyrdom of three of the party’s top leaders, Ragheb Harb, Imad Mughniyeh, and Abbas al-Mousawi, at the hands of Israel. Nasrallah reiterated the continued arming of the resistance and repeated his call to pull out from public use personally owned arms.
Commenting on the Arab revolutions, Nasrallah criticized what he termed as “the interference of [Lebanon’s] March 14 and their sending of weapons and bolstering of fighting among the Syrian people,” reminding the rival political group of their objection to Hezbollah’s support of Bahraini protestors and material aid to resistance in Palestine via Egypt.
Nasrallah cautioned against discord in Egypt and pointed fingers at the US and Israel for fomenting it, saying that Israeli officials are living in a state of anxiety due to its dwindling power.
He also lamented that “Arab peoples and governments are not occupied with Palestine” while Palestinians, including prisoners on hunger strike, and Bahrainis, are left to their own devices.
In relation to Syria, Nasrallah said the regime has its shortcomings as acknowledged he says by its leadership but that “it has stood in the face of the US-Israeli project and supported resistance.” While the regime did not open up a front in Golan, none of its detractors, Nasrallah argued, has opened such a front or supported the resistance.
Nasrallah criticized the total refusal to engage with dialogue with the Syrian regime and opt for a political solution in Syria by the same people who call for negotiations with Israel and have engaged with it for decades. He leveled similar criticism against those who bar the supply of weapons to Israel while sending weapons to Syria so the “Syrians fight each other.”
Nasrallah wondered why there is “a Western-Israeli-Arab insistence to fight in Syria and topple the regime” suggesting it is cause for political reflection.
What does the European Union have to say about the plight of Palestinian hunger striker Khader Adnan? Not one word.
I have just entered Adnan’s name into the search facility on the website for the EU’s diplomatic service. The result: zero hits. A moment later, I searched under the words “Gilad Shalit” and received 230 hits.
Catherine Ashton, the bloc’s foreign policy chief, publicly sympathised with the family of Shalit at every conceivable opportunity, never acknowledging that the Israeli soldier belonged to an army of occupation and was taking part in acts of aggression against the Palestinian people when he was captured. Does she regard his life as more important than that of Adnan, a man in detention without being charged or convicted of an offence?
Is she more worried about the oppressor, than the oppressed? It would appear so.
Almost 12 hours ago, I contacted Ashton’s office, requesting an urgent explanation for her silence on Adnan’s hunger strike. I have still not received a response.
Too busy?
Perhaps her advisors too busy with matters they consider more pressing than the imminent death of a prisoner. Yet on Monday, her team was able to drop whatever other work it was doing and hastily respond to the attacks on Israeli embassies in India and Georgia. That same day, she (or her aides) found time to express concern about how Iranian opposition leaders Mir Hossein Moussavi and Mehdi Karroubi have now been under house arrest for an entire year. Her statement noted (properly) that these men – and Moussavi’s wife Zahra Rahnavard – have been detained “without any legal process.”
Khader Adnan is in jail without any legal process. Why has Ashton not protested at his treatment?
Dignity and freedom
Marking Human Rights Day in December 2011, Ashton recalled that “human rights are universal and that people everywhere aspire to live in dignity and freedom.”
Khader Adnan is undertaking a courageous and awe-inspiring protest to defend the rights of Palestinians to live in dignity and freedom.
And what does Catherine Ashton have to say? Not one miserable word.
The Argentine Confederation of Transport Workers warns of boycotting British ships reaching Argentina as the UK refuses Argentina’s call for negotiations over the sovereignty of Malvinas (Falklands).
“We have resolved to boycott any ship with the British flag, or with the lying and invented flag of the Falklands, or with any flag of convenience which the British pirates use,” the union said in a statement.
Earlier, in response to Britain “militarizing” the South Atlantic by sending a nuclear-armed destroyer to the area and the dispatch of an heir to throne, the Duke of Cambridge, to the region, Argentina raised the possibility of shutting the only air route to the islands which passes through Argentina’s airspace.
Seeking to resolve the issue through diplomacy and urging the UK to stop waging war over the islands’ sovereignty, Argentinean Foreign Minister Hector Timerman submitted an official complaint to the United Nations Security Council against Britain’s repeated military threats.
However, Britain’s ambassador to the United Nations Mark Lyall Grant warned Argentina that the UK would “robustly” defend Malvinas Islands if necessary, claiming the British government would hold talks with Buenos Aires on any issue except the islands’ sovereignty.
In December the South American trading bloc Mercosur including Argentina, Brazil, and Uruguay, decided to deny entry to vessels carrying the Falklands’ flag from their ports. Later, the Chilean government also expressed its solidarity with Mercosur members.
Palestinian Prime Minister in Gaza Ismail Haniyeh took part Saturday in Iran’s commemoration of its 1979 Islamic Revolution in Tehran. After thanking the Islamic Republic for supporting the resistance movements, he assured in a speech he delivered before the millions of participants in the celebrations that Hamas “will never recognize Israel”.
“They want us to recognize the Israeli occupation and cease resistance but, as the representative of the Palestinian people and in the name of all the world’s freedom seekers, I am announcing from Azadi Square in Tehran that we will never recognize Israel,” he said.
Haniyeh further emphasized that resistance and jihad are the strategic choice for this nation and the only path for liberating Al-Quds.
“The resistance will continue until all the Palestinian land, including Al-Quds, is liberated and all the refugees return,” he said.
Indicating that the Iranian people are a partner in the Arab victory against the Zionist entity, the Palestinian prime minister rejected the American and Zionist threats to the Islamic Republic, and the Western interference in the Arab and Islamic region, and stressed the importance of Islamic unity.
“The Islamic Revolution in Iran, the resistance, and the Arab spring assure that this is the period of the people, and that no one could stand against the will of the people,” he added.
Moreover, Haniyeh continued addressing the Iranian people saying: “We come to you, o Muslim people, on this day, to embrace the victories from the blessed land of Palestine to the Islamic revolution in Iran.”
Adnan, a Palestinian, has been on hunger strike ever since his 17 December detention without charge or trial by Israeli occupation forces in the West Bank.
In the 3-minute video, McKearney begins his comments with these words:
My name is Tommy McKearney. I’m a former member of the IRA. Thirty two years ago I was on hunger strike for 53 days in the H Blocks. Today Khader Adnan will be 54 days on hunger strike. Held by the Israeli government on administrative detention, in other words without charge or conviction, he is battling against atrocious conditions and a very unjust system. His life is ebbing away in a very cruel and harsh regime. His conditions are hard, difficult and awful. The world must intervene to save this man’s life in the name of humanity, in the name of decency, in the name of justice and legality.
Fifty-four days on hunger strike his body is beginning to collapse. We can’t say for sure whether this man will be alive tonight or tomorrow night because at this stage he has passed a critical point in which a human body can survive without food or nourishment. His pain is enormous, but his plight is deplorable…
McKearney was among a group of seven Irish Republican prisoners who went on hunger strike at the notorious British-run Maze Prison in 1980. The following year 23 more prisoners, went on hunger strike. The strikes were sparked by punitive British conditions against political prisoners.
Ten of the men fasted until death, perhaps the best known of whom was Bobby Sands who died on 5 May 1981 after 66 days on hunger strike. Sands was 27 years old. The Irish hunger strikes attracted world-wide sympathy and became a symbol of the Irish struggle.
Greece’s two largest unions have announced a 48-hour strike over the new austerity measures endorsed by the government in return for bailout loans.
The unions, General confederation of Workers of Greece (GSEE) and Civil Servants Supreme Administrative Council (ADEDY), announced on Thursday that their members will go on a two-day strike from Friday in protest at the controversial decision.
“We will hold a general strike on Friday and Saturday along with the civil servants’ union,” said a spokeswoman with GSEE which represents the private sector.
ADEDY’s Secretary General Ilias Iliopoulos described the measures as “painful” which will “create misery for youths, unemployed and pensioners do not leave us much room.”
“We are moving to a social uprising,” said Iliopoulos.
Greece has been the scene of repeated strikes since the country first resorted to bailouts from international lenders in 2010.
Leaders of the three parties backing Greece’s coalition government approved new austerity measures on Wednesday but failed to agree to creditors’ demands to make 300 million euros ($398 million) in pension cuts.
The country’s Prime Minister Lucas Papademos still hopes that the coalition leaders will strike a comprehensive deal by Thursday evening, his office said on Wednesday.
To secure a bailout package of 130 billion euros, Athens must first persuade the troika — the European Union (EU), International Monetary Fund (IMF), and the European Central Bank (ECB) — that it will implement long-delayed reforms and make further spending cuts.
Greece’s current debt stands at 340 billion euros ($440 billion) — a sum that equals around 31,000 euros debt per person in the country of 11 million people.
The country has, accordingly, the biggest debt burden in proportion to the size of its economy in the entire 17-nation eurozone.
The South African government is looking at plans to step up its support for Palestine. The Minister of Arts and Culture, Paul Mashatile, made the announcement during a press conference in Pretoria last week to announce that a Palestinian delegation, including Mr. Mashatile’s counterpart, Siham Barghouthi, had met with representatives of the government and signed a cultural agreement between South Africa and Palestine. Plans for future cooperation include literature exchanges, exhibitions, language development programmes and heritage preservation initiatives.
In addition to increased cooperation with Palestinians, the South African government is also considering increased sanctions against Israel. “We want to step up our support of the Palestinians and are investigating a number of peaceful ways to upgrade this support,” Mashatile told The New Age Newspaper last week. “We have no problem about supporting the Boycott, Disinvestment and Sanctions (BDS) campaign against Israel.”
This will come as no surprise to those who are familiar with South Africa’s ruling African National Congress’s long-held position over Palestine. The ANC has been a supporter of the Palestinians’ struggle for freedom and independence for many years, not least, according to Mr. Mashatile, “because we count the people of Palestine among those patriots who stood by us in our struggle for national liberation”. Furthermore, legendary ANC leader Nelson Mandela said in 1997, “Having achieved our freedom we can fall into the trap of washing our hands of difficulties that others face. Yet we would be less human if we did so.”
The BDS movement succeeded in ridding South Africa of the minority Apartheid government; many prominent South Africans have therefore supported the BDS call against Israel, including Archbishop Desmond Tutu and former minister and freedom fighter Ronnie Kasrils.
The Palestinian delegation expressed their appreciation for South Africa’s support. “We are grateful for South Africa’s support for our efforts to become full members of the international community,” Siham Barghouthi told the press conference, “and we look to you for guidance in our ongoing struggle.”
The Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov held talks with Syrian President Bashar Assad, shortly after he arrived in Damascus and was received by thousands of regime supporters.
“Every leader in every country should be aware of his share of responsibility. You are aware of yours,” Lavrov said to Assad as they kicked off the talks, according to English-language reports by Russian news agencies.
“We hope that the Arab people can live in peace and understanding,” the Russian envoy added.
The Syrian state news agency SANA said that the foreign minister arrived in Damascus amid a huge popular reception in appreciation of Russia’s support to Syria, it’s people and its reform program.
“Huge crowds flocked to … greet Minister Lavrov and express appreciation of Russia’s stances,” it said.
State television showed footage of a sea of people waving Syrian and Russian flags as they lined the streets of the capital, many chanting: “Thank you Russia, thank you China.”
“I want to thank Russia and China for their stand in support of the Syrian people,” one woman said, before crowds swarmed to greet Lavrov’s convoy.
Lavrov’s trip comes days after Russia vetoed along with China against a UN Security Council resolution condemning Syria.
The mission is taking place on the orders of Russian President Dmitry Medvedev and Russian state media have said Lavrov is bearing a message from the Kremlin for Assad.
The foreign ministry said on Sunday the trip aimed to stabilize the escalating crisis in Syria by winning the “rapid implementation of much-needed democratic reforms” by the Assad regime.
Speaking to reporters on Monday, Lavrov refused to divulge the purpose of the mission.
“When you go on a mission on the order of the head of state then the purpose of the mission is usually only revealed to the person it is addressed to. If I tell you everything now, then what is the point?” he said.
Caracas – Member countries of Latin America’s alternative integration bloc, the Bolivarian Alliance for the Peoples of Our America (ALBA), met in the Venezuelan capital this weekend in order to discuss the advancement of the organisation at its 11th official summit.
Following a meeting on Friday to draft proposals and set an agenda, the presidents discussed a series of themes relating to ALBA’s role within the regional economy and various foreign policy issues. The body also approved several declarations relating to global political concerns, including pronouncements on Syria and the current diplomatic altercation between the UK and Argentina with relation to the Falkland Islands.
Bank of the ALBA
At the end of the summit’s first day, Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez announced that member countries had agreed to contribute 1% of their international reserves towards the bloc’s main bank in order to create a reserve fund.
The Bank of the Alba was established in 2008 with the intention of providing economic support to people-centred regional projects and to contribute to sustainable social and economic development across the region. The Bank is also cited as acting as a continental alternative to the International Monetary Fund.
At the summit, ALBA member countries agreed that the financial reinforcement of the bank would be pivotal to the development of the bloc. Chavez also reaffirmed Venezuela’s commitment to funding regional development projects by announcing his intention to increase petroleum production in the Orinoco Belt to that end.
“We should increase oil production from 3 to 3.5 million barrels a day, and by 2014 we should be at 4 million barrels. This is going to allow us greater flexibility in all of these projects,” said the head of state.
According to Chavez, Venezuela’s contribution to the bank will amount to around US$300 million.
Regional Currency
The heads of state also discussed the possibility of increasing the commercial use of the sucre, the bloc’s virtual currency. The sucre is currently used for direct trading between the ALBA countries, allowing them to circumvent the U.S dollar and minimise the foreign-exchange risk.
According to Ricardo Menendez, Venezuelan Vice-minister of Production and Economy, 431 financial transactions using the sucre were carried out between ALBA countries last year, amounting to over US$216 million worth of trade. However, Ecuadorean president, Rafael Correa, called for the use of the currency to be increased.
“Those free trade agreements, free markets, [with]…zero indemnity, annihilating the weak, that’s suicide for our countries…We should encourage fair trade; unite our reserves and financial capacity in the Bank of the Alba and avoid using foreign currencies,” he urged.
Daniel Ortega, the Sandinista president of Nicaragua, also expressed his desire to boost the use of the bloc’s currency. In statements, Ortega said that he hoped to begin using the sucre within the next few weeks, subject to approval from Nicaragua’s national assembly.
Anti-imperialist Agenda
As well as condemning what it referred to as the “systemic policies of destabilisation and interventionism” currently being implemented in Syria, the bloc also signed a document in support of Puerto Rico’s right to self-determination and full independence.
Further, ALBA reiterated its support for the Argentinean government in its diplomatic dispute with the UK over the Falkland Islands. In a special communication, the bloc called for a negotiated settlement to the Falkland’s question which does not violate the United Nation’s 31/49 resolution. The ALBA’s statements come as Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez also expressed his solidarity with the Argentinean President Cristina Kirchner on Saturday, stating that the South American nation would “not be alone” in the event of a conflict.
Correa suggested that the bloc should move to impose sanctions against the UK government due to its unwillingness to engage in dialogue with the Argentinean government to resolve the issue. Last week, the UK’s Foreign Secretary, William Hague, revealed that he had sent a warship to the Falklands as a “routine” measure.
Chavez has confirmed that the ALBA group will now review what sanctions may be taken in response to the “negative dialogue” and “ridiculous military threat” from David Cameron’s coalition government.
The ALBA also struck out against the Organisation of American States for its exclusionary stance with regards to Cuba. In accordance with a proposal from Correa, the bloc said it would consider not attending the Summit of the Americas, due to be held in Colombia this April, if Cuba were not invited.
“We could take this to the host country, which is the Colombian government, with whom we have re-established political and commercial relations… I am in agreement with Rafael Correa, if Cuba isn’t invited, we will consider not attending, it’s a matter of dignity,” concluded Chavez.
Helping Haiti
As part of the summit, the ALBA agreed to step up its humanitarian assistance to Haiti through the formation of an ALBA-Haiti work plan. The project will be aimed at providing emergency relief and facilitating reconstruction efforts in the Caribbean nation, which is still suffering the effects of the earthquake of January 2010.
Member countries also agreed to establish a Haiti fund in order to execute the projects and provide the country’s energy plants with fuel. Details will be finalised at a foreign ministers meeting in Haiti at the beginning of March.
In comments to the Venezuelan press, Haitian President Michel Martelly thanked the ALBA for its continued efforts to help the Caribbean nation in the wake of its humanitarian catastrophe. He added that the new ALBA plan would go towards alleviating extreme poverty in Haiti. Venezuela and Haiti also signed an independent bilateral agreement to increase cooperation between the two countries.
ALBA Expands
In the final act of the summit, the ALBA ratified St. Lucia and Surinam as two new honorary members to the bloc and confirmed that soon both countries would be full members of Venezuela’s energy integration organisation, Petrocaribe.
Other proposals that the group will now pursue include the creation of regional schools for social movements and the establishment of a communications secretary general; as well as the proposal to create a “defence counsel” for the bloc, which was submitted by Bolivian President Evo Morales.
Formed in 2004 by Venezuela and Cuba, the ALBA is an alternative to U.S free trade agreements in the region and seeks to address unjust terms of trade by engaging in commerce on the basis of solidarity and cooperation. ALBA nations currently include; Cuba, Venezuela, Nicaragua, Ecuador, Bolivia, Dominica, St. Vincent and the Grenadines and Antigua and Barbuda. The governments of Haiti, Surinam and St. Lucia also attended the event as “participant observers”.
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.
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.”)
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.
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 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 thatgovernment 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.
Media interest in Saudi Arabian connections to the crimes of 9/11 has centered on calls for the release of the 28 missing pages from the Joint Congressional Inquiry’s report. However, those calls focus on the question of hijacker financing and omit the most interesting links between the 9/11 attacks and Saudi Arabia—links that implicate powerful people in the United States. Here are twenty examples. … continue
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