When will this conspiracy of silence end?
By Dr. Bouthaina Shaaban | MEMO | October 17, 2010
The recent and latest – but probably not the last – images of prisoners being abused by Israeli soldiers showed a blindfolded Palestinian woman trying desperately to avoid 21st century brutality in a prison cell with neither bars nor windows. As the seconds ticked by like an eternity it was clear that her body was trying to shrink into itself to avoid the monsters of the modern age, in the land of Jesus Christ, who danced around their victim.
Were the soldiers dancing to celebrate the kidnapping of an Arab girl whose only crime was to struggle for freedom from an illegal occupation? Or were they dancing to celebrate the fact that the international conscience, so vociferous about freedom and human rights in other parts of the world, is so very quiet when it comes to the Palestinians who have been oppressed by Western-backed Israel for more than sixty years?
Ihsan Dababseh’s story is only one of numerous daily stories in the lives of the eleven thousand Palestinian prisoners in the last apartheid regime in the world. Nevertheless, the ‘civilized’ world hardly remembers them, except when seconds of the suffering of one of them is leaked out. These are mere seconds of long years of torture and humiliation, without any protest on the part of the ‘free’ Western media, human rights organizations or the UN Human Rights Council, maybe fearing the fate of American anchor, Rick Sanchez, who was fired by CNN simply for saying that “Jews are not oppressed”.
As a result of Western governments and media collusion with Israeli government terrorism, Israeli soldiers have arrested more than 90 Palestinian children in one month. The youngest, aged 13, was taken out of his family home by court order.
Human rights groups have revealed more than once that Israeli soldiers attack female prisoner cells and force them to take off their clothes, subject them to humiliating inspections and force them to raise their hands from 9 in the morning to 3 in the afternoon.
Do Western politicians, who flatter Israeli war criminals like Benjamin Netanyahu, by calling Israel ‘an oasis of democracy’ know this? Why don’t the Americans spread freedom and human rights in Palestine instead of supporting and funding torture, murder and settlement? Or do they view Palestinians as they viewed red Indians in America and the aborigines in Australia as people without human rights and whose life is not equal to human life?
American and European silence towards these atrocious Israeli crimes, even their absolute support of the racist government in Israel gave Israeli soldiers and settlers a free hand to kill, torture and run over unarmed Palestinian civilians. Their crimes have exceeded manifold those committed by the Apartheid in South Africa. They even exceeded Nazi brutality. This was the testimony of holocaust survivor on boat Irene which tried to break the Gaza blockade. He said, “what I suffered in the holocaust is largely similar to the suffering of Palestinian children today”. This was also expressed by Amira Hass (Haaretz, 7 October 2010). She wrote, “Evidence? Explanations? Common sense? No need. They, after all, are paid a salary by the Israeli taxpayer in order to invent new kinds of punishment and torture. She adds, “today, the sense of shame has disappeared. Society’s backing is assured”.
On my part, I add that the sense of shame has disappeared because the silence of the ‘international community’ is assured, because none of the world leaders is ‘free’ any longer. They have become captive to the Israeli lobby which controls the Congress, the media and the election money. That is why no American or European leader, not even the United Nations, will ever condemn any crime against the Palestinians as long as the perpetrators are Israelis. Even when the victim of such aggression is the Nobel peace prize laureate, Mairead Corrigan-Maguire. The peace activist arrived in Gaza on board the ship Rachel Corrie (named after the young woman run over by Israeli bulldozers). When she returned to Bein-Gurion Airport days ago, she was detained by Israeli authorities in the same way they detained American thinkers Noam Chomsky and Norman Finkelstein and Spanish artist Ivan Prado, secure in the knowledge that no one will dare criticize the Israeli apartheid regime for fear of being accused of anti-Semitism. Her crime was that several months ago she took part in a demonstration organized by the Bili’in villagers against the racist segregation wall and was twice on board ships to break the Gaza blockade.
The crimes committed with impunity by this racist entity against prisoners and peace, freedom, justice and human rights activists have gone so far largely because of the ‘silence’ of ‘democratic’ countries. It is true that Palestinian prisoners and activists are fighting for the freedom and dignity of the Palestinian people, but they actually embody the conscience of free people all over the world. Should we leave them in Israeli jails, as we left Nelson Mandela in the Apartheid prisons for decades, and wait until their release to turn them into icons of freedom and dignity? Or should we start immediately to work for releasing all prisoners and for enabling them to live in freedom and dignity with their families in their homeland?
New Hearing Set for Sami Al-Arian
By Stephen Lendman | The People’s Voice | October 16th, 2010
Though free on bail, Sami Al-Arian remains politically imprisoned like many hundreds of others behind bars. Because of his faith, ethnicity, prominence and political activism, he was accused of supporting “terrorism” and other outrageous charges.
In fact, he’s a Palestinian refugee, a distinguished professor, scholar, community leader, and civil activist, a man deserving honor, not incarceration doing hard time until released after five and half years of brutal treatment, including solitary confinement in rat and roach-infested cells.
He was denied religious services, got no watch or clock, and was kept in windowless cells with artificial lights kept on round the clock. Whenever outside his cell, he was also shackled hands behind back and ankles. In protest, he staged hunger strikes, long enough to endanger is life.
A Brief Timeline of His Case
FBI investigations hounded him for 11 years, spending millions of dollars for half a million phone wiretaps, searches and other forms of harassment.
Events came to a head at 5AM on February 20, 2003 when FBI agents and Joint Terrorism Task Force (JTTF) officers stormed his home guns drawn. They arrested him and three others separately on spurious charges of supporting terrorism, conspiracy to commit murder, racketeering, giving material support to an outlawed group, extortion, perjury, and other offenses proved bogus in court.
On February 27, University of South Florida president Judy Genshaft fired him, acting as a Bush administration stooge.
At his four day March bail hearing, prosecutors provided no evidence, witnesses, or any reason to hold him. Nonetheless, he and co-defendant Sameeh Hammoudeh were denied bail.
On March 27, he was incarcerated at maximum security federal penitentiary, Coleman, FL after initially held in jail. Later he was transferred repeatedly to other federal prisons.
In June 2005, his trial began. It was a witch-hunt travesty with phony evidence, the kind prosecutors use when they have none. Despite spending around $50 million for years of investigations and six months of trial, jurors exonerated him on eight serious charges, remaining deadlocked 10 – 2 for acquittal on nine lesser ones.
On March 2, 2006, fearing retrial, he agreed to plead guilty to one minor charge, be freed, then reunited with his family and deported. But it didn’t end there.
Assistant prosecutor Gordon Kromberg ordered him before a grand jury, violating terms of his plea bargain. Fearing entrapment, he refused, was held in contempt, again imprisoned, and sentenced to 18 months without mitigation – a clear effort to keep hounding and imprison him.
At the time, his attorney, Professor Jonathan Turley, called the Justice Department’s ploy “a classic perjury trap used repeatedly by the government to punish those individuals who could not be convicted before an American jury.”
Al-Arian appealed and remained imprisoned until released on bail on September 2, 2008 under house arrest, pending trial for criminal contempt. For the first time in over five years, he was reunited with his family, but his ordeal continues.
On October 29, 2010, a new hearing will be held before federal Judge Leonie Brinkema of the Eastern District of Virginia to decide whether criminal contempt charges will be pursued or dropped.
Under Obama, prosecutors are as ruthlessly corrupted as their predecessors, using every trick in the book to convict, whether guilty or innocent, and when trials are politically motivated, intensifying pressure even more. The Justice Department thus filed a motion to deny a defense motion, filed 18 months earlier to dismiss criminal contempt charges. Three previous DOJ motions were rejected. This time, Holder prosecutors not only requested denying the defense’s dismissal request, but asked Judge Brinkema to reverse her earlier decision letting Al-Arian’s attorneys present evidence in case of trial.
In March 2009, she backed the defense’s request to file a motion to dismiss Al-Arian’s charges, saying she’d rule later at further hearings, and expressing concern over government “bait and switch” tactics:
“where Dr. Al-Arian and his counsel were assured that, if he agreed to plead guilty (to one minor charge), he would not be subject to any further involvement with the Justice Department beyond his deportation following the completion of his sentence.”
Bush prosecutors reneged on the agreement.
Like earlier departments under Ashcroft, Gonzales, and Mukasey, Holder shows equal contempt for the law and judicial fairness, presenting a challenge for the most competent defense lawyers. Al-Arian, however, is well represented, his team led by Professor Jonathan Turley, a recognized legal scholar who’s written extensively on constitutional and tort law as well as legal theory and other topics. With him are attorneys William E. Olsen and Philip J. Meitl.
On October 29, at 8:30AM, Al-Arian’s hearing will be held at the
Albert V. Bryan US Courthouse
401 Courthouse Square
Alexandria, VA 22314
The freesamialarian site calls it his “most important” one so far, more than others up to now. His freedom and future depend on the outcome.
Some Final Comments
In July 2003, Amnesty International (AI) wrote US prosecutors, “calling for a review of the pre-trial detention conditions of Dr. Sami Al-Arian, aspects of which it said appeared to be ‘gratuitously punitive,’ ” and a breach of international standards.
In December 2005, AI sought fair procedures to resolve his case after jurors acquitted him of terrorist and other serious charges. AI noted his harsh solitary confinement, calling it “unnecessarily punitive.”
In August 2008, Howard Zinn said:
“I thought that (Al-Arian’s case) was an outrageous violation of human rights, both from a constitutional point of view and as a simple test of justice.”
His former appeals attorney, Professor Peter Erlinder and former National Lawyers Guild president said:
“The prosecution of Dr. Sami Al-Arian was a blatant attempt to silence political speech and dissent in the aftermath of the 9/11 tragedy. The nature of the political persecution of this case has been demonstrated throughout all its aspects, not only during the trial and the never-ending right-wing media onslaught, but also after the stunning defeat of the government in 2005, and its ill-advised abuse of the grand jury system thereafter.”
Throughout his ordeal, many other individuals and organizations expressed support, demanding justice and an end to prosecutorial ruthlessness, false imprisonment, and contempt for the rule of law.
In 2007, Norwegian filmmakers produced a documentary titled, USA v. Al-Arian. An updated 2009 version is now available. Access the following link to order:
Al-Arian was targeted for his ethnicity, prominence, activism, and for being Muslim at the wrong time in America. Washington’s police state harshness makes everyone just as vulnerable.
Earlier articles explaining Al-Arian’s ordeal, a man Bush administration prosecutors hounded, persecuted and imprisoned on bogus charges, can be accessed through the following links:
sjlendman.blogspot.com/-ordeal/04
sjlendman.blogspot.com/-ordeal/03
http://sjlendman.blogspot.com/-exoneration
Stephen Lendman lives in Chicago and can be reached at lendmanstephen@sbcglobal.net
500 Civil Activists from Asia Will March to Gaza Against Siege
TCN News | October 8, 2010
New Delhi: About 500 civil rights activists from 17 Asian countries will march to Palestine to press Israel to end the siege of Gaza. The activists will gather in New Delhi on December 1 and proceed to Gaza. The march is being organized by Asian People’s Solidarity for Palestine.
The group announced the schedule of the march in a press conference on October 5 in Delhi with similar press conferences on the same day in four other countries Turkey, Iran, Indonesia and Lebanon. According to the release, 500 civil resisters from 17 Asian countries will join the caravan from India and march through 18 Asian cities of Pakistan, Iran, and Turkey to break the siege of Gaza through the sea route in December 2010.
“This struggle is broad, varied and multi-dimensional. It is humanitarian and for peace, freedom and human dignity. It is against occupation, imperialism, apartheid, Zionism and all forms of discrimination including religious discrimination,” the group said.
Their major demands include Palestinian Self-Determination; Ending the Occupation; Equal Rights for All within historic Palestine; the Right of Return for Palestinian refugees; and Establishment of a Sovereign, Independent and Democratic state of Palestine with Jerusalem as the capital.
The Caravan will be carrying relief materials for the people of Gaza. The Asia to Gaza Caravan will cross into Pakistan via Wagah border where the Pakistan Solidarity for Gaza groups will host a civic reception for the caravan and Pakistani civil resisters will join the Caravan onwards to Iran. In every country and city, welcome committees will host receptions and public meetings with mass organisations and civil resisters will join the caravan. The caravan will culminate in 500 civil resisters boarding a ship from a Mediterranean port to sail to Gaza to break the illegal Israeli siege.
According to the release, the march has been endorsed by various organizations and individuals including All India Students Association (AISA), Aman Bharat, Asha Parivar, Awami Bharat, Global Gandhi Forum, JamiatUlema-I-Hind and Jamaat-e-Islami-Hind. The individuals include Achin Vanaik, Agdish Nagarkar, Anand Grover, Anand Patwardhan, Shabnam Hashmi, Shahid Siddiqui and Medha Patkar.
US Middle East Wars: Social Opposition And Political Impotence
By James Petras | July 4, 2007
Everywhere I visit from Copenhagen to Istanbul, Patagonia to Mexico City, journalists and academics, trade unionists and businesspeople, as well as ordinary citizens, inevitably ask me why the US public tolerates the killing of over a million Iraqis over the last two decades, and thousands of Afghans since 2001?
“You cannot win the peace unless you know the enemy at home and abroad”
US Marine Colonel from Tennessee.
Why, they ask, is a public, which opinion polls reveal as over sixty percent in favor of withdrawing US troops from Iraq, so politically impotent? A journalist from a leading business journal in India asked me what is preventing the US government from ending its aggression against Iran, if almost all of the world’s major oil companies, including US multinationals are eager to strike oil deals with Teheran? Anti-war advocates in Europe, Asia and Latin America ask me at large public forums what has happened to the US peace movement in the face of the consensus between the Republican White House and the Democratic Party-dominated Congress to continue funding the slaughter of Iraqis, supporting Israeli starvation, killing and occupation of Palestine and destruction of Lebanon?
Absence of a Peace Movement?
Just prior to the US invasion of Iraq in March 2003 over one million US citizens demonstrated against the war. Since then there have been few and smaller protests even as the slaughter of Iraqis escalates, US casualties mount and a new war with Iran looms on the horizon. The demise of the peace movement is largely the result of the major peace organizations’ decision to shift from independent social mobilizations to electoral politics, namely channeling activists into working for the election of Democratic candidates – most of whom have supported the war. The rationale offered by these ‘peace leaders’ was that once elected the Democrats would respond to the anti-war voters who put them in office. Of course practical experience and history should have taught the peace movement otherwise: The Democrats in Congress voted every military budget since the US invaded Iraq and Afghanistan. The total capitulation of the newly elected Democratic majority has had a major demoralizing effect on the disoriented peace activists and has discredited many of its leaders.
Absence of a National Movement
As David Brooks (La Jornada July 2, 2007) correctly reported at the US Social forum there is no coherent national social movement in the US. Instead we have a collection of fragmented ‘identity groups’ each embedded in narrow sets of (identity) interests, and totally incapable of building a national movement against the war. The proliferation of these sectarian ‘non-governmental’ ‘identity’ ‘groups’ is based on their structure, financing and leadership. Many depend on private foundations and public agencies for their financing, which precludes them from taking political positions. At best they operate as ‘lobbies’ simply pressuring the elite politicians of both parties. Their leaders depend on maintaining a separate existence in order to justify their salaries and secure future advances in government agencies.
The US trade unions are virtually non-existent in more than half of the United States: They represent less than 9% of the private sector and 12% of the total labor force. Most national, regional and city-wide trade union officials receive salaries comparable to senior business executives: between $300,000 to $500,000 dollars a year. Almost 90% of the top trade union bureaucrats finance and support pro-war Democrats and have supported Bush and the Congressional war budgets, the slaughter of Palestinians and the Israeli bombing of Lebanon and bought Israel Bonds ($25 billion dollars).
The Unopposed War Lobby
The US is the only country in the world where the peace movement is unwilling to recognize, publically condemn or oppose the major influential political and social institutions consistently supporting and promoting the US wars in the Middle East. The political power of the pro-Israel power configuration, led by the American Israel Political Affairs Committee (AIPAC), supported within the government by highly placed pro-Israel Congressional leaders and White House and Pentagon officials has been well documented in books and articles by leading journalists, scholars and former President Jimmy Carter. The Zionist Power Configuration (ZPC) has over two thousand full-time functionaries, more than 250,000 activists, over a thousand billionaire and multi-millionaire political donors who contribute funds to both political parties. The ZPC secures 20% of the US foreign military aid budget for Israel, over 95% congressional support for Israel’s boycott of and armed incursions in Gaza, invasion of Lebanon and preemptive military option against Iran.
The US invasion and occupation policy in Iraq, including the fabricated evidence justifying the invasion, was deeply influenced by top officials with long-standing loyalties and ties to Israel. Wolfowitz and Feith, numbers 2 and 3 in the Pentagon, are life-long Zionists, who lost security clearance early in their careers for handing over documents to Israel. Vice President Cheney’s chief foreign policy adviser in the planning of the Iraq invasion is Irving Lewis Liebowitz (‘Scooter Libby’). He is a protégé and long-time collaborator of Wolfowitz and a convicted felon.
Libby-Liebowitz committed perjury, defending the White House’s complicity in punishing officials critical of its Iraq war propaganda. Libby-Liebowitz received powerful political and financial support from the pro-Israel lobby during his trial. No sooner did he lose his appeal on his conviction on five counts of perjury, obstructing justice and lying, than the ZPC convinced President Bush to ‘commute’ his prison sentence, in effect freeing him from a 30 month prison sentence before he had served a day. While Democratic politicians and some peace leaders criticized President Bush, none dared hold responsible the pro-Israel lobby which pressured the White House.
The Presidents of the Major American Jewish Organizations (PMAJO) – numbering 52 – and their regional and local affiliates are the leading force transmitting Israel’s war agenda against Iran. The PMAJO, working closely with US-Israeli Congressman Rahm Emmanuel and leading Zionist Senators Charles Schumer and Joseph Lieberman, succeeded in eliminating a clause in the budget appropriation setting a date for the withdrawal for US troops from Iraq.
In contrast to the successful vast propaganda, congressional and media campaigns, organized and funded by the pro-Israel lobbies for the war policies, there is no public record of the big oil companies supporting the Iraq war, the Israeli invasion of Lebanon or the military threats of preemptive attacks on Iran. Interviews with investment bankers, oil company executives and a thorough review of the major Petroleum Institute publications over the past seven years provide conclusive evidence that ‘Big Oil’ was deeply interested in negotiating oil agreements with Saddam Hussein and the Iranian Islamic government. ‘Big Oil’ perceives US Middle East wars as a threat to their long-standing profitable relations with all the conservative Arab oil states in the Gulf. Despite the strategic position in the US economy and their great wealth ‘‘Big Oil’ was totally incapable of countering the political power and organized influence of the pro-Israel lobby. In fact Big Oil was totally marginalized by the White House National Security Advisor for the Middle East, Elliot Abrams, a fanatical Zionist and militarist.
Despite the massive and sustained pro-war activity of the leading Zionist organizations inside and outside of the government and despite the absence of any overt or covert pro-war campaign by ‘Big Oil’, the leaders of the US peace movement have refused to attack the pro-Israel war lobby and continue to mouth unfounded clichés about the role of ‘Big Oil’ in the Middle East conflicts.
The apparently ‘radical’ slogans against the oil industry by some leading intellectual critics of the war has served as a ‘cover’ to avoid the much more challenging task of taking on the powerful, Zionist lobby. There are several reasons for the failure of the leaders of the peace movement to confront the militant Zionist lobby. One is fear of the powerful propaganda and smear campaign which the pro-Israel lobby is expert at mounting, with its aggressive accusations of ‘anti-Semitism’ and its capacity to blacklist critics, leading to job loss, career destruction, public abuse and death threats.
The second reason that peace leaders fail to criticize the leading pro-war lobby is because of the influence of pro-Israel ‘progressives’ in the movement. These progressives condition their support of ‘peace in Iraq’ only if the movement does not criticize the pro-war Israel lobby in and outside the US government as well as the role of Israel as a belligerent partner to the US in Lebanon, Palestine and Kurdish Northern Iraq. A movement claiming to be in favor of peace, which refuses to attack the main proponents of war, is pursuing irrelevance: it deflects attention from the pro-Israel high officials in the government and the lobbyists in Congress who back the war and set the White House’s Middle East agenda. By focusing attention exclusively on President Bush, the peace leaders failed to confront the majority pro-Israel Democratic congress people who fund Bush’s war, back his escalation of troops and give unconditional support to Israel’s military option for Iran.
The collapse of the US peace movement, the lack of credibility of most of its leaders and the demoralization of many activists can be traced to strategic political failures: the unwillingness to identify and confront the real pro-war movements and the inability to create a political alternative to the bellicose Democratic Party. The political failure of the leaders of the peace movement is all the more dramatic in the face of the large majority of passive Americans who oppose the war, most of whom did not display their flags this Fourth of July and are not led in tow by either the pro-Israel lobby or their intellectual apologists within progressive circles.
The word to anti-war critics of the world is that over sixty percent of the US public opposes the war but our streets are empty because our peace movement leaders are spineless and politically impotent.
Letter from an Israeli (Birmingham) Jail
Israel is probably one of the most thoroughly segregated and intolerant nations
By Dallas Darling | Palestine Chronicle | October 14, 2010
If Martin Luther King would have been a Palestinian, I sometimes wonder how Israeli authorities would have treated him. This came to mind again when it was reported that an Israeli military court sentenced Palestinian nonviolence activist Abdullah Abu Rahmeh to one year in prison. Evidently, the military tribunal found him guilty of “incitement” and for organizing illegal protests. It also fined him $1,400, a stiff penalty for someone who lost over half of his farmland to land seized by Israeli settlement programs.
Similar to Martin Luther King, Abdullah Abu Rahmeh has experienced years of racial oppression and religious intolerance. Like Martin Luther King who founded the Southern Christian Leadership Conference to help achieve equality for blacks, Abdullah Abu Rahmeh is the coordinator of the Bilin Popular Resistance Committee against the Wall and Settlements. Since 2005, the movement has nonviolently challenged Israeli segregation and exclusive religious laws. It has also peacefully resisted Israeli bulldozing of Palestinian homes and annexation of Palestinian villages and land.
As Israeli security and military forces fire teargas canisters into the marching crowd, some of the protests have turned violent. Israeli rubber bullets have killed several protesters too. Still, Palestinian teens have thrown stones at soldiers while protesting. The Israeli military claimed several Palestinian teens confessed Abdullah Abu Rahmeh told them to throw stones. They have accused him of inciting violence and riots. However, Abdullah Abu Rahmeh has denied such charges and instead, he claims to have pursued nonviolent strategies while encouraging the youth to stop throwing stones.
In 1963 and before the Jobs and Civil Rights March on Washington, Martin Luther King brought the movement for equality and freedom to Birmingham, Alabama. President John Kennedy was embroiled with the effects of the Cuban Missile Crisis and appeared distant from the urgent need to initiate a courageous civil rights law for America. After watching newsreel footage of false arrests, police beatings, attack dogs ripping apart protesters, and the city’s fire department hosing passive marchers with enough force to break their bones, some were finally convinced-including President Kennedy-that segregation had to end.
Like Abdullah Abu Rahmeh, Martin Luther King was jailed for his nonviolent direct action campaign in Birmingham. A group of white Alabama ministers put an ad in the New York Times condemning Martin Luther King of being an “agitator” and wanting only to evoke violence and to start a riot. They tried to convince him to end his campaign and to wait, that the future would be better for black Americans. His response, or the Letter From A Birmingham Jail, was written on scraps of paper and in the margins of a newspaper. Can the contents of the letter be applied to Abdullah Abu Rahmeh and Palestinians and Arabs living under Israeli rule and in Occupied Territories?
Therefore, if Martin Luther King was a Palestinian and had been arrested and jailed, like Abdullah Abu Rahmeh, this is what the Letter From An Israeli Jail would say:
I am in Israel because injustice is here. Just as the eighth century prophets left their little villages and carried their ‘thus says God’ far beyond the boundaries of their home town, I too am compelled to carry the message of freedom beyond my particular home town. Moreover, I am aware of the interrelatedness of all communities and states. I cannot sit idly by and not be concerned about what happens in Israel. Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere. We are caught in an inescapable network of mutuality, tied in a single garment of destiny. Whatever affects one directly affects all indirectly. (1)
Israel is probably one of the most thoroughly segregated and intolerant nations. Its ugly record of police brutality and military incursions are known in every section of the Middle East. Its unjust treatment of Palestinians and Arabs in the courts is a notorious reality, as are the numerous false imprisonments of men, women and children. There have been more unsolved bombings and bulldozing of Palestinian homes and attacks on mosques in Israel than any nation in the Middle East. There have also been unsolved killings and a complete disregard for basic human rights and civil liberties. (2)
You may well ask: “Why direct action? Why sit-ins, marches, etc.? Isn’t negotiation a better path?” You are exactly right in your call for negotiation. Indeed, this is the purpose of direct action. Nonviolent direct action seeks to create such a crisis and establish such creative tension that a nation that has constantly refused to negotiate is forced to confront the issue. It seeks so to dramatize the issue that it can no longer be ignored. I have worked against violent tension, but there is a type of constructive nonviolent tension that is necessary for growth. It is the kind of tension that will help men to rise from the dark depths of prejudice and racism to the majestic heights of understanding and unity. (3)
Nations and groups are more immoral than individuals. We know through painful experience that freedom is never voluntarily given by the oppressor; it must be demanded by the oppressed. Frankly, I have never yet engaged in a direct action movement that was “well timed,” according to the timetable of those who have not suffered unduly from the disease of segregation and religious intolerance. For years now, I have heard the word “Wait!” It rings in the ear of every Palestinian with a piercing familiarity. This “Wait” has almost always meant “Never!” We must come to see with the distinguished jurist of yesterday that “justice too long delayed is justice denied. (4)
But when you have seen vicious mobs kill your mothers and fathers at will and bulldoze your sisters and brothers at whim; when you have seen hate filled security forces kick, brutalize, bomb, use as human shields, and dance around and humiliate your Palestinian and Arab sisters and brothers with impunity; when you see the vast majority of your people smothering in an airtight cage of poverty in the midst of an affluent society; when you are forever fighting a degenerating sense of “nobodiness”; then you will understand why we find it difficult to wait. There comes a time when the cup of endurance runs over, and men are no longer willing to be plunged into an abyss of despair. (5)
One may well ask: “How can you advocate breaking some laws and obeying others?” There are, in fact, two types of laws: There are just and there are unjust laws. Any law that uplifts human personality is just. Any law that degrades human personality is unjust. All segregation and religious intolerance statutes are unjust because they distort the soul and damage the personality. It gives the segregator and intolerant a false sense of inferiority. To use the words of Martin Buber, the Jewish philosopher, segregation and intolerance substitutes an “I-it” relationship for an “I-thou” relationship, and ends up relegating persons to the status of things. Segregation and intolerance are existential expressions of man’s tragic separation and awful estrangement. (6)
Of course, there is nothing new about this kind of civil disobedience. It was seen sublimely in the refusal of Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego to obey the laws of Nebuchadnezzar because a higher moral law was involved. We can never forget that everything Hitler did in Germany was “legal” and everything the Hungarian freedom fighters did in Hungary was “illegal.” It was “illegal” to aid and comfort a Jew in Hitler’s Germany. But I am sure that if I had lived in Germany during that time I would have aided and comforted my Jewish brothers even though it was illegal. (7)
But the Jewish and American moderates are more devoted to “order” than to justice: who prefers a negative peace which is the absence of tension to a positive peace which his the presence of justice. Shallow understanding from people of goodwill is more frustrating than absolute misunderstanding from people of ill will. I had hoped that Jewish and American moderates would understand that law and order exist for the purpose of establishing justice, and that when they fail to do this they become dangerously structured dams that block the flow of social progress. (8)
Actually, we who engage in nonviolent direct action are not the creators of tension. We merely bring to the surface the hidden tension that is already alive. We bring it out in the open where it can be seen and dealt with. Like a boil that can never be cured as long as it is covered up but must be opened with all its pus-flowing ugliness to the natural medicines of air and light, injustice must likewise be exposed, with all of the tension its exposing creates, to the light of human conscience and the air of global opinion before it can be cured. (9)
Oppressed people cannot remain oppressed forever. The urge for freedom will eventually come. This is what happened to the Palestinians and Arabs. Something within has reminded them of their birthright of freedom; something without has reminded them that they can gain it. Consciously and unconsciously, they have been swept in by what the Germans call the Zeitgeist, and with their black brothers of Africa, and their brown and yellow brothers of Asia, South America and the Caribbean, they are moving with a sense of cosmic urgency toward the promised land of racial justice and religious tolerance. (10)
(Note: Many international human rights organizations have already denounced Israel’s arrest and sentencing of Abdullah Abu Rahmeh, including Archbishop Desmond Tutu. During World War Two, Arabs and Palestinians also assisted Jews fleeing Germany and the Third Reich.)
– Dallas Darling is the author of Politics 501: An A-Z Reading on Conscientious Political Thought and Action, Some Nations Above God: 52 Weekly Reflections On Modern-Day Imperialism, Militarism, And Consumerism in the Context of John‘s Apocalyptic Vision, and The Other Side Of Christianity: Reflections on Faith, Politics, Spirituality, History, and Peace. He is a correspondent for www.worldnews.com. He contributed this article to PalestineChronicle.com. Visit: www.beverlydarling.com and wn.com//dallasdarling.
Notes:
(1) Young, Ralph F., Dissent In America, The Voices That Shaped A Nation. New York, New York: Parson Longman Publishers, 2006., p. 551.
(2) Ibid., p. 552.
(3) Ibid., p. 553.
(4) Ibid., p. 553, 554.
(5) Ibid., p. 554.
(6) Ibid., p. 555.
(7) Ibid., p. 556.
(8) Ibid., p. 556.
(9) Ibid., p. 556.
(10) Ibid., p. 558.
BDS Success: Unilever to Move Factory out of West Bank
Unilever Israel Foods is planning move its Beigel & Beigel company plant from the Barkan industrial zone, located in the occupied West Bank, to a location inside Israel, reports the Hebrew-language daily Maariv.
This moves follows intense Palestinian and international pressure on the parent company, Unilever International, to move its operations out of the settlement industrial zone or to divest from the factory, which collects profits due to the advantages given to Israeli businesses in the West Bank, including extensive subsidies by the Israeli government.
Unilever International, the UK and Dutch-owned multinational company, has been trying to divest from Beigel & Beigel since 2008, following the refusal of British stores to sell products manufactured in Israeli settlements. However, given the location of the factory in the illegal Ariel settlement and the growing international calls for accountability from the settlements industries, the company was unable to sell its shares.
“Following the divestment in recent years of a number of non-core businesses … the decision has been reached to divest of its interests in the bakery business and will therefore seek to find a buyer for Unilever’s share in the Beigel & Beigel partnership,” the company said in a statement at the time.
United Civilians for Peace, a Dutch organization, published a report in 2006 entitled Dutch economic links to the Israeli occupation of Palestinian and/or Syrian territories, and then began “a constructive dialogue with Unilever Netherlands on the ethical implications of the company’s investment in the settlement,” according to the UCP website.
According to the UPC report, “The land of the Barkan industrial zone was confiscated from surrounding Palestinian villages by a military order issued by the Israeli Defence Force in 1981, and declared “state land”. International Law prohibits the confiscation of occupied land not for military purposes.”
UCP also noted that the “Location in the settlement makes Unilever complicit with violations of international law, Palestinian human rights and labour rights,” and that “Beigel & Beigel benefits from subsidies allocated by the Israeli government to the industrial zones in the settlements. Also, the factory has been guaranteed a state grant for a plan of expansion.”
According to a 2008 Guardian newspaper article, “At Beigel & Beigel, 45% of the 140 workers are Palestinians from the surrounding villages whose land was confiscated for the construction. Most of them work on the assembly line operating machines and contrary to Unilever’s own labour standards, they are not paid the Israeli minimum wage.”
In 2008, Unilever Israel, which bought half of the Beigel & Beigel pretzel company in 2001, said their plan to sell Beigel & Beigel stocks was strategic, not ethical, but given their inability to sell stocks and divest from the company during this two year time period, Unilever’s recent action is a tacit admission that their decision to divest was a direct result of the pressure of the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement.
Let the Sun Shine In: Israel lobby tries to censor Ali Abunimah appearance at University
By Ali Abunimah | October 13, 2010
It has come to my attention that the Jewish Federation of New Mexico and Hillel at the University of New Mexico are actively trying to censor my lecture at the University of New Mexico next month by writing to departments and professors who may co-sponsor it as they co-sponsor countless other educational events on campus. Below is a copy of a letter that has been sent to departments, signed by Sam Sokolove, Executive Director of the Jewish Federation of New Mexico and Sara Koplik, Director of Hillel at the University of New Mexico.
Typically, they throw in everything to try to defame and tar me: Hamas, Hizbullah, anti-Semitism, making Jewish students feel uncomfortable — all the usual defamatory silencing tactics to try to suppress debate and discussion about Israel’s apartheid and the alternatives that respect everyone. As they surely know, I have been an unflagging advocate of full equality and human rights for all Palestinians and Israeli Jews and others living in historic Palestine, and am guided by the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Why do they not want students at the University of New Mexico to hear this message?
Instead of trying to censor my speech and intimidate departments from co-sponsoring it with the most lurid, false and manipulative charges, I invite them to attend and to urge students to attend and listen and ask me any questions they want.
Dear XXXXXXXXXX
It has come to our attention that the XXXXXXXXXX Department at UNM is co-presenting an appearance by Ali Abunimah, co-founder of the Electronic Intifada at the University of New Mexico campus on Sunday, November 7th. We are deeply troubled by the implications of the XXXXXXXXXX Department lending its support to this presentation.
As you are likely aware, Abunimah is a representative of the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) movement, a global movement intent on destroying Israel and her credibility in the world. It is an adjunct to what Hamas and Hezbollah are doing frontally, and according to the Anti-Defamation League, “BDS is about the three ‘D’s: “Demonization, Deligitimization, and applying a Double Standard.”
This movement is disinterested in peace, the exchange of ideas or legitimate dialogue. Its tactics deny Israel’s cultural products; deny Israel’s emissaries the right to be heard; delegitimize the Jewish historical ties to Israel; and portray Zionism not as an expression of peoplehood, but as an extension of European colonization.
This is all anti-Semitism in its clearest, most noxious form.
Whatever your personal views are on this matter, you should be aware of two things:
- The XXXXXXXXXXX Department’s support of this speaker sends a tacit message of support for the anti-Semitic message of BDS;
- The department’s endorsement sends a chilling message to the Jewish students and faculty of this public institution that the legitimacy of Israel within your department is questioned.
For those who care deeply about true peace, this is not an issue of “equal time” or “balance” on behalf of the pro-Israel perspective. Nor do we oppose Abunimah’s right to speak. Rather, we oppose the patina of respectability that your sponsorship provides to the message of demonizing The Other that is part and parcel of the BDS movement.
We ask in the strongest terms that you reconsider your department’s presentation of Ali Abunimah.
Sam Sokolove
Executive Director
Jewish Federation of New MexicoSara Koplik, PhD.
Director
Hillel at the University of New Mexico
Bahrain-based Saudi-financed “Islamic” bank Arcapita doing rich business with Israel military
Ali Abunimah | October 12, 2010
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This blog reported on 9 October that American Task Force on Palestine (ATFP) Board Member Marwan M. Atalla and his investment firm NEST U.S.A. Inc. are shareholders in Cirrus Design Corporation, an aircraft manufacturing firm which does millions in business with Israeli military contractors closely tied to the Israeli military establishment. (See “Board member of Ziad Asali’s ATFP does millions in business with Israeli military firm” )
As the earlier post explains, Cirrus has a long history of working with Israeli companies and recently chose an Israeli military contractor called TAT Technologies to supply $10 million worth of aircraft parts. TAT Technologies is run by Israeli military officers, including a former commander of Israeli occupation forces in southern Lebanon, and its factory is built on the land of the ethnically-cleansed Palestinian village of Yasur.
Since publishing that post, I have received new information from a former employee who is also a current minority shareholder at Cirrus. According to this individual Atalla was an active board member of Cirrus until 2001, but was forced to resign along with other independent board members when another investor, the First Islamic Investment Bank of Bahrain took a majority stake in Cirrus. Atalla and his firm NEST U.S.A. Inc. remain shareholders of Cirrus as of this time, according to NEST’s own website.
In 2005, the First Islamic Investment Bank of Bahrain changed its name to Arcapita. Arcapita is financed by investors in Kuwait, Qatar and Saudi Arabia and is well-connected to those countries’ ruling families.
The Arcapita website states on its current corporate investments page that it acquired a stake in “Cirrus Design Corporation” in 2001, but does not say how big the stake is. A 2007 report on aviation industry website AVweb, put Arcapita’s stake at a controlling 58 percent.
While the AVweb report mentions that Arcapita was seeking to divest from Cirrus, in fact it has become more deeply involved. An April 2009 press release from Cirrus stated that Arcapita had pumped even more money into the company during the global financial crisis.
As an Islamic investment bank, all of Arcapita’s investments are screened by its Shariah Supervisory Board which currently includes a religious scholar and former judge from the Supreme Court in Mecca, Saudi Arabia, as well as religious scholars from Pakistan and Bahrain. Such advisory boards are supposed to screen investments to make sure they comply with Islamic banking standards — typically avoiding interest, or investments in alcohol or pornography.
But for Arcapita, at least, there seems to be nothing un-Islamic about profiting from deals with the Israeli military establishment — the same military that has slaughtered more than nine thousand Muslims, Christians and others and injured and permanently maimed tens of thousands more in Palestine and Lebanon in the past decade alone in what numerous international investigations have termed war crimes and crimes against humanity.
Needless to say, Arcapita-controlled Cirrus’ business with the Israeli military establishment is a gross violation of the Palestinian civil society call for boycott, divestment and sanctions (BDS) on Israel.
Israeli military court sentences protest leader to 1 year
Ma’an – 11/10/2010
RAMALLAH — An Israeli military court on Monday sentenced non-violent protest organizer Abdallah Abu Rahmah to 12 months imprisonment, with a six-month suspended sentence.
Abu Rahmah has been in an Israeli jail since December, and was convicted in August of incitement, and organizing and participating in protests in Bil’in. Ofer military court also ordered Abu Rahmah to pay a 5,000 shekel fine (almost $1,400).
At his hearing in August, the military prosecutor requested an exceptionally harsh sentencing in order to deter Abu Rahmah and to intimidate others, a statement from the Popular Struggle Coordination Committee said.
PSCC spokesman Jonathan Pollak said the committee would appeal the sentence.
Abu Rahmah is a coordinator of the Bil’in Popular Committee Against the Wall and Settlements. Weekly protests are held in Bil’in against confiscation of village land to build illegal Israeli settlements.
Israeli military law in the West Bank uses a much stricter definition of illegal assembly than Israeli civilian law, in practice forbidding more than 10 people from assembling without receiving a permit from the military.
According to his supporters, Abu Rahmah’s conviction was based only on testimonies of minors who were arrested in the middle of the night and denied legal counsel despite significant concerns, acknowledged by the court, over their questioning.
The protest leader’s detention was internationally condemned. EU foreign policy chief Catherine Ashton said “The EU considers Abdallah Abu Rahmah to be a Human Rights Defender committed to non violent protest against the route of the Israeli separation barrier through his West Bank village of Bil’in.”
The Intergroup for Palestine, an official body of the Spanish Parliament represented by all political parties, issued a statement expressing its “deep concern that Abdallah Abu Rahmah’s potential incarceration aims at preventing him and other Palestinians from exercising their legitimate right to protest against the existence of the Wall in a non violent manner.”
Archbishop Desmond Tutu said he had been “very impressed” by Abu Rahmah’s commitment to non-violence and wise leadership, and said “Israel’s attempt to crack down on this effective resistance movement by criminalizing peaceful protest is unacceptable and unjust.”
Abdallah is the recipient of the the Carl Von Ossietzky Medal for Outstanding Service in the Realization of Basic Human Rights, which is awarded by the International League for Human Rights in Berlin.
President Barack “Midnight Raid” Obama: End Your Wars at Home and Abroad
By Glen Ford | Black Agenda Report | September 29, 2010
Last week’s FBI raids in the Twin Cities, Chicago and Durham, North Carolina amount to a declaration of war on the activist Left, in which grand juries are deployed as omnibus weapons of political persecution under an infinitely expandable anti-terrorism rationale. The constitutional lawyer in the White House has tossed the founding document into the National Security State shredder, as he prepares for global capitalism’s High Noon encounter with – anyone and everyone that resists.
A government that claims the right to kill U.S. citizens without even a whiff of due process and for reasons that are secret to the public and to the victim, has broken with every notion of the rule of law since the Magna Carta. The Obama Justice Department has spent every available hour since Inauguration Day building upon George Bush’s fascist logic in an attempt to fashion a flawless Orwellian police state doctrine in which secrecy and security are entwined like a strand of DNA. For targets not marked for oblivion, there awaits a grand jury with boundless powers to ensnare anyone, absolutely anyone.
The scope of information demanded of some of last week’s FBI victims – demands with which no one can fully comply, such as all records of domestic as well as foreign travel since the year 2000, or a list of all “contacts” that might somehow have bearing on the conflict in Colombia or the Mideast – is naked proof that the intent is to smother, entangle and utterly demobilize the target. The Obama administration is constructing a legal minefield in which any honest activist can be charged with lying to federal officers or a grand jury by commission or omission – each count of which is punishable by years in prison.
It is not brave, but prudent and self-protective, to refuse to discuss one’s political work or opinions or much of anything at all with FBI agents, as was reportedly the case with all of the recently targeted individuals. But grand juries are places where rights are butchered, and we can clearly see the broad outlines of a mass prosecution strategy unfolding, in which grand juries are the engines of political destruction. As Ron Jacobs wrote in Counterpunch, “There is a grand jury being convened in October 2010 with the intention of perhaps charging some of the people (and maybe others) subpoenaed on September 24. These raids are an attempt by the federal government to criminalize antiwar organizing.”
This is much more serious than merely “harassing” the anti-war movement. The Obama regime would not be going to so much trouble to systematically negate the Constitution just for the fun of it. They have a serious offensive in mind, which may have already begun.
U.S. intelligence services know perfectly well that activists like those raided last week barely have the material resources to put out slim periodicals or keep web sites updated. They cannot possibly provide “material support” to “terrorists” unless political statements against war (or silence in a grand jury) can be construed as, somehow, “support” for those the U.S. government deems terroristic. If the aim is to push anti-war and other social activists to the very edge of the cliff, where they will either shut down or fall into the carefully constructed legal abyss – that’s not harassment, that’s a campaign to “neutralize” the Left, in COINTELPRO terms.
As Black Workers for Justice stated, “We’ve seen these FBI and government raids and attacks on African American leaders and activists during the 1950s, 1960s and 1970s. Medgar Evers, Malcolm X, Martin Luther King, Jr., and members of the Black Panther Party, among others, were assassinated, jailed, beaten and driven into political exile for leading demonstrations and speaking out against racism, U.S. wars and other injustices…. Those who profit from these wars and U.S. support for oppressive governments like Israel and Colombia hope that by having a Black President, it will discourage African Americans from speaking out in protest against these raids, and against attacks on other social justice fighters. Dr. King said that during times like these, ‘We must break our silence!’”
Or, as the Freedom Socialist Party and Radical Women put it, in a joint statement, “the Obama administration is continuing COINTELPRO-type operations the FBI used in the ’60s and ’70s to divide the movements and smash dissent.”
A friend reminded me that, just as Nixon was thought to be the only U.S. president that could have pulled off the “opening” to China, based on his well-earned reputation as an arch anti-communist, so the First Black President might be the one that unleashes the 21st century police state in all its techno-horror. A Black president with a degree in constitutional law, who can still no do no wrong in the delusional eyes of strong majorities of African Americans, some of whom would remain in his corner even if Obama, himself, knocked down their doors in the wee hours of the morning.
If it is legal for Obama to kill Americans in total secrecy and impunity, with no explanation or even acknowledgment necessary, surely it is a lesser affront to an irrelevant Constitution to strangle the Left with grand juries.
Even Obamite-ridden United for Peace and Justice is upset, although not enough to confront the president, directly. The FBI is “a recidivist agency whose abuses have unfortunately recurred throughout its history,” said UFPJ, lamely. So, this is a problem of one agency, disconnected from the larger administration? What about Obama, the boss-man? The UFPJ will be cheering him and the Democrats on Saturday, October 2, as head of the official “peace table” at the NAACP and Big Labor’s mass rally in Washington, while the United National Anti-War Committee (UNAC), the Black is Back Coalition and tens of thousands of folks that demand an immediate end to U.S. wars of aggression, bailouts of Wall Street, mass Black incarceration, a multi-million jobs public employment program and a halt to U.S. aid to Israel, will form a distinct and separate contingent. By their demands, ye shall know them.
The Green Party was, in its anger, bold enough to mention the president’s name. “We demand that President Obama and Attorney General Eric Holder order an end to ‘police state’ tactics by the FBI and other security agencies and that the Justice Department investigate the Sept. 24 raids,” said Theresa El-Amin, Green Party co-chair. “We demand that grand jury investigations and subpoenas in connection with the raids be canceled immediately. We demand that President Obama restore the rule of law and order all security agencies and police forces to cease spying on citizens without obtaining a warrant. We encourage everyone to protest the FBI’s lawless and outrageous actions as loudly as possible.”
Obama’s newest assault on the Left has generated new demands for the October 2 rally. The San Francisco Labor Council, after resolving that the FBI raids “are reminiscent of the Palmer Raids, McCarthy hearings, J. Edgar Hoover, and COINTELPRO, and mark a new and dangerous chapter in the protracted assault on the First Amendment rights of every union fighter, international solidarity activist or anti-war campaigner, which began with 9/11 and the USA Patriot Act,” put forward a demand to choke the pep rally out of labor’s Democratic cheerleaders: “that this Council urge the AFL-CIO to ensure that denunciation of the FBI raids is featured from the speakers’ platform at the October 2, 2010 One Nation march in Washington, DC, possibly by inviting one of those targeted by the raids, for example the SEIU chief steward whose home was raided, to speak at the rally.”
Will the NAACP and Big Labor allow it to happen? By their cowardices and betrayals, ye shall also know them.
BAR executive editor Glen Ford can be contacted at Glen.Ford@BlackAgendaReport.com.
Israel Detains, Denies Entry to Nobel Laureate, Mairead Maguire
By Saed Bannoura – IMEMC & Agencies – September 29, 2010
The Israeli Authorities detained Irish Nobel Prize laureate, Mairead Maguire, at the Ben-Gurion International Airport Tuesday, and refused to allow her into the country. She was later escorted to a flight bound to Britain despite legal appeals to allow her into the country.
In 1967, Maguire was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize for her work against sectarian violence in Northern Ireland. The Nobel Prize was awarded to her and to Betty Williams.
Maguire flew to Israel on Tuesday morning from Frankfort – Germany. The Nobel Prize laureate was accompanied by a peace delegation of women, including five other Nobel Peace Prize laureates.
Israel previously issued a permanent order banning Maguire from entering the country for her participating in solidarity flotillas sending humanitarian aid to the besieged Gaza Strip. She was one of the human rights activists who were on the “Rachel Corrie” solidarity ship that was seized by Israel in May this year.
Judy Williams, an American Nobel Prize recipient, who intended to be part of the delegation with Maguire, stated that preventing entry to Maguire is of a great concern to the people who dedicate their lives for peace.
“The people who dedicate their lives to peace should not be considered a threat to security”, Williams said.
Two years ago, Maguire voiced a sharp criticism to Israel for ignoring all international community resolutions calling for ending Israel’s occupation in Palestine. She also called for removing Israel from the United Nations for its ongoing violations to Human Rights.
Eight US universities say yes to apartheid
By Lawrence Davidson | Redress | 27 September 2010
The Islamic University of Gaza – Click for more photos
A letter from Gaza appeared on the web dated 24 September 2010. It was from a group of Gaza academics and students and sought to publicize the fact that eight American universities have recently signed agreements with various Israeli universities to offer US students free semester-long programmes in Israel. Among the American universities participating in this venture are Harvard, Columbia and Michigan.
Unspoken strategy of cultural genocide
The Gaza academics and students expressed shock at this turn of events. And so they might, given the fact that they are sitting in an outdoor prison of Israeli making and have seen their educational institutions both starved of resources by an Israeli blockade and literally bombed to rubble by Israeli warplanes. The situation in Gaza is but the worst of a bad situation for all Palestinians, including those in the West Bank and Israel proper. When it comes to education in all of these locales apartheid policies are in place to interfere with Palestinian students and teachers and minimize the educational experience. Actually, this is part of an unspoken strategy of cultural genocide. Such policies are directly or indirectly supported by the Israeli academic institutions to which the participating American universities now want to send their students.
How can these US universities do this? This is certainly a legitimate question in an age when discrimination and racism are, supposedly, no longer socially or politically acceptable. After all Harvard, Columbia, Michigan, etc. are institutions of higher learning housed in a country that prides itself on broad civil rights laws and all of them adhere to social equity rules. Yet here they are climbing into academic bed, so to speak, with a state that practises apartheid against its non-Jewish minority and is attempting to ethnically cleanse the indigenous population of the occupied territories. Well, there are any number of scenarios that might lead them to this sort of hellish arrangement and here I offer only one possibility. It assumes an “Adolf Eichmann context.”
The realm of the bureaucrat
The people in control of American universities (and perhaps all universities) are mostly bureaucrats. Some of them are trained in the specialty field of higher education administration, some are professors who have crossed over to an administrative career line, and some are just folks hired from the general population pool to run sub-departments such as public relations and accounting. They are all trained to pay lip service to various sorts of mission statements and assessment markers; however, their lives are really very insular and their goals narrow and short term. For instance, even at the highest level, say the office of the university president, there are usually but a few major goals, and the main one in this case is to raise money.
Somewhere in the organizational chart is an office of overseas programmes (or some similar title). It is usually a small operation with a director and a secretary. Their job is to set up exchange programmes. What they are looking for are programmes at overseas schools that are roughly similar in quality to the courses their own institution offers. That way the credits can be legitimately transferred back home and stand in for some of their student’s degree requirements. The people who are arranging these exchanges usually know little or nothing of the social or political situation in the overseas institution’s country. And, they are not likely to educate themselves on these subjects beyond some assurance that the place is relatively safe for the students that will be participating in the exchange. It may be hard for those of us who are so focused on Israeli apartheid to accept this, but for most of the folks in these little offices, Israel has about the same cachet as the Czech Republic or maybe Ireland. There is a lot of ignorance at his level.
What else is going on?
Of course, that is not the end of the story. There are other folks out there, most of whom are indirectly associated with the university in question. These people know that there is a war going on against apartheid Israel, and they are not on our side. They want to counter the increasingly effective process of “chipping away at Israel’s legitimacy”. They also have deep pockets and lots of influence. These folks may be big donors to these universities and some of them may well sit on the institution’s board of governors/regents.
When the president or his representative goes out to raise money these donors have what appears to be innocuous conditions for their gifts. So they say to president x or y, “sure we will give you half a million dollars for that new sports complex you so covet, but in return we want you to create this exchange programme with Hebrew and Haifa universities”. The president thinks that this is little enough to ask for such a generous gift, and his friend on the board of governors/regents seconds the motion. A telephone call is made to the director of overseas programmes who is given a contact name and number at the Israeli embassy to get things rolling. And that is how it happens.
What comes next?
Soon enough this arrangement becomes public. You have to figure if they know about it in Gaza, they know about in Cambridge, Ann Arbor and upper Manhattan. Given the times there will probably be some sort of public protest, but the ensuing struggle will not be easy for the following reasons:
a) The university position will almost certainly be that to shun Israel is a violation of academic freedom, free inquiry and the essential non-political status of learning. This sort of argument is age old. The US universities were making it when they were asked to divest from apartheid South Africa and stop research funded by the “Defence” Department during the Vietnam war. One can never lay this argument to rest in any final way because it represents a cherished, if somewhat unreal, ideal.
So you point out for the one-thousandth time that there is an inherent contradiction when you take this position relative to Israeli universities just because they do not promote these academic ideals. They are destroyers of free thought and free inquiry as far as Palestinian rights (and particularly the right of education) are concerned. And so if the ideal of a non-political status for learning exists anywhere in the real world, it ain’t in Israel. The whole Zionist academic setup has been criticized by international as well as Israeli human rights organizations for these anti-educational activities. Finally, you try to tell the university decision makers that there is precedent for universities taking a stand against apartheid practices. At this point you notice that they have, figuratively, clicked on their iPods and are no longer listening.
b) Next you go to the professors of the institution and try to explain the same thing. That is when you come to the stomach wrenching realization that most of them do not care. Most academics are as specialized as the bureaucrats, and live their lives in just as insular a world. They know a lot about their sub-field and very little beyond it. They are dedicated to their families and their local communities and are, on the whole, decent people, but they are not interested, nor are they going to hit the street, for oppressed people far away. This is particularly true when their local news sources have been systematically libeling those people for 60-plus years. They too will hide behind the idea of academic freedom.
It should be noted that this is not quite the same thing as Julien Benda’s “treason of the intellectuals”. There is very little spouting of national chauvinism or the racism of Islamophobia (except for the Zionists professors among them). No, it is just co-optation into the system. It is just natural localism – I really just want to live my life and work in my laboratory or library cubicle, etc. I am reluctant to get too annoyed at my fellow academics for this attitude, because theirs is the immemorial stance of all ordinary folks everywhere.
c) So that leaves the students, and here there is a much better chance to gather a crowd and take a stand. There is always a socially conscious group among the youth who are willing to fight for a good cause and risk defying the powers that be. This is because they have yet to become ensconced in the system, bogged down with career, family, mortgage and the like. In other words, some of them have not yet shrunk into an insular world of very local interests and goals. Those are the people who will protest, if anyone will, at the ivy towers of Harvard, Columbia, Michigan and the five other schools which have willed their own corruption.
What are the odds of victory?
Whether anyone will listen to the protesters depends on how many there are, how loud they protest and how far they are willing to go with it. Are they willing to go into the dormitories and spread the word? Are they willing to picket not only the ordinary centres of power on campus, but also the admissions office when prospective students come to visit, or demonstrate on home-coming day and at all the football games? Are they willing to hunt for donors who might say they will not give if their institution partners with Israel? Are they willing to occupy the president’s office and thereby risk arrest? Are they willing to keep all of this up for weeks on end? It might take all of these sorts of activities to even have a chance at winning this contest.
Even so, the odds are not good. Essentially, you have to create such a cost to the institution in trouble and bad publicity that it outweighs that donor’s half a million dollars and/or the anger of the fellow on the board/regents. If in the end you do not win, you have to understand that it is not wholly a defeat. After all, you have certainly raised consciousness. In other words, you have set the stage for the next battle and made that one a little easier to win. So you have to have the energy to fight again and again. It is a scenario wherein youth is a definite plus.
There is another way in which mounting a serious protest at any of these schools must constitute a victory. That is the fact that such a protest will demonstrate to the academics and students in Gaza and the rest of Palestine that the world has not abandoned them, that they have allies and their struggle is now a worldwide one. In the short run, that might be the most important victory of all.
In conclusion
Here is a quote from the American academic Richard Hofstadter: “A university’s essential character is that of being a centre of free inquiry and criticism – a thing not to be sacrificed for anything else.” If this so (and all the leaders of the institutions involved in these exchanges will undoubtedly agree), then why are these eight universities sending their students off to Israeli schools that cooperate with state policies that deny just these sacrosanct pursuits to persecuted Palestinians? Why are they sending their students to a country that seeks to silence, at all levels of society, any free inquiry and criticism of its racist and oppressive national ideology? Why are they cooperating with institutions that have state-dictated policies (for instance, admissions policies) that would be illegal in the United States? Do they condone such behaviours? If they go through with these exchange programmes, then the answer is, for all intents and purposes, yes, they do. Essentially, they now lend themselves to the destruction of the very educational virtues they claim to cherish.
Lawrence Davidson is professor of history at West Chester University. He is the author of numerous books, including Islamic Fundamentalism and America’s Palestine: Popular and Official Perceptions from Balfour to Israeli Statehood.
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