International solidarity under attack
Mike Marqusee, The Electronic Intifada, 5 August 2010
From small beginnings and with few resources, the international movement in solidarity with the Palestinians has grown into a force that Israel perceives as a major threat. The assault on the Gaza aid flotilla was a lethal escalation in what has become an increasingly bitter campaign against that movement, whose constituents now range from dockworkers in South Africa refusing to offload Israeli goods to students at Berkeley demanding divestment.
The brutality of the flotilla attack was a measure of the extent to which the Israeli polity has grown to fear and loathe this global grassroots movement. In a way, the violence was a perverse tribute to a band of voluntary campaigners who are massively outstripped by Israel in money, institutional resources and access to the media, but who nonetheless have put more pressure on Israel than the world’s most powerful governments. Indeed, it’s the long-term collusion of those governments with Israel that has prompted the growth of citizen’s initiatives, such as the Freedom Flotilla, to redress the balance. People from very differing societies have come to the politics of international solidarity with Palestine via many routes. Nearly always, their commitment to the cause, the commitment that led the passengers on the boats to take such risks and suffer such punishment, is an expression of a wider aspiration for social justice, and above all a belief that this justice must be global in nature if it is to mean anything. One of the primary objects of the Israeli media barrage that followed the assault was to discredit and divide this movement. In particular, it sought to isolate and demonize an “Islamist” or “jihadi” element among the activists. (This was presaged by the especially vicious treatment meted out to those passengers identified by Israeli armed forces as Muslims.) The “Turkish boat” was said be the source of all the trouble. At one point it was claimed that an “al-Qaeda” team had been on board. The Turkish charity Isani Yardim Vakfi or IHH was traduced. People in the West with sympathies for the Palestinians were being warned: there was a type of person involved here with whom they would never want to make common cause.
Unfortunately, in France, a section of the left, driven by a misconceived interpretation of secularism, seemed to agree. They refused to join a protest against the assault on the flotilla on the grounds that other participants would include Muslim clerics. Under the guise of a dedication to universal values, this refusal was actually a restriction of those values: the expression of human solidarity was subjected to ideological conditions. Elsewhere the movement has prospered by its embrace of pluralism. This pluralism has been forged not by making a special case for the Palestinians but by universalizing their struggle: founding it on a commitment to human rights and common standards of justice. Far from “singling out Israel,” as is routinely claimed, the movement has begun, at long last, to expose how Israel singles itself out, demanding (and receiving) exemptions from those standards.
The diversity of the passengers on the flotilla was always its greatest strength. It meant that a much wider circle of people felt some kind of connection with the events in the Mediterranean, and also that they would have access to sources of information not trammeled by the Israeli state line. Transcending the boundaries of nation, religion and language, the passengers represented a growing global public that feels itself compelled to act because its governments will not. Like the motley delegation of foreigners who pledged their support for the French Revolution to the National Assembly in 1790, they were “ambassadors of the human race.” Of course, far from deterring Israel, this status made them a threat which had to be countered with a show of extreme violence.
True to form, Israeli spokespersons described the killings on board the Mavi Marmara as “self-defense” by Israeli soldiers threatened with “lynching.” The ensuing arguments about “violence” and who was responsible for it recapitulated a long history in which Israel has identified every denial of Palestinian rights or annihilation of Palestinian life as “self-defense.” Conversely, every assertion of those rights and every attempt to preserve those lives is deemed illegitimate, denounced as “aggression” or “terrorism.”
Here the Israelis tapped into a long-established bias in the Western media. A study by Arab Media Watch of the mainstream British press from January to June 2008 found that violent Israeli actions were almost always portrayed as “retaliating” to Palestinian aggression. Rocket attacks were represented as a “provocation” to Israel five times more often than the Gaza blockade was represented as a “provocation” to Palestinians. Forty years of occupation were portrayed as a provocation to Palestinians on only one occasion and settlement building twice. Where debate arises within the mainstream media, it tends to revolve around the “proportionality” of Israeli action, thus evading the underlying questions of Palestinian rights and Israeli domination.
Unlike the solidarity movements which grew up in response to the struggles in Vietnam or South Africa, the Palestine movement faces an opponent with its own international network, preaching its own form of solidarity (with Israel), very much a movement in its own right, however reliant on state support. Its rhetoric and tactics may be cynical in the extreme, but there’s no denying its emotional fervor. Building opposition to South African apartheid never involved the kind of on-the-ground contest with ideologically motivated, well-resourced opponents that pro-Palestinian activists routinely engage in. Just as the Palestinian cause is a global magnet for victims of discrimination and dispossession, so the cause of Israel is a magnet for the privileged, the entitled, the beneficiaries of Western and white supremacy. The rich and powerful see themselves as under siege from the poor and powerless and in Israel’s self-portrayal they recognize themselves. The gated communities of the world rally around the gated nation. The increasingly wealthy Indian elite — which has vigorously pursued governmental and business exchanges with Israel — sees in Israel not only an ally in a struggle against “Islamic terror” but a stepping stone to a closer relationship to the United States, and in a wider sense an entry into the exclusive club of the affluent and powerful.
Thus the highly particularist ideology of Zionism — which rests on the assertion of eternal ownership of a specified territory by a specified people — becomes a broader “civilizational” cause. This ideology underpins the ever-widening Israeli definition of “self-defense.” To those for whom the maintenance of a Jewish supremacist state in Palestine is the sine qua non of Jewish survival, any assertion of Palestinian rights is an “existential” threat — a negation that must itself be negated. As a state for all Jews, Israel embraces a global mission and enjoys special prerogatives. In the contemporary world only the US claims a wider remit of self-defense, insisting that it can strike anywhere to protect its perceived interests. Israeli exceptionalism finds a mirror and enabler in US exceptionalism, which in turn has its roots in the long history of Western colonialism, whose stock-in-trade was, for centuries, acts of piracy on the high seas. Through many years of grassroots education, agitation and organization, not to mention a steadfast defiance of intimidation, the solidarity movement has begun at last to have a real effect on the balance of power. But there is so much further to go. Governments around the world joined in the condemnation of the Israeli attack on the flotilla, but many of these same governments continue to provide essential means for Israel to pursue its destruction of the Palestinian people. In that context, those who consider themselves, in Thomas Paine’s words, “citizens of the world” are called upon to redouble their efforts to secure boycott, divestment and sanctions. If Israel continues to act with impunity, if Palestine instead of Israel is subject to isolation, then the powerful everywhere will have their options strengthened.
This essay is excerpted from Midnight on the Mavi Marmara, exclusively available from OR Books.
Israel declares village closed to foreigners
Ma’an – 31/07/2010
Nablus – Israeli forces turned away Palestinian medical teams at a checkpoint erected at Iraq Burin on Saturday morning, telling international medical volunteers that the area was a “closed military zone.”
Head of the Palestinian Medical Relief Society in Nablus Ghassan Hamdan said the volunteers tried to enter the Nablus-area village where the society had prepared to offer a free treatment day at a local clinic.
Hamdan said the team was told by Israeli soldiers at the village entrance that they must turn back because the village was a closed zone. He said that medics and society officials had made several attempts to explain the humanitarian nature of the mission, but soldiers responded saying their orders were to restrict all entry into the area.
An Israeli military spokeswoman confirmed that the area was declared a “closed military zone for all non-Palestinians,” but said that an exception was made for the doctors at 11a.m., hours after the group arrived at the checkpoint.
Officials from the society confirmed that the Palestinian and international medical workers were permitted into the area, and condemned the delay, saying it would cause a serious reduction in available medical services for villagers.
The society regularly organizes volunteer programs for doctors, nurses and medics from around the world who donate their time and perform free checkups and treatment to Palestinians without regular access to medical services.
The declaration follows one week after the detention of two young men at a checkpoint installed in the same location the previous Saturday.
Iraq Burin, cut off from Nablus by several checkpoints and roadblocks preventing access to the nearby settlement of Yizhar and Bracha, has held regular protests against continued land confiscations by the settlements and settler-only roads. The two detained were accused of having participated in protests in previous weeks.
According to a report by the Israeli human rights group B’Tselem, a new Israeli military order passed in January 2010 made gatherings of more than ten people illegal, by reenacting a 1967 law. The group said the law violated the right of assembly for Palestinians, guaranteed by the fourth Geneva Convention.
Larijani: Iran proud of backing Hezbollah
Press TV – July 30, 2010
Iranian Parliament (Majlis) Speaker Ali Larijani says Iran takes pride in Lebanon’s Islamic resistance movement for its steadfast Islamic stance.
Speaking in Iran’s northern Mazandaran Province on Thursday, Larijani praised Hezbollah for its resistance against oppression and said, “Hezbollah nurtures the original ideas of Islamic Jihad,” IRNA reported.
The Iranian official further slammed the West for charging Iran with “its support of terrorism” and said, “The real terrorists are those who provide the Zionist regime with military equipment to bomb the people” in the region.
Larijani also made a reference to the Western-brokered sanctions on Iran over its nuclear energy program and said the Islamic Republic has always emphasized negotiations but will not bow down under pressure from the bullying powers.
“They speak of the Iranian threat against the Zionist regime… but never elicit public opinion on the Zionist regime’s atomic warheads and other missiles,” he noted.
The UN Security Council passed a US-sponsored anti-Iran resolution on June 9 that imposes restrictions on the country’s economy and energy sectors.
The move was to pressure the Islamic Republic to resume nuclear talks.
Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has recently said that Tehran would return to talks only if certain conditions are met.
The Iranian chief executive pointed out that the Western countries should announce their stance on Israeli “bombs” and say whether they abide by the regulations of the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty.
An Anti-War Movement That Won’t Cave to Obama or Israel
By Glen Ford — 07/28/2010
For at least two years, there has been no anti-war “movement” worthy of the term – one that calls the aggressor by his name (starts with “O”) and gives no pass to apartheid Israel. There’s good reason to believe a corner has been turned, with last weekend’s anti-war conference in Albany, New York.
A renewed anti-war movement is under construction, one that breaks decisively from the Cult of Obama, demands an end to all U.S. aid to the Israeli “apartheid regime,” and calls for “immediate, total and unconditional withdrawal of all U.S. troops, mercenaries and contractors from Afghanistan, Iraq and Pakistan, and the immediate closing of all U.S. bases in those countries.”
Nearly 600 delegates – twice the initial expectations – took part in the United National Anti-War Conference, held at the Crown Plaza Hotel in Albany, New York, July 23 through 25. The mission: to rescue the anti-war movement from the rubble of its collapse with the ascent of Black Democrat Barack Obama to the presidency.
As George Bush exited the White House, the phony anti-war forces – people and groups that only oppose Republican wars – exited the movement. Activist and author David Swanson’s list of those that have made their peace with Obama’s wars include: Campaign for America’s Future, the Center for American Progress, DailyKos, Democracy for America, Moveon.org, National Organization for Women, Open Left, the Out of Iraq Caucus, the Progressive Caucus, the Network of Spiritual Progressives, Talking Points Memo, True Majority.
Black America, historically the most anti-war of all major U.S. demographic groups, remains emotionally invested in the First Black President – if not in his foreign and domestic policies. The great confusion in African American ranks over the true nature of Obama’s policies represents a huge problem for the Left – especially the Black Left. Yet, that façade, too, will crumble under the weight of events.
Organized labor’s reflexive instinct is also to back the Democrat in office, even when that means backing into a knife. But the reality of Obama, Inc. is by now inescapable to every honest unionist – and the anti-war movement only has need of the honest ones.
The conference voted to support the October 2 March for Jobs in Washington, DC, sponsored by the NAACP and both feuding wings of organized labor, as well as Rev. Jesse Jackson’s joint venture with the United Auto Workers for an August 28 mobilization in Detroit.
This writer pressed union-affiliated attendees on whether, in the end, labor and the NAACP will turn the October 2 march into a “rah-rah” session for Obama and the Democrats? “Not this time,” said a Black labor activist from upstate New York.
We shall see. Conference organizers were determined that there be a large and vocal anti-war contingent to the October 2 action. Leaders of the Black is Back Coalition say they intend to take part, as well, unless march organizers impose political conditions that make it impossible.
In the longer run, a “bi-coastal mass spring mobilization” is planned for New York, San Francisco and Los Angeles on April 9, 2011. Organizers envision actions in the interim that build momentum to the big events, when once again the anti-war movement might put many thousands of peaceful “boots on the ground.” To accomplish this, the scope of organizing must be widened. “A prime component of these mobilizations will be major efforts to include broad new forces from youth to veterans to trade unionists to civil and human rights groups to the Arab, Muslim and other oppressed communities to environmental organizations, social justice and faith-based groups.”
In addition to the demand for unconditional withdrawal from Afghanistan, Iraq and Pakistan, the Conference called for:
“The allocation of the trillions spent on wars and corporate bailouts to massive programs for jobs, education, health care, housing and the environment. Compensation to be paid to the peoples whose countries the U.S. attacked and occupied for the loss of lives and massive destruction they suffered,” and
“Reverse and end all foreclosures. Stop the government attacks on trade unions, civil and democratic rights, and immigrant communities.”
Conferees endorsed a flurry of other “action plans,” from opposition to U.S. military intervention in Africa, to “no war or sanctions against Iran,” to the “immediate freedom” of imprisoned human rights lawyer Lynn Stewart.
U.S. aid to Israel was the most contentious issue to arise at the conference. Israel supporters employed delaying tactics in an attempt to derail the Palestine Solidarity Caucus’s proposal for an “end to U.S. aid to Israel – military, economic, and diplomatic. End U.S. support for the Israeli occupation of Palestine and the blockade of Gaza.” Opponents claimed inclusion of the resolution would make it impossible for them to recruit labor activists into anti-war ranks – as if Zionists rule everywhere in the House of Labor. After a series of dilatory maneuvers by the pro-Israel faction, the Conference overwhelming endorsed the Palestine Solidarity Caucus position.
Perhaps the most poignant moment of the weekend came when Ralph Poynter read a letter from his companion in struggle for nearly fifty years, Lynne Stewart, who had been part of the conference steering committee. “I have been out of the steering apparatus due to my unavailability,” she wrote. “Serve the people with honesty, kindness and respect. Love the struggle.”
Glen Ford can be contacted at Glen.Ford@BlackAgendaReport.com.
Chomsky and Palestine: Asset or Liability?
Pulse Media | July 20, 2010
In a recent interview renowned linguist Noam Chomsky called the BDS campaign ‘hypocritical’. Jeffrey Blankfort, who is the author of an earlier important critique of Chomsky’s position on Palestine, responds:
When Noam Chomsky was stopped at Jordan’s Allenby Bridge and prevented from entering the Palestinian West Bank by Israeli occupation forces in May, the widespread condemnation of that action extended even into the mainstream media which in the past has paid little attention to his comings and goings and even less to what he has had to say.
Chomsky, who has visited Israel on a number of occasions and lived on a kibbutz in the 50s, had been invited to give a lecture at Bir Zeit University near Ramallah and had also arranged to meet with Salam Fayyad, the unelected prime minister of the Palestine Authority and a favorite of both Washington and Israel and, it would appear, of Chomsky.
The negative publicity arising from the incident caused the Israeli government to reverse its position, blaming its refusal to admit Chomsky on an administrative error. Chomsky was not mollified and decided to forego the trip to the West Bank and present his talk to the Bir Zeit students by video from Amman.
When interviewed by phone the following day from New York by Democracy Now! on which he is a familiar presence, Chomsky noted that “I was going to meet with the Prime Minister. Unfortunately, I couldn’t. But his office called me here in Amman this morning, and we had a long discussion. He is pursuing policies, which, in my view, are quite sensible, policies of essentially developing facts on the ground. It’s almost – I think it’s probably a conscious imitation of the early Zionist policies, establishing facts on the ground and hoping that the political forms that follow will be determined by them. And the policies sound to me like sensible and sound ones.”
Unfortunately, Chomsky was not questioned about his support for the nation building priorities of the earlier Zionists nor if he considered the Palestine Authority’s endorsement of Israel’s blockade of Gaza, of its attempts to suppress a UN investigation of the Goldstone Report, and of the role played by its US-trained militia in protecting Israel, to be also “sensible and sound.”
Missing from the discussion about what was made to appear a blunder on Israel’s part was a much more important issue: Why had Chomsky been invited to speak at Bir Zeit in the first place? For those puzzled by that question, be assured that it is meant to be taken quite seriously.
Once upon a time Prof. Chomsky was considered by many to be the most important spokesperson for the Palestinian cause. It was a position he attained largely on the basis of his writings and activism in opposing the Vietnam War and US intervention in Central America in which, unlike the case with Israel, he had no personal vested interest. That Chomsky has maintained that position despite the presence in the US of a number of distinguished Palestinian professors, among them the late Edward Said, who were and are more knowledgeable about the subject and could speak from personal experience that does not include prior service as “a Zionist youth leader”—Chomsky’s background– is a reflection of the political culture of the American Left which was and remains substantially if not predominantly Jewish, particularly in its leadership positions.
Support for Israel had become so ingrained and fear of anti-Semitism so deeply embedded in the psyche of American Jewish Leftists in the aftermath of World War 2, that if the Jewish state was to be criticized it had to be by someone from within the tribe who unequivocally supported its existence. Unfortunately, to the detriment of the Palestinians and the building of a viable Palestinian solidarity movement within the United States, that mindset persists to this day and largely explains why Chomsky maintains his reputation despite public utterances over the past half dozen years that have done more to undermine the Palestinian cause than to help it.
I examined Chomsky’s history in some detail in an article that I wrote for Left Curve in 2005 that called attention to the destructive role he has played regarding the Palestinian-based boycott, divestment and sanctions (BDS) campaign targeting Israel and the equally destructive impact of his dismissal of the pro-Israel lobby as an influential force in shaping US Middle East policy.
That he is still at it, and that his influence among what are considered “progressives” has lessened only imperceptibly, requires another look at the professor’s fierce and unyielding opposition to the BDS campaign launched by the leading organizations of Palestinian civil society. This movement has been gaining support in the world that exists outside of the United States, particularly among trade unions, a fact that is causing considerable concern within Israel and among its lobbyists/agents around the world who claim it is a campaign to “delegitimize” the Jewish state.
Within the United States, however, this campaign challenging Israel has frequently and in certain instances, intentionally, been confused with a vastly different, US-centered, campaign that avoids penalizing Israel while targeting US companies that provide goods and services that assist Israel in maintaining the occupation.
This latter campaign Chomsky does support as does the leading Jewish peace group, Jewish Voice for Peace which has recently been conducting a drive to get 10,000 signatures for its campaign to pressure Caterpillar to stop selling bulldozers to the Israel military which it has used to destroy Palestinian homes. While this is a worthy endeavor, does anyone seriously think that a refusal by Caterpillar to halt its sales to Israel would change the current situation for the Palestinians in any significant way? Or are we seeing something else here on the part of both Prof. Chomsky and JVP with their competing campaign, namely, damage control on Israel’s behalf?
One might certainly draw that conclusion from comments Chomsky has made over the past several years and most recently in interviews with Israeli television (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YCtYecGbQz8) and with Alison Weir of If Americans Knew, the newly appointed president of the Council for National Interest (CNI), on Jerusalem Calling, the CNI’s online radio program. (http://www.wsradio.com/internet-talk-radio.cfm/shows/CNI:-Jerusalem-Calling.html)
In the interview with Alison Weir, Chomsky not only repeatedly attacks advocates of an Israeli boycott as being hypocritical, he accuses them of doing damage to the Palestinian cause.
“What I have opposed,” says Chomsky, “is BDS proposals that harm Palestinians. If we are serious about BDS or any other tactic, we want to ask what the consequences are for the victims. We have to distinguish always in tactical judgments between what you might call ‘feel good’ tactics and ‘do good’ tactics. There are tactics that may make people feel good in doing something, but maybe they harm the victims.”
Pushed on the subject by Weir, he repeats that a boycott of Israel is “harmful to Palestinians and the reason is harmful is very obvious.” And what is obvious about it, Chomsky tells us in the very next sentence. “It is so hypocritical that it discredits the whole effort. I mean,” he says, “why boycott Israel and not boycott the United States? The US has a much worse record.”
When reminded by Weir that “Palestinian civil society issued a call, signed by dozens of diverse organizations calling for a boycott of Israel,” Chomsky was dismissive and condescending.
“There are groups who call themselves Palestinian civil society who are calling for a boycott,” he responds, “and I think they are making a mistake and I’ve explained why. I’m not going to take, adopt positions which have already been and will continue to be quite harmful to Palestinians.”
“If you want to, then do it,” Chomsky adds, upbraiding Weir and by implication, the Palestinian people themselves, “but it’s clear why the call for a boycott [of Israel] has been harmful for Palestinians and will continue to be.”
“The reason,” he repeated, “is very simple. It’s so utterly hypocritical that it’s basically a gift to the hardliners. They can say, ‘Look, you’re calling for a boycott of Israel, but you’re not calling for a boycott of the United States which has a much worse record, in fact, it’s even responsible for most of Israel’s crimes. (My emphasis)
“So therefore, if your position,” and from his tone of voice he is clearly jabbing a verbal finger at Weir, “is that hypocritical, how can we even take you seriously? That’s like giving a gift to the hard-line elements.
One might be forgiven for thinking that when Chomsky says “we” and refers to “hard-line elements” he is speaking of himself. He seems to confirm that later when, continuing his attack, he tells Weir:
“I find your commitment to harming Palestinians surprising. It is quite obvious why a call for a boycott of Israel is a gift to AIPAC. It’s a gift because they can point out that it is utterly hypocritical” and again, like a well rehearsed mantra he repeats, “We are not boycotting the United States, for example, which has a much worse record and is responsible for a lot of Israel’s criminal behavior.”
“I can give you cases if you want [but he doesn’t offer any] where the calls like the one you’re advocating have, in fact, for good reasons, harmed Palestinians, and he repeats once again that Weir’s “support for the efforts which are basically gifts to the hardliners…”
Let’s stop a moment before going on and ask ourselves some questions about what Chomsky has been saying.
One, shifting blame for Israel’s crimes against the Palestinians to the US (the Nakba?, the 1967 capture of the West Bank and Gaza?) he argues that rather than calling for a boycott of Israel, Palestinians should be calling for a boycott of the United States. Apart from the failure patently inherent in such a campaign, what does Prof. Chomsky believe would be the response of the majority of Americans to a call by Palestinians for such a boycott? Or, for that matter, a call by supporters of the Palestinians in the United States for a boycott of their own country? Beneficial for the Palestinians, Professor Chomsky, or harmful? Or just plain stupid?
Since the answer to that question is obvious, genuine supporters of the Palestinian struggle who still see Chomsky as an ally need to ask themselves why he would call for a campaign that would bring further disaster down upon the heads of the Palestinians.
Now think about his main argument that boycotting Israel as opposed to the United States is hypocritical; that the “hardliners,” in which he specifically includes AIPAC—which otherwise he dismisses– will use this against the Palestinians by pointing out that the US has committed far greater crimes than Israel. While there are some Jewish American settlers who have taken this position, referring to the Vietnam and Iraq wars, does Chomsky seriously believe that AIPAC or any major American Jewish organization would make this argument and compare America’s crimes to Israel’s? Again, the answer is obvious. But why does Chomsky insult our intelligence by asking us to believe such a fatuous claim? Why do those who know better let him get away with it?
The answer to the first question was given by Prof. Chomsky to the interviewer from Israel’ Channel Two television station who paid him a visit in Amman on May 19, two days after he was turned back at the Allenby Bridge.
When challenged about statements he had made strongly criticizing Israel, Chomsky responded, “I don’t regard myself as a critic of Israel. I regard myself as a supporter of Israel.”
Chomsky, who, in certain circles likes to boast of his early Zionist activities did so for both his Israeli interviewer and for Alison Weir. Noting that he had opposed the notion of a Jewish state in favor of a bi-national state, “once Israel was formed in 1948, my position has consistently been that Israel should have all the rights of every state in the international system, no more and no less. “ He would repeat exactly the same words when speaking with Weir six weeks later.
Chomsky volunteered to his Israeli interviewer that up to five or six years ago, he had considered living there as an alternative to the United States and in the 50s, “we had considered staying there, in fact.” In other words, he seems to have no problem with the Jewish “right of return” to what, until 1948, was Palestine, but considers a similar demand by the Palestinians who were actually born there to be not only unrealistic but potentially dangerous.
Although presented with an opportunity in both interviews to do so, Chomsky made no mention of the plight of the 750,000 Palestinians made refugees in the period of Israel’s founding nor of the more than 400 Palestinian villages that Israel purposely destroyed to wipe out their traces. In fact, that history and the situation of the now millions of Palestinian refugees today, is something he rarely, if ever mentions, unless asked about it.
On one such occasion, when he was asked if the refugees would be obligated to give up their “right of return” under a “two-state solution,” Chomsky’s preferred outcome, he replied: “Palestinian refugees should certainly not be willing to renounce the right of return, but in this world — not some imaginary world we can discuss in seminars — that right will not be exercised, in more than a limited way, within Israel. Again, there is no detectable international support for it, and under the (virtually unimaginable) circumstances that such support would develop, Israel would very likely resort to its ultimate weapon, defying even the boss-man, to prevent it. In that case there would be nothing to discuss. The facts are ugly, but facts do not go out of existence for that reason. In my opinion, it is improper to dangle hopes that will not be realized before the eyes of people suffering in misery and oppression. (Emphasis added) Rather, constructive efforts should be pursued to mitigate their suffering and deal with their problems in the real world.” (Znet,3/30.2004)
What Chomsky is saying to the refugees is that if they persist with their demand to return to Palestine, and should that demand, support for which is currently undetectable in Chomsky’s eyes, actually grow to the point where Israel feels threatened with an avalanche of returnees, it is likely to use its nuclear weapons and blow up the planet. So, for the sake of the “real world” that has ignored them and to keep Israel, a country that he unhesitatingly supports, from exercising the “Sampson Option,” the refugees should forget about going home and await some nebulous “constructive efforts….to mitigate their suffering.”
I can imagine what most Palestinians would say to that but it is unprintable.
When Weir asked if he had been aware of the Nakba in the days when he had been a Zionist youth leader, Chomsky acknowledged that he had been “well aware of that,” but rather than offer any opinion on it, he referred to his membership in Hashomir Hatzair which had supported a bi-national state and that he lived on a kibbutz which, prior to 1948, called for “Arab-Jewish cooperation in a socialist state.” He did not come to live on that kibbutz, however, until 1953, five years after the Nakba.
In speaking with Weir, Chomsky did not hesitate to defend Israel’s legitimacy.. “Within Israel,” he said, “within the so-called Green Line, the internationally recognized borders, it’s a democratic state in the sense of Western democracies. There are laws and more than laws, practices that assign second class citizenship to Palestinians. In that respect it is not different from the US and other Western democracies.”
While there are few who will deny that racism exists in every Western (and non-Western) society and that it has often taken violent forms, Chomsky’s attempt to rationalize Israel’s ongoing discrimination of those Palestinians who remained after the Nakba, by lumping it together with the forms of racism practiced in the US and elsewhere, is too riddled with holes to analyze here but raises additional questions about on which side of the barricades he stands. The fact that he says “the occupation is simply criminal” as if Israel is not should not deceive us.
It should also be pointed out that Chomsky’s accusing Weir of harming the Palestinian cause is in keeping with the modus operandi he has employed when challenged from the Left regarding his stands on the Israel-Palestinian issue. With Alison Weir, it was the boycott of Israel, with Noah Cohen, in 2004, it was the latter’s advocacy of a single state and the Palestinian right of return. Chomsky accused Cohen of “”serving the cause of the extreme hawks in Israel and the US, and bringing even more harm to the suffering Palestinians.”( Znet, 7/26/04))
I have also been not immune from such an attack. On November 12, 2004, before writing my article for Left Curve and after I had written the professor, asking him a number of questions that I hoped would clarify his positions he responded in a letter thusly:
“I have never really understood why you consistently take positions that so severely undermine any hope of justice for the Palestinians, find truth so offensive, and work so hard to evade our own responsibilities in favor of the much more convenient stance of blaming others [Israel]. But that’s your business. I don’t write or speak about it.”
What we are dealing with in the case of Prof. Chomsky is nothing less than intellectual dishonesty parading as its opposite and the boycott issue has brought it to the fore.
A glaring but little known example of that came in a speech that Chomsky made to the Harvard Anthropology Dept. in 2003 shortly after the MIT and Harvard faculties issued a joint statement on divestment. It was gleefully reported in the Harvard Crimson by pro-Israel activist, David Weinfeld, under the headline “Chomsky’s Gift”:
MIT Institute Professor of Linguistics Noam Chomsky recently gave the greatest Hanukkah gift of all to opponents of the divestment campaign against Israel. By signing the Harvard-MIT divestment petition several months ago—and then denouncing divestment on Nov. 25 at Harvard—Chomsky has completely undercut the petition.
At his recent talk for the Harvard anthropology department, Chomsky stated: “I am opposed and have been opposed for many years, in fact, I’ve probably been the leading opponent for years of the campaign for divestment from Israel and of the campaign about academic boycotts.”
He argued that a call for divestment is “a very welcome gift to the most extreme supporters of US-Israeli violence… It removes from the agenda the primary issues and it allows them to turn the discussion to irrelevant issues, which are here irrelevant, anti-Semitism and academic freedom and so on and so forth.” [Harvard Crimson, 12/2/2003] (Emphasis added.)
The following year, Chomsky clearly stunned Safundi, an interviewer for the Journal of South African and American Comparative Studies [5/10 2004] when in an exchange comparing Israel with the former apartheid regime, he again came to Israel’s defense and cast opposition to sanctions on Israel as a moral issue.
“One of the important tactics against the apartheid government was the eventual use of sanctions. Do you see that as a possibility?” asked Safundi.
“No,” Chomsky replied. “In fact I’ve been strongly against it in the case of Israel. For a number of reasons. For one thing, even in the case of South Africa, I think sanctions are a very questionable tactic. In the case of South Africa, I think they were [ultimately] legitimate because it was clear that the large majority of the population of South Africa was in favor of it.
“Sanctions hurt the population. You don’t impose them unless the population is asking for them. That’s the moral issue. So, the first point in the case of Israelis that: Is the population asking for it? Well, obviously not.
“So calling for sanctions here, when the majority of the population doesn’t understand what you are doing, is tactically absurd-even if it were morally correct, which I don’t think it is. The country against which the sanctions are being imposed is not calling for it.”
To which the bewildered Safundi understandably asked, “Palestinians aren’t calling for sanctions?”
“Well,” Chomsky responded, as if he had been asked a stupid question, “the sanctions wouldn’t be imposed against the Palestinians, they would be imposed against Israel.”
“Furthermore,” added, “there is no need for it. We ought to call for sanctions against the United States! If the U.S. were to stop its massive support for this, it’s over. So, you don’t have to have sanctions on Israel.”
It would seem from that exchange that Chomsky has more respect for the opinions of Israel’s Jews than those of his fellow Americans.
In applying double standards to Israel and the United States, Chomsky has been consistent.
After telling the Israeli interviewer that, speaking as an American citizen, “we are responsible for our own actions and their consequences,” in the very next breath he declares that “every crime that Israel commits is with US participation and authorization,” which, even if true, which it is not, presumably would make Israel culpable, but not apparently enough, in Chomsky’s eyes, to warrant a boycott.
At the end of the day, it is evident that Chomsky’s affection for Israel, his sojourn on a kibbutz, his Jewish identity, and his early experiences with anti-Semitism to which he occasionally refers have colored his approach to every aspect of Israel’s conflict with the Palestinians and explain his defense of Israel. That is his right, of course, but not to pretend at the same that he is an advocate for justice in Palestine.
That same background may also explain his resistance to acknowledging the very obvious power of the pro-Israel lobby over US Middle East policy which he, like many others who share a similar history, interpret as “blaming the Jews,” a most taboo subject. It is, without a doubt, far more comfortable for him and his followers to continue insisting that US support for Israel is based on it being a “strategic asset” for the United States even when an increasing number of mainstream observers who are not linked to AIPAC or the Zionist establishment have judged it to be a liability. Should not Chomsky himself, on the basis of his own statements, be judged as to whether he is an asset or a liability for the Palestinian cause? If they have not already done so, serious supporters of that cause, including Palestinians, need to ask themselves that question.
Standing With Private Bradley Manning
By KEVIN ZEESE | July 24, 2010
Those who oppose war and militarism need to stand with Bradley Manning, the 22-year old Army private, who believed he saw war crimes being committed by the U.S. military and shared the information so the American public could know what the armed forces were doing. The most famous leak from Manning was the “Collateral Murder” video shared on the Wikileaks.org website. The video he reportedly leaked showed an Apache Helicopter attack by the U.S. military killing a dozen civilians and wounding two children.
Manning allegedly leaked hundreds of thousands of diplomatic cables and emails that have yet to be published. He said that the documents showed horrible “crimes” and his goal in releasing them was to “hopefully [spark] worldwide discussion, debates, and reforms, if not . . . we’re doomed as a species.” His goal was for “people to see the truth… regardless of who they are… because without information, you cannot make informed decisions as a public.”
Now Manning is being held in custody in a prison in Kuwait, without access to private legal counsel facing 52 years in prison. The video he allegedly released started a much-needed discussion about the horrible truth about the killings that U.S. wars entail. He should be a national hero similar to whistle blowers like Daniel Ellsberg who exposed the truth of the Vietnam War. He deserves the support of the American people. Indeed, people like him should be getting medals and promotions, not people like General Stanley McChrysal (Cheney’s Assassin) and James N. Mattis (“sometimes its fun to kill people”).
Thankfully, the peace movement is starting to speak up for Private Manning. We need to see a massive campaign of support for Bradley Manning. Courage to Resist, Veterans Against the War (IVAW), Veterans for Peace and Courage to Resist, along with my organization Voters for Peace, have spoken out in support of Manning. So, people can now take action to support Manning. Here are some options:
– Write President Obama, with copies to to Attorney General Eric Holder and Secretary of Defense Robert Gates calling for the release of Private Manning and allowing him access to civilian legal counsel. Click here to act now.
– Sign the petition at World Can’t Wait in support of Manning. Click here now to act.
– Visit www.BradleyManning.org and sign their petition, write to Manning and let him know you appreciate his courage and doing what you can to release him.
These wars, fought with corporate mercenaries are killing civilians at very high levels and undermining U.S. security. Secrecy allows illegal actions to continue – in our name. The importance of citizens like Manning becomes more evident when the behavior of the corporate media is noted. For example, The Washington Post’s David Finkel reportedly had possession of the Apache helicopter video two years ago but never released it to the public. Wars are able to hide behind the protection of a media that is too willing to not report their crimes. This is one example of many of corporate media cover-up that show the need for others to force transparency so the public knows what is being done in its name.
Let President Obama know you want to hear the truth. What is the U.S. military doing? Are prisoners being held without charges? Is torture continuing? How many civilians is the U.S. military killing? All these actions by the U.S. military are undermining our security. They are creating enemies for all of us.
Stand with Private Bradley Manning. Help to work for his release. He is a hero, not a criminal.
Israel’s friends at Westminster legislate to protect vilest criminals
By Stuart Littlewood | 24 July 2010
Israelis wanted for war crimes can sleep easier thanks to their friends and admirers in the British Establishment.
Yes, our brand-new coalition government intends providing a safe haven for the vilest of criminals.
When Israel’s ex-foreign minister, Tzipi Livni, and other architects of the terror campaign against Palestinian civilians, recently cancelled trips to the UK for fear of being arrested under universal jurisdiction laws on charges of war crimes, it sparked a diplomatic row. Britain’s then foreign secretary-in-waiting, William Hague, an avid Friend of Israel since boyhood, said: “We cannot have a position where Israeli politicians feel they cannot visit this country. The situation is unsatisfactory [and] indefensible. It is absolutely my intention to act speedily.”
He found it “completely unacceptable” that someone like Livni felt she could not visit the UK. He didn’t explain how welcoming Livni with open arms was possible “without weakening our commitment to hold accountable those guilty of war crimes”.
Gordon Brown, the then prime minister, expressed his regret over the incident, saying that Livni was “most welcome in Britain any time” – even though she was no longer a government minister in Israel.
Under universal jurisdiction all states that are party to the Geneva Conventions are obliged to seek out and either prosecute or extradite those suspected of having committed grave breaches of the conventions and bring them, regardless of nationality, to court.
“Grave breaches” means willful killing, torture or inhuman treatment, causing great suffering or serious injury to body or health, and other serious violations of the laws of war … the sort of atrocities that have been (and still are) committed wholesale by Israel in the Gaza Strip and West Bank.
Lo and behold, new Justice Secretary Kenneth Clarke has announced, just as MPs are about to disappear on their long summer recess, that “it would be appropriate to require the consent of the director of public prosecutions before an arrest warrant can be issued to a private prosecutor in respect of an offence of universal jurisdiction.”
Alerts have gone out from activist groups. The Palestine Solidarity Campaign urges its members to write to their MPs immediately:
This would seriously hamper the work of human rights lawyers in this country who are attempting to bring these war criminals to justice, and would deny the Palestinians yet another chance at justice.
Between September and December 2009, lawyers issued arrest warrants against three Israeli ministers who were planning to visit Britain. Two of them – Livni and Moshe Ya’alon – cancelled their visits as a result. The third – Ehud Barak – had his status upgraded by the then Labour government, so that he could attend the Labour Party conference in Brighton.
If the Government’s plans become law, warrants such as these will become much harder to serve.
Meanwhile, in his report to the UN, Judge Richard Goldstone found masses of evidence of war crimes by Israel in Gaza and has called for individual states in the international community to “start criminal investigations in national courts, using universal jurisdiction, where there is sufficient evidence of the commission of grave breaches of the Geneva Conventions of 1949″.
Hague and Clarke, however, seem determined to make the likes of Livni and Barak and their murderous military henchmen a protected species.
The director of public prosecutions, a supposedly independent figure, is answerable through the attorney-general. The new attorney-general is Dominic Grieve. In 2007 he was in Israel with a Conservative Friends of Israel delegation. He spoke up for the release of captured Israeli soldier Gilad Shalit but his sense of justice apparently didn’t prompt him to mention the thousands of Palestinian civilians tortured and rotting in Israeli jails.
Grieve’s deputy is Solicitor-General Edward Garnier. In February, while still in opposition but warming up for the general election, he and Kenneth Clarke visited Israel as delegates of Conservative Friends of Israel when they could (and should) have gone under a neutral parliamentary flag. They met with deputy foreign minister Danny Ayalon and leader of the Opposition Livni. Ayalon is also on the wanted list but was able to visit London after receiving a letter from the Foreign Office promising he would be safe from arrest while in England.
At the height of the Gaza blitz (which killed 1,400 including 350 children, destroyed or damaged 58,000 homes, 280 schools, 1,500 factories, water and sewage installations and 80 per cent of agricultural crops), Hague said in Parliament: “The immediate trigger for this crisis … was the barrage of hundreds of rocket attacks against Israel on the expiry of the ceasefire or truce.”
Wrong. A person in his position should know better than mouth off the Israeli propaganda line. The truce with Hamas didn’t just “expire”. It was violated after six months by Israeli forces, killing six Palestinians in air strikes and other attacks, in order to provoke Hamas. Israel had also failed to deliver its side of the ceasefire bargain, which was to lift the blockade.
While the evidence piles up against Livni and others, the justice secretary assures us that “our commitment to our international obligations and to ensuring that there is no impunity for those accused of crimes of universal jurisdiction is unwavering”. How can that be if universal jurisdiction cases in future are filtered and processed solely by the director of public prosecutions?
The fear is that the director of public prosecutions’ wheels turn so slowly that the birds will have flown before arrests can be made, and the change in the law will simply enable the director of public prosecutions to thwart private efforts to bring to book those criminals the British government regards as friends.
Let’s remember that after the 22-day devastation of Gaza and the mega-deaths and maimings, their friend Livni bragged how she would happily do it again.
Hague, after just two months in the top job at the Foreign Office, is already an embarrassment to English people who yearn for moral leadership in foreign affairs. It was Hague who uttered these words in 2008: “The unbroken thread of Conservative Party support for Israel that has run for nearly a century from the Balfour Declaration to the present day will continue. Although it will no doubt often be tested in the years ahead, it will remain constant, unbroken, and undiminished by the passage of time.”
Undimished by the passage of crime, too.
Israeli soldiers detain former European Parliament Vice President at nonviolent protest
International Solidarity Movement | July 23, 2010
Israeli soldiers detained the former Vice President of the European Parliament, Luisa Morgantini, in Bil’in this afternoon, injured on Israeli activist and arrested another.
Sixty nine-year-old Morgantini, an Italian Member of the Euopean Parliament (MEP) has long been an outspoken supporter of Palestinians. She has participated several times in demonstrations in Bil’in and in June 2008 was injured when Israeli soldiers attacked a group of non-violent activists.
Morgantini, who served as Vice President of the European Parliament between 2007 and 2009, today joined over 100 people from the West Bank village in their weekly Friday protest, which began after midday prayers. She was among a group of about 100 internationals supporting the peaceful demonstrators.
Israeli soldiers starting firing tear gas about ten minutes after the demonstration reached the fence that has been built illegally and cuts off villagers from their land. They then chased the protestors and forcefully detained the politician who was held for approximately 30 minutes before being released when her identity became clear to soldiers.
After her release Morgantini said: “I saw Palestinians protesting nonviolently attacked by the army for trying to defend their lands. I strongly encourage the EU to take strong action for the protection of Palestinians and the implementation of their rights.”
One Israeli activist, Kobi Snitz, was arrested while trying to speak to the army in order to secure Morgantini’s release.
Nominated for the 2005 Nobel Peace Prize, Morgantini is a leading member of the Italian peace movement and a champion of the Palestinian cause.
Many people suffered from tear gas inhalation and stun grenades thrown into the field, caused a fire among the olive trees.
Today’s protest in Bil’in proves once again that the army is continuing its policy of harshly suppressing demonstrations and arresting non-violent protesters. The demonstration called for the release of prisoners, Adeeb Abu Rahma, Abdullah Abu Rahme, Ibrahim al-Bornat, and Ahmed al-Bornat – all Bil’in residents jailed by Israel for resisting the occupation.
For more details contact the ISM Media office: 0597606276 – media@palsolidarity.org
Remembering the Madness and Mayhem of McCarthyism – a Primer for Israel
By: William A. Cook | 23. Jul, 2010
“We must not confuse dissent with disloyalty. We must remember always that accusation is not proof and that conviction depends upon evidence and due process of law. We will not walk in fear, one of another. We will not be driven by fear into an age of unreason, if we dig deep in our history and our doctrine, and remember that we are not descended from fearful men.” (Edward R. Murrow)
The State of Israel has just passed a “loyalty oath” required of all prospective citizens living in Israel illegally to swear allegiance to a “Jewish democratic state.” Concurrently, an academic backlash has erupted in Israel over proposed new laws, backed by the government of Binyamin Netanyahu, to criminalise a handful of Israeli professors who openly support a campaign against the continuing occupation of the West Bank.(Guardian 7/11/10)
It would appear that Israel is in need of a lesson on the virtues of democracy as they are anathema to tyrannical rule. Harry S. Truman vetoed the McCarran Internal Security Act of 1950 with this observation: “In a free country, we punish men for the crimes they commit, but never for the opinions they have.” To impose a “loyalty oath” and to criminalize professors who support actions against the government of Israel is to force compliance in thought and act, behavior more of a tyrannical state than a democratic one.
Consider that the Israeli Shin Bet recently interrogated the conscientious objector, Yonatan Shapira, a former Israeli Air Force pilot, who penned the “pilot’s letter” of 2003, continuing a harassment of a man for his dissenting opinions of the State of Israel. Salem-News on July 11 carried an article about another conscientious objector, Shir Regev, who has been given a third prison term for contending “I believe it is my personal duty to refuse and defect from an army whose main purpose is to serve as an occupation police for maintaining ‘Israeli order’ and imposing it on defenseless Palestinians who are denied citizenship.”
“We must not confuse dissent with disloyalty,” Murrow writes; nor must we confuse pseudo-democracy with democracy. Israel is not a democratic state; let’s be clear about that. Its citizenship exists solely for those who are members of a religion with one exception, those Palestinians who remained in Israeli controlled land areas after the cessation of hostilities in 1948 and the Declaration of the State of Israel by the Jewish Agency. These Arab Israelis as they are called, to obfuscate the reality of their Palestinian heritage, do not have equality before the law nor do they have access to all the benefits of their fellow citizens who are members of the Judaic faith; they have a passport and a country and even that can be denied if they ride in a Turkish Aid boat to visit their brothers and sisters in Gaza. For all those indigenous to the area of Palestine, accepted as a group by the United Nations and its members, the Palestinians, who live in land occupied by Israel and claimed by Israel, there is no citizenship, thus no equality in concept or in fact. Israel has no constitution; it operates under civic and religious law, especially in matters pertaining to marriage, retaining thereby control of the citizenry, and in land ownership which is essentially available only to Jews. This alone negates the concept of democracy as applicable to the Israeli State. If Israel is anything distinct as a country, it is in its theocratic nature not its democratic nature.
As Israel moves ever closer to a siege mentality by blowing wind on the coals of victimhood, the explosive vapors of Hamas’ determination to drive Israelis into the sea aided and abetted by surrounding Arab neighbors intent on destroying the Jewish State, it desperately grasps for means to control its citizens and force compliance with its policies, hence the “loyalty oath” characterized as early as 1663 by Samuel Butler in Hudibras as “Oaths are but words, and words but wind.” This is the act of a despot desperate to protect self at the expense of his subjects; it is the act of a failed State that resorts to the impossible, to impose the logic of its acts regardless of sense on all its subjects; it is the despair reflected in Macbeth, “Who can be wise, amazed, temperate, and furious, loyal and neutral, in a moment? No man.” No mind perceives the same as another, no heart responds the same, no soul accepts being the same; that fact is the power behind democracy, the uniqueness of each requiring of each respect for all others. Democracy is a concept united in its applicability to provide equity for all its citizens. Loyalty to injustice negates democracy; fidelity to one faith without tolerance for all faiths destroys equality for those excluded; truth determined by the despot or the tyrannical government cannot be truth for all; honor demanded of a citizen against his or her innate principles of belief dishonors that citizen; trustworthiness and faithfulness imposed by an oath undermines the conscience of the citizen forcing compliance regardless of the behavior required. A citizen who swears to an oath of absolute allegiance to any authority has destroyed self by that act and thereby has become but chattel, a beast serving the will of another. So much for the Israeli “loyalty oath.”
America has been there, indeed I have been there. Years ago I took a menial position in the House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC) and witnessed first hand the betrayal of democracy by a demagogue and his followers who set fear before the American citizenry by losing faith in the American people. Year after year this pall of fear lay on the American landscape as citizen turned against fellow citizen, neighbors rose in anger and resentment against artists, entertainers, professors, educators, union members, and even the military as McCarthy lashed his venom at all who opposed his witch hunt or refused to comply with his belief that Communists had infiltrated American society. He did not understand that dissent is not disloyalty; he knew nothing of tolerance of another’s belief; he failed to comprehend that equity necessitates respect and democracy means equity. Margaret Chase Smith spoke before the Senate of the United States in 1950 in a speech titled “Declaration of Conscience,” and noted “some of the basic principles of Americanism: the right to criticize; the right to hold unpopular beliefs; the right to protest; the right of independent thought.” These are the rights Israel would deny to Yonatan Shapira and Shir Regev and the university professors as well as to prospective citizens.
What has brought Israel to this sick state of affairs? Based on the research I have done through the seized documents taken by Richard Catling (Sir Richard C. Catling) when he was Deputy Head of the Criminal Investigation Division of the Mandate Police in the 1940s, in files he saved and marked as Top Secret, it is evident in the words of the leaders of the Jewish Agency, the Zionist leaders of the Consultancy as Ilan Pappe notes, that they intended to impose an atmosphere of fear on the new immigrants to unite them in their (the High Command of the Consultancy) intent to cleanse Palestine of its indigenous people necessitating protecting themselves against the Arabs who were out to destroy the Jewish state. That intent exists to this day. Add to this reality the need to grow the Jewish population to offset Palestinian growth, thus bringing to Israel the fanatical sects of Jews who live by a far right orthodoxy of “chosenness” and animosity against gentiles, especially those from Russia.
This group and others of similar persuasion have grown in strength even to the point where no government can exist without their presence. This has been true since Ariel Sharon held office. Their beliefs control government policy much as AIPAC controls our Congress. They believe that their g-d gave them the land of greater Israel and they have done and will do everything in their power to regain what g-d gave to them centuries ago regardless of historical realities or international law.
Jews of other persuasion, secular and reformed, True Torah Jews, Jews for Peace in Palestine and all others who understand the horrendous crimes being imposed on the Palestinians in their own land by those who have suffered under the brutal Nazi regime, recognize that there festers in the State of Israel a cancer that is spreading beyond its borders, those it has legitimately through the UN partition plan of 1947 and those it has acquired illegally and forcefully, that is destroying the Judaic faith and the principles it has stood for these many centuries. The country is being torn by a minority fanatical group that it cannot control, one that is pushing through legislation that corrodes any semblance of democracy as it pushes to a greater state of theocracy both of imposed behavior and imposed belief.
Creating such a state does nothing to advance democracy in the Middle East, it crushes it. The citizens of such a state become but puppets of those who have garnered power, used by them as wooden soldiers in their youth, as molders of their young tutoring them in the intolerant beliefs of ancient tribal men, and subservient elders that spout the party line in their Knesset. But there is a consequence to such behavior and such imposed control. There is a responsibility they assume when they shackle their people to acts that destroy, maim and kill innocent people as they march their way to their Greater Israel; there is the reality that international law uses as precedent, the trial that brought King Charles I to his death, and has been used now for the trials of Pinochet and Milosevic, the “universal right to punish a tyrant who denies democracy and civil and religious liberty to his people.” Charles was brought to trial by John Cooke who penned the words of indictment and his words continue today. That is a reality that Sharon, Olmert, Livni, Barak, and now Netanyahu and Lieberman face as they attempt to justify what is not justifiable and impose what is not legal not only on the people of Israel but on peoples of all nations that seek redress of the outrages the Israeli government has taken against its neighbors, most especially the Palestinians.
One need only mark the power of the peoples’ flotillas into Gaza. This is not the action of the governments of America or England or any single nation, this is a peoples’ action against tyranny; it is the equivalent of America’s Civil Rights Movement that had the people take to the streets, united in purpose and demands, against their government, state and federal, to right the wrong of segregation. It took time and many died in the quest for justice. But over time as more and more people understood that their government was the criminal, they grew in number and force until the government capitulated to their demands and granted justice to the African American and all who had been denied their civil rights.
The flotillas have grown in number over the months. They have made it known to the government of Israel and America, its puppet, that they will not stop until justice is achieved. This fall a flotilla of 50 to 60 boats from many countries will leave for Gaza. Now the Israeli government, its militarized government not its democratic one, will have to stop multitudes of boats with individuals from many countries and many nationalities all saying the same thing. “Freedom now, freedom now, the people of the world demand freedom now.” The people of the world demand that laws be obeyed, just laws, not laws made by the occupier for the oppressed. Accusation is not proof, guilt by association is not evidence, military might is not what is right for the people. Actions taken out of fear are actions removed from reason—fear erodes reason. “Let us not walk in fear, one of another,” as Murrow says, let us honor each other, recognize dignity in each other, respect each other, and thus treat all with equity, fulfilling the very concept of democracy by our actions.
William A. Cook is a Professor of English at the University of La Verne in southern California. His most recent book has just been released by Palgrave Macmillan, The Plight of the Palestinians: a Long History of Destruction. He can be reached at wcook@laverne.edu and at www.drwilliamacook.com
Holy Land 5 case reveals double standard in enforcement of US law
The Electronic Intifada, 20 July 2010
 |
An US federal agent at the Holy Land Foundation in Bridgeview, Illinois, as the contents of the office are seized on 4 December 2001. (AFP PHOTO/Scott Olson) |
“I had no intention in my mind and my heart but to help the Palestinian indigenous people who are and have been facing unusual economic distress … nothing in my life was as satisfactory and as self-fulfilling as knowing that I could sign a check. It is the only evidence you have against me, signing the check.”
At a special session on Palestinian political prisoners at the US Social Forum in Detroit last month, Noor Elashi recited that statement given by her father, Ghassan, when he was sentenced by a federal court in May 2009. Ghassan Elashi is the co-founder of the Holy Land Foundation (HLF), which was the largest Muslim charity in the US before it was shut down by the Bush Administration in 2001.
Sending aid not just to Palestinians living under the thumb of Israel’s military occupation, but to people in Bosnia, Albania, Chechnya and Turkey, the HLF was also involved in local and national humanitarian relief. The organization set up food banks on the East Coast, helped victims of the 1995 Oklahoma City bombing and provided assistance to people after floods and tornadoes devastated parts of Iowa and Texas in the 1990s.
Three months after the 11 September 2001 attacks, the US Treasury department froze the HLF’s bank accounts as the Executive branch shut down the organization under the auspices of the PATRIOT Act. Using a new provision called the Material Support Law, the US State Department accused the five HLF founders — now dubbed the Holy Land Five — of providing “assistance” to designated “terrorist groups” (namely Hamas) in Palestine. The Bush Administration immediately closed the organization and launched aggressive charges against the charity workers. There was no hearing, and the prosecution was authorized to use secret evidence.
Several other American faith-based relief organizations were also caught in the post-11 September hysteria of charity closures under the same new laws and executive orders. The legislation has been challenged by civil rights groups in the US Supreme Court as unconstitutional, but was upheld and used to sentence Ghassan Elashi, a father of six who immigrated to the US in 1978, to 65 years in prison.
On 21 June 2010, the Supreme Court ruled to continue to authorize prosecutions of charities under the Material Support provision, disappointing families and supporters of the Holy Land Five and troubling US-based organizations that directly support grassroots humanitarian programs in the Middle East.
Noor Elashi, a 24-year-old master of fine arts candidate at the New School in New York City, told The Electronic Intifada that her father’s legal team is in the middle of appealing the entire HLF case. “The attorneys are working with the American Civil Liberties Union and the Center for Constitutional Rights,” she said. “The overall impression is that the upholding of the Material Support Law is not the best thing that could happen regarding this case. It’s not the most positive step. But that said, there are so many other grounds for appeal, such as evidentiary issues and the prosecution’s use of an anonymous witness.”
Prosecutors working for the Bush Administration accused the HLF of supporting Hamas by trying to “win hearts and minds” of the Palestinian population through humanitarian assistance, and that the charities HLF worked with were “front groups” for the political party. But after several years of wiretapping phone lines, seizing documents and following money trails, the prosecution couldn’t support its allegations of an HLF-Hamas connection. Elashi said they then resorted to calling on an anonymous Israeli intelligence officer, who called himself “Avi,” as a key witness who told the jury he was an expert who could “smell Hamas.”
“It was the only time in the history of the United States that a witness inside a courtroom was allowed to remain anonymous, so the defense couldn’t cross-examine him,” Elashi said. “That in and of itself is huge grounds for appeal.”
In fact, Israeli intelligence officers, in an unprecendented move, were allowed to testify in secret using pseudonyms and disguises and without the defense being given a full opportunity to cross-examine them during the 2006 federal trial in Chicago of American citizen Muhammad Salah and stateless Palestinian Abdelhaleem Ashqar. Accused of “racketeering” charges related to fundraising for Hamas, both men were acquitted of all the terrorism-related charges, but each was found guilty on single counts of obstruction of justice; Salah for lying on a form in a civil case and Ashqar for refusing to testify before a grand jury.
Additionally, the US government infamously led a lengthy, repressive, and racist assault against the Palestinian-American professor and political activist Dr. Sami al-Arian. Al-Arian, who remains under house arrest following a six-year prison sentence — which included spending 43 months locked in solitary confinement — was also charged, as the HLF were, under the Material Support Law.
Elashi stressed that the HLF was never convicted of giving charity to designated “terrorist” groups, but in the end they were convicted of conspiring to give charity to zakat or charitable committees in Palestine.
“I feel like at this point, anybody is at risk,” Elashi said. “This is the time to be worried. What essentially can happen is that any American can be prosecuted for giving any type of charity, or any type of aid. Even a former president is at risk of being prosecuted,” she said, referring to how Jimmy Carter has helped train election workers in Lebanon.
“The problem with the law is that it’s way too vague,” Elashi added, “and because it’s way too vague, it really singles out groups from the rest of the population, and typically singles out Muslim charities as well as Arab-American individuals. And it’s all being done in the name of national security, but what it’s really doing is shredding the constitution and causing an economic chokehold on occupied Palestine.”
Elashi told The Electronic Intifada that despite the circumstances, her father is extremely hopeful about the appeals process. “Opening the charity was a form of optimism,” she said. “He knew from the first day that when he started the charity it was going to be a challenge. Soon after, he got attacked from pro-Israeli politicians and lobbyists, who tried to link the charity to Hamas and acts of violence. He continued to do everything possible to make sure that the charity kept running, and did pretty much what every other American aid organization did — USAID, the Red Cross, and the UN all gave money to the very same zakat committees that were listed in the HLF indictment.”
The Elashi family has not been allowed to visit Ghassan in prison, Noor Elashi said, for quite some time. In the fall of 2009, after one of the visits, a prison guard told the inmates and the families to disperse. But Noor’s younger brother Omar — who lives with Down’s Syndrome — ran to hug his father, and at that point the prison guard yelled at Ghassan, saying that he disobeyed orders. The guard filed a complaint that led to an internal investigation, and the prison ruled that there would be a six-month to one-year visitation ban.
Even after Ghassan was moved to another prison, the visitation ban moved with him. “We get two phone calls from him every month, which is significantly less than we would get from any other prison,” Elashi said. “We hope to finally see him in September or October.” Ghassan is currently being held inside a Communications Management Unit (CMU) in Illinois, a block within some prisons that are nicknamed “little Guantanamos” due to the overwhelming population of Muslims and people of Arab and Middle Eastern descent.
Defense Attorney Nancy Hollander, on behalf of the Holy Land Five, told The Electronic Intifada that the legal team is optimistic about the appeal. “We are currently working on our brief to the Fifth Circuit,” Hollander remarked. “The current deadline is 3 August, but that might get extended into September. All of our clients have been moved to other prisons. We are in contact with them regularly. We remain hopeful.”
Meanwhile, private, US-based, pro-Israel groups are currently sending millions of dollars every year to support illegal settlement colonies and right-wing Zionist settlers in the occupied West Bank. The New York Times reported on 5 July that at least 40 US-based organizations are actively donating more than $200 million in tax-deductible “gifts” to build and sustain illegal settlements. According to the Times, some of the donations also pay for “legally questionable” items such as bulletproof vests, guard dogs, weapon accessories and armored security vehicles (“Tax-Exempt Funds Aid Settlements in West Bank“).
Daniel C. Kurtzer, the former US ambassador to Israel, told the Times “a couple of hundred million dollars makes a huge difference” in terms of supporting the settlement industry, and if carefully focused, “helps to create a new reality on the ground.”
As of now, there is no indication that any of these faith-based, pro-settlement groups will face the kind of treatment and lengthy, expensive trials under the guise of the Material Support Law like those the Holy Land Five have faced. Noor Elashi told The Electronic Intifada that there is an obvious double standard being applied and enforced against her father and his colleagues.
However, she said that her father “feels his ordeal like he feels a fly on his shoe … He believes that it’s going to pass, and he’s still very proud of everything he’s accomplished. His work has been the most rewarding part of his life. He’s helped people rebuild homes and has given hungry people food. That’s what nourishes him. So he’s optimistic about the appeal.”
At the US Social Forum in Detroit, Elashi read the last part of her father’s statement upon his sentencing. “We helped Palestinian orphans and needy families, giving them hope and life,” he stated. “We gave them hope and life … And what was the occupation giving them? It was providing them with death and destruction. And then we are turned criminals. That is irony.”
Related:
Early release for soldier who killed British activist
Ma’an – 19/07/2010
Bethlehem – An Israeli soldier convicted of shooting dead a British peace activist has been granted an early release from prison, the Israeli press reported Monday.
A military committee accepted Taysir Hayb’s appeal, and he will be free in one month, the Israeli news site Ynet reported Monday.
Hayb shot Tom Hurndall, who died aged 22, during an incident on Gaza’s southern border.
Witnesses reported that the British citizen was watching children play on a street in Rafah when Israeli soldiers opened fire. Most of the children fled, but three, aged between four and seven, were paralyzed by fear.
Hurndall took one of the children to safety and was returning for the two others when Hayb shot him in his forehead.
After a two hour delay at the border, Hurndall was taken to hospital, where he remained in a coma until his death nine months later.
Hayb, an award-winning marksman, faced court after intense pressure from the British government and Hurndall’s parents and in his initial testimony, claimed that he had aimed four inches from Hurndall’s head but missed.
He also claimed Hurndall was wearing military fatigues, although photographic evidence showed he was wearing a fluorescent orange jacket to show he was a foreigner.
The soldier later changed his testimony and “admitted to firing in proximity to an unarmed civilian as a deterrent,” an Israeli army statement at the time said.
An Israeli military court convicted Hayb in 2005 and sentenced him to eight years in prison. During the trial, Hayb said that a policy of shooting unarmed civilians existed at the time.
Hurndall’s killing came one month after US activist Rachel Corrie was killed by a military bulldozer as she tried to stop the demolition of a Palestinian home in Rafah, and one month later British journalist James Miller was shot dead by an Israeli sniper in the same area.
A British inquest in 2006 found Hurndall was intentionally killed. “Make no mistake about it, the Israeli defense force have today been found culpable by this jury of murder,” the family’s lawyer Michael Mansfield said after the hearing.
In his appeal for early release, Hayb told the committee he is engaged and wishes to start a family, Ynet reported.
In journals released by Hurndall’s family since his death, the young photographer wrote, “I want to be proud of myself. I want more. I want to look up to myself and when I die, I want to smile because of the things I have done, not cry for the things I haven’t done.”
The boycott Israel movement
July 15, 2010
Real News Network’s senior editor Paul Jay interviews economist Shir Hever on the growing and increasingly effective boycott movement.
Shir Hever: Basically, it’s a movement that comes from people who support it not because they love Palestinians. It’s not because they feel a special affinity with the Palestinian people in particular — although that also exists of course — but mostly because these people feel that there is a connection between what happens in Palestine, what happens in the Middle East, and their own lives. Because… Israel is a kind of factory for repression and mechanisms of repression that are being sold to other countries in the world, and mechanisms that are used against Palestinians are often replicated and used against citizens of other countries by their governments because they have already been tested on Palestinians as kind of guinea pigs, if you want. And so the boycott movement is also a way for people to voice their dissatisfaction with their governments. Why are their governments enabling Israel, allowing Israel, to continue to violate international law, to develop and create weapons of mass destruction illegally, to deny Palestinians citizenship and democracy and to incarcerate a million and a half people in the Gaza Strip in conditions of utter poverty where their only means of sustenance is aid from the international community? Why should the international community allow this?…
Paul Jay: So far, the boycott movement, what effect is it having on the Israeli economy?
Hever: The effect is hidden by the Israeli various bureaus of statistics and the manufacturers association for example. There was one survey for example that showed 21% of Israeli exporters reported on average 10% loss of income because of the boycott which was related specifically to the attack on Gaza in 2008-2009. But this report was censored. This report was removed from… was never published, was only leaked to the media once and it’s impossible to get it because the manufacturers association know if that information reaches people who support the boycott movement, that will empower them and give them more confidence to continue their efforts.
See also:
The Real News Network | July 12, 2010
The Political Economy of Israel’s Occupation
18 families control 60% of the equity value of all companies in Israel
Featured Video
Russia Helping Build a New Middle East /Trita Parsi
or go to
Aletho News Archives – Video-Images
From the Archives
Sam Husseini: The entire US establishment helped lie their way into the Iraq war
By Slava Zilber | American Herald Tribune | October 14, 2019
Sam Husseini is a senior analyst with the Institute for Public Accuracy, independent journalist and contributor to The Nation and FAIR.
Slava Zilber: Sam, three years ago, you appeared on Talk Nation Radio with David Swanson and spoke about the case of the GCHQ whistleblower Katharine Gun. You pointed out that the people involved in the spying on the UN and the people authorizing the Iraq War were not held accountable:
“Virtually everybody who went along with the war, whether it is Kerry or Clinton, of course, the Bush administration themselves has falsified their own records in terms of why, what they did, when they did, why they did it, to the extent that they’ve been scrutinised at all.”
You also address it in a recent article. And recently, Joe Biden has been lying about his position on the Iraq War. How can such an important issue escape meaningful scrutiny? … continue
Blog Roll
Aletho News- Russia Helping Build a New Middle East /Trita Parsi
- Barghouti: ‘Netanyahu has fallen,’ era of Smotrich, Ben-Gvir over
- China slams US policy on Iran as Russia rejects legality of nuclear meeting at UN
- The Mecca Pact Courts Iran: Containment Comes Full Circle
- Oman FM: Persian Gulf states, Iran, Iraq should form security pact excluding US
- Trump peddles fresh falsehoods, claims Iran ‘started the war’ as US aggression drags on
- Ukraine quagmire? Yes, but it’s for NATO, not Russia
- US intelligence hypes Chinese, Russian space threats while accelerating its own military buildup in orbit
- Iran FM Araghchi: “Hormuz Will No Longer Be the Same”
- EU facing trillion-euro debt hole while seeking more cash for Kiev
- If Americans Knew
- An error has occurred; the feed is probably down. Try again later.
- No Tricks Zone
- Sudden Stratospheric Warming, Powerful El Niño Combination May Lead To Extreme Europe Cold, Energy Crisis!
- Two New Studies Find Thwaites Glacier Melt Cannot Be Driven By Human Activity Or A Warming Ocean
- E-Cars Reduce CO2 Emissions By Only 41% Compared To Internal Combustion Engine Vehicles
- Predictions Made By Renowned Climate Professor Over Past Decades Have Been Proven To Be Poor
- New Study Suggests Large Regions Of The Pacific Ocean Have Been Cooling For The Last 80 Years
- Germany’s Green Energy Debacle: High Energy Costs Force Kahla Porzellan to Close After 182 Years!
- New Study: 50 Years Of The Most Aggressive ‘Net Zero’ Policies Can Only Affect The Global Climate By 0.03°C
- US September “Heat” Was No Record…Many Records Set Decades Ago
- Latest European Green Energy Debacle; Portugal’s Largest Flagship Solar Park Insolvent!
- Green Energy Debacle: German Expert Professor Fritz Vahrenholt Warns Of Severe Economic And Social Consequences
