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Selling Israeli Militarism

TheRealNews | June 22, 2011

A discussion on militarism in Israeli society and gender equality in the army.

Alex Cohn, a war resister who served five months for objecting to serve in the army analyses a children’s show that portrays a typical interaction between soldiers and Israeli children as part of a discussion on the insidious prevalence of militarism in Israeli society.

June 25, 2011 Posted by | Militarism, Timeless or most popular, Video | Leave a comment

Washington plans further actions against Venezuela

The State Department said today that it is “seriously” considering classifying Venezuela as a “terrorist state”

By Eva Golinger – June 24, 2011 

During a hearing today on the Foreign Relations Committee of the House of Representatives of the United States on “sanctioned activities in Venezuela,” Congressional Democrats and Republicans asked the Obama administration to take more aggressive actions against the government of Hugo Chavez in Venezuela. The head of the Sub-Committee on Foreign Affairs for the Western Hemisphere, Connie Mack, Republican of Florida, branded the Venezuelan government “terrorist”, saying “it is time to act to contain the dangerous influence of Hugo Chavez and his relations with Iran”.

Mack is known for his rabid anti-Chavez stance. However, the Republican congressman has weight in the legislature because of his high office in the Foreign Relations Committee. His efforts, along with the head of the Foreign Relations Committee, Republican Ileana Ros-Lehtinen, managed to convince the White House to impose sanctions against Venezuela’s state oil company, Petroleos de Venezuela SA (PDVSA) last May 24. Mack has said that his only mission this year is “go for Hugo Chavez.”

Today’s hearing, devoted entirely to in Venezuela, was attended by senior officials of the State Department, the Treasury Department and the Office of Foreign Assets Control. In testimony before the Committee, the Assistant Under-Secretary of State for Latin America, Kevin Whitaker, revealed that the administration of Barack Obama is “seriously considering” labeling Venezuela a “terrorist state”. “No option is off the table and the department will continue to study any further action as may be necessary in the future,” said Whitaker.

The sanctions imposed on May 24 PDVSA fell into a sanctions law against Iran (Iran Sanctions Act) of the United States, including the prohibition of entering into contracts with the U.S. government, the use of the import and export bank of the United States and the approval of certain technology licensing. Washington’s hostile action towards Venezuela did not have much economic impact against the South American country and its oil company because it no longer had agreements with the U.S. government or loans from their banks. The sanctions did not affect the important oil supplies from Venezuela to the United States or the Venezuelan subsidiary in U.S. territory, CITGO.

However, the sanctions had an impact on diplomatic relations between Caracas and Washington, which were already in a period of deterioration. After the latter’s aggressive actions, the Venezuelan government declared relations with the United States “frozen”.

DANGEROUS TO DO BUSINESS WITH PDVSA

According to the Department of State, sanctions against PDVSA, while not impacting the country economically, “give a message to the world that it is dangerous to do business with Venezuela and PDVSA,” indicating that in the near future, Washington would act against those who enter into contracts or agreements with Venezuelan companies.

SANCTIONS AGAINST CONVIASA

The lawmakers also demanded that the State Department impose sanctions against the Venezuelan airline CONVIASA because of what they consider their “support for terrorism” because it had maintained flights between Caracas, Syria and Iran. Without a shred of evidence, the congressmen said that the flight, which is no longer operating, was “carrying radioactive material, weapons, drugs and known terrorists of Hezbollah and Iran.”

To support this dangerous “accusation”, Congress cited the German newspaper, Die Welt, which had published earlier in the week that Venezuela and Iran were building a missile base in the western Venezuelan coast-to “attack the United States.” Faced with this misinformation, President Hugo Chavez showed footage of a farm of windmills in the location where “sources” had indicated the fictional Iranian military base was.

MORE SANCTIONS

The congress also implored the State Department to consider applying more sanctions against Venezuela, including “a ban on U.S. imports” and “transactions in dollars.” Representatives of the White House said that although they are considering further action against the government of Hugo Chávez, which they consider to be “an enemy government”, they must take into account the significant supply of Venezuelan oil, which comprised 15% of U.S. imports . Some days ago, President Barack Obama authorized oil drilling in the state of Alaska in an area protected due to its environmental value, indicating that Washington is seeking to secure their energy needs before breaking the trade relationship with Venezuela.

SANCTIONS TO DATE

In addition to the sanctions imposed against PDVSA on 24 May, Washington already has taken aggressive actions against the Venezuelan government. In June of 2006, it classified Venezuela as a country that “does not cooperate sufficiently with the fight against terrorism” and imposed sanctions prohibiting US arms sales to Venezuela or of any company in the world using U.S. technology.

Since 2005, Washington also has classified Venezuela as a country that does not “cooperate in the fight against drug trafficking,” which should carry a financial penalty against the South American country. Yet, Washington clarified that since Venezuela has no loans in the U.S., the only support that could be cut would be those millions of dollars given annually to anti-Chavez groups in Haiti who work every day to overthrow the Chavez government. They included an exception to this penalty, saying that it “would not affect the U.S. financial support grants to democratic ‘civil society’ organizations, thus ensuring continued support for the destabilization of Venezuela.

In 2007, the Treasury of the United States sanctioned three senior Venezuelan officials, accusing them of ties to terrorism and drug trafficking, but never offered proof. The officials included the Director of the Directorate of Military Intelligence, General Hugo Carvajal, the then Director of Bolivarian Intelligence (SEBIN), General Henry Rangel and then-Minister of Interior and Justice, Ramón Rodríguez Chacin.

The following year, the Treasury Department designated two Venezuelans of Syrian origin, Fawzi Kan’an and Ghazi Nasr al Din, as being “terrorists” for having ties with Hezbollah, considered a terrorist group by the United States.

All indications are that Washington will continue to increase their aggression against Venezuela with future sanctions and isolation.

Translation by Aletho News

Click here for original Spanish language version

See also AFP:

US says won’t rule out options on Venezuela sanctions

June 25, 2011 Posted by | Progressive Hypocrite, Timeless or most popular, Wars for Israel | Leave a comment

The Challenge of Gaza Flotilla: Radical Political Agenda

By Richard Irvine | Palestine Chronicle | June 24, 2011

Recently I often think I have entered a parallel universe. One where the illegal is legal; the victim the criminal; where Goliath defends himself from David.

Palestinians have of course endured this experience for the last 100 years, but in recent weeks Israel’s denunciations of the upcoming Gaza Flotilla, coming on the heels of its pious condemnation of the dead refugees on the Golan Heights have stretched incredulity to breaking point.

When Israel killed 14 unarmed refugees on Nakba Day and then out did itself in a repeat performance three weeks later, I expected the international community to speak out; to condemn, to reiterate the promise of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, that everyone has the right to leave and return to their own country. I waited in vain.

Over the mumblings of the Quartet, and Ban Ki-moon’s pathetic call for “restraint,” the most strident voice of course was Israel’s. Outraged at having to kill unarmed civilians, the turkey shoot of refugees became transformed into a defence of Israeli sovereignty, the refugees aggressors – guilty of the egregious provocation of attempting to exercise their human rights.

Today, as the Gaza Flotilla approaches, the same transformation of unarmed activists into dangerous and irresponsible extremists is already well under way. Whilst Israel rehearses its naval operations, it also ratchets up its diplomatic and media offensive. Israel’s UN Ambassador, Ron Prosor, ominously repeats the language used before last year’s massacre; declaring the flotilla “a provocation” and calling upon the international community to do all in its power to prevent it.

Omitted of course from this discourse is the statement from the International Committee of the Red Cross that the blockade is illegal; or that from the former head of UNRWA in Gaza, John Ging, who last year called for activists to break the blockade. Indeed, forgotten already is the fact that Israel’s previous assault upon the Mavi Marmara was both illegal, and, according to the UN Human Rights Council report, murderous.

In other words, all the objective legal context necessary for the public and the international community to judge the actions of the activists and Israel is absent. Instead what is presented is a narrative of Israel under attack – indeed of Israel under siege. As Proser says, “The goal of the flotilla is not to give humanitarian aid but to provoke and aid a radical political agenda.”

That radical agenda being the enforcement of international and human rights law.

And of course Israel has had its successes. The Turkish charity IHH has pulled out of the flotilla, most probably under pressure from the Turkish government which in light of the Syrian uprising appears keen to repair relationships with Israel. Even more concerning however has been the pusillanimous appeal by Ban Ki-moon to Middle East states to do everything they can to prevent the flotilla (28/05/2011).

Similarly Israel’s champions in the media have not been slow to trumpet the statements of its politicians and smear the flotilla activists as far leftists, anti-Semites or terrorists; Israeli Admiral Eliezer Marom calling it “a hate flotilla whose only goals are to clash with IDF soldiers, create media provocation and to delegitimize the State of Israel.” (Ha’aretz, 19/06/2011)

Sadly, amongst all this media storm, what is being delegitimized here is not Israel but international law. To my knowledge, no country has issued a statement warning Israel not to attack it citizens, but several have warned their citizens not to take part in the flotilla and to avoid all travel to Gaza. This sends an ominous message. In the event of an Israeli attack it puts the blame for activist casualties on the activists themselves. In effect it is governments diplomatically washing their hands whilst giving Israel a readymade alibi to be as violent as it chooses. A phenomenon, which in the context of Gaza, is anything but unusual.

Yet International Humanitarian Law requires that all States both “respect and ensure respect” for the laws of war; the Universal Declaration of Human Rights that all States promote “universal respect for and observance of human rights and fundamental freedoms.” Therefore, when governments wash their hands of Gaza and of the activists who are seeking to aid its people, they are also washing their hands of these commitments.

So let’s see the Gaza Flotilla as the challenge it really is – it is not about whether a few ships can successfully reach Gaza; or about whether some tonnes of aid can be delivered; nor is it about the delegitimization of Israel – in fact, it is about the most fundamental issue of all – whether the rule of law or the rule of might should prevail. In the end its not just the siege of Gaza the flotilla activists are challenging, but the siege of international law. So yes I agree with Ron Proser, it is “a radical political agenda.”

~

Richard Irvine is a Belfast, Ireland-based writer.

June 24, 2011 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Deception, Timeless or most popular, War Crimes, Wars for Israel | Leave a comment

Mosque In Beersheba To Remain An Islamic Museum

By Katie Child | International Middle East Media Center | June 24, 2011

The Beersheba Municipality has rejected a petition by the Bedouin Muslims of the Negev to pray in the old mosque of Beersheba.

The Baseiso mosque was built in 1906 by the Ottoman Empire and served as a mosque until 1950. At that time, the Israeli’s decided to convert the mosque into a Museum for Islamic and Israeli culture.

The High Court of Justice rejected a petition by the Negev’s Muslim Committee and the Bedouin Rights Protection Foundation to convert the museum into a mosque for local Muslims to use it for prayer.

The Municipality stated that, “an active mosque in the heart of a Jewish city is unthinkable.” They also claimed that converting the museum back into a mosque for public prayer would threaten the city’s security.

Beersheba Mayor Rubik Danilovich stated that, “the city views Muslim prayer as an element of incitement.”

There remains no active center for the five thousand Muslims remaining in Beersheba, which compels them to pray on the street, in other public places, or not at all.

Since 1948, the population of Beersheba is mostly Jewish with no significant Arab population.

June 24, 2011 Posted by | Illegal Occupation, Timeless or most popular | Leave a comment

Americans Going To Gaza

The Struggle Video Network

Stanley Heller interviews various Americans before embarking to break the blockade on Gaza.

Gale Khoury

Richard Lopez

Melissa Lane

Kit Kittredge

Libor

June 23, 2011 Posted by | Solidarity and Activism, Timeless or most popular, Video | Leave a comment

Gen’l Ashkenazi, architect of Gaza onslaught, joins Brookings Institution as ‘Visiting Fellow’

By Philip Weiss on June 21, 2011

Tomorrow the Brookings Institution is having a panel on how Israel has defended itself from terrorism for the last 60 years. Triumphs and failures. And look who’s on the panel: Brookings Saban Center Visiting Fellow Gabi Ashkenazi, former chief of staff of the Israeli army, who helped direct the Gaza onslaught of 2008-2009 that killed nearly 400 children and who is cited in the Goldstone Report.

This is a reflection of the power of the Israel lobby: how enmeshed it is in our discourse, and why it is that the U.S. invariably provides Israel impunity for its actions against Palestinians.

I asked Ken Pollack, head of the Saban Center (yes it’s backed by Haim Saban, an ardent Zionist by his own description) about Ashkenazi. He didn’t respond. I bet even he is embarrassed by this. But I got a note back from Gail Chalef, director of communications for Foreign Policy at Brookings Institution:

I understand you had a question about Saban Center Visiting Fellow Gabi Ashkenazi. General Ashkenazi joined the Saban Center at Brookings as a visiting fellow on June 1.

Saban Center visiting fellows are leading thinkers and practitioners within their fields who help the Center stay at the forefront of research trends and policy developments through a temporary period of residence within the Center.

Saban visiting fellowships are typically three-to-six months in duration. During their stay, the visiting fellows contribute to the Center’s diversity of thought and research. The fellows also contribute to the Center’s reach, educating and informing a wide audience of political, corporate, and civic leaders, as well as the general public.

Visiting fellows also may use their time at Brookings to write and to attend and participate in Center events. They are also asked to provide others in the Brookings community with insights on their area of expertise. One other point – visiting fellows are not considered employees of The Brookings Institution.

June 21, 2011 Posted by | Timeless or most popular, War Crimes | Leave a comment

Occupation Forces abuse International Solidarity Movement activists during illegal arrest

19 June 2011 | International Solidarity Movement

On Sunday June 19th, six International Solidarity Movement activists from the United Kingdom, United States, Brazil, Germany, and Sweden were illegally arrested by the Israeli military after attending a demonstration against the construction on confiscated land belonging to the Palestinian village, Deir Qaddis.

Apart from numerous Palestinian, Israeli, and international activists, many children and elderly villagers participated. The demonstrators marched through the village waving flags and chanting slogans. Some of the demonstrators formed a road blockade with rocks on the confiscated land.

The Israeli military arrived shortly after and responded with volleys of tear gas, aimed directly at demonstrators. The tear gas canisters set alight the grass around them, causing a fire which spread for hundreds of meters throughout the hills.

After the Israeli military had left the area, the demonstrators returned to the village. The military subsequently invaded the village following the demonstrations. The internationals were resting in a Palestinian home following the demonstration drinking tea. Upon noticing army infringement upon the village, the international volunteers walked onto the road to see where the army was, hoping that their presence as internationals would deter the soldiers from attacking the village. Yet the commanding officer ran down the hill, with about 15 soldiers behind him, pointed his gun directly at the volunteers, and said violently, “If you move, I will shoot.”

While under arrest the soldiers proceeded to teargas the village below, and as they did so, the wind carried the teargas across to the international volunteers. As they tried to treat themselves with onions and alcohol wipes, items commonly used to deter the affects of tear gas, the soldiers shouted that tear gas was “part of the Israeli experience.”

Then the soldiers forced them to walk in convoy formation.

“We walked with a soldier in front of us, behind, and one on either side with guns, shouting at us and using intimidation techniques, forcing us to walk like prisoners,” said one volunteer. She continued to describe her experience as they were taken away from the village. “We walked for approximately 15 minutes in the heat and sun along the road until we were outside the illegal Israeli settlement of Nil’ in. When we repeatedly stated that we did not believe our presence in the village was illegal, or that the arrest was legal, the soldiers responded with the same aggressive responses that we ‘should know the law of the country that we are in, meaning Israel. They then made us get into an armoured jeep, where we were forced to sit in silence for approximately 30 minutes before blindfolding us, for the acclaimed reason that we were “not allowed to see the settlement” through which we were passing, as if we were terrorists,” she said.

During the first six hours of detention, the activists were kept in an armored military truck, being blindfolded for approximately one hour. After more than ten hours in detention, the activists were forced to stay awake and were given one piece of bread and water. The arresting\ officer was the Hebrew/English translator during each activist’s interrogation, having testified against them just hours before. He talked over the activists as they gave their testimony, accused the activists of lying and cut one activist off before she could finish her testimony. They were released 17 hours later, after signing a condition stating they will not participate in demonstrations in Deir Qaddis, Bi’lin, Ni’lin and Deir Qaddis.

The activists were charged with participating in an illegal demonstration despite the fact that the demonstration took place on Palestinian land and therefore can not be declared illegal under both Israeli and international law.

June 21, 2011 Posted by | Solidarity and Activism, Subjugation - Torture, Timeless or most popular | Leave a comment

UK Ambassador Craig Murray: Legal analysis of right of Gaza flotilla to sail

Israel-Palestine: The Missing Headlines | June 20, 2011

Ambassador Craig Murray is a former Alternate Head of the UK Delegation to the United Nations Preparatory Commission on the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea. He was deputy head of the teams which negotiated the UK’s maritime boundaries with France, Germany, Denmark (Faeroe Islands) and Ireland.

As Head of the Maritime Section of the Foreign and Commonwealth Office, he was responsible for giving real time political and legal clearance to Royal Navy boarding operations in the Persian Gulf following the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait, in enforcement of the UN authorised blockade against Iraqi weapons shipments.

Ambassador Craig Murray is therefore an internationally recognised authority on maritime jurisdiction and naval boarding issues.

His analysis of the Israeli blockade of Gaza and the right of the Gaza flotilla to sail:

“The legal position is plain. A vessel outwith the territorial waters (12 mile limit) of a coastal state is on the high seas under the sole jurisdiction of the flag state of the vessel. The ship has a positive right of passage on the high seas. The coastal state can regulate economic activity exploiting the resources of the seas and continental shelf up to 200 miles, the extent of the continental shelf, or the agreed boundary, but there is no indication of fishing, oil drilling or analogous economic activity in this case. The vessel is entitled to free passage.”

“This right of free passage is guaranteed by the UN Convention on the Law of the Seas, to which the United States is a full party. Any incident which takes place upon a US flagged ship on the High Seas is subject to United States legal jurisdiction. A ship is entitled to look to its flag state for protection from attack on the High Seas.”

“Israel has declared a blockade on Gaza and justified previous fatal attacks on neutral civilian vessels on the High Seas in terms of enforcing that embargo, under the legal cover given by the San Remo Manual of International Law Applicable to Armed Conflicts at Sea.”

“There are however fundamental flaws in this line of argument. It falls completely on one fact alone. San Remo only applies to blockade in times of armed conflict. Israel is not currently engaged in an armed conflict, and presumably does not wish to
be. San Remo does not confer any right to impose a permanent blockade outwith times of armed conflict, and in fact specifically excludes as illegal a general blockade on an entire population.”

“It should not be denied that Israel suffers from sporadic terrorist attacks emanating from Gaza. However this does not come close to reaching the bar of armed conflict that would trigger the right to impose a limited naval blockade in terms of San Remo. To make a comparison, in the 1970’s and 1980’s the United Kingdom suffered continued terrorist attack from the Irish Republican Army, with much more murderous impact causing many more deaths than anything Israel has suffered in recent
years from Gaza. However nobody would seek to argue that the UK would have had the right to mount a general naval blockade of the Republic of Ireland in the 1970’s and 1980’s, even though the Republic was undoubtedly the base for much IRA supply and operations. Justifications of Israeli naval action against neutral civilian ships by San Remo is based on special pleading and an impossibly strained definition of the term “armed conflict”.

June 20, 2011 Posted by | Timeless or most popular, War Crimes | Leave a comment

TSA Now Storming Public Places 8,000 Times a Year

By Tara Servatius | American Thinker | June 20, 2011

Americans must decide if, in the name of homeland security, they are willing to allow TSA operatives to storm public places in their communities with no warning, pat them down, and search their bags.  And they better decide quickly.

Bus travelers were shocked when jackbooted TSA officers in black SWAT-style uniforms descended unannounced upon the Tampa Greyhound bus station in April with local, state and federal law enforcement agencies and federal bureaucrats in tow.

A news report by ABC Action News in Tampa showed passengers being given the signature pat downs Americans are used to watching the Transportation Security Administration screeners perform at our airports. Canine teams sniffed their bags and the buses they rode. Immigration officials hunted for large sums of cash as part of an anti-smuggling initiative.

The TSA clearly intends for these out-of-nowhere swarms by its officers at community transit centers, bus stops and public events to become a routine and accepted part of American life.

The TSA has conducted 8,000 of these security sweeps across the country in the past year alone, TSA chief John Pistole told a Senate committee June 14.  They are part of its VIPR (Visible Intermodal Prevention and Response) program, which targets public transit related places.

All of which is enough to make you wonder if we are watching the formation of the “civilian national security force” President Obama called for on the campaign trail “that is just as powerful, just as strong and just as well funded” as the military.

The VIPR swarm on Wednesday, the TSA’s largest so far, was such a shocking display of the agency’s power that it set the blogosphere abuzz.

In a massive flex of muscle most people didn’t know the TSA had, the agency led dozens of federal and state law enforcement agencies in a VIPR exercise that covered three states and 5,000 square miles. According to the Marietta Times, the sweep used reconnaissance aircraft and “multiple airborne assets, including Blackhawk helicopters and fixed wing aircraft as well as waterborne and surface teams.”

When did the TSA get this powerful? Last year, Pistole told USA Today he wanted to “take the TSA to the next level,” building it into a “national-security, counterterrorism organization, fully integrated into U.S. government efforts.”

What few people realize is how far Pistole has already come in his quest. This is apparently what that next level looks like. More than 300 law enforcement and military personnel swept through a 100-mile stretch of the Ohio Valley alone, examining the area’s industrial infrastructure, the Charleston Gazette reported.

Federal air marshals, the Army Corps of Engineers, the U.S. Coast Guard, the FBI, the Office of Homeland Security and two dozen other federal, state and local agencies teamed up to scour the state’s roads, bridges, water supply and transit centers under the TSA’s leadership.

What is remarkable about these security swarms is that they don’t just involve federal, state and local law enforcement officials. The TSA brings in squads of bureaucrats from state and federal agencies as well, everything from transportation departments to departments of natural resources.

The TSA had received no specific threats about the Tampa bus station before the April sweep, reporters were told.

They were there “to sort of invent the wheel in advance in case we have to if there ever is specific intelligence requiring us to be here,” said Gary Milano with the Department of Homeland Security in an ABC News Action television report. “This way us and our partners are ready to move in at a moment’s notice.”

Federal immigration officials from Customs and Border Patrol swept the station with the TSA, looking for “immigration violations, threats to national security” and “bulk cash smuggling.” (How the bulk cash smuggling investigation related to national security was never explained.)

“We’ll be back,” Milano told reporters. “We won’t say when we’ll be back. This way the bad guys are on notice we’ll be back.”

The TSA gave the same vague answers when asked about the three-state sweep this week. That sweep wasn’t in response to any specific security threat, either.

The purpose was to “have a visible presence and let people know we’re out here,” Michael Cleveland, federal security director for TSA operations in West Virginia told the Gazette. “It can be a deterrent.”

It might be — if Americans are willing to live this way.

Tara Servatius is a radio talk show host. Follow her @TaraServatius and on Facebook.

June 20, 2011 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Full Spectrum Dominance, Timeless or most popular | Leave a comment

Challenging Israeli apartheid, starting at Ben Gurion Airport

By Laura Durkay | Mondoweiss | June 20, 2011

From July 8-16, I will join hundreds of internationals for a week of solidarity actions in coordination with 15 Palestinian civil resistance organizations in the occupied West Bank and East Jerusalem.  To my knowledge, this will be the first attempt to bring such a large number of internationals—already over 500, according to organizers—to the West Bank and East Jerusalem in a coordinated manner.  While Freedom Flotilla 2, sailing in the coming days, rightly puts the spotlight on Israel’s cruel blockade of Gaza, we intend to show that Israeli repression in the rest of historic Palestine—the West Bank, Jerusalem, and what is now Israel—is no less important and is part of the same project of ethnic cleansing and colonization.

The opening act of our week of nonviolent resistance is, in my opinion, its most creative and daring component.  On a single day, July 8, hundreds of internationals and Palestinians living abroad will fly in to Tel Aviv’s Ben Gurion Airport and perform one simple but radical action: refuse to lie about the fact that we are there to travel to the Occupied Territories and visit Palestinians.

Anyone who has traveled to Palestine knows the potential risks associated with this action.  Israel controls all entry points into Palestine, except for the Rafah crossing into Gaza, which is controlled by Egypt and has its own Kafkaesque challenges.  The Israeli government routinely denies entry to people it knows or simply suspects of being Palestine solidarity activists; journalists, academics and cultural workers sympathetic to the Palestinians; even people coming to do volunteer or charity work in the Occupied Territories.

This means that for years, the most common strategy among solidarity activists entering Palestine has been to keep your head down and lie about why you are there.

Plenty of us know the routine.  You say that you’re a tourist.  You play dumb about history and politics, and you never say you are going to visit Palestinians.  You don’t point out the fact that every person of color in your group just got picked out for questioning.  You submit calmly to interrogation and construct non-offensive half-truths, conveniently leaving out certain parts of your itinerary.  When they search your stuff, you nod and say you understand it’s for “security reasons.”  You swallow every rebellious instinct that brought you to Palestine in the first place and temporarily submit to a racist, invasive, intimidating security apparatus in the hope that they will deign to let you in to Palestine, and accept that this is the price to be paid for being able to do the work you want to do.

For the record, I don’t think there is anything inherently wrong with this strategy.  In any given situation, the most useful way to interact with agents of the Israeli state is a tactical decision.  I understand there are many groups of people who do not have the luxury of pissing off Israeli security: people who depend on free movement in and out of Palestine for work, study, or to see family; those engaged in long-term projects in the region for whom maintaining access to the Occupied Territories is crucial; those engaged in critical media work that gets Palestine’s story out to the world; those who may be in a more vulnerable position for any number of reasons.

But at the same time, we should be clear that Israel’s border controls and repressive entry policies are part of the apartheid system—a big part.  Entry restrictions on solidarity activists, journalists, and NGO workers are a natural outgrowth of the restrictions that prevent a large percentage of the worldwide Palestinian population from returning to their own country and/or moving about freely within it.  They are a component of the elaborate matrix of borders, walls, checkpoints, permits, soldiers and secret police by which the Israeli government exerts a choke-hold on free movement and political activity throughout occupied Palestine.  They are part and parcel of the occupation machinery that seeks to isolate the Occupied Territories and make life there unbearable so that Palestinians will leave, and that frequently forces them out whether they want to go or not.  And like all other parts of the apartheid system, they deserve to be challenged.

This year’s Nakba and Naksa Day protests saw Israel besieged on every one of its garrisoned borders by unarmed Palestinians simply wanting to return home.  At the end of this month, Freedom Flotilla 2 will defy Israel’s punitive and illegal naval blockade of the Gaza Strip.  We see the July 8 fly-in as our contribution to the new movement that is chipping away at Fortress Israel.

Some fellow activists have raised the possibility that this action will result in nothing more than hundreds of us being summarily deported, and possibly banned from entering Palestine in the future.  It is entirely possible that this will happen, and anyone participating in this action should be aware of the risk.  It seems to me a very small risk to take in comparison to the crushing violence Palestinians have stood up to for over 60 years.  While this action is not for everyone, I believe the time is right for those in a position to expose and nonviolently resist Israel’s repressive entry policies to do so on a mass scale.

Just as no one thinks one flotilla (or two or three) is going to bring the siege of Gaza to an end, no one believes this one day of action will immediately alter the state of affairs at Ben Gurion Airport and the rest of Israel’s borders.  In the short term, it is possible that it may even make airport personnel more suspicious and aggressive.  That is how oppressors respond to acts of resistance.  They often become more aggressive before they are defeated, because they rightly sense that the momentum is on the side of justice.

July 8, and the week of solidarity it opens, is one step in the long process of taking down the apartheid system.  The Arab revolutions, the growing BDS movement, and Israel’s own increasingly hysterical reactions to nonviolent protest have radically accelerated the timeline of that process from what many of us believed possible only a few years ago.  Israeli apartheid’s days are numbered, and now is the moment to challenge it on every front.

Laura Durkay is a member of Siegebusters Working Group and the International Socialist Organization in New York City.  You can follow updates from the week of solidarity on her personal blog, Laura on the Left, and on Twitter at @lauradurkay. 

Individuals interested in participating in the July 8-16 week of solidarity should email info@palestinejn.org or visit http://www.palestinejn.org/ for more details.

June 20, 2011 Posted by | Solidarity and Activism, Timeless or most popular | Leave a comment

Why are there continuous attempts to silence Press TV?

How to watch Press TV in the UK:

~

PressTVGlobalNews on October 13, 2011

Ofcom has finally decided to remove Press TV form the Sky Platform.

PressTVGlobalNews on June 20, 2011


Press TV – June 10, 2011

The British government has mobilized all its communications and media facilities in a desperate attempt to force Iran’s English language news channel Press TV off-air.

The facilities in question include the pro-Zionist newspaper The Sunday Times and other right-wing media outlets. Also contributing to the attempt is the Office of Communications (Ofcom), the so-called media regulatory body whose managers are directly installed by the Queen and have to report to the monarchy.

Ofcom has been instructed to mount pressure on Press TV with the help of Zionist media giant Rupert Murdoch’s newspaper, The Sunday Times. The paper recently published a politically motivated article to distort facts about Press TV and put more pressure on the Iranian news channel.

Press TV Ltd. is a British production company which is making programs critical of Western imperialism. Its partner in Tehran, sheds light on the dark, undemocratic aspects of the British political structure, especially the hereditary rule of the royals. It also lays bare London’s double standards toward Middle East developments and their links with Britain’s historical presence in the region.

Press TV’s regular coverage of crimes committed by the Israeli regime in the occupied Palestinian territories are definitely among the strict red lines that British media policy-makers will not easily tolerate.

Outgoing Israeli ambassador to the UK, Ron Prosor, once wrote in The Daily Telegraph that “Britain is increasingly becoming a hotbed of anti-Israeli sentiment. Attitudes once considered marginal or extreme have drifted dangerously close to the mainstream.” … Full article

June 20, 2011 Posted by | Full Spectrum Dominance, Timeless or most popular, Video | Leave a comment

Hiding The Decline In Sea Level

By Steven Goddard | June 19, 2011

When warmists don’t like data, they simply throw it out – or hide it best they can. A great example is the Aviso “multi-mission” sea level graph, which purports to support the idea that sea level is rising almost 3 mm/year.

http://www.aviso.oceanobs.com/

But if you look closely at the graph, you can see that the most sophisticated satellite (Envisat) has been painted an almost invisible shade of light yellow.

Below, I hue shifted the same graph, and it becomes clear why they did this trickery. There has been essentially no sea level rise for the last seven years.

June 19, 2011 Posted by | Deception, Science and Pseudo-Science, Timeless or most popular | Leave a comment

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