By Ali Abunimah – Electronic Intifada – 04/27/2011
Elections: What is the point of having elections in the West Bank and Gaza Strip once more under conditions of brutal Israeli military occupation, siege and control? Neither the West Bank government nor the Gaza government are truly in control of the fate of Palestinians. The power lies in Israel’s hands. As I wrote recently, such elections only further the illusion of self-governance while doing nothing to challenge or change actual Israeli control. And, when there is so much political repression in the West Bank, and indeed in Gaza, how can we have a guarantee of free elections?
Reform of the PLO: If Hamas and Abbas made a deal to reform the PLO which just includes adding Hamas to the dead body of the PLO how will that serve the Palestinian people? What about elections for the Palestinian National Council that include ALL Palestinians, including the majority which does not live in the 1967 occupied territories? A deal where Abbas and Hamas make a cozy deal to share seats in an undemocratic PLO is simply unacceptable.
More broadly, the goal for Palestinians should not be “unity” among factions, but unity of goals for the Palestinian people. What is the purpose and platform of the planned “transitional government” other than merely to exist? A real Palestinian strategy that unites all segments of the Palestinian people has been articulated by the BDS movement:
(a) an end to occupation and colonization of the 1967 territories; (b) full equality and an end to all forms of discrimination against Palestinians in the 1948 areas (“Israel”); and (c) full respect and implementation of the rights of Palestinian refugees.
Notably neither Fatah Abbas nor Hamas have endorsed this campaign, and neither has articulated a realistic strategy aimed at restoring the rights of all Palestinians. … Full post
It comes as no surprise that a newspaper owned by Mort Zuckerman, an ardent Zionist, would be anti-Palestinian and that it would strongly oppose efforts to break the Israeli naval blockade by sending a flotilla of ships to Gaza. But a recent editorial printed by the Zuckerman-owned New York Daily News is a particularly egregious example of U.S. media’s aversion to the facts on Israel/Palestine. The bald-faced lies–which follow recent Israeli pronouncements about the “terrorists” organizing the upcoming international flotilla to break the Israeli blockade–printed would be laughable only if it wasn’t going to be read by thousands of people.
The editorial states:
Sponsors of the flotilla are happily playing with fire, as they did a year ago in sailing into the blockade under the guise of delivering medicines and the like to Gaza. In fact, some of those ships carried suicidal fighters instead of useful goods. Nine of the brigands died when Israeli commandos were forced to board and came under assault.
To claim that those aboard the Mavi Marmara were the aggressors is to completely invert reality. The attack was conducted in international waters after Israel cut off all communications from the ships and surrounded the flotilla with over 20 naval vessels and warships, along with multiple helicopters. In addition to the 45 highly-trained and heavily-armed commandos who rappelled onto the largest ship, the Turkish-flagged Mavi Marmara, murdering at least 9 civilians and wounding about 60 more, about 650 other Israeli troops, including surveillance and support troops alongside those who actually boarded the ships, took part in the illegal assault on the flotilla.
And then there’s these howlers:
No one of any credibility disputes that Israel’s blockade is legal under international law. In coordination with Egypt, Israel barred sea-going shipments into Gaza in 2009 after years of Palestinian mortar and rocket attacks on Jewish soil.
As a board of inquiry put it:
“Israel imposed the naval blockade on the Gaza Strip for military-security reasons, which mainly concerned the need to prevent weapons, terrorists and money” from entering.
The UN has recognized the blockade’s legitimacy under international law. Now, it must prevent this perilous propaganda ploy.
First of all, the naval blockade has been in place since 2007, along with the land and air blockade–not 2009 as the editorial claims. The “board of inquiry” the Daily News refers to is the Turkel Commission, the name for the Israeli investigation into the flotilla events–hardly a neutral source of facts about the blockade of Gaza.
And finally, it appears that Zuckerman’s newspaper likes to make up facts. The UN has not “recognized the blockade’s legitimacy under international law.” In fact, various UN reports have labeled the blockade illegal. The UN fact-finding mission on the 2008-09 Gaza conflict, known as the Goldstone report, stated that the blockade was a form of collective punishment and that it was therefore in “violation of the provisions of article 33 of the Fourth Geneva Convention.” The UN report on the Israeli attack on the Mavi Marmara also clearly states that the blockade is illegal. In 2009, the Associated Press reported that “U.N. human rights chief Navi Pillay has accused Israel of violating the rules of war with its blockade stopping people and goods from moving in and out of the Gaza Strip.”
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Nima Shirazi is a political commentator from New York City. His analysis of United States policy and Middle East issues, particularly with reference to current events in Iran, Israel, and Palestine, can also be found in numerous other online and print publications, as well as his own website, WideAsleepInAmerica.com.
Alex Kane, a freelance journalist based in New York City, blogs on Israel/Palestine and Islamophobia in the United States at alexbkane.wordpress.com.
Leadership in Washington recognizes the damage our soaring health care spending is doing to our entire economy. Although their rhetoric differs, recent budget proposals from both Republicans and Democrats mistakenly place the blame on Medicare and Medicaid. Cuts to and privatization of these important public insurances will place us on a dangerous path that will leave health care costs soaring and more patients unable to afford necessary care.
Medicare and Medicaid must be left out of the discussion entirely until leadership has the courage to address the real reasons why our health care costs are rising, the toxic environment created by investor owned insurances and the profit-driven health care industry.
Health care spending in the United States is the highest in the world and in some cases is two times higher than spending in other industrialized nations, which achieve nearly universal coverage with better health outcomes than the U.S. Our soaring health care costs outpace our growth in GDP, inflation and wages. By any measure it is an unsustainable situation.
If we look at the various health care models in the United States, we find that the rise in spending is lower for traditional (non-privatized) Medicare and Medicaid than it is for the private sector. Our public insurances are our most efficient insurances with administrative costs of around 3%, despite the fact that they cover our most vulnerable and least healthy populations. Administrative and marketing costs for private plans are 15% or more, and the plethora of private plans further increase cost and complexity as patients and health professionals try to navigate their arbitrary and ever-changing rules.
Medicare and Medicaid are the victims of our current fragmented and profit-driven model of paying for health care which has resulted in high prices for health services and medications.
Private health insurers are financial institutions designed to create profit by obstructing, denying and restricting access to health care. They add no value to our health and in fact their business practices have polluted health care financing causing all insurances to adopt their practices in order to ‘compete’. They have also fragmented the health care market and thus the ability to negotiate for fair prices for goods and services leading to the highest prices for pharmaceuticals and procedures.
The commonsense solution is to eliminate wasteful and costly private health insurance and adopt a universal health care system modeled on the strengths of Medicare and given the power to negotiate for reasonable prices.
It is counterproductive to even discuss cuts to Medicare and Medicaid before addressing the fundamental reasons for rising costs. Yet, both Democrats and Republicans have focused on cuts to Medicare and Medicaid in their budget proposals.
The Ryan budget proposal, the Path to Prosperity, would fully privatize Medicare by moving to a voucher system in 2022 forcing all seniors to purchase private insurance. The vouchers are not designed to keep up with the rate at which health care costs are increasing so that over time seniors will either have to pay more out of pocket for health insurance premiums or will choose skimpier insurance plans that leave them unprotected should they have a serious illness or accident. Nearly half of Medicare enrollees have an income that is less than twice the federal poverty level and so have little room to absorb an increased share of health care costs.
Medicaid is significantly limited under the Ryan budget proposal which plans to cut overall Medicaid spending by $800 billion over ten years and change to block grants for each state. Block grants will mean that individual states will continue to be under economic pressure to limit who and what services are covered. As fewer are covered by Medicaid, they will have to either purchase private insurance through the exchanges or either seek a waiver from or be penalized for not purchasing insurance.
The Obama administration supports cuts to Medicare through the Independent Payment Advisory Board (IPAB) which is tasked with keeping per capita Medicare spending below a target level which is set to be lower than the current rate of health care cost inflation. Rather than blatantly privatizing Medicare as called for in the Ryan proposal, the President’s plan will slowly strangle Medicare leaving seniors struggling to find physicians able to care for them.
The IPAB was actually created in the Affordable Care Act (ACA). The President’s budget proposal would increase the power of the IPAB to cut Medicare costs. Medicaid spending is also capped under the President’s budget.
Sadly, the Peoples Budget put forth by the Congressional Progressive Caucus rubberstamps the President’s approach to cutting Medicare and Medicaid spending.
Underneath cuts to Medicare and Medicaid is a dangerous trend of increasing privatization of health care in the U.S.
There is a growing trend to put more of our population into private insurances and a growing privatization of our public health insurances. Over the past few years as the number of people able to afford employer sponsored health insurance has fallen, private health insurance profits have continued to grow as they move into providing insurance to or administering plans for the Medicare and Medicaid populations.
The ACA puts more people into the private insurance market by mandating that all uninsured who do not qualify for public health insurance purchase private insurance through the exchanges starting in 2014 and subsidizes the purchase of private insurance using public dollars.
Half of the newly insured under the ACA are eventually supposed to come from an expansion of Medicaid eligibility. However, the Department of Health and Human Services has already allowed state expansions in Medicaid coverage to lapse. A recent White House Fact Sheet also supported allowing states to place their Medicaid population into private insurance through the health insurance exchanges.
Privatization of health care is a failed experiment in the United States.
The United States differs from other nations in allowing investor-owned corporations to profit at the expense of human suffering and lives. After decades of experience with this unique privatized model of financing health care, the results are clear and startling.
The United States has the highest per capita health care costs, the highest prices for medical goods and services (and lower overall usage rates) and no control over health care spending. Despite attempts to patch the current health care situation, the number of uninsured and those with skimpy health insurance that leaves them unable to afford health care or at risk of medical bankruptcy continues to grow. Suffering and preventable deaths are higher in the U.S. than in other industrialized nations.
In addition, there have been no significant gains in important measures of health such as life expectancy and infant and maternal mortality rates. Our health disparities continue to grow, especially for those who have chronic conditions. And our health care workforce continues to be inadequate as health professionals quickly burn out from trying to practice in our complex and irrational health care environment.
It is time to recognize the failure of the market model of paying for health care and embrace comprehensive and effective health reform. The model for our ‘uniquely American’ solution lies in traditional Medicare, a single payer health system for those who are 65 years of age and over. Since its inception 45 years ago, Medicare has lifted seniors out of poverty and improved their health status.
Physicians for a National Health Program advocates for an improved Medicare for all health system, one that builds on the strengths of Medicare such as its universality, administrative efficiency and the patient’s freedom to choose a health provider, and also corrects the weaknesses of Medicare such as the lack of comprehensive benefits, out of pocket costs and low reimbursement rates.
Both Democrats and Republicans are missing the point by putting the emphasis on controlling Medicare and Medicaid costs without effectively addressing the reasons for our rising health care costs. Rather than embracing the Republican rhetoric which blames our public insurances, Democrats would do well to call out the real reason for our health care spending crisis, our current fragmented and profit-driven model, and advocate for a national improved Medicare for all.
Margaret Flowers, MD is a pediatrician who serves as the Congressional Fellow for Physicians for National Health Program.
Middle East analyst and investigative journalist Maidhc Ó Cathail exposes US governmental and quasi-governmental agencies that have been involved behind the scenes in encouraging “democratic” reform in the Middle East.
Mentioned:
Al-Jazeera, Tahrir Square, Washington Post, George Soros, Barack Obama, Eastern Europe, Color Revolution, Open Society Institute, USAID, National Endowment for Democracy, The International Republican Institute, National Democratic Institute, Mohamed ElBaradei, Muslim Brotherhood, International Crisis Group, Mondo Weiss, Israel Lobby, Arab Protests, Serbia, Srdja Popovic, Otpor, Slobodan Milosevic, April 6th Youth Movement, Belgrade, Facebook, Internet, Twitter, Canvas, Colonel Robert Helvey, Gene Sharp, From Dictatorship to Democracy, Autocracy, Georgia, Ukraine, Orange Revolution, Peter Ackerman, Wall Street, Drexel Burnham Lambert, Michael Milken, Albert Einstein Institution, International Center for Nonviolent Conflict, Freedom House, Thomas A. Dine, AIPAC, American Israel Public Affairs Committee, Max Kampelman, JINSA, The Jewish Institute For National Security Affairs, PNAC, Project for the New American Century, Neoconservative Movement, Trotskyism, Kenneth Adelman, Paula J. Dobriansky, Joshua Muravchik, Mark Palmer, Ronald Reagan, Crusade for Freedom, Allen Weinstein, Dr. Wiliam Robinson, CIA, Breaking the Real Axis of Evil, Herzliya Conference, Radical Islam, Uzi Landau, Avigdor Lieberman, Ariel Sharon, Judith Miller, Ahmed Chalabi, Steven Emerson, Council for a Community for Democracies, Frank C. Carlucci, The Carlyle Group, Jared Cohen, Google Ideas, Condoleezza Rice, Hilary Clinton, CyberDissidents.org, James Prince, Democracy Council, David Keyes, Natan Sharansky, The Case for Democracy, Withdrawal from Gaza, New Anti-Semitism, Israel, Zionist, Bernard Lewis, Iraq War, Dick Cheney, Clash of Civilizations, Nazism, Bolshevism, Christendom, Islam, Lebanonization, Iran, Ronald Lauder, WJC, World Jewish Congress, World Trade Center, 911, Anti Defamation League, ADL, Hungary, Austria, CME, Central European Media Enterprises, SignalOneTV, Iraq, Saudi Arabia, Larry Diamond, Justice and Development, AK Party, Turkey, Gradual Democratiszation, Moderate Liberal Islamic Democracy, Carl Gershman, Oligarchy, Baathists, Islamists, Israel, Jewish People, Unemployment, Corruption
In May 2009, Congressmen Eric Cantor (R., Va.) and Steny Hoyer (D., Md.) wrote to President Barack Obama about U.S. policy toward Israel. Their staff sent the letter as a PDF but forgot to change the name of the file to something other than “AIPAC Letter Hoyer Cantor May 2009.pdf.”
AIPAC stands for the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, a group widely recognized as one of the most effective at lobbying Congress, and a group that consistently promotes the positions of the rightwing party of the Israeli government. AIPAC also has the distinction of having lobbied against accountability for an Israeli attack on a U.S. ship and in favor of leniency for a man convicted of selling U.S. secrets to Israel. In a separate case, six years ago, two AIPAC employees were indicted for obtaining U.S. secrets from a U.S. military employee who pled guilty. After powerful Congress members like Jane Harman (D., Calif.) lobbied on their behalf, the charges were dropped.
That’s what it means to be an effective lobby group: having your way. Need sanctions on Iran? You got em. Support at the United Nations for illegal settlements in Palestine or a blockade and bombing of Gaza? Not a problem. In fact, it would be our pleasure to provide the weapons needed, whether it’s for bombing Gaza, bombing Lebanon, or killing Turkish and American peace activists on an aid ship as happened last year. We’d be honored, and don’t let cost be a consideration! That would be an insult in these times of huge budget surpluses in Washington! (Warning, this paragraph contained sarcasm.)
We give $3 billion in “military aid” to Israel every year, more than we give to any other country. This is justified by the need to protect Israel from all the other countries in its region, most of which we also give or sell arms to. Last fall, when pressure was building in Washington to cut off foreign aid spending, Congressman Cantor proposed making an exception for Israel that would help guarantee it $30 billion over the next decade by hiding that funding in the U.S. “defense” budget. That proposal didn’t fly, but neither has any funding of Israeli weapons been cut.
Is there any spending here in Virginia that Congressman Cantor has defended this tenaciously? Would there be if we could afford it?
Cantor is listed on Maplight.org as the top recipient of campaign money from “pro-Israel” groups in the U.S. House of Representatives, having taken in over $200,000. These groups, most of them affiliated with AIPAC, dump tens of millions of dollars into U.S. elections each cycle. And they certainly appear to get what they pay for. In February, continuing a decades-long pattern that has made the United States the leader in U.N. vetoes, President Obama instructed U.N. Ambassador Susan Rice to veto and overrule the other 14 Security Council members’ backing of a resolution condemning as illegal Israeli settlements in the West Bank.
The problem here is more specific than the wild-west financing of U.S. elections. The problem is that the interests of the Israeli government, far from always representing the Israeli people, in no way represent those of the American people or the people of Virginia. Our views may align or diverge. But the Israeli government’s hostility toward Iraq or Iran, Lebanon or Palestine, or to independent democratic rule in Egypt and the rest of the region, need not be our own. That should be for us to decide, open to foreign input, but free of foreign financial pressure. AIPAC raises its money in the United States but advances the agenda of a foreign nation, diverging often from the majority views of both Americans at large and Jewish Americans in particular.
Later this month, Congressman Cantor will be a featured speaker at AIPAC’s annual conference in Washington DC, but over 100 peace and justice organizations will be holding a counter-conference called “Move Over AIPAC.” I wonder if Eric Cantor will get the message.
David Swanson is an author and blogger in Charlottesville, Va.
Ron Paul is far from perfect, but I’ll say this much for the Texas congressman: He has never authorized a drone strike in Pakistan. He has never authorized the killing of dozens of women and children in Yemen. He hasn’t protected torturers from prosecution and he hasn’t overseen the torturous treatment of a 23-year-old young man for the “crime” of revealing the government’s criminal behavior.
Can the same be said for Barack Obama?
Yet, ask a good movement liberal or progressive about the two and you’ll quickly be informed that yeah, Ron Paul’s good on the war stuff — yawn — but otherwise he’s a no-good right-wing reactionary of the worst order, a guy who’d kick your Aunt Beth off Medicare and force her to turn tricks for blood-pressure meds. By contrast, Obama, war crimes and all, provokes no such visceral distaste. He’s more cosmopolitan, after all; less Texas-y. He’s a Democrat. And gosh, even if he’s made a few mistakes, he means well.
Sure he’s a murderer, in other words, but at least he’s not a Republican!
Put another, even less charitable way: Democratic partisans – liberals – are willing to trade the lives of a couple thousand poor Pakistani tribesman in exchange for a few liberal catnip-filled speeches and NPR tote bags for the underprivileged. The number of party-line progressives who would vote for Ron Paul over Barack Obama wouldn’t be enough to fill Conference Room B at the local Sheraton, with even harshest left-leaning critics of the president, like Rolling Stone’s Matt Taibbi, saying they’d prefer the mass-murdering sociopath to that kooky Constitution fetishist.
As someone who sees the electoral process as primarily a distraction, something that diverts energy and attention from more effective means of reforming the system, I don’t much care if people don’t vote for Ron Paul. In fact, if you’re going to vote, I’d rather you cast a write-in ballot for Emma Goldman. But! I do have a problem with those who imagine themselves to be liberal-minded citizens of the world casting their vote for Barack Obama and propagating the notion that someone can bomb and/or militarily occupy Afghanistan, Pakistan, Iraq, Somalia, Yemen and Libya and still earn more Progressive Points than the guy who would, you know, not do any of that.
Let’s just assume the worst about Paul: that he’s a corporate libertarian in the Reason magazine/Cato Institute mold that would grant Big Business and the financial industry license to do whatever the hell it wants with little in the way of accountability (I call this scenario the “status quo”). Let’s say he dines on Labradoodle puppies while using their blood to scribble notes in the margins of his dog-eared, gold-encrusted copy of Atlas Shrugged.
So. Fucking. What.
Barack Obama isn’t exactly Eugene Debs, after all. Hell, he’s not even Jimmy Carter. The facts are: he’s pushed for the largest military budget in world history, given trillions of dollars to Wall Street in bailouts and near-zero interest loans from the Federal Reserve, protected oil companies like BP from legal liability for environmental damages they cause – from poisoning the Gulf … and mandated that all Americans purchase the U.S. health insurance industry’s product. You might argue Paul’s a corporatist, but there’s no denying Obama’s one.
And at least Paul would – and this is important, I think – stop killing poor foreigners with cluster bombs and Predator drones. Unlike the Nobel Peace Prize winner-in-chief, Paul would also bring the troops home from not just Afghanistan and Iraq, but Europe, Korea and Okinawa. There’d be no need for a School of the Americas because the U.S. wouldn’t be busy training foreign military personnel the finer points of human rights abuses. Israel would have to carry out its war crimes on its own dime.
Even on on the most pressing domestic issues of the day, Paul strikes me as a hell of a lot more progressive than Obama. Look at the war on drugs: Obama has continued the same failed prohibitionist policies as his predecessors, maintaining a status quo that has placed 2.3 million – or one in 100 – Americans behind bars, the vast majority African-American and Hispanic. Paul, on the other hand, has called for ending the drug war and said he would pardon non-violent offenders, which would be the single greatest reform a president could make in the domestic sphere, equivalent in magnitude to ending Jim Crow.
Paul would also stop providing subsidies to corporate agriculture, nuclear energy and fossil fuels, while allowing class-action tort suits to proceed against oil and coal companies for the environmental damage they have wrought. Obama, by contrast, is providing billions to coal companies under the guise of “clean energy” – see his administration’s policies on carbon capture and sequestration, the fossil fuel-equivalent of missile defense – and promising billions more so mega-energy corporations can get started on that “nuclear renaissance” we’ve all heard so much about. And if Paul really did succeed in cutting all those federal departments he talks about, there’s nothing to prevent states and local governments — and, I would hope, alternative social organizations not dependent on coercion — from addressing issues such as health care and education. Decentralism isn’t a bad thing.
All that aside, though, it seems to me that if you’re going to style yourself a progressive, liberal humanitarian, your first priority really ought to be stopping your government from killing poor people. Second on that list? Stopping your government from putting hundreds of thousands of your fellow citizens in cages for decades at a time over non-violent “crimes” committed by consenting adults. Seriously: what the fuck? Social Security’s great and all I guess, but not exploding little children with cluster bombs – shouldn’t that be at the top of the Liberal Agenda?
Over half of Americans’ income taxes go to the military-industrial complex and the costs of arresting and locking up their fellow citizens. On both counts, Ron Paul’s policy positions are far more progressive than those held – and indeed, implemented – by Barack Obama. And yet it’s Paul who’s the reactionary of the two?
My sweeping, I’m hoping overly broad assessment: liberals, especially the pundit class, don’t much care about dead foreigners. They’re a political problem at best – will the Afghan war derail Obama’s re-election campaign? – not a moral one. And liberals are more than willing to accept a few charred women and children in some country they’ll never visit in exchange for increasing social welfare spending by 0.02 percent, or at least not cutting it by as much as a mean ‘ol Rethuglican.
Mother Jones’ Kevin Drum, for example, has chastised anti-Obama lefties, complaining that undermining – by way of accurately assessing and commenting upon – a warmonger of the Democratic persuasion is “extraordinarily self-destructive” to all FDR-fearing lefties.
“Just ask LBJ,” Drum added. The historical footnote he left out: That LBJ was run out of office by the anti-war left because the guy was murdering hundreds of thousands of Vietnamese. But mass murder is no reason to oppose a Democratic president, at least not if you’re a professional liberal.
There are exceptions: Just Foreign Policy’s Robert Naiman has a piece in Truth Out suggesting the anti-war left checking out Gary Johnson, the former governor of New Mexico who’s something of a Ron Paul-lite. But for too many liberals, it seems partisanship and the promise – not even necessarily the delivery, if you’ve been reading Obama’s die-hard apologists – of infinitesimally more spending on domestic programs is more important than saving the lives of a few thousand innocent women and children who happen to live outside the confines of the arbitrary geopolitical entity known as the United States.
Another reason to root — if not vote — for Ron Paul: if there was a Republican in the White House, liberals just might start caring about the murder of non-Americans again.
NATO’s military intervention in Libya began as an enforcement of a no-fly zone to protect civilians but has quickly morphed into an attack on civilian targets to undermine the morale of Gaddafi loyalists in order to turn them against the country’s leader.
NATO has struck Gaddafi’s residence repeatedly, and in recent days attacked a TV broadcast center.
If it sounds like a rerun of NATO’s 1999 air war on Yugoslavia, when NATO showered bombs on civilian targets in order to “protect” civilians, that’s because NATO has dusted off an old script.
The campaign over Libya, according to senior US officers, draws on lessons from 1999. (1)
Here was US General Michael Short 12 years ago on the logic of the NATO bombing campaign.
If you wake up in the morning and you have no power to your house and no gas to your stove and the bridge you take to work is down and will be lying in the Danube for the next 20 years, I think you begin to ask, “Hey, Slobo, what’s this all about? How much more of this do we have to withstand?” (2)
Short told The New York Times that the bombing campaign was based on “hopes that the distress of the Yugoslav public will undermine support for the authorities in Belgrade.” (3)
Here’s US General John P. Jumper today, who was commander in 1999 of US Air Force units in Europe.
It was when we went in and began to disturb important and symbolic sites in Belgrade, and began to bring to a halt the middle-class life in Belgrade, that Milosevic’s own people began to turn on him. (4)
Jumper says NATO is following the same logic in Libya today.
How NATO got away with bombing civilian targets in Belgrade in 1999 offers insight into how it’s getting away with bombing civilian targets in Tripoli in 2011.
First, then as now, no one was big enough and strong enough to stop them.
Second, NATO bamboozled enough people into believing Serb forces were slaughtering ethnic Albanians in Kosovo to win support for an intervention as the only way to avert a bloodbath (sound familiar)? The tens of thousands of corpses NATO ministers warned would be found scattered across Kosovo and buried in the Trepca mines, were never found.
Third, NATO simply made the definition of a military target so malleable that it could fit just about any site NATO planners wished to destroy. Roads and railways were said to be legitimate quarry, because they were used by military vehicles. Bridges allowed military units to move easily from one point to another, and therefore could be taken down as legitimate military targets. Radio-television buildings were fair game because they were deemed to be part of the enemy’s “propaganda apparatus” (which means, if we’re to apply a consistent standard, that The New York Times’ building is a legitimate target for any country the United States attacks.) Government buildings were part of the enemy’s command and control infrastructure, and as a consequence could be obliterated as lawful targets. And the schools, hospitals and people destroyed by NATO bombs that couldn’t be passed off as legitimate military targets were dumped into the convenient category of “collateral damage.”
Peter Ackerman, the moneybags who hobnobs with Zbigniew Brzezinski and Robert Gates on the US foreign policy elite’s Council on Foreign Relations, and who founded an organization to promote color revolutions, created a documentary about the downfall of Milosevic, called Bringing Down a Dictator. It credits so-called nonviolent pro-democracy activists—not NATO’s bombing of civilian targets to turn Milosevic’s supporters against him–with bringing about Milosevic’s ouster.
Maybe Ackerman’s definition of non-violence (and of dictator: Milosevic was elected in multiparty elections which continued to be carried out after he became president) is as malleable as NATO’s definition of a military target.
What’s clear is that NATO and the color revolution outfit Ackerman founded have the same goal: to sweep leaders of non-satellite countries from power in order to integrate their countries unconditionally into the global economy as Western vassal states.
If the goal can be achieved by bombing civilians to weaken their morale, NATO is up for it, as much today as it was in 1999.
1. Thom Shanker and David E. Sanger, “Nato says it is stepping up attacks on Libya targets”, The New York Times, April 26, 2011.
2. Washington Post, May 24, 1999.
3. New York Times, May 13, 1999. Cited in William Blum’s Rogue State: A Guide to the World’s Only Superpower.
4. Shanker and Sanger.
By HENRY HERSKOVITZ and MICHELLE J. KINNUCAN | April 26, 2011
After Malcolm X returned from his epiphanic trip to Mecca, he was asked if White people could join his Organization of Afro-American Unity. He was very clear in his response:
“They can’t join us. I have these very deep feelings that white people who want to join black organizations are really just taking the escapist way to salve their consciences. By visibly hovering near us, they are ‘proving’ that they are ‘with us’. But the hard truth is this isn’t helping to solve America’s racist problem. The Negroes aren’t the racists. Where the really sincere white people have got to do their ‘proving’ of themselves is not among the black victims, but out there on the battle lines of where America’s racism really is – and that’s in their own home communities.” The Autobiography of Malcolm X, pp 383-384, emphasis in original.
He added that by working separately, Whites and Blacks would form a successful collective. “Working separately, the sincere white people and the sincere black people actually will be working together.”
The words of this fighter for justice are valid 46 years later in another context: Defining the role of Jews in the Palestine solidarity movement. The lesson is that sincere Jews should not play leading roles in the Palestinian solidarity movement, but should instead expose and challenge the racism that exists in their own Jewish communities. So what are Jewish-led and Jewish-identified groups and leaders doing? Certainly, they criticize atrocities committed by Israel in the West Bank, Gaza and East Jerusalem, but are they clearly defining their positions? Do they oppose Jewish supremacism, as some opposed White supremacism in South Africa during the 1980s? Which of the higher profile Jewish-led and Jewish-identified groups are demanding an end to a Jewish state and full and immediate return for displaced Palestinians and their descendants?
With the possible exception of the Neturei Karta rabbis, they don’t exist. Following Malcolm X, Jews have predictably ingratiated themselves into some Palestinian organizations, have created “dialogue” groups between Jews and Palestinians (where the elephant of who’s oppressing whom is conveniently ignored), have spoken clearly against Christian Zionism, but where are their voices challenging Judaic Zionism? After all, it’s “their own home community”.
Why is it that our group, Jewish Witnesses for Peace and Friends, standing in front of an avowedly Zionist synagogue in Ann Arbor, Michigan for over seven years, remains the only Jewish-founded and Jewish-led group that openly and explicitly challenges Jewish power, here and in Palestine? Why is there a list of over forty Jewish peace activists who refuse to stand with us and against the racism so deeply rooted in their own community? What are they in the game for?
Proportionately and in dollars spent, votes coerced, degree of dedication and organization, no other community supports Israel more strongly than the Jewish community. Perhaps a case might be made that Christian Zionists are more numerous, but they follow the lead of Jewish Zionists; strong Jewish-led anti-Zionist campaigns focused on the Jewish community would help empower more Christians to challenge Christian Zionism. Also, Christian Zionists are dwarfed by the political footprint of the Jewish organizations comprising the “Israel Lobby”. In short, the Jewish community’s worthiness and appropriateness as a target for criticism and concerted anti-Zionist organizing, it is as clear as it is confounding that more Jews don’t take on this vital task.
This writer joined the steering committee of a local peace group shortly after the attacks of 9/11 and was continuously frustrated that attempts to place Palestine on the table for discussion and action were swept off. This in spite of the fact that US support for Israel was one of three major reasons the attacks were purportedly launched. The Jewish leaders of this peace group could not countenance harsh criticisms of Israel, and when membership overwhelmingly (78 per cent in favor) supported a resolution calling for an end to military aid, the leadership eventually terminated the membership and reorganized Michigan Peaceworks as a Director-led 501(c)(3) organization.
Personal experiences like the above suggest a pattern: Jews become peace activists, but when the realization strikes that they must choose between the mutually exclusive constructs of a Jewish state and a just peace, these activists move into gate-keeper mode. Like Monty Python’s Black Knight, they cry “None shall pass” to those of us who call for the peaceful dismantlement of the Jewish state. Our voices are marginalized, and by the very same folks who should be joining us.
After all, who better than Jewish activists to challenge the Jewish community? Personal discussions with Christian activists indicate that all-too-many are terrified of being labeled an “anti-Semite”. Terrified to the point of inaction, at best. They look to Charles Freeman, Arun Gandhi, Helen Thomas, and Will Smith as examples of what could happen to them should they speak truthfully.
This sets the stage for true peace activism from Jews in the movement: The racist nature of the Jewish state is fostered in local, American Jewish communities. As an example, the rabbi at Beth Israel Congregation, where we protest every Saturday, confirmed in the local newspaper that his congregation is unabashedly Zionist: “there is one general statement which I can make on behalf of the congregation – Beth Israel Congregation affirms without any hesitation or equivocation the legitimacy of the existence of the State of Israel as a Jewish state”. According to its website, Beth Israel proudly stood with Israel as it battered Lebanon in 2006. Children from Beth Israel are taken on trips to Israel where they are posed with armed IDF soldiers and in front of military vehicles. In short, Zionist indoctrination and support for Israel are staples in the religious life of that congregation.
The unwillingness of many Jewish activists and organizations to confront the local roots of violent Jewish supremacism foisted upon the indigenous people of Palestine is shocking and inexcusable. It would be clear to Malcolm X, were he to return to us today. He would most likely have harsh words to Jewish peace activists who do not hold their own community accountable for the support they give the Jewish state, much like he had for Whites who refused to expose the racism in the White community.
The solution to Jewish supremacism in Palestine is simple: End it. Demand of Jews in the peace movement that they stop yelling only about a 1967 “occupation”, and start condemning the creation and maintenance of a Jewish supremacist state imposed by force upon an unwilling and incredibly resilient native population in 1948. This was the culmination of a Jewish movement started decades earlier. Taking the cause of justice and peace back to the Jewish community is the most valid path forward for Jews supporting an end to the racism both in Palestine and in their own community.
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Henry Herskovitz is a retired Mechanical Engineer, and became a peace activist after witnessing the effects of US-led sanctions against Iraq in 2000. He founded Jewish Witnesses for Peace and Friends, a group in Ann Arbor that has held non-violent vigils at Beth Israel Congregation for over seven years. He’s worked with the International Solidarity Movement as well as the Michigan Peace Team in Palestine. Contact: http://www.facebook.com/people/Henry-Herskovitz/627467402
When Tamar, one of the Israeli women of the human rights observation and documentation group Machsom Watch (machsom translates to ‘checkpoint’ in English) first telephoned me a few days before we were to meet for me to join her shift at Qalandiya checkpoint in the Palestinian West Bank, she asked me where we could meet. We had planned to meet during the afternoon of Easter Sunday so that she could answer some of my questions about access for foreigners and of rights, if any, at the over five hundred illegal Israeli checkpoints between the occupied West Bank and both occupied East Jerusalem and Israel proper.
“Shall we meet in Beit Hanina or at Qalandiya?” Tamar asked me. Any other Sunday, I may not have had a problem with either spot, but Easter Sunday fell during the Jewish holiday of Passover, and for the entire week of Passover, plus two extra days, we in the West Bank were under military closure. Beit Hanina is a small village in East Jerusalem which borders on the illegal Israeli separation wall, and is within the green line established in 1967. Legally under international law, Beit Hanina and all of East Jerusalem should be under Palestinian control, but these areas are instead entering the forty-fourth year of Israeli occupation.
Hence, to reach Beit Hanina from the West Bank, Palestinians must either be residents of Jerusalem, or have received a military permit to cross the checkpoint (or several checkpoints) that separate them from Jerusalem. Military permits, as one might expect, are not easy to get and are usually issued for sick individuals only to visit hospitals in Jerusalem for a short period of time—often valid for only a few hours. Students and workers can apply for temporary academic or work permits to be in Jerusalem but the Israeli military often does not renew them once they expire, or their holders are forced to enter a lengthy process of renewal, during which they are denied access into Jerusalem. To get any type of permit to cross into Jerusalem, even for Palestinians whose families, villages, and even streets are cut off from their neighbors by the separation wall, the applicant must meet age qualifications. Once a Palestinian child from the West Bank turns twelve years of age, he will be given a blue West Bank identity card and is banned from entering Jerusalem, even with his parents. Those West Bank Palestinians who do have permission to enter Jerusalem are not allowed further than Jerusalem into the 1948 borders of Israel.
I am currently living in the town of Birzeit, close to the de facto Palestinian Authority capital of Ramallah and about twenty-two kilometers from Jerusalem, and as an American, I hold an Israeli tourist visa. As a foreigner with an Israeli visa, I usually do not have problems passing through Qalandiya checkpoint—besides the usual being treated as less than a human, or as part of a herd of cattle along with the Palestinians.
“Well, I don’t know if I can get to Beit Hanina on time, you know, I have to pass through the checkpoint and it is…” I began saying to Tamar.
“Oh right, I know, there is a closure. We’ll meet at Qalandiya, on the Palestinian side, next to the wall,” she answered, knowing quite well that because of the Jewish holiday, the entire West Bank was closed in. Even those with normal permits for school and work would face the threat of not being allowed through the checkpoints, and many checkpoints through the West Bank were simply closed for the entire period. Although Qalandiya would remain open, as it is the main checkpoint between the city of Ramallah and Jerusalem, it would take quite some time to pass through it. Two days before speaking to Tamar, I had gone to Jerusalem on the first day of the closure. Only one lane out of several was open to filter Palestinians and visa-holders through the checkpoint and the wait at that particular time of the day was over one hour. On a normal day, nearly forty thousand people pass through Qalandiya checkpoint. Despite the seventy-five degree heat and the screaming of the female soldiers for people to stay in a line and only pass through the turnstiles one-by-one, it could have been worse. It always can be worse.
Tamar informed me that if we did not spot each other on Sunday afternoon, I could ask anyone around if she was there. Anyone will know you? I asked. “Well yes, after being there eight years, you know…” she replied. And so it was set. I would spend my Easter Sunday afternoon at Qalandiya checkpoint.
I arrived in the West Bank early in January to carry out eight to nine months of research for my doctoral thesis. My field is history, and specifically, the history of the Palestine Mandate. My main reason for being in Palestine then, is not the same as that of many other foreigners who are here as solidarity activists or working or volunteering for NGOs in the West Bank and particularly in Ramallah. I had heard about Machsom Watch some years before, and have high respect for their work: they are a group of Israeli women who since 2001 have taken it upon themselves to bear witness to the injustices and abuses, as well as the system of apartheid and control, that take place at both the hundreds of Israeli checkpoints and military courts which try Palestinian men, women and children for various offenses. They document what they witness and publish it both on their website in great detail, with photos, and also send it to Israeli government officials and representatives. They consider themselves peace activists and against the occupation of Palestine. They are the only group who focuses on what goes on at the checkpoints, and the respect and trust they are held within by the Palestinians is very high. Understandably they are met with suspicion, hostility, offense, and even arrest by the young soldiers who man the checkpoints—for simply watching, documenting, and photographing the checkpoints.
My experiences in passing through the checkpoints are not positive, although as a white female with an American passport I do have some degree of preferential treatment. I would assume that most foreigners, even those who support Israel, have a very eye-opening experience when they pass through a checkpoint and are themselves humiliated or watch other human beings—including the elderly, pregnant women, children, and the sick—humiliated for simply committing the unforgivable sin of being a Palestinian who is attempting to use his denied-right to move about freely. I have certainly seen suffering at the Qalandiya checkpoint and heard innumerable horrible stories of it, since I pass through it every weekday to get to Jerusalem. To pass into Israeli controlled territory, one must use the terminal of Qalandiya, or other checkpoint inspections on foot or by vehicle. At Qalandiya, we can only get into the terminal through a narrow passageway, one-by-one, surrounded very closely on both sides by high metal bars. Then we must wait at first one, then another, then often another, turnstile. Movement through this is controlled by Israeli soldiers some distance ahead, in their offices behind bullet and soundproof glass. For fun or as collective punishment, the turnstiles are often locked for long periods of time as the queue to pass through them grows. If two people try to squeeze through one turn, the turnstile is often locked by the soldier, who screams over the loudspeaker at the offenders and everyone else. Without reason, some lanes of the checkpoint can be announced as closed and everyone standing in front of them must move to the next lane, extending the waiting time. Children are separated from parents in turnstiles and then the queues. When taking the Arab bus from Ramallah to Jerusalem, passengers who disembark at the checkpoint while the bus goes through its own lane, usually are not finished in time to get on the same bus and must wait for another.
The usual scene after I get through the waiting and reach final turnstile, pass through and place my belongings on the metal detector, is the following: I walk to the soundproof window to show my visa to the soldiers behind the glass. They are young, often in their late teens, and despite the fact that they have made us wait for long periods of time in queue, they are texting or on Facebook on their mobile phones, are listening to music in headphones, are napping with their feet on their desks, are eating or drinking, or are joking around. As an American, I am usually waved on through, but sometimes my passport number and details are recorded. The Palestinian ID cards all have electronic chips that correspond with their finger prints, ensuring that they cannot use another person’s ID to pass through checkpoints. I am supposed to be allowed through at all times with a visa, but I was once turned back, even after insisting having a visa means I am allowed in Israel without such checkpoint restrictions, and told that only West Bank ID holders were allowed into Jerusalem that day.
Foreigners and passport holders who entered Jerusalem from Ramallah on the Ramallah-Jerusalem bus were previously allowed to remain on the bus as it went through the bus lane. Those over age sixty-five or who are going to the hospital are also able to stay on the bus. Two soldiers board, often after long waits, and check each person’s ID, fingers on their rifle’s triggers. The soldiers, for any reason, can deny entry to any Palestinian or force them off the bus to walk through the checkpoint. Recently however, all foreigners are treated as Palestinians and are no longer allowed to remain on the bus. It is an interesting situation the Israelis are creating with this new ‘order’: the middle-aged or retired tourists from Midwest America or a small town in Britain who decided to visit Ramallah, or perhaps Bethlehem, for the day but who have no idea of the system of control of the occupation, are made to disembark from the bus on their return to Jerusalem and wait in queue at the checkpoint with the Palestinians. They will see, firsthand, what Israel does not want internationals to see: the humiliation and degradation that takes place at checkpoints. They will be treated as animals as well, pushed through the pen of the checkpoint and screamed at by soldiers over loudspeakers for touching the bars that surround the lanes, getting out of line, not moving fast enough, jamming the turnstiles, or not understanding what they are in fact saying in Hebrew.
The most demeaning thing I witnessed out of many occurred at Qalandiya. I travel in the mornings to Jerusalem, and this happens to also be the time many Palestinians are going to Jerusalem to reach the hospital. One morning while waiting in the bus to have my passport inspected, the soldiers approached a very elderly woman sitting at the front on the bus. I had seen her get onto the bus with great difficulty unaccompanied. She had a large patch over one eye. One soldier inspected her documents, as she had a permit to go to the hospital. He was not satisfied with the permit, and as she was a West Bank ID holder, he told her briskly to get off the bus and walk through the terminal for West Bank ID holders. As it happens, this terminal is a walk away from the bus lane, through several lanes of traffic and through a small opening in a metal fence. For an elderly woman, blind in one eye and by herself on the way to the hospital, making her walk all the way to the other terminal is a cruel injustice. She protested; the soldiers both insisted. She appealed to the bus driver. “Yalla hajji, yalla,” was his response, as there was nothing he could do to oppose the soldiers. She was forced off the bus with several shouts from the soldiers. In another example while waiting in the checkpoint line, a young man and his sister were in front of me and the young man was clearly disabled. His sister passed through the metal detector fine, but when he tried, the detector beeped. He tried again, same thing. The sister began to tell the soldiers behind glass that her brother has braces in his mouth, and this always happened, it was fine. The soldiers would hear nothing of it, and telling her to be quiet, began making the young man, disabled, remove first his coat, then shoes, then watch, then sweater…I was able to pass through as he was taking off articles of clothing and walking back and forth through the metal detector.
For the very ill who are transported to the checkpoint by a Palestinian ambulance, they face life-threatening waits. Palestinian vehicles, even ambulances from the Red Crescent, are not allowed into Israel although there are several Palestinian hospitals in Jerusalem. Instead, a victim of a sudden heart attack or stroke or an infant with sudden respiratory arrest who cannot be treated at a hospital in the West Bank, must somehow have had the foresight to predict their situation, and arrange for theirs and the ambulance’s papers to be sent to the checkpoint or at least presented in order when they arrive at Qalandiya. Obviously, this is impossible. The wait is often very long for ambulances to pass. It is the soldiers—the IDF who are clearly not trained doctors—to decide how dire a patient’s condition is. They need not let them pass even if the patient is near death if their papers are not in order. The job of the soldier is to only let ambulances pass once the vehicle’s and the patient’s papers are in order and the soldiers are assured the patient is not a security threat to the state of Israel. Family members of the patient who are West Bank ID holders—even mothers of infants—are not allowed to cross the check point with the ambulance and so the patient often goes alone. Once the ambulance is let through, it must park just outside the vehicle lane and back up to the awaiting Israeli-licensed ambulance. The patient is transferred from the Palestinian to the Israeli ambulance in order to be taken the rest of the way to the hospital in Jerusalem.
I arrived to Qalandiya on Easter with a good idea of what takes place at checkpoints—not only the insults but also violence and arrests at the hands of the soldiers. Meeting Tamar made this all the more clear, as she recounted stories from various checkpoint-watching in the past eight years of her service to Machsom Watch. Many of the vendors (often children) who make their living at Qalandiya selling water, soda, coffee and tea, sweets, produce, prayer cards and taxi rides to other checkpoints for those denied entry at this one, knew Tamar and spoke Hebrew with her. Others who had recognized her from other times at the checkpoint came to speak with her eagerly. As it was Easter, the terminal was quite full but two lanes were operating. The queue was nevertheless long. The bus lane had been closed all week and so everyone had to pass through these two lanes that day. Those who were allowed into Jerusalem for Easter—very few Palestinian Christians were issued permits to visit the holy city for their holiest of days—had passed through hours earlier. This afternoon, the soldiers allowed two or three people at a time through the first and second sets of turnstiles, with long periods of waiting in between. Some of Tamar’s friends shared their stories, and some were eager to know what her organization did, seeing her name-tag.
After a couple of hours at Qalandiya, I went with Tamar through two other checkpoints in close proximity: Al-Ram and Hizme, also entrances to Jerusalem. At al-Ram, soldiers stop only cars with yellow Israeli plates. This is an internal checkpoint, not on any border, and is set up so that Jews from the nearby settlement do not ‘accidentally’ take the wrong road and end up in Qalandiya refugee camp or checkpoint. If the cars’ occupants are Palestinians, they are allowed to continue on through, but settlers must turn around and take the Israeli-only road to their destination. Upon getting out of the car at the checkpoint with Tamar to observe, one of the soldiers approached us, his gun pointed right at me. Tamar asks him in Hebrew to please not point his gun in such a way. Another soldier, who knows her, comes over to speak with her for a bit and the first soldier turns and walks back to his post.
My Easter Sunday was well-spent—observing the modes of control at the checkpoints. Luckily, there were no incidents in our time at Qalandiya and the other two checkpoints outside of the normal denials of entry. We finished our day with kunefe, an Arabic pastry, at a sweets shop in East Jerusalem. Here, Tamar greeted the staff, all quite familiar with her, and told them she had heard from the soldiers at Qalandiya that the military closure for the Jewish holiday would be extended two extra days. Instead of closure being lifted by Monday morning, it would last until Tuesday night. The cashier shook his head and smiled. “We are waiting for you. Go on, we just keep waiting for you,” he said in reply.
My grandma just had a stroke this weekend, in Gaza. She’s crying out constantly to her children, she wants them to be next to her in the hospital. We’re scrambling for a way to get into Gaza. I’ve pleaded on my facebook status for help. One of my friends suggested I “organize a humanitarian delegation” so that the Egyptian Embassy will give me special permission to travel through Rafah to Gaza. Really?
Ben-Gurion is much closer to Gaza and travel would be less complicated, less visas. Usually one travels through Israel to get to Gaza, as it is much closer and you pay an Israeli tourist visa/ entrance whether through Rafah or Ben-Gurion anyhow. But since Israel’s siege on Gaza, Israel has closed crossings into Gaza which means I can not travel from Ben-Gurion airport to Gaza unless Israel permits me to enter through the Erez Crossing.
Even going through Ben-Gurion, there is the harassment, the interrogation, the strip search, the constant verbal assaults on identity and of course to top that off the deportations. After all that trouble there’s no guarantee to get in through Ben-Gurion, and then there is even much less of a possibility of getting to Gaza through the Erez crossing. First Israel made the Erez crossing more complicated by making us get out and switch cars, then they made it more complicated by making us walk a 1/2 mile distance with countless pieces of luggage (filled with gifts for family in Gaza), then Israel shut down Erez all together. What is the word for that? Degradation?
My other option is to fly to Cairo, get in a taxi and drive 5 hours or so to Rafah and go to Gaza through the Rafah border. The Rafah border is intermittently closed, limits number of travelers, requires multiple visas (one for Egypt another for Israel) will be very exhausting as one of the people I need to bring to Gaza is wheelchair bound and crossing through Rafah requires multiple ins and outs of buses (by Egypt and Israel) and taxis over a distance of 1/4 mile or so. This is all followed by a final interrogation and strip search at Israeli customs (at least that’s what it looked like the last time I was able to get through Rafah) before freedom to Gaza.
Of course we’re not even guaranteed permission to travel through Rafah once we land in Egypt hence my friend’s suggestion to “organize a Humanitarian Delegation.” Can you imagine being required to “organize a Humanitarian Delegation” in order to visit your grandparents? Maybe it’s just me being sympathetic to my own circumstances, but something is strikingly Kafka-esque and painfully cruel that instead of just jumping on a plane to see my tata (grandmother) I’m forced to “organize a Humanitarian Delegation” to get permission from a neighboring country to enter Gaza.
Unfortunately, the “humanitarian delegation” sounds like our best hope! Thank you Israel and your supporters. My 89 yr old grandmother’s one wish while she rests in the hospital is for her children to be with her, and we have the visas, the passports, and the money to buy airplane tickets, but we don’t have Israel’s permission to enter Gaza. So what seems like a normally simple task of getting on a plane to visit family has become overshadowed by MASSIVE obstacles by the Penal Colony.
“Lydda Four Eight” is a stay at home mother with a black hole in her heart. Her last attempt to go to her grandmother’s home was rejected by Israeli Army Commander at the Erez Crossing.
In months of strategizing, the media team settled on red and white as the opposition colors for the spring elections. After Hariri’s assassination, however, the team members faced an unexpected challenge: how to blend the colors into the angry demonstration, giving the movement the brand recognition that had proved so successful in Ukraine.
Despite being the primary colors of Lebanon’s flag, red and white were not obvious choices. Kassir said they considered orange. But they did not want the movement to be seen as an imitation of Ukraine’s uprising, in November and December, that overturned fraudulent elections. Many Lebanese also remembered the distinctive orange markings on the Israeli tanks that rumbled into the country in 1982.
Blue also posed complications: What shade? Israeli blue wouldn’t work. Nor would European Union blue or United Nations blue. A rainbow was briefly considered, but it evoked the international gay rights movement. “In a macho country like this one,” Kassir said, “it just wouldn’t have worked.”
They settled on red and white. In the hours after the assassination, Jumblatt’s wife, Nora, a leading organizer of the protests, commissioned the manufacture of 40,000 lengths of red-and-white cloth that opposition leaders would soon drape around their necks. This was meant to serve as a message to the young foot soldiers to set aside party banners and follow suit, opposition strategists said. Soon, only red and white could be seen on the square and in other demonstrations, including a March 7 human chain leading from the bomb site to Hariri’s grave.
“In the business, it’s called visual equity,” said Francis, whose regular clients include General Mills, Cadbury chocolates and several banks. “That day, when I saw the streets full of red and white, it was just visually stunning.”
At the time of publication, Said Francis was the regional creative director of the advertising agency Saatchi & Saatchi, which had been acquired in 2000 by the Publicis Groupe, a Paris-based global marketing concern. Considering Francis’s role in mobilizing crowds against Syria and Hezbollah, it’s interesting, to say the least, that his boss is an ardent supporter of Israel.
According to the Wikipedia entry on Publicis CEO Maurice Lévy:
In January 2008, Lévy was bestowed the International Leadership Award 2008 from the Anti-Defamation League in recognition of his stance towards tolerance and diversity. He also financed the 2008 concert at the Trocadéro to celebrate the 60th anniversary of the founding of the state of Israel.
The top US military official has accused Pakistan’s intelligence agency of having links with militants in making attacks against NATO and the US troops in Afghanistan. The claim has been rejected by Islamabad.
This edition of News Analysis examines the relationship between the US and Pakistan.
On February 13, 1960, France carried out its first nuclear test in Algeria’s southern Reggane region. According to official statistics, 17 nuclear tests were carried out in total over the next 6 years. The area remains affected, and local scientists say that radioactive contamination has caused genetic mutations and irreversibly changed the region.
There are no official statistics on the number of victims. The only figures can be found in the records kept by the French representative of the local church, which lists 42,000 victims of nuclear tests. Three years ago, the French Ministry of Defense issued a statement, putting the number at 27,000 people. The victims include French soldiers as well as local Algerians who lived in the surrounding areas. … continue
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Ron Paul is far from perfect, but I’ll say this much for the Texas congressman: He has never authorized a drone strike in Pakistan. He has never authorized the killing of dozens of women and children in Yemen. He hasn’t protected torturers from prosecution and he hasn’t overseen the torturous treatment of a 23-year-old young man for the “crime” of revealing the government’s criminal behavior.
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