Israeli Defense Minister Avigdor Lieberman has asked Israeli Attorney-General Avichai Mandelblit to investigate rights group B’Tselem for asking Israeli soldiers not to kill Gaza protesters.
In a tweet, Liberman urged the state to “probe the heads of B’Tselem for incitement to disobedience after their call for soldiers to refuse orders in defending the border.”
“This subversive and impermanent organisation, together with those who hate Israel and the international media who are trying to delegitimize our soldiers who are acting in a legal and moral manner in a complicated situation,” he says. “We will put an end to this.”
B’Tselem hit back at Lieberman, stressing that live fire to disperse demonstrators is illegal under Israeli law.
In a statement, the human rights group said that the order violates Section 110 of Israel’s penal code, and Lieberman’s efforts to have the group investigated are without merit.
“The defense minister is the one inciting to break the law, and it’s good that the attorney general will now have the opportunity to officially determine this,” B’Tselem says, according to Days of Palestine.
Ten days have passed since the Crown Prince of Saudi Arabia Mohammed bin Salman in a sensational interview with Time magazine recognized Israel’s right to exist and talked up future ties between the two countries. MBS hinted at the possibility of cooperation with Israel, adding the caveat that “we have to have a peace agreement (between Israel and the Palestinians) to assure the stability for everyone and to have normal relations.”
Ten days are enough to shake the world – Bolshevik Revolution in Russia took only that long. By now MBS’s statement should have set the Muslim Middle East on fire, since after all, he is the de facto ruler of Saudi Arabia and is destined to be the future Custodian of the Holy Places. On the contrary, there has been no violent reaction in the Islamic world to MBS’ extraordinary remarks.
Could this be his “Narasimha-Rao moment”? In India too, there was some agonizing when Prime Minister Rao took the decision in 1992 to establish diplomatic relations with Israel. The conventional wisdom was that there might be a political backlash from the Indian Muslim community. But nothing of the sort happened. And over the years the Indian political elite not only got adapted to the Israel ties but took to it with gusto once it became apparent that the Palestine issue was passé in the Indian public opinion.
Clearly, Rao made a shrewd assessment of the gains and losses. MBS too must have done that since the Saudis and Israelis have been having sub-soil contacts for a while already. There is every reason to anticipate that the Saudi-Israeli political ties are transforming. The big question is, if Saudi Arabia takes the lead, how long can the rest of the Muslim Middle East hold back?
The other Persian Gulf oligarchies will take the cue from MBS. The UAE, in particular, is already trudging the same path – if anything, the Crown Prince of Abu Dhabi Mohammed bin Zayed bin Sultan Al-Nahyan, also called MBZ, is somewhat ahead of MBS (whom he reportedly mentors.) Egypt already has diplomatic ties with Israel and Jordan always kept communication lines open to Israel. Qatar too has had dealings with Israel. The so-called “Shi’ite Crescent” (Iran, Iraq, Syria and Lebanon) may be an exception, while Turkey is regarded as an “outsider” by the Arab countries.
What about Pakistan? There has always been an opinion among the Pakistani elite that Islamabad should pragmatically deal with Israel. The former dictator Pervez Musharraf has brazenly spoken about the desirability of Pakistan having dealings with Israel in mutual interest. Interestingly, in August 2016, Pakistani and Israeli air force jets (plus the UAE air force) took part in the annual “Red Flag” war simulation exercise hosted by the US at the Nellis Air Force base in Nevada as part of advanced combat training exercise.
The Red Flag is regarded as the biggest and best simulation of war in the world. Interestingly, in 2015, the air forces of the United States, Israel, Singapore and Jordan had participated in the Red Flag and it was reported at that time that Israeli planes had even refueled the Jordanian fighter jets in the air, on the way to the US.
Some degree of proximity between Pakistan and Israel can be expected to develop in the downstream of the Saudi-Israeli rapprochement, especially if it blossoms as a quasi-alliance (which seems highly likely in a near-term scenario). To be sure, it will not escape Israel’s notice that the Islamic Military Alliance created by the Saudis has the former Pakistani army chief General Raheel Sharif as its commander-in-chief. Significantly, during his interview with Indian media while visiting Delhi recently, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu refused to be drawn into public discussions regarding the Modi government’s “surgical strikes” against Pakistan, hinting evasively that Israel and Pakistan kept rules of mutual conduct.
Netting the big fish in the Islamic ocean has always been a foreign-policy priority for Israel. (We tend to overlook that Judaism and Islam are Abrahamic religions.) And as the biggest Islamic power, Pakistan is a pristine whale shark, 40′ long and weighing 20 tons. The marine biologists say that though carnivorous, the whale shark is unlikely to take a nibble out of an unwary surfer, and is in fact, so friendly that people often swim with it.
Israeli Defense Minister Avigdor Lieberman said on Sunday that there were “no innocent people” in the besieged Gaza Strip after days of protests and clashes left 30 Palestinians martyred, including a journalist.
“There are no innocent people in the Gaza Strip,” Lieberman told Israel’s public radio.
“Everyone’s connected to Hamas, everyone gets a salary from Hamas, and all the activists trying to challenge us and breach the border are Hamas military wing activists.”
Referring to the journalist Yasser Murtaja, who was martyred during Friday protest, Lieberman claimed: “We know that in many instances Hamas has used journalists and the media and the Red Crescent and ambulances to carry out terror activities.”
“Whoever flies a drone over [Israeli] forces, over our soldiers – we won’t take any chances,” Lieberman said, alleging that Murtaja was using a drone for photos and videos when he was targeted by occupation forces on Gaza border.
Two journalists who were accompanying Murtaja stressed that the 30-year-old journalist was not using a drone during Friday protest.
“He was using a normal video camera all day,” Ashraf Abu Amra, one of the two journalists said.
As of April 7, nearly three thousand unarmed Christian, Muslim and secular Palestinians have been wounded, over three dozen are in critical condition and at least twenty-five unarmed protestors, including children have been assassinated by hundreds of Israeli snipers and heavily armed troops shooting tank shells into crowds of civilians protesting their decades of incarceration by the racist Israeli state.
The Israeli government praised the ‘restraint and morality’ of the IDF, as did the fifty-two Major Jewish American Organizations (MJAO) who largely control the US Congress. These grotesque massacres began during the Christian Holy Week on Good Friday and Easter, coinciding with the Jewish Passover. The self-righteous officials of the MJAO and their relatives and friends broke matzos at joyful Seders as the blood of Palestinians soaked into ground at the fence containing the largest open-air prison camp in history, Gaza.
While tribal loyalties bonded the Israeli and Jewish American leaders, the politicians of the Western oligarchic electoral regimes refrained from criticizing the shocking display of brute force and even defended Israel’s cold blood mass killings of Palestinian civilians in their Gaza prison.
This paper will discuss and analyze the reasons for Israel’s willing Western accomplices and the centrality of its fifth column in the United States.
Israel’s Willing Accomplices
Because of the US veto power, the United Nations Security Council refused to condemn or even discuss Israel’s wanton slaughter in Gaza. The Secretary General of the UN meekly mentioned ‘violence’ and the need for an ‘investigation’ into the killings. The United States Ambassador to the UN, Nikki Haley, prevented any investigation into the ongoing Israeli war crimes. She characterized Israel’s mass murder of unarmed Palestinians as ‘defensive action against terrorists’.
Both major US political parties defended Israel’s crimes against humanity and threatened critics, labeling them as ‘hypocrites’, while deflecting attention away from the state slaughter of Palestinian civilians, pointing to the behavior of the Arab countries.
With the notable exception of Bernie Sanders, both legislative houses and the executive branch expressed unconditional support for Israel’s ongoing slaughter.
The mass media, including all the major television, newspaper and radio outlets echoed the vituperative speeches of Israel’s Ziofascist leaders.
All the major political lobbies in Washington followed the leading arm of the US-Israel lobby, the ‘52 MJAO’.
The key question is what explains the power of Israel to continuously commit crimes against humanity with impunity?
Clearly Israel, by itself, lacks the economic, political and media power to influence international organizations. Nor does Israel exercise sufficient ‘soft power’ or cultural influence to neutralize the tens of millions of critics around the world with any persuasive arguments . . . except in the United States.
Where does the power that protects Israel from any consequences for its brutal crimes reside?
The key to Israel’s impunity lies in a chain of command beginning with the local grass roots of hundreds of fanatical, unconditional Zionist-Israel First organizations in the US.
Every major and minor US city has local Zionist-councils who use their influence to intimidate local professional, business, political and media groups into ensuring that critics are censored and Israel’s war crimes are covered up. The tactics range from ‘friendly’ influence within local civic organizations to outright threats, bullying and slander.
Local Zionist organizations are linked to state-wide and national political and economic confederations that influence the nomination and financing of all candidates, the elected officials and the composition of editorial boards of the major media outlets.
Equally important, Zionist activists pressure and recruit leaders of civil society groups through guided propaganda tours to Israel. They enforce obedience and submission to Zionist objectives by blacklisting critics, contacting their places of employment and demanding they be fired. They employ even more repressive tactics against perceived threats to Israel’s interests, including threatening phone calls and unwelcome ‘visits’. At the commanding heights of the Zionist pyramid, hundreds of billionaires and millionaires finance and influence the corporate mass media, the political parties and conservative and liberal religious and educational institutions and demand adherence to Israel’s agenda.
The Zionist power configuration (ZPC) parlays its influence far beyond its dues-paying members, who, in reality, comprises only a very tiny fraction of the US population.
Wider networks extend and magnify the Zionist presence, multiplying power centers up to the highest levels of public policy making. The ideological influence of the Israel Fifth Column is concentrated on a single issue: Defending Israel and its crimes against humanity. They succeed because of their enormous impact on the US role in world politics, including Washington’s trade and military policy in strategic regions, especially in the Middle East.
The members of Israel’s Fifth Column may be liberal or conservative on a broad spectrum of domestic socio-cultural issues, (gay rights, immigration reform, racial and cultural identity, feminism, the environment, etc . . . ) while, at the same time, they provide unconditional support for Israel’s oppression, imprisonment, expulsion and massacre of tens of thousands of Palestinians.
In fact, the Fifth Column’s primary commitment to Israel has guaranteed that the US would wage a sequence of catastrophic wars against Israel’s regional rivals and targeted adversaries – Iraq, Libya and Syria – even at enormous cost in US lives and wasting multi-trillions of dollars of US taxpayers funds. This Zionist-promoted drain on the US treasury to finance disastrous wars has completely undermined any policies to address the domestic needs of US working people (which the progressive Zionists have loudly claimed to support!) The consequences have been tragic to the people of the Middle East and to the increasingly impoverished and desperate American working poor and minorities.
Israel’s power to freely murder unarmed civilians in Gaza is derived from the Fifth Column’s influence in the US. Without it Israel would have no power to block the UN from imposing sanctions, or the International Court of Justice from convening a tribunal for war crimes. Israel would not have nuclear weapons or advanced missiles to threaten its neighbors and destabilize the hundreds of millions of civilians who live in the greater Middle East, were it not for the its US-based Zionist power configuration. The nation of Israel would be ‘confined’ within internationally agreed borders and it would be forced to reverse its policy of ethnic cleansing. Israel would have to become a diverse – society based on laws, instead of a lawless, apartheid ethno-fascist police state dedicated to oppressing half of the people within its declared and occupied territories.
The key to Israel’s power is found in its leaders’ command structure, which dictates policy to its tribal diaspora. Their overseas accomplices command the regional, state and local organizations to relay “the message” and apply various means to enforce it. Dissent by Jews and non-Jews is swiftly and viciously punished, adherence to Zionist dictates is rewarded.
Opponents are ostracized, blacklisted and slandered – without recourse.
Ideological conformity or submission to the Zionist agenda ensures employment, promotions and political and judicial appointments. No Jewish critics of Zionism, no matter how prestigious, have ever received senior political or economic appointments. Even academic careers are systematically derailed. This is well understood by everyone in the US, especially by upwardly mobile ‘silenced critics’.
The so-called ‘uniformity’ of the Zionist-Jewish community is maintained by the stick and carrot. The leading stockbrokers, bankers, casino and media moguls know they can hold liberal or conservative opinions on US domestic issues but must support or remain silent on Israel’s war crimes or else . . . suffer reprisals.
Even critics are careful to temper their dissent by blaming ‘both sides’: They equate the 25 murdered civilians in Gaza with the IDF snipers who complain of fatigue from repeatedly pulling the trigger.
Conclusion
Defending Palestinian rights and finally stopping the massacre(s) in Gaza requires taking on the Israel-Zionist chain of command in the United States. First and foremost, it requires opposing Israel’s corrupt and spineless apologists in the US Congress, who have consistently supported the policies of Israel, taken Israeli-Zionist money, submitted to Zionist blackmail and sent thousands of American troops to their deaths to support Israel’s interests in the Middle East. It requires taking on the local Zionist boosters, including the thugs and blackmailers, as well as the local ‘respectable’ elite.
The prestigious Israel First crowd at Harvard, Yale, Princeton and other elite Ivy League universities just celebrated Passover. Meanwhile, the thuggish enforcer of Zionist expansion, a former nightclub bouncer, Israeli Defense Minister Avigdor Liberman praised the IDF snipers who murdered Gazan school kids, saying they “deserved commendation” (FT, 4/2/18 p. 3).
Not a single US Congressperson raised a critical voice against the grotesque brutality of Lieberman fearing the Fifty-Two Presidents of the Major Jewish American Organizations. The 52 respectable presidents endorsed the wounding of nearly three thousand unarmed Palestinian civilian protesters, who never even crossed from their horrific mass prison into the Zionist state of Israel.
To support a meaningful protest one must shame and name the Zionist 5th column close at hand, because they are politically responsible for making sure that US political leaders submit to Israel’s agenda and guarantee total impunity and indeed praise for all the brutal ‘Liebermans’.
Zionist tribal organizations and leaders, their networks and organizers who ‘commend’ the IDF killers need to be named, exposed and confronted.
The US enablers, who protect, promote and defend Israeli war criminals are Zionist psychologists, lawyers, journalists and experts who can talk at great lengths about ‘Jewish ethics’ but who have never shown a shred of decent human compassion and solidarity for the victims in Gaza.
The issue of Zionist crimes resonates across the social spectrum.
Prominent progressive working-class leaders, like Jeremy Corbyn, the head of the British Labor Party, are routinely slandered as anti-Semites for speaking publicly about Israel’s oppression of Palestinians. Leading Zionist spokespeople have launched a vindictive media campaign to destroy Corbyn and prevent a courageous politician from leading tens of millions of British workers in their struggle for social justice.
In the United States, Zionists organize to slander any and all popular leaders engaged in the struggle for social justice, labor and minority rights if they dare to speak against Israel’s injustice against their counterparts – workers and oppressed minorities in Palestine.
The struggle for Palestinian self-determination has a profound significance for the United States as its youth and minorities confront increasing desperation and injustice in their communities. American youth and minorities see their own struggles for justice against an increasingly oligarchic police state mirrored in the protests of Palestinian youth. Their defense of free speech (including the freedom to criticize and confront Israel’s war crimes), freedom of assembly (including the freedom to organize boycotts of Israeli products) and self-determination, mean that American working class youth must confront the oligarchy run by and for the plutocrats at home and in Israel.
GAZA – Head of Hamas’s Political Bureau Ismail Haneyya on Saturday said that the Palestinian people are capable of challenging the Israeli occupation even under the most difficult circumstances.
Speaking at the funeral of the Palestinian photojournalist Yaser Murtaja in Gaza, Haneyya said that the Great March of Return represents a battle of awareness to emphasize on national constants, most importantly the right of return.
Haneyya praised the courage of journalist Murtaja who sacrificed his life for the sake of conveying truth to the world.
Murtaja died earlier Saturday after he succumbed to a serious injury he sustained after being deliberately shot in the abdomen by an Israeli sniper while covering peaceful protests near the border fence east of Khuza’a town in the southern Gaza Strip.
Hundreds of Palestinian citizens and dozens of journalists took part in Murtaja’s funeral chanting slogans calling for prosecuting Israel’s leaders over their crimes against the Palestinian people.
This is easily a six-star work of history, political economy, human rights & atrocities, and cultural engineering.
On the one hand the author is “fair and balanced” in establishing that the enclosure of the commons and the dispossession of the freemen in the UK, and the genocide and dispossession of the Native Americans in the USA, are the antecedents for what the Zionists have done to the Palestinians. On the other hand, in a cold, rigorous, exquisitely detailed manner that integrates specific legal cases (most in violation of natural and common law), specific national policies and military actions, and specific acts of cultural and geographic “engineering” that include the re-naming of all points of the landscape, and an advanced form of archeological fraud inventing an entire history of Jewish presence out of thin air, this book is the modern equivalent of the Nuremberg Trials Prosecutor’s Handbook.
This book is a case study in occupation, dispossession, and a mix of moral, political, economic, military, and geospatial mendacity rooted in the evil practices of others, but imposed on the Palestinian people by the Zionists (not to be confused with Judaism), such that any unbiased observer can easily conclude that the Zionists have done to the Palestinians what they claim the Germans did to the Jews, easily co-equal in proportional terms to the worst of the other genocides in history from China to Russia and points south.
The book has been eleven years in the making, and the methodical, reasoned, and superbly-documented nature of this narrative easily shows the investment of time and energy and review by many others. The notes and the bibliography are extraordinary, with full credit to all who have explored and documented aspects of this long-running geospatial, ethnic, and cultural atrocity.
The core mental model of the Zionists – carefully described as identical to the core mental model of the colonial powers who considered “heathens” as non-persons – is rooted in the conception of land that is open (not enclosed) and not cultivated (never mind its organic productivity) as “vacant” and subject to claim, to cultivation, to enclosure, and therefore to EXCLUSION of those who have for hundreds of years been stewards of that same land, with documented title.
This books makes clear that the Zionist vision is rooted in five big lies and four big thefts.
Five Big Lies:
LIE #1: Palestine was “unoccupied” and consisted of “dead land.”
LIE #2: Zionists have earned, claimed, and are rightful owner of Israel not just by the contrived Balfour Declaration, itself a crime against humanity (this my opinion, the Balfour Declaration is mentioned only twice in 318 pages), but by virtue of Zionist patrimony – the cultivation of land, the building of settlements and the building of walls.
LIE #3: Every place in Palestine has a Hebrew name, with the Palestinian names that have been used for hundreds of years virtually assassinated – shades of Stalinism and historical revisionism. As Shlomo Sand has so carefully argued, Israel is an invented land, there is absolutely no basis in fact to its claims to Palestine. [It can also be said that both the Jewish and Catholic religions were invented as control mechanisms serving Caesar — I leave it to others to posit whether this might be true of other religions rooted in dogma.]
LIE #4: Every archeological site that can be found (or fabricated) is alleged to “prove” that Judaism has been deeply established across Palestine and particularly in Jerusalem, for hundreds of years. This is a lie. From allegedly serious history books to the Wikipedia comic book pages, the Zionists have fabricated history and done it so well – along with their broad ability to censor countervailing narratives – that loosely educated individuals incapable of doing primary research believe the Zionist lies about heritage sites.
LIE #5: Poor little Zionists are a beleaguered people being attacked by Palestinians who are incapable of working hard or creating new settlements and farms and so on. It is impossible to read this book without feeling the deepest sense of outrage over what the Zionists have done to the Palestinians in their ambition to “settle” Israel at any cost. It merits comment that the “Jewish state” is by definition a racist, genocidal state precisely because it excludes the Palestinians and other non-Jews, and anyone that does not “get” that is stupid or bribed or blackmailed into embracing the Zionist narrative.
Four Big Thefts:
THEFT #1: The outright seizures of land to which the Palestinians have had varied forms of hereditary title, and the use of “national security” to jump from 10% legitimate Jewish ownership to 85% Zionist control regardless of the legalities, is a theft co-equal to that of the colonial powers against the indigenous peoples of the Americas and Africa, but unique for being so concentrated and persistent, and in the Middle East.
THEFT #2: The seizure of the Negev stands as a special case and is ably documented by the book. 90% of all Palestinians living there were EVICTED, turned into REFUGEES.
THEFT #3: The seizure of the Galilee stands as a special case and is ably documented by the book. In the course of discussing THEFT #2 and THEFT #3 the author makes it clear that “cultural engineering” is a modern term for genocide. The Bedouins specifically, the Palestinians generally, have been GENOCIDED to create the “Jewish” state.
THEFT #4: Not discussed in this book but very well documented by Chuck Spinney among others, is the Zionist theft of water from the Jordanians in particular – the “miracle in the desert” is rooted in theft – very long underground pipelines violating Jordanian sovereignty and depleting the Jordanian aquifers, presumably with the complicity of the ruling family of Jordan.
The author is superb at explaining the intersection of Locke’s labor theory of value that perverted our understanding of the term – the “labor” of the indigenous is vastly more valuable because it does not destroy nature and impose what are now known as “true costs” – ecological and social costs – but by perverting the term, Locke justified the triumph of a factory and rent-seeking system of labor over the kinship and stewardship model of labor.
The true cost of Western civilization – its many benefits not-with-standing – is waste and war and the destruction of cultural, ecological, ethnic, experiential, and linguistic diversity.
I have a note about two thirds of the way through the book, after the author discusses how the Zionists decided to act outside of God’s framework: Israel in its present formation is BLASPHEMY. It is a direct violation of God’s plan and timing, it is an act of man, it is Satanic evil incarnate.
It is of great import to me to learn through the author’s scholarship that the Zionists have had a written plan for the conquest of Palestine since 1899. To achieve their goals – which I hasten to add are in my view REVERSIBLE – they have reduced the original Palestinian population of 900,000 in 1947 by 750,000 – they have genocided, through displacement if not death, 83% of the Palestinian population.
The author discusses Jerusalem, without doing what Henry Siegman and others have done, which is to say, challenged the rights of the Zionists to Jerusalem.
The author’s focus is on how the Zionists have used control of transportation to isolate the Palestinians clinging to Jerusalem, at the same time that they are building walls and using every tool they have including outright military theft of land, to eradicate the Palestinian presence in Jerusalem. In this I find the Arab leaders complicit, gutless, and culpable along with the Zionists for crimes against humanity associated with the occupation of the Holy City.
To end on a positive note, while weeping for the Zionist rape of Palestine: if President Donald Trump can unite the Koreas and denuclearize the North while eventually demilitarizing the South once the unification is completed, he can restore Palestine to the Palestinians. If there is to be a Jewish state, it must be a small Jewish state centered on Tel Aviv. From Gaza to Jericho the Palestinian nation must be restored. Jerusalem should become an international city with no Zionist military or official presence. All that is required to achieve this end is the complete cessation of US funding and support for Zionist atrocities: $30,000 a year for every man, woman, and child in Zionist Israel. ENOUGH!
The NDP leadership’s suppression of debate on the Palestine Resolution exposed the hollow nature of its democracy. It also highlighted party insiders’ extreme deference to the dominant media.
As I detail here, the party machinery employed a variety of manoeuvres to avoid debating a Palestine Resolution unanimously endorsed by the NDP youth convention, many outside groups and over 25 riding associations. Far and away the most widely backed foreign policy resolution at the party’s recent convention, it mostly restated official Canadian policy, except that it calls for “banning settlement products from Canadian markets, and using other forms of diplomatic and economic pressure to end the occupation.”
The suppression of the Palestine Resolution wasn’t an anomaly or based on arcane policy disagreement, as party apparatchiks have repeatedly claimed since the convention. For two decades the party machinery has put Palestine resolutions sponsored by the Socialist Caucus and submitted to conventions by different riding associations at the bottom of the priority list, which means they are not discussed at the convention. During more recent conventions a broad range of internationalist minded party activists have come close to rallying a sufficient number of delegates to overturn the de-prioritization of Palestine solidarity resolutions at poorly publicized sessions before the main plenary. According to the Socialist Caucus website, at the 2011 convention “delegates at the foreign policy priorities panel succeeded in moving the Canadian Boat to Gaza resolution from very low on the list up to #2 position. But minutes before we could vote on approval of the content of the resolution, party officials herded 30 to 40 MPs and staff into the room to vote it down.”
In another authoritarian anti-Palestinian move, during the 2015 federal election the NDP responded to Conservative party pressure by ousting as many as eight individuals from running or contesting nominations to be candidates because they defended Palestinian rights on social media. In the most high profile incident, Morgan Wheeldon was dismissed as the party’s candidate in a Nova Scotia riding because he accused Israel of committing war crimes in Gaza, when it killed 2,200 mostly civilians in the summer of 2014.
Ousting a candidate elected by a riding association or suppressing debate on a widely endorsed resolution are stark examples of anti-Palestinian authoritarianism. But, a simple look at the polls highlights the party leadership’s democratic deficit on the subject. According to a 2017 poll, most NDP members have a negative or very negative view of the Israeli government and believe Canada is biased towards Israel.Even without the party taking up the issue, the Ekos poll of 1,000 Canadians found that 84% of NDP members are open to sanctioning Israel and 92% thought the Palestinian call for a boycott was reasonable.
No issue better highlights the divide between members’ wishes and leadership actions. In short, the Palestine question symbolizes the weakness of NDP internal democracy.
Various historic and current ties between the party brass and Israel lobby groups contributed to their suppressing debate on the Palestine Resolution, but while important, these relations aren’t the defining factor. Nor, is the party leadership’s hostility to members’ wishes on Palestine primarily ideological. Unlike his predecessor, party leader Jagmeet Singh isn’t anti-Palestinian. Rather, he is an ambitious politician operating in an anti-Palestinian political culture.
The main force driving the suppression of debate on the Palestine Resolution was fear of mainstream media backlash. Party leaders believe (correctly) that the Palestine Resolution’s call for a ban on settlement products, which after a half-century of illegal occupation should be entirely uncontroversial, would elicit a corporate media backlash. Additionally, they are right to fear the dominant media’s capacity to shape attitudes, especially on issues far removed from people’s daily concerns.
The dominant media can also be cynically manipulative. On the eve of the convention the Globe and Mail, probably at the prodding of the Centre for Israel and Jewish Affairs, published a story linking planned speaker Tamika Mallory to Louis Farrakhan. The story was titled “Supporter of homophobic, anti-Semitic U.S. religious leader to speak at NDP convention.” Even though Mallory was to speak as an organizer of last year’s Women’s March in Washington, half the story was about Palestine resolutions, which Mallory had nothing to do with. In fact, the convention organizers who invited her to speak confusingly renamed, deprioritized and then blocked the Palestine Resolution from being debated. To add insult to injury, most Palestine Resolution proponents would have preferred fewer convention speakers to give members more time to debate/determine party policy.
Electorally focused NDP leaders are right to fear media backlash for challenging Canada’s anti-Palestinian status quo. But, at some point members need to ask themselves why devote time, money, votes, etc. to a social democratic party, especially at a level where they’ve never formed government, if it is unwilling to push the parameters of official debate to the left? While those receiving a salary from the organization may feel differently, expanding the range of ‘politically acceptable’ discussion is a central reason for a third party’s existence.
And really, why be scared of the big bad media wolf? NDP provincial governments have legislated substantial social gains despite media-generated hysteria. The media decried the introduction of the Agricultural Land Reserve in B.C., public auto insurance in Manitoba and the party’s crowning glory, Medicare. Big media bitterly denounced the party when it implemented Medicare in Saskatchewan in 1962. During the 23-day-long doctors’ strike in response to Medicare, the Moose Jaw Times Herald ran editorials headlined: “Ugly Image of Dictators”, “Neutrality Never Won Any Fight For Freedom”, “Legal Profession Next to be Socialized” and “The Day That Freedom Died In Saskatchewan”. That editorial claimed “the people of Saskatchewan are now awakening and find that their province has been slowly, and in recent months much more rapidly, transformed from a free democracy into a totalitarian state, ruled by men drunk with power.”
In fact, the dominant media has condemned almost every progressive policy implemented by the left in the world over the past two centuries, from public schools, to banning child labour, pensions, shorter work days, daycare and more.
Leaving aside the abandonment of real left wing policy at the core of the NDP’s ‘avoid media backlash at all costs’, this may not even be the best short-term electoral strategy. The media has vilified leftist (pro-Palestinian) Labour party leader Jeremy Corbyn, but he is well placed to be the next Prime Minister of Britain. On a lesser scale a similar dynamic is at play with Bernie Sanders in the US.
On the specific question of the NDP’s challenge to Canadian complicity in Palestinian dispossession, the growth of online news and global television stations makes it easier than ever — if the party cared to try — to defend critical positions. Additionally, the long-standing nature of the conflict, the growing number of Canadians from countries more sympathetic to Palestinians and decades of solidarity activism on the subject, mean there are many politically active people who are yearning for a challenge to the Liberal/Conservative status quo. They are likely to be galvanized by media attacks.
NDP Palestine policy offers a sort of barometer by which to evaluate the party’s commitment to democracy and social justice. Right now the forecast doesn’t look good.
According to the Israeli army, Jews are now a minority in Israeli-controlled territory. Palestinians outnumber them. This is despite all the creative measures Israel has used to minimize the number of Palestinians and boost the number of Jews.
These measures include killing, starving and preventing adequate medical treatment for Palestinians (especially in Gaza but also in the West Bank), seizing and destroying their homes and property, separating families, outright expulsion (from Jerusalem, for example), capturing and terrorizing children, and making economic activity all but impossible. The purpose is to get Palestinians to leave, reproduce in smaller numbers or simply die more quickly. Despite some success with each of these, the goal continues to elude its pursuers.
Part of the reason is that the number of Jews is not keeping pace. More than a million are estimated to have emigrated from Israel in the last decade, even though they continue to be counted as Israeli Jews. Israel has found “Jews” among Peruvian Indians, Ethiopian tribes and minority groups from India. American Jews who opt to be buried in Israel are considered “immigrants” and given Israeli citizenship. Nevertheless, it appears to be a losing battle, according to army statistics.
Now the Diaspora Ministry is coming to the rescue. It recommends admitting as “Jews” populations that have an “affinity to Israel and Judaism. These include communities that declare themselves to be Jewish but are not recognized as such, as well as communities (like the marranos in Spain), that have a historical Jewish connection, in some cases more than half a millennium old. In these cases, the immigrants would have to “convert” to Orthodox Judaism, as was done with the Ethiopians, Peruvians and Indians.
Although this proposal is controversial, it holds potential for a more creative (but possibly more justified) solution to the demographic “bomb” that the other measures are attempting to address. Ancestry has always been the eligibility criterion for becoming an Israeli citizen. Currently, proving a Jewish grandparent is sufficient. The Diaspora Ministry proposal would extend the definition to include those descended from a historically Jewish population.
This is the key that enables a creative solution. Since Israelites were the original Jewish population, who better to recruit than their descendants, some of whom may have converted to other religions since that time? The most likely candidates are those still living in the region where the Israelites lived. There is strong historical evidence that many of them were among the first to convert to Christianity and later Islam. Many of them can trace branches of their family back hundreds of years or even more than a millennium in the same location.
While it is true that much of this population might be uninterested in converting, there are many Israeli “Jews” that are already Buddhist, Baha’i, Christian (Russian Orthodox), and atheist. Religion need not be an obstacle; just consider them Jews and give them Israeli citizenship, as has been done with so many others without asking for conversion. This has the advantage of eliminating the non-Jewish Palestinian population (by considering them Jewish) while doubling the Jewish population (by the same means) of Israel and all the territories that it controls.
Giving Palestinians Jewish status is obviously much more than a demographic solution, because it holds the potential to solve a host of other problems – perhaps most of the outstanding issues – with the Palestinians. Considering them Jews would make them legally indistinguishable from other Israeli citizens (not the “second-class” status of Palestinian citizens of Israel) and therefore endow them with truly equal rights.
Of course, this proposal is unlikely to be considered seriously, no matter how well it fits the twisted logic of who qualifies as a Jew and is eligible to become an Israeli citizen. This is because of an insurmountable obstacle that trumps all others – racism. Whatever other considerations might be relevant, Palestinians are for Israel and the Zionist leadership, “the Enemy”. Israel defines itself and its Jewish population in opposition to Palestinians, who are to be kept out of sight and functionally disenfranchised if their existence has to be conceded at all. In fact, the objective is to make them disappear altogether, as more than a century of Zionist vision and planning has made clear.
There is little point in trying to find logical and acceptable solutions of this kind. Israel is not seeking peace, accommodation, compromise, or tolerance. From the point of the Zionist leadership, there is no benefit to it. The Israeli economy, culture and social structure depend entirely upon a hostile relationship with Palestinians and Israel’s neighbors. The only currently acceptable solution for Israel is complete capitulation; i.e., for Palestinians to give up all claims to their land and existence as a nation. Even that is doubtful, because Israel could potentially collapse if it doesn’t find new enemies. But there is no danger of that.
Paul Larudee is one of the founders of the Free Gaza and Free Palestine Movements and an organizer in the International Solidarity Movement.
A Palestinian video journalist and photographer who had just been contracted to work with MEMO has been hospitalised after being shot by Israeli sniper fire today while covering The Great March of Return near Gaza’s eastern border.
Though wearing a vest marked ‘PRESS’, Yaser Murtaja, co-founder of Ain Media production company, was shot in the abdomen by Israeli snipers perched on a hilltop on Gaza’s border.
Israeli sniper shoots journalist on #Gaza border and now he is in the operation room in hospital. pic.twitter.com/m3Pw21SWRK
Ain Media, which is made up of a dozen Palestinian media professionals, has been covering the events taking place near Gaza’s border with Israel since Friday. In the past, the team have produced work for Al JazeeraDocumentaries, BBC Arabic, VICE, Alaraby TV, UNICEF, UNRWA and Oxfam amongst others.
In an interview with MEMO earlier this month, Yaser said that his passion for filming and photography was born out of his desire to document the events taking place in the besieged Gaza Strip and to do what he could to help shed light on the reality of life in Gaza and the plight of fellow countrymen under occupation and blockade.
At least 23 Palestinians have been killed by Israeli forces in Gaza and more than 1,500 others wounded during the Great March of Return, a six-week demonstration and sit-in which started last Friday to mark Palestine Land Day and is calling for the implementation of the Right of Return.
Palestinians come together near Gaza’s eastern border for ‘The Great March of Return’
Demonstrators are demanding that Palestinian refugees be granted their right to return to their towns and villages in historical Palestine, from which they were driven in 1948 to make way for the state of Israel.
In the run-up to the mass demonstrations last week Israel deployed thousands of troops on the border, threatening to use live ammunition against anyone who threatened Israel’s “security infrastructure”.
Geraldo Rivera was asked on the Fox show “The Five” on April 3, 2018 whether he ever regretted a story he had done.
In reply he said that he regretted not supporting Palestinians during the Second Intifada (uprising) against Israeli “occupation and oppression.” He said he regretted “chickening out” and not “adding my voice as a Jew.”
That’s an excellent excellent question. Let me tell you what I regret. I regret in 2002 backing down from backing the Palestinians in their conflict with Israel, the Second Intifada. Because I saw with my own eyes how, and I know this is going to resonate very poorly with the people watching right now– but still, I have to tell you how I feel. I saw at firsthand how those people were– and now you just had 14, 15 people killed in Gaza. Palestinians killed by the IDF forces. I saw what an awful life they live under constant occupation and oppression, and people keep saying, “Oh, they are terrorists, or they are this or they are that.”
They are an occupied people and I regret chickening out after 2002 and not staying on that story and adding my voice as a Jew, adding my voice to those counseling a two-state solution. It’s so easy to put them out of sight, out of mind, and let them rot, and be killed, and keep this thing festering. And I think a lot of our current problems stem from – that’s almost our original sin, Palestine and Israel. I want a two-state solution. I want President Trump to re-energize the peace process.
The Second Intifada was a mass, largely unarmed Palestinian uprising that began in fall of 2000. To see those killed on both sides scroll down here. For information on the current situation in Gaza go here.
Beyond the general concerns regarding the nomination of John Bolton as National Security Advisor, there is also the specific issue of his impending access to the most highly classified intelligence information that the United States possesses.
There are a number of reasons why Bolton should be denied a clearance, including his well-known record of abusing subordinates at State Department and colleagues at the United Nations. Bolton also has a close personal relationship with Israel and its government that may have included divulging classified information. The Israeli connection is particularly sensitive because Bolton is beholden to casino billionaire Sheldon Adelson, who has funded his activities since he left State Department in 2006. And Bolton knows how to return a favor, approving of Adelson’s suggestion to detonate a nuclear bomb in the Iranian desert, just to warn them what might be coming. Adelson, a major GOP donor, was displeased with Rex Tillerson and H.R. McMaster, and to have been instrumental in their removal. Both men supported the nuclear agreement with Iran and both are now gone. McMaster was also targeted as “anti-Israeli” for having opposed moving the US Embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem.
Bolton’s regard for Israel has included unauthorized disclosure of classified information when he was Undersecretary of State for Arms Control and International Security. He collaborated with the Israelis, often without the State Department being aware of what he was doing, to justify a US attack on Iran. The strategy to bring about a war included diplomatic pressure, crude propaganda, and the production of fabricated evidence by Mossad.
Bolton was technically under the supervision of Secretary of State Colin Powell, but he violated existing State Department regulations by taking a series of secret trips to Israel in 2003 and 2004. Thus, when Secretary of State Colin Powell was saying administration policy was not to attack Iran, Bolton was working with the Israelis to lay the groundwork for a new war. During a February 2003 visit, Bolton assured Israeli officials in private meetings that he had no doubt the United States would take down Saddam Hussein, before dealing with Iran and Syria.
During multiple trips to Israel, Bolton had unannounced meetings, including with the head of Mossad, Meir Dagan, without the usual reporting cable to the Secretary of State. Those meetings clearly dealt with a joint strategy on how to bring about political conditions for an eventual US strike against the Iranians.
John Bolton, while serving as US ambassador to the United Nations, also went behind his boss’s back to supply Israel with crucial information on American plans at the U.N. so as to redirect US policy. Dan Gillerman, who served as Israel’s Ambassador to the U.N. in 2006 when Bolton was US ambassador has described how “in more than one case, Ambassador Bolton called me and alerted me to the fact that his mission—the United States mission to the U.N.—was about to vote against Israel and asked that I alert the prime minister, who at that time was Ehud Olmert. In more than one case the prime minister called the president, who was then George W. Bush, and got him to overrule the State Department.”
Bolton would regularly reach out to the Israelis to subvert positions being supported by the US government, as in August 2006 when the U.N. Security Council was considering Resolution 1701, with the purpose of ending a month-long war between Israel and Hezbollah in southern Lebanon. Bolton warned the Israelis what Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice was planning to support the initiative. Gillerman reports that “In that case John Bolton got in touch with me at about 8 o’clock in the evening, which was 3 in the morning in Israel, calling to say ‘You have to call your prime minister and tell him that Condi Rice sold you out to the French.’”
Given what John Bolton did when last in office, he should never again be allowed to have access to classified information since he would clearly abuse that privilege to satisfy his own agenda. That President Trump will undoubtedly grant Bolton access to all sensitive information is discouraging, particularly as the new Advisor, supremely sure of himself and possessing a proclivity to do what he considers expedient without regard for consequences, cannot be relied to do the right thing when it comes to national security. He should never be granted a clearance to use top level intelligence and should never be placed in a position of authority that would permit him to do mischief. Unfortunately, urging President Trump to reverse the Bolton decision because of the grave damage it will inevitably do to the United States is not likely to be received favorably by the White House.
One Democratic State (ODS) has the wind at its back. The last two years have seen a flurry of organizing for ODS, increasingly since December 2017 when the US/Israel axis rejected the central Palestinian demand for its capital, Jerusalem, thereby rendering the Palestinian ‘state’ of the two-state solution once and for all unacceptable.
But ODS is not a reaction to the infeasibility, impracticality, impossibility or ‘death’ of the two-state solution. First, ODS always said the two-state solution is primarily undesirable, whether it is feasible or not: it partitions the homeland, does not involve real sovereignty, and leaves the refugees and the Palestinians in Israel out in the cold.
Rather, ODS has always been based on first principles: The unity of Palestine, human rights, citizenship for all who live between the river and the sea and the absolute inalienability of the right of return as citizens and property restitution for the ethnically-cleansed Palestinians wherever they live.
Such a clear position, thwarted by the Zionism of the powers that be, was held by the Palestinian leadership from 1918 until 1948 in testimony before the King-Crane Commission in 1919, resolutions of the seven Palestine Arab Congresses between 1919 and 1928, petitions to the British Mandatory and League of Nations in the 1930s, positions at the St James Roundtable talks of 1939, at the Anglo-American Commission in 1946 and at the UN Special Committee on Palestine in 1947.
While the PLO Charters of 1964 and 1968 lack detail about the envisaged independent Palestinian state, until 1974 the Palestinian National Councils pursued one secular, democratic state in all of Palestine, supported by 99% of Palestinians. This leadership then over a period of fifteen years gradually abandoned ODS in favor of the Bantustan solution promised by the Oslo accords twenty years later.
That is, until the late 1980s the core of the two-state solution – accepting partition, accepting Jewish ethno-religious rights in Palestine, ditching the refugees – was never really worth talking about. The Galilee-basedAbnaa al-Balad and the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine rejected the PLO change, keeping the ODS vision alive under severe repression by the Zionist entity. The revival of the ODS vision after the Oslo disaster was led by such as Edward Said, Ghada Karmi, Azmi Bishara and Tony Judt.
Between 2004 and 2007 the books appeared: Mazin Qumsiyeh’s Sharing the Land of Canaan, Virginia Tilley’s The One-State Solution, Ali Abunimah’s One Country, Ghada Karmi’s Married to Another Man. Conferences were held in Madrid, Southampton, Haifa, Boston, London, Stuttgart, Munich, Zürich, Dallas, Toronto. Articles were written, anthologies appeared: Jamil Hilal’s Where Now for Palestine?, Lowenstein & Moor’s After Zionism, Hani Faris’s The Failure of the Two-State Solution, as well as Ofra Yeshua-Lyth’s The Case for a Secular New Jerusalem.
As well as these authors, leaders like Omar Barghouti, George Bisharat, Susan Abulhawa, Ilan Pappe, Nur Masalha, Leila Farsakh, Haim Bresheeth, Annemarie Jacir, Joseph Massad, Salman Abu Sitta and Norton Mezvinsky all came out publicly for ODS. BADIL and academics such as Walid Khalidi, Victor Kattan, Rex Brynen, Naseer Aruri, Francis Boyle, Rosemary Sayigh and John Quigley worked ceaselessly for the right of return, which can happen only within the ODS framework.
Finally, organisation
The political party National Democratic Assembly (Tajammua, or Balad), currently part of the Joint List in the Knesset, has for the last twenty years advocated an Israel that is ‘the state of its citizens’, not of Jews only, while standing strongly by the right of return. Its program would render the areas occupied in 1948 truly democratic, but was less specific on re-unification of Palestine and the modalities of return. ODS – that is, bog-standard democratic ideology – was the reason for the effective exile of its then leader Azmi Bishara in 2007.
Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) of course also implies ODS. If the three conditions stated in 2004 for calling off the boycott were fulfilled – sovereignty for the West Bank and Gaza Strip, absolute equality for the Palestinian citizens of Israel, and Return – you would have what might be called Two Democratic States. But if one adds the fourth BDS demand, that for Palestinian self-determination, which since Woodrow Wilson’s day adamantly included rejection of partition of the homeland, re-unification into a single state follows rigorously.
Three declarations similar to ODS but leaning somewhat towards the contrasting bi-national solution appeared in 2006-2007, written by Palestinians in Israel:The Future Vision of the Palestinian Arabs in Israel of the National Committee for the Heads of the Arab Local Authorities in Israel,The Democratic Constitution of Adalah, andThe Haifa Declaration of Mada al-Carmel, the Arab Center for Applied Social Research.
The sites 1not2 and One Democracy, based in England, and One Democratic State, based in Texas (website presently hijacked), carried the torch internationally for some time. The latter group is led by Samir Abed Rabbo, author of the Munich Declaration of 2012 which unites three further groups formed in 2013: in May the Popular Movement for One Democratic State on the Land of Historic Palestine, also in May the Jaffa ODS group, and in July in England the group ODS in Palestine Ltd. The straightforward, one-page Munich Declaration builds upon and is consistent with several ODS declarations that went before, written by people named above.
Most of the fifty members of the Popular Movement for ODS live in the West Bank and Gaza Strip, but also in Turkey, Switzerland, England and the US. It is registered as a Swiss Association at Handelsregisteramt Zürich, Nr. CHE-390-290.948. Its Board members include Radi Jarai, Imad Saed, Ibrahim Saad, Ghada Karmi, Munir Abbushi, Ilan Pappe, Sameer Sbaihat, Walid Abu Tayeh and myself.
Most of the thirty members of ODS in Palestine Ltd live in England, some remaining anonymous in order to avoid the wrath of the apartheid state. It is registered as a Company Limited by Guarantee, Nr. 08615817. It has organised talks on ODS by Ghada Karmi, Ilan Pappe, Karl Sabbagh, Salma Karmi, Awad Abdelfattah, Ruba Salih and Gideon Levy, made a large metal key of return which stands in front of St Mary’s Cathedral in Edinburgh, and seeks to complement the solidarity work being done on other fronts by focusing on the ODS solution.
Two further groups have emerged in 2016 and 2017. The One State Foundation is a non-membership group registered in Holland. Its three Board members are Hamada Jaber, Ofer Neiman and Angelique Eijpe, a Dutch diplomat. It laudably publishes in Arabic, English and Hebrew, and its Facebook page already has around 6,000 likes. Another group, organised primarily by Jeff Halper, is made up almost exclusively of Jewish Israelis and Palestinian citizens of Israel, and has been meeting in Haifa and Exeter. It leans somewhat towards the collective political rights of groups of citizens, defined on ethnic criteria, rather than the strictly individual-rights approach of ODS.
Other active individuals insist that the word ‘secular’ should appear in the name or title of an ODS movement or group, but it remains to be seen if they will become publicly visible as such a group.
Finally, some liberal Zionists as well as the group Independent Jewish Voices have put forth the idea of a true democracy for all now living between the river and the sea, but their position of compromise on right of return and retention of the Israeli Law of Return is incompatible with ODS.
Debates and Unity?
The right of return is the linchpin of the liberation of Palestine. This right means that any Palestinian wishing to return to places of origin (homes) in the territory now called Israel, from which they were displaced since 1948, could literally do so. Over 8 million Palestinians fit this description, and could join the almost 2 million Palestinians now living in the 48-occupied territory.
It also means that they all would be re-enfranchised as citizens of Palestine – whatever the formal structure of that state is, and whether or not they immigrated to Palestine. It also means full restitution of their property and compensation for losses incurred by dispossession and displacement since 1948. As in 1947, well over 90% of the land of historic Palestine would be under Palestinian private or municipal or waqf ownership.
While the right of return, respect for the human rights listed for instance in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, and normal democratic rules of governance unify all of these groups and individuals, there are some areas of debate.
Most importantly, should ethnic or religious groups be explicitly granted political rights in Palestine? The century-old tradition of a state of its citizens, a continuation actually of the Ottoman regime from 1908 onwards, which included Muslims, Jews, Christians, Armenians, Druze, Europeans, and Circassians, was overturned by Britain with the words of Herbert Samuel and Winston Churchill in the White Paper of 1922, stating that “the Jewish people… is in Palestine as of right and not on the sufferance.”
That is, it is not some Jewish individuals, but all Jews anywhere, that have political rights in Palestine. The British had adopted this Zionist nation-state goal. Of course this notion, like the idea that Hindus or Druze or Roman Catholic Christians, say, have political claims to Palestine by virtue of their genes or religion, is not to be taken seriously.
The fear of many supporters of ODS, however, is that acknowledging any collective rights defined in terms of race or religion could open the door to some such bi-nationalism, the ideology that there are two (actually there are more) ethnically-defined ‘nations’ in historic Palestine with equal collective rights: the old, false picture of parity, two sides with equal ethical claims fighting for one state.
It is often overlooked that the collective claims of Palestinians are not defined racially, but rather multi-racially as the land’s indigenous people. Their claims are justifiable in terms of collective self-determination, but the collective is territorially and historically defined, not racially.
Of course it is possible that the Islamic Resistance Movement (Hamas), one of the two large Palestinian political groups, is making political claims for Muslims which would trump those of non-Muslims. Its new Document released last May, after all, states that Palestine’s “frame of reference is Islam” and that it is “an Arab Islamic land”.
Hamas of course envisions a re-unified independent Palestine and supports right of return without any ifs and buts, but likely differs from ODS in regarding as “Palestinians” only “Arabs who lived in Palestine until 1947”, leaving the question of the citizenship of non-Arabs open. While ODS would treat all present Israeli Jews also as citizens, albeit comprising a minority, Hamas on this formulation would have to adopt a concept of ‘non-Palestinian citizen of Palestine’. Similarly, the Islamic Movement in Israel would have to square the circle of a state which is both democratic and either ‘Arab’ or ‘Islamic’.
Another debate is over the word ‘secular’, which in English means not atheism or state opposition to religion, but rather merely the separation of state and religion (and ethnicity). However, in Arabic and in the political history of Palestine and the wider Near East the term does apparently carry such connotations. Thus, the Munich Declaration in Articles 4 and 5 describes a secular state without using the word.
A final issue is the exact nature of the restitution of property. The wheel must not be re-invented, as precedents abound, not least pertaining to the property of Jews confiscated in the 1930 and 1940s in Europe. The view applied in those cases took property rights strictly, and in the case of Palestine would mean that once ownership reverts to Palestinians or a Palestinian political or religious institution, the restored owners would have the right to say what happens on that land and who lives and works there. That is what ownership normally means.
The contrasting view would abrogate this conception of property rights in order to assure that no Jewish individual – or, for that matter, no Palestinian resident on other Palestinians’ land – would be evicted; the search is for a politically necessary collective compromise in spite of the inalienability of property rights in international law. Here, it seems, the human rights of dispossessed Palestinians might have to be weighed against the humanitarian situation of people, descendants of recent immigrants, who were born into residency and life in Palestine.
ODS is a Positive Vision
Again, in portraying ODS we don’t have to even mention the two-state solution, or its demise, its impossibility or even its blatant violation of most of the rights of the vast majority of Palestinians. Whatever the ethics and practical politics of the two-state farce, they are a negative distraction and can be safely ignored.
What’s more, ODS can be argued for while avoiding any obsession with Israel, what it does, what it wants, who it is. The argument proceeds from Palestinian rights, period. Such focus on Israelis – on whether they will ‘accept’ ODS or not – is even a form of normalization. A shift from criticizing Israel to ignoring it might be salutory.
Anything other than the one undemocratic, apartheid state now existing, which bars 7 million Palestinians from entering Palestine, much less returning to it, must be achieved by extreme and manifold outside pressure on the Israeli state. While ODS wholeheartedly welcomes any Jewish Israeli, it tends to take a sober look at dialogue with Zionism, a dialogue that has been going on in vain for over 100 years – the more so as between 80 and 90% of Jewish Israelis hold firmly to Zionism.
Working on convincing Palestinians to stand behind ODS, on the other hand, holds promise – the more so as at least half of them are sympathetic to it. While visiting Lebanon last year I met no Palestinian who did not support ODS. Recent polls of only West Bank and Gaza Strip residents even show over 40% support, and since ODS is the only solution that does justice to the Palestinians in the diaspora, it is a safe assumption that ODS has an overwhelming majority when all Palestinians are asked.
Encouraging is the movement of Diaspora Palestinians which, as the Palestine Abroad Conference, co-chaired by Majed Al-Zeer of the Palestinian Return Centre, held a meeting attended by over 5,000 people in Istanbul in February 2017. While I know little about this group, its program is likely to be uncompromising on right of return and de-partition of the homeland.
Like other international supporters of all the rights of all Palestinians, I have had to pick and choose from among Palestinian positions. There is no unifying position. What’s more, there is no vision. Like other seemingly impossible yet ultimately successful quests – anti-slavery, say, or women’s suffrage, or anti-South African Apartheid or, indeed, Zionism – it seems to me the Palestinian cause needs a vision.
The two-state solution is anything but a vision. While no non-Palestinian should argue for one second with any Palestinian who has paid the dues, who believes that suffering has gone on long enough, and that one must take anything that would count as a Palestinian state in the homeland, we do have the option of respecting Palestinians who hold that two-state position but working with those Palestinians and Jewish Israelis who want democracy beyond ethnicity, religion and colonialism, and the return, as citizens, of all Palestinians.
– Blake Alcott is an ecological economist and the director of One Democratic State in Palestine (England) Limited. The author welcomes any information on ODS or bi-nationalism activity sent to blakeley@bluewin.ch.
By Tony Cartalucci – New Eastern Outlook – 29.11.2017
The United States Air Force’s 59th Medical Wing’s molecular biology branch recently was revealed to have been collecting specifically Russian RNA and synovial (connective) tissue samples, prompting fears in Russia of a possible US directed ethnic-specific bioweapons program. … continue
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GAZA – Head of Hamas’s Political Bureau Ismail Haneyya on Saturday said that the Palestinian people are capable of challenging the Israeli occupation even under the most difficult circumstances.
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