An ideologue is someone who sees the world in the limiting terms of a doctrine or dogma. It is limiting because the human world does not operate or evolve according to any one dogma. Therefore ideologues must wear blinders that result in tunnel vision – a tunnel which, like a Procrustean bed, tries to force the world to fit their chosen ideology.
There are hundreds of ideologies out there, both religious and secular, and in every case the resulting tunnel vision eventually results in absurdities – claims about the world that, seen from outside of the ideology, make little or no sense. So it is with the ideology of Zionism and the doctrinaire interpretations its adherents make about their own behavior and the behavior of others who oppose them.
One such proponent of Zionist ideology is David Harris, the Executive Director of the American Jewish Committee (AJC). The AJC describes its mission as “to enhance the well-being of the Jewish people and Israel.” This is a point of dogma for the Zionists – that the well-being of the Jewish people and Israel are bound together. I am often confronted with Harris’s ideological take on events because, curiously, he has me on his mailing list.
David Harris’s View of Ongoing Violence in Israel
On 11 October 2015 Harris posted an essay on the ongoing violence in Israel-Palestine. It is entitled “Attacks Against Israelis: The World’s Silence Is Deafening” and the entire piece can be found both on the Huffington Post and The Times of Israel. The essay seeks to promote a picture of Israeli victimhood. As such it opens up a clear window on the Zionist’s view of the present situation and therefore is worth taking a look at.
What I am going to do is take representative segments from Harris’s essay and show how the grievances he reserves for Israelis seem somehow wrong when considered from outside the Zionist perspective. Indeed, as Harris’s complaint about the “world’s silence” in the face of violence against Israelis suggests, for many people his picture of Israeli victimhood is quite untenable. Because his ideology will not allow him to consider the possibility of Israel’s responsibility for the present violence, the world’s “silence” leaves him aggrieved and bewildered.
Here then are some representative parts of Mr. Harris’s essay.
Harris starts this way: “For days now, I have been watching in dismay as Israeli citizens face random attacks, some deadly, by Palestinian assailants on the streets of their cities and towns. Children have been orphaned, parents have lost children, and some survivors are doubtless scarred for life.”
It is true that individual Israelis have been hurt or killed in the recent past in apparently random attacks by Palestinians. Unfortunately, this is as far as Harris’s understanding goes. Thus, his tunnel vision renders invisible other perspectives, such as the possibility that dead and injured Israeli Jews, like the Palestinians themselves, are victims of the aggressive Zionist society and culture they live in, the government and laws they obey, and the racist policies they tolerate.
Given this perspective the present Palestinian violence becomes understandable as a product of anger and frustration caused by Israeli occupation and long-standing discrimination against Israeli Arabs. There has been no need for an indoctrination of hate by Hamas or any other religiously inspired group (a favorite red herring of Zionist ideologues) to explain Palestinian actions. Israeli policies and practices in and of themselves are quite sufficient.
Harris cannot perceive, much less understand, this perspective. Yet, in ever greater numbers, the people outside of Israel can see that any portrayal of Israeli victimhood is in conflict with an objective reading of the history of the Israeli-Palestinian struggle.
David Harris continues, “And I’ve been wondering, not for the first time, what it would take for the world to wake up and acknowledge … that Israel, the lone liberal democracy in the Middle East, is facing violence that must be condemned unequivocally, and that it, like any other nation, has the obligation to defend itself.”
This “wondering” is also a product of Mr. Harris’s constricted view. There have never been any Zionist complaints, from Harris in particular, about the world’s silence while the Palestinians experience “liberal” Israel’s ethnic bias and occupation. Nor did he and his fellows take note of the world’s silence when Palestine’s own 2006 democratic election was suppressed by Israel and its American ally. It is exactly this silence in the face of Palestinian suffering that has left Israeli power in place and allowed for its oppressive use. Yet this particular silence has no place in Harris’s ideologically constructed world.
Harris goes on, “It’s striking how … some otherwise intelligent and thoughtful people in government, media, or think tanks, just shut down their critical faculties. Instead, they resort to a Pavlovian response mechanism that essentially rejects any possible legitimacy for the Israeli position and blindly defends whatever Palestinian narrative comes along.”
As noted above, an ideological outlook usually leads to absurdities. The truth is that until recently the Zionist narrative on Israel-Palestine held a monopoly in the West. Now, finally, Israel’s consistent apartheid-like practices are being noticed and as a result that monopoly is crumbling. The best Harris can do is evoke a fictional “Pavlovian mechanism” to explain the responses to Israeli policies. Nonetheless, the weakening of the Zionist narrative is at an early stage, which means that, even now, it is often not the Israeli narrative that has to fight its way into the media, think tanks and government councils. It is the Palestinian one.
There is much more to Harris’s missive, and almost every paragraph is shaped by the doctrinal demands of his ideology. The ersatz victimhood he claims for the Israelis is in fact a measure of the resulting distortion. For he, and his fellow Zionists, have stolen that depiction of suffering from their own victims, the Palestinians. Such is the power of ideological blinders.
Conclusion
To pull off this reversal of roles and posit the Israelis as victims of the Palestinians, Harris’s essay must leave out the seminal fact that for the past 67 years Israel has possessed overwhelming power. With this power Israel has oppressively controlled almost every aspect of Palestinian life. The inevitable result is the violence of resistance. Israelis who suffer from that violence should take this reality into consideration. But, few of them can do this.
The explanation for this inability brings us back to the problem of tunnel vision. Consider the following: many Palestinians can understand Western Jewish history, including the Holocaust, and recognize how it shapes, though ultimately cannot excuse, Zionist behavior. This ability to understand is facilitated by the fact that the Palestinians were not responsible for the suffering of Western Jewry. Unfortunately, the Zionists can’t reciprocate by understanding the history that drives Palestinian behavior. They cannot do so because their ideology precludes the possibility that they are in fact responsible for Palestinian suffering. Ideologues are not known for their skill at self-criticism.
One of the most renowned Jewish journalists, I. F. Stone, once said, referring to his own Jewish brethren, “how we act toward the Arabs will determine what kind of people we become: either oppressors and racists in our turn like those from whom we have suffered, or a nobler race able to transcend the tribal xenophobias that afflict mankind.” Well, the verdict is in, at least for those Jews who adhere to the Zionist ideology. For them “oppression and racism” has won out. And so has denial – just read David Harris.
“All I possess in the presence of the death is fury and pride” – Mahmoud Darwish
Gaza, Occupied Palestine – Ahmed Al Sarhi was executed in cold blood yesterday by an Israeli sniper, from the cowardly distance of the Zionist fence that encloses Gaza, turning it into a prison. This is just another story of this shameful concentration camp that, as if that was not enough, is also routinely bombarded by the Zionist war machine with total impunity.
Including Ahmed, there has been a total of fifteen people killed by Israeli forces since October 9th, in the Gaza strip alone. This includes a three year old girl and her pregnant mother, who died as a result of the bombing of their family home. Throughout Palestine since the beginning of this month, fifty-two people have been killed, among them twelve children. The systematic killing of children by the occupation forces is not a mistake or collateral damage, figures confirm that Palestinian children are the main military target of Israel.
But we cannot limit ourselves to stating names, figures, data without contextualizing what happens here in Palestine – at the root of this catastrophe, a vicious occupation of a colonial entity imposed by blood and fire on Palestinian territory, with the full support of the so-called Western Democracies. Palestinians are being killed on their own land, the land of their ancestors. They have not come to seek death, death has come to them under the guise of a “religious conflict,” but that is not true – this is plainly colonialism, theft, conquest and occupation, and for this the Zionist entity conducts a continuous and terrifying ethnic cleansing.
Among the first victims of this genocide is the truth, so it is our duty to prevent mass media outlets from turning Palestinians into “terrorists” who always “die” in an “ongoing terror attack.” To begin with, they are not terrorists, they are an occupied people exercising their legitimate right to defense with all the resources – very few resources – at their fingertips. They do not “die”, they are executed in cold blood by one of the most powerful armies in the world or by that other paramilitary entity, formed by fanatical settlers highly trained and armed to the teeth.
How much hopelessness, suffering, unpunished abuse, how much spilled blood can the human heart take before bursting? What terrible reasons can drive a young man to take a kitchen knife and be under the Zionist bullets attempting a futile defense, the last desperate act of rebellion for justice? A justice that has been denied to them from the day of their birth to the day of their death.
Those Palestinians, described by the media in a de-contextualized, biased, malicious way, as “neutralized terrorist” are mostly young people and teenagers. The dramatic reality that the media handle turns this into a grotesque spectacle where the executioner becomes the victim should not go unnoticed.
After the cold-blooded murder of these children, young martyrs, there are more crimes: their families are beaten, lynched, imprisoned, their homes demolished, their residence permits revoked, a whole series of infamous collective punishments – illegal and heinous – trying to silence a people pushed to the limits of their endurance.
In the Gaza Strip there are no kitchen knives as weapons of the juvenile despair. Here the occupation is not present face to face like in the West Bank, here it remains lurking behind cowardly attacks from the distance of warships, planes, helicopters and drones and by land surrounding Gaza with a fence full of turrets, tanks, rifles and all kind of military technology at the service of death.
Then young Gazans, many of them teenagers or children, who have already suffered in their own flesh three brutal massacres, stripped of all hope and future, march to the very limits of their imprisonment in a sacrificial ritual, to offer their defenseless chests to the bullets of the occupier, with no other weapon than a harmless stone, a flag, their rage and pride – it is all they have in the presence of death. Children, young martyrs of Gaza, march to the borders of this, their land, their prison, their grave, to offer their brief life as anonymous prisoner to put a dignified end to their agony.
Young man a few meters from the zionist fence, Gaza Strip, Palestine. September 2013.
It is our duty to not let them be murdered three times over, where yes – because that Zionist colony sadly known as “Israel” commits on them a triple crime – there is first the murder itself, secondly the impunity of the fact and third, equally or even more terribly, the slander of the victim, making the victim guilty of their own death.
If we cannot prevent the slaughter of the Palestinian people, at least we have to avoid that impunity and slander primed on these desperate boys in search for justice, or even more painfully, a quick escape to this long tragedy.
As you read these lines the Zionist occupation and international silence continue to send children to their death.
NEARLY a third of all patients referred for urgent medical care outside the Gaza Strip are being barred from leaving.
The number of exit permits granted is now at it’s lowest level for six years, with the exception of last summer during the war.
New figures from the World Health Organisation (WHO) show the Israeli and Egyptian governments stopped three out of every ten people who had medical referrals from leaving Gaza. Of those, 104 were children and ten were elderly patients over 60 years old. And no medical aid or medical delegations were allowed entry into Gaza at all during the entire month of September.
The main referral specialties needed were in oncology, orthopaedic surgery, ophthalmology, paediatrics, and heart catheterization.
Most of the patients had been offered care in Palestinian-run hospitals, with 157 referred to East Jerusalem and the West Bank, 12 in Israel and 3 in Jordan.
The WHO said in a statement yesterday (Wednesday) that of 1,883 patients who applied to leave in September, 527 were rejected. Another 363 patients , including 104 children, received no response to their applications. And permits were formally denied to 72 of the patients, including five children and ten elderly patients over 60 years old.
One 23 year old patient was even arrested by Israeli security at Erez, despite being approved for a permit. He had been referred for treatment for an eye injury following a road accident. He is still in custody and is due in court on October 20.
In August, the WHO reported an “unprecedented” shortage of health staff in Gaza, with many nurses and doctors not being paid for over a year.
In addition, they reported a chronic shortage of drugs and medical disposables, and said staff were working in poor conditions, without sufficient support, were under-trained, and facing shortages of supplies and electricity.
Most of the patients needed Israeli permits, with only 141 patients (8%) seeking approval to exit through the Rafah border crossing into Egypt. But Rafah was open for only 5 days last month, with only a few exceptions for religious pilgrims making the trip to Mecca.
The figures show a stark change since the July 2013 closure, when around 4,000 Gaza civilians a month used the Rafah crossing for medical access.
Family members including parents, who wished to accompany patients, also made 1,920 applications for permits to Israel’s authorities. Of these, only 66.5% were approved, 25.8% were pending and 7.7% were denied.
The top referral destinations were:
Makassed Hospital (22.27%) and Augusta Victoria Hospital (12.16%) in East Jerusalem
An Najah National University Hospital (8.58%) in Nablus
Al-Haia center for heart catheterization in Gaza (4.38%)
Nasser Institute in Cairo (4.09%)
The remaining appointments (48.5%) were in 40 other hospitals.
Source: WHO OPT SITUATION REPORT 1. 19 OCTOBER 2015
As Israeli state authorities processed my arrest on account of ‘an Instagram photo’, Israeli forces and settlers shot dead three Palestinian teenagers on the streets of Hebron on Saturday 17.10.15. With three teenagers killed and settlers literally celebrating in their blood, it is perhaps little surprise that those with cameras slung over shoulders are increasingly coming under threat.
Sitting in a cold room for hours, without access to a lawyer, I watched my beloved camera slammed on a table. Meanwhile, my presence in the base was denied to my colleague. One of my photos, I was told, rendered me a threat to the ‘security of Israel’.
An Instagram photo? Me? A threat to one of the most powerful states in the world?
The threat here? The truth.
Truth says Aeschylus, is the first casualty of war. But, can truth be a casualty? Truth cannot be arrested, deported, humiliated, beaten or killed. Hidden? Yes. Repressed? Yes. But it still remains.
Cameras indicate that – Occupation – we are watching you, we are documenting you, we are here, and we see you. We see Palestinian blood running on occupied streets in Hebron. Indeed, I dropped my camera lens cap in Hadeel’s.
CPT, as a very small thread in the fabric of resisting this occupation, has recently come under heightened attack. Including abusive phone-calls, increased police aggression and checks, and now, arrest.
We were detained by Israeli border police as we were en route to the site of 17 year-old Bayan’s murder. We stood detained against the wall as we waited for the commander “who wanted to speak” to me. Informed I was under arrest for taking a photo of “classified material” (two weeks ago in public space), I was taken to a police station to await interrogation. I knew they were ‘serious’ – this was not their normal provocation that we experience daily – but I did not yet know the full extent of the danger they would later put me in ten hours later.
“Why do you love these terrorists?” I was repeatedly questioned, amidst suggestions that I “go and sleep with Abu Mazzan” (PA leader Mahmoud Abbas) throughout the cold hours of waiting. I stated my right to inform my lawyer that I was in custody, to which I was greeted with “you tell your lawyer when I tell you to”, informed I would have to wait for longer because of such non-cooperation. My passport and my camera confiscated, I shivered for seven hours awaiting interrogation.
My body grew tenser and sorer, and, needless to say, my request for something warm was greeted with smirking. One Border Police woman amused herself with staring at me for some time. Another’s gun knocked my leg as he fidgeted. Another attempted to engage me in conversation about how ‘ungrateful’ ‘the Arabs’ were, citing the ‘giving back of Gaza’ in 2005. I declined conversation, deciding it was not the time to discuss locking over 1.5 million people in an open air prison and bombing them. Eventually most of the personnel trickled away, and I was left with one Border Police woman who, thankfully, largely ignored me. The sounds of explosions from all over Hebron, and two consecutive violent films – ironically set in prisons – filled the space as we sat in awkward silence.
Later, as the room refilled there began a somewhat animated discussion about the lack of English speakers to translate in interrogation. I listened wide-eyed as the discussion moved onto ‘Ofer’ – in reference to the renowned military prison near Ramallah. Ofer prison- where countless Palestinians are held for months without charge in ‘administrative detention’. As a British soldier was thankfully located, I was told I had one chance, and one chance only, to call my lawyer.
My one conversation over, interrogation began, and I was informed that I was to be deported. Apparently, I could speak to my lawyer again when I got off the plane. Chuckling, my interrogator changed this to a 15 day ban from Hebron. Supposedly, I was to leave that night. Listening to the clashes raging outside, with two teenagers killed so far, I expressed the impossibility, to which I was given a shrug and a “well if you don’t leave tonight, I deport you”. Told to sign forms, including one fully in Hebrew, I was also skin-crawlingly informed that my interrogator would keep my camera unless “I was a good girl for him”.
Suddenly, the interrogator received a call and ran from the room. 18 year old Tarek had been killed by Israeli soldiers. The third teenager in 12 hours.
Explosions outside the base heightened and a blindfolded Palestinian man, staggering as he was dragged in, was now slumped next to me. He was wincing with pain at the tightness of his handcuffs. “These are the terrorists you love” I was told.
An hour and a half later, my interrogator returned, and took my DNA, while we argued about the danger of leaving Hebron amidst the chaos of that bloody night. “It’s not safe” I said, “I have nowhere to go”, to which my interrogator repeated I could sleep with Abu Mazzan, and another replied “of course it’s not safe – you are in Israel, there are terrorists everywhere”. Resisting temptations of stating that we are in ‘occupied Palestinian territory’, I once again called my lawyer, having blessedly had my phone left with me in the chaos of the killing. Eventually, she convinced them to return my passport, my camera, and for me to leave by 9am the following morning.
Real panic set in as I was released. They did not release me to the Palestinian area, but into the settlement housing strongly ideological individuals. That day settlers had killed a teenager and celebrated in his blood. That day Israeli soldiers had called to other international activists to run, as settlers approached with machine guns. Having had my fair-share of being spat at, jeered at, being swerved at by cars, and accusations of Nazism or ISIS membership from settlers, I knew full well the danger, walking alone at 10pm. Those that made me leave that way were also fully aware of that danger, particularly heightened that day.
Reaching the now deserted road where Palestinians still live, I could hear the noise of mobs of settlers as I headed to the road block to meet my friend. Palestinian families watching the horror of the day from their windows were calling to me: “why are you out walking there? It’s not safe! Come off the street!” Three men cautiously opened their door, ushering me in to their family home. Loaded with the gift of cucumbers, one Palestinian man risked arrest – and even death had we ran into settlers – to walk me to the road block where I met friends, who drove me, also at their own risk, back home.
Back at the office, we sat listening until 3am to continued explosions and the calls of warning and help screaming from mosque towers around the city, as settlers continued to attack families.
My arrest is a very small fragment of a much wider repression of those documenting the violence of occupation. On the day I was arrested, so were two Palestinian activists from Youth against Settlements, having videoed the aftermath of Fadel’s murder. This week, the Israeli military has ransacked journalist offices, Israeli border police were caught on video stamping on the face of an accredited journalist, as the Foreign Press Association report “a series of unprovoked attacks”, and human rights workers and journalists are increasingly targeted in demonstrations.
Flicking through images and videos on my camera, I see the extreme ugliness of this occupation, which we will continue to write about, photograph and video. I also see the faces of the kindergarten children we escort to school in Hebron.
Truth: a casualty of war it may be, but a fatality? No. It cannot be. It exists. It screams. It threatens. It simmers. In ‘speaking truth to power’, not only do we see the horrors of the violence of this occupation, but we see the glimmers of hope and humanity that cannot be repressed.
A lawsuit has been filed in the United States against former Israeli Prime Minister and Defense Minister Ehud Barak for his role in the 2010 Israeli commando attack upon the Gaza Freedom Flotilla in which eight Turkish citizens and one American citizen were killed by Israeli forces and over 50 Turkish passengers were wounded.
The trial would be the first time a former Israeli Prime Minister would be put on trial for reasons of international terrorism.
The family of Furkan Doğan, the American citizen who appears to have been executed in the attack — shot five times, including point blank to the head, according to the family’s lawyers — filed the lawsuit in the Central District Court of California. Notice of the trial was handed to Barak on Oct. 20 in Los Angeles when he spoke in the Distinguished Speaker series of Southern California.
According to a press release from the Turkish International Humanitarian organization that sponsored the Mavi Marmara ship, charges against Barak include his planning and leadership in the murder of Furkan Doğan and others in international waters, willful killing, attempted willful killing, intentionally causing serious injury to body or health, international terrorism, plundering, intentionally causing damage to property, restriction of people’s freedom and instigating violent crimes.
American attorneys Hydee Dijsktal and Dan Stormer; the British law firm, Stoke & White; British Professor Dr. Geoffrey Nice; and UK attorney Rodney Dixon are the legal team for the Dogan family.
Other legal proceedings against Barak and other senior members of the Israeli government are in the works. In 2010 in France, the widows of Cevdet Kılıçlar and Necdet Yıldırım, two others executed by Israeli commandos, brought a lawsuit against Barak which he evaded when he was informed of the French lawsuit as he was about to deplane in Paris to attend a weapons expo.
In a case brought in the International Criminal Court (ICC), the ICC prosecutor has ruled that the attack by Israeli commandos upon the Mavi Marmara in the Gaza Freedom Flotilla was a war crime.
Additionally, the Seventh High Criminal Court in Istanbul, Turkey, has issued a “red notice” for the arrest of four senior Israeli government officials in a lawsuit filed in Turkey. The Israeli officials named by the court are Israel’s former Chief of Staff Gabi Ashkenazi, former navy chief Eliezer Marom, former military intelligence head Amos Yadlin, and former air force intelligence chief Avishai Levy.
Due to political considerations dealing with the State of Israel, the Ministry of Justice of Turkey has delayed sending to Interpol the “red notice” much to the consternation of those seeking justice.
Ann Wright served 29 years in the U.S. Army/Army Reserves and retired as a Colonel. She also was a U.S. diplomat for 16 years and worked in U.S. Embassies in Nicaragua, Grenada, Somalia, Uzbekistan, Kyrgyzstan, Sierra Leone, Micronesia, Afghanistan and Mongolia. She resigned from the U.S. government in March, 2003 in opposition to the Iraq war. She was on the 2010, 2011 and 2015 Gaza Freedom Flotillas and has been to Gaza six times after Israeli attacks on Gaza.
BETHLEHEM – Israeli forces shot and killed a Jewish man in central Jerusalem overnight Wednesday after mistaking him for a “Palestinian attacker,” Israeli police and media said.
Israeli media said the man was shot after he attempted to grab a weapon from Israeli security forces after an argument. The man was identified as a Jewish-Israeli from his identity card.
Other reports said a private security guard shot the man after an altercation as he was getting off a bus in the center of Jerusalem.
Israeli forces have killed at least 47 Palestinians since the start of the month, many of whom rights groups claim were killed through “extra-judicial execution” by Israeli forces, who have been urged by officials to shoot and kill alleged attackers on scene.
On Sunday, an Eritrean man was shot and killed after being suspected of being a second attacker during a shooting in Beersheba bus station in southern Israel.
The man was identified as Haftom Zarhum, 29, and had traveled to Beersheba to obtain a visa.
Graphic video footage shows Zarhum being assaulted and kicked in the head as he lies bleeding on the ground, with several benches thrown at him as an angry Israeli mob surrounds him.
Last week in northern Israel an Israeli stabbed and injured another Israeli after reportedly mistaking him for a Palestinian.
Attacks allegedly committed by Palestinians throughout the occupied Palestinian territory and Israel this month have left at least nine Israelis dead, including three settlers.
West Bank, occupied Palestine – A video posted on October 12th by Shehab news agency described as an attack on a Palestinian girl from Haifa in her twenties for allegedly trying to assault a taxi driver in Tel Aviv after an argument between them. The video shows a woman pinned to the ground by a man as passers-by argue about whether or not to beat and kill her. One woman claims she saw the woman had a knife and screams “Why are you playing around. They are coming to kill our children!” and demands her execution. Another bystander asks the man “Did she come at you with a knife?” and he replies “She put her hand in her pocket.” Yet Another kicks her in the head.
While there undoubtedly are stabbings of Israelis taking place, there are also undoubtedly mistaken or false accusations and pressure from Israeli civilians to kill people they suspect of being terrorists. The latest example being the Eritrean asylum seeker Mulu Habtom Zerhom who was shot and beaten to death in the Beersheva central bus station after being mistaken for an Arab. Because Mulu was not Palestinian there will be an investigation committee looking into his murder.
Palestinians who are killed are assumed guilty by default. In the case of the Palestinian woman in the video taken in Tel Aviv, if some of the bystanders hadn’t intervened and the woman had been lynched it would have been reported as: “knife wielding terrorist neutralized”. This is how the Israeli media portrayed 23 year old Ahmed Sha’ban from Ras el-Amud in Occupied East Jerusalem. Al Quds Newspaper published a video showing an Israeli security guard shooting twice directly at Ahmed’s body after he is already on the ground. An Israeli eye witness is heard stating: “Central bus station in Jerusalem, just now, a terrorist was exterminated, bro, right in front of me! Right in front of me he shot him ten times! Ten bullets were shot at him now! It’s such a mess here! I don’t know, he didn’t touch anything… He didn’t have a knife in his hand. Everyone shouted ‘terrorist’. The security guard shot him. I am telling you the bullets are right in front of me. My head hurts.”
Israeli officials have been criticised by human rights organisations for calling on Israelis with licensed guns to carry them in public and to kill any suspect. They have made it clear that it is not necessary to determine if the suspect is holding a knife before shooting to kill. At a press conference on October 8th Israeli Minister of defence Moshe Yaalon stated “Right now it is required primarily to be vigilant, determined, to respond quickly to any local attack, to eliminate the terrorist stabber or the perpetrator, stone thrower and the like, immediately on the spot. This is the answer to this kind of terrorism.” Other Israeli officials rushed to echo the sentiment On the 11th of October MK Yair Lapid Head of the Yesh Atid party said on a televised interview,” whoever takes out a knife or a screwdriver or whatever it may be, needs to be shot to kill”, adding “don’t hesitate. Even at the start of an attack, shooting to kill is correct.”
There have been many cases of alleged knife wielders shot in the last months since the killing of Hadeel al-Hashlamoun in Hebron that Amnesty international categorized as an extrajudicial execution. They all deserve an investigative committee. Whether a suspect is falsely accused or did actually carry out an attack, shooting and/or killing people who do not constitute an immediate threat to anyone is war crime.
The grand plan was going swimmingly. The concept of endless wars for Greater Israel was working and producing impressive results. Opportunistically, through aggravation of war after war, chunk by chunk of Arab land was usurped and the map of Greater Israel was slowly materializing. No matter the unstable chaos surrounding the State of Israel for the past seven decades, and no matter the undying Palestinian resistance and the violent Intifadas that erupted internally, the Zionist dream of Greater Israel remained consistently intact and was progressing unabated and unchallenged by anyone.
But dreams, by their diaphanous nature are easily interruptible – can easily turn into sudden nightmares. Indeed, dreams do, in the blink of an eye, simply end.
Nobody expected the Zionist dream to come to a sudden halt like this. Nobody. Nobody expected Russia, literally in the blink of an eye, to suddenly assert itself militarily in the Levant and in the process turn the Zionist dream into a geopolitical and existential nightmare. No further territorial expansions are even remotely possible now with Russia’s military presence in the Levant. The Russian army is in the Levant to stay and the Israelis know it. In the Zionist universe, it’s as if a mighty big-footed contender had suddenly appeared in the dream and instantly stepped on the Greater Israel map like it was a castle made of sand.
Russia is not a declared enemy of Israel. Russia did not squelch The Greater Israel dream on purpose. The destruction of the Zionist dream is the result of an unintended consequence that purely serves the regional and global interests of Russia. Happenstance that the Zionist dream was in the way of Russian ambitions, that’s all. Dog eat dog world.
But what are Russia’s interests in lassoing the Levant?
Well, first, Putin intends to re-fulfill the old Russian dream of establishing sizable military foundations and bases in the ‘warm waters’ of the world, in the Mediterranean, to be more precise, in order to pivot and project power westwards with practical ease. And also, to use Mediterranean naval bases as a first line of defense against a Western creep towards its own territory. Russia’s growing military presence in Syria is a matter of “national security”, Putin has declared several times over. Establishing multiple bases in the Mediterranean has not been possible for Russia to do since the 1967 Arab-Israeli war when it lost the Middle East chess game to America, symbolized by Egypt, a major Soviet client at the time having its Soviet military hardware devastated by Israeli-operated, made-in-USA weaponry. Russia today considers its growing presence in Syria to be a most vital geopolitical maneuver for re-establishing a seat of power again in the Middle East, in tandem with its progress into future Superpowerdom. In the current uncontrollable chaos of the Levant, this is an ambition that Russia must begin implementing immediately, lest the region falls dangerously under ISIS and Zioconism, making it thus harder for Russia’s old dream to be realized.
Secondly, Putin sees the cloth of American Empire as fast fading, especially in the Middle East, and he’s taking advantage of this: putting forth a challenging proposition to the American Emperor. Yes, Vladimir Putin, president of Russia, a man considered to be a cold-blooded realist, is aware of America’s weaknesses, but he’s also aware of its current strengths and he is in Syria as a power salesman – he’s in Syria to make a deal with Empire Americana. Respectfully, but firmly, he is pitching to Empire: ‘Look, you remain supremely powerful, but you are hemorrhaging in the Middle East and the situation is now critical. You cannot afford a new large-scale war in the Middle East that may or may not reassert your hold on the region; and you have lost all your proxy wars there as well – there are no more black-clad joker cards in your deck. You cannot continue on this disadvantageous path, you cannot stand still either and you also cannot withdraw from the region. All these are strategically inferior options and will not stop the bleeding of your powers. The only way out is through pragmatism. The only remedy is to share control of the Middle East with us, Russians. We have together shared power in the Middle East under the shadow of the Cold War and yes it created dangers and complexities for both our countries in the past. But today is different: there is no official Cold War between us and so our new partnership can only serve to strengthen us both’. This, dear reader is Russia’s diplomatic speak, received with quiet relief by the White House and cussed and scorned by the Ziocons in DC. Simplified, Putin is in Syria and his realist message to America is: ‘Share the Middle East with us now or we both fall in the future’. And it looks like Obama has quietly taken heed, in the interest of Empire and realism and not out of cowardice or submission to Putin. Obama’s problem is that although he begrudgingly agrees with Putin’s analysis and remedy, he cannot be seen to be supporting it in public because the Neocons would immediately set the dogs of treason on him, bogging him down with political obtrusion and smear campaigns in his last 15 months of power – possibly damaging his party’s winning chances at the next elections.
Thirdly, in my opinion, Russia is in Syria also for the purpose of redressing Russian military image and history. After the devastating defeat of the Soviet Union at the hands of the American-backed Afghani Mujahedeen, and considering the profound nationalism that Russian society feels especially towards its military institutions, it behooves any modern Russian leader thus to conceive and create a military victory against a modern version of the same old enemy who had previously defeated them – a military morale-booster both for the Russian populations and for the history books. A utilization of the sentiments of the ‘comeback kid’ for mass consumption so as to boost levels of nation devotion. Russia, being the largest nation in the world, landmass-wise, it has to regularly make grand spectacles and gestures in the name of national unity enhancement. Killing Takfiri terrorists in Syria, nay smashing them to smithereens with Russian Air Power is an opportune event to balance out and positively update Russian history books.
Yes, the Russian military buildup in Syria, especially in marine and air power, now looks to be, relatively speaking, permanent. And this is what is causing Israel and its Ziocon friends in Washington sleepless nights and hectic, nefarious group-brainstorming sessions. They know that the dream of a Greater Israel cannot be realized with Russia dominating the skies and waters of the Levant. This is the current and silent inescapable reality. This is the wall that suddenly sprung up and instantly separated Zionists from their beloved Greater Israel dream. Because of a ‘wall’, the dream is now impossible.
Some would call this, poetic justice.
The ‘dream destroyed’ being the current unspoken reality, Israel is left with no expedient and transforming choices. It cannot go to direct war with a more powerful Russia and win back domination over Levant skies and waters. It couldn’t even defeat Hezbollah who lack any form of Air Power back in 2006. And more frustratingly for Israel, it cannot blackmail, coerce or buy President Putin either. Moreover, presently under the leadership of Obama, it is clear that America is not prepared to go to direct war with any nation, let alone Russia, on behalf of Israel. The current architects of expansionist Zionism are at a complete and utter loss to recognize all these chokehold factors – blood is draining from their faces. No more meetings over what Arab country to genocide next so as to steal more land and resources, the issue now is not when and how the Zionist dream can be finally fulfilled, but how to safely bring the corpse-dream back from the dead without anyone noticing.
Alas, there are no clever Zionist ideas on the architects’ table. They are truly and absolutely in utter speechless shock.
And what compounds this hectic catatonia that the Zionist Sensei are currently experiencing is the fact that they know that Israel’s global credibility is at its lowest ever, and that sooner or later, the international community – seeing Israel’s geopolitical weakness – will start pressing hard, even imposing the 2-State solution on Israel, based on the 1967 borders. This is the double nail in the Greater Israel dream coffin. Not only will Israel be unable to expand territory, but it will also be forced into giving up territory currently under its (illegal) control. Something that the Israeli public are psychologically not prepared for, nor is there any political will in the Israeli halls of power to do so either.
Observations of the behaviorism of Zionists tell us that what they cannot change, they usually endeavor to spoil. And the only thing they are still capable of doing is spoiling it for Arabs. They will undoubtedly attempt to expand the current regional conflicts into another one hundred years of Arab on Arab wars. This is a given – they breathe to spoil life for their Arab neighbors. And we also observe that when Zionists are not willing or able to go to war, they usually endeavor to send other capable and willing nations to war on their behalf. But as noted a few passages above, this is currently impossible under the Obama administration. The dream of Greater Israel remains smashed.
What to do then? What is the ultimate solution? Would Israel prefer that America directly and militarily confront Russia in the Levant? I call it a yes. Even at the cost of causing World War Three? Yes. Even at the risk of igniting a nuclear war? Yes.
Yes, yes, and a triple yes. The global Zionist congress pathology shows every indication of this. ‘The tribe above all’ is their core belief. They are Masadian-ISISians in suits with basements full of nukes. Their narcissistic intentions are always clear – their motives and maneuvers are never to be trusted.
We are currently at a very serious and sobering point in the fast-evolving dramas taking place in the Levant and the Middle East at large. Everyone concerned is standing shoulder-to-shoulder with the unknown. This alignment of overwhelming unknowns is rare in history. The geopolitical stress and distress levels – despite the equalizing Russian presence in the Levant – remain excruciatingly high for all parties concerned. All actors have so much to lose with a single wrong move. A cluster of unknowns is forcing everyone into extreme caution. Hesitant steps are made then quickly unmade. If you were to privately ask Obama or Putin what would happen to the world the day after a war between their two nations ignites, they would both be likely to look you somberly in the eye and say, ‘I don’t know’.
The unknown is upon us and we are upon the unknown.
For now, Zionist masterminds plan on keeping the death of the dream of Greater Israel a secret, in the hope that the next American president would be more malleable and more reactionary than Obama. They will be quietly biding their time and hoping that the next President of America would be more Zionist that Theodore Herzl. More ideologically violent than ISIS and Tarantino. Hoping against all hope that the tiny state of Israel would survive a Word War Three catastrophe with little damage inside its boundaries. Hoping against all hope that the Arab world surrounding Israel, all of it would literally be bombed back into the stone ages, while Israel continues to be the hi-tech bride of the Middle East. Hoping against all hope that Russia would again be defeated by America in the Middle East – just so that Israel can again dominate the skies and waters of the Levant, allowing it thus to revive the corpse of the Greater Israel project. Hoping against all hope that igniting World War Three would actually solve all of Israel’s problems.
Once again, the Associated Press provides a blatantly slanted news report on Israel-Palestine. The problem is, AP’s slant is only blatant to those who know the full facts. This is the article that hundreds of newspaper wire editors around the US, most of whom have never visited the region and whose information comes largely from AP, are seeing. Below I will discuss AP’sOctober 14 news report. I will quote the AP report in full, commenting below each section about what it contains and does not contain.
By Aron Heller
As is typical, AP’s story is written by an individual with strong connections to Israel. Aron Heller grew up in Israel, graduated from Tel Aviv University, and may be an Israeli citizen. It is likely that he or members of his family have served in the Israeli military. None of this is disclosed to AP readers. [We’ve noticed that, hours after this appeared, the byline for this same basic story is now given as “Tia Goldenberg,” who is probably updating it.]
JERUSALEM (AP) — The Israeli military began deploying hundreds of troops in cities across the country on Wednesday to assist police forces in countering a wave of deadly Palestinian shooting and stabbing attacks that have created panic across the country.
According to what seem to be the figures at the time of the article, Israelis have killed 30 Palestinians and injured somewhere between 1,100 and 1,400 since the beginning of the current violence, while Palestinians have killed 7 or 8 Israelis and injured about 30. Yet, Heller’s focus is on Israelis.
Israel was created in 1948 through violently pushing off their ancestral land hundreds of thousands of the Muslims and Christians who originally constituted the large majority of the population on the land (these are the Palestinians; the Palestinians who stayed within the borders of what is now Israel are called by Israelis and those who follow the Israeli line “Israeli Arabs”).
Since 1967 Israel has maintained an illegal and often brutal occupation of Jerusalem, the West Bank and Gaza. The human rights of Palestinians both inside the Green Line (Israel) and in the Occupied Territories (the West Bank and Gaza) are frequently violated, and over the decades thousands have been rounded up and imprisoned, often with minimal if any judicial processes. None of this context is included in Heller’s story.
The military’s planned deployment of six companies marks the first implementation of measures by Israel’s security Cabinet to counter the attacks that have intensified dramatically in recent days.
Heller continues his focus on Israelis. In the past few days Israelis have killed eight Palestinians, including a three-year-old, a thirteen-year-old, a fifteen-year-old, and a 26-year-old pregnant woman. Yet, these appear of no concern to Heller.
The Cabinet met late into the night and announced steps early Wednesday that included allowing police to seal off points of friction or incitement.
Heller fails to report that the original incitement came from the Israeli government; see below.
Many of the recent attackers have come from Arab areas of Jerusalem, prompting calls to seal off those neighborhoods to contain potential attackers. In a new step, Israeli forces placed makeshift checkpoints in Palestinian neighborhoods in Jerusalem to monitor traffic leaving the areas.
As in most US media reports, readers are not told that Israel’s acquisition of Jerusalem was done through unlawful military actions. Nor are readers informed that the Palestinians in Jerusalem originally constituted the large majority of Jerusalem’s inhabitants, a population that Israel has attempted through the years to push out as it works to “Judaize” the area.
The Cabinet, which was meeting again Wednesday, also decided to strip residency rights and demolish homes of some attackers and draft hundreds more security guards to secure public transport.
Heller fails to note that destroying family homes – which in addition to containing the spouse and children of alleged attackers, also often contain grandparents, cousins etc – constitutes collective punishment, making large numbers of men, women and children who are innocent of any alleged crime homeless. Collective punishment is illegal under the Geneva Conventions.
Israeli police said 300 soldiers had already been incorporated into their deployment on the streets of east Jerusalem, where many of the assailants are from.
Heller neglects to mention that Israeli forces have assailed large numbers of Palestinian men, women, and children. Again, he focuses on Palestinian violence, not the greater amount of violence perpetrated by Israel.
In new violence Wednesday, Israeli police said they shot and killed an Arab man after he pulled out a knife and attempted to stab them. His identity was not immediately known.
Heller reports the Israeli version of this death without bothering to confirm it with eyewitnesses. He doesn’t even bother to learn the dead man’s age or anything about the human being that Israeli police just killed. He also uses Israel’s term “Arab,” rather than calling the man Palestinian, a more accurate terminology that also implies a history of the area that Israel has tried to erase.
In recent weeks, eight Israelis have died in a string of stabbings, shootings and the stoning of a car, while 30 Palestinians have been killed – 13 of them identified by Israel as attackers, the rest killed in stone-throwing clashes with Israeli forces.
Finally, in the eighth paragraph, Heller mentions that Israelis have killed 30 Palestinians. And it finally comes out – put another way, but certainly not the way Heller chooses – that Israeli forces have killed at least 17 people that even Israeli spokespeople don’t accuse of criminality.
Heller fails to note that crowd control in most civilized nations does not usually consist of live ammunition. Such a lethal method of crowd control is used by Israel only against non-Jews. When extremist Jewish Israelis riot and throw stones, Israeli forces do not have a policy of using live ammunition in which people are shot in the head. In some instances Israeli claims that those killed had stabbed or were about to stab Israelis have been refuted by video and eyewitness testimony.
In addition, Heller errs in saying that all the other Palestinians killed by Israel were killed in stone-throwing clashes. Some were killed at close range, for example; another was killed by an Israeli airstrike in Gaza. Much of this is documented by the Palestinian Centre for Human Rights. However, it appears that Heller relies entirely on Israeli military reports for his information and does not seek additional information.
Heller also fails to note that the term “clashes” largely denotes Israeli soldiers in full combat gear with the latest weaponry firing at unarmed protesters.
Israel’s internal security minister said Wednesday that the bodies of dead Palestinian attackers would not be returned to their families for burial.
Again, Heller takes Israeli officials’ word that these were all “attackers,” even though eyewitnesses and videos have refuted this claim in a number of cases.
Gilad Erdan said the funeral processions of Palestinians who killed Israelis often turn into “an exhibition of support for terror and incitement to murder.” He said Israel should not allow them to “enjoy respect and ceremonies” after their deaths.
Heller fails to report that to many Palestinians and others these are resistance fighters defending their population. Instead, Heller quotes the Israeli official view without interviewing Palestinians or others to report their viewpoint and information, which has been reported widely in the Palestinian media. Heller appears to only use official Israeli sources.
The funerals are a frequent flashpoint for clashes and often include calls for revenge. Erdan suggested the attackers be buried without fanfare in distant cemeteries where previous Palestinian killers have been buried.
Israel provides no proof that those it kills and buries in its sometimes secret cemeteries were actually attackers. Second, as discussed above, those who actually were combatants could validly be seen as members of a resistance movement fighting a far more powerful force illegally occupying their land. Yet, Heller calls them “Palestinian killers.” He never refers to Israelis who have killed Palestinians – in fact, far more – as “Israeli killers.”
The comments come after a particularly bloody day Tuesday in which a pair of Palestinian stabbing and shooting attacks in Jerusalem killed three Israelis and another two attacks took place in the normally quiet Israeli city of Raanana. Three Palestinians, including two attackers, were also killed.
A few days ago Israelis killed five Palestinians, including a 10-year-old; a few days before that Israelis killed six Palestinians; and not long before that they killed seven Palestinians in one day. However, for Heller It is only the day in which three Israelis are killed that is “particularly bloody.”
The government has been unable to stop the violence, carried out mostly by young Palestinians unaffiliated with known militant groups and apparently acting on their own. The violence erupted a month ago over the Jewish New Year, fueled by rumors that Israel was plotting to take over Jerusalem’s most sensitive holy site, sacred to both Muslims and Jews. Israel has adamantly denied the allegations.
Heller leaves out an event that took place five days before the Jewish New Year: Thousands of Palestinians gathered at a village in the occupied West Bank to mourn the excruciating death of a young mother burned in an arson attack by Israeli settlers. The attack had also killed her husband and infant son. Her four-year-old son, while burned on 60 percent of his body, has so far survived. Israel, worried that Palestinians would demonstrate at Jerusalem’s Al Aqsa Mosque, restricted access to the Mosque, one of the holiest sites in Islam.
This was just one of what the Israeli newspaper Ha’aretzreports were a spate of “nationalist hate crimes, known as ‘price-tag’ attacks, by suspected Jewish settlers. Such groups have warned in the past there would be a price to pay for any action by Israeli authorities they regard as hostile to the Jewish settlement movement or to far-right religious beliefs.”
None of this makes it into Heller’s story.
Heller also leaves out many other incidents that took place in the days before the Jewish New Year, including:
The Israeli Tax Authority rejected a claim for compensation by officials of the Catholic Church demanding compensation for the burnt Church of Multiplication of Loaves and Fishes, which was burnt in an Israeli terrorist arson attack, last June.
Dozens of Palestinians, including children, were injured on Friday evening and early night hours, in Silwan town, in occupied East Jerusalem, during clashes that took place after Israeli fanatics assaulted an 8-year-old child, while Israeli soldiers invaded homes and fired gas bombs, concussion grenades and rubber-coated metal bullets.
Israeli Defense Minister, Moshe Ya’alon confirmed, on Wednesday, that Israeli occupation authorities know who burned the house of the Dawabsha family, in July, but failed to identify them.
Palestinian medical sources reported, Friday, that four young men were wounded, one moderately, after Israeli soldiers assaulted the weekly protest in Kufur Qaddoum, near the northern West Bank city of Qalqilia.
Israeli soldiers assaulted, on Friday, the weekly nonviolent protest against the illegal Israeli Annexation Wall and colonies, in Bil’in village, near the central West Bank city of Ramallah, leading to scores of injuries.
The Palestinian Detainees’ Committee has reported, Thursday, that detainee Bilal Kayed is ongoing with the hunger strike he started on September 5, demanding his removal from solitary confinement.
The Israeli Prison Authority renewed, Thursday, the Administrative Detention order against a hunger striking Palestinian journalist, for three additional months, without charges or trial.
Israeli soldiers kidnapped, on Thursday morning, five Palestinians in different parts of the occupied West Bank, including a teenager walking to school in Jerusalem.
Israeli soldiers invaded, on Thursday morning, the al-‘Arroub refugee camp, north of the southern West Bank city of Hebron, and clashed with scores of students as they were heading to school.
Several Palestinians fishing boats were attacked, on Thursday morning, by Israeli navy fire close to the shore in the Sudaniyya Sea, northwest of Gaza City.
Reporters from RT (Russia Today) traveled to Gaza to look into last year’s report that 90% of Gaza’s water is undrinkable. As they sampled water from different parts of the coastal Strip, they found that the report is accurate – the water throughout Gaza is dirty, salty and undrinkable.
Israeli forces, on Wednesday morning, threw teargas grenades on the Kharabtha Boys School, near Ramallah, causing tens of suffocation cases among students.
A group of Israeli extremists, living in illegal Israeli colonies in the northern West Bank district of Nablus, burnt on Wednesday at dawn, Palestinian olive orchards and farmlands.
About five Israeli military machines, Tuesday night, entered the town of Khuza’a near Khan Younis city, southern Gaza Strip, to raze agricultural lands.
Heller mentions Palestinian concerns about Israeli changes to the status quote at one of the holiest sites in Islam and reports they were denied by Israel, but fails to inform readers that Jordan, Egypt, the Arab League, and the UN also protested Israeli actions at the site. Heller also omitted information that Jewish extremists openly call for the destruction of the site. He also fails to mention “Israel’s numerous efforts to restrict Muslim prayer at the mosque and the increasing presence of Jewish worshippers, who are protected by troops when they visit the compound,” as journalist Barbara Erickson reports in an analysis on the New York Times‘ similar pattern of omissions. Erickson reports:
“After the latest incursion, the director of the mosque compound, Sheikh Omar al-Kiswani, said that Israel occupation authorities “have imposed their sovereignty over [the mosque compound] by power of force.” Israel controls who enters and exists, he said, and officials use force against anyone who challenges them.
“This is a cry of alarm from a site revered by millions of Muslims throughout the world, but it found no mention in the Times. Instead, we receive the Israeli spin on this tragic saga as the newspaper glosses over the expansionist aims of a Zionist state.”
None of this is in Heller’s story, which only reports, as usual, an Israeli official statement denying Israeli culpability, and suggests that Palestinian views are illusory. Heller omits the statement by the heads of Christian churches in Jerusalem expressing concern at Israel’s violations at Al-Aqsa Mosque.
Israel says the violence has been fueled by what it says is rampant incitement against Jews and Israelis on social media spread by Islamic groups and the Palestinian leadership. In a briefing to foreign journalists Wednesday, Israeli Cabinet minister Yuval Steinitz said it had less to do with political differences and more with anti-Semitic incitement to create a religious war.
He showed Palestinian videos and animations that glorified the stabbings of Jews in the Old City of Jerusalem and the killing of a Jewish settler couple in the West Bank in front of their children.
He also quoted Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas’ recent statement where he blessed “every drop of blood spilled for Allah” and that Jews desecrated a Jerusalem holy site with their “filthy feet.”
“This is not new. It is just a new wave of terrorism and violence and this time it’s totally clear that the main approach here is a religious approach,” Steinitz said. “It’s all about horrible, anti-Jewish, racist incitement.”
Heller reports, without question or context virulent accusations by an Israeli official, while failing to provide counter statements by Palestinian officials and others.
He fails to mention the Palestinian boy with head injuries and broken legs lying on the ground whom Israeli soldiers reportedly let bleed while Israeli spectators looked on, cursing him. (More details and video here.)
Also missing from Heller’s report are Israeli attacks on Palestinian hospitals and medics, a Palestinian woman who was shot dead by Israeli forces while her hands were up, the 10-year-old Palestinian boy kidnapped and blindfolded by Israeli soldiers, and the 13-year-old boy whose leg was scheduled to be amputated after he was shot by Israeli soldiers. There is virtually no mention of Palestinians injured and maimed by Israelis, even though there are over 1,400.
Palestinians say the violence, coming at a time when prospects for gaining independence appear nil, is the result of years of occupation and failed peace efforts.
Finally, in his 18th paragraph, Heller provides Palestinian information.
“Israel is an occupier in Jerusalem. It should end its occupation. This is the key to peace and stability,” said Saeb Erekat, a top Palestinian official.
“Decisions such as the ones adopted by the Israeli Cabinet pour gasoline on the fire,” he added. ” Measures of collective punishment and killings and arrests and demolishing houses and confiscation of lands will only lead to the escalation of the situation.”
For the first and only time in his very long article, in the final quarter of his story, Heller quotes Palestinians.
The clashes erupted last month when young Palestinians barricaded themselves inside the Al-Aqsa Mosque compound in Jerusalem’s Old City, hurling stones and firebombs at police.
Heller leaves out the dozens of Israeli soldiers and settlers who assaulted Al-Aqsa Mosque. He ignores the mother and infant burned to death the previous month, and the ongoing Israeli attacks, kidnappings and destruction that have taken place week after week, month after month, year after year against Palestinians.
Israeli attacks against Palestinian men, women, and children, it appears, simply don’t matter to AP on the same scale as attacks on Israelis.
Alison Weir is executive director of If Americans Knew and president of the Council for the National Interest.
UPDATE:
The PLO Negotiations Affairs Department has issued a report on the violence from Sept 13-Oct 13 that shows that Israeli forces committed 29 confirmed killings, 1,100+ injuries, 398 raids, 607 detentions, 316 temporary detentions, 482 flying checkpoints, 735 Israeli gunfire attacks, 6 home demolitions, 81 destruction/confiscations of properties, 10 assaults on medical sector, 197 incidents of settler terrorism/violence.
The report states:
Over the past month, Israel has killed 29 Palestinians. According to Amnesty International some of the recorded cases amount to “extrajudicial killings.”
On September 22nd at 7:43 am, an Israeli soldier shot several bullets at Hadil Hashlamon and killed her for allegedly ‘holding a knife’ when she stopped to pass one of the many checkpoints inside Hebron’s old city. Israeli officials refuse to release the video footage that shows the entire sequence of events.
Marcel Leme, a Brazilian national and an International Human Rights Observer, was a few meters from the scene. He presented a written report with still photos of his testimony (published on Blog Sanaúd-Voltaremos). Leme said: “The woman remained froze on the other side of the metal barrier, behind her there was a wall. She did not move, speak, scream or react. She has never tried to attack any soldiers and did not even get closer to them. Then the Israeli soldiers started opening fire at her some five or six times. The soldiers were now about 3 meters away from her.”
Since the beginning of October, many Palestinians have been killed in cold blood for allegedly holding a knife. So far, not one investigation has been launched to determine the truth. Other Palestinians have been killed by “Israel’s indiscriminate an even deliberate” use of fire on demonstrators according to Human Rights Watch.
The report provides the names of the 29 Palestinians killed by Israel during the past month:
Hadeel Saleh Al-Hashlamoun 18 Hebron 22 September 2015 2 Ahmad Izat Khattatbah 26 Beit Foriek/ Nablus 24 September 2015 3 Muhanad Shafik Halabi 19 Jerusalem 3 October 2015 4 Fadi Samir Alloun 19 Jerusalem 4 October 2015 5 Hufaytha Othman Suliman 18 Tulkarm 4 October 2015 6 Abdel Rahman Shadi Obidulalah 11 Bethlehem 5 October 2015 7 Amjad hatim Al Jundi 17 Hebron 7 October 2015 8 Wisam Jamal Faraj 20 Jerusalem 8 October 2015 9 Thaer Abu Ghazaleh 19 Jerusalem 8 October 2015 10 Ahmad Jamal Salah 20 Jerusalem 9 October 2015 11 Mohammad Al-Ja’bari 19 Hebron 9 October 2015 12 Abdel-Majid Al-Waheedi 20 North Gaza 9 October 2015 13 Ahmad Al-Hirbawi 20 Central Gaza 9 October 2015 14 Shadi Husam Dolah 20 Gaza 9 October 2015 15 Zeiad Nabil Sharaf 20 Gaza 9 October 2015 16 Mohammad Hisham Al-Raqab 15 Khan Yunis 9 October 2015 17 Adnan Abu Aliyan 22 Khan yunis 9 October 2015
INJURIES
According to the Palestinian Ministry of Health, more than 1,100 Palestinians have been injured, including 200 children, since the beginning of October. Additionally 400 Palestinians have been shot with live ammunition and 700 with rubber-coated bullets. The following examples highlight incidents where the Israeli army fired on children: ๏ On September 15th at Al-Ram’s North junction, Israeli forces shot three persons, including two children, during a protest against the Israeli occupation and the continued storming of Al-Aqsa Mosque Compound by extremist Jewish settlers. Israeli forces started by shooting rubber-coated metal bullets, sound bombs and tear gas canisters at unarmed Palestinian civilians leading to the wounding of: Basil Ayoub Mohammed Al-Salaymeh (17 years old), Mahmoud Shaker (15 years old), and Qusai Mohammed Abed Rabbo. They were all sent to the hospital for treatment. ๏ On September 18th near Al-Jalazoun Refugee Camp the Israeli forces fired rubber-coated metal bullets, sound bombs and tear gas canisters at Palestinian protestors. As a result Mohammad Safi (16 years old) was injured. ๏ On October 11h The Israeli military launched missiles (in 2 consecutive strikes) on Al –Zaytouneh neighbourhood located in southeast Gaza and in southwest Gaza. This resulted in the injury of four members of the same family including a child: Mohammad Hassan (5 years old). Israel claimed that it targeted a training area for Palestinian gunmen.
ISRAELI RAIDS AND ARRESTS OF PALESTINIANS
Israeli forces have carried out at least 400 raids in the State of Palestine over the past month. Additionally, more than 600 Palestinians have been arrested. This includes the detention of a security guard at Al-Aqsa mosque compound – and the assaulting of Sheik Omar Kiswani, the director of Al-Aqsa Mosque, and another Security guard – to allow the Israeli Minister of Agriculture Uri Ariel, accompanied by several Israeli settlers to enter the holy site.
NO. NAME AGE DISTRICT DATE
18 Jihad Zayed Obied 22 Central Gaza 9 October 2015 19 Ishaq Badran 16 Jerusalem 10 October 2015 20 Mohammad Saed Ali 19 Jerusalem 10 October 2015 21 Ibrahim Ahmad Awwad 28 Hebron 10 October 2015 22 Rahaf Yahia Hassan 2 Gaza 11 October 2015 23 Noor Rasmi Hassan (5months pregnant) 30 Gaza 11 October 2015 24 Marwan Hisham Barbahk 10 Khan Yunis 10 October 2015 25 Khalil Omar Othman 15 Khan Yunis 10 October 2015 26 Ahmad Abdallah Sabah Sharkah 15 Ramallah 11 October 2015 27 Mohammad Nathmi Shmasnah 23 Jerusalem 12 October 2015 28 Hasan Khaled Manasra 15 Jerusalem 12 October 2015 29 Mustafa Adel Khatib 17 Jerusalem 12 October 2015
In 1992, Marc Ellis wrote an important article for the time, “Beyond the Jewish-Christian Dialogue: Solidarity with the Palestinian People,” which appeared in The Link, published by Americans for Middle East Understanding. Ellis found that “the Jewish progressive consensus position is a form of oppression vis-à-vis the Palestinian people.” The consensus of the time emphasized the “two rights of Jews and Palestinians to the land,” Israeli atrocities as “aberrations,” and the anguish of “the Jewish soul.”
Ellis instead recognized the genocidal import of Zionism and the state of Israel. “What if… the Jewish character of the state makes expendable, in a terrifying sense, makes logical, the end of indigenous Palestinian culture and community in historic Palestine?” He found that the “ecumenical dialogue” of liberal Christians and Jews had turned into “what one might call the ecumenical deal: eternal repentance for Christian anti-Jewishness unencumbered by any substantive criticism of Israel.”
The ecumenical deal has broken down somewhat as Christian churches have discussed Israel’s oppression of the Palestinians and sold investments in companies doing business with “the occupation,” often with great trepidation, against furious Jewish hostility. The interfaith outreach of Jewish Voice for Peace attempts to re-establish the ecumenical deal on more limited but defensible terms.
Sabeel arose in 1993, from the efforts of Reverend Naim Ateek and other Palestinian Christians “to interpret scripture in light of the Palestinian experience under occupation. As local Christians studied together, they forged a Palestinian version of liberation theology, which upholds the Gospel call for freedom from political, social and economic oppression.” (http://fosna.org/about/who-are-friends-sabeel) Sabeel is Arabic for “the way;” it has offices in Nazareth and Jerusalem and affiliates in Europe, North America and elsewhere. Outside Palestine its conferences, political travel and educational material promote awareness and activism on Palestine among Christians; it is the voice of the Christian left, experienced and committed.
For this audience Wise recounted her life of terror as a Jewish American. While traveling to Jewish day school on a Catholic school bus some children asked to see her horns. “I thought they were just being silly. Today I hope I know a bit more about the history of anti-Semitism in the Christian world.”
At her day school, “education about the Nazi Holocaust was a centerpiece of our learning.” In high school she visited Holocaust sites in Europe with her Jewish youth group. “We were told stories of how the Christian world was complicit in Nazism and their crimes. I sobbed and wailed at each visit to the camps, horrified and disturbed.”
In rabbinical school, she nonetheless “adopted as her spiritual mentor” Dietrich Bonhöffer, the Lutheran pastor and theologian whose opposition to Nazism cost him his life. She was also inspired by the White Rose German student resistance group, who were likewise executed. The example of “those who benefit from the systems of power and oppression actively opposing and resisting it with their lives continues to feed me in this work.”
This work begins with anti-anti-Semitism. “I see you all working hard to get out from underneath the history of Christian violence against Jews.” She emphasizes “that there is nothing anti-Semitic about criticizing Israel and there is nothing anti-Semitic in the BDS call by Palestinian civil society.”
That being said, when I get asked how to deflect accusations of anti-Semitism I do caution people to ask themselves if they are in fact anti-Semitic. While there is nothing inherently anti-Semitic in critiquing Israel, that does not mean you do not also harbor anti-Semitic sentiments toward Jews. This is something worth exploring personally and perhaps also in your congregations or organizations.
Wise continues: while “anti-Semitism certainly does still exist… it has largely lost its power in the US…. Jewish people are not impeded in any material way from pursuing the life of our choosing.” Yet Wise spends three pages of a six-page text on a tour d’horizon of anti-Semitism, before deciding that “anti-Semitism is still real, if not very potent,” and we must “fight how accusations of anti-Semitism are being used as an effective weapon to silence debate on Israel.”
Wise then discusses the actions in the California legislature and the University of California system, to define anti-Semitism in ways that limit free speech, and sharply curtail criticism of Israel. She states that “those of us who are Jewish… strongly feel the obligation—strategically and morally—to speak out when false charges of anti-Semitism are used to tar the movement.” The privilege and strategic choice of Jewish people is not opposing injustice in the name of “the Jews” but opposing it on general terms, as injustice for all.
After three-quarters of a page on the Jewish Zionist assault on free speech, Wise returns to anti-anti-Semitism, as if her empathy is exhausted. “What can you all do to confront and address Christian hegemony in the world, and in our work organizing for justice? I have frankly been surprised that I am often the person to raise this question, and hope to see organizations like Friends of Sabeel acknowledge, unpack and address Christian privilege, just as we at JVP… with Jewish privilege.” “Christian privilege” is not the force oppressing Palestine, rather Zionism is destroying Christianity in Palestine, and all else non-Jewish. The main sources of Islamophobia in the US today are Jewish, as a member of JVP’s board has attested in a book. (Elly Bulkin and Donna Nevel, Islamophobia and Israel)
Yet Wise calls for “study groups about the legacy of anti-Semitism and Islamophobia in Christianity.” Wise asks: “Have you ever been given a school vacation or paid holiday related to Christmas or Easter when school vacations or paid Holidays for Ramadan or the Jewish High Holidays were not observed?” Wise carries on for four paragraphs about holidays, the weekend, Christmas ornaments and calendars. This trivializes the threat to Muslims, who face discrimination, physical assault and legal persecution, not mainly problems observing their religion. Christians who support Palestine need no lectures about Christian Islamophobia.
Such gambits allow Wise to claim religious discrimination because public life isn’t based on the needs of the religious fraction of the Jewish 2% or so of the US population. “On top of these types of reflections, I can imagine your communities working to support and encourage each other to ensure that your work advocating for Palestinian human rights does not rely on anti-Semitic ideas.”
Wise offers examples that “help elucidate the differences between a clear criticism of Israeli policy and its backers and anti-Semitic ideas often repeated by activists with no anti-Jewish intentions and lines emerging from Neo-Nazi and anti-Semitic organizations.” Thus:
A clear criticism of Israel would be: “Israel has a repeated and ongoing record of human rights offenses.”
A way to say this same idea in a way that reflects anti-Semitic sentiment, even unwittingly, would be to say: “Israel is a worse human rights violator than most or all other countries.”
A way that anti-Semitic organizations or people say the same idea: “Israel is the root of the world’s problems.”
JVP tells Sabeel what is permissible to say, just like the Jewish commissars it opposed in California. JVP is somewhat more permissive, but equally intent on propaganda and manipulation. Israel does not merely have a “repeated and ongoing record of offenses.” It is the only state on earth that is constituted on a racialist basis; it is growing daily more fanatical and violent within historic Palestine. Israel has provoked increasingly destructive wars ever since its founding, directly and through its influence in the US. In 2003 an EU poll of 7500 Europeans found nearly 60% held Israel to be the leading danger to world peace. For JVP any argument about Israel’s radicalism and extreme menace (including to itself) is prima facie anti-Semitism.
Her final example is:
A clear criticism: “Many Israeli soldiers justify their actions toward Palestinians by saying they are just following orders.”
A way to say this same idea in a way that reflects anti-Semitic sentiment, even unwittingly, would be to say: “Israelis are just like Nazis.”
A way that anti-Semitic organizations or people say the same idea: “Israel is worse than the Nazis. This wouldn’t be happening if the Nazis were successful,” and so on.
In 1969 Yeshayahu Leibowitz, philosopher and scientist at the Hebrew University, “began to talk of the inevitable ‘Nazification’ of the Israeli nation and society. By the time of the [1982] Lebanon War he had become an international celebrity because of his use of the epithet ‘Judeo-Nazi’ to describe the Israeli army.”
In 1974 Israel Shahak, a faculty colleague of Leibowitz, and president of the Israeli League for Human and Civil Rights, stated:
I am not afraid… of the comparison with ‘that which befell the German people between the two world wars.’ I am not afraid to say publicly that Israeli Jews, and with them most Jews throughout the world, are undergoing a process of Nazification. [Jewish silence] includes – exactly as it did in Germany – not only those among us who are in my opinion real Nazis, and there are a lot of those, but also those who do not protest against Jewish Nazism, so long as they think it serves Jewish interest… I am trying to act before it is too late.
Hajo Meyer, a survivor of Auschwitz and an outspoken critic of Zionism and Israel, who passed away recently, gave a final interview in August.
“If we want to stay really human beings, we must get up and call the Zionists what they are: Nazi criminals,” Meyer said. The hate of the Jews by the Germans “was less deeply rooted than the hate of the Palestinians by the Israeli Jews,” he observed. “The brainwashing of the Jewish Israeli populations is going on for over sixty years. They cannot see a Palestinian as a human being.”
An analysis of Zionism and the Jewish people as Jewish race doctrine could doubtless be developed with academic rigor, though not by the luminaries on JVP’s advisory board, even as Ellis’s prospect comes to ghastly fruition: “the Jewish character of the state makes expendable, in a terrifying sense, makes logical, the end of indigenous Palestinian culture and community in historic Palestine.” Christian churches are burned within Israel; Palestinians are burned alive in their homes in the West Bank; Palestinians under occupation and Israeli citizens alike are gunned down without provocation; Muslims are banned from prayer in the Islamic holy site in Jerusalem, while Jewish religious fanatics who want to raze the site and build a temple swagger about guarded by Israeli soldiers. Wise and JVP refuse to fight back, rule out deeper analyses of Zionism as prima facie anti-Semitism.
Hajo Meyer was a self-proclaimed Reform Jew in the classical, anti-Zionist mold, who rejected the idea of the Jewish people and its state ,and accepted the status of Jews as a religious minority (or secular citizens) in modern liberal terms. That outlook belongs to the legacy of the Enlightenment and Jewish emancipation, from pre-modern Jewish religious society, as well as from gentile restrictions.
In late July Jewish Voice for Peace rolled out a new web site. The substantive “frequently asked questions” were reduced from eight to five. One omitted question was: “Are you Zionist, anti-Zionist, post-Zionist or something else?” JVP requires gentiles to condemn anti-Semitism, but Zionism is, or was, merely a “FAQ,”, while Jewish moderns condemned it on principle.
Commenting on this now-vanished public, and internal JVP material, New York University law student Amith Gupta argued that “JVP has taken at least 4 different positions on Zionism, implying a lack of any principle regarding racism and colonialism against Palestine in particular and the Middle East as a whole.” “JVP’s statements imply a lack of principled positions regarding racism against Palestinians, Arabs, and Muslims, while taking a staunch position against perceived racism toward the Jewish community. This is a racist double-standard.”
Yet Zionism is not only racism and settler colonialism in Palestine, but the Jewish people, eternally distinct, separate, unintegrable. As anti-Semitism has been driven to the margin, and all society opened to Jewish accomplishment, separatism has been deliberately cultivated. The Judaic scholar Jacob Neusner coined the term the “Zionism of Jewish peoplehood,” to describe Jewish attitudes in the United States. “The Jewish people is my homeland. Wherever Jews live, there I am at home.” Neusner described himself as “on the margins of the group,” and has few illusions about it. “I wonder if history can provide an example of a Jewish community more ethnocentric, and less religiously concerned, than our own.” (Stranger at Home, p. 31)
We who preach brotherhood so self-righteously to our fellow citizens preserve in our hearts the least edifying part of our heritage, the hostility to gentiles… One hears Jews speak frequently of all non-Jews as goyim… One sees the preservation of Jewish neighborhoods and social facilities as unwalled ghettoes in towns where Jews are freely accepted into the social life of the general community. (p. 32)
The “Zionism of Jewish peoplehood” is most crucially the “Israel lobby,” after the celebrated article and then book by Professors John Mearsheimer and Stephen Walt, The Israel Lobby and U.S. Foreign Policy, about the lobby’s decisive, detrimental influence. JVP vilifies the “Israel lobby” critics as anti-Semites. The first article in JVP’s 2004 collection Reframing Anti-Semitism warned that “the relative success of Jews in the United States and some parts of Europe has spawned some reactionary rekindling of late 19th/early 20th century Jewish conspiracy theories, harkening back to the infamous Russian forgery, the Protocols of the Elders of Zion.” The publication of The Israel Lobby checked such talk, and JVP introduced the term guardedly in its work, but it dislikes the argument and its proponents, as shown by its attack on Alison Weir.
Weir’s short book Against Our Better Judgment. The Hidden History of How the U.S. Was Used to Create Israel has sold nearly 20,000 copies, extraordinary for a dry, factual, self-published work. Weir was denounced as an anti-Semite by JVP and the US Campaign to End the Occupation for granting interviews to far-right journalists whose work is full of anti-Semitic tropes. A petition in support of Weir gathered 2,000 signatures, including many prominent Palestine movement people, many Palestinians in Palestine, and many members of JVP and US Campaign member organizations.
As Weir pointed out, the same journalists had interviewed dozens of people in the Palestine movement, whom JVP and End the Occupation have not attacked. Clearly, the Israel lobby critique, in the form of Weir’s book and her public following, were the reasons for the attack, not anti-Semitism. The movement people interviewed by these journalists include many Jews, which suggests that the journalists’ anti-Semitism is a crude, ugly misapprehension of the real problem of the Israel lobby, not principled. In any case anti-Semitism has no more political prospects than Islamic religious law, is utterly marginal, as Wise admits.
Wise “personally, at least, finds [anti-Semitism] to be an extremely small problem, much smaller than the issues of Jewish privilege and Islamophobia issues.” But Wise devoted most of a talk to a Christian audience to this extremely small problem.
My work alongside Christians is an important challenge to those dangerous and disempowering messages I learned growing up. I no longer believe Jews are inevitably alone in the world, but in fact quite the opposite. I now see just how much we are there for each other.
Wise and JVP are “there” to impose the new ecumenical deal: no critique of Zionism, in Palestine or in the US Israel lobby, only of “the occupation;” and constant flagellation about Christian privilege and anti-Semitism.
For this Wise claims inspiration from Pastor Bonhöffer and the White Rose students, who gave their lives fighting Nazism. Such aggrandizement, extravagantly moralized, is a frank statement of Jewish superiority. Physicians, heal thyselves.
Donna Nevell’s Oct 7th article about a new report called “The Palestine Exception to Free Speech: A Movement Under Attack in the US” – released by Palestine Legal and the Center for Constitutional Rights (See more here.) points to the rise in North American academia, of a phenomenon that I encountered head-on back in the late 1970s when I arrived as a grad student in Massachusetts from my native Pakistan, and which I’ve continued to witness (and experience the brunt of, throughout my 25 years of teaching, via demands for “civility” whenever I criticized Israeli policies in public settings, earning me the ire of Zionist colleagues, with those in power using that privilege on various committees to deny me academic awards, funding support, etc )–but which I thought was on the wane in recent years. This is the phenomenon of the facile canard of accusations of anti-semitism (a silencing tactic par excellence)–levelled against anyone and everyone who wants to approach the topic of Israel/Palestine with a critical eye, or who wishes to speak out against Israel’s use of disproportionate violence against Palestinian civilians year after year, or who wishes to raise legitimate questions about the illegitimacy of Israeli settlements on Palestinian lands which continue unabated to date, in contravention of countless UN resolutions against such occupation.[1]
In recent years, however, I’ve felt a shift in public opinion and discourse around issues of Israel/Palestine, as attested to by my students, who have become more aware of, and thus more critical of the imbalance of military and economic power between Israel and its disenfranchised Palestinian second-class citizens as well as the Palestinians of the Occupied Territories, which has led them to become more aware of the dominant media bias in favor Israel. Yet, the recent, ignominious case of Prof Steven Salaita’s “unhiring” by the University of Illinois Urbana-Champagne in the wake (ostensibly) of some tweets he wrote criticizing Israel during its 2014 “Operation Protective Edge” military blitzkrieg against Palestinian civilians of Gaza,[2] points to the desperate push-back occurring on US campuses against this perceived shift in public (and student) opinion. Opines Nevell:
As Israeli violence against the Palestinian people escalates, support across the globe for justice in Palestine, and calls in this country for the US government and corporations to stop facilitating Israel’s gross violations of international law and human rights, are increasingly common-place. However, rather than engage substantively about those well- documented violations, Israel’s defenders recklessly and baselessly smear Israel’s critics with charges of anti-Semitism, promoting terrorism, and seeking to “delegitimize” Israel.
What is particularly troubling about this propaganda tactic—a longstanding one as it is—is that because it enjoys the support of rich donors who can and do, influence the corporate culture of universities (those of us who’ve been around long enough have witnessed the acceleration of the corporatization of US academia over the past several decades), there are increasingly virulent attacks occurring against faculty and students alike who dare to speak out against Israeli state policies. Nevell tells us how:
These campaigns are largely directed at college campuses where consistent, bold, and creative organizing is ongoing against Israel actions and against university complicity in supporting Israeli crimes. Those whose views are considered unacceptable to Israel’s supporters have been targeted with personal and ad hominem attacks that include, but are not limited to, intimidation, campaigns to get professors fired, and ongoing harassment. When speaking on college campuses, I was told story after story of students who were hesitant to speak out because of fear of reprisals. Further, accusations of “creating hostile environments” or being “uncivil”–ironic as they are—are yet another attempt to derail the call for equality, for accountability, and for fairness.
At a recent gathering of students and faculty of Columbia University and the general public, Professors Steven Salaita and Rashid Khalidi (the latter is Edward Said chair of Middle Eastern Studies at Columbia), while celebrating the publication of Salaita’s book which chronicles his year since he was unhired/fired by UIUC for an allegedly anti-semitic tweet during august of 2014, provided the standing-room-only audience also with a glimpse into the darkening atmosphere on university campuses which has arisen in the wake of a successful BDS movement (the campaign for Boycott, Divestments and Sanctions against Israel until it complies with international law and Palestinian rights), as a means to curtail freedom of speech for those criticizing the Israeli state. Plus ca change, plus c’est la meme chose.
What is truly inspiring and refreshing, however, about Salaita’s take on the current manifestation of this chronic disease afflicting academe, is that he rises above his personal predicament (no mean task, given loss of employment and livelihood for himself and his family, and the need to relocate abroad to earn a living: as he pointed out, while it’s wonderful that he was finally able to land a very prestigious position as the Edward Said Chair at AUB in Beirut, it is only a one-year appointment). Beyond his personal tribulations, then, he discusses the full ramifications of the “civility” argument that has become the official discourse of the corporate university, which he persuasively describes as simply the latest instance of a colonial mechanism aimed at “controlling”—i.e disempowering—those professors and students who represent marginalized/colonized groups, and whose scholarship challenges received wisdom or the “hegemony” of the “dominant discourse” that rules the roost. To be critical of the power apparatus, of the corporatization of academe which routinely silences opposing voices by depriving us of jobs, tenure, promotions, this evil corporatization that has led to the de-funding of departments and programs that challenge dominant knowledge paradigms and the (il)logic of profit over humanity and democratic education, which has led to the infantilizing and punishing of students who wish to organize for their rights—in short, to raise critical voices for justice and for an end to dehumanization, is to now stand accused of “uncivility.” This is precisely what happened to Salaita. As he puts it so pithily in his book, Uncivil Rites: Palestine and the Limits of Academic Freedom :
In the hegemon, state violence is never violent. Expressions of the subaltern, however, are always said to be conducted violently. Indicting a lone tweeter allows those invested in the colonial apparatus to avoid confronting their own complicity in the cruelties of racism and war. Many folks wrung their hands—teeth gnashed into rugged nubs—about my tweets critical of Israel while saying nothing of Israel’s wanton slaughter in Gaza. If, in the imagination of the liberal state, racism is but an individual failing, then critique of structural violence is a collective evasion (14).
In other words, while Salaita was indicted as an “individual” for practicing “uncivil behavior” through his critical tweets of Israel, the hegemonic university and its administrators did not need to confront their complicity in supporting Israeli racism and its unremitting and unjust war against Palestinians. Here are some sobering statistics Salaita provides that highlight the injustice which disingenuous accusations of “uncivility” directed at the victims or those angry at the situation and wishing to expose it, like Salaita, cover over:
Since 2000, Israelis have killed 2,060 Palestinian children while Palestinians have killed 130 Israeli children. The overall death count during this period is over 9,000 Palestinians and 1,190 Israelis….Israel has imposed hundreds of settlements on the West Bank [in direct violation of UN resolutions], while Palestinians inside Israel increasingly are squeezed and continue to be internally displaced. Israel has demolished nearly thirty thousand Palestinian homes as a matter of policy. Palestinians have demolished zero Israeli homes. (17)
But such techniques of silencing the “other” which today are directed with unrelenting and almost single-minded force against supporters of Palestinian human rights by the corporate university, have a long history aimed at other marginalized communities as well. Observes Salaita,
What happened to me has been happening to ethnic, sexual and cultural minorities in academe for decades, African Americans especially, and it continues to happen today. A shameful irony is that Jews were long marginalized in the academy because of their supposed dangers to Anglo civility, victims to rationalizations for their exclusion that, sadly, don’t look terribly different than the ones being used against supporters of Palestinian human rights. (49)
The supreme irony here, is that it is the victims of incivility who are being treated as its perpetrators! Plus ca change…. Indeed, blaming the victim is an age old strategy of the powerful. But, as Salaita notes, as Nevell recently observed, and which is where I began this piece, change is definitely in the air, and things will not remain the same, the French adage notwithstanding. Salaita notes, with some optimism
Israel is losing the PR battle, the proverbial hearts and minds. Its supporters, in turn, are lashing out with the sort of desperation endemic to any strong party in decline. They are punitive and belligerent in the absence of honest debate. This is about undemocratic power reasserting itself, refusing to cede a word to Palestinians in a severely compromised public discourse. It is, simply stated, colonial paranoia. (53)
As history has shown us, even the most entrenched colonial apparatuses come to an end, at times, seemingly suddenly (it seems this way especially to those who haven’t been paying attention to subaltern discourses!) A fairly recent case in point: South Africa. Injustice, apartheid, do not last forever. And neither will that other corporate hegemon: the neoliberal university. In the unjust, shameful, ludicrous and illegal case brought against Salaita by UIUC to deny him the position he was hired for, to teach in the Department of Native American Studies (yes, the ironies just multiply!)—it is the corporate university that has already lost in the court of public opinion.
Notes.
[1] The UN Human Rights Council formed in 2006 has issued 45 resolutions condemning Israeli actions; the UN’s Security Council has issued dozens of such resolutions, all of which Israel has, to date, flouted with impunity, thanks to blind support from its most powerful ally, the government of the USA. Between 1955 and 1992 alone, the UN issued 65 resolutions against Israel, but to date, Israel remains in contravention of most of them. Israel continues to be in violation of the U.N. Charter, the Geneva Conventions, laws of international terrorism, and other norms of international law.
[2] during its 2014 attacks on Gaza Between 8 July and 27 August, more than 2,100 Palestinians were killed in the Gaza Strip, along with 66 Israeli soldiers and seven civilians in Israel. The UN says the vast majority of Palestinian deaths are civilian.
Fawzia Afzal-Khan is a Professor of English, University Distinguished Scholar, Director of Women and Gender Studies at Montclair State University. She can be reached at: khanf@mail.montclair.edu
Rabbis have declared the killing of Palestinian resistance fighters “a religious duty”, Israeli media reported.
Israeli news website Walla reported that right-wing rabbis replied to questions including: “Am I allowed to kick the insurgent, hit him or shoot him in order to kill him after he has been arrested or is this prohibited?”
Rabbi Rav Benzion Mutzafi replied: “It is not only desirable to do so, but it is a religious duty that you hold his head down to the ground and hit him until his last breath.”
Mutzafi expressed anger towards Rabbi David Staph’s response. Staph said it is prohibited for people to attack a Palestinian perpetrator of an operation after he has been injured or when he is posing no danger. Mutzafi responded: “Do not listen to Staph because those who have mercy on the cruel will end up being cruel toward the righteous.”
Chief Rabbi of the city of Safed, Shmuel Eliyahu called on all Israeli police officers and soldiers who allow Palestinian resistance fighters to live after their arrest:
“It is prohibited to keep the vandal alive after the operation, because if he is left alive, there is a fear that he would be released and then he would kill others,” Eliyahu wrote on Facebook.
For quite some time the British have accepted that British Jewish organizations have hijacked the political discourse. As has happened in other Western countries, the British political establishment has engaged is a relentless rant against antisemitsm. Sometime the focus drifts for a day or two. An alleged ‘Russian nerve gas attack’ provided a 48 hour pause. Occasionally we bomb Arabs in the name of ‘human intervention’ only to realize a day or two later that we have, once again, followed a premeditated foreign agenda. But, somehow, we always return to the antisemitism debate, as if our media and politicians are a herd of flies gravitating to a pile of poop. … continue
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