Students for Justice in Palestine condemns US government witch hunt
Students for Justice in Palestine | 29 December 2010
“For if they take you in the morning, they will be coming for us that night.”
– James Baldwin, in an open letter to Angela Davis, 19 November 1970
As students at over fifty American universities, we unequivocally condemn the abuse of grand jury subpoenas to chill the exercise of First Amendment rights by university students and anti-war activists speaking and organizing against Israel’s continued oppression of the Palestinian people. Since 24 September 2010, the FBI has served at least 24 grand jury subpoenas on students and activists in a secret investigation that many have called a witch hunt. We call upon Attorney General Eric Holder and United States Attorney Patrick Fitzgerald to respect the civil rights and free speech of all those who support the Palestinian struggle for freedom by immediately withdrawing grand jury subpoenas which threaten the First Amendment rights of students and activists around the country.
The government’s assault on organizations and individuals who support the Palestinian struggle for freedom has become increasingly authoritarian. The abuse of laws criminalizing “material support for terrorism” is unprecedented and, had they been implemented at the time of South African apartheid, would have effectively criminalized broad American support for the anti-apartheid movement. At the apparent behest of US Attorney Patrick Fitzgerald, the government today has cast a net so wide that it has entangled journalists, college students, and peace activists. We know that a campaign so indiscriminate will seriously impinge on the First Amendment and other civil rights of people living in the United States. This will, in particular, affect active and outspoken students on university campuses, especially those of Palestinian descent.
It is not only our right but also our moral duty to speak and act against American foreign policy and its destructive impact on innocent people around the world. Today, America unfortunately stands behind Israel’s oppression of the Palestinian people with money, weaponry, and diplomatic support. We seek to reverse this situation so that American foreign policy stands on the side of people who work towards justice. We reject the government’s efforts to isolate the Palestinian people by severing them from their non-violent supporters abroad. Therefore we stand in solidarity with the victims of our government’s campaign both in America and around the globe.
If Attorney Fitzgerald’s campaign marks the morning of a new day, then we are certain of what awaits us in the night. Like Baldwin before us, we live in an age in which silence is not only criminal but suicidal — we shall, therefore, make as much noise as we can.
Signed:
* American University, Students for Justice in Palestine
* Arizona State University, Students for Justice in Palestine
* Bard College, International Solidarity Movement
* Benedictine University, Students for Justice in Palestine
* Boston University, Students for Justice in Palestine
* Brandeis University, Brandeis SJP
* Brooklyn College CUNY, The Palestinian Club
* Columbia University, Students for Justice in Palestine
* Cornell University, United for Peace and Justice in Palestine
* DePaul University, Students for Justice in Palestine
* Eastern Washington University, SLAC
* Florida International University, Students for Justice in Palestine
* George Mason University, Students for Justice in Palestine
* George Washington University, Students for Justice in Palestine
* Georgetown University, Students for Justice in Palestine
* Hampshire College, Students for Justice in Palestine
* Harvard Law School, Middle East Law Students Association
* Harvard University, Alliance for Justice in the Middle East
* Harvard University, Harvard College Palestine Solidarity Committee
* Harvard University, Harvard Law School Justice for Palestine
* Hunter College, Students for Justice in Palestine
* Loyola University, Middle Eastern Student Association
* Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Palestine@MIT
* New York University, Students for Justice in Palestine
* Northeastern Illinois University, Students for Justice in Palestine
* Northwestern University, Students for Justice in Palestine
* Ohio State University, Committee for Justice in Palestine
* Pennsylvania State University, Students for Justice in Palestine
* Rutgers University – New Brunswick, BAKA: Students United for Middle Eastern Justice
* San Diego State University, Students for Justice in Palestine
* School of the Art Institute of Chicago, Students for Justice in Palestine
* Temple University, Temple Students for Justice in Palestine
* Tufts University, Students for Justice in Palestine
* University of Arizona, Students for Justice in Palestine
* University of California, Berkeley, Students for Justice in Palestine
* University of California, Berkeley Law, Law Students for Justice in Palestine
* University of California, Davis, Students for Justice in Palestine
* University of California, Irvine, Students for Justice in Palestine
* University of California, Los Angeles, Students for Justice in Palestine
* University of California, Riverside, Students for Justice in Palestine
* University of California, San Diego, Students for Justice in Palestine
* University of Chicago, Students for Justice in Palestine
* University of Florida, Students for Justice In Palestine
* University of Illinois at Chicago, Students for Justice in Palestine
* University of Maryland, Baltimore County, Students for Justice in Palestine
* University of Michigan, Students Allied for Freedom & Equality
* University of Nebraska, Lincoln, Palestine Solidarity Committee
* University of Pittsburgh, Pitt Students for Justice in Palestine
* University of South Florida, Students for Justice in Palestine
* University of Southern California, Students for Justice in Palestine
* University of Texas at Austin, Palestine Solidarity Committee
* University of Washington, Students for Justice in Palestine
* Vermont Law School, Law Students for Justice in Palestine
* Wellesley College, Justice for Palestine
* Yale University, Yale Students for Justice and Peace in Palestine
Honoring Helen Thomas
By JAMES ABOUREZK | November 22, 2010
These remarks were delivered at a tribute for Helen Thomas, Thursday, November 18, at the Marriott Wardman Park Hotel in Washington DC D.C., sponsored by the American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee (ADC).
I’m very proud to be asked to speak at a tribute to one of the great journalists in the history of this country – Helen Thomas. I say she is a great journalist because she was never cuddled up in the lap of the President – any president – when she was doing her job. She is someone my old friend, I.F. Stone, would be very proud of if he were still alive.
To say that she made a long succession of Presidents uncomfortable with her sharp questioning would be an understatement. Even Barack Obama, who has been advertised as a tolerant man, had to join in the denunciations of Helen. He, along with the others in the press corps, acted very much like children in a school yard. When one of the children falls down, the rest start kicking.
Helen was not necessarily done in by her statement about Israel. What she said is what I’ve been saying for years – the Zionists should get the hell out of Palestine.
Where they go when they leave there is not my concern, just as it is not the Zionists’ concern where the Palestinians went when they were driven out of Palestine. She was done in because she embarrassed the group of lap dogs who call themselves White House reporters. She has been doing what each and every one of them wishes they had the temerity to do – find out what the government is doing to us on a day by day basis.
She has consistently posed serious questions to each administration in turn – questions that affect the financial and emotional and security health of our country. She refused to go along with the game played by the national press – that is, to be very, very polite to the President during his press conferences so that they may stay in the good graces of the government they are supposed to be reporting on.
I’m especially proud because now ADC has been called anti-semitic by the Director of the Bnai Brith Defamation League, Abe Foxman. You remember Dr Johnson’s saying, that patriotism is the last refuge of a scoundrel? Well, anti-semitism has become the last gasp of the worn-out old Zionists who, instead of trying to make America a better place in which to live, make their living snarling at anyone who might criticize what Israel is doing to the Palestinians and to the Lebanese, and to the Syrians.
I once called Alan Dershowitz a snake on Al Manar television. Al Manar is Hezbollah’s news channel in Lebanon. When he found out what I had said, he wrote a column in the Jerusalem post, calling me an anti-Semite. My response has been – to him and to anyone else – that an anti-Semite is synonymous with disliking Jews, and that I do not dislike Jews, I only dislike Alan Dershowitz, and Abe Foxman, and Bibi Netanyahu.
I also know now that I should have apologized to the snakes.
As for Abe Foxman, he is the head of the B’Nai Brith, whose stated mission is to promote tolerance and to fight against racism. He demonstrated that tolerance when he came out bleating that he was opposed to a mosque being built near the World Trade Center site. And he has made a living equating anti-Zionism with anti-Semitism, which, so far as tolerance goes, promotes only hatred and racism.
The truth is, that Israel has very little to do with Judaism, but it has a lot to do with fascism.
For the Zionist supporters of Israel, it’s OK for Israel to kill on the average of at least one Palestinian a day during its illegal occupation;.
It’s OK for Israel to use the million and a half people in Gaza as living targets in a shooting gallery.
It’s OK to bomb Syria and Lebanon any time such an attack is needed to bolster the military credentials of Israel=s politicians.
It’s OK to invade Lebanon whenever they feel like it. In my memory, Israel’s military has killed at least 30,000 civilians in their Lebanon invasions. But lately, with Hezbollah standing up to them, it=s happening on fewer and fewer occasions, and fewer and fewer Lebanese are being slaughtered by Israel.
It’s OK to destroy the olive groves of Palestinian farmers. It’s OK to move them off their land to make room for Jewish settlements.
It’s OK for Israel to send agents to spy on the United States, and it’s OK for the Obama Administration to dismiss charges against those of Israel’s spies who have been caught red-handed.
It’s OK for Israel to commit an act of criminal piracy on the high seas by boarding a ship full of people and food and medicine on their way to help stem the starvation brought on by Israel’s policy in Gaza, and to outright murder 9 people, including an American citizen out on the high seas. Have you heard much lately about the American boy who was assassinated by the Israeli military on board one of those aid ships? Have you wondered why you haven’t heard anything about it from those great American journalists who so bravely ganged up on Helen Thomas?
It’s OK to do all of those things I’ve listed, but it’s not OK to send money and food to Palestinian refugees to help them survive.
And it’s not OK for Helen Thomas to tell Israel to get the hell out of Palestine.
And it’s not OK for anyone else to say that Israel’s illegal occupation of Palestine is wrong and against the law, and that American taxpayers’ money is being used to help Israel commit these crimes against humanity. That kind of criticism brings down calls of “anti-Semitism” from the likes of Foxman and Dershowitz.
As an American citizen, I am deeply worried, among other things, about the direction our government has taken and is taking with respect to its financing of Israel’s crimes. There is no one left in the press corps to ask such questions now that they’ve drummed Helen out of journalism.
Helen’s fatal, and final, sin was, during a discussion of Iran’s nuclear program during a press conference, to ask President Obama if anyone else in the Middle East -beside Iran – has nuclear weapons. Of course, he didn’t answer the question, which probably explains why he joined the chorus of denouncers to drum Helen Thomas out of the White House press room. He simply didn’t want the question coming up again at a future press conference.
But you can easily see the service Helen performed by asking that question. As the Zionists and the Israelis are working very hard to get our country into a war with Iran, there remains almost no voice in the press or in the Congress to call a halt to this madness.
That is why we are all paying tribute to Helen tonight, and I hope, for a long time after this night. We pay tribute to all soldiers who act with bravery, and tonight, we add Helen Thomas to that company. She deserves our thanks, and she deserves the thanks of our nation.
Thank you.
James Abourezk is a former U.S. Senator, who practices law in Sioux Falls. He can be reached at georgepatton45@gmail.com.
Teaching The Oppressed How To Fight Oppression
By Ramzy Baroud | Palestine Chronicle | 23 October, 2010
An American activist once gave me a book she wrote detailing her experiences in Palestine. The largely visual volume documented her journey of the occupied West Bank, rife with barbed wires, checkpoints, soldiers and tanks. It also highlighted how Palestinians resisted the occupation peacefully, in contrast to the prevalent media depictions linking Palestinian resistance to violence.
More recently, I received a book glorifying non-violent resistance, and which referred to self-proclaimed Palestinian fighters who renounced violence as “converts”. The book elaborated on several wondrous examples of how these “conversions” came about. Apparently a key factor was the discovery that not all Israelis supported the military occupation. The fighters realized that an environment that allowed both Israelis and Palestinians to work together would be best for Palestinians seeking other, more effective means of liberation.
An American priest also explained to me how non-violent resistance is happening on an impressive scale. He showed me brochures he had obtained during a visit to a Bethlehem organization which teaches youth the perils of violence and the wisdom of non-violence. The organization and its founders run seminars and workshops and invite speakers from Europe and the United States to share their knowledge on the subject with the (mostly refugee) students.
Every so often, an article, video or book surfaces with a similar message: Palestinians are being taught non-violence; Palestinians are responding positively to the teachings of non-violence.
As for progressive and Leftist media and audiences, stories praising non-violence are electrifying, for they ignite a sense of hope that a less violent way is possible, that the teachings of Gandhi are not only relevant to India, in a specific time and space, but throughout the world, anytime.
These depictions repeatedly invite the question: where is the Palestinian Gandhi? Then, they invite the answer: a Palestinian Gandhi already exists, in numerous West Bank villages bordering the Israeli Apartheid Wall, which peacefully confront carnivorous Israeli bulldozers as they eat up Palestinian land.
In a statement marking a recent visit announcement by the group of Elders to the Middle East, India’s Ela Bhatt, a ‘Gandhian advocate of non-violence’, explained her role in The Elders’ latest mission: “I will be pleased to return to the Middle East to show the Elders’ support for all those engaged in creative, non-violent resistance to the occupation – both Israelis and Palestinians.”
For some, the emphasis on non-violent resistance is a successful media strategy. You will certainly be far more likely to get Charlie Rose’s attention by discussing how Palestinians and Israelis organize joint sit-ins than by talking about the armed resistance of some militant groups ferociously fighting the Israeli army.
For others, ideological and spiritual convictions are the driving forces behind their involvement in the non-violence campaign, which is reportedly raging in the West Bank. These realizations seem to be largely lead by Western advocates.
On the Palestinian side, the non-violent brand is also useful. It has provided an outlet for many who were engaged in armed resistance, especially during the Second Palestinian Intifada. Some fighters, affiliated with the Fatah movement, for example, have become involved in art and theater, after hauling automatic rifles and topping Israel’s most wanted list for years.
Politically, the term is used by the West Bank government as a platform that would allow for the continued use of the word moqawama, Arabic for resistance, but without committing to a costly armed struggle, which would certainly not go down well if adopted by the non-elected government deemed ‘moderate’ by both Israel and the United States.
Whether in subtle or overt ways, armed resistance in Palestine is always condemned. Mahmoud Abbas’ Fatah government repeatedly referred to it as ‘futile’. Some insist it is a counterproductive strategy. Others find it morally indefensible.
The problem with the non-violence bandwagon is that it is grossly misrepresentative of the reality on the ground. It also takes the focus away from the violence imparted by the Israeli occupation – in its routine and lethal use in the West Bank, and the untold savagery in Gaza – and places it solely on the shoulders of the Palestinians.
As for the gross misrepresentation of reality, Palestinians have used mass non-violent resistance for generations – as early as the long strike of 1936. Non-violent resistance has been and continues to be the bread and butter of Palestinian moqawama, from the time of British colonialism to the Israeli occupation. At the same time, some Palestinians fought violently as well, compelled by a great sense of urgency and the extreme violence applied against them by their oppressors. It is similar to the way many Indians fought violently, even during the time that Mahatma Gandhi’s ideas were in full bloom.
Those who reduce and simplify India’s history of anti-colonial struggle are doing the same to Palestinians.
Misreading history often leads to an erroneous assessment of the present, and thus a flawed prescription for the future. For some, Palestinians cannot possibly get it right, whether they respond to oppression non-violently, violently, with political defiance or with utter submissiveness. The onus will always be on them to come up with the solution, and do so creatively and in ways that suit our Western sensibilities and our often selective interpretations of Gandhi’s teachings.
Violence and non-violence are mostly collective decisions that are shaped and driven by specific political and socio-economic conditions and contexts. Unfortunately, the violence of the occupier has a tremendous role in creating and manipulating these conditions. It is unsurprising that the Second Palestinian Uprising was much more violent than the first, and that violent resistance in Palestine gained a huge boost after the victory scored by the Lebanese resistance in 2000, and again in 2006.
These factors must be contemplated seriously and with humility, and their complexity should be taken into account before any judgments are made. No oppressed nation should be faced with the demands that Palestinians constantly face. There may well be a thousand Palestinian Gandhis. There may be none. Frankly, it shouldn’t matter. Only the unique experience of the Palestinian people and their genuine struggle for freedom could yield what Palestinians as a collective deem appropriate for their own. This is what happened with the people of India, France, Algeria and South Africa, and many other nations that sought and eventually attained their freedom.
Related articles
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Israelis attacking children on their way to school
April 2010
Palestinian Children in the rural village of at-Tuwani speak of their encounters with violent Israeli Settlers in the South Hebron Hills of Occupied Palestine.
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Photos of Israeli soldiers humiliating Palestinian detainees disclosed
Occupation soldier leaves threat: “we will be back”
Press TV – October 25, 2010
Israeli troops have abused Palestinian detainees during the 2008-2009 attack on the Gaza Strip, new photos released by a rights group show.
The photos were published on Monday by Breaking the Silence, an Israeli group of veteran combat soldiers who collect testimonies and photos of troops who have served in the occupied territories.
One picture shows a soldier pointing his assault rifle at the face of a blindfolded Palestinian detainee.
Other images show soldiers smiling and posing inside what appears to be Palestinian homes and in one picture a woman in a headscarf is cooking at a stove.
Yehuda Shaul, a founding member of Breaking the Silence, said the group has received dozens of similar pictures that point to a widespread phenomenon.
“It’s the norm in the Israeli military and it’s a direct consequence of being in a place where you control and rule civilians on a daily basis,” he said.
“You become corrupt, and you are not able any more to see them as human beings like you,” he added.
Blindfolded and bound Palestinian girl on her knees with four Israeli soldiers pointing their guns and laughing provocatively
The Israeli military would not immediately comment on the photos.
The Israeli military launched a deadly assault on the beleaguered Gaza Strip at the turn of 2009, killing at least 1,400 Palestinians, most of them women and children.
Photos – IMEMC
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Israeli police look to settlers to fill ranks
First army, now police set for takeover
By Jonathan Cook | October 18, 2010
As US-sponsored peace talks have stalled over the issue of settlements, Israel’s national police force has revealed that it is turning to the very same illegal communities in its first-ever drive to recruit officers from among the settlers.
The special officer training course, which is chiefly aimed at discharged combat soldiers, includes seven months of religious studies in an extremist West Bank settlement.
The programme has provoked widespread concern among Israel’s 1.3 million Palestinian citizens, a fifth of the population.
“The police have already repeatedly demonstrated their hostility to Palestinian citizens, but this move proves that the authorities want to extend and deepen our oppression,” said Jafar Farah, the director of Mossawa, an advocacy centre for the Palestinian minority.
“Is it really credible that these religious extremists who have been educated to hate Palestinians in the West Bank are going to behave differently when they police our communities inside Israel?”
The first 35 cadets in the officer-training programme – known as “Believe in the police” – are to start their studies next month. More than 300 settlers are reported to have expressed an interest in the course so far.
The police command is said to have taken up the idea, originally proposed by right-wing groups, in the hope of reversing years of declining recruitment levels that have led to a national shortage of officers.
Cadets will study for three and a half years, mostly at Haifa University in Israel, at the end of which they will be awarded a degree and the rank of officer.
But their studies also include seven months in a religious seminary in a small extremist settlement, Elisha, deep in the West Bank. Although all the settlements are illegal under international law, Elisha is one of dozens of wildcat settlements also illegal under Israeli law.
Gershom Gorenberg, an expert on the religious settlers, said Israel’s “future police commanders” would graduate from the course after an early lesson in law-breaking.
Yonatan Chetboun, the head of the Raananim movement, a right-wing group overseeing the programme, described to Olam Katan, a newspaper popular with the religious community, one way the organizers might win over settlers to a career in the police.
He said taking potential recruits on night-time patrols of Ramle and Lod – Israeli towns notorious for containing deprived, crime-ridden Palestinian neighbourhoods – would quickly open their eyes to one of “the most meaningful national issues”.
The police spokesman was not available for comment.
A team of rabbis has been appointed to resolve potential conflicts between the settlers’ religious principles and their police duties, which could involve desecrating the sabbath and dealing with “immodest” women.
A right-wing settler activist, Hor Nizri, who has clashed with the police in the past over the evacuation of settlements, has been put in charge of recruiting young settlers.
He told the Yedioth Aharonoth newspaper that the programme was “a historic reconciliation”, adding: “We want to fill the ranks of the police as we fill the ranks of the army.”
His comments have sparked concern among Palestinian groups inside Israel that the programme is the first phase of an attempted settler “takeover” of the police, replicating their growing dominance of sections of the army.
The first official figures on the number of settlers in the Israeli military, released last month, show their massive over-representation in combat units. About a third of all officers in such units were settlers, up from only 2.5 per cent in 1990.
The police hope that a career in the force will be attractive to many of the settlers after they are discharged.
However, Mr Farah said there was plenty of evidence that religious settlers were becoming ever more extreme in their hostility towards Palestinians. He pointed to the growing influence of extremist rabbis in promoting anti-Palestinian views.
Over the summer, two prominent rabbis from the settlement of Yitzhar, near Nablus, were questioned on suspicion of incitement after publishing a book, The King’s Torah, in which they sanctioned the killing of non-Jews, including children. In one passage, the authors write: “There is justification for killing babies if it is clear that they will grow up to harm us.”
The book has been endorsed by a number of senior rabbis in the settlements.
Similar sentiments have been gaining a foothold among army rabbis.
Early last year, in the immediate wake of Israel’s three-week operation in Gaza, it was revealed that the army rabbinate had handed out a booklet to combat soldiers about to enter Gaza calling their attack “a war on murderers” and warning them against “surrendering a single millimetre” of territory.
Some 1,400 Palestinians were killed in the attack, including hundreds of women and children.
The Palestinian minority’s relations with the police are already marked by deep distrust, following the killing of 13 unarmed demonstrators and the wounding of hundreds more in 2000, at the start of the second intifada.
A subsequent state commission of inquiry accused the police command of viewing the minority as “an enemy”.
Mr Farah also pointed to the unexplained deaths of 36 Palestinian citizens by the police over the past decade. In only two cases have police officers been convicted.
Some Israeli observers have expressed concern that the settlers’ greater influence on the police could also make implementing the dismantlement of West Bank settlements much harder in any future peace deal.
Mr Gorenberg said previous evacuations, including the 2005 withdrawal from Gaza, had been handled chiefly by the police because so many army units were dominated by settlers. The police, he added, “could acquire the same weakness”.
A version of this article originally appeared in The National, published in Abu Dhabi.
Israel’s Political Firewall against the Truth
By George Polley | Palestine Chronicle | September 28, 2010
In an article published in the September 6th edition of The Palestine Chronicle (“Imagining Palestinians as Equal”) I began with this quote from novelist Aldous Huxley: “The propagandist’s purpose is to make one set of people forget that certain other sets of people are human.” It is the key to separating out what is blatant propaganda and what is fair and honest communication.
The purpose of Israel’s political firewall is blocking out and discrediting the testimony of the people it abuses on a daily basis and their supporters, through using high level elites.
In my mental health career working with abusive systems was a main interest, and this is classic abusive system behavior. The example I used in the article was The Yale Initiative for the Interdisciplinary Study of Antisemitism (YIISA), formed earlier this year. Billing itself as dedicated to the scholarly research of the manifestations of antisemitism globally, as well as other forms of prejudice, it fits snugly into the propaganda format promoted by Israel’s Reut Institute.
The Friends of Israel Initiative (FII) led by former Spanish PM José María Aznar and directed by Rafael Bardaji, Sr. Aznar’s former national security advisor is a second example. Founded in May of this year, it is made up of a group of high level personalities supported by a large network of influential opinion formers such as William Kristol, Dore Gold, Alan Mendoza, Joao Spada, Eliot Abrams, Allen Roth, Pablo Kleinman, Jeffrey Gedmin, Robin Shepherd, among many others.
Where does FII’s support come from? That is difficult to say, as donors are not listed on their website, and I’ve unable to locate any information about them on the internet, other than they are a dozen private donors from Spain, America, Israel, France, Italy and Britain, and provide the FII with a working budget of almost £1 million a year, which translates to over $1,550,000 US dollars (Source: The Jewish Chronicle Online, July 22, 2010).
FII’s declared purpose is a familiar one if you are familiar with Israel’s propaganda initiatives: Combating “the deligitimization of the State of Israel at home, abroad and inside the institutions of the international community”; publicly showing solidarity with Israel’s democratic institutions which are “the legitimate expression of the Jewish people’s millennial aspiration to live in peace and freedom in its national homeland (emphasis added); supporting Israel’s inalienable right to secure borders “so that its citizens can continue living with the same guarantees that our own societies enjoy; consistently and firmly opposing the prospect of a nuclear armed Iran; working to ensure that Israel is fully accepted as a normal Western country, which they see as “an essential and indivisible part of the Western world to which we belong (emphasis added)”; and “reaffirm[ing] the value of the religious, moral, and cultural Judeo-Christian heritage as the main source of the liberal and democratic Western societies.”
Not one word about the Palestinian people and what has happened to them from 1948 to the present day. Not a single word or syllable anywhere on FII’s website. The clear message is that the Palestinian people do not exist except as terrorists and delegitimizers who refuse to accept Israel’s continued stealing of their lands, murdering their people and treating them like dogs. The sole purpose of the FII is to delegitimize Israel’s critics and dismiss the Palestinians as dogs.
Is this a bit harsh? When the Palestinian people are ignored to this degree, I don’t think it is. The message of The Friends of Israel Initiative is a message that Israel’s propaganda machine very much wants everyone, especially the power brokers in the West to hear … and believe. What the rest of us believe is irrelevant, because to the propaganda machine and power brokers, “the people” do not count. By now that should be eminently clear to anyone who follows the daily news. Am I being needlessly cynical? Sadly, I don’t believe I am.
There is more. Marcello Perla, former president of the Italian Senate remarked at the launch of the FII that Israel was viewed “as the father of human rights”, and that “attacking Israel is attacking the culture of human rights” (The Jewish Chronicle Online, 22 July 2010). (It took me a minute after reading that before I could say “You have got to be joking!”) On FII’s website’s home page, Mr. Perla is quoted as saying that “The campaign of demonization against the State of Israel must stop. All men and women of goodwill should join together to say that enough is enough” (almost a word-for-word quote from the Reut Institute’s report “Building a Political Firewall Against Israel’s Delegitimization”).
On the same date, former Spanish PM José María Aznar published an article in The Jewish Chronicle Online titled “We in the West need to regain moral clarity, complete with a head shot of Sr. Aznar looking very serious and morally clear. Claiming that Israel is an integral part of the West, he makes this astonishing claim: “The one thing setting it apart from the rest of us is its status as the only democracy whose existence has been questioned since inception.” He then makes this incredible, whiplash-inducing statement: “[I]f Israel fell into the hands of its enemies, the West as we know it would cease to exist.” Say what?
Take a moment to sit back and take three deep, slow breaths to clear your mind and unclench your jaw. Go to this link and read the article for yourself, take three deeper, slower breaths to calm the hysterical laughter or rage that’s beginning to well up inside and overwhelm your thinking mind, refocus your eyes and move on.
What Mr. Aznar has done is declare war against Israel’s enemies whom he declares are enemies of the West. Worse, he uses the rhetoric of cultural warfare, a “clash of cultures” between the virtuous West and the evil and cynical Muslim world. This is so bizarre that it makes my hair stand on end. Does he really not see how dangerous this Reut-think is? Are he and his friends fools, or just suicidal idiots bent on dragging all of us into a neocon war to defend a state that, from its inception has been morally indefensible?
We in the west do need to regain moral clarity, which is the point the growing legions of Israel’s critics are making eminently clear. But refusing to even mention the Palestinian people is morally reprehensible to all men and women of good will, to say nothing at all about good sense.
Mahmoud El-Yousseph said it best in a recent article in The Palestinian Chronicle titled “The Hesder Quiz: Where is Israel?”. “‘Where is Israel’?” he asks. “The more accurate answer would be: It is located in the heart of the Arab world. It was built illegally in 1948 on stolen Palestinian land and on the ruin of hundreds of towns and villages that have been erased from the face of the earth so the native inhabitants will never have a chance to return back home and to what is rightfully theirs.”
Until Sr. Aznar and his friends understand that, the West has no moral clarity at all. Moral clarity comes to us courtesy of people like Mahmoud El-Yousseph and others who call Israel out on its racism and violence toward the Palestinian people. To quote from a recent article by Gilad Atzmon, Israeli expatriate, jazz musician and activist, “reconciliation is the surest way to peace.” And this is true wherever injustice exists, which is to say wherever one group of people treat another group or groups of people as if they are nothing at all.
I will say this for Sr. Aznar and his friends: They do know how to parrot their lines. Wouldn’t you love to know who their financial backers are? Now that is a worthy subject for someone to research and publish at least one article on.
– George Polley is a Japan-based writer.
Revered Rabbi Preaches “Slaughter” of Gentile Babies
By JONATHAN COOK | August 2, 2010
Nazareth: A rabbi from one of the most violent settlements in the West Bank was questioned on suspicion of incitement last week as Israeli police stepped up their investigation into a book in which he sanctions the killing of non-Jews, including children and babies.
Rabbi Yitzhak Shapira is one of the leading ideologues of the most extreme wing of the religious settler movement. He is known to be a champion of the “price-tag” policy of reprisal attacks on Palestinians, including punishing them for attempts by officials to enforce Israeli law against the settlements.
So far the policy has chiefly involved violent harassment of Palestinians, with settlers inflicting beatings, attacking homes, throwing stones, burning fields, killing livestock and poisoning wells.
It is feared, however, that Shapira’s book The King’s Torah, published last year, is intended to offer ideological justifications for widening the scope of such attacks to include killing Palestinians, even children.
Although Shapira was released a few hours after his questioning last Monday, dozens of rabbis, as well as several members of parliament, rallied to his side, condemning the arrest.
Shlomo Aviner, one of the settlement movement’s leaders, defended the book’s arguments as a “legitimate stance” and one that should be taught in Jewish seminaries.
But in a sign of mounting official unease at Shapira’s influence on the settlement movement, the Israeli military authorities also threatened last week to enforce a decade-old demolition order on Yitzhar’s seminary, which was built without a permit.
Dror Etkes, a Tel Aviv-based expert on the settlements, said the order was unlikely to be carried out but was a way to pressure Yitzhar’s 500 inhabitants to rein in their more violent attacks.
He said the authorities had begun taking a harder line against Yitzhar only since Shapira and several of his students were suspected of torching a mosque in the neighboring village of Yasuf last December.
“Shapira is trying to redefine the conflict with the Palestinians, turning it from a national conflict into a religious one. That frightens Israel. It doesn’t want to look as though it is fighting the whole Islamic world,” Etkes said.
He added that the rabbi and his supporters were closely associated with Kach, a movement founded by the late Rabbi Meir Kahane that demands the expulsion of all Palestinians from a “Greater Israel”. Despite Kach being banned, officials have largely turned a blind eye as its ideology has flourished in the settlements.
“It may be illegal to call oneself Kach but the authorities are more than tolerant of settlers who hold such views and carry out violent attacks. In fact, what Kahane was doing in the 1980s seems like child’s play compared with today’s settlers.”
In the 230-page book, Shapira and his co-author, Rabbi Yosef Elitzur, also from Yitzhar, argue that Jewish law permits the killing of non-Jews in a wide variety of circumstances. The terms “gentiles” and “non-Jews” in the book are widely understood as references to Palestinians.
They write that Jews have the right to kill gentiles in any situation in which “a non-Jew’s presence endangers Jewish lives” even if the gentile is “not at all guilty for the situation that has been created”.
The book sanctions the killing of non-Jewish children and babies: “There is justification for killing babies if it is clear that they will grow up to harm us, and in such a situation they may be harmed deliberately, and not only during combat with adults.”
The rabbis suggest that harming the children of non-Jewish leaders is justified if it is likely to bring pressure to bear on them to change policy.
The authors also advocate committing “cruel deeds to create the proper balance of terror” and treating all members of an “enemy nation” as targets for retaliation, even if they are not directly participating in hostile activities.
The rabbis appear to be offering justifications in Jewish law for collective punishment and other war crimes of the kind committed by the Israeli army in its attack on Gaza in the winter of 2008.
Pamphlets similarly calling on soldiers to “show no mercy” were distributed by the army’s rabbinate as troops prepared for the Gaza operation, in which 1,400 Palestinians, the majority of them civilians, were killed. Religious settlers have come to dominate many combat units.
An investigation last year by Yesh Din, an Israeli human rights group, found Shapira’s seminary had received government funds worth at least $300,000 in recent years. American and British groups have also contributed tens of thousands of dollars in tax-deductible donations.
According to the Jerusalem Post, the Yitzhar settlers have responded to the demolition order against their seminary by threatening to publish documents showing that the housing and transport ministries were closely involved in the project too.
The settlers have repeatedly rampaged through nearby Palestinian villages, most notoriously in September 2008, when they were filmed shooting at homes in Assira al-Kabaliya, smashing properties and daubing Stars of David on homes. Ehud Olmert, the prime minister of the time, termed the settlers’ actions a “pogrom”.
The same year a religious student from Yitzhar was arrested for firing home-made rockets at Palestinian villages close by.
In April, Yitzhar’s settlers marched through the village of Huwara and pelted a Palestinian family’s home with stones in “reprisal” for the arrest of 11 of their number.
A settler from Yitzhar was questioned last month over the fatal shooting of a 16-year-old Palestinian, Aysar Zaban, in May, reportedly after stones were thrown at the settler’s car. The teenager was shot in the back.
Last week, the settlers attacked Burin, shooting at villagers and burning fields.
In most of these cases, the settlers who were arrested were released a short time later either by the police or the courts. In January, a Jerusalem judge freed Rabbi Shapira for lack of evidence in the arson attack on the mosque.
Yitzhak Ginsburg, an authority on Jewish law and a mentor to Shapira, was questioned by police last Thursday over his endorsement of the book. In the past Ginsburg has praised Baruch Goldstein, a settler who opened fire in Hebron’s Ibrahimi mosque in 1994, killing 29 Palestinian worshippers.
In 2003 Ginsburg was accused of incitement for publishing a book that called for the expulsion of Palestinians from Israel and the occupied territories, but the charges were dropped after he issued a “clarification statement”.
A group calling itself “Students of Yitzhak Ginsburg” recently distributed a leaflet urging Israeli soldiers to “spare your lives and the lives of your friends and show no concern for a population that surrounds us and harms us”.
Kach was founded in 1971 by the late Meir Kahane, an American rabbi who immigrated to Israel. He won a seat in the Israeli parliament in 1984 on a platform of expelling all Palestinians from Israel and the occupied territories. As an MP, he drafted legislation to revoke the Israeli citizenship of non-Jews and ban sexual relations between Jews and gentiles.
The political party was banned from running for the Israeli parliament in 1988 and the movement was outlawed six years later. Although the group is considered a terrorist organization in the United States and most of Europe, its ideology has been allowed to thrive in the settlements.
Today, dozens of rabbis espouse an interpretation of Jewish religious law identical to or worse than Kahane’s.
Michael Ben Ari, a former Kach leader, was elected as an MP last year for the far-right National Union party, which holds four seats in the 120-member parliament.
Avigdor Lieberman, who leads the parliament’s third largest party and is foreign minister, briefly joined the party before it was banned. His own party’s anti-Arab “No loyalty, no citizenship” program includes echoes of Kahane’s ideology.
Jonathan Cook’s website is www.jkcook.net.
Mishaal explains Hamas’s strategy in dealing with the Israeli occupation
Palestine Information Center – 22/07/2010
DAMASCUS: Khaled Mishaal, the head of Hamas’s political bureau, has explained Wednesday that his Movement follows firm and well-studied strategies in dealing with the Israeli occupation, the internal Palestinian social fabric, and the international community.
In an interview with the Jordanian Al-Sabeel newspaper, Mishaal said that his Movement doesn’t reject negotiations with the enemy as an option but he explained that the Israeli occupation is an extraordinary condition being a foreign body implanted in Palestine uprooting millions of Palestinian people out of their homes at gunpoint. Such a situation made negotiation with the Israeli occupation as the only option something unacceptable because it was proven that negotiations without having force to back your stand is a waste of time, he elaborated.
“The Palestinian negotiator now is negotiating with the Israelis, coordinating with them in terms of security, and giving them all that they need for gratis, so what would compel the Israelis in this case to give anything good in return”, Mishaal said stressing that resistance for the Palestinian negotiators must also be a strategic option in order to give strength to their stands.
“Negotiation is a tool and tactic to serve the strategy and not a strategy per se, and at the same time, it is not an alternative for the resistance and the strategy of confronting the occupation,” he underscored, adding that many offers came to Hamas in the past to sit and negotiate with Israeli officials but the Movement refused.
Mishaal also reiterated Hamas’s firm stand not to recognize or give legitimacy to the Israeli occupation in Palestine despite the strong regional and international pressures on the Movement, adding that it is a clear and decisive stand for Hamas.
Nevertheless, he agreed that the Israeli occupation, by searching for and pressing for recognition, knows it was and still is an illegitimate entity that built itself on the ruins and the land of other people, pointing out that the PLO headed by the Fatah faction had recognized the Israeli occupation but reaped nothing for that recognition.
“We want to make it clear for the entire world that we won’t recognize the legitimacy of somebody that usurped and still is usurping our lands, killed and still is killing our people”, The Hamas leader pointed out.
Moreover, Mishaal enumerated a number of reasons for the American and Israeli rejection of Hamas’s proposal of establishing a Palestinian state on the Palestinian lands occupied in 1967 and having a long-term truce with the Israeli occupation without giving it the legitimacy on the rest of the Palestinian land, including the US and Israeli belief that they have the power and the supremacy, the weak Arab and Palestinians who offered them more tempting proposals although at the expense of the legal rights of the Palestinian people, and the incitement from certain Arab and Palestinian parties against the Movement.
Furthermore, Mishaal made it clear that Hamas has no problem with the Jews or Judaism, but it has a problem [with] and fights the Zionists who stole the Palestinian land and expelled its people.
On Hamas’s international relations, Mishaal highlighted the importance of such relations, saying that Hamas exploits its international ties to explain the just Palestinian cause, and to prove that the Zionist project isn’t only dangerous to the Palestinians but rather to the entire world, pointing out that his Movement achieved good results in this regard.
In addition, Mishaal explained that Hamas is a resistance Movement fighting for the liberation of Palestine and doesn’t care how enemies classify it, stressing that Hamas will never abandon the Palestinian national constants and the legal rights of the Palestinian people on their homeland.
He also underlined that Hamas’s battle is against the Israeli occupation and that the Movement had never joined any alliance against any Arab or foreign country.
As far as Hamas’s view toward the Palestinian Christians, Mishaal said that Hamas deals with Palestinian Christians in a brotherly manner and based on the Islamic teaching of respecting their faith, citing a number of Palestinian Christian figures who are struggling for the Palestinian just cause, including Archimandrite Atallah Hanna, and Archimandrite Hilarion Capucci among others.
“Our followers have supported and voted for Christian candidates in Gaza and the West Bank during the PA legislative elections in 2006 like Husam Al-Taweel,” Mishaal emphasized.
Finally, Mishaal stressed the role of Palestinian women in the struggle against the Israeli occupation, adding that Hamas holds Palestinian women in high esteem being partners with the Palestinian men in that struggle, “and we are always working to develop the Palestinian women’s role in this regard”.
“There are tens of Palestinian women incarcerated in the Israeli jails, and many of them are serving long-imprisonment terms”, he said.
No help from Washington
By Nicola Nasser | Palestine Chronicle | July 17, 2010
Palestine Liberation Organisation (PLO) officials in the government of Mohamed Abbas often complain they spend more time negotiating with American rather than Israeli governments. This has been particularly true of late. Since Israel’s all-out assault on Gaza nearly a year and half ago, Palestinian officials have discontinued all direct talks with the Israelis and have been talking to the Americans. US presidential envoy George Mitchell has been closely engaged in the region since May 2010, but his efforts have not proved fruitful.
The Palestinians have had no more luck with the Americans than with the Israelis. They have been consistently asked to accept US-Israeli peace terms that spell disaster and capitulation. Apart from exhausting the Palestinians, and making them edge closer to further concessions, nothing of substance has emerged from talks with either the Americans or the Israelis.
The Americans have sold the Palestinians false hopes, giving Israel the time it needed to grab land and change the demographics of their state-to-be. Now, even the fig leaf of good intentions has fallen.
In a meeting between US President Barack Obama and Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu last Tuesday, the mercy bullet was finally fired, dealing a deadly blow to fantasies of American help.
Palestinian negotiators keep telling us that they have no other option but to negotiate with the Americans. This is not true. The Palestinian people don’t want them to do so, and their fighting spirit is alive and well. When all other options run out, the people will come up with options of their own. It is what people living under foreign occupation have always done, and the Palestinians are no exception.
President Abbas used to tell us that the ball is in Israel’s court. Now Obama has kicked it back into the Palestinian court. Once again, the White House has made it clear that the ball, the court, the referee, and the players should all perform according to American dictates.
The peace process has been at best a US- Israeli PR exercise, at worst a political ruse designed to help the Zionists and undermine the Arabs. The whole aim of the peace process has been to create a fifth column in our midst. At heart, the peace process had no bearing on peace. Fairness was never part of the equation.
It is time the Arabs, especially Palestinian Arabs, called it a day. It is time the admission was made that the peace process has done nothing at all for the peace, security, and development of this region.
Obama was pleased to see Netanyahu, just as George Bush was once thrilled to confer with Ariel Sharon. The words the two presidents used in describing the Israeli dignitaries were almost identical. Sharon was called a “man of peace”. Now Netanyahu seems to be inheriting the title, no matter that a few days earlier he ordered the massacre of peace activists on the Gaza-bound flotilla, no matter that on the same day Obama welcomed him, the Israeli group B’Tselem issued a damning report on the expansion of settlements in the West Bank.
Obama had nothing but praise for the Israeli prime minister. There are no differences between Israel and the US, Obama declared, describing his talks with Netanyahu as “excellent” and his country’s ties with Israel as “extraordinary”. Washington is as committed to Israel’s security as it always was, and the “special ties” as binding as ever, he told US reporters.
For his part, Netanyahu said reports about a schism in US-Israeli relations were just rumours.
To reward Netanyahu for what he described as “progress” toward peace, Obama accepted an invitation to visit Israel.
Does any of this surprise President Mahmoud Abbas?
The only harsh words the American president used were in reference to the Palestinians, whom he advised to stop provoking and embarrassing the Israelis. The Palestinians should stop thinking of “excuses” to tarry on peace and start talking to the Israelis. Any conditions Obama once made on direct talks seem to have been forgotten. The current US position is that the Palestinians should start talks without preconditions.
This is not what President Abbas was hoping to hear. Instead of encouragement, the Palestinians have been admonished and told to behave.
A close associate of President Abbas told Al-Quds Al-Arabi that “all signs suggest that the US administration would press the Palestinian Authority to hold direct talks” without guarantees or preconditions. This is basically what Mitchell has been trying to do throughout his earlier visits to the region.
Now Abbas has to choose. Either he gives way to the Americans, which is what he’s done since Annapolis in 2007, or he gives up on the Americans. In the first case, he would lose any remaining credibility. In the second, he will have to step down. He has gambled everything on negotiations, and now any hope of fruitful talks has evaporated.
The only option left to the Palestinians is resistance and more resistance. It is a course that is not only long and hard, but calls for national unity. The PLO made it into government as a result of resistance and national unity. Now the lack of unity and resistance threaten to banish the PLO into the wilderness, or turn it into a lackey of the occupation authorities.
– Nicola Nasser is a veteran Arab journalist based in Bir Zeit, West Bank of the Israeli – occupied Palestinian territories.
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