Anti-Zionist Notes

the cherpas

2006-03-22T03:17:00.000-05:00

brooklyn-based band the shondes describe themselves as follows:

We are, in a word, Shondes: as queers and trannies, radical activists, three
anti-occupation Jews and a Shiksa, we're shondes to the communties we come
from, and make passionate and political music to say that we're proud to be a
shonde! Our sound is driving and dramatic Rock music, with heavy Classical
influences; imagine Yiddishe spawn of Patti Smith, R.E.M., Sleater Kinney, and
Bach. With drums, bass, guitar, violin, and intertwining vocal melodies, all
instruments are foregrounded in the style of a classical quartet but coalesce
like a rock band to make a fresh and unexpected sound.

sounds good to me. the shondes are playing "chametz rock - a radical jewish passover" on april 15.

pappe on peretz

2006-01-05T12:32:00.000-05:00

"The illusion won't last: all those Israelis who, at great risk to their lives, protest against the apartheid wall, who monitor the roadblocks, who refuse to serve in the army of occupation but instead do everything they can to help the Palestinians living under the yoke of occupation, need a change more significant than any Amir Peretz will bring. And so do the Palestinians, who have not only endured one of the longest and harshest occupations of modern times but have suffered false promises of liberation whenever a leader supposedly committed to peace has emerged in Israel only to show himself committed to Zionism in such a way as to preclude any meaningful chance of solving the conflict."

israel evacuates legal palestinian outpost, leaves hundreds of illegal israeli ones

2006-01-05T12:17:00.000-05:00

an article in haaretz describes how a legal "outpost" - really a caravan - created by palestinian residents of bil'in and a group of peace activists was dismantled. the outpost is located right near hundreds of illegal houses in modiin ilit (upper modiin), an israeli colony. as attorney michael sfard pointed out in a legal challenge to the colony, the occupation authorities should have to explain to the court why the double standard exists.

it's obvious, of course, why the double standard exists - because israel is an apartheid state. but what will the lawyers for israel's government argue?

palestine solidarity conference at georgetown

2006-01-05T12:15:00.000-05:00

FIFTH ANNUAL NATIONAL STUDENT CONFERENCE OF THE PALESTINE SOLIDARITY MOVEMENT

FEBRUARY 17-19, 2006

GEORGETOWN UNIVERSITY

The Palestine Solidarity Movement (PSM) announces that its fifth annual conference will be held February 17th through 19th at Georgetown University in Washington, DC. The annual conference comes to Georgetown’s campus, which possesses a Catholic and Jesuit identity, on the heels of a series of bold initiatives taken by the decision-making bodies of various Christian denominations to consider the use of divestment as a tactic to non-violently influence a just resolution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. The event will be hosted by Georgetown University’s Students for Justice in Palestine (GU-SJP) on behalf of PSM, a coalition of North American organizations dedicated to implementing divestment and boycott strategies as a component of human rights activism in order to realize both equality and justice for all people residing within Israel/Palestine.

palestinian refugee camps web site

2005-12-31T17:36:00.000-05:00

ASWAT - palestinian lesbian group

2005-12-31T15:57:00.000-05:00

a worthy cause

- jazzman

+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+

Happy New Year from ASWAT

Dear Friends and Colleagues,

We at ASWAT wish you a happy new year, a year of liberation, tolerance and acceptance, a year of political activism and love acts, a year of resonating voices and celebrated diversity, a year of sisterhood and cooperation. No more fear, no more occupation, no more oppression, exclusion or racism.

We would like to take this opportunity to remind you that ASWAT's radical voice, vision and ultimately activism is supported by the generosity of funds and individuals. Finding partners that would not hesitate to affiliate with our values is not an easy task. By supporting us, you allow us the autonomy to act against homophobia, occupation and patriarchal values. Your support in us is vital to the continuation of our work.

Support our effort!

Donate directly
Checks may be sent by mail to ASWAT- Kayan or through bank transfer to
The First International Bank of Israel (Bank Ben Leumi Harishon)
20 Hertzel St. Haifa, Israel
Account Number: 00-409-835757

Donor advised tax deducible donation, for Kayan-Feminist Organization-ASWAT, can be made via:
New Israel Fund-
UK: 26 Enford Street London W1H2DD
USA: POB 91588 Washington Dc 20090-1588 USA
Switzerland: PO. Box 425, CH-4010 Basel

ASWAT- Palestinian Gay Women
118 Arlozorov St., Haifa 33276
Tel: +972- 4- 866-2357
Fax: +972-4-864-1072

Sincerely Yours,

Aswat-Palestinian Gay Women
www.aswatgroup.org

bertrand russell on palestinian refugees

2005-08-13T14:43:00.000-04:00

"The tragedy of the people of Palestine is that their country was "given" by a foreign power to another people for the creation of a new state. The result was that many hundreds of thousands of innocent people were made permanently homeless. With every new conflict their numbers increased. How much longer is the world willing to endure this spectacle of wanton cruelty? It is abundantly clear that the refugees have every right to the homeland from which they were driven, and the denial of this right is at the heart of the continuing conflict. No people anywhere in the world would accept being expelled en masse from their country; how can anyone require the people of Palestine to accept a punishment which nobody else would tolerate? A permanent just settlement of the refugees in their homeland is an essential ingredient of any genuine settlement in the Middle East".

"Message from Bertrand Russell to the International Conference of Parliamentarians in Cairo, February 1970." Reprinted in The New York Times, Feb. 23, 1970.

updates on the norman finkelstein site

2005-06-06T12:11:00.000-04:00

there's new material on norman finkelstein's website. most of is is dershowitz-bashing (which, with dershowitz in "panic mode" as finkelstein puts it, is not much of a sport) by norman and by alexander cockburn, but there's also an excerpt from finkelstein's forthcoming memoir (is he old enough to be allowed to write a memoir?).

one bit of news from the cockburn article: michael neumann will be publishing a book, "the case against israel", with counterpunch.

schickelgruber sounds off

2005-06-06T11:51:00.000-04:00

this piece was published in the chain of local magazines published by the israeli tabloid maariv. it appeared in october 2003, and was written under the name "a. schickelgruber". maariv missed the irony, not realizing that "adolf schickelgruber" was the birth name of adolf hitler; nor did they notice that the text consisted of a bunch of quotes from "mein kampf" and other hitler speeches and writings pasted together. after realizing what they had done, they sacked the columnist who wrote the piece, yehuda nuriel. having missed the original irony, maariv's editor amnon denker missed the point of the piece, explaining his termination of nuriel as follows:

"This is an extremely repulsive satire, which means that anyone who opposes Sarbanut (Conscientious Objection) is Hitler, quasi-Hitler, or about to become Hitler. In my view, as an editor of a Jewish newspaper in Israel, it is a horrible act which can not be forgiven, and can not be protected by the right for a free speech."

who says you have to be literate to be the editor of a major publication? here's an english translation of nuriel's piece, as it appeared in harper's magazine in april 2004:

"A brave and moving response to the refusenik pilots. A must read..."

Those who want to live, let them fight, and those who do not want to fight in this world of eternal struggle do not deserve to live.

What we must fight for is to safeguard the existence of our people, the sustenance of our children and the freedom and independence of the fatherland, so that our people may mature for the fulfillment of the mission allotted it by the creator. The world has no reason for fighting in our defense, and as a matter of principle God does not make cowardly nations free.

Our nation wants peace because of its fundamental convictions. We want peace also owing to the realization of the simple primitive fact that no war would be likely essentially to alter the distress in our region. The principal effect of every war is to destroy the flower of a nation. We need peace and desires peace!

The war against our enemies cannot be conducted in a knightly fashion. This struggle is one of ideologies and will have to be conducted with unprecedented, unmerciful and unrelenting harshness. Man has become great through struggle. Whatever goal, man has reached is due to his originality plus his brutality. If you do not fight, life will never be won. The man who has no sense of history is like a man who has no ears or eyes. It must be thoroughly understood that the lost land will never be won back by solemn appeals to God, nor by hopes in any United Nations, but only by the force of arms.

A single blow must destroy the enemy, without regard of losses. A gigantic all-destroying blow. Success is the sole earthly judge of right and wrong.

There is a road to freedom. Its milestones are Obedience, Endeavor, Honesty, Order, Cleanliness, Sobriety, Truthfulness, Sacrifice, and love of the Homeland. Universal education is the most corroding and disintegrating poison that “liberalism” has ever invented for its own destruction. One of the worst symptoms of decay was the increasing cowardice in the face of responsibility, as well as the resultant self-hatred in all things.

In actual fact the pacifistic-humane idea is perfectly all right perhaps when one law rules the world. Therefore, first struggle and then perhaps pacifism. Pacifism as the idea of the State, international law instead of power - all are means to unman the people. They hold India up to us as a model and what is called 'passive resistance.' True, they want to make an India of us, a folk of dreams which turns away its face from realities, in order that they can oppress it for all eternity.

What food did our press dish out to the people before the violent events? Was it not the worst poison that can even be imagined? Wasn't the worst kind of pacifism injected into the heart of our people at a time when the rest of the world was preparing to throttle us, slowly but surely? Even in peacetime didn't the press inspire the minds of the people with doubt in the right of their own state? Was it not the press which knew how to make the absurdity of 'democracy?'

A concerted and all-embracing attack must be made on unemployment in order that the working class may be saved from ruin. Within four years unemployment must be finally overcome. At the same time the conditions necessary for a revival in trade and commerce are provided. Theater, art, literature, cinema, press, posters, and window displays must be cleansed of all manifestations of our rotting world and placed in the service of a moral, political, and cultural idea.

The required message does not have multiple shadings; it has a positive and a negative; love or hate, right or wrong, truth or lie, never half this way and half that way. This is the very first condition which has to be fulfilled in every kind of public relations: a systematically one-sided attitude towards every problem that has to be dealt with. The best means of defense is attack.

Ours is not a warlike nation. It is a soldierly one, which means it does not want a war, but does not fear it. It loves peace but also loves its honor and freedom. We will never allow anyone to divide this people once more into camps, each fighting the other. The world will not help, the people must help themselves. Its own strength is the source of life. That strength the Almighty has given us to use; that in it and through it, we may wage the battle of our life. May God Almighty give our work His blessing, strengthen our purpose, and endow us with wisdom and the trust of our people. Lord God, let us never hesitate or play the coward.

If we are forced to send the flowers of the nation into the hell of war without the smallest fear, then surely we have the right to remove millions of another race that breeds like vermin. For we are fighting not for ourselves but for the whole country.
A. Schicklgruber

checkpoint syndrome

2005-06-06T11:07:00.000-04:00

duplication alert: i copied this straight from angry white kid's blog. more context and details, including how to get the full text of "checkpoint syndrome", now available in english for the first time, can be read on his blog.

CHECKPOINT SYNDROME
By Liran Ron Furer

GAZA 1997

I was very excited, that first time on a checkpoint. We were all quite stressed. We were polite to the Arabs, we checked each car thoroughly. The Arabs immediately sensed that we were new recruits to the job. They asked us which unit we belonged to and how long we were going to stay. They smiled at us with their special derisory smiles when we let them go, though sometimes they hooted to make us nervous or frighten us. It took some time, but we soon learned how to work at the checkpoint. We felt more at ease, the Arabs didn't frighten us so much any more, gradually we realized that it was they that had to be frightened not us. After all, it was in our hands whether or not they were going to reach their place of work on time. It was we who could make their life very difficult. Someone told us that the more the Arabs were afraid of us the more order there would be at the checkpoint. As time passed we discovered that he was right.

*

Today we taught the Arabs at the checkpoint to sing "Alinor". Eli checked the documents of an old twisted Peugeot and noticed that the driver looked exactly like Zohar. He took out a camera and took his picture. Then he dragged him out of the car and started to sing songs from Zohar's repertoire and made the Arab sing with him, without the lyrics of course. The Arabs who sat in the car were laughing. Then the crazy Eli shouted at them: "What are you laughing at? Start singing too!". The Arabs got frightened and started to sing. We dragged them out of the car and arranged them in a line, like a choir. I tried to teach them the lyrics:
"…Aaaalinor, you are beautiful, like an angel…"
What a sight to see these Arabs singing a song of Zohar Argov. It was like in a movie.

*

The Arabs hate us because we built a State over their heads, and now we sit on top of them with these checkpoints. We have taken away their will to live and this is why they turn into terrorists, to fight us and to resist. They bomb our buses and restaurants. This is a vicious circle and everybody suffers in the end. So what does it matter? What is certain is that in a situation like this it is better to be us, the Jews.

*

We sat in the back of the jeep with our feet pressing on top of this Arab. He was lying there with his feet sticking out from the jeep. We drove and the Arabs were standing at the side of the road and watching. Our Arab was lying silently but you could hear that he was crying quietly to himself. His head was actually lying on my jacket. He was bleeding and his blood was running making a puddle of blood mixed with saliva. It disgusted me and made me angry so I caught his hair and turned his head on one side. He gave a loud cry so, to silence him, we stepped on his back more forcefully. This silenced him for a while and then he started to cry again. We came to the conclusion that he was mental or mad for certain. The company commander told us on the phone to bring him to the base. "You did fine, tigers…" He was just teasing us.

*

Today I was really nervous. The heat and the flies at the checkpoint, I felt as if I was going mad, I hit an Arab again without a reason - he tried to cross the checkpoint without papers. Still, I might have gone a bit over the top. I put him in the shed (so that others would not see) and started to hit him with my fists straight into his face, and kicked him all over his body. I don't think he will lodge a complaint against me (I remember his face well), but I mustn’t do that sort of thing. I’ve got to restrain myself, I should not let wickedness rule over me. I shouldn't let these vicious urges get the better of me.

where is the non-violent palestinian protest?

2005-06-04T19:40:00.000-04:00

a couple of years ago, i attended a talk by four members of jews against the occupation - NYC, three of whom discussed their trips to israstine with the international solidarity movement. there was a large and hostile zionist turnout, which dominated the Q & A period, as usual, with questions that were disguised attacks rather than understanding-enhancing queries.

the most memorable question was, "why don't the palestinians adopt non-violent forms of resistance, instead of bombing israeli civilians?". it was memorable because most of the panel's discussion had been about precisely that: the non-violent forms of resistance initiated by palestinians and supported by the ISM - and suppressed with considerable brutality by the israeli occupation forces. panelist ora wise lambasted the questioner for being so brainwashed as to miss the central point of the presentation.

what follows is a press release from al-mubadara - the palestinian national initiative - a political party that i've blogged about several times. it describes just one more instance in which the israeli army unleashes its brutality against a nonviolent demonstration, and just another instance of prominent palestinian political figure and humanitarian mustapha barghouti being physically assaulted at one of these demonstrations.

Press Release

Over 15 people injured, including Dr. Mustafa Barghouthi, by Israeli Occupation Forces during an Anti-Wall Demonstration in Bil’in

Friday, 3 June 2005

Dr. Mustafa Barghouthi, the head of Al Mubadara, the Palestinian National Initiative, was amongst tens of demonstrators injured by Israeli Occupation Forces (IOF) at a non-violent demonstration against the construction of Israel’s Apartheid Wall in Bil’in village (West-Ramallah) earlier today.

Dr. Barghouthi was participating in a non-violent, civilian demonstration together with Palestinian, Israeli and international activists against the construction of the Apartheid Wall, that stands in breach of the International Court of Justice’s ruling in July 2004, declaring the construction of the Wall and its associated regime illegal.

During the demonstration the Israeli military began firing rubber bullets, tear gas and sound bombs at demonstrators. Over 15 demonstrators were injured after being beaten by IOF soldiers and tens of others suffered breathing difficulties after inhaling the smoke from tear gas bombs. Among the injured was Dr. Mustafa Barghouti. He sustained injury at his left leg as a result.

Since the construction of the Wall began weekly non-violent demonstrations have been taking place in Bil’in. Until today over 1,500 dunums of agricultural land have been seized and there are plans to confiscate at least an additional 1,000 dunums as construction of the Wall continues. Although Israel has to freeze its colonial expansion and dismantle its illegal settlements, in accordance with international humanitarian law, the route of the Wall near Bil'in has specifically been designed to incorporate the new settlement Menura, and the expansion of the existing settlement Kiryat Sefer.

To date, approximately one third of the construction of the Apartheid Wall has been completed, with only 20 percent running along the Green Line. When completed, the Wall will stretch 670 kilometers, eating into 46 percent of the land of the West Bank.

The Palestinian people call on the international community, as High Contracting parties to the 4^th Geneva Convention, to pressurize Israel to bring an immediate halt to its illegal construction of the Apartheid Wall, according to the Advisory Opinion of the International Court of Justice and to launch an inquiry into the continuous assaults by the IOF against Palestinian non-violent demonstrations, as today.

azmi bishara on patience

2005-06-02T21:53:00.000-04:00

interesting article.

al awda newspaper out

2005-05-31T19:46:00.000-04:00

the first issue of "al-awda: voices of resistance and liberation" has just been released, and it looks good. those folks at new jersey solidarity have got energy if they've got anything.

jewishspeak

2005-05-16T09:32:00.000-04:00

an oldie but a goodie from jewish women watching, a feminist organization which works to hold the american jewish (secular and religious) leadership accountable to women, gays, and others who have traditionally been excluded. this issue of jewishspeak parodies the crap that we get from our elite leadership about the israel-palestine conflict.

features:

- dissent: is it good for the jews? major jewish organizations say "no"
- hillel horrified: pro-israel indoctrination not fully effective
- new study shows: palestinian heads just not shaped for democracy
- voices from birthright: because i deserve it!
- calling student activists: 7 ways YOU can save israel
- warning signs that your professor may be a terrorist

zionism and hindutva

2005-05-15T17:11:00.000-04:00

i've taken some time off from challenging to, among other things, do some challenging of hindutva - the semi-fascist ideology of hindu supremacy. here's a slightly old essay by vijay prashad discussing the political and military connections between india and israel.

a selection:

The fantasy entertained by the Hindu Right government is that an alliance with the world's lions (USA-Israel) will allow India to sup at High Table, to eat high on the hog. Certainly the expectation is that trade will follow the military tie-up.
For that reason, we see a wholesale sell-out by the Hindu Right to US-Israeli foreign/military policy objectives.

and here is a piece by raja harish swamy that analyzes the two ideologies in greater depth.

gains for the PNI

2005-05-15T16:57:00.000-04:00

the palestinian national initiative - endorsed by the late edward said and led by dr. mustapha barghouti - has made gains in the first set of local elections in which it fielded candidates.

highlights include:

Almubadara and its coalition of independent personalities were able to win nine seats from a total of eleven seats in Beit Lid.

Almubadara and its coalition were also able to win seven seats from a total of thirteen seats in Anabta, in which the political movement of Fateh had won five seats and Hamas only one.

Almubadara and its other coalition of the Popular front of liberation of Palestine (PFLP) won four seats in the village of Surda while Fateh and Hamas each one two seats respectively.

The democratic coalition which includes Almubadara as well as the independent figures won eight seats from a total of eleven seats in Hajja village near Qalqilya.

lies, damned lies, and dershowitzisms

2005-05-04T18:22:00.000-04:00

samer elatrash writes about alan dershowitz's lies:

Dershowitz has chutzpah. That’s the title of one of his tedious books, and that’s Norman Finkelstein’s conclusion in his upcoming book Beyond Chutzpah, which demonstrates the banality of the mendacious intellectual using the example of Alan Dershowitz’s The Case for Israel.

and here's a pretty funny question-and-answer about dershowitz from an interview with finkelstein:

Q: You recently debated Alan Dershowitz on Democracy Now; do you think he represents one of the main archetypes of the evil of America?

Finkelstein: If he is, then he is a representation of Hannah Arendt's banality of evil. You want to believe that there is something profound in evil. But evil has no depth. Look at Adolf Eichman; he could have been a vacuum salesman. Yes Dershowitz is evil, a vacuum salesman at Harvard.

blog spotted

2005-05-02T18:48:00.000-04:00

do unto others as they do unto you. antony loewenstein, a journalist/writer who blogs about politics, including middle east politics, linked to me so i'm returning the favor. check it out.

report from caterpillar shareholder meeting

2005-04-27T22:25:00.000-04:00

this came over a listserve.

>
> Dear Supporter:
>
> All of us at JVP, especially the members of the
> Caterpillar committee, are just catching our breath
> after the build-up to the Caterpillar annual meeting
> in Chicago on April 13. Still, we couldn't wait to
> let you know what happened. We're simply ecstatic
> about the work of diverse groups that came together
> to call on CAT to end the sale of weaponized
> bulldozers to the Israeli military, including Stop
> Caterpillar-Chicago, US Campaign to End the
> Occupation, the Sisters of Loretto, Mercy Investment
> Group, Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch.
>
> On the global front, protests were held in over 30
> cities around the world, bringing massive attention
> to CAT's role in profiting from violating human
> rights and perpetuating the occupation.
>
> Shareholder resolutions are non-binding, so the goal
> is not to win all the votes but rather to shine a
> spotlight on the issue -- a spotlight that cannot be
> ignored by CAT board of directors. In that,we were
> successful beyond our wildest dreams.
>
> The issue of home demolitions of Palestinian homes
> dominated the entire meeting, ensuring that the
> staff and board of directors of CAT will be dealing
> with this issue for a long time to come. CAT CEO Jim
> Owens spent the majority of the meeting asking,
> "Does anyone have anything else to talk about,
> anything related to business?" Of course the only
> business that most people attending wanted to talk
> about was home demolitions and sales to the Israeli
> military.
>
> Three people from the American Jewish Congress and
> Stand With Us also attended the meeting. JVP
> Co-Director Liat Weingart spoke to Rosz Rothstein,
> the representative from Stand With Us, who
> shockingly told Weingart that Palestinians do not
> own their land. "What do they expect will happen if
> they build a house in Yosemite? If you build on land
> that isn't yours, how can you expect that it won't
> be demolished?" We took heart in the knowledge that
> AJCongress and Stand With Us are out of touch with
> both the US administration's understanding of the
> conflict and with mainstream American Jewish
> opinion, which is much more peace-minded and
> respectful of human rights.
>
> JVP board member Sara Norman gave a stunning speech
> to introduce our shareholder resolution, saying that
> investigating CAT bulldozers' role in destroying
> civilian homes is "responsible corporate
> decision-making." Our resolution got 3% of the vote,
> meaning we won the support of investors holding
> close to 3/4 billion dollars of CAT stock, including
> CalPERS, the largest pension fund in the world.
> Finally, we achieved feature coverage in dozens of
> media outlets throughout the world including the LA
> Times, the Jerusalem Post and Haaretz, the
> Associated Press, and Reuters. One of America's most
> respected business programs, NPR's Marketplace, also
> featured the campaign as the second story on their
> evening program on April 13. As the Chicago Tribune
> reported, CAT suffered a "punishing public relations
> campaign" this past year.
>
> The campaign is starting to have a clear financial
> impact on the company. Whereas in 2001, only 3
> stories ran in major media connecting CAT bulldozers
> with human rights abuses, already in the first
> quarter of 2005, 275 similar stories have run in
> major English language publications. One commentator
> documented that CAT stock went down by 8.5% on the
> week of the shareholder vote, as compared to a 6%
> decrease for competitor John Deere. On the week of
> an annual meeting, it's very unusual that a
> company's stock decrease, rather than increase,
> given that the focus of an annual meeting is to
> highlight the strengths and accomplishments of the
> company.
>
> Now, with partners all over the world taking action
> to stop CAT sales to the Israeli military and to
> divest from corporations that irresponsibility
> profit from the occupation, the tide is starting to
> turn.
>
> Cecilie Surasky
> Jewish Voice for Peace

labor for palestine

2005-04-27T11:18:00.000-04:00

sorry aboutthe lapse in postings. i've been up to my eyeballs in university politics and in preparing a presentation for an academic conference.

today's featured organization is labor for palestine. the large US unions like the AFL-CIO have a long and shameful history of support for US imperialism, and their israel policy is no exception.

the AFL-CIO has about $5 billion invested in israel bonds. my own union, the united auto workers, is much less bad than the AFL-CIO, at least in terms of material support for israel, but doesn't challenge israel in any way. this despite israel's attacks on palestinian workers, and its stoking of racism - both between jews and arabs, and between ashkenazi and mizrahi jews - that hurts workers' unity. in a more sensible world, unions would be leading the charge to divest from israel, rather than cheering it on.

labor for palestine seeks to bring about a change in labor's attitudes towards israel. there's already a lot of skepticism in the rank-and-file, which needs to translate into a change of attitude at the top. to that end, LFP is having an educational conference on labor and the israel/palestine issue, ahead of the AFL-CIO's convention in chicago this summer.

relative humanity

2005-02-27T07:59:00.000-05:00

those who don't believe that the conflict between israel and the palestinians is a case of imperialism or colonialism need to explain the U.S. media's different valuations of israeli and palestinian lives. teddy roosevelt sums the attitude up:

'[A] Conquest may be fraught with evil or with good for mankind, according to the comparative worth of the conquering and conquered peoples.'

- Theodore Roosevelt

this double standard - essentially white supremacy, with israelis defined as white and palestinians as other - is most clearly on display when palestinians resume violence against israeli civilians after a period of refraining from it. universally in the establishment media, this is portrayed as shattering the truce or the calm. the assumption, and therefore the message, is that the israeli crimes that the palestinians held back their response to - killings, woundings, house demolitions, colony construction, wall construction - were not violations of the truce or disturbances of the calm, because what we value is calm for israelis not palestinians - peace for the whites, not for the colonized.

thus, the recent bombing in tel aviv, possibly carried out by islamic jihad, was universally reported as shattering the calm, but the same is not true of the 170 israeli killings of palestinians since the last such bombing in november.

if americans knew conducts studies of reporting of israeli vs. palestinian deaths in the US print media. the consistent conclusion is that israeli deaths are reported much more prominently than palestinian deaths. the executive director, alison weir, writes here about the LA times' coverage of the recent bombing.

here's a challenge to those who disagree with the colonialist/imperialist analysis: is there any other way to understand these facts?

a new call for divestment

2005-02-24T21:35:00.000-05:00

the world council of churches, which consists of most non-catholic christian denominations, voted to consider selective divestment from israel.

newsday reports that "jewish groups" are furious:

"Here you have Mahmoud Abbas and Ariel Sharon reaching out to one another in peace, and the WCC is trying to slap people down," said David Elcott, interfaith director for the American Jewish Congress in New York, referring to the Palestinian and Israeli leaders. "The timing couldn't be more embarrassing."

we see here one of the purposes of sharon's "reaching out". the settlements continue to be built, the apartheid wall continues to be built, but the notion that these crimes should be met with international sanctions has to be discarded because we're in a time of peace.

israeli AG reverses land theft

2005-02-02T11:44:00.000-05:00

israeli attorney-general meni mazuz has reversed the decision by a couple of cabinet members - natan sharansky and zevulun orlev - to apply the absentee property "law" to residents of east jerusalem.

he offered some technical explanation, but his clearly stated motive is to "avoid opening new fronts in the international arena in general, and in particular in the arena of international law." probably a smart move for the zionist state: if the international community started to consider the legality of the absentee property "law", it could lead to a court battle and an order to israel to compensate the refugees by returning their stolen property, which would leave israel with much less land. moreover, as mezuz points out, since the decision was effectively a result of the apartheid wall that the world has condemned, it strengthens the case against israel on a front where it's already on shaky ground.

orlev - who i'm not familiar with but is evidently a likudnik nut - strongly condemned the attorney general's pragmatism:

MK Zevulun Orlev defended the original decision yesterday, and declared that Mazuz's move is "the suicide of the Jewish state. The absentee property law has existed on the books for many years, and the attorney general is also subject to it," said Orlev. "The time has come to put an end to the inferiority complex and the apologies."

the fascist types who view any sort of caution or compromise as an indication of an inferiority complex always seem to be projecting their own inferiority complexes.

palestinian children & israeli criminals - together at last

2005-02-01T18:41:00.000-05:00

i'm passing this along. it comes from a person who is in touch with the palestinian prisoner association.

According to reports by the Palestinian Prisoner Association, 6 Palestinian children political prisoners, including 15 year old Bayan Najajrah, have been placed in a prison reserved for Israeli criminals serving long-term sentences. They include criminals convicted of murder and other capital crimes. According to Bayan's mother, the children are being terrorized by the Israeli prisoners who steal their foods, bang on the walls and doors of their rooms during the night, and beat them every now and then. Bayan was recently assaulted by some of the prisoners.

on so-called "torture" in detention centers

2005-01-27T11:15:00.000-05:00

scott horton writes:

"This so-called ill treatment and torture in detention centers, stories of which were spread everywhere among the people, and later by the prisoners who were freed ... were not, as some assumed, inflicted methodically, but were excesses committed by individual prison guards, their deputies, and men who laid violent hands on the detainees."

Most people who hear this quote today assume it was uttered by a senior officer of the Bush administration. Instead, it comes from one of history's greatest mass murderers, Rudolf Hoess, the SS commandant at Auschwitz. Such a confusion demonstrates the depth of the United States' moral dilemma in its treatment of detainees in the war on terror.

full article here.

lest we forget...

2005-01-27T11:09:00.000-05:00

today is the 60th anniversary of the liberation of auschwitz-birkenau concentration/death camp, where three of my grandparents spent time in their youth. i'm suppressing my anger that mass murderers like dick cheney are scoring political points by pretending to pay their pretended respects, in the interests of the more important thing, which is remembering.

photos from palestine

2005-01-26T20:32:00.000-05:00

check 'em out.

web resource: IHL in the occupied palestinian territory

2005-01-26T20:29:00.000-05:00

lots of documents about international humanitarian law. free registration required.

a fraud fit for... a prime minister?

2005-01-26T20:16:00.000-05:00

a few days ago i blogged about the martin luther king hoax - the fabricated letter in which dr. king denounces anti-zionism as anti-semitism. today, in his disgraceful speech at the knesset's commemoration of the 60th anniversary of the liberation of auschwitz, prime minister ariel sharon cited the fake letter.

"Many of the manifestations of anti-Semitism in the past years are no longer aimed just at Jews as individuals. Rather, they are aimed at the embodiment of all Jews - the State of Israel, the Jewish state. As early as 1967, in A Letter to an Anti-Zionist Friend, Dr. Martin Luther King wrote that anti-Zionism is no less than disguised anti-Semitism.

I quote, "The times have made it unpopular in the West, to proclaim openly a hatred of the Jews. This being the case, the anti-Semite must constantly seek new forms and forums for his poison. He does not hate the Jews, he is just anti-Zionist! My friend, when people criticize Zionism, they mean Jews - make no mistake about it.""

the stock market speaks

2005-01-25T09:40:00.000-05:00

i wrote up a post in prose, but as i went to save the draft, blogger fucked it up and i lost it. i don't have time or energy to do it again (i'm lying in bed on tuesday morning) , so i'll write it up in point form.

- israel has been assassinating palestinian political and military leaders
- this is criminal activity - it clearly violates the 4th geneva convention, but this post is about the pragmatics of it
- israel: these assassinations are justified on the grounds that they increase security
- sensible people: they undermine israeli security by inviting retaliation
- israeli stock market (new study): they undermine israeli security.
- the facts: the israeli stock market dips immediately after israel assassinates palestinians political leaders, suggesting that the ruling class anticipates a worsened security situation.
- confirming this explanation for the drop is the differential between different sorts of companies. while retail companies are reduced in value, companies producing perimeter defense products soar. in fact, their response to assassination of palestinian political leaders is twice as strong as their response to palestinian attacks - a 5.6% rise as opposed to a 2.7% rise. unfortunately the article doesn't go into details on these differences
- the palestinian stock market dips after attacks on israeli civilians, suggesting the same conclusions.
- the israeli market - and perimeter defense products - improve after assassinations of military, as opposed to political figures, suggesting that the israeli rulers believe that these actually improve the security situation.

let america be america again

2005-01-22T22:43:00.000-05:00

a poem by gay (probably) black american,  langston "what happens to a

dream deferred?" hughes, published in 1936.



it was read at various protests against bush's inauguration.

Let America be America again.

Let it be the dream it used to be.

Let it be the pioneer on the plain

Seeking a home where he himself is free.



(America never was America to me.)



Let America be the dream the dreamers dreamed--

Let it be that great strong land of love

Where never kings connive nor tyrants scheme

That any man be crushed by one above.



(It never was America to me.)



O, let my land be a land where Liberty

Is crowned with no false patriotic wreath,

But opportunity is real, and life is free,

Equality is in the air we breathe.



(There's never been equality for me,

Nor freedom in this "homeland of the free.")



Say, who are you that mumbles in the dark?

And who are you that draws your veil across the stars?



I am the poor white, fooled and pushed apart,

I am the Negro bearing slavery's scars.

I am the red man driven from the land,

I am the immigrant clutching the hope I seek--

And finding only the same old stupid plan

Of dog eat dog, of mighty crush the weak.



I am the young man, full of strength and hope,

Tangled in that ancient endless chain

Of profit, power, gain, of grab the land!

Of grab the gold! Of grab the ways of satisfying need!

Of work the men! Of take the pay!

Of owning everything for one's own greed!



I am the farmer, bondsman to the soil.

I am the worker sold to the machine.

I am the Negro, servant to you all.

I am the people, humble, hungry, mean--

Hungry yet today despite the dream.

Beaten yet today--O, Pioneers!

I am the man who never got ahead,

The poorest worker bartered through the years.



Yet I'm the one who dreamt our basic dream

In the Old World while still a serf of kings,

Who dreamt a dream so strong, so brave, so true,

That even yet its mighty daring sings

In every brick and stone, in every furrow turned

That's made America the land it has become.

O, I'm the man who sailed those early seas

In search of what I meant to be my home--

For I'm the one who left dark Ireland's shore,

And Poland's plain, and England's grassy lea,

And torn from Black Africa's strand I came

To build a "homeland of the free."



The free?



Who said the free?  Not me?

Surely not me?  The millions on relief today?

The millions shot down when we strike?

The millions who have nothing for our pay?

For all the dreams we've dreamed

And all the songs we've sung

And all the hopes we've held

And all the flags we've hung,

The millions who have nothing for our pay--

Except the dream that's almost dead today.



O, let America be America again--

The land that never has been yet--

And yet must be--the land where every man is free.

The land that's mine--the poor man's, Indian's, Negro's, ME--

Who made America,

Whose sweat and blood, whose faith and pain,

Whose hand at the foundry, whose plow in the rain,

Must bring back our mighty dream again.



Sure, call me any ugly name you choose--

The steel of freedom does not stain.

From those who live like leeches on the people's lives,

We must take back our land again,

America!



O, yes,

I say it plain,

America never was America to me,

And yet I swear this oath--

America will be!



Out of the rack and ruin of our gangster death,

The rape and rot of graft, and stealth, and lies,

We, the people, must redeem

The land, the mines, the plants, the rivers.

The mountains and the endless plain--

All, all the stretch of these great green states--

And make America again!

old apartheid law used in massive land grab

2005-01-22T22:00:00.000-05:00

thought race-based thievery by states was a thing of the past? then you're not giving israeli enough credit for its audacity.

a correpondent for ha'aretz reports that last july, israel quietly applied the absentee property law to palestinians living in east jerusalem - a fact that only emerged in the last few days. this "law" had been used following the conquest of israel in 1948 to transfer the land, which had mostly been owned by individual palestinians, to the state of israel. this was one of the key race-based "laws" that facilitated the conversion of a palestinian country into a jewish one. (i use scare quotes around words like "law" because it's questionable whether such apartheid policies are legal, even when enacted by states.)

the haaretz article misleads by leaving out the racial character of the "law". it's bad enough that it lets the state steal people's land, but what makes it worse is that it applies to palestinians but not to jews. in this way it is a key plank of the apartheid system, as described by uri davis in two books: israel: an apartheid state, and apartheid israel: possibilities for the struggle within.

one ironic bit of this is that the "law", as its name suggests, was originally promulgated to strip property away from actual absentees - people who, due to being expelled, were not able to be on their land. some of the "absentees" were eventually able to return to israel in one way or another, but were still classified as absentees in order to deprive them of their property - in fact, they are classified with the oxymoron "present absentees". with the application of the "law" to east jerusalem, all of the "absentees" are actually present, and in fact had no idea that it had been stolen from them until the state routed the apartheid wall between their homes and their erstwhile fields. when they went to complain, they were informed that the fields were no longer theirs, as they are "absentees".

the best part of the haaretz article is the candidness of an israeli official, nailing the reality of the israeli "legal" system:

"It's not fair that a man becomes an absentee because his tie to his land has been cut without his doing. But morality is one thing, and what is written in our laws another."

avigail abarbanel on what "peace" really means to israelis

2005-01-19T11:15:00.000-05:00

avigail abarbanel, a psychotherapist by trade, applies her skills to the analysis of the psychological aspects of the israel/palestine conflict. here's part of a text that i lifted from thecutter's weblog.

In family therapy there is an accepted principle that unless serious injustices are addressed, there cannot be real peace. Families that protect dark secrets always pay a heavy price. I watched Israeli intellectuals on TV engage in genuine discussion trying to analyse and understand why things are so bad in Israel. They raised every possible reason for the situation other than the most obvious one – Israel’s history. It was excruciating to watch but also familiar. I have never seen a society so steeped in denial as Israeli society.

The entire spectrum of Israeli politics is in denial about Israel’s history and this is why I do not have much faith in the Israeli Left. The handful that are not in denial like Dr Ilan Pappe who visited Australia last year, or Dr Uri Davis exist outside this spectrum. Their research into the events of 1948 and the circumstances surrounding the birth of the state of Israel is not discussed on public television and is not in Israeli history books. The average Israeli does not even know who they are. Although published by reputable publishers like Cambridge University Press, Dr Pappe’s books have so far been refused publication in Hebrew. The reason offered is that they lack academic merit... The way most Israelis perceive their own history is as if they have always been the weak victim. The question of whether or not it was morally right or even wise to create a state at the expense of another people is never raised.

the destruction of gaza

2005-01-19T11:02:00.000-05:00

peter hansen, the (reportedly) outgoing commissioner-general of UNRWA, the united nations relief and works agency, spoke recently about the horrendous situation in gaza.

“If you wanted to go into Gaza today you wouldn’t be able to because there are tanks along all along the main road to Gaza. All along the road you will see houses that have been bulldozed. As you move down through Gaza the situation gets even worse,” Hansen stated. “As you approach the southern end of Gaza - where Kann Yunis and Rafah have seen continued destruction, where the numbers of people who have been made homeless by bulldozers exceeds 25,000 - we have managed to re-house 8,000 of them but we are fighting a losing battle. We can not build as fast as the destruction takes place. So, Gaza is in a very, very poor state. Everybody there hopes that this conflict can end so not only their suffering can end but the deprivation of a dignified human life after decades.”

full article here.

games conquerers play

2005-01-18T17:03:00.000-05:00

angry white kid and lisa have blogged about kate raphael bender, who was arrested in palestine and brought before an israeli judge (this is a criminal offense on israel's part, i believe) who ordered her deported. the judge refused to hear an appeal because while she was in jail awaiting her trial, kate's visa expired. in her words:

To lock up a non-violent human rights activist until the day her visa has expired, deny her request to move the hearing so she would have time left on her visa, and then say she has no right to appeal because her visa has lapsed is conduct we would expect from a totalitarian regime, not a country which wants to be called a democracy.

apparently kate's appeal focused on the illegality of the arrest, conducted as they were in areas that israel agreed during oslo would be sovereign palestinian areas by now. no doubt the judge would have found a reason to dismiss the argument. but by behaving in a totalitarian fashion, he or she avoided even hearing it.

an american refusenik

2005-01-18T01:51:00.000-05:00

my cyber-friend carl may be imprisoned for deserting the US military. a veteran of many years, his three-year term of service in the texas army national guard was extended against his will under bush's stop-loss program. a conscientious objector who sees the war against iraq as imperialist, he did not report for duty. instead, he is looking into possible legal action against the united states government.

check out carl's blog here.

the insanity continues

2005-01-18T01:37:00.000-05:00

sy hersh's article on the bush administration's foreign policy strategy for the next four years.

the introduction:

George W. Bush’s re-election was not his only victory last fall. The President and his national-security advisers have consolidated control over the military and intelligence communities’ strategic analyses and covert operations to a degree unmatched since the rise of the post-Second World War national-security state. Bush has an aggressive and ambitious agenda for using that control—against the mullahs in Iran and against targets in the ongoing war on terrorism—during his second term. The C.I.A. will continue to be downgraded, and the agency will increasingly serve, as one government consultant with close ties to the Pentagon put it, as “facilitators” of policy emanating from President Bush and Vice-President Dick Cheney. This process is well under way.

Despite the deteriorating security situation in Iraq, the Bush Administration has not reconsidered its basic long-range policy goal in the Middle East: the establishment of democracy throughout the region. Bush’s reëlection is regarded within the Administration as evidence of America’s support for his decision to go to war. It has reaffirmed the position of the neoconservatives in the Pentagon’s civilian leadership who advocated the invasion, including Paul Wolfowitz, the Deputy Secretary of Defense, and Douglas Feith, the Under-secretary for Policy. According to a former high-level intelligence official, Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld met with the Joint Chiefs of Staff shortly after the election and told them, in essence, that the naysayers had been heard and the American people did not accept their message. Rumsfeld added that America was committed to staying in Iraq and that there would be no second-guessing.

“This is a war against terrorism, and Iraq is just one campaign. The Bush Administration is looking at this as a huge war zone,” the former high-level intelligence official told me. “Next, we’re going to have the Iranian campaign. We’ve declared war and the bad guys, wherever they are, are the enemy. This is the last hurrah—we’ve got four years, and want to come out of this saying we won the war on terrorism.”

a fraud fit for a king

2005-01-17T21:00:00.000-05:00

i take the title of this entry from an article by tim wise, who exposed "letter to an anti-zionist friend", an attack on anti-zionism that was supposedly written by martin luther king jr., as a hoax.

another article, by fadi kiblawi and will youmans, casts doubt on claims by seymour lipset and earl lewis that MLK once reprimanded a questioner who criticized zionism and told him it he was "talking anti-semitism". the authors find no evidence that dr. king spoke in boston or cambridge before his death in 1968, which are the place and year given for the alleged remark.

the MLK you don't get to see

2005-01-17T20:44:00.000-05:00

critical montages reminds us of the side of rev. martin luther king that the corporate outlets ignore: the one who before his death was a class warrior, organizing a multiracial coalition of poor people to march on washington and demand an economic bill of rights, and who was bitterly critical of US imperialism, both in its military form, as expressed in the war against vietnam, and its economic form.

dehumanization of israelis

2005-01-17T01:37:00.000-05:00

in intense ethnic conflicts, usually a lot of dehumanization goes on, and the israel/palestine conflict is no exception. arabs are dehumanized in israeli media and public discourse, israelis are demonized in palestinian media and public discourse. one asymmetry between oppressor and oppressed is that in order to be the oppressor, israelis must also dehumanize themselves. those who watch the israeli army know that the kids who serve in the occupied territories often have to drive themselves out of their own minds in order to do the things they do. as with american GIs in vietnam, many soldiers abuse drugs while on active duty. it's well-known that those who can afford it will often follow up their army stint with either a series of visits to their psychiatrist, or on the beaches of goa in a drug-induced haze. i don't know if this is backed up empirically, but anecdotes have it that physical abuse of spouses spikes in post-military situations.

in a a recent interview in the israeli daily maariv, soldiers speak out about their mental state while in "service":

"It takes time to understand that for three years we weren't normal people", says K., a first-sergeant who served in the Engineering Corps' Yael reconnaissance unit. "We were like zombies. We didn't make decisions independently. We did things without prior thought. If I'd been told - and I was told - to hit some old woman in the stomach with my rifle-butt, to get her to shut up, I would have done it without thinking at all. No problems".

whatever one thinks of the ethics of the palestinians' attacks on civilians, it seems that this sort of self-dehumanization doesn't take place. i'm finally getting around to reading fanon's the wretched of the earth, where he argues that the colonized person in fact humanizes herself through violence. my mind's not made up on this, and i understand that hannah arendt takes a very different view from fanon - i'll be reading her book on violence once i'm through with fanon.

new comments facility

2005-01-15T17:40:00.000-05:00

i was asked to switch to the haloscan comments facility, which apparently has some advantages that i didn't bother to try to understand.

to prevent there being two separate comments facilities, i suppressed the blogger comments. that means that previously posted comments are now invisible. if you find this terribly distressing, e-mail me and i'll see what i can do.

israelis will vote in iraqi elections

2005-01-13T08:37:00.000-05:00

thanks to the angry arab news service for bringing this to my attention.

according to an article in ha'aretz, all people who can prove they or their fathers were born in iraq will be eligible to vote in the upcoming elections. this will include hundreds of thousands of israelis.

i applaud this broadening of democracy, and urge the adoption of this principle in other countries. for example, the millions of palestinian refugees who were born in israel or whose fathers were born in israel should be allowed to vote in israeli elections.

the hunt is over

2005-01-13T08:16:00.000-05:00

the search for the weapons of mass destruction - bush's main excuse for the conquest of iraq - has ended. the search for the holy grail continues.

in some alternate world, the bush administration took responsibility for its actions, the democrats took responsibility for their inaction, and the US media took responsibility for helping the government deceive the public. unfortunately this alternate world remains distant from ours.

see satire here.

israeli interference in the palestinian election

2005-01-13T08:03:00.000-05:00

graham usher reports in al-ahram about some of the ways in which israel interfered with elections in the occupied territories. these include:

- allowing freedom of movement for their candidate, mahmoud abbas, but not other candidates.

- not allowing some gazans to vote

- not allowing prisoners to vote

- forcing most east jerusalem voters to travel to the west bank to vote

found art

2005-01-12T18:27:00.000-05:00

found on oz shelach's website oznik. originally found on a bathroom wall on an israeli military base. works much better in hebrew.

Take away this uniform
That ruined my life
Take away this beret
That got me locked away
Take my Army ID
I don't want it anymore
Let me just see a Mental Health Officer
That'll get me outa here.

i've added the refuser watch counter provided by oznik. it also works better in hebrew. instead of "courage to refuse" it reads "justice will be victorious".

the poem transliterated:

kxu li tamadim
sheharsu li taxayim
kxu li takumta
shebiglala ani bata
kxu li taxoger
lo rotse oto yoter
tnu li rak lirot kaban
sheyotsi oti mikan

transliteration note: "x" represents a velar fricative, as in "bach"

prosodic notes:
- primary stress is always on the last syllable of the word, but the word "li" is never stressed.
- feet are iambic, constructed from right-to-left. i.e. last syllable of every line is stressed; third last syllable of every line is stressed, etc.
- exception: in the three lines beginning with "she", there is no stress before the last syllable of the first word.

why rebels must be middle class (and white)

2005-01-11T18:40:00.000-05:00

thanks to mark elf i've become aware of the case of tali fahima, an israeli woman put in administrative detention for being in contact with the leader of a militant palestinian group. daphna baram asks why fahima, and not the many other israelis who talk to palestinian militants, was punished, and suggests a plausible answer: israeli dissidents must be white and middle class, while ms fahima is mizrahi and grew up poor. as she doesn't fit the standard profile of the questioning middle class academic, she sets a particularly bad example. baram lists a couple of other mizrahi dissidents who were singled out for harsh punishments: rami hasson and mordechai vanunu.

for an introductory text on europeans and mizrahim in israel, see here. for more in-depth material, read ella shohat, who challenges the mutual exclusiveness of "arab" and "jew", identifying herself as an "arab jew".

as the election distracts, the annexation proceeds

2005-01-10T08:32:00.000-05:00

friday's haaretz contains a story by aluf benn describing the booming construction in the settlement bloc of gush etzion, where i used to live. settlement expansion has been constant throughout the "peace process" while never receiving the appropriate level of attention in the press and in public pronouncements. as the world is distracted by the election spectacle that has failed to excite palestinians and by the gaza "disengagement", israel is quietly expanding its west bank settlements with the tacit support of american leaders, although the construction is in violation of promises sharon made to george bush (and less importantly, a war crime). the facts that are beginning to be established on the ground are: (1) the west bank will be split into two by a corridor of jewish settlements, and (2) the annexation wall will form the new border between israel and the palestinian territories. the article also introduces a term that i hadn't heard before, "the blue line":

"At the Defense Ministry they have completed the demarcation of the "Blue Line," which will establish the boundaries of Jewish settlement in the West Bank."

as informed people know, israel never intended to accept a palestinian state with the border on the green line, which is the line determined by the armistice agreements following the 1948 war, and which world opinion has traditionally favored as the border for the two state solution. when israel agrees to return to negotiations, we can expect that the presuppositions will include everything between the green line and the annexation wall as belonging to israel, and everything within the blue line as "disputed" area that the palestinians must compromise over if they're serious about peace.

article highlights:

"The official level is advancing the declaration of state lands in the A-1 plan to link Jerusalem to Ma'aleh Adumim, which is perceived on the left as a deathblow to the final status agreement because it will cut the northern West Bank off from the southern part and prevent the Palestinian state from having essential territorial contiguity."

"According to Peace Now, the main building effort in the Jewish settlements in the West Bank is now focused on the area between the Green Line and the separation fence, and it is aimed at turning the fence into Israel's permanent border. There are many signs of this on the ground. The huge gate that has been set up in the fence near Alfei Menashe, on the road that goes up to Karnei Shomron and Kedumim, looks like a border crossing point and not like a temporary barrier, even though the smiling female soldiers there make do with hearing the drivers speak Hebrew and don't ask for identification."

donating to tsunami relief efforts?

2005-01-07T20:10:00.000-05:00

i just made my donation through via campesina, an alliance of peasant, fisher and landless peasants organizations. from their website:

The relief philosophy of Via Campesina is that these communities should participate actively and be the key actors in the re-construction process, and that their fisherfolk and peasant organizations should play a key mobilizing and supporting role. Via Campesina wants to give these communities and their organizations the political support they need in this process, and to help get them the funds they need for reconstruction. The funds raised in this campaign will be used to strengthen local communities as the key actors in this process. The success of local, self-organized, civil society disaster relief efforts in previous disasters in Latin America, Asia, and Africa, contrasted with government inefficiency and top-down, demobilizing programs, has often marked a key stage in the empowerment and growth of large, popular, grassroots, civil society social movements by which previously marginalized people take control of their own lives. Let us work together to help those in need at this time, and let us do so in ways that help build self-sufficiency, grassroots organization, and peoples power for the future.

once upon a time in the middle east

2005-01-06T22:28:00.000-05:00

by Adel Darwish

A scorpion pleads with a hesitant water buffalo to give him a ride across a deep river. Assuming the common interest of crossing the water will ensure his safety, the buffalo agrees. Mid-stream he feels the pain of the scorpion's sting. "Why did you sting me, you idiot? You have killed us both !" were the dying buffalo's last words. The drowning scorpion shrugged his shoulders as he replied: "I don't know! This is the Middle East."

(pertinent to my last post - jazzman)

abu mazen vs barghouti

2005-01-06T22:18:00.000-05:00

haithem el-zabri compares the two frontrunners for leader of the palestinian authority, calling abbas israel's man and barghouti a breath of fresh air for the palestinians. however, arjan el-fassed reports that like abbas, barghouti has failed to excite the palestinian public and is stalled at 20% in the polls. a "man on the street" that he interviews describes the election as a choice between america's man and europe's man.

to be perfectly frank, the choice seems very clear to me, and i can't fathom why palestinians would opt for a collaborator over a dedicated humanitarian and champion of resistance. but then, middle east politics is full of such mysteries.

barghouti campaign: israel murders campaign volunteer

2005-01-06T13:40:00.000-05:00

(anyone see media coverage of this? not me - jazzman)

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

Press Release No. 10
1 January 2005

Young Volunteer Shot Dead by Israeli Army while Campaigning for Dr. Mustafa Barghouthi

On the morning of Thursday, 30 December 2004, Riziq Ziad Musleh, a 17-year-old Palestinian high school student, left his home in the Tel al-Sultan Refugee Camp near the southern Gaza Strip city of Rafah. He was placing posters on a wall near his home for Dr. Mustafa Barghouthi's presidential campaign when, without any warning or incident, he was shot in his right side from the direction of the Rafah Yam* Israeli settlement. An observation tower manned by Israeli soldiers is located in the settlement, about 500 yards from where Riziq was standing.

The bullet lodged in Riziq's heart. He was taken to the Abu Yusef al-Najjar hospital in Rafah, where he was pronounced dead at 11:00 p.m. that night.

A formal complaint about this tragic event and other serious harassment faced by Palestinian presidential campaigners, volunteers, and candidates has been lodged with the EU Election Observation Mission.

We call for immediate intervention by the international community to stop all assaults on presidential candidates, volunteers, and campaigners by Israeli forces. We call once again on the international community to make sure that the Israeli government lives up to its promise of allowing free and fair elections in the Occupied Palestinian Territories, in the best interests of peace, justice, and democracy for all peoples in the region.

We also call for serious and sustained pressure by the international community on the Israeli government to end policies at the highest levels that foster the atmosphere of immunity that allows and encourages such egregious assaults on the most basic rights and freedoms of Palestinian people.
________________________
* The Rafah Yam settlement was established in 1984 on expropriated Tel al-Sultan land, and in 2001 it was occupied by 134 Israeli settlers. Source: Peace Now Settlement Watch, 31-12-2001

To contact Dr. Mustafa Barghouthi, call: +972 (0)59 674 411

imperialism and colonialism

2005-01-06T13:11:00.000-05:00

michael brenner wrote the following in the comments section of the post on dershowitz:

"But Israel as colonial, imperialist state? Why, because Israel relies on big countries? What country in the Middle East doesn't? The Arabs relied on the Soviet Union during the Cold War and owe their statehoods to European colonial powers. What's the crime of Israelis except being too white for you? And what about the Israelis who hail from Arab countries, from which many were forced out? Also colonialist/imperialists?"

i think it's a fair question. rather than post a long comment, i'll post my thoughts as a blog entry.

there's more to the "colonialist/imperialist" analysis than reliance on big countries. i would really recommend the two books which i mentioned - "the question of palestine" and "the fateful triangle" - but i'll summarize my thoughts very briefly here.

first, the analysis is not about individual israelis. i wouldn't say that the jews forced out from arab countries are colonialists/imperialists, but then i wouldn't say it of the european jews either - most of them didn't go to israel because they shared the zionist vision - they went because they were forced out of europe. my grandparents, for example, moved to israel from czechoslovakia after WWII, and were virtually refugees. nobody physically forced them out, but it was impossible after returning from the camps to go on with life as usual, and the whole jewish community was leaving. i understand that the same sort of situation is mostly what caused most jews from iraq, tunisia and other arab countries to leave in the late 40's and early '50's. i imagine the same would tend to be true of colonizing people in general - they're the people who are most motivated to leave the home country, often because they're persecuted there. my point is that the analysis of israel as colonialist/imperialist is an analysis of the israeli state and its relationship to the world's main imperial power, the united states.

second, i wouldn't consider the arab states on the whole to be imperialist or colonial states (i'd say iraq is, but that's a different story). israel is a colonial state because it was set up by a group of invading foreigners with an agenda of getting rid of the natives, and because it's a european jewish state in a land that has been predominantly non-jewish and non-european up until very
recently. the arab states *used* to be colonial states when the foreigners still ruled them, either by being in direct control, or from behind an "arab facade" like the british in india. the arab states currently, despite their many flaws, are not racially exclusive states ruled by a foreign ethnic group. that's why israel is a colonial state and the arab states are not. the fact that their borders and much of their form were set by the conquerers is not that significant a fact in this context, i don't think.

as for the imperialism part, i would argue that that the relationship between israel and the US is qualitatively different from the relationship between egypt and the US or saudi arabia and the US. egypt and saudi arabia get money to keep quiet, repress their populations, and keep the oil flowing. israel (and turkey, and iran before the revolution, and iraq before the invasion of kuwait) were local projections of US military power, hence much more directly tools of imperialism.

but even further, israel is a mini-imperial power on its own in the middle east. it has at some point or other violated the territory of each of its neighbors (palestine, egypt, jordan, syria, lebanon) and has occupied, long-term, the territories of four of those five nations (west bank, gaza strip, sinai, golan heights, southern lebanon). so while it serves US imperial interests, it also uses military conquest to further its own ambitious territorial agenda.

it's possible that back in the day, the relationship between say, the USSR and egypt, was similar to the modern-day relationship between the US and israel. if so, then arguably egypt was imperialist at the time. i don't know so much about that relationship, but in my understanding the USSR's posture in the middle east was rather defensive, since the oil states "belonged" to the US.

ha'am im falastin

2004-12-30T07:06:00.000-05:00

from the jewschool sto', via yoshie's critical montages blog.

"the nation is with palestine"

this is, of course, a sendup on the familiar pro-settlement "the nation is with the golan" bumper sticker.

hiatus?

2004-12-29T11:34:00.000-05:00

i'm off for about 1.5 weeks of vacation. i may or may not update this blog while i'm away. if you're gregorian, happy new year!

some notes on dershowitz, chapter 1

2004-12-29T10:03:00.000-05:00

starting today, i will sporadically blog about alan dershowitz's (i will sometimes use "D" for short, and "dershy" or "dershy the clown" for derogation) book "the case for israel".

many zionists who i've debated with in the past year have used the book either to back up a particular point, or to recommend as the best pro-israel book to read in order to gain an understanding of the case for zionism.

well, i've read most of it, and i find it really unimpressive. the argumentation has many flaws: there is crucial reliance on very questionable "facts"; there is a lot of bad reasoning; there is a lot of wandering off topic, so that the claim that dershowitz pretends he is refuting is actually never addressed; there are cases where he concedes the point that he claims to be refuting; most of all, there is a high degree of selectivity in presenting his opponents' case against israel. dershowitz will generally not present arguments *for* the position that he sets himself up *against*, so from the perspective of someone who is familiar with the case against israel, D's argument is completely besides the point, and from the perspective of someone trying to gain an understanding of the conflict or to move the debate forward, the book is just dishonest.

the book apparently takes the form of a legal brief, a format i'm not familiar with, but seems to be an elaboration of the familiar "myths and facts" format. besides the introduction and the conclusion, the book contains thirty-two chapters. each chapter consists of:

- an "accusation", stated in D's words.

- a section called "the accusers", consisting of one to three quotes from individuals, which apparently are supposed to document the accusation.

- a brief presentation of what D considers "the reality".

- and "the proof" for the reality.

as set up, these parts are supposed to be tightly connected, so that he argument in "the proof" is supposed to be an argument against "the accusation". but as i've said, D often wanders off point or concedes the "accusation" and ends up giving a "proof" for something else entirely. i raise this point because the book is usually promoted as a refutation of 32 accusations, one per chapter, so it's important to note that it is not even an attempt to do so.

anyway, straight to chapter 1.

the accusation: "israel is a colonial, imperialist, settler state, comparable to apartheid south africa".

this chapter is a case of D's "proof" not arguing against "the accusation". the chapter discusses the history of the jewish presence in palestine and the nature of the first aliyah. the "accusation" that D seems to be refuting is something like "the jewish presence in israel dates back to the 1880s, when a group of jews, acting consciously in the service of the european powers, began to colonize palestine on behalf of those states".

D does a fine job of refuting this accusation, by delving into the long history of jews in palestine, including a steady presence since the days of the crusades, and by discussing the adverse circumstances in eastern europe that led many jews to flee their countries and escape to many places around the world, including palestine. all that's left unclear is the little matter of who makes this accusation - i've certainly never heard it.

what i have heard is a pretty solid analysis of israel as a colonial, imperialist settler state. those who are truly interested in this issue can examine the writings of edward said, especially his book the question of palestine, where he discusses zionism in the context of european colonial ideologies, and of noam chomsky, especially the fateful triangle, where he discusses the relationship between the state of israel and the world's leading imperialist power, the united states of america.

D doesn't mention either of these authors or books in this chapter, although he heaps scorn on them in other places in the book, like the introduction, where he calls them elitists for having criticisms of the two-state settlement. nor does he mention theodor herzl's book der judenstaat, uncontroversially the most important document of the zionist movement, which explicitly advocates colonialism and imperialism, not to mention genocide. and it pretty much ignores the entire history of zionism, from the early days of the jewish colonization society and appeals to the european powers, through the yishuv's dependence on the british government, to the present-day clienthood relationship between israel and the US. nowhere in chapter 1 does D even attempt to take this analysis on.

chapters 2 and 3 deal with related issues: the accusation that the early jewish immigrants forced palestinians off their land (which dershowitz concedes is true), and the accusation that the second wave of jewish immigration was part of a plot for jews to take over all of palestine (which he doesn't really argue against). i'll leave these for another time.

the israelite-philistine conflict

2004-12-29T09:36:00.000-05:00

the struggle between the israelites and the philistines in ancient times, as described in the bible, has many similarities to today's israel-palestine conflict. there are many parallels between the ancient philistines and modern day israel, and between the old times israelites and today's palestinians. for example:

- israelis today largely came via the mediterranean sea to the coast, where they are largely settled (mizrahi immigrants came later, and played less of a role in developing settlement patterns). the philistines similarly arrived by boat and set up on the coast. the ancient israelites were more concentrated in the hilly area in the center of the country, where most palestinians live.

- the israelis, like the ancient philistines, were able to conquer parts of the palestinian/israelite center of the country, which they governed ruthlessly.

- suicide bombings: invented by samson the brave, popularized by hamas.

the naqba and the return (awda) - slideshow

2004-12-28T14:53:00.000-05:00

the naqba is the disaster of 1947-49, in which 4/5 of the palestinian population of the lands seized by israel were forced out.

the awda is the return of refugees, a prerequisite for a just or reasonable settlement of the conflict.

the link is to a series of maps and charts illustrating the issues. it's not always obvious what's being suggested, but you should take a look anyway - the maps give some idea of the scale of the conquest, and suggest how the return might happen.

I-P conflict 101

2004-12-26T09:43:00.000-05:00

there's an excellent introduction to the israel-palestine conflict, in the form of a collection of brief quotes, here. hosted by cactus48.

another terrorist attack

2004-12-26T01:56:00.000-05:00

israel has killed a leader of the al-awsa martyr brigades in jenin, by firing a missile into a residential building. the haaretz report doesn't mention whether there were other casualties.

assassinations of this sort are the ones that most reliably bring retaliatory strikes against israeli civilians, as israeli leaders must know. why is israel looking to provoke another palestinian bombing? i'll speculate that israel is looking for an excuse to disrupt the upcoming elections for president of the palestinian authority.

hamas makes major gains in local elections

2004-12-26T01:48:00.000-05:00

not too surprising, since the fatah leadership is speaking openly about giving up the armed struggle, without really articulating an alternative liberation strategy.

cultural/academic boycott?

2004-12-26T01:29:00.000-05:00

omar barghouti advocates cultural/academic boycotts of israel. samer elatrash responds.

the jewish mentality

2004-12-23T19:23:00.000-05:00

a libyan court was thrown into disarray this week after the state's expert witness on the jewish mentality, a professor of jewish studies at the university of tripoli, testified that the jewish mentality is made up of a sense of victimhood, pathological hatred of non-jews, and tendency to live in a world of illusions, pointing out for good measure that jews are dirty, and accusing them of being parasitic on the islamic state. the trial is of leaders of the libyan jewish community who are accused of transferring funds to organizations in israel, considered by qaddafi's government to be a terrorist state.

sound made up? this actually happened, except that it happened in israel, not libya, the remarks were about the arab mentality and delivered by a professor of middle eastern studies at the hebrew u, and the charge is of supporting hamas. also, libya has separation of church and state and separation of race and state, unlike israel on both counts.

read about it here.

no doubt MEMRI, b'nai brith and all the others that monitor the arab world for expressions of anti-zionist and anti-jewish sentiment will be devoting the same attention to this case as they do to such expressions in the arab world.

oh, wait - i forgot, those aren't anti-racist organizations, they're jewish supremacist organizations devoted to spreading zionist propaganda. my bad.

is israel apartheid?

2004-12-22T23:45:00.000-05:00

actually, the machover article i mention below is so interesting to me that i will reproduce it in its entirety. machover is a leading israeli socialist and anti-zionist.

Is it Apartheid?

by Moshe Machover

10 November 2004

In recent months there is a growing tendency among opponents of Israeli oppression and defenders of Palestinian rights to refer to Israeli policy towards the Palestinians as "apartheid".

The "separation wall" that Israel is constructing on Palestinian lands is often denounced as the "apartheid wall". An International conference on Palestine scheduled for 5 December 2004 at the School of Oriental and African Studies in London is entitled by its organizers as "Resisting Israeli Apartheid: Strategies and Principles".

I would like to warn against an unthinking use of this misleading analogy between Israeli policy and that of the defunct apartheid regime in South Africa. It is theoretically false and politically harmful.

To be sure, the two have many features in common. Both are perniciously racist; both impose a degree of separation between ethnic groups. And this is no accident: both are instances of the genus colonial settler state. Indeed, Israel and apartheid South Africa were, until the latter's demise, the last two surviving active instances of this genus.[1] Now Israel is the only remaining one.

But the point is that they belong to two distinct species of the genus. All colonial settlers' societies built themselves up on exploiting the resources of the country that they colonized: primarily its land, which they wrested from the indigenous people, who became dispossessed. The decisive difference between the two species was what was to become of the dispossessed natives.

In one model of colonization, their labor power became one of the indigenous resources - indeed, the main resource - to be exploited by the settlers. The ethnic conflict between the two groups thus assumed the nature of a kind of class struggle. This model is represented, in almost pure form, by apartheid South Africa.

In the other model, the native population was to be eliminated; exterminated or expelled rather than exploited. Israel is an active instance of this model. If you wish to find an instructive parallel, look not at South Africa. Rather, read Dee Brown's Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee: An Indian History of the American West.

Apartheid was a device for keeping the exploited natives - the majority of the population - as part of the same economy, and therefore essentially also of the same society, as the settler exploiters; but without actually admitting it, and without giving the former rights of citizenship. Officially, the natives were citizens of fake states, the Bantustans. But the last thing the architects of the apartheid state wanted was a real departure of the black Africans, whose labor power was vital for its economy.

Zionism never intended to create a Palestinostan for the Palestinian Arabs. From the very start, it planned to get rid of them, to create a purely Jewish "Land of Israel". This premeditated policy - referred to in Zionist literature as 'transfer' - was largely implemented in the 1948 war. The Palestinian Arab minority whom - for lack of time or opportunity – the nascent Israeli state failed to expel from its territory did not seem to represent a major "demographic threat". To be sure, their lands were for the most part expropriated and given over to Jewish settlements, they were severely discriminated and for many years kept under military rule. But, crucially, they were not denied rudimentary citizenship rights. They are Israeli citizens, who can vote for the Knesset.

A new problem arose following the June 1967 war. Israel found itself controlling the whole of Palestine as well as a part of Syria. But, from the Zionists' viewpoint, this great territorial acquisition of their wet dreams came with an encumbrance: a large Arab population, many of them refugees of the 1948 ethnic cleansing and their descendants. This population, which "remained 'stuck' to their places," the Zionists realized, "may destroy the very foundation of our state."[2] Israel managed to ethnically cleanse some

of the newly occupied territories, such as the whole of the Golan Heights, the Latroun salient in the approaches to Jerusalem, and some refugee camps near Jericho. But the bulk of the population of the West Bank and Gaza Strip still "remained stuck to their places."

Zionists of all major parties - Labor and Likud alike - ardently wished to 'transfer' as many Palestinians as possible. The only difference was about what was considered possible. The more pragmatic or cautious among them thought that the 'world' (which for Israel meant primarily US politicians and opinion-manufacturers) would not allow a massive ethnic cleansing. On the other hand, it was becoming clear, especially during the first Intifada, that Israel could not afford to control the Palestinian population directly.

These more pragmatic Zionists looked for a Palestinian leadership to do the job for them: to control and repress the Palestinians, thus guaranteeing the security of Israel. This was the essence of the Oslo Accord, which Peres managed to sell to Rabin and, no less important, to Yasser Arafat.[3]

The Oslo plan, had it materialized, would indeed have led to something like a Palestinian Bantustan, resulting in a convergence of the Zionist settler state towards the apartheid model. But this was not to be. The plan was vigorously opposed by more optimistic or fundamentalist Zionists, such as Ehud Barak in the Labor Party and most of the leaders of Likud. Just in time, Rabin was assassinated. The Netanyahu government which followed stalled the implementation of Israel's side of the Oslo bargain, thus subverting it. The next Israeli prime minister, Labor's Ehud Barak, continued this policy at Camp David by a more subtle means: dictating to Arafat new conditions, falsely packaged as a 'generous offer', that even he could not accept.

The next prime minister, Ariel 'Bulldozer' Sharon, true to his legendary brutality and blood lust, has pursued yet another tactic: smashing the Palestinian Authority's resources and at the same time deliberately provoking Palestinian suicide bombings, so as to expose Arafat's inability to serve as Israel's security guard, and thus prove his uselessness and irrelevance from a Zionist viewpoint.

What Sharon & Co are planning is not really an apartheid regime. They are not interested in keeping the Palestinians permanently in place, as a subjugated population. They are planning to ethnically cleanse as many Palestinians as possible. Of course, this requires what in Zionist parlance is referred to as she'at kosher, an opportune moment. A general upheaval in the Middle East may present a suitable opportunity. If necessary, it could actually be provoked. Meantime, as a purely temporary measure, the Palestinian population is to be atomized and separated - not only from the Israeli Jews but also within their own community, village from village, neighborhood from neighborhood. And make no mistake: this is not going to be like a Bantustan, more like a series of Indian Reservations.

Conflating this with apartheid in fact misses the most essential point. Incidentally, it can also backfire: defenders of Zionism can easily show that the Palestinian citizens of Israel, while not enjoying equal rights, are nevertheless considerably better off than Black Africans used to be under apartheid.

But, much more importantly: talk of Israeli 'apartheid' serves to divert attention from much greater dangers. For, as far as most Palestinians are concerned, the Zionist policy is far worse than apartheid. Apartheid can be reversed. Ethnic cleansing is immeasurably harder to reverse; at least not in the short or medium term.

To be sure: there is one great difference between the Zionist colonization project and that of the United States. When the US achieved its 'manifest destiny' and reached from ocean to ocean, grinding to dust the indigenous people - that was that: no more 'Red Indians' to hunt and uproot. In the case of Zionist Israel, no matter how far it can expand - and surely it will need to expand further in order to protect and defend its former expansion - it will always be confronted and surrounded by Arabs. If the Arab world will one day unite, it can defeat and reverse Zionist expansionism.

But this will require a far-reaching transformation of the Arab World, defeat of its present ruling classes and unification of the Arab nation.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

1. There are of course several other states that started off in this way; but they have ceased to be active in a sense similar to that in which an extinct volcano still exists as a mountain, but is no longer active as a volcano.

2. Joseph Weitz, 'A solution to the refugee problem: a State of Israel with a small Arab minority', Davar, 29 September 1967. Davar was the Histadrut daily, in effect organ of the Israeli Labor Party. Weitz was member of that party, an apparatchik who had played a central role in planning the transfer before 1948 and implementing it during 1948/49.

3. I have dealt elsewhere with the reasons for Arafat's acquiescence in accepting what amounted to little more than the job of Israel's proxy Palestinian Police Chief.

jerusalem post interviews hanan ashrawi

2004-12-22T23:28:00.000-05:00

the link will take you to the jewish voice for peace website (check out the rest of their site too).

name notes: it's "ashrawi", not "ashwari". and it's "hanan", not "hannan".

while you're on the jewish voice for peace website, check out moshe machover's interesting article on using the term apartheid to describe israel.

the somerville divestment campaign

2004-12-22T11:56:00.000-05:00

the campaign to get the city of somerville to divest from israel came close to succeeding, but was beaten back by a large coordinated campaign.

as tom wallace writes, it's bittersweet. bitter because it ultimately failed, sweet because the campaign shows that efforts to hold israel accountable are making gains.

this battle was lost because the zionists managed to persuade the aldermen that people in the US shouldn't adopt a one-sided approach to the conflict: instead, we should continue our even-handed approach of giving israel billions of dollars a year, investing our savings accounts in israel, and blocking united nations resolutions critical of israel, not to mention peace initiatives.

we can work together!

2004-12-22T11:44:00.000-05:00

i get a lot of e-mails from relatives of recently deceased presidents, military strongmen and cabinet members of african and other third world countries. invariably they want to partner with me in some arrangement that carries little risk but great financial rewards. i dunno what it is about me that attracts relatives of powerful dead people - maybe i'm listed in some sort of directory. none of these opportunities has quite worked out for me yet, but i maintain high hopes. it just has to work once for me to be rich.

today, i received an e-mail from none other than el-abdull arafat, son of late palestinian president yasser arafat. he writes:

Dear Sir,

I write to crave your indulgence over the transfer and management of some funds deposited in a vault by my father Yasser Arafat, the late palestinian president.

I am compelled by the event of my father's death to seek a foreign contact as partner with me in repartriating this funds for safe investment abroad. Could you in earliest possible confirm your interest and readiness in this venture.

Thanks in anticipation of your prompt and positive reply.

Faithfully
El-Abdull Arafat.

strangely, mr. arafat seems to work at the times of india. well, whatever. i'm gonna get rich. see you suckers later.

happy yule!

2004-12-22T01:24:00.000-05:00

and while i'm at it, happy christmas, happy kwanzaa, and happy jewsmas and nittel nacht.

war is over if you want it.

safer with sharon?

2004-12-21T23:48:00.000-05:00

right-wingers keep saying that israelis elected sharon to provide security, and that he's doing a good job of it. these people miss two points.

1. sharon was elected because the left became disgusted with barak's terrorism. with no reasonable candidate, many leftists stayed home, while others went as far as organizing a boycott of the election. this provided sharon's margin of victory.

2. a comparison of israeli civilian casualties under barak vs. under sharon gives us some idea of sharon's success in providing security for israelis. during barak's nearly two years as prime minister (may 1999 - march 2001), the number of israeli civilians killed (i.e. people killed while not on military duty, in israel proper) in palestinian terror attacks was approximately 5 or 6. sharon has been prime minister for about twice as long. on his watch, the number of israeli civilians killed in palestinian terror attacks has been approximately 424, about a 40-fold increase if you adjust for length for prime ministership. the year-by-year and month-by-month casualty tables that i used for calculating these figures are available from btselem.

of course, part of the difference is that the palestinians largely restrained themselves as barak pretended to negotiate, first with the syrians and then with them. palestinian violence against the occupation forces really started at the end of september, after barak made it clear that there's no chance the occupation will end through negotiations, after sharon defiled a holy site with his presence, accompanied by his legions of storm troopers, and after the occupation forces shot people dead in the al-aqsa mosque after prayers. israel responded to the legitimate resistance with large-scale terror, and the palestinians' retaliatory terror built slowly: two bombings in november, killing two people each. then a break until february, followed by a slow build-up culminating in the first large attack, the dolphinarium bombing, in june 2001, after sharon had taken over. so in part, barak was the beneficiary of the palestinians taking a while to retaliate.

but this is missing part of the point: barak was able to bring security to israelis by pretending to negotiate, during which palestinians held their fire. sharon has done nothing but provoke and aggravate in ways that seem calculated to increase the severity of the response: for example, assassinating leaders of resistance groups and absolutely refusing to negotiate. if israelis were sensible people making an electoral choice based on the security criterion, they would have handily rejected sharon, knowing very well what he stands for.

is israel going fascist?

2004-12-21T23:41:00.000-05:00

from a poll reported in haaretz, via angry arab:

67 percent of these Israelis believe that strong leaders can be more beneficial to the country than laws and public debate. Fifty-one percent of the Jewish subjects said that Israeli Arabs should not be allowed to be elected to the Knesset; about 30 percent of the subjects approve of nonviolent forms of civil revolt like demonstrations without a permit and refusal to serve in the territories, actions that involve disobeying the law; 24 percent support violent revolt, as compared to 9 percent who approved of this in a study that was conducted a number of years ago.

this follows a report last week that 44% of americans polled favor restricting the rights of muslims in this country.

repeat after me:
israel is a democracy.
the united states is a democracy.
israel is a democracy.
the united states is a democracy.
israel is a democracy.
the united states is a democracy.

44% of americans favor limiting civil rights of muslims

2004-12-17T22:32:00.000-05:00

i wonder what percent support limiting the rights of christians?

where's the incite?

2004-12-17T22:10:00.000-05:00

another expert confirms what everyone who's not brainwashed by israeli and zionist propaganda has known for years: there's no hatred or incitement in palestinian textbooks. it's really time to move on to more interesting topics, like comparing racist stereotypes in israeli vs. palestinian children's literature.

when i lived in palestine, the "hasamba" series of books, in which a brave yet zany group of children takes on the arab legion, terrorist cells, the british army, etc., was huge among children my age, and the racist caricatures of arabs must have been an important part of how we formed our views. other series of books (ha-ma'apilim, danidin, the one about the soccer players, whose name i don't remember) were similarly racist. i wonder how the children's literature of the occupied compares. anybody know?

i remember once on those years reading a story with a plot involving an israeli boy and a palestinian boy, initially distrustful of each other, learning to get along and coming to be friends by sharing common adventures. this was so far out of my perception of a realistic event that i treated it as fantasy literature.

oh, those encroaching settlements

2004-12-17T22:04:00.000-05:00

the morally pure residents of nirit, israel are being turned against their will into colonists, with the expansion of the adjacent colony of alfei menashe. boo hoo.

tree destruction pictures

2004-12-16T15:56:00.000-05:00

a few days ago, a group of west bank colonists entered the palestinian village of jayyous and destroyed 117 olive trees. it got a brief mention in haaretz, the palestine chronicle, and perhaps nowhere else. a group called ecumenical accompaniment programme in palestine and israel, however, has posted pictures on their website.

olive tree destruction is a particularly insidious form of economic terrorism. these trees are the only means of livelihood for many palestinian farmers, and they take years to mature to the point that they can produce fruit. a destroyed tree is a difficult thing to replace.

besides being insidious from this perspective, and besides being at the moral level of a kristallnacht window-smashing, it's also particularly insidious from the standpoint of jewish halakha. the destruction of fruit trees during sieges is proscribed outright in the torah. deuteronomy 20:19 states:

When you lay siege to a city for a long time, fighting against it to capture it, do not destroy its trees by putting an ax to them, because you can eat their fruit. Do not cut them down. Are the trees of the field people, that you should besiege them?

the last line - in hebrew: ki ha'adam etz ha-sadeh - is well-known. the religious colonists of zufin who destroyed the trees certainly know the laws, as surely as they know that they can get away with these crimes.

when they showed up at 8 am, the villagers called for help, but you know how these things go. take it away, flava...

Now I dialed 911 a long time ago
Don't you see how late they're reactin'
They only come and they come when they wanna
So get the morgue embalm the goner...

You better wake up and smell the real flavor
Cause 911 is a fake life saver

So get up, get, get get down
911 is a joke in yo town
Get up, get, get, get down
Late 911 wears the late crown

the army showed up IN THE AFTERNOON!

how did the colonists manage to destroy 117 trees? they came WITH A BULLDOZER!

^{if palestinians try to get rifles to defend themselves, they're terrorists, and this justifies driving tanks through, and firing missiles at, residential neighborhoods. if illegal colonists wreak havoc with a bulldozer, they get half a day to play, then the army shows up to send them home. if the israeli government applied proportionately the standards to illegal settlers that it applies to the palestinians that it is required to protect, it would be dropping ten megaton bombs on the colonies.}

the onion on the administration's exploitation of the armed forces

2004-12-16T13:14:00.000-05:00

"Man, all the troops do these days is bitch, bitch, die unnecessarily, and bitch."

"worms" is a new one

2004-12-15T21:32:00.000-05:00

via angry white kid: a likud leader has managed to come up with a new dehumanizing slur against arabs:

An Israeli Knesset member from Prime. Minister Ariel Sharon's ruling Likud party has described all Arabs as worms in a parliamentary debate.

Yehiel Hazan, parliamentary leader of the biggest lobby group for Jewish colonists illegally settling in the occupied West Bank and Gaza Strip, said on Monday:

"The Arabs are worms. You find them everywhere like worms, underground as well as above."

"worms" joins "crocodiles", "drugged cockroaches", "snakes", "dogs", "grasshoppers", and "beasts walking on two legs" on the colorful list of dehumanizing zoological slurs applied by the nazi, er israeli, leadership to arabs and palestinians. note that these are not from street hooligans but from the people at the top: barak, begin, raful eitan, and so on.

one wonders whether a similar list could be compiled of zoological slurs against jews from hitler, himmler, and the like, or from arab leaders like arafat, nasser etc. if so, it would make a fun quiz where you have to guess who used the slur against whom.

speaking of quizzes, i once created a quiz called "spot the zionist" where i interspersed anti-jewish quotes from zionists like herzl and pat robertson with anti-jewish quotes from anti-zionists like zundel. i tested it mostly on educated jewish people familiar with the israel-palestine conflict, and they didn't do much better than chance on identifying the zionists. if i find it i'll post it.

prelude to an academic boycott of israel

2004-12-15T11:01:00.000-05:00

from a forthcoming WRMEA article.
<>
London Conference, a Prelude to Academic Boycott of Israel

Washington Report on Middle East Affairs
Jan/Feb 2005
By Paul de Rooij

On Dec. 5, some 270 academics from around the world convened in London to discuss the implementation of a boycott of Israeli academic institutions and the severing of cultural links with Israel. The aim of the conference was to refine the arguments, clarify the rationale, and determine how to act next. Participants considered it an important step toward convincing large numbers of academics to heed a call for an academic boycott.

Support for the boycott is motivated by the terrible conditions created by the Israeli occupation and continued dispossession of the Palestinians. Furthermore, the failure of governments to effectively pressure Israel so that it will comply with international law means that it is up to civil society to act. As Lawrence Davidson, a professor of history in the U.S., stated: “Governments in the West, left to themselves, do not have the will to sanction Israel for its illegal occupation of the occupied territories and its violent destruction of Palestinian society. Therefore, an international grass roots movement must be organized to educate significant parts of the Western populations on the nature of Israeli behavior, and simultaneously build pressure on Israel to change its ways, and governments to act to encourage this change.” Boycotts, a quintessential nonviolent form of protest, are seen as a key tactic to force Israel to end the occupation and in general obtain a modicum of justice. Academics in particular see the boycott of Israeli academic institutions as a way they can contribute to this struggle.

Israeli professor of history Ilan Pappe called on his academic colleagues to “boycott us.” This may seem an odd recommendation coming from an Israeli scholar—indeed, someone likened Pappe’s call to a “turkey voting for Christmas”! Pappe explained his action, however, by arguing that change will not come from within, that external pressure is essential for Israel to change. Although Israeli academics may be more liberal than the population at large, Pappe didn’t believe that demand for change would come from this quarter. If Israeli academics actively were working for change, he explained, then the boycott might be seen as counterproductive. It was clear from several presentations, however, that Israeli academic institutions are part of the problem. Support for the boycott also came from a handful of academics in Israel, some Israeli academics working abroad, and a significant number of Jewish academics.

twenty questions with a "terrorist"

2004-12-14T11:50:00.000-05:00

this interview comes via a friend doing international solidarity work in palestine during the olive harvest - jazzman

The Al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigade (AAMB) is an armed Palestinian resistance movement on several lists of “terrorist” organizations. In 2002 Al-Aqsa was officially added to the U.S. list of foreign terrorist organizations. On Nov 29 2004 the author –while in the West Bank as a human rights activist- was granted an interview with a leader and spokesperson for the Brigade in the Nablus region, a centre of resistance to the Israeli occupation. The subject of the interview (referred to only as AA here) said that he was born in a local refugee camp, and, with his weapon at his side and a translator, agreed to answer any questions. What followed was a revealing discussion that may call a few stereotypes into question.

TF: How old are you?

AA: 28 years old

TF: How long have you been a resistance fighter?

AA: Four years with the AAMB.

TF: How did you become involved?

AA: Four years ago each of the resistance groups started new brigades. We demonstrated after Sharon entered the mosque. The Israelis tried to assassinate many brigade leaders and this is when the resistance grew. Each time there is an operation we try to stop them. Israelis call civilians “resistance fighters” and the media does not show any invasion or incursion unless Palestinians attack Israelis. We are a peaceful people. We don’t want Israel on our land. We want peace with all countries.

TF: What are your thoughts on President Bush’s election victory?

AA: There are no problems between the American and Palestinian people, but Bush’s decisions to support Israel gives Sharon a license and a green light to attack Palestinians. The problems are with the president and the government, not the American people.

TF: Have you had your picture taken for your martyr poster?

AA: Yes, in 2002 I had it done after an attempt on my life. We believe in God. God gives life and God takes it away. We have nothing to lose. I have brothers both martyred and in jail. Being a martyr for the cause of the Palestinian people is a good thing.

TF: Are you currently wanted by the Israeli army?

AA: Yes.

TF: How do you feel about international activists? Are they effective in supporting the Palestinian people?

AA: Internationals are welcome anytime. We love the people’s support. Even though you are not an army, you still help in your solidarity. Sometimes internationals are standing near the army jeeps so we don’t shoot. Internationals help protect the citizens, but the Israeli army doesn’t care…look what happened to Rachel Corrie.

TF: Many suicide bombers have come from this region. How do you feel about this?

AA: We have no other way to fight. It’s the only weapon we have.

TF: How is it decided who will become a suicide bomber?

AA: Those who do it believe and trust God. No one is told to do it. No one has told me to do it.

TF: In the last few years there have been several women taking up the cause as suicide bombers, one from a nearby refugee camp. How do you feel about this?

AA: I personally don’t agree with it, but a woman who chooses to be involved in an “operation” is showing that she is equal with the men in the struggle.

TF: Why is the Nablus area such a place of resistance to the occupation?

AA: There are four refugee camps full of people wanting to go back to their land. All the leaders of the brigades are from the camps. The Israeli army is killing children and women so we’ll fight until the end. (AA then spoke of the number of people killed during the intifada and the high percentage of these coming from the camps).

TF: What are your thoughts on the upcoming election for Palestinian leadership? Do you support a certain candidate?

AA: The AAMB have decided to support the candidate that the person on the street supports. Anyone who gets the vote of the people we will respect.

TF: What do you do to relax?

AA: I watch Al Jazeera, look at the internet, meet with friends, but I have no peace or safety until the occupation ends.

TF: If there were to be peace, an end to the occupation, what would you do then?

AA: I would join the police. I had a good job before the intifada. I have a wife, children, I want to live in peace.

TF: Do you worry about your personal safety and your family’s safety?

AA: Yes. I can only be in the camps and the Old City. Sometimes I sleep in other places. It (an attack) could happen to any family here, not only mine.

TF: Are you ever afraid?

AA: We are always looking to see if there are strange faces. If there are, we will check. My brother and friends help with this.

TF: Is there a message you would like to get out to North America?

AA: My message is…stand near us. We are not terrorists. We need a homeland, a government, safety. All our fighting is small operation compared to Israel. We have bullets, but Israel has tanks, Apache helicopters, chemical weapons, thousands of soldiers. Please support the Palestinian cause. Our situation is unfair. God will help you.

TF: Do you hate the Jewish people because of the occupation?

AA: We have nothing against the Jews. We don’t want Israel’s occupation. We want a homeland. This is not about race. We do not want to kill Jews, just an end to the occupation.

(The final 2 questions were asked lightheartedly, ending the interview)

TF: Why do you wear black? Don’t you think you’d look better in brighter colors?

AA: Laughter.

TF: What is your favorite food?

AA: Chicken. When you come back we will sit right here in my home and eat together. But if I don’t survive until then, please forgive me. I apologize.

Thomas Feakins is a Canadian social worker and activist recently returned from the West Bank.

the war prayer

2004-12-13T22:46:00.000-05:00

thanks, lawrence of cyberia.

O Lord our God, help us to tear their soldiers to bloody shreds with our shells; help us to cover their smiling fields with the pale forms of their patriot dead; help us to drown the thunder of the guns with the shrieks of their wounded, writhing in pain; help us to lay waste their humble homes with a hurricane of fire; help us to wring the hearts of their unoffending widows with unavailing grief; help us to turn them out roofless with little children to wander unfriended the wastes of their desolated land in rags and hunger and thirst, sports of the sun flames of summer and the icy winds of winter, broken in spirit, worn with travail, imploring Thee for the refuge of the grave and denied it -- for our sakes who adore Thee, Lord, blast their hopes, blight their lives, protract their bitter pilgrimage, make heavy their steps, water their way with their tears, stain the white snow with the blood of their wounded feet!

We ask it, in the spirit of love, of Him Who is the Source of Love, and Who is the ever-faithful refuge and friend of all that are sore beset and seek His aid with humble and contrite hearts. Amen.

- The War Prayer; Mark Twain

gaza explosion

2004-12-13T17:15:00.000-05:00

from justin podur's blog.

eqbal ahmad on the strategy for liberating palestine

2004-12-12T22:24:00.000-05:00

in this passage, from the book "confronting empire: interviews with david barsamian" (2000, based on an interview conducted in 1996), eqbal describes a keynote address he gave at a conference organized by arab americans in 1968 on the topic of palestine liberation.

"eqbal: i argued that armed struggle was supremely unsuited to the palestinian condition, that it was a mistake to put so much emphasis on it. i argued that armed struggle is less about arms and more about organization, that a successful armed struggle proceeds to out-administer the adversary and not to out-fight him. and that the task of out-administration occurs when you identify the primary contradiction of your adversary and expose that contradiction not only to yourselves, which you don't need to do so much, but to the world at large, and more important, to the people of the adversarial country itself.

i argued that israel's fundamental contradiction was that it was founded as a symbol of the suffering of humanity... at the expense of another people who were innocent of guilt. it's this contradiction that you have to bring out. and you don't bring it out by armed struggle. in fact, you suppress this contradiction by armed struggle. the israeli zionist organizations continue to portray the jews as victims of arab violence.

barsamian: i'm interested that this was what you wanted to project in this conference, coming off your first-hand experience in algeria where one million algerians were killed in a revolutionary struggle.

eqbal: yes, but precisely because of that. if i hadn't gone through the algerian experience, i wouldn't have reached this conclusion. after seeing what i saw in algeria, i couldn't romanticize armed struggle. the costs to the people of algeria were very high. OK, they agreed to pay the cost, but it was high. also, i knew what many people would not recognize even today, which is that the algerians lost the war militarily, but won it politically. they were successful in isolating france morally. so the primary task of revolutionary struggle is to achieve the moral isolation of the adversary in its own eyes and in the eyes of the world...

for example, in 1968 i said, "this is a moment to fit ships in cyprus, fit boats in lebanon and say, 'we're not going to destroy israel. that is not our intent. we just want to go home.' reverse the symbols of the exodus. see if the israelis are in the mood to sink some ships. they probably will. let them do so. some of us will die. let us die."...

barsamian: to further pursue the argument that you were making at the 1968 conference to arab americans, liberation struggles need to morally isolate the adversary. i'll give you that, with a qualification: it has to be an adversary that subscribes, at least on a rhetorical level, to liberal democratic traditions.

eqbal: obviously, you couldn't morally isolate the regimes of hitler or stalin. a strategy of moral isolation assumes that the adversary has based its own legitimacy on moral grounds. gandhi understood this rather well with regard to british colonialism, which justified itself on liberal principles and was violating them. he stood british imperialism upside down on its head.

at the risk of offending some people, between 1967 and now, israeli society has in some way worsened. likud, a right-wing party that has fewer moral compunctions, has now become the major party and has organized a large right-wing constituency such as... the gush emunim and other settler movements. they are much less susceptible to moral arguments. centrist zionism's primary contradiction was its principles of legitimacy were moral and its practices were immoral. and it is that which had to be fully used. opportunities were lost in the 1970's, once the PLO had become a quasi-state in lebanon. an opportunity has returned now, but there are no takers... if yasir arafat would take on the role of a gandhi or a martin luther king and announce tomorrow, "i must stop these settlements. they violate the spirit of oslo. we are committed to peace. you are making war. we do not want to use violence against you. peacefully we will march against you. we will sit in. we will clog the roads, start a full-scale movement, and discipline the palestinians not even to throw stones, intifada-style, because israelis will use and justify bullets against stones. they will use soldiers against children. don't even give them that." israel will divide. it will divide as a society the way america divided. i would keep it divided until it makes peace.

my argument about what the palestinian struggle should be about has returned again. but if you don't have a leadership, then what do you do?"

the modern day maccabees

2004-12-12T21:36:00.000-05:00

here's a thought that occurred to me a few years ago, and which i've never seen expressed in public.

take the maccabees. this time of year, jews celebrate their exploits. in some ways, they're considered the archetypal jewish warriors. they are lionized among the zionized. last time i was on an organized tour of israel, tales of the maccabees' military exploits were some of the biggest highlights of the trips. our tour guide would draw the connections between the battles of the maccabees and other historical battles in the land, from the days of joshua to the israeli occupation forces in modern times. the IOF are supposed to be the maccabees of today, combining bravery, fierce loyalty to the jewish people, and brilliant military tactics to secure smashing victories against the enemies.

but of course, the IOF are not the maccabees of today. the maccabees were not the army of a state, but an informal guerilla grouping of jews living under greek occupation, who succeeded in kicking the occupier out of their country. the IOF, of course, is a proper state army whose main function is to enforce an occupation. the two could hardly be more opposite.

the present-day analogue of the maccabees is hamas: an informal guerilla army, militant and strongly rooted in the community, bravely - and brutally - resisting an occupation by any and all means. like the maccabees, hamas is a religious fundamentalist organization seeking to impose religious rule once it gains power.

there are, of course, differences: the maccabees were overzealous in their battle against assimilation, often killing assimilated jews. hamas does nothing of the kind, and has a declared policy of tolerance towards all palestinians and a policy of cooperating with other militant palestinian organizations. similarly, hamas has shown itself willing to make pragmatic concessions short of its maximalist demand of an islamic palestine - in particular, it has indicated that it would support the two state solution that the whole world except israel and the US supports. one cannot imagine the maccabees making such compromises.

but still, hamas remains the closest analogue to the celebrated maccabees. i would be interested in seeing the reactions of people to this analysis. not just of the right wing zionists who lionize the maccabees while despising hamas, but of anyone who dismisses hamas as just an extremist terrorist organization, without recognizing its value.

and no, i'm not suggesting that we set up an eight day long holiday to celebrate hamas.

a response to dennis ross

2004-12-12T14:52:00.000-05:00

i wrote the response below to an essay by dennis ross posted at factsofisrael.com.

but first, a bit of explanation: usually when people talk about "israel's generous offer", they mean israel's position at the camp david negotiations of july 2000. anyone at a minimal level of literacy who has researched the question for five minutes knows that calling israel's ultimatum at camp david "generous" is bullshit. dennis ross is too sophisticated to use that line, but would still like to blame arafat for the failure of negotiations. his dilemma is that the vast majority of peace plans along the international consensus of the two-state solution were received well by the palestinians and either forcefully rejected or else ignored outright by israel (see chomsky's the fateful triangle). there are no cases that i know of in which the palestinians refused to consider a solution in accordance with security council resolution 242 and a palestinian state. so in order to blame the palestinians, ross relies on the clinton plan of late december 2000, after palestinian patience with israel's intransigence ended and they resumed armed resistance to the occupation, and israel responded with massive violence against civilians. that offer was not rejected by arafat but rather accepted as a basis for negotiations - negotiations that barak played along with but did not take seriously (see tanya reinhart's book), and eventually called off. the fact that arafat didn't accept the offer outright is viewed as evidence of his intransigence and duplicity, and is the key to blaming the palestinians for the lack of a diplomatic resolution to the conflict.

here's my response to the essay:

the fact that dennis ross, a former AIPACer, acknowledges that israel's "generous offer" at camp david is nonsense should settle the matter once and for all.

ross's entire case against arafat, judging by the essay above, reduces to this: arafat accepted the clinton plan as a basis for negotiations, rather than accepting it outright. this "rejection" is the reason there's no peace. not the dozen peace plans that the palestinians accepted and israel rejected, not barak's breaking off the taba negotiations over the clinton plan, not israel launching an all-out war on the palestinian population.

to the dennis rosses of the world, palestinians must accept every offer that they're given, without the opportunity to negotiate, and without any consideration of the context: decades of israeli rejection on the diplomatic front, and brutality and war crimes on the military front. could it be that palestinians were too upset at israel's unwillingness to live up to its obligations under oslo, too mad about the hundreds of palestinians murdered and thousands maimed between october and december 2000 to be willing to accept the generous concessions that the clinton plan expected them to make, including the surrender of individual and collective rights?

ross's essay is a contribution to the anti-palestinian propaganda that is used to secure acquiescence to israel's enormous crimes. it is not a contribution to peace-making.

poetry time

2004-12-12T13:56:00.000-05:00

shema
primo levi

You who live safe
In your warm houses,
You who find, returning in the evening,
Hot food and friendly faces:

Consider if this is a man
Who works in the mud
Who does not know peace
Who fights for a scrap of bread
Who dies because of a yes or a no.
Consider if this is a woman,
Without hair and without name
With no more strength to remember,
Her eyes empty and her womb cold
Like a frog in winter.

Meditate that this came about:
I commend these words to you.
Carve them in your hearts
At home, in the street,
Going to bed, rising;
Repeat them to your children,

Or may your house fall apart,
May illness impede you,
May your children turn their faces from you.

stealing from charity

2004-12-11T21:29:00.000-05:00

a large US charity, the holy land foundation, is among four defendants in an antiterrorism case that were forced to pay over $150 million to the family of an american-israeli colonist who was killed by hamas in the occupied territories. the lawsuit is based on allegations, which HLF officials have denied, that the HLF has given money to hamas. similar allegations led the US government to freeze the HLF's assets in 2001, though no evidence of the HLF-hamas link was presented.

the jury bought the line that the HLF and other US organizations like the islamic association for palestine have supported hamas, apparently on the basis of claims made by steven emerson, a self-proclaimed expert on terrorism who is most famous for being spectacularly wrong about the oklahoma city bombing. this guy is often taken seriously by the selectively gullible corporate media, but intelligence officials with expertise in terrorism tend to dismiss him.

the suit was brought under the antiterrorism act of 1990. but don't fret, supporters of terrorism! your donations to the israeli army and israeli settlements are still tax-deductible.

democracy now interview with noam chomsky + one state blog

2004-12-11T21:09:00.000-05:00

1. amy goodman of democracy now interviewed noam chomsky a few days ago. most of the interview is about zionism and israel in the early days.

2. thanks to marc from jews sans frontieres, i found this blog that's for the one state solution. haven't had the chance to do much reading, but anyone who's into natacha atlas and primo levi has got to be pretty cool.

let me make one thing perfectly clear

2004-12-11T19:54:00.000-05:00

the following two people are not the same:

This is abbas, head of the PLO, posing next to a building that he wants to give to israel.

2004-12-11T19:45:00.000-05:00

this is abbath, a freak from the band immortal.

THESE TWO ARE NOT THE SAME PERSON

marwan's demands from fatah

2004-12-11T19:07:00.000-05:00

marwan barghouti has offered to withdraw from the race for president of the palestinian authority if the fatah restores itself as an organization of resistance.

the following are the specific demands that barghouti reportedly made in a letter to mahmoud abbas, according to arabs48.

1. The Political Platform of Fateh must include a reference to "resistance to the occupation in accordance with international legality."
2. The future of the Palestinian people must not be confined to the results of the negotiations process, and that the Intifada must be considered as a national independence movement.
3. Abbas' political platform or statement must specifically include detailed references to the Palestinian Fundamentals, which must be named. The statement/platform must also specify explicitly that at the top of those Fundamentals is the Right of Return in accordance to international legality and must specify Jerusalem as the capital of the independent Palestinian state.
4. Abu Mazin and the PLO must reject any partial or intermediate agreements with the occupation and must reject the postponement of the national issues for later stages of negotiations (i.e. refugees' return and Jerusalem and the borders of the Palestinian state, the so called final-stage issues).
5. Specifying a detailed schedule for the release of all prisoners.
6. Israel must stop its policy of assassination and the targeting of "wanted" activists.
7. Israel must nullify its "wanted for security reasons" list, must stop pursuing them, and must permit the return of the fighters who were sent to exile as part of the 2002 Church of the Nativity deal .
8. The reorganizing of the PLO on sound bases, including a commitment to the program of resistance.
9. Rebuilding Fateh on the bases of continued resistance to occupation, the convening of Fateh's national congress, which must include Fateh's members both inside and outside Palestine, and clearly defining the duties and rights of Fateh's members.

massad on anti-semitism

2004-12-11T13:59:00.000-05:00

joseph massad, who teaches middle eastern studies at columbia university, has written an excellent article about zionism, anti-semitism and holocaust denial in al-ahram weekly (probably the best weekly newspaper out of the arab world - the equivalent to le monde diplomatique).

massad is best known for being witch-hunted as part of efforts by campus watch and allied organizations to smear, intimidate and attack academics and programs that promote serious academic analysis of the middle east. if you want to know why massad is the chosen target, read the article: it's a sharp analysis which argues that anti-semitism is the wrong concept for understanding jew-hatred in the arab world, that it might be a useful concept for understanding arab- and muslim-hatred in the west, and that holocaust-denial in the arab world is a result of accepting the logic of zionism.

israel is interfering in palestinian elections

2004-12-08T13:56:00.000-05:00

news stories and analysis related to the palestinian elections:

1. according to presidential candidate mustapha barghout i, israel is not allowing candidates freedom of movement. (and that includes those candidates who aren't being illegally held in israeli jails.)

2. from the electronic intifada: marwan barghouti's candidacy is good for democracy.

israel wants international funding for apartheid upgrade

2004-12-06T11:27:00.000-05:00

from the guardian:

Israel has released plans for the upgrade of roads and construction of 16 tunnels which would create an 'apartheid' road network for Palestinians in the West Bank.

...

Eiland (israeli official - j.) asked for an estimated £110 million, which would come from taxpayers in Europe, the US and Japan. The international community unanimously rejected the request, stating they could not finance a project not supported by the Palestinian Authority.

the real jazzman

2004-12-05T10:29:00.000-05:00

for those of you who are unaware, i post anonymously, mostly out of respect for my parents, who are hardcore right-wingers. they know my politics, but they would be mortified if any of their friends saw my name attached to these posts.

i chose "jazzman" because jazz is an acronym for Jews Against Zionism and Zoophilia. (that's right - i'm against zoophilia too. deal with it.) i'm not a jazz artist or a fan - in fact, i like jazz much less than any respectable, social-climbing middle class graduate student ought to.

today, we feature a real jewish anti-zionist jazzman - gilad atzmon. a professional jazz musician, he's much more critical of israel than i am, to the point that israel bans his records. though he grew up in israel, he identifies as a "hebrew-speaking palestinian" rather than israeli.

something in the falafel?

an inside source tells me that atzmon went to the same little high school in jerusalem that produced several other well known critics of israel, like linguist danny fox and film theorist dorit naaman.

mustapha barghouti

2004-12-05T05:02:00.000-05:00

among the candidates for leader of the palestinian authority is dr. mustapha barghouti. he isn't getting much press compared with the likes of abu mazen and mustapha's distant cousin marwan barghouti, but he has attracted attention from progressives. for example, he's been endorsed by najla said, daughter of the late edward said, who had worked together with barghouti to found the palestinian national initiative. najla, who by the way was smashing in reorientalism, writes:

as you all know, yasir arafat has died. and there will be elections in palestine to elect a successor to his presidential office. in the US media we hear only about abu mazen (mahmoud abbas--the guy arafat appointed) and marwan barghouti (the guy in jail), but there is another man running for president, and i and my family endorse his campaign 100% his name is MUSTAPHA BARGHOUTI (not related to MARWAN--aforementioned guy in jail) and he represents al mubadara, the palestinian national intitiative, a DEMOCRATIC party in palestine whose advocates and members are intelligent, educated, equality-endorsing NON VIOLENT advocates of the rights of palestinians and ALL HUMAN BEINGS, who should, as we as americans know, be EQUAL under every law. my father was one of the founders of this initiative with mustapha, as was haider abdel shafi. i will not say more but send you pleadingly to their website: http://www.almubadara.org/ just read. and learn and spread the word. we need palestinians BEHIND THIS PARTY and we need everyone else to help spread the word about its existence. i saw dr. barghouti give a talk a year ago, and was very impressed. without downplaying the bleakness of the current situation, he offered a vision of hope. the palestinian national initiative, like the alternative palestinian agenda, is the kind of movement - democratic, nonviolent and progressive - that critics of the palestinians say they would like to see and then ignore the existence of.

sad anniversary

2004-12-02T15:11:00.000-05:00

whenever i go off the topic of israel and palestine, i feel like starting off with an apology for digressing.

but you know what? i don't think i need to. let's take seriously martin luther king's principle:

an injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere.

a corrollary of this principle is:

if we are concerned about injustice anywhere, we must be concerned about injustice everywhere.

it follows that if we are concerned about justice in palestine, then we must be concerned about justice in other places too. QED.

and besides, as the northland poster collective t-shirt for kids says: an owie to one is an owie to all.

today's sad anniversary: twenty years ago, on the night of december 2-3, 1984, was the union carbide chemical leak in bhopal, india. we all know about the chernobyl nuclear disaster that killed 30 people immediately, and up to 2500 eventually. fewer of us know about the bhopal tragedy, where negligence on the part of the american corporation union carbide, now owned by dow chemical, caused the immediate death of 7,000 people and the eventual death of more than 20,000. the survivors, victims and their families are still waiting for justice and looking for solidarity.

destroying jewish historical sites

2004-12-02T14:48:00.000-05:00

zionist propagandists will assert israel's superiority over arabs based on treatment of holy sites: when jordan occupied the old city of jerusalem, they'll say, it kept it off limits to jews, while israel respects muslim and christian holy sites.

a thoughtful person would respond: "duh! the jews under consideration lived in israel, a country hostile to jordan, which attacked the jordanian forces in 1948, and which conducted terror raids in the occupied jordanian territories in the fifties and sixties. of course jordan would not unilaterally allow foreign citizens to enter the old city, holy sites or no holy sites."

an informed person would add: "israel's treatment of religious holy sites is possibly the worst in the world. it did to mosques and churches what it did to the villages containing them - razed them to the ground."

but today's topic is jewish historical sites, not muslim and christian holy sites.

crazy ol' rabbi arthur waskow of the shalom center points out that the palestinian town of anata is the biblical anatot, birthplace of the prophet jeremiah. you'll remember that jeremiah was the bible's fiercest critic of the wrongdoing and godlessness practiced by the ancient jews. the modern state of israel has being demolishing homes in jeremiah's birthplace.

and second, the city of falluja, which US forces have been committing war crimes in, turns out to be none other than the old jewish center of pumbedita. the place is mentioned often in the talmud, and was one of the great centers of jewish learning back in the day. talmudists from sura and naharda used to joke that the scholars from pumbedita would try, rhetoric-wise, to pass camels through the eyes of needles. of course, that's the pot calling the kettle black, the bush calling the bin laden a terrorist. let's remember the words of that old rabbinic scholar, jesus of nazareth, who said that it's easier for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to pass through the gates of heaven, and assume that in its modern interpretation, it applies to warmongering heads of state.

jews for yesha; or: yesha li eretz acheret

2004-12-02T11:43:00.000-05:00

and now for something completely different...

a festive rendition of the internationale, in japanese.
(thanks, yoshie!)

okay, so today's featured link is to mo'etzet yesha, the council for the jewish colonies in the occupied palestinian territories.

settlers/colonists don't refer to these territories as "the occupied territories", for obvious reasons. nor do we call them "the west bank and gaza strip". we call them "yesha", which is an acronym for yehuda, shomron and 'aza - judea, samaria and gaza: biblical names with ideological resonance.

"yesha" is also a play on the hebrew word for "salvation" - right wing israelis promote the line that the colonists are the salvation of israel. but it's also very close to "yeshu", which is "jesus" in hebrew, hence the pun in the first part of the title of this entry.

the second pun is much more complicated to explain to non-israelis. there's a famous israeli song called "eyn li eretz acheret", meaning "i have no other country". it's sung by corinne allal, a left-leaning tunisian-israeli lesbian, who happens to be my favorite israeli singer. the song's title is patriotic, and indeed the song starts off on a patriotic note, with the title line, and the line "here is my home". the brain-dead fascist crowd in israel therefore interprets the song as a jingoistic anthem, even singing it at their rallies. this is much the same way as ronald reagan thought that bruce springsteen's "born in the USA" reflected his brand of chauvinism. and the right-wing israelis are just as heads-up-their-asses wrong as reagan was: the song's style is just about the opposite of triumphant - it's slow, rueful, melodic, and has virtually no instrumentation. and after the beginning, the lyrics become extremely critical, and the singer pledges not to be silent until her country opens its eyes. powerful stuff.

anyway, replacing "eyn" with "yesh" would change the song title to mean "i have another country", and changing it to "yesha" keeps it suggestive by similarity of sound, but also changes the meaning to "judea, samaria and gaza are a different country for me".

if you read all that and get it, good for you.

why zionists love mahmoud abbas

2004-12-01T19:58:00.000-05:00

last year, the US and israel forced yasser arafat to relinquish his presidency, and replaced him with mahmoud abbas, aka abu mazen, aka the palestinian william henry harrison.

at first look it might seem undemocratic for two occupying countries to demand the removal of a popularly elected president of the country they're occupying, in favor of a guy who's as popular in his country as alan keyes is in illinois. but you're forgetting that the united states is the beacon of democracy, and israel is by definition the only democracy in the middle east. therefore, even if palestinians democratically elect a leader, their choice can be overruled by a country that assigns citizenship and votes on the basis of race. that's just how democracy works.

anyway, what israel couldn't do through its "democratic practices" - an abbas presidency lasting more than a couple of heartbeats - it has done by assassinating arafat. abbas has won the support of the fatah leadership - an indication of just how far the once-militant organization has plummeted - and has become the leader of the PLO, which means he'll probably become the leader of palestine. the US and israel will love it - not because he's against violence, but because he possesses the demostrated willingness to sell his people out, as the article below discusses, and as tanya reinhart analyzes in her great little book "israel/palestine: how to end the war of 1948". personally, i'm rooting for a different candidate who's against violence, but is not a sellout: mustapha barghouti. more about him in a different entry.

excerpt:

Israel's goal is not to achieve calm for the purpose of negotiating a total, orderly withdrawal from the occupied territories in the context of a peace deal. Israel wants to end Palestinian resistance in order to remove any obstacle to implementing its expansionist programme in all of Palestine. This would certainly thrill Israel, but it will not lead to peace and security, nor will it gain the Palestinians anything.

read hasan abu nimah's full article here.

come and see the blood in the streets

2004-12-01T17:18:00.000-05:00

i've been soooo busy, that i haven't had time to finish my response to mitchell bard's myth #1, which i promised yesterday. fortunately, i don't have many readers yet, so the cumulative heartbreak is, i presume, limited. in the meantime, here's a poem that i learned today.

I'm Explaining a Few Things
Pablo Neruda

You are going to ask: and where are the lilacs?
and the poppy-petalled metaphysics?
and the rain repeatedly spattering
its words and drilling them full
of apertures and birds?
I'll tell you all the news.

I lived in a suburb,
a suburb of Madrid, with bells,
and clocks, and trees.

From there you could look out
over Castille's dry face:
a leather ocean.
My house was called
the house of flowers, because in every cranny
geraniums burst: it was
a good-looking house
with its dogs and children.
Remember, Raul?
Eh, Rafel? Federico, do you remember
from under the ground
my balconies on which
the light of June drowned flowers in your mouth?
Brother, my brother!
Everything
loud with big voices, the salt of merchandises,
pile-ups of palpitating bread,
the stalls of my suburb of Arguelles with its statue
like a drained inkwell in a swirl of hake:
oil flowed into spoons,
a deep baying
of feet and hands swelled in the streets,
metres, litres, the sharp
measure of life,
stacked-up fish,
the texture of roofs with a cold sun in which
the weather vane falters,
the fine, frenzied ivory of potatoes,
wave on wave of tomatoes rolling down the sea.

And one morning all that was burning,
one morning the bonfires
leapt out of the earth
devouring human beings --
and from then on fire,
gunpowder from then on,
and from then on blood.
Bandits with planes and Moors,
bandits with finger-rings and duchesses,
bandits with black friars spattering blessings
came through the sky to kill children
and the blood of children ran through the streets
without fuss, like children's blood.

Jackals that the jackals would despise,
stones that the dry thistle would bite on and spit out,
vipers that the vipers would abominate!

Face to face with you I have seen the blood
of Spain tower like a tide
to drown you in one wave
of pride and knives!

Treacherous
generals:
see my dead house,
look at broken Spain :
from every house burning metal flows
instead of flowers,
from every socket of Spain
Spain emerges
and from every dead child a rifle with eyes,
and from every crime bullets are born
which will one day find
the bull's eye of your hearts.

And you'll ask: why doesn't his poetry
speak of dreams and leaves
and the great volcanoes of his native land?

Come and see the blood in the streets.
Come and see
The blood in the streets.
Come and see the blood
In the streets!

myths, facts and analysis

2004-11-30T17:44:00.000-05:00

part of my goal in this blog is to present responses to the zionist propaganda of alan dershowitz, mitchell bard, and others. their propaganda is often cleverly done and is well-promoted, but in most cases, an informed person with a web connection and a few minutes for reflection is able to see that they are either false, or because of ideological presuppositions they do not contribute to a better understanding of the conflict, nor do they promote justice or reconciliation. i'm somewhat well-informed, have a fast connection and i'm willing to make the time, so you'll be seeing discussion of zionist propaganda in this blog. hopefully the responses will be thoughful, analytical, and supportive of a good and just understanding of the conflict. and if i slip up and refer to dershowitz as "dershy the clown", or remark upon the appropriateness of the possessor in mitchell bard's "the complete idiot's guide to middle east conflict", you can chalk it up to my saucy nature, or the frustration of challenging a dominant narrative.

a note about my use of terms like "zionist", "anti-zionist" and "zionist propaganda": i am very aware that these are signifiers that tend to mark their users as dogmatic, conspiratorial and maybe antisemitic. this is in part due to the many dogmatic, conspiratorial, sometimes antisemitic crazies who have abused the term; in another part, it reflects the success of zionist propagandists in hijacking all discourse about israel and palestine, to the point that to focus on zionism as a concept, or to look at the action of zionists, or to consider zionism an ideology that could give rise to a specific form of propaganda, is outside the bounds of reasonable discourse, hence in "crazy" territory. part of why i'm using this term is precisely in order to attack this signification - to return "zionism" to the list of words that can be used neutrally in a political analysis.

i will probably attack the myths one by one, without being systematic - disciplined systematicity is one thing i'm really bad at. but i will begin at the beginning, with myth one in mitchell bard's "myths and facts":

“The Jews have no claim to the land they call Israel.”

that post coming up.

creative protest at berkeley

2004-11-30T13:06:00.000-05:00

it must be something in the northern california waters. palestine solidarity protests in the bay area are often among the most creative. students for justice in palestine at berkeley pioneered the mock checkpoint; yesterday they unveiled the mock bypass road.

bypass roads are one of the many overt expressions of israeli apartheid in the occupied territories. israel doesn't have jews-only bathrooms, but these roads are essentially jews-only highways: off-limits to the palestinians living in the occupied territories, they are primarily used by residents of the illegal jewish colonies in the west bank. they're also a key part of the geographical carve-up of palestine that's intended to prevent a contiguous palestinian state, even if israel agrees to return to the negotiating table. see jeff halper's well-known article the matrix of control.

and speaking of the bay area and creative protest, one of my absolute favorite organizations is QUIT - queers undermining israeli terrorism. check out the starbucks takeover especially.