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John Kerry’s finest hour: Obama Team Labels Israel an Outlaw Nation
By John Grant
Hallelujah!
Talk Nation Radio: Ann Wright on the Women's Boat to Gaza and Being Kidnapped by Israel in International Waters
Ann Wright is a retired U.S. State Department official and army colonel who resigned in 2003 in protest of the war on Iraq. She's just returned from another attempt to reach Gaza by sea.
For more information, see http://WomensBoatToGaza.us
Total run time: 29:00
Host: David Swanson.
Producer: David Swanson.
Music by Duke Ellington.
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Why I won’t be voting for Hillary in November: A Neolib Posing as a Progressive vs. a Reality TV Star Posing as a Fascist
By Dave Lindorff
I won’t be voting for Hillary Clinton if she wins the Democratic Party nomination for president, and I won’t heed Bernie Sanders if, as he has vowed to do, he calls on his supporters to “come together” after the convention, should he lose, to support Clinton and prevent Donald Trump or another Republican from becoming president.
Trying to make art support the Zionist cause: Israel Moves to Check Its Artists
By John Grant
“A new thought occurred to Rami. It soothed him like a gentle caress. Not all men are born to be heroes. Maybe I wasn’t born to be a hero. But in every man there’s something special, something that isn’t in other men. In my nature, for instance, there’s a certain sensitivity. A capacity to suffer and feel pain. Perhaps I was born to be an artist.”
Nonviolent Resistance in the South Hebron Hills
By Cassandra Dixon
The worst worries of a child’s school day should be homework. Maybe a lost book, or an argument with a friend. No child’s walk to school should routinely involve armed soldiers and fear of sometimes being chased and assaulted by angry adults. But for the Palestinian children who live with their families in the small rural villages that make up the South Hebron Hills, this is how the school day begins. Illegal settlements and outposts isolate and separate their villages and soldiers are a constant in their lives.
Once, the trip from the tiny hamlet of Tuba to the school in the village of Tuwani was a calm and beautiful walk along a quiet road connecting the two villages. During the l980s Israeli settlers built a settlement on privately owned Palestinian land, which had been used to graze sheep and goats. Following construction of the settlement, the settlers established an illegal outpost. Now, industrial chicken barns sit astride the road that once served children walking to school, farmers taking livestock to town, and families traveling to Tuwani, or the larger town of Yatta for health care, shopping, and higher education.
Between the settlement and the outpost, what remains of the road is closed to Palestinians. With one exception, - children walk behind an Israeli military jeep to reach their school. Their parents are not allowed to walk with them.
The twenty or so children who make this trip start their school day in an unprotected field, anxiously waiting for the Israeli soldiers who will oversee their walk to school. Villagers had built shelters in which the children could await the soldiers, but Israeli authorities have dismantled every shelter. If it is raining, the children get soaked. Some days the soldiers are the same soldiers who chased or arrested shepherds the day before – shepherds who may be the brothers or fathers of these children. Some days the soldiers are late, leaving the group of children waiting, vulnerable to attack and within easy reach of the outpost. Some days the military escort does not arrive at all, and the children make the trip to school with international volunteers along a longer path, which also lies alongside the settlement.
About 1,000 people live in the neighboring villages, an estimated half of whom are children. Nevertheless, because the villages lie inside of Israeli Firing Zone 918, the military uses the land for military training.
Amazingly, despite all of this, it is almost unheard of for children to miss a day of school. Parents are determined that their children will be educated. When I began volunteering in Tuwani, the school reached only to third grade. Now thanks to the community’s determination to provide their children with education, students can complete high school in the village, and although facing a continued threat of demolition by Israeli military bulldozers, villagers have built and staffed primary schools for children who live in 8 nearby villages.
This is what nonviolent resistance to military occupation looks like.
I’m grateful that I can spend a portion of this year in Palestine. For many years children in these villages have taught me about nonviolence. Sometimes, the presence of international human rights workers holding cameras has some small positive effect on their days.
U.S. people bear some responsibility for the interruption of their childhoods. The U. S. subsidizes about 25% of Israel’s military budget, at a cost to U.S. taxpayers conservatively estimated at $3.1 billion a year.
I’m working with the Italian organization Operation Dove.
They support Palestinians who resist the Israeli occupation, standing with families in their commitment to remain on their land. This includes accompanying school children and farm families as they walk to school, graze their animals and tend their crops. Operation Dove helps document the harassment, intimidation, arrests, detentions, home demolitions, checkpoints, road closures, military training exercises, and settler attacks. Villagers also report to Operation Dove when they endure theft and when their crops and property are destroyed.
Protective presence provided by activists is not a large-scale solution to the violence that intrudes into childrens’ lives in Palestine. But many years of visits with these families persuades me that it’s important and necessary to support and participate in the villagers’ nonviolent efforts. Families that confront militarism and occupation help us move beyond our addiction to militarism and violence.
The children I met early on are grown now. Some have gone on to college, and some have families of their own. These young people have every reason to be angry. Their childhoods included fear, intimidation, demolitions, arrests and isolation. But they have also grown up witnessing their community’s steadfast commitment to nonviolently resist injustice. Their families have supported them well, including them in the community’s struggle for dignity. Against all odds they are growing up with humor and tenacity instead of anger and bitterness. They are living proof to the rest of us that love wins.
To read more about Operation Dove’s work in the South Hebron Hills, visit http://www.operazionecolomba.it/togetherattuwani
Cassandra Dixon lives at Mary House of Hospitality, a small catholic worker house which offers hospitality to families visiting the federal prison at Oxford, WI, and works as a carpenter in Madison.
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Photo Credit: Cassandra Dixon
Caption: This little girl was injured by two masked settlers who attacked her with stones as she gathered herbs with a friend on the path between Tuba and Tuwani. She and her siblings make the same trip on foot each school day. She is an amazingly smart and tough young girl – insistent that the many odd volunteers that pass through her life should learn her name and visit her family’s home. She needed four stitches in a head wound after the attack.
Where’s the truth, and how can you find it?: The US Corporate Media are Essentially Propaganda Organs of the US Government
Are the American corporate media largely propaganda organs, or news organizations?
Warmongers & Peacemongers: Learning How Not to Rule the World
By John Grant
[Al Qaeda’s] strategic objective has always been ... the overthrow of the House of Saud. In pursuing that regional goal, however, it has been drawn into a worldwide conflict with American power.
Will Obama Give Israel even more American Weapons and Dollars to Kill Palestinians?
Editor's note: Say no at http://noweaponsforisrael.org
By Ann Wright
President Obama met with Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu on November 9 in the White House and is considering the Israeli request to give a 50% increase of nearly $1.5 billion in U.S. military funding bringing the U.S. donation to the killing of Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza to $4.5 billion a year.
As it stands now, more that half of the U.S. foreign military spending for 2016 goes to Israel. As in all things, Israel gets special treatment by the U.S. allowing Israel to spend 25% of its gift from the U.S. to pay itself for buying weapons from its own weapons industry!!!
According to a recent congressional report, Israel has received $124.3 billion in military assistance from the US since its founding in 1948.
The report states that “strong congressional support for Israel has resulted in Israel receiving benefits not available to any other countries; for example, Israel can use U.S. military assistance both for research and development in the United States and for military purchases from Israeli manufacturers.
In addition, U.S. assistance earmarked for Israel is generally delivered in the first 30 days of the fiscal year, while most other recipients normally receive aid in installments, and Israel (as is also the case with Egypt) is permitted to use cash flow financing for its U.S. arms purchases.
In addition to receiving U.S. State Department-administered foreign assistance, Israel also receives funds from annual defense appropriations bills for rocket and missile defense programs. Israel pursues some of those programs jointly with the United States.”
As Obama was meeting Netanyahu, eight blocks away at the Palestine Center in Washington, DC, a surgeon from Norway who works on behalf of his university part of each year in al Shifa hospital in Gaza, told of the devastation, destruction and human suffering these American weapons and dollars cause.
Dr. Mads Gilbert spoke of 51 days of terror in Gaza in the summer of 2014 as the Israeli Attack forces brutalized the people of Gaza with Israeli and U.S. artillery, assassin drone ordnance, F16s, hellfire missiles and dense inert military explosives. Gilbert said that the 2014 Israeli attack on Gaza was 500% stronger than 2009 attack. He was working at al Shifa hospital in 2009 when the IDF attacked Gaza. In 2014, the IDF fired 50,000 of those shells into Gaza and conducted over 6,000 air strikes, destroying over 3,500 buildings in Gaza City alone including over 50% of the hospitals in Gaza.
At the end of the 51-day attack, 2250 Palestinians were dead, including 551 children and 299 women. 3,500 Palestinian children were wounded and the 1 million children and youth who live in Gaza were all deeply affected by the attacks. 60 percent of the 1.8 million who live in Gaza are under the age of 22.
Dr. Gilbert’s presentation included mind-searing photos of the carnage caused by Israeli attacks and the audio of the sounds of jets racing overhead, bombs exploding and buildings collapsing.
Photo of Dr. Mads Gilbert in al Shifa hospital with Palestinian child
Citing the report of the United Nations Independent Commission of Inquiry on the 2014 Gaza Conflict, Gilbert said the IDF purposefully targeted the civilian population including entire families, that the IDF purposefully targeted hospitals, ambulances and four UN shelter facilities.
The report stated that “Hundreds of Palestinian civilians were killed in their own homes, especially women and children. At least 142 families lost three or more members in an attack on a residential building during the summer of 2014, resulting in 742 deaths. The fact that Israel did not revise its practice of air-strikes, even after their dire effects on civilians became apparent, raises the question of whether this was part of a broader policy which was at least tacitly approved at the highest level of government.”
Additionally, “the commission is concerned about Israel’s extensive use of weapons with a wide kill and injury radius; though not illegal, their use in densely populated areas is highly likely to kill combatants and civilians indiscriminately. There appears also to be a pattern whereby the IDF issued warnings to people to leave a neighbourhood and then automatically considered anyone remaining to be a fighter. This practice makes attacks on civilians highly likely. During the Israeli ground incursion into Gaza that began in mid-July 2014, hundreds of people were killed and thousands of homes destroyed or damaged.
The commission report stated: “Palestinian armed groups fired 4,881 rockets and 1,753 mortars towards Israel in July and August 2014, killing 6 civilians, including one child and injuring at least 1,600.” 66 Israeli soldiers were killed in military operations inside Gaza.
The commission also reported: “In the West Bank including East Jerusalem, 27 Palestinians were killed and 3,020 injured between June and August 2014. The number killed in these three months was equivalent to the total for the whole of 2013. The commission is concerned about what appears to be the increasing use of live ammunition for crowd control by the Israeli Security Forces, which raises the likelihood of death or serious injury.”
The commissioners wrote, “Impunity prevails across the board for violations allegedly committed by Israeli forces, both in Gaza and the West Bank. “Israel must break with its lamentable track record in holding wrong doers accountable, and accountability on the Palestinian side is also woefully inadequate.”
Signaling further attacks on Gaza, during a November 10 talk at the Center for American Progress in Washington, Netanyahu said that Gaza has “become this poison thumb, this poison dagger that sends rockets” into Israel and that Israel must be prepared for a long period of tension.
This blind backing for whatever Israel does and providing the weapons to do it is dangerous for the United States and for Israel. As Israeli journalist Gideon Levy recently wrote concerning Hillary Clinton’s unwavering support for Israel, but can be expanded to the similar support given by both Republican and Democratic led U.S. administrations: “… support (for) the continued occupation is like a person who continues to buy drugs for an addicted relative. This is neither concern nor friendship; it is destruction… “false” friends of Israel – have been one of the curses on this country for years. Because of them, Israel can continue to act as wildly as it likes, thumbing its nose at the world and paying no price. Because of them, it can destroy itself unhindered.
Israeli attacks on people in Gaza and the West Bank will end when we the citizens of the U.S. force our government to stop its military and diplomatic backing of the State of Israel.
About the Author: Ann Wright served 29 years in the U.S. Army/Army Reserves and retired as a Colonel. She also was a U.S. diplomat for 16 years and resigned in 2003 in opposition to the war on Iraq. She has been in Gaza six times and was on the 2010 Gaza Flotilla that was attacked by the IDF and who executed nine passengers and wounded 50.
How a High Dollar Speech Sends a former Israeli Prime Minister to US Federal Court on Claims of War Crimes
By Ann Wright
Serving legal documents on high visibility persons who have been involved in international criminal acts is very difficult. However, the temptation of large honoraria for speeches in the United States tripped up a former Israeli Prime Minister who has been accused of war crimes for his involvement in the murders of ten passengers (nine were killed immediately and a seriously wounded passenger died after being in a coma for several years) on the Mavi Marmara in the 2010 Gaza Freedom Flotilla.
In a telephone press conference on October 21, the international legal team that filed the lawsuit against former Israeli Prime Minister and Minister of Defense Ehud Barak described how “legal process service” or official notification of a legal claim filed against him was done. The legal team knew Barak would be in Southern California giving three talks as a part of the Distinguished Speaker Series of Southern California and hired a commercial “certified process server” to deliver the court documents to Barak.
According to attorney Dan Stormer of the Los Angeles law firm Hadsell Stormer Renick LLP,on the evening of October 20 when Barak was scheduled to give a lecture in Thousand Oaks, California, the process server handed the documents to one of Barak’s security team who, in the view of witnesses, handed the documents to Barak, thereby completing the official notification of Barak that a civil case against him had been filed in U.S. Federal Court.
On Friday, October 15, 2015, attorneys for U.S. citizen Furkan Dogan, a 19 year old U.S. citizen who was shot 5 times by Israeli commandos, had filed a civil lawsuit in the Federal District court of California, Central Division, against Barak for his role as Defense Minister in the 2010 Israeli Defense Forces raid on the Gaza Freedom Flotilla ship Mavi Marmara that resulted in the executions of nine unarmed civilian passengers and wounding of over 50 passengers, one of whom died after being in a coma for several years. The lawsuit was filed using Alien Tort Claims, Torture Prevention and Anti-Terrorists legislation.
The legal documents filed in Federal District Court state: “Defendant Barak is responsible and liablefor the common plan, design, and scheme unlawfully to attack the six vessels of theGaza Freedom Flotilla and the civilian passengers on board which constituted acts of international terrorism and resulted in extrajudicial killings, torture, and cruel inhumane or other degrading treatment, in violation of customary international law.
Defendant Barak’s position as Israeli’s Minister of Defense provided him with the ability and capacity to plan, direct, control and oversee the operation against the Flotilla and the IDF soldiers who conducted the attack. Therefore Defendant Barak possessed command responsibility over the IDF forces, and knew or should have known that the unlawful attack on the Flotilla would result in torts and international law violations against Plaintiffs. Defendant Barak failed to stop the violations before and during the attack, and failed to punish those responsible for committing the violations after the attack, thereby ratifying their conduct.”
Attorney Stormer said that Barak must respond to the lawsuit within 30 days after which the discovery phase of the lawsuit will begin. Stormer said that if the suit is successful, damages and compensation to the parents of Furkan Dogan, could amount to “tens of millions of dollars.” Stormer said that other families of those executed by the Israeli commandos may join the lawsuit.
British lawyer Rodney Dixon said that having Barak served the legal process in California was a “watershed” moment. Dixon said that the Nuremburg, Tokyo, Yugoslavia and Sierra Leone war crimes trials demonstrate that political leaders who order the targeting and killing of unarmed civilians can be held accountable.
In September 2009, lawyers representing 16 Palestinians living in Britain asked a London court to issue an arrest warrant for Barak who was speaking in Britain for his role in the deaths of hundreds of unarmed Palestinians in Gaza who were killed in the Israeli 29 day attack on Gaza in December 2008-January 2009. However, the court ruled that Barak enjoyed diplomatic immunity from prosecution as he was in office at the time.
Legal team attorney Haydee Dijkstal, who is a lawyer in The Hague, the Netherlands, said during the press conference that “there is no protection for officials who have left office” and the lawsuit against Barak could not be thrown out by the U.S. court on grounds of diplomatic immunity.
Several members of the George W. Bush administration do not travel to certain countries in Europe due to lawsuits filed against them in Germany, France, Spain and Switzerland for their roles the war on terror and torture.
About the Author: Ann Wright served 29 years in the US Army/Army Reserves and retired as a Colonel. She was a US diplomat for 16 years in US Embassies in Nicaragua, Grenada, Somalia, Uzbekistan, Kyrgyzstan, Sierra Leone, Micronesia, Afghanistan and Mongolia. She was a passenger on the 2010 Gaza Freedom Flotilla, and on the 2011 and 2015 flotillas.
Lawsuit for 2010 Gaza Flotilla Deaths Filed in US Court Against former Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak
By Ann Wright
A lawsuit in the United States has been filed (PDF) against former Israeli Prime Minister and Defense Minister Ehud Barak for his role in the 2010 Israeli commando attack upon the Gaza Freedom Flotilla in which 8 Turkish citizens and one American citizen were executed by Israeli forces and over fifty Turkish passengers were wounded. The trial will be the first time a former Israeli Prime Minister will be put on trial for reasons of international terrorism.
The family of Furkan Doğan, the American citizen who was assassinated in the attack, filed the lawsuit in the Central District Court of California and notice of the trial was handed to Barak last night, October 20, in Los Angeles when he spoke in the Distinguished Speaker series of Southern California (http://speakersla.com/
According to a press release (http://mavi-marmara.ihh.org.
American attorneys Hydee Dijsktal and Dan Stormer, the British law firm, Stoke & White, British Professor Dr. Geoffrey Nice and UK attorney Rodney Dixon are the legal team for the Dogan family. Ehud Barak was almost arrested in France in 2010 when he went to a weapons expo. by hopping off the plane last minute with the trial opened against him by the wives of martyrs in France. Other legal proceedings against Barak and other senior members of the Israeli government are in the works. In 2010 in France, the widows of Cevdet Kılıçlar and Necdet Yıldırım, two others executed by Israeli commandos, brought a lawsuit against Barak which he evaded when he was informed of the French lawsuit as he was about to deplane in Paris to attend a weapons expo in France. In the case brought in the International Criminal Court (ICC), the ICC prosecutor has ruled that the attack by Israeli commandos upon the Mavi Marmara in the Gaza Freedom Flotilla was a war crime. Additionally, the 7th High Criminal Court in Istanbul, Turkey has issued a “red notice” for the arrest of four senior Israeli government officials in a lawsuit filed in Turkey http://www.incanews.net/en/ Due to political considerations dealing with the State of Israel, the Ministry of Justice of Turkey has delayed sending to Interpol the “red notice” much to the consternation of those seeking justice. About the Author: Ann Wright served 29 years in the US Army/Army Reserves and retired as a Colonel. She also was a US diplomat for 16 years and worked in US Embassies in Nicaragua, Grenada, Somalia, Uzbekistan, Kyrgyzstan, Sierra Leone, Micronesia, Afghanistan and Mongolia. She resigned from the US government in March, 2003 in opposition to the Iraq war. She was on the 2010, 2011 and 2015 Gaza Freedom Flotillas and has been to Gaza six times after Israeli attacks on Gaza.
A Dangerous Car Ride Through the Clashes
My best friend just visited me for two weeks. The entire time I have been here, it has been pretty quiet. There hasn’t been much violence or conflict. But four days after she arrived, violence and clashes started happening every day. They are still happening everyday and as I write this I can hear the clashes in the background (gun shots and a baby crying). We mostly chilled in Bethlehem where I live and each evening if we were able to go outside, we would go to a different restaurant or meet different friends of mine in the area. Other nights when the clashes were booming just blocks from my apartment, we stayed in. Although the situation is heightened, we still wanted to do stuff and I still wanted to show her Palestine. Not only do I love traveling around the West Bank, but I also felt it was my duty to show her around and do the best I could to explain things.
Living in a Conflict Zone
I think the last few days have been the first time that I have really felt like I live in the Occupied Territories. The Wall, the soldiers, the checkpoints, the questions, the stories, the excitement, the feeling that it is dangerous. Don’t get me wrong the injustice that I have witnessed over the past 6 months is hard to describe and the sadness and oppression all around me is hard to deal with but all of that just seems like nothing now. Now it feels more like a conflict zone.
There have been clashes and riots everyday all over the West Bank including in Bethlehem. The Israelis cleansed the Temple Mount of Muslims last week for a Jewish holiday and there have been settler attacks around the West Bank. The West Bank is in an uproar. Meanwhile, Hamas fires rockets to Sderot…the same town I visited a few weeks ago. There is talk of the third intifada.
Can Corporatized Universities Allow Criticism of Israel?
The University of California is seeking to ban criticism of Israel. This is a widespread phenomenon in the United States, as attested by two new reports and cases like that of Steven Salaita, author of Uncivil Rights: Palestine and the Limits of Academic Freedom.
Salaita was fired by the University of Illinois for criticizing Israel on Twitter. Norman Finkelstein had been denied tenure by DePaul University for criticizing Israel. William Robinson was almost driven out at UC Santa Barbara for refusing to "repent" after criticizing Israel. Joseph Massad at Columbia had a similar experience.
Why, in a country that stretches "freedom of speech" to the point of covering the bribery of politicians, should it be acceptable to criticize the United States but not a tiny, distant country only just created in 1948? And why should such censorship reach even into institutions that usually pile "academic freedom" on top of "freedom of speech" as an argument against censorship?
First and foremost, I think, is the nature of Israel. It's a nation practicing apartheid and genocide in the twenty-first century using U.S. funding and weaponry. It can't persuade people of the acceptability of these policies in open debate. It can only continue its crimes by insisting that -- precisely as a government serving one ethnic group only -- any criticism amounts to the threat of apartheid and genocide known as "anti-Semitism."
Second, I think, is the subservience of the contemporary degenerate educational institution, which serves the wealthy donor, not the exploration of human intellect. When wealthy donors demand that "anti-Semitism" be stamped out, so it is. (And how can one object without being "anti-Semitic" or appearing to dispute that there actually is real anti-Semitism in the world and that it is as immoral as hatred of any other group.)
Third, the crackdown on criticizing Israel is a response to the success of such criticism and to the efforts of the BDS (boycotts, divestment, and sanctions) movement. Israeli author Manfred Gerstenfeld published openly in the Jerusalem Post a strategy for making an example of a few U.S. professors in order to "diminish the threat of boycotts."
Salaita called his book Uncivil Rights because the accusations of unacceptable speech typically take the form of proclaiming a need to protect civility. Salaita didn't tweet or otherwise communicate anything actually anti-Semitic. He tweeted and otherwise communicated many statements opposing anti-Semitism. But he criticized Israel and cursed at the same time. And to compound the sin, he used humor and sarcasm. Such practices are enough to get you convicted in a U.S. Court of Indignation without any careful examination of whether the sarcastic cursing actually expressed hatred or, on the contrary, expressed justifiable outrage. Reading Salaita's offending tweets in the context of all his other ones exonerates him of anti-Semitism while leaving him clearly guilty of "anti-Semitism," that is: criticizing the Israeli government.
This criticism can take the form of criticizing Israeli settlers. Salaita writes in his book:
"There are nearly half a million Jewish settlers on the West Bank. Their population currently grows at double the rate of other Israelis. They use 90 percent of the West Bank's water; the 3.5 million Palestinians of the territory make due with the remaining 10 percent. They travel on Jewish-only highways while Palestinians wait for hours at checkpoints (with no guarantee of passing through, even when they are injured or giving birth). They regularly assault women and children; some bury alive the natives. They vandalize homes and shops. They run over pedestrians with their cars. They restrict farmers from their land. They squat on hilltops that don't belong to them. They firebomb houses and kill babies. They bring with them a high-tech security force largely composed of conscripts to maintain this hideous apparatus."
One could read even such a longer-than-twitter criticism and imagine certain additions to it. But, reading the whole book from which I've quoted it, would eliminate the possibility of fantasizing that Salaita is, in this passage, advocating vengeance or violence or condemning settlers because of their religion or ethnicity or equating all settlers with each other except in so far as they are part of an operation of ethnic cleansing. Salaita does not excuse either side of the conflict but criticizes the idea that there is a conflict in Palestine with two equal sides:
"Since 2000, Israelis have killed 2,060 Palestinian children, while Palestinians have killed 130 Israeli children. The overall death count during this period is over 9,000 Palestinians and 1,190 Israelis. Israel has violated at least seventy-seven UN resolutions and numerous provisions of the Fourth Geneva Conventions. Israel has imposed hundreds of settlements on the West Bank, while Palestinians inside Israel increasingly are squeezed and continue to be internally displaced. Israel has demolished nearly thirty thousand Palestinian homes as a matter of policy. Palestinians have demolished zero Israeli homes. At present more than six thousand Palestinians languish in Israeli prisons, including children; no Israeli occupies a Palestinian prison."
Salaita wants Palestinian land given back to Palestinians, just as he wants at least some Native American land given back to Native Americans. Such demands, even when they amount to nothing but compliance with existing laws and treaties, seem unreasonable or vengeful to certain readers. But what people imagine education consists of if not the consideration of ideas that at first seem unreasonable is beyond me. And the notion that returning stolen land must involve violence is a notion added to the proposal by the reader.
However, there is at least one area in which Salaita is clearly and openly accepting of violence, and that is the United States military. Salaita wrote a column criticizing "support the troops" propaganda, in which he said, "My wife and I often discuss what our son might grow up to accomplish. A consistent area of disagreement is his possible career choice. She can think of few things worse than him one day joining the military (in any capacity), while I would not object to such a decision."
Think about that. Here is someone making a moral argument for opposing violence in Palestine, and a book-length defense of the importance of this stand outweighing concerns of comfort or politeness. And he wouldn't so much as object to his son joining the United States military. Elsewhere in the book, he notes that U.S. academics "can travel to, say, Tel Aviv University and pal around with racists and war criminals." Think about that. This is an American academic writing this while David Petraeus, John Yoo, Condoleezza Rice, Harold Koh, and dozens of their fellow war criminals teach in U.S. academia, and not without huge controversy about which Salaita cannot have avoided hearing. In response to outrage at his criticism of "support the troops," his then-employer, Virginia Tech, loudly proclaimed its support for the U.S. military.
The U.S. military acts on the belief, as found in the names of its operations and weapons as well as in its extended discussions, that the world is "Indian territory," and that native lives don't matter. A West Point professor recently proposed targeting critics of U.S. militarism with death, not just denial of tenure. And why is such criticism dangerous? Because nothing the U.S. military does to the people of Afghanistan, Iraq, Pakistan, Yemen, Somalia, Syria, or anywhere else is any more defensible than what the Israeli military does with its help -- and I don't think it would take much consideration of the facts for someone like Steven Salaita to realize that.
Talk Nation Radio: Khury Petersen-Smith on Black Solidarity with Palestine
Khury Petersen-Smith is an activist who lives in Boston. He traveled to Gaza in 2009 as part of the Viva Palestina medical relief delegation. He also traveled to Iraq on a peace delegation in 2004. His organizing and writing focus particularly on Black liberation, Palestine solidarity, and U.S. empire. He was an organizer of a new statement of black solidarity with Palestine: www.blackforpalestine.com
Also find him here: http://facebook.com/black4palestine and here: http://twitter.com/black4palestine
Total run time: 29:00
Host: David Swanson.
Producer: David Swanson.
Music by Duke Ellington.
Download from Archive or LetsTryDemocracy.
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Visiting Non-Jewish Populations Of Israel: Part 1: Introduction
Most of my blog and most of my experiences have been from behind the Separation Wall in the West Bank. But a few weeks ago, I went on a political tour around Israel. There were about 20 of us and we hired a big, bright pink bus to take us on a three day tour. It wasn’t a typical tour that most people go on when they come to Israel. People usually visit Tel Aviv and go to the beach, maybe visit the Carmel Market and shop at one of the many malls. Then they go over to Jerusalem and visit some holy sites, and the Old City. They probably go to the Dead Sea and even up to the Sea of Galilee.
Living Next to the Border of Gaza
During my non-touristy tour around Israel, we traveled to Sderot which is an Israeli town a few kilometers from the Gaza border. It is often hit by rockets during upheaval. It was interesting to see the trauma that the Jewish people in that town live in because I rarely get that side of the story. There were bomb shelters everywhere including the playground, which had a bomb shelter painted and shaped like a big caterpillar. I guess to cheer up the children. The state of Israel requires each home in to have a bomb shelter. Instead of trying to make peace, when the project was initiated the Israeli government used tax money that could have been used for social services, to install many of these private bomb shelters.
Visiting Non-Jewish Populations Of Israel: Part 3: Druze in the Golan Heights
After a night in Jaffa, we went up to the Golan Heights and met the Druze who also live under harsh conditions and live with less rights than Jewish citizens within the state of Israel. The Golan Heights was taken from Syria in 1967 during the six day war and has been occupied by Israel ever since. There are many Arabs, including the Druze population that now live within the borders of Israel in the Golan Heights. The lecture and tour of this Druze village about the living conditions and situation of the Druze population was very informative and interesting. The conditions are similar to the West Bank Palestinians. As I learn more and more about the different people of this land, the facts start blending about each group’s situation. They are all similar, they are all horrible. Most of them are unbelievable and they all violate international and my moral law.
Visiting Non-Jewish Populations Of Israel: Part 2: Unrecognized Bedouin Villages
At the beginning of our tour, we traveled to the Negev and met with Bedouins who live in the “unrecognized villages”. These villages have about 80,000 people living in them and half of them are under the age of 18. Although, these people live inside the state of Israel, are considered citizens, pay taxes if they work and some of them even serve in the military, they don’t have access to electricity or running water. When the tour guide said that some of them voluntarily serve in the military, I was astonished…why would they do that. It turns out the Israeli military needed more soldiers to enroll in the military so they told Bedouins in these villages that if they serve in the military the state of Israel would give them electricity and running water and make their living conditions better. So many Bedouins from these villages joined the military and were sometimes the toughest, harshest soldiers in the West Bank because they were trying to prove
Talk Nation Radio: Eve Spangler on Israel/Palestine
https://soundcloud.com/davidcnswanson/talk-nation-radio-eve-spangler-on-israelpalestine
Eve Spangler is a sociologist and a human and civil rights activist. For the last decade, her work has focused on the Israel/Palestine conflict. We discuss her new book, Understanding Israel/Palestine: Race, Nation, and Human Rights in the Conflict.
Total run time: 29:00
Host: David Swanson.
Producer: David Swanson.
Music by Duke Ellington.
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Effects of Oppression and Occupation
I am sure there are many effects of the Israeli oppression and occupation of the Palestinian people. I probably have written about some of them in past entries. I have had so many experiences living behind the wall. Part of me wanted this blog to be about the stories that I have heard but I also wanted it to be about the experiences I have had living behind the wall. It's interesting too because after the first few weeks, random people stopped telling me their stories, as my Arabic got better, people stopped telling me their stories, as I went from being known as a tourist to known as someone who lived here, people weren't flocking to me to tell me their stories. But also as I stayed here and as my Arabic got better and as I went from being known as a tourist to someone who lived here, my personal stories about living behind the wall were racking up but I became blocked mentally. One day in the Palestinian life is like a week.
The Only Democracy in the Middle East
Doesn't that indicate freedom. Freedom of movement. Freedom of religion, freedom of speech, freedom of travel. Maybe equal rights. Liberty...if it's the only democracy in the Middle East then why is it the only country in the Middle East that I have traveled to where I have been interrogated at the airport on the way in and the way out...each time I have been there? Why is it the only country I have traveled to in the Middle East where I am scared to post on Facebook? Where I'm scared to blog about my experiences? Where I'm scared to tell people where I am living? Where I am scared to tell people where I am volunteering and what I am doing? Why is it the
Israel Sees Nazism in Mirror it Mistakes for Window
Israel is trying to expel the population of a village for the crime of not being Jewish, the same crime for which Israel bombs the people of Gaza for a month or so every few years and blockades them in between these bursts of violence.
Meanwhile, Mike Huckabee declares that making peace with Iran amounts to marching Israelis "to the door of the oven."
Guess which of the two stories will get more coverage!
A crime of over 70 years ago, part of a war that in my unscientific estimate forms the single most common theme of U.S. historical fiction -- whether print or film -- is more important news in the view of U.S. editors than is a crime of right now.
And that was true 60 years after World War II and 50 years after and 40 and 20 and even 3 years after World War II.
Eve Spangler has just published a wonderfully well documented book that should be the text for universal history classes, called Understanding Israel/Palestine: Race, Nation, and Human Rights in the Conflict. Spangler, the U.S. child of two holocaust survivors, was a college professor before she had the slightest idea what had happened in Palestine during the twentieth century. When she found out, she went all-in and found out as much as could be known.
Spangler takes students to Israel/Palestine every year. When visiting the Arab market in Hebron, she learned that the heavy metal mesh screen overhead was hung there to protect shoppers from bricks and chairs thrown down from balconies by Israeli settlers. However, Spangler was struck with the contents of one of the objects settlers had learned could penetrate the screen: a plastic bag of human excrement. Israeli settlers behave like prisoners gone mad from confinement even as they steal the land and homes of non-Jewish people with impunity.
How can this be? What went wrong?
Well, at least a part of what went wrong went wrong from the start, from even before the 1948 Nakba in which Israelis-to-be ethnically cleansed the land without a people for the people without a land. The land without a people was more densely populated than the United States, but was seen as populated by subhuman non-people, not even Untermenschen.
"Clearly, the aspiration to creating a 'new man,'" Spangler writes, "defined by a hyper-masculine ethos of physical and military strength and by 'clean and pure blood' (and a 'new woman' defined by fecundity) had echoes of fascist ideology and profoundly racist implications. Consider, for example, the iconic photo of an Israeli soldier gazing reverently at the Western Wall on the day that the Israeli army conquered East Jerusalem in 1967. He is startlingly Aryan in appearance. Nor did the preference for blondes end in 1967. Recently social workers told an Israeli friend of mine who is waiting to adopt a baby, that her family could have a 'defective' baby immediately, but would have to wait about a year for a 'normal' baby or up to five years if they insisted on having a blond, blue-eyed child. 'Defective' children, this family discovered, were dark-skinned."
Two years after the liberation of the concentration camps in Europe, Jewish militias besieging the town of Beisan (Bet She'an), Spangler notes, "required some Arabs to don yellow armbands, and marked Arab stores with yellow decals, targeting them for looting." Spangler, whose book covers many subtopics other than the one I'm focusing on, is infinitely careful to stress the obvious, namely that similarities are not exact equivalencies. Her point in noting the similarities is, I think, clearly and legitimately enough to expose the imperfect yet startling mimicry and the motivation of misdirected revenge in the basic policies of the Israeli government from that day to this toward the people who lived in the "uninhabited" land.
Lillian Rosengarten's forthcoming Survival and Conscience: From the Shadows of Nazi Germany to the Jewish Boat to Gaza is an account by a Jewish woman who fled Nazi Germany for the United States as a little girl with her parents. "Nationalism revisited," she writes, "is now twisted into a parody of the Nazi credo, 'Deutschland über alles,' extolling Germany over all others with only pure Germans as inhabitants. Get rid of the undesirables who are beneath contempt. I must not make such a comparison, you say. Yet I must, for I fear a Jewish State that belongs only to Jews is a dangerous road. I must question the profound psychological impairment suffered and internalized by generations of Jews that follows the Nazi Holocaust. The cycle of paranoia and abuse is playing out its destructive course: this is how I understand Palestinians as the last victims of the Holocaust."
I would question only how Rosengarten can see into the future and find the last victims of the influence of Nazism. After World War II, the military of the United States -- which, of course, arms the Israeli military free of charge while whining about how it can't afford luxuries like schools, housing, and bridges that don't collapse -- hired sixteen hundred former Nazi scientists and doctors, including some of Adolf Hitler’s closest collaborators, including men responsible for murder, slavery, and human experimentation, including men convicted of war crimes, men acquitted of war crimes, and men who never stood trial. Some of the Nazis tried at Nuremberg had already been working for the U.S. in either Germany or the U.S. prior to the trials. Some were protected from their past by the U.S. government for years, as they lived and worked in Boston Harbor, Long Island, Maryland, Ohio, Texas, Alabama, and elsewhere, or were flown by the U.S. government to Argentina to protect them from prosecution. To observe and note the Nazification of the U.S. military is neither to absolve the U.S. military of its pre-WWII crimes nor to pass blame off to the Nazis instead of blaming U.S. officials of later generations for their own actions. Blame is not a limited quantity.
I don't think we can dismiss Huckabee's comments about ovens as simply a bid to be dumber than Donald Trump and win the pro-stupidity vote in the Republican primaries. Transforming Iran from devil to negotiation partner victimizes Israel precisely by stripping Israel of some of its victim-status. Without the status of eternally current victim of the fantasized reenactment of long-past crimes, Israel has to be viewed through a filter of actual facts. Were Jews victimized by Germany? Of course! Did Palestinians deserve to suffer for it? Of course not! Did Iran have anything to do with it? Of course not! Would I support pulling all the U.S. military bases out of Germany and turning all of their land over to Jewish settlers? Sure!
But only those who want to leave Palestine should leave it. Only those who want to stay in a nonviolent, pluralist, secular, democratic, state with equal rights for all and compensation for Palestinians harmed over the past many decades should remain.
Photo above is from MiddleEastMonitor.
The 51-Day Genocide
Max Blumenthal's latest book, The 51 Day War: Ruin and Resistance in Gaza, tells a powerful story powerfully well. I can think of a few other terms that accurately characterize the 2014 Israeli assault on Gaza in addition to "war," among them: occupation, murder-spree, and genocide. Each serves a different valuable purpose. Each is correct.
The images people bring to mind with the term "war," universally outdated, are grotesquely outdated in a case like this one. There is no pair of armies on a battlefield. There is no battlefield. There is no aim to conquer, dispossess, or rob. The people of Gaza are already pre-defeated, conquered, imprisoned, and under siege -- permanently overseen by military drones and remote-control machine-guns atop prison-camp walls. In dropping bombs on houses, the Israeli government is not trying to defeat another army on a battlefield, is not trying to gain possession of territory, is not trying to steal resources from a foreign power, and is not trying to hold off a foreign army's attempt to conquer Israel.
Yes, of course, Israel ultimately wants Gaza's land incorporated into Israel, but not with non-Jewish people living on it. (Eighty percent of Gaza's residents are refugees from Israel, families ethnically cleansed in 1947-1948.) Yes, of course, Israel wants the fossil fuels off the Gazan coast. But it already has them. No, the immediate goal of the Israeli war on Gaza last year, like the one two years before, and like the one four years before that, would perfectly fit a name like "The 51 Day Genocide." The purpose was to kill. The end was nothing other than the means.
Veterans Call on Israel to Free International Flotilla, End Siege of Gaza
From Veterans For Peace
U.S. State Department Should Demand Immediate Release of all Passengers
St. Louis, MO. — Veterans For Peace applauds the international Freedom Flotilla 3, including prominent VFP member, Colonel Ann Wright (USAR Retired), and the courage of all who attempted to break the Israeli siege of Gaza this week.
We deplore the Israeli government’s illegal seizure, in international waters, of the lead boat, the Marianne of Gothenburg from Sweden, and the illegal abduction of her crew and passengers. We call for the immediate release of the ship, along with its crew and passengers and all of their confiscated property including their video recording devices, tapes, disks cards and any other devices they used to record exactly what happened when and after the boat was commandeered.
We are also disturbed by credible reports now being heard that flotilla volunteers were subjected to unnecessary levels of violence from Israeli military personnel who reportedly tased four unarmed civilians. At least 9 crew and passengers are currently detained. These actions of the Israeli government confirm Israel’s status as a true rogue state and demand a strong response from the United States Government.
Sailing -- Again -- to Break the Israeli Naval Blockade of Gaza
By Ann Wright
I’ve just set foot on dry land after five days at sea on one of the four boats of Gaza Freedom Flotilla 3.
The land I have set foot on is not Gaza, nor Israel, but Greece. Why Greece?
New strategies are needed to keep the momentum for challenging the Israeli naval blockade of Gaza and the isolation of the Palestinians there. Our attempts in the past five years have resulted in the Israeli government’s piracy in international waters seizing a virtual armada of our ships, kidnapping hundreds of citizens from dozens of countries, charging them with entering Israel illegally and deporting them for a ten year period, which denies them the opportunity to visit with Israelis and Palestinians in Israel, Jerusalem and the West Bank.
The ships that form the flotillas have been purchased at substantial expense through the fundraising efforts of Palestinian supporters in many countries. After litigation in Israeli courts, only two of the vessels have been returned to their owners. The remainder, at least seven ships, are in Haifa harbor and apparently are part of a tourist tour to see the ships that terrorize Israel. One boat reportedly has been used as a target for Israeli naval bombardment.
The newest strategy is not to sail all of the ships in any flotilla into Israeli hands. The publicity, primarily in the Israeli press, of an impending flotilla of unknown size coming from unknown departure points, forces the Israeli government intelligence and military organizations to expend resources, human and financial, on determining what unarmed civilians are challenging their naval blockade of Gaza—and how they are challenging it.
Hopefully, for every minute Israeli government organizations expend to try to stop the ships in a flotilla they are making resources unavailable for the continued horrific treatment of Palestinians living in Gaza and the West Bank.
For example, the day before the Marianne ship from Sweden was captured, an Israeli aircraft flew a search pattern for two hours over ships in the area to attempt to determine how many vessels were in this area and which might be a part of the flotilla. We suspect there were other Israeli vessels, to include submarines, with electronic capability to identify radio or satellite transmissions from all ships in the area and attempt to pinpoint our ships. These efforts come at a cost to the Israeli government, much more of a cost than our purchasing ships and having passengers fly to flotilla departure points.
Tomgram: Jen Marlowe, "They Demolish and We Rebuild"
There’s an ugliness to war beyond the ugly things war does. There are scars beyond the rough, imperfectly mended flesh of the gunshot wound, beyond the flashback, the startle reflex, the nightmare. War finds peculiar and heinous ways to distort lives, and when children are involved, it can mean a lifetime spent trying to recapture what was, to rebuild what never can be.
Harrowing Account of Attempting to Get Into Gaza from Egypt
Crossing Rafah
by JOHNNY BARBER
The Rafah Crossing from Egypt to Gaza was opened on May 26th for 2 days after being closed for the past 75 days. The opening allowed Palestinian residents of Gaza who were stranded in Egypt or third countries to return home to Gaza. The crossing remained closed for those trying to leave Gaza. The waiting list for people trying to leave has reached 15,000 people. The waiting list includes thousands of medical patients, students, and people traveling to their work or their families abroad. Many of these people have been trapped in Gaza since the Israeli attack last July.
The last time the crossing was opened was in March when just 2,443 people in total were permitted to travel in both directions. While Morsi was in power in Egypt, nearly 41,000 people were traveling through the crossing each month.
My friend Hanaa* had spent 2 years in the U.S. earning a masters degree.
Where Would Jesus Live?
If Jesus lived in Galilee in recent decades he would live in a world alive with Palestinian traditions clinging to a long-rooted history but struggling through the aftermath of the never-ended ethnic-cleansing operation that spiked in 1948.
Hatim Kanaaneh has written a fictionalized account, Chief Complaint: A Country Doctor's Tale of Life in Galilee, based on his experiences as a village doctor during the past half-century, a doctor who traveled to the United States for his education and returned to Palestine to practice his craft. His dialogue-heavy stories reach back to before 1948, merging folklore with myth and legend, featuring in the opening vignette a larger-than-life comedic but sensitive giant as short on wits as he is strong of muscle and heart.
Often in this wonderfully entertaining book a straightforward account will quickly become a rumor, a legend, an event infused with more meaning than might have been expected. After learning, for example, that multi-level homes are a sign of wealth, and that the top level is the most prestigious, we read that in one case a steep hill made it easiest to enter one home from the top floor. "That is why Isa housed his two oxen and his donkey in the 'alali -- the penthouse -- for the first winter after it was built. . . . And, that dear reader, is how it came to be rumored in these parts that Isa had sworn a pact of brotherhood and equality with his work animals and accorded them the level of reverence reserved for the head of a family. 'If only our cousins, the Jews, would treat us that humanely!' neighbors would joke."
Chief Complaint is a bit like the accounts of the British veterinarian's tales in All Creatures Great and Small. One doctor treats non-human animals, the other human, but both treat families. A great number of Kanaaneh's patients require placebos and other psychological rather than medical assistance. Gradually one begins to gather that the lot of them, who form a tight community, are to various degrees traumatized. They are in love with land, with the agriculture of that land, with the history of that land. And the land has been stolen, is being stolen, and is being desecrated. This is a more intimate portrait of people than one would be likely to gain on a trip to Palestine/Israel, and the unifying theme at the bottom of their ailments seems to be land loss. A character is describing a wedding of the past:
"Groups of men and women from all the other clans in the village would arrive every night, singing on their way over just after sundown and with many bagfuls of coffee beans, rice, sugar, and bulgur wheat as presents. Or they would have a boy dragging a lamb or a goat ahead of them. And the women would bring bundles of wood on their heads for the fire, which was lit up every night and around which the group dance and songfest were held. There is nothing like it today; since Israel occupied the Galilee, people bear only ill will and jealousy toward each other."
The narrator asks his father to sell beloved land in order to send him to the U.S. for medical school. His father throws a shoe at him. He picks up the shoe and returns it. It is thrown again. He repeats this until his sister speaks to his father who finally laughs and agrees, hopelessly, despairingly perhaps, but understanding the need to proceed.
People have been modernized out of their land, overwhelmed by Western military technology and organization. But those people are more than catching up in the area of communication — assuming that is that anyone in the West still reads.
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Disclaimer: The author does work for the publisher of this book, but that work does not include book reviews.
