Education for Liberation! Venceremos Unidos!
Peter S. Lopez {aka:Peta}
Sacramento, California,Aztlan
Yahoo Email: peter.lopez51@yahoo.com
Come Together! Join Up! Seize the Time!
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/THIRD-WORLD-NEWS/
c/s
From: Enrique Ferro <ferro.enrique@gmail.com>
Sent: Saturday, August 29, 2009 3:44:19 PM
Subject: TIFF Protest + BDS Campaign + Tents for Homeless in Gaza, Ramadan, Bil'in Night Raid + Miftah Review + Fighting for the Right to Walk + Israeli settlements + HUMAN RIGHTS + Ahmadinejad + Rigged Elections also in Afghanistan + Honduras + KATRINA
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
August 28, 2009
Filmmaker John Greyson Pulls Film from TIFF in Protest of Their Spotlight on Tel Aviv
Canadian Filmmaker John Greyson has withdrawn his film Covered from this year's Toronto International Film Festival (TIFF) in protest of theirCity-to-City Spotlight on Tel Aviv. Greyson has taken this principled standin response to a call from the Palestinian Campaign for the Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel (PACBI), which asks artists and audiences to boycott the City-to-City Spotlight on Tel Aviv. PACBI describes the spotlight as a celebration of Tel Aviv and Israel which "can only be seen by Palestinians and supporters of a just peace around the world as an act of complicity in whitewashing Israel's war crimes and other grave violations of international law. It is a cynical and immoral politicization of the TIFF."
Today, Greyson sent a letter to the organizers of TIFF outlining his reasons for pulling out of the festival. He writes "My protest is against the Spotlight itself, and the smug business-as-usual aura it promotes of a "vibrant metropolis [and] dynamic young city... commemorating its centennial", seemingly untroubled by other anniversaries, such as the 42nd anniversary of the occupation. Isn't such an uncritical celebration of Tel Aviv right now akin to celebrating Montgomery buses in 1963, California grapes in 1969, Chilean wines in 1973, Nestles infant formula in 1984, or South African fruit in 1991?". Greyson is one of a growing number of prominent Canadians, such as Naomi Klein, who support the Palestinian campaign for Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions against the State of Israel until it complies with international law.
The full text of Greyson's letter is available at:
http://tiny.cc/tiff_open_letter
[I recommend reading the full text and sending it on as a sample of what can and should be done regarding festivals celebrating Israel or its individual cities. Dorothy]
The PACBI statement can be found at:
http://www.pacbi.org/etemplate.php?id=1085
Media Contacts:
John Greyson - 647-272-0386 or johngreyzone@gmail.com
Alternate contact: 416-890-3703 or protest.tiff@gmail.com
=======
| More Israeli Academics are joining the BDS Campaign. See the following in http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/1110417.html ANALYSIS / Israeli academics must pay price to end occupation | |||
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| By Anat Matar | |||
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Several days ago Dr. Neve Gordon of Ben-Gurion University of the Negev published an opinion piece in the Los Angeles Times. In that article he explained why, after years of activity in the peace camp here, he has decided to pin his hopes on applying external pressure on Israel - including sanctions, divestment and an economic, cultural and academic boycott. He believes, and so do I, that only when the Israeli society's well-heeled strata pay a real price for the continuous occupation will they finally take genuine steps to put an end to it. Gordon looks at the Israeli society and sees an apartheid state. While the Palestinians' living conditions deteriorate, many Israelis are benefiting from the occupation. In between the two sides, Israeli society is sinking into complete denial - drawn into extreme hatred and violence.
The worn-out slogan that everybody raises in this context is "academic freedom," but it is time to somewhat crack this myth. The appeal to academic freedom was born during the Enlightenment, when ruling powers tried to suppress independent minded thinkers. Already then, more than 200 years ago, Imannuel Kant differentiated between academics whose expertise (law, theology, and medicine) served the establishment and those who had neither power nor proximity to power. As for the first, he said, there was no sense in talking about "freedom" or "independent thought" as any use of such terminology is cynical. Since then, cynicism has spread to other faculties as well. At best academic freedom was perceived as the right to ask troubling questions. At worst was the right to harass whomever asked too much. When the flag of academic freedom is raised, the oppressor and not the oppressed is usually the one who flies it. What is that academic freedom that so interests the academic community in Israel? When, for example, has it shown concern for the state of academic freedom in the occupied territories? This school year in Gaza will open in shattered classrooms as there are no building materials there for rehabilitating the ruins; without notebooks, books and writing utensils that cannot be brought into Gaza because of the goods embargo (yes, Israel may boycott schools there and no cry is heard). Hundreds of students in West Bank universities are under arrest or detention in Israeli jails, usually because they belong to student organizations that the ruling power does not like. The separation fence and the barriers prevent students and lecturers from reaching classes, libraries and tests. Attending conferences abroad is almost unthinkable and the entry of experts who bear foreign passports is permitted only sparingly. On the other hand, members of the Israeli academia staunchly guard their right to research what the regime expects them to research and appoint former army officers to university positions. Tel Aviv University alone prides itself over the fact that the Defense Ministry is funding 55 of its research projects and that DARPA, the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency in the U.S. Defense Department, is funding nine more. All the universities offer special study programs for the defense establishment. Are those programs met with any protest? In contrast with the accepted impression, only few lecturers speak up decisively against the occupation, its effect and the increasingly bestial nature of the State of Israel. The vast majority retains its freedom to be indifferent, up to the moment that someone begs the international community for rescue. Then the voices rise from right and left, the indifference disappears, and violence replaces it: Boycott Israeli universities? This strikes at the holy of holies, academic freedom! The writer is a lecturer in Tel Aviv University's Department of Philosophy. | |||
Professor
Department of Sociology and Anthropology
Carleton University
Ottawa, Ontario
Canada K1S 5B6
Phone: 613 520-2600/3569
Fax: 613 520-4062
It�s Tents for Most Homeless Families in Gaza, Prefabricated Huts for the Lucky Few
By Mohammed Omer
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August 28, 2009 DESPITE THE parade of various international diplomats and aid workers surveying the destruction in Gaza, virtually nothing has changed since Israel ended in January its Operation Cast Lead assault�peversely named after a line in a children�s Hannukah poem. Israel launched its assault on Dec. 27, 2008, during the Jewish religious festival. Homeless families are distressed at the lack of progress in providing adequate and safe shelter, despite pledges made by international donors at a conference held in Sharm el-Sheikh, Egypt in early March. "I am glad to be one of the first people in Gaza to receive a prefabricated hut," said Issa Hamouda, who lives in Gaza�s densely crowded Jabalya refugee camp. The 57-year-old Hamouda gestures toward some of his 20 children and grandchildren standing next to the rubble of what used to be their family home, where they would wake up every morning. "It�s only the size of one room," he said of their new dwelling, it�s better than nothing." The prefabricated hut stands next to the rubble of his demolished house. "Each time I pass this tent and prefabricated hut," Hamouda added, "it�s a symbol to remind us of the last offensive against us." Unfortunately, the tent and adjacent shanty hut his family has been forced to live in since January will not be coming down anytime soon. Despite more than $4.5 billion in pledges made at the international donors� conference to help rebuild the Gaza Strip, nothing seems to be getting through to Gaza so far. According to a senior official in Gaza�s de facto government, who noted that no funds have yet been received from donor nations, "There have been no serious attempts, by all sides, to plan the reconstruction of the Gaza Strip." In the weeks following the Israeli assault, aid groups set up tent camps in the hardest hit areas, but the prefabricated shelters did not arrive until June, when the Hamas-led government in Gaza began distributing 192 structures supplied by Turkey. The Organization of the Islamic Conference (OIC) plans to supply an additional 1,200 prefabricated units in the coming weeks or months, according to Palestinian sources in Gaza. The 40-foot-square pre-fabricated huts in which fewer than 200 families currently are living have no toilet, washroom, kitchen or private facilities. Indeed, they are little more than a simple tool shed. Yet, in Gaza, five months after Israel halted its attack, it passes for a home. There are some Gazans who are not reduced to living in tents or huts: they are crammed into the homes of relatives and friends, or renting an apartment if an available one can be found. The latter, however, is a luxury most Gazans cannot afford. Asked about the international pledges to rebuild Gaza, Hamouda replied, "These donor countries should first work to end the occupation, instead of offering to pay the cost of the occupation. If you want to give me dinner, don�t just give me a fish, but teach me how and let me fish. We don�t want to be dependent on other countries� donations." Gaza has an abundance of human resources, including many workers and professionals, he added. "We could live much better just off our available resources," Hamouda said, "with open borders and no more occupation controlling our lives." Israel�s 22-day attack on Gaza killed more than 1,400 Palestinians. Thousands more�the majority civilians�were injured. According to the latest U.N. survey, 3,500 houses were completely destroyed, 2,100 sustained major damage and 40,000 sustained minor damage. Hamouda�s large family is the main reason he was one of the first people in Gaza to receive a shelter, which was assembled by the Ministry of Social Affairs. Most Gazans prefer to have the shelters situated near what used to be their homes. Hamouda described how Israel targeted his house during Operation Cast Lead. First it was bombed by Israeli warplanes, and later demolished by Israeli bulldozers. "Who knows when my children will have a home again?" he asked. "All is demolished, nothing was left behind, including our trees and farm. Even the donkey was killed under the ruins of the house. "We have no privacy and no protection from the heat of the day or the cold of the night," he added. "We just want to live a normal life like people in other nations around the world." In Hamouda�s opinion, the visits to Gaza by former British Prime Minister Tony Blair and former U.S. President Jimmy Carter were "a catastrophe. Neither Carter nor Blair came down to see our tragedy. Yet they allowed the occupation of our homeland when they were in office. I don�t expect anything good from either of them." Carter may not have visited the Hamouda family, but he denounced the deprivations facing Palestinians in Gaza as unique in history and asserted that they are being treated "more like animals than human beings" (see p. 17). Meanwhile, Israel�s crippling siege of Gaza remains in place. Maxwell Gaylard, the United Nations resident and humanitarian coordinator for the Occupied Palestinian Territories, explained why�months later and despite donor pledges�shelters for Gaza�s homeless families are not being built: "It�s a simple reason," the Jerusalem-based Gaylard said. "The government of Israel doesn�t allow construction materials into Gaza. "I have replanted our trees three times," said Hamouda, "but each time Israeli bulldozers destroy them. It makes me think that Israel doesn�t only consider human beings in Gaza as enemies, but also the trees." Several human rights groups and European governments have called on Israel to allow construction materials into Gaza, but so far there has been no lessening of the siege. "We have been in negotiation with the Israeli authorities, but there is no approval to allow construction materials into Gaza," Gaylard said. "Gaza is a place which has enjoyed a good standard of living before, but not now," he said. "Many are poor�they live on one meal per day�it is pretty miserable." Asked how long he thought the reconstruction of Gaza would take, the U.N. official could only respond, "I wish I knew. We have been constantly calling for the opening of the borders and stating that the Gazan people should not have to be subjected to this collective punishment." "We have built our houses with our sweat and blood," said Issa Hamouda. Pausing, he added: "And we are ready to rebuild it again and again�but Israel should respectfully leave us alone, and we will manage with the resources we have available." Award-winning journalist Mohammed Omer reports on the Gaza Strip, where he maintains the Web site <www.rafahtoday.org>. He can be reached at < gazanews@yahoo.com This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it >. |
:: Article nr. 57438 sent on 29-aug-2009 06:52 ECT
www.uruknet.info?p=57438
Link: www.washington-report.org/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=3063
The chronic electricity shortage in Gaza is primarily the result of Israel's ongoing siege of the Gaza Strip.
The only power plant in Gaza was bombarded in 2006 by an Israeli airstrike. While subsequent repairs have brought the plant back into working order, it operates at only two-thirds capacity because Israel restricts the amount of European Union-supplied industrial fuel allowed through the Nahal Oz crossing point. Diesel smuggled from Egypt is of insufficient quality to fuel the plant. The power plant's total output is 55 megawatts.
About a year and a half ago Egypt built a line to carry electricity into the Rafah and Khan Younis districts, in the southern Gaza Strip, which provides 17 megawatts.
Israel provides 120 megawatts through land power lines to cover the northern and eastern regions of the Gaza Strip. Still, the grid suffers from a permanent shortage of 30% of the needed power supply prompting the power authority and electric company to schedule regular power cuts for eight hours a day.
During Ramadan this problem is exacerbated because Palestinians preparing their evening meal all do so around the same time of the afternoon causing the grid to overload and outages to occur.
According to Kanan Ubeid, deputy chief of the Palestinian Energy Authority, "This power crisis can be solved either by increasing the shipment of fuel donated by the EU, or enlarging the Egyptian line to increase its capacity."
Around 3:30 am, the Israeli occupation forces invaded Bil'in once again arresting 2 Palestinians.
Two houses were raided simultaneously by at least 40 soldiers. In the first house, Ashraf Mohammad Jamal Tofik Al-Khatib (age 29) was arrested. In the second house, they arrested Hamru Hisham Burnat (age 24).
The cameraman, Haitham Al-Khatib, who was filming in his own house, one victim being his brother, was repeatedly forcibly moved and hit, and threatened with arrest unless he stopped filming. They declared his house a "closed military zone" but did not produce any military order. 3 Jeeps and 2 Humvee jeeps were used for the operation. The Israeli Army invaded Bil'in from three directions, the neighbor villages Kofr Ni'ma and Saffa, and through the gate from the Apartheid Wall. They parked their vehicles, engines running, opposite the mosque. With the victims inside the Jeeps, the vehicles exited the village toward the Wall.
Thank you for you continued support,
Iyad Burnat- Head of Popular Commitee in Bilin
co-founder of Friends of Freedom and Justice - Bilin
Email- bel3in@yahoo.com
Mobile- (00972) (0) 547847942
Office- (00972) (2) 2489129
Mobile- (00972) (0) 598403676
www.bilin-ffj.org
Week in Review
[August 23 – August 29]
By MIFTAH
August 29, 2009
In the first time in PLO history, the Palestine National Council voted in the Executive Committee's first woman, Hanan Ashrawi on August 27. Ashrawi, a PLC member and former minister, was voted into the PLO's highest decision making body along with four others including ousted Fateh Central Committee member Ahmad Qurei.
"The era of done deals that exclude women is over," said Ashrawi, who won 182 votes. The elections, which were also a first for the Executive Committee, came after a tumultuous Fateh Conference that saw a lot of bruised egos of longtime Fateh members who were voted out of the movement's decision making bodies and hoped to win a chair in the PLO.
The PNC, which held a special session on August 26 and 27 under the leadership of President Mahmoud Abbas also decided that should reconciliation talks fail with Hamas, the Palestinians would still go to elections on the scheduled date. Conciliation talks have not moved forward unfortunately. On August 22, the dialogue in Cairo was officially postponed until after the PNC session was over. So far, a new date has not been set.
On August 25, Prime Minister Salam Fayyad unveiled his program for establishing a Palestinian state by 2011 and ending the Israeli occupation. According to the plan, the Palestinians will declare their state in two years regardless of the outcome of negotiations with Israel. "It is possible and necessary to establish a state in two years," Fayyad said during his press conference in Ramallah. Part of his plan, which is based on Palestinian institution-building regardless of the occupation, includes building a railroad through the Palestinian territories and an airport in the Jordan Valley.
The plan, which may not have been welcomed by Hamas, was met warmly by the European Union. On August 26, European Commission representative Christian Berger said the EU supported Fayyad's plan.
"The European Commission welcomes Prime Minister Fayyad's government program and we are looking forward to further discussions with our Palestinian partners on how we can best support it," he said in a statement.
Another two-year marker is that of US President Barack Obama, who insists that this goal is realistic despite the impasses he has met with Israel on settlement construction. Israeli Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman scoffed at the plan on August 23, saying it was unrealistic. "In the 16 years since the Oslo Accords, we haven't managed to bring peace to the region, and I'm willing to bet that there won't be peace in another 16 years, either. Certainly not on the basis of the two-state solution," he said.
Two states is already a far-fetched plan what with Israel's continued settlement construction. While Jerusalem, according to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, is off limits, reports have been circulating of a US-Israel agreement on a temporary settlement freeze in the West Bank. Nothing yet has been confirmed but reports are talking about an Israeli freeze of up to 12 months in settlements excluding east Jerusalem and the 2,400 homes already under construction.
It is going to be difficult, given Netanyahu's intransigence. On August 25, Netanyahu said he would refuse to freeze settlement construction in east Jerusalem. "Jews have been building in Jerusalem for 3000 years," he said, not believing there is any reason to stop now. He also said he would only agree to a Palestinian state if it were demilitarized, if the right of return was off the table and there was an end to claims.
Also, there have been reports about the United States agreeing to exclude east Jerusalem from their demand on an Israeli settlement freeze. However, on August 28, US officials denied any such report, saying Washington has not made any final agreement and that its position has remained unchanged. One State Department spokesman did say however, that "The Obama administration will be flexible on pre-conditions for all parties involved in Middle East peace negotiations."
Palestinians and Arabs are having nothing of it. On August 28, Egyptian Foreign Minister Ahmed Aboul-Gheit insisted that Jerusalem must be included in any Israeli settlement freeze before peace talks could resume, reiterating the Palestinian and Arab stance that Jerusalem was an "Arab capital."
Jewish settlers are obviously trying their best to foil any attempts at stunting their growth. On August 23, the Jewish settlement group, Elad announced its intentions to erect a new settlement in Ras Al Amoud, which they would name Maaleh David. The plan includes the construction of 104 new housing units for Israeli Jews in the heart of this east Jerusalem neighborhood.
Israel was also scrutinized by The Elders, a group of foreign dignitaries aimed at bringing peace to the region which was established by former South African President Nelson Mandela. The delegation, whose mission ended on August 26 includes former US President Jimmy Carter, South African Archbishop Emeritus Desmond Tutu and former Irish President Mary Robinson. During a visit to the separation wall and protests in Bilin, Carter said all Israeli settlements should be dismantled. "Settlements built on Palestinian land must be removed so that justice will prevail and so that peace will prevail in the region," he said.
Desmund Tutu had a word or two to say to the Israelis as well. On August 27, Tutu told the Israeli daily Haaretz, "The lesson that Israel must learn from the Holocaust is that it can never get security through fences, walls and guns".
"In South Africa, they tried to get security from the barrel of a gun. They never got it. They got security when the human rights of all were recognized and respected." He also said that the Palestinians were wrongfully paying the price of the Holocaust.
In an interview with the Palestinian news agency Maan on August 26, Archbishop Tutu said Israel and other parties would have to sooner or later talk to Hamas.
"You don't make peace with friends," he said. "You negotiate with those who are regarded as pariahs."
In Bilin on August 28 as the elders visited, Israeli army soldiers attacked protesters injuring six including nine-year old Usama Breijiyeh.
Also on August 28, three Palestinian men, all from the Lahham family, were killed and another injured when a tunnel collapsed in the southern Gaza Strip. Furthermore, 25-year old fisherman Mohammed Attar was killed the same day in an Israeli navy shelling off of Gaza's shore.
On August 25, two others, Mansur and Nael Batneeji were also killed in an Israeli raid on the tunnels in Rafah. Ten others were injured.
Then on August 24, 20-year old Ata Hasumi was killed by Israeli forces in Gaza in Beit Lahyia.
Finally, on August 23, notices went up in girls' schools across Gaza telling students that they must wear the jilbab and hijab (full Islamic dress) if they were to remain in school. Furthermore, the Hamas run education ministry announced that it was "feminizing" the schools by banning all male teachers from teaching in girls' schools. Director of education in the education ministry Mahmoud Abu Haseera denied that the de facto government had issued orders forcing the girls into the jilbab but did say the "feminization" of schools was in line with Islamic society.
From Ramzi Baroud
http://www.foreignpolicyjournal.com/2009/08/28/fighting-for-the-right-to-walk/
Fighting for the Right to Walk
August 28, 2009
by Ramzy Baroud
Gaza's troubles have somehow been relegated, if not completely dropped from the mainstream media's radar, and subsequently from the world's conscience and consciousness. Weaning the public from the sadness there conveys the false impression that things are improving and that people are starting to move on and rebuild their lives.
But nothing could be further from the truth. Since the conclusion of Israel's war last year, the Palestinian Ministry of Health declared that 344 Gaza patients have reportedly been added to the swelling number of casualties.
Khaled Abed Rabbu, once a young father of four is a precise living example, such an eloquent paradigm of what no human being ought to endure in this world laden with international human rights organizations, mediators, advocates and diplomats.
His house was completely destroyed, as were two of his little girls. He buried seven year old Soad and Amal, just two, soon after burying any hope that Samar his four year old daughter's future would be any less bleak.
According to an IslamOnline report, Khaled's wife, Kawthar lined up the children in front of their house in the Jabaliya refugee camp, holding a white flag. But their internationally recognized gesture was disregarded by Israeli forces and the shelling of their home and family commenced. These miserable events unfolded at Christmas time last year, when the Rabbu family was reduced by nearly half.
But since then, they, and a disgracefully large number of other such families, have somehow slipped our minds. Completely surrounded still, and prevented from ever advancing back to point zero, the Israeli siege on Gaza is what one must certainly brand the quintessence of barbarism.
Like in December of 2008, the Israeli blockade means that almost nothing enters or exits Gaza; injured in need of treatment are not allowed exit nor entrance, as is the case with medical supplies, medicine, food and almost anything in-between.
With entire neighborhoods pulverized in the attack, concrete is desperately needed to rebuild the many homes, mosques, hospitals and other structures that were destroyed. That too, is forbidden. And so Khaled, like so many others, has little hope that his home, which has now lain in shambles for the better part of a year, will be restored any time soon.
From September 14 to October 2, 2009, the Human Rights Council will conduct a session where the office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights will present its report based on the fact finding mission, headed by Justice Richard Goldstone, conducted after the Israeli attacks.
Nearly eight months after the bloodletting of Operation Cast Lead, a 34 page report by the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights was released on August 13, pressing for a lifting of the Gaza blockade. The new report, which will be presented along with Goldstone's report in September, lays out the many incomprehensible details of how the Israelis battered the Strip, one of the most impoverished and the most densely populated piece of Planet Earth. The details were laid out, chastising Israel for snubbing the most basic norms of human decency:
"Under the Universal Declaration of Human rights, everyone has the right to leave any country, including his own, and to return to his country . . . and everyone has the right to seek asylum. Such calls were ignored, and the borders of the Gaza Strip remained closed throughout the conflict."
"The right to health of children, set out in article 24 of CRC, is of particular concern in Gaza. United Nations agencies, Ministry of Health officials and health NGOs report that rising poverty, unemployment and food insecurity, compounded by the conflict, have increased the threat of child malnutrition. In January, UNICEF said that 10.3 per cent of Gazan children under five were stunted."
The report continued on, expressing concern that the only export allowed out of Gaza in nearly two years was 13 large truckloads of cut flowers, fully recognizing that the siege was in direct response to the Gazan people exercising their right to elect the Hamas government.
From the denial of food to medical supplies to housing to clean water to education to any basic sense of what is called the "highest attainable standard of physical and mental health" according to the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights (ICESCR), Israel managed, as the report concluded, to deny pretty much every last one.
One has to wonder, and even after so many years of witnessing such amazing ingenuity when it comes to tormenting the Palestinians, does the Israeli government, and further, does the Israeli public feel any sense of shame, remorse or even the slightest embarrassment when the most basic norms of human behavior must be laid out in so elementary a fashion, reminding, and then re-reminding them that it is a fundamental human right to have access to something as basic as food and clean water?
This is a thought that Khaled must ponder from time to time. It is sure that life has been no cake-walk for Khaled, but perhaps this last year has been the most trying of all. Two little ones lost, homeless, and his third of four children struggling to walk in a Belgium hospital.
Sana, his four year old, was supposedly one of the lucky ones on that day, for she survived, and was one of very few that escaped to safety through Egypt's sealed border. But she has two bullets lodged in her tiny spine, so deeply embedded that Belgian surgeons cannot remove them. So now she is paralyzed, her body propped up and supported by a vibrant pink and purple back brace, like a fairy's suit of armor. Chances of ever walking again are grim. Just two or three short years after graduating from a crawl, and now she will most likely be in a wheelchair for the rest of her life, even though her doctors and her mother say that she is desperate to walk again.
And so it seems to be the sad case that this exhaustive 34 page report failed to mention, or perhaps it may be until this point that a clause has never been drafted, declaring the universal right for every little girl and boy to walk.
Ramzy Baroud is an author and editor of PalestineChronicle.com. His work has been published in many newspapers, journals and anthologies around the world. His latest book is, "The Second Palestinian Intifada: A Chronicle of a People's Struggle" (Pluto Press, London), and his forthcoming book is, "My Father Was a Freedom Fighter: Gaza's Untold Story" (Pluto Press, London).
http://www.ramzybaroud.net
Read more articles by Ramzy Baroud
Israeli settlements and "ethnic cleansing"
Martin Shaw, 26 - 08 - 2009
The argument that the dismantling of Israeli communities in the Palestinian West Bank would amount to "ethnic cleansing" is increasingly being heard. It deserves close examination of a kind its proponents may not welcome, says Martin Shaw.
26 - 08 - 2009
An intense political engagement over the question of West Bank settlements is continuing between the Barack Obama administration in the United States and the government of Binyamin Netanyahu in Israel. A failure to resolve the issue would be fatal to any chances of real progress towards an Israeli-Palestinian peace agreement.
A particular rhetorical weapon is being employed by self-proclaimed supporters of Israel in the United States in relation to the settlements: that any dismantling of these communities and removal of their inhabitants would amount to "ethnic cleansing". The use of such a term makes an explicit association between any withdrawal of the settlers from the West Bank and (among many other cases) the systematic expulsions that took place during the wars of ex-Yugoslavia in the 1990s.
The argument is being made for immediate political purposes, as the pace of engagement in the new round of regional diplomacy quickens (see Alex Spillius, "Obama close to securing Middle East peace talks", Daily Telegraph, 26 August 2009). But some of its rhetorical potency derives from the fact that it connects to historical experience and political reference-points in the region as well as beyond. The "ethnic cleansing" case thus deserves closer examination: but might it lead in directions that its proponents would not wish to go?
A subtle warning
A prominent Republican pollster, Frank Luntz, has circulated a report to sympathetic individuals and organisations on behalf of the Israeli Project (TIP). This outlines what it calls "the best settlement argument": "The idea that anywhere that you have Palestinians there can't be Jews, that some areas have to be Jew-free, is a racist idea. We don't say that we have to cleanse out Arabs from Israel. They are citizens of Israel. They enjoy equal rights. We cannot see why it is that peace requires that any Palestinian area would require a kind of ethnic cleansing to remove all Jews" (see Gilad Halpern, "Pro-Israel group: Obama settlements policy backs 'ethnic cleansing' of Jews", Ha'aretz, 23 August 2009).
The advice of the Israel Project - whose board of advisors includes twenty members of the US Congress, from both parties - represents an interesting variation in the response to perceived threats. Israeli politicians and their allies have long argued that Arab and Islamist opposition to Israel's existence portends a new holocaust. The most prominent example is the reaction to the anti-Israel rhetoric of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, the holocaust-denying Iranian president, in 2005 (interpreted by no less than the International Association of Genocide Scholars as a "public expression of genocidal intent"). The Israel Project's approach (albeit now somewhat qualified by its founder) represents a subtler and apparently more realistic warning of a new, inherently anti-Semitic, threat. The "ethnic cleansing" argument - given that this concept is so often used as a euphemism for genocide - keeps the genocide threat to the fore without conjuring the fear of a mass slaughter of Jews, which is obviously implausible in the context of any likely peace settlement.
The political context and motive of the "cleansing" argument may make it appear little more than a shallow propaganda move. Certainly the way the Israel Project presents it - denying any threat to "cleanse out Arabs from Israel" and asserting Israeli Arabs' citizenship and "equal rights" - is doubly disingenuous. The desirability of "transferring" Israeli Arabs out of the state is a recurring theme on the not-so-far shores of Israeli politics, and on no serious assessment can Arabs be said to have equal rights in what is, after all, the "state of the Jewish nation". The current proposals to demand that Arabs take a loyalty oath to the Jewish state only emphasise the deepening crisis of the Arab community's position within Israel (see Laurence Louër, "Arabs in Israel: on the move", 20 April 2007).
The historical code
But if the Israeli Project's focus on "ethnic cleansing" hits a deeper nerve, this is precisely because of the way that all political issues in the Israel-Palestine conflict, including the settlements, are defined in terms of communal interests. Sixty years ago hundreds of thousands of Palestinian Arabs were expelled and terrorised into flight by the emergent Israeli state - a certain episode of "ethnic cleansing" and indeed of genocide (to the extent that there was a concerted policy to destroy a large part of Arab society). For the last forty years, Israel has used its occupation of the West Bank and east Jerusalem to continue the process of dispossessing Palestinian homes and land, in slow-motion and by means which are ostensibly legal in domestic law (if not in international law, since the occupation itself remains illegal).
In this light, is it not then plausible to consider the proposal to dismantle Israeli settlements a kind of "ethnic cleansing" in reverse? It is clear that there have been many such genocidal "cleansings" in history, including the wholesale "revenge" expulsions of Germans in the closing stages and aftermath of the second world war in the Soviet Union, Czechoslovakia, Poland and Yugoslavia. True, there can be no suggestion that the mere "freeze" on new and extended settlements currently proposed by President Obama could fall into this category, since no one will be dispossessed or expelled from anywhere as a result (although a freeze may save a few Palestinians from this fate). But since any even half-reasonable peace settlement must hand over some Israeli settlements to Palestinian control (without this there is no possibility of a coherent and viable Palestinian state), the situation of the Jewish population in these settlements is a real, complex and potentially difficult issue.
It is clearly relevant that many settlers, as well as settlement leaders, have been in the vanguard of Israel's illegal expansion in the occupied territories, and their parties are the most aggressively anti-Palestinian in the current Israeli political scene. No able-minded adult settlers can truly have been wholly ignorant of this context, and in this sense all can be regarded as complicit to some degree. However these facts cannot justify the compulsory removal of an entire population, including children and the mentally incapable - as well as those settlers whose motives have been primarily socio-economic rather than expansionist. Such an expulsion might indeed be considered, like the Israeli expulsions of Palestinians since 1948, "racial" in character (whatever the specific ideological motives). Even if neither Israel nor Jews have collective rights to occupied Palestinian lands, it can be argued that individuals and families may have acquired personal rights to stay in homes in which they have lived for years or even, in some cases, decades. The key to the question, then, is the reconciliation of these rights with justified Palestinian demands for political control over the occupied lands in which settlements have been built - and the rights of former Palestinian landowners to compensation.
The political twist
So if "peace" does not "require that any Palestinian area would require a kind of ethnic cleansing to remove all Jews", three things would be necessary to achieve peace without "cleansing".
First, Israeli advocates must stop talking euphemistically about a "Palestinian area", and face up to the unanswerable case (in the absence of any realistic prospect of a single bi-communal state) for a viable Palestinian state. Second, Israel must acknowledge the terrible consequences of its own "ethnic cleansings" of Palestinians, starting with 1948 and including those that have taken place recently to allow the building of the settlements, and make proposals to address the continuing injustices arising from them. Third, Israel must address the poor and deteriorating situation of the Arab minority within its own borders, dropping all constitutional provisions which make Arabs second-class citizens and ensuring that "equal rights" become a reality.
For if the continued existence of a Jewish population in the settlements requires a Palestinian state in which minorities can be confident that their individual and communal interests will be respected, the latter needs to be matched by an Israeli state which demonstrates the same standards. A Palestinian state should not be a racially Arab state; but neither should the Israeli state be defined as the state of the Jewish people. Unless both states can be defined both by secular, non-racial constitutions and by clear, well-founded and widely-supported policies of minority inclusion, the prospects for Jewish residents in any settlements handed back to Palestine - and for Israeli Arabs - will continue to be poor.
The Israel Project offers nothing in this direction. It supports policies that would continue to confine Palestinians to Bantustan-style "areas", deny the abuses they have suffered over sixty years and their unequal status within today's Israel, and do everything to sustain the present illegal status of territory- and land-grabbing settlements.
The group's advocacy touches on a real issue, but by seeking to block any serious compromise with legitimate Palestinian claims its campaign only makes more likely the kind of "cleansing" which it says it wants to avoid - and that when compromise comes, as it must, a number of Israeli settlers will be forcibly removed. Most probably this will be done, as in Gaza in August 2005, by the Israeli state itself.
This makes it ever more important now to distinguish between the rights of settler families and the ideological interests and purposes of the Israel Project and its allies. For in the context of the just and secure two-state agreement that Israelis and Palestinians alike desperately need, such ostensible support for Israel turns on closer inspection into its opposite.
Ed Corrigan
http://www.thecanadiancharger.com/page.php?id=5&a=111
The Canadian Charger, August 26, 2009
IS IT ANTI-SEMITIC TO DEFEND PALESTINIAN HUMAN RIGHTS?
Edward C. Corrigan, BA, MA, LL.B.
This article was submitted to The Canadian Parliamentary Coalition to Combat Antisemitism http://www.cpcca.ca/home.htm )
All across Canada and in the United States, there is an organized campaign to suppress criticism of Israeli policies toward the Palestinians.
The campaign is especially strong on university campuses where many voices have been raised in support of human rights for the Palestinians.
One such example is the attempt to suppress the Public Interest Research Group, founded by Ralph Nader, at the University of Ottawa for their support for Palestinian human rights.
Similar anti-Palestinian campaigns have occurred at many universities in Canada
including the University of Toronto, the University of Western Ontario and York University.
An attack against a student group that was sympathetic to the Palestinians occurred at the University of Western Ontario in 1982. The student group was refused official recognition because of its support for the Palestinians and for sponsoring Palestinian and Arab speakers. After this refusal a complaint was made to the Ontario Human Rights Commission.
After a long battle, and with the support of the Canadian Civil Liberties Association and its General Counsel Alan Borovoy, and a supportive editorial in The Globe & Mail, the Ontario Human Rights Commission compelled the University Students Council at the University of Western Ontario to issue a statement of regret and to ratify the student group. The refusal was deemed discriminatory against Palestinians and persons associated with Palestinians. (See "The Palestinian Question at the University: The Case of Western Ontario," American-Arab Affairs, Summer 1987, pp. 87-98.)
Despite this successful legal precedent at Western Ontario there have been many attacks against individuals and groups across Canada and the United States because of their support for human rights for Palestinians. Over the last few years there is a concerted attempt to suppress discussion of the Palestinian issue in North America.
There also is a campaign to punish those individuals who have spoken out in support of the Palestinians by cutting funding and by denying them tenure and even getting them terminated from their positions of employment.
Two well-known examples of firings are the campaigns that targeted Jewish professors' Norman Finkelstein (author of many books on Israel and Zionism including Image and Reality of the Israel-Palestinian Conflict, (Verso Press, New York, 1995) and Joel Kovel (author of Overcoming Zionism: Creating a Single Democratic State in Israel/Palestine (Pluto Press: London, 2007)) for their attacks on Israel's policies toward the Palestinians.
Another tactic is to smear such individuals who have supported the Palestinians with allegations of anti-Semitism. One such individual was Arch Bishop Desmond Tutu. A few complaints from the Jewish community led to the Noble Prize winner being banned from speaking on campus by the University of St. Thomas in Minnesota. Tutu was attacked because of statements he made criticizing Israeli policy toward the Palestinians that some Jewish individuals said were "anti Semitic."
Marv Davidov, an adjunct professor with the Justice and Peace Studies program at the University of St. Thomas said:
"As a Jew who experienced real anti-Semitism as a child, I'm deeply disturbed that a man like Tutu could be labeled anti-Semitic and silenced like this,...
"I deeply resent the Israeli lobby trying to silence any criticism of its policy. It does a great disservice to Israel and to all Jews."
After provoking a strong backlash against the decision, and a campaign lead by Jewish Voice for Peace in support of the Arch Bishop which produced more than 6,000 letters of protest, the University rescinded the ban.
Professor Bill Robinson was also a target of a similar campaign about alleged anti Semitism to get him fired at the University of California Santa Barbara (UCSB). Ultimately the University administration defended Robinson's academic freedom and the right to express his opinions in his global politics class. Robinson, who is Jewish, distributed an email prepared by a pro-Palestinian Jewish activist that compared the Israeli attack on Gaza to the Nazi attack on the Warsaw Ghetto. In response to this attack, on Professor Robinson, more than 100 UCSB faculty members signed a petition asking the university to dismiss the charges against him. In addition, 16 university department chairs wrote letters to the University authorities asking them to dismiss the case against Robinson.
Sir Gerald Kaufman, one of the founders of Independent Jewish Voices in Britain, also used his position as a Member of Parliament in London, England to criticize Israeli policy toward the Palestinians. Members of Kaufman's family perished at the hands of the Nazis and in the Holocaust. As one of the U.K.'s harshest critics of Israeli policies, Kaufman routinely compared the Jewish state's treatment of Palestinians to Nazi Germany's treatment of Jews. (See for example, "We Cannot Allow These Murders to Go Unpunished: We can demand these homicidal Israeli soldiers be prosecuted for war crimes," by Gerald Kaufman, The Independent, April 12, 2006).
This campaign to silence critics of Israel and to demonize supporters of the Palestinians is most disturbing and a violation of free speech, academic freedom and violation of Palestinian human rights.
It is also a violation of basic democratic rights when a government does it. For example, the recent cuts to the Canadian Arab Federation's funding by Citizenship and Immigration Minister Jason Kenney. The punitive action taken by Minister Kenney is a denial of the fundamental freedoms and rights which are guaranteed in the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms.
The Charter guarantees the right of free speech and freedom of conscience and protects the individual and organizations from government sanction.
This campaign is also an attack on the numerous dissenting Jews who support human rights for the Palestinians.
Canadian Jewish groups like Not in Our Name (NION) and Jewish Independent Voices (Canada) and their support for the Palestinians and their criticism of the "Jewish State," are simply ignored. For political purposes they simply do not exist.
The mainstream media also rarely covers these alternative Jewish perspectives. However, there are rare exceptions and sometimes views critical of Zionism are published in the mainstream North American press. Here is one notable example:
"It's hard to imagine now, but in 1944, six years after Kristallnacht, Lessing J. Rosenwald, president of the American Council for Judaism, felt comfortable equating the Zionist ideal of Jewish statehood with "the concept of a racial state -- the Hitlerian concept." For most of the last century, a principled opposition to Zionism was a mainstream stance within American Judaism.
Even after the foundation of Israel, anti-Zionism was not a particularly heretical position. Assimilated Reform Jews like Rosenwald believed that Judaism should remain a matter of religious rather than political allegiance; the ultra-Orthodox saw Jewish statehood as an impious attempt to "push the hand of God"; and Marxist Jews -- my grandparents among them -- tended to see Zionism, and all nationalisms, as a distraction from the more essential struggle between classes.
To be Jewish, I was raised to believe, meant understanding oneself as a member of a tribe that over and over had been cast out, mistreated, slaughtered.
Millenniums of oppression that preceded it did not entitle us to a homeland or a right to self-defense that superseded anyone else's. If they offered us anything exceptional, it was a perspective on oppression and an obligation born of the prophetic tradition: to act on behalf of the oppressed and to cry out at the oppressor.
For the last several decades, though, it has been all but impossible to cry out against the Israeli state without being smeared as an anti-Semite, or worse. To question not just Israel's actions, but the Zionist tenets on which the state is founded, has for too long been regarded an almost unspeakable blasphemy.
Yet it is no longer possible to believe with an honest conscience that the deplorable conditions in which Palestinians live and die in Gaza and the West Bank come as the result of specific policies, leaders or parties on either side of the impasse.
The problem is fundamental: Founding a modern state on a single ethnic or religious identity in a territory that is ethnically and religiously diverse leads inexorably either to politics of exclusion (think of the 139-square-mile prison camp that Gaza has become) or to wholesale ethnic cleansing. Put simply, the problem is Zionism." ("Zionism is the problem: The Zionist ideal of a Jewish state is keeping Israelis and Palestinians from living in peace," by Ben Ehrenreich, Los Angeles Times, March 15, 2009.)
Most of the rest of the World has a much more critical view of the Israeli occupation of Palestinian land and supports the right of Palestinians to self determination.
For example in one vote at the United Nations, held on December 19, 2006 on the Israeli Palestinian issue, the tally was 176 to five in favor of the Palestinians.
The countries that supported Israel were the United States, the Marshall Islands, Palau and Micronesia.
Five countries abstained. They were: Australia, Canada, Central African Republic, Nauru and Vanuatu.
The entire rest of the World voted in favor of the right of Palestinians to self-determination. However, to read the mainstream North American press you almost never hear of these one-sided votes.
All human beings are entitled to basic human rights. However, the well documented human rights violations of the Palestinians at the hands of the Israelis, by respected organizations such as Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch, The International Red Cross, the United Nations, and even by Israeli organizations such as B'Tselem, Rabbis for Human Rights and the Public Committee Against Torture in Israel and by many Israeli journalists, are attacked and buried under a barrage of criticism that they are biased, are unfair for singling out the Jewish State or are even anti-Semitic.
My own record as a lawyer representing refugee claims for Palestinians from the Occupied Territories made against Israel, is 28 positives to one negative or a 96.5% success rate.
However, in the eyes of the supporters of Israel this does not mean that there are serious human rights problems in the Occupied Territories.
Israel can do no wrong. It is the Immigration and Refugee Board of Canada that is "anti-Semitic" and the Jewish members of the IRB who rendered positive decisions on Palestinian refugee claims made against Israel are "self-hating Jews."
A Palestinian is simply an inhabitant or citizen of Palestine. There are Jewish, Christian, Muslim and non-believers who are Palestinian. The indigenous Palestinian Jews were opposed to the European Jewish settlers who were flooding into Palestine with the support of Great Britain. A Palestinian is simply a national designation like that of being Canadian or American.
There is no racial, ethnic or religious criteria for being a Palestinian. Only by right of birth, naturalization and descent that one becomes a Palestinian, just like in most other countries.
The Jewish State's citizenship and Immigration process are unique in the World. To qualify as a "Jew" in "the Jewish state" one must meet a racial or ethnic criteria or in the alternative, a religious criterion.
The Jewish Law of Return grants almost immediate citizenship rights to Jews from anywhere in the World.
Palestinians who were born in the country and forcibly expelled are, for the most part, forbidden to return.
The Zionist state of Israel defines itself as "Jewish" and structures itself to advance the interests of Jews at the expense of non-Jews and especially against the indigenous Christian and Muslim Palestinian population.
In March 1919 United States Congressman Julius Kahn presented an anti-Zionist petition to President Woodrow Wilson as he was departing for the Paris Peace Conference.
The petition was signed by 31 prominent American Jews. The signatories included Henry Morgenthau, Sr., ex-ambassador to Turkey; Simon W. Rosendale, ex-attorney general of New York; Mayor L. H. Kampner of Galveston, Texas; E. M. Baker, from Cleveland and president of the Stock Exchange; R. H. Macy's Jesse I. Straus; New York Times publisher Adolph S. Ochs; and Judge M. C. Sloss of San Francisco. Part of the petition read:
"....we protest against the political segregation of the Jews and the re-establishment in Palestine of a distinctively Jewish State as utterly opposed to the principles of democracy which it is the avowed purpose of the World's Peace Conference to establish. Whether the Jews be regarded as a "race" or as a "religion," it is contrary to the democratic principles for which the world war was waged to found a nation on either or both of these bases."
There is much controversy over what is Zionism and how to define the "Jewish State." As Akiva Orr writes,
The Zionist movement and its State- ISRAEL, do not represent the Jewish people. They never did.
They represent a particular trend within the Jewish people, namely- the nationalist trend. To find out whether Israel is a Jewish State or a Zionist State one need only ask any religious Orthodox Jew anywhere. His answer will be unambiguous: a Jewish State must be ruled by Jewish religious law- " Halakha". Israel is not ruled by "Halakha" laws, but by secular laws. Therefore Israel is not a Jewish State. The fact that it provides refuge to Jews does not make it a Jewish State . . . Zionism and Judaism are different entities. They have contradictory qualities. (See http://www.kibush.co.il/show_file.asp?num=34734. Occupation Magazine, 25 July, 2009.)
The argument is often made that criticism of Israel, or more appropriately the self described "Jewish State," the meaning of which is not defined, is anti-Semitic. The fact that many Jews have criticized Israel and Zionism is deemed irrelevant. These Jewish critics are attacked as "self-hating Jews."
There is no rational basis for the argument that criticism of the State of Israel and the political ideology of Zionism is anti-Semitic. The logic for this view is obviously flawed.
For example it makes no sense to accuse an individual who criticizes Apartheid South Africa's racist policies toward the blacks as evidence of racism toward Whites.
Or that criticism of the Nazi policy toward the Jews should not be allowed because it is evidence of racism against Germans.
Similarly if you criticize American policy toward the Iraq war and torture at Abu Ghraib Prison, or the Jim Crow laws that institutionalized discrimination against blacks in the southern states, that you are racist against Americans. This argument is obviously absurd and should not even need a response.
To quote one American Jewish academic on the comparison of Israel's treatment of the Palestinians to the racist Jim Crow laws in the United States: "I grew up as a white girl in the Jim Crow South and I have spent my adult life in the study of racism; what I see when I go to Palestine is Jim Crow on steroids."( "A Jewish state - or Jewish values?," by Tema Okun, Mondoweiss, 21 July, 2009).
It is a basic right to evaluate and to criticize a political ideology or political movement and to review and even criticize a state's policies.
The argument should be evaluated on the merits and the truthfulness of the facts presented. It is also a right to present alternative facts and to have a debate.
However, when one side wants to avoid debate, divert the discussion or suppress the topic and launches personal attacks against their opponents, it is almost a certain proof that they are hiding some uncomfortable truths.
Dr. Joel Beinin in an article, "Silencing critics not way to Middle East peace," published in the San Francisco Chronicle, on February 4, 2007, discussed the campaign to silence critics of Israeli policy.
Beinin is a professor of History at Stanford University and is Jewish. He is active with Jewish Voice for Peace. Here is what Beinin had to say about the campaign to attack critics of Israel's policies toward the Palestinians.
"Why discredit, defame and silence those with opposing viewpoints? I believe it is because the Zionist lobby knows it cannot win based on facts.
An honest discussion can only lead to one conclusion: The status quo in which Israel declares it alone has rights and intends to impose its will on the weaker Palestinians, stripping them permanently of their land, resources and rights, cannot lead to a lasting peace.
We need an open debate and the freedom to discuss uncomfortable facts and explore the full range of policy options. Only then can we adopt a foreign policy that serves American interests and one that could actually bring a just peace to Palestinians and Israelis."
The ethnic cleansing of Palestinians, as well as the massacres, rapes and illegal confiscation of Palestinian property, is well documented by Israeli historians.
These include Simcha Flapan, The Birth of Israel: Myths and Realities (New York: Pantheon Books, 1987); Benny Morris, The birth of the Palestinian refugee problem 1947-1949, (Cambridge University Press: New York, 1987); Nur Masalha, Expulsion of the Palestinians (Washington D.C.: Institute for Palestine Studies, 1992); Benjamin Beit-Hallahmi, Original Sins, (Olive Branch Press: New York, 1993); and Ilan Pappe, The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine, (Oneworld Publications: Oxford, 2006).
There are many more Israeli authorities that confirm the ethnic cleansing of the Palestinians in 1947-1949 and again in 1967. In fact it is still going on today in what some Israelis call the "slow motion ethnic cleansing" of the Palestinians. (For example see "Slow Motion Ethnic Cleansing," By Uri Avnery, Counter Punch, 09 October, 2003.)
If the Palestinians, or their supporters, complain about the well-documented facts surrounding the ethnic cleansing of Palestine, losing their property to which they had legal title to, losing their personal belongings and even their bank accounts, having 531 villages destroyed, losing their country and their right to a citizenship, and then not being allowed to return to their homes in contravention of international law; or complain about discriminatory policies of the Jewish National Fund or the discrimination involved in the Jewish Law of Return; or complain about the house demolitions, the more than 600 Israeli military check points in the West Bank, the 42 years of military Occupation of Gaza and the West Bank, the program of targeted assassinations, the well-documented cases of torture; and the imprisonment of more than 11,000 Palestinians including women and children, many held without charge under what is called Administrative Detention, or the recent slaughter in Gaza, that these complaints and to expose these facts is anti-Semitic!
The view that it is anti-Semitic to criticize Israel, or its actions, is pure and simple racism against Palestinians. The Palestinians, Arabs and Muslims have many legitimate reasons to criticize the policies and actions of "the Jewish State." A state that aggressively, and repeatedly, attacks its neighbours and is slowly but systematically ethnically cleansing its non-Jewish population is not above criticism.
No state is above criticism. You should be very afraid of a political ideology that you must accept without question.
There is also much to criticize in the Arab world but it would be absurd to say that one cannot criticize the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia for its treatment of women or its human rights record, because it is racist against Arabs or is anti-Muslim. A person who made such an argument would be laughed at. No one would take them or the argument seriously.
Yet this allegation of anti-Semitism is a frequent smear tactic that has been used against individuals who have publicly supported Palestinian human rights.
These individuals include former US President Jimmy Carter, Arch Bishop Desmond Tutu, Nelson Mandela, Bertrand Russell, Mahatma Gandhi, Arnold Toynbee, George Orwell and many, many others who have expressed public support for the Palestinians. Most of the strongest critics of Zionism and Israel's policies are Jewish.
The only Jewish member of Lloyd George's cabinet when Great Britain first threw its weight behind Zionism in 1917, Sir Edwin Montagu, was adamantly opposed to the creation of a Jewish state. He attacked the Balfour Declaration and Zionism because he believed they were anti-Semitic. Montagu argued that Zionism and anti-Semitism were based on the same premise, namely that Jews and non-Jews could not co-exist.
Ironically, people like me who want Jews to remain in our society, be an important part of our community and be safe from discrimination and racism are diametrically opposed to the Zionist goal of ingathering all of the Jews to Palestine.
Zionists want to "save the Jews" because they are not safe in the diaspora and face the threat of persecution due to the intractable anti-Semitism that exists in non-Jewish societies. To quote one Zionist commentator,
"The Law [of Return] and the Clause and, for that matter Zionism and the Jewish State are necessary so long as the threat to our people continues; so long, in other words, as Diaspora exists.....So the Law of Return continues to be necessary for Jewish survival, to serve its essential function in Zionist theory and practice. The Law defines Israel's Zionist mission, our state as protector and refuge for threatened Diaspora Jewry. ("Hands off the Law of Return!," by David Turner, The Jerusalem Post, December 10, 2007)
Without the history of Christian anti-Semitism that has existed in Europe and the centuries of persecution of the European Jewish community political Zionism would be considered a deranged and absurd political philosophy. Without anti-Semitism Zionism has no legitimacy.
Sir Edwin Montagu was also afraid that a Jewish state would undermine the safety of Jews in other countries. It appears that this fear was realized in that the safety of the Arab Jewish community was undermined, to a large extent deliberately, so that they would be forced to immigrate to Palestine to strengthen the Jewish presence there.
Montagu's opposition to Zionism and the Balfour Declaration was supported by the leading representative bodies of Anglo-Jewry at the time, the Board of Deputies and the Anglo-Jewish Association, and in particular, by three prominent British Jews Claude Montefiore, David Alexander and Lucien Wolf.
Many Jews are anti-Zionist and opposed the settlement of Jews in Palestine.
In fact historically Zionism was not supported by the majority of Jews. In the process of creating the state of Israel the political Zionists destroyed Palestine and ethnically cleansed more than 700,000 Palestinians from their homes and villages in order to create a demographic Jewish majority in their newly created "Jewish state."
There is a very respected and honored Jewish tradition of opposition to injustice and human rights violations. There is no monolithic position for Jews when it comes to Israel and the Palestinian issue.
Below is a link for my article "Jewish Criticism of Zionism" which lists more than 160 Jewish critics of Zionism. This article lists many prominent Jewish intellectuals that are extremely critical of Israel's policies towards Palestinians.
There is a long distinguished line of Jewish critics of Zionism and Israel's treatment of the Palestinians.
This list includes Albert Einstein, Sigmund Freud, Hannah Arendt, Franz Kafka, Isaac Asimov, I.F. Stone, Norton Mezvinsky, Alfred Lilienthal, Silvain Levi, Eric Rouleau, Tony Judt, Sara Roy, Ronnie Kasrils, Eric Hobsbawn, Saul Landau, Noam Chomsky, Hans Kohen, Eric Fromm, Bruno Kreisky, Pierre Mendes France, Richard Falk, Harold Pinter (the Nobel prize winner for Literature), Philip Roth, Michael Selzer, Don Peretz, Immanuel Wallerstein, Rabbi Michael Lerner, actor Ed Asner and many other leading Jewish intellectuals and religious figures.
Isaac Asimov was one of the greatest writers of the Twentieth Century and wrote on many topics. He expressed his views about Zionism in a number of pieces. One example is found in the second volume of his autobiography In Joy Still Felt. There, he tells of having dinner in 1959 with some friends and his wife. Asimov wrote:
"As usual, I found myself in the odd position of not being a Zionist and of not particularly valuing my Jewish heritage....I just think it is more important to be human and to have a human heritage; and I think it is wrong for anyone to feel that there is anything special about any one heritage of whatever kind. It is delightful to have the human heritage exist in a thousand varieties, for it makes for greater interest, but as soon as one variety is thought to be more important than another, the groundwork is laid for destroying them all."
Asimov also commented on Zionism in a chapter titled "Anti-Semitism" in I. Asimov, his third autobiographical volume.
There, Asimov discussed how he was distressed by the capability of the historically oppressed (such as the Jews) to in turn become oppressors if given the chance.
Asimov wrote: "Right now, there is an influx of Soviet Jews into Israel. They are fleeing because they expect religious persecution. Yet at the instant their feet touched Israeli soil, they became extreme Israeli nationalists with no pity for the Palestinians. From persecuted to persecutors in the blinking of an eye."
Tens of thousands of religious Jews today are adamantly opposed to Zionism including the orthodox Neturei Karta and the Satmar sects. Rabbi Yisroel Weiss is the international spokesman for Neturei Karta. Hundreds of thousands of religious Jews in Israel reject the secular political movement of Zionism which created "the Jewish State."
There is an important book written by Dr. Yakov M. Rabkin, a professor of History at the University of Montreal. It is titled A Threat from Within: A Century of Jewish Opposition to Zionism, (Zed Books: London, 2006).
This book examines Jewish religious opposition to Zionism and details the long history of religious opposition to Zionism as a political movement to establish a Jewish state in Palestine. Rabkin describes present day Jewish religious anti-Zionism as follows:
"...the rejection of Zionism in the name of the Torah, in the name of Jewish tradition. Such rejection is all the more significant in that it can in no way be described as anti-Semitic, recent attempts to conflate any expression of anti-Zionism with anti-Semitism notwithstanding.
At first glance this seems to be a paradox.
After all, the public almost automatically associates Jews and Israel. The press continues to refer to "the Jewish State." Israeli politicians often speak "in the name of the Jewish people."
Yet the Zionist movement and the creation of the State of Israel has caused one of the greatest schisms in Jewish history.
An overwhelming majority of those who defend and interpret the traditions of Judaism have, from the beginning, opposed what was to become a vision for a new society, a new concept of being Jewish, a program of massive immigration to the Holy land and the use of force to establish political hegemony there." (Yakov M. Rabkin, A Threat from Within: A Century of Jewish Opposition to Zionism, (Zed Books: London 2006), p. 2.)
Israel's founders were in fact atheists who wanted to transform Judaism from being a religion into a secular national movement based on race or ethnicity. This explains why Jewish religious leaders were strongly opposed to secular Zionism. Theodore Herzl was seen as an anti-Semite due to his hostility to religious Jews.
In 1943, a group of 92 Reform rabbis, and many other prominent American Jews, created the American Council for Judaism with the express intent of combatting Zionism.
Included in the Council's leadership were Rabbi Morris S. Lazaron of Baltimore; Lessing J. Rosenwald, the former chairman of the Sears, Roebuck & Company, who became president of the Council; Rabbi Elmer Berger who became its executive director; Arthur Hays Sulzberger, publisher of The New York Times; and Sidney Wallach of the American Jewish Committee.
An example of their views on Zionism is "Palestine," a pamphlet published by the American Council for Judaism, 1944, p.7 [American Council for Judaism Records (1942-1968), American Jewish Archives. Cincinnati, OH] which stated as follows: "...the concept of a theocratic state is long past. It is an anachronism. The concept of a racial state— the Hitlerian concept— is repugnant to the civilized world, as witness the fearful global war in which we are involved."
The American Council for Judaism was founded to expressly oppose Zionism.
It was created in response to a 1942 Zionist Conference in the US, which proposed the formation of a Jewish army in Palestine before the state was founded.
The Council send letters to various governments and officials expressing their objection to such a notion as a 'religious' state, especially since they believed that: "that Jewish nationalism tends to confuse our fellowman about our place and function in society and diverts our own attention from our historic role to live as a religious community wherever we may dwell."(America Council for Judaism, Series A. Correspondence, Subseries 1: General, 1942-1953.)
Membership in the Council grew to more than 15,000. Its members were highly articulate and greatly angered the Zionist leadership, who wanted the American Jewish community to present a united front on the Palestine question.
The book, Jews Against Zionism: The American Council for Judaism 1942-1948, by Thomas A. Kolsky, (Temple University Press, Philadelphia, 1990) is a history of the anti-Zionist American Council for Judaism during the period just before the creation of the "Jewish State."
After Israel's spectacular success in the 1967 Arab-Israeli war, however, a change in the policy towards Zionism occurred in the American Council for Judaism.
Anti-Zionist Jewish author Alfred Lilienthal has suggested that "Zionist infiltration" succeeded in "neutralizing" the Council. A separate organization was subsequently established in 1969 called American Jewish Alternatives to Zionism (AJAZ).
The new group, which was based in New York, continued the original anti-Zionist tradition of the American Council for Judaism. Rabbi Elmer Berger served as president of AJAZ and also editor of its publication the AJAZ Report until shortly before his death in 1996.
The American Council for Judaism is still in existence but has softened its strict anti-Zionist position but today it is non-Zionist and highly critical of the "Jewish State's" policies toward the Palestinians.
Their publications frequently carry anti-Zionist Jewish criticism. Allan C. Brownfeld is the Editor of Issues, their quarterly newsletter and also editor of their "Special Interest Report." Stephen L. Naman is President of the Council.
Adam Shatz, the literary editor of The Nation Magazine, has edited a book titled Prophet's Outcast. The book contains essays written by 24 prominent Jewish scholars and intellectuals which are very critical of Zionism and Israel's treatment of the Palestinians. A copy of my review in Middle East Policy can be found at the link below.
Another important book is The Other Israel: Voices of Refusal and Dissent, edited by Roane Carey and Jonathan Shainin. It contains articles very critical of Israel's policies, written by 27 prominent Israelis.
The Forward was written by a prominent Israeli author and journalist Tom Segev. The Introduction is written by Anthony Lewis, the two-time Pulitzer Prize winning journalist, who worked at The New York Times between 1969 and 2001. Lewis is now the James Madison Visiting Professor at Columbia University. The link to my review is found below.
There are many Israeli critics of Zionism and anti-Zionist Jews in Israel where the conflict with the Palestinians is most apparent.
These include Avraham Burg, former head of the World Jewish Agency and former Speaker of the Knesset; Shulamit Aloni, a former Minister of Education;
Yossi Sarid a former Knesset member and past leader of Meretz; Uri Avnery former Knesset member and leader of Gush Shalom; the late Israel Shahak former Chair of the Israeli League for Human and Civil Rights; former General and Knessett Member Mattityahu Peled; Meron Benvenisti, former Deputy Mayor of Jerusalem; Jeff Halper head of Israeli Committee Against House Demolitions; Felica Langer, a well known human rights lawyer; Michael Warschawski, co-founder of the Alternative Information Center; University of Oxford historian Avi Shalim; Eitan Bronstein Chair of Zochrot, which means "Remember," and works to remind Israelis about the Nakba or Palestinian catastrophe; the late linguist and journalist Tanya Reinhart; New Israeli Historian Ilan Pappe; Uri Davis, author of
Israel: An Apartheid State (London: Zed Books, 1987); Tikva Honig-Parnass, editor of Between the Lines; and journalists Gideon Levy, Amira Hass, A.B. Yehoshua, Yitzhak Laor, Akiva Eldar, Meron Rapoport, B. Michael and Gideon Spiro to name only a few of the many Israelis who are anti-Zionist, non-Zionist or extremely critical of Zionism and Israel's policies toward the Palestinians.
There was an interesting book review published in Haaretz,on February 29, 2008, written by Tom Segev.
It was a review of a book titled, When and How Was the Jewish People Invented? (published by Resling in Hebrew). It is authored by Israeli historian Shlomo Zand (also spelled Sand). Prof. Zand teaches history at Tel Aviv University. The book became a best seller in Israel. Segev writes:
"...in one of the most fascinating and challenging books published here in a long time. There never was a Jewish people, only a Jewish religion, and the exile also never happened - hence there was no return. Zand rejects most of the stories of national-identity formation in the Bible, including the exodus from Egypt and, most satisfactorily, the horrors of the conquest under Joshua. It's all fiction and myth that served as an excuse for the establishment of the State of Israel, he asserts."
This information and arguments have been around for a long time but it is interesting to see them published in one of Israel's leading daily newspapers and presented in a book written by an Israeli historian. Here is how Segev summarizes the arguments in Zand's book:
"According to Zand, the Romans did not generally exile whole nations, and most of the Jews were permitted to remain in the country. The number of those exiled was at most tens of thousands. When the country was conquered by the Arabs, many of the Jews converted to Islam and were assimilated among the conquerors. It follows that the progenitors of the Palestinian Arabs were Jews. Zand did not invent this thesis; 30 years before the Declaration of Independence, it was espoused by David Ben-Gurion, Yitzhak Ben-Zvi and others.
If the majority of the Jews were not exiled, how is it that so many of them reached almost every country on earth? Zand says they emigrated of their own volition or, if they were among those exiled to Babylon, remained there because they chose to. Contrary to conventional belief, the Jewish religion tried to induce members of other faiths to become Jews, which explains how there came to be millions of Jews in the world. As the Book of Esther, for example, notes, "And many of the people of the land became Jews; for the fear of the Jews fell upon them."
Zand quotes from many existing studies, some of which were written in Israel but shunted out of the central discourse. He also describes at length the Jewish kingdom of Himyar in the southern Arabian Peninsula and the Jewish Berbers in North Africa. The community of Jews in Spain sprang from Arabs who became Jews and arrived with the forces that captured Spain from the Christians, and from European-born individuals who had also become Jews.
The first Jews of Ashkenaz (Germany) did not come from the Land of Israel and did not reach Eastern Europe from Germany, but became Jews in the Khazar Kingdom in the Caucasus. Zand explains the origins of Yiddish culture: it was not a Jewish import from Germany, but the result of the connection between the offspring of the Kuzari and Germans who traveled to the East, some of them as merchants.
We find, then, that the members of a variety of peoples and races, blond
and black, brown and yellow, became Jews in large numbers.
According to Zand, the Zionist need to devise for them a shared ethnicity and historical continuity produced a long series of inventions and fictions, along with an invocation of racist theses. Some were concocted in the minds of those who conceived the Zionist movement, while others were offered as the findings of genetic studies conducted in Israel." ("An Invention Called 'The Jewish People,' By Tom Segev, Ha'aretz, February 29, 2008.)
It is somewhat ironic that issues and subjects that relate to the Palestinians and Zionism that are virtually taboo in North America are openly discussed in Israel.
These same subjects are much more openly discussed in Europe and in the rest of the World. (For example see, "New Israeli Scholars Face up to Israel's Origins," by Eric Rouleau and "Are the Jews an Invented People" by Eric Rouleau, Le Monde diplomatique, 10 May, 2008; and "A crisis in Judaism: For many Jews today, Israel is not a normal state – it is a cause or ideal, and therein lies the problem," By Brian Klug, The Guardian, 15 January, 2009; "Israel's war crimes," By Richard Falk, Le Monde diplomatique, English edition, March 2009; "Israel's Lies," By Henry Siegman, London Review of Books, 29 January, 2009).
Here is what noted financier, George Soros, writing in The New York Review of Books, on April 12, 2007, had to say on this the lack of debate in the United States on the Palestinian issue:
"The current policy is not even questioned in the United States. While other problem areas of the Middle East are freely discussed, criticism of our policies toward Israel is very muted indeed. The debate in Israel about Israeli policy is much more open and vigorous than in the United States. This is all the more remarkable because Palestine is the issue that more than any other currently divides the United States from Europe."
. . .
For an example of the type of discussion that goes on in Israel is the following statement made by Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert: "For sixty years there has been discrimination against Arabs in Israel. This discrimination is deep-seated and intolerable." Olmert made this statement while addressing a meeting of the Knesset committee that was investigating the lack of integration of Arab citizens in public service." (see "PM slams 'discrimination' against Arabs," By Elie Leshem and Jpost.com Staff, Jerusalem Post, Nov 12, 2008).
Another example is the current Knesset Speaker Reuven Rivlin (from the right-wing Likud Party) who called for a fundamental change in relations between Jews and Arabs in Israel. He urged the founding of a "true partnership" between the two sectors, based on mutual respect, absolute equality and the addressing of "the special needs and unique character of each of the sides."
The Speaker was reported to say all this in an address to be delivered at the president's residence in Jerusalem on August 3rd, 2009. Quoting from Rivlin's prepared speech which was released to the media:
"the establishment of Israel was accompanied by much pain and suffering and a real trauma for the Palestinians (in large part due to the shortsightedness of the Palestinian leadership). Many of Israel's Arabs, which see themselves as part of the Palestinian population, feel the pain of their brothers across the green line - a pain they feel the state of Israel is responsible for."
Many of them," Rivlin says, "encounter racism and arrogance from Israel's Jews; the inequality in the allocation of state funds also does not contribute to any extra love. (See "Knesset Speaker: Establishment of Israel caused Arabs real trauma," By Haaretz Service, Haaretz, 3rd August, 2009.)
Can you ever imagine a top American or Canadian politician making statements like these, or a leading Canadian or American newspaper publishing an article like this one? If they did make statements like these what would be the reaction?
However, Rivlin still tried to focus the blame on the Palestinian leadership for the problems and does not fully acknowledge Israel's part in the expulsions. These expulsions and massacres started before the official declaration of Israel's Independence on May 14, 1948. And according to Israeli Historian Ilan Pappe there were expulsions of the Palestinians from 30 villages after the War had ended in 1949.
Rivlin also does not address the land seizures from Palestinians who fled or were expelled from their homes but remained in Israel.
These individuals were considered Israeli citizens, but still lost all of their property. These individuals are called "present Absentees," an Orwellian phrase if there ever was one.
Here is how one Israeli academic, Gabriel Piterberg, describes the phrase and how it relates to Israel: "How the founding myths of Israel dictated conceptual removal of Palestinians, during and after physical removal. The invention of 'retroactive transfer' and 'present absentees' as the glacial euphemisms of ethnic cleansing." (See "Erasures," by Gabriel Piterberg, New Left Review, July-August 2001.)
Nor does Rivlin acknowledge that most of the Zionist leadership wanted all of Palestine without its Arab population and this wish "miraculously" came true. Palestinian leadership, inept as it was, cannot be blamed for everything.
Another important book on this topic is Reframing Anti-Semitism:
Alternative Jewish Perspectives published by the Jewish Voice for Peace.
It contains articles written by 8 Jewish American writers. One of the articles is written by Judith Butler, the Maxine Elliot Professor in Rhetoric and Comparative Literature at the University of California at Berkley.
Her article is on the question of whether criticism of Israel is anti-Semitic. Her answer and article is titled: "No, Its Not Anti-Semitic." The link to my review of the Jewish Voice for Peace book is found below.
Another book that examines Jewish criticism of Zionism and Israel's policies is Wrestling with Zion: Progressive Jewish-American Responses to the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict, edited by Tony Kushner and Alisa Solomon (Grove Press: New York, 2003).
Kushner is an award winning playwright and Solomon a staff writer at The Village Voice and a professor at Baruch College-City of New York. This book contains a collection of 53 prominent American Jewish writers' critical analysis of Zionism and Israel's policies.
This list includes such distinguished writers as Arthur Miller, Susan Sontag, Marc Ellis, Naomi Klein (actually a Canadian) and Rabbi Arthur Waskow among many others.
Another important book on Jewish criticism of Zionism and Israel's treatment of the Palestinians is A Time to Speak Out: Independent Jewish Voices on Israel, Zionism and Jewish Identity (Verso: London, 2008).
It is edited by four prominent British academics, Anne Karpf, Brian Klug, Jacqueline Rose and Barbara Rosenbaum. This book contains the highly critical writings of 27 Jewish academics and thinkers on the issues of the Occupation, Israel and Zionism.
There are a number of other anthologies and collections of writings from anti-Zionist Jews.
These include Zionism Reconsidered, edited by Michael Selzer, (The MacMillian Company: London, 1970); Zionism: The dream and the reality: A Jewish Critique, Gary V. Smith ed. (Barnes & Noble Books: New York, 1974); Jewish Critics of Zionism and The Stifling and Smearing of a Dissenter, by Moshe Menuhin, (Association of Arab University Graduates, 1976); Judaism or Zionism, EAFORD & AJAZ (American Jewish Alternatives to Zionism) eds., (Zed Books: London, 1986); The End of Zionism and the Liberation of the Jewish People, Eibie Weizfeld ed. (Clarity Press: Atlanta, 1989); Radicals, Rabbis, and Peacemakers: Conversations with Jews against the occupation, edited by Seth Faber (Common Courage Press, Monroe ME, 2005).
Faber's book contains a series of interviews with leading American dissident Jews' Noam Chomsky, Steve Quester, Joel Kovel, Norton Mezvinsky, Ora Wise, Norman Finkelstein, Phyllis Bennis, Adam Shapiro, Daniel Boyarin, Rabbi David Weiss, and includes a speech and an essay by Marc Ellis.
Mordecai Richler, the late esteemed Canadian author, wrote an article entitled "Israel marks 50th anniversary out of favor with many Jews," Toronto Star, February 15, 1998.
Many other Canadian Jews are opposed to Zionism or are critical of Israel's treatment of the Palestinians.
Many Canadian Jews were against the war on Gaza. These dissenters include academics and writers Judy Rebick, Naomi Klein, Avi Lewis, Rick Salutin, Bernard Avishai, Howard Skutel, Yakov Rabkin, Klaus Herrmann, Janet Weinroth, Judith Weisman, Michael Neumann, Alan Sears, Gabor Mate, Judy and Larry Haiven, Michael Mandel, Ursula Franklin, Abbie Bakan, Mordecai Briemberg, Eibie Weizfeld, Zalman Amit, Rabbi Reuben Slonim, pianist Anton Kuerti, Ralph Benmergui broadcaster and producer and Judy Deutsch head of Science for Peace to name but a few.
The Jewish Outlook Society, headquartered in Vancouver, Canada, publishes Outlook.
They describe their magazine as, "An Independent, secular Jewish publication with a socialist-humanist perspective." Carl Rosenberg is the Editor and Sylvia Friedman is the Managing Editor. Harold Berson is in charge of circulation. They have over 40 Jewish individuals, primarily living in Canada, who serve in various capacities with the organization and their publication.
Outlook takes a critical view of Israel's policies toward the Palestinians and frequently publishes Jewish anti-Zionist perspectives.
Independent Jewish Voices (IJV) (Canada) currently has more than 100 members.
Dylan Penner, Sid Shniad and Diana Ralph serves as coordinators for IJV. The Steering Committee is composed of 24 Canadian Jewish activists including Fabienne Presentey, Sandra Ruch, Andy Leher and Harry Shannon. The IJV is a member-led organization, with chapters in Vancouver, Winnipeg, Toronto, Hamilton, Ottawa, Montreal, and Halifax.
Here is what Independent Jewish Voices (Canada) said, in their February 19, 2009 Press Release, about Stephen Harper Conservative government's position on the Israeli/Palestinian conflict and Minister Jason Kenney's cutting off funding for English Second Language training programs run by the Canadian Arab Federation:
"We believe that Mr. Kenny [sic] and his Conservative government is threatening CAF's funding because CAF stands for justice for Palestinian people and because it expresses principled criticism of oppressive Israeli policies.
As Jews, we affirm that criticizing Israeli policies is NOT anti-Semitic. Anti-Semitism refers to hostility and/or prejudice against Jews. Like any other government, Israel has obligations under international law.
To responsibly raise critical concerns about the discriminatory, illegal, and brutal policies of another government is an ethical imperative, which our government should support.
However, the Conservative government has gone further than any previous Canadian administration in endorsing illegal and brutal Israeli assaults on Palestinian and Lebanese people.
Prime Minister Stephen Harper has pledged complete allegiance with Israel and labels as "anti-Semitic" any criticism of Israeli actions (including the Gaza massacre, house demolitions, use of illegal phosphorous and DIME weapons against civilians, etc.).
As Jews, we believe this is a dishonest smoke-screen, a ploy to discredit principled calls for humanity, justice, and compliance with international law."
There are hundreds, and probably thousands, of Jewish critics of Zionism and of Israel's policies toward the Palestinians who have published articles or written books on the subject. Yet many Zionists, and their supporters, claim that there is a monolithic Jewish position in support of Zionism, Israel and the occupation of Palestinian land.
This claim of near universal Jewish support for the Zionist state and its actions toward the Palestinians is so far from the truth that it is laughable.
One has only to open your eyes and review the written record to see that there is no Jewish consensus on these issues and a great deal of criticism and outright opposition to Zionism exists in Jewish intellectual and religious circles, both in the past and today.
Israel's supporters shamelessly use the argument that to criticize Israel is anti-Semitic no matter what Israel does. This argument is almost entirely false and politically motivated. Not to tell the truth, or to suppress discussion, about what is going on in Palestine is racist and a crime against the Palestinian people and a crime of silence and indifference not unlike the one committed against Jews in the Second World War.
To quote George Soros on the use of anti-Semitism, a tactic he described "the most insidious argument," to silence the political debate on Israel's policies toward the Palestinians.
".....Any politician who dares to expose AIPAC's influence would incur its wrath; so very few can be expected to do so. It is up to the American Jewish community itself to rein in the organization that claims to represent it.
But this is not possible without first disposing of the most insidious argument put forward by the defenders of the current policies: that the critics of Israel's policies of occupation, control, and repression on the West Bank and in East Jerusalem and Gaza engender anti-Semitism.
The opposite is the case. One of the myths propagated by the enemies of Israel is that there is an all-powerful Zionist conspiracy. That is a false accusation. Nevertheless, that AIPAC has been so successful in suppressing criticism has lent some credence to such false beliefs. Demolishing the wall of silence that has protected AIPAC would help lay them to rest. A debate within the Jewish community, instead of fomenting anti-Semitism, would only help diminish it."
Billionaire George Soros can hardly be considered a leftist. He is also Jewish.
Here is what Ben Ehrenreich, the author of the novel "The Suitors," wrote in the Los Angeles Times on the issue of criticism of Zionism being anti-Semitic.
"Meanwhile, the characterization of anti-Zionism as an "epidemic" more dangerous than anti-Semitism reveals only the unsustainability of the position into which Israel's apologists have been forced. Faced with international condemnation, they seek to limit the discourse, to erect walls that delineate what can and can't be said.
It's not working. Opposing Zionism is neither anti-Semitic nor particularly radical. It requires only that we take our own values seriously and no longer, as the book of Amos has it, "turn justice into wormwood and hurl righteousness to the ground."
Establishing a secular, pluralist, democratic government in Israel and Palestine would of course mean the abandonment of the Zionist dream. It might also mean the only salvation for the Jewish ideals of justice that date back to Jeremiah." ("Zionism is the problem: The Zionist ideal of a Jewish state is keeping Israelis and Palestinians from living in peace," by Ben Ehrenreich, Los Angeles Times, March 15, 2009.)
There is clearly a wide range of opinion on Zionism that exists within the Jewish community. This fact needs to be recognized. We also need to reject specious arguments and reject false allegations of racism and anti-Semitism. We need to fight for freedom of speech, academic freedom, critical inquiry and democratic debate, at all universities and colleges, in the media, in the halls of political power and all across North America. Individuals should be allowed to decide for themselves questions about Zionism and the Palestinians based on open debate, the facts and informed opinion not on suppression of debate, intimidation and censorship.
This article will appear in a forthcoming issue of Outlook magazine published by the Canadian Jewish Outlook Society.
Edward C. Corrigan is a lawyer certified as a Specialist in Citizenship and Immigration Law and Immigration and Refugee Protection by the Law Society of Upper Canada in London, Ontario, Canada. He can be reached at corriganlaw@edcorrigan.ca or at (519) 439-4015.
I'm afraid Ahmadinejad's political behaviour portrays him more and more as a lunatic who has long lost the grasp of reality. At the end of the day he'll be kicked off by his own erstwhile supporters, fed up of his erratic action and statements ...
Ahmadinejad calls for prosecution of Iran's opposition leaders
By Borzou Daragahi
The president says post-election unrest was part of a foreign "enemy plot" carried out by "subversives." His demand runs counter to Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei, who gave a conciliatory speech Wednesday. |
:: Article nr. 57415 sent on 29-aug-2009 17:24 ECT
www.uruknet.info?p=57415
Link: www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/world/la-fgw-iran-ahmadinejad29-2009aug29,0,219
1500.story
Please, no double standard: elections were rigged both in Afghanistan and Iran.
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War is not the answer, for only love can conquer hate
Not in our Name! And another world is possible!
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Earlier this week, the SOA graduate-backed Honduran military coup regime refused all diplomatic options to return democracy. The U.S. State Department responded by asserting that visas to Hondurans would no longer be granted under the coup. Late yesterday State Department officials made it clear that they are considering legally defining the situation as a "military coup." This would create an automatic cut-off of all remaining aid to Honduras. The coup regime immediately responded by saying that they would allow the rightful President Zelaya to return with amnesty, but not as president. Clearly the coup leaders are caving to the pressure. We need you to act now to return democracy to Honduras. Please make two very important phone calls this morning!
1.) Call the State Department at 202-647-5171 or 1-800-877-8339 and ask for Secretary Clinton. Deliver the following message: "Legally define the de facto regime in Honduras as a military coup and cut off all aid to Honduras until President Zelaya is unconditionally reinstated."
2.) Call the White House at 202-456-1111 and repeat the same message "Legally define the de facto regime in Honduras as a military coup and cut off all aid to Honduras until President Zelaya is unconditionally reinstated."
Thanks,
Liz, Luciana, Mike, Roy, Pam, Eric, Jake, Pablo, Lisa and Hendrik
SOA Watch
Click here to watch a new Real News Network news clip about the situation in Honduras. 60 days of anti-coup protests show persistence in civil disobedience and little faith in int'l community.
Mother Jones: The Secret History of Hurricane Katrina
Mother Jones
http://qwstnevrythg.com/2009/08/mother-jones-the-secret-history-of-hurricane-katrina/
There was nothing natural about the disaster that befell New Orleans in Katrina's aftermath.
Confronted with images of corpses floating in the blackened floodwaters or baking in the sun on abandoned highways, there aren't too many people left who see what happened following Hurricane Katrina as a purely "natural" disaster. The dominant narratives that have emerged, in the four years since the storm, are of a gross human tragedy, compounded by social inequities and government ineptitude—a crisis subsequently exploited in every way possible
But there's an even harsher truth, one some New Orleans residents learned in the very first days but which is only beginning to become clear to the rest of us: What took place in this devastated American city was no less than a war, in which victims whose only crimes were poverty and blackness were treated as enemies of the state.
It started immediately after the storm and flood hit, when civilian aid was scarce—but private security forces already had boots on the ground. Some, like Blackwater (which has since redubbed itself Xe), were under federal contract, while a host of others answered to wealthy residents and businessmen who had departed well before Katrina and needed help protecting their property from the suffering masses left behind. According Jeremy Scahill's reporting
"When asked what authority they were operating under," Scahill reported, "one guy said, 'We're on contract with the Department of Homeland Security.' Then, pointing to one of his comrades, he said, 'He was even deputized by the governor of the state of Louisiana. We can make arrests and use lethal force if we deem it necessary.' The man then held up the gold Louisiana law enforcement badge he wore around his neck."
The Blackwater operators described their mission in New Orleans as "securing neighborhoods," as if they were talking about Sadr City. When National Guard troops descended on the city, the Army Times described their role as fighting "the insurgency in the city." Brigadier Gen. Gary Jones, who commanded the Louisiana National Guard's Joint Task Force, told the paper, "This place is going to look like Little Somalia. We're going to go out and take this city back. This will be a combat operation to get this city under control."
Ten days after the storm, the New York Times reported
Malik Rahim, a Vietnam veteran and longtime community activist, was one of the organizers of the Common Ground Collective, which quickly began dispensing basic aid and medical care in the first days after the hurricane. But far from aiding the relief workers, Rahim told me this week, the police and troops who began patrolling the streets treated them as criminals or "insurgents." African American men caught outside also ran the risk of crossing paths with roving vigilante patrols who shot at will, he says. In this dangerous environment, Common Ground began to rely on white volunteers to move through a city that had simply become too perilous for blacks.
In July, the local television station WDSU released a home video
"Did you have any problems with looters," [sic] asked an officer.
"Not anymore," said Gleason.
"Not anymore?"
"They're all dead," said Gleason.
The officer asked, "What happened?"
"We shot them," said Gleason.
"How many did you shoot?
"Thirty-eight."
"Thirty-eight people? What did you do with the bodies?"
"We gave them to the Coast Guard," said Gleason.
Gleason told his story with a cup of red wine in one hand and riding a tractor from Blaine Kern's Mardi Gras World.
Although the government's aid efforts were in chaos, those involved in the self-generated community rescue and relief efforts were often seen as a threat. Even so, Common Ground, founded in the days after Katrina hit, eventually managed to serve more than half a million people, operating feeding stations, opening free health and legal clinics, and later rebuilding homes and planting trees. But they "never got a dime" from the federal government, says Rahim. The feds did, however, recruit one of Common Ground's founders, Brandon Darby, as an informant, later using him to infiltrate groups
And while the government couldn't seem to keep people from dying on rooftops or abandoned highways, it wasted no time building a temporary jail in New Orleans.
Burl Cain, the warden of the notorious Angola Prison, a former slave plantation that's now home to 5,000 inmates, was rushed down to the city to oversee "Camp Greyhound" in the city's bus terminal. According
In the virtual martial law imposed in New Orleans after Katrina, the war on the poor sometimes even spilled over into the war on terror. In his latest book Zeitoun, published in July, Dave Eggers tells the story of a local Syrian immigrant who stayed in New Orleans to protect his properties and ended up organizing makeshift relief efforts and rescuing people in a canoe. He continued right up until he was arrested by a group of unidentified, heavily armed men in uniform, thrown into Camp Greyhound, and questioned as a suspected terrorist. In an interview with Salon
Zeitoun was among thousands of people who were doing "Katrina time" after the storm. There was a complete suspension of all legal processes and there were no hearings, no courts for months and months and not enough folks in the judicial system really seemed all that concerned about it. Some human-rights activists and some attorneys, but otherwise it seemed to be the cost of doing business. It really could have only happened at that time; 2005 was just the exact meeting place of the Bush-era philosophy towards law enforcement and incarceration, their philosophy toward habeas corpus and their neglect and indifference to the plight of New Orleanians.
Through all the time that the federal and local governments, in concert with wealthy New Orleanians, were pitching their battle, there was virtually no one fighting on the other side. Reviewing the "available evidence" a month after Katrina, the New York Times concluded that "the most alarming stories that coursed through the city appear to be little more than figments of frightened imaginations." The reports of residents firing at National Guard helicopters, of tourists being robbed and raped on Bourbon Street, and of murderous rampages in the Superdome—all turned out to be false.
Since then it has become increasingly clear that the truth of what happened in New Orleans—vigilantism and racially tinged violence, a military response that supplanted a humanitarian one—is equally sinister.
James Ridgeway is a senior correspondent at Mother Jones. For more of his stories, click here
--
"They have succeeded in dominating us more
through ignorance, than through force".
Simon Bolivar
"Those who can make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities." Voltaire
!VENCEREMOS!
1 comment:
It is John Greyson who is politicizing TIFF and abusing it for his own political ends.
I wonder if John Greyson's big public hissy fit about TIFF has anything to do with him being on the Advisory Board of the Toronto Palestinian Film Festival and always pushing for a world-wide boycott of anything even remotely related to Israel?
Knowing what TIFF's plans were, one wonders why he waited to the last moment to withdraw, rather than just in the beginning many months ago withdrawing?
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