Madonna: "The Harlot’s Dance" & "Israel’s New Best Friend"

Link

By Adib Kawar • Sep 13th, 2009 at 19:32 • Category: Biography, Internet and Communication, Israel, Newswire, Religion, Zionism

WRITTEN BY: Satia’a Nouredine
TRANSLATED BY: Adib S. Kawar

She slowly spreads her legs, then she raises them high, before she rests her right leg on a couch’s armrest, and waits for seconds, then she quickly jumps up, she slackens the reins of her body another time proceeding with its hysteric movements, which don’t lack defiance, and don’t rest except when a wave of clapping and shouts breaks out: She practices her private rituals, which usually mixes between art, sex and religion… But she lately chose to reduce it to a politically guided message, which is passed from a place where nobody can miss its meaning.

Is Madonna praying or harloting?!

The audience thoroughly reads the message. Follows up with passion the divergence of the thighs and her buttocks shaking, but they were waiting for her promised last surprise: The white and blue flag covering the burning and squirming body on the stage fluttering in the humid air under spotlights, to announce that the meeting had actually taken place in that dramatic moment, which required years’ long parade of passing away appointments, and processes of reciprocal temptations until all obstacles of separation had melted down.

What used to look like a dancing movement that the singer used to perform up till it became an identification mark and a feature of her body, now has a different meaning, there is a new identity that represents itself, and announcing her joining that small religious group, and asks to receive its blessing, and calls with the diverged and raised thighs, prophet Jacob himself and nobody else, so as to fall upon her and justify her belonging to his descendents even if it was somehow late. And when she received the response in approval, she exclaimed with open ecstasy: “Israel is the center of energy in this world, and it is the axis of peace on this earth.”

Before she reached this climax, she inspired that she is torturing her body and mind. She looked far far away to find that there is a faction called “The Cabala”, which is joined by only the well learned in studies of the Torah and the Talmud, and when she became forty years old, which is the year specified for membership, she started her repeated trips looking for the ultimate truth that is buried in the midst of legends, up till she found it at the age of fifty four, and discovered that it doesn’t require one to give-up that impudent dance, on the contrary it could be calling for it, and consider it of the rituals of piety or actually an approximation to that prophet in particular.

For six nights Madonna danced in “Israel”, and it is said that she sang too, though nobody heard her singing before then and no one memorized her words. In the seventh day she decided to rest as a guest of Benjamin Netanyahu and ask him for her new citizenship identity papers, which she couldn’t obtain from his competitor, Tzipi Livni the night before, he promised to look into the matter, and to publish her letter for the public to read, that is yearning for another idea that it is fighting for other peoples and nations, and diffuse the common impression about its savageness and barbarism, through a famous American artist, who at last discovered herself and through a religious justification by her harlotry dancing.

Assafir – Sep. 5th. 2009

Madonna, Israel’s New Best Friend

hip-hop by Guzin Bilgi

What’s the deal?
Madonna and Israel?
They have a common zeal?
Is she simply a “friend”?
Or a very good weapon
on Israel’s right hand?
Their intimacy is very very mysterious
The impact of this fuck quite tremendous
I could not call this bitch an artist
But rather a brilliant whore and a dumb cabalist!

see the video and read the article http://thefastertimes.com/israel/2009/09/05/madonna-israels-new-bff/

NOTE: the previous version of this post contained the original Arabic of the article and the Arabic Translation of Guzin’s hip-hop by Adib.

To see them visit: www.tlaxcala.es

Tagged as: Israel, Jewish Identity Politics, Madonna, Religion, Zionism

Adib Kawar is a writer, researcher, translator Arab and/Palestinian and Zionist affairs – Hobby painter. Bachelor of Arts, American University of Beirut 1954. Was born in Nazareth – Palestine, residing in Beirut – Lebanon. Retired ex-Manager of an industry and marketing. من مواليد الناصرة فلسطين، مقيم في بيروت – لبنان. خريج الجامعة الأمريكية في بيروت 1954 المهنة سابقا – مدير مؤسسة صناعية وتسويق، متقاعد حاليا. كاتب، باحث، مترجم متخصص في القضية الفلسطينية والصهيونية، الهواية الرسم المؤلفات: “شكل الدولة العربية العتيدة”، “المرأة اليهودية في فلسطين المحتلة”، “الدعاية الصهيونية في الرواية الأمريكية” (عربي و إنجليزي) “شهادات لمقتلعين فلسطينيين) و “التعليم الفلسطيني تحت الاحتلالين”
Email this author All posts by Adib Kawar

From War Criminal in Israel to Coffee Salesman

Link

By Kawther Salam • Sep 13th, 2009 at 13:54 • Category: Analysis, Biography, Counter-terrorism, No thanks!, Israel, Kawther’s Choice, Newswire, Palestine, Uprooted Palestinians’ Testimonies, War, Zionism

The past is an integral part of the present, history is the past, especially if the past is associated with oppression, persecution and tyranny of the strong against the weak, and of the occupation against the occupied nation, women, children, patients, elderly and civilians.

If the past is associated with war crimes and crimes against humanity and injustice, then the history of the perpetrators is the history of criminals and their crimes, and the victims must never forget, never forgive, lest the perpetrators continue on their path of crimes. Nobody can ask from perpetrators to take responsibility for their crimes, because if they were responsible, or even capable of responsibility, to begin with, they would not engage in acts understood as reprehensible by the vast majority of humanity. The victims, on the other hand, have the responsibility not only to take care of ourselves, but to do everything in our power to stop the perpetrators, and to warn others about them.

I remember hearing my mother say that “the right can not be lost as long as the owner stands behind his right, questioning the right of the criminal and demanding his own right, until justice is achieved”.

The Justice is my goal, and the law is the only way to achieve justice, even after a hundred thousand years. If I die before achieving justice, I will leave it in will to my heirs to claim my rights, be it in one, ten, thousand or hundred thousand years. The jews will give me justice and restore my rights, be it the jews of today, or be it their descendants in 10,000 generations. (Kawther)

On August 21, 2009, I found out that the Israeli war criminal, the former military commander of Hebron, colonel Yigal Sharon, had been appointed as CEO and a coordinator for foreign expansion of an Israeli coffee company, “Aroma“, in Europe (Romania, Ukraine, Cyprus) and elsewhere.

I know Sharon personally: he was the best of the worst of the IDF war criminals who served in the occupied territories. He was interested in having good contact with journalists in order to cover the IDF crimes commited under his command.

I still remember all the grave crimes which he committed and covered in my homeland Hebron, (actually I was one of his victims, my hand was broken under his command). I have all the names of the children who were sniped, murdered and jailed under his command, I know all the military orders which he issued to pilfer the Palestinians property, I also appeared with him in the film “Hebron City without Mercy” in which I exposed the scandalous crimes of his soldiers, who forced Palestinians of Hebron to drink their urine in plastic bottles.

I know Yigal Sharon, who participated in and committed crimes against humanity, crimes of war against the civilian populations of Hebron, which all together amount to ethnic cleansing and genocide.

Yigal Sharon also aided and abetted the criminal lawlessness of the jewish squatters present in Hebron: he conspired with them to dismiss the Israeli police chief at the time, Ish “Bono” Yemeni, who saw his duty in implementing the law equally for all instead of acquiescing to the crimes of the IDF and the squatters.

Because of Yigal Sharon’s shameful and criminal past, I wrote AROMA Coffee informing them that it is not acceptable to give employment as the representative of their company in Europe to a war criminal.

A copy of e-mail was sent to the European commission, the chambers of commerce of the countries where Aroma conducts business, and human organizations interested in the issue.

I have not received an answer from Aroma, so I decided to publish the letter, and to seek the help of everybody, also from human rights organizations, to help me to sue Yigal Sharon to try to secure an arrest warrant against him for war crimes anytime he enters Europe.

---

From: K Salam <email>

To: info@aroma.co.il; dmachover@hickmanandrose.co.uk

Sent: Friday, August 21, 2009 5:25:50 PM

Subject: Yigal Sharon

Ladies and gentlemen,

I just found out that a war criminal, a murderer of Palestinian children in Hebron, colonel Yigal Sharon, is the CEO of Aroma Israel, and that he coordinates the development business abroad (in Europe and elsewhere).

As a defender of human rights, a journalist and a victim of colonel Yigal Sharon, and also in the name of many other victims of Yigal Sharon from Hebron, like for example Hosam abu Allan, Wael Al-Shukhi, Samer Karameh, Lina Misk, I would appreciate if you end the employment of Yigal Sharon with Aroma Israel, as a coordinator of the brand “Marrone Rosso” in Europe and elsewhere, and in any other position.

As a victim of Yigal Sharon and also in the name of the many other victims of the crimes of Yigal Sharon in Hebron, I think that it is not acceptable to give employment to a war criminal as the representative of your company in Europe or anywhere else, where human rights and the laws are respected. I reserve the right to initiate and follow legal steps against Yigal Sharon, wherever he is. I think that it is in the best interest of your company to not be seen as associated with a war criminal and perpetrator of ethnic cleansing and genocide. Outside of Israel, most people prefer not to buy their coffee from people with blood on their hands.

I ask your cooperation in bringing the war criminal Sharon to court for his many crimes. Much success for your company Aroma, but without the war criminal Yigal Sharon.

Thank you for your consideration,

---

See more photos about victims of Yigal Sharon, and read more about him. Each photo reminds me of a crime. It is not fair to leave criminals free. It is not just that war criminals to become lawyers.

Which are the laws that Yigal Sharon studied at the School of Law? Were they the unjust laws which he imposed in my homeland. Or were they the codes of “honor” of criminal organizations, of gangs of murderers, thieves and rapists?

Tagged as: hebron, Human Rights Violations, IDF, Israel, Journalism, Palestine, palestinians, Resistance, Zionism

Kawther Salam is a Palestinian journalist. She had a career of over 20 years working for various newspapers and TV stations in Palestine. She forced to live in the Exile in Vienna since 2002.
Email this author All posts by Kawther Salam

Haidar Eid – An Open letter to Mr. Jacob Zuma, President of South Africa

Link

By Guest Post • Sep 10th, 2009 at 9:50 • Category: Analysis, Biography, Culture and Heritage, Israel, Newswire, Opinions and Letters, Palestine, Religion, Resistance, Somoud: Arab Voices of Resistance, War, Zionism

(in the photo: People in Johannesburg March in Solidarity with Palestine.)

Dear Mr. President,

I am writing to express my dismay and disappointment with both your attendance at the national conference of the South African Jewish Board of Deputies – a racist organization by any standards – as well as the content of your speech at that forum.

I am a naturalised South African of Palestinian origin. I spent more than five years in Johannesburg, during which I earned a PhD from the University of Johannesburg and lectured at the-then Vista University in Soweto and Rand Afrikaans University in Johannesburg.

I would like to take issue with the manner in which you express your support for the two-state solution: “It is a solution that fulfils the aspirations of both parties for independent homelands through two states for two peoples, Israel and an independent, adjoining, and viable state of Palestine” (emphasis mine). Allow me, Mr. President, as a resident of Gaza, to express my shock with the fact that – only 8 months after the Gaza massacre, in which 1500 civilians, including 434 children, were brutally murdered – you still believe that there are two symmetrical sides. You even call it the “Israeli-Palestinian conflict!” Was that your belief in the 1970’s and 80’s; that there were “two-sides” to the South African “conflict”? Were there two equal parties, namely White and Black, with equal claim to the land and equal historical responsibility for the-then status quo? No doubt, this sounds like a bizarre interpretation of South African history and one which we Palestinians find equally astounding when applied to our history and our reality today.

Mr. President, these words of yours are even more disturbing, given your own involvement in the commendable struggle against the brutal, anti-human apartheid system and the notion of “independent homelands” which were based on the separation of human beings. Your struggle as Black South Africans, was morally superior to apartheid because it was inclusive where apartheid focused on separation; it was embracing where apartheid focused on division; it was life-affirming where apartheid was violent and murderous.

The South African anti-apartheid goal, adopted by anti-apartheid activists all around the world was unequivocal: the end of the racist system and ideology of apartheid. There could be no toenadering (rapprochement) with apartheid ideologues; no creation of homelands and puppet leaders: the system had to be dismantled in its entirety. Many South Africans supported by a sustained global anti-apartheid campaign, sacrificed their lives to bring down the Bantustansan euphemistically, called independent homelands by the apartheid regime. Mr. President, Steve Biko, Oliver Tambo, Chris Hani, the Mxenges, the Slovosac to mention but a few anti-apartheid heroes must have listened to the speech to the JBD and wondered what happened to the universal values and human rights espoused by the ANC.

Comrade Jacob (if I may),

I would like to brief you on the nature of the powerful party, i.e. Israel – with whom your post-apartheid government still, amazingly, maintains exceptional diplomatic and economic ties.

Unlike the new post-apartheid South Africa, which you helped to create, in the State of Israel all human beings are NOT equal. There are fundamental artificially created and selectively rewarded a level of of citizens in the state. Israel defines itself as a Jewish State. It, therefore, creates a bizarre distinction between “nationality” and “citizenship.” Almost 22% of the citizens of Israel are Palestinians who are excluded from such a definition. Israel thus, by definition is NOT the state of its citizens, but rather that of “The Jewish People”, most of whom, like the members of JBD whom you were addressing, have no birthright connection to it. The question which begs an answer is what the status of those Palestinian citizens in a Jewish state is? The answer is, as every single – to use a word you must abhor “non-white” South African knows: Racism.

The delegates at the national conference of the South African Jewish Board of Deputies, Jewish, but at the same time, South African citizens “enjoy full rights” in Israel, rights that apartheid Israel denies to us, the indigenous people of this land. They also call us “Israeli Arabs”, “Jerusalem residents”, “Arabs of the territories”, not to mention the refugees living in the Diaspora, whose mere mention always spoils any party, and whose right to return and compensation is sanctioned by International Law (UNGA resolution 194).

Israeli nationality, therefore, is non-existent. Instead, there is “Jewish Nationality”. To make such a bizarre term comprehensible, think of “White Nationality” as opposed to South African. In your speech before the JBD, you state very eloquently that “(m)uch as we are conscious of who we are culturally and otherwise, it must not take away the national identity, as we should be South Africans first”.

The International Convention on the Suppression and Punishment of the Crimes of Apartheid, Article 2, Part 3, clearly defines apartheid as:

“[a]ny legislative measures and other measures calculated to prevent a racial group or groups from participation in the political, social, economic and cultural life of the country and the deliberate creation of conditions preventing the full development of such a group or groups, in particular by denying to members of a racial group or groups basic human rights and freedoms, including the right to work… the right to education, the right to leave and return to their country the right to a nationality, the right to freedom of movement and residence.”

This definition, in its entirety, clearly applies not only to the Palestinian people residing in the West Bank and Gaza Strip, but also those living in Israel itself. This is precisely the reason that the UN Special Rapporteur on the Human Rights Situation in the Occupied Territories, a fellow South African, John Dugard, concluded that “the 1973 International Convention on the Suppression and Punishment of the Crime of Apartheid appears to be violated by many practices”.

If you were born to Palestinian parents living in Israel – a fate you have been spared, Mr. President – you too would be denied the rights of “Jewish Nationality” and been forced to submit to institutionalized inferiority or choose to resist it.

Furthermore, ICSPCA (quoted above), Article 2, Part 4, makes it crystal clear that:

“[t]he term ‘the crime of apartheid’,’ shall apply to “any measures including legislative measure, designed to divide the population along racial lines by the creation of separate measures and ghettos for the members of a racial group or groups The expropriation of landed property belonging to a racial group or groups or to members thereof..”

Comrade Jacob, the word apartheid never appears once in your speech before the JBD! A listener would never know that you were speaking to an audience who actively support apartheid in another country.

Did you know that racist laws used to forbid Black property ownership in white areas in apartheid South Africa are in force in apartheid Israel? Indigenous Palestinian citizens of Israel are not only prohibited from living on land owned by “Jewish institutions”, but are also not allowed by force of “law” to reside in any areas designated “Jewish” either.

I, myself, Mr. President, a resident of Gaza, like so many Palestinians, have legal title to my parents’ land in Israel, but have no “legal” right to it because my parents’ property, like that of millions of other Palestinians’, was taken away from us and given over to Jewish ownership. The facts are that Jews owned only 7% of Palestine before 1948; today 93% is considered “state land” and can only be owned by Jews or Israel.

This is only one example, Comrade Jacob, of the nature of the state your government deems “democratic”and “friendly” despite its past strategic ties with apartheid SA. In your presidential campaign, you were quoted singing “kill the Boer!” And yet, in your speech, you “unequivocally” condemn “all forms of violence from whatever quarter”, particularly where civilians are targeted!

I fail to understand this contradiction. Is this a reflection of the difference between comrade Jacob and President Zuma? Do you, as president, think that Palestinians have no right to resist their occupation and dispossession? You even equate our resistance with the War Crimes and Crimes against Humanity committed by the Israeli Occupation forces in the West Bank and, in particular, in Gaza.

Is it too much, comrade Jacob, for us, representatives of Palestinian Civil Society organizations to ask your government to sever all diplomatic ties with apartheid Israel, and endorses not to say lead the growing global Boycott Divestment and Sanctions campaign against Israel? Is that really too much to ask a democratic post-apartheid South Africa for?

Is this the embodiment of Fanon’s prophecy about the “Pitfalls of National (Racial?) Consciousness?” Is it because the Black Middle class which your government represents and which has taken power from the White Middle class is underdeveloped? Fanon, whom you must have read while on the run from the apartheid police, says that this national middle class “has practically no economic power, and in any case it is in no way commensurate with the bourgeoisie of the mother country which it hopes to replace.” Is this why you are prepared to kowtow to the South African Jewish community which “has been called one of the most tightly-knit in the world, overwhelmingly united in its support for Israel?”

Your government, Mr. President, turns a blind eye to the war crimes of its own citizens against Palestinians. The South African war criminal David Benjamin was allowed to freely move around South Africa and share his tactics of support and defence for the Israeli Occupation Forces in its recent onslaught against the Gaza Strip with impunity. There are seventy other South Africans that are known to have links with the destruction of the Israeli Occupation Forces who enjoy the same impunity. It is left to individuals and civil society organizations in South Africa to take action against these criminals that should rightly be the task of the government.

Your post-apartheid government, Mr. President, unashamedly, supports the two-state solution: one for Palestinians (Muslim and Christians), and one for Jews. In other words, you support the re-birth of Bantustans, albeit in the Middle East this time. The two-state solution is a racist solution, comrade Jacob. If you did not accept it for yourselves in South Africa, why force it on Palestinians instead of supporting us as we demand the right to our homeland every single inch of it?

Mr. President,

A politics based on narrow-minded, selfish pragmatism was rejected by all anti-apartheid forces, locally and internationally during the years of the anti-apartheid struggle. What was promoted, instead, was adherence to universal principles of equality and dignity.

I truly hope you will reconsider. I know that it is my constitutional right as a citizen of the New South Africa – which I am proud of – to address you directly. I do so to express my deep disagreement and dissatisfaction with your government’s Middle East policy and its continued support for the apartheid policies of the Israeli government, given that this support undermines and actively harms the Palestinian struggle for liberation and self-determination.

Sincerely,
Professor Haidar Eid
Gaza, Palestine

– Dr. Haidar Eid is Associate Professor in the Department of English Literature, Al-Aqsa University, Gaza Strip, Palestine. Dr. Eid is a founding member of the One Democratic State Group (ODSG) and a member of Palestinian Campaign for the Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel (PACBI).

source: http://www.palestinechronicle.com/ and the author

Tagged as: Apartheid, BDS, gaza, Israel, Israeli apartheid, Jewish lobbies, Palestine, Racism, South Africa, Two States Solution, War against Gaza, Zionism

Jeff Blankfort – Uri Avnery’s rationalising Israel’s dispossession of the Palestinians

Link

By Guest Post • Sep 5th, 2009 at 20:30 • Category: Analysis, Biography, Hasbara Deconstruction Site, Israel, Newswire, Opinions and Letters, Palestine, Resistance, Zionism

Recently, Uri Avnery, Gush Shalom leader and “darling” of the left-Zionists, has been writing quite a bit more frequently some pieces that ask folks to not renounce the Zionist “dream” and has decided to add his two bits to the Palestinian call to Boycott Israel, standing firmly against said Boycott. Jeff Blankfort, writer, journalist and radio host has addressed him again.

Hello Uri,

I have just read your response to critics of your opposition to boycotting Israel and, having long ago realized the limits of your activism and worldview, it held no surprises. You have quite clearly invested too much time and energy over the years in rationalizing Israel’s dispossession of the Palestinians from their homeland to acknowledge the injustice that was not only inherent but required for Israel’s creation. The passage of time does not erase that injustice no matter how many times you or others invoke the Nazi holocaust. The die for establishing a Jewish state displacing the Palestinians from their homes and villages was cast well before Hitler came to power so that issue should have no place in this argument.

The arguments against establishing a Jewish state in Palestine raised by anti-Zionist and non-Zionist Jews going back to the early years of the last century were well known and all have been proved correct. So it should not be a matter of surprise that Israel’s legitimacy has not been accepted by the Palestinians and the other peoples of the region. It was advertised by Zionists worldwide as a colonial settler enterprise with pride, in fact, until such terminology fell out of favor. That it was established at a time when the rest of the world was engaged in a period of decolonization was even a further guarantee of its rejection and had it not been for the influence of its supporters in the US and Europe and the arms that flowed from that support, Israel, like French Algeria, would have become another episode in history. (And it is noteworthy that it was Israel’s support for the French against the Algerian resistance that led to France being Israel’s chief supplier of weaponry until 1967).

You are also well aware that to maintain Israel as the Sparta of the Middle East, the “Pro-Israel Lobby,” has long held the US Congress in thrall, strangling what little is left of American democracy. Do you not recall writing how one president after another tried to resolve the Israel-Palestine conflict and how each one was forced by The Lobby to retire from the field defeated? And with each defeat, the theft of Palestinian land and the growth of the settlements continued. Who has paid the price for that?

As you have already assumed, I am against the existence of the state of Israel or a Jewish state by any other name which is based on the notion that a Jew from anywhere in the world has more of a right to live in what most of the world knew and accepted as Palestine than a Palestinian Arab who was born there or her or his family members. If that is not both immoral and racist, we need new definitions for those words. And yet you, apparently, do not find it so, and reject the opinions of those who do. (The notion that Israel or any country can be a homeland for a person not born there and who cannot trace a single relative that was born there is but another example of how Zionists have twisted the language to justify the unjust.)

Your desperation for an argument against the idea of a single state becomes apparent when you write that the French and the Germans did not agree to live together. Do you really believe there is any comparison to be made between the two situations. Are the French sitting on German land or vice versa?

I continue to be mystified at your continuing efforts to separate the settlers from those Jews living within the Green Line as if the majority of those in Israel proper are not as responsible for electing a series of professional killers as their prime ministers year after year, all of whom have expanded the settlements. There hasn’t been a single poll of Israeli Jews that I have seen going back to 1988, in the early days of the first intifada, where half of those polled did not call for the ethnic cleansing of Palestinians from the West Bank and Gaza. How many settlers were there in 1988?

In your wonderful democracy, every able-bodied Jewish man or woman, with the exception of the chassdim, has served as an occupier in the West Bank or Gaza for the past 42 years. Are they not culpable?

Yesterday, I watched on Al-Jazeera as Israeli soldiers fired waves of tear gas and some smelly green liquid on non-violent Palestinians who were marching to demonstrate the steel fence that cuts through their land at Ni’ilin and who then began targeting the Al-Jazeera reporter. Are we expected to embrace these young thugs wearing an Israeli uniform? Are those who hate them to be condemned and not the thugs and those who sent them there?

You repeatedly use the word peace but not once do you use the word justice. And that is what separates you and your fellow Zionists from the Palestinians and those who genuinely support them. The occupation bothers your conscience, your sense of idenity as an Israeli but how much does it affect your life? Ending the occupation no matter how it is arranged will bring you peace of mind and time to finish your memoirs. Now, try if you can, and imagine yourself as a Palestinian who has been under an Israeli jackboot all of his or her life. Would you be simply looking for peace, an absence of that Israeli jackboot, or would you be seeking and demanding justice?

Your conclusion expresses your confusion. You write that you want “Israel to be a state belonging to all its citizens, without distinction of ethnic origin, gender, religion or language; with completely equal rights for all,” yet you assume there will be a “Hebrew-speaking majority” that will allow its “Arab-speaking citizens…to cherish their close ties with their Palestinian brothers and sisters…” If there is no distinction between one citizen and another, Jewish or Arab, how can you assume that the majority will continue to be Hebrew-speaking (or are you allowing for the possibility that Israel’s Palestinian Arab population which already is largely bi-lingual will become the majority at which point Israel will no longer be a Jewish state?) If that is so, perhaps there is hope for you yet.

Jeff Blankfort

—– Original Message —– From: “Uri Avnery” <xxxx>

To: <xxxx>

Sent: Saturday, September 05, 2009 8:51 AM

Subject: Avnery // again on boycott

Hi,

Hope this may interest you. Many readers have sent my thoughtful comments on my last article. I am unable to answer them in detail. I am writing my memoirs on top of my regular political and journalistic work, and therefore can only answer laconically. Please excuse.

Shalom, Salamaat,

uri

The Boycott Revisited

THE PEOPLE of Sodom, the Bible tells us, were very wicked indeed.

They had a nasty habit of putting every passing stranger into one particular bed. If the stranger was too tall, his legs were shortened. If he was too short, his body was stretched to the required length.

In a way, each of us has such a bed, into which we put everything new. Confronted with a novel situation, we tend to equate it with a situation we have known in the past.

In politics, this method is especially pervasive. It relieves us of the irksome necessity of studying an unfamiliar situation and drawing new conclusions.

Once, the pattern of Vietnam was applied to every struggle around the world – from Argentina to North Korea. Nowadays, the fashion points to South Africa. Everything resembles the struggle against apartheid, unless proven otherwise.

SINCE SENDING out last week’s article, “Tutu’s Prayer”, I have been flooded with responses, some laudatory, some abusive, some thoughtful, some merely angry.

Generally, I don’t argue with my esteemed readers. I don’t want to impose my views, I just want to provide food for thought and leave it to the reader to form his or her own opinion.

This time I feel that I owe it to my readers to clear up some of the points I was trying to make and answer some of the objections. So here we go.

I HAVE no argument with people who hate Israel. That’s entirely their right. I just don’t think that we have any common ground for discussion.

I would only like to point out that hatred is a very bad advisor. Hatred leads nowhere, but to more hatred. That, by the way, is a positive lesson we can draw from the South African experience. There they overcame hatred to a remarkable extent, largely thanks to the “Truth and Reconciliation Commission” headed by Archbishop Tutu, where people admitted their past offenses.

One thing is certain: hatred does not lead towards peace. Let me be quite explicit about this, because I sense that some people, in their righteous indignation over Israel’s occupation, have lost sight of this.

Peace is made between enemies, after war, in which awful things invariably happen. Peace can be made and maintained between peoples who are prepared to live with each other, respect each other, recognize the humanity of each other. They don’t have to love each other.

Describing the other side as monsters may be useful in waging war, but singularly unhelpful in waging peace.

When I receive a missive that is dripping with hatred of Israel, that portrays all Israelis (including myself, of course) as monsters, I fail to envision how the writer imagines peace. Peace with monsters? Angels and monsters living side by side in peace and harmony in one state, hating each other’s guts?

The view of Israel as a monolithic entity composed of racists and brutal oppressors is a caricature. Israel is a complex society, struggling with itself. The forces of good and evil, and many in between, are locked in a daily battle on many different fronts. The settlers and their supporters are strong, perhaps getting stronger (though I doubt it), but are far – even in their own view – from a decisive victory. Neve Gordon, for example, has been left unmolested in his post at Ben-Gurion University, because any attempt to remove him would have caused a public outcry.

I ALSO have no argument with those who want to abolish the State of Israel. It is as much their right to aspire to that as it is my right to want to dismantle, let’s say, the USA or France, neither of which has an unblemished past.

Reading some of the messages sent to me and trying to analyze their contents, I get the feeling they are not so much about a boycott on Israel as about the very existence of Israel. Some of the writers obviously believe that the creation of the State of Israel was a terrible mistake to start with, and therefore should be reversed. Turn the wheel of history back some 62 years and start anew.

What really disturbs me about this is that almost nobody in the West comes out and says clearly: Israel must be abolished. Some of the proposals, like those for a “One State” solution, sound like euphemisms. If one believes that the State of Israel should be abolished and replaced by a State of Palestine or a State of Happiness – why not say so openly?

Of course, that does not mean peace. Peace between Israel and Palestine presupposes that Israel is there. Peace between the Israeli people and the Palestinian people presupposes that both peoples have a right to self-determination and agree to the peace. Does anyone really believe that racist monsters like us would agree to give up our state because of a boycott?

The French and the Germans did not agree to live in one joint state, though the differences between them are incomparably smaller than those between Jewish Israelis and Arab Palestinians. Instead, they set up a European Union, composed of nation-states. Some 50 years ago I called for a similar Semitic Union, including Israel and Palestine. I still do.

Anyway, there is no sense in arguing with those who pray for the disappearance of the sovereign State of Israel, rather than for the appearance of the sovereign State of Palestine at its side.

THE REAL argument is among those who want to see peace between the two states, Israel and Palestine. The question is: how can it be achieved? This is an honest debate and is generally conducted in a civil manner. My debate with Neve Gordon is in this framework.

The advocates of boycott believe that the main, indeed the only way to induce Israel to give up the occupied territories and agree to peace is to exert pressure from the outside.

I have no quarrel with the idea of outside pressure. The question is: pressure on whom? On the government, the settlers and their supporters? Or on the entire Israeli people?

The first answer is, I believe, the right one. That’s why I hope that President Barack Obama will publish a detailed peace plan with a fixed timetable and apply the immense powers of persuasion of the USA to get both sides to agree. I don’t think that this is politically possible without the support of a large part of Israeli society (and, by the way, of the US Jewish community).

Some readers have lost all hope in Obama. That is, without doubt, premature. Obama has not surrendered to Binyamin Netanyahu – indeed, it is quite conceivable that the opposite is happening. The struggle is on, it is a hard struggle against determined opposition, and we should do all we can to help Obama’s peace policy to prevail. We must do this as Israelis, from inside Israel, and thereby show that this is not a struggle of the US against Israel, but a joint struggle against the Israeli government and the settlers.

It follows that any boycott must serve this purpose: to isolate the settlers and the individuals and institutions which openly support them, but not declare war on Israel and the Israeli people as such. In the 11 years since Gush Shalom declared a boycott of the products of the settlements, this process has been gaining momentum. We must laud the Norwegian decision, this week, to divest from the Israeli Elbit company because of their involvement with the “Separation Fence” that is being built on Palestinian land and whose main purposeis to annex occupied territories to Israel. This is a splendid example: a focused action against a specific target, based on a ruling of the International Court.

I think that far more can be done by a concentrated national and international campaign. A central office should be set up to direct this effort throughout the world against clear and specific targets. Such an effort could be helped by world public opinion, which recoils from the idea of boycotting the State of Israel, and not only because of the memory of the Holocaust, but will identify itself with action against the occupation and the oppression.

I have been asked about the Palestinian reaction to the boycott idea. At present, Palestinians do not boycott even the settlements, indeed it is Palestinian workers who are building almost all the houses there, out of economic necessity. Their feelings can only be guessed. All self-respecting Palestinians would, of course, support any effective measure directed against the occupation. But it would not be honest to dangle before their eyes the false hope that a world-wide boycott would bring Israel to its knees. The truth is that only the close cooperation of Palestinian, Israeli and international peace forces could generate the necessary momentum to end the occupation and achieve peace.

This is especially important because our task in Israel today is not so much to convince the majority of Israelis that peace is good and the price acceptable, but first that peace is possible at all. Most Israelis have lost that hope, and its revival is absolutely vital on the way to peace.

TO REMOVE any misconceptions about myself, let me state as clearly as possible where I stand:

I am an Israeli.

I am an Israeli patriot.

I want my state to be democratic, secular, and liberal, ending the occupation and living at peace both with the free and sovereign State of Palestine that will come into being next to it, and with the entire Arab world.

I want Israel to be a state belonging to all its citizens, without distinction of ethnic origin, gender, religion or language; with completely equal rights for all; a state in which the Hebrew-speaking majority will retain its close ties with the Jewish communities around the world, and the Arab-speaking citizens will be free to cherish their close ties with their Palestinian brothers and sisters and the Arab world at large.

If this is racism, Zionism or worse – so be it.

Tagged as: BDS, Boycott Israel, Israel, Jeff Blankfort, Palestine, Uri Avnery, Zionism

The Silence of the Antiwar Movement is Deafening

Link

By Guest Post • Sep 1st, 2009 at 16:55 • Category: Analysis, Biography, Human Rights, Newswire, Resistance, War

Cindy’s Lonely Vigil in Obamaland

WRITTEN By JOHN V. WALSH August 28, 2009 “Counterpunch” — Cindy Sheehan will be at Martha’s Vineyard beginning August 25 a short way from Obama’s vacation paradise of the celebrity elite but very far from the Afghanistan and Pakistan and Iraq where the body bags and cemeteries fill up each day as Obama’s wars rage on. She will remain there from August 25 through August 29 and has issued a call for all peace activists to join her there. For those of us close by in the New England states and in New York City, there would seem to be a special obligation to get to Martha’s Vineyard as soon as we can.

A funny thing has happened on Cindy Sheehan’s long road from Crawford, Texas, to Martha’s Vineyard. Many of those who claim to lead the peace movement and who so volubly praised her actions in Crawford, TX, are not to be seen. Nor heard. The silence in fact is deafening, or as Cindy put it in an email to this writer, “crashingly deafening.” Where are the email appeals to join Cindy from The Nation or from AFSC or Peace Action or “Progressive” Democrats of America (PDA) or even Code Pink? Or United for Peace and Justice. (No wonder UFPJ is essentially closing shop, bereft of most of their contributions and shriveling up following the thinly veiled protest behind the “retirement” of Leslie Cagan.) And what about MoveOn although it was long ago thoroughly discredited as principled opponents of war or principled in any way shape or form except slavish loyalty to the “other” War Party. And of course sundry “socialist” organizations are also missing in action since their particular dogma will not be front and center. These worthies and many others have vanished into the fog of Obama’s wars.

Just to be sure, this writer contacted several of the “leaders” of the “official” peace movement in the Boston area – AFSC, Peace Action, Green Party of MA (aka Green Rainbow Party) and some others. Not so much as the courtesy of a reply resulted from this effort – although the GRP at least posted a notice of the action. (It is entirely possible that some of these organizations might mention Cindy’s action late enough and quickly enough so as to cover their derrieres while ensuring that Obama will not be embarrassed by protesting crowds.) We here in the vicinity of Beantown are but a hop, skip and cheap ferry ride from Martha’s Vineyard. Same for NYC. So we have a special obligation to respond to Cindy’s call.

However, not everyone has failed to publicize the event. The Libertarians at Antiwar.com are on the job, and its editor in chief Justin Raimondo wrote a superb column Monday on the hypocritical treatment of Sheehan by the “liberal” establishment. (1) As Raimondo pointed out, Rush Limbaugh captured the hypocrisy of the liberal left in his commentary, thus:

“Now that she’s headed to Martha’s Vineyard, the State-Controlled Media, Charlie Gibson, State-Controlled Anchor, ABC: `Enough already.’ Cindy, leave it alone, get out, we’re not interested, we’re not going to cover you going to Martha’s Vineyard because our guy is president now and you’re just a hassle. You’re just a problem. To these people, they never had any true, genuine emotional interest in her. She was just a pawn. She was just a woman to be used and then thrown overboard once they’re through with her and they’re through with her. They don’t want any part of Cindy Sheehan protesting against any war when Obama happens to be president.”

Limbaugh has their number, just as they have his. Sometimes it is quite amazing how well each of the war parties can spot the other’s hypocrisy. But Cindy Sheehan is no one’s dupe; she is a very smart and very determined woman who no doubt is giving a lot of White House operatives some very sleepless nights out there on the Vineyard. Good for her.

Obama is an enormous gift to the Empire. Just as he has silenced most of the single-payer movement, an effort characterized by its superb scholarship exceeded only by its timidity, Obama has shut down the antiwar movement, completely in thrall as it is to the Democrat Party and Identity Politics. Why exactly the peace movement has caved to Obama is not entirely clear. Like the single-payer movement, it is wracked by spinelessness, brimming with reverence for authority and a near insatiable appetite to be “part of the crowd.” Those taken in by Obama’s arguments that the increasingly bloody and brutal AfPak war is actually a “war of necessity,” should read Steven Walt’s easy demolition of that “argument.” (2) Basically Obama’s logic is the same as Bush’s moronic rationale that “We are fighting them over there so we do not have to fight them over here.” There is a potential for “safe havens for terrorists,” as the Obamalogues and neocons like to call them, all over the world; and no one can possibly believe the US can invade them all. However, the ones which Israel detests or which allow control of oil pipelines or permit encirclement of China and Russia will see US troops sooner or later.

The bottom line is that everyone in New England and NYC who is a genuine antiwarrior should join the imaginative effort of Cindy Sheehan in Obamaland this week and weekend. We owe it to the many who will otherwise perish at the hands of the war parties of Bush and Obama.

1.See: http://original.antiwar.com/justin/2009/08/23/war-coverage-and-the-obama-cult/
Or go to Antiwar.com and make a contribution while you are there. It’s almost as good as CounterPunch.com.
2.See:http://walt.foreignpolicy.com/posts/2009/08/18/the_safe_haven_myth
John V. Walsh can be reached at John.Endwar@gmail.com He welcomes comments, and he looks forward to seeing crowds of CounterPunchers at Martha’s Vineyard this week and weekend.

===

War Coverage and the Obama Cult
Why we aren’t getting the real story
by Justin Raimondo
August 24, 2009
http://original.antiwar.com/justin/2009/08/23/war-coverage-and-the-obama-cult/

There was a time when Cindy Sheehan couldn’t go anywhere without having a microphone and a TV camera stuck in front of her. As she camped out in front of George W. Bush’s Crawford ranch, mourning the death of her son Casey in Iraq and calling attention to an unjust, unnecessary, and unwinnable war, the media created in her a symbolic figure whose public agony epitomized a growing backlash against the militarism and unmitigated arrogance of the Bush administration. It was a powerful image: a lone woman standing up to the most powerful man on earth in memory of her fallen son.

Touting “an exclusive interview with Cindy Sheehan” on Good Morning America, four years ago ABC anchorman Charles Gibson intoned: “Standing her ground. She lost her son in Iraq, she opposes the war, now she’s camped out at President Bush’s ranch and says she won’t leave until he meets with her.”

The level of coverage only increased in the coming days and weeks. As Cindy continued her vigil, Gibson enthused:

“All across the country protests against the war in Iraq, inspired by the mother standing her ground at President Bush’s ranch.”

Flashing across their television screens, viewers saw the headline “MOM ON A MISSION: IS ANTIWAR MOVEMENT GROWING?” as Gibson averred:

“This morning a war of words. All across the country protests against the war in Iraq, inspired by the mother standing her ground at President Bush’s ranch. But is anyone in the White House feeling the heat?”

That was then. This is now: in an interview [.mp3] with Chicago’s WLS radio on Aug. 18, Gibson was asked whether his network planned to cover Sheehan’s plans to travel to Martha’s Vineyard, where she is protesting the escalation of the war in Afghanistan while President Obama is vacationing there. Gibson’s answer:

“Enough already.”

It is one thing to decide war protests aren’t newsworthy, that they’re just the irrelevant emanations of a fringe element radically out of step with the 99 percent of the country that’s marching happily off to war. That, however, is very far from being the case.
Back in 2005, Cindy represented a minority that was on its way to becoming a majority. Today, she starts off her renewed vigil with over half of the American people agreeing with her that the Afghan war isn’t worth it.

Yet Gibson’s announced news blackout is being observed well nigh universally: aside from Rush Limbaugh, only the generally conservative Boston Herald, the Martha’s Vineyard Gazette, a daytime MSNBC news show, and a few blogs bothered noticing Sheehan’s determination to be “an equal opportunity vacation disruption,” as the Herald writer put it. The bitterness of conservatives over the obvious double standard is expressed by Limbaugh in terms of the usual partisan rhetoric:

“When she’s out there revving up people against George W. Bush, it’s, let’s cover her 24/7, let’s make sure we have our cameras out there outside Bush’s ranch when she’s there, whatever she’s saying, whatever she’s doing, if she goes down and meets with Hugo Chavez, our cameras will be there. They could not get enough of her. Now that she’s headed to Martha’s Vineyard, the State-Controlled Media, Charlie Gibson, State-Controlled Anchor, ABC: `Enough already.’

Cindy, leave it alone, get out, we’re not interested, we’re not going to cover you going to Martha’s Vineyard because our guy is president now and you’re just a hassle. You’re just a problem. To these people, they never had any true, genuine emotional interest in her. She was just a pawn. She was just a woman to be used and then thrown overboard once they’re through with her and they’re through with her. They don’t want any part of Cindy Sheehan protesting against any war when Obama happens to be president.”

While Cindy is nobody’s pawn – as she is proving by her actions – the general point Limbaugh is making seems all too true. So why isn’t he cheering?

After all, what did this pro-war blowhard have to say about Cindy back when Gibson was breathlessly broadcasting her every utterance? Well, he basically said she was a traitor and a fraud, comparing her to Bill Burkett, who provided CBS with phony “evidence” purporting to show Bush’s failure to show up for National Guard training. “Her story,” he said, “is nothing more than forged documents.” Sheehan’s crusade, he claimed, was all part of a “coordinated” plan by the “far Left,” which he seemed to equate with the Democratic Party.

In the beginning of this year, when a caller asked “where are all the … Cindy Sheehans, the Code Pink Tuscaderos [sic] of the Democratic Party” now that Obama is in the White House, Limbaugh replied:

“Well, frankly, that doesn’t bother me. I had enough of Cindy Sheehan to last me a lifetime. She was always a nonfactor anyway. I mean, Cindy Sheehan, this is a poor woman who’s lost her mind, and then that fact was used by the Drive-By Media to further drive her crazy into making everybody and her think that she was relevant, only because she was willing to accept enough money from a California PR film to build and occupy a little shack across the road from Bush’s house down in Crawford, Texas.”

Aside from the fact that he has no idea whether or not she has the same media handlers – the True Majority group, founded by Ben Cohen of Ben and Jerry’s Ice Cream, hired Fenton Communications to handle Cindy’s media relations and thanked her when she (prematurely) announced her “retirement” from peace activism – one has to wonder what Rush is complaining about. Gibson is doing just what the bombastic radio commentator always wanted him to do: ignoring Cindy’s antiwar protest.

Can’t we all just get along? On the higher levels of the commentariat, the “Left” and the “Right” are slow-dancing in perfect harmony whenever Obama plays a martial tune. Now that the Obamaite think-tanks, such as the Center for a New American Security and the Center for American Progress, are holding joint conferences with Rush’s neocon buddies – Bill Kristol and his Foreign Policy Initiative – hailing Obama’s Afghan “surge” and proffering advice on how best to go about it, Rush ought to relax. He and Keith Olbermann can now march together, arm in arm, into the glorious war-torn future, united in steadfastly ignoring the Cindy Sheehans of this world.

We, of course, are not ignoring her passionate protest, including in our news section – but, then again, we don’t fit into the Left/Right dichotomy that the “mainstream” media is stuck in and has a financial interest in promoting. With Keith Olbermann capturing the self-described “left-wing” pro-Obama demographic, and Limbaugh/Hannity/O’Reilly going after the anti-Obama crowd, they’re divvying up the demographic pie, with Fox News settling for the older crowd, and MSNBC going for the younger and more “hip” set.
Here at Antiwar.com it isn’t about demographics or Obama, and it certainly isn’t about the two major parties, both of which now accept the central premise of America’s wars: that the U.S. has both the right and means to police the world.

In rejecting that onerous principle, we stand outside the bipartisan “consensus” and the whole ersatz Left/Right division of American opinion – whose proponents exhibit a curious unity when it comes to the vital question of foreign policy.

As much as Limbaugh and his right-wing brothers and sisters railed against the “liberal” media for undermining the war effort, they never really questioned the factual basis of the administration’s case for invading Iraq: that Saddam Hussein possessed “weapons of mass destruction,” that he was on the verge of attacking his neighbors, and that he had proven links to the perpetrators of the 9/11 terrorist attacks. Instead, they reported these claims uncritically – even as they were being debunked right here on this Web site.

The lesson of all this is simple: the “mainstream” media simply can’t be trusted. That’s why newspapers are losing circulation at a rapid clip, and television news is fading in importance. It’s not the Internet that’s killing off the sainted mandarins of the “mainstream” – it’s their role as transmission belts for official propaganda, whether it be from the government or the partisan opposition. They’re shills, and everybody knows it.

That’s why Antiwar.com is more important than ever – and isn’t it ironic that we’re clinging to life by a very thin thread, just at the moment when we’re needed the most?

Oh, well, life is like that, you know. I never expected it to be easy. Yet even I have to admit that this fundraising campaign is beginning to scare me: we’re way behind where we were at this point last time around, to say nothing of last year. The number of contributors is equivalent, and even shows signs of increasing, but the amounts are smaller by as much as half. We all are facing some hard economic times. It just means we’ll have to extend our fundraising campaign by as much as a week – hopefully not more. But we’ll do what we have to do to stay afloat.

If you haven’t given, or even if you have, I want to extend this appeal to all my readers, even the ones who don’t agree with some (or much) of what I have to say in this space. You may love Obama or you may bitterly oppose him: whatever. You need to realize, however, that this isn’t about him. It’s about maintaining a skeptical approach to the foreign policy currently being conducted by those geniuses in Washington, who think they know all there is to know to bring order to a disorderly world.

It’s about maintaining a wonderfully complete source of hard news, as well as an outlet for dissenting opinions – often colorfully expressed – in an age of ideological conformity and bland “pragmatism.”

It’s about maintaining the tradition of independent journalism in a world where “journalists” are bought and sold like the ladies of Amsterdam’s red-light district and events are viewed through a partisan prism.

source: http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article23379.htm

hat tip: Karin

Tagged as: Afghanistan, anti-war movement, Cindy Sheehan, Iraq, Obama, Pakistan, US foreign policy, War

Palestinian MPs and Cabinet members STILL in Israeli jails after illegal abduction

Link

By Mary Rizzo • Aug 28th, 2009 at 23:25 • Category: Action Alert, Biography, Counter-terrorism, No thanks!, Israel, Newswire, Palestine, Petitions, Resistance

Israel has many thousands of Palestinian political prisoners locked up in their jails. Men, women, even children are deprived of their freedom and forced to live in a cage precisely because of their love of justice and freedom. Among these prisoners are 21 Palestinian Members of Parliament (Palestinian Legislative Council) and 8 Cabinet Ministers. Shocking but true, these people are still locked away in prison cells three years after their night-time abduction as if they were criminals! In what country would this be condoned or permitted? The international community exhibits a deafening silence, but let’s not forget these men and women who lost their liberty because their people voted them into office against the desires of Israel. We have to keep these prisoners in the public eye, let them know they are not abandoned and that their freedom will come. Let’s sign the endorsement letter of the campaign and especially, add their plight to our campaigning work so that the world is aware that Israel abducts Parliament members of another government, jails them and keeps the world silent about it.

From the International Campaign for Releasing Abducted Members of Parliament (Free PLC) site:

Three years have passed since PLC members were abducted by Israeli occupation forces before the eyes and the hearing of the world in a dangerous precedent as a political crime and in atrocious violation of the principles of international law and Geneva Fourth Convention, besides trespassing the rules of democracy and principles of respecting the people’s wills.

Israeli occupation insists on violating the dignity of democracy and even trying it through its persistence in abducting the MPs and prosecuting them and going too far in extending their unlawful imprisonment after its end with the aim of keeping them behind the prison bars during all the parliamentary term.

Out of our care for peace among people, our respect for their will to choose their representatives and for consolidating the rules of the free democratic and parliament action, our decisive rejection of the abducting and trying of MPs which has been a trial of democracy and abducing of its consequences, our awareness of the fact that the place of those abducted MPs in not jail but their parliamentary seats for which the Palestinian people have chosen them through the ballot boxes, we have decided to conduct the International campaign for freeing the abducted MPs in continuation of efforts exerted in defense of this cause and to unite the abilities of the parliamentarians and freemen of the world so as to ensure the dawn of freedom for the abducted MPs.

In this campaign we are keen on sending the following telegrams:

First: our decisive rejection of the Israeli piracy and harsh intervention in the internal Palestinian affairs and the incessant attempts to change the Palestinian political map through the abducting of MPs and blowing up the democratic choice.

Second: the necessity of the World Community’s movement to protect human values and democratic morals and confront Israeli violation of International conventions and agreements.

Third: inviting all parliamentarians and free personalities of the world to join the international campaign for freeing the abducted MPs and bear their responsibility in defending democracy and to form a world public opinion pressing for releasing the PLC members and incriminating this serious Israeli policy.

Document of liberty

The International campaign for freeing kidnapped members of parliament

“A political crime and Fettered Democracy”

Out of our desire to see peace prevailing all over the world, our keenness to have mutual respect among all the peoples of the Earth and our observance of the results of the democratic process and the peaceful exchange of authority, we declare our rejection of kidnapping of the elected Palestinian members of parliament which has been a dangerous precedent and an atrocious violation of international laws and conventions.

We warn that this silence towards such crime means directing a deathblow to democracy, social peace and world peace, it means a threat to stability in the world and empowering the law of the jungle which trespasses civilized development and modern human regulations.

We hereby call on the world community the human rights organizations and all those who are able to practice pressure an the Israeli occupation to act seriously and effectively for the prompt release of the symbols of Palestinian legitimacy, the members of parliament.

And jointly let us act for the freeing of Palestinian members of parliament kidnapped in the prison of Israeli occupation.

http://www.freeplc.org/ (in English and Arabic)
http://www.freeplc.org/en/home.php?page=c2hvd1RocmVhZA==&id=NA==&type=Zml4ZWQ=

SIGN THE SUPPORT DOCUMENT: http://www.freeplc.org/en/home.php?page=Z3Vlc3RCb29r

See also: for background http://www.miftah.org/Display.cfm?DocId=10670&CategoryId=2

Jerusalem, 29 June 2006: The Palestinian Initiative for the Promotion of Global Dialogue and Democracy (MIFTAH) is deeply alarmed at the escalating situation in the occupied Palestinian territories following Israel’s abduction of 21 Palestinian members of parliament (PLC members) and 8 cabinet ministers from the West Bank late last night and during the early hours of this morning.

In a wide-scale assault against various Palestinian cities and towns in the occupied West Bank, the Israeli army launched a wave of abductions against what it called “members of a terrorist organization,” which included senior political figures from the democratically-elected Hamas government and PLC members, as well as members of other Palestinian political groups.

The arrested ministers are: Mohammed al-Barghouthi – Minister of Labor, Omar Abdul Razeq – Minister of Finance, Samir Abu Eisheh – Minister of Planning, Wasfi Kabaha – Minister for Prisoners Affairs, Nayef Rjoub – Minister of Waqf and Religious Affairs, Khaled Abu Arafeh – Minister for Jerusalem Affairs, Issa al-Ja’bari – Minister of Local Government.

The arrested members of parliament include: Ahmad Attoun – PLC member (Jerusalem), Mohammed Abu Teir – PLC member (Jerusalem), Wael al-Husseini – PLC member (Jerusalem), Anwar Zboun – PLC member (Bethlehem), Mahmoud al-Khatib – PLC member (Bethlehem), Riyadh Raddad – PLC member (Tulkarem)

The Israeli army also arrested the mayor of the northern West Bank city of Qalqilya, Wajih Qawwas, and his deputy Hashem al-Masri.

In addition to the above, Israeli military forces abducted 30 other Palestinian activists throughout the West Bank.

The Israeli government has downplayed claims that it carried out the wave of abductions in an attempt to bargain the release of Gilad Shalit, an Israeli soldier kidnapped by Palestinian resistance fighters in the Gaza Strip last Sunday. Shalit was taken hostage during a military operation against Israel’s occupation and in response to the wave of terrorist attacks by the Israeli army against the Gaza Strip last month, which claimed the lives of at least 20 Palestinian civilians, including 7 members of the same family.

MIFTAH equally expresses grave concern regarding Israel’s premeditated military offensive campaign against Palestinian civilians in the Gaza Strip, which began early Wednesday with a wave of air and ground attacks, so far resulting in the complete destruction of basic infrastructure in the Strip, including the cut off of electricity from the southern Gaza districts.

There are serious fears among the civilian Palestinian population in the Gaza Strip that Israel’s aggression in the coming days will aim to inflict unprecedented degrees of pain and destruction, particularly in the Rafah district. Palestinian president Mahmoud Abbas has condemned Israel’s military offensive and called it “collective punishment.”

MIFTAH calls on the international community to take immediate steps in order to prevent a serious humanitarian crisis in the already impoverished and shattered Gaza Strip, and urges governmental and non-governmental organizations to intervene to bring an end to Israel’s punitive measures against the civilian population of the occupied Palestinian territories, particularly in the Gaza Strip.

MIFTAH also calls for the immediate release of all Palestinian cabinet ministers, PLC members, and activists, and calls upon the international community to hold Israel accountable for its violation of their immunity as elected members of the Palestinian political leadership.

The Palestinian Initiative for the Promotion of Global Dialogue and Democracy, MIFTAH, is a non-governmental, non-partisan Jerusalem-based institution dedicated to fostering democracy and good governance within Palestinian society through promoting public accountability, transparency, the free flow of information and ideas and the challenging of stereotyping at home and abroad.

For further information, please contact:
Media and Information Programme, MIFTAH
Tel: +972 2 585 1842
Fax: +972 2 583 5184
E-mail: mip@miftah.org
Website: www.miftah.org

Tagged as: Free PLC, Human Rights Abuses, Israel, Palestinian political prisoners, Palestinian politicians, political prisoners

Mary Rizzo is an art restorer, translator and writer living in Italy. Editor and co-founder of Palestine Think Tank, co-founder of Tlaxcala translations collective. Her personal blog is Peacepalestine.
Email this author All posts by Mary Rizzo

Iqbal Tamimi – Abraham bought a cave, he did not buy Palestine

by Jalal Al Rifa’i-Al Dustour newspaper-Jordan

Link

By Iqbal Tamimi • Aug 12th, 2009 at 22:11 • Category: Analysis, Biography, Culture and Heritage, Israel, Newswire, Palestine, Religion, Resistance, Somoud: Arab Voices of Resistance, Zionism

I have been reading an article by Robin-Yassin Kassab, entitled ‘A visit to Hebron’. Yassin Kassab is the author of ‘The Road from Damascus’. This time he was not writing about Damascus, he was writing about my home town Al-Khaleel, known to the Western world by the name of Hebron. In his article he describes his visit to Al-Khaleel accompanied by a number of wonderful writers and publishers, amongst them Michael Palin, Henning Mankel, Deborah Moggach, Claire Messud and MG Vassanji, and he describes the misery of the people in my hometown under the illegal Israeli occupation. Those writers have been able to witness the very painful reality when they travelled to Palestine to participate in the Palestine Festival of Literature.

As usual, the Zionists were ready with sharpened teeth to shred his efforts by their usual Hasbara methods of sending their false poisonous comments in an attempt to mask any efforts at explaining what is really going on in Palestine. One of the comments left by one of those Zionists on his blog complained that ‘Hebron Arabs today have access to 98% of the entire city. Jews have only access to 3% of Hebron’.

In the comment of this ‘anonymous’ reader, what seems to look like an innocent number of complaints, should the reader not know much about that part of the world he/she will fall a victim to the false impression that the presence of the Israeli Occupation in my hometown is justified and not an illegal occupation according to international law and even by Israeli standards. His comments sounded like as if they are coming from a victim who is supposed to have equal rights of access.

The 3% of the Jews in Hebron he was talking about are not supposed to be there, the occupying force according to international law is not supposed to allow or facilitate the transfer of its own citizens to the occupied areas.

He complained that the owners of the city – the Arab Palestinians – have access to 98% of their own city and the occupiers who are called for well-known media manipulation reasons ‘the settlers’ have access to 3%. ‘The expression settlers’ seems to be a very benign use of the language for a malignant reason. Of course the total according to his figures makes the population of Al-Khaleel more than 100%, this is a good example of what happens when Israeli authorities employ cyber amateurs to defend its crimes against the Palestinians, they work very fast so that they conjure numbers that do not make any sense. The Zionist state employs thousands every year to work on character assassination of the writers who bring to light any information about the absurdity of the Israeli occupation in Palestine, like Mr Kassab.

This shows how far they can go to fabricate false stories by throwing numbers without any verifications or referencing, and as usual, the Westerners swallow it all because the numbers and figures are connected in their experience with studies and statistics, and methods we all respect and do not doubt their credibility. I want to surprise ‘Mr anonymous’ and tell him that the people in Al-Khaleel are supposed to have 100% access to their own city because it is their home. It seems that the Zionists are full of themselves to a point they think that people can’t figure out that it is unacceptable for a total stranger to come from as far as Russia to occupy the living room of any Palestinian by hooliganism, and deny the owner access to his own kitchen or bathroom. Blocking the way of the locals is preaching their human rights and this is what the claimed 3% Jewish ‘settlers’ are doing in my hometown.

Those Jewish ‘settlers’ who have access to 3 % of my home have killed three students while walking on campus in 1986 for no reason whatsoever. Those 400 gun-wielding settlers are guarded and protected by 1,500 Israeli soldiers who witness their daily attacks on the unarmed local Palestinians and do nothing about it even though they are supposed to protect the locals according to International law. The Israeli authorities tend to demolish any home, should the owner build one brick without their permission, but at the same time claim that they could do nothing to handle the illegal presence of the Jewish settlers in the heart of Al-Khaleel, occupying the roof tops of the Palestinians homes and throwing their rubbish on them every day, and calling the Palestinian women whenever they open their doors ‘whores’.

I guess those ‘chosen by God’ people show the Almighty as an under-achiever, he could not even choose a respected lot who behave themselves when he went to choose his own loved lot. I would imagine no ordinary person would ever choose to be a friend with someone with a bad reputation and despicable manners like the Jewish settlers, let alone a wise compassionate God, but it seems that they know that the Western world is a hypocritical lot, they would support their claims even though they are a secular majority who deny even the presence of God, but when it comes to Israel suddenly they turn to be serious believers of every claim told by the Zionist lot, and the angel halo appears shining, bright and glowing above their heads, you can almost touch their holy wings. Even those who have just converted to Judaism only yesterday for visa reasons to work in Israel and care less about Moses, Jacob, Solomon, or any other prophet mentioned by any holy book, turn by a swift magic wand into very religious people even when they are posing naked in adult magazines to promote tourism in ‘the Holy Land’.

My brother-in-law is a doctor whose clinic is located in the heart of the city of Hebron, where the settlers are turning the people’s lives into living hell because they are God’s chosen brats. His practice is located in an area where poor, sick, underprivileged people need medical attention. The soldiers who are supposed to be guarding the locals according to international law are not doing so, on the contrary, they are helping the settlers to occupy the rooftops of the neighbouring houses including his clinic, the soldiers themselves used to urinate in the water reservoir on the rooftop of his practice to drive him out, and to evacuate the area from the last few Palestinians who were persevering and trying to get on with their miserable lives against the odds. For years he used to go every single day to his practice and just set there, even though he knew perfectly well that he could not treat the ever-decreasing number of sick people who could reach his clinic, not because of the intimidation of the settlers and the hygiene problems only, but because they are hindered by tens of roadblocks and obstacles as well. But he never gave up on his mission, he continued to go to work every morning anyway – to send the Israeli occupying forces a clear message of ‘I am not leaving’. All his patients knew about his daily struggle and used to knock on his home door asking for help at odd hours, he could not turn them back, but one can imagine what kind of life this must have been for him and for his wife and children who hardly have any privacy at home, and who could not anticipate when the next banging on the door will start.

Many times he would go to his work and could not come back home that day because a new curfew had started while he was in his practice.

This is a reality every single Palestinian in my hometown has to deal with day in day out. I remember asking him once ‘what you were doing in the clinic then if you could not treat your patients’? He smiled and said I used to help my wife in her housework. I have been able to pick the leaves of almost 30 Kg of Oregano one summer to dry them for family use for the rest of the year’.

Storing food to manage during the curfews is another problem. The Israeli authorities used to cut the electricity of the city on purpose until all the stored food kept in homes’ freezers rotted and was no longer edible, besides subjecting the lives of sick people in the operation theatres at the hospital to great danger. My late husband told me about a number of surgical operations he had to perform at Princess Alia Hospital which turned to be a challenge when the electricity was cut off, besides the fact that most drugs including anaesthetics were banned, many patients were stitched without any sedation. Those are only a few kinds of inflicted pains the people had to deal with.

Year after year of hardships taught the Palestinians to find their own solutions, the people knew that the curfews can be imposed at any time, and for no reason whatsoever, no one is allowed to look through a window or walk outside the door during such enforced siege, no shops will be opened, no cars are permitted to take a dying person to hospital. The people of Al-Khaleel had to find solutions to this hard reality. They were forced to become self-sufficient and learn how to survive, no more they rely on freezing their food, they started drying, pickling, salting, and bottling the very little they managed to cultivate in their home gardens.

The same paid Zionist to attack the article and assassinate its writer’s character says ‘Close to 100 Jews have been killed in the Hebron region by Arab terrorists, in cold blood over the years and this number does not include 67 Jews murdered in Hebron 80 years ago, during the 1929 riots and massacre’.

I dare this person who threw at us the first rounded figure using his ‘close to’ expression to come with any evidence of his claim, but still I would like to tell him that according to official statistics by the Palestinian Central Bureau of Statistics the number of reported innocent civilians killed in Hebron by Israeli soldiers in only 8 years not 61 years, between 29 September 2000 – 31 December 2008 is 265 people, those were all innocent civilians.

This same person evidently employed by the Foreign Ministry of Israel to bleach its burned image is complaining about what he described as ‘noise’ in my occupied home town, he claims ‘the Muslim call-to-prayer begins at about 4:00 AM and is repeated five times daily, with other public interludes, until after 11:00 PM, waking up sleeping people and preventing them from sleeping, with this noise being broadcast from numerous points in the city’.

For goodness sake, if you do not like living there just go back where you came from, you are living in our home, you have no right to tell us how to behave or complain about our worshiping rituals, at least the not chosen people who still worship God unlike his own chosen people who smeared his name. So…this chosen by God man considers calling for prayers a ‘noise’, while shelling, bombing, and demolitions of homes, snipers’ bullets whizzing all the time, and hovering military aircrafts since 1967 are not? How about sleeping somewhere else where you will have the right to sleep without being disturbed by the ‘non chosen people by God’.

The same chatterbox complains as well about the Ibrahimi Mosque which no more is treated with the dignity and respect it deserves, he says ‘the largest hall, the Isaac Chamber, is off-limits to Jews so that Moslems may hold their prayers there’. I guess he forgotten to mention that the Israelis occupy more than half the Mosque and as such Muslims have no access to their own place of worship, and the 3 main entrances are fitted with metallic security doors and Muslims have access through one entrance only where they are searched and humiliated, men and women, before every prayer by God’s chosen people. But most of all he forgot willingly to mention that a fundamentalist racist Jew shot down 29 Muslims while kneeling in prayer in that same mosque and was considered a hero by the Jewish Zionist society.

Not only that, he lies through his teeth, he claims that ‘Most of those 400 settlers are children, and they aren’t gun-wielding’. Oh really, that is fascinating information, so…the fourth strongest army in the world could not handle less than 400, people the majority of which are children? I would indicate such a story-teller to the Israeli Foreign office should he want to knit a lie, to do some research… and make a lie-proof story because there are people who read and there are those who do their own research. And by the way, when 4000 years ago, the prophet Abraham came to my city as an Iraqi immigrant, he bought the cave which became later the burial place for his wife from us, we the Palestinians, the people of Al-Khaleel…surely you are not serious to believe that whoever buys a cave owns the whole country, and pass it as an inheritance to his believers wherever they are!!!

Visit Palestinian Mothers to see some films of the scenes this article talks about.

Tagged as: hebron, Israel, Judaism, Occupied Territories, Palestine, Religion, Settlers, Zionism

Iqbal Tamimi is a Palestinian journalist and poet from Hebron. She is the creator of a vibrant and important activists’ network Palestinian Mothers, open to all who share the vision of peace and justice, men and women alike. She is working now in UK.
Email this author All posts by Iqbal Tamimi

Urgent: Ahmad Sa’adat transferred to isolation in Ramon prison!

Link

By Guest Post • Aug 12th, 2009 at 21:41 • Category: Action Alert, Biography, Counter-terrorism, No thanks!, Israel, Newswire, Palestine, Resistance, Zionism

Ahmad Sa’adat, the General Secretary of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, was transferred on August 11, 2009 to Ramon prison in the Naqab desert from Asqelan prison, where he had been held for a number of months. He remains in isolation; prior to his transfer from Asqelan, he had been held since August 1 in a tiny isolation cell of 140 cm x 240 cm after being penalized for communicating with another prisoner in the isolation unit.

Attorney Buthaina Duqmaq, president of the Mandela Association for prisoners’ and detainees’ rights, reported that this transfer is yet another continuation of the policy of repression and isolation directed at Sa’adat by the Israeli prison administration, aimed at undermining his steadfastness and weakening his health and his leadership in the prisoners’ movement. Sa’adat has been moved repeatedly from prison to prison and subject to fines, harsh conditions, isolation and solitary confinement, and medical neglect. Further reports have indicated that he is being denied attorney visits upon his transfer to Ramon.

Ahmad Sa’adat undertook a nine-day hunger strike in June in order to protest the increasing use of isolation against Palestinian prisoners and the denial of prisoners’ rights, won through long and hard struggle. The isolation unit at Ramon prison is reported to be one of the worst isolation units in terms of conditions and repeated violations of prisoners’ rights in the Israeli prison system.

Sa’adat is serving a 30 year sentence in Israeli military prisons. He was sentenced on December 25, 2008 after a long and illegitimate military trial on political charges, which he boycotted. He was kidnapped by force in a military siege on the Palestinian Authority prison in Jericho, where he had been held since 2002 under U.S., British and PA guard.

Sa’adat is suffering from back injuries that require medical assistance and treatment. Instead of receiving the medical care he needs, the Israeli prison officials are refusing him access to specialists and engaging in medical neglect and maltreatment.

The Campaign to Free Ahmad Sa’adat demands an end to this isolation and calls upon all to protest at local Israeli embassies and consulates (the list is available at: http://www.mfa.gov.il/MFA/About+the+Ministry/Diplomatic+missions/Web+Sites+of+Israeli+Missions+Abroad.htm) and to write to the International Committee of the Red Cross and other human rights organizations to exercise their responsibilities and act swiftly to demand that the Israelis ensure that Ahmad Sa’adat and all Palestinian prisoners receive needed medical care and that this punitive isolation be ended. Email the ICRC, whose humanitarian mission includes monitoring the conditions of prisoners, at jerusalem.jer@icrc.org, and inform them about the urgent situation of Ahmad Sa’adat!

Ahmad Sa’adat has been repeatedly moved in an attempt to punish him for his steadfastness and leadership and to undermine his leadership in the prisoners’ movement. Of course, these tactics have done nothing of the sort. The Palestinian prisoners are daily on the front lines, confronting Israeli oppression and crimes. Today, it is urgent that we stand with Ahmad Sa’adat and all Palestinian prisoners against these abuses, and for freedom for all Palestinian prisoners and for all of Palestine!

The Campaign to Free Ahmad Sa’adat

http://www.freeahmadsaadat.org

info@freeahmadsaadat.org

Tagged as: Ahmad Sa’adat, Israel, Palestine, Palestinian political prisoners, Zionism

Rally: Free Palestinian political prisoner Mohammad Khatib!

Link

By Guest Post • Aug 11th, 2009 at 9:59 • Category: Action Alert, Biography, Counter-terrorism, No thanks!, Israel, Newswire, Palestine, Resistance, Zionism

Israel continues to imprison Palestinian community activist Mohammad Khatib from Bil’in village in the West Bank.

Mohammad Khatib, along with over twenty other Palestinians from Bil’in, has been arbitrarily arrested during a recent night-time raid carried out by the Israeli army. The agricultural village of Bil’in has gained international attention for its weekly protests against the Israeli apartheid wall. Bil’in has become a symbol for the Palestinian popular resistance to Israel’s ongoing military occupation.

Mohammad Khatib has now joined an estimated 8,000 Palestinian prisoners currently being detained by Israeli authorities. According to a recent report from Amnesty International, many Palestinian prisoners “face medical negligence, routine beatings, position torture and strip searches by Israeli prison authorities.” The Palestinian prisoner population includes over 400 children and over 100 women detainees.

Today, increasing numbers of Palestinian children, including youth from Bil’in village, are being arrested and detained by Israeli forces. According to the Palestinian section of Defense for Children International, “each year, hundreds of Palestinian children are arrested, interrogated, abused and imprisoned by the Israeli military authorities. In some cases, the abuse amounts to torture.”

Israel is targeting Palestinian community activists from Bil’in in an attempt to silence a popular resistance movement that is gaining international attention and inspiring other Palestinian communities in the West Bank to take-up similar popular protest strategies. Throughout the past year, several other Palestinian villages have also initiated weekly protests against Israel’s apartheid wall.

In June 2009, Mohammed Khatib traveled to Canada for the preliminary hearings of a historic lawsuit launched by Bil’in village against two Quebec-based companies, Green Park International and Green Mount International. Both companies are building illegal Israeli-only settlements on Bil’in’s lands.

At present, Mohammed Khatib, a father to two sons and two daughters, remains in Israeli custody despite the fact that no charges have been brought against Khatib.

Monday’s night-time raid is just one in a series of many carried out by Israeli forces in Bil’in since June 2009. These military raids coincided with the commencement of legal proceedings against Green Park International and Green Mount International in Canada.

We calling on Montrealers to participate in a demonstration this Friday to express solidarity with Mohammad Khatib, Bil’in village and the Palestinian movement against Israeli apartheid and occupation.

for more information visit:
http://www.bilin-village.org

FRIDAY AUGUST 14th 12h00
Indigo Bookstore
corner of St. Catherine & McGill college
(metro McGill)
Montreal, Canada
Source: http://www.tadamon.ca/post/4391

Gilad Atzmon – Time to Talk about the Rise of Jewish Crime?

Link

By Gilad Atzmon • Jul 24th, 2009 at 13:40 • Category: Biography, Gilad Atzmon, Gilad’s Choice, Newswire, Our Authors, Religion

“I am what you call a matchmaker,” Rosenbaum is quoted as saying at a July 13 meeting with the two undercover agents.

“I’m doing this a long time,” the complaint says Rosenbaum told the two agents. He then added: “Let me explain to you one thing. It’s illegal to buy or sell organs. … So you cannot buy it. What you do is, you’re giving a compensation for the time.”

As we learn from Liberal Democrat Shadow Home Secretary Chris Huhne that “Britain is setting a shameful new record in anti-Semitic incidents this year,” we also happen to be informed by every press outlet about the massive New Jersey Corruption Sweep: A shocking tale of money-laundering and human organ trading led by a bunch of Rabbis.

The NY Times reports “It was replete with tales of the illegal sales of body parts; of furtive negotiations in diners, parking lots and boiler rooms”. In an article titled the “Jewish Launderette” the Israeli Ynet takes it further providing the juicy details. “The FBI raided synagogues and arrested a few Rabbis. One of those who are held in custody is Rabbi Yitzchak Levi Rosenbaum of Brooklyn who is suspected of trading in body parts. He is charged with a decade-long activity selling kidneys, exploiting both ill and poor donators. He would convince a donator to sell his kidney for $10.000. Rabbi Levi Rosenbaum would then sell the kidney to the needy for $160.000.”

I may raise the inevitable question here, can you imagine your local priest or Imam trading in ‘body parts’? Can you think of a Muslim cleric or a pastor trying to buy your kidney or sell you one in a ‘parking lot’ or in a ‘diner’?

I do not think so.

Here is my suggestion to Liberal Democrat Shadow Home Secretary and everyone else who happens to be ‘concerned’ with the ‘rise of anti-Semitism’.

In the light of Israeli brutality, the conviction of gross swindler Madoff and the latest images of Rabbis being taken away by FBI agents, it is about time we stop discussing the rise of anti-Semitism and start to elaborate on the rise of Jewish Crime.

Tagged as: anti-Semitism, Gilad Atzmon, Rabbi Organ sales scandal, Rabbi Rosenbaum

Gilad Atzmon is a jazz musician, composer, producer and writer.
Email this author All posts by Gilad Atzmon

Three city mayors and several rabbis held in New Jersey corruption inquiry