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#3503

From: NYCLAW
Date: Sun Dec 6, 2009 11:17 pm
Subject: Palestine: Muzzling debate on academic boycott through selective resort to "academic freedom"

mletwin2001

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http://www.pacbi.org/etemplate.php?id=1132

PACBI | BRICUP Newsletter | December 2009
Muzzling debate on academic boycott through selective resort to "academic freedom" (PACBI column)

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"'Israeli academic institutions are targeted for boycott because of their persistent complicity in perpetuating Israel's occupation, racial discrimination and denial of refugee rights."
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A persistent and recurrent theme in arguments used by Zionist and other Israel lobby groups to counter or undermine the Palestinian-initiated academic boycott of Israel [1] is that academic boycotts are "anathema to the free flow of thoughts and ideas" and therefore are the "antithesis of academic freedom." This argument has been refuted quite thoroughly by BDS activists, particularly in PACBI and BRICUP, over the years; still its convenience and demagogic utility have given it longevity.

PACBI has always argued that the notion of academic freedom as used in the above is not only based on false premises; it also betrays an Israel-centric discourse and agenda that undervalue the rights of the oppressed, the Palestinians, and privileges the oppressors, the Israelis.

Since the PACBI Call for academic boycott, endorsed and advocated by BRICUP and other PACBI partners around the world, unambiguously targets institutions, not individual academics, the assumption that the boycott stifles academic exchange and the free flow of ideas is untenable. Nothing in the PACBI Call or in the elaborate PACBI Guidelines for the International Academic Boycott of Israel [2] prevents any Israeli academic from traveling and participating in conferences and research projects, so long as the project or visit is not sponsored by or conducted on behalf of a boycottable Israeli institution, as all universities are.

Israeli academic institutions are targeted for boycott because of their persistent complicity in perpetuating Israel's occupation, racial discrimination and denial of refugee rights. This collusion takes various forms, from systematically providing the military-intelligence establishment with indispensable research -- on demography, geography, urban planning, hydrology, psychology, among other fields -- that directly benefits the occupation apparatus; to tolerating and often rewarding racist speech, theories and 'scientific' research; to institutionalizing discrimination against Palestinian Arab citizens; to suppressing Israeli academic research on the Nakba [3]; to directly committing acts that contravene international law, such as the construction of campuses or dormitories in the Occupied Palestinian Territory, as the Hebrew University and the so-called Ariel University Center of Samaria have done.

Accordingly, although the ultimate objective of the boycott is to bring about Israel's compliance with international law and its respect for Palestinian human and political rights, PACBI's targeting of the Israeli academy is not merely a means to an end, but rather part of that end. This is especially true when taking into account the fact that the academic boycott is one component of a general campaign for boycott, divestment and sanctions (BDS) adopted by a decisive majority of Palestinian civil society.

Among other problematic aspects, the conception of academic freedom used to muzzle debate on the academic boycott of Israel appears to be restricted to the suppression of the 'free exchange of ideas among academics,' leaving out the situation of academics in contexts of colonialism, military occupation and other forms of national oppression, where 'material and institutional foreclosures [. . .] make it impossible for certain historical subjects to lay claim to the discourse of rights itself,' as Judith Butler eloquently argues.[4] Academic freedom, from this angle, becomes the exclusive privilege of some academics but not others.

The protection of academic freedom and the free exchange of ideas cannot be the only norm dictating the political engagement of academics. Often, when oppression characterizes all social and political relations and structures, as in the case of South Africa during apartheid or indeed Palestine, there are equally important and sometimes more important freedoms that must be fought for, especially by academics and intellectuals. The aim of the academic boycott of Israel, in this context, is not to safeguard academic freedom as an abstract principle, or to obtain better conditions for academic freedom in Palestine, but to obtain justice and fundamental rights for the entire Palestinian people, including academics.

The academic boycott that the Palestinians are calling for aims to bring about an end to Israel's colonial and apartheid policies through targeting one institutional arena deeply implicated in the state's violation of international law and Palestinian rights. The overriding principle is not academic freedom (whether for Palestinians or Israelis), but freedom from colonial rule and oppression. The underlying principle here is the equality of human beings in moral worth and their equal right to live in freedom, as expressed in the first article of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. This same principle informed the struggle in South Africa and the international support it received.

Privileging academic freedom as above all other freedoms contradicts seminal international norms set by the United Nations. The 1993 World Conference on Human Rights, for instance, proclaims that [5]:

All human rights are universal, indivisible [. . .] interdependent and interrelated. The international community must treat human rights globally in a fair and equal manner, on the same footing, and with the same emphasis. While the significance of national and regional particularities and various historical, cultural and religious backgrounds must be borne in mind, it is the duty of States, regardless of their political, economic and cultural systems, to promote and protect all human rights and fundamental freedoms.

By turning the free flow of ideas to an absolute, unconditional value, the opponents of academic boycott come into conflict with the internationally accepted conception of academic freedom, as defined by the UN Committee on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights, which states [6]:

Academic freedom includes the liberty of individuals to express freely opinions about the institution or system in which they work, to fulfill their functions without discrimination or fear of repression by the State or any other actor, to participate in professional or representative academic bodies, and to enjoy all the internationally recognized human rights applicable to other individuals in the same jurisdiction. The enjoyment of academic freedom carries with it obligations, such as the duty to respect the academic freedom of others, to ensure the fair discussion of contrary views, and to treat all without discrimination on any of the prohibited grounds. [Emphasis added]

When scholars neglect or altogether abandon their said obligations, they thereby forfeit their right to exercise academic freedom. This rights-obligations equation is the general underlying principle of international law's position on human rights.

Furthermore, many who have hurled the "suppressing academic freedom" charge at advocates of the academic boycott against Israel completely ignore the rampant abuse of this "freedom" in the Israeli academy to protect and mainstream racist incitement against the indigenous Palestinians. If upholding Nazi views, denying the Holocaust and espousing anti-Semitic theories are widely regarded in the Western academy as falling outside the realm of academic freedom, why should the racially exclusivist Zionist discourse, Nakba denial and Islamophobic/anti-Arab speech and "academic theories" be viewed as normal or acceptable under the rubric of freedom of speech?

Finally, it is quite revealing that prominent academic institutions in the West that were quick to condemn the initial British efforts for boycott of the Israeli academy did not feel any moral obligation to stand up against the Israeli colonial and apartheid injustices which prompted those boycott efforts in the first place. It is this double standard that calls into question the very motives of those who insist on condemning the academic boycott of Israel -- and only of Israel! -- as conflicting with "academic freedom."

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This column is based on previously published articles by PACBI members, particularly the contributions by Lisa Taraki and Omar Barghouti to the special issue of Academe, September-October 2006, the publication of the Association of American University Professors (AAUP). http://www.aaup.org/AAUP/pubsres/academe/2006/SO/Boycott/Critics.htm

[1] PACBI Call for Boycott: http://www.pacbi.org/etemplate.php?id=869

[2] http://www.pacbi.org/etemplate.php?id=1108

[3] Oren Ben-Dor argues that one of the purposes of the proposed academic boycott is to "provide a means to transcend the publicly-sanctioned limits of debate," adding that, "Such freedom is precisely what is absent in Israel." From this angle, the boycott is seen as "generating" true academic freedom. "The Zionist ideology which stipulates that Israel must retain its Jewish majority is a non-debatable given in the country -- and the bedrock of opposition to allowing the return of Palestinian refugees. The very few intellectuals who dare to question this sacred cow are labeled 'extremists'." Oren Ben-Dor, 'Academic Freedom in Israel is Central to Resolving the Conflict,' CounterPunch, May 21/22, 2005. http://www.counterpunch.org/bendor05212005.html

[4] Judith Butler, 'Israel/Palestine and the Paradoxes of Academic Freedom,' Radical Philosophy, V.135, January-February 2006.

[5] United Nations World Conference on Human Rights, Vienna Declaration and Program of Action, July 12, 1993. http://www.unhchr.ch/huridocda/huridoca.nsf/(Symbol)/A.CONF.157.23.En?OpenDocument

[6] UN Committee on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights, The Right to Education (Art.13), December 8, 1999. http://www.unhchr.ch/tbs/doc.nsf/(Symbol)/ae1a0b126d068e868025683c003c8b3b?Opendocument

http://www.bricup.org.uk/documents/archive/BRICUPNewsletter23.pdf

Posted on 05-12-2009

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#3502

From: NYCLAW
Date: Sat Dec 5, 2009 12:57 am
Subject: Palestine: Why Boycotting Apartheid Israel Matters

mletwin2001

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http://plutopress.wordpress.com/2009/12/04/why-boycotting-apartheid-israel-matters/

Why Boycotting Apartheid Israel Matters
Owen Holland makes the case for the boycott of Israel

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"Even if one were able, for a moment, to suspend Israel's criminal incursion into Gaza and its ongoing annexation of the West Bank and look at Israel on its own terms: it is an apartheid state."
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Back at the beginning of the year, over thirty UK universities went into occupation in response to Israel's brutal, unremitting assault on Gaza. At some of these universities, the movement is now beginning to crystallise and gather enough strength -- as well as political will -- to turn into an organised campaign to boycott Apartheid Israel. The campaign is supported by numerous organisations: Jews for Boycotting Israeli Goods, the International Jewish Anti-Zionist Network, Action Palestine and PSC to name but a few. And that's just UK-based groups. The Global BDS Movement website carries up-to-date information on the international context.

A matter of weeks ago, Sussex University joined Essex, Goldsmiths and SOAS in voting to tell its students' union to boycott Israeli goods on campus. Despite the sour jibes of the inevitable reactionary backlash, the decision was not the result of a core of politically-minded activists having seized control of the union in order to manipulate it to their own shadowy and malign ends: it was the result of a free and fair referendum, the biggest in the union's history. It was Democracy, you know, a bit like Irish 'No' vote on the Lisbon Treaty (Wrong Answer Irish: Vote Again) or the population of Gaza electing Hamas.

The call to boycott originates, crucially, in Palestinian civil society and trades unions. This immediately deflates the claim, heard sometimes from the 'Vote No' campaign that a boycott would hurt the very people it aims to help. Rather, the tactic stands in a long tradition of mass resistance to oppression, of standing in solidarity with the oppressed: the name originates with a certain Captain C. C. Boycott, an Irish land agent who died in 1897. Small wonder, then, that the Falls Road Murals in Belfast paint pictures of solidarity with Palestinian suffering.

We also have a historical precedent of success on our side: Apartheid South Africa is no longer with us. Ben White's recent book Israeli Apartheid: A Beginner's Guide does an excellent job of drawing out the parallels between the two cases.

Even if one were able, for a moment, to suspend Israel's criminal incursion into Gaza and its ongoing annexation of the West Bank and look at Israel on its own terms: it is an apartheid state. One need only consider the 20% Arab-Israeli minority who live within Israel and look at their exclusion from the full rights of citizenship to see the hypocrisy of the frequently touted idea that Israel is a 'beacon of democracy' in the Middle East. One could then draw a link to the millions of Palestinian refugees who are denied the right of return to their historic homeland. Indeed, one might go say so far as to say that it is the Palestinian Diaspora -- truly global in its reach -- that has inherited the real legacy of Jewish universalism: the legacy of an enforced statelessness and consequent universality. In Babylon, however, there was no such thing as white phosphorous.

There is something curiously hypocritical about the view which responds to the seemingly intractable situation in the Occupied Palestinian Territories by saying: we want debate, as a bridge towards peace, but then simultaneously asserts that such debate stirs up division and unnecessarily imports the conflicts of another part of the world onto, say, a university campus. In other words, 'debate' is allowed, provided it does not interrupt the discourse of the dominant power. In this instance, such an interruption would call into question the Israeli occupation and oppression of Palestinians, which Israel's Euro-US sponsors conveniently overlook -- over and over again. This is what was behind the attempted suppression of the Goldstone report on the Gaza assault.

The apologists for Israel seek to foreclose debate by stating which terms can and cannot be used: ethnic cleansing, apartheid, Zionism are all definitely out. This restrains consciousness within a cocoon of inertia, allowing the Israeli state to continue its policy of drip-drip ethnic cleansing safe in the knowledge that mass passivity will be the only response. But universities are not ivory towers, they cannot pretend to be unaffected by the struggles of the world or hold themselves aloof from its antagonisms and conflicts. There are, needless to say, some people who cannot bring themselves to avert their gaze in such a manner. The imperative to turn one's eyes away speaks of nothing more than the guilt of the complicit. So not only will we refuse to turn our eyes away, we will actively promote consciousness of Palestinian suffering.

This entry was posted on Friday, December 4th, 2009 at 9:27 am and is filed under Israel / Palestine, Pluto Press. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

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#3501

From: NYCLAW
Date: Tue Dec 8, 2009 12:58 am
Subject: Obama's Wars: Liberals Are Useless

mletwin2001

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http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/liberals_are_useless_20091206/?ln

Liberals Are Useless
Posted on Dec 7, 2009
By Chris Hedges

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"You don't want to disturb Obama because McCain is worse. And every four years both parties get worse. There is no pull. That is the dilemma of The Nation and The Progressive and other similar publications. There is no breaking point. And when there is no breaking point you do not have a moral compass.
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Liberals are a useless lot. They talk about peace and do nothing to challenge our permanent war economy. They claim to support the working class, and vote for candidates that glibly defend the North American Free Trade Agreement. They insist they believe in welfare, the right to organize, universal health care and a host of other socially progressive causes, and will not risk stepping out of the mainstream to fight for them. The only talent they seem to possess is the ability to write abject, cloying letters to Barack Obama -- as if he reads them -- asking the president to come back to his "true" self. This sterile moral posturing, which is not only useless but humiliating, has made America's liberal class an object of public derision.

I am not disappointed in Obama. I don't feel betrayed. I don't wonder when he is going to be Obama. I did not vote for the man. I vote socialist, which in my case meant Ralph Nader, but could have meant Cynthia McKinney. How can an organization with the oxymoronic title Progressives for Obama even exist? Liberal groups like these make political satire obsolete. Obama was and is a brand. He is a product of the Chicago political machine. He has been skillfully packaged as the new face of the corporate state. I don't dislike Obama -- I would much rather listen to him than his smug and venal predecessor -- though I expected nothing but a continuation of the corporate rape of the country. And that is what he has delivered.

"You have a tug of war with one side pulling," Ralph Nader told me when we met Saturday afternoon. "The corporate interests pull on the Democratic Party the way they pull on the Republican Party. If you are a 'least-worst' voter you don't want to disturb John Kerry on the war, so you call off the anti-war demonstrations in 2004. You don't want to disturb Obama because McCain is worse. And every four years both parties get worse. There is no pull. That is the dilemma of The Nation and The Progressive and other similar publications. There is no breaking point. What is the breaking point? The criminal war of aggression in Iraq? The escalation of the war in Afghanistan? Forty-five thousand people dying a year because they can't afford health insurance? The hollowing out of communities and sending the jobs to fascist and communist regimes overseas that know how to put the workers in their place? There is no breaking point. And when there is no breaking point you do not have a moral compass."

I save my anger for our bankrupt liberal intelligentsia of which, sadly, I guess I am a member. Liberals are the defeated, self-absorbed Mouse Man in Dostoevsky's "Notes From Underground." They embrace cynicism, a cloak for their cowardice and impotence. They, like Dostoevsky's depraved character, have come to believe that the "conscious inertia" of the underground surpasses all other forms of existence. They too use inaction and empty moral posturing, not to affect change but to engage in an orgy of self-adulation and self-pity. They too refuse to act or engage with anyone not cowering in the underground. This choice does not satisfy the Mouse Man, as it does not satisfy our liberal class, but neither has the strength to change. The gravest danger we face as a nation is not from the far right, although it may well inherit power, but from a bankrupt liberal class that has lost the will to fight and the moral courage to stand up for what it espouses.

Anyone who says he or she cares about the working class in this country should have walked out on the Democratic Party in 1994 with the passage of NAFTA. And it has only been downhill since. If welfare reform, the 1999 Financial Services Modernization Act, which gutted the 1933 Glass-Steagall Act -- designed to prevent the kind of banking crisis we are now undergoing -- and the craven decision by the Democratic Congress to continue to fund and expand our imperial wars were not enough to make you revolt, how about the refusal to restore habeas corpus, end torture in our offshore penal colonies, abolish George W. Bush's secrecy laws or halt the warrantless wiretapping and monitoring of American citizens? The imperial projects and the corporate state have not altered under Obama. The state kills as ruthlessly and indiscriminately in Iraq, Afghanistan and Pakistan as it did under Bush. It steals from the U.S. treasury as rapaciously to enrich the corporate elite. It, too, bows before the conservative Israel lobby, refuses to enact serious environmental or health care reform, regulate Wall Street, end our relationship with private mercenary contractors or stop handing obscene sums of money, some $1 trillion a year, to the military and arms industry. At what point do we stop being a doormat? At what point do we fight back? We may lose if we step outside the mainstream, but at least we will salvage our self-esteem and integrity.

I learned to dislike liberals when I lived in Roxbury, the inner-city in Boston, as a seminary student at Harvard Divinity School. I commuted into Cambridge to hear professors and students talk about empowering people they never met. It was the time of the leftist Sandinista government in Nicaragua. Spending two weeks picking coffee in that country and then coming back and talking about it for the rest of the semester was the best way to "credentialize" yourself as a revolutionary. But few of these "revolutionaries" found the time to spend 20 minutes on the Green Line to see where human beings in their own city were being warehoused little better than animals. They liked the poor, but they did not like the smell of the poor. It was a lesson I never forgot.

I was also at the time a member of the Greater Boston YMCA boxing team. We fought on Saturday nights for $25 in arenas in working-class neighborhoods like Charlestown. My closest friends were construction workers and pot washers. They worked hard. They believed in unions. They wanted a better life, which few of them ever got. We used to run five miles after our nightly training, passing through the Mission Main and Mission Extension Housing Projects, and they would joke, "I hope we get mugged." They knew precisely what to do with people who abused them. They may not have been liberal, they may not have finished high school, but they were far more grounded than most of those I studied with across the Charles River. They would have felt awkward, and would have been made to feel awkward, at the little gatherings of progressive and liberal intellectuals at Harvard, but you could trust and rely on them.

I went on to spend two decades as a war correspondent. The qualities inherent in good soldiers or Marines, like the qualities I found among those boxers, are qualities I admire -- self-sacrifice, courage, the ability to make decisions under stress, the capacity to endure physical discomfort, and a fierce loyalty to those around you, even if it puts you in greater danger. If liberals had even a bit of their fortitude we could have avoided this mess. But they don't. So here we are again, begging Obama to be Obama. He is Obama. Obama is not the problem. We are.

Chris Hedges, author of "Empire of Illusion: The End of Literacy and the Triumph of Spectacle," will speak with other anti-war activists at Lafayette Park across the street from the White House at 11 a.m. Dec. 12 in a rally calling for the withdrawal of all American troops from Iraq and Afghanistan.

AP / Jens Meyer

A woman in Germany selects a candy box with President Barack Obama's face on it.

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#3500

From: NYCLAW
Date: Sun Dec 6, 2009 11:05 pm
Subject: Obama Steals Bush's Speechwriters

mletwin2001

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http://www.progressive.org/wx120209.html

Obama Steals Bush's Speechwriters
By Matthew Rothschild, December 2, 2009

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"Obama can call that "global security," if he wants to, but it's dripping red."
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If you closed your eyes during much of the President's speech on Afghanistan Tuesday night and just listened to the words, you easily could have concluded that George W. Bush was still in the Oval Office.

Or, at the very least, that Obama had stolen his speechwriters.

Because, like Bush, Obama had barely cleared his throat when out came the first mention of September 11, along with the Bushian line: "We did not ask for this fight."

Like Bush, Obama lied about the lead up to the Afghanistan war, saying that the United States invaded "only after the Taliban refused to turn over Osama bin Laden. "

That's false.

"President George Bush rejected as "non-negotiable' an offer by the Taliban to discuss turning over Osama bin Laden if the United States ended the bombing in Afghanistan," the Guardian reported on October 14, 2001.

Like Bush, Obama looked straight ahead into the camera to address the people of a country he's about to inflict more hell upon, and said: "I want the Afghan people to understand -- America seeks an end to this war and suffering." And like Bush, he added: "We have no interest in occupying your country." He even went further out on a flimsy rhetorical limb by saying the United States wants to "forge a lasting friendship in which America is your partner, and never your patron."

Well, it's sure acting like a patron today.

Like Bush, Obama exaggerated the "contributions from our allies" in this war effort, which is overwhelmingly American.

Like Bush, Obama cited Al Qaeda's "attacks against London and Amman and Bali."

Like Bush, Obama promised a long war against terrorism. "The struggle against violent extremism will not be finished quickly, and it extends well beyond Afghanistan and Pakistan," he said. "It will be an enduring test of our free society, and our leadership in the world."

And like Bush, Obama went to great lengths to distort the record of that "leadership."

"More than any other nation, the United States of America has underwritten global security for over six decades," he said.

Well, let's see: The United States led the world to the cliffs of nuclear annihilation during the Cold War. The United States invaded one Latin American country after another, and subverted other governments there covertly. The United States helped overthrow governments in Ghana and the Congo, and supported racist forces in southern Africa. The United States plunged into the Korean War, and then supported one dictator after another in South Korea. The United States killed between two and three million people in Indochina. And the United States supported Suharto in Indonesia, who killed nearly a million people, some at the behest of the CIA, after taking power in 1965. The U.S. also supported Suharto's invasion of East Timor ten years later, which took another 200,000 lives.

Obama can call that "global security," if he wants to, but it's dripping red.

And here's another whopper: "Unlike the great powers of old, we have not sought world domination," he said.

Well, what does having almost 1,000 military bases in more than 100 countries mean, then?

Obama went on: "We do not seek to occupy other nations."

Well, the United States has invaded or overthrown dozens of countries in the last six decades, and it doesn't need to occupy them if it can install a puppet regime instead.

And he went further: "We will not claim another nation's resources or target peoples because their faith or ethnicity is different from ours."

Well, maybe not for those reasons, but certainly to make profits for our private corporations and for perceived U.S. security. See Guatemala. See Chile. See the Carter Doctrine.

Obama ended this riff by saying, "We are still heirs to a moral struggle for freedom. And now we must summon all of our might and moral suasion to meet the challenges of a new age."

Compare Obama's airbrushed historical account with the following passage from Bush's 2004 State of the Union Address:

"America is a Nation with a mission, and that mission comes from our most basic beliefs," he said. "We have no desire to dominate, no ambitions of empire. Our aim is a democratic peace -- a peace founded upon the dignity and rights of every man and woman. America acts in this cause with friends and allies at our side, yet we understand our special calling: This great Republic will lead the cause of freedom."

Finally, like Bush, Obama ended his speech by alluding to 9/1l again, citing the "memory of a horrific attack."

The White House speechwriters must have carpal tunnel by now from all their cutting and pasting of Bush's rhetoric into Obama's mouth.

And that he didn't choke on these words tells you all you need to know about Obama.

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#3499

From: NYCLAW
Date: Wed Dec 2, 2009 3:13 am
Subject: Palestine: Israel deports African American activists

mletwin2001

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http://electronicintifada.net/v2/article10924.shtml?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+electronicIntifadaPalestine+(Electronic+Intifada+%3A+Palestine+News)

Israeli authorities deport African American political activists
Press release, Al-Awda New York, 1 December 2009

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"Zionism and racism have always gone hand in hand -- the Israeli occupation regime was one of the greatest military sponsors of the South African apartheid state."
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The following press release was issued by Al-Awda New York, the Palestine Right to Return Coalition on 25 November 2009:

Al-Awda New York, the Palestine Right to Return Coalition, condemns the racist denial of entry to Palestine of African American political activists Dhoruba Bin Wahad and Naji Mujahid by the Israeli occupation.

The occupation of Palestine has always been based on the racist theory and practice of Zionism, including the expulsion of hundreds of thousands of Palestinians and the denial of millions of Palestinian refugees' right to return home as part of building a "pure Jewish state" through the dispossession and oppression of the indigenous Palestinian Arab people.

Zionism and racism have always gone hand in hand -- the Israeli occupation regime was one of the greatest military sponsors of the South African apartheid state. US racism has sponsored and encouraged Zionist racism. This reality has made itself quite apparent in the denial of entry to Palestine, abuse and detention of Bin Wahad and Mujahid.

On 23 November 2009, Dhoruba Bin Wahad, a former US political prisoner and leader of the Black Panther Party, and Naji Mujahid, a student activist from Washington DC rode tourist bus en route from Amman, Jordan to the to the West Bank of occupied Palestine, where both had been invited to attend the International Conference on Palestinian Political Prisoners in Jericho that was sponsored by the Palestinian Authority Ministry of Prisoners and ex-Prisoners Affairs.

As the bus crossed the bridge that connects Jordan with the West Bank of occupied Palestine, it stopped for a border inspection by Israeli occupation officers. Of the numerous individuals on the bus, only Dhoruba and Naji were ordered to disembark. Significantly, both were the only Black people on the bus.

The border officers searched Dhoruba's name on the Internet after they had been pulled aside from the rest of the tourists, who passed without incident. They discovered that he is Muslim, a former Black Panther leader and someone who spent 19 years in prison for a crime he did not commit. (Dhoruba, a target of COINTELPRO, was arrested in 1971 and sentenced to life in prison. His conviction was overturned in 1990.) Both Dhoruba and Naji were interrogated, strip searched and their property confiscated and searched. Despite their cooperation and offer to return into Jordan, their detention continued for over 12 hours. They were ultimately released but denied permission to enter occupied Palestine and returned to Jordan.

The treatment accorded to Dhoruba and Naji would be outrageous if it occurred to anyone, and echoes the ongoing abuse of Palestinians and Arabs seeking to enter Palestine and the drive to push Palestinians and Arabs to leave their homeland through settlement, land confiscation, checkpoints, the Israelization of Jerusalem, discrimination and laws targeting Palestinians in occupied Palestine '48. As Naji Mujahid himself stated, "the humiliation and frustration that we endured was a small taste of what we can be sure the Palestinians go through on a daily basis."

It is apparent that this incident occurred as a clear manifestation of Zionist racism. Dhoruba and Naji were ordered off the bus before Israeli border officials had any idea of their country of origin, personal histories, or plans to attend the conference on political prisoners. At the time they were targeted, the occupation officers knew only that they were Black.

The racist actions of the Israeli government prevented critical meetings between former US political prisoners and former Palestinian political prisoners from taking place. Furthermore, it was an attempt to deny the Black community in the US news about Palestine -- both Dhoruba and Naji had arranged to do a series of reports for Black community news outlets about the conference, Palestinian political prisoners and the Palestinian liberation struggle.

Al-Awda New York expresses its outrage over this latest incident of Zionist racism, we join in the demand of Dhoruba and Naji's attorneys that the US State Department protest the treatment of Dhoruba Bin Wahad and Naji Mujahid. We salute these strong and determined freedom fighters in the Black community and pledge that we will only continue and intensify our collective struggle against racism and oppression, from the US to Palestine.

The Palestinian community and the Black community face common enemies in Zionism, racism and imperialism, and we stand together to demand freedom for all political prisoners from the US to Palestine, an end to Zionism and racism, and the full liberation of all of our communities and all of our people!

Related Links

* http://www.al-awdany.org/

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#3498

From: NYCLAW
Date: Fri Dec 4, 2009 2:58 am
Subject: Chicago Labor Resolution for Immediate and Unconditional Ending of Afghanistan War

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[Chicago Labor Against the War (CLAW) has submitted the following resolution to a U.S. Labor Against the War conference this weekend. New York City Labor Against the War (NYCLAW) shares the views it expresses.]

CLAW Resolution for Immediate and Unconditional Ending of Afghanistan War

WHEREAS the US occupation of and war in Afghanistan is opposed by the majority of people in the U.S. who, at home, face widespread economic attacks on their living standards as many states, such as California, face bankruptcies and massive public sector layoffs and cutbacks while at the same time billions upon billions of tax dollars are poured into the bottomless pit of paying for wars for private profit in the Mideast; and

WHEREAS the US war in Afghanistan is nothing more than a business opportunity for certain corporations, as is the US war in Iraq, where Zalmay Khalilzad, former US ambassador to Baghdad and also former US ambassador to the UN, has now set up an office in Erbil, Kurdistan to advise companies seeking business in Iraq, and retired general Jay Garner, the de facto US governor in Iraq during the invasion, is an advisor to a Canadian oil company that owns 37 percent of a Kurdistan oil block, all of which reveal the real relationships within and objective of the government-military-business confederacy dictating our involvement in the Mideast; and

WHEREAS the Afghanistan government of Hamid Karzai, who undisputedly stole in broad daylight the recent election, is a den of corruption and gangsterism, which is supported by the US Government because Karzai is willing to go along with Washington's campaign of killing and plundering that nation's wealth; and

WHEREAS President Obama has made clear for many years and also during his campaign for president in 2008 that he was and is unambiguously and steadfastly in favor of pursuing and expanding the US war and occupation in Afghanistan, despite and in the face of his base of support which arose out of the movement against the war in Iraq; and

WHEREAS important national organizations, including USLAW, which had opposed the Iraq war, immediately following the 2006 election victory of the Democratic Party in Congress, which was generally considered as a national referendum against the war, indicated, implied or subtly telegraphed to the newly elected Congress that they would accept a gradual, or stepped-down, 'exit strategy' approach, which did embolden that Congress to remain in Iraq and continue to fund that war; and

WHEREAS the U.S. antiwar movement needs to articulate as clearly as possible the need for an immediate and unconditional withdrawal from Iraq in order to oppose plans for an open-ended occupation of 50,000 troops, and revitalize the movement that put millions on the street worldwide on February 15, 2003, and oppose a similar drive by the U.S. and NATO for a similar permanent occupation of Afghanistan; therefore be it

RESOLVED that USLAW calls for the immediate and unconditional withdrawal of the US military and NATO forces from Afghanistan; and

RESOLVED that the USLAW calls upon the organizations of the antiwar movement to also demand the immediate and unconditional withdrawal of the US military and NATO forces from Afghanistan.

-submitted to USLAW 3rd National Assembly by Chicago Labor Against the War, Nov. 15, 2009

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#3497

From: NYCLAW
Date: Thu Dec 3, 2009 4:09 am
Subject: Some Simple Questions After Obama's Afghanistan War Speech

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http://www.huffingtonpost.com/david-sirota/some-simple-questions-aft_b_376259.html

David Sirota
Newspaper columnist, radio host (AM760), bestselling author
Posted: December 1, 2009 08:51 PM
Some Simple Questions After Obama's Afghanistan War Speech

--------
"Where's the antiwar movement and the marches and the organizing and the protesting? Where are all those well-funded groups that protested George W. Bush's war policy? Or was all that really just about hating George Bush and embracing blind Partisan War Syndrome?"
--------

Just a few quick questions to ponder after President Obama's speech announcing a massive escalation in Afghanistan:

- What percentage of those kids in the audience will die because of this decision?

- Why do so many pundits and pro-Obama activists continue to focus on how "hard" and "difficult" and "trying" this decision is for President Obama, rather than on how "hard" and "difficult" and "trying" this will be for the soldiers who are killed? Doesn't Obama get to make this decision, and then go home to the comfortable confines of a butlered White House, while thousands of Americans will be sent 7,000 miles from home to face their potential deaths? Isn't the latter "harder" than the former?

- Where's the antiwar movement and the marches and the organizing and the protesting? Where are all those well-funded groups that protested George W. Bush's war policy? Or was all that really just about hating George Bush and embracing blind Partisan War Syndrome?

- In the days and weeks after this speech, will the White House's cynical new spin get ever more desperate and become, hey - at least an Afghanistan escalation holds out the possibility of making sure military combat casualties start outpacing military suicides?

- Simple budget question: Should we now believe that escalating the Afghanistan War at the same annual cost of universal health care will save more than 45,000 Americans a year (i.e. the number of Americans who die every year for lack of health insurance)?

- Did CNN really turn a move to potentially send thousands of Americans to die in Central Asia into an over-stylized, hyper-marketed television show called "Decision Afghanistan?" Is the media really that soulless, or did my eyes betray me?

- Which is worse - a stupid person like George W. Bush starting a dumb occupation, or a smart person like Barack Obama following the lead of that stupid person, but actually escalating that occupation?

- The "we're going to escalate war to end war" refrain throughout the speech - have we heard that before somewhere? It sounds sorta like "we'll burn down the Vietnam villages to save them." Just curious if that's what we're talking about here - because, ya know, that worked out really well.

- Are we really expected to believe that massively escalating a war is the way to end a war? I mean, really? Like, is the public really looked at like we're that stupid? And a follow-up question: Are we really that stupid?

- If Obama's Afghan War strategy about escalating a war to end a war was a self-help strategy for, say, alcoholics, wouldn't it prescribe drinking more whiskey to stop drinking - and wouldn't we all laugh at that?

- How many pundits will insist that bowing down to the Military-Industrial complex and escalating this missionless war somehow shows "resolve" and "strength" and "toughness" and "leadership" and not embarrassing weakness?

- Would the Obamaphiles now telling us to "give President Obama a chance" with this decision and/or defending Obama's escalation - would these same people be saying we should "give President McCain a chance" and/or defending President McCain's escalation if he was the one in office making this decision?

- I'm confused: Is this hope or change?

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#3496

From: NYCLAW
Date: Wed Dec 2, 2009 3:17 am
Subject: United Antiwar Movement Tells Obama: "The war must be ended now."

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http://mrzine.monthlyreview.org/afghanistan301109.html

United Antiwar Movement Tells Obama:
No Escalation!

--------
"The war must be ended now."
--------

President Barack Obama
The White House
Washington, D.C.

November 30, 2009

Dear President Obama,

With millions of U.S. people feeling the fear and desperation of no longer having a home; with millions feeling the terror and loss of dignity that comes with unemployment; with millions of our children slipping further into poverty and hunger, your decision to deploy thousands more troops and throw hundreds of billions more dollars into prolonging the profoundly tragic war in Afghanistan strikes us as utter folly. We believe this decision represents a war against ordinary people, both here in the United States and in Afghanistan. The war in Afghanistan, if continued, will result in the deaths of hundreds if not thousands of U.S. troops, and untold thousands of Afghans.

Polls indicate that a majority of those who labored with so much hope to elect you as president now fear that you will make a wrong decision -- a tragic decision that will destroy their dreams for America. More tragic is the price of your decision. It will be paid with the blood, suffering and broken hearts of our young troops, their loved ones and an even greater number of Afghan men, women and children.

The U.S. military claims that this war must be fought to protect U.S. national security, but we believe it is being waged to expand U.S. empire in the interests of oil and pipeline companies.

Your decision to escalate U.S. troops and continue the occupation will cause other people in other lands to despise the U.S. as a menacing military power that violates international law. Keep in mind that to most of the peoples of the world, widening the war in Afghanistan will look exactly like what it is: the world's richest nation making war on one of the world's very poorest.

The war must be ended now. Humanitarian aid programs should address the deep poverty that has always been a part of the life of Afghan people.

We will keep opposing this war in every nonviolent way possible. We will urge elected representatives to cut all funding for war. Some of us will be led to withhold our taxes, practice civil resistance, and promote slowdowns and strikes at schools and workplaces.

In short, President Obama, we will do everything in our power, as nonviolent peace activists, to build the kind of massive movement -- which today represents the sentiments of a majority of the American people -- that will play a key role in ending U.S. war in Afghanistan.

Such would be the folly of a decision to escalate troop deployment and such is the depth of our opposition to the death and suffering it would cause.

Sincerely, (Signers names listed in alphabetical order)

Jack Amoureux, Executive Committee
Military Families Speak Out

Michael Baxter
Catholic Peace Fellowship

Medea Benjamin, Co-founder
Global Exchange

Frida Berrigan
Witness Against Torture

Imam Mahdi Bray, Executive Director
Muslim American Society Freedom Foundation

Elaine Brower
World Can't Wait

Leslie Cagan, Co-Founder
United for Peace and Justice

Tom Cornell
Catholic Peace Fellowship

Matt Daloisio
War Resisters League

Marie Dennis, Director
Maryknoll Office for Global Concerns

Robby Diesu
Our Spring Break

Pat Elder, Co-coordinator
National Network Opposing Militarization of Youth

Mike Ferner, President
Veterans For Peace

Joy First, Convener
National Campaign for Nonviolent Resistance

Sara Flounders, Co-Director
International Action Center

Sunil Freeman
ANSWER Coalition, Washington, D.C.

Diana Gibson, Coordinator
Multifaith Voices for Peace and Justice

Jerry Gordon, Co-Coordinator
National Assembly To End Iraq and Afghanistan Wars and Occupation

Rabbi Lynn Gottlieb
Shomer Shalom Network for Jewish Nonviolence

David Hartsough
Peaceworkers San Francisco

Mike Hearington, Steering Committee
Georgia Peace and Justice Coalition, Atlanta

Larry Holmes, Coordinator
Troops Out Now Coalition

Mark C. Johnson, Ph.D., Executive Director
Fellowship of Reconciliation

Hany Khalil
War Times

Kathy Kelly, Co-Coordinator
Voices for Creative Nonviolence

Leslie Kielson , Co-Chair
United for Peace and Justice

Malachy Kilbride
National Campaign for Nonviolent Resistance

Adele Kubein, Executive Committee
Military Families Speak Out

Jeff Mackler, Co-Coordinator
National Assembly to End Iraq and Afghanistan Wars and Occupations

Kevin Martin, Exec. Director
Peace Action

Imam Abdul Malik Mujahid, Chair-Elect
World Parliament of Religion

Michael T. McPhearson, Executive Director
Veterans For Peace

Gael Murphy, Co-founder
Code Pink

Michael Nagler, Founder
Metta Center for Nonviolence

Max Obuszewski, Director
Baltimore Nonviolence Center

Pete Perry
Peace of the Action

Dave Robinson, Executive Director
Pax Christi USA

Terry Rockefeller
September 11th Families For Peaceful Tomorrows

Samina Sundas, Founding Executive Director
American Muslim Voice

David Swanson
AfterDowningStreet.org

Carmen Trotta
Catholic Worker

Nancy Tsou, Coordinator
Rockland Coalition for Peace and Justice

Jose Vasquez, Executive Director
Iraq Veterans Against the War

Kevin Zeese
Voters for Peace

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#3495

From: NYCLAW
Date: Tue Dec 1, 2009 12:28 am
Subject: Malalai Joya: A troop surge can only magnify the crime against Afghanistan

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http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/cifamerica/2009/nov/30/obama-afghanistan-troops

A troop surge can only magnify the crime against Afghanistan
If Barack Obama heralds an escalation of the war, he will betray his own message of hope and deepen my people's pain
o Malalai Joya
o guardian.co.uk, Monday 30 November 2009 19.00 GMT

--------
"But I still have hope because, as our history teaches, the people of Afghanistan will never accept occupation."
--------

After months of waiting, President Obama is about to announce the new US strategy for Afghanistan. His speech may be long awaited, but few are expecting any surprise: it seems clear he will herald a major escalation of the war. In doing so he will be making something worse than a mistake. It is a continuation of a war crime against the suffering people of my country.

I have said before that by installing warlords and drug traffickers in power in Kabul, the US and Nato have pushed us from the frying pan to the fire. Now Obama is pouring fuel on these flames, and this week's announcement of upwards of 30,000 more troops to Afghanistan will have tragic consequences.

Already this year we have seen the impact of an increase in troops occupying Afghanistan: more violence, and more civilian deaths. My people, the poor of Afghanistan who have known only war and the domination of fundamentalism, are today squashed between two enemies: the US/Nato occupation forces on one hand and warlords and the Taliban on the other.

While we want the withdrawal of one enemy, we don't believe it is a matter of choosing between two evils. There is an alternative: the democratic-minded parties and intellectuals are our hope for the future of Afghanistan.

It will not be easy, but if we have a little bit of peace we will be better able to fight our own internal enemies -- Afghans know what to do with our destiny. We are not a backward people, and we are capable of fighting for democracy, human and women's rights in Afghanistan. In fact the only way these values will be achieved is if we struggle for them and win them ourselves.

After eight years of war, the situation is as bad as ever for ordinary Afghans, and women in particular. The reality is that only the drug traffickers and warlords have been helped under this corrupt and illegitimate Karzai government. Karzai's promises of reform are laughable. His own vice-president is the notorious warlord Fahim, whom Brad Adams of Human Rights Watch describes as "one of the most notorious warlords in the country, with the blood of many Afghans on his hands".

Transparency International reports that this regime is the second most corrupt in the world. The UN Development Programme reports Afghanistan is second last -- 181st out of 182 countries -- in terms of human development. That is why we no longer want this kind of "help" from the west.

Like many around the world, I am wondering what kind of "peace" prize can be awarded to a leader who continues the occupations of Iraq and Afghanistan, and starts a new war in Pakistan, all while supporting Israel?

Throughout my recent tour of the US, I had the chance to meet many military families and veterans who are working to put an end to the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. They understand that it is not a case of a "bad war" and a "good war" -- there is no difference, war is war.

Members of Iraq Veterans Against War even accompanied me to meet members of Congress in Washington DC. Together we tried to explain the terrible human cost of this war, in terms of Afghan, US and Nato lives. Unfortunately, only a few representatives really offered their support to our struggle for peace.

While the government was not responsive, the people of the US did offer me their support. And polls confirm that the US public wants peace, not an escalated war. Many also want Obama to hold Bush and his administration to account for war crimes. Everywhere I spoke, people responded strongly when I said that if Obama really wanted peace he would first of all try to prosecute Bush and have him tried before the international criminal court. Replacing Bush's man in the Pentagon, Robert Gates, would have been a good start -- but Obama chose not to.

Unfortunately, the UK government shamefully follows the path of the US in Afghanistan. Even though opinion polls show that more than 70% of the population is against the war, Gordon Brown has announced the deployment of more UK troops. It is sad that more taxpayers' money will be wasted on this war, while Britain's poor continue to suffer from a lack of basic services.

The UK government has also tried to silence dissent, for instance by arresting Joe Glenton, a British soldier who has refused to return to Afghanistan. I had a chance to meet Glenton when I was in London last summer, and together we spoke out against the war. My message to him is that, in times of great injustice, it is sometimes better to go to jail than be part of committing war crimes.

Facing a difficult choice, Glenton made a courageous decision, while Obama and Brown have chosen to follow the Bush administration. Instead of hope and change, in foreign policy Obama is delivering more of the same. But I still have hope because, as our history teaches, the people of Afghanistan will never accept occupation.

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#3494

From: NYCLAW
Date: Fri Nov 27, 2009 3:35 am
Subject: Palestine: Delegitimization of Zionism is moving fast. What next?

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http://mondoweiss.net/2009/11/delegitimization-is-moving-fast-what-next.html

Delegitimization is moving fast. What next?
by Ahmed Moor on November 25, 2009

--------
"One can make a convincing analogy between white supremacists and Zionists -- both are would-be saviors and protectors of the race. Both are racists. The difference is that Zionism has been legitimized by Western leaders."
--------

As I read the news surrounding developments in Palestine/Israel I'm astonished at how quickly the political landscape has changed and continues to change, and the future of Palestine/Israel is as unclear as ever. Making predictions about the future is risky business, and I don't presume to know enough to do so. But one feature of this changing landscape will impact that future and it merits discussion. Israel, the primary project of the Zionist movement, is being steadily delegitimized as a political entity. More and more people are beginning to question the right of Zionist Israel to exist. In short, Zionism is becoming a dirty word.

What sort of political arrangement can possibly emerge in Palestine/Israel when the actors and 'facts on the ground' change and multiply so quickly? There was a time not too long ago when many reasonable people insisted that endgame meant two states for two peoples in Palestine/Israel. The Jews have a historic attachment to Palestine, they explained. The Holocaust has shown what happens to Jews among the gentiles, they argued. Furthermore, enmity between two longtime antagonists had reached levels that required ethnic partition. Implicitly, they argued that acquisition of territory through war was admissible.

So, forget about international law. Forget about your right of return and the inadmissibility of the acquisition of territory through war and a top-down, brutally executed ethnic cleansing program. Israel has a right to exist and that right is underlined by the near universal Western acceptance of Zionism -- the principle of racially pure colonial Jewish statehood -- as a credible political program for Jews and non-Jews.

It is worth pausing here for a moment to review what Zionism is. Many Jewish and non-Jewish people see justice in the idea of a Jewish state, inhabited by a demographic majority of Jewish people. That sentiment is informed by an attachment to the spiritual homeland of the Jews -- Palestine. So Zionism is the fusion of tribalism and territory, which is a very common phenomenon in the world today. In many ways, Zionism is just Jewish nationalism. Zionism differs from other forms of nationalism in one important respect, however. The territory claimed by Jewish nationalists was inhabited by non-Jews.

Early Zionists were confronted by the problem of wrong-raced people living in the places that they hoped to populate with Jews. For people like my maternal grandfather, Khaled Edwan, that meant loading his possessions on the back of a donkey, and trekking by foot to the tented refugee camp in the Gaza Strip with other villagers from Barbara, a Palestinian village located near where modern day Ashkelon stands today.

Early Zionists appreciated the importance of narrative in the national imagination. Ethnic cleansing and heroic redemption of the land are two incongruous themes, so for the sake of consistency, Barbara was razed to the ground by Zionist bulldozers. A national forest was planted in its place. When young American Jews in the fifties donated pennies and nickels to the Jewish National Fund to plant a tree in Israel, they were oftentimes erasing Palestine.

I had a conversation with a Zionist in New York several months ago who conceded that Palestinians had been ethnically cleansed from Israel to make room for Jews. Despite that, he couldn't understand my attachment to Palestine -- to places I've never been in Israel proper -- that my grandfathers and their families had been forcibly removed from. It was incomprehensible to him that I should want to return to places lost sixty years ago. He insisted that Palestinians should make the best of things in Jordan, Lebanon, Syria, America, Canada or wherever. I replied that the Jews lost their country thousands of years ago, and haven't forgotten it. We lost ours only sixty years ago. He seemed to get it after that.

The Zionists were successful in ethically cleansing Palestine. But they didn't succeed in eliminating the Palestinian nation. They refused to acknowledge the injustice that permeated the existence of their state, and instead agreed to the principle of two states for two peoples. They even managed to convince some Palestinians to accept the 'two-state solution' -- to join the Zionist fold. Logically, any Palestinian who endorses the 'two-state solution' is self-identifying as a Zionist.

Some of these Palestinians support two states because they believe it is the most pragmatic, or possible, solution at this time. But this approach sacrifices the rights of Palestinian refugees, and possibly the rights of Palestinian citizens of Israel, in exchange for an ill-defined state built on the steadily dwindling 22% of the country Palestinians lost in 1948. The quiescence of these Palestinians may win them entry into the most rarefied circles. They may publish articles in prominent magazines and visit with the American president.

Many Palestinians will bristle at the charge; in Palestine, Zionism is a dirty word. Not many people are comfortable with being called racists. White supremacists and separatists in the United States sometimes argue that their movement is misunderstood. Theirs is a quest to safeguard white culture in the face of a multicultural onslaught. White literature, music, art and soul are subordinated to, and infected, maligned and corrupted by intermixing with other races. Bernard Avishai made the same argument recently in an email exchange with Philip Weiss. In a nutshell, the Jewish state exists so that Mr. Avishai can more fully appreciate Jewish poetry.

This is no coincidence. One can make a convincing analogy between white supremacists and Zionists -- both are would-be saviors and protectors of the race. Both are racists. The difference is that Zionism has been legitimized by Western leaders. Western culture embraced the Zionist cause and narrative in the post-War period. I wonder how many American youths were captivated by Paul Newman's brave and hale Zionist in the Hollywood film Exodus.

How many baby boomers today subconsciously associate Paul Newman's brand of salad dressing, whose profits are donated to philanthropic causes, with Zionism? Marilyn Monroe famously celebrated Israel's eighth anniversary in 1956 alongside John F. Kennedy in Yankee Stadium. One can imagine how the image of America's premier starlet and handsome young politician must have appeared to many ordinary Americans. Today, the American actress Natalie Portman helps Alan Dershowitz write 'The Case for Israel' while performers Madonna and Lady Gaga parade around the Holy Land singing Zionist praises. The end result is that many non-Jews in America identify with Jewish supremacy; there are many non-Jewish Zionists.

The process of inuring gentiles to Jewish racism has resulted in some glaring contradictions and confused sentiments. President Jimmy Carter -- whose integrity is unimpeachable, and who deservedly won the Nobel Peace Prize for his prodigious humanitarian undertakings -- still writes in his books that Israel must remain the Jewish state, and that Jewish apartheid is restricted to the occupied West Bank. As someone who greatly admires President Carter -- I hesitate to levy the criticism, but humanitarianism and ethnic cleansing are mutually exclusive. And apartheid exists within Israel proper as well.

The truth about the legacies and consequences of Zionism is emerging in America. I outlined in a previous essay some of the reasons why Zionism is becoming a dirty word. Student BDS movements are proliferating on American campuses and gaining greater ground in their struggle for equal rights in Palestine/Israel. Indeed, the recent BDS conference that took place at Hampshire College is a heartening sign of things to come. But while it was once enough to oppose the occupation of Palestine, the bar must be raised. It is clear that the 'two-state solution' is not a solution. Besides, it is unworkable and impossible -- Mr. Obama cannot transfer 500,000 Jewish settlers from the West Bank.

The reality of an apartheid state in all of Palestine/Israel has raised the bar. Practically, what does it mean to end the occupation? What about the security of settlers? Who will enforce the Jew-only road rules? Ending the occupation of Palestine doesn't mean anything; the egg is scrambled.

Reality requires that we reevaluate our goals. The aim should be to discredit the entire system of inequality in Palestine/Israel. Boycotting Israeli goods manufactured in the settlements is an important first step, but the Zionist colonial settlement program is engineered by the Zionist government of Israel. Jewish supremacists do not only inhabit Ariel and Kiryat Arba. They live in Tel Aviv and Netanya. The brilliant Zionist technician working for Intel Israel also partakes in the systemic suppression of another peoples' human rights. His economic activity strengthens a repressive political regime, while his democratic vote empowers chauvinists. It is a fact that more than 90% of the voting Israeli public supported the recent Gaza massacre.

I should clarify that not all Israelis are Zionists. There are Israelis who recognize that something is rotten in the state of Israel. The project to undermine Zionism cannot be motivated by vindictive, retributive impulses. On the contrary, the project to undo Zionist Israel must be inspired by an overarching commitment to humanity and equal rights. While Zionists ought to be challenged anywhere, it must be clearly understood and forcefully declared that Jews have a right to live in the Holy Land, but only as equals, and not cloaked in a Master Race theology.

This is not a new idea. Once accepted by a majority of the people -- Palestine/Israel, or Israel/Palestine, or whatever it may be called -- will enact normal immigration and naturalization laws. That process will begin with an unbending commitment to the nonviolent pursuit of justice at all costs. This may seem like a radical position to take, but justice is a radical principle.

I will not venture to predict the future. But I can outline my hopes for the future. I look forward to a time when academics, policy makers and analysts, pundits, and ordinary people are unencumbered by a poorly considered attachment to Zionism. I hope that I will see the day when Zionists will be forced into the closet alongside all the other racial supremacists who share their pathology. Zionism is a dirty word. I look forward to the day humanity reacts to it that way.

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#3493

From: NYCLAW
Date: Thu Nov 26, 2009 6:17 pm
Subject: GI Resistance: Ft. Hood Update, podcast, and THE MESSENGER film

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An Update from Ft. Hood

As you can imagine, Ft. Hood is still feeling the aftershocks of the massacre that happened over two weeks ago. While we still have yet to learn the twisted motivations of the shooter, the fact that he was a psychiatrist responsible for counseling other soldiers is a tragic testament to the dire lack of adequate mental health care for troops.

IVAW Ft. Hood has been speaking out about the issue, holding a candlelight vigil honoring the victims, and offering Warrior Writers workshops and free professional counseling sessions at Under the Hood Cafe, one of the only safe environments for anti-war soldiers near the base. See news clip here of IVAW's Veterans Day vigil.

As the Army conducts a probe into the shootings, and units go back to preparing for Afghanistan deployment, IVAW members have been targeted for being outspoken about the health care needs of their fellow soldiers. One was threatened with a physical beating by commanding officers for wearing his IVAW shirt, and then forcibly held and interrogated.

A new Army mental health survey of soldiers in Afghanistan shows that morale is down and mental stress increases with an increased number of deployments. Currently there is one mental health specialist for approximately 1,100 troops in Afghanistan. The Army says it hopes to improve that ratio to one for every 700 soldiers in Afghanistan. This is obviously still totally inadequate.

Next Steps
The professional therapist we brought down to Ft. Hood counseled soldiers and also researched a referral list of area therapists friendly toward anti-war soldiers. IVAW Ft. Hood will continue to aggressively outreach to other soldiers about the need to for mental health services on the base and provide them with referrals to quality counseling outside the gates of Ft. Hood.

Will you give a donation now to support our continued important work at Ft. Hood? Click here to make a contribution.

Hiroshima survivor and IVAW war resistor give joint talk

Victor Agosto, former Ft. Hood soldier and Afhganistan war resistor, and Emiko Hakada, a survivor of the Atomic bomb the U.S. dropped on Hiroshima gave a joint talk at Pom Gallery in NYC as an IVAW fundraiser. Listen to a podcast of their remarks here

New film, THE MESSENGER, depicts hidden pain of U.S. casualties

The Messenger, starring Woody Harrelson, Samantha Morton, and Ben Foster, is the story two soldiers assigned to the Army's Casualty notification service. Click here to find a screening in your area. Watch the trailer here.

Thank you for your continued support.

Iraq Veterans Against the War

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#3492

From: NYCLAW
Date: Fri Nov 27, 2009 8:01 pm
Subject: Labor for Palestine: COSATU Reaffirms Support for Israel Boycott

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http://www.cosatu.org.za/show.php?include=docs/pr/2009/pr1126g.html&ID=2681&cat=COSATU%20Today

COSATU supports SA government on illegal settlements in East Jerusalem and condemns attacks by SA Zionist Federation

--------
"We welcome the initiative of the British Universities and Colleges Union and the British Committee for the Universities of Palestine to be held in various parts of the UK in December to bring together the active participation of unions that support the global BDS Campaign against Israel."
--------

The Congress of South African Trade Unions fully supports the statement of the South African government on the continued illegal expansion of the Israeli occupation, particularly in East Jerusalem.

"We condemn the fact that Israeli settlement expansion in East Jerusalem is coupled with Israel`s campaign to evict and displace the original Palestinian residents from the city," said Chief Director for Public Diplomacy, Saul Kgomotso Molobi. "We call upon the Israeli government to cease their activities that are reminiscent of apartheid forced removals."

COSATU equally emphasises that Israel is an occupying power and that international legal obligations are clear on such matters, and rejects the attacks on our government by the Zionist Federation of South Africa, the body responsible for defending the policies of apartheid Israel in our country.

The Zionists arrogantly state that, "the Israeli government is legally entitled to allow for the natural expansion of the Jerusalem suburb of Gilo, in East Jerusalem. People, whether Jew or Arab, are being removed from their homes only because those homes are illegal. Any increase in the cycle of violence in the region will come from the radical Palestinian element determined at all costs to ensure that peace remains forever elusive."

"The SA Zionist Federation is appalled that the SA government compares the situation in Israel with that of 'apartheid forced removals'. The apartheid regime was radically immoral; for the SA government to compare the two shows a regrettable lack of understanding of both and simultaneously makes a mockery of the tragedy of apartheid."

It finally makes the following ridiculous conclusion: "The South African Zionist Federation condemns the double standards applied only to Israel by our government; and questions again why Israel is always judged to a standard different from that of the rest of the world."

In fact, the greatest display of double standards is that by the US and Israel, who refuse to be subjected to the ICC and other international institutions of redress and justice for their war crimes in Gaza and the whole of Palestine, as well as in Afghanistan and Iraq.

The COSATU 10th National Congress resolution was clear on this matter when it said: "We support all cases that try those that committed crimes against humanity. However, we must ensure that this is not selective in its application and not used for narrow political interests, but to ensure relief and justice for victims of war crimes, abuse and conflicts.

"COSATU should call on the ICC to investigate and prosecute Israel and the US for war crimes in Palestine, Iraq, Afghanistan and the whole Middle East, so as to ensure that the narrow interests of the powerful do not promote impunity in the administration of global justice".

Therefore we call on the Zionist Federation and its associates to respect international law, cease their support for apartheid policies and join the world community of freedom-loving people in the search for peace, justice and happiness for all.

We also encourage the South African government to continue raising the plight of our suffering brothers and sisters in Palestine who desire only peace and dignity in their own land. This is a legitimate struggle like those of in the same way that all colonised people waged their own struggles for democracy and freedom from occupation.

We also take this opportunity to join the world community of solidarity activists in preparing for global commemorations against the brutal Gaza incursion by Israel during December.

We welcome the initiative of the British Universities and Colleges Union and the British Committee for the Universities of Palestine to be held in various parts of the UK in December to bring together the active participation of unions that support the global BDS Campaign against Israel.

It will involve a series of major public meetings in Leeds, Glasgow and Manchester, culminating in a major BDS Conference in London on 5th December 2009. This kind of public mobilisation, involving mainly organisations and influential individuals from Palestine, South Africa, the UK and other parts of the world, is an important step in the process of consolidating a strong global movement for the liberation of Palestine. It should be emulated in all national campaigns.

Unless we unite and act together globally, a serious backlash could result and the cause of the Palestinian people could suffer under the weight of US imperialism and its cronies. This campaign was certainly boosted by the UN General Assembly's historic adoption of the Goldstone report, with its limitations, which is a step forward in the campaign for the prosecutions of all war criminals.

Bongani Masuku (International Relations Secretary)
Congress of South African Trade Unions
1-5 Leyds Cnr Biccard Streets
Braamfontein, 2017
Johannesburg
P.O.Box 1019
Johannesburg, 2000
South Africa
Tel: +27 11 339-4911/24
Fax: +27 11 339-5080/6940
Mobile: +27 79 499 6419
E-Mail: bongani@...

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#3491

From: NYCLAW
Date: Fri Nov 27, 2009 3:01 am
Subject: A People's History of Thanksgiving

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http://www.uruknet.info/index.php?p=m60502&hd=&size=1&l=e

A People's History of Thanksgiving
By Ramzy Baroud
November 26, 2009

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'While Native Americans and Palestinians were the ancient indigenous peoples of their lands, this was of little or no relevance to the foreign settlers. What really mattered was "Manifest Destiny", what really mattered was "Zionism".'
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This week Americans will observe "Thanksgiving" commemorating a romanticized era in their nations record, celebrating the supposed solidarity and brotherhood enjoyed by the first settlers and the indigenous people of what is now called the United States. However, this fantastic tale of friendship contradicts the candid remarks of many notable personalities in US history.

Few can be as blunt regarding the legacy of the United States toward the native people of this land as the 26th President of the United States, Theodore Roosevelt. In his narrative, "The Winning of the West," Roosevelt spoke about the "spread of the English-speaking peoples over the world's wasted spaces." He wrote: "The European settlers moved into an uninhabited waste...the land is really owned by no one.... The settler ousts no one from the land. The truth is, the Indians never had any real title to the soil."

In an interview with the British Sunday Times, on June 15, 1969, former Israeli Prime Minister, Golda Meir made similar claims, stating, "There was no such thing as Palestinians. It was not as though there was a Palestinian people in Palestine considering itself as a Palestinian people and we came and threw them out and took their country from them. They did not exist."

While Native Americans and Palestinians were the ancient indigenous peoples of their lands, this was of little or no relevance to the foreign settlers. What really mattered was "Manifest Destiny", what really mattered was "Zionism".

Roosevelt goes on: "The world would probably not have gone forward at all, had it not been for the displacement or submersion of savage and barbaric peoples as a consequence of the armed settlement in strange lands of the races who hold in their hands the fate of the years."

In the mid forties, David Ben-Gurion declared that Israel is adopting a system of "aggressive defense. With every Arab attack we must respond with a decisive blow: the destruction of the place or the expulsion of the residents along with the seizure of the place."

My grandparents, mother and father, along with nearly one million people were expelled from their land after the brutal destruction of 418 villages and towns, and the murder of thousands of Palestinians. They spread in all directions, mostly on foot to clear space for the Chosen People. They settled in refugee camps, concentration camps, which are still in existence until today. My grandparents along with my mother, father and brother are buried in one of those camps.

Ben Gurion retired in 1963, four years before Israel invaded the rest of Palestine, the West Bank, Gaza, and East Jerusalem. It created another tragedy, another dispossession, all with the hope that the state of Israel can become purely Jewish. Israel defied international law that called for the right of return for Palestinians refugees. Instead, it instituted its own law, shortly after its establishment in 1948, issuing the right of return for Jews only. Any one of Jewish race, anywhere in the world was and is still allowed to come to Palestine, granted citizenship, to live free of charge on a land that is not his, in a place where he does not belong.

Amid this savagery, land grabbing and dehumanization of the victims, both the United States and Israel have managed to convince themselves that the way they treated their victims was in fact humane and civilized. "No other conquering or colonizing nation has ever treated savage owners of the soil with such generosity as has the United States," Roosevelt said.

Likewise, what many have called "the most moral army in the world", many Israeli officials could very well be held to international account for their involvement in Israel's infamous Operation Cast Lead, which lead the to deaths of nearly 1,500 innocent civilians in the Gaza Strip just about one year ago.

From targeting civilians to completely ravaging the civilian infrastructure to using civilians as human shields to using illegal weapons on civilians, the Israeli army rose to new heights regarding the capacity and potential of human savagery.

Judge Richard Goldstone, who lead the UN delegation said that he had witnessed things in Gaza that would give him nightmares for the rest of his life. Such contemporary acts of barbarity bring to mind comments made by Roosevelt regarding the conduct of his armies: "No other conquering or colonizing nation has ever treated savage owners of the soil with such generosity as has the United States."

Please allow me to shift the course of my thoughts to finish with these great words from the 1927 Grand Council of American Indians:

"We want freedom from the white man rather than to be integrated. We don't want any part of the establishment, we want to be free to raise our children in our religion, in our ways, to be able to hunt and fish and live in peace. We want to be ourselves. We want to have our heritage, because we are the owners of this land and because we belong here.

"The white man says, there is freedom and justice for all. We have had their "freedom and justice," and that is why we have been almost exterminated. We shall not forget this."

Similar are the sentiments of Abdelrazik Abu al-Hayjah, the Palestinian Administrator of the Jenin refugee camp, who declared after the Israeli massacre of Jenin in 2002:

"If they will destroy the camp many times, the people of Jenin will rebuild it, because with every time the peoples' courage and determination intensify. The more Israel brutalizes Palestinians, the stronger their resistance shall be. Israel cannot resolve its problems by force. They have to understand that Palestinians' quest for freedom cannot be stopped. Its only human nature for people to resist, to regain their freedom.

"The (Palestinian) people do not hate Israelis because their names are different, or because their language is different. Nor do they hate them because they have anything against the Jewish religion, but because they are occupiers, and as long as they are occupiers, the resistance will go on. The Palestinian resistance shall live as long as the occupation lives."

- Ramzy Baroud (www.ramzybaroud.net) 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), now available for pre-orders on Amazon.com.

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#3490

From: NYCLAW
Date: Thu Nov 26, 2009 2:50 am
Subject: Labor for Palestine: Palestinian trade unions unanimously support boycott movement

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http://electronicintifada.net/v2/article10915.shtml

Palestinian trade unions unanimously support boycott movement
Press release, BDS National Committee, 25 November 2009

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"We further urge all trade unions and trade union federations to sever their links with the Histadrut, a Zionist organization that has always played a key role in perpetuating Israel's occupation, colonization and system of racial discrimination, and that has justified and applauded Israel's war crimes in Gaza in December 2008 and January 2009."
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In reaction to reports alleging that a Palestinian trade union official has stated his reservations about the Palestinian civil society campaign of Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS), the full spectrum of the Palestinian trade union movement has expressed solid support for the BDS National Committee (BNC) and for the global BDS campaign against Israel as an effective form of resisting its military occupation, war crimes and apartheid policies.

On 12 November, The Jewish Chronicle, a staunchly Zionist paper published in the United Kingdom, reported that the Secretary General of the Palestinian General Federation of Trade Unions (PGFTU), Shaher Sa'ad, had told a small delegation of British trade unionists that PGFTU "had so little interest in the subject [of boycotting Israel] it had never discussed boycotts, divestment and sanctions (BDS)." The head of the delegation, Steve Scott, who is the director of Trade Union Friends of Israel (TUFI), a well-oiled lobbying front for Israel in the trade union movement, is quoted in the same article as saying, "the only area where the PGFTU did have a boycott policy was with regard to produce from West Bank settlements. Even then, there was concern about whether that boycott could do more harm than good for the 30,000 Palestinians employed there."

On 14 November, Shaher Sa'ad categorically denied the above report in an interview with Al-Jazeera TV, reiterating his support for the boycott against Israel. The following day, in an official speech before thousands of Palestinian workers at a political rally in Nablus, he called again for "boycotting [all] Israeli goods" and "supporting local [Palestinian] products" as an effective "form of resistance against the Israeli occupation."

Whether Mr. Sa'ad made the statement attributed to him by the Zionist media outlets in the UK or not, the fact remains that PGFTU has officially endorsed the Palestinian civil society campaign of Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) against Israel, since it was launched on 9 July 2005, and has been a member in the BDS National Committee (BNC), the coalition of Palestinian unions, political parties, NGOs and networks that leads the global BDS campaign, ever since its inception.

If The Jewish Chronicle's report is accurate, something that cannot be taken for granted, given the paper's notorious record, Mr. Sa'ad will have isolated himself completely from the absolute majority of the Palestinian trade union movement, including a solid majority within PGFTU itself. Since the above report, the BNC has officially asked PGFTU for clarifications and for a public, written position confirming its support for the boycott and calling on international trade unions to support BDS. Within hours of our letter, PGFTU-Gaza (which forms a sizable part of the whole Federation) issued an official statement confirming its support for BDS and condemning any alleged violation of it by Sa'ad. Six trade union factions within PGFTU immediately followed suit, endorsing the BNC position and confirming their unambiguous support for BDS. Union leaders affiliated to all political parties represented in the PGFTU have insisted on the need to combat any attempts to undermine the BDS movement.

Furthermore, the largest, most representative Palestinian trade union federation, the General Union of Palestinian Workers (one of the constituent mass organizations of the Palestine Liberation Organization), reiterated its steady support of BDS and denounced Sa'ad's reported statements as falling completely outside the Palestinian trade union consensus behind the boycott of Israel. The Palestinian Federation of Independent Trade Unions also issued a similar position. It is worth noting that all three federations are part of the BNC.

The Israel lobby groups in the UK and elsewhere have felt quite desperate lately in their abortive attempts to stop the spectacular growth of the BDS movement, particularly among major international trade unions. In South Africa, Great Britain, Ireland, Brazil, Canada and France trade union federations representing tens of millions of workers have endorsed -- partially or fully -- the BDS campaign against Israel. Many trade unions in Europe, Latin America and Canada have also announced their support for the Israel boycott, underlining the dramatic shift in international public opinion against Israel, especially in the aftermath of its war crimes against the Palestinian people in the occupied Gaza Strip, which were squarely condemned by the UN Fact Finding Mission led by South African Judge, Richard Goldstone.

The BNC, including all three federations representing the Palestinian trade union movement, warmly salute all international trade unions who have endorsed BDS, confirming that this is the most effective and needed form of solidarity with the Palestinian people and the strongest challenge to Israel's criminal impunity and exceptionalism. As in the struggle against South African apartheid, Israel's occupation, colonialism and apartheid will only come to an end when international civil society shoulders the moral responsibility by holding Israel to account before international law and universal principles of human rights, and by treating it as a pariah state, as apartheid South Africa was, deserving comprehensive and sustained BDS campaigns.

Any isolated and dissonant statements attributed to any Palestinian trade union official can never be regarded as remotely representing the Palestinian trade union movement, as it would be in direct conflict with the consensus in this movement behind BDS. We urge all international trade unions to heed the call of Palestinian civil society, including the trade union movement, by endorsing BDS. We further urge all trade unions and trade union federations to sever their links with the Histadrut, a Zionist organization that has always played a key role in perpetuating Israel's occupation, colonization and system of racial discrimination, and that has justified and applauded Israel's war crimes in Gaza in December 2008 and January 2009.

The Histadrut and Israel apologists within the international trade union movement have continuously tried to use partial comments and innuendo by this or that Palestinian trade union official to create a deceptive impression of an imagined "split" in the Palestinian trade union movement on BDS. Today, we reconfirm to the TU movement worldwide that the Palestinian trade union movement stands united in support of BDS and calls on every TU to endorse BDS. This is our best hope to end Israel's grave violations of international law and to attain our inalienable, UN-sanctioned rights, especially our right to self determination.

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#3489

From: NYCLAW
Date: Wed Nov 25, 2009 12:55 am
Subject: Inquiry inspires no faith in Iraq

mletwin2001

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http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2009/nov/24/inquiry-iraq-chilcot-tony-blair

Inquiry inspires no faith in Iraq
Asked about the Chilcot inquiry as they struggle to survive, Iraqis say Tony Blair and George Bush have already escaped justice
o Sami Ramadani
o guardian.co.uk, Tuesday 24 November 2009 07.00 GMT

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"US policymakers, followed meekly by most of the British political and establishment notables, planned the invasion and "destruction" of Iraq many years before 2003. They cite the 13 years of murderous sanctions from 1991 to 2003 as a prelude for the occupation of the country."
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The daily lives of ordinary Iraqis are such that an inquiry set up by the British government to look into the war on Iraq is almost totally brushed over in the country. Iraqis are avid followers of the news and most are very aware of the inquiry, but their situation today has become desperate; the lives of millions have been transformed into a bitter struggle for survival.

The attitude of those in Baghdad who are invited to comment on the inquiry swiftly changes from expressions of pain and sadness to that of anger and strong denunciation of the war and its architects, George Bush and Tony Blair. It is striking that the one common thought that comes to the fore is that Bush and Blair have escaped justice and "got away with murder".

They certainly don't have any confidence that the outcome of the inquiry will lead to Blair appearing before a legal tribunal to account for his role in engineering and launching the illegal war.

The terms of the debate in Iraq are very different from those here in Britain. For while here people are seeking to establish beyond much doubt who did what, when and why, people in Iraq regard it as an open and shut case: US policymakers, followed meekly by most of the British political and establishment notables, planned the invasion and "destruction" of Iraq many years before 2003. They cite the 13 years of murderous sanctions from 1991 to 2003 as a prelude for the occupation of the country. They stress that Saddam Hussein's 35-year dictatorship and non-existent WMD were "used as a pretext" for the war.

What makes Iraqis very bitter is that more than six years after the invasion, the situation for most of them has deteriorated beyond all gloomy expectations. One Iraqi last week was in tears as he spoke about his extended family, for whom life has become dominated by death and destitution. He told the Baghdadia satellite TV station:

How long will we continue dying like this? When the bombs don't get us, we perish of water-borne diseases, as we drink the dirty water. When the bombs don't get us, our babies are born deformed because of the depleted uranium they used on us. Six years of hell were preceded by 35 years of oppression. When is it going to all end?

The composition of the inquiry panel itself doesn't inspire confidence as to how deep it will dig into the war's planning and motives. Michael Crick of the BBC writes that inquiry member Sir Lawrence Freedman, who was a key Blair adviser, told him in 1999 "he was contacted by Downing Street seeking his thoughts" for a Blair speech.

When was military action justified for liberal, humanitarian reasons? Sir Lawrence says he was astonished when he heard and read Blair's famous Chicago speech -- that it was based largely on the memo he sent to No 10.

One memo, however, that the inquiry needs to examine carefully is the one seen by international law expert Philippe Sands QC, in which Bush was noted as telling Blair that perhaps they should paint a US plane with UN colours, hoping that Saddam would shoot at it and give the US the pretext for war. The memo of the 31 January 2003 meeting also makes clear that both leaders acknowledged lack of evidence on WMD.

One suggestion I heard from a Baghdad resident is that Sir John Chilcot and his panel should pack up and go to Iraq to talk to the people suffering the terrible aftermath of war and sanctions.

Let them come and see how some of our children and families have been reduced to searching rubbish dumps to make a living in one of the richest countries in the world. Let them come and talk to the widows and orphans of the US-led war.

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#3488

From: NYCLAW
Date: Fri Nov 13, 2009 10:29 pm
Subject: Palestine: The Disastrous Presidency of Mahmoud Abbas

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http://www.counterpunch.com/amiri11132009.html

November 13-15, 2009
Is It Really Over?
The Disastrous Presidency of Mahmoud Abbas
By RANNIE AMIRI

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"Though it appears doubtful the quisling Abbas will actually resign, its mere suggestion should still be cause for celebration among Palestinians."
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After five long years, and at great expense to a state hoped-to-be-called Palestine, Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas has finally realized that subservience to the United States and Israel pays little in dividends. Indeed, what he has done to the cause of Palestine, the unity of its people, and the advancement of their rights has been nothing short of unmitigated disaster.

Last week, Abbas said he would not seek re-election in polls scheduled for January 2010. His resignation however, was quickly rejected by the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO), and as of today, no one has announced their intent to run in his place.

In truth, many consider the move a tactic to exert additional pressure on the Obama administration, especially after Abbas' demand for an Israeli settlement freeze prior to talks went largely ignored.

It came, after all, on the heels of Secretary of State Clinton's meeting with Prime Minister Netanyahu, in which she rewarded Abbas for his years of servility with the following humiliating statement:

"What the Prime Minister has offered in specifics of restraint on the policy of settlements ... is unprecedented."

Nevertheless, a host of regional leaders publicly urged him to stay on as president (the list of which is quite telling): Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak, Jordanian King Abdullah II, Israeli Defense Minister Ehud Barak, and President Shimon Peres (who referred to him as "my old friend"). As quoted by the Ynet news website, an Israeli state official candidly stated, "It's an Israeli interest to have Abbas stay in office."

Because elections are unlikely to be held if Abbas chooses not to run, it may be that he remains the de facto president regardless (lest we forget, his four-year term already expired in January of 2009, but was unilaterally extended for an additional year). This appears increasingly probable since the Palestinian election commission just announced their recommendation that the January 24 ballot be postponed. Even if Abbas were to step down, the complicated political bureaucracy still leaves him as head of both the PLO and Fatah, ensuring he remains highly influential.

Broken Leadership, Broken Country

Despite the logistical challenges of occupation, Palestinians took it upon themselves to hold free and fair parliamentary elections in January 2006. The winner was the Islamist group Hamas, which, to the chagrin of the self-entitled Fatah faction, earned them the right to form a government. Tensions between the two groups quickly came to a head though, after Abbas called on Hamas to not only accept a two-state solution, but recognize Israel's "right to exist."

In Abbas, Israel found a valuable partner; one who was willing to compel fellow Palestinians to accept conditions to which Israel itself has never agreed.

Hamas did form a unity government, including in it members of Hamas, Fatah and independents. But in their ongoing dispute, Abbas dissolved this government in the summer of 2007, and (illegally) appointed Salam Fayyad as prime minister. This eventually led to the outbreak of violence in Gaza, the expulsion of Fatah forces from the territory and a fracture in the Palestinian leadership that persists to this day.

Sitting comfortably in Cairo, it was Abbas who blamed Hamas for Israel's savage December 2008 assault on Gaza, adopting the Israeli strategy of blaming the victim. Under a crippling siege prohibiting the most basic of humanitarian supplies, and one that left many of Gaza's children malnourished or starving, Israel indiscriminately attacked militants and civilians alike; firing at those waving white flags of surrender and despair, using white phosphorus in densely populated areas, and striking at U.N.-operated schools and food warehouses.

Then came the report by Justice Richard Goldstone, head of the U.N. Fact-Finding Mission on the Gaza Conflict. Bowing as he always has to U.S. pressure, and hoping to curry favor with the Americans and Israelis, Abbas shamefully asked the United Nations Human Rights Council to shelve discussion of it and its allegations of Israeli war crimes. Evoking outrage even amongst his supporters, the decision was eventually reversed.

Symbolic of his behavior over the past five years, Abbas' stance on the Goldstone Report brought to the fore the embarrassment and shame many Palestinians have long felt over his actions. Capitulation to Presidents Bush and Obama, and Israeli Prime Ministers Sharon, Olmert and Netanyahu, has only led to the unabated expropriation of Palestinian land and progressively worse relations between the rival elected and appointed governments.

Though it appears doubtful the quisling Abbas will actually resign, its mere suggestion should still be cause for celebration among Palestinians. Even if it ultimately does not come to pass -- at least for now -- let them rejoice.

Rannie Amiri is an independent Middle East commentator. He may be reached at: rbamiri AT yahoo DOT com.

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#3487

From: NYCLAW
Date: Sat Nov 21, 2009 2:52 am
Subject: Bipartisan Witch-Hunts: Judge Roy Bean Takes Manhattan

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November 20-22, 2009
Judge Roy Bean Takes Manhattan
By Ron Jacobs

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"From the trials in Salem to the hanging of the Haymarket Martyrs; from the deportations of the anarchists and other radicals during the Palmer Raids of the early twentieth century to the trials of antiwar and black liberation activists in the 1960s and 1970s, the history of the United States is full of these rituals of cleansing. It doesn't matter if there are any truly guilty among the prosecuted and persecuted."
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After several months of delay due to the legal concerns of his publisher American author Robert Coover published the novel The Public Burning in 1977. This novel is an often humorous and consistently biting commentary on the state of the US empire and the psyche that maintains it. It features (among others) Richard Nixon as the protagonist and narrator with occasional appearances from Uncle Sam as a Methuselahian superhero and Dwight Eisenhower as the latest incarnation of the American everyman. The entire tale occurs in the week leading up to the execution of accused atom bomb spies Julius and Ethel Rosenberg and ends the night of their execution.

Because it is fiction, Coover has moved the location of the execution to Times Square. The setting is possibly the most important aspect of the novel in that it portrays the execution not as the ultimate realization of justice but as a piece of national theater. It is a cathartic political moment designed to prove that the United States of America will not be undone by Communists and other anti-American misfits, nor will it succumb to those who disagree with the natural order of things under American capitalism. This show is as much for the American people as it is for the rest of the world. No self-doubt is to be acknowledged when it comes to the American destiny. Coover's Uncle Sam character tells then Vice President Nixon as much in a vision: "We ain't going up to Times Square just to fill the statutorial law...," says Uncle Sam. "This is to be a consecration, a new charter of the moral and social order of the Western World...."

When I heard that Obama's Justice Department was going to try at least five of the alleged 9-11 suspects in New York City I couldn't help but think of Coover's novel. In the same way that the Rosenberg execution was a piece of political theatre designed to insure the US public that Washington had the over-hyped communist threat under control, this trial serves the purpose of convincing that same public that the terrorist threat is also being taken care of. During the trial and aftermath of the Rosenbergs, the US military was fighting a war in Korea and occupying a good portion of the world. Involvement in Vietnam on the side of the French was increasing and the ultra-right was relishing the publicity it had obtained thanks to Joe McCarthy and other anti-Communist demagogues. Nowadays, the US military is fighting a war in Afghanistan, occupying Iraq and maintaining military bases around the world. The ultra-right is up to its usual publicity-seeking inanities and the economy is stumbling. It's time for a unifying event. Since (thankfully) attacks on the US homeland don't happen very often, the next best thing to rally the masses might very well be this trial.

Currently, there is a sideshow being whipped up by the rightwing that insists that the defendants should all be tried in military courts. Most of those not among that political minority disagree. The right has nothing to fear, however. Despite all the backslapping statements calling Attorney General Eric Holder's decision a triumph for the American way of justice, justice is not really the issue in these upcoming trials. No, what's at stake here for the empire reaches deeper than that. As far as the empire's guardians are concerned, these trials are about the very nature of the American future. Convictions (and most likely executions of the condemned) are essential to the continuation of the project. Doubt must be purged. Naysayers must be silenced. If the defendants are, by some fluke, acquitted, the jury will live in fear of their own countrymen for a long time. The court itself will be an armed camp reminiscent of the prison in Guantanamo where the defendants were held for years without trial. The effects of any torture endured by the defendants will lurk underneath every accusation and piece of evidence presented.

Given that New York is one of the top media capitals in the world, don't look for a change of venue for these trials. The message here is not in the courtroom proceedings, but in the presentation of those proceedings. The Lady Justitia will be present, but the real force in this courtroom will be Nemesis, the god of vengeance. He has already made a difference, through the fact of the torture used by interrogators on the defendants. Getting the message that confuses justice with vengeance across will be the task of the media circus certain to ensue. The prosecution and their cohorts on the bench are depending on it.

From the trials in Salem to the hanging of the Haymarket Martyrs; from the deportations of the anarchists and other radicals during the Palmer Raids of the early twentieth century to the trials of antiwar and black liberation activists in the 1960s and 1970s, the history of the United States is full of these rituals of cleansing. It doesn't matter if there are any truly guilty among the prosecuted and persecuted. It only matters that the national soul is cleansed and thereby able to begin its mission again--the mission referred to by everyone from John Winthrop in his discourses written on the passage to the new world to every president that ended his addresses with the words God Bless America. The city on the hill is still being built--now on a planetary platform. First, however, we must rid ourselves of those who don't share our vision of that city but would tear it down. More importantly, we must get rid of the self-doubt among those citizens who think the cost is too high. Vengeance under the cover of justice is just the prescription demanded by Uncle Sam and his saints.

Ron Jacobs is author of The Way the Wind Blew: a history of the Weather Underground, which is just republished by Verso. Jacobs' essay on Big Bill Broonzy is featured in CounterPunch's collection on music, art and sex, Serpents in the Garden. His first novel, Short Order Frame Up, is published by Mainstay Press. He can be reached at: rjacobs3625@...

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#3486

From: NYCLAW
Date: Sat Nov 21, 2009 2:40 am
Subject: Palestine: Bantustans and the unilateral declaration of statehood

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Bantustans and the unilateral declaration of statehood
Virginia Tilley, The Electronic Intifada, 19 November 2009

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"A unilateral declaration by the PA that creates a two-state solution despite its obvious Bantustan absurdities is now the only way to preserve Jewish statehood, because it's the only way to derail the anti-apartheid movement that spells Israel's doom."
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The PA leadership in Ramallah is leading the Palestinian movement of independence to a dead end with its proposed unilateral call for Palestinian statehood. (Thaer Ganaim/MaanImages)

From a rumor, to a rising murmur, the proposal floated by the Palestinian Authority's (PA) Ramallah leadership to declare Palestinian statehood unilaterally has suddenly hit center stage. The European Union, the United States and others have rejected it as "premature," but endorsements are coming from all directions: journalists, academics, nongovernmental organization activists, Israeli right-wing leaders (more on that later). The catalyst appears to be a final expression of disgust and simple exhaustion with the fraudulent "peace process" and the argument goes something like this: if we can't get a state through negotiations, we will simply declare statehood and let Israel deal with the consequences.

But it's no exaggeration to propose that this idea, although well-meant by some, raises the clearest danger to the Palestinian national movement in its entire history, threatening to wall Palestinian aspirations into a political cul-de-sac from which it may never emerge. The irony is indeed that, through this maneuver, the PA is seizing -- even declaring as a right -- precisely the same dead-end formula that the African National Congress (ANC) fought so bitterly for decades because the ANC leadership rightly saw it as disastrous. That formula can be summed up in one word: Bantustan.

It has become increasingly dangerous for the Palestinian national movement that the South African Bantustans remain so dimly understood. If Palestinians know about the Bantustans at all, most imagine them as territorial enclaves in which black South Africans were forced to reside yet lacked political rights and lived miserably. This partial vision is suggested by Mustafa Barghouthi's recent comments at the Wattan Media Centre in Ramallah, when he cautioned that Israel wanted to confine the Palestinians into "Bantustans" but then argued for a unilateral declaration of Palestinian statehood within the 1967 boundaries -- although nominal "states" without genuine sovereignty are precisely what the Bantustans were designed to be.

Apartheid South Africa's Bantustans were not simply sealed territorial enclaves for black people. They were the ultimate "grand" formula by which the apartheid regime hoped to survive: that is, independent states for black South Africans who -- as white apartheid strategists themselves keenly understood and pointed out -- would forever resist the permanent denial of equal rights and political voice in South Africa that white supremacy required. As designed by apartheid architects, the ten Bantustans were designed to correspond roughly to some of the historical territories associated with the various black "peoples" so that they could claim the term "Homelands." This official term indicated their ideological purpose: to manifest as national territories and ultimately independent states for the various black African "peoples" (defined by the regime) and so secure a happy future for white supremacy in the "white" Homeland (the rest of South Africa). So the goal of forcibly transferring millions of black people into these Homelands was glossed over as progressive: 11 states living peacefully side by side (sound familiar?). The idea was first to grant "self-government" to the Homelands as they gained institutional capacity and then reward that process by declaring/granting independent statehood.

The challenge for the apartheid government was then to persuade "self-governing" black elites to accept independent statehood in these territorial fictions and so permanently absolve the white government of any responsibility for black political rights. Toward this end, the apartheid regime hand-picked and seeded "leaders" into the Homelands, where they immediately sprouted into a nice crop of crony elites (the usual political climbers and carpet-baggers) that embedded into lucrative niches of financial privileges and patronage networks that the white government thoughtfully cultivated (this should sound familiar too).

It didn't matter that the actual territories of the Homelands were fragmented into myriad pieces and lacked the essential resources to avoid becoming impoverished labor cesspools. Indeed, the Homelands' territorial fragmentation, although crippling, was irrelevant to Grand Apartheid. Once all these "nations" were living securely in independent states, apartheid ideologists argued to the world, tensions would relax, trade and development would flower, blacks would be enfranchised and happy, and white supremacy would thus become permanent and safe.

The thorn in this plan was to get even thoroughly co-opted black Homeland elites to declare independent statehood within "national" territories that transparently lacked any meaningful sovereignty over borders, natural resources, trade, security, foreign policy, water -- again, sound familiar? Only four Homeland elites did so, through combinations of bribery, threats and other "incentives." Otherwise, black South Africans didn't buy it and the ANC and the world rejected the plot whole cloth. (The only state to recognize the Homelands was fellow-traveler Israel.) But the Homelands did serve one purpose -- they distorted and divided black politics, created terrible internal divisions, and cost thousands of lives as the ANC and other factions fought it out. The last fierce battles of the anti-apartheid struggle were in the Homelands, leaving a legacy of bitterness to this day.

Hence the supreme irony for Palestinians today is that the most urgent mission of apartheid South Africa -- getting the indigenous people to declare statehood in non-sovereign enclaves -- finally collapsed with mass black revolt and took apartheid down with it, yet the Palestinian leadership now is not only walking right into that same trap but actually making a claim on it.

The reasons that the PA-Ramallah leadership and others want to walk into this trap are fuzzy. Maybe it could help the "peace talks" if they are redefined as negotiations between two states instead of preconditions for a state. Declaring statehood could redefine Israel's occupation as invasion and legitimize resistance as well as trigger different and more effective United Nations intervention. Maybe it will give Palestinians greater political leverage on the world stage -- or at least preserve the PA's existence for another (miserable) year.

Why these fuzzy visions are not swiftly defeated by short attention to the South African Bantustan experience may stem partly from two key differences that confuse the comparison, for Israel has indeed sidestepped two infamous fatal errors that helped sink South Africa's Homeland strategy. First, Israel did not make South Africa's initial mistake of appointing "leaders" to run the Palestinian "interim self-governing" Homeland. In South Africa, this founding error made it too obvious that the Homelands were puppet regimes and exposed the illegitimacy of the black "national" territories themselves as contrived racial enclaves. Having watched the South Africans bungle this, and having learned from its own past failures with the Village Leagues and the like, Israel instead worked with the United States to design the Oslo process not only to restore the exiled leadership of the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) and its then Chairman Yasser Arafat to the territories but also to provide for "elections" (under occupation) to grant a thrilling gloss of legitimacy to the Palestinian "interim self-governing authority." It's one of the saddest tragedies of the present scenario that Israel so deftly turned Palestinians' noble commitment to democracy against them in this way -- granting them the illusion of genuinely democratic self-government in what everyone now realizes was always secretly intended to be a Homeland.

Only now has Israel found a way to avoid South Africa's second fatal error, which was to declare black Homelands to be "independent states" in non-sovereign territory. In South Africa, this ploy manifested to the world as transparently racist and was universally disparaged. It must be obvious that, if Israel had stood up in the international stage and said "as you are, you are now a state" that Palestinians and everyone else would have rejected the claim out of hand as a cruel farce. Yet getting the Palestinians to declare statehood themselves allows Israel precisely the outcome that eluded the apartheid South African regime: voluntary native acceptance of "independence" in a non-sovereign territory with no political capacity to alter its territorial boundaries or other essential terms of existence -- the political death capsule that apartheid South Africa could not get the ANC to swallow.

Responses from Israel have been mixed. The government does seem jumpy and has broadcast its "alarm," Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman has threatened unilateral retaliation (unspecified) and government representatives have flown to various capitals securing international rejection. But Israeli protests could also be disingenuous. One tactic could be persuading worried Palestinian patriots that a unilateral declaration of statehood might not be in Israel's interest in order to allay that very suspicion. Another is appeasing protest from that part of Likud's purblind right-wing electorate that finds the term "Palestinian state" ideologically anathema. A more honest reaction could be the endorsement of Kadima party elder Shaul Mofaz, a hardliner who can't remotely be imagined to value a stable and prosperous Palestinian future. Right-wing Israeli journalists are also pitching in with disparaging but also comforting essays arguing that unilateral statehood won't matter because it won't change anything (close to the truth). For example, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has threatened unilaterally to annex the West Bank settlement blocs if the PA declares statehood, but Israel was going to do that anyway.

In the liberal-Zionist camp, Yossi Sarid has warmly endorsed the plan and Yossi Alpher has cautiously done so. Their writings suggest the same terminal frustration with the "peace process" but also recognition that this may be the only way to save the increasingly fragile dream that a nice liberal democratic Jewish state can survive as such. It also sounds like something that might please Palestinians -- at least enough to finally get their guilt-infusing story of expulsion and statelessness off the liberal-Zionist conscience. Well-meaning white liberals in apartheid South Africa -- yes, there were some of those, too -- held the same earnest candle burning for the black Homelands system.

Some otherwise smart journalists are also pitching in to endorse unilateral statehood, raising odd ill-drawn comparisons -- Georgia, Kosovo, Israel itself -- as "evidence" that it's a good idea. But Georgia, Kosovo and Israel had entirely different profiles in international politics and entirely different histories from Palestine and attempts to draw these comparisons are intellectually lazy. The obvious comparison is elsewhere and the lessons run in the opposite direction: for a politically weak and isolated people, who have never had a separate state and lack any powerful international ally, to declare or accept "independence" in non-contiguous and non-sovereign enclaves encircled and controlled by a hostile nuclear power can only seal their fate.

In fact, the briefest consideration should instantly reveal that a unilateral declaration of statehood will confirm the Palestinians' presently impossible situation as permanent. As Mofaz predicted, a unilateral declaration will allow "final status" talks to continue. What he did not spell out is that those talks will become truly pointless because Palestinian leverage will be reduced to nothing. As Middle East historian Juan Cole recently pointed out, the last card the Palestinians can play -- their real claim on the world's conscience, the only real threat they can raise to Israel's status quo of occupation and settlement -- is their statelessness. The PA-Ramallah leadership has thrown away all the other cards. It has stifled popular dissent, suppressed armed resistance, handed over authority over vital matters like water to "joint committees" where Israel holds veto power, savagely attacked Hamas which insisted on threatening Israel's prerogatives, and generally done everything it can to sweeten the occupier's mood, preserve international patronage (money and protection), and solicit promised benefits (talks?) that never come. It's increasingly obvious to everyone watching from outside this scenario -- and many inside it -- that this was always a farce. For one thing, the Western powers do not work like the Arab regimes: when you do everything the West requires of you, you will wait in vain for favors, for the Western power then loses any benefit from dealing more with you and simply walks away.

But more importantly, the South African comparison helps illuminate why the ambitious projects of pacification, "institution building" and economic development that the Ramallah PA and Prime Minister Salam Fayyad have whole-heartedly embarked upon are not actually exercises in "state-building." Rather, they emulate with frightening closeness and consistency South Africa's policies and stages in building the Bantustan/Homelands. Indeed, Fayyad's project to achieve political stability through economic development is the same process that was openly formalized in the South African Homeland policy under the slogan "separate development." That under such vulnerable conditions no government can exercise real power and "separate development" must equate with permanent extreme dependency, vulnerability and dysfunctionality was the South African lesson that has, dangerously, not yet been learned in Palestine -- although all the signals are there, as Fayyad himself has occasionally admitted in growing frustration. But declaring independence will not solve the problem of Palestinian weakness; it will only concretize it.

Still, when "separate development" flounders in the West Bank, as it must, Israel will face a Palestinian insurrection. So Israel needs to anchor one last linchpin to secure Jewish statehood before that happens: declare a Palestinian "state" and so reduce the "Palestinian problem" to a bickering border dispute between putative equals. In the back halls of the Knesset, Kadima political architects and Zionist liberals alike must now be waiting with bated breath, when they are not composing the stream of back-channel messages that is doubtless flowing to Ramallah encouraging this step and promising friendship, insider talks and vast benefits. For they all know what's at stake, what every major media opinion page and academic blog has been saying lately: that the two-state solution is dead and Israel will imminently face an anti-apartheid struggle that will inevitably destroy Jewish statehood. So a unilateral declaration by the PA that creates a two-state solution despite its obvious Bantustan absurdities is now the only way to preserve Jewish statehood, because it's the only way to derail the anti-apartheid movement that spells Israel's doom.

This is why it is so dangerous that the South African Bantustan comparison has been neglected until now, treated as a side issue, even an exotic academic fascination, to those battling to relieve starvation in Gaza and soften the cruel system of walls and barricades to get medicine to the dying. The Ramallah PA's suddenly serious initiative to declare an independent Palestinian state in non-sovereign territory must surely force fresh collective realization that this is a terribly pragmatic question. It's time to bring closer attention to what "Bantustan" actually means. The Palestinian national movement can only hope someone in its ranks undertakes that project as seriously as Israel has undertaken it before it's too late.

Virginia Tilley is a former professor of political science and international relations and since 2006 has served as Chief Research Specialist at the Human Sciences Research Council of South Africa. She is author of The One-State Solution (U of Michigan Press, 2005) and numerous articles and essays on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Based in Cape Town, she writes here in her personal capacity and can be reached at vtilley A T mweb D O T co D O T za.

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#3485

From: NYCLAW
Date: Fri Nov 20, 2009 2:02 am
Subject: GI Resistance: Courage to Resist Bulletin

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headlines Mom facing Afghanistan deployment, jail
Courage to Resist rallies national political, legal, and family support of Alexis Hutchinson, the single mom jailed by the Army for refusing to deploy after being unable to find care for her 11-month old son Kamani.

Campaign wins Army objector discharge!
In August, we launched a campaign to "Free Army objector Dustin Stevens and the end illegal pre-trial punishment of the Fort Bragg 50." With your help, we did just that!

D.A.M. report from Israel/Palestine
Update from Sarah Lazare, Courage to Resist Project Coordinator, and Iraq War resister Stephen Funk who are traveling throughout Israel/Palestine with the Dialogues Against Militarism project.

"Undeployables" to the Afghan Front
Dahr Jamail and Sarah Lazare take a look at the situation Army-wide for Echo Platoon-type of situations across the country for TomDispatch. (link only)

Support Alexis Hutchinson, single mom still facing Afghanistan deployment, court martial

Please make a tax-deductible donation to Alexis' legal and family support fund.

By Jeff Paterson, Courage to Resist. November 16, 2009

"I currently don't have a family care plan, but they told me they did not care and for me to get ready to go to Afghanistan," explained Oakland, California native Spc. Alexis Hutchinson, a 21-year-old soldier based at Hunter Army Airfield outside of Savannah, Georgia.

As I spoke to Alexis on the phone, I believed if I found her a civilian lawyer to work with the military, a reasonable resolution would be quickly found. Unlike most service members Courage to Resist assists, Alexis was not refusing to deploy. She was not looking to speak out against war. She was simply asking for more time to find someone to care for her 11-month old son Kamani. Within a few days, however, the Army had tossed Alexis in the stockade and turned Kamani over to the Chatham County (Georgia) foster care system.

In response to a public outcry, growing media attention, and congressional inquiries, the Army backed off of their pledge to deploy Alexis last night, November 15. Alexis' lawyer Rai Sue Sussman of San Francisco notes that "The Army maintains that she may still be sent to Afghanistan for a court martial." That has left Ms. Sussman contemplating travel to Afghanistan to represent her client.

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