May 21, 2008 - No. 83 The Right to Be Is Inviolable!
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Anyone
engaged in Palestine solidarity work,
particularly in North America, is accused of being anti-Semitic and
guilty of hate crimes. Whether the organizers are academics, students,
trade unionists, rabbis and so on is irrelevant. There are even
special categories of those deemed "anti-Semites." If the critics
are Jewish, they are "self-hating anti-Semites." If they come from an
Arab or Muslim background, they are "terrorist anti-Semites." If they
are trade unionists, it is "proof" of the racist and backward nature of
workers. In turn, all the Palestinian people and Arab populations that
defend themselves against the Israel
state are labelled wholesale "anti-Semites" and, according to the
accusers' logic, "hate" Jewish people and "their" state of Israel. It
is
only one small step from this accusation to the current reality where
all of Gaza, 1.5 million people, is labelled a "hostile entity" by the
Israeli state in the name of security and defending
itself against racism.
For indigenous peoples around the world,
including
those in North America or Palestine, their very existence, their being,
is a block to the realization of the state colonial project in each
area. Similarly, for African slaves in the Americas and the Caribbean,
the denial of their right to be and to security
was fundamentally related to the need of the established state colonial
powers and slaveowners to exploit their involuntary servitude and
participate in the slave trade. Such state cruelty,
exploitation and genocide cannot be effective or maintained for long if
displaced slave
populations or indigenous peoples retain their own systems of living,
thinking,
cultures, languages; in sum, their right to be and to be secure within
their societies. State-organized hate
speech and denial of security for a particular group negates individual
and collective rights and violates the right to be and rule of law and
norms of a modern state.
Given this modern rendering of rights and laws,
the
fallacies inherent to the line of labelling "anti-Semitic" those who
oppose Israeli state policies are readily apparent. They are inherently
a contradiction. It is not possible to claim that those who affirm the
right to be of Palestinians are guilty of hate
crimes or violate the right to security of those who are resident in
the state of Israel. The negation of the Palestinian nation and
Palestinians' right to be due to Israeli state policies is in itself a
negation of the security of all those resident in the state of Israel
and constitutes a hate crime against the entire Palestinian
people and their rights to security, self-determination, conscience and
related freedoms. Montreal, May 10, 2008 |
Your refusal to allow such alternative voices to be heard, is an example of the ongoing difficulty faced by Quebec and Canadian society to break with a monolithic conception of minorities. Preventing the student conference from taking place contributes to re-enforcing anti-Jewish sentiment, as such actions serve to strengthen popular myths (regarding anti-Jewish racism) which suggest that "Jewish people" are against freedom of expression, repress all criticism and control our public institutions. In Israel hundreds of Israeli Jews put their lives at risk while they struggle to uphold the principles of freedom of expression and of action!
In repressing such actions of social solidarity, and the holding of open discussion (on any topic), the Collège de Bois-de-Boulogne is undermining the foundations of a democratic society. The College is telling the youth -- that irrespective of all the talk about peace and solidarity -- school is not the place to learn to exchange on diversity! We also insist that it is just as important that we break away from the a priori heritage we are saddled with with respect to all minority groups -- such as that there is only one view -- or -- Jewish voice, which represents the sole and unique Jewish community.
As committed Jewish people, we demand of the College, as we do of all other educational institutions, that they bring their policies in step with the democratic principles we all share -- freedom of expression and the right to assembly.
Members of Voix indépendantes juives Montréal:
Fabienne Presentey
Abby Lipman, Professor, McGill University
Greg Robinson, Professor, UQAM
Scott Weinstein
Lesley Levy
Carolyn Shaffer
Mira Khazzam
Robert Silverman
Bruce Katz
, English Professor
Devora Neumark
Contact:
Scott Weinstein, scottmontreal@
yahoo.ca
(Translated from French original by TML Daily)
University of Western Ontario
Suppression of Student Groups
On Tuesday, 22 April, 2008, the University Students Council (USC) of the University of Western Ontario went too far.
For years, now, it has usurped the power that students are supposed to wield, notably control over what is still called, as if it were intended as a cruel joke, "the university community centre." The USC runs this so-called community centre as if it were a shopping mall: a retail space whose primary function is to serve as a revenue stream for the self-described USC "corporation." Students have to apply for permission from the USC corporation if they want to hand out information about a political event, if they want to hold a protest on the "concrete beach" (which is sometimes mistaken for public space for students, but which is actually another retail space run by the USC mall), or if they want to set up a small table to distribute information to their fellow students. At no other university in North America is the free flow of information between students so tightly controlled by such a small group of "corporate" student-executives.
Now, apparently drunk with ill-gotten power, the USC has taken it upon itself to "de-ratify" the UWO Public Interest Research Group (PIRG) club, and to steal $600 dollars of the club's money, to be added to the USC's bloated corporate coffers. The PIRG is an umbrella organization under which several "working groups" are organized. This year's PIRG included the Feminist Action Group, Counter-Stryker, Palestinian Human Rights, and the GRIP Zine. Obviously, these are groups which criticize certain features of our society. But that is not the kind of thing that mall managers want happening in their dedicated retail spaces. The PIRG had to go. On Tuesday, exploiting the fact that students are busy with exams, the USC decided to suppress the Feminist Action Group, Counter-Stryker, Palestinian Human Rights group, and -- above all -- the very idea that students could engage in unauthorized political activity that might not be tightly controlled by the USC corporation.
It is time for a Free Speech Movement on the UWO campus. Students, staff and faculty have to take a lesson from previous free speech movements at universities like UC Berkeley some years ago, and take back the campus as a space for free discussion of ideas, even controversial ideas that are seldom debated in shopping malls. Only when the USC's mall is replaced by a real community centre for student organizing, controlled from below by all students, will students at UWO enjoy the same opportunities to freely express their views on campus that are already enjoyed by students at almost every other university in North America.
Dr. Stephen D'Arcy
Assistant Professor Department of Philosophy
Huron University College
Email: sdarcy@huron.uwo.ca
http://sdarcy.edublogs.org
Was UWO PIRG's Support for
Palestinian Human Rights a
Factor?
It is not clear from the email what grounds were put forward for deratification and if any warning were given to the University of Western Ontario Public Interest Research Group (UWO PIRG) as to problems and any opportunity to correct procedural errors. I am not sure how other UWO student clubs are treated and what circumstances are required before deratification. UWO PIRG has been the official sponsor of a number of pro-Palestinian speakers on campus since the deratification of Solidarity for Palestinian Human Rights (SPHR) at Western several years ago. The pro-Palestinian stance of the SPHR club was clearly a part the attacks on that club.
UWO PIRG also sponsored speakers critical of Israeli
policies towards the Palestinians. These speakers included Israeli
historian Ilan Pappé who spoke about the "Ethnic Cleansing of
Palestine
in 1948-1949" and Dr. Ismail Zayid who gave a presentation on the
discriminatory nature of the Jewish National
Fund. If these pro-Palestinian presentations were part of the reasons
behind the deratification of UWO PIRG and SPHR then they follow a
pattern of anti-Palestinian, anti-Arab and anti-Muslim racism that has
been found to exist at the University of Western Ontario in the past.
March 27, 2008 lecture by Ilan Pappé at University of Western Ontario.
Anti-Palestinian and anti-Arab racism has been the
subject of at least four human rights complaints made to the Ontario
Human Rights Commission against the University of Western Ontario. All
four complaints were up held by the Ontario Human Rights Commission.
Three complaints were up held
against the University of Western Ontario and one was up held against
the University Students Council (USC). My article on the USC complaint
and on the battle to present the pro-Palestinian speakers, many of them
Jewish, at Western can be found in "The Palestinian Question at the
University: The Case of Western
Ontario," American-Arab Affairs,
Summer 1987, pp. 87-98. (This journal
is now called Middle East Policy)
The University Student's Council was
required to publish "a statement of regret" and to ratify Canadians
Concerned for the Middle East (CCME). The pro-Palestinian club also won
the backing of the Canadian
Civil Liberities Association and a supportive editorial from the Globe
and Mail. Many Jewish academics and other prominent figures also
criticized the attempt to censor debate on the Palestinian issue at UWO.
The three complaints of "differential treatment of Arab students" were filed in 1987 against the University of Western Ontario. The University of Western Ontario was required to publish an apology and pay four Arab students $2,000 each for "their mental anguish." Newspaper reports of the "Anti-Arab complaint" were carried in the London Free Press and the Globe and Mail on February 10, 1994. "In his open letter of apology university president George Pedersen admitted Western was slow in responding to the local Arab Palestinian community's "legitimate concerns" and failed to achieve "the ideals associated with freedom of speech in the incidents cited." ("UWO agrees to apologize, pay Arab students $8,000," London Free Press, February 10, 1994 p. B1)
What is disturbing is that the President of the University of Western Ontario, Dr. Paul Davenport, defends his accepting an award from the Jewish National Fund, which was found to be a racist organization by the Israeli Supreme Court for discrimination against Arabs in Israel, on the basis of free speech. I am a strong supporter of free speech and academic freedom. However, the silence of the UWO Administration on repeated attempts to harass and shut down pro-Palestinian organizations at Western and organizations that sponsor pro-Palestinian speakers, speaks loudly about hypocrisy and to discriminatory and even racist attitudes towards Arab and Muslim students at UWO, and those who associate with them. This silence and refusal to intervene also speaks of a blatant double standard towards free speech and academic freedom when it comes Palestinian human rights at Western when these same arguments are used to defend racism against Arabs in Israel by organizations such as the Jewish National Fund.
Edward C. Corrigan
BA, M.A., LL.B
UWO Alumni 1977 and 1991
* Edward C. Corrigan is a lawyer certified as a Specialist in Citizenship and Immigration Law and Immigration and Refugee Protection by the Law Society of Upper Canada in London, Ontario, Canada. He can be reached at corriganlaw@edcorrigan.ca or at (519) 439-4015.
Should the University of Western Ontario
Be Supporting
a Racist Organization?
University of Western Ontario President Paul Davenport has accepted an award from the Jewish National Fund (JNF) despite the protest of 36 members of the UWO faculty.
Many individuals including many Jews, contend that the JNF is a racist organization that discriminates against non-Jews.
For example, there is a letter signed by two Jewish organizations and 34 individual Jewish signatories protesting a JNF event being held at Windsor Castle to commemorate the 60th anniversary of the founding of the state of Israel.
Israeli Uri Davis's book, Israel: An Apartheid State details the discriminatory policies of the JNF and many other Israeli practices that discriminate against non-Jews. Professor Davis spoke at Western in the fall of 2005.
The JNF also was used to cover up the ethnic cleansing and destruction of three Palestinian villages in 1968. In the place of these villages "Canada Park" was created by the JNF and was subsidized by the Canadian taxpayer.
A CBC Fifth Estate program about the JNF and Canada Park, was broadcast on 21 October, 1991, entitled "A Park with no Peace."
This program interviewed eye witnesses and documented the war crimes committed by Israel and how the JNF was used to cover up those crimes.
In 1995 an Israeli Arab couple, the Kadans, tried to buy a long-term lease for an apartment on land owned by the JNF. For 10 years the JNF and the Israeli Lands Authority refused to lease this "Jewish" land to these non-Jews.
They took their case to court. Eventually the Israeli Supreme Court ruled that state land could not be sold to Jews only.
Unfortunately 93% of the land in Israel is governed by this racist criteria of excluding non-Jews. This Israeli Supreme Court ruling caused huge embarrassment among Jews worldwide. Many Jews asked how could Jews protest against anti-Semitism when condoning blatantly racist practices in Israel?
America's Jewish Reform Movement, to which most American Jews adhere, strongly condemned the practice.
The JNF's bylaws and operations were deemed to represent racial discrimination by the United Nations Committee on Economic Social and Cultural Rights in 1998. To quote the UN Committee:
"The Committee notes with grave concern that the Status Law of 1952 authorizes the World Zionist Organization/Jewish Agency and its subsidiaries including the Jewish National Fund to control most of the land in Israel, since these institutions are chartered to benefit Jews exclusively.
"Despite the fact that the institutions are chartered under private law, the State of Israel nevertheless has a decisive influence on their policies and thus remains responsible for their activities.
"A State Party cannot divest itself of its obligations under the Covenant by privatizing governmental functions. The Committee takes the view that large-scale and systematic confiscation of Palestinian land and property by the State and the transfer of that property to these agencies, constitute an institutionalized form of discrimination because these agencies by definition would deny the use of these properties by non-Jews. Thus, these practices constitute a breach of Israel's obligations under the Covenant."
Former Deputy Mayor of Jerusalem, Meron Benvenisti, wrote in the Israeli daily Ha'aretz on June 29, 2006, "it's well known that the 'national institutions' -- the Jewish Agency and Jewish National Fund -- primarily exist to enable institutional discrimination based on ethnicity while clearing the state from accusations that it deviates from universal norms common to liberal democracies."
To avoid overturning the practice held to be racist the JNF adopted policies to circumvent the law.
Benvenisti wrote, "A classic example is the High Court of Justice's decision regarding the Kada'an family, which was perceived at the time as dealing for the first time with the principle of equality, confronting the Zionist principle of 'redeeming the land,' and presenting a victory of democracy over the apartheid inherent to the national institutions' land distribution policies. Those institutions quickly learned how to 'minimize the damage' and continue with their discriminatory policy."
Israeli Attorney General Menachem Mazuz in early 2005 also forbade the Jewish National Fund from issuing tenders for Jews only.
To quote Benvenisti, "And once again, a way was found to circumvent the decision through 'land swaps,' which only strengthened the JNF as a discriminatory institution with racist policies."
The JNF refused to obey the Israeli Supreme Court ruling and continued the discriminatory practice with the Israeli state authorities refusing to enforce the ruling of their highest court.
The JNF launched a campaign to reverse the court's decision. In 2007 a JNF Bill was introduced into the Knesset, to continue the discriminatory practice, which passed on the first reading by 64-16 votes.
The implications are quite clear. If Israel is a "Jewish state" then it cannot be a state of all its citizens who have equal rights. In Israel 25% of the population is non-Jewish and is severely discriminated against and denied basic democratic and social rights. This bill prompted Israel's newspaper, Ha'aretz, to publish an editorial titled, "A racist Jewish state" condemning the discriminatory practices of the JNF and the Israel Lands Authority.
The late and prominent member of the London Jewish community, Bernard Wolfe, who I had the privilege of knowing, decided to challenge the restrictive convent that barred Jews, Catholics and Blacks from living in the Beaches Pines resort in Grand Bend.
As a result of this legal challenge, and others, restrictive covenants which barred individuals on the basis of race or religion from owning land have been declared racist and illegal in Canada.
I wonder if President Davenport would accept an award from the South African apartheid state or the Klu Klux Klan that discriminated against Blacks. Would he accept an award from an organization that discriminated against Jews?
I hope that he would not accept such a dubious honour. Yet he accepts an award from an organization that discriminates against Muslims and Christian Palestinians and members of all other religions except Judaism.
The JNF also excludes from its lands any other race or ethnic group except those individuals whose mother was Jewish.
The question must be asked why is President Davenport
accepting an award from a racist organization?
Ryerson University
Solidarity with Palestinian Human Rights
Condemns
Terrorist Attack
Solidarity for
Palestinian Human Rights (SPHR) with its
14
branches and affiliates across Canada, stand shoulder to shoulder with
our Black brothers and sisters at Ryerson University who have suffered
from a terrorist attack on the offices of the East African Students
Group (EAST).
The arson attack targeted the bulletin board of EAST which carried posters and information against Racism, Islamophobia, and Military Occupation. This attack follows the re-activation in Canada of the Jewish Defense League (JDL), the only Jewish group labeled by the FBI as a "right-wing terrorist group." On February 4th at Ryerson University during events held by Black and Palestinian students, around 50 JDL members harassed students attending the lecture without police interference. This sent a message to the JDL and other Jewish supremacist individuals that it is acceptable to target visible minorities in our cities. Furthermore, this decision by the Toronto police to stand-by idly only emboldened those who committed this terrorist action a week later.
The police are not alone in creating a climate of acceptance around the JDL as several Jewish news agencies, including the Canadian Jewish News, have touted the founder of the Canadian JDL, Meir Weinstein, as a strong leader to be respected and covered the racist harassment at Ryerson U on the February 4th as community empowerment.
On the U.S. side of the border, the JDL was responsible for many murders and arson attacks in the 1980s, leading the FBI to label them "the second most active terrorist group in the United States." In Canada after the tragic events of September 11, 2001, the JDL Chairman, Montreal born Irv Rubin, initiated a campaign of bomb scares and death threats against students at Concordia University who were critical of U.S. and Israeli state policies. At the time, Montreal Police also were unconcerned by the JDL threat. Community members were assured by Montreal police officers that Rubin was only able to recruit 5 students at Concordia. Of course it takes only one person to wreck havoc upon innocents. A few months later Irv Rubin was arrested by police in Florida preparing to bomb a host of targets, including the largest Mosque in the USA and Concordia University in Montreal.
We urge the Toronto Police force to take our concerns seriously and investigate any links that could be made between the attack on the East African Students group and the reconstitution of the JDL in Canada. Inaction on the part of the police will send the wrong message to those who perpetrated this heinous act.
We also call on Jewish organizations to speak loudly against Jewish supremacy, violence and terrorism within their community. Setting a good example in tolerance is the only way any community can isolate fanatics.
We finally call on all people to join Ryerson students in solidarity on Tuesday, February 26 at NOON outside the Cafeteria at the University to show our opposition to such acts.
To Contact SPHR-National:
Laith Marouf, Chapter Coordinator
(514) 999-1948
sphr.national@gmail.com
www.sphr.org
To contact affected students at Ryerson University:
Mohammed Malik, East African Students of Toronto @
Ryerson, m8malik@ryerson.ca
Heather Kere, Vice-President Education of the Ryerson
Students' Union
vp.education@rsuonline.ca or (416) 979-5255 ext. 2318
United States
Statement in Support of Professor Thomas Abowd
RAWI, the Radius of Arab American Writerfs, is dismayed to learn that one of its members and supporters, Professor Thomas Abowd, has been subject to racist and hostile actions by his employer, Wayne State University.
We are disturbed in particular that Dr. Abowd was a victim of unsubstantiated accusations of "anti-Semitism," an allegation that was found to have no basis in fact. Dr. Abowd's colleagues know him to be a compassionate educator and a first-rate scholar whose research on the Israel-Palestine conflict, spatial identities, and issues of racialization in the Arab World and North America is innovative and frequently cited. Wayne State University's refusal to support Dr. Abowd in the face of false denigration of his character is lamentable; its subjection of Dr. Abowd to various forms of racism is inexcusable.
Wayne State University's unwarranted interrogation of Dr. Abowd is a capitulation to a type of slanderous and reactionary activism that has recently targeted Arab American academics such as Nadia Abu El-Haj at Barnard College, Joseph Massad and Rashid Khalidi at Columbia University, Hatem Bazian at UC-Berkeley, and Wadie Said, also at Wayne State University.
That capitulation sets an ominous precedent for all academics whose research focuses on areas of the world in conflict. It also signals to partisan agitators inside and outside of academe that false and hyperbolic charges against professors with whose viewpoints they disagree require no logic or evidence. Those charges simply need to be raised and the professor, without due process, will be disciplined, silenced, or even terminated. No university should entertain such an aberrant form of jurisprudence; those that do rightly bring on themselves lasting damage to their reputations.
We, the undersigned, call on Wayne State University to cease its harassment of Dr. Abowd forthwith and to redress any undue distress the harassment has caused. We likewise call on Wayne State University to fulfill its legal and ethical responsibilities to sustain a collegial workplace for its employees and to protect their civil and constitutional rights.
To sign the petition,
send an email to
rawipetition@yahoo.com and include your name, occupation, and
professional affiliation.
Jewish Labor Committee Attempts to Shut Down Boston Conference on Zionism
Zionists walked into a well-known center for left activists in Boston this week and with a single complaint, managed to take away an already agreed-upon meeting space for an April conference on Palestine organized by the New England Committee to Defend Palestine. Around March 9, the local branch of a national group called the Jewish Labor Committee told the director of Encuentro 5 and the landlord of the building that houses Encuentro that the New England Committee to Defend Palestine is a "hate group" and demanded that it not be allowed to hold the conference in Encuentro's meeting space. On March 14, the director of Encuentro informed the conference organizers that he would have to accede to pressure from the Jewish Labor Committee and UNITE-HERE (the Union of Needle trades, Industrial and Textile Employees and Hotel Employees and Restaurant Employees Union). UNITE-HERE is connected to a trust that owns the multi-story brick industrial building in Boston's Chinatown. Encuentro's space is on the 5th floor of this building and is held without a lease, making it vulnerable to landlord threats.
Beneath the facts of the case lie a number of ironies:
• Attacks like this are exactly the subject of the disputed conference. The purpose of the conference, whose title is "Zionism and the Repression of Anti-Colonial Movements," is to expose attacks on activists as they have been carried out historically by Zionist forces. Activists scheduled to speak have been involved in the Native American struggle against European genocide on the North American continent, the Black liberation struggle in the U.S. from slavery onward, the struggle against U.S. imperialism in Central America, the movement against apartheid in South Africa, the struggle against U.S. imperialism and genocide in Iraq, and the struggle against U.S.-Israeli genocide in Palestine.
• Encuentro bills itself as "a space for progressive movement building" in Boston.[1] Massachusetts Global Action -- the organization that runs Encuentro -- argued the need for a "tactical retreat" and offered us $400 and help finding another venue if we would consent to leave. We told them that this would undermine the meaning of our conference, their own work, and the movement as a whole. Our suggestion to Encuentro was to take this matter to the activist community -- to the people who use the space -- to tell them what was taking place and invite them to help organize a struggle to defend the integrity of our collective work.
Zionist organizations like the JLC have more material and political power than perhaps at any time in the past. But this power is increasingly hollow, since it must increasingly assert itself by shutting down a discussion about that power -- a discussion that is growing and moving into the mainstream. The JLC did not succeed by persuading Encuentro 5, but by threatening them through the building's owners. These are clearly threats that they have the power to carry out -- a fact that proves what critics of Zionism are saying.
But this also demonstrates that while they have more material power than ever before, they have less ideological support than ever before. The legitimacy of the Zionist project--the passive consent given to U.S. support for "Israel" -- is collapsing. That collapse must come before the serious fight over material power -- a fight that is coming.
We are disappointed that Encuentro 5 and Mass Global Action decided that it was not strategic for them to challenge this abuse of power now. We know that the repercussions might well have been severe, and recognize that this would affect a great deal of effort and work that has gone into building their organization. We offer the following as a challenge -- not so much to them, but to the movement as a whole, since finally the question is not about any of our specific, struggling organizations:
Can we build a movement against imperialism, or against social injustice in the United States, if the limits of our discussion can be set by organizations like the JLC -- organizations that are committed to ensuring that billions of dollars in U.S. military and economic support are given yearly to one of the most militarized colonial states in the world?
There is widespread discontent with Zionist power. This discontent will not turn itself into a meaningful response until it becomes organized around specific battles. This can only take place if at some point people are willing to say "it stops here."
• "Progressives" are not progressive. The "progressives" are the Jewish Labor Committee, which calls itself "the Jewish voice in the labor movement." The JLC did not come in from the outside but actually has an office in Encuentro's own space. The Jewish Labor Committee's web site[2] shows its president, Stuart Applebaum, standing proudly with war criminal Shimon Peres in February in Jerusalem. The JLC has put out a statement condemning the Palestinian call for boycott, divestment, and sanctions against "Israel." The JLC statement asserts that Israelis, who have brutally occupied Palestine for 60 years, carrying out a program of genocide ever since, should not be seen as "victimizers."
The progressives are UNITE-HERE, the brave union for oppressed garment and hotel workers, which acted in this fiasco as a landlord bully threatening to kick out tenants for political speech.
The progressives are leftists who support resistance in Palestine, but not resistance that uses measures of a kind used by its enemy -- namely, armed struggle. The leadership of the resistance in Palestine, Lebanon, Iraq and Afghanistan today is Islamic. Progressives in the U.S. support secular political movements, so they don't support the people who are actually carrying out the resistance in these countries which the U.S. and "Israel" are busy devastating. Support for resistance by oppressed people should be given without qualification.
• The criminal has accused his victim of the crime. The real hate groups are those who support genocide in Palestine. The Boston Jewish Labor Committee's accusation that the conference organizers are a "hate group" comes right out of the manual of the Anti-Defamation League which has gone to great pains to define political speech and action as good or bad in terms favorable to the Zionist project. The ADL is a "progressive" organization -- it seems to be for the right thing, except when it comes to criticism of "Israel." Criticism of "Israel" is anti-Semitism -- that's hate speech, that's against the law. The ADL was part of a recent attack on a mosque being built in Boston. It was exposed for lobbying Congress against a bill that condemns the Armenian genocide. During the late '70s and early '80s, it spied on organizations in the U.S. that supported the struggle against white supremacist apartheid in South Africa. This do-good "no place for hate" organization is actually a front group for a racist foreign power.
The limits of political speech on the left are now being defined by the very organizations who say they're working for the good. There is no open debate. The idea is to simply prevent political speech. Why is support for a nasty racist state in occupied Palestine driving so much of U.S. and international politics? And the question goes beyond Palestine, since these same organizations have the power to set limits on the discussion of "social justice" and racism here inside the US. This includes a history of demonizing black nationalists like Malcolm X, Stokely Carmichael, and the Black Panthers as "anti-Semites." In many cases people's careers have been ruined and their reputations smeared by forces who never came out in the open. Joseph Massad, Tony Martin, Ward Churchill, and most recently Catherine Wilkerson, are examples. Ward Churchill will be among the speakers at the conference.
The New England Committee to Defend Palestine assures all those who have been invited to and registered for the April 12 and 13 conference that we have secured another venue and will be announcing it soon. We couldn't have provided a better example of Zionist interference in anti-imperialist activism than the one that just happened here. We have great speakers coming from many different movements. We hope that supporters of the struggle in Palestine, and all those who recognize the need to build a truly independent opposition to oppression inside the U.S., will join us for this event.
New England Committee
to Defend Palestine
www.onepalestine.org
Notes
1. www.encuentro5.org
2. www.jewishlabor.org
San Francisco
20 Jews Arrested in Protest of 60th Anniversary Event
In response to Israel's 60th anniversary celebrations,
20 Jewish
activists were arrested, demonstrating Jewish opposition to Israel's
60-year-old policy of dispossession, and highlighting the
often-silenced struggle of Palestinian refugees. For over two hours, 30
Jewish activists and supporters disrupted San Francisco's
anniversary event, bunkering against the main atrium of the Jewish
Community Center (JCC). In conjunction, over thirty Jewish and
Palestinian supporters held a rally outside the center to call
attention to ongoing Israeli policy of apartheid against the
Palestinian population. With banners reading, "Jews in Solidarity
with 60+ years of Palestinian Resistance," activists declared the
anniversary, "No Time to Celebrate." "As Jews of conscience, acting in
solidarity with 60-plus years of Palestinian resistance, we're here
today to promote an 'Independence' that does not depend on an
ethnically or religiously exclusive state or on the
displacement of indigenous people," said Eric Romann, International
Jewish Solidarity Network (IJSN) organizer. "We want joint liberation,
not isolation."
The action in San Francisco, organized by the local
IJSN, is part
of "No Time to Celebrate," a national Jewish campaign opposing Israel's
60th Anniversary celebrations, while simultaneously amplifying the
American Jewish community's critique of Israeli policy. The Israeli
Consulate and the Jewish
Community and Relations Council (JCRC), who have attempted to silence
any and all criticism of Israeli policy, were the sponsors of this
event.
The activists presented the JCRC with a statement, with the following demands:
* To stop the targeting of non-Jewish organizations, particularly of organizations serving communities of color in the San Francisco Bay Area and beyond, that criticize Israel and/or express solidarity with Palestine
* To stop claiming that anti-Zionism and criticism of Israel are anti-Semitic
* To acknowledge that they do not speak for the full organized Jewish community -- that Jewish voices that criticize Israel and Zionism are legitimate voices of dissent within Jewish communities
* To criticize Israeli Deputy Defense Minister, Matan Vilnai threat of a "shoah" against the people of Gaza and demand a public apology for the exploitation of the Nazi genocide against the Jewish people for the continued ethnic cleansing of Palestinians.
Middle East
Israel's Right to Terrorism
Gaza Strip, May 14, 2008: demonstration to commemorate 60th anniversary of Al Nakba.
In response to Palestinian Resistance to Israel's terror, Matan Vilnai, Israel's deputy defence minister, threatened Palestinian's with a holocaust. Vilnai told Israeli Army Radio: "[the Palestinians] will bring upon themselves a bigger shoah (holocaust) because we will use all our might to defend ourselves." An occupying power (aggressor) has no right to self-defence. The deliberate killing of innocent and defenceless Palestinians is not self-defence; it is terrorism.
For nearly sixty years, Jews -- Israeli in particular -- have exclusively used the word "holocaust" to describe crimes committed against Jews by the Nazis, ignoring the Nazi's millions of non-Jewish victims. The holocaust is not only being used as a Zionist tool (a weapon) to shield Israel from any criticism, but also to manipulate the public and gain Israel sympathy as a "victim state." In addition, Israeli leaders use the holocaust as a justification for ongoing Israel's terror and war crimes against the Palestinian people. The creation of Israel brought unimaginable suffering on the Palestinian people and turned them into holocaust victims.
According to Gaza-based journalist Mohammed Omar of rafahtoday.org, at least 130 Palestinians, including 39 children and 10 women were killed by the Israeli army in the last days of February 2008. Even babies as young as six-month-old are targeted by Israel's terror. In addition, more than 370 children were injured. Only one Israeli settler and two Israeli soldiers were killed by Palestinians resisting Israeli aggression against the people of Gaza, the perfect pretext for mass murder of Palestinians. The home-made Palestinian rockets used by the Palestinian Resistance are nothing compared with the F-16s bombers, helicopter missiles, cluster bombs and artillery shells used by the Israeli war machine against defenceless Palestinian population under brutal occupation.
For more than a year, the 1.5 million inhabitants of Gaza have been under brutal blockade enforced by the Israeli army and backed by U.S. and European leaders. Mass starvations of Palestinian children, daily bombardment of residential areas, kidnapping, imprisonment and assassination of political leaders have become the norms. People have become used to the suffering of the Palestinian people. According to Israel, the terror is justified. The Israeli Supreme Court (the guardian of Jewish Justice) has approved this policy of collective punishment and mass starvation (Ha'aretz, 02/02/2008). However, it is worth noting that, Israel would not be able to perpetuate violence on such a scale were it not for the apathy and equanimity of Westerners; they share responsibility.
The morally correct Western powers, led by the U.S. -- which never shy away from putting Israel's interests first -- have unconditionally supported Israel's violence. Major European powers and the U.S. continue to provide massive military, financial and political supports to Israel. And with disregard to the suffering of the Palestinian people, Westerners commemorate Israel's genocidal policy of ethnic cleansing and dispossession of the Palestinian people by celebrating Israel's so-called "60th Anniversary." British children are now required to take lessons on the "Jewish holocaust," while French children are encouraged to identify with the personal stories of French Jewish children who died in the "Jewish holocaust."
In addition to the unconditional backing of the West, Israel has the unquestionable backing of Western media. Global propaganda outlets such as, the BBC, CNN, New York Times, etc. are tirelessly covering-up Israel's war crimes and spreading Israeli propaganda. As portrayed by Western media, Israel is a "civilised" and "democratic" nation, never initiates terrorist attacks or involved in daily acts of terrorism. Israel simply responds and retaliates. Israel responds to Palestinians throwing stones and retaliates against Palestinian rockets. Israeli soldiers are 'forced' to kill Palestinian children and pregnant women, and demolish Palestinian houses. Israeli soldiers are not responsible because they are facing a stronger enemy. The fact that these crimes are acts of terrorism against defenceless people doesn't seem to interest Western media. The fact that Israel is a racist apartheid state aimed at becoming a homogenous "Jewish state" at the expense of the indigenous Palestinian people is deliberately ignored by Western media. By contrast, the Palestinians are portrayed as 'militants' -- regardless of age -- 'seeking revenge' and trying to 'destroy' a 'peace-loving Israel.'
Of course, when it comes to "peace" there is no such discourse among Israeli leaders. Peace has become Israel's euphemism for violence and Palestinian dispossession. For Israeli leaders, peace means the ongoing killing of defenceless Palestinians, initiated by Israeli violent provocations. And in collaboration with Palestinian traitors (elites), Israel continues to build and expand its illegal Jewish colonies (settlements) and Jewish-only roads. The Apartheid Wall separates Palestinian from their children's schools, farms and isolates them in designated ghettos deprived of land and water. For the Palestinians, "daily living is defined by the body count [of their loved ones], the number of coffins being hurried to the cemeteries, the crammed hospital corridors and the overflowing of intensive care units," said an editorial in the Gulf News. It is genocide in slow motion.
In another development, a new opinion conducted by the Israeli daily Ha'aretz and the polling company Dialog in collaboration with Tel Aviv University, shows 64 percent of Israelis favour a truce with the Palestinian Resistance, including HAMAS, the highest majority to date. HAMAS leaders said they would consider a ceasefire if Israel lifted its blockade and ceased violent attacks in besieged Gaza and the occupied West Bank. Successive Israeli leaders have rejected every Palestinian proposal for ceasefire or peace, blindly pursuing the Zionist policy of ethnic cleansing of the Palestinian people from their homeland.
Finally, a "holocaust" will not bring peace to Palestine. Peace will return to Palestine only if Israeli leaders end their genocidal policy and the illegal occupation of Palestinian land. Under the international Genocide Convention adopted in 1948 after the defeat of Nazism, incitement to genocide is a punishable war crime. Hence, Israeli leaders should abide by international laws and revoke terrorism and violence.
*Ghali Hassan is an independent writer living in Australia.
A Defeated Policy, Not a Defeated People
Nablus, May 15, 2008
Compared with the international silence that surrounded Israel's recent massacres of Palestinian civilians in the Occupied Gaza Strip, condemnation and condolences for the victims of the shooting attack that killed eight students at the Mercaz HaRav Yeshiva in Jerusalem has been swift.
"I have just spoken with [Israeli] Prime Minister [Ehud] Olmert to extend my deepest condolences to the victims, their families, and to the people of Israel," U.S. President George W. Bush said. UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon added his "condemnation" and "condolences," as did EU High Representative Javier Solana.
The day before the Jerusalem attack, Amira Abu 'Aser was buried in Gaza. She had lived just 20 days on this earth before being shot in the head by Israeli occupation forces who attacked the house of friends she and her family were visiting. Needless to say, she had not been firing rockets at Sderot when she was killed. One of the house's inhabitants was found the next day, shot dead and his head crushed by an army jeep, an apparent victim of an extrajudicial murder by Israeli forces. (http://electronicintifada.net/v2/article9375.shtml)
But confirming their status in the eyes of the "international community" as less than complete human beings, neither Amira's killing, nor any of the dozens of Palestinian civilian victims of Israel's onslaught in Gaza have merited condemnation or condolences.
The fallacy that lies behind the differential concern for the lives of innocent Israelis and Palestinians is that the massacre in Jerusalem and the massacres in Gaza can be separated. Israeli deaths are "terrorism," while Palestinian deaths are merely an unfortunate consequence of the fight against "terrorism." But the two are intricately linked, and what happened in Jerusalem is a direct consequence of what Israel has been doing to the Palestinians for decades.
Let me be clear that the killing of civilians, Israeli or Palestinian, is wrong, repugnant, and cannot bring this one-hundred-year war caused by the Zionist colonization of Palestine to an end. There will be an Israeli propaganda effort -- as always -- to present Palestinian violence as being simply motivated by hatred, and divorced from the context of brutal occupation that Palestinians live under. What greater proof could you need than an attack on religious students, devoting their life to the study of the Torah?
We cannot expect much analysis in the media of why the Mercaz HaRav yeshiva might have been chosen as a target. Was it mere coincidence that the school, named for Rabbi Abraham Isaac Kook, and led after his death by his son Rabbi Zvi Yehuda Kook, is the ideological cradle of the militant, Jewish supremacist settler movement Gush Emunim?
Unlike other sects in Israel which sought exemption of their students from military service, Gush Emunim encouraged its followers to join the army and become the armed wing of religious nationalist Zionism. Gush Emunim settlers, many of them, like Moshe Levinger, graduates of Mercaz HaRav, founded the most extreme and racist settlements in the Occupied West Bank, including the notorious colonies in and near Hebron whose inhabitants have made life miserable for Palestinians in the city and forced many of them out of their homes. It is the militant settlers of Gush Emunim who still honor Baruch Goldstein who murdered 29 Palestinians in Hebron in February 1994. It is in Hebron that the Gush Emunim settlers spray "Arabs to the gas chambers" on Palestinian houses.
It is possible that the Mercaz HaRav gunman did not know
or care
about any of this, that any target he could identify as Israeli would
have satisfied his desire to exact revenge?
In 2002, Israeli army chief Moshe Yaalon declared that "the Palestinians must be made to understand in the deepest recesses of their consciousness that they are a defeated people." This would be achieved by the massive and constant application of force until they got the message. The same philosophy was elaborated in 2004 by Professor Arnon Soffer, one of the architects, with former Israeli prime minister Ariel Sharon, of the 2005 Gaza "disengagement."
Soffer, an avid supporter of turning Gaza into a hermetically-sealed pen for unwanted Palestinians, explained that if Palestinians fire a single rocket over the fence into Israel, "we will fire 10 in response. And women and children will be killed, and houses will be destroyed. After the fifth such incident, Palestinian mothers won't allow their husbands to shoot Qassams [rockets], because they will know what's waiting for them."
Soffer predicted that in a few years' time, "when 2.5 million people live in a closed-off Gaza, it's going to be a human catastrophe. Those people will become even bigger animals than they are today, with the aid of an insane fundamentalist Islam." With Palestinians closed in, "The pressure at the border will be awful," Soffer predicted. "It's going to be a terrible war. So, if we want to remain alive, we will have to kill and kill and kill. All day, every day."
To be fair, Soffer did display a human side: "The only thing that concerns me is how to ensure that the boys and men who are going to have to do the killing will be able to return home to their families and be normal human beings" ("It's the demography, stupid," The Jerusalem Post, 21 May 2004).
For decades Israel has been exercizing with ever-escalating brutality this deliberate strategy to crush through force and starvation a civilian population in rebellion against colonial rule. To Israel's vexation, the Palestinians are not playing their part. After sixty years of expulsions, massacres, assassinations of their leaders, colonization, torture, and mass imprisonment, the Palestinians have utterly failed to understand that they are a "defeated people."
The vast majority of Palestinians in Gaza and the West Bank endure unprecedented oppression by the Israeli army and settlers without resorting to violence in response, but they maintain an inextinguishable determination to endure until they regain their rights. If the methods the Palestinian resistance has sometimes used are reprehensible, they have also been typical for anti-colonial resistance movements throughout time, as William Polk shows in his book Violent Politics: A History of Insurgency, Terrorism and Guerilla War from the American Revolution to Iraq, and Robert Pape demonstrated through his study of suicide bombing in Dying to Win.
Is it not time for the rest of the world to step in and force Israel at last to understand the same thing, so that the senseless bloodshed can finally stop and all the people of the country -- Israelis and Palestinians -- can begin to imagine a future other than an endless parade of funerals?
*Co-founder of The Electronic Intifada, Ali Abunimah is author of One Country: A Bold Proposal to End the Israeli-Palestinian Impasse (Metropolitan Books, 2006).
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