NOVANEWS

Dear Friends,

Have been under the weather lately, which is why you have had a few days vacation from the usual intros and large numbers of items.  I was happy to see that compatriots kept you informed.  Am getting back to normal, but not quite there yet.  So, will make this intro brief.

The initial 3 items comment on or report aspects having to with academic freedom.  The first of these relates that an ‘academic, community leader, author and journalist’ had been deported from Israel after hours of detention.  The 2^nd argues and shows that “As much of the West becomes increasingly Islamophobic – universities are assumed “breeding grounds” for radicalisation.”  And the third, from Haaretz, contends that “Jews are dishonored by a blind defense of Israel.”  It deals with 3 cases in the United States in which ‘liberal’ Jews did partake of defending persons unjustly kicked out of academia, but in which Jewish mainstream organizations kept silent.

Item 4 relates that “Nabil Shaath, a leader of Mr. Abbas’s party and a veteran negotiator, said that Mr. Obama’s speech had ‘contained little hope for the Palestinians,’ except for the one sentence,” which, as you can guess, was the one stating that the Palestinian state should be on the 1967 lines.

In item 5 Zeev Sternhell in Haaretz maintains that “Netanyahu’s Israel is on course to become a pariah state.”  It should have been designated as one long ago.  When will people begin pointing out to Israelis and others that if Hamas is a terrorist organization (as Netanyahu and also Obama hold), so also is Israel.

Item 6 is a brief report informing us that more marches to Israel’s borders can be expected.

If you still have energy, don’t forget to check the headlines and summaries in “Today in Palestine” www.TheHeadings.org

All the best,

Dorothy

1.  Mondoweiss [forwarded by Ofer]

Shifting the occupation to the academic battlefield – South African academic Na’eem Jeenah detained and deported

http://mondoweiss.net/2011/05/shifting-the-occupation-to-the-academic-battlefield-south-african-academic-na%E2%80%99eem-jeenah-detained-and-deported.html?utm_s

by Ayesha Jacub on May 19, 2011

Academic, community leader, author and journalist Na’eem Jeenah has been the latest academic to face detention by Israeli authorities. In his capacity as director AMEC: the Afro Middle East Centre, Jeenah was en route to Palestine to participate in research meetings. AMEC is a South African based think-tank which aims to maintain public discussion and shape public discourse on issues related to the Middle East. At its inception AMEC was headed by Waddah Khanfar, the present General Manager of the Al Jazeera network. AMEC has since established itself as a credible commentator in South Africa on Middle East issues.

This Tuesday, some hours after Mr Jeenah was first detained at Ben Gurion airport, AMEC staff received news of his detention via the South African Ambassador to Israel, H.E Ismail Coovadia. They were also informed about his pending deportation to Istanbul. On Tuesday evening, Israeli authorities were repeatedly refusing to disclose information about Mr Jeena’s location.

By Wednesday, Mr Jeenah was deported to Istanbul after ten hours of interrogation. According to Ambassador Coovadia, “his treatment (by Israeli officials) has been extremely bad”. Jeenah’s passport and personal possessions were not returned.

Na’eem is the latest casualty in the long list of influential personalities who have been denied access to Palestine. In 2008 Professor Richard Falk , the UN Special Rapporteur for the occupied Palestinian territory was deported to Switzeland after a nightlong detention by Israeli authorities. Professor Falk was to collect information to be presented to the UN Human Rights Council. Israeli authorities reasoned that he was denied access because of his description of Israel’s blockade on the Gaza territory as being a “Holocaust in the making”.

In 2008 Archbishop Desmond Tutu was named as the head of a fact-finding mission to the Gaza strip. He subsequently cancelled this trip after his travel clearance was declined by Israeli officials, fearing that the report would cast a negative shadow over Israel.

A less unexpected refusal of entry was that of academic Norman Finkelstein in May 2008. Finkelstein has been an outspoken critic of Israeli policies and accuses Israel of misrepresenting the Holocaust towards furthering its nationalistic aims.

Another critic of Israeli policy is renowned linguist, Professor Noam Chomsky who was barred from accessing the West Bank in May 2010. Israeli authorities tried to brush this incident off as a logistical error, suggesting that if Mr. Chomsky attempted to re-enter, he would succeed.

With Freedom of Speech being a tenant of democracy ,this pattern of denying academics and dissenting voices access to Palestinian territories seems incongruous with Israel’s claim to being the only true democracy in the Middle East.

Academic tensions between South Africa and Israel have previously come under the spotlight in march this year with the landmark decision by the University of Johannesburg to sever ties with Israel’s Ben-Gurion university. In September 2010 a set of criteria were issued for BGU to comply with, within the following 6 months. BGU failed to meet these conditions which ‘ included a requirement that a Palestinian university must be included in the research relationship’.

Evidence was presented to the UJ Senate (one of its highest decision making bodies) ‘showing clearly BGU’s active restriction and violation of political and academic freedom; its direct and deliberate collaboration with the Israeli Defence Force (an occupying military force in flagrant violation of international law); and its maintenance of policies and practices that further entrench the discriminatory policies of the Israeli state.’

BGU spokesperson Faye Bittker said ‘cancelling this agreement, which was designed to solve real problems of water contamination in a reservoir near Johannesburg, will only hurt the residents of South Africa.’ This was in reference to the joint project between UJ and BGU exploring efforts to reduce water contamination. IOL news quoted Palestine Solidarity Campaign spokesman Salim Vally’s response: ‘As UJ’s deputy vice-chancellor, Adam Habib, has pointed out, ensuring clean water in South Africa has nothing to do with Israeli research and assistance, and has everything to do with the South African government’s investment.’

This academic boycott by UJ of BGU was a pioneering move hailing an important victory for the International Boycott Divestment and Sanctions movement. The moral relevance of this call being made by a South African University is important considering the previous international pressure (including academic pressure) applied on institutions complicit in supporting apartheid structures.

The academic boycott of BGU and Na’eems deportation are some examples of the struggle against occupation being played out on the academic field. Na’eem Jeenah returned to South Africa this morning. In a statement issued on Wednesday afternoon, Na’eem’s wife Melissa expressed appreciation to family, friends and the Department of International Relations and Cooperation, the Deputy Foreign Minister Ebrahim Ebrahim and the Ambassador to Tel Aviv, HE Ambassador Ismail Coovadia for their ongoing support.

Ayesha Jacub is a freelance writer and medical Doctor from South Africa now living in Doha.

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2.  Al Jazeera

21 May 2011 09:11

Academic freedom and ‘dangerous ideas’

As much of the West becomes increasingly Islamophobic – universities are assumed “breeding grounds” for radicalisation.

http://english.aljazeera.net/indepth/opinion/2011/05/20115209548781438.html

Tarak Barkawi

Universities have always been venues for discussion of ideas that change society – but self-serving managers now collude with state officials to criminalise academic research considered ‘dangerous’ [GALLO/GETTY]

There is this absurd idea that universities are somehow “ivory towers”, that they are separate from the real world, from the influence of politics and power. Nothing could be further from the truth, as the exponential growth of “terrorism studies” demonstrates.

Academics and universities are profoundly shaped by power. And they, in turn, shape politics and society. Anthropology developed alongside empire. Physics looks the way it does because of funding for nuclear weapons and nuclear energy research. Area studies was more or less a creation of the US department of defence, which sought knowledge of all the places threatened by communism.

Naturally, entrepreneurial academics and university administrators are on the lookout for whatever new knowledge power and money think they need – mostly science, technology, and medicine but also law schools, business schools, and public policy programs. Their efforts attract funding, which provides resources, which further develops these areas, shaping the very nature of the contemporary university.

The illusion that knowledge can be free from power is the supreme marketing advantage of universities. Free inquiry produces the best ideas, which then can be put to work in the real world for profit, comfort, health, and security. The great universities of the developed world grew under this illusion, and society and economy benefitted enormously from their research and teaching.

But ideas are also volatile and potentially threatening, and they can be untoward and inconvenient, especially when they concern politics and violence. I once was invited to a particularly inspired conference on a sub-industry in terrorism studies called “radicalisation”. This is the idea that one can study how people – Muslims, primarily – become “radicalised” and turn to violence.

‘Radicalisation’ as a dangerous theory

The conference was inspired because it was held in South Africa. Radicals who had fought body and soul against apartheid were present. They had a rather different appreciation of what it meant to be radical than the Western and Israeli security academics and officials in attendance.

Back in the West, “radicalisation” was concerned with identifying and combating dangerous ideas and their bearers. But the politics of “the War on Terror” determined the limits of thought. In Tony Blair’s Britain, radicalisation of British Muslims could not be blamed on the war in Iraq. As elsewhere in Europe, it was supposed to be about the failure of Muslims to properly integrate, the result of a multiculturalism that was too tolerant.

“Radicalisation” was indeed a dangerous idea and began to affect what was happening in both politics and in universities. Research councils in the UK funnelled money into “policy relevant” research on the topic. The imprimatur of academic research helped foster the belief that various texts and websites, personalities and forums were a threat to public security.

The universities now found themselves portrayed as sites of radicalisation, as places where dangerous ideas infected vulnerable Muslims. Indeed, University College London is apparently to blame for the bomb in Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab’s underwear.

A conflict ensued between the university’s purpose-free inquiry and the politics of “the War on Terror”. Controls on reading lists, libraries, outside speakers, and student organisations were debated. In a delightful Catch-22, some of the very texts and websites used by teachers and researchers in terrorism studies were now considered “radicalising”.

Universities in the rosy blush of Enlightenment self-confidence would brush off the notion that they were supposed to restrict rather than foster debate about “national security”.

Even the cynical university manager would know that the brand of his enterprise was at stake. Give in to too many demands to control thought and adapt to the politics of the day, and it would be fatally compromised. The communists and homosexuals can be handed over to Senator McCarthy – but after that he will have to be stopped for the sake of freedom of thought.

But there is another domain in which universities are not separate from society: neoliberalism’s destructive management culture. There is little notion here of free thinking, but much desire to radically restructure everything existing in the cause of one’s own career and bank balance. The university version is astounding for its combination of incompetence and acute sensitivity to prevailing winds.

Freedom to think, just not about Islam

The result is beyond farce, as events at the University of Nottingham have demonstrated. A graduate student, Rizwaan Sabir, asked his friend to print off a document he was using for his research on terrorism. The document was originally called “Military Studies in the Jihad against the Tyrants” and the friend, Hicham Yezza, was an administrator in the modern languages department. Versions of it were in the University’s own library.

In the hysteria generated by fears of “terrorists” in our midst, the model citizen, channelling their inner Jack Bauer, is the one who turns in their neighbours in a timely fashion.

And so when a colleague discovered the document on Yezza’s computer, the police were called with undue haste, within hours. University officials did not pause to consult Sabir’s teachers or the University’s own terrorism experts, which included a former British army officer, Dr Rod Thornton. But an academic involved from the very beginning, a professor of literature no less, did assure police officers that the document in question was not “legitimate material” and was “illegal”. A University official announced the document had “no valid reason to exist” and was “utterly indefensible”.

Sabir and Yezza were sent off to six days of detention and interrogation, the beginning of a long saga for them and their families with counter-terror police and, in Yezza’s case, the immigration authorities. They were eventually cleared.

The University reacted like a company whose brand was under threat, but one which had forgotten its brand was academic freedom, not witch hunting. An apology and a campus-wide period of reflection and debate would have settled the matter. Instead, no mistake was to be admitted – lest harm come to the careers of university managers.

In the neoliberal era, when a company is publically criticised for good reason, managers seek redress in the courts over matters of libel, as in the McLibel affair. When their own employees speak out, they are disciplined, fired, or sued. In such ways does the cold grip of private power strangle public speech.

Accordingly, the University of Nottingham has used disciplinary procedures and harassment to silence any criticism of its actions from its own staff. Most recently, it suspended Dr Thornton for presenting details of the sordid affair at an academic conference. For good measure, it used legal threats to force the academic association that sponsored the conference to remove his paper from their website. Al Jazeera readers can find it here.

And so, in the twilight days of a war fought in the name of civilisation, a Western university has substituted logics of libel and defamation for free speech, and filed academic freedom away in some forgotten corner of its human resources department. A civilisation dying to the clank of filing cabinets closing and pens scribbling on the bottom line, so completely have neoliberalism and “the War on Terror” hollowed out the values of the West – even in its “ivory towers”.

Tarak Barkawi is Senior Lecturer, Centre of International Studies, University of Cambridge. He specialises in the study of war, armed forces and society with a focus on conflict between the West and the global South in historical and contemporary perspective. He is author of Globalisation and War, as well as many scholarly articles.

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Al Jazeera’s editorial policy.

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3.  Haaretz,

May 20, 2011

Jews are dishonored by a blind defense of Israel

‘Two Jews, three opinions,’ is the old adage. On ‘everything but Israel,’ is the present reality.

http://www.haaretz.com/print-edition/opinion/jews-are-dishonored-by-a-blind-defense-of-israel-1.362926

By Alan Levine

Now that the City University of New York board of trustees has reversed course and approved an honorary degree for Tony Kushner, it is time for the Jewish establishment to reflect upon its failure to speak out. Jewish history tells us that silence is complicity. While individual Jews and progressive Jewish organizations, such as Jews Say No!, Jewish Voice for Peace, Jews Against Islamophobia, Jews for Racial and Economic Justice, the Shalom Center, and J Street joined those protesting CUNY’s earlier decision to withdraw its initial offer of an honorary degree to Kushner, not one of the mainstream Jewish organizations seemed to think the trustees did anything wrong in punishing someone for his dissenting views on Israel. Neither the American Jewish Committee nor Congress, not the Anti-Defamation League, not the Jewish Community Relations Council, not Hillel.

It is not the first time. Prior to the Kushner fiasco, two front-page controversies erupted in recent years over actions by New York public officials against persons believed to be critical of Israel. In each case, the major Jewish organizations were either actively complicit or, by their silence, tacitly complicit, reflecting a mindset that dissent on Israel is bad for Israel and bad for the Jews. The position is wrong as a matter of strategy. More important, it is wrong morally, and represents a profound betrayal of the Jewish ethical commitment to open inquiry and to justice.

The first controversy involved Debbie Almontaser, an esteemed educator who was selected by the city’s department of education in 2007 to head the new Khalil Gibran International Academy, the nation’s first Arabic dual-language school. Because she was an Arab and a Muslim, she was subjected to a relentless, bigoted smear campaign. Nevertheless, her supporters remained firm, until a front-page New York Post article appeared describing the sale of “Intifada NYC” T-shirts. Although it was clear that Almontaser had no connection to the T-shirts, she was pursued by a Post reporter, who asked her for the root of the word “intifada.” She said that its Arabic root is a word meaning “shaking off.”

The next day, August 6, 2007, the Post published an article headlined “City Principal Is ‘Revolting,'” which reported that Almontaser had “defended” the “pro-violence shirt.” The JCRC and the ADL, which had previously admired Almontaser’s work, weighed in against her. Teachers union president Randi Weingarten questioned Almontaser’s fitness to be a school principal because she had not condemned the intifada, an unprecedented suggestion that a New York City educator be required to take a pro-Israel loyalty oath. By the end of the week, the mayor and the schools chancellor had demanded her resignation.

A respected educator lost her job only because she was thought to be insufficiently supportive of Israel. No mainstream Jewish organization said a word in protest. To the contrary.

A footnote to that story: CUNY trustee Jeffrey Wiesenfeld, who led the opposition to the Kushner award, was an overwrought opponent of KGIA as well. When a KGIA supporter, a rabbi, angrily differed with him at a public rally, Wiesenfeld suggested that the rabbi “get yourself a suicide bomb and go blow yourself up.” So much for the man who thought Tony Kushner’s views on Israel were not rational.

Then earlier this year there was the case of Kristofer Petersen-Overton, a Brooklyn College adjunct professor hired by the political science department to teach a course on the Middle East. Although the department had approved Petersen-Overton’s credentials and the proposed course, NY State Assemblyman Dov Hikind wrote the college that Petersen-Overton was “an overt supporter of terrorism.” The college promptly canceled the course. After letters of protest poured in from around the world, it was reinstated. Although the college’s capitulation to Hikind represented a serious assault on academic freedom in the name of pro-Israel orthodoxy, not a single mainstream Jewish organization spoke out.

And now Tony Kushner’s honorary degree. The CUNY trustees, after a firestorm of criticism, have admitted error. But how did it happen in the first place? Wiesenfeld is only one vote. What accounts for the initial acquiescence of Benno Schmidt, CUNY’s board chair, who, as a former president of Yale and a First Amendment scholar, knows the stifling impact on academic freedom when universities capitulate to demands of political orthodoxy? There is a clue in his statement calling for the reinstatement of Kushner’s honorary degree. While acknowledging that a candidate’s political views are irrelevant to the awarding of honorary degrees, Schmidt gratuitously added, “If it were appropriate for us to take politics into account in deciding whether to approve an honorary degree, I might agree with Trustee Wiesenfeld, whose political views on the matters in controversy are not far distant from my own.” Having said that Wiesenfeld’s extremist political views are irrelevant, he proceeded to establish his own pro-Israel orthodoxy. That the board chair of a distinguished university is compelled to establish that he is “sufficiently pro-Israel” says that something is terribly wrong with the current climate of discourse about Israel and its policies.

Two Jews, three opinions, is the old adage. On “everything but Israel,” is the present reality. Despite its belief to the contrary, neither the Jewish community nor Israel is well-served by that reality. Mainstream Jewry is dishonored by having the likes of Wiesenfeld and Hikind be its public voice on such matters, and by insisting that unquestioning and irrational loyalty to Israel substitute for rational debate and a commitment to what is just.

Alan Levine, a New York civil rights lawyer, represented Debbie Almontaser in her suit against the NYC Department of Education.

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4. Herald Tribune,

May 20, 2011

Palestinian Sees Prospects of Deal Receding

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/05/21/world/middleeast/21palestinian.html?_r=1&ref=middleeast

By ISABEL KERSHNER

JERUSALEM — After President Obama’s high-profile speech on Thursday in which he laid out broad principles for reaching an Israeli-Palestinian deal, the Palestinian president, Mahmoud Abbas, called an emergency meeting at his headquarters in Ramallah in the West Bank. He advised his associates not to comment on the speech, according to a senior Palestinian official who attended the meeting, but to wait instead for Mr. Obama’s meeting with the prime minister of Israel in the White House “and see if there are any positive signs.”

By the end of that meeting, judging by the statements of Mr. Abbas’s associates, the prospects of renewed negotiations leading to a swift agreement appeared at least as distant, if not more, than before.

The official, Nabil Shaath, a leader of Mr. Abbas’s party and a veteran negotiator, said that Mr. Obama’s speech had “contained little hope for the Palestinians,” except for the one sentence that spoke of the borders of a future Palestinian state being based on the 1967 lines with mutually agreed land swaps, a shift in American diplomatic language that addressed a long-held Palestinian demand.

But sitting alongside Mr. Obama after a two-hour meeting in the Oval Office, Mr. Netanyahu publicly and forcefully shot down that notion. Ignoring the element of land swaps, which would afford negotiators some flexibility, the Israeli leader totally rejected the idea of withdrawing to the pre-1967 lines, reiterating that they are “indefensible” and do not take into account the “demographic changes,” meaning the large Israeli settlement blocs that have taken hold in the West Bank over the last 40 years.

Yet Mr. Netanyahu is “continuing to make that demographic change through settlement and colonization,” fumed Mr. Shaath in a telephone interview from Ramallah. He noted that Mr. Obama made only passing reference to the continuing construction in his speech and did not mention it at all in his statement on Friday.

In a world of nuclear weapons, rocketry, and powerful air forces like Israel’s, Mr. Shaath added, it was irrelevant to speak of borders as indefensible, especially, he said, when applied to “a tiny country like Palestine.”

Adding to the sense of Palestinian outrage, Nabil Abu Rudeineh, the official spokesman of Mr. Abbas, issued a statement after the Obama-Netanyahu meeting saying that Mr. Netanyahu’s position was “an official rejection of Mr. Obama’s initiative, of international legitimacy and of international law.”

It was the Palestinians who walked out of the last round of peace negotiations last September after a partial Israeli moratorium on building in the settlements expired. In order to return to talks, Palestinian officials say, they want to hear Mr. Netanyahu agree to the 1967 lines as the basis for negotiations and a renewed, if temporary, settlement freeze.

In the absence of negotiations, the Palestinian leadership plans to seek international recognition of a Palestinian state in the United Nations General Assembly in September, an idea that is opposed by the United States and that could isolate Israel.

Mr. Shaath said that Mr. Obama’s speech conceded most issues to the Israelis, including viewing Israel as a Jewish state, opposing the plans for United Nations recognition and criticizing the Fatah faction for its recent reconciliation pact with Hamas, which the United States designates as a terrorist organization.

On the refugee issue, one of most delicate and intractable in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, Mr. Obama managed to upset both sides. Mr. Shaath criticized the president for suggesting that refugees could be left, like the status of Jerusalem, for discussion at a later stage after the subjects of borders and security. The Israelis were critical that Mr. Obama failed to spell out that the solution for Palestinian refugees of the 1948 war and their descendants lay not in Israel, but within the borders of a future Palestinian state.

Mr. Netanyahu said Friday that it was time to tell the Palestinians that any return of refugees to Israel proper was “not going to happen.”

Mr. Shaath, the veteran Palestinian negotiator, said that any idea that the positions articulated in Washington might induce the Palestinians to abandon their march toward the United Nations was “utterly ridiculous.”

Palestinian officials brushed aside the statements by Mr. Obama and Mr. Netanyahu that the recent pact between Fatah and Hamas raises serious problems and requires answers from the Palestinian leadership. Fatah leaders said that the reconciliation was an internal affair that had nothing to do with the peace process.

In Israel, the news channels broadcasted the statements at the White House in real time, but there was little immediate reaction since the meeting ran late into the Sabbath eve. Channel 2 News, which generally has the highest ratings, extended its Friday news program to cover the event, but minutes later the commercial channel reverted to its usual programming — a local singing contest that is the Israeli equivalent of “American Idol.”

But the Palestinians were not alone in their view that the recent developments in Washington had not helped the peace process. In a critique of Mr. Obama’s speech, Robert Satloff, executive director of The Washington Institute for Near East Policy, which is widely seen as pro-Israel, said that the approach to Israeli-Palestinian peace enunciated by Mr. Obama had “within it the seeds of deepening tension and perhaps even rift between the two sides.”

Mr. Satloff’s article was recommended to reporters by Mr. Netanyahu’s media department as “one of the best analyses of the situation.”

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5.  Haaretz,

May 20, 2011

Netanyahu’s Israel is on course to become a pariah state

Netanyahu heads for Washington as Israel to stop Israel’s collision course with all our allies, who are no longer prepared to listen to his arguments about the country’s security.

http://www.haaretz.com/print-edition/opinion/netanyahu-s-israel-is-on-course-to-become-a-pariah-state-1.362923

By Zeev Sternhell

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is going to Washington at what may be the last chance to turn the establishment of a Palestinian state from a global anti-Israel campaign into a joint Israeli, American and European project. The establishment of a sovereign Palestinian state is today a necessity, just as Zionism was a necessity. And about half of Israeli society apparently agrees with Western public opinion and Western governments on the principle that Palestinian Arabs have the same right to independence and sovereignty as do Israeli Jews.

Were Netanyahu a leader worthy of the name, one who understood the deep processes taking place under his nose and tried to make the most of them, he would not think and speak like a leader of the Betar youth movement. But on his upcoming trip to the United States, Netanyahu will prefer to rely on AIPAC, an organization that represents the right-wing minority of American Jews and symbolizes the Jewish community’s disappearing past. There, just as in the Likud Central Committee, it is still possible to talk about the Land of Israel as belonging to the Jews alone.

It is precisely this approach, which ignores the rights of the Palestinians, that drives young people, intellectuals and liberals away. At universities, in the media and in the cultural world, these groups are already displacing the conservatives. The extent to which the Jewish right has lost its sway even in its stronghold, New York, can be gathered from its failure to prevent American playwright Tony Kushner from getting an honorary doctorate from the City University of New York.

Another incident, which was not publicized in the media but is even more significant, involved an attempt to prevent a young pro-Palestinian lecturer from getting a position at Brooklyn College. Under pressure from the pro-Israel right, the planned appointment was canceled by the school’s president. But when the academic staff rose up in arms, the lecturer was given the job. If the right is unable to get the results it wants even in Brooklyn, it is easy to imagine its plight in other places.

To this must be added the international pressure for an academic and economic boycott of Israel, which has been generated by the recognition that there is no other way to force Israel to end the occupation. Closer to home, Deutsche Bahn’s withdrawal from the project to lay a railway line between Tel Aviv and Jerusalem should have caused a shock. But here, we prefer to avoid reality.

Because of its blindness and imperviousness, Israel is gradually turning from a source of pride and an object of admiration into a nuisance, if not an object of outright hostility.

This is how, with our own hands, we turned the problem of the occupation into an issue for the entire Western world, and the Palestinians into the West’s proteges: Faced with an occupying power that is simultaneously unresponsive and self-righteous, the West feels moral and political responsibility for the Palestinians’ fate, just as in the past, Western public opinion felt deep sympathy for the Jewish state.

This feeling of responsibility has increased in recent years, after it became clear that the Israeli right has no intention of responding to Palestinian demands for freedom and independence. Under the guise of security considerations and the war on terror hides the real, ideological reason: In the right’s view, recognizing the equal national rights of the Palestinians means forgoing exclusive Jewish ownership of the Land of Israel. From the point of view of members of the Israeli rejectionist front, recognizing the equality of Jewish and Arab rights on both sides of the Green Line is tantamount to betraying Jewish history.

But since the number of people who are still prepared to buy an argument of this kind is diminishing worldwide, Israel is on a collision course with all our allies and supporters. And at the end of this road, it is liable to become a pariah state.

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6.  Haaretz Saturday, May 21, 2011

Latest update 17:01 21.05.11

Report: Palestinian group calls for renewed border demonstrations

Group that organized Nakba Day protests has called on Palestinian refugees to march to Israel’s borders on anniversary of Six Day War on June 5, Maan news agency reports.

http://www.haaretz.com/news/diplomacy-defense/report-palestinian-group-calls-for-renewed-border-demonstrations-1.363145

By Haaretz Service

Tags: Israel news Palestinians

The Palestinian group that organized Nakba Day demonstrations last week is calling on Palestinian refugees to stage peaceful marches to Israel’s borders on June 5, the Palestinian news agency Maan reported on Saturday.

June 5 will mark the 44th anniversary of the start of the Six Day War in 1967, during which Israeli forces took control of East Jerusalem, the West Bank and the Gaza Strip.

According to the report, the group said that refugees will hold demonstrations in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip, as well as in Syria, Lebanon and Jordan.

Last Sunday, clashes erupted during Nakba Day protests in the Palestinian territories and along Israel’s borders with neighboring states.

A total of 14 demonstrators were killed in incidents on the Lebanese and Syrian borders.

The group organizing the demonstrations reportedly said on Saturday that the May 15 protests were “just the beginning”.

NOVANEWS

 
Mixed Reactions to Obama’s Middle East Speech – by Stephen Lendman
Perhaps one way to view Obama’s speech is saying you can please all the people some of the time, some of them all the time, but not all of them all the time. World reactions were indeed mixed, though policies, not posturing, are key.
Obama’s, in fact, have no ambiguity, including imperial wars and rock-solid support for Israel. However, not everyone believes it, including the Zionist Organization of America, the oldest American one, founded in 1897.
On May 19, its press release headlined, “ZOA: AIPAC Should Rescind Invitation for Obama to Speak,” saying:
ZOA “strongly condemned President Obama’s Mideast speech (favoring) the establishment of a Hamas/Fatah/Iran state on the Auschwitz 1967 indefensible armistice lines. This would almost surely become a Hamas/Iran terror state threatening Israel and further destabilizing the Mideast. President Obama has dealt Israel a severe diplomatic blow, which harms all those who care about peace and fighting terrorism.”
The statement’s bigoted absurdity requires no comment. Its contempt for truth and justice is self-explanatory.
In contrast, the Anti-Defamation League, no paragon of virtue, applauded Obama’s Israeli support, saying:
The ADL “commended (Obama) for his statement of US priorities in the Middle East, his strong affirmation of the deep and ‘unshakeable’ relationship between the United States and Israel, and expressed support for his vision of a negotiated Israeli-Palestinian settlement with strong security provisions for Israel and a non-militarized Palestinian state.”
On May 22, Obama will address AIPAC at its annual Washington conference, affirming America’s commitment to Israel, as will other top US officials. They include Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, House Speaker John Boehner, and other congressional members, genuflecting to the Israeli Lobby’s power in their annual pilgrimage to AIPAC.
According to Mondoweiss’ Philip Weiss, “Obama won’t have to write another speech” for their conference, quoting his pledge of allegiance to Israel, saying:
“….(O)ur friendship is rooted deeply in a shared history and shared values. Our commitment to Israel’s security is unshakeable. And we will stand against attempts to single it out for criticism in international forums.”
It was enough for J Street, another pro-Israeli organization, to commend Obama’s “important speech today outlining his approach to the changing Middle East and stating that efforts to end the Israeli-Palestinian conflict through a two-state solution are ‘more urgent than ever.’ ”
“We are grateful that (Obama) reiterated….America’s friendship with Israel (and) commitment to (its) security.”
On May 19, Reuters reported other instant reactions to his speech, including:
Cairo University Professor Ezzedin Choukri-Fishere, saying:
“I think this goes substantially beyond what Obama said in his Cairo speech in 2009, where he merely….talked about general principles of a new American policy toward the Arab world.”
Egypt’s Muslim Brotherhood senior member Essam Al-Erian:
“A disappointing speech. Nothing new. American strategy remains as is. American cover for dictatorial presidents in Syria, Yemen, Bahrain remains as is. American promises are just promises. There is no decisive decision to immediately withdraw from Iraq or Afghanistan. Threatening Iran remains the same.”
Moreover, his June 2009 Cairo speech “evaporated after two weeks. This speech will evaporate in a few minutes. And the message it carries to the nations of this region is basically that: Do not wait to get any support from the White House. Maintain your efforts and achieve your freedom.”
Doha-based Brookings Center research director Shadi Hamid:
Obama tries “to appeal to everyone and ends up disappointing everyone. (He) says US core interests align with Arab hopes. Well, why didn’t they align for five decades?”
Cairo University Professor Hassan Nafaa:
“It was a great speech, very eloquent, full of hope. There was a real commitment to democratic transition in the Arab world.”
West Bank Birzeit University analyst Samir Awad:
“Obama did not come up with any new position. He totally adopted the Israeli position and that is not the role of an honest mediator. I do not think that this speech will bring the sides closer to peace. As a Palestinian, I was expecting more from him.
Council on Foreign Relations member Robert Danin:
“It’s very significant. For the first time, the United States has articulated what the territorial basis for a settlement between Israel and the Palestinians should be.”
Mixed Media Reaction
London Independent analyst Robert Fisk headlined, “Lots of rhetoric – but very little help,” saying:
“It was the same old story. Palestinians can have a ‘viable’ state, Israel a ‘secure’ one. Israel cannot be de-legitimized. The Palestinians must not attempt to ask the UN for statehood in September. No peace can be imposed on either party….Oh yes, and the Palestinian state must have no weapons to defend itself. So that’s what ‘viable’ means!”
A New York Times editorial headlined, “Peace and Change,” saying:
Promising “strong support to those yearning for freedom, (his) speech on Thursday did not go far enough….The two big questions now are: How quickly will Washington deliver (on promised aid to) Egypt and Tunisia? And how much harder (will Obama) push Israel and the Palestinians to start serious peace negotiations,” no matter that past ones were irrelevant and stillborn, what Times editorials won’t acknowledge.
A Washington Post editorial headlined, “A new Mideast policy,” saying:
“Obama laid out a far-reaching and energetic new approach to the unfolding Arab revolution. (He) unequivocally stated that ‘it will be the policy of the United States to promote reform across the region,’ and to support transitions to democracy….In short, (he) gave coherence, resources and direction to a US Middle East policy that had been confused and underpowered.”
At best, in fact, he offered old wine in new bottles, endorsing imperial dominance, support for Israel, other key regional allies, and lip service only for Palestinians, meaning nothing ahead will change.
Nonetheless, Wall Street Journal writer Laura Meckler headlined, “Jewish Donors Warn Obama on Israel,” saying:
He risks “losing financial support because of concerns about his handling of Israel….complaints (centering) on a perception that (he’s) been too tough on Israel.”
According to Malcolm Hoenlein, executive vice chairman of the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations (CPMAJO), the leading Zionist umbrella group:
Possible discontent may affect Obama’s fundraising. “It’s that people hold back. People don’t have the enthusiasm and are not rushing forward (to) be supportive. Much more what you’ll see is (others will) hold back now.”
Notorious bigot Alan Dershowitz’s Jerusalem Post op-ed headlined, “President Obama’s mistake,” saying:
“Without insisting that the Palestinians give up their absurd claim to have millions of supposed refugees ‘return’ to Israel as a matter of right, he insisted that Israel must surrender all of the areas captured in its defensive war of 1967, subject only to land swaps.”
Former Chicago columnist Mike Royko once remarked that “no self-respecting fish would (want to be) wrapped in a Murdoch paper.” He might have added the Jerusalem Post for publishing any Dershowitz op-ed, an earlier article calling him:
— a purveyor of myths, canards, false logic, and hate;
— a misinterpreter of fundamental law standards;
— a believer in unique Jewish suffering, mindless of all others;
— an advocate of torture, targeted assassinations, land theft and dispossessions; and
— a committed Zionist and Israeli apologist, legitimizing its aggression, its worst crimes and abuses, believing that “international law, and those who administer it, must understand that (in times of war) the old rules” don’t apply against “fanatical foes.”
He also defends preemptive wars, no matter how lawless, calling the UN Charter’s 51 (limiting attacks to self-defense) “anachronistic, (a) mid-twentieth century view of international law” inapplicable to today’s threats.
In other words, like other extremist pro-Israeli apologists, on matters affecting Israel, laws don’t applies, threat or no threat.
On May 20, Haaretz headlined, “Obama to aides: Netanyahu will never do what it takes to achieve Mideast peace,” but neither will he or other US officials.
Nonetheless, Netanyahu said “Israel appreciates (Obama’s) commitment to peace,” ahead of his May 20 White House meeting.
Palestinian Reaction
After Obama’s speech, President Mahmoud Abbas called for an emergency meeting with other Arab leaders to discuss it. His spokesman, Nabil Abu Rudeineh, said an official response will come after consultations are completed. Thursday night, Abbas called Egyptian, Jordanian and Saudi foreign ministers to discuss Obama’s speech.
Hamas spokesperson Sami Abu Zuhri said his speech reiterated failed US policies, adding that he “even refuses to denounce the ongoing Israeli occupation, and expressed ongoing support to Israeli crimes.”
Hamas political bureau member Izzat Al Rishiq said Obama demanding Palestinians recognize Israel as a Jewish state shows his clear bias. He also denounced his support for Israeli settlements and backing for delaying discussions on Jerusalem and refugees until final peace talk stages. Palestinians, of course, have heard that excuse since pre-Oslo, knowing by now that tomorrow never comes.
Moreover, a Hamas press release strongly condemned Israel’s announced addition of 1,500 units in Pisgat Zeev and Abu Ghneim (Har Homa) East Jerusalem settlements, saying:
They “escalat(e) Israeli violations and illegal constructions of Jewish settlements in the occupied West Bank, including in occupied East Jerusalem.”
A Final Comment
After 44 years of occupation, every day is Nakba Day for Palestinians, what political posturing won’t change, especially because Washington and Israel won’t tolerate it.
Daily in fact, Palestinians experience reality on the ground, documented in weekly Palestinian Center for Human Rights reports. Its latest May 12 – 18 one covered escalated Israeli West Bank and Gaza attacks:
— killing two Palestinian children;
— wounding 144 others, including 47 children, five women, and four journalists;
— firing on fishermen off Gaza’s coast, no casualties reported;
— arresting 12 peaceful protesters, 15 others in West Bank community incursions, and another four at military checkpoints;
— terrorizing children at the Al-Thawri neighborhood Orphanage School in East Jerusalem;
— allowing settlers to “commit systematic crimes against Palestinians” and their property with impunity; and
— much more in the West Bank, East Jerusalem and besieged Gaza.
Nakba is Palestine’s catastrophe, an ongoing daily disaster under illegal military occupation. Changing reality to hope starts with ending it.
Stephen Lendman lives in Chicago and can be reached at lendmanstephen@sbcglobal.net. Also visit his blog site at sjlendman.blogspot.com and listen to cutting-edge discussions with distinguished guests on the Progressive Radio News Hour on the Progressive Radio Network Thursdays at 10AM US Central time and Saturdays and Sundays at noon. All programs are archived for easy listening.

Emperor Obama vs the Arab people

Despite calling for change in some parts of the Middle East, the US president reaffirmed the status quo where it counts.

By giving Israel his unflinching support, Obama has alienated much of the Arab world [GALLO/GETTY] In 1960, British Prime Minister Harold Macmillan delivered an important speech titled Wind of Change, first in Accra and later in Cape Town, signaling British decolonisation of its African territories and warning the South African regime to move away from its apartheid policies. In 2011, US President Barack Obama begged to differ. While dubbing his speech Winds of Change, in reference to the uprisings ongoing across the Arab World, his speech made it clear that the same winds were not yet blowing in Washington DC, and perhaps never will. President Obama’s second speech on the Arab world, delivered on 19 May, showed such constancy and lack of change in US policy as his first speech, delivered in Cairo on 4 June 2009. This is not to say that the two speeches lacked flair and imperial hubris in the delivery, but rather that their characteristic lack of substance or novelty, let alone their decorative and gratuitous verbosity, demonstrate that imperial climate control in Washington can never be “changed”, not even by the wind of the Arab uprisings. The problem with US policy in the Arab world is not only its insistence on broadcasting credulous US propaganda – easily fed to Americans, yet with few takers elsewhere in the world – but also that it continues to show a complete lack of familiarity with Arab political culture and insists on insulting the intelligence of most Arabs, whom it claims to address directly with speeches such as Mr Obama’s. US diversions In the past three decades, Arab leaders allied with the United States (and even the few who were not) have been telling their peoples that Iran, Shia, Sunni Islamists, the Palestinian people and their wretched cause, among others, are the reason for the hardship of Arabs. Indeed this conjuring up of enemies started with the US-Saudi-Kuwaiti plan to subcontract an all-out war against revolutionary Iran, as the enemy of Arabs, which was launched by Saddam Hussein in 1981 to defend America’s oil wells – and which resulted by 1988 in the death of one million Iranians and 400,000 Iraqis. In the meantime, and since the late 1960s, Jordan, Syria, and Lebanon have engaged in wars with the Palestinian guerrillas and against Palestinian civilians, whom they identified as the enemy. Egypt launched a war against Libya when Sadat was in power, and later, under Mubarak, against its own Islamists and against the Palestinian people. Indeed even Algeria was conjured up as the enemy of Egyptians in Mubarak’s last year on the throne. Saudi Arabia, while repressing all of its population in the name of Wahabism, has not stopped hatching various plans (and plots) since 1982 to bring Israel into the Arab fold. When President Obama peddles the Israeli lie, that his pro-Israel advisors at the White House – and there has been no other kinds of Middle East advisors at the White House since the Clinton administration – feed him, that “too many leaders in the region tried to direct their people’s grievances elsewhere. The West was blamed as the source of all ills, a half-century after the end of colonialism. Antagonism toward Israel became the only acceptable outlet for political expression,” to which leaders is he actually referring? Sadat, Mubarak, Ben Ali, Kings Hussein and Abdullah II of Jordan, Kings Hasan II and Muhammad VI of Morocco, President Bouteflika, any of the Gulf monarchs or the two Hariri prime ministers, Rafiq and Saad? Not only are such lies not believable to anyone in the wider world, but also, were the US administration to believe them, explain the ongoing foreign policy failures in a region the US insists on dominating – but which it refuses to learn much about. Popular opposition and leadership support Opposition to the United States and Israel in fact is something espoused by the peoples of the Arab world, not by their leaders, who have been insisting for decades that the US and Israel are the friends of Arabs. Indeed the people of the region have been the only party that insisted that US policies and domination in the region and constant Israeli aggressions are what make these two countries enemies of the Arab peoples, while Arab rulers and their propaganda machines insisted on diverting people’s anger toward other imagined enemies, which the US conjured up for the region, while making peace with Israel. Obama’s attempt to deny the hatred that Arabs feel towards the United States and Israel because of the actions of these two countries is nothing short of the continued refusal of the United States and Israel (not of Arabs) to take responsibility for their own actions by shifting the blame for the horrendous violence they have inflicted on the region onto their very victims. When Obama and Israel call on Arabs to take responsibility for the state of the region and not blame the US and Israel for it, what they are essentially doing is to refuse to take responsibility for what they have inflicted on Arabs. Arabs have clearly taken responsibility and have been trying to remove the dictators that the US and Israel have supported for decades – and which they continue to support. The only parties refusing to take responsibility here are the United States and Israel. Obama’s speech, sadly, continues this intransigent tradition. In the same vein, Obama chastises Syria for following “its Iranian ally, seeking assistance from Tehran in the tactics of suppression. And this speaks to the hypocrisy of the Iranian regime”. He would have done well to accuse the French, British, and his own government – with whom the regimes of Ben Ali and Mubarak consulted until their last moment in office. The scandal of French collaboration with Ben Ali’s and Mubarak’s governments until the last minute, especially in “security” matters, has filled world newspapers over the past months, as did the news that both the Egyptian defense minister Muhammad Tantawi (now in charge of the military council governing post-Mubarak Egypt) and army chief of staff Sami Anan spent much of the Egyptian uprising in Washington DC consulting with the Americans on how best to “deal” with the uprising – leaving aside the other direct line to Mubarak and Omar Suleiman that many US government and security organs had until the last moment of Mubarak’s rule – and since. But Obama thinks Arabs are stupid or ignorant of the fact that it is the US and European countries who train and fund almost all governmental security agencies in the region. Iran’s help to Syria may expose Iranian hypocrisy, but US, British and French hypocrisy, thankfully remains unexposed. Freedom – for some Obama spoke of how “there must be no doubt that the United States of America welcomes change that advances self-determination and opportunity”, but given his insistence that such change be brought about in Syria and Libya, but not in Oman, Jordan, Morocco, Saudi Arabia, Bahrain (among others), does raise many doubts. The silence on demonstrations in monarchies (Saudi Arabia, Oman, Jordan, Morocco) and the mild criticisms of Yemen, whose popular uprising precedes Libya’s, stand in stark contrast with the vehemence of Obama’s criticisms of Syria and Libya. The belated mention of Bahrain stood out as a sign of a lack of courage, as now weeks after the Bahraini uprising has been successfully crushed through use of a US-supplied and supported Gulf mercenary force led by Saudi Arabia, Obama mustered the courage to speak about ongoing arrests there and the destruction of Shia mosques. In the case of Syria, however, his criticisms and those of his government started from day one. Indeed when juxtaposed with his statement that “we will keep our commitments to friends and partners”, a clearer picture was revealed about where and what kinds of changes the US welcomes – and where and what kinds of changes it does not. Obama even went further by enumerating where America’s “core” principles should apply: Baghdad, Damascus, Sanaa, and Tehran, in addition to Benghazi, Cairo, and Tunis – but not Riyadh, Manama, Muscat, Amman, Algiers, or Rabat. America’s alleged core principle of religious tolerance and equality is also highly country-specific. Aside from identifying Iraq, a country the US destroyed and where it instituted the most virulent form of religious sectarianism and ethnic hatred in the region, as “a multi-ethnic, multi-sectarian democracy”, Obama’s concern for religious tolerance applies to Egypt – and thankfully, but more mildly, to Bahrain only. But when it comes to Israel, this commitment disappears, as Obama insists that Arabs must “recognise Israel as a Jewish State”, and once again threatens Palestinians (as he had threatened them in his Cairo speech) to desist from “delegitimising” Israel’s right to be a state that discriminates by law against its non-Jewish citizens on a religious and ethnic basis. “For the Palestinians, efforts to delegitimise Israel will end in failure,” he said. Supporting religious tolerance, one would think, should apply uniformly and not selectively. Obama’s myopia, however, is such that he thinks Arabs will buy his anti-Arab and pro-Israel rhetoric readily. This also applies to another of America’s “core interests”, namely nuclear proliferation. Obama shamelessly declared that his country has “for decades … pursued” a policy of “stopping the spread of nuclear weapons” in the region. But as the entire world has known for almost four decades, Israel is the only country in the region that possesses such weapons, which, at least, on one occasion it threatened to use – and refuses to sign the nuclear non-proliferation treaty. That the US has supported Israel in its nuclear pursuits, and blocks any UN decision that seeks to penalise it for it seems not to be in contradiction of America’s “core interests.” Iraq, Syria, and Iran should be prevented from having nuclear reactors, even for peaceful purposes – but Israel can and should be allowed to have all the nuclear weapons it wishes to have. Sympathy for colonisers Finally, Obama comes to the Palestinian question and tells us once again nothing new or substantive, Zionist protestations notwithstanding. First, Arabs are enjoined once again – as we were in his Cairo speech – to sympathise with the poor Israeli Jews who experience “the pain of knowing that other children in the region are taught to hate them”. That Israel and the leading US Jewish organisations have for decades been the main global purveyors of the most racist and virulent forms of anti-Arab and anti-Muslim hateful propaganda seems to have escaped Obama and his advisors. What kind of credibility does Obama think he will have with Arabs who have been on the receiving end of such global hatred for decades, when he wants them to sympathize with the suffering of their persecutors who have been blowing up Arab children non-stop since 1948? But Obama went further, not only does he believe that, unlike all other countries in the region which must practice religious tolerance, Israel should be exempted from that condition and must be supported in its legal practice of religious and ethnic intolerance – but tells us that such exemption should only apply inside the state of Israel but not in the Occupied Territories. When Obama declares that “the dream of a Jewish and democratic state cannot be fulfilled with permanent occupation”, he is telling us that it is possible to exist without tolerance, meaning that Palestinian citizens of Israel should continue to suffer ethnic and religious discrimination from the “Jewish and democratic state” – but not Palestinians in the Occupied Territories. He remains unclear on whether Palestinians of the city of Jerusalem should suffer or not. Right to exist Obama proposes that the negotiations over the Israeli occupation of Jerusalem be postponed, but he simulatenously proposes that Israel should withdraw to the borders of 1967; here he is either showing ignorance of the situation, or outright malice. The 1967 borders of which Obama speaks include East Jerusalem, but Obama seems to have excepted the city from these borders a priori, as if it is not part of them, even though international law and the United Nations recognise it as part and parcel of the territories occupied through war in 1967. This is aside from the fact that Israel has illegally expanded East Jerusalem at the expense of West Bank lands, with some estimates putting its current municipal size at ten per cent of the West Bank (in 1967 it was a mere six square kilometers). The so-called “mutually agreed swaps” of land that Obama proposes are no such thing. Israel already took a further ten per cent of the West Bank behind its apartheid wall. Add to that the settlements and the Jordan Valley, which Israel claims is the part it wants to swap land for. What Palestinians have left at the end is less than 60 per cent of the West Bank that could be designated as a “Palestinian state”, although even that state should be “non-militarised,” yet surprisingly “sovereign”, as Obama tells us. Obama also remains concerned about Israel’s right to exist but not that of the Palestinians. He declared,without irony, in reference to Hamas: “How can one negotiate with a party that has shown itself unwilling to recognise your right to exist?” After all, the Palestinians have been negotiating for two decades with Israel, which refuses insistently to recognise the Palestinians’ right to exist in a state of their own. If Harold Macmillan’s speech in 1960 urged the South Africans to abandon apartheid, Obama’s in 2011 insists that the Palestinians must recognise Israel’s right to continue to be a racist state. When Obama speaks of how America’s “short-term interests” in the region, at times, “don’t align perfectly with our long-term vision for the region”, he is peddling the biggest imperial lie of all. America’s short- and long-term interests in the region have always been control of oil resources, securing US profits, and defending Israel. Until “winds of change” blow on these interests, the position of the United States as the most powerful anti-democratic force in the Arab World will remain the same, Emperor Obama’s speeches notwithstanding. Joseph Massad is Associate Professor of Modern Arab Politics and Intellectual History at Columbia University. He is author of The Persistence of the Palestinian Question (Routledge, 2006). The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Al Jazeera’s editorial policy.