MONDOWEISS ONLINE NEWSLETTER

NOVANEWS
 
12/07/2010

• What’s J Street doing meeting with Israeli officials on BDS?

• Attention progressives for Palestine: Rep. Alan Grayson wants to hear from you

• The intellectual dishonesty of Benny Morris: Blame the Palestinians, always

• A jolt? More on Brazil’s decision to recognize Palestine

• Carmel fire response shows criticism of Israel is based on policy not anti-Semitism

• Argentina, Uruguay recognize Palestine within its 1967 borders

• Fundraising drive off to a great start – please help us keep it going!

• Israel supporters using Wikileaks to promote attack on Iran are ignoring Arab public opinion

• BDS movement spreads to Australia

• Message to Vieux Farka Touré: Colonialism is colonialism, whether it happens in West Africa or Palestine

 

 

What’s J Street doing meeting with Israeli officials on BDS?

 

Dec 06, 2010

 

Alex Kane

The lobby group J Street has a somewhat muddled policy on the boycott, divestment and sanctions (BDS) movement.

An interview in which their executive director says that he’s meeting with the Israeli Foreign Ministry on “how to address” the movement adds to the confusion.

On their website, J Street explicitly says that it is “greatly concerned by the goals and tactics of the formal global BDS Movement” and that it opposes the BDS movement because “they fail explicitly to recognize Israel’s right to exist and they ignore or reject Israel’s role as a national home for the Jewish people.”

J Street was slammed by Palestine solidarity activists–including Israelis–for actively working with organizations such as the right-wing David Project, Stand With Us and the Jewish National Fund against the landmark divestment effort at the University of California, Berkeley.  After that episode, Jeremy Ben-Ami, J Street’s executive director, said that “J Street will not be signing on to letters with organizations like that in group settings again,” apparently conceding that J Street was wrong to do so.  And last June, during a Jewish debate on the BDS movement, J Street board member Kathleen Peratis said she would support the boycotting of settlement products (although this is clearly not J Street’s position).

But in a just-published interview with Hadassah Magazine, Ben-Ami says that “this very afternoon I have a meeting with people from Israel’s Foreign Ministry on how to address the BDS [Boycott Divestment Sanctions] movement.”

What exactly is J Street doing meeting with the Israeli Foreign Ministry over how to “address” BDS?

 

 

The Israeli government has a very unconfused, clear policy on the BDS movement:  it’s a threat to the State of Israel, part of a growing “delegitimization” campaign.  And they’re actively working to neutralize it.

Last summer, the Israeli Knesset began steps to pass what Adalah, a group that works to protect the rights of Palestinian citizens living in Israel, describes as a bill “to outlaw any activities promoting any kind of boycott against Israeli organizations, individuals or products.”  And the well-connected Reut Institute, an Israeli think tank, gave a presentation to the Israeli cabinet last winter on the need to “direct substantial resources to ‘attack’ and possibly engage in criminal ‘sabotage’” against the BDS movement, as Ali Abunimah reported.

In the most recent prominent move taken against the BDS movement, the Jewish Federations of North America and the Jewish Council for Public Affairs launched “a multimillion-dollar joint initiative to combat anti-Israel boycott, divestment and sanctions campaigns,” according to the Jewish Telegraphic Agency.

Where does J Street stand on all of this?  Does it support the undemocratic nature of the Israeli bill that seeks to criminalize boycotts against the state?  Does it support throwing millions of dollars to undermine a campaign that seeks to ensure that the human rights of Palestinians are respected?  And just what were they meeting with the Israeli Foreign Ministry about concerning the movement?

The post originally appeared on Alex Kane’s blog here.

 

Attention progressives for Palestine: Rep. Alan Grayson wants to hear from you

 

Dec 06, 2010

 

Seham

Rep. Grayson penned an article for Huffington Post today, Looking For Your Ideas and Advice, and created a website where he wants the progressive community to write to him with their ideas about anything from peace to the economy. He will be forwarding all comments to the Progressive Caucus’ two new leaders Reps. Keith Ellison and Raul Grijalva.  Though Rep. Grayson portrays himself as a progressive, on Palestine he is anything but.  In an interview withDemocracy Now in March of this year, he said the following about whether Israel should continue to ethnically cleanse East Jerusalem of its Palestinian inhabitants:

REP. ALAN GRAYSON: If you’re talking about areas in East Jerusalem, I don’t think it’s really conceivable that the Israelis will ever give up that land. I just don’t think that’s plausible. If you’re talking about areas like Ari’el, areas elsewhere on the West Bank, I think that that’s much more debatable. One could easily conceive of a two-state solution that allows Israel very little of that land. Even the Israelis’ own maps that were presented at Taba provided that only a tiny fraction of that land would end up in Israeli hands. For building outside of those areas, that seems to be unduly provocative. For building in an area that Israel is going to end up with anyway, under any conceivable form of peace, you know, that’s much less harmful.

 On AIPAC, Iran and the war on Gaza, Rep. Grayson had the following to say:

GRAYSON: I met with Howard Kohr, the head of AIPAC [American Israel Public Affairs Committee], twice last week.
PJV: And what was the gist of the conversation?
GRAYSON: The gist of the conversation was that Iran is a tremendous threat to Israel and needs to be stopped. And I agree with that.
PJV: And what about what is going on in the Gaza Strip; was there any conversation about that?
GRAYSON: Yes, we talked about that. I think what AIPAC often tries to do is to educate Members of Congress who frankly follow this a lot less closely than I do. In my case, I read Haaretz and the Jerusalem Post online four or five times a week, so I am pretty familiar with the circumstances and why the war took place. As a famous Israeli once said, the Palestinians never miss an opportunity to miss an opportunity.

 

 

Rep. Grayson will be leaving Congress in January, but it’s still important that we take this opportunity to let him know exactly where the rest of the progressive anti-war community that elected him stands on these issues and to let the new leaders of the Progressive Caucus know that Progressive Except for Palestine is not the direction we want them to take.

 

The intellectual dishonesty of Benny Morris: Blame the Palestinians, always
 

Dec 06, 2010

 

Matthew Taylor

Slog through Benny Morris’ latest screed about who’s to blame for the collapse of the two state solution at your own risk… It’s like a ride on a quadruple loop roller coaster. The twists and turns of the rampant intellectual dishonesty, complete with the requisite comparison of “dealing with the Palestinians is like appeasing Hitler,” will leave your stomach in your throat. A few rebuttals to Morris:

Palestinian political elites, of both the so-called “secular” and Islamist varieties, are dead set against partitioning the Land of Israel/Palestine with the Jews…. Fatah’s leaders, led by Palestine National Authority President Mahmoud Abbas, flatly reject the Clintonian formula of “two states for two peoples”…

Anyone who’s spoken personally with Fatah’s senior leaders, as I have, cannot with a straight face claim anything other than that they are desperate to partition Palestine. Really, where does Morris get this stuff?

Now let’s address the persistent “Hamas myth” — the myth that Hamas would block a viable two state solution. Israel’s apologists like to drag this one out of the fridge like expired, three-week old, moldy meatloaf. Morris writes (yawn!):

Hamas, which may represent the majority of the Palestinian people and certainly has the unflinching support of some 40 percent of them, speaks clearly. It openly repudiates a two-state solution. Hamas leaders, to bamboozle naïve (or wicked) Westerners…occasionally express a tactical readiness for a long-term truce under terms that they know are unacceptable to any Jewish Israelis (complete Israeli withdrawal to the 1967 borders and acceptance of the refugees’ “Right of Return”), but their strategic message is clear, echoing the Roman statesman Cato the Elder: “Israel must be destroyed.”

Let’s turn the microphone over to Hamas Prime Minister Ismail Haniyeh — other Hamas leaders, by the way, said virtually the same thing several years ago:

Ismail Haniyeh…signaled a softening of Hamas’s long-standing position prohibiting the ceding of any part of the land of what was British-mandated Palestine until 1948….

“We accept a Palestinian state on the borders of 1967, with Jerusalem as its capital, the release of Palestinian prisoners, and the resolution of the issue of refugees… Hamas will respect the results (of a referendum) regardless of whether it differs with its ideology and principles.”

 

 

And what about the Arab Peace Initiative, which calls for a “just, mutually agreed” solution to the refugee crisis? Benny Morris sends the words “just, mutually agreed” through his reality distortion field, and says:

The idea that the refugees must return to their homes has been the ethos, the be-all and end-all of Palestinian politics and policy, since 1948….In their public utterances during the past two years, Abbas and his colleagues have been rock-solid in their advocacy of an unrestricted“Right of Return”—and why not take them at their word?…

In reality, every Arab state/member, including the PA, including Abbas, has signed on to the Arab Peace Initiative, which calls for a “just, mutually agreed” solution. In what universe would Israel “mutually agree” to an “unrestricted” Right of Return? Israel would not. Abbas is rock-solid in endorsing “mutually agreed.”

I could go on and on about Morris’ distortions and slights of hand, for example, not mentioning that the Gaza pullout was explicitly intended not to give the Palestinians justice or a fair start at a state, but instead to expand Israel’s hold on West Bank colonies and put the “peace process” into formaldehyde. Or I could mention the massive elisions about what’s really blocking the two-state solution, namely, Israel’s insistence on continuing to gobble more pizza — steal land, steal water, build more illegal colonies — while the two parties pretend to negotiate about the pizza.

But perhaps the most interesting parts are where Morris happens to drop some pearls of wisdom:

I believe that the successive Israeli prime ministers—Ariel Sharon, Ehud Olmert, and Benjamin Netanyahu—were (and are) mistaken in not following up this Arab [Peace] Initiative…

What remains, in the absence of a basic change of Palestinian mindset, is a bleak picture. No viable peace agreement is remotely in prospect. Neither is the emergence of a full-fledged Palestinian state.

…Continued Israeli rule over the territory and its people, obnoxious to most Israelis and to the rest of the world, raises the prospect of a bi-national state or an apartheid state…

Minor corrections to the above… change the words “Palestinian mindset” to “Israeli mindset that support endless colonization” and also change “prospect of an apartheid state” to “current reality of a de facto apartheid state from the river to the sea” and we’d be getting somewhere.

A jolt? More on Brazil’s decision to recognize Palestine
 

Dec 06, 2010

Léa Park

In a letter sent to Mahmoud Abbas by Brazilian President Luiz Inåcio Lula da Silva, the Brazilian government has declared its recognition of a Palestinian State along the 1967 armistice lines.  The Brazilian Ministry of Foreign Affairs posted the announcement in both Portuguese and English on its website yesterday.

” …on 1 December 2010, the Brazilian Government has recognized the Palestinian State based on the existing borders in 1967. 

 
“The recognition has taken place following negotiations by the Palestinian side and a letter sent by President Abbas to President Lula, last 24  November, in which he requested the recognition.
 
“The initiative is in accordance with Brazil’s historical willingness to contribute to the peace process between Israel and Palestine, whose direct  negotiations are currently on hold, and it is in line with UN resolutions, which have demanded an end to the occupation of Palestinian territories and  the construction of an independent State within the borders of 4 June 1967.     …   “

On November 27, Phil referred us to an article by Jeff Halper, founder and director of the Israel Committee Against House Demolitions, a man nominated by the American Friends Service Committee for the Nobel Peace Prize. Besides his work inside Israel/Palestine, Halper has done as much as anyone else, I believe, to educate people here in the United States (anyone who would listen, that is) about the nature and consequences of Israeli policy with respect to the Occupied Territories.  Looking forward to 2011, here is what Jeff had to say:

“In terms of any sort of rational, linear, government-led ‘peace process’, we have arrived at the end of the road.

And yet I’m optimistic that 2011 will witness a game-changing ‘break’ that will create a new set of circumstances in which a just peace is possible.  That jolt which smashes the present dead-end paradigm must come from outside the present ‘process’. It can take one of two forms.  The first  possible game-changer is already being discussed: a unilateral declaration by the Palestinian Authority of a state…

Such a scenario, while still possible given the deadlock in negotiations, is unlikely, if only because the leadership of the Palestinian Authority lacks  the courage to undertake such a bold initiative. A second one seems more likely: in 2011, the Palestinian Authority will either resign or collapse, …

Maybe Brazil’s action is a forerunner to just the kind of jolt Halper is talking about, at least with respect to the “the first possible game-changer”.   Maybe the courage and commitment of all the actors, and their supporters, to a just resolution to conflict in the region, is about to be tested…yet again.

 

 

For more about what recognition “by the world’s fifth largest country, and an emerging new world economic superpower” might portent, be sure to read Gil Macguire’s Brazil – The Perfect Solution for Palestine.

 

Possibilities for U.N. support were outlined by P.A. negotiator Saeb Erekat in early November.

 

Update: On Monday, Argentina and Uruguay announced they would join the parade, bringing the movement toward recognition some front page attention.

Carmel fire response shows criticism of Israel is based on policy not anti-Semitism
 

Dec 06, 2010

 

Adam Horowitz

A friend passes along this excerpt from Yossi Alpher’s Peace Now Q & A:

That that help came from the United States, France, Britain, Spain, Greece, Cyprus, Bulgaria, Turkey, Russia, Egypt, Jordan and even the Palestinian Authority can conceivably be understood as a sign that Israel’s international isolation and de-legitimization are not as critical as some might have assumed, or that they really do derive primarily from Israel’s mismanagement of a single issue, the Palestinian conflict, rather than hard-core anti-Semitism.

Argentina, Uruguay recognize Palestine within its 1967 borders
 

Dec 06, 2010

 

Seham

And other news from Today in Palestine:

 

 

 

Settlers/ Land, Property, Resource Theft & Destruction/Ethnic Cleansing
Israel FM: No reason for settlement freeze
LJUBLJANA (AFP) – Israel sees no reason to reimpose a freeze on settlement construction in the West Bank after an initial moratorium failed to break the deadlock in the peace process, its foreign minister said Monday.  “I do not see any reason to extend this moratorium. After 10 months of moratorium, we are still in a deadlock. We do not see any benefit,” Avigdor Lieberman told a news conference with his Slovenian counterpart Samuel Zbogar.
http://www.maannews.net/eng/ViewDetails.aspx?ID=339553
Israel Approves The Construction Of 846 Settlement Units In Jerusalem
A report prepared and published by the National Bureau For Protecting the Land and Countering Settlements, revealed that the Israeli government approved the construction of 846 units in Jewish settlements in occupied East Jerusalem.
http://www.imemc.org/article/60092 
Israel to build 130 new housing units in O. Jerusalem
Hours after the IOA declared its intention to build more than 652 housing units in Pisgat Ze’ev settlement last week, it approved a plan to build 130 other units in Gilo settlement.
http://www.palestine-info.co.uk/En/default.aspx?xyz=U6Qq7k%2bcOd87
Activism/Solidarity/Boycott, Divestment & Sanctions

Mass-mirroring Wikileaks
Wikileaks is currently under heavy attack. In order to make it impossible to ever fully remove Wikileaks from the Internet, we need your help. if you have a unix-based server which is hosting a website on the Internet and you want to give wikileaks some of your hosting resources, you can help!
http://www.wikileaks.nl/mass-mirror.html 
Hundreds of WikiLeaks Mirror Sites Appear
The United States urged Switzerland not to provide safe haven for the site’s founder, who was accepting donations to a bank account there.
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/12/06/world/europe/06wiki.html
Defend WikiLeaks – Boycott Amazon
A spontaneous movement to boycott Amazon.com, the online retailer, has taken off in response to the company’s decision to kick WikiLeaks off its servers. We at Antiwar.com unequivocally endorse this effort. In spite of attempts by some to claim the company was subjected to a threat “at gunpoint,” in reality, no one put a gun to Amazon’s head. They were more than happy to join the attack on WikiLeaks, as their statement made all too clear: 
http://original.antiwar.com/justin/2010/12/05/defend-wikileaks-%E2%80%93-boycott-amazon/ 
Organizer of Ni’ilin’s Popular Committee and Two Other Members Released From Jail, Joseph Dana
The members of the Popular Committee had been held in military jails for the past ten and half months on trumped up charges designed to crush the unarmed resistance in Ni’ilin. The village held a massive celebration in their honor as they returned home.
http://josephdana.com/2010/12/organizer-of-niilins-popular-committee-and-two-other-members-released-from-jail/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=organizer-of-niilins-popular-committee-and-two-other-members-released-from-jail
In Argentina workers’ movements, community radios take up BDS
November saw a flurry of BDS activities in Argentina, where workers from the recovered factories, along with the global umbrella organization for community radio, committed to active support of the 2005 Palestinian BDS call.  Workers in the recovered factories in Argentina pledged to support the BDS call. These workers are part of a larger movement in Argentina that began in 2000 during Argentina’s economic crisis. At that time, the first workers resisted eviction from their places of work, and with the bankruptcy and flight of the management, took upon themselves the duties of production, administration and marketing. Since 2001, 205 factories around Argentina have been reclaimed by the workers.
http://stopthewall.org/worldwideactivism/2411.shtml
Open the Al-Bweira Roads, from US Campaign to End the Israeli Occupation
Upper Hudson Peace Action is asking members of the US Campaign to pick up their pens and phones to help open the road to the West Bank town of Al-Bweira. This is one more step in our effort to end the Israeli occupation of Palestine.
http://endtheoccupationblog.blogspot.com/2010/12/open-al-bweira-roads.html 
Happy holidays, Philip Weiss
From a friend. These cards are available at If Americans Knew.
http://mondoweiss.net/2010/12/happy-holidays.html 
#BDS: Campaign materials
As part of the campaign “Israel is occupying Palestine, I boycott” campaign material is made available to the Belgo-Palestinian Association. Feel free to contact us if you need it!
http://bit.ly/fcuMPJ
#BDS: Reports on BDS and Caterpillar weaponized bulldozers
The Israeli press is reporting that Caterpillar is withholding the delivery of tens of D9 bulldozers—valued at $50 million—to the Israeli military.(1) These are weaponized bulldozers that are used to illegally destroy homes and orchards of Palestinian families. And they are the very same bulldozers as the one that killed a 23-year-old American peace activist named Rachel Corrie seven years ago when she tried to protect the home of the Nasrallah family in Gaza.
http://youthanormalization.blogspot.com/2010/12/bds-reports-on-bds-and-caterpillar.html
Joseph Dana on New Media and the Truth in Israel & Palestine
Reporter Joseph Dana recently did this interview, on GRITtv with Laura Flanders, on how social media are giving Palestinians the ability to tell their stories to their world. He also talks about Wikileaks and the nonviolent resistance on the ground in Palestine.
http://endtheoccupationblog.blogspot.com/2010/12/joseph-dana-on-new-media-and-truth-in.html 
Flotilla Support for Gaza
On May 28 (three days before Israel’s high seas massacre), Haaretz writers Jack Khoury and Yuval Azoulay headlined, “Hamas: Flotilla shows whole world opposes Gaza siege,” saying:  Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh said “if Israel behave(s) like pirates and attack(s) the international Freedom Flotilla carrying 10,000 tons of (humanitarian) aid for Gaza, then the Palestinians will have won. The flotilla’s message is clear and it will reach the entire world.”
http://sjlendman.blogspot.com/2010/12/flotilla-support-for-gaza.html
Fundraising drive off to a great start – please help us keep it going!
Just a quick update on our current fund raising drive. We are off to our best start ever! You can follow the progress in the graphic to the right, but we’ve already raised over $8,000, which means thanks to our generous matching fund we’ve raised $16,000.
http://mondoweiss.net/2010/12/fundraising-drive-off-to-a-great-start-please-help-us-keep-it-going.html
Anti
Message to Vieux Farka Touré: Colonialism is colonialism, whether it happens in West Africa or Palestine, Shireen Tawil
I was greatly disappointed to learn that Vieux Farka Touré performed last week at the Tel Aviv Opera House on November 26, 2010.  The son of the late, world-renowned Malian guitarist and singer Ali Farka Touré, Vieux Farka Touré has gained prominence in the international music world in recent years as one of Africa’s leading musicians.  His eponymous debut album was released in 2006, and he has since released three albums and performed at the 2010 World Cup in Johannesburg, South Africa.
http://mondoweiss.net/2010/12/message-to-vieux-farka-toure-colonialism-is-colonialism-whether-it-happens-in-west-africa-or-palestine.html
Abuse of Palestinian Children

B’Tselem: Jerusalemite children tortured by Israeli interrogators
B’Tselem said in a report that Palestinian children in Silwan town, occupied Jerusalem, were severely tortured at the hands of Israeli interrogators.
http://www.palestine-info.co.uk/En/default.aspx?xyz=U6Qq7k
Siege/Rights Violations/Restriction of Movement

Medic: Israeli policies to blame for Gaza health woes
STOCKHOLM (AFP) – The head of an award-winning group of Israeli medics said Monday the health woes of Palestinians in Gaza and Arab Bedouins living in Israel were the direct consequence of government policies.  As her group “Physicians for Human Rights Israel” prepared to receive the annual Right Livelihood Award in Stockholm, Ruchama Marton said the causes of health problems were often political in nature.
http://www.maannews.net/eng/ViewDetails.aspx?ID=339582
Rafah crossing to close Tuesday
GAZA CITY (Ma’an) — Gaza’s crossings committee announced the Rafah crossing on the Strip’s border with Egypt will close Tuesday for the Islamic new year.  Crossings officials said the closure would apply in both directions.
http://www.maannews.net/eng/ViewDetails.aspx?ID=339506
2 crossings operate, Gaza imports at 36%
GAZA CITY (Ma’an) — The southernmost Gaza crossing Kerem Shalom and the bulk goods Karni crossing in the northern Strip were announced open for imports on Monday, Palestinian liaison official Raed Fattouh said.  Fattouh said he was informed early in the morning that 150 to 160 truckloads of goods and 20 new cars would be allowed through the Kerem Shalom crossing, in addition to limited quantities of domestic-use gas and industrial-grade diesel.
http://www.maannews.net/eng/ViewDetails.aspx?ID=339313
Racism and Discrimination

Fire suspects’ mother: They were in school
Police arrest two Usfiya brothers, aged 14 and 16, on suspicion of negligence which caused Carmel blaze. Relatives: Police have no proof they started the fire.
http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-3994226,00.html
Carmel blaze is not the only thing burning Israel from the inside
In Israel, 53 percent of the Jewish majority now wants the government to encourage the emigration of Israeli Arabs. It’s worth looking at that again: An absolute majority of those defined as Jews in Israel want government action to bring about “ethnic cleansing” in the state. A third reading of this finding will aggravate the chill that should run down the spine of Israel’s democracy. Twenty years after Kahanism was deemed illegal, 65 years after the racist tragedy in the heart of Europe, most Jewish hearts in Israel pulsate in sync: Kahane was right!
http://www.haaretz.com/print-edition/opinion/carmel-blaze-is-not-the-only-thing-burning-israel-from-the-inside-1.328890
Violence/Aggression

Israeli forces kill two Palestinians east of Gaza
Occupied Jerusalem: Israeli forces killed two armed Palestinians as they approached the boundary fence of a kibbutz east of Gaza, military radio reported on Thursday.  The Israeli military opened fire on the men as they approached the Kfar Aza kibbutz, east of the northern Gaza Strip, the report said. The forces recovered the bodies of the two men and found weapons and explosive devices on them, the report said, without specifying whether the men were killed inside Gaza or Israeli territory.
http://gulfnews.com/news/region/palestinian-territories/israeli-forces-kill-two-palestinians-east-of-gaza-1.722006
Detainees (Israeli and PA)

Minister: Israel detained 423 Palestinians last month
BETHLEHEM (Ma’an) — Israeli forces detained 423 Palestinians, including 80 children in the month of November Palestinian Authority Minister of Prisoners Affairs Issa Qaraqe said Monday.  Qaraqe said most of these arrests took place when Palestinians attempted to fight off Israeli settlers who encroached on West Bank land.  He was speaking during a visit to the Hebron home of Nasser Theeb Meswada, 42, who was recently released after seven years in Israeli prisons.
http://www.maannews.net/eng/ViewDetails.aspx?ID=339397
Six Palestinians Arrested During Israeli Army Raids
A series of Israeli military raids that were held during Sunday night and Monday morning in the area of Ramallah, concluded with six Palestinian residents detained, PNN reported.

Six Palestinians Arrested During Israeli Army Raids

Hamas: PA security detained 8 supporters
HEBRON (Ma’an) — Hamas officials in the West Bank accused the Palestinian Authority security services of detaining eight party supporters during spot checks and raids overnight.  The Islamist movement said Monday that the detentions, which it alleged were politically motivated and unfairly targeted members, occurred in the West Bank districts of Nablus, Jenin, and Qalqiliya, all in the north.
http://www.maannews.net/eng/ViewDetails.aspx?ID=339335
Dweik, Hamas MPs join solidarity sit-in with Jericho detainees on hunger strike
Dr. Aziz Dweik and other Hamas MPs in the West Bank joined the solidarity sit-in organized by relatives of detainees in the PA Jericho jail who went on hunger strike nine days ago.
http://www.palestine-info.co.uk/En/default.aspx?xyz=U6Qq7k%
Families of hunger strikers in PA jails met with Dr. Barghouthi
The families of the six Palestinian hungers strikers imprisoned by the Palestinian authority met with Dr. Mustafa Al-Barghouthi and handed him a special file related to the detention of their sons.
http://www.palestine-info.co.uk/En/default.aspx?xyz=U6Qq7k%2bcOd 
PA transfers six hunger strikers from Jericho solitary jail to other prisons
The families of the six Palestinian detainees who went on hunger strike in Jericho prison said the PA transferred their isolated sons from this jail to other prisons in different West Bank areas.
http://www.palestine-info.co.uk/En/default.aspx?xyz=U6Qq7k%2bcO
HRW urges PA to release West Bank blogger
JERUSALEM (Ma’an) — Human Rights Watch on Sunday urged the Palestinian Authority to release a blogger detained over his religious opinions.  PA intelligence officers arrested Walid Hasayin on 31 October at an internet cafe in the West Bank city of Qalqiliya.  Ahmad Mbayyad, the head of the PA’s military judiciary, told HRW that Hasayin was suspected of posting online messages criticizing Islam and other religions.
http://www.maannews.net/eng/ViewDetails.aspx?ID=339260 
AP Exclusive: Jailed Palestinian atheist apologizes 
JERUSALEM — A Palestinian atheist jailed for more than a month for sharing his views in a blog has apologized for offending Muslims, in a step he hopes will lead to his release.  International rights groups have criticized his arrest as a demonstration of the limits on free speech under the Western-backed Palestinian Authority.  The 26-year-old, Walid Husayin, apologized in a letter to his family and sought forgiveness for what he called his “stupidity.”
http://www.jpost.com/Headlines/Article.aspx?id=198257
PA security: ‘Atheist’ blogger kept in jail for own safety
RAMALLAH (AFP) – A young Palestinian blogger jailed for posting “blasphemous” remarks online is being kept in jail over fears he will be killed by his family, security sources said on Monday.  Walid al-Husseini, 26, was arrested in the northern West Bank city of Qalqilya at the end of October for “blasphemy against the prophet and the Koran” for posts on his blog and on the social networking site, Facebook. “It is impossible to release him because we are afraid he will be killed by his family,” a security source in Qalqilya told AFP, adding that relatives had disowned Husseini after his arrest.
http://www.maannews.net/eng/ViewDetails.aspx?ID=339581
Political Developments

Argentina Recognizes Palestine Within its 1967 Borders
After Brazil’s decision to recognize a Palestinian state within the 1967 borders, the President of Argentina, Cristina Fernandez de Kirchner, confirmed, on Sunday, that she would also recognize an independent Palestine with the same parameters.
http://www.imemc.org/article/60096

Argentina, Uruguay to recognize Palestine (AFP)
AFP – Argentina and Uruguay said Monday they were joining Brazil in recognizing an independent Palestinian state, earning an immediate sharp rebuke from Israel and causing unease in the United States.
http://us.rd.yahoo.com/dailynews/rss/mideast/*http://news.yahoo.com/s/afp/20101206/wl_mideast_afp/palestinianmideastdiplomacyargentinauruguaybrazil

Palestinians bet to grab international recognition of state with 1967 borders
RAMALLAH, Dec. 4 (Xinhua) — Facing the stalled peace talks with Israel, Palestinian politicians and observers believe that an international recognition of an independent Palestinian state on the 1967 borders would be a powerful start to grab a worldwide recognition.  “The recent Brazilian declaration to recognize the establishment of an independent Palestinian state is a very big step. We consider this step a start to get more recognition from the world’s countries of the independent Palestinian state,” chief Palestinian negotiator Saeb Erekat told Xinhua on Saturday.
http://news.xinhuanet.com/english2010/world/2010-12/04/c_13635258.htm 
Hamas says waiting for Fatah to call meeting
GAZA (Ma’an) — Hamas official Salah Al-Bardawil said Sunday it was up to Fatah to initiate the next meeting in Damascus to discuss national unity.  Despite several meetings in the Syrian capital, the rival factions have so far failed to reach agreement on security issues, said to be stalling Hamas signing the Egyptian-mediated unity paper.
http://www.maannews.net/eng/ViewDetails.aspx?ID=339280 
PFLP: Gambling on US endangers Palestinians
GAZA CITY (Ma’an) — The Palestinian government in Ramallah’s willingness to rely on the United States as a broker for Middle East peace was dangerous and harmed the Palestinian cause, the Palestinian Front for the Liberation of Palestine said Saturday.  The leftist Palestinian faction said in a statement that the PA should take the issue to the UN and demand the implementation of relevant resolutions based on international legitimacy rather than continue with “absurd” peace talks.
http://www.maannews.net/eng/ViewDetails.aspx?ID=338842 
Arabs should not ‘close door’ to US efforts: Egypt FM (AFP)
AFP – Arab states believe US efforts to save direct Israeli-Palestinian peace talks should be given more time to succeed, Egypt’s Foreign Minister Ahmed Aboul Gheit said here Monday.
http://us.rd.yahoo.com/dailynews/rss/mideast/*http://news.yahoo.com/s/afp/20101206/wl_mideast_afp/romaniaegyptarabsisraelpalestinianspeacediplomacy
Another Dahlan coup?
From BBC monitoring service:  “A Palestinian leader close to Fatah has revealed new details of what has become known in the Fatah milieu as the “Dahlan case,” the incessant accusations against him for being the architect of a comprehensive plan to control Fatah and succeed Mahmud Abbas as president.  Two weeks after the Palestinian Information Centre disclosed the content of the plan sent by Fatah Central Committee [CC] member Muhammad Dahlan to the US Administration, which contains security proposals to topple the Palestinian government in Gaza and to control the Gaza Strip, the source related to our correspondent the existence of a connection between the abovementioned security document and the developments within Fatah, after Dahlan and other Fatah leaders, including CC member Nasir al-Qudwah, appeared before a commission of inquiry set up by the PNA presidency and headed by Fatah leader Abu-Mahir Ghunaym. The source explained that the investigation of Dahlan and a number of Fatah leaders followed on the heels of Al-Qudwah’s harsh criticism of Mahmud Abbas, which was published in The Wall Street Journal and was later confirmed to be instigated by Dahlan.   Yet, the most serious thing that the sources disclosed goes beyond disagreements and verbal criticisms to practical action on the ground that Dahlan and a number of leaders supporting him are preparing. The source revealed that the US Administration received a letter from Muhammad Dahlan, Nasir al-Qudwah, Sultan Abu-al-Aynayn, and Tawfiq al-Tirawi stating that “Abbas is now unable to make peace but we are able to, and that he must be substituted by a personality that has the ability to achieve this.” Moreover, and as proof of the seriousness of the offer, the letter suggests assigning the Interior Ministry in the Fayyad government to Dahlan and pledges to regain control of the Gaza Strip from Hamas according to the plan sent earlier. The source also noted that the US response has not arrived yet.  According to the source, the recent letter coincided with the rise in the pace of alignments within Fatah between a group supporting Dahlan and another comprising historic leader who oppose him, especially after the return of large numbers of Dahlan’s supporters to Palestine after their exit from the Gaza Strip in the aftermath of the decisive military action that was carried out by Hamas.”  PS Source: Palestinian Information Centre website in Arabic 21 Nov 10
http://angryarab.blogspot.com/2010/12/another-dahlan-coup.html
Netanyahu Thanks Abbas For Palestinian Firefighters Help
Palestinian president, Mahmoud Abbas, received on Friday a phone call from Israel’s Prime Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, for sending Palestinian firefighters to help in controlling the fires in the north of the country.
http://www.imemc.org/article/60090 
What did Egypt and Jordan do when Lebanon was under attack by Israel
“Responding to an appeal by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu for help, Bulgaria and Jordan sent firefighters; Cyprus, Greece, Russia and the United States dispatched aircraft to ferry water and chemical retardant; Britain sent helicopters; and additional assistance came from Spain, Azerbaijan, Romania and Egypt, government officials said.”
http://angryarab.blogspot.com/2010/12/what-did-egypt-and-jordan-do-when.html
Turkish PM says Israel must ‘clear blood’ to mend ties
ANKARA (AFP) – Turkey’s prime minister insisted Sunday on an Israeli apology and compensation over a deadly raid on a Gaza-bound aid ship in May as the only way to mend bilateral ties, Anatolia news agency reported.  His remarks followed media speculation that the crisis between the one-time allies might thaw in the wake of Turkey’s dispatch of two helicopters to help fight a devastating forest fire in northern Israel, which claimed 41 lives.
http://www.maannews.net/eng/ViewDetails.aspx?ID=339240 
Other News

Turkey and Israel Set to Restore Relations
Turkish and Israeli diplomats met in Geneva on Sunday, and discussed repairing relations between the two countries cooled since after Israeli military raid on the Gaza flotilla last May, Ha’aretz said.

Turkey and Israel Set to Restore Relations

Settlements hold key to Israel’s survival: Dutch MP (AFP)
AFP – Israel must keep on building settlements in the occupied West Bank to defend itself against the forces of Islam out to destroy the Jewish state, visiting ultra-rightwing Dutch MP Geert Wilders said.
http://us.rd.yahoo.com/dailynews/rss/mideast/*http://news.yahoo.com/s/afp/20101206/wl_mideast_afp/israelpalestiniansnetherlandspoliticssettler
Sectarian views of Hizbullah and Hamas
I don’t have much time to write about this poll but a few points only.  1) How is it sectarian when Sunnis in Lebanon have the same unfavorable views of Hamas as they do of Hizbullah?  It must mean it is political. 2) It is clear that you can’t extrapolate from the Sunnis of Lebanon to the Sunnis of the Arab world. 3) There is no factor considered in terms of the general tendency in closed and repressive society for people polled to identify with the views of the government, especially when many of those polls by Gallup and Pew are conducted face-to-face (and even phone polls can be intimidating because people fear their governments are calling).
http://angryarab.blogspot.com/2010/12/sectarian-views-of-hizbullah-and-hamas.html
Poet Najwan Darwish Reads for New York City Crowds
New York City – PNN – Americans and Palestinians alike thronged to the Alwan Center of the Arts in New York City to hear the Palestinian poet Najwan Darwish read a selection of his work on Sunday.  Barnard College Literature Professor and critic Bashir Abu Mana said after the reading, “Najwan Darwish’s poems present the struggle of Palestinian life in a personal voice. His poetry…represents the face of reality.”  “What surprised me about in his poetry was his consistency in form and artistry while still being able to capture reality as he sees it,” said Abu Mana.
http://english.pnn.ps/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=9232&Itemid=1
Analysis/Op-ed

State Dep’t reporters continue to be rambunctious about Israel announcing 625 new houses for Jews, Philip Weiss
The other day we picked up a State Department press conference in which reporters were bluntly questioning ass’t secretary PJ Crowley about the United States covering for Israeli intransigence and colonization. Well those reporters continued to ask questions on Thursday, the words “double standard” were hurled, when the Obama administration failed to say a word of condemnation of further East Jerusalem settlement. From the State Department.
http://mondoweiss.net/2010/12/state-dept-reporters-continue-to-be-rambunctious-about-israel-announcing-625-new-houses-for-jews.html
Wikileaks II: the special relationship
“QME” is short-hand for the “qualitative military edge,” or America’s posture of making sure that Israel’s weaponry remains more advanced than that which it sells to the Gulf States and especially Saudi Arabia. Note especially that “Israel does not expect that all QME decisions will breaks in its favor”: why not? Is Chaim Saban having cigarette breaks when the Pentagon and Obama are discussing which weapons systems they’re going to ship to Saudi Arabia in return for the oil profits Saudi Arabia reaps from  jacked-up oil prices, a constant regressive tax on the American working class?
http://www.maxajl.com/?p=4521&utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+http%2Fwwwmaxajlcom%2Ffeedrss2+%28Jewbonics%29 
Meet Moshe Soprano, Philip Weiss
I try to give the people what they want (I’ve been a news guy most of my life), and a lot of people are talking about the cable on Wikileaks from Tel Aviv a year ago about all the organized crime in Israel, and the fears of that o.c. spreading to the U.S. (because after all we’re joined at the hip). Raimondo loves the cable.  A couple more responses.
http://mondoweiss.net/2010/12/meet-moshe-soprano.html
Putting out fires. Or not, Akiva Eldar 
The Carmel fire destroyed another layer of the myth that the State of the Jews is a military-technological superpower that should not be trifled with.
http://www.haaretz.com/print-edition/opinion/putting-out-fires-or-not-1.329093 
“GOD-TV” evangelical Christian channel funds Israeli ethnic cleansing
Despite the fact that it was the seventh demolition since last July, this time the destruction of the Bedouin village of Al-Arakib in the Israeli Negev was different. The demolition was different because this time Christian evangelists from the United States and England were involved. GOD-TV justifies this contribution by citing the book of Isaiah.
http://sabbah.biz/mt/archives/2010/12/04/god-tv-christian-funds-israeli-ethnic-cleansing/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+SabbahsBlog+%28Sabbah+Report%29 
An Israeli and a Palestinian meet at the separation fence – on the U.S.-Mexico border, Amira Hass 
If passed, a decade-old bill will allow the naturalization of young Latino-Americans in the U.S. Republicans oppose it, so does Fox News. But the U.S. Army is in favor.
http://www.haaretz.com/print-edition/features/an-israeli-and-a-palestinian-meet-at-the-separation-fence-on-the-u-s-mexico-border-1.329089?localLinksEnabled=false
Julian Assange: Wanted by the Empire, Dead or Alive, ALEXANDER COCKBURN
The American airwaves quiver with the screams of parlor assassins howling for Julian Assange’s head. Jonah Goldberg, contributor to the National Review, asks in his syndicated column, “Why wasn’t Assange garroted in his hotel room years ago?” Sarah Palin wants him hunted down and brought to justice, saying: “He is an anti-American operative with blood on his hands.”
Assange can survive these theatrical blusters. A tougher question is how he will fare at the hands of the US government, which is hopping mad. The US attorney general, Eric Holder,  has announced that the Justice Department and Pentagon are conducting “an active, ongoing criminal investigation” into the latest Assange-facilitated leak under Washington’s Espionage Act.
Asked how the US could prosecute Assange, a non-US citizen, Holder said, “Let me be clear. This is not saber-rattling,” and vowed “to swiftly close the gaps in current US legislation…”
http://www.counterpunch.com/cockburn12032010.html 
Israel supporters using Wikileaks to promote attack on Iran are ignoring Arab public opinion, Antony Loewenstein
Sever Plocker, a columnist for Yediot Aharonot, recently wrote with pride and some sadness that, “At least on the Iranian issue — and apparently on more than a few other matters — the leaders of the world, including the Arab world, think as we do [the Israelis], but are ashamed to admit it”.  Benjamin Netanyahu has praised the Wikileaks cable dump as vindication of his government’s bellicose pronouncements over Tehran. The Atlantic’s Jeffrey Goldberg haswritten likewise.
http://mondoweiss.net/2010/12/israel-supporters-using-wikileaks-to-promote-attack-on-iran-are-ignoring-arab-public-opinion.html
Lebanon

Lebanon lodges complaint with UN over Israeli spying devices
SIDON: Lebanon lodged over the weekend a complaint with the United Nations over spying devices installed by Israel on Lebanese territories.  “Lebanon has filed today a complaint against Israel before the Security Council via its permanent mission at the United Nations in New York, after its [Israeli] troops remotely detonated Friday spying devices that Israel had planted in Lebanon,” said a statement by Lebanon’s Foreign Ministry Saturday.
http://www.dailystar.com.lb/article.asp?edition_id=1&categ_id=1&article_id=122226#axzz17IM3g3l0 
Lebanon told allies of Hezbollah’s secret network, WikiLeaks shows
Cable exposes deep regional and international concerns about volatile situation in Lebanon following 2006 war.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2010/dec/05/lebanon-warned-allies-hezbollah-telecoms 
Lebanon ‘gave Israel army tips’
Defence minister offered advice to Israel in 2008 on how to defeat Hezbollah, WikiLeaks documents show.
http://english.aljazeera.net/news/middleeast/2010/12/20101246144971381.html
Wikileaks: Hezbollah Rockets Cover All of Israel
Gareth Porter: Balance of forces in Middle East has changed with Hezbollah able to “cover entire territory of Israel” with rockets.  
http://pulsemedia.org/2010/12/05/wikileaks-hezbollah-rockets-cover-all-of-israel/
Saad Hariri: “The Iraq [invasion] was unnecessary. [Invading] Iran is necessary.”
WikiLeaks have had something for everyone. ….. Supporters of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad rejoiced over the cable in which a British official opined that he had actually won the rigged June 2009 presidential election……. Ahmadinejad’s supporters also overlooked another leaked cable in which an American diplomat reported that a source had told him that it was Mir Hossein Mousavi who had won the election with 26 million votes, which only goes to show that neither of the two cables should be taken seriously……….Arab leaders have privately been urging the United States to stage a military attack on Iran. These are the same leaders that time and again have publicly proclaimed that they oppose such an attack, which demonstrates both their utter dishonesty toward their own citizens and the fact that they are well aware that, as unpopular as Ahmadinejad is at home, he enjoys wide popularity in the Islamic world due to his intransigence toward Israel. …..Lebanese Prime Minister Saad Hariri is quoted in an August 2006 cable arguing that the “Iraq [invasion] was unnecessary. [Invading] Iran is necessary.” Of course, the American mainstream media did not mention that Hariri called for defense ties with Iran during his recent trip to the country… Mubarak said that none will accept a nuclear Iran, ‘we are all terrified.’
http://friday-lunch-club.blogspot.com/2010/12/saad-hariri-iraq-invasion-was.html 
WikiLeaks: Hariri fears next Israel war would kill pro-West camp
BEIRUT, Lebanon (AFP) — Lebanon’s Prime Minister Saad Hariri told a top US diplomat he feared another war with Israel would mean the “death” of his pro-Western alliance, leaked cables showed Monday.  A document reportedly obtained by whistleblowing website WikiLeaks and published on the website of local daily Al-Akhbar quoted Hariri as saying he believed Shiite militant group Hezbollah, which fought a deadly war with the Jewish state in 2006, would rise again should there be another round of violence.
http://www.maannews.net/eng/ViewDetails.aspx?ID=339346
Charles Rizk to Jeffrey Feltman: ‘I am trying to delay the release of the four generals due to the “devastating impact their release would have on March 14 morale”
“… The STL, as well as the initial United Nations International Independent Investigation Committee (UNIIIC) probe, is mentioned on numerous occasions in cables seen by The Daily Star.  Some will fuel claims that the STL is politicized. In a cable dated July 6, 2007, Minister of Justice Charles Rizk appeared to ask Feltman to pass on Lebanon’s preferred choice of tribunal judges.  “Rizk would like us to whisper quietly to UN officials which four are Lebanon’s preferred choices out of the twelve judicial nominations,” it read.  Rizk reportedly told Feltman that he was trying to delay the release of the four Lebanese generals held in connection with the assassination, due to the “devastating impact their release would have on March 14 morale.”  In a cable dated June 20, 2006, UNIIIC Commissioner Serge Bremmertz reportedly expressed concerns that evidence against the jailed generals was not strong enough to justify their continued detention. ….”
http://friday-lunch-club.blogspot.com/2010/12/charles-rizk-to-jeffrey-feltman-i-am.html 
Wikileaks [25]: “Saudi MOI: ‘…Concerned about funds flowing to Hizballah from the Saudi Shi’a community
SUBJECT: SAUDI INTERIOR MINISTRY BRIEFS SPECIAL ADVISOR HOLBROOKE AND TREASURY DAS GLASER ON TERRORISM FINANCE.  (SBU) Special Advisor Ambassador Richard Holbrooke and Treasury DAS Glaser were briefed on Saudi terror finance efforts at a May 16 meeting with Interior Ministry (MOI) officials at the Security Forces Officers Club in Riyadh. Holbrooke also received a briefing on Saudi counterterrorism strategies:….. 6. (C) MOI Senior Advisor Major General Dr. Sa’ad al-Jabri said… Hajj was still “a vacuum in our security,” he admitted. Another problem was money going to Hizballah from Saudi Shiites. The Saudis’ focus had been on funds from Sunni sources, but they needed to focus on the Shi’a too, Dr. Sa’ad said.  (C) Holbrooke noted that Pakistan was also a center for terrorist financing through Islamic charities and asked whether the Saudis were monitoring the large Pakistani community in Saudi Arabia, and whether the Saudis were consulting with the governments of Pakistan, India, and Bangladesh about the issue.  8. (C) Holbrooke asked whether the Taliban still found support in Saudi Arabia….. Holbrooke asked about Iran, and Dr. Sa’ad replied that in the Saudi view, Iran was a “serious contributor”…
http://friday-lunch-club.blogspot.com/2010/12/wikileaks-25-saudi-moi-concerned-about.html 
The new Walid Jumblat, As`ad Abukhalil
“Jumblatt expresses gratitude that Syria re-established order at the end of the Lebanese civil war and suggests that Syria’s military may need to take over the country again if Hezbollah is indicted by an international tribunal investigating the killing of former Lebanese prime minister Rafiq al-Hariri and the country deteriorates into sectarian strife.  “It seems that, well, we cannot govern ourselves by ourselves,” Jumblatt said. “Lebanon is not a nation. It’s a bunch of tribes.”
http://angryarab.blogspot.com/2010/12/new-walid-jumblat.html 
Aoun: There’s Global Conspiracy to Destabilize Lebanon
04/12/2010 The head of the Change and Reform parliamentary bloc MP Michel Aoun on Saturday warned that there was a global conspiracy to destabilize Lebanon and accused the international community of seeking to create a clash between Hezbollah and the Special Tribunal for Lebanon.  “Let them tell us why there is a Court that wants to condemn Hezbollah, and then there are media leaks for the benefit of Hezbollah. Why?” Aoun wondered.  “The truth is this: There is an international conspiracy to destabilize Lebanon,” Aoun told a student delegation representing the victorious alliance from the Lebanese American University (LAU).  “That is why they do not want to refer the false witnesses’ issue to the Court because this would lead to the truth,” he concluded.
http://almanar.com.lb/NewsSite/NewsDetails.aspx?id=164540&language=en 
Leaked memos reveal unprecedented look into how US views Lebanon
BEIRUT: Investigators working for the UN probe into the death of former Prime Minister Rafik Hariri fought with “insane” procedural constraints which may have damaged its operational capacity, leaked diplomatic cables claimed.  Intercepted confidential US Embassy correspondences – seen exclusively by The Daily Star – paint a picture of an investigation plagued by bureaucracy, poor management and staff shortages.  The Daily Star has obtained a tranche of cables sent from the US Embassy in Beirut to the US State Department over a period of several years. They reveal allegations of political duplicity, external meddling in domestic affairs and scathing assessments of both Lebanese and international officials.
http://www.dailystar.com.lb/article.asp?edition_id=1&categ_id=2&article_id=122242#axzz17IPCn9AY 
Siniora: Office attack will not spur change in policy
SIDON: Former Prime Minister Fouad Siniora said over the weekend that an attack on his office near the southern coastal city of Sidon would not drive him to change his “principles.”
http://www.dailystar.com.lb/article.asp?edition_id=1&categ_id=1&article_id=122233 
Al-Akhbar and Wikileaks, As`ad Abukhalil
This I can report to you because many of you have been asking me.  Yes, those documents that are being released by Al-Akhbar are Wikileaks from a larger collection (and more, much more are to follow).  Al-Akhbar has been acting very responsibly toward those documents: handling them with care and caution and showing concern for the lives of people (innocent people) involved.  Al-Akhbar has decided to go over them all again to redact what potentially could pose danger to lives of innocent people.  They will release them today at 3:00PM (Beirut Time).  Al-Akhbar will post a note to readers on Monday to explain their policies on the documents.  The political class of March 14 is stunned and very nervous: the release of the documents has been most embarrassing for them all, and for their masters in UAE and Saudi Arabia.  There political chatter has suddenly softened on the part of Prince Muqrin puppets in Beirut (in one Wikileak document, Fu’ad Sanyurah interrupts a meeting with US officials to take a call from Prince Muqrin and then another one from Prince Bandar).   In the handling of the newspaper, the paper is as independent as it has been since its founding.
http://angryarab.blogspot.com/2010/12/al-akhbar-and-wikileaks.html 
Angry Arab: New York Times Distorts Politics of Lebanese Newspaper, Alex Kane
I don’t blog much about events in Lebanon because I haven’t read enough about the country nor have I been there, but I just wanted to highlight an example of the New York Times‘ distorted coverage of the Middle East on an issue other than Israel/Palestine, where their reporting is usually quite bad.
http://alexbkane.wordpress.com/2010/12/04/angry-arab-new-york-times-distorts-politics-of-lebanese-newspaper/ 
Noah Feldman learns about Lebanon (and about Al-Akhbar) from Hariri reporters, As`ad Abukhalil
Look at this racist, Noah Feldman (who does not believe that Arabs act rationally), only managed to talk to one side in Lebanon:  “I discussed the rise of Hezbollah with Hanin Ghaddar, the managing editor of Now Lebanon…”  He did not mention that Now Hariri is a propaganda outlet for Hariri family.  And here he dares to talk about Al-Akhbar (a man who writes about Ghazzali and other Islamic theologians based on the translation of their work in English–at least in his last book which I had reviewed here–see below):  “The cultural page of Hezbollah’s newspaper, Al-Akhbar, features articles about Jorge Luis Borges and photographs of women in tank tops and jeans—hardly the stuff of stereotypical Islamist propaganda. Hezbollah affiliates not only write reviews of the latest art shows, some of them actually participate in arts events organized by the leading secular-minded curators of Beirut.”  A man who does not read Arabic and is pleased with himself because he studied Arabic–we know what a few years of Arabic would do to your fluency in the language.  It is obvious that his few days visit to Lebanon relied on the briefings by the likes of Now Hariri reporters and editors.  No one in Lebanon except the Hariri family refers to Al-Akhbar as “Hezbollah’s newspaper.”  But Feldman is really really that ignorant.  It is not that he is dumb–that is another matter–but he is really genuinely ignorant about his subject matter. When I read Feldman about Islamic law, I really sincerely miss every classical Orientalist who ever wrote about Islam.  He is that ignorant.  Tell that ignorant visitor to Beirut that Hizbullah does not support gay rights–which the newspaper supports–unless he believes that Hizbullah is now a feminist organization which advocates gay and lesbian rights.   But what do you expect from a guy who learns about Lebanon from reporters at the most vulgar propaganda outlet, known as Now Lebanon.  I mean, all those who know about Lebanon talk about that site but only to mock it and mock its coverage.  This is a site that was founded by `Uqab Saqr–for potato’s sake. Enough said.
http://angryarab.blogspot.com/2010/12/noah-feldman-learns-about-lebanon-and.html
Noah Feldman, As`ad Abukhalil
The last I needed is for Noah Feldman to write about Beirut.  I had written about this man before: someone who said before congress that people in the Middle East don’t often act rationally.   Look what he said here in the Wall Street Journal:  “Hezbollah provoked Israel into a war by crossing the border to kidnap two Israeli soldiers.”  I guess that French resistance also provoked Hitler by running a campaign of assassinations that targeted not only Nazi collaborators but often their wives and children.
http://angryarab.blogspot.com/2010/12/noah-feldman.html
Noah Feldman gets the pulse of the Lebanese public, As`ad Abukhalil
Look at his contacts in Lebanon who educate him about Lebanon: “To check this theory, I spoke to Mohamed Choucair, the president of the Federation of Chambers of Commerce of Lebanon and the CEO of Patchi chocolates, the region’s largest candy manufacturer. We were sitting in the cigar bar of Le Gray hotel near Martyrs’ Square with Paula Yacoubian, Beirut’s answer to Oprah Winfrey, and her husband, Moafac Harb, formerly the news director of the U.S.-government-funded Arabic television network Alhurra.”  He did not even say that Shuqayr (not Shuqayr–a professor of Islamic law who does not know the rules of Arabic transliteration) is a lackey of Hariri family.  And he does not say that Yacoubian is a TV reporter on Hariri TV and that no one–except someone who does not know a thing about Lebanon and who can’t watch Arabic TV– would say that she is comparable to Oprah.
http://angryarab.blogspot.com/2010/12/noah-feldman-gets-pulse-of-lebanese.html
Cultural Ministry website in Lebanon hacked: shows news of attacks on Syrian workers in Lebanon
Attacks on Syrian workers featured on the website of Cultural Ministry in Lebanon.
http://angryarab.blogspot.com/2010/12/cultural-ministry-website-in-lebanon.html
Iraq

Sunday: 5 Iraqis Killed, 5 Wounded
Iraq was remarkably quiet today even though security officials said that foreign fighters have been entering Iraq and could be behind some of the notable attacks in recent months. At least five Iraqis were killed and five more were wounded in light violence. Among the casualties was an elderly Christian couple.
http://original.antiwar.com/updates/2010/12/05/sunday-5-iraqis-killed-5-wounded/ 
Iraq: Gunmen kill elderly Christian couple inside their Baghdad home
Attackers gunned down an elderly Christian couple late Sunday inside their Baghdad home, the latest in a string of religious-rooted violence that has spurred international outcry and a full-court press for justice from Iraqi authorities.
http://www.cnn.com/2010/WORLD/meast/12/05/iraq.christian.attacks/
More foreign fighters seen slipping back into Iraq (AP)
AP – Intelligence officials say foreign fighters have been slipping back into Iraq in larger numbers recently and may have been behind some of the most devastating attacks this year, reviving a threat the U.S. military believed had been almost entirely eradicated.
http://us.rd.yahoo.com/dailynews/rss/iraq/*http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20101205/ap_on_re_mi_ea/ml_iraq 
Zebari rebuffs clemency calls for Aziz as Frattini visits Iraq
BAGHDAD: Iraqi Foreign Minister Hoshyar Zebari rebuffed a call for clemency against the execution for Saddam-era minister Tareq Aziz that was made by his visiting Italian counterpart Franco Frattini Sunday.
http://www.dailystar.com.lb/article.asp?edition_id=10&categ_id=2&article_id=122216 
Iraq considers Riyadh regime a bigger threat than Iran
Senior figures in the Iraqi government view Saudi Arabia as a greater threat to their country’s security than Iran, according to WikiLeaks’ latest release.
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/middle-east/iraq-considers-riyadh-regime-a-bigger-threat-than-iran-2152328.html
US cable describes controversial Saddam execution (AFP)
AFP – A newly-leaked US diplomatic cable describes in detail the circumstances of Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein’s execution, from guards telling him to “go to hell” to officials taking mobile phone pictures.
http://us.rd.yahoo.com/dailynews/rss/iraq/*http://news.yahoo.com/s/afp/20101206/wl_afp/usdiplomacywikileaksiraqsaddam
Life A Bitter Struggle for Displaced Iraqi Female Heads of Households Returning Home
Food, lack of work and health care remain the major obstacles to recovery among displaced Iraqi female heads of households who have returned home, says IOM.  In its latest survey on displacement in Iraq with a special focus on female-headed households, IOM assessed 1,355 displaced families headed by a woman which have returned to their former homes.
http://www.reliefweb.int/rw/rwb.nsf/db900SID/ASAZ-8BVGXX?OpenDocument&RSS20=02-P
Iraqi school for Roma is basic, but gives hope (AFP)
AFP – It might look modest, but the tent that acts as a class room and the car that doubles as an office are, for the Roma who attend lessons there, the first school of its kind in Iraqi Kurdistan.
http://us.rd.yahoo.com/dailynews/rss/iraq/*http://news.yahoo.com/s/afp/20101205/wl_mideast_afp/iraqkurdsminorityeducation 
U.S. and other world news

“Republicans in the Senate are telling AIPAC “don’t you dare.”
AIPAC,.. is afraid of defying right-wing Republicans in the Senate. Sen. Jon Kyl (R-AZ), in particular, is telling AIPAC “don’t you dare.” His reason is simple: Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) has ordered Republicans to block anything the President submits to the Senate except, of course, tax cuts for millionaires. That includes START.  (The good news is that Kyl may come around and then AIPAC can too.) The case that START is critical to Israel is impossible to dispute. In a letter to AIPAC, Senators Carl Levin (D-MI) and Chuck Schumer (D-NY) explain that there is one gigantic factor that should matter more to the so-called pro-Israel lobby than pleasing Republicans: Iran. Rejecting the treaty will probably cause Russia to abandon the US-led effort to prevent Iran from getting nuclear weapons.
http://friday-lunch-club.blogspot.com/2010/12/republicans-in-senate-are-telling-aipac.html
Mosque shuns FBI informant
Muslims took out restraining order against an FBI agent sent to spy on them. The agent is suing his former handlers.
http://english.aljazeera.net//news/americas/2010/12/201012520148175694.html 
Hunt for WikiLeaks founder Assange appears ‘politically motivated,’ says lawyer
LONDON: The pursuit of WikiLeaks’ founder Julian Assange appears to have “political motivations,” his lawyer said Sunday, as the elusive boss of the whistle-blowing website is wanted on sex assault allegations.
http://www.dailystar.com.lb/article.asp?edition_id=10&categ_id=2&article_id=122220 
Assange Accuser Worked with US-Funded, CIA-Tied Anti-Castro Group
Julian Assange’s chief accuser in Sweden has a significant history of work with anti-Castro groups, at least one of which is US funded and openly supported by a former CIA agent convicted in the mass murder of seventy three Cubans on an airliner he was involved in blowing up.
http://my.firedoglake.com/kirkmurphy/2010/12/04/assanges-chief-accuser-has-her-own-history-with-us-funded-anti-castro-groups-one-of-which-has-cia-ties/ 
US tries to keep troops in Iraq away from WikiLeaks (AFP)
AFP – The US military in Iraq is trying to prevent soldiers from viewing WikiLeaks documents and has posted a web advisory suggesting they could be breaking the law, a spokeswoman said on Saturday.
http://us.rd.yahoo.com/dailynews/rss/iraq/*http://news.yahoo.com/s/afp/20101204/wl_mideast_afp/usdiplomacyinternetwikileaksiraqmilitary
Assange threatens to release ‘poison pill’ if arrested or killed
There is a new threat from the founder of the whistleblower website WikiLeaks.  Julian Assange will release a “poison pill” that contains a “deluge” of secret information if he is killed, arrested or his website is permanently shut down, Daily Mail reports.  “Due to recent attacks on our infrastructure, we’ve decided to make sure everyone can reach our content. As part of this process we’re releasing archived copy of all files we ever released,” WikiLeaks said in a message on its site.
http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2010/12/assange-threatens-release-poison-pill-arrested-killed/
Senate GOP leader: WikiLeaks head a ‘terrorist’
Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell is calling the founder of the online site WikiLeaks a “high-tech terrorist” for releasing classified material from the U.S. government.
http://www.salon.com/news/wikileaks/index.html?story=/news/feature/2010/12/05/us_us_wikileaks_mcconnell 
House of Saud reacts to Wikileaks
Prince Turki Al-Faysal (close friend of Bin Laden and of Mullah Omar) calls for the beheading of those who are releasing Wikileaks.
http://angryarab.blogspot.com/2010/12/house-of-saud-reacts-to-wikileaks.html
Julian Assange’s lawyers say they are being watched
Lawyers representing the WikiLeaks founder, Julian Assange, say that they have been surveilled by members of the security services and have accused the US state department of behaving “inappropriately” by failing to respect attorney-client protocol.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2010/dec/05/julian-assange-lawyers-being-watched 
Reporters Sans Frontières statement on WikiLeaks
This is the first time we have seen an attempt at the international community level to censor a website dedicated to the principle of transparency.
http://wlcentral.org/node/484
Ron Paul: ‘What we need is more WikiLeaks’
Popular Texas Republican Congressman Ron Paul is no stranger to breaking with his party, but in a recent television appearance the libertarian-leaning Rep. went even further than any member of Congress in defending whistleblower website WikiLeaks.
http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2010/12/ron-paul-what-wikileaks/ 
US forced to shake up embassies around the world after WikiLeaks revelations
Battered by a scandal which seems to provide a fresh wave of embarrassment with each passing day, the US government is being forced to undertake a major reshuffle of the embassy staff, military personnel and intelligence operatives whose work has been laid bare by the whistle-blowing website WikiLeaks.
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/politics/us-forced-to-shake-up-embassies-around-the-world-after-wikileaks-revelations-2152167.html 
State Department To Columbia University Students: DO NOT Discuss WikiLeaks On Facebook, Twitter
Talking about WikiLeaks on Facebook or Twitter could endanger your job prospects, a State Department official warned students at Columbia University’s School of International and Public Affairs this week.  An email from SIPA’s Office of Career Services went out Tuesday afternoon with a caution from the official, an alumnus of the school. Students who will be applying for jobs in the federal government could jeopardize their prospects by posting links to WikiLeaks online, or even by discussing the leaked documents on social networking sites, the official was quoted as saying.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/12/04/state-department-to-colum_n_792059.html 
Wikileaks 
“In addition, Arab rulers, despite all the weapons their states have bought from America and elsewhere, again find themselves exposed to their own people as impotent to handle a serious regional problem. They appear totally dependent on the United States, a country that is deeply unpopular among Arabs for its policies in the region, to take care of it for them.”
http://angryarab.blogspot.com/2010/12/wikileaks.html 
US believes Al Jazeera is ‘propaganda tool of Qatar’
The United States government thinks the broadcaster Al Jazeera is being used as a propaganda tool by the government of Qatar to help to advance its agenda on the international stage, according to a memo published by WikiLeaks yesterday.
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/politics/us-believes-al-jazeera-is-propaganda-tool-of-qatar-2152329.html 
Al Jazeera rejects leaked US claims
Al Jazeera says the leaked US cables about the network is very far from the truth.
http://english.aljazeera.net//news/middleeast/2010/12/2010125231346145291.html 
US embassy cables: Saudis praise American strike against al-Qaida in Yemen
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/us-embassy-cables-documents/244077 
US cables: Yemen offered US ‘open door’ to attack al-Qaida on its soil
Dispatches reveal president’s secret deal to let US launch missile attacks on Aqap, but claim it as Yemen’s own work.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2010/dec/03/wikileaks-yemen-us-attack-al-qaida
Former Aussie PM asked US to be prepared to ‘use force’ against China
Wikileaks: The former PM, who is also Australia’s current Foreign Affairs minister, reportedly maintained that deploying force should be an option ‘if everything goes wrong’ with regards to the communist state.
http://www.ibtimes.com/articles/88841/20101205/australia-china-united-states-kevin-rudd-prime-minister-hillary-clinton-wikileaks-diplomatic-cables.htm 
In wake of WikiLeaks, Iran tells Gulf Arabs: We’re not a threat to Mideast
Iran FM tries to lower tensions with Gulf Arab leaders after a WikiLeaks cable reported they are worried about Tehran’s nuclear program.
http://www.haaretz.com/news/diplomacy-defense/in-wake-of-wikileaks-iran-tells-gulf-arabs-we-re-not-a-threat-to-mideast-1.328827?localLinksEnabled=false
Cat and mouse: Iranian foreign minister shakes hands with senior U.S. official… but dodges Hillary Clinton, Josh Rogin
MANAMA, Bahrain—U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton tried to speak with Iranian Foreign Minister Manouchehr Mottaki twice on Friday, pursuing him both inside and outside the gala dinner here at the Ritz Carlton in Manama. But Mottaki deliberately avoided contact with her both times.  “If he comes to the dinner, I’ll probably see him. But he doesn’t talk to me,” Clinton told The Cable in our exclusive interview just hours before the event. 
http://thecable.foreignpolicy.com/posts/2010/12/04/iranian_foreign_minister_shakes_hands_with_senior_us_official_but_dodges_hillary_cl
A resurgent Syria alarms U.S., Israel
BEIRUT — Syria’s fresh interference in Lebanon and its increasingly sophisticated weapons shipments to Hezbollah have alarmed American officials and prompted Israel’s military to consider a strike against a Syrian weapons depot that supplies the Lebanese militia group, U.S. and Israeli officials.
http://feeds.washingtonpost.com/click.phdo?i=381ae444f10a082f25260bd0c9ddb2bf
US government on elections in Egypt and Iran
Egypt:  “When State Department spokesman P.J. Crowley was asked on Tuesday what would be the administration’s “next step,” he said only that “we will continue to raise our concerns where appropriate...”  Iran:  “The White House said human rights “are a matter of moral and pragmatic necessity for the United States” and the United States “will always stand with those in Iran who aspire to have their voices heard.”
http://angryarab.blogspot.com/2010/12/us-government-on-elections-in-egypt-and.html

www.TheHeadlines.org

Fundraising drive off to a great start – please help us keep it going!
Dec 06, 2010 10:17 am | Philip Weiss and Adam Horowitz

Just a quick update on our current fund raising drive. We are off to our best start ever! You can follow the progress in the graphic to the right, but we’ve already raised over $8,000, which means thanks to our generous matching fund we’ve raised $16,000.

This is amazing, thank you, but we still have a way to go. Please give today!

 

 

 

Just as a reminder, we’ve decided to send two thank you gifts to anyone who can make a donation of $100 or higher to our matching fund:

• Gift 1: The first ever Mondoweiss T-Shirt. You’ll be able to wear the “War of Ideas in the Middle East” wherever you go and;

• Gift 2: A free signed and dedicated copy of our new book The Goldstone Report: The Legacy of the Landmark Investigation of the Gaza Conflict (it comes out in January, so please be patient on delivery of both gifts)…

If you’d like your gifts sent to someone else just let us know.

We also realize that a $100 donation is more than some people can afford, so we would also like to offer a Mondoweiss t-shirt to anyone who donates over $60.

Thanks again for your support!

Click here to make a tax-deductible donation to Mondoweiss through the Nation Institute.

 

(While simpler, the Paypal donations are not tax-deductible.)

The address you fill in on the Groundspring site will be the address to which we send your t-shirt and book. For Paypal donations over $100, we will email you with a mailing address request.

Israel supporters using Wikileaks to promote attack on Iran are ignoring Arab public opinion
 

Dec 06,2010

 

Antony Loewenstein

Sever Plocker, a columnist for Yediot Aharonot, recently wrote with pride and some sadness that, “At least on the Iranian issue — and apparently on more than a few other matters — the leaders of the world, including the Arab world, think as we do [the Israelis], but are ashamed to admit it”.

Benjamin Netanyahu has praised the Wikileaks cable dump as vindication of his government’s bellicose pronouncements over Tehran. The Atlantic’s Jeffrey Goldberg has written likewise.

Even Wikileaks founder and Australian citizen Julian Assange, in a strange comment to Time magazine, stated that the Iran-related documents would aid Middle East peace. Assange approvingly quoted Netanyahu when making this allegation.

Such news brings comfort to the Zionist world. The long-standing rule of the Middle East is my enemy’s enemy is my friend. Perhaps, but these are the kinds of friends the Zionist state is keen on making (via the UK Guardian ):

Saudi Arabia is the world’s largest source of funds for Islamist militant groups such as the Afghan Taliban and Lashkar-e-Taiba – but the Saudi government is reluctant to stem the flow of money, according to Hillary Clinton.

“More needs to be done since Saudi Arabia remains a critical financial support base for al-Qaida, the Taliban, LeT and other terrorist groups,” says a secret December 2009 paper signed by the US secretary of state. Her memo urged US diplomats to redouble their efforts to stop Gulf money reaching extremists in Pakistan and Afghanistan.

“Donors in Saudi Arabia constitute the most significant source of funding to Sunni terrorist groups worldwide,” she said. 

Just to clarify. Arab autocrats allegedly fear Iranian hegemony in the region. This has almost nothing to do with nuclear power but rather a serious challenge to the decades-old dominance of the American and Israeli umbrella that insulate dictatorships from popular opinion. The Iraq war, privately backed by many Arab states, allowed Tehran to assume a powerful position in the Middle East and Israel was more than happy to go along for the ride. True democracy is messy and unpredictable. It’s far easier to ensure continuity by backing reliable brutes that won’t argue with billions of dollars in annual aid.

These are Israel and Washington’s best mates.

 

 

The screwed geo-political “logic”  is almost comical. Israel and its followers claim Islamist terrorists are the greatest threat to the world (aside from Shia fundamentalists in Iran). But the biggest funders of these groups are the regimes that allegedly share Israel’s fear over the suspected Iranian nuclear bomb.

It’s tragic though unsurprising that most mainstream Zionists in the US remained either silent over the Wikileaks cable dump or were publicly pleased that other states in the Middle East wanted to incapacitate Iran. New York’s Forward editorialised disapprovingly of the release and was joined by the Australian Jewish News. Nothing was said about the kinds of friends Israel is keeping. Nothing about the support for the countries backing individuals who would like to kill Jews. And no comment about so closely aligning Israel with some of the most brutal regimes on the planet.

What was missed in so much of the Zionist cheering was the Arab people themselves. They don’t exist; their wishes and desires seemingly irrelevant. Unelected leaders are allowed to speak for them. Arab bloggers wrote copiously about the story but Arab public opinion is most instructive over the Iranian “threat”.

Shibley Telhami explained in The National Interest:

the biggest gap in the recent coverage of the story has been understanding Arab public opinion toward Iran and how this affects government calculations. In fact, Iran has the ability to play the Arab-public-opinion card and reach out to groups that threaten the control of Arab governments. And there is evidence that they have succeeded in doing just that, even beyond the rising power of their allies, particularly Hezbollah in Lebanon. In large part, Tehran benefits from Arab public anger toward Israel and the United States, and from the perceived paralysis of their own leaders: consistently, in the past several years, all the polls I’ve conducted at the University of Maryland with cooperation from Zogby International show that in Egypt, Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Jordan, Morocco and Lebanon, the Arab public expressed views about Iran that highlighted just how different the public feels when compared to the elites.

Last August, I released the 2010 Arab public opinion poll results [4], which indicated that Arabs polled were more open to Iran’s nuclear program, including the possibility of nuclear-weapons production, than ever before. In an open question about the world leader Arabs admired most, Ahmadinejad was chosen by 12 percent of those questioned—landing him in third place, behind only Turkish leader Recep Erdoğan and Venezuelan demagogue Hugo Chavez.

My own analysis of the results suggested that Iran is benefiting from the sentiment that “the enemy of my enemy is my friend.” This was particularly visible when those polled were asked to identify the two states that posed the biggest threat to them: 88 percent identified Israel, 77 percent identified the United States and 10 percent identified Iran. While the results on this latter issue varied somewhat from country to country, the trend held across countries polled.

Moreover, Shibley analysed the Al-Jazeera online readers comments when Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad visited Lebanon this year. The results were hardly shocking; most people backed a leader who they thought stood up for Palestine and against Washington and Tel Aviv’s designs on the region. It’s unfortunate that Ahmadinejad rules over an increasingly despotic regime.

Israel has long sided with reliably compliant Arab states to further its aims. Egypt’s collusion in the Gaza siege is just the latest example. But something has changed in the last years. I’m reminded of something Robert Fisk told me soon after the 2006 Lebanon war; many in the Arab world no longer fears Israel and its major benefactor.

In fact the Wikileaks cables, despite Chas Freeman claiming otherwise in the New York Times last weekend, confirm that Israel and the US have constructed unsustainable coalitions in the Middle East that are ultimately leading to the rise of Islamist parties with mass popular appeal.

That’s quite an achievement by the US State Department, the Zionist lobby and Israel itself.

Antony Loewenstein (http://antonyloewenstein.com/) is a Sydney journalist and author of My Israel Question and The Blogging Revolution

BDS movement spreads to Australia
 

Dec 06, 2010

 

Kim Bullimore

BDS action in Melbourne, Austrailia

In October 2010, Australian Palestine solidarity activists and supporters of human rights held their first national Boycott, Sanctions and Divestment (BDS) conference in support of Palestine. The Building Solidarity: Combating Occupation and Apartheid – activism in support of Palestine conference in Melbourne brought together more than 150 Palestine solidarity activists and supporters of human rights and represented a watershed moment in the Palestinian solidarity movement in Australia

At the conclusion of the conference, participants unanimously adopted a calendar of BDS activity and actions to be carried out over the next 12 months. In the month since the conclusion of the conference, Palestine solidarity groups around the country have begun to launch “Don’t Buy Israeli Apartheid for Christmas” actions in the lead up to Christmas as the first stage of the national campaign. So far a range of BDS actions have been held in most Australian capital cities, including Melbourne, Brisbane, Adelaide and Perth.

 

 

BDS action in Perth

BDS action in Brisbane

Kim Bullimore is one of the organisers of the national Australian BDS conference held in October 2010. She is a volunteer with the International Women’s Peace Service in Palestine and writes regularly on the Palestine-Israeli conflict for the Australian newspaper, Direct Action. She has a blog at: www.livefromoccupiedpalestine.blogspot.com. For more information on the Australian BDS campaign visit: http://australianbdscampaign.wordpress.com/.

Message to Vieux Farka Touré: Colonialism is colonialism, whether it happens in West Africa or Palestine
 

 

Dec 06, 2010

 

Shireen Tawil

I was greatly disappointed to learn that Vieux Farka Touré performed last week at the Tel Aviv Opera House on November 26, 2010.  The son of the late, world-renowned Malian guitarist and singer Ali Farka Touré, Vieux Farka Touré has gained prominence in the international music world in recent years as one of Africa’s leading musicians.  His eponymous debut album was released in 2006, and he has since released three albums and performed at the 2010 World Cup in Johannesburg, South Africa.

Vieux Farka Touré’s performing in Tel Aviv is a clear breach of the international movement for boycott, divestment, and sanctions (BDS) movement against Israeli apartheid in Palestine—whose inception was in Occupied Palestine by Palestinian civil society. As an artist hailing from post-colonial Mali—a country well familiar with the ravages of colonialism and western imperialism—I had hoped and expected that Touré would have the moral courage to stand against participating in the normalization and legitimization of Israel’s colonization of Palestine.

France colonized Mali in 1892 and retained control until 1960.  During these 68 years of colonization France used its own economic interests (e.g. paying for its colonial empires) to determine the economic future of Mali—turning its agricultural production to that of solely cotton.  This single-market focus came at the expense of other cash crops, which were more beneficial to Malians, such as peanut farms.  This economic control over Mali has directly contributed to much of the poverty Mali now faces (in 2009, Mali’s GDP per capita stood at approximately $1,200, while France’s was $32,800—the discrepancy a lingering ghost of the cost of colonization to indigenous populations, even four decades after gained independence).

Likewise, Israeli colonization of Palestine and its system of apartheid has had extremely negative economic ramifications for Palestinians.  Israel, established on 78% of historic Palestine, has, since 1967, further appropriated 40% of the Occupied Territories—making it off limits to Palestinians.  Israeli settlers routinely uproot olive groves and violently threaten Palestinian farmers during olive harvest season—whose products are a vital source to the Palestinian economy.

Israeli imposed trade restrictions have resulted in a West Bank economy flooded with products made by illegal Israeli settlements, and a limit on Palestinian exports from the West Bank.  Israel continuously exploits Palestinian natural resources for its own economic benefit—one example being the production of Ahava beauty products made from mud from the Dead Sea.  This multi-million dollar Israeli company is situated in an illegal Israeli settlement in the West Bank, collecting mud and other resources from a site on the Dead Sea which borders the West Bank. 

In doing so, it is stealing resources that rightfully belong to, and should benefit, Palestinians. A recently passed law that will prohibit Palestinians from accessing fresh water sources is another example. Israeli imposed checkpoints, roadblocks, and road closures have also had a negative effect on internal Palestinian trade within the West Bank. Perhaps most devastating, if one can tier devastation when speaking of colonization, is Israel’s illegal, lethal blockade of the Gaza Strip.  By almost hermetically sealing the Gaza strip for four years, the Israeli imposed siege has impoverished 1.5 million Palestinians, strangling an already feeble economy, and further fracturing Palestinian society between the West Bank and Gaza Strip.

 

 

Much as France’s colonization of Mali, whose residual effects are still visible and present today, deleteriously affected indigenous African populations, Israel’s colonization of Palestine is oppressing Palestinians’ rights to freedom, self-determination, and growth as a people.  Whether European colonization of Africa, Asia, and South America of decades ago, or Israeli colonization of Palestine at present, colonization is a suffocating, destructive, unjust, and unacceptable force.  Presumably, Vieux Farka Touré would agree that French colonization was a violent, racist institution that caused great harm to the people of West Africa.  If Vieux Farka Touré believes that Malians deserved (during French colonization, and deserve today) the right to self-determination and freedom, he should extend those same beliefs to Palestinians today under Israeli colonization.

By performing in Tel Aviv, Vieux Farka Touré is siding with and normalizing colonization and apartheid.  Cancelling his performance would have sent a clear message that he neither accepts nor supports colonial projects.  Many prominent musicians have recently cancelled scheduled performances in Israel—including Snoop Dogg, Gil Scott Heron, Sting, the Tindersticks, Devendra Banhart, the Klaxons and Gorillaz Sound System, Elvis Costello, and the Pixies. The fight against apartheid in South Africa showed us that cultural boycott and isolation is an effective, strategic move to pressure an apartheid government to capitulate its oppressive system against an indigenous population. Indeed, Nelson Mandela believes “our freedom is incomplete without the freedom of the Palestinians.” The Palestinian BDS movement is growing in victories, but needs continuous support to send a clear message: the world will not accept Israeli colonization and apartheid.

Many people today look down on European colonialism as a dark era in world history.  I hope that Vieux Farka Touré will realize that colonialism is colonialism, whether it happens in West Africa or in Palestine, the next time he is asked to perform in Israel.  By performing in Tel Aviv, Vieux Farka Touré has directly supported a racist and oppressive system.  As the adage goes—‘silence is compliance’, however in Touré’s case it was not silence, but his music that was compliance in the unjust, violent, and illegal institution of Israeli apartheid. 

Shireen Tawil is a public health professional specializing in mental and reproductive health based in Beirut.