NOVANEWS
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An angry Obama warns the lobby that the ‘world is moving too fast’ (to preserve a Jewish state)
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Obama the racist sectarian
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Move Over AIPAC flashmob @ D.C. Union Station
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Report: Israeli snipers picked off unarmed protesters at Lebanon-Israel border
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Nakba Protest: Are these Israeli agent-provocateurs?
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‘Colonization is indefensible, not 1967 borders’ – Cohen in NYT
An angry Obama warns the lobby that the ‘world is moving too fast’ (to preserve a Jewish state)
May 22, 2011
Philip Weiss
Today’s speech by Barack Obama to AIPAC was a historic speech, maybe the most remarkable speech he has ever given. For a masked and calculating man, it was incredibly sincere. For just below the politically-hogtied phrases and praises for the Israel lobby that controls his future, it was filled with rage. When he spoke over and over of a Jewish democratic state and then said that the world was changing, and spoke about that Jewish state upholding universal values that Americans also share, I heard vicious irony: You want a religious state, you have the power to demand it of me, because you are the Israel lobby, well time is running out on you.
And when he finished his speech by reminding the Jews before him that we are fellow Americans, I thought it was a jab at their dual loyalty.
The Israel lobby has never been so naked. Walt and Mearsheimer’s estimations of its character 6 years ago look meager now when the Wall Street Journal writes openly of “Jewish donors,” something Walt and Mearsheimer refuse to say, and when Obama begins his speech by reminding AIPAC of what a good boy he was back in Chicago 2004, when he reached out to “Rosey” when he thought abut running, Lee Rosenberg, the slightly cadaverous media executive who brought Obama to the podium today, and is surely hated by many in the room for doing so.
And all the boilerplate of the speech, the endless celebration of the deep ties between Israel and the U.S., came off as so much boilerplate, lobby speak. I know I have to say this, and you know it, too, Obama is saying, but it is boilerplate.
He is angry. I thought he wasn’t going to mention the word 1967 or the controversy it set off the other day. But he surprised me by saying it 3 or 4 times and going right into the controversy. So he is angry at being shown up by Netanyahu, whom he mentioned only once, in passing. He is angry that as John Mearsheimer said yesterday at Move Over Aipac, Netanyahu has taken on Obama three times and defeated him three times.
The beauty of the speech for me was about the Arab spring and the impatience of history.
Obama said that time is running out on the endless peace process. I was abusing him through most of the speech but when he said, “The world is moving too fast,” I cried out in pleasure. Obama knows what we on the left know: that because of the Arab spring and the millions on the Arab street whose demands he dignified today, and because of the disgust of peoples everywhere with the American-led peace process– in Latin America, Europe, Asia and the Arab world, as he reminded the lobby– the world is sick of a Jim Crow state. When I go to Europe this week, this is all people will ask me about, he said, veiling angr.
And when Obama spoke twice of the “demographic” realities west of the Jordan, he was only echoing what Mearsheimer said the day before, there is a majority of Palestinians between the Jordan and the sea, and this is your last chance to gerrymander a Jewish majority on the vast majority of the land that you already ethnically cleansed. I believe he spoke these words about demography with rage– how can an anti-racist say racist phrases without rage? And when he said that Israel and the U.S. share the background of claiming their freedom against overwhelming powers – the British, the Arabs—I think he was offering an ironical history lesson. Obama doesn’t believe in a Jewish democracy any more than he believes in a white or a Christian democracy. He will say these words over and over, in bitterness, to the lobby that has got him politically hogtied because he depends on, according to the Wall Street Journal, Jewish money, and he may well believe in partition for the same reason Mearsheimer does, to head off violent cataclysm in Israel and Palestine, but he is on our side in his heart. On the side of the world moving forward with progressive ideals.
And when he talks about the world’s impatience with an absurd peace process—a peace process that Christiane Amanpour said today is the definition of insanity, and that Steve Walt said yesterday at Move On Aipac seems as plausible a means of producing two states as our plans to colonize Alpha Centauri—it is his own impatience. The lobby has been exposed and Barack Obama is doing all that he can to open up the American discourse to a discussion of its values. So I’m grateful for the speech today.
Obama the racist sectarian
May 22, 2011
Seham
I had dual reactions to Obama’s speech Thursday. On the one hand I was relieved that he spouted Israeli propaganda because it’s good for Palestinians and Arabs to be constantly reminded who is against them and the United States can only be described as an enemy of the Palestinian people. And, no, I was not impressed with his meaningless words about the 1967 borders because he prefaced them by saying that no matter what Israel does or does not decide to do that our relationship with them would never change and that we would indefinitely continue to pick up the tab for the occupation without complaint.
However, It still shocks me when he ignores Palestinian deaths. Anyone listening to his speech would think that for every 100 Israelis that die, 0 Palestinians are killed–and not the other way around. Apparently, Palestinians can die, the babies, the elderly and the non-violent peace activists and it’s OK, because “Israel has the right to defend itself.” He did not even mention the international peace activists that have been killed ormaimed by Israel–even if they are American, because Israel has the right to defend itself from peace activists too.
It still leaves me feeling appalled when I hear US demands that Hamas, again, recognize Israel’s “right to exist” when in reality it is Palestinians both from Hamas and Fatah begging Israel and the international community to recognize them on 22% of their historic land. I couldn’t believe the language about Palestinians ceasing incitement against Israel without a word about the systematic judicial and political discriminationsanctioned by Israeli law that is taking place against Palestinian citizens inside of Israel and those Palestinians living under Israeli control in the Occupied West Bank and Jerusalem. Does Obama not realize that the same internet that spread information about Tunisia, Egypt, Libya and Syria has made accessible for years information about Israel’s daily cruel treatment of Palestinians, the extra-judicial assassinations, landtheft, home demolitions, detention of non-violent peaceactivists, routine detention of children, attacks on weeklypeaceful protest and the killing of innocent young menand women by Israeli settlers and soldiers? Did I mention that any combination of these things happendaily? Am I to understand that Obama does not know those things or should we expect that Palestinians accept that dying in accidents related to being occupied on a daily basis is a fact of life. And that they should not complain lest it be construed as “incitement.” Apparently, after Israel commits its daily crimes against Palestinians they should say, “thank you, we love you.”
I was also disgusted by Obama’s comments on Bahrain was that for his Saudi audience? Anyone with a sense of decency should be outraged by the barbarity of the Al Khalifa regime which has taken to snatching young Shia girls from their classrooms and torturing them; arrestingdemocracy activists, beating them to the point ofdisfigurement and then threatening them with rape; putting nurses and doctors on trial for giving medical care to activists. But for Obama, it seemed hard to pretend that Bahrainis had any humanity, they’re another set of very dispensable Arabs (like Palestinians) that don’t truly need to be humanized. It was difficult for Obama to even stutter out “B-B-Bahrain” as he briefly admonished the regime for demolishing mosques, he then blamed Iran for sectarian agitation there! What does Iran have to do with the fact that the majority Shia population in Bahrain are treated like second class citizens? Is it the fault of Bahrainis that the only people in the region expressing disgust over what that royal regime is doing to them happen to be Shia Iranians?
I’ve been disgusted with Obama for a while but it has now reached what feels like a crescendo. His speeches now elicit from me the same disgust I’ve felt listening to Mubarak, Suleiman, Qadhafi, Saleh, Al-Assad and Bush. I can’t listen to him without feeling absolutely revolted.
Move Over AIPAC flashmob @ D.C. Union Station
May 22, 2011
annie
I’m excited to hear news about the Move Over Aipac event in D.C. this weekend. Here’s a start!
Report: Israeli snipers picked off unarmed protesters at Lebanon-Israel border
May 22, 2011
Alex Kane
A May 20 report from Human Rights Watch alleges that Israeli snipers may have picked off unarmed demonstrators at the Nakba protest last Sunday in the Lebanese village of Maroun al-Rass. 10 protesters were killed in Lebanon as tens of thousands of Palestinian refugees approached the Lebanon-Israel border, demanding the right of return.
Human Rights Watch reports (my emphasis):
An estimated 50,000 people gathered in Maroun al-Rass for a planned commemoration of Nakba Day, according to four participants. A Human Rights Watch researcher was also present to monitor the demonstration. The witnesses told Human Rights Watch that at 10:45 a.m., a group of protesters tried to move toward the nearby border fence, but that Lebanese anti-riot police, crowd-control officials with clubs, and Lebanese military pushed them back. Ibrahim Dirani, a photojournalist who was near the border, said that “when they [Lebanese army] fired in the air to push the protesters back, the protesters got excited and started throwing rocks at the [Lebanese] army.” At around noon, a group of several hundred people, primarily young men, overwhelmed the security forces and ran toward the fence.
A second witness who was close to the fence told Human Rights Watch:
When they reached the fence, they started throwing rocks toward the Israeli side. There were some Israeli soldiers but you could not see them that well. They were hidden behind the trees… Suddenly, we heard two shots from the Israeli side and saw one protester fall dead.
But the protesters would not be deterred. They continued throwing rocks. At around 2:30 to 3 p.m. a Merkava tank came and released white smoke. Behind the tank and the smoke, more Israeli soldiers arrived. And at that point, we heard a lot more gunfire. It was intermittent fire, as if shot by snipers.
Human Rights Watch observed the Israeli tank as well as what appeared to be a sniper outpost consisting of a small earth mound with a window on the side. Demonstrators close to the fence said they saw more than a dozen Israeli soldiers, many of them behind a row of trees, and a military jeep. “I heard Israeli soldiers shoot every few minutes,” the photojournalist said. “It was like the shooting was done by snipers, because after each shot we would see a wounded person fall.” Human Rights Watch saw the crowd carrying the apparently dead body of a boy or youth away from the fence, and saw another man, 22-year-old Munib al-Masri, who was shot in the abdomen and taken to a hospital. A third protester was shot in the head and killed.
Both Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International have called for investigations into the Israeli military’s conduct on May 15, when thousands of Palestinian protesters from Gaza, the West Bank, Lebanon, Syria and Jordan demanded their right to return to villages in what is now Israel.
Alex Kane, a freelance journalist based in New York City, blogs on Israel/Palestine and Islamophobia atalexbkane.wordpress.com, where this post originally appeared. Follow him on Twitter @alexbkane.
Nakba Protest: Are these Israeli agent-provocateurs?
May 22, 2011
annie
At msnbc, photographer Baz Ratner describes the scene:
During events held by Palestinians to mark “Nakba” (Catastrophe) on Sunday May 15 to commemorate the expulsion or fleeing of some 700, 000 Palestinians from their homes in the war that led to the founding of Israel in 1948, I was covering a clash between Israeli security forces and Palestinian youths in the Shuafat refugee camp, a neighbourhood of East Jerusalem surrounded by the controversial Israeli barrier. Both sides were standing at a distance from each other when I arrived and the youths were throwing stones towards the police. The police retaliated by firing rubber bullets and tear gas, a common occurrence during clashes. After a few hours the police charged towards the protesters who were running away. I saw that part of the police were running down an alley. Due to my past experience in these types of situations I followed them sensing that something out of the ordinary may occur.When I reached a point in the alley I saw riot police surrounding a group of about ten masked men and a woman, all armed with pistols, detaining a few Palestinians.It was the second time that I witnessed undercover police detaining Palestinians but the first time I’ve ever seen an undercover policeman wearing woman’s clothes. The ‘woman’ was pushed into the car and very quickly all of the undercover policemen were rushed into other civilian cars and the detained Palestinians were left to the riot police. There are a few undercover police units who infiltrate Israeli-Arab and Palestinian communities by dressing up and acting as Palestinians. Knowing Arabic well and Arab customs, they use the surprise element to achieve arrests. Some Druze and Jewish and even some Arabs are experts in this field.
(my bold)
‘Colonization is indefensible, not 1967 borders’ – Cohen in NYT
May 22, 2011
Matthew Taylor
Roger Cohen busts out a brilliant catchphrase in the NY Times that could serve as the basis for the next Young Jewish Proud protest:
The 1967 lines are not “indefensible,” as Netanyahu declared in his immediate response to Obama’s speech. What is “indefensible” over time for Israel is colonizing another people.
