NOVANEWS
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6, count em 6, members of Congress sign letter to Clinton expressing concern for ‘safety’ of US citizens on flotilla
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Hillary gives Israel green light to ‘defend’ itself from flotilla
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Bachmann takes it to the mat– US and Israel are ‘two sides of the same coin’
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Now they tell us: Yale anti-Semitism shop’s whole purpose was to defend Israeli expansion into West Bank!
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Israelis shoot up protesters’ bulldozer at Bil’in wall– as Fayyad participates in demo
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Alice Walker tells ‘Foreign Policy’ she went from ‘mythic’ Israeli in ’67 to ‘terrorist state’ in Cast Lead
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US flotilla members to Obama: We sail ‘in our country’s great tradition of citizen activists taking nonviolent action to stand up to injustice’
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‘CNN’ seeks to balance Alice Walker’s Gaza piece w English novelist explaining how an ‘Israeli parent’ sees things
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The ethnic cleansing of Lyd, and how it continues today
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Does Jello Biafra’s possible Tel Aviv show mark bedtime for punk rock relevancy?
6, count em 6, members of Congress sign letter to Clinton expressing concern for ‘safety’ of US citizens on flotilla
Jun 24, 2011
Philip Weiss
This just in from Just Foreign Policy:
A congressional letter re the U.S. Boat to Gaza was sent to Secretary Clinton todayand posted here: Six members of Congress signed on to Rep. Dennis Kucinich’s letter calling on Secretary Clinton to “work with the Israeli government to ensure the safety of the U.S. citizens on board” the U.S. Boat to Gaza, the Audacity of Hope. The letter was sent to Secretary Clinton on Friday, June 24th.
Check out the letter. No endorsement of the flotilla, no word on the siege of Gaza. “We wholeheartedly support Israel’s right, and indeed its duty, to protect its citizens from security threats.” And:
“In order to avoid another confrontation this year, we urge all parties to practice maximum restraint and avoid violence.”
Hear that, flotilla passengers?
Not a word about safe passage. Not a word about safe passage. Because you can’t call for a flotilla to be let in to Gaza. All you can say is, don’t kill them. Triumph.
More from Just Foreign Policy:
In addition to Rep. Kucinich, signers included: Rep. William Lacy Clay, Sam Farr, Bob Filner, Eleanor Holmes Norton, and Barbara Lee. Just Foreign Policy applauds these members of Congress for speaking out for the safety of the U.S. passengers on the Audacity of Hope. Policy Director of Just Foreign Policy Robert Naiman will be a passenger on the U.S. Boat to Gaza. In a press statement released today, Naiman noted, “State Department officials have an obligation to speak out against threats to attack us. It is deeply disappointing that they have so far failed to do so.”
Hillary gives Israel green light to ‘defend’ itself from flotilla
Jun 24, 2011
Philip Weiss
“And we think that it’s not helpful for there to be flotillas that try to provoke actions by entering into Israeli waters and creating a situation in which the Israelis have the right to defend themselves,” Clinton said.
And just now on MSNBC. Allyson Schwartz, congressperson from suburban Philadelphia, repeatedly justified the Libya intervention by saying that Ghadfi had killed Americans. Well Israel has killed Americans. Repeatedly. Furkan Dogan, Rachel Corrie. The USS Liberty.
Bachmann takes it to the mat– US and Israel are ‘two sides of the same coin’
Jun 24, 2011
annie
On June 13th Michelle Bachman announced her presidential run. Today it is all about…. Israel.
This speech of hers could have been written by Israel’s Foreign Ministry it is so over the top, such a blatant pandering to Israel interests. We’re all used to candidates cementing their Israel bonafides during the election season but this coming directly on the heels of her announcement to run, these declarations– “Most Americans recognize that Israelis and Americans are two sides of the same coin because we share the same values and the same aspirations… We even share the same exceptional mission — to be a light to the nations” — leave no wiggle room, none.
Notice in Bachmann’s final segment, she cites Tzipi Livni’scode for rising democracies where we get schooled ‘democracy is about values before it is about voting’?
President Obama rightly asserted that America’s commitment to our values is being tested today but contrary to what he says upholding American values doesn’t require us to support the rise to power of those who reject the bedrock notion of liberty of individual rights and freedom of religion that are the foundations of the American creed just because they manage to convince a majority of voters to support their intolerant message, because upholding American values does not involve saying we will support whatever political forces win the most votes.
Upholding American values means that we make clear that we have standards of human conduct and if you don’t subscribe to them then while we may cooperate with you when we have an interest in doing so we will not consider you a credible ally. Upholding American values means standing shoulder to shoulder with those who share them and first and foremost that means that we must stand with Israel. I stand with Israel.
Our policies in the Middle East must be guided by this very basic imperative, we must insure that israel is strong and gets stronger so that it remains capable of defending itself at all times and under all circumstances.
God bless you and may God bless the State of Israel and certainly the United States of America.
Bring it on Michelle, let’s talk more about Israel. Something tells me this will wear very thin with the American public.
Now they tell us: Yale anti-Semitism shop’s whole purpose was to defend Israeli expansion into West Bank!
Jun 24, 2011
Philip Weiss
The Yale Daily News reports on Yale’s decision to establish a new anti-Semitism shop that will replace the lately-cashiered program, the Yale Initiative for the Interdisciplinary Study of Anti-Semitism. The story says that leftwing bloggers helped drive YIISA, as it was known, into the wilderness. And it valorizes everything we said about that program: that it was utterly Zionist in its orientation. The money quote:
Sociology Professor Jeffrey Alexander, a member of the YIISA faculty governance committee, said that [YIISA exec Charles] Small’s use of the phrase “engaged scholarship” revealed YIISA’s focus on politics over scholarship. YIISA was “definitely” too political, in his view, which reduced its appeal to the broader Yale population, causing it to fail the review of its academic standards. “The reason [for YIISA’s lack of success] was that it was political, had a strong political orientation,” Alexander said. “[This orientation] was to defend the policies of the current conservative government [of Israel], and the whole post ‘67 tendency of Israel’s foreign policy, which is to occupy conquered territories, to continue the settlement movement.”
Because I am reading Jack Ross’s superb history of anti-Zionism, I can tell you that Zionists made their way into every turret and pillar and pillbox and altar of Jewish life in the 1950s. It didn’t have to be that way, but today people like Peter Beinart and Jeffrey Goldberg and Thomas Friedman accept that universal presence as a norm. Well again, it doesn’t have to be that way. And per Ross, it is about to change.
So what is fascinating about this account in the Yale Daily News is that a guy like Alexander, who had some responsibility to rein in the former anti-Semitism program at Yale, is so outspoken about its failure. I wonder whether Yale’s next anti-Semitism program, which yes, is sure to bring in checks, will be more dispassionate on the Israel question. I think it will be.
Israelis shoot up protesters’ bulldozer at Bil’in wall– as Fayyad participates in demo
Jun 24, 2011
Jonathan Pollak
From Jonathan Pollak of the Popular Struggle Coordination Committee in Bil’in:
Hundreds of protesters led by a bulldozer marched on the Wall in Bil’in today after the Israeli army began dismantling it earlier this week.
Palestinian Prime Minister Salam Fayyad and Israeli member of Knesset Mohammed Barakah participated in the demonstration. Israeli soldiers open fire at a Palestinian protester driving a bulldozer at the site of the Wall in Bil’in today, shattering one of the vehicle’s windows and pancturing two of its tires.
At the time of the shooting, the bulldozer was dismantling the gate in the section of the Wall that is being relocated by the army these days.
The 500 protesters, among them Fayyad and Israeli MK Barakah, marched from the village’s mosque towards the Wall. On arrival to the gate, and as the bulldozer advanced at the gate, the protesters were attacked with rubber-coated bullets, tear-gas and foul-smelling water shot by a water-cannon. Two people were lightly injured.
At a demonstration in the village of Nabi Saleh, also today, the army attacked a group of children dressed as clown who were running kites inside the village. In Deir Qaddis, the Nili settlement’s security guard shot live fire at protesters who flew the Palestinian flag from one of the houses being built in the new neighborhood of the settlement.
Background: The Bil’in Popular Committee declared today as the last day of the old path of the Barrier on village’s lands, and the beginning of the struggle against the new path. On Tuesday morning this week, army bulldozers began work to dismantle the Wall in Bil’in. As early as 2007, after two years of weekly protests in the village and following a petition filed by the residents, Israeli high court declared the path of the Barrier illegal. The court ruled that the route was not devised according to security standards, but rather for the purpose of settlement expansion. Despite the high court’s ruling four more years of struggle had to elapse for the army to begin dismantlement.
During these years two people were killed in the course of the weekly protests and many others injured. Yet even according to the new path, sanctioned by the high court, 435 acres of village land will remain on the “Israeli” side of the Barrier. On September 4th, 2007, the high court ordered the state to come up with an alternative path for the existing Barrier in Bil’in within a reasonable period of time. Despite the ruling, many months elapsed and no new plan was offered.
On the May 29th, 2008, the residents of Bil’in filed a petition to hold the state in contempt of the court due to this delay. In response to the petition, the state offered an alternative path. However, the plan failed to comply with the high court’s ruling as the proffered path left a large area designed for settlement expansion on the “Israeli” side of the Barrier. The only difference between the two paths being that the latter offered to award 40 acres of land back to the residents. A second petition claiming the alternative path not in accordance with court ruling was then filed.
On August 3rd, 2008, the court declared that the first alternative path indeed fails to adhere to the ruling. The court ordered the state to come up with another alternative path. On September 16th, 2008, the state offered a second alternative path. This path also left a large area designed for settlement expansion on the “Israeli” side, offering to return a100 acres of village land to the residents. A lawyer for the residents asked that the state be held in contempt of the court for violating a court ruling for the second time. On December 15th, 2008, the high court ruled that the second alternative path was not in accordance with the original court ruling.
In April 2009 the state offered a third alternative path which left most of the area destined for settlement expansion on the “Palestian” side of the Barrier, thereby returning to the village 150 acres of 490 acres annexed by the original path.
Alice Walker tells ‘Foreign Policy’ she went from ‘mythic’ Israeli in ’67 to ‘terrorist state’ in Cast Lead
Jun 24, 2011
Philip Weiss
Things are changing in the establishment, very slowly. Another important moment, Foreign Policy interviewsAlice Walker about why she’s on the flotilla, and notice the frame, it’s her belief in Israel in ’67, and now it’s just like the United States of Lyncherdom…
FP: How long have you been involved in Palestinian activism? What drew you to it?
AW: It started with the Six Day War in 1967. That happened shortly after my wedding to a Jewish law student. And we were very happy because we thought Israel was right to try to defend itself by pre-emptively striking against Egypt. We didn’t realize any of the real history of that area. So, that was my beginning of being interested in what was going on and watching what was happening. Even at that time, I said to my young husband, well, they shouldn’t take that land, because it’s actually not their land. This just seemed so unjust to me. It just seemed so wrong. It’s really unjust because in America we think about Israel in mythical terms…
I think Israel is the greatest terrorist in that part of the world. And I think in general, the United States and Israel are great terrorist organizations themselves. If you go to Gaza and see some of the bombs — what’s left of the bombs that were dropped — and the general destruction, you would have to say, yeah, it’s terrorism. When you terrorize people, when you make them so afraid of you that they are just mentally and psychologically wounded for life — that’s terrorism. So these countries are terrorist countries…
FP: Are you frightened?
AW: Sometimes I feel fear. And the feeling that this may be it. But I’m positive — I’m looking at it as a way to bring attention to these children and their mothers and their grandmothers, and their grandfathers and their fathers, who face this kind of thing every day. I grew up in the South under segregation. So, I know what terrorism feels like — when your father could be taken out in the middle of the night and lynched just because he didn’t look like he was in an obeying frame of mind when a white person said something he must do. I mean, that’s terrorism too. So, I know that feeling. And this is what they are living under.
US flotilla members to Obama: We sail ‘in our country’s great tradition of citizen activists taking nonviolent action to stand up to injustice’
Jun 24, 2011
Adam Horowitz
Correction: Earlier I posted that the letter below was sent in response to the State Department travel advisory against participating in the flotilla. That was inaccurate. The letter was sent before the travel advisory, and the organizers of the US Boat to Gaza have yet to hear from the White House. The organizers of the US Boat to Gaza did release a statement today in response to the travel advisory which said in part:
U.S. peace activists preparing to set sail on the U.S. Boat to Gaza, The Audacity of Hope, expressed profound disappointment over a statement issued by the U.S. State Department on Wednesday, June 22, 2011. Instead of calling on the Israeli government to let a flotilla of unarmed civilians sail to Gaza, the United States government is pressuring its own citizens to refrain from legal acts.
For regular updates on the US Boat to Gaza you can follow them on Twitter and visit the US Boat to Gaza website.
14 June 2011
The President
The White House
1600 Pennsylvania Avenue NW
Washington, DC 20500
Dear Mr. Obama:
We are writing to inform you that 50 unarmed Americans will soon be sailing in a U.S. flagged ship called The Audacity of Hope as part of an international flotilla to Gaza.
Our peaceful demonstration will challenge Israel’s blockade of Gaza, which has effectively imprisoned 1.6 million civilians, almost half of whom are under the age of 16. The blockade has impoverished the people of Gaza, deprived them of needed materials and supplies to rebuild their lives after the Israeli attack of late 2008 and early 2009, impeded those who are ill or infirm from seeking outside medical aid, and prevented students from seeking education outside of Gaza. 45% of the working age population is unemployed.
In addition to 36 passengers, 4 crew, and 10 members of the press, our boat will carry thousands of letters of support and friendship from people throughout the U.S. to the women, children and men of Gaza. There will be no weapons of any sort on board. We will carry no goods of any kind for delivery in Gaza. Our mission is from American civil society to the civil society of Gaza. We do not serve the agenda of any political leadership, government or group. We are engaged solely in non-violent action in support of the Palestinian people and their human rights.
In our country’s great tradition of citizen activists taking nonviolent action to stand up to injustice, we sail in the hope that our voyage will show the people in Gaza that they are not alone, and that it will call attention to the morally and legally indefensible collective punishment of a population of civilians.
Mr. President, you have noted the unsustainability of the Gaza blockade. And your administration has spoken boldly in support of peaceful demonstrations throughout this Arab Spring.
As U.S. citizens we expect our country and its leaders to help ensure the Flotilla’s safe passage to Gaza – as our country should support our humanitarian demand that the Gaza blockade be lifted. This should begin by notifying the Israeli government in clear and certain terms that it may not physically interfere with the upcoming Flotilla of which the U.S. boat The Audacity of Hope — is part. We authors, builders, firefighters, lawyers, social workers, retirees, Holocaust survivors, former government employees and more expect no less from our President and your administration.
Our boat will sail from the eastern Mediterranean in the last week of June. We shall be grateful to you for acting promptly and decisively to uphold the rights of civilians to safe passage on the seas.
Sincerely,
The passengers of The Audacity of Hope
Nic Abramson, Johnny Barber, Medea Benjamin, Greta Berlin, Hagit Borer, Regina Carey, Gale Courey Toensing, Erin DeRamus, Linda Durham, Debra Ellis, Hedy Epstein, Steve Fake, Ridgely Fuller, Megan Horan,Kathy Kelly, Kit Kittredge, Libor Koznar, Melissa Lane, G. Kaleo Larson, Richard Levy, Richard Lopez, Ken Mayers, Ray McGovern, Gail Miller, Carol Murry, Robert Naiman, Henry Norr, Ann Petter, Gabe Schivone, Kathy Sheetz, Max Suchan, Brad Taylor, Len Tsou, Alice Walker, Paki Wieland, Ann Wright
cc:
The Honorable Ban Ki-moon, U.N. Secretary General
The Honorable Hillary Clinton, Secretary of State
The Honorable Jeffrey Feltman, Assistant Secretary of State
The Honorable Susan E. Rice, Permanent U.S. Representative to the United Nations
The Honorable James B. Cunningham, U.S. Ambassador to Israel
The Honorable John F. Kerry, Chairman U.S. Senate Foreign Relations Committee
The Honorable Richard G. Lugar, Ranking Member U.S. Senate Foreign Relations Committee
The Honorable Robert P. Casey, Chairman Subcommittee on Near Eastern and South and Central Asian Affairs
The Honorable James E. Rish, Ranking Member Subcommittee on Near Eastern and South and Central Asian Affairs
The Honorable Ileana Ros-Lehtinen, Chairman U.S. House Committee on Foreign Affairs
The Honorable Howard L. Berman, Ranking Member U.S. House Committee on Foreign Affairs
The Honorable Steve Chabot, Chairman Subcommittee on Middle East and South Asia
The Honorable Gary L. Ackerman, Ranking Member Subcommittee on Middle East and South Asia
‘CNN’ seeks to balance Alice Walker’s Gaza piece w English novelist explaining how an ‘Israeli parent’ sees things
Jun 24, 2011
Philip Weiss
CNN ran a piece by Alice Walker saying why she’s trying to go to Gaza on the flotilla, it feels a need to balance it with these tripes from “British Jewish author” shown holding his pen at the beach, Howard Jacobson. I saw his novel supporting Israel at my sister’s house at Thanksgiving. I better talk to my sister about this, actually. This piece is portentous, and blind to the disproportion of suffering. Check this out:
if the aim of the flotilla is to ensure that one child will not be set above another it is hard to see how challenging the blockade will achieve it. All an Israeli parent will see is a highly charged emotionalism disguising an action that, by its very partiality, chooses the Palestinian child over the Israeli.
As if Israeli conditions are anything like the ghetto that is Gaza.
“If the Israeli military attacks us, it will be as if they attacked the mailman,” she says. Wrong on a thousand counts. As a writer, Alice Walker must understand the symbolic significance of words. The cargo is a cargo of intention. It is freighted with political sympathy and attitude. It means to blunder into where it isn’t safe, clothed in the make-believe garments of the unworldly, speaking of children and speaking like children, half inviting a violence which can then be presented as a slaughter of the innocents.
The ethnic cleansing of Lyd, and how it continues today
Jun 24, 2011
Rana
The Israeli organization Zochrot has published testimonies from two men, Fayeq Abu Mana and Aaraf Muharab, on the Israeli ethnic cleansing of Lyd, my parents’ hometown. Israelis raping Palestinian women, wide-scale pillaging of Palestinian belongings for resale, mass murders of Palestinians, burning bodies of murdered, a massive Israeli military operation on the ground, military planes air bombing Lyd/Lod, Palestinians forced into prison and work camps. This is how Israel was created: raping, pillaging, and murdering.
From the testimony of Fayeq Abu Mana:
Lod was a quiet city without war. There were only Arabs here, Christians and Muslims, no Jews at all. Ben Shemen was the neighboring Jewish village and we were their friends. The war started and there were battles and they came to occupy Lod. The Jewish soldiers came from the direction of Ben Shemen dressed as Arabs like the Jordanian army. There was a war and there were casualties everywhere in Lod. In the room next to here there were many dead.
There were many bodies. They were buried not far from here, near the main road. They buried them in a pit, I mean a jama’a [mass grave], everyone. Down in the city there is another mosque. It has a room that people entered, about 75 people. Someone from Lod took grenades and threw them at the army and killed a few soldiers. One of the soldiers, his brother was killed. He went to the mosque and killed all the people in that room.
We sat at home and they told us to burn the corpses. We burned them on the spot. They said to go to the mosque and take the corpses out from there. How take them out? The hands of the dead were very swollen. We couldn’t lift the corpses by hand, we brought bags and put the corpses on the bags and we lifted them onto a truck. We gathered everyone in the cemetery. Among them was one woman and two children. They said burn. We burned everyone.
I want those who stand with Israel to tell me how they justify this?
This man’s testimony matches the experience of my own family testimonies. My
grandmother clinging to her citrus trees, refusing to leave her home and land that she and my grandfather had sacrificed so much and worked so hard for. Where
was my grandmother to go with 11 children? She finally fled when the planes came
and started bombing her hometown.
Aaraf Muharab relates the history in 1948 to the situation today, where Israel is still trying to force Palestinians out of Lyd, or at least limit the population’s growth. He says:
I want to connect it to what is happening today in local problems. Sometimes it seems to me that people experienced more than one Nakba. Two days ago a house in Lod belonging to a woman with nine children was destroyed and now she is discarded. We made a decision to rebuild the house but it’s not certain that they wouldn’t try to destroy it again. Most of the crimes are committed in fact because there is order. No suffering can be used as a reason to cause suffering to another, otherwise there is no end to it. I don’t think that Zionism is totally evil but you have to recognize the injustice here. Jews here thin, that they are continuing the path of Herzl and they don’t see a difference between the expulsion of 1948 and expulsion today. You’re talking here about a demographic problem and that is the basis of racism.
Aaraf makes an important distinction in Israel’s mistreatment of Palestinians. Here at Mondoweiss we often talk about discrimination but in the context of appropriating land in Lod he sheds light on the deeply institutionalized systematic and bureaucratic Israeli hostility toward Arabs. He continues:
I don’t want to use the word ‘discrimination’ because discrimination means, say, that 80% is apportioned to one side and 20% to the other. But here they give zero percent to the Arab side. It’s not discrimination but hostility. Planning in Lod is carried out purely in favor of the Jews and the Arab areas are an obstacle to the plans and nothing more.
