NOVANEWS
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Surviving the Dahieh War: Rami Zurayk’s ‘War Diary: Lebanon 2006′
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The same Islamophobic bloggers and pundits that influenced Norway killer also influence Congress
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Israeli bulldozers edge ever closer to… Al Badawi
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Israeli threatens no ‘food, fuel, water, anything’ if occupied Palestinians seek statehood
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Israeli dignitary warns that binational state is worse than apartheid
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American Jews feel warmer about Netanyahu than Obama — in switch from a year ago
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Australian police crack down on BDS protest, arresting 19
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Daily Kos, anti-semitism, & the zombie peace process
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My response to ‘DailyKos’ smear
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Israel sues Bedouin village for $.5 million cost of uprooting it again and again
Surviving the Dahieh War: Rami Zurayk’s ‘War Diary: Lebanon 2006′
Jul 29, 2011
Helena Cobban
Thirty months before there was Cast Lead, there was the Dahieh War, a sustained assault against Lebanon during which the Israeli military flattened an entire neighborhood of tightly packed high-rises in southern Beirut called simply “the Dahieh” (the suburb.) The vast majority of the 300,000 people who lived until then in the Dahieh had fled before the flattening began, finding shelter in other parts of Lebanon or in neighboring Syria. The inhabitants of Qana, in South Lebanon’s mountainous Jabal ‘Amel region, were not so “lucky”. On July 30, 2006, the Israeli military bombed a house in Qana in which scores of civilians had sought refuge: Some 60 of them were killed, including at least 19 children.
We are now approaching the fifth anniversary of that massacre in Qana. (Tragically, the village had suffered an eerily similar tragedy during a precursor Israeli assault, ten years earlier.)
In 2006, the Israeli military continued its mega-lethal campaign against Lebanon for 33 days, July 12 through August 14. They killed 1,200 Lebanese citizens, the vast majority of them civilians. They also destroyed several extensive residential neighborhoods, including the Dahieh, along with bridges, power plants, factories, and numerous other civilian facilities throughout the whole country. (43 Israeli civilians and 121 Israeli military were also killed in the war.) But as with the assault against Gaza 30 months later, even that level of destruction failed to achieve the Israeli government’s goals of bending the targeted population to Israel’s political will.
The Dahieh War was a turning point for activists from throughout the region, demonstrating that even an institution that enjoys chrystal-clear military supremacy can be resisted and showing that when Islamist and secular social activists combine forces they can withstand even the fiercest onslaught.
But what was it like to live in Lebanon and South Lebanon under such a fierce Israeli assault? My company, Just World Books, is proud to be publishing a unique account of those days written by the Lebanese social activist Rami Zurayk. Zurayk’s short work War Diary: Lebanon 2006 will be available as an ebook and a paperback within the coming days– certainly long before the fifth anniversary of the ceasefire. Click on the ‘Buy’ button button there to place advance orders for this moving and very important 60-page work.
Here, exclusively for Mondoweiss, are two excerpts from War Diary: those covering July 30 and July 31, 2006:
July 30, 2006
I waited till the end of this day to write in my journal. I usually purposely delay the daily task of fishing back the memories of my day, at least the most marking of them, from the troubled swamp that is my short-term memory, and then polish them, observe them before laying them on the computer screen. Today I am just afraid of what I have to write.
Last night the Israeli air force destroyed a shelter where more than sixty women, children, and handicapped people had sought refuge in the village of Qana in South Lebanon. They all died, buried under the rubble. I saw on TV their families, their relatives and their friends, those who remained and who looked deader than the deceased, pull them from under the chunks of broken walls and arrange them next to each other, in an infinite line of dusty but intact bodies. If it wasn’t for the way they were being carried, held by their limbs as if they were sheep, one could have thought they were sleeping. From time to time, a press photographer or a journalist extended a helpful hand. From time to time, a man would drop his burden, so light in his arms but so heavy in his soul, and collapse in tears. The women were wailing, the men were shouting their anger, and all, all, even the foreign journalists were expressing loudly their indignation of a massacre they knew would remain unpunished. The Chosen People do not pay debts. And they never give IOUs.
In Tel Aviv, Condoleezza Rice, the U.S. Secretary of State, expressed her sadness, but she went on, these are things that happen in wars.
The Israeli prime minister, Ehud Olmert, blamed Hizbullah. To convince us, he constructed a very simple argument: If there was no Hizbullah, Israel wouldn’t have needed to bomb Lebanon, and all these innocent deaths could have been avoided. The whole world listened to him. Many people believed him, especially in the West. The black sheep like us knew he was lying, but they were scared of saying anything, so they just moved their heads up and down and sideways so that the world could read in it both negation and acquiescence, and they went baaa baaa.
The families of the victims promised to keep fighting Israel till their last breath.
July 31, 2006
I woke up very early this morning, as I do everyday. I made coffee and switched the TV on. The morning news was full of war and death. There were mostly images of children lying next to each other as if they were peacefully sleeping, eyes wide open. We could tell they were dead because their parents, hysterical with pain, were moving them around to show them to the press photographers without the care usually reserved to the living.
A voice over was informing us that the UN Security Council, which had convened a special session last night, had expressed its profound sadness for the death of the 60 women and children of Qana, buried in their shelter by an Israeli mega bomb. The Security Council had not found it necessary to con- demn this attack or to impose an immediate ceasefire, but there were talks of a 24-hours truce to bury the dead.
The job of the palace eunuchs has always been to counsel the monarch and to take care of his dirty work, without ever antagonizing him.
This is when I decided to go to Sinay, my village in the South. I’d had enough of my daily routine and of my self-inflicted isolation. I had to see with own eyes my country and the state in which the enemies put it. I wanted to surprise Suhayla and my other cousins and tell them my love. I had at least ten other perfectly valid reasons when I only needed one: I needed air, emotions, danger. In my house in Beirut I was starting to get moldy.
I took the road on my brother Tarek’s bike, a 250cc Kawasaki Ninja, stylish in spite of its small engine. I had barely joined the airport road when a speeding truck flashed its lights and overtook me. It was filled with large badly sealed sacks from which emanated the vilest stench, a smell of carrion macerated in rotten fruits. The vehicle was leaving behind it a trail of solid matter of various sizes that collided with my face, my chest, my helmet, and filled my lungs. When a flattened metal can skimmed my helmet, I understood that this was the solid waste hearse of Beirut delivering its load to the burial grounds of Na`meh.
I exited the highway and waited for a few minutes. I knew this trip would be dangerous, but if I had to die, I would rather it be at the hands of the Israelis.
There were very few people on the Khaldeh road, and traffic thinned further towards Na`meh, which stank of badly buried waste. I was riding fast, easily passing all the cars. It was more interesting to ride than I had thought, and I quickly rediscovered my reflexes. A good thing too, because right after the bend at the entrance to Na`meh, the road was blocked with a mountain of metal scrap and cement blocks. This is all that was left of the bridge that once crossed over the highway. A temporary diversion towards a side road had been opened. I took it and found myself in the center of the village. It was swarming with Lebanese army troops. The shop fronts that had been blown out by the explosions were open, and the activity was surprising. I stayed on the small road till Damour where all the cars took the mountain road. I asked the Lebanese army checkpoint if there was another way. The soldiers told me to rejoin the highway, as I would be able to pass with the bike.
I rode alone for a while on the deserted road. Soon, I saw in the distance a mound of debris similar to the one I had encountered in Na`meh. There were many cars parked around it, and a man seemed to be doing some work in the distance. I went towards him.
The crater must have been 30 meters in diameter. It was partly filled with its own rubble, but I could also see a number of destroyed cars. As to the ones I thought were parked, they were all burned and torn. The man was busy filing one of the sides of the gaping hole with stones and sand, in order to make a passage wide enough for cars to wade through on this river of wreckage. I was able to pass easily and stopped to ask him if the road to Saida was clear.
At this moment, a minivan bursting with women and children arrived from the south. To pass the improvised bridge, they had to step out of the bus and walk to the other side. They were coming from Nabatiyeh where they had spent the last 3 days in a dark and stinky shelter where they had to defecate and urinate on the floor, right in front of each others, like beasts in a stable. They had tried their luck at dawn, and had safely reached Saida where they had waited several hours before finding a driver who had accepted to take them to Beirut in exchange for their last savings. The women stood stoically with their long veils twirling in the breeze. They were looking incredulously at the horizon and the sea, without seeming to understand where they were. They breathed deeply, to fill their lungs with the smell of seaweed, thyme and the perfumes of the land as if to eliminate the dirty air of the shelter. The children were catatonic, their heads filled with sleep and with images of noisy death. The families had no idea where to go after reaching Beirut.
I took the old coastal road, as I was told. There were columns of smoke in the distance. I knew it was the Jiyyeh power plant, where the fuel tanks had been burning for over15 days. I reached Sa`adiyat, where my uncle Ziad had taught me how to gather sea urchins way before the wars started. There wasn’t a single car in sight, and I was in Jiyyeh very quickly. This is where the ‘hottest’ beaches of Lebanon are located. They have evocative names : Janna, Pangea, Jonas, Bamboo Bay. Luxurious places where the customers are care- fully filtered at the entrance. I remembered that I had promised myself never to set foot there again. Five or six years ago, my family and that of my friend Tuha had decided to spend the day at the beach. We went to the place called Jonas. The fat man at the gate wanted to take our names in order to book a beach umbrella and I answered him in Arabic. I gave my name as well as Tuha’s, which in reality is Abdul-Fattah Amhaz: you can’t get more Shi`a than that. The man looked at me as if he was regretting to have told us that there were vacancies. He then said: “you know this is a classy beach, you can’t grill meat or prepare a narguileh.” To this day, I feel pain in the stomach and in the nape of my neck when I think about the incident. I know I should have broken his teeth and gone home instead of following my wife’s advice and avoid spoiling the day. But that was a long time ago when I was young and stupid and without rancor.
The stench of burning fuel was infernal, and the carcinogenic cloud had spread over more than a kilometer. I crossed it literally blindly. When I exited this Gahanna, the sea in Rmeileh was turquoise, and the waves were languor- ously dying on the black sticky sand.
The great bridge at the entrance to Saida had disappeared. All that remained were two powerless stumps trying in vain to grasp each other. I took the small road towards the temple of Eshmun, the Phoenician War God. The smell of orange blossoms impregnated the humid and motionless air. Suddenly there was nothing other than this palpable smell that seemed to emanate from the pores of the earth, from the wood of the trees and from the leafy shadows. It intoxicated me and I dissolved myself in it, thinking about death.
At the Saida [Sidon] exit, there were Lebanese army soldiers, slouching at the tables in front of a mana’ish bakery. I made the mistake of asking them if the highway was open. They immediately became suspicious and asked me for my identity papers. I obeyed while remarking sarcastically about the absurdity of their request and about the imbecility of an Israeli spy who would stop to ask directions from the army. They told me to take the old road and to watch out for the Israeli helicopters that were hunting Resistance bikers riding on the southern roads.
The traffic on the road to Sour [Tyre] was moving pretty well and could have almost been ‘normal’, if it weren’t for the absence of trucks, which were also being specifically hunted by the enemy air force. The passing cars were car- rying whole families with mattresses and blankets on the roof. They all had white flags hanging from the windows or tied to the radio antennas.
I reached Ghazieh, which had been bombed several times. In front of the restaurants-butcheries aligned on the main road, men were lighting up large barbecues. The smell of the grilled meat stopped me for a minute and took me back a few months, to a lunch stop we made, a friend and I, on our way back from Sinay. I didn’t stay long. There is nothing worse than the stench of cold barbecue, the sickening stench of which sticks to the hair and to the clothes, and which can only be eliminated with a complete scrubbing.
A few kilometers later, I left the coastal road and rode towards the ochre hills of the Jabal `Amel in its summer attire.
The narrow and sinuous road that links my village to the coast passes by Bissariyeh, Ghassaniyeh, Kawtarieh, then through the isolated valley of Khartoum. There wasn’t any traffic; I had fun carving the bends. The bike was well balanced, and its handling excellent. I would have liked it to have more power, but it was good enough, and it almost made me forget the danger of driving on this road, where the ‘Apache’ helicopters could appear at any time. Lost in my thoughts, I realized the absurdity of being shot by a war machine to which the Americans had given the name of one of the tribes they had exterminated. When it comes to money, the Americans are capable of doing anything, even of recycling the glory of their victims. Will the next generation of U.S. planes be called ‘Hizbullah’?
A few minutes later, I passed the large flamboyant bougainvillea hedge and took the small road to Sinay. Suddenly I was in my cousin’s old house. We kissed without letting anyone see us, because it is not done in the vil- lage, then we cried together for her daughter who had died two months before. We drank the very dark and very sweet tea we make in my region. Sitting on the couch, I let peace penetrate me while my cousins talked about the war.
Please consider buying this wonderful, very human document. The ebook is $4.00 and the papwrback is $7.00. Tell your friends about it, too! Rami Zurayk is also the author of our new bookFood, Farming, and Freedom: Sowing the Arab Spring, which explains a lot about how the aid and trade policies imposed on Lebanon and other Arab countries over the past 25 years wrecked rural livelihoods and did so much to help prepare fertile ground for the democrats of the Arab Spring.
If you want to find out more about Zurayk and his work, watch this great 6-minute video of him discussing his work and his activism.
The same Islamophobic bloggers and pundits that influenced Norway killer also influence Congress
Jul 28, 2011
Karina Piser
In light of the Oslo attacks, it is important to pause and contemplate what sparked this event, and indeed where such hatred comes from. One thing is clear: this in no way occurred in isolation.
It was a disconcerting coincidence that an article on the front page of Monday’s New York Times coincided with a sensationalist event entitled “Homegrown Jihad in the USA: Culmination of the Muslim Brotherhood’s 50-year History of Infiltrating America,” presented by Citizens for National Security (CFNS), located in Boca Raton, Florida and sponsored by U.S. Congressman Allen West, a Republican from Florida.
In fact, the Times article reported on the strong influence of a group of American bloggers on Anders Behring Breivik’s–the man accused of the Oslo massacre–decision to bomb government buildings and kill so many innocent civilians. His 1,500-page manifesto spoke directly to the alleged failure of Norwegian politicians to protect the nation from the spread of nefarious Islamic influence. His manifesto, which cites Robert Spencer’s blog, Jihad Watch, an astounding 64 times, should serve as a reminder of the terrifying influence of right-wing extremism in a world of online media.
CFNS is part of this xenophobic network of ideologues to which Breivik subscribed. Eli Clifton at Think Progress has done great work on unpacking the influential forces behind the manifesto, revealing the frequency in which Breivik cites alleged counter-terrorism experts and Islamophobic bloggers and pundits in justifying his views. Breivik’s manifesto cites Daniel Pipes, a board-member of CFNS, and his think-tank, The Middle East Forum, eighteen times. Pipes’ blog features a variety of extreme, ultra-conservative gems of articles on the Middle East and a whole spectrum of important political issues, such as his confirmation of President Obama’s Muslim identity that lists the President’s “ties to Islamists,” or his plan for Palestinian-Israeli peace, which essentially calls for Israel to wage relentless violence on all of its potential adversaries in order to achieve its national goals. Pipes also thinks up clever phrases to describe his ridiculous assessments of the world. My personal favorite, Sudden Jihad-Syndrome, refers to cases “whereby normal-appearing Muslims abruptly become violent.” The most atrocious aspect of this blatantly racist and ignorant phrase is that, since Pipes coined it, it has appeared on an increasingly widespread basis.
What’s particularly frightening about all of this—the event, Daniel Pipes, Breivik’s manifesto—is not that right-wing radicals exist. That’s not news to any of us. But we should take note of the political influence these lunatics somehow manage to have, and the fact that our nation’s Congresspeople support events like “Homegrown Jihad in the USA.” Ignoring these trends would be dangerous.
The goal of the CFNS event was to present an “in-depth, 18-month long research project” revealing the Muslim Brotherhood’s influence in America. The presentation’s first slide, “THE WAR IS REAL,” introduced the “one-sided war” the Brotherhood has waged against America and the West for the last 50-years. Graphic representations of intricate networks of Muslim Brotherhood “affiliates”—a cast of super-nefarious organizations like the Muslim Students Association, the Muslim American Society, and the North American Islamic Trust—allegedly show the extent to which the Muslim Brotherhood has not only infiltrated America but has transformed every Muslim-American into a raging terrorist, intent on waging “jihad” (a term undefined by the speaker of course) against the West, threatening the “inherently secular” nature of the American political climate (this statement was then contradicted, or perhaps unintentionally retracted, by the speaker after I posed a quite simple question regarding his opinion on the potential threat of other groups that conflate religion and politics, like Evangelical Christians or even lobbying organizations like AIPAC).
Even more bizarre than the “in-depth” research project is the absolute absence of citations or statistics in the pamphlet distributed at the briefing. The only citation is from the Center on Law and Security at NYU which offers graphical representation of prosecutions of “homegrown terrorists.” The goal was to show a linkage between “homegrown terrorists” and “Islam,” clearly to vilify Islam to such an extent that CFNS’s hideous conflation of Muslim and Terrorist would seem somehow grounded in scholarship or reality. In this clear misappropriation of important academic data, CFNS used a statistic about prosecution of terrorist activity to implicate the Muslim Brotherhood and Muslim-Americans in general.
And what are we to make of the database of 6,000 names generated by CFNS’s “in-depth research?” When asked whether or not the names on said database were based on action or association, the speaker paused, and then confirmed that all individuals (and organizations, for that matter) marked as linked to the Muslim Brotherhood (and identified as alleged threats) were listed solely based on (unproved) “affiliation” rather than “terrorist activity.” The prospect of Congress having access to a database of 6,000 names of allegedly dangerous individuals is alarming and should serve as a red-flag for the possibility of violence against the American-Muslim community. If this isn’t McCarthyite, I’m not sure what is.
CFNS’s rhetoric should not be taken lightly. Although many of the attendees at the conference only came to witness its absurdity and get a free lunch, some took heed to the ludicrous message CFNS was trying to convey. The presence of Islamophobia in America and on a global scale is certainly alarming. The identification and data-basing of Muslim students should be a warning sign. This is not benign hatred. When an American politician sponsors an event clearly grounded in racism, anti-Muslim rhetoric and fear-mongering, conscientious individuals and organizations aimed at fostering understanding at peace should take action.
Karina Piser is an intern with New America Foundation’s Middle East Task Force.
Israeli bulldozers edge ever closer to… Al Badawi
Jul 28, 2011
R. Taylor
Yesterday there were more arrests in al Walaja, the village west of Bethlehem which is being enveloped by The Wall, as people protested against the destruction of village land. Once again Dr Mazin Qumsiyeh was arrested by Israeli soldiers (for the third time), as were Sherin Al-Araj and five Israeli anti-occupation activists.
That news is bad enough but those arrested will no doubt survive. The same might not be true of al Badawi, the village’s oldest inhabitant. Al Badawi is a magnificent 5,000 year old olive tree, perhaps the oldest in the world. It stands in The Wall’s path and, according to reports from Palestinian news sources, Israeli bulldozers are edging ever closer. The fear is that this tree along with many others will be destroyed.
Al Badawi stands on the north-facing slopes of al Walaja which plunge steeply down into Wadi-el- Jundi where The Green Line follows the valley bottom and the Jerusalem to Tel Aviv railway line. On the opposite side of the valley, above the Biblical Zoo, is the site of the original village of al Walaja. In 1948 al Badawi would have been witness, in October of that year, to its conquest by Israeli troops. The inhabitants fled. Some made their way across Wadi-el-Jundi and built al Walaja again. 63 years later al Walaja’s existence is once more under threat. This time one of the world’s finest trees is threatened.
Israeli threatens no ‘food, fuel, water, anything’ if occupied Palestinians seek statehood
Jul 28, 2011
Philip Weiss
Noam Sheizaf has a post with a video of Palestinian envoy Riyad Mansour breaking down in the Security Council here. The lines:
Why should the Palestinian people be forced to languish yet another year — or even one more day — under foreign occupation? They should not and they must not. This is the time to end the Israeli occupation. This is the time for Palestine’s independence. This is the time for Palestine and Israel to live side by side in peace and security, and this is the time for a new Middle East. We believe that the international community is ready for that, and we trust that the appropriate actions will be undertaken soon to make this a reality.
Why? Well Mr Mansour, Stewart Ain of the New York Jewish Week, tells you what Israelis are prepared to do to you if you push forward with this initiative:
“There is an undercurrent of what Israel would do if they went ahead with this,” [Gerald Steinberg, neocon and political science professor at Bar-Ilan University] said, referring to reports that the Netanyahu government was considering voiding the Oslo peace accord or annexing settlements. “I don’t think it’s serious but rather is part of the political theater going on — threat, counter-threat. It’s more directed at the Europeans and the UN than anybody else. … And the Palestinians may pull back at the last minute. It’s all part of the theater.”
Should Israel cancel the Oslo Accords, it would no longer be obligated to give the Palestinians food, fuel, water or anything, according to Mordechai Kedar, a lecturer in the Department of Arabic Studies and a researcher at the Begin-Sadat Center for Strategic Studies.
“Israel could provide them whatever it wanted on an individual basis but not as a state in the making,” he said. “And they then could forget about the refugee issue and Jerusalem. They would have to live with what they had. In my view, Israel should let them create six city-states in the West Bank and Israel should stay in every area to make sure they don’t fall into the hands of Hezbollah or Hamas.”
“The minute the Palestinians go to the UN by themselves without Israel, they are abrogating the Oslo Accords, which clearly state that an agreement must be made by the two sides and that neither can go to an outside international body without the agreement of the other,” he added.
Israeli dignitary warns that binational state is worse than apartheid
Jul 28, 2011
Philip Weiss
J Street has got a group of Israeli generals visiting Washington to lobby American officials that the ’67 lines are defensible lines.
The neocons are upset by this. Kredo of Washington Jewish Weekreports: “[Noah] Pollak said… ‘It’s time for J Street to stop politicizing the U.S.-Israel relationship.'” If only. Then there’s this:
Characterizing the outcry that resulted from Obama’s remarks as “just PR,” [attorney Gilead] Sher, a colonel in the Israeli Defense Forces Reserves, said that without a viable two-state solution, Israel risks becoming an “apartheid state” or, worse, a “Jewish-Palestinian state.”
American Jews feel warmer about Netanyahu than Obama — in switch from a year ago
Jul 28, 2011
Philip Weiss
I’m late to this J Street poll of American Jewish opinion from two weeks back. It shows what I always say, American Jews are conservative on the Israel/Palestine issue, and they’re the wrench in the works. American Jews disapprove of Obama’s handling of the Israel/Palestine conflict, by 56-44, and don’t want a Palestinian statehood declaration.
But here’s my headline: In the J Street poll a year ago, Obama got a warm-and-fuzzy rating of 56.5, narrowly edging Netanyahu, who scored 55.8. This year Netanyahu beats out Obama, 61 to 54. So it seems that Netanyahu’s throw-down in Congress moved American Jews.
Some of the other 2011 results:
If Obama were running against Romney in 2012, you’d vote for: Obama 63%, Romney 24%.
Should the US vote for or against a Palestinian state at the U.N. in the fall? 34% for, 47% against. I am told that the Pro figure jumped to 41% for those under 40. Still, this underscores what I always say, Palestinian statelessness is an American Jewish achievement. (Obama’s voters generally are far more positive than Jews as a group toward Palestinians.)
Should Israel prevent flotilla from reaching Gaza? 78 percent say Yes.
And this is a blow against the claim that American Jews remain liberal: Do you consider yourself Conservative, Moderate, Liberal, or Progressive? Add up the #s and you get: 55 percent conservative or moderate, 45 percent liberal or progressive.
Now let me return to the warm and fuzzy ratings, to clarify them. The polled were asked to quantify their feelings for a public figure on 0-100, cold to hot. Now Obama actually got more positive/warm grades– grades over 50– than Netanyahu, by 56 percent for Obama, 44 percent for Bibi. But Obama also got way more negative/cold grades — under 50– than Netanyahu, by 34 percent to 20 percent. And this is where the change is from 2010 to 2011: Obama’s warm ratings dropped from 59% to 56% while Bibi’s negatives dropped from 22% to 20%.
Australian police crack down on BDS protest, arresting 19
Jul 28, 2011
Kim Bullimore
On July 1, the Coalition Against Israeli Apartheid (CAIA) in Melbourne Australia held a non-violent Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) action in Melbourne’s CBD. The non-violent and peaceful demonstration of more than 120 people was violently attacked by the Victorian Police and 19 activists were arrested. They are now facing fines of up to $30,000.
The non-violent BDS action sought to highlight the complicity of two Israeli companies, Jericho and Max Brenner Chocolate, in Israel’s occupatoin and apartheid policies, as well as Israel’s ongoing war crimes and human rights abuses against the Palestinian people.
Jericho produces cosmetics made from minerals exploited from the Dead Sea. While Jericho profits from the Dead Sea, the Palestinian people who live on the land surrounding the Dead Sea are regularly denied access by Israel’s military occupation of Palestinian lands. Restrictions are enforced on the Palestinian people via network of apartheid and occupation policies, including military checkpoints, exclusion zones and Israeli only roads. Max Brenner Chocolate is owned the Strauss Group, one of Israel’s biggest food and beverage companies. On its website, the Strauss Group emphasises its support for the Israeli military. The Strauss Grpups provides care packages, sports and recreational equipment, books and games for soliders. Strauss boasts that it supports both the Golani and Givati Brigades of the Israeli military. Both of these brigades were heavily involved in Israel’s 2008/2009 military assault on the Gaza Strip, which resulted in more than 1300 Palestinians being killed, the majority civilian, including approximately 350 children.
The non-violent BDS action called on the public to boycott the two Israeli companies and to join the Palestinian initiated BDS campaign against Israel.
In the wake of the police attack on Palestine solidarity activists, a defence campaign has been set up in support of the 19 pro-Palestine/BDS activists and to oppose the criminalisation of pro-Palestine activism and the attack on civil liberties by the Victorian police. The campaign has issued a statement and is calling on all supporters of Palestinian rights and civil rights to endorse the statement and support the campaign in defence of the “Boycott-Israel19” (please email the campaign email addressboycottisrael19@gmail.com).
The attack on the July 1 action marked a clear escalation in Victorian police violence against pro-Palestinian demonstrators. CAIA had held a similar action to the July 1 a month earlier on May 20 which also focused on Max Brenner Chocolate and Jericho While there was a strong police presence, the BDS action was not attacked by the police, as it was a month later. You can see the May 20 BDS action footage here:
You can find out more about the campaign by visiting the campaign website at: www.boycottisrael19.wordpress.com.
Kim Bullimore is a volunteer with the International Women’s Peace Service in Palestine (www.iwps.info). Kim writes regularly on the Israel-Palestine conflict for the Australian newspaper, Direct Action (www.directaction.org.au) and has a blog atwww.livefromoccupiedpalestine.blogspot.com
Daily Kos, anti-semitism, & the zombie peace process
Jul 28, 2011
annie
The following is comment from one of my favorite bloggers attached to an important “diary” from Adalah at the popular website Daily Kos. Appropriately titled Israel: Protesters Responsible for Their Own Deaths the diary is an excellent example of some of the fine writing you will find at Daily Kos. I’d like you to read this comment before I continue.
I think (16+ / 0-)
at times we lose sight of the bigger picture and how these spats are reflective of something very instructive.
These personal antagonisms are not surprising in the least, and they reflect very accurately the larger problems of advocating for Palestinians in American political discourse.
The new meme from the pro-Israel “team” is to tar everyone who supports BDS as an anti-semite because, so they argue, BDS supports ‘boycotting Jews’.
They know this is utterly ridiculous. They know that the BDS movement is modeled after the boycott of apartheid South Africa, and it is not about boycotting one ethnicity, but about challenging a state which enforces legalized discrimination against a stateless, occupied people who have no legal rights at all and can be abused, arrested, and killed at will and have no legal recourse to challenge the state that does this. But that does not matter to them. Instead, MBNYC, Mets102 and their crew understand that at least in this place, the Palestinian struggle for human rights and equality will be instinctively supported by people once they are educated with the facts. So they must derail, they must insult, they must lie.
The reason they do this is because they understand that recommended diaries like this one reach more people, and more threatening to them, reach an audience that is predisposed to political activism in the Democratic Party. Of course today there is very little difference between Democrats and Republicans vis a vis Israel, and we saw the ways that Democrats sided with the right wing Netanyahu over their own President. Those who are attacking the Palestinian equality movement are doing so because they want to control the discourse about criticism of Israel and ensure that what is a widespread view among progressives about Israeli violations of human rights does not reach a wider audience.
That’s what’s going on here. The trolling by MBNYC, the constant charges of anti-semitism, the hounding of Arab posters who articulate the Palestinian cause far more effectively than they can articulate their cause, a cause predicated on maintaining a discriminatory system–all of this done by about 15 users who understand that progressives who are educated about what Israel does to Palestinians will not support their positions and tactics and will instinctively support equal rights for Palestinians, a position soysauce advocates. Let’s be clear too: this isn’t about one vs. two states. Some people from Adalah support a two state settlement, others don’t. It’s about one group that advocates for refugees, for occupied and brutalized civilians, for legal and political equality, and another group that advocates on behalf of a state. And let’s be clear: identifying so strongly with state power, any kind of state power, is an untenable position if one claims to support human rights, because all states violate human rights, and Israel more so than most, as it maintains a 44 year illegal occupation of Palestinian lands.
So the personal attacks will keep coming. So will the anti-Arab racism, so will the trolling. But as is clear in this diary, their views and tactics are not popular here.
by sortalikenathan on Mon Jun 06, 2011 at 06:55:30 PM PDT
Several times over the last few months I’ve been alerted by friends regarding ‘diaries’ by members of ‘Team Shalom’ at Daily Kos highly critical of Mondoweiss. Why does this matter? For our site, I don’t think it does. It’s clear some of our biggest detractors read this site avidly, including the comments that ultimately drive traffic. Team Shalom has run a campaign to have this site banned from Daily Kos (even tho I am not aware posters there link to this site with any regularity, perhaps I am wrong) and yesterday one of my friends who posts there wrote to inform me they have achieved this goal.
As anyone who reads this site knows Phil is very interested in stimulating a conversation within the American Jewish community about identity including but not limited to Israel and that ongoing wound, their conflict with Palestine. My hunch is members of Team Shalom do not want to have any conversations about Jewish identity, especially within the establishment, pertaining to Israel/Palestine and that’s why we’re seeing this pushback at Daily Kos.
I am grateful to Phil and Adam for taking on the herculean task of cracking open a much needed conversation, for I know without this conversation there will be no resolution and no way as Americans we can facilitate peace in both Palestine and Israel. An important ’09 article is an example of the kind of writing that makes this site so vital and important to the American conversation .
In Liberals like to deceive themselves about Jewish power Phil challenges a concept Bernard Avishai (author of a fine book called The Hebrew Republic) repeats,“One cannot just assume that the Congress will care what Jews want”. It’s as important a conversation to have now, after the 29 standing ovations, as it was when it was written. This is exactly the kind of conversation that needs to take place across this country if we are ever going to learn how to use that power to bring peace in the middle east, which of course includes Israel and Palestine. And I am not ashamed to be part of this conversation. I will leave you now with the words of a friend and regular reader of Daily Kos, published here for the first time.
These are a bunch of liberal Jews who are basically in the bunker. Most of them won’t rec diaries about Israelis helping Palestinians in Sheikh Jarrah or Hebron. They’re not fans of Dimi Reider or Joseph Dana or Amira Hass. What they are interested in is policing thought and speech, even the thought and speech of their fellow Jews who don’t agree with them. That they get to define what anti-semitism is, not other Jews on the site (and there are many other Jews who oppose their views as you know). Do these Jews get to determine what is at stake for all Jews?
Furthermore, by focusing on anti-semitism and not on the horrific suffering inflicted by Israeli policy on Palestinians, by supporting a zombie peace process designed to deliver greater and greater gains for Israel, focusing on the words typed into boxes on screens through the internet, they are taking the focus away from where it should be – on Palestinians and their actual physical, mental and emotional suffering under a policy of institutional and systemic violence by the Israeli government. But this is yet another way to drown out Palestinian voices, by making it all about one particular type of racism and pulling the curtain over the racism of the occupation. By yelling loudly enough about anti-semitism, by making advocates of Palestinians who do not condone any form of racism always having to defend themselves against charges of anti-semitism, they obscure the racism of the Israeli government, the Israeli laws and the Israeli occupation.
All they have are these tactics, since the tide is turning against them. Young Jews are questioning Israel. The Arab world has risen up in an Intifada inspired by the Palestinian intifadas to shake off their despots. Over a hundred countries have recognised Palestine and more will do so in September with the UN vote. Palestinian civil society is moving ahead with BDS and Israelis are looking at the other citizenships they can acquire, just in case. Refugees from 1948 want to go home and who cannot be sympathetic to that? That is why the liberal zionists are freaking out, that is why they are behaving this way. I say let them. They are becoming more and more ineffective every day.
Take care,