Mondoweiss Online Newsletter

NOVANEWS

• Oakland carries Khader Adnan to Occupy San Quentin

• Brooklyn’s Park Slope Food Coop to take the first step towards a boycott of Israeli goods on March 27

• Ten reasons why AIPAC is so dangerous

• Israelis sanction a march of incitement against Hanin Zoabi in her hometown

• Gorenberg on why one state is a non-starter: Jews would have to pay higher taxes or receive fewer services

• ADL enlists city of Oakland to block Atzmon event

• Crawfish, gumbo, and the truth

• Dershowitz wants MJ Rosenberg fired for daring to stop Iran war push

• Open letter to Harvard President: Charges that one-state conference is anti-semitic are ‘defamatory’ and serve ‘to prevent rational discussion of ideas’

• Lobby’s bedfellows: CAP’s new PR outfit also worked for Sheldon Adelson’s pet project

Oakland carries Khader Adnan to Occupy San Quentin

Feb 28, 2012

Allison Deger

(Photo: Marin Independent Journal)

On Monday, February 20, 700 activists with Occupy Oakland descended upon San Quentin State Prison.  Palestinian and Arab activists organized a small contingency to focus on hunger striker Khader Adnan. Occupiers were surrounded by police as they held signs and distributed literature on Israeli administrative detention.

(Photo: Allison Deger)

The demonstration’s main target, San Quentin, one of California’s largest adult prisons, was on lockdown: highway exits to the prison were closed, and the 4,055 prisoners inside the facility were forced to stay in their cells the entire day. Outside at the three-hour rally, Occupiers called for an end to the death penalty, life sentences, parole restrictions, and political prisoners. Occupy Oakland focused on Adnan’s case as part of its broader campaign against mass incarceration and police repression.

(Photo: Bill Hackwell)

Zachariah Barghouti, Oakland Occupier and organizer with the Palestinian Youth Movement commented on bringing Adnan into Occupy San Quentin:

I protested in support of our comrade Khader Adnan because he flipped my world upside down. Khader Adnan is willing to sacrifice his life, literally starve his ego, to make a future without Israeli prisons possible for all Palestinians. Khader Adnan embodied self-sacrifice, a concept mastered by the few, and taught me that, like history, resistance is my food, my fuel, and my body is a vehicle for change.

(Photo: Allison Deger)

From Oakland to Palestine, occupation is a crime

Oakland is the first of the occupy movements to incorporate Palestine solidarity into its cross-movement building. The occupy political organizing in the Bay Area is fiercely anti-racist, and the Oakland community has long-standing experience with excessive force and illegal detention.  Currently, the Oakland Police Department (OPD) is under threat of a federal takeover after failing to make reforms a judge ordered following a misconduct scandal.  About ten years ago, a group of OPD officers known as the “rough riders” were charged with excessive force and planting drugs on black residents of blighted West Oakland.  The officers were acquitted and OPD failed to make any of the 53 reforms.  This impunity towards police and criminalization of Oakland residents is what connects this California community to the occupied Palestinian territories.

(Photo: Allison Deger)

Moreover, a few weeks ago, Occupy Oakland endorsed Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions against the state of Israel, and there are plans to hold panel discussions on March 13 with Tristan Anderson and Scott Olson. In 2009 Anderson was critically injured from an Israeli tear gas canister and Olson sustained a severe head wound from a police crackdown last November, also from a tear gas canister.

(Photo: Allison Deger)

When marching the one-mile back to where cars and buses were parked, protesters chanted for the freeing of all prisoners. And, in typical Occupy Oakland fashion, demonstrators also cheered, “the system has got to die, hella, hella occupy!”

(Photo: Allison Deger)

The action was part of a “National Occupy Day in Support of Prisoners,” with protest taking place in approximately a dozen U.S. cities.

Brooklyn’s Park Slope Food Coop to take the first step towards a boycott of Israeli goods on March 27

Feb 28, 2012

Carol Wald

Members of Brooklyn’s Park Slope Food Coop will be voting on more than work shift arrangements at the Coop’s monthly General Meeting in March. They’ll be deciding on whether they’ll be having a co-op wide referendum about the Coop’s stance on human rights.

On the agenda for the March 27 meeting is a proposal spearheaded by a diverse group of the Coop’s members on holding a referendum to determine the Coop’s participation in the global nonviolent Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement against Israel’s violation of international law and human rights. Members hope the vote will bring some sort of conclusion to over two years of heated arguments in meetings and in the pages of the Coop’s biweekly newspaper.  A vote in favor of a referendum would allow all 16,000 Co-op members to vote on the boycott. Opposition to even voting on having a referendum has been fierce. Those in favor of a Co-op boycott are hoping for a yes vote on the referendum.  Without it, only members present at a General Meeting (typically a few hundred) could vote on whether the Co-op will join the boycott.  “On an issue that Co-op members feel so strongly about”, according to one of the organizers of the boycott, “it is essential for the entire membership to have a voice”.

Disagreement about a boycott hasn’t been confined to the newsletter . One member of  PSCF Members For BDS was assaulted by another member while shopping and several others have been verbally abused.   Some non-affiliated members, however, have written to the group saying that the BDS debate has allowed them to publicly voice their support, which they felt they couldn’t do before.

Historically, the Coop has been active in boycotts:  it opposed apartheid-era South Africa long before the call was widespread, joined in the boycott against Nestle, and in recent years has boycotted such companies as Coca-Cola and Flaum Appetizing for labor rights violations. For many, the proposal to boycott Israeli goods is the most contentious issue the Coop has ever dealt with. Turnout for the March 27 meeting is expected to be so high that Coop staff has reserved the auditorium of Brooklyn Technical High school, estimated to hold 1,700 people.

With a date set, and coverage in the Wall Street Journal, Daily News, and Metro, the pace of organizing has stepped up – as well as the level of vitriol by anti-BDS coop members.

In the meantime, “PSFC members for BDS” continues to spread the word. Upcoming events the group has sponsored include the screening of the documentary Until When on February 28 and a presentation by Joel Kovel on the environmental crisis in Palestine/Israel on March 17th.

Ten reasons why AIPAC is so dangerous

Feb 28, 2012

Medea Benjamin

Graphic from the Occupy AIPAC website – www.occupyaipac.org

The American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) is one of the most powerful lobby organizations in the country. AIPAC’s clout helps fuel a never-ending cycle of violence in the Middle East.

Here are ten reasons why AIPAC is so dangerous.

1. AIPAC is lobbying Congress to promote a military confrontation with Iran. AIPAC – like the Israeli government – is demanding that the U.S. attack Iran militarily to prevent Iran from having the technological capacity to produce nuclear weapons, even though U.S. officials say Iran isn’t trying to build a weapon (and even though Israel has hundreds of undeclared nuclear weapons). AIPAC has successfully lobbied the U.S. government to adopt crippling economic sanctions on Iran, including trying to cut off Iran’s oil exports, despite the fact that these sanctions raise the price of gas and threaten the U.S. economy.

2. AIPAC promotes Israeli policies that are in direct opposition to international law. These include the establishment of colonies (settlements) in the Occupied West Bank and the confiscation of Palestinian land in its construction of the 26-foot high concrete “separation barrier” running through the West Bank. The support of these illegal practices makes to impossible to achieve a solution to the Israel/Palestine conflict.

3. AIPAC’s call for unconditional support for the Israeli government threatens our national security. The United States’ one-sided support of Israel, demanded by AIPAC, has significantly increased anti-American sentiment throughout the Middle East, thus endangering our troops and sowing the seeds of more possible terrorist attacks against us. Gen. David Petraeus on March 16, 2010 admitted that the U.S./Palestine conflict “foments anti-American sentiment, due to a perception of U.S. favoritism for Israel.” He also said that “Arab anger over the Palestinian question limits the strength and depth of U.S. partnerships with governments and peoples in the [region] and weakens the legitimacy of moderate regimes in the Arab world. Meanwhile, al-Qaeda and other militant groups exploit that anger to mobilize support.”

4. AIPAC undermines American support for democracy movements in the Arab world. AIPAC looks at the entire Arab world through the lens of Israeli government interests, not the democratic aspirations of the Arab people. It has therefore supported corrupt, repressive regimes that are friendly to the Israeli government, such as Egypt’s Hosni Mubarak. Events now unfolding in the Middle East should convince U.S. policy-makers of the need to break from AIPAC’s grip and instead support democratic forces in the Arab world.

5. AIPAC makes the U.S. a pariah at the UN. AIPAC describes the UN as a body hostile to the State of Israel and has pressured the U.S. government to oppose resolutions calling Israel to account. Since 1972, the US has vetoed 44 UN Security Council resolutions condemning Israel’s actions against the Palestinians. President Obama continues that policy. Under Obama, the US vetoed UN censure of the savage Israeli assault on Gaza in January 2009 in which about 1400 Palestinians were killed; a 2011 resolution calling for a halt to the illegal Israeli West Bank settlements even though this was stated U.S. policy; a 2011 resolution calling for Israel to cease obstructing the work of the UN Relief and Works Agency for Palestinian Refugees; and another resolution calling for an end to illegal Israeli settlement building in East Jerusalem and the occupied Golan Heights.

6. AIPAC attacks politicians who question unconditional support of Israel. AIPAC demands that Congress to rubber stamp legislation drafted by AIPAC staff. It keeps a record of how members of Congress vote and this record is used by donors to make contributions to the politicians who score well. Members of Congress who fail to support AIPAC legislation have been targeted for defeat in re-election bids. These include Senators Adlai Stevenson III and Charles H. Percy, and Representatives Paul Findley, Pete McCloskey, Cynthia McKinney, and Earl F. Hilliard. AIPAC’s overwhelmingly disproportionate influence on Congress subverts our democratic system.

7. AIPAC attempts to silence all criticism of Israel by labeling critics as “anti-Semitic,” “de-legitimizers” or “self-hating Jews.” Journalists, think tanks, students and professors have been accused of anti-Semitism for merely taking stands critical of Israeli government policies. These attacks stifle the critical discussions and debates that are at the heart of democratic policy-making. The recent attacks on staffers at the Center for American Progress is but one example of AIPAC efforts to crush all dissent.

8. AIPAC feeds U.S. government officials a distorted view of the Israel/Palestine conflict. AIPAC takes U.S. representatives on sugar-coated trips to Israel. In 2011, AIPAC took one out of very five members of Congress—and many of their spouses—on a free junket to Israel to see precisely what the Israeli government wanted them to see. It is illegal for lobby groups to take Congresspeople on trips, but AIPAC gets around the law by creating a bogus educational group, AIEF, to “organize” the trips for them. AIEF has the same office address as AIPAC and the same staff. These trips help cement the ties between AIPAC and Congress, furthering their undue influence.

9. AIPAC lobbies for billions of U.S. taxdollars to go to Israel instead of rebuilding America. While our country is reeling from a prolonged financial crisis, AIPAC is pushing for no cuts in military funds for Israel, a wealthy nation. With communities across the nation slashing budgets for teachers, firefighters and police, AIPAC pushes for over $3 billion a year to Israel.

10. Money to Israel takes funds from world’s poor. Israel has the 24th largest economy in the world, but thanks to AIPAC, it gets more U.S. taxdollars than any other country. At a time when the foreign aid budget is being slashed, keeping the lion’s share of foreign assistance for Israel meaning taking funds from critical programs to feed, provide shelter and offer emergency assistance to the world’s poorest people.

The bottom line is that AIPAC, which is a de facto agent for a foreign government, has influence on U.S. policy out of all proportion to the number of Americans who support its policies. When a small group like this has disproportionate power, that hurts everyone—including Israelis and American Jews.

From stopping a catastrophic war with Iran to finally solving the Israel/Palestine conflict, an essential starting point is breaking AIPAC’s grip on U.S. policy.

Israelis sanction a march of incitement against Hanin Zoabi in her hometown

Feb 28, 2012

Today in Palestine

 Report: Police sanction protest against Zoabi in Nazareth
BETHLEHEM (Ma’an) — Israeli police have given permission for a right-wing march against a Palestinian member of the Israeli parliament in her home town of Nazareth, Israeli media reported Monday. Part of a campaign under the slogan “Expel Hanin Zoabi from the Knesset”, her fellow parliamentarian Michael Ben-Ari will accompany activists from far-right group Our Land of Israel in the procession through the Palestinian city on March 11, Hebrew newspaper Maariv said.
link to www.maannews.net

Land Theft / Destruction / Ethnic Cleansing / Apartheid

Islamic-Christian Committee Calls For Protecting Al-Aqsa Mosque
The Islamic-Christian Committee for Protecting Jerusalem and the Holy Sites, called on the Arab, Islamic and international countries to intervene for halting the escalating Israeli attacks against the Al-Aqsa Mosque in occupied East Jerusalem, especially amidst repeated attempts by extremist settlers who have been trying to break into it.
link to www.imemc.org

Al-Quds Conference Decides To Head To UN

The Al-Quds Arab Conference, held in Doha – Qatar, concluded its deliberations on Monday with a decision to head to the United Nations over the ongoing Israeli violations and escalation against the Arab and Islamic Holy Sites in occupied East Jerusalem.
link to www.imemc.org
Soldiers go to sleep in village threatened with demolition
Haj Sami Sadeq – Al Aqaba village council – A month after the Israeli Army issued demolition orders for 90% of the small village of Aqaba, villagers were surprised, on coming to prayer on an early morning hour, to find numerous Israeli soldiers deeply sleeping in jeeps outside the village`s mosque – evidently having complete trust in the goodwill of the threatened village`s inhabitants. Indeed, Aqaba villagers took care not to disturb the sleeping soldiers.
link to www.kibush.co.il

Violence & Aggression

Witnesses: Settlers raid Hebron village
HEBRON (Ma’an) — A group of Israelis entered Hebron village Halhul overnight Monday, sparking clashes with locals, witnesses said. No injuries were reported. Witnesses told Ma’an the group attempted to pray near Nabi Younis Mosque in the east of the village and threw stones at worshippers performing the dawn prayer. Israeli forces surrounded the village, and escorted the group out with military jeeps, locals said. Settler attacks in the West Bank against Palestinians increased by more than 50 percent in 2011, according to the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs.
link to www.maannews.net

Israeli warplanes intensify flights over Gaza
All types of Israeli warplanes were seen filling the skies over Gaza Strip on Monday evening as Palestinian security agencies evacuated their buildings in anticipation of possible air strikes.
link to www.palestine-info.co.uk

IOF soldiers arrest two minors, raid Jenin villages
Israeli occupation forces (IOF) arrested two Palestinian minors near Yatta village in Al-Khalil province while rearing sheep.

IOF soldiers round up 8 Palestinians in Nablus village
Israeli occupation forces (IOF) stormed Kafr Qalil village to the south east of Nablus at dawn Monday and rounded up eight citizens before withdrawing from the village.

Palestinian activist faces Israeli administrative detention
Palestinian nonviolent youth activist, Fadi Quran was assaulted and arrested in Palestine on Friday as he demonstrated for the reopening of the Shuhada Street to Palestinians. Quran’s crime? Israeli officials say Fadi “pushed” a soldier.

Four political detainees on hunger strike for one week
Four detainees in the PA jails have been on hunger strike in Nablus jails for the past week demanding their release, relatives said on Sunday.

On February 25th Palestinian men and women, elders and children, together with Israeli and international activists gathered for two demonstrations organized by the South Hebron Hills Popular Committee. The first demonstration, attended by approximately ninety people, was planned in response to twenty-nine trees being cut down during the last four months on private Palestinian property near the illegal outpost of Havat Ma’on. During the action the participants planted about thirty small olive trees on a hill near the village of At-Tuwani. The demonstration was guarded by the Army, the border police, the police and the DCO (District Coordination Office), nearly forty officers overall.

Beit Ommar Demonstrators Continue to Demand an End to the Occupation
On Saturday, February 25th, 2012, Palestinian villagers from Beit Ommar, supported by international and Israeli solidarity activists, rallied against the Israeli occupation during the community’s weekly unarmed demonstration. As usual, the demonstrators headed towards the illegal Israeli settlement of Karmei Tzur, which is built on Beit Ommar village farmland. Demonstrators could not get anywhere close to the settlement fence; instead they were met with scores of soldiers preventing them from going any farther by pushing them back. The activists chanted and called upon the soldiers to act more humanely. Farmers in Beit Ommar want to access the land that the new fence separates them from; this is why these demonstrations take place. The increasing amount of land grabs make it more difficult for Beit Ommar residents to survive economically.

Occupation Forces Suppress Popular Weekly Protests, Dozens of Suffocation Cases from Poison Gas
al-Masara: The occupation forces suppressed the weekly protest against the settlements and the apartheid wall. This protest sent as well strong condemnation of the frequent attacks on the al Aqsa Mosque and remembered the anniversary of the Hebron massacre. People were chanting slogans in solidarity with the people of Hebron that had gathered in a mass protest demanding the opening of al-Shuhada Street, which has been closed since the massacre of Palestinian worshippers at the hands of an Israeli militant. The occupation forces suppressed the weekly march and prevented the protesters from entering their land under the pretext that the land is considered a closed military zone. Kufur Qaddom: The occupation forces rained tear gas bombs on the protestors, causing dozens of cases of suffocation. They also sprayed the protesters with sewage water and used sound bombs. However, all this failed to end the march. Bilin: A photojournalist alongside other protesters and internationals suffered from suffocation after inhaling tear gas. The weekly march came to kick off Israeli Apartheid Week under the title “Dignity and Resistance.” The occupation forces shot metal bullets covered with rubber and tear gas bombs towards the protesters.

Al Aqsa – “The banner of our struggle for justice, freedom and equality”
Yet another martyr, Talat Ramia, 23 years old, killed by the Israeli military with live rounds on his chest last Friday. The protest during which he was killed happened in ar Ram, a suburb of Jerusalem, in reaction to Israel’s threats against the al Aqsa mosque.The latest escalation came as a result of inflammatory statements from Israeli hard-liners threatening to destroy the mosque and build in its place a Jewish Temple.Ibrahim, an eyewitness to the events in Al Aqsa on Friday explains how the events unfolded: “I go every day to the al Aqsa mosque soo I have been able to follow not only the provocations from  the Israeli side but also the reaction from Palestinian Jerusalemites.

Arab MKs: Harming al-Aqsa will lead to global jihad
Arab MKs spark fury back in Israel over participation in International Conference for Defense of Jerusalem in Qatar; claims Israel is ‘Judaizing Jerusalem.’ Website lists them as Palestinian representatives.

Egyptian FM: We won’t remain silent toward violation of Aqsa sanctity
Egyptian foreign minister Mohammed Kamel Amr has condemned the Israeli occupation authority’s desecration of the sanctity of the holy Aqsa mosque in occupied Jerusalem.

The Mossad Has Long Given Marching Orders to AIPAC, Grant Smith
AIPAC’s Washington policy conference next month is drawing intense scrutiny and unprecedented resistance. AIPAC has worked quietly for years to tripwire the United States into war with Iran. Soon it will “ask” Congress and the president to define “nuclear weapons capability” as the threshold for war, essentially demanding an immediate attack.

Saudi-backed Bahraini forces have attacked peaceful demonstrators near the capital, Manama, dispersing the anti-government protest using force.

Dore Gold converts to Sunni Islam–and speaks on its behalf
“Many Sunni Arab countries are in fact more worried by the threat coming from the Persian Shias of Iran than by Israel, reckons Dore Gold, a former official who posits an opportunity for pacts of mutual interest. “What pulled Europe together was not coal and steel but fear of the Soviet Union,” he says.”

Arabia awaits its spring | Saad al-Faqih,  Saad al-Faqih
Staggeringly corrupt and repressed, Saudi Arabia is ripe for revolution. But fear deters reformers from declaring their views ‘Let us strangle the last king with the guts of the last priest,” the French 18th century philosopher Denis Diderot said. The same phrase is now widely repeated across Arabia – or Saudi Arabia, as it is currently named under the dynastic autocracy. It is only a matter of time before the revolutions that have swept the Arab world in the past year reach the Saudi kingdom.

Scores reported dead in Syria violence

Activists say 125 killed as government touts overwhelming approval for new constitution meant to end one-party rule.

link to www.aljazeera.com

“Murdering Assad more Noble than Killing an Israeli”
Saudi cleric who once offered cash prize to whomever kidnaps Israeli soldier comes out against the Syrian President.
link to www.almanar.com.lb

Syria: Qatar and splinter group back arming resistance – live updates

• Just three people evacuated from Homs as siege continues
• Western journalists not among those taken to safety
• Government announces 89% voted for new constitution
• Qatar calls for Syrian opposition to be armed

EU imposes new sanctions on Syrian regime
European foreign ministers have frozen the assets of several Syrian government officials and imposed sanctions on the country’s central bank.

link to www.independent.co.uk

www.TheHeadlines.Org

Gorenberg on why one state is a non-starter: Jews would have to pay higher taxes or receive fewer services

Feb 28, 2012

Adam Horowitz

It seems the Harvard One State conference really has Israel’s supporters – both liberal and conservative – running for cover. Jeffrey Goldberg does his part today in his column for Bloomberg:

This group argues for the “one-state solution,” the merging of the Palestinian and Jewish populations between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea into a single political entity. It is an entirely unworkable and offensive idea, but because it is couched in the language of equality and human rights, rather than murder and anti-Semitism, it has gained currency in certain not-entirely-marginal circles . . .

The one-staters posit that they differ from the Shukairy approach or from the ideology of Hamas. They don’t seek the expulsion of Jews from Palestine, they say, but instead the creation of a unified parliament that would represent all Arabs and Jews between the river and the sea. Instead of two ethnic- based states, they say, there would be one harmonious, pluralistic democracy.

Terrifying idea, isn’t it? Goldberg goes to Gershom Gorenberg to paint the horror that one democratic state could produce in Israel/Palestine:

Gershom Gorenberg, in his new book, “The Unmaking of Israel,” a jeremiad directed at the Jewish settlement movement, writes at length about the absurdity at the heart of the proposal.

“Palestinians will demand the return of property lost in 1948 and perhaps the rebuilding of destroyed villages. Except for the drawing of borders, virtually every question that bedevils Israeli-Palestinian peace negotiations will become a domestic problem setting the new political entity aflame.”

Gorenberg predicts that Israelis of means would flee this new state, leaving it economically crippled. “Financing development in majority-Palestinian areas and bringing Palestinians into Israel’s social welfare network would require Jews to pay higher taxes or receive fewer services. But the engine of the Israeli economy is high-tech, an entirely portable industry. Both individuals and companies will leave.”

In the best case, this new dystopia by the sea would be paralyzed by endless argument: “Two nationalities who have desperately sought a political frame for cultural and social independence would wrestle over control of language, art, street names, and schools.” In the worst case, Gorenberg writes, political tensions “would ignite as violence.”

So even Gorenberg acknowledges that the worst case scenario is violence, and most likely the new country would be tied up in fights over “language, art, street names, and schools” – which is to say it would be about as functional as almost any other democracy. Is the threat of Jews paying higher taxes really the best argument liberal Zionists can muster these days?

What goes unsaid in the piece, and what Goldberg really finds “unworkable and offensive” about the idea of democracy in Israel/Palestine, is that Israeli Jews would have to give up the special and exclusive rights they enjoy now as Jews in an ethnocratic state. Equality would seem to be Israel’s greatest existential threat.