Mondoweiss Online Newsletter

NOVANEWS

• Shadia Mansour, first lady of Arabic hip-hop, featured in Esquire mag contest
• Egypt is looted, and the U.S. press calls it ‘reform’
• Remnick ignores the Nakba’s role in Israeli ‘democracy’
• The spoils of lawfare, or please do not pet the Islamists: Shurat HaDin’s 2012 ‘Ultimate Mission to Israel’
• Muslim activists give NYPD chief Ray Kelly the cold shoulder
• The evolution of Peter Beinart
• To my unborn children
• Another civilian massacre and the savagery of our soldiers
• Reflections After the Harvard One State Conference
• @IDFSpokesperson tweets inaccurate video and fake civilian casualty statistics

Shadia Mansour, first lady of Arabic hip-hop, featured in Esquire mag contest

Mar 13, 2012

Allison Deger

(Photo: Hip Hop Diplomacy)

Esquire magazine is hosting a run-off for the “hottest” woman and Palestinian hip-hop artist Shadia Mansour is in the running.

The contest with “sixty-four women, six rounds, and one winner — your winner — without any actual consequences” is kitschy at best, and sexist at worst. But (unfortunately) it is also one of the few mainstream profiles of a Palestinian woman outside of the “terrorist” or “victim” paradigm. Best of luck to Shadia, the first lady of Arabic hip-hop.

For a reminder on Shadia Mansour’s way with words and rhythm, check out her “El Kofeyye 3arabeyye” music video.

Egypt is looted, and the U.S. press calls it ‘reform’

Mar 13, 2012

James North

Joseph Stiglitz

One of the more annoying and dishonest features of the mainstream American media over the past couple of decades has been its use of the word “reform,” without quotation marks, as shorthand for a set of controversial economic policies the United States and global institutions like the International Monetary Fund have imposed on the poor nations in the global south.

The word “reform” is biased; no right-thinking person could be against it. If the New York Timesand the Washington Post had followed their own rules about objectivity, they would have instead used neutral terms, like “neoliberalism,” or “the Washington Consensus,” and they would have pointed out that distinguished economists like Nobel Laureate Joseph Stiglitz, along with large, vocal masses of people in the poor countries themselves, have warned for years that the “reform” policies are a slow-motion disaster.

The latest evidence for the failure of neoliberalism comes from Egypt, and even the mainstream press is finally recognizing it. In the Washington Post recently, Stephen Glain blamed the U.S government, the IMF and the World Bank for pushing policies that severely damaged Egyptian agriculture, to the point where the country now has to waste precious foreign exchange to import nearly all of the wheat it needs for bread, the staple food.

An earlier Post article showed how the U.S. Agency for International Development (AID) funded a Cairo think tank that vigorously promoted the “privatization” of state-run companies, public resources, and lands. Privatization, one of the tenets of the neoliberal orthodoxy, is supposed to foster competition, efficiency and economic growth.

In fact, the privatizations were rigged by Gamal Mubarak, the deposed dictator’s son, and his cronies, who gained control of companies worth billions of dollars at fractions of their true value. (The Post reported that the Chicago-based international law firm Baker & McKenzie arranged many of the deals.) The biggest of Gamal’s shady partners, Ahmed Ezz, inherited a state-owned steel company, which he turned into an inefficient monopoly.

Instead of wasting $10 million on their think tank, U.S. AID could have simply stopped any adult Egyptian in the street and asked them how privatizations conducted by the Mubarak regime would turn out.

Professor Joe Stiglitz uses the terms “market Bolsheviks,” or “market fundamentalists,” to describe the zealots who have imposed neoliberalism across the global south. His choice of words is brilliant. The unelected apparatchiks at U.S. AID or the IMF who have pressured the governments of Egypt or Bolivia or Zambia over the past 20 years or so, without caring about or even knowing the reality in those places, are the spiritual descendants of the Soviet central planners who coldly treated human beings as statistics.

Meanwhile, a small group of thieves stole billions of dollars of public property that had been built up by the Egyptian people. At the very least, the mainstream press should stop calling this colossal robbery “reform.”

Remnick ignores the Nakba’s role in Israeli ‘democracy’

Mar 13, 2012

Omar Barghouti

Editor’s Note: Earlier today Phil posted on a recent New Yorker article by David Remnick titled “Threatened“. Omar Barghouti emailed out this response to Remnick’s piece and gave us permission to publish it.

How sickeningly typical, predictable, and utterly immoral of soft Zionists!

Nakba denial is always an indicator of deep-seated racism and a profound deficiency in intellectual honesty, not to mention moral decency. But in this article Nakba denial, indeed denial of the existence of 62% of the Palestinian people (those outside the occupied Palestinian territory), is taken to a whole new level, whereby Israel’s “birth” becomes a glorified “experiment in Jewish power, unique after two millennia of persecution and exile” and where Israel’s “structures of governance are point of pride.” Alas, according to the editor of the New Yorker, this wonderful democracy is currently (only currently) undergoing an “impasse.” Jewish fundamentalists (and settlers are largely assumed to be part of that camp, without much justification) are gaining power and undermining an otherwise flourishing Israeli Jewish “democracy” that is closer to the European social-democratic model. The fact that almost all of Israel’s crimes against the Palestinian people and other Arab peoples for the last six decades have been committed predominantly by avowedly secular Jews — of European descent — is lost on this influential author.

The fact that Zionist gangs ethnically cleansed in a well-documented, pre-meditated crusade of massacres, expulsions and terror, most of the indigenous Palestinians to establish a Jewish-dominated state in Palestine is never mentioned. Only “the occupation” has corrupted the otherwise innocent, thriving, miraculous Israel.

Palestinians are revolted by this relentless Zionist revisionism, deleting most of us out of existence and only recognizing an ever shrinking subset of our rights, with the not-so-hidden intent of saving Israeli apartheid.

True, by US mainstream “media” standards, this article passes as revolutionary–after all, the author describes Israel with such taboo terms as “apartheid,” “fundamentalism” (in reference to the Jewish brand, for a change), “xenophobia,” “racism,” etc. But the omission of the foundational injustice committed by the Zionist movement and later Israel against the Palestinian people is inexcusable, professionally, morally, or otherwise.

The spoils of lawfare, or please do not pet the Islamists: Shurat HaDin’s 2012 ‘Ultimate Mission to Israel’

Mar 13, 2012

Paul Mutter

Part of me very much wishes to believe this is all a viral marketing effort leading to a forthcoming episode of Portlandia where they go to Israel. It is almost that surreal, but in a somewhat entertaining manner.

Shurat HaDin – an Israeli “lawfare” group that set up legal roadblock after roadblock against “Gaza Freedom Flotilla II” last year – has for several years offered tours of Israel that take in the sort of sights a military fanboy would love, from Hezbollah watching on the Lebanese border to visiting the IAF units that carry out targeted killings and viewing military trials of alleged Hamas operatives (that was part of the 2011 trip). Also, there is a BBQ. The one-week trip costs around US$3,000 and is billed as “Taking it to a Whole New Level,” “The Ultimate Mission to Israel”.

No argument here.

As a sometimes-national security blogger, I’d be lying if I didn’t say I was curious about this sort of combat voyeurism and how it might speak volumes about the further militarization of Israeli society, though a friend’s perhaps uncharitable assessment is that most of the people who do go on these trips are not Israelis, but IDF fanboys from the U.S. (the works of Tom Clancy were mentioned in passing in the discussion). In that case, these trips say more about the way the IDF is perceived in both countries than anything else.

Here’s this year’s agenda. As you can see from the screenshot, I mentioned the Gaza flotilla to start with not just because it’s Shurat HaDin’s claim to fame in the U.S. media (its charity work in Israel and lawsuits against terrorist financiers not being well-known outside of the country) but because, apparently, one of this year’s highlights is a trip to the undisclosed naval base where the Israeli navy is holding flotilla ships it’s impounded. It’s not clear which ships they’re referring to, but since only a single ship from the 2011 effort reached Gazan waters, I imagine they are also referring to ships from the 2010 effort.

I guess it’s really only fair that the lawfare group be allowed to tour these prizes – the navy might have actually boarded and impounded the ships in both cases, but Shurat HaDin made their job so much easier the second time through its pressure campaign against the organizers and the Greek government. With one exception, a French boat, none of the second flotilla’s ships made it further than Greek territorial waters.

I imagine anyone who might be linked to the IAEA is not allowed to go any further than the gift shop when the group makes a stop at the Research Center for Atomic Energy (do you think one can buy plausible deniability Jericho missile keychains there?).I’d have to say that this year’s most questionable whistlestop for Shurat HaDin is the opportunity for ticket holders to visit a Druze village that has apparently become home to a number of refugees fleeing Syria’s nascent civil war. With several Syria events planned for the trip, apparently, I guess there is not much concern over that conflict escalating in the Golan Heights area.

You all probably think I’m appalled with many aspects of this itinerary – no, not the BBQ, obviously, the gawking at refugees, yes – yet I must look for the silver lining, and to me that silver lining is the timing of the summer’s venue, July 9-16.

Why is this cause for cautious optimism? Because some informed comment has determined that if Israel is going to attack Iran this year, it will almost certainly be before the end of this summer. Surely this indicates that war with Iran is unlikely in the tour organizers’ minds who, based on where they’re getting to go, must have a feel on the pulse of the security forces (who are generally not as sanguine about the prospect of war with Iran as Ehud Barak appears to be).

And while Netanyahu might be an overly rude guest – just ask Obama – he does not seem to be an overly rude host (he hasn’t expelled Gideon Levy or the Arab minority yet). Surely, he would not risk waging war with Iran and inconveniencing Israel’s most gung-ho tourists?

Muslim activists give NYPD chief Ray Kelly the cold shoulder

Mar 13, 2012

Alex Kane

Mayor Michael Bloomberg and NYPD chief Ray Kelly (Photo: AP)

Ray Kelly, the current head of the New York Police Department (NYPD) and a potential future mayoral candidate, has a problem. Month after month of revelations unearthed by the Associated Press (AP) has painted a damning picture of his police force’s massive and arbitrary spy operation targeting Muslims.

So now, Kelly is embarking on a public outreach effort to bring Muslim leaders over to his side. He’s had some success, and the likes of Zuhdi Jasser, an anti-Muslim activist, have publicly praised his actions. But Muslim activists highly critical of Kelly and the NYPD’s spying have called the public outreach a “sham” effort that has excluded the very people who have been requesting meetings with the NYPD over Muslim community-police relations.

Kelly has withstood months of withering criticism of the NYPD’s efforts to monitor and catalog virtually every aspect of Muslim life in New York City and elsewhere. Last week, Kelly met twice with Muslim leaders at One Police Plaza. The leaders came out of the meeting singing Kelly’s praises. Mayor Michael Bloomberg received the message; on his weekly radio show, Bloomberg said that “almost all of the Muslim groups he has spoken to in recent weeks are supportive of New York City’s surveillance programs,” the AP reported.

Muslim activists, though, say that’s simply not true. Last Friday, I spoke with Debbie Almontaser, a prominent Muslim leader in New York who was formerly the head of the city’s first dual-language Arabic public school. Later that day, Almontaser was set to participate in a press conference denouncing the meetings and the NYPD’s surveillance program.

Debbie Almontaser (Photo: WNYC/Flickr)

Almontaser, currently a coordinator and board member for the Muslim Consultative Network, was invited to the first of the meetings with Kelly. She rejected the offer, though, because she was only given 24 hours notice, and found it “insulting” that the NYPD was picking who to meet with.

“Police Commissioner Kelly has hand selected individuals” to meet with, said Almontaser. “He has just intentionally disregarded the call for a meeting or giving a courtesy invitation to individual leaders from the coalitions that have been asking for meetings for the past year.”

Almontaser also raised questions about the leaders meeting with Kelly. “Those leaders that he met with are leaders in their own right, providing services to individuals in their community,” she said. But “whether or not these people have the expertise of being able to critique legal, constitutional matters that infringe on the civil liberties of Muslim Americans, that has yet to be determined. Because if they were able to critique this surveillance project, and they read the extensive documents that were released by the Associated Press, they very well would see that this project is really infringing on our civil liberties.”

As for the claim that, in general, Muslims are supportive of the NYPD spy efforts, Almontaser also said that was false. She noted that the coalitions organizing last week’s press conference–the Muslim American Civil Liberties Coalition and the Islamic Leadership Council of New York–represent over 65 organizations.

Kelly’s public outreach efforts came the same week as yet another damning report from the AP was published. The latest AP article definitively shows that the NYPD spied on people just because they practiced Islam–a detail that contradicts Bloomberg’s previous statements. The article was based on once-secret documents that show the NYPD compiled detailed information on Egyptians, Syrians and Albanians in the city. From the AP:

The New York Police Department collected information on businesses owned by second- and third-generation Americans specifically because they were Muslims, according to newly obtained secret documents. They show in the clearest terms yet that police were monitoring people based on religion, despite claims from Mayor Michael Bloomberg to the contrary…

In late 2007, however, plainclothes officers in the department’s secretive Demographics Unit were assigned to investigate the region’s Syrian population. Police photographed businesses and eavesdropped at lunch counters and inside grocery stores and pastry shops. The resulting document listed no threat. And though most people of Syrian heritage living in the area were Jewish, Jews were excluded from the monitoring.

“This report will focus on the smaller Muslim community,” the report said.

Similarly, police excluded the city’s sizable Coptic Christian population when photographing, monitoring and eavesdropping on Egyptian businesses in 2007, according to the police files.

“This report does not represent the Coptic Egyptian community and is merely an insight into the Muslim Egyptian community of New York City,” the NYPD wrote.

In response to the report, Almontaser said: “They are just specifically targeting Muslims, period. This is absolutely unacceptable and unconstitutional.”

The AP revelations are likely to keep streaming out. Still, Muslim activists have an uphill battle to fight. A Quinnipiac University poll released today reports that 58 percent of people surveyed support the NYPD’s dealings with the Muslim community.

The evolution of Peter Beinart

Mar 13, 2012

Adam Horowitz

May, 2010 to Jeffrey Goldberg (emphasis added in both quotes):

I’m not asking Israel to be Utopian. I’m not asking it to allow Palestinians who were forced out (or fled) in 1948 to return to their homes. I’m not even asking it to allow full, equal citizenship to Arab Israelis, since that would require Israel no longer being a Jewish state. I’m actually pretty willing to compromise my liberalism for Israel’s security and for its status as a Jewish state.

March, 2012 on the Daily Beast:

Zion Square’s mission is to launch a conversation not just about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, not just about the specter of war with Iran, not just about the relationship between Israel and diaspora Jews, not just about Jewish theology and culture, but about the struggle to confront the ethical responsibilities of a world in which Jewish fortunes have radically changed. My own deeply held belief is that that struggle should be guided by the principles of Israel’s declaration of independence, which envisions a Jewish state that ensures “complete equality of social and political rights to all its inhabitants irrespective of religion, race or sex.” I believe that such a state can only be achieved through a new commitment to full citizenship for those Palestinians who live within the green line, and through the creation of a Palestinian state beyond it.

A work in progress. How long before Beinart reconsiders his thoughts on the right of return? Or the idea of a Jewish state all together?

To my unborn children

Mar 13, 2012

Today in Palestine

Nader is a blogger in Gaza, read more on his blog Sleepless in Gaza,. Nader got accepted to a university in the UK but needs donations to cover tuition, you can donate to his college fundhere.

On the way to join Friday prayers at a protest tent in Tel Rumeida, three of us stopped to stand with a Palestinian man who was being detained by a soldier on Shuhada Street near Beit Hadassah, an Israeli settlement. The soldier immediately said to us, “Go, you cannot stay here!”. We told him it was our job to stay until he released the man. At that, he threatened to arrest us. We said “OK, call the police if you like. We are not leaving.” He picked up his phone, then immediately gave the Palestinian his ID back so he could go on his way. We left.
link to mondoweiss.net