Mondoweiss Online Newsletter

NOVANEWS

The myth of Israel’s favorable treatment of Palestinian Christians

Mar 15, 2012

Fida Jiryis

 

Amb. Michael Oren’s article, ‘Israel and the Plight of Mideast Christians,’ presents Israel as a tolerant, dove-like, and peaceful democracy. This is belied by the facts.

I am one of those Palestinian Christians living inside Israel to whom Oren refers. At no time in my life have I ever felt the ‘respect and appreciation’ by the Jewish state, which Oren so glowingly references. Israel’s Christian minority is marginalized in much the same manner as its Muslim one or, at best, quietly tolerated. We suffer the same discrimination when we try to find a job, when we go to hospitals, when we apply for bank loans, and when we get on the bus — in the same way as Palestinian Muslims.

Israel’s fundamental basis is as a racist state built for Jews only, and the majority of the Jewish population doesn’t really care what religion we are if we’re not Jewish. In my daily dealings with the State, all I have felt is rudeness and overt contempt.

Oren’s statement that ‘The extinction of the Middle East’s Christian communities is an injustice of historic magnitude’ is outright shocking to anyone familiar with even the basic history of how Israel was founded. I would like to remind him and others that this founding expelled thousands of Palestinian Christians from their homes in 1948 and displaced them, either forcing them to flee across the border or making them internal refugees. The ethnic cleansing of Palestinians that comprised the founding of Israel is, too, an injustice of historic magnitude. A man living in a glass home — or a home stolen from Palestinians — should think very carefully before tossing stones.

My cousin’s husband, Maher, is from Iqrith, a village a few miles from mine in the Galilee. His family, and all of Iqrith’s inhabitants, were expelled from their village in 1948 and Iqrith was razed to the ground by Israeli forces on Christmas eve, 1950, in a special ‘Christmas gift’ to its people. The timing of this destruction leaves one to wonder at the intended message. Maher was born years after his family took shelter in Rama, a village nearby in the Galilee. Today, he struggles with finding a place to build a house to live in with his wife and children. Israeli policies that severely restrict the building zones in Arab towns and villages result in land shortages impeding the population’s natural expansion. Limiting land to residents of the same town or village means that internal Palestinian refugees face severe housing discrimination.

The return of people like Maher has been made impossible by Israel, which refuses to negotiate on the right of refugees to return to their homeland. If Oren is so concerned for Palestinian Christians, would he kindly give the green light for the return of Christian refugees from Iqrith, Bir’im, Tarshiha, Suhmata, Haifa, Jaffa, and tens of other Palestinian towns and villages that they were expelled from in 1948? The answer, I assure you, is no. Many of these refugees are living in refugee camps in nearby countries, where Israel and Oren are happy to leave them.

The terrorists referred to in Oren’s statement that ‘Israel, in spite of its need to safeguard its borders from terrorists, allows holiday access to Jerusalem’s churches to Christians from both the West Bank and Gaza,’ are in fact Palestinian Christians living on the land that Israel has occupied — in flagrant opposition to all human rights charters — and from which it is refusing to withdraw its soldiers and illegal settlers. To applaud Israel for giving people permits to travel across what by law is their own country is the height of hubris.

His claim that ‘In Jerusalem, the number of Arabs–among them Christians–has tripled since the city’s reunification by Israel in 1967’ fails to mention Israel’s relentless policies of cracking down on Jerusalem: building unending settlements; building a Separation Wall that slices right through the city, severing its families, neighborhoods and businesses and hitting hard at its Arab economy; seizing Arab lands and expelling families that have lived on them for generations; and revoking the citizenship of any Palestinian resident who travels abroad for too long. Imagine the outcry if an American citizen traveled abroad for two years and upon return discovered that his citizenship was revoked and that he had lost his American ID and passport.

Israeli officials don’t care whether the Palestinians they discriminate against are Christian or Muslim. It is true that inter-religious strife is on the rise in a region long tormented by poor living conditions, for which the West bears significant responsibility having aided the region’s many dictators.

Oren’s faux tolerance and crocodile tears over the plight of Christians fool no one. Were he serious, I would urge him to have a close look at Israel’s policies of occupation and racial discrimination.

As Jesus said, ‘Why do you look at the speck that is in your brother’s eye, but do not notice the log that is in your own eye?‘ (Matthew 7:3)

‘NYT’ coverage of Gaza attacks downplays civilian suffering

Mar 14, 2012

Alex Kane

NYT HQ
(Photo: MediaBistro.com)

Ethan Bronner may be on his way out, but the New York Times’ habitual deference to the Israeli government’s line isn’t about to leave with him. The latest example: Isabel Kershner and Fares Akram’s coverage of the recent Israeli air raids on the Gaza Strip.

The most egregious aspect of the coverage is the downplaying of Palestinian civilian suffering during the recent Israeli attacks on Gaza. Here’s Kershner and Akram in today’s paper:

Islamic Jihad took the lead in retaliating, firing barrages of rockets at Israel, while Israel carried out more than 30 airstrikes against rocket launching sites and other facilities, killing about 25 Palestinians, most of them militants.

It’s true that most of the Palestinians killed in the past five days have been fighters associated with Islamic Jihad and the Popular Resistance Committees (PRC). But the NYT’s omission of the deaths of five Palestinian civilians is glaring.

According to Al-Haq, a Palestinian human rights group, “Israeli airstrikes have resulted in the death of 25 Palestinians, including five civilians, two of whom were children, as well as the wounding of some 80 people, mainly civilians.”

The NYT’s other coverage of the fighting in Gaza was no better. A March 11 article reports that the Israeli airstrike that assassinated the head of the PRC occurred because Israel “holds the group responsible for an attack from Egypt last August.” But as Max Blumenthal pointed out inAl Akhbar:

As is so often the case, the Israeli army is lying. According to the army’s own investigation of the Eliat attack last year, the attackers were not from Gaza as Israeli government spokespeople initially claimed — they were Egyptian. The army’s investigative findings were first reported by Alex Fishman, the military correspondent for the Israeli daily Yedioth Aharanoth, who had treated the earlier attempts to blame Gaza’s Popular Resistance Committees for Eilat with extreme skepticism. Bloggers Idan Landau [Hebrew only],Richard Silverstein and Yossi Gurvitz also marshaled evidence shredding the army’s case against Gaza.

The Washington Post was also criticized recently for its coverage of Gaza. Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting’s Peter Hart skewers their reporting:

Coverage of Israel/Palestine often attempts to make an extraordinarily lopsided conflictseem somehow more “balanced.” Take this line from the Washington Post (3/12/12)

“The fighting has killed 18 Gazans, all but two of them militants, and disrupted the lives of about 1 million Israelis living within range of rocket fire.”

Why would 18 people who were killed be compared to the disruption of daily life? If disruption is the standard, then one would have to determine how many Gazans have had their lives disrupted by power outages, drones, air strikes and so on.

A sentence like this would seem to be an attempt to “balance” a wildly imbalanced reality.

(H/T to Max Blumenthal.)

Elite Israeli ‘sniper squad’ raids Palestinians in prison, injures 11

Mar 14, 2012

Allison Deger

Ashkelon
Israeli prison. (Photo: mdot)

Early Monday morning an elite “control and restraint” unit and a massive number of soldiers raided Palestinians in an Israeli prison with tear gas and rubber bullets, leaving 11 injured. The raid took place just one week after a group of Palestinian women submitted affidavits charging Israeli security officials with torture.

masada
                   Masada unit training with ‘advanced
non-lethal force.’ (Photo: Israeli Ministry
of Public Security)

The 5 am attack began when 200 soldiers and the Masada, a special forces unit trained in “sniper marksmanship,” flooded Israel’s Ashkelon prison. According to one of the inmates, the prison system’s special forces unit stormed the facility “on the pretext of searching for cell phones and messed up the inmates’ holdings forcing them to strip naked during the inspection.”

Military raids, and late night attacks on detainees are a common practice in Israeli prisons. Last year, there were a reported 200 instances of special military forces attacking Palestinian prisoners. And a few years ago a prisoner was killed in a raid, also at Ashkelon prison.

Nisreen El-Shamayleh’s 2011 Al Jazeera English report on the 2007 Ashkelon raid.

In the 2007 prison raid, Mohammed al-Ashkar was killed by a rubber bullet shot at close range. A video documenting the raid was later leaked in 2011. The footage shows the same Masada unit from the latest assault attacking prisoners in close quarters with live ammunition. The video also captures security forces preventing wounded Palestinians from receiving medical attention.  As a result, al-Ashkar died in prison, 50 days before his scheduled release.

Since 1967, 200 Palestinian prisoners have died in Israeli detention facilities due to torture, abuse, and/or medical neglect.

Palestinian and Palestine-solidarity activists issue critique and condemnation of Gilad Atzmon

Mar 14, 2012

Adam Horowitz

In the past two weeks Palestinian and Palestine-solidarity activists have issued two separate statements regarding Gilad Atzmon. I posted one in the Mondoweiss comment section here, and it generated quite a bit of discussion. Yesterday, a second statement was issued by Palestinian activists. Both are posted below in full.

1. Granting No Quarter: A Call for the Disavowal of the Racism and Antisemitism of Gilad Atzmon

For many years now, Gilad Atzmon, a musician born in Israel and currently living in the United Kingdom, has taken on the self-appointed task of defining for the Palestinian movement the nature of our struggle, and the philosophy underpinning it. He has done so through his various blogs and Internet outlets, in speeches, and in articles. He is currently on tour in the United States promoting his most recent book, entitled, ‘The Wandering Who.’

With this letter, we call for the disavowal of Atzmon by fellow Palestinian organizers, as well as Palestine solidarity activists, and allies of the Palestinian people, and note the dangers of supporting Atzmon’s political work and writings and providing any platforms for their dissemination. We do so as Palestinian organizers and activists, working across continents, campaigns, and ideological positions.

Atzmon’s politics rest on one main overriding assertion that serves as springboard for vicious attacks on anyone who disagrees with his obsession with “Jewishness”. He claims that all Jewish politics is “tribal,” and essentially, Zionist. Zionism, to Atzmon, is not a settler-colonial project, but a trans-historical “Jewish” one, part and parcel of defining one’s self as a Jew. Therefore, he claims, one cannot self-describe as a Jew and also do work in solidarity with Palestine, because to identify as a Jew is to be a Zionist. We could not disagree more. Indeed, we believe Atzmon’s argument is itself Zionist because it agrees with the ideology of Zionism and Israel that the only way to be a Jew is to be a Zionist.

Palestinians have faced two centuries of orientalist, colonialist and imperialist domination of our native lands. And so as Palestinians, we see such language as immoral and completely outside the core foundations of humanism, equality and justice, on which the struggle for Palestine and its national movement rests. As countless Palestinian activists and organizers, their parties, associations and campaigns, have attested throughout the last century, our struggle was never, and will never be, with Jews, or Judaism, no matter how much Zionism insists that our enemies are the Jews. Rather, our struggle is with Zionism, a modern European settler colonial movement, similar to movements in many other parts of the world that aim to displace indigenous people and build new European societies on their lands.

We reaffirm that there is no room in this historic and foundational analysis of our struggle for any attacks on our Jewish allies, Jews, or Judaism; nor denying the Holocaust; nor allying in any way shape or form with any conspiracy theories, far-right, orientalist, and racist arguments, associations and entities. Challenging Zionism, including the illegitimate power of institutions that support the oppression of Palestinians, and the illegitimate use of Jewish identities to protect and legitimize oppression, must never become an attack on Jewish identities, nor the demeaning and denial of Jewish histories in all their diversity.

Indeed, we regard any attempt to link and adopt antisemitic or racist language, even if it is within a self-described anti-imperialist and anti-Zionist politics, as reaffirming and legitimizing Zionism. In addition to its immorality, this language obscures the fundamental role of imperialism and colonialism in destroying our homeland, expelling its people, and sustaining the systems and ideologies of oppression, apartheid and occupation. It leaves one squarely outside true solidarity with Palestine and its people.

The goal of the Palestinian people has always been clear: self determination. And we can only exercise that inalienable right through liberation, the return of our refugees (the absolute majority of our people) and achieving equal rights to all through decolonization. As such, we stand with all and any movements that call for justice, human dignity, equality, and social, economic, cultural and political rights. We will never compromise the principles and spirit of our liberation struggle. We will not allow a false sense of expediency to drive us into alliance with those who attack, malign, or otherwise attempt to target our political fraternity with all liberation struggles and movements for justice.

As Palestinians, it is our collective responsibility, whether we are in Palestine or in exile, to assert our guidance of our grassroots liberation struggle. We must protect the integrity of our movement, and to do so we must continue to remain vigilant that those for whom we provide platforms actually speak to its principles.

When the Palestinian people call for self-determination and decolonization of our homeland, we do so in the promise and hope of a community founded on justice, where all are free, all are equal and all are welcome.

Until liberation and return.

Signed:

  • Ali Abunimah
  • Naseer Aruri, Professor Emeritus, University of Massachusetts, Dartmouth
  • Omar Barghouti, human rights activist
  • Hatem Bazian, Chair, American Muslims for Palestine
  • Andrew Dalack, National Coordinating Committee, US Palestinian Community Network
  • Haidar Eid, Gaza
  • Nada Elia, US Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel
  • Toufic Haddad
  • Kathryn Hamoudah
  • Adam Hanieh, Lecturer, School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS), London
  • Mostafa Henaway, Tadamon! Canada
  • Monadel Herzallah, National Coordinating Committee, US Palestinian Community Network
  • Nadia Hijab, author and human rights advocate
  • Andrew Kadi
  • Hanna Kawas, Chair person, Canada Palestine Association and Co-Host Voice of Palestine
  • Abir Kobty, Palestinian blogger and activist
  • Joseph Massad, Professor, Columbia University, NY
  • Danya Mustafa, Israeli Apartheid Week US National Co-Coordinator & Students for Justice in Palestine- University of New Mexico
  • Dina Omar, Columbia Students for Justice in Palestine
  • Haitham Salawdeh, National Coordinating Committee, US Palestinian Community Network
  • Sobhi Samour, School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS), London
  • Khaled Ziada, SOAS Palestine Society, London
  • Rafeef Ziadah, poet and human rights advocate

2. Not Quite “Ordinary Human Beings”—Anti-imperialism and the anti-humanist rhetoric of Gilad Atzmon

Attempting to latch onto the just, vital, and growing movement in support of the Palestinian national liberation struggle, Gilad Atzmon is one of a very small and unrepresentative group of writers who have argued (in agreement with many Zionists) that there is no meaningful distinction to be made between Jews in general and Israeli atrocities. According to Atzmon, the latter are simply a manifestation of Jews’ historic relationship to gentiles, an authentic expression of an essentially racist, immoral, and anti-human “Jewish ideology.”

Atzmon’s statements, besides distorting the history of Jews and constituting a brazen justification for centuries of anti-Jewish behavior and beliefs, also downgrade anti-Zionism to a mere front in the broader (anti-Jewish) struggle. Atzmon has specifically described Zionism not as a form of colonialism or settlerism, but as a uniquely evil ideology unlike anything else in human history. In addition to any ethical problems, this line of argumentation actually strengthens Zionism’s grip and claim to be the authentic representative of Jews. It obscures the reality that Zionism is an imperialist and colonialist enemy of Jewish people and Palestinians, as well as the Arab people generally and all those oppressed and exploited by imperialism.

In his online attack on Moshe Machover, an Israeli socialist and founder of the anti-Zionist group Matzpen, Atzmon states:

Machover’s reading of Zionism is pretty trivial. “Israel,” he says, is a “settler state.” For Machover this is a necessary point of departure because it sets Zionism as a colonialist expansionist project. The reasoning behind such a lame intellectual spin is obvious. As long as Zionism is conveyed as a colonial project, Jews, as a people, should be seen as ordinary people. They are no different from the French and the English, they just happen to run their deadly colonial project in a different time.[1]

For Atzmon, such views are “pretty trivial” and “lame” because he holds that Jews are in fact radically different from the French and the English. Of the many quotes we could provide in this regard, here is a small sampling:[2]

In order to understand Israel’s unique condition we must ask, “who are the Jews? What is Judaism and what is Jewishness?”[3]

Zionism is a continuation of Jewish ideology.[4]

The never-ending robbery of Palestine by Israel in the name of the Jewish people establishes a devastating spiritual, ideological, cultural and, obviously, practical continuum between the Judaic Bible and the Zionist project. The crux of the matter is simple yet disturbing: Israel and Zionism are both successful political systems that put into devastating practice the plunder promised by the Judaic God in the Judaic holy scriptures.[5]

Sadly, we have to admit that hate-ridden plunder of other people’s possessions made it into the Jewish political discourse both on the left and right. The Jewish nationalist would rob Palestine in the name of the right of self-determination, the Jewish progressive is there to rob the ruling class and even international capital in the name of world working class revolution.[6]

Were Jewish Marxists and cosmopolitans open to the notion of brotherhood, they would have given up on their unique, exclusive banners and become ordinary human beings like the rest of us.[7]

I do not consider the Jews to be a race, and yet it is obvious that “Jewishness” clearly involves an ethno centric and racially supremacist, exclusivist point of view that is based on a sense of Jewish “chosen-ness.”[8]

At the most, Israel has managed to mimic some of the appearances of a Western civilisation, but it has clearly failed to internalise the meaning of tolerance and freedom. This should not take us by surprise: Israel defines itself as a Jewish state, and Jewishness is, sadly enough, inherently intolerant; indeed, it may be argued that Jewish intolerance is as old as the Jews themselves.[9]

Israel and Zionism then, has proved to be a short lived dream. It was initiated to civilise Jewish life, and to dismantle the Jewish self-destructive mode. It was there to move the Jew into the post-herem[10] phase. It vowed to make the Jew into a productive being. But as things turned out, neither the Zionists nor the “anti Zionists” managed to drift away from the disastrous herem culture. It seems that the entire world of Jewish identity politics is a matrix of herems and exclusion strategies. In order to be “a proper Jew,” all you have to do is to point out whom you oppose, hate, exclude or boycott.[11]

The conclusion to such views is not difficult to draw:

The endless trail of Jewish collective tragedies is there to teach us that Jews always pay eventually (and heavily) for Jewish power exercises. Yet, surprisingly (and tragically) enough, Jews somehow consistently fail to internalise and learn from that very lesson.[12]

More precisely, commenting on the climax of State violence directed at Jews in the 1930s, most famously by Germany, but also in most other European nations, Atzmon is clear:

The remarkable fact is they don’t understand why the world is beginning to stand against them in the same way they didn’t understand why the Europeans stood against them in the 1930s. Instead of asking why we are hated they continue to toss accusations on others.[13]

Within the discourse of Jewish politics and history there is no room for causality. There is no such a thing as a former and a latter. Within the Jewish tribal discourse every narrative starts to evolve when Jewish pain establishes itself. This obviously explains why Israelis and some Jews around the world can only think as far as “two state solution” within the framework of 1967 borders. It also explains why for most Jews the history of the holocaust starts in the gas chambers or with the rise of the Nazis. I have hardly seen any Israelis or Jews attempt to understand the circumstances that led to the clear resentment of Europeans towards their Jewish neighbors in the 1920’s-40’s.[14]

It is, as such, not surprising that Atzmon’s work has received enthusiastic reviews by such prominent members of the racist right as former Ku Klux Klan leader David Duke, Kevin MacDonald of the Occidental Observer, David Icke, and Arthur Topham’s the Radical Press. It should not be surprising that Atzmon has distributed articles defending Holocaust deniers and those who write of “the Hitler we loved and why.”[15] These connections ultimately serve the interests of Zionism, which seeks to conflate anti-Zionism with anti-Jewishness. Zionist agents have repeatedly attempted to ensnare and link Palestinian, Arab, and/or Muslim rights advocates to Neo-Nazism, through dirty tricks and outright lies.

It is more surprising and disappointing, then, that a small section of the left has opted to promote Atzmon and his works. In the UK, the Socialist Workers Party promoted Atzmon for several years before finally breaking with him; his latest book The Wandering Who? has been published by the left-wing Zero Books (a decision that elicited a letter of protest from several Zero authors).[16] In the United States, the widely-read Counterpunch website has repeatedly chosen to run articles by Atzmon. Currently, in February and March 2012, Atzmon is on tour in North America, where several of his speaking engagements are being organized by progressive anti-imperialists who we would normally like to consider our allies.

While perhaps well-meaning, operating under the assumption that any opposition to Zionism is to be welcomed, progressives who promote the work of Atzmon are in fact surrendering the moral high ground by encouraging a belief-system that simply mirrors that of the most racist section of Israeli society. Anti-racism is not a liability; on the contrary, it is a principle that makes our movements stronger in the long fight for a better tomorrow.

As political activists committed to resisting colonialism and imperialism—in North America and around the world—we recognize that there can be different interpretations of history, and we welcome exploring these. Without wishing to debate the question of whether far-right and racist ideologues should be censored, or how, we see no reason for progressive people to organize events to promote their works.

In our struggle against Zionism, racism, and all forms of colonialism and imperialism, there is no place for antisemitism or the vilification of Jews, Palestinians or any people based on their religions, cultures, nationalities, ethnicity or history. At this historic junction—when the need to struggle for the liberation of Palestine is more vital than ever and the fault lines of capitalist empire are becoming more widely exposed—no anti-oppressive revolution can be built with ultra-right allies or upon foundations friendly to creeping fascism.

  • As’ad AbuKhalil, The Angry Arab News Service, Turlock, CA
  • Suha Afyouni, solidarity activist, Beirut, LEBANON
  • Max Ajl, essayist, rabble-rouser, proprietor of Jewbonics blog site, Ithaca, NY
  • Haifaa Al-Moammar, activist, stay-at-home mom, and marathon walker, Los Angeles, CA
  • Electa Arenal, professor emerita, CUNY Graduate Center/Hispanic & Luso-Brazilian Literatures and Women’s Studies, New York, NY
  • Gabriel Ash, International Jewish Anti-Zionist Network, Geneva, SWITZERLAND
  • John Baglow, writer, researcher, consultant, CANADA
  • Joel Beinin, Donald J. McLachlan Professor of History, Stanford University, Palo Alto, CA
  • Dan Berger, Wild Poppies Collective, Philadelphia, PA
  • Chip Berlet, Boston, MA
  • Nazila Bettache, activist, Montréal, CANADA
  • Sam Bick, Tadamon!, Immigrant Workers Center, Montréal, Québec
  • Max Blumenthal, author; writing fellow, The Nation, New York, NY
  • Lenni Brenner, author, Zionism in the Age of the Dictators, New York, NY
  • Café Intifada
  • Paola Canarutto, Rete-ECO (Italian Network of Jews against the Occupation), Torino, ITALY
  • Paulette d’Auteuil, National Jericho Movement, Albuquerque, NM
  • Susie Day, Monthly Review, New York, NY
  • Ali Hocine Dimerdji, PhD student at The University of Nottingham, in Nottingham, UK
  • Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz, professor emerita, California State University
  • Todd Eaton, Park Slope Food Coop Members for Boycott/Divestment/Sanctions, Brooklyn, NY
  • Mark Elf, Jews sans frontieres
  • S. EtShalom, registered nurse, Philadelphia, PA
  • Benjamin Evans, solidarity activist, Chicago, IL
  • Steven Fake, author and activist, Reading, PA
  • David Finkel, managing editor, Against the Current, Detroit, MI
  • First of May Anarchist Alliance
  • Racheli Gai, Jewish Voice for Peace and Tucson Women in Black
  • Sherna Berger Gluck, professor emerita, California State University/Israel Divestment Campaign, CA
  • Neta Golan, International Solidarity Movement
  • Tony Greenstein, Secretary Brighton Unemployed Centre/UNISON, Jews for Boycotting Israeli Goods, Brighton, UK
  • Andrew Griggs, Café Intifada, Los Angeles, CA
  • Jenny Grossbard, artist, designer, writer and fighter, New York, NY
  • Freda Guttman, activist, Montréal, CANADA
  • Adam Hanieh, lecturer, Department of Development Studies/SOAS, University of London, UK
  • Swaneagle Harijan, anti-racism, social justice activism, Seattle, WA
  • Sarah Hawas, researcher and solidarity activist, Cairo, EGYPT
  • Stanley Heller, “The Struggle” Video News, moderator “Jews Who Speak Out”
  • Mostafa Henaway, Tadamon!, Immigrant Workers Center, Montréal, CANADA
  • Elise Hendrick, Meldungen aus dem Exil/Noticias de una multipátrida, Cincinnati, OH
  • Doug Henwood, Left Business Observer, New York, NY
  • Ken Hiebert, activist, Ladysmith, CANADA
  • Louis Hirsch, Jewish Voice for Peace (for ID purposes ONLY), Chicago, IL
  • Elizabeth Horowitz, solidarity activist, New York, NY
  • Adam Hudson, writer/blogger, San Francisco Bay Area, CA
  • Dhruv Jain, Researcher at the Jan Van Eyck Academie and PhD student at York University, Paris, FRANCE
  • Remi Kanazi, poet and author of Poetic Injustice: Writings on Resistance & Palestine
  • Tom Keefer, an editor of the journal Upping the Anti, Toronto, CANADA
  • Karl Kersplebedeb, Left Wing Books, Montréal, CANADA
  • Anne Key, Penrith, Cumbria, UK
  • Mark Klein, activist, Toronto, CANADA
  • Bill Koehnlein, Brecht Forum, New York, NY
  • L.A. Palestine Labor Solidarity Committee, Los Angeles, CA
  • Mark Lance, Georgetown University/Institute for Anarchist Studies, Washington, DC
  • David Landy, author, Jewish Identity and Palestinian Rights: Diaspora Jewish Opposition to Israel, Dublin, IRELAND
  • Bob Lederer, Pacifica/WBAI producer, Queers Against Israeli Apartheid, New York, NY
  • Matthew Lyons, Three Way Fight, Philadelphia, PA
  • Karen MacRae, solidarity activist, Toronto, CANADA
  • Heba Farouk Mahfouz, student activist, blogger, Cairo, EGYPT
  • Marvin Mandell and Betty Reid Mandell, co-editors, New Politics, West Roxbury, MA
  • Ruth Sarah Berman McConnell, retired teacher, DeLand, FL
  • Kathleen McLeod, poet, Brisbane, AUSTRALIA
  • Fred Mecklenburg, News & Letters Committees in Chicago, IL
  • Karrie Melendres, Los Angeles, CA
  • Matt Meyer, Resistance in Brooklyn, New York, NY
  • Amirah Mizrahi, poet and educator, New York, NY
  • mesha Monge-Irizarry, co-director of Education Not Incarceration; SF MOOC City commissioner, San Francisco, CA
  • Matthew Morgan-Brown, solidarity activist, Ottawa, CANADA
  • Michael Novick, People Against Racist Terror/Anti-Racist Action, Los Angeles, CA
  • Saffo Papantonopoulou, New School Students for Justice in Palestine, New York, NY
  • Susan Pashkoff, Jews Against Zionism, London, UK
  • Tom Pessah, UC Berkeley Students for Justice in Palestine, Berkeley, CA
  • Marie-Claire Picher, Theater of the Oppressed Laboratory (TOPLAB), New York, NY
  • Sylvia Posadas (Jinjirrie), Kadaitcha, Noosa, AUSTRALIA
  • Roland Rance, Jews Against Zionism, London, UK
  • Danielle Ratcliff, San Francisco, CA
  • Liz Roberts, War Resisters League, New York, NY
  • Manfred Ropschitz, UK
  • Jonathan Rosenhead, British Committee for the Universities of Palestine
  • Emma Rosenthal, contributor, Shifting Sands: Jewish Women Confront the Israeli Occupation, Los Angeles, CA
  • Penny Rosenwasser, PhD, Oakland, CA
  • Suzanne Ross, Free Mumia Abu-Jamal Coalition, The Riverside Church Prison Ministry, New York, NY
  • Gabriel San Roman, Orange County Weekly, Orange County, CA
  • Ian Saville, performer and lecturer, London, UK
  • Joel Schwartz, CSEA retiree/AFSCME, New York, NY
  • Tali Shapiro, Anarchists Against the Wall, Boycott From Within, Tel Aviv, OCCUPIED PALESTINE
  • Simona Sharoni, SUNY, author, Gender & the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict, Plattsburgh, NY
  • Jaggi Singh, No One Is Illegal-Montreal/Solidarity Across Borders, Montréal, CANADA
  • Michael S. Smith, board member, Center for Constitutional Rights, New York, NY
  • Pierre Stambul, Union juive française pour la paix (French Jewish Union for Peace), Paris, FRANCE
  • Muffy Sunde, Los Angeles, CA
  • Bhaskar Sunkara, editor of Jacobin, Bronx, NY
  • Tadamon! (http://www.tadamon.ca/), Montréal, CANADA
  • Ian Trujillo, atheist, Los Angeles, CA
  • Gabriella Turek, PhD, Auckland, NEW ZEALAND
  • Henry Walton, SEIU, retired, Los Angeles, CA
  • Bill Weinberg, New Jewish Resistance, New York, NY
  • Abraham Weizfeld, author, The End of Zionism and the liberation of the Jewish People, Montreal, CANADA
  • Ben White, author, Palestinians in Israel: Segregation, Discrimination, and Democracy, Cambridge, UK
  • Laura Whitehorn, former political prisoner, NYS Task Force on Political Prisoners, New York, NY
  • Naomi Wimborne-Idrissi, founding member, Jews for Boycotting Israeli Goods (J-BIG)
  • Asa Winstanley, journalist for Electronic Intifada, Al-Akhbar and others, London, UK
  • Miriam Yagud, Gloucestershire, ENGLAND
  • Ziyaad Yousef, solidarity activist
* List in formation
* Organizations listed for identification purposes only

Postscript:

This text is not intended as a comprehensive critique of Gilad Atzmon’s politics. It was written quickly by some North American anti-imperialists who learned of Atzmon’s 2012 speaking tour just days before it was to begin in late February 2012. At first it was thought it would be signed by just a few people, but the initiative quickly took on a life of its own, being posted to the web and to multiple listservs, discussed via email and on Facebook, and elsewhere, even before the wording had been finalized or a decision had been made as to how to use it (the initial assumption had been that it would be passed on to organizers with far less fanfare). Instead of a few signatures, within a week there were dozens, and emails continue to arrive from people wishing to sign on. We believe that this speaks to the deep frustration that many of us feel when confronted with Atzmon’s anti-Jewish beliefs, which constitute an affront to our anti-racist principles, as well as a distraction from the essential tasks of opposing colonialist genocide and Israeli apartheid. What this response makes clear is that for many anti-imperialists, opposing such racism remains essential to building a movement against imperialism and the myriad forms of oppression that both feed on and are fed by it.

Any subsequent news or information about this initiative will appear here on the Three Way Fight website (threewayfight.blogspot.com). Those wishing to endorse or discuss this initiative, or for more information, should email antiracistantizionist@yahoo.com. We wish to reiterate that we consider many of those promoting Atzmon’s work to be allies, but would ask that they reconsider their decision to do so. This is not a call for censorship, but for consistency and accountability.


[1] Gilad Atzmon, “Tribal Marxism for Dummies,” originally published in June 2009, republished on his Web site on April 24, 2011.
[2] Many more quotes like these could be provided, but we assume this is enough to show that these are not out-of-context or out-of-character remarks. If not, readers may wish to peruse the section of Atzmon’s website on “Jewishness” atwww.gilad.co.uk/writings/category/jewishness
[3] Gilad Atzmon, “Tribal Marxism for Dummies,” Atlantic Free Press, July 2, 2009.
[4] Anayat Durrani, “Exposing Dangerous Myths,” Interview with Gilad Atzmon, originally published in Al-Ahram Weekly (May 19-25, 2011), republished on Atzmon’s Web site on May 19, 2011.
[5] Gilad Atzmon, “Swindler’s List: Zionist Plunder and the Judaic Bible,” Redress Information & Analysis, April 5, 2008.
[6] Ibid.
[7] Ibid.
[8] Gilad Atzmon, “An Interesting Exchange With A Jewish Anti Zionist,” Atzmon’s Web site, August 17, 2011.
[9] Gilad Atzmon, “The Herem Law in the context of Jewish Past and Present,” Atzmon’s Web site, July 16, 2011.
[10] “Herem” is a Hebrew word that refers to banning or excluding someone; it is also the name of the repressive legislation Israel recently passed to enable punitive lawsuits against those calling for a boycott of the apartheid state. For Atzmon, this law is just one more example of Zionism’s Jewish uniqueness (guess he never heard of SLAPPs), as he concludes that “this is what Jews do best: destroying, excluding, excommunicating, silencing, boycotting, sanctioning. After all, Jews have been doing this for centuries.”
[11] Ibid.
[12] Gilad Atzmon, “A Warning From The Past,” Atzmon’s Web site, May 26, 2011.
[13] Quoted in Shabana Syed, “Time for World to Confront Israel: Gilad Atzmon,” Arab News, June 14, 2010.
[14] Gilad Atzmon, “Jewish Ideology and World Peace,” Atzmon’s Web site, June 7, 2010.
[15] Tony Greenstein, “Bookmarks & Invitation to Gilad Atzmon & Holocaust Denial,”JustPeaceUK, Yahoo! Groups, June 9, 2005.
[16] “Zero Authors’ Statement on Gilad Atzmon,” Lenin’s Tomb, September 26, 2011.

Fighting from civilian areas? Perfectly understandable– in Syria

Mar 14, 2012

Philip Weiss

From a story about Syrian violence on NPR Monday night: “Melissa Block speaks with Al Jazeeracorrespondent Anita McNaught about Syria’s governmental crackdown on Idlib. She was there over the weekend, and is now in Antakya, Turkey, on the border with Syria.”

BLOCK: Let me ask you this, Anita. The rebel soldiers, such as they are, are they embedded among the civilian population? So if they’re firing at tanks, are they in effect attracting return fire at the very civilians that they would want to protect?

MCNAUGHT: I think that’s a very strategic and military way of looking at things. The reality is this: The forces of the Assad regime are not picking military targets. They’re not picking any targets other than the city itself and its civilian infrastructure. This isn’t a city with a military area. This is just people’s homes, and that’s what the tanks are firing into directly and indiscriminately.

When you use terms like embedded, these fighters are sons of the families in the city. They’re not embedded in any military sense with anyone. They’re on the street corners. They’re hiding around sides of buildings, but those are precisely the buildings that the tanks are firing into. And what use are their light weapons, their Kalashnikovs, their shotguns against the massive powerful and heavily equipped military that the Syrian government has to call upon?

Assume for a moment that Block was talking about such violence in Gaza, taking the lives of civilians, and her correspondent offered the same explanation. Would the radio host accept the explanation? No. Would pro-Israel voices clamor for correction, balance, context, etc? And talk about human shields? Absolutely. Yet who can really dispute McNaught’s account. Let the Arab spring transform us all.

IDF fundraiser at Waldorf Astoria raises $26 million

Mar 14, 2012

Adam Horowitz

Uriel Heilman has a JTA report on Tuesday night’s $1,000-a-plate fundraiser for the Israeli military at New York’s Waldorf Astoria hotel. The event featured video messages from Gilad Shalit and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

One of the stars of Tuesday night’s dinner — which raised $26 million for the IDF — was a combat soldier named Doron who operates one of the Iron Dome anti-missile batteries and appeared alongside Gantz in the satellite broadcast. When the evening’s emcee, radio host and Fox News contributor Monica Crowley, asked Doron how many missiles he personally had intercepted, the crowd laughed as if she were talking about football game stats. Doron’s answer: four.

The crowd cheered.

“Aren’t these guys the best!” Crowley gushed.

Israeli sculptor portrays Freud’s inner fantasies

Mar 14, 2012

Philip Weiss

Close readers know that I am interested in Israeli sculpture. OK, truthfully:  obsessed by the subject.

So on my latest trip to the Jewish state, I pursued my interest. This is chapter one, folks, the night I stepped into a wondrous mysterious Tel Aviv gallery…

 

A message from Hana Shalabi’s family

Mar 14, 2012

Today in Palestine

Hana+Shalabi

“We call upon the Palestinian National Authority, all Palestinian national factions and all Palestinians to go to the streets and participate in the support action planned on Saturday March 17 in solidarity with our daughter Hana Al-Shalabi and all administrative detainees. We will continue supporting our daughter’s hunger strike and we want to let our daughter Hana know: we are with you in your hunger strike until you achieve your demand; your immediate release from the unjust Israeli jails.

Your support to Hana is necessary to achieve Hana’s immediate release; it is also needed to support our daughter in her open hunger strike which she has started on February 16, 2012.
Finally, we call upon all administrative detainees to join Hana’s hunger strike until you achieve your own immediate release and put an end to the unjust Israeli policy of administrative detention which violates human rights and International law.”
For more details on local supporting actions planned on Saturday March 17 12-3 pm near Ofer illegal Israeli Jail- Ramallah-Occupied Palestine,  in solidarity with Hana Shalabi, click here.
To all comrades, activists, and friends all over the world, try to organize a supporting action at the same day/date/time.
Please circulate widely.

Hashtags:  #iWantAFree life for #Hanashalabi

This post was originally published on 3isianmadani.blogspot.com.

The ‘Arabwashers’ of apartheid

Mar 14, 2012

Abir Kopty

“The most potent weapon of the oppressor is the mind of the oppressed.”  Steven Biko

Al Arakib
2010 demolition at Al-Araqib in Negev, from Electronic Intifada, by Joseph Dana

As in South Africa during Apartheid, where the white regime used some black collaborators to “blackwash” Apartheid, Israel is doing the same.

Israel, which never adheres to International law or UN resolutions, seems to be worried about “Israel Apartheid Week” (IAW), and it has all the reason to. Eight years ago, “Israel Apartheid Week” started in four campuses in Canada. This year it took place in more than 100 campuses around the world. The BDS movement (Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions) is gaining momentum, growth and significant milestones.

This year, the Israeli Hasbara (propaganda machinery) sent to the world a 100 students’ delegation, to counter the IAW. They are trained, armed with arguments and marketing skills, and their task is to protect the “image” of Israel as a “democracy”. At least two members of this delegation are Arab women, citizens of Israel, Bushra Khalaileh, from Deir Hana, a village in the north. and Ranin Khouri, from Nazareth. One Muslim, one Christian. The Muslim was sent to South Africa, the Christian, to Europe.

Khalaileh said to Maariv news website that she “as Arab Israeli, loves her state and believes it seeks peace and it respects all of its citizens”. Her status, as an Arab woman in Israel is much better than the status of other Arab women in other countries, she says. That is, in fact, typical of Israeli propaganda: exploiting women’s right to whitewash the racial discrimination. She, like her masters, avoids the real and relevant comparison that needs to be done: and that is with Jewish women within her own state. Maybe Mrs. Khalaileh doesn’t know well the struggle of Palestinian women for decades within their community and within the state. Maybe she never compared Palestinian women’s unemployment vs. Jewish women’s, or compared salaries, or development, or security of women. As long as Khalaileh repeats her oppressors’ mantra, who cares!

Ranin Khouri, who was also part of Israeli delegation to New York last September to fight the Palestinian UN bid, was sent this time to European countries, to defend Israel.

I hope when they come back, they would pay a visit to Alaraqib village, in the Naqab, which was demolished for the 36th time the other day. On the way, they can visit the 47 families of Palestinian citizens who were killed here in Israel since the year 2000 by Israeli security forces. In only two cases the shooter was convicted. Maybe they can convince those families and the residents of Alaraqib, that they live in the most democratic state ever!

Khouri and Khalaileh are no better than Arab citizens who serve in the Israeli army and take part in the oppression of their own people, and no better than those who are members of Zionist parties who are the perpetrators of Israeli colonialism, Apartheid and racism. Every society has those who internalize the mentality of the oppressed and behave as inferiors, who should be thankful to their oppressors.

Those do not represent the vast majority of the Palestinians inside Israel. I hope people who listen to them understand that complicity with the oppression is an outcome of the oppression.

This post first appeared on Abir Kopty’s site last week.

Obama rejects a Syrian deal because his team wants F15s (and other stuff I learned at lunch)

Mar 14, 2012

Philip Weiss

The last time we had lunch you misquoted me, my friend from the Arabian peninsula said yesterday at lunch in New York.

I’m sure, but how?

You said I hate liberal Zionists. I don’t hate them. I don’t respect them. That is  because their position is morally bankrupt– they say they are for a two state solution and they will do nothing to have the U.S. pressure Israel. But I don’t hate them. That shows a failure to disaggregate human beings. I reserve that feeling for individuals.

Who do you hate?

Assad, Netanyahu.

What will happen with Assad?

You know, I have a friend in Washington who is connected. Or he’s connected to people who are connected. He knows a realist who has ties to the White House who has told him, he believes there could be a deal. The Sunni business elite and the top Alawite generals would defect, then they go to Assad and arrange the exit of several families. It would have to take place soon and they’d be gone in an instant. That is the only way to preserve the society from mass bloodshed. And to save the Christian community, which is linked to the regime. Look, why do you think Assad has not been indicted? They are trying to preserve that option. They are trying to avoid Libya, where they left Qaddafyi no choice but to fight to the death.

Now it may be that this realist doesn’t have the intelligence. Maybe the Jordanians know more. But the administration has told him it’s not possible. It is not going to happen. It may be they know something; but I think they want a military intervention. My friend says, Obama is just Bush with a nice face. He also is captured by neocons and liberal interventionists.

So when you ask about Assad, I think there are only two paths, one is continuing civil war and the other is the F15s. And both mean 100,000 dead.

Could that happen in Egypt?

No. In Egypt the structure has been preserved. From now on it is just dirty politics. The US and the SCAF [the military command] and the Muslim Brothers, they are all working together.

Why don’t you people [in the Gulf] do something about Syria?

Because the Arab world is impotent. Please. I have no illusions about that. Do you want to charge us with impotence? I plead guilty!

What about Libya, you led that.

No, that was the U.S. It was the GCC [the Gulf Cooperation Council] then the Arab League. But it was all orchestrated. The same orchestration could happen again. And do you know who is against it? Maliki. He says, There must be no foreign intervention in an Arab nation. The man installed by foreign intervention!

My friend laughed. Then he said, I have something to ask you about your site.

Alright.

This is a small criticism. Whenever something infinitesimal happens in America, you say it is huge. Like you wrote about Chris Hayes having Palestinians on television the other day, and you said, this is huge. Or with Beinart’s blog—which I assure you I will be reading with great interest—you said, this is huge. These things are significant, but they’re not huge.

You’re right. But I’m not intellectual, I’m emotional. Any of my friends will tell you that. Also, I haven’t been following this as long as you have so I don’t have perspective. And then I am inside little New York. Inside Jewish life. Like Little England–they say that about writers in London. So everything feels huge.

Well alright. But where I am, I don’t see the movement you see. And when Friedman says, The Congress is bought and paid for by the Israel lobby, it is very good. But huge? No. You know why he is saying it?

No.

Because he is trying to make people forget he was so aggressive about pushing the Iraq war.

That’s funny. Now I have a question for you.

Anything.

You’ve been in and out of my country for 30 years. Has Jewish power here increased?

Of course. Absolutely.

How can you say that?

I will tell you what has changed. Did you see that cable that was leaked where back in the 70s Kissinger said, “Israel does us more harm than good in the Arab world.” He was saying Israel is not our responsibility. No one would say that now. This was at the time of the reassessment in 1975.

Under Ford.

Yes but Kissinger was behind it. That would never happen now. Or consider the Arab oil embargo. This could not happen now.

That’s Arab countries, I’m talking about the U.S.

But don’t you see– the embargo could only happen because there was no overwhelming consensus against it. Today there would be an overwhelming consensus against an embargo. Then there were two factors preventing a consensus. There was the Cold War. America was not going to invade the Gulf, not with the Soviet Union breathing down its neck. And then American politics. The Republican Party didn’t care about Israel. It was as Kissinger said. And that flipped under Reagan. How much importance you ascribe to either of those factors, I don’t know. But the second one has to do with the power of the American Jewish community.

I must tell you, Arabs always had this dream, wait till the second term of a Republican administration. Because they remembered Eisenhower so fondly. Then Reagan came and he was more on Israel’s side than anyone! And even he was not so bad as they are now. In ’81 Israel bombed Osirak and the Americans were against it. Reagan came out and condemned it. Well in ’07 they bombed Syria and what did you hear from the Americans? Nothing. What does that mean?

Listen, something else you should do.

OK.

You don’t write about the Palestinians. You only write about Israel. But the PA is a collaborationist regime. Israel provides them with the passes and the privileges and they sign off on the occupation.

This is Oslo.

But you never write about it. They are a corrupt elite. They pretend to serve the people, but they are only serving themselves.

It’s not my society.

That’s not an excuse. You should write about it. You know, they always say, we are behind in technology, the Arabs. And it is true. We are behind. But something much worse, we are behind in terminology.

You are going to make a joke.

No it’s true. We are behind in terminology. The Israelis say, They want to push us into the sea. They say that over and over. They will push us into the sea. And people believe them. But what do they want? They want to transfer the Palestinians. Isn’t that much nicer? Even the liberal Zionists. They want to transfer!

So we’re back to liberal Zionists.

Yes!

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