Ending the Year as We Began: Left of Center
December 31, 2006
Happy New Year!
Sectarian Murder Masquerading as Justice
December 31, 2006
Sunnis have been playing rats in Lebanon for quite some time now, but the Iraq war has ended that monopoly. Instead of challenging a foreign invader responsible for nearly two million deaths of their sons and daughters in the past decade, the Shia have chosen to play the rats this time, collaborating with the occupier since the very first day.
Given the quagmire the occupying army finds itself in today despite only 20% of the population participating in the resistance, one can only speculate what the effect would have been had the rest joined in. One can’t say that any fewer lives would have been lost, but atleast Iraq, for once, would have been free.
For having flirted with Israel and US, having massacred citizens both within his own borders and in Iran, Saddam surely deserved the fate. But this is victor’s justice, indeed a lynch mob. There is no justice when a country is being occupied by a foreign army. The rats who have sustained this occupation and run the death squads clearly don’t have the moral authority to deliver any justice.
This should serve as a good lesson for the regional puppets, and also the legions of idiots who wish for the United States to furnish them with “democracy”. Besides being a travesty of “Justice”, this was sectarian murder. A fair trial was clearly not in the occupiers interest as, besides Saddam’s guilt, it would have revealed their own culpability. Instead they ran the kangaroo court where defense lawyers were assassinated, three judges were replaced, and evidence suppressed.
Saddam should have been tried for Anfal, and the use of Chemical weapons against the Iranis. But we all know where the invoices would lead. Let us also not forget the culpbability of the Gulf Sheikhs (including Kuwait), Jordanians and Egyptians in arming and abetting Saddam’s invasion of Iran. All those secrets, of course, will accompany the tyrant to the grave.
The Shia that were shown cheering forget that they were not merely participating in the execution of a brutal dictator but also in their own national humiliation. If that was the price for their collaboration, then I must say they grossly undervalue themselves. A free Iraq could have delivered this justice – had they participated in the resistance – and it would not have been tainted with the stain of collaboration.
What I find sad is that Hizbullah has failed to distance itself from the likes of SCIRI. For once I wish true resistance organizations would rise above their sectarian loyalties.
Exit Uncle Tom: A Debt of Servitude
December 30, 2006
The United Nations generally carries a benign image: humanitarian aid, peacemaking, refugee rehabilitation etc. One would, therefore, expect the predictable eulogies as the UN’s current secretary general prepares his exit. Surely the oppressed masses, who the UN is putatively instituted to serve, would have words of high praise for a man who presided over some of the most turbulent times, bet it in Africa, Balkans, Palestine or Iraq.
Lets hear then, what is Mr. Annan’s great achievement:
Annan Made the Nations a Little Less United Against Israel…But some who follow U.N. affairs closely have detected important changes in the world body’s attitude toward Israel and the Jewish people during the last 10 years…And in August this year, when Israel’s counteroffensive against Hezbollah in Lebanon had clearly failed to achieve its objectives, the Israeli government turned to the U.N. for help in ending the conflict. The world body responded with a Security Council resolution blaming Hezbollah for the war and with a strengthened peacekeeping force.
Just 10 years ago it would have been hard to imagine such a scenario taking place, and some are inclined to give Annan much of the credit for the change. As Shimon Peres put it at a recent farewell dinner for Annan, “there are things a secretary general must do, and there are also things that he is free to do. We shall remember Kofi Annan — and thank him — for the things he did that he was free to do.”
In the age of Rwanda, Sarajevo, Jenin, Fallujah, there you have the great diplomat delivering service where it matters least but counts for most.
Perhaps UN Watch had something to do with it?
Give Peace a Chance
December 29, 2006
The FBI has finally released the last remaining documents from its secret files on John Lennon. Lennon was monitored over his involvement in anti-war activities, his vocal opposition to Nixon and his links to various dissident groups. At one point Nixon attempted to have him deported (as a measure of how bad things have become since, little fuss was raised when Yusuf Islam [formerly Cat Stevens] was deported from the US recently).
The release of the files come after 20 years of persistent requests from author and history professor Jon Wiener. According to Democracy Now:
Wiener says he was told at the time the files contain “national security” information and could cause “military retaliation against the United States.” According to Weiner, the newly-released documents contain well-known information on Lennon’s contacts with dissident leaders in Britain in the early 1970s. Wiener said: “I doubt that Tony Blair’s government will launch a military strike on the U.S. in retaliation for the release of these documents. Today, we can see that the national security claims that the FBI has been making for 25 years were absurd from the beginning.”
The documents are available on LennonFBIfiles.com. To be sure, you will find most of it covered in black ink, so we will never really discover the extent of FBI’s intrusion. The dissidents listed include Tariq Ali, who, along with Robin Blackburn, had interviewed Lennon. Ali’s impressions of the FBI’s surveillance and his encounter with John Lennon appear here.
Cidade De Deus
December 28, 2006
Following is an excellent review of Cidade De Deus (City of God) by my friend Paul de Rooij that points out its shortcomings as a political statement:
This is the Brazilian version of `Boyz N the Hood’ – but City of God is two notches better, yet with a few shortcomings.
The initial scene of a chicken running away is masterful. If one has had the experience of running after chickens, then one must admire how the cameraman managed to keep up the pursuit until the poor thing disappeared under a police van. Surely, the Humane Animal Society was present ensuring the humane treatment of the bird – although the miraculous escape from underneath the wheel could not have been planned.
Now is the film depicting reality and is it providing some incisive criticism? Not quite. The favelas surrounding Rio and always perilously close to sliding off the sides of the hills after a rainstorm contain masses of people. Increasingly, it is the favelas or the outlying quasi-cities/slums — built to remove the pressure off Rio from the migration from the Northeast — that cast ominous shadows over the rest of the city. They are cities because their populations are huge; they are part of the bigger city, yet a city apart. The same repeats itself in the rest of Brazil. The crime rate is legendary, and it paints a rather bleak future for the country unless something is done on the double.
City of God is about the internal dynamics of a quasi-city/slum. The city is portrayed as devouring itself – suggesting the bitterly ironic name of the city. Gang vs. gang with the occasional corrupt opportunistic intervention by the police. Crucially the spillover effects of this criminal culture don’t envelop the posh areas of Rio. Any well-to-do Brazilian watching this film won’t sweat too much – the violence is happening elsewhere. Here is where the film is a bit weak – it is hardly a political statement or an indictment of the Brazilian model. It is just internecine warfare, not a crime wave descending on the middle classes by the beach, and the film doesn’t make a political statement by suggesting that the inequality has anything to do with the problems depicted in the film. Unfortunately City of God is a shallow story, all be it a well told one.
One more thing is evident in this film and it is a problem affecting all of cinema. All films must fall within the commercially imposed time limits, i.e., the absurd two-hour mark. Unfortunately, it is impossible to weave a rich story in such a limited time slot. Several characters are developed early on, although one can hardly empathize with them or understand them. The first five characters are introduced, but soon afterwards, several are bumped off. Then right smack in the middle of the film another important character is introduced – errr… isn’t this a bit late? Whoa! Mr. Meirelles man, you only have two hours to tell a story! This would have been acceptable if the film were a wee bit longer, but suddenly it is difficult to discern who is who and what makes them tic. The way this film handles this is by having `chapter headings’. The story is compressed and explained by these subtitles. It may be borderline-effective, but what this film needed was another half hour developing the `smell’ of the place. This was wonderfully achieved and portrayed in the initial football (aka soccer) scene in a barren field. A few more scenes of the open sewers or the fermenting garbage and Meirelles would have had a masterpiece (although another hour to make a political statement would also have been necessary!).
My score = 7/10
Lynching Jimmy Carter
December 28, 2006
Even before Jimmy Carter’s book hit the stands, the Israel Lobby had kicked into action mobilizing its shock troops in the Media and Congress. Democratic Party’s AIPAC-sponsored leader Nancy Pelosi, along with lesser figures such as Howard Dean, John Conyers were quick to dinstance themselves from Carter. When the intial strategy of silence failed, a concerted media campaign was launched aimed at discrediting the book. Charges ranging from plagiarism, inaccuracy to inventing facts failed to prevent the book from reaching various Bestseller lists. Norman Finkelstein has presented an excellent critique of the nature and merits — or lack thereof — of the allegations levelled at Carter’s book.
Now, the Lobby seems to have launched the second wave of its attack. This time its personal.
The new approch focuses on Jimmy Carter’s “Jewish problem”. The implication being that Carter’s book is merely the latest manifestation of his long standing antipathy towards Jews, even pro-Nazi sympathies. Neal Sher, the former Executive Director of AIPAC — the main Israeli lobby group in the United States — now tells us that a man surely wouldn’t be criticizing Israel unless he were a Nazi sympathizer.
Besides being the former head of the pro-Fascist AIPAC, let us find out, then, who this paragon of moral probity is himself. Norman Finkelstein writes:
For the record Neil Sher is one of the bigger crooks and dumber and loathesome creatures walking God’s earth. He was heavily into the Holocaust compensation racket until he was kicked out of his position for vacationing around the the world (with his wife) on Holocaust compensation monies. It’s not without interest what happened to the other heroes of the compensation racket. Rabbi Israel Singer, CEO of the Holocaust industry, squirreled away World Jewish Congress monies in a secret Swiss bank account for his “retirement fund” and ran up a huge expense account in five-star hotels and first class travel, which he had to return after State Attorney-General Eliot Spitzer investigated his shenanigans. Burt Neuborne, the “pro bono” Holocaust huckster who served as lead attorney, was finally given a dressing down by the New York Times after he raked in $5 million from the German case and then asked for another $6 million from the Swiss case, all along having claimed that he was working gratis in memory of his prematurely deceased daughter (a rabbinical student). New York State Comptroller, Alan Hevesi, another heavy-hitter in the compensation racket, just lost his job due to misuse of public funds. And now this revolting rat named Sher has crawled back out of his sewer to besmirch Carter. How much is he getting paid this time around?
On Sher’s Nazi reference, Jeffrey Blankfort has the following to add:
In this article, former AIPAC Director and Director of the Justice Dept. Office of Special Investigations, Neil Sher, implies that former president Jimmy Carter has Nazi sympathies. What people like Sher, the Jewish lobby and the US government need to be asked is why those “Special Investigations” only concerned lower level ex-Nazis (who were of no use to the US) and why Sher and the lobby have never said a word about the war criminals and terrorists from around the globe, apart from those who wore Israeli uniforms, who have been coddled and protected by the American government and whose crimes were arguably far worse and much more extensive than anyone ever investigated by the “Office of Special Investigations,” including the SS officer referred to below, which was just another way in which the lobby used the American government and US taxpayers money to justify Israel’s crimes against the Palestinian and the Lebanese peoples.-JB
Hasta Siempre Rachel Corrie
December 26, 2006
In the latest news from Occupied Canada the play My Name is Rachel Corrie based on the peace activist’s letters from the Occupied Palestinian Territories has been blocked by the Israel Lobby for the second time in a single year. Corrie was crushed to death as she stood in the way of an Israeli bulldozer about to demolish a Palestinian family’s home. Earlier this year the Lobby had already blocked the play – which had packed audiences in London for a month – from being staged in New York by James Nicola.
According to Vareity magazine:
But in a situation eerily similar to the one that faced Nicola, it appears that pressure has been brought upon Bragg [the artistic producer] from some of his board members not to alienate the Toronto Jewish community.
Jack Rose, from the CanStage board — while admitting he has neither read nor seen the script — said that “my view was it would provoke a negative reaction in the Jewish community.”
And philanthropist Bluma Appel, after whom CanStage’s flagship theater is named, concurred. “I told them I would react very badly to a play that was offensive to Jews.”
The Lobby finds Corrie as dangerous in death as the Israeli State had in life. Besides trying to suppress the the play in the US and Canada, the Lobby also launched scurrilous smear campaigns against the dead girl. The censorship was prominently denounced by Harold Pinter and others in a letter to the New York Times, which asked: “So what is it about Rachel Corrie’s writings, her thoughts, her feelings, her confusions, her idealism, her courage, her search for meaning in life — what is it that New York audiences must be protected from?”
As the Lobby denies Corrie the space to posthumously tell the story that is infused with her inimitable courage and exemplary humanity, I bring to you Rachel Corrie, in her own words.
Following are the letters she wrote before her epic struggle was brought to an early end by the cowardly state of Israel.
February 7 2003
Hi friends and family, and others,I have been in Palestine for two weeks and one hour now, and I still have very few words to describe what I see. It is most difficult for me to think about what’s going on here when I sit down to write back to the United States. Something about the virtual portal into luxury. I don’t know if many of the children here have ever existed without tank-shell holes in their walls and the towers of an occupying army surveying them constantly from the near horizons. I think, although I’m not entirely sure, that even the smallest of these children understand that life is not like this everywhere. An eight-year-old was shot and killed by an Israeli tank two days before I got here, and many of the children murmur his name to me – Ali – or point at the posters of him on the walls. The children also love to get me to practice my limited Arabic by asking me, “Kaif Sharon?” “Kaif Bush?” and they laugh when I say, “Bush Majnoon”, “Sharon Majnoon” back in my limited arabic. (How is Sharon? How is Bush? Bush is crazy. Sharon is crazy.) Of course this isn’t quite what I believe, and some of the adults who have the English correct me: “Bush mish Majnoon” … Bush is a businessman. Today I tried to learn to say, “Bush is a tool”, but I don’t think it translated quite right. But anyway, there are eight-year-olds here much more aware of the workings of the global power structure than I was just a few years ago.
Nevertheless, no amount of reading, attendance at conferences, documentary viewing and word of mouth could have prepared me for the reality of the situation here. You just can’t imagine it unless you see it – and even then you are always well aware that your experience of it is not at all the reality: what with the difficulties the Israeli army would face if they shot an unarmed US citizen, and with the fact that I have money to buy water when the army destroys wells, and the fact, of course, that I have the option of leaving. Nobody in my family has been shot, driving in their car, by a rocket launcher from a tower at the end of a major street in my hometown. I have a home. I am allowed to go see the ocean. When I leave for school or work I can be relatively certain that there will not be a heavily armed soldier waiting halfway between Mud Bay and downtown Olympia at a checkpoint with the power to decide whether I can go about my business, and whether I can get home again when I’m done. As an afterthought to all this rambling, I am in Rafah: a city of about 140,000 people, approximately 60% of whom are refugees – many of whom are twice or three times refugees. Today, as I walked on top of the rubble where homes once stood, Egyptian soldiers called to me from the other side of the border, “Go! Go!” because a tank was coming. And then waving and “What’s your name?”. Something disturbing about this friendly curiosity. It reminded me of how much, to some degree, we are all kids curious about other kids. Egyptian kids shouting at strange women wandering into the path of tanks. Palestinian kids shot from the tanks when they peak out from behind walls to see what’s going on. International kids standing in front of tanks with banners. Israeli kids in the tanks anonymously – occasionally shouting and also occasionally waving – many forced to be here, many just agressive – shooting into the houses as we wander away.
I’ve been having trouble accessing news about the outside world here, but I hear an escalation of war on Iraq is inevitable. There is a great deal of concern here about the “reoccupation of Gaza”. Gaza is reoccupied every day to various extents but I think the fear is that the tanks will enter all the streets and remain here instead of entering some of the streets and then withdrawing after some hours or days to observe and shoot from the edges of the communities. If people aren’t already thinking about the consequences of this war for the people of the entire region then I hope you will start.
My love to everyone. My love to my mom. My love to smooch. My love to fg and barnhair and sesamees and Lincoln School. My love to Olympia.
Rachel
February 20 2003
Mama,
Now the Israeli army has actually dug up the road to Gaza, and both of the major checkpoints are closed. This means that Palestinians who want to go and register for their next quarter at university can’t. People can’t get to their jobs and those who are trapped on the other side can’t get home; and internationals, who have a meeting tomorrow in the West Bank, won’t make it. We could probably make it through if we made serious use of our international white person privilege, but that would also mean some risk of arrest and deportation, even though none of us has done anything illegal.
The Gaza Strip is divided in thirds now. There is some talk about the “reoccupation of Gaza”, but I seriously doubt this will happen, because I think it would be a geopolitically stupid move for Israel right now. I think the more likely thing is an increase in smaller below-the-international-outcry-radar incursions and possibly the oft-hinted “population transfer”.
I am staying put in Rafah for now, no plans to head north. I still feel like I’m relatively safe and think that my most likely risk in case of a larger-scale incursion is arrest. A move to reoccupy Gaza would generate a much larger outcry than Sharon’s assassination-during-peace-negotiations/land grab strategy, which is working very well now to create settlements all over, slowly but surely eliminating any meaningful possibility for Palestinian self-determination. Know that I have a lot of very nice Palestinians looking after me. I have a small flu bug, and got some very nice lemony drinks to cure me. Also, the woman who keeps the key for the well where we still sleep keeps asking me about you. She doesn’t speak a bit of English, but she asks about my mom pretty frequently – wants to make sure I’m calling you.
Love to you and Dad and Sarah and Chris and everybody.
Rachel
February 27 2003
(To her mother)
Love you. Really miss you. I have bad nightmares about tanks and bulldozers outside our house and you and me inside. Sometimes the adrenaline acts as an anesthetic for weeks and then in the evening or at night it just hits me again – a little bit of the reality of the situation. I am really scared for the people here. Yesterday, I watched a father lead his two tiny children, holding his hands, out into the sight of tanks and a sniper tower and bulldozers and Jeeps because he thought his house was going to be exploded. Jenny and I stayed in the house with several women and two small babies. It was our mistake in translation that caused him to think it was his house that was being exploded. In fact, the Israeli army was in the process of detonating an explosive in the ground nearby – one that appears to have been planted by Palestinian resistance.
This is in the area where Sunday about 150 men were rounded up and contained outside the settlement with gunfire over their heads and around them, while tanks and bulldozers destroyed 25 greenhouses – the livelihoods for 300 people. The explosive was right in front of the greenhouses – right in the point of entry for tanks that might come back again. I was terrified to think that this man felt it was less of a risk to walk out in view of the tanks with his kids than to stay in his house. I was really scared that they were all going to be shot and I tried to stand between them and the tank. This happens every day, but just this father walking out with his two little kids just looking very sad, just happened to get my attention more at this particular moment, probably because I felt it was our translation problems that made him leave.
I thought a lot about what you said on the phone about Palestinian violence not helping the situation. Sixty thousand workers from Rafah worked in Israel two years ago. Now only 600 can go to Israel for jobs. Of these 600, many have moved, because the three checkpoints between here and Ashkelon (the closest city in Israel) make what used to be a 40-minute drive, now a 12-hour or impassible journey. In addition, what Rafah identified in 1999 as sources of economic growth are all completely destroyed – the Gaza international airport (runways demolished, totally closed); the border for trade with Egypt (now with a giant Israeli sniper tower in the middle of the crossing); access to the ocean (completely cut off in the last two years by a checkpoint and the Gush Katif settlement). The count of homes destroyed in Rafah since the beginning of this intifada is up around 600, by and large people with no connection to the resistance but who happen to live along the border. I think it is maybe official now that Rafah is the poorest place in the world. There used to be a middle class here – recently. We also get reports that in the past, Gazan flower shipments to Europe were delayed for two weeks at the Erez crossing for security inspections. You can imagine the value of two-week-old cut flowers in the European market, so that market dried up. And then the bulldozers come and take out people’s vegetable farms and gardens. What is left for people? Tell me if you can think of anything. I can’t.
If any of us had our lives and welfare completely strangled, lived with children in a shrinking place where we knew, because of previous experience, that soldiers and tanks and bulldozers could come for us at any moment and destroy all the greenhouses that we had been cultivating for however long, and did this while some of us were beaten and held captive with 149 other people for several hours – do you think we might try to use somewhat violent means to protect whatever fragments remained? I think about this especially when I see orchards and greenhouses and fruit trees destroyed – just years of care and cultivation. I think about you and how long it takes to make things grow and what a labour of love it is. I really think, in a similar situation, most people would defend themselves as best they could. I think Uncle Craig would. I think probably Grandma would. I think I would.
You asked me about non-violent resistance.
When that explosive detonated yesterday it broke all the windows in the family’s house. I was in the process of being served tea and playing with the two small babies. I’m having a hard time right now. Just feel sick to my stomach a lot from being doted on all the time, very sweetly, by people who are facing doom. I know that from the United States, it all sounds like hyperbole. Honestly, a lot of the time the sheer kindness of the people here, coupled with the overwhelming evidence of the wilful destruction of their lives, makes it seem unreal to me. I really can’t believe that something like this can happen in the world without a bigger outcry about it. It really hurts me, again, like it has hurt me in the past, to witness how awful we can allow the world to be. I felt after talking to you that maybe you didn’t completely believe me. I think it’s actually good if you don’t, because I do believe pretty much above all else in the importance of independent critical thinking. And I also realise that with you I’m much less careful than usual about trying to source every assertion that I make. A lot of the reason for that is I know that you actually do go and do your own research. But it makes me worry about the job I’m doing. All of the situation that I tried to enumerate above – and a lot of other things – constitutes a somewhat gradual – often hidden, but nevertheless massive – removal and destruction of the ability of a particular group of people to survive. This is what I am seeing here. The assassinations, rocket attacks and shooting of children are atrocities – but in focusing on them I’m terrified of missing their context. The vast majority of people here – even if they had the economic means to escape, even if they actually wanted to give up resisting on their land and just leave (which appears to be maybe the less nefarious of Sharon’s possible goals), can’t leave. Because they can’t even get into Israel to apply for visas, and because their destination countries won’t let them in (both our country and Arab countries). So I think when all means of survival is cut off in a pen (Gaza) which people can’t get out of, I think that qualifies as genocide. Even if they could get out, I think it would still qualify as genocide. Maybe you could look up the definition of genocide according to international law. I don’t remember it right now. I’m going to get better at illustrating this, hopefully. I don’t like to use those charged words. I think you know this about me. I really value words. I really try to illustrate and let people draw their own conclusions.
Anyway, I’m rambling. Just want to write to my Mom and tell her that I’m witnessing this chronic, insidious genocide and I’m really scared, and questioning my fundamental belief in the goodness of human nature. This has to stop. I think it is a good idea for us all to drop everything and devote our lives to making this stop. I don’t think it’s an extremist thing to do anymore. I still really want to dance around to Pat Benatar and have boyfriends and make comics for my coworkers. But I also want this to stop. Disbelief and horror is what I feel. Disappointment. I am disappointed that this is the base reality of our world and that we, in fact, participate in it. This is not at all what I asked for when I came into this world. This is not at all what the people here asked for when they came into this world. This is not the world you and Dad wanted me to come into when you decided to have me. This is not what I meant when I looked at Capital Lake and said: “This is the wide world and I’m coming to it.” I did not mean that I was coming into a world where I could live a comfortable life and possibly, with no effort at all, exist in complete unawareness of my participation in genocide. More big explosions somewhere in the distance outside.
When I come back from Palestine, I probably will have nightmares and constantly feel guilty for not being here, but I can channel that into more work. Coming here is one of the better things I’ve ever done. So when I sound crazy, or if the Israeli military should break with their racist tendency not to injure white people, please pin the reason squarely on the fact that I am in the midst of a genocide which I am also indirectly supporting, and for which my government is largely responsible.
I love you and Dad. Sorry for the diatribe. OK, some strange men next to me just gave me some peas, so I need to eat and thank them.
Rachel
February 28 2003
(To her mother)
Thanks, Mom, for your response to my email. It really helps me to get word from you, and from other people who care about me.
After I wrote to you I went incommunicado from the affinity group for about 10 hours which I spent with a family on the front line in Hi Salam – who fixed me dinner – and have cable TV. The two front rooms of their house are unusable because gunshots have been fired through the walls, so the whole family – three kids and two parents – sleep in the parent’s bedroom. I sleep on the floor next to the youngest daughter, Iman, and we all shared blankets. I helped the son with his English homework a little, and we all watched Pet Semetery, which is a horrifying movie. I think they all thought it was pretty funny how much trouble I had watching it. Friday is the holiday, and when I woke up they were watching Gummy Bears dubbed into Arabic. So I ate breakfast with them and sat there for a while and just enjoyed being in this big puddle of blankets with this family watching what for me seemed like Saturday morning cartoons. Then I walked some way to B’razil, which is where Nidal and Mansur and Grandmother and Rafat and all the rest of the big family that has really wholeheartedly adopted me live. (The other day, by the way, Grandmother gave me a pantomimed lecture in Arabic that involved a lot of blowing and pointing to her black shawl. I got Nidal to tell her that my mother would appreciate knowing that someone here was giving me a lecture about smoking turning my lungs black.) I met their sister-in-law, who is visiting from Nusserat camp, and played with her small baby.
Nidal’s English gets better every day. He’s the one who calls me, “My sister”. He started teaching Grandmother how to say, “Hello. How are you?” In English. You can always hear the tanks and bulldozers passing by, but all of these people are genuinely cheerful with each other, and with me. When I am with Palestinian friends I tend to be somewhat less horrified than when I am trying to act in a role of human rights observer, documenter, or direct-action resister. They are a good example of how to be in it for the long haul. I know that the situation gets to them – and may ultimately get them – on all kinds of levels, but I am nevertheless amazed at their strength in being able to defend such a large degree of their humanity – laughter, generosity, family-time – against the incredible horror occurring in their lives and against the constant presence of death. I felt much better after this morning. I spent a lot of time writing about the disappointment of discovering, somewhat first-hand, the degree of evil of which we are still capable. I should at least mention that I am also discovering a degree of strength and of basic ability for humans to remain human in the direst of circumstances – which I also haven’t seen before. I think the word is dignity. I wish you could meet these people. Maybe, hopefully, someday you will.
Blood Diamond and Uncle Tom
December 24, 2006
I am reading Jimmy Carter’s book on Palestine and in one of his early visits to Israel, he describes Yitzhak Rabin speaking about Israel’s flourishing diamond trade with Apartheid South Africa.
Commenting on the Israel Lobby’s denunciations of Carter’s use of the word “Apartheid” to describe the conditions in Palestine, Robert Fisk asks:
Didn’t Israel have a wealthy diamond trade with sanctioned, racist South Africa? Didn’t Israel have a fruitful and deep military relationship with that racist regime? Am I dreaming, looking-glass-like, when I recall that in April of 1976, Prime Minister John Vorster of South Africa – one of the architects of this vile Nazi-like system of apartheid – paid a state visit to Israel and was honoured with an official reception from Israeli prime minister Menachem Begin, war hero Moshe Dayan and future Nobel prize-winner Yitzhak Rabin?
To the industry’s chagrin, now comes a new big budget film — Blood Diamond – that “depicts some of the violence surrounding the diamond trade in Sierra Leone in the 1990s”. Anticipating its release, the diamond industry has cultivated a prominent black hip hop mogul and the former head of the NAACP to whitewash its exploitation of black Africans.
The trip to Botswana and South Africa was largely paid for and organized by the Diamond Information Center, which handles public relations in the United States for the Diamond Trading Company, the marketing division of De Beers…Mr. Chavis said he and Mr. Simmons did not see a problem with participating in the diamond industry, which has historically exploited Africans.
Jeffrey Blankfort offers the following insight into the background of the pair of Uncle Toms:
Two of the more obscene aspects of political life in today’s world are (1) the almost total absence of any discussion on who has profited from the trade in Africa’s “blood diamonds” (hint: the world’s diamond centers are in Tel Aviv, New York and Antwerp and they are run by Hasidic Jews ) and (2) the plantation-like control over the black political class by the American Jewish political establishment. Both come together in this article from today’s NY Times. Simmons, who made a fortune with his DefJam record label, joined with Rabbi Marc Schneier in 2002 to become chair of the “The Foundation for Ethnic Understanding to combat anti-Semitism and Racism, with an emphasis on the former and ” was honored by the Israeli Consulate at the Jewish Community Relations Council/Jewish National Fund Annual Tribute to Martin Luther King, Jr., held at the home of Israeli Consul General Alon Pinkas” according to the foundation’s web site.
The story of Ben Chavis is a much sadder one. Chavis, a one-time civil rights leader, tried to remake the NAACP into a viable organization more than a decade ago with an outreach to black youth, but ran afoul of the NAACP’s Jewish funders who would not forgive him for having earlier expressed support for the PLO. Through the Forward newspaper and Commentary magazine, they launched a concerted attack against him, and with the loss of those Jewish funders, he was finally forced to resign, whereupon the funding miraculously returned and the organization once again became irrelevant in the black community. Now, like Jesse Jackson who is still doing penance for having referred to Jews as “Hymie,” in 1984, as in the expression, “All Hymie wants to talk about is Israel” (which he said to NPR’s Juan Williams, another Uncle Tom, who proceeded to snitch on him), Chavis is apparently trying to get into the good graces of the plantation’s overseers. Besides Jackson, genuflecting to Jewish power seems to have worked for Al Sharpton and Rep. John Conyers whose criticism of Jimmy Carter for using the word, “apartheid” to describe Israel’s treatment of the Palestinians under its occupation, was cited in an ad attacking Carter placed in the NY Times by the ADL last Wednesday.-JB
Beds are Burning
December 24, 2006
Like many who strive for public office in the age of neoliberalism, Peter Garrett has long since compromised his principles, but he is one of the very few who used his celebrity to draw attention to the disposession of the Indigenous Australians. Not only is this one of the finest rock tracks ever written, the message is just as powerful.
Enjoy!
Beds Are Burning
by Midnight OilOut where the river broke
The bloodwood and the desert oak
Holden wrecks and boiling diesels
Steam in forty five degreesThe time has come
To say fair’s fair
To pay the rent
To pay our share
The time has come
A fact’s a fact
It belongs to them
Let’s give it backHow can we dance when our earth is turning
How do we sleep while our beds are burning
How can we dance when our earth is turning
How do we sleep while our beds are burningThe time has come
To say fair’s fair
To pay the rent, now
To pay our shareFour wheels scare the cockatoos
From Kintore East to Yuendemu
The western desert lives and breathes
In forty five degreesThe time has come
To say fair’s fair
To pay the rent
To pay our share
The time has come
A fact’s a fact
It belongs to them
Let’s give it backHow can we dance when our earth is turning
How do we sleep while our beds are burning
How can we dance when our earth is turning
How do we sleep while our beds are burningThe time has come
To say fair’s fair
To pay the rent, now
To pay our share
The time has come
A fact’s a fact
It belongs to them
we’r gonna give it backHow can we dance when our earth is turning
How do we sleep while our beds are burning
Boycott Israel
December 23, 2006
John Berger has taken a principled and courageous stance on Israel’s continued brutalization of the Palestinians and his call for a cultural boycott has now been joined by such superlative individuals as Arundhati Roy, Ken Loach, Brian Eno, Eduardo Galeano, Ahdaf Soueif and many others. The Blood hounds and smear mongers of the lobby have already kicked into action. At this hour it is imperative for all of us struggling for the rights of the Palestinians to give these courageous inviduals maximum support in the face of Zionist slander.
Here is their statement:
There is a fragile ceasefire in Lebanon, albeit daily violated by Israeli overflights. Meanwhile the day-to-day brutality of the Israeli army in Gaza and the West Bank continues. Ten Palestinians are killed for every Israeli death; more than 200, many of them children, have been killed since the summer. UN resolutions are flouted, human rights violated as Palestinian land is stolen, houses demolished and crops destroyed. For archbishop Desmond Tutu, as for the Jewish former ANC military commander now South African minister of security, Ronnie Kasrils, the situation of the Palestinians is worse than that of black South Africans under apartheid.
Meanwhile, western governments refer to Israel’s legitimate right of self-defence, and continue to supply weaponry. The challenge of apartheid was fought better. The non-violent international response to apartheid was a campaign of boycott, divestment and UN-imposed sanctions which enabled the regime to change without bloodshed.
Today, Palestinians teachers, writers, film-makers and non-governmental organisations have called for a comparable academic and cultural boycott of Israel as offering another path to a just peace. This call has been endorsed internationally by university teachers in many European countries, by film-makers and architects, and by some brave Israeli dissidents. It is now time for others to join the campaign – as Primo Levi asked: “If not now, when?” We call on creative writers and artists to support our Palestinian and Israeli colleagues by endorsing the boycott call. Read the Palestinian call pacbi.org.
John Berger
Brian Eno
Sophie Fiennes
Eduardo Galeano
Reem Kelani
Leon Rosselson
Steven Rose
Arundhati Roy
Ahdaf Soueif
Elia Suleiman
and 85 others
John Berger stresses the need for speaking out in this comment piece. Norman Finkelstein has already made a strong case for an economic boycott and Gabriel Ash has made a compelling case for the justice and efficacy of a boycott campaign. From South Africa, Virginia Tilley urges us to Boycott Now! From Palestine Omar Barghouti reminds us why the boycott is necessary. From Israel itself, we have the indefatigable Ilan Pappe and Tanya Reinhart supporting this call.
Please support the boycott and send letters of support to newspapers, journals and websites.
