Debate on the Palestinian Right of Return
April 26, 2007
Here is a pretty decent debate, featuring Bassem Eid and Yossi Beilin in favor of giving up the right of return, and Ilan Pappe and Ali Abunimah arguing against the motion. Following article sums up the outcome.
Should the Palestinians give up their right to return to their homeland after decades of misery and sufferings in refugee camps across the world? A huge majority of the participants at Qatar Foundation’s Doha Debates yesterday rejected the idea when they overwhelmingly defeated the motion that suggested Palestinians should give up their full right to return. Only 18.4 per cent of the participants voted for the motion.
The debate was marked with the presence of two prominent Jewish personalities from Israel, opposing each other. Equally interesting was the presence of two Palestinians facing each other on the two sides of the panel. Speaking for the motion were Bassem Eid, founder and director of the Palestinian Human Rights Monitoring Group and Yossi Belin, currently a member of the Israeli Knesset and Chairman of the Meretz, Yachad Party. He has been a leading proponent of the peace process with Israel’s neighbours and especially the Palestinians.
Dr Ilan Pappe, a noted Jewish author and historian and senior lecturer of political science at the Haifa University spoke against the motion. He was joined by Ali Abunimah, son of a Palestinian refugee and co-founder of the Electronic Intifada, an Internet gateway about Palestine and the Palestine-Israel conflict. Tim Sebastian was the moderator of the Debates.
Bassem opened the discussion by arguing that the Palestinians living in miserable situations in refugee camps are fed up with their 60 years long suffering. They can no more pin their hopes on the corrupt and inefficient Palestinian political leadership and the only option left for them is to comprise their right of return to Palestine to get a decent living elsewhere. “Having spent 40 years in a refugee camp I have lost all hope and energy to fight. If any Palestinian still maintain that spirit, he is most welcome to continue fighting,” said Bassem.
His views, however, found only a few supporters among the audience, which included several Palestinian students, who are children of refugees. One student participant at the question-answer session went to the extend of questioning his right to call himself a human rights activist. ” What role model you are presenting to the younger generation of Palestinians?,” he asked Bassem.
The view that dominated the debates was that strongly upheld by the panellists who opposed the motion. Right of return to the homeland is a fundamental right of any human being which has to be protected at any cost. It is unacceptable to say that Palestinians should give up this right to gain few concessions from Israel, pointed out Pappe.
Abu Nimah said during his visits to the Palestinian refugee camps in Lebanon and Jordan, he found that despite their sufferings, majority of the refugees are still longing to go back to Palestine. Both the speakers called for a solution to the Palestinian issue in the same way the Apartheid system in South Africa was tackled. The racist system in South Africa prolonged for about 300 years but now the Blacks and the Whites live in harmony in the country. “The same could happen in Palestine, if there is international pressure on Israel to change its racist policies,” said Pappe.
Both the panelists proposed a one-state solution to the Palestinian issue, where Jews, Muslims and Christians can live in harmony under a joint government. Yossi Bellin said on the practical front, majority of the Jews in Israel will never accept the full return of the Palestinian refugees, which is sure to change the demographic pattern of the Israeli society. Israel can allow a limited return of the refugees and provide a compensation for those who agree to give up their claim for return. No peace process is going to succeed without a permanent solution to the refugee issue, he added.
Alternatives to Failure
April 26, 2007
About a week back, the generally perceptive Israel peace activist Uri Avnery wrote an article entitled “Bed of Sodom“ in which he criticized people like Ilan Pappe who have been advocating a single secular democratic state in historic Palestine. Avnery’s is the typical soft-Zionist position (Chomsky has a similar position) which fails to locate Israel’s discriminatory regime and all the evils that flow from it in the ethnic exclusivism of the prevailing Zionist ideology. As a result, while he remains a staunch critic of Israeli policies, he refuses to question the system that perpetuates the oppression.
Following is “Looking for alternatives to failure“, Pappe’s response to Avnery.
Uri Avnery accuses the supporters of the one-state solution of forcefully imposing the facts onto the “Bed of Sodom”. He seems to regard these people at best as daydreamers who do not understand the political reality around them and are stuck in a perpetual state of wishful thinking. We are all veteran comrades in the Israeli Left and therefore it is quite possible that in our moments of despair we fall into the trap of hallucinating and even fantasizing while ignoring the unpleasant reality around us.
And therefore the metaphor of the Bed of Sodom may even be fitting for lashing out at those who are inspired by the South African model in their search for a solution in Palestine. But in this case it is a small cot of Sodom compared to the king-size bed onto which Gush Shalom and other similar members of the Zionist Left insist on squeezing their two-state solution. The South African model is young — in fact hardly a year has passed since it was seriously considered — while the formula of two states is sixty years old: an abortive and dangerous illusion that enabled Israel to continue its occupation without facing any significant criticism from the international community.
The South African model is good subject matter for a comparative study — not as an object for a hollow emulation. Certain chapters in the history of the colonization in South Africa and the Zionization of Palestine are indeed nearly identical. The ruling methodology of the white settlers in South Africa resembles very closely that applied by the Zionist movement and later Israel against the indigenous population of Palestine since the end of the 19th century. Ever since 1948, the official Israeli policy against some of the Palestinians is more lenient than that of the Apartheid regime; against other Palestinians it is much worse.
But above all the South African model inspires those concerned with the Palestine cause in two crucial directions: by introducing the one democratic state, it offers a new orientation for a future solution instead of the two-state formula that failed, and it invigorates new thinking of how the Israeli occupation can be defeated — through boycott, divestment, and sanctions (the BDS option).
The facts on the ground are crystal clear: the two-state solution has dismally failed and we have no spare time to waste in futile anticipation of another illusory round of diplomatic efforts that would lead to nowhere. As Avnery admits, the Israeli peace camp has so far failed to persuade the Israeli Jewish society to try the road of peace. A sober and critical assessment of this camp’s size and force leads to the inevitable conclusion that it has no chance whatsoever against the prevailing trends in the Israeli Jewish society. It is doubtful whether it will even keep its very minimal presence on the ground, and there is a great concern that it will disappear all together.
Avnery ignores these facts and alleges that the one-state solution is a dangerous panacea to offer to the critically ill patient. All right, so let us prescribe it gradually. But for God’s sake let us take the patient off of the very dangerous medicine we have been forcing down his throat the last sixty years and which is about to kill him.
For the sake of peace, it is important to expand our research on the South African model and other historical case studies. Because of our failure we should study carefully any other successful struggle against oppression. All these historical case studies show that the struggles from within and from without reinforced each other and were not mutually exclusive. Even when the sanctions were imposed on South Africa, the ANC continued its struggle and white South Africans did not cease from their attempt to convince their compatriots to give up the Apartheid regime. But there was not one single voice that echoes the article of Avnery, which claimed that a strategy of pressure from the outside is wrong because it weakens the chances of change from within. Especially when the failure of the inside struggle is so conspicuous and obvious. Even when the De Klerk government negotiated with the ANC the sanctions regime still continued.
It is also very difficult to understand why Avnery underrates the importance of world public opinion. Without the support this world public opinion gave to the Zionist movement, the Nakba (catastrophe) would not have occurred. Had the international community rejected the idea of partition, a unitary state would have replaced Mandatory Palestine, as indeed was the wish of many members of the UN. However, these members succumbed to a violent pressure by the US and the Zionist lobby and retracted their earlier support for such a solution. And today, if the international community alters its position once more and revises its attitude towards Israel, the chances for ending the occupation would increase enormously and by that maybe also help to avert the colossal bloodshed that would engulf not only the Palestinians but also the Jews themselves.
The call for a one-state solution, and the demand for boycott, divestment and sanctions, has to be read as a reaction against the failure of the previous strategy — a strategy upheld by the political classes but never fully endorsed by the people themselves. And anyone who rejects the new thinking out of hand and in such a categorical manner, may be less bothered by what is wrong with this new option and far more troubled by his own place in history. It is indeed difficult to admit personal as well as collective failure; but for the sake of peace it is sometimes necessary to put aside one’s ego. I am inclined to think that way when I read the false narrative Avnery concocted about the Israeli peace movement’s ‘achievements’ so far. He announces that ‘the recognition of the existence of the Palestinian people has become general, and so has the readiness of most Israelis to accept the idea of a Palestinian state with Jerusalem as the capital of both states’. This is a clear case of amputating both the leg and the hand of the patient to fit him to the Bed of Sodom. And even more far-fetched is the declaration that ‘We have compelled our government to recognize the PLO, and we shall compel them to recognize Hamas’ — now that the rest of patient’s limbs have been dispensed with (sorry for the gruesome metaphor but I am forced into it by Avnery’s choice). These assertions have very little in common with the position of the Jewish public in Israel towards peace from 1948 until today. But facts can sometime confuse the issue.
But in order to stifle any debate on the one-state solution or the BDS option, Avnery draws from his magic hat the winning card: ‘but beneath the surface, in the depths of national consciousness, we are succeeding’. Let us thus provide the Palestinians with metal detectors and X-ray equipment — they may discover not only the tunnel, but also the light at its end. The truth is that what lies in the deepest layers of the Israeli national consciousness is far worse from what appears on the surface. And let us hope that this remains there forever and does not bubble to the surface. These are deposits of dark and primitive racism that if allowed to flow over will drown us all in a sea of hatred and bigotry.
Avnery is right when he asserts that ‘there is no doubt that 99.99 percent of Jewish Israelis want the State of Israel to exist as a state with a robust Jewish majority, whatever its borders’. A successful boycott campaign will not change this position in a day, but will send a clear message to this public that these positions are racist and unacceptable in the 21st century. Without the cultural and economical oxygen lines the West provides to Israel, it would be difficult for the silent majority there to continue and believe that it is possible both to be a racist and a legitimate state in the eyes of the world. They would have to choose, and hopefully like De Klerk they will make the right decision.
Avnery is also convinced that Adam Keller debunked most successfully the argument for a boycott by pointing out that the Palestinians in the occupied territories did not give in to boycott. This is indeed a fine comparison: a political prisoner lies nailed to the ground and dares to resist; as a punishment he is denied even the meager food he received hitherto. His situation is compared to a person who occupied illegally this prisoner’s house and who for the first time is facing the possibility of being brought to justice for his crimes. Who has more to lose? When is the threat mere cruelty and when is it a justified means to rectify a past evil?
The boycott will not happen, states Avnery. He should talk with the veterans of the anti-Apartheid movement in Europe. Twenty years passed before they convinced the international community to take action. And they were told, when they began their long journey, that it will not work — that too many strategic and economic interests are involved and invested in South Africa.
Moreover, adds Avnery, in places such as Germany the idea of boycotting the victims of the Nazis would be rejected out of hand. Quite to the contrary. The action that already has been taken in this direction in Europe has ended the long period of Zionist manipulation of the Holocaust memory. Israel can no longer justify its crimes against the Palestinians in the name of the Holocaust. More and more people in Europe realize that that the criminal policies of Israel abuse the Holocaust memory and this is why so many Jews are members in the movement for boycott. This is also why the Israeli attempt to cast the accusation of anti-Semitism against the supporters of the boycott has met with contempt and resilience. The members of the new movement know that their motives are humanist and their impulses are democratic. For many of them their actions are triggered not only by universal values but also by their respect for the Judeo-Christian heritage of history. It would have been best for Avnery to use his immense popularity in Germany to demand from the society there to recognize their share not only in the Holocaust but also in the Palestinian catastrophe and that in the name of that recognition to ask them to end their shameful silence in the face of the Israeli atrocities in the occupied territories.
Towards the end of his article, Avnery sketches the features of the one-state solution out of the present reality. And thus because he does not include the return of the refugees or a change in the regime as components of the solution he describes today’s dismal reality as tomorrow vision. This is indeed an unworthy reality to fight for and nobody I know is struggling for it. But the vision of a one-state solution has to be the exact opposite of the present Apartheid state of Israel as was the post-Apartheid state in South Africa; and this is why this historical case study is so illuminating for us.
We need to wake up. The day Ariel Sharon and George W. Bush declared their loyal support for the two-state solution, this formula became a cynical means by which Israel can maintain its discriminatory regime inside the 1967 borders, its occupation in the West Bank and the ghettoization of the Gaza Strip. Anyone who blocks a debate over alternative political models allows the discourse of two states to shield the criminal Israeli policies in the Palestinian territories.
Moreover, not only are there no stones left in the occupied territories with which to build a state after Israel ruined the infrastructure there in the last six years, a reasonable partition is not offering the Palestinian a mere 20 percent of their homeland. The basis should be at least half of the homeland, on the basis of the 181 partition route, or a similar idea. Here is another useful avenue to explore, instead of embroiling forever inside the Sodom and Gomorrah stew that the two-state solution has produced so far on the ground.
And finally, there will be no solution to this conflict with a settlement of the Palestinian refugee problem. These refugees cannot return to their homeland for the same reason that their brothers and sisters are being expelled from greater Jerusalem and alongside the wall and their relatives are discriminated against in Israel. They cannot return for the same reason that every Palestinian is under the potential danger of occupation and expulsion as long as the Zionist project has not been completed in the eyes of its captains.
They are entitled to opt for return because it is their full human and political right. They can return because the international community had already promised them that they could. We as the Jews should want them to return because otherwise we will continue to live in a state where the value of ethnic superiority and supremacy overrides any other human and civil value. And we cannot promise ourselves, as well as the refugees, such a fair and just solution within the framework of the two-state formula.
History Makes Poverty
April 25, 2007
Nearly two years back, in the wake of the G8 summit at Gleneagles in Scotland, Bob Geldof, who organised the Live 8 events, announced: “a great justice has been done”, he gave the G8 leaders, ”10 out of 10″ on aid, and ”on debt, eight out of 10 … Mission accomplished frankly.”
I am reminded of someone else who used similar words — George W. Bush — and of course, the mission looks far from accomplished. How about Geldof? How is he faring with his mission.
Almost two years after the G8 group of leading industrial nations promised to boost development assistance by $50bn a year by 2010, the Africa Progress Panel headed by the former UN secretary-general Kofi Annan said rich countries were only 10% of the way to their target.
“If the efforts to double aid by 2010 are not increased soon it will be too late,” Mr Annan said as the APP presented its findings in Berlin to the prime minister and the German chancellor, Angela Merkel, who will host this year’s G8 summit in early June.
Sheridan-Galloway — in Solidarity!
April 25, 2007
When two of Britain’s finest orators gather under one roof the atmosphere could get electric. That was the case today with Tommy Sheridan and George Galloway rallying a crowd of about six hundred or so people at the Royal Concert Hall in Glasgow. Hearing the two men back to back reminds one why the establishment would be so keen to bring them down: heard widely enough, their voices, which never fail to resonate with the public, could unravel the structure of exploitation and oppression that is maintained by excluding such critical, informed and eloquent voices.
Sheridan and Galloway both focused on domestic issues for the most part. Sheridan drew an interesting comparison between the treatment of asylum seekers escaping murder and rape, and asylum seekers of an altogether different nature — people with immense wealth who come and live in Scotland as tax asylum. He promised open borders to the former and an expedited exit to the later. He spoke about scandalous reality of the New Labour regime, which had promised to reduce income inequality, but has instead managed to increase the wealth of Britain’s wealthiest thousand threefolds in its decade long reign.
Galloway began by paying tribute to Sheridan, whom he called a ‘working class hero’ with a ’heart of a lion’. He applied Rumsfeld’s famous Knonw-knowns quote to Tommy’s case by pointing out that his integrity, committment, energy and will to fight are the known knowns. The various Scottish MSPs he said were the known unkowns: a hundred of them could be sitting in the crowd and no one would even notice. Whereas Sheridan would always stand out even if surrounded by a thousand of them. The councilor he called the unknown unknowns: their names, their contributions and their significance, all are unknown unknowns. Galloway as well turned his attention to the failues of New Labour. He had some anecdotes about the immeasurable wealth of the kind of people who have benefitted from Blair’s policies. Goldman Sachs was one example: its executives are so rich that one of them had 1.3 m pounds stolen by his secretary, without him even noticing. The secretary was commuting to office in a yatch, while Blair was attending their soire’s boasting about how they can make much more under his rule, while paying even less taxes than they did under Thatcher.
Galloway’s most potent indictment came for the war in Iraq; after describing scenes from Abu Ghraib and Baghdad’s mean streets, he reminded people that ‘this is Blair’s legacy’. He made his final appeal to both believers, and non believers alike. To the believers his message was that they have a day of judgement to face, and with all the horrors being wrought on the innocent people of Iraq and Afghanistan, if they were to put New Labour back in office, then they’ll have plenty to answer for. To the nonbelievers he made the simple moral argument: how will they face their grand children, and what lessons will they have impart, when they stood by and let their government carry out a campaign of mass murder in their name.
Sinnerman
April 24, 2007
Thanks to H. for reminding me of this beautiful Nina Simone song. Someone has put together a much nicer video for this song. Highly recommended!
Sinnerman — Nina Simone
Oh Sinnerman, where you gonna run to?
Sinnerman, where you gonna run to?
Where you gonna run to?
All along dem day
Well I run to the rock, please hide me
I run to the rock,please hide me
I run to the rock, please hide me, Lord
All along dem day
But the rock cried out, I can’t hide you
The rock cried out, I can’t hide you
The rock cried out, I ain’t gonna hide you guy
All along dem day
I said, Rock, what’s a matter with you rock?
Don’t you see I need you, rock?
Lord, Lord, Lord
All along dem day
So I run to the river, it was bleedin’
I run to the sea, it was bleedin’
I run to the sea, it was bleedin’
All along dem day
So I run to the river, it was boilin’
I run to the sea, it was boilin’
I run to the sea, it was boilin’
Along dem day
So I run to the Lord, please hide me Lord
Don’t you see me prayin’?
Don’t you see me down here prayin’?
But the Lord said, go to the devil
The Lord said, go to the devil
He said, go to the devil
All along dem day
So I ran to the devil, he was waitin’
I ran to the devil, he was waitin’
Ran to the devil, he was waitin’
All on that day
I cried -Power!
(Power to da Lord)Bring down,
(Power to da lord),Power!
(power to da lord)Well I run to the river, it was boilin’
I run to the sea, it was boilin’
I run to the sea, it was boilin’
All along dem day
So I ran to the Lord
I said, Lord hide me, please hide me
please help me
Along dem day
He said, child, where were you
when you oughta been prayin’?
I said,Lord, Lord, hear me prayin’
Lord, Lord, hear me prayin’
Lord, Lord, hear me prayin’
All along dem day
Sinnerman you oughta be prayin’
Oughta be prayin’, Sinnerman
Oughta be prayin’,
All on that day
I cried -Power!
(Power to da Lord)Go down
(Power to da Lord)Power!
(Power to da Lord)Power, Power, Lord
Don’t you know I need you Lord
Don’t you know that I need you
Don’t you know that I need you
Power, Lord
Yeltsin: A Gasbag Departed
April 24, 2007
The unrestrained praise garnered by Russia’s murderous former President from his present day American and British counterparts is in itself enough to make one skeptical. It would be some time before the true extent of the horrors wrought on the Russian people in general, and the Chechens in particular, would be recognized, but even with the limited information available today the picture that emerges isn’t particularly pretty.
Democracy Now reports:
But critics blame Yeltsin for plunging his country into year’s of economic and political turmoil after he dissolved the Soviet Union. He also presided over the disastrous military campaign to crush Chechnya’s drive for independence. The Washington Post puts it like this: “Yeltsin was no towering democrat. In launching a war against the breakaway southern region of Chechnya in 1994, he was responsible for the violent deaths of more Russian citizens than any Kremlin leader since Joseph Stalin. As president, he tolerated, even authorized, the excesses of a system in some ways as corrupt and morally adrift as the one it replaced,” the Washington Post said…
Katrina vanden Heuvel now joins us, publisher of The Nation magazine and expert on US-Russia relations, joining us in the firehouse studio here in New York. Welcome to Democracy now!
KATRINA VANDEN HEUVEL: Thank you, Amy.
AMY GOODMAN: Well, I’d like to talk to you about a number of issues, but let us start with Boris Yeltsin. Can you assess his career?
KATRINA VANDEN HEUVEL: Boris Yeltsin was a man who squandered, in my view, the democratic possibilities he was given. In June 1991, he was elected president in the freest election in Soviet Russia…But he squandered the democratic possibilities, I believe, that Mikhail Gorbachev opened for Russia. He did so in three ways: he presided over the greatest fire sale in twentieth century history, in my view, strip-mining the country; he launched the war against Chechnya, killing hundreds of thousands of Russian civilians and Chechens; and he presided over a corrosive poverty that to this day afflicts Russia.
And the other thing that I think we need to remember is that he abolished the Soviet Union. He abolished it in a forest with three men. And you can argue about whether the Soviet Union, we are better off today without the Soviet Union, but in that undemocratic unraveling of a country, we see today some of the legacy of that undemocratic moment.
AMY GOODMAN: What do you mean, “in a forest with three men”?
KATRINA VANDEN HEUVEL: Three men. With two other leaders of the former Soviet republics, of Ukraine and Belarus. In the Belovezh Forest, there was an unraveling of the Soviet Union. They signed a document. There was no referendum, as Gorbachev had tried to put through a year before. So I think all of those elements, particularly — Amy, two years later, after Boris Yeltsin had stood before the parliament and said, “I am a man of a parliament,” he launched with cannons and tanks, as you may recall, a destruction of the very parliament that had elected him.
In this country — let’s not forget, it’s very interesting to read the media today — most of the media in those Yeltsin years were boosters and cheerleaders of Yeltsin because, as so many Americans, particularly in, I think, our media, they wanted to see in Russia what they wanted to see, which was this transition to democracy and free markets. But it was far more complicated than that. And you see the kind of mea culpas in these editorials you just read. That line in the Washington Post is very strong, in terms of what Yeltsin did in Chechnya, comparing him to Joseph Stalin. But in those years, those Yeltsin years, it was Yeltsin as the guarantor of democracy.
But as one Russian journalist once quipped to me, Yeltsin in Russia today is viewed more as the guarantor of oligarchy than the guarantor of democracy. And that, I think, is how he is viewed by the majority of Russians, who associate him with the breakup of a country — they didn’t love the Soviet system — but the breakup of a country and an empire which they associated with, and also throwing the country into the greatest peacetime depression any nation has suffered and creating this small band of oligarchs with such enormous wealth, because they were given, in exchange for electing Yeltsin in 1996, the assets of this country — the great oil, gas and raw minerals of a country — in exchange for electing Yeltsin, who in 1996 understood that he might not have been elected without their help. And that election remains contested in Russian journalism today.
AMY GOODMAN: The response of people in Russia to his death?
KATRINA VANDEN HEUVEL: Well, I was there about three weeks ago, but I can tell you that if nothing has changed since then, I think, for many Russians, the memory of that Yeltsin era is not a positive one. Amy, you have to understand that Yeltsin’s death, in my view, reminds us that the de-democratization of Russia didn’t begin with Putin, and that Putin is the inevitable consequence of Yeltsin and Yeltsinism. So think about how Russians relate to Yeltsin: if you look at what Putin represents, it’s the antithesis. It’s a man who has come back to take back those assets and to state control. It’s a man who has decided to take back the media, though it is, I think, inaccurate to argue that under Yeltsin the media was so free. What happened under Yeltsin is to some extent what we’ve seen in this country, where the media was given out to the oligarchical interests into private hands and was often manipulated for political purposes by the government.
So I think Russians associate him with this great pain and poverty and chaos, and they saw in Putin, a man — let’s not forget — who was essentially appointed by Yeltsin — the elections were rigged, by Putin, who — his first act was in a kind of Ford-Nixon move to give Yeltsin and his family immunity and from prosecution. They see in Putin a man who is restoring the greatness of the Russian state, whether we like it or not, and who is giving them some stability, a reprieve from the chaos they associate with the Yeltsin years.
Finally, the sad part of it is that Yeltsin and his band of merry reformers, those so touted by Larry Summers and Strobe Talbott and others in the Clinton administration, they gave democracy a bad name in Russia, because too many Russians today associate democracy with chaos, corruption and poverty.
The French Elections
April 23, 2007
It appears very likely that the far right Sarkozy (I was appalled to hear Al Jazeera International describe him as “somewhat reformirst, centre-right”. If even Sarkozy has claims on ‘centre’ I presume Atilla the Hun would qualify as ‘left-liberal’) will win the French election. From some of the coverage, I gathered that elections in France are no less image-driven than in the US. Personally, my already diminishing faith in Western-style democracy will vanish if this execrable creature is elected as the president of France.
It is rather sad that only four years after the French resisted US pressure to back its illegal invasion of Iraq, they should vote in a poodle who is vying for Tony Blair’s kennel. Following is from the Fanonite archives:
If you thought Blair was a disgrace, wait till you meet his new competitor for American affection. Nikolas Sarkozy, the French Interior Minister and future Premiereship hopeful is on a visit on the United States, and according to this NYT report he also seems to have a keen sense of where the power lies:
He told Jewish leaders of his love of Israel, American business leaders of his love of free enterprise, and Francophiles of his love of America. He confessed that he loves to read Hemingway and watch movies like “Miami Vice.”…
In a closed-door meeting with more than a dozen Jewish leaders on Monday, he said France should not have waited as long as it did to commit troops to Lebanon and went further than Mr. Chirac in criticizing Hezbollah, calling it a “terrorist” organization, according to one participant, who spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to disclose what took place at the meeting.
Speaking on Turkey’s bid to join the EU, he added:
In the meeting with Jewish leaders, for example, he said Europe had a problem with its own Muslim population and asked, “So why is America advocating Turkish membership in the European Union?” according to one participant. He added, “We don’t have a model of handling Muslims in Europe, so why should we bring in the Turks?”
He said the Libyan leader, Col. Muammar el-Qaddafi, had told him that one day Europe would be Muslim, and added that it would be “terrible” if such a thing happened with American help, the participant said.
Bil’in has been the site of one of the longest running peaceful resistance campaign against the brutal Israeli occupation. While the resistance has been strictly nonviolent, the Israel’s response puts paid to the idea that a Gandhi like campaign could succeed in the face of unrestrained brutality. The latest victim of Israeli barbarity is the Irish Nobel Peace Prize laureate Mairead Maguire. Democracy Now! reports:
Israeli forces have killed eight Palestinians over the past two days including a 17-year-old girl and a Palestinian police officer. Meanwhile Israeli troops fired rubber bullets and tear gas at a non-violent protest against the separation wall near the West Bank village of Bilin. Several protesters were injured including the Nobel Peace laureate Mairead Maguire who was shot with a rubber bullet. Mairead has just returned to Ireland.
Amy Goodman interviewed Maguire on todays show:
AMY GOODMAN: Can you tell us what happened?
MAIREAD MAGUIRE: Yes. I was invited with my friend to attend a nonviolent conference in Bilin, a village outside Ramallah, and to give a talk there, which I did. At the end of the conference, we were invited to participate in a nonviolent demonstration with some of the Palestinian members of parliament, including Dr. Barghouti, and Israeli peace activists and local villagers and international visitors from over several hundred countries so — or several hundred international peace activists from over twenty countries.
We walked along to try to walk up toward the separation wall, and it was a totally nonviolent protest. And we were viciously attacked by the Israeli military. They threw gas canisters into the peace walkers, and they also fired rubber-covered steel bullets. As I tried to move back and helping a French lady, I was shot in the leg with a rubber-covered steel bullet, and the young Israeli soldier who shot me was only twenty meters from me. I was stunned by it, and then later on, after having some treatment by the ambulance medics, I went back down to the front line with the peace activists, and we were again showered with gas. I was overcome and had a severe nosebleed and had to be taken by stretcher to the ambulance and treated.
And I witnessed there a Palestinian woman, maybe around in her sixties, and an old Palestinian man with blood on his face. These were over twenty-five unarmed peace people who had been viciously attacked by the Israeli military. And it was a completely peaceful protest. It was absolutely unbelievable. I never in all my years of activism witnessed anything so vicious as from the Israeli military.
AMY GOODMAN: We’re talking to the Nobel Peace Prize laureate Mairead Maguire, who just came from the West Bank town of Bilin. Can you describe the wall there, the wall that you were protesting?
MAIREAD MAGUIRE: Yes, the wall is being built right through the village of Bilin, and the villagers’ land is being cut off. This wall is actually not so much a security wall, as it is really a wall that is taking in yet more of Palestinian land. The Palestinians have lost two-thirds of their land. When I was walking along that road, my interpreter from the press conference earlier in the day told me that he had owned ten acres of land on the other side of the wall, that the Israeli authorities had moved in, confiscated his land, uprooted his olive trees, which are 400 years old, and taken the olive trees to Jerusalem, and they were planted in Israeli settlements in Jerusalem.
So this is a wall, which is — it is an apartheid wall. It’s dividing the people. But this is also by domination and control, which is what the word “apartheid” means. So, I mean, this kind of repression of the Palestinian people and the occupation which is going on — now, the anniversary is June the 9th, when it’s forty years occupied — this will not bring peace or security to Israel, which we all want to see. This will bring division and suffering, uninhibited. The international community needs to demand that the occupation end.
AMY GOODMAN: You won the Nobel Peace Prize, Mairead Maguire, in 1976. Why? What actions were you engaged in then, some thirty years ago?
MAIREAD MAGUIRE: Well, in 1976, we were in a very dangerous position in Northern Ireland. We were in the brink of civil war. Three of my sister’s young children were all killed. And we started a peace movement. Our message was, this problem will not be solved through violence; it can only be done through dialogue and through nonviolence. And today in Northern Ireland, we are very glad we have our peace, and we are moving towards a more normal society. I believe the message from Northern Ireland, that you cannot solve these problems through state violence, militarism, paramilitarism, suicide bombs; you cannot solve these problems through violence, but only through nonviolence. That’s a message that is beginning to be heard more and more in Israel and in Palestine.
The Country That Has Grown Up
April 23, 2007
Last year, when the historian Tony Judt wrote an article calling Israel “The country that wouldn’t grow up“, it outraged mainstream Jewish organizations to the degree where they waged a concerted campaign to silence him. According to him, Israel
still comports itself like an adolescent: consumed by a brittle confidence in its own uniqueness; certain that no one “understands” it and everyone is “against” it; full of wounded self-esteem, quick to take offense and quick to give it.
There is no doubt that the country is unique. Many of the ways dare not speak their name. However, it appears that the country is willing to take offence only when it finds others in the role of perpetrator. Mistreatment of Jews is bad when the Europeans, were doing it, but there is little reason for worry if today the state of Israel itself is keeping more than 40% of holocaust survivors below the poverty line (I use the word ‘keeping’ advisedly, since the state has more than enough resources to look after them, but has instead diverted them towards its expansionist policies in the occupied territories). Anti-Semitism deserves condemnation when it manifests itself elsewhere, but is very much tolerable (in fact the state has created the conditions for it) when it appears within its own borders, especially in its military.
Perhaps the country is finally mature enough to reconicle itself to the reality of what it has been inflicting on the Palestinians. Until now, the IDF has been engaged in Nazi-like behavior; little surprise then that some should turn out to be sporting Swastikas on their arms.
Soldiers in an IDF base drew swastikas and yelled ‘Heil Hitler’, hurting a soldier who had emigrated from France to Israel in order to escape anti-Semitism. The affair was exposed after the soldier, age 21, submitted a suit to the Ministry of Defense…
According to the soldier, he decided to move to Israel from France after suffering years of anti-Semitism in the country….”
While on base, I witnessed appalling and scary incidents, carried out by a group of Russian immigrants who behaved like neo-Nazis. They would draw swastikas, do the fascist salute, and yell ‘Heil Hitler’…
His advocate, Eli Saban, stated that the soldier’s appeals to his commanders on the base did not help, and the anti-Semitism merely worsened, eventually even manifesting as physical violence…
Rabbi Avraham Levine never imagined that years after immigrating from Russia to Israel he would fall victim to a brutal anti-Semitic attack in the heart of the Jewish state.
But less than three months ago, he was beaten up by teenage skinheads as he walked home in the city of Petah Tikva on Tel Aviv’s outskirts…
The number of incidents with a neo-Nazi, fascist or anti-Semitic streak has increased dramatically over the past 15 years in the Jewish state, which prides itself of being a safe haven for Jews from all over the world, according to the Dmir Centre, which monitors and assists victims of such attacks.
Although the Jewish state is no stranger to anti-Israeli attacks, a new trend has developed since the 1990s — anti-Semitic attacks carried out by “Jewish” citizens, says the centre’s chief Zalman Gilichenski…
The [Russian] nationalists came to Israel as part of the massive immigration wave from former Soviet states in the 1990s. While they are Jewish under Israel’s law of return — meaning that either they, one of their parents or one of their grandparents are Jewish — they do not consider themselves as Jews.
Gilichenski receives reports of anti-Semitic incidents in Israel on a daily basis and he estimates there are some 500 incidents a year in Israel.
Official figures are hard to come by — the police, and justice and interior ministries all refuse to provide statistics.
And Israeli police are reluctant to brand the incidents as anti-Semitic, instead using the term vandalism for racist attacks and desecration of graves and synagogues…
Gilichenski says the authorities turn a blind eye: “Israel is very swift to criticise anti-Semitism abroad but remains silent in the face of anti-Semitism within.” …
Despite the lack of official statistics, expressions of anti-Semitism and neo-Nazism in Israel are abundant.
Dozens of school and synagogue walls have been sprayed with swastikas and racist slurs in Russian in recent years. The most serious incident was recorded when the great synagogue of Petah Tikva was vandalised and desecrated with anti-Semitic slurs in May 2005.
The same month, military police arrested a soldier of Soviet origin who had a Nazi swastika tattooed on his arm and who said he hated Jews.
Shortly afterwards, another soldier was indicted for setting up the first neo-Nazi website in Israel, which included links to the text of Adolf Hitler’s Mein Kampf and a photo of him and two other soldiers performing a Nazi salute in uniform. He was sentenced to 200 hours community service…
Among its goals is to “accustom Russian people living in Israel to Russian national culture and awaken national consciousness,” to prevent “any and all forms of Russian people converting to Judaism,” to help Russians in Israel return to the motherland, and prevent “Jews from returning to Russia.”
In statements posted on the website, the nationalists say they choose to live among the people they despise because their duty is to help fellow Russians get in touch with their roots.
When Will Christianity Damn the White Phosphorus Bombers?
April 22, 2007
According to his online bio Henry Porter, the Observer‘s inhouse fuddy-duddy, titled his last book Lies Damned Lies. His latest contribution confirms that he has plenty more on offer. For variety’s sake, however, his latest is spiked with a dash of Islamophobia. The title itself — When will Islam damn the chlorine bombers? – recalls the unreconstructed Orientalists who tried to resurrect their trade once the collapse of Soviet Union necessitated a new enemy. Beginning with the familiar anthropomorphism to the cultural determinism which would seem quite out of place if one were discussing anyone but Muslims, Porter can safely put aside the political context or the individual motivations and seek all clues in ’Islam’. But the comedy doesn’t end there. Since Porter gets generous column space in the Observer, I presume he actually has an audience. Let us then look at how much credit he gives to his reader’s intelligence.
The gas bombs have a special significance with Iraqis because of the use of chemical weapons by Saddam Hussein in Halabja 19 years ago.
The gas bombs do have a special significance, but unlike Porter, Iraqis can usually count higher than 19 and few have forgotten Churchill’s use of poison gas over the ‘recalcitrant tribes’ of northern Iraq. ”I do not understand this squeamishness about the use of gas”, said Churchill who was “strongly in favour of using poisoned gas against uncivilised tribes”, because they “would spread a lively terror”.
Then there is the question of Chlorine, which clearly has a ‘special significance’ as the genocide carried out in Iraq by US-UK during the 90s through the sanctions regime was aided by the fact that water treatment facilities were destroyed by allied bombing and the import of Chlorine for the treatment of water was prohibited. Most of the nearly 2 million deaths in the period were health related.
It is now established that this tactic has been one of al-Qaeda’s gifts to Iraq.
It has also been established that al-Qaeda is US-UK’s gift to Iraq.
The pathologies of Iraq are hard to pin down and most people in the West have long given up trying.
Most people in the West, as with people anywhere else, know very well why the Iraqis are keen to rid their country of foreign occupation. As Haifa Zangana, a person infinitely better placed to discern the motivations behind Iraq’s struggle, puts it, “It is important to recognise that the resistance was born not only of ideological, religious and patriotic convictions, but also as a response to the reality of the brutal actions of the occupation and its administration. It is a response to arbitrary break-ins, humiliating searches, arrests, detention and torture.”
This fellow on the other hand has his head so far up his posterior that all he see is shit. This may not put him in an ideal position to offer insights on Iraq, but it does allows him to speak with authority on ‘pathologies’.
We turn away, taking a perhaps rather odd refuge in the certainty that this is all the fault of the neoconservatives, of the arrogance of Bush and Blair and what is strangely called a policy of ‘liberal intervention’. A majority were against the war in 2003 and almost everyone is now.
Of course. He doesn’t say however what is so ’odd’ about it?
It is certainly true that none of this would be happening if, in the first place, the invasion had not gone ahead and if, in the second, the Pentagon had not decommissioned the agencies, police force and military units of Saddam’s state.
That maybe the only sensible statement in this exceedingly ignorant — and boring — screed, but so far it is predictable enough for me to assume that this is merely a set up for the inevitable apologia. Had he allowed his head some fresh air, he’d perhaps know that he has already lost the argument; Justice Robert Jackson had declared what he just described as the ‘supreme crime’ that carries within it the accumulated evil of all else that follows. So whatever else he may have to add, the culpibility ultimately lies with his own Dear Leader.
The case should ideally rest here, of course, but it is too tempting for me to let the rest of this windbag’s silliness slide.
If the number of attacks diminished, the Americans and British troops would leave Iraq far faster than seems likely at the present.
Fantastic logic (and I mean that literally). German leadership would have loved this one: “If the number of attacks diminished, the SS and Wehrmacht would leave Stalingrad far faster than seems likely at the present”. Defenders of Stalingrad were endowed with better sense, and so are Iraqis.
The proof of this lies in the fact that the great majority of casualties are caused by Arabs killing Arabs, Muslims slaughtering Muslims…It is as if Protestant and Catholic groups in the French Resistance used the Nazi occupation to blow up each other’s churches and market places and slaughter each other’s children. Actually, it is weirder in Iraq because the Sunni extremists of al-Qaeda are killing and torturing more Sunnis than Shia, let alone US soldiers.
And I bet Porter has plenty of statistics to back these claims? In fact, he offers none. However, others still have use for the treacherous numbers that wreak such havoc on ideological fantasies. Only last week, Haifa Zangana wrote, “According to Brookings, the independent US research institute, 75% of recorded attacks are directed at occupation forces, and a further 17% at Iraqi government forces.”
The thought process is psychopathic: it has the same logic we heard in the ravings of the gunman at Virginia Tech.
That may be truer of his own thought process and its apparent failure to reconcile with the reality of an occupation. Since he uses the French resistance analogy, perhaps he could also tell us the similarities between them and Geoffrey Dahmer?
But we cannot leave it at that. Somewhere in Iraq, for example, there is an individual who allowed two young children to travel into Baghdad as passengers in the back seat of car that was loaded with explosives. Naturally enough, the children’s presence lowered suspicion at the checkpoints. The car entered the city, the adults hopped out and detonated the bomb with the children still inside.
Where in Iraq? Or is that a scene from his next novel? Remind me not to read it; his imagination is sick.
That is badness of a high order and you would expect it to have offended every loving parent across Islam.
I presume he is talking about the conjurings of his imagination. Fortunately most parents ‘across Islam’ don’t have access to his views, but if they did, I can assure you they would be very offended.
Moving on, what is ‘Islam’? His statement hints at a geographic entity; is it part of Iraq — or is Iraq part of it? If not, then why is it required to answer for events that were conjured up by this fellow’s imagination?
There is nowhere for us to go on Iraq. There is darkness but no hint of dawn…More troops mean more deaths, but fewer troops may mean even more deaths.
So now we finally come to the point. In simpler words, our phoney white liberal friend is arguing for continued occupation. But what phoney white liberal worth his salt would give up an opportunity to shift the blame and pontificate.
Among the Middle Eastern powers, there has to be recognition that many of the demons let loose in Iraq are the product of religious fanaticism.
Beep! Remember Justice Jackson?
The Muslim world has to find its own way of speaking up for humanity and civilisation and, for a start, to condemn the chlorine bombs.
Yep, right after the ‘Christian world’ finds its own way of speaking up for humanity and civilisation and, for a start, to condemn the white phosphorus bombs (that have incinerated the citizens in Fallujah, Tal Affar, Ramadi and numerous other Iraqi cities). As Gandhi put it, speaking of ‘Western civilisation’, “it would be a good idea”.
