Americans are heavily involved in the conflict: from funding (the US provides Israel with roughly $3 billion annually in military aid) to corporate investments (Microsoft has one of its major facilities in Israel) to diplomatic support (the US has vetoed 32 United Nations Security Council resolutions unsavory to Israel between 1982 and 2006).
anti-Occupation
Richard Falk argues that a Palestinian victory in the legitimacy war with Israel would not necessarily produce the desired political results and that it is vital that the Palestinians exercise “patience, resolve, leadership and vision, as well as sufficient pressure” if they are to win their just rights.
We have rights not just in this land, but also rights over this land. This is a historic axiom. Even if the generation that experienced the events of Land Day in 1976 does not get to see the desired change, our message will be passed to all future generations as they mark Land Day each year.
Israeli and Palestinian activists old enough to remember the start of the Occupation will remember Hava Foguel who was fighting it from 1967. Hava passed away earlier this week in Jerusalem. She was a truly amazing woman: always thinking about others, most generous, understanding and accepting of the other and the different; and always thinking about the oppressed, whoever and wherever they are: Palestinians, abused women, minorities and immigrants in the US, and the homeless. She fiercely stood on the side of justice, and for many years fought against the Occupation. (31 March 2010)
Norman Finkelstein: “Goldstone did not perform the role of the Jewish liberal… which is to be anguished, but no consequences. And all of a sudden Israeli liberal Jews are discovering, hey, there are consequences for committing war crimes. You don’t just get to walk into the sunset and look beautiful. They can’t believe it. They are genuinely shocked. ‘Aren’t our tears consequences enough?’ Aren’t our long eyes and broken hearts consequences enough?’ ‘No,” he said, ‘you have to go to the criminal court.’”
IOA Editor: Read Chris Hedges’ Is America ‘Yearning for Fascism’?
The biggest Swedish pension fund said Monday it had barred Israeli arms maker Elbit Systems from its investment portfolios… “The Ethical Council recommended that Elbit Systems Ltd should be excluded from each portfolio because it deems that the company can be linked to violations of fundamental conventions and norms.”
My Jewish sisters and brothers, you can continue to look away as Israel claims to speak and to act in your name. It kills and maims in your name. It dispossesses and occupies in your name. It talks peace and wages war in your name. If you turn a deaf ear to their mourning again this year, if you harden your heart again this year, if your voice is not raised this year in protest – then you are acquiescing in the ongoing ethnic cleansing of another people, in your name.
Today at 2:00 PM, Boston University held a memorial service for the late Howard Zinn at Marsh Chapel. It featured 15 speakers, many of which were his personal friends and coworkers, including Noam Chomsky, former professors at Boston University, several current Political Science Professors at Boston University, and one Iraq War Veteran turned anti-war student activist.
The Military Police interrogation of a key suspect in the killing of American human rights activist Rachel Corrie was cut short by a direct order of then GOC Southern, Maj. Gen. Doron Almog, army documents obtained by Haaretz suggest.
Secretary of State Hillary Clinton told attendees at the AIPAC conference on Monday that the US commitment to Israel is “rock-solid” but Clinton did criticize Israel for continuing to build settlements in occupied East Jerusalem. In a defiant speech hours after Clinton’s address, Netanyahu rejected US criticism and vowed to continue building settlements. Democracy Now! speaks with Norman Finkelstein, author of the new book, “This Time We Went Too Far: Truth & Consequences of the Gaza Invasion.”
Medea Benjamin of Code Pink [said] that the left-wing activist group orchestrated the bogus AIPAC press release [see below] calling for a settlement freeze that got picked up by several major news organizations today.
The majority of Jewish Israelis are complicit in the perpetuation of the current state of affairs. When growing groups of conscientious people refuse to play the game of building a fictitious democratic sand castle on the shores of the Mediterranean, the Israeli Jew behaves like a spoiled rich brat, who would rather destroy his own castle than see natives share his world and his dreams.
international public opinion would welcome a mass Palestinian revolt. Voices for boycott and sanctions against Israeli apartheid would grow. Voices to lift the siege on Gaza would strengthen. And Israel would again confirm itself in popular world opinion as a pariah state. Will that cause a crack in its own flawed self-image? One hopes so. Will Israelis come to see themselves for what they really are: brutal, self-indulgent occupiers who are holding a whole people hostage? They may well do. There are certainly some beleaguered Israeli anti-occupation groups who are in desperate need for supporters and sympathizers.
[T]he IDF harms not only one of the basic values of democratic rule, the freedom to demonstrate, but also discriminates in its policy, granting excessive liberty to lawless settlers while being heavy-handed with leftist protesters. The IDF order is therefore a revolting and ridiculous act, and the defense minister… must take immediate action to void it.
IOA Editor: It is extremely unlikely that General Barak will void the IDF decision, which he likely pre-approved.
I will mourn on Nakba Day. And also on the day that precedes it which we call Remembrance Day and which is nothing but a day dedicated to the cult of dead flesh, at the end of which everyone goes out and grills another kind of dead flesh on open flames, sings, dances, overeats and gets drunk. I will mourn for our Independence Day that is nothing but a celebration of the triumph of closure and subjugation.
Edward [Said] was a visionary and constructive critic who spoke truth to power. He was a courageous and original thinker who was not afraid of taking risks and going against the grain, who always thought in alternative ways that led to opening roads and building bridges. The only thing he most abhorred was criticism that was destructive.
This month, a civil lawsuit in Israel in the case of our daughter Rachel Corrie will converge with the seven-year anniversary of her killing in Gaza. A human rights observer and activist, Rachel, 23, was crushed to death by an Israel Defense Force (IDF) Caterpillar D9R bulldozer as she tried nonviolently to offer protection for a Palestinian family whose home was threatened with demolition. This lawsuit is one piece of our family’s seven-year effort to pursue accountability for Rachel while, also, challenging the Occupation that claimed her life.
Amira Hass: The army has declared the West Bank villages of Bil’in and Ni’lin a ‘closed military area’ until August 17, it emerged Monday. In arresting a demonstrator on Friday, police cited a military edict closing off the two villages, where weekly protests against the barrier Israel is erecting around the West Bank have often turned violent.
IOA Editor: The latest IDF scheme against non-violent protest against the Wall: If you can’t beat them, ban them. Declaring a ‘closed military area’ is an old Israeli military administration trick used extensively in the 1950s and 1960s to confiscate Palestinian agricultural lands: Owners were first disallowed access to their land; subsequently, and under a seemingly unrelated regulation, the land was confiscated for being allowed to lie fallow. In this case, closing the area means that both protesters and the media will be banned from Bil’in and Na’alin.
[T]he failure of the peace groups is not simply a strategic one but one of understanding and analysis as well: an inability to fully confront the overwhelming evidence that demolishes the most cherished mythologies in Israel and the American Jewish community.
“The idea that there’s a 501c3 non-profit that raises money for a foreign army seems a little odd,” said Nancy Kricorian, coordinator of CODEPINK in New York, who said “there was something about Cast Lead that was a turning point for us.”
IOA Editor: Video of the demonstration
Also, photos of the demonstration
A massive demonstration will greet IDF Chief of General Staff Lt.-Gen. Gabi Ashkenazi when he arrives at the luxury Waldorf Astoria hotel in Manhattan this week to speak at a Friends of the IDF fund-raiser.
UPDATE: It was a large turnout and we marched around the midtown block filled by the Waldorf Astoria hotel. Some so-called “pro-Israel” folks tried to change our minds… and a separate Palestinian protest took place nearby. The authorities were not unfriendly, and one or two individuals — working on behalf of one or more, local or foreign, government agencies — recorded the images of each of us as we passed by their lenses.
Jerusalem – Ma’an – Israeli Attorney General Yehuda Weinstein filed a litany of charges against senior Fatah official Hatem Abdul Qader, all in relation to recent civil unrest among Palestinians in Jerusalem.
[The] main theses are two sides of one medal:
1. In Israel the struggle for socialism must be part of a regional struggle; and it necessarily implies a struggle to overthrow Zionism.
2. Conversely, a defensive struggle against the worst effects of Zionism can be waged on its own as a series of one-issue campaigns, by single-issue groupings; but Zionism cannot and will not be overthrown in this way. It can only be overthrown as part of a socialist transformation of the entire region, the Arab East. And it requires an organization set up according to this strategy.
The Israeli peace camp didn’t die. It was never born in the first place. While it’s true that since the summer of 1967, several radical and brave political groups have been working against the occupation – all worthy of recognition – a large, influential peace camp has never existed here.
“Perhaps they are listening in on our phone calls, looking into our e-mails, or they have a snitch,” [one demonstrator] told Haaretz. “We do not know and do not bother ourselves about these things. We are not an underground organization and our activities are open, but the army has recently been investing a great deal of intelligence effort in preventing us from demonstrating.”
But now I feel that it has become more possible, more urgent to reconsider the politics of the BDS. It is not that the principles of the BDS have changed: they have not. But there are now ways to think about implementing the BDS that keep in mind the central focus: any event, practice, or institution that seeks to normalize the occupation, or presupposes that “ordinary” cultural life can continue without an explicit opposition to the occupation is itself complicit with the occupation.
John Pilger reminds us of the struggle by an extraordinary few in Israel against the repression and lawlessness of the occupation of Palestine. They are the inspiration to break the loud silence in the Jewish diaspora.
The neighborhood of Sheikh Jarrah, a 20-minute walk up the hill from the Damascus Gate to the Old City of Jerusalem, has become the focal point of the struggle over the expanding project of Jewish settlement in East Jerusalem and the West Bank.
As he prepares to leave Jerusalem after four years as the Guardian’s correspondent, Rory McCarthy reflects on a new, harsher climate of thought that is apparent in the wake of the Dubai assassination. But this attitude is not universal: dissent thrives in the most unlikely places.
Rashid Khalidi: “A two-state solution looks a lot further off today than it did in the 1990s… In spite of all of these vicissitudes…” Palestinians have an “extraordinary solidarity of society” and general cohesiveness, so they may just escape their “very, very grim future.”
Brown University student: “I thought it was phenomenal” [and] found it “particularly motivational,” and… was “enraged by the current situation in Palestine.”
Demonstrators participating in rally protesting the Israel’s West Bank separation fence dismantled a section of the barrier on Friday, during a rally marking five years since the beginning of the Bil’in protests. About a thousand people took part in the rally, which was also attended by Palestinian Prime Minister Salam Fayyad, Palestinian parliament member Mustafa Barghouti as well as Fatah strongman Nabil Shaath.
On February 25, 2010 activists around the world will participate in an international day of action to raise awareness about the issue of lack of freedom of movement in the Palestinian city of Hebron. The closure of Shuhada Street to Palestinians is just one prominent example of the policy of separation that affects the lives of Palestinians all across the occupied Palestinian territories.
Reut says the campaign is the work of a worldwide network of private individuals and organizations. They have no hierarchy or overall commander, but work together based on a joint ideology – portraying Israel as a pariah state and denying its right to exist.
IOA Editor: Conveniently, Israel’s ‘experts’ equate criticism of Israeli actions — mostly, directly connected to the Occupation, and the Occupation itself — for which Israel has deservedly earned the title “pariah state,” with denial of its right to exist. This is an old Hasbara trick: You criticize us, you’re really saying Israel has no right to exist. Left out of the discussion is “The right to exist as what?” As an occupying state? An Apartheid state? The term “delegitimization campaign” is actually turned on its head: It is the Israelis who are attempting to delegitimize their critics by calling them “delegitimizers,” trying to blur the distinctions between “delegitimizers” and anti-Semites, consistent with old Israeli propaganda practices: If you criticize us, and you’re not Jewish, you’re an anti-Semite. (And if you are Jewish, you’re sick – afflicted by “self-hate,” etc. See Ur Shlonsky’s recent email exchange on the Academic Boycott.) Those of us old enough have heard this some four decades ago.
The IOA is proud to be a very small part of the “worldwide network… [having] no hierarchy or overall commander…” We steadfastly reject the Occupation and strongly criticize Israel’s long record of violations of international law.
“Israel knows that the non-violence struggle is spreading and that it’s a powerful weapon against the occupation,” said Neta Golan, an Israeli activist based in Ramallah. “Israel has no answer to it, which is why the security forces are panicking and have started making lots of arrests.”
It is a matter of regional planning policy that expropriates vacant lands and restricts Palestinian development, and of the denial of the indigenous people’s natural rights: the right of inheritance and cultivation, the right to freedom of movement, the right to work, the right to family life, and the right to housing and education by choice. This… sums up the history of the occupation from 1967 to today. It is the government’s guiding policy in East Jerusalem and lies at the foundation of the treatment of Palestinian citizens of Israel.
