SIRATYST (Stuff I Read and Thought You Should Too) --
“To ravage, to slaughter, to usurp under false titles, they call empire; and where they make a desert, they call it peace.”
(Calgacus, as quoted by Tacitus, Agricola 30-31)"
Buttar has dual citizenship. She spent many years working in the
United States in medicine. She has engaged in human rights activism to
help poor women in Pakistani prisons. Five years ago she went to
Pakistan to become a politician and extend her activism into the
government of Pakistan.
She describes herself as being “unique” because she can see
“the view” from her Pakistan street and from her US street. She sees
from her US street that the “general public doesn’t even know what
drones are” or know of the impact.” She knows from her Pakistan street
that “someone can push a button and people are killed.” Thousands of
innocents lose their lives. Only about 170 terrorists have been killed.
During her presentation at the drone summit, she asked, “What have
the Pakistani people done?” She recounted history and how there were
really no terror attacks before 1979.
Afghanistan was occupied by Russia.
That’s when Charlie Wilson was a senator and that’s when the American
government and the Israeli government funded the mujahideen, gave them
weapons, gave them technology for this war against Russia. And then,
where 600 million refugees came into Pakistan, that’s when the seed of
the terror tree was planted.
She said intelligence agencies in America and in Pakistan fueled the
creation of Taliban. They fueled the creation of groups that are now
being fought.
Now, Pakistani people – 190 million
Pakistani people – are victims of [terrorism]. They are the victims of
remote control killing. Because, view from my street when I was a little
girl in Lahore, it was a very peaceful city. It was a mix of ancient
and modern city. And today I am very sorry to say I wanted my girl to go
back and see that view, but she will never see that view. She will be
tainted this security, guard, gated communities, this sheer fear in
Lahore. In last five years, in Lahore alone, which is a city of 8
million people.
In Lahore alone, I think there have been more than 30
terrorist-mediated bombings. And it happens – there is a drone attack
and then there is a terrorist-mediated attack. Our markets, our hotels,
our restaurants, our schools, our railway stations. Just two weeks ago
there was an attack on railway station. We have to think of these
victims. We have to think of 190 million whose lives have been made
living hell because of this war on terror and these terror attacks and
these remote-controlled killings.
Buttar says with great conviction that the onus is on the American
people to hold the US government “accountable for wars and intervention
in Pakistan.” She says, “We are intervening in sovereign countries’
politics and issues.” And we should not do that — not give covert
under-the-table money and instead give civilian aid for schools,
hospitals – really focus on education because problems we are facing are
really going to be solved by financial independence.”
It is the dependence on military aid from the US and NATO countries and
the monopoly of force, which the US has on the region, that really makes
Pakistan impotent in the face of American power. This gives the US an
unrestrained ability to bully Pakistan into accepting whatever
counterterrorism operations the US wants to carry out in Pakistan.
April 23, 2012: Anti-riot policemen used their batons to hit a squatter
after a violent attempt to demolish shanties in Sucat, Paranaque city,
metro Manila. At least one resident was killed and 40 were injured as a
housing demolition on Monday turned violent with police using tear gas
on residents who in turn hurled rocks and other objects at them, a local
media reported.
On April 23, 2012, at about 3:00
am, Israeli soldiers broke into the house of Ahmad Abu Hashem, a member
of the Popular Committee of Beit Ommar, for the second time in a week.
This time they arrested his 15-year-old son Mohamad Ahmad Khalil Abu
Hashem. In total, four people were arrested during the raid last night.
Three of them are under the age of 18. Those arrested were:
Mohamad Ahmad Khalil Abu Hashem, 15 years old. Tareq Jamal Khalil Abu Maria, 17 years old. Badran Jalal Badran Abu Ayash, 15 years old. Wahed Hamdi Abu Maria, 44 years old.
The
soldiers broke into their houses at night and harassed the families and
fired several canisters of teargas. The ambulance was called because
people were injured after inhaling the gas.
19 people have been
arrested from Beit Ommar so far this month, and 13 of these are under
the age of 18. Night raids are almost a nightly occurrence in Beit
Ommar, to create fear in the community and to discourage people from
resisting the occupation. Residents of Beit Ommar are frequently
arrested with no charges held against them, and usually have to pay
fines between 1000 and 4000 shekels in order to be released.
By: Students for
Justice in Palestine, University of Massachusetts Boston
UMASS BOSTON STUDENT
SENATE PASSES RESOLUTION CALLING FOR
DIVESTMENT FROM
BOEING
CITING BOEING’S
INVOLVEMENT IN ISRAEL’S OPERATION CAST LEAD, STUDENT-LED
COALITION
DEMANDS
DIVESTMENT FROM BOEING AND OTHER COMPANIES PROFITING
FROM WAR CRIMES
& HUMAN RIGHTS VIOLATIONS
University of
Massachusetts Boston, MA, April 18th, 2012 - The UMass Boston
Undergraduate Student Government unanimously passed a bill demanding that the
UMass Foundation, the university’s investment fund, divest from Boeing and other
companies profiting from war crimes and/or human rights violations.
This motion is a resounding victory for student activists nationwide and
contributes to broader international solidarity movements, including the
movement for Boycotts, Divestment, and Sanctions of Israel (BDS) as called for
by Palestinian civil society in 2005.
Building on UMass’s
tradition of student protest and ethical divestment, a coalition of concerned students, student
groups, and faculty presented the bill to the Undergraduate Student
Government. As one of the first American
Universities to divest from apartheid South Africa in 1978, and having recently
divested its funds from Sudan in protest of the genocide transpiring in Darfur
in 2007, students sought to continue this tradition of ethical integrity by
demanding divestment from Boeing, a company that has actively manufactured and
sold weapons, which have been used in direct attacks on Palestinian civilians, a
violation of international humanitarian law and human rights.
The bill argues that the University’s
investment in Boeing, a company
profiting from war crimes, dramatically conflicts with the University’s mission to serve
“the public good of our city, our commonwealth, our nation, and our world” (http://www.umb.edu/the_university/mission_values/). In
addition to demanding the University’s immediate divestment from Boeing and
other companies which profit from war crimes, the bill calls for the
establishment of a Responsible Investment Committee to further uphold the
University’s refusal to invest in companies which profit from violations of
international law, human rights and other injustices.
The bill was sponsored
by the president of the Undergraduate Student Government, the Speaker of the
Undergraduate Student Senate, the incoming undergraduate Student Trustee, nine
student groups, and 33 faculty.
The bill specifically
highlights the connection between Boeing and Operation Cast Lead, Israel’s
3-week military onslaught against the Gaza Strip in 2008-09,
during which 1,300 Palestinians were killed, most of them civilians,
including 412 children. Boeing produces the Hellfire missile and AH-64 Apache
attack helicopters, both of which are documented to have been used in Operation
Cast Lead. Israel’s actions during Operation Cast Lead have
been condemned by multiple international NGOs and humanitarian organizations,
such as Amnesty International andHuman Rights Watch.
Sponsoring students
and organizations intend this resolution to build a framework for further
divestment work on campus, up to and including a call for the University of
Massachusetts to divest its funds from all companies profiting from war crimes
anywhere in the world. In particular, UMass Boston’s Students
for Justice in Palestine (SJP), a sponsoring student group, hopes that this
resolution will pave the way for a broader campaign asking the University of
Massachusetts to divest from any and all companies profiting from Israel’s
illegal occupation and colonization of the indigenous people of
Palestine. SJP considers the passage of this bill to be a
proud victory for the Palestine solidarity movement and is offered as a response
to the 2005 call from Palestinian civil society for boycotts, divestment, and
sanctions against Israel. Incoming Student Trustee Alexis Marvel
expressed her resolve to force the bill through the board of trustees.
In
recent reactions to the BDS movement, writers like Peter Beinart,
Daniel Levy and Thomas Friedman have offered criticism. This criticism,
however, which views the question of Palestine through the prism of
Zionism, is incapable of grappling with a movement that views the same
question through a humanist perspective of rights.
Activists hold a banner reading "Boycott Israel" outside the
Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OEDC)
headquarters in 2010 in Paris, Bertrand Langlois / AFP / Getty Images
In a lengthier article for the Atlantic, Daniel Levy expands on a point Beinart makes in his New York TimesOp-Ed and one that is more or less reflected in Friedman’s column demanding boycott activists carry a map of a two-state solution with them at all times.
“I
cannot support or accept the call of the BDS movement,” Levy writes,
because “it has nothing to say about Jewish collective, communal or
national Jewish interests. And, the refusal to proscribe a political
result—to explain the end goal of BDS—is not a minor thing.”
Let’s
unpack this. What is BDS? The BDS movement is a global movement called
for by Palestinian civil society that aims to pressure Israel to meet
three requirements: 1) self-determination for Palestinians in the
occupied territories, 2) a Right of Return for Palestinian refugees and
3) full equality for Palestinian citizens of Israel.
BDS
is not a political movement; it is, and I think by design, a
rights-based movement. It does not aim to draw borders. This is not
because of a philosophy about one state or two, but rather because a
person’s location on one side of a border or the other has no bearing on
their inalienable human rights.
The
question of Palestine has always been one of rights—rights to vote,
rights to return to and live on your land, rights to equality among
others—and not simply one of identity. Palestinians are not in search of
a national-state identity; we know who we are, and we are the people of
Yaffa, Haifa, Nablus, Ramallah, Gaza, Jerusalem and the rest of
Palestine.
This
is perhaps why the ‘peace process’ was such a dismal failure. It
attempted to Zionize the Palestinian cause, converting it from a cause
of rights to a cause for an ethnically homogeneous state to address a
Zionism-created problem of statelessness within the confines of 22% of
Palestine. Palestinians do not want a state for the sake of having a
state, a flag, an anthem, an army, or a president. Palestinians who
supported a two-state outcome only sought a Palestinian state in so far as that state would be a vehicle toward realizing Palestinian rights.
What
became clear over the past 20 years of peace processing is that even in
the best case scenario a Palestinian state would come only at the
significant expense of Palestinian rights. Edward Said and many
other Palestinians knew this at the beginning of the Oslo process and
made their objections known. Today, two decades and 400,000 Israeli
settlers later, even Yossi Beilin, the Israeli architect of Oslo, tells
us the peace process is a ‘farce.’
'Liberal
Zionists' like Beinart, Levy and Friedman are somewhat supportive of
Palestinian human rights as long as they do not challenge Zionist
domination of politics and stay behind a border. But the reality is that
human rights should exist where humans exist—and there are humans on
both sides of every border.
'Liberal
Zionists' are very clear as to why they won’t support BDS: because the
realization of Palestinian rights challenges what Levy terms “national
Jewish interests.”
No
reasonable person would have demanded Martin Luther King bring a draft
of the Civil Rights Act to every protest assuring Whites that equality
for Blacks would not mean the end of White privilege or domination over
political affairs.
So
why does merely supporting Palestinian rights challenge these ‘national
Jewish interests?’ Why does supporting the human rights of one people
mean taking something away from another?
It is because Zionism holds that these two things, Palestinian human rights and "national Jewish interests" are mutually exclusive. It’s because Zionism was put into action at the expense
of the rights of Palestinians and that the maintenance of Israeli
Jewish monopolization of political control demands the continued
violation of Palestinian rights.
The
way forward requires us to challenge this false dichotomy, which means
challenging Zionism. The human rights of Israeli Jews do not need to be
violated in any way for the human rights of Palestinians to be realized.
More
people than ever before are realizing today that Zionism was the wrong
answer to the Jewish question. The right answer was civil and human
rights for all regardless to ethnicity or creed. The BDS movement
understands that a Zionist approach to the question of Palestine is
flawed and has, instead, chosen a rights-based framework.
Perhaps
the reason ‘liberal Zionists’ have so much trouble with BDS is
precisely because it makes the incompatibility of liberalism and Zionism
that much harder to hide.
An eye-opening report published last November in the Wall Street Journal
revealed that the Obama Administration was permitting the CIA to kill
people in Pakistan without even knowing who they were: "Signature
strikes target groups of men believed to be militants
associated with terrorist groups, but whose identities aren't always
known. The bulk of CIA's drone strikes are signature strikes." As I noted at the time, this is the same CIA that is known to have jailed innocent people,
subjecting them to harsh interrogation tactics and years of wrongful
imprisonment. Despite those errors, and the CIA's lack of transparency
and accountability, the Obama Administration loosed it in Pakistan, where we've killed
lots of innocent people. And while it's been operating in Yemen for
some time, the CIA now wants official permission to kill people whose
identities it can't confirm in that country either.
Is President Obama going to agree? "If approved, the change would probably accelerate a campaign of U.S.
airstrikes in Yemen that is already on a record pace, with at least
eight attacks in the past four months," The Washington Postreports. "For President Obama, an
endorsement of signature strikes would mean a significant, and
potentially risky, policy shift. The administration has placed tight
limits on drone operations in Yemen to avoid being drawn into an often murky regional conflict and risk turning militants with local agendas into al-Qaeda recruits."
It's
worth pausing at that line about the "tight limits" on current drone
operations in Yemen. Here's how Jeremy Scahill, who reported on the
ground there, described the reality of American policy:
For years, the elite Joint Special Operations Command and the CIA had
teams deployed inside Yemen that supported Yemeni forces and conducted
unilateral operations, consisting mostly of cruise missile and drone
attacks. Some of the unilateral strikes have killed their intended
targets, such as the CIA attack on Awlaki. But others have killed
civilians--at times, a lot of civilians. And many of these have been in
Abyan and its neighboring province of Shebwa, both of which have
recently seen a substantial rise of AQAP activity. President Obama's
first known authorization of a missile strike on Yemen, on December 17,
2009, killed more than forty Bedouins, many of them women and children,
in the remote village of al Majala in Abyan. Another US strike, in May
2010, killed an important tribal leader and the deputy governor of Marib
province, Jabir Shabwani, sparking mass anger at the United States...
The October drone strike that killed Awlaki's 16-year-old son,
Abdulrahman, a US citizen, and his teenage cousin shocked and enraged
Yemenis of all political stripes. "I firmly believe that the [military]
operations implemented by the US performed a great service for Al Qaeda,
because those operations gave Al Qaeda unprecedented local sympathy,"
says Jamal, the Yemeni journalist. The strikes "have recruited
thousands." Yemeni tribesmen, he says, share one common goal with Al
Qaeda, "which is revenge against the Americans, because those who were
killed are the sons of the tribesmen, and the tribesmen never, ever give
up on revenge." Even senior officials of the Saleh regime recognize the
damage the strikes have caused.
Put another way, the status quo, with its relatively greater
protections, resulted in dozens of dead innocents and, according to some
experts, created the conditions for blowback. And since Scahill did his
reporting, the pace of drone strikes has increased, "with about as many
strikes so far this year as in all of 2011," the Post reports.
"Which U.S. entity is responsible for each strike remains unclear." Also
secret are the identities of the people targeted and the people killed,
a confluence of opacity that make abuses likely and more dead innocents
all but certain.
A [Short clip] a huge march demanding the step-down of the government. Today 20th of April on Budaiya main road.
Also, I saw a tweet from a family member that hunger-striker Al Khawaja, nearing 70 days on his strike, has quit taking water and asked for a non-violent response to his death.
Prisoners will begin an indefinite hunger strike this month. This
means they will refuse all forms of food and liquid (with the exception
of water) until their demands are met. The hunger strike has been
initiated because this is the the the only tool that the Palestinian
prisoners have to achieve their rights. We must pressurise the occupying
government and force it to negotiate on the demands the prisoners
movement has been striving to achieve.
The hunger strike is supported by
the prisoners movement as a whole, with agreement amongst all member
parties.
The demands of the Karameh Hunger Strike are:
1. An end to the policy of solitary confinement and isolation which
has been used to deprive Palestinian prisoners of their rights for more
than a decade.
2. To allow the families of prisoners from the Gaza Strip to visit
prisoners. This right has been denied to all families for more than 6
years.
3. An improvement in the living conditions of prisoners and an end to
the ‘Shalit’ law, which outlaws newspapers, learning materials and many
TV channels.
4. An end to the the policies of humiliation which are suffered by
prisoners and their families such as strip searches, nightly raids, and
collective punishment.
The aim of the hunger strike is to shift local, regional and
international public opinion. It aims to put pressure on the occupying
government and hold it responsible for the health of all prisoners.
Palestinian Prisoners are calling on free people across the world to
to do everything in their power to support them in their struggle for
rights.
BTW, I'm not sure if they meant to do it, but Al Jazeera labelled one of the cops at Ben Gurion as an "Israeli Settler." :) Unintentional truth. Also, note that the Brussels airport police were using dogs on the unarmed human rights activists!
Four days after Vik has gone, I drew the portrait that he always wanted (Shahd Abusalama
To read all of Shahd's beautiful letter to Vik, go here. EXCERPT:
My dear Vik, I want you to know that you just left us in body but
your soul will be living forever. I want you to be sure that everybody
who believes in you and in the Palestinian cause will keep taking your
path. I want you to know that you are our hero; you define humanity for
us because you are the humanity. Stay human, this is how you were all
the time with every step you took. Vittorio, you are the winner, you are
the dreamer who never gives up, so my dear friend rest in peace. Stay
Human!I ’
P.S: I wrote this letter 5 days after his body left us.
The day after NATO Host Committee co-chairperson Madeleine Albright
belabored South Side high school students on her favorite topic – the
ineffable virtues of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization and its need
to encompass the world so as to share its benefits with populations not
yet bombed and occupied – two other members of the committee visited a
sixth-grade classroom at the Walt Disney Magnet School on the North
Lakefront to deliver the same message.
The two summit propagandists interrogated the primary school
students, who had been given their homework in advance, with questions
like “When was NATO started?” and “Why was it started?” in an
instruction in dogma that resembles catechism classes in parochial
schools.
In answer to the second query, one well-prepared youngster responded, “To prevent World War III!”
One is free to substitute another verb for “prevent.”
Other questions included, “Who were we worried about in 1949?” with
the inevitable “The Soviet Union!” as the required answer. Matters
haven’t changed much in essence since the Cold War bunker mentality of
1949 held sway over the minds of terrified schoolchildren.
The Chicago Tribune account of the event, written by the perpetually
uncomprehending Mary Schmich, has the tone of schoolchildren being
coached to celebrate the hosting of the 2016 Olympics (which Chicago bid
for and lost) or the Chicago Cubs’ pennant prospects. Nice and
“bubbly,” with a We Are the World schmaltziness incongruous with the
deadly nature of the organization which is being paid obeisance.
During the earlier Albright session with a select (elect) group of
students from an elite secondary school, the sort of pupils deemed
potential successors to the likes of the former secretary of state and
in the future able in their own right to order bomb and missile attacks
on defenseless peoples, students were grilled on the benefits accruing
to Chicago in hosting the military bloc’s summit, and one enterprising
student earned herself a gold star by stating “It’s like being able to
see history in front of your eyes.”
NATO and the Department of State Albright headed during NATO’s first
war in 1999 have deployed brigades of officials to similarly
indoctrinate students across the city of 3 million. The Host Committee,
the State Department, the White House, the Rahm Emanuel administration
and NATO Headquarters in Brussels have also prepared a number of public
relations initiatives to promote the military alliance as a benign
organization the hosting of which is an honor to the city and an
opportunity to showcase the “world-class” qualities of the same.
Chicago Public Schools is fully collaborating with the NATO Host
Committee in using classrooms and school hours to conduct a one-sided
pro-NATO information campaign, as though academic standards and
achievement in Chicago are so outstanding as to permit time for the
inculcation of “North Atlantic values.”
Its website invites its almost half million students to “Win an iPod
and start your career as a video director” by entering a contest to
produce videos to “welcome leaders from more than 50 countries to
Chicago for the NATO (North Atlantic Treaty Organization) Diplomatic
Summit this May.”
There are no better issues, no higher values to promote than the
world’s and history’s largest military bloc which only five and a half
months ago completed its first war in Africa and is in the twelfth
calendar year of a war in Asia. It is reprehensible – is criminal –
enough to recruit men and women in their late teens and early twenties
to kill and die abroad under the NATO banner, but to conduct this sort
of children’s crusade is truly unconscionable.
It isn’t specified whether the iPod comes replete with the NATO logo.
As the indoctrination process proceeds further down the grade levels to
pre-school, perhaps scale-model toy cruise and Hellfire missiles and
cluster bomb three-dimensional puzzles can be handed out to the
children.
The NATO Host Committee also plans a video link-up with students in
Chicago and counterparts in Afghanistan in which the two groups will
share musical performances.
In a sane and just world Chicago students would be invited to visit
bomb shelters where Serbian, Afghan and Libyan children huddled in
terror in the cold and dark while NATO bombs and missiles rained down
from the sky and the cemeteries where their opposite numbers’ battered
bodies are buried.
The more valiant Chicago pupils could volunteer to spend their summer
vacation clearing cluster bomb fragments in past NATO war zones.
That sort of practical education would contribute to learning the
most important lesson: That war is an utter abomination and an
organization that exist solely for that purpose has no right to exist.
Solidarity activists around the world understand the meaning of
sacrifice, but few experience its ultimate reality the way Tom Hurndall
did exactly eight years ago.
Thomas “Tom” Hurndall was an aspiring photojournalist who put himself
at the service of the world. In 2002, he traveled through Europe,
eventually making his way to Jordan and Egypt where he felt intrigued by
the mix of cultures. In early 2003, he joined the anti-war movement
against the invasion of Iraq and physically moved there. But as the
invasion became more and more likely, he moved to Jordan to help provide
medical services to Iraqi refugees. There, he discovered the
International Solidarity Movement (ISM) and moved to Rafah in the Gaza
Strip not long after. The date was April 6, 2003.
Five
days later, Israeli soldiers opened fire close to where he was
standing. As he ran for cover, he noticed that three of the many
children previously playing in the road had become paralyzed with fear.
Donning a bright orange vest, Tom dashed towards one of the children and
brought him to safety. He turned back to rescue another child, but as
he approached, Israeli sharpshooter Taysir Hayb fired a round into his
skull. Tom hit the ground bleeding less than a week after moving to
Palestine. The date was now April 11, 2003.
After an hours-long delay at the border, Tom’s ambulance was finally
allowed through. Tom received emergency treatment in Be’ersheva Hospital
before being transferring to London where he remained in a coma for
nine months. He died on January 13, 2004.
Tom is survived by a loving family and grateful supporters. He didn’t
have much time to do the work he would’ve enjoyed. But in just five
days, Tom gave more to the movement for a free Palestine than many of
us, especially myself.
On this day, let us recognize the passion that drove Tom and the
fearlessness that set him apart. Let us remember him and his ultimate
sacrifice.
The Easter Sunday brunch crowds were just beginning to thicken
on Atlantic Avenue when two dozen human-rights activists, some beating
drums and singing American Indian chants, marched through in single
file.
Weaving their way through diners and shoppers, they passed
out leaflets and held their banners high to remind the crowds that
Leonard Peltier, an American Indian convicted of shooting two FBI agents
at the Pine Ridge, S.D., Indian Reservation in 1975, is still in
prison, serving two consecutive life terms for first-degree murder.
Many
people have questioned Peltier's guilt since his 1977 sentencing. Some
believe he was set up by the FBI and an unjust legal system. Books,
documentaries, posters and works of art have been created to recount
Peltier's story, and several celebrities and human rights groups have
taken up his cause, saying he received an unfair trial.
"We want
him freed," said Dorothy Ninham, an Oneida Indian from Wisconsin who has
known Peltier since the early 1970s and still visits him in prison.
"This is one of many injustices that have happened to red people and all
races. We're not talking about one day and two agents. We're talking
about all the years of oppression our peoples have suffered."
Ninham
and a group of activists have been walking across the United States to
share Peltier's plight. They began their trek at Alcatraz, the former
prison in California, on Dec. 18, and plan to end it on May 20 in
Washington, D.C.
Peltier's story is familiar to many who remember
the American Indian civil rights protests of the 1970s. On June 26,
1975, two FBI agents, Jack Coler and Ronald Williams, came under heavy
gunfire as they searched for a American Indian man who had been accused
of stealing. Peltier, who had been a member of the activist American
Indian Movement, admitted to firing at the agents in a 1999 memoir, but
denied firing the fatal shots.
Peltier's most recent application
for parole was denied in 2009. Peltier, 67, is in the Coleman Federal
Correctional Complex in North Florida, but Ninham said the marchers do
not plan to stop there on their way to Washington.
The Delray Beach
march attracted an assortment of former hippies who remember the
American Indian protest movement and young activists who said they
identify with human-rights causes and police brutality victims.
"The genocide of these great peoples is still going on," said Dona Knapp, of North Naples.
"At any moment, any of us could be Leonard Peltier," said Brenda McCabe, of Delray Beach. "Any of us could be targeted."
John Wulf, of Delray Beach, said the case altered his thinking about the American justice system.
"You
have a legal system working to hold someone for whom the evidence is
questionable," Wulf said. "It created doubt for me about our system and
how it operates."
The group is staying at the Duncan Center, an Episcopal retreat in Delray Beach.
After Sunday's march, they watched "Incident at Oglala," a 1992
documentary about the case, and had a potluck dinner and drumming
celebration.
In today’s setting, while the Occupation of the Palestinian
territories is the most glaring example of the system of Israeli
apartheid, it’s not the only representation. The Israeli government has
been toying with the further expansion of the illegal settlements in
the Occupied Territories along with population transfers—read ethnic
cleansing—of Palestinian citizens of Israel, particularly as voiced by
Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman. The lack of democracy that [Peter] Beinart
points to in the Occupied Territories is not walled off from what has
been unfolding within the Israel of the pre-1967 borders.
Beinart further undercuts his argument about Israeli democracy by never having admitted that he was wrong when he said to Jeffrey Goldberg two years ago,
“I'm not asking Israel to be Utopian. I'm not asking it to allow
Palestinians who were forced out (or fled) in 1948 to return to their
homes. I'm not even asking it to allow full, equal citizenship to Arab
Israelis, since that would require Israel no longer being a Jewish
state. I'm actually pretty willing to compromise my liberalism for
Israel's security and for its status as a Jewish state. What I am asking
is that Israel not do things that foreclose the possibility of a
Palestinian state in the West Bank, because if it is does that it will
become--and I'm quoting Ehud Olmert and Ehud Barak here--an ‘apartheid
state.’" This reinforces the notion that he gets the non-democratic
reality of the West Bank, but either doesn’t get Israel’s internal lack
of democracy or simply doesn’t much care. It’s a serious flaw in
Beinart’s thinking about the conflict (not to mention Goldberg’s, who
doesn’t even follow up on the undemocratic statement).
Whether the resolution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is found
in one bi-national state or two states will be a matter settled by the
Israelis and the Palestinians – and, one trusts, the balancing influence
of an international community that recognizes the law-breaking ways of
the more powerful Israel. In fact, global opinion has increasingly
moved to isolate Israel and to make clear the false democratic façade
surrounding it. The campaign for Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions
(BDS) has been a significant instrument in that campaign. BDS
delegitimizes the Israeli apartheid system and challenges the false
theology and colonial mentality that has both helped to create it and
reinforced it. BDS offers an opportunity for all those who support
peace, justice and democracy for the Israeli and Palestinian people to
enter into a struggle with one of the most profound examples of
injustice currently faced, an injustice that rather than existing in
isolation can ignite a firestorm if permitted to go unanswered.
Bill Fletcher, Jr. is the Executive Editor of BlackCommentator.com. He
is a Senior Scholar with the Institute for Policy Studies and the
immediate past president of TransAfrica Forum. He was a co-founder of
both the Center for Labor Renewal and the Black Radical Congress. He is
the co-author of "Solidarity Divided" (University of California Press,
2008)."
Clearly, proper media coverage would focus on the history of Syria,
the proximal cause of the uprising, the legitimacy or lack thereof of
the authorities, the agendas of the various rebel factions. We need to
know why, if that country has long been ruled by a minority, only now
are we seeing serious anti-government agitation. In short, we need
geopolitical context. And we need to ask why some advocates of open
revolution are characterized as victims, as in this case, while other
rebels elsewhere—in, say, France or Saudi Arabia—are characterized as
terrorists?
Besides, while aspirations to greater freedom are right and proper,
not all the people trying to overthrow odious regimes are necessarily
pure-minded freedom fighters. And the result after the fall is often not
what was promised.
As important is that we look at our own system objectively. In the
United States, for example, we pay homage to democracy every four years,
but isn’t our political system, like that of these Middle Eastern
countries, increasingly dominated by a fairly small number of very rich
people? The average American has very little understanding of what is
really going on, or why—either in their own country or in their name in
distant lands—and tends to respond to propaganda, much of it funded by
this same small circle of interests.
But if enough Americans really got the picture, concluded the system
was rigged, and began taking to the streets, we know that the
authorities would, just like the Syrians, the Saudis, and so on, clamp
down with force. Oh, wait: that’s already happened, all over the
country, in myriad ways. We could start, for example, with the
aggressive response to various Occupy encampments.
As for why the West is suddenly so passionate about human rights in
this particular country, while almost totally ignoring the issue in
other places, like Saudi Arabia, Bahrain and the United Arab Emirates,
some possible explanations immediately come to mind. [CONTINUE READING AT ORIGINAL]
Rachel Maddow defended the legally fuzzy bombardment of Pakistan,
Yemen, Somalia, Ethiopia, and other nations in an interview with Howard
Stern. In Maddow’s words
the drones, “don’t change the politics of it [war] that much.” In
reality, however, the politics have changed markedly because of the US
military’s use of their stable/panoply of death-inducing/mass immolating
drones. And it is, moreover, exceedingly unclear what is meant by Maddow’s comments
as, for example, families have embarked upon lawsuits against the US
government for innocents, non-terrorists, and non-combatants — who have
been unceremoniously snuffed out — by the legally hazy, and decidedly unmanned aerial drones.
Additionally and infamously, of course, whole wedding parties have
been wiped out, by some detached and far-flung controller in the
American Southwest or in Langley, VA. Is this what is meant by making
war more and more “hospitable” and “sanitized”? I guess, in a sense, but
not; of course, for those at the receiving end of the drone. Such
questions, I think, force one to wonder about what Maddow thinks
regarding the Constitution — vis a vis the war authorization for the US
military conflict — in the so-called Afpak war zone.
Indeed, the aforementioned authorization for the war in Afghanistan, pertains to the US military’s actions in Afghanistan — and Afghanistan alone. [4] Thus, of course, there is no constitutional basis
for any sort of military, or even drone activities in the sovereign
nation of Pakistan (or any of the other nations where they have been
used). And furthermore, one wonders what Maddow’s position on the two
American citizens — executed under unconstitutional bureaucratic fiat is — considering that this was not addressed
in the Howard Stern interview. These Americans were, according to the
Obama administration, guilty until proven innocent, but; of course,
never received anything like their inalienable right to a trial, or the
long-hallowed and (previously) integrally American jury of their peers.
International law scholar Richard Falk does believe that drones have
changed the idea of war/military conflict seriously, and that their
advent should be regarded with grave interest/concern. According to Falk
the drones clearly raise questions about national sovereignty, and the
parameters about presently held notions — of what are the currently
permissible forms of war. Falk likens legal “rationalities” for the
usage of the deathly — and indeed death-dealing — military drone
technology, as analogous to John Yoo style torture memo-esque scrawlings
of the George Bush Jr. administration/cabal. So, if some more mature,
rational, and informed legal bases/doctrines, don’t arise regarding
present and impending drone technology; Falk envisions a dystopian
future scenario of rampant proliferation that will be imposed upon the
world, by a small number of select, drone-armed, and exceedingly
powerful elite states.
