The Only Democracy in the Middle East: 12.2.2010
February 15th, 2010 § 1 Comment
What will you be doing on Israeli Apartheid Week?
February 15th, 2010 § 2 Comments
Israeli Apartheid Week begins on March 1, 2010 and is expected to take place in over 40 cities from around the world. Activists, human rights enthusiasts and concerned citizens will be organizing a variety of events to bring attention to Israel’s policies in the occupied Palestinian territories, as well informing people about the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement which continues to gain ground internationally.
If you’re planning to organize IAW in your city, or to learn more, click here.
Michael Oren Receives Special Welcome at UC Irvine
February 15th, 2010 § 6 Comments
More than 10 Palestinian solidarity activists were arrested for making their voices heard during American-born Israeli Ambassador to the US Michael Oren’s speech at the University of California Irvine last week. They were rude and disruptive and considering Oren’s background, some might argue not nearly enough. Freedom of speech is a widely publicized and cherished constitutional right in the land of the free, but it is interesting to see how quickly it is wrenched away when people start saying things that challenge the rationale of US foreign policy.
The entire clip is worth watching, but to get a sense of the narrow-minded immaturity displayed by the “adults” in the crowd, pay particular attention to 5:15 and 5:22 when (a professor?) tells the students who are being forced out that “you’re failing your exams!”
National mission
February 14th, 2010 § Leave a Comment
Commenting on the proposed building of a “Jews-only” building in Jaffa, the head of the development company in question was reported as saying: “We will continue to build throughout the Land of Israel. The national mission today is to bring rabbis and educators to every city in Israel, in order to strengthen Jewish identity in Israel.”
The phrase ‘national mission’ felt familiar – here are just a few other examples of this kind of language.
In the Negev
“After the cornerstone laying ceremony, in which Joseph Hess of JNF America participated, Mr. David Raisch, the local CEO, said that he was very excited to see the guests from the USA: “When we were evacuated from Gush Katif, we insisted on staying together as a community. We asked the government for a national mission, we told them we wanted a place no one else wanted to live in, and that’s how we ended up in Shomeria. It’s exciting for me to see you here today, because it makes me realize that building the eastern Negev is not just our personal goal, you are our partners to this task…”"
“The significance of the Disengagement Plan is not only the evacuation of the Gaza Strip – it is also an increased effort to develop the Negev, the Galilee and greater Jerusalem. The Government of Israel, which I head, considers developing the Negev, the Galilee and greater Jerusalem a primary national mission – and views settlement as the number-one tool for doing so.” [PM Ariel Sharon] « Read the rest of this entry »
The New York Times and the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict: The Bronner Affair
February 14th, 2010 § Leave a Comment
By Jerome Slater
The New York Times has now confirmed that the son of Ethan Bronner, for the past two years its chief correspondent in Israel, has enlisted in the Israeli army. On January 25, the website Electronic Intifada picked up on what was then still a rumor and pointed out that the internal policies of the Times state that journalists might have to be reassigned if the activities of family members create apparent conflicts of interest. The policy guidelines provide an example: “A brother or a daughter in a high-profile job on Wall Street might produce the appearance of conflict for a business reporter or editor….”
Electronic Intifada sent a message to Bronner asking if the rumor was true. Bronner did not respond but turned the message over to Susan Chira, the Times foreign editor, who did. With the usual brisk arrogance, evasiveness, or non-responsiveness of the Times whenever its coverage of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is criticized, Chira dismissed the question of whether Bronner’s family ties (he is also married to an Israeli woman) constituted a conflict of interest: “Mr. Bronner’s son is a young adult who makes his own decisions. At the Times we have found Mr. Bronner’s coverage to be scrupulously fair and we are confident that will continue to be the case.”
No doubt the Times hoped that would dispose of the issue, but thanks to the internet, it was not to be.
USA and USSR: Accidental Parallels?
February 13th, 2010 § 2 Comments
M. Shahid Alam
Is the question of parallels between the USA and the USSR idle, even mischievous? Perhaps, it is neither, but, on the contrary, deserves our serious consideration.
During the Cold War, the USA and USSR were arch rivals, each the antipodes of the other. For some four decades, they battled each other for ‘survival’ and global hegemony, staring down at each other with nuclear tipped missiles, ready at the push of a button to consummate mutually assured destruction. What parallels could there possibly exist between such irreconcilable antagonists?
Dismissively, the skeptic might retort that their similarities start and end with the first two letters in their names. The USA won and the USSR lost the Cold War. With all four of the letters in its name, the USSR is dead and gone. Its successor state, Russia, now ranks a distant second behind the USA in military power, a position it retains only by virtue of its nuclear arsenal. Measured in international dollars, the Russian economy ranked eighth in the world in 2009, trailing behind its former client, India.
On the other hand, the USA still believes it can ride roughshod over much of the world like a Colossus. It came close to doing this for a few years after the collapse of communism. In the years since its occupation of Iraq, that image has been deflated quite a bit. Haven’t the events of the last decade – the growing challenge to its hegemony in Latin America, the economic rise of India and China, and the recovery of Russia from its collapse of the previous decade – downsized the Colossus of the 1990s? Indeed, the near collapse of its economy in 2008 appears to have brought the Colossus down on its knees.
Sut Jhally on US Culture and Media
February 13th, 2010 § 2 Comments
Sut Jhally
I have used several Media Education Foundation films in my classes and have found them to be an excellent resource for teaching. Jhally also has some perceptive comments on US media coverage of the Israel-Palestine conflict.
Sut Jhally is Professor of Communication at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst and Founder and Executive Director of the Media Education Foundation (MEF). He is one of the world’s leading scholars looking at the role played by advertising and popular culture in the processes of social control and identity construction. The author of numerous books and articles on media(including The Codes of Advertising and Enlightened Racism) he is also an award-winning teacher (a recipient of the Distinguished Teaching Award at the University of Massachusetts, where the student newspaper has also voted him “Best professor”). In addition, he has been awarded the Distinguished Outreach Award, and was selected to deliver a Distinguished Faculty Lecture in 2007.
The Coming Revolt of the Guards
February 12th, 2010 § Leave a Comment
Entering Fort McCoy
On entering the Dane County Jail, the first holding cell that Brian Terrell and I were placed in had only one other person. We previously saw this man outside the cell during our initial booking. He was a man with dark black skin and a full beard. I thought I heard one of the officers say he was from Gambia. When we entered the cell, the man was in mid-ritual in what appeared to be a Muslim’s midday prayer. A young white guard, who had the accent of a Midwesterner, looked disdainfully at the man and then somewhat positively at Brian and me. The guard said, “Just ignore that,” as if the man was insulting or threatening us by his peaceful act of prayer. To which I replied, “It’s fine with me.”
This experience was contrasted by the next encounter I had with another officer who made digital copies of my fingerprints and pictures. As this middle-aged man placed my hand on the machine, I made a remark that I was surprised that he did not already have my information handy. (This was the third time I was fingerprinted and pictured for this same charge.) He said, “Oh yeah? You arrested a lot? What are you in for?” I told him that I was arrested with a group who engaged in civil disobedience at Ft. McCoy. Getting the sense that this man may have previously been in the armed services, I explained that we were not against the men and women in the military personally, but that our goals were to enter the base to talk to the rank and file soldiers about ending the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and to make certain the soldiers were aware of their right to refuse illegal and immoral orders.
Islamic Revolution fits easily into Venezuelan February holiday schedule
February 11th, 2010 § 1 Comment
The issue of Latin American ties with Iran has been invoked in recent years to justify a variety of behavior on the part of the Israeli Foreign Ministry, such as the attendance by Deputy Foreign Minister Danny Ayalon at the 2009 meeting of the Organization of American States in order to counteract Iranian influence in the region. This particular counteractive effort was apparently successful, as neither anyone from the Iranian Foreign Ministry nor anyone else not belonging to an American state showed up; as for Israeli government concerns regarding the existence of Iranian embassies in Latin America and one-stop flights between Caracas and Tehran, it has also proven historically possible to reach Israel from Latin American cities, hence the 1983 training on Israeli soil of future Colombian paramilitary leader Carlos Castaño Gil.
Myth-Making
February 11th, 2010 § 3 Comments
We often project our current political concerns backwards in time in order to justify ourselves. I say ‘we’ because everyone does it. Nazi Germany invented a mythical blonde Aryan people who had always been kept down by lesser breeds. The Hindu nationalists in India imagine that Hinduism has always been a centralised doctrine rather than a conglomerate of texts and local traditions, and describe Muslim, Buddhist, Christian, Sikh, Jain and animist influences on Indian history as foreign intrusions. Black nationalists in the Americas depict ancient Africa as a continent not of hunter-gatherers and subsistence farmers but as a wonderland of kings and queens, gold and silk, science and monumental architecture. To our current cost, Zionists and the neo-cons have been able to reactivate old Orientalist myths in the West, myths in which the entirety of Arab and Islamic history has involved the slaughter and oppression of Christians, Jews, Hindus, women, gays, intellectuals .. and so on.
Such retrospective mythmaking frequently goes to the most absurd extremes in young nations conscious of their weakness or of a need for redefinition (America may be one of these). Probably for that reason it is particularly evident in the Middle East.
Many Muslims go beyond adherence to those concepts and taboos that are necessary for religious belief and idolise or demonise historical figures who have nothing to do with the divine revelation. For many Sunnis, the first caliphs were ‘rightly guided’ saints who could do no wrong. During their reign there was no crime, poverty or injustice in the realm of Islam. For many Shia, the same men (apart from Ali) were decadent criminals. These secular figures were not deities or prophets but human beings working in specific contexts, with all the good and bad and moral ambiguity that implies, but Muslims frequently hold religious positions on their worth. The same applies even to later worldly figures like Haroon ar-Rasheed (saint or criminal) and Salahuddeen al-Ayubbi (likewise; as well as Kurdish traitor and hero of Arabism).
