Taxpayer-funded ‘anti-Terror’ unit involved in propaganda effort over Gaza
March 18th, 2010 § 3 Comments
by Scotland Against Criminalising Communities
The Annual Report of the Intelligence and Security Committee (ISC), laid before Parliament last Thursday, confirms that a Government propaganda unit set up to tackle terrorism intervened to influence British public opinion during the Israeli attack on Gaza last year. The report also outlines a number of other steps taken by the Research, Information and Communications Unit (RICU), including the creation of a network of community organisations. RICU is linked to the UK Government’s Prevent programme for preventing “violent extremism.”
Activities of this sort distort democracy in the UK. They aim to mobilise public and voluntary sector workers and ordinary people as propagandists for controversial Government policies. They poison public debate by linking opposition to the Government’s foreign policy to support for “extremism.” And they do all this within a framework of Government initiatives already notorious for the massive intelligence-gathering that they involve.
PalFest Breaks Through Israeli Barriers
March 18th, 2010 § Leave a Comment
The Palestine Festival of Literature (PalFest) is a cultural roadshow that tours Palestine annually. Last year novelist and PULSE coeditor Robin Yassin-Kassab was a featured participant alongside other well-known writers like Suheir Hammad and Michael Palin. PalFest combats one of the most negative effects of Israel’s continued occupation of Palestine: the isolation of the Palestinian people. In the following interview, PalFest creative producer Omar Robert Hamilton discusses PalFest’s origins and what they have planned for the future.
(The creators of Palfest are currently working on their upcoming 2010 roadshow and are expected to release the names of this year’s participants in April. In the meantime be sure to check out their website and become a fan of them on Facebook for regular updates.)
Jasmin Ramsey (JR): How did PalFest begin?
Omar Robert Hamilton (ORH): Ahdaf Soueif and Brigid Keenan were talking — as they almost always do — about what they could do to help Palestine. They came up with the idea of encouraging authors and artists working in English to visit Palestine and take part in literary activities alongside their Palestinian colleagues.
JR: Why do you think it’s important to bring “writers and artists from around the world to Palestinian audiences”?
Taking Sides: Israel and the lobby against the US
March 17th, 2010 § 24 Comments
by John Mearsheimer
In the wake of Vice President Joe Biden’s ill-fated trip to Israel last week, many people would agree with the Israeli ambassador Michael Oren’s remark that ‘Israel’s ties with the United States are in their worst crisis since 1975… a crisis of historic proportions.’ Like all crises, this one will eventually go away. However, this bitter fight has disturbing implications for Israelis and their American supporters.
First, the events of the past week make it clear in ways that we have not seen in the past that Israel is a strategic liability for the United States, not the strategic asset that the Israel lobby has long claimed it was. Specifically, the Obama administration has unambiguously declared that Israel’s expansionist policies in the Occupied Territories, including East Jerusalem, are doing serious damage to US interests in the region. Indeed, Biden reportedly told the Israeli prime minister, Binyahim Netanyahu, in private:
This is starting to get dangerous for us. What you’re doing here undermines the security of our troops who are fighting in Iraq, Afghanistan and Pakistan. That endangers us, and it endangers regional peace.
If that message begins to resonate with the American public, unconditional support for the Jewish state is likely to evaporate.
Let’s talk about America’s record on women’s rights
March 17th, 2010 § Leave a Comment
America's second-class citizens?
After Jasmin brought my attention to this story, I thought I would roll out a few more coincidentally timed reports that highlight the contradictions between America’s self-proclaimed equality and our astonishing contemporary failures in the area of women’s rights.
Firstly, Amnesty USA has released a new study on the quality of maternity care for American women. It notes:
The USA spends more than any other country on health care, and more on maternal health than any other type of hospital care. Despite this, women in the USA have a higher risk of dying of pregnancy-related complications than those in 40 other countries. For example, the likelihood of a woman dying in childbirth in the USA is five times greater than in Greece, four times greater than in Germany, and three times greater than in Spain.
Unsurprisingly, there is a tremendous racial disparity as an African American woman’s odds of dying as a result of child birth is four times greater than that of white American.
Secondly, Democracy Now! explored the disparity in median wealth for American women. The median for a single Black woman is $100, $120 for a single Hispanic woman, and $41,000 for a single white woman. Seriously.
If you’re playing along at home, you can check off both “post-racial” and “feminist” on the list of things we hear about America but know are not true. I will also give you a prize if you can tell me how many of America’s governors are women and explain how that reflects the country’s diversity.
Image by Maze Walker on Flickr.
Israel’s colonization of East Jerusalem – some context
March 17th, 2010 § 3 Comments
The first political planning decision in the ‘reunified’ city concerned plans not for construction but for the geopolitical determination of borders…the determining consideration, ‘a maximum of vacant space with a minimum of Arabs,’ laid down as the basic tenet in the delineation of the borders, made possible the planning and implementation of the prinicipal political objective: the creation of physical and demographic faits accomplis.
[It became] clear that the planners must set their sights on the vacant areas on the outskirts of the city and surrounding it. These areas would have to be expropriated from their Arab owners. The legal instrument at the disposal of the Israelis for this purpose was the Land Ordinance (Expropriation for Public Purposes) of 1943, which grants the treasury minister the authority to expropriate private land when there is a ‘public need’ for such action – with the definition of ‘public need’ left to the minister himself…
But no one was deceived by the designation of these ‘ethnically colorblind’ needs; the expropriated areas were being taken from Arabs and handed over to Jews. This was an extraordinary interpretation of the word public: The only legitimate public was Jewish, and therefore only jews were entitled to benefit from the expropriation.
From Meron Benvenisti, City of Stone: The Hidden History of Jerusalem, Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1996, pp.154-55.
Make Rachel Corrie’s Memory Matter
March 17th, 2010 § 2 Comments
Rachel Corrie was killed by an IDF operated bulldozer while non-violently protesting the illegal demolition of a Palestinian home.
Years ago I attended a talk by Craig and Cindy Corrie, the parents of Rachel Corrie, the 23 year old American girl who was killed by an IDF operated bulldozer while non-violently protesting against the illegal demolition of a Palestinian home. The Corries were modestly dressed, soft-spoken and friendly. Craig explained that besides Rachel, no one in their family was political, and both he and Cindy have always been “average Americans.” To make his case Craig added with a laugh that he worked as a simple insurance actuary (someone who uses statistics to calculate insurance premiums) for most of his life.
Aside from Rachel’s interest in human rights (something which she exhibited at a very young age), excerpts from her journal reveal that she was also living the life of a normal American girl. Almost everything about the Corries was ordinary, but ever since Rachel’s murder they have been living extraordinary lives. Instead of resorting to bitterness or dejected withdrawal from the outside world (an understandable response to the unimaginable pain of a losing a child), the Corries have been campaigning about Rachel’s legal case. Rather than distancing themselves from that far away and foreign world that Rachel lost her life in, they educated themselves about the plight of the Palestinians who have been enduring decades of Israeli instigated expulsion and oppression. Ever since Rachel’s death, the Corries, once average Americans, have been devoted to Palestinian human rights.
Israeli Behavior does not Endanger Turkish Lives
March 16th, 2010 § Leave a Comment
Israeli-manufactured drones will help maintain Turkish hillside slogans proclaiming that the homeland will never be partitioned.
A Haaretz article entitled “Ashkenazi visits Ankara as ties with Turkey warm up,” concerning yesterday’s attendance by Israel Defense Forces Chief of Staff Gabi Ashkenazi at the NATO-sponsored International Symposium on Global Terrorism and International Cooperation, explains the present need for warming as follows:
Relations were damaged six months ago after Turkey’s decision to cancel Israel’s participation in international exercises in which Israeli planes were due to take part.”
The extent of the damage is called into question by an Al Jazeera English article from two months ago entitled “Barak in Turkey to repair ties,” which additionally reports that “Turkish officials are currently in Israel to test unmanned drone aircraft that Israeli companies have manufactured for Turkey’s army.” The article acknowledges that “[t]he project has been long delayed over technical problems and political tensions” and goes on to explain that the January 17 visit to Ankara of Israeli Defense Minister Ehud Barak was “the highest-level bilateral visit since a diplomatic feud erupted over Israel’s recent treatment of the Turkish ambassador,” Oğuz Çelikkol.
Can We Call it “Just Another Fascist Regime in the Middle East” yet?
March 15th, 2010 § 1 Comment
The Latest Raid in Bil'in Photo By Hamde Abu-Rahma
Chapter XXV of Part Three of the Goldstone Report was dedicated to Repression Of Dissent In Israel, Right To Access To Information And Treatment Of Human Rights Defenders. I personally remember the fear of speaking out, I felt at the time. It was a tense environment and a hands-on lesson in democracy (or lack there of).
The Israeli environment, today, is calmer to a degree; Most probably due to the short memory span of the typical Israeli. Yet the authorities (the only ones with property rights to this memory span) are exponentially getting more and more nervous about world perception of Israel. This nervousness manifests in many different and desperate ways, I’ve written about, but today I’d like to focus on what’s becoming more and more flagrant: The repression of leftist activists.
Amira Hass as a Measure to Oppression
When I started seeing Amira Hass in the Sheikh Jarrah protests, I was almost as giddy as a groupie. At the time, it didn’t occur to me that if she’s covering repression of the Jewish (for sake of clarification only) left, then she’s taking time off of covering much more atrocious transgressions against Palestinians. And though her enjoyment of taking part in actual democratic practice was obvious, she was on the job, and the article was soon to follow:
The Israel Defense Forces says it is using information on Israelis who demonstrate against the separation fence in a bid to deny them entry at nearby checkpoints… It also appears that the IDF is observing the routes the activists take to reach the villages.
Oman Again
March 15th, 2010 § 1 Comment
To break up the winter I spent most of January visiting my brother-in-law and friends in Oman, where I used to live, and my sisters in Doha, Qatar.
Since Hamad bin Khalifa Aal Thani deposed his corrupt father, Qatar’s powerful oil and gas economy has expanded and diversified. The state follows an interesting and idiosyncratic foreign policy. It hosts the largest American miltary base in the Gulf, and it also hosts – against American and Arab objections – al-Jazeera. In terms of the regional ‘Resistance Front versus US-client’ dialectic, Qatar stands in the middle, and in 2008 it helped negotiate a Lebanese compromise between the two sides. Wahhabism is influential (my five-year-old niece wants to attend ballet classes, but ballet classes are banned because the costume is considered unIslamic – even for five-year-old girls in a man-free environment), yet women can vote and drive.
Overall, I don’t much like the place. I had a good time with my family, ate some fine meals, went to a book fair. But there’s a bad power game going on in Qatar. Nobody is smiling. I met some very pleasant Qataris – the staff in the excellent Islamic Art Museum, some men in a bowling alley, a retired pearl diver – but I also noticed many refusing to descend from their cars at the grocery shop. (Arabs often expect take-away food to be brought to the car, but not groceries.) Expatriates form a majority of the population. As elsewhere in the Gulf, expatriate wage and class status can be mapped reasonably smoothly onto ethnicity, with white Westerners on top, followed by Lebanese, then other Arabs, then Indonesians, Pakistanis and Indians. Expatriates don’t have citizenship rights, although the infrastructure depends on them. Many contemporary Qataris, in contrast to their proud grandfathers, are obese. The city is one of close walls. The surrounding desert is flat, pale, and begrimed by industry.
Inside the Lawfare Project
March 15th, 2010 § 2 Comments
Netanyahu’s Attack on Human Rights NGO’s Hits the States
by Max Blumenthal
As the anti-Goldstone, human rights-bashing Lawfare Project’s opening event on March 11 wrapped up, I asked its chairman, Columbia University Law School Dean David Schizer, for an interview. Schizer, who had just attacked the Goldstone Report from the podium, pointedly refused to speak to me and looked for the exit. As Schizer was leaving, he was politely confronted by Columbia Law School Professor Katherine Franke, who heads the school’s Program in Gender and Sexuality Law.
“Why didn’t you invite any speakers with an alternative perspective?” Franke asked Schizer.
His reply was curt. “We invited one or two but they couldn’t make it,” Schizer claimed before hurrying away.
Schizer was understandably nervous about his exposure. After all, he had just presided over a day-long conference during which Israeli human rights workers were labeled as traitors while Judge Richard Goldstone and human rights groups were compared to “anti-Semitic street gangs.” After several speakers had harshly condemned legal efforts against the construction of Israeli settlements in East Jerusalem and the West Bank, Schizer appeared beside them to lend his credibility to their views.
