The Freedom Charter or the Second Nakba?
July 21st, 2010 § 4 Comments
by Ken O’Keefe
Imagine this, imagine that Nelson Mandela and the African National Congress negotiated a deal with the South African Apartheid regime and settled for a “two-state solution.” Imagine Mandela negotiating with the Apartheid regime a land deal in which less than 15% of current day South Africa went to the black South Africans, the remaining 85% to the inherently racist Apartheid government and its people.
With that in mind, I ask, is there any real difference between that scenario and the idea of a “two-state solution” today? I am happy to know that ever-increasing numbers of people inside and outside of Palestine see what I see, the so-called two-state solution is in truth the two-state disaster, the second Nakba.
I can imagine the result of two states and, as far as I am concerned, anything less than one state, with all equal protection under the law, is a recipe for perpetual conflict. And that is exactly why every US and EU administration and puppets and stooges of all stations from around the globe support the second Nakba of two states. One a nuclear armed, economically advanced and land rich, the other impoverished and beaten, a legacy to the motto that ‘might makes right’ and justice comes at the barrel of a gun.
A Friendly Conversation with the Shabak
July 21st, 2010 § 3 Comments
Yonatan Shapira
Activist Yonatan Shapira (you may know him from actions such as The Pilots’ Letter, Tutu Disruption, and The Warsaw Ghetto Uprising) was summoned to a “friendly talk” with the Shabak [translation via Promised Land]:
Yesterday Rona from the Shabak called me and asked me to come talk to meet her in the police station on Dizengof st. (Tel Aviv). She refused to tell me what was it about, but made it clear I wasn’t going to be arrested, and that this is just an acquaintance or “a friendly talk”…
At five o’clock I got to the Dizengof police station and was sent to the second floor of the rear building, where a guy who presented himself as Rona’s security guard waited for me. I was taken to a room and subjected to a pretty intimate search to make sure I didn’t install any recording device on my testicles. After I was found clean I was let into Rona’s room. She was a nice looking girl, apparently from a Yemeni origin, in her early thirties.
“Truth Alone Triumphs”: of David, Goliath, Stones, and Speech
July 21st, 2010 § 6 Comments
by Huma Dar
"A Defiant Kashmiri woman being frisked by Indian Security Forces." 2007. Uncredited photograph from a Kashmiri blogger
And the night’s sun there in Srinagar? Guns shoot stars into the sky, the storm of constellations night after night, the infinite that rages on. It was Id-uz-Zuha: a record of God’s inability, for even He must melt sometimes, to let Ishmael be executed by the hand of his father. Srinagar was under curfew. The identity pass may or may not have helped in the crackdown. Son after son–never to return from the night of torture–was taken away.
… But the reports are true, and without song: mass rapes in the villages, towns left in cinders, neighborhoods torched. “Power is hideous / like a barber’s hands.” The rubble of downtown Srinagar stares at me from the Times.
… And that blesséd word with no meaning–who will utter it? What is it? Will the women pronounce it, as if scripturing the air, for the first time? Or the last?
… What is the blesséd word? Mandelstam gives no clue. One day the Kashmiris will pronounce that word truly for the first time. (Excerpt from Agha Shahid Ali’s “The Blesséd Word: A Prologue,” in The Country Without A Post Office, 1997: 16-17)
Images from Against the Wall
July 20th, 2010 § 2 Comments
Graffiti by Ron English (Photo by POW)
Last week we posted the introduction to photojournalist William Parry’s new book Against the Wall: The Art of Resistance in Palestine, in which he documents West Bank Wall graffiti and his interactions with Palestinians whose lives are made nearly impossible under the guise of ensuring Israeli security.
Below are assorted images from the book, with captions and relevant excerpts from the text. All photographs, captions and text by William Parry.
Contact Parry at againstthewall_thebook@yahoo.co.uk.
Check back next week for the Wall-related saga of one particular Palestinian family Parry encountered.
The Stones On Our Streets
July 20th, 2010 § 3 Comments
by Majid Maqbool
The street is the home of our stones. Streets can be occupied, but stones are free for us to pick up, and angrily fling in the air — in protest. From the hands of the oppressed, once pelted, the stones deliver a message to the oppressor: while you kill with no remorse on my soil, and stage false encounters with all your advanced weapons, I’m not going to keep quiet. I will not let you kill us without offering resistance. I have these stones on my streets. I exist in these stones. If your occupation is in bullets, our resistance is in these rough-edged, homegrown stones.
We, who come out protesting on the streets, are not an ignorant, frustrated and unemployed lot — as the occupier likes to frame us, and the whole world seems to simplistically believe. Far from it! We are the ones who refuse to keep quiet in tyrannical times. We are the ones who shape the songs of resistance, as we practice them in our streets. It takes much courage and conviction to come out on the streets, and protest against the heavily militarized state forces. The sentiment of freedom confronts the idea of occupation. In every stone that’s pelted, there’s a promise to bring down the structures of occupation, bit by bit, crack by crack. We know in our hearts and minds that this ugly structure of occupation – built on deceit over the years — is bound to crumble one day under the force of our stones. It is this hope that keeps the resistance alive.
Friends of Israel Initiative: The neoconservatives’ eastern front
July 20th, 2010 § 4 Comments
by Tom Mills
Today in the House of Commons Britain’s leading neoconservative organisation the Henry Jackson Society hosts the UK launch of the Friends of Israel Initiative. This new organisation is the latest of a number of well connected advocacy groups in the UK seeking to deflect criticism of Israel’s illegal occupation and repeated human rights abuses.
The Friends of Israel Initiative says it ‘aims to create a network linking private and public figures who agree with the idea of an Israel fully anchored in the West’. This network will not have to be built from scratch; rather Friends of Israel will be able to integrate itself into extremist networks already well established in UK politics.
The Friends of Israel Initiative is an international operation and was first launched in Paris on 31 May – the same day that Israeli soldiers boarded the Mavi Marmara in international waters and killed nine activists. The organisation was reportedly established by Dore Gold, an American born Israeli who heads the Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs and was formerly an adviser to Ariel Sharon and the current Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.[1]
Gold also has links with UK politicians. In January 2007 he led an Israeli delegation at a conference at the House of Commons debating possible measures against Iran.[2] The conference resulted in an Early Day Motion signed by 68 MPs urging ‘the British Government to put forward a resolution at the United Nations Security Council demanding President Ahmadinejad be brought to trial on the charge of incitement to commit genocide’.[3] The Motion was introduced by the neoconservative MP Michael Gove, a signatory to the Henry Jackson Society’s Statement of Principles and now a Cabinet Minister.
Israelis Dump Sewage in Palestinian Villages
July 19th, 2010 § 1 Comment
Al Jazeera – Israeli settlements have been dumping untreated waste directly into a sewage canal that runs through the occupied West Bank, affecting Palestinian villages along its banks. The hazard posed is compounded by the dumping of toxic chemical waste on agricultural land, with villagers reporting a rash of skin diseases and respiratory problems. The Israeli government has banned plans by the Palestinian Authority to build pipes and pumps to treat and divert wastewater away from the affected villages. Al Jazeera’s Nisreen El-Shamayleh reports.
