Category: Zionism

The winds of change?

D'oh!
D'oh!

Two bits of very good news emerge today.

First, following on the publication of Dennis Ross’ new book on how to use negotiations to launch a war against Iran, Haaretz is reporting that Ross is being relieved of his duties as Obama’s point man on Iran.  It is as if this current Obama administration will not offer all the support possible to warmongers to kill as much Muslims as possible!  Poor Ross must be pining for the good days of American foreign policy, where lust for war against Muslims seemed like a precondition for joining any foreign policy team.

Second, the American people, it seems, have had enough with the incestuous relationship of their government with the regime of Tel Aviv.  In a few months, the percentage of Americans who say the US should support Israel has dropped from 71% to 44%.  The Israel Project (a propaganda outfit that makes AIPAC look reasoned) conducted the poll, though it refuses to publish its results officially. Could it be the mass murder in Gaza? The apartheid in the West Bank? Or could it be the rhetoric of Bibi and his fascist buddies? Or was it, perhaps, the Israeli ministerial calls for regime change in America?

Not all is well in America’s Zionistan.  Are these two bits of news a turning point in the American-Israeli relationship? We’ll have to wait and see.

Entering Palestine

I love it when Arab Christians have names like Omar. It shows, on their fathers’ part, a rejection of the sectarianism which cripples us. I know of a Christian family in Beirut which named its eldest son Jihad, and Muslim families with sons called Fidel and Guevara. Omar is not merely a specifically Muslim name; it’s more particularly a Sunni name, disliked by some Shia for theological-historical reasons. Omar is not a good name to have written on your ID card while driving through a Shia-militia-controlled area of Baghdad. But I know an Iraqi Shia woman whose brother is called Omar, because her father rejected the whole sorry sectarian business.

By and large, the Palestinians have avoided the curse. It’s still the case that if you ask a Palestinian whether he’s Muslim or Christian he responds, “Palestinian!” I mention this because our guide from Amman to the Allenby Bridge was a Palestinian Christian called Omar, and because the Palestinians, unlike their enemies, are proud of their diversity and pluralism.

Swaying in the bus aisle, Omar explained that Jordanian officers would check our passports but would not stamp them. “The Jordanian government has recognised Israel, but not Israeli control over the West Bank. Why are there Israeli police on the border and not Palestinians? Jordan recognises this as a crossing, but not a border.”

Surely Omar was pleased that, since the peace agreement, he could visit his family in Bethlehem? Not really: “Jordan allows every Israeli to come here. They get visas automatically when they come in. But we have to apply at the Israeli embassy, where they treat us badly, and 95% of applications are refused. I tried to go in for my uncle’s funeral, but they wouldn’t let me. This is the balanced peace we have with our neighbours.”

The Jordanian side of the crossing takes less than ten minutes. Omar collects our passports to flash at an officer while we drink water in the shade. Then back onto the bus, without Omar, and over the bridge.

Continue reading “Entering Palestine”

Israel lobby descends on UC-Santa Barbara

Original Email at Issue p. 7
One slide of the photo essay Prof. Robinson sent to his students

The Anti-Defamation League and the Israel advocacy group “Stand With Us” are leading an aggressive, direct campaign to pressure UCSB administrators and faculty to investigate and discipline Professor of Sociology William I. Robinson for having introduced materials critical of Israel in a course on global affairs. The UCSB academic senate opened an official inquiry alleging “academic misconduct” and “anti-semitism”, following complaints by two students in response to an email Robinson sent out to his class during Israel’s war on Gaza. The email consisted of an article published in the Kansas City Jewish Chronicle by Judith Stone, who had recently returned from the occupied territories (the editor responsible was fired the next day), a photo essay which juxtaposed Nazi atrocities against Jews in WWII and Israeli atrocities against Palestinians in Gaza and the following commentary:

If Martin Luther King, Jr. Were alive on this day of January 19, 2009, there is no doubt that he would be condemning the Israeli aggression against Gaza along with u.s. military and political support for Israeli war crimes, or that he would be standing shoulder to shoulder with the Palestinians. I am forwarding some horrific, parallel images of Nazi atrocities against the Jews and Israeli atrocities against the Palestinians. Perhaps the most frightening are not those providing a graphic depiction of the carnage but that which shows Israeli children writing “with love” on a bomb that will tear apart Palestinian children.

Continue reading “Israel lobby descends on UC-Santa Barbara”

From Vanunu to the New Jew

Mordechai Vanunu breaks the rules
Mordechai Vanunu breaks the rules

“I cannot keep silent … Disaster follows disaster; the land lies in ruins … My people are fools; they do not know me.” Jeremiah 4:19

Mordechai Vanunu is a Moroccan Jew, born in Marrakesh. Today he credits his humanity to having been born in an Arab country rather than in the Jewish state. He was nine when he was taken to Israel. He attended an ultra orthodox school, and after his military service became a nuclear technician at the Dimona plant. At this time his anti-Zionist politics developed. Later he flirted with Buddhism, converted to Christianity, and in London in 1986 told the Sunday Times what he knew of Israel’s nuclear weapons programme, backing his claims with photographic evidence.

He was then caught in a ‘honey trap’, lured by a beautiful woman from London to Italy, drugged and kidnapped in Rome by Mossad (with the connivance of British, French and Italian intelligence services), and brought back to Israel, where he served 18 years in prison for his truth-telling, twelve of them in solitary confinement. He says he survived because of his strong will (“the first thing I did in prison was give up smoking”), and by playing opera records. He refused to converse with the only human beings available – his guards. His lawyer describes him as “the most stubborn, principled, and tough person I have ever met.”

Continue reading “From Vanunu to the New Jew”

Racists for democracy: the fascist odor of the new Israeli coalition

The chambers of the Israeli Knesset

“The factory of racist laws with a distinct fascist odor is now working at full steam,” writes Uri Avnery, on the swathe of bills currently passing through the Knesset that discriminate against the native Arab population.

How lucky we are to have the extreme Right standing guard over our democracy.

This week, the Knesset voted by a large majority (47 to 34) for a law that threatens imprisonment for anyone who dares to deny that Israel is a Jewish and Democratic State.

The private member’s bill, proposed by MK Zevulun Orlev of the “Jewish Home” party, which sailed through its preliminary hearing, promises one year in prison to anyone who publishes “a call that negates the existence of the State of Israel as a Jewish and Democratic State”, if the contents of the call might cause “actions of hate, contempt or disloyalty against the state or the institutions of government or the courts”. Continue reading “Racists for democracy: the fascist odor of the new Israeli coalition”

Seven Jewish Children – a Play for Gaza

Caryl Churchill
Caryl Churchill

by Caryl Churchill

A video of the play can be viewed here:

No children appear in the play. The speakers are adults, the parents and if you like other relations of the children. The lines can be shared out in any way you like among those characters. The characters are different in each small scene as the time and child are different.

1

Tell her it’s a game

Tell her it’s serious

But dont frighten her

Dont tell her they’ll kill her

Tell her it’s important to be quiet

Tell her she’ll have cake if she’s good

Tell her to curl up as if she’s in bed

But not to sing.

Tell her not to come out

Tell her not to come out even if she hears shouting

Dont frighten her

Tell her not to come out even if she hears nothing for a long time

Tell her we’ll come and find her

Tell her we’ll be here all the time.

Tell her something about the men

Tell her they’re bad in the game

Tell her it’s a story

Tell her they’ll go away

Tell her she can make them go away if she keeps still

By magic

But not to sing.

Continue reading “Seven Jewish Children – a Play for Gaza”

Lieberman’s party proposes ban on Arab Nakba

As Palestinians mark Nakba Day to recognise the catastrophe of 1948, yet more evidence emerged of the racist nature of Israeli foreign minister Avignor Lieberman’s Yisrael Beitenu party. In a clearly provocative act they now want to ban the some 1.5 million Arabs within Israel from celebrating this day and would threaten anyone doing so with jail terms. This is nothing new for Lieberman and his mob who have openly called for Arab Israelis to swear allegiance oaths to the state and even “voluntarily forfeit” their citizenship in exchange for land. Such policies are clearly aimed at “transfering” the remaining Arabs that reside within Israel’s borders and finishing the job that the Zionist project started. To announce proposals on such a day should be roundly condemned for the grotesque insensitivity that they represent.

In another article in Haaretz , Palestinian participation in this day is trivialised and reduced with a cheap dig at the division between the two main political factions in the Palestinian territories: Hamas and Fatah. “Only 2000 turn out….for March held by Hamas” reads the headline, while the top line refers to the “dispersal” of Palestinians during the so-called “War of Independence”. However, not mentioned (which is noted in the Lieberman article), is that many ceremonies were in fact held a day early because May 15 falls on Friday, the Muslim day of rest. Why let this get in the way of having a dig at Hamas while downplaying the anguish that 61 years of injustice has already caused eh? The description of “dispersal” is also particularly euphemistic, as if the hundreds of thousands of Palestinians merely faded-away or quietly scattered from their villages, rather than the terrorization and intimidation that they were subjected to by Irgun and Haganah thugs.

Rant against Hypocrisy

If Israel is not a racist state, if Zionism is not a racist ideology, then I do not speak English.

I don’t quite know why, but hypocrisy is the element in political discourse which catalyses my most murderous responses. Perhaps it’s because I like language, or respect it, and believe it shouldn’t be raped.

Continue reading “Rant against Hypocrisy”

A Crucial Distinction

peter-gooderhamWhy exactly did Britain lead a walkout of the UN anti-racism conference yesterday? True to form, rather than focusing on the obvious issue of what was said in the speech, and why the protesting governments considered it so objectionable, the media focused on the narrow diplomatic issues raised by the walkout itself. On BBC Newsnight Jeremy Paxman interrogated the UK Ambassador to the UN in Geneva in his usual manner,  firing off innocuous questions masked in an aggressive and irreverent tone. First he why the UK government had attended the conference in the first place.  He later accused the Ambassador of playing into the hands of the wicked Ahmedinajed. “What you have done today is exactly what someone like President Ahmedinajed wants,” Paxman complained, “He’s won today.”

One section of the interview however was revealing:

Jeremy Paxman: What is the difference between Zionism and racism?

Peter Gooderham: Well we see the two as being quite distinct…

Jeremy Paxman: Yeah what’s the difference?

Peter Gooderham: Well Zionism is a political movement related to the establishment of a homeland…

Jeremy Paxman [quietly]: So are some forms of racism.

Peter Gooderham:…a Jewish homeland, in the er…in what is now Israel and racism is something else. I mean racism is, I think we all know it when we see it and it’s not, it’s not that, and we have fought long and hard at the United Nations to keep that, to maintain that distinction.

So there you go. Zionism is not racism because we know racism when we see it and it’s not that. Just like we know terrorism when we see it, and it’s not this.

Support Grows for One Democratic State in Palestine

Nadia Hijab loses her agnosticism concerning the one-state solution.

Ehud Olmert’s nightmare is at hand. Not only does the former Israeli prime minister now really have to fight those corruption charges. He also faces the realization of his fears that the Palestinians might give up on a two-state solution in favor of a struggle for equal rights that would mean, as he put it, the “end of the Jewish state.”
Yo, Ehud, that struggle is a growing movement, and it isn’t a threat to Jews – on the contrary, Jews are very much a part of it.

Continue reading “Support Grows for One Democratic State in Palestine”