What is the alternative to peace talks to nowhere?

A very watchable lecture in 13 parts that Ali Abunimah gave at Stanford on Nov 3, 2010, sponsored by Students Confronting Apartheid by Israel (SCAI).

Also well worth reading is a well-written piece in Ma’an News Agency, where Ali Abunimah responds with logic and vision to Hanan Ashrawi while she clings to a broken two state dream.

“Ms. Ashrawi ought to know better than anyone else that it is the totally fraudulent ‘peace process,’ starting with the Oslo Agreement which should never have been signed, which bought time for the occupation to deepen its tentacles in the West Bank and Jerusalem, and to impose — with the complicity of the Palestinian Authority in Ramallah — the blockade on Gaza.”

Abunimah said that when Ashrawi argues Palestinians cannot not assemble a global coalition for the one-state solution “she displays a total lack of faith in the Palestinian people and their cause. Palestinian rights and demands are not a gift of ‘global partners,’ but a birthright. When the ANC demanded democracy in South Africa, they set the terms of the agenda, they did not wait for the permission of the US State Department before asking for their rights.

“The one-state solution is the only just, moral and practical solution which restores the rights of all Palestinians — the refugees and the diaspora, the Palestinians within the 1948 territories, and those in the West Bank.”

Abunimah also noted the significance of Ashrawi having to reckon with the one-state solution: “While skeptics and critics of the single state always dismissed it as a marginal idea, they now find it gaining ground to their dismay, and having to defend a so-called two-state solution that everyone knows will never lead to the restoration of Palestinian rights.”

The first successful dock protest against Israeli apartheid ever at Oakland

The boycotts, divestments and sanctions movement in the US just took a gigantic leap forward with a successful solidarity action between activists and longshoremen at Oakland, CA to prevent an Israeli ship from unloading its cargo.

In Oakland, California an Israeli ship was blocked by protesters for the first time in history. 700-1000 protesters blocked three different gates at 5:30 A.M. keeping dockworkers from unloading the Israeli cargo.

ILWU members refused to cross picketline – citing “health & safety” provisions of their contract. Management demanded “instant arbitration.” The arbitrator took a look at the picketlines at each gate to the SSA Terminal and ruled that ILWU members were justified in refusing to cross.

All dockworkers were sent home with FULL PAY.

This vid features the Brass Liberation Orchestra.

Omar Barghouti on BDS

Equal rights for all is the key to the democratisation of the fascist ziostate.

Barghouti defines the resistance movement with three aims (1) ending the occupation and colonisation of Palestine outside the 1967 border (2) ending racial discrimination against Palestinians (3) allowing Palestinian refugees the right of return.

George Fletcher, a law professor at Columbia University disgracefully blames the conflict on the oppressed Palestinians, showing a complete absence of understanding of natural justice. His shallow white supremacist argument boils down to ‘Israel is right’, therefore there is no argument. He denies Israel’s genocide of Palestinians, despite being faced with the evidence.