Grooving on Lowkey’s T shirt – AUSTRALIA HAS A BLACK HISTORY
The track also mentions Ali Abunimah.
US Imperialism
Noam Chomsky on the Dangers of American Empire and Why the US Continues to be Bin Laden’s Best Ally : What Chomsky doesn’t mention: The ruling elite in the US who invest in the defence and associated corporations benefit hugely from increased militarisation and Pentagon budget pursuant to 9/11. The US taxpayers are fleeced by the ruling class, and the scam is reinforced and insured by the existence of defence and allied industries providing jobs in nearly every US state.
In 2010, US arms exports were round $8641m, a small fraction of the US defence budget of $698b. Arms exports are the number 1 US export earner.
The 180-strong community faces the threat of imminent displacement if the Israeli authorities demolish their homes and school as planned. This may well destroy the community, one of 20 in the area, who have become victims of creeping settlement expansion and ethnic cleansing. Write Israeli Minister of Defense Barak to demand he refrains from pursuing the demolition of the Khan al Ahmar School.
‘According to the statement, Israeli authorities used Allawi’s personal passwords to gain access to Al-Jazeera’s internal news and email networks.’
What have the Israeli ghouls been doing to Samer Allawi?
“Appeal to District Court for Independent Doctor to Visit Al Jazeera Journalist Samer Allawi Detained for 23 Days without Charge by the Israeli GSS (Shabak)”
‘He is currently detained at the Kishon prison, an IPS detention facility in Haifa, and is under interrogation by the ISA, with no charges have been filed against him to date.
Mr. Allawi’s attorney, Salim Wakeem, has voiced concerns regarding the methods of his interrogation, particularly as Mr. Allawi suffers from chronic health conditions. Mr. Allawi’s attorney was denied access to documentation concerning his medical condition and treatment.
Court protocols from Mr. Allawi’s hearing dated 22 August 2011 indicate that Mr. Allawi was not examined by a physician upon arrival in the detention facility, in contradiction of the IPS regulations, which provide that a detainee should be examined by a medic within 24 hours and by a physician within 48 hours of arriving in a detention facility.
According to court protocols, Mr. Allawi stated that since his arrest he has suffered pain that is not treated; that he was not examined by a physician since his arrest; that he has used only medications he had with him upon his arrest, and that the IPS has not supplied him with any further medication. ‘
Today, there’s yet another ‘deeply disappointing’ from the UK foreign minister as Israel swipes more Palestinian land to sprout illegal Jews-only housing.
Israel’s interior ministry announced its sanction of 1,600 new homes in Ramat Shlomo, and impending approval of 2,000 more in Givat Hamatos and 700 in Pisgat Zeev on Thursday, a week after 900 housing units were announced in Har Homa.
On August 11, the US was ‘deeply disappointed’ with Israel’s new East Jerusalem construction plan, on April 6, Catherine Ashton arched an eyebrow and sighed she was ‘deeply disappointed’ at previous land theft.
Without concerted action, this ‘deep disappointment’ is shallow. When will there be a ‘totally despicable’ and ‘we are going to sanction and divest from you until you stop stealing land from Palestinians, end your illegal occupation and apartheid?’
Disability and Palestine
RT @Tweet_Palestine: i wish we had people fighting for disabled peoples’ rights here there is no regards to disability despite large numbers
RT @Tweet_Palestine: 1of the biggest problems now is that the PA is not paying all benefits to those with disability which are very low to start with Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities
@occpal also read Art 30, 2nd paragraph, of 1949 Geneva Convention III :Special facilities shall be afforded for the care …etc”
RT @Budouroddick: Disability rights in Pal are criminally overlooked. I tried to start an empowerment project, but none helped. Help this radio station in Gaza get equipment for blind reporters
Appearing before the Israeli military court in Ofer, Palestine rights leader Bassem Tamimi reads as much of his statement as the judge permits him. It is stirring and to the point, describing how the Israeli authorities have treated him and his family during previous periods of incarceration for non-violent protest of the illegal Israeli Occupation.
Your Honor, I hold this speech out of belief in peace, justice, freedom, the right to live in dignity, and out of respect for free thought in the absence of Just Laws.
Every time I am called to appear before your courts, I become nervous and afraid. Eighteen years ago, my sister was killed by in a courtroom such as this, by a staff member. In my lifetime, I have been nine times imprisoned for an overall of almost 3 years, though I was never charged or convicted. During my imprisonment, I was paralyzed as a result of torture by your investigators. My wife was detained, my children were wounded, my land was stolen by settlers, and now my house is slated for demolition.
I was born at the same time as the Occupation and have been living under its inherent inhumanity, inequality, racism and lack of freedom ever since. Yet, despite all this, my belief in human values and the need for peace in this land have never been shaken. Suffering and oppression did not fill my heart with hatred for anyone, nor did they kindle feelings of revenge. To the contrary, they reinforced my belief in peace and national standing as an adequate response to the inhumanity of Occupation.
International law guarantees the right of occupied people to resist Occupation. In practicing my right, I have called for and organized peaceful popular demonstrations against the Occupation, settler attacks and the theft of more than half of the land of my village, Nabi Saleh, where the graves of my ancestors have lain since time immemorial.
I organized these peaceful demonstrations in order to defend our land and our people. I do not know if my actions violate your Occupation laws. As far as I am concerned, these laws do not apply to me and are devoid of meaning. Having been enacted by Occupation authorities, I reject them and cannot recognize their validity.
Despite claiming to be the only democracy in the Middle East you are trying me under military laws which lack any legitimacy; laws that are enacted by authorities that I have not elected and do not represent me. I am accused of organizing peaceful civil demonstrations that have no military aspects and are legal under international law.
We have the right to express our rejection of Occupation in all of its forms; to defend our freedom and dignity as a people and to seek justice and peace in our land in order to protect our children and secure their future.
The civil nature of our actions is the light that will overcome the darkness of the Occupation, bringing a dawn of freedom that will warm the cold wrists in chains, sweep despair from the soul and end decades of oppression.
These actions are what will expose the true face of the Occupation, where soldiers point their guns at a woman walking to her fields or at checkpoints; at a child who wants to drink from the sweet water of his ancestors’ fabled spring; against an old man who wants to sit in the shade of an olive tree, once mother to him, now burnt by settlers.
We have exhausted all possible actions to stop attacks by settlers, who refuse to adhere to your courts’ decisions, which time and again have confirmed that we are the owners of the land, ordering the removal of the fence erected by them.
Each time we tried to approach our land, implementing these decisions, we were attacked by settlers, who prevented us from reaching it as if it were their own.
Our demonstrations are in protest of injustice. We work hand in hand with Israeli and international activists who believe, like us, that had it not been for the Occupation, we could all live in peace on this land. I do not know which laws are upheld by generals who are inhibited by fear and insecurity, nor do I know their thoughts on the civil resistance of women, children and old men who carry hope and olive branches.
But I know what justice and reason are. Land theft and tree-burning is unjust. Violent repression of our demonstrations and protests and your detention camps are not evidence of the illegality of our actions. It is unfair to be tried under a law forced upon us. I know that I have rights and my actions are just.
The military prosecutor accuses me of inciting the protesters to throw stones at the soldiers. This is not true. What incites protesters to throw stones is the sound of bullets, the Occupation’s bulldozers as they destroy the land, the smell of teargas and the smoke coming from burnt houses. I did not incite anyone to throw stones, but I am not responsible for the security of your soldiers who invade my village and attack my people with all the weapons of death and the equipment of terror.
These demonstrations that I organize have had a positive influence over my beliefs; they allowed me to see people from the other side who believe in peace and share my struggle for freedom. Those freedom fighters have rid their conscious from the Occupation and put their hands in ours in peaceful demonstrations against our common enemy, the Occupation. They have become friends, sisters and brothers. We fight together for a better future for our children and theirs.
If released by the judge will I be convinced thereby that justice still prevails in your courts? Regardless of how just or unjust this ruling will be, and despite all your racist and inhumane practices and Occupation, we will continue to believe in peace, justice and human values. We will still raise our children to love; love the land and the people without discrimination of race, religion or ethnicity; embodying thus the message of the Messenger of Peace, Jesus Christ, who urged us to “love our enemy.” With love and justice, we make peace and build the future.
In the vid below, a courageous Jewish American man is harrassed by the Israeli police and arrested for protesting for Palestinian rights.
The liberal Zionist vision is indeed motivated by moral concerns. The vision recognizes that it is morally wrong, not just inexpedient, for Israel to have day to day control over the lives of Palestinians. It is less concerned with the measure of effective control Israel will have over the future Palestinian state, and indirectly, on the lives of the Palestinians living within it. I don’t think it is concerned with that at all.
In 2005, Cox agreed to serve as “Co-President” of The Jerusalem Summit, an Israeli Zionist organization that denies the Nakba and which has advocated the ethnic cleansing, or transfer of Palestinians and espouses extreme Islamophobic views.
‘Children often watch with their parents as their homes are demolished. A house is a place of safety and comfort for most children around the world. A home demolished is a future destroyed’.
Oblivious to Nutanyahoo’s murder of the two state solution (again) this week before the US Congress, Australian politician Melissa Parke keeps flogging a dead horse. Melissa’s speech is notable though for its recognition of the oppression of Israel’s occupation, a rare occurrence in the Australian Parliament. She meanders down the fallacious imperialist/zionist path of the formation of two states being central to the US national security interest and further drags Australia’s national security interest into the mix.
Is Zionism set to implode at last, unable to resolve its racist contradictions? The just rights demanded by Palestinian people in their call to boycott, divest and sanction apartheid Israel bypass and supercede the Israeli and western imperialists’ obsession with protecting racist privilege through a mythological quest for a ‘peace process’ focused on two states for two ‘peoples’, ignoring the facts that 20% of Israel’s population are not jewish, and there are half a million jewish settlers illegally squatting in the Occupied Territories. It is not the West’s ‘national security interests’ which are at stake here – how racist is it to place Palestinians’ human and political rights in the context of ‘national security’? – but credibility as purveyor of the enlightened values of democracy and human rights the developed world claims to embrace.
As Rae Abileah says: ‘Before we go preaching democracy abroad, we should make our own democracy more responsive to the public good, not the wishes of wealthy lobbyists.’ And by reference to this quote, I don’t just mean the zionist lobby, but the entire capitalist corporate lobby behemoth whose imperialist interests coincide.
‘We call on all Palestinian and Arab community associations, societies and committees, student organizations, solidarity campaigns, to reject fully and unequivocally the Statehood initiative as a distraction that unjustifiably and irresponsibly endangers Palestinian rights and institution.’
‘Like the BNC, the USPCN statement emphasizes that fundamental Palestinian rights, not “statehood” remain the core of Palestinian efforts:
As has been recently revealed, this initiative in no way protects nor advances our inalienable, and internationally recognized, rights—fundamental of which are our right to return to the homes and properties from which we were forcibly expelled, our right to self-determination, and our right to resist the settler colonial regime that has occupied our land for more than 63 years.
The Palestinian people, wherever they are, hold these rights. They are non-negotiable. No one can barter them away for false promises of “peace” and “stability.” The cynical irony of turning a UN resolution enshrining our right to return under international law (UNGA Res. 194) into a rhetorical ploy should give anyone pause. That it is being advanced at a time when the PA does not even have the political mandate of Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza through Palestinian Legislative Council elections must also give us pause.;
‘Goodwin-Gill’s memo and an interview he gave explaining its implications have heightened concern among Palestinians about the PA’s ill-thought out and desperate step which comes after the complete failure of the US-sponsored “peace process” on which the PA bet all its cards.’
‘But more importantly, the South African comparison helps illuminate why the ambitious projects of pacification, “institution building” and economic development that the Ramallah PA and Prime Minister Salam Fayyad have whole-heartedly embarked upon are not actually exercises in “state-building.” Rather, they emulate with frightening closeness and consistency South Africa’s policies and stages in building the Bantustan/Homelands. Indeed, Fayyad’s project to achieve political stability through economic development is the same process that was openly formalized in the South African
He insisted in the interview that Palestinians would not be able to force the right of return for Palestinian refugees on Israelis within the context of a peace agreement, but that he seeks a “just solution.”
There are three major conditions needed for a free viable Palestinian state. The first is national unity – the Palestinian state needs to represent all Palestinians as one people whether inside or outside of Occupied Palestine. A second component is economic viability – a Palestinian state needs be able to make its own decisions on sovereign matters and not be held hostage to foreign aid and the will of donor countries. A third and major component of a Palestinian state is security – it needs to have the strength to claim the land and protect is people either through an army or some form of international guarantees.’
Of course, in traditional Christianity and in Orthodox Judaism, hostility to gays exceeds the few vague references in the Qur’an. But Israeli writers, very much like classical anti-Semites, are so obsessed with their hatred of Islam and Muslims that they have to bring it in no matter what. Furthermore, openly or semi openly “gay” leaders (like Sultan Qaboos) have served as heads of state in Arab and Muslim lands but not in Israel.
‘the power of secular pro-democracy movements throughout the region now reverberate in Palestine as a validation of grassroots resistance.
If that feedback loop can be harnessed to reinvigorate the idea of Palestinian liberation, then we might finally see the ends and the means match up in the struggle to defeat imperialism, violence and dictatorship.’
Zionism and imperialism – two heads of the same grotesque beast, which advances the cause of robber barons who defend their own interests under the holy shibboleth of capitalism.
“At 700 kilometres long, with 85 per cent of its route inside the West Bank, the Barrier cuts off communities from basic services, denies people access to their homes, and leaves thousands of people dependent on humanitarian handouts.”
Recounting a meeting she had with Palestinians who had been evicted from their homes in East Jerusalem to make way for Israeli settlements, Ms. Amos said they faced daily violence and threats from settlers, noting the attacks on Palestinians are rarely prosecuted.
Thousands of Palestinians had lost their right to live in East Jerusalem and those in the West Bank struggled to access specialized education and reach medical facilities that are only available in Jerusalem.
Fact-checking Netanyahu’s Speech DePaul vote on Sabra hummus a victory for human rights: SJP’s strategy is not predicated on the elimination of an Israeli state. Rather, it deals purely with human rights. The logic is simple; boycotting Sabra hummus and other similarly problematic products sends a strong signal to owners of the companies that make them, which is that any profiteering from human rights violations will not be tolerated.
Further to the existent and potential neoliberalism (formalisation of bantustan economy) in any incipient Palestinian state is the role that state of bantustans would play in the predatory US regional strategic plan as it counters the ‘arab spring’. Since Nutanyahoo doesn’t have the political capital or intention to offer a viable sovereign Palestinian state, the possibility for such is strictly hypothetical.
As more countries recognise a Palestinian state prior to another proposed declaration of same in September, Israeli politicians have moved to counter it with plans for annexation. However, if the OPT or parts thereof are annexed, Israel will have institutionalised apartheid systemically, highlighting the existing Palestinian bantustans and the two tiered racist zionist entity where non-jews are discriminated against by more than 20 laws. At that point, Israel will become unsustainable to the point of complete self-delegitimisation. The struggle will then be firmly focussed on equal rights for all, and the ethical nature of and necessity for BDS, boycotts, divestments and sanctions will be affirmed even more strongly.
Hamas has long signalled its desire to move away from armed struggle toward purely political means – this is the essence of its proposed hudna, or long-term truce, with Israel. It is of course possible to defend the legitimate and universal right to armed resistance against occupation, while choosing not to exercise it. “Where there is occupation and settlement, there is a right to resistance. Israel is the aggressor,” Meshaal told The New York Times on May 5, “But resistance is a means, not an end.”
Yet to choose different means, a movement has to have a viable political strategy and a clear definition of its ends. Hamas has failed to articulate, or to rally the Palestinian people around either. Instead its strategy appears to be simply to sign on to the inherently unjust, and infeasible “two-state solution” – and hope for admission to “the peace process”.
Some of the Middle East elephant’s mandarins are signalling a major land grab if Palestinians request recognition of a Palestinian state in the UN in September.
Danon favors responding to a Palestinian declaration of statehood by annexing all of Area C, which includes all the West Bank’s Jewish settlements and empty land. He said Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu should follow the example of his predecessors Levi Eshkol, who annexed eastern Jerusalem, and Menachem Begin, who annexed the Golan Heights.
‘Israel should head off the U.N. vote at the pass, he says, by having Bibi proclaim to Congress that Israel accepts Palestinian statehood. But that would leave half a million Israelis in Palestinian hands without Palestine being able to protect them. This would require Israel to maintain all the present security measures until Israel and Palestine have fully agreed on peace. Sure, this is a ploy, but not a bad one for Israel because it might avoid an international blessing for a Palestinian state.’
Netanyahu has already begun staking out Israel’s redlines. Speaking to reporters on March 9, Netanyahu said,
“Our security border is here on the Jordan and our defense line begins here. If that line is breached they will be able to infiltrate terrorists, rockets and missiles all the way to Tel Aviv, Jerusalem, Haifa, and Be’er Sheva and throughout the country. There is no alternative to the IDF’s line of defense. Therefore, in any future situation, and I say in any future arrangement as well, the IDF must stay here, i.e. along the Jordan River. This is the State of Israel’s insurance policy. If this was true before the major unrest now shaking the Middle East and the entire region, it is doubly true today. The IDF must remain along the Jordan River.
Yet Nutanyahoo doesn’t have the political capital in the Knesset to take on the fanatical illegal settlers. Israel covets the land and resources of the West Bank, particularly the water, and did I mention the land? While the US supports Israeli intransigence there is no chance that a Palestinian state would be formed in anything other than name. Nutanyahoo’s, and indeed any other Israeli leader’s strategy will be for the status quo – unctuous bleatings of negotiated outcomes and fake peace processes, while daily, illegal Israeli settlers supported by the IOF nibble away at the West Bank, continuing Israel’s criminal colonisation and slow, disgusting genocide.
“Our intention is to leave the situation as it is: autonomous management of civil affairs, and if they want to call it a state, let them call it that. If they want to call it an empire, by all means. We intend to keep what exists now and let them call it whatever they want. . . . Our approach is steadfastness, development, construction, strengthening and so on. This is our approach and this is what we do as a government.”
This is a defining moment for the people of the region and, by extension, a critical moment for Central Command to remain engaged with our partners and to clear away obstacles to peace and prosperity. On that note, while Israel and the Palestinian territories are not in my assigned theater, lack of progress toward a comprehensive Middle East peace affects U.S. and CENTCOM security interests in the region.
I believe the only reliable path to lasting peace in this region is a viable two-state solution between Israel and Palestine. This issue is one of many that is exploited by our adversaries in the region, and it is used as a recruiting tool for extremist groups. The lack of progress also creates friction with regional partners and creates political challenges for advancing our interests by marginalizing moderate voices in the region. By contrast, substantive progress on the peace process would improve CENTCOM’s opportunity to work with our regional partners and to support multilateral security efforts.
As Obama prepares for the next election, it’s unlikely he will apply adequate pressure to Nutanyahoo for a viable Palestinian state and risk his domestic political capital before a hostile Israel lobby, despite the forebodings of his defence advisors. The rainbow’s end is an illusion.
More broadly, the goal for Palestinians should not be “unity” among factions, but unity of goals for the Palestinian people. What is the purpose and platform of the planned “transitional government” other than merely to exist? A real Palestinian strategy that unites all segments of the Palestinian people has been articulated by the BDS movement:
(a) an end to occupation and colonization of the 1967 territories; (b) full equality and an end to all forms of discrimination against Palestinians in the 1948 areas (“Israel”); and (c) full respect and implementation of the rights of Palestinian refugees.
Notably neither Fatah Abbas nor Hamas have endorsed this campaign, and neither has articulated a realistic strategy aimed at restoring the rights of all Palestinians.
“The United States supports Palestinian reconciliation on terms which promote the cause of peace. Hamas, however, is a terrorist organization which targets civilians,” White House spokesman Tommy Vietor said in a statement.
“To play a constructive role in achieving peace, any Palestinian government must accept the Quartet principles and renounce violence, abide by past agreements, and recognize Israel’s right to exist,” he said.
: Avi Issacharoff and Amos Harel believe Netanyahu will be able to use the newly signed unity deal as proof that Abbas doesn’t really want peace.
…
Renewed relations between Hamas and Fatah, however limited, could shed a different light on Abbas’ intentions, and Netanyahu, who is due to speak before both houses of Congress next month, will be able to present the agreement as proof that Abbas doesn’t really want peace.
Over half of the Egpytian public want to scrap the existing peace deal with Israel, according to a new survey undertaken by the Pew Research Center for the People and the Press. The poll measured attitudes in Egypt three months after the start of the uprising in Cairo. The U.S. State Department said in response to the survey that “the Egyptian army has pledged to uphold international agreements forged by Egypt, including the 1979 peace agreement with Israel.”
…
The survey said that 54 percent of Egyptians supported the annulment of the peace agreement with Jerusalem, and that just 36 percent wanted to maintain the peace agreement with Israel.
The annulment figure rose to six out of ten Egyptians when people in lower income brackets were asked. Further, 59 percent of respondents in lower educational brackets also supported negating the agreement. Among wealthy and well-educated Egyptians, the figures for those in favor of annulling peace relations with Israel are 45 percent and 40 percent.
…
Regarding the United States, only 22 percent of Egyptians think that the US played a positive role in the uprising, in contrast to 39 percent who think that the Americans exerted a negative influence; 35 percent think that the US had no influence.
President Barack Obama, it turns out, has an image problem in the Middle East and not just in Israel: Almost two-thirds of Egyptians (64 percent ) report that they do not trust Obama’s global policy. Further, 52 percent of respondents did not like President Obama’s responses to changes in the Middle East. Less than half (45 percent ) of Egyptians are happy with the U.S. President’s performance in the region.
Four out of ten Egyptians want to maintain close relations with the U.S., yet a similar number want their country to move away from the Americans. Only 15 percent of Egyptians want to strengthen relations between their country and the U.S. in years ahead.
You could blame Facebook. What typically happens when an artist — of any genre or stature — announces a show in Israel, the act’s Facebook page or website is bombarded with posts calling on said artist to cancel the show out of protest and/or boycott the country entirely.
The detention of Tamimi is not a formality: under Israeli military decree 101 he is being charged with attempting “verbally or otherwise, to influence public opinion in the Area in a way that may disturb the public peace or public order.” As in Syria, this is an “emergency decree” disguised as protecting public security. It carries a sentence of 10 years.
Finkelstein speaks to his forthcoming book “A Farewell to Israel : The Coming Breakup of American Zionism”
Nathan Glazer, 1957: “Israel has had remarkedly slight effects on the inner life of American jewry.”
Mr. Wiesel before 1967 war was asked by Haaretz what can we do to win over jews to their jewishness because there was a fear back then of rampant assimiliation: “The jewishness of jewish youth can still be reached but not through Israel. Perhaps through the problems of jews in Russia, perhaps through questions about the Holocaust, but not through Israel.”
Finkelstein: “Israel became a strategic asset of the US. If you were pro-Israel, you were actually super-loyal to the United States, because there was Israel on the frontline protecting American interests from Arab hordes… Israel was winning, while practising ‘purity of arms’. … Zionism as an idea arises from the idea that jews cannot assimilate. Zionism’s main product is the state of Israel. Paradoxically by swearing allegiance to Israel, Americans can thus assimilate fully into American life, defending Judaeo Christian culture against Arab hordes. The more pro-Israel one is, the more pro-American one becomes.”
“Israel is seen as a besieged beacon of enlightenment values in the Middle East, so for American jews Israel becomes a source of pride… Israel is the Alamo all over again.”
The history of European Orientalism is one that is fully complicit with anti-Semitism from which it derives many of its representations of ancient and modern Arabs and of ancient Hebrews and modern Jews. As Edward Said demonstrated a quarter of a century ago in his classic Orientalism, “what has not been sufficiently stressed in histories of modern anti-Semitism has been the legitimation of such atavistic designations by Orientalism, and… the way this academic and intellectual legitimation has persisted right through the modern age in discussions of Islam, the Arabs, or the Near Orient.” Said added: “The transference of popular anti-Semitic animus from a Jewish to an Arab target was made smoothly, since the figure was essentially the same.” In the context of the 1973 War, Said commented that Arabs came to be represented in the West as having “clearly ‘Semitic’ features: sharply hooked noses, the evil moustachioed leer on their faces, were obvious reminders (to a largely non- Semitic population) that ‘Semites’ were at the bottom of all ‘our’ troubles.”
…
While holocaust denial in the West is indeed one of the strongest manifestations of anti-Semitism, most Arabs who deny the holocaust deny it for political not racist reasons. This point is even conceded by the anti-Arab and anti-Muslim Orientalist Bernard Lewis. Their denial is based on the false Zionist claim that the holocaust justifies Zionist colonialism. The Zionist claim is as follows: Since Jews were the victims of the holocaust, then they have the right to colonise Palestine and establish a Jewish colonial-settler state there. Those Arabs who deny the holocaust accept the Zionist logic as correct. Since these deniers reject the right of Zionists to colonise Palestine, the only argument left to them is to deny that the holocaust ever took place, which, to their thinking, robs Zionism of its allegedly “moral” argument. But the fact that Jews were massacred does not give Zionists the right to steal someone else’s homeland and to massacre the Palestinian people. The oppression of a people does not endow it with rights to oppress others. If those Arab deniers refuse to accept the criminal Zionist logic that justifies the murder and oppression of the Palestinians by appealing to the holocaust, then these deniers would no longer need to make such spurious arguments. All those in the Arab world who deny the Jewish holocaust are in my opinion Zionists.
…
Today we live in a world where anti-Arab and anti-Muslim hatred, derived from anti-Semitism, is everywhere in evidence. It is not Jews who are being murdered by the thousands by Arab anti- Semitism, but rather Arabs and Muslims who are being murdered by the tens of thousands by Euro- American Christian anti-Semitism and by Israeli Jewish anti-Semitism. If anti-Semites posited Jews as the purveyors of corruption, as financier bankers who control the world, as violent communist subversives, and as poisoners of Christian wells, the Arab and the Muslim today are seen as in control of the oil market and therefore of the global financial market, the purveyors of hatred and corruption of civilised Christian and Jewish societies, as violent terrorists, and as possible mass murderers, not with some Semitic Jewish poison but with Semitic Arab nuclear, chemical, and biological weapons (which are nowhere to be found). Thus Michael Moore feels vindicated in telling us in his recent film, Fahrenheit 9/11, about the portion of the American economy controlled by Saudi money while neglecting to mention the much, much larger American share of the Saudi economy. Anti- Semitism is alive and well today worldwide and its major victims are Arabs and Muslims and no longer Jews. The fight should indeed be against all anti-Semitism no matter who the object of its oppression is, Arab or Jew.
“I’m not sure it’s the role of academics to change society. People should speak out in support of democracy and criticize undemocratic elements, but not necessarily through academia. Civil society movements should lead… academics are not only academics, they are also something else, they are also members of civil society. And as members of civil society, academics need to struggle for social justice, locally and nationally.”
The Palestinian Authority will defer its attempts to unilaterally declare a Palestinian state at the United Nations if “real and serious” negotiations with Israel begin, an official was quoted saying Monday.
Secretary General of the Palestine Liberation Organization Yasser Abed Rabbo told London-based Al-Hayat newspaper on Monday that the basis of any negotiated agreement must be according to “the 1967 borders, very limited exchange of land and no exchanges of populations.”
The Zionists in contrast are automatons. Wherever I speak they do always the same. They come to the audience without any arguments or just shout “lies!” … They are brainwashed to nothing.
It is a lesson I learned in Auschwitz. When a dominant group tries to dehumanize a certain distinguishable group, it is necessary that the members of the dominant group have been brainwashed beforehand. A normal human being cannot see another human being suffering, let alone inflict suffering. His or her inborn empathy needs to be reduced to be able to inflict suffering on a human being. My hope is that, eventually, a society composed of a majority that lost empathy by brainwashing right from the kindergarten until the army, like the Zionists, kills itself from within by too much aggression.
Those who think BDS is the wrong way to go to achieve justice and rights for Palestinian people aren’t listening to Palestinian civil society, but to the colonial voice in their head.Jin, April 2011.
Comments are closed 
