Palestinian Self-Determination and Resistance to Colonisation

Omar Barghouti: “There is no Israeli nationality, just Jewish nationality. Israel is the only nation on earth which does not offer nationality to all its citizens.”

“You don’t acquire a right by committing a crime.”

“Colonisers don’t have natural rights in acquired territory.”

Chomsky 1976: ‘There is no such thing as “Israeli nationality” in the state of Israel. There is a “Jewish nation” but no “Israeli nation”. (In “The Arabs in Israel” – Sabri Jiryis)

Related Links

No Such Thing As Israeli Nationality
Netanyahu has invited America to punish Israel
Israel is unique in being a State that is a state, not of its own citizens but of its Jewish nationals. Indeed citizenship is becoming ever more meaningless as legislative attacks on Arab citizens of Israel become more frequent (e.g. not being allowed to live with a married partner from the Occupied Territories or being able to revoke the citizenship of Arabs). Israel is a Jewish State, a state of its Jewish nationals as opposed to all of its citizens. That is why it is not a democratic state but one which is ever fearful that the non-Jews (Arabs) are going to breed and multiply and outnumber Jews. That is the ‘demographic problem’ as it is quaintly termed.
“Israeli Nation” vs. “Jewish State”
“Jewish Nationality,” “National Institutions” and Institutionalized Dispossession

Palestine / Israel Links

Obama’s speech to AIPAC affirms commitment to Israel and US policies that doom it Ali Abunimah:

Obama’s use of demographic scare-mongering indicates an acceptance of the fundamentally racist view that the mere existence of certain categories of humans (in this case non-Jewish Palestinians) in a country is unacceptable and dangerous – even if they or their parents or grandparents were born in that country. Palestinians “west of the Jordan River” are not interlopers or intruders. They are indigenous people of the country. Instead of searching for ways for Israel to escape them by gerrymandering a bantustan, Obama should be calling for full and equal rights, nothing less.

Demonstration against Nakba crackdown and Obama Speech, Qalandia checkpoint, 20.05.2011
Netanyahu is an Outstanding Firefighter
Diana Buttu on President Obama’s Speech on Middle East & North Africa
Palestinian Activist Omar Barghouti Says Obama Speech “Irrelevant”
Israel and Palestine: Obama’s flawed approach : Richard Falk
Samah Sabawi’s thoughts on Obama’s speech truncated & mangled by the Australian
60 east J’lem Jewish homes to be dedicated
Transcript of Obama’s grovel. ‘America’s commitment to Israel’s security flows from a deeper place—and that’s the values we share. ‘ Those are of course, imperialism, occupation, oppression and exploitation.
‘Friend of Israel’ steers Obama’s Middle East policy
Obama’s AIPAC speech welcomed across Israel’s political spectrum
London protest against goods from illegal Israeli settlements
PFLP denounces Obama speech as another attempt to deceive Palestinians into a futile “peace process”
ULU: Why We Voted for Boycott
Stones alone will not stop the occupation
Belgian-French bank Dexia considers selling Israeli subsidiary
Lessons from Marrickville for BDS Activists

Israel is not supported by the Australian state (and Western powers) because of strong Israel lobbies in these countries or because politicians simply are misinformed and can do with a bit more reading. Unfortunately, they are informed all too-well and choose to support Israel regardless of its human rights violations. Israel serves a fundamental role as a pillar of support for western hegemony over the Middle East. Understanding this allows us to shift our longer-term Palestine solidarity organizing from lobbying politicians on an individual basis and writing letters to the media, to actually taking on the harder work of building a mass movement that targets the very economic and political connections that allow apartheid to continue. The strategic demands of boycott, divestment, and sanctions that we put forward target the powerful economic and ideological ties between North American, European, and Australian capital and apartheid Israel.

JfJfP condemns killings by Israel of Nakba-day demonstrators
Limmud Oz 2011 is compromised by banning people
Israel ‘Approves New West Bank Settler Homes’
The third intifada: Inevitable, not imminent
Referendum on NUS affiliation sparks debate
Interview with Noam Chomsky
Walk the line in Palestine
17 year old Palestinian boy killed by army fire in Gaza
Questions persist regarding arrest of Israel’s military attaché in Russia
Palestinians plan large-scale march, border protest on June 5
Israel plans to seize 140,000 dunums of Dead Sea land
BBC is ‘confusing cause and effect’ in its Israeli coverage

Australia Links

John Pilger: How the Murdoch press keeps Australia’s dirty secret

The rationale to “intervene” was that child abuse among Aborigines was in “unthinkable numbers”. This was a fraud. Out of 7 433 Aboriginal children examined by doctors, four possible cases were identified. This is about the rate of child abuse in white Australia. What this covered was an old-fashioned colonial grab of mineral-rich land in the Northern Territory where Aboriginal land rights were granted in 1976.

The Murdoch press has been the most lurid and vociferous in its promotion of the “intervention”, which a United Nations special rapporteur has condemned for its racial discrimination. Once again, Australian politicians are dispossessing the first inhabitants, demanding leasehold of land in return for health and education rights that whites take for granted and driving them into “economically viable hubs” where they will be effectively detained – a form of apartheid.

The outrage and despair of most Aboriginal people is not heard. For using her institutional voice and exposing the government’s black supporters, Larissa Behrendt has been subjected to a vicious campaign of innuendo in the Murdoch press, including the implication that she is not a “real” Aborigine. Using the language of its soulmate the London Sun, the Australian derides the “abstract debate” of “land rights, apologies, treaties” as a “moralising mumbo-jumbo spreading like a virus”. The aim is to silence those who dare tell Australia’s dirty secret.

Intervention facing UN criticism
Rehoused Lebanon refugees still long for Palestine

Other Links

America Becoming an Idiocracy becoming???
The Obama Deception: Why Cornel West Went Ballistic by Chris Hedges