The manoeuvres at the top of the regime have transparently been choreographed in Washington. Mubarak’s declaration on Tuesday night followed hard on the heels of a visit from the Obama administration’s envoy, Frank Wisner, a paid lobbyist of the Egyptian government, who was reported to have “urged” the Egyptian president not to stand again.
Frank G. Wisner Jr. is not known to the U.S. public either as a diplomat or as a master spy, but as an unscrupulous financier. He was part of the Enron power elite involved in the fraudulent bankrupcy of the corporation that ruined countless small investors and, later, as Vice Chairman of American International Group whose share prices plummeted by 95% during the 2008 financial crisis before its bailout with taxpayers’ money.
From the Guardian:
11.31pm GMT: Frank Wisner, the US special envoy sent by Obama to talk to Egypt’s government, is on his way back to the US, empty-handed it would appear. AP reports:
The White House had attempted to nudge Mubarak to the exits, dispatching former US Ambassador Frank Wisner as a special envoy to deliver the message to him. But by Wednesday, Wisner was on his way back to the United States.
A senior US official, speaking on condition of anonymity due to the delicacy of the matter, suggested Wisner had been seeking specific pledges from Mubarak beyond just a promise not to stand for re-election. The official would not elaborate, but the administration has made no secret of the fact that it wants the state of emergency lifted and would prefer to see Mubarak’s son, Gamal, not try to succeed his father. Mubarak mentioned neither in his address Tuesday night.
Wisner is a veteran of “economic espionage” and is believed to have used his diplomatic cover to advance US governmental and corporate economic interests while he served as a diplomat to Asia. A member of Wisner’s staff told InterPress Services in 1997 that “if anybody asked the CIA to help promote US business in India, it was probably Frank”.
I understand if they expect a domestic audience to swoon for this sort of rhetoric, but do they actually expect that there is anyone in the Middle East, anywhere, who will take seriously the righteous objections of Hilary Clinton — the American Secretary of State and close Mubarak family friend — to the rise of an oppressive military dictatorship in the Middle East? Is anyone there really going to believe that it’s that government’s lack of respect for human rights — rather than its refusal to serve American interests and heed its various dictates — that is motivating the hostility and threats?
Egypt protests – live updates What lay behind Obama’s friendship with Mubarak? Erdogan is Brilliant Egypt: much too early to celebrate Google, Facebook, Twitter sound off on Egypt
RT @ArabRevolution: @VodafoneEgypt actively supporting Mubarak regime. SMS sent to Egyptians http://yfrog.com/gzhf7fvj BOYCOTT @VodafoneUK #
RT @jeremyscahill URGENT Cairo #journalists reporters GET OUT of your HOTEL ROOMS NOW http://bit.ly/gFRvZg #Jan25 RT NOW @chrislhayes #
@PJCrowley The perpetrators of today’s violence in #Egypt must be held accountable, and the government should tell its supporters to eschew violence. #
. @PJCrowley Take careful note ‘Pro-Mubarak supporters are recognizably police, says Peter Beaumont. ‘ http://tinyurl.com/4a8urur #
. @PJCrowley Some of the attackers caught. Their IDs showed them to be policemen dressed in civilians clothes.’ http://tinyurl.com/4nuvurn #
. @PJCrowley RT @alaa: Further proof there is police among the thugs, they’re now shooting tear gas #Jan25 # Protestor consoles Egyptian army officer
On January 15, the US mobilised the Connecticut National Guard Detachment 2, Company I, 185th Aviation Regiment of Groton to be deployed to the Sinai Peninsula, Egypt, “to support the Multinational Force and Observers”.
The unit left Connecticut Jan. 15 for Fort Benning, Ga., for further training and validation. The unit operates C-23C Sherpa aircraft and has deployed three times in the last seven years in support of the conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan.
The unit will provide an on-demand aviation asset to the Multinational Force and Observers commander to support its mission of supervising the security provisions of the Egypt/ Israel Peace Treaty.
Chief Warrant Officer Four James Smith of Ivoryton commands the aviation unit.
Here’s a list of US deployments in the Sinai and a breakdown of the constituency of the multinational force.
The US contributes three units collectively known as Task Force Sinai:[8]
* Force HQ – 40 personnel
* Infantry Battalion (USBATT – drawn from National Guard units)- 425 personnel currently members of the Illinois Army National Guard to be replaced in early 2011 by the Maryland National Guard[9]
* Support Battalion – 235 personnel consisting of:
o Headquarters
o Medical Company consisting of Dental, Medical, Physical Therapy, Veterinarian, and Preventative Medicine.
o Explosive Ordnance Disposal Detachment (EOD)
o Aviation Company
As far as I can discover, the deployment has yet to reach its eventual destination and was routine.
The entrance of Egyptian military forces into Sinai is prohibited by the Egyptian-Israeli peace treaty, to which the US is a guarantor. Lisa Goldman and myself tried to get a reply from the IDF Spokesman, to no avail. The spokesman of the Foreign Ministry, Yigal Palmor, gave Goldman the following response: “We will have to analyze the situation. We are under clear instructions not to make any comment on the Egyptian situation, no matter what. So it’s not as though we’ll have an answer later on. You’ll just have to wait and see, okay?”
Several foreign policy scholars and former officials have been urging the U.S. administration for months to prepare for the end of the Hosni Mubarak era and the instability that would accompany it.
The United States has no plans to redeploy troops or ships in response to the unrest roiling Egypt and the instability in Tunisia and Jordan, the head of the U.S. Central Command said Tuesday.
On a visit to London, Gen. James Mattis said military leaders and lawmakers were closely watching developments, but stressed that he had no orders to rearrange his forces in response.
“These issues do not call for a military solution right now,” Mattis said. “There’s no reason right now for any shift in military forces, or anything like that. I’ve not received any orders.”
Mattis spells out the primary US strategic interest:
… he said it was unlikely events in Egypt would lead to difficulties for ships passing through the Suez Canal – another major concern for lawmakers and businesses.
The canal is the key route to the Mediterranean and used to avoid the longer and perilous path around Africa to the Atlantic Ocean.
“When you look at the fiscal impact of that on whoever is in a position of authority in Egypt, I just can’t imagine a motive to shut that down,” said Mattis, who succeeded Gen. David Petraeus as head of the military’s Central Command in August.
President Mubarak and military leaders view our military assistance program as the cornerstone of our mil-mil relationship and consider the USD 1.3 billion in annual FMF as “untouchable compensation” for making and maintaining peace with Israel. The tangible benefits to our mil-mil relationship are clear: Egypt remains at peace with Israel, and the U.S. military enjoys priority access to the Suez Canal and Egyptian airspace. We believe, however, that our relationship can accomplish much more. Over the last year, we have engaged MOD leaders on developing shared strategic objectives to address current and emerging threats, including border security, counter terrorism, civil defense, and peacekeeping. Our efforts thus far have met with limited success.
The key question is, will the localized incident in
Mahalla spark a wider movement? The government is clearly
focused on containing unrest. Even while the riots were
still winding down, PM Nazif traveled to Mahalla, paid
bonuses to factory workers and praised those who did not join
in the riots (ref D). The government has also accelerated
arrests of activists in Cairo (ref E). The organizers of the
April 6 strike — distinct from Mahalla — have already
called, via Facebook, for a follow-on national strike on May
4, Mubarak’s eightieth birthday. Even regime insiders have
acknowledged the political savvy behind this tactic —
channeling current outrage towards the next big event. The
GOE responded with a press release announcing that President
Mubarak will give a May 5 speech to “underline Egypt’s keen
to desire to protect the rights of laborers and accentuate
the role they can play in the development process …. and to
reiterate the government’s commitment to safeguard the
interests of workers against any backlashes they might face
as a result of the economic reform program.” More broadly,
the government continues to address the shortage of
subsidized bread by using military bakeries and distribution
Another strain of this criticism, articulated most forcefully by Yediot Aharonot columnist Eitan Haber, who was a top aide to Yitzhak Rabin, is that this sends a dreadful message to Israel.
Obama threw Mubarak “to the dogs,” Haber wrote in a column that appeared on Monday.
“America, which waves the banner of ‘citizens rights,’ ‘democracy,’ and ‘freedom of information,’ turned its back in a day on one of its most important allies in the Middle East.
Obama sold Mubarak for the pot of lentils of popularity among the Egyptian masses,” Haber wrote, adding that the US president did this without a true understanding of the Middle East.
“Our conclusion in Israel needs to be that the man sitting in the White House is liable to ‘sell’ us over night.
The thought that the US might not stand by our side in the day of need causes chills. God help us.”
This theme was also picked up by former Mossad head Danny Yatom, who said in an Israel Radio interview that the US treatment of Mubarak was a dangerous message to Washington’s allies in the region – including Israel – that they could not rely on America.
Yatom said Washington’s first error was not in more aggressively supporting the opposition in Iran when it took to the streets against President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad in the summer of 2009.
By contrast, Yatom said, “there is an important relationship” between the US and Egypt, with Egypt an important layer in Washington’s regional policy.
“The way Obama and Hillary Clinton abandoned Mubarak at once is very problematic, and I think hints to other allies – for instance Israel – that these things can happen under certain grave circumstances to us as well, and to others.”
Yatom said the US erred in talking – as Clinton did on Sunday – of an orderly transition to lasting democracy, and should have instead sufficed with demanding reform.
They should have supported him [Mubarak], but demand more reform,” he said. “I think he would have responded.”
“93% of the land of Israel is for exclusively jewish use. In South Africa, we used to talk about the fact that 13% of the population had control of 97% of the land. In Israel it is worse.”
Na’eem Jeena reflects on the challenges and victories of the BDS movement, drawing parallels to the 30 year BDS movement that helped bring down the Apartheid regime in South Africa.
Nada Elia at 2010 Israeli Apartheid Week
Tanya Reinhart on Israeli apartheid: ‘It’s trying to get as many Palestinians out of the land as possible … it’s about driving them out of the land.”
While Ran Greenstein in this article defines Israeli apartheid as that practised throughout ‘Greater Israel’, he sees solutions to broach it through a staggered approach, due to the occupation – that making Israel a state for all its citizens is more immediately achievable than achieving this in ‘Greater Israel’.
It is worse, not in the sense that apartheid was not an absolutely terrifying system in South Africa, but in the ways in which the Israelis have taken the apartheid system and perfected it, so to speak; sharpened it. For instance, we had the Bantustans and we had the Group Areas Act and we had the separate schools and all of that but I don’t think it ever even entered the mind of any apartheid planner to design a town in such a way that there is a physical wall that separates people and that that wall denotes your freedom of movement, your freedom of economic gain, of employment, and at the same time is a tool of intimidation and dehumanisation. We carried passes as the Palestinians have their ID documents but that did not mean that we could not go from one place in the city to another place in the city. The judicial system was absolutely skewed of course, all the judges in their judgements sought to protect white privilege and power and so forth, and we had a series of what they called “hanging judges” in those days, but they did not go far as to openly, blatantly have two separate justice systems as they do for Palestinians [who are tried in Israeli military courts] and Israelis [who are tried in civil, not military courts]. So in many ways the Israeli system is worse.
Another thing that makes it even worse is that when we fought our battles, even if it took us a long time, we could in the end muster and mobilise international solidarity on a scale that enabled us to be more successful in our struggle. The Palestinians cannot do that. The whole international community almost conspires against them. The UN, which played a fairly positive role in the struggle against apartheid in South Africa, takes the disastrous position of not wanting to offend its strong members like the United States who protect Israel. So even in the UN, where international law ought to be the framework wherein all these things are judged, where international solidarity is not an assumption but is supposed to be the very foundation upon which the UN builds its views on things and its judgements as to which way it goes, the Palestinians don’t even have that.
Palestinians are mocked in a way that South Africans were not. In a sense, the UN tried in our case to follow up on its resolutions to isolate the apartheid regime. Here, now, they make resolutions against Israel one after the other and I don’t detect even a sense of shame that they know there is not going to be any follow up. Under Reagan the United States was pretty blatant in its so called constructive engagement programme and in its support for the white regime in South Africa, but what the United States is doing now in the week that UNESCO took the decision to support the Palestinian bid for a seat in the United Nations, to withdraw all US financial support; to resort immediately to economic blackmail, that is so scandalous. So in all those ways I think we are trying to say that what is happening in Israel today is a system of apartheid that in its perfection of that system is more terrifying in many ways than apartheid in South Africa ever was.
Ismail Coovadia made the statement in a letter to pro-Palestinian activists.
In it, Coovadia explained his decision to reject a symbolic gift from the Israeli government — planting trees in his honor in a national park named after South Africa.
He said Israeli policies that discriminate against Palestinians appeared to be reminiscent of his experiences under South Africa’s apartheid system. South Africa’s post-apartheid government frequently identifies with the Palestinians.
Coovadia, who completed his four-year term in January, confirmed the letter’s contents on Tuesday.
Israeli Foreign Ministry spokesman Yigal Palmor said Coovadia did not made such complaints during his term. Israel routinely rejects the apartheid comparison.
Michael Ben-Yair, Israel’s attorney general from 1993 to 1996, has written that following the Six Day War in June 1967, “We enthusiastically chose to become a colonial society, ignoring international treaties, expropriating lands, transferring settlers from Israel to the occupied territories, engaging in theft and finding justification for all these activities.
“Passionately desiring to keep the occupied territories, we developed two judicial systems: one ? progressive, liberal ? in Israel; and the other ? cruel, injurious ? in the occupied territories. In effect, we established an apartheid regime in the occupied territories immediately following their capture.”
That oppressive regime exists to this day. Avraham Burg, Israel’s Knesset Speaker from 1999 to 2003 and former chairman of the Jewish Agency for Israel, has long determined that “Israel must shed its illusions and choose between racist oppression and democracy,” insisting the only way to maintain total Jewish control over all of historic Palestine would be to “abandon democracy” and “institute an efficient system of racial separation here, with prison camps and detention villages.” He has also called Israel “the last colonial occupier in the Western world.”
Yossi Sarid, who served as a member of the Knesset between 1974 and 2006, has written of Israel’s “segregation policy” that “what acts like apartheid, is run like apartheid and harasses like apartheid, is not a duck – it is apartheid.”
Yossi Paritzky, former Knesset and Cabinet minister, writing about the systematic institutionalization and legalization of racial and religious discrimination in Israel, stated that Israel does not act like a democracy in which “all citizens regardless of race, religious, gender or origin are entitled to equality.” Rather, by implementing more and more discriminatory laws that treat Palestinians as second-class citizens, “Israel decided to be like apartheid?era South Africa, and some will say even worse countries that no longer exist.”
Shulamit Aloni, another former Knesset and Cabinet member, has written that “the state of Israel practices its own, quite violent, form of Apartheid with the native Palestinian population.”
In 2008, the Association of Civil Rights in Israel released its annual human rights report which found that the dynamic between settlers, soldiers and native Palestinians in the occupied West Bank was “reminiscent, in many and increasing ways, of the apartheid regime in South Africa.”
Ehud Olmert, when he was Prime Minister, told a Knesset committee meeting, “For sixty years there has been discrimination against Arabs in Israel. This discrimination is deep?seated and intolerable” and repeatedly warned that if “we face a South African-style struggle for equal voting rights (also for the Palestinians in the territories), then, as soon as that happens, the State of Israel is finished.”
Ehud Barak has admitted that “[a]s long as in this territory west of the Jordan river there is only one political entity called Israel it is going to be either non-Jewish, or non-democratic. If this bloc of millions of Palestinians cannot vote, that will be an apartheid state.”
Shlomo Gazit, former member of Palmach, an elite unit of the Haganah, wrote in Ha’aretz that “in the present situation, unfortunately, there is no equal treatment for Jews and Arabs when it comes to law enforcement. The legal system that enforces the law in a discriminatory way on the basis of national identity, is actually maintaining an apartheid regime.”
Last summer, Knesset minister Ahmed Tibi told the Jerusalem Post that “keeping the status quo will deepen apartheid in Israel as it did in South Africa,” while Gabriela Shalev, former Israeli ambassador to the UN, told The Los Angeles Times last year that, in terms of public opinion of Israel, “I have the feeling that we are seen more like South Africa once was.”
Council on Foreign Relations member Stephen Roberts, after returning from a trip to Israel and the West Bank, wrote in The Nation that “Israel has created a system of apartheid on steroids, a horrifying prison with concrete walls as high as twenty-six feet, topped with body-ravaging coils of razor wire.”
In April 2012, Benjamin Netanyahu’s own nephew, Jonathan Ben Artzi, wrote that Israel’s “policies of segregation and discrimination that ravaged (and still ravage) my country and the occupied Palestinian territories” undoubtedly fit the definition of Apartheid.
Linguist, cultural anthropologist, and Hebrew University professor David Shulman wrote in May 2012 in The New York Review of Books that there already exists “a single state between the Jordan River and the sea” controlled by Israel and which fits the definition of an “ethnocracy.” He continues:
“Those who recoil at the term ‘apartheid’ are invited to offer a better one; but note that one of the main architects of this system, Ariel Sharon, himself reportedly adopted South African terminology, referring to the noncontiguous Palestinian enclaves he envisaged for the West Bank as ‘Bantustans.’”
“For those of us who live here, it is something we take for granted. But visitors from abroad cannot believe their eyes: segregated education, segregated businesses, separate entertainment venues, different languages, separate political parties … and of course, segregated housing. In many senses, this is the way members of both groups want things to be, but such separation only contributes to the growing mutual alienation of Jews and Arabs.”
“Despite its best intentions, Israel has created a system of separation in the West Bank which fits the textbook definition of apartheid. According to Michael Ben-Yair, Attorney General of Israel throughout the nineties, “In effect, we established an apartheid regime in the Occupied Territories immediately following their capture. That oppressive regime exists to this day.” He is not alone in asserting this perspective. Many notable Israelis like Meron Benvenisti, Akiva Elder, and Shulamit Aloni, to mention a few, agree that Israeli style apartheid is a reality.”
Women’s emancipation in the Arab region is closely linked to the regimes under which we live, regimes which are supported by the US in most cases, and the struggle between Israel and Palestine has an important impact on the political situation. Besides, how can we speak of liberation for Palestinian women without speaking of their right to have a land on which to live? How can we speak about Arab women’s rights in Palestine and Israel without opposing the racial discrimination exercised against them by the Israeli regime?
the ASA released a ruling on 5 July 2011, dismissing each and every complaint made by the SAJBD against the advert and instead ruled in favor of the submissions made by SA Artists Against Apartheid. The ASA also refused to provide any sanctions in favor of the SAJBD.
Reggae DJ, “The Admiral”, and member of the SA Artists Against Apartheid collective, welcomed today’s decision:
“The ASA decision is significant due to our own history of Apartheid. The decision sends a clear message to the Zionist lobby that the time has come for an end to the baseless accusations of “discrimination” and “hate speech” whenever criticism of Israel is voiced. Calling Israel an Apartheid state is legitimate because Israel practices Apartheid. The boycott of such an oppressive regime should be supported as it was in our own Anti-Apartheid freedom struggle.”
“-522 roadblocks and checkpoints obstruct Palestinian movement in the West Bank, compared to 503 in July 2010.
– So far in 2011, an additional 495 ad-hoc ‘flying’ checkpoints obstructed movement around the West Bank each month (on average), compared to 351 in the past two years.
– 200,000 people from 70 villages are forced to use detours between two to five times longer than the direct route to their closest city due to movement restrictions.”
In July 2008, 21 South African activists, including ANC members, visited Israel and Occupied Palestine. Their conclusion was unanimous. Israel is far worse than apartheid as former Deputy Minister of Health and current MP Nozizwe Madlala-Routledge explained:
“What I see here is worse than what we experienced – the absolute control of people’s lives, the lack of freedom of movement, the army presence everywhere, the total separation and the extensive destruction we saw….racist ideology is also reinforced by religion, which was not the case in South Africa.”
Sunday Times editor, Mondli Makhanya, went further: “When you observe from afar you know that things are bad, but you do not know how bad. Nothing can prepare you for the evil we have seen here. It is worse, worse, worse than everything we endured. The level of apartheid, the racism and the brutality are worse than the worst period of apartheid.”
I have been to the Occupied Palestinian Territory, and I have witnessed the racially segregated roads and housing that reminded me so much of the conditions we experienced in South Africa under the racist system of Apartheid. I have witnessed the humiliation of Palestinian men, women, and children made to wait hours at Israeli military checkpoints routinely when trying to make the most basic of trips to visit relatives or attend school or college, and this humiliation is familiar to me and the many black South Africans who were corralled and regularly insulted by the security forces of the Apartheid government.
Parallels Between Apartheid South Africa & Israeli Policies : Quotes
“We know too well that our freedom is incomplete without the freedom of Palestinians.” — President Nelson Mandela, Pretoria, December 4, 1997
“Israel, like South Africa, is an apartheid state.” — Former South African President Hendrick Verwoerd, Rand Daily Mail, November 23, 1961
“When I come here and see the situation [in the Palestinian territories], I find that what is happening here is 10 times worse than what I had experienced in South Africa. This is Apartheid.”
– Arun Ghandi
“As someone who lived in apartheid South Africa and who has visited Palestine I say with confidence that Israel is an apartheid state. In fact, I believe that some of the atrocities committed against the South Africans by the erstwhile apartheid regime in South Africa pale in comparison to those committed against the Palestinians.” – Willie Madisha, in a letter supporting CUPE Ontario’s resolution.
“They support Zionism, a version of global racist domination and apartheid based on the doctrine that Jews are superior to Arabs and therefore have a right to oppress them and occupy their country.” – Current COSATU President, Sidumo Dlamini.
But we can also say that the practical manifestations of Israeli apartheid are in many ways worse than South African apartheid ever was.There was never a “security wall” built around Bophuthatswana or any of the other Bantustans. There was never a time when only certain people could drive on certain roads. There was never a serious debate about the right of exiles and refugees to return to South Africa. Therefore, over and above your situation containing the essence of apartheid, it is in many ways worse than apartheid, and we call on the world community to condemn the Israeli occupation as such.
Yours is also, in our view, a typical colonial situation whereby the colonizers claim the lives and land of the colonized. Furthermore, your situation is exacerbated by the West satisfying their guilt for the Holocaust at your expense. We reject this utterly and call on the West and their allies across the world to take responsibility for the situation that they have created.
‘Israel discriminates against Palestinians in the West Bank and East Jerusalem in favour of half a million Israeli settlers. Its restrictions on freedom of movement, manifested in countless humiliating checkpoints, resemble the “pass laws” of apartheid. Its destruction of Palestinian homes resemble the destruction of homes belonging to blacks under apartheid’s Group Areas Act. The confiscation of Palestinian farms under the pretext of building a security wall brings back similar memories. And so on. Indeed, Israel has gone beyond apartheid South Africa in constructing separate (and unequal) roads for Palestinians and settlers.
Apartheid’s security police practiced torture on a large scale. So do the Israeli security forces. There were many political prisoners on Robben Island but there are more Palestinian political prisoners in Israeli jails.
Apartheid South Africa seized the land of blacks for whites. Israel has seized the land of Palestinians for half a million settlers and for the purposes of constructing a security wall within Palestinian territory – both of which are contrary to international law.’
The Russell Tribunal verdict (Johannesburg Nov 7/2011): ” The Tribunal finds that Israel subjects the Palestinian people to an institutionalised regime of domination amounting to apartheid as defined under international law. This discriminatory regime manifests in varying intensity and forms against different categories of Palestinians depending on their location. The Palestinians living under colonial military rule in the Occupied Palestinian Territory are subject to a particularly aggravated form of apartheid. Palestinian citizens of Israel, while entitled to vote, are not part of the Jewish nation as defined by Israeli law and are therefore excluded from the benefits of Jewish nationality and subject to systematic discrimination across the broad spectrum of recognised human rights. Irrespective of such differences, the Tribunal concludes that Israel’s rule over the Palestinian people, wherever they reside, collectively amounts to a single integrated regime of apartheid.”
Settlers Attack Local, International Law Professors In Hebron: Palestinian researcher, professors of Refugees Studies at Oxford University, Abbas Shiblaq, stated that “this attack is a proof of the fascist nature of the Israeli occupation and its settlers” who aim at uprooting the Palestinians from their homeland, and a proof that Israel’s policy if based on “voiding the other”.
Shiblaq described the situation in Hebron and the illegal Israeli violations as a system that is deeper and larger than the former apartheid system in Southern Africa. He added that what the media reports about the violations carried out by extremist settlers and Israeli soldiers, in Hebron, barely reflects %5 of what is happening on the ground.
“We see culture as a propaganda tool of the first rank, and I do not differentiate between propaganda and culture.” (Ha’aretz; 21/09/05)
An example:
Linkin Park played Israel 15 November 2010, and posed with Nir Barkat, Mayor of Jerusalem when the day before his engineer announced 3,000 more jews only homes including in East Jerusalem.
Recently, the US-based Creative Community for Peace (CCFP) — a group of US entertainment industry leaders — was formed with the explicit intent to crush the BDS movement as it pertains to the cultural boycott against Israel. In an October article, the Jerusalem Post reported that:
Creative Community For Peace (CCFP) pledges to use a wide range of measures to bolster the resolve of artists who sign contracts to perform in or travel to Israel and then face calls from various “boycott groups” to cancel their trips, according one of its founders, Steve Schnur.
Schnur is a worldwide executive of music and marketing for Electronic Arts and president of Artwerk Music Group, and is responsible for licensing music for some of the most popular computer video games.
“We felt that if we could create a place where artists can get information from other artists and from people they know who understand what Israel is really about – the freedom, the democracy and equal rights – and not rely on the disinformation they’re given about ‘apartheid’ Israel, then maybe we could change things,” Schnur said in a phone call this week from Los Angeles.
“Our aim isn’t to applaud the fact that artists have come to Israel, but to enable others to continue to go there.”
The boycott issue has always been present with regard to international artists and Israel, but in the past few years, pro-Palestinian organizations abroad have stepped up efforts to bombard scheduled acts with e-mails, letters and Facebook campaigns urging them to cancel.
CCFP is also closely linked to StandWithUs (SWU), a US-based pro-Israel and anti-boycott organization devoted to expanding Israeli propaganda on US college campuses and crushing Palestine solidarity activism in local communities. As The Electronic Intifada reported, SWU has tight ties with the Israeli government to combat BDS.
The list is a long one: Preventing the funding of propeace and pro-human rights organizations, intervening within the judicial system and politicizing the appointment of Supreme Court justices, challenging the status of Arabic – the mother tongue of over 20 percent of the country’s population – as an official language, threatening to intervene in the curriculum of the country’s universities, turning a blind eye to attacks on left-wing peace activists, forcing an oath of loyalty on those citizens whose ethnic and national background is neither Jewish nor Zionist, and the rounding up, imprisonment and physical expulsion of helpless refugees without the right to a fair hearing or trial.
…
It has become almost second nature for Israelis to view the Arab and Palestinian residents of the country as citizens with lesser rights than those of the Jewish majority. But the ease with which those rights have been denied, is now spreading to the Jewish majority.
So who is driving who into the sea? “In the case of South Africa the aim of apartheid was to set up a situation where blacks were confined to Bantustans, but there was no intention to drive the black people out of the area all together. They wanted to exploit the labor of the black people. This is the big difference with the overriding purpose of the apartheid system across of Mandate Palestine. The overriding purpose here is population transfer. The idea is to drive the Palestinians out completely and to bring the Jewish settler population in, so it becomes an exclusively Jewish state.”
Israel’s gone way beyond apartheid – Frank Barat interviews Jeff Halper, who says: ‘Prisoners can rise up in the prison yards but prison guards have all the rights in the world to put them down. That’s what Israel has come to. They are terrorists and we have the right to put them down. In a sense Israel has succeeded with the international community, and the US especially, in taking out of this situation the political. It’s now solely an issue of security, just like in prisons. It’s another concept that does not have any legal reference today but we’d like to put that in because warehousing is not only in Israel. Warehousing exists all over the capitalist world. ‘
Samer Abdelnour in Al Shabaka: “Much analysis of Israeli apartheid focuses on comparisons with South Africa. Al-Shabaka Policy Advisor Samer Abdelnour argues that the specific characteristics of Israel’s unique brand of apartheid need to be better understood in order to successfully dismantle it. He identifies three inter-locking dimensions of Israeli apartheid: physical, architecture, and ideological. Examining apartheid through these dimensions, he reveals Israeli apartheid to be far more sophisticated than that of South Africa and suggests directions for thinking and action to overcome Israel apartheid.”
From Tunisia, to Lebanon, Egypt, Syria, Algeria, Jordan and Yemen, people are rising up against the waning US empire’s puppet dictators while the US pays begrudging lip service to their struggle or like Biden, sacrifices the democratic aspirations of Egyptians to Israel and US geopolitical scheming (he means resources and militarisation). The price, once again for empire, is worth it? After all, these are only brown people who happen to be living where the resources which the US covets are situated. Several patronising US blogocrats of various shades of white supremacy have expressed less than admirable support for the courageous Egyptian people – surely these annoying foreign brown people should wait until the empire tells them it is convenient for them to pursue regime change, the government leaders they acquire after the revolution may be even more unappealing than their current torturous US allied villains. For neocon Laurent Murawiec afficionados, the dream of Egypt being the ‘prize’ for empire is surely now a nightmare.
Later, @PJCrowley tweeted “We are concerned that communication services, including the Internet, social media and even this #tweet, are being blocked in #Egypt.” #
The people’s demonstrations express heartfelt grassroots impatience to be rid of oppression – an impetus echoed also by Iranians attempting to dislodge their current repressive nexus. In Egypt,
At least four persons have died so far, 600 have been arrested and many more injured. Protests are flaring up in Cairo, 6th of October City, Suez, Mahalla al-Kubra and Alexandria.
“Young people are standing in the way of heavily armed armored vehicles and stopping them. People are genuinely frustrated,” Khaled al-Balashy, editor-in-chief of al-Badil newspaper told IPS.
“That was the first time I see people literally sacrificing their lives in face of police brutality,” al-Balashy said. “They think nothing worse could happen to them. This is unprecedented. And the changes will be equally unprecedented. It is a matter of time.”
Diaa Rashwan, an analyst with the semi-official al-Ahram Center for Strategic Studies noted that the protests are now calling for regime change, not for the usual government benefits or reduction in food prices.
… the administration at least twice threatened to cut funding to the Palestinian Authority if elections were called and anyone other than Mahmoud Abbas and Salam Fayyad remained in power.
And it actively works with Israeli and Palestinian security services to deny the democratic will of Palestinians.
What is clear, then, is that Obama not only prefers the status quo, but the United States will actively subvert democracy in order to ensure that governments that will follow its policies remain in power.
If the administration has taken such an anti-democratic line with Palestinians, imagine how it must feel about the protests that have just exploded in Egypt, where substantive democratic change and a truly representative government would no doubt be far less amenable to US policies and strategic objectives regarding Israel and the war on terror than is Mubarak’s.
Faced with the overwhelming calumny and injustice of its oppressors evidenced in the Palestine Papers, dispossessed Palestinians are steadfast, continuing to insist on their rights.
For Amar al-Masaid, 28, history was something he lived with every day. “Our country was taken by force,” he said, amid jumbo boxes of cornflakes, tins of spam and chocolate Santa Clauses in his family’s shop. “They invaded us. They are a colonial power. We will never make any compromise. We will never sell our land. It would be better to stay with the Jews under occupation that give up our rights.”
His family had fled from Deir Aban in 1948; his father still has the deeds to the land they lost. “If you ask a little baby in these camps where their home is, they will answer you,” he said.
On cue, seven-year-old Dahoud and his sister Ranim, five, arrived to buy dried coconut, sent by their mother. Where did they come from? “Palestine,” said the boy; his sister whispered “Al-Maliha,” an Arab village south of Jerusalem until 1948, now home to a huge Israeli shopping mall and sports stadium.
According al-Masaid, the refugees live in a prison. Look around you, he said gesturing at the wall looming a couple of hundred yards away.
Nearby, 63-year-old Mousa al-Masaid, wearing a red-and-white keffiyeh, was passionately dismissive about the recent disclosures of negotiations. “I don’t care what they say on al-Jazeera,” he said. “All I care about is going back to my homeland. You want me to give up my land for peace? To hell with peace! I would rather live under the rule of monkeys than give up my land for peace.”
The Palestinian negotiators did not represent him, he said, and had no right to bargain away his homeland on his behalf.
The offices of the Palestinian ambassador to the UK have been occupied by a group of students who are demanding new Palestinian national council elections.
At 1pm today, around a dozen Palestinian students from a number of British universities arrived at the Palestinian general delegation to the UK in Hammersmith, west London.
Although they had made an appointment to see the ambassador, Professor Manuel Hassassian, they arrived in large numbers and with computers and banners.
A spokesman for the students said they had been moved to stage a peaceful sit-in by the release of leaked Palestinian papers over the last few days.
“The documents confirmed what we had known all along — that they are out of touch with the people,” the spokesman said.
As well as calling for new elections, the students — from Oxford, SOAS, LSE, City and Westminster universities — are demanding a more inclusive political process that reflects and engages all Palestinians.
“We are ready to stay as long as necessary until our message has been received and understood,” he said.
The ambassador, whose office has been occupied, has asked the students to leave the room but has told them they are welcome to remain in the building.
“They told me they wanted to hold a sit-in in my office. I told them: ‘You’re welcome. This is your embassy. This is your home’,” he said.
Hassassian also said he had agreed to pass their demands on to the Palestinian government, but needed his office back if he was to relay them.
“We are being very hospitable and we hope that they respect our hospitality,” he said.
Two Metropolitan police officers entered the embassy a little after 4pm, and chatted to the ambassador and protesters.
The Palestinian students have issued a demand for the Palestinian Liberation Organisation to be restored “as the sole legitimate representative of the Palestinian people”.
@SultanAlQassemi Hassan Nafaa on Al Jazeera Arabic “The only replies from the govt were on the security front, no political concessions were offered” #Jan25 #
@SultanAlQassemi Hassan Nafaa “What we want is for President Mubarak to announce he will not run again for presidency or appoint his son as president” #Jan25 #
@SultanAlQassemi Hassan Nafaa “We want the parliament to be reformed. We want to hear Mubarak say ‘I understand your demands & we will comply'” #Jan25 #
@SultanAlQassemi FYI: Hassan Nafaa is Professor & Chairman of the Political Science department at Cairo University & anti-inheritance of power campaigner #
@SultanAlQassemi Poetry #Jan25 “O Security Officers, who will you protect when the Pashas flee Egypt like others have done? Carry two sheilds instead of one” #
@SultanAlQassemi Poetry of #Jan25 “And he wants to appoint his genius son for us as well? After 30 years!” Tamim Al Bargouthi poetry on Al Jazeera Mubasher. #
RT @ummhajarforpal: All known ways 2 stay online in #Egypt + HOWTO make gasmask http://wp.me/p16sn9-2QP #jan25 #bloggers Please RB & RT!!!
On “Australia Day” many Australians project yobboish nationalism and drape themselves in the flag US-style, while the self-appointed elite sneer at the ‘bogans’ and ‘bevans’. Yet elitism is another form of the purulent racism with which Australia is infested, a miasm from the colonial aristocracy with roots in British class structure along with a more recent infection from the US ‘Me, me, me’ consumerist culture which values money, power and capitalist competition over community and cooperation.
At my place, we think of Australia Day as Invasion Day, the anniversary of the day our indigenous people saw white sails on the horizon, bringing Little England and its vapid social class structure, filthy diseases and other introduced species and destructive agricultural methods. This is my poem/song about the colonialists’ invasion of Australia.
Blow the Winds
Five years gone since my mate left home
he purchased his ticket to slavery
consigned him to another land
to wait for me in purgatory.
His pretty girl cried silken tears
sent to the gallows with cotton in her ears
they said she lied by the Rule of Law
born and bred a gypsy woman.
I’ll be going now, and I’ll see you soon
Sailing beneath the rising moon,
I’ll look for you in Melbourne town,
and there’s never been a heart so torn.
I stole an heiress in a field one morn
My heart’s in tatters and my hopes are gone,
In 1825, cold and wet and barely alive
I miss my woman and the babes she’s borne,
Fated to hang by a weeping judge,
Now sailing on the winds of scorn.
Blow the winds and fill the sails
take us to hell in New South Wales
The hulks are full in England
with many more like me
Bound to be Australians
with ironclad guarantees.
Me life’s not me own, I’m a Government man,
don’t remember when me term began,
the squatter’s chains rattle in me bones
to please the whims of the English throne.
Thrown into the white man’s cell
for laughin’ late and givin’ ‘em hell,
grabbed by the coppers, ripped from the land
no white fella can understand.
In 1985 another Murri suicides,
and there’s plenty more in Australia
of scoundrels such as me
Australia would be better off
if we’d hung on English trees.
Later, @PJCrowley tweeted “We are concerned that communication services, including the Internet, social media and even this #tweet, are being blocked in #Egypt.” 