From Archbishop Desmond Tutu to Australian Friends of Palestine

Archbishop Desmond Tutu
Archbishop Desmond Tutu
“Dear Friends of Palestine in Australia

The people of the world have been shocked and horrified at the recent brutal and disproportionate assault on the people of Gaza. Over 2000 people have died, hundreds of them children. The infrastructure of Gaza, already greatly damaged in previous similar attacks, is now completely degraded, with basics such as water and electricity denied to the vast majority of the population. Thousands are without shelter and medicines and 80% of the population are dependent on UN assistance.

The world waits while representatives of Israel and the Palestinians negotiate a ceasefire and we hope that there will be peace. But peace will not come until the illegal occupation of the Palestinians ends. It will not come to Gaza until Israel and Egypt lift the 8 year siege that has crippled the Gazan economy and squeezed the population, creating enormous hardships for the people there.

Decades of reliance on diplomacy to deliver a just outcome in Palestine have come to nothing. But a new hope lies in the ordinary citizens of the world. This is the worldwide non-violent movement known as the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement, or “BDS”. This movement carries the hope of millions of ordinary people who are turning the tide through economic pressure to force Israel to end its occupation of the Palestinians and participate in a just resolution to the conflict between these two peoples who deserve peace.

Many of you in Australia are part of the BDS movement. You are seen every week in different cities and towns talking to other Australians about BDS and informing them about the injustices suffered by the Palestinians. Many others of you participate individually by choosing not to buy Israeli products or the products of companies that support Israel in its illegal occupation of Palestine. Others of you refuse to buy tickets to the Israeli Film Festival, or boycott Israeli academics who come from Israeli Universities that support Israel’s policies of occupation.

Protest outside the Israeli Film Festival, Brisbane
Protest outside the Israeli Film Festival, at the Palace Centro Cinema Brisbane, August 22, 2014. Riot police stood 1 metre in front of demonstrators.

This is the power of BDS.

We in South Africa, who know about oppression and occupation and who know about the power of BDS, salute the Australian BDS movement and we join with you in calling for Israel to end the Occupation; to end the siege of Gaza. We join with you in calling on the Australian Government to demand that the occupation of the West Bank ends; for Israel to stop the illegal Israeli settlements in the West Bank; for the siege of Gaza to be permanently lifted.

We in South Africa join with you and we shout “Free Free Palestine!”

God bless you.

Archbishop Emeritus Desmond Tutu (Cape Town – South Africa)”

Through a Cage Lightly … Icke is proved wrong

Sulphur crested cockatooFrom their burgeoning colonies in the outer solar system, the Zenoids inflicted a complete blockade on Earth. A fleet of these ancient feathered beings had arrived without warning six centuries ago searching for a vulnerable region to establish their arboreal colonies. With their leaders refusing on the grounds of self-defence to set clear borders, the Zenoid colonies moved closer and closer to Earth, establishing permanent lofty fortresses as they advanced. The Zenoids promised the Earthians a planet of their own only if they would renounce resistance and accept Zenoid needs for numerical superiority and security. The colonists laid claim to one planet after another.

In vain, the Earthians struggled to confront the Zenoid occupation and gain freedom to travel the universe. Whenever the Zenoids commenced their regular assaults on Earth’s meagre defences, the Earthians fired rockets toward the gravitic force field which imprisoned them and at the invading Zenoid colonies themselves. The Earth rockets’ guidance systems and payloads were primitive and pitiful compared to the powerful Zenoid arsenal which scorched the Earth in catastrophic reprisals when the Earthian rockets retaliated against Zenoid attacks. Ingeniously, the Earthians developed communication wormholes to breach the force field and now and then pleas for assistance sped across the spacenet. As soon as they were detected, the wormholes were imploded by the Zenoids with great loss of life at the tunnel entrances on Earth.

The Zenoids shook their feathers and shrugged.

Our security is sacred and Zenoid colonies have a right to defend themselves!” their leaders trumpeted, “Did not the Supreme Feathered Being promise us a solar system? we can only be safe in a solar system of our own! it is ours and we have a right to it all, this space without beings for beings without space. We shall kill and kill and kill until the Earthians submit to our domination. With our superior technology, we will acquire these savages’ planet. Their rockets are sent to kill us. It is us or them.

With nothing to lose and nowhere else to go, the Earthians did not surrender. In desperate resistance, they fired even more rockets at the expanding Zenoid fortresses, signalling to the rest of the galaxy that support was needed urgently. Yet noone came except a few dignitaries from the Full Galactic Spectrum empire who promised sincere dialogue and peace negotiations whilst affirming the empire’s unbreakable primary relationship with the Zenoids. Earth had never been admitted into the Grand Galactic Council. Year after weary year, the Zenoids proclaimed to the Council and its sponsors that any alteration to the status quo would damage their self-evident right to self-defence and security.

With its involvement conveniently blamed on Zenoid machinations or ignored, the opportunistic Spectrum Empire armed and enabled the Zenoid colonisers in return for new weapons pretested on the Earthians and a swag of promising asteroid mining leases. As usual when there were unidollars to be harvested, the Full Galactic Spectrum empire distanced itself and its own genocidal expansionist record from the Zenoid colonists’ gross being rights violations and universal war crimes, exonerating itself and its feathered friends, always insisting on the dominant right of the Zenoids for security. In neighbouring solar systems, the Empire contentedly conducted lucrative brutal interventions and development projects while horrified beings elsewhere were distracted by devastating Zenoid crimes against the Earthians.

Powerful planets with long, dastardly histories of galactic colonisation and veiled schemes of their own supported the Zenoid invaders openly. In the Grand Galactic Council, however, some decolonised members recoiled from the actions of the Zenoids, summoned their legal advisors, ejected Zenoid diplomats and refused to trade with the colonisers. Across the galaxy, while planetary elites plotted advantage and convoluted Zenoid propaganda enveloped the newspacenet, prescient beings with consciences mobilised around the call of the Earthians to boycott the Zenoid colonies, to isolate and pressure the Zenoid rulers into changing their belligerent ways, for this tactic worked before when invaders attempted planetocide and systematic oppression of hapless pre-existing inhabitants.

As pressures mounted upon them, the Zenoids decided to strike – it was time to crush the annoying Earthians completely and conquer the final frontier. A new pretext was devised whereby the Earthians would be blamed for the coming Zenoid attack. Soon the Zenoid droneships were pummelling the bright blue planet, obliterating Earthians and their homes with abandon and impunity. From the rest of the universe, the Zenoids demanded sympathy.

Do not the rockets come from this planet Earth to attack us?” they cried. “These Earthians are using Earth and themselves as a shield! have they not sworn to drive us from the Galaxy?

In the branches of their colonies, indignant Zenoids flapped luminous wings and shrieked to each other, “We must pulverise these ground dwellers, destroy their homes, power supplies, factories, food and water! They teach their children to hate us! Kill them all, or they will breed to outnumber us! did not these Earthians use rockets, tunnels and security as excuses to murder their own colonised beings several centuries ago? Let them taste their own poison.

… TBC, or not

Related Links

Icke is a proponent of a super-duper grand unified conspiracy theory

Sonia Montez – Climbing Fences : The Occupation Song

New York-based singer, songwriter and guitarist, Sonia Montez, expressed her support last year for boycott, divestment and sanctions of apartheid Israel.

Her new song “Climbing Fences : The Occupation Song” is written in solidarity with the Palestinian people and all folks living under occupation, including in Ferguson, Missouri.

Sonia says:

“As a musician/activist, the worlds in which I live are often separated from each other. We are trained in entertainment to not mix in politics because it may alienate a potential audience.

I abhor this idea and always have. From pop culture icons like Roger Waters to John and Yoko, to the great jazz artists of the 40’s and 50’s, politics has been crucial to the evolution of art and culture. It is in this spirit that I release this free demo, rough, faltered, honest, and filled with all of the emotional rage I and many others have felt over the brutalization of our human brothers and sisters.

Download it, share it, cover it, use it, remix it, tweet it, boast it from every speaker in every city. Make these words of solidarity count, we will not close our eyes, we will not be silent, we will witness and the world will know. Let the message ring loud, FROM #FERGUSON TO #PALESTINE: #OCCUPATION IS A CRIME!”

Lyrics:

Sonia MontezClimbing Fences : The Occupation Song

Dead night
Fire in the sky
Stars are running shy
Ground bleeds in streams for you

Early little love child
Bore the burden of the hate squad
Someone watched as innocence left your eye
Climbing fences that tear you apart

How golden is our silence now?

When they come in the middle of dead night
When there’s nothing but fire in the darkened sky
Stars run shy from the bullet fight
How the ground bleeds in streams of pain for you

“Listen pretty sister
I got boys with toys to paint you red
I got silence now”

When they come in the middle of dead night
When there’s nothing but fire in the darkened sky
Stars run shy from the bullet fight
How the ground bleeds in streams of pain for you

You bleed as the world closes blinds
You scream as the pressure holds you tight
In this cage, you can’t breathe
When all you need to be is free

When they come in the middle of dead night
When there’s nothing but fire in the darkened sky
Stars run shy from the bullet fight
How the ground bleeds in streams of pain for you

Video: British Jews Against Genocide Protest

Further to the previous written report of the protest held outside the offices of the Board of Deputies of British Jews, the video above captures the testimonies of people from British Jews Against Genocide who participated.

Here’s selections from some of the powerful speeches at the event:

Selma James: I have to remind people of the stories that Jews told when they came to England to ask for English help because they were being taken to the death camps. And the Foreign Office said that the Jews were hysterical, that it wasn’t really true, that it wasn’t really happening, and when they finally convinced Churchill to bomb the tracks to Auschwitz, the Foreign Office refused to do it and I am reminded of that because today what’s happening to Palestinians is being dismissed by the media, is being demeaned by the media. It’s the same history repeating itself because the people who are being slaughtered are not being listened to, are not being taken seriously.

Yael Kahn: Intentionally Israel sees the women and the mothers and children as their main targets. Israel’s fight is not against Hamas, Israel is fighting against the people of Gaza.

Barnaby Raine: We’re here to present the other tradition in Jewish history, the tradition of solidarity of standing with the oppressed. Not just standing with Jews but standing with whoever they are when they are oppressed. So that’s why we stand with the Palestinian people and we as Jews and human beings support Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions against the state of Israel.

 

Related Links

Over 100 Jewish Survivors and Descendents of Survivors of Nazi Genocide Condemn the Massacre of Palestinians

In Support of Reinstating Professor Steven Salaita & Restoration of Academic Freedom

My email to the Chancellor of the University of Illinois, Phyllis Wise, objecting to the firing of Professor Steven Salaita and demanding his reinstatement is below. You can send one too.

Professor Steven SalaitaI am shocked and dismayed that you would end the employment of the honourable Associate Professor of American Indian Studies, Steven Salaita, due to pressure from those who place the indefensible – the genocidal actions of settler colonial Israel toward Palestinians whom it occupies, oppresses and sieges in Gaza – before academic freedom and ethical educative values.

Would you have treated Nelson Mandela and Martin Luther King similarly for their strenuous public advocacy for attainment of rights for the rightsless because racists objected to their appointments? It is not uncivil nor bigoted to challenge racism.

Should academics be gagged from expressing political analyses and opinions in public so that the tender sensibilities of racists, white supremacists and nationalists are not offended? Surely one of the roles of education is to civilise people through learning to shed their prejudices and ignorance. Further, no state or political ideology should be quarantined from critique. To punish people for critiquing the Israeli regime or any other state undermines the foundations of democracy.

What message are you sending to other academics who oppose injustice and oppression? Why side with and encourage today’s McCarthyite bullies and their witchhunt of dissenters?

Please act judiciously in the spirit of civilised values, academic freedom and democracy – restore your reputation by re-employing Steven Salaita.

Please add your support to the petition demanding Steven Salaita’s reinstatement.

Related Links

Shit and Curses, and Other Updates on the Steven Salaita Affair (Updated)
University of Illinois fires professor Steven Salaita after Gaza massacre tweets
Jewish group that sent email promising action denies role in Steven Salaita firing
USACBI Condemns UIUC Firing of Arab-American Scholar Steven Salaita
Return of the blacklist? Cowardice and censorship at the University of Illinois
AAUP Statement on Case of Steven Salaita