March 30, 2017 at 08:42 (Activism, AIPAC, Associate Post, Boycott Israel, Cartoons)
Netanyahu addressed the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions, or BDS, movement aimed at Israel, saying Israel will defend itself on the “moral battlefield… We’ll defend ourselves against slander and boycotts.”
Image by Carlos Latuff
Related report HERE
AIPAC speakers say the enemy is BDS, while ‘biggest Jewish-led protest’ surges outside
March 30, 2017 at 08:04 (anti-Semitism, Associate Post, Germany, Israel, zionist created anti_Semitism)
Freedom of speech and academic freedom are much cherished freedoms and must also be applicable to critics of politicians of the “Jewish State.” However, the relentless pro-Israel lobby thwarts this important right in Germany and in the world by using infamous and groundless accusations of anti-Semitism. We cannot and must not permit it!
By Evelyn Hecht-Galinski, English translation by Milena Rampoldi
Just 72 years after the liberation of the Auschwitz concentration camp, Jewish citizens in Germany and foreign Jews are prohibited from speaking, and are accused of Anti-Semitism. At the moment, Jewish speakers like Ilan Pappe and Moshe Zuckermann are prohibited from speaking at the conference “50 Jahre israelische Besatzung” (50 years of Israeli Occupation) which will take place in June in Frankfort. (1)
Freedom of speech and academic freedom are much cherished freedoms and must also be applicable to critics of politicians of the “Jewish State.” However, the relentless pro-Israel lobby thwarts this important right in Germany and in the world by using infamous and groundless accusations of anti-Semitism. We cannot and must not permit it!
Again, an organiser, this time the Ökohaus in Frankfort, was put under pressure by the Israel Lobby, the Jewish Community, and in its wake by the unspeakably philo-Semite mayor Becker, to cancel the rooms to the organizers of the conference. Thanks to the “special” relations to the “Jewish State” and its lobby, in Germany, it is really difficult for everyone to bear the pressure and the defamation campaigns of this lobby for a long time. (2)
There is a Jewish Community led by its president Leo Latasch, full of satisfaction after the cancellation of the rooms, hoping that the conference will not find new rooms because he fears the activities of the conference members.
Where does this person live? In the “Jewish State” where Knesset members hit each other sometimes? About what should Pappe, Zuckermann, or Paech hit each other? About their anger to collectively oppose to the illegal Zionist occupation of Palestine?
And when the mayor Becker from his office tells everyone and their dog: “Who wants to create the scene in Frankfort, is not welcome to our city,” I realize that there is anti-Semitism again in Frankfort, and that this anti-Semitism is directed against Jews who engage for the end of the decades-long illegal occupation of Palestine. This is a shame for the alleged open-minded Frankfort!
In particular the leading media are obliged to uncover the lies, instead of supporting and covering them up.
All this already happened in the past: media, artists, and intellectuals remained unjustly silent and cringed away, when it was about persecuted Jews. However, this should not be a reason to close our eyes again when Jewish perpetrators in the “Jewish State” have been ethnically cleansing, illegally occupying, and judaizing Palestine for more than half a century now under our eyes without being held accountable for it!
These endless attacks of the Israel lobby against the freedom of expression is a hit against democracy, and cannot be accepted!
However, the editor-in-chief of the Frankfurter Rundschau, Arnd Festerling, opposed it with an exceptional and brave article. And Daniel Bax did the same, by writing several articles about anti-Semitism and Islam hatred. Two of the few rays of hope in the German media landscape: (3) (4) (5) (6)
In the following the chronology of the philo-Semite destructors of freedom of opinion: (7) (8) (9)
It cannot be that a philo-Semite clique decides about political opinion leadership by excluding Jews because they raise their voice against the Apartheid regime in the “Jewish State.” It is particularly reprehensible that Jews and Christians, in short “Christian Zionists,” cooperate so profitably in this field. And again, there is an “anti-Jewish sentiment“ in Germany, produced by Jewish Anti-Semites who want to avoid any criticism of the crimes against international law and human rights committed by the “Jewish State.” Is it not a case for the International Court of Justice in Den Haag when Jewish citizens in Europe, who engage for non-anti-Semite, nonviolent BDS campaign (boycott, disinvestment, sanctions), are muzzled or get a travel ban from the alleged “democratic Jewish State?”
The new Capos are Jews against Jews, with the zealous support of “Christian-Zionist” politicians. (10)
How history is being repeated: There already were Jewish Capos, closely cooperating with Fascists. Today these new Capos – and the majority of them are Holocaust survivors – cooperate with the grandchildren of National Socialists as “values’ hypocrites” of the “German leading culture.”
What an absurd, German leading culture, pretending from Muslim refugees and immigrants to recognise the existence right of an Apartheid State, guilty of an illegal occupation for decades, by ethnically cleansing and land-grabbing from another people, and by ignoring all requests of the UN Security Council, and which does not shy away from mistreating and arresting Palestinian children and women, and which with the blocked Gaza maintains an open-air prison, like a concentration camp, with approximately 2 million people. (11) (12)
What does this “leading culture” of “Christian-Jewish” values connect? Common enemy images to hide their own crimes. The new common enemy image and object of hatred: Islam and Muslims! Palestinians and Muslims are collectively labelled as terrorists, and categorised as suspects and “dangererous.” Can this marginalization be sustained in the long term? Surely not, as it produces justified anger and hatred.
This atmosphere causes senseless prejudices against Muslims and also makes life difficult for well-intentioned people to feel well in Germany. A good integration can only be achieved, if we do not only pretend from Muslims, what we would never pretend from other religious communities like Jews.
While the Central Council of Jews, the Jewish Communities in Germany, and many international organizations, in particular in Berlin, have never distanced themselves from the “Jewish State” and its crimes against international law and human rights and from the illegal occupation of Palestine, they absurdly hold Muslim and Islamic organizations and communities collectively liable for crimes they are not liable for and with which, in opposition to Jewish representatives, have never expressed their solidarity because they refuse them.
On the other hand, Jewish Israel critics and occupation opponents are medially silenced with the support of official German politics and are denied freedom of speech. In this point, Germany 2017 is very similar to Nazi Germany.
Is this what we learnt from German history; that we have to marginalize and silence alleged “bad” Jews with the help of “good” Jews? Germany has slid from anti-Semitism into a fatal philo-Semitism, and we have to oppose all together this dangerous situation. We are not willing to accept the threat of freedom of speech by Zionist anti-Semitism.
A Jew to Zionist Fighters
by Erich Fried
What do you actually want?
Do you really want to outdo
those who trod you down
a generation ago
into your own blood
and into your own excrement
Do you want to pass on the old torture
to others now
in all its bloody and dirty detail
with all the brutal delight of torturers
as suffered by your fathers?
Do you really want to be the new Gestapo
the new Wehrmacht
the new SA and SS
and turn the Palestinians
into the new Jews?
Well then I too want,
having fifty years ago
myself been tormented for being a Jewboy
by your tormentors,
to be a new Jew with these new Jews
you are making of the Palestinians
And I want to help lead them as a free people
into their own land of Palestine
from whence you have driven them or in which you plague them
you apprentices of the Swastika
you fools and changelings of history
whose Star of David on your flags
turns ever quicker
into that damned symbol with its four feet
that you just do not want to see
but whose path you are following today
Originally posted AT
March 29, 2017 at 13:13 (DesertPeace Exclusive, Double standards, Irony, Israel, Palestine)
There is a strange headline in the Israeli Press today …. (Click on link to see report)
What about these ‘PEOPLE’? Are they all guilty? Somehow I tend to doubt it.
Needless to say, there were no reports in the Israeli Press about these PEOPLE ….. Leading one to believe that they are not considered people by the Israeli Press…
Total Number of Political Prisoners
Administrative Detainees
Child prisoners
Female prisoners
1948 Territories prisoners
East Jerusalem prisoners
Gaza prisoners
Palestinian Legislative Council members
Prisoners before Oslo
Prisoners serving a sentence above 20 years
Prisoners serving life sentences
Prisoners serving more than 20 years
Prisoners serving more than 25 years
“Since the Israeli occupation of Palestinian territory in 1967, more than 800,000 Palestinians have been detained under Israeli military orders in the occupied Palestinian territory (oPt). This number constitutes approximately 20 percent of the total Palestinian population in the oPt and as much as 40 percent of the total male Palestinian population… 8,000 Palestinian children have been arrested since 2000.”
| Type of Prisoner | Number of Prisoners |
| Total Number of Political Prisoners | 7000 |
| Administrative Detainees | 750 |
| Female prisoners | 70 |
| Child prisoners | 438 |
| Palestinian Legislative Council members | 6 |
| East Jerusalem prisoners | 450 |
| 1948 Territories prisoners | 70 |
| Gaza prisoners | 343 |
| Prisoners serving life sentences | 458 |
| Prisoners serving a sentence above 20 years | 473 |
| Prisoners serving more than 20 years | 30 |
| Prisoners serving more than 25 years | 15 |
| Prisoners before Oslo | 30 |
March 29, 2017 at 12:44 (Activism, Associate Post, DesertPeace Exclusive, Gaza, International Solidarity, Photography)
On March 25th, for the 3rd year in a row, UNRWA held a 5K run in Brooklyn’s Prospect Park. The sky was threatening, the temperature was moderate after a week of winter cold, and the rain never arrived. At 8AM people started arriving to pick up their numbers, tee shirts, and have something to eat. At 9AM about 1400 runners took off – they included babies and grandparents, some ran, some walked, some were pushed in carriages and some were in wheelchairs, one used a scooter and many were carried. It was truly a joyful family event. The Brooklyn event raised approximately $200,000 for mental health services for the children of Gaza. The people of Gaza will see photos and videos of the event – they will see that good people are thinking of them and trying to help. There will be 4 more 5K runs in other U.S. cities. The people of Gaza will not be forgotten!
Photos © by Bud Korotzer, Report by Chippy Dee
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March 28, 2017 at 07:57 (Associate Post, Cartoons, Gaza, YouTube)
Carlos Latuff expresses his solidarity and support for the Palestinian People, with a condemnation for Israel’s crimes against humanity in Gaza
March 27, 2017 at 12:06 (Activism, AIPAC, Videos)
Activists from the IfNotNow group entered a conference held by the America Israel Public Affairs Committee Sunday, demanding that American Jews stop supporting what they say are Israeli abuses toward the Palestinians.
Security at the AIPAC conference, the largest pro-Israel conference of the year, was extremely strict and according to IfNotNow members, the four activists purchased tickets as AIPAC delegates in order to gain access to the building. The IfNotNow activists dropped banners from the center’s third floor stating that their group “reject AIPAC and the occupation” before security guards removed them.
AIPAC delegates watching the from the hallways booed the protestors as they were taken out. Most participants, however, were spread out in conference rooms and were not aware of the protest taking place.
About 15,000 participants are expected to attend the three-day AIPAC conference that began Sunday, where top Israeli and American leaders are discussing Middle East policy in the first major meeting since the November elections.
RELATED ….. (Click on link)
AIPAC Revoked Credentials Of IfNotNow Activists Registered To Conference
Meanwhile ….. outside the conference
And a LiveStream from yesterday …
March 27, 2017 at 10:36 (DesertPeace Exclusive, What you didn't know BUT should)
March 27, 2017 at 10:00 (Book Review, Ethnic Cleansing, Guest Post, Interview, Israel, Palestine)
I regard Zionism as being the antithesis of everything that is decent, humane and just. As for anti-Zionism, to me, it has no special meaning because I am opposed any individual or organisation — irrespective of ethnicity, religion, or political ideology — that in any way violates the rights of others.
By Milena Rampoldi. In the following my interview with the author William Hanna about his new novel entitled Hiramic Brotherhood: Ezekiel’s Temple Prophecy. Set against a backdrop of hatred and violence in the Middle East,the novel delves into the issue of Israel’s ethnic cleansing and addresses racism in the Middle East.
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March 26, 2017 at 14:42 (BEX Alert)
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March 26, 2017 at 12:33 (Boycott Israel, Israel, Palestine, zionist harassment)
Palestinian society has condemned Israel’s arrest and interrogation of Omar Barghouti, a co-founder of the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) movement as the next step in Israel’s fight against the BDS movement as a whole.
Image by Carlos Latuff
March 23, 2017 at 10:05 (Corrupt Politics, Israel)
A growing exodus of young Israelis to Berlin has not only shocked Israel’s far right leadership but has highlighted the growing disillusionment with Zionism …
Watch this video first, then read the article …
LANGUAGE WARNING: Gavin McInnes of TheRebel.media winds up his first visit to Israel by sharing what he’s learned about its people!
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A third of Jewish Israelis would leave the country if they could, according to a poll conducted by Masa Israeli, a group looking at the divisions of Jewish society in Israel.
It found that secular Jews were the most likely to want to immigrate, with 36% saying they would leave the country if they could. Orthodox Jews were the least likely to want to immigrate; only 7% said they would leave.
The poll, which was reported by the Walla! news site, found that while 44% of secular Jewish Israelis identify as Israelis foremost, 83% of traditional and 90% of religious Jewish Israelis identify as Jews foremost.
The poll was conducted ahead of a conference called the “Israeli Journey to Change” in the Knesset which is looking for common ground in Israel.
“The survey data indicates a problem with a sense of identity, connection and belonging to the people, to the land and to the state among a growing part of society in Israel and that reality already has created a rift and split in all of Israeli society,” said Masa Israeli director, Uri Cohen.
March 22, 2017 at 13:15 (Apartheid, Israel, Palestine, Women)
Historically, some women, including the richest and most prominent, have identified themselves with a feminism that ignores race and class, and thus ignores most women, who are directly impacted by poverty, racism, war and occupation, and environmental devastation in the industrial and non-industrial world. Such feminists celebrate the women who have broken the glass ceiling and moved into the 1%. For them, feminism means the right of women to be equal to men in managing capitalism with its exploitation, occupation, racism and underlying it all, sexism.
Drawing by Rana Bishara, 2015: ‘RIP Martyrs, Nour and Baby Rahaf- Gaza’
Attacking the International Women’s Strike on March 8, supporters of Israel argued that the decolonization of Palestine has no place in feminism and further asked if there is a place for Zionists in the feminist movement. We turn the question around and ask if the occupation of Palestine, the bombings of Gaza, the apartheid that applies two separate and unequal systems to Israel’s relationship to Palestinians–can be compatible with feminism? While Israel’s apologists were posing such questions, the Israeli army, as reported by the Palestinian Center for Human Rights, was busy shutting down two events in Jerusalem marking International Women’s Day.
Had Zionists who call themselves feminists understood the International Women’s Strike (IWS) as reflective of an indivisible sense of justice, they would have readily realized that the IWS call cannot tolerate racism. An inclusive feminism has rightfully rejected the Zionist justification of Israel’s violation of the rights of millions of Palestinian women and girls, both refugees and those living under barbaric occupation and siege.
Historically, some women, including the richest and most prominent, have identified themselves with a feminism that ignores race and class, and thus ignores most women, who are directly impacted by poverty, racism, war and occupation, and environmental devastation in the industrial and non-industrial world. Such feminists celebrate the women who have broken the glass ceiling and moved into the 1%. For them, feminism means the right of women to be equal to men in managing capitalism with its exploitation, occupation, racism and underlying it all, sexism.
At its root, feminism is a movement demanding liberation for women. The struggle for women’s rights under the banner of feminism cannot meaningfully exist without addressing and working to eliminate oppression rooted in racism, colonialism and capitalism. This is the case for women in many countries who support the feminism of the 99%. In other words, grassroots women are not merely the backdrop but the central concern of their movement. Accordingly, the platform of the International Women’s Strike lifted up many of the most crucial issues undermining women’s survival around the world: an end to gender violence, reproductive justice for all, labor rights, social programs, and an end to environmental degradation—in short, an anti-racist and anti-imperialist agenda.
In this new climate, what is happening to Palestinian women is not a detail but a vital question. As a result, Rasmea Odeh was one of the women invited to be part of the leadership of the U.S. strike.
Rasmea Odeh is a Chicago-based Palestinian community leader who has diligently and persistently fought for the empowerment of Arab immigrant women by providing leadership development and English language services, as well as alleviating the isolation experienced by newly arrived immigrant families.
Ms. Odeh was subjected to torture and sexual assault for resisting colonization and occupation. Her life story embodies the experience of all women who have survived racist state violence. The false accusations against Ms. Odeh, repeated by self-identified Zionists are malicious and intended to criminalize Ms. Odeh and her supporters. This has the effect of legitimizing the use of torture against political prisoners as a means to coerce information to justify their imprisonment.
What has happened to Ms. Odeh at the hands of Israel is replicated all over the globe by repressive and imperialist governments. The feminism of the 99% which is now emerging rejects this persecution and torture, wherever it takes place.
Zionist feminism is an oxymoron. It may have had a shared legacy with white-women-only feminism but it does not reflect the conviction of today’s activists who refuse to stand by the notion of justice for some of us while denying justice to others. We reject Zionism and Zionist feminism. A growing number of women are recognizing that the feminism that does not confront capitalism, racism, and colonialism will not lead to liberation, just as there is no liberation possible without confronting sexism. Any way forward must overcome the voices of selective feminism that defend systems of oppression and try to silence our voices.
Rabab Abdulhadi is an Associate Professor of Ethnic Studies/Race and Resistance Studies and the Senior Scholar of the Arab and Muslim Ethnicities and Diasporas Initiative, at the College of Ethnic Studies, San Francisco State University. She is the co-editor of the award-winning anthology, Arab and Arab American Feminisms: Gender, Violence and Belonging and her work has appeared in dozens of journals on gender and justice (Syracuse University Press) and co-founder and editorial board member of the Islamophobia Studies Journal. Abdulhadi is co-chair of Feminists for Justice in Palestine, the interest group that initiated and organized that NWSA campaign for BDS in 2015.
Suzanne Adely is a global labor human rights lawyer and activist. She is a member of the International Women’s Strike (IWS) U.S. Planning Committee, co-chair of the National Lawyers Guild International Committee, bureau member of the International Association of Democratic Lawyers and an organizer with the US Palestine Community Network and the Palestine Right to Return Coalition.
Angela Davis emerged as a prominent activist in the 1960s as a leader of the Communist Party USA, and had close relations with the Black Panther Party. She co-founded Critical Resistance, an organization working to abolish the prison-industrial complex and was a professor (now retired) at the University of California, Santa Cruz, in its History of Consciousness Department and a former director of the university’s Feminist Studies department.
Selma James is an activist, political thinker, and writer. She is the founder of the International Wages for Housework Campaign and helped launch the Global Women’s Strike. She is the author of numerous publications, including, most recently, Sex, Race and Class — The Perspective of Winning: A Selection of Writings 1952-2011. While married to and involved in political work with the late C.L.R. James, Selma wrote her seminal 1952 essay, “A Woman’s Place.”
March 22, 2017 at 09:49 (Activism, Associate Post, DesertPeace Exclusive, Iraq War, Photography)
On March 19th, these words were the chant which resounded from about two hundred people gathered on the steps of the main NYC public library, and their march from the library to the U.S. military recruiting station surrounded by a massive electronic American flag at Times Square. This event took place on the anniversary of the 14th year of the American attack on Iraq and its continuing war.
Photos © by Bud Korotzer, Report by Chippy Dee
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March 21, 2017 at 10:35 (Africa, Associate Post, Cartoons)
There’s a lack of food, but plenty of ammunition
Image by Carlos Latuff
See this related report (Click on link)
March 21, 2017 at 10:18 (Guest Post, Interview, Israel, Palestine, Two State Solution)
In the following my interview with Jeremy R. Hammond of Foreign Policy Journal. I talked to him about Palestine, journalism, US foreign politics, and about Zionism as a colonialist project.
By Milena Rampoldi
Do you believe the two-state solution is definitively buried?
Israel and the US certainly have been working hard for decades to bury it, but, no, I do not believe they have succeeded. On the contrary, I think right now there is a unique opportunity for the Palestinians to move forward and accomplishing an end to the Israeli occupation, which is essentially equivalent to implementing the two-state solution. The leadership should pursue legal remedy for the Occupying Power’s crimes against the Palestinian people through the international mechanisms that have been available to Palestine since the UN recognized it as a state in 2012; most specifically, through the International Criminal Court (ICC).
What do you believe the next moves of the Trump administration will be in Palestine/Israel and Middle East?
He’ll likely try to pick up the baton from the previous administration and make a feeble and vain effort to restore credibility to the US-led so-called “peace process”. He might, for example, try to persuade the Netanyahu government to implement some kind of limited scaling back of Israel’s illegal settlement activity in the West Bank. The good news is that with Trump in the Oval Office, it seems unlikely the “peace process” could regain any traction even among other governments of the world (it has long since ceased to have any credibility among the publics of the world).
This presents the Palestinian leadership with an opportunity. They must take advantage of the political leverage they gain so long as the “peace process” is dead on account of Israel’s refusal to even limit its illegal activities. If the Palestinian Authority (PA) won’t do what is necessary, the Palestinian people should rise up and dissolve that body – which the PLO has the authority to do – and find new leadership who will.
For me personally, Israel is a neo-colonialist project. What do you think about it?
It is certainly a neo-colonialist project. Going back to the Mandate era, the League of Nations’ Palestine Mandate was literally drafted by the organized Zionists, the aim being to implement an occupation regime that would accommodate their goal of displacing and dispossessing the Arab inhabitants with mass waves of Jewish immigration. The idea was that the right to self-determination of Palestine’s inhabitants wouldnot be respected until the Jews became a majority. This was in keeping with the British and Zionists’ concept of “the democratic ideal” (as discussed between Lord Arthur Balfour and Zionist leader Chaim Weizmann). It was a colonialist project from the outset, and so remains today.
Tell us about your books!
In late 2008, when Israel began its 22-day full-scale military assault on Gaza dubbed “Operation Cast Lead”, I watched with disgust how the US mainstream media waged a propaganda war against the public, a systematic campaign of deception that served the purpose of manufacturing consent for the US government’s support for Israel’s war crimes against the civilian population of Gaza. I became determined to write a book about it to set the record straight. (My coverage of the US’s support for Israel’s war crimes during that conflict resulted in me receiving a Project Censored Award.)
But I didn’t just want to write about that operation. I wanted to explain the whole conflict in context, to help others understand why this conflict has persisted for so long. Only by fully understanding what the greatest obstacles are can we determine how to move forward. What is required is a paradigm shift, a change in the way the public perceives this issue. We need to fight the propaganda and get the truth out. That is why I set out writing Obstacle to Peace: The US Role in the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict (2016)
But before I could explain contemporary events, I would need to provide the necessary historical background and explain what the root causes of this conflict are. That would require examining the period from the rise of the Zionist movement in the late 1800s through to the establishment of the state of Israel in 1948 via the ethnic cleansing of Palestine. So I ended up splintering my book idea and writing a short book titled The Rejection of Palestinian Self-Determination: The Struggle for Palestine and the Roots of the Israeli-Arab Conflict (2009).
Obstacle to Peace presents historical context as necessary in order to understand more recent events (it focuses primarily on the last decade), but readers will even get more out of it if they first read The Rejection of Palestinian Self-Determination as a primer to understanding how the conflict originated.Obstacle to Peace will then help readers understand why the conflict persists, how the mainstream media serve to help perpetuate it, and what needs to happen for peace and justice to finally be realized.
How to engage for Palestine today as human rights activists, writer and journalists?
Everyone has their own strengths in terms of knowledge and skills, and it’s up to the individual to determine how best to apply those skills toward achieving peace and justice. My own strengths include research, analysis, and writing, so that is where I’ve focused my energy. I can’t advise others how to focus their energy without knowing their individual strengths. Generally, however, we must continually educate ourselves and then share that knowledge with others until a tipping point is reached and the necessary paradigm shift occurs at which point it will become politically infeasible for the status quo to persist any longer.
Which are the main objectives of Foreign Policy Journal?
I established FPJ to serve as an antidote to the propagandistic reporting of the mainstream media, which serve the role of manufacturing consent for government policy. I’m borrowing this phrase from Edward Herman and Noam Chomsky, from their book Manufacturing Consent; they were in turn borrowing the phrase from Walter Lipmann, who had written in the early 20th century about the need for the ruling elites to manufacture the consent of the ruled for the policies they wished to implement to pursue their own self-interests (as opposed to the interests of the public).
It’s my goal with FPJ to help others become better informed about the true nature of US foreign policy and international affairs, as this is a task at which the mainstream media have utterly failed us.
Originally written FOR
March 20, 2017 at 08:16 (Apartheid, Israel, Palestine, United Nations)
Apartheid has been considered in the annals of the United Nations and world public opinion to be second only to genocide in the hierarchy of criminality”,
And
Genocide and apartheid are the only two international crimes, the commission of which States have a duty to prevent.
Image by Carlos Latuff
March 20, 2017 at 08:06 (Culture, Interview, Israel, Occupation, Palestine)
Let’s talk about Palestine, giving the podium to an artist who lives in occupied Palestine. He’s Maher Shawamreh, a dance teacher and director of the school of art in Ramallah. In the interview with us he explains how dance communicates peace by extending the soul, and in this way reaching beyond the walls built by intolerance and war.
by Antonietta Chiodo, English Translation by John Catalinotto
He speaks of his love for the arts he teaches daily with the support of his colleagues the Orient & Dance Theatre. His students are children and teenagers. Communication takes place through the vibrations of the body and music. Maher, a man who grew up in a state of siege, managed to create in this modern era the ability to dissolve words and bring peace to life on the stage with the ability to unite different cultures and languages.
As a teacher and highly developed artist he has been allowed in recent years to get a foothold in the West through his shows, and can boast of collaborations with artists from various countries. His ability to draw comparisons and to make use of the arts has enabled him to continually outdo himself regarding technique, using bodily communication to convey freedom to the audiences.
When did you start your engagement with dance and what made you realize that was your life’s path?
As a young man I studied electrical engineering. My career in contemporary dance officially started in 1996. In 1999 I started to do some shows in various regions of Palestine and other countries. I supported myself by working in the workshops. A few years later I started doing more ambitious interpretations, supported by works by works of artists at the high level of Mahmoud Darwish and Ghassan Kanafani. Then I became definitely aware that I could no longer escape or be distracted from dance. It had taken hold of my life and filled my thoughts. To make it clearer, let me explain that dancing is not life itself, but it is my journey in search of my identity. Through dance I became part of the universe and came into contact with God (Allah). Nowadays I realized that dance is a cure, a miracle drug.
Why in human history have artists proven the most valuable ambassadors of peace?
Humans communicate with each other in different languages, in French, Arabic, Italian, Spanish … it is our job to understand each other to the end and apply outselves to the search for different semantic content. Art is a universal language and does not need a specific grammar to be understood. Dance is body language. Awakening sensations and vibrations, dance merges nature and soul. In this way it establishes a communication with the spirit, moved by Allah. At that point you realize that God loves you and through that message you find your inner peace. At the moment in which a body dances, Allah puts the universe in motion. Creating transforms itself into a movement, giving life to a permanent dance. The dance and music give rise to immortality for those who interpret it as well as for those who observe them.
How would you imagine a dance show with Western artists and Palestinians? What music would you choose?
As I mentioned before, dance is the extension of the word of Allah through the body and produces our sensations. We can share this in all the languages of the world. By listening passively, we can touch our souls. We can reflect on ourselves dancing without feeling any fear. Also, dance allows us to simultaneously share different cultures and languages. That’s what I try to convey through my art. I love to dance with live music, moving not only my body but also my soul. The audience that watches my dance convinces me that dance has no boundaries. In fact, it includes the land, the olive trees, the eagle, the rocks, the sea … an elderly woman. It would be necessary to express ourselves freely in the central square of a market to overcome our own personal inner deficiencies through artistic expression. That’s my art expressed in words.
With what secret did you help your students overcome their fear of failing?
My students should be content with themselves and erase everything from their concious thoughts when they dance. Only in this way will they eliminate tensions. I learned to separate from my stress, fleeing far away. When I enter the room and see the first student, all my feelings become positive. And I exist only in that single moment. Through dance, the rage that is intrisic to human beings tends to lose itself in the movements, finally managing to completely dissolve. Dance is capable of creating tolerance. Dancing is like escape for the soul from life and from the world around us.
Have you ever been afraid that one of your students could be taken away by Israeli soldiers?
No, we are not afraid, we were born under occupation.
Originally posted AT
March 20, 2017 at 07:56 (Civil Liberties, Corrupt Politics, Israel, Occupation, Palestine, United Nations)
The latest Zionist nail to be hammered into the coffin for freedom of expression occurred last week when the disingenuous U.S. ambassador to the UN — the Indian American Sikh Nikki Haley — hypocritically expressed superpower outrage and condemnation while calling for the withdrawal of a UN report that quite justifiably accused Israel of establishing an “apartheid regime.”
March 19, 2017 at 08:11 (Assassinations, Gaza, In Memoriam, International Solidarity, Israel's Shame, Rachel Corrie)
March 16th marked the anniversary of the Israeli killing of Rachel Corrie in Rafah, southern Gaza strip, 14 years ago.
On March 16, 2003, Rachel was killed by an Israel Occupation Force (IOF) armored bulldozer in Rafah during the second Palestinian intifada.
Rachel had come to Gaza to try and establish a sister city project between her hometown Olympia, Washington and Rafah, Gaza. She was a peace activist connected to the International Solidarity Movement (ISM), who tried to prevent the demolition of Palestinian houses which were being carried out by the Israeli army.
After a three hour long confrontation between ISM activists and the Israeli army’s demolition forces, she was killed, less than two months after arriving in Gaza.
Israel claims that the driver of the bulldozer could not see Rachel because of the limited field of view from within the bulldozer. Humans rights groups claim that the driver had seen her and deliberately continued driving, disregarding her fellow activists who were shouting and waving their arms, which resulted in Rachel’s death.
The Israeli army’s investigation of the incident concluded that the death was an accident because the driver of the bulldozer had limited visibility and therefore couldn’t see Rachel. Amnesty International and other human rights organizations criticized the military investigation, claiming that it was not transparent, credible or thorough enough.
In 2006 Bradley Burston, Haaretz columnist said “We should have saved Rachel Corrie’s life that day… Right now, somewhere in the West Bank, there’s an eight-year-old whose life could be saved next week, if we’ve managed to learn the lesson are resourceful enough to know how to apply it.”
In 2005 a one-woman drama called ”My Name Is Rachel Corrie” ran at London’s Royal Court Theater, and received a warm reception. In April 2015, the drama was staged Off Broadway in the East Village in New York.
Two years ago a symbolic gravestone with her name was installed in Tehran cemetary in Iran, alongside twelve other symbolic gravestones.
There is a street named after Rachel Corrie in Ramallah, West Bank.
Italian activist Nicola Arboscelli stands in front of graffiti memorializing American peace activist Rachel Corrie who was killed 14 years ago today, on March 16, 2003, Rafah refugee camp in the Gaza Strip. (Photo: Abid Katib/ Getty Images)
March 19, 2017 at 07:57 (Associate Post, Germany, Israel, Palestine)
How long can the “special” relationship to the “Jewish State” be allowed to lead to the discrimination and marginalisation of Israel’s critics and pro-Palestinian activists in Germany?
Or must we go to the moon to be safe from the Israel lobby?
by Evelyn Hecht-Galinski, Translated by Dr. Milena Rampoldi
The Holocaust, the clash of civilisations, can no longer be exploited to make us blindly accept today’s crimes by a people who were victims in the past. In replacing anti-Semitism, Philo-Semitism has assumed alarming dimensions and must not become a new, forward-pressing power.
In fact, the community of hypocritical states, and particularly Germany, will be again guilty of the dehumanization of another people.
With its Zionist state ideology, consequently practised since 1948 including dispossession, land grabbing, and ethnic cleansing of Palestine — all protected and financially supported by the U.S., Europe, and Germany in particular — the “Jewish State” has definitively abandoned all moral values so that for a long time now the term “values” has become a phrase for the values of hypocrites.
If the “Jewish State” calls itself the “only democracy in the Middle East,” then we have to strongly oppose it. How can the Israeli state, which is neither Judaic nor democratic, call itself “democratic”? Readers will certainly ask themselves why I always write “Jewish State” instead of “Israel”: Since this Zionist land grabbing state would like to be recognised as “Jewish State” instead of a state for all citizens, including Palestinians. And this is a completely anti-democratic intention!
In addition, all criticism of its crimes against international law and human rights are denigrated as anti-Semitism and hatred towards Jews, and the activists of the BDS campaign for a Free Palestine must be silenced. And exactly for this reason, the BDS movement is a thorn in the side of the “Jewish Occupiers‘state“ and the Israel lobby. However, Federica Mogherini, the EU High Representative for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy, defends the BDS movement. In October 2016 she condemned attacks against human rights advocates and affirmed the right of European citizens to freedom of speech and assembly. Unfortunately, many EU states do not comply with this principle. (1)
In the meantime, in the “Jewish State” not only NGOs and government-critical media are restricted with undemocratic laws. Also the Palestinian citizens and Jewish activists engaging for the BDS are pursued.
Travel bans do not stop in front of prominent Jewish intellectuals like Chomsky and Finkelstein. And we are waiting for criticism in vain! People would surely scream if it was about Turkey or Russia. However, in this case it is just about the “Jewish State” . . .
How is it possible that Germany and other EU states prohibit this right and drag it into the dirt under pressure of the “Jewish State” and Israel lobby?
In the end, the BDS movement has only one goal; Israel has to comply with its obligation to recognise the inalienable right of Palestinians to self-determination; has to stop the illegal occupation and colonisation of Palestine; has to remove the Apartheid wall running through the land stolen from the Palestinians; has to recognize the basic right of Palestinian-Israeli citizens for complete equality and to guarantee, respect, protect and request the legal rights of return of the dispossessed Palestinian refugees to their homeland Palestine and to their property, as agreed in the UN Resolution 194. When will the “Jewish State” recognize and apply Resolution 194? Finally, this was the condition for the acceptance of Israel in the United Nations! (2)
All these requests and objectives were confirmed in an endless number of UN resolutions. However, the ruling of the International Court of Justice, declaring that the construction of the Apartheid Wall in the occupied Palestinian territory was illegal, was ignored by the “Jewish State” like numerous other UN resolutions against the illegal settlements, and the violations against international law and human rights. Only one resolution was recognised by the “Jewish State”: the UN resolution 181, known as UN Partition Plan of 29 November 1947.
How can it be that every Jewish citizen has to right to go back to his/her alleged “homeland,” with all civil rights, while the dispossessed Palestinians are deprived of those rights? Is that democratic? No, it is not. It is deeply ethnocratic and racist!
All talk is just about “Muslim terrorism,” forgetting Jewish terrorists and political state terrorists who promote this kind of terrorism. Where in the world is there a state calling for the “murder of Arabs,” where children throwing stones are given more severe sentences than Jewish “Defence Soldiers” murdering Palestinians and subsequently being hailed as heroes and given “Man of the year” awards? Where is there a state where the majority of the Jewish population defends these murderers?
And why does this “Jewish State” recognised by the international community which up to now refuses to determine its borders continue to insist on the recognition of its own “right to exist”? And what is worse, how is it possible that a German federal government makes of this ominous “existence right” a reason of state and in addition forces refugees to accept this “existence right” as condition for an integration which “needs values”, decreeing it an “identity-forming lead culture”?
Is it not a travesty when the Central Council of Jews in Germany asks from the Muslim refugees to recognize the existence right of a state which has been refusing for decades to recognize the existence right of an independent Palestinian state and does not distance itself from the crimes against international law and human rights and the illegal Jewish occupation? Being afraid of the refugees bringing their denial of Israel and anti-Semitism to Germany, they exactly achieve the opposite, promoting a collective prejudice against refugees. Is this part of the tasks of the Central Council of Jews in Germany?
While at the moment there is such a hot debate about Turkish ministers talking at election meetings in Germany, there has never been such a discussion for Israeli politicians calling German and French citizens of Jewish faith to “come home to their homeland Israel.” Just a second: these “returnees” are preferably housed in illegal settlements. Why does nobody among politicians or intellectuals opposed to this in Germany? Why is there a double standard when it is about Jews or Israel?
Why today are we again witnessing Israeli lobby pressure that closes BDS bank accounts, restricts activists, and denies Jewish peace activists, scientists, and teachers agreed spaces controversial events and discussions being cancelled and universities withdrawing teaching assignments and the freedom to teach. Nip things in the bud!
Again in Germany “good” and “bad” Jews are selected. However, this time this results from the cooperation of the world of politics and the Israel lobby, some media and Christian Zionists. The “Christian-Jewish community of values” is giving up all moral values, and has found its mission in the war against “Islamic terrorism” as the new bogeyman.
The insidious “Israelization” of Germany is in full swing. How can you take an occupier state as a model and forget the 50 years long illegal occupation of Palestine?
Instead of celebrating government consultations with a Jewish regime of occupiers, Germany should put pressure on the “Jewish State” and threaten it with sanctions. When it was about Russia, Merkel was in the frontline!
Does all this correspond to “our” values and to the values of our constitution? How can Mum Merkel prescribe the German reason of state for the security of the “Jewish State,” a state committing genocide during the last attack against Gaza about which there will not be any Parliamentary Session. Merkel even called the Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu and expressed her solidarity with him and the “security” of his country. A questionable security the Western nations, led by the USA and Germany, will finance
with massive military expenditures and tax gifts permitting the illegal occupation and the attacks.
Israel is a highly-armed nuclear power and is a danger for world peace. It is only waiting to attack Lebanon or Iran. Günter Grass, one of the few serious intellectuals, said this, and was damned and defamed. I can personally confirm how deeply the Nobel laureate for literature and the sincere SPD politicians were struck by this defamation campaign.
Up to now I have been missing the partisanship of the elite, the intellectuals, the officeholders, and the “sincere ones of the socialist party,” when it is about the freedom for Palestine. They all remain cowardly silent when it is about the decades-long and well-documented crimes against the international law and human rights committed in the “Jewish State.” They simply fear to be labelled as anti-Semites.
This hypocrisy affects me a lot. If we look at the numerous wars and interventions we have been involved in up to now, including the Nobel prize for peace winner, the EU, and former US president Obama, we see how our “democratic values” have become a ridiculous parody. And the newly-elected US president Trump supports do the “Jewish State” in its rapacious settlement policies.
Because of its alleged “special” relationship, Germany and its government is obliged to convince its friends of the Jewish state to recognize international law and UN resolutions, and to guarantee to the Palestinians their inalienable right for self-determination, which should be a democratic self-evident fact for a German State, which in Article 1 of its constitution says that human dignity applies to all (Palestinians included) and is indivisible. This should apply also to a “Jewish State” being the alleged only democracy in the Middle East. However, until now, this has not occurred for decades.
The freedom of speech and teaching must apply also to the critics of the Israeli policies and must be defenced. This is what I expect from the German elite, who cowardly retreat in silence when it is about Israel. Where is the solidarity with the universities where the Israel lobby deeply interferes with the freedom of teaching?
Do we also want that here in Germany teachers engaging for a free Palestine have to emigrate, as many Israeli intellectuals do? Let us think about Ilan Pappe, teaching in exile in Exeter today. Also he should not have a ban on speaking in Germany as a descendant of Holocaust survivors only because of the pressure by the Israel lobby.
We should oppose together to the title of my book “Das elfte Gebot:Israel darf alles” (English translation of the title: The 11th Commandment: Israel is allowed to do all).
And to the question of FAZ on the occasion of a controversy at the court with the Jewish Spiegel-Welt journalist and islamophobe porno writer H.M. Broder “What is a Jewish woman in Germany allowed to say against Israel?” I would like to answer: “All, of course, and in particular the truth!” More or less polemically, but straight from the heart! And I do not want to avoid doing that!
Or must we go to the moon to be safe from the Israel lobby?
Originally posted AT
Desertpeace 