Revoking Israel’s UN Membership

Revoking Israel’s UN Membership

Israel membership at the UN is conditional on its respect for international law.

By Snorre Lindquist and Lasse Wilhelmson – Stockholm

The Gaza Strip is now the largest concentration camp in the world. The situation grows steadily more insufferable for the 1.5 million Palestinians who live there. Deliveries of food, medicine and fuel are made difficult or stopped altogether. Child malnutrition is increasing. Water supplies and drainage have ceased to function. Children die for lack of healthcare. Tunnels to Egypt, dug by hand, are the only breathing space. Journalists and diplomats are denied entry. Israel is planning more military efforts. The Palestinians in Gaza are now to be starved into surrender and become an Egyptian problem.

The UN should use the word apartheid in connection with Israel and consider sanctions with the former South Africa serving as a model. Miguel dÉscoto Brockman, president of the UN General Assembly, conveyed this message at a meeting on November 24th 2008 with the UN General Secretary Ban Ki-moon present.

The 1976 Nobel peace prize laureate, Mairead McGuire from Ireland, recently suggested a popular movement demanding that the UN revoke Israel’s membership. The international community now needs to put tangible pressure on Israel in order to stop its war crimes.
Not once, during the past 60 years, has Israel shown any intention of living up to the requirements stipulated by the UN, in connection with the country’s membership in 1948, namely that the Palestinians who had been evicted from their homes should be allowed to return at the earliest possible opportunity. Moreover, Israel holds the hardly flattering world record of ignoring UN resolutions.

It can be questioned from the aspect of human rights legislation whether Israel is a legitimate state. Established practice between states usually requires borders that are legally maintained and a constitution, neither of which Israel has. These requirements are also named in the UN resolution (181) Partition Plan for Palestine, approved by the General Assembly in November 1947. The plan was accepted by the Zionists Jews in Palestine but rejected for excellent reasons as unjust by the Arab states. Only decisions made by the UN Security Council are mandatory. Later on, Israel unilaterally laid claim to a considerably larger portion of land than that suggested by the UN.

The eviction of eighty per cent of the Palestinians who lived west of the 1947 armistice line, and Israel’s refusal to allow them to return is the human rights argument for expelling Israel from the UN. Not only has Israel played the Partition Plan false but has, by its actions, thwarted the grounds – fragile from the start – for its UN membership.

Israel makes use of various strategies to achieve its goals, the same goals as for over a hundred years ago: As few and as well controlled and weakened Palestinians as possible in areas as small as possible between the Mediterranean and the River Jordan. And to try and get acceptance worldwide for the theft of land that is vital to the “state” that calls itself “Jewish and democratic”. This obviously bears no similarity to a peace process.

Why does nobody ever comment on the fact that Israel’s prime minister never misses an opportunity to harp on about how important it is that the rest of the world and the Palestinians recognise Israel, not as a democratic country for all its citizens, but as a “Jewish state”?

What would we have said if South Africa’s Prime Minister, in a similar way, had demanded recognition of South Africa as a “white and democratic state”, thus de facto accepting the racist apartheid system that allowed non-whites to be classified as lesser human beings?
In the article The end of Zionism, published in the Guardian on September the 15th 2003 the Jewish dissident and former speaker of Knesset, Avraham Burg wrote:

“Diaspora Jews for whom Israel is a central pillar of their identity must pay heed and speak out … We cannot keep a Palestinian majority under an Israeli boot and at the same time think ourselves the only democracy in the Middle East. There cannot be democracy without equal rights for all who live here, Arab as well as Jew … The prime minister should present the choices forthrightly: Jewish racism or democracy.”

No support can be found in The UN recommendation concerning a Jewish and a Palestinian state for unequal rights for the citizens of each country. Neither is there any indication as to how a “Jewish” state could become Jewish. There is support, however, for the intention that demographic conditions should be held intact at partition. Interpreting into the text an intention concerning characteristics of a “Jewish state” tailored to the ideology of Zionism is wholly in contradiction with the text of the resolution.

Even the Balfour Declaration, which entirely lacks human rights status, notes that the Jewish national home in Palestine should in no way encroach upon the rights of the Palestinians. Neither did US President Truman recognise Israel as a Jewish state. On the contrary, he ruled out precisely that formulation before making his decision to recognise Israel.

Thus, the legitimacy of a “Jewish state” so urgently sought by Israel lacks support in international documents that concern the building of the state. Israel’s government is, of course, fully aware of this. Why else would it keep on searching for this recognition?

The UN should now embark on a boycott of the apartheid state of Israel and, with the threat of expulsion from the UN, demand that Israel allows the evicted Palestinian refugees to return in accordance with the UN resolutions 194 and 3236.

With this done, meaningful peace talks can proceed and various solutions be reached for co-habitation with equal rights for all people between the Mediterranean and the River Jordan. No such solution can be compatible with the preservation of a Jewish apartheid state.

– Snorre Lindquist is a Swedish Architect of, among other things, the House of Culture in front of the Nativity Church in Bethlehem on the West Bank. Contact him at snorre_lindquist@hotmail.com.

– Lasse Wilhelmson is a commentator on the situation in the Middle East, and is a member of a local government in Sweden for 23 years, four of which in an executive position. Contact him at: lasse.wilhelmson@bostream.nu. The writers contributed this article to PalestineChronicle.com.

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The Vatican says it the way it is

The Vatican says it the way it is, prompting wails about “anti-Semitism” and “blood libel” as if that makes it all OK

Cardinal Gianfranco Ravasi, President of the Vatican Council for Culture, commenting on the war between Israel and Hamas, delivered a severe attack on the Jewish people:

“I think of the ‘massacre of the innocents’. Children are dying in Gaza, their mothers’ shouts is a perennial cry, a universal cry”.

The Catholic Church high official equated Israel’s operation in Gaza against terror groups with the New Testament story of Herod’s slaughter of Jewish babies in his effort to kill Jesus.

Ravasi, who is one of the most popular Catholic cardinals and the director of the Church’s policy on culture, called Israelis baby-killers in a shameless form of anti-Semitism which subtly accuses the Jewish State of trying to murder the new Jesus, symbolized by the Palestinian people.

The Vatican official’s modern blood libel against Israel was delivered during the presentation of Pope Benedict’s new book about the life of Jesus. However, Ravasi’s theme – the Jews as Herod, who killed all the innocent babies because his heart was set on killing Jesus – was much beloved by Medieval organizers of pogroms.

The vicar-general of the Latin Patriarchate of Jerusalem, William Shomali, said on Vatican Radio that “what is happening in Gaza now is a vicious circle of violence”. The auxiliary bishop then declared that “it’s difficult to know who started it”. How difficult?

A few weeks ago, in an interview with the Catholic magazine Famiglia Cristiana, Shomali claimed that “hatred of Christians” is the Talmud itself.

“The Talmud, the holy book studied by the ultra-orthodox, more highly venerated than the Bible itself, invites religious hatred, speaks badly of Jesus, and even worse of Mary and, in general, of Christians,” the bishop said, adding that “in Israeli schools, love for the other is not taught, but rather the destruction of the other”.

Talking to the Vatican News Agency, Michel Sabbah, Patriarch Emeritus of Jerusalem, said that the Gaza Strip for many years “has been living under the weight of an absurd embargo, which makes the daily lives of a million and a half of people inumane”.

Sabbah signed the recent appeal by more than one hundred Christian leaders who have asked the international community to support the recognition of the Palestinian State as a full member of the United Nations. Among the signers is the Greek Orthodox Archbishop Atallah Hanna, a self professed anti-Semite who blessed the suicide attacks against Israeli civilians.

As yet, no condemnation has come from the Pope of the barrages of rockets fired by terror groups on southern Israeli cities before Operation Pillar of Defense. The Church authorities, and Benedict XVI himself, raised their voices in condemnation of the violence that has broken out in the Gaza Strip only after Israel began bombing the installations of the terrorist movements in that territory. Not a word was heard before that.

During the Cast Lead operation in 2009, the Vatican officials called Gaza “a concentration camp”. After the Nazi comparison did its work, the Jesus-killer motif has now returned to the Catholic Church.
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The views expressed in this article are the sole responsibility of the author and do not necessarily reflect those of this Blog!

Pathetic Hasbara Video

Tuesday, January 3, 2012 at 7:53AM Gilad Atzmon

In a usual deceitful manner the clip introduces itself saying: “The State of Israel and the Jewish people are united in baring the human responsibility to live ethical and moral lives.”

If the Jewish State was indeed ‘ethical and responsibel’, Gaza wouldn’t be the biggest open air prison in the history of humanity. The Jewish state is in engaged in a slow genocide. It is merciless ethnic cleanser. It has no room amongst nations.


Gilad Atzmon’s New Book: The Wandering Who? A Study Of Zionist tricks and Hasbara methods – Amazon.com or Amazon.co.uk.

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The views expressed in this article are the sole responsibility of the author and do not necessarily reflect those of this Blog!

Berlin wall

Berlin wall

I continue to be sad, shocked but also inspired by what I see and hear in my working tour in Germany. I remain cautiously optimistic because lessons of history, as sad as they are, provide an unmistakable map for the future. Hitler (and Zionists) who aimed to leave Europe with no Jews have failed. Here in Germany is the fastest growing Jewish population on earth and more than half of them come from Israel (the supposed haven of Jews). Many of the activists for human rights here are ex-Israeli or ex-Zionist Jews. Gideon Levy explains in Haaretz this week how and why Israelis are getting foreign passports at unprecedented rates.

As you examine the sites of former Nazi interrogation camps and as you look at pictures and read stories of the past, you are struck by the idiocy of humans who thought they could get away with treating fellow human beings with such indignities. There are enough resources for everyone on earth but greed and racism seem to dog our species and rear its ugly head here and there. The folly and arrogance of power confronting indifference and subjecting fellow humans to such cruelty is beyond description in certain periods of our history. In other periods, denial (of the Nakba or of the Jewish holocaust) can hurt the feelings of survivors. No human can claim they are not impacted by these things. But I as a Palestinian found the microcosm of this all too human history truly disturbing and resonating with our reality.

Today, it was reported that the government of Israel is considering a new plan to move 30,000 Bedouins to concentration areas from their unrecognized villages in the Negev because of “environmental reasons”. Seventy years ago, thousands of Roma (Gypsies) were also relocated to improve the environment. Gypsies (Roma) are still treated bad in Germany and they are still around despite those early attempts to clear them out.

Seven years ago, uprisings in the Jenin Refugee Camp and in Nablus old city (ghettos) were put down brutally, sixty years before, an uprising in Warsaw ghetto was put down. Stories about Jewish collaborators with the Nazis bear uncanny resemblance to descriptions of Palestinian collaborators with Zionist plans (including stories of extortions, use of family members, use of medical or economic levers etc).

Walls three meters high in Berlin are mostly gone but walls 8 meters high in Palestine still stand. I bought a piece of the wall in Berlin. I imagined that very soon, some Palestinians will be making a lot of money selling pieces of the Israeli apartheid wall. Dreams and memories and lessons and tears and hopes know no state boundaries and no national or religious boundaries.

I recalled the remarkable book by Jewish theologian Marc Ellis “Out of the Ashes” and his message that the lessons of horrors should be “never again to all humans” not “never again to my group.” That is the lesson I hope will finally sink in to all of us.

We held a press conference about planned actions of bringing Freedom Flotilla II to Gaza in late June and bringing hundreds of peace activists to the rest of Palestine July 8-16 (sponsored by 30 Palestinian groups so far and supported by hundreds of organizations around the world, see PalestineJN.org). The press conference was on the same day as the day that one year ago, Israeli navi commandos attacked humanitarian ships of the Gaza freedom Flotilla murdering 9 activists and injuring many. All of us are inspired by the determination of the International civil society (people of all walks of life who act on their conscience) to keep working for peace with justice. This determination stands in contrast with the collaboration of Western governments in supporting the last remaining apartheid colonial state. As we see in the Tunisia, Egypt and the rest of the Arab world, we can safely bet on the power of the people.

Press Conference in Berlin May 31, 2011 (Gestrige Pressekonferenz mit Mazin):

http://www.publicsolidarity.de/2011/5/31/willkommen-in-pal-astina-mission-8-juli

Action in Palestine: A new colony has been put off on the land of Kufr Malek east of Ramallah. The villagers are planning the first in a series of protest this Friday June,3 2011 at 12:30

Please come and lend your support. For more information contact: Majed Fahim 0599201411

Action especially for those in the USA: Call TIAA-CREF

http://wedivest.org/2011/06/call-tiaa-cref-today/

International Women Peace Service seeks volunteer women for work in Palestine http://iwps.info/?page_id=380

Actions around the world: June 5^th in front of Israeli embassies and consulates and at major apartheid barriers (borders, checkpoints etc). For example Sunday there will be an event in Al-Walajah starting at 10 AM.

Remember we still seek volunteers and activists for Palestine. Wilkommen

Mazin Qumsiyeh

http://qumsiyeh.org

http://palestineJN.org

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The rabbis of the devil

By Khalid Amayreh

[ 22/01/2011 – 12:54 AM ]

Imagine, just imagine, the outcry that would follow an imagined call by a European Muslim or Christian religious leader suggesting sending hundreds of thousands of Jews to concentration camps. The Sheikh or priest or bishop would be lambasted beyond imagination, and his denomination or church would immediately distance itself from his foolish remarks.

Political authorities would also declare that Nazi-minded Sheikh or bishop has no place in modern Europe and that governments would nip the hateful and racist elements in the bud. In short, he would be looked upon as a pariah, to say the very least. He even might be forced to commit suicide under public pressure.

As to Jewish circles, their protests would be clarion and omnipresent.

But how would things look like if such a call took place in Israel and was made by a popular rabbi, with hundreds of thousands of followers?

According to a weekly Hebrew magazine, several rabbis, including the rabbi of Safad, Shmuel Eliyahu, recently proposed the establishment of death camps for the Palestinians.

The magazine indicated that the creation of these camps would be the duty of all devout Jews.

The Yedeot Ahronot’s YNet on Saturday, 15 January quoted the rabbis as stating that the Torah requires Jews to wipe out any trace of the so-called Amalek in Palestine . Many religious Jews refer to their perceived or real enemies as Amalek.

The YNet quoted Jewish intellectual Audi Aloni as saying that calls for the extermination of Palestinians are openly made in the synagogues as the genocidal idea has become a practical option.

“No one objected to Rabbi Shmuel Eliyahu, chief rabbi of Safad and Rabbi Shlomo Aviner, Chief Rabbi of Beit El, who undersigned the advisory opinion, which suggested approval for their opinion.”

I realize that these evil men don’t represent Jews everywhere, nor do they even represent the entire rabbinic community. There are many esteemed rabbis who reject outright the satanic mindset permeating through the landscape of the sick minds of people like Elyahu, his cohorts and evil colleagues.

The Torah, after all, was supposed to be a light upon humanity. But when it becomes, thanks to those rabbis of Satan, a tool for genocide, there is obviously a huge catch-22 hanging over Judaism’s conscience.

Again, the fact that these nefarious rabbis don’t represent the entirety of Judaism is no guarantee that their damage will be limited. A fool man’s fire could frustrate a thousand wise men who wouldn’t know how to put it off.

Isn’t this the way the holocaust started? It didn’t start with concentration camps, or even with Kristalnacht. Such death camps as Auschwitz , Treblinka, Mauthauzen and Bergen Belsen became only known much later.

The purpose of this small piece is not to vilify or demonize Jews. Nor am I particularly enthusiastic about hurling Nazi epithets at Jews. However, nothing should be further from truth.

The call for sending millions of Palestinians to concentration camps means that a sizeable segment of the Israeli Jewish society is capable, at least mentally, of embarking on the unthinkable. It means that a real Jewish holocaust against the Palestinian people is not outside the realm of imagination.

This matter is well known, even known too well for us who live in this part of the world. After all, Israel demonstrated two years ago, during its Nazi-like onslaught on the Gaza Strip, that it could do the unthinkable.

And that was not the first time Israel behaved manifestly nefariously. In 2006, during the Israeli aggression on Lebanon , the Israeli air force dropped more than 2,000,000 cluster bomblets on South Lebanon civilian areas, arguably enough to kill or maim at least 2 million Lebanese children.

The scant media coverage of the latest diabolic statements by the rabbis of evil in no way lessens their gravity and seriousness. After all, these are not marginal or isolated figures in society.

In fact, paying not sufficient attention to this phenomenon is tantamount to encouraging it. If Germans and others had not kept silence in the late 1920s and early 1930s, many things wouldn’t have occurred.

I would want to be cautious drawing historical analogy between every thing happening in Israel today and everything that happened in Europe several decades ago. However, there are certain parallels that shouldn’t escape our attention, and the latest outrageous statements by these diabolical rabbis are one of them.

Let no one say that words are innocuous and can’t kill; nay, words can kill and do kill. A few years ago, a Jewish immigrant from France decapitated a Palestinian cabby from East Jerusalem after the taxi-driver gave the killer a ride to his home north of Tel Aviv. And when the murderer was eventually arrested and interrogated by the police, he said he heard his neighborhood synagogue rabbi say that the lives of non-Jews had no sanctity.

More to the point, it is abundantly clear that thousands of Israeli soldiers would rather heed and obey their respective rabbis’ homilies than their army superiors’ instructions when it comes to treating Palestinians. This fact was revealed during the Israeli onslaught on Gaza two years ago when Israeli soldiers knowingly and deliberately murdered innocent civilians, including children, by the hundreds.

But this is not the time for demonization; it is rather the time for action. Jewish leaders of all orientations should speak up as strongly as possible against those who are besmirching the good name of their religion.

The likes of Shmuel Eliyahu must be told that there is no place in Judaism for those who advocate genocide for non-Jews. In the final analysis, when Jews or anybody else think or behave or act like the Nazis acted, they simply become Nazis themselves.

Finally, Jews shouldn’t keep silent in the face of these abominations just because the media and public opinion in the West are more or less keeping silent. Well, since when a moral stance was decided by other people’s apathy or silence? In fact, the immoral silence of much of the west toward what is happening in Israel these days is bad and dangerous for Jews and their future.

Anything that causes moral desensitization to occur is definitely bad. This is to put it extremely mildly.

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Israel said it would keep Gaza near collapse: WikiLeaks

Via Activistpost

Gaza – AFP image

Reuters

Israel told US officials in 2008 it would keep Gaza’s economy “on the brink of collapse” while avoiding a humanitarian crisis, according to U.S. diplomatic cables published by a Norwegian daily on Wednesday.

Three cables cited by the Aftenposten newspaper, which has said it has all 250,000 U.S. cables leaked to WikiLeaks, showed that Israel kept the U.S. Embassy in Tel Aviv briefed on its internationally criticized blockade of the Gaza Strip.

The territory, home to 1.3 million Palestinians, is run by the Islamist Hamas group, which is shunned by the West over its refusal to recognize Israel, renounce violence or accept existing interim Israeli-Palestinian peace deals.

“As part of their overall embargo plan against Gaza, Israeli officials have confirmed to (U.S. embassy economic officers) on multiple occasions that they intend to keep the Gazan economy on the brink of collapse without quite pushing it over the edge,” one of the cables read.

Israel wanted the coastal territory’s economy “functioning at the lowest level possible consistent with avoiding a humanitarian crisis,” according to the November 3, 2008 cable.

Read Full Article

Posted by Activist at 8:50 AM

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>Calling Gaza a prison camp is an understatement

>

There may be some semblance of civil life and stability in Gaza, but it is our freedoms that are under siege

Laila El-Haddad

guardian.co.uk, Thursday 5 August 2010 14.00 BST

It’s three years since I’ve been back to Gaza. Much has happened since my last visit.

Fatah waged a failed coup and now rules only the West Bank, while Hamas is in charge of Gaza.

Israel launched its deadly Cast Lead assault. Fuel shortages. Electricity crises. And so on.

I needed to regain perspective. So I walked and I talked and I listened.

I went to the beach where women – skinny jeans and all – were smoking water pipes, swimming and generally having a good time, irrespective of the purported Hamas ban on women smoking sheesha.

During the eight hours of electricity we get each day, I logged on to the internet and browsed the English-language papers. It seemed like suddenly everyone was an expert on Gaza, claiming they knew what it’s really like. Naysayers and their ilk have been providing us with the same “evidence” that Gaza is burgeoning: the markets are full of produce, fancy restaurants abound, there are pools and parks and malls … all is well in the most isolated place on earth – Gaza, the “prison camp” that is not.

If you take things at face value, and set aside for a moment the bizarre idea that the availability of such amenities precludes the existence of hardship, you’ll be inclined to believe what you read.

So, is there a humanitarian crisis or not? That seems to be the question of the hour. But it is the wrong one to be asking.

The message I’ve been hearing over and over again since I returned to Gaza is this: the siege is not a siege on foods; it is a siege on freedoms – freedom to move in and out of Gaza, freedom to fish more than three miles out at to sea, freedom to learn, to work, to farm, to build, to live, to prosper.

Gaza was never a place with a quantitative food shortage; it is a place where many people lack the means to buy food and other goods because of a closure policy whose tenets are “no development, no prosperity, and no humanitarian crisis“, Gisha, the Legal Centre for the Freedom of Movement, explained in a press release.

The move from a “white list” of allowable imports to a “black list” might sound in good in theory (ie everything is banned except xyz, to only the following things are banned) but in practice only 40% of Gaza’s supply needs are being met, according to Gisha. The Palestinian Federation of Industries estimates that only a few hundred of Gaza’s 3,900 factories and workshops will be able to start up again under present conditions

Sure, there are a handful of fancy restaurants in Gaza. And yes, there is a new mall (infinitely smaller and less glamorous than it has been portrayed).

As for food, it is in good supply, having found its way here either through Israeli crossings or the vast network of tunnels between Gaza and Egypt. Of course, this leaves aside the question of who in Gaza’s largely impoverished population (the overwhelming majority of whose income is less than $2 a day, 61% of whom are food insecure) can really afford mangoes at $4 a kilo or grapes at $8 a kilo. A recent trip to the grocery store revealed that meat has risen to $13 a kilo. Fish, once a cheap source of protein, goes for $15 to $35 a kilo. And so on.

Prices are on par with those of a developed country, except we are not in a developed country. We are a de-developed occupied territory.

All of the above adds up to the erasure of the market economy and its replacement with a system where everyone is turned into some kind of welfare recipient. But people don’t want handouts and uncertainty and despair; they want their dignity and their freedom, employment and prosperity and possibility.

Perhaps most significantly, they want to be able to move freely – something they still cannot do.

Let’s take the case of Fadi. His father recently had heart surgery. He wanted to seek followup care abroad, at his own expense, but he doesn’t fall into the specified categories allowed out of Gaza for travel, whether through Egypt or Israel. “He’s not considered a level-one priority,” Fadi explained. “Can you please tell me why I can’t decide when I want to travel and what hospital I can take him to?”

Even the cream of Gazan high-school students must lobby the Israeli authorities long and hard to be allowed out to complete their studies.

They literally have to start a campaign in conjunction with human rights groups to raise enough awareness about their plight, and then look for local individuals to blog about their progress, explained Ibrahim, who was approached by one organisation to “sponsor a student”.

I have no doubt that if Stephanie Gutmann and Melanie Phillips lived in Gaza their principle worry would not be about “what parts of their bodies they can display”, it would be the fact that they would not be allowed out again. It would be because everything from the kind of food they would have on their plate to when they can turn on the lights to what they can clothe those bodies with and whether or not they can obtain a degree is determined by an occupying power.

Using the phrase “prison camp” to describe Gaza, as Britain’s prime minister did, is not vile rhetoric. It is an understatement and even a misnomer.

Prisoners are guilty of a crime, yet they are guaranteed access to certain things – electricity and water, even education – where Gazans are not. What crime did Gazans commit, except, to quote my late grandmother, “being born Palestinian”?

Ketchup and cookies may be flowing to Gaza in slightly greater quantities than before. But so bloody what? Goods for export are not flowing out. Nor, for that matter, are people. So while there may be some semblance of civil life and stability in Gaza, there is absolutely no political horizon or true markers of freedom to speak of.

And as long as freedom of movement is stifled, whether by Israel or Egypt, and export-quality goods, which account for a large portion of Gaza’s manufacturing output, are forbidden from leaving Gaza, all the malls and mangoes in the world won’t make a bit of difference.

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Two State Hypocrisy by Daniel McGowan

Thursday, July 8, 2010 at 4:33PM Gilad Atzmon

Historical Palestine (or Israel within the borders it now controls including pre-1967 Israel, the West Bank, Gaza, and the Golan Heights) is one country with one water system, one electrical grid, one powerful military to defend and define its external borders, one monetary system, one telephone system, and one postal system.  It is already one state, although half the population has lesser rights or none at all.

The current argument for creating two states is simply another attempt to carve out a Jewish state, called Israel, where Jews have by law superior rights to non-Jews. 
It involves ethnic cleansing, segregation, and racism; it is definitely not a formula for lasting peace.

American support of a racist, apartheid state is contrary to what we Americans profess to believe.  Yet we overwhelmingly endorse the idea of a Jewish state and ignore the basic human rights of half the population that is not “chosen.”

Americans claim to endorse equal rights of citizenship everywhere in the world, except Israel.  We do so both out of conviction and out of fear of being smeared with the anti-Semitic tar brush.  We are loath to even discuss Jewish power that compels us to deny self determination and equal rights for Palestinians.

Our government supports the ghettoization of Gaza and other Palestinian enclaves; it ignores Israeli concentration camps like Ketziot; it supports the building of illegal settlements in occupied territory; it turns a blind eye to nuclear proliferation by Israel; it defends a Jewish attack on an unarmed humanitarian flotilla, and it sends our military to fight wars demanded by Israel.

It is time for all Americans to support the de facto One State of Israel/Palestine and to demand that it treat all of its inhabitants as citizens with equal rights, regardless of religion or ethnicity.

Daniel McGowan
Professor Emeritus

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A massacre is not a massacre

Ghassan Hage, The Electronic Intifada, 3 June 2010

Occupation is not occupation (Anne Paq/ActiveStills)

I don’t write poems but, in any case, poems are not poems.

Long ago, I was made to understand that Palestine was not Palestine;
I was also informed that Palestinians were not Palestinians;
They also explained to me that ethnic cleansing was not ethnic cleansing.
And when naive old me saw freedom fighters they patiently showed me that they were not freedom fighters, and that resistance was not resistance.
And when, stupidly, I noticed arrogance, oppression and humiliation they benevolently enlightened me so I can see that arrogance was not arrogance, oppression was not oppression, and humiliation was not humiliation.

I saw misery, racism, inhumanity and a concentration camp.
But they told me that they were experts in misery, racism, inhumanity and concentration camps and I have to take their word for it: this was not misery, racism, inhumanity and a concentration camp.
Over the years they’ve taught me so many things: invasion was not invasion, occupation was not occupation, colonialism was not colonialism and apartheid was not apartheid.

They opened my simple mind to even more complex truths that my poor brain could not on its own compute like: “having nuclear weapons” was not “having nuclear weapons,” “not having weapons of mass destruction” was “having weapons of mass destruction.”

And, democracy (in the Gaza Strip) was not democracy.
Having second class citizens (in Israel) was democracy.
So you’ll excuse me if I am not surprised to learn today that there were more things that I thought were evident that are not: peace activists are not peace activists, piracy is not piracy, the massacre of unarmed people is not the massacre of unarmed people.

I have such a limited brain and my ignorance is unlimited.
And they’re so fucking intelligent. Really.

Ghassan Hage is professor of anthropology and social theory at the University of Melbourne.

Hebrew Culture for Dummies by Gilad Atzmon

In the last few days Israel was singled out by the Nuclear Non-Proliferation conference’s decision to note Israel as a country’s whose facilities must be regulated as “fundamentally wrong and duplicitous.” This happens for a reason. As much as Israel insists to operate as a modernised high-tech Jewish Ghetto, it also persists in being the biggest threat to world peace. Seemingly, nations are starting to show some real signs of fatigue of the Jewish state and its collective lunacy. But the bad news from Israel doesn’t stop just there. The Sunday Times reports today that Israel stations nuclear missile in the Gulf near the Iranian coastline.

 This doesn’t leave much room for doubt. Following the suicidal Massada narrative, the Jewish state is now doing everything it can to escalate the situation in the Middle East into a nuclear world war.

This brings us back to the Free Gaza Flotilla that aims to deliver necessary aid to the besieged Gazans. It doesn’t take a genius to gather that in addition to its humanitarian mission, the Free Gaza Flotilla has a simple symbolic role. It is there to direct world attention to the unbearably grim situation in Gaza. Gaza is the biggest jail in the history of humanity. It is a concentration camp for 1.5 million Palestinians, many of them 1948 refugees. The Gazans have been living in a blockade for four years. They are subject to air raids, warfare with WMDs, they are starved and face severe shortages of water, petrol, electricity and medical supplies.

The Flotilla should also be realised as a symbol of world fatigue of Israeli barbarism. As such, the Flotilla can only win. It will win if Israel let it through to accomplish its crucial humanitarian mission but it will also win if Israel stops it off shore, detains its participants and sends some of them to jail as Israel has vowed to do. Israel can only lose here and its leadership may want to think twice on how to minimise the damage they are about to inflict upon themselves.

The Jewish state is very engaged with Jewish history. Yet, Israelis have managed to draw the very wrong historic lesson. Rather than becoming a compassionate and merciful nation, Israel has become an ultimate merciless evil. It locks the indigenous population of the land in concentration camps. It existentially threatens the entire region with its nuclear arsenal. It indeed looks as if the Jewish state gave up on the possibility to become a nation amongst nations. It gave up on humanism.

Following the astonishing statistical figure of 94% of Israelis supporting the 2009 genocidal assault on Gaza, the Israeli leadership gathers that inflicting pain on others translates into political popularity in the Jewish State’s street. Currently, the Israelis seem to gain a lot of pleasure from watching their kosher Navy chasing cement and paper on its way to Gaza. As I write these words, 6 boats are making their way to Gaza. Their humanitarian mission is sacred. This Flotilla is also a symbol of our resentment towards Israeli barbarism. Israel better listen to the nations now because the world’s ability to endure tolerance to Zionist brutality is running out fast.