Israel and those "real democratic" rights

by Lawrence Davidson
(courtesy of Sonja Karkar, Editor, Australians for Palestine)

9 October 2011

Part I – What “Real Democratic Rights”?

In his speech to Congress on 24 May 2011 Prime Minister Netanyahu boasted
that “Of the 300 million Arabs in the Middle East and North Africa, only
Israel’s Arab citizens enjoy real democratic rights.” This is, of course, a
variation on the oft cited claim that Israel is “the only democracy in the
Middle East.” Leaving aside places like Lebanon and now potentially Tunisia
and Egypt, one can ask just how “real” are these democratic rights the Prime
Minister claims for Israel’s Arabs? Here is some recent evidence that speaks
to this question.

1. At the end of September 2011 the Israeli government announced “a plan to
displace 30,000 native Bedouin Arabs [all of whom are Israeli citizens]…from
their homes [in the Negev].” This would constitute “the biggest
dispossession plan of Palestinians issued by Israel since 1948. It would
forcibly relocate about half of the Bedouin population from their existing
villages, which are older than the State of Israel itself….”

Why should Israel do this to the Bedouin? Is it to facilitate their
enjoyment of their “real democratic rights”? Well not quite. According to
head of the Regional Council of Ramat Ha-Negev, a Zionist settlement in the
region, the reason goes like this, “I want the Negev to be Jewish….Jewish
settlement must grow, must continue…..What do you mean by ‘they [the
Bedouin] also have rights’! You know what–after all this it is no longer
possible to conceal the core problem, which is the struggle over the land.
Who does this land belong to–us or them?”

2. At the Beginning of October 2011 leaders of the Jewish settler movement
announced their intention “to turn Palestinian population centers into
another Srebrenica.” This was their reaction to the prospect of
international recognition of a Palestinian state. Initiating Balkan style
killing fields would represent a marked escalation of ongoing lower level
terror tactics which have seen the destruction of Palestinian crops, the
harassment of Palestinian adults and children, the practice of arson against
mosques, and the occasional outright murder. While this threat was directed
mainly at the Palestinians of the West Bank, the Israelis are bound by
international law to see to their civil rights as well. And since
Netanyahu’s vaunted claim implies Israel’s civilized, law-abiding status
relative to the Arab states, that Palestinian population must be taken
account of.

To show the extent of their respect for the rights of the Palestinians,
settler rabbis have evoked the memory of their American-Israeli “saint and
hero,” Barach Goldstein, whose claim to lasting fame is the massacre of
Muslims at prayer in Hebron back in 1994. And, there has been much
recapitulating of the message delivered in October 2010 by “the spiritual
leader of Shas, the powerful religious political party….that the status of
non-Jews is similar to that of beasts of burden….” And just how many “real
democratic rights” do the animals of Israel have?

3. Just in case you think that these threats are hyperbole, take a look at
reports and video on the recent pogrom-like violence near the settlement of
Anatot. On 30 September 2011 Palestinians along with Israeli allies came to
help a Palestinian farmer plant trees on land he owns near the settlement.
They were attacked and beaten by settlers some of whom were armed policemen.
The attackers have been accurately described as “nearly a lynch-mob.” Then
on 3 October 2011 a mosque in the upper Galilee village of Tuba -Zangariyye
was set on fire by arsonists who left behind the message “Price Tag.” This
is a terrorist tactic used by Israeli right wing extremists. Every time the
Israeli government gets in the way of their racist and expansionist
ambitions (which really is not often enough) they retaliate with acts of
terror against Palestinians.

Part II – Woeful Ignorance

The truth is that Arab-Israelis have always been second-class citizens,
suffering systematic and state sanctioned discrimination. Most of them are
effectively segregated out from the majority Israeli Jewish citizenry. In
this way their “real democratic rights” are rendered largely symbolic. The
only reason they are allowed to vote is because their votes cannot change
the system that discriminates against them. The Palestinians in the Occupied
Territories are even more vulnerable. They are not citizens at all and, even
if Israel annexes the West Bank they never will be. This is because making
them citizens would greatly enhance the likelihood that Arab-Israeli votes
might, in fact, become sufficient to alter the system. The Zionists will
never let that happen. If the choice is between democracy and keeping Israel
a Jewish state, the Israeli establishment will jettison democracy without
thinking twice. In fact, there is a portion of Israeli Jews who have already
jettisoned any regard for “real democratic rights,” even for themselves.

It is interesting to note that 95% of the U.S. Congress seems oblivious to
all this. Indeed, a good number of them recently went off on an all expenses
paid (illegal) junket to Israel which objective observers might consider the
equivalent of giving material aid to a terrorist organization. There is good
reason to believe that this oblivious state of mind is not shared by many of
their constituents, who are slowly but surely being educated about the
criminal nature of Israeli behavior. Unfortunately these constituents have
not, as of yet, made their representatives’ slavish attachment to Zionist
lobby money and influence a voting issue. When will they do so? Perhaps soon
after it is brought home to them that Israel, the “democracy,” has an
unsavory resemblance to Alabama or Georgia in the 1930s and 1940s. If the
settler rabbis have their way this likeness will grow rapidly and thus
become harder to hide. Through their sacrilegious misreading of the Talmud,
these holy men appear anxious to bless lynching on all days of the week
except the Sabbath.

It is not only American Congressmen who are ignorant of Israel’s
deteriorating national character. One might ask just how many Israeli Jews
know how close they are to the precipice of pogrom violence or worse. Some
of course do. In a 14 June 2011 piece by Ilan Peleg and Dov Waxman they tell
us “We believe that unless immediate, serious and dramatic action is taken
to improve the situation of the Arab minority and majority-minority
relations, great dangers are in store for Israel. It is no exaggeration to
say that domestic stability, Israeli democracy and future
Israeli-Palestinian peace could all be undermined by a continued
deterioration in Arab-Jewish relations in Israel.” But polls of Israelis
show that the majority, caught up as they are in the dominant culture of
victimhood and fear of the Arabs, are either ignorant of or unconcerned
about the dangers of which Peleg and Waxman warn. Indeed, most of them want
the Arabs segregated or just kicked out and therefore have no problem with
their society’s deteriorating majority-minority relations.

Part III – The National Skinner Box

All of this raises some serious issues:

1. For most citizens the national environment is like a great big Skinner
Box. In other words it is a hothouse of indoctrination. Americans were
taught to hate and fear communists, Russians were taught to hate and fear
capitalists, and Israeli Jews are taught to hate and fear Palestinians.
Nation states do a good job at such indoctrination–making it part and parcel
of the acculturation process. And, under the right circumstances, whole
populations can easily move from hatred and fear to actual mayhem.

2. This sort of deep seated indoctrination results in nationwide habits of
thought that are remarkably hard to change. Think of the inertia of a large
body, say a planet, moving through space. It is going to take a lot of force
to overcome that inertia, usually force of catastrophic intensity. To put it
another way, whole populations trained to seeing the world one way, usually
do not shift perceptions unless something really bad happens to them. That
something can be military defeat, deep and unbridgeable societal divides
leading to civil war, or the severe costs of isolation and economic boycott
visited on them by the outside world. The severity of these forces are
testimony to just how stubborn indoctrinated populations can be.

Any way you look at it, the situation for those Palestinians under Israeli
domination is likely to get worse before it gets better. And it is going to
take a force of catastrophic intensity to really change Israeli behavior. My
money is on BDS – Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions.

Dr. Lawrence Davidson is the co-author of “A Concise History of the Middle
East and author of “America’s Palestine: Popular and Official from Balfour
to Israeli Statehood”. He is a member of West Chester University’s history
faculty since 1986. He earned his bachelor’s degree from Rutgers University
and completed his master’s and Ph.D. degrees from Georgetown University and
the University of Alberta in Canada, respectively. ldavidson@wcupa.edu,
www.tothepointanalyses.com

Abbas's High-Stakes Gamble in the UN

Graham Usher
September 28, 2011
United Nations

It’s easy to see who won the great debate that captivated the United Nations last week. Palestinian Authority leader Mahmoud Abbas made an eloquent case that after twenty years of a futile “peace process,” the time had come to end Israel’s occupation and for the UN to admit his country as a full member state.

Israeli leader Benjamin Netanyahu called for peace talks “without preconditions”—only to inject such preconditions (like the PA recognizing Israel’s “Jewish character”) that would make talks a nonstarter. Abbas was received rapturously; Netanyahu, coolly.

But the villain was Barack Obama, at least for those peoples in a region where Israel’s occupation is becoming the permafrost on the Arab Spring. The United States had long made it clear it would veto any Palestinian bid for full membership. But President Obama didn’t just rehearse Israeli arguments against the move; he adopted Israel’s narrative on the conflict. “Let’s be honest: Israel is surrounded by neighbors that have waged repeated wars against it,” he said.

Obama made no mention of the occupation, Jewish settlements or even that, since 2002, those neighbors have offered Israel a full peace in return for a full withdrawal from occupied Arab land. It was the most pro-Israeli speech ever made by a US president at the UN, said a veteran Jewish American commentator. It’s “the reason we are going to the UN,” seethed Palestinian delegate Hanan Ashrawi.

The task there is herculean. The PA faces obstruction not only from Washington but from supposed allies like the European Union, the UN and even Russia, the three other members of the so-called Quartet. No sooner had Abbas submitted his bid to the Security Council than all four united to contain it, alarmed that a US veto would inflame anti-Western passions across the Middle East. The Quartet called for the two sides to resume negotiations in a month and reach a peace agreement in a year.

That proposal has been tried in the past. It will tank this time too. Abbas says there can be no return to talks unless they are accompanied by a freeze on settlement-building and are based on the 1967 armistice lines as the border between Israel and a future Palestinian state. The Quartet statement specifies neither.
As of now, six of the Security Council’s fifteen members are backing the PA’s bid. It needs nine to force a vote. If it fails to get a vote, that would suit the United States and, it seems, the Quartet.

Abbas’s dilemma is acute. If he accepts the Quartet’s terms, he would undo all the kudos he has gained for his refusal to bend under US pressure. But if he rejects them, he risks alienating the EU, the UN and Russia, the powers he thinks are needed as a counterweight to Washington’s pro-Israel bias. This dilemma exposes the weakness at the heart of the UN gambit.

There have been two camps behind the UN bid in the PA leadership. Both agreed that for domestic reasons, the Obama administration will not be able to broker even partially fair negotiations this side of the 2012 presidential elections. But one camp, led by Abbas, believes the US abdication could be offset by upgrading Palestine’s status at the UN and internationalizing the negotiations to include the EU, the UN and Russia. The aim was never to end Oslo’s model of bilateralism per se but to freight it with more favorable conditions.

The other camp says Oslo is dead, and argues that an upgrade in UN status—either as a full member or the lesser non-member observer state—would strengthen the PA legally and politically as a “state under occupation.” It may even allow for prosecution of Israel at the International Criminal Court.

The problem is that both camps are reliant on others to further their diplomacy. And currently they are up against a US-EU bloc with two aims. The main one is to spare the United States the shame of a veto at the Security Council. But another is to slow Palestine’s becoming a non-member observer state at the General Assembly, a move the Quartet believes could end all hope of negotiations and trigger Israeli-US sanctions against the PA.

There are other flaws in the PA’s strategy. Abbas received a rousing welcome when he returned to Ramallah. But the largely stage-managed rallies there contrasted poorly with the minuscule gatherings in support of the UN bid in occupied East Jerusalem, among Palestinian citizens of Israel and in the diaspora, let alone the zero demonstrations in Hamas-ruled Gaza. This is testimony of the PA’s failure to ground its UN strategy in a genuine national consensus.

Abbas also said the UN bid was “the Palestinian spring.” Yet in New York he paid only lip service to those democratic movements and states most associated with the Arab uprisings. When Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan addressed the UN, not a single Palestinian delegate was present.

Erdogan has been the regional leader who has made Palestinian independence a cornerstone of a new Middle East. Used correctly—by inscribing the Palestinian narrative of self-determination in the Arab narrative of freedom—the Arab uprisings could be marshaled by the PA as a powerful counterweight to the forces facing them at the UN, especially since the only reason the Quartet has become engaged, admitted one EU diplomat, is out of fear that “the Israel-Palestine conflict could become an issue on the Arab street.”

Time will tell whether Abbas turns to the region to bolster the UN bid or remains ensnared by it. By temperament he prefers diplomacy to revolutionary change. Last week’s defiance of US power may have been his finest hour in the eyes of his people, but it also marked the failure of an Oslo model he owned for more than eighteen years. “I don’t know what to do when I return,” he confided to a friend in New York.
Another Palestinian official was even blunter about the absence of a Palestinian strategy. What comes after September, he was asked. “October,” he said.

About the Author: Graham Usher is a writer and journalist who has written extensively about the Arab world and South Asia.

The dead begin to speak un in India

Kashmir is one of two war zones in India from which no news must come. But those in unmarked graves will not be silenced

By:Arundhati Roy

Editor’s note: For too long I have ignored other issues, including Kashmir. I plead guilty. The only reason is lack of time. However, I will try and cover what I have neglected so far. As a starter, I am reproducing here an important article by the indefatigable and fearless crusading journalist and writer Arundhati Roy.

This article was published on guardian.co.uk at 19.01 EDT on Thursday 29 September 2011. A version appeared on p52 of the Main section section of the Guardian on Friday 30 September 2011. It was last modified at 05.28 EDT on Monday 3 October 2011.

***********************

A Kashmiri farmer walks past unmarked graves in Bimyar, west of Srinagar, in 2009. Photograph: Mukhtar Khan/AP

At about 3am, on 23 September, within hours of his arrival at the Delhi airport, the US radio-journalist David Barsamian was deported. This dangerous man, who produces independent, free-to-air programmes for public radio, has been visiting India for 40 years, doing such dangerous things as learning Urdu and playing the sitar.

Barsamian has published book-length interviews with public intellectuals such as Edward Said, Noam Chomsky, Howard Zinn, Ejaz Ahmed and Tariq Ali (he even makes an appearance as a young, bell-bottom-wearing interviewer in Peter Wintonick's documentary film on Chomsky and Edward Herman's book Manufacturing Consent).

On his more recent trips to India he has done a series of radio interviews with activists, academics, film-makers, journalists and writers (including me). Barsamian's work has taken him to Turkey, Iran, Syria, Lebanon and Pakistan. He has never been deported from any of these countries. So why does the world's largest democracy feel so threatened by this lone, sitar-playing, Urdu-speaking, left-leaning, radio producer?

Here is how Barsamian himself explains it:"It's all about Kashmir. I've done work on Jharkhand, Chhattisgarh, West Bengal, Narmada dams, farmer suicides, the Gujarat pogrom, and the Binayak Sen case. But it's Kashmir that is at the heart of the Indian state's concerns. The official narrative must not be contested."

News reports about his deportation quoted official "sources" as saying that Barsamian had "violated his visa norms during his visit in 2009-10 by indulging in professional work while holding a tourist visa". Visa norms in India are an interesting peep-hole into the government's concerns and predilections. Using the tattered old banner of the "war on terror", the home ministry has decreed that scholars and academics invited for conferences and seminars require security clearance before they will be given visas. Corporate executives and businessmen do not.

So somebody who wants to invest in a dam, or build a steel plant or a buy a bauxite mine is not considered a security hazard, whereas a scholar who might wish to participate in a seminar about, say, displacement or communalism or rising malnutrition in a globalised economy, is. Terrorists with bad intentions have probably guessed that they are better off wearing Prada suits and pretending they want to buy a mine than admitting that they want to attend a seminar.

David Barsamian did not travel to India to buy a mine or to attend a conference. He just came to talk to people. The complaint against him, according to "official sources" is that he had reported on events in Jammu and Kashmir during his last visit to India and that these reports were "not based on facts". Remember Barsamian is not a reporter, he's a man who has conversations with people, mostly dissidents, about the societies in which they live.

Is it illegal for tourists to talk to people in the countries they visit? Would it be illegal for me to travel to the US or Europe and write about the people I met, even if my writing was "not based on facts"? Who decides which "facts" are correct and which are not? Would Barsamian have been deported if the conversations he recorded had been in praise of the impressive turnouts in Kashmir's elections, instead of about daily life in the densest military occupation in the world (an estimated 600,000 actively deployed armed personnel for a population of 10 million people)?

David Barsamian is not the first person to be deported over the Indian government's sensitivities over Kashmir. Professor Richard Shapiro, an anthropologist from San Francisco, was deported from Delhi airport in November 2010 without being given any reason. It was probably a way of punishing his partner, Angana Chatterji, who is a co-convenor of the international peoples' tribunal on human rights and justice which first chronicled the existence of unmarked mass graves in Kashmir.

In September 2011, May Aquino, from the Asian Federation against Involuntary Disappearances (Afad), Manila, was deported from Delhi airport. Earlier this year, on 28 May, the outspoken Indian democratic rights activist, Gautam Navlakha, was deported to Delhi from Srinagar airport. Farook Abdullah, the former chief minister of Kashmir, justified the deportation, saying that writers like Navlakha and myself had no business entering Kashmir because "Kashmir is not for burning".

Kashmir is in the process of being isolated, cut off from the outside world by two concentric rings of border patrols – in Delhi as well as Srinagar – as though it's already a free country with its own visa regime. Within its borders of course, it's open season for the government and the army. The art of controlling Kashmiri journalists and ordinary people with a deadly combination of bribes, threats, blackmail and a whole spectrum of unutterable cruelty has evolved into a twisted art form.

While the government goes about trying to silence the living, the dead have begun to speak up. Perhaps it was insensitive of Barsamian to plan a trip to Kashmir just when the state human rights commission was finally shamed into officially acknowledging the existence of 2,700 unmarked graves from three districts in Kashmir. Reports of thousands of other graves are pouring in from other districts. Perhaps it is insensitive of the unmarked graves to embarrass the government of India just when India's record is due for review before the UN human rights council.

Apart from Dangerous David, who else is the world's largest democracy afraid of? There's young Lingaram Kodopi an adivasi from Dantewada in the state of Chhattisgarh, who was arrested on 9 September. The police say they caught him red-handed in a market place, while he was handing over protection money from Essar, an iron-ore mining company, to the banned Communist party of India (Maoist). His aunt Soni Sori says that he was picked up by plainclothes policemen in a white Bolero car from his grandfather's house in Palnar village.

Interestingly, even by their own account, the police arrested Lingaram but allowed the Maoists to escape. This is only the latest in a series of bizarre, almost hallucinatory accusations they have made against Lingaram and then withdrawn. His real crime is that he is the only journalist who speaks Gondi, the local language, and who knows how to negotiate the remote forest paths in Dantewada the other war zone in India from which no news must come.

Having signed over vast tracts of indigenous tribal homelands in central India to multinational mining and infrastructure corporations in a series of secret memorandums of understanding, the government has begun to flood the forests with hundreds of thousands of security forces. All resistance, armed as well as unarmed has been branded "Maoist" (In Kashmir they are all "jihadi elements").

As the civil war grows deadlier, hundreds of villages have been burnt to the ground. Thousands of adivasis have fled as refugees into neighbouring states. Hundreds of thousands are living terrified lives hiding in the forests. Paramilitary forces have laid siege to the forest, making trips to the markets for essential provisions and medicines a nightmare for villagers. Untold numbers of nameless people are in jail, charged with sedition and waging war on the state, with no lawyers to defend them. Very little news comes out of those forests, and there are no body counts.

So it's not hard to see why young Lingaram Kodopi poses such a threat. Before he trained to become a journalist, he was a driver in Dantewada. In 2009 the police arrested him and confiscated his Jeep. He was locked up in a small toilet for 40 days where he was pressurised to become a special police officer (SPO) in the Salwa Judum, the government-sponsored vigilante army that was at the time tasked with forcing people to flee from their villages (the Salwa Judum has since been declared unconstitutional by the supreme court).

The police released Lingaram after the Gandhian activist Himanshu Kumar filed a habeas corpus petition in court. But then the police arrested Lingaram's old father and five other members of his family. They attacked his village and threatened the villagers if they sheltered him. Eventually Lingaram escaped to Delhi where friends and well-wishers got him admission into a journalism school. In April 2010 he travelled to Dantewada and escorted villagers to Delhi to give testimony at the independent peoples' tribunal about the barbarity of the Salwa Judum and the police and paramilitary forces. In his own testimony, Lingaram was sharply critical of the Maoists as well.

That did not deter the Chhattisgarh police. On 2 July 2010, the senior Maoist leader, Comrade Azad, the official spokesperson for the Maoist party, was captured and executed by the Andhra Pradesh police. Deputy Inspector General Kalluri of the Chhattisgarh police announced at a press conference that Lingaram Kodopi had been elected by the Maoist party to take over Comrade Azad's role (it was like accusing a young school child in 1936 Yan'an of being Zhou Enlai). The charge was met with such derision that the police had to withdraw it. Soon after they accused Lingaram of being the mastermind of a Maoist attack on a congress legislator in Dantewada. But oddly enough, they made no move to arrest him.

Lingaram remained in Delhi, completed his course and received his diploma in journalism. In March 2011, paramilitary forces burned down three villages in Dantewada – Tadmetla, Timmapuram and Morapalli. The Chhattisgarh government blamed the Maoists. The supreme court assigned the investigation to the Central Bureau of Investigation. Lingaram returned to Dantewada with a video camera and trekked from village to village documenting first-hand testimonies of the villagers who indicted the police. By doing this he made himself one of the most wanted men in Dantewada. On 9 September the police finally got to him.

Lingaram has joined an impressive line-up of troublesome news gatherers and disseminators in Chhattisgarh. Among the earliest to be silenced was the celebrated doctor Binayak Sen, who first raised the alarm about the crimes of the Salwa Judum as far back as 2005. He was arrested in 2007, accused of being a Maoist and sentenced to life imprisonment. After years in prison, he is out on bail now.

Kopa Kunjam was my first guide into the forest villages of Dantewada. At the time he worked with Himanshu Kumar's Vanvasi Chetna ashram, doing exactly what Lingaram tried to do much later – travelling to remote villages, bringing out the news, and carefully documenting the horror that was unfolding. In May 2009 the ashram, the last neutral shelter for journalists, writers and academics who were travelling to Dantewada, was demolished by the Chhattisgarh government.
Kopa was arrested on human rights day in September 2009. He was accused of colluding with the Maoists in the murder of one man and the kidnapping of another.

The case against Kopa has begun to fall apart as the police witnesses, including the man who was kidnapped, have disowned the statements they purportedly made to the police. It doesn't really matter, because in India the process is the punishment.

It could take years for Kopa to establish his innocence. Many of those who were emboldened by Kopa to file complaints against the police have been arrested too. That includes women who committed the crime of being raped. Soon after Kopa's arrest Himanshu Kumar was hounded out of Dantewada.

Eventually, here too the dead will begin to speak. And it will not just be dead human beings, it will be the dead land, dead rivers, dead mountains and dead creatures in dead forests that will insist on a hearing.

In this age of surveillance, internet policing and phone-tapping, as the clampdown on those who speak up becomes grimmer with every passing day, it's odd how India is becoming the dream destination of literary festivals. Many of these festivals are funded by the very corporations on whose behalf the police have unleashed their regime of terror.

The Harud literary festival in Srinagar (postponed for the moment) was slated to be the newest, most exciting literary festival in India – "As the autumn leaves change colour the valley of Kashmir will resonate with the sound of poetry, literary dialogue, debate and discussions …"
Its organisers advertised it as an "apolitical" event, but did not say how either the rulers or the subjects of a brutal military occupation that has claimed tens of thousands of lives could be "apolitical". I wonder – will the guests come on tourist visas? Will there be separate ones for Srinagar and Delhi? Will they need security clearance?

The festive din of all this spurious freedom helps to muffle the sound of footsteps in airport corridors as the deported are frog-marched on to departing planes, to mute the click of handcuffs locking around strong, warm wrists and the cold metallic clang of prison doors.
Our lungs are gradually being depleted of oxygen. Perhaps it's time use whatever breath remains in our bodies to say: "Open the bloody gates."

About this author: Arundhati Roy was born 0n November 24, 1961 in Shillong,Meghalaya, India.She is a writer and an activist who focuses on issues related to social justice and economic inequality. She won the Booker Prize in 1997 for her novel, The God of Small Things, and has also written two screenplays and several collections of essays.For her work as an activist she received the Cultural Freedom Prize awarded by the Lannan Foundation in 2002.

For an interesting video interview, click on: www.youtube.com/watch?v=gnTS9gHCZoI

OBAMA'S BADGE OF SHAME

By: Gulamhusein A. Abba

No one told the Kuwaitis that the only way to end Iraq’s occupation
was for them to negotiate with Iraq.

Kosovo was unilaterally recognized by the United States three years
ago–even though its statehood did not come about through a negotiated
settlement with Serbia

One does not ask the robbed to negotiate with the robber as to which
of the robbed items s/he is going to return, when s/he is going to do it
and on what terms. The keepers of law and order step in
and do the needful.

In this case particularly, more than in any other case, it is the duty
and responsibility of the international community to step in.
It is they who created Israel

It is time for the international community to end this farce of direct negotiations
between the helpless occupied and the all-powerful occupier.
It is time for it to live up to its duty and obligations and
take action to end the illegal occupation

Obama has diminished himself, tarnished the image of America
and, as between Israel and Palestine, has aligned himself
with the oppressor against the oppressed.
**********************************

The portion of Obama’s speech in the United Nations that referred to the Palestinian bid for membership in the UN earned for him a “badge of honor” from Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu (those are the very words used by Netanyahu when he congratulated Obama on his speech!). But, in the eyes of most of the world, it brought shame and disgrace on Obama and the US and made a laughing stock of both.

There are three points he made in his speech. One was that the Palestinian state cannot come into being through resolutions in the UN. He forgets that but for a resolution of the UN, Israel would not be even existing today. And it was a UN resolution that enabled NATO to actively help the Libyan rebels get control of Tripoli and most of Libya. Again, it was UN resolutions that resulted in the formation of the Alliance of the Willing and launching of Desert Storm. Once again, it was a UN resolution that enabled the launching of the war on Iraq purportedly to find and destroy Weapons of Mass Destruction.

In Tunisia the US, along with the rest of the world, cheered the Tunisian rebels when they got rid of their tyrannical government. In Egypt the US supported, slowly, hesitatingly, cautiously and, at times, seemingly reluctantly, the Egyptian people and applauded the departure of dictator Hosni Mubarak, a long time and loyal ally of the US. In Libya the US went one step further. It spent billions of dollars and actively participated, along with NATO forces, in bombing Gaddafi’s bases. But for the UN resolution sanctioning NATO intervention, the Gaddafi regime would still be in power in Libya.

Not so long back, Iraq reclaimed Kuwait, which was once its province and an integral part of Iraq, and would have remained so had not the British, as was their common practice, drawn a line in the sand, carved out from Iraq what is now Kuwait and put a puppet on its throne. There are those who even today believe that Iraq’s occupation of Kuwait was done with a nod and a wink from the then American ambassador to Iraq.

US and the whole civilized world, notwithstanding any “justification” that Iraq may have had, was outraged at this breach of international law by Iraq. The question of sovereignty of lawfully constituted nations was involved. It acted promptly and decisively to end this illegal occupation of Kuwait and, in a reasonably short time, the Iraqi occupying force was not only driven out of Kuwait but chased almost to the gates of Basra.

No one told the Kuwaitis that the only way to end Iraq’s occupation was for them to negotiate with Iraq. There were some negotiations of sorts but not between the occupied and the occupier. Rather, it was with world powers.

In none of the above cases were the desired results obtained through negotiations.
More to the point is the recent prominent example Kosovo. It was unilaterally recognized by the United States three years ago–even though its statehood did not come about through a negotiated settlement with Serbia

Photo: Courtesy of GALLO/Getty

It is ridiculous to ask Palestinians to negotiate with Israel. Israel is the aggressor, the occupier and Palestinians are the victims of this aggression, the occupied. Besides, there is no comparison between them. Israel has the fourth largest army in the world and is heavily armed, its arsenal including nuclear arms. Palestinians have no army at all. They are completely asymmetrical.
Besides, one does not ask the raped to negotiate with the rapist or the robbed to negotiate with the robber as to which of the robbed items s/he is going to return, when s/he is going to do it and on what terms. The keepers of law and order step in and do the needful.

In this case particularly, more than in any other case, it is the duty and responsibility of the international community to step in. It is they who, in 1949, ignoring the strong objections and protests of the indigenous people, the Palestinians, and of all the neighboring Arab states which surround Palestine, carved out a little more than 50% of Palestine as it then exited, and gifted it to the Jewish community, which promptly started its ethnic cleansing activities in the demarcated area and its surroundings.

In the war that followed the attacks launched by the surrounding Arab nations, chiefly to halt the massacre of the Palestinians, Israel went beyond the area granted to it by the international community, and, the truce lines at the end of that war added more territory to Israel.
Not satisfied, Israel in 1967 launched an attack on Jordan (which was then in control of the West Bank and East Jerusalem), Egypt (which controlled the Gaza Strip) and Syria (to which belonged the Golan Heights).As a direct result of this aggression Israel gained control of and occupied all the said territory in Palestine, thus fulfilling its objective of establishing Eretz Israel, with Judea and Samaria, in all of the land between the Jordan river and the sea to the west. It continues this illegal occupation to this day, with impunity.

This occupation is the longest occupation in present history, and it is a brutal and tyrannical one. Human rights violations and violations of international law occur regularly in open sight of the whole world. Massive transfer of population by the occupying power into occupied lands, destruction of villages in the occupied territories, building illegal constructions thereon – all violations of international law -- go on almost on a daily basis.

That this occupation and the Israeli settlements built on lands beyond what was earmarked for Israel is illegal is recognized and accepted by the whole world, including the USA. The international community, which created the state responsible for these illegal acts, instead of doing its duty and carrying out its obligations and responsibilities, asked the Palestinians to negotiate with the aggressor, Israel!

Having no other alternative, the Palestinians did just that. Arafat even signed, eighteen years back, the disastrous Oslo Accords, believing that under its terms, within five years all the occupied territory would be fully under the control of the Palestinians.
Israel used this agreement to expand exponentially its settlements in the occupied territories. The expected transfer of power after five years never happened. Instead fresh demands and conditions were put forward by Israel. When the Palestinians refused to accede to these preposterous demands, Israel shamelessly alleged that the Palestinians had rejected peace and chosen the path of terrorism!

Notwithstanding all this, the Palestinians have persevered and negotiated and negotiated and negotiated -- Madrid (1991), Oslo (1993), Wye River (1997), Camp David (2000), Taba (2001), Quartet’s road map (2002), Annapolis (2007), bilateral negotiations (2008) and on and on. All to no avail. The grabbing of land, demolitions of Palestinian homes and even entire villages,, uprooting of produce, building of illegal Israeli settlements and “for Jews only” roads and highways has continued unabated.

Even the powerful USA and strong ally of Israel could not get Israel to at least cease and desist from further violation of international law by putting a halt to the construction of illegal Israeli settlements in the occupied territories.

All that these “negotiations” got for Palestinians is almost 6500 Palestinian civilians killed since September 2000 alone, over 45,000 Palestinians injured (some maimed for life), over 6,000 Palestinians in Israeli jails, many with no charges (including over 250 females and children under the age of 16), over 650,000 Palestinians detained and imprisoned, over 25,000 Palestinian homes demolished since 1967 – over half since 2003, including over 4300 during the Israeli military assault on Gaza in 2008-2009.

The number of Israeli settlers has more than doubled during the last ten years of “negotiations”, reaching a staggering figure of 650,000. There are 236 illegal Israeli settlements in the West Bank and East Jerusalem. These occupy about 43 per cent of the land in the truncated West Bank and East Jerusalem and have displaced thousands of Palestinians. There are over four hundreds checkpoints and Jewish-only roads. And, of course the monstrous separation and land grabbing Wall snaking through Palestinian territories.

Clearly the sole beneficiary of these “negotiations” is Israel, which is using the negotiations for this very purpose. The Palestinians have gained nothing. To the contrary. they have lost much from the meager amount they had.
Under these circumstances, to say that the only course for the Palestinians is to negotiate with Israel is, to say the least, cruel.

It is time for the international community to end this farce of direct negotiations between the helpless occupied and the all-powerful occupier. It is time for it to live up to its duty and obligations and take action to end the illegal occupation.

The first step is to approve the Palestinians’ application for full membership.

Regrettably, of all persons, Obama has threatened to veto any resolution granting this request!
Coming from the man who started his presidency by choosing the Palestinians to be the first to be called on phone, who gave the Cairo speech so full of hope and promise to the Arab world, who not so long ago snubbed Netanyahu, this stance by Obama is inexplicable and strange indeed.
But then, the President’s chair has magical powers. It changes men. Its occupant becomes addicted to it. S/he will do anything to retain this seat.

Alas, Obama has obviously chosen this path. From being a world statesman he has sunk to being a contender in the coming general elections in the USA. He used the international forum to speak to the electorate in the USA. Aware of the power of AIPAC, desperate to shore up his sagging popularity back home, he spoke what powerful donors and supporters wanted to hear.
In doing so, he has shown a complete disregard for justice and international law, has diminished himself, tarnished the image of America and, as between Israel and Palestine, has aligned himself with the oppressor against the oppressed.

Note: Please also see the poem “Peace Talks” by Palestinian poet Samah Sabavi in the October 2009 archives in this blog.

SLAUGHTER IN GAZA

ISRAELI WARPLANES CONTINUE DEADLY AIR STRIKES
Where is the reporting of this human slaughter in our media?

A compilation of photos taken since Israel began bombarding Gaza on 18 August. To see a large version, please go to our website: Australians for Palestine

Sonja Karkar, Editor of Australians for Palestine writes: Israel is continuing to pound Gaza - MEMO reports 19 killed and 42 injured. More distressing photos on MEMO website

Is anyone going to do something about Israel's flagrant disregard of human life? Children are being slaughtered and parents have nowhere to run to escape. Israel has the entire population of Gaza under siege and there is no safe haven for the Palestinians.

Collective punishment directly contravenes Article 33 of the Fourth Geneva Convention, and is identified a war crime. How big must the numbers be before journalists will have the courage to write and editors to publish what Israel is doing again with impunity in violation of international law?

THE LONDON RIOTS: Lessons to be learnt

by Gulamhusein A. Abba

Photo Credit: readerssupportnews.org

“Who believed there would be no consequences
to the increase of obscene wealth for a few while
impoverishment simultaneously plagued the masses”.
“A Society on the Verge of a Meltdown” By Jakob Augstein
Spiegel Online: 08.18.2011

It has been reported that the recent riots in London are the worst that city has seen. Several areas were affected. Apart from London proper, the riots, which began late in London’s Tottenham district, spread to Manchester in central England, Carring Cross area of Nottinghamshire, Leicester, Wolverhampton, West Brunswick and other areas.

The damage done was tremendous. Shops were set on fire, window panes broken, stores looted, police shot at. Cases of stabbing were reported. Lives were lost.

Almost immediately the blame game started. A favorite culprit was “multiculturism” (code for ‘these damned immigrants’). Others blamed poor or non-existing parenting. Parents blamed laws that prevented them from using old and tried methods to discipline their children.

Prime Minister David Cameron, on returning to London after cutting short his summer vacation, reacted in the only way governments know to react in such situations. He hammered out a tough line against the rioters. Thousands of police flooded the capital. He talked about not letting a “culture of fear” taking hold and said “nothing is off the table”. Including water cannons, never deployed in Britain so far.

To the rioters he said, to thunderous applause, “We will find you. We will arrest you. We will punish you. You will pay.” To the people he said “We will protect you” and promised that the government would compensate them for such damage and or losses they may have suffered. And to the authorities he gave an assurance that they would be given “strong powers”, which would include allowing police to order “thugs” to remove masks or hoods, evicting “trouble makers” from subsidized housing, and temporarily disabling cell phone instant messaging services.

Whatever else may have been responsible, the charge against immigrants was unwarranted. Those indulging in violence included local whites. And many immigrants went out of their way to stop the rioting and looting.

The rioting, the violence, the arson, the looting, the lawlessness was deplorable and deserving of unreserved condemnation. Such violence serves no purpose. It only backfires. Worse, it results in avoidable damage and loss, including to public property, when the country can least afford it.

Giving the police extra powers and deploying them in large numbers to quell the riots was the right thing to do, on short term basis.

That having been said, there is need for context, a need for understanding the root cause of the unrest and taking long term measures to deal with them.

That is what was urged by some when the US was faced with the 9/11 terror attack. At that time, all those who called for introspection were branded as traitors and accused of blaming the victims!

The same thing is happening now in England. There is a knee jerk reaction against the rioters. Harsh words are being said against them. And harsh actions are being called for and taken. Deservedly. But we cannot stop there. We have to dig deeper.

Apart from charges of insensitive policing, other factors which are being cited as causes of the riots are: isolation and neglect of communities, deep frustration and anger across Britain over the government’s austerity budget which will bring huge cuts to social services and welfare payments, so vital to the poor, without exacting any “sacrifices” from the rich.

I have for years been saying that as the gap between the rich and the poor widens, unrest will spread and, unless corrective steps, grounded in social justice are taken, the poor and the exploited will sooner or later revolt.

When an agenda is pushed that makes the rich richer and punches out huge holes in the social safety net of the poor and the powerless, when those already suffering are asked to sacrifice more while nothing is asked of the rich, when those in power turn a blind eye to the struggle for survival by the masses, and a deaf ear to their cries, a point is reached when it becomes unbearable and intolerable and the building frustration, despair, desperation and rage boils over and expresses itself in the only way left --- violence.

It is argued in some quarters that the riots in England were not a protest. It was a riot. The rioters were not protesting government’s policies. They were simply out on a looting spree, having “fun” as one of the rioters described it.

True the rioters looted. True some of the acts were pure, unadulterated evil. No one denies that. And those who indulged in these acts need to be dealt with.

And yet there is need to ask as to why these acts happened. Does the government, does the British society have any responsibility in this?

“The riots began in Tottenham, which has the highest unemployment rate in London. Youth clubs have been closed, because the austerity economics regime slashed 75% of the youth services budget. And, as Seumas Milne points out, young people in the neighborhood said the club closings could lead to rioting, as bored and anxious young people take to the streets.” Wrote Richard (RJ) Eskow on August 11 in his article “England's Ashes - Our Future?” (http://www.ourfuture.org/blog-entry/2011083211/englands-ashes-our-future)

Education grants for children from low-income families have been
abolished. So also, in many areas, youth centers and help centers for the unemployed and pregnant have been closed. In the Lewisham area alone, five libraries were closed. In the London borough of Haringey, which includes Tottenham, 75 percent of funding for youth services will be cut over the next three years.

The gap between rich and poor is wider in Great Britain than almost anywhere else in the Western world. It is a tough place to live in if you are poor.

According to a UNICEF study, the UK is ranked as the most child-unfriendly of 21 major industrialized nations. There are 3.4 million children living below the poverty line in Britain. For those youngsters living in what are dismissed as “bad neighborhoods”, life can be very difficult. Almost daily they put up with beatings and assaults. Some 60 percent of those between the ages of 10 and 15 become a victim of crime at least once.

The violence escalates and “evolves”. Those who used fists soon find themselves having to use knives. Then, guns.

The average age of those for whom such a violent confrontation is deadly used to be 24. Now it is 19!

Whole neighborhoods were devastated by the policies of Margaret Thatcher in the 1980s. Neither Tony Blair nor Gordon Brown did anything to fix them.

These are the neighborhood in which the rioters have been living. This is the life which the “NEETS” (i.e. not in education, employment or training), who number a whopping 1.2 million, are fated to live -- a life of drugs, loitering and weapons. As one writer observed. “They rule their local areas under the law of the jungle, with a deep sense of uselessness in a world where almost every recreational activity costs money; money which they don't have”.

One woman, a truly compassionate woman who has worked hard all her life and who has given, given and given, referring to the rioters said: “They are given by the state a place to live in and money to live on, without having to work for it. They should be grateful. Instead, they burn and loot and kill. They are nothing but scum.” That such a woman could say this reveals how uninformed the people are of realities.

Here is what one of the rioters said when this was put to him; “"No one has ever given me a chance; I am just angry at how the whole system works. They give me just enough money so that I can eat and watch TV all day."

That about sums it up. Just enough money to eat and watch TV all day. Thus the elite make sure that these unfortunates remain confined to the “bad neighborhoods.” !

So, when the police shot and killed a 29-year-old black man, Mark Duggan, in the London area of Tottenham on a Saturday, they decided they had had enough of it and went on a “shopping spree”. Not having any cash, or plastic, they used what they had – sticks, knives, rocks, fire bombs. ( It has been claimed that the police shot the man only after he had shot at them. A loaded handgun was recovered from the scene, but the Independent Police Complaints Commission said there was no evidence that Duggan had fired on police before he was shot. An inquest into his death is ongoing. It is expected to take months to reach a conclusion).

The rioters are those who years back were thrown away by society, considered to be dregs and flotsam of society. The house and the money which the woman said the rioters should be grateful for is the price the elite pay to keep them confined to the “neighborhoods”, to make sure that they do not make inroads into the world of the elite, the “haves”.

The prospects of these youth in London are no better than of the youth in Cairo or Sana'a. What they need and want is not handouts, not “a place to live in and enough to eat”, but opportunities to educate themselves and jobs they are willing to work, so that they can escape the culture of violence amid which they are forced to live, and live instead a life of dignity and respect.

For too long the message to the British underclass has been: Born poor, you will remain poor and so will your children and grandchildren.

Yes, the violence was deplorable and condemnable. Yes, the rioters are the immediate and visible culprits responsible for the ashes in which parts of England lie. Yes, they must be found and dealt with according to law.

But what about those who knowingly ignored the frustration and rage their policies were causing? When governments pander to the rich and turn their backs on those who need their help most -- the poor, the elderly, the sick, the disabled, the homeless, the powerless, the forgotten ones, those dismissed as dregs and flotsam of society – then those in charge of such governments are the ones who are the hidden culprits responsible for the resultant violence.

Who is going to punish them? How are they going ot be punished?

The answer seems to be clear. Boot them out of office! But that is easier said than done. In the system as it exists today, millions are required to just contest an election. Far more to win one. And no single person has that kind of money. The funding comes from the vested interests and global corporations or even foreign governments. Those who get elected are beholden to them and will do nothing that will interrupt the flow of funds from these sources.

There are big problems that need to be grasped and addressed. There are solutions but these are beyond the scope of this article.

What must be realized is that the riots in England are a harbinger of things to come. A class war on a much larger scale looms, not only in England but all over the world. As witnessed in Tunisia and Egypt, and being witnessed in Bahrain, Yemen, Syria and Lebanon.

The exploited are done taking it lying down. Their voices are ringing out loud and clear. Their determination to rid themselves of the old order is in plain sight. They will not be stopped. They cannot be stopped.

A disclaimer:
Nothing said here is meant to condone or justify the violence that the Brits witnessed recently. Just to add context and apportion the blame where it belongs.

More importantly, it is meant to bring home the point that unless the root causes for the violence are examined and long term corrective and meaningful steps are taken, this cycle of violence will

An Ode to Lifta

By Nahida Izzat

Nahida Izzat
the Exiled Palestinian

Editor's Note: This version has been very slightly edited, near the ending. It was written by the young poet on reading that Israel is planning to raze the old village of Lifta to make room for vacation homes for Israelis. Read the full account in A Palestinian's Last Village to be Razed appearing on this blog.

I think of Lifta... I smile.... like a flower

Lifta . . . The healing touch of my grandmother

The aroma of her bread, baked with tenderness and love

Lifta . . . The hand of my mother against my face

Her gentle fingers running through my curls

Lifta . . . The smile of "Amal" my childhood friend

Gazing at Jerusalem in the horizon

Lifta . . . Rambling roses, lavender and jasmine

Poppies, daisies, chamomile carpets

And a blanket of stars

I think of Lifta . . . I smile . . . like a flower

Lifta . . . distressed rocks, anxious roofs and wounded windows

Lifta . . . fatigued Hills sleeping on each other’s shoulders

Hunched homes, years of anguish and solitude

Insisting not to bow down

Resilient trees embracing the landscape

Refusing to surrender

A pounding tearful stream determined not to drown

I think of Lifta . . . I smile . . . like a flower

Lifta . . . fragrant dreams of little girls

bouncing in the meadows

Lifta . . . sparkly eyes teaming with joy . . .

following a baby gazelle down the valley

Lifta . . . Rainbow giggles of many many children,

singing, dancing, playing "bride and groom"

I think of Lifta . . . I smile.... like a flower

Lifta . . . Lifta . . . Lifta

Lifta . . . the throbbing wound of my heart

The scent of my buried memories seeping through my tortured being

Lifta . . . the childhood paradise I yearn to re-grasp

Lifta . . . the last straw humankind could hold onto

To save its humanity

I think of Lifta . . . I smile . . . like a flower

I think of Lifta . . . I weep... like a motherless child

I think of Lifta . . . I sing like a buoyant hummingbird

I think of Lifta . . . I tremble like an autumn leaf

I think of Lifta . . . I haemorrhage like slaughtered lamb

I think of Lifta . . . I smile.... like a flower

I think of Lifta . . . I gasp for a glimpse of her splendour

I think of Lifta . . . I melt with love, so tender

I think of Lifta . . . I rage with blazing anger

You doers of evil

who so wantonly rain death and destruction

on helpless, defenseless

Palestinians

Heed if you have a residue of a heart

NEVER AGAIN you said

NEVER AGAIN you LIED

Heed if you have a scum of a soul

You destroy Lifta! You unleash your own demise

WRATH as NEVER BEFORE

Torment

Boundless, measureless, bottomless, eternal

It’s your choice

And so it goes

Delightful

Life . . . goes on!

About the author: Nahida Izzat is a Jerusalem-born Palestinian refugee living in exile for over 44 years. She was forced to leave her homeland, Palestine, at the age of seven during the six-day war. Nahida is a mathematician by education, a mother of 3 children by career, an artist by hobby, and a returned-refugee to a free Palestine by optimism, hopes and anticipation