Well, Jack Layton has summed up the image of an emerging Liberal-Conservative Coalition in Ottawa. I agree on Jack probably on most things, but he's wrong on this one. There has been a Conservative-Liberal Coalition ever since Paul Martin lost in 2006 and Stephen Harper took the reins. Ignatieff is different from Stephane Dion on one matter, he comes across as having a spine, but in reality he's the same. Oppose the budget, oppose everything the Conservatives do, but vote to keep them afloat for as long as possible. With a right-winger like Ignatieff in charge, I think the Libs and Cons will be getting closer and in the coming years it will become more and more apparent how indistinguishable these two parties have become.
Were we expecting much more from the Liberals, really?
Here's a video from Rick Mercer from the Dion Days, just as relevent today as it was then:
(except the no one can understand our leader speak line)
Ah Well, if there is another war coming up I am sure Iggy and Harper can team up to make sure Canada gets involved...TOGETHER!
Thursday, January 29, 2009
Tuesday, January 27, 2009
York Strike Almost Done
Well, looks like Dalton McGuinty has decided to impose back-to-work legislation for CUPE 3903. This is what the York University administration has wanted all along, from what I can tell. The union striked 81 days, the administration only bargained and negotiated 11 of those days, continually backing away from the table. They wanted the government to intervene. The NDP is delaying the bill, but it looks like things are going to get harsh for CUPE 3903.
The NDP, again, has stuck to it's principles. As an undergraduate student I stand with them. I plan a possible academic career myself and know the quality of education, as a citizen of this province and country is sliding down while tuition fees rise. This problem will only fester. Back-to-work legislation solves nothing in the long-run. Let us hope the next Ontario NDP leader is as principled as Howard Hampton.
As for York U, there is going to be much tension on the campus in the next few months. I don't know what the next step for the union will be. Let's hope they can get something out of this, but I cant say what. Government has no right to intervene, this sets a dangerous precedent. Truly, I have seen a disgusting display by some of the undergrads, solely blaming the union and the YFS. There have been death-threats made against union members, vandalizing against the union and YFS. I have never seen such a disgusting display of immaturity and ignorance in my life.
Classes are starting again inevitably and I got work to do, it seems.
The NDP, again, has stuck to it's principles. As an undergraduate student I stand with them. I plan a possible academic career myself and know the quality of education, as a citizen of this province and country is sliding down while tuition fees rise. This problem will only fester. Back-to-work legislation solves nothing in the long-run. Let us hope the next Ontario NDP leader is as principled as Howard Hampton.
As for York U, there is going to be much tension on the campus in the next few months. I don't know what the next step for the union will be. Let's hope they can get something out of this, but I cant say what. Government has no right to intervene, this sets a dangerous precedent. Truly, I have seen a disgusting display by some of the undergrads, solely blaming the union and the YFS. There have been death-threats made against union members, vandalizing against the union and YFS. I have never seen such a disgusting display of immaturity and ignorance in my life.
Classes are starting again inevitably and I got work to do, it seems.
Tuesday, January 20, 2009
Article on Gaza by Hammam Farah
By Hammam Farah – Toronto
The incessant sound of typing over the many laptops around me became the background theme sound of my life for the past two and a half weeks. Since Israel's latest assault on Gaza that began on December 27, my social circle of journalists and activists have besieged ourselves (no pun intended) in a friend's basement to write articles, coordinate with other groups, take interviews, and discuss strategies for raising awareness and taking action.
Already, the bone chilling, cold streets of Toronto have seen several mass demonstrations of solidarity with the people of Gaza and anger at an Israeli government that is increasingly being recognized as one of apartheid and racial exclusion. For our Palestinian people back home, the struggle consists of continued steadfastness and resistance. For us in the Diaspora, it's about education, solidarity, and the promotion of the global boycott, divestment, and sanctions (BDS) campaign against Israeli apartheid and its institutions. For both those in Palestine and outside, the long-term goal is the ending of Israeli apartheid, and the immediate goal is breaking the world's silence over the two-year-old inhuman siege on Gaza and its culmination with this massive assault that has so far taken the lives of over a thousand people today.
This latest assault represents the failure of the siege to weaken Hamas and the Gazan people's resolve. It should come as a wake-up call to the world that placing 1.5 million people in a cage and denying them basic necessities, including food, medical supplies and fuel only takes that fuel from their hands and adds it to the fire.
When I phoned my grandmother who lives in Gaza to check on her last week, she said that there used to be a choice between bread and rice, but now there was only bread. The obvious next step is for even bread to disappear and the people left with nothing to eat. She went on to say that the electricity was out and that the water was dirty and had to be boiled to clean. The psychological aspect is even worse. People are left to constantly contemplate whether to stay home or seek shelter elsewhere within the narrow streets of Gaza, which is one of the few, if not the only, territories on earth where civilians are denied the chance to leave and seek refuge during a time of war or bombardment. The decision could determine whether they would live or die. To my increasing frustration, other relatives did not answer their phones because the Israeli intelligence has been calling people to intimidate them into collaborating.
But the suffering only strengthens our will to continue the struggle. Here in Canada, our government will have to answer for its overt support for the massacres. So do our universities. Several university presidents issued a statement in 2007 condemning Britain's University and College Union's motion to discuss the academic boycott of Israel, using the principle of academic freedom as justification. But they have remained silent over the bombing of the Islamic University of Gaza and other educational institutions. How dare they have the audacity to believe that condemnation of a non-violent boycott, but silence over the violence of bombs will go unanswered for? They, also, will have to answer to us. And all the student unions that refused or kept delaying the passing of boycott resolutions will now have to make a choice.
For this is just the beginning. It is inspirational to see the thousands of people who came out to the streets in protest and the many who attended a teach-in on Gaza last week. The number of unions who are pledging to boycott Israel is continuing to grow. The number of Jews opposing Israel's apartheid is continuing to grow and even the media has been finally reporting on Jewish condemnation and protest of Israel. And the governments of Venezuela and Bolivia have cut their ties with Israel.
And yet, Israel does not see the harm it has done to its own image. Even during this horrific onslaught on Gaza, the Central Elections Committee of Israel has just banned two of the largest and most popular Palestinian citizen ("Israeli Arab") parties from running in next month's Knesset elections. If this is how Israel plans to fight back the growing allegations of apartheid, then our work is going to be cut out for us much sooner than I predicted.
Many people are getting involved now, including people that were unaware of what's going on, people who were unsure which side to take, people who knew what was going on but didn't know what to do about it, people who supported the Palestinians but did not support the boycott and now do, and people who supported Israel and now don't.
- Hammam Farah is a Palestinian Canadian who was born in the Gaza Strip as part of Gaza's small Christian community. He resides in Toronto and is a solidarity activist with the Coalition Against Israeli Apartheid (CAIA), which is spearheading the boycott, divestment, and sanctions (BDS) campaign in Canada. He can be reached at hammamf@gmail.com
If you like this article, please consider making a contribution to the Palestine Chronicle.
The incessant sound of typing over the many laptops around me became the background theme sound of my life for the past two and a half weeks. Since Israel's latest assault on Gaza that began on December 27, my social circle of journalists and activists have besieged ourselves (no pun intended) in a friend's basement to write articles, coordinate with other groups, take interviews, and discuss strategies for raising awareness and taking action.
Already, the bone chilling, cold streets of Toronto have seen several mass demonstrations of solidarity with the people of Gaza and anger at an Israeli government that is increasingly being recognized as one of apartheid and racial exclusion. For our Palestinian people back home, the struggle consists of continued steadfastness and resistance. For us in the Diaspora, it's about education, solidarity, and the promotion of the global boycott, divestment, and sanctions (BDS) campaign against Israeli apartheid and its institutions. For both those in Palestine and outside, the long-term goal is the ending of Israeli apartheid, and the immediate goal is breaking the world's silence over the two-year-old inhuman siege on Gaza and its culmination with this massive assault that has so far taken the lives of over a thousand people today.
This latest assault represents the failure of the siege to weaken Hamas and the Gazan people's resolve. It should come as a wake-up call to the world that placing 1.5 million people in a cage and denying them basic necessities, including food, medical supplies and fuel only takes that fuel from their hands and adds it to the fire.
When I phoned my grandmother who lives in Gaza to check on her last week, she said that there used to be a choice between bread and rice, but now there was only bread. The obvious next step is for even bread to disappear and the people left with nothing to eat. She went on to say that the electricity was out and that the water was dirty and had to be boiled to clean. The psychological aspect is even worse. People are left to constantly contemplate whether to stay home or seek shelter elsewhere within the narrow streets of Gaza, which is one of the few, if not the only, territories on earth where civilians are denied the chance to leave and seek refuge during a time of war or bombardment. The decision could determine whether they would live or die. To my increasing frustration, other relatives did not answer their phones because the Israeli intelligence has been calling people to intimidate them into collaborating.
But the suffering only strengthens our will to continue the struggle. Here in Canada, our government will have to answer for its overt support for the massacres. So do our universities. Several university presidents issued a statement in 2007 condemning Britain's University and College Union's motion to discuss the academic boycott of Israel, using the principle of academic freedom as justification. But they have remained silent over the bombing of the Islamic University of Gaza and other educational institutions. How dare they have the audacity to believe that condemnation of a non-violent boycott, but silence over the violence of bombs will go unanswered for? They, also, will have to answer to us. And all the student unions that refused or kept delaying the passing of boycott resolutions will now have to make a choice.
For this is just the beginning. It is inspirational to see the thousands of people who came out to the streets in protest and the many who attended a teach-in on Gaza last week. The number of unions who are pledging to boycott Israel is continuing to grow. The number of Jews opposing Israel's apartheid is continuing to grow and even the media has been finally reporting on Jewish condemnation and protest of Israel. And the governments of Venezuela and Bolivia have cut their ties with Israel.
And yet, Israel does not see the harm it has done to its own image. Even during this horrific onslaught on Gaza, the Central Elections Committee of Israel has just banned two of the largest and most popular Palestinian citizen ("Israeli Arab") parties from running in next month's Knesset elections. If this is how Israel plans to fight back the growing allegations of apartheid, then our work is going to be cut out for us much sooner than I predicted.
Many people are getting involved now, including people that were unaware of what's going on, people who were unsure which side to take, people who knew what was going on but didn't know what to do about it, people who supported the Palestinians but did not support the boycott and now do, and people who supported Israel and now don't.
- Hammam Farah is a Palestinian Canadian who was born in the Gaza Strip as part of Gaza's small Christian community. He resides in Toronto and is a solidarity activist with the Coalition Against Israeli Apartheid (CAIA), which is spearheading the boycott, divestment, and sanctions (BDS) campaign in Canada. He can be reached at hammamf@gmail.com
If you like this article, please consider making a contribution to the Palestine Chronicle.
Saturday, January 17, 2009
Friday, January 16, 2009
Jewish UK MP Compares Israelis to Nazis
UK Jewish MP in a Commons debate : Israel acting like Nazis in Gaza -- "They are not simply war criminals, they are fools."
YOUTUBE - 15 Jan 2009
SIR Gerald Kaufman, the veteran Labour MP, yesterday compared the actions of Israeli troops in Gaza to the Nazis who forced his family to flee Poland.
During a Commons debate on the fighting in Gaza, he urged the government to impose an arms embargo on Israel.
Sir Gerald, who was brought up as an orthodox Jew and Zionist, said: "My grandmother was ill in bed when the Nazis came to her home town a German soldier shot her dead in her bed.
"My grandmother did not die to provide cover for Israeli soldiers murdering Palestinian grandmothers in Gaza. The present Israeli government ruthlessly and cynically exploits the continuing guilt from gentiles over the slaughter of Jews in the Holocaust as justification for their murder of Palestinians."
He said the claim that many of the Palestinian victims were militants "was the reply of the Nazi" and added: "I suppose the Jews fighting for their lives in the Warsaw ghetto could have been dismissed as militants."
He accused the Israeli government of seeking "conquest" and added:
"They are not simply war criminals, they are fools."
YOUTUBE - 15 Jan 2009
SIR Gerald Kaufman, the veteran Labour MP, yesterday compared the actions of Israeli troops in Gaza to the Nazis who forced his family to flee Poland.
During a Commons debate on the fighting in Gaza, he urged the government to impose an arms embargo on Israel.
Sir Gerald, who was brought up as an orthodox Jew and Zionist, said: "My grandmother was ill in bed when the Nazis came to her home town a German soldier shot her dead in her bed.
"My grandmother did not die to provide cover for Israeli soldiers murdering Palestinian grandmothers in Gaza. The present Israeli government ruthlessly and cynically exploits the continuing guilt from gentiles over the slaughter of Jews in the Holocaust as justification for their murder of Palestinians."
He said the claim that many of the Palestinian victims were militants "was the reply of the Nazi" and added: "I suppose the Jews fighting for their lives in the Warsaw ghetto could have been dismissed as militants."
He accused the Israeli government of seeking "conquest" and added:
"They are not simply war criminals, they are fools."
Israel Bombs UN HQ; burning humanitarian aid
Israel shells UN headquarters in Gaza, destroys tonnes of humanitarian aid
Thu, 2009-01-15 14:10.
By: Ibrahim Barzak And Amy Teibel, THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
GAZA CITY, Gaza Strip - Israel shelled the United Nations headquarters in the Gaza Strip on Thursday, engulfing the compound and a warehouse in fire and destroying a large stockpile of food and humanitarian supplies intended for Palestinian refugees.
UN workers and Palestinian firefighters, some wearing bulletproof jackets, struggled to douse the flames and pull bags of food aid from the debris.
Israeli officials said their forces were fired on from the compound by Hamas guerrillas.
UN officials at the scene dismissed the Israeli claim as "nonsense."
UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon, who is in the region to end the devastating offensive in Gaza, demanded a "full explanation" for the attack, which also wounded three people.
He said the Israeli defence minister told him there had been a "grave mistake."
However, Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert said the military fired artillery shells at the UN compound after Hamas opened fire from the location.
"It is absolutely true that we were attacked from that place, but the consequences are very sad and we apologize for it," Olmert said. "I don't think it should have happened and I'm very sorry."
Even as a top Israeli envoy went to Egypt to discuss a ceasefire proposal, the military pushed farther into Gaza in an apparent effort to step up pressure on Hamas.
Among Thursday's casualties was Hamas Interior Minister Said Siam, killed in an Israeli air strike that flattened a home in Gaza City.
Hamas television said Siam, a top aide, along with Siam's brother and his brother's family were also killed.
Siam is considered to be among Hamas' top five leaders in Gaza. As interior minister in the Hamas government in Gaza, he oversaw thousands of security agents.
Ground forces thrust deep into a crowded neighbourhood for the first time, sending terrified residents fleeing for cover. Shells also struck a hospital, five highrise apartment buildings and a building housing media outlets in Gaza City, injuring several journalists.
Bullets also entered another building housing The Associated Press offices, entering a room where two staffers were working but wounding no one.
The Foreign Press Association, representing journalists covering Israel and the Palestinian territories, demanded a halt to attacks on buildings housing journalists.
The Israeli army had collected the locations of media organizations at the outset of fighting to avoid such attacks.
Israel launched its war on Dec. 27 in an effort to stop militant rocket fire from Gaza that has terrorized hundreds of thousands of Israelis.
Some 1,100 Palestinians have been killed, roughly half of them civilians, according to UN and Palestinian medical officials. Gaza health official Dr. Moaiya Hassanain said at least 50 people were killed throughout Gaza on Thursday.
Thirteen Israelis also have been killed since the campaign began. Israel says it will press ahead until Hamas halts the rocket fire and stops smuggling weapons into Gaza from neighbouring Egypt.
Israeli police said 20 rockets hit southern Israel on Thursday, injuring 10 people. Five of the wounded were in a car that was struck in the city of Beersheba.
The UN compound struck Thursday houses the UN Works and Relief Agency, which distributes food aid to hundreds of thousands of destitute Gazans in the tiny seaside territory of 1.4 million people.
"I conveyed my strong protest and outrage to the defence minister and foreign minister and demanded a full explanation," said Ban, who arrived in Israel on Thursday morning from Egypt.
It had only that morning become a makeshift shelter for 700 Gaza City residents seeking sanctuary from relentless Israeli shelling, UN officials in Gaza said.
John Ging, director of UNRWA operations in Gaza, said the attack at the compound caused a "massive explosion" that wounded three people.
A senior Israeli military officer said troops opened fire after militants inside the compound shot anti-tank weapons and machine-guns. The officer spoke on condition of anonymity pending a formal army announcement later in the day.
Ging, who was in the compound at the time, dismissed the Israeli account as "nonsense."
Israeli shells first hit the courtyard filled with refugees, then struck garages and the UN's main warehouse, sending thousands of tonnes of food aid up in flames, Ging said.
Later, fuel supplies went up in flames, sending a thick black plume of smoke into the air.
"It's a total disaster for us," Ging said, adding that the UN had warned the Israeli military that the compound was in peril from shelling that had begun overnight.
UN officials say they have provided Israel with GPS co-ordinates of all UN installations in Gaza to prevent such attacks.
The refugees were moved to a school away from the immediate fighting, he said.
Separately, Israel shells landed next to a UN school in another Gaza City neighbourhood, wounding 14 people who had sought sanctuary there, medics and firefighters said.
An Israeli attack near a UN school in northern Gaza earlier this month killed nearly 40 people. At the time, Israel said militants had fired on army positions from the building.
Thu, 2009-01-15 14:10.
By: Ibrahim Barzak And Amy Teibel, THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
GAZA CITY, Gaza Strip - Israel shelled the United Nations headquarters in the Gaza Strip on Thursday, engulfing the compound and a warehouse in fire and destroying a large stockpile of food and humanitarian supplies intended for Palestinian refugees.
UN workers and Palestinian firefighters, some wearing bulletproof jackets, struggled to douse the flames and pull bags of food aid from the debris.
Israeli officials said their forces were fired on from the compound by Hamas guerrillas.
UN officials at the scene dismissed the Israeli claim as "nonsense."
UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon, who is in the region to end the devastating offensive in Gaza, demanded a "full explanation" for the attack, which also wounded three people.
He said the Israeli defence minister told him there had been a "grave mistake."
However, Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert said the military fired artillery shells at the UN compound after Hamas opened fire from the location.
"It is absolutely true that we were attacked from that place, but the consequences are very sad and we apologize for it," Olmert said. "I don't think it should have happened and I'm very sorry."
Even as a top Israeli envoy went to Egypt to discuss a ceasefire proposal, the military pushed farther into Gaza in an apparent effort to step up pressure on Hamas.
Among Thursday's casualties was Hamas Interior Minister Said Siam, killed in an Israeli air strike that flattened a home in Gaza City.
Hamas television said Siam, a top aide, along with Siam's brother and his brother's family were also killed.
Siam is considered to be among Hamas' top five leaders in Gaza. As interior minister in the Hamas government in Gaza, he oversaw thousands of security agents.
Ground forces thrust deep into a crowded neighbourhood for the first time, sending terrified residents fleeing for cover. Shells also struck a hospital, five highrise apartment buildings and a building housing media outlets in Gaza City, injuring several journalists.
Bullets also entered another building housing The Associated Press offices, entering a room where two staffers were working but wounding no one.
The Foreign Press Association, representing journalists covering Israel and the Palestinian territories, demanded a halt to attacks on buildings housing journalists.
The Israeli army had collected the locations of media organizations at the outset of fighting to avoid such attacks.
Israel launched its war on Dec. 27 in an effort to stop militant rocket fire from Gaza that has terrorized hundreds of thousands of Israelis.
Some 1,100 Palestinians have been killed, roughly half of them civilians, according to UN and Palestinian medical officials. Gaza health official Dr. Moaiya Hassanain said at least 50 people were killed throughout Gaza on Thursday.
Thirteen Israelis also have been killed since the campaign began. Israel says it will press ahead until Hamas halts the rocket fire and stops smuggling weapons into Gaza from neighbouring Egypt.
Israeli police said 20 rockets hit southern Israel on Thursday, injuring 10 people. Five of the wounded were in a car that was struck in the city of Beersheba.
The UN compound struck Thursday houses the UN Works and Relief Agency, which distributes food aid to hundreds of thousands of destitute Gazans in the tiny seaside territory of 1.4 million people.
"I conveyed my strong protest and outrage to the defence minister and foreign minister and demanded a full explanation," said Ban, who arrived in Israel on Thursday morning from Egypt.
It had only that morning become a makeshift shelter for 700 Gaza City residents seeking sanctuary from relentless Israeli shelling, UN officials in Gaza said.
John Ging, director of UNRWA operations in Gaza, said the attack at the compound caused a "massive explosion" that wounded three people.
A senior Israeli military officer said troops opened fire after militants inside the compound shot anti-tank weapons and machine-guns. The officer spoke on condition of anonymity pending a formal army announcement later in the day.
Ging, who was in the compound at the time, dismissed the Israeli account as "nonsense."
Israeli shells first hit the courtyard filled with refugees, then struck garages and the UN's main warehouse, sending thousands of tonnes of food aid up in flames, Ging said.
Later, fuel supplies went up in flames, sending a thick black plume of smoke into the air.
"It's a total disaster for us," Ging said, adding that the UN had warned the Israeli military that the compound was in peril from shelling that had begun overnight.
UN officials say they have provided Israel with GPS co-ordinates of all UN installations in Gaza to prevent such attacks.
The refugees were moved to a school away from the immediate fighting, he said.
Separately, Israel shells landed next to a UN school in another Gaza City neighbourhood, wounding 14 people who had sought sanctuary there, medics and firefighters said.
An Israeli attack near a UN school in northern Gaza earlier this month killed nearly 40 people. At the time, Israel said militants had fired on army positions from the building.
Thursday, January 15, 2009
Jewish Activists Close L.A. Israeli Consulate Down!
Demanding an end to military action in Gaza, eight to 10 Jewish activists chained themselves this morning to the Israeli Consulate building on Wilshire Boulevard.
Other activists who were not chained to the building walked in a circle outside the consulate, chanting: "Let Gaza live! End the siege now." One of the signs they carried read: "The Israeli consulate has been closed for war crimes."
Hannah Howard, a spokeswoman for the International Jewish Anti-Zionist Network, which is conducting the protest, said demonstrators chained themselves to the front steps of the building at 8:30 a.m. and that two others blocked the walkway. Several more stood in front of the driveway on Wilshire Boulevard to prevent cars from entering and exiting. About 50 protesters participated in the demonstration, she said.
“Jews will not allow the violence that is being done in our name to continue," Howard said. "Not all Jews are united in support of Israel. We [also] recognized the humanitarian crisis in Palestine.”
The consulate is on the 17th floor of the building at 6380 Wilshire Boulevard, and many other businesses have offices inside.
Updated, 5:11 p.m.: Authorities said demonstrators who chained themselves outside the Israeli Consulate ended their protest peacefully about noon, according to LAPD Sgt. Ronnie Crump. Event organizers were told by police officers that demonstrators could be arrested, because it was against the law to block the entrances of buildings. Shortly after that, demonstrators ended their protest, Crump said. "It ended peacefully and quietly," he said of the protest's conclusion.
No arrest were made at the demonstration.
-- Ruben Vives
Monday, January 12, 2009
Gaza Child
Gaza Child
Oh Gaza Child,
You are in my scopes,
Clinging to the two day old corpse of your mother,
Her blood is frozen on the streets,
No one mourns for her,
You cling to her for warmth,
For you have nothing else in the world,
Oh Gaza Child,
You are in my targets now,
I will shoot one bullet into the back of your head,
Your brains will litter the asphalt,
And no one hear you scream,
No one will know your name,
No one will care,
For you are beneath a human being,
In this Hell that you call your home,
Oh Gaza Child,
My trigger finger is itching,
Hundreds of your like fill the streets,
Their eyes glazed over,
Their mouths open,
Their lives cut short,
Their names unknown,
Merely a statistic,
No one will shed tears for them, or for you,
Oh Gaza Child,
Your life will end soon,
You will follow your brothers and sisters,
Their tiny heads separated from body,
Their flesh melted by our chemicals,
As nothing but a sub-human,
A terrorist,
If anyone sheds tears I will use one holocaust to justify this one,
Oh Gaza Child,
I have ended your life now,
Your carcass lies there for the carrion,
It is your fault,
Some of your ilk shot homemade fireworks upon us,
And now we will exterminate every one of you for it,
Good-bye Gaza child…
-IDF Soldier’s memo
Saturday, January 10, 2009
Naomi Klein calls for Boycott, Divestment and Sactions Against Israel
It's time. Long past time. The best strategy to end the increasingly bloody occupation is for Israel to become the target of the kind of global movement that put an end to apartheid in South Africa.
In July 2005 a huge coalition of Palestinian groups laid out plans to do just that. They called on "people of conscience all over the world to impose broad boycotts and implement divestment initiatives against Israel similar to those applied to South Africa in the apartheid era." The campaign Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions - BDS for short - was born.
Every day that Israel pounds Gaza brings more converts to the BDS cause, and talk of cease-fires is doing little to slow the momentum. Support is even emerging among Israeli Jews. In the midst of the assault roughly 500 Israelis, dozens of them well-known artists and scholars, sent a letter to foreign ambassadors stationed in Israel. It calls for "the adoption of immediate restrictive measures and sanctions" and draws a clear parallel with the antiapartheid struggle. "The boycott on South Africa was effective, but Israel is handled with kid gloves.... This international backing must stop."
Yet many still can't go there. The reasons are complex, emotional and understandable. And they simply aren't good enough. Economic sanctions are the most effective tools in the nonviolent arsenal. Surrendering them verges on active complicity. Here are the top four objections to the BDS strategy, followed by counterarguments.
1. Punitive measures will alienate rather than persuade Israelis. The world has tried what used to be called "constructive engagement." It has failed utterly. Since 2006 Israel has been steadily escalating its criminality: expanding settlements, launching an outrageous war against Lebanon and imposing collective punishment on Gaza through the brutal blockade. Despite this escalation, Israel has not faced punitive measures - quite the opposite. The weapons and $3 billion in annual aid that the US sends to Israel is only the beginning. Throughout this key period, Israel has enjoyed a dramatic improvement in its diplomatic, cultural and trade relations with a variety of other allies. For instance, in 2007 Israel became the first non-Latin American country to sign a free-trade deal with Mercosur. In the first nine months of 2008, Israeli exports to Canada went up 45 per cent. A new trade deal with the European Union is set to double Israel's exports of processed food. And on December 8, European ministers "upgraded" the EU-Israel Association Agreement, a reward long sought by Jerusalem.
It is in this context that Israeli leaders started their latest war: confident they would face no meaningful costs. It is remarkable that over seven days of wartime trading, the Tel Aviv Stock Exchange's flagship index actually went up 10.7 per cent. When carrots don't work, sticks are needed.
2. Israel is not South Africa. Of course it isn't. The relevance of the South African model is that it proves that BDS tactics can be effective when weaker measures (protests, petitions, back-room lobbying) have failed. And there are indeed deeply distressing echoes: the color-coded IDs and travel permits, the bulldozed homes and forced displacement, the settler-only roads. Ronnie Kasrils, a prominent South African politician, said that the architecture of segregation that he saw in the West Bank and Gaza in 2007 was "infinitely worse than apartheid."
3. Why single out Israel when the United States, Britain and other Western countries do the same things in Iraq and Afghanistan? Boycott is not a dogma; it is a tactic. The reason the BDS strategy should be tried against Israel is practical: in a country so small and trade-dependent, it could actually work.
4. Boycotts sever communication; we need more dialogue, not less. This one I'll answer with a personal story. For eight years, my books have been published in Israel by a commercial house called Babel. But when I published The Shock Doctrine, I wanted to respect the boycott. On the advice of BDS activists, I contacted a small publisher called Andalus. Andalus is an activist press, deeply involved in the anti-occupation movement and the only Israeli publisher devoted exclusively to translating Arabic writing into Hebrew. We drafted a contract that guarantees that all proceeds go to Andalus's work, and none to me. In other words, I am boycotting the Israeli economy but not Israelis.
Coming up with this plan required dozens of phone calls, e-mails and instant messages, stretching from Tel Aviv to Ramallah to Paris to Toronto to Gaza City. My point is this: as soon as you start implementing a boycott strategy, dialogue increases dramatically. And why wouldn't it? Building a movement requires endless communicating, as many in the antiapartheid struggle well recall. The argument that supporting boycotts will cut us off from one another is particularly specious given the array of cheap information technologies at our fingertips. We are drowning in ways to rant at one another across national boundaries. No boycott can stop us.
Just about now, many a proud Zionist is gearing up for major point-scoring: don't I know that many of those very high-tech toys come from Israeli research parks, world leaders in infotech? True enough, but not all of them. Several days into Israel's Gaza assault, Richard Ramsey, the managing director of a British telecom company, sent an e-mail to the Israeli tech firm MobileMax. "As a result of the Israeli government action in the last few days we will no longer be in a position to consider doing business with yourself or any other Israeli company."
When contacted by The Nation, Ramsey said his decision wasn't political. "We can't afford to lose any of our clients, so it was purely commercially defensive."
It was this kind of cold business calculation that led many companies to pull out of South Africa two decades ago. And it's precisely the kind of calculation that is our most realistic hope of bringing justice, so long denied, to Palestine.
Naomi Klein's latest book is The Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism. This article was first published in The Nation.
In July 2005 a huge coalition of Palestinian groups laid out plans to do just that. They called on "people of conscience all over the world to impose broad boycotts and implement divestment initiatives against Israel similar to those applied to South Africa in the apartheid era." The campaign Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions - BDS for short - was born.
Every day that Israel pounds Gaza brings more converts to the BDS cause, and talk of cease-fires is doing little to slow the momentum. Support is even emerging among Israeli Jews. In the midst of the assault roughly 500 Israelis, dozens of them well-known artists and scholars, sent a letter to foreign ambassadors stationed in Israel. It calls for "the adoption of immediate restrictive measures and sanctions" and draws a clear parallel with the antiapartheid struggle. "The boycott on South Africa was effective, but Israel is handled with kid gloves.... This international backing must stop."
Yet many still can't go there. The reasons are complex, emotional and understandable. And they simply aren't good enough. Economic sanctions are the most effective tools in the nonviolent arsenal. Surrendering them verges on active complicity. Here are the top four objections to the BDS strategy, followed by counterarguments.
1. Punitive measures will alienate rather than persuade Israelis. The world has tried what used to be called "constructive engagement." It has failed utterly. Since 2006 Israel has been steadily escalating its criminality: expanding settlements, launching an outrageous war against Lebanon and imposing collective punishment on Gaza through the brutal blockade. Despite this escalation, Israel has not faced punitive measures - quite the opposite. The weapons and $3 billion in annual aid that the US sends to Israel is only the beginning. Throughout this key period, Israel has enjoyed a dramatic improvement in its diplomatic, cultural and trade relations with a variety of other allies. For instance, in 2007 Israel became the first non-Latin American country to sign a free-trade deal with Mercosur. In the first nine months of 2008, Israeli exports to Canada went up 45 per cent. A new trade deal with the European Union is set to double Israel's exports of processed food. And on December 8, European ministers "upgraded" the EU-Israel Association Agreement, a reward long sought by Jerusalem.
It is in this context that Israeli leaders started their latest war: confident they would face no meaningful costs. It is remarkable that over seven days of wartime trading, the Tel Aviv Stock Exchange's flagship index actually went up 10.7 per cent. When carrots don't work, sticks are needed.
2. Israel is not South Africa. Of course it isn't. The relevance of the South African model is that it proves that BDS tactics can be effective when weaker measures (protests, petitions, back-room lobbying) have failed. And there are indeed deeply distressing echoes: the color-coded IDs and travel permits, the bulldozed homes and forced displacement, the settler-only roads. Ronnie Kasrils, a prominent South African politician, said that the architecture of segregation that he saw in the West Bank and Gaza in 2007 was "infinitely worse than apartheid."
3. Why single out Israel when the United States, Britain and other Western countries do the same things in Iraq and Afghanistan? Boycott is not a dogma; it is a tactic. The reason the BDS strategy should be tried against Israel is practical: in a country so small and trade-dependent, it could actually work.
4. Boycotts sever communication; we need more dialogue, not less. This one I'll answer with a personal story. For eight years, my books have been published in Israel by a commercial house called Babel. But when I published The Shock Doctrine, I wanted to respect the boycott. On the advice of BDS activists, I contacted a small publisher called Andalus. Andalus is an activist press, deeply involved in the anti-occupation movement and the only Israeli publisher devoted exclusively to translating Arabic writing into Hebrew. We drafted a contract that guarantees that all proceeds go to Andalus's work, and none to me. In other words, I am boycotting the Israeli economy but not Israelis.
Coming up with this plan required dozens of phone calls, e-mails and instant messages, stretching from Tel Aviv to Ramallah to Paris to Toronto to Gaza City. My point is this: as soon as you start implementing a boycott strategy, dialogue increases dramatically. And why wouldn't it? Building a movement requires endless communicating, as many in the antiapartheid struggle well recall. The argument that supporting boycotts will cut us off from one another is particularly specious given the array of cheap information technologies at our fingertips. We are drowning in ways to rant at one another across national boundaries. No boycott can stop us.
Just about now, many a proud Zionist is gearing up for major point-scoring: don't I know that many of those very high-tech toys come from Israeli research parks, world leaders in infotech? True enough, but not all of them. Several days into Israel's Gaza assault, Richard Ramsey, the managing director of a British telecom company, sent an e-mail to the Israeli tech firm MobileMax. "As a result of the Israeli government action in the last few days we will no longer be in a position to consider doing business with yourself or any other Israeli company."
When contacted by The Nation, Ramsey said his decision wasn't political. "We can't afford to lose any of our clients, so it was purely commercially defensive."
It was this kind of cold business calculation that led many companies to pull out of South Africa two decades ago. And it's precisely the kind of calculation that is our most realistic hope of bringing justice, so long denied, to Palestine.
Naomi Klein's latest book is The Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism. This article was first published in The Nation.
Friday, January 9, 2009
Toronto Gaza Demonstration Footage
Here you can see the entire crowd move by, over 5,000 people is what I heard. There is another one tommorrow, likely to be even bigger. January 10, at 11am at Bay & Bloor. BE THERE!
\\
This second video is from a protest in Washington.
Thursday, January 8, 2009
Aid Workers Killed in Gaza - ENOUGH IS ENOUGH!
http://www.alertnet.org/thenews/newsdesk/IRIN/e2d10c345ca038c918df14e49c2047f9.htm
Israel claims they are only targeting militants. This is a blatant lie. If they were targetting militants why are aid workers dying? The entire Gaza Strip is being bombaraded, brutally destroyed with the use of depleted uranium and white phosphrous.
This is sheer genocide in my opinion. Not since Rwanda has such speedy, efficient murder been employed. There are some people I've talked to, who want to be moderate, who are too scared to criticize Israel because they worry about being percieved as anti-semitic. F*** that...I could name dozens upon dozens of Jews who are against this off the top of my head. Genocide is genocide and it needs to be called what it is.
If you live in Toronto come at 11am this Saturday, Jan 10 at Bay & Bloor (near the ROM). In Montreal they have just blockaded the Israeli Consulate. Let's do the same. Enough is enough.
Israel claims they are only targeting militants. This is a blatant lie. If they were targetting militants why are aid workers dying? The entire Gaza Strip is being bombaraded, brutally destroyed with the use of depleted uranium and white phosphrous.
This is sheer genocide in my opinion. Not since Rwanda has such speedy, efficient murder been employed. There are some people I've talked to, who want to be moderate, who are too scared to criticize Israel because they worry about being percieved as anti-semitic. F*** that...I could name dozens upon dozens of Jews who are against this off the top of my head. Genocide is genocide and it needs to be called what it is.
If you live in Toronto come at 11am this Saturday, Jan 10 at Bay & Bloor (near the ROM). In Montreal they have just blockaded the Israeli Consulate. Let's do the same. Enough is enough.
Wednesday, January 7, 2009
Jewish Anti-Zionist Group Occupying Israeli Consulate in Toronto
Arrests underway in Toronto Israeli Consulate Sit-in
Toronto: Wednesday January 7, 2009 Time: 11:20 am
Police have moved in to arrest a group of Jewish Canadian women who are currently occupying the Israeli consulate at 180 Bloor Street West in Toronto.
The women took their action in protest against the on-going Israeli assault on the people of Gaza.
The group is carrying out this occupation in solidarity with the 1.5 million people of Gaza and to ensure that Jewish voices against the massacre in Gaza are being heard. They are demanding that Israel end its military assault and lift the 18-month siege on the Gaza Strip to allow humanitarian aid into the territory.
Israel has been carrying out a full-scale military assault on the Gaza Strip since December 27, 2008. At least 660 people have been killed and 3000 injured in the air strikes and in the ground invasion that began on January 3, 2009. Israel has ignored international calls for a ceasefire and is refusing to allow food, adequate medical supplies and other necessities of life into the Gaza Strip.
Protesters are outraged at Israel's latest assault on the Palestinian people and by the Canadian government's refusal to condemn these massacres. They are deeply concerned that Canadians are hearing the views of pro-Israel groups who are being represented as the only voice of Jewish Canadians. The protesters have occupied the consulate to send a clear statement that many Jewish-Canadians do not support Israel's violence and apartheid policies. They are joining with people of conscience all across the world who are demanding an end to Israeli aggression and justice for the Palestinian people.
The group includes: Judy Rebick, professor; Judith Deutsch, psychoanalyst and president of Science for Peace; B.H. Yael, filmmaker; Smadar Carmon, an Canadian Israeli peace activist and others.
Spokespersons for the group will be outside the Israeli consulate:
Dr. Miriam Garfinkle:
416-731-6605
mgarfinkle@sympatico.ca
Cathy Gulkin:
416-697-0768
cgulkin@rogers.com
Release is online at http://www.sources.com/Releases/NR135.htm
Toronto: Wednesday January 7, 2009 Time: 11:20 am
Police have moved in to arrest a group of Jewish Canadian women who are currently occupying the Israeli consulate at 180 Bloor Street West in Toronto.
The women took their action in protest against the on-going Israeli assault on the people of Gaza.
The group is carrying out this occupation in solidarity with the 1.5 million people of Gaza and to ensure that Jewish voices against the massacre in Gaza are being heard. They are demanding that Israel end its military assault and lift the 18-month siege on the Gaza Strip to allow humanitarian aid into the territory.
Israel has been carrying out a full-scale military assault on the Gaza Strip since December 27, 2008. At least 660 people have been killed and 3000 injured in the air strikes and in the ground invasion that began on January 3, 2009. Israel has ignored international calls for a ceasefire and is refusing to allow food, adequate medical supplies and other necessities of life into the Gaza Strip.
Protesters are outraged at Israel's latest assault on the Palestinian people and by the Canadian government's refusal to condemn these massacres. They are deeply concerned that Canadians are hearing the views of pro-Israel groups who are being represented as the only voice of Jewish Canadians. The protesters have occupied the consulate to send a clear statement that many Jewish-Canadians do not support Israel's violence and apartheid policies. They are joining with people of conscience all across the world who are demanding an end to Israeli aggression and justice for the Palestinian people.
The group includes: Judy Rebick, professor; Judith Deutsch, psychoanalyst and president of Science for Peace; B.H. Yael, filmmaker; Smadar Carmon, an Canadian Israeli peace activist and others.
Spokespersons for the group will be outside the Israeli consulate:
Dr. Miriam Garfinkle:
416-731-6605
mgarfinkle@sympatico.ca
Cathy Gulkin:
416-697-0768
cgulkin@rogers.com
Release is online at http://www.sources.com/Releases/NR135.htm
Tuesday, January 6, 2009
Monday, January 5, 2009
The Young Turk Vidoes on Gaza Situation
First time I've seen this guy. He's great!
Ishallah this will end soon...
Ishallah this will end soon...
Saturday, January 3, 2009
George Galloway on Gaza
Everyone, please do everything you can to spread awareness about this grave injustice.
عمر سليمان.. من Ù…Øاورة Øماس إلى اتهامها
Friday, January 2, 2009
Massacres in Gaza
Since Israel and largely the Western Press refuses to acknowledge their humanity I felt the need to post this. The images are disturbing.
Thursday, January 1, 2009
Article on Genocide in Gaza
Nir Rosen
guardian.co.uk, Monday 29 December 2008 08.00 GMT
Article history
I have spent most of the Bush administration's tenure reporting from Iraq, Afghanistan, Lebanon, Somalia and other conflicts. I have been published by most major publications. I have been interviewed by most major networks and I have even testified before the senate foreign relations committee. The Bush administration began its tenure with Palestinians being massacred and it ends with Israel committing one of its largest massacres yet in a 60-year history of occupying Palestinian land. Bush's final visit to the country he chose to occupy ended with an educated secular Shiite Iraqi throwing his shoes at him, expressing the feelings of the entire Arab world save its dictators who have imprudently attached themselves to a hated American regime.
Once again, the Israelis bomb the starving and imprisoned population of Gaza. The world watches the plight of 1.5 million Gazans live on TV and online; the western media largely justify the Israeli action. Even some Arab outlets try to equate the Palestinian resistance with the might of the Israeli military machine. And none of this is a surprise. The Israelis just concluded a round-the-world public relations campaign to gather support for their assault, even gaining the collaboration of Arab states like Egypt.
The international community is directly guilty for this latest massacre. Will it remain immune from the wrath of a desperate people? So far, there have been large demonstrations in Lebanon, Yemen, Jordan, Egypt, Syria and Iraq. The people of the Arab world will not forget. The Palestinians will not forget. "All that you have done to our people is registered in our notebooks," as the poet Mahmoud Darwish said.
I have often been asked by policy analysts, policy-makers and those stuck with implementing those policies for my advice on what I think America should do to promote peace or win hearts and minds in the Muslim world. It too often feels futile, because such a revolution in American policy would be required that only a true revolution in the American government could bring about the needed changes. An American journal once asked me to contribute an essay to a discussion on whether terrorism or attacks against civilians could ever be justified. My answer was that an American journal should not be asking whether attacks on civilians can ever be justified. This is a question for the weak, for the Native Americans in the past, for the Jews in Nazi Germany, for the Palestinians today, to ask themselves.
Terrorism is a normative term and not a descriptive concept. An empty word that means everything and nothing, it is used to describe what the Other does, not what we do. The powerful – whether Israel, America, Russia or China – will always describe their victims' struggle as terrorism, but the destruction of Chechnya, the ethnic cleansing of Palestine, the slow slaughter of the remaining Palestinians, the American occupation of Iraq and Afghanistan – with the tens of thousands of civilians it has killed … these will never earn the title of terrorism, though civilians were the target and terrorising them was the purpose.
Counterinsurgency, now popular again among in the Pentagon, is another way of saying the suppression of national liberation struggles. Terror and intimidation are as essential to it as is winning hearts and minds.
Normative rules are determined by power relations. Those with power determine what is legal and illegal. They besiege the weak in legal prohibitions to prevent the weak from resisting. For the weak to resist is illegal by definition. Concepts like terrorism are invented and used normatively as if a neutral court had produced them, instead of the oppressors. The danger in this excessive use of legality actually undermines legality, diminishing the credibility of international institutions such as the United Nations. It becomes apparent that the powerful, those who make the rules, insist on legality merely to preserve the power relations that serve them or to maintain their occupation and colonialism.
Attacking civilians is the last, most desperate and basic method of resistance when confronting overwhelming odds and imminent eradication. The Palestinians do not attack Israeli civilians with the expectation that they will destroy Israel. The land of Palestine is being stolen day after day; the Palestinian people is being eradicated day after day. As a result, they respond in whatever way they can to apply pressure on Israel. Colonial powers use civilians strategically, settling them to claim land and dispossess the native population, be they Indians in North America or Palestinians in what is now Israel and the Occupied Territories. When the native population sees that there is an irreversible dynamic that is taking away their land and identity with the support of an overwhelming power, then they are forced to resort to whatever methods of resistance they can.
Not long ago, 19-year-old Qassem al-Mughrabi, a Palestinian man from Jerusalem drove his car into a group of soldiers at an intersection. "The terrorist", as the Israeli newspaper Haaretz called him, was shot and killed. In two separate incidents last July, Palestinians from Jerusalem also used vehicles to attack Israelis. The attackers were not part of an organisation. Although those Palestinian men were also killed, senior Israeli officials called for their homes to be demolished. In a separate incident, Haaretz reported that a Palestinian woman blinded an Israeli soldier in one eye when she threw acid n his face. "The terrorist was arrested by security forces," the paper said. An occupied citizen attacks an occupying soldier, and she is the terrorist?
In September, Bush spoke at the United Nations. No cause could justify the deliberate taking of human life, he said. Yet the US has killed thousands of civilians in airstrikes on populated areas. When you drop bombs on populated areas knowing there will be some "collateral" civilian damage, but accepting it as worth it, then it is deliberate. When you impose sanctions, as the US did on Saddam era Iraq, that kill hundreds of thousands, and then say their deaths were worth it, as secretary of state Albright did, then you are deliberately killing people for a political goal. When you seek to "shock and awe", as president Bush did, when he bombed Iraq, you are engaging in terrorism.
Just as the traditional American cowboy film presented white Americans under siege, with Indians as the aggressors, which was the opposite of reality, so, too, have Palestinians become the aggressors and not the victims. Beginning in 1948, 750,000 Palestinians were deliberately cleansed and expelled from their homes, and hundreds of their villages were destroyed, and their land was settled by colonists, who went on to deny their very existence and wage a 60-year war against the remaining natives and the national liberation movements the Palestinians established around the world. Every day, more of Palestine is stolen, more Palestinians are killed. To call oneself an Israeli Zionist is to engage in the dispossession of entire people. It is not that, qua Palestinians, they have the right to use any means necessary, it is because they are weak. The weak have much less power than the strong, and can do much less damage. The Palestinians would not have ever bombed cafes or used home-made missiles if they had tanks and airplanes. It is only in the current context that their actions are justified, and there are obvious limits.
It is impossible to make a universal ethical claim or establish a Kantian principle justifying any act to resist colonialism or domination by overwhelming power. And there are other questions I have trouble answering. Can an Iraqi be justified in attacking the United States? After all, his country was attacked without provocation, and destroyed, with millions of refugees created, hundreds of thousands of dead. And this, after 12 years of bombings and sanctions, which killed many and destroyed the lives of many others.
I could argue that all Americans are benefiting from their country's exploits without having to pay the price, and that, in today's world, the imperial machine is not merely the military but a military-civilian network. And I could also say that Americans elected the Bush administration twice and elected representatives who did nothing to stop the war, and the American people themselves did nothing. From the perspective of an American, or an Israeli, or other powerful aggressors, if you are strong, everything you do is justifiable, and nothing the weak do is legitimate. It's merely a question of what side you choose: the side of the strong or the side of the weak.
Israel and its allies in the west and in Arab regimes such as Egypt, Jordan and Saudi Arabia have managed to corrupt the PLO leadership, to suborn them with the promise of power at the expense of liberty for their people, creating a first – a liberation movement that collaborated with the occupier. Israeli elections are coming up and, as usual, these elections are accompanied by war to bolster the candidates. You cannot be prime minister of Israel without enough Arab blood on your hands. An Israeli general has threatened to set Gaza back decades, just as they threatened to set Lebanon back decades in 2006. As if strangling Gaza and denying its people fuel, power or food had not set it back decades already.
The democratically elected Hamas government was targeted for destruction from the day it won the elections in 2006. The world told the Palestinians that they cannot have democracy, as if the goal was to radicalise them further and as if that would not have a consequence. Israel claims it is targeting Hamas's military forces. This is not true. It is targeting Palestinian police forces and killing them, including some such as the chief of police, Tawfiq Jaber, who was actually a former Fatah official who stayed on in his post after Hamas took control of Gaza. What will happen to a society with no security forces? What do the Israelis expect to happen when forces more radical than Hamas gain power?
A Zionist Israel is not a viable long-term project and Israeli settlements, land expropriation and separation barriers have long since made a two state solution impossible. There can be only one state in historic Palestine. In coming decades, Israelis will be confronted with two options. Will they peacefully transition towards an equal society, where Palestinians are given the same rights, Ã la post-apartheid South Africa? Or will they continue to view democracy as a threat? If so, one of the peoples will be forced to leave. Colonialism has only worked when most of the natives have been exterminated. But often, as in occupied Algeria, it is the settlers who flee. Eventually, the Palestinians will not be willing to compromise and seek one state for both people. Does the world want to further radicalise them?
Do not be deceived: the persistence of the Palestine problem is the main motive for every anti-American militant in the Arab world and beyond. But now the Bush administration has added Iraq and Afghanistan as additional grievances. America has lost its influence on the Arab masses, even if it can still apply pressure on Arab regimes. But reformists and elites in the Arab world want nothing to do with America.
A failed American administration departs, the promise of a Palestinian state a lie, as more Palestinians are murdered. A new president comes to power, but the people of the Middle East have too much bitter experience of US administrations to have any hope for change. President-elect Obama, Vice President-elect Biden and incoming secretary of state Hillary Clinton have not demonstrated that their view of the Middle East is at all different from previous administrations. As the world prepares to celebrate a new year, how long before it is once again made to feel the pain of those whose oppression it either ignores or supports?
guardian.co.uk, Monday 29 December 2008 08.00 GMT
Article history
I have spent most of the Bush administration's tenure reporting from Iraq, Afghanistan, Lebanon, Somalia and other conflicts. I have been published by most major publications. I have been interviewed by most major networks and I have even testified before the senate foreign relations committee. The Bush administration began its tenure with Palestinians being massacred and it ends with Israel committing one of its largest massacres yet in a 60-year history of occupying Palestinian land. Bush's final visit to the country he chose to occupy ended with an educated secular Shiite Iraqi throwing his shoes at him, expressing the feelings of the entire Arab world save its dictators who have imprudently attached themselves to a hated American regime.
Once again, the Israelis bomb the starving and imprisoned population of Gaza. The world watches the plight of 1.5 million Gazans live on TV and online; the western media largely justify the Israeli action. Even some Arab outlets try to equate the Palestinian resistance with the might of the Israeli military machine. And none of this is a surprise. The Israelis just concluded a round-the-world public relations campaign to gather support for their assault, even gaining the collaboration of Arab states like Egypt.
The international community is directly guilty for this latest massacre. Will it remain immune from the wrath of a desperate people? So far, there have been large demonstrations in Lebanon, Yemen, Jordan, Egypt, Syria and Iraq. The people of the Arab world will not forget. The Palestinians will not forget. "All that you have done to our people is registered in our notebooks," as the poet Mahmoud Darwish said.
I have often been asked by policy analysts, policy-makers and those stuck with implementing those policies for my advice on what I think America should do to promote peace or win hearts and minds in the Muslim world. It too often feels futile, because such a revolution in American policy would be required that only a true revolution in the American government could bring about the needed changes. An American journal once asked me to contribute an essay to a discussion on whether terrorism or attacks against civilians could ever be justified. My answer was that an American journal should not be asking whether attacks on civilians can ever be justified. This is a question for the weak, for the Native Americans in the past, for the Jews in Nazi Germany, for the Palestinians today, to ask themselves.
Terrorism is a normative term and not a descriptive concept. An empty word that means everything and nothing, it is used to describe what the Other does, not what we do. The powerful – whether Israel, America, Russia or China – will always describe their victims' struggle as terrorism, but the destruction of Chechnya, the ethnic cleansing of Palestine, the slow slaughter of the remaining Palestinians, the American occupation of Iraq and Afghanistan – with the tens of thousands of civilians it has killed … these will never earn the title of terrorism, though civilians were the target and terrorising them was the purpose.
Counterinsurgency, now popular again among in the Pentagon, is another way of saying the suppression of national liberation struggles. Terror and intimidation are as essential to it as is winning hearts and minds.
Normative rules are determined by power relations. Those with power determine what is legal and illegal. They besiege the weak in legal prohibitions to prevent the weak from resisting. For the weak to resist is illegal by definition. Concepts like terrorism are invented and used normatively as if a neutral court had produced them, instead of the oppressors. The danger in this excessive use of legality actually undermines legality, diminishing the credibility of international institutions such as the United Nations. It becomes apparent that the powerful, those who make the rules, insist on legality merely to preserve the power relations that serve them or to maintain their occupation and colonialism.
Attacking civilians is the last, most desperate and basic method of resistance when confronting overwhelming odds and imminent eradication. The Palestinians do not attack Israeli civilians with the expectation that they will destroy Israel. The land of Palestine is being stolen day after day; the Palestinian people is being eradicated day after day. As a result, they respond in whatever way they can to apply pressure on Israel. Colonial powers use civilians strategically, settling them to claim land and dispossess the native population, be they Indians in North America or Palestinians in what is now Israel and the Occupied Territories. When the native population sees that there is an irreversible dynamic that is taking away their land and identity with the support of an overwhelming power, then they are forced to resort to whatever methods of resistance they can.
Not long ago, 19-year-old Qassem al-Mughrabi, a Palestinian man from Jerusalem drove his car into a group of soldiers at an intersection. "The terrorist", as the Israeli newspaper Haaretz called him, was shot and killed. In two separate incidents last July, Palestinians from Jerusalem also used vehicles to attack Israelis. The attackers were not part of an organisation. Although those Palestinian men were also killed, senior Israeli officials called for their homes to be demolished. In a separate incident, Haaretz reported that a Palestinian woman blinded an Israeli soldier in one eye when she threw acid n his face. "The terrorist was arrested by security forces," the paper said. An occupied citizen attacks an occupying soldier, and she is the terrorist?
In September, Bush spoke at the United Nations. No cause could justify the deliberate taking of human life, he said. Yet the US has killed thousands of civilians in airstrikes on populated areas. When you drop bombs on populated areas knowing there will be some "collateral" civilian damage, but accepting it as worth it, then it is deliberate. When you impose sanctions, as the US did on Saddam era Iraq, that kill hundreds of thousands, and then say their deaths were worth it, as secretary of state Albright did, then you are deliberately killing people for a political goal. When you seek to "shock and awe", as president Bush did, when he bombed Iraq, you are engaging in terrorism.
Just as the traditional American cowboy film presented white Americans under siege, with Indians as the aggressors, which was the opposite of reality, so, too, have Palestinians become the aggressors and not the victims. Beginning in 1948, 750,000 Palestinians were deliberately cleansed and expelled from their homes, and hundreds of their villages were destroyed, and their land was settled by colonists, who went on to deny their very existence and wage a 60-year war against the remaining natives and the national liberation movements the Palestinians established around the world. Every day, more of Palestine is stolen, more Palestinians are killed. To call oneself an Israeli Zionist is to engage in the dispossession of entire people. It is not that, qua Palestinians, they have the right to use any means necessary, it is because they are weak. The weak have much less power than the strong, and can do much less damage. The Palestinians would not have ever bombed cafes or used home-made missiles if they had tanks and airplanes. It is only in the current context that their actions are justified, and there are obvious limits.
It is impossible to make a universal ethical claim or establish a Kantian principle justifying any act to resist colonialism or domination by overwhelming power. And there are other questions I have trouble answering. Can an Iraqi be justified in attacking the United States? After all, his country was attacked without provocation, and destroyed, with millions of refugees created, hundreds of thousands of dead. And this, after 12 years of bombings and sanctions, which killed many and destroyed the lives of many others.
I could argue that all Americans are benefiting from their country's exploits without having to pay the price, and that, in today's world, the imperial machine is not merely the military but a military-civilian network. And I could also say that Americans elected the Bush administration twice and elected representatives who did nothing to stop the war, and the American people themselves did nothing. From the perspective of an American, or an Israeli, or other powerful aggressors, if you are strong, everything you do is justifiable, and nothing the weak do is legitimate. It's merely a question of what side you choose: the side of the strong or the side of the weak.
Israel and its allies in the west and in Arab regimes such as Egypt, Jordan and Saudi Arabia have managed to corrupt the PLO leadership, to suborn them with the promise of power at the expense of liberty for their people, creating a first – a liberation movement that collaborated with the occupier. Israeli elections are coming up and, as usual, these elections are accompanied by war to bolster the candidates. You cannot be prime minister of Israel without enough Arab blood on your hands. An Israeli general has threatened to set Gaza back decades, just as they threatened to set Lebanon back decades in 2006. As if strangling Gaza and denying its people fuel, power or food had not set it back decades already.
The democratically elected Hamas government was targeted for destruction from the day it won the elections in 2006. The world told the Palestinians that they cannot have democracy, as if the goal was to radicalise them further and as if that would not have a consequence. Israel claims it is targeting Hamas's military forces. This is not true. It is targeting Palestinian police forces and killing them, including some such as the chief of police, Tawfiq Jaber, who was actually a former Fatah official who stayed on in his post after Hamas took control of Gaza. What will happen to a society with no security forces? What do the Israelis expect to happen when forces more radical than Hamas gain power?
A Zionist Israel is not a viable long-term project and Israeli settlements, land expropriation and separation barriers have long since made a two state solution impossible. There can be only one state in historic Palestine. In coming decades, Israelis will be confronted with two options. Will they peacefully transition towards an equal society, where Palestinians are given the same rights, Ã la post-apartheid South Africa? Or will they continue to view democracy as a threat? If so, one of the peoples will be forced to leave. Colonialism has only worked when most of the natives have been exterminated. But often, as in occupied Algeria, it is the settlers who flee. Eventually, the Palestinians will not be willing to compromise and seek one state for both people. Does the world want to further radicalise them?
Do not be deceived: the persistence of the Palestine problem is the main motive for every anti-American militant in the Arab world and beyond. But now the Bush administration has added Iraq and Afghanistan as additional grievances. America has lost its influence on the Arab masses, even if it can still apply pressure on Arab regimes. But reformists and elites in the Arab world want nothing to do with America.
A failed American administration departs, the promise of a Palestinian state a lie, as more Palestinians are murdered. A new president comes to power, but the people of the Middle East have too much bitter experience of US administrations to have any hope for change. President-elect Obama, Vice President-elect Biden and incoming secretary of state Hillary Clinton have not demonstrated that their view of the Middle East is at all different from previous administrations. As the world prepares to celebrate a new year, how long before it is once again made to feel the pain of those whose oppression it either ignores or supports?
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