Three Israel-related events this year have stayed in the headlines, reflecting the importance of Israel in Canadian political and cultural life.

First, Canadian Ambassador to Israel Jon Allen was recently honoured at Canada Park — built on occupied Palestinian land in violation of international law — as one of hundreds of donors who helped establish the park on the ruins of three Palestinian villages. Just north of Jerusalem, it was founded in the early 1970s following Israel’s occupation of the West Bank in the 1967 war. It is hugely popular for walks and picnics with the Israeli public, who are by and large unaware that they are in Palestinian territory that is officially a closed military zone. Former Israeli parliamentarian Uri Avnery has described the park’s creation as an act of complicity in “ethnic cleansing” and Canada’s involvement as “cover to a war crime”. About 5,000 Palestinians were expelled from the area during the war. A plaque bearing Allen’s name is attached to a stone wall constructed from the rubble of Palestinian homes razed by the Israeli army. The Jewish National Fund, treated as a charity for tax purposes, establishes and manages such parks on behalf of Jewish people worldwide. Canada Park is believed to be the only example, outside East Jerusalem, of the JNF becoming directly involved in managing land in the Occupied Palestinian Territories.

Then there is the wildly popular exhibition, “Dead Sea Scrolls: Words that Changed the World,” at Toronto’s Royal Ontario Museum (ROM), a joint project with the Israel Antiquities Authority (IAA), funded by the Toronto Tanenbaum family dynasty who coincidentally were instrumental in the creation of Canada Park. This exhibition provided a fitting gala premier for the museum’s ultra-modern wing designed by Israeli-American Daniel Libeskind. Libeskind, whose parents were Polish Holocaust survivors, also designed the Berlin Jewish Museum, the Felix Nussbaum Museum in Osnabruck, Germany, and the Danish Jewish Museum in Copenhagen. The Dead Sea Scrolls, regarded as one of the greatest archaeological discoveries of the 20th century and including what is purported to be the oldest known version of the Old Testament (150BC-70CE), were found by a Bedouin shepherd in caves near Qumran, near the Dead Sea, and later by the Palestine Archaeological Museum (also known as the Rockefeller Museum) in a joint expedition with the Department of Antiquities of Jordan and the Ecole Biblique Française between 1947-1956. The Scrolls were displayed at the Palestine Archaeological Museum in East Jerusalem until 1967, when they were seized and relocated to the Shrine of the Book at the Israel Museum in West Jerusalem. Since 1967, additional (illegal) excavations and findings by the Israel Antiquities Authority (IAA) took place in Qumran and the surrounding area, and artefacts continue to be (illegally) appropriated by Israel, under the auspices of the IAA.

Under international law and in accordance with Canada’s and Israel’s obligations as signatories to the 1954 UNESCO protocol for the “Protection of Cultural Property in the Event of Armed Conflict”, Israel is not entitled to these artefacts. The repatriation of the Scrolls and millions of other artefacts to Palestine remains a key issue for those seeking peace and justice in the Middle East. In 2005, Canada signed other UNESCO conventions and protocols specifically aimed at preventing the removal and the exhibition of illegally removed artefacts from occupied territories, and adopted domestic Canadian legislation — the Cultural Property Export and Import Act — which makes it a criminal offense to import cultural property in violation of the conventions. The ROM, for its own part, is a member of the Canadian Museums Association whose Ethics Guidelines states that “museums must guard against any direct or indirect participation in the illicit traffic in cultural and natural objects that are: stolen, illegally imported or exported from another state, including those that are occupied or war-stricken.” The 1954 Convention clearly requires Canada to “take into custody cultural property imported into its territory either directly or indirectly from any occupied territory” and “return, at the close of hostilities, to the competent authorities of the territory previously occupied, cultural property which is in its territory.”

Israel not only continues to illegally excavate in occupied Palestinian territory but dismisses international law altogether (despite its UNESCO pledges), using archeology and discoveries such as the Dead Sea Scrolls to reinforce the Zionist national narrative and the colonial project upon which the state was founded. Supposedly a science removed from political, religious, or ideological bias, archeology under the IAA is the very antithesis of this, being rooted in Biblical mythology. Artefacts like the Scrolls are, according to Amos Elon, “almost titles of real estate, like deeds of possession to a contested country”. Like British, French, and German imperialist functionaries before them, Israeli archeologists sift through the many layers of historical evidence in search of what will prove their belief that they are indeed God’s Chosen People, ignoring or rather destroying the intervening layers and interpreting finds to suit their needs. The thousands of years of non-Jewish Arab civilisation don’t matter. Historian Keith Whitelam says in The Invention of Ancient Israel: The Silencing of Palestinian History, the modern state of Israel has “cast its shadow of influence backwards to claim previous periods as its ‘prehistory’.” The IAA is just as much a steamroller, flattening indigenous Palestine, as the Israeli Defence Forces, in their policy of archeological apartheid. Committee Against Israeli Apapartheid (CAIA) activist Ali Mustafa writes that Israeli archeology is explicitly categorised by the IAA as either Jewish/Israeli or Arab/Muslim in a process whereby ancient artefacts that supposedly belong to the Biblical era are actively sought after, while supposedly encouraging Palestinians to do the same concerning later Islamic periods. Following the Oslo peace process, Israel claimed it was prepared to assign jurisdiction of all “Arab” and “Muslim” archeological sites in the West Bank over to the PA; however, the offer was flatly refused, and the PA instead demanded control over all sites, as well as an immediate return of artefacts seized since 1967. The logic is simple: conflate all Palestinian history as Islamic (openly disregarding Christian and secular influences), and apply these reductive and simplistic binary terms to all artefacts ignoring the region’s shared past and overlapping cultural heritage. Despite the overwhelming evidence that the Scrolls should be seized by ROM and the Canadian government under their international obligations and held or handed over to UNESCO until their ownership is determined, the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation concluded in June that “the museum feels the scrolls are legally held and both the federal and provincial government have expressed their support of the exhibition.”

The third event is the Toronto International Film Festival’s “City to city Spotlight on Tel Aviv”, in cooperation with the Israeli Embassy and the Canada-Israel Cultural Foundation. Along with the ROM exhibition, this PR scheme was to be the centre- piece of Israeli Consul Gissin’s special Canadian “Brand Israel” campaign, dreamed up in 2008 on his arrival in Toronto, using the same mass marketing techniques of “The Israel Project”, launched in 2002 in the US, to present a more “benign” vision of Israel to the Canadian public. The Israel Project uses “grassroots” encounter groups to hone their propaganda efforts. Canadian partners in the Project’s Canadian spin-off included Sidney Greenberg of Astral Mediaand David Asper of Canwest Global Communications, arguably the most powerful media magnates in Canada, who are funding a million dollar media and advertising campaign aimed at changing Canadian perceptions of Israel.

“Brand Israel” is intended to take the focus off Israel’s treatment of Palestinians and refocus it on achievements in medicine, science and culture. In The Israel Project’s 2009 Global Language Dictionary, Frank Luntz explains: “Americans want a team to cheer for. Let the public know GOOD things about Israel … The language of Israel is the language of America: ‘democracy’, ‘freedom’, ’security’, and ‘peace’”. Fleshing out how to rebrand Israeli atrocities, Gissin made it clear that his mission was to “make Israel relevant” to Canadians and use Toronto as a test market for the Israel brand during his term. The lessons learned from Toronto would inform the worldwide launch of Brand Israel in the coming years, Gissin said. Official Brand Israel logos and advertising can be found across Toronto in bus shelters, on billboards, on radio and TV. Gissin said the ad blitz would be “an attack on all the senses.” The idea was to see “how to introduce a brand into Toronto” with emphasis on “grassroots” exposure, to promote Tel Aviv as a city of peace, untouched by the wars Israel has waged since 1948, despite the fact that many Palestinian communities were destroyed and Jaffa annexed to make way for the emergence of modern-day Tel Aviv.

But all is not well in the Land of Nod. The Canadian government regularly opines it is assiduously monitoring anti-Semitism despite the absence of anti-Jewish sentiment and despite the pro- Jewish nature of the media in this most laid-back, multicultural of nations. But Canadian “grassroots” are not limited to pro-Israeli marketing groups. Despite mainstream media subservience to Canada’s vigorous and large pro-Israeli lobby, some people have had enough. Zionist propaganda efforts in this “so friendly” country have increasingly met with resistance, and all the Israeli consuls in the world cannot undo the damage that Israeli war crimes have done and continue to do, as the siege in Gaza and the expansion of illegal Israeli settlements continue.

There are now strong citizen groups fighting Canada’s official support of every Israeli government whim. There are many Jewish anti-Zionist groups, such as Jews for a Just Peace, Jewish Voices for Peace, Not in Our Name, Women in Solidarity with Palestine, Independent Jewish Voices, and the International Jewish Anti-Zionist Network (IJAZ). Nonspecific Jewish groups include Canadians for Justice and Peace in the Middle East (CJPME), Palestine House, Canada Palestine Association, and the above-mentioned CAIA, which has grown rapidly with centres in Toronto, Montreal, Winnipeg and Vancouver. Anti-Zionist activists have been holding vigils regularly at the Toronto Israeli Consulate for eight years now. They are organising the sixth Anti-Apartheid Week to be held soon on more than 25 university campuses across the country, and demonstrations and fundraising events on behalf of Palestinians are held regularly. IJAZ has launched a campaign “Divest from Israel: Support the Palestinian call for boycott, divestment and sanctions (BDS) against Israel”, which includes stickering Israeli products in stores, requesting stores to de-shelve Israeli products, targetting businesses, organisations or government officials that support Israel, “organise a public tachlit service, a ritual that symbolises the casting away of our misdeeds, to spiritually divest from Zionist narratives and mythology and to atone for the ways that we have fallen short in countering them.”

Allen’s support for Canada Park, implicitly condoning Israel’s ruthless ethnic cleansing of Palestinians, has landed him in hot water. He had to deny any personal contribution to Canada Park, an External Affairs spokesperson insisting that he had not made a personal donation and that his name had been included as a benefactor when his parents gave their contribution. Uri Davis, an Israeli scholar and human rights activist who has co-authored a book on the JNF calls Canada Park “a crime against humanity that has been financed by and implicates not only the Canadian government but every taxpayer in Canada.” Canada Park is particularly sensitive for Israel because it lies outside the country’s internationally-recognised borders. The Palestinian inhabitants’ expulsion, Eitan Bronstein, director of the Israeli NGO Zochrot (Remembering), said, was a premeditated act of ethnic cleansing of villagers who put up no resistance.”We have photographs of the Israeli army carrying out the expulsions,” he tells tourists, holding up a series of laminated cards. According to Zochrot, 86 Palestinian villages lie buried underneath JNF parks. Zochrot activists regularly select a destroyed village, taking Palestinian refugees with them as they place a handmade sign detailing the village’s name in Arabic and Hebrew. Within days, the signs are removed. Bronstein said he believes signs erected by official bodies may have a greater impact in opening Israeli minds. “In a recent newspaper interview, a senior JNF official admitted that it would be hard to stop our campaign,” he said. “Slowly we believe Israelis can be made to appreciate that their state exists at the expense of another people. Only then are Israelis likely to be ready to think about making peace.”

With Zochrot’s efforts in mind, Uri Davis joined in an application to the Canadian tax authorities to overturn the JNF’s charitable status and said attempts to rename Canada Park “Ayalon Park” over the past decade suggested that the Canadian authorities were already concerned about the prospect of the country’s involvement in the park coming under scrutiny. In April, before the ROM exhibition opened, Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper and executives at the ROM were sent letters of protest from senior officials of the Palestinian Authority, including PA President Mahmoud Abbas, declaring that the scrolls were in fact illegally seized by Israel following its occupation and annexation of the West Bank in 1967 and calling for their repatriation. The ROM exhibition inspired a campaign of protest led by the CJPME trying to get ROM officials to adjust the display of the artifacts to reflect the fact that the Scrolls were confiscated from East Jerusalem during Israel’s 1967 invasion and occupation of the Palestinian West Bank, to use “West Bank (Israeli-occupied)” and East and West Jerusalem with 1948 Armistice borders on maps. CJPME’s Thomas Woodley said, “We would like there to be a balanced narrative. The ROM is presenting the scrolls entirely from the Israeli perspective. There’s no discussion about what happened between their discovery and their exhibition today.”

ROM met with CJPME members and initially agreed to make changes and even distribute an additional leaflet to be inserted into the museum’s brochure. Friday pickets were held throughout the summer to inform the public about the theft of the Dead Sea Scrolls. However, a visit by Al-Ahram Weekly to the exhibition revealed that no such changes were made, and the history of their discovery in Jordan and seizure in 1967 was finessed. ROM’s PR spokesperson Marilynn Friedman declined to answer questions about why ROM reneged on promises to accommodate CJPME’s concerns.Woodley said ROM director Thorsell was receptive, and assumes that the IAA vetoed any changes that would detract from the Zionist narrative. Tens of thousands of innocent schoolchildren are being respectfully shepherded through subterranean, darkened halls, and left with the impression that the ancient “Israelis” inhabited the kingdom of “Judea”, that their “descendants” heroically prevented the “pillaging of the Scrolls by Bedouin” and are the rightful owners. The mythical kingdoms of 10th-3rd century BC Palestine — for which there is no conclusive evidence — are carefully delineated and explained in commentaries as if they are actual history. A dazzling success story for the most part for Gissin’s “Brand Israel”.

The dust-up, however, continues to provide a platform for activists to educate Canadians and empowers demonstrators at the nearby Israeli consulate. It has provided a 6-month platform for re-rebranding Israel as the centre of 21st-century apartheid. And no amount of slick PR can undo the fact that merely by continuing to exist, despite all odds, Palestinians endure as testimony to the injustice of “The Israel Project” in all its manifestations. Palestinians only have survival itself as proof of the crimes committed against them, choosing to maintain traditional dress, religious faith (both Christian and Islamic), and the historical memory of the Nakba as their most meaningful and durable expressions of resistance. Though former Israeli Prime Minister Golda Meir notoriously declared that “there is no such thing as Palestinians,” Palestinian academic Edward Said more accurately explained that, “In the case of a political identity that’s being threatened, culture is a way of fighting against extinction and obliteration.” The battle being waged over the Scrolls is not so much about any particular ethnic, religious, or even cultural-based claim, but more importantly a means of opposing Zionist colonial discourse.

Finally, TIFF’s cozying up to the Israeli propaganda machine blew up into a global scandal, as a spontaneous movement of protest among a few filmmakers turned into an international incident, bringing 1,500 signatures from prominent Israeli public figures and the likes of Jane Fonda, Julie Christie, Alice Walker, Naomi Klein, Guy Maddin, Walter Bernstein, and Harry Belafonte to the now historic “Toronto Declaration”. Leading Canadian filmmaker John Greyson, the catalyst for the declaration, refused to screen his latest film Covered in protest. Egyptian director Ahmad Abdalla withdrew his feature film debut Heliopolis, as did Ahmed Maher (The Traveller). The protesters were denounced in the mainstream media, called “opportunists, hypocrites, fascists, censors, storm- troopers, apartheid-supporters, intolerant totalitarians, a mob of homophobic anti-Semitic terrorist regime supporters” acting “effectively [as] Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s local fifth column” by Canadian film producer Robert Lantos. Yet the protest overshadowed the festival itself and was a godsend for educating the wider public, which could not help but hear about the unprecedented protest, despite mainstream media indifference or hostility. Greyson condemned the opportunism of TIFF for its complicity with the Israeli consulate’s “Brand Israel” campaign. “I’m reminded of last year, when the opening night party for Passchendaele featured real soldiers posing on a Canadian Armed Forces tank. Many of us were disturbed by this uncritical collaboration with the Canadian army, currently fighting in Afghanistan. So I have to ask: who is politicising TIFF? Why hasn’t TIFF explicitly explained and repudiated the perceived Brand Israel connection, beyond vague disavowals? What’s the extent of Israeli sponsorship, beyond airfare, receptions, and the Mayor’s presence? Why an exclusive programme of Israeli state-sponsored features, when shorts could have provided critical alternative voices?”

Opponents of Greyson wrote to York University, demanding that he be investigated, fired, even deported. In a delightful irony, the popular 2nd Toronto Palestinian Film Festival opened just a few weeks after TIFF closed. “It feels like the days of the first anti-apartheid struggle back in the 1970s,” enthused one activist. BDS is already a buzzword among politically-aware Canadians. Of course, there was much momentum back then from the successful anti-Vietnam War movement, the Zionist control of mainstream was less stifling, and there was much stronger political awareness in those Cold War years. But the anti-apartheid movement eventually brought everyone on board, even the notorious Margaret Thatcher, who seeing the writing on the wall, joined in. This anti-apartheid struggle phase two is picking up steam, even among Israel’s best friends. In presenting the Toronto Declaration, Greyson explained that he had just returned from South Africa, where he visited the Hector Pieterson Museum, dedicated to the memory of the 1976 Soweto massacre, where over 500 school children and anti-apartheid activists were killed by security forces. Among other things, the museum documents how this event became a turning point for the world, “a line in the sand, a moment when we ostriches finally woke up and expressed our outrage against South Africa’s apartheid regime. During my visit to the museum, the 2008 words of former Israeli Education Minister Shulamit Aloni echoed in my head: ‘Israel practices a brutal form of apartheid in the territory it occupies. Its army has turned every Palestinian village and town into a fenced-in, or blocked-in, detention camp.’” Greyson was overwhelmed by the outpouring of protest at TIFF and predicted that “Gaza represents a similar turning point to Soweto, a similar line in the sand. A moment when it’s imperative to speak out against the outrages of the Occupation.”

The Obama Administration objected to the move by Israel that discriminates against American citizens of Palestinian origin. However, there has been no protest from Ottawa even though Time magazine and the Israeli daily Haaretz ran lengthy articles focusing on a Palestinian Canadian businessmen harmed by this new policy. A few weeks ago the Globe and Mail reported that “Although some of the most high-profile cases of individuals being turned away involve Canadian citizens, the Harper government has, so far, made no protest.”

This silence bolsters claims by some commentators that under Prime Minister Stephen Harper’s Conservative government, Canada has become (at least diplomatically) the most pro-Israel country in the world. Israeli officials concur. After meeting Canada’s Foreign Affairs Minister, four other Conservative ministers and Liberal leader Michael Ignatieff in July 2009, Israeli Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman, who has openly called for the expulsion of Palestinian citizens of Israel, commented:

“It’s hard to find a country friendlier to Israel than Canada these days. Members both of the coalition and the opposition are loyal friends to us, both with regard to their worldview and their estimation of the situation in everything related to the Middle East, North Korea, Iran, Sudan and Somalia. No other country in the world has demonstrated such full understanding of us.”

Two days after Harper won a minority government in January 2006, Hamas won Canadian-monitored and facilitated legislative elections. Quickly after assuming power Harper made Canada the first country (after Israel) to cut its assistance to the Palestinian Authority. The aid cutoff, which was designed to sow division within Palestinian society, had devastating social effects.

Ostensibly, the aid cutoff was due to Hamas’s refusal to recognize Israel. Yet, Canada has not severed relations with Likud-led Israeli governments, which do not recognize the Palestinians’ right to a state. Harper explained, “Future assistance to any new Palestinian government will be reviewed against that government’s commitment to the principles of nonviolence, recognition of Israel and acceptance of previous agreements and obligations.” But support for Israel was never made contingent on “nonviolence” or an end to settlement construction.

In March 2007, Palestinian political factions representing more than 90 percent of the Palestinian Legislative Council established a unity government. Still, the Conservatives shunned the new government all the while claiming to speak regularly (like the Israelis) with Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas. When the unity government’s Information Minister Mustafa Barghouti traveled to Ottawa on a global peace tour, Foreign Affairs Minister Peter MacKay refused to meet him. Barghouti, who represents a secular party, explained at the time, “I think the Canadian government is the only government that is taking such a position, except for Israel.” Barghouti had already met the foreign ministers of Sweden and Norway, the Secretary-general of the United Nations and then US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice.

However, once Hamas officials were ousted from the Palestinian Authority (PA), Ottawa restarted diplomatic relations and financial support. “The Government of Canada welcomes the leadership of President Abbas and Prime Minister [Salam] Fayyad in establishing a government that Canada and the rest of the international community can work with,” explained MacKay after the unity government’s collapse in mid-2007 and the appointment of a new government in Ramallah. “In light of the new Palestinian government’s commitment to nonviolence, recognition of Israel, and acceptance of previous agreements and obligations, and in recognition of the opportunity for a renewal of peace efforts, Canada will provide assistance to the new Palestinian government.”

With Palestinian society divided and a more compliant authority in control of the West Bank, the Canadian International Development Agency contributed $8 million “in direct support to the new government.” Part of this aid was directed towards creating a Palestinian police force “to ensure that the PA maintains control of the West Bank against Hamas,” as Canadian ambassador to Israel Jon Allen was quoted by the Canadian Jewish News. US Lt. General Keith Dayton, in charge of organizing the Palestinian force, never admitted that he was strengthening Fatah against Hamas but to justify his program Dayton argued that Iran and Syria funded and armed Hamas. Bolstering Fatah to counteract the growing strength of Hamas was the impetus for Dayton’s mission. However, the broader aim is to build a force to patrol Israel’s occupation, a fact Dayton does little to dispel.

In January 2007, Foreign Affairs Minister Peter MacKay offered an immediate $1.2 million for Dayton’s mission. A fifth of Dayton’s initial staff was comprised of Canadians, and during a press conference with MacKay in Jerusalem Condoleezza Rice said Dayton “has a Canadian counterpart with whom he works very closely.” Two years later, Dayton’s military training force in the West Bank reportedly included nine Canadians, 16 Americans, three Brits and one Turk.

In June 2008, a Harper government press release announced, “Canada is a strong supporter of Palestinian security system reform, particularly through our contribution to the mission of Lt. General Keith Dayton, the US security coordinator, and to the European Union Police Coordinating Office for Palestinian Police Support.”

Canada’s contribution to the Dayton mission was part of a $300 million “aid” package that began in December 2007. According to the government agency Public Safety Canada, “a significant component [of the $300 million will be] devoted to security, including policing and public order capacity-building. This five year commitment will go towards the creation of a democratic, accountable, and viable Palestinian state that lives in peace and security alongside Israel.”

But does anything close to a “viable Palestinian state” exist? Is Israel allowing it to be created? Growing Jewish-only settlements, Israeli bypass roads and the apartheid barrier all make a Palestinian state far from realistic in the short to medium term. Yet Canadian officials act as if Israel is working toward a Palestinian state.

In Gaza, Israel’s occupation has turned into a blockade. For 27 months, Israel has reduced food and medicine from entering the tiny coastal territory to a fraction of what is needed by the besieged population. Yet, the Harper government has refused any criticism of the siege. Canada was the only country at the UN Human Rights Council (UNHRC) to vote against a January 2008 resolution that called for “urgent international action to put an immediate end to Israel’s siege of Gaza.” It was adopted by 30 votes with 15 abstentions.

Instead, the Conservative government has been quick to congratulate Israel for any small pause in its blockade. In January 2009 International Cooperation Minister Bev Oda proclaimed that “We commend Israel’s decision to facilitate the delivery of humanitarian assistance [to Gaza] through a temporary ceasefire.” A day after Oda’s announcement, Israeli forces fired on a UN convoy during a ceasefire, killing a Palestinian aid worker. There was no follow-up statement from Oda condemning Israel’s actions.

Compared to Ottawa’s cheerleading, most of the world was hostile to Israel’s attacks on Gaza last winter. In solidarity with Gaza, Venezuela expelled Israel’s ambassador at the start of the bombardment and then broke off all diplomatic relations two weeks later. Israel didn’t need to worry since Ottawa was prepared to help out. “Israel’s interests in Caracas will now be represented by the Canadian Embassy,” explained the Jerusalem Post (Ottawa had been “doing this for Israel in Cuba” since 1973). In August 2009, the Canadian embassy in Caracas also began providing visas to Venezuelans traveling to Israel.

For defining Canadian policy as “we support Israel no matter what it does,” B’Nai Brith International bestowed Harper with its Presidential Gold Medallion for Humanitarianism. The first ever Canadian to receive the award, Harper joined former Israeli Prime Minister David Ben Gurion, and US Presidents John F. Kennedy and Harry S. Truman. For its part, the Canadian Jewish Congress gave Harper its “prestigious Saul Hayes Human Rights award, named for a former CJC executive director, the first time it’s been given to a sitting PM.”

Despite the government’s strident support for Israel, grassroots opposition to that country’s policy has never been greater. Recent protests against the Toronto International Film Festival’s spotlight on Tel Aviv were a major setback to Israeli public relations efforts. The festival embarrassment followed massive demonstrations against Israel’s assault on Gaza, when many cities across the country witnessed their largest ever Palestinian solidarity demonstrations.

Alongside displays of opposition to specific Israeli policy, the boycott, divestment and sanctions (BDS) campaign is growing. Many social groups such as Independent Jewish Voices and Quebec’s most active student Federation, ASSE, have joined the BDS movement, as have a number of unions, including the Canadian Union of Public Employees (Ontario), the Canadian Union of Postal Workers and the teachers Federation in Quebec. Social movements in Canada have never been more critical of Israel.

But the only unity generated among Jewish and Palestinian residents after four years of disruptions to the city’s traffic and businesses is general agreement that the project is rapidly becoming a white elephant.

After engineering problems, rows between the contractors and the municipality and delays caused by archaeological discoveries along the route, completion of the first 14km section of track is not expected until the end of next year at the earliest — more than 18 months behind schedule. The budget overspend is estimated at more than $500 million.

This week, in an indication of the deepening crisis, Israel’s Dan bus company was forced to step in to buy the five per cent stake of Veolia, a French company that is supposed to operate the line for the next 30 years. Dan, which is waiting for the Israeli government to approve its bid, has no prior experience of running a rail system.

Shmuel Elgrably, a spokesman for the transit system, told the Haaretz newspaper last week that the loss of Veolia had “screwed” the project.

Veolia’s unexpected withdrawal from City Pass, a French-Israeli private consortium backed in part by public finances, is being claimed as a victory by Palestinian officials and activists whose boycott and lobbying efforts appear to have forced the company to quit the project.

They have accused Veolia and another French firm, Alstom, which is laying the tracks and providing the rail cars, of violating international law by working on a project designed to benefit Jewish settlements in the occupied part of Jerusalem.

Since East Jerusalem’s annexation, Israel has moved some 200,000 Jews into illegal colonies surrounding more than a quarter of a million Palestinian residents.

Despite pressure from Washington for a settlement freeze in East Jerusalem and the West Bank, Israel’s prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, declared this week: “Jerusalem is not a settlement and construction [of homes] will go on as planned.”

Officials announced this month that 500 new apartments are to be built in Pisgat Zeev — a settlement of more than 40,000 Jews that will be connected to West Jerusalem in the first phase of the rail system’s construction.

The line, which is supposed to serve 150,000 passengers a day and ease congestion on Jerusalem’s roads, will also pass by the famous Damascus and Jaffa Gates of the Old City.

Future sections of track are supposed to link up other Jewish settlements, including Neve Yaacov, Atarot and Gilo.

When the transit system contract was signed in 2005, Ariel Sharon, the prime minister at the time, said it would “sustain Jerusalem for eternity as the capital of the Jewish people”.

Omar Barghouti, a founder of the Palestinian Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions Movement, which has been targeting Veolia and Alstom over their involvement, wrote this month in the Jerusalem Quarterly magazine that the railway was part of “a comprehensive, long-term strategy … to cement the integration of those [settlement] blocs into an ever sprawling ‘Greater Jerusalem”.

Mr Barghouti claimed that the transit system is part of a secret Israeli plan, the outlines of which were revealed by the Haaretz newspaper in May, to create large infrastructure projects to prevent the future division of Jerusalem and thereby thwart any hope of a peace agreement.

The Palestinians demand East Jerusalem as the capital of their hoped-for state.

The project’s supporters, however, point out that five of the 23 stations along the first line will be located in Palestinian neighbourhoods, including the deprived Shuafat refugee camp.

To be profitable, says City Pass, the light rail must cater to the city’s large communities of ultra-Othodox and Palestinians, both of whom are heavy users of public transport but currently use different bus routes.

Yet there are few indications that either group is keen to be brought on-board the transit system.

Palestinians are likely to be wary of using a railway dominated by settlers, and there may be severe limitations to their access to the service.

Shir Hever, a Jerusalem-based economist, said many Israeli Jews would be unwilling to share trains with the city’s Palestinian inhabitants, particularly after a series of terror attacks last summer in East Jerusalem, mostly using bulldozers.

“The real questions,” he said, “are how many Palestinian areas in East Jerusalem will be left out of the loop of the rail system and, even where there are stops, what security requirements will be imposed on Palestinians, compared to Israeli Jews, before they can board the train?”

Some observers suspect that, after the first attack following the railway’s opening, it will be closed to Palestinian travellers.

The ultra-Orthodox appear equally distrustful. Their rabbis have condemned the transit system because it will encourage men and women to mingle and replace the community’s own segregated “modesty” buses. Last year, seven rabbis wrote to the municipality to complain that their followers would have to pass through secular neighbourhoods “where a God-fearing person would not set foot”.

Planners too, it seems, are preparing for trouble. The 42 rail cars — each costing more than $3m — are designed to withstand stones and firebombs.

But the very survival of the project is now in question after the boycott movement’s successful lobbying. A Dutch bank, ASN, pulled its investments from Veolia in 2006, and the company lost a large contract in Sweden this year.

Alstom is also under great pressure. The Swedish national pension fund, AP7, excluded the French firm from its investment portfolio this year and activists are now seeking to force its withdrawal from a consortium awarded a $1.8billion contract in Saudi Arabia to build the Haramain Express between Mecca and Medina.

In addition, both Veolia and Alstom are battling the Palestine Liberation Organisation through the French courts over their involvement in City Pass.

The consortium’s woes have only increased with the election last year as Jerusalem mayor of Nir Barkat, a right-wing businessman who is a vocal opponent of the venture. Costs have already exceeded $1.1bn, twice the original projections, with the Israeli government sinking in $200m itself.

Earlier this year Mr Barkat threatened to terminate City Pass’ contract after the completion of the first line. He believes other routes can be served by a fleet of buses that would be five times cheaper to run.

– calling Barack Obama a “racist (who) has a deep-seated hatred for white people or the white culture; I don’t know what it is….This guy is, I believe, a racist;”

– calling Van Jones “an avowed, radical, revolutionary communist,” then saying “Jones is the tip of the iceberg” as part of his over-the-top campaign against anyone less extremist than himself;

– stating “The most used phrase in my administration if I were to be President would be ‘What the hell do you mean we’re out of missiles;’ ”

– saying “We need to be the first ones in the recruitment office lining up to shoot the bad Muslims in the head…. In 10 years, Muslims and Arabs will be looking through a razor wire fence at the West;”

– telling Muslim Congressman Keith Ellison to “prove to me that you are not working with our enemies;”

– advocating disposing of Guantanamo detainees by shooting them in the head;

– accusing Al Gore of creating a new “Hitler youth” by promoting environmental awareness, and called for kicking California out of the union;

– in 2003, telling listeners he was praying for a gruesome death for Democrat presidential candidate Dennis Kucinich, and in 2005 saying he fantasized about strangling filmmaker Michael Moore;

– characterizing Obama’s new regulatory czar, Cass Sunstein, as a crazed animal rights activist who believes that rats matter more than people; and

– in September 2005, expressing open “hate” toward Katrina victims, calling them “scumbags” for not waiting patiently for emergency aid at a time their lives were devastated, and the Bush administration was forcibly removing them to distant locations, then preventing them from returning so predatory developers could exploit their neighborhoods for profit.

In May 2008, a Media Matters Action Network report titled, “Fear & Loathing in Prime Time: Immigration Myths and Cable News” highlighted undocumented Latino immigrant hatemongering by Lou Dobbs, Bill O’Reilly, and Glenn Beck, each making outlandish claims, including:

• an alleged connection between undocumented Latinos and crime;
• how they exploit social services and don’t pay taxes;
• the “reconquista” myth about a supposed Mexican plot to take over the US Southwest; and
• an epidemic of Latino voter fraud.

According to Beck, “It’s time to wake up in this country. We are dealing with an illegal alien (read Latino) crime wave, and drug smuggling is just the beginning.” He opened a special 2008 “Border Crisis” program saying: “America’s border crisis. Rape, drugs, kidnapping, even murder. It is beginning to look a lot more like a border war…. Every single illegal immigrant is guilty of a crime, every single one…. Every undocumented worker (read Latino) is an illegal immigrant, a criminal and a drain on our dwindling resources.”

He added:

– “I’ve got a quick message for illegal aliens if you happen to be watching; you better start packing your bags; and to the politicians in Washington who are soft on illegal immigration, start packing up your office, because when the terrorists strike, which they will, and when we find out that they’re here illegally from some other country, we will be telling all of you to get the hell out;”

– earlier he said “I told you about the five-part plan that I believe may lead to the end of the West as we know it; I called it my ‘Perfect Storm;’ one of the elements….is illegal immigration; it is still a great way for terrorists to come here and mess with us; but even if that doesn’t happen….at the very least (they’re) attacking our culture, and our way of life; they are not melting into our melting pot; they’re here for the cash;” and

– “I also know our country is on fire, and the fuel is illegal immigration; they (threaten) our national security;” they come for “three reasons: one, they’re terrorists; two, they’re escaping the law; or three, they’re hungry (because) they can’t make a living in their own dirtbag country.”

This is what passes for American mainstream “journalism” that’s in no worse form than from Glenn Beck – on Fox News, the radio outlets that give him a platform, and the sponsors that make his kind of programming possible. More on them below.

Joe McCarthy’s Earlier Jihad Against the Left

In the 1950s, Joe McCarthy’s witch-hunts against alleged communists, those on the left, and Democrat administration and other “subversives” included Secretary of State Dean Acheson whom he called “a pompous diplomat in striped pants,” General George Marshall when he was Secretary of State for being “soft on communism” and being “a man steeped in falsehood,” and many others on his so-called “blacklist.”

In 1950, with no proof, he said he had a list of 205 known communists in the State Department, later reduced the number to 57, but said they were passing secret information to the Soviets. He claimed:

The reason why we find ourselves in a position of impotency is not because the enemy has sent men to invade our shores, but rather because of the traitorous actions of those who had all the benefits that the wealthiest nation on earth has had to offer — the finest homes, the finest college educations, and the finest jobs in Government (and the private sector) we can give.

He characterized enemies as “card-carrying communists.” Others as “loyalty risks” or being “soft on communism.” For political gain, he vilified patriotic Americans, created years of hysteria, targeted anti-American books in libraries and got them removed, then overstepped enough to be hung on his own petard with publications like the Louisville Courier-Journal reporting that:

“In this long, degrading travesty of the democratic process, McCarthy has shown himself to be evil and unmatched in malice.” On December 2, 1954 the Senate censured him and took away his power base. Later ill with cirrhosis of the liver from years of abusive alcoholism, he died a broken man on May 2, 1957.

Today, the term “McCarthyism” is synonymous with baseless malicious slander, unscrupulous fear-mongering, vilifying the innocent, accusing them of disloyalty, and calling them terrorists, Islamofascists, illegal immigrants, and unpatriotic for supporting progressive change and ideas to the left of right wing views.

McCarthysim Redux Through the Right Wing Media

Nightly on Fox News, Glenn Beck delivers some of the worst of it to his estimated 2.3 million faithful and millions more on The Glenn Beck Program, a nationally syndicated talk-radio show aired by Premiere Radio Networks (a Clear Channel Communications subsidiary) throughout the country on over 300 stations, according to a Premiere Speakers Bureau promo about him stating that his program “is presently the third highest-rated national radio talk show among adults ages 25-54.”

It said that he debuted on CNN’s Headline News in May 2006 “with his self-styled topical talk show and quickly soared in popularity.” CNN at the time called it “an unconventional look at the news of the day featuring (Beck’s) often amusing perspective on the top stories from world events and politics to pop culture and everyday hassles.”

In early January 2007, he also joined ABC News’ Good Morning America as a regular contributor with its senior executive producer, Jim Murphy, saying:

“Glenn is a leading commentator with a distinct voice. At times, he is the perfect guest for many of the talk topics we cover on morning news programs.”

In 2008, Beck won the Marconi Radio Award for Network Syndicated Personality of the Year from the National Association of Broadcasters. Previous winners included Rush Limbaugh and Fox News’ Sean Hannity. After his award, Premiere Radio Networks president, Charlie Rahilly, said:

“Glenn’s conversation with millions of Americans weekly on The Glenn Beck Program….makes him a familiar voice in our culture. We salute his work, creativity, and humor, and congratulate him on his genuine recognition by our industry.”

He regularly features guests like Karl Rove, John McCain, Sarah Palin, Rudy Giuliani, Rick Santorum, Rush Limbaugh, and an array of the most extremist Republican members of Congress, others from right wing think tanks, and former Bush administration officials.

His syndicator, Premiere Radio, is a subsidiary of Clear Channel Communications, the world’s largest radio broadcaster, concert promoter, and billboard advertising firm. It’s also a major player in US television and Spanish language broadcasting, and very much to the right of center in ideology. As one of America’s most powerful media companies, it’s played a leading role in destroying media diversity by airing the same content on many dozens of its stations simultaneously, suppressing everything not supportive of its views.

In 2002, Clear Channel attracted the attention of Senator Russ Feingold and several other members of Congress over its anti-competitive behavior and alleged shady business practices. In 2009, the company remains a powerful force, ranking ninth among the top 20 US media companies ahead of The New York Times Co., the Washington Post Co., Hearst Corp., and McGraw-Hill.

More on Beck’s Background

He’s written three New York Times-listed bestsellers, publishes the entertainment Fusion Magazine, and tours the country twice yearly in his own one-man show to promote himself as a national institution.

Instead of condemning his extremism, on December 4, 2006, the New York Times described him as a “tearful rising star” in calling him “brash (and) opinionated (with an) unfiltered approach (in) saying what others are feeling but are afraid to say.” Writers Brian Stelter and Bill Carter said he “has a gift for touching the passion nerve (by) tapping into fear about the future.”

They quoted Old Dominion University’s Jeffrey Jones saying Beck engages in “inciting rhetoric. People hear their values are under attack and they get worried. It becomes an opportunity for them to stand up and do something” without realizing how destructive Beck’s extremism is to their own well-being. Even Beck once said about himself: “I say on the air all the time, if you take what I say as gospel, you’re an idiot.”

His Premiere’s Speakers Bureau bio says he debuted in radio at age 13 in Seattle, and grew up in nearby Mount Vernon. After high school, he got jobs “as a Top 40 DJ” in Baltimore, Houston, and New Haven, CT.

It also explained that at age 30, he became consumed by alcoholism and drug addiction, then regained sobriety and “found a new direction.” He remarried, became a baptized Mormon, and decided to pursue talk radio after being offered his own show on Tampa, Florida station WFLA-AM. In his first year, it became number-one rated, and within 18 months, Premiere Radio Networks offered him national syndication.

In January 2002, the Glenn Beck Program debuted on 47 stations. Today, he’s on over 300 as well as XM satellite radio.

LDS Living Magazine (for Latter Day Saint Mormon families) provides more details about Beck’s background. It said he was fired from his first three radio jobs in Washington State. Six months later, he returned on WPGC in Washington, DC. Was again fired. Then he became program director and “morning guy” on a small Corpus Christi, TX station. After two years of “moving around from city to city, he ended up in Baltimore.” He also worked at WRKA in Louisville, KY and WKCI-FM in Hamden, CT.

Three days after converting to Mormonism, he was offered his first radio talk show in Tampa. It propelled him to national prominence and his current positions at Fox News, his syndicated radio program (first from Philadelphia in January 2002, now in New York), and as a hot topic on other programs, including MSNBC’s Keith Olbermann’s war of words with Beck.

He posted a September 6 request on The Daily Kos to “Send Me Everything You Can Find About Glenn Beck.” He added that he’ll “expand this to the television audience and have a dedicated email address to accept leads, tips, contacts, on Beck, his radio producer Burguiere, and the chief of his tv enables, Ailes (head of Fox News)….”

It may simply be a PR stunt to boost ratings and get added revenue for General Electric, MSNBC’s owner, that certainly can stop this if it wishes.

Sponsors Bailing Out on Beck

To date, over five dozen decided they’ll no longer be associated with his kind of antics, fearing, of course, it may harm their image and hurt sales and profits.

In 2005, Van Jones (now inactive) and James Rucker co-founded ColorOfChange.org “to strengthen Black America’s political voice” toward the goal of making “government more responsive to the concerns of Black Americans and to bring about positive political and social change for everyone.”

In the wake of Beck calling Obama a “racist” and attacking Van Jones, it sent a letter to his sponsors urging them to boycott “the kinds of views and tactics” he espouses and cease all advertising on his program.

FoxNewsBoycott.com joined in as part of its campaign “to help people realize that Fox News Channel and its personalities are a detriment to journalism and journalistic integrity.” It urges supporters “to boycott, not only Fox News Channel, but Fox News sponsors and companies that air Fox News in their places of business.”

To date, over 60 companies no longer advertise on Glenn Beck, including:

• AT & T
• Bank of America
• Bell & Howell
• Best Buy
• Campbell Soup
• Capital One
• Clorox
• Berkshire Hathaway’s GEICO Insurance
• General Mills
• HSBC
• Johnson & Johnson
• Kraft Foods
• Mercedes-Benz
• Procter & Gamble
• Sanofi-Aventis
• Sprint
• Travelers Insurance
• UPS
• Verizon Wireless, and
• Wal-Mart

Many others still advertise, but more keep pulling out, showing the effectiveness of the national campaign, backed by many tens of thousands of signatures from Color of Change and Fox News Boycott supporters.

The Internet’s power is real and proves when enough committed people back progressive issues, constructive change follows. If if works against Glenn Beck and Fox News, why not in a campaign to reclaim the kind of America people deserve and can have if they work hard enough for it.

If not now, when? If not us, who? If not soon, maybe never? If that’s not incentive enough, what is?

Every time I think of 9/11
I see burning flesh dripping off the bones of Iraqi children in Fallujah
Now Gaza
I tend to memorialize the forgotten
The collateral damage eclipsing our unpunished crimes

Maybe it’s because I’m a numbers guy
Because if I had a dollar for every time an Iraqi died since 2003
I’d be a millionaire

And don’t get me wrong
Sometimes I don’t know who I hate more
The governments in the West
Or the politicians in the East
Who sell their souls quicker than the oil they export
Straw men who use Palestine as a tool to line their pockets
And don’t give a nickel to their people
Quisling governments
Who stitch mouths shut for a check from Washington and AIPAC
How can you be their prototypical anti-Semite
If you are signing peace accords to oppress your own people?

And then Orientalists and idiots talk about how
We can’t have democracy in the Middle East
Because of what happened in Gaza
A Hamas boogyman wrapped in democratic elections
Rahm Emanuel wants to educate me and my people about democracy gone wrong
Why doesn’t he try implementing one in Israel first?
Instead of bowing down to terrorists like his father and the IDF
Lauding a third rate, racist, European society that’s imploding quicker
Than its moral standing in the world
Enlightened like 1950s Afrikaners and slave traders
Just because the house is beautiful
Doesn’t mean the bones you built it on have fully decomposed

The Israeli left is about as alive as Ariel Sharon
I’m sick and tired of asking for permission to resist
From antiquated leftists and progressives
Who care more about keeping it Kosher than moving things forward
I put down my pen and waving fist to resist with college kids and Palestinians
Boycott and divest!
Because who cares about preserving a living when governments are killing civilians
Complicity by silence and reserve units bombing Gaza
Your academics and scholars, theater groups and practitioners, are part of the problem

And if logic doesn’t fit into your long term plan of rejecting
My right to return, I’m sorry
Maybe one day you’ll return to reality
Where my people have babies quicker
Than Zionists can concoct Jordanian options

I don’t want your sympathy or introspective confessions
Won’t sit on my hands till they lose oxygen
Like the people of Balata and Rafah
Vote for Barack Obama
And pretend that his 22 day silence was golden
While emaciated children starved to death
Surrounded by their parent’s corpses

This can’t be America the Beautiful
A criminal with a few positive attributes
Doesn’t alleviate genocide
Bombing Afghanistan, Pakistan, and Iraq
Into oblivion doesn’t make you historic
It makes you as blind and bloodthirsty
As the white men that came before you
Apathetic hipsters now excited about a president
Who broke history, but not poverty, occupation, or corporate interests

I’d rather proudly walk through the graveyard of peace accords
And failed dialogue sessions
Than see my people just as occupied or third class citizens
We are the gavel that will slam down like a verdict
We are not waiting for Israel or America or the Supreme Court to approve it
We’ll boycott Lev Leviev, Caterpillar and your apartheid companies
We’re taking back the right of return and the keys to a country
Because we never asked you to go back to Europe or sit in open air prisons
I’m not asking for your advice, I’m explaining the decision
You can stay here, with us, but only as equals
It’s not that you’re Israeli, it’s that you’re wrong
That’s why I fight for my people!

Uri Avnery opposes the brutality inflicted on Palestinians. He campaigns for peace with Palestinians. But he also has a Zionist past. He is European born and fought for the terrorist Irgun in perpetration of a holocaust (Nakba) against Palestinans. He later renounced Irgun’s tactics. He is antiwar, but he is not anti-the fruits of war. He approves of a two state solution. In other words, Israeli Jews will keep the fruits of their dispossessing others — this while continuing to press for the return of what they were dispossessed.¹

Avnery advocates selective use of tactics against Zionism. This is apparent when it comes to an international boycott of Israel. Avnery states that no one is better qualified than South African archbishop Desmond Tutu to answer this question.²

What does Tutu say? He has called on the international community to treat Israel as it treated apartheid South Africa. Tutu supports the divestment campaign against Israel.³

Avnery’s fellow Israeli, Neve Gordon, agrees that it is time for a boycott.⁴ Avnery laments, “I am sorry that I cannot agree with him this time – neither about the similarity with South Africa nor about the efficacy of a boycott of Israel.”

Indeed, the apartheids — while in many respects similar — are also different. Gary Zaztman pointed to a key difference:

For all its serious and undoubted evils and the numerous crimes against humanity committed in its name, including physical slaughters, South African white-racist apartheid was not premised on committing genocide. Zionism, on the other hand, has been committed to dissolving the social, cultural, political and economic integrity of the Palestinian people, i.e., genocide, from the outset, at least as early as Theodor Herzl’s injunction in his diaries that the “transfer” of the Palestinian “penniless population” elsewhere be conducted “discreetly and circumspectly.”⁵

Boycotts as a Tactic against Racism

Avnery says Tutu told him: “The boycott was immensely important, much more than the armed struggle.”

But it was the revolutionary, Nelson Mandela, who refused to give up the right to armed struggle, who negotiated the dismantling of South African apartheid.⁶

Tutu also told Avnery, “The importance of the boycott was not only economic but also moral.”

Avnery writes, “It seems to me that Tutu’s answer emphasizes the huge difference between the South African reality at the time and ours today.”

So what is Avnery saying? First he states that Tutu is best qualified person to speak to the effectiveness of boycotting as a tool in the fight against racism, then he says Tutu has it wrong. So is Avnery saying, then, that he is best qualified to speak on the effectiveness of boycotts against racism?

Avnery fears that Israeli Jews will feel “the whole world is against us.”  

However, isn’t that, in a sense, what the purpose is: to show that the whole world is against Jewish racism against Palestinians? It must be emphasized that the world is not against Jews, as Israeli propaganda would choose to portray it. Although he doesn’t specifically state it, Avnery is using a version of the anti-Semitism smear: if you are against anything Israel does, then you are against Israelis. Hence, you are anti-Semitic. This grotesque perversion of morality and logic holds that to be against racism toward Palestinians makes one anti-Semitic.

Avnery admits, “In South Africa, the world-wide boycott helped in strengthening the majority and steeling [sic] it for the struggle. The impact of a boycott on Israel would be the exact opposite: it would push the large majority into the arms of the extreme right and create a fortress mentality against the ‘anti-Semitic world’. (The boycott would, of course, have a different impact on the Palestinians, but that is not the aim of those who advocate it.)”

Avnery merely states what is the current status quo. Israel is already hunkered down in an extreme right fortress mentality. The boycott is not the cause. Avnery fixates on the population dynamics. What is the relevance of majority and minority in Avnery’s reasoning? It would seem that Palestinians being in the minority – and the fact that the Palestinians support the boycott – to be even greater reason for international support of the boycott. Who and what is Avnery supporting: Palestinians from racism or Israeli Jews from the economic effects and moral stigma of an international boycott?

As for the aim of the boycott campaign: “to deny Israel the financial means to continue to kill Palestinians and occupy the lands.”⁷

Avnery raises “the Holocaust” arguing that Jewish suffering has imprinted itself deeply on the Jewish soul. That the Nazis rounded up Jews in concentration was a moral outrage. But what is the lesson of World War II? That suffering imposed on any identifiable group of people is evil and wrong, or that one group can appropriate a holocaust, make it their own, and use past suffering as a shield to inflict a holocaust on another people? Avnery argues that boycotting Jews will remind them of Nazism, but when Jews use Nazi-type techniques what should they be reminded of?

Avnery says it is okay to boycott of the product of the “settlements.” He draws a distinction between “settlers” (i.e., “colonisers”) and other Israeli Jews. How then does Avnery rationalize the fact that the “settlers” are in the West Bank?
 
Avnery asserts, “Those who call for a boycott act out of despair. And that is the root of the matter.” Indeed, despair is life for many Palestinians under occupation or in refugee camps.

Avnery states that an international boycott would be difficult to achieve, and the US would not be behind it. It was not easy to achieve against the apartheid regimes in South Africa either. Is that a reason not to try? Did not the US oppose a boycott of South Africa? Yes, it might take a long time. But times do change. The US (and its western allies’s) recalcitrance was steam rolled in Venezuela, Cuba, Bolivia, and elsewhere. Empires have risen and fallen throughout history.

Avnery finds that the tactic of boycotting is “an example of a faulty diagnosis leading to faulty treatment. To be precise: the mistaken assumption that the Israeli-Palestinian conflict resembles the South African experience leads to a mistaken choice of strategy.”

Avnery continues, “In South Africa there was total agreement between the two sides about the unity of the country. The struggle was about the regime. Both Whites and Blacks considered themselves South Africans and were determined to keep the country intact. The Whites did not want partition, and indeed could not want it, because their economy was based on the labor of the Blacks.”

Seems there is some faulty analysis going on. “Whites did not want partition”? How can Avnery state something so factually inaccurate? What were Venda, Lebowa, the Bantustans, if not sections of South Africa partitioned off by the White government? Furthermore, that Zionism is now no longer dependent on Palestinian labor does not mask that it at one time was dependent on such labor; Avnery is cherry picking in his argument. Denying Palestinians the right to work in historical Palestine is a tactic that evolved from Zionism.

Also, how is it that Avnery can argue against an international boycott of Israel when Israel maintains a crushing illegal embargo against Palestinians – a war crime? As long as Israel uses such a tactic, then resistance through boycott, certainly, is legitimate.

Avnery says Israeli Jews and Palestinian Arabs have nothing in common. However, this same lack of commonality was true between White and Black South Africans as well. Nonetheless, I take exception with the thrust of such argumentation. It prepares the ground for racism. Israeli Jews, Palestinians, Black and White South Africans are all humans. They all eat, work, sleep, have dreams, have families. This should be reason enough to act humanely toward each other: love of humanity. It is entirely possible to embrace our shared humanity and respect diversity.

Avnery concludes, “In short: the two conflicts are fundamentally different. Therefore, the methods of struggle, too, must necessarily be different.”

This is logically flawed reasoning, much like the logical and moral flaw that being a victim of a genocide minimizes one’s own culpability in a subsequent genocide. One suspects that Avnery may well be the victim of a pained conscience and cognitive dissonance. I submit that the two “conflicts”⁸ are fundamentally similar. Fundamentally, colonial Israel and colonial South Africa share these hallmarks: a racially, culturally, spiritually, linguistically different group of outsiders through preponderant violence dispossessed Indigenous peoples of their homeland, and set up an apartheid system which humiliates the Indigenous peoples and privileges the occupiers.

Avnery focuses on certain “fundamentals” — which I submit are not fundamentals but nuances — that he considers different.

Avnery’s solution lies with “a comprehensive and detailed peace plan” from US president Barack Obama and “the full persuasive power of the United States” to lead to “a path of peace with Palestine.”

Avnery remembers well previous US-backed peace plans, like Oslo and the Roadmap. Why, then, does he cast his audacious hope on AIPAC appeaser Obama? Avnery hopes that Israeli Jews will realize that peace with Palestinians is the way? The peace activist touts a solution that has failed and been rejected many times. He rejects a solution that worked in South African because of the sensibilities of the oppressors.

But let us examine Avnery’s logic that fundamentally different “conflicts” demand different struggles.

Oppression is overthrown by struggle. Fundamentally different “conflicts” can succeed through similar struggles. As one example, revolutionaries overthrew an American-backed dictatorship in Cuba through armed struggle and Cuban revoluntionaries defeated South African forces in Angola through armed struggle.⁹

In his article’s finale, seemingly assured of his own argumentation over the person he deems the best qualified authority on boycotts as a tool to overcome apartheid, Avnery points to a prayer of Tutu’s – a prayer that would serve all of us well:

“Dear God, when I am wrong, please make me willing to see my mistake. And when I am right – please make me tolerable to live with.”

Hopefully, Avnery abides by such humbleness when he sees the error of his ways as well.

1. See Dinah Spritzer, “Last chance for Holocaust restitution?” JTA, 30 June 2009.
2. Uri Avnery, “Tutu’s Prayer,” Gush Shalom, 29 August 2009.
3. Desmond Tutu, “Israel: Time to Divest,” New Internationalist magazine, January/February 2003. Available online at Third World Traveler.
4. Neve Gordon, “Boycott Israel,” Los Angeles Times, 20 August 2009.
5. Gary Zatzman, “The Notion of the ‘Jewish State’ as an ‘Apartheid Regime’ is a Liberal-Zionist One,” Dissident Voice, 21 November 2005.
6. See Bill Keller, Tree Shaker: The Story of Nelson Mandela (Boston: Kingfisher, 2008). Mandela wanted to pursue a peaceful, non-violent settlement, but when faced with the violence of state power he felt compelled to use violence as a method of struggle. Mandela did emphasize that this violence was not terrorism: 98.
7. ”Aim of the boycott campaign,” Boycott Israel Now.
8. The word “conflict” minimizes the atrocities wreaked on Palestinians and South Africans by their oppressors.
9. Isaac Saney contends that the Battle of Cuito Cuanavale was the “turning point in the struggle against apartheid. ”Isaac Saney, “The Story of How Cuba Helped to Free Africa,” Morning Star, 4 November 2005. Available at Embajada de Cuba en Egipto.

Daddy was making more money than he’d ever made in his life, about $4,000 a year. The median national household income at the time was $5,000, mostly thanks to America’s unions. After years of moving from one rented dump to another, we bought a modest home ($8,000) and felt like we might at last be getting some traction in achieving the so-called “American Dream.” Yup, Daddy was doing pretty good for a backwoods boy who’d quit school in the sixth or seventh grade — he was never sure, which gives some idea how seriously the farm boy took his attendance at the one-room school we both attended in our lifetimes.

This was the golden age of both trucking and of unions. Thirty-five percent of American labor — 17 million working folks — were union members, and it was during this period the American middle class was created. The American middle class has never been as big as advertised, but if it means the middle third income-wise, then we actually had one at the time. But whatever it means, one third of working folks, the people who busted their asses day in and day out making the nation function, were living better than they ever had. Or at least had the opportunity to do so.

From the Depression through World War II the Teamsters Union became a powerful entity, and a popular one too because of such things as its pledge never to strike during the war or a national emergency. President Roosevelt even had a special designated liaison to the Teamsters. But power and money eventually drew the usual assortment of lizards, and by the mid-fifties the Teamsters Union had become one corrupt pile of shit at the top level. So rotten even the mob enjoyed a piece of the action. The membership, ordinary guys like my dad, was outraged and ashamed, but rendered powerless by the crooked union bosses in the big cities.

My old man was no great follower of the news or current events, but he tried to keep up with and understand Teamster developments. Which was impossible since his reading consisted of anti-union Southern newspapers, and the television coverage of Teamster criminality, including murders, and the ongoing courtroom trials.

All this left him conflicted. His Appalachian Christian upbringing defined the world in black and white, with no gray areas. Inside he felt he should not be even remotely connected with such vile things as the Teamsters were associated with. And he sometimes prayed for guidance in the matter. On the other hand, there was the pride and satisfaction in providing for his family in ways previously impossible. He’d built a reasonable working class security for those times and that place in West Virginia. Being a Teamster certainly made that possible. But for damned sure no one had handed it to him. He drove hi s guts out to get what he had.

There were rules, and log books and all the other crap that were supposed to assure drivers got enough rest, and ensure road safety and fairness for the truckers. Rural heartland drivers saw it for the bullshit it was, but it was much better paying bullshit. For a little guy hauling produce from Podunk USA to the big cities, it still came down to heartburn, hemorrhoids, and longer hauls and longer hours than most driver’s falsified log books showed. And sometimes way too much Benzedrine, or “bennies.”

Bennies were a type of speed commonly used by truckers back then because of the grueling hauls. As a former doper who has done bennies, I can avow they are some gritty nerve jagging shit. Their only virtue is making you wide awake and jumpy, and after you’ve been awake on them a couple days, which many drivers were, crazier than a shithouse rat. Nearly every truck stop sold bennies under the counter. Once while hallucinating on bennies, Daddy nearly wiped out a roadside joint. He recalled “layin’ on the jake brake, down shifting, and watching hundreds of the witches like in The Wizard of Oz come down out of the sky in the dark.” Somehow he got 30,000=2 0pounds back onto the road while several folks inside the diner were pissing themselves in the windowside booths.

My daddy ran the eastern seaboard in a 12-wheeler — there were no 18-wheelers yet. It had polished chrome and bold letters that read, “BLUE GOOSE LINE.” Parked alongside our little asbestos-sided house, I’d marvel at the magic of those bold words, the golden diamond and sturdy goose, and dream of someday “burning up Route 50″ like my dad.
Old U.S. Route 50 ran near the house and was the stuff of legend if your daddy happened to be a truck driver who sometimes took you with him on the shorter hauls: “OK boy, now scrunch down and look into the side mirror. I’m gonna turn the top of them side stacks red hot.” And he would pop the clutch and strike sparks on the anvil of the night, downshifting toward Pinkerton, Coolville and Hanging Rock. It never once occurred to me that his ebullience and our camaraderie might be due to a handful of bennies. Yessir, Old 50 was a mighty thing, a howling black slash through the Blue Ridge Mountain fog. A place where famed and treacherous curves made widows and truck stops and cafes bloomed in the tractor trailers’ smoky wakes. A roadmap will tell you it eventually reaches Columbus and Saint Louis, places I imagined had floodlights raking the skies heralding the arrival of heroic Teamster truckers like my father. Guys who’d fought in Germany and Italy and the Solomon Islands and were still wearing their service caps these years later, but now pinned with the gold steering wheel of the Teamsters Union. Such are a working class boy’s dreams.

I have two parched photos from that time. One is of me and my brother and sister, ages ten, eight and six. We are standing in the front yard, three little redneck kids with bad haircuts squinting for some faint clue as to whether there was really a world out there, somewhere beyond West Virginia. The other photo is of my mother and the three of us on the porch of that house on route 50. On the day my father was slated to return from any given run we’d all stand on the porch listening for the sound of airbrakes, the deep roar as he came down off the mountain. Each time my mother would step onto the porch blotting her lipstick, Betty Grable style hair rustling in the breeze, and say, “Stand close, your daddy’s home.”

And that was about as good as it ever got for our family. Daddy’s heart later gave way from a congenital defect and he lost everything. He was so scrupulously honest about debts he could never recover financially. Unable to borrow money, uneducated and weakened for life, he set to working in car washes and garages. After his union trucking days were over, we were assigned to the margins of America, a million miles from the American Dream, joining those people never seen on television, represented by no politician and never heard from in the halls of power.

Now it was only a little house by the side of the road with not enough closets and ugly asbestos shingle siding. But it was ours, just like the truck and the chance to get ahead that it offered. And we had felt like we were some small part of America as it was advertised. All because of a union job during the heyday of unions in this nation.

It was also a period of Teamsters Union corruption, replete with criminal moguls such as Dave Beck, George Meany and Jimmy Hoffa. Yet the history of the few top lizards on the national rock of greed is not the history of the people.

If a few pricks and gangsters have occasionally seized power over the dignity of labor, countless more calculating, bloodless and malevolent pricks — the capitalist elites — have always held most of the cards

Which is why in 1886 railroad and financial baron Jay Gould could sneer, “I can always hire one half of the working class to kill the other half.” And why a speaker at the U.S. Business Conference Board in 1974 could arrogantly declare, “One man, one vote has undermined the power of business in all capitalist countries since World War II.” And why that same year Business Week magazine said, “It will be a hard pill for many Americans to swallow — the idea of doing with less so that big business can have more. Nothing in modern economic history compares with the selling job that must now be done to make people accept this new reality.”

The new reality is here, and has been since 1973, the last year American workers made a wage gain in real dollars. Hell, it’s been here so long we accept it as part of America’s cultural furniture. Only about 12% of American workers are unionized and even with a supposedly union-friendly Democratic Congress, unions are still fighting to exist (although government employees are unionized at 36%, because the Empire allows some leeway for its commissars). In fact, things are worse than ever. Employers can now force employees to attend anti-union presentations during the workday, at captive audience meetings in which union supporters are forbidden to speak under threat of insubordination. Back in 1978 when I was working to organize the local newspaper, the management was not even allowed to speak to the workers on the matter until after the union vote results were in.

Then there’s President Obama, the guy softheaded liberals think is going to turn this dreadful scenario around. He talks a good game about unions, when he is forced to. But Obama is working on the things that will “create a legacy,” such as health care (which is simply a new way to pay the insurance industry’s blackmail) or the economy (by appointing the same damned people who fucked it up to fix it), and immigration reform, a nicely nebulous term that can mean whatever either side of the issue wants it to mean. Obama’s not going to publicly ignore the unions. But he’s not going to sink much political capital into this corporatized nation’s most radioactive issue either. For him, union legislation is just a distraction from the “legacy building” of a very charming, savvy, and ambitious politician. That is the assessment of Glenn Spencer of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, one of the most anti-union institutions in America. (Many thanks to Washington writer Ken Silverstein for publishing Spencer’s astute observations).
Things are changing though. Union membership climbed 12 percent last year. Twelve percent of twelve percent ain’t shit, but at least it’s forward motion. At that rate it will only take us 21 years to get back to the 1956 level of union membership. We can expect no miracles; top union leaders are still among the Empire’s elites. And they are still technically accountable to whatever membership will still have jobs when the 2012 elections roll around. The least they could do is make it harder for Obama to lick off those millions of hard earned union support dollars from the top of the campaign contribution ice cream cone as he did in ‘08.

But who can be sure? Because the new union elites and their minions are lawyers and marketing professionals. They’ve never come down off the mountain with both stacks red hot, or gathered on the porch of a crappy but new roadside bungalow, proud because they owned it, and stood up straight because, “Boys, your daddy is coming home.”
I’m not going into the current brouhaha about the Employee Free Choice Act (EFCA) or the “card check” bullshit here. Because what it’s gonna take to restore dignity to laboring America ain’t gonna be more legislative wrangling. What it takes won’t be pretty, maybe not even legal in this new police state, and sure as hell won’t be “within the system.” Because the system is the problem.

So it will be up to us, just like it always has been . . . the writer, the Nicaraguan janitor, the forty-year-old family man forced to bag groceries at Wal-Mart, the pizza delivery guy, the welder and the certified nurse . . . the long haul trucker and the short order cook. And they will snicker at us from their gilded roosts on Wall Street and Pennsylvania Avenue.

Some people are bound to get hurt in the necessary fight. In fact, people need to be willing to get hurt in the fight. That’s the way we once gained worker rights, and that’s the way we will get them back. The only way to get rid of the robbers’ roost is to burn the fucker down.

Anyone got a match?

Does anyone find it interesting that Israel is the only country on the planet going around with this incessant insistence that everyone recognize her right to exist? Given that we Palestinians are the ones who have been dispossessed, occupied, and oppressed, one might expect that we should be the ones making such a demand. But t hat isn’t the case. Why? Because our right to exist as a nation is self-evident. We are the natives of that land! We know we have that right. The world knows it. That’s why Palestine doesn’t need Israel or any other country to recognize her right to exist. We are the rightful heirs to that land and this can be verified legally, historically, culturally, and even genetically. And as such, the only true legitimacy Israel will ever have must come from us abdicating our inheritance, our history, and our culture to Israel. That’s why Israel insists we declare she had a right to take everything we ever had — from home and property, cemeteries, churches and mosques, to culture and history and hope.

Israel is a country that was founded by Europeans who came to Palestine, formed terrorist gangs who set about a systematic ethnic cleansing of the native Palestinians from their homes on 78% of Historic Palestine in 1948. Those Palestinians and their descendants still languish in refugee camps. Israel attempted a similar scenario in 1967 when they conquered the remainder of Palestine, but Palestinians then couldn’t be dislodged from their homes as easily. This remains true, despite 40 years of Israel’s violent and oppressive military occupation of the West Bank and Gaza. Despite home demolitions, land confiscations, rapacious building of Jewish-only colonies, endless checkpoints, targeted assassinations, bombings of schools, hospitals, municipal buildings and malls, closures and denials; despite the massive human rights abuses, the imprisonment and torture of men women and children alike, the separation of families, the daily humiliations; despite the massive killings — Palestinians remain. We still resist. We still live, love, and have babies. As much as we can, we rebuild what Israel destroys. Such are rights!
Rights are inherent and inherently just, like the right to live with dignity and to be masters of one’s own fate. It is a human right not be persecuted and oppressed because you happen to belong to one religion and not another.

That Israelis simply take property belonging to Palestinians is not a right. That is theft. That Israel cut off the movement of food, medicine and other basic goods to the Gaza strip, causing massive malnutrition, economic collapse and misery because Palestinians elected particular leaders is not a right. That is an affront to humanity. That Israel rain death from the skies on an already battered and starved Gaza, murdering over 3000 human beings and maiming thousands more in a single month is not a right. It’s a war crime. That Israel has employed every imperialistic tactic to subjugate, humiliate, break, and expel an entire nation of principally unarmed civilians because of their religion is not a right. It is a moral obscenity. That every Jew from Europe, Africa, Asia, the Americas, and Australia be entitled to dual citizenship, one in their native country and one in Israel, while the rightful heirs to the land linger as refugees without citizenship anywhere is not a right. It is an outrage.

I’m sure my words will be twisted in some way to imply that I’m advocating pushing Israelis “into the sea” or some other asinine claim. So let me be explicit: We all have the right to exist, to live, to be masters of our own destiny. We all have the right not to be oppressed by others. Such rights are inherent to every individual living in that land: Jew, Muslim, or Christian. But Israelis do not have the right to create particular religious demographics by causing the demise of the natives. To be a Jewish [or Muslim or Christian] state, where privilege is accorded to those belonging to a particular religion at the expense of those who do not is not a right.

A nation that discriminates against and oppresses those who do not belong to a particular religious, racial, or ethnic group is not a light onto nations. It is a blight. And to recognize such racism as a human or national right goes against every tenet of international law. It defies the basic sense that the worth of a human being should not be measured by their religion, any more than it should be measured by the color of their skin or the language they speak.

A closer look at the article revealed it wasn’t a Norm Coleman ploy to get folks in Minnesota to quit eating burgers and fries, nor a menu for the genetically obscene monster in Mary Shelly’s Frankenstein, but an announcement by Germany’s Agriculture Minister Ilse Aigner that Germany is banning the cultivation of MON 810, a genetically modified (GM) corn produced by US biotech giant Monsanto.

The GM Monster

It appears that MON 810 is also believed to be the “Frankenstein” of GM crops by at least five other European countries — France, Austria, Hungary, Greece and Luxembourg — all of whom have banned its use. MON 810 was approved by the European Union in 1998, and was the only GM crop approved for cultivation in Germany. Aigner said she had legitimate reasons to believe that the genetically modified Monsanto seed “presents a danger to the environment.” The plant produces a toxin that not only destroys the larvae of the corn borer moth, but other, beneficial, insects as well.

Andreas Thierfelder, spokesman for Monsanto Germany, responded that Monsanto would decide “as quickly as possible” whether to take legal proceedings. She said the “matter was very urgent as the planting season was about to start.” Just how urgent was evident days later when Monsanto filed a lawsuit against the German government, claiming that its ban on MON 810 is arbitrary and contravenes EU rules. Although Monsanto sued France in an effort to overturn its ban on genetically modified corn, and lost that battle in March when France’s highest court ruled that the corn “may” harm the environment and wildlife, the German government is justifiably edgy, as it must prove conclusively to the German court that MON 810 damages the environment.

But the feeder GM corn is just one tiny blip on the Frankenfood radar. And, it’s not just Europeans who should worry. As Jim Hightower, former two-time Texas agriculture commissioner warned way back in June 2004:

For some time, the likes of Monsanto have had their white-smocked engineers tinkering merrily and dangerously with the very DNA of food, genetically modifying the natural composition of things like potatoes so they contain a pesticide in every one of their cells, or altering rice so it contains a diarrhea drug in every bite. This is no mere lab experiment, for unbeknownst to the vast majority of Americans, Monsanto and a handful of other global biotech giants have quietly spread the seeds of these genetically altered Frankenfoods to so many farms over the past decade that about a third of the foods on U.S. supermarket shelves now contain organisms with tampered DNA — everything from baby food and milk to products made with soybean and corn. Thanks to well-placed campaign donations and powerhouse lobbying, this infiltration of our food supply has been done with practically no consumer awareness, since both Bill Clinton’s and George W’s administrations have let these foodstuffs be sold in America without so much as a label on them to tell us that we’re buying something that our families might prefer to avoid.

Kinda ruins the appetite, doesn’t it? Not just the fact that Monsanto has infiltrated the bulk of our food chain, but that it clearly believes it has the right to do so with or without our knowledge. It has fought oversight, regulation, labeling and scientific research for years. The arrogance with which multinational biotech corporations such as Monsanto are disrupting and modifying life’s natural genetic order — from seeds to food to animals to humans to the environment — is creepy. The Almighty must surely be watching in slack-jawed amazement.

The Profit Plan

These giants are “chemical” corporations, and one of their goals is to create seeds that will withstand more (and more and more) of their herbicides. Monsanto, which gave us the deadly Agent Orange and the toxic weed killer Roundup, is not alone in its quest to manipulate, or to control the world’s order. Germany’s chemical giant Bayer, well known for its popular and effective Bayer aspirin, and for Aleve and Alka-Seltzer, was the first to introduce heroin as well as mustard gas, and produces a series of neonicotinoids — insecticides that attack the central nervous systems of insects, such as bees. Other mega-corporations dealing in both pharmaceuticals and pesticides, to name a few, are Merck, DuPont, Dow Chemical, and Syngenta — but Monsanto has been around for more than a century, produces 90-percent of genetically modified seed — and has many friends in high places. Many high places.

Last year, Vanity Fair’s Donald L. Barlett and James B. Steele teamed up to present a well-researched background article, “Monsanto’s Harvest of Fear,” wherein they listed some, but not all, of these friends:

Monsanto has long been wired into Washington. Michael R. Taylor was a staff attorney and executive assistant to the F.D.A. commissioner before joining a law firm in Washington in 1981, where he worked to secure F.D.A. approval of Monsanto’s artificial growth hormone before returning to the F.D.A. as deputy commissioner in 1991. Dr. Michael A. Friedman, formerly the F.D.A.’s deputy commissioner for operations, joined Monsanto in 1999 as a senior vice president. Linda J. Fisher was an assistant administrator at the E.P.A. when she left the agency in 1993. She became a vice president of Monsanto, from 1995 to 2000, only to return to the E.P.A. as deputy administrator the next year. William D. Ruckelshaus, former E.P.A. administrator, and Mickey Kantor, former U.S. trade representative, each served on Monsanto’s board after leaving government. Supreme Court justice Clarence Thomas was an attorney in Monsanto’s corporate-law department in the 1970s. He wrote the Supreme Court opinion in a crucial G.M.-seed patent-rights case in 2001 that benefited Monsanto and all G.M.-seed companies. Donald Rumsfeld never served on the board or held any office at Monsanto, but Monsanto must occupy a soft spot in the heart of the former defense secretary. Rumsfeld was chairman and C.E.O. of the pharmaceutical maker G. D. Searle & Co. when Monsanto acquired Searle in 1985, after Searle had experienced difficulty in finding a buyer. Rumsfeld’s stock and options in Searle were valued at $12 million at the time of the sale.

Bartlett and Steele go into some detail about the lengths Monsanto will go to protect its patent rights, not only against GM or GE (genetically engineered) farmers, but organic farmers as well. They write:

Monsanto goes after farmers, farmers’ co-ops, seed dealers — anyone it suspects may have infringed its patents of genetically modified seeds. As interviews and reams of court documents reveal, Monsanto relies on a shadowy army of private investigators and agents in the American heartland to strike fear into farm country. They fan out into fields and farm towns, where they secretly videotape and photograph farmers, store owners, and co-ops; infiltrate community meetings; and gather information from informants about farming activities. Farmers say that some Monsanto agents pretend to be surveyors. Others confront farmers on their land and try to pressure them to sign papers giving Monsanto access to their private records.

Once you opt to buy Monsanto seeds, you are no longer a farmer, you’re a “grower” — a serf — and you must sign a Technology/Stewardship Agreement wherein you agree, among many other restrictions, to use Monsanto seed for planting only a single commercial crop…not to sell or give seeds to any other person for planting . . . to pay annual technology fees (in addition to the price of the seed) due Monsanto . . . to turn over your records and receipts anytime Monsanto asks for them. In short, you sign your life — and your livelihood — over when you become a “grower.” And, if you’re ever taken to court (and it’s likely you could be), and you lose (and it’s likely you will) — you will find you agreed to pay Monsanto and its attorney fees and all related court costs.

The End Game

This goes way beyond garnering profits for agriculture conglomerates such as Monsanto. It is about disrupting the natural order of life — whether plant or animal. And, for those orchestrating this havoc, it is about control. As Henry Kissinger once said matter-of-factly, “If you control the oil you control the country; if you control food, you control the population.” Kissinger has long been obsessed with two things — depopulating the world and establishing a New World Order.

What better way to control the food than to ban seed saving — what better weapon is there to use against starving populations than food? The answer is laid out in detail in F. William Engdahl’s November 2007 critical book about genetic manipulation, Seeds of Destruction. Engdahl is no conspiracy theorist. He is a leading researcher as well as an economist and an associate and regular contributor for the Center for Research on Globalization.

In his extensive three-part review of Seeds, investigative journalist Stephen Lendman reveals “the diabolical story of how Washington and four Anglo-American agribusiness giants plan world domination by patenting life forms to gain worldwide control of our food supply and why that prospect is chilling.”

Lendman reminds us that Kissinger has been both at the forefront and behind the scenes since the 1960s when, as Engdahl wrote, “the Rockefellers were at the power center of the US establishment (and) Secretary of State Henry Kissinger (was) their hand-picked protégé.” Kissinger was there as Nixon’s Secretary of State in 1973 when the food crisis hit and, as Engdahl said, he decided US agricultural policy was “too important to be left in the hands of the Agricultural Department so he took control of it himself.” Even back then, Kissinger’s goal was to go global and seize control of the agricultural food market. Kissinger’s “food diplomacy” was to use food to “reward friends and punish enemies.”

Lendman writes, “Food is power. When used to cull the population, it’s a weapon of mass destruction.” He says “One way or another, the Rockefeller Foundation aims to reduce population through human reproduction by spreading GMO seeds.” And the “world’s number one” in patenting seeds is Monsanto. He explains:

Like it or not, they’re advancing their agenda, and a 2004 Rockefeller Foundation report shows it. GM crop production achieved nine consecutive double digit year increases since 1996. More than eight million farmers in 17 countries now plant them, over 90% in developing nations. Far and away, the US is the world’s leader “with aggressive Government promotion, absence of labeling, and the domination of US farm production.” Here, “genetically engineered crops (have) essentially taken over the American food chain.” In 2004, over 85% of soybeans were genetically modified, 45% of corn, and since animal feed is mainly from these crops “the entire meat production of the nation (and exports) has been fed on genetically modified animal feed.” What animals eat, so do humans.

According to Engdahl, agribusiness giants, aided by the Rockefeller Foundation, the US government and the World Trade Organization (WTO) are progressing relentlessly toward the second pillar of Kissinger’s end game — controlling food to control (and expunge) populations of lesser nations. In December 2007, Engdahl sounded the alarm about yet another seed venture (adventure?), “Doomsday Seed Vault in the Arctic,” a steel-reinforced concrete seed bank built deep inside a mountain on the remote Norwegian island of Spitsbergen. This “program” is funded by the Rockefellers, by such seed giants as Syngenta and Monsanto — and by Microsoft founder Bill Gates, who knows a bit about monopoly.

The Way Out

Engdahl says that, since 2007, Monsanto and the US Government together hold the patent for a commercial seed called “Terminator,” designed to commit suicide after just one harvest, and farmers will be forced to return to Monsanto or other seed giants to purchase new seeds each year for crops needed to feed their populations. He said if they’re allowed to continue their reckless pursuit of power, in a decade or so, the small farmer will be but a memory and the majority of the world’s food producers would be little more than feudal serfs in bondage to three or four giant seed corporations. “Those who say ‘it can’t happen here’ should look more closely at current global events,” he wrote. “The mere existence of that concentration of power in three or four private US-based agribusiness giants is grounds for legally banning all GMO crops even were their harvest gains real, which they manifestly are not.”

The good news is that Europe is fighting back against being forced to plant genetically manipulated seeds for plants and food. Countries like Austria and Denmark, France — and now Germany — are standing up, and standing together, to ban biotech products. As is always the case, when those who lust for power and control concoct their grand schemes, they fail to factor in the human response. Lendman says public opinion throughout Europe is strongly opposed to GMO foods and ingredients. He writes:

Several EU countries, including France, Germany, Austria and Denmark, even ban some EU-approved biotech products to further cloud the outlook. Polls show why, with European public opinion strongly opposed to GMO foods and ingredients, with hostility levels in France as high as 89% and 79% wanting governments to ban them. This shows European consumers are far ahead of Americans and much better protected (so far) by their overall exclusion as well as having labeling requirements for those allowed to be sold. That provision is crucial as it empowers consumers to use or avoid eating these foods. If enough people abstain, food outlets won’t carry them.

It’s not that Americans don’t care that the Rockefeller-Gates-Monsanto plan to solve world hunger is but a ghastly scheme to cull the population of its nonproductive bottom-feeders. Thanks to conspiratorial US media, most of us are either blissfully unaware or are unable to make a sound because, as Hightower said, our “Congress and the White House (and the media) have Monsanto checks stuffed in their ears.”

The way out is to become informed — and just say no to having unlabeled, untested products crammed down our throats. If we do nothing, we will reap what we sow. We will, as Charles Galton Darwin, grandson of evolutionist Charles Darwin, wrote in his 1952 book The Next Million Years, be condemned to the status of workers in a beehive.

We must stand up and support Europe’s attempt to organize a ban on genetically modified crops and food. It is the way — the only way — out of this mess. Lendman, who maintains “the stakes are much too high — human health and safety must never be compromised for profit,” suggests that we read Engdahl’s book, which is a “wake-up call” for all of us.

I suggest we start by reading Lendman’s review of that book, which is a much louder wake-up call.

That movement is the boycott, divestment, and sanctions movement, and one of its main demands is the boycott of and divestment from Israeli corporations and international corporations that sustain Israeli apartheid and colonialism. We know from the South African example that a combined strategy of armed resistance with boycott, divestment, and sanctions led to the downfall of the apartheid regime, and thus can be successful. Focusing on economic resistance ties this movement to the roots of the Palestinian Resistance Movement which historically sought to liberate Palestine as well as the rest of the region from Western imperialism through its economic neocolonial policies.

We also know that we in Lebanon are not cleansed from Zionist products. From cosmetics to clothing, from bulldozers to coffee, we consume products that are produced by corporations that substantially support Israel — either by investing in Israel, or by supporting Israel financially or diplomatically. (While the removal of certain Zionist products, like Intel, is difficult, for the vast majority of products, such as Nestle and Estee Lauder, their removal from our market will actually invigorate our economy by increasing investment in local products and local businesses.)

In addition to the clear form of economic boycott (which, is too often incorrectly confused with censorship), there is the important avenue of academic and cultural boycott. An academic boycott involves refraining from participation in any form of academic or cultural cooperation, collaboration or joint projects with Israeli institutions, and thus ultimately works to promote pushing universities themselves to divest from any collaboration or cooperation with any Israeli institution. South African professors also called on their colleagues around the world to boycott them in order to delegitimize and isolate the apartheid regime. The boycott campaign in South Africa worked because of that isolation, which was coupled with an economic boycott, divestment, and eventually this led to the sanctions placed on the regime, which led to its demise.

The most powerful weapon of the academic boycott is the refusal to legitimize Zionism, the ideology upon which Israel was built, the ideology that allows for one group of people to steal, to kill, and to expel, an ideology that is fundamentally and wholly racist. It is Zionism that must be defeated.

The academic and cultural boycott of Israel is growing globally. It has been active in Canada and in the United Kingdom for a few years now. It has spread to Australia and the United States. The publicity surrounding this movement is as powerful a weapon as the movement itself as well as it further calls for a rethinking of Israel’s right to exist as a Jewish state. Indeed, the boycott movement is so strong now that Israeli colonists are paying $2 million to improve their global image.

Academics in Lebanon have added their voice to this growing movement. Faculty from the University of Balamand, the American University of Beirut, the Lebanese American University, Notre Dame University, Lebanese University, Beirut Arab University, USEK, Lebanese International University and Global University signed a statement calling for full academic boycott of Israel and Israeli institutions, and calling our colleagues, throughout the world, and most particularly those in the Arab world and those claiming to stand in solidarity with the Palestinians, to comprehensively and consistently boycott and divest from all Israeli academic and cultural institutions, and to refrain from normalization in any form of academic and cultural cooperation, collaboration or joint projects with Israeli institutions as a contribution to the struggle to end Israel’s occupation, colonization and system of apartheid. To add your signature, please refer to: www.boycottzionism.wordpress.com

Today, March 30, 2009, marks the Global Boycott Divestment and Sanctions Day of Action. Let us stand together.

* * * * * * * * * *

Statement of Academics in Lebanon

In this latest onslaught against Palestinians, Israel has attacked a university, the Ministry of Education, schools across the Gaza Strip, and several UNRWA schools. Such attacks against learning centers are not unique for Israel. Most particularly since 1975, Israel has infringed upon the right of education for Palestinians by closing universities, schools and kindergartens, and by shelling, shooting at, and raiding hundreds of schools and several universities throughout the occupied Palestinian territories.
Nor have these attacks been limited against Palestinians. As academics in Lebanon, we are all too familiar with Israeli onslaughts against educational centers. In its latest assault, in 2006, for example, Israel destroyed over 50 schools throughout Lebanon, and particularly schools designed for the economically disadvantaged in the South.

We thus stand, as academics in Lebanon, in urging our colleagues, regionally and internationally, to oppose this ongoing scholasticide and to support the just demand for academic boycott, divestment, and sanctions against Israel. Specifically, we ask our colleagues worldwide to support the call by the Palestinian Campaign for the Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel to comprehensively and consistently boycott and disinvest from all Israeli academic and cultural institutions, and to refrain from participation in any form of academic and cultural cooperation, collaboration or joining projects with Israeli institutions as a contribution to the struggle to end Israel’s occupation, colonization and system of apartheid.

We further call on the enforcement of Lebanese anti-normalization laws with Israel (including the 1955 law), and thus for the prosecution of individuals and institutions in Lebanon that violate those laws and conduct collaborations, associations or investments in Israel or with Israelis.

We salute the recent statement by the Scottish Committee for the Universities of Palestine calling for a boycott of Israel, the letter signed by 300 Canadian academics to Canadian Prime Minister Harper asking for sanctions against Israel, and the appeal by the Canadian Union of Public Employees (CUPE) Ontario University Workers Coordinating Committee supporting a ban on collaborations between Canadian and Israeli universities.

Sawsan Abdulrahim
Sana Abidib
May Abboud
Michel Abou Ghantous
Dahna Abourahme
Mona Abu Rayyan
Mohamad Alameddine
Rayane Alamuddin
Falah Ali
Mahmoud El-Ali
Rayan El-Amine
Karma Bibi
Nabil Dajani
Nabil Fares
Nicolas Gabriel
Aline Germani
Sabah Ghandour
Rima Habib
Samer Habre
Nicolas Haddad
Hratch Hajetian
Roger Hajjar
Sari Hanafi
Sirene Harb
Diala Hawi
Ihad Hedroj
Sami Hermez
Ibrahim El-Hussari
Maha Issa
Samer Jabbour
Paul Jahshan
Fatme Al-Jamil
Maher Jarrar
Rasha Al-Jundi
Tamar Kabakian-Khasholian
Faysal El-Kak
Ghada Kalakesh
Rabih Kamleh
Samar Khalil
Nikola Kosmatopoulos
Michel Majdalani
Jean Said Makdisi
Judy Makhoul
Maya Mansour
Muzna Al-Masri
Rania Masri
Zéna Meskaoui
Cynthia Myntti
Aida Naaman
Omar Nashabe
Hoda Nasrallah
Youssef Nasser
Mike Orr
Hibah Osman
Gillian Piggott
Daniel F. Rivera
Joelle Rizk
Nada Saab
Amal Saad-Ghorayeb
Sofia Saadeh
Naim Salem
Nisreen Salti
Helen Samaha-Nuwayhid
Rima Sarraf
Richard Saumarez Smith
Rosemary Sayigh
Kirsten Scheid
Eugene Sensing-Dabbous
Rabih Sultan
Lyna Al Tabbal
Jihad Touma
Hanan Toukan
Nazek Yared
Marian Yazbek
Samar Zebian
Hussein Zeidan
Mohammed Zubeidi
Huda Zurayk
Rami Zurayk

Many economists assure us the current recession will begin to subside by 2010, but the paradigm from which they conceptualize reality is incomplete, ignoring costs externalized by markets, such as the encroaching effects of habitat destruction. The fledgling and contagious social unrest at hand must be quickly organized, attitudinized and mobilized, for existing environmental, geopolitical and financial upheavals threaten the survival of many. Firstly, the outlook for food yields in 2009 is dismal: Many analysts have warned of a 20 to 40 percent drop in agricultural production, depending on the harshness and duration of the current global drought. Two years ago, however, Science published predictions of “permanent drought by 2050 throughout the Southwest” of the United States, and forecast levels of aridity akin to the Dust Bowl of the 1930’s that would envelope swaths of land from Kansas to California. The Hadley Center in the UK reported in November 2006,

“Extreme drought is likely to increase from under 3% of the globe today to 30% by 2100 —areas affected by severe drought could see a five-fold increase from 8% to 40%.”

This, of course, is a recipe for widespread desertification. The NOAA foresees drought of considerable duress—“ largely irreversible for 1,000 years”—and identifies the following key regions as facing, insofar as our contemporary purviews are considered, permanent Dust Bowls: (Romm )

• U.S. Southwest
• Southeast Asia
• Eastern South America
• Southern Europe
• Southern Africa
• Northern Africa
• Western Australia

Countries yielding two thirds of the world’s agricultural output are on the precipice of serious climatatic discontinuities reminiscent of the Global Climate Optimum of the 900 to 1300 variety. Food prices will soar, and, in poor countries where food is scarce, millions will starve. One thing we have to fall back on is our natural humanity, —not just our braininess and know how, but also the fact that the collective wet dream that constitutes our social reality skews how many of us can actually live now and in the future. Simply put, by ditching the wet dream and downsizing, we significantly better our plight. There are plenty of atavistics (those who are like, so last dark ages) among us, like Dianne Feinstein, who said that it is Californians “god-given right to water their lawns and gardens.” Southern Californian Scott Thill offers, in an article published by AlterNet, a new definition of the front lawn: “Gorgeously tended middle fingers to reality, which, like death and taxes always, has a way of winning in the end.”

The California drought is anticipated to be the worst in modern times. Already thousands of acres of crops are fallow, with no sign of slowing. Furthermore, the Northern Sierra snowpack for this past winter turned out to be 51% lighter than usual. According to the Los Angeles Times, the state is nearly out of water, leaving it with prayers of rain and a dwindling Northern California supply. Los Angeles has already begun allocation of water, which, as Scott Thill points out, means water to the rich (north) and away from the poor (south). He then portends evacuations and realignments, “by 2100, you will not recognize it.” East of southern California, 18 percent of Texas is burdened by severe drought.

In some countries historical relief efforts have been undertaken. The Chinese government has allocated 86.7 billion yuan (roughly $12.69 billion) to affected regions, and, moreover, lent a helping hand to its western colleagues during the financial crisis, but also to nature itself. Officials in Beijing blasted silver iodide into clouds over northern China to create precipitation as a means of alleviating the most severe drought experienced by the region in half a century. King your fingers crossed (or maybe not, there’’s no telling with these things!), as China produces 18% of the world’s grain each year.

Australia has been in the midst of an unremitting dry spell since 2004, as 41% of the country’s agriculture suffers the worst drought in the 117 years of record-keeping. Rivers have stopped flowing, lakes are being eradicated by toxicity, and farmers have left their land.

Shall we proceed? Argentina’’s worst drought in half a century has turned that country’s verdant landscapes to dust. The country has declared emergency. Soy plants are scorched by the sun and Argentina’’s food production is set to go down a minimum of 50 percent or greater. 2008’’s wheat yield was 16.3 million metric tons, whereas 2009′’s is projected to be merely 8.7 metric tons.

Africa faces food shortages due to lack of rainfall. Half the agricultural soil has lost nutrients necessary to grow plant. The Middle East and Central Asia, to boot, are suffering from contemporary nadir droughts and food grain production is at the lowest levels in decades. A major shortage of planting seed for the 2010 crop is expected.

Stocks of foodstuff are dangerously low worldwide. Agricultural commodities must rise in price so as to obviate even larger food shortages and famine. Wheat, corn, soybeans, etc. must become expensive enough so that every available acre is harvested with the best possible fertilizers. With food prices steady, production will continue to fall and millions would starve.

A spike in food price is likely to spark competitive currency appreciation in 2009. Foreign exchange reserves exist for this. Central banks the globe over would lower domestic food prices by either directly selling off their reserves to appreciate their currency or buying grain from the market. Appreciating a currency is the fastest way to control food inflation. The more valuable a currency the more monopolistic a nation over global resources —so, for example, an overvalued dollar enables the US to consume 25% of the world’s oil, despite only having 4% of the world’s population. Were China to sell off its US reserves, its population of over one billion would then suck up the world’s food supply. Prices soar around the world.

This process, however, would most likely not end up in the impoverishment of nation states per se, though almost certainly the disintegration of the modern middle class, already long past its youthful heyday. The American Dream has been repeatedly resuscitated over the last thirty years through portfolio insurance, Long-Term Capital Management, the internet, the housing market, and now the looters have taken to the streets—oh, excuse me; I mean to their theoretical electronic world—and pillaged the landscape.

Social unrest and soaring food prices go hand in hand, from sea to shining sea. Countries, so as to avoid revolutionary reform from the bottom up, would have no choice but to appreciate their currencies in order to cheapen food imports. China holds the best deck, and so then would sell off more of its reserves. The world’s reserve currency, the dollar, floats into precarious waters. As a fiat currency, the US dollar is, by its very nature, worthless. Trillions of US holdings could be liquidated in favor of food.

“”We will rebuild, we will recover, and the United States of America will emerge stronger.” (President Barack Obama, State of the Union Address 24 Feb 2009)

In Washington, talk of bailouts and relief are framed in the realm of economics and economics only, with no considerable deliberation of our species ecological outlook. The budget proposal is sold as a demand oriented New Deal-esque expansionary program, with health, education, renewable energy, investment infrastructure and transportation at its forefront. The hope is to stimulate employment, boost social programs and to revive the real economy. Michel Chossudovsky reports in a recent article published by Global Research, that —– surprise, surprise— — the “stimulus package” is the most substantial diverging of public spending ever, and serves the interests of Wall Street, in particular, the finance, oil and defense cartel. This in and of itself should cause social unrest, and certainly makes more likely the potential evaporation of the middle class.

The 2010 fiscal year, which begins on October 1st, will represent an increase in spending of 32%. The nucleus of the proposal inflates defense and the Middle East War funds, the Wall Street bank “bailouts that never end,” so-called by the New York Times, and interest on a debt that exceeds ten-fold the world’’s GDP. The bailout— financed, in part, by the recipients themselves, the creditors, which, as understood by the Treasury and the banks in the first place, meant the FED enjoyed sweeping authority over how the money was to be spent from the onset of this collapse—continues under the new proposed budget. Unlike Keynesian style deficits, this piling on of debt through the proposed budget would not stimulate investment and consumer demand; there will be no expansion of production and employment, for the giveaway of tax dollars to the financial oligarchs is no more than a monumental concentration of wealth and centralization of world banking power.

Washington places defense spending at $739.5 billion, though some estimates assert aggregate defense and military related spending at more than $1 trillion. The total of both bailouts—, Obama’s $750 billion piled on top of Bush’s $700 billion dollar bailout, —is 1.45 trillion dollars paid for by the Treasury. Virtually all federal government revenues would be expended to finance the bank handouts: 1.45 trillion, the war; $739 billion, and interest payments on public debt; $164 billion. And then the well is dry. There are no funds available for the social programs encapsulated in the stimulus package. Therefore, programs for healthcare and education will most likely be sold to private enterprise to fund the bankrupt state. Education is not the only state asset that is at risk of being privatized: Public infrastructure, urban services, highways, national parks, etc. are all at risk. The worsening fiscal collapse coalesces in the privatization of the state, tilling the land for a much more lucrative market in governance and social control.

Many economists hypothesize that the Obama administration is employing Zimbabwe School of Economics policies, where by hyperinflation is produced through the incessant printing of money, resulting in that currency’s fall to zero. Currently, we are seeing the simultaneous devaluation of the currency and the purchase of the world’’s commodities by corporations, government assets included; a process that will presumably leave the rest of us with toilet paper.

So, that leaves us with a raped resource base and a new system of globalized neo-feudalism. In 1800, —around the time of the Industrial Revolution—, there were 969,000,000 humans on earth. That leaves more than five billion redundant individuals whose lives were made possible by fossil fuels and abundance of water. A ubiquitous and enduring reorientation of human cognition is the key to survival: in short, reprioritization. This problem is of the utmost importance. A change of consciousness would result in a change in mass behavior. This starts at the obvious level: short-showers, low-flow everything, no lawns, total conservation and the reorientation of the economy based on renewable resources and sustenance. We must then work on disbelieving in our governments and the moribund banking system.

An all-pervasive insurgency, attacking multi-laterally the global industrial grid oligarchy, with broad but explicit aims— among which a new harmony with the natural world is foremost— must, before all else, work towards dismantling tyrannical corporations. Computers and electricity are the lifeblood of civilizations. Coordinated attacks against the electric grid, financial markets, and destroyers of the environment could be wildly successful, but could only be so as part of a talented and colossal movement with army-like discipline. Specialization comes in handy. The average American city has food for about half a month, which means economies will need know-how to localize and quick.

Another option would be to create companies of our own to challenge the global giants. Max Keiser, host of the Oracle on the BBC, has championed the idea of creating huge syndicates of boycotters against companies such as Coca-Cola and Exxon/Mobil. The money saved would be diverted to the world’s top activism organizations. The biggest take-home lesson when it comes to boycotts is this: the consumer wields enormous power. You’’ve been told it before and it’’s true. Boycotts of certain market elements such as the Fed Cartel (Citibank, JP Morgan Chase, Bank of America), in which we move our money, refinance with another bank, sell our stock or quit our jobs, is a major step in the right direction.

Your television lies. Propagandistic news networks like CNN, NBC, ABC, Fox, etc are the only companies from whom Americans get their daily dose of news. The panoply of diverse news websites on the internet forms the most active resistance community around; further privatization and censoring of the internet must be actively challenged. The corporate attitudinized mass media dangles carrots in front of the consumer’s face from the confines of a hallucinatory feedback loop. Awash in an onslaught of terroristic American-style boulevard journalism, dimension is hard to find. The axioms with which the corporate-owned media frame reality are so far off base that it can be taxing for many of us to find the right ripostes while discussing our world with Nationalists. A good example is the recent slandering of Michel Phelps, caught toking with a relatively impressive piece of glass. The pro-marijuana movement has failed utterly, —though they are indeed going up against a billion dollar smear campaign— to gain traction with this simple notion: That had Michel Phelps not indulged in marijuana, his record breaking Olympic performance would have been inconceivable. There are many doctors who have championed the medical benefits of marijuana, some going so far as to suggest THC promotes brain cell growth.

Don’t join the military, for the US government and mercenaries view soldiers as cannon fodder or expendable assets; one in four soldiers in the US is homeless.

Wine-making vats are an excellent habitat for a multitude of micro-organisms. By fermenting the juice of crushed fruit, the organisms explode at first before depleting the once abundant nutrients needed for survival. They eventually die from the accrual of alcohol and carbon dioxide they themselves produced. We choke just the same on our industrial discharge, especially in agglomerations such as Southern California and BosWash on the eastern seaboard. By making our communities self-sustainable with clean energy such as solar, wind, geothermal, and magnetic— forever replacing the obsolete 80-year long enterprise known as the combustible engine—, we make ourselves and our families less dependent on the broken state-enterprise apparatus. Not to mention less toxic.

It’s important to remember, there’’s always the future. We must keep our humanity; —it’s much too late in the ballgame to be weighed down by our razor-thin ideologies, be they Marxism, Capitalism, Christianity, Islam, Nudism, Obamaism, Indie Rockism, Hyphy, Fuck the’ policeism, or what have you. Understanding, compassion, and altruism are the chords deep within our souls, and once struck it is clear that they are the essence of humanity.

Allow me to introduce you to a peculiar form of denial called anosognosia, the condition in which a person suffering from a disability due to brain injury appears unaware or denies the existence of the malady. This ailment applies to radical changes in one’s life, affecting the newly blind or paralyzed. Indeed, Woodrow Wilson, 28th President of the United States, suffered from anosognosia after a stroke on October 2, 1919. After the bloodletting of “the war to end all wars” subsided, Wilson’’s first priority was the establishment of the League of Nations, which he believed would help ensure world peace. With the help of those by his side, Wilson ignored the seriousness of his stroke, and continued to look forward to more campaigning in favor of the League, and even the possibility of a third term. Wilson was no more than wool gathering with such hopes in light of his incapacity.

The industrialized world’s superego is suffering from a terminal form of anosognosia: We have all gone insane. That we find solace in proclamations from economists that the current financial crisis will subside in a year’’s time, while momentarily watching the corporate nanny state’s complete submission to corporate rule, is further evidence of our aloofness. Our capacity for widespread social reform is great if only we exercise our power. Malcom X expressed his belief that one day there would be a clash between the rich and poor of the world, and, in all likelihood—, details of how it may or may not play out aside—, we are headed towards such a clash. So, before we starve between a stream and a berry bush, now is the time for us to reconsider our goals and desires. Next week is the sixth anniversary of the war in Iraq. I suggest we all consider penciling it into our day planners.

Washington’s blatant and longstanding campaign for regime-change must be denounced and resisted in all its manifestations — no ifs, ands or buts. The economic sanctions are, as the letter describes them, “collective punishment of the Zimbabwean people.” The signers correctly and “unequivocally denounce these sanctions as war crimes and the officials who initiated them as war criminals.”

Well said — but there’s a great disconnect between the words and some of the names listed as endorsing the letter. A number of the signers are full-throated, religious-like followers of Barack Obama, one of the “war criminals” that has supported and, as president, extended U.S. sanctions against Zimbabwe.

These unabashed Obamites, several of whom I debated at a large forum in Harlem in December, make a great noise about “imperialists” in general while pledging undying “solidarity” in the struggle against such “criminals”, yet in their daily practice labor mightily to absolve President Obama of culpability for his crimes. It requires rivers of obfuscation and oceans of purposeful omission to separate the Commander-in-Chief and President of the United States from the crimes planned and carried out in his office. The perpetrators of this bizarre fantasy — that the “imperialists” are out to get Mugabe, but Obama isn’t one of them — deepen confusion among the public, especially African Americans, and make a mockery of true solidarity. In the light of ever-unfolding events, they make themselves and progressive politics appear ridiculous, as they tiptoe around the mountainous facts of Barack Obama’s actual presidency — not the wishful one they have invented.

Obama’s implacable hostility to Zimbabwean independence and sovereignty is undeniable. He has consistently spoken and acted in lockstep with George Bush on the subject, and as president is preparing new ground for aggression against that country and elsewhere in Africa and the developing world.

On June 24, 2008, following a US-UK-led United Nations Security Council resolution declaring that violence fostered by Mugabe’s government had made fair runoff elections “impossible”, candidate Obama took South Africa to task for failure “to pressure the Zimbabwean government to stop its repressive behavior.” The U.S., he said, should tighten its economic sanctions. Obama told the press: “If fresh elections prove impossible, regional leaders backed by the international community should pursue an enforceable, negotiated political transition in Zimbabwe that would end repressive rule and enable genuine democracy to take root.” That’s regime change.

Obama’s behavior was in perfect synch with the Bush Administration, and with Republican presidential candidate John McCain’s statements on the issue.

At the United Nations on July 10, Russia and China vetoed punitive American and British sanctions against Zimbabwe. Frustrated and outraged, Bush used his executive powers to expand U.S. sanctions, joined by Britain and the European Union.

On January 15 of this year, days before Obama took the oath of office, his nominee for Ambassador to the UN, Susan Rice, told a confirmation hearing on Capitol Hill it was still possible that Russia and China might be persuaded to change their votes on Zimbabwe sanctions. There can be no doubt she was speaking for the incoming administration, which looked forward to winning sanctions where George Bush had failed.

On January 26, Mugabe and the opposition agreed to form a unity government, threatening to derail the U.S.-British strategy to further isolate and then topple Mugabe. When the unity talks briefly fell apart, Obama, now president, let it be known that he hoped the opposition would remain out of government, so that momentum toward UN sanctions might be revived. That would be Susan Rice’s job. “Susan is extremely aware of what is going on in Zimbabwe and she feels very strongly that there is a tremendous miscarriage of justice in that country and that it has to end,” an Obama foreign policy aide told The Times [UK]. “Once she has her feet on the ground she is going to turn her attention to this issue.” The January 28 story was titled, “President Obama leads US drive to topple Robert Mugabe in Zimbabwe.”

When, a few days later, unity talks successfully resumed with the support of African organizations, the Obama administration reacted with bitterness and frustration. “Mugabe is not getting a reprieve from President Obama,” said an aide. For the time being, however, UN sanctions were off the table, and the momentum of American aggression was spent.

But not necessarily for long. Susan Rice, an ardent supporter of AFRICOM, like her boss, is a leading advocate of “humanitarian” military intervention, the doctrine that big powers have a duty to intervene when a government fails to protect its people from . . . whatever. In the run-up to unity talks, the Brits and Americans appeared to be trial-ballooning Zimbabwe’s cholera outbreak as a pretext for intervention — but in Africa, a “humanitarian” rationale for imperial interference can always be found, or invented.

It is beyond dispute that Obama, as candidate and president, has been a fierce proponent of sanctions against Zimbabwe. George Bush’s sanctions by executive order are now Barack Obama’s sanctions — fully qualifying the new president as a “war criminal,” as defined by the signers of the recent “Open Letter to the People of Zimbabwe.” Yet some of the signers are apparently capable of compartmentalizing facts as it suits them, in order to avoid painful confrontation with the truth: Obama is not only our first Black president, but also our first Black war criminal president.

Who are these deeply conflicted persons? I am specifically referring to five signatories of the Open Letter, whose irrational Obama-Love I have personally witnessed in the context of debate over Obama’s foreign and domestic policies, the first four at Harlem’s Great Debate in December, the last encounter at Audubon Ballroom, Harlem, in early 2008.

Prof. Dr. Leonard Jeffries, City College CUNY. Dr. Jeffries refuses to present any substantive critique of Obama’s actual policies on Africa or any other issue. He proclaims that every Black person should study “Obama-ology,” meaning “how Obama does things.”

Dr. James McIntosh, Committee to Eliminate Media Offensive to African People (CEMOTAP). Dr. McIntosh tells audiences to look out for Obama’s “winks” — those confidential messages meant especially for Black folks. The rest is just Obama doing what he has to do.

Viola Plummer, December 12th Movement. Ms. Plummer has the uncanny ability to call for revolution and declare the near-divinity of Obama in the same breath.

Atty. Malik Zulu Shabazz, New Black Panther Party. Atty. Shabazz and his party bear no resemblance to the original. His evaluation of Obama: “He is a good father and husband.”

Amiri Baraka, playwright & poet. The one-time Prince of Schisms now pillories Cynthia McKinney for failing to get on the Obama-wagon. His capacity for both insult and reason appears to be failing.

Not one of these five people, all prolific speakers with followings in their own arenas, would call President Barack Obama a war criminal in the usual course of their political work. Instead, to varying degrees, they publicly praise and even express adoration for him. Yet they sign an Open Letter affirming solidarity with the people of Zimbabwe in the face of sanctions by “war criminals” — like Obama. Such solidarity is worthless on its face, because it means less than nothing in their actual domestic practice, which is filled with expressions of love for the war criminal and endless excuses and rationalizations for his behavior.

One line of the Open Letter is especially poignant in light of the contradictions personified by the Five Obamists: “We face the same enemies at home as do the people of Zimbabwe — the worldwide clique of bankers and bosses who put their greed for profits before meeting people’s needs.”

The Obamites are fully capable of damning the banksters till midnight, all the while pretending that Barack is not Wall Street’s protector and co-conspirator. Resisting reality, they spread further confusion.

We don’t have a Julius Caesar. But we do have an Avigdor Liberman. When he announced his support the other day for the setting up of a government headed by Binyamin Netanyahu, that was the crossing of his Rubicon.

I hope that this is not the beginning of the end of Israeli democracy.

Until the last moment, Liberman held the Israeli public in suspense. Will he join Netanyahu? Will he join Tzipi Livni?

Those who participated in the guessing game were divided in their view of Liberman.

Some of them said: Liberman is indeed what he pretends to be: an extreme nationalist racist. His aim is really to turn Israel into a Jewish state cleansed of Arabs – Araberrein, in German. He has only contempt for democracy, both in the country and in his own party, which consists of yesmen and yeswomen devoid of any identity of their own. Like similar parties in the past, it is based on a cult of (his) personality, the worship of brute force, contempt for democracy and disdain for the judicial system. In other countries this is called fascism.

Others say: that is all a façade. Liberman is no Israeli Fuehrer, because he is nothing but a cheat and a cynic. The police investigations against him and his business dealings with Palestinians show him to be a corrupt opportunist. He is also a friend of Tzipi. He cultivates a fascist image in order to pave his way to power. He will sell all his slogans for a piece of government.

The first Liberman would support the setting up of an extreme Right government by Netanyahu. The second Liberman could support a Livni government. For a whole week he juggled the balls. Now he has decided: he is indeed an extreme nationalist racist. As the Americans say: if it walks like a duck and quacks like a duck, it is a duck.

For appearances’ sake he told the President that his proposal to entrust Netanyahu with the setting up of a government applies only to a broad-based coalition encompassing Likud, Kadima and his own party. But that is just a gimmick: probably such a government will not come into being, and the next government will be a coalition of Likud, Liberman, the disciples of Meir Kahane and the religious parties.

Some on the Left say: Excellent. The voters will get exactly what they deserve. At long last, there will be an exclusively rightist government.

One of the proponents of this attitude is Gideon Levy, a consistent advocate of peace, democracy and civil equality.

He and those who think like him say: Israel simply has to pass through this phase before it can recover. The Right must get unlimited power to realize its program, without the pretext of being hindered by leftist or centrist members of the coalition. Let them try, in full view of the world, to pursue a policy of war, the overthrow of Hamas in Gaza, the avoidance of any peace negotiations, unfettered settlement, spitting in the face of world public opinion and collision with the United States.

In this view, such a government cannot last for long. The new American administration of Barack Obama will not allow it. The world will boycott it. American Jewry will be shocked. And if Netanyahu strays – even slightly – from the Right and narrow path, his government will fall apart. The Kahanists, up to then his full partners, will divorce him on the spot. After all, the last Netanyahu government was overthrown ten years ago by the extreme right after he sat down with Yasser Arafat and signed an agreement that gave (pro forma) a part of Hebron to the Palestinian Authority.

After the fall of the government, according to this prognosis, the public will understand that there is no rightist option, that the slogans of the Right are nothing but nonsense. Only thus will they arrive at the conclusion that there is no alternative to the path of peace. The voters will elect a government that will end the occupation, clear the way for a free Palestinian state with its capital in East Jerusalem and withdraw to the Green Line borders (with slight, mutually acceptable, adjustments).

For the public to accept this, a shock is needed. The fall of the deep-Right government can supply such a shock. According to a saying attributed (mistakenly, it appears) to Lenin: The worse, the better. Or, put in another way: it must become much worse before it can get any better.

This is a seductive theory. But it is also very frightening.

How can we be sure that the Obama administration will indeed put irresistible pressure on Netanyahu? That is possible. Let’s hope that it happens. But it is not certain at all.

Obama has not yet passed a real test on any issue. It is already clear that there is a marked difference between what he promised in the election campaign and what he is doing in practice. In several matters he is continuing the policies of George Bush with slight alterations. That was, of course, to be expected. But Obama has not yet shown how he would act under real pressure. When Netanyahu mobilizes the full might of the pro-Israel lobby, will Obama surrender, like all preceding presidents?

And world public opinion – how united will it be? How much pressure can it exert? When Netanyahu declares that all criticism of his government is “anti-Semitic” and that every boycott call is an echo of the Nazi slogan “Kauft nicht bei Juden” (“Don’t buy from Jews”) – how many of the critics will stand up to the pressure? How much courage will Merkel, Sarkozy, Berlusconi et al be able to muster? And on the other side: will a world-wide boycott not intensify the paranoia in Israel and push all the Israeli public into the arms of the extreme Right, under the time-worn slogan ”All the World is against us?”

In the best of circumstances, if all the pressures materialize and have a maximum impact – how long will it take? What disasters can such a government bring about before the pressure starts to take effect? How many human beings will be killed and injured in attacks and acts of revenge by both sides? Such a government would be dominated by the settlers. How many new settlements will spring up? How many existing settlements will be extended at a hectic pace? And in the meantime, won’t the settlers intensify their harassment of the Palestinian population with the aim of bringing about ethnic cleansing?

The components of the Rightist coalition have already declared that they do not agree to a cease-fire in Gaza because it would consolidate the rule of Hamas there. They seek to renew the Gaza War under an even more brutal leadership, to re-conquer the Strip and to return the settlers there.

Netanyahu’s talk about an “economic peace” is complete nonsense, because no economy can develop under an occupation regime and hundreds of roadblocks. Any peace process – real or virtual – will grind to a halt. The result: the Palestinian authority will collapse. Out of desperation, the West Bank population will turn further towards Hamas, or the Fatah movement will become Hamas 2.

Inside Israel, the government will have to confront the deepening depression and perhaps cause economic chaos. All the sections of the government are united in their hatred of the Supreme Court, and the crazy manipulations of Justice Minister Daniel Friedman will give way to even crazier ones. Under the catchy slogan of “regime change”, targeted assaults against the democratic system will take place.

All these things are possible. One or two years of a Bibi-Liberman-Kahane government can cause irreparable damage to Israel’s standing in the world, Israeli-American relations, the judicial system, Israeli democracy, national morale and national sanity.

The positive side of this situation is that the Knesset will once again include a large opposition. Perhaps even an effective opposition.

Kadima came into being as a government party. It will not be easy for it to adapt to the role of opposition. That will require an emotional and intellectual transformation. For ten years I myself conducted an uncompromising oppositional struggle in the Knesset, and I know how difficult it is. But if Kadima manages to undergo such a transformation successfully – which is very doubtful – it may become an effective opposition. The necessity to present a clear alternative to the rightist government may lead it to discover unsuspected strengths within itself. Tzipi Livni’s games with the Palestinians may turn into a serious program for a Two-State solution, a program that will be strengthened and deepened by the daily parliamentary struggle vis-à-vis a government with an opposite program.

Labor, too, will have to undergo a profound transformation. Ehud Barak is certainly not the person to wage an oppositional fight – especially as he will not be the “head of the opposition”, a title officially conferred by law on the leader of the largest opposition faction. He will be second fiddle even in opposition. Labor will have to compete, and perhaps-perhaps this will lead to its recovery. The Bible tells us of the miracle of the dry bones (Ezekiel 37).

That is true even more for Meretz. It will have to compete with both Kadima and Labor to justify its place in the struggle for peace and social recovery.

A real optimist can even hope for the narrowing of the gap between the “Jewish Left” and the “Arab parties”, which the Left has until now boycotted and left out of all coalition calculations. The common struggle and the joint votes in the Knesset may bring about a positive development there too.

And beyond the parliamentary arena, the government of the extreme Right may change the atmosphere in the country and stimulate many well-intentioned people to leave the security of their ivory towers and start a process of intellectual rejuvenation in the circles from which a new, open and different Left must spring.

All these are theoretical possibilities. What will happen in reality? What will be the consequences of a “pure” rightist regime, if Tzipi Livni maintains her determination not to join a Netanyahu government? Will Israel set off down a suicidal road from which there is no return, or will this be a passing phase before the wake-up call?

It is a great gamble, and like every gamble, it arouses both fear and hope.

The moral imperative to answer the call “to impose broad boycotts and implement divestment initiatives against Israel similar to those applied to South Africa in the apartheid era,” is overwhelming — so much so that failure to act amounts to a kind of self-mutilation, a defiling of one’s legacy. Every iota of African American past and present existence tells us that no people can be allowed to superimpose themselves, their history, their supra-national rights on another people and their land, thus negating the Other’s humanity — the essential facts of Zionism.

1948 saw the creation of civilization’s greatest document to date – possibly the founding document of the truly modern era — the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. The year also witnessed the founding of a state based on the antithesis of those values: Israel.

Both Malcolm X and Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. tapped the deep reservoirs of the Declaration in their struggle for African Americans’ human rights, and both understood the indivisibility of freedom. “Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere,” wrote Dr. King in his “Letter from a Birmingham Jail.” “We are caught in an inescapable network of mutuality, tied in a single garment of destiny.” Malcolm counseled Black activists that “if they would expand their civil rights movement to a human rights movement it would internationalize it.”

That movement was internationalized, culminating in the 1980s South Africa corporate disinvestment and boycott campaign. As Black writer/activist Kevin Alexander Gray wrote in a piece earlier this year, calling for a similar campaign against Israel:

“What’s happening in Palestine is not fundamentally different from what occurred in apartheid South Africa. Kids are being killed. People have been herded into the (more deadly) equivalent of Bantustans. Political leaders are targeted for assassination…. Israel’s behavior demands the same response from the world human rights community as was mustered against South Africa.”

The obligation to respond is felt most intensely among Black Americans, who have experienced apartheid at home and fought successfully against it in Africa — but who are represented in public offices by abject cowards. Thirty members of the Congressional Black Caucus shamed themselves and us by endorsing a Resolution affirming the Jewish State’s “right to defend itself against attacks from Gaza” and absolving Israel of any blame for the slaughter. Seven Black lawmakers sought cover in voting “present” — as if that would cloak their slavish fear of the Israel lobby — while only two voted Nay: Reps. Maxine Waters (D-CA) and Gwen Moore (D-WS).

The man- and womanhood was scared out of the Black misleadership class in general, and the Congressional Black Caucus in particular, in 2002, when the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) joined with corporate moneybags to unseat two Black lawmakers. Reps. Cynthia McKinney, of suburban Atlanta, and Earl Hilliard, from Alabama, could not be counted on to bend their knees to Israel. They had to go.

As Hilliard told me in July 2002, tons of money suddenly rained down on his opponent, Artur Davis, “not just [from] corporations, but organizations like AIPAC. Mostly Republican operatives and Jewish operatives that were sent by different organizations and groups and corporations.”

Was it their intention to make a public display of their power, I asked? “Oh, definitely — the seed of fear,” Hilliard replied. “It sends a message to every member of Congress.”

The same message was sent the next month, with Cynthia McKinney’s defeat in Georgia. “I was targeted by AIPAC and others for my opposition to the Israeli occupation of and genocidal policies toward Palestine,” said McKinney, who last year ran for president on the Green Party ticket.

2002 was the beginning of a joint corporate/pro-Israel offensive to subdue or eject “unreliable” Black Democrats. The dramatic deterioration of the Congressional Black Caucus, as an agent for progress on Capitol Hill, dates from that year. The corporate Right and the Israel lobby act in tandem. Their purge of Black politicians has been so successful, they’re running out of live targets. Maxine Waters and Gwen Moore are the last two righteous sisters standing on Capitol Hill — where Black manhood is extinct. Down the street at the White House, chief of staff Rahm Emanuel stands guard — although President Obama appears to be an entirely voluntary captive of Israel.

So we see that the tentacles that strangle Gaza and once helped South Africa build nuclear weapons, are throttling the life out of independent Black politics in the United States. Boycott and disinvest in Israel! If not in solidarity, in self-defense.

A range of organizations came out in Amherst, Mass., on February 7 in solidarity with the people of Gaza. (SW)

This historic decision came as a result of from Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP), a group formed at Hampshire in 2006. According to a statement from Sigmund Roos, chair of the Board of Trustees, the board reviewed the college’s investments to address a petition from SJP.

Among the corporations that Hampshire will divest from are United Technologies, which produces Blackhawk helicopters and engines for F-15 and F-16 fighter jets that Israel uses to kill Palestinians, and Caterpillar, which supplies Israel with bulldozers that the Israel Defense Force (IDF) uses to destroy Palestinian homes, orchards and olive groves in clearing land for illegal settlements and the “Separation Barrier” apartheid wall.

The petition in support of divestment was signed by over 800 Hampshire students, faculty and alumni (on a campus with under 1,500 students). It was the product of a two-year campaign that included educational events such as film screenings and lectures, “mock walls” simulating life in the occupied West Bank, and interactive forums.

SJP explained the reasons for its actions in a statement:

Traditionally, Hampshire College has advocated for the oppressed. In 1977, Hampshire College was the first college in the U.S. to divest from apartheid South Africa. In 2001, Hampshire was the first college to object to the war in Afghanistan.

In this spirit and in light of the fact that the Israeli occupation is the longest ongoing occupation since World War II, we state our objection to the oppression of the Palestinian people. The Hampshire community hereby declares its commitment to work toward the end of this occupation. Furthermore, we call upon Israel to end its policies of discrimination and to respect international law and Palestinian rights, including the right to self-determination. We support the Palestinian right to resist the occupation in accordance with international law.

In recent weeks, the SJP at Hampshire joined with students from area colleges and the community in the recently formed Pioneer Valley Coalition for Palestine, which organized protests against the Israeli bombing and ground assault in Gaza that killed over 1,300 people, including hundreds of children. The protests, on January 10 and February 7, drew hundreds of people each time.

The banner at the front of the February 7 march proclaimed “From Amherst to Gaza: Abolish Racism.” That was a reference to the “Justice for Jason” movement against the prosecution of University of Massachusetts Amherst Jason Vassell for defending himself from racist attackers. It was also meant to express the links between racism against African Americans and the Islamophobia used to justify the occupation of Palestine, Afghanistan and Iraq.

The rallies were the largest antiwar actions in Amherst in recent years and were heavily attended by Arabs and Muslims. Student activists from SJP, Palestine solidarity organizations on other local campuses, the Campus Antiwar Network, the UMass Muslim Students Association and the International Socialist Organization added their voices to the call for divestment from Israel.

SJP hopes their success will be an inspiration and a call to action for others who support justice for the people of Palestine. With students occupying buildings and winning concessions in support of Palestine across Britain–and now in the U.S. at the University of Rochester, divestment at Hampshire College is an important victory for a growing movement.

Building a movement that calls on U.S. institutions to divest from Israel is a key component of the struggle for justice for the people of Palestine.

The ethnic cleansing of Palestine in 1948 to make possible to foundation of the state of Israel and the occupation of the West Bank and Gaza Strip that began in 1967 have created a horrific reality for Palestinians, which anti-apartheid activist Archbishop Desmond Tutu described after a 2003 visit as “much like what happened to us Black people in South Africa.”

Israel’s illegal occupation and slaughter of innocents would not be possible without the vast funding and political support it receives from the U.S. government. Israel has been the top recipient of U.S. foreign aid for years–a total of more than $100 billion since 1948, over half of which is military aid.

Hampshire College’s divestment of funds from Israel has set a precedent for a movement that could play an important role in ending apartheid in Israel.

Hampshire played a similar leading role in the struggle against apartheid South Africa. In 1977, students in the Committee for the Liberation of Southern Africa occupied the college’s administrative offices. They won their demands, and Hampshire became the first U.S. college to divest from apartheid South Africa.

By 1982, similar struggles won divestment at other colleges and universities, including the nearby Umass Amherst, the University of Wisconsin, Ohio State University and the entire University of California system (which withdrew $3 billion in investments). By 1988, over 150 institutions had divested from South Africa.

By the end of the 1980s, as well, dozens of cities, states and towns across the U.S. had put in place some form of economic sanctions against the apartheid regime in South Africa. Inspired by the resistance of Black South Africans, the U.S. movement pressured Congress to pass (over a veto by President Ronald Reagan) sanctions against the racist regime. The solidarity movements around the world provided important support to the struggle of Black South Africans that defeated apartheid.

Hampshire College’s role in the campus anti-apartheid movement was an inspiration and a tool for SJP’s movement for divestment from corporations that support Israeli apartheid, according to SJP member Brian Van Slyke. “That Hampshire was the first college to divest from apartheid South Africa was really a rallying cry for us on this campus,” he said.

Hampshire SJP is hosting a rally outside the campus library at Noon on February 13 to celebrate this historic victory and have an open discussion about the next steps for the movement for justice in Palestine.

According to Van Slyke, these include defending this gain by “getting the word out to other activists and community organizers” to “make sure that people like [rabid pro-Israel supporter] Alan Dershowitz don’t succeed in smearing us or shutting us down.” SJP members plan to continue organizing to push for Hampshire to provide resources for an exchange with Palestinian students.

SJP has received numerous invitations from activists on other campuses and is considering sending members on a tour to share the story of their victory and the lessons they’ve learned to inform and inspire other students to push for and win divestment from Israel.

“SJP has proven that student groups can organize, rally and pressure their schools to divest from the illegal occupation,” SJP said in a press release. “The group hopes that this decision will pave the way for other institutions of higher learning in the U.S. to take similar stands.”

Government officials fear that recent media revelations relating to Col Sharvit-Baruch’s role in the Gaza operation may assist human rights groups seeking to bring Israeli soldiers to trial abroad.

A Spanish judge began investigating Israeli war crimes in Gaza under the country’s “universal jurisdiction” laws this month, and a prosecutor at the International Criminal Court in The Hague is considering a Palestinian group’s petition to indict Israeli commanders.

Meanwhile, the furore — by highlighting the close ties between the army and Israeli universities — is adding weight to a growing campaign in Europe and the US to impose an academic boycott on Israel, say activists.

Tel Aviv University’s decision to hire Col Sharvit-Baruch to teach international law prompted protests from staff after the local media published details of the military planning for the Gaza offensive.

More than 1,300 Palestinians were killed during the operation, the majority of them civilians, and thousands were injured.

According to critics quoted by the Haaretz newspaper, Col Sharvit-Baruch and her staff manipulated standard interpretations of international law to expand the scope of army operations to include civilian targets.

Leading the protest is Haim Ganz, a law professor who has called the colonel’s approach to international law “devious jurisprudence that permits mass killing.” In a letter to the university, Prof Ganz said he was lodging “a moral protest against a state of affairs where somebody who authorised these actions is teaching the law of war.”

Last week Ehud Olmert, the prime minister, threatened to cut government funding for the law faculty should Col Sharvit-Baruch’s appointment not proceed. The university’s president, Zvi Galil, phoned the cabinet secretary to reassure the government, saying Prof Ganz’s opinions were not shared by most staff.

Other academics have rallied in support of Col Sharvit-Baruch, accusing her critics of waging a McCarthyite campaign against her.

According to the Israeli media, she personally approved the first wave of air strikes in Gaza that targeted a police graduation ceremony, killing at least 40 cadets.

Although police forces have civilian status in international law, and are therefore protected from military reprisal, Col Sharvit-Baruch is reported to have revised her opinion of the attack’s legality during the many months of planning.

In addition, she is said to have “relaxed” the rules of engagement, approved widespread house demolitions and the uprooting of farmland, and sanctioned the use of incendiary weapons such as white phosphorus over the densely populated enclave.

She also offered legal justification for the targeting of buildings in which civilians were known to be located as long as they had been warned first to leave. Schools, mosques and a university were among the many civilian buildings shelled by the Israeli army during the 22-day operation.

Her decisions have been widely criticised by international human rights organisations as well as by international law experts in Israel.

The professor Yuval Shany, who teaches public international law at Hebrew University in Jerusalem, called her interpretation of the rules of war “flexible.” Regarding the strike against the police cadets, he said: “If you follow that line, there is not much that differentiates [the cadets] from [Israeli] reservists or even from 16-year-olds who will be drafted [into the Israeli army] in two years.”

Col Sharvit-Baruch’s predecessor, Daniel Reisner, noted that her staff had stretched the accepted meanings of international law. The army’s operating principle, he added, was: “If you do something for long enough, the world will accept it.”

Orna Ben-Naftali, the dean of law at the College of Management in Rishon Letzion, said the army’s conduct in Gaza had made international law “bankrupt”. “A situation is created in which the majority of the adult men in Gaza and the majority of the buildings can be treated as legitimate targets. The law has actually been stood on its head.”

But despite the protest at Tel Aviv University, most academic staff in Israel supported Col Sharvit-Baruch’s appointment, said Daphna Golan, a programme director at the Minerva Center for Human Rights at Hebrew University. “I think even Prof Ganz has been frightened into silence by the backlash.”

The episode, she said, highlighted the intimate relations between the army and universities in Israel, as well as the dependence of the universities on army funding.

She noted that there were many special programmes designed to favour army and security personnel by putting them on a fast track to degrees.

“Most of the professors in the country’s Middle East departments — the ‘experts on Arabs’ who shape the perceptions of the next generation — are recruited from the army or the security services,” she added.

Omar Barghouti, a co-ordinator of the Palestinian Campaign for the Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel, said Col Sharvit-Baruch’s employment was a further indication of the “organic ties” between Israeli institutions and the army.

“This just adds one more soldier to an already very long list of war criminals roaming around freely in Israeli universities, teaching hate, racism and warmongering, with impunity,” he said.

He noted that calls for an academic boycott were growing in the wake of the Gaza offensive.

Al-Quds University, with campuses in East Jerusalem and the West Bank, severed its contacts with Israeli universities last week. It had been the last Palestinian university to maintain such ties.

At the same time, a group of US professors announced that they were campaigning for an academic boycott of Israel — the first time such a call has been heard in the US.

Mr Barghouti said an “unprecedented” groundswell of popular opinion was behind new campaigns in countries such as Australia, Spain, Sweden, Canada, South Africa and New Zealand.

Declaration notwithstanding, nothing changed. Gaza remains occupied, under siege, and totally isolated. Borders are still closed. On January 28, the New York Times said “truckloads of humanitarian aid” are stuck in Egypt because of Israeli and Cairo restrictions. Little can get in, and attacks merely downshifted to a lower gear.

Shortly after Sunday’s announcement, an Israeli aircraft killed a Gaza City resident. IDF troops opened fire in Wadi al-Salqa village, southeast of Deir al-Balah. Homes in al-Qarara village were attacked. Helicopter gunships struck areas west of Khan Yunis, and F-16s bombed near the Science and Technology College in the same area. Israeli naval vessels shelled coastal areas and turned back ships with humanitarian aid. Agricultural land was raised. Arrests were made. Gaza continues to be terrorized.

For the week ending January 28th, the Palestinian Centre for Human Rights (PCHR) reported continued Gaza and West Bank incursions and attacks:

• the IDF shot and killed a Gaza farmer on his land;
• 17 Gaza and West Bank Palestinians, including four children and two journalists, were wounded;
• 32 West Bank incursions were conducted;
• 64 West Bank civilians, including 15 children, were arrested;
• a private West Bank home near Bethlehem was seized as a military site;
• Gaza remains under siege and total isolation; conditions overall keep deteriorating;
• two Jerusalem homes were demolished; 53 civilians were left homeless; and Israel continues Judaizing Jerusalem through repeated land seizures.

The same pattern repeats daily, and reports indicate more American and EU complicity. The US Navy patrols the Red Sea to prevent weapons “smuggling,” and Army Corps of Engineers are on the Egypt-Gaza border to locate tunnels and destroy them. EU nations will monitor Rafah and perhaps other Gaza-Egypt border crossings, and France, Britain and other European countries offered naval vessel patrol help in the Red Sea.

On a January 26 Gaza visit, EU Commissioner for Development and Humanitarian Aid, Louis Michel, refused to meet with Hamas. He called it “a terrorist movement” responsible for three weeks of Gaza fighting, the enormous devastation, and for using civilians as “human shields.” In response, Hamas official, Mushir al-Masr, expressed shock “to see a European official giving cover to massacres and terrorism committed by the Zionist enemy against the Palestinian people. Palestinian resistance is as legitimate as the resistance of European countries that fought against foreign occupiers.” International law affirms this.

On January 27, Haaretz reported that the fragile ceasefire was near collapse after an IDF soldier was killed. An air strike followed, and Israeli tanks again were on the move. “Heavy gunfire was audible along the border in central Gaza and Israeli helicopters hovered in the air, firing bursts from their machine guns, Palestinian witnesses said.”

On January 29, Maan News reported that nine Gazans, mostly children, were wounded by an F-16 missile in Khan Younis following overnight strikes at the As-Salam district of Rafah. In addition, IDF tanks “invaded Gaza near Deir Al-Balah, bulldozing agricultural land,” then withdrew in early morning. On the same day, 14 West Bank arrests were made, civilians seized from their homes in Bethlehem, Hebron and Bet Suweif village. A day earlier, the IDF invaded Zboba village, near Jenin, conducted house-to-house searches, enforced a curfew, forced families from their homes, ransacked their belongings, and arrested eight more men.

Incursions like these occur daily. Palestinian Prisoner Society president Qaddura Fares said 300 Gazans were arrested during three weeks of fighting and more when it ended. Israel conceals their names and where they’re held. Some are wounded and untreated. All are denied access to lawyers and ICRC representatives.

On January 30, Haaretz reported that “Israel plans more ‘pinpoint’ strikes against Hamas (and other resistance) in Gaza….to let Hamas know that strikes against Israel would not go unanswered, one source said.”

In her first news conference as Secretary of State, Hillary Clinton blamed Hamas, said Israel has a “right to self-defense, (and that) rocket attacks…cannot go unanswered.” Hardly surprising from any US official, Republican or Democrat, although Clinton’s belligerence is high on the Richter scale.

At a Cairo news conference, US Middle East envoy George Mitchell said America “is committed to vigorously pursuing lasting peace and stability in the region.” He met with Egypt’s Mubarak, then headed for Tel Aviv meetings with Ehud Olmert, Tzipi Livni, Ehud Barak, Shimon Peres, IDF’s chief of staff Gabi Ashkenazi, and Likud leader Benjamin Netanyahu to say America is committed to:

• Israel’s security;
• the “road map” assuring no possibility of peace;
• no policy change to allow Palestinians their right of return;
• Israel’s illegal settlement expansions;
• stopping Hamas weapons “smuggling” to deny their right of self-defense;
• dealing only with Mahmoud Abbas so “the Palestinian Authority (PA) will get a foot in the door in Gaza;” and
• in spite of being Palestine’s legitimate government and proposing a one and a half year truce (conditional on ending Gaza’s siege and reopening all border crossings), Mitchell won’t meet with Hamas to “pursue lasting peace and stability in the region;” he rebuffed Hamas’ overture; affirmed the Bush administration’s one-sided diplomacy; said nothing about continued Israeli attacks, arrests, and settlement expansions, paid lip service only to Gaza’s humanitarian crisis, insisted that the PA be in charge of Gaza’s borders, reiterated that Hamas is a “terrorist group,” then headed for Ramallah to meet with Mahmoud Abbas and his coup d’etat government.

Addressing a (New York-based) World Jewish Congress in Jerusalem on January 28, foreign minister Livni affirmed Israel’s “right to act to defend ourselves against those activities in Gaza, including weapons ’smuggling’ and build-up of military capabilities. Israel is going to act according to a new equation. We are not going to show restraint anymore. (Anymore?) We need to change the rules of the game until they (Hamas) learn that the rules have changed and the equation has changed.”

Haaretz said Olmert told Mitchell that Gaza’s borders won’t reopen until Hamas releases IDF soldier Gilad Shalit. Unmentioned are thousands of imprisoned Palestinians, many held without charge, hundreds with no access to family or outside contact, most tortured, and all denied due process.

On January 28, Hamas rejected Olmert’s terms. The Israeli English language Ynetnews.com quoted a member of its Cairo delegation, Salah al-Bardawil, saying: the ball is in Israel’s court. “The demands are known (and so is the price). It is no secret that there are 11,000 Palestinian prisoners sitting in Israeli prisons. No tie shall be made between the truce and Shalit. If Israel wants him released, it must pay the rightful and asked price.”

Bardawil rejects a Gaza “security zone” giving Israelis “an excuse to kill anyone who comes close to it, even if they are farmers and innocent civilians, claiming that they are members of the resistance organizations.” For Israel, all civilians are legitimate targets, even women, children, the elderly, and infirm. Daily, they suffer grievously throughout Occupied Palestine.

Nonetheless on February 1, Al-Arabiya TV reported that Hamas accepted Egypt’s one-year truce proposal beginning February 6. The delay will give its delegation time to make it official in Cairo. Details so far are sketchy but apparently involve PA monitoring/controlling border crossings and Hamas and PA authorities coordinating their activities. Earlier Hamas accepted a one and a half year truce conditional on re-opening borders so humanitarian and other essential aid can enter freely.

Gaza Professor Said Abdelwahed’s Email

Three weeks of fighting have taken a terrible toll, yet appalling suffering continues. Consider the children. “Bereaved and traumatized, (they) need psychotherapists and special care! Who will take care of them? Local psychotherapy organizations can’t do it and for more than one reason.” Yet the need is overwhelming.

“Children have bad memories (from) ugly nights, nightmares and bad dreams. (It’s been) an ongoing show of miseries, untold stories, stress and depression! The day before yesterday,” fear of renewed Israeli attacks surfaced. Buildings and Gaza City schools “were evacuated immediately! Pupils ran out of schools knowing not where to go. F-16s flew overhead. They broke the sound barrier and scared everyone.”

“The world community talks about arms smuggling to Gaza! What kind of arms” are they talking about? The fighting proved that “Palestinians have no weapons that can annoy Israeli aircraft, helicopters or tanks. The whole geography and psychology of Gaza have changed. It’s like an earthquake. Homes have been destroyed. Whole neighborhoods. Thousands are now displaced.”

“The fact is that words fall short of describing how things look now. It’s more horrible than the Holocaust.” Referring to dead children, Abdelwahed said: “I did not know before that 450 children and infants were Hamas affiliates or supporters…take care.”

World Affirmation of Continued Israeli Attacks

Palestinians remain isolated and abandoned. Disturbing truths are hidden from sight. The dominant media are complicit. BBC management won’t air an emergency fundraiser claiming doing so would show bias. A spokesman said: “The decision was made because of question marks about the delivery of aid in a volatile situation and also to avoid any risk of compromising public confidence in the BBC’s impartiality in the context of (a) news story.”

On January 29, Maan News reported that “Palestinian academics and media personnel as well as international activists, demanded the BBC leave Gaza over its refusal to air an appeal for aid.” Academics organized a sit-in near BBC’s Gaza office and denounced it for its action. Gaza Professor As’ad Abu Sharkh said: “The BBC has become a partner to Israel in its war on Gaza.” Others were equally vocal.

Throughout its history, BBC has been a reliable imperial tool. Its reputation remains unblemished. Veteran UK politician, Tony Benn, called its decision a “public betrayal…incomprehensible and it follows the bias in BBC reporting of this crisis.” In America, it’s much worse. Victims are vilified, aggressors praised, and no uncomfortable truths are aired or printed. Regardless of its crimes, Israel is untouchable.

EU Failure to Protect Human Rights in Occupied Palestine

On January 28, the Palestinian Centre for Human Rights (PCHR) accused EU nations of failing to protect Palestinians’ human rights and demanded that remedial steps be taken. PCHR expressed dismay “by recent statements made by, and actions taken by, EU states regarding human rights violations” in Gaza and the West Bank.

In spite of weeks of slaughter, destruction and trauma, “EU member states abstained from a (January 12) United Nations Human Rights Council resolution condemning the (IDF’s) military offensive. A week later, Czech foreign minister and (EU Council) president-in-office, Karl Schwarzenberg, (said the EU) ’should not act as a judge’ (against IDF humanitarian law violations).” In solidarity with Israel, he said: “I have never seen a war where humanitarian law was completely respected.”

Louis Michel, quoted above, went even further by claiming Hamas bore “overwhelming responsibility” for Israel’s offensive. These actions “highlight that the 27 EU member states are blatantly failing in their obligations as High Contracting Parties to the (1949) Fourth Geneva Convention to protect the lives of Palestinians in Gaza. The shameful silence of the entire international community…illustrates its utter failure to hold Israel accountable for its masse violations of human rights (throughout Occupied Palestine) and especially in Gaza.” International law demands accountability. Gazans remain imprisoned, and the West Bank is under military occupation.

Letting Israel slaughter, destroy, imprison, terror bomb, use illegal weapons, and willfully target civilians grants it license to keep doing it with impunity. PCHR wants accountability and for the EU not to “upgrade its political and economic relationship (through) the EU-Israel Association Agreement (on trade, political, and regional cooperation). (It’s) conditional on Israel’s respect for human rights.” Tel Aviv blatantly disdains them. This no longer can be tolerated. Palestinians deserve justice. “EU member states must finally make a stand for the respect of law and protection of civilian lives.”

Obama’s Middle East Policy “A Mirror Image of Bush”

It’s from Palestine Chronicle Editor-in-Chief Ramzy Baroud in his article titled: “For Palestinians, Obama’s Message is Crystal Clear.” Despite promising change, “how different will Obama truly be when his administration is done carrying out a few symbolic gestures to appease the ever-eager public” at a time when great economic distress takes precedence? Despite promising “a new era,” continuity remains US-Israeli policy, and note Obama’s statements.

His first January 22 public one affirmed one-sided Israeli support in saying: “Let me be clear — America is committed to Israel’s security. And we will always support Israel’s right to defend itself against legitimate threats…Hamas must meet clear conditions: recognize Israel’s right to exist; renounce violence; and abide by past agreements.” It must also abandon its right to resist, to self-defense, to self-determination, to a sovereign Palestinian state inside pre-1967 borders, to be free from military occupation, from repeated Israeli incursions, and to remain Occupied Palestine’s legitimately elected government.

“Obama’s unparalleled clarity” is unequivocal. Israeli rights matter. Palestinian ones don’t. “For Gazans, and most Palestinians, things cannot be any clearer.” Obama promises continuity, not change. Palestinians are on their own. Their struggle for liberation continues.

Hopeful Justice in Spain

On January 29, AP reported that Spanish judge Fernando Andreu “began an investigation into seven current or former Israeli officials over a 2002 bombing in Gaza that killed a Hamas militant and 14 other people, including nine children.” Andreu sees a possible crime against humanity in targeting Salah Shehadeh in which an F-16 dropped a one-ton bomb in Gaza City. He’s proceeding “under (the universal jurisdiction) doctrine that allows (Spanish) prosecution of (such crimes and ones alleged to be terrorism or genocide), even if they are…committed in another country.”

In June 2008, the Palestinian Centre for Human Rights (PCHR) sued Israeli officials in the National Court of Spain naming then Israeli Air Force commander Dan Halutz, defense minister Binyamin Ben-Eliezer, senior air force commander Doron Almog, national security chief Giora Eiland, defense ministry official Michael Herzog, IDF chief of staff Moshe Ya’alon, and General Security Service head Avi Dichter.

Andreu called the bombing “clearly disproportionate and excessive” and said he agreed to investigate the charges because Israel stonewalled his request for information. He added if he determines that innocent civilians were targeted, he might bring “even more serious” charges. The Spanish National Court said that genocide may be charged if intent to exterminate Palestinians can be proved.

Former Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s comment was expected: “It’s absurd; Israel is fighting against war criminals and they are charging us with crimes.” The charges make “a mockery out of international law.” One of the accused, Benjamin Ben-Eliezer, called the charges “ludicrous and outrageous (and that) terrorist organizations are using the courts to prosecute a state that works against terror.” Ehud Barak said they’re “halluncinatory.”

With Washington and western endorsement, blaming victims is customary Israeli practice. It expects a wave of criminal lawsuits and international pressure to investigate IDF war crimes in the aftermath of its terror bombing Gaza.

Amnesty International (AI) Ammunition

On January 17, AI got access to Gaza and “found first hand evidence of war crimes, serious violations of international law, and possible crimes against humanity.” More investigation continues, but already “the stories are harrowing,” including Israel’s “use of white phosphorous.” AI calls for “a full-fledged independent investigation” to uncover all crimes in the conflict.

Calls for an Academic and Cultural Boycott

On January 29, Haaretz reported that “In the wake of Operation Cast Lead, a group of American university professors has for the first time launched a national campaign calling for academic and cultural boycott of Israel.” Its mission statement says:

“In light of Israel’s persistent violations of international law, and Given that, since 1948, hundreds of UN resolutions have condemned Israel’s colonial and discriminatory policies as illegal and called for immediate, adequate and effective remedies, and Given that all forms of international intervention and peacemaking have until now failed to convince or force Israel to comply with humanitarian law, to respect fundamental human rights and to end its occupation and oppression of the people of Palestine, and In view of the fact that people of conscience in the international community have historically shouldered the moral responsibility to fight injustice,” and joined together in boycott, divestment and sanctions campaigns…

“We representatives of Palestinian civil society, call upon international civil society organizations and people of conscience (everywhere) to impose broad boycotts and implement initiatives against Israel similar to those (against) South Africa.” We ask for support “for the sake of justice and genuine peace.” Demands listed are:

• ending Israel’s illegal occupation, colonization, and Separation Wall;
• recognizing full equality for Arab Israelis; and
• “respecting, protecting, and promoting the rights of Palestinian refugees to return to their homes and properties” as UN Resolution 194 mandates.

A Rare Davos Economic Forum Confrontation

Annually in Davos, Switzerland at the World Economic Forum, the world’s corporate Mafia dons meet to discuss prospects for greater global exploitation.

On January 29 to a packed audience and on television, Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan faced off with Israeli president Shimon Peres in debate, then stormed off the stage in disgust when the moderator cut him short and ended discussion. After Peres defended attacking Gaza in a lengthy monologue, Erdogan accused him of “killing people. I find it very sad that people applaud what you said. There have been many people killed. And I think that it is very wrong and it is not humanitarian.”

Washington Post moderator David Ignatius cut him off. Erdogan said “Please let me finish.” Ignatius responded: “We just don’t have time. We really do need to get people to dinner.” Erdogan again: “Thank you very much. Thank you very much. Thank you very much. I don’t think I will come back to Davos after this.” The audience appeared stunned. Erdogan brushed past reporters but not before his wife said: “All Peres said was a lie. It was unacceptable.”

Erdogan, of course, played to a home audience, and it paid off. Back in Istanbul, he got a rapturous welcome. He later spoke with Peres by phone and agreed not to let the incident affect Turkish-Israeli relations.

Israeli-Turkey confrontation began when Gaza was attacked. It continued in Cairo when Israeli defense ministry political security bureau head, Amos Gilad, refused to meet with Ahmet Davutoglu, Erdogan’s senior foreign policy advisor. Davutoglu was Turkey’s conduit between Hamas and the West. Israel and Egypt stonewalled him. Israel and Turkey have strategic ties. It remains for high-level fence-mending to repair them.

Israeli Professor Avi Shlaim in the London Guardian

On January 7, he headlined: “How Israel brought Gaza to the brink of humanitarian catastrophe.” Shlaim once served in the IDF, never questioned Israel’s legitimacy inside the Green Line, and now teaches international relations at Oxford. He examined the conflict in context and said “Establishing the state of Israel in May 1948 involved a monumental injustice to the Palestinians.” At the time, British Middle East Cairo office head, John Troutbeck, wrote foreign secretary Ernest Bevin that Americans were responsible for creating a gangster state headed by “an utterly unscrupulous set of leaders.”

Given Israel’s history of violence and latest Gaza aggression, Troutbeck’s comment was prescient, but he omitted his own country’s complicity that’s still solid to this day.

Shlaim condemns what he calls “Greater Israel(’s) permanent political, economic and military control (over Palestine)…the result has been one of the most prolonged and brutal military occupations in modern times.” In Biblical language, “Israel turned the people of Gaza (and the West Bank) into the hewers of wood and the drawers of water, into a (reserve) source of cheap labour and a captive market for Israeli goods.” Palestine “is a classic case of colonial exploitation in the post-colonial era. Jewish settlements…are immoral, illegal, and an insurmountable obstacle to peace.”

“Israel likes to portray itself as an island of democracy in a sea of authoritarianism. Yet Israel has never in its entire history done anything to promote democracy (for its Arab citizens and population in the Territories).”

Palestine under Hamas is “the only genuine democracy in the Arab world,” except for perhaps Lebanon. Yet “America and the EU shamelessly joined Israel in ostracising and demonising (its) government…” The situation is “surreal…with a significant part of the international community imposing economic sanctions not against the occupier but against the occupied, not against the oppressor but against the oppressed.”

Palestinians are vilified for their own misfortunes. Israel, America, and the West call them “terrorists,” Hamas “just a bunch of religious fanatics (besides), and Islam incompatible with democracy” when, in fact, they’re normal people with ordinary dreams and have as much right to them as anyone.

Israel claims self-righteous victimhood while unleashing overpowering brute force. In Hebrew it’s called “bokhim ve-yorim, crying and shooting…The brutality of (its) soldiers is fully matched by the mendacity of its spokesmen…(its) propaganda is a pack of lies.” A chasm separates rhetoric from reality. Indiscriminate terror bombing is how it tries to spare civilians. Its philosophy is “an eye for an eyelash.”

Militarism can’t bring security. Only reconciliation and diplomacy works, but Israel stays hard line. Shlaim concludes that his country is “a rogue state with an utterly unscrupulous set of leaders.” They disdain international law, use terror weapons, slaughter civilians, and hold Islam in contempt.

“Israel’s real aim is not peaceful coexistence…but military domination.” It compounds past mistakes “with new and more disastrous ones.” It pursues a classic definition of insanity: repeating the same mistakes, expecting different results, and using newspeak propaganda for justification. Poor Israel. Its credibility is gradually eroding. Growing millions hold it in contempt. Its choice ahead is simple. Reform or perish, yet Israel persists in staying hard line.

We condemn Israel’s recent (December 2008/ January 2009) breaches of international law in the Gaza Strip, which include the bombing of densely-populated neighborhoods, illegal deployment of the chemical white phosphorous, and attacks on schools, ambulances, relief agencies, hospitals, universities, and places of worship. We condemn Israel’s restriction of access to media and aid workers.

We reject as false Israel’s characterization of its military attacks on Gaza as retaliation. Israel’s latest assault on Gaza is part of its longtime racist jurisprudence against its indigenous Palestinian population, during which the Israeli state has systematically dispossessed, starved, tortured, and economically exploited the Palestinian people.

We reject as untrue the Israeli government’s claims that the Palestinians use civilians as human shields, and that Hamas is an irredeemable terrorist organization. Without endorsing its platforms or philosophy, we recognize Hamas as a democratically elected ruling party. We do not endorse the regime of any existing Arab state, and call for the upholding of internationally mandated human rights and democratic elections in all Arab states.

We call upon our fellow writers and academics in the United States to question discourses that justify and rationalize injustice, and to address Israeli assaults on civilians in Gaza as one of the most important moral issues of our time.

We call upon institutions of higher education in the U.S. to cut ties with Israeli academic institutions, dissolve study abroad programs in Israel, and divest institutional funds from Israeli companies, using the 1980s boycott against apartheid South Africa as a model.

We call on all people of conscience to join us in boycotting Israeli products and institutions until a just, democratic state for all residents of Palestine/Israel comes into existence.

Mohammed Abed
Elmaz Abinader
Diana Abu-Jaber
Ali Abunimah
Opal Palmer Adisa
Deborah Al-Najjar
Evelyn Azeeza Alsultany
Amina Baraka
Amiri Baraka
George Bisharat
Sherwin Bitsui
Breyten Breytenbach
Van Brock
Hayan Charara
Allison Hedge Coke
Lara Deeb
Vicente Diaz
Marilyn Hacker
Mechthild Hart
Sam Hamill
Randa Jarrar
Fady Joudah
Mohja Kahf
Rima Najjar Kapitan
Persis Karim
J. Kehaulani Kauanui
Haunani Kay-Trask
David Lloyd
Sunaina Maira
Nur Masalha
Khaled Mattawa
Daniel AbdalHayy Moore
Aileen Moreton-Robinson
Nadine Naber
Marcy Newman
Viet Nguyen
Simon J. Ortiz
Vijay Prashad
Steven Salaita
Therese Saliba
Sarita See
Deema Shehabi
Matthew Shenoda
Naomi Shihab Nye
Magid Shihade
Vandana Shiva
Noenoe Silva
Andrea Smith
Ahdaf Soueif
Ghada Talhami
Frank X. Walker
Robert Warrior

And why should ye not fight in the cause of Allah and of those who, being weak, are ill-treated and oppressed?—Men, women, and children whose cry is, “Our Lord! Rescue us from this town, whose people are oppressors; and raise for us from Thee one who will protect; And raise for us from Thee one who will help.
–The Holy Koran, Sura IV, Verse 75

Woe to you scribes and Pharisees, you hypocrites! You lock the kingdom of heaven before human beings. … You have neglected the weightier things of the law: judgment and mercy and fidelity.
– The Gospel of Matthew, 23: 13-27

If you love those who love you, what credit is that to you? Even sinners love those who love them. And if you do good to those who do good to you, what credit is that to you? Even sinners do the same.
–The Gospel of Luke, 6: 27

Just before the exit of the restaurant, my thoughtful, septuagenerian Leftist writer-friend is contemplating a poster of “The Rat Pack”–Frank Sinatra, Dean Martin, Sammy Davis, Jr., Lawford and Bishop in front of the old Sands hotel in Vegas, circa late 50’s/early 60’s. They’re all slim and young, hip and cool, smiling–and I comment, “The good old days! … Looks innocent now, doesn’t it?”

And he answers, “Are things worse now—or do we just know more about what’s going on … so they seem worse?”

“They are worse,” I aver, “because we know more—and because it is now.”

The tyranny of now! The poignancy of it. The brilliance of it. It’s fleeting beauty and its searing pain that notches itself into the psyche of the race, scours the memory and transfixes the future. “Too crowding, too confusing,” Frost wrote. “Too present to imagine.” The Now forever transcending Now.

It’s not just Santayana’s well-worn dictum about not learning the lessons of the past and having to repeat them. It is living long enough to watch the grotesque patterns constantly repeating themselves—an insane kaleidoscope of blood, gore, stupidity and treachery; a Mandelbrot set where Satan himself is the minuscule jester, infinitely repeating, dancing madly in the background of our lizard brains.

Whatever else it may achieve, Israel’s onslaught against women, children and the ridiculously mis-matched rag-tag “army” of Hamas men who are trying to protect them—whatever else it may accomplish, it has done this: It has destroyed the 60-year plus rationale of the Holocaust as Israel’s raison d’etre. The Zionist state has ensured that any claims it may have had against a war-weary world that “allowed” the Holocaust to happen must now be cancelled. Whatever moral high-ground Jews may have had to carve out of the Ottoman Empire a piece of their ancient kingdoms of Judah and Israel is now ground turning to sludge beneath their war boots, their tanks, their US-paid-for F-16’s, their naval bombardments, their expansionist settlements, their apartheid policies.

I am not one to deny the Holocaust of the Jews (though research suggests ample reasons for questioning the numbers). One of the enduring horrors of the present state-terrorism against a practically defenceless population is that it has made “The Holocaust” irrelevant. There is no more Holocaust with a capital “H”! More than 60 years after the end of the holocaust of the Second World War—some 50 million dead; nearly 80 years after the holocaust of the First World War—some 20 million dead; more than a century after half a millennium of Euro-American holocausts against the natives of the Americas, Africa and Asia—100s of millions dead—we reach a forlorn conclusion: whatever else the attributes of the tool-using ape—the one that built the spires of Notre Dame, lofted the “St Mathew’s Passion” and erected the sublime scaffolding of the “Tao Te Ching”–, whatever else you may say about us, say this: We are a holocaust-making species. We’re not only genocidal, we appear to be geocidal, too. (Not all, of course; only the worst of us: most of our politicians, businessmen, preachers and entertainers!) While the names, nationalities, colors of our victims change with the generations, this central fact remains: powerful fanatics can always adduce imperatives to justify their rampages against the herded, far less powerful masses. And, yes, what the Zionist state is doing in Gaza now is a holocaust in the most degrading tradition of that horror genre!

If we recognize this little Satan dancing within our limbic systems—this tribal Id-itching for power and control—one next wonders if the sane, peaceful majority of our species can ever succeed in straight-jacketing the lethal maniacs? The way the question was framed when I was a kid in post-WW II and fin-tailed-cars-America was this: Where were the “Good” Germans? Next: Didn’t they know what was happening? Couldn’t they have stopped it? And if they knew, and did not stop the gaseous slaughters—weren’t they guilty, too? (And implied, therefore: Didn’t they deserve Dresden and the rest?) And if they did not know … shouldn’t they have known? And weren’t they guilty for not knowing? (Hannah Arendt, contemplating the accountant/owlish demeanor of Adolf Eichman even invented a term for the guilt of not-knowing and not caring to know: “the banality of evil.”) Now, should we not ask, Where are the Good Jews?

In fact, there are many “Good Jews” who are as disgusted with the steel-toed boots of Zionism as are their Gentile kindred. In fact, they are apt to feel more kinship with the uncircumcised Gentiles (and their Shiksas) than with their Bible-thumping, war-drumming cohorts who have exchanged helmets for yarmulkas. In fact, many Semitic children of Abraham and Sarah and Abraham and Hagar are wondering: Where did these Ashkenazi fanatics come from and how did they seize control of our religion, our politics, our very identities?

One place one is not going to find “Good Jews” is in the US Congress, especially the Senate. According to Wikipedia, the US Senate is 14% Jewish (out of a total US population of 1.4 % Jewish!) A chosen people, indeed, but what combination of international financing, media control and political corruption accounts for such divine choosing? (Just for fun, check out the number of Blacks in that exclusivist club: In 2005 when Barack Obama defeated the voluble but vacant Alan Keyes for the Illinois seat, he became the 5th African-American senator in US history. As of now, it remains to be seen whether Ron the Hair-guy’s choice of Ron Burris to fill Obama’s seat will bring the number of our black senators to the grand total of 1 (out of a total US population of about 14%!).

But not to worry! As Veep-Elect Joe Biden famously declared: “You don’t have to be Jewish to be a Zionist!” Which means what exactly? Perhaps it means that whoever hoped for “change we can believe in” had better plant a few flowers at Paul Wellstone’s grave and pray for a resurrection. It means that the complexion of our president may change, but the Anglo-American-Zionist imperialist alliance that has bullied, ransacked, raped and murdered with a fair bit of impunity for some six decades now—that alliance is alive and well and still strutting at Balmoral Castle, Crawford Texas and in Bernie Madoff’s penthouse (at least for now).

It also means that Joe Biden can give Majority Leader Harry Reid a good run for his money as the dumbest politician in America today. Justifying the US Senate’s unanimous resolution to support Israel “in its conflict with Hamas,” the Good Mormon earnestly asked all Americans to consider how we would respond if Canada or Mexico were lobbing rockets at Buffalo, New York or San Antonio? Wouldn’t we respond just as the noble Israelis? Aside from the fact that most “Good Americans” don’t know the difference between a Zionist and a cinnamon twist, someone had best give Pastor Reid a brush-up course in Analogies.101. While Mexico may have weighty, recrudescent reasons to lob rockets our way, there is a considerable, rather inhospitable desert between our borders, and as long as their own crapulous politicoes can use the porous borders as a release valve to vent the steam of over-population, I believe we are fairly safe. And, even if a few jobless mariachi crooners suddenly go loco and fire a few rockets into the Salton Sea, would we then have the right to incinerate every man, woman, child and burro in greater Guadalajara? As for Canada—the main reason they have for sending rockets our way would be the inane TV shows we send their way. But we can probably rest easy. “ Law and Order” is not a real casus belli.

It is hard not to be cynical when one drives down Old Georgetown Road in the affluent D.C. suburb of Bethesda and sees a huge banner in front of a synagogue proclaiming, “We Support Israel!” First thought—a la Biden—what exactly does that mean? I have noticed this sign for several months now and each time I see it I wonder if there might be an amendment or two. And, each time, I sadly observe no refinement of the original impulse. The banneristas are what I like to call “Up to a Point” people. They reach some comfortable conclusion then will not go beyond it. They will kill and die, torture and be tortured to maintain that psychological comfort zone. If we were alien beings observing the phenomenon from space, we might shake our bulbous, gray heads and fly on. Unfortunately, the un-brain-dead among us are left dreading the next object of the proclamationists’ contemplation.

Second appertaining thought: Didn’t we used to have some laws and some consensus about the separation of Church (read synagogue, temple, mosque and shrine) and State? If the banneristas want to declare their allegiance to a foreign power in a my-country-right-or-wrong sort of jingoistic way, haven’t they broken at least one covenant with the rest of the community in which they flourish? Basically, if they insist on taking political positions—and what else are they doing?—can’t the rest of us start taxing them? Can’t we make a fuss? There must be a God-awful lot of tax moolah to be had from all those rattling collection plates and Bingo nights. (Not to mention Bernie Madoff type charities.)

A campaign to tax the warmongering churches and synagogues is one way we can begin to take back our world. And on that subject, we might wonder just how much of our tax dollars in our sinking US economy has been flushed down the porcelain bowl while supporting the Zionist entity’s acquisition and utilization of weapons of mass destruction? Since Anwar Sadat played footsie with Menachem Begin, there’s been an overt transfer of wealth of two billion a year in “foreign aid” to Israel and one billion a year to our favorite living mummy, Mubarak. A billion here and a billion there is real money—but it’s a pyramid of beans when compared to the covert aid in military equipment, training and intelligence. What if cheated, foreclosed-upon Americans, without health care, with lousy schools and a crumbling infrastructure, stopped hemorrhaging tax dollars to the murderous war-machinery of the American-Zionist empire?

If one needs anger and disgust to fire up the movement take a quick look at these US Representatives primping, preening and expostulating before the Israeli media of Ha’aretz, etc.:

(Frankly, I could not get beyond looking up the nose of Henry Waxman looking down his nose at the camera!) What are we paying these jackasses for? Have they made the world safe for democracy? Have they added an iota of humanity to the eternal struggle for light, truth, peace and understanding? Can we fire them? Can we rise up in rebellion? Can we stop being herded like cattle to election booths in order to pull levers for the sake of meaningless slogans that do not save a single child from these days of infamy?

Among the terrible pictures that I have seen on the Web, pictures that Palestinians and friends of Palestine have sent me, the most terrible was not of shattered, mutilated bodies, of blasted lives and unendurable pain. The most terrible was a picture of young Israelis standing within their secure borders (of occupied Palestine!) looking at the devastation being visited on the terrified civilians of Gaza a couple of miles away. And the unremitting horror of that image was that those who watched the bombs bursting in air and the puffs of death rising—they were smiling.

I searched my memory banks to recall where I’d seen such an image before. It was many years ago in a book about the Civil Rights struggle in America and it showed a lynching of a black man and a crowd of grinning whites—men, women and children in a party mood under the limbs of the tree upon which hung the burnt and crucified corpse. It used to be possible for travelers in the apartheid US south to purchase postcards depicting such scenes—and they had captions like, “One less Nigger to worry about!”

Nigger! Terrorist! How easily we have learned to dehumanize a population which was defrauded, whose lands were expropriated, whose children have been mutilated. What happens in Gaza will not stay in Gaza. What happens in Gaza will very likely happen in New York or London or Tel Aviv within the twinkling of an eye. We are all Niggers here! We are all “the other” in someone else’s nightmare. Very well, then. Let us stand with the Niggers of Gaza and everywhere against the grinning lynch mob. Niggers—unite!

Naomi Klein offers some good ideas.

We can boycott the lunatics. We can cut off their funding, the life-blood of money they suck out of the system. There’s a site, inminds, that names names and provides details.

Do we really need to spend $5 bucks for a cup of latte from Starbucks so that CEO Howard Shultz can be honored with a “Friend of Zion Tribute Award?” Must we stuff our faces with McDonald’s lousy burgers so that chairman and CEO Jack M Greenberg can work with the Jewish United Fund to “maintain American military, economic and diplomatic support for Israel; monitor and, when necessary, respond to media coverage of Israel”? We need a burger man monitoring our media? There are many more suggestions at the inminds boycott site. Let us cry out now and back it up with our dollars: Enough already!

Let us also boycott the cultural products of this insanity! Do we really need to see one more movie about the Jewish holocaust? Are there no other tragedies to ponder? Can I think of no better way to entertain my date than to take her to another Stephen Spielberg movie? Must I buy Elie Wiesel’s next book just because Oprah tells me I should? Can we learn to think for ourselves again?

A sound way to oppose the grinning lynchers is to expose them. Zionism can no longer be peripheral to American politics. We need to educate ourselves and demand that it be a central topic in our political campaigns. We can no longer excuse the genuflections of Obama, Biden, Hillary, et. al. before AIPAC—our most powerful lobby.

The Buddhists talk about Saddha—a questioning process for the soul. We grow through experience, self-interrogation about right and wrong—not by blind faith in a creed, an ideology, a religion, a national or ethnic identity. But, through study, meditation, good works and courage we may achieve a measure of enlightenment and a higher level of humanity.

Morality—our behavior towards our own human species and other species–supersedes any allegiance to the tribe. Whether it is Rabbi Hillel exhorting us not to do to others what we don’t want done to ourselves, or whether it is Jesus the Nazarene expressing the idea in the affirmative, the message is the same. Without empathy, we are a doomed species. Those without it will always be barbarous. Our modern “civilization” (finance capitalism with media/academic/military control) does everything to crush it, deny it. Arnold’s lines come to mind: “And we are here as on a darkling plane / Swept with confused alarms of struggle and flight / Where ignorant armies clash by night.” Yet we endeavor to preserve our empathy because we know without it we are lost, we are nothing. Our only real strength is in our relationships.

Is there an empathy gene? Can it be switched on, switched off? Can it be cultivated? Is it there in some and not in others? Have we been “naturally selected” over the millennia to turn it off as the warrior traits were favored over the nurturing? Nine years into the New Millennium and we are drowning in our own excrement, wedded to the hag of ancient ideas.

But some of those old ideas are like amaranths, always ready to bloom again with proper nourishment. About wisdom, Solomon wrote, “She is more precious than rubies: and all the things thou canst desire are not to be compared unto her.” And about opposing evil, exposing stupidity and acting with courage and morality: “Withhold not good from them to whom it is due, when it is in the power of thine hand to do it.”

One engineering student, Heba El-Sakka, responded to this military bombardment of her university stating, “My graduation project, the fruit of five years of hard study, vanished in a blink on an eye. It can’t be. It feels like the missiles took away a piece of me.” Anas, a science major, asked, “How can a book be the target of a military missile? I ask the Western world, isn’t that what you call ‘barbarity?’”

This current bombing–which comes after an eighteen-month air, land, and sea blockade–began mid-morning the previous day, December 27th, at the precise time when children walk home from school. Thus, the first bombs killed a number of school children. They were killed by US-made bombs and dropped by US-made F-16s.

So far, Israel has bombed several schools—including those UNRWA schools where Palestinians fled to escape the bombing–the Ministry of Justice, the Ministry of Education, a control room for Palestine Telecommunications Company, two animal farms, three charities, the fishing port, six ambulances, eight mosques, pharmacies, ambulances, a mental health center, the main prison, police stations (killing 120 civilian police officers) and homes throughout Gaza.

At this writing, there are over 434 Palestinians who have been killed (21% women and children) and over 2,300 Palestinians who are injured (57% women and children), many of whom will likely die as a result of a severe shortage of medicine and medical equipment. Moreover, unlike other wars–such as the Israeli assault of Lebanon in 2006–Palestinians in Gaza have nowhere to flee; they are locked in a prison controlled by Israel via air, land, and sea.

This is not the first time that Palestinians have been besieged by Israel in Gaza or elsewhere in Palestine or in refugee camps in the region. This is merely the latest siege in a sixty-one year history of massacres and ethnic cleansing.

Although Israel’s violations of the Geneva Convention have been highlighted in some international media—such as blocking fuel, medicine, food, and water from entering Gaza or preventing medical patients from seeking treatment outside Gaza—other aspects of the siege are largely ignored, particularly in the United States. Since June 2007, the Israeli-imposed blockade has held the people of Gaza hostage as it imposes its policy of collective punishment, which was escalated rhetorically as a shoah (Hebrew for Holocaust) by Matan Vilnai, Israel’s deputy defense minister in February 2008. Palestinians in Gaza, approximately half of whom are children, are held captive to the onslaught of Israeli attacks on Gaza.

Israel’s attack on education

The siege has not only drastically reduced the availability of medicine, fuel, and food, but also of educational materials. The Israeli government has obstructed educational accessibility in Gaza and prohibited students from leaving to attend university in the West Bank or abroad. Last fall, Khaled Al-Mudallal was one of those students trapped inside Gaza and prevented from returning to Bradford University; his case symbolizes the struggle for Palestinians’ right to education. The “Let Khaled Study Campaign,” which emerged from student organizations at Bradford, organized various petitions on his behalf; he finally returned to England last fall. However, hundreds of other university students remain trapped in Gaza.

It is this context of Palestinians being denied their right to education by Israel that must be brought to bear in discussions about the Palestinian Campaign for the Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel (PACBI). Israel’s practice of infringing upon the right to education coincided with the founding of the first Palestinian university, Birzeit, in 1975. In addition to curricular materials being subjected to Israeli censors—both intellectual material produced internally and imported— Palestinian students, faculty, and academic institutions have been in a noose. In the West Bank, the educational suffocation began when Birzeit’s founding president, Dr. Hanna Nasir, was arrested and deported to Lebanon in 1974. It continued with the closing of all Palestinian universities, schools, and kindergartens in the West Bank and Gaza, during the first intifada in 1987, ostensibly rendering Palestinian education illegal. Between 1988 and 1992, all universities remained closed, and Palestinian education was forced to go underground into people’s homes, mosques, churches, and community centers, which were repeatedly raided and during which people were arrested. Since 1992, when universities were allowed to reopen, Palestinians found themselves struggling to arrive at their schools as a result of curfews, closures, checkpoints. Since the start of the second intifada, Palestinian academic institutions have been military targets as eight universities and over three hundred schools have been shelled, shot at or raided by the Israeli army.

This brief history provides a crucial backdrop that led to the academic boycott’s genesis. But while progress has been made in Canada and England in building support for boycott, divestment, and sanctions (BDS), in the United States advocates of BDS have been met with charges of censorship and anti-Semitism. PACBI asks for solidarity among global organizations to support Palestinians by boycotting Israeli academic institutions, and calling for sanctions and divestment using a strategy similar to that of the anti-apartheid movement in South Africa. Part of its initial 2004 statement asks us to “refrain from participation in any form of academic and cultural cooperation, collaboration or joint projects with Israeli institutions” as well as promote divestment from Israel at our universities. The Canadian Union of Public Employees agreed to support the boycott in 2006. Significantly, in 2005 England’s Association of University Teachers (AUT) was the first to adopt the academic boycott, reversing itself after thirty-four days. A year later, the National Association of Teachers in Further and Higher Education supported the boycott in theory; after it merged with the AUT to form the University and College Union (UCU), the UCU endorsed a pro-boycott motion in 2007. Last year the UCU congress voted overwhelmingly to support the boycott process, albeit sans the word boycott.

Is Israel an apartheid state?

We know from South Africa that apartheid, in essence, means separation; separate, and most definitely unequal. Legal experts and leading human-rights figures including Archbishop Desmond Tutu, the current United Nations General Assembly President, Miguel D’Escoto Brockman, and UN human rights experts have used this term to describe Israel’s policies towards Palestinians. Even a former Israeli Attorney General, Michael Ben-Yair, recognized it as such when he wrote in 2002, “In effect, we established an apartheid regime in the occupied territories immediately following their capture. That regime exists to this day.” Other Israelis agree, including Amos Schocken, the publisher of the Israeli daily Ha’aretz, Zehava Gal-On, a Knesset member with the Meretz-Yachad party, and Israeli historian, Ilan Pappe.

It has been sixty-one years of Israeli apartheid and we believe the time has come for Americans to join the academic boycott of Israel. We supported an academic boycott of South Africa. The situation now, in the occupied Palestinian territories, is by far worse according to numerous South Africans who have experienced both, chief among them Tutu.

Israeli professor of history, Ilan Pappe, calls on his academic colleagues to support the academic boycott of Israel. He argues that change will not come from within, and that external pressure is essential for Israel to change. If Israeli academics were working for change, he explained, then the boycott might be seen as counterproductive. His writings on the subject make it clear that Israeli academic institutions are complicit. Indeed, the knowledge that upholds the system of apartheid and the current siege on Gaza is produced in Israeli universities. Further, Israeli professors and students alike, as a result of their compulsory, life-long military service are called up for reserve duty every year.

Support for the boycott also came from a handful of academics in Israel, some Israeli academics working abroad, and a significant number of Jewish academics. But there are many American academics who don’t support an academic boycott because they believe in the free exchange of ideas. We wonder why this value of speech seems to be more important than the lives, which we value, of those Palestinians and Lebanese whose lives and rights are regularly violated by Israel; moreover, as educators one of our fundamental axioms must be: justice and human rights. Dialogue has been attempted over the last sixty-one years and failed miserably. The argument that Israeli academics would be punished is equally misguided; these are not human rights, they are privileges. Access to research funds or travel to conferences is nothing when compared to the casualties suffered by Palestinian people and civilian infrastructure like its schools and universities. The Universal Declaration of Human Rights says nothing about academics having a right to academic freedom, but it is clear about one’s right to access education, a right that Palestinians do not have. Furthermore, in sixty-one years not one Israeli academic body or institution has ever issued a statement condemning the ethnic cleansing and occupation that continues to affect Palestinians’ daily lives.

What American Academics can do about Israeli Apartheid

Thus, in the midst of this carnage in Gaza, in solidarity with Palestinian civil society organizations that have called on the international community to support their call for BDS we urge our fellow American academics to work towards this end on their university campuses. In the midst of this latest massacre—the bloodiest massacre since 1967–the Palestinian Association of University Teachers issued a statement calling for those in the international community to “immediately impose boycotts, sanctions, and divestments on the Apartheid Israeli state,” and to demand the enforcement of all United Nations resolutions, particularly UN Resolution 194 calling for the right of return for all Palestinian refugees, and to demand that Israel comply with the Fourth Geneva Convention and international humanitarian law.

Likewise, the Palestinian National Boycott Committee, of which PACBI is a part, issued a renewed call to action this week:

While the US government has consistently sponsored, bankrolled and protected from international censure Israel’s apartheid and colonial policies against the indigenous people of Palestine, the EU was able in the past to advocate a semblance of respect for international law and universal human rights. That distinction effectively ended on December 9th, when the EU Council decided unanimously to reward Israel’s criminal disregard of international law by upgrading the EU-Israel Association Agreement. Israel clearly understood from this decision that the EU condones its actions against the Palestinians under its occupation. Palestinian civil society also got the message: the EU governments have become no less complicit in Israel’s war crimes than their US counterpart.

The large majority of world governments, particularly in the global south, share part of the blame, as well. By continuing business as usual with Israel, in trade agreements, arms deals, academic and cultural ties, diplomatic openings, they have provided the necessary background for the complicity of world powers and, consequentially, for Israel’s impunity. Furthermore, their inaction within the United Nations is inexcusable.

Father Miguel D’Escoto Brockman, President of the UN General Assembly prescribed in a recent address before the Assembly the only moral way forward for the world’s nations in dealing with Israel:

More than twenty years ago we in the United Nations took the lead from civil society when we agreed that sanctions were required to provide a nonviolent means of pressuring South Africa to end its violations. Today, perhaps we in the United Nations should consider following the lead of a new generation of civil society, who are calling for a similar non-violent campaign of boycott, divestment and sanctions to pressure Israel to end its violations.

Now, more than ever, the Palestinian Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions National Committee, BNC, calls upon international civil society not just to protest and condemn in diverse forms Israel’s massacre in Gaza, but also to join and intensify the international Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) campaign against Israel to end its impunity and to hold it accountable for its persistent violation of international law and Palestinian rights. Without sustained, effective pressure by people of conscience the world over, Israel will continue with its gradual, rolling acts of genocide against the Palestinians, burying any prospects for a just peace under the blood and rubble of Gaza, Nablus and Jerusalem.

We urge our fellow academics to not only support this statement in theory, but also in practice by pushing for academic boycott on your campuses as you return to classes this week. Supporting the human rights of Palestinians is not anti-Semitic; it is about human rights: Palestinian human rights. If this were any other captive population besieged for seven days with US-made materiel, we would be outraged and acting. So we are asking you to act now. It is our tax dollars at work that enables this massacre to take place. Let us work for justice, for consistency. Let us make apartheid, in all its forms, only present in history books.