A boycott bombshell in January was dropped by an 11th-grade American Jewish teenager, Jesse Lieberfeld, who won Dietrich College’s 2012 Martin Luther King, Jr Writing Award for his essay about his moral awakening when he realised his American Jewish culture was unavoidably identified with supporting Israel.

I once belonged to a wonderful religion,” says young Jesse. “I routinely heard about unexplained mass killings, attacks on medical bases, and other alarmingly violent actions for which I could see no possible reason. ‘Genocide’ almost seemed the more appropriate term… Whenever I brought up the subject, I was always given the answer that there were faults on both sides… I felt horrified at the realisation that I was by nature on the side of the oppressors. I was grouped with the racial supremacists.” Finally, at the synagogue, he asked, “I want to support Israel. But how can I when it lets its army commit so many killings?” and was told by the rabbi, “It is a terrible thing, isn’t it? But there’s nothing we can do. It’s just a fact of life.” “I thanked him and walked out shortly afterward. I never went back.

When American youth like Jesse are forced to give up being Jewish because of Israeli crimes, it cannot be long before Israel crumbles under the weight of its accumulated crimes.

2011 witnessed the rise of Internet attacks on Israeli government sites by public-spirited BDSers determined to enforce a kind of “cyber boycott”. While the Saudi government remains aloof from BDS support, an enterprising Saudi hacker disrupted several Israeli websites in January, prompting Israeli hacker Yoni (most likely a spin-off from the Israeli military’s IDF-TEAM, which brought down Saudi and Abu Dhabi financial exchange websites last year) to threaten war, including “mass credit card exposures, and denial-of-service attacks”.

“Yoni” piously told Ynet, “We do not operate against any specific nationality, and any person who operates against the group’s principles will be harmed, regardless of religion, creed or gender. In addition, I wish to note that the group regrets harm done to innocents and tries to avoid it as much as it possible.” Imagine if Israel adhered to such high standards in its relations with its neighbours — it would not need to hack and steal credit card information from anyone.

Another such anti-BDS feint is by the pro-Israeli Internet NGO Monitor, DPWatchDog and Israel’s Reut Institute, which called on Israeli government agencies to “sabotage” and “attack” the Palestine solidarity movement, and has claimed credit for “price tag” attacks on The Electronic Intifada by Dutch Foreign Minister Uri Rosenthal, the Palestine Return Centre, the persecution of the Olympia Food Co-op, the Berkeley Daily Planet and the “Irvine 11”. In “2011: The Year We Punched Back on the Assault on Israel’s legitimacy,” Reut lauds the emergence of “our network” and gives credit to the Israeli government and “the Jewish world’s mobilisation against the political assault on Israel”.

This conflation of “Jewish” and “Israeli” is the Israel-firsters’ trump card, perversely stoking anti-Jewish sentiment where none exists, the so-called “new anti-Semitism”, a direct result of Israeli crimes. “Price tagging” is usually associated with Israeli settler terrorism, vandalism, tree-felling, mosque burnings and murder. A particular zealous advocate, Andrew Adler, suggested in the Atlanta Jewish Times in January that US President Barack Obama could be on the hit list. That the Reut Institute associates itself with such criminal activity is yet another sign of Israel’s drift towards outright pariah status, and fuel for the anger of the Jesse Lieberfelds “regardless of religion, creed or gender”.

Boycott activities are not just confined to Israeli products abroad or visits by Westerners to Israel, but are now taking place regularly on land, at sea and in the air, as activists surround Israel and invent ever new ways to break its siege of the Occupied Territories.

The Global March to Jerusalem held a conference in Beirut in January confirming 30 March, the 36th anniversary of Palestinian Land Day, as the date for their land action: “From all continents we will converge and gather along the Palestinian borders with Jordan, Egypt, Syria and Lebanon in a peaceful march towards Palestine.”

Plans for “Sailing for Freedom” by French and other European activists are moving ahead, aiming for a September yachting regatta in the Mediterranean, starting in Marseilles and proceeding to Tunisia, Egypt and Gaza. Other flotilla organisers have been discussing a new strategy of sending isolated vessels from various ports instead of high-profile flotillas, with the intent of actually breaking the siege, as opposed to merely attracting world attention to Israel (and Greek and US) sabotaging of flotillas.

In April 2012 a Flytilla is scheduled to arrive at Ben Gurion Airport, to “again challenge the Israeli policy of isolating the West Bank”. “Welcome to Palestine” is a French-Belgian initiative, modeled on the Flytilla last July, when 500 people prepared to fly to Tel Aviv. Despite the nightmare that activists experienced both in European airports and in Ben Gurion Airport, 125 actually arrived, and this year, activists are determined to increase their numbers and continue to poke the Israeli watchdog.

“The Israelis have constructed enormous prisons for Palestinians. But prisoners have a right to visits,” says Adri Nieuwhof. The idea has spread to the UK, where towns are sponsoring people to risk Israeli wrath. European airlines are now more concerned with their image in the West than with Israeli authorities, and organisers predict that there will be less collusion to pre-screen flights arriving in Tel Aviv from Europe.

These particularly plucky activists continue the tradition begun in 2011 of a peaceful blitzkreig of Israel from all sides, risking life and limb, enforcing a kind of physical “citizens boycott” of Israel, complementing the spiritual one by the young Jesses. Their co-activists on the “homefront” are now combining the physical and spiritual by the now annual protest during the Israel lobby AIPAC’s annual conference in Washington DC. This year it is called OCCUPY AIPAC, scheduled for 2-6 March. Kalle Lasn, editor of Adbusters, declared: “The time has come for the Occupy Movement to demand an end to the Occupation of Palestine.” OCCUPY AIPAC will provide a sneak preview of “Roadmap to Apartheid” narrated by Alice Walker (roadmaptoapartheid.org).

Legal actions against BDSers continue to plague activists. But there are principled judges. Twelve French activists from Boycott 68 were acquitted 15 December on charges of “inciting discrimination and racial hatred” for calling on French shoppers at Carrefour supermarkets to boycott Israeli goods. The court judgment is expected to put the kibosh on further persecution of activists.

UK’s National Union of Students endorsed campaigns targeting divestment in Eden Springs and Veolia on 6 January. Veolia suffered considerably from a robust BDS campaign across Europe last year for its light-rail project in Jerusalem, but is defiant in expanding its activities in Israel without regard to their legality. Subsidiaries of Veolia own and operate Tovlan landfill which processes Israeli waste in the occupied Jordan Valley. To sweeten the tons of garbage it dumps illegally on Palestinian land, Veolia recently offered three containers for free waste collection to Palestinians in Jiftlik. Comments Omar Barghouti, “As Desmond Tutu said, we do not need anyone to polish our chains; we want to break them altogether. This is beyond humiliating; it is racist and criminal. Derail Veolia!”

Sanctions — and their removal, in the case of the Palestinians — require foreign governments to stare down the powerful world Zionist lobby. Few states dare to do this, but there are more and more cracks in the walls that Israel puts up.

Palestinian Prime Minister Ismael Haniya launched a historic tour of Egypt, Tunisia, Sudan, Turkey, Qatar and Bahrain in January, welcomed throughout the region as a David to the Israeli Goliath.

Three Hamas politicians also left Gaza via Egypt to attend a meeting of the Inter-Parliamentary Union in Switzerland in January, the first time since Hamas was democratically elected in 2006. Switzerland does not belong to the European Union, which put Hamas on its list of terrorist organisations to please Israel.

“We also met with the Red Cross in Geneva, the vice-mayor of Geneva and with Islamic organisations in different cantons,” Mushir Al-Masri said. A meeting at the University of Geneva to commemorate the anniversary of Operation Cast Lead, Israel’s attack on Gaza in December 2008, was attended by 500. “All persons who were complicit in the war crimes committed in Gaza should be taken to court,” Al-Masri told the packed hall. Socialist MP Carlo Sommaruga told the audience, “I was an activist against the racist apartheid regime in South Africa. Every person has a responsibility. Everyone can participate in the BDS movement.”

“To be internationalist is to pay our debt to humanity” says Fidel Castro and this can be read on many billboards in Cuba.

What is internationalism?—cooperation among people and nations, states my dictionary. The book of definitions maintains that internationalism is a principle of communism and socialism. It is the belief of ideological leaders such as Lenin, Fidel and Che.

Che wrote in his essay, “Socialism and Man”, that proletarian internationalism isn’t just a duty but a necessity. If revolutionary leaders forget this, Che wrote, the revolution will lose its inspiration and imperialism will benefit.

Che was also known for having severely criticized Soviet Union leadership for having lost its internationalism with the world’s proletariat and the Third World. Following up on Che’s critique, I find it important to criticize communist and socialist parties, and governments led by these parties, which let down people who are oppressed by, or invaded by, national or foreign powers.

Internationalism in action

1. Internationalists must support resistance fighters against invasions. Therefore, one must chastise political parties and groups that give political or moral support to those who call themselves the Iraq Communist Party as it is part of the Quisling government the USA terrorist state set in. ICP leaders live side by side the invaders in the Green Zone. That there are organizations in the United States, UK, Denmark and elsewhere, which call themselves communist or socialist parties and that cooperate with the world’s greatest terrorist state is incomprehensible, shameful, immoral and anti-internationalist.

2. The same applies to people who still support the Zionist state of Israel, which commits genocide against the Palestinian people. Millions of decent people have gotten together to support Palestinians in many ways, including Ships to Gaza. In Denmark, four groups of people have challenged the state’s terrorist laws by donating solidarity aid to the secular leftist PFLP which is part of the Palestinian resistance. Rebellion (Denmark), Fighters and Lovers, Horserød-Stuthoff Association (veterans of WWII resistance fighters imprisoned in Horserød and Stuthoff prisons), and TIB’s club (local carpenters near Copenhagen) have aided both PFLP and FARC, Colombian armed liberation movement.

3. Internationalist can not cooperate with US-NATO aggressive wars, which always have the goal of controlling that country’s economy and politics for capitalist profits. It is shameful that many experienced socialists and communists, as well as naïve progressive people, have backed up West’s big capitalist plans to take over Libya, and thus have bombed Libya back to the stone age. Denmark was one of only six countries that dropped tens of thousands of bombs on Libya, destroying much of it infrastructure, schools, hospitals…In fact, Denmark dropped more bombs on Libya than it has on any other country in its history, Afghanistan included. And the pilots were cowards as there was no resistance by Libya’s air force, already decimated.

This conflict has little to do with the Arab Spring movement. It is a conflict between internal war lords, with ordinary people involved who wished to increase democracy but who were misled by US-NATO whose forces seek to control Libya’s oil and avoid a gold-based currency that Gaddafi was promoting amongst all African countries. Now, US-NATO has placed a lackey government in Tripoli just as they did in Afghanistan and Iraq.

4. Internationalists must also criticize comrade governments, such as Cuba and ALBA governments in Latin America, when they make big mistakes regarding internationalism. We can’t be true comrades-solidarity activists by keeping our mouths shut when this occurs. Such is the case with their support of the brutal government of Sri Lanka, which practices genocide against the minority Tamil population. Ever since independence from Great Britain, in 1947, the majority Sinhalese governments and chauvinist Buddhist monk system has discriminated against Tamils. They have constantly been treated as second class citizens, their language and religions relegated to secondary status without national recognition. Even pogroms have been employed with the brutal murder of many thousands on various occasions. And since May 2009, following the end of a 26-year civil war, ethnic cleansing in the traditional Tamil homeland in the north and eastern areas is the rule of the day.

Cuba and ALBA have spoken only positively of their historic ties with the Non-Aligned Movement (NAM), to which Sri Lanka is a member, but so are 130 other nations. One cannot, in the name of protecting each nation’s sovereignty, avoid critique when one or more of these nations oppresses or conducts pogroms and genocide against part of the population. Nor can we accept as an excuse the immoral geo-political game that nearly all governments of whatever color play.

We shall also criticize Bolivia, Uruguay, Brazil and other Latin American progressive governments for helping the US and France in their ouster of the only decent and only democratically elected people’s president in Haiti’s history, Jean-Bertrand Aristide. These Latin American governments actually assist the US’s 2004 coup d´état against Aristide by placing occupying troops in the small country, seeking to dampen the people’s anger. These progressive governments should, instead, back up the people’s desire to bring their president back to state power, just as they sought to do for President Zelaya in Honduras where national capitalists and generals kicked him out of office, with background support once again by the United States government.

5. On the personal and organizational plain, internationalism operates when workers of a major firm ask people to boycott a product because of the mistreatment of the workers by the firm. This is the case with Coca-Cola whose workers in Colombia asked us to stop buying the “drink of the death squad” (David Rovics song), because it hires mercenaries to murder workers who seek to organize a union and struggle for collective bargaining. Workers in other countries, such as Guatemala, and farmers in India have asked the same.

It is with joy that I can state that here where we gather (carpenters’ hall in Valby, Denmark), this union is one of the few local unions and political or grass roots groups in Denmark that has boycotted Coca-Cola. This is something any and all individuals can do. It is just a soda drink. So drink something else. Boycotting Coca-Cola is just like boycotting all products from Israel and Sri Lanka. It is a simple act of solidarity, of internationalism.

Charlotte and I have just returned from a six week trip in India where two of my books (“Tamil Nation in Sri Lanka” and “Sounds of Venezuela”) were published by New Century Book House, Tamil Nadu. The Tamil book concerns the history and contemporary life of the Tamil people in that island-nation, and the need to act in solidarity with them. The Venezuela short book concerns this people’s efforts to create a better world for themselves and solidarity with all peoples. When people asked us where we are from we often replied that we are “internationalists”. Interestingly, many Indians understood our meaning and were pleased to think in terms of being brothers and sisters in the world.

This concept, and feeling, of brotherly love, of internationalism has taken off in a bigger way, in 2011, than in many decades. It started in Tunisia, and has expanded to the indignados in Spain, to the anti-capitalists in Wall Street and in hundreds of cities throughout the US and the West.

We have much to criticize and yet much to be glad for as 2012 opens. We must remember and appreciate those who set us off on this new anti-capitalist/anti-imperialist, non-violent and democratic revolution—from the martyr in Tunisia (street vendor Mohammed Bouazizi) and his Iraqi spiritual brother a bit earlier, shoe-thrower Muntazar al-Zaidi, to Occupy Wall Street protestors to Bradley Manning and Julian Assange and co-workers at Wikileaks, who helped spark it all by blowing the whistle on the war criminals. These modern-day Paris Commune resisters without arms—OWS and Occupy the World—are growing and they are presenting a vision and with it a program-in-discussion that must be studied and supported.

Internationalism is an endless struggle, an endless challenge. It does not end even when one or more of our political parties take over the governing reigns. We activists from the streets must always keep our wary eyes pinned on the leaders, regardless of their names, just as our clear eyes cast light upon humanity’s future.

In December 2011, when an Israeli soldier shot him from a short distance with a tear gas canister, half of Mustafa’s face went missing. More soldiers laughed as his horrified family tried to accompany him to a nearby hospital, according to activists present at the scene. Only the mother was finally able to obtain a special permit from the Israeli military, which allowed her to be with her son.

Mustafa’s crime? He, along with Palestinian, Israeli and international peace activists, protested the besiegement of Nabi Saleh by the illegal Jewish settlement of Halamish. Halamish has existed since 1977 and drastically grown in size and population ever since, taking over privately-owned Palestinian land. As of late, Nabi Saleh has been struggling for mere survival as its fresh water spring has also been seized by settlers under the watchful eye of the Israeli army.

Mustafa died so that the village of Nabi Saleh could live. The struggle will continue for years.

A young man may now be gone, but he also left behind a legacy which has become the cornerstone of the augmenting international solidarity with Palestinians around the globe.

The struggle for justice in Palestine is ultimately between a Palestinian — protesting, with a rock or rifle in hand — and an Israeli, often equipped with the latest killing technology the arms industry has to offer. The former fights for basic rights — land, water, freedom, equality and such – while the latter is determined to intimidate, silence, imprison, and, when compelled, commit murder or even large scale massacres to prolong Israeli occupation and military dominance over Palestinians.

Things are not always so clear-cut, of course. Some Palestinians have learned with time the benefits of co-existing with the occupation. Some Israelis have jointly struggled with Palestinians against the inhumanity of the occupation, the brutality of the military and the illegality of the land seizure.

One such Israeli is Tamar Fleishman, of Machsomwatch. She is simply indefatigable. Her mission is to document the daily violations committed by the Israeli army at a series of checkpoints extending between Ramallah (in the West Bank) and Jerusalem. Showing a complete disregard for international law, and even the official foreign policy of the United States, Israel has insisted that the entirety of Jerusalem is Israel’s eternal capital. But illegally occupied East Jerusalem — or al-Quds — has been the beating heart of Palestinian national, religious, and even intellectual identity for many generations. To split the heart from the body, Israel has been choking occupied East Jerusalem since 1967, encircling it with illegal Jewish settlements, Jewish-only bypass roads, and a dizzying checkpoint structure intended to create a permanent divorce between the West Bank and a city that Palestinians see as their future capital.

Armed with a camera and her own willpower, Tamar is relentless. She knows by name all the tired-looking children who sell tea in plastic cups, newspapers and gum at all the checkpoints. She narrates their stories of humiliation, pain and struggle. She tells of the people crammed between glass walls, barbed wire and blocks of cement. As long as these women and men keep the checkpoints populated, Jerusalem will maintain its historic attachment with the rest of Palestine.

And Tamar, the habitual visitor of these very spots, will resume her daily toil to convey the stories that capture the essence of this enduring conflict.

But without the numerous media outlets that challenge the inherent pro-Israeli bias, censorship and apathy of mainstream media, Mustafa’s story and Tamar’s photos would have remained confined to Nabi Saleh, or some checkpoint manned by cruel soldiers.

In fact, the story of Palestine is getting more than a good share of coverage in old and new alternative media outlets. More, 2011 has concluded on a positive note as far as media coverage of this conflict is concerned. In an article entitled, ‘The media consensus on Israel is collapsing’, Jordan Michael Smith reveals that “slowly but unmistakably, space is opening up among the commentariat for new, critical ideas about Israel and its relationship to the United States” (salon.com, December 21). While Smith rightly credits the academics Tony Judt, Stephen Walt and John Mearsheimer for “expanding the permissible,” the pressure on mainstream media has been obstinately championed by numerous individuals from all walks of life. It is they, who, for many years, refused to subscribe to the convenient narrative that venerates and vindicates Israel — not only at the expense of Palestinians, but also at the expense of the United States’ foreign policy.

The popular solidarity movement continues to score new victories with each passing day. Israel’s attempt at countering its gains seems to achieve little more than inviting controversy, which actually recruits more support for Palestinian rights.

One platform that has become very successful in recent years, and particularity so in 2011, was the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) movement.

“The BDS movement is growing relentless,” wrote Eric Walberg, author and editor at al-Ahram Weekly. His ‘BDS Updates’ regularly highlight the overwhelming success of the worldwide initiative that is partly modeled on the triumphant anti-Apartheid movement of South Africa. His year-ender updates for 2011 included the cancelation of an Israel tour by the famous musician Natacha Atlas (though sadly, not all artists were so principled). Walberg also reported that “in a wonderfully shocking divestment move, Israeli powers-that-be are furious at BNP Paribas for shutting down its operations in Israel. (They) believe the bank’s board of directors caved to pressure groups, in the first case in years of a foreign bank leaving Israel…” Such reports are now stable items crowding social media channels on a regular basis.

True, 2011 had its share of tragedy. Human lives were lost in Palestine. But hope was also sustained by the sacrifices of numerous ‘ordinary’ people who collectively managed to achieve many hard-earned feats. It is these numerous small victories that will make it difficult for Israel to continue with its futile campaign to occupy and dominate a people so determinately entrenched in their land — from the small village of Nabi Saleh to the proud Palestinian city of al-Quds.

Among depositions, the Palestinian Centre for Human Rights in Gaza cited the Fourth Geneva Convention and the 2002 Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court which prohibits “the transfer, directly or indirectly, by the Occupying Power of parts of its own civilian population into the territory it occupies.”

This was just in time to honour the UN-endorsed International Day of Solidarity with the Palestinian People, marked on 29 November to coincide with the anniversary of the UN vote for the Partition Plan, and first marked in 1976. Boycott Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) activists in 10 European countries staged more than 60 actions as part of a Day of Action calling on supermarkets and governments to “Take Apartheid off the Menu”.

In the UK, 26 November was declared a national BDS Day of Action targeting Britain’s largest supermarket chain Tesco, the only supermarket in the UK that is openly selling illegal settlement goods. Activities ranged from street protests, e-lobbying, re-labelling, flash protests and internet-working. While Agrexco may be kaput as Israel’s largest supplier of fresh produce to Europe, Mehadrin has taken its place and was the target of the European Day of Action Against Israeli Agricultural Produce Exporters.

Demonstrators in the US boarded buses run by Veolia to educate passengers about Israel’s apartheid policies. Boston activists launched a campaign challenging the Massachusetts Bay Commuter Rail Company’s contract with Veolia. In Baltimore, activists demonstrated at Penn Station during rush hour, singing a freedom song and drawing connections between the Palestinian and American struggles for equality, linking Veolia’s profiteering from racism and exploitation in Israel/Palestine to the City of Baltimore’s contracts with its own workers.

In a cynical rearguard bid to attract Christmas shoppers, Israel Lobby activists launched Buy Israel Week November 28, hastily put together to counter the growing BDS tide. Luke Akehurst, director of We Believe in Israel, called for two BUYcott days, featuring discount coupons, sponsored by StandWithUs, El-Al, the Jewish National Fund and other such pillars of Israeli apartheid.

While American sympathisers were politely tolerated in their protests against Veolia’s transport activities in Israel, their compatriots in Palestine proper were violently arrested for confronting Veolia and Egged, the two major culprits, and targets of BDS activists in Europe.

Inspired by their Western supporters, six Palestinian Freedom Riders emulated the legendary Freedom Riders of the American south of the 1960s, riding settler bus 148 near the illegal settlement of Psagot. Much like those courageous black and white Americans (including many Jews) of yesteryear, the Palestinians were forcibly removed and arrested.

This new generation of Freedom Riders will further inspire Westerners for whom “It is a moral duty to end complicity in this Israeli system of apartheid,” according to arrested Hebron resident Badee Dwak. Fellow arrestee Basel Al-Araj minced no words: “The settlers are to Israel what the KKK was to the Jim Crow South — an unruly, fanatic mob that has enormous influence in shaping Israeli policies today and that violently enforces these policies with extreme violence and utter impunity.”

Pulitzer Prize-winning author Alice Walker wrote:

Board the buses to Everywhere. Sit freely. Go into Jerusalem with my blessing. Like many of my country people, I have witnessed this scenario before and know where it can lead. To a straightening of the back and a full breath taken by the soul. Some of us have shed blood, others have shed tears. Some have shed both. All sacred to the cause of the dignity we deserve as beautifully fashioned citizens and Beings of this Universe.

Sadly, as he honoured the Freedom Riders of the 1960s for their courage and dedication fifty years ago, President Barack Obama had no such words for the equally brave ones in Israel today.

In the Arab world, 29 November activities took BDS the logical extra step, with 7,000 Jordanians gathering in the Jordan Valley and marching to the Israeli border to condemn Israel’s settlement expansion, calling for the liberation of Al-Quds (Jerusalem), home to the Al-Aqsa Mosque, which is the second holiest site for Muslims. “We sacrifice our souls and blood for Al-Aqsa Mosque and Al-Quds,” the Jordanians chanted after noon prayers, calling on Jordanian authorities to scrap its peace treaty with Israel.

Even as 100,000s of Cairenes gathered to defend the Egyptian revolution in Tahrir Square 26 November, a rally co-sponsored by Al-Azhar and the Union of Muslim Scholars attended by 5,000 called on Muslims to fight “Jerusalem’s Judaisation”. Al-Azhar Imam Ahmed Al-Tayeb said: “We are telling Israel and Europe that we shall not allow even one stone to be moved there.” Activists chanted: “Tel Aviv, Tel Aviv, judgment day has come.”

In other boycott news, a victory for a clutch of brave and principled tennis fans arrested for protesting at the New Zealand Women’s Tennis Open last December, which featured Israeli Shahar Peer. After a year of trials, they were finally exonerated in a landmark decision by High Court Justice Paul Heath, who said “Disruption of an individual’s enjoyment of a sporting event was not the same as disruption of public order.” Quipped a free John Minto, “Annoyance is not a crime, annoyance is part of being in democracy.” The judge said it was clear the protest was meant to convey to the tennis player the concerns at the way Israel treated the Palestinian Territories.

In contrast to the tidal wave of Western artists now boycotting Israel-linked events (the Yardbirds just cancelled a scheduled Tel Aviv show), iconic singer and actor Barbra Streisand performed at a fundraising gala in Los Angeles for Friends of the IDF. Streisand supports OneVoice, which promotes a two-state solution that fails to address structural injustices and has long been discredited. Guests of honour included media magnate Haim Saban and former Israeli Military Chief of Staff Gabi Ashkenazi, who commanded the attacks on Gaza in 2008-09 which killed 1,400 Palestinians. An Israeli propaganda video about Streisand’s appearance at the gala features armed Israeli soldiers running in a scenic sunset.  A shameful sunset in her own career.

In a wonderfully shocking divestment move, Israeli powers-that-be are furious at BNP Paribas for shutting down its operations in Israel. Bank of Israel Governor Stanley Fischer, Finance Minister Yuval Steinitz and Banks Supervisor David Zaken believe the bank’s board of directors caved to pressure groups, in the first case in years of a foreign bank leaving Israel. BNP Paribas has had operations in Israel since 2003. The bank claims it sustained serious damage from the Greek crisis, yet the only foreign branch it is closing is its Israeli one.

Unfortunately, as yet, no international governmental sanctions against Israel have been imposed in the past few months. On the contrary, the US continues to oppose attempts to boycott Israel, putting great pressure especially on Arab League states, which officially support BDS. Under US anti-boycott legislation enacted in 1978, US firms are prohibited from compliance with any such boycott directly or for a third party, and are required to report any such request to the US Department of Commerce. The WTO is an accomplice, as Israel is supposed to be treated as a Most Favoured Nation by member states.

This pressure has unfortunately had its effect. Morocco and Gulf Coordination Council members, especially Qatar, Bahrain and Oman, acceded to US arguments that boycotting Israel harmed the “peace process” and turn a blind eye to third-party economic relations with Israel and even quietly conduct direct trade.

But the Arab Spring is forcing these truant governments to wake up to their people’s demands. And the US showpiece for its vision of the new Middle East — Iraq — doesn’t dare end boycott activities, which were the hallmark of Iraqi politics prior to the US invasion.

Judaism.com sells what it calls “essential Judaica,” which includes items such as imprinted kippot (skullcaps) for weddings and bar mitzvahs, kosher wines and a small but amusing collection of “pet Judaica.” The site was completely inaccessible on Friday. On Saturday typing “Judaism” into your browser displayed a message claiming that the site was down because of “routine maintenance” and that Judaism.com would be operational on Sunday. The maintenance must have been more difficult than anticipated. The site was not restored until Tuesday afternoon. There was neither mention of Iran or hackers nor any indication of the four-day disappearance of Judaism from cyberspace.

I understand that I could be accused of taking pleasure in someone else’s troubles, but I found this incident risible. Could the cyber-attack on Mr. Perelman’s web site be a small part of a larger organized government campaign from Tehran to retaliate for the Stuxnet virus and various other assaults which are now generally recognized to be part of an American/Israeli effort to punish or overthrow the Iranian regime? Or could the attack have been perpetrated by a young Iranian seller of Islamic religious paraphernalia who erroneously believes harming Judaism.com is an appropriate Muslim response to the Israeli threats to bomb Teheran nuclear facilities? The possibility that my Hanukkah candle order could become collateral damage in a nasty covert war being waged between Israel and the United States against Iran made me laugh.

I have had three short telephone conversations with Mr. Perelman who refuses to be interviewed about the attack. He did tell me that he had informed the FBI and that they were currently attempting to find the culprit(s). I wonder what the Feds would be able to do if they located the hackers in Iran.

When I first heard Shlomo Perelman had called about the digital intrusion, I imagined newspaper headlines such as “Iranians Attack Judaism, Israel Vows It Will Retaliate.” Shlomo, not surprisingly, did not see the humor in the situation. Although his website was fully restored on Tuesday afternoon, December 6, and he indicated that the monetary lose incurred was not too bad, Shlomo Perelman still feared that if the cyber-attack became widely known it would somehow hurt business and the image of Judaism.

To my Jewish readers: Judaism.com actually has some nice stuff. Check out the menorahs and Jewish calendars. Just remember to observe the Palestinian boycott campaign and make sure nothing you buy is made in Israel or by settlers from the Occupied Territories.

Given that the governments of Greece and Italy are apparently being seized for direct political rule by the financial system, one might suggest that dispensing with democratic niceties is the international order of the day. Perhaps, then, Israel won’t find itself all that isolated after all. But it might. In any case, developments in Israel and the commentary that they have triggered should provide the opportunity to forcefully brush aside any lingering illusions about Israeli establishment ‘moderation’. Such illusions are little more than an unfortunate hangover from years gone by, when Israeli colonial rule found unlikely allies even among ostensible Western progressives.

The authoritarian challenge to Ariel Sharon’s democracy

The English-language webpage of Ha’aretz, Israel’s daily ‘newspaper of record’, offers an interesting view of the sinking ship that is liberal Israeli hypocrisy. The site currently features a section titled ‘Project Black Flag’, borrowing the imagery from the Israeli legislature’s Kadima opposition, whose representatives demonstratively waved black flags in the Knesset earlier this month in protest against the current wave of authoritarian legislation being pushed through by Israel’s governing coalition. (Kadima, recall, is the party launched in 2005 by Ariel Sharon and continuing to champion his legacy.) Below, I’ll turn to some of the noteworthy associated commentary. First, its ideological and strategic context deserves some sustained attention.

Historically, the ample Western arms, economic backing and political-diplomatic cover that have enabled Israeli actions were given to an Israel that was widely understood to ‘shoot and cry’. Wars were forced upon it by nefarious enemies, and whatever abuses occurred during Israel’s valiant self-defence were committed with a pained restraint. ‘We can forgive the Arabs for killing our children,’ Golda Meir is quoted, ad nauseam, as explaining to the world. ‘We cannot forgive them for forcing us to kill their children.’ Incidentally, that ‘the Arabs’ (or the IHH, or whatever other designated enemies of Israel) are to blame even for Israeli atrocities remains a familiar theme of Israeli diplomacy – and maddeningly, variations on this theme are often echoed by many people who really ought to know better. Israel, anyway, internally distraught at what it was being forced to do, featured in this story as a brave but enlightened character beset by difficult dilemmas, both strategic and moral.

An exaggerated and idealized projection of the pluralism internal to the Jewish Israeli political system has been internationally exploited to destructive effect for many decades. This has been widely observed by critical observers of the US and Israeli political scenes. In his 1983 tome concerning US policy and the Palestine question, Noam Chomsky, for example, expressed his usual understated disgust at this spectacle. In the aftermath of the horrendous massacres in 1982 Lebanon, Chomsky observed, US Congressional liberals leveraged signs of dissent within Israel (which were largely driven by the tactical opposition of the Israeli Labour Party) to justify further increases in US aid to finance Israeli military power and settlement construction.

Israel, so the logic went, was proving itself to be a vibrant democracy. Chomsky wrote: ‘Presumably there is … a lesson here as to how to obtain further victories in Congress. It would be interesting to know how the reported 400,000 people who demonstrated in Israel in protest over the massacres will react to the fact – and fact it is – that the practical outcome of these efforts, given the way things are in the United States, was to accelerate the militarization of Israeli society and its expansion into the occupied territories.’¹ Unfortunately, judging from recent Israeli ‘moderate’ commentary, there is reason to suspect some may have been quite satisfied.

Idealized exaggeration of Israeli pluralism has long been very widespread indeed, even in critical circles. For example: ‘One often hears statements,’ as the late Tanya Reinhart observed, interpreting the detailed accounts of state policy available in Israel’s press ‘as signifying that the Israeli media is more liberal and critical of Israel’s policies than other Western media. This, however, is not the explanation.’ More to the point, she explained, it has less reason to be inhibited: ‘Things that would look outrageous in the Western world are in Israel considered natural daily routine.’² Nonetheless, so suffocating are the terms of discussion of Palestine in the West that critics are sometimes tempted to latch on to even the most morally bankrupt tactical dissent within the Israeli establishment to legitimize their own opposition.

This reflex serves to build up unrealistic expectations concerning prospective challenges to Israeli colonial rule from within the Jewish Israeli political system, to derail serious analysis and principled strategy, and sometimes to downplay the need for international action. Worst of all, it can take the form of ‘moderate’ opinion in the West demanding that Palestinians simply try to partner with ‘moderate’ Israeli establishment opinion – in other words, demanding Palestinian acquiescence to colonial rule (in thinning ‘peace process’ packaging) in a spirit of false internationalism. Palestinian resistance politics can then be dismissed if they fail to orient themselves towards dialogue with the increasingly elusive force that is the Israeli ‘peace camp’.

For at least some leading Israeli intellectuals, the strategic value of such distortion is apparent. An Israel that appears to ‘shoot and cry’ is understood to be better positioned to keep receiving the arms, economic backing and diplomatic cover necessary to keep firing than one that shoots and cheers. Hence the current dilemma.

Ilan Pappé, identified from the late 1980s as one of the Israeli ‘new historians’ who challenged established Zionist orthodoxy, recounts an instructive exchange he had in the ’90s with a colleague at Haifa University, Arnon Sofer – a rather iconic ‘organic intellectual’ for the forces of racist Israeli demographic management. Pappé cites Sofer as explaining: ‘Between you and me, within four closed walls, you are one of us. But it is good that you are beautifying Israel’s image abroad.’³ In Pappé’s case, such exchanges were predictably and definitively cut off by his political record in the ensuing years. They nonetheless reveal much about the outlook of advocates (à la Sofer) of an internationally palatable Israeli colonialism.

The visible rightward shift of Israeli politics is causing considerable unease in such quarters (as expressed in the recent commentary of Ari Shavit, sampled below).

A fight that liberals can’t easily win

The political dynamics that have set Israel on its current political trajectory deserve serious consideration. Indeed, within the Jewish Israeli political arena, on purely logical grounds, one can understand why the contest between unapologetic ethno-religious chauvinism and liberal Zionist hypocrisy is gradually being resolved at the expense of democratic pretense.

People interested in this contest (and prepared to plug their noses while facing an icon from each side) ought to watch the 1985 debate, available online, between Harvard University’s Alan Dershowitz and Rabbi Meir Kahane. For those without the nose plugs or stomach for the video, I’ll review a few relevant highlights.

Dershowitz (now here’s a real shock) offers little of original interest. Kahane, on the other hand, represents an interesting phenomenon. Since this debate finds Kahane in what for him constitutes good form, and at what for him most closely approximates good behaviour, I feel compelled to emphasize that this is a man who really does personify caustic, fascist venom (videos where he quite transparently expresses a visceral, hateful glee at the mass killing of Palestinians are also widely available). An open advocate of theocracy, violent expulsions and indiscriminate killing of civilians, Kahane explicitly urged his adherents to carry out paramilitary attacks against Palestinians along these lines, and many did and do (for his part, Kahane was assassinated in late 1990).

What is interesting about Kahane for present purposes is the way, rare if not unique, in which he presents the unapologetic Zionist case against liberal hypocrisy to an English-speaking audience. Notably, one can see – not in Kahane’s career or organizational work, which I won’t dwell on here, but in the logical course of the argument – the way in which he uses the consensual political Zionist demand for a Jewish majority state in the former Palestine to undercut the principled political basis for any genuine democratic opposition. While I do not wish to simply conflate the two, it is precisely the congruence of Kahane’s politics with Israel’s established political mainstream that makes the former at once dangerous and revealing.

I’ll confine this brief review of Kahane’s comments to two issues: (1) the indiscriminate killing of Palestinian civilians and (2) the contradiction between democracy and the consensual political Zionist commitment to racist demographic management.

(1) Asked about instances in the preceding period in which his adherents indiscriminately killed Palestinians in the occupied West Bank, Kahane positions these actions within (albeit towards the right of) the established Zionist canon. He explains: ‘Innocent people? This is a picture of a man named David Raziel [Kahane shows a portrait of Raziel]. He’s a national hero in Israel. There is a village named after him, Ramat Raziel. Streets in Jerusalem, in Haifa, in Netanya, named after Raziel. Do you know who this hero was? There’s a stamp – a stamp! – in Israel with his picture on it. You know who David Raziel was? He was the head of the Irgun in the 1930s … David Raziel, the national hero of Israel, planted a bomb in the Arab marketplace in Jerusalem. It went off and it killed 27 Arabs.’ Those who continue in this tradition, Kahane later urges, should be fully supported by state forces: ‘it’s a tragedy that those Jews took the law into their own hands. It was the job of the government of Israel to do what they did. … those so-called “terrorists” were attempting to put the fear of God into the Arabs. Because the only thing that the Arab will ever understand is fear.’ (Consider: to what extent does this sentiment fundamentally differ from official ‘deterrence’ thinking?)

(2) More revealing, in many ways, are the exchanges between Kahane and Dershowitz on Arnon Sofer’s intellectual stomping ground: state management of the demographic balance in territory governed by Israel. This is among the central defining axes of Israeli politics, and its treatment during the debate is extremely illustrative.

In short, Dershowitz’s rhetorical flailing and Kahane’s forthright rebuttal stand together as a telling display of the pummeling that ostensible liberalism is likely to face in honest, principled debates that assume shared political Zionist premises (especially on the question of ‘demography’).

The debate moderator poses (1:00:49-) a basic question: Do ‘the Arabs’ have the right ‘to become the majority in Israel’ and ‘by democratic and peaceful means’ to challenge the state’s Jewish character?

Loathe to really admit Palestinians into such important ‘in-house’ debates, Dershowitz responds by immediately reframing the matter. Dershowitz begins: ‘We don’t even have to reach that issue: what if Jews decide by democratic principles to vote against principles that Rabbi Kahane holds sacred? What if Jews tomorrow were to vote to repeal the Law of Return [which guarantees any Jew defined as such by the state to gain immediate citizenship and residency rights]? I would fight tooth and nail against that … But Israel is a democracy. And if Rabbi Kahane and I, together, fail in our efforts to persuade Jews to maintain the Law of Return then we will have lost our fight for democracy. … We have to fight that [demographic] battle, we have to look at it as a challenge.’ In facing this challenge, Dershowitz suggests that it is actually Kahane who undermines the Judaization of Palestine by advocating a Halachic (Jewish theocratic) regime which will dissuade Jewish immigration and settlement from abroad. Thus, Dershowitz asserts, a liberal democratic Zionism provides the sturdier defense against the threat posed by indigenous Palestinian demography (i.e., resident existence).

Kahane replies: ‘I must say that was impressive. Dr Dershowitz took four minutes brilliantly not answering the question. The question wasn’t whether it was a challenge. Of course, it’s a challenge; agreed, it’s a challenge. The question was: Assuming the Arabs “beat” us, would you be willing to accept that? The question is, Do they have a right to be a majority, in theory? Under democracy, of course they have that right! Under Zionism – not religious Zionism, but the Zionism of a man named Herzl, who wrote a book called The Jewish State – of course they don’t have that right.’

Underpinning Kahane’s polemical strength are the basic points of contact between his caustic calls for anti-Palestinian action and the policies of Israel’s founding Labour Zionist mainstream. ‘We have,’ Kahane declares to the audience, ‘to face up to truth. We have to face up to so many truths. Among which is that Ben-Gurion, when he was the prime minister, didn’t allow an Arab to leave his village at night without a special pass [recall that Palestinian citizens of Israel faced military governance from 1948 through to 1966]. Which I think is a magnificent example of democracy.’

Likewise, albeit in a somewhat roundabout way, Kahane reminds the audience that debates about demography, ‘population transfer’ and exclusion of Palestinian refugees were not simply triggered by post-1967 Israeli policy in the West Bank and Gaza or the associated fundamentalist settler camp. ‘There’s not one Arab refugee living in Lebanon who comes from the West Bank,’ he emphasizes. ‘Every single one comes from the Galilee, from Haifa. There’s not one Arab refugee in Gaza who comes from the West Bank. Half of them come from Jaffa, and from Ramle, and from Lydda, and from Be’er Sheva, and from what is now Ashdod and Ashkelon [all locations from which Palestinians were ethnically cleansed in 1948].’ Kahane’s point, for all the nominally defensive rhetoric with which he packages these remarks, is that if Israel accepts liberal democratic premises ‘there will be a Law of Return for Arabs – and rightly so, under democracy.’ Therefore, pursuit of consensual political Zionist aims is taken to require a rejection of democratic norms.⁴

The relative coherence of Kahane’s politics in this debate when compared to the rearguard tactical arguments made by Dershowitz is, in strategic terms, more apparent than real. Kahane’s doctrinal rigidity (especially combined with articulate Brooklyn English) involved an assault on the enlightened liberal pretenses that have greased Israel’s arms procurement machinery in the West since the state’s inception. In an earlier era, Ben-Gurion famously derided the politics of the Zionist right – specifically, those of Ze’ev (Vladimir) Jabotinsky and his Revisionists – as ‘verbal maximalism’. To speak publicly of aggressive objectives at the expense of building the international support needed to realize them was, for Ben-Gurion, a novice move and a marker of political naivety.

Nowadays, concern for the possible ideological discomfort of Western patrons is apparently weakening as a constraint on the terms of Jewish Israeli political discussion, and the genuine sway of liberalism is eroding even more visibly.

‘Kahane is smiling’

Gideon Levy is one of those rare Israeli journalists who has staked out a position of genuine democratic opposition to state policies. Among his many periodic pieces with a standard unifying theme – ‘damn, mainstream Jewish Israeli politics are a disaster that just keeps getting worse’ (I paraphrase) – was an article published during Israel’s most recent elections and titled simply, ‘Kahane won’. A recent Ha’aretz news report (November 16) picks up on the same theme.

Describing this month’s Jerusalem rally marking the anniversary of Kahane’s assassination, where ‘euphoria gripp[ed] the massive crowd’, the reporter samples some of the video entertainment charging the ‘jubilant’ atmosphere:

Clip after clip that had aired on Israel’s commercial television stations over the last year was shown on the big screen of the Heichal David hall in Jerusalem’s Romema neighborhood. There was a report broadcast by Channel 10 just two days ago about Ariel Zilber’s new song, “Kahane was right.” A Channel 2 report that praised longtime [Kahanist] activist Itamar Ben-Gvir as a “skilled media machine and as “a kind of celeb” … Then back to Channel 2, which showed [National Union MK Michael] Ben-Ari explaining how he would respond to rocket fire from the Gaza Strip: “24 hours, and there would be no more Beit Hanun [a city in northern Gaza which has been especially hard hit by indiscriminate Israeli artillery fire].” The crowd went wild. “Today, Rabbi Kahane is sitting in heaven and smiling,” Ben-Gvir told the audience. … “Today, it isn’t just Ben-Ari,” Ben-Gvir noted. “In Yisrael Beitenu, in National Union, even in Likud they understand that Kahane was right.”

In earlier decades, the idealized international image of internal Israeli politics helped to colour perceptions of such displays. Consider the best known massacre of Palestinians by a follower of Kahane’s teachings: Israel Defense Forces (IDF) physician Baruch Goldstein’s February 1994 shooting spree in Hebron’s Ibrahimi mosque, which killed 29 Palestinians and wounded another 150. An important poll, relayed by an Israeli commentator in the immediate aftermath of the killings, ‘established that at least 50 per cent of Israeli Jews would approve of the massacre, provided that it was not referred to as a massacre but rather as a “Patriarch’s Cave Operation,” a nice-sounding term already being used by religious settlers.’ The commentator noted that this exposed as false mythology the notion that ‘with the exception of a few psychopaths, the entire nation, and its politicians included, has resolutely condemned Dr Goldstein, even though, luckily for us, all major television networks in the world were last week deluded by this untruth.’⁵ But crucially, the myth for the most part held.

Following the 1994 massacre, the Yitzhak Rabin government sealed the occupied West Bank and Gaza, repressed the ensuing wave of Palestinian protests (killing 33 Palestinians in the process), and put the Palestinian population of Hebron under a nearly six-week curfew to protect the settlement of Kiryat Arba (the messianic scourge which terrorizes Hebron, and in which Goldstein had resided); Rabin then moved on to join in accepting the 1994 Nobel Peace Prize.⁶ This is a balancing and juggling act for which the Israel of Binyamin Netanyahu is less well suited.
Today, the main organizations of the Jewish Israeli establishment ‘left’ are not only weak on principle (recall Labour Party leadership of the Defense Ministry that managed the assault on Gaza in 2008-9, and Meretz Party support for the Israel Air Force massacres that opened the campaign), but are also in disintegrating electoral freefall and facing a striking loss of their public influence. The implications of the possible collapse of the liberal Israeli establishment’s domestic political sway are too numerous to even try to list here. (Those interested in details can peruse Haaretz’s so-called ‘Project Black Flag’.) Here I’ll wrap up by sampling some strategic concerns expressed by veteran commentator and Ha’aretz editorial board member Ari Shavit.

Shavit, in his way, is attuned to global power relations and Israel’s place within them. Early this year, as Egyptian popular rebellion challenged the Hosni Mubarak dictatorship, Shavit mused: ‘Following half a century during which the Arab world has been governed by dictators, the rule of tyranny is cracking at the seams. The Arab masses are no longer willing to suffer.’ That the Obama administration did not rigidly support Mubarak’s rule in the face of this crisis was, for Shavit, a ‘betrayal’. ‘It could be that the American empire was evil’ in its reign over the past several decades, Shavit explained, but it has been beneficial for many and relied on a base of Third World ‘fear’ and ‘obedience’ that the US leadership is not doing a good enough job of maintaining.

Only time will tell whether the Obama administration’s attempt to maintain basic strategic military and political-economic continuity in Egypt without Mubarak’s personal participation will succeed in the face of the impressive popular resilience and courage on display in Egypt’s streets and factories, but one needs to be a truly callous hack to consider these developments from the vantage point of imperial strategy. Just to give a sense of where Shavit’s coming from.

This month, with the Israeli far right on a triumphant and internationally visible march through the Israeli mainstream, Shavit decries the fact that ‘Israel’s enlightened elite’ seems to have ‘lost its public hegemony’. While the forces of populist chauvinism may revel in this turn of events, Shavit pleas, their international implications cannot be ignored. ‘Israel’s alliance with the United States and Europe is based on shared values, and harming these values will erode the alliance.’

Shavit continues: ‘…without the elite of Rehavia, Ramat Aviv and Ra’anana, Israel would have no existence. Without left-wing scientists, left-wing intellectuals and left-wing high-tech entrepreneurs, Israel would be a backward country, weak and pathetic. It would not be able to rule over Judea and Samaria [the biblical designation for the West Bank], it would not be able to defend itself [!] against Iran, and it would not survive in the storms of the Middle East.’

Standing on such fine and noble principle, it’s no wonder that politics the likes of Shavit’s are facing a possible domestic collapse.

Conclusion

Internationally, we also need to face up to some obvious truths. One of which is that the problem is not merely the Meir Kahanes and Avigdor Liebermans. There exists a grim and ominous continuity running from the explicit articulation by legal representatives of Israel’s Kadima-Labour coalition of ‘economic warfare’ against the people of Gaza at the outset of 2008; through to the spoiling of 50,000 infant vaccines in April of that year, as even the general storage unit of Gaza’s Health Ministry was starved of fuel; and on to the deployment against Gaza at year’s end of soldiers among whom t-shirts soon circulated featuring a veiled, pregnant woman, her belly targeted in the crosshairs of a rifle, alongside the slogan ‘one shot, two kills’.⁷

That ongoing shifts in Jewish Israeli politics are increasing the clout of unabashedly genocidal political forces is very dangerous. The upsurge of democratic resistance to the regional order that has developed since the ‘Arab spring’ is, for its part, being variously interpreted in Israel (to take another pair of Ha’aretz articles from the past week as examples) as a deterrent to aggressive Israeli action and a possible trigger for it. But however these dynamics play themselves out, the burden of containing the Israeli threat cannot be forced solely upon those targeted by Israeli nuclear warheads. For Israeli planners, the prospect of an erosion of Israel’s base of support in the West continues to function as a deterrent to escalating crimes – albeit, for now, a fairly weak and unreliable one. For those of us in the West, ongoing efforts to attach tangible social costs to the current course of Israeli policy are thus the priority.

The movement for Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions has done much to expand and enrich efforts in this direction. I’ll not contribute much of substance here to the necessary accompanying strategic discussions, but will briefly point out a couple of political traps that should be avoided.

The first, in light of the above, is an exaggeration of the pluralism of the Jewish Israeli political scene or excessive reliance on the dissidents within it. In earlier decades, critics in the West often suggested that identification with Jewish Israeli peace forces was an advisable means of engaging with the Palestine question (a politics that partially overlapped with the prominent public role of high-ranking dovish veterans of the Israeli military establishment in countering right-wing opposition to the ‘peace process’, especially in the US). There are of course genuine democratic movements doing important work under difficult circumstances in the Jewish Israeli political arena, mostly outside of the established ‘peace camp’. But those oriented towards the deteriorating terms of Jewish Israeli political discussion are, in the main, not positioned to constructively set the tone for critical international debate.

The second possible trap is an unhealthy fixation on Jewish dissent in the West. This is an awkward issue which I will only touch on briefly here. But the flip side of ongoing attacks on Palestinian citizens of Israel as fundamentally external to the Israeli polity is the state’s orientation towards those, abroad as well as resident, whom it defines as Jewish. Whether or not the current proposed legislation codifying ‘Israel’s status as the nation-state of the Jewish people’ passes, this is part of the Israeli political system’s basic orientation. Some quick points: It is necessary to develop a political climate of organized opposition that challenges both established Israeli state structures and the international organizations attached to them (e.g., the Jewish Federations of North America). Such opposition needs to be guided by an understanding that these formations do not truly represent the constituencies in whose name they claim to act (i.e., Jews everywhere; in this regard the overlap between predominant Zionist and anti-Semitic doctrine is striking). However, while specifically ‘Jewish’ oppositional politics will be a necessary part of this process, they are best positioned as a very narrow part of the broader challenge that is required.

On principle, a careful approach here is necessary. If we reject, as we ought to, the idea that Jewish identity (as defined by whatever clerics) should bestow upon an individual social and political rights in Palestine/Israel that trump those of the country’s indigenous people, then we ought also to challenge the legitimacy of any political weight that accrues to an individual’s political positions by virtue of this definition. And anyway, for good reasons, this particular kind of identity-based oppositional politics suffers from some basic strategic weaknesses that will inevitably limit its strength. Fixation on Jewish dissident politics can thus simultaneously skew dynamics within our movements, limit the scope and integrity of oppositional work on the Palestine question, and reproduce a new dead end in the tradition of automatic deference to the Israeli ‘peace camp’. Discussion of how to avoid this trap needs to be pursued seriously, but elaboration of the issue is for another place.

The fundamental point is this. The ‘almost total silence about Zionism’s doctrines for and treatment of the native Palestinians’ in ostensibly enlightened Western circles was, as Edward Said put it, ‘one of the most frightening cultural episodes’ of the 20th century.⁸ Broad and coordinated effort will be required to overcome its effects. In the face of the ongoing surge of unapologetic chauvinism within Jewish Israeli politics, no illusions about Israel’s internal political scene should linger or be allowed to calm international concerns. Given the established character of the Israeli leadership, the character of the domestic pressure it faces, and the balance of power between Israeli state forces and the Palestinians, intense concern is called for. At the very least, this moment should prompt some left ‘house-keeping’ through which allied hesitation in challenging the Israeli political system, as a system, is cleared away.

There are hopeful signs that the growing movements against austerity and for an expansion of social and democratic rights are incorporating critical engagement with the Palestine question within their development. No advocate for equality can support an Israeli state drifting towards theocracy and employing battlefield techniques against civilian populations in ‘defense’ of an anachronistic colonialism. The international political space opened by the crumbling of liberal Israeli mythology should be filled with unflinching popular demands for equality, in Palestine as elsewhere.

1. Noam Chomsky, The Fateful Triangle: The United States, Israel and the Palestinians (Boston: South End Press, 1983 & 1999), p. 110.
2. Tanya Reinhart, The Road Map to Nowhere: Israel/Palestine Since 2003 (London: Verso Books, 2006), p. 9-10.
3. Ilan Pappé, Out of the Frame: The Struggle for Academic Freedom in Israel (London: Pluto Press, 2010), p. 30.
4. For context and details on the politics of ‘transfer’, in particular, see Nur Masalha, Expulsion of the Palestinians: The Concept of ‘Transfer’ in Zionist Political Thought, 1882-1928 (Washington: Institute for Palestine Studies, 1992) and A Land Without a People: Israel, Transfer and the Palestinians, 1949-96 (London: Faber & Faber, 1997); and Jonathan Cook, Blood and Religion: The Unmasking of the Jewish and Democratic State (London: Pluto Press, 2006).
5. For further citations and details see Israel Shahak and Norton Mezvinsky, Jewish Fundamentalism in Israel (London: Pluto Press, 1999), p. 99-108.
6. Graham Usher, Palestine in Crisis: The Struggle for Political Independence after Oslo (London: Pluto Press in association with the Transnational Institute and the Middle East Research & Information Project, 1995), p. 20.
7. Michele K. Esposito, ‘Quarterly Update on Conflict and Diplomacy, 16 February-15 May 2008’, Journal of Palestine Studies (vol. 47, no. 4), p. 124.
8. Edward Said, The Question of Palestine (New York: Vintage Books, 1979 & 1992), p. 113.

Freedom of expression is the Matrix, the indispensable condition of nearly every other form of freedom.

– Justice Benjamin Cardozo

The Press has the right to print or not print anything it wants. That right should be supported. There is, however, another issue — that of journalistic ethics. Since OWS began, there has been a deluge of misinformation, innuendo, and inflammatory speech in print in the nation’s newspapers. I defend the right of newspapers to misinform, but I also defend the rights of citizens to push back after being misrepresented in print. It should not be necessary to own a large printing press in order to respond to a news organization.

Sometimes economic issues are at play. Newspapers don’t want to offend the money/business interests in the community. Sometimes inaccurate reporting is the result of a lack of knowledge of journalists. After all, how many schools teach a course in ‘Anarchy’? Actually, there are some schools that do have such a course of study. Surprising as it might be, one school that has a history of offering a well-taught class in ‘Anarchy’ is Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute. RPI is a highly respected right-leaning institution in Troy, New York. RPI receives military contracts.

The article below is a response to an editorial. The response was submitted to the paper days ago, but has not been published. It probably won’t be. Across the country many do not have Internet connections. The only means of responding to an editorial is in the newspaper itself. A conundrum — a Catch 22.

A Response

The Editorial in the November 15, 2011 issue of the Bennington Banner deserves a reply. Thank you for recognizing OWS. As a fan of newspapers, I place great importance on the Press. It is the fabric that ties a community together. In many locations, it is the only means of mass communication. This places a heavy moral burden on the Press. I had my first newspaper job in 1952. In those days, The Big Story was a favorite TV program about newspapers. Journalism was a highly respected calling.

There are a couple of issues with the editorial about OWS. First is the use of the word “Anarchy”. It is used as a highly inflammatory, prejudicial term implying violence, often to misinform the reader. In my day, labeling — without explanation — even a small part of the movement as such would be called ‘sloppy journalism’. It is a label that paints all with the same brush. Christians, Jews, Democrats, Republicans all have members who exhibit violence. No one should ever condemn the entire group for the actions of a few.

… Professor Howard Zinn, author of the People’s History of the United States… describes anarchism in his book Declarations of Independence as following: “Anarchists, I discovered, did not believe in anarchy as it is usually defined — disorder, disorganization, chaos, confusion, and everyone doing as they like. On the contrary, they believed that society should be organized in a thousand different ways, that people had to cooperate in work and in play, to create a good society. But anarchists insisted, any organization must avoid hierarchy and command from the top; it must be democratic, consensual, reaching decisions through constant discussion and argument.”… What attracted me to anarchism was its rejection of any bullying authority — the authority of the state, of the church, or the employer. Anarchism believes that if we can create an egalitarian society without extremes of poverty and wealth, and join hands across all national boundaries, we will not need police forces, prisons, armies, or war, because the underlying causes of these will be gone.¹

”

Bennington OWS is organizationally much like Professor Zinn describes. Maybe the most important fact about OWS is that it is a horizontal movement. There is no hierarchy. No chain-of-command. No leaders. No followers. It is not only about money and banks. Yes, the misadventures of Wall Street are an issue – but only one of many issues. OWS is anything that the people want it to be – locally and globally. It is by far the most democratic organization that anyone could wish for.

It is about building sustainable communities. It is about organic farming. It is about justice for all. It is about transparency. It is about smart meters and dumb grids. It is about giving consumers choice. It is about advocating for victims of injustice. It is about hunger and homelessness. It is about home foreclosures. It is about the environment. It is about health care. It is about fracking. It is about war and peace. It is about drones. It is about the use of cluster bombs and land mines by the USA. And — my personal favorite — it is about the First Amendment. The First Amendment, as written, applies only to the Congress – but the spirit of the First Amendment applies to all. Why is censorship of political speech so common in Vermont? Why is there censorship of political books in Vermont? Why are public buildings allowed to be used for political debate, when some on the ballot are excluded — as in the Bennington Fire House? It might be legal, but it is not in keeping with the spirit of free political speech. It gets even worse. Dennis Steele, a Vermont Candidate for Governor being was arrested. His crime: he wanted to participate in a candidates’ forum.

One thing I know about Bennington OWS is that is it dedicated, passionate, empathetic, and altruistic. It is the most community oriented movement in the area. Imagine dedicating many hours every week to the community, for no money and no personal gain. Everyone is encouraged to join with us to build a fair, just, sustainable Vermont for all.

And finally, I thank the writer of the Editorial for mentioning boycotts. Many of us have been pushing for boycotts and strikes for decades. Bennington OWS is action oriented. You’ll be hearing from us. Stay tuned in.

1. An excerpt from Food Not Bombs.

Atlas, who grew up in Belgium, is of Egyptian, Moroccan and Palestinian ancestry and has Jewish roots. She was appointed a Goodwill Ambassador for the United Nations Conference Against Racism in 2001, which was boycotted by the United States and Israel, for raising issues about US treatment of African Americans and Israel’s treatment of Palestinians.

The flip side of cultural boycotts of Israel is to prevent Israeli cultural figures from presenting a false image of Israel abroad. Idan Raichel, “Israel’s most popular dread-locked musician,” according to the Israeli Ministry of Foreign Affairs, prominent in Masa (Journey) Israel tours to recruit young Jews from American and Europe to Israel, is more than just a musician, seeing Israel’s cultural icons as “ambassadors of Israel in the world, cultural ambassadors, hasbara ambassadors, also in regards to the political conflict”.

Raichel’s hasbara message prompted American Jews to protest a recent Masa “journey” across the US, using the Internet to coordinate leafletting at the concert tour sites. His recent album “Open Door” prompted signs at the demos entitled “Does ‘Open Door’ include Palestinians?” and “Don’t entertain apartheid.” “Idan Raichel can’t support apartheid,” countered one concert-goer, “He sleeps with a black woman!” Raichel is part of the Brand Israel campaign, which aims to bring arts to the world in order to, in the words of an Israeli foreign ministry official, “show Israel’s prettier face, so we are not thought of purely in the context of war”.

A Finnish campaign is under way to cancel a new deal to purchase Israeli drones. Like Canada, the US, Turkey and Russia, Finland has been attracted by Israeli know-how in lethal weapons. The Finnish Defence Ministry recently signed an agreement on drone purchases, in defiance of EU regulations. This prompted Foreign Minister Erkki Tuomioja to break ranks with his colleagues and declare, in reference to Israel, that “No apartheid state is justified or sustainable.” Earlier while in opposition, Tuomioja himself signed a petition calling for an end to the arms trade with Israel. As foreign minister, Tuomioja could demand the suspension of EU-Israel Association Agreement, which gives Israel special trade access to EU markets, but on condition that Israel respects human rights.

The EU’s “common foreign policy” has been a bitter disappointment, especially with respect to Israel, as consensus prevents principled nations within the EU from acting, and attempts to enforce EU regulations are easily buried in bureaucratese. For instance, the Seventh Framework Programme (FP7) provides research funds for universities and companies from Israel as a result of the Association Agreement. Despite Israel´s consistent violation of the Agreement’s human rights clause, Israeli companies such as Ahava, “academic” institutions such as Technion, and worse, Elbit Systems and Israeli Aerospace Industries receive European funding through FP7 on an equal footing with EU member states.

EU Scientific Commissioner Máire Geoghegan-Quinn insisted that there was no reason to exclude Israel’s Idan Raichel company from EU-related activities since she did not have “any information about any radar systems Motorola Israel might or might not have installed in the West Bank”. Geoghegan-Quinn is not reading her inbox, where she would have found reports to the European Commission by the Palestinian Campaign for the Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel and “Stop the Wall” documenting Motorola’s work in Israeli settlements in the West Bank.

An ambitious boycott-divestment effort by the newly launched KARAMA (Keep Alstom Rail And Metro Away) and the ongoing “Derail Veolia and Alstom” campaign, celebrated an important victory. Alstom lost the bid for the second phase of the Saudi Haramain Railway project linking Mecca with Medina, worth $10 billion, due to its involvement in Israel’s Jerusalem Light Rail (JLR) project. Alstom also suffered when the Dutch ASN Bank and the Swedish national pension fund AP7 excluded it from their investment portfolios. Veolia has lost more than $12 billion worth of contracts following boycott activism in Sweden, the UK, Ireland and elsewhere.

A national conference of Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP) took place from 14-16 October at New York’s Columbia University, bringing together 400 American student activists from a hundred campuses. SJP activists have made famous their mock checkpoints, walls, and die-ins on campus, to bring home the reality of Israeli persecution of Palestinians.

Delegates brainstormed about divestment campaigns and how to counter the power of AIPAC. Codepink’s Medea Benjamin, who gained world celebrity status for interrupting Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu’s speech to Congress in May, explained how to lodge a complaint with the Office of Congressional Ethics against the American Israel Education Foundation Congressional trips to Israel, which violate Congressional Ethics Rules.

Columbia University grad student Dina Omar said the conference helped create a “solid network and apparatus to help protect students from being systemically targeted by institutional power.” A week before the conference, the Anti-Defamation League (ADL) reported on the “growing strength” of SJP. Ironically, it was a 2010 ADL statement calling SJP one of the top 10 “anti-Israel” groups in the US that pushed 67 chapters to unite. Max Ajl said: “The timing was key – everywhere there was the buzz that we are part of a broader mobilisation, the Occupy Wall Street movement. There is now both the opportunity and the incentive to link these struggles.”

Interestingly, there is division in the anti-BDS ranks over how hard to crack down on BDSers by claiming that Jewish students might be made “uncomfortable”. While the ADL lauded the US Department of Education’s 2010 decision to expand the 1964 Civil Rights Act to include “anti-Israel and anti-Zionist sentiment that crosses the line into anti-Semitism”, the Jewish Council for Public Affairs (JCPA) cautions Jewish groups against suppressing free speech by invoking civil rights laws. “Lawsuits and threats of legal action” should only be used “for cases which evidence a systematic climate of fear and intimidation coupled with a failure of the university administration to respond with reasonable corrective measures.”

Ali Abunimah, co-founder of Electronic Intifada and author of One Country: A Bold Proposal to End the Israeli-Palestinian, argues that the ADL strategy is “inherently anti-Semitic because it assumes incorrectly and ahistorically that all criticism of Israel equals criticism of Jews”, and thus condemns all Jews for the racism practiced by Israel. “It seems that at least some in the pro-Israel community fear that this aggressive campaign of censorship and intimidation may do more to cast Israel’s defenders as thugs, than to improve Israel’s image on campuses.”

In interview with Time, Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan questioned why sanctions are promoted by the US when dealing with Iran and Sudan, but are taboo with regards to Israel. Sanctions imposed by the United Nations on Israel would have resolved the issue of Mideast peace long ago, he said. “Until today, the UN Security Council has issued more than 89 resolutions on prospective sanctions related to Israel, but they’ve never been executed.” The reason the international community had stood by without sanctioning Israel was that the Quartet – which includes Russia, the United States, the European Union, and the UN – was not genuinely interested in resolving the Mideast conflict or “they would have imposed certain issues on Israel.”

The UK’s Trades Union Congress voted to reconsider its ties with Israel’s national trade union federation Histadrut, reaffirming its policy to encourage affiliates, employers and pension funds to disinvest from, and boycott the goods of, companies who profit from illegal settlements, the Occupation and the construction of the Wall.

In a most unusual boycott move, on 1 September, London cultural activists from “Beethovians for Boycotting Israel” sang their own version of the Ode to Joy repeatedly during a concert by the Israeli Philharmonic at London’s Royal Albert Hall, finally bringing the live BBC broadcast to a halt. “Israel, end your occupation, There’s no peace on stolen land. We’ll sing out for liberation till you hear and understand.”

South African students endorsed a nationwide boycott against Israel, and South Africa’s Advertising Standards Authority dismissed complaints relating to a radio advert by the lead guitarist of Faithless in support of the South African Artists Against Apartheid: “Hi, I’m Dave Randall from Faithless. Twenty years ago I would not have played in apartheid South Africa; today I refuse to play in Israel. Be on the right side of history. Don’t entertain apartheid. Join the international boycott of Israel.”

Legendary NBA basketball player Kareem Abdul-Jabbar declined to appear in Israel due to “concerns arising from Nakba day violence.” Abdul-Jabbar was slated to show his new documentary film about racial segregation in basketball, On the Shoulders of Giants, and was due to compete for the “Spirit of Freedom Award” at the Jerusalem Film Festival.

Facing an intense Europe-wide boycott campaign, Israel’s largest produce exporter, Agrexco, which markets produce from Israel’s illegal settlements as “product of Israel”, filed for bankruptcy this summer. Its financial woes, however, pale next to those of French multinational Veolia, an urban systems corporation which provides light rail services that link West Jerusalem with illegal Israeli settlements in occupied East Jerusalem and the surrounding West Bank.

Since the beginning of the Palestinian-led campaign in 2005, Veolia has lost contracts worth more than $14 billion. A recent merger between Veolia’s transport division and a subsidiary of the main French state investment fund shows the French government’s solution to Veolia’s problems: let the taxpayers finance Veolia’s income losses. Veolia is cutting its activities from more than 40 countries, but not the one country — Israel — that is the main cause of its financial woes.

Involvement in the light rail project violates Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) guidelines. Considering that Paris is the seat of the OECD and Israel a new member, this is particularly ironic.

Meanwhile, Israel’s Sodastream took a direct hit in Sweden, its largest market, when the Coop supermarket chain announced it would stop all purchases of its products. The main production facilities for Sodastream are located at Mishor Adumim, Israel’s largest settlement in the occupied West Bank, where it profits from tax benefits enjoyed by companies in industrial parks in illegal settlements. Unilever has already bowed to BDS pressure, in July announcing plans to move its Bagel and Bagel pretzel factory to a location within the green line. Sodastream itself has shown signs it will probably comply, also announcing it will build a new factory within the green line, expected to begin operations in 2013, the same year the lease on the Mishor plant is due to expire.

The campaign against Sodastream has quickly spread around the world, including the US. In March, a petition calling on Bed Bath & Beyond to stop selling Sodastream products (as well as products from Ahava, the settlement-based cosmetics company) was delivered to 15 locations up and down the US West Coast, from Seattle to Los Angeles, and a group of activists dressed as brides held a mock wedding inside Bed Bath & Beyond in Los Angeles calling on concerned brides everywhere to strike Sodastream (and Ahava) off their bridal registries.

The struggles are uphill, especially in Australia. A peaceful BDS action against a Jericho cosmetics outlet, which sells Dead Sea salts, was attacked in July by the Victoria police, and 19 Melbourne activists face fines of $32,000. The attack followed the call by Victoria Jewish Community President John Searle for the police to “stamp down harder on aggressive protesters”. Currently in the US, France and Greece, hundreds of pro-Palestine activists are facing criminal charges for nonviolently standing up for Palestinian human rights.

Then there’s the herem law passed 11 July by the Knesset that allows “victims” to sue boycott promoters. This bill follows upon the Knesset’s recent Nakba law, which defunded any institution that acknowledged the ethnic cleansing of Palestine in 1948.

Israeli peace group Peace Now immediately set up a Facebook group “So Sue Me, I’m Boycotting the Settlements”. “We’ve never done a boycott of settlements. We are doing this now because of the boycott law,” Peace Now activist Etai Mizrav said. “The moment they decided to shut mouths, we decided it is time to tell the Israeli public that whoever supports settlements supports Israel’s isolation and harms the state.” A coalition of allied groups said they would ask Israel’s Supreme Court to overturn the law. “It is really absurd that victims of the occupation should be paying damages to the occupiers if they organise a boycott of settlement products,” coalition spokesman Idan Ring said.

A divestment victory this summer was the decision by Norway’s 450 billion euro Oil Fund to exclude two Israeli firms — Africa Israel Investments and its engineering subsidiary Danya Cebus — for their settlement activities.

As for sanctions, the big news this summer was the UN Palmer Report which criticised Israel’s attack on the Freedom Flotilla last year for its excessive use of violence, but nonetheless supported its siege of Gaza, despite an earlier UN Human Rights Commission report condemning it as illegal. The lack of any real sanctions against Israel by the world body prompted the Turkish government to send its Israeli ambassador packing. Israel’s killing of at least five Egyptian border guards this summer prompted Egyptian protesters to send their Israeli ambassador packing too, and the Israeli ambassador in Jordan fled amid worries over a similar protest there.

There was a setback for those trying to bring Israeli politicians to account. Last week Britain amended a law that allowed for issuing arrest warrants against Israeli politicians and military figures under terms of universal jurisdiction, which holds that some alleged crimes are so grave that they can be tried anywhere. Such a warrant was issued against Israeli opposition leader Tzipi Livni in 2009.

Despite opposition from the imperialist countries led by the US, the 2001 WCAR became a flashpoint for focusing international attention on two issues: reparations for slavery and the liberation of Palestine. It involved a convergence of several events: the official meeting of member states that adopted the DDPA; the NGO Forum that approved a substantially stronger document (the WCAR NGO Forum Declaration); a two-day general strike led by COSATU against the privatization of social services in South Africa/Azania; and daily protest marches outside the conference venue regarding land reform, Palestine, and reparations. The government meeting was marked by a walkout of the US, Canadian, and Israeli delegations.

A 2009 review conference took place in Geneva, Switzerland following the 2001 WCAR and reaffirmed the DDPA. The US, Canada, Israel, and seven other rich countries boycotted this meeting as well.

Now, ten years after the Durban conference, delegates representing the member states of the UN will discuss the DDPA again – this time in Midtown Manhattan. The Obama administration, along with the governments of Australia, Canada, the Czech Republic, Israel, Italy, and the Netherlands, have already announced plans to boycott the gathering. Combined with this boycott, the lackeys and mouthpieces of the US ruling class are already working to derail the conference with false charges of anti-Semitism and jingoistic references to the 9/11 attacks (see for example the 6/3 New York Daily News editorial “President Obama must organize an international boycott of obscene, anti-Semitic Durban III confab” which contains blatant falsehoods about the content of the DDPA).

Why Is the US Empire So Afraid?

The Obama administration’s decision to boycott the September 2011 conference in NYC was announced in a June letter from Joseph E. Macmanus, acting U.S. assistant secretary of state for legislative affairs, addressed to some members of Congress. The letter claimed that the US was boycotting, because the Durban and follow-up conferences have “included ugly displays of intolerance and anti-Semitism.”

Two years ago, the Obama administration released a more detailed press statement regarding its decision to boycott the 2009 review conference in Geneva. Titled “U.S. Posture Toward the Durban Review Conference and Participation in the UN Human Rights Council,” the statement opposed the reaffirmation of the DDPA and outlined the conditions for a document that would be tolerable to the US:

It must not single out any one country or conflict, nor embrace the troubling concept of “defamation of religion.” The U.S. also believes an acceptable document should not go further than the DDPA on the issue of reparations for slavery.

The Obama administration’s reasons for boycotting the September 2011 conference in NYC and the 2009 review conference in Geneva are pretenses for shutting down criticism of Israel. Out of 341 paragraphs, the DDPA contains four paragraphs on Palestine, hardly any “singling out” of the Zionist entity. To protect its attack dog in the Middle East, the US is once again resorting to the usual tactic of equating criticisms of Israeli settler-colonialism with anti-Semitism.

The Obama administration’s non-participation is not surprising or exceptional. It exposes the fact that this administration continues to carry out the strategic interests of the US ruling class in maintaining white supremacist national oppression inside the Empire and in dominating the people of the world.

The Bush administration deliberately sent a low-level delegation to the 2001 WCAR, which did not include secretary of state Colin Powell, and then recalled it in the middle of the conference. During the Carter and Reagan administrations respectively, the US boycotted the 1978 and 1983 World Conferences to Combat Racism and Racial Discrimination in Geneva, where UN member states condemned apartheid in South Africa/Azania as a crime against humanity and denounced Israel’s collaborative relationship with the apartheid regime.

Why is the US Empire so afraid of participating in UN-sponsored conferences on racism and racial discrimination? While the one-country-one-vote forum of the UN General Assembly is certainly more difficult to control than the UN Security Council or an exclusive gathering of the imperialist countries, most of the countries in the General Assembly are neocolonial states, run by local elites that play varying roles in administering imperialist relations. Thus, why does the US have such a record of non-participation?

First, there exist real contradictions in foreign policy between the US ruling class and certain dependent countries, even while the latter do not break fundamentally with the imperialist system and are not reliable allies of the peoples’ movements. Second, each of these UN-sponsored gatherings is a forum for shaping the views of people around the world, where peoples’ movements have the opportunity to influence international public opinion through militant street mobilizations outside conference venues.

Both of these factors contribute to the possibility of embarrassment and isolation at any UN function for the US ruling class, which sits at the head of a country with racism in its DNA. To paraphrase Mao, here is one arena where it is not the people who fear US imperialism, but it is US imperialism that fears the people of the world.

A Hard Look at the Text of the DDPA

The DDPA is not legally binding or enforceable under international law. It derives its authority from moral recognition and the commitment of UN member states to implement its provisions. As such, the struggle over the DDPA’s language is primarily an ideological struggle over how to understand history and our present conditions. Viewed in this way, it is a compromised text. The DDPA contains a few provisions that could be advances in the fight against racism if seized by the peoples’ movements, but embodies a capitulation to the imperialist countries in some other important ways.

The most important advance made in the text is the acknowledgement in Paragraph 13 that “slavery and the slave trade are a crime against humanity and should always have been so, especially the transatlantic slave trade.” The term “crime against humanity” carries weight under international law and the recognition of slavery as such may have given a boost to reparations litigation. Yet, at the same time, the DDPA does not contain any language advocating reparations for slavery. It only expresses profound “regret” for slavery and states in Paragraph 100 that “some States have taken the initiative to apologize and have paid reparation, where appropriate, for grave and massive violations committed.” Beyond that, there are only general provisions discussing the right of all victims of racism, racial discrimination, xenophobia, and related intolerance to seek “just and adequate reparation.” Furthermore, the DDPA fails to similarly characterize colonialism as a “crime against humanity.” There is much further to push.

The four paragraphs discussing Palestine in the DDPA are even more timid. Paragraph 65 discussing the right of refugees to return voluntarily to their homes and properties provides no indication that it is addressing Palestinian refugees in particular. This should be contrasted with the declaration and programme of action adopted at the 1978 World Conference to Combat Racism and Racial Discrimination which referred explicitly to the Nakba (Arabic for “catastrophe” – the name given to the 1948 mass expulsion): “the cruel tragedy which befell the Palestinian people 30 years ago and which the[y] continue to endure today – manifested in their being prevented from exercising their right to self-determination on the soil of their homeland, in the dispersal of hundreds of thousands of Palestinians, the prevention of their return to their homes, and the establishment therein of settlers from abroad.”

The leading provision Paragraph 63 simultaneously recognizes the Palestinian right to self-determination and to the establishment of an independent state alongside “the right to security for all States in the region, including Israel.” The previous declarations and programmes of action adopted at the 1978 and 1983 World Conferences to Combat Racism did not condition the Palestinian right to self-determination on Israel’s security. In that respect, the DDPA is a step backward. Further, note that the text discusses the right of States to “security,” not people or populations, in effect codifying the existing states in the region. This is a predictable gesture in a document adopted by the UN member states, yet ironic in light of the North African and Arab democratic revolts. Finally, of course, UN General Assembly Resolution 3379, which correctly identified Zionism as a form of racism and remained in place from 1975 to 1991, continues to set the bar in the struggle within the UN over the proper characterization of Israeli settler-colonialism and its ideology.

Build the People’s Movements; Isolate the US Imperialists

As September 22 approaches, working and oppressed people in the US Empire can draw lessons from past historic campaigns to bring the crimes of the US ruling classes before the UN. In 1951, Paul Robeson and William L. Patterson presented a petition to UN officials titled “We Charge Genocide” condemning the oppression of Black people in the US, reflected in the widespread practice of lynching. Malcolm X would again raise the call during the 1960s for Black people to use the UN as a forum to expose their oppression in the US. In 1970, the Young Lords and the Puerto Rican Student Union organized a march of 10,000 people to the UN demanding independence for Puerto Rico, the release of political prisoners, and an end to police violence. In 1979, the National Black Human Rights Coalition organized a 5,000-strong march to the UN, with the slogans “Black People Charge Genocide” and “Human Rights is the Right to Self-Determination.” There should be a renewed focus today on the UN as an important site of struggle for working and oppressed people in the US.

COSATU’s two-day general strike against neoliberal policies on the eve of the 2001 WCAR in Durban provides a powerful example of how peoples’ movements can utilize such international gatherings to their advantage. The September 22 meeting is taking place not only in the country that is the home base of the Empire, but in the city that is the heart of US finance capital. It is crucial for all working and oppressed people to mobilize for the Durban + 10 Coalition activities from September 18 through 22, especially any protest marches that are planned.

The movement for reparations in the US can broaden and deepen its forces by highlighting the survivals of slavery in the foundations of US society today and the failure of Reconstruction to fully uproot them. Mass incarceration. Racist policing. Schools that operate like jails. Disproportionate unemployment. Enduring Black poverty throughout the country and in the Black Belt south.

In the weeks leading up to the conference and during the days of scheduled activity, we must make clear that reparations for slavery, as well as one hundred years of semi-slave sharecropping and national oppression that continues to this day, is a just demand that exposes the true character of the US Empire. It is a demand that is central to the liberation of the Black nation and the right of Black people to self-determination everywhere. It is a demand for the global redistribution of wealth stolen by the Empire. Without it, socialism is impossible.

Well, it’s this year’s Gaza solidarity flotilla.

It could be said, of course, that last year’s “little fleet” – that’s what the word means in Spanish, much as “guerrilla” means “little war” – is also a reasonable candidate. It never reached Gaza, but the commander of the Israeli navy could well repeat the words of Pyrrhus, king of Epirus, whose victory over the Romans was so costly that he is said to have exclaimed: “Another such victory, and I am lost!”

Flotilla 1 did not reach Gaza. But the naval commando attack on it, which cost the lives of nine Turkish activists, aroused such an outcry that our government saw itself compelled to loosen its land blockade of the Gaza Strip significantly.

The repercussions of this action have not yet died down. The very important relations between the Israeli and Turkish militaries are still ruptured, with Turkey demanding an apology and indemnities. The victims’ families are pursuing criminal and civil proceedings in several countries. An ongoing headache.

Flotilla 2 reached its end this week, when a huge naval action led to the capture of 1 (one!) little French yacht and the detention of its sailors, journalists and activists — all 16 (sixteen) of them. Even our tame broadcasters could not help themselves from sneering: “Why didn’t they send an aircraft carrier?”

The 14 boats that were prevented from sailing, and the one that did sail, not only kept our entire navy on alert for weeks, but also helped to keep the Gaza blockade in the news. And that, after all, was the whole point of the exercise.

What happened to the 14 boats which did not sail?

Incredible as it sounds, the Greek navy and Coast Guard forcibly prevented them from leaving Greek ports. There existed no lawful grounds for this, nor was there any pretense of legality.

It would be no exaggeration to say that the Greek navy was acting under orders from the Israeli Chief of Staff. A proud sea-faring nation with a nautical history of thousands of years (“nautical” even happens to be a Greek word) degraded itself to perform illegal actions to please Israel.

It also ignored acts of sabotage carried out by naval commandos — guess whose — against the boats in Greek harbors.

At the same time, the Turkish government, the defiant sponsor of the Mavi Marmara, the ship on which the Turkish activists were killed last year, prevented the same ship from sailing this year [See article in which Huseyin Oruç, deputy of the Turkish Humanitarian Relief Foundation, refutes the claim that Turkey prevented the Mavi Marmara from sailing. -- Ed].

Also at the same time, groups of pro-Palestinian activists who tried to reach the West Bank by air were stopped on their way. Since there is no direct access to the West Bank by land, sea or air except through Israeli territory or Israeli checkpoints, they had to travel via Ben-Gurion International Airport, Israel’s gateway to the world. Most did not make it: under instructions from our government, all international airlines blocked these passengers at check-in, using “blacklists” provided by our government.

It seems that the long arm of our diligent security service reaches everywhere, and that its orders are obeyed by countries large and small.

A hundred years ago, the secret police of the Russian Czar, the dreaded “Okhrana”, forged a document called “The Protocols of the Elders of Zion”.

(In those times, the secret police everywhere was still called Secret Police, before being dignified as “Security Services”.)

The document reported a secret meeting of rabbis in the old Jewish cemetery of Prague, to decide upon strategy to secure Jewish rule over the world. It was a crude falsification, which lifted entire passages verbatim from a novel written decades earlier.

In its pages, the real situation of the Jews was grotesquely distorted – they actually had no power at all. In fact, when Adolf Hitler – who used the Protocols for his propaganda – set in motion the Final Solution, almost nobody in the whole world lifted a finger to help the Jews. Even US Jews were afraid to raise their voices.

But if the authors of the falsification were to return to the scene of their crime today, they would rub their eyes in disbelief: this figment of their sick imagination looks like coming true. The Jewish State – as Zionists like to call us – can order around Greek naval authorities, get Turkey to climb down, instruct half a dozen European states to stop passengers at their airports.

How do we do it? There is a simple answer, consisting of three letters: USA.

Israel has become a kind of Kafkaesque doorkeeper to the world’s sole remaining superpower.

Through its immense influence on the American political system, and especially on the Congress, Israel can levy a political tax on anyone who needs something from the US. Greece is bankrupt and desperately needs American and European help. Turkey is a partner of the US in NATO. No European country wants to quarrel with the US. Ergo: they all need to give us a little political baksheesh.

To cement this relationship, Glenn Beck, the obnoxious protégé of Rupert Murdoch, visited us and was enthusiastically received in the Knesset, where he told us “not to be afraid”, because he (and, by implication, Fox and all of America) was supporting us to the hilt.

It is because of this that a few lines, which appeared this week in the New York Times, caused near panic in Jerusalem.

The NYT is, perhaps, the most “pro-Israel” paper in the whole world, including Israel itself. Many of its editorial writers are ardent Zionists. A news story critical of Israeli policies has almost no chance of appearing there. No mention of the Israeli peace movement. No mention of the dozens of demonstrations in Israel against Lebanon War II and the Cast Lead operation. Self-censorship is supreme.

But this week, the NYT published a blistering editorial criticizing Israel. The reason: the “Boycott Law”, passed by the right-wing Knesset majority, which forbids Israelis to call for a boycott of the settlements. The editorial practically repeats what I said in last week’s article: that the law is blatantly anti-democratic and violates basic human rights. The more so, since it comes on top of a whole series of anti-democratic laws that were enacted in the last few months. Israel is in danger of losing its title as the “Only Democracy in the Middle East”.

Suddenly, all the red lights in Jerusalem started to blink furiously. Help! We are going to lose our only political asset in the world, the pillar of our strength, the basis of our national security, the rock of our existence.

The result was immediate. On Wednesday, the right-wing clique that now controls the Knesset, under the leadership of Avigdor Lieberman, brought to final vote a resolution that would appoint two Committees of Inquiry into the financial resources of human-rights NGOs. Not all NGOs, only “leftist” ones. This was another item on the long list of McCarthyist measures, many of which have already been adopted and many more of which are waiting for their turn.

The day before, Binyamin Netanyahu appeared specially in the Knesset to assure his followers that he fully approved, and indeed had sponsored, the Boycott Law. But after the NYT editorial, when the Commission of Inquiry resolution came up, Netanyahu and almost all his cabinet ministers voted against it. The religious factions disappeared from the Knesset. The resolution was voted down by a 2 to 1 majority.

But one ominous fact emerged: Apart from Netanyahu and his captive ministers, all the Likud members present voted for the resolution. This included all the young leaders of the party – the coming generation of Likud bosses.

If the Likud remains in power – this group of ultra-rightists,[] will be the government of Israel within ten years. And to hell with the New York Times.

Fortunately, there are signs that a new phenomenon is in the making.

It started innocently with a successful consumer strike on cottage cheese, in order to compel a cartel of fat cats to reduce prices. This has been followed by a mass action by young couples, mostly university students, against the impossibly high prices of apartments.

A group of protesters put up tents in the center of Tel Aviv and have now been living there for over a week. Soon after, such encampments sprang up all over the country, from Kiryat Shmona on the Lebanese border to Beer Sheva in the Negev.

It is much too early to tell whether this is a short-term protest or the beginning of an Israeli Tahrir Square phenomenon. But it clearly shows that the takeover of Israel by a neo-fascist grouping is not a foregone conclusion. The fight is on.

Perhaps — just perhaps! — even the New York Times could be starting to report on the reality of our country.

Hebrew had been a dead language for many generations, more or less like Latin, when it was still used in the Catholic church. Then, suddenly, concurrent with the emergence of Zionism (but independently) it sprang back to life. This never happened to any other language.

Theodor Herzl laughed at the idea that Jews in Palestine would speak Hebrew. He wanted us to speak German. “Are they going to ask for a railway ticket in Hebrew?” he scoffed.

Well, we now buy airline tickets in Hebrew. We read the Bible in its Hebrew original and enjoy it tremendously. As Abba Eban once said, if King David were to come to life in Jerusalem today, he could understand the language spoken in the street. Though with some difficulty, because our language gets corrupted, like most other languages.

Anyhow, the position of Hebrew is secure. Babies and Nobel Prize laureates speak it.

The fate of the other miracle is far less assured.

The future – indeed, the present – of Israeli democracy is shrouded in doubt.

It is a miracle, because it did not grow slowly over generations, like Anglo-Saxon democracy. There was no democracy in the Jewish shtetl. Neither is there anything like it in Jewish religious tradition. But the Zionist Founding Fathers, mostly West and Central European Jews, aspired to the highest social ideals of their time.

I have always warned that our democracy has very shallow and tender roots, and needs our constant care. Where did the Jews who founded Israel, and who came here thereafter, grow up? Under the dictatorship of the British High Commissioner, the Russian Czar, the Dictatorship of the Proletariat, the king of Morocco, Pilsudsky’s Poland and similar regimes. Those of us who came from democratic countries like Weimar Germany or the US were a tiny minority.

Yet the founders of Israel succeeded in establishing a vibrant democracy that – at least until 1967 – was in no way inferior, and in some ways superior, to the British or American models. We were proud of it, and the world admired it. The appellation “the Only Democracy in the Middle East” was not a hollow propaganda slogan.

Some claim that with the occupation of the Palestinian territories, which have lived since 1967 under a harsh military regime without the slightest trace of democracy and human rights, this situation already came to an end. Whatever one thinks about that, in fact Israel in its pre-1967 borders maintained a reasonable record until recently. For the ordinary citizen, democracy was still a fact of life. Even Arab citizens enjoyed democratic rights far superior to anything in the Arab world.

This week, all this was put in doubt. Some say that this doubt has now been dispersed, and that a stark reality is being exposed.

Charles Boycott, the agent of a British landowner in Ireland, could never have imagined that he would play a role in a country called Israel 130 years after his name had become a world-wide symbol.

Captain Boycott evicted Irish tenants, who defaulted on their rent because of desperate economic straits. The Irish reacted with a new weapon: no one would speak with him, work for him, buy from him. His name became synonymous with this kind of non-violent action.

The method itself was born even earlier. The list is long. Among others: in 1830 the “negroes” in the US declared a “boycott” of slave-produced products. The later Civil Rights movement started with a boycott of the Montgomery bus company that seated blacks and whites separately. During the American Revolution, the insurgents declared a boycott on British goods. So did Mahatma Gandhi in India.

American Jews boycotted the cars of the infamous anti-Semite Henry Ford. Jews in many countries took part in a boycott of German goods immediately after the Nazis came to power in 1933.

The Chinese boycotted Japan after the invasion of their country. The US boycotted the Olympic Games in Moscow. People of conscience all over the world boycotted the products and the athletes of Apartheid South Africa and helped to bring it to its knees.

All these campaigns used a basic democratic right: every person is entitled to refuse to buy from people he detests. Everyone can refuse to support with his money causes which contradict his innermost moral convictions.

It is this right that has been put to the test in Israel this week.

IN 1997, Gush Shalom declared a boycott of the products of the settlements in the occupied Palestinian territories. We believe that these settlements, which are being set up with the express purpose of preventing the establishment of a Palestinian state, are endangering the future of Israel.

The press conference, in which we announced this step, was not attended by a single Israeli journalist. But the boycott gathered momentum. Hundreds of thousands of Israelis do not buy settlement products. The European Union, which has a trade agreement that practically treats Israel as a member of the union, was induced to enforce the clause that excludes products of the settlements from these privileges.

There are now hundreds of factories in the settlements. They were literally compelled, or seduced, to go there, because the (stolen) land there is far cheaper than in Israel proper. They enjoy generous government subsidies and tax exemptions, and they can exploit Palestinian workers for ridiculous wages. The Palestinians have no other way of supporting their families than to toil for their oppressors.

Our boycott was designed, among other things, to counter these advantages. And indeed, several big enterprises have already given in and moved out, under pressure from foreign investors and buyers. Alarmed, the settlers instructed their lackeys in the Knesset to draft a law that would counter this boycott.

Last Monday, the “Boycott Law” was enacted, setting off an unprecedented storm in the country. Already Tuesday morning, Gush Shalom submitted to the Supreme Court a 22 page application to annul this law.

The “Boycott Law” is a very clever piece of work. Obviously, it was not drafted by the parliamentary simpletons who introduced it, but by some very sophisticated legal minds, probably financed by the Casino barons and Evangelical crazies who support the extreme Right in Israel.

First of all, the law is disguised as a means to fight the de-legitimization of the State of Israel throughout the world. The law bans all calls for the boycott of the State of Israel, “including the areas under Israeli control”. Since there are not a dozen Israelis who call for the boycott of the state, it is clear that the real and sole purpose is to outlaw the boycott of the settlements.

In its initial draft, the law made this a criminal offense. That would have suited us fine: we were quite willing to go to prison for this cause. But the law, in its final form, imposes sanctions that are another thing.

According to the law, any settler who feels that he has been harmed by the boycott can demand unlimited compensation from any person or organization calling for the boycott – without having to prove any actual damage. This means that each of the 300,000 settlers can claim millions from every single peace activist associated with the call for boycott, thus destroying the peace movement altogether.

AS WE point out in our application to the Supreme Court, the law is clearly unconstitutional. True, Israel has no formal constitution, but several “basic laws” are considered by the Supreme Court to function effectively as such.

First, the law clearly contravenes the basic right to freedom of expression. A call for a boycott is a legitimate political action, much as a street demonstration, a manifesto or a mass petition.

Second, the law contravenes the principle of equality. The law does not apply to any other boycott that is now being implemented in Israel: from the religious boycott of stores that sell non-kosher meat (posters calling for this cover the walls of the religious quarters in Jerusalem and elsewhere), to the recent very successful call to boycott the producers of cottage cheese because of their high price. The call of right-wing groups to boycott artists who have not served in the army will be legal, the declaration by left-wing artists that they will not appear in the settlements will be illegal.

Since these and other provisions of the law clearly violate the Basic Laws, the Legal Advisor of the Knesset, in a highly unusual step, published his opinion that the law is unconstitutional and undermines “the core of democracy”. Even the supreme governmental legal authority, the “legal advisor of the government”, has published a statement saying that the law in “on the border” of unconstitutionality. Being mortally afraid of the settlers, he added that he will defend it in court nevertheless. The opportunity for this is not far off: the Supreme Court has given him 60 days to respond to our petition.

A small group of minor parliamentarians is terrorizing the Knesset majority and can pass any law at all. The power of the settlers is immense, and moderate right-wing members are rightly afraid that, if they are not radical enough, they will not be re-elected by the Likud Central Council, which selects the candidates for the party list. This creates a dynamic of competition: who can appear the most radical.

No wonder that one anti-democratic law follows another: a law that practically bars Arab citizens from living in localities of less than 400 families. A law that takes away the pension rights of former Knesset members who do not show up for police investigations (like Azmi Bishara.) A law that abolishes the citizenship of people convicted of “assisting terrorism”. A law that obliges NGOs to disclose donations by foreign governmental institutions. A law that gives preference for civil service positions to people who have served in the army (thus automatically excluding almost all Arab citizens). A law that outlaws any commemoration of the 1948 Naqba (the expulsion of Arab inhabitants from areas conquered by Israel). An extension of the law that prohibits (almost exclusively) Arab citizens, who marry spouses from the Palestinian territories, to live with them in Israel.

Soon to be enacted is a bill that forbids NGOs to accept donations of more than 5000 dollars from abroad, a bill that will impose an income tax of 45% on any NGO that is not specifically exempted by the government, a bill to compel universities to sing the national anthem on every possible occasion, the appointment of a Parliamentary Commission of Inquiry to investigate the financial resources of left-wing [sic] organizations.

Looming over everything else is the explicit threat of right-wing factions to attack the hated “liberal” Supreme Court directly, shear it of its ability to overrule unconstitutional laws and control the appointment of the Supreme Court judges.

Fifty-one years ago, on the eve of the Eichmann trial, I wrote a book about Nazi Germany. In the last chapter, I asked: “Can It Happen Here?”

My answer still stands: yes, it can.

The Palestinian BDS National Committee’s Rafeef Ziadah explains that the campaign includes all three components of BDS: in the first place, the boycott of Agrexco products, but also divestment via suspension of commercial agreements, and sanctions through court actions directed at Agrexco’s violations of international law, especially false labelling of produce. According to Stephanie Westbrook:

Its complicity in a broad range of human rights violations, profiting from crops grown on stolen land, irrigated with stolen water and worked with child labour also provides the campaign with ample opportunities to reach out beyond the Palestine solidarity networks to find allies in other social justice movements.

Companies such as Agrexco not only turn a profit, but also provide a direct economic incentive to maintain the occupation and continue Israeli apartheid policies. Activists in Montpellier focussed on lobbying retail chains and food co-ops, protest actions such as “flash mobs” at supermarkets and trade fairs, and airport and transport terminal blockades. In France, there are ongoing demonstrations at the new Agrexco terminal at the port of Sète. “BDS action!” campaigns are under way in Sweden and Norway. The French campaign involves Confédération Paysanne and Via Campesina. The first step of the newly formed European-wide network will be a Global Day of Action Against Agrexco set for 26 November.

French transportation and urban systems company Veolia continues to lose more garbage pickup contracts, this time in London, due to public pressure by BDS activists on local government councils. Veolia is a French-owned transportation and urban planning corporation that has contracts with the Israeli government to provide services to West Bank settlements. Recently Veolia lost contracts in Edinburgh, Richmond, Portsmouth, Winchester and now a £1 billion bid in South London.

Taking a cue from Bishop Desmond Tutu, British cosmetics firm LUSH, known for its organic hand-made cosmetics, with stores and factories in over 40 countries, endorsed OneWorld’s “Freedom for Palestine”, an unofficial rock anthem recalling “Free Nelson Mandela” (1984), a song which helped inform youth about the struggle against apartheid in South Africa in the 1980s. The move by LUSH marks a significant shift toward mainstreaming the Palestinian struggle, and comes as the Israeli cosmetics firm Ahava closes its London store after the successful “Stolen Beauty” campaign against it.

On 29 May British Prime Minister David Cameron resigned as an Honorary Patron of the Jewish National Fund (JNF). For many years leaders of all three main political parties became Honorary Patrons of the JNF by convention. According to Stop the JNF Campaign spokesman Dick Pitt, “Cameron was the only leader of the three major parties remaining as a JNF Patron. This decline in political support for the JNF at the highest levels of the political tree may be a sign of the increasing awareness in official quarters that a robust defense of the activities of the JNF may not be sustainable.”

“Even Israeli courts have criticised the JNF as an organisation that discriminates against non-Jews. It is not acceptable that such an organisation is allowed to operate in the UK, much less to enjoy charity status,” says Michael Kalmanovitz, UK co-ordinator of the International Jewish Anti-Zionist Network. Already its fundraising events face regular protests. In 2007, the American JNF application for consultative status on a key UN committee was rejected because delegates were unable to distinguish between the activities of the US branch and those of the JNF in Israel which the UN Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination has criticised.

French-Belgian bank Dexia is divesting from its 65 per cent stake in Dexia-Israel even though it faces a loss. For two years, BDS activists in Belgium and the Netherlands, France , Turkey and Luxembourg campaigned against Dexia after it was revealed that the bank provided long-term loans to more than 50 illegal Israeli settlements in the occupied West Bank. The divestment organisers congratulated the 69 groups that organised demonstrations, petitions, posters, and parliamentary questions for what they called a “partial victory” against the colonisation of the West Bank.

Israel continues to face sanctions by the international community; in particular, Turkey, which has yet to re-establish its diplomatic presence in Tel Aviv after more than a year. Kerim Uras was to become the new Turkish ambassador, but his appointment was suspended after the Israeli attack on the Mavi Marmara last May which resulted in the death of nine Turkish citizens. The process was never renewed, as Israel refused even to apologise. “The crime against humanity committed last year [by Israel ] still has not been accounted for,” Turkish Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoglu said recently. This could push Israel to leave its ambassadorial post in Turkey empty when Ambassador Gaby Levy departs this autumn.

The sanctions aspect of BDS is complex. Not only does it involve trying to control Israel ’s rogue behaviour using international laws, but also the struggle to prevent anti-discrimination laws from being used by Zionists to silence criticism of Israel on the pretext that such criticism is a manifestation of anti-Jewish prejudice. Toronto City Council members defied their loudly pro-Israeli mayor, Rob Ford, by voting to accept the City Manager’s Report that the phrase “Israeli Apartheid” does not violate Toronto ’s Anti-Discrimination Policy, Ontario’s Human Rights Code, or Canada’s Criminal Code regarding hate speech. This vote will allow anti-Zionists demonstrators to continue to join Toronto city-funded parades and for students at Toronto universities to continue to hold Israeli Apartheid Week, despite attempts by the Canadian Jewish Congress and other Zionist groups to prevent open discussion of Israel’s ongoing violations of international law.

Yet another aspect of the sanction of Israel is the attempt to counter Israel’s own “sanction” of Gazans. As Al-Ahram Weekly goes to press, the world awaits news from the latest Freedom Flotilla – the world’s attempt to break the siege of Gaza. Gazans gather at the new memorial bearing the names of who died in last year’s flotilla, and flanked by flags representing citizens who have sailed to Gaza in past attempts to break the siege. Five boats successfully docked in Gaza in the past five years, with another four violently turned back by the Israeli navy. In May, Israeli soldiers fired on the latest, a Malaysian aid ship carrying piping for a sanitation project in Gaza, forcing it to dock in Egyptian waters. Despite intense pressure from even the UN not to challenge Israel’s violation of international law, Free Gaza’s attorney Audrey Bomse says:

The flotilla violates no international laws or laws of the sea, and so an outright ban on our sailing to Gaza is essentially a statement against the rights of the Palestinian people to control their own ports and lives.

Only Turkey provides grudging support, with Davutoglu asking flotilla organisers to “wait and see” if Egypt’s Rafah crossing will provide an end to the siege, but warning, “Turkey will give the necessary response to any repeated act of provocation by Israel on the high seas.” Under Turkish government pressure, the Turkish NGO Humanitarian Relief Foundation (IHH) has cancelled the participation of the Mavi Marmara. The 21 other vessels from different countries are expected to sail to Gaza after meeting in international waters in the eastern Mediterranean on 27 June. This year, boats from Canada and the US will take part. Canadian Boat to Gaza’s David Heap says the Freedom Flotilla participants are not intimidated. “Where our governments have failed the Palestinians of Gaza, civil society must act instead.”

The Sicarii played a principal role in provoking the Roman onslaught against the Jewish population in Jerusalem and in the eventual destruction of the city. Their identifying characteristics: victim hood, no compromises, use of daggers to resolve issues, generating hate, and creating victims. Two questions still require responses: Why did the Sicarii pursue a suicide effort and why did the first century Jews tolerate their presence?

History tells us that populations never learn from history and proceed to commit the same mistakes. The Jews have followed this principal; Sicarii have been prevalent throughout Jewish history and have often brought tragedy to Jewish populations.

Roman crushing of the Jewish rebellion in Jerusalem in 67 AD did not stop Jewish rebellions in Roman territories. Thirty eight years later, Jewish tribes in Crete, Cyrenaica (modern day eastern Libya), Cyprus, Mesopotamia and the Aegean took advantage of Roman struggles with attacks from other nations to start the Kitos war. According to Roman history, the war “spiralled out of control resulting in a widespread slaughter of Roman citizens and others by the Jewish rebels. The rebellions were finally crushed by Roman legionary forces, chiefly by the Roman general Luseis Quietus, whose name gave the conflict its title.”

The Jewish Encyclopedia describes the Cyrene massacres:

By this outbreak Libya was depopulated to such an extent that a few years later new colonies had to be established there.

In Cyprus a Jewish band under a leader named Artemion had taken control of the island, killing thousands of civilians. Under the leadership of one Artemion, the Cypriot Jews participated in the great uprising against the Romans under Trajan, and they are reported to have massacred 240,000 Greeks (Dio Cassius, lxviii. 32). A small Roman army was dispatched to the island, soon reconquering the capital. After the revolt had been fully defeated, laws were created forbidding any Jews to live on the island.

Wars undertaken with no possibility of permanent victory; just the opposite, certain destruction of the Jewish populations. And all this done when history considers the Jews relatively accepted and free to practice their religion in the Roman Empire.

In the first century AD, Jews lived across the Roman Empire in relative harmony.

Protected by Rome and allowed to continue their religion, everything was fine until rebellion in Judaea led to a major change in the practice of their faith.

By the beginning of the first century AD, Jews had spread from their homeland in Judaea across the Mediterranean and there were major Jewish communities in Syria, Egypt, and Greece. Practicing a very different religion from that of their neighbors, they were often unpopular. As a result, Jewish communities were often close-knit, to protect themselves and their faith.

Jews had lived in Rome since the second century BC. Julius Caesar and Augustus supported laws that allowed Jews protection to worship as they chose. Synagogues were classified as colleges to get around Roman laws banning secret societies and the temples were allowed to collect the yearly tax paid by all Jewish men for temple maintenance.

There had been upsets: Jews had been banished from Rome in 139 BC, again in 19 AD and during the reign of Claudius. However, they were soon allowed to return and continue their independent existence under Roman law.

If fighting and losing two wars against impossible odds was not sufficiently punishing, Simon Bar Kokhba, a proclaimed Messiah, commandered another revolt against the Roman Empire during the years 132–136 AD. The revolt temporarily succeeded in establishing an independent state of over parts of Judea for two years before the Roman army overcame the rebellion. Result: The Romans barred Jews from Jerusalem, except for Tisah B’av, a fast day that commemorates the destruction of the Jerusalem Temples

Sicarrii among the Jews continued for centuries with false Messiahs and troubling figures who defied authority in losing causes.

For several reasons, the initial Zionist thrust resembled the Sicarii actions.

Althought their philosophy had little appeal to the Jewish people of the late 19th century, Zionists behaved as if they spoke for the Jews, and their actions threatened them.

The first Zionist Congress (1887) was to have taken place in Munich, Germany. However, due to considerable opposition by the local community leadership, both Orthodox and Reform, it was decided to transfer the proceedings to Basle, Switzerland. Theodore Herzl acted as chairperson of the Congress which was attended by some 200 participants. (Only 69 were delegates)

The Reform Judaism’s (representing most of American Jews at that time) 1885 Pittsburgh Platform called for Jews to adopt a modern approach to the practice of their faith.

Instead of a nation, the Pittsburgh Platform envisions Jews as a religious community within a nation. For this reason, there was an explicit rejection of Zionism, which was viewed as unnecessary because American Jews were at home in America.

The 19th century emancipation movements liberated west and middle European Jews and permitted them to integrate into European society. The Russian Jews, who had major problems, didn’t consider Zionism as a relief for their difficulties.

Between 1881 and 1914, 2.5 million Jews migrated from Russia–2 million to America and only 30,000 to Palestine. Another 500,000 went to the large capitals of Western Europe.

Bernard Avishai, The Tragedy of Zionism

Rather than benefiting world Jewry, the Zionist message endangered it. Nations were uncertain about their Jewish citizens, who were portrayed by Zionists as having different consciences and mind-sets. Zionism presented Jews as having allegiance to an external ideal, willing to leave their native country if the opportunity became available.

By 1914 the original Zionism had become a stagnant adventure. The Balfour Declaration and the allied victory in World War I revived the Zionist mission. Despite the revival and the establishment of the state of Israel, it’s unproven that the original Zionism succeeded or even has a presence. The Jews who immigrated to Israel immediately after 1948 arrived for mainly economic and political reasons and not to fulfill a Zionist mission. Israel even claims the massive number of immigrants from North Africa and the Middle East (Mizrahi) did not arrive voluntarily, but were forced out of their homes. Zionism has not persuaded a great number of Jews to leave their western nations, not deterred them from greatly participating in their nations’ economic and social gains and not prevented them from integrating themselves into their nations’ cultures. The Economist (Jan.11, 2007) mentions that only 17% of American Jews regard themselves as pro-Zionist and only 57% say that “caring about Israel is a very important.” Even if Israel were not primarily a Jewish nation, but politically similar to other western nations and willing to give the immigrants special largesse, the odds favored the willingness of the North African and Middle East Jews to leave their homes and move to any democratic nation in the Middle East, Jewish or non-Jewish..

The attempt to recruit the world in an embargo against Nazi Germany in 1933 can be considered a Sicarii effort.

Jewish organizations initiated an international boycott campaign as a response to German discriminatory policies and abuses of German Jews. In March 1933 the American Jewish War Veterans and the American League for the Defense of Jewish Rights launched the first US Jewish boycott campaign.

Although, undoubtedly originated with proper intentions, the boycott was doomed and counterproductive. Nations struggling with economic depressions did not want to disturb world trade, had enough of their own problems and weren’t prepared to encounter Germany. The Nazis, who would never have been moved by any embargo, took advantage of the intended boycott to try to prove their argument that Jews engaged in international conspiracies. The boycott campaign further enraged the Nazis against the Jews and tightened the discrimination against them.

The underground war fought by Jewish militias against the British Mandate exposed more Sicarii.

The Altalena, carrying members of the right-wing Irgun militia, was sunk in 1948 after arriving in Tel Aviv against the Israeli government’s orders. The encounter left 16 Irgun members and three IDF soldiers dead.

The King David Hotel bombing in Jerusalem on 22 July 1946 killed 91 people, including17 Jews.

The Jewish underground organization Lehi assassinated British Minister Resident in the Middle East Lord Moyne, and United Nations mediator Folke Bernadotte. Although banned by the Israeli government and called “a criminal group of terrorists” by the UN, Israel granted a general amnesty to Lehi members on 14 February 1949.

Eventual Israeli Prime Ministers committed each of these atrocious actions. David ben Gurion ordered the sinking of the Atalena; Menachem Begin carried out the King David hotel bombing and Isaac Shamir was known as a leading member of the Lehi.

The modern Sicarii, those who claim to speak for the Jewish people but are bringing them to eventual decline, have replaced metal daggers with character assassination, defamation, attacking words, wounding innuendos and bludgeoning malice towards their fellow Jews. They have a unique focus of utmost loyalty to the state of Israel. Jews who don’t share their views and refuse to profess similar loyalty receive their daggers of condemnation.

Neither historical, scientific, or archaeological findings and knowledge, supports a great Hebrew civilization. Jewish legal claims to the Levant, and singular heritage to Jerusalem, contradict the Iscarii focus. Nevertheless, the Iscarii consider fellow Jews who are educated with this knowledge as stupid and deceived traitors and unleash their wrath to intimidate and silence them. Preposterous expressions, such as ‘self-hating’ Jews, anti-Zionism is anti-Semitism, and all those who are antagonistic to Israel are anti-Semites, exhibit a lexicon of hate that guides their actions. The over-used epithets expose the Sicarii’s lack of facts, reality and logic to support their arguments. The rights of others – no consideration at all.

These insulting and ugly epithets solicit examples of “Jewish baseness,” Jewish lack of regard for others, and Jewish feelings of superiority and fuel anti-Jewish feeling. The Iscarii promote the objects they rally against, and which they actually need to validate their existence.

Iscarii websites unashamedly list fellow ‘self-hating’ Jews.

http://www.heebz.com/categories/Self-Hating-Jews
http://masada2000.org/list-K.html

These lists pit Jew against Jew, upset innocent persons and defame Jews. Some persons noting the social quality of individuals in the list have asked to be placed on it. However, the lists are not jokes, but an insult to the Jewish people.

Words beget violence and the more radical Iscarii are driven to violence. The most well known appearance of their violence is the attacks on Tikkun’s Rabbi Lerner.

Only one day after Rabbi Lerner presented the Tikkun Award to South African Justice Richard Goldstone, at a celebration of Tikkun‘s twenty-fifth anniversary attended by over 600 people at the University of California, Berkeley, Lerner’s home was again assaulted by extremist Zionists who once again plastered posters over his home. This is the third assault on Lerner’s home since he announced he would be presenting the award to Justice Goldstone, whose report on Israel’s human rights violations during the Israeli assault on Gaza in Dec. 2008 and Jan.2009 was denounced by the State of Israel and by the AIPAC-dominated House of Representatives last year.¹

An array of well known and consistent dagger throwers in universities, radio, television and print media target those who criticize Israel by trying to curtail professorial tenure, halt publication of books, prevent production of plays, and sidetrack printing of articles. These attackers don’t dialogue or debate issues. They are not interested in truth or reality. Sparked by, “We are always right,” they engage in character assassination, slander and defamation to subdue their rivals. Most disconcerting is their use of the World War II Holocaust to advance their agenda. In addition to appointing themselves as the voice of live Jews, the Iscarii assume themselves to be the voice of dead Jews.

A true story of a typical Iscarious

Seated at breakfast in a Jerusalem hostel, a forty year old English woman explains why she is a new arrival in the West Bank settlement Ma’ale Adumim. She never felt at home in an England filled with anti-Semites. Here, in Israel she feels she has come home. Turn to an American who is asked if he feels the same. He explains he never faced anti-Semitism in his life and never felt anything else but being an American. His words enrage the British expatriate who leaps up and utters: No, first you are a Jew. Then, you are an American.

It is natural that many Jews, regard their birth nation as their primary faith and remain separated from Israel. Many regard Israeli laws to be intolerant, not protective of minorities and somewhat comparable to the Nazi Nuremburg laws. Some relations:

• Since Jews can only be married in Israel by orthodox rites, Jews cannot receive an intermarriage ceremony within the state.
• Although the term right of return refers to a principle of international law and gives any person the right to return or re-enter his country of origin, the Israeli Right of Return only permits foreign Jews to immediately gain citizenship and does not permit immigration of non-Jews, such as Palestinian refugees.
• An Israeli, according to the so-called Nakba law, must wholeheartedly and unreservedly celebrate the founding of the Jewish state in 1948. Any groups or institutions that mourn the event, which was accompanied by the expulsion of hundreds of thousands of Arab residents from their homes – the Nakba, or Catastrophe – or that deny the state’s “Jewish and democratic nature” can now be denied state funds.
• The Citizenship Law allows the state to revoke citizenship and imprison anyone convicted of acting against “the sovereignty of the state”.
• Fifty rabbis signed a declaration calling for Jews not to let Arabs rent apartments in their communities. The state owns almost all the land and, except for special situations, refuses land sales to non-Jews.

In Eichmann in Jerusalem, Hannah Arendt noted similarity between the racist foundation of the state of Israel and the 1935 Nuremburg laws. Both laws were based on an idea of Judaism as a race, not as a religious practice, regardless of whether individuals identified themselves as a Jew or belonged to the Jewish religious community.

Many Jews refuse to accept the rationalization that the oppression of the Palestinian people is a temporary measure brought about by Israel’s security considerations. They see no reason to be drawn into the conflict in which they have no part. Not so with the new Iscarii.

Three huge granite stones rest comfortably on the top of Midbar Sinai Street, in Givat Havatzim, Jerusalem’s northernmost district. Cut to specification, the imposing stones represent one of several preparations by the Temple Mount and Land of Israel Faithful Movement’s to erect a Third Temple on the Haram al-Sharif/Temple Mount. Since the Islamic Wafq owns and controls all the property on the Haram al-Sharif, by what means can these stones be transferred to the Temple Mount and how can a Temple be constructed there? Not by any legal means. The stones are a provocation, which the Israel government refuses to halt. Since the Iscarii now have the occupation forces on their side, it becomes obvious they will be more threatening. In ancient times, their efforts contributed to the destruction of Jerusalem. Now it could be the entire Middle East.

1. Zionist Extremist Hate Crime Against Rabbi Lerner: Third Attack on His Home and the Limits of “Freedom of the Press,” 3/17/2011, Berkeley, California

Agrexco is Israel’s largest fresh produce exporter and European markets account for the vast majority of their sales under the brand Carmel. The Israeli government’s 50% stake in the company as well as their marketing of 60-70% of the fruit and vegetables grown in illegal Israeli settlements in the West Bank have made Agrexco a prime strategic target for the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) campaign.

Boycott of Agrexco products, divestment via suspension of commercial agreements and sanctions through legal procedures.

Rafeef Ziadah, representative of the Palestinian BDS National Committee (BNC), recalled that the campaign against Agrexco includes all three components of BDS: boycott of Agrexco products, divestment via suspension of commercial agreements and sanctions through legal procedures. Agrexco’s complicity in a broad range of human rights violations, profiting from crops grown on stolen land, irrigated with stolen water and worked with child labor, also provides the campaign with ample opportunities to reach out beyond the Palestine solidarity networks to find allies in other social justice movements.

The forum centered on two parallel tracks with the objective of ridding European supermarkets of Agrexco products: boycott campaigns and court actions.

Campaigns and Strategies

During the boycott workshop, activists presented a review of the campaigns and actions taking place in the various countries, including lobbying retail chains and co-op member meetings, actions at supermarkets and trade fairs, airport blockades and Italy’s very first BDS flash mob. In Belgium last May, over 400 people  in 22 cities filed a complaint with the police citing Agrexco’s complicity with violations of international law. In France, the new Agrexco terminal at the port of Sète became a catalyst for the movement, with a mass demonstration of over 1500 people, a remarkable number for a BDS action! Campaigns are also under way in Sweden and Norway, who were unable to send delegates to the forum. In Sweden activists presented the national co-op with a dossier on Agrexco’s activities who promised to investigate. In Norway, the campaing instead focuses on the local importer, who is consulting their attorneys on the question.

Mislabeling and Fraud

Michael Deas, European coordinator for the BNC, underlined the importance of boycotting Agrexco as a company and not just the products it exports from the illegal Israeli settlements. Aside from problems of traceability – Agrexco has been caught on numerous occasions mislabeling products or mixing settlement produce with that from the Israeli side of the Green Line – purchasing any Agrexco products means supporting a company profiting from the occupation and apartheid policies of the Israeli government.

The involvement in the French campaign of farmers unions, Confédération paysanne and Via Campesina, keep the issues of sustainable agriculture and food sovereignty at the forefront. Michael Deas also underlined the role Palestinian farmers unions have and can play in the campaign against Agrexco. In fact, Palestinian farmers unions were crucial role in helping to expose a propaganda stunt organized by Agrexco in France, claiming that boycotts of Agrexco products damaged Palestinian farmers in Gaza.

The legal workshop, with the presence of three Palestinian attorneys from the Palestinian Bar Association, concentrated on possible court actions against Agrexco. While several countries – Belgium, UK, Italy – are currently exploring legal action, the French case has already produced an important result. An agent of the court inspected customs documents for the Agrexco ships docking at Sète and found clear cases of fraud. A 2010 decision of the European Court of Justice ruled that products from Israeli settlements are not eligible for preferential trade tariffs under the EU Israel Agreement. Yet here were invoices for dates from the Jordan Valley declared to be “Israel Preferential Origin.” This proof of fraud, from none other than a court official, will be vital to campaigns throughout Europe.

Movement for an Agrexco-free Europe

The two-day forum succeeded in bringing together campaigns across Europe with the goal of coordinating our actions and strengthening the movement for an Agrexco-free Europe. The first step of the newly formed European-wide network will be a Global Day of Action Against Agrexco set for November 26, 2011.

With all the extremely useful, though highly technical, talk of legal cases, corporate structures, local affiliates, commercial trade agreements, distribution networks, etc., it’s important to remember that behind the data and numbers, this is about people’s lives.

Agrexco turns a profit while enforcing Apartheid in Palestine

The land confiscations, the stolen water, the house demolitions, the checkpoints, make it impossible for Palestinians to develop their own economy. A reasonable person can draw but one conclusion, these policies serve to drive the Palestinians from their land. And companies such as Agrexco not only turn a profit, but also provide a direct economic incentive to maintain the occupation and continue the apartheid policies.

Rafeef talked about the first time she saw a Jaffa orange in a UK supermarket. She could smell the sweet aroma, but she couldn’t buy it. She thought of her grandfather, evicted from his land, but who returned to work for the new owner because he just couldn’t give up his land. And how Palestinian produce figures in the minds of refugees, denied their right of return.

Rafeef concluded the forum with an open invitation to all to her house in Haifa, once Palestine is free. Once she can return home.

And the campaign to boycott the products of Carmel Agrexco is a step along the way.

The true nature of Israeli policy towards the Palestinians prompted Jewish-American folk legend Pete Seeger to speak out. Seeger, 92, used to participate in the Israeli Arava Institute’s virtual rally “With Earth and Each Other”, but Arava’s behind-the-scenes partner is the Jewish National Fund, responsible for destroying Palestinian lands and building forests on them to hide their crimes. Seeger now realises Arava is in fact a subtle tool of “Rebrand Israel”: “Now that I know more, I support the BDS movement as much as I can.” Seeger has long given royalties from his famous Bible-based song from the 1960s “Turn, Turn, Turn,” to the Israeli Committee Against House Demolitions for their work in rebuilding demolished homes and exposing Israel’s practice of forcing Palestinians off their land to build Jewish villages and cities.

In the build-up to IAW, the Ramallah-based “Stop the Wall Campaign” and “It’s Apartheid” media collective announced the winners of the first International Israeli Apartheid Short Film contest in February. The winners “Apartheid Road”, “Ali Wall” and “Confronting the Wall” can be viewed at itisapartheid.info. Ali Al-Jadar’s story is especially touching; as a callow 16-year-old, he built a ladder and planted a Palestinian flag at the top of the wall near his home. The IDF came in the night, arrested, tortured and sentenced him to eight years in prison, though mercifully he was released in a prisoner exchange after two years. He is one of the thousands of modest heroes that inspire IAW activists around the world.

In Beirut, South African anti-apartheid activist Salim Vally provided insights from the earlier South African struggle. Lebanese activist Rania Masri described the boycott movement as a vehicle against global and local neoliberalism. Iconic Palestinian freedom fighter Leila Khaled linked IAW goals with current anti-government revolts in the broader Arab world, which are dominated by social movements for justice and self-determination.

Ontario universities joined together to draw up a petition signed by 140 academics to divest from BAE Systems, Northrop Grumman, Hewlett Packard and Lockheed, all of which provide military and/or information technologies that help Israel violate international law.

A dramatic IAW event was staged by students from the Arizona chapter of Jewish Voice for Peace at the University of Arizona (UA) and UA migrant rights group No Más Muertes/No More Deaths (NMM), who erected a mock apartheid wall dividing the UA campus in Tucson for a week, drawing a parallel between the wall being built dividing Mexico and the US and the Israeli apartheid wall. “People are dying and suffering from abominable policies being funded with US tax dollars,” remarked JVP coordinator Chicano-Jewish student Gabriel Matthew Schivone.

More than 6000 human remains of Mexicans seeking a better life have been recovered from the US/Mexico borderlands in the past two decades. “We will not stand idly by nor stay silent regarding the enormous suffering being inflicted either in our local deserts and cities, or 10,000 miles away in Israeli-occupied Palestine. Our wall symbolised our collective will to end global apartheid and work toward a world that truly offers justice for all.”

Last year Hampshire College in Massachusetts, the first US college to divest from South Africa in 1979, became the first to divest from the Israeli occupation, following its anti-racism Action Awareness Week 2008. As in Arizona, students constructed a mock wall, distributed Palestinian and Israeli passports randomly to students, and when they tried to pass through, the activists showed them how they would be treated in Israel. As in Toronto they launched a petition drive to divest from firms supporting Israeli apartheid.

As a result student Will Delphia made his debut as documentary film producer last year with the 30-minute film To Know is Not Enough, using Hampshire Students for Justice in Palestine archival footage, clips from media coverage, and interviews with the personalities involved. Though the administration never admitted it divested because of Israeli apartheid, as one student says in the film, “The administration divested. But the administration is not the college. The staff, students and community are. We made the decision and we are making the statement.”

University of Johannesburg went a step further to become the first South African university to implement an academic boycott of an Israeli university, Ben-Gurion University. The UJ Senate concluded that “there is significant evidence that BGU has research and other engagements that support the military and armed forces of Israel, in particular in its occupation of Gaza.” Bishop Desmond Tutu argued: “Palestinians have chosen, like we did, the nonviolent tools of boycott, divestment and sanctions. South African universities with their own long and complex histories of both support for apartheid and resistance to it should know something about the value of this nonviolent option.”

EuroPalestine is engaged in spectacular and frequent BDS actions that the European Israel lobby and the French government try relentlessly to block through legal actions. They recently made a 15-city tour of France with 200 activists and posted their documentary about it. They plan to bring thousands to East Jerusalem and the West Bank 8-16 July for the Gaza Freedom March, with Palestinians hosting their foreign supporters.

The most important BDS-inspired event of 2011, marking the first anniversary of the tragic Israeli attack on the Mavi Marmara last May, will be the Free Gaza Movement flotilla expected in late May, when 12 ships carrying a thousand peace activists with humanitarian supplies will head for Gaza. Israel’s Ambassador to Turkey Gaby Levy asked the Turkish government to help stop the activists, but was told the flotilla was “an initiative by civil society”. Israel’s UN Ambassador Meron Reuben called the activists “terrorists” who are “willing to become martyrs”. One of the “terrorists” is retired US Colonel Ann Wright, who vowed, “Despite these threats, we are definitely sailing.”

The courage that Palestinians have shown under six decades of brutal occupation is now infecting people with a conscience around the world. It looks like the siege will finally be broken in June, with the flotilla and with Egypt’s promise to open the Gaza crossings, to be followed by the arrival at Ben-Gurion airport in July of thousands more activists determined to embrace their Palestinian brothers and sisters.

As Che noted in his Bolivia Diary, April 13, 1967: “Maybe we are attending the first episode of a new Vietnam”, he wrote after learning that US army “advisors” were in Bolivia to assist in his capture.

President Evo Morales, an admirer of Che, had initiated the people’s climate conference as a response to the failed United Nations COP15 climate conference in Copenhagen, Denmark, in December 2009. The Copenhagen Accord was strongly biased in favor of the rich governments and transnational capitalist corporations that continue business as usual: extracting unlimited profits from human labor and natural resources while contaminating Mother Earth with its gaseous emissions and devastating wars.

I knew personally that President Morales was seriously upset with the lack of attention given to diminishing the poisoning of the earth, because I had worked with him as a media advisor during the Copenhagen conference. He was furious with capitalism’s greed and unconcern for life.

A friend from California, Jaime Smith, and his girl friend, Lorena, joined me at Cochabamba in central Bolivia where Evo had been a leader of the coca-leaf grower-workers association. It was a unique and exhilarating experience to be with so many people—35,000 from 147 countries—and all the more so because we could agree that the root cause of the devastating climate changes is due to the contaminating nature of the capitalist economy.

At the inauguration, on April 20, President Morales recommended that we eat and drink more healthily. When we produce and eat healthy food (ecologically grown), we also contaminate the earth less. Coca-Cola was among products he suggested we not consume. Evo recounted a story about plumbers using Coca-Cola to unplug stopped up toilets because it has so much acid in it. He recommended instead that we drink chica, a fermented corn drink.

I thought Evo missed an opportunity here to plug Coca-Colla, which a new national firm had just begun producing. The soda, advertised as containing energizing coca from coca leaves, was on sale at the conference. The Empire’s Enjoy Coca-Cola warring falsetto is now challenged by Inca descendents’ coca-leaves.

I also thought that Evo could have mentioned other good reasons to boycott Coca-Cola, such as its hiring paramilitaries in Colombia and Guatemala to murder its workers who seek better working conditions and who join unions; and in India where its firm drains the soil of its water and nutrients and causes hundreds of thousands of farmers to quit their land.

Boycotting Coca-Cola for me began when I saw on TV a huge billboard in Vietnam’s countryside with the smiling blonde “Enjoying” Coca-Cola while US napalm was dropped on peasants behind the perverse advertisement.

We can’t boycott all the products sold by capitalist monopolies—hardly any corporation is morally better than another—but when workers of a corporation themselves ask us to do so then our solidarity morality leaves us no choice. Colombia’s SINALTRAINAL union has so asked the world’s citizens since it began a boycott of Coca-Cola in 2001, after the firm had murdered several workers and family members. The struggle still goes on, now with two dozen murdered in Colombia and Guatemala. Coca-Cola bottling companies in Brazil, Bolivia, Philippines, Zimbabwe and Turkey have also used torture and murder.

In Denmark, I helped convince some small political organizations to stop buying and selling the “drink of the death squads”; a few local union branches did the same. At this writing, about 200 universities in several countries have rejected it’s presence on their campuses. This includes such prestigious names as: Harvard and Oxford.

David Rovics sings Coke is the drink of the death squads

What are you gonna do/
We can let Coke run the world and see what future that will bring/
Or we can drink juice and smash the state
Now that’s the REAL THING!

For the week we were at the Cochabamba climate conference, Che’s image looked at us from placards, pamphlets and books while we discussed and debated what could be done about the destruction of Mother Earth. Thousands participated in several seminars and in 17 workshops. These are some of the key points we arrived at:

• “Capitalism as a patriarchal system of endless growth is incompatible with life on this finite planet…the alternatives [to both capitalism and the Soviet experience with a predatory production system] must lead to a profound transformation of civilization.”
• Instead of living a capitalistic lifestyle—the “live better” greed creed—let us develop the indigenous concept of “living well”. This enhances the environment holistically and encourages meeting everyone’s basic needs.
• Demand that the United Nations force the rich nations to reduce their CO2 emissions by 50% of 1990 levels no latter than 2017.
• These nations must use at least 6% of their Gross Domestic Product, much less than they use for wars, for mitigation of and adaptation to climate changes in the developing world.
• Recognize the universal rights of Mother Earth: the right to all life, clean water and air. Every human being is responsible for respecting and living in harmony. Guarantee peace and eliminate nuclear, chemical and biological weapons. Decolonize the atmospheric space.
• Conduct a worldwide referendum of five points concerning how to protect nature: agree or not to eliminating the capitalist economy; transfer all financing for wars to finance the defense of mother earth; free our territories of troops and military bases; create an International Climate and Environmental Justice Tribunal to judge and sanction contaminating nations and firms.
• “Capitalism responds through militarization, repression and war to the resistance of the people. It requires a potent military industry, the militarization of societies and war as conditions necessary for its process of accumulation as well as for its control over territories, mineral and energy resources, and to suppress the struggles of the people. Wars, through their direct impact on the environment (massive consumption of combustible fossil fuels, oil spills, GHG emissions, impoverished uranium contamination, white phosphorus, etc.) have become one of the primary destroyers of Mother Earth.”

En Route

After the conference, Jaime, Lorena and I boarded a modern bus and set out for Vallegrande where Che and other guerrillas had been secretly buried, October 10, 1967.

Three decades later, their remains were discovered. On June 28, 1997, seven bodies were found. When exhumed, one proved to be Che’s. In order to make a positive fingerprint comparison, the murderers sawed off Che’s hands. When the exhumed cadaver without hands was DNA tested, as was its teeth, it could be positively identified as Che’s. On July 12th, the remains of all seven were sent to Cuba. In time, the remains of a total of 30 guerrillas were exhumed and sent to Cuba where a memorial was built beside the Che museum in Santa Clara.

At the time of these liberation efforts, General René Barrientos was in power. In 1964, he had overthrown an elected president, Victor Paz Estenssoro, who was not a militarist. Naturally, the CIA backed Barrientos. Oddly enough, Barrientos made a left-leaning friend, Antonio Arguedas, Minister of the Interior. After Che’s murder, Arguedas acquired his cut off hands and a copy of his Bolivia diary. Some months later, Arguedas saw to it that both the hands and the diary got to the Cuban government. Among his assistants were friends in the Bolivian Communist Party. Their leader, Mario Monje, had refused to aid Che, going back on his earlier word to both Che and Fidel. This was a costly betrayal.¹

When Morales became president, he proclaimed Che Route as an attraction for visitors from near and far. Some even made a several day pilgrimage out of it.

On the road, we stopped at Samaipata, a small town that a guerrilla column had occupied briefly. They captured the army’s little garrison with the loss of one army soldier. Although the people were curious about the guerrillas, and respected payment in cash, they were leery about them. Of the 48 guerrillas in the ELN (Ejército de Liberación Nacional de Bolivia-National Liberation Army) none of them came from the Santa Cruz province where the rich still maintain political power.²

When we got to Vallegrande, a town of 27,000 people, we arranged for a guided tour at the Che museum and then ate a tasty meal at María Tereza’s Café Galería de Arte. Her husband is a painter whose images of Che hang on the walls. María Tereza thinks well of Che and is proud of her father, who was jailed by the military dictator General Hugo Banzar after he grabbed power, in August 1971, from General Juan José Torres. María’s father, Dr. Gustavo C. Cárdenas Cabrera, had been mayor of the town when the more liberal Torres was president for ten months. General Torres had tolerated the “subversive” act committed by Mayor Cárdenas: that of naming the principle street, “Comandante Ernesto Che Guevara”!

The next day, our well-informed guide, Adalid, showed us the Hospital Nuestro Señor de Malta laundry room where Che’s body was brought and laid on display. This small room is now covered with graffiti honoring Che as the liberator who never dies. Che’s murderers had buried him secretly in the vain hope that he would not only physically disappear but that his memory would as well.

From there we drove a short distance to a countryside controlled by the military. It was here that the remains of 121 cadavers were eventually dug up. Thirty of these could be identified as Che and his men and Tania. The other 91 had been murdered for other reasons.

Che’s small group had been discovered close to La Higuera by 180 Bolivian soldiers. Che was captured after being wounded in the leg, his rifle smashed out of commission by a soldier’s bullet, his pistol out of bullets. The Bolivians had been assisted by two CIA agents. One of them was Felix Rodriguez, a Cuban exile counterrevolutionary who was part of the invasion force at the Bay of Pigs. Today, he lives a “hero’s life in Miami, displaying to the curious a wristwatch of Che’s.

Excavation of the land to find these bodies had started after writer Jon Lee Anderson questioned General Mario Vargas Salinas, in November1995, about what happened to Che’s body. Vargas was a captain at the time he pursued the ELN. Captain Vargas had been present when Che and the others were buried under an old airfield runway. After nearly 30 years, the general told the long kept secret, hoping to find reconciliation.

The then President Gonzalo Sánchez de Lozada dismissed the statement as one spoken “between whiskey and whiskey”. Anderson held a news conference and said that he had a tape recording of the conversation, which occurred between “coffee and coffee”. Vargas then admitted the truth and the president ordered the area be dug up.³

A simply made mausoleum encompasses the graves of Che and six others: three Cubans, two Bolivians and one Peruvian. Four of the seven killed from this battle were executed after capture. The guerrillas never executed any prisoner taken. That was also the moral policy of Che, Fidel and the other Cubans during the Cuban revolutionary. In fact, when soldiers were wounded and captured, Che or another doctor treated their wounds.

Nearby is a site of bodies of other guerrillas, who had been mowed down in an ambush directed by Captain Vargas. He had a peasant snitch. These guerrillas, including Tania, had been in “Joaquin’s” column (Juan Vitalio Acuña), which had gotten separated from Che’s group. Seven were killed as they crossed a river at Vado de Yeso; two more were captured and then assassinated. Now, each grave has well kept roses and plants. A cow or two may come in, however. There are no guards.

While Lorena took photographs and Jaime sat alone on a wall deep in thought, I asked Adalid about how residents here feel about Che and the other guerrillas today.

“I’d say the majority in Vallegrande is indifferent, a few are even against him, and about one-third are sympathetic. La Higuera is very small, and most there think well of him, even to the point of worshipping him. Some do here, too.”

Susana Osinaga, the nurse who cleaned Che’s corpse, saw something “miraculous” about his “strong eyes, his beard and long hair.” She told reporters that she prays to Che for guidance. She asked him to heal her ailing daughter and he did. Other locals claim that they have found lost animals upon whispering Che Guevara’s name to the sky, or by lighting a candle to his memory.

Some of the hospital’s nuns and other local women also thought of Che as Christ-like. Some of them cut clumps of his hair for good luck charms. In various homes throughout Bolivia, Che’s portrait hangs alongside Christ and Catholic saints.

There are many others, however, who see him as evil, especially those belonging to the rich class or even indigenous people into denial about their ancestry. We met some of the latter people in the town of Villa Serrano, after leaving La Higuera. We saw many people dressed in typical indigenous peasant clothing. The few I spoke with, however, told me they were Spanish and not interested in talking about Che. Their eyes indicated displeasure at seeing my red t-shirt with Che’s image. One pointed to a man dressed in Western clothing. When I approached him, his eyes spoke belligerently.

“What are you doing here in that shirt? It is an insult to us to portray that man. You and other foreigners coming here are misinformed about him. Nor should you speak of us as `Indians´. We come from Spanish stock,” his strident voice lightened as he enunciated “Spanish stock”.

Back in La Higuera, a small town of about 30 families, we had visited the school house where Che was held and shot. In the next room, the Bolivian “Willy” (Simeón Cuba Sarabia) was assassinated. “El Chino”, the Peruvian Juan Pablo Chang Navarro, was also murdered that day. All three men were shot in parts of their body that could indicate they fell in battle.

The small school is now a museum containing Che’s M2 rifle, his leather brief case, various books and documents. “I prefer to die on my feet than live on my knees” is one of Che’s sayings written on the walls.

Outside are two statutes of Che, one with a Christian cross beside it. I doubt that Che would have been happy about such adoration. He was certainly not a religious believer.

We were shown to a medical clinic where Cuban doctors care for the residents. After Morales’ election, Cuban doctors care for millions of Bolivians. At that time, 2,600 were doing so.

Broad smiling Danay Glez met us alongside her circumspect doctor husband Roberto Sanchez. The clinic was well equipped with essential necessities brought from Cuba.

“We are responsible for 806 persons in this general area; about 90 in town,” Roberto stated.

“Besides caring for the people’s health, we teach them about computation, and about Che,” chimed in Danay. “Surprisingly, many people think that he came here to kill and rape civilians.”

Surprisingly also is that the story of Che and the ELN is not taught in the schools, not even since Morales’ election.

“We are so pleased to work here in the country where Che fought and died to free the Bolivian people,” Danay said. “This is the most satisfactory moment of my life. And to think that our medical technique and our doctors cured his killer! Yes, that is the way it was. Well, that is what we stand for: curing the sick. It gives satisfaction curing one more person.”

Incredibly, Cuban doctors had operated on Mario Terán, an old blind man, at a Santa Cruz hospital two years before. The Cuban medical creation, Operation Miracle, is an ophthalmologic rehabilitation program that can cure many causes of blindness, such as cataracts. It is performed free by Cuba and Venezuela.

Terán may not have been recognized at the hospital when he was operated on in August 2006. He was living under a pseudonym (Pedro Salazar). Nevertheless, he had his son pass a letter to the Santa Cruz largest daily, “El Deber”, in which he, the killer of Che, expressed gratitude to Fidel Castro because Cuban doctors had restored his eyesight.

Mario Terán had told “Paris Match”, in 1977, what Che had told him as Terán came to kill him.

“When I came in, Che was sitting on the bench. When he saw me he said, ‘You’ve come to kill me’. I couldn’t bring myself to fire. ‘Calm down’, he said: ‘Aim well! You are going to kill a man!’”

What a strange world we live in. Cuba’s revolutionaries, especially Che, are accused by the US and many other governments of being barbarous terrorist murderers. Yet this “terrorist” Caribbean island-country sends hundreds of thousands of professionals to help millions whilst the accusers send hundreds of thousand to kill millions in their profit wars.

In the spring of 2009, five years after the operation was developed, Cuba Coopera, a website belonging to Cuba’s Foreign Affairs Ministry, reported that Operation Miracle had benefited 1,500,000 people from 35 countries. 1,331,000 were from countries other than Cuba; and 266,743 had undergone surgery at Cuban facilities. Cuba with Venezuelan financing had also donated 60 ophthalmologic centers to Venezuela, Bolivia, Ecuador, Guatemala, Haiti, Honduras, Panama, Nicaragua, Paraguay, Uruguay, Mali and Angola. Today, about two million people can see thanks to Operation Miracle.

Besides the truth and myths about Che is “the curse of Che” as Anderson reported.

Some people in Vallegrande believe that Che has seen to it that six of the politicians and military officers who shared responsibility for his murder died violent deaths.

The first was the very president who ordered his murder. General René Barrientos was killed in a helicopter crash in April 1969. Inexplicably, the chopper just fell out of the sky.

The peasant, Honorato Rojas, who betrayed the second column of Che’s, was taken out later in 1969 by a second ELN (failed) attempt to start a revolution.

In 1971, Colonel Roberto Quintanilla, the intelligence chief who made Che’s fingerprints, was executed in Germany.

Lt. Col. Andrés Selich was directly involved in the capture and execution of Che. Selich later led a military revolt that put General Banzer in power. When he became disillusioned with Banzer, the dictator had thugs beat him to death, in 1973.

In late May, 1976, Colonel Joaquín Zenteno Anaya was shot down in Paris by an unknown group, “Che Guevara International Brigade”. Zenteno had been commander of the Eighth Army Division pursuing Che’s group. He spoke with Che at length after his capture and he kept his rifle. Zenteno received the order to murder Che, which he gave to his superior, Colonel Selich.

On June 2, 1976, an Argentine right-wing squad took care of “liberal” General Juan José Torres. Torres had cast his vote for Che’s execution. But the left did not kill him. He was killed because he was a populist ousted by a more pro-US general. He became a victim of the CIA’s Operation Condor. Interesting operations juxtaposition: miracle and condor.

The man who actually arrested Che, Gary Prado, became a general. Later he became paralyzed when he accidentally shot himself. And, as stated, the man who actually plugged Che became blind. Mystically, the “curse” took pity on that soldier and four decades later doctors following in Che’s footsteps cured him. Why did he survive and get cured—maybe because he was not an officer.

1. Jon Lee Anderson, Che Guevara: A Revolutionary Life, p. 745.
2. Of the 48 guerrillas who fought between February and November 1967, 27 were Bolivians, 16 Cubans, three Peruvians, one German-Argentine (Haídee Tamara Bunke-Tania) and the Argentine (Cuban naturalized) Ernesto Che Guevara. Eleven survived, most of whom had been captured, tortured, imprisoned and later granted amnesty. The three Cuban survivors escaped Bolivia and found their way to Cuba. Nineteen Bolivians were killed: two drowned accidentally, five were assassinated after capture, one deserted and assassinated after capture, and 11 died in combat. Two of three Peruvians died in combat; one was assassinated. All 13 Cubans killed died in combat. Tania died in combat. In addition, two international solidarity activists were captured after meeting with Che in Bolivia. Frenchman Régis Debray and Argentine Ciro Bustos were tortured, sentenced to 30 years and served nearly three in prison before release.
3. Interview with Jon Lee Anderson by Jaime de la Hoz Simanaca.

The BfW letter hits all the right notes and speaks truth. It asks Dylan “not to perform in Israel until it respects Palestinian human rights,” explaining that “a performance in Israel, today, is a vote of support for its policies of oppression.” The letter speaks of ethnic cleansing, land theft, martial law, air strikes, and massacres. It beseeches the folk legend, who has “been part of a civil rights movement,” to stand with the oppressed against the aggressor. BfW writes that “BDS is a powerful and united civil initiative in the face of a brutal military occupation and apartheid. It’s a nonviolent alternative to a waning armed struggle and it has reaped many successes and instilled much hope, in the past six years.”

A Ha’aretz article proudly notes that the Dylan concert will be held “where Leonard Cohen and Elton John recently performed,” and is being promoted by “Marcel Avraham, the promoter who organized the Leonard Cohen and Elton John concerts – as well as the upcoming Justin Bieber concert that will be held over Passover.”

So, will Bob Dylan – the man who wrote “Masters of War” and “The Times They Are A-Changin’” in 1963 – heed the call? Of course not. Although Dylan would appear to be the perfect political ally, his human and civil rights bona fides have faded over time – to the point of non-existence.

In 1971, Time Magazine reported that Dylan was “returning to his Jewishness” and “getting into this ethnic Jewish thing.” A friend of his told the magazine, “He’s reading all kinds of books on Judaism, books about the Jewish resistance like the Warsaw ghetto. He took a trip to Israel last year that no one was supposed to know about and even, it is rumored, gave a large donation to the Israeli government.” The article continues:

Dylan denied giving money to Israel or to the fanatical Jewish Defense League, but he confesses great admiration for that “Never again” action group and its reckless leader Rabbi Meir Kahane. “He’s a really sincere guy,” says Bob. “He’s really put it all together.”

Yes, you read that right. Bob Dylan said Meir Kahane, who favored the forced expulsion of Palestinians from their homeland and whose racist Kach party has since been banned from Israeli politics, is “a really sincere guy” who’s “really put it all together.”