Zionism’s Lost Shine

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Re: Zionism’s Lost Shine

Postby seemslikeadream » Sun Mar 22, 2015 12:04 pm

Published on
Saturday, March 21, 2015
byCommon Dreams
UN Commission: Israeli Occupation Imposes 'Grave Situation' on Palestinian Women
Motion condemns Israel's 50-day military assault on Gaza late last summer, which killed at least 2,194 Palestinians, including hundreds of women and girls
bySarah Lazare, staff writer

The United Nations Commission on the Status of Women passed a resolution on Friday condemning the Israeli occupation as imposing a "grave situation" on Palestinian women.

The motion (pdf) from the 45 member commission notes that "the Israeli occupation remains the major obstacle for Palestinian women with regard to their advancement, self-reliance and integration in the development of their society."

Further, the resolution condemns Israel's 50-day military assault on Gaza late last summer, which killed at least 2,194 Palestinians, at least 75 percent of them civilians and over 500 of them children.

Sponsored by the Palestinian and South African delegates, the motion passed 27 to two, with the U.S. and Israel voting against and 13 European Union members abstaining.

It comes on the heels of a statement released by the Gaza-based Palestinian Center for Human Rights for International Women's Day.

"The International Women’s Day comes this year while many Palestinian women have been experiencing cruel and inhumane conditions due to the Israeli arbitrary practices that affected their lives," the Center's declaration reads. "Women's suffering doubled in the Gaza Strip in particular due to the consequences of the latest Israeli offensive, as they have been enduring hard and complicated living conditions."
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Re: Zionism’s Lost Shine

Postby seemslikeadream » Thu Apr 02, 2015 6:50 pm

Defying college’s threats, California students build mock Israeli wall
Submitted by Nora Barrows-Friedman on Thu, 04/02/2015 - 00:55
Image

Students displayed a mock wall on Pitzer College’s campus on Tuesday, defying administrative restrictions. (Photo from Pitzer SJP Facebook)
Student activists at Pitzer College in southern California are risking administration sanctions this week to bring attention to Israel’s violations of the rights of Palestinians.

Members of Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP) had constructed a mock wall on campus on Tuesday as part of their actions marking Israeli Apartheid Week — a global series of events intended to spark discussions on campuses about Israel’s occupation in Palestine and the Palestinian-led boycott, divestment and sanctions (BDS) movement.

On 27 March, the Pitzer administration warned SJP that their plans to construct the mock wall would be “in blatant defiance” of college policy. The mock wall is a colorful, sixty-foot-long replica of Israel’s wall in the occupied West Bank, emblazoned with artwork, facts and statistics highlighting Israel’s violations of human rights.

By going forward with their creative direct action, Pitzer SJP could face punishment by the administration.

“Not surprising”

The administration seems to have come under pressure by on-campus Israel-aligned students who reportedly sent a letter of complaint in February to the Pitzer College Aesthetics Committee.

The group “anticipat[ed] SJP’s proposal to display the mock separation wall and claim[ed] that the wall is anti-Semitic and would make Jewish students on campus uncomfortable,” according to a letter to Pitzer’s administration sent by Palestine Solidarity Legal Support this week.

Noah Latkin, a member of SJP at Pitzer, told The Electronic Intifada on Tuesday that “it wasn’t necessarily surprising” that the group has been singled out for scrutiny by the university.

“There was opposition to us even becoming a club,” he said. “People in the student senate labeled us as inherently anti-Semitic. We had to meet with the president of the student senate who asked us ‘how can we make sure you don’t offend people on campus?’”

Smears and attacks against Palestinian students and members of SJP are not new to students of the Claremont College consortium, which includes Pitzer.

In 2013, a professor at Pitzer’s sister campus Claremont McKenna College called a Palestinian student “a cockroach” during a mock checkpoint action on campus as part of Israeli Apartheid Week. The student, Najib Hamideh, attended Pitzer College and was a member of Students for Justice in Palestine. The professor, Yaron Raviv, is an Israeli citizen.

“Violated”

As they planned for Israeli Apartheid Week at Pitzer this year, Latkin said that students expected an administrative backlash. “When we met with the dean of students [before the wall action], he told us that inevitably someone was going to submit a formal complaint … insinuating that if we build this wall, we would have to go through judicial proceedings. It was an inevitable consequence,” he said.

According to Palestine Solidarity Legal Support, SJP submitted their proposal to the Aesthetics Committee in late February. The committee requested photos of panels of the mock wall about two weeks later, which SJP provided. Without communicating to SJP members that their proposal hinged on it, the committee demanded more photographs and an “idemnification” contract, “to which SJP did not know how to respond.”

“SJP did not know the College was waiting for more information, and the students received no follow-up requests from the Committee, in writing, or verbally,” the legal advocacy group added. On 9 March, SJP was told that their proposal for the mock wall action was denied.

The college’s dean then emailed Latkin, warning him of consequences that could arise for SJP if they went ahead with their action.

“We realized that our rights had been violated,” Latkin said.

No “Palestine exception”

In a press release, Liz Jackson, staff attorney with Palestine Solidarity Legal Support, said that Pitzer is violating its own free speech policies in its attempts to censor SJP’s mock wall action.

“As it should, Pitzer claims to embrace a compelling interest in unfettered inquiry and the collective search for knowledge. Under California law, there can be no ‘Palestine exception’ to this policy,” she stated.

“The accusation that displaying a mock Israeli apartheid wall would target Jewish students is an attempt to divert the conversation away from the human rights policy issues SJP is attempting to raise; SJP’s activity targets the Israeli state, not any individual,” Jackson added.

“Help us dismantle the wall”

Latkin said that it was important to display the mock wall not just to resist censorship, but because of the opportunities to educate fellow students about Israeli policies of discrimination and separation.

“People have been telling me that they’re glad [the wall action] happened,” Latkin said. He added that pro-Israel students who passed by the wall became upset by people speaking out against Israel’s policies.

“If people on campus are opposed to the wall, [we’ve said to them] help us dismantle the wall at the end of the day — but to extend that more, help us dismantle the actual wall. If this makes you uncomfortable, imagine what it’s like for the Palestinians,” Latkin said.

He added that SJP is prepared to go through administrative proceedings as necessary to defend their rights to free speech and to organize on behalf of Palestinians’ rights.

American Muslims for Palestine has created an online petition to support Pitzer SJP.
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Re: Zionism’s Lost Shine

Postby Searcher08 » Thu Apr 02, 2015 8:15 pm

The group “anticipat[ed] SJP’s proposal to display the mock separation wall and claim[ed] that the wall is anti-Semitic and would make Jewish students on campus uncomfortable,” according to a letter to Pitzer’s administration sent by Palestine Solidarity Legal Support this week.


The predictability of the responses here, after studying the Frank Luntz's links from the muzzlewatch site, is really funny. It is like hasbara 'buzzword bingo'. :sun:
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Re: Zionism’s Lost Shine

Postby AlicetheKurious » Sat Apr 04, 2015 3:24 pm

This video was filmed in El-Khalil, a Palestinian town illegally occupied by Israel in 1967. The Zionists call it "Hebron" and are forcing the Palestinian majority into smaller and smaller areas, while criminal, armed Jewish squatters live free and privileged on stolen Palestinian land. Don't call this "apartheid", because it makes Jewish university students in the US "uncomfortable" if you do.

"If you're not careful the newspapers will have you hating the oppressed and loving the people doing the oppressing." - Malcolm X
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Re: Zionism’s Lost Shine

Postby Searcher08 » Sat Apr 04, 2015 4:40 pm

:thumbsup
I'm going to practice my hasbara :sun:

"Why do you hate Israel, Alice? Just posting something like this shows you want all those poor Israelis to be driven into the sea by the same maniacs in this video who were trying to take over a Jewish street. The IDF were showing their kindness to those poor Moose-limbs. They are the kindest army in the world."
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Re: Zionism’s Lost Shine

Postby Elvis » Sat Apr 04, 2015 5:27 pm

The two soldiers in that video anger me because with their behavior they cheapen the lesson of the Holocaust; I guess "Never Again" has a slightly different meaning for me.

What don't they understand about "Never Again"?

I don't read a lot of threads because they're so depressing.
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Re: Zionism’s Lost Shine

Postby Elvis » Sat Apr 04, 2015 5:34 pm

Searcher08 wrote:They are the kindest army in the world.


"Killing them with kindness." Great.
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Re: Zionism’s Lost Shine

Postby seemslikeadream » Tue Apr 07, 2015 12:40 am

Samore Goes To Bat For The Framework Agreement

by Eli Clifton

Say what you will about pressure group United Against Nuclear Iran (UANI), from their connections to Iran-conflict profiteering to allegations of ties to intelligence agencies, they leave a path of unanswered questions about their motivations, funding, and mission. But over the past week, the group’s ability to push for tighter sanctions on Iran and evermore hawkish U.S. negotiating positions seems to be slipping.

Last Wednesday, I reported on this blog that UANI President Gary Samore predicted that Congress is unlikely to stand in the way of a nuclear deal with Iran. And once the deal was announced on Thursday, UANI members had little bad to say about the White House’s framework agreement.

Samore and advisory board member Olli Heinonen were cited in The New York Times’ first write-up of the agreement as “skeptical experts” who were “impressed” by the deal. Samore praised the agreement’s “very satisfactory resolution of Fordo and Arak issues for the 15-year term” of the accord, and Heinonen assessed it as “a fairly comprehensive deal with most important parameters.”

The following day Graham Allison, director of Harvard’s Belfer center (where Samore and Heinonen also hold positions) published a piece in The Atlantic, “assessing the impact of the accord.” He concluded, “Obama administration and its indefatigable secretary of state deserve a hearty round of applause for what has been achieved at this point.”

But Samore’s defense of the deal wasn’t done yet. On Monday, he made a series of statements supporting the deal and defending it against critics in Congress and Israel.

First, his name appeared on a letter issued by The Iran Project, a group promoting better ties between Iranian and U.S. officials. The letter, whose signatories included former Secretary of State Madeleine Albright, and former National Security Advisors Brent Scowcroft, Sandy Berger, and Zbigniew Brzezinski, welcomed the framework agreement and “[called] on the U.S. Congress to take no action that would impede further progress or undermine the American negotiators’ efforts to complete the final comprehensive agreement on time.”

Then Samore published a column in Foreign Affairs, titled “Deal With It,” urging Congress to stop threatening sanctions legislation, warning that “such threats strengthen Iran’s hand by putting pressure on the U.S. negotiators to make concessions to avoid congressional action that would blow up the talks.”

But the day wasn’t over yet and Samore, who is emerging as one of the framework agreement’s more energized defenders, took to the phone for an Israel Policy Forum-sponsored teleconference.

Samore told the participants that “it’s an impressive array of concessions Iran has made,” and acknowledged he’s “surprised by how much [Iran’s Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei] was willing to concede.”

He also provided details from his time in the Obama administration on the strategic calculations about a possible military strike on Iran’s nuclear facilities. “Nobody could predict with any confidence what the Iranian counter-stroke would be,” Samore said, and there was “concern that if we bombed these facilities it would give the Iranians a good justification for leaving the [Non-Proliferation Treaty].”

Samore, in another slap at congressional efforts to derail the administration’s negotiations in Lausanne, Switzerland, expressed his concern about efforts to bring the Corker-Menendez bill to a vote before a final agreement has been reached. “The Iranians have been taking advantage of the tensions between Congress and the White House,” said Samore.

But his harshest criticism was saved for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, a close friend of UANI funder Sheldon Adelson. “I think he’s motivated by a very sincere concern about this agreement and obviously he feels very deeply that the agreement isn’t adequate,” said Samore. “I don’t think it’s very likely that his objections are going to be very effective. And I worry that some of the things he’s done to politicize the issue have probably made it easier for the White House to persuade Democrats in Congress to support them.”

Finally, Samore ended the call warning that “in terms of Israel’s isolation with other countries, I think the Palestinian issue and settlements is a far more dangerous concern to Israel’s legitimacy than the Iran nuclear issue.”

For those keeping count, two of UANI’s advisory board members are effectively backing the deal, and the group’s president is slamming congressional efforts to block the framework agreement. And Samore would like Israel to deal with its construction of illegal settlements before interfering with a nuclear agreement reached by the P5+1 and Iran. UANI still hasn’t issued a statement about the framework agreement.

Sheldon Adelson may be wondering what exactly his $500,000 contribution to UANI went to support.
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Re: Zionism’s Lost Shine

Postby elephant » Tue Apr 07, 2015 1:15 am

AlicetheKurious » Sat Apr 04, 2015 2:24 pm wrote: Don't call this "apartheid", because it makes Jewish university students in the US "uncomfortable" if you do.


There's another way of writing this, just as strong, that makes the statement more accurate and allows for the possibility of change.

"Don't call this "apartheid", because it makes some Jewish university students in the US "uncomfortable" if you do."
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Re: Zionism’s Lost Shine

Postby seemslikeadream » Wed Apr 08, 2015 10:03 am

Why Is a Pro-Israel Group at Rutgers College Partnering with an Extreme Anti-Semitic Christian Organization?
Christians United For Israel's John Hagee has in the past engaged in extreme anti-semitic rhetoric.
By Zaid Jilani / AlterNet April 8, 2015

The Rutgers chapter of Hillel International, the Jewish college student religious group, is known for courting anti-Muslim beliefs. For example, its executive director was caught saying that Islam is a problem, and denying Palestine's right to exist.

Next week, Rutgers Hillel is co-sponsoring an event on combating anti-semitism with Christians United For Israel, a Christian Zionist group headed by pastor John Hagee. Hagee has in the past engaged in extreme anti-semitic rhetoric, such as saying that the Holocaust was God's will. More recently, he reiterated his position that Jews need to accept Jesus to avoid going to hell.

The event features Kasim Hafeez, a Pakistani-British man and self-proclaimed former adherent of “radical Islam” who now supports Zionism. Hafeez uses his Muslim background to set himself apart from other supporters of Israel, but there's little difference between him and garden-variety neoconservatives. He wrote a Facebook post comparing Obama to Neville Chamberlain, who famously appeased Hitler.

The alliance between Rutgers Hillel, CUFI and a self-proclaimed former Muslim extremist seems to show that when it comes to those who are supporting Israel's government at any cost, there are few limits; even allying with former or current anti-semites is acceptable.
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They could still get him out of office.
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Re: Zionism’s Lost Shine

Postby AlicetheKurious » Wed Apr 08, 2015 3:31 pm

elephant » Tue Apr 07, 2015 7:15 am wrote:
AlicetheKurious » Sat Apr 04, 2015 2:24 pm wrote: Don't call this "apartheid", because it makes Jewish university students in the US "uncomfortable" if you do.


There's another way of writing this, just as strong, that makes the statement more accurate and allows for the possibility of change.

"Don't call this "apartheid", because it makes some Jewish university students in the US "uncomfortable" if you do."


You're right, of course. My mistake.
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Re: Zionism’s Lost Shine

Postby AlicetheKurious » Thu Apr 09, 2015 4:31 am

Links in the original:

When Free Speech Becomes Dead Silence – The Israel Lobby And A Cowed Academia
08 APRIL 2015 LAST UPDATED ON 08 APRIL 2015 BY EDITOR


The sudden cancellation of an academic conference on Israel, as well as the lack of outcry from 'mainstream' media, demonstrates once again the skewed limits to 'free speech' in 'advanced' Western democracies. 'Je suis Charlie' already feels like ancient history. It certainly does not apply when it comes to scrutiny of the state of Israel.

The conference, titled 'International Law and the State of Israel: Legitimacy, Responsibility and Exceptionalism', was to be held at the University of Southampton from 15-17 April 2015. Planned speakers included Richard Falk, the former UN special rapporteur on human rights in the Palestinian territories, Gabi Piterberg, a historian at the University of California at Los Angeles, Israeli academic Ilan Pappé and Palestinian historian Nur Musalha.

The meeting was billed as the 'first of its kind and constitutes a ground-breaking historical event on the road towards justice and enduring peace in historic Palestine.' The approach would be scholarly with 'multidisciplinary debate reflecting diverse perspectives, and thus genuine disagreements'. Rather than being a coven of political extremists and violent hotheads, this was to be a serious gathering of respected and authoritative academics with in-depth knowledge of Israel and Palestine.

But intense pressure from the Israel lobby about the airing of 'anti-Semitic views' has torpedoed the University of Southampton's earlier stated commitment to uphold 'freedom of speech within the law'. In a classic piece of bureaucratic hand-wringing, the university issued a corporate-style statement on 1 April that leaned heavily on the pretext of 'health and safety' to kill off the conference. This happened a mere two weeks before the conference, planned months earlier in consultation with the university, was due to begin.

The Board of Deputies of British Jews was among those Zionist groups that had been urging the university to cancel the event. Its president, Vivian Wineman, said:

'It is formulated in extremist terms, has attracted toxic speakers and is likely to result in an increase in anti-Semitism and tension on campus.'


The Telegraph reported that 'at least two major patrons of the university were considering withdrawing their financial support. One is a charitable foundation, the other a wealthy family.'

There was also fierce criticism from several politicians at Westminster. Mark Hoban, the Conservative MP for Fareham, described the conference as a 'provocative, hard-line, one-sided forum that would question and delegitimize the existence of a democratic state.' Caroline Nokes, MP for Romsey and Southampton North, said the university risked bringing itself into disrepute by hosting what she described as 'an apparently one-sided event'.

A senior government minister even got involved. Eric Pickles, Secretary of State for Communities, derided the conference as a 'one-sided diatribe'. He went further:

'There is a careful line between legitimate academic debate on international law and the actions of governments, and the far-left's bashing of Israel which often descends into naked anti-Semitism.'


This was outrageous high-level political interference in free speech. When the university confirmed that it was cancelling the conference, the decision was predictably welcomed by the Israeli embassy in London:

'This was a clear instance of an extremist political campaign masquerading as an academic exercise, and it is only right to recognise that respecting free speech does not mean tolerating intolerance.'


Michael Gove, the Government Chief Whip and former Secretary of State for Education, could barely contain his glee:

'It was not a conference, it was an anti-Israel hate-fest.'




The 'Health And Safety' Pretext

On April 2, the conference organisers responded to the university's sudden reversal of its earlier commitment to hold the conference. The organisers, who include Israeli-born law professor Oren Ben-Dor, said that they were 'shocked and dismayed' at the university's about-turn. This was especially disappointing given that the police had given assurances that they would be 'able to manage the demonstrations'.

The organisers noted that 'general sensitivity following recent terrorist events in Europe' had been 'misused to inflate the risks' of the conference going ahead. More widely, warned the organisers, the implications for academic freedom would be dire:

'The stakes for academic public space, for academic freedom and for freedom of speech are too high. The message it sends to other academic institutions and to students all over the world is grave and depressing. It will potentially make campuses obedient and depoliticised, distant and docile corporate spaces.'


An inadvertent clue to the reality underlying the university's rhetoric on 'security' and 'health and safety' could be found in a report last month in the Jewish Chronicle. Board of Deputies of British Jews president Wineman told the Chronicle that:

'When we had a meeting with the university vice-chancellor they said they would review it [the conference] on health and safety terms.

'The two lines of attack [sic] possible were legal and health and safety and they were leaning on that one.'


The 'line of attack' about 'health and safety', then, appears to be cover for the university caving in to pro-Israel pressure. This fits a wider pattern of the pro-Israel lobby's fear of increasing global condemnation of Israeli crimes against the Palestinian people and international law. As Ben White, an authoritative freelance journalist on the Middle East, reported last month, the British ambassador to Israel, Matthew Gould, recently met with UK university heads to discuss Israel and the limits of 'freedom of speech'. Also present were representatives of at least three pro-Israel organisations: the Board of Deputies of British Jews, the Jewish Leadership Council, and the Union of Jewish Students.

Southampton University's refusal at the time to buckle under pro-Israel lobby pressure was cited in the meeting.
White noted:

'This stubborn commitment to freedom of speech has clearly angered Britain's Israel lobby, but the bigger question here is why a UK ambassador was involved in the first place.'


When pressed to explain this, a Foreign Office spokesperson told White that 'part of Matthew Gould's role involves outreach to the British Jewish Community.' White added:

'The spokesperson did not elaborate on whether lobbying British universities was part of the ambassador's remit.'


The conference organisers have now lodged an injunction at the High Court in London in an attempt to prevent the university from curtailing their right to freedom of speech. The legal argument is that in unfairly withdrawing permission for the conference, the university has capitulated to the pro-Israel lobby. 'This is blatant censorship under the guise of a specter of campus being overrun by violent hordes, which is patently groundless,' said Mark McDonald, a public interest lawyer from the chambers of Michael Mansfield QC.

Many academics have protested the university's decision. David Gurnham, the Director of Research at the university's School of Law, wrote in an email to vice-chancellor Professor Don Nutbeam:

'It seems to me outrageous that you seem to have allowed the bullying and threats of the Israeli lobby to prevent the perfectly lawful and legitimate exercise of free speech and academic debate. I understand that the police had reported that they would be perfectly able and willing to deal with any security concerns at the event: this ought to be good enough.

'Cancelling the event in this way makes the University look weak, spineless and reactionary. I am proud to be a member of academic staff here, but your decision to withdraw support for a conference in this manner makes me, and I'm sure very many others like me, seriously question the University's commitment to open and free debate.'


(More letters of protest from academics can be read here.)

All this comes at a time when the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement is gathering strength. A recent debate at the Cambridge Union Society even passed the motion that 'This House Believes Israel Is A Rogue State'.

At the time of writing, a petition calling for the University of Southampton to uphold free speech has attracted almost 10,000 signatures in just one week (it took a Zionist petition in favour of cancelling the conference one month to reach around 6,500).

An earlier petition in support of the conference was signed by round 900 academics around the world, including Noam Chomsky.

All of this must make the pro-Israel lobby deeply uncomfortable. As Ben White observed:


'Whatever the final outcome, this story is significant for the way in which it illustrates not so much the pro-Israel lobby's power, but its weaknesses.'




No More 'Je Suis Charlie'

Media coverage of the cancellation of the conference has been almost non-existent. We found just three news articles in the national press: one in the Guardian, one in the Telegraph and one in the Express.

But what is even more glaring than the lack of news coverage is the editorial silence on the pro-Israel lobby's bullying and intimidation. What happened to all those grand declarations from editorial offices, under the banner 'Je suis Charlie', to uphold freedom of speech and the 'right to offend'? The journalists and cartoonists who were murdered at the Charlie Hebdo offices in Paris were, we were told, 'martyrs for freedom of speech'. The atrocity was 'a war declared on civilisation', 'an attack on the free world', 'an assault on journalists and free speech'. A Guardian editorial proclaimed:

'If there is a right to free speech, implicit within it there has to be a right to offend. Any society that's serious about liberty has to defend the free flow of ugly words, even ugly sentiments.'


Where is the outpouring of dismay now from liberal commentators across the British media at the actions of the pro-Israel lobby? Where are the comment pieces decrying this latest attack on free speech? When it comes to Israel, the 'right to offend' is quietly dropped.

Moreover, why should it be 'toxic' to examine critically the founding ideology of Israel, a state that was built on one of the largest forced migrations in modern history? As Israeli historian Ilan Pappé documented in his acclaimed 2006 book, The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine, the establishment of Israel in 1948 was 'Nakba' - a catastrophe - for the Palestinians. More than half of Palestine's native population, close to 800,000 people, were uprooted, and over 500 Palestinian villages destroyed.

Nakba largely remains a taboo subject for 'mainstream' coverage of the Middle East. Indeed, notes Pappé, the ethnic cleansing of the Palestinians by Israel is a 'crime [that] has been erased almost totally from the global public memory'. This crime, he continues:


'has been systematically denied, and is still today not recognised as an historical fact, let alone acknowledged as a crime that needs to be confronted politically as well as morally.' (Ibid., p. xiii)


Sadly, the fear of offending the powerful pro-Israel lobby remains a major factor in British politics, cultural debate and media reporting of Israel and Palestine (see Peter Oborne's Dispatches documentary for Channel 4 in 2009). As one senior BBC television news producer revealed to Professor Greg Philo of the Glasgow Media Group:

'We wait in fear for the telephone call from the Israelis.'




'The Specious Slur Of Anti-Semitism'

In a moving piece of personal testimony, Professor Suleiman Sharkh of the University of Southampton, one of the conference organisers, published an open letter. He said:

'I grew up in Gaza, but my family is originally from a town called Majdal Asqlan (now called Ashkelon by Israel). In November 1948, six months after the establishment of the State of Israel and after the wars had ended, the town was bombed and many people were killed. Those who survived were herded towards Gaza, crawling on their hands and knees in the thorny field. Since then we have lived in squalid refugee camps. I walked around in the sand soiled by the open sewers with my bare feet. I got my first shoes when I went to school at the age of six.'


Professor Sharkh then explained the relevance and importance of the conference to Palestinian people:

'International Law was responsible for our misery. It was used to legalise the theft of our homes and it continues to be used to legalise the ongoing oppression of my people by the State of Israel. The questions asked by the conference are therefore questions that I have been asking all my life. They are important questions that need to be answered.'


The conference is now likely to go ahead at an alternative venue to be publicised soon.

The journalist and filmmaker John Pilger, whose powerful documentary Palestine Is Still The Issue is a must-see, told Media Lens (email, April 3, 2015):

'Israel is a gangster state. It holds the world record in the breach and defiance of international law. It regularly massacres and terrorises the Palestinian civilian population of Gaza, which even David Cameron has described as an "open prison". Its courts uphold racism as state policy. It has re-elected a congenital liar as its prime minister. Its historians have long revealed the criminality of its beginning -- the theft of land, the murder and brutalising of the indigenous population.'


He continued:

'What Israel has, however, are powerful collaborators, who, even at the lowest rung, are able to intimidate institutional bureaucrats and others with the specious slur of anti-Semitism. In Britain, the Jewish Chronicle and the Board of Deputies operate this barely disguised smear as efficiently as a metronome. They, and others, have now helped silence a much needed conference on Israel at the University of Southampton. But they should not be wholly blamed. The collusion of the university authorities as they run up the false flag of "security concerns" is to blame; and the memory of every murdered child in Gaza is now their spectre. And along with the so-called "lobby", they cannot win.'


Pilger concluded:

'The rest of humanity has long recognised the truth about Israel, as every international survey shows. With exquisite timing, student unions across the UK are joining the boycott, divestment and sanctions movement that is sweeping country after country, including the United States. The craven decision of Southampton will speed its progress; nothing is surer.'


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Re: Zionism’s Lost Shine

Postby American Dream » Thu Apr 09, 2015 5:10 pm

Rather than nake undue thread proliferation, I will post this here:


https://www.jacobinmag.com/2015/04/pale ... ah-habash/

Fabricated Language

Israel and its allies have a long history of distorting the speeches of Arab leaders.

by As'ad abu Khalil

Image
George Habash, founder of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, and Palestine Liberation Organization leader Yasser Arafat.


From the beginning of the Arab-Israeli conflict, especially after the 1942 Biltmore Conference, Zionist leaders focused most of their propaganda efforts on the United States. In that year, future Israeli Prime Minister David Ben-Gurion chose to move the Zionist Congress from Europe to the United States, in an effort to situate the movement within the framework of the “free world,” even while Israel was being successfully sold to the Soviet Union as a socialist experiment.

The trend continued. After Gamal Abdel Nasser assumed power in Egypt in 1952, Israel calculated that this charismatic and popular pan-Arab leader would be its most formidable foe. There were massive efforts at convincing Western audiences that Nasser was the second coming of Hitler.

But Nasser was a very frustrating target. He was a secular who was always careful in his rhetoric. He never maligned Jews, and always expressed his belief that Arabs should not harbor any ill will toward Jews qua Jews. Nevertheless, Zionists went to work. But they could only find a lone interview with an Indian journalist in which Nasser, allegedly, made a reference to the grotesque forgery that is The Protocols of the Elders of Zion.

In 1964, Israeli elites turned their focus to the new leader of the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO), Ahmad Shuqayri. They claimed that he had threatened to “throw Jews into the sea.” And no matter how many times Shuqayri challenged Zionists to come up with the citation, or any sort of corroboration, and no matter much he agitated to prove his innocence — indeed, to his last days, in his two memoirs — they made the lie stick. Indeed, a Google search of Shuqayri’s name will turn up this invented quotation.

The same went for Yasser Arafat, who assumed leadership of the PLO in 1969. Arafat was called a terrorist and a tool of international communism during the Cold War.

The notoriously sensationalist journalist, Oriana Fallaci, even made up a quotation by the thoughtful George Habash, who never in his long career as head of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, ever insulted Jews or Judaism — unlike Zionist leaders who casually insult and malign Arabs and Muslims. Fallaci claimed in Life Magazine that Habash had said, “We believe that to kill a Jew far from the battleground has more of an effect than killing one hundred of them in battle.”

Zionists also distorted the pronouncements of Iranian leaders after the 1979 revolution. While former Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad made quite a few dumb and insulting statements regarding the Holocaust, Zionists distorted the words and have alleged threats of war by Iran’s supreme leader, Ali Khamenei. Yet Khamanei has made his position clear: “We recommend neither a classical war by the army of Muslim countries nor to throw migrated Jews at sea.”

As Hezbollah developed into a formidable enemy to Israel, and after repeatedly humiliating the Israeli army on the battlefield, its leader, Hassan Nasrallah, became a favorite target for Zionist propagandists. After the September 11 attacks, Zionists fabricated a call by Nasrallah in which he allegedly urged Palestinians to undertake suicide attacks “worldwide.” The Canadian Broadcasting Corporation conducted an extensive search and could not find any source for this statement except in an article in the Jewish Week.

The quotation was not sourced.

And when Hezbollah produced its authoritative political document in December 2009, it said explicitly “our problem with them [Zionists] is not because they are Jewish,” and added in the section on Zionism: “[The conflict] is not based on ethnic, religious, or racial confrontation on our part.” This portion of the document was ignored by Western media.

Ever since the outbreak of the civil war in Syria, US outlets have alleged, without any evidence, that Syrian President Bashar Al-Assad and Nasrallah have been using anti-Sunni sectarian rhetoric when neither of them speak in these terms — unlike the “pro-Western” Saudi and Hariri media in the Middle East. (Nor has anything said been comparable to the words of the infamous pro-Saudi cleric ‘Ar ‘ur, who threatened to place Alawites in a “meat grinder.”)

Late last month, both the New York Times and the Washington Post distorted the contents of a speech by Nasrallah to make him seem either sectarian — against Sunnis, even though he consistently steers clear of any sectarian language — or dogmatically religious in his attack on the Saudi-led war on Yemen.

As the New York Times wrote, “Hezbollah’s leader, Hassan Nasrallah, denounced the Saudi-led operation Friday, accusing the kingdom of unleashing Sunni extremists like Al Qaeda against Shiites elsewhere.” This is a total fabrication. Nasrallah only made one sectarian reference in the speech, when he said that Iran supports Hamas and other Palestinian groups who are Sunnis. And he prefaced his remarks by apologizing to the audience for using the sectarian language that he consciously avoids.

He never stated that they send Sunnis against Shiites. In every reference that Nasrallah makes about Takfiri groups, he goes out of his way to say that they pose the greatest danger to Sunni Muslims. He did indeed accuse Saudi Arabia of sending terrorists to Iraq, but in very different terms.

Yet the Washington Post reported: “In a lengthy speech Friday night, the Hezbollah leader Hasan Nasrallah poured scorn on Saudi Arabia’s attempt to influence the outcome of the Yemeni conflict, saying that it is doomed to fail ‘because these are the laws of God.’” In fact, this was part of a humorous section of the speech when Nasrallah mocked the Saudi regime and said that they follow the religion of Bush. Playing the role of conquerors and occupiers, they can only fail — his reasoning was quite secular.

These distortions are no outlier. Whether it’s Nasrallah or Nasser or Habash, when it comes to the enemies of Israel, you can’t trust what you read about their rhetoric and speeches in the mainstream media of the West.
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Re: Zionism’s Lost Shine

Postby seemslikeadream » Sun Apr 12, 2015 12:30 pm

Israeli courts convict hundreds of Palestinian children
Courts have come under heavy criticism for harsh judicial measures against Palestinian minors accused of stone-throwing.
Patrick Strickland | 10 Apr 2015 10:17 GMT | War & Conflict, Middle East


More than 700 Palestinian minors are sentenced in Israeli military courts every year, according to DCI-Palestine [Getty]
Beit Anan, occupied West Bank - When Israeli soldiers detained Hussam al-Sheikh's 15-year-old son Khaled on Christmas Day last year, he expected to pay a fine and bring the boy home within a few hours.
"A few weeks earlier, some young boys from our village were arrested for allegedly throwing stones," Sheikh told Al Jazeera. "They all came home the next morning after their parents paid a small fine."
Accused of throwing stones, Khaled was arrested near the Israeli separation wall in Beit Anan, a village near Sheikh in the occupied West Bank. Yet, upon arriving at the police station at the Binyamina settlement where the boy was being held, Hussam learned that his son would not be allowed to go home with him anytime soon.
"When we got to the police station, he had been beaten up and there was blood on his face," Sheikh told Al Jazeera. "After five court hearings, he was sentenced to four months in prison. How does a 50-year-old man sit on a bench and decide the fate of little children?"

The Israeli military court that sentenced Khaled also fined his parents 2,000 Israeli shekels ($510) - a costly amount on top of the lawyer and court fees the Sheikh family already had to pay.
Palestinians tried in Israeli military courts are convicted at a rate of more than 99 percent, according to a 2011 military document leaked to the Israeli daily Haaretz.
"Why is this necessary?" Sheikh asked. "Can you seriously tell me that these kids throwing stones at a concrete wall pose a threat to their state? Or to their soldiers in armoured jeeps?"
Ill-treatment of Palestinian children in the Israeli military detention system is widespread and systematic, as nearly three out of four kids experience some form of physical violence during arrest, transfer or interrogation
Brad Parker, attorney and international advocacy officer for DCI-Palestine
Israeli, Palestinian and international rights groups have decried Israel's practise of arresting Palestinian children. According to a recent report by Military Court Watch, a group that monitors Israel's detention of children, 182 of the more than 5,600 Palestinians detained in Israeli jails were children as of the end of February.
The Palestine Liberation Organisation (PLO) announced in a December report that in 2014, Israel detained 1,266 Palestinian children below the age of 15 in the occupied West Bank, including East Jerusalem. Since 2000, the report added, more than 10,000 Palestinian children have been detained by Israeli forces.
Israel recently prompted widespread criticism for its 45-day imprisonment of Malak al-Khatib, a 14-year-old girl who returned home in the central West Bank village of Beitin on February 13. Like Khaled al-Sheikh, she had been accused of throwing stones, and was prosecuted in an Israeli military court.
Brad Parker, an attorney and international advocacy officer for Defence for Children International - Palestine Section (DCI-Palestine), said that Khatib and Sheikh were among the more than 700 Palestinian children sentenced in Israeli military courts every year.
"Ill treatment of Palestinian children in the Israeli military detention system is widespread and systematic, as nearly three out of four kids experience some form of physical violence during arrest, transfer or interrogation," Parker told Al Jazeera, citing DCI-Palestine's statistics.
RELATED: Toddler caught up in Israeli crackdown
In most cases, Parker added, parents are not notified of their children's arrest for 24 to 48 hours, and the children do not see their parents or a lawyer until they stand before a judge in an Israeli military court. "Despite the fact that international law and international juvenile justice standards include a prohibition on compelling a person from testifying against themselves or confessing guilt, this is commonplace in the Israeli military detention system," he continued.
Yet, in more than one-quarter of juvenile arrests of Palestinians in 2014, children were coerced into signing confessions in Hebrew, despite the fact that most do not speak the language, a recent DCI-Palestine report noted.
An Israeli military spokesperson did not reply to Al Jazeera's multiple requests for comment on these allegations.
According to a study published last month by UNICEF, the United Nations programme focusing on children, Palestinian children are regularly subjected to verbal abuse and intimidation, strip-searched and not "adequately notified of their legal rights, in particular the right to counsel and the right to remain silent".
In November 2014, ministers in Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's government threw their weight behind a bill that could impose sentences of up to 20 years in prison for Palestinians in East Jerusalem who throw rocks at Israeli vehicles. "Israel is acting firmly against terrorists, rock-throwers, against firebomb throwers and against those who use fireworks," Netanyahu said at the time.
"A terrorist is a terrorist," then-Justice Minister Tzipi Livni, considered a centre-left politician, declared. "It makes no difference what weapon he uses."
Though the bill has yet to pass in the Knesset, Israel's parliament, human rights groups say it will disproportionately affect Palestinian children, who are involved in the majority of stone-throwing cases.
"We know that most children are arrested for participation in demonstrations or throwing stones, so this new legislation can be seen as directly targeting children and youth," said Randa Kamal, an advocacy officer for Addameer, a Ramallah-based group that monitors Israel's arrests of Palestinians.
Meanwhile, back in their West Bank home, the Sheikh family is worried for Khaled's health. He suffers from anaemia, a blood condition that requires him to take medicine three times a day - but Sheikh said he has not been able to speak to his son since his arrest.
"He looked very ill when we saw him in court," he recalled. "We have no way of knowing whether he has been given the medicine and treatment that he needs. We are very worried about his health."
Mazars and Deutsche Bank could have ended this nightmare before it started.
They could still get him out of office.
But instead, they want mass death.
Don’t forget that.
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Re: Zionism’s Lost Shine

Postby elfismiles » Wed Apr 15, 2015 1:43 pm

bds boycott divestment sanctions movement - here in Austin, Texas at UT University of Texas.

SG debates divestment resolution
Image
Collin Poirot, Plan II and communications studies senior, voices his opinion of the divestment legislation.
Photo Credit: Jack DuFon | Daily Texan Staff

Tags: Israel, Palestinian Territories, Rebecca Hanai, University of Texas, University of Texas Investment Management Company
These tags are automatically generated. The Daily Texan does not guarantee their accuracy.

Published on April 15, 2015 at 2:00 am
Last update on April 15, 2015 at 2:05 am
By Samantha Ketterer

Students debated a Student Government resolution that would support divestment of the University of Texas Investment Management Company (UTIMCO) from corporations that supporters said facilitate in the oppression of the Palestinian people.

The legislation, introduced Tuesday, states that UTIMCO’s investments in these corporations violate University values. The legislation asks UTIMCO to divest from five specific companies in which UTIMCO holds shares: Alstom, Cemex, Hewlett-Packard, Procter & Gamble, and United Technologies.

“UTS continues to hold securities in — and thereby profits from — companies which have an active role in the human rights abuse and institutionalized structural violence perpetrated against the Palestinian people, consequently making it a complicit third party,” the legislation states.

Collin Poirot, Plan II and communication studies senior and an author of the document, said the investments directly affect students despite the overseas distance of Palestine and Israel.

“This resolution has direct implications for a number of UT students,” Poirot said. “These companies that our tuition dollars are supporting are directly responsible for the persecution and oppression of family members of UT students.”

Rebecca Hanai, an advertising junior who spoke in opposition to the legislation, said the issue is too divisive for SG to take a vote.

“A resolution proposing a divestment from Israel would indeed divide our campus for the worse,” Hanai said. “As a Jewish student leader on this campus, I can personally say that I attend a school that supports such a polarizing issue.”

The divestment resolution, which members of the Palestinian Solidarity Committee and other allied groups drafted, is part of a larger “boycott-divestment-sanctioning,” or “BDS,” movement that Palestinian civil rights organizations have started.

Hanai said BDS movements cut off dialogue between the two groups.

“The notion of [BDS] movement coming to the Forty Acres is a regression to change of any kind,” Hanai said. “The AR resolution poses a threat to our campus, not only by demoting justice, human rights or peace at UT-Austin, but also by repressing any opportunities for open dialogue.”

Amy Nabozny, College Republicans president and history and government junior, said she thinks the resolution would target Israel.

“This piece of legislation would be responsible and deliberately singles out and demonizes the only Jewish state and few democracies in the Middle East,” Nabozny said.

Law student Mohammed Nabulsi, a law school representative and author of the resolution, said Unify Texas, an organization opposed to divestment, has misrepresented UTDivest, the movement that supports the resolution.

“It’s not asking for a divestment from businesses who do business in Israel; rather it’s asking for divestment from a little, limited amount of companies … all whom do business in the Occupy [Palestine] territories, participating in illegal activity and also participating in a violation of human rights,” Nabulsi said.

Student groups at other universities, such as UC-Davis and DePaul University, have been successful in passing similar legislation. UT’s SG also passed a resolution last session asking for UTIMCO to divest from companies that facilitate in genocide in Sudan.

The legislation will be sent to the Government Affairs Committee this week.

http://www.dailytexanonline.com/2015/04 ... resolution
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