Egypt: Sometimes Revolutions Fail

The aftermath of the army's crackdown on the Ikhwan: A grief-stricken man among the bodies in a makeshift morgue.

‘[I]f the state is the product of the irreconcilability of class antagonisms, if it is a power standing above society and “alienating itself more and more from it,” it is clear that the liberation of the oppressed class is impossible not only without a violent revolution, but also without the destruction of the apparatus of state power which was created by the ruling class and which is the embodiment of this “alienation”.’ —V.I. Lenin, The State and Revolution, 1917

It has been two and a half years of hope, cycled with fear and disappointment. In the winter of 2011, millions of Egyptians took to the streets. In Cairo, Tahrir Square was turned into a carnival of revolution, an encampment where hundreds of thousands shook off the quiet of decades of political and military repression. In a model for the Occupy movement which followed later in the U.S. (which, it must be said, never quite reached the critical mass of the Egyptian — or Greek— squares movements), people camped out in public spaces, talking and celebrating and building a new reality 24 hours a day, defying the rules and laws of established order. There were waves of repression and violence, sectarian tension, and massive social ferment. Egyptians watched as the military, key to Egyptian state power in the most obvious ways, stood down and then consented to the overthrow of the Egyptian dictator Hosni Mubarak in February of 2011.

It's worth calling out the role of the United States during the Egyptian revolution: while cops used American-supplied teargas against protesters, the Obama government made equivocating noises until the die was cast that Mubarak would fall. As the U.S. has loudly shouted "Democracy!" it's clear what they've really meant was "Order!" It's also clear their primary concern is for the protection of Israel: Egyptian revolutionaries have over and over again called into question the peace treaty signed by Anwar Sadat, even as successive governments including Morsi's have done their part to enforce the Israeli blockade of Gaza. Jumping ahead a moment, the new military regime has been coordinating military attacks against Islamist rebels in northern Sinai with Israel and Israeli drones.

An interim government — again with the backing of the military — organized elections. After a long period of confusing debate a run-off election seemed to exclude both liberal democrats and leftists, forcing Egyptians to choose their new leadership either from a candidate tainted by association with the previous machine, or Mohammed Morsi, the candidate of the long-banned Ikhwan, or Muslim Brotherhood, an Islamist political party and social movement that sought to establish an Islamic State in a multi-sectarian nation. The Ikhwan promised to be more moderate than the far-right Salafist Islamist parties. Morsi won the election, and proceeded to use his new government to undermine democracy and give the Islamist movement permanent advantage. Leftists, liberals and Egypt's significant Coptic Christian population began to get nervous.

Fast forward to this summer, a new movement called "tamarod" ("rebellion") mobilized millions of people back into the streets. Some claimed that the ensuing demonstrations were the largest gathering of human beings ever. The military moved into action quickly, delivering an ultimatum not to the protesters, but to the Morsi government. In July, the military acted, and it deposed Morsi in a quick show of force. Millions celebrated the coup d'etat in the streets, though not the Ikhwan, who recognized that it had been backed into a corner.

A woman protester challenges a cop breaking up an Ikhwan protest encampment

The Brotherhood soon set up its own protest camps in different districts of Cairo. Demonstrations turned violent, and a confrontation seemed imminent. This week, the military acted and attacked those camps. Over just a few days, hundreds maybe thousands of people have been killed, significantly including dozens of members of security forces. A heartbreaking post from an eyewitness on Facebook conveys some of the horror of the military crackdown on the Ikhwan:

"For the first time in my life I thought I wasn't going to make it home. This is a nightmare. After Friday prayer we had the Day of Rage march spilling out of the mosque into the streets. We prayed upon the deceased, wrapped in shrouds at the front of the minbar, their loved ones crying out in pain and raising their hands to the sky. We drove to Ramses, where all of the protests around the country were funneling into a massive one. As soon as I started walking, I saw reporters scurrying here and there with their cameras trying to get into the mobs. Smoke was everywhere...for the first time I experienced tear gas. That stuff hurts. Your eyes water, your throat cracks, you can't see, and the only way to relieve it is to pour pepsi into your eyes or water with yeast and breathe into a cloth. I was walking with my family into the crowd when we saw people running back, warning us not to go, they are firing live ammunition, people are dying. Helicopters are everywhere, dropping tear gas canisters. You can distinguish the crisp shots of live ammunition as opposed to the muffled blunts of the cartouche. I look up and I can see snipers atop the buildings. All of a sudden it is chaos. Everyone is running, everyone is pushing you or pulling you along; on one side there are thugs advancing upon you with sticks, on the other side are snipers and helicopters. The only thing you can do is flatten yourself against the walls of the buildings. One man lost his temper and started screaming in the middle of the streets, almost ripping his clothes off, telling us "WHY ARE YOU SCARED. THEY ARE TEN. WE ARE TEN THOUSAND. STAND YOUR GROUND." None of the protestors were armed. No one. As we advanced ahead, more gunshots, more people with cartouche wounds in their face. Small motorcycles were operating as makeshift ambulances as they urgently puttered back and forth, each time with a different man or woman on it covered in blood, some lifeless, some screaming in pain. There aren't enough motorcycles; some people are holding others like babies and running in the streets to the mosque which is housing injured folk. Dead bodies are being transported atop floor mats. There are mini fires on every corner of the street so as to make smoke so the helicopters don't see clearly. As we turned to head home, we found the street we were on was blocked with thugs. We took a side alleyway, hoping it was safer. As I was walking in the quiet alley, passing by a guy making bean sandwiches, I heard a sharp rat-a-tat-tat and turned to my right. A man not one meter in front of me, RIGHT IN FRONT OF MY FACE, got shot in the head and plopped to the floor, lifeless. His brother was holding him when this happened and started shaking the man's bloody face. He gave one last futile kick...I swear I saw his soul go out of him...and sunk like jello. His brother screamed in anguish...the deepest anguish I've ever seen, and threw himself at my feet. Sobbing uncontrollably, pounding at the floor like an infant, wiping his face and smearing blood everywhere. People picked him up, hugged him, kissed him, consoling him for something that couldn't be consoled. The dead man was carried away, pools of viscous ruby red pouring out of his head on the floor. When I walked home I saw a tank with soldiers sitting on it, stoic expressions on their faces. One woman in hysterics asked them if they were content in their hearts, to which the soldier replied yes, yes I am very content. I don't even know anymore. You can sit behind your computer screen talking politics, talking about churches or mosques or brotherhood or the STUPID word 'islamists' all you want...go ahead. This stuff can't be unseen." —Eman Haggag (August 16)


Not clear from this account is the massive division taking place in Egyptian society. It seems the military government has the support of massive numbers of Egyptians. And it's true, even as the Ikhwan is being violently repressed (again, U.S.-supplied teargas and weapons), its supporters have been attacking Christian churches as they retreat.

A statement from Tahrir-ICN, an anarchist network, nails the danger faced by the Egyptian people:

"The events of the past couple of days are the latest step in a sequence of events by which the military can consolidate its hold on power, aim towards the death of the revolution and a return to a military/police state.

The authoritarian regime of the Muslim Brotherhood had to go. But what has replaced it is the true face of the military in Egypt — no less authoritarian, no less fascist and for sure more difficult to depose.

The massacre carried out by the army against pro-Morsi supporters in Nadha Square and Raba’a has left around 500 killed and up to 3000 injured (Ministry of Health figures — the reality is likely much higher). It was a pre-orchestrated act of state terrorism. Its aim is to divide the people and push the Muslim Brotherhood to create more militia’s to revenge and protect themselves. This in turn will enable the army to label all Islamists as terrorists and produce an “internal enemy” in the country which will allow the army to keep the military regime in an ongoing state of emergency.

They go after the Muslim Brotherhood today, but they will come after anyone who dares to criticize them tomorrow. Already the army has declared a state of emergency for one month, giving the police and military exceptional powers, and a curfew has been declared in many provinces for the same amount of time from 7pm to 6am. This gives the army a free hand to crack down on dissent..." (August 15)

A cumpled poster for overthrown President Morsi

So what has happened here? How is it that a revolutionary process that seems to have birthed so much hope all over the world seemingly come to such a terrible, bloody end, with an entrenched military dictatorship stronger than ever?

Let's go back again to Lenin:

"A state arises, a special power is created, special bodies of armed men, and every revolution, by destroying the state apparatus, shows us the naked class struggle, clearly shows us how the ruling class strives to restore the special bodies of armed men which serve it, and how the oppressed class strives to create a new organization of this kind, capable of serving the exploited instead of the exploiters."

It seems this crucial bit of revolutionary understanding has been lost. Even the Ikhwan, which rightfully saw seizing the government as key to its social agenda, seems to have forgotten that the state is nothing without the naked power of the military. The working-class communist left was destroyed by the radical nationalist Nasser in the 1950s. As happened across the Middle East, repression by rightward drifting nationalist forces drove a Leninist understanding of the state underground. While Egypt has a new generation of left organizations, none of these seems to have a strong mass base. The Trotskyist Revolutionary Socialists, for instance, seems to have bravely taken part in these two years of revolution, even losing martyrs to the repression. But in the end the Revolutionary Socialists supported the election of Morsi that has led to this predictable conclusion.

In my opinion, what the tragic unfolding of events in Egypt teaches us are some of the limits of horizontalism. Who could fail to be inspired by millions of people going out in the streets? Who could fail to be inspired by the new reality created in the mass democracy of the squares? In the early days of the revolution in 2011 there was some discussion of popular and factory committees, suggesting some will toward parallel horizontal self-reorganization of society; I can't tell how widespread or continued this movement was. But it's clear that this inspiring movement of people into the streets never challenged the real source of power of the Egyptian state. Indeed, Egyptian popular reverence for the military is repeated in news accounts ad nauseum. The whole world crossed its fingers and hoped that the Egyptian people would win, would win a new reality. How could millions of people in the streets, a scale unimaginable in the United States, lose? And yet, here we are.

What seems misunderstood to me in a horizontalist, or anarchist, critique of Leninist tradition, is the notion of how revolutionaries should organize. Horizontalists deride "vanguardists" for substituting themselves for the people, for being the seed of a future organized class of self-privileged dictatorship. I agree with anarchists that this is a danger, documented by certain historical failures. But what if the role of revolutionary leadership is to preserve the memory of theoretical and historical lessons? The capitalist state seems to well understand where its power comes from. In today's world it's true that not a lot of people are listening to communists, and there are lots of reasons why this is true, many of them excellent. But communist — Leninist — theory is rich with an understanding of the power of the state, and I think that it is incumbent on communists to offer up a bit of leadership by telling the truths it has learned about how revolutions unfold.

Egypt proves that none of this is an abstraction:

“According to the Marxist theory of the state, the army is the chief component of state power. Whoever wants to seize and retain state power must have a strong army. Some people ridicule us as advocates of the "omnipotence of war". Yes, we are advocates of the omnipotence of revolutionary war; that is good, not bad, it is Marxist. The guns of the Russian Communist Party created socialism. We shall create a democratic republic. Experience in the class struggle in the era of imperialism teaches us that it is only by the power of the gun that the working class and the laboring masses can defeat the armed bourgeoisie and landlords; in this sense we may say that only with guns can the whole world be transformed.” —Mao Zedong (1938)

The Egyptian revolution should remain an inspiration to all of us. It was a brilliant display of popular power, faults and all. Lenin talks about Marx's attitude toward the heroic Paris Commune, which was crushed in 1871:

"It is well known that in the autumn of 1870, a few months before the Commune, Marx warned the Paris workers that any attempt to overthrow the government would be the folly of despair. But when, in March 1871, a decisive battle was forced upon the workers and they accepted it, when the uprising had become a fact, Marx greeted the proletarian revolution with the greatest enthusiasm, in spite of unfavorable auguries.... Marx, however, was not only enthusiastic about the heroism of the Communards, who, as he expressed it, "stormed heaven". Although the mass revolutionary movement did not achieve its aim, he regarded it as a historic experience of enormous importance, as a certain advance of the world proletarian revolution, as a practical step that was more important than hundreds of programmes and arguments. Marx endeavored to analyze this experiment, to draw tactical lessons from it and re-examine his theory in the light of it." 

So many popular movements have been successful in the past few decades, even though they may have not been socially transformative or socialist revolutions, it's hard to see this one apparently collapse. And sadly it probably won't be the last time the people are defeated as blood runs in the streets. We remember the 1960s as the decade when the Vietnamese were waging their ultimately victorious struggle against US imperialism, but we forget that was also the decade when half a million Indonesian communists were killed in a counterrevolution. So this is an opportunity to learn, and prepare ourselves for the next time.

What if the Occupy movement had been stronger? We saw how much the state felt threatened, how repression, albeit non-lethal repression, was quickly (and ultimately successfully) wielded to crush occupations across the country. What were the limits of our own radically rebellious horizontalism? While I think it would have been silly to suggest getting guns and running off to the woods to practice armed struggle, for equal reasons I think it would also be wrong, as some leftists are suggesting to the post-Occupy milieu, to channel all that rebellious energy to fielding electoral candidates. We must create and build popular power, but never forget the enemy we are up against. When there are millions and millions of Americans out in the street— and I believe this will happen one day — we will need to be there to share the lessons of history, and "The people united will never be defeated" is inspirational but incomplete.


(Crossposted to the Kasama Project).

Just Do It.

US Imperialism Is A Paper Tiger
Excerpts from a speech by Mao Zedong, 1956

The United States is flaunting the anti-communist banner everywhere in order to perpetrate aggression against other countries.

The United States owes debts everywhere. It owes debts not only to the countries of Latin America, Asia and Africa, but also to the countries of Europe and Oceania. The whole world, Britain included dislikes the United States. The masses of the people dislike it. Japan dislikes the United States because it oppresses her. None of the countries in the East is free from U.S. aggression. The United States has invaded our Taiwan Province. Japan, Korea, the Philippines, Vietnam and Pakistan all suffer from U.S. aggression, although some of them are allies of the United States. The people are dissatisfied and in some countries so are the authorities.

All oppressed nations want independence.

Everything is subject to change. The big decadent forces will give way to the small new-born forces. The small forces will change into big forces because the majority of the people demand this change. The U.S. imperialist forces will change from big to small because the American people, too, are dissatisfied with their government.

In my own lifetime I myself have witnessed such changes. Some of us present were born in the Ching Dynasty and others after the 1911 Revolution...

Now U.S. imperialism is quite powerful, but in reality it isn't. It is very weak politically because it is divorced from the masses of the people and is disliked by everybody and by the American people too. In appearance it is very powerful but in reality it is nothing to be afraid of, it is a paper tiger. Outwardly a tiger, it is made of paper, unable to withstand the wind and the rain. I believe the United States is nothing but a paper tiger.

History as a whole, the history of class society for thousands of years, has proved this point: the strong must give way to the weak. This holds true for the Americas as well.

Only when imperialism is eliminated can peace prevail. The day will come when the paper tigers will be wiped out. But they won't become extinct of their own accord, they need to be battered by the wind and the rain.

When we say U.S. imperialism is a paper tiger, we are speaking in terms of strategy. Regarding it as a whole, we must despise it. But regarding each part, we must take it seriously. It has claws and fangs. We have to destroy it piecemeal. For instance, if it has ten fangs, knock off one the first time, and there will be nine left, knock off another, and there will be eight left. When all the fangs are gone, it will still have claws. If we deal with it step by step and in earnest, we will certainly succeed in the end.

Strategically, we must utterly despise U.S. imperialism. Tactically, we must take it seriously. In struggling against it, we must take each battle, each encounter, seriously. At present, the United States is powerful, but when looked at in a broader perspective, as a whole and from a long-term viewpoint, it has no popular support, its policies are disliked by the people, because it oppresses and exploits them. For this reason, the tiger is doomed. Therefore, it is nothing to be afraid of and can be despised. But today the United States still has strength, turning out more than 100 million tons of steel a year and hitting out everywhere. That is why we must continue to wage struggles against it, fight it with all our might and wrest one position after another from it. And that takes time.

It seems that the countries of the Americas, Asia and Africa will have to go on quarrelling with the United States till the very end, till the paper tiger is destroyed by the wind and the rain.

To oppose U.S. imperialism, people of European origin in the Latin-American countries should unite with the indigenous Indians. Perhaps the white immigrants from Europe can be divided into two groups, one composed of rulers and the other of ruled. This should make it easier for the group of oppressed white people to get close to the local people, for their position is the same....

What use is imperialism? The Chinese people will have none of it, nor will the people in the rest of the world. There is no reason for the existence of imperialism.  

___

Also, gotta love The Onion. "US Flag Recalled After Causing 143 Million Deaths."

The Benghazi Circus: Is There Anything There?

Benghazi, Benghazi, Benghazi! (to the tune of "Marcia, Marcia, Marcia"). Meme floating around Facebook.

Question: Why has there never been a coup d'etat in Washington, D.C.?
Answer: Because there is no U.S. embassy there.

Not a new joke, but appropriate in the light of this week's congressional hearings into the "terrorist" attack on the U.S. consulate in Benghazi, Libya, last September 11. Republicans are up in arms, trying to implicate President Obama and now former Secretary of State and presumed 2016 presidential candidate Hillary Clinton in something resembling a scandal. Increasingly shrill, Republican politicians and conservative pundits are claiming that there's something here worse than Watergate, the actual scandal back in the early 1970s that revealed illegal activities in President Nixon's reelection campaign.

It's obvious the primary Republican motivation is "gotcha," a continuation of their base, and often deeply racist, campaign against the country's first black president. We're all used to seeing how when Obama says "yea," they say "nay." It's a tiresome spectacle, especially because Obama's underlying positions are often much closer to those of the Republicans than anyone cares to acknowledge. But it seems to me clear that the Obama administration is indeed engaged in a fairly clumsy attempt to muddy the waters over the Benghazi incident. There's some leaked e-mails showing an attempt to get the administration talking points just so, and an effort to explain the odd spectacle of Obama's sleazy U.N. diplomat Susan Rice being shuttled around the talk show circuit to soft-peddle what was, from their perspective, a minor diplomatic disaster.

Of course there's the standard Republican hypocrisy. One need only recall the unheeded message "Osama Bin Laden determined to strike inside the U.S." from a presidential briefing in August 2001, that George W. Bush was never seriously held responsible for; or the hundreds of large and small attacks on American diplomatic properties that have taken place in the last couple decades. And there's little discussion of Republicans cutting back on the budget for diplomatic protection. So in one sense, scandal, schmandal. This is a routine Washington sideshow. These are all sleazebag politicians, Republicans and Democrats alike, looking not for truth but looking to make — or cover up — hay.

But I think it's a fair question to ask why the Obama administration stuck to a trivially unimportant talking point, that the Benghazi consulate was spontaneously attacked during a protest against a crude anti-Islamic American film rather than attacked as part of a planned action by enemies of the United States.

Iranian revolutionaries display captured evidence of CIA spying at the occupied US embassy in Tehran

Question: What do you call the destruction and burning of a U.S. embassy?
Answer: A good start.

I think two things happened in Benghazi that the administration would not care to admit. First, that post-NATO regime change Libya was full of people not so apparently grateful for U.S. intervention; and secondly that the so-called U.S. Benghazi Consulate was something more than just a diplomatic installation. Indeed it seems that one of the objectives of the Benghazi attackers was to liberate prisoners who were being held at the consulate. The question must be asked: Was the Benghazi Consulate actually a CIA black site?

As the exposure of the nest of spies in Tehran back in 1979 by heroic Iranian students revealed, so-called American diplomatic installations are actually and commonly hotbeds of espionage and subversion. For decades and decades all over the world, U.S. embassies were hosts to coup plotters and schemers to manipulate foreign governments to the will and interests of the United States. In the post-911 era of the so-called war on terror, it would surprise noone to learn that the web of CIA black sites — off-the-public-grid facilities where suspected "terrorists" could be held, interrogated, tortured, or worse, often with the assistance of local repressive secret police agencies — would include American facilities in hotspot countries like Libya. There's already a public record of the CIA working with repressive governments, ironically including Libya's Gaddafi who it eventually helped overthrow, and Syria's Assad, to interrogate suspected terrorists. It would seem to me shocking and counter-intuitive to think the Benghazi consulate was NOT such a blood-soaked station of international repression.

The new Libyan government was embarrassed by the attack on Benghazi (the state-department socialists of the North Star blog, big supporters of the NATO intervention, even ran an embarrasing apologia for the attack.) With the establishment of a U.S. drone base in neighboring Niger, one suspects that spying eyes will be quick to foil any future "terrorist" attack against U.S. interests in Libya.

The real lesson of Benghazi is that U.S. imperialism has a proven record of covert and open manipulation of foreign governments. As far as I'm concerned, the destruction of the consulate there was another case of chickens coming home to roost. To me the real outrage is that other U.S. diplomatic facilities elsewhere all over the world are engaged at this very minute in acts of subversion, control and exploitation. That's what imperialism does, and that's not a truth one should expect to come out of the congressional Benghazi circus.

Perhaps there's some perverse pleasure to be taken in watching corrupt, war-mongering politicians in Washington bloody each other: I for one have no interest in choosing between creepy racist Republicans and Hillary Clinton/Susan Rice/Barack Obama. But ultimately scandals like this one are ugly spectacles that demoralize and depoliticize people. One day we'll put all those buildings in Washington, built by forced labor of black slaves, to good use.

Defend Palestine! Stop the Israeli Attack on Gaza!

Omar Jihad Mashrawi holding his one-year-old son, who died from his injuries following an Israeli air strike.

With the full assent of the just re-elected Obama administration, today the Israeli government carried out a series of attacks on Gaza, including the targeted assassination of Ahmed Jabari, the military leader of Hamas, the organization that rules Gaza.

أحمد الجعبري "خالدٌ فينا" -
Ahmed Jabari " You're eternal to us," graphic from the PFLP

The Israeli attacks, which have already taken the lives of a number of Palestinian children, have been widespread in besieged Gaza, and an incursion of ground troops has already been threatened by the Israeli government. Below, blogger and activist Abu Abunimah of the Electronic Intifada exposes the Israeli lie machine's usual dissembling inventions over who started shooting first. Making its point of view clear, the Obama administration issued a disgusting statement: "We strongly condemn the barrage of rocket fire from Gaza into southern Israel, and we regret the death and injury of innocent Israeli and Palestinian civilians caused by the ensuing violence. There is no justification for the violence that Hamas and other terrorist organizations are employing against the people of Israel." Yes that's right, the US is condemning Hamas for being attacked.



Attacks apparently continued overnight; I'm writing this night-time on Wednesday before dawn in Palestine. Decent human beings everywhere must stand up for the right of the Palestinian people to live their lives free from Israeli terror and occupation. There's a protest now scheduled for New York City on Thursday afternoon.

Remembering The Main Enemy

In the belly of the beast

As the "Arab Spring" continues to challenge the established order in countries across the Middle East, a key question has emerged: given the predatory nature of the United States, what's the proper response when local forces call for "humanitarian" military assistance from American or NATO forces? There's an ongoing debate on left forums in the internet, and I am happy to report that Kasama's Mike Ely has succinctly staked out a position that jibes with my own. This is a response written to a piece by Pham Binh, which originally appeared on The North Star and was reposted on Kasama called "Libya and Syria: When Anti-Imperialism Goes Wrong."

Here is a portion of Mike Ely's article. Read the whole thing at Kasama.

Answer to Pham Binh: Our responsibility to oppose new U.S. crimes, by Mike Ely

Here is one of the most basic and important questions of any revolutionary movement: Do you support the government and this system or don’t you? Do you see what their interests are, and the criminal nature of their actions, or don’t you?

All my life, I have seen how in popular movements the most basic goals are controversial. In ironic ways, it has been controversial to be antiwar in the antiwar movement. It has been controversial to be communist in the communist movement.

So I’m not surprised that someone writes (for audiences of communists, revolutionaries, and socialists) that we should support the U.S. military in its previous attack on Libya, and then even urges pre-support for a not-yet-existent U.S. attack on Iran’s ally government in Syria.
(I  wonder: Is this argument the leftist pre-stage to supporting coming Israeli/U.S. attacks on Iran? And which of Pham’s arguments here can’t be applied there?)
Here is my view in a nutshell:

• We should not support U.S. military attacks around the world. We should not support U.S. bases, fleets, drones, agents, trainers, commandos or nukes intruding into the lives of people around the world.
• We should support the isolation, defeat and dismantling of the U.S. military (not its murderous deployment in the troubled spots of empire). “Yankee Go Home!”
• We should politically expose this military, its purposes, its goals, and its nature — not portray it as a possible force for good.
• We should not create public opinion for its next possible attacks in the next zone of civil conflicts.
• We should create public opinion for the future political dismantling of the U.S. military as an institution (and for its systematic removal around the world, break up of its office corps, the destruction of its nukes, the trial and punishment of its leading war criminals). Where the Pentagon stands, we should hope for a salted field of the kind that surrounded ancient Carthage.

I would like to break down parts of Pham’s argument, piece by piece.
Starting with insult for your opponents

Pham  starts by saying

“Reflexive opposition to Uncle Sam’s machinations abroad is generally a good thing. It is a progressive instinct that….”

Since Pham then goes on to reject such opposition, it is worth noting that the phrasing here is loaded. Our opposition to U.S. imperialism is here described as “reflexive,” “instinct” and later as “a broken record.” At one point, he even compares us to dogs salivating on command.

His claim is that consistent opposition to U.S. imperialist actions is unnuanced, mechanical and unthinking, as if we don’t consider specific circumstances, and are just on autopilot following raw gut feelings. And then his own analysis is purported to be, by contrast, thoughtful and engaged with reality.

I think these characterizations are as mistaken as they are rude.
Is it counterrevolutionary to oppose U.S. imperialism?

Pham writes:

“The moment the Syrian and Libyan revolutions demanded imperialist airstrikes and arms to neutralize the military advantage enjoyed by governments over revolutionary peoples, anti-interventionism became counter-revolutionary because it meant opposing aid to the revolution.”

This jumbles everything up.
First, supporting the U.S. government (from here within the U.S.) is counterrevolutionary, because we intend to make a revolution against them.

One of the key tasks of any revolutionary movement is to systematically expose the core institutions, figures and interests that define the existing system. It is an inflexible task. Any movement that is not clear on that cannot and will not ever train forces to make a revolution.

There may be rebellions against established governments in Syria and Libya, and this-or-that group may make tactical decisions of various kinds. But their choice hardly define (for us) what we should say or do in regard to this empire and its military.

We obviously can’t control what political forces do in Libya or Syria (and we are hardly in a position to advise them). But I can tell you that regardless of what anyone says, anywhere in the world, we will oppose U.S. imperialism.

When the German revolutionaries said during World War 1 “The main enemy is here in our own country,” they were saying that their political exposure and activity had to be aimed at the German imperialists –  at the German justifications of war aims, at the German government’s pretenses of democracy and anti-autocracy etc. Why? Because they (the communist revolutionaries in Germany) intended to mobilize forces to overthrow the German Kaiser and the capitalist system in Germany.
People in other countries (say in Russia, or France during World War 1) had other tasks — because (obviously) if a Russian socialist focused mainly on exposing German imperialism’s oppressive nature it would (objectively, in the real world of politics) mean encouraging the Russian war effort and strengthening the Russian Tsar.

We (in our time and place) have a special and distinct task in regard to U.S. imperialism. We are in the belly of this beast, in the heart of the empire — and the demagogic lies of the U.S. government have an especially great influence among the people.

Here in the U.S., too many people believe “The U.S. might not always be good, but it is certainly better than a Saddam, or an Assad, or a Gaddafi, or a Brezhnev, or…..” When the Hillaries and Reagans of this government portray the U.S. as a force for good, and for “democracy,” and for ending torture, and for popular sovereignty of distant peoples, we have a special and ongoing responsibility to expose all that.

There may be times when revolutionaries in distant places may find themselves in tactical alliances with reactionary powers. Mao Zedong in China and Ho Chi Minh in Vietnam took aid from the U.S. in WW2. The Vietnamese took aid from the USSR during their struggle for independence…
But again no decision by anyone anywhere should lead revolutionaries in the U.S. to ally with U.S. imperialism. And history is rich with examples of those who flirted with such pro-imperialist tactics, and the terrible consequences of that.

The illusion that the U.S. military might help the revolution
Pham assumes that the U.S. military intervention is somehow aid for revolutions in Libya and Syria.  This is perhaps the key issue (and key illusion) to discuss  (and I will open that issue here without dealing with it in great depth).

But here is the core reality to confront: The U.S. military is the single largest force of murder and oppression in world history. Its very purpose (its nature and its conscious goal) is to serve, defend and extend U.S. imperialism. When this massive and brutal military enters anywhere, that is done to extend U.S. power (and serve the larger purposes of U.S. state policy and capitalist interests).
Sometimes the U.S. fails in its policy goals. Sometimes its military actions bog down in failure and defeat (thank gawd). But their purpose and intent is always to deepen the U.S. grip on key and strategic parts of the world, to prevent genuine revolution, prevent the rise of non-revolutionary but anti-U.S. forces, to co-opt and intimidate diverse political forces, to force intrusion of U.S. economic interests and so on.

The military entrance of the U.S. imperialists is (objectively and inevitably) the intrusion of American interests and power — and (especially in fragile, undefined and chaotic political situations) they intentionally skew and transform the entire situation.

They encourage pro-U.S. puppet forces to emerge, they corrupt and compromise those who were not previously inclined that way, they attach threads to everything (including debts, trainers, etc) as political-military forces on the ground become dependent (for their day to day survival) on imperialist actions (and therefore inevitably obedient to imperialist demands, or even hints).
We oppose all of that.

We do not want the U.S. empire strengthened. We do not want the U.S. to have a say in who emerges in Syria or Libya or Iran. We do not want them to be able to mascarade as defenders of popular aspirations anywhere.

We need to oppose their practical efforts and politically expose their nature (to anyone we can reach)....

For a decade, the U.S. has been on a rampage (unprecedented since Hitler attacked his neighbors one by one in the late 1930s). This U.S. “war on the world” has focused on the wide swathe of countries from North Africa to Central Asia: Afghanistan, Iraq, Western Pakistan, Yemen, Somalia, Libya, now potentially Syria and Iran. This is all part of a single global strategy that emerged from 9/11 — where Bush and Obama policies have a great deal of overlap.

Do we really need to train the people to look at each of these cases, one by one, and ponder afresh “Is this one good for the people there?”

We should (and do) support popular uprisings against oppressive governments (including in China, Iran, Syria, Libya, Greece, Egypt, etc. etc.) but we should be firm, strategic and consistent in our opposition to U.S. imperialism. (That is our special responsibility for reasons having to do with both our position in the world and our particular task within world history.)...

We are revolutionaries and communists in the belly of the beast. We are people with serious responsibilities and serious intentions.

Save the Palestinian Hunger Strikers!

Palestinian protesters (Che T-shirt sighting!) outside Israeli Supreme Court in Jerusalem last week. Photo from Alakhbar English.

Decades ago in the midst of another desperate struggle, imprisoned revolutionaries in Northern Ireland used the final weapon available, and went on a series of hunger strikes to bring attention to British repression. Several Irish Republican Army militants starved to death, including most famously Bobby Sands.

Today the desperate resistance tactic of the hunger strike is being deployed by some two thousand Palestinians in Israeli jails. Two of these protesters, in administrative detention without charges or recourse, are now said to be near death. Thaer Halahla, 34, and Bilal Thiab, 27, shown in the posters above, have been denied visits from their families and independent medical authorities.

Today the Israeli Supreme Court rejected their appeals to end their "administrative detention." At their hearing, one of the men fainted from weakness. The other, Mr. Halahla, is quoted saying, “I am a man who loves life, and I want to live in dignity. No human can accept being in jail for one hour without any charge or reason.” 

These two men are not accused of any crime, merely of being "potential terrorists" by virtue of their membership in the Palestinian Islamic Jihad faction. Sound familiar? This is what the NDAA law passed by Congress and signed by President Obama authorizes here in the United States.


Save Thaer Halahla and Bilal Thiab!

Palestine and UNESCO: Two Videos

The video above actually made me tear up as Palestine is voted full state membership in the United Nations agency UNESCO. Note that, as Jews sans Frontieres blog points out, the whole world laughs at Israel as it casts its "no" vote. (Sorry about the advertisement; it's worth sitting through). The joy of the Palestinian delegation, indeed the vast majority of the room, is awesome to behold.

On the other hand, the video below is nausea-provoking as an American official defends the United States' "no" vote. (First noted on AngryArab). Note the journalist Matt Lee who doesn't let the soul-dead American bureaucrat get away with her nonsensical rationalizations and hypocrisy:


Transcript here, thanks to Mondoweiss.

It took about five minutes for the Republic of South Sudan's application for U.N. membership to be approved by the U.N. What ever could the hold-up be with the Palestinian application made a month ago?

The Betrayal

"Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman on Tuesday presented the United Nations with his draft for a population and territory swap, as part of an eventual peace deal between Israel and the Palestinians. Under Lieberman's controversial scheme, part of Israel's Arab population would be moved to a newly created Palestinians state, in return for evacuation of Israeli settlements in the West Bank.'A final agreement between Israel and the Palestinians has to be based on a program of exchange of territory and populations,' Lieberman told the United Nations General Assembly in New York."
— rightwing Israeli Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman advocating the ethnic cleansing of Israel, in 2010, quoted in Ha'aretz

"Or, we can say that this time will be different – that this time we will not let terror, or turbulence, or posturing, or petty politics stand in the way. This time, we will think not of ourselves, but of the young girl in Gaza who wants to have no ceiling on her dreams, or the young boy in Sderot who wants to sleep without the nightmare of rocket fire. This time, we should draw upon the teachings of tolerance that lie at the heart of three great religions that see Jerusalem’s soil as sacred. This time we should reach for what’s best within ourselves. If we do, when we come back here next year, we can have an agreement that will lead to a new member of the United Nations – an independent state of Palestine, living in peace with Israel.”
— Barack Obama at the United Nations, September 2010

"Let us be honest with ourselves: Israel is surrounded by neighbors that have waged repeated wars against it. Israel’s citizens have been killed by rockets fired at their houses and suicide bombs on their buses. Israel’s children come of age knowing that throughout the region, other children are taught to hate them. Israel, a small country of less than eight million people, look out at a world where leaders of much larger nations threaten to wipe it off of the map. The Jewish people carry the burden of centuries of exile and persecution, and fresh memories of knowing that six million people were killed simply because of who they are. Those are facts. They cannot be denied....And we will only succeed in that effort if we can encourage the parties to sit down, to listen to each other, and to understand each other’s hopes and each other’s fears. That is the project to which America is committed. There are no shortcuts. And that is what the United Nations should be focused on in the weeks and months to come."
— Barack Obama at UN, September 2011, effectively announcing that the U.S. will veto the application of Palestine to the UN Security Council for recognized statehood

'Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman congratulated President Barack Obama Wednesday on his speech at the United Nations General assembly, praising him for not stating that negotiations between Israel and the Palestinians should be based on 1967 borders. “I congratulate President Obama, and I am ready to sign on this speech with both hands.”'
— Avigdor Lieberman on Obama's 2011 UN speech, reported in Ha'aretz

"I did not believe what I heard, it sounded as if the Palestinians were occupying Israel. There was no empathy for the Palestinians, he only spoke of the Israeli problems."
— Hanan Ashrawi, a member of the Palestinian UN delegation

"Let's be honest: Israel is surrounded by neighbors that have waged repeated wars against it. [false] Israel's citizens have been killed by rockets fired at their houses and suicide bombs on their buses. [correct but this should be balanced by explaining that 10 times more Palestinians were butchered] Israel's children come of age knowing that throughout the region, other children are taught to hate them. [Israelis teach hate 100 more times than the other way around and hate of the colonizer to the colonized is not the same as the reverse]. Israel, a small country of less than eight million people, looks out at a world where leaders of much larger nations threaten to wipe it off of the map. [That is nonsense; Israel wiped Palestine including 530 villages and towns and now is the fourth strongest country plus having you Obama and Congress as its lackeys]. The Jewish people carry the burden of centuries of exile, persecution, and the fresh memory of knowing that six million people were killed simply because of who they were. [Irrelevant and highly emotional: just study the history of Nazi-Zionist collaboration to see how absurd to link Apartheid Israel with "The Jewish People", itself a mistaken term no more valid than concepts of "The Christian People" or "The Muslim People"]. These facts cannot be denied [they are regurgitation of Zionist myths, irrelevant facts, and half truths]. The Jewish people have forged a successful state in their historic homeland [a racist apartheid state based on land theft and ethnic cleansing; is that your definition of success?]. Israel deserves recognition [no it does not, Israel deserves to be faced with the truth and pressured to transform just like Apartheid South Africa]..."
— Obama's speech with bracketed comments from blogger and Professor Mazin Qumsiyeh at Birzeit University in Palestine

"Palestinians have a better chance of getting a state on Craigslist than from Barack Obama... Not a word about settlements or occupation. Not a word about Palestinian conditions, or Palestinian nonviolent resistance, while he sang praises of the Arab spring. No sense of the strategic let alone moral urgency of ending the longest military occupation in modern history."
— Philip Weiss of Mondoweiss blog

"This morning Mr. President you are so popular in Israel. You are the king of Israel. You did great job. It will be such a shame if you lose the next elections after such a speech. While you where speaking at the UN, Ahed Wahdan, a 15-year-old Palestinian boy who was shot yesterday by Israeli soldiers with rubber bullet in his eye, listened to you....We listened to you when you talked about Israel’s citizens who have been killed by rockets fired at their houses, and that other children are taught to hate Israeli children. Do you not think that Israeli children hear what is said by rabbis who preach hate about Arabs? And we listened about Jewish suffering. No doubt Jewish people have suffered Mr. Obama, but let us put things in order: Jewish people are not the victims here. The Israeli state is not the victim; it is the occupier and the oppressor which continues to deny Palestinians living in their homeland and in exile ‘their universal right to live in freedom and dignity’. When you fail to mention Palestinian suffer under occupation, when you fail to consider Palestinian children as equal human beings who deserve a better future, who are also entitled to human rights, you might win elections, but you lose your integrity, and you make it clear to everyone why the ‘so called peace process’ should be out of your hands. We listened to you when you said “there are no shortcuts”, we couldn’t stop wondering, how come South Sudan deserved such a shortcut? A new precedent has been made with the case of South Sudan, UN recognition in five days. No need to answer, we understand that the interests there are different, and so are the standards and the values."
— Palestinian feminist blogger Abir Kopty

The Palestinian Delegation has promised to bring its application for statehood to the Security Council on Friday.

The white areas of the map at top show the areas of the West Bank "accessible" to Palestinians; this fragmented area is the basis for all the proposals made by Israel for a Palestinian micro-state. Note the lack of an international border. The colored areas on the map below show the Bantustans, fake "nations," that white-minority ruled apartheid South Africa was gradually granting "independence" before the establishment of majority rule and the dismantling of apartheid. Hmm....notice the similarities? Top map snagged from Zunguzungu.

Anti-Americana: From the Mouths of Babes

A child's drawing from Gaza; part of an exhibition that was to have been held by The Museum of Children's Art in Oakland, California, entitled "A Child's View of Gaza." Under protest of pro-Israel lobbyists, the exhibition was cancelled. See no evil and it doesn't exist, apparently. But even the little children of Gaza know where the weapons come from that kill their parents, their siblings, their friends, their relatives. Silence the little children and maybe it will all go away.

Excellent discussion of the shutdown at Democracy Sometimes: "Imagine for a moment that MOCHA were presenting an exhibition of Tibetan children’s art, and supporters of the Chinese government protested that allowing people to see drawings by children who lived under Chinese occupation was anti-Chinese. Not only can I not conceive that MOCHA would cave in to the pressure and cancel the show, but if they did, every human rights and civil liberties organization in town, or in the country, would be screaming foul. In fact, I would bet that the same Jewish organizations who act so decisively and aggressively to shut down anything that might generate sympathy for Palestinians would be among those decrying censorship by pro-Chinese forces."

For more examples of Anti-American art featured here at The Cahokian, click here.

Hopefully Just the Beginning

That's a photo from Al Jazeera of one of the Egyptian protesters who last night attacked the Israeli embassy in Cairo. Protesters demolished a wall built by the Egyptian police to protect the embassy; some protesters gained access to the embassy itself and this one has ripped down the hated Zionist banner. Others threw confidential papers and files out the windows. The protesters waged a battle with Egyptian police, and today Israel announced it was pulling its staff out of Cairo. Good riddance. This comes a week after an insulting UN report on last year's Israeli pirate attack on the Gaza peace flotilla and Israel's repeated failure to apologize for assassinating eight unarmed Turkish civilians caused Turkey to expel the Israeli ambassador. Again, good riddance. Turkey and Egypt need to abrogate their treaties with Israel and stop enabling the repression of the Palestinians who they both claim to support.

Palestinian authorities have reaffirmed their intention to bring their case to the United Nations this month, hoping to get the UN general assembly to recognize a Palestinian State. The Obama administration, clinging to its obscene lie that it supports the rights of Palestinians, has continued to threaten to veto any Palestinian moves. Fortunately, the U.S. has no veto power in the general assembly. Obama and the U.S. government support only a Palestinian state that is a powerless, defenseless Apartheid-style bantustan on a tiny speck of historical Palestine. Since the last failure of farcical peace talks, the Zionist regime has gone full-steam ahead with its theft and seizures of Palestinian lands: so-called settlement activity — actually the illegal colonialization of Arab land and property — is at an all-time high and the U.S. is doing absolutely nothing but encouraging it.

It's clear that U.N. recognition of a Palestinian state on the rump territory Israel conquered in 1967 will not solve the fundamental problem of injustice in the region, but perhaps it will give the Palestinians some legal recourse to prevent further erosion of their rights and land. Since they seem to have few real international allies willing to actually use leverage against the State of Israel, they will have to keep doing what they're doing. The Angry Arab printed a photo of a sign at a democracy protest in neighboring Syria that reads: "We shall not forget you, O Palestine but we have been occupied with our blood."

And this is why the U.S. and Europe are so desperate to seize control of the wave of unrest that has been sweeping the Arab world: sooner or later the despots and corrupt leaders who speak out of both sides of their mouths will be gone, and nothing will stand between the obscenity that is the Zionist State of Israel and the people of the region who yearn for freedom and justice and peace.

Yesterday's protest at the Cairo den of spies was a good start.

Update: More great pictures of this historic event at the Occupied Palestine blog.

Impunity x 3: Tales of Injustice

This summary is not available. Please click here to view the post.

Be Careful Who You Get In Bed With, Indeed

This video, circulating around the internet the past week, shows an American gay activist named "Marc Pax" recounting how, on behalf of his "LGBT group," he offered to build support for the upcoming Peace Flotilla to Gaza and was rebuffed. He then claims he discovered the Peace Flotilla was connected to the "anti-gay" Palestinian organization Hamas. Well so he claimed.

It turns out that "Marc Pax" is an Israeli actor named Omer Gershon and that this "personal" video is the work of the Israeli government, heavily promoted by the Israeli government's propaganda press office. Read anti-Zionist activist Max Blumenthal's blog and the Electronic Intifada blog for all the lurid details. Even the staunchly pro-Israel New York Times now reports that this video is a "hoax."

This is a prime example of Israeli government "pinkwashing," its vile attempt to split the pro-Palestinian movement by suggesting that only Israel is the true friend of gays in the Middle East. This video is prime evidence that Pinkwashing propaganda is another example of the big lie. In fact, numerous publically gay figures are not only associated with the anti-Israeli Apartheid movement, they are involved with the upcoming peace flotilla, including John Greyson, who created the "Gaza Island" video posted here a few days ago, and renowned writer Alice Walker.

Israel's attempt to present any support to the Palestinian people of Gaza as political support to the Hamas government and therefore aid to terrorists is beneath contempt. That is its rationale for killing Palestinians with impunity, notably the same rationale used by repressive regimes worldwide. Call your enemies "terrorists" and people will look away as you butcher women and children. Every tyrant knows this and the fake-democracy Israel has learned that lesson well.

The Israeli government is pulling out all the stops to try to sabotage the Peace Flotilla. Having already announced it will repeat its acts of piracy in international waters, Israel and its hasbara propagandists as well as outright saboteurs are waging a massive campaign of disruption.

Mondoweiss and Max Blumenthal report on how the virulently anti-gay American pastor John Hagee is a bankroller of the so-called Israel Law Center, which just tried to sabotage the Flotilla by pressuring the crisis-ridden Greek government to declare the American flotilla ship, docked at a Greek port, "unseaworthy." So much for Israel's pro-gay credentials. It thrives on taking money from anti-gay American fundamentalist Christians eager for the end times which they pray Israel will hasten. Mondoweiss also reported that another Flotilla vessel docked in Greece has been physically sabotaged.

The Israeli government has been trying to warn journalists off the Flotilla as well: "I think we're seeing an absolute last ditch and paniced effort by the Israeli government to control the narrative of these flotilla ships. It's well known that activists on board last years flotilla recorded all events that took place and Israel has confiscated and destroyed most of the footage and so I think the Israeli government specifically addressing journalists is sending a message to the international community that Israel is going to, at all costs, control the narrative and control the story of these flotilla ships. Now the fact journalists have not wavered I think is a good sign for the international media and press freedom,"according to leftwing Israeli-American journalist Joseph Dana working for The Nation.

Don't be fooled: if you climb into bed with Israel and its lies you're climbing into bed with piracy and murder.

Hillary Clinton Endorses Israeli Piracy & Claims to Palestinian Waters

Hillary Clinton, Obama's Secretary of State, has just issued a statement on the upcoming blockade-running peace flotilla to Gaza: "We do not believe that the flotilla is a necessary or useful effort to try to assist the people of Gaza...Just this week, the Israeli government approved a significant commitment to housing in Gaza. There will be construction materials entering Gaza. And we think that it’s not helpful for there to be flotillas that try to provoke actions by entering into Israeli waters and creating a situation in which the Israelis have the right to defend themselves."

That last sentence is the clincher: the flotilla has no intention of going near Israeli waters. It intends to go into Palestinian waters off Gaza. And besides that, the last flotilla, on which Israeli commandos assassinated eight peace activists including one American citizen (with total impunity), was in international waters when it was attacked. The flotilla is an example of nonviolent activism, which the American government claims to endorse, supporting international law and the rights of the Palestinian people, which the American government also claims to endorse, and now the American government, in advance, takes the side of pirates and murderers.

Back in 2009, Clinton claimed "the new U.S. administration will vigorously pursue the creation of a Palestinian state, stressing that movement toward Palestinian independence seems 'inescapable.'" Apparently her definition of a Palestinian State means something different than an independent nation with control of its own borders and neighboring waters, in other words, an Apartheid-style Bantustan.



(News first noted on Mondoweiss.)

Politicians' Follies

It seems to be the political sweet season. Here's a few must-read links.

Herman Cain Casting Call
Courtesy of We Are Respectable Negroes blog, a chilling Herman Cain video coupled with a leaked casting-call for a Cain commercial. Includes this priceless paragraph:

"7. Arab American with Dog. One person from the Middle East is needed with his or her dog. Preferably, a yellow Labrador retriever or a lovable mutt who enjoys interacting with others. The dog should be a puppy. If it is exceptionally talented and has prior acting experience, an older animal will also be acceptable."

Read the whole post here.

The Important Lies of Anthony Weiner
The underwhelming Weinergate generated some hilarious headlines. But what about the actually important lies Weiner has told? Hint, they're about neither his penis nor whether he sexted his facebook friends.

"WEINER: You can see a difference in the development in the West Bank with 11 percent year over year growth, with no Israeli occupation there either, with increasing access to checkpoints...
COHEN: No occupation in the West Bank, did I hear you right?
WEINER: Yes."

Read the list of his actual lies on Mondoweiss.

T-Paw's Imaginary Economic Plan
Former Minnesota governor Tim Pawlenty entered the Republican race with a plan to oppose gay adoption. And with a plan for full economic recovery achieved...by lowering taxes! Ezra Klein demolishes T Paw:

"This plan isn’t optimistic. It isn’t a bit vague. It’s a joke. And I don’t know which is worse: The thought that Pawlenty knows that and went forward with this pandering, fantasy-based proposal anyway, or the thought that he doesn’t know it, and he really thinks this could work."

Read the whole thing on WaPo. And hey Minnesota, what is wrong with you people? This guy AND Michelle Bachmann?

Breaking: Newt's Rats Jump Ship

As of this posting, Newt Gingrich's campaign team just walked out on him.

"At least Newt wasn't being treated for cancer when this happened."

Hilarious analysis at aplainblogaboutpolitics.

Rick Santorum Doesn't Like Being Made Fun Of

Also recently officially-announced ultra-right wing and ultra-uptight Republican candidate Rick Santorum has a google problem. His program consists of little more than his hatred of gay people. Watch him whine frothily and then read the comments of the gay people who rightfully hate him back at Joe.My.God.

Sarah Palin Said Something Unintelligible
Oh wait, I was posting news.

On President Obama's Middle East Speech

(Photo: Right-wing Israeli Prime Minister and U.S. presidential advisor Benjamin Netanyahu shown in front of the Islamic Noble Sanctuary in occupied Jerusalem).

President Obama made a speech on Thursday that was billed as a major policy speech on the Middle East, touching on both the wave of "Arab Spring" revolutions and the Palestine/Israel conflict. Perhaps you missed this bit of reporting from the New York Times:

"The Israeli government immediately protested, saying that for Israel to return to its pre-1967 borders would leave it “indefensible.” Mr. Netanyahu held an angry phone conversation with Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton on Thursday before [emphasis added —ish] the speech, officials said, in which he demanded that the president’s reference to 1967 borders be cut.

Israeli officials continued to lobby the administration until right before Mr. Obama arrived at the State Department for the address. White House officials said he did not alter anything under Israeli pressure, though the president made changes in the text that delayed his appearance by 35 minutes. "

Yes, you read that correctly. The White House submitted Obama's speech to Israel for approval before he delivered it and the Israeli government was making demands on what President Obama could say before he said it. And why not? United States policy is, in reality, identical to the ethnic cleansing, racist, and brutal collective punishment policies of the Apartheid state of Israel. The U.S. is Israel's major economic and political partner, and Israel knows it has carte blanche for absolutely whatever it wants to do. And furthermore by the utterly insane logic of American politics, it is widely believed that it is political suicide for politicians — and Presidents — to offend either the Israel lobby or pro-Israel Jewish voters and therefore successful American politicians must remain firmly in the pocket of Israel if they want to remain successful.

Shortly before the speech and prior to his departure to meet with Obama in Washington on Friday, Netanyahu was meeting with Israel's Interior Ministry to discuss expanding Israeli settlements near occupied East Jerusalem. Israeli settlement-building — actually ethnic cleansing and land theft illegal by international law — was not mentioned by President Obama in his speech.

Nevertheless, Obama went on his speech to suggest that the future negotiated state of Palestine be based on the 1967 borders of Israel, "with agreed-upon land swaps." This mild statement recognizing the bare minimums of accepted international law drew harsh criticism from Netanyahu who said before, during, and after his meeting with Obama on Friday, "it's not gonna happen." But the meeting between Obama and Netanyahu went great according to the Huffington Post: Benjamin Netanyahu went into the White House Friday "worried, but came out encouraged," according to a senior Israeli official briefed on the prime minister's frank meeting with President Barack Obama. Obama issued a statement, "So, overall, I thought this was an extremely constructive discussion. And coming out of this discussion, I once again can reaffirm that the extraordinarily close relationship between the United States and Israel is sound and will continue."


(Photo: Israeli arms supplier and ethnic-cleansing enabler Barack Obama speaking on the Middle East in Washington on Thursday).

So what did Obama say in his speech? He discussed the pro-democracy protests sweeping the Arab world. He did not, of course, mention the decades of support given to Arab dictators by the United States. Somewhat surprisingly Mr. Obama did criticize the crackdown by the Bahraini government against democracy protesters. (Though of course he had nothing to say about it when it was happening.) Obama notably failed to name one country in particular, and that is close U.S. ally Saudi Arabia, a dictatorship and religious theocracy that actually sent in troops to Bahrain so that Bahraini security forces could do the actual dirty work of crushing the protest movement.

Speaking of religious theocracies, Mr. Obama endorsed the official Israeli line: "Israel as a Jewish state and the homeland for the Jewish people." Which of course is great news for the soon to be ethnic-cleansed Christian and Muslim Arab citizens of Israel proper. (Israel is now in fact requiring loyalty oaths of new immigrants to "the Jewish state.")

Obama did not mention Israeli "settlements" in the occupied territories. And he implied discussion of the right of return of Palestinian refugees displaced by Israel and the status of Jerusalem could be left til later. He said the future Palestine would share a border with Jordan, and this is what really pissed off Netanyahu. In Netanyahu's vision the Israeli military will keep possession of the Jordan Valley, and any Palestinian microstate Bantustan will be isolated from direct borders with the outside world. But never fear, Netanyahu, because Obama said that Israel had the right to defend itself, while Palestine would be a "non-militarized state." One might suggest Obama study the historical definition of the term "state."

To my mind the worst thing Obama said about Israel and Palestine was this: "For Israelis, it has meant living with the fear that their children could be blown up on a bus or by rockets fired at their homes, as well as the pain of knowing that other children in the region are taught to hate them. For Palestinians, it has meant suffering the humiliation of occupation, and never living in a nation of their own." He repeats the Zionist propaganda lie that Israel is the victim of violence, and Palestinians merely the victims of symbolism. The truth, as Omar Barghouti points out below, is that Palestinians are actually, now, being ethnically cleansed. They are actually the victims of violence on a scale far beyond the (tragic and occasional) victims of terrorism.

Obama's conclusion, "That is the choice that must be made -– not simply in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, but across the entire region -– a choice between hate and hope; between the shackles of the past and the promise of the future" seems to me particularly hollow. Because despite all the rhetoric about hope when it comes down to actual actions on the ground, the U.S. can be counted on to back the status quo, to take the side of Israel, and to hang on to the coattails of regional dictators until the last possible moment. The American government has claimed to oppose illegal Israeli settlements in the occupied territories for years. But when it came to a U.N. vote to condemn those settlements just this past winter, the U.S. took Israel's side and vetoed the U.N. criticism. There is no heroism, no hope, no principle, no audacity in that move. It was the same old crass complicity in the ethnic cleansing of the Palestinian people.

On Nakba day, thousands of nonviolent unarmed Palestinians rushed Israel's boundaries, in the case of the Golan Heights on the border with Syria, successfully breaching the territory occupied by Israel since 1967. Israel responded by shooting dozens. It is those people, the people of the Arab Spring, who will ultimately solve this problem. The Middle East does not need another ethnic theocracy: it needs a democratic and secular state in Palestine. It can be a homeland for Jews as well as non-Jews, but it cannot be built on the basis of injustice and denial of rights to the people who live there or were forced out in the past sixty years. To coin a phrase, a two-state solution where the Palestinians are locked in a unsustainable prison at the mercy of a military machine armed by the most powerful nation on earth "just isn't gonna happen."

Independent (and secular) Palestinian activist Omar Barghouti was asked by The Real News to comment on President Obama's speech. He said that he thought it was irrelevant, and that nobody in the region but the Israelis and Palestinian Authority leader Mahmoud Abbas was that interested in what Obama had to say on the matter. "The best thing that the U.S. can do is leave us alone." The interview with Barghouti is extraordinary, and should be required viewing. It follows below.