Free Ahed Tamimi!

testing blogspot's malfunctioning with this excellent Latuff cartoon.

Terror & lies: Israel unleashes brutal pogrom against Gaza

 This article originally appeared on the Kasama Project, 18 July 2014. Reposting here to preserve the links. It can also be read here.

“Free Free Palestine! Down Down Israel!”

by ISH
Wednesday's direct Israeli hit on four young children playing football on a Gaza beach tells a story.
It epitomizes the entire disgusting episode in occupied Palestine that has unfolded since the collapse of so-called peace talks earlier this year. Western journalists witnessed the precision targeting of the four children by the Israeli naval forces who blockade the Gaza coastline. Pictures of the tiny torn bodies being carried away from the scene filled the internet.

The US network NBC immediately pulled the reporter who had honestly reported on the targeting of the children. Predictably Israeli spokesmen offered a few brutally transparent crocodile tears for “unfortunate mistakes,” and yet the very next day the Israelis killed more children, and proceeded to bomb the Al-Waffa Orthopedic Hospital into oblivion. Shortly afterwards, a few hours ago as of this writing, Israeli tanks crossed into Gaza under the cover of darkness, marking a significant escalation of the Israeli extermination campaign against the Palestinian population.

Dawn is about to break on an unknown future for the almost 2 million people crowded into the small, impoverished, besieged enclave of Gaza. Over 250 Palestinians have already been killed, almost 2,000 wounded. 80% of the dead are non-combatants, and an obscene number are children. It is estimated that one Palestinian child has been killed by Israel every three days for the past 13 years, so the events of the current Israeli offensive are far from an anomaly.

What is happening in Gaza is not a conflict, it's a massacre. What is happening is not a war, but a pogrom, the herding together and culling of the captive Palestinian population.

Israel and its supporters have crafted a brutal narrative absolving themselves of all guilt for the mass murder they are committing. From the Israeli government, and the legions of Zionist agents spouting officially approved “hasbara,” or “explanations” in the media and on the internet, down through the echelons of politicians in countries far and wide — here in the US including conservative and liberal alike — we hear that Israel is just “defending itself” and “trying to prevent civilian casualties.”

Nothing could be further from the truth. Israel knows what it is doing, fully consented to by President Obama and the US government. Wielding the spectre of “Islamic terror,” Israeli apologists blame the Palestinian Islamic Resistance Movement Hamas for their own actions in the most grotesque and self-serving ways. With the utterance of the word “Hamas” all morality and human empathy is to be cast aside, and all license for brutality and inhumanity assured. The Zionists blame Hamas for using the population of tiny, crowded Gaza as human shields, as though there was someplace in Gaza not to be a human shield, as though there was someplace else either Hamas or the population could go. But the truth must be told: as one person noted on twitter, “blaming Hamas for firing rockets at Israel is like blaming a woman for punching her rapist.”

The accomplices of Israel in the American media are unstinting. The day of the assassination of the four children, the so-called paper of record The New York Times ran a small sub-headline: “Boys Drawn to Gaza Beach and Into Center of Mideast Strife,” while running a feature photo and headline about “An Israeli Town's Emergency Routine” that lamented the effect of Gaza's rockets on the town's beach lifestyle and the sleep habits of local residents. Thus the dead children are blamed for their own deaths and the inconvenience of Israelis ranked worse than the murder of whole Palestinian families.

Meanwhile pictures are readily available of crowds of Israelis camped out on the heights outside Gaza having carnage-viewing parties, where cheers go up every time the light and noise of bombs striking their targets becomes clear.

It's not hard to find accounts of what life is really like for the population of gaza. “This night is one of those terrifying ones. dark, no electricity, smoky haze and constant bombing and shaking. windows are breaking!” tweeted one Gaza resident, Mohammed Omer. Many firsthand accounts are too heartbreaking to retell. The pharmacist just back from study in Cuba, his young wife now a widow. The child who finds out his whole family has just been killed. The eighteen members of a family slaughtered just to eliminate one Hamas government official, who in the end was the only one to survive.

The Israeli military gives Palestinians momentary warning of impending doom, the so-called knock on the roof warning shot.  The Israelis claim this absolves them of responsbility for what happens next. Palestinian poet Lena Khalaf Tuffaha exposes the horrible reality:

"They call us now.
Before they drop the bombs.
The phone rings
and someone who knows my first name
calls and says in perfect Arabic
“This is David.”
And in my stupor of sonic booms and glass shattering symphonies
still smashing around in my head
I think "Do I know any Davids in Gaza?"
They call us now to say
Run.
You have 58 seconds from the end of this message.
Your house is next.
They think of it as some kind of war time courtesy.
It doesn’t matter that
there is nowhere to run to.
It means nothing that the borders are closed
and your papers are worthless
and mark you only for a life sentence
in this prison by the sea
and the alleyways are narrow
and there are more human lives
packed one against the other
more than any other place on earth
Just run.
We aren’t trying to kill you.
It doesn’t matter that
you can’t call us back to tell us
the people we claim to want aren’t in your house
that there’s no one here
except you and your children
who were cheering for Argentina
sharing the last loaf of bread for this week
counting candles left in case the power goes out.
It doesn’t matter that you have children.
You live in the wrong place
and now is your chance to run
to nowhere.
It doesn’t matter
that 58 seconds isn’t long enough
to find your wedding album
or your son’s favorite blanket
or your daughter’s almost completed college application
or your shoes
or to gather everyone in the house.
It doesn’t matter what you had planned.
It doesn’t matter who you are
Prove you’re human.
Prove you stand on two legs.
Run."

The politicians have all blamed Hamas for prolonging Gaza's agony by rejecting a ceasefire that Israel briefly accepted. Yet the ceasefire, hatched in Washington, suggested to Israel by the military-lead government in Egypt and not even discussed with the Hamas leadership (all in hiding for fear of assassination by Israel) was really more of a demand for surrender. The fact that Hamas countered with an eminently reasonable 10-year truce plan  was entirely ignored by the pro-Israel media.

A few months ago the politicians were trumpeting yet another round of “peace” talks, aimed at the final surrender of the Palestinian people to their Zionist occupiers. But it all went to shit when even the collaborationists in the ruling Palestinian Authority couldn't stomach Israeli intransigence and their continued ethnic cleansing of the West Bank. Talks were broken off, and the American negotiators led by the creepy secretary of state John Kerry packed up and went home. The Fatah-led branch of the Palestinian Authority running the West Bank announced a unity deal with the Hamas-led branch of the Palestinian Authority running Gaza. Despite widespread skepticism among Palestinians that unity would stick, all hell broke loose as the Israelis and Americans went into full panic mode.

Escalating land seizures, so-called “settlement” building and daily violence against the Palestinians was becoming routine for the Israeli apartheid state: but an alliance of Hamas and Fatah opened up the possibility that Israel would lose its PA partner in oppression, and Israel began to do everything in its power to sabotage the unity agreement.

In June, three teenaged Israeli settlers (one of whom was old enough to be in the Israeli military) went missing while hitchhiking in the occupied West Bank. The Israeli government accused Hamas of kidnapping the settlers, and launched a massive dragnet across the West Bank. Hundreds of Palestinians were kidnapped by the Israeli government, and several were killed. People had their homes ripped apart by Israeli soldiers. After a couple weeks the settlers were found dead, and it's clear they were killed more or less right away. It's been widely suggested that the Israeli government knew this, but used the interval to whip up a racist frenzy across Israeli society against Palestinians. As of this writing, no actual tie between the killings and Hamas has been established; indeed it's been suggested it was the work of supporters of the ISIS network ravaging Syria and Iraq.

Very little of the media narrative bothered to question why Israeli teenagers were wandering around with impunity in militarily occupied territory. The Hebron area of the occupied West Bank where these events unfolded is one of the most segregated of the occupied territories: Israeli military force barricades a small settler outpost protecting Israeli-only roads and Israeli-only neighborhoods from the local Palestinian population. The local settlers routinely brutalize Palestinian civilians. Frankly, the three Israeli settlers should be compared to teenaged Belgian colonists wandering around the Belgian Congo in 1914 or German teens wandering around occupied Ukraine in 1942.

The disappearance of the three settlers provided the Israeli government with an excuse to whip up a frenzy of vengeance. It was aimed at Hamas, but directed against all Palestinians. Mobs chanted “Death to the Arabs.” Israeli young people created facebook memes dehumanizing Arabs. Prime Minister Netanyahu himself raised the call for revenge. The Israeli government has created a vicious rationalization for its actions that is almost unbearably and tragically ironic given the facts on the ground: “A deep and wide moral abyss separates us from our enemies,” said Netanyanu. “They sanctify death while we sanctify life. They sanctify cruelty while we sanctify compassion.” This should be called what it is, racist contempt for the Palestinians. It is the justification for the Israeli policy of collective punishment.

Israeli lawmaker Ayelet Shaked posted this genocidal screed on facebook: “Behind every terrorist stand dozens of men and women, without whom he could not engage in terrorism. They are all enemy combatants, and their blood shall be on all their heads. Now this also includes the mothers of the martyrs, who send them to hell with flowers and kisses. They should follow their sons, nothing would be more just. They should go, as should the physical homes in which they raised the snakes. Otherwise, more little snakes will be raised there...They have to die and their houses should be demolished so that they cannot bear any more terrorists.”

In the aftermath of the settlers being found dead Israeli thugs beat up Palestinians; thugs in uniform rearrested many of the Palestinians freed from Israeli prisons under peace agreements. One young man was brutally burned alive. While eventually three Israelis were arrested for killing the young Palestinian, the Israeli disinformation machine initially tried a vile bit of pinkwashing, at first claiming that young Mohammad Abu Khdeir was killed by his own family for being gay. Khdeir's Palestinian-American cousin was subsequently beaten senseless by Israeli police. (As with the death of the young Turkish-American Furkan Dogan on the Mavi Marmara blockade runner ship at the hands of Israeli pirates a few years ago, all of a sudden the US government lost interest in the welfare of American citizens abroad).

What are the stakes as Israel attempts to pummel the Palestinians of Gaza into submission?
New York based Palestinian activist Amin Hussein says, “why is surrender at this juncture so dangerous? Because Israel intends either to beat Gaza and the resistance into submission so they can function like the PA but in Gaza, or pave the way for Israel’s entry into Gaza to destroy the resistance, kill as many people as possible, make the price in life so unbearable, that people would wish it would end. Egypt has provided cover for genocide. This is how genocides happen. You blame the victim for the necessity to kill them. This is a war on the Palestinian people in which Arab countries, including the counter-revolutionary neoliberal Palestinian Authority and the international community, are paving the way for death and destruction, way beyond what we have seen.” Hussein urges concrete solidarity against the horrors now unfolding: “Us, being in the streets, doing more, we bring the one-sided war home.”

There is so much more to discuss about Palestine. About the role of the various resistance factions, the contradictory but ultimately counterrevolutionary role of the Palestine Authority, about the prospects for a single democratic and socialist state where Muslims, Christians, Jews and atheists can live together. But for now the moral imperative is exposing the truth about the murderous pogrom that Israel has unleashed, and standing in solidarity with the residents of Gaza, indeed with all Palestinians.

Although most world governments have closed their eyes to the Israeli attack on Gaza, mass demonstrations in solidarity with the Palestinians have taken place all over the world expressing the revulsion of common people against what the Israelis are doing. I urge you to find a solidarity action in your area, and take a stand with the right of the Palestinians to resist Israeli brutality. Don't let the Palestinians stand alone.

Despite advances on the front of Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions, the situation in Palestine is grim right now. One can only hope that the Israeli butchers have taken a step too far; and that the justified rage of people against their crimes of war will make itself known. The late Palestinian communist poet Tawfiq Ziad expressed it well:

“Gentlemen, you have transformed
our country into a graveyard
You have planted bullets in our heads,
and organized massacres
Gentlemen, nothing passes like that
without account
All that you have done
to our people is
registered in notebooks."

“When people are occupied, resistance is justified!”

Élise Rivet, known as Mère Élisabeth after she became a nun, "After the fall of the French Third Republic to Nazi Germany in World War II, she began hiding refugees from the Gestapo and eventually used her convent to store weapons and ammunition for the Mouvements Unis de Résistance (MUR)."

She died in a Nazi concentration camp, and is universally considered a hero of the resistance. Tell me again about Hamas storing munitions in Mosques. Victory to the Palestinian Resistance!

Again, today, I was lucky. And yet my eyes are filled with tears.

I spent my morning on the computer. Although my extended unemployment would allow me to sleep until noon or stay awake all night, I try to keep to a fairly normal human schedule. I wake up, I listen to the news on the radio. My cat leads me to his food dish, so I open a can. I breakfast at my desk. I log into my computer, checking Facebook, and a few other sites.

I have been relishing the coverage of Alakhbar English, a secular left-wing site out of Beirut. Their coverage of the Israeli pogrom on Gaza is righteously outraged, and their posture untainted by the immorality of Saudi or Qatari paymasters. A few days ago they put up a page: "The victims of Gaza: A list of Palestinians killed in Israel's ongoing assault." It keeps a running tally of the casualties, printing their names, their ages, and the brutal circumstances of their murder. It's hard to read; overwhelming. The passing of each precious life coolly noted, each child, woman, man, each martyr to the cause of living their own lives documented one last time.

I shared the link on Facebook. I noticed the metadata that Facebook shows with the post was outdated, reading "Updated July 22 at 6:45 pm: The Gaza health ministry has confirmed the deaths of 627 Palestinians so far in the besieged..." and then it drops off. Yet when I shared the link this morning, July 24, the article itself read a total of 746 deaths. I paused to consider what I had done yesterday, while the electrons of metadata caught up with the typing of a careful webmaster. I had not died. I had not had my home bombed, with or without warning. I had not had my sister, my mother, my father, my children, my friends killed, or maimed. I was not sent screaming into the street in mortal panic. I was very very lucky in my apartment thousands of miles away from, no, I won't call it a war...thousands of miles away from that massacre. What cosmic accident plunked me down here, privileged only to bear distant witness?

This morning I took care of tasks in the warmth of a humid, overcast, but quiet Brooklyn day. I worked on a flyer for a brilliant Palestine solidarity action tomorrow night, the guerrilla transformation of a benefit for the IDF into a benefit for medical aid for Gaza. My cat begged for some of my lunch. I drank iced coffee, followed by some delicious sour cherry juice from Turkey. I'm looking at the clock noting the time I must leave the house to be at tonight's Gaza solidarity rally in downtown Manhattan.

I checked back on my Facebook share this afternoon. The metadata stayed unchanged. I clicked through to the link.

Five hours.

"Updated July 24 at 7:00 pm: The Gaza health ministry has confirmed the deaths of 784 Palestinians so far in the besieged strip since Israel began its relentless assault on July 8. Among those killed, at least 175 were aged 18 or younger."

784.

Thirty-eight more precious lives taken, like that, in the moments it took me to avoid doing my laundry. I couldn't hear the screams, the cries, the crashing of bombs and bricks, I couldn't smell the smoke, the sulfur. I couldn't save any lives, stop any killing. I couldn't offer solace to anyone's unimaginable grief. I couldn't shut up the voices on the radio making grotesque rationalizations for their even more grotesque actions.

My rage seethes, leaving a hollow pit in my chest. I feel impotent, powerless.

This morning certain people I knew online spent time blaming the Palestinians for their own deaths, and in those hours more Palestinians — more people — were actually and literally killed by a calculating, cruel enemy.

Five hours. What did I do this morning? Again I was very lucky.

Everybody I know is okay today, going about their business.

Yet why are my eyes wet from tears?

Something awful is happening right this moment. Shut your eyes, turn away, it's still there, even if you can't see it.

It's time to do something.

Channelling Grief, Despair and Rage

This haunting photo shows volunteers sitting in the lobby of Al-Wafa orthopedic hospital in Gaza, acting as human shields after the hospital received warning shots from the IDF. A day or two later, the hospital was leveled by Israel.

At the start of the Israeli offensive against Gaza I promised my comrades I would write something about Gaza. As the days went by I found myself paralyzed. The rage at what was unfolding flowed through me, but the words jumped around inside my head like little wounds that wouldn't congeal.

I have never had such a difficult time writing anything before in my life. The past week has filled me with grief and despair. Beyond the horror of what's being done to virtually defenseless human beings is my sense of disgust at the people rationalizing the murder of children: all these defenders of Israel, whether politicians or just heartless regular people. But what's happening now is so important. This is a test of our humanity.

We as human beings cannot afford to look away from what is happening. It's ugly but it's really happening. The question is what will we do about it. So this is my article on the tragic affairs in Gaza. Finally last night the words came together and I was able to finish the article I had promised at 1 in the morning. I'm proud of it. I hope you'll read it.

What is happening in Gaza is not a conflict, it's a massacre. What is happening is not a war, but a pogrom, the herding together and culling of the captive Palestinian population.

Israel and its supporters have crafted a brutal narrative absolving themselves of all guilt for the mass murder they are committing. From the Israeli government, and the legions of Zionist agents spouting officially approved “hasbara,” or “explanations” in the media and on the internet, down through the echelons of politicians in countries far and wide — here in the US including conservative and liberal alike — we hear that Israel is just “defending itself” and “trying to prevent civilian casualties.” Nothing could be further from the truth. 

Read all of "Terror & Lies: Israel unleashed brutal pogrom against Gaza."

Recent Writings

Supporters of GEHO in Jinja, Uganda

After a long dry spell, I've been doing some more writing, all of it over on the Kasama website. Working with other members of the editorial collective, I've been helping to flag and introduce interesting articles from outside websites, as well as generating original content.

First up, I'm most proud of a long piece I spent a week researching and writing. Entitled "Real Enemies, False Friends: Imperialism and Homophobia in Africa," it covers the causes behind the wave of terrifying anti-gay repression in Africa. I've coined the phrase "weaponization of gay rights" to describe the hypocritical embrace of LGBT rights by Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama as a neocolonialist cudgel in the arsenal of US imperialism. It's pretty timely in the context of the orgy of hypocrisy during the Sochi Olympics in which anti-gay, repressive Russia is being pilloried by the professedly pro-gay, but still repressive US. I take aim at local demagogues, American evangelicals like Scott Lively, imperialist politicians, and the worst alleged gay rights organization ever, the Human Rights Campaign.

Next up are a bunch of short introductions meant to frame and introduce articles for discussion:

"Sochi Olympics — stop anti-gay violence in Russia" is a Human Rights Watch report  on the disturbing increase in antigay violence following the passage of Russia's gay propaganda law. My introduction just presents some of the issues for those not familiar. I'd like to follow this up with a discussion of the attempted gay boycott of Sochi and its corporate sponsors, addressing some of the same issues of hypocritical imperialism as in my Uganda/Nigeria piece.

"East Baltimore — What the fuck is a selfie?" is an article about life in a world where social media doesn't reign supreme. My introduction is a call to examine the bubbles and presumptions leftists inhabit when thinking about interacting with the real world.

"Atlanta, unfit rulers should get out of the way" is an article about the calamitously unusual snowstorm that swept the south. My introduction talks about the clash of extreme weather and capitalist crisis.

"American Studies Association penalized by NY Senate for Israel boycott" talks about the attempted retaliation against supporters of the BDS movement in New York. My introduction introduces the BDS movement as a way of materially supporting the Palestinian struggle.

Since Kasama front paged my fairly critical piece on Peter Seeger, we chose another article that was more personally laudatory as a counterpoint. I introduced "Music journalist Dave Marsh remembers Pete Seeger" in the hopes of keeping a discussion going.

My personal life is still quite unsettled, but it feels good to be speaking my mind again and keeping up with the writing. I'd love feedback from readers.

Palestine Postage Stamp Conflict Escalates

Commemorative block just issued by Palestine Authority reads "State of Palestine."

I've written before about the postage stamps of Palestine. The competing Palestinian governments in the West Bank and Gaza have both now been issuing stamps for years based on the Oslo Accords, which created the Palestinian Authority and provided for certain advances in Palestinian civil government despite overall Israeli occupation. 

The stamps issued in Gaza by the Hamas-controlled wing of the PA have been overwhelmingly "militant" in theme and completely untolerated by Israeli authorities. The stamps issued by the Fatah-controlled West Bank wing, however, have generally followed a condition dictated by Israel to be on "peaceful" subjects, and to not explicitly challenge Israeli authority or be overly suggestive of an independent Palestinian entity. Thus, Israeli authorities have confiscated, delayed, suppressed, or complained about certain stamp issues, or ultimately refused to transmit mail bearing stamps it deems offensive or improper. Palestine Authority stamps are generally used on mail from the West Bank to the rest of the world with no problem, since the Fatah government generally pursues a policy of nonconfrontation.

While several sets of stamps have been issued by the West Bank Palestinian Authority this year with the usual pacific subject matter (animals of Palestine, and firefighters, for example) and the standard "Palestinian Authority" inscription, Palestinian postal authorities have surprised the world with an unannounced commemorative block just issued, inscribed "State of Palestine." A revision of a similar, football ("soccer") themed block issued last year, the block marks the recognition by the world Football authority, FIFA, of "the Palestinian national home ground." While this FIFA decision was back in 2008, the willingness of the PA to use "State of Palestine" on the stamp comes in recognition of the "State of Palestine" by a vote at the United Nations last year. Several world bodies and various countries have now recognized the State of Palestine. 

The block, shown above, shows a waving Palestinian flag, a cheering crowd and a soccer ball.

It's not yet known how Israel will react to this postal challenge to Israeli control. According to my sources, some Palestine Authority mail is now routed from the West Bank through Jordan, so Israel may be impotent to do more than verbally challenge the "State of Palestine" inscription. Interestingly, the currency of this issue is switched from "fils" to "mils," switching in effect from Jordanian currency to a virtual Palestinian one.

First Day Cover recently issued in Gaza

Definitely not meeting with Israeli approval, is the most recent stamp issue of the Gaza government. Released in June, a set of stamps and a block mark the "Battle of Shale Stones," or the Israeli assault on Gaza last year. The elaborate block shows the face of Ahmed Jabari, the Hamas military commander assassinated by Israel at the start of their attack. The block is an elaborate montage of explosions, fighters, a waving Palestinian flag, a map of Palestine and a missile bearing Palestinian colors launching out of Gaza. Also featured at the top of the block are the flags of Qatar and Turkey, two regional powers that have been supporters of the Hamas government.

Click on the images to see them in their full colorful glory.

More information on the stamps of Palestine can be found at the comprehensive Zobbel site, "An Introduction to the Philately of Palestine." Thanks to Palestinian stamp dealer Arabian Stamps for images (See Arabian Stamps at Ebay or Delcampe). Another good source of info on recent Palestinian stamps is an English philatelist, Magan Stamps.

Yesterday They Called Him a Terrorist

Nelson Mandela (L) in Robben Island prison.

Slightly expanded from a note I wrote on Facebook. I actually saw Mandela briefly, though an odd moving cage of glass. He visited New York City after his liberation, and was given a ticker-tape parade which I attended with my friend Pat. I still have the felt flag printed with ANC colors that we waved from the sidelines, amazed at the turning wheels of history.

As of this writing South African hero Nelson Mandela is hospitalized, in critical condition. While he is quite possibly near death, he has survived previous bouts of a lung ailment aggravated by his years in a white-supremacist prison.

But in advance of all the pretty, laudatory words sure to come upon his death, it's really important to remember that the biggest backers of the racist system of apartheid in South Africa were the United States, the UK, and the State of Israel. All the world's politicians will be crying crocodile tears for Mandela when he passes, but they all considered him a terrorist virtually up until the moment he was released from his life-stealing 27 years in prison. Much of the radical promise of Mandela's African National Congress was (predictably) set aside upon their assumption of power, but that pales, in the scale of political horrors, in comparison with the whitewashing of decades of racist lies, backed by massive amounts of money and weapons, that propped up the racist white minority regime in South Africa and made life desperate and dangerous for its black majority.

Reagan, Thatcher, and all their ilk believed Mandela deserved to rot in jail. The Israelis understood what Apartheid South Africa meant for them and studied its methods carefully as they exchanged military and financial aid. These are not accidents nor inconsistencies.

Back in the day the divestment movement met the same arguments that today's BDS movement meets. Don't be fooled, the companies and conglomerates and multinational corporations of international capitalism believe oppression is profitable. That's how they want the world organized.

The governments of the world believe they have a right to label freedom fighters terrorists.

The apartheid state in Israel believes that some people are not as human as others. If South Africa teaches us anything about humanity it teaches us about the justness of the struggle of the Palestinian people.

Who are tomorrow's Mandelas? Don't let the Reagans and Thatchers of today off the hook. The struggle continues; it's right to rebel.

Thank you Nelson Mandela for your part in changing history.

Leila Khaled: A Hero of the Palestinian Struggle Returns to Palestine

Palestine liberation hero Leila Khaled of the PFLP at a rally this week in Gaza.

There are very few living revolutionaries I revere. History has been hard on heroes: so many have been transformed into martyrs. But one of my real heroes returned to the stage of history this week, though you might not know it from the lack of mainstream press coverage. Palestinian revolutionary Leila Khaled bravely returned to Palestine this week. In the aftermath of Israel's recent war on the tiny swath of Palestinian territory, the border between Gaza and Egypt is now more open than it has been in decades. And so Khaled was able to travel from her home as a refugee in Jordan to a part of her country long forbidden to her by the state of war and occupation between the Israeli state and the Palestinians.

Leila Khaled arriving in Gaza after crossing from Egypt at Rafah.

I read Khaled's now out-of-print autobiography "My People Shall Live" many years ago. In it she tells the story of how she came to be a revolutionary, and what lead to her role hijacking airplanes for the Palestinian cause. She describes how the view from the plane flying over Haifa was as close as she could come to returning to the place of her birth. While of course many accuse Khaled of being a terrorist, her hijackings were political statements and not instruments of random terror against innocent people. (See an earlier post here at The Cahokian for some thoughts on the politics of airplane hijacking). At a time when the Palestinians were a defeated, victimized people, considered a non-entity by so many, Khaled became a human face for the spirit of resistance.

The revolutionary Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine celebrates its 45th birthday.

Khaled is a member of the PFLP, the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, which was founded 45 years ago. The rally in Gaza was meant to celebrate the anniversary of the PFLP as well as the 25th anniversary of the first Palestinian intifada, or uprising. Speaking to the people of Gaza, Khaled clearly expressed the PFLP's point of view, quite different than the conciliatory view of the PLO majority that governs the Palestine Authority. She said:

"I am proud of you, you raise all of our heads high. The entire Palestinian people is unified behind you, united with the resistance even when split on negotiations and calm, and in the camps and diaspora we hear the echoes of your struggle and say ‘We are with you, Gaza’. During the Zionist aggression, everywhere in the camps and in diaspora our people were cheering for the resistance.... I said that I am going to Gaza, this holy land of resistance which raised all of our heads high. I am going to my family, my friends and our people there. I bring with me great love from the parents who want to return to Gaza, Haifa, Yafa, Jerusalem and Ramallah. We want to return to all of Palestine and we will definitely return to all of Palestine.... At this moment I will repeat the words of the martyr and leader Abu Ali Mustafa: I come to continue the revolution, to continue resistance, and never to compromise on the constants.... [the right of Palestinians to return] is baptized with the blood of the Palestinian people who will continue to struggle until achieving our goals and our return.”

The PFLP was the most important of the Palestinian liberation organizations formed to to the left of the nationalist Fatah movement. The PFLP of George Habash and Ghassan Kanafani came to be among the most militantly revolutionary, influenced by Maoism in the moment when the People's Republic of China seemed interested in fomenting worldwide revolution. Unlike the Islamic militant wings of today's Palestinian movement like Hamas, the PFLP was (and is) a secular movement: many of its founders were in fact largely drawn from the Palestinian Christian community, and they explicitly adopted Marxism-Leninism. The current head of the PFLP, Ahmad Saadat, is imprisoned by Israel. Ironically he had been arrested by the Palestine Authority and was later seized by the IDF.

The iconic portrait of Leila Khaled taken in the late 1960s.

Leila Khaled's image has come to be iconic of the struggle of the Palestinians. At the time of her courageous acts she was young, beautiful, and eloquent. She reflected the will and determination of a people fighting for freedom against desperate odds.

"My People Shall Live"

I am inspired by her continued courage and determination. When American or Israeli politicians try to proclaim "there is no Palestine or there are no Palestinians," Leila Khaled's visage is there to prove them wrong. And her commitment to women's liberation and vision of a radical and socially just society adds dimension to the idea of the Palestinian revolution. In revering Khaled I honor not violence but resistance, courage, selflessness, and the indomitable hope of the human spirit.

The PFLP was formed out of revolutionary necessity.

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.

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!

An Invitation to Ethnic Cleansing

“Remember there was no Palestine as a state. It was part of the Ottoman Empire. And I think that we’ve had an invented Palestinian people, who are in fact Arabs, and were historically part of the Arab community. And they had a chance to go many places.” — Republican presidential candidate, serial adulterer and alleged intellectual Newt Gingrich in an interview with The Jewish Channel.

I wish I could say I was shocked by Gingrich's comments, which have received pretty wide coverage. But I've had many many arguments over the years with supporters of Israel who have said pretty much the same thing. Forget any logical response to this outrage, like does he therefore suggest Bulgaria, Turkey, Syria, Lebanon, Iraq, Saudi Arabia, Yemen and Jordan are equally undeserving of statehood since they share a similar historical pedigree as Palestine? Nevermind his glossing over of the fact that whatever he chooses to call them the indigenous inhabitants of the land occupied by Israeli military force are currently violently besieged, suppressed, and deprived of their civil and human rights. Nevermind that not so long ago people of his political ilk were blaming the Jews for the evils of the world not fantasizing about the money they could earn by pantomiming prostration before the agenda of a foreign country's entirely questionable political policy.

What game are these politicians playing? Even George W. Bush, for crissake, paid lip-service to the idea that Palestinians deserved recognition of their personhood. The Republican presidential lineup have every last one of them (except far-right nutjob libertarian Ron Paul) been stumbling over each other to be the greatest supporter of Israeli Apartheid of all the rest. It's hard not to see it as a certain extension of the Republicans' formerly blatant anti-Semitism, this cartoonish courtship of a small country and a small American demographic which they imagine to require such outrageous genuflection. It's made even more odd by the fact that notwithstanding a little bit of rhetoric here or there, the Obama administration has proved itself a loyal lapdog of the rightwing Netanyahu government.

"And they had a chance to go many places." Absolutely chilling. Imagine for a moment he's talking about the Jews of prewar Europe, or the Tutsi of Rwanda. Newt Gingrich is an amoral sociopathic monster.

If you have a strong stomach here's a little reality check. Mustafa Tamimi was 28 years old; he attended a nonviolent protest in the occupied West Bank, protesting land seizures by so-called settlers. He was shot point blank in the face with a (US-made?) tear gas cannister. This is video of the aftermath of that shooting. Mondoweiss recounts, "The impact blew off half of Tamimi's face, and when his friends and family cried out in horror, Israeli soldiers laughed and said, "So?".

"Pinkwashing" Called Out in the NY Times

It's not the kind of thing you usually see in The New York Times. While the Times has a "liberal" reputation, its position on Israel is quite fundamentally compromised (see the Angry Arab for near daily demolitions of the Times's anti-Palestinian racism). But there it is, an Op-Ed piece entitled "Israel and 'Pinkwashing.'" I'm proud to say that the author of this piece, Sarah Schulman, is a friend of mine, somebody I actually went to college with many years ago. She's been active as a writer, academic, and lesbian activist for three decades, and getting this piece in the Times is a real achievement not only for defenders of Palestinians but for lesbian and gay activists in general.

Schulman skillfully ties the Israeli attempt to make gays complicit with the repressive policies of the State of Israel to the European-American Islamophobic movement that is racist to the core:

"These depictions of immigrants — usually Muslims of Arab, South Asian, Turkish or African origin — as “homophobic fanatics” opportunistically ignore the existence of Muslim gays and their allies within their communities. They also render invisible the role that fundamentalist Christians, the Roman Catholic Church and Orthodox Jews play in perpetuating fear and even hatred of gays. And that cynical message has now spread from its roots in European xenophobia to become a potent tool in the long-running Israeli-Palestinian conflict." Read the whole piece. Congrats, Sarah.

---

In related news, New York City Queers Against Israeli Apartheid (NYC QAIA) continues to be excluded from using the meeting rooms at New York City's LGBT Community Center. It's been conducting its business for months now at sit-ins in the Center's lobby. Veteran gay activist Steve Ault, both a member of QAIA and a founder of the LGBT Center, tried to meet with Center Board Members but was rudely disinvited from any board discussion. NYC QAIA has now issued an excellent identity statement:

New York City Queers Against Israeli Apartheid (NYC-
QAIA) is a group of queer activists who support Palestinians’
right to self-determination, and challenge Israel’s occupation
of the West Bank and East Jerusalem as well as the military
blockade of Gaza. We endorse Palestinian civil society’s call
for Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) against Israel,
and the call by Palestinian queer groups to end the
occupation as a critical step for securing Palestinian human
rights as well as furthering the movement for Palestinian
queer rights.*

NYC-QAIA also calls for an immediate end to Israel’s siege of
Gaza and the collective punishment of its people, which are
clear and widely recognized violations of international law.
NYC-QAIA opposes the continued construction of illegal
settlements in the West Bank and East Jerusalem and the
demolition of Palestinian homes. NYC-QAIA calls for the
release of all political prisoners in Israeli jails. Lastly, given
that Israel’s brutal treatment of Palestinians depends so
heavily upon our own government’s support, NYC-QAIA
demands an end to U.S. military and financial aid to Israel.

PALESTINE IS A QUEER ISSUE.

As queers, NYC-QAIA recognizes the myriad ways in which
various forms of oppression — including colonialism, racism,
homophobia and transgenderphobia — are deeply entwined.
As queers, we refuse to accept state violence against
ourselves or others. As gay rights gain support in the US and
Israel, the Israeli government and its defenders have
increasingly co-opted the rhetoric of gay rights to veil Israel’s
racist, colonialist state violence—and this pinkwashing we
also adamantly refuse to accept.

To those who claim Israel is a haven for queers, NYC-QAIA
replies: queer rights in Israel have not been granted by a
benevolent government—they were demanded, fought for,
and to some extent, won. Because Apartheid Israel applies
different rules and laws to Jews, non-Jews and particularly
Palestinians, those minimal rights do not universally apply to
queer Palestinians, nor to queer Israelis of any ethnic group
who build families with Palestinians, nor to queers who
support BDS and oppose Israel’s crimes against Palestinians,
nor to many others. The presence or absence of the same
minimal rights in Palestine is not comparable; apartheid and
occupation strip Palestinian queers of the basic human rights
that have permitted queers in Israel to make their small
gains. Apartheid is the issue.

NYC-QAIA does not speak on behalf of Palestinians — we
stand in solidarity with Palestinians in their struggle. NYC-
QAIA does not support any formal political entity and we do
not all necessarily stand behind a one- or two-state solution.
We reject outright all systems of domination and hate,
including Islamophobia and anti-Semitism. Despite what our
detractors claim, we are not self-hating queers. And the
many Jewish members of NYC-QAIA are not self-loathing
Jews but rather Jews who refuse to support an apartheid
state.

NYC QAIA meets at the LGBT Community Center. We're currently forced to hold our meetings as sit-ins in the lobby: at the behest of anti-Arab and anti-Muslim hatemongers, the Center refuses to rent meeting space to anti-apartheid queers. But the Center is wrong to deny safe space to Arab queers, Muslim queers & other queers it deems “controversial.” And the Center is wrong to censor queer political organizing. So NYC QAIA is holding the space. Occupy!

*The BDS document and its original signers are posted at
www.bdsmovement.net. For more information, see the websites
of Palestinian Queers for BDS, Aswat, and al-Qaws.

NYC QAIA sits-in at the Center alternate Tuesdays, next meeting December 6. They're working on getting a blog up, I will update here when that blog is made public.

For past Cahokian articles on Pinkwashing, click here. I also recommend another activist friend's article "Scott Piro, Queer Support for Israel & the Pinkwashing Scam" by Pauline Park, at her blog on gender rights.

UPDATE: Check out Sarah's "Documentary Guide to Pinkwashing" on PrettyQueer.com. Essential!

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.

Peoples of the World, Beware!

"At the same time, Libya is a lesson in what the international community can achieve when we stand together as one. I said at the beginning of this process, we cannot and should not intervene every time there is an injustice in the world. Yet it’s also true that there are times where the world could have and should have summoned the will to prevent the killing of innocents on a horrific scale. And we are forever haunted by the atrocities that we did not prevent, and the lives that we did not save. But this time was different. This time, we, through the United Nations, found the courage and the collective will to act....

The United States was proud to play a decisive role, especially in the early days, and then in a supporting capacity. But let’s remember that it was the Arab League that appealed for action. It was the world’s most effective alliance, NATO, that’s led a military coalition of nearly 20 nations. It’s our European allies -- especially the United Kingdom and France and Denmark and Norway -- that conducted the vast majority of air strikes protecting rebels on the ground. It was Arab states who joined the coalition, as equal partners.

This is how the international community should work in the 21st century -- more nations bearing the responsibility and the costs of meeting global challenges. In fact, this is the very purpose of this United Nations. So every nation represented here today can take pride in the innocent lives we saved and in helping Libyans reclaim their country. It was the right thing to do....

First, and most immediately: security. So long as the Libyan people are being threatened, the NATO-led mission to protect them will continue.... For without security, democracy and trade and investment cannot flourish."

—President Obama at the United Nations today

Read between those lines very carefully. This is why the American/NATO intervention was wrong, and much worse than the faux left-wing Qaddafi dictatorship on a grand scale. With the Libyan action U.S. imperialism, the world's sole superpower, was announcing that the disaster of Iraq would not stop it from deciding for the world's peoples which of their governments, which of their struggles, which of their aspirations, are deemed legitimate. All the pretty talk about saving lives, let's tell it plainly, is utter bullshit.

Tell the people of Bahrain that the U.S. cares about democracy. Tell the people of Gaza the U.S. cares about saving lives. Tell the people of Yemen the U.S. cares about injustice.

Even the New York Times sees between those lines. Check out how they reported this speech: ' “Today the world is saying, in one unmistakable voice, ‘We will stand with you as you seize this moment of promise; as you reach for the freedom, the dignity and the opportunity you deserve,’ ” he said Tuesday. But he was talking about Libyans, not Palestinians. American officials say that Palestinian statehood at the United Nations will jeopardize the peace process; Israel is adamantly opposed to United Nations recognition of a Palestinian state.' [italic emphasis added]

The most powerful war machine on earth (and we know that's not Denmark and Norway) now knows it can get away with sending remote-controlled death from above on your country, your cities, your revolution, your counterrevolution — no matter — with total impunity. They will get away with it. They will claim it is the will of the "international community." And there is nothing you can do about it. There is no way you can fight back against it.

And if you are not in their pocket, do not offer them the proper strategic or "trade and investment" opportunities, they will look the other way. They will ask you to "negotiate." They will stab you in the back. Beware what has now been unleashed.

Graphic is a 1960s Cultural Revolution-era Chinese poster, snagged from the extraordinary ChinesePosters.net. It reads, optimistically: "Awakened peoples, you will certainly attain the ultimate victory!"