Category: Palestine

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Suheir Hammad – magnificent poetry

Sometimes I use this blog to remind myself later of people who add to the weft and weave to transform for a moment my wretched, mundane existence into a dance of possibilities and wishes. Suheir is possessed by the muse – when she performs it is the whole woman, the laughing medusa of Helene Cixous, the frightening yet irresistible gypsy who leads us to prophecy with a toss of the head – it is up to us if we wish to grasp the destiny she offers.

Hammad’s poem ‘The Refugees’ has poignancy at present in Australia, where the inglorious prime monstress Julie Gillard is esconsced to wage a battle royale in the August election. Gillard is dog-whistling – calling the noxious Australian xenophobes who need so little encouragement. Both parties are craven in this regard, yet there’s something particularly obscene about a party which is supposed to have at least some respect for human rights pandering to racist human refuse.

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The first successful dock protest against Israeli apartheid ever at Oakland

The boycotts, divestments and sanctions movement in the US just took a gigantic leap forward with a successful solidarity action between activists and longshoremen at Oakland, CA to prevent an Israeli ship from unloading its cargo.

In Oakland, California an Israeli ship was blocked by protesters for the first time in history. 700-1000 protesters blocked three different gates at 5:30 A.M. keeping dockworkers from unloading the Israeli cargo.

ILWU members refused to cross picketline – citing “health & safety” provisions of their contract. Management demanded “instant arbitration.” The arbitrator took a look at the picketlines at each gate to the SSA Terminal and ruled that ILWU members were justified in refusing to cross.

All dockworkers were sent home with FULL PAY.

This vid features the Brass Liberation Orchestra.

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All ships are subject to inspection

Israeli Consulate New York . @IsraelConsulate yr navy says future #flotilla 2 be treated as provocateurs on board – what of the jewish aid ship? http://is.gd/cPyAj

. @Jinjirrie The blockade exists to protect Palestinians and Israelis. All ships are subject to inspection regardless of who’s on board.

. @israelconsulate why won’t you accept inspections by the UN? why send #flotilla ships to Ashdod & why board them in international waters?

and enquiring minds also want to know how the blockade, which prevents items like sewing machines, musical instruments, fishing rods, coriander, goats and chickens from entering gaza, ‘protects’ Palestinians.

. @israelconsulate furthermore, you say ‘blockade exists to protect Palestinians & Israelis’ – what are you protecting Palestinians from?

No reply to my last questions yet. So ‘all ships are subject to inspection’ and no direct answer to my question about whether the jewish ship would also be treated as having provocateurs on board.

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Palestinians Should Go Back To Where They Came From

Veteran reporter, 89 year old Helen Thomas created a massive kerfuffle with her radical comment that “They”, the Israel referred to by her interlocutor, should go back where they came from – and Steve Colbert’s subsequent exposure of zionist maleficence is superb and beyond reproach.

Ali Abunimah - Israel is a racist entityIt’s significant to inveterate cynics like myself that the subject incident occurred on May 27 but wasn’t broadcast and magnified by the rightwing zionist media machine until several days later, after the indiscriminate zionist attack on humanitarian aid workers on board the Freedom Flotilla in international waters, killing 9 and wounding more than 30 people.

Although her comments were badly phrased and unfortunately vulnerable to misuse by the ziolobby, and it also seems significant that they were spun, she never said precisely ‘jews should leave Israel’ though was repeatedly quoted in the media as if she did.

To quote prominent Palestinian activist Ali Abunimah ‘it’s all still about selling a product that does not and cannot exist: a “moderate” and “liberal” racist state’.

Thus the media kerfuffle and public diversion is a distraction from the real major issues at hand, which are the horrendous illegal blockade which Israel maintains over the people of Gaza for its dubious ‘self-defence’ in the light of its horrific , oppressive 63 year apartheid inflicted upon the indigenous, dispossessed Palestinians, whose rights are spun by their oppressor as conditional upon their accepting the ‘right’ to ‘exist’ of the vile racist entity which inflicts brutal Occupation upon them and which has usurped their land without their consent.