colonialism

May 12, 2011December 11, 2020

Australian Rightwing Zionists Take Shonky Aim at BDS

How to tell boycotts, divestments and sanctions (BDS) against apartheid Israel are working? Rightwing zionists in Australia are making a stringent attack on politicians and trade unionists who support human rights and justice for Palestinians and have the temerity to back BDS and oppose Israeli apartheid.

Opposition senator Eric Abetz successfully moved a motion raising concerns about the Greens, Labor and union support of the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions campaign against Israel after Marrickville council’s brief adoption of the policy. “The Senate condemned those in the Labor Party, the Greens and unions who are supporting the BDS campaign against Israel,” Senator Abetz said.
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NSW Jewish Board of Deputies chief executive Vic Alhadeff slammed Ms Rhiannon’s involvement with the [Coalition for Justice and Peace in Palestine] forum, which he described as “an activist conference lacking any hint of balance or academic integrity on a divisive and complex issue”.

Rightwing zionists and supporters have already shown their colours by organising against Marrickville Council’s resolution on BDS, marshalling Christian zionists and rightwing Jewish zionists to combine forces in the Inner West Jewish Community and Friends Peace Alliance, which ran a phone push poll and other PR endeavours prior to the NSW State Election in Marrickville.

On March 3 a request from the group was accidentally published on the Jewish news website J-Wire and a blog, requesting $12,000 in public donations for activities ”to research what local people really think … carefully targeted media coverage and advertising in relation to the election … Please also pass this information on quietly to like-minded friends”. It was quickly deleted.

Eleven days later Marrickville Council said it was investigating four complaints from residents about a survey ”asking residents to comment on the GBDS against Israel”. At least one resident complained the interviewer had claimed to be from the council.
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Vic Alhadeff, chief executive of the NSW Jewish Board of Deputies, said his organisation had no knowledge of the poster campaign, or the phone survey, until afterwards.

However, Alhadeff’s comment was disingenuous – the cached blog post of the Inner West Jewish Community and Friends Peace Alliance says:

Also, we have among our own numbers people who are deeply involved in the Jewish community, and we are in frequent communication with Vic Alhadeff and Yair Miller from the Jewish Board of Deputies as well as Peter Wertheim from the Executive Council of Australian Jewry.

A few days ago, an unprincipled slur against Senator-elect Lee Rhiannon of the Greens was proliferated by The Australian, which has unswervingly offered slanted opinion on BDS, Israel and Palestine, notably failing to publish any stories by Palestinian advocates prior to the NSW State Election and Marrickville Council vote on BDS.

Ant Loewenstein annotates the Senate motion by Abetz and Private Members motion by Julie Bishop in his blog post ‘Palestinian rights barely exist for Australian politicians’. The vote in the Senate was 32 – 30, with the independents voting with the coalition.

In view of the call by the Palestinian Trade Union Coalition for BDS (PTUC-BDS) for solidarity from trade unions around the world, the motion by Senator Abetz to apply political pressure to the ACTU is way out of order. Since when has the Liberal party’s ambit been Australian trade unions and workers? – as ever, Israel is a special case for these sycophantic supporters of the rogue zionist entity. As Australian citizens, we should be extremely concerned that the zionist lobby buys off our politicians’ and Australia’s stance for justice and rights for oppressed people.

Please contact Senator Abetz and Julie Bishop below and tell them Israel, in contravention of more than two score UN Security Council resolutions, should butt out of Australian politics, that they should clarify any lurks and perks provided by zionists to their political campaigns, and remind them that boycotts, divestments and sanctions are the legitimate non-violent tactic called for by oppressed Palestinian civil society for long overdue justice and rights.

Senator Eric Abetz
GPO Box 1675. HOBART TAS 7001
Email:
Web: http://abetz.com.au/contact
Electorate Office Numbers:
Telephone: (03) 6224 3707
Facsimile: (03) 6224 3709
Toll Free: 1300 132 493

Canberra Office Numbers:
Telephone: (02) 6277 3019
Facsimile: (02) 6277 5707

The Hon Julie Bishop, MP
414 Rokeby Road
Subiaco, WA 6008
PO Box 2010
Subiaco, WA 6904
Email:
Phone: (08) 9388 0288
Fax: (08) 9388 0299
Web & Blog: http://www.juliebishop.com.au/

For information on how to address an Australian politician, see here.

Palestine / Israel Links

OCHA Report on Key Humanitarian Concerns in East Jerusalem [.pdf]
Palestinian unity is not for sale- You keep our tax..we keep our struggle”
Enrique Iglesias, don’t sing for the Israeli apartheid!
Deep Purple: Only ‘wimps’ cancel concerts in Israel
Great Songs of Indifference?: Bob Geldof, do not Ignore the Call
Lupe Fiasco raps about Gaza, discusses Obama and the War on Terror on the Colbert Report
Activists preparing for “third intifada”
For 40 years Israel practiced deceit in its purported plans for Palestinian autonomy (and that deceit required a partner)
AHAVA promotional campaign on Twitter jammed with BDS messaging
An Essay I wrote for English: Palestine remembered
This Is Why The Israeli Occupation of Palestine Must END! (Part 1: Mothers of Palestine)
This Is Why The Israeli Occupation of Palestine Must END! (Part 2: Children of Palestine)
How the ‘temporary weave’ of Zionism is starting to fray at the edges

Other Links

Poll-driven middle-class welfare for families earning over $150 000 a year is a bad thing, says The Australian—until Tony Abbott’s talking points decide otherwise.
Electronic Surveillance: America’s Secret Domestic Spying Apparatus
Senators Introduce Bill to Make Guantánamo Permanent Prison for Terror Suspects

May 9, 2011December 11, 2020

The Biggest Privilege is Assumption

Emma Rosenthal discusses class, privilege and racism:

“There are real privileges, such as George W. Bush getting into Yale, or inheritance, or power of the ruling class, and then there are rights, that not everyone has. But we fall in the trap of calling them privilege– housing, a job, income, access, citizenship, a voice, health care, etc. and we get loopy ideas like “deprivileging jewish voices”, where we start to diminish each other’s rights, which is foolish. Why would we want to deprivilege any voice that is getting heard at all? (assuming it’s true!). For the working class, the issue isn’t who has and who doesn’t have privilege but who has and doesn’t have certain rights. The problem comes in with assumptions, which is the real privilege. So for example, when someone who is not dis-abled insists my dis-ability is all in my head, because whenever she doesn’t feel well she says a prayer, does some yoga, or thinks positive, and her cold goes away, and projects her experience on to me, that’s a privileged assumption. When people who don’t speak engish as a first language enter a facebook thread, and get teased for their english, that’s a privileged assumption, because of the hegemony of english. When someone says “why don’t immigrants come in legally. like my friend did?” that’s a privileged assumption. It’s not that the friend shouldn’t have been able to enter the country legally, but that everyone should, without racist quotas, or other barriers to immigration (sexual orientation, political position, dis-ability). It’s the assertion of “my experience” as “proof” that a problem doesn’t exist, or that it’s the fault of the victim, that is the privilege, not the actual exercise of the right.

A man should be able to get a job without someone asking him if or assuming that his family responsibilities might get in the way. Getting a job isn’t privilege. It’s a right. He’s not violated anyone’s rights by getting a job. we don’t want to perpetuate that idea. We need to universalize rights, not oppression. So it’s not just the assumption on the part of the person who has more rights, but also the society that confers them.

Too much of the left is about diminishing each other, which is fine for those for whom activism is 1. about feeding their own narcissism, or 2. assuaging their guilt. But for those of us who really need social change, these divisions of who has more than whom, just have no place in real movement building.

Racism and its applications to avoid culpability– like white Christians who avoid looking at white privilege (along with upper and middle class diaspora Palestinians) and claim it’s obvious and not an issue anymore, while focusing on “jewish privilege” so they can jockey for position within a movement, isn’t just a privilege of assumption, it’s an assertion of very real privilege, though one that serves the ruling class, more than petit bourgeois activists who are more interested in half measures.’

May 8, 2011December 11, 2020

BDS will win over Israeli oppression

In this interview, Omar Barghouti highlights the principled support from musicians and writers for boycotts, divestments and sanctions against Israel and spells out the reason why BDS will defeat Israeli oppression:

‘When celebrities of this caliber cancel events in Israel over its human rights record they help to reveal Israel’s true face as a state practicing occupation, settler-colonialism and apartheid and contribute to challenging Israel’s impunity and infringement of international law.
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Besides, I think the foundational principle of international solidarity is to listen to the oppressed themselves, their needs and aspirations, not to think on their behalf, as if we cannot think straight or do not understand what is in our best interest. The latter attitude is colonial and patronizing, par excellence.
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Israel and its well-oiled lobby groups in the West have tried every trick in their book of vilification, intimidation, bullying and intellectual terror to deter or smear BDS activists and leaders everywhere. So far, they have miserably failed, however, as they themselves sometimes admit. Given its morally consistent, non-violent, human rights based agenda that upholds the rule of international law, full equality for all humans and a categorical rejection of all forms of racism, including anti-Semitism, the global BDS movement has dragged Israel into a “battlefield,” where we maintain decisive ethical superiority and neutralize Israel’s daunting arsenal of weapons, including nuclear weapons.’

Barghouti also outlines the justification for academic and cultural boycott of Israel:

‘The Palestinian Campaign for the Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel is a key part of the BDS campaign, due to the entrenched and persistent collusion of Israel’s academic and cultural institutions in maintaining and whitewashing Israel’s occupation and apartheid. It is important to emphasize that our campaign targets Israel’s academic and cultural institutions, not individuals, so the claim that our boycott would prevent Israeli academics or artists from interacting with their counterparts worldwide is simply false and intentionally misleading. Regardless, those who oppose the boycott because they erroneously think it infringes Israelis’ freedom of speech seem to forget that Palestinians, too, deserve that right. The fact that Israel’s decades-long system of colonial oppression denies Palestinians all our fundamental rights, including the right to free speech and often the right to education, appears to be less worthy of those critics’ interest. When Israel criminalized Palestinian education and shut down all Palestinian universities (some for four consecutive years), schools and even kindergartens during the first intifada, which was overwhelmingly peaceful, we did not hear much protest from many of those who are currently attacking the academic boycott because of its alleged impact on Israeli academic freedom. It is this hypocrisy that makes us wonder whether those people truly believe that all humans deserve equal rights, regardless of their identity.’

Palestine / Israel Links

Pro-Palestine Protestors form human wall as CRH involvement with Israel’s illegal wall again a major issue
AFP PRESS RELEASE 28: Palestinian unity, statehood and the importance of BDS
Israel’s future
The demolition nation is at it again, destroying the Palestinian village of Amniyr situated on private Palestinian land which Israel has usurped as ‘state land’, for the third time.

Other Links

Noam Chomsky: My Reaction to Osama bin Laden’s Death

May 4, 2011December 11, 2020

Leila Khaled on May Day 2011.

“Where there is occupation there will always be resistance.”

“We shouldn’t believe the imperialists that they can make a better world. It’s only the working class that can make the world much more possible to live in without injustice and having our freedom. When the working class gets its freedom in any country, it means that it is building a better future for the generations to come.”

EVENT : DEBATE : Should the Left support the BDS campaign against Israel?

For all Victorians, there will be a meeting on the 11 May · 19:00 – 20:30 at Trades Hall, 54 Victoria St, Carlton.

Almost everyone on the Left under 55 can only remember Israel as the Goliath battling the Palestinians David — from the first Lebanon war to the two Intifadas a modern army has faced far weaker opponents. And yet Israel is still supported very strongly by Western governments like our own.

The Left is united in wishing to tackle the issue, and the biggest item on the agenda is BDS a campaign for boycotts, divestments and sanctions against Israel. But is BDS the best way forward – what should be the Left’s attitude to the global BDS campaign?

Two activists line up to debate the merits of BDS:

KIM BULLIMORE who has worked on the ground in Palestine with the Women’s International Peace Service since 2004 will be putting the case for the Global BDS.

Israeli-born SOL SALBE, a campaigner for Palestinian human rights in this country for 42 years will be putting case for a more selective pinpointed approach.

Former trade union activist BILL DELLER, who used to chair the Victorian Peace Network has agreed to chair the debate.

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This event is part of the New International Bookshop’s Underground Talk series. Entry is $5/ $2 concession.

Palestine / Israel Links

AIPAC does not speak for me – Hedy Epstein:

The vicious discrimination brought to bear against Palestinians in the occupied territories deserves no applause from members of Congress attending the AIPAC conference. Instead, they should raise basic questions with Israeli officials about decades of inferior rights endured by Palestinians both inside Israel and the occupied territories.

Mohammed al-Dura’s father wins slander case against Israeli in French court
Out of a population of 1.6 million, 25 Gazans protested OBL’s killing.

The crowd included al-Qaida sympathizers as well as students who said they opposed bin Laden’s ideology, but were angry at the United States for killing him and consider him a martyr.

Bin Laden (and his sponsors): any political significance?
US is desperate for a victory and this one will be a chance, although the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq are going terribly for the US. Obama yesterday basically signed the death sentence of the Pakistani president for thanking him for his role. How dumb is that? Even if he thought to falsely claim that the US did not violate Pakistani sovereignty near the capital of Pakistan. Public opinion surveys will soon give a tremendous boost to Obama,
Report recommends a ‘measured response’ towards Palestinian unity in order to keep the US on side, in contrast to Nutanyahoo’s hysterical reaction.
The 1936-1939 Revolt
Palestine in the Middle East: Opposing Neoliberalism and US Power

A central component of this vision is the normalization and integration of Israel into the Middle East. The US envisions a Middle East resting upon Israeli capital in the West and Gulf capital in the East, underpinning a low-wage, neoliberal zone that spans the region. What this means is that Israel’s historic destruction of Palestinian national rights must be accepted and blessed by all states in the region. In the place of real Palestinian self-determination (first and foremost the right of return of refugees), a nominal artificial state will be established in the dependent islands of territory across the West Bank and the Gaza Strip. This goal is an essential pre-requisite of US strategy in the region. Our political activities must be informed by this understanding if we are to successfully build effective solidarity movements to confront and turn back this project.

Raja Khalidi and Sobhi Samour present ‘a review of the neoliberal worldview that underpins new Palestinian political and economic thinking and which, in our view, endangers the Palestinian national liberation agenda by errors both of commission and omission.’

US Imperialist Links

Making the World Safe for Terrorism

– the U.S. has blended its battle against terrorism with preservation of American global interests. Each blended component contradicts the other and creates confusing missions in U.S. foreign and military policies.
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The Middle East can be conveniently divided between the nations that the U.S. confronts and have been antagonistic to Radical Islam and the nations that the U.S. befriends and whose policies have contributed to terrorist actions against the United States.

The former nations, The Islamic Republic of Iran, Iraq, Syria and Lebanon, occupy the northern area of the Middle East. The latter nations, Israel, Saudi Arabia, Egypt, and Yemen occupy the Middle East’s southern frontier.

Fomenting nationalism with murder : While nationalism sweeps the US with the death of Bin Laden, Muslim Americans worry bigotry against them will persist.

Afghanistan / Pakistan Links

‘Khost Province has long been a breadbasket for Afghanistan because of its multiple agricultural growing seasons. It’s also a historical power base for insurgent networks run by Gulbuddin Hekmatyar and Jalaluddin Haqqani. “Hekmatyar and Haqqani and their forces just flow back and forth through both sides,” said Lt. Col. Jesse Pearson, the battalion commander of Task Force Spader, of the border with Pakistan.’

US funding of the very nasty and still existent Gulbuddin Hekmatyar, “a particularly fanatical fundamentalist and woman-hater.”21 According to journalist Tim Weiner, “[Hekmatyar’s] followers first gained attention by throwing acid in the faces of women who refused to wear the veil. CIA and State Department officials I have spoken with call him ‘scary,’ ‘vicious,’ ‘a fascist,’ ‘definite dictatorship material.’”

Hahhaa … this is rich : ‘Guantánamo Bay files: Pakistan’s ISI spy service listed as terrorist group’

Around 18 months after the fall of the Taliban, another memo claims, Iranian intelligence gave a former Taliban commander and Hekmatyar US$2m to fund “anti-coalition militia” activities. Citing further intelligence reports, the file says: “In December 2005, representatives of Ismail Khan, former governor of Herat and minister of water and power in Afghanistan, met with two Pakistanis and three Iranians to discuss the planning of terrorist acts and to create better lines of communication between the [Hekmatyar group] and Taliban.”

This latter claim appears highly speculative as Khan is a long-term enemy of Hekmatyar and the Taliban – in 2009 he narrowly survived a suicide attack for which insurgents claimed responsibility.

in consideration of the fact that

‘By 1987, the annual supply of arms had reached 65,000 tons, and a “ceaseless stream” of CIA and Pentagon officials were visiting Pakistani Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) headquarters in Rawalpindi and helping to plan mujahideen operations:

At any one time during the Afghan fighting season, as many as 11 ISI teams trained and supplied by the CIA accompanied mujahideen across the border to supervise attacks, according to Yousaf and Western sources. The teams attacked airports, railroads, fuel depots, electricity pylons, bridges and roads….

CIA operations officers helped Pakistani trainers establish schools for the mujahideen in secure communications, guerrilla warfare, urban sabotage and heavy weapons.31

Although the CIA claimed that the purpose was to attack military targets, mujahideen trained in these techniques, and using chemical and electronic-delay bomb timers supplied by the U.S., carried out numerous car bombings and assassination attacks in Kabul itself.32’

May 3, 2011December 11, 2020

Holding to Human Rights in Marrickville

Fiona Byrne keeps the faith on the universal relevance of human rights and the oppression of Palestinian people.

I am proud to have been one of five Greens and four ALP councillors on Marrickville who took the global message to local government.

We believe that we represent citizens who would not want their money being used to support the on-going dispossession of the Palestinian people.

We led Marrickville into support of the global boycott, divestment and sanctions movement, a grassroots movement, aimed at pushing the Israeli government to comply with international humanitarian law.

Rupert Murdoch, Barry O’Farrell, and, sadly, some of the leaders of the Labor Party felt differently.

They clearly believe that Australia is best served by the cone of silence on Middle Eastern policy that pervades our politics and our media, whether it is Israel, Syria or any other country where the struggle for human rights continues.

We do not agree.

I’m proud to have recently heard the story from my parents’ homeland of 12 department store workers in Dublin who in the mid-’80s went on strike for two-and-a-half years for the right to not handle goods from apartheid South Africa.

Initially they were vilified, but as the sanctions movement grew their courageous stand gave hope and strength to those fighting for their human rights half a world away.

Relevant Links

BARGHOUTI: Setting the record straight on BDS –

The Marrickville Council was on the right side of history when it first chose to endorse the global BDS campaign. It remains so by insisting on Palestinian rights, despite the tactical setback. Brave Australians had done the same when responding to the calls from the oppressed South African majority under apartheid. We expect no less from conscientious Australians today in response to our urgent appeal for effective solidarity. I have no doubt that one day commentators and activists will mark Marrickville’s decision as the true beginning of mainstreaming BDS in Australia and of finally standing up to Israel’s lobby and for the rights of Palestinians.

Palestine debate widens despite council BDS backdown

The campaign against Marrickville Council’s support for BDS shows just how worried apologists for Israel are about the growing global support for an ethical local policy towards Israel based on its treatment of Palestinians.

Palestine / Israel Links

Facebook campaigns launched for Palestinian boycott of Israeli products
Israeli Foreign Minister urges boycott of PA – Hamas government

The developments on Wednesday represent an unambiguous failure of Israel’s long-standing policy of ‘divide and rule’. It was in pursuit of such a strategy that Israel began to fund Hamas in the late seventies and eighties, in order to undermine the secular Palestinian leadership of the PLO. This strategy appears to have backfired dramatically, in a similar fashion to Israel’s 1982 invasion of Lebanon, which resulted in the creation of the other asymmetric threat on Israel’s borders, the Shi’ia Hizbollah movement.

In retrospect, such a development was always likely in view of the utter intransigence of Israeli negotiators revealed by the Palestinian Papers. The leaked documents reveal a supine, if not desperate, Palestinian negotiating team making sweeping concessions on refugees right to return, the legal status of the Temple Mount and illegal settlements in East Jerusalem, to no avail. Such obduracy, arguably far in excess of what hardline Zionist Vladamir Jabotinsky was recommending in his doctrine of the Iron Wall, recalls Golda Meir’s stance towards Anwar Sadat in 1971, a stance that led inexorably to the Yom Kippur War.

Gaza is a symbol of occupation, thanks to Israel : Israel’s Pavlovian response to Palestinian reconciliation, which included the usual threats of boycott, is the result of the ingrained anxiety of people who no longer control the process

Bassem Tamimi: “Our destiny is to resist”

The occupation is continuous in Israeli society and this is why they lose — because they try to force us to accept them as an occupier, and that will never happen. We don’t have any problem with Jewish people. Our problem is with Zionism. We don’t hate them on the other side; we simply demand that they end the occupation of their minds. The separation between us is between different ways of thinking, not between land. If we change our ways of thought and remove the mentality of occupation from our minds — not just from the land — we can live together and build a paradise.
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The army is determined to push us toward violent resistance. They realize that the popular resistance we are waging with Israelis and internationals from the outside, they can’t use their tanks and bombs. And this way of struggling gives us a good reputation. Suicide bombing was a big mistake because it allowed Israel to say we are terrorists and then to use that label to force us from our land. We know they want a land without people — they only want the land and the water — so our destiny is to resist. They give us no other choice.