Lecture that Ali Abunimah gave at Stanford on Wednesday, November 3rd 2010 entitled “What is the alternative to peace talks to nowhere?” Sponsored by Students Confronting Apartheid by Israel (SCAI).
Ali Abunimah in Santa Fe, New Mexico
Recently, Ali Abunimah lectured despite zionist objections at the University of New Mexico. He was interviewed by Mary-Charlotte at Santa Fe Radio-Cafe.
“So what precisely does it mean to have a Jewish state? If here in the United States we have the protections and the right to live the way we want to, to raise our children the way we want to, respecting the rights of others, why would we need to declare the United States to be a Jewish state, or a Christian state, or a White state, or any other kind of state. And exactly the same applies in Palestine. If the concept of a Jewish state is a state where you have special privileges and special rights because you are a Jew, that is not a concept of a Jewish state that anyone should defend or support, but if you are talking about a country in which there is a large Jewish community that enjoys all the protections of the law, that it gets to live the way it wants like any other community, then that is a good thing, that’s what I am talking about.”
PCRF Completes Another Mission Despite One Man Down
A Palestinian Children’s Relief Fund 3 man French team completed its week long mission to the Nasser Hospital in Khan Younis, Gaza on November 12 after training local surgeons and performing expert orthopaedic surgery and neurosurgery on needy patients. Professor Christophe Oberlin has led several past missions to help the people of Gaza. The team also included anaesthesiologist Dr. Christophe Denetes and surgeon Dr. Azez Rafee Asan.
As reported by Ma’an Newsagency on November 8, one of the team was denied entrance by the IDF. The PCRF now reveal this team member was British doctor, Dr. Asan, who was denied entry by Israel “despite having a prior permit and working there in the past“. Dr. Asan is originally from Iraq. Israel has a disturbing record of denying entry to doctors to the Gaza Strip.
This French mission was sponsored through the PCRF by the Firedoll Foundation of California.
The PCRF is one of the few American-registered NGOs with a license from the Office of Foreign Asset Control (OFAC) from the US Dept. of Treasury enabling them to work in the government hospitals in Gaza to provide humanitarian surgical care for sick and needy patients. Australia also participates in PCRF projects through the Australian Friends of Palestine Association.
What is the alternative to peace talks to nowhere?
A very watchable lecture in 13 parts that Ali Abunimah gave at Stanford on Nov 3, 2010, sponsored by Students Confronting Apartheid by Israel (SCAI).
Also well worth reading is a well-written piece in Ma’an News Agency, where Ali Abunimah responds with logic and vision to Hanan Ashrawi while she clings to a broken two state dream.
“Ms. Ashrawi ought to know better than anyone else that it is the totally fraudulent ‘peace process,’ starting with the Oslo Agreement which should never have been signed, which bought time for the occupation to deepen its tentacles in the West Bank and Jerusalem, and to impose — with the complicity of the Palestinian Authority in Ramallah — the blockade on Gaza.”
Abunimah said that when Ashrawi argues Palestinians cannot not assemble a global coalition for the one-state solution “she displays a total lack of faith in the Palestinian people and their cause. Palestinian rights and demands are not a gift of ‘global partners,’ but a birthright. When the ANC demanded democracy in South Africa, they set the terms of the agenda, they did not wait for the permission of the US State Department before asking for their rights.
“The one-state solution is the only just, moral and practical solution which restores the rights of all Palestinians — the refugees and the diaspora, the Palestinians within the 1948 territories, and those in the West Bank.”
Abunimah also noted the significance of Ashrawi having to reckon with the one-state solution: “While skeptics and critics of the single state always dismissed it as a marginal idea, they now find it gaining ground to their dismay, and having to defend a so-called two-state solution that everyone knows will never lead to the restoration of Palestinian rights.”
Towards Hope completes its successful mission to Gaza
A medical team from Australian NGO Towards Hope has completed a 10 day trip to Gaza. Co-sponsored by PCRF, the Palestine Children’s Relief Fund, the team assisted ‘dozens of Palestinians from the besieged Gaza Strip with expert care’, as well as ‘training for local doctors’, a source close to the mission revealed today.
The team consisted of Australian Orthopaedic (Bones and Joints) Surgeon, Dr Tim Keenan, Physiotherapist, Jaquie Hocking from Perth, a Theatre Nurse and an Anaesthetist from Italy. They operated at the Gaza European Hospital from October 10th, finishing on October 16th,
undertaking reconstructive surgery and providing rehabilitation services. It is also planned to provide some ongoing training and assistance where necessary, to enable local staff to continue such work, after the team leaves.
This is Dr Keenan’s first trip to Gaza, although he has led medical teams to Nablus in West Bank in the past.
Max Ajl makes a superb comparison of the Towards Hope / PCRF medical mission with an Israeli effort, tuned to Channel H for Hasbara.