No time to blog at present, annoyingly, so here’s a poem by Rafeef Ziadah “We Teach Life, Sir” which is receiving deserved accolades round the globe. Rafeef’s thoughts contrast with the colonising of the Occupy Wall Street movement by the liberal ziolobby, which claims legitimacy in the OWS since titularly it opposes the Israeli Occupation (though not the occupation and deprivileging of non-Jews in Israel itself) and so that instant solidarity becomes restricted by zionist-mediated checkpoints of the mind. More chains to break! Not enough people have broken through to the realisation that zionism is fully congruent with imperialism, both utilising the familiar tool of capitalism, both expansionist and colonialist.
Take your goons and bases home, Obama. You aren’t welcome here until you stop using Australia as a projection of US criminal imperialism.
Palestine / Israel Links
Palestinians express solidarity to NYC ‘Occupy’ camp before raid; Activist in tweet controversy linked to Israel PR groups Palestine solidarity activists in particular (as I can tell you from experience) have all too often been asked to check their politics at the door in various political coalitions in the US, in the interest of not “alienating” the mainstream (if we can speak frankly, this was a major issue in organizing against the Iraq war during the past decade). The recent response of Daniel Sieradski, a driving force between Occupy Judaism, to the controversy over support for Freedom Waves shows that this logic is still, unfortunately, current in parts of the Occupy movement Defense Minister Ehud Barak is under fire over a comment he made during an interview with PBS’ Charlie Rose on Wednesday. Asked by Rose whether he would strive for nuclear weapons had he been in Iran’s shoes, Barak said, “Probably…I don’t delude myself that they are doing it just because of Israel .”
‘”While India brutalises Kashmir in so many ways, that occupation brutalises the Indians.
It (the occupation) turns us into a people who are able to bear a kind of morally reprehensible behaviour done in our name, and the fact that so few Indians will stand up and say anything about it is such a sad thing.”‘
Emma Rosenthal Speaks at Macarthur Park Oct 22, 2011 (Photo J Pedro Morales)Emma Rosenthal, MacArthur Park, Rampart Division-LAPD, Los Angeles
I am grateful for the opportunity to speak to you today at this October 22 demonstration against police brutality on the theme, Resistance Matters, focusing on a segment of EVERY community– people with dis-abilites.
People with dis-abilities are specifically targeted by police for abuse and brutality.
People who are deaf, unable to heed orders they do not hear, unable to communicate with authority, often are killed or battered by a system that doesn’t take their communication needs into consideration.
People with visible dis-abilities attract the attention of bullies, including the bullies in blue who know that there are no consequences for our ostracism or victimization.
People who appear, walk, talk differently are often singled out, accused of being drunk, and often have trouble with law enforcement because of both misunderstandings and the outright hostility toward us, by the police.
People with mental health conditions come in contact with police on the street, when our behavior doesn’t conform to society’s expectations, or when police are called to respond to medical emergencies.
Homelessness and prisons ARE our society’s mental health care system.
Police often respond to medical psychiatric emergencies with brutal and often deadly force, claiming they felt that they were in imminent danger.
Imagine if health care providers said they had to kill a patient because the patient’s condition threatened the lives of health care professionals.
It is the job of health care providers to treat people who are ill. We must demand no less of emergency personnel, including police, when answering a call for medical emergencies.
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There is a nexus of gender, class and race with dis-ability, compounding our experience with authorities. We are part of every community, not a separate group, or geographic. There is no organization or outreach that can fully succeed without our full inclusion. You cannot address the issue of police brutality without also addressing the role of people with dis-abilities in the struggle for social justice.
Yet many social justice organizations don’t include people with dis-abilities fully, in addressing many social justice issues, and often perpetuate attitudes and policies that contribute to our marginalization.
You can’t defend our rights without our participation, our full participation. Nothing about us, without us. Working on our behalf without us, simply appropriates our exploitation in the service of rhetoric.
A movement that isn’t informed by the victims perpetuates the abuse. Planning that does not take our specific needs and issues into consideration often puts us in significant danger. Too often event security responds to us in much the same way that the state does. I have been at demonstrations where the event coordinators did as much to endanger us, as the police do. This must be changed, this must be challenged.
We cannot fight a system by replicating its attitudes & practices. We cannot demand from society what we cannot also create among ourselves.
Expectations of people with dis-abilities merge with issues of race/gender and class to increase marginalization via expectations of behavior.
Thinking of people with dis-abilities as aberrant, undesirable, non-contributing and a burden have no place in the movement, these are capitalist attitudes.
Dis-ability rights isn’t charity. nothing short of full inclusion is justice. It is not your place to “help” us, but rather to work with us, to include us in ways that inform praxis.
It is NOT our job to make you comfortable with out conditions.
It is NOT our job to find our own way into your organizations.
It is NOT our job to say what you want to hear, and to leave our particular needs and experience out of the discussion.
Dis-ability inclusion is the collective responsibility of the entire community.
________________
Additionally, agents of repression know to use dis-ability to divide the movement, like they use gender & race; by relying on our own prejudice & bigotry.
Infiltrators use ridicule of people with dis-abilities. Police have been known to “street: us into demonstrations to provoke an angry crowd that knows we are acceptable targets.
These divisive tactics don’t work when we check ourselves, our own entitlements that mask as privileges that defeat us all. We cannot build a sincere movement w/o including the most marginalized sectors, and we cannot address police brutality by ignoring its specific nexus with dis-abilty .
_______________
It must also be recognized that police not only target people with dis-abilities for abuse, but also, in their brutality, create dis-ability, leaving those who survive, injured and traumatized. Let us honor those comrades wounded in the struggle, injured by capitalism, with ramps, sign language & voice, as well as make room for all activists into the future, as any one of us can become a person with a dis-ability, at any time.
No more excuses. These are matters of resistance because resistance matters.
So, let us build the strongest resistance to police brutality and state hegemony by ever increasing the circle, by standing, sitting, signing, rolling arm in arm in solidarity, a strong movement that cannot afford to leave anyone behind, a movement that needs everyone’s voice, everyone’s story.
Does this mean that Hamas and Israel could potentially do a deal over the broader issues? The answer is no, but not because of the conventional wisdom that Hamas doesn’t recognize Israel, espouses violence, and refuses to accept signed agreements.
In fact, Hamas has said repeatedly — including in a New York Times interview with its leader Khaled Meshal — that the movement is willing to accept a Palestinian state in only the West Bank and Gaza Strip, provided all Israeli settlements are removed and the rights of Palestinian refugees are respected.
But while Hamas was strong in the specific context of negotiations over prisoners, the movement by itself or even in combination with other Palestinian factions is not strong enough to compel Israel to meet broader demands.
The power balance remains too lopsided against Palestinians for negotiations to be anything more than what they have been for two decades: a cover for Israel to continue colonization.
For this reason in 2005, Palestinian civil society, independently of all political factions, issued its unified call to supporters around the world for boycott, divestment and sanctions (BDS) on Israel. It urges that these “punitive measures” be maintained until Israel recognizes the Palestinian people’s rights and respects international law in three ways: an end to the occupation and colonization of Arab lands conquered in 1967; recognizing the fundamental rights of Palestinian citizens of Israel to full equality; and respecting the rights of Palestinian refugees, including the right of return. These are goals that unify all Palestinians, whether they support the fast-fading two-state solution, or a single democratic state incorporating Israelis and Palestinians throughout historic Palestine (Israel, the West Bank and Gaza Strip together).
Modeled on the successful campaign that helped isolate apartheid South Africa, the logic is straightforward: As long as Israel enjoys an overwhelming power advantage it will never respect Palestinian rights nor dismantle its racist, colonial and apartheid-like policies. Why should it when it pays no price for doing what it pleases?
The BDS campaign was prompted in part by the response — or rather the lack of it — to the 2004 International Court of Justice ruling that Israel’s West Bank wall is illegal. When no governments took any measures to enforce the decision, Palestinians realized that global civil society would have to act.
Similarly, Israel remains in violation of countless U.N. resolutions, and has faced no accountability whatsoever for the war crimes and crimes against humanity committed over many years, but most recently in Gaza in 2009 and detailed in the U.N.-commissioned Goldstone report.
Could the BDS shift the balance of power such that Israel would be forced to concede Palestinian rights? The international movement’s rapid growth has convinced some influential Israelis that it can. Last year, the Reut Institute, a think tank with close ties to the Israeli government, called for an all-out campaign of “sabotage” and “attack” on “delegitimization” of Israel. It especially focused on BDS, and warned that the movement’s “ momentum is gaining.”
In response to the Reut report, the Jewish Federations of North America and the Jewish Council for Public Affairs launched a multimillion-dollar initiative to “combat anti-Israel boycott, divestment and sanctions campaigns.”
And in his May speech to the Israel lobby (AIPAC), President Obama vowed that the U.S. would help Israel fight “delegitimization.”
But he warned nonetheless that “the march to isolate Israel internationally — and the impulse of the Palestinians to abandon negotiations — will continue to gain momentum in the absence of a credible peace process and alternative.”
Israel’s isolation is growing not only because of BDS, but because of regional developments including the uprising that toppled Egypt’s pro-Israel Mubarak regime, and Turkey’s break with Israel over the Gaza siege and the attack on the Mavi Marmara.
While this might dismay Obama, those who yearn for negotiations leading to peace and justice should do all they can to hasten the erosion of Israel’s power advantage over the Palestinians. After all, as this week’s events demonstrate, Israel only negotiates seriously with the strong.
The Israeli-public-opinion argument becomes much more problematic for me, however, when a Palestinian argues that Palestinians ought to calibrate their struggle to conform to “reality”. The argument is analogous to South Africans deliberating on the impossibility of their course because white public opinion was overwhelmingly in opposition.
No. The sensible thing for Palestinians to do is to doggedly pursue justice, irrespective of the opinion of the “average Israeli” – which is just what they are doing. Israeli opinion can be acted upon and aligned with global norms of proper conduct over time, but only through the pressure applied by Palestinian agency and struggle. The Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement is one example of that agency today.
of the IDF secret report on the Eilat terror attack is the fundamental error that it made in anticipating that the attack would come from Gaza instead of from Sinai. He offers a shocking, but unsubstantiated claim that the Sinai terrorists were affiliated with Iran.
This confirms the judgment of independent analysts like myself and Israeli bloggers like Idan Landau, that the Israeli government lied when it claimed the Popular Resistance Committees were behind the attack and when it launched a targeted killing campaign against the PRC. Israel’s post-Eilat Gaza assault was a bluff, an attempt to mollify Israeli public opinion because Israel couldn’t or wouldn’t attack the real originators of the attack whether they were in Sinai or Teheran.
Abbas’s rousing speech in the UN arguing for Palestinian statehood belies the impotence of the PA to stop further Israeli appropriations, with crowing zionists announcing another 1,100 illegal Israeli colonial homes to be built on Palestinian land in the West Bank. Within Israel, 30,000 Bedouins are to be ethnically cleansed and their lands confiscated to make room for more jews-only settlements. From the Palestine Papers, it’s clear Israel has rebuffed the most generous of offers by Abbas in the past and that Abbas colludes with Israel to suppress Palestinian resistance. No matter what concessions Palestinians make, Israel always raises the bar, most recently with Nutanyahoo’s demand for recognition of a ‘jewish’ (racist) state. Israel has no intention of offering a viable state for Palestinians or equal rights for all – a brief glance at the Likud platform attests to this fact. Palestine has all the resources, most importantly, water, and without them, Israel would choke. As long as the US and EU remain merely ‘deeply disappointed’, ziocode for ‘business as usual’ and fail to insist on Israel’s adherence to international law, there is no impetus which can make Israel stop its oppression save steadfast non-violent resistance and BDS, BDS and more BDS.
The best antidote for Abbas’ deceptive two state euphoria is Ali Abunimah’s interview about it. Ali sees Palestinian people beginning to focus increasingly on a struggle for equal rights.
If the October Knesset vote for annexation of the West Bank is affirmative, the necessity for equal rights with one and a half million illegal settlers presently occupying Palestinian land will become urgent.
The Palestinian Authority’s bid to the United Nations for Palestinian statehood is, at least in theory, supposed to circumvent the failed peace process. But in two crucial respects, the ill-conceived gambit actually makes things worse, amplifying the flaws of the process it seeks to replace. First, it excludes the Palestinian people from the decision-making process. And second, it entirely disconnects the discourse about statehood from reality.
In a speech today, Ashton congratulated herself for increasing Europe’s involvement in something called the Middle East peace process. “I have worked to achieve a greater EU role as I believe we are ideally placed as a friend of both parties,” she said.
Three United Nations independent experts Tuesday called for an immediate end to the Israeli demolitions of Palestinian owned-houses and other structures in the West Bank, including East Jerusalem, which have seen a dramatic increase since the beginning of the year, according to a press release by OHCHR.
– At my meetings, I said, all right, Turkey is a model of democracy, a secular state, a social state with the rule of law upheld. We are not intentionally trying to export a regime — we couldn’t care less. But if they want our help, we’ll provide any assistance they need. But we do not have a mentality of exporting our system.
…
Turkey is getting stronger as time goes by, and the situation of many European states is quite obvious.
Most wars in the world end when the leaders of both parties come to understand that continued fighting will not bring them any benefit. In many cases the benefit in question is any personal profit leaders themselves. In other cases, when a nation gets the leaders deserve, benefit at heart is the good of society.
Israel is significantly inferior in its war against the people of Palestinians, that does not go unnoticed by any one who looks with open eyes on the balance of power in the Middle East. Israeli – Palestinians can not end Israel’s victory on the first model. Not difficult to conclude that this strategic situation assessment – History and basic rational considerations. However, this conclusion is also from the experience and the historical facts themselves, without any theory.
In June 1967 the State of Israel was close to the end of war from the first model than ever before, and above all close she could reach it in the foreseeable future. But war is not over. On the other hand, the Arab side during Israel – Filastin be theoretically possible to win and bring the war to end the first model.
The moral is that the Israeli Government to end the war, according to the second model. To do this, create a situation of East – Mediterranean in which no Arab ruler, including leaders of the Palestinians, there will be nothing to gain personally for the war, and none of them has a strong emotional stimulus will be enough to start a global campaign to another.
“The current Israeli leadership unfortunately is racist and aggressive, especially Leiberman and his team which is only tolerated for the sake of the coalition government. Hundreds of thousands of Israelis have gathered to protest economic situation in the country. Change in Israel hinges on how far Lieberman will be tolerated”.
The Turkish deputy premier said Israel had lost Egypt’s friendship in the Middle East as well.
“Egypt used to be one of the closest allies Israel had in that region. Now Egypt is friends with Turkey and it had cut all diplomatic ties with Israel. Everyone knows very well what kind of a position an isolated Israel will be in when devoid of ties with Turkey.”
James Brandt from the JDEF makes it clear that the zionist lobby had a political agenda when censoring the “Child’s View from Gaza” exhibit scheduled months ago to be held at MOCHA.
Upon hearing about the exhibit, Jewish community representatives met with MOCHA staff to voice our concerns. First, the exhibit’s violent, even gory images are wholly inappropriate to be viewed by young children. Second, the exhibit and its associated programming were designed to further MECA’s well-documented agenda to delegitimize Israel.
But violent images of Israeli suffering are OK.
Certainly, an appropriate context could be created for MECA’s exhibit. Professionals could determine the appropriate minimum age for visitors. Images could be added to present a balanced context.
These would depict the shelling of Israeli schools, Israeli families praying for the return of kidnapped soldiers and Israeli children grieving for parents killed in terrorist attacks.
Got that? images of violence of Palestinians GOOD, images of Israeli violence BAD.
The Museum of Tolerance held a workshop for children to respond to drawings of children from Darfur of the genocide which they witnessed. These drawings are being used as evidence of war crimes by the Sudanese government in the International Criminal Court. Are Israel’s defenders worried that Gazan children’s drawings may be used similarly? Regardless, the Israel lobby’s double standards on violence and children are shockingly apparent.
This exhibit constitutes propaganda aimed at indoctrinating our children under the guise of art. There is no context given to understand the complex issues facing Israel and the Palestinians.
Brand Israel bullies children. Palestinian children endure apartheid, occupation and oppression, and their art is deemed unacceptable because it challenges the monopoly on victimhood held by Brand Israel. The obsessive need to control the narrative of oppression was a striking characteristic of the apartheid South African regime also.
The Association for Civil Rights in Israel, which appealed against the ban on Route 443, dared suggest the word apartheid and was reprimanded for it. In her ruling, Supreme Court President Dorit Beinisch wrote that “the great difference between the security means adopted by the State of Israel for defense against terrorist attacks and the unacceptable practices of the policy of apartheid requires that any comparison or use of this grave term be avoided.”
Today, a demonstration of many community groups concerned about the political censorship of Gazan children’s art was held in Oakland outside MOCHA. Here’s an account of the protest and related events on the MOCHA facebook page:
Mocha partially changed its opinion half an hour before the demo after it saw the public and many artists rally behind the exhibit and also after realizing that MECA found a place nearby to show the kids’ drawings. Many Mocha staff members are outraged by the decision of the board and many Mocha members ended their membership after walking into the museum and throwing a fit because of the shameful behavior of Mocha. There were many angry emails and phone calls too. The presence of the media today also compelled Mocha to reconsider. Mocha’s scandal grew every day and public scorn grew with it too.
Mocha missed the Thursday deadline that was given to it by MECA and today, it was too late. Mocha realized that it made a big mistake and MECA was not going to save its ass from public scorn. Besides, Mocha refused to show all the drawings and wanted to pick and choose and that is still censorship. So yes, it’s still about censoring the artwork of the Palestinian children.
Some of the advocates for censorship of the exhibition also revealed an underlying motivation to attack BDS, unstated elsewhere publicly.
David Marshak: We are trying to respond to the BDS campaign, which is very well-funded and organised. We can’t match the funding and numbers but we can improve our ability to respond to attacks like these. We have a lot of work to do. JVP is very good.
Crayons of mass creation speak truth to power. The Israel lobby art censors quiver and quake at their impact, and struggle to suppress images and language which attest to Israel’s war crimes and collective punishment perpetrated against the civilian population in Gaza subject to Israel’s oppression – apartheid, occupation and siege. Yet since Israel’s survival apparently depends on censoring children’s drawings of its crimes, Israel has surely doomed itself.
An exhibit of controversial drawings and paintings by Palestinian children was shown in a downtown Oakland museum’s courtyard Saturday, after the Museum of Children’s Art canceled the display three weeks ago.
After criticism from exhibit founder Middle East Children’s Alliance, the museum made a late offer Friday to reschedule the event at a later time, but the organizers said they had already found their own space.
…
The Alliance’s executive director, Barbara Lubin, said she received a call Friday afternoon from a museum representative asking to meet with her group to discuss rescheduling the exhibit.
“I just laughed,” she said. “I said, ‘You must be crazy; we have spent the last three weeks looking for a place to display (the artwork.) … I
can’t believe you have the chutzpah (audacity) to call me at this late date.’ I have just signed a lease on a space for (an exhibit) for the next two months.”
…
On Saturday afternoon, a band played while people held up the drawings in the courtyard, and patrons filed into the Museum of Children’s Art.
The museum’s interim executive director, Masako Kalbach, was sympathetic to the views of museum critics.
“We do understand their feelings about our offer of being too late,” she said. “We would really like to talk to them.”
Also at the showing Saturday were about a dozen people from StandWithUs/San Francisco Voice for Israel.
“I think an exhibition that also shows the suffering of children of Southern Israel who have had (thousands) of rockets aimed directly at them could be a much more balanced exhibit,” said group spokesman Mike Harris.
The museum’s decision to cancel the exhibit triggered an outcry against what critics called censorship of Palestinian children’s art, especially since the museum has presented similar wartime artwork, including an exhibit of Iraqi children’s drawings depicting the U.S. war in Iraq.
A museum representative originally said the art was “not appropriate for an open gallery accessible by all children.” But late Friday, museum board member Randolph Belle issued a statement.
“When we canceled the exhibit ‘A Child’s View from Gaza’ earlier this month, we did so both because we lacked a formal policy for sensitive content, and because we were not confident that we had the resources to deal with the numerous concerns we received regarding the exhibit. In response to input from the community and careful consideration by our board of directors and staff, the Museum of Children’s Art has developed a new policy governing the exhibition of items with sensitive content,” the statement said.
Belle’s statement said the Middle East Children’s Alliance has been invited to reschedule the exhibit in keeping with the new policy.
Lubin said she had not seen Belle’s statement Saturday.
She is traveling to Gaza next month to collect new artwork from the children based on how they feel about having their exhibit banned from the museum.
Lubin said she will consider working with the museum to show this set of artwork as long as they do not censor the show.
Board member Randolph Belle said the decision was based on the violent nature of some of the work in the show. “Basically we got some [calls from] concerned parents, the Jewish Federation and MOCHA community members,” Belle said, “stating that they didn’t feel that children should be exposed to these images in a public space.”
On Friday, dozens of protestors in front of MOCHA, organized in part by the San Francisco-based Arab Resource and Organizing Center (AROC), shouted “Shame!” and accused the museum’s board of censorship. “It is very hurtful,” said AROC Youth Program Coordinator Lubna Morrar, who spoke at the protest. “We had been working with [MOCHA] for so long, and if they felt like they didn’t want to take on this project then they shouldn’t have even implemented it to begin with.”
Ziad Abbas, associate director of the Berkeley-based Middle East Children’s Alliance (MECA), said that during the six months of preparing for the exhibit, which was to include various workshops, “the staff was very supportive, very helpful.” But just two weeks ago, Abbas said, MECA was informed that the event would not take place.
He said the MOCHA representative who called him did not explain in detail—”just that it is an internal issue they are having,” Abbas said. “But we know, we understand that the moment you talk about Palestine, or mention Palestine, you will find the pro-Israeli groups try to put the pressure to silence or to shut you down.”
Abbas said he understands MOCHA was under pressure from various groups. “That is what we saw on the Internet later,” he said. “Many people supporting Israel were congratulating each other after the museum cancelled the exhibition.” Specifically, Abbas and his associates point to both the Jewish Community Relations Council and the Jewish Federation of the East Bay as playing a role in the exhibit’s cancellation.
Faith Metlzer, of San Francisco Voice for Israel, said she was relieved the exhibit would not be shown at the museum. “The art has anti-Semitic, as well as anti-American, symbolism,” she said. “To me, things like this—bombs with Jewish stars on them—it’s just a way of demonizing our people and our religion.”
Metlzer said she worried about how the exhibit would have affected Jewish children in Oakland. “How would you go around with a Jewish star on a T-shirt or on a chain, when the symbol of your people and of your religion has become a hate symbol?” she asked.
In addition to complaints about the violent imagery included in the show, Belle acknowledges that MOCHA did receive calls from people worried that the exhibit was “painting the Jews in a negative light.” But he says the cancellation was not political, and was instead done to protect children from inappropriate, graphic images.
“We are being painted as censors, we’ve been portrayed as having caved in,” Belle said. “We’ve been portrayed a lot of different ways that are just not accurate. We would never have taken the show had we ascribed to any kind of censorship.”
Belle describes MOCHA as a small organization that was caught off-guard and overwhelmed by the emotional reaction the exhibit generated. “We probably did not diligently look at the implications of having this show,” he said. “I don’t know if it was naïveté or just a misjudgment, but there were some mistakes made, and we are paying for them right now.”
Before this controversy, MOCHA had no official exhibition policy, and the “Child’s View of Gaza” exhibit was accepted with a simple up-and-down vote by the board. “In retrospect,” Belle said, “we should have done things differently.”
While “no one threatened to pull [MOCHA] funding or anything else like that,” Belle said, the burden placed on the organization by a controversial exhibit was just too great a risk. “We can make a statement, or we can serve our constituencies,” he said.
In the past, MOCHA has featured work by children of Iraq and Afghanistan, as well as a WWII exhibit. “Those exhibits did not generate the kinds of passionate responses that this one did,” Belle said.
Abbas also points to those exhibits in questioning MOCHA’s actions. “Why is Palestine different?” he asked. “Children paint what they see in the street. They paint what the Israeli army did. They try to reflect the reality of where they live.”
The Middle East Children’s Alliance received a call from MOCHA on Friday afternoon proposing an alternate exhibit. “They used the terminology ‘modified some pictures,’” Abbas said, which he described as another form of censorship. “We told them ‘Shame on you…it is too late.’”
…
‘Eleanor Levine, a member of the non-violence advocacy group Code Pink, said Friday, “This is not about religion, it is about a very powerful lobby, the Zionist lobby, that exerts a tremendous amount of power. And they are simply not interested in having the Palestinian voice heard.” Levine called the conflict “a great shame and pity,” and said she hopes MOCHA has “the opportunity to show different cultural art and values” to the people of Oakland.’
Pro-Israel lobbying groups claimed that the Gaza exhibit was anti-Israel and fought to kill it. They asserted that the art could not possibly have been created by children.
Museum officials insisted that their abrupt about-face had nothing to do with pressure from the Jewish Federation of the Greater East Bay and other pro-Israel Jewish groups that threatened to withhold funding if the museum went ahead with the exhibit. But these same groups gloated on the Internet about getting the exhibit canceled.
Instead, museum officials asserted that their decision to pull the plug on the exhibit less than two weeks before its scheduled opening last Saturday stemmed from concerns from parents, educators and other community members over the violent war images and their appropriateness for young children.
But past exhibits belie that rationale. In 2009, MOCHA held an exhibit of children’s art from the war in Bosnia and Iraq. It also depicted graphic images created by children who had been witnesses to war and was, as one might expect, difficult to view.
Indeed, the curator for that exhibit, Joan Miro, says she is “appalled and mystified” by MOCHA’s decision to cancel the Gaza exhibit.
The museum’s actions have drawn justifiable condemnations from critics, including progressive Jewish groups who have demanded the museum reverse itself and allow the art work to be shown.
The entire event is troubling that certain individuals have prevented the public from viewing art they don’t want us to see. What’s to stop other organizations from using the same strong-arm tactics to silence opposing viewpoints?
The Middle East Children’s Alliance in Berkeley, which organized the exhibit, showed the artwork Saturday — in the courtyard in front of MOCHA. Museum officials have only themselves to blame for this public relations fiasco.
We understand the enormous pressure the museum faced — including funding threats. But the decision is a violation of MOCHA’s own mission to give a platform to children’s expression from around the world.
Shamefully, pro-Israel groups have long strategized to silence Palestinian voices and those in solidarity. For 23 years, MECA has challenged such censorship and fought to raise the voices of Palestine, especially those of children.
In 1991, when we invited Professor Noam Chomsky for a speaking engagement, 19 professors from
UC Berkeley signed a letter to bookstores selling tickets to the event. The professors threatened to picket their stores, but the owners refused to be censored.
In December 2005, MECA, in collaboration with Alliance Graphics and the Berkeley Arts Center, presented Justice Matters: Artists Consider Palestine, an exhibit displaying the artwork of 14 Palestinian and North American artists. Fourteen rabbis visited Mayor Tom Bates of Berkeley demanding that he cancel the show. They further insisted that the city withdraw funding to the Berkeley Arts Center and to be given the right to inspect any future art exhibit. Despite the rabbis’ objections to the art, the mayor rejected censorship and the show opened to a huge crowd of supporters.
MECA has always respected and loved MOCHA, and continues to support the museum and those who work there. Our support for the museum has not ceased — rather, our anger and our frustration is directed at the board of directors for lacking the courage to withstand bullying and intimidation.
What is so frightening to these pro-Israel forces that they are willing to put millions of dollars into a campaign to shut down protests on campuses, muzzle speakers who advocate for human rights for all, and even silence the voices of children by censoring their art?
Outraged activists spread the story far and wide via listservs, Twitter, Facebook, etc., and MOCHA’s e-mail account and Facebook page (apparently now closed down) were barraged with indignant messages.
‘Since March 2009, various organizations, including Amnesty International,1 Human Rights Watch and the United Nations Fact-Finding Mission2 have produced reports on the entire operation or specific aspects of it. In addition, Israeli human rights organizations, both in joint statements3 and in individual publications such as those by B’Tselem4 and Gisha5, have also related in a critical manner to the IDF’s (Israeli
Defense Forces) actions during the operation. All these publications have arrived at the general conclusion that was expressed in one report:
“Much of the destruction was wanton and resulted from direct attacks on civilian objects as well as indiscriminate attacks that failed to distinguish between legitimate military targets and civilian objects. Such attacks violated fundamental provisions of international humanitarian law, notably the prohibition on direct attacks on civilians and civilian objects (the principle of
distinction), the prohibition on indiscriminate or disproportionate attacks, and the prohibition on collective punishment.”6’
The No-Risk Policy
‘Kasher’s argument is that in an area such as the Gaza Strip in which the IDF does not have effective control the overriding principle guiding the commanders is achieving their military objectives. Next in priority is protecting soldiers’ lives, followed by avoiding injury to enemy civilians.
“Sending a soldier there to fight terrorists is justified, but why should I force him to endanger himself much more than that so that the terrorist’s neighbour isn’t killed? I don’t have an answer for that. From the standpoint of the state of Israel, the neighbour is much less important. I owe the soldier more. If it’s
between the soldier and the terrorist’s neighbour, the priority is the soldier”.25″
The Dahiye Doctrine
Two years later, in the beginning of October 2008, the Commanding Officer of the IDF’s Northern Command, Maj. General Gadi Eisenkott, gave an interview to Yedioth
Ahronoth newspaper, in which he unveiled what he called the “Dahiye Doctrine”:
“What happened in the Dahiye Quarter of Beirut in 2006, will happen in every village from which shots are fired on Israel. We will use disproportionate force against it and we will cause immense damage and destruction. From our point
of view these are not civilian villages but military bases.
This is not a recommendation, this is the plan, and it has already been authorized.”46
Some of the advocates for censorship of the exhibition also revealed an underlying motivation to attack BDS, unstated elsewhere publicly.