Professor Richard D. Wolff: This four part course provides a working foundation in the core concepts of Marxian economic theory – necessary and surplus labor, labor power, surplus value, exploitation, capital accumulation, distributions of the surplus, capitalist crises, and the differences between capitalist and other class structures. In addition, these core concepts will be systematically used to understand current social problems (including political and cultural as well as economic problems). The goal is to enable students to apply Marxian economics in their own efforts to analyze society and to strategize politically today.
For many Palestinians, Lifta is a symbol of the Nakba, literally the “catastrophe”, of 1948 in which 700,000 people were dispossessed. It embodies their longing for their land, and their bitterness at their continued refugee status. It is, wrote Palestinian author Ghada Karmi in a letter to the Los Angeles Times, “a physical memory of injustice and survival”.
Targeting of children is nothing new in West Bank villages like Nabi Saleh and Bil’in. This afternoon, Israeli police raided the house of 8 year-old Ali Siyam in the Occupied East Jerusalem neighborhood of Silwan.
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Siyam’s arrest comes days after Israeli soldiers broke the arm of a 9-year-old Palestinian child in the West Bank village of Nabi Saleh. Soldiers, in violation of Israeli army rules of conduct, fired a tear gas canister directly at the child from a range of ten meters. Another 14 year old child was injured from a tear gas canister before the demonstration was over.
In its last open letter to Cameron, sent two weeks ago, Stop the JNF characterized the JNF’s British Park in Israel as one that was planted “in order to cover over the remains of the Palestinian villages of Ajjur and Zakariyya, destroyed in 1948, and to prevent the original population and their descendants from returning.”
Palestine Solidarity Campaign director Sarah Colborne said in a statement that Cameron’s decision “reflects the fact that it is now impossible for any serious party leader to lend their public support to racism.” She added: “The Jewish National Fund plays a critical role in facilitating the continued dispossession and suffering of Palestinians.”
Oblivious to Nutanyahoo’s murder of the two state solution (again) this week before the US Congress, Australian politician Melissa Parke keeps flogging a dead horse. Melissa’s speech is notable though for its recognition of the oppression of Israel’s occupation, a rare occurrence in the Australian Parliament. She meanders down the fallacious imperialist/zionist path of the formation of two states being central to the US national security interest and further drags Australia’s national security interest into the mix.
Is Zionism set to implode at last, unable to resolve its racist contradictions? The just rights demanded by Palestinian people in their call to boycott, divest and sanction apartheid Israel bypass and supercede the Israeli and western imperialists’ obsession with protecting racist privilege through a mythological quest for a ‘peace process’ focused on two states for two ‘peoples’, ignoring the facts that 20% of Israel’s population are not jewish, and there are half a million jewish settlers illegally squatting in the Occupied Territories. It is not the West’s ‘national security interests’ which are at stake here – how racist is it to place Palestinians’ human and political rights in the context of ‘national security’? – but credibility as purveyor of the enlightened values of democracy and human rights the developed world claims to embrace.
As Rae Abileah says: ‘Before we go preaching democracy abroad, we should make our own democracy more responsive to the public good, not the wishes of wealthy lobbyists.’ And by reference to this quote, I don’t just mean the zionist lobby, but the entire capitalist corporate lobby behemoth whose imperialist interests coincide.
‘We call on all Palestinian and Arab community associations, societies and committees, student organizations, solidarity campaigns, to reject fully and unequivocally the Statehood initiative as a distraction that unjustifiably and irresponsibly endangers Palestinian rights and institution.’
‘Like the BNC, the USPCN statement emphasizes that fundamental Palestinian rights, not “statehood” remain the core of Palestinian efforts:
As has been recently revealed, this initiative in no way protects nor advances our inalienable, and internationally recognized, rights—fundamental of which are our right to return to the homes and properties from which we were forcibly expelled, our right to self-determination, and our right to resist the settler colonial regime that has occupied our land for more than 63 years.
The Palestinian people, wherever they are, hold these rights. They are non-negotiable. No one can barter them away for false promises of “peace” and “stability.” The cynical irony of turning a UN resolution enshrining our right to return under international law (UNGA Res. 194) into a rhetorical ploy should give anyone pause. That it is being advanced at a time when the PA does not even have the political mandate of Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza through Palestinian Legislative Council elections must also give us pause.;
‘Goodwin-Gill’s memo and an interview he gave explaining its implications have heightened concern among Palestinians about the PA’s ill-thought out and desperate step which comes after the complete failure of the US-sponsored “peace process” on which the PA bet all its cards.’
‘But more importantly, the South African comparison helps illuminate why the ambitious projects of pacification, “institution building” and economic development that the Ramallah PA and Prime Minister Salam Fayyad have whole-heartedly embarked upon are not actually exercises in “state-building.” Rather, they emulate with frightening closeness and consistency South Africa’s policies and stages in building the Bantustan/Homelands. Indeed, Fayyad’s project to achieve political stability through economic development is the same process that was openly formalized in the South African
He insisted in the interview that Palestinians would not be able to force the right of return for Palestinian refugees on Israelis within the context of a peace agreement, but that he seeks a “just solution.”
There are three major conditions needed for a free viable Palestinian state. The first is national unity – the Palestinian state needs to represent all Palestinians as one people whether inside or outside of Occupied Palestine. A second component is economic viability – a Palestinian state needs be able to make its own decisions on sovereign matters and not be held hostage to foreign aid and the will of donor countries. A third and major component of a Palestinian state is security – it needs to have the strength to claim the land and protect is people either through an army or some form of international guarantees.’
Of course, in traditional Christianity and in Orthodox Judaism, hostility to gays exceeds the few vague references in the Qur’an. But Israeli writers, very much like classical anti-Semites, are so obsessed with their hatred of Islam and Muslims that they have to bring it in no matter what. Furthermore, openly or semi openly “gay” leaders (like Sultan Qaboos) have served as heads of state in Arab and Muslim lands but not in Israel.
‘the power of secular pro-democracy movements throughout the region now reverberate in Palestine as a validation of grassroots resistance.
If that feedback loop can be harnessed to reinvigorate the idea of Palestinian liberation, then we might finally see the ends and the means match up in the struggle to defeat imperialism, violence and dictatorship.’
Omar Barghouti: “There is no Israeli nationality, just Jewish nationality. Israel is the only nation on earth which does not offer nationality to all its citizens.”
“You don’t acquire a right by committing a crime.”
“Colonisers don’t have natural rights in acquired territory.”
Chomsky 1976: ‘There is no such thing as “Israeli nationality” in the state of Israel. There is a “Jewish nation” but no “Israeli nation”. (In “The Arabs in Israel” – Sabri Jiryis)
Obama’s use of demographic scare-mongering indicates an acceptance of the fundamentally racist view that the mere existence of certain categories of humans (in this case non-Jewish Palestinians) in a country is unacceptable and dangerous – even if they or their parents or grandparents were born in that country. Palestinians “west of the Jordan River” are not interlopers or intruders. They are indigenous people of the country. Instead of searching for ways for Israel to escape them by gerrymandering a bantustan, Obama should be calling for full and equal rights, nothing less.
Israel is not supported by the Australian state (and Western powers) because of strong Israel lobbies in these countries or because politicians simply are misinformed and can do with a bit more reading. Unfortunately, they are informed all too-well and choose to support Israel regardless of its human rights violations. Israel serves a fundamental role as a pillar of support for western hegemony over the Middle East. Understanding this allows us to shift our longer-term Palestine solidarity organizing from lobbying politicians on an individual basis and writing letters to the media, to actually taking on the harder work of building a mass movement that targets the very economic and political connections that allow apartheid to continue. The strategic demands of boycott, divestment, and sanctions that we put forward target the powerful economic and ideological ties between North American, European, and Australian capital and apartheid Israel.
The rationale to “intervene” was that child abuse among Aborigines was in “unthinkable numbers”. This was a fraud. Out of 7 433 Aboriginal children examined by doctors, four possible cases were identified. This is about the rate of child abuse in white Australia. What this covered was an old-fashioned colonial grab of mineral-rich land in the Northern Territory where Aboriginal land rights were granted in 1976.
The Murdoch press has been the most lurid and vociferous in its promotion of the “intervention”, which a United Nations special rapporteur has condemned for its racial discrimination. Once again, Australian politicians are dispossessing the first inhabitants, demanding leasehold of land in return for health and education rights that whites take for granted and driving them into “economically viable hubs” where they will be effectively detained – a form of apartheid.
The outrage and despair of most Aboriginal people is not heard. For using her institutional voice and exposing the government’s black supporters, Larissa Behrendt has been subjected to a vicious campaign of innuendo in the Murdoch press, including the implication that she is not a “real” Aborigine. Using the language of its soulmate the London Sun, the Australian derides the “abstract debate” of “land rights, apologies, treaties” as a “moralising mumbo-jumbo spreading like a virus”. The aim is to silence those who dare tell Australia’s dirty secret.
With a 10 to 1 vote in favour of BDS, the University of London Union Senate just remade history. The ULU was the first student union in the UK to support boycott of white South Africa and the largest student union in Europe has now built on its laurels, being the first to support BDS against apartheid Israel.
1) to boycott is to target products, companies and institutions that profit from or are implicated in, the violation of Palestinian rights
2) to divest is to target corporations complicit in the violation of Palestinian human rights, as enshrined in the Geneva Convention, and ensure that investments or pension funds are not used to finance such companies
3) to call for sanctions is to ask the global community to recognise Israel’s violations of international law and to act accordingly as they do to other member states of the United Nations
4) that in 2009 the The Human Sciences Research Council of South Africa released a report stating that Israel was practising a form of apartheid in the occupied West Bank, (http://www.hsrc.ac.za/Media_Release-378.phtml)
5) that Israel continues to build a 8 metre high “annexation” wall on Palestinian land inside the post-1967 occupied West Bank, contravening the July 2004 ruling by the International Court of Justice (the highest legal body in the world, whose statutes all UN members are party to) and causing the forcible separation of Palestinian communities from one another and the annexation of additional Palestinian land.
6) that within the occupied West Bank and East Jerusalem, Israel continues a policy of settlement expansion in direct violation of Article 49, paragraph 6 of the 4th Geneva Convention which declares “an occupying power shall not deport or transfer parts of its own civilian population into territories it occupies.” 6) that the Gaza Strip continues to face a suffocating siege from land, sea and air by Israel, and continues to suffer military incursions into the territory by the Israeli army
7) that Palestinians living in Israel continue to suffer third-class citizenship and are heavily discriminated against from healthcare, education, landownership and in many cases having ‘unrecognised’ villages completely demolished
8) that there continues to be millions of Palestinian refugees throughout the world who are racially discriminated against by not being allowed to return to their homes in Israel and the Occupied Territories, which is legally recognised under international law, including United Nations resolution 194.
9) that ULU and the NUS nationally adopted the call for BDS in the 1980s when it was called for by South Africans fighting racism and apartheid
10) that Ronnie Kasrils, the Jewish South African Minister of Intelligence said “The boycotts and sanctions ultimately helped liberate both blacks and whites in South Africa. Palestinians and Israelis will similarly benefit from this non-violent campaign that Palestinians are calling for.”
11) that the call for BDS has come from over 170 Palestinian civil society organisations, including student organisations, as well as organisations within Israel and across the global; and that the campaign is founded on the basis of anti-racism and human rights for all
Union Believes:
1) that unions should work to support the Palestinian people’s human rights and uphold international law
2) that BDS is an effective tactic, which educates society about these issues, economically pressures companies/institutions to change their practices and politically pressures the global community
3) that unions have a moral responsibility to heed the call of oppressed peoples, like we did so proudly during the BDS campaign to end South African apartheid
4) that the BDS movement has united human rights campaigners from different nationalities, races, religions and creeds across the world
Passed 10-1 in ULU – largest union in Europe, 20 universities and 130,000 students.
Union Resolves
(1) Institute thorough research into ULU contacts with investments and companies,including subcontractors, that may be implicated in violating Palestinian human rights as stated by the BDS movement
(2) Pressure University of London universities and affiliate students’ unions to divest from Israel and from companies directly or indirectly supporting the Israeli occupation and apartheid policies;
(3) Promote students’ union resolutions condemning Israeli violations of international law and human rights and endorsing BDS in any form;
(4) Actively support and work with Palestine solidarity organisations such as the BDS Movement, Palestine Solidarity Campaign, Jews for Justice for Palestinians, British Committee for Palestinian Universities , Israeli Committee Against House Demolitions
(5) Affiliate ULU to the Palestine BDS National Committee and engage in education campaigns to publicize the injustice of Israel’s discriminatory policies against the Palestinians and its illegal occupation
1. To demand freedom for Palestine, calling for an end to the siege of Gaza and occupation of the West Bank and the right to return for all refugees.
2. To encourage unions to twin with universities in Palestine and to send an NUS delegation on future convoys to the Gaza strip.
3. To strongly condemn Israel’s siege on Gaza and actively campaign for it to be lifted in accordance with international law.
4. To support the Palestinians’ right to education by building links with students at the Islamic University of Gaza and other educational institutions in Gaza.
In other dispatches, female human rights lawyer Meissa Irshaid, from the Public Committee Against Torture in Israel, was assaulted and arrested by Israeli goons whilst advocating for protesters who had already been arrested. Such is Israel’s contempt for the rule of law.
Joseph Weitz, director of the JNF since the 1920s, said in 1940 with malice aforethought: ‘There is no way beside transferring the Arabs from here to the neighboring countries’. This vile zionist ethnic cleansing must end.
Boycott, divestments and sanctions action against Seacrets 14 may Perth 2011
Hamas leaders are neo-liberal capitalists, their economic policy no different from the orthodox economies of any other western nation. In fact Gazans’ ability to deal with enforced austerity and its resilient Big Society should be a model for the west. Ghazi Hamad, the Deputy Foreign Minister, delivered a message to Israelis – in Hebrew – calling for a truce after tensions rose dramatically in April. And in the last week Khaled Meshaal announced an acceptance of the 1967 borders – if that is not recognition of Israel, I don’t know what is – and yet another twenty-year Hudna (Arabic for truce).
‘Israel to take down road blocks currently causing a shortage of medical supplies and treatment. The resolution also calls on Member States and NGOs to provide assistance to meet urgent health and humanitarian needs in the area.’
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The treatment of Palestinians in Israeli jails was also mentioned, using several cases where men and women were denied medical treatment while in custody.
“The resolution calls for an end to the siege and a deconstruction of checkpoints, it calls for the provision of support for the Palestinian health sector from the international community, and it puts in place the framework for the Director-General of the World Health Organization to send a fact-finding mission to Palestine for a thorough investigation”
In the message released Wednesday, bin Laden referred to the revolutions in Egypt and Tunisia, but made no mention of those in Libya, Syria or Yemen.
“There is a serious crossroads before you, and a great and rare historic opportunity to rise with the Ummah (Muslim community) and to free yourselves from servitude to the desires of the rulers, man-made law, and Western dominance”.
‘People are blaming the revolution for new oil crises despite this is not the first time it happens , in fact some people tend to forget in the past few years of Mubarak we have even more worse crises. Where was the revolution when people were actually killing each other to get a loaf of bread during the time of Mubarak !?’
Firstly, if ‘Acknowledgements’ are not, never has been and shouldn’t be mandated, then why did Ted feel a need to bring it up? Why did he feel this of all issues was relevant to point out?
Is he so self-absorbed that the only Aboriginal issues that are of interest to him are those which directly affect him? Not surprising to those who saw Headlines in March that read ‘Aboriginal women from Lake Tyers staging a blockade to protest against the state government’s administration of their community’.
the report, which described the human rights revolutions across the Middle East and North Africa as “inspirational”, has condemned Israel’s conduct in multiple areas including the justice system, the Gaza blockade, human rights accountability, housing demolitions and settlement activity, torture and excessive use of force, freedom of movement and freedom of speech.
Those of us who lived through and struggled against apartheid South Africa consider the actions of the Israeli state to surpass even the barbarism of apartheid South Africa. Isreal is already considered a pariah state in the eyes of most of humanity. It should be treated as such. We therefore support the BDS campaign wholeheartedly.
