Tag: Zionism

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Flytilla! Israel Hustles Humanitarians Away From Its Crime Sites

Israel has a phobia of boats AND planes transporting humanitarians! While the Freedom Flotillas to Gaza highlight the illegal blockade Israel enforces on the 1.6 million people who live in Gaza, the Air Flotilla shows up Israel’s disgraceful blockade of the West Bank bantustan.

Israel’s fear of humanitarians accessing the West Bank was so great, the ‘provocation’ from ‘delegitimisation’ by people of conscience so frightening, that ziomoles combed facebook groups hunting for prospective passengers in advance.

Aided by Facebook, Israel on Friday prevented scores of pro-Palestinian activists from boarding Tel Aviv-bound flights in Europe, questioned dozens more upon arrival at its main airport and denied entry to 69, disrupting their attempts to reach the West Bank on a solidarity mission with the Palestinians.

Israel had tracked the activists on social media sites, compiled a blacklist of more than 300 names and asked airlines to keep those on the list off flights to Israel. On Friday, 310 of the activists who managed to land in Tel Aviv were detained for questioning, said Interior Ministry spokeswoman Sabine Hadad. Of those, four were immediately put on return flights and 65 were being held until flights home could be arranged for them, she said. The rest were permitted entry, she said. [hasbara alert]
…
Yigal Palmor, a spokesman for Israel’s Foreign Ministry, said the list was compiled by following organizers’ preparations on social networks and websites. In all, about 300 people were identified as planning to create “provocations” upon arrival, he said.

“These people announced on their Internet sites that they planned to come here and cause disruptions, and told their friends. We were able to contact other foreign ministries and simply give them links,” Palmor said. Barring entrance in such cases is “accepted practice in any country,” he added.

Larry Derfner describes the reaction of the locals once they realised who the humanitarian arrivals were:

A couple of dozen people, mainly men but also a few women, followed very close behind the tightly-bunched demonstrators, cops and reporters to the police van. “Throw them in the garbage,” shouted one woman. An old man tried to get at one of the activists, but the police stopped him.

I was there ostensibly as a journalist, and I was scribbling notes, but I felt cowardly not saying anything to these nationalist hooligans, so I started telling them in Hebrew, “What are these people doing?” The woman who wanted them thrown in the garbage said, “They’re hurting us!” I said, “They’re talking,” and the little mob turned on me, a couple of the men raised their fists. The woman told me, “Go back home, get out of here,” I said, “I live here.”

Now we know where the unbalanced, indignant girl in the psychiatrist’s office in the latest hasbara infomercial went after she stormed out. Mobs are primed and cued by propaganda, then act out the omitted conclusion.

It is not surprising that Israel denies and is desperate to conceal its ongoing crimes in the West Bank with self-righteous rage from humanitarians who would be sympathetic to Palestinians under brutal military occupation suffering frequent incursions, arrests, a draconian matrix of checkpoints stifling movement, home demolitions, water theft, olive tree burnings, land theft and settler violence. Two and a half million Palestinian people live in the West Bank bantustan, enduring a lack of basic human rights, without nationality, persecuted by encroaching, violent illegal settlers, tacitly and overtly supported by a racist, belligerent expansionist government, determined to evict them from the fraction of their birthright which remains intact betwixt the already usurped hilltops and pampered ziocolonies.

As flytilla humanitarians continue to jet in, more of the world cannot help but notice in abhorrence the loathsome discrimination and dispossession inflicted on Palestinians and the willingness of Israel to forego the incoming revenue, for these travellers must pass through Israel to reach the West Bank, so its glossy, privileged ‘western’ image is not ‘delegitimised’. Blithely unaware that it manically scuttles its own leaky vessel, Israel has run out of fingers to plug the widening holes.


Flytilla blocked: RT talks to only Gaza activist who ‘slipped through net’

Related Links

“Air Flotilla” successful in exposing Israeli blockade of West Bank
Israel blocks airborne protest, questions dozens
Mobocracy at Ben-Gurion Airport
Hysteria at the airport – If the intention of flotilla and fly-in organizers was to direct global attention to Gaza, Israel’s government and law enforcement agencies are doing everything to help them and even boost the resonance.
Pro-Palestinian activists barred from boarding flights in Paris
Israel tries to stop pro-Palestinian ‘flytilla’
#Airflotilla | Overview
Nearly 600 women, men and children, among whom more than 350 French citizens, will fly to the West Bank next Friday 8 July, in answer to the call from 15 West Bank Palestinian civil society organizations.
Gaza fly-in: 2 pro-Palestinian activists to be deported
Israel blocks 200 pro-Palestinian activists from flying into country
By Torpedoing the Gaza Flotilla, Israel Sunk its Own Ship
Israel: “Flytilla” activists threaten to go on hunger strike as they insist there is no ground for detention
Israel has been accused of over-reacting to a recent ‘fly-in’ of activists who say they were treated harshly.

Israel / Palestine Links

Israel thieves more land from Palestinians to bolster one of its illegal settler outposts
Weekly Report On Israeli Human Rights Violations in the Occupied Palestinian Territory (30 June– 06 July 2011)
IDF Castrator Earns Second-Highest National Award
Firm that produced anti-flotilla video works for Israeli government

The Israeli production company Zed Films that made the anti-flotilla propaganda video “Sex with the Psychologist” lists the Israeli Prime Minister’s Office, the Government Press Office, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and other official Israeli bodies as its clients. Does this indicate that this and other recent propaganda videos are the work of the Israeli government?

Is Palestine Next? by Adam Shatz

And there’s yet another reason for the lack of interest in the declaration: as the prospect of a genuine – a sovereign and independent – Palestinian state has receded, another discourse has returned, one with much deeper roots in the Palestinian political imagination than talk of statehood, and much closer to the ideas that inspired the Arab uprisings. It’s often forgotten that until the mid-1970s, Palestinians were looking not to establish a state but to achieve ‘national liberation’, to restore their rights in the land from which they had been driven – beginning with the right of return. Palestinians rarely talk about statehood, but they often talk about their rights; statehood is viewed, at best, as a means to achieve them. And because they don’t often talk about statehood, it seems unlikely that the failure to win recognition at the UN would be enough to spark an uprising. Any sign of serious unrest, moreover, would not be viewed kindly by the PA, which would do everything in its power to prevent a third intifada that might sweep it away.

U.S. House passes resolution threatening to suspend aid to Palestinians
Spirit of Rachel Corrie: Humanitarian Cargo Released and Shipped to Gaza
Palestinian civil society calls for comprehensive military embargo on Israel
In the top four – Israel hits 7.2 billion in arms exports
Chomsky: In Israel, a Tsunami Warning : Dan Gillerman, Israel’s former ambassador to the United Nations, warned participants that “the morning after the anticipated announcement of recognition of a Palestinian state, a painful and dramatic process of Southafricanization will begin” – meaning that Israel would become a pariah state, subject to international sanctions.
Saudis replace Israel as top importer of U.S. arms – must have been a good year for oil profits.
#BDS Victory: Filmmaker Barbara Hammer Endorses BDS!

I accept and exercise my social responsibility as an artist not to lend legitimacy to the State of Israel as long as it continues the occupation.

My conscience will not allow me either to participate in programs funded by the current Israeli government at this point in time, or to show my films at venues that receive funding from that government. I stand in support of the Palestinian and Israeli peoples who believe in justice for all, equal representation, and an end to the oppression of the Palestinian peoples. It is the least I can do. The most is yet to be seen.

AIPAC Bills Opposing Palestinian Statehood Drive Sail Through House And Senate

The boycott law is unconstitutional and undemocratic

?’Israel passes law banning calls for boycott – Opposition blasts law, which penalizes persons or organizations who call for a boycott of Israel or the settlements, calling it unconstitutional and irresponsible’ : But Israel doesn’t *have* a constitution.
American Jew refused entry to Israel on suspicion of converting to Islam
The Audacity of Illegal Settlers in Hebron | West Bank | Rise Resist and Revolt
Israel-Lebanon gas border dispute
What is the Palestinian Boycott, Divestment and Sanction movement?
this is your Gaza opening

Turkey Links

Turkey’s purification

Other Links

Google+ and “Real Names”
Anonymous leaks cache of sensitive security data from FBI contractor –

includes “a proposal for the FBI to develop a “Special Identities Modernization (SIM) Project” to “reduce terrorist and criminal activity by protecting all records associated with trusted individuals and revealing the identities of those individuals who may pose serious risk to the United States and its allies”.

Ahmadinejad calls on Iran colleges not to segregate sexes – “It has been heard that in some universities, classes and disciplines are being segregated without considering the coincidences.” (I’m sure the translator meant ‘consequences’!
GILLARD STOPS GAY AUSSIES FROM MARRYING IN NEW YORK Nothing worse than a wowser in power.
Mass psychosis in the US : How Big Pharma got Americans hooked on anti-psychotic drugs.

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Detailed Information on the Sabotage to the MV Saoirse, Turkey Denies Support for Thwarting the Flotilla

Detailed Information on the Sabotage to the MV Saoirse “It looks very much like underwater explosives, probably plastic explosives, were used on the shaft.”

In Al Jazeera’s latest Inside Story, “Outsourcing the Gaza blockade” , it is highlighted that pressure is being brought to bear on Greece by Israel and its undying friend the US, and as well by countries in the EU. Huwaida Arraf and Mustafa Barghouti insist to Akiva Eldar that the truth of apartheid and denial of Palestinian human rights must be acknowledged despite the lily-livered Israeli faux left thinking it is not palatable to the Israeli public.

Turkey Rebuts Barak’s Claim It Supported the Prevention of the Flotilla

@Levent Basturk: ”Ibrahim Kalin, the chief foreign policy adviser to PM Erdogan, has recently sent a twitter message saying that Barak’s statement regarding Turkey’s cooperation to prevent flotilla is A FABRICATION. The Turkish Foreign Ministry will soon deny what Barak said regarding Turkey’s role in thwarting the mission of the flotilla.” #

Translation of confirmation in TRT.NET.TR:

Turkey rejected the Israeli minister’s statement that Turkey has been in positive attitude in the attempts to thwart the mission of the flotilla.

Publication Date: 07/04/2011 12:19:23
Updated: 4/7/2011 12:19:23

The statement of the Israeli Defense Minister Ehud Barak with respect to Turkey’s “positive position” in thwarting the mission of the Gaza flotilla was denied by Ankara .

Ministry of Foreign Affairs has said the participants of the fleet going to Gaza was entirely composed of international non-governmental organizations, therefore, was not affiliated in any way with the Turkish government.

“Flotilla, Totally A Civilian Initiative …”

Foreign Ministry Spokesman Selcuk Unal emphasized that the flotilla was totally a civil initiative.

Unal said “the news about a group of countries that tried to prevent this civilian initiative does not reflect the reality and is groundless with respect to Turkey.”

Israeli Defense Minister Barak has said previously Greece, Cyprus and Turkey had positive approaches in efforts to thwart the mission of the flotilla heading to Gaza.

I’ll end with a diversion to the past :

“And Phrygia shall with earthquakes groan again
Wretched. Alas, alas, Laodicea”

Book X11 Sibylline Prophecies

Related Links

Geoffrey Palmer, the head of the commission that’s investigating the incident that led to the death of nine Turks as they tried to break Israel’s blockade of the Gaza Strip, has said he intended to issue his committee’s report on Thursday – regardless of whether Israel and Turkey came to a prior agreement on a statement on the matter
Israeli hasbara site CAMERA seems to think the Palmer report has been released already too.
If a compromise is not reached soon, the UN report will be released as is, and bilateral ties will likely be frozen for a long period, the source said. If a compromise is reached, the report will be reworded and toned down.

Equally as important were the recent comments of Israeli Deputy Foreign Minister Danny Ayalon,

who nearly two years ago humiliated the Turkish ambassador to Israel by deliberately placing him in a lower chair during a televised meeting. In a meeting last month with seven Turkish journalists, Ayalon said he never meant to humiliate the ambassador, that he had meant it as a joke, and that he had immediately sent a letter of apology to him.

He told the journalists that the time was ripe to restore Israeli-Turkish relations and that he supported Turkey’s decision to have talks with Hamas in an attempt to forge a unity government with the Palestinian Authority.

“We would kiss the hands of every Turk if Hamas said they accept the Oslo [Treaty], condemn terror and recognize Israel,” Ayalon said.

Greece blocks Gaza banned boat with 30 ‘captains’ on board

Israeli peace groups support the Gaza-bound Freedom Flotilla

The Gaza Flotilla is indeed a courageous act of political protest, an expression of worldwide solidarity with the Palestinian people and rejection of Israeli practices of oppressive occupation, as manifested in the continuing siege and blockade of Gaza and the imposition of collective punishment upon a mass of civilians.

Flotilla II: Brave Activists, Spineless Politicians
Icelandic MP visits Gaza aid flotilla and calls on others to do same
Greek consulate, governor confirm ‘powerful’ pressure on Greece led to flotilla ban
Since when do humanitarians, one quarter of whom ARE Jewish, bearing aid and letters of compassion equal ‘kill-the-Jews’? This obnoxious hasbara is really scraping the bottom of the barrel.

Palestine / Israel Links

MKs to ask Knesset: Disqualify Tibi bill on Nakba denial : Knesset Speaker Reuven Rivlin expressed doubt over whether it was legal to disqualify Tibi’s bill, but said the bill is an act of provocation against the state.
Letter to Israeli left: Choose one state, not apartheid ‘The solution to this conflict will not be the separation of both people into two different states, but rather, it is living together and coexisting with equal rights that will bring an end to this conflict.’
Hundreds of settlers break into Yousef’s tomb
Gaza border opening holds less opportunities than hoped for
Top Israeli pol meets far-right German millionaire

Israeli Likud politician, Ayoub Kara, deputy minister for Development of the Negev and Galilee, has no qualms about meeting with ‘Patrick Brinkmann, a Swedish right-wing extremist who has supported neo-Nazi and right-wing populist parties in Europe’. Building islamophobia is a shared interest.

Blast hits Egyptian gas pipeline – more motivation for the Israelis to steal gas from the offshore Gaza gas fields
Now is no time for ASEAN to stop supporting Palestine
IDF: Netanyahu OK’d transfer of terrorist bodies – did Yehuda Hiss keep the skulls?
Rabbi promotes ‘modesty wounds’ Why doesn’t the Israeli state fire this rabbi who is on a state paid sinecure and teaching self-mutilation to young women? Nutanyahoo made it clear in another article yesterday by Rachlevsky what the evil purpose of these messianic villains are:

‘They are the elite commando unit leading the nation and paving the way’.

This as an extremely telling quote illustrating Nut’s cynical use of myth and it verifies the mechanism of expansionism – how the secular zionist gameplayers utilise messianic settlers, and why these extremist rabbis are supported by government.

Israel’s strategy, tactic and aim is always expansionism and each supports the other. This is the nexus which underlies what Jeff Halper describes as the ‘matrix of control’. The settlers advance, which requires military backup. The next beachhead/hilltop is taken, then rinse and repeat. The infrastructure follows, all justified by the hasbara of ‘security’ to protect the ‘civilians’. Obviously, these ‘elite commandos’ aren’t civilians.

Equal rights for all as a principle, contained in BDS, attacks the basic zionist strategy, tactic and aim. This might be the main reason why the zionists hate BDS so much. From the ongoing zionist wailing about it, BDS appears more effective than a settlement freeze. Equal rights for all as a principled aim also has more chance of resounding in the working class who after all are the puppets of the international elite, the main beneficiaries of the government-assisted religious bigotry/apartheid/racism/elitism and other societal divisions.

There’s a distinct sociopathy in the sheer malevolence of the design and practice of the governmental gameplayers who use these rabbis to inspire and lead settlers to steal Palestinian land.

The rabbis are cultists, which means that some are not technically insane, they are delusional, but since their delusion is supported by the government, it’s probably better to examine those who are the malignantly narcissistic gameplayers at the top who cynically use the rabbis and who farm them, paying for their delusional education and employment as the part of the strategy of expansionism, as a tactical vanguard commando unit to achieve military and political goals.

Egypt Links

Hillary Clinton announces Brotherhood talks
Tahrir’s journey to Palestine

Turkey Links

Five generals, one colonel put behind bars on coup charges

Australia Links

Repressive ASIO law extensions passed – ASIO gets wider investigative powers – ASIO can now spy on WikiLeaks along with anyone who forms groups to campaign on political and social issues.
Police make vicious attack on Palestine solidarity protest

Max Brenner Chocolates was targeted because it is owned by the Strauss Group, the second largest Israeli food and beverage company. The company boasts on its website that it has supported the Golany reconnaissance platoon of the Israeli Army for more than 30 years.

The Daily Danby

Danby said: “There was no meeting with Danny Danon in the Knesset during my recent visit. Many Knesset members attended a session at the International Conference of Jewish Parliamentarians with myself and other Jewish Mps such as Irwin Cotler ( Canada) and Gary Ackerman ( Democrat of New York). I have not discussed with Mr Danon the possibility of Australia taking refugees from Israel. I did not meet him. I have no such power as the Jerusalem Post claims to bring this before parliament, and I was never contacted by the Jerusalem Post to check the validity of the claims made in the article. There was no meeting, no discussion and no agreement. Danny Danon is a nice guy. He must have been misquoted. The last time I saw him was at the leadership forum in Israel in December, where I made a public speech outlining the recent history of Australia’s immigration policy. I deplore the use of terms like ‘Muslim infiltrators’. I publicly told the forum then that the Israelis had to do what we did, and that is make an assessment of asylum seekers status and background. I said publicly then and restate that it is impossible for any one country, Australia or Israel to forcibly return people who have good grounds for fearing for their lives. That is not to say that Australia or Israel cannot return people to their countries of origin if they have agreements with those governments and that the people being returned have not been assessed as refugees or have legitimate fear for their lives.”

Danby’s judgment is suspect. Danny Danon is not a ‘nice guy’. Recently in his NYTimes Op Ed he proposed Israel annex all West Bank settlements and uninhabited lands.

‘Moreover, we would be well within our rights to assert, as we did in Gaza after our disengagement in 2005, that we are no longer responsible for the Palestinian residents of the West Bank, who would continue to live in their own — unannexed — towns.

These Palestinians would not have the option to become Israeli citizens, therefore averting the threat to the Jewish and democratic status of Israel by a growing Palestinian population. ‘

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Protests, Diplomatic Flotilla Sabotage & Other Scuttlebutt

Flotilla Related Links

Please email Greek PM to release Freedom Flotilla II
@jvplive: pers @ NY Greek Consulate told JVP supporter “It’s your government [US] that ordered us not to let the ship sail!” flotilla2# @USBOATTOGAZA #
Leftist Greek MPs accuse government of caving to Israeli pressure to stop Gaza flotilla
Middle East Quartet: Additional Gaza flotillas should be discouraged
Palestinian NGOs condemn Greek government decision to block Freedom Flotilla II
Aboard the Gaza flotilla LIVE
Greece detains Gaza-bound boat captain
Israeli-Swedish activist Dror Feiler, acting spokesman for the flotilla

, said although there was no proof of Israeli involvement, the Jewish state was “the only party who would benefit” from such vandalism.

Israel has made no secret of its determination to prevent the flotilla reaching Gaza and has accused passengers of harbouring “terror activists” who are “looking for blood.”

Endless delays and fading hope while waiting to sail to Gaza

Palestine/ Israel Links

PACBI-Behind the Boycott: Why South Africa’s academic boycott of Ben Gurion University took hold
Get ready for cheers of “Bi-bi, Bi-bi!!”
Lessons Learned And The Coming Theocracy – charming weekly malevolence from the ziocolony.
A racist, messianic rabbi is the ruler of Israel Nutanyahoo of the extremist rabbis who incite murder of those who oppose expansionist zionism and even Jews: ‘They are the elite commando unit leading the nation and paving the way’.

Nor does Lior stop at non-Jews. Leading rabbis have testified that Lior was the source of rulings labeling the late Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin a “rodef” and a “moser” (a traitor who endangers Jewish lives ). Here, too, he didn’t stop at incitement. Rabin’s assassin used to travel to Hebron to see the rabbi. Baruch Goldstein (who massacred Arabs at the Cave of the Patriarchs in 1994 ) also visited King Lior for instruction. After he massacred dozens of people, the rabbi ruled that Goldstein was “holier than all the martyrs of the Holocaust.”

Israel bans use of words that start with “b”, “o” and “z”

Turkey Links

Moving Beyond the Dichotomy Writer falls into his own trap?

The dichotomous perception of the choice in the orientation of Turkish policy between “pro-Western” and “anti-Western”, or “pro-Muslim”, is more reflective of a mental division of the world between Occident and Orient than of the complex reality of 21st-century international politics.

Other Links

2011-07-02 Cables reveal the logic of Nicaragua’s social welfare programs for street children: ‘Cut the budget and hide it in secrecy’

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International Terrorism by Israel Against the Irish Boat to Gaza?

Dr. Fintan Lane from the MV Saoirse: “If this boat had gone to sea, it’s almost certain we would have lost lives – this boat would have sank.”

From Haaretz:

“This was done by hostile divers and identical sabotage was carried out to the Swedish ship, Juliana,” ISG spokesman Raymond Deane told DPA. “The inference is that the saboteurs were Israeli,” he said.

“This is attempted murder. The damage done to the propeller means that the ship could have sailed but the propeller would have come up through the hull after some time. We are a small ship and we would have gone down,” Deane added.

The Israeli embassy in Dublin said it had no connection with the incident and no information on it, Ireland’s national broadcaster RTE reported.

Six of the 20 crew and passengers who intended to sail on the MV Saoiree will transfer to another ship in the flotilla, ISG said. Those include former Ireland rugby player Trevor Hogan and Paul Murphy, a Socialist Party Member of the European Parliament, as well as ISG campaign coordinator Fintan Lane. They are joining activists on board the joint Italian and Dutch ship in the flotilla.

State Department deputy spokesman Mark Toner said Thursday the U.S. has seen no independent confirmation of the ships having been sabotaged, yet nevertheless stated that “our opinion that’s been stated very clearly from the State Department, both from the secretary down to this podium, is that these flotillas are a bad idea.”

The sabotage against the Irish and Swedish boat, both of whose propeller shafts were similarly damaged, could just as well have been done by US navy divers, as a favour to Israel.

The Irish government is showing some spine, with Minister for Foreign Affairs Eamon Gilmore backing calls for an investigation into damage.

Minister Gilmore said he takes the matter seriously.

“I do have concerns about it, and that is something that is going to have to be investigated initially by the Turkish authorities,” the Tánaiste said.

“I would take a very serious view of it, if it turned out that there was sabotage of that vessel.”

Mr Gilmore last week told Israeli ambassador to Ireland, Boaz Modai, that any interception of the flotilla must be peaceful.

He said while the activists were well intended and well motivated, they had been warned it would it would be dangerous to travel on the MV Saoirse vessel and on the mission.

“I met with a delegation from the people who are travelling a couple of weeks ago and subsequent to that I met with the Israeli ambassador and made it clear to him both what our travel advice was but also our expectation that there would not be a repeat of last year and that people who engaged in what is essentially a form of peaceful protest activity, that there is not to be a disproportionate response to that activity,” he added.

Sinn Féin leader Gerry Adams has also called for a probe into the incident.

“The Irish government has a responsibility to protect Irish citizens abroad and must demand answers from the Israeli government on this matter,” Deputy Adams said.

“I would also urge the government to ask the Turkish authorities to carry out a full and thorough investigation into what has occurred.”

Sign the petition for an independent inquiry into the sabotage.

Related Links

Sabotage of MV Saoirse in Turkey: ‘An Act of International Terrorism’
MV SAOIRSE SABOTAGE PHOTOS AND VIDEO
Israel army uses fabrications to assert flotilla financial links to Hamas
Gaza flotilla activists: Queers welcome aboard aid ships
Alice Walker : “Settlers are the Klan,” she says definitively, referring to the notorious white supremacist terror organization. “They don’t have their white sheets because I guess they don’t need them.”
Warding off the evil eye in the Eastern Mediterranean
Why breaking Israel’s illegal blockade on the people of Gaza is essential.
Political Zionism has always been an ideology of force and violence. Israel has become a society of force and violence

This is a recurring pattern: first demonization, then legitimization (to act violently ). Remember the tall tales about sophisticated Iranian weaponry coming through arms-smuggling tunnels in Gaza, or those about how the Strip was booby-trapped? Then Operation Cast Lead came along and the soldiers hardly encountered anything like that.

The attitude toward the flotilla is a continuation of the same behavior.

British Parliamentarians add support for Flotilla to Gaza
Peaceful flotilla essential step to win freedom for Palestinians

Palestine / Israel Links

Insane racism update: Danny Danon: Send African migrants to Australia

“The arrival of thousands of Muslim infiltrators to Israeli territory is a clear threat to the state’s Jewish identity,” Danon told The Jerusalem Post.

“The refugees’ place is not among us, and the initiative to transfer them to Australia is the right and just solution.

“On the one hand, it treats the refugees and migrants in a humane way. On the other hand, it does not threaten Israel’s future and our goal to maintain a clear and solid Jewish majority,” he explained.

U.S. Senate passes resolution threatening to suspend aid to Palestinians

The PLO General Delegation to the U.S. said in response that while it respects the right of Senate members to pass resolutions expressing their views, “we urge them to use an even-handed, fair, and unbiased approach when addressing their concerns on the Israeli-Palestinian peace process.”

The delegation added that “the Israeli government has failed to reciprocate, and Prime Minister Netanyahu has repeatedly chosen a policy of land grabbing and settlement expansion over a just solution to the conflict and an end to the Israeli occupation of the West Bank and Gaza Strip.”

Janan Abdu on the detention of her husband, political prisoner Ameer Makhoul

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To Jello Biafra : Please Don’t Play Apartheid Israel

After several decades, it seems my path and Jello’s are diverging – despite denials, he’s spinning off to Israel to wallpaper over the apartheid crimes of the regime with his life work. Yes, I’m taking this personally. I’ve revelled in his songs for their abrupt condemnation of imperialism, its accomplices and crimes since the early 80s. His music was part of a fabulous repertoire which punctuated the critical strikes and struggle to reclaim the right to march from the police state of Joh Bjelke Petersen in Queensland Uber Alles, and the anti- apartheid campaign to liberate South Africa. Our community radio station, the legendary 4ZZZ, suffused our lives with punk.

While not so popular at paid gigs outside the city, the success and appeal of political songs by the likes of Jello, Chris Bailey of The Saints, The Clash and other punk innovators helped to inspire me to keep writing and performing them whenever I could.

Now, Jello’s ambivalence to BDS, the principled non-violent tactic of resistance chosen by Palestinians, impacts me like losing a best friend who after a lifetime of feigning solidarity, reveals they always secretly despised your politics.

As a child, one of my first records was an album of a musical revue from apartheid South Africa called ‘Wait a Minim!’. The songs hedge about the cruel regime in veiled, satiric terms, because the government imprisoned its critics on the notorious Robben Island. Nelson Mandela along with countless others – musicians, playwrights, actors, activists and authors – were banished to that miserable hellhole for years. Many thousands of Palestinian political prisoners too are incarcerated in Israeli dungeons since they dare to exercise their legal right under international law to resist the illegal Israeli occupation. These are the people, including 217 children, whom Jello betrays most heinously by disrespecting the Palestinian BDS call. Awaiting their freedom are mothers, fathers, wives, husbands, children and family who are prevented often by Israel from visiting them, sometimes for many years. And there’s more treachery.

Palestinian people are relegated by the Israeli regime to the sub-human status of ‘demographic threat’. Through the deliverance of their birthright by imperial schemers into the hands of northern european invaders who will not countenance their return though it is guaranteed by international law, refugees are locked outside their ancestral domains. Their kin who avoided slaughter or expulsion from 1947 onward and who remain with their descendants in the Occupied Territories endure segregation, checkpoints, lack of basic rights, brutal military incursions, bombardments, blockades, harassment, exploitation, home demolitions, water and land theft and more. They share the fate of being born ‘children of a lesser god’ with Palestinians residing over the apartheid wall in the usurped state itself, under the thrall of a contemptuous, expansionist regime masquerading as did white South Africa as a democracy, impelled by discriminatory majority rule. While the real Israeli left supports universal human rights and BDS, the faux left staggers under a fatal cognitive dissonance which cannot resolve the contradiction of equal rights for all with the Zionist compulsion for a racist ethno-religious state.

I’ve gigged in very diverse places, from large civic venues to tiny dance halls way out west, played pub punk and rock, classical, gypsy, blues, soul, latin and cocktail jazz. Yet I can’t imagine playing a gig against the express wishes of Aboriginal people, to be used as a poster child to benefit the delusional racism of several past gerrymandered, authoritarian regimes and acolytes which held sway over and discriminated against Australian indigenous people by virtue of the white settler colonial majority. I have seen firsthand what covert and overt racism means in the name of ‘peace’ for people of colour.

At this time, the refrain of Palestinian people subsisting under the boot crescendoes and cries for justice – that song is the roots of the blues and so too, punk. International musicians can be a powerful force for change by respecting Palestinian civil society’s call for boycott. Then the Palestinian song demanding justice, freedom and equal rights for all can be heard loud and strong.

SOURCE

Related Links

Jello Biafra cancels his Tel Aviv gig
Another day, Another Appeal!
Peace Now Collaborates With Lieberman
Jello Biafra pulls out of Israel concert “I am going to Israel and Palestine to check things out myself – and may yet conclude that playing for people in the belly of the beast was the right thing to do in the first place.”
Jello’s conclusions recorded in his diary after visiting Israel :

I will not perform in Israel unless it is a pro-human rights, anti-occupation event, that does not violate the spirit of the boycott. Each musician, artist, etc. must decide this for themselves.

Jello Biafra’s ‘Ultimate Third Rail’: Why the Outspoken SF Punk Rocker Abandoned Plans to Play in Israel

UPDATE 28/2/12

Jello’s diary at Alternate Tentacles is truncated for an article at Al Jazeera. Where and what threats did Jello receive from BDS supporters? Not on his wall.

UPDATE 25217

From Boots Riley of The Coup in June 2011:

Well, let me see. I don’t know what my history with punk rock is. I love The Clash. There are a few bands that I think would be called punk that I would think fall into that. My cousin Lauren has a band called New Earth Creeps. That’s a punk band.

My first history of punk rock was given to me on a three hour drive from an airport in Alabama to Tuscaloosa. I was trapped in a van with Jello Biafra. I said I don’t know much about punk rock. For three hours, he started talking about punk from the mid 60s to the 2000s. That was an experience. That being said, if youâ??ve talked to Jello, he takes a hardline on certain bands. He didn’t like The Clash because they were on a major label. He’s a character. When he told me about Bad Brains, a lot of the groups he told me about, was the first time hearing about them. I listened to them later. “Bad Brains were good but blah blah blah and people stopped liking them.”

Now Jello is crossing the international picket line of the boycott, from the movement in Israel. He’s going to play in Israel while there is a boycott which is the same as playing Sun City. Knowing him and how hardline he is on people, on whether or not they stick to the script, that shocked me. I called him and left some messages.*

It’s not about keeping something from the people. Do boycotts work to force states to do something? The answer is, “if they are big enough they do.” The whole thing with Jelloâ?¦ by having Jello Biafra, someone who is a self proclaimed radicalâ?¦even Jello Biafra went! He’s performing there, not just going there. The boycott is against performing, not visiting. He not only doesn’t choose a side, he strikes a blow against the boycott movement. Before Jello decided to go there, even Coldplay was down the boycott. Coldplay but not Jello Biafra! Is Coldplay or Elvis Costello proving himself to be more punk rock than Jello? That’s a sad day.

I think that neither hip hop nor punk rock is in of itself radical or against the state. I think hip hop can support the status quo and so can punk rock. People get in an aesthetic that make themselves feel rebelliousâ?¦ just like rock and roll. Just like the Rolling Stones and Led Zeppelin were rebellious. But Mick Jagger can have tea with the Queen. Johnny Lydon, is on commercials. So is Iggy Pop. I think a lot of times people give themselves a pass as if they are punk rock.. people do that in hip hop too.

Itâ??s fine to be individual and find your own way. But if your individuality is actually going against a group of folks who have come together to be able to change the world, then you are on the side of the government, on the side of the capitalist- not just standing by and observing.