Lecture that Ali Abunimah gave at Stanford on Wednesday, November 3rd 2010 entitled “What is the alternative to peace talks to nowhere?” Sponsored by Students Confronting Apartheid by Israel (SCAI).
Ali Abunimah in Santa Fe, New Mexico
Recently, Ali Abunimah lectured despite zionist objections at the University of New Mexico. He was interviewed by Mary-Charlotte at Santa Fe Radio-Cafe.
“So what precisely does it mean to have a Jewish state? If here in the United States we have the protections and the right to live the way we want to, to raise our children the way we want to, respecting the rights of others, why would we need to declare the United States to be a Jewish state, or a Christian state, or a White state, or any other kind of state. And exactly the same applies in Palestine. If the concept of a Jewish state is a state where you have special privileges and special rights because you are a Jew, that is not a concept of a Jewish state that anyone should defend or support, but if you are talking about a country in which there is a large Jewish community that enjoys all the protections of the law, that it gets to live the way it wants like any other community, then that is a good thing, that’s what I am talking about.”
Australian Zionist Organisation Funding Appropriation of West Bank Sites
The initial piece in the Jerusalem Post alerted the world to some scurrilous shenanigans perpetrated by the United Israel Appeal’s New South Wales branch:
‘A major Zionist organization has withdrawn an advertisement because it featured images mocking the torture of prisoners at Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq. The United Israel Appeal (New South Wales) – Keren Hayesod last week withdrew the ad for a young adult UIA event, which was issued as a press release as well as on a Facebook page.’
Looking for a story behind the news, we investigated where the funds of the United Israel Appeal are disbursed.
In October, the Israel-based parent body of the United Israel Appeal, Keren Hayesod, sealed a deal with the Israeli government.
‘Leading the projects that Keren Hayesod will support is Prime Minister’s Office project regarding national heritage sites. Keren Hayesod has taken it upon itself to raise funds in order to supplement the Government budget and expand the scope of the project.’.
As is customary with its illegal apartheid wall, the majority of which is sited on the Palestinian land across the 1967 Green Line, Israel stretches the boundaries of what it regards as ‘national’.
On February 21, 2010, Netanyahu presented a Cabinet Communique outlining earmark funding of the national heritage project.
I would like to add three short comments.
– The list of sites submitted here is neither closed nor final. It can and will certainly include other sites. I also intend to include Rachel’s Tomb, to the rehabilitation of which the Jewish Agency has allocated NIS 20 million, and the Tomb of the Patriarchs. Since I was asked, I would like to make my intentions clear, and this is what will be.
– The donations that we are talking about here are earmarks. The list submitted here is the Government’s earmarked budget, even though we hope to receive the assistance of many other elements.
– We will meet again this week in order to approve the national transportation plan that will join the Galilee and the other parts of the State of Israel in an accessible national transportation grid, and which will – inter alia – bring people to this wonderful place. I think that it will greatly contribute to bringing the periphery closer to the center and vice-versa, itself a great economic contribution.”
What is Keren Hayesod’s relationship with the Jewish Agency?
Keren Hayesod is headed by a board of trustees, appointed by the Zionist Executive and the Jewish Agency. In addition to financing the activities of the Jewish Agency, Keren Hayesod undertook to support the yishuv economically and to provide financial assistance for development and settlement. Most revenues come from fundraising and are distributed by the institutions of the Zionist movement. Keren Hayesod collects donations in almost all countries with a Jewish community, either directly or through volunteers.
UNESCO has recently insisted that Israel remove the Cave of the Patriachs and Rachel’s Tomb, both located in the Palestinian West Bank, from its list of national heritage sites as they are sites of mosques. Abbas and Haniyeh have also insisted the sites be removed from Netanyahu’s proposed national heritage trail. Netanyahu has refused to do so.
Through its funding arrangements with its Israeli parent body, the United Israel Appeal New South Wales branch is complicit with Israeli commandeering of ‘national’ heritage sites in the West Bank.
‘In NSW, 50% of Women’s Division funds are allocated to The Nurit Absorption Centre , located in Be’er Sheva. The remaining 50% of funds raised are incorporated into the universal revenue of Keren Hayesod in Israel.’
Under its never-fully implemented Declaration of Establishment of 1948, Israel undertook to safeguard the holy sites of all religions. Israel has failed to fulfill its promise. As the 2008 US State Department Human Rights Report: Israel and the occupied territories states:
The 1967 Protection of Holy Sites Law protects all holy sites, but the government implemented regulations only for 137 Jewish sites, leaving many Muslim and Christian sites neglected, inaccessible, or threatened by property development. The Holy Sepulchre and other well-known sites have de facto protection as a result of their international importance; however, community mosques, churches, and shrines often faced threats from developers and municipalities that Jewish sites did not face. Christian pilgrimage sites around the Sea of Galilee faced regular threats of encroachment from district planners who wanted to use parts of the properties for recreation.
The just-released 2009 US State Department International Report on Religious Freedom reiterates the problems noted in the previous year’s report:
The 1967 Protection of Holy Sites Law applies to holy sites of all religious groups within the country and in all of Jerusalem, but the Government implements regulations only for Jewish sites. Non-Jewish holy sites do not enjoy legal protection under it because the Government does not recognize them as official holy sites. At the end of 2008, there were 137 designated holy sites, all of which were Jewish. Furthermore, the Government has drafted regulations to identify, protect, and fund only Jewish holy sites. While well-known sites have de facto protection as a result of their international importance, many Muslim and Christian sites are neglected, inaccessible, or threatened by property developers and municipalities. The Christian pilgrimage sites around the Sea of Galilee face periodic threats of encroachment from district planners who want to use parts of their properties for recreation. In the past, only diplomatic interventions have forestalled such efforts. Such sites do, however, enjoy certain protections under the general Penal Law (criminal code), which makes it a criminal offense to damage any holy site. Following a 2007 order by the High Court to explain its unequal implementation of the 1967 Protection of Holy Sites Law, the Government responded in March 2008 that specific regulations were not necessary for the protection of any holy sites. The Government did not explain why it therefore promulgated regulations for Jewish sites but not for non-Jewish sites.
Donations to the United Israel Appeal are tax deductible so untaxed Australian income can be diverted overseas to fund Israeli ‘national heritage’ projects in the illegally occupied West Bank. Frank Lowy is a Life Governor of the UIA while son Steven Lowy is Chairman, Major Donor Division.
Frank Lowy’s money ended up in Israeli charities from his untaxed Liechenstein bank accounts.
And this is from the Murdoch press back home:
Just prior to being appointed to the RBA board in 1995, Frank Lowy paid $25million to settle a long-running tax dispute with the Australian Taxation Office.
That dispute related to a $48.3 million payment received by a Lowy family company, Cordera Holdings. Three days after a court hearing began, a settlement was reached. In mid-February this year, German tax authorities conducted raids on dozens of prominent businessman for allegedly using Liechtenstein bank accounts, and two weeks later the ATO announced there were 20 audit cases under way relating to funds in Liechtenstein ranging from $200,000 to millions of dollars.
Why hasn’t the ATO done anything about this yet? Any reporters asking questions over here? Or is Lowy too powerful on his home pitch?
The Murdoch media repeatedly stresses that:
There is no suggestion the Lowys are the subject of the Australian or US investigations.
No, they are just being called to give evidence at a Senate inquiry about dodgy tax schemes, where they have previous form. I am sure they are just popping in for a little chat, that’s all. Lowy was also linked to a corruption scandal involving Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert, but I’m sure that Mr Olmert is just a very nice man too.
…
But according to Lowy, those Israeli charities got ALL the money:“The report fails to mention the fact that all of the funds held in the structure in the Liechtenstein bank were distributed for charitable purposes in Israel some years ago,” he said.
Lowy is a long-term donator to Keren Hayesod.
Brog, who described Lowy’s politics in Israel as “centre-left”, said he believed he had also been a strong supporter of, and donor to, the Labour Party. He had also been a “very, very generous donor to Keren Hayesod” since the 1980s, Brog said.
“And I would expect that that financial support has only increased in the years since.”
According to a handful of Australian and Israeli businessmen who are active in Israel and keep an eye on Lowy’s movements in that country, the money that he puts into the Institute for National Security Studies and Keren Hayesod are the two main concerns he devotes time to outside his business interests.
UPDATES
Translation: Visiting Hebron is a must, but do make sure you see everything
When visiting the Cave of the Patriarchs one must not only explore the well-tended and re-paved Jewish part of the cave. One must also enter the Muslim side, though access is not as convenient. You can also visit the deserted Shuhada Street with the ubiquitous IDF positions everywhere. Tamar Golan and Michal Tsadik from Machsom Watch
Israeli education: Molding fascists, one student at a time
The Tax-Exempt Status of Charities that Support Israeli Settlements
UPDATE 6/2/12
The theft by heritage stealth continues:
Asked about the politicization of national heritage sites, he answers very seriously: “The fact that we are located within the Prime Minister’s Office gives us a status and presence that we wouldn’t have if we were part of a ministry. It is impossible to ignore us. Everyone sees us as the right people to approach.”
He says the prime minister and cabinet secretary are involved and interested in the national heritage project, but do not dictate what is to be done. Furthermore, recent cuts at government ministries did not affect his project.
“The decision to place heritage sites on the agenda is a legitimate political decision, but that is where the politics stops. Beyond that, everything stems from professional considerations. There is a lot of pressure on us, but it comes from local council heads. Many of them think I have piles of money to distribute.”
The list of 220 proposed sites includes 30 in the West Bank. Five have either been approved or have a good chance of getting the green light for financial support and development from Pinsker and his colleagues. But the issue of whether a potential site is located inside or outside the Green Line does not seem relevant to Pinsky. “The question from my perspective is: How many visitors could we bring to the site after we decide to invest in it? It doesn’t matter to me if it’s in Judea and Samaria or Tel Aviv.”
Pinsky says he is, however, aware of the criticism the project may encounter. “If someone suggests building an elevator in the Cave of the Patriarchs, because it is an important site, I would consider this based on its merits,” he explains. “But because the site is a sensitive place, I would first submit a recommendation to the prime minister. I would not promote it on my own.”
Pinsky gently criticizes the council heads in West Bank areas who, he says, “thought that the fact that a kippah-wearer was appointed to the job guarantees that their issues would be taken care of. Very quickly they realized things don’t work that way and that we arrive at our decisions in a very focused way.”
Related Links
How much do we know about Frank Lowy and his beloved Israel?
Lowy’s Israeli Charities?
The secret Auschwitz ceremony that Ehud Olmert exposed
Introducing the Jewish National Fund Vol1 [pdf]
Preparing for Legal Action: Focus on Canada Park Vol2 [pdf]
Ongoing Ethnic Cleansing: Judaising the Naqab [pdf]
Greenwashing Apartheid Vol4 [pdf]
At last year’s UIA gala fundraiser in Sydney, president Bruce Fink said it had raised $16 million, making it the “highest per capita campaign in the Keren Hayesod world.”
Shopping mall magnate Frank Lowy, a life governor of the UIA who fought in the 1948 War of Independence, reminded the 1,000-plus donors in the audience of the countless lives lost defending Israel. “We must recognize our responsibilities and pay our dues,” Lowy said.
Burla believes discontent is mounting among the younger generation of Australian Jews, despite the country being “arguably the most Zionist Jewish community in the Diaspora.”
“In particular, the lack of trust reflects a growing sense among the younger generation of the Australian Diaspora that Israel sees Australian Jewry as a resource that can be used for its own needs, without any accountability or mutual responsibility,” Burla wrote at the time of the scandal surrounding the death of Australian-born Ben Zygier, an alleged Mossad agent who committed suicide inside an Israeli maximum-security prison in 2010.
In 1948, the future of Israel was predicted …
Hannah Arendt, Albert Einstein and others attempted to let the world know what the future of Israel under Begin’s fascism would be:
Before irreparable damage is done by way of financial contributions, public manifestations in Begin’s behalf, and the creation in Palestine of the impression that a large segment of America supports Fascist elements in Israel, the American public must be informed as to the record and objectives of Mr. Begin and his movement.
The public avowals of Begin’s party are no guide whatever to its actual character. Today they speak of freedom, democracy and anti-imperialism, whereas until recently they openly preached the doctrine of the Fascist state. It is in its actions that the terrorist party betrays its real character; from its past actions we can judge what it may be expected to do in the future.
…
Within the Jewish community they have preached an admixture of ultranationalism, religious mysticism, and racial superiority. Like other Fascist parties they have been used to break strikes, and have themselves pressed for the destruction of free trade unions. In their stead they have proposed corporate unions on the Italian Fascist model.
UPDATE
Letter from Albert Einstein April 10, 1948.
Enough Pizza for All
MiddleEastPizzaTalks from GazaFreedomMarch on Vimeo.
As a proponent for one state with equal rights for all, Ali Abunimah is being targeted by the noxious zionist lobby for censorship. He challenges the absurd anti-democratic methodology used against him:
Typically, they throw in everything to try to defame and tar me: Hamas, Hizbullah, anti-Semitism, making Jewish students feel uncomfortable — all the usual defamatory silencing tactics to try to suppress debate and discussion about Israel’s apartheid and the alternatives that respect everyone. As they surely know, I have been an unflagging advocate of full equality and human rights for all Palestinians and Israeli Jews and others living in historic Palestine, and am guided by the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Why do they not want students at the University of New Mexico to hear this message?
As Ali has said, memorably: “Zionists tend to regard equal rights for all citizens in a nonracial nonsectarian state roughly the way Dracula views garlic.”
For political zionists, there is not enough pizza for all, nor should the cooks and kitchen staff sit at the same table with them. Like all racist ideologies, zionism can’t survive in the light of day – with the institution of full equal rights.
Further, political zionism is a form of fascism, with censorship of opposing ideas just one symptom of a larger nauseating recipe – super-nationalism, Blut und Boden, syncretised mythologies of past and future glory, nation and race/ethnicity placed above all else, promotion of a cult of unity, strength and purity, atomisation of the working class, belligerent expansionism for lebensraum, sexism, corporatism, perpetual warfare, militarism, violence, dominance of the petty bourgeois class, social darwinism, authoritarianism, rejection of cultural pluralism and multiculturalism, indoctrination, propaganda, newspeak, unegalitarian regulation of private property primarily for the benefit of the community not individuals, selective populism, unegalitarian social welfare, attack of intellectuals, disagreement is treason, racist loyalty oaths, strategic victimhood and sense of besiegement, scapegoating, contempt for the weak, contradictory narratives of weakness and strength, xenophobia, and a cult of heroism. All these are expressed in Israel’s political zionism, projected externally by the ubiquitous, bullying Israel lobby, and pandered to by other invasive settler colonial and imperialist miscreants for whom questioning and censuring the zionist entity would bring into focus their own brutal crimes against Indigenous people. Israel perpetrates the crimes of settler colonialism and apartheid, propelled by the fascist ideology of political zionism.
Each form of fascism as it arises takes aspects of existing culture and grows a unique poisonous plant.
Relevant Links
Eternal Fascism: Fourteen Ways of Looking at a Blackshirt (Umberto Eco) (.pdf)
Italian Fascism between Ideology and Spectacle (Federico Caprotti)
Marxists on Fascism
The palingenetic core of generic fascist ideology (Roger Griffin) [.pdf]
The 14 Characteristics of Fascism (Lawrence Britt)
It’s Barak’s fault
A Spectre is Haunting Israel
Israel embraces fascism and where is the Zionist Diaspora?
The eugenicist racism of religious zionism: ‘Gentile sperm leads to barbaric offspring’
Between moral outrage and historical analysis
The Boycott Law is Fascism: it is a categorically anti-democratic law whose goal is to annul any possibility of legitimate protest.
Mob defending the territory of the tribe : Jewish Women as scapegoats and targets for sexism [Google tr] [Heb]
Everywhere it seems extreme racist, nationalist and religious radicalization merger also appears.
What is Fascism?
Studying the U.S. Political Right
Conspiracism
What are the Different Sectors of the Right?
A vile logic to Anders Breivik’s choice of target : Slavoj Zizek deconstructs Breivik’s fascist ideology, with particular reference to the anti-semitism implicit in zionism and Breivik’s own anti-semitism.
Ilan Pappe “Israel, the Holocaust and the Nakba”:
‘The Israelis went the other way in two directions that complemented each other. On the one hand, they felt secure from any Western pressure and continued the dispossession of the Palestinians – until today. The limits to their actions in the past, and quite probably in the future, were well defined by the late Israeli journalist Aryeh Caspi: as long as the Israelis do not do to the Palestinians what the Nazis did to the Jews, they are within the legitimate and moral boundaries of civilised behaviour. The repertoire of actions within those limits was, and still is, quite horrendous, as the latest Israeli actions in the Gaza Strip testify. The other direction was to Nazify the Palestinians so as to justify further the actions against them. ‘
General definitions of fascism of Robert Paxton:
“Fascism is a system of political authority and social order intended to reinforce the unity, energy, and purity of communities in which liberal democracy stands accused of producing division and decline.”
…
“a form of political behavior marked by obsessive preoccupation with community decline, humiliation or victimhood and by compensatory cults of unity, energy and purity, in which a mass-based party of committed nationalist militants, working in uneasy but effective collaboration with traditional elites, abandons democratic liberties and pursues with redemptive violence and without ethical or legal restraints goals of internal cleansing and external expansion.”
Excerpts from the book “Anatomy of Fascism” (Robert O. Paxton)
Would there be a State of Israel without Hitler?
Studying Fascism in a Postfascist Age. From New Consensus to New Wave?
Imperialism and Settler Colonialism in West Asia: Israel and the Arab Palestinian Struggle – useful class analysis of zionism a dictatorship of the petty bourgeoisie from Europe
Nutanyahoo seizes dictatorial powers :
Seeing as the PM controls the cabinet’s agenda, he will be able to run his proposals repeatedly until they are approved or conversely “bury” decisions made by ministers, pending further discussion.
The Prime Minister’s Office’s legal advisor Attorney Shlomit Barnea Fargo expressed reservations over the clause which she said enables the PM to undermine the decisions of government-appointed committees.
She also raised concerns over the uncertainty created by the fact that no time limit was given to the option of scheduling additional discussions on ministerial committee decisions.
Secular Jewish thinkers articulated pragmatic strategies for harnessing memory and tradition in the pursuit of a national project of self-redemption: “Zionism was a bold revolution with one foot leaping backwards.” Borrowing a coinage from the philosopher Walter Benjamin, Chowers writes that many Zionists “saw themselves as creating a new nowtime, a new constellation in which the ancient Hebraic times and their own epoch become profoundly attached and transform each other.”
Israel: The Logic of a Settler State
A single Palestine on the basis of secularism, democracy, and socialism would be transformed from a cornerstone of the capitalist-imperialist world order into a cornerstone of an emancipatory one. The prerequisite for this possibility is the defeat of Israel as a Zionist entity, the defeat of its inherent settler logic (and Zionism is historically just one example of settlerist ideology), and thereby the dissolution of its current social formation into one that is not irredeemably anti-emancipatory. There can be no ‘Zionist left’, no ‘liberal Zionism’, and so forth, for such propositions are incompatible with the practical logic of the settler state. The concept of Israel must die so that a Palestine may live for Jews and Arabs, Druze and Bedouin alike.
On the fascist role of the Histadrut:
Being “general to its core,” the Histadrut has effectively become the central force of the Jewish community in its many aspects. It organized the Zionist armed forces, sometimes in collusion with the British occupation, and sometimes secretly against British wishes; it created a system of social security, the only one in existence in Israel, which has become an important weapon in the domination of the Jewish masses and the organization of the workers under the authority of the Histadrut; it has opened recruitment offices everywhere, thus reinforcing its domination, while at the same time regulating tihe right to work; it possesses its own school network, its own promotion societies and its own production and service co-operatives; as an organization it completely dominates the kibbutzim and collective farms of the whole country. It is not for nothing that the Histadrut was considered the central pillar of the Zionist enterprise from its beginning, or as the Zionists say, “the state in embryo.”
On the contradictory narratives of weakness and strength:
“‘Shahar Burla, a political scientist at the University of New South Wales, argues in “Political Imaginations in the Diaspora” (Resling, 2013) that Israel presents a two-faced image to Diaspora Jews to maximize the “ultimate goal” – extracting as much financial support as possible from Jews living overseas.
On the one hand, he says, Israel portrays itself to Diaspora Jews as a strong homeland in order to elicit financial support as an “insurance policy” against another Holocaust.
But on the other hand, he says, Israel casts itself as weak, especially in the face of the Iranian nuclear threat and Islamist terror, also to trigger financial support. Burla argues that these two seemingly contradictory narratives, both underpinned by the premise of anti-Semitism, have helped ensure Diaspora Jews continue to donate vast sums via the United Israel Appeal, the Jewish National Fund and other Zionist organizations. ‘”
Israel: The Logic of a Settler State
‘It is no coincidence that as Israel has become stronger and its logic has expressed itself more fully, it has become ever more fascist and less concerned even with formal equality and democracy – as shown most recently by the restrictive laws forbidding even the commemoration of the Naqba (the original ethnic cleansing of the Palestinians), the exclusion of anti-Zionist groups from parliamentary representation, and the unification between Likud and the fascist organization of Avigdor Lieberman. As I have argued, this trend of the capital-state relation to move away from formal liberalism and into a fascist siege mentality is characteristic of a settler state frustrated in its normalization process. For settler states, this normalization process can only occur on the basis of the destruction of the social formation of its rivals, of the original inhabitants; the US and Australia only even considered reforming the racial ladder system after their physical-demographic security as a settler state and their destruction of all rival social formations was complete. So it is with Israel also, and therefore Israel as a state does not and cannot want peace, whatever individuals within it may fervently hope.’