To the International Brigades

“No pasara’n!” – La Pasionaria, 1937

Yet they HAVE passed, Dolores,

our secular lady of sorrows,

passed the frente de Jarama

and the frente del Ebro

and all the other fronts –

swept Europe with fire

then disappeared, only to surface

again in a new guise

in Palestine, wolves

in sheep’s clothing, burning

the flesh of Gaza and of Hebron

and Jenin with their hellfire missiles

and their gasoline, crushing

body with soul with tanks

and bulldozers, calling forth

the rising of our IBs once more!

As long as there are

eyes to see and ears to hear, 

we shall echo your call, time

after fearless time, until their ovens

burn themselves out, until

the wolves surrender to the lambs.

We shall shout until our voice gives out,

THEY SHALL NOT PASS!

Long Island, February 2015

The War Lobby

The pressure is mounting in elite circles for war both in the Middle East and in Ukraine, despite the trillions of dollars we have wasted on military adventures over the last decade, and regardless of how weary the American people have become of bombings, invasions, and torture being done in our name. Why the drumbeats for more conflict?

Our media won’t talk about the real players behind this call for war. One force is the rich and powerful weapons industry whose profits soar with each new bloodbath. Our defense budget of over half a trillion a year is maintained by armies of corporate lobbyists, who in turn bribe government officials with the potential of million dollar jobs in the private sector. Our biggest defense contractors sit on advisory boards right inside the Pentagon, plotting how to sell more obscenely priced killing machines. 

Even less talked about is the religious war lobby, an unholy alliance between right wing Christians and Jews. Working together in giant evangelical gatherings, they wave American and Israeli flags while fantasizing about a biblical holy war. Spewing Islamophobia, they pledge everlasting allegiance to the state of Israel, no matter how many thousands of Palestinian children it slaughters. 

Senators Gillibrand and Schumer are among the very top recipients of cash from the Israel lobby. Will they be willing to oppose America’s new militarism when the defense contractors and the fanatical Zionists start turning the screws? Will our two senators represent the people, or the well heeled war lobby?

Fred Nagel

Boycott Israeli Products

An effective way to motivate Israel to reform its policies toward the Palestinians is to boycott Israeli products. When Israel feels the economic pinch its leaders may be  inclined to end Israel's occupation and settlement of Palestinian territory that is leading to apartheid-like conditions.  Boycotts were key to ending apartheid in South Africa, and as part of a worldwide campaign they also can help in this case. This will benefit Israel as well as the Palestinians, because ending Israel's displacement of the Palestinians and its settlement of their land will give Israel the peace and security it needs.

So don't buy anything labeled "Made in Israel " or invest in securities of Israeli companies.  Brands to avoid include SodaStream, Teva prescription drugs, Leviev diamonds, Sabra, Tribe, Osem and Yehuda hummus and dips, CaesarStone countertops, and Checkpoint web security. AHAVA cosmetics are made in the Occupied Territories and should be especially avoided. Don't patronize cultural organizations like Israel Philharmonic Orchestra, Jerusalem Symphony, Israeli dance and theater companies, and teams like Israel National Basketball Team. Don't visit Israel and don't fly El Al, Israel's national airline.

Certain US companies also are legitimate boycott targets. Don't use the products of, or invest in: Caterpillar, Inc., whose equipment Israel uses to demolish Palestinian homes; RE/MAX Realty, which has franchises that sell Israeli homes built on confiscated Palestinian land; and Hewlett-Packard and Motorola, whose electronics Israel uses in its expansionist agenda.  Finally, don't invest in Boeing, whose jets and helicopters Israel uses to attack Gaza.

Gregory DeSylva

One irony in the “free speech” movement

One irony in the “free speech” movement that has emerged from the terrorist attack on the Hebdo office in Paris is how much the US media omits.

The United States, of course, funded and armed al-Qaida back in the Reagan years to counter Russian influence in Afghanistan. In addition, the US has had a long term “special relationship” with Saudi Arabia, the principal supporter of radical Islam in the world. 15 of the 19 hijackers in the 9/11 attacks came from Saudi Arabia. 

Our media also left out a key piece of information about the last horrific terrorist attack based on radical ideology, the slaughter of 77 mostly teenagers by Anders Breivik in Norway. The students had been gunned down because they were supporters of Palestinian rights, and the crazed gunman was inspired by Islamophobia and right-wing Zionism.

Maybe any religion that supports violent killings in he name of God should be condemned, be it Muslim, Christian, or Jewish. Maybe governments should be condemned as well. The US should end its support for Saudi Arabia, a country that monthly beheads more in the name of Islam than IS does in a year. Then there is our government’s embrace of Israel while it slaughtered 500 Palestinian children in Gaza. President Obama even rushed additional high tech bombs to the Israeli Army in case there were more UN schools to be obliterated. 

Let’s not cover up the truth in our newly found enthusiasm for free speech.

Fred Nagel

Article in La Voz Magazine

Thanks, Fanny, for the translation.

THE LAST GAZA WAR AND THE HISTORY OF THE ISRAELI-PALESTINE CONFLICT

By  Rosana Zarza Canova

Surely, may read in the newspapers or listen on the radio about the Gaza conflict that happened this summer, june 7 to august 26.  It started after 2 young Israelis were kidnapped and killed, on june 12,

Near Bethlehem, in Cisjordania, and a young Palestinian guy was assassinated on july 2 in east Jerusalem.

The office of humanitarian issues of the occupied territories in Palestine (OCHA opt) informs that 1.8 million people were affected in Gaza.  11,231 people were injured, and 2,231 died.  Israel had 71 dead.

OCHA also informs that 37.650 houses were damaged and 18,000 were destroyed in Gaza.  A humanitarian

Catastrophe.

When I spoke with my family, friends and co-workers about this event, I was angry when they suggested

That it had been a war.  I don’t believe that this last offensive has been a war.  The language that is 

Usually used about the Israeli-palestinian conflict is important: war is quite different than conflict and

Offensive.  This conflict has to be observed in order to understand that the events that just happened

Were not of a war.  Newspapers and radio news usually don’t have enough space or time to put the

Actual events in its right historical context.

It has to start by knowing dates, 1917, 1948, 1967 and 2000, y words like Zionism, Nakba, arab nationalism to understand the conflict.  On November 2^nd of 1917, the Balfour declaration was

Enacted.  Arthur James Balfour, the ministry of exterior of England, send a letter to the president of the

Zionist federation, giving him his support to create a jewish state in Palestine.  Zionism is a movement

Created to re-establish a piece of land for the jews in the land of Israel.  Palestine had been administrated by the English after the first world war.  In 1947 the united nations declared a partition

Plan for Palestine en two estates- jewish and arab.

1947 and 1948 an Israeli-arab war ensued between Israel and Egypt, Syria, Jordan, Saudi Arabia, Irak and

Libia.  In 1948 Israel was declared a jewish state and the English left Palestine.  The Nakba, which is considered the arab catastrophe was when 900,000 palestinians had to flee or were expelled from their

Homes in what today is Israel.  My family, friends and co-workers should know about this history, in order to be able to comment regarding the actual event. Aljazeera.com, is a source known for its news

And history of the middle east, and tells how Israel took another 50% of the declared partition of the United Nations.

The six day war happened in 1967, and then Israel took Cisjordania of Jordan, Gaza and the Sinai peninsula from Egypt, and the Golan Heights from Syria.  The map, common in studies of this conflict, shows how Israel has been extending itself on the Palestinian territory from 1946 to 2011.  From the first world war to the present the Palestinian territory, and therefore, its politics and government, have

Been dominated by the english, Israelis or the arabs, and not by the Palestinians.  The organization to liberate Palestine (OLP) was started by the League of Arab Nations in 1964.  This league is comprised by the arab nations.  Arab nationalism started to be formed after the second world war mostly in Cairo (Egypt) and the OLP was started by Egyptians and not Palestinians.  Rashid Khalidi, teacher of arab studies Columbia University, suggests that the arab nationalism and the arab league undermined the

Palestinian nationalistic movement.  

After reading the history of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict I hope my family, friends and co-workers will not continue calling the recent offensive or conflict in Gaza, a war. The actual events cannot be understood without the context of its history, but only as a part of a long history, complicated and intense.  Palestinians do not have the capacity to make decisions for themselves since long time ago, 

Due to the fact that before the English, the Ottoman empire were governing.  Israel controls the Gaza

Strip and Cisjordania since l967.  It is called an Occupation.  During the last offensive, the secretary of

The United Nations, Ban Ki-Moon, ask a stop to the firing and said that there should be a way to end

This Occupation.  Also there is a lot of history to understand besides of the events that happened in 1917, 1948, 1967 and 2000.  For example, the failure of the peace process, the wall that separated 

Israel the west bank and Gaza, the history of Hamas, which is the party governing Gaza, and the blockade of Gaza.

About the Author

Rosana Zarza-Canova is the daughter of an Spanish father and a North-American mother.  She graduated from Bard College in May of 2014 majoring on Politics Science and Arab studies.  She is intense on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.  She stopped working for La Voz at Bard so that she could establish a project together with her Palestinian friend, called the Bard Palestinian Youth Initiative.  This project brings Bard students to a town in the west bank, summer time, as a cultural interchange, and to develop resources for young people.  January 2015 she is starting her new service to the community with youngsters and the Peace Corps in Morocco.    

  

Resources to Learn more About the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict

After summer of horror, Gaza families face winter in cramped shacks “Electronic Intifada.” October 17, 2014.  http://electronicintifada,net/content/after-summer-horror-gaza-families-face-winter-cramped-shacks/13952

Khalidi, Rashid.  Palestinian Identity: the Construction of Modern National Consciousness. New York: Columbia UP, 1997.

Gaza in cridital conditions,” says Ban, calling again for immediate ceasefire”  UN News Centre.  July 28, 2014.  http://www.un.org/apps/news/story.asp?NewsID=48357#.VEkru1arE3Y

Timeline: Palestine since 1915” AlJazeera. February1, 2009.

http://www.aljazeera.com/focus/arabunity/2008/02/20085251908164329.html

“Occupied Palestinian Territory: Gaza Emergency Humanitarian Snapshot” OCHA oPt. September 4, 2014. http://www.ochaopt.org/documents/humanitarian_snapshot_8september_2014-opt_v4.pdf

The “civilized” American people will be forever linked with the fate of the Palestinians.

Since World War II, America has been coming to terms with the Nazi Holocaust. How did a “civilized” German people commit such atrocities? Did they know of the extermination camps, or recognize the criminal insanity of their leaders?

How could they not have known? The decade before the war had been filled with the most hateful expressions of racial persecution. Millions of Germans participated in the beatings, the destruction of businesses, and the looting of homes. So very few spoke out against the impending genocide. Were they led astray by a blind, messianic nationalism? Were they simply scared to raise their voice against what had become a repressive military dictatorship?

All the time we have been studying someone else’s holocaust, reading about it, watching movies, and building monuments and museums, we have been silently involved in our very own. Perhaps we were more inclined to look the other way, since our nation was built on the ethnic cleansing of indigenous populations and the exploitation of millions of black slaves.

Whatever the reason, we have been blind to the ethnic cleansing and impending genocide of the Palestinian people. We have allowed five million Palestinians to suffer under apartheid while another six million were forced from their homeland. We have defended Israel against against worldwide condemnation, supplied it with high tech weaponry, and given it billions in US aid. Moreover, our Congress approves each new slaughter in Gaza, insuring that the “civilized” American people will be forever linked with the fate of the Palestinians.

Fred Nagel

A Few Words Are Worth a Thousands Images

A Few Words Are Worth a Thousands Images
by Harriet Malinowitz

As people in towns and cities around the nation – including Ithaca, New York, where I live – explode over the second non-indictment of a white police officer who killed a black man in little over a week, many have remarked upon the resemblance between violent, racist repression here and in Israel/Palestine – and on the impunity enjoyed by those who represent the “law” in both places. According to the Israeli human rights and information organization B’tselem, from 2001 to 2011, the Military Police Investigations Unit “did not conduct investigations on Palestinians killed by Israeli soldiers.” Since then, those responsible for beatings and abuse “are not fully prosecuted. A new law passed by the Knesset, the Israeli parliament, makes it almost impossible for Palestinians wronged by Israeli security forces to claim compensation.”

The parallels become less surprising when one considers programs such as the Law Enforcement Exchange Program (LEEP), a creation of the Jewish Institute of National Security Affairs (JINSA), whose motto is “Securing America, Strengthening Israel.” Delegations of U.S. law enforcement officials – including “police commanders, security experts, and FBI agents” from LA, Chicago, DC, Boston, Philadelphia, New York, St. Louis, and other cities – are sponsored by JINSA and the Anti-Defamation League to learn Israeli methods of surveillance, intercepting “illegal immigrants,” crowd control, and other “counter-terrorism” and “law enforcement” measures that are conducted upon the people for, so it is said, their own protection.

Of course, U.S. authorities were not strangers to repressive tactics before this. As journalist Mark LeVine has pointed out, urban police departments and the federal government found counterinsurgency methods used in Vietnam to be useful in responding to the civil rights, anti-war, and United Farm Workers labor rights movements at home in the 1960s. And comparisons don’t imply equivalencies. Says LeVine, “Israelis are still living in the American 1950s, while Gazans remain trapped in a ghetto in which no Ferguson resident would want to live.” Still, Jimmy Johnson has reported in Electronic Intifada that in 2005, “the then-chief of police of Washington, DC, a city that has adopted Israeli-style policing to an extreme degree, told The Washington Post that Israel is ‘the Harvard of antiterrorism.’”

In Israel/Palestine, as in the U.S., the buck spent on surveillance – or at least its value - stops when it comes to cops. On May 15, 2014 – the anniversary of the Nakba, or the “catastrophe” in which hundreds of thousands of Palestinians fled or were killed in the 1948 war – two Palestinian teenagers were shot to death by Israeli police. According to CNN, “Security cameras captured the second fatal shooting that day of … 17-year-old Mohammad Odeh Salameh…. Doctors pronounced Salameh dead on arrival at the hospital, with a bullet wound that had pierced his back and exited his chest. No arrests were made….” An American-Israeli blogger not only denies the responsibility of the Israeli killers; he suggests that the video footage was simply a “’Pallywood’ production,” a “hoax in which no one was actually killed.”

Meanwhile, it’s the videotaping messengers who fare the worst. Ramsey Orta, the 22-year-old who captured Eric Garner’s death on his cell phone, was subsequently indicted – also in Staten Island - for weapons possession. Orta told the arresting officers, "You're just mad because I filmed your boy.” Strangely, his grand jury did not find him as credible as Daniel Pantaleo’s grand jury, of the same borough, found Eric Garner’s killer. “Karma’s a bitch” Orta’s arresting officer allegedly counseled him. Ira McKinley, director of the recent documentary The Throwaways (about mass incarceration and police brutality in upstate New York), was aggressively accosted by police for filming as they stopped a young black man near a community center in Albany, soon after Trayvon Martin’s murder. (He felt that some footage might be helpful.) When McKinley was arrested in Ithaca in 1989 – before cellphone cameras – the Ithaca Journal headlines ran “Differing Views” and “Two Versions Cloud Charge of Brutality.” Meanwhile, the routine fate of devices that record assaults on Palestinians (and their owners) is best summed up by the title of the documentary Five Broken Cameras.

As each graphic record hits the headlines – from Rodney King to Mohammad Odeh Salameh to the carnage in Gaza this summer to Eric Garner – those here and there who cling to a sliver of faith in justice believe that a tipping point has been reached, that after this, it can’t go on. But a few words from PR firms, think tanks, and prosecutors whose livelihood hinges on their complicity with police forces are apparently worth a thousand images.

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 License

Harriet Malinowitz is Lecturer in Writing at Ithaca College and a member of Jewish Voice for Peace.
On Dec 10, at 3:01 PM Dec 10, 'Harriet Malinowitz' hmalinowitz@yahoo.com [MiddleEastCrisisResponse] <MiddleEastCrisisResponse@yahoogroups.com> wrote:

http://www.commondreams.org/views/2014/12/07/few-words-are-worth-thousands-images