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November 2010

The real Yitzhak Rabin

Nov 04, 2010 01:14 pm | Alex Kane

Today marks the fifteenth anniversary of when former Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin was assassinated by a right-wing Israeli extremist for Rabin’s signing of the Oslo Accords with Yasir Arafat. With the anniversary comes the obligatory mourning of Rabin as a “man of peace,” as the Israeli leader who, had he survived, might have been the one who brought lasting peace to Israel and Palestine.

While that’s the conventional wisdom of Rabin, it’s based on a total erasure of his sordid role in the Israeli military establishment as well as a fundamental misreading of what the Oslo accords were intended to do. The only way that wisdom holds is if you shut out Palestinian views of Rabin, which is what happens in U.S. media and political discourse.

Former President Bill Clinton’s Op-Ed in today’s New York Times is emblematic of the narrative about Rabin in the United States. Clinton says Rabin had a “vision for freedom, tolerance, cooperation, security and peace”; that had he lived, “I am confident a new era of enduring partnership and economic prosperity would have emerged”; and that the “the cause for which Yitzhak Rabin gave his life” was “building a shared future in which our common humanity is more important than our interesting differences.”

The reality of Rabin is that he was a key player in the expulsion of tens of thousands of Palestinians during the 1947-49 war that led to Israel’s founding, which Palestinians refer to as al-Nakba, or the Catastrophe. During the First Intifada, or Palestinian uprising, Rabin infamously gave orders to “break the bones” of Palestinians participating in the uprising against the then-twenty year old Israeli occupation of the West Bank and the Gaza Strip. And the Oslo accords were never really about peace; it was a successful attempt to “subcontract” the occupation out to the newly formed Palestinian Authority, as Israeli professor Neve Gordon puts it in his excellent book Israel’s Occupation.

In The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine, Ilan Pappe writes:

Israel’s ‘peace’ axioms were re-articulated during the days of Yitzhak Rabin, the same Yitzhak Rabin who, as a young officer, had taken an active part in the 1948 cleansing but who had now been elected as prime minister on a platform that promised the resumption of the peace effort. Rabin’s death – he was assassinated by one of his own people on 4 November 1995 came too soon for anyone to assess how much he had really changed from his 1948 days: as recently as 1987, as minister of defence, he had ordered his troops to break the bones of Palestinians who confronted his tanks with stones in the first Intifada; he had deported hundreds of Palestinians as prime minister prior to the Oslo Agreement, and he had pushed for the 1994 Oslo B agreement that effectively caged the Palestinians in the West Bank into several Bantustans.

Ha’aretz columnist Amira Hass gave voice to what Palestinians think of Rabin in this article:

Before the handshake on the White House lawn, before the Nobel Prize and before the murder, when Palestinians were asked about Rabin, this is what they remember: One thinks of his hands, scarred by soldiers’ beatings; another remembers a friend who flitted between life and death in the hospital for 12 days, after he was beaten by soldiers who caught him drawing a slogan on a wall during a curfew. Yet another remembers the Al-Amari refugee camp; during the first intifada, all its young men were hopping on crutches or were in casts because they had thrown stones at soldiers, who in turn chased after them and carried out Rabin’s order.

As for the goals of the Oslo accords, here’s what Gordon writes:

The Oslo process was, to a large extent, the result of Israel’s failure to crush the intifada, and Israel’s major goal in the process was to find a way of managing the Palestinian population while continuing to hold on to their land. As Edward Said, Noam Chomsky, and several others pointed out from the outset, Oslo was not an instrument of decolonization but rather a framework that changed the means of Israel’s control in order to perpetuate the occupation. It constituted a move from direct military rule over the Palestinians in the OT to a more indirect or neocolonial form of domination.

And what has the creation of the Palestinian Authority, perhaps the most lasting legacy of the tenure of Rabin, brought to the Palestinian people? Collaboration with Israel and repression of dissent.

Let’s save the lauding of Rabin as a “man of peace” for someone who is really working towards peace and justice in Israel and Palestine.

This post originally appeared on Alex Kane’s blog. Follow him on Twitter here, and donate here to help send him to Israel/Palestine.

Gilad Atzmon’s Video Address for The One Democratic State Conference

“Building on the Madrid, Boston, and Haifa conferences, a select group of activists from a variety of backgrounds convened last weekend in Dallas, Texas in order to implement an international project – to pass a declaration which professes the need for creating a single democratic state in what is now occupied Palestine….

Speakers included:
Dr.Mazin Qumsiyeh, Palestinian author and expert on Palestinian refugee rights, who spoke to us via video from occupied Palestine.
Lenni Brenner, Jewish anti-Zionist author of Zionism in the Age of the Dictators.
Gilad Atzmon, Israeli-born British jazz musician and anti-Zionist political activist and writer, who spoke to us from Britain.
Paul Hershfield, co-founding member of the Campaign to End Israeli Apartheid, Southern California. Richard Falk, professor of international law at Princeton University.
Virginia Tilley, professor of political science, author of The One-State Solution: A Breakthrough for Peace in the Israeli-Palestinian Deadlock, who spoke to us from South Africa.

 

Mahalia Jackson-I’m on my way

Kufur Qasim Massacre: The Triumph of Memory

Some of those who were massacred in Kufur Qasim on October 29, 1956.

By Seraj Assi

On October 29, 1956, the Israel Border Police (Magav) announced a sudden curfew on the village of Kufur Qasim located on the Israeli side of the Green Line. Colonel Yiskhar Shadmi, then the Brigade Commander of Israel’s Central District, gathered the border patrol battalion commanders and instructed them to shot and kill anyone found outside his or her place during the curfew, including women and children. When asked what to do with those workers who were unaware of the curfew, he replied with the cynical Arabic term “Allah Yirhamhu (May God have mercy on him).

Less than thirty minutes after the curfew had been announced, village workers returning home were lined up and shot to death. In less than two hours, the massacre claimed the lives of 48 Palestinian citizens all but four of whom were residents of Kufur Qasim. The majority of the victims were children and women. One of the victims was a pregnant woman who was killed with her unborn child.

On November 20, 1957, a sulha (ceremony of reconciliation) was held in Kufur Qasim and attended by over 400 representatives of the Israeli society and Arab villages. Local Palestinian newspapers reported how Israeli military authorities forced representatives from the families of the victims to attend the sulha in an attempt to sweep the crime under the rug of “Arab tradition”.

Shira Robinson has summarized the Israeli responses to the massacre in the refusal to hold public trial, the release of the convicted soldiers, the appointment of the responsible commanders to higher government posts and the imposition of the sulha on the victims’ families.

In fact, Israel’s responses to the massacres were consistent with its founding ideology. Indeed, what made the murder of forty-eight innocent civilians possible and forgivable from the Israeli standpoint was the very idea of the Jewish State that belonged to the Jewish People, in which Palestinian Arabs were seen as permanent enemies. A series of Israeli massacres of Palestinians committed over the past decades was grounded in this ethnocentric vision.

From the Palestinian perspective, the motivation behind the Kufur Qasim massacre was linked to the Zionist commitment to cleansing the country of its native Palestinian population. The massacre was a direct outcome of Israel’s policies towards the Palestinian Arab minority since 1948. These included, as Robinson has pointed out, the suppression of their national identity and collective memory, the deprivation of their civil rights, the confiscation of their land and the cultivation of racist attitudes against them in Jewish schools and public discourse.

Kufur Qasim Massacre left no doubt that Israeli violence towards Palestinian citizens was an end in itself. Its target was the generation of the Nakba whose memory of explosion, loss and family separation was still fresh. The massacre took place in the midst of the military rule (1949-66) imposed by Israel on the remaining Palestinian population, which was completely cut off from the rest of the Arab world, the Palestinian people and from each other. Captured in the iron cage fashioned by the military regime, the first generation of Palestinians inside Israel was born in total isolation.

Two decades passed before the Land Day events of March 30, 1976 culminated in the murder of six Palestinian citizens by the Israeli army and security forces. Twenty-four years later, in September 2000, the Second Intifada broke out in Palestine and spread throughout the Arab villages inside Israel. By early October 2000, thirteen Palestinian citizens had been massacred by the Israeli police. The victims were all from the young generation whose insistence on its Palestinian identity had reached maturity in the course of the annual Land Day commemorations.

These events were met by a young generation whose collective memory was constructed upon the rejection of the old sulha manipulations. This generation knows very well how to draw strong links between the Kufur Qasim Massacre and the other Israeli massacres of Palestinians in Deir Yasin, Qibya, Nahalin, Rafah and Gaza. The strong line etched in the memory of this generation stretched between the Nakba of 1948 and the Intifada of October 2000. It reminds us that the memory of a people can never be suppressed.

During the past decade a new generation of Palestinian filmmakers, rappers, writers and poets came to celebrate the decisive failure of Israel to de-Palestinize their memory. In early 2010, the fresh Palestinian hip-hop band Damar (destruction), composed of two young Palestinian girls from two small villages near Nazareth, sent this clear message:

“You think that the Third Generation will be Israeli? Come on! Time does not make us forget, but remember”

– Seraj Assi is a PhD Candidate in Arabic and Islamic Studies, Georgetown University, Washington DC. He contributed this article to PalestineChronicle.com.

 

Sustainable Rural Tourism in Palestine , International Workshop and Maftoul Festival

Talented guys “Naturally Seven” sing on Paris Metro

Riz Khan – Hope vs hype : Tariq Ali

Twenty Two Demonstrators injured in Nabi Saleh

In light of growing military violence towards demonstrators in Nabi Saleh recently, protesters attempted to march to their lands in two separate groups, which were both aggressively blocked by the soldiers and Border Police officer well inside the village.

An injured demonstrator treated by a Red Crescent medicAn injured demonstrator treated by a Red Crescent medic 

While one group was attacked by massive amounts of tear-gas from afar, the second group – mostly composed of women, international activists and older men, was attacked with tear-gas and pepper spray, at close range, and for no apparent reason.

The village was then swarmed with huge forces of soldiers and Border Police officers, who took over three houses, shooting demonstrators from their rooftops with scores of rubber-coated bullets and tear-gas projectiles.

The clashes that evolved after the army has attacked the demonstration continued until dark, when the soldiers finally left the village and retreated to the checkpoint at its entrance. 22 people were injured at varying degrees of severity, including a 10 year-old girl who was shot in the arm with a rubber-coated bullet, two journalists and a twenty year-old woman, who broke her ankle after being hit with a tear-gas projectile. In total, seven people required hospitalization.

Shattered windows in a car belonging to an Israeli activist after Border Police officers shot at itShattered windows in a car belonging to an Israeli activist after Border Police officers shot at it 

After the soldiers have left, an Israeli activist noticed that all the windows of his car were broken. An eyewitness saw Border Police officers take pictures of the car and afterwards shooting rubber-coated bullets towards it. A few of these bullets were found inside the car.

The residents of Nabi Saleh have been holding regular demonstrations against the creeping confiscation of their lands by the adjacent Jewish-only settlement of Halamish since December 2009. Protest was sparked after settlers, abated by the Army, forcefully took over a natural spring belonging to the village.

The hilltop village of Nabi Saleh is home to approximately 550 residents and is located 30 kilometers northeast of Ramallah along highway 465. Residents have been holding regular demonstrations against the creeping confiscation of their lands by the adjacent Jewish-only settlement of Halamish since December 2009. Protest was sparked after settlers, abated by the Army, forcefully took over a natural spring belonging to the village.

From the Popular Struggle Coordination Committee

Gilad Atzmon: Julie Sabbath Goy Burchill

DateTuesday, November 2, 2010 at 11:18AM AuthorGilad Atzmon

In her desperate attempt to smear Lauren Booth, Independent writer Julie Burchill, a devout Zionist, proves how deceiving British multiculturalism is.

Indeed the Zionification of this Kingdom has left this country in a disastrous ethical limbo.

“Last year I took the first steps towards converting to Judaism; also last year, I abandoned my attempt”, says Burchill.

But I guess that Burchill didn’t really have to convert — She is obviously far more Jewish than anyone I can think of. Burchill can teach Rabbi Ovadia Yosef what self-love is all about. She can teach Paul Wolfowitz, David Aaronovitch and David Miliband what moral-interventionism stands for. She can give  Israeli Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman a crash course in Hasbara.   Burchill can lecture Zionist slander operators on how to spread venom.

But most significantly, she displays an astonishing command of Jewish humour. Burchill is indeed very funny.

Jewish humour is a pretty simple concept : it is based on self-mockery mixed together with the absurd. Thus we have Woody Allen presenting himself as an alpha male Schwarzenegger type, and through self deprecation, Larry David would appear to challenge our tolerance of the ultimate form of Jewish rudeness.

And then we have Julie Burchill presenting herself as a veteran Sex bomb –  funny indeed.

Jewish humour though, is, in practice, a camouflage: through comedy, funny Jews manage to live in peace with their symptoms. But sometimes, even the best of Jewish comedians fail to provide the goods, as Woody Allen and Larry David may have learned.

It is pretty astonishing to witness the amount of poison that pours out of Burchill against Booth, a fellow journalist who recently converted into Islam: it is even more astonishing to find such a level of islamophobia and  personal attack on the pages of a respected British paper. In the past, I certainly saw this kind of vile personal slander on Jews only  blogs.

But I have never seen anything similar on paper, let alone in a British paper.

I guess that the Zionification of Britain is beginning to take a heavy toll on our cultural and public life.

Would Booth have to go through such a slanderous campaign  if she had converted into Judaism? I don’t think so. Would anyone in  the British press dare remind us, for instance, that it is actually Judaism that calls on its followers to “pour their wrath on the Goyim?”  No one would remind us that the crimes that are committed on a daily basis  by the Jewish state, are actually implied by certain interpretation of the Old Testament, namely the Zionist interpretation.

British multiculturalism is indeed a funny concept,  it basically means tolerance towards everyone except Muslims.

I would prefer to spare you from reading Burchill’s personal attack on Booth (much of which reminds me of an old Jewish mother’s Passover dinner tantrum) but, I will review some of her argument, because it is apparent that the logic she employs is symptomatic of both Neocons and Zionists in Britain and in America.

“There is one religion which proscribes its followers under threat of death from rejecting it, and that is Islam” says Burchill :  Yet if there was any truth in such a statement, our streets would be soaking with the blood of ex-Muslims. This is obviously not the case.

Whilst we are on the subject of proscription, restriction, revenge and forgiveness in religious precept and religious tradition, I am sure that  Burchill learned in school about Jesus : whilst the man didn’t actually reject Judaism, he did suggest to his fellow Jews to love their neighbours.

That was enough  to nail him to the cross. I guess that Burchill doesn’t know   that the word Yeshu- Jesus in Hebrew-is the abbreviation  for the Hebrew phrase “may his name and memory be blotted out”. Seemingly, Rabbinical Jews are yet to forgive Jesus.

But maybe we should leave Jesus’ crucifixion aside. Many contemporary Jews rightly argue that they have nothing to do with this crime. Yet, I do wonder whether Burchill has heard about Israeli PM Yitzchak Rabin, and the Talmudic Rabbinical ruling that led to his assassination. Igal Amir, the young student who took Rabin’s life, had come to believe that Rabin was a ‘din rodef’, meaning Talmudically, a ‘pursuer’ who endangered Jewish lives. Under din rodef, Amir would be justified in ‘removing’ Rabin from being a threat to Jews.

As far as Rabbinical  Judaism is concerned, one doesn’t even have to reject Judaism in order to be murdered.  It is enough that a Rabbi or a great Cohen tags  a Jew as a ‘din rodef’ in order for another Jew to complete the job.

But let us return to Burchill’s ad hominem argument against Lauren Booth – next, she turns her attention to Booth’s work for Press T.V.

“It’s hard to know where to start when describing the sheer ickiness of Booth,” says condescending Burchill. “That she works as a paid stooge for the murderous Iranian regime’s television channel has to come pretty near the top.”

As tragic as it may be, it is actually Britain and the British (rather than Iran and Iranians) who are directly complicit in a colossal criminal war that has lead up to date to  1,421,933 fatalities in Iraq alone.  It is pretty fascinating that ‘nearly converted’ Burchill would denounce the Iranian regime as murderous while it is evident  that Britain was taken to the Iraq  war by a government that was funded by the Zionist lobby, led by no other than fund raiser,  Lord Cashpoint Levy.

In fact, more than ever,  we need Press TV  in the UK, for the Iranian TV channel is the only broadcast in Britain to deliver a full coverage of Israel’s colossal crimes.   In case Burchill has managed to forget, at the eve of  Operation Cast Lead, when the BBC was quick to follow IDF ‘instructions’ and evacuated its reporters from Gaza, it was Press TV that stayed behind and  delivered live footage of the Israeli massacre. It was Press TV rather than BBC, SKY or ITN that broadcasted in real time UNRA shelter shelled with white phosphorous.

We need Press TV, and we need many more Lauren Booths to practise real journalism instead of Zionised comedy. We need Press TV and Lauren Booth exactly because the British press and people like Julie Burchill have so evidently failed.

Burchill is not just a devout Zionist and a Neocon, she is also a sincere feminist. She doesn’t like Islam, and she doesn’t hide it either. She doesn’t approve of regimes that “uphold the punishment of death by stoning for adulteresses”.   For those who fail to remember, it was also so called ‘feminists’ who were the first to campaign against the Taliban  in the mid 1990’s, just to  prepare the ground for the American invasion.  I am almost taken in by Burchill’s caring for Muslim women;  yet, I wonder  how come the ‘women’s right campaigner’ fails  to  show the same care for Palestinian women  who are  often enough bleeding  to death in  Israeli roadblocks.

When it seems as if Burchill runs out of Necoon slogans, she then takes the gloves off and pulls the chicken out of the boiling soup :  Booth ,according to  Burchill, is so “jaded that she can only get a kick from self-denial.”  But may I point out to Burchill here,  that conversion is actually the exact opposite of ‘self-denial’. It is actually all about the ‘self’ being ‘spiritually awakened’ out of a state of denial, an experience that may be foreign to ‘nearly converted’ Burchill.

However, Burchill’s feeble accusation of ‘self denial’ does ring a bell here; it does sound familiar: It is after all, common amongst Jews and within the Zionist fold to label their dissident voices as being ‘self haters’.

As I mentioned earlier on, Burchill didn’t have to convert: the Jewish philosophy and manners are apparently deeply engraved within her soul. It spills out  in each of her sentences — and it is far from being attractive.

But I guess that at a certain stage Burchill just couldn’t hold it together anymore. She wanted Lauren Booth to simply shut up. She suggested that Booth treats herself “to a full-face and – most essentially – mouth-covering burka”. All of a sudden, Burchill, the liberal impostor, the one who just a few lines before was rallying for freedom of Muslims, gays and women, has revealed her true face: in Burchill’s world, women and homosexuals should be free — but Muslim converts better shut up.

Can anyone explain this discrepancy?  It is no wonder that Neo-conservatism and  moral interventionism are such a disaster.  There is not a single shred of truth, coherence or consistency in them. They are, in fact, simply a pretext for Zionist expansionism.

This is unfortunately the true meaning of the current western brutality. It obviously didn’t take me by complete surprise then, when I found out that Julie Burchill was also a supporter of the war in Iraq.

But, as one would expect, Burchill’s poisonous outbursts are followed by some tender ‘light waves’ of self-love: Israel was named recently as “the eighth happiest country in the world – coming in above Britain and the US”, says the proud Zionist enthusiast.

And I am now more concerned than ever : If Israelis can be so pleased with themselves at a time when their army locks millions of Palestinians in concentration camps with no food or medical supplies, it really says a lot about the Jewish State, the Israelis — and it says a lot about Sabbath Goys like Julie Burchill.

I am afraid that we are dealing here with a morbid psychotic ideological collective.  I wish I knew how to help them — or at least how to save the rest of us.

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