October 4th, 2012 | Add a Comment
…but they were completely upstaged by his Wile E. Coyote climax.
These parts are highly worth revisiting. Bibi’s brazen, out-and-out racism and lunatic brand of nationalist-supremacy, were expressed in no uncertain terms upon the United Nations stage. The man’s true colors were there for all to see.
I owe the discovery of the lesser-known first half of Bibi’s speech, to Palestinian-American comedian Amer Zahr, a.k.a. The Civil Arab. Myself, I was probably going to ignore the Bibi speech altogether – had the Web not suddenly exploded with images of Acme bombs.
But Zahr, as he says, must listen:
As a Palestinian, I tuned in. It’s my duty. Plus, I say the guy’s name at least 3-4 times a day (I won’t tell you how), so the least I could do was to listen to his speech.
And here’s the speech itself. Some gems (with my comments), starting from the very first sentence:
Ladies and Gentlemen,
Three thousand years ago, King David reigned over the Jewish state in our eternal capital, Jerusalem.
Leave aside the universal consensus among archaeologists and historians (except far-right Zionist ones) that the David-Solomon kingdom’s extent, and possibly even existence, was dramatically overblown by the Old Testament writers who lived several centuries later.
There is one fact that is beyond dispute. That kingdom, or city-state, or chieftainship or whatever David presided over (if he really existed), was Israelite. Not Jewish. As even the Biblical record grudgingly admits, the Israelites happily worshipped multiple gods, including regular human sacrifice right there in our eternal Jerusalem, in a ravine we call Gei Ben Hinom and the English transliterated as Gehenna. So much for “Jewish State.”
The Jewish religion in any form recognizable to us today, was still about 500 years in the future, to be born upon the ashes of the Israelite period, and bearing a very distinctive Diasporic character. In fact, the only period of full Jewish sovereignty between the religion’s true birth and modern times was the Hasmonean kingdom, a short-lived, corruption-ridden little operation that eventually succumbed to its incessant internal strife.
Considering Bibi’s bragging later in his speech, and his attempt to pose as the all-knowing teacher lecturing a willfully ignorant world, it is ridiculously ironic for him to begin with such a piece of blatant, crappy, ignorant antiquity-worship in his first sentence. And he’s just getting warmed up:
Yesterday was Yom Kippur, the holiest day of the Jewish year. Every year, for over three millennia, we have come together on this day of reflection and atonement. We take stock of our past. We pray for our future. We remember the sorrows of our persecution; we remember the great travails of our dispersion; we mourn the extermination of a third of our people, six million, in the Holocaust.
But at the end of Yom Kippur, we celebrate. We celebrate the rebirth of Israel. We celebrate the heroism of our young men and women who have defended our people with the indomitable courage of Joshua, David, and the Maccabees of old. We celebrate the marvel of the flourishing modern Jewish state.
I know Yom Kippur. Dammit, I’ve fasted every Yom Kippur for the past 30 years. This junk of Bibi’s has almost nothing to do with Yom Kippur. And please, let other Jewish (or Judaism-knowledgeable) readers correct me if I’m wrong. Yom Kippur is mostly for atoning for one’s personal sins, and for the community’s sins. Not for reaffirming our collective sense of external persecution and its myth of supremacy. For that, we have plenty of other holidays, thank you very much.
And the central figures of Judaism, surely during Yom Kippur, are not Joshua-David-Maccabees who flexed the Jewish Muscle (the latter are rarely mentioned outside of Hanuka), but the prophets who spoke truth to power and pointed to the community its own sins.
But the speech is just about to get much, much worse:
In Israel, the past and the future find common ground. Unfortunately, that is not the case in many other countries. For today, a great battle is being waged between the modern and the medieval.
The forces of modernity seek a bright future in which the rights of all are protected, in which an ever-expanding digital library is available in the palm of every child, in which every life is sacred. The forces of medievalism seek a world in which women and minorities are subjugated, in which knowledge is suppressed, in which not life but death is glorified.
These forces clash around the globe, but nowhere more starkly than in the Middle East.
Israel stands proudly with the forces of modernity. We protect the rights of all our citizens: men and women, Jews and Arabs, Muslims and Christians – all are equal before the law.
Clash of Civilizations? Really? In 2012?!? Has this guy stepped out of a time machine? And in whose books is the idealization of Medieval times bad, but the idealization of an imagined 3000-year-old past good? Of course, in a hypocritical racist bigot’s books: “my ancient history good, your ancient history bad”.
Regarding the great treatment of non-Jewish citizens, forgive me, dear Smug Prime Minister, but I prefer the direct testimony of their own legal-advocacy NGO Adalah over your childish self-congratulations. Their current headline reads “NCPB (National Committee for Planning and Building) reaffirms plans to build Jewish town on ruins of Bedouin village.” Par for the course of the Enlightened Jewish State.
Where were we? Oh, yes, explaining how great we are. And modest.
Israel is also making the world a better place: our scientists win Nobel Prizes. Our know-how is in every cell-phone and computer that you’re using. We prevent hunger by irrigating arid lands in Africa and Asia.
…And gratuitously induce hunger by strangling the West Bank and Gaza. Let us not forget that if it was not for a certain 2010 Flotilla, to this very day your government would have still rationed the food allowed into Gaza, to make sure those medievalists don’t get too fat and lazy.
And Israel’s exceptional creativity is matched by our people’s remarkable compassion. When disaster strikes anywhere in the world – in Haiti, Japan, India, Turkey Indonesia and elsewhere – Israeli doctors are among the first on the scene, performing life-saving surgeries.
Like they did just a few weeks ago… oops. no. A few weeks ago, Israel deliberately let a group of Eritrean refugees almost die of thirst and hunger inside its own territory, stranded between border fences in plain view of its soldiers who were under strict orders not to offer any assistance, only limited amounts of water. And this was not an isolated incident: Bibi government has set a disgusting precedent, inciting against this recent wave of African refugees, and building massive concentration, sorry, “internment” camps for them.
Should we laugh or cry? I say laugh:
President Abbas just spoke here. I say to him and I say to you: We won’t solve our conflict with libelous speeches at the UN. That’s not the way to solve it.
Says the guy who just slandered the entire Middle East except his own country.
We have to sit together, negotiate together, and reach a mutual compromise, in which a demilitarized Palestinian state recognizes the one and only Jewish State.
Because that is what negotiations are all about: me dictating to you a-priori how they must end.
Ok, enough about us good guys. Let’s go back to some bad-guy classics that never get old:
Israel wants to see a Middle East of progress and peace. We want to see the three great religions that sprang forth from our region – Judaism, Christianity and Islam – coexist in peace and in mutual respect.
Yet the medieval forces of radical Islam, whom you just saw storming the American embassies throughout the Middle East, they oppose this. They seek supremacy over all Muslims. They are bent on world conquest. They want to destroy Israel, Europe, America. They want to extinguish freedom. They want to end the modern world.
Where’s Jon Stewart when we need him?
They want to drag humanity back to an age of unquestioning dogma and unrelenting conflict. I am sure of one thing. Ultimately they will fail. Ultimately, light will penetrate the darkness.
We’ve seen that happen before. Some five hundred years ago, the printing press helped pry a cloistered Europe out of a dark age. Eventually, ignorance gave way to enlightenment.
So too, a cloistered Middle East will eventually yield to the irresistible power of freedom and technology. When this happens, our region will be guided not by fanaticism and conspiracy, but by reason and curiosity.
Because hey, nothing even remotely resembling that, has really happened around us over the past two years, right?
In last year’s UN speech, at least, Bibi was careful to pay a completely phony lip-service to the Arab Spring, despite being the most notoriously anti-Arab-Spring world leader from day one. Now all pretenses are gone. He made a boastful “I told you so” Knesset speech in late 2011 (Haaretz summarized, “Netanyahu: Arab Spring pushing Mideast backward, not forward”). By September 2012, Bibi is sure that his anti-Arab-Spring view has been scientifically proven correct, a closed case. He was right and everyone else was wrong, and it’s not even worth deliberating upon.
So what is worth mentioning at length?
Some 70 years ago, the world saw another fanatic ideology bent on world conquest. It went down in flames. But not before it took millions of people with it. Those who opposed that fanaticism waited too long to act. In the end they triumphed, but at an horrific cost. My friends, we cannot let that happen again.
At stake is not merely the future of my own country. At stake is the future of the world. Nothing could imperil our common future more than the arming of Iran with nuclear weapons.
Oh yessssssss, now it’s nearing perfection. To juxtapose Nazism and Iran within two sentences, in one “Islamo-Fascist” fell rhetorical swoop – and to top if off with a modest 70 spoons or so of personal and nationalist megalomania. mmmmmm…
From here, the road is open to an escalating tirade against Iran and its nukes – right up to the Wile E. Coyote bomb that everyone saw.
What I find most amazing, is that among Israelis – this bunch of supposedly savvy, world-weary political cynics – Bibi is considered a great speaker. Haaretz even ran an article, claiming that after the speech Republicans were wishing Bibi could run for President instead of their own batch of clowns.
It has been a while since I’ve read such a bad speech. The cartoon-bomb skit turns out to have been the least douche-baggy part of it!
September 11, 2012 § Leave a Comment
Red Hot Chili Peppers’ drummer, Chad Smith, professing a liberal language of equality and harmony for all.You book some tour, receive some award, get an event invitation. “They love me! They really love me!” you think. Or maybe “Woah, cool! I always wanted to go to Murmansk!” All of a sudden, out of nowhere, you start getting letters from Arizona: “Dude, we’re trying to have a picket line here, you’re seriously treading on our turf! Boycott racism!” Panicked, you call your agent: “But I just wanted to make music!” Your agent, being payed to be in contact with the corporeal world tells you how it is: “We’ll have to loose some revenue, but let’s donate this concert’s proceeds to these people’s organizations!”, better yet “let’s buy activists off with free tickets!” Without much debate, you happily pack your bags and head off in your private airplane to the Congo. After all, what do you know about politics?
Inside the Mind of the Artist from an Activist’s Perspective
Many don’t yet know of the world-wide Palestinian lead movement to Boycott, Divest, and Sanction (BDS) Israel. Some of these people are artists, musicians, authors, painters, film makers, etc. I can imagine that more often than not, the request for a cultural boycott, really does surprise them. More often than not, the narrative of Palestinian oppression is new to them, not to mention the concept of a Palestinian People, to begin with.
Speaking as an activist for social change, I expect very little from the majority of over-payed, “celebrity” artists. In a reality where art has been commodified by the capitalist market, the line between individual and brand-name comminutes drastically. As an activist, I understand all too well that artists are trapped in a world where courageous truth-speaking could cost you that coveted success. I believe that the people who wrote the BDS guidelines have taken this into serious consideration. And although we, in the movement, share a dream of a world that not only doesn’t do “business as usual” with power, but also speaks truth to power, we have allowed a very wide margin for artists, who need time for a learning process, and can start with the basic act of civil disobedience: Not performing in Israel.
The case of the Red Hot Chili Peppers is different however. This international-mega-celebrity band managed to somehow ride the waves of catchy base funk tunes, and safely crossover from the subversive garage to the far off land of superstar status, all the while keeping their political integrity and continuing their act of speaking truth to power.
As an activist, who thought for the first 25 years of her life that she was going to be an artist when she grows up, I have serious (vegan)beef with artists who dance around in metaphors, because they’re too afraid to talk about the struggles of their time. One can’t say this about the Red Hot Chili Peppers. Their songs are very straightforward, and no one can mistake when they speak about the Native American genocide, Anarchism and resistance, Police oppression, racism, America’s foreign policies, and drug addiction.
Red Hot Chiling Silence
In the past 4 months, I’ve taken a visible role in the campaign to get the Red Hot Chili Peppers to cancel their concert in Israel. A campaign which grew to almost 8000 signatures, more than a dozen letters from organizations around the globe, and managed to get support from other celebrities. Following the band closely, on their current world tour, we’ve seen that it goes beyond the music to support causes it believes in. Be it Treyvon Martin, Pussy Riot, or Captain Paul Watson, the Red Hot Chili Peppers, recognizing their public status, have made a conscious choice to raise awareness about something other than themselves.
Because of the band’s vocal stance against systems of oppression that breed racism, sexism, speciesism and brutally silence resistance, and because we know that they proudly support and are willing to act for the betterment of life of Palestinian refugees, it was surprising that they even booked a concert in Israel, to begin with. Let alone, that they have not cancelled, in spite of a whole campaign that was geared to back them up in this one simple act of solidarity with Palestinian victims of Israel’s apartheid policies and de-facto ethnic cleansing via brutal military occupation.
But all this has already been said. Now- after the Red Hot Chili Peppers have gone through with the act of entertaining the beneficiaries of apartheid, through a producer that has a special relationship with the colonizing apartheid government, and not protesting while the state of Israel uses them as a whitewashing mechanism, or a bullying tactic against a political minority it has outlawed– it’s time to talk about their chilling silence.
Throughout these 4 months, while vocalizing support for various worthy struggles, neither the band, nor their agents, have made one attempt to contact any one of their petitioners. Unlike other artists who don’t use anyone to coldly negotiate their connections with their audience, the Red Hot Chili Peppers did not make the commercial “mistake” of commenting on the issue so hotly at hand. For many fans, my-naive-self included, this act shattered the band’s image of easy-going accessibility, and the question still looms in my mind: How much money does one have to invest, to be able to afford to seem like one of the common people?
Are the Bodies in My Back Yard Bothering You?
As a woman who is active in fighting violence against women and gender-based discrimination in my community, there’s another aspect of the Red Hot Chili Peppers’ silence, which chills me to the bone. Often when confronted, a man who has behaved in violent and sexist ways will just ignore his petitioners. Thinking that beyond degrading his victim, he may also erase her from existence, if he so chooses.
Red Hot Chili Peppers touring occupied Jerusalem (a.k.a. al-Quds), accompanied by Israeli security personnel.Now before anyone gets their feathers ruffled, I’m not calling the Red Hot Chili Peppers rapists or wife-beaters. To clarify: The band came here, despite very clear explanations of what role they will be playing in the local politics, and their moral obligations as a world-renowned brand-name, as well as American tax-paying citizens. They entertained a segregated audience, singing about “The Power of Equality”. They did it on the remains of an ethnically cleansed Palestinian village. They did it for money. They toured around in occupied territory, enjoying pillaged resources, accompanied by Israeli security personnel, and it didn’t occur to them to ask where their bodyguards got their professional experience and who’s paying their salary.
And while the general strategy for the band, dealing with this image crisis, was to ignore all notifications of human rights violations, perpetrated by the Israeli military regime, that the campaign updated by-the-hour for 4 months (including the day of their performance, which saw the so-called “Israeli Defense Forces” razing water tanks in Nablus, demolishing more Palestinian homes, bombing children in Gaza, enabling more settler violence, arresting and torturing more Palestinian prisoners on hunger strike, and suppressing the right to free speech by means of terror); Chad Smith, the band’s drummer went further and blocked all twitter accounts that made an attempt to raise his awareness to what he was about to lend a hand to.
Wake up Motherfucker and Smell the Slime
Red Hot Chili Peppers drummer, Chad Smith, enjoying the Dead Sea (a.k.a. “pillaged resources”).As in many cases of calling out a person who behaves in a sexist manner, we take into account that gender violence and discrimination is so normalized in our culture, that the person perpetrating it isn’t even aware that that is what he has done. We give him the benefit of the doubt that that was not his intent. And since ignoring the existence of Palestinians and trampling their ability of obtaining liberation and self determination is so normalized in global culture and in U.S. culture in particular, the movement gives artists, that book Israel, the benefit of the doubt that trampling Palestinian human rights was not their intent. However, the more the movement grows, the more affective its campaigns, it’s getting harder and harder to believe that artists just had no idea.
I write this article not only for the Red Hot Chili Peppers. I write this article as an appeal to the many other artists, who carelessly do business with apartheid and entertain its beneficiaries, as we speak. I write this article as the government of Israel, with the help of some music industry fat cat friends, steps up its efforts in branding Israel as a world-class cultural Mecca. As, in the past three years we’re seeing an influx of rock acts coming in, each a bigger brand name than the other, propelling Tel Aviv (a.k.a. “The Bubble”) to a top tourism destination, where foreigners can enjoy the spoils of colonialism in a vibrant environment.
I write this article as an opening shot to the flood of appeals that are due to come to artists who will decide to participate in the Lollapalooza festival that’s scheduled for the summer of 2013. The festival is sponsored by the Israel Tourism Ministry and facilitated by the Tel Aviv municipality. It will take place in the same Yarkon Park, where the moans of the dancing ghosts of Jarisha village were muffled by yesternight’s Red Hot Chili Peppers concert. Don’t say you didn’t know.
[Still image from “Promised Lands.”]Susan Sontag, Promised Lands. Poland/France, 1974.
Groupe Cinéma Vincennes, L’Olivier. France/Palestine, 1976.
Mike Hoolboom, Lacan Palestine. Canada, 2012.
In 1973, Susan Sontag, the visual critic and essayist, traveled to the Middle East to film in Israel, just before the end of the October War that saw Egypt and Syria uniting to launch a surprise attack in retaliation for the colossal losses of the 1967 war. To watch Susan Sontag’s Promised Lands in April 2012 as part of the London Palestine Film Festival, playing to a full house, is a testament to the changing mode of representing Israel in western cultural capitals. It is also probably an entirely different aesthetic, intellectual, and emotional experience than viewing the film when it first premiered in 1974 in New York City. It is impossible to engage this film today, along with others such as L’Olivier (1976) and Lacan Palestine (2012) that were shown at the same festival, without contextualizing them against the backdrop of the shifting dynamics of representation.
Against Interpretation? The Politics and Poetics of Israeli Trauma
Upon its release in 1974, Promised Lands was banned in Israel. This ban was not a result of a fear of the Palestinian perspective, for there is hardly any of this in the film. Sontag was more interested in capturing the vulnerability of Israel, as she and her liberal New York intellectual cohort understood it, during the period from the foundation of the state in 1948 to 1974, when the film was released. This was a period when the “Palestinian,” and the very idea of “Palestine,” was either non-existent or simply a synonym for “terrorist” in mainstream Western (especially American) society. Through a collage of images of a fearful, traumatized, and insecure nation, Promised Lands could be read as an early attempt to uncover the young Israeli state’s narrative of a heroic national liberation. This was a narrative resting on a deep belief—ironically held by many supporters of anti-colonial nationalist struggles prominent in the leftist intellectual New York circles of the 1960s and 1970s—that a civilized and western Jewish state was liberated from Arabs by Holocaust survivors against all odds, rather than forcefully expelled by colonial settlers armed with the latest in European military technology and racist ideology. Read more
September 4, 1997 was the day my niece Smadar was killed. For my family and I it will forever be a sad day, a day that brings bad tidings. It was September 4 when that phone call came from my mother telling me that there was an explosion in Jerusalem, even as I was watching the horror live on CNN. Those words: “there was an explosion and we can’t find Smadari” will forever ring in my ears. Hours later it was confirmed and I was on my way to Jerusalem, for the funeral.
No one warned me that I would see those words in the morning paper in Jerusalem as I arrived from the airport: “The granddaughter of peace activist, ret. General Matti Peled…” It was still dawn. I still don’t know what to say on this day or what to think as September 4 approaches. That day I would cry in my sisters arms like a baby, and would feel that way over and over again, each year, even now, all these years later.
As we drove away from the grave site, Elton John’s new version of “Candle in the Wind” was playing on the radio and Nurit, my sister would never forgive herself for leaving her baby girl alone buried in the dirt. Then, for seven days and six nights, the house where I was born, and where Smadar lived ,would see so many faces. That the door of the Jerusalem apartment through which Generals and diplomats once entered and on which now a sticker reads FREE PALESTINE, was open for people who sought to find light at the end of their darkened lives.
At the time Smadari was killed Bibi Netanyahu was Prime Minister. He was asked to stay away, and spare himself the indignity of facing our family. Today Bibi is once again Prime Minister. Among those who did come to pay respects at the time was Ehud Barak. The General, decorated soldier and now Israel’s “defense” minister – personally responsible for the death of thousands of innocent Israelis and Palestinians. At the time he was the head of the Labor party and people had hope he would be different. Today Barak is an all powerful “Defense” minister standing at the head of Israel’s unstoppable war machine – placing the full weight of the mammoth he leads so that death maintains its dominion.
Each year I try and each year I fail to somehow face this terrible day. And each year September 4 just brings more sadness. It brings more sadness because of a girl that was killed, and because so many thousands have died since from the same preventable cause – Israeli terrorism.
This terrorism is part of the discourse among Israelis and Israeli supporters; It faces you at Ben Gurion airport where Palestinians humiliated each and every day; You meet Israeli terrorism at the weekly peace marches in the West Bank, where participants are shot and arrested, and it thrives in Israeli jails where hundreds of thousands of palestinians have been tortured for decades; Israeli terrorism is unstoppable in Gaza where millions are locked up in an open air concentration camp, and where Israeli pilots drop bombs on civilians and then congratulate themselves on a job well done. And now Israeli terrorism has even reached as far as Persia, with Israeli threats to bomb Iran and terrorize its 75 million people.
If we want little girls to stop dying in this place, its time to stop Israeli terrorism. Meanwhile, September 4 will remain a day when my sweet, 13 year old niece Smadar died.
By Franklin Lamb
August 28, 2012 “Information Clearing House” —- Congresswoman Illena Ros-Lehtinen will have her hands full as she makes the political and social rounds at this month’s Republican National Convention. Illena, is the only female committee chair in the House of Representatives and arguably Israel’s most ardent agent. She is a constant thorn in the Obama administration’s side, regularly castigating the president for playing “political games with U.S. foreign policy” and being “soft on Iran” and undermining the legitimacy of Israel. Ros-Lehtinen is a congressional cheer leader also for her Jewish voters in Florida — a key battleground in the rapidly approaching US presidential election. Most recently, Ros-Lehtinen helped shepherd through Congress yet another bill tightening sanctions against Iran while calling for US military action against the Assad regime in Syria.
The Congresswomen’s focus will likely not be on pushing the republican’s talking points regarding her party’s nominee, Mitt Romney the former “moderate Massachusetts governor” who she is aware is unlikely to win the White House. Nor, according to a source at the Democratic National Committee, frantically putting together final touches on their own Convention, to be held the week of September 3 in Charlotte, North Carolina, will Ileana spend much time with or promoting Mitt’ running mate, Congressman Paul Ryan. Ryan, an Ayn Rand (author of The Fountainhead and Atlas Shrugged as well as founder of the Objectivism movement) follower, regularly tells audiences that “Ayn Rand’s teachings have been one of the most profound philosophical influences of my life.” Well, except for religion and abortion and a few other matters, as Ayn, who passed away in 1982 was an avowed atheist and strongly pro-abortion, the opposite of what Ryan tells audiences he is.
Rather, Ros-Lehtinen will be meeting with local, national, and international Jewish leaders in this must win state where she has been assigned the task of reassuring them that the Republican Party is Israel’s best friend and that a recent US government draft report urging a US re-think of its relationship to Israel is the responsibility of none other than Barack Obama, and it reveals his true disdain for Israel.
Helping her smear the White House with the findings in the draft analysis will be William Kristol, publisher of the neoconservative Weekly Standard and Director of the New American Century, an “Israel first” Washington-based lobby “promoting joint Israeli and American political and military leadership across the globe, while bringing democracy to the Middle East”.
So what is all the fuss about?
It’s a paper entitled: Preparing For A Post Israel Middle East, an 82 page analysis that concludes that the American national interest in fundamentally at odds with that of Zionist Israel. The authors concludes that Israel is currently the greatest threat to US national interests because its nature and actions prevent normal US relations with Arab and Muslim countries and, to a growing degree, the wider international community.
The study was commissioned by the US Intelligence Community comprising 16 American intelligence agencies with an annual budget in excess of $ 70 billion. The IC includes the Departments of the Navy, Army, Air Force, Marine Corps, Coast Guard, Defense Intelligence Agency, Departments of Energy, Homeland Security, State, Treasury, Drug Enforcement Agency, Federal Bureau of Investigation, National Security Agency, National Geospatial Intelligence Agency, National Reconnaissance Agency and the Central Intelligence Agency commissioned the study.
Among the many findings that Ros-Lehtenin and Kristol and other unregistered agents of Israel will likely try to exploit politically between now and November 6, by using them to attack the Obama Administration. A sampling of the findings includes the following:
• Israel, given its current brutal occupation and belligerence cannot be salvaged any more than apartheid south Africa could be when as late as 1987 Israel was the only “Western” nation that upheld diplomatic ties with South Africa and was the last country to join the international boycott campaign before the regime collapsed;
• The Israel leadership, with its increasing support of the 700,000 illegal settlers on the occupied West Bank is increasing out of touch with the political, military and economic realities of the Middle East;
• The post Labor government Likud coalition is deeply complicit with and influenced by the settlers’ political and financial power and will increasingly face domestic civil strife which the US government should not associate itself with or become involved with;
• The Arab Spring and Islamic Awakening has, to a major degree, freed a large majority of the 1.2 billion Arab and Muslims to pursue what an overwhelming majority believe is the illegitimate, immoral and unsustainable European occupation of Palestine of the indigenous population;
• Simultaneous with, but predating, rapidly expanding Arab and Muslim power in the region as evidenced by the Arab spring, Islamic Awakening and the ascendancy of Iran, as American power and influence recedes, the US commitment to belligerent oppressive Israel is becoming impossible to defend or execute consistent given paramount US national interests which include normalizing relations with the 57 Islamic countries;
• Gross Israeli interference in the internal affairs of the United States through spying and illegal US arms transfers. This includes supporting more than 60 ‘front organizations’ and approximately 7,500 US officials who do Israel’s bidding and seek to dominate and intimidate the media and agencies of the US government which should no longer be condoned;
• That the United States government no longer has the financial resources, or public support to continue funding Israel. The more than three trillion dollars in direct and indirect aid from US taxpayers to Israel since 1967 is not affordable and is increasingly being objected to by US taxpayers who oppose continuing American military involvement in the Middle East. US public opinion no longer supports funding and executing widely perceived illegal US wars on Israel’s behalf. This view is increasingly being shared by Europe, Asia and the International public;
• Israel’s segregationist occupation infrastructure evidenced by legalized discrimination and increasingly separate and unequal justice systems must no longer be directly or indirectly funded by the US taxpayers or ignored by the US government;
• Israel has failed as a claimed democratic state and continued American financial and political cover will not change its continuing devolution as international pariah state;
• Increasingly, rampant and violent racism exhibited among Jewish settlers in the West Bank is being condoned by the Israeli government to a degree that the Israel government has become its protector and partner;
• The expanding chasm among American Jews objecting to Zionism and Israeli practices, including the killing and brutalizing of Palestinians under Israeli occupation, are gross violations of American and International law and raise questions within the US Jewish community regarding the American responsibility to protect (R2P) innocent civilians under occupation;
• The international opposition to the increasingly apartheid regime can no longer be synchronized with American claimed humanitarian values or US expectations in its bi-lateral relations with the 193 member United Nations;
The Draft ends with language about the need to avoid entangling alliances that alienate much of the World and condemn American citizens to endure the consequences.
Interestingly, it notes Iran as an example of a country and people that have much in common and whose citizens have a real interest in bilateral associations (here an apparent reference to Israel and its US lobby) not determined by the wishes of other countries and their agents. It also highlights the need for the US to undertake “the repairing relations with Arab and Muslim countries including the drastically curtained use of drone aircraft.
The coming days will clarity the success of Israel’s in making an issue of the finding in the soon to be published daft report and the degree to which the Republican Party will gain for its findings in the race for the White House.
Franklin Lamb, former Assistant Counsel, US House Judiciary Committee and Professor of International Law at Northwestern College of Law in Oregon, earned his Law Degree at Boston University and his LLM, M.Phil., and PhD degrees at the London School of Economics. Following three years at the International Court of Justice in The Hague, Lamb was visiting fellow at the Harvard Law School’s East Asian Legal Studies Center.
He is currently doing research in Lebanon and volunteers with the Palestine Civil Rights Campaign and the Sabra-Shatila Foundation. Lamb is the author of: Israel’s 1982 War in Lebanon: Eyewitness Chronicles of the Invasion and Occupation, South End Press, First Printing, 1983, International Legal Responsibility for the Sabra-Shatila Massacre, Imp. TIPE: 42, Rue Lebour 93100 Montreuil, Paris, France 1984, The Price We Pay: A Quarter Century of Israel’s Use of American Weapons in Lebanon (Lamont Press) 2007, His latest book, The Case for Palestinian Civil Rights in Lebanon, is due out shortly.
Footage from Rachel’s interview conducted by Middle East Broadcasting Company on March 14th, 2003, two days before she was murdered by the Israeli Defense Forces.
http://www.haaretz.com/news/diplomacy-defense/watch-israel-bars-100-international-activists-from-crossing-into-west-bank.premium-1.460854#
By Amira Hass
“Israel prevented some 100 pro-Palestinian activists from entering the West
Bank on Sunday evening from Jordan at the Allenby Bridge crossing. The
demonstrators, from France, Belgium and other European countries, bore an
official invitation from the governor of Bethlehem, a senior Fatah official
named Abdel-Fattah Hamaiel. The activists were carrying gifts including
writing implements for the children of Bethlehem in honor of the beginning
of the school year on Monday.
The demonstrators arrived at the Allenby Bridge over the Jordan River in
two buses, but when they reached the Israeli side they were not allowed to
disembark.
At the crossing, an Israeli official in civilian clothes collected all the
passports from the passengers on the first bus and returned them after 10
minutes – all with a “denied entry” stamp.
The second bus was not even allowed to approach the Israeli side of the
crossing, and the passports of its passengers were not even collected. The
passengers got off the bus and demanded that Israeli officials explain why
they were being denied entry, but they were ordered back on the bus; the
driver was told to turn around.
Many of the activists had previously participated in such events as the
annual Welcome to Palestine “flytilla.” Their goal is to stress the
Palestinian people’s right to host visitors from other countries that have
diplomatic relations with Israel as they see fit – the same right accorded
to Israeli citizens.
The Jordanian official in charge of the Allenby crossing met with the
activists in his office before they attempted to enter Israel, and said he
knew of their arrival and of the invitation. But he advised them that
Israel might prevent their entry, noting that Jordan played no part in that
refusal whatsoever.”
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Mazin Qumsiyeh, PhD
http://qumsiyeh.org
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