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What’s wrong with the ADL survey and how it could be improved

 on May 19, 2014 56

Jackie Mason

There has been a lot of criticism of the ADL’s worldwide survey of anti-Semitism, and many of the obvious flaws in the study already have been discussed (or linked to) here. At the outset, the organization that commissioned the study is hardly a disinterested, unbiased observer. An ADL study on anti-Semitism should be greeted with the same skepticism as a tobacco industry study on the effects of second-hand smoke.

The ADL has multiple interests in exaggerating and even promoting the threat of anti-Semitism. First, ADL perpetually has its hand out for donations, and what better way to motivate donors than a screaming headline that there are one billion anti-Semitic adults on the planet? In fact it wasted no time in doing that here, as ADL’s home page trumpets the frightening results and offers visitors an easy way to “Help ADL Change the World” with a single click. Just have your VISA card ready. It is difficult to imagine that the survey was not planned, at least in part, as a fundraiser, with foreknowledge of a direct relationship between the quantification of the danger and the anticipated revenues.

Second, the ADL enhances its own prestige and even justifies its existence with the looming threat of anti-Semitism. This point was scathingly made a few years ago by an unlikely source, the comedian Jackie Mason, a steadfast pro-Israel voice who has been known to dabble unapologetically in anti-Palestinian racism.  Mason, for reasons of his own,  passionately defended Mel Gibson following his drunken anti-Semitic tirade. Gibson’s detractors were motivated, said Mason, by

jealousy and hate and contempt for a guy who’s doing too good. Also with this guy Abe Foxman, this head of the ADL. Another fake from top to bottom. I don’t talk about people, it’s not my nature, but he’s a total fake. Let’s be honest about it. Anybody who makes a life out of fighting racism in effect has to blow-up racism in order to justify himself and the job he has, otherwise he’d have to go to work. Otherwise he’d have to get up in the morning and get a real job.

Finally, the ADL makes no secret of its own pro-Israel agenda. Israel, like the ADL itself, feeds off the perception of worldwide anti-Semitism, which serves to portray the country as a necessary refuge for Jews from the threat of persecution.

READ ON HERE

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Gaza: Crushed between Israel and Egypt

                    on October 2, 2013 35

An empty smuggling tunnels in Rafah, Gaza. (Photo: Marius Arnesen)

An empty tunnel in Rafah, Gaza. (Photo: Marius Arnesen)

The furor over the recent chemical weapons attack in Syria has overshadowed disturbing events to the south, as Egypt’s generals wage a quiet war of attrition against the Hamas leadership in Gaza.

Hamas has found itself increasingly isolated, politically and geographically, since the Egyptian army ousted the country’s first democratically elected president, Mohammed Morsi, in early July.

Hamas is paying the price for its close ties to Egypt’s Muslim Brotherhood, the Islamic movement that briefly took power through the ballot box following the revolutionary protests that toppled dictator Hosni Mubarak in 2011.

Since the army launched its coup three months ago, jailing the Brotherhood’s leadership and last week outlawing the movement’s activities and freezing its assets, Hamas has become a convenient scapegoat for all signs of unrest.

Hamas is blamed for the rise of militant Islamic groups in the Sinai, many drawn from disgruntled local Bedouin tribes, which have been attacking soldiers, government institutions and shipping through the Suez canal. The army claims a third of the Islamists it has killed in recent operations originated from Gaza.

At an army press conference last month, several Palestinians “confessed”  to smuggling arms from Gaza into Sinai, while an Egyptian commander, Ahmed Mohammed Ali, accused Hamas of “targeting the Egyptian army through ambushes.”

The Egyptian media have even tied Hamas to a car bombing in Cairo last month which nearly claimed the life of the new interior minister, Mohammed Ibrahim.

Lurking in the shadows is the army’s fear that, should the suppressed Muslim Brotherhood choose the path of violence, it may find a useful ally in a strong Hamas.

A crackdown on the Palestinian Islamic movement has been all but inevitable, and on a scale even Mr Mubarak would have shrunk from. The Egyptian army has intensified the blockade along Egypt’s single short border with Gaza, replicating that imposed by Israel along the other three.

Over the past weeks, the army has destroyed hundreds of tunnels through which Palestinians smuggle fuel and other necessities in short supply because of Israel’s siege.

Egypt has bulldozed homes on its side to establish a “buffer zone”, as Israel did inside Gaza a decade ago when it still occupied the enclave directly, to prevent more tunnels being dug.

That has plunged Gaza’s population into hardship, and dealt a harsh blow to the tax revenues Hamas raises on the tunnel trade. Unemployment is rocketing and severe fuel shortages mean even longer power cuts.

Similarly, Gaza’s border crossing with Egypt at Rafah – the only access to the outside for most students, medical patients and business people – is now rarely opened, even to the Hamas leadership.

And the Egyptian navy has been hounding Palestinians trying to fish off Gaza’s coast, in a zone already tightly delimited by Israel. Egypt has been firing at boats and arresting crews close to its territorial waters, citing security.

Fittingly, a recent cartoon in a Hamas newspaper showed Gaza squeezed between pincers – one arm Israel, the other Egypt. Sami Abu Zuhri, a Hamas spokesperson, was recently quoted saying Egypt was “trying to outmatch the Israelis in tormenting and starving our people”.

Hamas is short of regional allies. Its leader Khaled Meshal fled his Syrian base early in the civil war, alienating Iran in the process. Other recent supporters, such as Turkey and Qatar, are also keeping their distance.

Hamas fears mounting discontent in Gaza, and particularly a demonstration planned for November modelled on this summer’s mass protests in Egypt that helped to bring down Morsi and the Muslim Brotherhood.

Hamas’ political rival, Fatah – and the Palestinian Authority, based in the West Bank – are reported to be behind the new protest movement.

The prolonged efforts by Fatah and Hamas to strike a unity deal are now a distant memory. In late August the PA annnounced it would soon be taking “painful decisions” about Hamas, assumed to be a reference to declaring it a “rogue entity” and thereby cutting off funding.

The PA sees in Hamas’ isolation and its own renewed ties to the Egyptian leadership a chance to take back Gaza.

As ever, Israel is far from an innocent bystander.

After the unsettling period of Muslim Brotherhood rule, the Egyptian and Israeli armies – their strategic interests always closely aligned – have restored security cooperation. According to media reports, Israel even lobbied Washington following the July coup to ensure Egypt continued to receive generous US aid handouts – as with Israel, mostly in the form of military assistance.

Israel has turned a blind eye to Egypt pouring troops, as well as tanks and helicopters, into Sinai in violation of the 1979 peace treaty. Israel would rather Egypt mop up the Islamist threat on their shared doorstep.

The destruction of the tunnels, meanwhile, has sealed off the main conduit by which Hamas armed itself against future Israeli attacks.

Israel is also delighted to see Fatah and Hamas sapping their energies in manoeuvring against each other. Political unity would have strengthened the Palestinians’ case with the international community; divided, they can be easily played off against the other.

That cynical game is in full swing. A week ago Israel agreed for the first time in six years to allow building materials into Gaza for private construction, and to let in more fuel. A newly approved pipe will double the water supply to Gaza.

These measures are designed to bolster the PA’s image in Gaza, as payback for returning to the current futile negotiations, and undermine support for Hamas.

With Egypt joining the blockade, Israel now has much firmer control over what goes in and out, allowing it to punish Hamas while improving its image abroad by being generous with “humanitarian” items for the wider population.

Gaza is dependent again on Israel’s good favor. But even Israeli analysts admit the situation is far from stable. Sooner or later, something must give. And Hamas may not be the only ones caught in the storm.

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Seymour Hersh says official story of bin Laden killing is ‘one big lie, not one word is true’

                    on September 27, 2013 44

 

Guardian piece on the legendary journalist Seymour Hersh, 76, holding forth to young English journalism students.

He is angry about the timidity of journalists in America, their failure to challenge the White House and be an unpopular messenger of truth.

Don’t even get him started on the New York Times which, he says, spends “so much more time carrying water for Obama than I ever thought they would” – or the death of Osama bin Laden. “Nothing’s been done about that story, it’s one big lie, not one word of it is true,” he says of the dramatic US Navy Seals raid in 2011.

Hersh is writing a book about national security and has devoted a chapter to the bin Laden killing. He says a recent report put out by an “independent” Pakistani commission about life in the Abottabad compound in which Bin Laden was holed up would not stand up to scrutiny. “The Pakistanis put out a report, don’t get me going on it. Let’s put it this way, it was done with considerable American input. It’s a bullshit report,” he says hinting of revelations to come in his book.

Other great stuff:

“But I don’t know if it’s going to mean anything in the long [run] because the polls I see in America – the president can still say to voters ‘al-Qaida, al-Qaida’ and the public will vote two to one for this kind of surveillance, which is so idiotic,” he says…

If Hersh was in charge of US Media Inc, his scorched earth policy wouldn’t stop with newspapers.

“I would close down the news bureaus of the networks and let’s start all over, tabula rasa. The majors, NBCs, ABCs, they won’t like this – just do something different, do something that gets people mad at you, that’s what we’re supposed to be doing,” he says….

“The republic’s in trouble, we lie about everything, lying has become the staple.” And he implores journalists to do something about it.

(One comment. The guy’s an investigative journalist. I remember when Hersh fired me with a passion for investigative journalism, back in 1975; he visited my college newspaper and when I asked him what to investigate said that Harvard had likely cooked its admissions standards to exclude radical troublemakers. I couldn’t confirm this. I lacked the chops. At that time, Nick Lemann said “to be an investigative journalist, you have to have a low threshhold for outrage.” Wonderful insight.)

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BBC to censor violinist Nigel Kennedy’s statement about Israeli apartheid from TV broadcast

Aug 16, 2013 04:16 pm | Tom Suarez

nigelkennedy
Nigel Kennedy  (photo: Chris Christodoulou/BBC)

The BBC has confirmed that it will censor a statement made by violinist Nigel Kennedy from its television broadcast of his performance with the Palestine Strings at a prestigious music festival last week. The BBC made the censorship move because he used the word “apartheid” to describe the world in which his Palestinian colleagues live while performing at the BBC Proms.

Click here for a recording of the actual statement the BBC is excising from its broadcast[1]. The following is a transcript:

“It’s a bit facile to say it, but we all know from the experience of this night of music, that giving equality and getting rid of apartheid gives a beautiful chance for things to happen.”

According to The Jewish Chronicle[2], BBC governor Baroness Deech called for an apology from Mr. Kennedy and said that “the remark was offensive and untrue. There is no apartheid in Israel.” Not only is there no apartheid in Israel, she claimed, but nor is there any in Gaza or the West Bank. (She made no mention of East Jerusalem.)

In fact, nearly all aspects of Apartheid, as defined by the UN, apply to Israel in all four of its guises: domestically, its military occupation of the West Bank, its military ‘annexation’ of East Jerusalem, and its siege of Gaza.

This legal definition includes [3]:

• Any measures including legislative measures, designed to divide the population along racial lines by the creation of separate reserves and ghettos for the members of a racial group or groups, theprohibition of mixed marriages among members of various racial groups, the expropriation of landed property belonging to a racial group or groups or to members thereof;

• Any legislative measures and other measures calculated to prevent a racial group or groups from participation in the political, social, economic and cultural life of the country and the deliberate creation of conditions preventing the full development of such a group or groups, in particular by denying to members of a racial group or groups basic human rights and freedoms, including the right to work, the right to form recognised trade unions, the right to education, the right to leave and to return to their country, the right to a nationality, the right to freedom of movement and residence, the right to freedom of opinion and expression, and the right to freedom of peaceful assembly and association;

• Denial to a member or members of a racial group or groups of the right to life and liberty of person;

• The infringement of their freedom or dignity, or by subjecting them to torture or to cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment;

• Arbitrary arrest and illegal imprisonment of the members of a racial group or groups;

• Deliberate imposition on a racial group or groups of living conditions calculated to cause its or their physical destruction in whole or in part;

• Inhumane acts committed for the purpose of establishing and maintaining domination by one racial group of persons over any other racial group of persons and systematically oppressing them.

– – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – –

1. The volume of Mr. Kennedy’s voice has been raised slightly for clarity.

2. Marcus Dysch, “BBC to cut Kennedy slur from Proms broadcast“, The Jerusalem Chronicle Online, August 16, 2013.

3. Source: UN, International Convention on the Suppression and Punishment of the Crime of Apartheid. Bold emphasis added.

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Hasbara fail: the ambassadors mutiny

by Annie Robbins and Phil Weiss on January 3, 2013 37

 

Some late developments from Israel only solidify the impression that this country is working hard to destroy its international reputation and simply cannot help itself because of internal pressures from rightwing politicians.

First, annexation of the West Bank is being pushed aggressively so that Likudniks can win the Israeli election, in complete disregard of international opinion. Harriet Sherwood in the Guardian:

Prominent members of Israel‘s ruling Likud party have proposed the annexation of part of the West Bank as the battle for rightwing votes intensifies before the general election in less than three weeks.

Government minister Yuli Edelstein told a conference in Jerusalem that the lack of Israeli sovereignty over Area C – the 60% of the West Bank under full Israeli military control in which all settlements are situated – “strengthens the international community’s demand for a withdrawal to the pre-1967 lines”.

About that international opinion: Here is a delicious story in Ynet about the Israeli ambassadors complaining to the home office about the crap they have to push to the world, and a Netanyahu aide slapping them down:

[Ambassador to the UN Ron] Prosor, one of the highest ranking Israeli diplomats in the world, asked [National Security Council head Yaakov] Amidror what was the rationale behind timing the decision to promote construction in area E1 (between Jerusalem and Ma’aleh Adumim)  after the UN resolution to upgrade the Palestinian Authority to an observer state status.

Prosor’s fellow ambassadors, who found it difficult to explain to the world the basis of Israel’s foreign policy on the matter, applauded Prosor….

Ambassadors left the conference feeling highly displeased. “It ended in unpleasant tones. Prosor asked a completely legitimate question and was rebuked. We don’t argue that our job is to represent the state, but those who do have to understand the logic behind its decisions.”…

President Shimon Peres also discussed the Palestinian issue on Monday, for the second time this week. A day after declaring Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas to be a partner for peace and severely criticizing Netanyahu and Lieberman’s handling of diplomacy, the president said that “there is nothing wrong with talking to Hamas, as long as it accepts the terms of the Quartet

A key point in that Ynet piece is that the government has no choice but to annex, and that it knows it is killing itself internationally:

It should be noted that the Foreign Ministry recommended to the government to postpone any counter-measures to the Palestinian bid so as not to focus international attention on Israel, fearing it may be seen as vindictive.
OK, but there is too much internal political pressure not to annex. Again from that Ynet piece: “Amidror said that there was a need to make it clear to the Palestinians that unilateral moves on their part come with a price.” And check this out, from the Times of Israel, echoing that Guardian piece above:

[Likud member of Knesset] MK Yariv Levin advocated a slow but steady de facto annexation of the West Bank, mainly by expanding existing settlements and taking whatever steps were possible to apply laws on Jewish communities beyond the Green Line.

“In this way, we will try, slowly but surely, to expand the circle of settlements, and to afterwards extend the roads that lead to them, and so forth. At the end of this process, the facts on the ground will be that whatever remains [of the West Bank] will be merely marginal appendages,” he said.

Last week, two senior Likud MKs caused an uproar when they stated that the party does not support a two-state solution, despite Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s 2009 Bar-Ilan University speech, during which he in principle agreed to a demilitarized Palestinian state, if the Palestinians recognized Israel as a Jewish state.

Israel might think it can annex under the radar. But nothing is escaping European attention; this is what their ambassadors have to sell.

The mutiny by the ambassadors may have been sparked by an upstart Israeli thinktank that released a study last week.

“Israel’s public diplomacy apparatus, contrary to its poor reputation, is well-coordinated and highly sophisticated. Israel’s diplomatic isolation, therefore, cannot be attributed to a mythic ‘hasbara problem’; it can only be a product of Israeli policy itself

Haaretz reported on the study: There is causal connection between Israel’s poor international image and the policies of its government.

“Instead of dealing with the connection between the policies of Israel’s government and the country’s image in the world,” [Molad thinktank study] continues, “a myth is taking hold, one which stresses an ‘advocacy problem’ caused by anti-Israel organizations and institutions which exploit double standards and even anti-Semitic tendencies in the international community in order to damage Israel.”

The study insists that “inflating anti-Israel propaganda on the one hand, and inflating criticism of Israeli advocacy on the other hand, deflects public attention away from the causal connections between the erosion of Israel’s image and of its international status and the policies of its government.”

And interestingly, Haaretz even suggested that the ambassadors should bring the study up:

Next week in Jerusalem, the Foreign Ministry will hold its annual conference of the country’s ambassadors around the word. During past meetings, former Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman regularly upbraided and insulted Israel’s ambassadors, the participants of the conference. He claimed that instead of explicating Israel’s policies and positions more assertively, and defending “national honor,” the country’s diplomats cowered and surrendered around the world. But now Lieberman, facing indictment, has left the Foreign Ministry – and the ambassadors conference this year may serve as a good opportunity to discuss Molad’s findings.

About Annie Robbins and Phil Weiss
Philip Weiss is Founder and Co-Editor of Mondoweiss.net.

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A mother sends ‘a message to the whole world’ about the Palestinian will

by on May 29, 2012 14


images 1 1
Nidal Izziden Fattash

This is a story of an amazing bittersweet twist of fate, of a  mother’s love for her son and how she stepped in to save his dreams in a system designed to crush Palestinians.

On May 23, Israeli forces stormed the dormitory of An-Najah University in Nablus. They arrested Nidal Izziden Fattash, a graduate student, hours before he was due to present his master’s thesis to the university committee. He had just completed his project at 2 am.

Ma’an News:

Nidal’s mother, a school principal, had helped her son throughout his MA degree, and knew the subject of his research well.

“It had been three weeks since I’d seen Nidal, he had been engaged and busy working on his final project which forced him to stay at the university in Nablus. I kept in touch with him through Facebook and phone calls,” she said.

After finding out about his arrest, Nidal’s mother headed to work with thoughts racing through her head.

After consulting with the university administration and several teachers, she decided to represent her son by presenting his final MA project to the university committee.

With a confident voice and sheer determination, Nidal’s mother discussed her son’s final project and answered all of the committee’s questions on the subject.

She was later told by the university that Nidal had passed his presentation and successfully obtained his MA degree.

“I did this for Nidal in revenge against the Israeli occupation, who tried to crush my son’s happiness, and to deliver a message to the whole world that there is a strong Palestinian will which can’t be conquered,” she said.

Nidal Izziden Fattash is still being detained by Israel’s military occupation authorities. The charges against him are unknown.

I would like to congratulate Nidal on his master’s degree.

Let’s hope Israel releases him shortly. Arresting someone hours before finalizing a dream that takes years of study and effort to achieve seems particularly cruel and heartless. But it is what we’ve come to expect from this military occupation.

About Annie Robbins

Annie Robbins is Writer at Large for Mondoweiss, a mother, a human rights activist and a ceramic artist. She lives in the SF bay area.

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Support a Palestinian family fighting to stay together under Israel’s citizenship law

by on January 29, 2012

There has been a flood of new laws, practices and rules of apartheid in Israel. Sometimes many of us feel paralyzed because of the racist manifestations in the judiciary, legislature and executive and don’t know where to start fighting. Yet when those laws begin to destroy the lives of close friends, we know this is a good place to start.

On January 12th, 2012 the Israeli Supreme Court upheld a ruling allowing Israel to prevent Palestinians from the West Bank and Gaza, who marry Israelis, to reside with their spouses in Israel. This law further permits the deportation of Palestinians who are currently living with their families in Israel.

I remember a year ago when I wrote against the collaboration of the Supreme Court of Israel with the apartheid regime within the ’48 borders of the State. Some of my colleagues claimed that we were pushing it too far. While they all agreed that the Supreme Court collaborates with the occupation, they stilled maintained the belief that within Israel there exists equality before the law.

Yet on January 12th, 2012 the Supreme Court proved otherwise by allowing “the only democracy in the Middle East” to destroy the basic human right of Palestinian citizens of Israel to maintain a family unit, just because they are Arab.

Khatib family466
Taiseer Khatib, his wife Lana and their two children,
Yusra (3) and Adnan (4). (Photo: Abir Kopty)

Some of you have probably already heard about the horrific decision of the Supreme Court, but I would like to introduce you to the story of my good friend, Taiseer, and how this new decision can rupture the life of his family just because they are not Jews.

I am asking for your help to disseminate his story to the world and to be in contact with him (email) to enhance the campaign against the new discriminatory rule of the Supreme Court.

Taiseer Khatib is not only a friend, but a colleague of mine from the Freedom Theatre in the Jenin Refugee camp. He began working there six years ago, teaching creative writing and helping to establish the multi-media division at the Theatre.

The January 12th ruling has paved the way for the impending deportation of Taiseer’s wife Lana, a Palestinian from the West Bank town of Jenin, who has been living with him in Israel since their marriage six years ago. The couple lives in Acre and have two children together – Adnan, 4, and Yusra, 3. Currently, the family is terrified of what might happen if Lana is deported, breaking their family apart.

Taiseer’s case is just one of thousands, but I believe that through supporting him we can combat this ruling. It would mean a lot to me if you could contact Taiseer to try to help the cause in any way possible.

I believe that today, pressure from outside of Israel is the only way to reduce the damages of the racist flood, at least until the time comes when the entire ideological structure of the racist ideology that mobilizes Israel will fall apart.

Please see his email address below, along with links to more information about the ruling.

Thanks for your support,

Udi Aloni

Taiseer Khatib’s email is: taiseerk@gmail.com

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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.

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