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MN Break the Bonds Campaign joins Minneapolis protest of 1,500 against the attacks on Gaza

1500 join Minnesota march in solidarity with Gaza

July 19, 2014
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Anh Pham, of the Minnesota Committee to Stop FBI Repression. (FightBack! News/Staff)

Columbia Heights, MN – More than 1500 people joined a massive rally and march here, July 18, to stand in solidarity with Gaza and to demand an end to Israel’s attacks. Crowds lined the sidewalks for blocks and then took the street, marching down Central Avenue, one of the busiest thoroughfares in the Twin Cities.

According to a statement from protest leaders, the demonstration was held “to give voice to growing opposition to Israel’s inhumane attacks, and to build pressure on the Minnesota’s congressional delegation to end U.S. military aid to Israel.”

Grassroots call-in days and meetings with members of the state’s congressional delegation have targeted Representatives Ellison and McCollum and Senators Klobuchar and Franken, urging them to vote against continued U.S. support for Israel.

Sabry Wazwaz, of the Minnesota Anti-War Committee, urged protesters to learn from the spirit of Malcolm X in challenging U.S. support for the Israeli occupation of Palestine.

Anh Pham, of the Minnesota Committee to Stop FBI Repression demanded the federal government drop the trumped up charges against Palestinian leader Rasmea Odeh and called on people to pack the court room at her trial Sept. 8, in Detroit.

Meredith Aby-Keirstead, a spokesperson for the Anti-War Committee, who traveled to Gaza in 2002, explains, “Israel is bombing Gaza, one of the most densely populated places on the planet, and claiming everything as a military target. In fact, they have targeted mosques, schools, hospitals, infrastructure like electrical lines and nearing 1000 homes. Last Saturday, Israel bombed a center for the disabled, killing both patients and nurses. And last weekend every single building operated by the UN for Palestinian refugees in Gaza were bombed. Israel receives over $3 billion in U.S. aid every year. Our tax dollars are paying for this massacre.”

Aby-Keirstead told demonstrators, “It is hypocritical for the president to criticize Palestinians for fighting back with rocks or rockets or whatever when Israel has been occupying, land grabbing, starving, beating, jailing and killing Palestinians for over 50 years. Palestinians are an occupied people have the right to resist.”

The protest was initiated by Anti-War Committee and Coalition for Palestinian Rights, with support from Al-Aqsa Institute of Minnesota, American Muslims for Palestine – Minnesota, Freedom Road Socialist Organization, Minnesota Break the Bonds, Minnesota Immigrant Rights Action Committee (MIRAc) Socialist Action, Students for a Democratic Society at UMN, Students
for Justice in Palestine (SJP UMN), Welfare Rights Committee and Women Against Military Madness (WAMM).

A large turnout is expected for the July 23 Peace Bridge Vigil, which will focus on Palestine. The action will take place 5:00 to 6:00 p.m., on the Lake Street and Marshall Avenue Bridge, which spans the Mississippi between Saint Paul and Minneapolis.

Minnesota Break the Bonds Member Publishes Editorial in Star Tribune

Editorial counterpoint: The other side of the Gaza story

By Sylvia Schwartz

http://www.startribune.com/opinion/268020311.html?src=news-stmp

I am the Jewish daughter of Holocaust survivors. I say this to emphasize that Jews do not speak with a single voice. I have spent considerable time studying Zionism (not to be conflated with Judaism) and the history of Israel and Palestine. This history is critical as it relates to the present.

Zionism is a political philosophy that calls for a homeland for Jews. The political movement was begun in the late 1800s by Theodor Herzl and led to the founding of Israel in 1948. Contrary to common perception, this conflict has not been raging for millennia. Jews, Christians and Muslims lived fairly peacefully together for centuries in Ottoman Palestine. The influx of tens of thousands of European Jews, escaping anti-Jewish pogroms, began pushing out the indigenous population. In 1948, 750,000 Palestinians were expelled from their homes in what the Palestinians call the Nakba (catastrophe) and Israelis call the War for Independence. Tens of thousands fled to Gaza, others to the West Bank or nearby Arab countries.

Gaza has been militarily occupied by Israel since 1967. Israel claims that withdrawal of its army and civilians from Gaza means it is no longer occupied. However, the legal definition of occupation is effective provisional control. Israel has absolute control over Gaza and its population.

Israel controls all of Gaza’s borders except that with Egypt. Israel controls Gaza’s sea and airspace. Palestinians are shot at when fishing more than 3 nautical miles from the coast, although the Oslo Accords allow 20 nautical miles. Israel posts snipers along the fence and maintains a 300-meter buffer area between the wall and Gaza’s land. This farmland lies fallow because Israeli snipers shoot and kill farmers there.

Israel controls all goods into Gaza, and since the siege began in 2007, disallows virtually all exports, thus destroying Gaza’s economy. Gaza has been a humanitarian disaster for years.

A recent Star Tribune editorial (“Hamas cynicism is the biggest threat to Gaza,” July 16) placed the blame of the current conflict solely on Hamas, exactly what the Israeli government wants Americans to believe. In fact, it so parroted the Israeli line that it could have been written by an Israeli government propagandist.

Israel claims (without evidence) that Hamas uses civilians as human shields, though many reports show that Israel uses Palestinian civilians as human shields.

Eighty percent of the victims of this attack have been civilians, and dozens have been children. The United Nations and other humanitarian agencies have accused Israel of war crimes.

Israel claims that it has a right to defend itself. I ask: Do not Palestinians have the right to defend themselves?

Israel has an obligation under international law to protect civilians. It is a violation of the Geneva Conventions to target hospitals and places of worship, yet hospitals and mosques have been destroyed.

This attack on Gaza is an extension of the Zionist project, one to ethnically cleanse Palestinians and replace them with Jews. In this scenario, all Palestinians become the enemy and therefore in Israeli eyes, all Palestinians are legitimate targets, babies and children included.

It is truly a tragedy that most Americans side with the aggressor in this conflict, although not surprising. The American people have been told only one side of this story. Only recently have the Palestinians become more successful at reaching Americans.

Public awareness of the facts is increasing. When Palestinian civil society called for boycott, divestment and sanctions (BDS) from Israel until it complies with international law, people all over the world, and increasingly in America, began to see how this nonviolent movement could bring about change. To date, universities and churches have divested from corporations profiting from human-rights abuses. Academic, cultural and consumer boycotts are spreading. These initiatives will pressure Israel to change its policies.

BDS has the potential to create justice in Israel and Palestine. For further information, contact the Minnesota Break the Bonds Campaign via http://mn.breakthebonds.org.

‘Death and horror’ in Gaza as thousands flee Israeli bombardment

Palestinian government condemns attack on Shujai’iya district as ‘war crime’ as Israel announces deaths of 13 soldiersPalestinian government condemns attack on Shujai’iya district as ‘war crime’ as Israel announces deaths of 13 soldiers

http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/jul/20/gaza-thousands-flee-israeli-bombardment

The fiercest fighting of the 13-day war in Gaza erupted on Sunday as Israel dramatically widened its ground offensive, sending tanks and troops into urban areas and causing thousands of panicked civilians to flee.

The Palestinian government has described the attack on Gaza’s Shujai’iya neighbourhood, in which at least 60 people were killed, as a “war crime” which required immediate international intervention.

It came as the Israeli military announced that 13 soldiers had been killed in an attack by Palestinian militants in Gaza. No more details were immediately available.

A statement from the Palestinian government said it “condemned in the strongest terms the heinous massacre committed by the Israeli occupation forces against innocent Palestinian civilians in the neighbourhood of Shujai’iya”.

The office of Palestinian president Mahmoud Abbas issued a similar statement condemning the “massacre”.

Images of the corpses of women and children lying in streets were posted on Facebook as hospitals were overwhelmed with the dead, injured and those seeking sanctuary from the onslaught.

Palestinian human rights organisations also warned that the disproportionate number of civilian deaths could constitute a war crime committed by Israel.

Despite Israel saying it had agreed to a two-hour ceasefire in the middle of the day, requested by the Red Cross to allow for the injured and dead to be evacuated, shelling and gunfire continued. Israel blamed continued Hamas rocket fire for the breakdown of the humanitarian truce.

All morning, terrified people ran from their homes, some barefoot and nearly all empty-handed. Others crowded on the backs of trucks or rode on the bonnets of cars in a desperate attempt to flee. Sky News reported that some had described a “massacre” in Shujai’iya. Witnesses reported hearing small arms fire inside Gaza, suggesting gun battles on the streets. Heavy shelling continued from the air and sea.

Bodies were pulled from rubble amid massive destruction of buildings in the neighbourhood. Masked gunmen were on the streets.

Late on Saturday evening, Israeli forces had hit eastern areas of Gaza City with the heaviest bombardment yet of the 13-day war. The assault was most intense in the direction of Shujai’iya, where an orange glow of flames lit up the sky. At one stage, artillery and mortar rounds were hitting the outskirts of the city every five seconds. Later in the night jets flew low passes over the coast.

The Guardian saw families squeezing into the back of what few vehicles were available as streets further east were pounded by artillery fire.

Columns of people, many of them too scared, angry and shocked to speak, approached down the main road to the east and from side streets, even as small arms fire was audible in the distance.

One of those fleeing was Sabreen Hattad, 34, with her three children. “The Israeli shells were hitting the house. We stayed the night because we were so scared but about six in the morning we decided to escape,” she said.

“But where are we supposed to go? The ambulances could not enter and so we ran under shell fire.”

Three other men pass by in a hurry clutching bedding in their arms. Asked what they had seen they would only answer: “Death and horror.”

Many of those escaping Shujai’iya made for Gaza’s central Shifa hospital, which was engulfed by chaotic scenes and ambulances ferrying the dead came in a steady steam – among them a local TV cameraman, Khaled Hamad, killed during the overnight offensive, wheeled out wrapped in a bloody plastic shroud.

Those who had fled congregated in corridors, on stairs and in the hospital car park. Staff put mattresses on floors to accommodate the injured, while some patients were being evacuated.

Aish Ijla, 38, whose leg was broken by shrapnel, said: “We live very close to the border. When the shells started we couldn’t leave the house. It is two storeys. The shells were hitting the upper floor so we all moved downstairs. There were 30 of us in the house. Then the shrapnel started hitting the door.

“It was quiet for a moment and we decided to run. But as we were on the road a shell landed near me, breaking my leg. I told the family to go on without me and carried on going for a little bit and stopping then going on. Eventually an ambulance reached me after two hours.”

The UN agency for Palestinian refugees, UNRWA, said more than 63,000 people had sought sanctuary in 49 shelters it was providing in Gaza, and it expected the numbers to rise. “The number has tripled in the last three days, reflecting the intensity of the conflict and the inordinate threats the fighting is posing to civilians. We call on all sides to exercise maximum restraint and to adhere to obligations under international law to protect civilians and humanitarian workers,” said spokesman Chris Gunness.

An Israeli air strike on the house of senior Hamas official Khalil al-Hayya killed his son and daughter-in-law and two children, hospital officials said. Near the southern town of Rafah shelling killed four Palestinians, according to officials.

Israel sent more troops into Gaza overnight after demolishing more than a dozen Hamas tunnels and intensifying tank fire on border areas. Israel disclosed that at least four soldiers had been killed in its ground offensive, and that more than two dozen wounded soldiers were evacuated to hospitals. There were unconfirmed reports that Israel suffered significant military casualties in a cross-border attack by Hamas militants on Sunday morning.

Lieutenant Colonel Peter Lerner of the Israel Defence Forces said additional troops had been sent into Gaza on the orders of the government. “Forces have undergone an intensified training and thorough planning period and are prepared and stand ready for the task at hand,” he said.

The Israeli military was setting up a field hospital to treat injured Palestinians at Erez, the northern border crossing between Gaza and Israel.

Since the start of Israel-Hamas fighting almost two weeks ago, 348 Palestinians have been killed and 2,700 wounded in Israeli air and artillery strikes, according to Palestinian health officials. A quarter of the deaths were reported since the start of the ground offensive late Thursday, they said.

Shawan Jabarin, of the Palestinian human rights organisation Al-Haq, warned that Israel could be committing war crimes. “Israel has one of the most technologically advanced armies in the world both in terms of weaponry and intelligence. Yet, throughout this latest escalation of attacks, as with Operation Cast Lead and Operation Pillar of Defence, we see a disproportionate number of civilian deaths and damage to civilian property.”

Jabarin added: “The obligation not to target civilians and civilian infrastructure is absolute and any intentional violation of this obligation amounts to a war crime.”

As fighting raged, the UN secretary general, Ban Ki-moon, headed to Qatar on Sunday as part of renewed ceasefire efforts. He was due to meet Mahmoud Abbas in Doha.

Abbas was also expected to meet Khaled Meshaal, the Hamas leader based in the Qatari capital.

Meanwhile, according to the Egyptian newspaper Ahram, the US secretary of state, John Kerry, was travelling to Cairo to aid the mediation effort.

Hamas last week rejected an Egyptian call to both sides to halt hostilities, insisting on advance guarantees that Israel and Egypt will significantly ease their border blockade of Gaza. Qatar has presented a ceasefire proposal incorporating Hamas’s demands, while Egypt said on Saturday it had no plans to revise its ceasefire proposal.

Israel is opposed to Qatar’s involvement, and insists that Egypt must be a party to any deal. Doha hosts a large number of exiled Islamists from across the Middle East, including Meshaal.

The French foreign minister, Laurent Fabius, who flew to Israel after meetings in Egypt and Jordan, said on Saturday efforts to secure a ceasefire had failed. “Sadly I can say that the call for a ceasefire has not been heard, and on the contrary, there’s a risk of more civilian casualties that worries us,” he said after talks with the Israeli prime minister, Binyamin Netanyahu.

According to the Israeli military, its soldiers have uncovered 34 shafts leading into about a dozen underground tunnels, some as deep as 30 metres. Israel has said demolishing tunnels is the principal goal of its ground operation and it has released footage showing tunnels being demolished by excavators and air strikes.

The IDF reported there were three cross-border incidents on Saturday. The most serious involved 12 Palestinian militants disguised in Israeli uniforms, who emerged from a tunnel in Israel to fire an anti-tank missile at Israeli troops, killing two and injuring several others.

They were “aiming to carry out a lethal attack” on a nearby Israeli community, the IDF said. The dead soldiers were named as Bar Rahav, 21, and Benayahu Rubel, 20.

At least one Palestinian was killed in the clash. Hamas said its fighters took some of the soldiers’ weapons back to their hideouts.

In other confrontations, Palestinian gunmen emerged from tunnels and exchanged gunfire with Israeli soldiers. Two of the militants were killed, and another died when the explosive vest he was wearing detonated, the military said.

In one incident, Hamas fighters carried tranquilisers and handcuffs, indicating they “intended to abduct Israelis”, according to the military.

As the offensive intensified, electricity and water supplies in Gaza were increasingly disrupted.

The Gaza City municipality said a main water line was damaged, leaving parts of the city without water. Gaza has suffered from rolling blackouts for years, but periods without electricity have increased to up to 20 hours at a day.

Liberation Through Boycott and Divestment from Cape Town to Gaza

 

The following commentary by Robert Kosuth (Twin Ports Break the Bonds Campaign) was published in the Hillsider Duluth Community Newspaper (Volume 14 Issue 1, January, 2014).
 

Since his death, Nelson Mandela has been rightfully praised for his leading role in the ending of apartheid in South Africa.  No less important were the many thousands of activists in the struggle as well as the millions around the world who participated in the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS)  movement against the notorious all white regime.

 

Since 2005 there has been a call by Palestinian civil society groups for a BDS movement against the state of Israel along the lines of the successful 1980s movement against apartheid South Africa.  Physicist Stephen Hawking has boycotted conferences in Israel and author Alice Walker has said that conditions for Palestinians are far worse than what she experienced in the segregated South.  Archbishop Desmond Tutu says the same about the conditions of Black South Africans under apartheid there.

 

With the founding of the state of Israel in 1948, upwards of a million Arab Palestinians were forced off  their land by Jewish settlers primarily from Europe.  The political doctrine of Zionism sought to establish a state exclusively for Jews in historical Palestine.  Western guilt for having done almost nothing to save European Jews from Nazi gas chambers facilitated the process.  In time, desire to control Mid East oil and politics led the US to become a staunch supporter of Israel.  Under the US umbrella, Israel acts with near total impunity demolishing Palestinian homes, appropriating land, and maintaining an apartheid system similar to the one that existed in white-ruled South Africa.

 

The US-Israel relationship is both a linchpin and weak point for the US empire.  To ask hard questions about this relationship and the treatment of Palestinians is to ask hard questions about the true nature of US policy goals.  It also echoes similar US government appropriation of Native American lands and denial of human rights of African American slaves.

 

In Minnesota, we are especially focused on the divestment of our state’s $23 million in Israel bonds, which were bought with taxpayer money and used in a host of ways to maintain Israel’s apartheid state.   A statewide group, Minnesota Break the Bonds, is working on divestment and we have a local affiliate as well.  (http://mn.breakthebonds.org/; http://twinportsbbc.blogspot.com/).   We are also involved in a wide range of education and outreach activities.  Currently, there is a worldwide boycott aimed at SodaStream home carbonation systems, which are sold at Target and many other chains.  These products are made by an Israeli company in illegally occupied Palestinian territory, where local Palestinian workers are paid bare minimum wages.  Like the workers on Soweto in the past, Palestinians are subjected to constant security checks and have to commute to homes in restricted areas because they are not permitted to live in exclusively Jewish settlement areas.

 

History is on the side of the Palestinians.  Check out these websites and join this unstoppable effort for Palestinian rights.  http://www.ifamericansknew.org/; http://www.bdsmovement.net/

Colonialism From Two Perspectives: Native American and Palestinian Commonalities

Disappearing Indigenous LandCOLONIALISM FROM TWO PERSPECTIVES:

Native American & Palestinian Commonalities

SATURDAY, NOV. 23, NOON to 2pm at the SUPERIOR PUBLIC LIBRARY

PANEL SPEAKERS:

-Reyna Crow of Idle No More and the Northwoods Wolf Alliance

-Karen Redleaf of MN Advocates for Peace & Justice in the Middle East

You’re invited to presentation on colonization as experienced by both Native Americans and Palestinians.  Both peoples have been victims of ethnic cleaning, colonization and settler colonialism. Tragically, both peoples are far too familiar with war, death, occupation and bogus peace processes and negotiations that have only resulted in the loss of more of their land.  Come learn and discuss the ongoing injustices perpetuated against Native & Palestinian peoples, and what you can do to help the struggle for justice.  This event is free and open to the public.

Sponsored by the Twin Ports Break the Bonds Campaign www.twinportsbbc.blogspot.com

Josh Ruebner discusses his book Shattered Hopes

Josh Ruebner flyerJosh Ruebner, National Advocacy Director of the US Campaign to End the Israeli Occupation, will be in the Twin Cities to discuss his book Shattered Hopes: Obama’s Failure to Broker Israeli-Palestinian Peace. The book describes the failures of the Obama administration to bring peace to the Middle East.

Phyllis Bennis, director of New Internationalism Project, Institute for Policy Studies, has written: “…this book provides a welcome clarity that cuts through years of stale disinformation.” Bill Fletcher, Jr., writer/activist and past president of the Trans AfricaForum wrote “Josh Ruebner has offered a badly needed contribution to a discussion that is all too often suppressed in the mainstream media.”

Read more at www.shattered-hopes.com.

The event is sponsored by Friends for a Nonviolent World, Minnesota Break the Bonds Campaign, and Middle East Peace Now. It is endorsed by Jewish Voice for Peace Minnesota, Minnesota Coalition for Palestinian Rights, and Women Against Military Madness – Middle East Committee.

 

Mr. Ruebner will be speaking and signing copies of his book at Christ the Redeemer Lutheran Church, 5440 Penn Ave. South, Minneapolis, MN 55419 at 7:00 pm November 20, 2013.

Fast Times in Palestine Author Comes to Rochester

FAST TIMES IN PALESTINE

A Book Talk with Pamela J. Olson

TUESDAY, OCTOBER 29, 2013 at 7:00 pm

ZUMBRO LUTHERAN CHURCH – FIRESIDE ROOM

624 3rd Ave. SW

ROCHESTER, MN

FREE AND OPEN TO THE PUBLIC

 Pamela Olson will discuss her book Fast Times in Palestine, a memoir set in the heart of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.  The book is an account of Olson’s experience stumbling into the West Bank on a post-college backpacking trip, becoming a journalist, and serving as the foreign press coordinator for a Palestinian presidential candidate.

Little by little, the book reveals the realities of life under occupation –social, political, geographical, and psychological—in a narrative full of beauty, suspense, cruelty, star-crossed love, and dark humor.

I have read much of the writing of this conflict, and no other book has conveyed such an authentic, penetrating, and enchanting sense of the Palestinian people and their long struggle for rights and security. — Richard Falk, UN special Rapporteur on Human Rights in the Palestinian Territories

Brimming with tension and tragedy, but also with the humor, warmth, everyday foibles, and irrepressible hopes of a people determined to live free. —Tony Karon, Time

Sponsored by SouthEast Minnesota Alliance of Peacemakers (SEMNAP) and Minnesota Break the Bonds Campaign (MN BBC)

Questions?  Darlene Coffman at 507-250-0902.

Pamela Olson’s website: http://pamolson.org

Twenty Years of Failure

Twenty Years of Failure: MN BBC Report Documents MN State Board of Investment’s Neglect of Human Rights

On September 11, 2013, members of MN BBC personally delivered a comprehensive report to Governor Mark Dayton at the quarterly State Board of Investment meeting documenting the SBI’s twenty year failure to follow its own international human rights investment guidelines. MN BBC prepared the report following a two year examination of internal SBI documents. Those documents revealed that the SBI’s human rights guidelines, adopted in 1992 by a task force led by then State Auditor Dayton following pressure from Minnesota’s two largest labor unions, have failed to prevent the SBI from investing in countries, like Israel, that are documented human rights violators. According to the the report, the guidelines have received little more than lip service from the SBI’s investment managers, exposing the State of Minnesota to accusations of financial complicity in international human rights violations. The report concludes with recommendations that would immediately bring the SBI into compliance, if adopted. Click MNBBC-White Paper to see the full report.

 

MN BBC Featured in Front Page New York Times Article

I.R.S. Scrutiny Went Beyond the Political

By Published: July 4, 2013

WASHINGTON — In 2010, a tiny Palestinian-rights group called Minnesota Break the Bonds applied to the Internal Revenue Service for tax-exempt status. Two years and a lot of prodding later, the I.R.S. sent the group’s leaders a series of questions and requests almost identical to the ones it was sending to Tea Party groups at the time.

What are “the qualifications and experience” of Break the Bonds instructors? Does the group “present a sufficiently full and fair explanation of the relevant facts” about the West Bank and Gaza? Provide copies of pamphlets, brochures or other literature distributed at group events? Reveal all fees collected and “any voluntary contributions” made at group functions? Provide a template of petitions, postcards and any other material used to influence legislation, and a detailed accounting of the time and money spent to influence state legislators?

The controversy that erupted in May has focused on an ideological question: Were conservative groups singled out for special treatment based on their politics, or did the I.R.S. equally target liberal groups? But a closer look at the I.R.S. operation suggests that the problem was less about ideology and more about how a process instructing reviewers to “be on the lookout” for selected terms was applied to any group that mentioned certain words in its application.

Organizations approached by The New York Times based on specific “lookout list” warnings, like advocates for people in “occupied territories” and “open source software developers,” told similar stories of long waits, intrusive inquiries and bureaucratic hassles that pointed to no particular bias but rather to a process that became too rigid and too broad. The lists often did point to legitimate issues: partisan political campaign organizations seeking tax-exempt status, or commercial businesses hoping to cloak themselves as nonprofit groups. But even I.R.S. officials say lookout list warnings were often pursued in a ham-handed or overly rigid way.

Last month, the acting I.R.S. commissioner, Daniel I. Werfel, formally ordered an end to such lists after discovering that they were still in use after the controversy flared up.

Sylvia Schwarz, a co-director of the Break the Bonds group, shrugged at the treatment meted out by the I.R.S. She was used to rough scrutiny in a country that tilts against the Palestinians, she said. But the same questions, asked of conservative organizations, led to the dismissals of top I.R.S. officials, prompting criminal and Congressional investigations, scarring the reputation of the nation’s tax collection agency and eliciting charges that the White House had used the agency to pursue its political opponents.

Two months of investigation by Congress and the I.R.S. has produced new documents that have clouded much of the controversy’s narrative. In the more complicated picture now emerging, many organizations other than conservative groups were singled out: “progressive” organizations, medical marijuana purveyors, organizations formed to carry out President Obama’s health care law, and open source software developers who create software tools for computer code writers and distribute them free of charge.

“As soon as you say the words ‘open source,’ like other organizations that use ‘Tea Party’ or ‘Occupy,’ it gets you red-flagged,” said Luis Villa, a lawyer and a member of the board of directors of the Open Source Initiative. The I.R.S. feared that such groups were really moneymaking enterprises.

According to the Treasury inspector general for tax administration, the I.R.S. received 199,689 applications for tax-exempt status between 2010 and 2012. In 2012 alone, the agency received 73,319, of which about 22,000 were not approved in the initial review process. The inspector general looked at 296 applications flagged as potentially being from political groups. That means most of the applications pulled aside for further scrutiny in those years had nothing to do with politics, conservative or liberal, just as most of the red flags thrown up by the I.R.S.’s lookout lists were not overtly political.

Chi Eta Phi Sorority, a mainly African-American nurses’ society that advertises its mission as “social change,” applied for 501(c)(3) charitable status on June 24, 2011, days before the I.R.S. tightened its scrutiny of tax exemption applications. The organization fell under a “group rulings” flag in one of the lookout lists. Two years and 73 questions later, Chi Eta Phi is still waiting for the I.R.S.’s Cincinnati office, which handles the tax exemption applications, to respond.

Among the requests for more information: Describe in detail any legislative activities, with percentage of time and money devoted. Explain the following programs: sisterhood/brotherhood, networking, collaboration with other organizations, loving and caring, and commitment and service.

As for “occupied territory” advocacy groups like Ms. Schwarz’s, an I.R.S. “be on the lookout” list warned screeners that “applications may be inflammatory, advocate a one-sided point of view, and promotional materials may signify propaganda.”

Some Congressional Democrats say the new details show that the initial reaction to the I.R.S. findings was skewed.

“We replaced the leadership of the I.R.S. over this. We have subpoenas out. We are deposing employees. And we have damaged the president,” said Representative Gerald E. Connolly, Democrat of Virginia and a member of the House committee that initiated the I.R.S. inquiry. “It turns out this has been a gross distortion of reality.”

Even with the narrative muddied, most Republicans see no reason to back off. The House Oversight and Government Reform Committee last week voted along party lines that an I.R.S. official, Lois Lerner, had waived her Fifth Amendment rights against self-incrimination by offering a brief statement as she invoked the amendment when she appeared before the committee in May. The vote paves the way for the committee to bring Ms. Lerner back for more questioning.

Republican investigators say conservative groups singled out by the I.R.S. have received far rougher treatment than liberal groups.

Yet some Republicans have tempered their statements on the controversy.

“We haven’t proved political motivation,” said Representative Charles Boustany Jr., a Louisiana Republican who, as the chairman of the House Ways and Means Subcommittee on Oversight, is leading one inquiry.

Senator Roy Blunt, Republican of Missouri, said that in retrospect, suggestions that Mr. Obama had orchestrated an I.R.S. attack on his political enemies were unwarranted.

“Presidents have always been very careful about maintaining the appearance of keeping hands off the I.R.S.,” he said. “I don’t have any reason to believe there wasn’t targeting of conservatives, but it might well have been a lot more than that as well.”

Groups that produce and disseminate open source software — which is distributed at no cost to anyone for further software development — may have had it the roughest. A recent I.R.S. “be on the lookout” list warned screeners that such software groups “are usually the for-profit business or for-profit support technicians of the software.”

“If you see a case, elevate it to your manager,” the list orders.

That entreaty has proved to be the kiss of death, said Mr. Villa, of the Open Source Initiative. One group seeking a tax exemption was making software as a tool for political dissent abroad — with the blessing of the United States government. Another was making software, free, for struggling musicians seeking to distribute their work on the Internet. They were both rejected, unlike most of the political groups, which have secured their tax exemptions.

“None of the groups have been able to find the magic words to get over the hurdle,” Mr. Villa said.

Jesse von Doom, whose group CASH Music seeks to help musicians on the Internet, applied for 501(c)(3) status in February 2009. Finally, in June 2012, his application was rejected in a 13-page letter signed by Ms. Lerner, the I.R.S.’s director of tax-exempt organizations, who has been put on administrative leave.

Democrats are now aiming their anger at J. Russell George, the Treasury inspector general for tax administration, whose audit in May helped make the controversy public. That audit focused on the targeting of groups that had “Tea Party,” “patriot” or “9/12” in their names.

Democrats say that they examined the 298 applications reviewed by the inspector general, and that some of them were from liberal groups. But Mr. George’s audit did not mention them.

Mr. George’s staff said he reviewed all the applications that the I.R.S. identified as potentially involving political groups, not just those from Tea Party groups. But the inspector concluded that only conservative groups got the extra scrutiny.

“When you serve in this capacity, you have to make determinations that, on occasions, upset people,” Mr. George said in a statement. “This obviously is one of those occasions.”