Photo (courtesy of Elisabeth Geschiere): Some of the numerous Palestinian homes and shops along Shuhada Street in Hebron, West Bank that have been closed by Israeli Occupation Forces.

Joel Weisburg, Northfield News, June 18, 2010

To the editor:
I am a Jew who is critical of many Israeli policies toward Palestinians. I feel I must respond to my colleague Alan Rubenstein’s suggestion (Northfield News, June 16) that an earlier letter writer, Bill McGrath, was “duped by anti-semites” into calling for boycott, divestment and sanctions against Israel for attacking the Gaza aid convoy.

The great majority of the participants in the aid convoy were nonviolent peace activists. I would have been proud to have been among them, trying to deliver aid to a people who are living in destitution due to Israel’s and Egypt’s blockade. I would not be surprised if a small number among the flotilla participants were anti-Jewish, but this was far from a common thread among them.

The Hamas movement that rules Gaza was elected by the people of Gaza in an election that international observers claimed was free and fair. Dr. Rubenstein is correct that the Hamas movement makes clear its desire to destroy Israel. Nevertheless, Israel needs to negotiate with its enemies, as does every country that faces a foe. But instead of attempting to talk to its enemies, it often responds with force. Two of the latest instances were the Israeli invasion of Gaza 18 months ago which resulted in hundreds of civilian deaths and Israel’s attack on the aid flotilla.

These actions are abhorred by many people, including some Jews like me. The Israeli government appears to feel that it can use disproportionate force with few resulting consequences. Part of the reason for this is undoubtedly the strong U.S. government support for its policies. Israel is the largest recipient of U.S. aid dollars, and we regularly veto U.N. resolutions condemning its actions against Palestinians.

Those of us who support a policy of boycott, divestment, and sanctions toward Israel are seeking to use nonviolent means to change its inhumane policies, much as was done toward South Africa and other countries that violate human rights. We are attempting to help bring justice to a people living under an unjust military occupation. I hope that readers will judge for themselves whether this means we have been “duped by anti-Semites.”

Joel Weisberg is a resident of Northfield, Minnesota.

First posted at: http://northfieldnews.com/news.php?viewStory=53197

Amber Michel, SC Times, June 24, 2010

In the days since the humanitarian mission to Gaza was besieged by Israeli commandos, I have grown increasingly frustrated with the declaration by Israel that its heavily armed commandos were acting only in self-defense. I’m also angry with my own government’s unwillingness to condemn the attacks.

Despite the bad, albeit predictable, behavior of the United States and Israeli governments, nothing is more offensive than the politically motivated claims that there is indeed no humanitarian crisis in Gaza.

How quickly we forget the death and destruction that washed over Gaza just 18 months ago. More than 1,400 were slaughtered; a devastating 24 percent of those were children.

No humanitarian crisis? Consider the findings of these aid organizations:

United Nations: “Around 70 percent of Gazans live on less than $1 a day, 75 percent rely on food aid and 60 percent have no daily access to water.”

World Health Organization: “Trucks of medical equipment bound for Gazan hospitals have repeatedly been turned away without explanation.”

Red Cross: “Import procedures are keeping even basic medical items … from entering the strip.”

Gaza desperately needs aid and supplies. The Gaza Freedom flotilla was on a peaceful humanitarian mission to deliver those badly needed goods.

Nearly one year ago, I was in a meeting with American citizen Huwaida Arraf, co-founder of the International Solidarity Movement, key organizer of the Gaza Freedom flotilla and passenger on one of the ships raided by Israel.

I could not have imagined that one year later I would hear reports of the massacre of so many innocents on a humanitarian mission. Thankfully, Huwaida was not seriously injured.

There is a humanitarian crisis. We as Americans, through the $3 billion in aid we provide Israel annually, are largely responsible for the suffering of millions in Gaza and the West Bank.

We have the opportunity to declare that as Minnesotans, we will not pay for any more suffering in Gaza and the West Bank. Minnesota owns $19 million in Israeli bonds, purchased with state pension and retirement funds. We can end Minnesota’s support for Israel’s murderous behavior. Be heard, Minnesota. Contact your legislators and tell them, “No Minnesota money for war crimes!”

Amber Michel is the Central MN regional organizer for Minnesota Break the Bonds and founder of Students for a Free Palestine at St. Cloud State University.

First Posted at: http://www.sctimes.com/article/20100624/OPINION/106240023/1006

Photo: www.indymedia.ie/article/91057

Rich Broderick, TC Daily Planet, June 2 2010.

It’s hard to decide which spectacle was more pathetic.

Was it hapless Eric Holder, the Attorney General who closed the book on torture, illegal surveillance and a host of other crimes committed by the Bush Administration, now bravely announcing the opening of criminal and civil investigations into the British Petroleum oil rig disaster?

Or was it the equally hapless Hilary Clinton the very next day rejecting demands for an independent investigation of Israel’s criminal attack in international waters on a Turkish aid flotilla and asking instead, pretty please, for Israel to conduct its own “impartial” inquiry into just how its military came to commit yet another outrage?

What a Hobson’s Choice of impotence!

If the timing of Israel’s latest act of aggression had not been determined by outside forces – the launching of the aid flotilla – I might suspect that the Netanyahu government conducted its raid on the Mavi Marmara to coincide with the distraction created for Americans by the Gulf of Mexico oil spill.

Certainly there is precedent for such suspicions. Israel’s re-invasion of the West Bank during the Second Intifada, its 2006 incursion into Lebanon (which left behind more than one million unexploded cluster bombs), and the massacre it carried out in December 2008 and early January 2009 in the Gaza Strip all took place while our eyes were turned elsewhere.

But even without the element of convenient timing, there are powerful currents connecting these two disasters – the BP spill, which is destroying one of the world’s largest, most productive, and fragile ecosystems, and Israel’s commando raid on the high seas.

To begin with, both predatory capitalism – the not-so-invisible hand governing the activities of criminal enterprises like BP – and predatory Zionism are, in the simplest terms, enemies of life. In the case of global capitalism, the enemy of all forms of life on earth. In the case of Zionism, the enemy of Palestinian life.

What’s more, these two apocalyptic ideologies – predatory capitalism and predatory Zionism — are within sight of achieving the wreckage that is the inevitable outcome of their activities. Even before the Gulf spill, the planetary ecosystem upon which human and most other forms of life depend for survival was at a tipping point from beyond which there will be no turning back. And Israel, by murdering and starving an entire generation of Palestinian children and stealing whatever scrap of land or natural resource might make it possible to support an independent Palestinian economy, is on the verge of eliminating any vestige of hope for a viable Palestinian state – which Israel never wanted in the first place.

Lastly, the most important connection between these phenomena is that both absolutely depend on the United States for political, economic, and military support in order to thrive and carry out their evil ends.

More than 98 percent of the oil pumped out of the Gulf of Mexico’s 3800 drill rigs is refined into gasoline for use in private automobiles – the cars we drive by choice and because, lacking a system of mass transit, we mostly have no choice but to drive. U.S. policy in the Middle East is driven by a quest for regional hegemony, the better to maintain access to oil fields and untapped reserves.

In turn, our oil-driven foreign policy helps feed this country’s military-industrial-complex, which, along with the End-Timers of the Christian Right and members of the Israel-right-or-wrong fifth column crowd, is one of the chief constituents of our “special relationship” with the Zionist state.

I’m not exactly sure how to get a handle on predatory global capitalism. The Caux Round Table (http://www.cauxroundtable.org/), an international non-profit headquartered in the Twin Cities, is trying to promote principles of ethical conduct in the world’s business community. Supporting their efforts might help, though I am also inclined to think that the exemplary execution of one or two of the psychopaths who run companies like BP might not be a bad idea either.

When it comes to predatory Zionism, there have emerged some peaceful and perhaps even effective ways to make a difference. One is the Global Boycott, Divest and Sanction Movement (http://bdsmovement.net). Begun about five years ago by Palestinian organizations, BDS has gained the support of many non-Palestinians, both inside and outside Israel, including most notably Canadian author and leading anti-global capitalism crusader, Naomi Klein. The BDS movement seeks to use tactics similar to those brought to bear on South Africa in efforts to end that nation’s apartheid policies.

Meanwhile, a local organization with ties to Global BDS, the Minnesota Break the Bonds Campaign (http://mn.breakthebonds.org/), wants to convince legislators to divest some $19 million in Israeli bonds currently held by several state pension and retirement funds.

Not only are those bonds helping to underwrite illegal settlements on the West Bank as well as Israel’s now three-year-old blockade of the Gaza Strip, a blockade that was not — pace America’s lapdog media — initiated to stop rockets from landing in Israel but to impose collective punishment on Gaza for electing a Hamas-led government. Minnesota’s pension funds could actually earn better rates of return if they were invested in higher-yielding – and less-bloodstained — bonds.

As horrific images of poisoned seas and dead wildlife compete with horrific images of the murder of pro-Palestinian activists on the high seas, it’s tempting to throw up our hands in despair. But despair is precisely the response that the BP’s and the Netanyahu’s and all their packs of flying monkeys in politics and the press want us to feel.

The Devil always has the best arguments. The Devil has always had the best arguments.  The antidote to despair is not argument but action. Even if the actions seem small and incremental, that’s still better then turning away – and in turn, throwing in our lot with the enemies of everything decent and just.

The enemies, indeed, of life itself.

First posted at: http://www.tcdailyplanet.net/blog/rich-broderick/murder-high-seas-divesting-death-and-destruction

Photo: http://www.reuters.com/article/idUSTRE65325D20100604

Fedwa Wazwaz, The Star-Tribune, June 2nd. 2010.

As events unfolded during the attack on the Freedom Flotilla in international waters, what was amazing was how credible news agencies like CNN opened the airwaves to Israeli government spokespeople to speak unchallenged. This while those who knew the other side of the story—the activists–were being detained, and after their personal belongings, including pictures and video footage, were seized by the Israeli Defense Forces.

Had this event happened off the shores of Iran, for instance, the news coverage would have been mainly on how Iran censors freedom of press and free speech.  But time and time again, when Israel attacks, and creates a news blackout – we find that in America, Israel speaks unchallenged.

Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting (FAIR) released a media advisory that can be read here.

“Much of the U.S. press coverage takes Israeli government claims at face value, and is based largely on footage made available by Israeli authorities–while Israel keeps the detained activists away from the media (not to mention from lawyers and worried family members).”

There were also no international law experts who appeared on maintstream news stations to debunk the Israeli claim that their actions were legal within international law.

As mentioned in FAIR advisory

“According to Craig Murray (5/31/10), former British ambassador and specialist on maritime law, the legal position ‘is very plain’: ‘To attack a foreign flagged vessel in international waters is illegal. It is not piracy, as the Israeli vessels carried a military commission. It is rather an act of illegal warfare.'”

What happened in the aftermath of Freedom Flotilla attack is no different than what has happened before.

We are hearing the same old ‘they started it’ and ‘Israel is acting in self-defense’ argument.  Noam Chomsky, professor of linguistics at MIT, responded to this classic argument best:  “You can’t defend yourself when you are militarily occupying someone else’s land.  Call it what you like, it is not self-defense.”

In this situation, the ships were on International waters, around 50-70 miles from Gaza.  Israel invaded the ships, so the self-defense argument does not stand here as well.  Israel was not defending itself because Israel’s self was not being invaded or attacked.

The context of this crisis is an occupation that is illegal within international law. It is a humanitarian struggle like the struggle for civil rights here and over apartheid in South Africa.  The world leaders have had their turn to resolve this situation and for decades they failed. Mainstream American media outlets have failed throughout these decades to ask the necessary critical questions before the American public square.  So, as with South Africa, ordinary people decided to take action.

People of many faiths, including Jews, and of many ethnicities and many walks of life–from holocaust survivors to intellectuals–have joined an international movement to dismantle Israel’s apartheid regime.

Unlike the media outlets, these ordinary citizens asked many questions of themselves and others.  They went on painstaking trips to see the situation on the ground.  They respected themselves enough to verify, to investigate and to dig for the truth.

Please read below some of these voices:
Desmond Tutu, South Africa
“It is not with rancor that we criticize the Israeli government, but with hope, a hope that a better future can be made for both Israelis and Palestinians, a future in which both the violence of the occupier and the resulting violent resistance of the occupied come to an end, and where one people need not rule over another, engendering suffering, humiliation, and retaliation. True peace must be anchored in justice ”

Judith Butler, Jewish faculty member at Berkeley.
“But if you struggle against voicelessness to speak out for what is right, then you are in the middle of that struggle against oppression and for freedom, a struggle that knows that there is no freedom for one until there is freedom for all. There are those who will surely accuse you of hatred, but perhaps those accusations are the enactment of hatred.”

Hajo Meyer is the author of The End of Judaism: An Ethical Tradition Betrayed.
“I am pained by the parallels I observe between my experiences in Germany prior to 1939 and those suffered by Palestinians today. I cannot help but hear echoes of the Nazi mythos of ‘blood and soil’ in the rhetoric of settler fundamentalism which claims a sacred right to all the lands of biblical Judea and Samaria. The various forms of collective punishment visited upon the Palestinian people — coerced ghettoization behind a ‘security wall’; the bulldozing of homes and destruction of fields; the bombing of schools, mosques, and government buildings; an economic blockade that deprives people of the water, food, medicine, education and the basic necessities for dignified survival — force me to recall the deprivations and humiliations that I experienced in my youth. This century-long process of oppression means unimaginable suffering for Palestinians.”

And the sad part is, as Norman Finkelstein points out in this footage here.  Unless, Israel is stopped – this is a very serious situation.  We need to get beyond the morality contest discussions, and childish who started it tag games, and get to the hard work of seeking truth, critical thinking, independent investigations and holding people responsible accountable before a court of law.
If you are interested in a campaign to investigate the raid and bringing a peaceful end to the blockade, then please sign the petition here.

The petition simply reads:

“We call for an immediate, independent investigation into the flotilla assault, full accountability for those responsible, and the lifting of the Gaza blockade.”

And Jewish Voices for Peace also has a petition that sends directly to your U.S. congresspeople.

I further invite you this coming Friday to an event on the Al-Nakba Commemoration.  Please bring your critical questions regarding the event to the speakers.

Friday, June 4, 2010
6:00 p.m.
Speakers George Galloway, British parliamentarian and founder of Viva Palestina
Dr. Hatem Bazian, UC Berkeley professor
Refreshments will be served
$10.00 admission fee
Crowne Plaza Minneapolis North
2200 Freeway Boulevard, Brooklyn Center, MN 55430

(originally posted at: http://www.startribune.com/yourvoices/fedwawazwaz.html?elr=KArks47cQiUdcOy_9cP3DiU47cQU7DYaGEP7U )

Marc Trius, May 14

I would like to start with a simple statement: a racially stratified, undemocratic, and warlike State isn’t good for anybody. It certainly isn’t good for those who get ground under the unsympathetic wheels of racial domination, or shot, blown, and burned by the fires of war. But neither is it good for those who benefit from enforced privilege or sit safe and secure in the bunker while the war is happening to someone else. Those who live by the sword will eventually die by the sword no matter how good their sword technology is, and those who live on the backs of others will end up consumed by their own cruelty and arrogance, no matter how long they themselves have previously been downtrodden.

Israel is a racially stratified, undemocratic, and warlike State. Israel is a State in which a fifth of the citizenry is denied a stake of ownership and required to forswear their own identity and history to avoid being branded enemies of the State. Even to call for equal rights is sufficient for an Israeli Arab to be hounded by the Security Services; to make alliances with Palestinians who are not citizens of Israel is even worse. When Azmi Bishara, a Palestinian Member of Knesset(MK)—the Israeli Congress—called for a ‘State of all its Citizens’ and refused to deny his cultural and political links with other Arabs, he was stripped of parliamentary immunity by special legislation, and eventually driven out of the country by harassment and threats of a trial for High Treason.

The so-called ‘Nakba Law’ is another attack on Palestinian identity, history, and self-expression. This law forbids public commemoration of the expulsion of more than 700,000 Palestinians from Israel in 1948; any public institution that commemorates the Day of the Nakba (May 15th) will be fined ten times the amount it spent on the event. This law passed the first reading in the Knesset last month, and has two more votes before it goes on the books.

There’s more: A series of ‘Loyalty Laws’ have been proposed that would strip anyone of citizenship for reasons such as refusing to swear fealty to Israel as a Jewish State; still pending is a law that would require Non-Governmental Organizations (NGOs) that receive funds from sources outside of Israel to register on a special list; and a law, inspired by the Goldstone Report, that would shut down any organization which “provides information to foreign authorities and act to bring Israeli Military officers or Israeli leaders to trial on alleged war crimes” (from Ha’aretz Newspaper) has been proposed by MKs from Kadima, a centrist Israeli party, and from the National Union, a far-right party.

This onslaught of legislation is partly the result of the last elections, when far-right parties such as Israel Our Home and The National Union entered the governing coalition. The underlying reasons, however, include the rising civic consciousness among the Israeli Arab public and the increasing threat it poses to Jewish supremacy in Israel.

That is why Arab civil society is targeted with such verve. A recent example is the arrest of Ameer Makhoul on May 6th. Makhoul, the head of an Arab NGO called ‘Ittijah’, or The Union of Arab Community-Based Associations, and chairman of the Public Committee for the Defense of Political Freedom, was taken from his home at 3:10am by Israeli Security Services, and is being held for the allegation of ‘grave espionage.’ A gag order on news coverage of this event stood for a few days, until Israeli and international bloggers brought it to light. While the Security Services claim that Makhoul was giving secrets to a Hizbullah agent in Lebanon, it was eventually revealed that the accusation relies on a meeting between Makhoul and a Palestinian environmentalist from Jordan. This is what happens to Arab citizens of Israel who, like Makhoul and Bishara, speak to Arabs who are not also Israeli citizens.

For a State that sees the Palestinian Arab minority, which comprises a fifth of its population, as a “Strategic Threat,” as Avi Diskin, head of the Israeli General Security Services, proclaimed in 2007, acts of repression are inescapable. The grudging grant of citizenship to those Palestinians who failed to flee in 1948 (an event which, as we recall, it may soon be a crime to commemorate) does not change the fact that, as Bishara wrote in the Los Angeles Times, they have been transformed into “foreigners in [their] own country,” made to face discrimination in housing, education, and employment, turned into scapegoats for anything that goes wrong in the land, and denied political freedom.

It takes more than elections to make a Democracy: it takes a system where the rule of law, freedom of expression and conscience, and equality are paramount. As the new, draconian legislation and Makhoul’s and Bishara’s cases demonstrate so clearly along with many other cases here unmentioned, whatever can be said of Israel—whether it’s good or bad, necessary or counterproductive, Jewish or anti-Jewish—a Democracy is certainly isn’t.

Originally posted at:  http://open.salon.com/blog/mtrius/2010/05/14/israel_a_democracy_for_jews_only

Photo source: http://ruslantrad.wordpress.com/2009/09/02/some-facts-you-may-not-have-known-about-israel-the-only-democracy-in-the-middle-east/

Heidi Rimpila, Editorial in Star Tribune, April 26, 2010

The conflict in the Middle East continues to escalate at an alarming rate. The violence and the destructiveness experienced by both the people of Israel and Palestine is unacceptable.

Unfortunately, the United States continues to come up short of taking real action to put an end to the occupation and oppression of Palestinians. After the recent American vow to halt Israel building settlements in East Jerusalem, the response from Israel should be a big eye-opener for all of us. This action taken by Israel should make us all question how much of a bilateral relationship there really is between Israel and the United States. It seems that Israel will do what it wants to do, with or without our consent.

If there is going to be any real action to bring about peace, there needs to be more than simply peace talks and negotiations between the United States, Israel and Palestine.

When is the United States going to see its role in this issue and take egalitarian action to bring about an end to this awful occupation that is hurting so many people on both ends?

Instead of trying to engage in peace talks that have so far done no good, the U.S. needs to stop providing financial support for Israel’s continuing oppression of the Palestinian people. By taking this step, America will engage in real action to stop Israel’s occupation of Palestine and move closer to bringing about a just peace.

Heidi Rimpila is a resident of Minneapolis, Minnesota.