Monthly Archive for January, 2010

Donna Mulhearn’s “Ordinary Courage”

Published on 31 January 2010 in Israel. 1 Comment Tags: , .

I’m honoured to be launching Donna Mulhearn’s first book, Ordinary Courage, which primarily examines her role as a human shield in Iraq in 2003:

Murdoch Books and The Centre for Peace and Conflict Studies at The University of Sydney are delighted to invite you to the launch of Donna Mulhearn’s first book, Ordinary Courage

To be launched by journalist and author Antony Loewenstein

Date: Tuesday 2nd February Time: 6.00-8.00pm Venue: Footbridge Theatre, The University of Sydney Parramatta Road, Camperdown Please RSVP by 29th January to claireg@murdochbooks.com.au

‘In this powerful memoir, Donna Mulhearn’s courage and principles stand in damning contrast to the lies told in our name. I salute her.’

John Pilger

What is happening to the war-scarred children of Gaza?

Published on 31 January 2010 in Israel. 0 Comments Tags: , , , , .

I’ve been publishing the compelling stories by Australian Donna Mulhearn during her recent trip to Gaza.

Here’s her latest and last reflections:

Dear friends,

The children concentrated hard as they drew the blood spurting out of bodies, the helicopters firing bullets onto people below, the aeroplanes dropping bombs. They also drew weary palm trees, grey clouds and houses broken in two.

But it was one child’s depiction of the sun that really broke my heart. In this drawing, the scenes of war were graphically depicted in a typical child-like way, and in the top left-hand corner, watching on, was the sun. It was coloured bright yellow, with rays extending towards the earth. It had large blue eyes, with big eyelashes, and little red lips. It looked similar to the way many children around the world would draw the sun.

Except this sun, the sun in Gaza, had tears falling down its cheeks.

The sun was crying. In the mind of this little boy from Gaza, his view of our world is of chaos around him and a sun that is crying.

We were in a dim, concrete back room of a building in one of Gaza’s poorest neighbourhoods. The children, aged from 4 years to about 10 sat cross-legged in a circle and quietly drew their pictures as we looked on. They were not fidgeting, or playing up, or distracted by our presence. They were strangely silent as they carefully drew.

These children have been diagnosed as suffering acute post-traumatic stress disorder. We were at a play therapy group established by the Palestinian Trauma Centre. The Centre hopes to respond to the devastating impact that last year’s attack had on the children of Gaza; the children endured its missiles, bullets, bombs and screams, day in day out.

The teacher invited the children to stand up and, one by one, explain their pictures. Our host whispered the translation to us as they held their pictures and spoke matter-of-factly.  After a minute of this, I turned my head to face the wall, so the children didn’t see me crying.

There were stories of being trapped under rubble in the dark and screaming and screaming some more and fighting their way out, only to find the bodies of their family lying dead in the ruins. There were stories of children holding the bodies of a parent, or grandparent after a missile attack, cradling them as life left their bodies. There were stories of sisters and brothers and cousins they used to have. And there were pictures of the houses they once lived in, now just rocks and rubble.

You can see some of the pictures here.

These are the stories of the little children of Gaza. Stories of things they should never see, or imagine, let alone experience for themselves.

But they did. And now the children of Gaza live the nightmare of trauma within a nightmare of occupation and siege. And it’s making them sick: sleepless, withdrawn, listless, angry. Physically ill.

The Palestinian Trauma Centre has conducted studies which conclude that most Palestinians in the Gaza Strip have been subjected to the symptoms of trauma and that 41% of children and their families are suffering serious mental illness and psychological disorders. Since the attack on Gaza last year, in which more than 1400 people were killed, including about 300 children, these figures would now be much worse.

There was another drawing that took my breath away. Created by a 10-year-old girl, it was simply a large eye on page. A carefully drawn eye: with black outline, eyebrows, and eyeballs coloured in light blue with a white pupil. And again there were tears falling from the eye. This time they were tears of blood, coloured dark red.

A child psychologist from the UK who was with us, observed how the drawing has none of the hallmarks of typical children’s pictures. He said the girl must have been in a state of psychosis when she drew it. Perhaps, like so many in Gaza, she had lost the will to live?

An eye with tears of blood and a sun that cries – these images are coming from deep within the little girls and boys of Gaza.

The little children of Gaza will grow up, one day.

Between now and then, I wonder, what has to be done to take the tears away?

Your pilgrim,

Donna

Memo to Jews close to God; porn and online gambling are your friends

Published on 31 January 2010 in Israel. 0 Comments Tags: , , , , .

The intention of ultra-Orthodox Jews in Israel to ban access to an open internet in Israel isn’t going too well:

Are Israel’s Haredi religious authorities losing control of their followers?

In December, leading Israeli rabbis launched a new push to curtail Internet use among ultra-Orthodox Jews, emphasizing that their longstanding ban on Web surfing applied to sites geared toward the Haredi community as well. They threatened stricter penalties than ever before for those who disobeyed. But rather than showing their power, the battle against Haredi Internet use has exposed the rabbis’ weakness, as large parts of the community resolutely remain online.

The Israeli rabbis first came out against Internet use in January 2000, when more than 30 Haredi leaders forbade Internet connections at home. Back then, the main concern was the easy availability of online pornography. The ban was not particularly controversial, as Israeli Haredim had long accepted a similar ban on owning television sets.

Many Haredim, however, circumvented the ban by using 3G phones, which allowed Internet access — until the rabbis forced them to buy “kosher-certified” sets in which the Internet feature was disabled. Others frequented Internet cafés. Still others brought computers into the home for work purposes, a practice that the Rabbinical Commission for Media Affairs — established by leading Haredi rabbis to set policy — was forced to permit in 2007, conceding that the Internet was essential for many businesses.

Senior rabbis continued to emphasize the ban on casual Internet use. But it was too late. Although no accurate figures for Haredi Internet use exist, the Israeli phone company Bezeq claims that a quarter of the Haredi households that it serves have a Bezeq Internet connection. Many others, presumably, use different service providers.

Meanwhile, blogs written by Haredim who have theological doubts or misgivings about their closed society have flourished. And Israeli Haredim developed an online network of news sites, whose existence is by now taken for granted. Along with hard news, the sites feature gossip from the rabbis’ courts, discussion of intra-communal scandals and forums in which any aspect of Haredi life can be criticized.

Jessie Boylan reports on the wild lands of Sinai and Gaza

Published on 31 January 2010 in Israel. 0 Comments Tags: , , , , .

I posted a few days ago a wonderful essay by Australian photo-journalist Conor Ashleigh about his experience in Egypt and Gaza during the Gaza Freedom March. A colleague Jessie Boylan was with him and she has also filed a compelling travelogue on the journey.

Is the internet actually helping authoritarianism in Iran?

Published on 31 January 2010 in General. 0 Comments Tags: , , , , .

Web contrarian Evgeny Morozov (I use that term with affection) argues that web tools such as Twitter and blogging are not really assisting dissidents in Iran but are in fact making it far easier for the regime to crack down.

Canadian students lead the way on BDS

Published on 31 January 2010 in Israel. 0 Comments Tags: , , , , , .

Students Against Israeli Apartheid (SAIA) Carleton in Ottawa, Canada, have released a stunning video explaining why their university should divest from companies intimately involved in the Israeli occupation.

It’s just the latest example of civil society taking up the issue of Palestine when governments and the elites continue backing gross human rights abuses in Palestine. Such attitudes won’t shift with better PR from Israel and its supporters. End the occupation and get back to us:

For the past several months, Students Against Israeli Apartheid – Carleton (SAIA), a student group at Carleton University in Ottawa that is committed to supporting the Palestinian struggle for freedom, has been conducting research on Carleton’s investments in Israeli apartheid. The Carleton Pension Fund currently lacks any ethical guidelines, with its only mandate being the maximization of profit. SAIA has discovered that the Pension Fund, which provides retirement income for Carleton staff and faculty, currently has some $2,762,535 invested in five companies that are complicit in the oppression of the Palestinian people. In light of these findings, SAIA has launched a campaign calling on Carleton to immediately divest from the offending corporations: Motorola, BAE Systems, Northrop Grumman, L-3 Communications, and Tesco supermarkets, as well as to adopt a socially responsible investment policy for all of its investments.

Motorola is involved in designing and implementing perimeter surveillance systems around illegal Israeli settlements and military camps in the West Bank.  Motorola and its subsidiaries also have hundreds of millions of dollars worth of contracts to supply the Israeli military with telecommunications technology, checkpoint security and control systems.  By providing support for the Israeli military, Motorola plays a role in ensuring that settlement expansion will continue, and that the occupation will deepen, in a clear violation of international law.

BAE Systems is the world’s third-largest arms producer.  Both BAE and its Israeli subsidiary, Rokar, contribute to weaponry used by Israel to attack Palestinian civilians in the occupied West Bank and Gaza.  BAE produces cluster bombs and the F-16 combat aircraft, which were used during the 2008-2009 assault on the Gaza Strip, which killed over 1,400 Palestinians, most of whom were non-combatant civilians.

Northrop Grumman, one of the world’s largest weapons manufacturers, provided the Israeli military with many of the parts for the Apache AH64D Longbow Helicopter, which was described by Amnesty International as a piece of “key equipment used by the [Israeli military] in the [December 2008 – January 2009] Gaza bombing campaign.”  Furthermore, Northrop Grumman is the sole provider of radars for the F-16 combat aircraft. It also assists in producing the Longbow Hellfire 2 missiles, which, as has been documented by many human rights organizations, were widely used against Palestinian civilians in Gaza.

L-3 Communications is one of the many large multinational firms aiding in the construction and maintenance of the system of military checkpoints that severely restrict Palestinian freedom of movement in the West Bank and around Gaza. The matrix of checkpoints has been condemned by human rights organizations as a brutally repressive system that violates the basic human rights of the Palestinian people.  In addition to being a means of political repression and land annexation, the checkpoints constitute a tool of collective punishment, which is a crime under international law.

Tesco Supermarkets is a large United Kingdom-based international grocery and general merchandising retail chain.  It has been the target of social justice activists in the U.K. for selling produce originating from illegal Israeli settlements, for mislabeling products coming from the settlements as “West Bank”, as well as for using an exporter, Carmel-Agrexco, which has been criticized for using slavery-type working conditions in its factories in the occupied West Bank.  Tesco’s financial support for the illegal Israeli settlements lends them legitimacy and enables their economic growth and physical expansion, while simultaneously inhibiting the development of the Palestinian economy.

Carleton is no stranger to BDS activism, and it has a strong precedent to build upon.  In 1987, Carleton divested from all companies complicit in the apartheid regime in South Africa.  Carleton’s president at the time wrote a memorandum, saying, “Carleton University abhors apartheid and will do all it can to show its position on apartheid within its business practices.” Given Carleton’s past commitment to divesting from apartheid regimes, SAIA is calling on the university to once again place itself on the right side of history by ending its investments in the ongoing oppression of the Palestinian people.

The South African victory serves as an inspiring model for SAIA’s divestment campaign, which is the first Palestine-centred divestment initiative in Canada. Hopes are high that, through a well-planned local campaign, as well as the natural growth of BDS, momentum will pick up at universities across the country and similar initiatives will emerge to form a national movement to cut campus ties with Israeli apartheid.

Specifically, SAIA recommends that:

1. The Carleton University Board of Governors, via the Pension Fund Committee, immediately divest of its stock in BAE Systems, L-3 Communications, Motorola, Northrop Grumman, and Tesco

2. Carleton University refrain from investing in other companies involved in violations of international law (for recommended guidelines see Conclusions/Recommendations section of the divestment report)

3. Carleton University work with the entire university community to develop, adopt, and implement a broader policy of Socially Responsible Investment (SRI) for its Pension Fund and other investments, through a transparent and effective process.

Muzzlewatch provides the background:

Last year we wrote about Canada (not Minnesota’s) Carleton University when their Apartheid Week poster was banned by the school administration. They didn’t realize at the time that the poster featured weaponry made by multinational companies that are part of the college’s investment portfolio. Well now they know. Here is their new campaign video which re-tells the story of the censorship of the poster and the reasons behind their new divestment campaign.

Why protesting Petraeus is so important

Published on 31 January 2010 in General. 0 Comments Tags: , .

I mentioned here recently the protest at Georgetown University against visiting speaker General David Petraeus. Soon after I received the following email from a participant of the action:

I am writing to thank you for mentioning last week’s protest of General Petraeus on Georgetown’s campus in your blog. As one of the students involved, it has been alarming to see the backlash against our actions both on campus and online. Forming the opinions of our detractors are the likes of this extremist blogger as well as the editorial board of the main student paper and the student government ["the Georgetown University Senate: 1) Condemns the disrespectful and improper actions of the Georgetown University students who disrupted the lecture of General David H. Petraeus on January 21, 2010. 2) Expresses our belief that this behavior abridged the speaker’s right to free speech and the audience’s right to see and hear the speaker, in conflict with university policy and our proud tradition of freedom of expression. 3) Expresses our gratitude and respect for General Petraeus, the men and women in uniform, and all those who keep us safe and protect our freedoms.].

If you are familiar at all with Georgetown, where such war criminals as Georget Tenet and Doug Feith have very recently held positions on the faculty, this will not surprise you. So in our ongoing effort to bring some sanity to a student body and faculty who have shown a frighteningly uncritical acceptance of American militarism, the base of our support must necessarily be located outside of the campus community.

Petraeus is definitely being groomed for politics with this grand lecture tour – a sitting general, incessantly professing his love of
his troops, taking practically a year off to polish his public image: a microcosm of modern virtual war. And his oft-cited qualifications are superficially very impressive – he wrote a dissertation at Princeton about the lessons of Vietnam: that’s presidential shit! Nonetheless he has been instrumental in crafting and executing the so-called surge strategy, which is little more than a blueprint for and a making-necessary-of an indefinitely prolonged occupation.

So from one person who finds such a scenario unacceptable to another, I express my gratitude. If you wish I can keep you posted on the ongoing struggle here at Georgetown – the more outlets there are for voices of dissent, the better. You never know what sorts of tactics will be employed to silence opposition.

Why our commentator class love to love war

Published on 31 January 2010 in General. 0 Comments Tags: , , , , .

Salon’s Glenn Greenwald rightly concludes that the responsibility-free media class that advocates “for more wars that never touch their lives” should be treated with the contempt they deserve (while, in contrast, somebody like Howard Zinn, who opposed wars, is side-lined or even ignored by the mainstream):

I’m periodically criticized for an ”angry” tone in my writing, which I always find mystifying.  I genuinely don’t understand why anger should be avoided or even how it could be.  What other reaction is possible when one looks around and sees the government leaders who committed these grave crimes completely unburdened by any accountability and treated as respectable dignitaries, or watches the Tom Friedmans, Jeffrey Goldbergs, Fred Hiatts and other unrepentent leading media propagandists who helped enable it still feted as Serious and honest experts, or beholds the current Cabinet and Senate filled with people who supported it, or observes the Michael O’Hanlons and Les Gelbs and other Foreign Policy Community luminaries who lent trans-partisan credence to it all continue to traipse around still pompously advocating for more wars that never touch their lives?

A few months ago, I did an MSNBC segment with Dan Senor, who is currently a Fox News contributor, author of a new book hailing the greatness of Israeli innovations, a recent addition to the Council on Foreign Relations, and husband of CNN anchor Campbell Brown.  But back in 2003 and 2004, he was Chief Spokesman for the ”Coalition Provisional Authority” in Iraq — the U.S. occupying force in that country.  Sitting in the green room with him before the segment, I was really disgusted by the paradox that one is supposed to treat him as just some random political adversary deserving of standard civility, respect and respectability — in other words, a Decent Person is supposed to forget that he was an official who enabled and lied about some of the most monstrous acts of the last many years and is wholly unrepentent.  And, of course, he was going on MSNBC that day to opine about our current foreign policy options:  direct involvement in this horrific crime is no disqualifying factor; it’s not even a black mark against someone’s credibility and reputation.

Much of the world doesn’t believe Israeli arrogance anymore

Published on 31 January 2010 in Israel. 0 Comments Tags: , , , .

The revealing statement by the Israeli government to the UN:

You are worrying about the humanitarian rights of 1.5 million Palestinians in Gaza. You should be worrying about one Israeli who is being held there.

Tony Blair will always be remembered for supporting colonial wars

Published on 30 January 2010 in General. 1 Comment Tags: , , .

The evidence given by Tony Blair to the Chilcot inquiry in London over his decision to invade Iraq showed a man utterly incapable or unwilling to understand the gravity of the decision. The hundreds of thousands killed, the lies told in the service of war and the criminality of the entire enterprise. Many in the world will always regard Blair as a war criminal, myself included.

Blair’s testimony even included a not-so-subtle call for military action against Iran.

In the Guardian, Iraqi Haifa Zangana writes:

It was excruciating watching Tony Blair’s testimony at the Iraq inquiry. Blair was the same smooth talker as he was throughout his career, repeating his “absolutely clear” visions, how options are quite simple, and “when you’re right, it is the right thing to do”. He kept to his usual script, including reading from his speeches and preaching at length on why he feels stronger now about WMD and managed to manoeuvre the committee on to “the danger of Iran”, though never mentioning Israel’s arsenal. He was so self-righteous, I got the impression that he was about to stand up holding the bible ranting “God will judge me on the Iraq war”!

But how often do war criminals admit their crimes? He was in a warm, well-lit hall, conversing with gentle folk in an academic conversation that could have lasted forever. Undergraduates would have asked more probing questions.

Sabiha Khudur Talib, a 62-year-old grandmother from Basra, was led away from her house in 2006 by British soldiers, according to her son. Her tortured body was found dumped on a roadside in a British body bag. The Royal Military Police, we are told, is investigating. Should not Blair be investigated too? Contrast Blair’s questioning with the questioning of Iraqis initiated by Blair and Bush.

Abu Ghraib was just the start for the terror campaign unleashed by the “liberators”. The legacy is still there, by mercenaries and US-UK trained Iraqi guards: midnight raids, people led into darkness in their underwear with hands shackled and sacks on their heads, to be tortured about allegations that can be later dubbed “mistakes”. Last month alone nearly two thousands Iraqis were arrested, accused of terrorism.

Blair’s polished performance only confirms to Iraqis, Arabs and Muslims what they experience on the ground: racist, colonial foreign policy.

This inquiry can only be meaningful if it leads to the re-establishment of justice and international law. Without that we can only imagine what the growing orphans will do to Iraq and the world in a few years. A humanitarian worker, quoted in the latest Red Cross report, said: “Once I was called to an explosion site. There I saw a four-year-old boy sitting beside his mother’s body, decapitated by the explosion. He was talking to her, asking her what had happened.” He will be asking the living too. Current UN estimates are of 5 million Iraqi orphans, holding the UK and the US responsible. It is up to the British people who had twice democratically elected Blair and co to make amends to the victims, to hold their government responsible for the damage to Iraq and to the world.

Mahmoud Abbas and his cute police state

Published on 30 January 2010 in Israel. 0 Comments Tags: , , , , .

How the US-backed Palestinian Authority deals with dissent in the West Bank, silencing and arresting imams and activists.

The makings of a police state, kindly brought to the Palestinians by the international community.

Zinn dies, NPR abuses his memory

Published on 30 January 2010 in General. 2 Comments Tags: , .

Following the death of Howard Zinn, America’s public broadcaster, National Public Radio (NPR) featured the following (via FAIR):

When progressive historian Howard Zinn died on January 27, NPR’s All Things Considered (1/28/10) marked his passing with something you don’t often see in an obituary: a rebuttal.

After quoting Noam Chomsky and Julian Bond, NPR’s Allison Keyes turned to far-right activist David Horowitz to symbolically spit on Zinn’s grave. “There is absolutely nothing in Howard Zinn’s intellectual output that is worthy of any kind of respect,” Horowitz declared. “Zinn represents a fringe mentality which has unfortunately seduced millions of people at this point in time. So he did certainly alter the consciousness of millions of younger people for the worse.”

Horowitz’s substance-free attack contributed nothing to an understanding of Zinn’s life or work, other than conveying that he’s disliked by cranky right-wingers. (Horowitz has been best known in recent years for his race-baiting and Muslim-bashing–Extra!, 5-6/02; FAIR report, 10/1/08.) He seems to have been included merely to demonstrate that NPR will not allow praise for a leftist to go unaccompanied by conservative contempt.

That’s “balance” for you.

Israel only sees goodness in itself

Published on 30 January 2010 in Israel. 1 Comment Tags: , , , .

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu:

They [the international community] know that no country has faced the kind of terror rocket attacks that we have faced, except for Britain during World War II, and that our response was the only sensible response. Operation Cast Lead was a more proportionate response than was meted out by Great Britain when it was hit by a roughly equal number of projectiles.

There is no humanitarian crisis in Gaza.

In rejecting the Goldstone report, Defence Minister Ehud Barak:

I think this report again proves the fact that the IDF (Israel Defence Force) is the most responsible and serious army and operates in the most moral way.

Conor Ashleigh on “My Journey to Gaza”

Published on 29 January 2010 in Israel. 1 Comment Tags: , , , , , .

An Australian colleague, photo-journalist Conor Ashleigh, recently embarked on the Gaza Freedom March but his experience, told exclusively on this website below, is something to behold.

He shot some stunning photographers in Gaza itself, “One Year On”:

Here is Conor’s story:

My journey began on December 26th or Boxing Day as its known in Australia. Three plane trips and 25 hours later I emerge through an early morning haze of pollution in Africa’s biggest city, Cairo. I head straight away to meet up with two Australians who have been working in the region for the last year and have both been involved in the Gaza Freedom March and previous delegations to the Strip. Over a glass of coffee I get an update on the march. The murmurs I heard before my departure are confirmed; its quite clear that the Egyptian Government doesn’t intend to let the 1400 strong international delegation into Gaza. I was so disappointed by this news; all the effort to generate support to travel to Gaza seemed pointless, at least for a few hours until the two Australians propose that I travel with them to the border town of Rafah to establish a protest camp from where we can attempt to enter Gaza. Trusting their sense of judgment coupled with the idea of being stuck in crazy Cairo with 1400 extremely frustrated peace activists the decision was made, I would leave as soon as possible for the border. After a few hours racing around Cairo buying supplies which included a huge canvas tent we jumped in a mini bus filled with locals and zoomed off towards Al-Arish.

Al-Arish is the closest city to the Rafah crossing and a central hub for goods travelling into Gaza via the tunnels. Throughout the day reports had been flooding in that foreigners were being refused entry and that people already based in the city for the march were being held in their hotels under house arrest. While this was a concern we had been in contact with certain people in the port city who promised to hide us as long as we could reach safely. With the girls covered in headscarves we slipped through two checkpoints, while just 200 kilometres from Al-Arish we reached a more established point with at least 20 Egyptian security officials. Again the door to our mini bus was opened and people were asked to show their Egyptian identification cards. Unfortunately I was next to the door and my sleeping act was interrupted by a police officer demanding my card, after replying to his barking demands with blank stares it became clear I was not in fact a local but one of the foreigners the many extra security officers were stationed to find.

Caught, we piled out of the mini bus, grabbed our bags and tent from the roof and sat down while the many plain clothed security officials discussed our situation. We had stupidly handed over our passports and being an identifiable fugitive wasn’t particularly appealing so a quick escape wasn’t possible. Once the initial hype settled we realised there were two Britons also waiting at the checkpoint. Soon after another two foreigners were stopped and ordered out. Our group refusing to return to Cairo had quickly become eight. While the security officials continued to tell us that our only option was to return to Cairo we maintained our peaceful protest and refused to move. The police and security detail weren’t sure what to do with us but our presence at the checkpoint was not appreciated. Constantly the security men tried to intimidate us by screaming in our faces ‘yalla yalla’, which is Arabic for ‘go go’. We refused to move for quite some time, eventually another four vehicles full of armed plain clothed security arrived, the intimidation mounted until we were given no other option but to move up the road. By this point it was well past midnight, no one had eaten and multiple layers of clothing were being creatively added. Once we established our canvas mansion we all collapsed to sleep for a few well-needed hours before the sun was on its way back out.

Waking in a canvas mansion in the Sinai desert wasn’t as romantic as it sounds. We had all barely eaten, while personally it had been 24 hours since my last meal. To pass the time we attempted a game of chess and even tried to entice the police to a game of soccer but inevitably these were all just small distractions from our hunger and lack of a plan. Eventually it was agreed that we must find food so three members of the group set out in the direction of a sign that indicated a petrol station wasn’t too far back along the highway. After a few hours the three returned bearing gifts that seemed all so incredible considering our lack of nourishment; pita bread, cheese, bottles of water, canned beef, apple juice as well as exciting news of a possible alternative to our situation. As we made a respectable arms length circle from the goods we made our way through enough food aid to relieve a small refugee camp. We mixed bread with cheese and tahina, while our scouts then went on to share exciting news about meeting a local Bedouin who through the language differences understood our dilemma and offered to help us through the desert and away from the police.

Throughout the day the police presence at the checkpoint had grown to at least 200 personnel including 6 large riot buses full of armed soldiers. Slipping away from the police into the desert with the Bedouin man was not straight forward, as our passports would only be returned if we agree to return to Cairo. We packed down our tent and approached the head security official where we managed to negotiate to have our passports back and return to the nearest town where we could find food and water. Surprisingly the police agreed and hailed down a taxi, after close conversation with the driver we were able to load on our bags and start squeezing into the taxi, as we attempted to affirm with the driver that we would stop in the next town the police interjected saying that we must travel directly to Cairo. In a unified protest we grabbed our bags plus the canvas mansion and made our way back down the highway with passports in tow. After managing to get a kilometre away we stopped behind a house and called our contact, within a few minutes we could see his ute driving down the highway looking for us, as it spotted us it pulled in quickly and somehow we managed to all squeeze ourselves and our gear into the ute and drive off into the desert.

Once we had negotiated a price and another ute arrived we set off into the Sinai desert. It didn’t take much to realise how well these men know the desert, maybe this has something to do with the fact that the endless mounds of golden granules all seem the same to me. My driver’s questions and eagerness to talk became worrying when a few times he slipped off the track and we launched off a tuft of sand, It took quite some time to decipher the odd form of communication between the two cars, as we were scooting along sandy roads at 100km the leading cars lights would turn off or switch to just hazards while at other points the tailing car would kill its lights placing total trust in the path taken by the first. After two hours we stopped and were met by two men in a rather flash new 4WD, the driver told us to put our bags in the new car and as he waved his arm around I noticed the handgun tucked neatly under his arm with extra clips stowed under the other. I informed the others quietly about the guy we were now getting in a car with, before we had time to talk about it we were piling in to the car. Being the first to open the door to the back seat I couldn’t help but notice a vest that lay across the back seat, it didn’t take me long to realise it was filled with AK47 clips and without even thinking I picked it up and asked where I should place it. Once it was resting safely in the front next to the Kalashnikov our group like a three-dimensional game of Tetris managed to squeeze into the car. After another few hours driving we arrived at a small thatched hut where a few very surprised looking men sat around a pit of glowing coals. The group in the little hut had tripled once our group arrived, after a cup of tea and a chat with the men the morning was fast approaching and we all fell into a hazy sleep.

The next day we awoke to find other men arriving in the little camp, with just Jessie speaking Arabic we managed to tell the Bedouins about our trip so far as well as our plans to travel to Gaza to take part in the Gaza Freedom March, the men were all supportive of our plan as well as the struggle of the Palestinians. It was interesting to hear the men talk about how they identify not as Egyptians but as Bedouins, as a people who move freely not bound by the typical borders, we heard stories of how these men guide refugees and goods into Israel as well as providing supplies for the tunnels into Gaza.

In true Bedouin fashion we were given more food then we could eat and once our expanded stomachs had resigned from what seemed like a bottomless plate of food we set off in two 4WD’s for the desert. As the cars turned off a sealed road into the sand dunes I wondered why they would feed us so well if they planned to take us into the Sinai and finish us off, soon enough we stopped on top of a large sand dune from where we could see Israel and Gaza. The men went about deflating the car tires and as we all hopped back in we started to descend the sheer drop of the dune. I am not sure if it is physically possible for a car to role end over end but I was convinced this was about to happen, the fear of rolling down the epic dune was shared with attempting not to land on the AK47 that bumped along on the back seat next to me, after starting slowly the driver then floored the car as we bounced away with our drivers giggling at our serious stares from the rear vision mirror. Once the novelty had worn off we stopped at a rather large house in the desert. We were ushered into a palace where elaborate ground cushions ringed the large marble floor. After our adventures from the previous few days I felt naughty sitting in this incredible house, we all seemed out of place but the head man of the house made us welcome and busied us with plates of food and cups of tea and coffee. After our second meal we made up our beds with the women sleeping upstairs and the men on the luscious cushions in the main room. My life experience so far has shaped my rational mind while my time in Egypt which included escaping the government’s check points and then being warmly welcomed by AK47 wielding desert people has totally crippled any sense of normality I have known and I still hadn’t reached Gaza.

The next morning we received confirmation that a bus with just 70 of the1400 Gaza Freedom Marchers had left Cairo for Gaza. With knowing little about the current politics of the Gaza Freedom March or the actions that had been taking place in Cairo which was where the majority of the marchers remained, we set out in the late afternoon for Al-Arish. Travelling in the second carload with the two Australians and a Turkish girl we sped through the desert at 160km loud Egyptian music pounded the car while a handgun and four mobile phones sat on the front seat between the driver and myself.

We arrived at the agreed hotel in Al-Arish to meet the buses with the GFM delegation from Cairo, instead we were met by members of the Gaza Freedom March a few in particular who were trying rather aggressively to convince us not to enter Gaza. A meeting surrounding the politics of the buses entering Gaza swarmed inside, many people were quite critical of the token number of people given access while five members of our group decided not to travel. I am thankful that I left in the second car and didn’t have the best part of an hour to become overwhelmed by the intense negotiations that had been exploding at the hotel or take part in the larger issues that had been dominating the international delegation in Cairo while our adventure had been unfolding. I recognise the sentiment that a smaller group entering Gaza was a political sell out, but I also know that individual’s intentions for travelling to Gaza are very diverse, some members of the group who entered were returning to Gaza to see family they hadn’t ever met or seen for decades. Despite the messy politics involved with the trip, I came to Egypt for one reason and that was to visit Gaza, to bear witness and share the stories I was able to learn about with a wider audience in Australia and around the world.

So in short after the complicated arrival in Al-Arish I did board the bus for Gaza along with 83 other people including Palestinians living abroad, human rights workers, Orthodox Rabbis opposed to the siege, peace activists as well as a bunch of other incredibly talented individuals, journalists and story tellers.

My time in Gaza

After a delayed crossing in Rafah we were finally allowed into Gaza where we were greeted by a large contingent of Hamas officials who escorted the group to our hotels. After another late night and a few hours sleep the Gaza Freedom March awaited us, initially Code Pink the group organising the GFM had estimated that 50,000 Palestinians would march in opposition to the continuing siege. After talking quietly with a few locals it was made clear that the march had been taken over by Hamas and many civil society groups who had been preparing for months were no longer welcome at the march. Hearing this news was devastating, I considered not attending in protest but I reminded myself that I came to Gaza to document and I’m sure I wouldn’t find much in my hotel.

The march was quite obviously not what anyone expected, there were barely any local women present and only 500 marchers at a generous estimate. Numerous Hamas police and security officers ringed the march in particular the Orthodox Rabbis from New York, it was an impressive sight to see these Rabbis marching along waving their Palestinian flags and holding anti-Zionist signs. Once the marchers reached the Erez crossing passionate speeches ensued as well as chants from the international delegation. After the march the foreigners were rounded up and taken on a bus tour of some areas that were badly affected by the bombings a year ago. It was extremely frustrating to be stuck on a bus and not allowed to interact with the local people, the strict leash Hamas held was starting to agitate many foreigners including myself. Once we returned to the hotel myself along with another Australian photographer Jessie Boylan escaped from the hotel and despite the security details attempts to stop us we marched off keen to experience some real Gaza. Jessie has been working in the region on projects for over a year and had already visited Gaza twice before, her knowledge and friends made it possible for me to learn about the reality Hamas desperately want us not to see.

Through Jessie I met an incredibly inspiring person named Doa’a, she is 25 years old and has recently graduated in medicine from a university in Gaza. Outside the Emergency Department in the hospital where Doa’a works she showed us a tent filled with shrapnel from the bombings a year ago. Doa’s shared with us stories from the chaotic time when the bombs including white phosphorous fell on homes, schools, UN warehouses and other civilian infrastructure. Doa’a was obviously uncomfortable reliving these memories from a year ago, the conversation quickly turned to her engagement and upcoming wedding. When Doa’a is married she will move to Sweden to live with her husband also a Palestinian doctor, she seems understandably sad to be leaving her friends and family behind but at the same time life under the siege offers little opportunity or hope for young people such as Doa’a and an opportunity to work and study further in Europe would be hard to pass up.

As the year of 2009 was fast coming to an end I found myself at a Palestinian hip-hop gig come candle light vigil. With a full moon watching over what a friend Gazan friend Ahmad called ‘the worst year of his life’, the candles and sombre mood seemed fitting for a moment of reflection. P-Unit is a hip-hop crew who use their art form to tell of the injustice and struggle Gazans face, P-Unit took to the stage and it didn’t take long to have the crowd going crazy, people were cheering and dancing on top of chairs which pushed the rappers even harder with their Arabic rhymes. After just the second song the Hamas security officials decided people were having too much fun and shut down the show, it was so disappointing this happened but the rappers themselves told me it happens to them quite a lot when they perform. While Gaza is a war zone it is also a place of incredible culture where education and the arts are highly regarded therefore witnessing this censorship was important as it allowed me to understand the lack of freedom many people face in Gaza.

The next morning, the first day of 2010, Hamas had another bus tour planned for the group however Jessie and I had other plans. After avoiding the bus we met up with a friend of Jessie’s who had organised a press taxi that was fitted with a police siren and driven by a man who used to drive for the previous political leader in Gaza, I believe. After flying along the coast we ended up in Rafah the area that borders with Egypt. The siege of Gaza means the closure of all borders into the territory, in order for the 1.5 million people to survive tunnels under the Egyptian border have sprung up throughout Rafah. I was able to visit the tunnels and to see first hand the process of survival, it was seven metres below the surface in a small tunnel where I met 20 year old Mahmoud. Mahmoud has been working in the tunnels since he was 17. He works for 12 hours each day and earns US $45 a day. Not a bad wage in a place where most people survive from aid deliveries but the catch being the danger associated to working in the tunnels. The week before I stood there hunched over three young men just like Mahmoud died in a tunnel collapse, it’s a common occurrence I am told made worse from Israeli bombings.

Moving through the tunnels is everything from petrol to fruit and this lifeline is soon to be stopped, the Egyptian government recently announced their plans to build a large metal barrier under the border crossing. I asked the man in charge of the tunnel what would happen when Egypt completes this underground barrier he told me with conviction that they will find a way to penetrate it, I believe they will but what will be the costs in the meantime and how will Gazan’s manage to survive with growing prices for basic essentials.

Since the Israeli withdrawal from the Gaza Strip in 2005 eerie remains of their former settlements still stand as reminders of their dominance and control of Gaza. I was walking close to the ocean through the skeleton of an Israeli green house when I heard the distinct sound of rapid gunfire. We drove down to the beach where we met Gazan border police who confirmed the gunfire was coming from an Israeli patrol boat that patrolled just a few kilometres off the coast. In order to survive fisherman head out in their small boats only to come under fire from Israeli patrol boats who accuse them of crossing into Israeli waters. As we set out for Gaza city I scanned the landscape and watched the Palestinian boats zip across the water in a game of cat and mouse while on the shore the Strip’s sewage flowed freely into the ocean, this siege affects every part of life including the most basic forms of infrastructure.

Once we arrived back in Gaza City Jessie invited me to visit a family she knows well. Gaza is reportedly the most densely populated region in the world and this family like their many neighbours live in an overcrowded apartment. The home I entered was lovely, everyone I spoke to inspired me with his or her courage and intelligence, in particular Asma. Asma and her family experience a lot of social stigma for the fact that she is divorced, she is harassed for her work as a writer and activist while the facts that she has male friends and doesn’t cover her head also cause her trouble with Hamas. Currently writing her third book titled ‘Gaza is Haram’, Asma knows that when it comes time to be published she will have to leave Gaza for sometime as it wont be safe for her to remain with the expected religious backlash. While sitting and chatting with the family in the lounge room the sound of a not too distant bomb fills the room, Asma’s mother instantly reaches for the radio as she holds it to her ear her fingers furiously turn the knob searching for a station with information. Nothing is known about the bomb as night falls and unfortunately we must leave this incredible family to return to the hotel where the international delegation is meeting for a presentation from the Palestinian Centre for Human Rights.

Without knowing my last night lay before me in Gaza I sit down and chat with my new friends and make plans for the next week, as we sit smoking a shisha and drinking Turkish coffee I received a text message from another young Gazan inviting me to stay with her family for the rest of my time in Gaza.

Hope must be exceedingly hard to find in a place where freedom is only an intellectual notion but as I sat talking and joking with such a well educated, creative and ambitious group of youth I am sure there is much hope for the future of Gaza.

The following morning I awake before the sun and meet up with Jessie and a Gazan named Ahmad who has a great sense of humour, we shake off our yawns and head down to the sea for the daily fish markets. These markets must be a bizarre display from a distance as men gather round a particular box of seafood and aggressively bid until a winner is found, then just as abruptly as the catch has been won the tightly formed crowd shuffles to the next box. After a while of wrestling my way through these circles we walked down to the port where the fishing boats are docked. The shoreline is scattered with remains of buildings that lay as a constant reminder of the reality in Gaza.

Pushed for time we head back to the hotel to pack, the majority of the international delegation is leaving after the short window of time given by the government has come to an end. While people mill around saying goodbye to family and friends, myself and a group of others who intend to stay longer in the world’s most densely populated region try to avoid being shoved onto the buses. As the buses pull out from the hotel my Gazan friends join me as we plan for the day which includes visiting the Jabailya refugee camp and meeting the family I will live with for a week. As we attempt to leave the hotel a wall of Hamas security officers stops us, while I have been able to avoid the spook’s grip in previous days the suit and sweater types barricading the doorways are determined to not allow any of the foreigners out of the hotel. After an emotional few hours where I couldn’t help but cry my friends told me ‘Conor, smile, you’re in Gaza’. After an hour or so my Gazan friends were  forced to leave the hotel, at this point sitting in the lobby surrounded by Hamas guards I felt very much alone. Elsewhere in the hotel other internationals that planned to stay longer tried to hide in the hotel but were eventually rounded up, then we were all dumped on a bus from where we watched Gaza leave us behind as we drove silently to the border. As we drove along at dusk I sat there still in shock that my time had come to an end so quickly, I had planned to be in Gaza for another week and the idea of just so few days experiencing life there was heartbreaking. The official reason that our stay couldn’t be extended was that the Egyptians would close the border at midnight and after that we wouldn’t be allowed to leave, after a painfully slow border crossing into Egypt I arrived in Cairo around 3am dumped my bags in Jessie’s house and fell into a deep sleep on a pile of cushions on the ground.

Reflections

In the days since I left Gaza it’s become quite evident that in fact the border was not totally closed as Hamas stated. It is difficult to not let my frustration overwhelm my other emotions and experiences from my time in Gaza. Hamas didn’t allow us the freedom to document and listen to the people in Gaza but the time I had with people in Gaza I was met with such openness and warmth that I distinguish greatly between the people and the government. Finally, I must acknowledge how lucky I am to possess a passport that allows me to leave Gaza under siege unlike the many Palestinians that desperately need to cross the border to receive medical care or try to return to university in Egypt.

It has taken me quite some time to process my experience. I avoided putting pen to paper for a few days in Cairo as I felt totally overwhelmed by my intense journey and I was quite insecure about writing this story in a manner that would do justice to the places I visited and the people I met.

Time for new Palestinian elections but who really cares?

Published on 29 January 2010 in Israel. 0 Comments Tags: , , , .

Internal Palestinian politics are mired in mistrust, hatred and fighting (or colluding) with Israeli occupation. This “milestone” has been barely recognised:

Four years after Hamas won an upset victory in the 2006 Palestinian legislative elections, prompting swift international sanctions and a Western-led diplomatic boycott, the mandate for the parliament it dominated officially expired on Monday.

According to the Palestinian Constitution, new parliamentary elections should have been held Sunday, Jan. 24, in both the West Bank and Gaza Strip.

But continued political division between the West Bank, governed by the Western-backed Palestinian Authority (PA), and the Hamas-run Gaza Strip, has delayed the elections indefinitely.

…

Omar Shaban, director of the Gaza-based Palestinian think tank Pal-Think, which works on Palestinian reconciliation efforts, says Hamas’s time in power has turned the organization into a more pragmatic movement ready to talk to the West. But he is afraid that because today’s deadline passed without any elections, Palestinians are further than ever from creating a democratic state.

“The dream that we had, to build a state and a viable political system, it is no longer feasible now that today has passed,” says Mr. Shaban. “How can we do this now when we can’t even have simple elections?”

Zinn on the universality of human rights (Zionism not excepted)

Published on 29 January 2010 in Israel. 1 Comment Tags: , , .

The death of Howard Zinn has reminded us of his powerful and incendiary words. Take this essay (reproduced in full below) from 1999, titled, “A larger consciousness“:

Some years ago, when I was teaching at Boston University, I was asked by a Jewish group to give a talk on the Holocaust. I spoke that evening, but not about the Holocaust of World War II, not about the genocide of six million Jews. It was the mid-Eighties, and the United States government was supporting death squad governments in Central America, so I spoke of the deaths of hundreds of thousands of peasants in Guatemala and El Salvador, victims of American policy. My point was that the memory of the Jewish Holocaust should not be encircled by barbed wire, morally ghettoized, kept isolated from other genocides in history. It seemed to me that to remember what happened to Jews served no important purpose unless it aroused indignation, anger, action against all atrocities, anywhere in the world.

A few days later, in the campus newspaper, there was a letter from a faculty member who had heard me speak—a Jewish refugee who had left Europe for Argentina, and then the United States. He objected strenuously to my extending the moral issue from Jews in Europe in the 1940s to people in other parts of the world, in our time. The Holocaust was a sacred memory. It was a unique event, not to be compared to other events. He was outraged that, invited to speak on the Jewish Holocaust, I had chosen to speak about other matters.

I was reminded of this experience when I recently read a book by Peter Novick, THE HOLOCAUST IN AMERICAN LIFE. Novick’s starting point is the question: why, fifty years after the event, does the Holocaust play a more prominent role in this country—the Holocaust Museum in Washington, hundreds of Holocaust programs in schools—than it did in the first decades after the second World War? Surely at the core of the memory is a horror that should not be forgotten. But around that core, whose integrity needs no enhancement, there has grown up an industry of memorialists who have labored to keep that memory alive for purposes of their own.

Some Jews have used the Holocaust as a way of preserving a unique identity, which they see threatened by intermarriage and assimilation. Zionists have used the Holocaust, since the 1967 war, to justify further Israeli expansion into Palestianian land, and to build support for a beleaguered Israel (more beleaguered, as David Ben-Gurion had predicted, once it occupied the West Bank and Gaza). And non-Jewish politicians have used the Holocaust to build political support among the numerically small but influential Jewish voters—note the solemn pronouncements of Presidents wearing yarmulkas to underline their anguished sympathy.

I would never have become a historian if I thought that it would become my professional duty to go into the past and never emerge, to study long-gone events and remember them only for their uniqueness, not connecting them to events going on in my time. If the Holocaust was to have any meaning, I thought, we must transfer our anger to the brutalities of our time. We must atone for our allowing the Jewish Holocaust to happen by refusing to allow similar atrocities to take place now—yes, to use the Day of Atonement not to pray for the dead but to act for the living, to rescue those about to die.

When Jews turn inward to concentrate on their own history, and look away from the ordeal of others, they are, with terrible irony, doing exactly what the rest of the world did in allowing the genocide to happen. There were shameful moments, travesties of Jewish humanism, as when Jewish organizations lobbied against a Congressional recognition of the Armenian Holocaust of 1915 on the ground that it diluted the memory of the Jewish Holocaust. Or when the designers of the Holocaust Museum dropped the idea of mentioning the Armenian genocide after lobbying by the Israeli government. (Turkey was the only Moslem government with which Israel had diplomatic relations.) Another such moment came when Elie Wiesel, chair of President Carter’s Commission on the Holocaust, refused to include in a description of the Holocaust Hitler’s killing of millions of non-Jews. That would be, he said, to falsify the reality in the name of misguided universalism. Novick quotes Wiesel as saying They are stealing the Holocaust from us. As a result the Holocaust Museum gave only passing attention to the five million or more non-Jews who died in the Nazi camps. To build a wall around the uniqueness of the Jewish Holocaust is to abandon the idea that humankind is all one, that we are all, of whatever color, nationality, religion, deserving of equal rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. What happened to the Jews under Hitler is unique in its details but it shares universal characteristics with many other events in human history: the Atlantic slave trade, the genocide against native Americans, the injuries and deaths to millions of working people, victims of the capitalist ethos that put profit before human life.

In recent years, while paying more and more homage to the Holocaust as a central symbol of man’s cruelty to man, we have, by silence and inaction, collaborated in an endless chain of cruelties. Hiroshima and My Lai are the most dramatic symbols—and did we hear from Wiesel and other keepers of the Holocaust flame outrage against those atrocities? Countee Cullen once wrote, in his poem Scottsboro, Too, Is Worth Its Song (after the sentencing to death of the Scottsboro Boys): Surely, I said/ Now will the poets sing/ But they have raised no cry/I wonder why.

There have been the massacres of Rwanda, and the starvation in Somalia, with our government watching and doing nothing. There were the death squads in Latin America, and the decimation of the population of East Timor, with our government actively collaborating. Our church-going Christian presidents, so pious in their references to the genocide against the Jews, kept supplying the instruments of death to the perpetrators of other genocides.

True there are some horrors which seem beyond our powers. But there is an ongoing atrocity which is within our power to bring to an end. Novick points to it, and physician-anthropologist Paul Farmer describes it in detail in his remarkable new book INFECTIONS AND INEQUALITIES. That is: the deaths of ten million children all over the world who die every year of malnutrition and preventable diseases. The World Health Organization estimates three million people died last year of tuberculosis, which is preventable and curable, as Farmer has proved in his medical work in Haiti. With a small portion of our military budget we could wipe out tuberculosis.

The point of all this is not to diminish the experience of the Jewish Holocaust, but to enlarge it. For Jews it means to reclaim the tradition of Jewish universal humanism against an Israel-centered nationalism. Or, as Novick puts it, to go back to that larger social consciousness that was the hallmark of the American Jewry of my youth. That larger consciousness was displayed in recent years by those Israelis who protested the beating of Palestinians in the Intifada, who demonstrated against the invasion of Lebanon.

For others—whether Armenians or Native Americans or Africans or Bosnians or whatever—it means to use their own bloody histories, not to set themselves against others, but to create a larger solidarity against the holders of wealth and power, the perpetrators and ongoing horrors of our time.

The Holocaust might serve a powerful purpose if it led us to think of the world today as wartime Germany—where millions die while the rest of the population obediently goes about its business. It is a frightening thought that the Nazis, in defeat, were victorious: today Germany, tomorrow the world. That is, until we withdraw our obedience.

What every journalist must know before starting work

Published on 29 January 2010 in General. 0 Comments Tags: .

How news is really made, an insider’s guide:

Emancipation: How liberating Europe’s Jews from the ghetto led to revolution and renaissance

Published on 29 January 2010 in General. 0 Comments Tags: .

I’m honoured to be in conversation with author and journalist Michael Goldfarb on his upcoming Australian tour at Sydney bookstore Gleebooks on 17 February at 6.30pm:

For almost 500 years, the Jews of Europe were kept apart, confined to ghettos or tiny villages in the countryside. Then, in one extraordinary moment in the French Revolution, the Jews of France were emancipated. Soon the ghetto gates were opened all over Europe. The era of Emancipation had begun. What happened next would change the course of history.

Emancipation tells the story of how this isolated minority emerged from the ghetto and against terrible odds very quickly established themselves as shapers of history, as writers, revolutionaries, social thinkers, and artists. Their struggle to create a place for themselves in Western European life led to revolutions and nothing less than a second renaissance in Western culture.

The book spans the era from the French Revolution to the beginning of the twentieth century. The story is told through the lives of the people who lived through this momentous change. Some are well-known: Marx, Freud, Mahler, Proust, and Einstein; many more have been forgotten. Michael Goldfarb brings them all to life.

This is an epic story, and Goldfarb tells it with the skill and eye for detail of a novelist. He brings the empathy and understanding that has marked his two decades as a reporter in public radio to making the characters come alive. It is a tale full of hope, struggle, triumph, and, waiting at the end, a great tragedy.

This is a book that will have meaning for anyone interested in the struggle of immigrants and minorities to succeed. We live in a world where vast numbers are on the move, where religions and races are grinding against each other in new combinations; Emancipation is a book of history for our time.

Michael Goldfarb was National Public Radio’s voice in London for almost twenty years, first as NPR’s London correspondent, then bureau chief, and finally as senior correspondent of Inside Out, the award-winning public radio documentary program. He has been the recipient of the DuPont-Columbia Award, the Overseas Press Club Award, and British radio’s highest honour, the Sony Award. The author of Ahmad’s War, Ahmad’s Peace: surviving under Saddam.

Antony Loewenstein is a freelance journalist and author of the bestselling My Israel Question and The Blogging Revolution.

Why the Israeli left may rise again over East Jerusalem (but don’t count on it)

Published on 29 January 2010 in Israel. 0 Comments Tags: , , .

Avraham Burg, former speaker of the Knesset, is interviewed in Israel over the growing social unrest and ethnic cleansing in East Jerusalem:

The former speaker of the Knesset, Avrum Burg, on Galie Tzahal’s (IDF Radio), morning show, Ma Boer, with Razi Bakai, 24 January, 2010:


Anchor Razi Barkai: Good morning, former Knesset Speaker Avraham (Avrum) Burg.

Burg: Good morning.

Barkai: How long has it been since you last took part in a demonstration?

Burg: Many, very many years.

Barkai: The last famous demonstration you attended was the one in which you marched alongside Emil Grunzweig, who was killed then by a hand grenade.

Burg: That is possible. I do not remember, but it must have been decades since I last attended such a demonstration.

Barkai: What made you show up last weekend?

Burg: I came because I felt something was evolving here in Jerusalem that is of much greater significance than a single building and a few tenants. This is a huge symbol of Jerusalem as a powder keg that is about to explode right in everyone’s faces here. A man cannot stay at home when this is happening.

Barkai: There are two formalistic arguments that you have to deal with. First, the fact that this demonstration was staged without a permit and you, who have observed the law for many years and as former Knesset speaker, must be aware of that. Second, the buildings you were protesting against were bought by Jews in a completely legal deal.

Burg: Regarding the legality or illegality of this demonstration, the way I understand the law, when people stand around and no speeches are made, it is a rally and people may assemble and rally all they want. Still, I would not want to debate this question because a normal, reasonable state should know that when such a burning issue is on the agenda, it cannot silence it with technicalities. This issue is too urgent, too troubling to be swept under the rug with formalistic arguments.

Barkai: Who do you think made the call and decided that the demonstration was illegal — the Israel Police or, as Yosi Sarid wrote in Haaretz this morning, the Israel Beitenu police?

Burg: The police did. The police officers, whether they are simple cops or the police commissioner, are not my enemies. The person on the other side is actually the Israeli prime minister. I feel that two systems failed here. First, the legal system, the justice system. There are rules in Israel and the citizens have citizens’ rights.

Barkai: Just a second. I still want you, Avrum Burg, to address the second argument too.

Burg: The Jewish property issue?

Barkai: That’s right.

Burg: I will address it very briefly. There are open cases of Jewish property that was in Arab hands and Arab property that was in Jewish hands. When Jerusalem one-sidedly contains the return of Jewish property to Jewish hands, and having a normal justice system and courts, it would be impossible to reject Arab claims to their houses in Talbiya, Katamon, and Tel Aviv.

Barkai: Are you saying that, actually, the right-wing arguments actually uphold the [Palestinian] right of return?

Burg: Of course they do. With his flaccidity, escapism, and keeping away from the issue, Benjamin Netanyahu is actually absent from it, even though it is a burning issue from both the humanitarian and political perspectives. He dumped the concept of two states for two nations on our heads, but by promoting Jerusalem, Silwan, Sheikh Jarrah, and Shimon Hatzadik, he is actually promoting the Arab claims that we want our property where the Palestinians want to return. We cannot allow an anecdotal situation where a single house and a few settlers, or a judge who fails to see the big picture, or who is trapped because, when applied to East Jerusalem, the law is distorted, discriminating, and aggressive. I cannot accept a situation in which an incident that comes from below dictates the strategic policy of the State of Israel.

Barkai: Listen, you mentioned the fact that a court had handed out a ruling in this matter, which makes the remarks you are making a bit problematic. You were there with Yosi Sarid and Uri Avneri, veteran warriors and demonstrators who have always fought for the rule of law and for the independence of the courts, but only up to the point, only until court rulings conflict with your worldviews. Suddenly, you make different arguments.

Burg: My struggle is against the law — [I'd explain this] if we had time, which we don’t — because this is the nature of a plan that introduces wrongs that the law allows in Jerusalem. In de jure terms, the very legislation would have shocked us and we would cry against such discrimination among us, but we will address the judicial system too. The judicial and law-enforcement systems are so selective. Jonathan House in Silwan will never be evacuated, but a house in Sheikh Jarrah was evacuated immediately, and its residents, who are now second-time refugees, live in a tent outside their home. When settlers move in and are not evacuated, it means that the law or its application is discriminatory. The law cannot be applied this way. This is wrongdoing.

Barkai: As one of the tribe elders — and forgive me for giving you this title — I would say that you are experiencing a second wind. I wish to address the cynical remarks that Yosi Sarid made in his Haaretz article this morning. He spoke about the absence of MKs, those who were supposed to pick up your struggle. He even mentioned names of MKs who are mainly involved in social struggles, which he cynically qualified, and are not involved in the Palestinians’ struggle. What do you think about that absence?

Burg: Yosi Sarid is 100% right. His Haaretz article expressed what many people feel. All that was once the Israeli left, the peace camp, from Haim Oron down, the three Meretz MKs and the Labor leftover MKs who fail to stand up and show up there and in other places that the civil society has taken upon itself, are practically making themselves redundant. Presently, these parties represent none of us. If they returned to the streets, rejoined the struggle, stopped fearing of making a stand wherever it is needed, and start backing up the detainees, the people on the streets, my children, my family members who have been demonstrating there for many weeks, and all of us who go there and are not protected by immunity or anything else — then they would be parties that represent us. Otherwise, they have no meaning.

Barkai: Avraham Burg, thank you very much.

Burg: Shalom.

Reading the Iranian tea-leaves (but not from neo-cons)

Published on 29 January 2010 in General. 0 Comments Tags: , , .

Many fear that this year will see aggressive action against Iran and “regime change” under the guise of supposedly freeing the Iranian people (witness Robert Kagan in the Washington Post this week making this very point; yet another man determined to install a friendly puppet in Tehran. A neo-conservative who doesn’t care one iota for the Iranians who would suffer in the chaos).

Arshin Adib-Moghaddam teaches comparative politics at SOAS at the University of London and writes that Iran’s internal politics are hardly stable but not as confused as many outsiders think:

Despite the systematic efforts of many commentators and media outlets to represent what is happening in Iran as a wholesale revolt against everything the Islamic Republic stands for, a sober analysis reveals that we are witnessing the renegotiation of political power in the country. The protagonists represent different wings within the system; the contours of their politics are drawn upon the expanding canvas of the Islamic Republic. In short: Iran is in a post-revolutionary state, not a pre-revolutionary one.

At the height of the demonstrations after the contested election of President Mahmoud Ahmadinezhad during last summer, I argued, in an article that was disputed and challenged by many skeptics, that we were not witnessing another revolution. But simply because there is a consensus amongst many people with vested interests that the Islamic Republic must be subdued and vilified by any means, one should not be bullied into overlooking the nuances of the changing political landscape in Iran. Simply because the legitimate yearnings for democracy and justice by Iranians are misinterpreted as a rebellion against Iran’s bias toward the Palestinian cause or indeed Islam itself, one should not be fooled into underestimating the capabilities of the state-sanctioned proponents of the political order in the country. What supporters of “regime change” can hope for, and what every Iranian, Arab, Muslim and any other person who empathizes with the plight of the people in the region must fear, is an entrenched civil war that would rip the country apart.

But I don’t think it will come to that. We are already witnessing signs of accommodation. Mir-Hossein Mousavi has written a conciliatory letter, which was followed up by Mohsen Rezai in his own communication with the Supreme Jurisprudent Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. Behind the curtains the political factions are negotiating in order to rescue the political system in Iran from further destabilization. The opposition figures, Mousavi, Mehdi Karroubi, Mohammad Khatami and most notably Ayatollah Ali Akbar Rafsanjani, emerged out of the revolution and would never devour the project they have been busy building up. They are disciples of the Islamic Republic, and they are revealing themselves as such at this very moment.