Cathy Sultan's Blog, page 9
January 10, 2017
LAND CONFISCATION BY ANY MEANS POSSIBLE
Even before Israel declared itself a State in 1948 the origins of modern Israeli land and planning law regimes had already been written. The Jewish National Fund, founded in 1901, was originally established for the purpose of acquiring land in Palestine, regardless of previous legal ownership, for the purpose of settling Jews on such lands.
By 1948, Israel had already begun enacting emergency legislation to deal with land acquisition. The Absentee Property Regulation was enacted to give control over “Absentee” (Palestinian) property to a Custodian of Absentee Property. The Custodian was entitled to seize such property and the burden lay on the Palestinian landowner to prove that he was not an “absentee.” The role of the Custodian was put on more solid footing by the Absentee Property Law, enacted in 1950, which allowed the Custodian to transfer absentee land to a body called the Development Authority. This body was then entitled to transfer the land to the Jewish National Fund on behalf of the State of Israel.
The Palestinians who refused to flee what became Israeli-proper in 1948 were also forced from the land. The Defense Regulations was used to declare “closed military areas” effectively denying Palestinians access to their lands.
The Land Acquisition Law of 1953 was enacted to guarantee the “legality” of the confiscation of land during and after 1953. It did so by retroactively legalizing the seizure of land on the basis of “security and “development.” So successful was this takeover that by 1951 the State of Israel held 92% of the land.
As a result of the June 1967 war, over 500,000 Palestinians were expelled from their homes and land. By June 15, 1967, only five weeks after the end of the war, Israel quietly established its first settlements in the Occupied Territories despite promised to Washington that it had no intention of doing so. By the end of 2016, approximately 650,000 Jewish Israelis live in the Occupied West Bank and close to 200,000 in Occupied East Jerusalem, plus an additional 25,000 living in the Occupied Golan Heights.
On my first visit to Israel/Palestine in March 2002, I interviewed a high school teacher in Ramallah. According to Elias, “All land confiscation is legal according to Israel. It is, of course, a way to control and disperse Palestinians. Just take a look at all the Israeli settlements across the West Bank. This was all land previously owned by Palestinians. Once a parcel of land is declared absentee or in violation of some obscure Israeli law, the Israeli bulldozers turn up. The Arab home is destroyed, its 300 year old olive trees uprooted, effectively erasing any evidence of a Palestinian presence.” (The continuation of this and other interviews can be found in Israeli and Palestinian Voices: A Dialogue with both Sides.)
Israel’s controversial proposed new law known s the Regularization Bill aims to legalize unauthorized West Bank outposts, or, in Israeli jargon, Jewish clusters.
According to Oren Yiftachel, co-chair of B’Tselem, the Israeli Information Center for Human Rights in the Occupied Territories, founded in 1989: “This proposed legislation could join the ranks of global terra nullius legislation with honor. In the name of invasion and colonial settlement—in this case, Jewish—this law would erase the validity of previous ownership systems in place for centuries. As settler leaders have reiterated, nothing will stop them from violating international law, and undercutting ethics and justice.
If passed, the new legislation will put Israel in its proper place as a pariah state.
This book is available for purchase here:
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ISRAEL’S COLONIAL ENTERPRISE HAS KILLED THE TWO-STATE SOLUTION
The U. N. Security Council Resolution 2234 condemning Israeli settlements on Palestinian lands reaffirms the obligation of Israel, the occupying power, to abide scrupulously by its legal obligations and responsibilities under the Fourth Geneva Convention relative to the Protection of Civilian Persons in Time of War…and recalling the advisory opinion rendered on July 9, 2004 by the International Court of Justice, condemning all measures aimed at altering the demographic composition, character and status of the Palestinian Territory occupied since 1967, including East Jerusalem, including, inter alia, the construction and expansion of settlements, transfer of Israeli settlers, confiscation of land, demolition of homes and displacement of Palestinian civilians, in violation of international humanitarian law and relevant resolutions.
The White House position is that Washington has always regarded settlements as an impediment to peace and a threat to a two-state solution. President Obama’s abstention on the U.N. resolution, therefore, was consistent and appropriate with US foreign policy regarding Israel’s settlement policy in the Occupied Territories.
The US House of Representatives, in its usual shameless manner, has chosen to side with Israel against Washington’s official policy. Senator John McCain asserted that “Today’s passage of an ill-conceived resolution on Israeli settlements marks another shameful chapter in the bizarre anti-Israeli history of the United Nations.”
Apparently it matters not to Senator McCain that Israel stands in violation of the rule of law and by doing so for close to fifty years, has eroded the force of international law. And while the US Congress shamelessly refuses to recognize the harsh reality of Israel’s unwillingness to conclude a just peace with Palestinians while concurrently stealing their land, the rest of the world is now willing to declare Israel in open violation of international law. Even if our spineless Congressional leaders continue to allow Israel to escape the consequences of its criminal behavior, it will still become a pariah state that lives in increasing social, cultural and economic isolation and Netanyahu’s temper tantrums will most certainly speed up the process.
Kerry, according to the Israeli Prime Minister, attacked “the only democracy in the Middle East.” The key element of a democracy, however, is “the guarantee of basic human Rights to every individual person vis-à-vis the state and its authorities as well as vis-à-vis any social groups (especially religious institutions) and vis-à-vis other persons.” By this definition Israel is not a democracy.
By its colonization of the West Bank and East Jerusalem, Israel has also killed the notion of a two-state solution. The world pretends it is still alive because it is not prepared to confront the truth of its death. It is this pretense, sadly, that has shielded Israel and allowed it to continue its 50 year occupation and confiscation of Palestinian land. For as long as there was hope for a two-state solution, there was no reason to press Israel on settlement expansion and human rights violations.
Gideon Levy, writing in Haaretz shortly after the U.N. vote said: “Supporters of a two-state solution respond aggressively to anyone who tries to undermine their magical faith in a miracle that is dead but will somehow be resurrected. “ He elaborated, saying that “most people know the truth but refuse to admit it. They know that the number of settlers (650,000) has reached a critical mass. They know that no party in Israel will ever evacuate them. And without all of them being evacuated—and this, too, is something they know—there is no viable Palestinian state.”
Netanyahu has admitted multiple times that he would never allow a Palestinian state. He is not alone. All Israeli governments—all of them—continued the settlement enterprise knowing it would kill a two-state solution.
Again, according to Gideon Levy, “They act like the relatives of a moribund patient who is already brain dead, and whose organs are needed for transplants, but they refuse, hoping that somehow, a miracle will happen and the living dead will be resurrected.”
Hoping for a miracle and therefore preventing the life-saving transplant has killed, definitively, any hope for a Palestinian state. Israel has the final say in the matter. It can be definitively be labeled an apartheid state or it can agree to one state with equal rights for all its citizens.
As I write in Israeli and Palestinian Voices: A Dialogue with both Sides, it is not the Palestinians, as people seeking self-determination and liberation from 50 years of occupation who face constant doubt and anxiety about the legitimacy and longevity of their political project, it is the Israelis.
This book is available for purchase here:
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December 31, 2016
BDS SUCCESSES IN 2016
What were the top 10 BDS victories of 2016?
Nora Barrows-Friedman Activism and BDS Beat 30 December 2016
Intensifying repression against BDS movement shows Israel is becoming “desperate and irrational,” Palestinians say.
Ryan Rodrick BeilerActiveStills
2016 began with a bang: French telecommunications giant Orange announced in early January it was dumping its Israel affiliate.
This came just months after boycott activists renewed their campaign against the company over its support for Israel’s 2014 assault on Gaza and its complicity in Israel’s colonization of the occupied West Bank.
The same week, a major Irish corporation yanked its cement contracts with Israel following boycott pressure.
Meanwhile, churches, student unions and local activists continued to organize strong boycott, divestment and sanctions (BDS) campaigns that caused panic among Israeli leaders.
Embarrassed by these significant victories, Israel spent 2016 waging “an all-out war” on the global BDS campaign, “in a desperate attempt to crush it,” according to the Palestinian BDS National Committee (BNC).
Bullying
Israel resorted to threatening and bullying individuals, adopting policies to expel suspected boycott activists and to bar others from entering.
This followed last year’s naming by Israel’s leading financial daily of Omar Barghouti, a co-founder of the BDS movement, among 100 people most likely to influence Israel’s economy in 2016.
Israel imposed an effective travel ban on Barghouti, following threats against him and other Palestinian human rights defenders by top Israeli government ministers in March.
Amnesty International condemned the threats, which included a call by intelligence minister Yisrael Katz for “targeted civil eliminations” of BDS leaders with the help of Israeli intelligence.
“Israel has attempted to stigmatize, demonize and in some cases delegitimize BDS from above, after failing to crush the movement at the global grassroots and civil society levels,” notes the BNC.
But throughout 2016, BDS has only grown stronger, the group adds.
“The logic of appeasing Israel’s regime of oppression has started giving way to the logic of sustained international pressure, which proved instrumental in ending apartheid in South Africa,” it says.
With that spirit in mind, here are the top 10 BDS successes of 2016, as covered by The Electronic Intifada.
10. Activists rose up against Hewlett Packard. Campaigners in dozens of cities across six continentsparticipated in an international week of action against Hewlett-Packard, bringing attention to the company’s role in enabling Israel’s rights violations.
9. Irish company divested from Israel’s cement industry. One of Ireland’s largest companies, CRH, announced in January that it was chucking Israeli assets after sustained grassroots boycott pressure. CRH held 25 percent of the shares in Mashav, owner of Israel’s top cement manufacturer Nesher.
Nesher cement has been used in constructing Israel’s wall and settlements in the West Bank and in the light rail network serving Israeli settlements in occupied East Jerusalem.
8. Spanish municipalities declared themselves “apartheid-free zones.” More than 50 cities across Spain now declare themselves free of Israeli products in a campaign that began in July 2014, at the height of Israel’s attack against Gaza.
With more than 120,000 residents, Cádiz, in Andalusia, is one of the largest cities to support the campaign.
7. Norwegians ditched Israeli products. Two major cities in Norway voted to boycott Israeli goods and services produced in settlements inside occupied Palestinian territory.
6. Churches continued to mobilize for Palestinian rights. Denominations voted in 2016 to boycott Israeli financial institutions, and to dump or bar investments in corporations that profit from Israel’s occupation.
A church in California vowed not to purchase supplies from Hewlett-Packard, a company that provides equipment to Israel’s military and settlements.
Presbyterians reaffirmed their previous commitments to divestment, while 24 denominations together called for “economic leverage” against businesses or governments that violate human rights.
Lutherans voted to call for an end to US aid to Israel.
5. Governments and political parties stood up to anti-BDS bullies. Sweden, followed by the Netherlands and Ireland, publicly upheld the right of citizens to work for BDS.
Meanwhile, the European Union and the US State Department admitted that boycott advocacy is a protected free speech right.
The Canadian Green Party and the Dutch government rejected pressure by right-wing Israel lobby groups.
4. Activists helped defeat anti-BDS legislation. Grassroots campaigners fought back against a growing wave of legislation promoted by US state and federal lawmakers – and encouraged by Israel lobby groups and the Israeli government – to suppress BDS activism.
In Massachusetts, an anti-boycott amendment was withdrawn in the state senate in July following a campaign by Palestine solidarity groups.
The amendment, which was tacked onto an unrelated economic bill, would have blacklisted individuals and businesses that engage with the Palestinian-led boycott of Israel. Organizers said that in order to successfully counter the imminent anti-boycott legislation there, they knew they had to engage directly with lawmakers over a sustained period.
In the UK, a test case for banning BDS campaigning failed in the high court.
And in France, a court overturned a government ban on a meeting to support individuals facing trial for their Palestine solidarity activism. The BDS campaign in France continued to flourish despite the government’s crackdown.
In May, lawmakers in Ontario, Canada’s most populous province, made history: theirs was the world’s first full legislature to vote down an anti-BDS law.
3. G4S was forced to buckle under BDS pressure. Under years-long pressure by grassroots campaigns, the world’s largest private security firm, G4S, ditched most of its Israeli businesses.
Four UN agencies in Jordan and one in Lebanon ended their contracts with the corporation.
The city of Berkeley, California, also voted to divest from private prison corporations, including G4S, for its role in human rights abuses against undocumented persons in the US and Palestinians under occupation.
2. Telecom giant Orange quit Israel. The French telecommunications company Orange announced it was quitting Israel in January, following sustained international boycott pressure.
The campaign calling on Orange to cut ties with Israel’s Partner Communications began in 2010 and involved unions and groups in France, Tunisia, Morocco and Egypt, countries where Orange or its affiliates have tens of millions of mobile phone subscribers.
The campaign received a major boost in May 2015 when BDS Egypt called for a boycott of Orange subsidiary Mobinil, which has 33 million customers. This came after The Electronic Intifada revealed the extent of Orange’s complicity in Israel’s 2014 assault on Gaza.
“Orange had no choice but to realize that investing in occupation, profiteering from Israel’s colonization of Palestinian land and involvement in violations against Palestinian rights is a commercially bad investment,” said Abdulrahman Abou Salem of BDS Egypt, a coalition of trade unions, political parties and campaign groups.
Partner Communications, which operated under the Orange Israel brand, built and operated extensive mobile telephone infrastructure in Israel’s settlements built on Palestinian land in the occupied West Bank in violation of international law.
1. Students stood strong. Students in the US, Canada and the UK passed strong divestment measures in their student governments and trade unions, amidst intensifying smear campaigns by outside Israel advocacy groups and shady websites.
Students “are eventually going to be members of the public in various capacities after they graduate. And the rapidly shifting politics around Israel-Palestine on campuses is something that we should really take heart in,” Rahim Kurwa, a graduate student at UCLA, told The Electronic Intifada in August.
Since the beginning of 2016 alone, more than a dozen campuses around the US passed some form of divestment resolution or boycott measure, Kurwa, a member of Students for Justice in Palestine, said.
“People now realize that it doesn’t make any sense to claim that you’re a progressive or that you care about basic principles of equality and human rights if you can’t apply those principles to the question of Palestine … and a freedom struggle that has gone on for decades now.”
December 22, 2016
WHY IS THE LATEST UN RESOLUTION BAD FOR THE PALESTINIANS?
Since I’ve written extensively about Israeli settlements in Israeli and Palestinian Voices:A Dialogue with both Sides, and condemn them strongly, I was a bit confused when I read that the Palestinian Authority did not want President Obama to veto or abstain when the latest UN Resolution regarding Israeli settlements came before the Security Council. Since Ali Abuminah from Electronic Intifada has answered this question so brilliantly and so thoroughly I thought it appropriate to post it on my blog site.
Why UN resolution on settlements would be bad for Palestinians
Ali Abunimah Rights and Accountability 22 December 2016
UN draft resolution marketed as opposing Israeli settlements on occupied Palestinian land actually lays ground to eventually legitimize them.
Mahfouz Abu TurkAPA images
Update
The vote on the UN Security Council resolution condemning Israeli settlements, scheduled for Thursday afternoon, has reportedly been postponed. This came after Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu put pressure on Egypt, the resolution’s sponsor.
The Obama administration had reportedly planned to abstain, meaning the resolution would likely have passed if it had come to a vote.
It is unclear when, or if, it will be voted on.
Original article
The UN Security Council is set to vote Thursday afternoon on a resolution condemning Israeli settlements in the occupied West Bank, including Jerusalem.
I hope the resolution fails, but let me explain why.
The resolution, promoted by the Palestinian Authority, introduced by Egypt and supported by France, contains parts that are fine, even laudable.
It ostensibly reaffirms previous Security Council decisions, such as resolution 465 which invalidates Israel’s claims to have annexed Jerusalem. It also confirms “the inadmissibility of the acquisition of territory by force.”
It recalls “the obligation of Israel, the occupying power,” to abide by the Fourth Geneva Convention on the protection of civilians under occupation, and the 2004 International Court of Justice decision against Israel’s wall in the West Bank.
The draft clearly condemns “all measures aimed at altering the demographic composition, character and status of the Palestinian Territory occupied since 1967, including East Jerusalem.”
It demands a halt to “the construction and expansion of settlements, transfer of Israeli settlers, confiscation of land, demolition of homes and displacement of Palestinian civilians, in violation of international humanitarian law and relevant resolutions.”
These elements are positive but not new.
Since there are already plenty of resolutions on the books which use almost identical – and often stronger – language why is a new resolution needed?
All that is needed is for action to enforce existing resolutions – such as sanctions on Israel.
But this resolution, like its predecessors, takes no action. In a masterful example of empty diplomatic phrasing, the draft only commits the Security Council “to examine practical ways and means to secure the full implementation of its relevant resolutions.”
This leisurely “examination” has been going on for half a century now while Israel continues to violently steal and colonize Palestinian land.
Undermining Palestinian rights
What is even more worrying is the rest of the resolution – read in whole it is a clear attempt to legislate into international law the so-called two-state solution.
In September, I warned that a resolution of this kind would undermine, not support, Palestinian rights.
This draft does not contain a single reference to Palestinian rights, especially the right of return for refugees. It makes no mention of Gaza, which has been under a devastating and illegal Israeli siege for over a decade – a blockade enforced jointly with Egypt, the resolution’s sponsor.
Rather, it expresses “grave concern that continuing Israeli settlement activities are dangerously imperilling the viability of the two-state solution based on the 1967 lines,” as if two states, not restoring Palestinian rights, is an end in itself.
I have explained previously how the tricky phrase “based on the 1967 lines” is designed to allow Israel to annex its vast settlement blocs.
Take the older resolution I mentioned, 465 from 1980. It demands that Israel “dismantle the existing settlements” – all settlements built since the West Bank was occupied in 1967.
The draft now under consideration only calls on Israel to dismantle “all settlement outposts erected since March 2001” – the implication is that most of the existing settlements, particularly the large blocs, will remain forever.
So while being marketed as a move against settlements, this resolution lays the ground to legitimize them, albeit under the framework of a “negotiated” peace agreement.
No right to resist
There are many other negative elements to this draft, including its affirmation that Palestinians have a duty effectively to police themselves on behalf of their occupiers by confiscating so-called “illegal weapons” and “dismantling terrorist capabilities” – Israeli-style language that demonizes an occupied people.
It supports “existing security coordination” – the collaboration between Israeli occupation forces and the Palestinian Authority that is broadly opposed by Palestinians.
All this is a clear attack on the internationally recognized right of all occupied peoples, including Palestinians, to engage in legitimate resistance.
Which other occupied people has been required to ensure that its occupiers can colonize and subjugate them in tranquility?
Two pro-Israel positions
Notably, the draft warns against “a one-state reality” – language designed to stigmatize and forestall discussion of alternatives to the failed “two-state” vision of ethno-racial territorial partition – namely a single, democratic, non-racial, non-sectarian state with equality for all citizens.
Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu has demanded that the US veto the resolution, claiming it is anti-Israel.
The French ambassador in Tel Aviv reassured Israel that its concerns are misplaced. “The tendency in Israel to say ‘the whole world is against us’ is wrong,” Helene Le Gal told media. “We say all those things against the settlements because we are with Israel, not against it.”
The clash between Netanyahu and the French over this draft is a confrontation between two pro-Israel positions.
Netanyahu represents an unabashedly racist Israel which is no longer interested in claiming that it wants peace nor that it is willing to give the Palestinians their rights under any conditions.
France represents a pro-Israel bloc of Western countries which are equally committed to Israel’s right to continue to be racist, but which believe this can only be guaranteed if some bantustan option remains open to the Palestinians.
This resolution is about rescuing Israel as a racist state that ensures its Jewish demographic majority through a battery of racist laws. Meanwhile Palestinians, shorn of their fundamental rights, will be consigned at best to a bantustan given the title and trappings of a state.
President-elect Donald Trump has weighed in on Netanyahu’s side, urging a US veto.
All attention now is on whether the outgoing US administration of President Barack Obama will veto this resolution, as it did a similar one in 2011, or abstain, allowing it to pass.
If Obama allows it to pass it will be the final act in his long record of undermining Palestinian rights.
This book is available for purchase here:
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December 12, 2016
PRESIDENT OBAMA, PLEASE RECOGNIZE THE STATE OF PALESTINE
One hundred thirty-seven countries have recognized the State of Palestine. President Obama, will the United States be the 138th?
In a recent New York Times Opinion Page Jimmy Carter stated, ”We do not yet know the policy of the next administration toward Israel and Palestine, but we do know the policy of this administration. It has been President Obama’s aim to support a negotiated end to the conflict based on two states, living side by side in peace.”
President Obama could use his remaining month and a half in office to ensure that a UN Security Council resolution recommending the recognition of Palestine be permitted to pass. According to Camille Mansour, adviser to the PLO negotiating team, Obama could accomplish a number of goals with such a decision. It would be his gift to the Middle East before leaving office June 20, 2017.
“He has the ability to instruct his UN representative to support or abstain from a resolution that will become irrevocable once the UN Security Council passes it. Even Donald Trump would not be able to reverse it.”
As I argue in Israeli and Palestinian Voices: A Dialogue with Both Sides, the idea of a Security Council resolution regarding settlements or a framework for a future resolution could easily be reversed by the newly elected president but recognition of a state once it is approved by the United Nations would be more difficult to reverse as the state would have received international legitimacy.
There are skeptics who think Obama will not have the courage, as a lame duck, to make such a bold decision. Right-wing Israeli officials are betting that Donald Trump’s election has buried the idea of a Palestinian state. Allowing a vote for Palestinian statehood—whether by withholding a veto or abstaining—would be a small step in helping translate thus far unimplemented US policy and guarantee that the new president could not bury the two-state solution.
The three possible actions President Obama could take are:
Unilateral recognition of a Palestinian state within specific or approximate borders following the 1948 armistice lines where no Palestinian state ever existed. In virtually all world forums, this would more judicially move the status of Israel’s administrative presence in “Judea and Samaria” from disputed to occupied.
Abstain from vetoing a pending French resolution that would impose settlement lines and/or recognize a Palestinian state within 18 months absent agreement by the parties.
Impose a territorial settlement within a two-year deadline if the parties do not craft one by themselves. Of the three options, recognition of Palestine would be the toughest, a condemnation of settlements the mildest.
Already Israel and Trump’s pro-Israel supporters are sending signals to Obama to forgo any action at the United Nations.
A positive decision on Palestinian statehood would be a peaceful response to the right-wing Israeli Prime Minister’s anti-Obama interventions in US policy, especially regarding Iran. Such a decision would help redeem his presidency not only in the eyes of the Palestinian people but those seeking peace both within the United States and around the world.
The United States can still shape the future of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict before a change in presidents, but time is very short. The simple but vital step this administration must take before its term expires on Jan. 20 is to grant American diplomatic recognition to the state of Palestine, as 137 countries have already done, and help it achieve full United Nations membership.
In September 1978, after signing the Camp David Accords, President Jimmy Carter stood before a joint session of Congress and said “Blessed are the peacemakers, for they shall be called children of God.” As Mr. Begin and Mr. Sadat sat in the balcony above Jimmy Carter, the members of Congress stood and applauded the two heroic peacemakers.
Could Barak Obama be hailed as a peacemaker and finally earn his Nobel Peace Prize?
You have until January 20, 2017 to leave such a legacy, Mr. President. Will you be bold enough to commit to such a noble act?
This book is available for purchase here.
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November 20, 2016
THE RELIGION OF SECURITY
As a democracy becomes more fragile, and fear becomes all-consuming, attacks on freedom of expression and civil rights become more acceptable. The religion of security is in the ascendant. What has been happening in Israel over the last fifty years—suppression of the most basic human rights of the Palestinian people—could, with a Trump presidency and the rise of extreme right-wing ideology, also occur in the United States to Muslims. A matrix of control under Israeli military occupation is thoroughly outlined in Israeli and Palestinian Voices: A Dialogue with both Sides. President-elect Trump proposes enacting similar measures for illegal immigrants and Muslim Americans.
Because of 9/11 there is now an all-encompassing dogma that frames our lives. It centers around one inflexible concern—security—and is based on the belief, both here and in Israel, that we are perpetually under threat. It’s a conviction stoked by carefully cultivated myths—all Muslims are terrorists; Palestinians want to kill Israelis. In African American communities, security has also been used to whitewash crimes. Similarly, it provides legitimacy for discriminatory practices against Muslim Americans. If allowed to continue, such bigotry risks becoming the norm throughout our society.
No one doubts that terrorism exists. There is, however, little recognition of how counter-terrorism measures create perverse effects. Increased police brutality in African American communities and fear and loathing against Muslims are but a few of these perversities. Across America, African Americans men risk being pulled over for driving while black. In Israel, a security guard will listen to your Hebrew for a hint of an Arab accent. If he detects one he will pull you over for questioning.
Stereotypes don’t occur overnight. They develop insidiously. Eventually prejudices worsen and harden into racism. This contributes to the destruction of a society and is something that risks happening under a Trump presidency.
Our President-elect has said he will force Muslims to register and carry ID cards stating their religion, something the Third Reich required Jews to do, using instead yellow badges that resembled the Star of David. “We’re going to have to do things that we never did before,” Trump said. “Some people are going to be upset about it but I think that now everyone feels that security is going to rule.”
Ironically, the Left is all aflame about Trump’s idea of a registry. Apparently these brave defenders of civil liberties are unaware that a Muslim Registry, euphemistically called the National Security-Entry-Exit Registration System, was imposed shortly after 9/11 with the endorsement of Hillary Clinton and many other Democrats and persisted well into the Obama presidency, only being officially abandoned in 2011. And who is to say if it ever officially ended.
Ajamu Baraka, Vice Presidential contender on the Jill Stein ticket, was stopped and interrogated about his residency and status quo no less than five times during that decade of dread. During her Senate campaign, Hillary Clinton made a dramatic gesture of returning campaign contributions from American Muslims and Muslim groups, this more than a year before 9/11.
Our prejudices, across political and racial lines, have been operating in inconspicuous ways for a very long time. President-elect Trump has simply exposed them to the full light of day.
The book is available for purchase here:
November 14, 2016
HUMANITARIAN INTERVENTIONS AND NO FLY ZONES
The definition of regime change is the replacement of one government by another by use of military force. US involvement in altering or replacing foreign governments has entailed both overt and covert actions.
In the sequel to The Syrian, one of my characters reveals through her diary entries the extent to which not just the Obama administration but Bush’s before him have so underhandedly pushed to effect regime change in Syria and Iraq before that.
George W. Bush used the language of civilian protection in 2003 to conduct a war of aggression against Iraq. His war broke Iraq’s infrastructure and state institutions and made a mockery of humanitarian intervention. The number of dead in Iraq since 2003 has reached approximately 500,000. This figure doesn’t count the US-driven sanctions on Iraq prior to the invasion that led to the death of half-a-million children, to which Madeleine Albright, then US Ambassador to the UN, commented: “We think the price was worth it.”
Hillary Clinton called for a no-fly zone in Syria even though it would have likely lead to war with Russia. A no-fly zone is a coercive appropriation of the partial airspace of a sovereign country. It is the arbitrary creation of a demilitarized zone in the sky to prevent belligerent powers from flying in that air space. Her no-fly policy over Libya, when she was Secretary of State, cost 50,000 civilians their lives. In Syria, the “belligerent power,” ironically, would be the internationally recognized legitimate Syrian government and its legitimate ally, Russia.
In her final debate, Clinton said: “I will continue to push for a no-fly zone and safe havens within Syria. It would help protect the Syrians and prevent the constant outflow of refugees.”
Despite calls for a non-fly zone Barack Obama has resisted such measures. Instead, through the CIA’s John Brennan, he fed weapons, training and billions of dollars to so-called “moderate” rebels affiliated with Al-Qaeda-linked jihadists. In early November, according to the St. Paul Pioneer Press of November 13, 2016, the US lost three of its Army Special Forces who were working for the CIA training al-Qaeda fighters on the Syrian-Jordanian border.
On October 28, the New York Times published an astonishing conclusion about an aspect of the Obama administration’s strategy in Syria, though gently and benevolently worded. The Times indicated that it was being felt that Obama had insufficiently armed the “moderate opposition,” so that in Aleppo it had “no choice” but to partner with al-Qaeda affiliate Jabhat Fatah al-Sham (formerly al-Nusra) to fight off Putin and Assad. At the same time, Reuters noted that the Obama administration had formerly considered arming the “moderates” with anti-air missiles but was constrained by the fear that such weapons would fall in the hands of “extremists.” Such reports suggest the absurdity of launching a War on Terror that results in fighting a War with Terrorists.
According to the Washington Post, the day after Donald Trump became President-elect, Barak Obama, in an about face, ordered the Pentagon to find and kill the leaders of the al-Qaeda-linked group in Syria that the administration had largely given free reign until now and who have been at the vanguard of the fight against the Syrian government. That shift is likely to accelerate once President-elect Donald Trump takes office…possibly in direct cooperation with Moscow. Also, the US Department of the Treasury Office of Foreign Assets Control took action this week to disrupt Al-Nusra Front’s military, recruitment and financing operations. These actions mark a major change in US policy. Nusra will from now on be on the run not only from Russian and Syrian attacks but also from the intelligence and military capabilities of the United States. The Pentagon will now wage war on Al-Qaeda in Syria just as the Russians are doing. This comes after five years of nearly unlimited US support for Al-Qaeda and its so-called “moderate” Syrian affiliates, resulting in half a million dead and millions of refugees.
Russia and Syria will welcome the new Obama policies should they come to fruition on the ground. However we may feel about the morality of governments in Russia, Syria, Iran and Iraq, one thing is clear: they did not launch the war on Iraq, opening the door to all the crimes that followed from that original crime. It is time to decide whether we want to live with things as they are or change them. And we must begin by changing them at home. President Obama is apparently trying to do just that.
This book is available for purchase here:
November 10, 2016
WHAT DOES A TRUMP PRESIDENCY MEAN FOR THE PALESTINIANS?
In Israeli and Palestinian Voices: A Dialogue with both Sides I analyze what the current and past presidents have done about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
Odds strongly favored Hillary Clinton to win. If she had what would her administration have looked like? Since her campaign pitched her as the natural successor to Obama, the Democrat who just unconditionally handed Israel a $38 billion military aid package, we can assume she would have continued the same policies into the future. She repeatedly marketed herself as a belligerent and violently hawkish ally of Israel and Netanyahu against the Palestinian people at a time when her party showed itself more open than ever to embracing Palestinian rights. When Bernie Sanders suggested an end to Israeli occupation of Palestinian territory, establishing mutually agreed-upon borders, pulling back settlements in the West Bank and ending the economic blockage of Gaza, Clinton threw him under the bus and forbade any such language in her party’s platform. She vowed to make blocking the nonviolent Palestinian-led boycott, divestment and sanctions movement (BDS) a priority of her would-be administration.
But Hillary Clinton is not our new president. Donald Trump is.
What will his presidency mean for the Palestinians?
Earlier in his campaign he insisted he would be even-handed in dealing with Israelis and Palestinians, driving the more fanatical Israeli supporters into the Clinton camp. Facing backlash he quickly pivoted promising Netanyahu that he would recognize Jerusalem as the undivided capital of the State of Israel, something not even George W. Bush dared do. He has actively encouraged Israel to continue building colonial settlements in the Occupied West Bank and East Jerusalem. During Obama’s eight years in office, settlement activity in the West Bank and Jerusalem increased by 100,000 new units. Apparently that is not enough.
Less than 48 hours after announcing his victory Trump invited Netanyahu to New York for a visit. This was to be expected since the Israeli settler community mobilized to support Trump’s campaign. Given this enthusiastic support it is unlikely Trump will ever recognize the State of Palestine even if 138 countries have also done so just as it is highly unlikely he will let a request for full UN membership for Palestine pass in the UN Security Council by voting in favor, or just by not vetoing the proposal.
The Palestinian struggle has already shifted to a struggle for equality against an entrenched system of Israeli occupation, settler-colonialism and apartheid anchored and deeply rooted in support from the US bipartisan establishment. So Palestinians were not waiting for the results of the US election to decide which course of action to take.
Over the last decade support for Palestinian rights has been rising in the US particularly among the young, the Bernie Sanders base, and in the increasingly diverse Democratic Party base that has been utterly ignored by the establishment leadership. They understand that US support for Israel comes not only from the same places that support white supremacy, mass incarceration, unchecked police violence, militarization and imperialism are strongest. They know it also stems from the liberal circles that embraced Clinton, who more often than not and with callous indifference equate colonizer and colonized, oppressor and oppressed, occupation and resistance, settlements and suburbs.
This is why Palestinians will now insist on nothing less than a one-state solution.
They have no choice. They will keep organizing and demanding their rights. They will resist an apartheid system that spearheads segregation, inequality and subjugation, that enforces separate roads and highways for Israelis and Palestinians in the West Bank, that tolerates hundreds of attacks by settlers targeting Palestinian property, livelihoods and lives without convictions, charges or even suspects, that imprisons tens of thousands of Palestinians without trial, shot dead without trial, shot dead in the back while fleeing without just cause, where Israeli officials use the army, policy, military courts, draconian administrative detentions not only to heed off terrorism but to curtail nearly every avenue of non-violent protest available to Palestinian while enforcing a matrix of control that imposes subtle, bureaucratic restrictions that affect every fiber of Palestinian society.
So what will a Trump presidency mean for the Palestinians? Nothing new, just more of the same.
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October 30, 2016
THE WHITE HELMETS
The 21st Century NGO has, in some cases, become a key tool serving the West’s quest for absolute global dominance. They are used to render specific communities/groups dependent on foreign aid in order to facilitate their “democratization,” thus ceasing to be neutral, unbiased humanitarian organizations. Instead, they become covert tools for foreign intervention and regime change.
In researching material for the sequel to The Syrian, I routinely peruse both alternative news and mass media sources to examine what gets reported, and what doesn’t, and the discrepancies therein. I had just read a September 30, 2016 article by Max Blumenthal entitled Inside the Shadowy PR Firm That’s Lobbying for Regime Change in Syria when I saw the cover article in Time’s October 17, 2016 edition, written by Jared Malsin, Whoever Saves One Life, Saves all of Humanity: The White Helmets of Syria and the 60,000 Lives They’ve Saved.
The White Helmets are credited for saving tens of thousands of lives, though estimates on exactly how many varies dramatically depending on the source. Whatever the number, there is little dispute that the White Helmets’ rank-and-file are saving lives in what seems to be an increasingly desperate situation in eastern Aleppo.
However, according to Blumenthal, the group is anything but impartial. The White Helmets’ leadership is driven by a pro-interventionist agenda conceived by the Western governments and public relations groups that back them.
The White Helmets were founded in collaboration with USAID’s Office of Transitional Initiatives—the wing that has promoted regime change around the world—and has been provided with $23 million in funding from the department. The USAID track record as a primary US government/CIA regime change facilitator is extensively documented. From South America to the Ukraine and across the Middle East, USAID serves a malevolent and oftentimes destructive role in the dismantling of sovereign nations and their reduction to Western hegemony vassal states, all in the name of freedom and democracy.
Anyone who visits the White Helmets website—which is operated by an opposition-funded PR company known as the Syria Campaign—is immediately directed to a request to sign a petition for a no-fly zone to “stop the bombs” in Syria. These sorts of communications highlight the dual role the White Helmets play as a civil defense organization saving lives while lobbying for a U.S. military campaign that will almost surely result in the collapse of the Syrian government. The White Helmets work primarily with the rebel group Jabat al Nusra (Al Qaeda in Syria)
According to a 2012 Pentagon estimate, a no-fly zone would require at least 70,000 American servicemen to enforce it, along with the widespread destruction of Syrian government infrastructure and military installations. Also sometimes called “safe zones” or “buffer zones,” from Yugoslavia to Iraq to Libya, no-fly zones have served almost without exception as the preamble to regime change. With no clear plan in place for the day after the government falls, or any conclusive evidence that its ouster is what most Syrian people want, the Western governments and public relations specialists who created the White Helmets are intensifying their push for regime change.
Away from the battlefield, the White Helmets have proven one of the most effective tools in the Syria Campaign’s public relations arsenal. James Le Mesurier, who is the lead participant in this USAID project, is a veteran of NATO interventions in Bosnia and Kosovo. After his army days, he moved into the lucrative mercenary industry by signing onto the Olive Group, an affiliate of Blackwater/Academi.
Le Mesurier’s job was to organize a unique band of people who rush into freshly bombed buildings to extract survivors—while filming themselves—in rebel-held areas facing routine bombing by Syrian army aircraft. Among the group’s primary functions has been marketing the White Helmets to Western media consumers as non-political heroes saving lives in a sea of sectarian villains. To date, USAID, the major stakeholder in the White Helmet organization, has donated $23 million, a substantial sum for a civil defense project in a war zone. A further $13 million in donations was poured into the White Helmet coffers by the British Foreign Office and the Syrian National Council, a parallel government backed and funded by the US, the UK and their allies.
In the Time Magazine article, Jared Malsin wrote:”All wars produce confusion—for chaos, nothing else comes close—but even the most brutal contests produce a glimmer of hope, or at last some sense of what is driving people to put their lives on the line. Yet to outsiders, 5 ½ years of revolution and war in Syria might appear to have produced mostly villains, along with refugees and numbing images of suffering on a blasted landscape that recalls Stalingrad. Enter the White Helmets. Ordinary Syrians emerging from the dust that hangs over the rubble of cities like Aleppo, double-timing it into some of the most dangerous places on earth to do what the world has refused to do—save Syrian lives.
“Every time the White Helmets scramble toward the sound of bombs, these heroes of Aleppo reassert the quality that will finally end the war—a unifying national identity that has seemed lost to the sectarian bigots or regional rivals that are pulling their country apart.”
So, are the White Helmets the heroes of Aleppo who will finally end the war? Are they, as Malsin asserts, “a unifying national identity that has seemed lost to the sectarian bigots and regional rivals that are pulling their country apart?”
Or are the White Helmets, as Max Blumenthal suggests, an essential part of the propaganda stream that facilitates the continued media and political campaign against the elected Syrian government?
This book can be purchased here.
October 23, 2016
OBAMA’S POLICY IN SYRIA
There is dismay and confusion within the Obama administration over its proposed “regime change” in Syria. It is not going according to plan. President Assad is still in power after five years of intense combat. His military is still loyal to him as are his people and Assad’s allies, Russia, Iran, China and Hezbollah stand steadfastly behind him. The Obama administration is particularly angry because Syrian and Russian militaries are attacking the jihadists lodged in eastern Aleppo, the same jihadists who are associated with al-Qaeda and ISIS and/or similar Islamic fundamentalist armed groups.
But shouldn’t the US be glad that the Syrian military and the Russians are attacking the jihadists?
It turns out that Washington has no interest in defeating the jihadists in Syria. In fact, this administration is just fine with the jihadists as long as they help them move the ball closer to their goal. The objective is to topple the regime, replace Assad with a US-stooge, splinter the country into multiple parts and control vital pipeline corridors. The only force capable of bring this about are jihadist forces.
In The Syrian I wrote that Syria was the conduit between Iran and Hezbollah, Israel’s two main enemies. In order to weaken Israel’s adversaries, Syria had to be destroyed. I also argued that there was a religious component. Syria is ruled by Alawites, an offshoot of Shiite Islam. Iran and Hezbollah are also Shiites. Saudi Arabia and the other Gulf nations, mostly Sunni, support the US and Israel’s attempt to destroy the three Shiite entities.
Since 2014, when The Syrian was published, facts on the ground have become more complicated, or should I say, much clearer.
Not only is the US willing to let jihadists do their bidding, they are supplying sophisticated weaponry to al-Qaeda, albeit through Saudi Arabia and Qatar, knowing full well that they are giving these weapons to the jihadists. Why isn’t this newsworthy? It would undercut the desired propaganda narrative of “good guy” rebels fighting “bad guy” Syrian government backed by “ultra-bad-guy” Russians.
The US wants Assad out of power and the only forces capable of bringing this about are the jihadists, euphemistically re-named “rebels” or moderates” by the cabal of “loyal” journalists who are not being honest with the American public. Why shouldn’t Americans be told that their tax money and US weaponry is going to aid the terrorist group that perpetuated the 9/11 attack? Why shouldn’t they be reminded, lest they’d forgotten, that Washington under President Carter helped midwife the modern jihadist movement and al-Qaeda through US-Saudi support for the Afghan mujahedeen in the 1980?
Under the Freedom of Information Act, an unclassified U.S. Department of State document, dated November 30, 2015 stated: “Bringing down Assad would not only be a massive boon to Israel’s security, it would also ease Israel’s understandable fear of losing its nuclear monopoly. With Assad gone, and Iran no longer able to threaten Israel through its proxies, Syria and Hezbollah, it is possible that the U.S. and Israel can agree on red lines for when Iran’s nuclear program has crossed an unacceptable threshold. In short, the White House can ease the tension that has developed with Israel over Iran by doing the “right thing” in Syria.”
Never mind that this same support of Israel and Saudi Arabia has brought us into a dangerous confrontation with Russia along with recently imposed sanctions and the elimination of nuclear and plutonium cooperation.
The new playbook gets even more dangerous. Washington now wants to encircle Mosul, closing off all escape corridors, and then, once Mosul falls, push the 9,000 or so jihadists into eastern Syria so Assad and his ally Russia cannot liberate Aleppo and declare victory.
According to Israel’s former Ambassador to the United States, Michael Oren, “We’ve always wanted Bashar Assad to go, we always preferred the bad guys who weren’t backed by Iran to the bad guys who were backed by Iran, even if the bad guys are affiliated with al-Qaeda.”
Stephen Kinzer wrote in the The Boston Globe on February 18, 2016 that, “The United States has the power to decree the death of nations. It can do so with popular support because many American are content with the official story. In Syria, it is: fight Assad, Russia and Iran. Join with our Turkish, Saudi, and Kurdish friends and support peace. This is appallingly distant from reality. It is also likely to prolong the war and condemn more Syrians to suffering and death.”
US support of Israel and Saudi Arabia has never had a reasonable basis in terms of American interests. Such support has brought us grief, death and trouble, including 9/11. So why is the American government the servant of Israeli and Saudi interests and not American interests?
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