National Demonstration - Solidarity with Gaza - End the Siege Now

From Stop the War:

National Demonstration

Solidarity with Gaza

End the Siege Now

Saturday 24 November

Assemble Downing Street 12 Noon

March to the Israeli Embassy

Speakers include: Bianca Jagger, Ahdaf Soueif, Andy Slaughter MP, Jeremy Corbyn MP, Jean Lambert MEP, Manuel Hassassian Palestinian Ambassador to the UK, Seumas Milne journalist, Victoria Brittain journalist, Bruce Kent CND, Andrew Murray UNITE, Steve Bell CWU, Lindsey German Stop the War, Kamel Hawwash Palestine Solidarity Campaign, Glyn Secker Jews for Justice for Palestinians, Daud Abdullah Middle East Monitor, Ismail Patel Friends of Al-Aqsa, Tariq Tahboub PFIB

URGENT FINANCIAL APPEAL BY STOP THE WAR

Stop the War has drained its resources in our campaign against Israel's war crimes in Gaza. We urgently need funds to finance this week's activities leading up to Saturday's demonstration. We rely entirely on contributions from our supporters and members. Please donate whatever you can to Stop the War's Campaign for Gaza Appeal. DONATE NOW HERE...

Lighting the torch - Jewish Socialist Group event

From the Jewish Socialist Group website:

LIGHTING THE TORCH, ALGIERS 8 NOVEMBER 1942 Speaker: Charlie Pottins

7.30pm, Sunday 11th November 2012 at MIC Centre, 81-103 Euston Street, London NW1 2EZ (3 min from Euston station) 

How a band of poorly armed, mainly Jewish, rebels took on Vichy French forces in Algiers, opening the way for Allied forces. On the 70th anniversary, we look at a little known page of history, and at what happened afterwards.
ALL WELCOME

Note the anniversary was 8 November but the commemorative event is on the 11th.  Well it had me confused....

The radicalisation of a Palestinian Druze

I remember reading an article in an English language Palestinian newspaper called al Fajr titled, The radicalisation of the Palestinian Druzes.  I suppose the title speaks for the article but I don't recall the article itself.  I was reminded of the headline by this tweet from the International Middle East Media Centre (IMEMC):

A young Druze man refuse to serve in the Israeli Army: A young druze man sent out a letter to the Prime Minister... tinyurl.com/8o7mfp8
— IMEMC News (@imemcnews) October 27, 2012

Here's the letter as published in English on the IMEMC site:

A young druze man sent out a letter to the Prime Minister of Israel Benjamin Netanyahu and defense minister Ehud Barak, explaining why he refuses to be part of the Israeli army. Young secular Druze men are required to conscript into the Israeli military the same as their Jewish peer group, however some of them refuse to do so.

Below is an English translation of the letter.

To the Israeli Prime Minister,
To the “Defense Minister”,
Subject: refusal to appear for compulsory military recruitment.

I’m the undersigned, Omar Zahr Eldin Mohammad Saad from the village of Mughar – Galilee, have received a notice to appear in the military recruitment offices on 31.10.2012 to conduct tests according to the conscription law imposed on the Druze community. I would like to make the following points:

I refuse to appear for tests, because I oppose the law of conscription imposed on my Druze community. I refuse because I am a man of peace and I hate all forms of violence, and the military institution represents for me the peak of physical and psychological violence. Since I received the notice to appear for tests, my life has changed, I became more nervous, my thoughts were distracted, I remembered thousands of cruel images, and I couldn’t imagine myself wearing military uniform and participating in the suppression of my Palestinian people or fighting my Arab brothers. I oppose the recruitment to the Israeli military and any other military for conscience and nationalistic reasons. I hate the injustice and oppose the occupation; I hate intolerance and restriction of freedoms. I hate those who detain children, the elderly and women.

I am a musician, I play the Viola , I have played in many places, I have musician friends from Ramallah, Jericho, Jerusalem, Hebron, Nablus, Jenin, Shfa’amr, Eilabun, Rome, Athens, Amman, Beirut, Damascus, Oslo, and we all play for freedom, humanity and peace, our weapon is the music and we shall not have any other weapon.

I am from a community that was unjustly treated by an unjust law, how can we fight our relatives in Palestine, Syria, Jordan and Lebanon? How can I hold arms against my brothers and people in Palestine? How can I be a soldier standing at Qalandia checkpoint or any other checkpoint, after I experienced the injustices at these checkpoints? How can I prevent someone from Ramallah to visit his city, Jerusalem? How can I guard the apartheid wall? How can I be a jailer to my own people while I know that the majority of prisoners are freedom prisoners and seekers of rights and freedom?

I play for joy, for freedom, for a just peace based on halting settlements, the end of the occupation in Palestine, the establishment of an independent Palestinian state with Jerusalem its capital, the release of all prisoners in prisons and the return of displaced refugees to their homes.

Many of the youth from my community have done the compulsory service in the army, what have we received? Discrimination in all areas, our villages are the poorest, our lands were confiscated, there are no master plans, and no industrial zones. Percentages of university graduates in our villages of the lowest in the region, the unemployment rates in our villages are the highest. This mandatory law has kept us away from our Arab connection.

This year, I will finish high school, and I seek to complete my university education. I’m sure you will try to make me concede my human ambition, but I announce it loudly:

I’m Omar Zahr Eldin Mohammad Saad will not be the fuel to the fire of your war, and will not be a soldier in your army .

Signature: Omar Sa'ad

No point in adding emphasis, it's all pretty emphatic.

Syria: the Palestinian dilemma

Here's a Comment is Free piece from The Guardian website by Sharif Nashishibi:

Palestinian leaders, organisations and officials were generally silent at the start of Syria's revolution, mainly out of concern for the fate of the half million Palestinian refugees in the country.

However, that has now changed, and not in President Bashar al-Assad's favour. Attacks on Palestinian camps by Syrian forces loyal to him – most recently last week against the Yarmouk camp – have resulted in killings, injuries, and the displacement of thousands. This has angered Palestinian refugees, many of whom are now openly supporting the revolution, as well as taking in Syrian refugees.

This is particularly damaging for the Assad regime because it has long regarded itself as a guardian of the Palestinian cause.

In an obvious reference to Palestinians, Jihad Makdissi, the Syrian foreign ministry spokesman, wrote on Facebook that "guests" in Syria "have to respect the rules of hospitality" or "depart to the oases of democracy in Arab countries". He later removed his comments following an outcry.

The regime's supporters often cite the fact that Palestinian refugees in Syria are treated far better than in other Arab countries. What they overlook, though, is that the law enshrining the rights of these refugees was enacted well before the Ba'ath party took power.

While several Palestinian leaders have now broken their silence about Syria, attitudes vary. Yasser Abed Rabbo, the PLO's secretary-general, described an attack by Assad's forces on a Palestinian camp in Latakia as "a crime against humanity." On the other hand, Nour Abdulhadi, the PLO's director in Syria for political affairs, later said Palestinian refugees "will remain as supporters of the Syrian government" – a claim seemingly out of step with the facts.

One major blow to Assad has been Hamas's stance. Not only did it refuse a request to hold pro-regime rallies in refugee camps in Syria, but it also allowed residents of Gaza to stage protests against him.

Its senior leaders left Damascus earlier this year, with political leader Khaled Meshaal – who reportedly twice turned down requests to meet Assad – now living in Qatar.

The article first appeared on Friday so comments are now closed.

Arafat poisoned? Danny Rubinstein told us so

Well here's a blast from the past.  A study commissioned by al Jazeera appears to support the idea that Yasser Arafat was poisoned.

Eight years after his death, it remains a mystery exactly what killed the longtime Palestinian leader. Tests conducted in Paris found no obvious traces of poison in Arafat’s system. Rumors abound about what might have killed him – cancer, cirrhosis of the liver, even allegations that he was infected with HIV.

A nine-month investigation by Al Jazeera has revealed that none of those rumors were true: Arafat was in good health until he suddenly fell ill on October 12, 2004.

More importantly, tests reveal that Arafat’s final personal belongings – his clothes, his toothbrush, even his iconic kaffiyeh – contained abnormal levels of polonium, a rare, highly radioactive element. Those personal effects, which were analyzed at the Institut de Radiophysique in Lausanne, Switzerland, were variously stained with Arafat’s blood, sweat, saliva and urine. The tests carried out on those samples suggested that there was a high level of polonium inside his body when he died.

“I can confirm to you that we measured an unexplained, elevated amount of unsupported polonium-210 in the belongings of Mr. Arafat that contained stains of biological fluids,” said Dr. Francois Bochud, the director of the institute.

Given the mystery as to the cause of death when it actually happened, I was surprised the allegation of poisoning wasn't more widespread but there was an allegation of poisoning from an authoritative voice, that of Israeli journo, Danny Rubinstein. I posted on his interview with Keshev, The Centre for the Protection of Democracy in Israel, back in 2006. The link to the interview is now broken but here is what Rubinstein had to say back then:

In my personal estimation, based on several findings and testimonies, we poisoned Arafat. Writing that today seems like an exercise in futility: 'those Arabs, with their imagination, and their conspiracy theories, etc.'. It is so opposed to our narrative and so identified with theirs, that I can't put that in. I think that's true for today's media in general: it's careful not to target sacred cows. In the end, all the systems adopt an approach held by part or most of the establishment.

There are many reasons why the zionist establishment would want to ignore Rubinstein.  He opposes the Law of Return and he makes no bones about describing Israel as an apartheid state.  Of course many people say both of those things but he was the first prominent Israeli journalist that I know of to say that Yasser Arafat was poisoned.

The al Jazeera piece concludes thus:

A conclusive finding that Arafat was poisoned with polonium would not, of course, explain who killed him. It is a difficult element to produce, though – it requires a nuclear reactor – and the signature of the polonium in Arafat’s bones could provide some insight about its origin.

Look again at what Rubinstein said: 

we poisoned Arafat.

He wasn't talking about himself.

Lieberman and the JNF - a racist among racists

Avigdor Lieberman, Israel's foreign minister, is paying a visit to the racist Jewish National Fund in London tonight.  That the racist JNF and the racist Lieberman support each other shouldn't surprise anyone.  I am however surprised that the JNF is so open about it.

There is a bright side to this.  The meeting should help those of us who have been trying to expose the inappropriateness of the JNF's charitable status since hosting a foreign politician can hardly be deemed non-political.  Also there is a protest planned and here are the details:

Appeal from Stop the JNF Campaign – UK

PROTEST ISRAELI FOREIGN MINISTER AVIGDOR LIEBERMAN IN LONDON

Tuesday 22 May 2012

From 6.15pm, The Pillar Hotel, 19 Brent Street, London, NW4 2EU (nearest tube Hendon Central, Northern Line)

Protest at the appearance of the Israeli Foreign Minister at a Jewish National Fund event in NW London tomorrow night and at the decision of the UK government to allow him entry to the UK

Apparently it's not just anti-zionists who are opposed to this visit.  Some zionists are worried about the effect Lieberman might have on hasbara efforts.

100 years of non-violent Palestinian resistance

I picked up a freebie issue of Time magazine yesterday and I was surprised to see a letter on non-violent Palestinian resistance.

I'm copying it out as it appears on page 10 of the 2 May 2011 edition because the letters aren't available on line:

Nonviolence among Palestinians is not new.

The recently released book Popular Resistance

in Palestine, by Mazin Qumsiyeh, documents

over 100 years of everyday acts of resis-

tance, with suicide bombings and rocket

attacks as the exception.  The world needs

to hear more about these courageous acts.

Peggy Vander Meulen,

GRAND RAPIDS, MICH, US. 

The book is available from Pluto Press.

Palestine Film Festival

Karma Nabulsi in The Guardian on the Palestine Film Festival:

The perilous art of choosing a film on Palestine for an international audience may appear fraught with elephant traps. Weighted down by more than 40 years of military occupation and 60 years of dispossession, and comprising the largest refugee population in the world, Palestine is a touchstone for passion and political engagement across the world. Is a film about it inherently too political, too ideologically rigid to enlighten, or indeed entertain? Do the unhappy politics of the place trump any chance of critical engagement on a film's artistic merit, or allow room for happy accident and serendipity in choosing a film?

The long-running London Palestine film festival, established at London University more than 20 years ago and held annually at the Barbican since 2005, arrived at a highly unexpected and bold solution to this challenge. It somehow manages to transcend this traditional dilemma by holding fast to a few simple but radical aims: to constantly push boundaries, disrupt our conventional understandings, make us see it all anew, and open it up for us once more. With each screening, discussion, roundtable, photography exhibit, director's conversation and artist's event, the world of Palestine is seen yet again, as if for the first time.

Under this mandate, a serious but ebullient festival has emerged. In order to keep shaking things up, a key premise was to universalise Palestine. Although we are in the midst of a wave of Palestinian film talent, they forgo the confines of a traditional "national cinema" series for an unmistakably internationalist one. This year's festival showcases 30 works by artists working in 12 different countries, and across genres from video art to biopic, puts up work for UK premieres (16 this year), and shows cutting-edge documentaries such as Mahmoud al Massad's mesmerising This Is My Picture When I Was Dead.

It also regularly celebrates archive gems, this year showing the recently restored Far from Vietnam (1967), on which Chris Marker, Jean-Luc Godard, Agnès Varda, Claude Lelouch, Alain Resnais and Joris Ivens all worked. The result is a carnival of cinematic styles and concerns that transcend and unite the historical, the aesthetic, and the political in film, and that is why it works so well. Each film and event challenges – either obliquely or directly – our thinking around Palestine today.

The festival also plays a major role as the platform for introducing Palestinian films and film-makers to UK audiences. Since its inception in 1998, more than 320 works have been shown, nearly half by Palestinians. The festival's focus on Palestinian work unites established and emerging artists. This year's festival opens with Zindeeq (pictured), a remarkable work of sublime beauty. Bold, dangerous and difficult, it is the latest work of pioneering Palestinian auteur Michel Khleifi. But it also contains a body of work from a new generation of film-makers such as May Odeh, Rima Essa and Abdallah al Ghoul.

This year the programme highlights pressing contemporary issues, as well. Vibeke Løkkeberg's astonishing Tears of Gaza offers a searing account of the human impact of the 2008-09 war in Gaza, while a triple-bill on 7 May focuses on the tunnels that furnish Gaza's precarious lifeline. And this year includes the rare chance to see Heiny Srour's 1984 feminist masterwork, Leila and the Wolves (co-presented with Birds Eye View film festival), as well as the UK premiere of Dahna Abourahme's groundbreaking documentary on the women of Ain el-Hilweh refugee camp in south Lebanon, The Kingdom of Women. Breathtaking, uplifting, heartbreaking, inspiring: welcome to Palestine.

The London Palestine film festival runs from 29 April to 11 May. Details:palestinefilm.org

Comments are open, even at this late hour.

Nice!

Actually, It isn't nice is the name of the song, written by Malvina Reynolds, and performed as the soundtrack to this video by Barbara Dane.

In Memoriam Juliano Mer Khamis

Whose violence begets violence?

According to this article in Ha'aretz, it is Israel's violence that begets Palestinian violence:

Famously, the Arabs don't need excuses to kill Jews. As everyone knows, only self-hating Jews believe there's a connection between the Israeli side's behavior in the occupied territories and violent acts by the Palestinian side. Right?

Not according to a recent article in the important Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, a journal that comes out in Washington. Contrary to the received version that "Israel only reacts" to Palestinian violence, the article scientifically shows that the cycle of violence spins in both directions. The three researchers - Prof. Nancy Kanwisher from the United States, Dr. Johannes Haushofer from Switzerland and Prof. Anat Biletzki from Israel - question previous articles claiming the Palestinian do not need provocations from the Israeli side, and that the terror attacks and rockets do not come in response to assassinations and attacks on Israel's part.

The article sums up a statistical analysis of the data on fatalities and Qassam launchings from 2000-2008, published by the Israel Defense Forces Spokesman and B'Tselem - The Israel Information Center for Human Rights in the Territories. The analysis was done using a method called vector autoregression, which enables isolation and analysis of how a single incidence of violence by one side influences the other.

Haushofer, an economist and neurobiologist at the University of Zurich, says the study shows that every time one side attacks the other, it can know with near certainty the other side will respond with violence. In this way, in effect, violence directly causes more Palestinian casualties or another rocket attack on Israel.

For example, according to the article's model, when Israel kills five Palestinians, the chances an Israeli will be killed by Palestinians the following day increase by 50 percent. Haushofer explains that he and his colleagues conducted the inquiry to "clear out" the rhetoric, the stereotypes and the ideological claims and to focus the discussion on the facts and their scientific and sane analysis.

Kanwisher, who heads the "Kanwisher Lab" for brain research at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, points to a cognitive bias on both sides, which do not see their own reactivity and responsibility for the conflict. "Thus, for example, even though the Israelis are the occupying side, they see themselves as victims of the other side," she says.

Without any direct connection to the article's research findings, Kanwisher says the Israelis do not understand their role in creating the violence of the other side. She suggests the policy makers in the United States direct their attention to the fact that acts like stealing Palestinian lands and violations of basic human rights are perpetuating the continuation of the conflict. And, in the nature of things, a conflict leads to one or another level of violence.

The third partner in the article, a Tel Aviv University professor of philosophy, Anat Biletzki, says the article knocks the scientific basis out from under the claim that the conflict is unilateral, and that the Palestinians attack Israel while Israel "only reacts."

"We are hoping the article will contribute facts and numbers to the public discussion of the conflict," says Biletzki, who for many years headed B'Tselem.

Biletzki contributes a political diagnosis of her own: "I don't need scientific research to determine that all the behavior of the Palestinians is a reaction to the Israeli occupation. For this, common sense is enough."

Quite!

Protest against an ethnic cleanser in London

URGENT ACTION: Protest against Jerusalem Mayor Nir Barkat, Monday 22nd March, 5pm, London

Nir Barkat, the mayor of Jerusalem behind the announcement of 1,600 new settlement units in East Jerusalem, will be visiting London early next week. A total of 50,000 housing units have planned in the coming years - doubling the settler population - and reducing the Palestinian population to a third. Israel's plans to restore Hurva synagogue a few hundred meters from Al-Aqsa mosque has led to clashes over the last few days - men under 50 have been refused entry into Al-Aqsa since Friday. Israel has deployed some 3,000 security forces across the city.

He will be speaking at Chatham House (10 St James's Square, London SW1Y 4LE). Come along and protest against the ethnic cleansing of Palestinians from East Jerusalem.

Organised by: Palestine Solidarity Campaign, Stop the War Coalition, British Muslim Initiative, Jews for Justice for Palestinians, Friends of Al Aqsa; Friends of Lebanon, Friends of Sabeel UK, Architects and Planners for Justice in Palestine, Liberal Democrat Friends of Palestine, Britain Palestine Twinning Network.

You can let Chatham House know what you think about their recent briefing ‘Jerusalem: the Cost of Failure' and the event by ringing 020 7957 5700 or emailing: contact@chathamhouse.org.uk.

Palestine Solidarity Camoaign

20 years after the fall of the Berlin Wall..

Palestinians from Nilin bring down one slab of the Apartheid Wall.

The goods in this supermarket have been liberated by the people of Honduras

By Que es

Honduras resistance call for international solidarity and boycott

Call from the National Front against the Coup d'Etat in Honduras to the Worldwide Working Class

This comes from the

..."National Front against the Coup d'Etat" which unites all of the social and political expressions of the popular movement and is driving the national movement towards the defeat of the dictatorship. This front is made up of worker, peasant and other peoples organizations, as well as by the left and center parties and movements who have declared themselves against the coup d'etat.

A few quotes (with my emphasis):

Behind the coup is the business leadership, the four political parties of the bourgeoisie, (Liberal Party, National Party, Christian Democratic Party and Party of Social Democratic Innovation and Unity), the leadership of the Catholic and Evangelical churches, as well as the main owners of the media. All of them made a counter-revolutionary alliance for fear that the popular poll of the 28th of June would give power to the people and especially to the working class and poor peasantry to start the construction of a new society, where the privileges of the bourgeois class and the landowners would be eliminated.

It is also necessary to say that behind this coup d'etat is the hand of North American imperialism and the Latin American ultra-right, who are seeing it as an opportunity to stop the advance of the left in the Central American region and the influence of the Venezuelan revolution, after the recent electoral triumphs of the Farabundo Marti National Liberation Front (FMLN) in El Salvador and the Sandinista Front in Nicaragua.

The international reaction was forceful from a diplomatic point of view: Except for the Zionist regime of Israel, no other country in the world dared to recognize the military-business dictatorship imposed in Honduras.

The only government that always had an ambiguous policy towards the usurping government was the North American government led by Barack Obama.

The Honduran working class, which since the beginning actively responded to the popular resistance, organized in the third week a unified mobilization through its own methods of struggle: la general strike and the takeover of work centers, starting with a 48 hour stoppage by the three central unions of the country (CUTH, CGT and CTH) this past 23rd and 24th of July, which was repeated again the 30th and 31st of the same month. In solidarity with them friends from the popular organizations of El Salvador and Nicaragua cut of the customs to stop the entrance of exit of merchandise from Honduras. Immediately the business associations of Honduras and Central America, who are in solidarity with the usurpers, screamed to the sky because that boycott implied losses of millions for their companies. This means that the strike and the commercial boycott are effective weapons to wear out the economic base of the coup-makers, more than formal declarations

Because of all of this, the National Front Against the Coup d'Etat makes a call to working class organizations world wide to organize and carry out militant solidarity with the working class and the people of Honduras, carrying out boycott actions of all products that enter or come out of Honduran ports, with the goal of economically asphyxiating the dictatorship; do protests in repudiation of the dictatorship in front of the U.S. and Honduran embassies, do political and cultural actions in solidarity with the struggle of the Honduran people, and in general carry out action that strengthens the struggle of the Honduran people and its working class to get us out of this oppressive regime and reach a new society.