Gaza Is Not Just About Gaza

     The tragedy of Israel bombing Gaza is not just about Gaza.  It is about the militarization of Israel, the U.S. and, by extension, the rest of the world, a process that goes on behind a cloud of lies and deceptions that are repeated in our mainstream media.

      Gaza is an example of how the media is part of and protects the interests of the 1%.  Israel’s aggression against Gaza is portrayed as Israel’s need to defend itself. We are not told what the Israeli military did to provoke a militant response from Hamas.  And we are not even supposed to imagine that Palestinians have a right to defend themselves too.  Because we do not hear about Israel’s long-range  Zionist goal of eliminating Arabs from the land between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean, we lack a context for understanding what is happening in Gaza,

      We are supposed to see Israel as the victim. That way we will not know that this invasion of Gaza was being planned for months.  Nor will we look at what Israel is doing daily in the West Bank and East Jerusalem to steal the land, destroy the trees, demolish the homes, imprison the youth and cut the supply of water. We will not understand that we taxpayers are paying for the bombs that fall on Gaza, the Caterpillar bulldozers that are retrofitted to demolish Palestinian homes,  the drones that pick out the targets in Gaza, because the U.S. gives Israel $3 billion a year in military/economic aid --  the largest aid package in the world. We need to ask ourselves why, and question this use of our resources.

In addition, Gaza is the victim of the flourishing arms industry and trading in arms by many countries, including Israel and the U.S. (read author Victor Thorn), and the need to keep testing new war toys.  The siege and war on Gaza are part of the trend towards global militarization and away from democratization, as  powerful elites attempt to hold on to power.

We who oppose war and want sustainable communities, must work hard to counter what is happening to Gaza and connect that issue with other issues of destruction and oppression.   Here are a few of those issues.

     Outsourcing jobs to countries with cheaper labor also means allowing poor working conditions. Two deadly fires last weekend in Bangladeshi clothing factories that supply Walmart and other U.S. stores are a case in point.  When those workers demand their rights, Bangladeshi police will need more weapons to control them.

     Our financial crisis has caused unemployment and home foreclosures in the U.S. (and in Europe), and the measures taken by banks and our government do not create jobs and save homes, but benefit the 1% while throwing more and more people out of work and home.  How is it possible to rebuild our economy  if people have no jobs?

     We are a society that is generally afraid of people who look different from ourselves. Such fear is encouraged by a growing private prison industry  that joins with racist politicians to fill their facilities with mostly young mostly Black men,  with the result that the Black community is deprived of their youth and all their potential, including their voting rights.  Similarly, the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency (ICE) promotes fear of immigrants, snatches them from their families and incarcerates  them in abusive conditions, sometimes for months, before deporting them.  Their stories rarely make the news.

     The Bush Administration re-opened Guantanamo Prison, off shore and out of reach in Cuba, where we could secretly torture and abuse men suspected of being terrorists, and where the Obama Administration still holds 161 men, defending their indefinite detention without trial.  Obama also authorizes the use of  targeted assassination of suspected terrorists  thus eliminating  any possibility of capture, arrest and trial.    Does this match with American laws and values?

In 1949, the USA founded the School of the Americas, which still operates today under a new name so as to try to hide its misdeeds.  Now called WHINSEC, it is located within an American army base in the state of Georgia.  Its sole purpose is to train military and police from Latin American countries in “counter-insurgency” tactics. Its graduates have been involved in almost every incidence of torturing, disappearing and murdering citizens who protest what their government is doing.  Typically the victims are labor leaders, teachers, intellectuals, students and advocates for the poor.  How is such programmed brutality kept out of our sight so that many of us have never heard of the School of the Americas/WHINSEC?

     The Keystone XL Pipeline is to be built clear across the United States, from Canada to the Gulf of Mexico to bring petroleum extracted from tar sand deposits in the North.  Good jobs?  Necessary fuel? Corporate profits?  Many people in the path of this pipeline are protesting it day and night, because the pipeline will cost millions of dollars to build, will run dangerously close to a major aquifer, and go through pristine prairie lands which are habitat for many species.  It might leak, as is frequently the case with petroleum pipelines. Extracting petroleum from tar sands requires enormous amounts of water, draining the common water table, and the used water, now full of chemicals leaches back into the water table. Do we know how much of this fuel is needed by our military, which consumes about 20 million gallons of fuel a day? (Barry Sanders)  Do we citizens need this fuel to support our lifestyles?

     In Central America poor countries are being sued by multi-national corporations for trying to curtail mining which (as with tar sands mining) is draining their fresh water supplies and killing off animals and plants that depend on the now polluted rivers.  Company militias have murdered or disappeared farmer-activists who are organizing to close these mines.  How did companies get this much lethal power?

     A militarized world is not a democratic world.  The destructive behaviors of corporations and governments create enemies among  the people they oppress. Thus the oppressors need more weapons to control restive populations.  And they need the media to keep us, the 99%, confused and uninformed.  But if we want a voice in how our communities and our world will operate, we must get involved.

The Cleansing of East Jerusalem and Prospects for Statehood for Palestine

On September 2, settlers from an East Jerusalem settlement* called Ma'ale Zeitim, one largely funded by U.S. billionaire Irving Moskovitz, took over one of the rooms in a Palestinian home in the neighborhood of Ras al-Amud. They came to the door of the house, forced their way in and stayed, backed up by a contingent of Israeli police, and supported by an Israeli court decision in their favor. The settlers claim that this property was owned by Jews before 1948, and therefore they are taking back what is theirs. Once installed in part of the family's home, they put a barbed wire fence through the middle of the family yard.



Ras al-Amud neighorhood lies below Jewish cemetery on opposite hillside.

*Settlement:. a colony of Jews in houses built on Palestinian land, illegal by international law, but supported and protected by Israeli law.

If this one-room occupation follows the pattern of the 2009 settler/government supported actions in another East Jerusalem neighborhood (Sheik Jarrah), the righteous settlers will end up evicting the Palestinian family, which will then be homeless and without any recourse to compensation. (See Just Vision's documentary film, "My Neighborhood." ) But compensation is not the issue. The issue is this: thousands of Palestinians owned homes and property in West Jerusalem before 1948, but they cannot use the Israeli courts to lay claim to them, much less expect police escorts to help them access those homes and forcefully evict the inhabitants.

This is the meaning of apartheid -- separate and unequal laws for different groups based on ethnicity.

Settler guard post on Pal roof in Old City




Israeli flag on settler apartment in the Old City of East Jerusalem



 When I recently toured East Jerusalem with ICAHD (The Israeli Committee Against House Demolitions) I saw the spiffy settlement apartment buildings plunked down on stolen properties and supplied with playgrounds, sidewalks, parking lots and street lights, next to Palestinian homes where residents, without sidewalks and playgrounds, are forced to burn their garbage alongside broken roads and in empty lots because of the lack of municipal services for which they pay ample taxes.** In contrast to the protected settlerments, 27,000 of the Palestinian homes in this part of the city have demolition orders from Israel. To the inhabitants of these homes, waiting for the bulldozers to come probably feels somewhat like having a star of David painted on your house in Germany in the 1930's. You know you are in trouble, but you don't know when that trouble will come.

**Palestinians are one third of the population of Jerusalem (East and West), but pay 40% of the total taxes and receive in services and schools 10% of the municipal budget.)

Will statehood solve these problems for Palestine? Two states? One state? An apartheid state? Everyone concerned with this isue in the States and here has begun to debate this question. What should a future Palestine look like, and how to get there? I draw my information from Palestinian activists- academics, community organizers and labor unionists -- who are well informed and are the ones whose efforts will shape the changes in the years ahead.

Majdi, one of the great guides for the group I brought to Palestine this year, declared that the main issue to be addressed is that of the refugees' right to return to their original homes and leave the miserable refugee camps. But in the meantime, while they wait for a political solution, the conditions in the refugee camps must be improved, to provide the basic conditions for a decent life. According to Majdi, neglecting these needs is making the camps "factories of violence," because young people do not see any hope for a better life. If they have two states, that means the end to the Right of Return, because refugees will be forced to reside in the Palestinian state instead of allowing them to go to their original villages which are mostly inside Israel.

However, many agree that creating a State of Palestine, with open borders, might be Step One towards the preferred outcome of one state joining the two peoples in this small area between the Mediterranean and the Jordan River. In the opinion of Isam,(see last photo) a middle class engineer, in whose garden we were enjoying the traditional sweets and coffee of the Al-Adha holiday, there cannot be one state until there has been a ten year period without violence from either side. Until then, "We can't live (in one state) with people who are trying to kill us."



Qalqilia checkpoint for workers



"Trying to kill us" takes a miriad of forms that entwine with daily life in a Kafka-esk way. An example is in the city of Qalqilia, which is right on the Green Line, the supposed border between Israel and the West Bank. Its 50,000 residents were once considered moderates but have become extremists thanks to the Separation Wall that Israel has built to enclose and imprison the whole city. There are a few openings in the wall that are checkpoints, manned by Blackwater-style security contractors. In order for 3,000 workers and farmers to get to their work on the other side of the wall in the morning, they have to line up at the checkpoint, starting at 2:00 a.m..



Sleuth hatches in the Wall around Qalqilia



Our group's visit to Qalqilia to see the effects of the wall included a view of huge hatches in the wall to allow for Qalqilia's wastewater to flow into Israel for treatment, according to agreements signed when the Green Line was drawn in 1949. Before there was a wall, the wastewater simply moved along a sleuth in the desired direction. Once the wall was built, and the hatches installed, Israel had control over the flow of the wastewater by opening or closing the hatches. In 2005 when heavy rains came, Israel closed the hatches, causing the water to back up and flood the whole city, wastewater and all.

At another gate in this wall around Qalqilia we encountered a man with a small tractor full of citrus trees. He was waiting for the "agricultural gate" to open so he could pass - with his Israeli-issued permit - to deliver the trees to a Palestinian trying to continue his nursery business in spite of the wall. The gate is supposed to open three times a day, at 7:00, 1:00 and 5:00, but only to those who have obtained a permit. For Americans it would be like needing to apply for a visa to get from your house to your own garden or to your neighbor's or to the town nearest to where you live, or to the local hospital or school.


Citrus trees waiting at the checkpoint



Israeli permit needed to cross checkpoint



But I was starting to write about one state, two states or an apartheid state. I think you can see that what exists now is the apartheid state, and the facts on the ground prove that this is the state that Israel wants, even while claiming to be a democratic state beseiged by terrorists who must be walled in or walled out. You might also see that two states are not possible as long as the settlements are allowed to stay in place on Palestinian land. The placement and size of the settlements, plus their connecting roads, plus the various military infrastructures and designated "green areas" leave only 8.7% of the West Bank in Palestinian hands, and this tiny amount is chopped up into little pieces that do not touch each other.

`Mohammed, a professor and organizer, has always believed that the goal should be for one democratic state for Jews and Palestinians (Muslim and Christian). If the settlers wanted to stay and abide by the rule of one set of laws for all, fine. If they wanted to leave, Palestinians could use the housing. There would no longer be a Jewish state, but a state where Jews would have equal rights with other citizens.

I asked Mohammed how he focuses his activism toward achieving one state.   Aside from teaching all whom he has regular contact with -- his university students and colleagues and the community served by the Palestinian House of Friendship which he founded in 1994-- about how a democracy works and the importance of being involved in one's community, and apart from promoting elections at the university, municipal and national levels, he also works outside the system to ceate a grassroots, unaffiliated network of like-minded people. The main challenge is to break through the power of the ruling party, Fatah, which is supported by the U.S. and Israel as a more or less compliant partner in the moribund "peace process."  The municipal elections that just took place across the West Bank were a measure of general disaffection with Fatah, which controls the Palestinian Authority (PA).  Many votes were won by the Left and Independent candidates.  As Mohammed told us, "We have the minds and determination. What we need is good management."

Other challenges to achieving statehood are the separation between the West Bank and Gaza, both politcally and geographically,  the lack of infrastructure for economic development, and restrictions impossed by the Israeli military occupation.

Sam Bahour, a Palestinian capitalist who surprised me with his astute analysis and advocacy for Palestinian rights, said in a lecture I attended last week, that the word "occupation" really does not apply anymore, since it implies a temporary situation and not this 45 year old one. He sees the solution as evolving from a "nation-state solution to a civil rights solution." Palestinians will never accept living in a Jewish State, but if everyone's civil rights are respected, Jews and Palestinians can live together. He places hope in the grassroots, not in the U.S., the E.U., nor in the PA (Palestinian Authority), which he sees as functioning only as an outsourcer of Israeli products.


Me, Mohammed, Isam, Madiha & daughter

 When I addressed my questions about the one state-two state solution to two other Palestinian intellectuals, Mazin and Sammeh, they both answered by talking about Zionism - a word that either confounds or irritates many people in the U.S. But not to talk about Zionism is to obscure the core of the problem. Zionism wants a Jewish state between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea wihout the presence of non-Jews. Mazin said that statehood is not an issue between two negotiating parties (Israel and Palestine), but an issue of Zionism, which denies the human rights of Palestinians. It is a colonial ideology, initiated in the 19th century when colonizing was the name of the global game, and it includes the ethnic cleansing of the indigenous population which had been multi-cultural, multi-ethnic and multi-religious. Mazin also believes that Zionism "has run its course", as indicated by the shift in popular opinion in the States away from uncritical acceptance of all that Israel does.

I had dinner last night in the home of Sammieh, professor of political science at Bir Zeit University. He said that it is "the nature of Zionism" that determines what kind of state is possible. If there were two states, it would mean the expulsion of the Arab/Palestinian populatiion from inside Israel, because Israel wants a purely Jewish state, and would expell its Arabs to live in the Palestinian state. On the other hand, one state is not possible because that would require both peoples to accept one another, and Zionist Israel does not want to accept non-Jews. "We do not have a problem with Jews; they have a problem with us. They do not want to live with us, they want to control us. Therefore, Zionism must change its nature. Israelis must learn to accept the Other." Zionism's non-acceptance will cause a bloody confrontation, said Sammeh. It is Palestinians' job to convince the Israeli people that they must change. ( Sammieh referred me to the work of the Israeli author Israel Shahak who has written about Zionism in "Jewish Religion, Jewish History.")

While this issue of statehood is being debated in lecture halls and study groups, it is being decided by the Zionist-imposed facts on the ground in Palestine, epitomized by the theft of a single room in Ras al-Amud. The situation is both laden with details and at the same time simple. While one people is depriving another of basic human rights, freedom of movement, and dignity, we have an apartheid state. It must be dismantled by all possible non-violent methods beginning with the rejection of Zionism.













AIPAC, Palestine and Iran

Outside Convention Center the night of AIPAC's closing plenary

AIPAC, the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, just had its annual convention in Washington, D.C.  It was attended by 13,000 people, including 400 of our elected Congress people.  President Obama addressed the attendees to praise Israel, as was expected, and to make his case for delaying an attack on Iran.  He did not mention Palestine  and Israel’s continuing occupation and rape of their land.

I was outside the convention, with a few hundred other protestors, to remind AIPAC and the President that Palestine exists, under Israeli occupation, and to say no to AIPAC’s  loud and frantic call for war on Iran.   AIPAC is powerful, maybe even more powerful than the president of the United States, it has no use for Palestinians, and it wants a war on Iran. 

AIPAC says it is speaking for Israel’s interests, and that whatever Israel wants, Israel should have. If Israel wants to continue to steal land from Palestinians in order to expand Israel, it should take as much land as it wants and ignore international law and human rights issues.   And if Israel wants a war on Iran, it should have a war, and the U.S. should help to fight it, over and above the $3 billion a year military aid package Israel already receives from us. 

Let us be clear that when AIPAC says “Israel”, it means the right-wing, hard-line political and military leadership – not the people of Israel, who have no more voice in what their government is doing than 99% of American people have in what our government is doing.   In fact, I contend that  AIPAC  does not have  your interests, my interests nor Israel’s interests in mind.  Its narrow mission is to benefit a very small (1% ?) , already powerful elite both here and in Israel that is using its vast economic resources to achieve its own agenda.

One agenda item is to use the weapons we sell Israel to bomb Gaza, demolish homes and water cisterns in the West Bank, patrol the checkpoints, and in every way possible try to drive Palestinians away in order to fulfill the Zionist project of  possessing  the entire historic Palestine for Jews. U.S. support of this agenda has cost us our moral authority in the Muslim world.

Another of AIPAC’s agendas is war on Iran.  But, do we Americans want another war, whether on Iran, or Syria, or Somalia, or anywhere?  Or is the price too high?  We are already paying for wars in Iraq and Afghanistan with our state budget cuts to schools, libraries, roads, bridges., and all of our social services.  We are paying with deaths and traumatization of our military personnel.   We are paying, as well, with our guilty consciences over the thousands, even millions of civilian casualties.  And the Planet is paying with the rarely-mentioned pollution of land and water caused by war.  Do we want more of the same? 

Are we going to be fooled by the fear-mongering that the war-profiteers and the media dish out?  Or might we start thinking for ourselves about the costs of war and whether  war will make us any safer?  I am scared when AIPAC uses its lobbying power to push for war, and I am only slightly comforted by the full page ad in the March 5 NYTimes, signed by 5 U.S. Generals, and three other ranking military and intelligence officers.  It states in part: “Military action at this stage is not only unnecessary, it is dangerous—for the United States and for Israel.  We urge you (Mr. President) to resist the pressure for a war of choice with Iran.”

There are many reasons not to attack Iran. One that catches my attention is the  probability of nuclear contamination if a bomb strikes one of the facilities where Iran says they are  building a nuclear power plant.

President Obama told AIPAC this week that, so far, Iran has not decided to build a nuclear weapon, and until he understands otherwise, he will pursue  the route of negotiations and sanctions.  But AIPAC wants war, not negotiations.  We must tell the President and Congress that AIPAC does not speak for us.  A war of choice is a bad choice, but it may come soon if we don’t speak up to prevent it.

   

 (Written as a commentary for the Greenfield, MA newspaper, "The Recorder")

Ten Years of Guantanamo, 2012

TEN YEARS OF GUANTANAMO, 2012

One hundred seventy-one Muslim men, many of them locked up for 9 or 10 years, almost all without being charged with any crime nor brought to trial, are still at Guantanamo. The U.S. Congress has made it almost impossible for any of them to leave, even though 89 of them have been cleared for release by either the Bush or Obama Administrations. For the misfortune of being picked up on a mistaken suspicion, or handed over to U.S. military for a $5000 reward, these men have not seen a single relative or friend since being strapped to the floor of a cargo airplane, hooded and shackled, and flown to Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.

For more than two years only the Red Cross was permitted to see them, and the conditions they found were so deplorable that the Red Cross broke with their own policy and spoke out about it. It was only after the photos of torture at Abu Ghraib prison horrified the conscience of the world that, at the end of 2004, the first lawyers were able to visit the detainees. Now they all have lawyers, but they don't have justice.

This is what provoked me to join Witness Against Torture to fast for ten days, to vigil, to demonstrate all over Washington DC, and finally to get arrested in a desperate effort to change policies that mock the rule of law, violate American values, and breach universal concepts of justice and morality. No country in the world will admit that it tortures, but many do, our government among them.

We have tortured the men at Guantanamo and continue to do so at Bagram Prison in Afghanistan. We have secretly sent our captives to third countries to be tortured (termed “extraordinary rendition”), and we openly use indefinite detention and solitary confinement for prolonged periods in order to break the spirits of our victims.

These are shameful practices. I am ashamed of my government. But I believe change of heart and law is possible. I believe in our goodness. For this reason I have put on the orange jumpsuit and black hood of the Guantanamo detainee and joined daily processions through the streets of the Capitol. For this I joined the Fast for Justice, as 100 citizens around the country gave up solid food for 10 days to mark the 10 years that Guantanamo has been open. I was willing to be hungry, tired and cold to remind me of the suffering of men we have tortured.

Demanding justice, 171 U.S. citizens in jumpsuits and hoods marched from the White House to the Supreme Court.

While we fasted in solidarity with the men who see no way out of Guantanamo, they heard of our gesture and felt a glimmer of hope. They sent us the message that they would join our protest by refusing food for three days, January 10, 11 and 12 I will remember this when I next wonder if my actions make any difference. Even a small light shines in the darkness.

There were 45-50 people in the Witness Against Torture circle housed in a church basement, where we built community among ourselves, made our daiy plans and got ready to commemorate the tenth anniversary on January 11th along with Amnesty International, the Center for Constitutional Rights and the National Religious Campaign Against Torture. We were encouraged by the knowledge that in 350 other cities across the country and world there would be simultaneous demonstrations demanding to close Guantanamo and Bagram, end indefinite detention and stop torture.

Maybe it isn't self-evident why torture of one's enemy is so unacceptable. Maybe we have heard the word so often that we no longer give it the weight it deserves. We have been inured to its use by watching fictionalized TV shows about it. The state changes its name to “enhanced interrogation” and tells us that it makes us safer, instead of denouncing is as fundamentally immoral. Torture is not just one human making another suffer excruciating physical or emotional pain, it is also a destruction of that person's ability to trust that there is any safe place or safe person. He becomes perpetually afraid. This has a devastating effect on his family and community as well, as some bond that normally ties people together is broken.

A cage like the original cells at Guantanamo

The longer Guantanamo is open, the more used we get to putting accused, "suspected" people beyond the reach of justice. Now Obama has signed the National Defense Authorization Act which authorizes the U.S. military to detain U.S. citizens anywhere on suspicion of wanting to harm this country and hold them without charges or trial for an indefinite period. What happened to many of the men in Guantanamo can now happen to any of us. Someone doesn't like you; they report to the police that you might be doing something Un-American; your home is surrounded in the middle of the night; you are taken to a holding cell and then a prison; you do not know what you are accused of; you are not let go for weeks, months, years... If you do not cooperate, you might undergo enhanced interrogation and be put in solitary confinement. Does this sound like America?

Protesting Guantanamo, fasting, getting arrested are our attempts to lift the veil that clouds our nation’s collective vision and begin a process of redemption.

January 14, 2012