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By Dr Arshad M Khan

Man’s inhumanity to man reached new levels of odium.  The generally trigger-happy Israeli army fired at unarmed demonstrators on the other side of the fence cordoning Gazans into a prison.  That hundreds were injured and at least 18 killed evoked little sympathy from our media and certainly no one dared criticize Benjamin Netanyahu’s crowing of the incident as a great victory.

The ‘liberal’ National Public Radio terms such incidents “violent clashes” as if there is a certain parity of arms, when a military firing at civilian demonstrators would result more appropriately in a massacre.

But Israel has new worries.  For the first time, Palestinians (Christian and Muslim) now outnumber Jews within Israel and the occupied territories.  A half million more now with the difference expected to widen on account of the higher Palestinian birth rate.  Hence a war of attrition.

Trigger-happy soldiers, an imprisoned Gaza with appalling living conditions, and then, of course, there is ethnic cleansing.  Outright expulsion, or denial of water and electricity and generally making life unbearable leading to a ‘voluntary’ form of departure.

Thus the village of Umm al-Hiran which was razed to the ground after the eviction of its residents.  Ayman Odeh, a Palestinian Arab member of the Knesset, was shot in the head and back by rubber bullets as he and others protested.  The area will now house Jewish settlers.

The reality of eviction, ethnic cleansing and annexation is not news, but is an undeniable new reality seeking to cordon off Palestinians in the worst areas.  For some Israelis, the choice boils down to segregated Bantustans or brutal expulsion.  The country itself is changing as Middle-Eastern Mizrahi and Sephardic Jews now number closer to the European Ashkenazi and are expected to exceed them eventually.  A civilized living together is excluded by religion in this Middle-Eastern enclave masquerading as a Western democracy; more like George Wallace’s Alabama awaiting a Martin Luther King, Jr.

About 2500 miles east lies another beleaguered population, the Kashmiris suffering a brutal decades-long occupation by an estimated one-quarter to three-quarter million force of Indian soldiers.   In one tactic they use shotgun weapons loaded with small pellet shells — no riot control techniques for them.  Their preferred target is not the lower body but the upper, resulting in all too numerous instances of small boys and young men being blinded for life.  Major Aditya Kumar was charged with murder after one incident only to be granted relief recently by a pliant Indian Supreme Court.

Demonstrations have intensified since the killing of the popular and charismatic rebel leader, Burhan Wani, in July 2016.  He was just 21.  Thousands of civilians have been injured, many blinded, and many have died as a result of the brutal response by the occupation forces.  The latest incident on April1 led to 20 deaths.

India promised a plebiscite under UN supervision about 70 years ago.  It has not been held.  The fact that Kashmiris are in massive civilian protest as well as open rebellion is well established by the presence of troops.  It is also abundantly clear, given a choice, that Kashmiris would tell their Indian overlords to get the hell out.  Whether they would want to join Pakistan or wish to remain by themselves is an open question.  It hardly matters in these days of open economic communities.

But foresight or statesmanship is not to be expected in leaders pushing their antiquated and noisome upper caste Hindu supremacy, tarnishing the founder Nehru’s proud boast of a secular state.  Add to it a rewriting of history in which the Taj Mahal is a Hindu temple.  It is not.  In the new India Christians, Muslims and lower caste Hindus (Dalits) are under constant threat or attack.

So there we are … two nuclear powers in constant confrontation without the sense to bury a colonial past and forge a new modern subcontinent.  No, that would be much too sensible.  Instead, religious extremism has secured a foothold and we all know how that can end unless it is quickly snuffed out.

Dr Arshad M Khan (http://ofthisandthat.org/index.html) is a former Professor based in the U.S. whose comments over several decades have appeared in a wide-ranging array of print and internet media.

6 April 2018

Source: https://countercurrents.org/2018/04/06/mans-inhumanity-to-man-israel-and-kashmir/

By Network in Defense of Humanity

We have witnessed in recent days the orchestration arranged by the representatives of the most rancid section of the Brazilian oligarchy, the organs of justice and the informative and televising outlets of that country. From this corrupt complicity has risen an arbitrary and illegal decision that can lead president and leader of the Workers’ Party Luiz Inacio Lula Da Silva to jail, and thus preclude his candidacy for next October’s elections, in what would be a prolongation of the coup d’état that ousted President Dilma Rousseff in 2016.

Due to the successes achieved by his government in the fight against poverty and inequalities, Lula is the candidate with the broadest popular support in the country, and that is well known by the right and its international allies. That is why they have used all possible ways to discredit and disable him. The farce that we have just witnessed is aimed at gaining a key position in Latin America to strengthen the neoliberal wave that will ruin any vestige of social advancement on the continent.

Once again bourgeois democracy and its institutions have demonstrated their inability to guarantee justice. From a supposed democratic order, they have used the most grotesque corruption, manipulation, threat and lies at their disposal to put an end to an option of the dispossessed.

Enough of this invoking of democracy and justice to oppose them to the people when the true and most authentic meaning emanates from them.

In these difficult and defining moments, the Network of Intellectuals, Artists and Social Movements in Defense of Humanity embraces, once again, Comrade Lula and with him the Brazilian people, mobilized today in support of their leader to recover in the streets the power illegitimately snatched by a cast of neo-fascists and known thieves.

We call on all networks, organizations and social movements to accompany our brothers and sisters in Brazil in denouncing this alarming situation and to speak on social networks with the greatest speed and forcefulness.

Network in Defense of Humanity

6 April 2018

Source: https://cuba-networkdefenseofhumanity.blogspot.my/2018/04/statement-from-network-in-defense-of.html

By Askiah Adam

PALESTINE, that enclave of humanity occupied, brutalised and totally without any form of military defence against any and all aggressors is conveniently perceived as a threat by the Jewish state, Israel, the undeclared, sole nuclear power in West Asia and North Africa (WANA). This latter entity, the occupying power, is a usurper legitimised by imperial Britain and today unconditionally supported and armed by the United States of America (USA). Such is the irony of the geopolitical construct that terrorises Gaza, virtually an open prison, and the West Bank, perpetually. Abandoned by the so-called international community, Palestinians draw inspiration from the defeat of the ‘mighty’ by the ostensibly ‘powerless’ at various points in history. It is that spirit which keeps the flames of resistance burning.

Demanding for the right of return to the homeland by the Palestinian diaspora of refugees, the on-going Great March of Return, a peaceful protest bringing out thousands of Palestinians marching along the Israeli border, is but the most recent show of this spirit with numbers symbolising strength. And, Israel not wishing to disappoint the world met this peaceful demonstration with such disproportionate violence that at least 18 Palestinians were killed and almost one and a half thousand injured because live bullets were fired into the crowd and drones flew overhead dumping tear gas on the marchers. That this degree of violence, which included a row of a hundred snipers on the ready, on the part of the occupiers was planned made it all the more galling. Tel Aviv knew they could perpetrate this act of inhumanity with impunity as it became obvious only too quickly. Calls for an investigation by the seemingly outraged international community were immediately quashed by a US veto in the UN Security Council, even as the martyred were being buried.

Long suffering, the Palestinians cannot any longer hope to find a solution through established institutions like the United Nations, now more than ever nothing but an instrument for legitimising the interests of the powerful member states. The time has come to unmask the futility of the two state solution used merely to prolong negotiations while enabling Tel Aviv to pursue its genocidal agenda. As Richard Falk insists the time for goodwill has “long passed”. It is time to pressure Israel into a settlement. Individuals and state actors alike must intensify the boycott, divestment and sanctions (BDS) campaign against Israel. In the name of justice let us isolate Israel. Support the BDS Movement and intensify the siege.

Askiah Adam
Executive Director
International Movement for a JUST World

Malaysia

6 April 2018

If King were alive today, his words would threaten most of those who now sing his praises

By Cornel West

The major threat of Martin Luther King Jr to us is a spiritual and moral one. King’s courageous and compassionate example shatters the dominant neoliberal soul-craft of smartness, money and bombs. His grand fight against poverty, militarism, materialism and racism undercuts the superficial lip service and pretentious posturing of so-called progressives as well as the candid contempt and proud prejudices of genuine reactionaries. King was neither perfect nor pure in his prophetic witness – but he was the real thing in sharp contrast to the market-driven semblances and simulacra of our day.

In this brief celebratory moment of King’s life and death we should be highly suspicious of those who sing his praises yet refuse to pay the cost of embodying King’s strong indictment of the US empire, capitalism and racism in their own lives.

We now expect the depressing spectacle every January of King’s “fans” giving us the sanitized versions of his life. We now come to the 50th anniversary of his assassination, and we once again are met with sterilized versions of his legacy. A radical man deeply hated and held in contempt is recast as if he was a universally loved moderate.

These neoliberal revisionists thrive on the spectacle of their smartness and the visibility of their mainstream status – yet rarely, if ever, have they said a mumbling word about what would have concerned King, such as US drone strikes, house raids, and torture sites, or raised their voices about escalating inequality, poverty or Wall Street domination under neoliberal administrations – be the president white or black.

The police killing of Stephon Clark in Sacramento may stir them but the imperial massacres in Yemen, Libya or Gaza leave them cold. Why? Because so many of King’s “fans” are afraid. Yet one of King’s favorite sayings was “I would rather be dead than afraid.” Why are they afraid? Because they fear for their careers in and acceptance by the neoliberal establishment. Yet King said angrily: “What you’re saying may get you a foundation grant, but it won’t get you into the Kingdom of Truth.”

The neoliberal soul craft of our day shuns integrity, honesty and courage, and rewards venality, hypocrisy and cowardice. To be successful is to forge a non-threatening image, sustain one’s brand, expand one’s pecuniary network – and maintain a distance from critiques of Wall Street, neoliberal leaders and especially the Israeli occupation of Palestinian lands and peoples.

“King said angrily, ‘What you’re saying may get you a foundation grant, but it won’t get you into the Kingdom of Truth’

Martin Luther King Jr turned away from popularity in his quest for spiritual and moral greatness – a greatness measured by what he was willing to give up and sacrifice due to his deep love of everyday people, especially vulnerable and precious black people. Neoliberal soul craft avoids risk and evades the cost of prophetic witness, even as it poses as “progressive”.

The killing of Martin Luther King Jr was the ultimate result of the fusion of ugly white supremacist elites in the US government and citizenry and cowardly liberal careerists who feared King’s radical moves against empire, capitalism and white supremacy. If King were alive today, his words and witness against drone strikes, invasions, occupations, police murders, caste in Asia, Roma oppression in Europe, as well as capitalist wealth inequality and poverty, would threaten most of those who now sing his praises. As he rightly predicted: “I am nevertheless greatly saddened … that the inquirers have not really known me, my commitment or my calling.”

If we really want to know King in all of his fallible prophetic witness, we must shed any neoliberal soul craft and take seriously – in our words and deeds – his critiques and resistances to US empire, capitalism and xenophobia. Needless to say, his relentless condemnation of Trump’s escalating neo-fascist rule would be unequivocal – but not to be viewed as an excuse to downplay some of the repressive continuities of the two Bush, Clinton and Obama administrations.

In fact, in a low moment, when the American nightmare crushed his dream, King noted: “I don’t have any faith in the whites in power responding in the right way … they’ll treat us like they did our Japanese brothers and sisters in World War II. They’ll throw us into concentration camps. The Wallaces and the Birchites will take over. The sick people and the fascists will be strengthened. They’ll cordon off the ghetto and issue passes for us to get in and out.”

These words may sound like those of Malcolm X, but they are those of Martin Luther King Jr – with undeniable relevance to the neo-fascist stirrings in our day.

King’s last sermon was entitled Why America May Go to Hell. His personal loneliness and political isolation loomed large. J Edgar Hoover said he was “the most dangerous man in America”. President Johnson called him “a nigger preacher”. Fellow Christian ministers, white and black, closed their pulpits to him. Young revolutionaries dismissed and tried to humiliate him with walkouts, booing and heckling. Life magazine – echoing Time magazine, the New York Times, and the Washington Post (all bastions of the liberal establishment) – trashed King’s anti-war stance as “demagogic slander that sounded like a script for Radio Hanoi”.

And the leading black journalist of the day, Carl Rowan, wrote in the Reader’s Digest that King’s “exaggerated appraisal of his own self-importance” and the communist influence on his thinking made King “persona non-grata to Lyndon Johnson” and “has alienated many of the Negro’s friends and armed the Negro’s foes”.

One of the last and true friends of King, the great Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel prophetically said: “The whole future of America will depend upon the impact and influence of Dr King.” When King was murdered something died in many of us. The bullets sucked some of the free and democratic spirit out of the US experiment. The next day over 100 American cities and towns were in flames – the fire this time had arrived again!

Today, 50 years later the US imperial meltdown deepens. And King’s radical legacy remains primarily among the awakening youth and militant citizens who choose to be extremists of love, justice, courage and freedom, even if our chances to win are that of a snowball in hell! This kind of unstoppable King-like extremism is a threat to every status quo!

Cornel West is an American philosopher, author, critic, actor, civil rights activist and leading member of Democratic Socialists of America.

4 April 2018

Source: https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2018/apr/04/martin-luther-king-cornel-west-legacy

By Dr Vacy Vlazna

My name is Falasteen,

I am the land from the Mediterranean Sea to the Jordan River. I am the home and only home to my children the Palestinians. Poets celebrate my beauty, my culture and the courage of my children… I tell the world that all your might, all your weapons and all your injustice will not be able to stop the march of my returning children. I tell the world that the day when my children return is the day when I am free, is the day when justice will finally prevail in this world. Reham Alhelsi

Suffocation from teargas is nothing  in comparison to the suffocation of grief for her fallen that is crushing Gaza. On Good Friday, Land Day 2018 was commemorated with a non- violent protest in Gaza which was turned into a bloody Land Day Massacre by 100 Jewish snipers; clones of psychopath, Elon Azaria, an Israeli  military, wait for it, medic who strolled over to unarmed and wounded Abdel Fatah al-Sharif and cooly extrajudicially executed him point blank.*

Surely, on that Good Friday morning the 30,000 Palestinians, young and old, either put up a brave front assuring anxious parents, “Don’t worry, I’ll be all right” or  silently spoke their last prayers as they stepped through the doorways of their homes  to join the  swelling stream of fellow unarmed patriots surging in an a mass act of honour for their Right of Return to

Al-Quds is my beating heart. Haifa is my pearl on the Mediterranean. Yafa is my heaven of oranges and Jasmines. Acca is my haven of white domes. Beer Is-Sabe’ is my princess of A-Naqab. Nablus is my mountain of revolution. Gaza is my dignity, my courage and my steadfastness. Jenin is my resistance, my home of legends. Safad is my daughter reaching out and embracing the sun. Al-Khalil is my guardian of glory. Beesan is my home of history, my roots reaching deep in time. Beit Lahim is my oasis of tranquillity. Ar-Ramlah is my endless love of the olive tree. Tabaria is my home of revolution against oppression. Tulkarim is my sea of green and golden meadows.   Reham Alhelsi

Males made up the vast majority but women too joined the protest like, “Umm Hussein Al-Aydi, in her 90s , was determined to be among the demonstrators on truce line on Land’s Day. She is a mother of two martyrs and all her kids were prisoners of war in Israeli jails! All respect and appreciation. She is an example of the Palestinian woman fighting for Palestine.” (posted on FB by Prof.  Abdelwahed)

Later in the day, 16 young protestors came home to be washed by mothers and wives for the last time, and to be carried by fathers, brothers, friends for the very last time on flag-draped funeral biers;

Wahid Nasrallah Abu Sammour, 27, Khan Younis, southern Gaza. (farmer killed before dawn on his land)

Mohammad Kamal Najjar, 25, Jabalia, northern Gaza.

Mohammad Naim Abu Amro, 27, Sheja’eyya, Gaza city.

Amin Mansour Abu Moammar, Rafah, southern Gaza.

Ibrahim Abu Sha’ar, 22, Rafah.

Abdul-Fattah Bahjat Abdul-Nabi, 18, Beit Lahia, northern Gaza.

Mahmoud Sa’adi Rohmi, 33, Gaza.

Sari Waleed Abu Odah, Beit Hanoun, northern Gaza.

Hamdan Ismael Abu Amsha.

Jihad Ahmad Freina, 34, east of Gaza city.

Ahmad Ibrahim Ashour Odah, 16, northern Gaza.

Abdul-Qader Merdhi al-Hawajri, 42, Nusseirat refugee camp, central Gaza.

Jihad Zoheir Abu Jamous, 30, Khan Younis.

Bader Faeq as-Sabagh, 21, Jabalia.

Naji Abdullah Abu Hjeir, 25, al-Boreij, central Gaza.

Mosab Zohair Salloul (still unconfirmed, his body has not been recovered)

Faris al Raqib, 29,  died of abdominal wounds in hospital.

Ahmad Arafa, 25 killed 3-4-18.

Gaza’s hospitals, already deprived for months by Israel and the Palestinian Authority of crucial medicines and equipment were overwhelmed by the tsunami of horrific injuries that 1500 protestors suffered by explosive bullets that in a nano second possibly created 500 amputees.

You can be certain that when Gazan doctors state they have never seen such wounds before, that the Jewish infiltrators are testing new weaponry which will boost the profits of its armament industry.

The Jewish sharpshooters and tank crews remained unscathed and boasted of their murderous precision,

“Yesterday we saw 30,000 people; we arrived prepared and with precise reinforcements. Nothing was carried out uncontrolled; everything was accurate and measured, and we know where every bullet landed.” tweet IDF Spokesperson.

For the Jewish state of Israel, the carnage is viewed as a PR nightmare, not an ethical nightmare. Never mind that the deliberate slaughter of civilians is a war crime under international law, Israeli PR hasbara (fake news) was automatically spurted throughout domestic and pro-Israel international media,

• The ‘clashes’ reported did not occur: “They are not clashes when one side is shooting and the other is getting shot. Snipers are shooting protestors from hundreds of meters away. The only thing clashing are Israeli bullets into Palestinian bodies.’ Yousef Munayyer

• The victims belonged to terror groups: Gazans protested as a united people. Besides, Hamas is not a terrorist organisation, it legitimately resists the Jewish Israeli illegal occupation of its land and the cruel illegal blockade of Gaza. The labelling of terrorists is the privilege of the powerful. However, all Jews in Israel, apart from a religious minority, from age18 must do compulsory military service to execute daily acts of State Terrorism against Palestinians.

• Hamas is to blame for organising the protest to cynically use, according to Horowitz’ and Weiser’s  tourette attacks on truth, “Gazans as the human shields for its aggression” and “Hamas strived for as many Palestinian deaths as possible, believing that every death was a public relations victory for them.”

• The outright evil of the massacre was airbrushed away by reminders of the Jewish state’s 2005 ‘total’ disengagement from Gaza even though Israel controls Gaza’s land, sea and airspace, even tough Israel has impoverished Gazan families with its illegal 11 year blockade that restricts the  exit and entrance of people and goods, and although Israel has traumatised Gazan families by three major military assaults targeting essential infrastructure, hospitals, schools, homes and unarmed civilians.

• The Jewish soldiers were just defending the border; the Jewish state has no officially recognised borders allowing Palestinians to be executed by Jews anywhere in historic Palestine.

• The poor Jewish soldiers, armed to the high-tech hilt and backed by drones, tanks and fighter planes  were in fear of their lives: Israeli reports of molotov cocktails, plastic explosives and shots fired by Hamas militants were inevitable. For every crime against humanity, war crime, extrajudicial execution, the Jewish state releases a statement blaming the victim(s) though evidence to the contrary eventually forces a retraction. One is reminded of the official cover-ups and lies that come with massacre territory, like those of  the British military after the Bloody Sunday Massacre, Northern Ireland 30 January in 1972.

On cue and unrepentant, Israel’s military cult of death asserted it would maintain its open-fire policy, a defiant Defense Minister Lieberman ruled out any investigation announcing his soldiers ‘deserve a medal’ while Netanyahu regurgitated the old chestnut about “the most moral army in the world.”

No engineering by Israel’s propaganda can justify its massacre of  Gaza’s peaceful protesters. Under international law there are UN resolutions and declarations such as ‘The promotion and protection of human rights in the context of peaceful protests.’ that ensures and “Affirms that nothing can ever justify the indiscriminate use of lethal force against a crowd, which is unlawful under international human rights law.

Outside of Gaza ironies and hypocrisies abound.

In March, British Jews hit London streets protesting, on false grounds, so-called antisemitism (based mainly on  criticism of Israel) in the Labour Party – not one shot was fired. But when Palestinians peacefully asserted, on valid grounds, their Right of Return guaranteed under international law- their protest was met by lethal fire from Jewish soldiers.

There is the political hypocrisy of  27  states expelling Russian diplomats in response to the alleged unproven Russian nerve-agent attack on an ex-Russian spy in England, yet none of those states have called for the expulsion of Israeli diplomats for the proven war crime massacre of 18 defenceless Palestinians.

Then there is the religious irony of an Easter massacre in the Holy Land. On Good Friday, thousands of foreign ‘Christians’ trod the Via Dolorosa kilometres away in Al Quds ( Jerusalem). Will they, on returning to their countries speak out for the young men crucified that day kilometres away in Gaza or will they do a St Peter and deny Palestinians justice? Even worse, millions of Jews, throughout occupied  historic Palestine and around the world celebrated Passover ritualising liberation from captivity the same time that Israel played Pharaoh with premeditated conviction in Gaza.

One also wonders if, on that tragic Land Day, there had even been 1000 Palestinians in the Western diaspora who, in solidarity with Palestine, stepped out of the doors of their safe privileged lives and  took to the streets  or raised their voice to protest Israel’s denial of their Right of Return and the relentless, violent Jewish theft of their homeland for which the 18 young martyrs died?

In contrast, we are witnessing something sublime  – spiritually ineffable – that is  both symbiotic with and transcends the tragedy of the Land Day Massacre – it is that ‘something’, even greater than ‘sumoud’,  that compelled men women and children who knew that snipers and tanks were waiting as they always are, to face them in the kill zone of fate.

That undaunted ‘something’, back in December, impelled paraplegic Ibrahim Abu Turaya’s last act to raise the Palestinian flag  and that spirit is echoed by,

Back at al-Shifa hospital, Mohammad Hilles struggles to recover from a bullet that shattered his leg.

The 27-year-old was shot above his knee joint while protesting with his friends about 100 metres away from the border fence.

He has had to undergo a 13-hour surgery to treat the damage to his veins and the severe bleeding that ensued.

When asked whether he regretted going to the march, he did not hesitate.

“I will return back to the demonstrations if I recover soon.” Aljazeera

That ‘something’ was forged and  galvanised by 70 years of Jewish terrorism and is the final nemesis of the Jewish state:

I tell the Zionist usurper entity that your terrorism, your massacres, your bullets, your bulldozers, your walls and your bombs will not break the will of my children, will not kill me, for I will continue to resist, I will continue to exist, I am here to stay because this land is me. I am Palestine from the River to the Sea, from Ras In-Naqourah to Im-Ir-Rishrash. Ana Falsteen min il bahar lal nahr, min Ras In-Naqourah la Im-Ir-Rishrash. Reham Alhelsi

*Reducing the 14 month sentence imprisonment, Israeli justice (an oxymoron) is releasing the remorseless Azaria in May.

Dr. Vacy Vlazna is Coordinator of Justice for Palestine Matters and editor of a volume of Palestinian poetry.

4 April 2018

Source: https://countercurrents.org/2018/04/04/no-massacre-can-stop-the-palestinian-right-of-return/

By Rene Wadlow

The Multilateral nuclear accord with Iran, the Joint Comprehension Plan of Action, needs strong, active support especially within the US administration, but also within Iran. The Accord was designed to prevent the Islamic Republic of Iran from using its civilian nuclear capacities to develop nuclear weapons.  The accord was negotiated among Iran and the United States, Britain, France, Germany, Russia, China and coordinated by the European Union.  The Accord was endorsed by the unanimous vote of the United Nations Security Council and went into force in 2016.

The Accord was considered an important foreign policy achievement of Barack Obama’s presidency and owed much to the energy and persistence of the US Secretary of State John Kerry and the European Union’s foreign policy chief Federica Magherini.

The Accord is structured on strict verification of Iranian nuclear facilities by the International Atomic Energy Agency. In exchange, sanctions previously imposed on Iran by the United Nations, the European Union and the United States would be progressively lifted.  The sanctions which were an effort to force Iran to halt uranium enrichment had a crippling impact on the Iranian economy.  The sanctions were largely related to the Iranian export of oil and  petrochemical products, important elements in Iranian foreign trade. However, the partial lifting of the sanctions has not improved life for the bulk of the people. More and more Iranians are saying that the Accord is only a collection of empty promises. Thus some in Iran, including the leaders of the powerful Revolutionary Guards are vocal in their opposition to the continuation of the Accord.

In US legislation, the US President must sign every six months an “Iran sanctions waiver” so that the US does not re-impose its sanctions policies.  The next deadline is 12 May.  Although as a rule of international law, one State can not alone modify a multilateral agreement, if the US were to reapply sanctions on Iran, the Accord would be deeply weakened if not totally destroyed.

During the presidential campaign, President Trump was critical of the Iranian Accord.  John R. Bolton, the new International Security Advisor, has been in his earlier private capacity highly critical of the Iran Accord in addition to a general hostility on his part to the Iranian government and its policies. The possibility that President Trump will not renew the waiver on the Iranian sanctions has already led to heated discussions within the White House, Congress and foreign policy annalists.

While the decision of the US waiver of sanctions is a presidential decision alone, the issue has a potential impact on all the conflicts in the wider Middle East as well as a potential impact on negotiations with North Korea on nuclear issues.  Therefore, the Association of World Citizens believes that there is a need to build active support for the Iranian Accord both within the USA and among the other States party to the Accord especially Western Europe and China which fears that a weakening of the Iran Accord would have a negative impact on the Korean nuclear negotiations.   Views on the importance of the continuing validity of the Accord should be shared widely among political representatives and foreign policy specialists.

Rene Wadlow is the President of the Association of World Citizens, an international peace organization with consultative status with ECOSOC, the United Nations organ facilitating international cooperation on and problem-solving in economic and social issues.

4 April 2018

By Dr Ramzy Baroud

Rim Banna passed away at the age of 51. Her death on March 24, after a decade-long battle with cancer, brought grief to Palestinians everywhere.

Rim, a Palestinian Christian from Nazareth, united the Palestinian people across political and geographic divides.

When she sang for the Homeland, nothing mattered but Palestine. Christians and Muslims, Fatah and Hamas, Gaza and Ramallah, all became one.

Through her soulful and warm voice, she imparted sorrow, yet celebrated life. Her songs ‘Fares Odeh’ and ‘Sarah’ were poetic interpretation of precious young Palestinian lives cut short by Israeli soldiers.

The butterfly will carry you to the back of a cloud

The gazelle will run with you to a hollow of sycamore

The scent of bread will take you, a martyr, to the embrace of your mother    

The star said to him, “Bring me to the courtyard of my house”

“Take me to the mattress of my slumber”

Sleepiness climbed up my sides

And settled in my head.”

Music unites Palestinians when politicians fail. In fact, while for years the collective calls for ‘Palestinian unity’ has gone unheeded, Palestinian music has continued to bring Palestinians closer.

Deep-rooted Palestinian culture is what makes Palestinians who they are, a people with a unique and lucid identity, despite 70 years of exile, ethnic cleansing, sieges, numerous borders and wanton killings.

And when Rim sang, her voice penetrated through the seemingly impregnable Apartheid walls, checkpoints, military curfews and unbridgeable distance.

It was during the First Intifada (popular uprising) of 1987 that Rim gained access to the hearts and homes of many Palestinians; initially in Palestine and, eventually, all over the world. Her voice, soft and reassuring, gave hope to those who lived under a 7-years long relentless Israeli military campaign. Israeli tactics, then, aimed at breaking the spirit of the rebelling Palestinian people.

Rim’s music offered new, modern renditions of Palestinian traditional songs, but without erasing the historical and cultural identity of that music.

Her music belongs to the Palestinian music genre of nationally-driven and culturally-centered art form, aimed at reintroducing – and, sometimes, reinventing – the past in a more relatable fashion.

While Israel is doing its utmost to deny and erase Palestinian culture, such cultural icons, as Rim Banna, but also ReemKelani, KamilyaJubran and Shadia Mansour, among others, have reasserted Palestinian culture, thus identity, around the globe.

Although a rarely publicized form of resistance, cultural resistance is at the heart of the Palestinian fight for freedom.

Italian thinker, Antonio Gramsci, who was imprisoned by fascist Italy for much of his life specifically because of his ideas on cultural resistance, had warned of how cultural hegemony is as much the enemy as outright dictatorship.

Palestinians contend with cultural hegemony, not as an academic notion, but as a daily reality.

Israel has spent decades launching and perfecting its cultural war against Palestinians, aimed at erasing Palestinian culture, on the one hand, while imposing its own cultural alternatives on the other.

Oddly, much of what Israel brands as Israeli culture is, in fact, the very Palestinian and Arab culture spanning millennia; from food, to music, to fashion and everything in between, the ‘Israel brand’ is essentially a Palestinian, Arab brand, stolen and rebranded.

But, unlike military and political war, cultural wars are often invisible and incremental. While the Israeli government is now busy replacing Arabic street names with Hebrew ones and outlawing the commemoration of the Nakba – the destruction of the Palestinian homeland in 1947-48 – it also aims at breaking the unity of Palestinian culture altogether.

Historically, early Zionists promoted the false idea that Palestine was a land with no people and that the natives of the land were nomads, passers-by with no cultural roots, no identity, thus no collective political aspirations.

Such propaganda was essential to promote the idea of a Jewish state in Palestine. The supposed ‘nomads’ who existed in Palestine eventually evolved to become the ‘refugee problem.’ To this day, Zionists and their rightwing supporters still encourage the cruel idea that Palestinians are an ‘invented people’.

So, when Rim Banna, ReemKelani, Mohammed Assaf, and numerous others – joined by poets, artists, and other Palestinian cultural warriors – celebrate the traditions, music and culture of their people, they stand at the frontlines of fighting a violent Zionist discourse that has, for over a century, been committed to the total erasure of Palestine.

In her music, Rim fought against the Israeli attempts at the cultural dispossession of the Palestinian people, while humanizing the likes of Fares, Sarah and many others.

This is why many Palestinians wept when Rim died; it is also why millions wept tears of joy when Mohammad Assaf – a refugee from Gaza – won the ‘Arab Idol’ competition in 2013.

It was not merely because Mohammad had a beautiful voice and that he deserved to win, but because of the representation of that thundering, self-asserting voice, his lyrics and, of course, the singer himself.

Assaf is a Gazan refugee. His family was driven from historic Palestine during the violent Zionist ethnic cleansing campaign of 1947-48. He was born in shattat (diaspora) and eventually returned to Gaza, only to live under a hermetic Israeli siege. He broke the siege to participate in the competition.

When Assaf sang, millions watched in wonder as he skillfully demolished all the walls, erased the checkpoints and bridged all the distance. Suddenly, Gaza, Ramallah, Nazareth, Haifa were once more united. Those in diaspora returned. The homeland became one.

Rim too offered that multi-layered representation, which supersedes politics and geography into a realm in which the Palestinian nationhood was made of shared culture, grief, resistance, poetry and hope.

Rim has died, but the generation of artistes she patiently nurtured will continue to sing, to celebrate a culture and a civilization that cannot be tamed by guns or imprisoned by walls.

Rim Banna was the voice of Palestine that can never be muted.

– Ramzy Baroud is a journalist, author and editor of Palestine Chronicle.

3 April 2018

Source: https://countercurrents.org/2018/04/03/rim-banna-and-the-cultural-war-that-palestinians-must-win/

By Dr Elias Akleh

Similar to Jesus, who was persecuted, tortured, crucified and murdered by ancient Jews, then rose up from the dead confirming his teachings, today’s Palestinians, whose parents had been robbed, persecuted, unjustly imprisoned, ethnically cleansed, and massacred by present day Jews, are rising up against Jewish Israeli terrorism, injustice, land theft, and brute murder, in peaceful mass rallies started on Friday March 31st towards their parents’ usurped homes and lands, asserting and exercising their right of return as confirmed by UN resolution 194.

These mass rallies commemorate the Palestinian Land Day, when in 1976 Yitzhak Rabin’s ministry decided to usurp more Palestinian land in the occupied Galilee but Palestinian masses in the north as well as in West Bank took to the streets in protests, that eventually and after bloody confrontations with the Israeli terrorist army and the shooting murder of 6 Palestinians, forced Rabin to cancel the decision. The current mass rallies are planned to continue daily and culminate on the 15th of May to commemorate the 70th anniversary of Nakba; Israeli occupation of Palestine, and to protest the planned transfer of the American embassy to Al-Quds on that day.

These mass rallies by young and old, male and female Palestinians brake the Zionist myth Ben Gurion once stated after the 1948 Nakba (catastrophe) when almost 800,000 Palestinians were forcefully driven out of their homeland, that “the old (Palestinians) will die, and the young will forget.” Young Palestinians have never forgotten their homeland, their homes, and their heritage. The Palestinians are bringing their young children to these rallies where workshop tents had been setup to teach the young generations their Palestinian history, their rights to the land, and to pass on the keys to their usurped homes along with the Palestinian flag. The young will never forget, and they will carry the torch until complete liberation.

These mass rallies also send powerful messages to the world, to the UN member countries, to the Zionist organization, and especially to the Arab leaders, who abandoned their Palestinian Arab brothers, betrayed the Palestinian just cause, and slept in bed with the Zionist Israeli enemy in the hope to keep their ruling positions, that the Palestinian cause is still alive and well, that the Palestinian new generations will not give up their rights to their homeland, and that the Zionist Greater Israel project is doomed to failure.

These mass rallies are also a message to the American administration, especially to president Trump, that Al-Quds is Palestinian; capital of Palestine and is not Jewish Jerusalem; capital of Israeli terrorist state. The Palestinians would never give up their own capital; Al-Quds, nor would they accept what have been dubbed as the deal of the century offering Palestinians a replacement semi-homeland in Sinai or parts of Jordan, similar to what America had done to the native American Indians when they imprisoned them in collective Indian concentration camps; euphemistically called “Indian Reservations.”

As usual, and as a prominent characteristic of the Israeli terrorist state, Israel had dispatched its very well armed terrorist army onto the entrances of Palestinian towns and onto the borders of the Gaza Strip to engage and to suppress the Palestinian peaceful rallies. In the West Bank and in the 1948 occupied areas these terrorist soldiers met the peaceful demonstrators with rubber coated bullets, live bullets, tear gas and stun grenades. In the Gaza Strip Israeli tanks and snipers were dispatched to engage Palestinians demonstrators. The Israeli soldiers had also used drones to bomb the Palestinian masses with gas grenades.

On the first day; Friday, of these peaceful walks the terrorist Israeli soldiers including snipers had murdered 16 Palestinians and wounded 1416 others, while thousands others suffered from tear gas inhalations. Such attacks by well-armed soldiers against unarmed peaceful civilian demonstrators are considered war crimes, and crimes against humanity. Terrorist Israeli army routinely perpetrate such crimes against Palestinian civilians particularly against Palestinian children. The silence of the international community, the shameful unconditional American support, and the pitiful silence and cooperation of some Arab leaders, had encouraged Israel to continue perpetrating such crimes without fear of any reprisal.

Israel is scared of the Palestinian resolve and aspiration that is reflected in their children. Israel’s fear of such peaceful rallies is reflected in their cruel and harsh suppression and persecution of Palestinians especially the children. Israeli leaders had stated many times their skewed belief that violence is the only means to deal with Palestinians in order to instill fear of reprisal in the hearts of the children. Yet it is the Palestinian children who scare the Israeli leaders, for the spirit of struggle to obtain their freedom and to regain their country is alive in them and is reflected in their behavior when they unfearfully face the heavily armed and well trained Israeli soldiers with only their bare hands. Israel had failed to instill fear in the hearts of the young generations of Palestinians. Their struggle will keep on going.

The UNSC, called upon by Kuwait to protect Palestinians by condemning the Israeli crimes, had failed to issue any condemnation due to the American veto. UNSC members are apprehensive about any American “punishment” if they voted against Israel. It is still fresh in their memory what Trump and Nikki Haley had threatened against such votes. Trump had openly stated that the US gives money to the UN as bribes so that its member countries would support the American positions right or wrong. Ignoring all the well documented Israeli crimes against Palestinians in order to keep receiving American financial aid make members of the UNSC partners in these crimes. All what they could offer is their false concern about the victims, call for restraint by all parties involved, and offer their support for the unworkable unpractical two-states solution.

The Palestinians had given peace many chances. They gave up almost 80% of their homeland in order to live peacefully and to build their own state. They entered into peace negotiations with Israel, yet all these negotiations led only to more Israeli usurpation of Palestinian land and the building of more illegal Israeli colonies. After the fair election of Hamas government in 2007, as attested by international monitors, the Gaza Strip had been abandoned by Abbas Fatah organization, and besieged by Israel and Egypt to starve Palestinians there to death. Israel had conducted bloody wars against Gaza Strip using the illegal cluster and white phosphorous bombs against the civilian areas. Many Arab leaders within the Arab League had abandoned Palestinians and normalized relationship with Israel on the expense of the Palestinian cause.

Religious fundamentalist Jewish extremist colonialists increased their terror attacks against Palestinian civilians; poisoning their water wells, shooting their cattle, cutting down their trees, burning their homes, kidnapping and murdering their children, and worst of all are the guarded violations of Al-Aqsa Mosque in an attempt to claim the Islamic holy places as their own Jewish holy places. Last week Jewish extremist Rabbis had conducted rehearsals to conduct animal sacrificial ceremonies within the Al-Aqsa Mosque compounds as celebration for their Passover feast.

Abandoned, betrayed, besieged, with many of their children imprisoned, and left to die by starvation the Palestinians, who lost their country, lost their rights and freedom, found themselves isolated and have nothing else to lose. Their recognition that they could not depend on their brother Arab leaders for any real help, convince them that the only solution they have is to depend only on their own selves and that the only language Israel understands is the language of armed struggle to establish facts on the grounds.

Dr. Elias Akleh is an Arab American from a Palestinian descent.

2 April 2018

Source: https://countercurrents.org/2018/04/02/palestinian-land-day-massacre/

Co-Written By Dr. Suresh Khairnar & Feroze Mithiborwala

Non-Violence is the greatest force at the disposal of mankind. It is mighter than the mightiest weapon of destruction devised by the ingenuity of man.
~ Mahatma Gandhi

We stand in solidarity with the Palestinian Right of Return and condemn the Israeli terror unleashed upon the peaceful unarmed marchers.

With more than 17 Palestinians dead, more than 1500 grievously injured by Israeli snipers targeting the unarmed marchers, the world must stand up as one with the Palestinian nation and condemn the Israeli regime for its inhumanity, violence and terror.

Unarmed Palestinians being attacked by Israeli Snipers.

They were not “clashes” as was being reported by certain pro-Zionist propagandist media, just Israelis firing on unarmed Palestinian Civil Resisters, peacefully marching back to their rightful land that was colonised by the Zionist occupation.

The Palestinians were only marching back to their homes and fields stolen by foreign settlers, aliens to this land, marching peacefully, resisting peacefully and despite the deadly targeted firing from the Israelis, yet not retaliating, but carrying on marching with undaunted courage.

Zionist Israel today is facing its end, an existential moral crisis, as it further loses its legitimacy within the comity of civilised nations.

It’s just a matter of time as with each passing day the Palestinian people win another moral victory, as they win the hearts, minds and conscience of the people and nations of the world.

Today hundreds of thousands have marched, braving the bullets that they knew would be fired upon them by the dehumanised Israeli army.

Yet they marched on, tomorrow when millions march, from across all of historic Palestine, when millions more will pour in from across the borders from Lebanon, Syria and Jordan, shot at, killed and maimed, yet marching to return back to their country, the cities, villages and fields, that will mark the beginning of the end of the Zionist Occupation.

When the conscience stirs within Israeli society, when Israeli soldiers refuse to shoot at unarmed civilians, when their humanity is awakened, then the tide shall change. Both the people’s will be redeemed and Palestine will be free, humanity will be free and peace shall prevail.

But till then the nations and peoples’ of the world must be prepared to march alongside the Palestinians, till Palestine is free.

March on Palestinians and its also time for the people of the world to march alongside you brave people, march for the freedom of Palestine, for of all Humanity.

Dr. Suresh Khairnar & Feroze Mithiborwala belongs to India Palestine Solidarity Forum

1 April 2018

Source: https://countercurrents.org/2018/04/01/condemn-the-israeli-terror-on-land-day/

By Andrea Germanos

Israel is shooting at protesters in Gaza again on Saturday, a day after Israeli forces shot dead at least 15 Palestinians.

Over 1,400 were also injured Friday by Israeli forces in Gaza, roughly half of whom were hit by live fire, according to Gaza’s Ministry of Health.  Thousands of protesters are attending funerals on Saturday.

“Medical facilities in Gaza, which have already been overstrained by the longstanding shortages of medical supplies, electricity, and fuel, are struggling to cope with the overwhelming number of casualties,” the ministry says.

Over two dozen protesters have already been injured in Saturday’s protests, Haaretzreports.

Friday was the first day of the “March of Great Return,” a six-week action slated to end on the day marking the “Nakba.” Tens of thousands of Palestinians gathered at five spots along the Gaza-Israel border saying, “We are not here to fight; we are here to return to our lands.”

As the Guardian reports: “Israel said it has positioned snipers and responded to ‘rioting’ Palestinians with ‘dispersal means’ and ‘firing towards main instigators.’ It said the movement was a Hamas-orchestrated ploy and it was identifying ‘terror attacks under the camouflage of riots.’”

Israel-based human rights group B’Tselem—which noted that “Israeli forces have already been lethally shooting Palestinian demonstrators in Gaza for some time”—criticized such a characterization of the movement. Sarah Leah Whitson, Middle East and North Africa director at Human Rights Watch, also noted that “Israeli allegations of violence by some protesters do not change the fact that using lethal force is banned by international law except to meet an imminent threat to life.”

Yousef Munayyer, executive director of The U.S. Campaign for Palestinian Rights, tweeted that “The Israeli military tweeted they knew ‘where every bullet landed,’ then deleted it, probably because there is video showing their bullets landing in the backs of unarmed protesters.”

Israel’s chief army spokesman, Brig. Gen. Ronen Manelis, said Saturday that if violence continues, “we will not be able to continue limiting our activity to the [separation barrier] fence area and will act against these terror organizations in other places too.”

United Nations Secretary-General António Guterres on Friday called for an independent probe of the deadly events, while Tayé-Brook Zerihoun, the deputy UN political affairs chief, warned the UN Security Council, “There is fear the situation might deteriorate in the coming days.”

B’Tselem, meanwhile, states, “The decision where and whether and how to demonstrate in Gaza is not Israel’s to make.”

“Official Israeli statements have made no reference to the actual reason for the protest—the disastrous reality in Gaza—or to the right to free protest. Israel has the power to immediately change life in Gaza for the better,” the group added, “but has chosen not to do so. It has made Gaza a huge prison, yet forbids the prisoners even to protest against this, on pain of death.”

Originally published in CommonDreams.org

Andrea Germanos is senior editor and a staff writer at Common Dreams.

1 April 2018

Source: https://countercurrents.org/2018/04/01/israeli-forces-open-fire-on-gaza-protesters-again/