Archives: Articles

By Richard Falk

The Palestinian hunger strike protesting Israeli prison conditions was suspended on May 27th after 40 days, at a time when many of the 1000 or so strikers were experiencing serious deteriorations of health, most were by then hospitalized, and the holy period of Ramadan about to commence creating continuity between the daytime fasting of the faithful and the prior desperate protest of the strikers. What was perhaps most notable about this extraordinary gesture of a mass prolonged hunger strike was that it was treated as hardly worthy of notice by the world media or even by the United Nations, which ironically is regularly attacked by diplomats and the media in the West for being overly preoccupied with Israeli wrongdoing.

It needs appreciating that recourse to a collective hunger strike is a most demanding form of political resistance, invariably provoked by prolonged outrage, requiring courage and a willingness to endure hardship by participants, as well subjecting their will to as harsh a test as life offers. To continue foregoing food for 40 days is a life-threatening and heroic, a commitment never lightly undertaken.

With Bobby Sands as their leader ten IRA imprisoned hunger strikers starved themselves unto their death in 1981. The world watched in rapt attention as this extraordinary spectacle of self-inflicted death unfolded day by day. Without openly acknowledging what was happening before their eyes, hardened political leaders in London silently took notice of the moral challenge they confronted, shifting tactics abruptly, and began working toward a political compromise for Northern Ireland in a manner that would have been unthinkable without the strike.

The Palestinians can harbor no such hopes, at least in the near term. Israel deliberately clouds the moral and political embedded challenges by releasing videotapes supposedly showing ‘snacks’ secretly being eaten by the strike leader, Marwan Barghouti. This fact that this accusation was vigorously denied by his immediate family and lawyer is occasionally noted in the world media, but only as a detail that does not diminish the impact of discrediting the authenticity of the strike. Whether true or not, Israel succeeded in shifting attention away from the strike and avoids doing anything significant to improve prison conditions, much less take steps to end the severe abuses of the Palestinian people over the course of an incredible period of 70 years with no end in sight. Prison authorities immediately resorted to punitive measures to torment those prisoners who were on strike. Such a response underscores ‘democratic’ Israel’s refusal to treat with respect nonviolent forms of resistance by the Palestinian people.

At this same time as the prison drama was unfolding, Gaza was experiencing a deepening of its prolonged crisis that has been cruelly manipulated by Israel to keep the civilian population of almost two million on the brink of starvation and in constant fear of military onslaught. Supposedly the caloric intake for subsistence has been used as a benchmark by Israeli authorities for restricting the flow of food to Gaza. And since that seems insufficient to impose the level of draconian control sought by Israel, three massive military attacks and countless incursions since the end of 2008 have inflicted heavy casualties on the civilian population of Gaza and caused much devastation, a cumulative catastrophe for this utterly vulnerable, impoverished, captive population. In such a context, the fact that Hamas has retaliated with what weaponry it possessed, even if indiscriminate, is to be expected even if not in accord with international humanitarian law.

A leading intellectual resident of Gaza, Haider Eid, has recently written a poignant dispatch from the front lines of continuous flagrant Israelu criminality, “On Gaza and the horror of the siege,” [http://mondoweiss.net/2017/gaza-horror-siege/;, May 25, 2017]. Eid ends his essay with these disturbing lines:

“We fully understand that the deliberate withholding of food or the means to grow food in whatever form is yet another strategy of Israel’s occupation, colonization, and apartheid in Palestine, and, therefore, should be viewed as an abnormality, even a pogrom!

But what we in Gaza cannot fathom is: Why it is allowed to happen?”

At the start of Ramadan, Haider Eid appeals to the world to stand up against what he calls ‘incremental genocide’ “ by heeding the BDS call made by Palestinian Civil Society.”

It is significant that Eid’s appeal is to civil society rather than to the Palestinian Authority entrusted with representing the Palestinian people on the global stage or for a revival of ‘the peace process’ that went on for twenty years within the Oslo Framework or to the UN that accepted responsibility after Britain gave up its Palestine mandate at the end of World War II. These conventional modes of conflict resolution have all failed, while steadily worsening the situation of the Palestinian people and nurturing the ambition of the Zionist movement to reach its goal of territorial expansion.

Beyond this, Eid notes that the authority of BDS is a result of an authoritative Palestinian call to which the peoples of the world are implored to respond. This shift away from intergovernmental empowerment from above to a reliance on empowerment by a victimized people and their authentic representatives embodies Palestinian hopes for a more humane future, and for an eventual realization of long denied rights.

It is appropriate to merge in our moral imagination the ordeals of the prisoners in Israeli jails with that of the people of Gaza without forgetting the encompassing fundamental reality—the Palestinian people as a whole, regardless of their specific circumstances, are being victimized by an Israeli structure of domination and discrimination in a form that constitutes apartheid and different forms of captivity.

It seems that the hunger strike failed to induce Israel to satisfy many of the demands of the strikers for improved conditions. What it did achieve was to remind Palestinians and the world of the leadership gifts of Marwan Barghouti, and it awakened the Palestinian population to the moral and political imperative of sustaining and manifesting resistance as an alternative to despair, passivity, and submission. Israelis and some of their most ardent supporters speak openly of declaring victory for themselves, defeat for the Palestinians. Regardless of our religious or ethnic identity we who live outside the circle of Israeli oppression should be doing our utmost to prevent any outcome that prolongs Palestinian unjust suffering or accepts it as inevitable.

What is unspeakable must become undoable.

Richard Falk is an international law and international relations scholar who taught at Princeton University for forty years. Since 2002 he has lived in Santa Barbara, California, and taught at the local campus of the University of California in Global and International Studies and since 2005 chaired the Board of the Nuclear Age Peace Foundation. For six years (2008-2014) he acted as UN Special Rapporteur for Occupied Palestine

29 May 2017

By Jonathan Cook

Nazareth: A decision by Donald Trump this Thursday could prove fateful for the immediate future of Jerusalem, the wider Israeli-Palestinian conflict and the region.

He must decide whether to renew a presidential waiver, signed by his predecessor, Barack Obama, that expires on June 1. The six-month waiver delays implementing a law passed by Congress in 1995 that requires the US to recognise occupied Jerusalem as Israel’s capital and relocate its embassy there from Tel Aviv.

It is a law every president for the past 22 years has baulked at. It would pre-empt the Oslo accords and negate Washington’s assumed role as “honest broker”. Carrying out Congress’s wish would deny the Palestinians East Jerusalem, the only credible capital of a future Palestinian state.

But equally significantly, the law would recognise Israel’s efforts to claim sovereignty over the Old City’s holy places, especially the incendiary site of Al Aqsa mosque. That could provoke a conflagration both locally, among Palestinians, and more generally in the Middle East.

Trump’s key advisers are reported to be bitterly divided. Some, such as secretary of state Rex Tillerson, warn that, if the president fails to approve the deferral, his claims to be crafting the “ultimate deal” to bring peace to the region will be doomed from the outset.

Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his allies, including in the US Congress, are doing their best to pressure Trump in the opposite direction.

On Sunday, Netanyahu staged a provocative stunt, holding his weekly cabinet meeting in a tunnel under Al Aqsa mosque compound to announce measures to bring millions more Jewish visitors to the occupied Old City, including a new cable car to the edge of the mosque.

It was Netanyahu’s decision to open the Western Wall Tunnel in 1996, when he first became prime minister, that brought the Oslo process into almost terminal crisis at an early stage. Three days of clashes killed more than 100 Palestinians and 17 Israeli soldiers.

Next Tuesday, meanwhile, the US Congress and Israel’s parliament in Jerusalem are due to celebrate the 50th anniversary of Israel’s illegal occupation of the city in a ceremony conducted via video link.

The Jerusalem Post reported on Monday that either Trump or vice-president Mike Pence are due to participate, in what could be interpreted as the first tacit recognition by the White House of Jerusalem as Israel’s capital.

That would be a continuation of Trump’s break with official US policy towards Jerusalem during his visit to the region last week. He became the first sitting president to visit the Jewish prayer plaza at the Western Wall, below Al Aqsa. It was unclear whether his advisers had explained that where he stood had been a Palestinian neighbourhood 50 years ago, before it was ethnically cleansed.

Trump stuffed a note into the wall, in what observers hoped was a plea for divine help in solving the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

But the Western Wall visit was more probably an effort to placate his core supporters. Christian evangelicals paid for dozens of billboards across Jerusalem reminding Trump that he won the election only because of their votes – and that they expect the US embassy to be moved to Jerusalem.

The day after Trump’s departure, Netanyahu exploited the president’s attendance at the wall to further damage prospects for peacemaking. He made a provocative speech to mark “Jerusalem Day”, Israel’s annual show of strength in East Jerusalem.

He claimed that Trump had disproved the “lies” promoted by the United Nations cultural body, Unesco, when it voted this month to re-state that Jerusalem is occupied.

In truth, it was Netanyahu who indulged in gross mendacity, claiming that East Jerusalem had been “desolate” and “neglected” before its occupation. Israel had “redeemed” the city, he said, while Al Aqsa mosque would “always remain under Israeli sovereignty”.

His supporters tried to give that claim concrete expression by staging the largest-ever march through the Old City on Jerusalem Day. Palestinians were forced into hiding or fled early as police allowed 60,000 Jewish ultra-nationalists to besiege the heart of East Jerusalem.

In a sign of the power balance in Israel, a small group of 50 left-wing Jews – many from the US – linked arms to try to block the march at the Old City’s entrance. Footage showed police brutally arresting them, grabbing them in chokeholds and breaking one woman’s arm.

Jerusalem is the most intractable of the final-status issues set out in the Oslo process. Those expecting miracles of Trump are going to be disappointed. His commitment to pressuring Netanyahu is weak, while the Israeli prime minister’s commitment to making concessions is non-existent.

Whether Trump signs the waiver or not on Thursday, all indications are that the US president – faced with domestic pressures and an intransigent Israeli government – is going nowhere with his “ultimate deal”.

The only real question to be decided on Thursday is whether Trump prefers to take the fast or protracted route to failure.

A version of this article first appeared in the National, Abu Dhabi.

Jonathan Cook won the Martha Gellhorn Special Prize for Journalism. His latest books are “Israel and the Clash of Civilisations: Iraq, Iran and the Plan to Remake the Middle East” (Pluto Press) and “Disappearing Palestine: Israel’s Experiments in Human Despair” (Zed Books).

30 May 2017

By Binu Mathew

The new rule notified under the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals (PCA) Act of 1960 banning cattle trade across India is clear encroachment of states’ rights. It will end federalism and will be a death knell for farmers. It is a virtual beef ban across India and also will destroy the livelihood of millions of farmers.

The states have to come up with new strategies to protect their rights enshrined by the constitution. It is time for state Chief Ministers affected by the rule to come together and protect their rights. The best man to take the lead in this matter is Kerala Chief Minister, Pinarayi Vijayan who has been very vocal and critical of the central government’s new rules. He has written to all Chief Ministers asking them to write to Prime Minister Narendra Modi to revoke the new rule. Just shooting off letters to a dictatorial Prime Minister won’t be enough. It’ not the time for prayers but for asserting the rights of the states.

In 1996 Jyoti Basu had a ‘golden opportunity’ to become the Prime Minister of India. His own party’s politburo vetoed it. Jyoti Basu had to rue later in life it as a ‘historical blunder’. Now another golden opportunity present itself to Pinarayi Vijayan, Chief Minister of Kerala to take the leadership in building a coalition in protecting federalism against the incursion and intrusion of the central government into the food plates and livelihoods of majority of India’s citizens.

He must urgently call:

1. A meeting of Chief Ministers of South Indian states to ensure the smooth transfer of cattle, meat, and meat products across these states, It is a life or death matter for millions of farmers meat and meat traders of these states.

2. A meeting of all Chief Ministers of India who oppose the intrusion of Central Government into the authority of the state listed under the constitution.

This is a historical juncture in the history of India. It’s time India must ask itself if it must continue to exist as a federal state or ‘cow down’ to the designs and manoeuvrings of the fascist Sangh Parivar. It is time some one must stand up right now and ask the right questions. Pinarayi Vijayan is the right candidate to do it. If he misses this ‘Golden Opportunity’, he’ll have to rue later in life like Jyoti Basu. Morever, he’ll have to regret that he let down India in this historical juncture.

India stands at a crossroads. It’s time to choose the path. One way leads to a fascist ‘Cowistan’, the other way leads to a federalist state which the builders of modern India envisioned. It’s time to choose.

Binu Mathew is the editor of www.countercurrents.org. He can be reached at editor@countercurrents.org

30 May 2017

By Clelia O. Rodríguez

The politics of decolonization are not the same as the act of decolonizing. How rapidly phrases like “decolonize the mind/heart” or simply “decolonize” are being consumed in academic spaces is worrisome. My grandfather was a decolonizer. He is dead now, and if he was alive he would probably scratch his head if these academics explained  the concept to him.

I am concerned about how the term is beginning to evoke a practice of getting rid of colonial practices by those operating fully under those practices. Decolonization sounds and means different things to me, a woman of color, than to a white person. And why does this matter? Why does my skin itch when I hear the term in academic white spaces where POC remain tokens? Why does my throat become a prison of words that cannot be digested into complete sentences? Is it because in these “decolonizing” practices we are being colonized once again?

I am not granted the same humanity as a white scholar or as someone who acts like one. The performance of those granted this humanity who claim to be creating space for people of color needs to be challenged. They promote Affirmative action, for instance, in laughable ways. During hiring practices, we’re demanded to specify if we’re “aliens” or not. Does a white person experience the nasty bitterness that comes when POC sees that word? Or the other derogatory terminology I am forced to endure while continuing in the race to become America’s Next Top Academic? And these same white colleagues who do not know these experiences graciously line up to present at conferences about decolonizing methodology to show their allyship with POC.

The effects of networking are another one of the ways decolonizing in this field of Humanities shows itself to be a farce. As far as I understand history, Christopher Columbus was really great at networking. He tangled people like me in chains, making us believe that it was all in the name of knitting a web to connect us all under the spell of kumbaya.

Academic spaces are not precisely adorned by safety, nor are they where freedom of speech is truly welcome. Not all of us have the luxury to speak freely without getting penalized by being called radicals, too emotional, angry or even not scholarly enough. In true decolonization work, one burns down bridges at the risk of not getting hired. Stating that we are in the field of decolonizing studies is not enough. It is no surprise that even those engaged in decolonizing methods replicate and polish the master’s tools, because we are implicated in colonialism in this corporatized environment.

I want to know what it is you little kids are doing here—that is to say, Why have you traveled to our Mapuche land? What have you come for? To ask us questions? To make us into an object of study? I want to you go home and I want you to address these concerns that I have carried in my heart for a long time.

Such was the response of Mapuche leader Ñana Raquel to a group of Human Rights students from the United States visiting the Curarrehue, Araucanía Region, Chile in April 2015. Her anger motivated me to reflect upon how to re-think, question, undo, and re-read perspectives of how I am experiencing the Humanities and how I am politicizing my ongoing shifts in my rhyzomatic system. Do we do that when we engage in research? Ñana Raquel’s questions, righteous anger, and reaction forced me to reconsider multiple perspectives on what really defines a territory, something my grandfather carefully taught me when I learned how to read ants and bees.

As politicized thinkers, we must reflect on these experiences if we are to engage in bigger discussions about solidarity, resistance and territories in the Humanities. How do we engage in work as scholars in the service of northern canons, and, in so doing, can we really admit what took us there? Many of us, operating in homogeneous academic spaces (with some hints of liberal tendencies), conform when that question is bluntly asked.

As someone who was herself observed and studied under the microscopes by ‘gringos’ in the 1980s, when pedagogues came to ask us what life was like in a war zone in El Salvador, Raquel’s questions especially resonate with me. Both of us have been dispossessed and situated in North American canons that serve particular research agendas. In this sense, we share similar experiences of being ‘read’ according to certain historical criteria.

Raquel’s voice was impassioned. On that day, we had congregated in the Ruka of Riholi. Facing center and in a circle, we were paying attention to the silence of the elders. Raquel taught us a priceless lesson.  After questioning the processes used to realize research projects in Nepal and Jordan, Raquel’s passionate demand introduced a final punch. She showed us that while we may have the outward face of political consciousness, we continued to use an academic discipline to study ‘exotic’ behaviors and, in so doing, were in fact undermining, denigrating and denying lessons of what constitutes cultural exchange from their perspective.

From these interactions in the field emerge questions that go to the heart of the matter: How do we deal with issues of social compromise in the Humanities? In unlearning? In many cases, academic circles resemble circuses rather than centres of higher learning, wherein a culture of competition based on external pressures to do well motivates the relationship between teacher and student.

One of the tragic consequences of a traditional system of higher education is working with colleagues who claim to have expertise on the topic of social activism, but who have never experienced any form of intervention. I am referring here to those academics who have made careers out of the pain of others by consuming knowledge obtained in marginalized communities. This same practice of “speaking about which you know little (or nothing)” is transmitted, whether acknowledged or not, to the students who we, as teachers and mentors, are preparing to undertake research studies about decolonizing.

Linda Smith speaks about the disdain she has for the word “research,” seeing it as one of the dirtiest words in the English language. I couldn’t agree more with her. When we sit down each semester to write a guide to “unlearning’,” or rather a syllabus, we must reflect upon how we can include content that will help to transmit a pre-defined discipline in the Humanities with current social realities. How can we create a space where a student can freely speak his/her mind without fear of receiving a bad grade?

Today, anything and everything is allowed if a postcolonial/decolonizing seal of approval accompanies it, even if it is devoid of any political urgency. These tendencies appear to be ornamental at best, and we must challenge the basis of those attempts. We can’t keep criticizing the neoliberal system while continuing to retain superficial visions of solidarity without striving for a more in-depth understanding. These are acts for which we pat ourselves on the back, but in the end just open up space for future consumers of prestige.

The corridors of the hallways in the institution where I currently work embodies this faux-solidarity in posters about conferences, colloquiums, and trips in the Global South or about the Global South that cost an arm and a leg. As long as you have money to pay for your airfare, hotel, meals and transportation, you too could add two lines in the CV and speak about the new social movement and their radical strategies to dismantle the system. You too can participate in academic dialogues about poverty and labor rights as you pass by an undocumented cleaner who will make your bed while you go to the main conference room to talk about her struggles.

We must do a better job at unpacking the intellectual masturbation we get out of poverty, horror, oppression, and pain–the essentials that stimulate us to have the orgasm. The “release” comes in the forms of discussions, proposing questions, writing grant proposals, etc. Then we move onto other forms of entertainment. Neoliberalism has turned everything into a product or experience. We must scrutinize the logic of power that is behind our syllabi, and our research work. We must listen to the silences, that which is not written, and pay attention to the internal dynamics of communities and how we label their experiences if we are truly committed to the work of decolonizing.

Clelia O. Rodríguez is an educator, born and raised in El Salvador, Central America.

6 April 2017

By http://samidoun.net

On the occasion of the victory of the Strike of Freedom and Dignity, the valiant battle of Palestinian hunger strikers in Israeli jails, confronting the occupier with their bodies and their lives, we salute the Palestinian prisoners on achieving their victory, not only for themselves and their families, but for the entire Palestinian people and global movement for justice and liberation. We salute and congratulate the prisoners on their victory after 40 days of sacrifice, steadfastness and endless struggle. We also salute and congratulate all those who contributed to this victory, throughout Palestine, in the refugee camps, in Palestinian communities everywhere and among strugglers around the world for justice and liberation. We simultaneously take this moment as an inspiration to continue and elevate our action and organizing for freedom – for all Palestinian prisoners and for the land and people of Palestine.

On 17 April, Palestinian Prisoners’ Day, 1500 Palestinian prisoners out of nearly 6500 imprisoned in Israeli jails launched their strike for a series of demands. These demands were straightforward, focusing on the restoration of family visits, the right to education, access to media and health care. Among the accomplishments of the strike is the restoration of the second monthly family visit, cancelled last year by the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) under the pretext of budget cuts, despite pledges from at least August 2016 to cover the costs of the second monthly visit for Palestinian prisoners.

It is appalling that it should take a 40-day mass hunger strike of Palestinian prisoners to restore family visits taken away by an international agency that should be motivated by the rights and well-being of the prisoners. Far from a neutral bystander, the ICRC was in fact a party to this strike and a participant in the confiscation of the rights of Palestinian prisoners. This raises once again sharp questions about what really provoked the cut in family visits for Palestinian prisoners and the level of Israeli involvement in what was claimed at the time to be a mere financial decision, despite Palestinian pledges to cover costs.

While further information about the agreement has not yet been released, news indicates that further achievements of the strike also center on the issue of family visits, including access to more relatives including grandparents and grandchildren; improved communication, especially between imprisoned children and women and their families, and the installation of public telephones; easing security prohibitions and the frequent bans on family visit imposed by the Israeli prison administration. Al-Mayadeen TV reported further aspects of the agreement:

• periodic entry of private external physicians to examine ill prisoners

• allowing visits from family members of the “second class,” including grandparents and grandchildren

• increasing the amount prisoners may have in their canteen (prison store, where nearly all necessities of life must be purchased from and Israeli corporation) accounts

• adding 3 satellite channels to the prisoners’ TV access

• transferring the Ramla prison hospital to the old section which includes several rooms and a recreation area

• installation of a public telephone for women prisoners, child prisoners and ill prisoners to communicate on a daily basis with their family members

• family visits to be increased to 60 minutes from 45 minutes

• photographs with parents once annually

• increasing the quantities of meat, vegetables and fruits for prisoners

• allowing the introduction of clothing such as trousers and bags

• providing each prisoner with 1 liter olive oil, 1 kilo coffee, 1/2 kilo baklava and 1/2 kilo za’atar.

The leaders participating in the strike included Fateh leader Marwan Barghouthi, Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine General Secretary Ahmad Sa’adat, fellow PFLP leaders Kamil Abu Hanish and Ahed Abu Ghoulmeh, longest-serving Palestinian prisoners Karim Younes and Nael Barghouthi, Hamas leaders Abbas Sayyed and Hasan Salameh, Islamic Jihad leaders Zaid Bseiso and Anas Jaradat, DFLP leader Wajdi Jawdat, former long-term strikers Mohammed al-Qeeq and Samer Issawi, and hundreds more of the imprisoned leadership of the Palestinian people.

Throughout the strike, the prisoners faced harsh repression. They were denied legal visits, family visits, beset by repressive raids, their belongings confiscated – even the salt that they relied on with water to preserve their life and health. Through it all, their steadfastness was an example of commitment and dedication to carry through their struggle. They were not alone in their steadfastness. The mothers and the families of the prisoners filled the tents of solidarity and support in every city, town, village and refugee camp in Palestine. Many prisoners’ mothers launched their own hunger strikes; they struggled, suffered, resisted and led alongside their children. Martyrs fell on the streets of Palestine as they protested and struggled for the liberation of their beloved prisoners at the hands of the occupation forces.

The Palestinian prisoners made clear through the Strike of Dignity and Freedom the power of Palestinian unity. The imprisoned leadership of all Palestinian trends stood together to confront the occupier, while that unity was felt in struggle, on the streets and inside prison walls – and the effects of that unity have been felt in the achievement of the prisoners’ victory.

The hunger strikers demanded that the Israeli occupation speak with their chosen leadership and defeated all attempts to circumvent the prisoners’ direction, leadership and choices. More than that, however, they demonstrated once again that the true, respected leadership of the Palestinian national liberation movement itself is found in the Palestinian prisoners’ movement. The Palestinian prisoners’ movement is at the core of the liberation struggle of the Palestinian people as a whole; far from a side issue of the movement, it represents the Palestinian people and their resistance.

Fundamentally, the Palestinian prisoners’ movement is and remains a voice and a power of resistance that continues to confront the occupier on a daily basis. This strike was not only about family visits, medical care and basic human rights; fundamentally, it was an assertion of Palestinian resistance, rejection of the occupier, and power to struggle, not only for specific demands, but for freedom, return and liberation.

The strike came as U.S. President Donald Trump visited the region, in cahoots with the Zionist movement, the Israeli state and the most reactionary Arab regimes in order to peddle weaponry, death and a so-called “grand bargain” designed to liquidate the Palestinian people’s struggle after 100 years of colonization, 70 years of Nakba and 50 years of intensified occupation. From within Israeli prisons, the strikers’ power and its reflection and resonance on Palestinian, Arab and international streets came to confront any and all such attempts to destroy Palestinian rights and push an apartheid “solution” of endless colonization. It made clear where the Palestinian people stand – with the prisoners, with the resistance and their imprisoned leadership, and not with reactionary Arab regimes or even the Palestinian Authority, which continued its security coordination with the occupation even as the prisoners, their families and their movement demanded that it come to an end.

Throughout Palestine, in the refugee camps in Lebanon, Jordan and Syria, everywhere around the world in exile and diaspora, it was clear that the Palestinian people were side by side with the prisoners’ movement in this strike. The prisoners’ struggle helped to build and energize Palestinian community organizing internationally to support the strike and demand freedom for the prisoners.

Samidoun Palestinian Prisoner Solidarity Network salutes all of the Palestinian community organizers, international political parties, global labor organizations, Palestine solidarity movements, women’s organizations, and strugglers for justice who organized hundreds of events in cities in every continent of the world, demonstrating again and again, developing creative protest mechanisms, taking the #SaltWaterChallenge, organizing one-day hunger strikes and building strength to support the Palestinian prisoners’ struggle. Historically the Palestinian prisoners have always emphasized the importance of international solidarity and support for their struggle for liberation. Every one of these groups and individuals who have taken action around the world has a part in this collective struggle and collective victory.

Through their struggle, the Palestinian prisoners have escalated and developed growing support for the Palestinian struggle – in the labor movement, where major union confederations in Canada and Uruguay joined social movements in Brazil issuing resolutions in support of the strike, and even among parliamentarians, as the Portuguese parliament, the Pan-African Parliament, many Members of European Parliament, Argentine and Chilean parliamentarians, Galician and Andalucian parliamentarians, and even Canadian NDP leadership candidate Niki Ashton and US Congressperson Danny Davis – supported the prisoners.

Perhaps most movingly, the power of internationalist solidarity between liberation struggles was vividly illustrated in the solidarity of Irish Republican, Filipino and Turkish and Kurdish political prisoners and the hunger strike of Arab Communist struggler for Palestine, Georges Ibrahim Abdallah, along with Basque and Arab comrades, in French prison in solidarity with the Palestinian prisoners’ strike, as well as the solidarity expressed from U.S. prisons. Palestinian prisoners celebrated the news of Puerto Rican struggler Oscar Lopez Rivera’s release from U.S. colonial prisons and rejoiced in the scene of his homecoming alongside former Palestinian prisoner and community leader Rasmea Odeh.

The Palestinian prisoners’ movement and their struggle also further empowered and inspired campaigns for boycott, divestment and sanctions – from the establishment of HP-free zones in labor unions and community institutions to the inspiration of local boycott campaigns and initiatives, focusing on G4S, HP, academic and cultural boycott and the full boycott adopted by the LO labor union in Norway. The power and clarity of the prisoners’ resistance must encourage all of us to center the demands and struggle of the prisoners in building the global campaign for boycott, divestment and sanctions.

On this occasion of the prisoners’ victory, we know that there is a long struggle to come, for liberation for the prisoners and liberation for Palestine. We urge all of the Palestinian communities, supporters of Palestine and social justice organizers who took to the streets, drank salt water, engaged in hunger strikes, expressed their solidarity and organized across borders and walls to celebrate the victory of the prisoners with events and actions on 4-6 June, in Celebrations of Dignity and Victory.

In these celebrations, we will recognize the power of the Palestinian people to defeat the occupier and the colonizer, honor the prisoners and their steadfastness, and emphasize the ongoing struggle. These celebrations are an occasion to escalate our demands for Palestinian freedom – for the liberation of Palestinian prisoners, the Palestinian people, and the entire land of Palestine.

27 May 2017

By Bryan Schatz

In June 2014, Iraqi forces dropped their weapons, shed their uniforms, and abandoned their posts as ISIS militants stormed into and captured Mosul. More than a year later, the United States began funneling $1.6 billion worth of new weaponry and other support to the beleaguered Iraqi army. The arsenal included tens of thousands of assault rifles, hundreds of armored vehicles, hundreds of mortar rounds, nearly 200 sniper rifles, and other gear.

What happened to much of it is now a mystery. According to a government audit obtained by Amnesty International, the US Army admits that it failed to accurately track this recent infusion of arms and other military supplies.

The now-declassified Department of Defense audit, obtained through a Freedom of Information Act request, reveals that efforts to keep track of weapons being sent to Iraq have been plagued by sloppy, fragmented, and inaccurate record keeping. The audit concluded that the Army unit in charge of transferring materiel to the Iraqi government “could not provide complete data for the quantity and dollar value of equipment on hand”—including large items such as vehicles.

This is not a new development. “If you do look back at previous audits, almost word for word, you get the same recommendations about the fact that they can’t centralize records, they’ve got records spread across different spreadsheets, it’s very difficult for them to locate weapons as they pass down the chain,” says Patrick Wilcken, Amnesty International’s arms control and human rights researcher. He notes that some Iraqi supply records are hand-written paper receipts.

The problem predates the current conflict by more than a decade. In 2007, the Government Accountability Office found that the United States could not account for nearly 30 percent of the weapons it had distributed in Iraq since 2004—about 200,000 guns. The situation does not appear to have improved much since then. In 2015, the Pentagon’s inspector general reported that the Iraqi army relies on “a manual, paper-based system for tracking supplies and equipment.” Even US and Iraqi personnel supervising arms depots did not know where specific weapons were supposed to be. Last year, Commander Elissa Smith, a Defense Department spokeswoman, told Mother Jones, “The bottom line is that the US military does not have a means to track equipment that has been taken from the government of Iraq by” ISIS.

The most recent audit notes that the Army couldn’t even tell whether certain equipment was in Kuwait or Iraq. It also claims that once military gear is transferred to the Iraqis, “it is no longer U.S. Government property” and the Pentagon “is relieved of responsibility to account for the equipment.” The Pentagon’s Golden Sentry program, however, requires that military supplies sent to foreign governments must be checked after delivery to ensure they are being used properly.

US-manufactured and supplied weapons in Iraq have made their way into the hands of ISIS fighters as well as paramilitary militias such as the Iranian-backed Popular Mobilization Units that have carried out summary executions, torture, and disappearances. Some of those militias have officially been incorporated into the Iraqi military. “This has been a constant feature of the Middle East and arms transfers,” Wilcken says. “Weapons go in, and maybe they serve their purpose for a short time, and then they come back to bite the suppliers. In Iraq, the weapons are not just spreading out into armed groups operating in Iraq but filtering back into the Syrian conflict as well.”

“There is a critical security situation in Iraq,” says Wilcken. Yet he says that funneling weapons into the country without effective monitoring fuels arms proliferation as well as human rights violations throughout the region. “If the [the United States is] investing billions of dollars in equipment, training, and assistance to the Iraqi army but not spending a little extra to ensure that this can lead to a long-term sustainable security solution, then that’s a distortion of their investments. They should be doubling down on securing arms supplies and checking that they’re not being handed out to serial violators.”

Bryan Schatz is a reporter at Mother Jones. Reach him at bschatz@motherjones.com

24 May 2017

By Dr Binoy Kampmark

It was time to do the Zionist boogie within a mere period of 27 hours, and anyone wishing to see two muggers of history enjoying each other’s company found themselves peering at Donald Trump of the United States, and Israel’s Benjamin Netanyahu, nearly arm in arm on the recent tilt in US policy.  “We understand each other,” effused the Israeli leader, “and so much of the things that we wish to accomplish for both our countries.”

Not that Washington had been that savage in reneging on its general policy on Israel during the Obama years. Israel was still deemed firm bosom pal and supposed beacon of democracy in a sea of Arab savagery. One could hardly count the various gestures on the part of the Obama administration, notably those taken in the second term, as firm, sharp turns.

True, the Obama administration had veered at points, paying lip service to international law and the questioned status of the Israeli settlements.  There had been a registered abstention in the UN Security Council.  But effectualness was nowhere to be seen.

Notwithstanding that, the actions of the administration even as Trump was readying to move into the White House provoked Netanyahu, who was also in a habit of turning on the issue of whether the two-state solution ever had legs.

Any Trump promise comes with hazards, the most notable of which is flipping rapid change.  It soon became clear, even within the short time the president was going to spend in Israel, that dangerous, even scandalous excitement was looming.

The issue about whether Trump had disclosed classified material to Russian delegates on Israeli intelligence capabilities reared its curious head, and was beaten down.  “Just so you understand, I have never mentioned the word or the name Israel.”[1]

Nothing about Trump is ever lofty.  The philosophy of the gut and instinct prevail, a situation that is bound to provoke controversy.  The supremely vulgar Israeli MP Oren Hazan, being a bird of such a feather, ploughed through in a successful effort to take a “selfie” with Trump.  Not even Netanyahu could stop him.

Nor should he have.  Hazan had been accused in a televised report in 2015 of pimping and drug taking, a situation which led to his suspension as deputy speaker of the Knesset.  In December that same year, he was suspended for one month from any parliamentary activity after unwarranted behaviour towards a colleague with a disability.  Such a fine resume would sail well in Trumpland.

The gut philosophy is certainly baffling seasoned operatives on the ground.  Having expressed, in warm terms, his desire that the Israeli capital move from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem, doubts have crept in.  An unnamed senior White House official told Bloomberg that, “We don’t think it would be wise to do it at this time.”[2]  There would be no provocations at a time “when everyone’s playing real nice.”

Nathan Thrall, senior analyst at the International Crisis Group, suggests that “both Israeli and Palestinian leaders – including Netanyahu – are made very nervous by Trump.”[3]  The baby risks being thrown with the bath water, and the diplomats and various politicians find themselves at odds with the status quo which emphasised paralysis over effort.  The only thing to do is utter niceties and sweet words – for the moment.

Worried that the ground might be shifting before the spectre of the “ultimate deal” on peace, former Likud member Moshe Feiglin fears that the Trump-Netanyahu association would spell doom for Israel, fuming at his prime minister for pushing “Israel’s strategic situation into the depths of an abyss that we have never known.”[4]  Such dabbling with Trump would thrill the progressives.  “Only Likud can fulfil the dreams of the most radical left.”

On this reality show in the Holy Land, the Trump display reduces history to show and spectacle, usually within the shortest of bursts.  This all came to a delightful head in the visit to Yad Vashem, where heads of state are scrutinised for their obeisance to the Holocaust credo.  What words of grave import would Trump come up with?  In all likelihood, it would have to be in less than 140 characters.

As a Presidential candidate, Barack Obama visited the memorial in 2008, and got on the horse of history to survey the world. The words in the guest book were lengthy, contemplating this “powerful reminder of man’s potential for great evil, but also our capacity to rise up from tragedy and remake our world.”

In his 2013 speech at the memorial, now as president, Obama spoke of how “our sons and daughters are not born to hate, they are taught to hate.  So let us fill their young hearts with the same understanding and compassion that we hope others have for them.”

Trump, in contrast, delivered a more trimmed version, still sneaking in the necessary punch of horror: “Millions of wonderful and beautiful lives, men, women and children were extinguished as part of a systematic attempt to eliminate the Jewish people.”  Netanyahu’s response almost broke the solemnity with unintended satire, thanking the US president for a speech “that in so few words said so much.”

In the guest book of Israel’s national Holocaust memorial were penned words seemingly screaming in their self-referential, adolescent awe: “IT IS A GREAT HONOR TO BE HERE WITH ALL OF MY FRIENDS – SO AMAZING & WILL NEVER FORGET!”

As Amir Tibon would conclude at the end, the first visit to Israel as the president of the United States saw Trump offer a diet to the Israeli people irresistible though unhealthy.  “It consisted almost entirely of sugar and sweets, with very little ‘protein’ in the form of actual substance.”[5]

Dr. Binoy Kampmark was a Commonwealth Scholar at Selwyn College, Cambridge.  He lectures at RMIT University, Melbourne.  Email: bkampmark@gmail.com

[1] http://edition.cnn.com/2017/05/22/politics/trump-israel-russia-intelligence/

[2] https://www.bloomberg.com/politics/articles/2017-05-17/trump-said-to-rule-out-moving-israel-embassy-to-jerusalem

[3] https://www.vice.com/en_au/article/trumps-constant-embarrassing-gaffes-in-israel-wont-hurt-him

[4] https://www.facebook.com/JewishLeadership/posts/10154967988673058

[5] http://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/1.791207

24 May 2017

By Mohammad Ashraf

(Kashmir’s new revolution is following an idea and not any particular leaders!)

Recently, there was a sting operation conducted by a TV network regarding money being received by some of the leaders of the present movement for “Azadi”. In fact, the discovery was proclaimed all over the country like the discovery of the principle of floatation by Archimedes who ran naked from his bath tub shouting “Eureka” (I have found it!). The receipt of funds by various parties in Kashmir from both sides of the border has been going on right from 1947. In fact, the flow of money from across the border started immediately on the ouster and imprisonment of Sheikh Abdullah in 1953. A Pakistani spy named Jahangir Khan used to bring money from across and deliver the same to Begum Abdullah and others. On this side the former RAW Chief Dulat in his book has given details of how money was given to mainstream leaders and others by him and many agencies. In fact, General V.K.Singh had also once disclosed that the Army too had been giving money to Kashmiri politicians. He had even named a particular politician whom he had allegedly given couple of crores. There have been allegations from many leaders of the present ruling set up in New Delhi that the stone pelters are being paid Rs 500 for throwing stones. Following the sting operation recently telecast on National TV channel, a team from the National Investigation Agency came to Srinagar to question various leaders regarding the receipt and distribution of foreign money. The entire exercise is aimed at discrediting these leaders in order to suppress the present popular movement. However, if one studies the present unrest in Kashmir, all types of leaders seem to be irrelevant as it is no longer a political movement but a “Revolution”. The main moving factor of any revolution in the world has always been an idea. It is an idea which gives rise to a revolution and it does not depend on leaders. In fact, on the contrary, every revolution throws up new leaders.

Kashmir’s history, both the ancient and the recent is full of tragedies, misfortunes and disasters. Famines, earthquakes, floods, epidemics and the political upheavals have always been there. In spite of all these misfortunes, Kashmiris have been surviving for last few thousand years and hopefully, will survive as long as human civilization exists on this planet or for that matter in the universe if man starts planetary travel and colonization! In the recent past, the worst misfortune for Kashmir has been its confused leaders who have been leading people from the proverbial pillar to the post! No leader has given a very concrete objective of where a Kashmiri can lead a life of honour and dignity, unmolested by oppressors and how he can get there! It is because of this that the new generation is following an idea and not any particular leaders.

In the long history of external subjugation, Kashmiris have risen many times but have always been crushed brutally. Almost after four centuries of subjugation, they did wake up from the deep slumber to which the foreign oppressors had put them. They also threw up a very tall and forceful leader but unfortunately after sometime he got confused and fatigued leaving his followers too confused and bewildered! There have been other leaders too but none like the colossus we had produced through the uprising of 1931. One cannot belittle the contribution he made along with his followers, one and all towards the ultimate emancipation of the down trodden people. Every Kashmiri in his heart cherishes the ultimate goal, which is to lead a life of honour and dignity which they call “Azadi”! However, so far the oppressors have proved stronger and crafty. Utilizing the weaknesses of the character of a Kashmiri and employing the harshest means they have succeeded in keeping him in perpetual bondage.

The new generation of Kashmiris does not believe in political jargon, dialogues, referendum, interlocutors, mediators, and political processes. They have got one universal idea, “Azadi”. The slogans are, “Go India, Go Back” and “We want Azadi”! Recently, many political leaders, intellectuals and others have opined that India has lost Kashmir. That is not correct. How can Kashmir be physically lost to India when it is held in place by half of the world’s third largest Army? Yes, India has lost Kashmiris. The land is still with them. A BJP leader has declared that the present unrest is in just three and half districts of Kashmir Valley. He needs to be corrected. Yes, the three and a half districts have been completely lost! The unrest is in all the twenty districts and even across the Pir Panjal Mountains. Incidentally, there is also a continuous refrain about talking to stakeholders. One needs to clarify as to who are the real stakeholders. According to information, 70% population of Kashmir is below 35 years. The most volatile is the generation born and brought up in the turmoil of the nineties of the last century. They are the real stakeholders now. Here one is reminded about Tom Paine’s quotation given in “The Rights of Man”! “There never was, there never can, and there never will be a generation of men which can bind posterity till the end of time! Every generation is free to decide its own future. The idea of ruling beyond the grave is preposterous!” So if one desires peace in Kashmir, the new and the real stake holders have to be taken on board. How that can be done, is the million dollar question!

Mohammad Ashraf, I.A.S. (Retired), Former Director General Tourism, Jammu & Kashmir

27 May 2017

By Dr Ramzy Baroud

Bat-Hen Epstein Elias’s long article on Iranian Jews is interesting. Parts of it, in fact, are heartwarming. Yet, despite the lack of any serious evidence, the story is entirely framed in the language of fear.

Entitled, “All the Jews there live in fear that their telephones are tapped,” the story in‘Israel Hayom’ peddles the idea that, although Iranian Jews seem generally content with their lives in Iran as an economically-privileged group, somehow, they are still afraid.

Or, perhaps, Israel needs them to be afraid, despite the fact that the Iranian Jews interviewed in the article expressed little or no fear sentiment at all.

One such character is ‘M’, who, like others asserted: “I never felt like I was being attacked because I was Jewish, or that my religious freedom was harmed.”

His narrative seems positive, if not altogether an encouraging model for co-existence.

For example, ‘M’ said: “I have a good friend, a Muslim, who takes care of me. He takes me to the doctor, and even to the movies and the park, and invites me for meals. Everyone is very good to me and helps me. Before I got sick, I had a lot of money. Medications in Iran are good, a little expensive, but they can be obtained with private insurance and government insurance.”

But then, the fear component is purposely pushed by the Israeli journalist with no clear editorial justification.

Referring to ‘M’, Elias wrote, “Like others, (‘M’) is careful when it comes to talking about the political situation, the nuclear program or the fear of an attack.”

Aside from the fact that Israel Hayom serves, along with other Israeli media, as a major platform for fear-mongering, the need to be afraid is a collective phenomenon in Israel, which it insists on imposing on Jewish communities around the world.

One could in fact argue that ‘fear’ in Israel is an official industry. It helps the government justify its military spending; it helps the military justify its wars; and it further cements the rise of rightwing, religious and ultra-nationalist parties, which now together, rule Israel.

In some way, this is an old, yet ongoing story.

When Israel was established in 1948, it called on all Jews to ‘return’ to the Jewish state, for they, allegedly, could not be safe anywhere else. While many Jewish immigrants throughout the years came to Israel seeking economic opportunities, many were compelled by fear.

That mindset has not changed at all. When militants staged several attacks in Paris in January 2015, Israel Prime Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, called on all French Jews to migrate to Israel.

“We say to the Jews, to our brothers and sisters, Israel is your home and that of every Jew. Israel is waiting for you with open arms,” Netanyahu said.

The statement was strongly criticized by French officials. Many were befuddled by such opportunism during one of France’s most difficult moments in many years.

But for Netanyahu, as for past and present Israeli leaders, inciting or capitalizing on Jewish fears is nothing new.

However, peddling fear is now far more sophisticated, and is deeply embedded in the relationship between the state and Israel’s Jewish population. It has been so internalized to the extent that Israel is incapable of seeing the legitimate fears of the Palestinians and is only obsessed with its own self-induced fears.

A particularly telling story was reported in Israeli media earlier this month when Israeli police officers gave a group of elementary school children a demonstration on “how to kill a Palestinian assailant and verify that he is dead.”

True, the event which took place in Ramat HaSharon on May 8 was not welcomed by all parents, but it was, nonetheless, an example of the training in fear that takes place at a very young age.

Commenting on the story, Jonathan Cook wrote, “Half of Jewish schoolchildren believe these Palestinians, one in five of the population, should not be allowed to vote in elections.”

This, then, is the desired outcome of such methodology, which is constantly fed by the state. Cook adds, “This month the defense minister, Avigdor Lieberman, called the minority’s representatives in parliament ‘Nazis’ and suggested they should share a similar fate.”

The use of the word ‘Nazis’ is not merely a widely inaccurate depiction, but such terminology is designed to constantly stir past fears to achieve racially-motivated political objectives.

Yes, Israelis are manipulated to be very afraid. But unlike occupied and oppressed Palestinians, the Israeli fear is self-induced, an outcome of an inherent sense of collective insecurity that is constantly fed by the government, political parties and official institutions.

Despite Israel’s massive military budget, nuclear arms and territorial expansion at the expense of Palestinians and other Arab neighbors, the sense of insecurity it engenders keeps on growing at the same rapid speed as its military adventures.

It is a vicious cycle.

When Netanyahu, for example, drew a red line in a graphic of a bomb during a speech at a United Nations General Assembly session in September 2012, he was, in essence drawing a new parameter of fear for his own society.

Yoav Litvin, a US-based Israeli doctor of Psychology and Behavioral Neuroscience, wrote convincingly on the subject.

His article entitled, “Independence on Nakba Day – Accountability and Healing as an Israeli Aggressor,” critiques the Zionist narrative, explaining how such deeply entrenched ideas of eternal victimization has led to Israel’s current state of permanent aggression and highly militarized society.

“We see that perspective represented by a long line of pro-aggression, exclusivist, expansionist and militaristic Israeli governments that instill and potentiate fear in order to control public opinion and facilitate their political and economic goals,” he wrote.

“In so doing, the Jewish victim narrative, a form of collective Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD), sustains the level of aggression and oppression that is a part of daily life in the reality of occupation.”

Writing in the ‘Haaretz’, Daniel Bar-Tal conveys a similar sentiment. However, for Bar-Tal, the Zionist narrative is itself designed, in part, to accommodate existing beliefs pertaining to a collective Jewish experience.

Bar-Tal rites, “Societal beliefs, vis-à-vis security, in Israel are based on past experience and on information disseminated via various channels and institutions, whether with regard to the conflict with the Palestinians or to relations with other actors in the region.” But equally important, “every member of society is also exposed to the collective memory of the Jewish people, by means of social, educational and cultural institutions.”

The Zionist narrative has purposely molded ‘past experiences’ into new political objectives and an expansionist ideology to harness the perpetual support of the Jewish people, in Israel and elsewhere. It has convinced them that their very survival is dependent on the subjugation of Palestinians.

This vicious cycle has, thus, become an obstacle to any peace that is predicated on justice and respect for international law and human rights.

The Zionist narrative, as championed by Netanyahu and Lieberman has zero margins for inclusiveness, and for that ideology to be maintained, fear in Israel must be infused.

However, the stronghold of fear must be broken.

Litvin courageously writes: “We, as Israelis, must break the parasitic bond that Zionist propaganda has created between the Israeli/Zionist collective narrative (the state) and ourselves so that dissent becomes both legitimate and even patriotic as a means of building an inclusive and just society in Israel/Palestine.”

In fact, there can be no other way.

Dr. Ramzy Baroud has been writing about the Middle East for over 20 years. He is an internationally-syndicated columnist, a media consultant, an author of several books and the founder of PalestineChronicle.com. His books include “Searching Jenin”, “The Second Palestinian Intifada” and his latest “My Father Was a Freedom Fighter: Gaza’s Untold Story”. His website is www.ramzybaroud.net.

25 May 2017