Category: human rights

Palestine: a people with a land are still without a land

Israel insists that it is still the underdog in the Middle East. Danny Ayalon, well known for his video series The Truth about Israel, is a familiar countenance on the pro-Israeli internet. He explains Underdogland with familiar maps and graphics, available at the click (such as the link above). The presentation has high production qualities, the music is rousing and the end-tone is dramatic. Favored mightily by those who like echo-chamber metaphors.

Wie weit zur Heimat?
Wie weit zur Heimat?

Something happened at Harvard and Microsoft recently: two prestigious shakers and movers (lifelong Zionists) endorsed a boycott of Israel, a ‘single state.’  It became the most read article on the Washington Post. This does not mean that they have joined the BDS Movement but it’s a step.

Steven Levitsky and Glen Weyl

Consider diaspora: the Syrians these last five years, the Palestinians these last sixty-seven years? To be ousted from ancestral lands along the Mediterranean and shoved to the east. Then, in 1967 (Naksa)  occupied by the same people who shoved you eastward in 1948: (Nakba).

But what about Lebensraum for the people of choice?

Unfortunately it was Paradise (Mahmoud Darwish)

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Conscious Activism

Perhaps a current dweller thinks “The Mediterranean coast is beautiful, but we need more living space for more living rooms. May the houses all look like the ones in California where the climate is the same.”

Descendants of Abraham: Ishmael and Isaac. A great lesson learned from those who occupied all of Palestine, the British and their Empire. A semantic sleight of hand and, magically, the Palestinians no longer exist. But a magician’s trick does not stay a secret forever. It turns out Palestinians were there all along with a history, a culture, families, friends, acquaintances, businesses, interests, festivals, religions, works of literature, restaurants, theaters, tourist trade, traditions…and tragedies.

Into The Wilderness
1500 BC, Old Testament prophet Abraham banishes Hagar and her son Ishmael into the wilderness after the birth of Isaac to his aged, barren wife Sarah. Genesis, chapter 16. (Photo by Hulton Archive/Getty Images)

At present, a two-state solution (State of Israel/State of Palestine) remains challenged by Realpolitik.

Immigration, emigration, visiting exiled family in other climes. Travel back and forth between Gaza and the West Bank? It’s onerous. The two territories are not contiguous. It is also expensive, time-consuming and dangerous.

I'll be home for...you can plan on me...
I’ll be home for…you can plan on me…

Did you know that most Israelis are not interested in visiting the occupied territories? To go through generations without once meeting the “other.” Believing only their own propaganda.

Palestinians are also de facto victims of extrajudicial executions. There are no Palestinian soldiers, there is no Palestinian military force. Israeli soldiers know they can simply attack fellow humans using their own judgment, without disciplinary action. Did you know that records detailing criminal acts are sometimes lost by the authorities entrusted with preserving them? I’ve hear that it happens.

Israel vê a ONU como território hostil. Por isso manda embaixadores militantes da anexação, cuja resposta-padrão a qualquer crítica é a acusação de ‘antissemitismo’ – diz Vijay Prashad.O governo de Israel não aprecia a ONU. Cartaz frequente nas ocupações de colonos ilegais é “UNwelcome” [ONU não é bem-vinda].

Highways connecting settlements are modern and rimmed with security. Fences built to complement the security wall lengthen.

source: Embaixadores de Israel: mais uma farsa do moderno apartheid

Existing Palestinian homes are demolished daily, reason optional. Unemployment is so high in the occupied sectors that many Palestinians work as domestic help in the very homes they lost to “settlers”. Yes, this is humiliating, but those who humiliate know that a mean-spirited, tough, single-minded determination and persistence may bring blossoms of fear and submission. The New York Times and NPR do not remove bias from their reporting. Both news giants are either corporations or corporately funded.

What happens when Rupert Murdock purchases media? The Wall Street Journal was once a newspaper of integrity, now it’s a tabloid. National Geographic was an institution and cultural icon. Guess who owns NG now. Readers and listeners are left to wonder: just who are these tattered keffiyeh-sporting angry people in the street, those with weapons slightly more modern than those of the Ottoman Empire, with knives and stones: stones right at-hand, produced from rubble left by incendiary bombs equipped with the latest technology, dropped on civilians (collaterals) by the fourth largest military on our planet.

Counter-arguments are always welcomed.

Thanks for reading

 

George Orwell and Stanley Cohen

The William Kunstler of our time, defender of the super-underdog, has been in prison since January 5, 2015. Human rights attorneys are a rare breed. Perhaps an endangered species.

Q.What do lawyers and sperm have in common?
A: A one in a million shot at being human.

-Stephen Fry

So Stanley Cohen is one in a million.

I follow Caged but Undaunted under the byline Marion Heads on WordPress. It maintains focus on the downtrodden, where the exploited live on the edge of existence. The views expressed on the blog are indeed undaunted, opinions often missing in what could be spirited spontaneous political discourse. What does a prison serve? What is the purpose of a jailer? To prevent escape. Pure and unexpurgated arguments should flow with freedom and abandon: you can tell when an author’s thoughts tether to a strict follow-the-line agenda or protocol.

First letters of STANLEY L. COHEN covered by the cage. The freed bird over the last letter. Send a letter to the caged: http://freestanleycohen.xs2.net
Send a letter to the caged: http://freestanleycohen.xs2.net

There are three words most associated with Stanley Cohen: Up the Rebels. His editorial on Prison America is as forcefully expressed as it is true. It’s the pulse of the USA in 2015. The prison-industrial complex beats to its tune. Much there is to know but the last thing the planet needs.

George Orwell as a soldier in Burma knew he was a tool of empire. He knew the imperious every day spent there, but he lived to tell us what happens to the human soul when twisted and contorted. His short stories “A Hanging” and “To Shoot an Elephant” reflect endless empire, endless war. Orwell chose the title 1984 as the simple inversion of the year of publication: 1948. The empire was in the state of dissolution. At a time of personal privation following his British Empire years he informs his readers of being  Down and Out in Paris and London. It is a memoir of the time he worked on the other side of an exclusive restaurant’s swinging doors. Orwell is synonymous with a vision of how the present may know a future.

Stanley Cohen is now in prison, his speech muted. Until January 5th his voice was available on Twitter. Hope we hear from him soon. Defending the disenfranchised is the bulwark of fair and decent society, though it’s safer to join with the tyranny of a majority.  While writing this post coverage of the events in Paris encompass news media. And as a small but vocal voice I continue to write about daily life in Palestine and Israel, where such deaths administered by agents of civil authority are hourly occurrences. Were I to sport a keffiyeh in the local supermarket would I draw attention? Or to wear a Palestinian flag?

Richard Leiby published an article in 2002 on ‘Behind the News in Israel‘. It provides perspective from a dozen years ago.

Thanks for reading.

Jimmy Carter: the man with 20-20 foresight

Earlier this week I mentioned hearing Diane Rehm interview Jimmy Carter on her program. A Mensch with a capital M, and not just because it’s a noun. I also listened to an interview on Bob Edwards Radio (need to write about Bob too, another Mensch). This was about Carter’s so-called “Malais” speech: you can internet that phrase too. That speech did not contain that particular word, but team it with Reagan and recall “Morning in America” and you’ll get there from here.

Well, Jimmy was right on target and he has lived long enough to see us realize it. Selling off your valuable possessions such as your industrial base to those overseas places makes you look like a lottery winner in the short run. It takes you closer to Shirley Jackson’s Lottery in the long run. Also no wars during the Carter Administration. No solar panels on the White House roof after 1980. Jimmy Carter’s foresight was 20-20. And he has the courage to use words like apartheid in proper context: truth to power. Mourning in America.

 

 

النكبة al-Nakba The Catastrophe

Israelis celebrate Independence Day with abandon on the 14th of each May. Remembering Nakba occurs the following day, but be aware: it is not permitted to mourn in Israel on Nakba Day, so it is forbidden to grieve ancestral family roots past, present and future. Many Palestinians lived on the Mediterranean coast. Certainly this would be my choice too, since the climate is that of Southern California. Californians also seem to prefer the coast, some prefer Sacramento. 700,000 Palestinians exiled in 1948. They left homes and lives rooted in many generations, many family trees. There is yet no legal option in Israeli law to a right to return. In the following video you’ll see a skeleton key on a sign: it signifies all the house-keys carried into the West Bank, Gaza or wherever a diaspora may take you.

Caution: This Video Contains Strong Language:

Mourning is Prohibited