Category: Prison

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.

Palestinian Independence

I am a supporter of Palestinian independence and a foe of apartheid: the dramatic separation of “the other” by a privileged people. A de jure and de facto status quo is brutally enforced upon the other.  I have followed Palestine and Israel for a long time. I stand on the side of justice and human rights as defined by the United Nations.  Palestine is a people whose culture is constantly threatened. Israel enjoys independence, Palestine does not.

Contemporary movements arise in unexpected but nevertheless appropriate ways. So they blossom in the same era. Fine parallels.
Contemporary movements arise in unexpected ways. They blossom in this era as related hashtags: #OneStruggle

Olive trees are an immortal theme in the land of Palestine.

olivetree_grandma
A Palestinian grandmother or mom and her children protecting their olive trees from demolition

Metaphor: olive branch in Genesis 8:11

genesis_811
When the dove returned to him in the evening, there in its beak was a freshly plucked olive leaf! Then Noah knew that the water had receded from the earth.

South Africa was another victim of British Empire. It was divided and conquered. Upon attaining independence from Britain, the State of South Africa adopted the divide and conquer technique. It was called Apartheid.

Apartheid (Afrikaans pronunciation: [ɐˈpartɦɛit]; an Afrikaans word meaning "the state of being apart", literally "apart-hood") was a system of racial segregation in South Africa enforced through legislation by the National Party (NP), the governing party from 1948 to 1994.
Apartheid (Afrikaans pronunciation: [ɐˈpartɦɛit]; an Afrikaans word meaning “the state of being apart”, literally “apart-hood”) was a system of racial segregation in South Africa enforced through legislation by the National Party (NP), the governing party from 1948 to 1994.
separation wall

This painting on the separation wall dividing Israeli and Palestinians employs the vehicle (metaphor) of art. Simple but powerful. It reminds me of all the graffiti that adorned the west side of the Berlin Wall (some might have called it the Berlin Fence between 1961 and 1989) until both the west and the east sides of that wall finally fell in 1989.

August 17, 2015

News item:

The Defense Ministry resumed construction on Monday of the separation barrier near Beit Jala, south of Jerusalem, even though the High Court of Justice had invalidated the building of the barrier in that region and ordered the state to reconsider it.

(August 17, 2015 Haaretz)

India gained its independence from the British Raj in 1947.

British Raj (rāj, lit. "rule" in Hindi) or British India, officially the British Indian Empire, and internationally and contemporaneously, India, is the term used synonymously for the region, the rule, and the period, from 1858 to 1947, of the British Empire on the Indian subcontinent.
British Raj (rāj, lit. “rule” in Hindi) or British India, officially the British Indian Empire, and internationally and contemporaneously, India, is the term used synonymously for the region, the rule, and the period, from 1858 to 1947, of the British Empire on the Indian subcontinent.

The British relinquished their imperial hold on Palestine the following year. In 1948 truth became a victim of war.

british_mandate

There is a worn  slogan: “a land without a people for a people without a land.” But Palestine was not an uninhabited region.It was the home of three (3) cultures in 1948: three adherents of a monotheistic faith, secular and others, such as Bedouin nomads.

When the British left the three cultures remained. 700,000 Palestinians began a diaspora (67 years so far) that relocated them to the West Bank of the Jordan River, a small segment along the Mediterranean known as Gaza and throughout the world.

Many Palestinians lived on the Mediterranean coast in 1947. Certainly this would be my choice too, the climate is that of Southern California. Californians prefer the coast, but they also live elsewhere in their state. They live in Sacramento, Los Angeles and San Diego, i.e. all over the state of California. Many Israelis enjoy the Mediterranean coast, but some prefer Jerusalem, a divided city similar to the previously divided Berlin: capital city of the German Democratic Republic and largest city of the German Federal Republic at the time of Nakba.

During the 1947 creation of the state of Israel, the homeland of the Palestinian people for more than a thousand years was taken from them by force. All subsequent crimes–on both sides–inevitably follow from this original injustice. Yet a peace process in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict has continued over the years despite the ongoing violence which has prevailed since the very beginning.
During the 1947 creation of the state of Israel, the homeland of the Palestinian people for more than a thousand years was taken from them by force. All subsequent crimes–on both sides–inevitably follow from this original injustice. Yet a peace process in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict has continued over the years despite the ongoing violence which has prevailed since the very beginning.

Sams Life in Jeddah A WordPress blog

Was the event of 1948النكبةم Nakba Catastrophe) or Israel Independence Day יום העצמאות‎ (Yom Ha’atzmaut)?

Catastrophe number two: the event of 1967: النكسة‎ يوم (The Naksa World Turned Upside Down).

Below, Moriarty as metaphor for the poorly understood victims of great crimes: the Palestinian people:

Picture to yourself the pilot fish with the shark, the jackal with the lion—anything that is insignificant in companionship with what is formidable: not only formidable, Watson, but sinister—in the highest degree sinister. That is where he comes within my purview. ‘You have heard me speak of Professor Moriarty?’

‘The famous scientific criminal, as famous among crooks -‘

‘My blushes, Watson!’ Holmes murmured in a deprecating voice.

‘I was about to say, “as he is unknown to the public”.’

‘A touch! A distinct touch!’ cried Holmes. ‘You are developing a certain unexpected vein of pawky humour, Watson, against which I must learn to guard myself. But in calling Moriarty a criminal you are uttering libel in the eyes of the law…

from A. Conan Doyle’s Sherlock Holmes story The Valley of Fear.

Joseph Goebbels: Nazi Rules for Jazz Performers

Joseph Goebbels, Minister for Propaganda in Hitler’s Third Reich (appointed 1933) had a way with guidelines. A well written article on Goebbels’ thoughts on jazz links below.

Editor’s note for the easily cognitively dissonanced: inclusion of this list in this blog does not represent approval of Minister Goebbels.

Josef Skvorecky on the Nazis’ Control-Freak Hatred of Jazz from The Atlantic January 3, 2012 by JJ Gould.

joseph_goebbels_quote

But if you want to get straight to the rules, Josef Skvorecky enumerates in the link above:

1. Pieces in foxtrot rhythm (so-called swing) are not to exceed 20% of the repertoire of light orchestras and dance bands.

2. In this so-called jazz type repertoire, preference is to be given to compositions in a major key and to lyrics expressing joy in life rather than Jewishly gloomy lyrics;

3. As to tempo, preference is also to be given to brisk compositions over slow ones (so-called blues); however, the pace must not exceed a certain degree of allegro, commensurate with the Aryan sense of discipline and moderation. On no account will Negroid excesses in tempo (so-called hot jazz) or in solo performances (so-called breaks) be tolerated;

4. So-called jazz compositions may contain at most 10% syncopation; the remainder must consist of a natural legato movement devoid of the hysterical rhythmic reverses characteristic of the barbarian races and conductive to dark instincts alien to the German people (so-called riffs);

5. Strictly prohibited is the use of instruments alien to the German spirit (so-called cowbells, flexatone, brushes, etc.) as well as all mutes which turn the noble sound of wind and brass instruments into a Jewish-Freemasonic yowl (so-called wa-wa, hat, etc.);

6. Also prohibited are so-called drum breaks longer than half a bar in four-quarter beat (except in stylized military marches);

7. The double bass must be played solely with the bow in so-called jazz compositions;

8. Plucking of the strings is prohibited, since it is damaging to the instrument and detrimental to Aryan musicality; if a so-called pizzicato effect is absolutely desirable for the character of the composition, strict care must be taken lest the string be allowed to patter on the sordine, which is henceforth forbidden;

9. Musicians are likewise forbidden to make vocal improvisations (so-called scat);

10. All light orchestras and dance bands are advised to restrict the use of saxophones of all keys and to substitute for them the violin-cello, the viola or possibly a suitable folk instrument.

joseph goebbels