Tag: apartheid

BDS (Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions) is Free Speech

Download the App buycott on your iPhone or iPad or on whatever app supports it to scan barcodes while shopping
Download the App buycott on your iPhone or on whatever app supports it to scan bar codes while shopping

BDS Movement Full List: here is an up-to-date and handy reference to the players: who they are, where they are and why they matter. Their game is gaining your participation through witting or unwitting complicity.

BDS Marin: here is one of the many local groups thinking global. The list above does not include Nestle among boycotted products but this Marin County movement does include them. So it’s good to cross compare.

BDS Movement on Twitter: here is another social media avenue for learning, teaching or contributing.  I’ve just received an article that delves into the HP security matrix. Life is an ongoing dystopia for Palestinians. HP has really earned it’s place on the BDS list. I’m looking into their other products but do not want to make it overly complex, or less focussed, at this moment.

Please feel free to contact me (ziegler.bill@gmail.com) or leave a comment on this post. Truth and accuracy are important, let me know if something isn’t correct. Participation is vital.

Methodist BDS Consultation
Methodist BDS Movement Consultation

Yesterday I attended a screening of Ghost Town – The Story of Hebron. A well attended event successfully delivered by the Cincinnati Palestine Solidarity Coalition. A fellow supporter of the Palestinian cause noted that I had a bottle of Tradewinds Tea in front of me. Nestle, a Swiss company of notable size, owns Tradewinds: they have plants in the West Bank.

We are presently working on a locally based BDS Movement for the Cincinnati area. Look for us at local businesses that unknowingly contribute to the massive human rights violations in territories occupied by Israel since 1967: the Naksa.

I was a sophomore at the University of Cincinnati at the time of the Six Day War, working on my B.A. in Geography: it was a subject topic in Human Geography that became the stuff of current events in the classroom. In 1971 I completed my M.A. in the same field at Kansas State University. I was born 8 months before the Nakba, so my personal hallmarks coincide in memory with the hallmarks of Palestine these 68 years now. A difference: I have never been a refugee but 6 million Palestinians from Palestine still are. BDS helps everyone.

https://boycottzionism.wordpress.com/2010/08/01/carlos-latuff-images-for-bds-activists/
Cultural boycotts are an integral part of BDS

No time is a good time to support an Apartheid state. I am personally complicit in supporting Apartheid by continuing my American citizenship. Rather than renouncing my home land I am at this moment exercising First Amendment rights, rights that are not available in the State of Israel. Lucas Koerner learned firsthand what may occur if you stand on a public square in Jerusalem. No one should feel discomfort at taking a stand, whether by #StandWithIsrael or #StandWithPalestine.

The First Amendment is one resilient set of words. I like its resonance. It’s available to the most marginalized people. Majority rule makes the world safe for the already comfortable. The Tyranny of the majority (dated 23 February) seeks to restrict basic human rights that already belong to the marginalized, on those less powerful. Just keep repeating this lie: “Majority Rules” from the playground to adulthood and you’ll think it’s truth.

Meanwhile, in this age of one dollar one vote you can still use the dollars at your discretion to cast a BDS vote.See you in the marketplace.

 

http://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/.premium-1.702383
Tyranny of the majority taking place in the Knesset. In this case Arab-Israelis, the one who “came out in droves” according to Binjamin N.

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)

Home
Home

darwish1

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

 

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.

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.