Tag: jewish voice for peace

Hedy Epstein, Fascism and Prison America

hedy.epstein.memo

Hedy Epstein (née Wachenheimer) was born in the city of Freiburg in the year 1924, a nine-year old kid when Hitler took over. She was one of the fortunate few who left Germany for the United States in 1939 (Kindertransport).

Hedy reported on Israel’s behavior during the 1982 Lebanon War. That behavior brought familiar the memories of childhood in a Freiburg in the 1930’s.

Hedy ist eine Menschln presently living in St. Louis, Missouri. In 2014 she was arrested at a protest in a suburb of Ferguson on a charge of “Failure to Disperse,” a charge similar to “Failure to Communicate.” Both “failures” are euphemisms. A “communication failure” took the life of Mr. Michael Brown.

failure.to.communicate

Fascism is never a good idea, but many fervently long for it every day.

Fascism is never subtle, it’s better at blurting and wallowing.

Fascism is filed in billziegler1947 under jailers or nice people.

Fascism proclaims that ethnic cleanliness is next to godliness. 

Fascism is proud and nasty, upfront and in your face foul.

Fascism believes that “the others” are impurities and impediments.

Fascism winks, nods and smiles at efficient and early dispatch of undesirables.

dylanroof

Be aware of how well Hedy Epstein is accepted in Israeli society. Beware.

“This diminutive 91-year-old icon of freedom and justice is loved and adored by everyone whose lives she has inspired or touched. As far as many Israelis are concerned, though, she can burn in hell. Some of them have actually said much, much worse about this frail, gentle, loving little Jewish lady who has put her life on the line continually for Palestine.”

A Great Friend of Palestine

Prison America is alive and well. It promises profit for idle capital and is certainly a growth industry. Good ROI.

“You are fettered,” said Scrooge, trembling. “Tell me why?” “I wear the chain I forged in life,” replied the Ghost.

“I made it link by link, and yard by yard; I girded it on of my own free will, and of my own free will I wore it.”

Shutting down prisons is a force for peace. Jesus the Jew of Nazareth knew that. 

Jesus was a true-blue Jew. He would not strew white phosphorous upon unsuspecting children.

https://islampeace1.wordpress.com/2012/11/18/israel-using-white-phosphorus-during-thier-operation-at-gaza/
White Phosphorous over Gaza

Just for the record: Jesus of Nazareth was not of European descent.

Fascism always festers fulsomely under the surface of polite society.

Question the plea “We must return to our commonly shared Judeo-Christian values as established by our Christian founding fathers.” What about the other third of the triad of a monotheism rooted in the Levant?

The monotheist religions are in number three:

  • Islam
  • Judaism
  • Christianity.

Abraham is patriarch to each.

Translations lie. Oft repeated lies lie big-time. Repeat a lie enough and it becomes the stuff of conventional wisdom. Watch out for the fallacy of affirming the consequent when presenting a logical argument.

Joseph Goebbels knew how to lie at world-class levels.

Ignore news cycles, soundbites, repeated headlines, rehashed dead horses.

Politics is warfare.

we.too.are.trying.to.stay.afloat

BDS and the Blacklisting of Pro-Palestinian Activists

Yesterday I learned about a pro-Israel operation you might be interested in. Propaganda online real time: Canary Mission

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It comes complete with rapid-fire context-insensitive propaganda video:

Canary Mission: Radicals Exposed

One of the links on their website takes you to organizations that pro-Israel movements view as threats. Among them BDS, Jewish Voice for Peace and Students for Justice in Palestine.

Obviously the  links do not take you to the activist website but rather to an internal link. Here is what happens when you click the Canary resource for BDS.

Canary is not about freedom, justice or equality. It’s about learning from Senator Joseph McCarthy.

BDS Movement (this site is about Freedom/Justice/Equality)

 

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Canary uses a dark agenda funded by a secret sponsor seeking to remove the privacy of innumerable activists and destroy their futures, i.e. a cleansing.

hasbara.israel.students.hashtag

Hasbara works by achieving a deft balance between information availability and media participation. It helps to have billions of dollars available to combat free and open society. Success depends upon promoting democratic principles on the de jure side while using fascist techniques on the de facto side. Then to proclaim that they continue the good fight as the only democracy in the Middle East: one protected by the most moral army in the world.

Corporate ownership (NYT, Time) and corporate sponsorship (NPR, PBS) permits bias to enter the news. The big lie requires billions of dollars to grow but it has shallow roots.

 

 

 

International Israeli-Apartheid Week

2016 marks the 12th anniversary for International Israeli-Apartheid Week.

Cincinnati is joining at this pivotal moment for realization of the deferred dream in the ancient land of Palestine. Your guide for this week: The Cincinnati Palestine Solidarity Coalition.

cpsc.israeli.apartheid.week

Appropriately enough it started in South Africa where the word Apartheid finds its origin. A literal translation from the Afrikaans is “Aparthood.”

That term turned into a rallying cry that awoke the planet. Unfortunately for the Native Peoples South Africa possesses natural beauty, rare resources and the indomitable spirit that deep roots bring a culture: easy low-fruit harvest for the voraciously hungry inheritors of southernmost Africa.

The parallels between the Palestinians and the Blacks under imperial rule are quite clear. Whereas the White settlers immediately took command in Africa, the representatives of an ethnocracy took command in the British Imperial presence in what the British named a Mandate for Palestine.

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Israeli scholar Oren Yitachel calls Israel a Colonial Ethnocracy

Guess who controlled that Mandate? Just as the Blacks were held in their place by the White colonialists, the Palestinians had the land pulled out from under them when the British left. A miracle of rare craft grafted to the roots. The people who left with their house keys in hand did not simply decide to leave this lovely land.

Unfortunately it was beautiful, as splendidly Mediterranean in climate as Southern California.

Unfortunately it was Paradise.

Today this beach has the very un-Arabic name "Gordon Beach" located at the very un-Arabic name Tel-Aviv. Turning the ancient city of Jaffa.
Today this beach has the very un-Arabic name “Gordon Beach” located at the very un-Arabic name Tel-Aviv. Turning the ancient city of Jaffa.

The British had just given up their Raj puppets in India one year earlier in 1947. You can recognize the charismatic leaders of these three exploited mandates for India, South Africa and now Palestine. One small hint: Mahmoud Abbas is not a charismatic leader but an enormously convenient Puppet for Israel. Arafat’s leadership? Cut short in 2004.

The Iran deal fell short for Netanyahu.

Teleprompter logic did the thinking for AIPAC: the Annual Conference for 2016. Mandate for Washington D.C.

Netanyahu’s academic garb for Israeli security studies are as thin as any emperor dare wear.

Next imagined existential threat to Israel? BDS.

One existential imagination after another.
One existential imagination after another and another.

 

 

 

 

 

 

The Ties that Bind America and Israel

Where a half-truth is a full-lie and a decimated truth is an epic.

do.economic.ties.corrupt.789.001

The AIPAC Conference in Washington D.C. this week demonstrates that America is not only shoulder-to-shoulder in the ties that bind. America and Israel are shoulder-to-shoulder at both shoulders now. It’s beginning to resemble that iconic Brezhnev/Honecker image burned into my, and now your, memory.

Perhaps Banksy might paint a similar theme on the Apartheid Wall.
Perhaps Banksy might paint a similar theme on the Apartheid Wall.

Wealth is publicly flaunted in 2016. The party of the big tent is becoming the party of the wide wallet. Before AIPAC met I held slight hopes that despite Clinton’s roots in political dynasty and Realpolitik she might take note of Palestine on Monday. Not a hint. Without Bernie Sanders it is the party of little hope for 2017.

I wonder if the New York Times would reject my headline suggestion:

“PACers pleased at remaining appeased.”

Just wondering.

Meanwhile 2.5 million Palestinians living in Palestine and 3.5 million Palestinians in diaspora live without independence but with a stolen homeland. Palestine was around a hundred years ago. Israel was not.

Photographs and films from 1948. Traditions, culture, family, livelihoods, fashions, ethnic recipes, hectic markets, crowded schools, beautiful sea of middle earth. Literally the middle of the known world during another failed empire: Roman Empire.
Photographs, films. traditions, culture, family, livelihoods, fashions, art, authentic cuisine, markets, schools, beautiful sea for beach lovers of Jaffa (renamed Tel-Aviv) Unfortunately it was Paradise (Mahmoud Darwish)

 

The Palestinian Authority directs attention from the sleight of hand played by Israel. Abbas is useful for diverting your eye from everyday ethnic cleansing.

The parties at the Oslo Accords of 1993 let pass a largely unknown legal restriction: requiring the labelling of goods manufactured in the West Bank, the occupied territories. A small negotiating point and legally binding, but the powers that be know the difference between de jure and de facto. Some negotiator did not recognize that BDS would happen.

The Gaza Strip is the most densely populated political unit on Earth. I wonder where the Palestinians now living in Gaza lived before they lived in Gaza?

It’s not a trick question. They lived in Palestine.

Here is where they used to live before the Nakba of 1948:

 

Refugee genesis and exodus.
Refugee genesis and exodus. From Visualizing Palestine

The rocks thrown by Palestinian youth are Made in the USA: created with weapons of modern technology. On July 12, 2014 Israelis showed up with lawn chairs (and a sofa) to witness rock manufacturing.

Israeli residents, mostly from the southern Israeli city of Sderot, sit on a hill overlooking the Gaza Strip, on July 12, 2014, to watch the fighting between the Israeli army and Palestinian militants. The world implored Israel and Hamas on July 12 to end hostilities as warplanes pounded Gaza for a fifth straight day, killing at least 30 Palestinians, and militants replied with rockets. AFP PHOTO / MENAHEM KAHANA (Photo credit should read MENAHEM KAHANA/AFP/Getty Images)
Israeli residents, mostly from the southern Israeli city of Sderot, sit on a hill overlooking the Gaza Strip, on July 12, 2014,

Bonus dollars for the military-industrial complex: an exploded bomb no longer exists after the explosion and must be replaced by an unexploded bomb. The destroyed homes are not replaced. But if they are replaced bombs are available to destroy them again.

Operation Protective Edge was just the most recent of many catastrophic assaults on Gaza. Meanwhile, Israel’s Justice System imprisons 12-year-old rock throwers. Death by sniper on Palestinians of any age thought to hold a knife. Actual knife-wielding/rock throwing optional.

The common response in the USA: shrug that shoulder.

Another lucrative industry for Israel: prisons. It’s where 12-year-olds are sent for throwing rocks, where they are housed. During a daily patrol IDF soldiers follow “suspected” youth to their homes. They enter homes at will and locate the suspect’s bedroom. At 2:00 in the morning a knock comes on the bedroom door. Bedwetting is common. I wonder why.

It’s called Stone Cold Justice. The unemployment rate in Gaza is +40%. Disaffected youth talk to their grandparents about memories of life before Nakba. My two grandchildren are not disaffected youth without hope. They have a grandfather who was born 8 months before Nakba. Their grandfather was not born in Jaffa.

Maybe we can look to the Ministry of Justice in Israel for justice, so let’s check there. Ayelet Shaked is Justice Minister.

ayeletshaked

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

How it feels.

stone.cold.justice

What it’s like.