Tag: nakba

Stanley Cohen in THE SHADOW

In America principles are goods placed on sale to the highest bidder. Career paths are paved with bricks forged by selling yourself out at every opportunity.

Cash in your chips at the next square and move on to another chance for a sell-out.

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Guardians of integrity are rare beasts on our fruited plain. Experience has taught me that wealth management is incompatible with free and open society. But weapons of wealth management are the coin of our realm.

A kind and gentle hint: the system is gamed.

Marking my 50th post on this blog, I leverage what goes for my political capital (49 previous articles) by suggesting that

STANLEY COHEN UN-CAGED AND STILL UN-DAUNTED

become essential reading for billziegler1947 readers.

THE SHADOW is the sole remaining underground newspaper in New York, the home of Stanley Cohen and the only living boy in New York. Mr. Cohen is following the same principled path he began in 1969 and his principles are not for sale.

Imagine that you are looking for a source for truth on Palestine. It’s right here on @StanleyCohenLaw all day long.

But if you need an additional source for truth on that occupied land, consider the words of anthropologist Jeff Halper. He graduated from Hebrew Union College in 1969, the same year I graduated from another Cincinnati institution on Clifton Avenue. I am presently reading and recommending his

War Against the People: Israel, the Palestinians and Global Pacification

Jerry Rubin is best known as one of the Chicago 7 of ’68, he was also a fellow University of Cincinnati alumnus who decided that selling stock portfolios was the new revolutionary act.  Rubin gave an address in Cincinnati the late 60’s. That was before joining the “revolution” on Wall Street as the Reagan era began.

I was still at U.C. during Naksa (’67 War) learning  geography from Laurence G. Wolf.

naksa

Today, speaking truth to power is the best way I know to find yourself in a Gulag.

Israel is a state recognized completely and thoroughly by the United States and a few South-Pacific island territory/nations. The prisons in Israel are legally available for detaining pre-teen Palestinians, indefinitely. Not the vision evoked by Leon Uris’ Exodus, more like Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World.

But if you are looking for an investment opportunity for idle dollars, prisons are wise investments. Billions of dollars accrete to a single individual. It’s where the smart money goes.

Good luck on your career path.

Alea jacta est.

 

 

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.

oren-yiftachel-smaller
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.

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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.

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How it feels.

stone.cold.justice

What it’s like.

 

At Ariel University a Boycott Begins

What good may a boycott bring? It can expose human rights violations otherwise ignored. Many members of academia are joining together, bringing attention to a little-known school via a boycott.  This past Monday (14 March 2016) a thousand protesting professors announced their stand on Ariel University

In all fairness though I am providing an opposing viewpoint for your convenience,  Anne’s Opinions: a WordPress site that explains every Israeli human rights abuse as somehow explicable. See if Anne adopts a certain insular perspective.

https://boycottzionism.wordpress.com/2010/08/01/carlos-latuff-images-for-bds-activists/Does Anne know that her society lives and thrives on Palestinian soil? Is Ariel a university of Israel? Or is it another foothold in Occupied Palestine? Does it benefit Palestine or does it serve the 500,000 settlers on occupied land?

Anne’s blog post on the Ariel action: Let’s see you boycott this, idiots.

Just for the record, Ariel University is not in Israel.

At Ariel University, only Zionists need apply
Professors Amir Hetsroni (pictured) and Steve Salaita have much in common.

Here is a different perspective on Ariel:

At Ariel University, only Zionists need apply

The list of reasons for this BDS action: Israeli Academics for Peace.