“I believe that despite the enormous odds which exist, unflinching, unswerving, fierce intellectual determination, as citizens, to define the real truth of our lives and our societies is a crucial obligation which devolves upon us all. It is in fact mandatory.
If such a determination is not embodied in our political vision we have no hope of restoring what is so nearly lost to us – the dignity of man.”
Harold Pinter.
“The best hope that Gaza has is if the riots and protests still erupting across the West Bank turn into a full-scale Third Intifada, the protests in Egypt become the basis for the final demolition of the Mubarak regime, and the rest of the Middle East explodes in rebellion.” Lenin;Blogger
Do street protests really count? Do images of carnage and of mothers crying out their pain and sorrow really change any? Do experiences of the recent past taught the world any lessons?
Rami Zurayk blogging on Land & People deplores:
“Hundreds of thousands demonstrated in London against Tony Blair’s decision to join the US in the Iraq war. Hundreds of thousands of Iraqi victims later, the UK is still in Iraq, Labor is still in government and they made Blair a special peace envoy. In Palestine no less.
We worked and worked and worked for Nahr el Bared since day one of the war on the camp in 2007. Hundreds of people offered food and clothes and money. We channelled all that to the 30,000 refugees. We organized vigils, campaigns, talks. We rallied international support.
The camp is still destroyed, and there is no money to rebuild it in spite of all the pledges. The refugees are refugees again. The houses are still without walls, windows or heat.”
What I know from years of personal struggle, is that you learn more from your enemy especially when he seems to be winning.
What is the smartest way of defeating an octopus enemy like Israel whose tentacles and strategies of attack are so multifaceted, adaptable, and far reaching?
Steady and disciplined steps may lead to what I would momentarily, and for semantic convenience, call: Counter-Zionism.
First, there must be a phase of learning from your enemy’s successes, for Zionism, as much as I despise it for the racist, proto-fascist ideology it represents, is an interesting phenomenon. It has achieved in a relatively short period of time an ever lasting reality deeply affecting international relations. It has succeeded in federating much of the Jewish people under its umbrella whilst in the beginning (at the end of the nineteenth century,) Jews were mostly left leaning and attached to their home countries.
Money of course helped the movement quickly reach its goals, but money would have worth nothing without the ideological basis and the network of financial and logistical support that it received.
I’m not going to embark into a lengthy and boring forensic dissection of the history of Zionism because I want to elaborate on what can be practically learned from it, hopefully receiving help from any reader passing by (although I know this site’s popularity figures should convince me to have much less ambitious schemes).
So, a Counter-Zionist movement should learn from Zionism itself and the steps as I imagine them are: First theoretical. Second, ideological. Third, logistical. And last, practical.
With the caveat that terrorist tactics used by Zionism since its inception and still today, should be utterly rejected.
To Be Continued.
.
This is inspired by the post by Jillian C. York who’s got some interesting links here.
Around the world, the ongoing massacre in Gaza is pushing people to further street protest. Gaza on my Mind proposes a series of banners, freely printable and usable during mass-protests.
Artists inspired by the tragedy unfolding have circulated some copyrightless political cartoons and drawings like those by Mazen Kerbaj:
Cartoons courtesy of “Mazen Kerbaj.”
Or these mind boggling cartoons by Carlus Latuff:
Cartoons courtesy of “Carlos Latuff.”
“There is a need for the people of the United States to understand that every piece of rubble that is on that strip of land is caused by US weapons.”
Cynthia McKinney.
These were the words of former U.S. Congresswoman and the Green Party candidate in the 2008 U.S. presidential elections, before Sailing yesterday to Gaza from Larnaca, Cyprus aboard the Dignity, a 66-foot yacht with supplies, medical aid and 16 passengers from Cyprus , the United States, Britain, Australia, Greece, Germany, Ireland, Iraq, Jordan, Sudan and Tunisia (find the passengers list here).
The Ship was still in international waters when she was attacked by Israeli gunboats early this morning:
“On Tuesday, December 30, at 5 a.m., several Israeli gunboats intercepted the Dignity as she was heading on a mission of mercy to Gaza. One gunboat rammed into the boat on the port bow side, heavily damaging her. The reports from the passengers and journalists on board is that she is taking on water and appears to have engine problems. When attacked, the Dignity was clearly in international waters, 90 miles off the coast of Gaza. The gunboats also fired their machine guns into the water in an attempt to stop the mercy ship from getting to Gaza,”
reported the Free Gaza Movement website, adding:
“[I]srael thumbs its nose in the face of maritime law by attacking a human rights boat in international waters and has put all of these human rights observers at risk. At no time was the Dignity ever close to Israeli waters. They clearly identified themselves and the Israeli attack was wilful and criminal. The Dignity is still in international waters, 40 miles off Haifa. Everybody on board is safe at the moment as the boat slowly makes its way to safety in Lebanon.”
Later Israeli Navy claims “they thought it was a terrorist boat,” although they were informed in advance of the plan and aim of the mercy ship.
For updated news please visit FreeGaza.org & Aljazeera.net who’s got journalists onboard.
Also: read this article by Pr. Richard Falk published yesterday on theNation.com, and which I came across thanks to Marcy Newman’s excellent Body on the Line. It is enumerating, from the stand point of international law, the crimes that Israel is committing in Gaza at the moment.
Latest : The damaged Free Gaza Movement boat Dignity has just docked in the port city of Tyre, southern Lebanon (Reuters).
“Gaza is the place with the highest population density in the world, which means that when you bomb from a height of ten thousand metres, you’ll inevitably butcher many civilians. You’re aware of it, you’re guilty as charged, it’s no error, no case of collateral damage.”
On ideological grounds I’m not a supporter of Hamas, but like it or not, these are the people who the Palestinians chose to lead them. After all, Hamas has always been cleaner than Fatah (its main political rival) and had a much better record in respecting the democratic process in Palestine since its inception. And this democratic choice was the natural result of years of Israeli systematic humiliations, harassment, disdain for whomsoever claims leadership, and of course political assassinations and state terror.
When in the 50’s, 60’s, 70’s and even during the 80’s, most of Palestinian militants were secular and mostly fighting a “conventional” war of liberation (i.e. not targeting civilians, and avoiding terror tactics -except the exceptions-), Israel responded with the same brutality and pushed the Palestinians little by little to the extreme.
The tactic today is not much different from the past: brinkmanship, brutal creation of new realities on the ground, and, let us not forget, cynical usage of bombs for electoral purposes (a general election is due next February in Israel with the far right, Likud party leading in the polls; although one must always remember that in Israel almost everyone is indeed ‘far right’). Fascist tactics that, one might think, shouldn’t be permitted in our day and age.
And as Israel is –apparently- preparing for another ground invasion of Gaza, it’s important to remember, as Le Monde Diplomatique’s columnist Alain Gresh reminds us, and contrary to what most of the Western media utters ad-nauseum, why the six month cease-fire failed:
“The deal consisted, apart from the cease-fire itself, of an end to the blockade and a commitment from Egypt to open the Rafah passage. What happened was that, not only Israel violated the truce by attacking and killing numerous victims on November the 4th [the day Obama got elected incidentally,] but the passage points to Egypt were only partially reopened and the Blockade hardened. As a result, the population, mostly in favour of the accord in June, wants now a clarification: either the war, or the unconditional opening of the gateways to Egypt and an end to the permanent blackmail that Israel uses to starve the Gazan population.”
If peace is to be achieved one day, it has to be negotiated with the Palestinians through their representatives. Hamas is today the legitimate gate keeper. And Israel knows that. Hence the ongoing onslaught.
Here is what Khaled Meshaal, the exiled Hamas leader said in Le Monde Diplomatique less that a week ago:
“Hamas and the Palestinian forces have offered a golden opportunity to solve the Arab-Israeli conflict. Unfortunately this has been ignored by the Americans, Europeans and the Quartet. Our will [to end the conflict] has conflicted with the refusal of Israel that nobody dares to oppose. In the 2006 National Reconciliation document, that all the forces signed (except Islamic Jihad), we clearly stated our acceptance of a Palestinian state inside the 1967 borders, with Jerusalem as a capital, free of settlements, and including the subject (mawdoo’) of the right of return. This is the common program of the Palestinian forces. Some want more others less[…] Arabs want something similar. The problem is in Israel. The U.S. play the role of a spectator in the negociations and they support Israel’s reluctance. The problem is therefore not Hamas, nor the Arab countries: it is Israel”
It sums it up really.
An interesting quote from Howard Zinn’s A people’s History of the US, which if read correctly might taught us something about the psyche of the settlers state Israel is today, and the supremacist philosophy that underpins its policies. It also helps to understand the cycle of hatred/revenge that Israel is endlessly fueling. Next time innocent Israeli civilans are murdered, remember where and when that all started.
Zionists have created a racist ideology for themselves and now that they have gone further down the way of murder and crimes, they feel they don’t have alternatives other than sticking to the ugly business they’ve started.
Why would they stop?
Now that a new president, pretty much in the Israel lobby’s pocket, is set to replace the old one in Washington, Israel, pretexting the expiration of a six-month truce with Hamas, has launched a wave of terror on Gaza, already badly hit by months of cruel embargo and total siege in punishment for the democratic election of Hamas to lead the Palestinian government back in 2006; Gaza is one of the most densely populated and impoverished places on earth with one and a half million people trapped between Egypt and Israel.
Actually it was Israel who first broke the truce, back in November, contrary to what is widely reported by the mass media, the BBC included.
Ehud Barak, the Isareli War minister (or criminal, as you like) says today that his operation will go on for “as long as necessary,” ignoring international calls for an end to the massacre.
He made his remarks as the first pictures of the onslaught began to appear on TV and the internet and as world’s governments protests began to emerge.
“Waves of Israeli aircraft swooped over the Gaza Strip, killing more than 210 Palestinians. The center of Gaza City became a scene of chaotic horror, where dozens of mutilated bodies were laid out on the pavement,”
the New York Times reported.
Gazans have been deprived of basic needs for months, have no reliable source of clean water, nor regular power and according to the UN’s own account, the strip is on the brink of a humanitarian catastrophe.
Zionist apologists heard tonight on radio talk-shows regularly used the usual excuse: “civilians compounds were bombed because Hamas activists are using the civilian population.” Ironically, the Nazi excuse for bombing whole neighbourhoods in occupied Europe was that insurgents and resisters hided and were helped by the population.
Bombing civilian areas is not something civilized countries do. Since Nuremberg this is considered a war crime. This is a war crime; a massacre; a mass murder, committed by American made deadly weapons, mostly paid for by American taxpayer’s money.
The terrible thing is, this will not make Israel safer and will only aggravate the trend in the Palestinian (and indeed the Arab street) toward a more extremist position. These policies have been pursued for decade after decade and have led nowhere. It is Israel that is upholding the status quo.
No reaction as now from Britain and the US governments, the “best friends of Israel” according to Tony Blair. The same happened with Lebanon in 2006.
Many of Obama enthusiasts think that he will dust off the Arab Peace Initiative made by all Arab states in 2002 in Beirut (which will be bombarded and reduced to dust by Israel less than four year later), accepted in principle by Iran and Hamas, and which proposed a plan to end the conflict as a whole and promised the Jewish state a full normalization in exchange for a withdrawal of the Israeli forces from the occupied territories. This was deliberately ignored by Israel and the Bush administration.
My deepest condolences to all those helpless Palestinian families, who are grieving tonight.
The day will get off to a cloudy start.
It will be quite chilly
But as the day progresses
The sun will come out
And the afternoon will be dry and warm.
In the evening the moon will shine
And be quite bright.
There will be, it has to be said,
A brisk wind
But it will die out by midnight.
Nothing further will happen.
This is the last forecast.
Harold Pinter.
أنـا حريتي... فإن سـرقوها
تسقطِ الأرضُ كلها والسماءُ
ما احترفتُ النفاقَ يوماً وكـلامـي
مـا اشتـراهُ الملـوكُ والأمراءُ
نــزار قــبــانــي
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