Thoughts on the major Israel missile strike on Damascus while reading a bit too much of the Western war propaganda …

Internal chaos weakens Syria and at least for now benefits Israel. However, the Syrian people have long tired of senseless killing there and support peace above all else. So, those still fighting the government are now largely either paid Western mercenaries or paid Islamic extremists bent on establishing a Saudi-style Sunni state in Syria. Not a surprise that, faced with such opponents the Syrian state was making progress on the battlefield (note such real news is not allowed on the mainstream ‘news’ because it counters the line/narrative that the Syrian government is on its last legs). Israeli missile attacks will help but won’t be enough, the rebels are too weak, so the attacks are primarily aimed at forcing Western intervention ‘Libya style’. (If you’ve forgotten what that did to Libya read this by Patrick Cockburn.) In sum, the ‘why’ of the Israeli attacks has nothing to do with the mainstream media’s explanation: “Israel strikes Syria, says targeting Hezbollah arms.” So please, read Robert Fisk:

The story is already familiar: the Israelis wanted to prevent a shipment of Iranian-made Fateh-110 missiles reaching Hezbollah in Lebanon; they were being sent by the Syrian government. According, at least, to a ‘Western intelligence source’. Anonymous, of course. And it opens the old question: why when the Syrian regime is fighting for its life would it send advanced missiles out of Syria? … why would the Syrians send [the missiles to Lebanon], as US sources were also claiming last night, when the Americans themselves claimed only last December that the Syrians had used the same ground-to-ground missiles against rebel forces in Syria.

I think Fisk’s analysis makes a great deal of sense, especially in light of the fact that the attack was on a huge scale, killing over a hundred Syrian soldiers and civilians (note how the mainstream ‘news’ avoids mentioning casualties: the only reference I have seen is on page 2 of a long New York Times report and refers only to soldiers killed). Al Akhbar’s Ali Rizk comments on RT.com:

It seems that Bashar Assad militarily has gained the upper hand so Israel realizes Assad won’t be going unless there’s outside intervention. So Israel is trying to drag the US by saying “If you don’t go in, then we shall wreak havoc. We shall go ahead with our own military escalation.”

But how could huge Israeli missile strikes on Syria trigger a pro-Israeli intervention? Don’t such unprovoked attacks indicate the problem is Israel, the attacker, rather than the ‘attackee’? (You might have asked the same thing after Syria asked the UN to investigate the rebels’ use of chemical weapons.) No, that would make too much sense, so read on:

In Washington, the reported Israeli attacks stoked debate about whether American-led airstrikes were the logical next step to cripple the ability of the Syrian president to counter the rebel forces or use chemical weapons. That was already being discussed in secret by the United States, Britain and France in the days leading to the Israeli strikes, according to American and foreign officials involved in the discussions, with a model being the opening days of the attacks on Libya that ultimately drove Col. Muammar el-Qaddafi from power.

But but but, the problem for U.S. and Western intervention is the Big Bear to the north:

I think what you have now is that Iran and Hezbollah now have a new significant ally of real significant weight which is Russia, which is continuing to the Middle East scene once again. So I think that if we do have escalation, Iran will intervene, Hezbollah will intervene, and I think also we might speak about a Russian intervention or some kind of a Russia role because Russia clearly has been very much present and there saying “I am here and I have a significant say.”

Is the West prepared to go mano v mano with Mr. Putin?

My guess is no, in part for the additional reason that even from a rational Israeli perspective ousting the Assad government is counterproductive. I think we are observing an Israeli military-industrial complex out of control, acting for its own expansionary and profit interests rather than in the interest of the Israeli state. Perhaps, just perhaps, there are rational (and powerful) people within the Beltway who realize that.

P.S. — Another recent Fisk piece well worth reading is “Alawite history reveals the complexities of Syria that West does not understand,” which begins:

In Syria these days, we are resorting to our racist little maps. The Alawite mountains and the town of Qardaha, home of the Assad family – colour it dark red. Will this be the last redoubt of the 12 per cent Alawite minority, to which the President belongs, when the rebels “liberate” Damascus? We always like these divisive charts in the Middle East. Remember how Iraq was always Shias at the bottom, Sunnis in the middle, Kurds at the top? We used to do this with Lebanon: Shias at the bottom (as usual), Shias in the east, Sunnis in Sidon and Tripoli, Christians east and north of Beirut. Never once has a Western newspaper shown a map of Bradford with Muslim and non-Muslim areas marked off, or a map of Washington divided into black and white people. No, that would suggest that our Western civilisation could be divvied up between tribes or races. Only the Arab world merits our ethnic distinctions.

Does Occupy even know that Israel exists, and that the U.S. is its leading supporter/funder? Not from looking at Facebook’s two main Occupy pages (here and here). Just saying, but Occupy seems not to have noticed that our leading Middle East ally is murdering Gaza children in our name.

Oh well, maybe this is just another indicator of the intractable problems an intentionally voiceless and wordless organization will have. Of course there never was a debate of any kind, hot-blooded or reasoned, within Occupy about what stance the organization should take on the U.S government’s slavish and lavish support for Israel no matter what it does, because no one has ever established what and where Occupy is or how or if it makes decisions.

But the photos of dead babies are real and IT WOULD NOT BE HAPPENING BUT FOR U.S. SUPPORT. I.e., as an American movement, you, Occupy, do not have a convenient way out: if you’re not against it then you are for it. But, yeah, okay …

“Never mind, go away, we’re trying to be an inoffensive Occupy!”

Okay, sorry, wouldn’t be prudent. But then …

Death toll in Gaza rises to 95 people, 23 of which are children, report Palestinian medical officials

If not now, when?

Source: http://media-2.web.britannica.com/eb-media/87/72087-004-CDFDD10E.jpg

Because raw imperialism can’t be defended, its defenders tend to be morons.

For example there’s the U.S. war on Iran, and therefore warrior for imperialism Fareed Zakaria vs. Iran. That country is suffering under the most brutal sanctions a corporate globalist hegemon can conjure, crushing the everyday hopes and lives of working and middle class Iranians. The victim’s duly elected president (the illegitimacy of the 2009 election is just more lies), although in most respects a bigoted right-winger himself, nonetheless consistently wins the debate with the intellectual warriors of corporate globalist imperialism. CNN a couple nights ago:

ZAKARIA: More with President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. I quote the Koran to him to show him that he might be wrong about something. …

Oh I bet you will ;->, looking forward to that Fareed …

ZAKARIA: You’re a student of history, and you said something that I was struck by in one of the gatherings that you were at. You spoke about Israel and you said it has no roots in history in the region. And I was wondering whether you really believe that because as you know, of course, Jews have lived there for thousands of years, and we know this, of course, because there are repeated references to the children of Israel in the Koran. There are 43 references to the children of Israel. In fact, one of them, chapter 17 Sura 104 says, we say onto the children of Israel, dwell in this land, live in this land, referring to the land that is now Israel. So do you dispute these facts or do you accept that there is some connection between the children of Israel and this land?

AHMADINEJAD (through translator): So we’re trying to fabricate to make the roots a connection? So you do not draw any distinction between the Zionists and the Jews?

ZAKARIA: I’m asking you.

AHMADINEJAD: I am — I have always maintained that the Zionist regime has no historical roots in the region. I — why would I say that the Jews have no historical root? They were also in Iran, a great many of them. So that means that Iran belongs to the Jews? Iran belongs to Iranians, whether they’re Jews, whether they’re Muslims or Christians. Please pay close attention here, sir. The borderline is quite thin. Zionism is a doctrine, is a school of thought, is an aggressive school of thought. It has nothing to do with the Jewish people. At the same time, the majority of those who are there now have come from other lands. They’re immigrants. Many of them recently converted to Judaism. So the way this regime took shape doesn’t matter. Yes, for a long time, Jews, Christians and Muslims lived in Palestine with one another in peace and stability and they will continue to do so in the future. It is not a Jewish/Christian/Muslim fight. We’re speaking of a group of Zionists who came and gained the reins of power.

Change the subject Fareed, you just been floored! (By the way, does the Ahmadinejad you read in that final paragraph in any way resemble the corporate imperial media Ahmadinejad?)

Scratch an obscure hillside in Israel and you find the tragedy and brutality of the Nakba, Israel’s 1948 ethnic cleansing [big map file] of Palestine’s Arab peoples. So, when the AP published Friday one of its many ’normal country’ articles about Israel, describing the excavation of an ancient hillside that was the Philistine town of Gath and later the Arab village of Tell es-Safi (the location also happens to be on the ‘Palestine’ side of the 1947 UN armistice line), a reader should demand that the article answer the following question: “What about Tell es-Safi, why was it abandoned by its inhabitants in 1948?” Wikipedia:

On 7 July [1948] Givaiti* commander Shimon Avidan issued orders to the 51st Battalion to take the Tall al-Safi area and “to destroy, to kill and to expel [lehashmid, leharog, u´legaresh] refugees encamped in the area, in order to prevent enemy infiltration from the east to this important position.”^[16] According to Benny Morris, the nature of the written order and, presumably, accompanying oral explanations, probably left little doubt in the battalion OC’s minds that Avidan wanted the area cleared of inhabitants.^[17][18]

^{*The Givati was a brigade of the Haganah, a Jewish paramilitary force from 1920-1948 that would later form the core of the Israeli Defense Forces.}

The AP instead reports the ethnic cleansing of the village in the following way, the passive construction excusing and disappearing the Israeli perpetrators:

… later the site became home to an Arab village, Tel el-Safi, which emptied during the war surrounding Israel’s creation in 1948.

(The Israeli university conducting the archaelogical dig is even more demure, referring not at all to the Arab ghost town or 1948 but only to “the site known as Tell es-Safi.”)

Almost always, when a news story touches on recent Palestinian or Israeli history, the anonymous Wikipedia army crushes the mainstream press. Wikipedia regularly provides readers the full, important truth. Wikipedia of course has lots of flaws — among them that it doesn’t have an encyclopedia entry entitled ‘The Nakba’ — but in this case: Wikipedia good, unafraid, unbiased, complete truth; AP bad, afraid, pro-ethnic-cleansing biased, very important truth left out.

And the whole truth matters, because it would inform clueless Americans — on this topic the vast majority — about ‘why they hate us’. ‘They’ hate the U.S. government for its always unquestioning but now increasingly enthusiastic support for Israel’s ethnic cleansing project, which is ongoing in July 2011, 63 years after the village of Tell es-Safih was cleansed and disappeared.

In the late 19th century, Tell al-Safi was described as a village built of adobe brick with a well in the valley to the north.^[13] James Hastings notes that the modern village prior to its depopulation also contained a sacred walī.^[7]

The villagers of Tall al-Safi were Muslim, and they had a mosque, a marketplace, and a shrine for a local sage called Shaykh Mohammad. In 1944 a total of 19,716 dunums [1 dunum = .25 acres] of land were used for cereals, while 696 dunums were irrigated or used for orchards.^[14]

To stop the ethnic cleansing please support Desmond Tutu’s call for the boycott of and divestment from an apartheid Israel.

Abdelrahman Amr Zaki, 15, rejected what he said were claims the protests are just about economic conditions.

“They are not. My father drives a BMW and I have a very good home. There is no democracy, no freedom. We just want Mubarak to go.”

The U.S. media and some progressives and a substantial number of demonstrators will apparently be satisfied with an Egyptian revolution that devolves into just ‘Mubarak out’. As we see in the quote at the top and the blockquotes below:

But a coalition of activists … said they would not talk with [Prime Minister] Shafiq.

Amr Salah, a coalition representative, told AFP that those who had launched the call to protest last week “will not accept any dialogue with the regime until our principal demand is met, and that is for President Hosni Mubarak to step down.”

“Our principal demand”? The subtitle and then a couple paragraphs from Code Pink Medea Benjamin‘s article on alternet:

Despite violence and intimidation, thousands of people are still camped out in the square — absolutely determined to stay there until Mubarak goes

Despite the danger on the streets, we went to the square carrying with two big banners. One said “World Says Time To Go, Mubarak!” and the other said “Solidarity With Egyptian People” in both English and Arabic. When the people in the square saw us and discovered we were Americans, they erupted into cheers. …

I couldn’t believe that after today’s attacks, there were still women in the square who planned to spend the night. A group of young women ran up to us and started hugging and kissing us. “You don’t know what your presence means to us,” one of the students said. ” Please tell Obama that we need him to do more to push Mubarak to go NOW, before more of us get killed.”

This attitude is not good, in fact it’s suspiciously post-ideological. In other words, if Egypt’s revolution goes the way of the “color-coded” revolutions sponsored by Western governments and foundations, it will be just as unsuccessful as those revolutions in transferring political power and economic wealth to the bottom 80% of Egypt’s population. Which is why the West sponsors these post-ideological revolutions.

So, no, I’m sorry otherwise honorable but congenitally too optimistic David North, the following does not seem to be happening:

The Egyptian revolution is dealing a devastating blow to the pro-capitalist triumphalism that followed the Soviet bureaucracy’s liquidation of the USSR in 1991. The class struggle, socialism and Marxism were declared irrelevant in the modern world. “History”—as in “The history of all hitherto existing society is the history of class struggles” (Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels)—had ended. Henceforth, the only revolutions conceivable to the media were those that were “color-coded” in advance, politically scripted by the US State Department, and then implemented by the affluent pro-capitalist sections of society.

This complacent and reactionary scenario has been exploded in Tunisia and Egypt. History has returned with a vengeance. What is presently unfolding in Cairo and throughout Egypt is revolution, the real thing.

Wish it were, but no. The best clue I have to the non-class nature of the revolution is summed up in the following question “What happened to the General Strike?” We read here and here on Monday that it was supposed to have begun on Tuesday. At myfiredoglake, Jeff Kaye wrote:

Egyptian Workers Hold Key to Uprising, New Union Association Issues Call for General Strike

… Barely reported in the West, among the crowds at Tahrir Square last Sunday, a new trade union confederation was announced, the Federation of Egyptian Trade Unions (FETU), which immediately issued a call for a general-strike. The call has been widely taken up, and many reports now link the uprising to unity with the workers, particularly in Suez, where the battle has been fought most intensely with state police.

But we’ve heard nothing about it, from any source, since then. Do a google search and see for yourself. Now, I realize the mainstream media is always reluctant to focus attention on expressions of worker power, but a successful general strike would _force_ attention on itself. That just has not happened, so I have to assume the general strike has not, uh, become ‘general’. And, since the effective way to demonstrate the working class is playing a primary role in a revolution is through it carrying out an effective general strike, my conclusion is the Egyptian working class and lower-middle-class are not going all out participating in this revolution, at least not yet.

Another worrying sign is the apparent fact that less than 300,000 protestors participated in Tuesday’s “million-man march.” Again, the regime attempted to discourage participation, but such attempts would’ve been overwhelmed by an entire working class enthusiastically participating in this revolution. So, I wonder.

If there is only a peripheral class aspect to this revolution and in fact its commanding center is post-ideological, that makes it understandable that workers would be reluctant to put their lives on the line for it. What would be the point? To get a “new boss, same as the old boss”? I wrote “It’s the U.S. vs. the Egyptian people (Mubarak’s just our dictator)” optimistically last week, but if this revolution is simply about replacing Mubarak with a friendlier face of what is essentially U.S.-sponsored military rule, what’s the point of dying for that?

Anyway, I hope I’m wrong, and that this is not just another of those manipulated “naive young people” revolutions that U.S. ‘pro-democracy’ foundations specialize in. However, it concerns me how long the U.S. has been planning for the post-Mubarak era, and, frankly, that Mohammed ElBaradei is a board member of George Soros’s International Crisis Group. (I wonder if that’s a secret, because Soros didn’t mention it in his op-ed boosting ElBaradei, published today in the Washington Post.)

Why is the revolution’s command-and-control post-ideological, if that is the case? Michael Barker writes well on capitalism’s foundations, how they fund progressive change but also place firm limits on it:

… if “we are serious about collectively working to building workable alternatives to capitalism then we must learn to subject our most influential theorists to ruthless criticism.” As I pointed out, a fundamental aspect of such endeavours required “critiquing the very organizations that have sustained (and constrained) much progressive activism, liberal foundations.” Unfortunately, in the year 2009, bar a few noteworthy exceptions, progressive writers have failed to respond to this challenge. On the contrary, many activist commentators have rallied to undermine support for a political agenda that raises legitimate debate about the multitude of problems associated with capitalist funding for progressive activism.

Another Michael Barker quote:

Counter to popular misunderstandings of their work, rather than promoting progressive and more participatory forms of democracy, liberal philanthropy actually serves the opposite purpose by helping preserve gross inequalities, thereby legitimising the status quo. It should not be surprising that Robert Arnove and Nadine Pinede note that although the Carnegie, Rockefeller, and Ford foundations’ “claim to attack the root causes of the ills of humanity, they essentially engage in ameliorative practices to maintain social and economic systems that generate the very inequalities and injustices they wish to correct.”

Finally, Ideology 1A might begin with an understanding of imperialism and the necessity for its success of co-opted host country capitalists. Juan Cole writes:

It should be remembered that Egypt’s elite of multi-millionaires has benefited enormously from its set of corrupt bargains with the US and Israel and from the maintenance of a martial law regime that deflects labor demands and pesky human rights critiques. It is no wonder that to defend his billions and those of his cronies, Hosni Mubarak was perfectly willing to order thousands of his security thugs into the Tahrir Square to beat up and expel the demonstrators, leaving 7 dead and over 800 wounded, 200 of them just on Thursday morning. …

More recently the cover story has been the supposed threat of radical Islam, which is a tiny fringe phenomenon in most of the Middle East that in some large part was sowed by US support for the extremists in the Cold War as a foil to the phantom of International Communism. And then there is the set of myths around Israel, that it is necessary for the well-being of the world’s Jews, that it is an asset to US security, that it is a great ethical enterprise– all of which are patently false.On such altars are the labor activists, youthful idealists, human rights workers, and democracy proponents in Egypt being sacrificed with the silver dagger of filthy lucre. …

For removing all pressure on Israel by the biggest Arab nation with the best Arab military, Egypt has been rewarded with roughly $2 billion in US aid every year, not to mention favorable terms for importation of sophisticated weaponry and other perquisites. This move allowed the Israelis to invade and occupy part of Lebanon in 1982-2000, and then to launch massively destructive wars on virtually defenseless Lebanese and Gaza Palestinians more recently. Cairo under Mubarak is as opposed to Shiite Hizbullah in Lebanon and fundamentalist Hamas in Gaza as is Tel Aviv. The regime of Hosni Mubarak appears to have taken some sort of bribe to send substantial natural gas supplies to Israel at a deep discount. It has joined in the blockade against the civilians of Gaza. It acts as Israel’s handmaid in oppressing the Palestinians, and is bribed to do so by the US.

P.S. Two things I wrote at pffugeecamp that inspired this post:

The sad failure of post-ideological revolts

Soros Foundation prudently sponsors this deadheaded stupidity. And dumbed-down college-educated kids swallow it.

I very very much wish that instead this were true:

Egyptian Workers Hold Key to Uprising, New Union Association Issues Call for General Strike

But unfortunately Jeff Kaye is likely wrong, and the backed by millions of dollars ‘post-ideology’ will win again. Like it has done in various colored revolutions in Eastern Europe and the Middle East in recent years. All of those revolutions spectacular failures in relation to their peoples’ actual hopes. Like Obama has been for his 2008 youngish, naive ‘post-ideological’ hopesters.

No, folks, there’s no easy way, ya can’t win with the learning you get from MTV and video games. Ya’ gotta crack the fuckin’ real books and learn something, get some ideology in ya. Leftism, Marxism, social democracy, modified by a lot of history reading and common sense.

Again, though, I assume the next U.S.-sponsored and military-dominated government will throw the people some bones in the form of subsidized bread prices and such. So, good on the Egyptian people.

by: fairleft @ Tue Feb 01, 2011 at 15:54:59 PM EST

Or, as I wrote briefly Wednesday, on the incoherence of ‘post-ideology’:

Anti-ideology is just for people too lazy and/or economically comfortable to stress working out a coherent ideology for themselves. And of course the rich who aren’t sociopaths don’t want to know what their real-life ideology is.

I think this stuff is having an effect on Israeli morale, and it’s almost better, more uncomfortable for ‘Israel no matter how bad’ defenders, that she doesn’t explain why she’s not coming. Why does this boycott work? Because it exploits and highlights Israel’s recent inhumanity, holding the moral high ground against the civilian killing and ethnic cleansing that Israel is increasingly infamous for. Strategically, that is where the Palestinians and their righteous cause need to stay.

Feel good as the Israeli correspondent’s frustration (reporting for the right-wing Israeli ‘news’ agency Ynet) rises off the screen. Slowly but surely the boycott’s working:

Vanessa Paradis cancels Israel concert
Or Barnea
January 17, 2011

Yet another artist cancelation: French singer, model and actress Vanessa Paradis canceled her performance in Israel, which was scheduled to take place on February 10 …

[Cropped; original by Benoit Derrier at wikipedia]

Paradis decided to cancel her trip to Israel “due to professional reasons”, as reported in the press release by manager David Stern. …

However, because this was the only concert Paradis canceled on her tour, some have claimed that the cancelation was brought about by public pressure and threats related to politics.

The Israel public is no stranger to last minute cancellations, most of which were due to political pressure from pro-Palestinian organizations. …

[A letter Paradis received from the international BDS movement] said that “despite international law, Israel is free of punishment… discriminating against its Arab citizens. Due to this situation, BDS calls upon French singer Vanessa Paradis to cancel her performance in Israel …”

A final note of intrigue is that her cancellation may have been based less on her own concerns than on her husband Johnny Depp’s fears of a ‘secondary’ fan backlash. Moving on to other the other good news accumulating on the ‘boycott Israel and its illegal occupation’ front:

John Lewis stops stocking Ahava products in Britain
14 January 2011

Ahava’s goods, processed on stolen Palestinian land, are becoming too hot to handle. Leading British retail business John Lewis is now refusing to stock this toxic brand. Canadian retailer The Bay has also confirmed that it had also discontinued sales of Ahava products.

By the way, if you are classical music fan, don’t forget (citations removed):

Boycott the Israel Philharmonic Orchestra on its US Tour!
Tuesday, 18 January 2011 16:00 PACBI

The Palestinian Campaign for the Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel appeals to BDS activists in the United States to boycott the US tour of the Israel Philharmonic Orchestra (IPO) in February and March 2011, due to its complicity in whitewashing Israel’s persistent violations of international law and human rights.

… The orchestra has lent itself to the official Israeli propaganda campaign titled Brand Israel, which aims to divert attention from Israel’s violations of international law and Palestinian rights to its artistic and scientific achievements.

Given the orchestra’s strong association with the Israeli state and other Zionist organizations involved in “brand-Israel” activities, PACBI calls upon all BDS activists in the United States to organize activities to protest and boycott the orchestra’s concerts. As long as it continues to partner with the state in planning, implementing, and whitewashing war crimes and international law violations, the Israeli cultural establishment cannot expect to be exempted from the growing boycott movement.

In the interest of further squelching the shockingly disinformed contention that Wikileaks is somehow an Israeli cointelpro operation. From Juan Cole:

The Norwegian newspaper Aftenposten has summarized an Israeli military briefing by Israeli Chief of Staff Gen. Gabi Ashkenazi of a US congressional delegation a little over a year ago and concludes that

The memo on the talks between Ashkenazi and [Congressman Ike] Skelton, as well as numerous other documents from the same period of time, to which Aftenposten has gained access, leave a clear message: The Israeli military is forging ahead at full speed with preparations for a new war in the Middle East.

Note: This war preparation is serious and specific, according to the paper, and clearly is not just a matter of vague contingency planning.

The paper says that US cables quote Ashkenazi telling the US congressmen, “I’m preparing the Israeli army for a major war, since it is easier to scale down to a smaller operation than to do the opposite.”

The general’s plans are driven by fear of growing stockpiles of rockets in Hamas-controlled Gaza and in Hizbullah-controlled Southern Lebanon, the likely theaters of the planned major new war. Ashkenazi does not seem capable of considering that, given a number of Israeli invasions and occupations of those regions, the rockets may be primarily defensive. …

Note that my post does not ‘voice support’ for Hezbollah, since (amazingly) that is now illegal under U.S. ‘law’. From Glenn Greenwald (emphasis in original):

Amazingly, Fran Townsend [formerly a Bush administration war criminal, now a CNN bigwig], on CNN, hailed the Supreme Court’s decision in Humanitarian Law — the Supreme Court ruling that upheld the DOJ’s view that one can be guilty of “material support for terrorism” simply by talking to or advocating for a Terrorist group — and enthusiastically agreed when Wolf Blitzer said, while interviewing her: “If you’re thinking about even voicing support for a terrorist group, don’t do it because the government can come down hard on you and the Supreme Court said the government has every right to do so.” Yet “voicing support for a terrorist group” is exactly what Townsend is now doing — and it makes her a criminal under the very Supreme Court ruling that she so gleefully praised.

Instead, just a reminder that the U.S. supports the outlaw Israeli state with at least $3 billion a year in U.S. tax dollars, and otherwise see my old essay, Singling Out Israel in Berkeley: 5 Reasons. Finally, don’t forget to support boycotting, divesting from, and sanctioning Israel! It’s what its rulers fear most.

Barbara Boxer Gets Progressive Support Despite Checkered Record on Human Rights, International Law
Boxer takes the positions she does not because AIPAC forces her, but because she can get progressives to campaign for her, donate money to her, and vote for her anyway.
By Stephen Zunes
October 18, 2010

Barbara Boxer shaking hands with Ariel Sharon

"The army knows the kids are there to collect. They watch them every day and they know they have no weapons," said Mohammed Abu Rukbi, a fieldworker with DCI. "They usually fire warning shots but the kids don’t take much notice."

Mohammed Sobboh, 17, [ABOVE] was shot just above the knee on August 25 when he was 800 metres from the border, he said. The 12 people in his family have no other income and are not entitled to aid from the UN as they are not refugees.

Israeli soldiers shot dead a horse and a donkey used by Mohammed and his brothers to carry the rubble, he said.

Gaza teens brave IDF fire to collect salvaged building materials
In three months, soldiers shot and wounded 10 youths collecting building materials in expanded buffer zone.
By Amira Hass
October 10, 2010

In the course of three months this summer Israeli soldiers shot and wounded 10 Palestinian teenagers who collect building materials from demolished structures in the former Israeli settlements and the Erez industrial zone in the northern Gaza Strip, dozens or hundreds of meters from the border. Palestinians believe the shootings are aimed at keeping people away from these areas, but despite the great risk dozens of nearby residents, many of them minors, continue to come in order to collect bits of cement and gravel from inside the buildings that were destroyed by the Israel Defense Forces around the time of the 2005 disengagement, and sell them to contractors and factories in the Strip. …

Every day dozens of people come to the ruins of the industrial zone and the settlements, such as Elei Sinai, in wagons drawn by donkeys or horses. One of the teens, who was shot on August 25, told Defence for Children that in recent months soldiers also shot and killed one of the donkeys and three of the horses.

Most of the children tell of a father who is unemployed. Some were among the thousands of Gazans who worked in Israel up until 2006, when their work permits were revoked. The father of one of the teens was forced to close his store as a result of Israel’s ban on the entry of goods it did not define as "humanitarian" into the Strip. After the death, about two years ago, of a 14-year-old shooting victim identified as "N.," the teen dropped out of school to help support his family. That is the story of all these teens, dropping out and going out to work. They all said in their statements that they are afraid to go back to collecting gravel. Some have difficulty walking or carrying heavy loads as a result of their injuries.

Some of the teens sold vegetables in the streets of Gaza City, earning only about NIS 20 or NIS 30 per day, before hearing from neighbors or acquaintances that one could make NIS 40 or more from collecting gravel.

Nine year old Amal and her twelve year old brother Mahmoud witnessed their father and brother being shot dead. Their house was also destroyed. Amal was injured and now lives with shrapnel embedded in her brain which leads to blinding headaches and visual impairment. She struggles with her homework and often finds it difficult to help her mother around the house. Amal says her wish is to become a doctor and help sick people.

Omsyatte, whose home was destroyed by F16s during the 2008 military offensive.

Nasser Abu Said outside the shrapnel-riddled home where his wife, Ne’ema, was killed by Israeli artillery.

Mother of five killed by Israeli artillery fire close to Gaza buffer zone
Three relatives also wounded in shelling on Gaza border, as family say no rockets were heard being fired before attack
Harriet Sherwood in Johar a-Deek
Friday 16 July 2010

…According to the woman’s husband, Nasser Abu Said, 37, the attack began without warning at about 8.30pm on Tuesday with two shells being fired as the family of 17 sat outside their house in the village of Johar a-Deek. Apart from Nasser and his 65-year-old father, the entire group was women and children.

"It was completely quiet, there were no rockets being fired or we wouldn’t have been sitting outside," he said, referring to Qassam missiles launched by militants into Israel.

His sister and his brother’s wife were injured by shrapnel. The family moved indoors and called an ambulance. "About 10 minutes later the ambulance called back to say the Israelis had refused them permission to come to the house," said Nasser.

His wife Ne’ema, 33, soon realised their youngest son, Jaber, was not among the children she was attempting to calm down, and was probably asleep on a mattress outside that he often shared with his grandfather.

As she went to fetch the toddler, another shell landed. "I called to my wife three times," said Nasser, who realised his father had also been badly injured in his leg and stomach. "I could hear small noises coming from her. I knew she was dying."

Via Palestinian co-ordinators, the IDF told the family that anyone going outside the house would be shot dead. Nasser began to tend to his injured father, knowing he could not reach his dying wife.

"I was holding myself in, especially in front of the children," he said. The children were crying hysterically and some had wet themselves, he added.

After two hours, an ambulance was allowed to reach the family. The Palestinian Centre for Human Rights (PCHR), which investigated the incident, said Ne’ema and her wounded relatives were taken to al-Aqsa Martyrs hospital in Deir al-Balah, where it was confirmed she had died from shrapnel wounds.

The Israeli Defence Force (IDF) said it had identified a number of suspects close to the border. "An IDF force fired at the suspects and identified hitting them," it said. The incident was being investigated, it added, but declined to say why ambulances had not been allowed to reach the family. …

29 December 2008: Palestinian children walk past a destroyed mosque and houses after they were hit by an Israeli missile strike that killed Jawaher Baalusha, 4, and her four sisters in the northern Gaza Strip.

29 December 2008: A Palestinian man carries his wounded child to the treatment room of Kamal Adwan hospital following an Israeli missile strike in Beit Lahiya.

1 January 2009: A Palestinian woman with two wounded members of her family in hospital following an Israeli missile strike in Beit Hanoun. Israel dropped a bomb on the home of a Hamas strongman, killing him along with two wives and four children in the first attack on the top leadership of Gaza’s rulers.

5 January 2009: A Palestinian woman sits on the floor beside her baby wounded by an Israeli tank shell, at al-Shifa hospital in Gaza. An Israeli tank shell killed three Palestinian children in their home in eastern Gaza City, medical officials said.

Gaza’s children suffer as conflict enters the classroom
The Israeli blockade and years of fighting have taken their toll on Gaza’s schools, where failure rates are rapidly rising
Rory McCarthy in Gaza City
Friday 16 May 2008

On this morning there was no electricity for the first four hours of school, there were no lights and staff had to use a whistle instead of the electric school bell. There was no running water, save what had been held in reserve in a spare tank at the bathroom. There was no bread for sale in the canteen because of shortages at the bakeries, even though many of the children rely on the small school shop to buy their breakfast. This, a result of the Israeli economic blockade of Gaza, was an ordinary day in extraordinary times.

More worrying are warning signs of a broader disintegration of society, such as those seen in exam results. Last autumn, the UN, which runs some of the best schools in Gaza, noted a sharp increase in exam failures. The failure rate in Arabic between ages nine and 15 was between 34.9% and 61.1% . In maths at the same age the failure rate was even higher at more than 65% , peaking at around age 11 with an astonishing failure rate of 90%. That compares with a failure rate of just 10% at UN schools in Palestinian refugee camps in Lebanon and Syria.

"There’s been a big change. There’s no enjoyment in the children’s lives, no going out, no picnics. There’s a lot of pressure on them and I can feel it in the class," said al-Katib. "They don’t do their homework, they make any excuse – no electricity, or they were sick, or tired. They are less attentive in class than they used to be."

It is not hard to cast a protest vote for a U.S. Senate candidate who expresses your values on Israel and Palestine.

Israel/Palestine position of Green Party California U.S. Senate candidate, Duane Roberts:

Duane Supports… Ending all U.S. military and economic aid to the state of Israel and the right of self-determination for the Palestinian people, including the right of refugees to return.

Israel/Palestine position of Green Party Illinois U.S. Senate candidate, LeAlan Jones:

We should adopt the Israel-Palestine single-state solution and end apartheid in the Middle East. Nations should be based on our collective humanity, not our divisive religions. and we must take steps guarantee that no taxpayer money supports state-sponsored terrorism or assassination. This means no more investing in Israel bonds, Saudi Arabia or China.

We officially demand that the US administration and the Israeli government provide a map of the borders of the state of Israel which they want us to recognize. …

We want to know whether this state includes our lands and houses in the West Bank and east Jerusalem. …

If this map is based on the 1967 borders and provides for the end of the Israeli occupation over all Palestinian lands… then we recognize Israel by whatever name it applies to itself in accordance with international law.

– Senior Palestinian Official Yasser Abed Rabbo

This of course under-reported in the U.S. move by the Palestinians (the latest U.S. ‘news’/propaganda on I/P, by the way, is "Israel offers settlement freeze in exchange for recognition; Palestinians say ‘no’") is smart if it increases international attention on what the U.S. and Israel are asking Palestinians to recognize: a borderless state fully expanded into Palestinian territory. Abed Rabbo added:

It is important for us to know where are the borders of Israel and where are the borders of Palestine. Any formulation the Americans present – even asking us to call Israel the ‘Chinese State’ – we will agree to it, as long as we receive the 1967 borders. We have recognized Israel in the past, but Israel has not recognized the Palestinian state.

Other Israel occupation news:

One year sentence for peacefully protesting ‘apartheid wall’
October 13, 2010; The Independent (UK)

That peaceful protester could be Israel’s partner for peace
By Libby Lenkinski Friedlander
September 24, 2010; Haaretz

Gazan Samir Al-Nadeem dies after waiting 35 days for exit visa to receive heart treatment
October 13, 2010; IPS

BDS Success: Unilever to Move Factory out of West Bank
October 12, 2010; Alternative Information Center (AIC)

Helen Thomas: You cannot criticize Israel in the U.S. and survive
October 12, 2010; Haaretz

Top 10 worst errors Israel is about to make
By Bradley Burston
October 12, 2010; Haaretz

The Jewish Republic of Israel
By Gideon Levy
October 10, 2010; Haaretz

Netanyahu, Lieberman and Barak are making Israel into a ghetto
By Avirama Golan
October 13, 2010; Haaretz

Golan’s is a passionate whine, but one of the Haaretz comments smacks it down with, I guess, the right degree of pessimism/realism:

Compelling but misleading analysis
Michael N; 10.13.10

To argue that the Crazy Right is scuttling the dream of the Old Zionist to create a normal state is misleading. There is plenty on the record to conclusively show that Ben-Gurion and many in the leadership of the Yishuv aspired to create a Jewish state to the exclusion of the Palestinians. The difference is that they were not as obtuse and ‘thuggy’ about their intentions and how to go about implementing it. The other salient differences are the reservoir of good intentions towards the new struggling state, which by now is all but gone, and the demise of the successor to MAPAI, the old labor party. The train has long left the station. There is nothing to lament. Likud and Israel Beiteinu are the true reflection of Israel and its people today. There is no viable center-left party that can lead a sober-sane electorate. Israel moves down the slippery slope of jingoism. Too bad.

Amira Hass asks what is delaying treatment of a 47-year-old Palestinian woman, Khalida Jarrar, who needs diagnostic brain tests that cannot be done in the West Bank due to lack of the necessary medical equipment?

This is a mere footnote in the chronicle of the Palestinians’ life under foreign rule. But this footnote is a typical chapter in the history of Israeli society: a democratic society that gives those wonderful fellows from the Shin Bet a blank check to act like the last of the great dictators and juggle with their subjects’ lives – without elections, without oversight, without supervision. Their word is sacrosanct. And if they say, as they did in reply to Haaretz, "Relevant information exists indicating that [Jarrar's] exit from the area poses a risk to our security," we all salute.

‘Salute’ cuz that’s what’s done in an incorrigibly (?) militarized society (things seem to have gone much further militarization-wise than they have in the U.S., though Americans _can_ relate). And, of course, as Hass notes, if there were any evidence that Jarrar was dangerous, she would’ve been arrested long ago. The real explanation for her brutal treatment may relate to the fact that she is a member of the Palestinian Legislative Council, representing the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine. She wants the Israel occupiers out, and the occupiers don’t like that.

Hass concludes:

For what is the endless postponement of an urgent medical test if not torture of a sick person and her family? . . .

Until six or eight years ago, a journalist’s report of a similar situation would have embarrassed someone up there on the security ladder and an exit permit for medical reasons would have been issued despite the "security considerations." But today, the sense of shame has disappeared. Society’s backing is assured.

What has happened to Israel that virtually no one there anymore stands up against this sort of brutal injustice and bullying? Why are the good people both of Israel and among her sympathizers so silent?