Archive
Fearmongering the worse public policy ever
July 11,2020
By Marivel Guzman
“It’s easier to fool people than convince them thanu they have been fooled,” Often attributed to Mark Twain.
No matter who said it, it is an absolute truth statement, even if there are no absolutes, someone might say. At the present times, 99 percent of the population has been fooled into believing many things that are not true, at least not scientifically backed by honest data (not paid science).
On the contrary, there is science against the opposite. But nobody will say, yes, I was fooled, but I’m ok with it.
Most people rather live a comfortable lie than an uncomfortable truth.
The lockdown(s) were never about hospitals’s capacity. The lockdown was and still is according to official sources to stop the infection of SARS-CoV-2.
The “surge” in cases is simply due to people testing positive for the SARS-CoV-2, but this fact does not make them a COVID-19 case.
Have you asked yourself why so many people are testing positive for the virus? The reason is that more testing is being conducted all across the world.
Second question: Why do people who are or seem healthy test positive, and you don’t even know you have it?
According to the latest study published in the Lancet, most young people, especially in groups from 14 to 49, had gotten the virus with no symptoms a lot.
Children under that age do not get infected. In the study, one child got the virus. The exception.
The group that from 50 to 65, got the virus with mild condition, not required hospitalization. The only group that is at risk are people 65 and over, and that is because they have a coctail of diseases that render their immune system weak.
Now, if in the present lockdown essential workers are allowed to mingle outside their homes to work, if they “catch” the virus obviously they will bring it home, to a “close quarters,” where they can infect any other members of the family. Right?
The lockdown is ineffective and is a complete disaster. Because destroyed the economy of the world at large and further more is eroding the means of survival of the sensitive population-Those who are daily laborers, migrants, street vendors whose only survival is in the tourist industry.
So, why instead to mandate a lockdown in a 7.8 billion people, why the policy wasn’t to protect the population at risk to get infected and to develop COVID-19, the flu which is also a respiratory infection could have been taken as a studied example.
Not every household in the world has a member in the mentioned group – 65 and over- those who has them should have the responsibility to care for their elderly, meaning wearing masks when in public to avoid getting the virus and bring it home. Taking all measures of hygiene before being in contact with their elders.
We must take into consideration another group, the population that already suffers from conditions known to weaken their inmune system. The same measures should be taken.
By now, science has studied that assymtomatic people do not transmit the virus, simply because the means of transmission starts when the body starts protecting itself through its defense mechanism such fever, sneezing, and coughing If you have a fever, no body can’t get sick by touching the warm skin of the person. Righ? but if you sneeze or cough, then you can transmit the virus. The WHO has the data compiled by countries that followed the strict tracking of assymtomatic and their contacts. “The data shows no secondary infection from an assymtomatic person,” the WHO said in its June 8 briefing.
If an asymptomatic person could transmit the virus just by speaking, this means the virus is in the saliva, right? Then, the testing for the overall population should be a simple swap of saliva from the mouth. But, that is not the present case. The testing is required to dig down on your throat or nose, where the virus is being isolated by the normal defense mechanism of the body if any virus is present.
So, again, the hospitals entered the equation when people started to challenge masks and lockdowns and the changing of mask guidelines.
If all governments can allocate billions of dollars to their defense budget to buy the latest weaponry of war, why they couldn’t they switch that budget to fight this “almost microscopic enemy “?
Another important point to address is the medical personnel of the army forces. This goes for every country. All states (countries) have trained nurses and doctors. Why instead of use resources enforcing this crippling lockdown, why didn’t the armies of the world deploy their medical personnel to the government and private owned hospitals to help fight the enemy?
To end but not less important, it is known, scientifically proven that there isn’t a treatment to cure viruses still now 2020, the only doctor’s prescription is rest, lots of fluids and medicines to treat the symptoms; high temperature, congested cough, and upper respiratory system symptoms. Although those symptoms are the defense mechanism of the body to fight the pathogens, whichever they are, if they become severe, they need to lessen the discomfort.
Only when the person become to ill to treat him/her at home is that they go to the hospital to be under medical treatment. This has been a common practice by the majority of the population, especially rural places that don’t have medical facilities nearby.
So, in my personal informed opinion – after endless research and medical knowledge- I’m talking as a nurse and as a journalist, the lockdown(s) and curfews are the wrong public policy ever enforced in the population in time of relative peace, at least in most countries.
In more cases, the better. If you have followed the reports from all the world’s CDCs, you find that COVID-19 cases resulting in deaths are very small percentages. Until now, analyzing the latest data, the death ratio range between
- 03 to 0.26 worse scenario, and this number is taking in consideration the data of the positive cases reported from assymtomatic persons who voluntary gave their throat or nose samples.
So again, wear your mask if you have to, but don’t blindly advocate for a lockdown that doesn’t affect you at all. Stay home if you feel safe, but stop feeding endless unnecessary fear to the population not affected by the SARS-CoV-2.
Take care of your elders and inmuno depressed, but don’t try to curtail with your fearmongering-the ability of the 90 percent of the population who can safely work and need to work to survive.
The lockdown is a wrong policy. Remember this: 37- million people live with HIV and live normal lives with treatment.
Cornel West speaks for Palestinians
By Marivel Guzman
Cornel West photo credit CornelWest.com
SACRAMENTO, Calif.– Sept. 29, 2016. Cornel West at Press Conference at Sacramento State University.
I was aware of West’s role in advising the Bernie Sanders presidential campaign, particularly on the Palestine Issue. For over 40 years, West has been a vocal advocate and supporter of the Palestinian people in their struggle against the Zionist occupation of their nation; Knowing West’s position on this important issue-of-the-day, I was intrigued by his deep concern about the plight of the Palestinian people and the need for people in this country to gain an objective and historical understanding of the roots of the current plight of Palestinians.
In my familiarity with West’s books, he has almost maintained a very progressive stance by tying their oppression to foreign occupation of their country. Therefore, I was eager to hear more about his views when I attended his lecture and press conference at Sacramento State University.
Knowing that the mainstream media would not only shy away, but ignore the conflict in the Middle East, particularly in regards to the Palestinian issue, I made it a point to ask West about his role in advising the Sander’s campaign regarding the rights of Palestinians that live under Israel’s occupation. His response made it clear that he remained firm in his conviction that the people of this country must understand and support the Palestinian struggle to regain statehood.
When I asked why the Democratic Party after the primaries refused to acknowledge the Palestinian issue, his reply was unequivocally clear,
“If they didn’t address it, they were just wrong, this was cowardly and too indifferent, too unwilling to engage the level of suffering and misery and injustice of precious Palestinians brothers and sisters.”
West went on to explain that the position of the Democratic Party has been “tied too long to American-Israeli Public Affairs Committee.” He went on to explain that “AIPAC is not representative of Jewish-Americans, it represents a slice of centrist and conservative Jewish-Americans.” He then went on to explain that the AIPAC is “very powerful, like the NRA, and any other powerful lobby that is shaping U.S. policy … and for too long the kind of policies that the AIPAC promotes has not recognized the humanity (of the Palestinians) and the evil of Israeli occupation …. I am against foreign domination, I think what we are about is that every human being has some security from domination.”
The topic went on to highlight Assembly Bill 2844 which Governor Brown recently signed into law opposing the boycott, divestment and sanctions against Israel.
There is a broad campaign both nationally and internationally to boycott, divest and impose sanctions upon companies that financially benefit from the Israeli seizure of Palestinian lands and resources.
This campaign included a boycott of those products from the occupied territories. The intent of Governor Brown bill is to protect the Israel by silencing and suppressing the groundswell support of an ever-growing number of people in this country and worldwide of the Palestinian people. Therefore, I asked West for his opinion of Assembly Bill 2844 and whether he thought groups such as the American Civil Liberties Union would challenge it on the basis of a denial of free speech. He felt that there would be legal challenges to this bill because he considers himself a libertarian when it comes to freedom of speech.
He went on to state that “there’s no doubt that there are many brothers and sisters in the BDS movement who are being targeted and demonized because they have a critique of not just Israeli occupation, they have a critique of the Israeli state that is perceived by very powerful elite at the top as being anti-Semitic …” “It is very difficult to have that conversation in the United States and so those of us who are part of the BDS we get demonized, we get viewed as if we are anti-Jewish, anti-Semitic and we just have to make it clear that we have to rob that kind of shallow characterization of the substance, we have to be very explicit about that fact that we take principled stance against anti-Jewish hatred and anti-Jewish prejudice and anti-Jewish sensibilities and still have fundamental commitment to the self-determination of Palestinians…”
I was very heartened by West’s formulation of the Middle East conflict and his wholehearted opposition to bigotry of any type. It was evident that he has pondered the issue long and hard or in his words for “30 to 40 years.” I found that his comments about President Obama’s neoliberal identity that leads him to support the State of Israeli to be on-target. He bravely criticized President Obama for his support and allowing himself to be captive to the right-wing elements in Israel. This included the passage of the $38 billion bill to the State of Israel. West concludes that the Middle East conflict is a very complex issue that demands “that we have enough people who are willing to tell the truth the best way they know it.”
Celebrities for Palestine; Cultural Activism with Ben Rivers
A talk by Ben Rivers on Playback Theatre and Popular Struggle in Occupied Palestine. Photo: Bhagya Prakash. K
Since December 2011, The Freedom Theatre’s Freedom Bus has engaged thousands of Palestinians and people from abroad in cultural actions that address Israel’s practice of settler colonialism, military occupation and structural apartheid. The Freedom Bus partners with village cooperatives, popular struggle committees and grassroots organizations to hold multi-day “solidarity stays” and “freedom rides” in villages, towns, refugee camps and Bedouin communities throughout the occupied West Bank. These events involve community visits, interactive seminars, guided walks, Hakawati (traditional storytelling), building construction, and protective presence activity.
A central feature of Freedom Bus events is the use of Playback Theatre. Through this method, a troupe of Palestinian actors and musicians invite stories from the audience and subsequently transform each account into a piece of improvised theatre. By sharing stories about the realities of life under colonization and apartheid, community members aim to mobilize audience members in the broader struggle for freedom and equality in historic Palestine.
Irene Fernández Ramos writes for her Storytelling, Agency and Community-building through Playback Theatre in Palestine What is Playback Theatre?
Playback Theatre is a form of non-scripted, interactive community-based theatre created in the 1970s in the United States by Jonathan Fox. A Playback Theatre event usually lasts around seventy-five minutes and it is constructed from the stories of members of the audience who are invited by a conductor to share short or long stories, or ideas, with the rest of the audience. The new storyteller steps forward and sits on the edge of the stage, where he or she is seen by the performers and by the audience. With the help of the conductor’s questions, this new ‘storyteller’ narrates his or her experience allowing the performers to understand the personal feelings lying behind the story and to translate them into improvised theatrical language. Read more on her essay here
Endorsers of the Freedom Bus include personalities such Archbishop Desmond Tutu, Alice Walker, Angela Davis, Judith Butler, Maya Angelou, Noam Chomsky, Omar Barghouti and Peter Brook. (Click for the full list of endorsers).
The Freedom Bus is also endorsed by the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions National Committee (BNC), Jewish Voice for Peace, Palestinian Campaign for the Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel (PACBI), Code Pink in between other organizations.
Using stories, photographs and video, Ben Rivers speaks about the Freedom Bus initiative and its role within the popular struggle movement.
Palestinian Solidarity Committee in India and 1 Shanthiroad last February organised a talk (Video) by Ben Rivers, a British-Australian drama therapist and co-founder of The Freedom Bus Initiative with The Freedom Theatre in Palestine, on playback theatre and popular struggle in Occupied Palestine. In the talk Ben focused on the cultural activities of the Freedom Bus Initiative, including ‘solidarity stays’ in which the team resides in a village for some days, acting as a protective cover or re-building homes . “We also work very closely with grassroots, popular struggle groups and organisations. We organize political actions together.” Excerpt from the Hindu.com
In his talk, Ben narrated some of his experiences working with the communities in occupied Palestine.
“In the South of the West Bank, in a region known as South Hebron Hills, we were on the outskirts of a village called Atwani, where a very small community lives. A lot of their land was stolen by people of a settlement nearby who were hostile. Palestinians who are grazing their sheep on the hills are regularly attacked by them. Palestinian children used to be stoned by the settlers as they walked to to school.”
Celebrities for Palestine use their royalty status to seek justice; Queen Rania
Queen Rania, a Palestinian by birth, is an international celebrity and has been often noted for her commitment to charity work geared toward women’s education, but also Rania had dedicated her precious time to seek justice for Palestinians. As a first lady, consort to the King of Jordan, she probably can not speak broadly without diplomatic repercussions for her country, but she does it in her role of social activist and she does very well. Her vocal support for Palestine has been latent in the news since she married king Abdullah of Jordan.
As a Jordanian, Queen Rania whose family is of Palestinian origin, she is concerned with the plight of Palestinians, On 2011, Queen Rania led a pro-Palestinian demonstration in Jordan’s capital, Amman. She urged the international community to end the massacres being committed in the occupied territories.
In Jordan, where nearly a third of the population is composed of Palestinian refugees, the Israeli occupation of the Palestinian territories of Gaza and the West Bank is “a hurt we feel each day,” Queen Rania Al Abdullah told a packed audience at Yale on Sept. 22, 2009. (Video attached)
“Larry King Live” on April 16, Queen Rania seemed to almost usurp Jordanian foreign policy from her husband. When King asked her about Jordan’s position on Palestinian attacks against Israeli civilians, she replied:
“Jordan has been very, very clear in this regard. We stand against any aggression committed against any innocent civilians, irrespective of the perpetrator or the victim. We do not approve of any aggression. We made that very clear.” Then — almost as an afterthought — she added, “King Abdullah also made that very clear.” said the Globalist
On 27 July UN Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA) Commissioner-General Pierre Krähenbühl met at UNRWA Headquarters in Amman with Jordan’s Queen Rania Al Abdullah to discuss the severe crisis and to express the Agency’s gratitude for the support of the Kingdom of Jordan.
During the meeting, which included several members of the UNRWA team, Her Majesty said that the attacks on helpless civilians on UNRWA premises and other humanitarian spaces in Gaza “demonstrate the blatant disregard for human life in this conflict. What more proof does the world need that there is no safe place in Gaza? No safe place for tens of thousands of desperate and defenseless civilians seeking refuge from the violence?”
Queen Rania addresses the audience during her visit to Yale University.
NY, USA/ September 22, 2009
Queen Rania makes an urgent plea on behalf of all the civilians living in Gaza for a “humanitarian ceasefire” and for the international community to do all it can to help alleviate the suffering.
Amman, Jordan/ January 5, 2009
Urgent Appeal: Palestinian Legislative Council Member Khalida Jarrar Expelled to Jericho
Occupied Ramallah, 20 August 2014 – The Israeli Military Governor in the West Bank has signed a military order expelling Palestinian Legislative Council Member and Addameer board member Khalida Jarrar to Jericho for a period of six months, with immediate effect.
Military Judge Advocate General
6 David Elazar Street
Harkiya, Tel Aviv
Israel
Fax: +972 3 608 0366; +972 3 569 4526
Email: arbel@mail.idf.il; avimn@idf.gov.il
OC Central Command Nehemia Base, Central Command
Neveh Yaacov, Jerusalam
Fax: +972 2 530 5741
Ministry of Defense
37 Kaplan Street, Hakirya
Tel Aviv 61909, Israel
Fax: +972 3 691 6940 / 696 2757
Legal Advisor of Judea and Samaria PO Box 5
Beth El 90631
Fax: +972 2 9977326
If any person, acting through the representatives of the Protecting Power, voluntarily demands internment and if his situation renders this step necessary, he shall be interned by the Power in whose hands he may be.
An open letter to the people of Gaza
An open letter for the people in Gaza
This letter is published under the Freedom of Information Act: “Notwithstanding the provisions of sections 106 and 106A, the fair use of a copyrighted work, including such use by reproduction in copies or phonorecords or by any other means specified by that section, for purposes such as criticism, comment, news reporting, teaching (including multiple copies for classroom use), scholarship, or research, is not an infringement of copyright.”
, Swee Ang e, on behalf of 24 signatoriesWe are doctors and scientists, who spend our lives developing means to care and protect health and lives. We are also informed people; we teach the ethics of our professions, together with the knowledge and practice of it. We all have worked in and known the situation of Gaza for years.
On the basis of our ethics and practice, we are denouncing what we witness in the aggression of Gaza by Israel.
We ask our colleagues, old and young professionals, to denounce this Israeli aggression. We challenge the perversity of a propaganda that justifies the creation of an emergency to masquerade a massacre, a so-called “defensive aggression”. In reality it is a ruthless assault of unlimited duration, extent, and intensity. We wish to report the facts as we see them and their implications on the lives of the people.
We are appalled by the military onslaught on civilians in Gaza under the guise of punishing terrorists. This is the third large scale military assault on Gaza since 2008. Each time the death toll is borne mainly by innocent people in Gaza, especially women and children under the unacceptable pretext of Israel eradicating political parties and resistance to the occupation and siege they impose.
This action also terrifies those who are not directly hit, and wounds the soul, mind, and resilience of the young generation. Our condemnation and disgust are further compounded by the denial and prohibition for Gaza to receive external help and supplies to alleviate the dire circumstances.
The blockade on Gaza has tightened further since last year and this has worsened the toll on Gaza’s population. In Gaza, people suffer from hunger, thirst, pollution, shortage of medicines, electricity, and any means to get an income, not only by being bombed and shelled. Power crisis, gasoline shortage, water and food scarcity, sewage outflow and ever decreasing resources are disasters caused directly and indirectly by the siege.1
People in Gaza are resisting this aggression because they want a better and normal life and, even while crying in sorrow, pain, and terror, they reject a temporary truce that does not provide a real chance for a better future. A voice under the attacks in Gaza is that of Um Al Ramlawi who speaks for all in Gaza: “They are killing us all anyway—either a slow death by the siege, or a fast one by military attacks. We have nothing left to lose—we must fight for our rights, or die trying.”2
Gaza has been blockaded by sea and land since 2006. Any individual of Gaza, including fishermen venturing beyond 3 nautical miles of the coast of Gaza, face being shot by the Israeli Navy. No one from Gaza can leave from the only two checkpoints, Erez or Rafah, without special permission from the Israelis and the Egyptians, which is hard to come by for many, if not impossible. People in Gaza are unable to go abroad to study, work, visit families, or do business. Wounded and sick people cannot leave easily to get specialized treatment outside Gaza. Entries of food and medicines into Gaza have been restricted and many essential items for survival are prohibited.3 Before the present assault, medical stock items in Gaza were already at an all time low because of the blockade.3 They have run out now. Likewise, Gaza is unable to export its produce. Agriculture has been severely impaired by the imposition of a buffer zone, and agricultural products cannot be exported due to the blockade. 80% of Gaza’s population is dependent on food rations from the UN.
Much of Gaza’s buildings and infrastructure had been destroyed during Operation Cast Lead, 2008—09, and building materials have been blockaded so that schools, homes, and institutions cannot be properly rebuilt. Factories destroyed by bombardment have rarely been rebuilt adding unemployment to destitution.
Despite the difficult conditions, the people of Gaza and their political leaders have recently moved to resolve their conflicts “without arms and harm” through the process of reconciliation between factions, their leadership renouncing titles and positions, so that a unity government can be formed abolishing the divisive factional politics operating since 2007. This reconciliation, although accepted by many in the international community, was rejected by Israel. The present Israeli attacks stop this chance of political unity between Gaza and the West Bank and single out a part of the Palestinian society by destroying the lives of people of Gaza. Under the pretext of eliminating terrorism, Israel is trying to destroy the growing Palestinian unity. Among other lies, it is stated that civilians in Gaza are hostages of Hamas whereas the truth is that the Gaza Strip is sealed by the Israelis and Egyptians.
Gaza has been bombed continuously for the past 14 days followed now by invasion on land by tanks and thousands of Israeli troops. More than 60 000 civilians from Northern Gaza were ordered to leave their homes. These internally displaced people have nowhere to go since Central and Southern Gaza are also subjected to heavy artillery bombardment. The whole of Gaza is under attack. The only shelters in Gaza are the schools of the UN Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA), uncertain shelters already targeted during Cast Lead, killing many.
According to Gaza Ministry of Health and UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA),1 as of July 21, 149 of the 558 killed in Gaza and 1100 of the 3504 wounded are children. Those buried under the rubble are not counted yet. As we write, the BBC reports of the bombing of another hospital, hitting the intensive care unit and operating theatres, with deaths of patients and staff. There are now fears for the main hospital Al-Shifa. Moreover, most people are psychologically traumatized in Gaza. Anyone older than 6 years has already lived through their third military assault by Israel.
The massacre in Gaza spares no one, and includes the disabled and sick in hospitals, children playing on the beach or on the roof top, with a large majority of non-combatants. Hospitals, clinics, ambulances, mosques, schools, and press buildings have all been attacked, with thousands of private homes bombed, clearly directing fire to target whole families killing them within their homes, depriving families of their homes by chasing them out a few minutes before destruction. An entire area was destroyed on July 20, leaving thousands of displaced people homeless, beside wounding hundreds and killing at least 70—this is way beyond the purpose of finding tunnels. None of these are military objectives. These attacks aim to terrorize, wound the soul and the body of the people, and make their life impossible in the future, as well as also demolishing their homes and prohibiting the means to rebuild.
Weaponry known to cause long-term damages on health of the whole population are used; particularly non fragmentation weaponry and hard-head bombs.4, 5 We witnessed targeted weaponry used indiscriminately and on children and we constantly see that so-called intelligent weapons fail to be precise, unless they are deliberately used to destroy innocent lives.
We denounce the myth propagated by Israel that the aggression is done caring about saving civilian lives and children’s well-being.
Israel’s behavior has insulted our humanity, intelligence, and dignity as well as our professional ethics and efforts. Even those of us who want to go and help are unable to reach Gaza due to the blockade.
This “defensive aggression” of unlimited duration, extent, and intensity must be stopped.
Additionally, should the use of gas be further confirmed, this is unequivocally a war crime for which, before anything else, high sanctions will have to be taken immediately on Israel with cessation of any trade and collaborative agreements with Europe.
As we write, other massacres and threats to the medical personnel in emergency services and denial of entry for international humanitarian convoys are reported.6 We as scientists and doctors cannot keep silent while this crime against humanity continues. We urge readers not to be silent too. Gaza trapped under siege, is being killed by one of the world’s largest and most sophisticated modern military machines. The land is poisoned by weapon debris, with consequences for future generations. If those of us capable of speaking up fail to do so and take a stand against this war crime, we are also complicit in the destruction of the lives and homes of 1·8 million people in Gaza.
We register with dismay that only 5% of our Israeli academic colleagues signed an appeal to their government to stop the military operation against Gaza. We are tempted to conclude that with the exception of this 5%, the rest of the Israeli academics are complicit in the massacre and destruction of Gaza. We also see the complicity of our countries in Europe and North America in this massacre and the impotence once again of the international institutions and organizations to stop this massacre.
Supplementary Material
References
Plugging Our Ears Does Not Serve Israel
by Oded Na’aman
An Israeli soldier poses with Palestinian detainees in an undated photo taken by an Israeli soldier and made available by the campaign group Breaking the Silence.
I was born in Israel. I served in the Army. Israel is the only home I know. You would think my speaking to students at Hillel would be welcomed. Yet my presentation to students at Washington University’s Hillel in St. Louis last month sparked a storm of controversy.
I had been invited by J Street U and was graciously hosted by Hillel at their beautiful new building. As a member of Breaking the Silence, a group of Israeli combat veterans that collects and publishes the testimonies of soldiers who served in the occupied territories, I was on campus to discuss the practices and principles of Israel’s military rule.
In the days leading to my visit, many in the Jewish community called for the event’s cancellation, claiming our sole goal was to “bash Israel.” Jacqueline Ulin Levey, executive director of St. Louis Hillel at Washington University, backed the event. She did, however, impose certain restrictions, asking that I not show any photographs or mention any testimonies besides my own. Hillel also flew in an Israel Fellow from Yale University to “balance” my talk by debriefing the students before and after.
Despite the constraints, the talk went well, with a long question and answer session. After the event, Lawrence Wittels, the chair of the school’s Hillel board, congratulated me.
But in the days following, the assault on Hillel and J Street U escalated. Eric Fingerhut, President and CEO of Hillel International, subsequently wrote to members of the Hillel community defending the organization’s decision. “While we join with the majority of the community in deeply resenting the actions of the former IDF soldiers in Breaking the Silence, who come to college campuses in America to disparage the IDF,” Fingerhut wrote, “it is, regrettably, part of the broad tent of dialogue regarding Israel.” By housing the event within Hillel, he argued, the staff could control and mitigate an unfortunate debate.
I applaud Hillel’s work facilitating a broad dialogue within the American Jewish community. But Fingerhut and those whom his letter addressed, seem to be more concerned with their own feelings toward Israel — their “tent” — than with Israel. Mention of the actions of the IDF, the values to which Israel is committed, and concern for the well being of Israel’s residents, whether Israeli or Palestinian, are noticeably absent from Fingerhut’s letter.
I don’t doubt Fingerhut’s genuine concern for Israel. I am sure those who called for the event’s cancellation are also sincerely dedicated to my country. But their concern does not protect Zionism. Rather, it threatens it. If Zionism is the dream of Jews to overcome a state of mere survival and forge our own destiny, then claiming that the occupation is necessary, that Israel “has no other choice,” is the betrayal of Zionism. Israel’s rule of force over a civilian population threatens our democratic integrity, moral character, and international standing – in short, it threatens that future.
Israel is a strong and thriving country. We can take responsibility for our actions, hold our institutions and military accountable, acknowledge our mistakes, and correct them. We can forge our own future, but only by ending the occupation.
Naturally, our claims are met with doubt. But we encourage critical debate based on evidence. We have testimony from over 950 soldiers about their service, many of them on film. Incidents we exposed have been confirmed by the Israeli media and we have been invited to speak at the United States Air Force Academy. Carmi Gillon, former head of the Shin Bet, has praised our work.
The testimonies portray a system of control and expropriation of land that is founded on the use of military force. Arbitrary violence is of the essence of military rule, which cannot rely on democratic legitimacy.
Instead of an actual dialogue about our reality and future, they are content to have a conversation about the conversation about Israel. Rather than respond to what they hear, they argue over whether they should plug their ears. This may serve some staff and some donors of Hillel International, but it doesn’t serve Israel. It takes some chutzpah to claim that by silencing our voices you are protecting our own country from us.
Oded Na’aman served in the IDF between November 2000 and October 2003. Since 2005 he has been a member of Breaking the Silence, a group of Israeli veterans that collects soldiers’ testimonies from the West Bank. Oded is currently pursuing his PhD in Philosophy at Harvard University.
Dear Jon Voight: A letter about Gaza
Does Jon Voight have his facts on Israel and Palestine right?
Original published in Aljazeera English: 13 Aug 2014 11:35
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Jon Voight with Israel flag in the background
As the carnage in Gaza reached a crescendo in the beginning of August, Jon Voight, one of Hollywood’s most vocal conservatives, penned a harsh attack on fellow actors Javier Bardem and Penelope Cruz in response to a letter they signed condemning the latest Israeli bombing of Gaza in which he accused them of “inciting anti-Semitism all over the world”. Many activists dismiss Voight’s letter as the rantings of an unthinking actor who long ago lost touch with political reality – a poor relation of conservative icon Charlton Heston. But Voight’s vitriol, and the narratives behind them, have for decades been quite effective in silencing criticism of Israel in Hollywood or among entertainers more broadly.
Indeed, they provide the intellectual cover for even more extreme attacks by celebrities like Joan Rivers, who in an “epic rant” worthy of an Israeli Knesset member, declared that Palestinians in Gaza “deserved to be dead”. This level of hatred mirrors the increasingly genocidal discourse against Palestinians within Israeli political and culture.
Yet it also gives cover for a growing blacklist by “top industry executives” against actors like Cruz and Bardem who dare criticize Israel publicly and without the level of deference that has long defined Hollywood’s treatment of the Jewish state.
Like most Hollywood scripts, the narratives on which the views of Voight, Rivers and other Hollywood Israel supporters are based are far removed from the historical and contemporary realities they purport to describe. Yet their power remains secure precisely because they are the same narratives used by the seemingly reasonable mainstream media and political actors – from the New York Times to President Obama – whenever the conflict is discussed.
Historical myths
There are three fundamental “myths”, to borrow a phrase from one of Israel’s founding revisionist historians, Simha Flapan, surrounding Israel’s birth and subsequent history that cohere the traditional narrative Voight is re-voicing. The first surround’s the state’s creation itself: “when in 1948 the Jewish people were offered by the UN a portion of the land originally set aside for them in 1921… The Arabs rejected the offer, and the Jews accepted, only to be attacked by five surrounding Arab countries committed to driving them into the sea… The Arabs tried it again in 1967, and again in 1973.”
The remains of an ambulance hit during the shelling of Shajaira
Voight’s account is familiar but it is a distortion of the actual history, one that echoes the official Israeli narrative to the letter. In reality, after three decades of increasing intercommunal conflict marked by periodic bursts of violence and growing Jewish immigration, the UN voted to partition Palestine in 1947.
Already by December 1947 a civil had erupted, in which both Zionist and Arab forces engaged in regular attacks and even terrorism, with coordinated Zionist attacks on Palestinian villages aimed at Judaising strategic parts of the country picking up speed by the beginning of spring 1948.
By May 15, the date of Israel’s establishment, tens of thousands of Palestinians had already been forced into exile. As Oxford University professors Avi Shlaim and Eugene Rogan demonstrated in their book The War for Palestine, Rewriting the History of 1948, Arab leaders either sent mostly untrained and badly armed forces whose primary goals were to prevent rather than support the creation of a Palestinian state. Jordan had even secretly agreed to a division of most of the territory (except Jerusalem) with the Zionist leadership.
The second myth surrounds the Six Day War. Voigt’s description of 1967 as the “Arab trying again” is familiar yet similarly inaccurate. There were certainly many threats emanating from Arab capitals in the late spring of 1967, but ultimately it was Israel that launched a “sneak attack”, one in which US and Israeli intelligence agencies correctly assumed would wipe out the combined forces of the surrounding states in roughly five days.
Whatever its motivations, 1967 became a war of conquest and expansion. Israel could have maintained a military occupation indefinitely, if security was its main concern. Instead, it began a process of settlement, which in Jerusalem and the West Bank has intensified without pause to the present day. Gaza, which Voight and other Israel supporters argues was “give[n] the Palestinians… as a peace gesture”. Gaza was never a gift Israel could “give” to Palestinians. It was not only occupied under international law but legally inseparable from the West Bank. What Israel has done was withdraw and then impose a siege while intensifying once again its settlements in and control over the West Bank, both of which violate international law.
The third myth surrounds the Oslo peace process. The traditional narrative, repeated here, is that “Israel has always labored for a peaceful relation with its Arab neighbors.” In reality, Israel violated every agreement with and about Palestinians, beginning with its pledge in the Camp David Accords to enable “full autonomy to the inhabitants” as soon as possible (as we know, instead of robust autonomy Palestinians received half a million settlers and lost control over the vast majority of their land). Israel’s record of abiding by the Oslo-era agreements is no better, and in fact doomed them from the start.
INTERACTIVE: Gaza Under Attack
The fourth myth surrounds Hamas. Voight claims that “the Palestinians elected Hamas, a terrorist organization, and they immediately began firing thousands of rockets into Israel.” Even the arch-conservative New York Post recognized that Hamas was elected not because of its terrorism but out of disgust with an utterly coopted, corrupt and brutal Palestinian Authority. More to Voight’s point, Hamas did not begin firing missiles into Israel until after it attempted to remove the newly elected leadership by force in a US and PA-supported coup. No significant rocket fire occurred until two years after Hamas was elected, during which time Israel continued its siege on Gaza and ever-tightening stranglehold on the West Bank.
Finally, Voight claims that his fellow actors “have forgotten how this war started”. But contrary to his assertion, as reported in great detail in the Israeli media, the Israeli government began a series of attacks on Hamas and other Palestinian activists, arresting, shooting and even killing many in response to its unity deal with the Palestinian Authority. This was the context for the kidnap and murder of three settler youth which was not a cause of but rather a link in a much larger chain of events that led to the present disaster.
Have Israel’s actions risen to the level of genocide, as the letter Mr Bardem and others signed alleges? Given the history of genocide against the Jews – the term was invented to describe the Holocaust – it is tragic that such a characterization can even be considered. But it must be faced, because Israel’s actions, which have long been characterized as “politicide” or “spaciocide” by Israeli and Palestinian scholars, as well as the political and public rhetoric against Palestinians, have become so intense that the genocide accusation can no longer be dismissed out of hand.
It is undeniable that Israelis have suffered in the latest Gaza war, but it’s equally certain that the suffering Israel has inflicted upon Palestinians is exponentially greater, and the responsibility for that suffering lies not just with Israel, but with the United States which has, in the words of Jon Stewart, acted as its “drug dealer” while pretending to be a caring friend. If Israel’s most vocal partisans like Jon Voight really care so much about Israel, they should take the time to understand this historical and political reality. Otherwise, their passion and concern for Israel will only lead it closer to the very reckoning they desperately hope it will avoid.
Gil Hochberg is a professor of Comparative Literature at UCLA. She is the author of "In Spite
of Partition: Jews, Arabs, and the Limits of Separatist Imagination" (Princeton University
Press, 2007) and is presently finishing a project studying the Visual Politics of the Israeli-
Palestinian conflict.
Mark LeVine is a professor of Middle Eastern History at University of California, Irvine, and
a Distinguished Visiting Professor at Lund University. His new book is One Land, Two States:
Israel and Palestine as Parallel States, co-edited with Ambassador Mathias Mossberg.
The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Al Jazeera’s editorial policy.
Fight with solutions, civil war is outdated and obsolete
Posted on April 13, 2013 by Akashma Online News
Our modern societies are socially evolved that a civil war does not need to involve guns and violence.
The words are just words; the meanings of words are given by regular people.
We had been waging a civil war for long time. Since the moment we disagree with the policies dictated by the higher class which controls the governments; we are social and political dissidents of our own societies. So, do not hold fears when you see the words civil war in the same sentence.
Our society goes by economic ups and downs by design. The interest regulated by the federal reserve and the stock market controls our every day lives one way or another. We do not need to own a home or stocks to be dependent on their machinations; machinations done to steal more money from our hard working earning.
We need to be aware of our situation to win this civil war, the only way it is to know how to fight a ruling system that do not benefit us.
We can should not keep a debt that we can not pay. Soon or later the bank that owns the debt will wants to collect, how does it?, the bank raises the interest rate and you have to pay the whole balance if you don’t agree with the change and pay off the whole amount, you automatically accept the new higher interest rate, and remember we do not have bankruptcy laws in our side any more, so avoid keeping high balances in your credit cards or better yet, do not incur in credit card debt.
The first step is to stop buying “brands” products; including food, cosmetics, cleaning items, and clothing. This will lower your grocery bill by 30 %. It is like getting 30 % raise in your salary.
Secondly, try to change your diet habits. Most of the products we fill our kitchen with, it is junk food; junk food that it is very expensive and not healthy.
Cook with less grease, and eat less sugar.
Substitute your groceries with food with shorter life spam. Start eating more fruit, vegetables and grains. Meats are expensive and full of toxic chemicals. This change will be reflected in your grocery bill; another 10 to 15 % saving, again another 15 % raise in your salary.
Use less electricity doing laundry after 7 p:m, this will lower your electrical bill by 3 %.
Cook measured dishes, counting calories, avoiding wasting food. Take on the habit of saving left over, do not waste food.
Take seriously the political process in your community, country, city, state and country. Getting involve in the electoral process will guarantee more control in the politicians that sit in the chair of power. Never vote for a candidate that runs too many TV spots, he is probably sponsored by a rich guy or powerful corporation.
Get involved in your community; There are many social issues that can be work out better with the help of everyone in your neighborhood.
If you have children in elementary school get involve in your children school activities, and attend parent conferences and participate in your school PTA.
Make your politicians accountable, attend at least once a month your city meetings and vote in the issues presented.
Citizens, do not allow yourself to be unprepared. Social issues are tackle down if know their roots problems.
There is no space for violent changes. In this modern society we can make pacific transition for a better society.
A violent Civil War is outdated. Say NO to violence
Glenn Greenwald: “Snowden has information for more damage”
Published on July 13, 2013 by Akashma Online News
The journalist who received the leaks from the CIA Mole said there are more documents
By Alberto Armendariz | LA NACION
RIO DE JANEIRO. – Smoke and Mirrors. With his striped bathing suit, his white sandals, his jean jacket and a backpack, Glenn Greenwald seems like a tourist walking along the promenade of Sao Conrado, Rio de Janeiro. But it is the journalist, blogger and columnist for the British newspaper The Guardian who surprised the world with revelations about the extensive network of U.S. cyber espionage that was leaked by Edward Snowden, former intelligence analyst for the National Security Agency (NSA ).
“Snowden has enough information to cause more damage to the U.S. government in a minute alone than anyone else has ever had in the history of the United States,” Greenwald, 46, told LA NACION, and since living in these latitudes writes regularly on international security issues which has made him famous, winner of several distinguished awards.
Today, the New Yorker, a former lawyer, is in the eye of the storm. Lawmakers in Washington want to put him on trial, spies of various countries seek Snowden’s secret information shared with him last month in Hong Kong and which he still sends from Moscow through an encrypted email system. He knows he’s being watched and that their conversations are monitored. They even steal the laptop from her boyfriend Rio, from their own home.
Three men wait in the lobby of the hotel Royal Tulip with credentials of a congress of osteoporosis about which the manager has no idea. Are they really doctors or are following Greenwald? Appearances are deceptive.
– Does Snowden’s decision to stay in Russia help him come to Latin America?
– Yes, the most important thing is not to end in U.S. custody, which proved extremely vindictive government to punish those who reveal uncomfortable truths, and in whose judicial system can not be trusted when it comes to people accused of endangering the national security. The judges do everything they can to secure convictions in these cases. He would be immediately put in prison to cover the debate that he helped generate, and end the rest of his days behind bars.
– Does Russia give him security guarantees?
– Not many countries in the world that have the ability and willingness to defy U.S. demands. But Russia is one of those countries and it has been good so far.
– Beyond the revelations about the spying system’s performance in general, what other information does Snowden have?
– Snowden has enough information to cause more damage to the U.S. government in a minute alone than anyone else has ever had in the history of the United States. But that’s not his goal. His objective is to expose software that people around the world use without knowing that they are exposing themselves without consciously agreeing to surrender their privacy rights. He has a huge number of documents that would be very harmful to the U.S. government if they were made public.
– Are you afraid that someone will try to kill him?
– It’s a possibility, although it would not bring many benefits to anyone at this point. Thousands of documents are already distributed and to make sure that several people around the world have the entire file. If something were to happen, those documents would be made public. This is an insurance policy. The U.S. government should be on its knees every day praying that nothing happens to Snowden, because if something happens, all the information will be revealed and that would be their worst nightmare.
– Can Latin America be a good shelter for Snowden?
– Only a few countries, including several in Latin America, China and Russia, have challenged the U.S., and have realized that America is no longer in a position of strength as it did before with the rest of the world, and that the rest of the countries do not have to obey its demands as if it were an imperial order. In Latin America there is a feeling of natural sympathy for the United States, yet there is a great resentment for specific historical policies of Washington toward the region. What happened to the plane of Evo Morales in Europe caused a strong reaction, was treated as if Bolivia was a colony and not a sovereign state.
– From documents Snowden shared with you, is there much more information related to Latin America?
– Yes. For each country that has an advanced communications system, such as from Mexico to Argentina, there are documents that detail how the United States collects traffic information, the programs that are used to capture the transmissions, the number of interceptions that are performed per day, and more. One way to intercept communications is through a telephone corporation in the United States that has contracts with telecommunications companies in most Latin American countries. The important thing will be to see the reaction of the various governments. I do not think that the governments of Mexico and Colombia will do much about it. But maybe those of Argentina and Venezuela will be willing to take action.
Glenn Greenwald / Columnist, The Guardian
Profession: Journalist
Age: 46 years
Origin: United States
National Security Letters
Posted on June 11, 2013 by Akashma Online News
National Security Letters
Source: Electronic Frontier Foundation
Defending Your Rights in the Digital World
Of all the dangerous government surveillance powers that were expanded by the USA PATRIOT Act the National Security Letter (NSL) power under 18 U.S.C. § 2709 as expanded by PATRIOT Section 505 is one of the most frightening and invasive. These letters served on communications service providers like phone companies and ISPs allow the FBI to secretly demand data about ordinary American citizens’ private communications and Internet activity without any meaningful oversight or prior judicial review. Recipients of NSLs are subject to a gag order that forbids them from ever revealing the letters’ existence to their coworkers to their friends or even to their family members much less the public.
The FBI’s systemic abuse of this power has been documented both by a Department Of Justice investigation and in documents obtained by Electronic Frontier Foundation through a Freedom of Information Act request.
EFF has fought for years to spread awareness of National Security Letters and add accountability and oversight to the process.
In 2007 EFF filed Freedom of Information Act litigation seeking documentation of National Security Letter misuse by the FBI. Thousands of pages of documents were released over a period of four years leading to repeated revelations of government abuses of power. An EFF report based on these documents led to tough questions for the FBI before Congress. The documents also helped prompt the Senate Judiciary Committee to investigate whether Attorney General Alberto Gonzales lied to Congress.
In 2008 EFF defended the Internet Archive from an inappropriate National Security Letter. Because NSLs come with a gag order most recipients are unable to ever reveal their existence. However with the help of EFF and the ACLU the Internet
Archive fought back and won the right to speak publicly about the letter. As a result it’s become one of the few well-documented and publicly-known cases of NSL use.
And in 2013, EFF won a landmark decision in the Northern District of California in which Judge Susan Illston declared one of the statutes unconstitutional in its entirety. EFF’s petition, brought on behalf of an unidentified telephone service provider, challenged both the underlying authority to obtain customer records as well as the concurrent gag provision that prevented the recipient from disclosing even that it had receiving an NSL.
EFF has been fighting in Congress for legislative reform of National Security Letters since 2005. In 2009 many hoped that President Obama having run for office promising to reform Bush-era surveillance abuses would work with Congress to curb NSL abuse. Unfortunately the Obama Administration has instead continued to block reform and has even sought to expand NSL powers.
Qadri’s march: Conspiracy theories galore
Posted on January 17, 2013 by Akashma Online News
Source Dunya News
The military has denied any link to Tahirul Qadri.
ISLAMABAD: To Pakistan s ruling party, a firebrand cleric camped outside parliament with thousands of protesters is looking more and more like the harbinger of their worst fear: a plan by the establishment to engineer a “soft coup”.
In their eyes, Muhammad Tahirul Qadri seems like the perfect candidate for such a mission. A practised orator who has electrified crowds with his anti-corruption rhetoric, the doctor of Islamic law leapt into action to back the last power grab by the army in 1999.
The aim this time, some politicians suspect, is to use Qadri to bring down the current administration and provide a pretext for the handpicked caretaker cabinet.
“What we are seeing is dangerous and evidence that the third force is up to its tricks again,” said Mahmood Khan Achakzai, a politician who has been a frequent critic of the army s record of interfering in politics.
The military has denied any link to Qadri, and army chief General Ashfaq Kayani has built up a reputation for standing more aloof from politics than predecessors who have not hesitated to dismiss civilian governments. Pakistan has been ruled by the military for more than half of its 65 years as an independent nation.
Critics note, furthermore, that the ruling Pakistan People s Party (PPP), which has a long record of confrontation with the military, has often been quick to portray itself as a victim of bullying by the military to distract attention from its shortcomings.
But the timing of Qadri s return from six years of living in Canada, just a few months before elections are due, and his role in supporting a 1999 coup by former army chief Pervez Musharraf have nonetheless rung alarm bells.
Qadri, who led a convoy of buses carrying thousands of protesters into the capital, Islamabad, on Monday, has repeatedly demanded that the army should have a say in the formation of an interim administration that is due to oversee the run-up to elections in May.
“You meet army officers in the night; I m asking that you consult with them on the caretaker set up under the sunlight,” Qadri said in a speech on Tuesday in remarks clearly addressed to the government.
The PPP s fears over the potential for military meddling centre on the impending formation of a caretaker cabinet.
Pakistan passed a constitutional amendment last year that requires the government and opposition to agree on the
composition of the temporary administration.
The amendment is designed to prevent any ruling party exploiting the advantages of incumbency to manipulate elections
by using state power to skew the playing field.
The PPP and the Pakistan Muslim League, the main opposition party, have spent months negotiating a list of mutually
acceptable names for the transitional cabinet, including a number of politicians noted for resisting military rule.
“The PPP has lost three generations of leaders fighting against dictatorships,” said a senior member of the PPP. “You
think we will give up now? We will take up this battle at all levels.”
Meanwhile, military officers privately do little to conceal their contempt for the PPP, whose government has been unable to end militant violence, bring down sharp food price inflation or get the economy on track since it took power in March, 2008.
They are also dismissive of the Pakistan Muslim League.
One officer, speaking in a personal capacity, said the army had no desire to seize power but might be forced to play a role
as mediator between political factions if the cleric s protests trigger a prolonged crisis.
“If this gets worse, then the army may have to intervene (as a moderator),” he told Reuters.
After years of suspicion and ill-will between the generals and the PPP-led coalition led by President Asif Ali Zardari, Qadri s protests have seemed to signal a shift in the political landscape, with unpredictable consequences.
“We can t say who is behind him. But all we know is that he can t pull this off without backing from someone,” Maulana
Fazlur Rehman, the veteran leader of the Jamiat Ulema-e-Islam, Pakistan s biggest religious party, said on television.
The political temperature soared even higher on Tuesday when Chief Justice Iftikhar Chaudhry ordered the arrest of Prime
Minister Raja Pervez Ashraf in connection with a corruption case. Authorities have yet to carry out his instructions.
An aide to Ashraf said the military was behind this move as well, but the chief justice is known to be independent-minded.
If Qadri succeeds in bringing down the government, then a man whose name had faded from the limelight since he left
Pakistan for Canada in 2006 will have sabotaged the PPP s bid to be the first civilian government to complete a full term.
That would undermine Pakistan s struggle to bury the legacy of decades of military dictatorship by building institutions
strong enough to resolve the nuclear-armed country s multiple crises.
The military has a track record of picking interim administrations in past decades that have then overstepped their
mandates by hounding the army s political opponents or manipulating elections.
Army officers in Bangladesh, which was part of Pakistan until it broke away in 1971, have used a similar approach to
appoint a technocratic government to implement reforms.
But some commentators and Western diplomats argue that times have changed and the military has lost the appetite for
embroiling itself in struggles with increasingly assertive political parties and a hyperactive media.
“The military has no interest in disrupting the path to elections: in fact their interest is the opposite, supporting
the transfer of power from one elected government to another, which is a political milestone in Pakistan s history,” said
Maleeha Lodhi, a former Pakistani ambassador to Washington.
Much will depend on whether Qadri has enough rhetorical firepower left to persuade his followers to maintain their
protest, or whether the government decides to order the police to apply pressure to disperse them.
“There is nothing wrong with raising your concerns and protesting,” said Information Minister Qamar Zaman Kaira. “But
if you try to hold the capital hostage and disrupt the lives of its people, the law will take its course.”
Political Prisoner George Ibraheem Abdullah
Posted on January 15, 2013 by Akashma Online News
Some excerpts were originally posted 12/29/2011 Published on France24
UPDATED by Marivel Guzman
Most of everything published in the original article is one side of the story, off course we know that every story has many faces, many sides to the same story.
Being in the internet era we can not be conformed with what the “News” tells us. Take your time and research every news outlet, blog and forum. Find the truth of the story. Make your own opinion, at the end of the story your opinion is what it matters.
Every bit of material written about PLO, Palestine and any other Palestinian supporter groups in the last 40 years needs to be revised. Every person incarcerated related to Palestine events was done according to Israel side of the story. Remember that for the first 50 years or so of the partition of Palestine, the only news coming out of the occupied territories were Israel News. Just recently with the internet wide use the more information is being filter out without Israel mingling with the truth. Anything that came out from the territories before the internet it is considered now Israel propaganda. Think again when you read old articles.
Palestine is an occupied land. It’s people being displaced and made refugee by the millions. For years, the world did not know about Palestine Occupation, unless you did have family inside. The News never bother to report Palestine’s side of the story. It is until recently with the coming of the internet that the world is unveiling the truth. Little by little the veil in coming off and Israel’s true colors are been seen by the world.
Resisting the occupation has been an everyday affair of every Palestinian, so do not get duped by Propaganda Hasbarista.
I had included some links to articles related to names and events related to the arrest of Georges Ibrahim Abdallah.
It is my intent to unveil the truth and to shed some light to events leading to the activities of some of the persons named in this article.
Georges Ibrahim Abdallah, the unpardoned terrorist will be release and deported to Lebanon .
The news were spreading like a wild fire in the net when the court released the information of the granting of his parole, but as part of his conditional release, Abdullah, 62, is required to leave France before January 14.
Over the years, Abdullah became a miscarriages of justice for resistance . He became eligible for parole after 18 years in prison, but each of his seven applications for release were turned down since 1999, a major breach of French legal procedures and the European Convention on Human Rights.
This came as the United States and “Israel” pressured France over the years to prevent Abdullah’s release, under the pretext that he had never apologized or expressed regret for the murders. Meanwhile, US Ambassador to France Charles Rivkin criticized the decision to grant him parole, arguing that Abdullah never expressed remorse and could yet be a threat if released.
For his part, Abdullah’s lawyer welcomed the ruling and said he hoped the government would not give in to US pressure by refusing to expel him.
“I hope that we have an independent enough government to expel him,” said the lawyer, Jacques Verges. ABNA NEWS
But a French court has postponed its decision until Jan. 28 on whether to release a pro-Palestinian Lebanese militant who has spent 28 years in jail.
During a visit to France last year, Lebanese Prime Minister Najib Mikati also called for Abdallah to be freed, calling him a “political prisoner.”
Updated 5:48pm: Several hundred protesters gathered outside the French embassy in Beirut Monday to demonstrate against the postponed release of former Marxist rebel Georges Ibrahim Abdallah.
Some demonstrators began hurling eggs and rocks at the embassy after shutting down traffic to demand the political prisoner’s immediate release following his 28-year imprisonment in France. Al Akhbar English January 14, 2013
Despite the fant that he completed the minimum term of his sentence in 1999, Georges Ibrahim Abdallah, sentenced to life in prison in 1987 for killing two US and Israeli officials, is still behind bars.
Earlier in December, a French court sentenced notorious Venezuelan militant Carlos the Jackal to life in prison. Now, another radical pro-Palestinian militant has resurfaced in France – this time, by proxy. France24
Carlos the Jackal figures prominently in Robert Ludlum’s Bourne Trilogy. In the Trilogy, Carlos is depicted as the world’s most dangerous assassin who’s trademark execution is a single well placed bullet in the throat, a man with international contacts that allow him to strike efficiently and anonymously at locations anywhere on the globe. His actual name (Ilich Ramirez Sanchez) is used and details – a mixture of fact and fiction – are given about his upbringing and training, including the fictional account that he trained with Russian intelligence at Novgorod. In the Trilogy he keeps residence in France disguised as a priest, protected by a close network of contacts. Born Trilogy
On December 22, several dozen protesters gathered in front of the Ministry of Justice in Paris to call for the liberation of Georges Ibrahim Abdallah, former leader of the Marxist-Leninist guerrilla group Lebanese Armed Revolutionary Factions. The 60-year-old Abdallah has been imprisoned in southwestern France since 1984, despite the fact that he completed the minimum term of his sentence in 1999.
The Factions Armes Revolutionnaires Libanaises (FARL) formed in 1979 is a Lebanese revolutionary group seeking to create a Marxist-Leninist state in Lebanon. Although this group was one of the three groups that emerged from the breakup of the PFLP-Special Operations Group [#CR0001639] upon the assadination of its leader, Wadi Haddad by Mossad. FARL According to CIA
Abdallah was sentenced to life in prison in 1987 for his involvement in the 1982 murders of US military attaché Charles Ray and Israeli diplomat Yakov Barsimentov in Paris, as well as in an assassination attempt on Robert O. Homme, an American consul in Strasbourg. The Lebanese Armed Revolutionary Factions has claimed responsibility for these acts, saying they were carried out in response to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
‘A resolute and pitiless militant’
Yves Bonnet, former director of France’s Central Headquarters for Surveillance of the Territory and founder of the International Centre for Research and Studies on Terrorism, contributed to the hunt that led to Abdallah’s arrest in Lyon in 1984. Despite that, he declares himself in favour of the prisoner’s release. “This injustice has lasted long enough,” he recently told FRANCE 24.
“It’s gone beyond the limits of what’s reasonable, and at this point nothing justifies his imprisonment. We should put him on a plane and send him back to Lebanon, where the authorities are willing to receive him.”
Described as a shy teacher from northern Lebanon who became – in his own words – a “revolutionary Communist and anti-Zionist militant”, Abdallah has filed for parole seven times – to no avail.
In November 2003, the local entity that grants parole in Pau, the southern city in which Abdullah is detained, gave the green light to one of Abdallah’s requests. But the minister of Justice at the time, Dominique Perben, appealed the decision, calling the prisoner’s case “extremely serious”. Abdallah remained in prison.
Abdallah’s most recent request for release on parole, filed in May 2009, was rejected by a Paris appeals court that deemed the prisoner “a resolute and pitiless militant” who might take up his “combat” again upon returning to Lebanon.
The court justified its decision by citing a 2008 French law that aimed to maintain in detention prisoners seen as likely to resume criminal behaviour once their prison sentence is completed. Contacted by FRANCE 24, the former justice minister did not wish to comment on “legal decisions made by independent judges”.
‘Hostage of the French government’
Abdallah is supported by a network of anti-imperialist, Marxist, and anti-Zionist activists who have continually denounced what they consider judicial mistreatment of “a hostage of the French government”. They compare him to a more celebrated former political prisoner: Nelson Mandela of South Africa.
Meanwhile, Abdallah’s lawyer, the controversial Jacques Vergès, has slammed the United States for what he alleges has been US pressure on French authorities not to release Abdallah. In 2007, Vergès urged French judges “to show our condescending American friends that France is not a submissive girl”. Demonstrators in Paris on December 22 used that argument in a scathing slogan, chanting: “French justice at the feet of Zionists and Americans”.
Like Abdallah’s supporters, Yves Bonnet contends that the US and Israel are still manoeuvring to keep the former leader of the Lebanese Armed Revolutionary Factions in jail. “France has faced enormous pressure to prevent the man who assassinated two people who were not, in fact, diplomats, but rather a CIA agent and a member of Mossad [Israeli secret service], from being freed from prison,” Bonnet said.
Meanwhile, the Shiite party Hezbollah has frequently called on France to liberate Abdallah, and the Lebanese authorities have already asked France to hand over the man they have called “one of their oppressed sons”.
‘France did not keep its promise’
In the late 1990s, Yves Bonnet appeared before a union of lawyers and judges to plead the case of a man who he said was likely “cursing” him from his jail cell. “I was received by four magistrates who listened attentively before turning me down politely,” Bonnet recounted. “They explained to me that Abdallah’s alleged conversion to Islam had turned him from a Christian into a dangerous Islamic propagandist, and for that reason it was impossible to release him.”
France’s former top intelligence official says he is especially “uncomfortable”, because he had secured a deal in 1985 to swap Abdallah for French diplomat Gilles Peyrolles, who had been kidnapped in Lebanon by the Lebanese Armed Revolutionary Factions in March of that year.
Peyrolles was freed just a month later in exchange for a guarantee to send Abdallah to Algeria instead of keeping him imprisoned in France. “The hostage was freed, but Abdallah stayed in jail,” Bonnet explained. “France did not keep its promise, even though I personally was willing to uphold my part of it.”
A French diplomat who was held by kidnappers for 10 days has been freed in Lebanon. The envoy, Gilles Sidney Peyrolles, director of the French cultural center in the northern port of Tripoli, was the fourth kidnapped foreigner to gain freedom in less than a week. Mr. Peyrolles said today that he he had been kept in Syrian-controlled territory by a group that treated him very well. April 03, 1985 New York Times
In an article published in French daily Le Figaro in January 2011, Middle East specialist Georges Malbrunot wrote that some of Abdallah’s supporters had even warned the French government about possible kidnappings of its citizens in Lebanon.
“The Clotilde Reiss case showed certain people in Lebanon that it was possible to get a prisoner back through blackmail,” a journalist close to Hezbollah is quoted as saying in the article.
For the first time, a French journalist was allowed to travel to the University of Isfahan, where French academic Clotilde Reiss taught prior to her arrest on charges of spying. Here is an exclusive report by special correspondent Alain Chabod.
5 Broken Cameras Exposes Israel True Colors
Posted on January 14, 2012 by Akashma Online News
Palestinian Political Prisoners of Conscience and Martys
Bassam Abu Rahmah, who was killed within minutes of receiving a direct hit to the chest from an IDF-fired high-velocity tear gas cannister at a regular Friday anti-Wall demonstration on 17 April 2009.
I have been activist for few years now. I consider myself to be part of the Palestinian Solidarity Movement and like Bil’in resistance fighters, I’ m an advocate for the non-violent movement. It is difficult to witness the struggle of Palestinians fighting their battle with a Palestinian Flag and a camera.
Bil’in residents decided to wage a Non violent resistance war against the stronger army of the Middle East.
They started this war 7 years ago protesting the Land grab for Settlements and the construction of the Apartheid Wall. They are not deterred by the gas, arrests, the bullets, the bullying and the death. Every Friday after prayer they gather by the Wall pacifically protesting the stealing of the Land.
I have been sharing photos and videos taken from the villages in West Bank, Gaza and West Jerusalem, images that could be rated R by the MPAA(Motion Picture Association of America) by its violent content. The violence is recorded in every one of the videos shoot by the residents and by the International Community of activists volunteering to be live witness of the Israel Occupation, internationals that take their own doses of beating, gas, bullets, arrests, and sometimes death.
It is not easy to get “used” to watching images of terror inflicted on the children, or people being dragged by the soldiers when they are arrested, specially is not easy to watch people dying in front of the cameras. After so many years of watching blood on the streets of Palestine, children being arrested in the middle of the night for throwing rocks to the military jeeps, you create this sympathy for resistance fighters. You can not help yourself to siding with the weak, the occupied people. You become more susceptible to pain, it is not possible to stop crying when watching so much pain inflicted on innocent people.
Phil was known as The Elephant, his Name was Bassem Abu Rahman RIP
Killed April 07, 2009
When Phil (Bassen Abu Rahmah, The Elephant) was killed, my heart stopped for a moment and my eyes could not stop crying. I was hoping to see him getting up smiling and mocking the Israel soldiers with his big smile and playful eyes. But 5 Broken Cameras is not a Hollywood movie where the script can be changed to give a happy ending to the story, NO!, 5 Broken Cameras it is the reality in Bil’in, Palestine and Phil was a real person not stunt paid actor. He was killed for no reason, other than showing to Palestinians who is the thug criminal in an occupied land, to show the Palestinians that even protesting with a flag it is a crime.
Two central figures in the Oscar Nominated Best Documentary 5 Broken Cameras Phil-Bassem Abu Rahman and Adeeb Abu Rahman.
Adeeb Abu Rahman gives the Occupation his biggest smile after coming out of court.
Adeeb Abu Rahmah, a non violent protester from Bil’in, was sentenced to 18 months imprisonment by the Military Court of Appeals, for his involvement in organizing non violent demonstrations in front of the Wall. The decision dramatically aggravates the one-year sentence originally imposed in the first instance.
Judge Lieutenant Colonel Benisho of the Military Court of Appeals accepted the Military prosecution’s appeal in Adeeb Abu Rahmah’s case today, which demanded to harshen the already heavy-handed one-year sentence imposed on him by the prior instance back in July. The court sentenced Abu Rahmah 18 months of imprisonment with bail of 6,000 NIS and suspended sentence of 1 year. An appeal filed by the defense both on the severity of the punishment and on the conviction itself was denied. Read it at 972 Magazine
Jawaher Abu Rahmah RIP January 1 2010
Jawaher Abu Rahmah sister of Bil’in activist, Phil-The Elephant-Bassem Abu Rahmah, died in Ramallah hospital. Jawaher Abu Rahmeh, in the occupied West Bank, died on this first day of the year2010 in Ramallah Hospital from the effects of massive quantities of IDF-fired tear gas used to disperse demonstrators at the regular weekly Friday demonstration against the route of The Wall through their village lands.
“We are shocked and furious for Israel’s brutality, which once again cost the life of a peaceful demonstrator. Israel’s lethal and inhumane response to our struggle will not pass. In the dawn of a new decade, it is time for the world to ask Israel for accountability and to bring about an end to the occupation.”
Adv. Michael Sfard, who represents the village in an appeal against the Wall added: “The son was killed by a directly aimed projectile, the daughter choked in gas. Two brave protestors against a regime that kills the innocent and doesn’t investigate its criminals. We will not quiet, we will not give up, we will not spare any effort until those responsible will be punished. And they will.”
the story of Adeeb Abu Rahma of Bil’in. It’s not part of the big diplomatic news like the Obama-Netanyahu meeting this week, but in a sense, it’s more important. Far from being unique, this case captures most of what there is to know about the current stage of the Israeli occupation in the West Bank. It’s the kind of things you have to keep in mind when you read the morning news.
Adeeb Abu Rahma is a resident of Bil’in, the village which became the symbol of non-violent resistance to the occupation. A few years ago, Israel decided to build its security barrier on Palestinian land, and not on the Green Line, the historic border between Israel and the West Bank. The reason for this was PM Ariel Sharon’s desire to capture more land for new neighborhoods in some of the large settlements Israel was building in recent years, and to secure a reality in which most of the settlements are seen as part of Israel, and not something “across the border”.
The people of Bil’in, who had much of their land taken for the barrier project, filed a petition to the Israeli Supreme Court against the confiscation, and even had a partial victory: The court ruled that parts of the fence were not constructed on the village’s land for security reasons, and ordered it to be moved. The court failed to address the main issue – the decision to build the fence inside the West Bank rather than on the old border – but it didn’t really matter, because the army simply ignored the verdict. Three years later, the fence is still on its original location.
For five years now, a popular struggle against the fence has been taking place in Bil’in. Every week, Palestinians, Israelis and international activists are taking part in demonstrations. Most of the action consists of attempts to march to the village’s confiscated land; occasionally stones are thrown, but there was never a serious threat to the army forces there, and certainly not to Israeli civilians who live nearby.
Without much outside help or even support from the Palestinian Authority, these demonstrations had a tremendous effect. They relegitimized the Palestinian cause in the eyes of the international community, after the blow it suffered because of the suicide attacks of the Second Intifada. The protest also spread to other villages in the West Bank, and there are already talks of a third Intifada – this time, a non-violent one.
Israel is doing all it can to stop the protest in Bil’in. It used rubber covered bullets, tear gas, stun grenades and plastic bullets against the demonstrators. Bassem Abu Rahma, Adeeb’s cousin, was among those killed on the hills surrounding Bil’in, after suffering a direct hit of a tear gas canister. As can be seen in this video, Bassem (like all the rest of the protesters) wasn’t taking part in any violent act when he was hit, and the soldiers who shot him weren’t in any kind of danger.
A few months ago the army declared the entire Bil’in area a closed military zone, and stepped up the nightly raids on the homes of Palestinian residents. Many were arrested and held under “administrative detention”, without having any charges presented against them. This is standard procedure in the West Bank; there are currently 213 Palestinians imprisoned under administrative detention orders without charges or trial.
Adeeb Abu Rahma, a taxi-driver and father of nine, was knows as one of the prominent figures in the none-violent protest. Adeeb and his wife Fatima’s families have been cut by the fence from some 25 acres of their land on which they used to grow olive trees and cereals. In this video, you can see Adeeb in an emotional outburst in front of IDF soldiers:
Michael Moore tweeted his followers to watch the film about Palestine that launched earlier in the departed year called 5 Broken Cameras. Twice. The chieftain of cinematic guerrilla activism sings it up as “one of the best films of the year” and ”that rare documentary that has the power to move many. Pls watch!”
“Watch one of the best films of the year, “5 Broken Cameras,” the story of a Palestinian farmer who picks up a camera” MMFlint
Moore reveals a deeper connection to the film than suggested by those lonesome tweets. It took home the best picture award at the Traverse City Film Festival founded by Moore in his native Michigan. And he’s spoken at a number of screenings in the US. A video of one such pre-screening talk shows the extent of his directorial admiration for Emad Burnat’s film and the significant Israeli obstacles he has had to climb to showcase the debut Palestinian talent. Bil’in protesters oppose a ‘horrible, horrible wrong’ — Michael Moore
Follow the narrative of “5 broken cameras” as it was made, planned, edited and made in a documentary as a final piece of art, 5 broken cameras presskit, gives you the most intimates details and difficulties presented with the reality of the Israeli occupations and continuous nigh raids and harsh tactics of the IDF trying to stop Bi’lin Village from demonstrating on Fridays after pryers in front of the illegal wall.
Rony Brauman – We do not parachute democracy
Posted on January 12, 2013 by Akashma Online News
Interview with Rony Brauman : “We do not parachute democracy”
Source Jeune Afrique
Israeli-Palestinian conflict, civil war, Syrian, Iranian nuclear Libyan revolution, intervention in northern Mali. Many cases in which the ultra destroyer of duty to intervene, Rony Brauman, displays positions that clash.Humanitarian action Figure, Rony Brauman, founder of Doctors Without Border France, where he is still active.
Born in Jerusalem in 1950, he claims Israeli citizenship, but he does not have the nationality. He dissociates the Jewish state dissociates into the two concepts, the second drawing community distinctions. “I have not been back to Israel since the government requires me to enter with an Israeli passport, he said. With such a document, I can not go into the occupied territories. And I refuse to go to Israel if I can not go in the Territories. ”
Author of several essays, he distinguished himself by his warnings about the dangers of having interference. A position that has resulted in a real duel of intellectuals with the French philosopher Bernard-Henri Lévy on the Libyan issue in 2011.
Jeune Afrique: How do you react to granting Palestine the status of observer state at the UN?
Rony Brauman: This is good news. This will deal with the Israelis occupying their status in a country recognized and no longer “disputed territories”, as they like to say. This will enable the Palestinians to get face-to-face sterile in which they are trapped and their claims to the UN, where they have many supporters. Must obviously stop relying on Washington, clearly the Israeli side to play the referee. Recognition of Palestine, though incomplete, goes in this direction.
The cease-fire in Gaza between Hamas and Israel, it is the failure of the policy of peaceful negotiation? It is indeed a failure of policy of Fatah and the Palestinian Authority (PA), who renounced armed struggle and have received in exchange the continued expansion of settlements. Israeli policy has always been to marginalize progressive nationalists to seek face-to-face with the Islamists. By military, political, economic, Israelis have literally walked the AP to anchor the idea that they had no partner for peace. This is one of their major slogans: we want peace, but it takes two for it. Tel Aviv’s strategy is to declare what are its legitimate interlocutors. Considering one hand Hamas as a terrorist organization, another AP like a ghost without legitimacy, both the invalid and close the door on negotiations.
The West also considers Hamas a terrorist movement …
This is insane, even though I do not believe in a military solution to the conflict: the intifada was a disaster and many Palestinians recognize. However, an occupied people have the right to defend themselves. Self-defense is an indisputable notion, enshrined in all the texts present in all heads and which can not oppose. Use violence against Israelis is a political and strategic mistake – given the relationship of forces completely unbalanced in favor of Israel and its terrible human consequences – but consider Hamas as a terrorist because he defends is another . Especially since he has made it clear several times that he accepted the existence of Israel within the 1967 borders. Hamas must be one of the speakers Israelis.
What else does the peace camp in Israel?
There is always a peace camp consisted of people more moderate than those in power. They receive support measured. Meretz, which advocates the solution of two separate states, received only 2.5% of the seats in the legislative elections of 2009. There is also the extreme left those proposing the creation of a Palestinian-Israeli confederation: the solution of the single state, binational. Spontaneously, I am inclined to this form of confederation, which formalize a fact, of course with equal civil, political, social for the entire population. Unfortunately, time is the overall shrinkage identity. De facto, it is a binational state that is built, but under worse auspices with the establishment of an apartheid situation.
Can we expect progress to Obama’s second term?
Nothing has been done for the first … Hope we can still do it and there is a little forced, the Americans are the only ones to have an influence on the Israelis. Unfortunately, despite the barely concealed antipathy for Netanyahu Obama, support for the Jewish state has never been stronger and strengthens the Israeli Prime Minister’s intransigence. And international opinion against Israel is deflected so that the United States remains his only friends and protectors. It is very unwise for Israel to base its existence and security on a single ally, while many signs that even the United States the strength of this alliance is crumbling, including among American Jews more and more distant from the state and sectarian violence.
What is your position on the Syrian conflict?
My perspective covers two different aspects. I wish first of all to see that the majority of the opposition, having long played the popular mobilization and self-defense, abandoned this strategy to the choice of open warfare. Armed struggle selects the most violent, the most radical and promotes frightens a number of people who end up taking refuge in the wait. My sympathy goes to those who reject opponents in a single movement dictatorship and armed struggle, and which are, unfortunately, not considered by our media and politicians. Another important point is the requirement of immediate departure of Bashar al-Assad asked by Westerners. Establish a prerequisite that will never be accepted, it is sign for war. The key for me is that the current policy resume, with or without Bashar. That this tyrant is ultimately expelled from office, I could only be satisfied with all the people who hope for a democratic solution in Syria.
Israel’s position on the Iranian nuclear program is legitimate? Israel, which has triggered a spiral of nuclearization in the Middle East, also with the help of France is the latest country founded to defend such a position. Iran was attacked by the British suffered a coup orchestrated by the CIA in 1953, was attacked by a coalition of US-French interposed by Iraqis, but Iran went to war with anyone. I have no sympathy for the mullahs and all my support goes to the opponents of the green revolution, but even among these, many supports Iran’s right to develop nuclear and sanctuaries in its territory in order to guard against attack. As with Iraq in 2003, Iran has made the problem. And the solution is to attack. When one sees the world as a set of nails, we did not mind that other tools hammer and tongs, but in politics it should be the exception, and the opposite should be the
rule. We do not parachute democracy, we do not require bombs.
(de g. à dr), Bernard-Henri Lévy, Nicolas Sarkozy, Mahmoud Jibril et David Cameron, le 15 septembre 2011, à Tripoli.
© Éric Feferberg/AFP
You have detonated in the media denouncing the intervention in Libya …
The Libyan adventure is itself part of a media manipulation characterized. Decided what Sarkozy and Obama was the air strafing protesters in Tripoli February 21, false information broadcast by Al-Jazeera on the basis of a simple telephone testimony. Yet there has been no demonstrations in Tripoli and even fewer aircraft strafing the crowd. No mainstream media has deigned to make any verification. The first page of the story of Bernard-Henri Lévy War begins without loving it: Then Cairo to support the Arab Spring is about to return to France when he sees on the screens of the airport aircraft to attack the crowd dive. He makes it clear that the importance of an event is the beginning. At right: this beginning-there has not occurred, it was a huge assembly propagandist, and set the tone for the future. Other manipulation: Benghazi, where the rebellion is part, was not within the scope of the threat of annihilation. Which saw columns of tanks that have been talked about so much? Person. The rebellious city was then completely build a position of strength. Subsequently, the National Transitional Council (CNT) could appeal to various mediators who proposed, such as Niger, Senegal and Turkey. But everything has been done for the option of war is the first resort. This war was decided in the early days of the uprising in Benghazi and was made its justifications (massacres, rape) and no one bothers to check.
What motivated this war?
Sarkozy could only furious at having been tricked by Kaddafi: all contracts Rafale, EPR, big-French strategic partnership Libyan Africa were a deception. There is first of all feeling, quite justified, that had French President Nicolas Sarkozy have been fooled by Gaddafi: all contracts Rafale, EPR, big-French strategic partnership Libyan Africa were a deception. Sarkozy could only be furious. The second reason is its second session from the Arab Spring. I shared also not all accusations addressed to the then government of ignoring the arrival of the Arab Spring. I saw in these reproaches intelligence hindsight always easy, and cunning of imperial thinking. It is indeed not in France or the West to open the doors of the rule of law to the people. It is the Arabs that it was to be released, the role of democratic countries is to show their support for these movements. Third reason: to engage in a war probably very victorious for a cause that is almost indisputable – stop the massacres committed by the tyrant more isolated area – was to ensure the success of esteem and entry in history whose dream any head of state.
Are you also unfavorable to French intervention on the side of African troops in northern Mali?
Can quite bring aid to a sovereign who asks: is not evil in itself. But if that request help Malians is not provided, is that there is a situation coup. American rule, which is not the worst, in principle prohibits help an army coup. And beyond the coup, we must ask who is in charge in this country. Mali is currently living in a state of dissolution, and in the absence of a reliable political pole, any military enterprise is doomed to failure. All over Syria and Libya especially I felt isolated, as what I think about Mali joined what most experts say political, economic and military: it must give a little color and substance to the Malian government, which will not happen overnight. Resume Timbuktu, Gao and Kidal should not be complicated, but it is the famous day after that poses a problem if there is not a state, a set integrator, this day will be one of a disaster.
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