Beyond Barack: A Time to Break IdolatryA King's Old Dream or the Emperor's New Clothes?

"Perhaps a new spirit is rising among us."
- Martin Luther King, Jr., April 4, 1967

"Perhaps."
- Me, January 19, 2009


If the much sought-after hope was finally affirmed on November 4, 2008, then surely the much-needed change is now just a day away. As George W. Bush makes a final pillow fort in the Lincoln Bedroom, giggles nostalgically whilst making some farewell fart noises with his hands in the Polk Bathroom, and orders a final decrusted PB&J from the Taft Kitchen, the rest of the country - if not the whole world - is eagerly anticipating a welcome return to reality after a surely surreal eight years.

Much ado has been made of Inauguration Day this time around and for good reason. There is certainly something to celebrate tomorrow. Yes, this is history. A sing-along concert replete with celebrities and rockstars was held on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial in Washington DC on Sunday. The timing, location, and occasion made the unmistakable connection - loudly, clearly, and deliberately - between the inspiration, influence, eloquence, and eminence of Martin Luther King, Jr. and the achievement, significance, confidence, and expectations of Barack Obama.

But while every media outlet, teary eyed pundit, sanctimonious blogger, and enthusiastic barista is all atingle with thoughts of peace, justice, and the first even moderately dark-skinned President, something seems amiss.

If Dr. King were still with us, if that April night in Memphis had been balmy rather than deadly, would he have supported Mr. Obama during his campaign for President? Would Dr. King approve of Barack's cabinet appointments, of his foreign policy advisers, of his bellicose posturing and aggressive threats, of his goals of increasing the size of the military, of "keeping all options on the table"?

On April 4, 1967 at Riverside Church in Manhattan, exactly one year to the day before his assassination, Martin Luther King, Jr. delivered a speech entitled "Beyond Vietnam: A Time to Break Silence" that resonates as loudly now as it did then - he dissented against America's imperial operations and foreign wars, challenged the citizens of the country he worked so hard to improve to protest the brutal actions of their government. He implored us all to stand with the oppressed, to side with the dispossessed, the exploited, the terrorized and the terrified, to challenge the hegemony and awesome power of the wealthy warmongers who send our sons and daughters to die for holographic ideologies, for dividends and assets, for, in King's own words, "the deadly Western arrogance that has poisoned the international atmosphere for so long."  This same arrogance, King said, explained the patronizing Western belief "that it has everything to teach others and nothing to learn from them."

Dr. King, who devoted his life to the pursuit of justice, peace, civil and human rights, railed against America's then current aggression in Vietnam, accusing the US government of being "the greatest purveyor of violence in the world today" and speaking out in the name of the "hundreds of thousands trembling under our violence." He made clear, though, that "the war in Vietnam is but a symptom of a far deeper malady within the American spirit."  He was right, of course, as this violence of ours has grown exponentially in the four decades since King's oration and the new Obama Administration shows no sign of changing course.

Is this a time of great optimism and hope or an opportunity to reaffirm and reorganize the struggle for true justice? Perhaps it is both. The stirring words of Dr. King are more relevant now than ever:

We are now faced with the fact that tomorrow is today. We are confronted with the fierce urgency of now. In this unfolding conundrum of life and history there is such a thing as being too late. Procrastination is still the thief of time. Life often leaves us standing bare, naked and dejected with a lost opportunity. The "tide in the affairs of men" does not remain at the flood; it ebbs. We may cry out desperately for time to pause in her passage, but time is deaf to every plea and rushes on. Over the bleached bones and jumbled residue of numerous civilizations are written the pathetic words: "Too late." There is an invisible book of life that faithfully records our vigilance or our neglect. "The moving finger writes, and having writ moves on..." We still have a choice today; nonviolent coexistence or violent co-annihilation.

Much speculation has been made about President Obama's inauguration speech tomorrow. Will he emulate Lincoln and King, Kennedy and Roosevelt? Personally, I think he should pay special attention to this 1967 Riverside Church speech and repeat Dr. King's prescient and timely words, "It should be incandescently clear that no one who has any concern for the integrity and life of America today can ignore the present war."

Obama ran a campaign and won an election on the promise of ending the brutal occupation of Iraq. Yet, for the past four years in the US Senate, he has consistently voted to fund and prolong this very occupation. He has no intention of removing all US personnel from Iraq, reserves the right of the United States to strike "enemy combatants" any time and anywhere, and has said nothing of dismantling the more than 700 military bases the US maintains in over 100 foreign countries. In addition, he has promised to send 30,000 more US soldiers to Afghanistan, almost doubling the 32,000 troops that are already there. He has affirmed his approval of cross-border attacks in Pakistan. He threatens the governments and people of Iran, Syria, Lebanon, and Palestine with extreme violence for not cowing to American dominance and hegemony. This is no path to peace or reconciliation. So what will Obama bring to the world? He has spoken often of resurrecting the sullied reputation of this country, the theoretical reputation of goodness, virtue, and honor that this country has never truly stood for nor sought to impress upon others (least of all ourselves), except through the business end of a bayonet, M16, or Apache helicopter.

Dr. King asked us, "Is our nation planning to build on political myth again and then shore it up with the power of new violence?"

This very year, the military budget of the United States will surpass $1 trillion, making it the largest ever recorded. This year, the federal government will spend more on nuclear weaponry than our primary education system. In this time of great economic crisis, where will the money required to care for the poor and the needy come from? Again, forty years ago, Dr. King warned us all, "A nation that continues year after year to spend more money on military defense than on programs of social uplift is approaching spiritual death."

So, whose side will Obama be on? Will he restore the rule of law and respect for the Constitution? Will he close Gitmo and free its kidnapped hostages? Will he bring the criminals who approved torture and the monsters who committed it to justice, knowing full well that the prosecution of war crimes is not a partisan witch-hunt or political maneuvering? Will he invoke the phony "War On Terror" in order to continue a destructive imperial project? Will he continue to remain silent about the Israeli genocide of Palestinians in Gaza, the racist and dehumanizing apartheid system in the West Bank, and the murder of Oscar Grant by a police officer in Oakland, because these topics are politically inconvenient?

"This I believe to be the privilege and the burden of all of us who deem ourselves bound by allegiances and loyalties which are broader and deeper than nationalism and which go beyond our nation's self-defined goals and positions. We are called to speak for the weak, for the voiceless, for victims of our nation and for those it calls enemy, for no document from human hands can make these humans any less our brothers," King said.

And Obama should listen.

For the soldiers sent to kill and die for empire, King said, "We are adding cynicism to the process of death, for they must know after a short period there that none of the things we claim to be fighting for are really involved...The more sophisticated surely realize that we are on the side of the wealthy and the secure while we create hell for the poor."

He spoke against militarism and dehumanization, saying, "the true meaning and value of compassion and nonviolence" is that "it helps us to see the enemy's point of view, to hear his questions, to know his assessment of ourselves. For from his view we may indeed see the basic weaknesses of our own condition, and if we are mature, we may learn and grow and profit from the wisdom of the brothers who are called the opposition." Through empathy and reflection, King explained, we may begin "to understand the arguments of those who are called enemy."

We must make strong demands of our new President. We must demand that the era of American aggression come to an end. We must demand that our troops be immediately withdrawn from Iraq and Afghanistan. We must be assured that our military will not attack or invade any other countries. We must demand that our government adhere to international law and act as an equal member of the world community. We must demand that our country respect our privacy and human rights. We must demand that we not be wire-tapped or spied upon. We must be assured that our country does not torture and that those who do will face the harshest of consequences. We must demand that our country provide its citizens with health care, education, and employment. We must demand an end to the $30 billion in financial aid and military support that this country will provide to Israel over the next decade, money that will be used to further subjugate the Palestinian people and destroy all possibility of a just and lasting peace.

Dr. King warned us that "if we do not act we shall surely be dragged down the long dark and shameful corridors of time reserved for those who possess power without compassion, might without morality, and strength without sight."

On November 4, 2008, Barack Obama told the American people who had just elected him the 44th President of the United States, "This is your victory...This is our moment."

Forty-one years and seven months earlier, with the prescience of a prophet, Martin Luther King, Jr. continued:

Now let us begin. Now let us rededicate ourselves to the long and bitter -- but beautiful -- struggle for a new world...Shall we say the odds are too great? Shall we tell them the struggle is too hard? Will our message be that the forces of American life militate against their arrival as full men, and we send our deepest regrets? Or will there be another message, of longing, of hope, of solidarity with their yearnings, of commitment to their cause, whatever the cost? The choice is ours, and though we might prefer it otherwise we must choose in this crucial moment of human history.

If Dr. King's beautiful dream, even in part, has been realized here in the United States, it is our duty here and now - and indeed it is the responsibility of the President we have elected, the leader who represents us all, the man we have selected to speak our words and wishes to the world - to know and to acknowledge that Americans are not the only ones with dreams. Afghans have dreams. Iraqis have dreams. Iranians have dreams. Lebanese have dreams. Syrians have dreams. Venezuelans, Cubans, and Bolivians have dreams. Today, as a result of the recent Israeli violence, there are now 1300 fewer Palestinian dreamers than there were three weeks ago.

These are dreams without violent invasions and foreign intervention, check points and separation walls, cluster bombs and white phosphorus, watchtowers and waterboarding, air strikes and Humvee convoys; these are dreams without threatening leaflets and bunker busters falling from the sky, without flak jackets and night-vision goggles, without bombed schools and broken levees, without FEMA trailers and refugee camps, without oil profits and no-bid contracts, without Blackwater and Halliburton, without body counts, death tolls, and collateral damage.

In his final book Where Do We Go From Here: Chaos or Community?, written in 1967, Dr. King writes: "Many of the ugly pages of American history have been obscured and forgotten....America owes a debt of justice which it has only begun to pay. If it loses the will to finish or slackens in its determination, history will recall its crimes and the country that would be great will lack the most indispensable element of greatness - justice."

This emphasis on justice may be lost on the incoming President, his retinue of Washington insiders, ardent Zionists, career militarists, and his coterie of armchair imperialists, bloated businessmen, and converted neoconservatives.

But the rebranding of American Empire will not signal the surrender of a global movement for peace and justice. Dr. King, as usual, spoke for all of us when he said, on that Spring day on the Upper West Side,

Somehow this madness must cease. We must stop now...I speak for those whose land is being laid waste, whose homes are being destroyed, whose culture is being subverted...I speak as a citizen of the world, for the world as it stands aghast at the path we have taken. I speak as an American to the leaders of my own nation. The great initiative in this war is ours. The initiative to stop it must be ours...These are the times for real choices and not false ones. We are at the moment when our lives must be placed on the line if our nation is to survive its own folly. Every man of humane convictions must decide on the protest that best suits his convictions, but we must all protest.

And we will protest.

We will dissent, we will disrupt.

We will object conscientiously and disobey civilly.

We will fight fiercely and revolt passionately with righteous indignation.

We will not be silent.

And we shall overcome...with or without you, Barack.

*****

GAZACRE!The New Year's Neo-Nakba

©Ben Heine

"When 2.5 million people live in a closed-off Gaza, it's going to be a human catastrophe...The pressure on the border is going to be awful. It's going to be a terrible war. So, if we [Israelis] want to remain alive, we will have to kill and kill and kill. All day, every day."

- Arnon Sofer, Israeli government advisor and Haifa University professor, as quoted in the Jerusalem Post 4/24/04

For the past eighteen days, I have been paralyzed by both anger and sorrow over the current Israeli assault on Gaza and the willing and deliberate massacre of the trapped and terrified population there. There are barely any words adequate enough to describe the horror of death and destruction that Israel has inflicted upon the 1.5 million Palestinians penned up in the meager 138 square mile cage created and guarded by the Jewish State.

To sane, rational, and moral people, there is no doubt whatsoever that Israel is willfully engaged in a full-scale slaughter, a calculated and carefully planned operation designed to murder Palestinians in mass quantities, to further destroy the civil and political infrastructure of an already devastated ghetto, and to instill terror and grief in a civilian population already at the mercy of humanitarian aid and foreign support due to the crippling Israeli blockade imposed upon Gaza. The residents of Gaza are being punished for exercising their right to self-determination, to national liberation, to resistance and survival. They are being punished, not only with a brutal and illegal economic siege that has left the population in dire need of food, fuel, water, and medicine, but also with the deadliest of military action. Israel's actions are not simply aggressive and unnecessary, they are decisively inhuman and psychopathic.

The streets of Gaza are awash with the blood of innocent men, women, and children; countless bodies still lie buried under the rubble of what once were apartment buildings, private homes, mosques, schools, universities, hospitals, and civil institutions. The carnage is man-made; it is the blood-lust of the Israeli government, army, navy, air force, settlers, and the vast majority of citizenry that justifies genocide of this magnitude. It is the full-fledged support, or in some cases complicit inaction, of the international community that allows the slaughter to continue unabated and uninhibited.

What a fucking nightmare.

It is no surprise where I stand on this issue. What is surprising is how many people here in New York, the United States, and around the world, stand in full, blood-soaked support of Israeli aggression against the people of Gaza. What is so simply a case of brainwashing, propaganda, hypocrisy, and ethically bankrupt moral relativism, the blind support of Israel is something I am familiar with considering I have a number of friends, colleagues, and acquaintances who suffer from this particular proclivity.

As a result, rather than continue feeling helpless and hopeless and simply rail against the naked aggression of Israel's Occupation Forces, I'll instead identify the lies and speak directly to the bullet-points (pun intended) and justifications propagated by Zionist apologists and genocidal militarists (read: mainstream politicians, media, and my Obama-loving associates) to explain Israel's most recent act of ethnic cleansing, collective punishment, and contempt for the most basic human rights and precepts of international law.

THE CLAIM: Hamas broke the six-month ceasefire by firing rockets into Israel from Gaza, thus prompting the Israeli government and military to act decisively to protect its citizens.

THE TRUTH: Israel broke the ceasefire, not Hamas. This is not even a remotely controversial statement nor it is a debatable matter of opinion. It's pure fact.

Hamas kept their end of the bargain while Israel did not. Even the New York Times admitted as recently as December 19, 2008 that Hamas was "largely successful" in stopping the homemade rockets. Ethan Bronner, the NYT Jerusalem bureau chief reported,

Hamas imposed its will and even imprisoned some of those who were firing rockets. Israeli and United Nations figures show that while more than 300 rockets were fired into Israel in May, 10 to 20 were fired in July, depending on who was counting and whether mortar rounds were included. In August, 10 to 30 were fired, and in September, 5 to 10.

Israel even admits that Hamas was not responsible for the few rockets fired during the ceasefire. Nevertheless, the terms of the truce, negotiated by Egypt, between Israel and Hamas included not only a halting of Hamas rocket fire from Gaza, but also the Israeli agreement to lift its brutal economic blockade of Gaza. This blockade, in place even before Hamas was voted into power, has prevented any exports from the territory (a clear breach of a 2005 accord) and has drastically restricted the number of import and humanitarian aid trucks allowed to enter Gaza for the purposes of bringing much needed food, fuel, water, spare parts for plumbing and sewage plants, and medical supplies to the already suffering, starving, freezing, and imprisoned population. 

Some apologists for Israel may argue that the shipment of goods into Gaza increased about 25% during the ceasefire. While this may be true, it doesn't tell the whole story. Bronner tells us that Hamas, having agreed to the terms of the truce, expected "a return to the 500 to 600 truckloads delivered daily before the closing, including appliances, construction materials and other goods essential for life beyond mere survival. Instead, the number of trucks increased to around 90 from around 70." 

In actuality, the situation in Gaza is far worse. Harvard scholar Sara Roy reports that "during November, an average of 4.6 trucks of food per day entered Gaza from Israel compared with an average of 123 trucks per day in October. Spare parts for the repair and maintenance of water-related equipment have been denied entry for over a year. The World Health Organization just reported that half of Gaza's ambulances are now out of order." 

So, even though Israel refused to lift the blockade of 1.5 million Palestinians, thereby essentially denying the residents of Gaza the right to live, Hamas still curtailed rocket fire as best it could. During the ceasefire, no Israelis were killed by Gazan rockets. 

So, wait, who broke the ceasefire? 

On December 30, 2008, the New York Times published its first editorial after Israel began carpet-bombing Gaza, beginning, "Hamas must bear responsibility for ending a six-month cease-fire this month with a barrage of rocket attacks into Israeli territory." 

In their thinly veiled fealty to Israel, the editors of the New York Times were lying to you. Blatantly. News sources far and wide (weirdly enough, including the New York Times itself) prove that it was Israel, not Hamas, that broke the ceasefire agreement. Let's take a look:

"Hamas militants in the Gaza Strip fired more than 35 rockets towards Israel today, the army and the Islamist group said, hours after the Israeli army killed six militants in the coastal territory." - Reuters, November 5, 2008

"Hamas militants fired more than 35 rockets into Israel today, hours after the Israeli army killed six people in the Gaza Strip in the first major exchange of fire since a truce took effect in June." - The Guardian, November 5, 2008 

"Israel Defense Forces troops yesterday killed a Hamas gunman and wounded two others in the first armed clash in the Gaza Strip since a cease-fire was declared there in June...Since the cease-fire, the IDF has launched frequent raids across the fence, albeit smaller in scale. The IDF is apparently interested in keeping these incursions low-profile, and they receive little attention in the Israeli media. Additionally, raids tend to be limited to addressing 'immediate threats,' as defined by the IDF...An Israeli army spokeswoman said troops had entered the territory." - Ha'aretz, November 5, 2008 

"For the first time since the ceasefire took effect in June, IDF forces operated deep in the Gaza Strip Tuesday night." - Yediot Ahronot, November 5, 2008 

"A five-month truce between Israel and the Islamist rulers of the Gaza Strip was foundering yesterday after Israeli special forces entered the besieged territory and fought Hamas militants, leaving six Palestinian fighters dead and four Israeli soldiers wounded." - The Times (UK), November 5, 2008 

"A spate of Israeli and Palestinian attacks and counter-attacks in the past 24 hours could spell the end of a five-and-a-half-month ceasefire...The killing of six Palestinian militants in Gaza by Israeli forces in a ground incursion and air strikes on 4 November was followed by a barrage of dozens of Palestinian rockets. The Palestinian attacks caused no casualties or damage, but there is a real risk that any further armed actions by either side would risk igniting another deadly campaign." - Amnesty International, November 10, 2008

If this weren't evidence enough, the New York Times' own hypocrisy is laid bare by articles it published before the Israeli air assault in late December:

"At least six Palestinian militants were killed in a clash and an Israeli air strike on Nov. 4 after an Israeli force entered Gaza for the first time in five months to destroy a tunnel Israel said it believed was intended for use in the abduction of soldiers." - Isabel Kershner, NYT's Jerusalem correspondent, November 12, 2008 

"The confrontations, following five months of relative calm, began to spike this month when the Israeli military destroyed a tunnel being dug toward Israel...The Israelis said it was an isolated operation, not a violation of the cease-fire agreed to in June, and asked Egypt to pass that message to Hamas in advance. But six Hamas militants were killed during the tunnel’s destruction, leading Hamas to retaliate with rockets, which led to more closings and operations and then more rockets." - Ethan Bronner & Taghreed El-Khodary, November 14, 2008

So, Israel called "time out!" and killed six people then blamed Hamas for breaking the truce? Yup. Does the Israeli government even believe the shit they're shoveling? Nope:

 

THE CLAIM: Hmmmm, ok, so Israel clearly broke the ceasefire, but Hamas rejected Israeli calls to extend it in mid-December and started firing more rockets once it officially expired. THE TRUTH: In a 12/29/08 article entitled "The true story behind this war is not the one Israel is telling," Johann Hari of The Independent reveals that a week before the Israel bombardment of Gaza began,

Hamas offered a ceasefire in return for basic and achievable compromises. Don't take my word for it. According to the Israeli press, Yuval Diskin, the current head of the Israeli security service Shin Bet, "told the Israeli cabinet [on 23 December] that Hamas is interested in continuing the truce, but wants to improve its terms." Diskin explained that Hamas was requesting two things: an end to the blockade, and an Israeli ceasefire on the West Bank. The cabinet – high with election fever and eager to appear tough – rejected these terms. 

The core of the situation has been starkly laid out by Ephraim Halevy, the former head of Mossad. He says that while Hamas militants – like much of the Israeli right-wing – dream of driving their opponents away, "they have recognised this ideological goal is not attainable and will not be in the foreseeable future." Instead, "they are ready and willing to see the establishment of a Palestinian state in the temporary borders of 1967." They are aware that this means they "will have to adopt a path that could lead them far from their original goals" – and towards a long-term peace based on compromise...Halevy explains: "Israel, for reasons of its own, did not want to turn the ceasefire into the start of a diplomatic process with Hamas."

THE CLAIM: But the entire framework of Hamas is dedicated to the destruction of Israel and its members and supporters want to throw all Jews into the sea, right?! 

THE TRUTH: Whereas there are certainly elements of Hamas that wish to see the violent devastation of Israel, just as there are hundreds of thousands of virulent Zionists - in Israel and around the world - who believe that all of historic Palestine belongs rightfully to the Jews (the Chosen People) and that all Palestinians should be murdered or transferred from the land of milk and honey, this is not the guiding consensus or motivation of its current leaders. Extreme sentiments, like some emblazoned in the 1988 founding charter of the organization have since been renounced (as early as 1990, Hamas rejected many of its more religious-based motivations) and have been replace by more popular ideals. [Let's not forget that the beloved founding charter of the United States explicitly allows the continuation of the slave trade (Art. 1, Sec. 9) and considers all non-whites to be "three-fifths" of a person (Art. 1, Sec. 2).] 

In its inception, Hamas provided an organized network of vital social welfare, educational, and charitable institutions that aided the poorest and neediest elements of the occupied Palestinian population. After the creation of its resistance military wing in 1992, during the First Intifada, Israel and the US met with and supported Hamas over the secular PLO in an attempt to weaken Fatah leader Yasser Arafat. Once Hamas grew stronger, receiving more popular support and gaining international backing, Israel reversed its course. 

Hamas is a political party focused on resistance to an unjust occupation and the promotion of a national liberation movement in Palestine. Its leaders, such as elected prime minister Ismail Haniyeh, have repeatedly called for an end to the "vicious cycle of violence," strongly denied the allegation that Hamas' goal is "the ultimate obliteration of the Jewish people," and agreed to "the establishment of a Palestinian state with Jerusalem as its capital with 1967 borders," as per the popular consensus of 72% of all Palestinians. (Fewer than 20% of Palestinians demand the reclamation of all of their ancestral land.) [A bit of perspective: As recently as September 2004, 46% of American adults believed that Saddam Hussein was personally involved in the 9/11 attacks. Whoa.] 

THE CLAIM: But I've heard that the leaders of Hamas are just big meanies with beards and they're scary and I hate them. What's so hard about recognizing Israel's right to exist? That just means they hate Jews, doesn't it? 

THE TRUTH: Prime Minister Haniyeh, in an 2006 interview with the Washington Post, stated clearly that "We are not lovers of blood. We are not interested in a vicious cycle of violence. We are oppressed people with rights...We do not have any feelings of animosity toward Jews. We do not wish to throw them into the sea. All we seek is to be given our land back, not to harm anybody." 

Counterpunch commentator Mike Whitney explains,

Haniyeh has supported the ban on suicide missions which has lasted for more than two years despite the blockade of food, medicine, fuel, and electrical power to the Gaza Strip and despite the daily bombings, incursions, arrests, assassinations and countless other humiliations associated with occupation. Hundreds of Israeli civilians are alive today because Haniyeh and his Hamas colleagues abandoned the armed struggle and entered politics.

Khalid Meshal, head of the political bureau of Hamas, said the following in a 2006 article published in The Guardian:

Our message to the Israelis is this: we do not fight you because you belong to a certain faith or culture. Jews have lived in the Muslim world for 13 centuries in peace and harmony; they are in our religion "the People of the Book" who have a covenant from God and His Messenger Muhammad (peace be upon him) to be respected and protected. Our conflict with you is not religious but political. We have no problem with Jews who have not attacked us - our problem is with those who came to our land, imposed themselves on us by force, destroyed our society and banished our people. 

We shall never recognise the right of any power to rob us of our land and deny us our national rights. We shall never recognise the legitimacy of a Zionist state created on our soil in order to atone for somebody else's sins or solve somebody else's problem. But if you are willing to accept the principle of a long-term truce, we are prepared to negotiate the terms. Hamas is extending a hand of peace to those who are truly interested in a peace based on justice.

The decision not to recognize Israel as a Jewish state is not an arbitrary one, or one based on racism or stubbornness. Recognition is a tricky thing and one that does not exist solely in the context of Israel and Palestine, as Noam Chomsky often points out. Does the United States government insist that Native Americans formally recognize the right of the US to exist on 100% of Native American land? Has Mexico been forced to recognize the United States' right to exist on land annexed and claimed as a result of the 1846-48 Mexican-American War, in which Mexico lost about 70% of its total territory? Of course not. (And, hey, wasn't it Israeli Prime Minister Golda Meir who denied the existence of the entire Palestinian people? Yes, it was.) 

Perhaps Prime Minister Haniyeh summed it up best when he declared, "If Israel declares that it will give the Palestinian people a state and give them back all their rights, then we are ready to recognize them." 

THE CLAIM: Whatever. As far as I know, Hamas is just an Islamist terrorist organization that violently took control of Gaza. By siding with them, the Palestinian people brought this suffering upon themselves. 

THE TRUTH: Hamas was democratically elected by the Palestinian people in January 2006 in free and fair elections supported by the US and closely monitored and approved by the international community. Israel refused to recognize the new government power due to its contrived determination that Hamas is solely a terrorist front. Israeli professor Avi Shlaim explains what followed:

America and the EU shamelessly joined Israel in ostracising and demonising the Hamas government and in trying to bring it down by withholding tax revenues and foreign aid. A surreal situation thus developed with a significant part of the international community imposing economic sanctions not against the occupier but against the occupied, not against the oppressor but against the oppressed. 

As so often in the tragic history of Palestine, the victims were blamed for their own misfortunes. Israel's propaganda machine persistently purveyed the notion that the Palestinians are terrorists, that they reject coexistence with the Jewish state, that their nationalism is little more than anti-Semitism, that Hamas is just a bunch of religious fanatics and that Islam is incompatible with democracy. But the simple truth is that the Palestinian people are a normal people with normal aspirations. They are no better but they are no worse than any other national group. What they aspire to, above all, is a piece of land to call their own on which to live in freedom and dignity. 

Like other radical movements, Hamas began to moderate its political programme following its rise to power. From the ideological rejectionism of its charter, it began to move towards pragmatic accommodation of a two-state solution. In March 2007, Hamas and Fatah formed a national unity government that was ready to negotiate a long-term ceasefire with Israel. Israel, however, refused to negotiate with a government that included Hamas. 

It continued to play the old game of divide and rule between rival Palestinian factions. In the late 1980s, Israel had supported the nascent Hamas in order to weaken Fatah, the secular nationalist movement led by Yasser Arafat. Now Israel began to encourage the corrupt and pliant Fatah leaders to overthrow their religious political rivals and recapture power. Aggressive American neoconservatives participated in the sinister plot to instigate a Palestinian civil war. Their meddling was a major factor in the collapse of the national unity government and in driving Hamas to seize power in Gaza in June 2007 to pre-empt a Fatah coup.

In Khalid Meshal's own words soon after the 2006 election victory,

The day Hamas won the Palestinian democratic elections the world's leading democracies failed the test of democracy. Rather than recognise the legitimacy of Hamas as a freely elected representative of the Palestinian people, seize the opportunity created by the result to support the development of good governance in Palestine and search for a means of ending the bloodshed, the US and EU threatened the Palestinian people with collective punishment for exercising their right to choose their parliamentary representatives. 

We are being punished simply for resisting oppression and striving for justice. Those who threaten to impose sanctions on our people are the same powers that initiated our suffering and continue to support our oppressors almost unconditionally. We, the victims, are being penalised while our oppressors are pampered. The US and EU could have used the success of Hamas to open a new chapter in their relations with the Palestinians, the Arabs and the Muslims and to understand better a movement that has so far been seen largely through the eyes of the Zionist occupiers of our land.

If Israel (and the US and EU) refuse to accept Hamas as the legal representative of the Palestinian people, as per a real democracy, they are therefore denying Hamas' own right to exist and to govern and they are explicitly, violently, and illegally disregarding right of the Palestinian people to self-determination. This right is guaranteed by UN General Assembly Resolution 2787 (12/06/71) and legitimizes the struggle for freedom by peoples under colonial and foreign domination or occupation. 

THE CLAIM: Why do you keep talking about Gaza being occupied? Everybody knows that Israel unilaterally pulled all its troops and settlers out in 2005! 

THE TRUTH: Just because Israel staged a pullout, doesn't mean the occupation ended. After Ariel Sharon's Likud government removed its 8,000 illegal settlers and accompanying military forces (making sure to first destroy all houses and farms they left behind) from Gaza, the Palestinian residents of the small strip - home to the highest population density and one of the very worst poverty rates in the world - were still very much under Israeli control. Gaza is the world's largest open-air prison, guarded on all sides by Israeli troops. The Israeli military still controls all access to Gaza, by land, sea, and air. Israel controls taxation in Gaza. The Israeli air force enjoys "unrestricted freedom to drop bombs, to make sonic booms by flying low and breaking the sound barrier, and to terrorise the hapless inhabitants of this prison." Army incursions are frequent, as are the resulting extra-judicial killings, kidnappings and illegal arrests. Israel controls all imports and exports from Gaza and therefore completely controls its economy - or deliberate lack thereof. Under Israel's brutal domination, almost half of Gaza's residents are unemployed, most live in unspeakable squalor and misery, and 80% subsist on less than $2 a day and rely on humanitarian aid to survive. According to the agencies of the United Nations and multiple international relief organizations, "even before the military campaign commenced, 75 percent of Gaza’s children were malnourished, 46 percent anemic and 30 percent suffered from stunted growth," reports Counterpunch contributer Rannie Amiri. 

Even before the recent atrocities committed by Israel against the Palestinian people, Gaza was already suffering from a tragic humanitarian crisis. 

THE CLAIM: Hey, Israel just acts out of self-defense and wants to protect its citizens, just like any normal, sovereign, and democratic country would do in similar circumstances. 

THE TRUTH: This statement assumes that Israel is a normal country. There has been a lot of talk lately of "what would any other country do" if people were shooting rockets at them, if the Quebequois were targeting Rochester, if British Columbians fired upon Seattle, if Mexicans were attacking San Diego, if Andorrans sought to destroy Spain and France simultaneously... 

Israel was established in 1948 on land that was already inhabited by an indigenous population. In the late 1940's, despite representing no more than 30% of the total population of Palestine - a percentage reached only after decades of illegal mass immigration to the region - Jews were to be given 56% of the land for their own state as part of the US and UK promoted UN Partition Plan, a non-binding advisory resolution. It achieved legitimacy with the backing of Western world powers and gained "independence" as a colonial state through violent transfer of the native inhabitants, systematic ethnic cleansing, and the massacres and intimidation of paramilitary death squads. Immediately after unilaterally declaring its creation, Israeli militias fought a war of expansion and annexed an additional 22% of Arab land as its own. In 1967, Israel militarily conquered the remaining 22% of Palestine. It has brutally occupied the entirety of historic Palestine ever since. 

Unlike other normal, sovereign, and democratic countries, Israel has no constitution and no internationally recognized borders. 

Israel has upwards of 20 laws that discriminate against its Arab citizenry, laws not dissimilar to those of Apartheid South Africa regarding mixed marriage, employment, real estate, and travel. The "Separation" Wall constructed in the West Bank has been deemed illegal by the Hague, the Geneva Conventions strictly forbid the acquisition of land through warfare, and guarantees "that persons displaced during armed conflict must be transferred back to their homes as soon as hostilities in the area in question have ceased." The people of Gaza and the West Bank have consistently been subjected to Israeli reprisal for their own resistance to occupation despite the simple fact that Article 33 of the Fourth Geneva Convention clearly prohibits collective punishment:

No protected person may be punished for an offence he or she has not personally committed. Collective penalties and likewise all measures of intimidation or of terrorism are prohibited. 

Pillage is prohibited. 

Reprisals against protected persons and their property are prohibited.

Israel often demolishes Palestinian homes as a matter of both policy and penalty. The Israeli Knesset just recently banned the only three Arab political parties from running in next month's Parliamentary election. Israel insists on being recognized as Jewish democratic state even though that description is an obvious contradiction is terms: how can a nation bestow dominance to one religious or cultural group and still equally represent all of its citizens, Jewish or not, as a democracy is supposed to do? Does this sound like a normal state that abides by normal rules? 

Professor Shlaim addresses the question of self-defense, thusly:

As always, mighty Israel claims to be the victim of Palestinian aggression but the sheer asymmetry of power between the two sides leaves little room for doubt as to who is the real victim. This is indeed a conflict between David and Goliath but the Biblical image has been inverted - a small and defenceless Palestinian David faces a heavily armed, merciless and overbearing Israeli Goliath. The resort to brute military force is accompanied, as always, by the shrill rhetoric of victimhood and a farrago of self-pity overlaid with self-righteousness. In Hebrew this is known as the syndrome of bokhim ve-yorim, "crying and shooting". 

To be sure, Hamas is not an entirely innocent party in this conflict. Denied the fruit of its electoral victory and confronted with an unscrupulous adversary, it has resorted to the weapon of the weak - terror. Militants from Hamas and Islamic Jihad kept launching Qassam rocket attacks against Israeli settlements near the border with Gaza until Egypt brokered a six-month ceasefire last June. The damage caused by these primitive rockets is minimal but the psychological impact is immense, prompting the public to demand protection from its government. Under the circumstances, Israel had the right to act in self-defence but its response to the pinpricks of rocket attacks was totally disproportionate. The figures speak for themselves. In the three years after the withdrawal from Gaza, 11 Israelis were killed by rocket fire. On the other hand, in 2005-7 alone, the IDF killed 1,290 Palestinians in Gaza, including 222 children.

THE CLAIM: There's no such thing as "disproportionate" force! If someone is trying to kill you, isn't it your duty, if not your right, to stop them? Stop playing the numbers game already. Sheesh. 

THE TRUTH: In the past 18 days, at least 1,025 Palestinians have been killed by Israeli bombardment from the sky, sea, and land. At least 60% of the dead are civilians, including well over 300 children. An additional 5,000 people have been injured and an estimated 90,000 have fled their homes in fear and desperation. In one of its very first aerial assaults, Israel decimated a graduation ceremony for new police officers in Gaza. Israel considered these cadets to be agents of Hamas and therefore viable military targets. So far, no international press has been allowed to enter Gaza to report on the assault as Israel has enacted and enforced a complete media blackout, despite a ruling by Israel's own Supreme Court to allow reporters access. 

Israel's reason for not letting the press cover the situation in Gaza is clear: they wish to maintain total control over news coverage to ensure that the truth is not told to its own citizens and the world at large. Truth implicates Israel in war crimes and, as John Ging, Gaza operations director for the United Nations Relief and Works Agency, confirms, "For the truth to get out, journalists have to get in." 

Former spokesman for the Israeli army, Nachman Shai, claims that full news coverage helps "the enemy," confuses and "destabilizes" the Israeli public. "Today, Israel is trying to control the information much more closely," he told the New York Times. Israel is intent on controlling public opinion based on its own propaganda, a decision made clear by Aviv Shir-On, deputy director general for media in the Israeli Foreign Ministry, who told the Times, "We are trying to coordinate everything that has to do with the image and content of what we are doing...We have talking points and we try to disseminate our ideas and message." 

The Foreign Press Association recently released a statement condemning Israel's restriction of the press:

The unprecedented denial of access to Gaza for the world’s media amounts to a severe violation of press freedom and puts the state of Israel in the company of a handful of regimes around the world which regularly keep journalists from doing their jobs.

The scale of the damage to both human life and property in Gaza is unimaginable. If the same casualty percentages had befallen the Israeli population these past two weeks, there would be over 6,000 dead and 23,000 wounded. Think about what kind of international outcry there would be if that were the case. How many condemnations and resolutions and consequences there would be. 

By contrast, 3 Israeli civilians (2 of them Israeli Arabs) and 10 soldiers (4 by "friendly-fire") have been killed since the assault began. 

Lanny Davis, senior adviser and spokesperson for the Israel Project and former special counsel to Bill Clinton, betrayed the deep-seated racism of most of the Zionist community when he revealed yesterday on Democracy Now! that "whether it’s one child in Israel or a hundred children in Palestine or in Gaza. To me, they’re equally tragic. There is no disproportionality. They’re equally tragic." 

A hundred to one? Equal? There's Zionism for ya! 

THE CLAIM: But Hamas uses its own people as human shields and hides in and amongst the civilian population of Gaza. It is their own fault that the civilian death toll is so high. Israel would never intentionally target women and children the way Hamas does. Remember, Israelis are the civilized ones! 

THE TRUTH: Members of resistance movements are not trained soldiers using high-tech weaponry. They are subjugated people fighting for freedom from oppression. Should the French Resistance in World War II have worn uniforms so that the authorities could pick them out of a crowd? Should the Jewish Labor Bund have passively accepted life in Russian pogroms? Should the leaders of the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising have been easy on Jewish Nazi collaborators, stopped digging escape tunnels, and acquiesced to the fate awaiting at Treblinka? Should the ANC have packed up their struggle once the Pentagon and Pretoria deemed it a "a major terrorist organization"?

Regardless of where Hamas "militants" may be hiding or storing homemade rockets, it is unequivocally forbidden under international law for Israel to target schools, universities, and civilian infrastructure. Israel has targeted and destroyed private homes, apartment buildings, cars, boats, ambulances, college dormitories, private industrial and agricultural enterprises, government and municipal facilities, the Ministries of Justice, Finance, Interior, Education, and Prisoner Affairs, City Council offices, television stations, police stations, courts, marketplaces, greenhouses, workshops, dairies, parks, charities, clinics, hospitals, cemeteries, and mosques. 

The first of the air strikes took place shortly before noon, a time when there were the maximum number of people on the streets of Gaza, corresponding with lunch breaks from work and shift changes at schools. A clearly marked UN school, sheltering Palestinian civilians, was bombed by Israel in an operation that took at least 40 lives. The school had, as per protocol, given the exact location to Israeli authorities to ensure the building's and occupants' safety. Israel first claimed that Hamas mortars were fired from the school, but later backed off the claim once hard evidence appeared and proved that Israeli story to be a lie. Israel has also targeted clearly marked UN cars and have delayed and even denied ambulances access to wounded civilians, thus compounding the already sickening death toll. 

The Guardian reports:

The nine Israeli human rights groups, which include B'Tselem, Gisha, Amnesty International's Israel section and Physicians for Human Rights, said accounts from Gaza showed the Israeli military was "making wanton use of lethal force" and called for a halt to attacks on civilians, access for civilians to escape the fighting, medical care for the injured, access for medical and rescue teams and the proper operation of electricity, water and sewage systems. Their unusually strong criticisms stand out in a country whose Jewish population at least has been united in extraordinarily strong support for the war in Gaza. 

The desperate state of health facilities in Gaza was highlighted yesterday in the Lancet medical journal. Several mobile clinics and ambulances have been damaged by Israeli attacks, it notes, and at least six medical personnel killed. Hospitals and clinics have been forced to close. International law requires that all medical staff and facilities be protected at all times, even during armed conflict, said the Lancet. "Attacks on staff and facilities are serious violations of these laws," it said. 

Many doctors are working 24-hour shifts, ambulances cannot be maintained and are breaking down, while hospital equipment, medicines and anaesthetics, beds and medical staff are all in short supply. Hospitals and clinics have had their electricity supplies cut and are relying on "fragile back-up generators". 

Norwegian doctors Mads Gilbert and Erik Fosse wrote that during their spell working in al-Shifa hospital in Gaza City in the current conflict they had "witnessed the most horrific war injuries in men, women and children of all ages in numbers almost too large to comprehend. The wounded, dying and dead have streamed into the overcrowded hospital in endless convoys of ambulances and private cars and wrapped in blankets in the caring arms of others. The endless and intense bombardments from Israeli air, ground and naval forces have missed no targets, not even the hospital."

Israel has even been using banned and experimental munitions during its horrific assault. Amy Goodman of Democracy Now! reports that "Human Rights Watch has accused Israel of illegally firing white phosphorous, which causes horrific burns if it comes in contact with the skin, over crowded refugee camps in Gaza. Medics and human rights groups are also reporting that they are seeing injuries distinctive of another controversial weapon, Dense Inert Metal Explosive, known as DIME, that was designed by the US Air Force in 2006. Those struck by the weapon who survive suffer severe mutilations and internal injuries." 

Israel has one of the world's most sophisticated militaries. Canadian journalist Justin Podur reminds us that, with about 2500 tanks, 1000 artillery pieces, more than 500 warplanes, 200 helicopters, 12 warships, 3 submarines, state-of-the-art unmanned aerial drones and the ability to "gather very precise intelligence using aerial photography and satellites," the Israeli war machine can pick and choose who and how many people to kill. "Given the intensity of its intelligence and the precision of its weapons," Podur writes, "Israel is able to choose the death toll, with some precision...Israel uses airpower and artillery to destroy from a distance, and opened its ground invasion at night. Since it has long since dismantled Gaza's electricity infrastructure, its soldiers are the only ones who can see at night through their infrared goggles - Gaza's people, civilians and anyone who might want to try to defend them, are in complete darkness."

Millions of people worldwide have taken to the streets and demonstrated against Israeli aggression, including massive protests within Israel itself (and not just by its Arab population). Salon.com's Glenn Greenwald has written extensively about Israel's current terrorism. Raji Sourani, head of the Palestinian Centre for Human Rights has called for Israel to be prosecuted in an international court for committing war crimes. Antoine Grand, head of the International Committee of the Red Cross in Gaza, has declared that “there is no place safe in Gaza for the civilians." The UN Human Rights Council has condemned Israel for its "massive violations of human rights of the Palestinian people.” President of the UN General Assembly, Miguel d'Escoto Brockmann, has called Israel's Gaza operation "a genocide." 

Journalist Chris Hedges reminds us that, even though Ehud Barak has claimed that Israel is engaged in a “war to the bitter end” against Hamas in Gaza, "Israel uses sophisticated attack jets and naval vessels to bomb densely crowded refugee camps, schools, apartment blocks, mosques and slums, to attack a population that has no air force, no air defense, no navy, no heavy weapons, no artillery units, no mechanized armor, no command and control, no army, and calls it a war. It is not a war. It is murder." 

THE CLAIM: Shit happens. Sometimes sudden and reactionary military decisions don't yield the most finely-tuned results. Plus, it's not like anyone is happy about what's going on there and dancing in the street. 

THE TRUTH: First of all, this operation, long in the planning, was not simply a devastating response to some symbolic rocket fire. Both Ha'aretz' Barak Ravid and independent Nazareth-based journalist Jonathan Cook report that Israeli Defense Minister (and prime ministerial candidate) Ehud Barak has been preparing for this attack for over six months. Cook writes that "in fact, indications are that the invasion's blueprint was drawn up much earlier, probably 18 months ago." 

Additionally, an October 2008 article published in Ha'aretz reveals the Israeli intention to "expand its destructive power beyond what it demonstrated two years ago against the Beirut suburb of Dahiyah [during the 2006 invasion of Lebanon]" during what the IDF [sic] called "the next war." The report quotes Israeli commander Gadi Eisenkot as saying,

We will wield disproportionate power against every village from which shots are fired on Israel, and cause immense damage and destruction. From our perspective, these are military bases...This isn't a suggestion. This is a plan that has already been authorized.

Regardless of Israel's reasons for obliterating Gaza (to stop rocket fire? to weaken or destroy Hamas? to show Israeli military might after its 2006 defeat in Lebanon? to re-occupy and re-settle the Strip? to kill as many Palestinians on George Bush's watch as possible before the new guy's sworn in?) the death toll alone makes all such rationalizations and justifications irrelevant. War crimes are war crimes are war crimes are war crimes. 

In a recent New York Times piece, Columbia professor Rashid Khalidi asserts that "this war [sic] on the people of Gaza isn’t really about rockets. Nor is it about 'restoring Israel’s deterrence,' as the Israeli press might have you believe. Far more revealing are the words of Moshe Yaalon, then the Israeli Defense Forces chief of staff, in 2002: 'The Palestinians must be made to understand in the deepest recesses of their consciousness that they are a defeated people.'" 

Unfortunately for Israel, which desires and is determined to create such havoc, terror, and grief in Gaza that Palestinians abandon their struggle for freedom and dignity, become compliant, complacent, and submissive for fear of even harsher future reprisals for their pesky resistance, they won't have much success. Joseph Massad, Khalidi's Columbia colleague, assures us that

the only constant in Palestinian lives for the last century of Zionist atrocities has been resistance to the Zionist project of erasing them from the face of the earth. While Zionism sought and recruited Arab and Palestinian collaborators since its inception in the hope of crushing Palestinian resistance, neither Israel nor any of its collaborators has been able to stop it. The lesson that Zionism has refused to learn, and still refuses to learn, is that the Palestinian yearning for freedom from the Zionist yoke cannot be extinguished no matter how barbaric Israel's crimes become.

As for dancing in the street, read Max Blumenthal's report and watch this video:

 
New York Zionists sure put the laughter in slaughter. 

THE CLAIM: Hey, I know what I know...or what I'm told. And I'm told that Israel wants peace. 

THE TRUTH: Peace doesn't bomb children. Peace doesn't wipe out entire families with the push of a button. Peace doesn't drop terrifying leaflets saying "Stay safe by following our orders." Peace doesn't threaten more violence. Peace doesn't murder others to keep its own safe. 

Avi Shlaim concludes, "A rogue state habitually violates international law, possesses weapons of mass destruction and practises terrorism - the use of violence against civilians for political purposes. Israel fulfils all of these three criteria; the cap fits and it must wear it. Israel's real aim is not peaceful coexistence with its Palestinian neighbours but military domination." 

Resistance against occupation, oppression, apartheid, humiliation, land theft, ethnic cleansing, disenfranchisement, imprisonment, extrajudicial killings, collective punishment, and the immoral and illegal denial of both human rights and vital resources is not terrorism. 

The invasion and devastation of a ghetto, the bombing of homes, schools, and mosques, and the deliberate murder of men, women, and children is not self-defense. 

If Israel claims it is justified in seeking revenge and retribution for 6,000 homemade rockets and desperate stone-throwing amounting to fewer than 20 Israeli deaths over the past decade, then what, I wonder, is Palestine to demand for over 100 years of violent displacement and militarized colonization, over 60 years of institutional racism, legalized ethnocentrism, and martial law, and over 40 years of aggressive and dehumanizing occupation and brutality that has and continues to destroy the lives and livelihoods of millions of indigenous people? What kind of justice can there be for the kind of grief suffered by three generations of Palestinian mothers? 

The struggle against the very worst in human nature and the most appalling of human actions is the struggle for a free, safe, and secure Palestine. I mourn for the people of Gaza. I curse myself for not being there and suffering alongside them. I hate myself for not being able to help. 

I stand with Gaza. And you should too. 

***** 

Last week, I received an automatic e-mail response from Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert's office after signing on to an urgent appeal for an immediate ceasefire. With the above information in mind, please read what Olmert's cyberobots send to me. The message contains in it a single truth; one belief that I share with the war criminal Olmert: Terrorism is terrorism no matter where it occurs. 

From: PMO HEB (PMOH@pmo.gov.il) 

Re: Urgent Appeal to Israel's Prime Minister's office We acknowledge receipt of your e-mail regarding the IDF campaign to protect the residents of southern Israel. 

For the past eight years, hundreds of thousands of Israelis have lived under the specter of incessant and indiscriminate rocket attacks from the Gaza Strip. While people in other countries have carried about their normal routines, sending their children to school and walking their dogs in the park, the people of Sderot and its neighboring communities have been denied such luxuries - for fear of being hit by incoming missiles. No sovereign nation should be expected to tolerate the daily targeting of its people, and yet the State of Israel has exercised maximum restraint and worked relentlessly to achieve a peaceful solution with the Palestinians. 

Since seizing control of the Gaza Strip by way of a violent coup in June 2007, Hamas - a terrorist organization allied with Iran, Syria and Hizbullah - has escalated its assault on the State of Israel. Even a truce with Israel was abused by Hamas which persisted in attacking Israeli towns, while also conspiring to upgrade its terrorist capabilities, manufacture and smuggle massive quantities of weapons into Gaza and construct a network of underground tunnels for combat purposes. 

Now, after Hamas has unilaterally abandoned this ceasefire and expanded the range of its missiles to threaten close to one million Israelis, the State of Israel must act decisively to defend its citizens. 

In 2005, the Disengagement plan brought an end to Israel's presence in the Gaza Strip, with the hope and aspiration that its Palestinian residents would begin to govern themselves and prosper. Israel has no desire to re-establish its hold over Gaza, but has resolved - in self-defense - to gain control over areas from which rockets are being launched on Israeli towns, and to significantly disable the Hamas terrorist infrastructure. Ultimately, Operation Cast Lead aims to produce lasting change in the security predicament affecting residents of Southern Israel, and Israel expects the international community to lend its support in the fight against Hamas terror. Terrorism is terrorism no matter where it occurs. 

At the same time, the IDF is taking great pains to direct its activities exclusively against terrorists. Hamas, however, callously places Palestinian civilians in harm's way, using schools, mosques, other public institutions and even private homes as arsenals and bases of operation - effectively taking the Palestinians of Gaza hostage and using them as human shields. Responsibility for injury to civilians in Gaza rests solely with Hamas. In contrast, the State of Israel is doing its utmost to minimize any harm to the Palestinian civilian populace; hundreds of trucks carrying humanitarian aid have been allowed passage into Gaza and this assistance will continue. There is no humanitarian crisis in the Gaza Strip. 

The State of Israel seeks peace and will remain steadfast in its pursuit of a two-state solution that will allow Israelis and Palestinians to live together as neighbors in harmony. 

Sincerely, 

Prime Minister's Office - E-Correspondence 

******

Between Barack and a Hard Place: My November 4th Conundrum

"Sitting on a sofa on a Sunday afternoon.
Going to the candidate's debate.
Laugh about it, shout about it
When you've got to choose
Every way you look at this you lose."
- Paul Simon

I have no illusions. I am no fool. I very much hope that Barack Obama is the next President of the United States of America. So what am I supposed to do this Tuesday when the people of this country (hopefully without much DieBold influence or voter caging) have a chance to choose their next leader? The knot in my stomach and the ache in my head are working against each other and I am at an impasse. So bear with me...I'm just trying to work my way through this stuff.

I have railed against the policies and positions of Barack Obama for a long time now - both here in this forum and in private conversations with friends - and made the choice not to cast a vote for him (or anyone) on Super Tuesday back in February. I have attempted to explain and justify my beliefs as best I could and have made a number of inflexible statements regarding my lever-pulling intentions come Election Day, among them:

"I could not and will not vote for Obama yesterday [in the New York Primary] or in the future (unless I am convinced otherwise)."

"I compromised my morals in 2004 and voted for John Kerry and I swore I'd never do that again."

and this:

"I will not be a complacent citizen, convincing myself that it is alright to support the inexcusable, picking from a short list of insiders because I think I have to in order to call myself a part of something bigger. Well, I am part of something bigger. A morality that forbids me from voting for someone who supports the occupation of Palestine, the invasion of Iraq and Afghanistan, the potential for a nuclear first-strike and not for reducing military spending and our own nuclear stockpiles. I will not. I will not. I will not."

If these sentiments seem to allow for wiggle room and plausible future deniability, I even made things easy for myself by declaring, quite simply, "I can not and will not vote for him."

So why might I be having a change of heart this late in the game, allowing for an eleventh hour, fourth quarter, ninth inning, two-minute warning, sudden death substitution of voting intention? The answer is anything but cerebral or nuanced:

I hate John McCain and Sarah Palin so fucking much, it makes me physically ill, violently furious, and literally frightened for the rest of the world.

Does this mean I support Barack Obama and Joe Biden? Absolutely not. Quite the contrary, actually. The more I think about what they stand for, believe in, and promote for the future of this country, the more convinced I am that I can not vote for their ticket on Tuesday. And herein lies my dilemma. How do I vote against McCain without voting for Obama? Is this even possible? Let's see...

A vote for a Third Party or truly progressive candidate with no chance whatsoever of winning the election is not a vote against a major party candidate who has a chance of becoming president. The vote is certainly important in its own right, but won't have any impact upon the actual outcome of this election. Using this logic, a vote for Cynthia McKinney or Ralph Nader, despite completely agreeing with their policies and worldview, is not a vote against John McCain and Sarah Palin; in fact, a strong argument can be made that a vote for anyone except Obama actually helps the McCain cause (though this argument really loses steam if made in New York, which will go to Obama no matter what).

A vote against the Republican ticket can be achieved in only one viable way: by voting for the Democratic ticket. This means making the choice not to vote for someone whose policies I actually agree with, in order to vote against someone whose policies I vehemently oppose.

So, how do I vote for something I believe in, namely real change and truly progressive politics, and also vote against the establishment candidates that seek to further erode civil liberties, deny human rights, destroy the planet, and further expand an aggressive, oppressive, and obviously failing modern empire? Unfortunately, I can't have it both ways. And I recognize that. But it doesn't make the choice any easier. I have to choose between voting for a candidate that I support and voting against candidates that I despise and who I believe are dangerous. Those options are indeed mutually exclusive.

suffragium fero ergo sum
While many people would agree that a ballot cast for an Independent or Green Party candidate is a wasted vote, there are strong arguments to be made for the opposite view. A vote for a progressive candidate is a vote against the historic dominance of the two party system. I believe in what Cynthia McKinney stands for. She has called for the impeachment of US war criminals and the investigation of 9/11. She truly believes in universal human rights, not just the rights of Americans and their supposed allies. She has an outstanding record and would be a real force of change in this country (not in the way that Obama is pretending to be). I agree with her in my head and heart and truly want her to be the next president. She will not be. But does that mean a vote for her is a wasted vote when it is a true expression of whom I support. If a vote against two party rule is a "waste" and "doesn't make a dent" in our political environment, how can any vote for the status quo be a vote for change? As Robert Weitzel, contributing editor to Media With a Conscience, passionately points out,

The corporate-controlled political system in our country is supported by an overwhelming majority of Americans who time and again waste their votes on two parties with track records for little more than self-preservation, corrupt-crony politics and for not making a “dent”...unless, of course, it’s to total the entire country.

The campaigns of Ralph Nader and Cynthia McKinney are not the acts of spoilers or vanity candidates. They are the acts of third party candidates struggling for the magical 15 percent that will allow them to challenge the hegemony of the Democratic and Republican parties in televised debates viewed by over 70 million voters. They are the acts of American citizens who believe it is a constitution rather than a corporate charter that is the governing document of our Republic.

Nader and McKinney are not naïve enough to think they’ll need to keep millions of donors’ dollars in reserve for their inaugural balls. They are campaigning for something more important than the presidency. They are campaigning to bring about systemic changes in the “politics as usual” in America. They are campaigning to redeem Abraham Lincoln’s “radical” ideal of an American “government of the people, by the people, and for [ALL] the people.”

I agree with this. The cause is noble and necessary. Yes, I want to fight against the absurdity of the two-pronged one party system in this country and open up the field to a more democratic exchange of ideas. But I also really really really want to vote against John McCain and, again, a vote for Nader or McKinney is not a vote against McCain, but rather a vote against both McCain and Obama collectively. A vote against both Democrats and Republicans, while absolutely the right thing to do in most or all cases, does not help John McCain lose. And I really want him to lose.

The choice may come down to the issue of an "imminent threat." I certainly believe that a McCain/Palin administration (I just vomited a little in my mouth) is more of a threat to the rest of the world than an Obama/Biden administration (pounding headache). Therefore, it is probably a good idea to protect the planet against an inevitable and speedy doom in favor of certain destruction that may be staved off for a bit longer. In other words, it might be a better idea to grab a bucket, ineffectual as it may be, rather than a fiddle while Rome continues to burn to the ground around you. Emphasis on the might. As Malcolm X once said, "You don't stick a knife in a man's back nine inches, and then pull it out six inches, and say you're making progress."

I want desperately to vote against John McCain and Sarah Palin. I want to vote against racism in this country and, more specifically, the staggeringly ignorant and xenophobic campaign that they have run and continue to encourage. I want them to suffer an unparalleled and humiliating defeat on Tuesday. I want their campaign to be forever remembered and referenced with contempt, disgust, and horror. I want their crushing loss to signal the waning influence of neo-conservative thought upon this country's foreign policy. I want the religious right to be blamed for sinking the GOP. I want John McCain to spend the last days of his offensive and dishonest life knowing he blew it, obsessing over his VP selection and his inability to ever surpass the achievements of his father and grandfather, being mocked and sneered at in the halls of Congress, maligned in the press, and denounced by his own despicable political party. I want Sarah Palin to cry herself into a champagne-and-shame-induced coma in an empty bathtub with a leaky faucet, all the while rebuking witchcraft in barely audible mumbles and blaming the Python spirit for her myriad failures.

That's what I want. In order to have played some role (however minor and insignificant) in achieving those goals, I would have to vote for Barack Obama.

To add to my growing list of "wants," I must mention that I want to want to vote for Barack Obama. Our personal histories share many common elements; in many ways, he is the viable candidate I've been waiting for and eagerly anticipating for my entire adult life. But I feel constantly betrayed by Barack Obama. I am consistently disappointed in Barack Obama. I am often offended by the words and actions of Barack Obama.

The Looming Power of FISA
He is a constitutional scholar who refused to pursue the impeachment of George W. Bush and Dick Cheney, despite their numerous and well-known crimes and misdemeanors, and he voted for the renewal of the unconstitutional Protect American Act (which he voted against last year), thereby compromising FISA legislation, supporting warrantless eavesdropping and spying, and approving retroactive immunity for companies that willfully broke the law and curtailed the civil liberties and right to privacy that are enshrined in the founding document of our nation. There seems to be no real explanation for Obama's reversal on this, especially after his claim in February that he whole-heartedly supports the "fight against retroactive immunity for the telecommunications industry," continuing, "Secrecy and special interests must not trump accountability. We must show our citizens -- and set an example to the world -- that laws cannot be ignored when it is inconvenient. Because in America –- no one is above the law." And then he voted to put phone companies above the law and ignored constitutional law when it was convenient for his campaign.

Foreign Policy without Legality or Humanity
Barack Obama not only wants to increase military spending, but also wishes to expand the Army by 65,000 soldiers and the Marine Corps by 27,000. Time and again, he and his running-mate Joe Biden have vowed to "hunt down and kill" Osama bin Laden. Kill. Elected officials running for the highest post in the land, if not the world, and they are threatening to kill someone? Isn't this country supposed to be the "peacekeeper," laughable though that concept may be considering this nation's actual history? Isn't our country built on laws? How does extrajudicial murder and revenge killing become military policy? How about promising the American people to bring bin Laden to justice? How about renewing our trust in the power of the courts, domestic and international, rather than promoting foreign policy based on vigilantism?

He promises to "end the war [sic] in Iraq" but vows to leave at least 50,000 US occupation forces and the largest embassy/fort in the world in place in order to fight residual terrorism in the country. The troops removed from Iraq will be redeployed in Afghanistan in order to ensure many more civilian casualties and the growth of an even more justifiably anti-imperial resistance to counter the enhanced American hegemonic overtures. Obama has threatened to carry out more military strikes within the borders of Pakistan, despite this being an unquestionable breach of international law, in an effort to further promote American exceptionalism when it comes to, well, everything. Not only has the Bush administration already taken cues from Obama's suggestion that "actionable intelligence" justifies the bombing of a sovereign country , but it is clear that the American people believe that the subsequent murder of innocent people by battery-operated slaughter drones to be, while perhaps regrettable, both unavoidable and easily forgivable. We have heard nothing from Obama regarding the recent US raid in Syrian territory, which blithely violated international law and deliberately targeted civilians. This attack deliberately tested the newly expanded tenets of the already illegal Bush Doctrine, as Defense Secretary Robert Gates outlined yesterday. At this point, the United States reserves the "right" not only to unilaterally attack any state or group that it believes is a threat or is supporting a potentially threatening organization, borders, proof, and rule of law be damned, but has also ominously argued that Washington should expand the doctrine of pre-emptive war to include possible nuclear strikes. Preemptive nuclear war! Remember, Robert Gates may even be asked to remain as Defense Secretary in an Obama cabinet.

Joe Biden, meanwhile, has proven himself to know little about foreign policy, during the VP debate with Sarah Palin in early October. Despite that being his apparent strength and area of expertise, Biden, a proponent of the Iraq War, said, "With regard to Iraq, I gave the president the power [in the October 2002 Iraq War Resolution]. I voted for the power because he said he needed it not to go to war but to keep the United States, the UN in line, to keep sanctions on Iraq and not let them be lifted." Foreign policy expert Stephen Zunes tells us,

This was perhaps the most seriously misleading statement of the entire debate.

Palin correctly countered with the fact that "it was a war resolution." Indeed, the resolution supported by Biden explicitly stated that "the president is authorized to use the Armed Forces of the United States as he determines to be necessary and appropriate." Biden certainly knew that.

It's also hard to imagine that Biden actually believed Bush's claim that it was necessary to "keep sanctions on Iraq and not let them be lifted." There was absolutely no serious effort in the UN or anywhere else at that time to lift any sanctions against Iraq in a manner that could have conceivably aided Iraq's ability to make war, develop "weapons of mass destruction," or in any other way strengthen Saddam Hussein's regime.

It's particularly disturbing that a man who may well be the next vice president seems to think that the United States has the right to try to "to keep the UN in line." The United States is legally bound - by a signed and ratified international treaty pursuant to Article VI of the U.S. Constitution - to provisions of the UN Charter. And the charter prohibits wars of aggression, such as the U.S. invasion of Iraq. The UN's job is to keep nation-states in line regarding international law, which the Iraq War - made possible in part through Biden's vote in support its authorization - was one of the most serious and blatant violations since the world body's establishment in 1945.

In any case, at the time of the Iraq War resolution, the UN had for well over a decade imposed the most comprehensive disarmament regime in history and had already successfully disarmed Iraq of its biological and chemical weapons; its biological, chemical and nuclear weapons programs; and its long-range delivery systems. Furthermore, at the time of the resolution and as a result of pressure from the UN, Iraq had already agreed to the return of UN inspectors under strict modalities guaranteeing unfettered access to confirm Iraq's disarmament. As a result, Biden's belief that the United States had to "keep the UN in line" is indicative of his contempt for the UN Charter and the post-World War II international legal order, thereby raising serious questions regarding Obama's judgment in choosing him as his running mate.

Additionally, Biden opposes democratic elections in Middle Eastern countries (namely the popular and completely legal West Bank election of Hamas), when the results can not be pre-determined to be pro-US, a dangerous position for an elected official to have as it attempts to rob people of their legitimate voice. He also believes that Hezbollah was kicked out of Lebanon by the US and France, prior to the Israeli attack in 2006, claiming that he and Obama urged NATO action to fill the power vacuum. This is not true, not a single word of it, nor is Biden's claim that Hezbollah and Hamas are proxies of Iran; both parties, despite receiving financial support from the Islamic Republic, follow their own agenda. Biden has said, "I've forgotten more about foreign policy than most of my colleagues know," and I'm certainly inclined to agree.

MASTURDEBATION!
All the Candidates Agree: Country First
(...but which country?)

"I'm so encouraged to know that we both love Israel, and I think that is a good thing to get to agree on."
- Sarah Palin, to Joe Biden 10.02.08


From watching both the Presidential and Vice Presidential debates and campaigns, it is clear that pledging undying and unwavering fealty to the State of Israel is par for the course for any major candidate running for office in the United States. But to go to such lengths in order to fawn and drool and proclaim "love" for another country, especially one that was created unjustly by imperial will, Western guilt, terrorism, displacement, land theft, and ethnic cleansing is downright creepy and inexcusable. Denying the rights and self-determination of Palestinians and refusing to acknowledge that occupation encourages resistance appears to be a surefire way to get votes in the Jewish American community. Barack Obama, with his scary foreign-sounding name (personally, I think a name like David Ben-Gurion is as scary as you can get) and his VP pick, the self-proclaimed Zionist Joe Biden, have worked very hard over the course of their campaign to espouse as much pro-Israel, anti-Palestinian rhetoric as they can muster.

Also, these days, commitment to Israel's "security" apparently means planning an unprovoked attack on Iran, a country which has threatened no military action against any other country in centuries. The term "second Holocaust" has been flying around more often than "spread the wealth around," "domestic terrorist," "reform," and is a close third behind "my friends," and "maverick." It seems that the entire country, as evidenced by the Obama's recent New York Times endorsement, has succumbed to the rampant lies that Iran is working on nuclear weaponry with the explicit intention to destroy the Israeli people. Clearly, constant repetition and propaganda yields results. Not only does American foreign policy, as dictated by Secretary Gates, enable and allow for illegal attacks on another country, potentially with nuclear weapons, but Obama's own troubling rhetoric seems aimed at beginning a war against Iran. Obama has constantly stated that he believes that, despite Iran having zero nuclear weapons or intention to attack any other country, "there is no greater threat to Israel – or to the peace and stability of the region – than Iran," continuing to claim without any proof that Iran "supports violent extremists," wrongly repeats that President Ahmadinejad "threatens to wipe Israel off the map," and stating that "the danger from Iran is grave, it is real, and my goal will be to eliminate this threat." As a quick refresher: Israel has hundreds of nuclear weapons, the full military and financial support of the most powerful nation on Earth, and has consistently, in its six decade history, threatened and attacked its neighbors and denied human and civil rights of an occupied native population and many of its own citizens.

The stage is already set, the foundation laid by the Bush administration and the presidential debate talking points, for the invasion of more Middle Eastern countries. And Barack Obama is doing nothing to curb the militarism and threats of this country. In fact, by all accounts, he is eager to march into new invasions and new occupations with deadlier weapons, fewer allies, and weaker rationale than we've had over the past eight years. And that's saying a lot.

War More Years, War More Years!
Despite the surprising, and welcome, shelving of House Con.Res. 362, a recent OpEd in the Washington Post, co-written by two conservative ex-senators, one Democrat and one Republican, suggests the United States immediately prepare to launch "a devastating strike on Iran's nuclear and military infrastructure" in order to prevent, by any and all means necessary, Iran from obtaining or being able to rapidly assemble a nuclear weapon. Setting aside the unequivocal findings of the NIE and IAEA which have concluded that Iran's nuclear program is not only wholly legal (as they are a signatory to the NPT, something which can't be said about such nuclear weapon stockpilers such as Israel, India, and Pakistan) but also that the program is for well-needed peaceful, civilian use, rather than for weaponry or bombs. In fact, not only has the Supreme Leader of Iran, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, declared that "Iran is no threat to anyone," but has also said that "using nuclear weapons is against Islamic rules. We will not impose the costs of building and maintenance of nuclear weapons on our people. Our explosive source is the power of our faith." Meanwhile, the new OpEd, as well as the oft-repeated bellicose rhetoric of US officials, generals, and Congressmen, blatantly threatens Iran with financial blockades and military attacks, stating that "an initial air campaign would probably last up to several weeks and would require vigilance for years to come."

So what does all this have to do with Obama? Well, the OpEd was written by Chuck Robb and Dan Coats and used, as the basis of their argument, a new report authored by war-mongering ideologues from the Bipartisan Policy Center - apparently attacking another Middle Eastern nation is something politicians of all stripes can agree on. Rob and Coats were also advised by an eleven member panel which included - here's the important part - Barack Obama's Middle East advisor Dennis Ross. Ross, an AIPAC loyalist and supporter of the invasion of Iraq, has had a profound influence on Obama's foreign policy (he co-authored the candidate's infamous AIPAC speech back in June) and has, more recently, been traveling around Florida, shul by shul, to promote Obama to worried Zionists. Speaking with the Israeli newspaper Ha'aretz in October, Ross, who co-founded the AIPAC-sponsored Washington Institute for Near East Policy and is currently the chairman of a new Jerusalem-based think tank, the Jewish People Policy Planning Institute which is funded and founded by the Jewish Agency, reassured tentative readers with these comforting words:

Preventing Iran from going nuclear is a very high priority for him [Obama], not only because it's such a threat to Israel, but because it's such a threat to the United States.

On the question of Israel, I talk about what I saw during his trip to Israel, how I saw his understanding of the relationship with Israel - he would describe it as a commitment of the head and heart. He looks at Israel and sees us as being two countries with common values [subjugation of a native population, land theft, occupation, segregation, disenfranchisement, and extrajudicial killings? - LB]. But he also looks at Israel and sees that whatever threatens Israel also happens to threaten the United States. So we have a [common] interest, because we end up facing the same threats.

If Barack Obama is such a transformative figure, such a beacon of hope and change, why is he getting foreign policy advice from a hawkish Zionist who has held prominent roles in the Reagan, Bush Sr., and Clinton administrations? Ross, along with such visionaries as Alan Keyes, Scooter Libby, and Paul Wolfowitz, helped define and carry out Reagan's foreign policy goals. This is not some silly attempt to link Obama with nefarious cronies whom the media dubs dangerous - no, no, this is a real connection, an advisor to the campaign and someone who will very likely hold a high-level position in the Obama administration. If this is the kind of person Barack Obama is getting his information and advice from, then what are we really in for over the next four years? By the same token, why would cross-party endorsements from the likes of Christopher Buckley and Christopher Hitchens, let alone one from Colin Powell, whose egregious lies did much to strengthen support for the illegal US invasion of Iraq, be tauted as a positive by Obama's campaign? To me, these connections are far more dubious than William Ayers, Jeremiah Wright, and Rashid Khalidi, three people who strive passionately for social justice.

Astoundingly, or perhaps obviously, I would support Barack Obama if what his detractors were saying about him were actually true; that is, if he were an Arab-sympathizer, Palestinian rights-activist, UN-loving, peacenik socialist, diplomacy-whore citizen of the world, with close ties to the Weather Underground and the Electronic Intifada, whose election foretells the "death of Israel" (politically, not violently) and the end of American hegemony. But he's not. Not even close. He's a left-leaning centrist, at best, with many neo-liberal economic, imperialist and exceptionalist ideals. He's an all-star panderer who has no qualms about abandoning long-time friends at the behest of a rabid media and opposition propaganda.

Even running-mate Joe Biden has been clear that a President Obama wouldn't be some peace-seeking, progressive pansy, going so far as anticipating a new 9/11, "an international crisis, a generated crisis, to test the mettle of this guy" within the first six months of his inauguration. "I can give you at least four or five scenarios from where it might originate," Biden continued, mentioning Russia and Middle Eastern countries as possible culprits. "We're gonna need you to use your influence, your influence within the community, to stand with him. Because it's not gonna be apparent initially, it's not gonna be apparent that we're right.” Alexander Cockburn of Counterpunch wonders, "What exactly is Biden hinting at in that last sentence? From the context of that whole paragraph it’s clear enough to me he’s suggesting that despite hopes that post-Bush/Cheney America might backpeddle from hasty military confrontations, President Obama will stand tall and lose no time in going eyeball to eyeball with those who would test his resolve....So don’t write off that attack on Iran quite yet. On Iran Obama is more hawkish than McCain; on Afghanistan and Pakistan too."

Also, let's not forget that Obama was quoted as telling Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert that he is eager to meet with Iranian diplomats in order to lay down the law and issue ultimatums. "If after that, they still show no willingness to change their nuclear policy, then any action against them would be legitimate," Obama said.

Whoopty-doo.

Joe The Plumber vs. Barack The President
So far, the strongest argument for voting for Obama on Tuesday has been seeing video clips of McCain/Palin faithfuls, frothing at mouth in their support of the Keating Five war criminal and the moose-killing Creationist, spewing ignorance and racism with every word. Yes, there is a clear distinction between the two major party candidates; one is worse than the other. One of these two guys will win the election. One of these guys will be the next president of the United States. But does that mean I can't rather one of these guys win and vote against both of them?

Then again, is it disingenuous for me to sit on the edge of my seat, watching the returns with bated breath and begging the people of this country to bestow the world with an Obama victory, without having cast a vote for him that day?

But wait, what's more disingenuous: Voting for someone I agree with most (if not all) of the time, who opposes the worst in this troubled nation of ours, or voting for someone whom I disagree with much of the time and who does not represent substantive change for this nation, but is merely a "better" choice than the worst this country has to offer, embodied in both John McCain and Sarah Palin? Look, I want to be surprised. I want to be wrong about what I fear will happen. I hope all my friends are right about Obama and that things in this country and the world will change (for the better). Maybe the best I can hope for is to be convinced by four years of potentially better leadership that I should vote for Obama's reelection in 2012.

I once wrote, "I just want to be able to go to sleep knowing that I did not support someone whom I don't support." So what should I do? Vote for the symbol? Vote for what I actually believe in? Maybe I should take a cue from Frederick Douglass, who wrote,

I prefer to be true to myself, even at the hazard of incurring the ridicule of others, rather than to be false, and to incur my own abhorrence.

Thanks Mr. Douglass, I think I know what to do.

*****