Israel lurches to the right: 'No Citizenship without Loyalty!’
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- Written by Neve Gordon Neve Gordon
- Published: 06 June 2010 06 June 2010
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In Israel, almost all of the protests against the navy’s assault on the relief flotilla took place in Palestinian space. Palestinian citizens in almost every major town and city, from Nazareth to Sachnin and from Arabe to Shfaram, demonstrated against the assault that left nine people dead and many more wounded. The one-day general strike called for by the Palestinian leadership within Israel was, for the most part, adhered to only by Arab citizens.{josquote}What is troubling about these pro-government students is not that they are pro-government, but the way they attack anyone who thinks differently from them, along with their total lack of self-criticism or restraint. If this is how students at Israel’s best universities respond, what can we expect from the rest of the population?{/josquote}
In Jewish space, by contrast, business continued as usual. Except for a demonstration in front of the Ministry of Defence in Tel Aviv, which brought together a few hundred activists, the only site where there was some sign of a grassroots protest against the raid was on Israeli university campuses. While numerically these protests were also insignificant – there were fewer than 2000 demonstrators from all the different campuses, out of a student body of more than 200,000 – they were extremely important both because they took place within Jewish space and because the protestors were Jews and Palestinians standing side by side.
Perhaps because of the widespread international condemnation of the attack on the flotilla, the Israeli police were relatively careful when handling these protests. Their caution is particularly striking when compared with the police reaction during the war on Gaza. Twelve students from the Technion and Haifa University were nonetheless arrested, and one at Ben-Gurion University was detained by undercover agents.
There was a visceral response to these campus protests, however, from pro-government students. Counter-demonstrations were immediately organised, bringing together much larger crowds that rallied around the flag. While demonstrations and counter-demonstrations are usually a sign of a healthy politics, in this case the pro-government demos revealed an extremely disturbing trend in Israeli society.
A group of opposition students from Ben-Gurion University prepared a big banner on the street near their off-campus apartment: ‘15 Dead. The Israeli government, as usual, has its reasons, and the Zionist majority, as usual, extends its support.’ Their neighbours spat on them and called them ‘cunts’, ‘whores’ and ‘traitors who love Arabs’ until the students fled.
The following morning these students and their friends rolled the same banner down from the administration building, initiating a third wave of protests on campus. Both those opposing and those supporting the Israeli government use Facebook to tell their friends about these spontaneous demonstrations, and so within minutes a couple of hundred students from both sides of the fray had gathered and were shouting chants in the middle of campus.
A Palestinian student with a Palestinian flag was shoved and had his flag torn from him by some of the pro-government protesters, who were chanting: ‘No citizenship without loyalty!’ In response, the Jewish and Palestinian oppositionists shouted: ‘No, no, it will not come, fascism will not come!’ and ‘Peace is not achieved on the bodies of those killed!’
At one point a Jewish provocateur, who is not a member of any group (and could even be a police agent), raised his hand in the air: ‘Heil Lieberman!’ The response of the pro-government students was immediate: ‘Death to the Arabs!’ Luckily the university security managed to create a wedge between the protesters, and in this way prevented the incident from becoming even more violent.
Pro-government students interviewed in the press said they were ’shocked to see faculty members, together with students from the left and Arab students shouting slogans against Israel’. Their classmates posted pictures of the protests on Facebook, asking likeminded students to ‘identify their classroom “friends”’.
A Facebook group was created to call for my resignation: by the end of the day more than 1000 people had joined. As well as hoping that I die and demanding that my family be stripped of our citizenship and exiled from Israel, members of this Facebook group offer more pragmatic suggestions, such as the need to concentrate efforts on getting rid of teaching assistants who are critical of the government, since it is more difficult to have me – as a tenured professor – fired.
What is troubling about these pro-government students is not that they are pro-government, but the way they attack anyone who thinks differently from them, along with their total lack of self-criticism or restraint. If this is how students at Israel’s best universities respond, what can we expect from the rest of the population?
You will have no protection
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- Written by Alice Walker, The Electronic Intifada, 4 June 2010 Alice Walker, The Electronic Intifada, 4 June 2010
- Published: 05 June 2010 05 June 2010
- Hits: 3060 3060
-- Medgar Evers to Civil Rights Activists in Mississippi, shortly before he was assassinated, 12 June, 1963
My heart is breaking; but I do not mind.
For one thing, as soon as I wrote those words I was able to weep. Which I had not been able to do since learning of the attack by armed Israeli commandos on defenseless peace activists carrying aid to Gaza who tried to fend them off using chairs and sticks. I am thankful to know what it means to be good; I know that the people of the Freedom Flotilla are/were in some cases, some of the best people on earth. They have not stood silently by and watched the destruction of others, brutally, sustained, without offering themselves, weaponless except for their bodies, to the situation. I am thankful to have a long history of knowing people like this from my earliest years, beginning in my student days of marches and demonstrations: for peace, for non-separation among peoples, for justice for Women, for People of Color, for Cubans, for Animals, for Indians, and for Her, the planet.
I am weeping for the truth of Medgar's statement; so brave and so true. I weep for him gunned down in his carport, not far from where I would eventually live in Mississippi, with a box of t-shirts in his arms that said: "Jim Crow Must Go." Though trained in the United States Military under racist treatment one cringes to imagine, he remained a peaceful soldier in the army of liberation to the end. I weep and will always weep, even through the widest smiles, for the beautiful young wife, Myrlie Evers, he left behind, herself still strong and focused on the truth of struggle; and for their children, who lost their father to a fate they could not possibly, at the time, understand. I don't think any of us could imagine during that particular phase of the struggle for justice, that we risked losing not just our lives, which we were prepared to give, but also our children, who we were not.
Nothing protected Medgar, nor will anything protect any of us; nothing but our love for ourselves and for others whom we recognize unfailingly as also ourselves. Nothing can protect us but our lives. How we have lived them; what battles, with love and compassion our only shield, we have engaged. And yet, the moment of realizing we are truly alone, that in the ultimate crisis of our existence our government is not there for us, is one of shock. Especially if we have had the illusion of a system behind us to which we truly belong. Thankfully I have never had opportunity to have this illusion. And so, every peaceful witnessing, every non-violent confrontation has been a pure offering. I do not regret this at all.
When I was in Cairo last December to support CODEPINK's efforts to carry aid into Gaza I was unfortunately ill with the flu and could not offer very much. I lay in bed in the hotel room and listened to other activists report on what was happening around the city as Egypt refused entry to Gaza to the 1,400 people who had come for the accompanying Freedom march. I heard many distressing things, but only one made me feel, not exactly envy, but something close; it was that the French activists had shown up, en masse, in front of their embassy and that their ambassador had come out to talk to them and to try to make them comfortable as they set up camp outside the building. This small gesture of compassion for his country's activists in a strange land touched me profoundly, as I was touched decades ago when someone in John Kennedy's White House (maybe the cook) sent out cups of hot coffee to our line of freezing student and teacher demonstrators as we tried, with our signs and slogans and
songs, to protect a vulnerable neighbor, Cuba.
Where have the Israelis put our friends? I thought about this all night. Those whom they assassinated on the ship and those they injured? Is "my" government capable of insisting on respect for their dead bodies? Can it demand that those who are injured but alive be treated with care? Not only with care, but the tenderness and honor they deserve? If it cannot do this, such a simple, decent thing, of what use is it to the protection and healing of the planet? I heard a spokesman for the United States opine at the United Nations (not an exact quote) that the Freedom Flotilla activists should have gone through other, more proper, channels, not been confrontational with their attempt to bring aid to the distressed. This is almost exactly what college administrators advised half a century ago when students were trying to bring down apartheid in the South and getting bullets, nooses, bombings and burnings for our efforts. I felt embarrassed (to the degree one can permit embarrassment by
another) to be even vaguely represented by this man: a useless voice from the far past. One had hoped.
The Israeli spin on the massacre: that the commandos were under attack by the peace activists and that the whole thing was like "a lynching" of the armed attackers, reminds me of a Redd Foxx joke. I loved Redd Foxx, for all his vulgarity. A wife caught her husband in bed with another woman, flagrant, in the act, skin to skin. The husband said, probably through pants of aroused sexual exertion: All right, go ahead and believe your lying eyes! It would be fun, were it not tragic, to compare the various ways the Israeli government and our media will attempt to blame the victims of this unconscionable attack for their own imprisonment, wounds and deaths.
So what to do? Rosa Parks sat down in the front of the bus. Martin Luther King followed her act of courage with many of his own, and using his ringing, compassionate voice he aroused the people of Montgomery, Alabama to commit to a sustained boycott of the bus company; a company that refused to allow people of color to sit in the front of the bus, even if it was empty. It is time for us, en masse, to show up in front of our conscience, and sit down in the front of the only bus we have: our very lives.
What would that look like, be like, today, in this situation between Palestine and Israel? This "impasse" that has dragged on for decades. This "conflict" that would have ended in a week if humanity as a whole had acted in defense of justice everywhere on the globe. Which maybe we are learning! It would look like the granddaughter of Rosa Parks, the grandson of Martin Luther King. It would look like spending our money only where we can spend our lives in peace and happiness; freely sharing whatever we have with our friends.
It would be to support boycott, divestment and sanctions (BDS) against Israel to End the Occupation of Gaza and the West Bank and by this effort begin to soothe the pain and attend the sorrows of a people wrongly treated for generations. This action would also remind Israel that we have seen it lose its way and have called to it, often with love, and we have not been heard. In fact, we have reached out to it only to encounter slander, insult and, too frequently, bodily harm.
Disengage, avoid, and withhold support from whatever abuses, degrades and humiliates humanity.
This we can do. We the people; who ultimately hold all the power. We the people, who must never forget to believe we can win.
We the people.
It has always been about us; as we watch governments come and go. It always will be.
Alice Walker is a poet, novelist, feminist and activist whose award-winning works have sold over ten million copies.
Gaza flotilla attack: Autopsies reveal intensity of Israeli military force
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- Written by Robert Booth, Harriet Sherwood in Gaza City and Justin Vela in Istanbul Robert Booth, Harriet Sherwood in Gaza City and Justin Vela in Istanbul
- Published: 04 June 2010 04 June 2010
- Hits: 3144 3144
• Victims found with up to six gunshot wounds
• Israel 'about to lose a friend' warns Turkey's US envoy
Nine Turkish men on the Mavi Marmara were shot 30
times, autopsies reveal
The nine victims
Cengiz Alquyz, 42
Four gunshot wounds: back of head, right side of face, back, left leg
Ibrahim Bilgen, 60
Four gunshot wounds: right chest, back, right hip, right temple
Cegdet Kiliclar, 38
One gunshot wound: middle of forehead
Furkan Dogan
Five gunshot wounds: nose, back, back of head, left leg, left ankle
Sahri Yaldiz
Four gunshot wounds: left chest, left leg, right leg twice
Aliheyder Bengi
Six gunshot wounds: left chest, belly, right arm, right leg, left hand twice
Cetin Topcuoglu
Three gunshot wounds: back of head, left side, right belly
Cengiz Songur
One gunshot wound: front of neck
Necdet Yildirim
Two gunshot wounds: right shoulder, left back
Read more: Gaza flotilla attack: Autopsies reveal intensity of Israeli military force
How Israeli propaganda shaped U.S. media coverage of the flotilla attack
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- Written by Glenn Greenwald Glenn Greenwald
- Published: 04 June 2010 04 June 2010
- Hits: 3153 3153
Israel has confiscated some of the most important material for the
investigation, namely the films, audio and photos taken by the
passengers [and] journalists on board and the Mavi Marmara’s security
cameras. Since yesterday, Israel has been editing these films and using
them for its own PR campaign. In other words, Israel has already
confiscated most of the evidence, held it from the world and tampered
with it. No court in the world would [trust] it to be the one examining
it. - Israeli Blogger
Read more on Salon.com
URGENT: Contact lost - 'Rachel Corrie' en route to Gaza
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- Written by Gaza Freedom Flotilla Gaza Freedom Flotilla
- Published: 04 June 2010 04 June 2010
- Hits: 3263 3263
Dear all,
Organisers of the flotilla have informed me that all communication has
been lost with the boat 'Rachel Corrie', en route to Gaza with 15(?)
passengers including Nobel Peace Prize winner Mairead Maguire, and
medical supplies. Spotting mechanism, Sat. phones and radio all out of
order/jammed since last night, apparently.
It is unclear where the boat is (probably about 200 miles from Gaza)
and in what direction she is heading. Israeli headlines (Haaretz,
YNet) aired identical items saying that 'the organisers' had decided
to turn back to Ireland but the organisers (from here) say t hey never
decided this or said this. There is a chance that Israeli forces could
take over the boat in complete media/radio silence under the cover of
this misinformation.
May I suggest that you forward this to others, and see if you can get
people to contact parliamentarians, government representatives, voice
concern about the passengers' safety, and ask them to contact their
representatives in Israel. Who knows, perhaps this might avert another
catastrophe.
Best
Miri
Miri Weingarten