ISRAEL’S CURRENT HEAD OF STATE IS AN OBNOXIOUS LOUDMOUTH JEWISH SUPREMACIST (IS THERE A NEW “NEW ANTI-SEMITISM”? PART 10)

Norman G. Finkelstein

Although it might not be the only epitome of human suffering in the contemporary world, Palestine surely qualifies as a “worthy” candidate.

The historical record shows that Israel’s rights have not been prejudiced but in fact privileged by the international community. It has been not the victim but thebeneficiary of a global double standard. Therefore, the thesis that a primal hatred of Jews accounts for its current pariah status cannot be sustained. Still, hasn’t Israel been unfairly targeted? Many more innocents (it is said) have been killed by Arabs in Syria and Darfur, while Tibetans, Kashmiris, and Kurds have also suffered under the incubus of foreign occupations. Nonetheless, public opinion fixates on Israel’s sins. How else to account for this discrepancy except anti-Semitism? But, although South Africa also bemoaned its pariah status, and in some technical sense it perhaps was unfairly singled out, it would have been ludicrous to argue that anti-White-ism figured as a corrupting factor in the international community’s moral calculus. The system of apartheid incarnated an essence so flagrantly antithetical and repugnant to the epochal zeitgeist, that the expostulations of its adherents fell—Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher excepting—on deaf ears.

Precisely why a particular local struggle metamorphoses into an international cause célèbre is not subject to mathematical demonstration. How does one prove that one people’s suffering is the worst? But surely the Palestine struggle possesses sufficient appalling features in its own right such that anti-Semitism need not be dragged in as a critical, let alone the overarching, explanatory factor. If you eliminate the “terrorism” background noise, it’s hard to come up with a more pristine instance of injustice. “What crime did Palestinians commit,” my late mother (who knew something about human suffering) once rhetorically asked, “except to be born in Palestine?”[1] The longevity of the conflict puts it in an “elite” class: if its inception is dated from the Balfour Declaration, nearly a century has elapsed; from the Nakba, seven decades; from the West Bank/Gaza occupation, still, five decades. Its various phases and facets embrace the gamut of human misery: ethnic cleansing, foreign occupation, and siege; massacre, torture, and humiliation. Its inequity endows the conflict with a biblical resonance: is it not David versus Goliath when a tiny battered people does battle with the regional superpower backed by the global superpower? The sheer cruelty and heartlessness bewilders and boggles: in the past decade, Israel has unleashed the full force of its high-tech killing machine on the “giant open-air prison in Gaza” (British Prime Minister David Cameron) not less than eight times: “Operation Rainbow” (2004), “Operation Days of Penitence” (2004), “Operation Summer Rains” (2006), “Operation Autumn Clouds” (2006), “Operation Hot Winter” (2008), “Operation Cast Lead” (2008-9), “Operation Pillar of Defense” (2012), “Operation Protective Edge” (2014). The incommensurability of the suffering makes mockery of affectations of “balance”: during Israel’s last “operation” in Gaza, 550 Palestinian children were killed while one Israeli child was killed, 19,000 Gazan homes were destroyed while one Israeli home was destroyed.

Although it might not be the only epitome of human suffering in the contemporary world, Palestine surely qualifies as a “worthy” candidate. What is more, whereas so much of the world yearns to “Give peace a chance,” Israel conspicuously yearns to “Give war a chance, and another chance, and another chance” (is there a day that goes by without Israel contemplating yet another attack on Gaza, Lebanon, Iran?); Israel flouts the global consensus supporting a two-state solution by appropriating and incorporating the last remnants of Palestine; Israel’s current head of state is an obnoxious loudmouth Jewish supremacist, while the Israeli people “shoot and cry,” “love themselves to death and pity themselves ad nauseam” (Gideon Levy)[2]—don’t Israel’s singular warmongering, brazenness and self-righteous arrogance themselves accentuate the conflict’s image as one of pure good versus pure evil?

If Palestine has become the emblematic cause of our time, it’s not because of a new “New Anti-Semitism,” although no doubt some anti-Semites have infiltrated its ranks. It’s because the martyrdom of Palestine and the meanness of Israel are so wrong.

_________________________________________

[1]My late mother was a survivor of the Warsaw Ghetto, Maidanek concentration camp, and two slave labor camps. Every other member of her family was exterminated.

[2] Gideon Levy, “Yair Lapid, Israel’s New Propaganda Minister,” Haaretz (22 February 2015).  

https://www.byline.com/project/13/article/761

Knesset rejects bill for equality for all citizens

The Knesset yesterday voted against a draft bill proposed by MK Jamal Zahalka of the Joint Arab List, which stipulates the inclusion of an equality clause in Israel’s Basic Law: Human Dignity and Liberty.

The majority of the Likud bloc, the Haredi parties and Kulanu party voted against the proposal. They were joined by Yesh Atid, led by Yair Lapid. However, the Joint List, Meretz and the Labour parties all supported the bill.

Also read:

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• Arab anger after Netanyahu threatens to stop call to prayer
• Israeli court rejects Palestinian objection to house demolitions
• Israeli court rejects Arab MKs’ petition to indict arsonist settlers
• Israel court says book on killing non-Jews not incitement

During his proposal, Zahalka said: “All constitutions in modern countries begin with stressing the principle of equality amongst their citizens. Even undemocratic countries adopt this principle legally, considering it a cornerstone for any modern political system, including democracy, which seems impossible and meaningless without equality.”

Zahalka also said that equality is a principle in itself and is not based on any other principles, rather, other human rights values are derived from it. He described the absence of equality in the state’s Basic Law as “a serious absence, as it forces the judiciary, amongst others, to explain why the word equality is missing from the basic laws, which are in place of the constitution.”

He added that Judge Aharon Barack explained the current law as human dignity that must also include the principle of equality. This is why we must include the word equality in a clear manner in the Basic Law.

“Anyone voting against the law is voting against equality, and does not have the right to promote democracy or say they are against discrimination and racism. The entire world adopts the principle of equality in their laws, and this is the only country that does not embrace equality in its laws. This is clear proof of the state’s nature,” Zahalka stressed.

https://www.middleeastmonitor.com/news/middle-east/23610-knesset-rejects-bill-for-equality-for-all-citizens

Turkey Bars Ambulances From Rescuing Trapped Kurds in Basement

At Least 20 Wounded Kurds Trapped in Cellar

by Jason Ditz,

The humanitarian nightmare of Turkey’s military curfew against Kurdish towns in the southeast is becoming increasingly public today, with focus growing on a group of wounded Kurdish civilians trapped in a cellar in Cizre for over a week.

There were 28 originally, though at least six have died of their wounds. The rest are still trapped in close quarters, unable to emerge without being immediately attacked by the Turkish military, and with no hope of rescue by ambulances.

Ambulances were keen to go in and rescue the wounded, but they were forbidden by Turkey’s high court, which insisted they couldn’t prove the wounded don’t have weapons. Despite the court making the ban on ambulances very public, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan insisted the report that ambulances couldn’t come in were “lies,” and accusing the Kurds of making up their injuries.

Cizre has been under curfew for six weeks, cut off from all basic utilities, and the target of military snipers if they leave their homes. Human rights groups have condemned the use of open-ended 24-hour curfews in populated areas, and the military’s repeated attacks on civilians trying to flee those areas.

Officially, the Turkish government has labeled everyone killed a “terrorist,” though rights groups have suggested several hundred civilians have been slain across the region.

http://news.antiwar.com/2016/01/29/turkey-bars-ambulances-from-rescuing-trapped-kurds-in-basement/

Uninvited to Talks, Syrian Kurds Leave Geneva

Turkey Blocks Kurdish Participation

by Jason Ditz,

A negotiation team from the Kurdish PYD, the political wing of the powerful YPG militia, has departed Switzerland today after being told they would not be allowed to participate in the UN peace talks on Syria, which began Friday.

Though they are one of the largest factions in the Syrian Civil War, and hold almost the entire Hasakeh Province, the PYD/YPGwere not invited to the talks, on the demand of Turkey, who insists they are terrorists. Both Russia and the US had sought their inclusion, with Russia suggesting they might be able to participate later even if they didn’t get in the first day.

PYD co-president Saleh Muslimwas among the delegation sent to Geneva, and while the group was carefully sequestered from the pro-Saudi “Higher Negotiations Committee” it was hoped they might find a spot at the table, given how few factions managed to show up in the first place.

Turkey’s refusal to allow any Kurds at the talks, along with resistance from other rebel factions, who insist the Kurds’ focus on fighting ISIS means they aren’t proper rebels, ultimately kept them out of the talks, which means the first round will be between the Syrian government and a coalition representing a handful of mostly trivial rebel factions.

http://news.antiwar.com/2016/01/30/uninvited-to-talks-syrian-kurds-leave-geneva/

Nonviolent Resistance in the South Hebron Hills

By Cassandra Dixon

  The worst worries of a child’s school day should be homework. Maybe a lost book, or an argument with a friend. No child’s walk to school should routinely involve armed soldiers and fear of sometimes being chased and assaulted by angry adults. But for the Palestinian children who live with their families in the small rural villages that make up the South Hebron Hills, this is how the school day begins. Illegal settlements and outposts isolate and separate their villages and soldiers are a constant in their lives.

Once, the trip from the tiny hamlet of Tuba to the school in the village of Tuwani was a calm and beautiful walk along a quiet road connecting the two villages. During the l980s Israeli settlers built a settlement on privately owned Palestinian land, which had been used to graze sheep and goats. Following construction of the settlement, the settlers established an illegal outpost. Now, industrial chicken barns sit astride the road that once served children walking to school, farmers taking livestock to town, and families traveling to Tuwani, or the larger town of Yatta for health care, shopping, and higher education.

Between the settlement and the outpost, what remains of the road is closed to Palestinians. With one exception, – children walk behind an Israeli military jeep to reach their school. Their parents are not allowed to walk with them.

The twenty or so children who make this trip start their school day in an unprotected field, anxiously waiting for the Israeli soldiers who will oversee their walk to school. Villagers had built shelters in which the children could await the soldiers, but Israeli authorities have dismantled every shelter. If it is raining, the children get soaked. Some days the soldiers are the same soldiers who chased or arrested shepherds the day before – shepherds who may be the brothers or fathers of these children. Some days the soldiers are late, leaving the group of children waiting, vulnerable to attack and within easy reach of the outpost. Some days the military escort does not arrive at all, and the children make the trip to school with international volunteers along a longer path, which also lies alongside the settlement.

About 1,000 people live in the neighboring villages, an estimated half of whom are children. Nevertheless, because the villages lie inside of Israeli Firing Zone 918, the military uses the land for military training.

Amazingly, despite all of this, it is almost unheard of for children to miss a day of school. Parents are determined that their children will be educated. When I began volunteering in Tuwani, the school reached only to third grade. Now thanks to the community’s determination to provide their children with education, students can complete high school in the village, and although facing a continued threat of demolition by Israeli military bulldozers, villagers have built and staffed primary schools for children who live in 8 nearby villages.

This is what nonviolent resistance to military occupation looks like.

I’m grateful that I can spend a portion of this year in Palestine. For many years children in these villages have taught me about nonviolence. Sometimes, the presence of international human rights workers holding cameras has some small positive effect on their days.

U.S. people bear some responsibility for the interruption of their childhoods. The U. S. subsidizes about 25% of Israel’s military budget, at a cost to U.S. taxpayers conservatively estimated at $3.1 billion a year.

I’m working with the Italian organization Operation Dove.

They support Palestinians who resist the Israeli occupation, standing with families in their commitment to remain on their land. This includes accompanying school children and farm families as they walk to school, graze their animals and tend their crops. Operation Dove helps document the harassment, intimidation, arrests, detentions, home demolitions, checkpoints, road closures, military training exercises, and settler attacks. Villagers also report to Operation Dove when they endure theft and when their crops and property are destroyed.

Protective presence provided by activists is not a large-scale solution to the violence that intrudes into childrens’ lives in Palestine. But many years of visits with these families persuades me that it’s important and necessary to support and participate in the villagers’ nonviolent efforts. Families that confront militarism and occupation help us move beyond our addiction to militarism and violence.

The children I met early on are grown now. Some have gone on to college, and some have families of their own. These young people have every reason to be angry. Their childhoods included fear, intimidation, demolitions, arrests and isolation. But they have also grown up witnessing their community’s steadfast commitment to nonviolently resist injustice. Their families have supported them well, including them in the community’s struggle for dignity. Against all odds they are growing up with humor and tenacity instead of anger and bitterness. They are living proof to the rest of us that love wins.

To read more about Operation Dove’s work in the South Hebron Hills, visithttp://www.operazionecolomba.it/togetherattuwani

Photo Credit: Cassandra Dixon: “This little girl was injured by two masked settlers who attacked her with stones as she gathered herbs with a friend on the path between Tuba and Tuwani. She and her siblings make the same trip on foot each school day. She is an amazingly smart and tough young girl – insistent that the many odd volunteers that pass through her life should learn her name and visit her family’s home. She needed four stitches in a head wound after the attack.”

http://www.counterpunch.org/2016/01/29/nonviolent-resistance-in-the-south-hebron-hills/

Bernie in Iowa: 2008 Redux?

by JIM GOODMAN

The 2016 presidential race, at least on the Democratic side, gives one a strong feeling of deja vu. 2008 with different faces, but very similar sentiments.

“I never caucused before,” said Christa Cronk, “I like Hillary and I’d love to see a female in the White House, but I think she comes from the same old establishment.” (2008)

“Yet many younger women who gathered did not share Ms. Dunham’s visceral enthusiasm for Mrs. Clinton, saying that for most of their lives she has been a familiar fixture of establishment politics rather than an exciting new voice or an agent of change.” (2016)

Clinton now is like Clinton then and while she and President Obama had their differences on the 2008 campaign trail, they were and still are, both, clearly centrist Democrats.

She has stated “I take a backseat to no one when you look at my record of standing up and fighting for progressive values”, but her claim to being a progressive is pretty suspect.

On trade, in 2012 Clinton stated “This TPP (Trans Pacific Partnership) sets the gold standard in trade agreements to open free, transparent, fair trade, the kind of environment that has the rule of law and a level playing field”. Then during the first debate in 2015 she said she no longer supported TPP.

While candidates can certainly change their minds, her support as Secretary of State suddenly changing to opposition as a presidential candidate does seem to point out that she is only following the trend of growing negative public sentiment towards TPP so she can appear to be a “champion of the common folk”.

On Wall Street, well, considering her lavish speaking fees and her opposition to any meaningful banking regulation (remember President Bill Clinton effectively de-regulated the banks when he got rid of the Glass-Steagall act in 1999), she is hardly in a position to claim a progressive stand on reigning in the excesses of Wall Street. Has she been purchased by Wall Street? I doubt it, but by Wall Street standards the rental rates are minimal.

On Health-care, single payer is, in her book, “off the table”. She supports the Affordable Care Act, (a very weak first step towards universal coverage), which guaranteed the health insurance industry and big pharma not just a slice of the existing pie, but an even bigger pie paid for by the tax payers.

Her list goes on—, she is no progressive, but has managed to convince many that she is..

As Conor Lynch at Salon noted “Sanders was a true progressive when progressivism was out of style back in the ‘90s, while Clinton has become increasingly progressive as more Americans have shifted to the left”.

On trade, Sanders has opposed free trade consistently because it is not “fair trade” meaning it is not fair to the people, workers, or the environment. It does, as he notes, work really well for corporations and the 1%.

On Wall Street, his tag line, “ If banks are too big to fail, they are too big to exist”. No Wall Street speaking fees, no super pacs and his comment, “The CEOs of large multinationals may like Hillary. They ain’t going to like me,” “And Wall Street is going to like me even less”. His proposal for a financial transaction tax— no they won’t like that a bit.

On health-care, Sanders’ idea, like the rest of the industrialized world, universal single payer, health-care as a right, not a privilege, “Medicare for all”.

His list goes on, he is not perfect, no one is, perhaps that is why he needs and asks for a revolution, he knows change will not happen without the involvement of the people.

Yes the 2008 deja vu is about Hillary Clinton, (she has changed little unless it was politically expedient to do so), but also, Obama and Sanders as candidates . Obama’s Progressive ideals were part of the reason he was elected. Of course, once in the White House, most of those fell by the wayside.

Would Sanders turn out to be a centrist or worse while masquerading as a Progressive?

His history would say no, a 50 year history of standing up for civil and minority rights, advocating Palestinian statehood and actuallymarching with striking workers, while Obama only talked about “putting on comfortable shoes and walking the picket line.”

I met Bernie Sanders early in his Congressional career. He traveled to Wisconsin to sit on a panel discussing fair farm prices and a food system determined by farmers and consumers, the environment and other social justice issues, he has a history and I think he will stick by it.

He is challenging the entire Democratic Party establishment, which is a good thing and long overdue.

Jim Goodman is a dairy farmer from Wonewoc, Wisconsin.

http://www.counterpunch.org/2016/01/29/bernie-in-iowa-2008-redux/

The urban imagination

• AMRITA SHAH

The aesthetic demands of a global makeover of our cities is throwing up new, more minute, forms of displacement.

Homeless people have been pitching tents in Manchester in the U.K. this winter. And more than 150 students at University College London face eviction because they cannot afford the soaring cost of rent. Homelessness and eviction in one of the most advanced societies in the world? And what does this have to do with India? Plenty, I would suggest, but before making the connection, let me offer a little background.

Urbanisation, driven by the motto that ‘cities are the engines of growth’, has been a key tenet of India’s structural reforms. Since 1993, policymakers have pushed an aggressive urban upgradation and expansion programme through schemes such as the Jawaharlal Nehru National Urban Renewal Mission and the recently launched Smart Cities Mission and Atal Mission for Rejuvenation and Urban Transformation; by 2030, if not earlier, over 40 per cent of India will be urban.

There is a political consensus on the subject, media coverage is generally euphoric, and public opposition, when it occurs, is sporadic and project-specific — against the Bus Rapid Transit System in Delhi, against Mumbai’s proposed coastal road, or against a smart city in Dehradun — rather than conceptual. Indeed, the discussion around India’s accelerated urbanisation, particularly in the mainstream media, has been not about whether India should rapidly urbanise but how best to go about it: what legislative amendments are required, how to allocate resources, which transport system is best, which cities to demarcate for upgradation, and so on and so forth.

What is a city?

If this discourse is in keeping with the long-held view of the city as a source of material progress and technological advancement (the latter most recently enshrined in the concept of the smart city), others highlight different, but equally familiar, associations with the city. In works of art, films, literary works, in the spurt of heritage walks and in the colourful events supplements of newspapers, one experiences the city as not only a repository of our pathologies, but also an escape, as Ambedkar pointed out, from traditional oppressions; a site for emancipatory struggles such as the independence and labour movements, cosmopolitan encounters, and creativity. While a preponderance of these approaches — logistical, celebratory and nostalgic — suggests a continuity with the past, urban scholars claim otherwise.

“Amongst the many implications of the phenomenon, the one that seems to have caused perturbation worldwide is the impact on living costs. ”

Saskia Sassen, who wrote the perceptive The Global Cityin 1991, says: “I look at global cities today and find they are no longer the cities of the organised working class or of that older notion of a bourgeoisie that finds in the city the place for its self-representation and projection of its power (including its civilising power). Global cities are where that increasingly elusive, privatised, digitised category we call global capital hits the ground.”

In a world transformed by information technology and capital mobility, attracting global fixed capital investment in the form of corporate headquarters, production facilities and downtown skyscrapers, and circulating capital (as transportation, tourism and cultural events) through an international identity has become, as political scientist Darel E. Paul observes, ‘a nearly universal economic development strategy’. Earlier, the competition would have between nations but with privatisation, deregulation and growing decentralisation, cities have acquired greater significance.

The evidence is all around us in India. We see the galvanising force of the pursuit of a global identity in new towering office blocks, flyovers and public transportation systems, in the proliferation of cafes, nightclubs, boutiques, malls, convention centres and hotels, in the drive against slums and ageing buildings, in urban beautification projects and cultural festivals. The trend is pervasive, percolating from the metro to Tier II cities, small towns and even rural districts where one can see apartment blocks often built with the Non-Resident Indian in mind, sprouting next to paddy fields.

Amongst the many implications of the phenomenon, the one that seems to have caused perturbation worldwide is the impact on living costs. In 2013, the chairman of Goldman Sachs Asset Investment Wing sounded a warning bell when he pointed out how investors looking for a safe place to park their money had raised real estate prices in London disproportionately high. The escalation not only marked a break from the U.K. economy, but also led to the phenomenon of dark, empty houses in rich neighbourhoods at a time of an acute housing shortage.

“The phenomenon of urban gated communities, exclusive enclaves for the rich with their own security and essential supply systems, are now an integral part of cities everywhere. ”

Artists who once thrived in New York now believe that the city has closed itself to the young and the struggling and can only house those who have made it. The phenomenon of urban gated communities, exclusive enclaves for the rich with their own security and essential supply systems, are now an integral part of cities everywhere. The Guardian in a recent article on Punta del Este, a beachside city in Uruguay that has become a gated city for the uber-rich, described how the creation of menial jobs for the poor of the city had been accompanied by a steep hike in costs for basic food, clothing and transport.

Displacement

The new urban landscape is particularly hard on the poor, as displacement, a familiar theme in India’s developmental trajectory since the dislodging of tribals from their habitats for the erection of dams, is now played out for the building of glossy towers and beautification projects. But the aesthetic demands of a global makeover throws up new, more minute, forms of displacement. The disappearance of lakes and the replacement of trees — that might have provided sustenance to the poor — with decorative plants are growing trends in Indian cities. Internationally, there is the spread of ‘hostile architecture’ which includes “anti-homeless” spikes and the Camden bench — a sculpted grey concrete seat designed by a London borough in 2012 to discourage sleeping or skateboarding. Incidentally, a Maharashtra State Minister made news in the early 2000s by moving to replace park benches with one-seaters, though his stated intention was to discourage lovers rather than the homeless.

While citification has stirred much public anticipation, the privileging of the global in the new urban imagination needs to be reflected on in urbanising India. At a time when the issue of social justice has been thrown to the forefront, its potential for expanding inequality is of particular concern.

Reading list

The New Blackwell Companion to the City edited by Gary Bridge and Sophie Watson (2011)

The Global City: New York, London, Tokyo by Saskia Sassen (2001)

Spaces of Global Cultures: Architecture, Urbanism, Identity by Anthony D. King (2004)

Justice, Nature & the Geography of Difference by David Harvey (1996)

Inside the Transforming Urban Asia: Processes, Policies and Public Actions edited by Darshini Mahadevia (2008)

The Promise of the Metropolis: Bangalore’s Twentieth Century by Janaki Nair (2005)

Bombay and Mumbai: The City in Transition, edited by Sujata Patel and Jim Masselos (2003)

Globalisation and the Politics of Forgetting edited by Yong-Sook Lee and Brenda S.A. Yeoh (2005)

Entangled Urbanism: Slum, Gated Community, and Shopping Mall in Delhi and Gurgaon by Sanjay Srivastava (2014)

Capital: The Eruption of Delhi by Rana Dasgupta (2014)

(Amrita Shah is the author of Ahmedabad: A City in the World.)

http://www.thehindu.com/opinion/op-ed/urban-displacement-is-changing-the-way-we-define-cities/article8172565.ece