So, let's begin... actually, let's just comment briefly on the Gaza situation, because this truly deserves a diary of its own, but a few words for now will suffice. from As'ad Abu Khalil, The Angry Arab;
Tuesday, May 15, 2007
Nobody should refer to the clashes in Gaza as a Palestinian "civil war." This is part of the war of Israel on the Palestinians--and Israeli (and US) weapons and funds are being used.
What we have is the unrelenting effort by Israel and the US to overturn the democraticly elected goverment of the Palestinains; they have been and are supplying Fatah with weapons, primarily through the gangs if Mr Dahlan, and now even Israel is openly joining in with airstrikes.
And let's not forget out faithful 'ally,' Hosni Mubarak
"However, [Mubarak] also proclaimed that Egypt is making great efforts to end the Hamas government and support Palestinian Authority Chairman Mahmoud Abbas. "With Hamas no way," he reportedly said."
Let's also not forget a recent statement by the once-convicted twice no so shy Elliot Abrams, on how the whole peace process is a big sham;
U.S. official: Peace effort aimed at lessening Arab, EU pressure
By Shmuel Rosner, Haaretz Correspondent
U.S. Deputy National Security Advisor Elliott Abrams on Thursday told a group of Jewish Republicans that the efforts the United States is now investing in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is aimed at lessening the pressure from Arabs and the Europeans, who weren't happy with the United States in its past approach.
Abrams was quoted by sources present at the meeting as saying Arab and European states want to see that there's at least an attempt or energy being exerted by the U.S. to move the peace process forward.
Abrams explained that the talks are sometimes not more than "process for the sake of process."
This was also commented on by Juan Cole
Deputy National Security Council adviser Elliott Abrams, a convicted perjurer who should not be holding high office, let slip recently that the Bush administration is not actually doing anything on the Arab-Israeli peace process, and any appearance that it is is just for show, to mollify the outraged Europeans and Middle Easterners (i.e. everyone in the world outside rightwing Zionists, whether Jewish or Christian). See also the evidence of US maneuvering to sink the elected Hamas government.
So, onto the next item, more information on the Bishara situation. I have received full permission to post in full an article by Yonatan Pollak, an Israeli and one of the most dedicated members of the non-violent resistance movement in Palestine.A member of Anarchists Against the Wall, I stood with him at many demonstrations, was beated together with him at many as well. Here's a shot of him in Aboud village, you can see him next to the man with the kufiyah hat, tattoo on his arm, black shirt on, white shirt around his neck, and about to get thwocked by a baton;
I too was hit not too much after him that day, a few seconds after this picture was taken, and I was lucky my arm was not broken. The army/police succeeded in dragging off the Israeli they were grabbing in the picture by the hair, here he is at the start of the demo (I do not remember his name);
And here is being dragged away after a severe beating
And here is very recent video footage... of him being beaten by the IOF AGAIN!!!!
But enough with the documentary, here's Yonotan's article, republished with full permission;
Flee, Freedom Fighter, Flee
by Yonatan Pollak
May 11, 2007
The basis of my political education, on the price one must pay for the struggle, was very close to home - within the family in fact. My grandfather, Nimrod Eshel, was among the leaders of the seamen revolt in the early 1950's. In a desperate attempt to break the strike and with no reason to arrest them, Ben Gurion instructed that he and others should be conscripted into the army. He was 27. My grandfather and his comrades saw the conscription as de facto administrative detention, but decided to go to the recruiting office anyway. This was a purely tactical decision, taken only after they had discussed going underground and the influence of such a step on the strike.
A few years earlier, my grandfather was arrested by the British in Latrun and Cyprus for his part in smuggling Jews from Europe. He often refers to these periods of arrest by saying "I had nothing against the British. It was a war - they arrested me and I tried to escape". Indeed, the prisoners had planned their escape from both places, though the plans were never executed, but nonetheless clearly showed their feelings as to the duty to fulfill their period of punishment.
When I grew up a little the anarchist movement became my political home, and with it the ethos of the Spanish Underground fighters who were forced into exile, many of whom crossed the border back and forth to harass Franco's army in the hills. To the stories of the past, other peoples' memories, I want to add my joy at the end of Apartheid in South Africa, at the return of that country's exiles. Together with the release of prisoners, those who had managed to escape from the Boers' jails to Mozambique or Botswana, came back.
Those who escape from the clutches of a repressive regime, whether they are guerrilla fighters or political leaders, deserve support and even admiration from dissidents for the sacrifice they made. Exile, one must remember, is not an easy choice even for those who despise the political regime in their country of birth.
Due to its inability to deal with the demand that the state change from a Jewish ethnocracy to a real democracy, Israel is these days opening a new front in the attack on its Palestinian citizens. This front has taken shape in the form of Shabak [Israel's General Security Services - equivalent to the US FBI] statements to the effect that the demands of Israeli Arabs for equality is subversive and will be terminated even if it is not against the law, in the definition of Israeli Arabs as a strategic threat, and most of all in the invention of a criminal case against one of the most prominent leaders of the the Palestinian public in Israel - Azmi Bishara.
Any rational person with eyes in his head can see that that case against Bishara was made up by the Shabak. Despite this, in the current political atmosphere, Bishara's trial (had he decided to show up for it) would have turned into a show trial and would have concluded long before the investigation was over. Even before the start of the the trial, while a ban on publication - full or partial - was still standing, Bishara was attacked by right-wingers, some more extreme than others, from Lieberman to Steiniz through Tamir and to Beilin. Many will be delighted to have rid themselves of the articulate challenge Bishara puts forth to Zionism and to the character of Israeli society. It is convenient for them to attempt to showcase him as one who has fled from the just punishment he deserves.
It is not surprising when the chorus of voices calling for Bishara to come back and receive his punishment comes from the right-wingers who see him as a strategic threat, but for some reason some of those who do understand the false spirit of the investigation are calling for him to come back and recognize the validity of the law, to come to terms with it in the name of civic responsibility. Those are the people who are abandoning him by the roadside and making him stand alone against the storm. In doing this, they are are abandoning the entire Palestinian Israeli public.
Bishara's civic responsibility demands in fact that a spade is called a spade, that is to say that the treatment of the Palestinian minority by the Jewish majority in Israel, especially towards its political freedoms, has forced Bishara into becoming a refugee, and is leading to a dangerous situation. Everyone knows that in the face of political desperation, these are those who turn to using the pen as a weapon, and there are those who will be pushed into choosing other means.
It is pointless to return to a trial whose result has been predetermined. It was just for Bishara to leave into forced exile, from where he will be able to continue to point arrows at the enemy of all human beings - racism. All that remains for us to say is: flee, freedom fighter, flee.
Yonatan Pollak is an activist with Anarchists Against Walls in Israel
(Translated to english by Rann Bar-On)
And another perspective, also with permission, from Rahul Mahajan and his blog Empire Notes
Weekly Commentary -- Azmi Bishara and Israeli Ethnocracy
After last summer’s Israel-Lebanon war, I speculated that, at least theoretically, there was a chance that Israel’s debacle and Hizbullah’s victory might lead to new hope in Israeli-Arab and even Israeli-Palestinian relations by putting a dent in the arrogant faith of most Israelis that they could always prevail against Arabs through force alone. Just as South Africa’s defeat by primarily African and African-Cuban forces at Cuito Cuanavale in 1988 played a noticeable role in the National Party’s eventual acquiescence to a negotiated end to apartheid, the potential outlines of such an eventuality were visible in Israel’s 2006 defeat as well.
Unfortunately, the chances of such a process beginning in the case of Israel were almost negligible; as I pointed out at the time, the problem was not so much the lack of a Palestinian Mandela as the lack of an Israeli de Klerk, not to mention the growth of an increasingly corrosive nationalism and racism among the Israeli public.
Since that time, that ugly turn has just intensified. It’s distressing to note that the preliminary Winograd commission report on the war made a point of laying some of the blame on Ehud Barak’s withdrawal from Lebanon. The crowd of more than 100,000 that gathered after the report drew at least as much from the right wing as from the left; it called for Olmert’s dismissal without calling for a change in Israel’s militaristic stance. And for the right, Olmert’s real crimes are losing the war by not bombing hard enough and, even more important, the Gaza withdrawal.
Another illuminating sign of this growing trend is the persecution of Azmi Bishara, leader of a growing civil rights movement among Israeli Palestinians and until recently an Arab member of the Knesset.
Bishara has been charged with treason for supposedly passing information to Hizbullah during the war and receiving money for it. I am not privy to the details of Shin Bet’s charges, but the claim seems silly. Unlike Arafat, he is no believer in the kindness of strangers with big guns and big moneybags (whether Syria or the United States), preferring instead to base his work on democratic politics and universal human rights principles.
And, as Bishara himself pointed out in a piece in the LA Times, what information exactly would an Arab MK have about the Israeli military that could compare with Hizbullah’s?
My favorite charge is that Bishara warned Hizbullah that during the war the Israelis would try to kill Hizbullah leader Hasan Nasrallah. One wonders if he also passed on crucial information regarding the possibility of the sun rising in the east.
While it is certainly possible that the Israeli government, caught in its hypernationalistic paranoia, believes the charges, the real reason, I think, for this persecution is the threat posed by Bishara’s democratic political actions within Israel.
As leader of the National Democratic Assembly, Bishara calls for transforming Israel from an ethnocracy to a democracy, with full civil and national rights for the Palestinian minority in Israel.
To quote Bishara: "Today we make up 20% of Israel's population. We do not drink at separate water fountains or sit at the back of the bus. We vote and can serve in the parliament. But we face legal, institutional and informal discrimination in all spheres of life."
This is an issue independent of the status of the West Bank and Gaza and of the right of return of refugees. Although the legal and institutional discrimination in Israel itself is not as bad as it was in the American South in 1930, it’s worse in many ways than it was in the South in 1880.
Talk about a one-state solution for Israel and use of the term "Israeli apartheid" is growing. The two main pillars for those who dismiss and demonize such talk are the claim that "secular and democratic" is simply code for destroying Israel and the claim that Israel within the green line is a democracy with equal rights for all. Bishara leads the movement that has the best chance of exposing both of those claims and of establishing credibility for anti-Zionism. And, composed of Israeli citizens as it is, it cannot simply be put down with violence or shut up in a cage like the population of the occupied territories.
Bishara is not the Palestinian Mandela, but he is trying to be the Palestinian Martin Luther King. His fate will be a harbinger of things to come in Israel and the Middle East.
