There are thousands of articles and blog post being written about the criminal attacks that began on Sunday. Likewise, there are protest taking place all across the globe, not just in the Arab world. Alerts as to where they are taking place can be found in other venues, including Facebook. Here we want to share three very thoughtful pieces that discuss the complicated and compelling politics in play.
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Nir Rosen
Once again, the Israelis bomb the starving and imprisoned population of Gaza. The world watches the plight of 1.5 million Gazans live on TV and online; the western media largely justify the Israeli action. Even some Arab outlets try to equate the Palestinian resistance with the might of the Israeli military machine. And none of this is a surprise. The Israelis just concluded a round-the-world public relations campaign to gather support for their assault, even gaining the collaboration of Arab states like Egypt.
The international community is directly guilty for this latest massacre. Will it remain immune from the wrath of a desperate people? So far, there have been large demonstrations in Lebanon, Yemen, Jordan, Egypt, Syria and Iraq. The people of the Arab world will not forget. The Palestinians will not forget. "All that you have done to our people is registered in our notebooks," as the poet Mahmoud Darwish said. Read More
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STATEMENT AGAINST THE MASSACRES IN GAZA
http://www.araborganizing.org/gaza
The Arab Resource and Organizing Center (AROC) condemn the unprecedented Israeli attacks on Gaza, killing more than 300 Palestinians and injuring more than 700. Israel will not cease to stop its terror and has vowed to continue and increase what it claims to be "terrorist centers" in Gaza. Ehud Barak, the Israeli defense minister, has announced that "…the operation will go on and be intensified as long as necessary".
While Israel attempts to justify its massacres as targeting Hamas security centers in retaliation for rocket fires, in reality what one can clearly see in the streets of Gaza is nothing short of an outright massacre of men, women and children. Children on their way to school, men and women who are simply walking around the street running daily errands were stricken down by US made F16 airplanes and missiles.
The US immediately declared its support for the attacks and Israel's "war on terrorism". This rhetoric has become far too familiar to the trained ear. As we have seen in Iraq and Afghanistan and as we've been seeing in Palestine the "war on terrorism" has become a war on all peoples pursuing their international human right for self-determination and freedom from occupation and oppression. Israel's Zionist Colonial project must be exposed! A country where a group of people have the exclusive right to a land and its resources based on religion/ethnicity, while the indigenous people of the land are forced to move and many murdered is Racist and Inhumane.
Three fabrications continuously being used by the US backed Israel and must be interpreted and understood as a complete falsehood to the reality on the ground;
1. "Disengagement" from Gaza
The government of Israel claims it "disengaged" or "pulled out" of Gaza in August 2005. As a result, Israel argues that it is no longer responsible for Gaza and that with the inception of the Oslo Accords in 1993, the Palestinian Authority is not responsible for the Gaza Strip. Even though Israeli soldiers are not physically present inside Gaza, they control all entry and exit points of all goods and people from land, air or sea. Gaza's main crossing point to the outside world, Karni, has repeatedly been shut down for extensive periods of time by Israel, except when Israeli producers wish to "dump cheap products into Gaza". Israel has only allowed a few "essential items" through the Kerem Shalom and Sufa crossings. However, both these crossings are completely controlled by Israel.
It does not stop there! 90 percent of private industries in Gaza have shut down, 80 percent of the population lives on food aid, if and when its allowed into Gaza, all construction sites are idle and unemployment has reached record highs. Even more frightening, water, gas and electricity are also controlled by Israel. All three of these supplies of BASIC resources have been cut of from Gaza in what has become what many top officials have described as the "gravest humanitarian crisis yet".
Imagine living with no water to drink, no gas to run a vehicle or heat your food, no electricity for light and communication. Imagine living in complete darkness for not one, two or three days but weeks at a time. This is not disengagement, but is a strategic move to starve out a population because of their demographic threat to the exclusionary racist state of Israel.
2. Rocket Fire from Gaza into Sderot
Since the December 19th ceasefire has been broken NO Israeli's have been affected by the rocket fires. Yet, the series of airstrikes culminating to Saturday's attacks have killed hundreds of Palestinian civilians by F16 warplanes and US made missiles and mortar shells. However, Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert declares Palestinian "citizens are not our enemy". Israel argues that a ceasefire has been broken. Yet, during the ceasefire, borders continue to be closed, movement restricted, and resources of the Palestinian people blocked by Israel.
The Israeli-Palestinian conflict is not a war with two equal participants. It is a colonial-settler occupation of a land at the expense of the indigenous population. The Palestinian have a right, which has been recognized internationally by the United Nations, to protect themselves against this attack on their self-determination.
3. Palestinian Authority and Arab Leaders Response
Recent negotiations amongst the Arab league and the Palestinian Authority have, as has become customary, been a series of blank statements with no action on the ground to support the Palestinian people. It was not until the Palestinian people, who found no hope amongst their Arab neighbors, broke down the border with Egypt on January 24, 2008 yearning for basic supplies and medicine. Today, Egypt continues to deny the Palestinian people the ability to breathe from the Israeli stranglehold of Gaza.
Giving the green light to Israel to kill innocent civilians in Gaza has become commonplace amongst Palestinian Prime Minister Mahmoud Abbas and his cronies considered to be "friendly neighbors" to Israel, as Ehud Barak announced on CNN. Ignoring the Palestinian people's calls for unity. Abbas and much of the Palestinian Authority have pushed aside the basic needs of its peoples for their own political agenda. Disregarding the polemics of their so-called leaders, the Palestinian people in the West Bank broke out in protest declaring to their brothers and sisters in Gaza "we are here for you".
It is important to understand that: a) there continues to be an occupation of Gaza even though Israel claims it "disengaged", b) the Palestinians have the right to resist occupation, and c) the representatives of the Palestinian people, supported by the West, have not meet the needs of its own people.
Our anger, frustration, sadness and love go to the courageous people of Gaza who are resisting the stranglehold of the Israeli occupation.
For it is in the struggle for Justice that it has become imperative amongst freedom loving people all over the world to come together in solidarity with the Palestinian people for Liberation against Occupation.
WE CALL FOR:
1. An Immediate Israeli Ceasefire and end to the Israeli siege of Gaza
2. The Arab masses to come out in the streets to voice their support for the Palestinian people
3. The United States government cease its unconditional support of the Apartheid State of Israel
4. Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions of all Israeli goods
5. All allies and supporters of the Palestinian people to come out in protest against the Massacres in Gaza
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| The neighborhood bully strikes again | |||
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| By Gideon Levy | |||
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Israel embarked yesterday on yet another unnecessary, ill-fated war. On July 16, 2006, four days after the start of the Second Lebanon War, I wrote: "Every neighborhood has one, a loud-mouthed bully who shouldn't be provoked into anger... Not that the bully's not right - someone did harm him. But the reaction, what a reaction!" Two and a half years later, these words repeat themselves, to our horror, with chilling precision. Within the span of a few hours on a Saturday afternoon, the IDF sowed death and destruction on a scale that the Qassam rockets never approached in all their years, and Operation "Cast Lead" is only in its infancy. Once again, Israel's violent responses, even if there is justification for them, exceed all proportion international law and wisdom. In the interim, the loftiness of peace was on the tip of the tongue of Ehud Olmert, a man who uttered some of the most courageous words ever said by a prime minister. The loftiness of peace on the tip of his tongue, and two fruitless wars in his sheath. Joining him is his defense minister, Ehud Barak, the leader of the so-called left-wing party, who plays the role of senior accomplice to the crime. Israel did not exhaust the diplomatic processes before embarking yesterday on another dreadful campaign of killing and ruin. The Qassams that rained down on the communities near Gaza turned intolerable, even though they did not sow death. But the response to them needs to be fundamentally different: diplomatic efforts to restore the cease-fire - the same one that was initially breached, one should remember, by Israel when it unnecessarily bombed a tunnel - and then, if those efforts fail, a measured, gradual military response. Read more | |||
There is RESISTANCE!!!
Progressives around the world are watching the Obama transition to the White House closely. While we in the US have our own expectations and misgivings about the presidency of the first African descendant to hold that office, people around the globe who for a century or more have been impacted by the imperial project have important insights to share. This is one from the journalist/writer Eduardo Galeano. Like many others he is both hopeful and sober.
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A young white radical friend of mine posted a sobering statement this morning in his Facebook status. He said "one Black family in the White House, 0 Black people in the Senate, 1 million Black men in prison." We have previously rejected the notion that everyone that supports Obama is suffering from severe delusions; you know, drank the Kool-Aid, been bamboozled, duped etc. Nonetheless, there is the question of expectations that have been cultivated through the "Yes We Can/Change We Can Believe In" mantras we have heard over the last 18 months. People need to confront within themselves and their communities the potential for all or any of these hopes.
How the future will look under an Obama presidency has been discussed quite seriously by the two groups of people I relate to regularly and extensively. The radical and progressive communities that have been critical and non-supportive have been very strident in their evaluations and projections of his administration. Many of them have been quite detailed and serious. The other community that I listen to very carefully is the multi-classed African American community. Here we have not heard tons of forecast but somber and tremendously powerful hope.
But there has been humor out there, at least when Black folk talk among themselves. Comments like "when he gets elected I ain't gonna pay no more taxes." Or "I am going to stop obeying traffic signals." These might be seen as payback for centuries of white privilege. The jokes go on and on but people are absolutely clear that they are jokes. There are two pieces of satire out there now that critique the reason for what was once thought impossible and the endless, if unrealistic, prospects Black people see as a result of this singular event.
Under the title "Nation Finally Shitty Enough to Make Social Progress" the Onion argues that US capitalism is in such a raggedy and tenuous state, the populace, heretofore guided by white supremacy and the enforcement of white privilege are so ready to turn the reigns of government over to a Brother. Two wars, the financial meltdown, global warming, etc., lets get moral out here and atone for 400 years of human rights abuses and criminality.
The other piece by the fluent and prolific Ishmael Reed brings on the humor as he satirizes all of the life transforming changes that an idealist Obama presidency might bring to the long suffering Black community. From the police addressing Blacks and Hispanics as Sir and M'am to Jesse Jackson becoming the lead editorial writer for the Wall Street Journal, we laugh about how much needs to be done and how little Obama may be able to do.
Both pieces clearly bring us back to the post euphoric reality that will be ours for the next four years.
A mighty blow to white supremacy has been struck but we still have "many rivers to cross."
As the rain continues to fall in North Carolina on this historic election day, like millions of voters, I am both hopeful and apprehensive. With the stress of such a long campaign coming to end, we can only be prepared for the exhilaration of an victory or the need for protest and resistance should the numerous problemsassociated with registrations in various states result in an Obama loss; a Stolen Election.
This election has certainly tested my understanding of what I have learned, studied and practiced for a little more than forty years. It has clearly emphasized differences with activists and some friends that I have either worked with for many years or have shared a general political perspective. For months we have had to read about all of the problems with Obama as a candidate for the Black masses on websites like Black Agenda Report and from some of the writers at Black Commentator although the latter has offered more nuanced discussions of what all of this means to Black people, other people of color, the working class and the rest of the world. Of course much of this commentary failed to go beyond the "usual suspects". Regrettably this is really no different than our outreach and influence in non electoral periods but it has been especially maddening when the masses are excited about something beyond American Idol and Dancing with the Stars and have chosen to engage.
Indeed the critiques from some sections of the Left are absolutely on target. Obama is not a revolutionary, a radical, an anti-capitalist or anti-imperialist. This obviously means that the social transformation that is required to make this a more just and democratic society cannot happen on his watch. But as Amiri Baraka has reminded the critics, given the two party system and the ideological outlook of the overwhelming majority of the electorate, it is impossible to even be in the race if you have and express the politics of what we have seen coming from the Social Forum Movement, for example. Only capitalist politicians, Black or white, get elected in a bourgeois democracy that has not yet reached the point of questioning the fundamental principles on which this nation state is built. In the wake of the meltdown of the financial markets and the overall crisis that is engulfing the world, conversations about free markets, privatization and government intervention in the economy will be more wide spread. Yet today, the politics of Malcolm X or Dr. King for that matter will not get you elected. And who gets elected matters. I don't care what the "twin parties of capitalism" line says (most of it being true) life under Obama, while not being transformed, will be slightly better than our fate under McCain.
I continue to be troubled by the line that people who support Obama have drank the Kool-aid or have been duped, hoodwinked or bamboozled. The Welfare Poets are powerful in their analysis of US history and it's role in the rest of the world, including an Obama Presidency. The question is, how do we move millions of people to this understanding in a way that will have a real impact on policy and the organization of this society. The differences and tensions are around how we move people in a way that is based on real world politics and life or death tactical choices. So you challenge the activists that you think should know better, but more damaging and sectarian, you dismiss the masses as ignorant and unsophisticated, lacking the astuteness that you have developed. At the end of the day, the question will be, who listened us and what impact did we have on the process.
The top ten format is always a good one to draw out current social phenomena. Eric Mann has developed a comprehensive, progressive and thoughtful Ten Reasons We Should Turn Out the Vote for Barack Obama. These are the ten reasons that have driven me over the last year; they are brief:
10. My 89 (Nov.9) year old father is so thankful that he lived to see this day when he could vote for a Black person.
9. My 11 year old grandson is extremely excited and motivated that a Black person will make history.
8. Barak won't be able to get Single Payer Health Insurance passed. But more people will have coverage than they would under McCain. This matters in terms of the quality of life for millions.
7. Obama will not appoint right-wing ideologues to the Supreme Court which is important for Reproductive Rights and Civil Liberties.
6. Obama will support the Employee Free Choice Act which will give workers a better shot at union organization. McCain opposes it.
5. Obama's election will demonstrate that a growing number of white people are willing to vote for an African American candidate in spite of prevailing white supremacist attitudes.
4. Black youth need to see that there are Black men and women who are intelligent and capable of handling on of the most important jobs in the country.
3. A Black person should have the right to be anything they want and are capable of without racist opposition and terror.
2. Obama's election can provide the basis for a peoples movement to push for more and more changes that cannot be made without grassroots energy and determination. We call for People's Assemblies.
1. Obama's election will take the Black community beyond the notion that simply voting in a Black person will make the necessary changes we need for freedom and prosperity . It will put us on the road to evaluating politics and class issues in a way that cannot be done until we get over this historic hurdle.
So to my elitist, smarter than the masses friends, I'm off to finish Voter Protection Work and to celebrate or protest. And I am further driven by the call from my father this morning during which he told me that in his small rural Virginia precinct, he voted for Obama. It brought tears to my eyes.
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