Bush and Sharon agree on Palestinians’ fate!

That ought to come as a shocker. It seems that Bush has endorsed Sharon’s plans for the unilateral destruction — oops, I meant starvation — oops, I meant withdrawal — of Gaza. He has also said that Palestinian refugees ought to forget about the right of return, and he has said nothing about the settlements on the West Bank. Or the bombings. Or the starvation. Or the closures. But then, how could he, when he’s applying these very techniques in Iraq?

Speaking of Iraq, what’s this I see? A new headline that ‘fighting flares up again in Fallujah’?

Now, class, what does it mean when the passive voice is used? It means that friends of ours (or us, ourselves) are killing people. Of course, that headline is doubly dishonest because the assumption is that there was a period before the ‘flareup’ when there wasn’t fighting going on in Fallujah — a lie.

The first line of the AP story has a bit more of an honest description of what’s going on: “US warplanes strafed gunmen in Fallujah…”

Democracy takes root in Haiti

Check out this press release from Latortue, Haiti’s new democratically-paramilitary-coup-installed leader who is presiding over a major massacre and occupation right now. It comes from his meeting with Powell and is published (where else?) on the State Department’s website.

“The third thing we discussed is the democratic process and how it is going on in Haiti today. I was happy that last night, I was the first to sign, with the political parties, the civil society groups, a convention, an agreement, in how this process should go on, go forward.”

“Secretary Powell is the first person to whom I explained this, because we just signed this last night. And I spoke to him, too, right after Easter, we will be setting up the Provisional Electoral Council, right after Easter. One of the things we assured the Secretary of State is that whether you were a former official, a minister, a secretary, in the present government, you will not be allowed to participate in the political process coming up.”

That’s why, I suppose, people like Oriel Jean, who worked for Aristide, is now sitting in a cell in Miami (thank the Canadian authorities for that one, as for many illegal actions and atrocities in this coup). Jean is being investigated for ‘drug charges’. But, of course, if you want to know how the drug trade really works, you should check out Al McCoy’s ‘Politics of Heroin’, Cockburn & St. Clari’s ‘Whiteout’, or, on Haiti, this piece from Paul DeRienzo.

Sadr, dead or alive?

Talk about a ‘feeler’. So various outlets are saying that the US is vowing to capture or kill Moqtada as-Sadr. Someone even used the famous ‘dead or alive’ phrase, last used for Osama bin Laden. I’m a little surprised. I would have thought they would have wanted to build him up into another famous Arab villain and make the ‘fiery cleric’s’ face known all over the country, stoking the racism that has played such a useful role in US war plans all over the world for a little longer.

It’s another page out of the Israeli handbook. I’m sure you’ve all read Fisk’s latest:

It seems that as long as you say “war on terror”, you are safe from all criticism. For not a single American journalist has investigated the links between the Israeli army’s “rules of engagement” – so blithely handed over to US forces on Sharon’s orders – and the behaviour of the US military in Iraq. The destruction of houses of “suspects”, the wholesale detention of thousands of Iraqis without trial, the cordoning off of “hostile” villages with razor wire, the bombardment of civilian areas by Apache helicopter gunships and tanks on the hunt for “terrorists” are all part of the Israeli military lexicon.

In besieging cities – when they were taking casualties or the number of civilians killed was becoming too shameful to sustain – the Israeli army would call a “unilateral suspension of offensive operations”. They did this 11 times after they surrounded Beirut in 1982. And yesterday, the American army declared a “unilateral suspension of offensive operations” around Fallujah.

Not a word on this mysterious parallel by America’s reporters, no questions about the even more mysterious use of identical language. And in the coming days, we shall – perhaps – find out how many of the estimated 300 dead of Fallujah were Sunni gunmen and how many were women and children. Following Israel’s rules is going to lead the Americans into the same disaster those rules have led the Israelis.

The media will, of course, go along with anything the US does, and racism will help those who want to to swallow it. But in Iraq, I wonder what the message will be, given that they took Saddam (Murder, Inc.) alive (even gave him a free dental exam), and are planning to blow Moqtada as-Sadr up?

Some Shady Arms Dealings

Some stuff that came through a little while ago. There is a trial in process of a fellow called Montesinos. He’s your friendly neighbourhood arms dealer, with a long resume of CIA work, as well as work for the notorious Peruvian democrat Alberto Fujimori. Obviously his work with the CIA involved providing weapons to illegal armed groups with the purpose of destroying social movements in Latin America.

The odd thing is, however, that he’s on trial in Peru right now for an arms deal — selling 10,000 AK-47 rifles to FARC — the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia.

Why would someone with a CIA resume sell weapons to FARC? That’s actually the basis of his plea for innocence: “I never sell to the left,” he’s said. As for the CIA, they say the matter is before the courts. One thing is for sure: this is not the whole story.

In other shady dealings:

Israel is apparently trying to figure out how helicopters sent to it from the United States (for the purpose of attacking more or less helpless Palestinian civilians) ended up in Colombia (where they are presumably being used for the purpose of attacking more or less helpless Colombian peasants). Canadians: make sure you read to the end of the article — there was a Canadian corporation involved. Somehow, there always is…

Haiti inconsistencies

In a previous post, I lamented the concept of the ‘Anti-Aristide, Anti-Occupation’ left. My principal argument was that Aristide was really besides the point. He was not the target of the coup: it was the Haitian people, the democratic process, and the population itself that was. But I’ve recently thought of something else.

If the ‘anti-Aristide, anti-occupation’ people were willing to condone a paramilitary terror campaign that slaughtered hundreds of people in order to get rid of Aristide, and are now willing to countenance those very paramilitaries in power, selling what little of the country there is to multinationals at a more rapid rate than before, will they be supporting and/or participating in armed struggle against the US Marines and Canadian soldiers? It seems to me that to be consistent, they would have to.

Meanwhile, an Amnesty International delegation has made a report, having just returned from Haiti. Here is an excerpt on what’s going on, confirming Fenton’s recent report:

“Amnesty International has also received recent reports of killings and kidnappings of persons belonging to pro-Aristide grassroots organizations in poor neighbourhoods of Port-au-Prince. Among those allegedly responsible were several escaped prisoners who had been jailed for rapes and other common crimes. These men have reportedly been working together with the Haitian police and MIF forces to identify people associated with the Lavalas regime. “

Fallujah is a test…

States rarely commit atrocities without putting out ‘feelers’ to see how they are going to go over. Israel, for example, has been putting out ‘feelers’ about assassinating Yasser Arafat for quite some time. The US has been putting out ‘feelers’ about attacking Syria and Iran since the invasion of Iraq. Likewise, plenty of ‘feelers’ are going out about getting Colombia to attack Venezuela. These things are tests: if the reaction suggests they can get away with it, they go for it.

So it is with Fallujah (See Andrea Schmidt’s latest report here). There is a note that came over the networks by various international organizations yesterday, with new estimates of the magnitude of the atrocity: “470 killed. 1200 injured, of which 243 are women and 200 are children. This is the first, underestimated body count from Falluja.” (The entire note is reproduced below).

This should actually be the sort of thing that our movement is good at: halting a dramatic massacre in progress against a civilian population, done directly by us, unfolding as we speak. And there have been emergency demonstrations and pickets all over North America. It is a major slaughter that will take place if the public response is inadequate. Here is the call for solidarity in its entirety:

End the Massacre in Falluja!

470 killed.
1200 injured, of which 243 are women and 200 are children.
This is the first, underestimated body count from Falluja.

April 9 2004
Occupied Baghdad

Since fighting escalated at the beginning of the week, Iraqi people, especially in the city of Falluja, are facing a humanitarian disaster. Occupation Forces have laid siege to the city. More than 470 people have been killed, 1200 injured. Dead bodies are lying in the streets.

Falluja is being mortared and bombed by F-16 fighter planes, helicopters dropping cluster bombs and rocket-propelled grenades.

Ambulances are being shot at by snipers. Medical aid and supplies have been stopped by US Occupation Forces. Aid workers delivering supplies have had to take secondary roads into the city; once they arrived, they found themselves under fire from US snipers.

No humanitarian corridor has been put in place.

A cease-fire was announced and people began trying flee, but US troops resumed their attacks. Many people remain trapped inside the city, and refugees trying to escape from Falluja to Baghdad are being prevented from reaching their destination by US military. They form a column that extends over 10 kilometers of highway.

The thousands of families who remain trapped in Falluja are running out of basic necessities like food and potable water. Hospitals and medical staff are overwhelmed, and are asking desperately for blood, oxygen and antiseptics.

Fighting is spreading all over the country, Al-Sadr City has been attacked and paid a high price with almost 100 casualties. The situation in Southern cities – Kerbala, Najaf, Kut – is unknown to us, but they are also feared to be the sights of humanitarian emergencies.

The international community, the United Nations and the European Community cannot remain spectators to the massacre in Falluja and the terrorization of Iraqi people all over the country.

The international community must take a firm position and demand that Coalition Forces stop these massacres and respect international conventions and allow for a humanitarian corridor through which refugees can safely escape, and medical supplies can reach Falluja.

Stop the massacre.
Stop attacking civilians.
End the siege of Falluja.

Signed:
Bridge to Baghdad/Italy (001 914 360 9080 in Baghdad)
CCIPPP/France (079 01 427 627 in Baghdad)
Italian Consortium of Solidarity/Italy
Iraq Solidarity Project/Canada (079 01 429 115 in Baghdad)

Globalization is Dead?

I have to admit that I have a soft spot for genuine liberals that is probably not entirely rational. One Canadian writer who falls into this category for me is John Ralston Saul, the husband of Canada’s governor general, Adrienne Clarkson. I have read all his books, and he strikes me as someone who really knows a lot more than he says. It might not be the case: I just like to think that he’s secretly a radical, even though he makes all kinds of inconsistent arguments (in Voltaire’s Bastards, for example, he says the trouble with the US methods of waging war is that they don’t work, because generalship wins battles not hardware. That might be true, but the big problem with US methods of waging war are the ends of those wars and the slaughter they bring). Anyway, he’s recently published an article proclaiming the death of globalization…

It is fun to read (phrases like: “This was the crucifixion theory of economics: you had to be killed economically and socially in order to be reborn clean and healthy.”) , but I don’t really buy it.

He pokes fun at pompous neoliberal ideologues, he provides some interesting historical context (though I’m not sure of its accuracy), and he gives novel interpretations of events. It’s also nice to hear a liberal acknowledge the genocide in the Congo and at least hint that the West had something to do with it, as he does:

“In a global world of economic and social measurement, we are bombarded daily by apparently exact statistics measuring growth, efficiency, production, reproduction, sales, currency fluctuations, comparative levels of obesity and orgasms, divorce, salaries and incomes. Yet we don’t know, or don’t care to know, whether it was a million or half a million Rwandans who were massacred. And the genocide was facilitated by Paris and Washington, using old-fashioned nation-state powers at the UN security council to block a serious international intervention. The Rwanda catastrophe then morphed into the Congo catastrophe, involving 4.7 million deaths between 1998 and 2003. Or was it 3 million? Or 5.5 million?”

And yet. As much as I enjoy the essay, it suffers from all the liberal flaws:

-Rwanda is mentioned as a ‘failure to intervene’. The ‘successful’ interventions where civilians were, and are being slaughtered (Afghanistan, Haiti, Iraq…) are left untouched.

-Globalization policies ‘don’t work’. Don’t they? Or are they doing exactly what they are intended to do — distribute wealth from the poor to the rich?

-Likewise, there’s a problem with nationalism:

“What we do know is that there has been a return across Europe of 19th-century-style negative nationalism. Although usually the product of fear, it reappeared in countries that had nothing to fear: Jorg Haider in Austria speaking out against immigrants, while echoing race and monolithic national myths. Italy governed by three nationalists, one of them the leader of Mussolini’s old party. Related phenomena in Belgium, Denmark, France, the Netherlands, Norway, Switzerland. A sudden revival of sectarian nationalism in Northern Ireland. The defeat of a compromise in Corsica. Everywhere these nationalists are now in coalition governments or are leading oppositions.”

The problem? John might have noted the major flag bearer (waver?) of what he calls ‘negative nationalism’ is the United States, rallying it to attack helpless countries, threaten others, etc.

That’s the trouble with this kind of politics: it makes elites seem like they’re ‘lost’ when they actually know exactly what they’re doing; it exhibits a blind spot when it comes to one’s own society; it takes on the easy battles but avoids the ones that would bring serious flak down on a good ‘public intellectual’.

Still, I’m a sucker for a liberal who can turn a phrase.

April 9: Anniversaries

So, April 9 is the day they took down the statue in Baghdad. They are commemorating it by taking down stickers of Moqtada as-Sadr, and they’ve apparently let up a little on the slaughter in Fallujah, though not elsewhere.

April 9 also marks the date of the Deir Yassin massacre in 1948, one of the massacres that took place during the ethnic cleansing of Palestinians that accompanied the foundation of the state of Israel. Like the US in Iraq, Israel is commemorating this anniversary with further atrocities against the population, the most important being the starvation of the population of Gaza.

We are also around the 10th anniversary of the Rwandan genocide.

In April of 2002, the Jenin massacre was unfolding.

Some nicer dates for April: in April 21 of this year, Mordechai Vanunu, the man who revealed Israel’s nuclear weapons program to the world, is being released from prison after 18 years.

Via Campesina declared April 17 the international day of the campesino.

Muslim Refusenik and Me, Part II

I thought I’d publish my correspondence with Manji in parts, but now I just want to get it over with. Spending more time on someone so far beneath contempt is unjustifiable when this morning’s CBC report said there have been 280 Iraqis killed in Fallujah alone since Sunday. Western media deflate Iraqi casualties; there are more cities that the Americans are attacking; these numbers come from hospital estimates and it is guaranteed that not everyone is getting to the hospitals; in other words, there is a major massacre unfolding here. Manji is an unaffordable diversion. So, I’ll publish the entire correspondence below, and have done.

When Manji wrote me the first time, I was as much amused as anything else. She was obviously bluffing. I hadn’t read her book yet, but I had seen her speech and gone through her website carefully and it was quite clear that she was not someone who was going to put her body on the line to protect Palestinian civilians (though I didn’t realize the depths of her racism until I read her book). So, I figured I would call her bluff. Here’s what I wrote back (interspersed, her words in italics):

Dear Justin,

Greetings. Irshad here. I’m writing to explore next steps with regard to sending me on a journalistic mission under the auspices of the International Solidarity Movement. I’ve checked out both websites that you’ve given to me, and look forward to learning more.

Given my crazy schedule for the next several months, I would hope to go in the very late spring or early summer.

Late spring or early summer sounds fine. The ISM normally has a ‘freedom summer’ campaign. Should you go in late spring, you will be between campaigns, but there will still be plenty going on.

Next steps?

ISM is normally caught up in issues of the moment — house demolitions, incursions, volunteers being deported, and so on — so the Palestine-side folks won’t be able to help much until you’re there. But folks in Canada probably can, at least somewhat, at least to answer your questions — you can certainly write me to answer any questions, for example. But basically all you need to do is go through the website, follow the instructions, travel there, and attend the training and screening in the territories.

From this point on in the email, you should take this as a personal email from me and not as a note from a ‘representative’ of ISM. Having read your book, I should tell you that this mission wouldn’t be like the one you went on in July 2002 — ISM is not in a position to pay plane tickets or expenses for volunteers, who normally raise their own funds through events and so on.

Volunteers get to the occupied territories and then join the ISM for trainings and then (nonviolent) actions, reporting, etc. As you can imagine, given that many would-be volunteers have been turned away, and others have been arrested, deported, (in the case of Tom Hurndall, Brian Avery, Coimhe Butterly, and others) shot and even (in Rachel Corrie’s case) killed by Israeli authorities, ISM is quite conscious of security and has a screening and training process. It asks that participants agree to some basic principles of unity, which you can find at both sites. These include adherence to nonviolence in practice, but they also include solidarity with the rights of Palestinians under international law and others, as you can read about. If you can in good faith agree with these principles and can join ISM without endangering yourself, other ISM volunteers, or Palestinians, then you’re set to go. My own feeling, having read your book and heard your talk, is that you would not be able to accept these principles of solidarity. But it is not my decision.

Last, and again speaking not as an ISM volunteer, I have written a review of your book for a radical site called ‘ZNet’, where I’m a frequent writer. Some of those you mention or reference in your book, including Noam Chomsky, Robert Fisk, Tariq Ali, and the late Edward Said, have writing featured on this site. Likewise a lot of progressive Israelis, notably Amira Hass, Gideon Levy, Tanya Reinhart, Baruch Kimmerling, and Neve Gordon. If you’d like to respond to the review, ZNet would probably publish your reply, along with my own reply to your reply.

http://www.zmag.org/content/showarticle.cfm?SectionID=22&ItemID=4624

————-

Her next reply escalated the bluff, and admittedly had me worried. It became obvious that she did not want to debate, but instead wanted to turn this into an opportunity to attack the ISM. I should have understood that from the beginning: while for me, the invitation and the correspondence was an opportunity to show the world what a fraud she is, from her point of view, this was an opportunity to join the mainstream chorus denouncing, smearing, and slandering ISM and spitting on the grave of people like Rachel Corrie.

Here’s her next note:

Jan 2, 2004

1) I knew about your review of my book when I emailed you the first time. I’ll be posting your review on my website shortly. Ain’t democracy great?

2) I’ve gone through the ismcanada website and, unless my eyes deceive me (very possible), I’ve missed the statement of unity that you mention. Do you mean familiarizing myself with the following:

* Going For the Right Reasons
* Respecting the Spirit of the ISM

If so, I’ve read it and I’m not sure what you think is so distasteful to me. On key fronts, I want the same things that the ISM does: an independent Palestinian state alongside a sovereign Jewish state, an end to the Israeli occupation (with clear and enforceable guarantees that the Israeli people will have secure borders after a withdrawal of troops), justice for the people of Palestine (which entails ending the corruption of the PA – an issue I don’t see tackled by the ISM). What is it about any of the above that the ISM would disagree with, even if it isn’t vocal about the need to be critical of PA human rights abuses and monetary manipulations?

In the spirit of my questions above, I will not be told what to think. Indeed, the conditions under which I went on my first, CIC-sponsored, trip to Israel were a) that I would be able to ask any questions I wanted, no matter who approved or disapproved; and 2) that I would have a hand in helping to shape the itinerary.

Will both conditions be met on any trip to the Occupied Territories under the International Solidarity Movement? Will representatives of the ISM attend meetings with Zionists in Israel, just as Canada-Israel Committee reps attended meetings with anti-Zionists in the Occupied Territories (and beyond)? If so, I can go with integrity.

But if not, I won’t pander to double-standards.

The choice is the ISM’s.

——–

Between her chortle about ‘democracy’ (there is a bizarre part in her book where she, presumably quoting from Fareed Zakaria without attribution, says it was ‘democracy’ that brought the Nazis to power so democracy isn’t always good… leaving aside the fact that it wasn’t ‘democracy’ that brought the Nazis to power but a putsch, I suppose one can’t expect her to remember her own book in every email), her talking about ‘integrity’, her failure to find the ISM’s principles of unity that are more or less front and centre on the palsolidarity.org website, and her failure to understand the disproportion between Israel (that is deliberately starving hundreds of thousands in Gaza) and PA corruption, I was rather too stunned to realize a simple fact: if all she wanted to do was a ‘journalistic mission’ why would she need ISM or anyone else to co-set up an itinerary?

But when I got that note, I was quite worried that I had created a situation where ISM activists and Palestinians would suffer for my writing to Manji. She would get a little more fame, perhaps prolong her 15 minutes, and the ISM would get a little more bad press, leading to more headaches and more problems for an organization that has already been hit extremely hard by repression. So, I made a point of telling her that she wouldn’t be welcome with ISM: the ISM has a screening process, and she could consider herself screened out.

In retrospect, I could simply have laid out an itinerary for her — the real refuseniks, some real journalists with integrity (Amira Hass, Gideon Levy), some serious researchers (Jeff Halper, Tanya Reinhart, Ilon Pappe, Baruch Kimmerling), some serious peace activists (Uri Avnery) — and all this without her ever having to leave Israel’s borders. I could have told her to try to get into Rafah, and spend some time watching bulldozers slowly raze the place to the ground… perhaps take one of those embarrassing photos of herself in front of a bulldozed house or a bullet-filled building, or maybe even in the wreckage of a missile attack. But instead, I wrote this:

Jan 2, 2004

Starting with 1), and me, as opposed to ISM. On the review and your posting it — I do agree that the most open and free debate and discussion is important, that pandering to double standards is a bad thing. If you want to debate on the internet any of the points raised in the article — on your site or elsewhere, ZNet for example, feel free to engage on any of them, and we will proceed from there. I would be pleased to have our correspondence go in that direction.

I said that I didn’t think that you would fit ISM’s criteria, and let me clarify further, because I think I miscommunicated something. My intention was to let you know that ISM has an open call for volunteers and that you could easily have gone to join ISM and seen ‘the other side’, to use your expression, and were not limited to presenting the limited and distorted view of the conflict that you present because ‘no one answered your email’. If you really are interested and ISM doesn’t fit, there must be other groups that probably have delegations that are closer to what you are looking for. The Bay Area’s ewish Voice for Peace (www.jewishvoiceforpeace.org), perhaps, or a journal like MERIP, (www.merip.org), or Toronto-based groups like the CJP-IP, etc.

Having said that, I think that your going with ISM would be a waste of their time and yours, at best. At worst, I think you would endanger the lives of activists working under very difficult conditions. I also think you would end up smearing and slandering ISM and misrepresenting its views the way you have smeared people like Edward Said, Tariq Ali, and Robert Fisk, all of which is spelled out in my review of your book. ISM has been smeared and slandered before, and survived it, but it isn’t something they should have to deal with on top of everything else.

But in any case, if you took what I said at Ryerson and in my review to mean that ISM could arrange a special fact-finding mission for you, that was my mistake. It can’t. It can only afford to take sincere, principled activists who want to work in genuine solidarity with Palestinians. This includes plenty of Israelis, of course, and plenty of people who consider themselves Zionists, which should also be obvious. But again, having read your book, I don’t think it applies to you. If there is a miscommunication here, it is my fault, for misrepresenting ISM’s open call to people of conscience to be an invitation to you to go on a fact-finding mission equivalent to that of the Canada-Israel Congress. I don’t know too much about the CIC, but I suspect that their offices have not been raided, dozens of their volunteers arrested and deported, and some of them shot or killed (as I detailed in a previous email). The ISM does not have the resources to arrange a special fact-finding mission for you — it does not do fact-finding missions, it is for committed activists who want to (nonviolently) act against the occupation under very difficult conditions. A solidarity trip is different from a fact-finding trip. This has nothing to do with telling people what to think or double standards. It has to do with what the ISM does and is. Again, I take responsibility for the miscommunication.

Dealing with 2), and ISM specifically, as opposed to me, my views, and my mistakes in communication.

The relevant parts of the site for activists to decide if they can accept ISM’s call for volunteers are on the www.palsolidarity.org site. They are here:

http://www.palsolidarity.org/about/aboutISM.php

Particularly these — this is the ‘statement of unity’ you were looking for but didn’t find:

“*We support the Palestinian right to resist the occupation, as provided for by International Law;
*We call for an immediate end to the occupation and immediate compliance and implementation of all relevant UN resolutions;
*We call for immediate international intervention to protect the Palestinian people and ensure Israel’s compliance with International Law.”

But the entire page is relevant.

Also, the ISM’s mission is here:

http://www.palsolidarity.org/about/mission.php

This is highly relevant. One expression of their invitation to people of the world is this:

“Because Israeli violence against civilians in Palestine has worsened, and the repression of the Occupation has tightened, many international allies of the Palestinian cause want to do more than write letters, demonstrate, present programs, form solidarity delegations, or send humanitarian aid. They want to do something more dramatic to stop Israeli attacks on Palestinian neighbourhoods and people with bombs and bullets, or closures and curfews, and to stop the United States from massively rewarding Israel for its brutality and protecting its occupation of Palestine They want to take direct action that will oppose the Occupation and force Israel to withdraw from the West Bank East Jerusalem, and Gaza.

“If this describes your feelings, this call is for you.”

The 4 goals stated in the mission statement are as follows:

“The International Solidarity Movement aims to do four things:

1: to dramatize the terrible conditions under which Palestinians live because of the Occupation, and to protect them from physical violence from Israeli soldiers and settlers. We work under the leadership of Palestinian peace activists, supporting them in their creative resistance to the Occupation, and lending support to Israeli and other peace activist groups.

2: to pressure International news media to focus on the illegality and brutality of the Occupation, and to so change public opinion that it demands that Israel respect international law, and that America stops funding Israel with billions of dollars each year.

3: to recruit volunteers from other nations to undertake non-violent resistance to the Occupation.

4:to establish divestment campaigns in the US and Europe to put economic pressure on Israel the same way the international community put pressure South Africa during the apartheid regimes.”

These are the most relevant parts of the ISM site to help you decide if you can join the ISM. It is an open call, to people who share these goals and principles and want to act on them. Those are ISM’s criteria.

——–

And so ended my interaction with the Muslim Refusenik, who is now making money in the United States and being paraded on television as a middle east expert (she cites one op-ed from the Boston Globe on the Sudan five times when discussing Israel/Palestine). A debate with me would have been no help to her career, I suppose. It’s just as well: there is little time for this nonsense right now.

Biddu, West Bank

This from the International Solidarity Movement. I won’t be posting every such report I get — but this is very typical of what goes on. I remember Thomas Friedman of the New York Times (the one who taunted Yugoslavia during the 1999 bombing and suggested the US bomb them back to 1389) reproaching Palestinians for not doing nonviolent resistance. Here’s how Israel responds to nonviolent resistance — sometimes, though it gets worse than this.

ISRAELI ARMY ATTACKS NONVIOLENT PROTESTERS IN BIDDU
Two Palestinian community leaders arrested and dozens villagers injured

[Biddu, NW Jerusalem] Before 6am this morning, Israeli army bulldozers started the construction of the wall in the outskirts of Biddu village again. They were confronted by villagers, Internationals and Israeli activists who tried to reach the worksite and stop the work. Israeli soldiers opened fire directly at the line of nonviolent protesters, shooting tear gas and concussion grenades and then rubber-coated metal bullets. Dozens of Palestinians are reportedly injured by eyewitnesses.

At 7:30am, the Israeli army arrested two Biddu community leaders, Mohamed Mansour and Ibrahim Saleh Bedwan, as they were protesting nonviolently the construction of the Wall through the village farmlands. They have been taken away to an unknown location.

The protesters are now completely surrounded by over 80 soldiers who are firing tear gas canisters, concussion grenades and rubber-coated metal bullets, targeting upper parts of the body.

The Popular Committee against the Wall and the activists are now trying to protect a house located at the outskirts of the village which is about to be demolished by the Israeli army. Some villagers are staying in the house to prevent its destruction while other are staying outside and are currently targeted with tear gas canisters and rubber-coated steel bullets.

For more information, please contact:

Biddu Village Council: +972.22.47.12.20
Mohammed Ayyash: +972.67.395.422
Mansour Mansour: +972.55.804.830
Neal: +972.66.346.165
ISM Media Office: +972.22.77.46.02