Florentino, the Devil, and the opposition

Last night was the closing of the referendum campaign. It closed with huge marches of the opposition and the chavistas. They say the opposition march was the biggest ever—one estimate I heard, from a journalist who was at the Madrid demonstrations around March 11, is over 500,000 people. More, he said, than any opposition march, ever, including the “national strike” of last year and the coup the year before. I cannot verify that, as I was not there. I was, however, at the “No” rally.

That rally was also huge, and I got there late, as people were already leaving. I am not very talented at guessing numbers of people. But there were hundreds of thousands as well, though not as many as at the massive march last Sunday. For a flavour of the “No” rally {it is always hard to know what to call the different groups. The opposition calls the chavistas “oficialismo”, the chavistas call the opposition “escualidos” or “golpistas”} it is necessary to discuss the famous local legend of Florentino and the Devil, which is the story the Chavistas have been using since the referendum was announced. There is even a feature movie coming out with the title: “A battle between good and evil in the plains”, is the byline.

Florentino y El Diablo

Chavez resurrected this local legend after the referendum was announced. The story goes as follows. There is a local music on the plains, based on improvisation, and musicians play a kind of competitive game, a kind of call-and-answer game. In the game, the one who gets the last word and stumps the other, wins. It is like rap, based on lyrical skill and improvisation. The champion of this game was Florentino. One day the Devil came along and challenged Florentino to a game, I think for the soul of Florentino. The one who got the last word as the sun rose would win. And there is a whole song that tells the story, with lyrics for both parts. In the end, Florentino won, of course. So Chavez says, he is like Florentino, the opposition—or the US, as you like—is the Devil, and he will have the last word.

So, yesterday at the party, this music, Florentino and the Devil was the recurring theme, and variations of it and the song were sung, including various musicians doing the call-and-answer with Chavez himself. There were other jokes too… Chavez ripping open his shirt to reveal a big “NO” T-shirt underneath. It was a very festive atmosphere—as the “Si” march also appeared to be, from television and second-hand reports that I have heard—people were dancing, drinking, listening to the music. The beer to be had—Polar, owned by Mendoza, one of the wealthiest families of Venezuela, a member of which {Enrique} is governor of the state of Miranda and leader of the opposition Coordinadora Democratica. The alternative beer, if you want to drink it—Regional, owned by Gustavo Cisneros, the wealthiest man in Venezuela, and one of the main leaders of the opposition. It is not easy to escape enriching the elite, even at a “No” rally.

The Opposition Press Conference

I tried to rectify my non-attendance at the “Si” rally by going to the Coordinadora Democratica press conference this morning. A nice neighbourhood, certainly. A very nice social club setting. And, for the most part, a different set of media than were at Miraflores yesterday. The speaker: the aforementioned Enrique Mendoza.

Interesting stuff. He registered protest with much that the government was doing. There were “hostile attitudes”, for example. International observers reported, in private meetings with the opposition of course, that their work was being “blocked”. How, specifically, he was asked. Well, he could not say specifically, out of respect for the “privacy” of the observers, who expressed worry that they might be kicked out and decided not to complain publicly, the most important thing being that they stay in the country. There are up to two million Venezuelans who will not use the voting machines but will vote with ballots, and Mendoza is worried that these ballots will be used to track voters and intimidate them. There are people who signed to bring the referendum about who now appear to be dead—he did not actually say whether or not they really were dead when they signed, something that seems to have happened—and others are getting “the runaround” from the electoral authorities. He thanked the Carter center and the OAS profusely, several times, noting that without their intervention we would not have gotten to the point we are at. In spite of all these government actions, Mendoza said, he was absolutely sure that the opposition would win.

The question and answer period was interesting as well. A Swiss journalist asked if the opposition could govern within the framework of the constitution or whether they would seek changes if they were in government. Mendoza said no, they would work with the constitution. A Brazilian journalist asked if the opposition would dialogue with Chavez. Mendoza said that a condition of dialogue was that Chavez release the sixty political prisoners—these, presumably, are people imprisoned for their role in the coup of 2002. Picking up where Chavez left off yesterday, another journalist asked about all the Wall Street confidence in Chavez. Did the opposition also have the confidence of Wall Street, Mendoza was asked. Mendoza gave a touching reply. This is a matter for Venezuelans to decide. “When we win on Sunday, we will win something beyond price. We will win a victory for our values, of reconciliation.”

One Venezuela, where the rich and poor can coexist

The CNN correspondent had an interesting question. She said—given that there are no guarantees of transparency, what will you do if the government announces that it has won, when you do not believe that it has. Are you prepared for another national strike, or what. Mendoza answered that there was no point in such speculations, that the opposition is democratic above all.

But the most touching statement came at the end. A question from TV Azteca in Mexico—the FOX NEWS or Globovision of Mexico—asking Mendoza “What kind of Venezuela are you seeking”. Mendoza answered: “We want a Venezuela where people respect one another. Where we are all Venezuelans, we are all together, whatever religious differences we might have, whatever class differences we might have. One Venezuela, where the rich and poor can coexist.” Truly, a moving vision for any country.

It was, overall, an interesting set of evasions and lies, combined with some setting up for the post-referendum claim that there was fraud. As for the voting machines, it seems like fraud will be difficult to do by way of the machines. The system works as follows. You register. You are faced with a touchscreen that very clearly asks are you SI or NO with the buttons clearly marked. You press one. The machine prints out the result. You check if the printed ballot matches what you pressed on the touchscreen, then you put the paper in the box. So there is the machine result and the paper trail, and hence a way of checking one against the other. There might be ways of cheating even with this system, but it is not a system made to facilitate such things… no hanging chads around here.

A last note on “polarization”. I am not convinced that it is so terrible a thing. Chavez mentioned yesterday that they cannot blame him for polarization—the country was polarized well before he showed up. All societies are, to the extent that they are unequal, polarized. When the poor are starving, that is not “polarized”, unless they are fighting back somehow or finding some expression. Then, there is “polarization”. I believe that the world would benefit a great deal if US society was a lot more “polarized” than it is. But there is a problem with polarization too, and you can see it when you look at the statements of the “oficialismo” versus the “opposition” or the “people” versus the “oligarchy” or of the “chavistas” versus the “escualidos”, different sets of names for two groups, none of which are “neutral”. Where there is polarization, there are radically different stories that cannot be reconciled, and evaluating them on their factual or logical merit is often very difficult, because the sources of the facts are themselves combatants. You are right now reading the report of a deeply biased observer, one whose biases are not at all hidden. This is not something that will change after the referendum. But it is important not to miss a key point: here there are two sets of official, irreconcileable pronouncements, both highly visible, both with plenty of power and support behind them. In most of the world there is only one, and the rest is completely marginalized. In which situation is it easier to figure out for yourself what is true… is a real question.

In Caracas: Memory and Media Circus as Campaigning Ends…

It has been an interesting night and day. I have spent a substantial portion of the past 24 hours listening to Chavez speak. The man speaks a lot. But let me explain.

Fear…

My interest in Venezuela started with my interest and work on Colombia. It seemed to me like the two countries, linked historically in so many ways, were living completely different histories today. I remember the coup in April 2002 in Venezuela and a moment when I thought Venezuela was going to go that same route—of paramilitarism, of neoliberalism based on massacre and assassination. But over the past two years Venezuelans have beaten repeated attempts at plunging them into that kind of future.

But yesterday I learned that I had overlooked something else—that that history of murderous counterinsurgency is very much a part of Venezuela´s own history. Last night, at the Complejo Cultural Teatro Teresa Carreno (which is a theatre built for the rich for their own use), there was a really moving event. An auditorium of well over a thousand people, mostly young people, students—real people, not elites—came to a launch of the fourth edition of a book by a journalist who is now the Vice President of Venezuela, Jose Vicente Rangel. The book, ´Expediente Negra´, is an investigation of human rights violations committed during the years of “democracy” here in Venezuela. There was a guerrilla insurgency here, in the 1960s and 1970s, and it, like so much else, was repressed savagely—the whole gambit of disappearances, massacres, assassinations. One President held publicly to the dictum of “shoot first, find out later”.

In addition to the strangeness of an elite theatre filled with people, the event itself was quite dignified, I thought. It would have been easy to do wrong: to turn an event that was a kind of commemoration into a way of scoring political points. But—and this is not to deny that political points were scored—the dead were honoured. Several family members of the disappeared spoke, and told their stories. There were cultural events, musical groups in between the speeches. And yes, there was Chavez, on the screen and in person.

The theme of the evening was “recovering memory” (“recuperar” in spanish has a deeper meaning than recovery in english). The disappeared were shown on screen. Their families held up their pictures. Their names were named (Alberto Lovera, Alejandro Tejero, Andres y Jose Ramon Pasquier, Jose Carmelo Mendoza, Luis Alberto Hernandez… and on and on). A famous musician of the era, Ali Primera, has a song, based on something a famous priest said during a service for one of the dead decades ago—“Those who die for life, cannot be called dead” (again, something is lost in the translation but you get the idea). The photos were shown in a montage, to the music of Ali Primera.

What was the political point of all this? Well, at the beginning of this note I said that my initial interest in Venezuela was not that of someone looking for the authentic revolution or the next revolutionary fashion—it was, instead, a kind of fear of a situation that was close to the brink, with paramilitaries sharpening their knives and waiting for their chance to restore neoliberalism. I thought of Colombia—but Venezuelans have their own, living memories of all this. And it only made sense for Chavez’s people to want to remind Venezuelans of what came before. Chavez does not do disappearances, torture, and massacres, though they accuse him of being a dictator. Venezuelans know this. And many of the people in the opposition are people who did participate in all this. So the cry, “no volveran!” (they will not return!)

Chavez talks…

The evening ended with a lot of Chavez. First, Luis Britto, one of the old generation of leftists who is part of the government, showed some interesting videos. To those who accuse us of censorship, he said, let me remind you of this freedom of press. He then showed two videos of the current vice president, Jose Vicente Rangel, who was in the 1990s a TV personality, trying to interview Chavez, who was in jail after trying to overthrow the regime in a coup in 1992. Both times, the interviews were censored, in a very crude way—a big red “CENSURADO” sign was pasted on Chavez´s face and the attempt ended.

But then, Britto showed a video of a very long interview Rangel did with Chavez two days before Chavez won the elections of 1998. That was an interesting interview—good questions, good answers. Rangel asked about power—they say you are a man who wants power, Chavez… why? Power for what? Chavez said, power isn’t like a glass of water you pick up—it is something you build… I want to build a new kind of power, democratic power, popular power.

After the long interview, Chavez got up to speak himself. “I will be brief”, he began, and he was—he only talked for an hour. He told a story of when he was in the army, and how he witnessed the torture of two campesinos where he was posted as a young sub-lieutenant in the 1970s. He tried, and failed, to stop it, but decided then that he had to do something. There were more stories, too, all trying to return to the point that all those who died fighting for change did not die in vain, that today´s process is built on their sacrifices.

And talks some more…

Then, this morning, I did what any good journalist should do once in a lifetime—I went to a mainstream press conference at the Presidential palace! Now that was a genuine media circus. Several hundred people, from mainstream media all over Latin America, Europe, and some of our friends from the United States as well. Indeed, Venezuela´s good friend Juan Forero (read his NYT reports on Colombia and Venezuela if you have a strong stomach) was sitting just a couple of seats from me. I got to watch him school another American journalist about all the money that Chavez is spending on frivolous things like education, health care, and Argentine beef. I got to watch him elbow that same American journalist and chuckle when Chavez mentioned how infallible the new voting system and voting machines were (that gave me a bit of the chills, actually, especially after getting a chance to read Greg Palast´s latest… do they know something we don´t? All sides here seem to like the machines. Is that not a sure sign something is wrong?)

The American journalists (you can probably read more about this on Narconews—there was a solid Narconews team there today) projected this air of world-weariness, cynicism, and wisdom to the ways of overblown politicians. That attitude was striking, considering how little wisdom or doubt they exhibit when dealing with their own government. But not, perhaps, surprising.

At any rate, Chavez hit his usual notes in the press conference: Latin American integration, opposition to neoliberalism, the likely overwhelming victory in the referendum, the readiness and preparation for any ‘irregularities’, the long history of US destabilization (mentioning Chile many times) in the region.

My two favourite quotes from the press conference were the following. First, when asked about what he hopes for from the US, he said—“we could hope for a lot. What couldn´t we accomplish with the US on our side? What couldn´t we accomplish in fighting poverty, fighting for education, for health care, for literacy in the neighbourhoods? What couldn’t we accomplish for all of the Americas, or for the whole world? I would be the first one to ally with the United States for something like that. But we cannot hope for anything like that. I read this morning that the US is about to take Najaf. Instead of withdrawing from Iraq, as Spain did, in a very dignified way, as other Latin American countries did, they are making this terrible mistake, with its terrible consequences, even worse.” He reminded the audience that Venezuela always opposed and continues to oppose the war in Iraq. And he reminded those present that the reason the price of oil is climbing is because of that war, in part.

My other favourite quote was about the CIA itself. When asked about the CIA, he said: “You know, it is like James Bond. Now, I love James Bond. I think the Sean Connery James Bond movies are irreplaceable. But James Bond is not as cool now as he was.” (this is fairly loose translation, forgive me) “Look at Dracula! Is the new Dracula as scary as Bela Lugosi´s Dracula? Superman? Even Batman, he’s not scary any more, and neither is Robin! The same is true of the CIA. We, a third world, underdeveloped country, we have taped the CIA giving classes here in Venezuela—that is, we have infiltrated them. I’ve called the US Embassy to ask them to stop trying to infiltrate our military—I know the military, when something is going on, they tell me…” When asked if the US would try to destabilize Venezuela, he said they probably would. “But they will fail, again and again.”

Let´s make a deal?

On the streets tonight, there are demonstrations. One of the opposition, the ‘Si’ camp, which by the private TV networks looks like it has hundreds of thousands (check out venezuelanalysis.com for last Sunday’s ‘No’ march photos). And another, a street party at the palace, of the ‘No’. You see, there is no campaigning allowed on Friday and Saturday—so this is the last night to publicly campaign (we will see how this rule is bent or broken tomorrow…) I am in the wrong place, writing when I should be on the street. But, I should mention the one thing that the mainstream media are likely to pick up about Chavez’s speech today.

There was a tone of wanting to play ball: Chavez mentioned the pipeline deal with Uribe. He quoted from many mainstream Wall Street journalists and analysts who predicted chaos, and who predicted that a Chavez victory would bring stability to the markets which the markets, especially the oil markets, need right now, whereas the opposition has no plan and no idea how to govern the country. In the midst of some very solid talk about Latin American integration, the irreversible changes to the constitution and in terms of land reform, housing, education, health, that have been mobilizing and democratizing forces, there was also this sense, that the government could work with the multinationals, work on the megaprojects, and cooperate in some areas. I imagine the mainstream media will seize on this.

The next days of non-campaigning promise to be interesting. Maybe a chance to get out of the media zone and talk to some people…

The Referendum Will Not Be Televised — or, hello from Venezuela

Greetings from Venezuela. I am not sure how much blogging I will be able to do, or what I will be blogging about. But I am in Venezuela, and I am here to cover the referendum for ZNet, and so I am glad that blogging can be a part of that. More later, I promise. I hope to get interviews and lots more…

Continue reading “The Referendum Will Not Be Televised — or, hello from Venezuela”

The Oracle

I caught a tiny bit of Kerry’s speech yesterday, Obama’s speech before that, and I am prepared to venture some predictions.

First, I believe that the Democrats will win in November.

Why? Not because I believe that the US is a democracy, or that the people’s will will prevail, or that the election is a matter of citizens’ choice. The opposite is true. I believe that this election is like a year-long job interviewing/application process. It’s reality TV, like that show where Donald Trump selected a manager by progressively firing elite youths. Like that show, the employer is the elite. The candidates are Kerry and Bush. And the criteria are very simple: who is going to be the better imperial manager. Who is going to better fulfill the desires of the elite at this particular time.

I believe that elites have asked themselves this question, and answered it, and decided that it will be Kerry. I also believe that Kerry has gone out of his way to prove himself a worthy candidate for this elite. The dems have accomplished this principally, as other bloggers have duly noted, by cleansing their program and rhetoric of peace, anti-imperial sentiment, or concern for the victims of US foreign policy. They will treat the people we send to kill our poor and helpless victims better; they will send more people to kill poor and helpless victims so they are safer when they do it; they will try to involve more countries in this killing (this latter isn’t going to work, and will help pave the way for the next Republican presidency). That’s their platform, and that is a winning formula. The media won’t destroy Kerry the way it destroyed Dean, and it will help Bush et al. gently out of office and start preparing them for a return immediately the election is over, just in case Kerry gets any funny ideas (and it’s pretty clear that Kerry has proven that he doesn’t have any funny ideas).

So, that’s my prediction. Kerry will win. But I have more predictions.

The shape of the Kerry order is already coming clear. He is clear on Venezuela (Chavez is a dictator, etc.). He is clear on Israel (Palestinians are terrorists, the wall is a fence, etc.) He isn’t so clear on Haiti, but I’m pretty sure he’s not going to be sending Aristide back there the way Clinton did unless it’s to stop a revolution.

But I think — and it might just be because it’s where I’m looking closest — that the Kerry order is clearest in Colombia. In Colombia (I’ll be trying to write about this soon) the paramilitary killers who have been slaughtering their way across the countryside and through the cities for decades were in the Colombian Legislature making speeches this past week, talking pompously about the ‘sacrifices’ they have made for the country (maybe they mean it in the ancient sense, like “Abraham sacrificed a lamb”, “The paramilitaries sacrificed thousands of peasants and unionists”). But this behaviour was denounced by the US ambassador William Wood, who said it was a ‘scandal’ that the paras talked of their sacrifices. What’s more, Kerry, Edwards, and others sent a letter to Colombia’s President, Alvaro Uribe Velez, telling him to have more respect for human rights.

Meanwhile, the roundups, sieges, murders, continue in the countryside.

And that, my friends, is what the Kerry order looks like. From Bush’s pushing-the-envelope fascism, we will move back to hypocrisy while the gains of the past 4 years are consolidated.

And there have been a lot of gains, when you think about it.

-Plan Colombia, initiated around 2000, has been a tremendous success, displacing millions, devastating the countryside, dismantling popular organization and capacity, destroying the prospects for peace, and bringing in Uribe.

-Iraq has been occupied.

-Haiti has been occupied and the possibility of democratic development there wrecked.

-Israel has built a wall and the starvation of Palestinians is advancing, possibilities for a just settlement seem still more remote, Palestinian society has been shattered even further, and Israel is militarily stronger than ever.

-Civil liberties, international law, labour rights, environmental accords, health agreements, all have been thoroughly shattered all to the benefit of the US.

-Countries are being locked into bilateral trade agreements that work just as well for the US as a multilateral agreement would have.

Small wonder elites figure now is a good time to try to digest some of these gains and have someone try to manage things smoothly instead of smashing their way to new depths of destruction. That option can always be used later, after all. Like in 4 more years.

And yet. Venezuela has been and continues to be a tough nut to crack. Uribe himself seems to have backed off of a war plan with Venezuela, going there to joke around with Chavez. He was no doubt ordered to do that by the US masters. The gas pipeline they went to discuss, it seems to me, may be an attempt to use the velvet glove on Chavez where the iron fists have failed. Involve Venezuela in megaprojects, promise ‘development’ and deliver something that alienates a progressive regime from its base… the neoliberal formula could succeed where coups, assassination attempts, sham strikes and referenda fail.

But maybe not. Kerry’s Iraq plan isn’t going to work. More troops? More allied involvement? What’s in it for the allies? What’s in it for the troops? If the troops are going to hide in bunkers, it ain’t going to help ‘win the peace’. If they are out there slaughtering people, it might help for a while but it might also make them targets (and the American media can count US troops killed, even if they can’t count Iraqis bombed or dead because of bad drinking water, and the day more US troops have died under Kerry than Bush will be a day the media marks, I promise you that).

If US movements can get over the ‘Anybody But Bush’ stuff quickly after Kerry wins and actually challenge the demobilizing democrats (and other demobilizing forces that are part of the whole machinery) they could generate something difficult for the system to handle. If Michael Moore (or anyone else who can figure out how) decides to use the space he’s created with F911 after Bush is gone, instead of trying to ‘support’ the criminals his film will have helped bring into power, maybe the country could have an opposition with some weight, and that would create difficulties for elites too.

It could be that Kerry’s victory will enable us to focus on the fact that there is an empire and these are imperial problems, not just some malignant cabal in the White House, and get to more systemic critiques. It could also be that the liberals will split from the anti-imperialists and weaken possibilities for anything serious to happen.

It’s also possible that Kerry won’t win. This is just a prediction, after all, and my record isn’t that good. File this one and be ready to throw it back at me in November.

This just in — anti-poverty organization is broke again!

The importance of a resource base for trying to organize is hard to overstate. Much of the reason so much of the ‘left’ (such as it is) is based on or around campuses is resources: who else has the time, the space (I mean literally, the rooms), the opportunities.

Well, there are other bases. The churches, for example. Much of the Central America solidarity movement in the 1980s was organized through churches. I guess much of the very early civil rights movement in the US was organized around churches.

Of course, liberal non-governmental organizations and political organizations have tremendous resources and can provide these on occasion for real movement work. The anti-globalization movement of the 1990s and the WSFs are related to this resource base.

Still another base, and perhaps the most potentially powerful, is still the unions. Even the small percentage of the workforce that is unionized provides tremendous resources to major national organizations with major infrastructures, whose principal political activity seems to be supporting parties who have more contempt for working people even than the union bureaucracy does.

Every once in a while one of these bases provides enough resources to start something that takes on a life and a momentum of its own. That is what happened with the Ontario Coalition Against Poverty some 15 years ago now. Begun with a tiny bit of union funding to organize some anti-poverty actions, OCAP took on a life of its own — and indeed became very critical of the limited resistance being offered by these unions that have such potential power (see this interview for some of that critique). But while OCAP definitely has a life of its own, including a movement base and an absolutely crucial function, the resource base has been drained away from it, and OCAP has been forced, as radical groups seem frequently to be forced, to rely on the most tenuous resource base — small donations from activists and sympathetic people. Below is their latest appeal for help with sustainable funding…

OCAP AGAIN HAS ITS BACK TO THE WALL AND IS UNABLE TO PAY ITS ORGANIZERS:

An Appeal for Emergency Donations AND Sustaining Solidarity

A few months ago, OCAP issued a statement on a financial crisis that meant it could not pay its organizers and meet basic obligations around the running of its office. A generous response pulled us out of that crisis but, unfortunately, the level of regular, sustaining donations did not come up nearly enough. For that reason, we are again in a grim situation and our organizers have not been paid on time.

The number of calls we receive and respond to ie. the welfare, tenant, disability, immigration, essential service cutoff casework we do, the provincial offence tickets we fight and so on, have not decreased. OCAP is hated by those in power and those who prop them up because it starts with the needs of those it fights for. If the City tries to push poor street sellers out of Chinatown, we defend them regardless of the fact that this puts us on a collision course with avowed progressive Olivia Chow. If hotel workers ask for our help when their own union lets them down, we act without worrying too much about the enemies we make in the ranks of labour officialdom.

This is a time when the need for a serious poor peoples’ organization is greater than ever. The task of implementing the social and political agenda of the banks and corporations has been handed to those who are skilled in presenting a gentler image than that of the upfront reactionaries they’ve replaced. Dalton McGuinty promised change and gives us a low key brand of the same as before. David Miller talked of a new kind of Toronto but, under him, the social cleansing of the homeless by cops and City officials rivals anything Mel Lastman ever set in motion.

Our funding options are limited and it is to those who agree with the stands we take that we must turn. We don’t run a lavish operation. It takes a bit more than $4,500.00 a month to run our office. That’s one full-time and two part-time organizers, our rent, utilities, phone and supplies for community meals and meetings. Thanks to the great solidarity of CUPE 3903, our rent is covered. Small regular sustaining donations meet the cost of our phone bill. However, our organizers are still relying on the hit and miss one time donations that people send us. Those donations are always greatly appreciated, of course, (we certainly need some of them right now) but the real issue is to extend our base of regular donations.

OCAP’s struggle to create a model of resistance at the base has won it respect throughout Canada and even internationally. People organizing in many different places have been influenced by our work and we ask supporters everywhere to help us build the resources we must have to develop and win. Details on the fights we are taking up can be followed by going to our website at www.ocap.ca

Those who want to help sustain OCAP’s work can send us post dated cheques or call/email us for the simple details on how to arrange for regular direct deposit donations. Please act without delay. Ask friends and progressive organizations to come to our help and send all support you can to:

Ontario Coalition Against Poverty,
10 Britain Street,
TORONTO, Ontario
M5A 1R6

In solidarity,

OCAP

**
Ontario Coalition Against Poverty
10 Britain St. Toronto, ON M5A 1R6
416-925-6939 ocap@tao.ca www.ocap.ca
**

March against the Wall begins…

There’s a major march against Israel’s Apartheid Wall has begun today. The repression has already begun, with Israel wounding 17 people at one of the first demonstrations.

Not content with just repressing the march, Israel also assassinated a Palestinian in Tulkarem. Israel has been active in Tulkarem recently: for example, they leveled a home there yesterday, declaring curfew. Israel also killed six people in Tulkarem earlier this week, something reported in Ha’aretz and analyzed by some ISM activists below. Take a look, and note the contrast between the eyewitness testimony of the activists who describe a flat-out assassination to the flat, military-sourced clinical description of a ‘gunbattle’ given in the mainstream media. Remember that every time you hear about armed Palestinians killed in gunbattles.

1. “Six Armed Palestinians Killed in Tulkarm” Last Night? (from ISM listserv, July 26 2004)

According to Ha’aretz Daily on-line Sunday evening: “Six armed Palestinians were killed by Border Police undercover troops in the West Bank town of Tul Karm on Sunday… Military sources said the six were members of Fatah’s military wing, the Al-Aqsa Martyrs’ Brigades, and were on their way to carry out a terror attack… A gunbattle ensued in which six of the militants were killed, including two local leaders of the group.” (See the rest of the Ha’aretz article pasted below)

This Ha’aretz description bears little resemblance to what happened on the ground. Six Palestinians were assassinated 100 meters from the ISM apartment where three ISM volunteers were staying at the time. Only two of the six Palestinians assassinated were members of the Al Aqsa Martyrs’ Brigades. According to reliable sources in Tulkarem, the other four were simply bystanders.

The Ha’aretz account, which relies on Israeli military sources, distorts reality by portraying all the victims as members of the armed resistance, by suggesting that Palestinians opened fire and were about to carry out a “terror attack”, by failing to note the killing of four Palestinian not involved with armed resistance, and the wounding of at least three others and the denial of access for Palestinian medical personnel.

This account in Ha’aretz, probably the most reputable Israeli newspaper, presents an inaccurate description to Israelis and to the world of one Israeli military operations in the Occupied Territories and of how Palestinians experience Israeli military occupation. The Ha’aretz account is complicit in covering up brutal Israeli military killings of four Palestinians who were not involved in armed resistance. The hundreds of stories of this type that are printed every year, where every Palestinian killed is a “militant” on his way to carry out a “terror attack”, portray an entirely different reality from what occurs on the ground daily. This type of one-sided reporting dehumanizes Palestinians and covers up Israeli military crimes rather than increasing readers’ knowledge and understanding.

1. “Six members of Al Aqsa Brigades” ?: Of the six who were assassinated, only two were members of Al Aqsa Brigades. Hani Awaida (27 years old) and Mahdi Tambouz (25) were well-known leaders of Al Aqsa Martyrs Brigade in Tulkarem who the Israeli military had tried to kill or capture many times. For example, about three weeks ago ISM volunteers visited a barber shop shortly after six Palestinians were arrested (including two barbers) by Israeli soldiers only minutes after Mahdi had left the shop. All said that the soldiers were looking for Mahdi that day.

Sayed Abu Qumra (24 years old) and Ahmed Barouq (26), both killed, were both civilians who happened to be in the area visiting friends. They had no relationship to armed resistance.

Abderrahim Hassan Shadid (34) was also killed. He was an agent in the Palestinian security services who may have been walking through the area to go to a nearby police station. He was reportedly on his cellphone with colleagues telling them that something was happening when the line went dead.

18 year old Mohammed Shanti was our next door neighbor. He had just succeeded in passing his high school graduation exam a few weeks ago. Mohammed had no relationship with the Palestinian resistance.

2. “A gunbattle ensued” ?: From 100 meters away ISMers heard all the shooting. There was one long burst of shooting, a short burst, and then minutes later another medium length burst. The sound of all the gunshots was the same. They were all fired from the same type of weapon, all Israeli weapons. There was no sound of shooting from Palestinian weapons. Witnesses confirmed that there was no Palestinian shooting, saying that the six were shot suddenly and at close range by Israeli special forces in a Palestinian-plated car before any of them could react.

3. “Six armed Palestinians” ? Two of the six may have been armed. Though witnesses saw no evidence of weapons, Palestinian sources suggests that it is possible that Mahdi and Hani were armed at the time, as they frequently were armed. If they had any weapons, the Israeli army must have taken them as there were no weapons near the bodies when soldiers withdrew.

Security agent Abderrahim Shadid was unarmed, as were the other three bystanders who were killed.

4. “On their way to carry out a terror attack” ? Awaida and Tambouz were standing by the side of the street eating when they were assassinated. The Israeli army has tried multiple times over the last months to kill Awaida and Tambouz, who are members of the Palestinian armed resistance. There is no reason to believe that at the moment they were killed they were about to carry out an attack. This just happened to be the moment when soldiers were, once again, tipped off by a collaborator as to their whereabouts.

Crucial Points Omitted from the Ha’aretz Article

In addition to failing to note that four of the six Palestinians assassinated were bystanders with no involvement in armed resistance, Ha’aretz did not report on these points:

5. Israeli soldiers deny access for Palestinians medical personnel: The Israeli military prevented Palestinian medical personnel from reaching the area and treating the men who were shot for at least 20 – 30 minutes. For at least 15 of those minutes three ISMers wearing florescent orange vests were standing in view of an Israel soldier and about 70 meters from and in view of the body of 18 year old Mohammed Shanti, who was dying in the street. The ISMers shouted that he needed medical care. In response at one point an Israeli soldier aimed his laser rifle sight at the chest of an ISMer.

6. Three other civilians wounded by Israeli gunfire: In addition to the assassination of four individuals with no involvement in armed
resistance, at least three other civilians were wounded by the random Israeli gunfire. Ten year old Mohsen Na’im was shot in the leg. 60 year old Khalil Zeidan was shot in the back while sitting on the street, and 19 year old Hashim Jarrad was shot in the wrist while attempting to seek cover inside his uncle’s barber shop.

I don’t think we will have the heart to tell our neighbors that Ha’aretz reported to the world that their assassinated eighteen year old son, Mohammed, who just graduated from high school and happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time was a dangerous terrorist.

For More Information from Tulkarem contact:

Pat: 972-54-6-253-451
Phyllis: 972-54-7-834-954
Abdelkarim: 972-59-836-783

Ha’aretz Daily

Troops kill 6 militants; 6 children hurt in Gaza settlement
By Amos Harel, Haaretz Correspondent, News Agencies and Haaretz Service

Six armed Palestinians were killed by Border Police undercover troops in the West Bank town of Tul Karm on Sunday.

Military sources said the six were members of Fatah’s military wing, the Al-Aqsa Martyrs’ Brigades, and were on their way to carry out a terror attack.

Witnesses said troops raided the town after dark and ambushed a group of eight militants. A gunbattle ensued in which six of the militants were killed, including two local leaders of the group. The other two gunmen fled, the sources said.

Fatah leaders produced a statement Sunday night in Tul Karm promising they will react quickly and painfully to the killing of members of their faction. The statement alluded to a strike “deep in Israeli territory.”

No criminals escape, even 30 years later — right?

This is pretty amazing. The Canadian Newspaper, the Globe and Mail reports that the RCMP arrested a man who has been living in Toronto for decades for a shooting of a police officer in Chicago 30 years ago. Douglas Freeman, the police say, is really Joseph Coleman Pannell, a Black Panther who shot police officer Terrence Knox in Chicago in 1969. Knox was shot in the arm and went on to a long career in law enforcement at the end of which he retired.

Continue reading “No criminals escape, even 30 years later — right?”

Still more on Sudan

I don’t use it too often, though perhaps I should — Al Jazeera reported today that the Arab League asked the international community to give Sudan time.

To put it mildly, this is rather underwhelming. So is the Sudanese government’s own line, that the US is ‘using’ the crisis in Darfur.

That the US is using it, and will use it, cynically and with no regard for the victims, is not in doubt (on July 22 the US Congress agreed that what was going on in Sudan was ‘genocide’ — something they never managed to do for Rwanda 10 years before; and let’s not forget al-Shifa, the pharmaceutical plant Clinton blew up in 1998). But the question is about the thing that is being used, not the US’s use of it, and the thing that is being used is very real and very horrific, according to the reports that are coming out, and despite the Arab League’s exhortations, it seems to me that time is the very thing that is not on the side of the victims of this assault.

All the details are difficult to get. But the Arab League’s position, that the onus is on the rebels to disarm, is untenable. The signs point to this being a war by government-backed militias against the population that won’t stop until the government is forced to call it off or the government has achieved its military, political, and economic objectives, probably having to do with displacing a large sector of the population.

You can read the UN Humanitarian Roundups at the Darfur Information Center to get an idea of what’s going on on the ground. The current concern is that the Sudanese government is trying to force hundreds of thousands of displaced people to go back to their homes, with no guarantees about not getting massacred.