Today, September 23, Palestinian Authority (PA) leader Mahmoud Abbas submits, to the UN the application for Palestinian statehood for the Palestinian territories occupied by Israel since 1967.
What are the implications of this effort? Does it serve the Palestinian cause? And why do Israel and the U.S. oppose this action? What’s the alternative?
Paradoxically, this month marks the eighteenth anniversary of when Abbas stood alongside Bill Clinton, Yasser Arafat and Yitzhak Rabin on the White House lawn in a ceremony celebrating the signing of the Oslo Accords.
As one of its architects, Abbas sold the Oslo agreement to the Palestinian people as the vehicle towards the establishment of an independent Palestinian state and the restoration of the rights of the Palestinian people.
But throughout the past two decades lofty promises were offered to the Palestinians, while endless negotiations across continents took place between Israel and the PA, which Abbas has headed since the death of Arafat in 2004: Madrid (1991), Oslo (1993), Wye River (1997), Camp David (2000), Taba (2001), Quartet’s road map (2002), Annapolis (2007), bilateral negotiations (2008), Obama’s promises for settlements freeze in Cairo (2009) and declaration of statehood within one year at the UN (2010).
But despite the fact that international law and world public opinion are overwhelmingly on the side of the Palestinians, all these efforts for establishing an independent Palestinian state were futile as they confronted the hard reality of brutal military occupation on the ground and Israeli intransigence at the negotiating table. Continue reading →
The Palestinian President, Mahmoud Abbas ,has announced his intention to apply to the United Nations Security Council for full membership for a Palestinian state on Friday, 23 September 2011…
Membership at the UN according to its charter is open to all other peace-loving states which accept the obligations contained in it and in the judgment of the organisation, are able and willing to carry out these obligations.
The admission of any such state will be effected by a decision of the General Assembly upon the recommendation of the Security Council.
A recommendation for admission from the Security Council requires affirmative votes from at least nine of the council’s fifteen members, with none of the five permanent members voting against. The Security Council’s recommendation must then be subsequently approved in the General Assembly by a two-thirds majority vote.
Despite the long term goal of the establishment of an independent Palestinian state, many Palestinian activists are discontented with this bid and are opposing it. Continue reading →
‘Social justice and transformation in Africa and Palestine are inextricably linked,’ writes Horace Campbell. The ‘demilitarisation of the region can only be secured by uniting the peace and justice forces in all parts of the world.’
AFRICA, PALESTINE AND THE WORLD CONFERENCE AGAINST RACISM
It was ten years ago in September 2001 at the World Conference against Racism (WCAR) when the collaboration between the anti-racist forces of the world and the anti-colonial forces came together in Durban. This WCAR brought the issues of racism, reparations and the oppression of the Palestinian peoples to the centre of the international agenda. A clear programme of action had been developed to reverse colonialism and for the repair of the harms done to humanity by colonialism, racism and all forms of oppression. Indeed, the full title of the conference was the Third World Conference against Racism, Racial Discrimination, Xenophobia and Related Intolerances.
No programme of action could be carried out because very soon after the conference on 11 September 2001, the world was carried into a new period of militarism and imperial aggression. Questions of the injustice of capital and neoliberal exploitation took a back seat at UN meetings. Continue reading →
President Obama delivered an empty and arrogant sermon to the United Nations Wednesday, laced with platitudes about “peace” that were designed to mask Washington’s predatory policies.
The American president received a tepid response from the assembled heads of state, foreign ministers and UN delegates. Not a single line in his speech evoked applause. The novelty of two years ago, when Obama made his first appearance before the body posing as the champion of multilateralism in contrast to Bush, has long since worn off. As the world quickly learned, changing the occupant of the White House did little to shift the direction of American foreign policy or curb the spread of American militarism.
The immediate purpose of Obama’s 47-minute address was to supplement a behind-the-scenes campaign of bullying and intimidation aimed at forcing the Palestinian Authority to drop its plan to seek a UN Security Council vote on recognition of Palestine as a sovereign member state.
Washington has vowed to veto any bid for Palestinian statehood if it comes to the Security Council, a move that would only underscore the real character of US imperialist policy in the Middle East and the hypocrisy of its claims to identify with the revolutionary upheavals of the Arab masses.
The speech and Obama’s defense of the veto threat served to accomplish the same purpose, further diminishing the US president’s popularity in the Arab world. According to a recent poll, his favorable rating in the region has fallen from roughly 50 percent when he took office to barely 10 percent, even lower than George W. Bush in his second term. Continue reading →
‘Tears of Gaza’ by Vibeke Lokkeberg is a documentary film that should be watched by every American, to see how Israel spends our taxes. Every European should watch it, to see the true face of Israel. It should be viewed by every Arab, to renew our resolve not to allow a racist nation to wipe Palestine and her children from the map and from history.
I had read the stories from Gaza after Israel’s so called “operation cast lead”. I had read the reports. I thought I had cried enough then not to cry again. But this film went to my heart, stirred everything up, made the tears fall and fall and here I am now, with a hollow, spooned out hole in my gut because bombs were dropped on sleeping children, helicopters rained the death and disfigurement of white phosphorous on terrified civilians huddling at a UN school for shelter… and no one is doing anything about it.Tears of Gaza lays bare the lies, the cover ups and Richard Goldstone’s moral flip flopping. It takes you into the heart of Gaza’s tormented landscape to show the truth behind craven and mendacious headlines with words that describe Israel’s slaughter as an “incursion” or “self defense”. This film shows us these truths through the luminous spirits of children. It is not to be missed!
I first heard of “Tears of Gaza”, or “Gaza Traer” as the original Norwegian title is called, when Bernard Henri-Levi launched an attack against Lokkeberg and me in major newspapers throughout Europe. She and I were in touch after that and I was finally just able to get hold of the film to watch it. It is a monumentally important work. It is beautiful and painful and honest and devastating.
Vibeke Lokkeberg gives us the names, faces, and stories of three ordinary Gaza children with extraordinary spirits. We first fall in love with Yehya, a 12-year-old boy who wants to become a doctor so he can heal people who are shot by Israelis. We see him on a small motorboat, lost in the magic of childhood as he is taught to steer the boat. His beautiful eyes and brilliant smile during these moments make his tears all the harder to bear when he talks about his beloved father. The losses that follow in his life are incomprehensible and overwhelming merely to hear about.
Until you meet Amira, 14 years old, and walk through her world.
Amira is beautiful. It’s the kind of beauty that holds an ineffable pain not often seen in the young. Her life, too, is marred by death and destruction and disfigurement of her body by ammunition. She tells us that she wants to become a lawyer so she can take the Israelis to court for the crimes they’ve committed. Then, recalling her father and brothers, she admits wishing she had just “gone with them”.
Like Amira, Rasmia is far beyond her 11 years. Arabic speakers might detect things about her that non-Arabic speakers will not. This is largely because of the translation; and this is my only criticism of the film. When Rasmia goes into what seems like a waking trance, her mother tells us in Arabic that she is “imagining”. The translation says “memorizing”, which doesn’t make sense and it distracts from an important subtlety. Her mother explains that she sometimes just “imagines” things from the attacks. I suspect that most psychologists witnessing those scenes and hearing her mother’s explanation would agree that she was experiencing flashbacks and exhibiting clear signs of post-traumatic stress disorder.
Another example where the wrong translation obscures important nuances is when Yehya is telling us about losing his father. He is, in fact, speaking in the third person: “when someone loses their father, it’s like they’ve lost the whole world” etc. But his words are translated as if in the first person: “when my father died, it’s like I lost the whole world.” The distinction might not seem important, until you realize that he cannot get the words out without breaking down when he speaks in the first person. It’s a faint distinction, but one that makes your heart break even more.
And we should all allow our hearts be broken over Gaza. It’s the least we can do. To hear these three children and ask others to hear them is the very least we can do. Vibeke Lokkeberg has given us a monumentally important record of what happened in December 2009 to January 2010; so no one can ever say “I didn’t know”.
Lest we forget, lest our tears dry or outrage subside, and lest our hearts heal before Palestine is free, I hope this film will be shown throughout the world, across university campuses, communities, organizations and living rooms. Take this not just as a review, but a call to action.
“He (Netanyahu) thinks he is the superpower and we are here to do whatever he requires. Who’s the (expletive) superpower here”?” –President Bill Clinton after meeting with the newly elected Benjamin Netanyahu
Under International Law and America’s War Crimes Act, all U.S. Presidents and the 535 members of the U.S. Congress are “complicitors” in Israel’s long history of genocide, ethnic cleansing, war crimes, and crimes against humanity; and as such are “war criminals” themselves.
Since 1922’s Congressional Adoption and Support of the illegal Balfour “Declaration” gifting Palestine to European Jews as “A”, not “The”, national homeland for Jews, Congress and every Administration have either remained silent or directly and indirectly supported Zionism’s use of terrorism and force to ethnically cleanse Palestine’s indigenous inhabitants and strongly supported the establishment of an illegal nation that was founded by terrorism and lives by terrorism. By being complicitors in such war crimes they are under International Law guilty of war crimes themselves.
Under the U.N. Charter member states must promote: “Universal respect for, and observance of, human rights and fundamental freedoms for all.”
The U.S. and Israel are signatories to the U.N. Charter and as such violate this fundamental principle of the Charter.
Israel is also in violation of the U.S. War Crimes Act which states, “An Act to amend title 18, United States Code, to carry out the international obligations of the United States under the Geneva Conventions to provide criminal penalties for certain war crimes” Continue reading →
“Libya is something very different from what happened in Egypt and Tunisia. It was not a pacific demonstration of people. It was, from the very start, armed groups against other armed groups, the regime. I’m not at all defending Gaddafi, but what is very specific of the case of Libya is that the so-called opposition, armed from the first minute, called NATO to their rescue. The target here . . . is not only oil, because they already have control of this oil, but more importantly water, the immense water resources of Libya. . . . And a third is to establish in Libya permanent US military bases, in order for AFRICOM, which is still based in Stuttgart, Germany, to be based in Africa. That is a direct menace against Egypt, against Algeria, . . . and against the countries of the African Sahel.” — Samir Amin
Samir Amin is a Marxist economist. This video conference, moderated by Biju Mathew, was sponsored by Brecht Forum on 11 September 2011. The text above is an edited partial transcript of the conference.
We are all going to be invited to the funeral of the two-state solution if and when the UN General Assembly announces the acceptance of Palestine as a member state.
The support of the vast majority of the organization’s members would complete a cycle that began in 1967 and which granted the ill-advised two-state solution the backing of every powerful and less powerful actor on the international and regional stages.
Even inside Israel, the support engulfed eventually the right as well as the left and center of Zionist politics. And yet despite the previous and future support, everybody inside and outside Palestine seems to concede that the occupation will continue and that even in the best of all scenarios, there will be a greater and racist Israel next to a fragmented and useless bantustan. Continue reading →
In your lengthy article Decade of Deceit: Anti-Semitic 9/11 Conspiracy Theories 10 Years Later, you label a number of named writers and commentators including me who say that Israel’s Mossad was or even might have been involved in the 9/11 terror attack as anti-Semitic, and you assert that they are demonizing “the Jews”. You also say: “Anticipating criticism, a number of these anti-Semitic conspiracists now try to immunize themselves against charges of anti-Semitism by making disclaimers up front about not being anti-Semitic. Their own works and record, however, blatantly contradict their innocuous self-characterizations.”
I have to assume that I am one of the “number” in the above quotation because when you introduce at the end of your piece a few sentences of what I have said on the subject of 9/11, you do so with these words: “After pre-emptively trying to dismiss charges of anti-Semitism, Hart asserts…” Continue reading →
‘Tears of Gaza’ by Vibeke Lokkeberg is a documentary film that should be watched by every American, to see how Israel spends our taxes. Every European should watch it, to see the true face of Israel. It should be viewed by every Arab, to renew our resolve not to allow a racist nation to wipe Palestine and her children from the map and from history.
