Two days ago, 1,360 Gaza Freedom March activists from 42 countries including the United States intending to enter Gaza for a commemoration of the Gaza massacre of a year ago, were confronted by Egyptian security forces on the banks of the Nile. These international activists have been continually denied access to the Rafah border crossing, and some groups have been confined to their lodgings, bus stations, and embassies under threat of deportation.
News is 'news' in our corporatacracy. Currently, for example, we have the Israeli-Warmongers-Only-Perspective 'News'. See below for how the release of a UN report on the war criminal conduct on both sides of the Gaza war is widely headlined in the mainstream news (to see how news of 320 dead Gazan children in that massacre is handled (hint: 'not at all'), see NPR's Linda Gradstein):
Israel fights 'perverse' UN report on Gaza
The funniest part is this sentence --
Both sides of the Gaza conflict criticised the report for putting them on the same footing.
-- followed by 5 paragraphs of Israeli criticism of the report, and then the article ends.
Just a reminder that it is possible to headline the release of the UN report fairly: Israel, Hamas called to account. Now was that so hard?
Related is the 'Anything to get "Iran's Got Nukes!" Into the Headline' 'News':
Iran is a nuclear power: Ahmadinejad aide
Where the Iranian spokesperson is allowed to dispel the headline's glaring implication in paragraph 20:
Javanfekr said Iran is ready to face the six powers and "during the talks we will definitely speak of banning nuclear arms globally because it is not a problem for us as we do not possess any nuclear arms."
So, obviously 'nuclear power' means 'nuclear power power'. Some of you got your war on before you realized that, right? That was the intent.
Meanwhile, McClatchy continues to be a source of news. Here it provides some reality on the domestic side, first the real health care catastrophe:
Come and see the blood in the streets.
Come and see
the blood in the streets.
Come and see the blood
in the streets!
- Pablo Neruda
I hope Robinson's students are debating this as intensely as the readers here. If so, this seems a raging success as a learning exercise.
- ProfEd
What is college supposed to be about? Back in my day, younguns, many of us hoped it would be about discovering of an intellectual 'real world' beyond the borders of our (mainstream media mediated) conventional ideas. Even now, I'm sure for a few freshpeople that is part of what they hope their college academic experience will provide them.
But that's not how it generally works out. Most professors care almost exclusively about tenure and the academic mole hill, and besides, they fear where things might go if they did their duty to nurture or even fucking provoke a 'worldly' awareness (however unsettling) in their students. So they think and act 'by the book', keeping their ears to the mainstream world and listening for instructions on which thoughts win points there and which are over the line. Boring.
These profs, of course, have long been intimidated into silence or at best muddled concern over the actions of America's number one ally Israel, while happily railing on the evils of official U.S. enemies Iran, 'the Taliban', Sudan, and, earlier, Serbia, Saddam, and the Soviets.
Nonetheless, Israel's razing of Gaza last January compelled UC Santa Barbara professor William Robinson to rashly provoke his 'sociology and globalization' students with an e-mailed photographic comparison of the Gaza and Warsaw ghettoes. Over the line.
Two of his 80 students complained, saying the Jewish professor was anti-Semitic. Because criticism of Israel is anti-Semitic, and because comparisons between barbed-wire-enclosed ghettoes - no one in or out enforced with deadly force - created by Nazi-era Germany and GWOT-era Israel are anti-Semitic.
Human Rights Watch released its final report on Israel's invasion of Gaza, finding that human rights or war crimes were indeed committed on the civilian population. The report specifically cited indiscriminate attacks which caused needless civilian suffering and the use of white phosphorus bombs, supplied to Israel by the US, in civilian areas.
A video which accompanied the report was titled Rain of Fire: Israel's Unlawful Use of White Phosphorous in Gaza
Thanks to Phillip Weiss of Mondoweiss for drawing attention to the following contrasting videos about Israeli Apartheid Week and the many educational videos that are being used to defend Israel's actions not only in Gaza, but over the past 60 years. Hasbara means "explanation," but when used in most critical settings, "propaganda" is its intended meaning.
There is even a site, Hasbara-Org, where one can go to obtain "explanations" from the Israeli side of the universe. For example, the settlement building that has been going on in the West Bank and East Jerusalem for 40 years, is not what we think it is. But first, the Palestinian view.
It's nice when a U.S. Secretary of State gets pissed off at and does something about the flagrant inhumanity of the main recipient of U.S. foreign and military aid, Israel:
Clinton warns Israel over delays in Gaza aid
By Barak Ravid and Avi Issacharoff, Haaretz Correspondents
February 27, 2009
Secretary of State Hillary Clinton has relayed messages to Israel in the past week expressing anger at obstacles Israel is placing to the delivery of humanitarian aid to the Gaza Strip. A leading political source in Jerusalem noted that senior Clinton aides have made it clear that the matter will be central to Clinton's planned visit to Israel next Tuesday.
Ahead of Clinton's visit, special U.S. envoy to the Middle East George Mitchell is expected to issue a sharply worded protest on the same matter when he arrives here Thursday.
"Israel is not making enough effort to improve the humanitarian situation in Gaza," senior U.S. officials told Israeli counterparts last week, and reiterated Washington's view by saying that "the U.S. expects Israel to meet its commitments on this matter."
Two weeks ago, four senior European Union officials sent a letter to the prime minister, foreign minister, defense minister and Yitzhak Herzog, the minister charged with humanitarian aid transfers to the Gaza Strip, protesting delays in the flow of aid through the crossings into Gaza. . . .
Now don't back down girl! Of course, the Israel Lobby quickly responded (and reported; WCBS doesn't allow readers to know what Clinton said that made seemingly 'everyone' so angry):
Uri Avnery, founder of Gusn Shalom, the Israeli peace activist group, once predict that America will eventually turn against Israel on grounds of its human rights abuses, but like a large ship in the ocean, its turn will be slow. The turn has come as we are seeing more and more evidence that Israel will no longer wag America's tail and bring it more and more international opprobrium on its account.
This article, Clinton warns Israel over delays in Gaza aid, which appeared in the Israeli newspaper Haaretz today, already intimates a new US policy concerning Israel and its treatment of the Palestinians.
Introduction to the translated version of the Speigel report.
"Spiegel database" of West Bank settlements and outposts Developed by the Israeli Ministry of Defense
Enclosed are translations of excerpts from a classified Israeli government database never before released to the public. This database has been in assembly since 2004, when then-Minister of Defense Shaul Mofaz tasked Brigadier General (Res.) Baruch Spiegel with building a database to include up-to-date reference for all statutory aspects of settlements and outposts in the West Bank.
The report data demonstrates:
Over 30 settlements - including longstanding settlements such as Ariel, Kochav Yaakov, Beit El, Elon Moreh and Ofrah - that were to some extent built on private Palestinian land.
Construction activity within settlements being conducted without necessary building permits or in direct violation of the building plans.
The extent and locations of unauthorized building in outposts across the West Bank.
Here's an on-video representation of how 'objective' the U.S. mainstream media is on Israel/Palestine (and Israel vs. the Muslim Middle East in general) matters. The Washington Post's David Ignatius defending the pillagers of Gaza and cutting off the outrage of the Muslim world (and Turkish prime minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan), at the world rich people's forum, Davos. BBC has a good video and describes what Israel President Shimon Peres had said -- just prior to Erdogan's attempted rebuttal -- to general applause:
Mr Peres had told the audience Israel was forced on to the offensive against Hamas by thousands of rockets and mortars fired into Israel.
"The tragedy of Gaza is not Israel, it is Hamas," the Israeli leader said.
"Why did they fire rockets? There was no siege against Gaza. Why did they fight us, what did they want? There was never a day of starvation in Gaza."
He argued that Mr Erdogan would have reacted in the same way if rockets had hit Istanbul.
What, there wasn't a siege? Yeah, right. And this lame excuse-making evokes widespread applause? Did the fine establishment ladies rattle their jewelry too? Homemade rockets that killed nobody versus an onslaught that razed and bulldozed Gaza's entire physical plant and killed 1,330 of its citizens, including roughly 500 children? Yeah, maybe Prime Minister Erdogan would be a bit irritated, and anxious for equal time. But no, Mr. Turkish prime minister, David Ignatius, gatekeeper/reporter at an American ruling elite newspaper, had the mike:
PLEASE NOTE: This video essay contains images of the Israeli and Palestinian casualties - including children - in Gaza as well as the Pulitzer prize-winning photo of the nude Vietnamese girl running from napalm bombing. Some viewers may find the images disturbing, but they are in context and germane to the subject matter.
"I and the public know
What all schoolchildren learn
Those to whom evil is done
Do evil in return."
W.H. Auden, "September 1, 1939"
Versailles is full of almost nothing but fools. And those who are not fools are forced to spend almost all their time responding to fools. So what would it be like if, instead of wall-to-wall fools chattering endlessly about the Mideast on one channel after another, we instead had an intelligence discourse to guide us? Well, we don't have the TV network infrastructure--at least not here in the US. But we do have the content available, and potential content-providers out the wazoo. To pick up on one channel, in particular, one need only look to the London Review of Books, which has a page, "LRB contributors react to events in Gaza", first put up on January 15, which it has continued to update.
This is page where one can read the views of historians and historically-informed commentators who know that history is always at least a double fabrication--fabricated first by those who act in its midst, and fabricated again by those who pick and chose how the initial fabrication is made sense of, which pieces are kept and which discarded, which kept together, which separated, which disappeared, and which created out of nothing.
Here, to entice you, are a few excerpts of a few contributions, to give you a flavor of what it might be to watch an intelligent discussion on tv for a change. The excerpts are not intended to represent the full views of those quoted, only to reflect some of the kinds of ideas, insights and perspectives they put into play.
The death of Israel's 'shooting and crying' soldier By Gabriel Piterberg
Not heeding Hegel's dictum that scholars, like Minerva's owl, ought to await dusk before spreading their wings, I would venture that Israel's ferocious onslaught on Gaza's Palestinians might deliver a coup de grace to one of the most effective tools in its propaganda kit: the image of the morally handsome, "shooting and crying" Israeli soldier.
Palestinian US College Grad Loses 2 Brothers in Israeli Shooting; Father Watched Son Bleed to Death After Israeli Troops Bar Ambulances
AMY GOODMAN: Well, as the [Israeli] Foreign Minister [Tzipi Livni] was denying Israeli war crimes in Gaza Friday, my next guest lost two of his brothers to Israeli attacks on that same day. Amer Shurrab is a Palestinian from Khan Yunis living in the United States. On Friday, his father and two brothers were fleeing their village when their vehicle came under Israeli fire. Twenty-eight-year-old Kassab died in a hail of bullets trying to flee the vehicle. Eighteen-year-old Ibrahim survived the initial attack, but Israeli troops refused to allow an ambulance to reach them until twenty hours later. By then, it was too late. Ibrahim had bled to death in front of his father.
Of all of Israel's apologists over the years, none surpasses Alan Dershowitz. In this article posted on Huffington Post this morning, The Phony War Crimes Accusation Against Israel, Dershowitz has gone overboard, comparing Israel's minor massacres in Gaza with the more extensive killings of civilians in Chechnya in Russia, and Sudan's of its Darfurian population. Fewer kills deserves consideration and should not be considered war crimes.
"Everything has got to come in; that is one of the things we will be insisting on strongly." -- John Holmes, UN humanitarian chief
The way to de facto peace between Israel and Hamas is obvious: end Israel's blockade on civilian goods and people going into and out of Gaza. Anyone who cares about peace, the security of Israel, and the security and welfare of Gaza should be pushing Israel - or the U.S., Israel's main and essential supporter - to lift its siege. Pushing hard, like the UN, CARE, and Save the Children did today and yesterday.
AFP: The United Nations urged Israel on Thursday to reopen Gaza crossings as senior officials assessed war damage . . .
"If you want to have reconstruction, you have to have cement and construction materials and pipes and spare parts," said UN humanitarian chief John Holmes at a UN-run school hit by an Israeli missile in the northern town of Beit Lahiya.
"Everything has got to come in; that is one of the things we will be insisting on strongly" in discussions with Israel, said Holmes who was touring Gaza along with UN Middle East envoy Robert Serry.
Gaza's 1.5 million residents are struggling to cope without electricity and other basic necessities on the fourth day of an Israeli blockade. Hospitals have begun to run short of fuel for generators, and sewage has spilled out onto the streets. Jacky Rowland reports.
Here's the background to Israel's deadly siege. . .
. . . for those who seek to advance their aims by inducing terror and slaughtering innocents, we say to you now that our spirit is stronger and cannot be broken; you cannot outlast us, and we will defeat you. . . .
Aftermath of Tel Aviv suicide bombing attack.
Gaza, mother and injured child.
. . . because we have tasted the bitter swill of civil war and segregation, and emerged from that dark chapter stronger and more united, we cannot help but believe that the old hatreds shall someday pass; that the lines of tribe shall soon dissolve. . . .
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