In spite of Obama's historic speech in Cairo early last year finding Israel's siege "intolerable," the siege remains intact and deprivations worsened by Israel's three week attack a year ago continue. At least 1,400 Palestinians, mostly civilians and roughly 300 children were killed. Israel has since ignored Washington pleas to permit sufficient humanitarian aid and building materials into the Strip.
Now, two Congressmen, Rep. Jim McDermott and Rep. Keith Ellison, have acted to create a letter to President Obama calling attention to the devastating humanitarian impact of Israel's illegal blockade of the occupied Gaza Strip
54 Members of Congress have signed on, irrespective of possible repercussions from the Israel Lobby, AIPAC, in particular.
Alan Dershowitz, the bane of human rights advocates in the US and elsewhere else, has been given his day in court to vent for Israel on Huffington Post, Arianna Huffington's left wing blogosphere newspaper.
Alan is not my favorite Democrat, far from it, mainly because his hypocrisy is so evident. When you discuss Israel, he falls into the deepest abyss of right wing Zionist ethnocentricism. He appears liberal and humanistic, and even advocates for human and civil rights, but when it comes to Israel, he falls into the exceptionalist trap. Alan is so rightward in his support of Israel, he is even able to justify the killings of Palestinian children, who he implies are terrorists.
Still let's give Alan his day in court, even though he uses the occasion to ply Israeli propaganda by the barrel full and gives the usual exceptionalism to Israel's occupation, colonialism, and state terrorism, the root of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
This is a quick hit posing as a diary, but the article it draws attention to is just not a news event, but an analysis of why Obama seems to be screwing up on the Israeli-Palestinian peace front. Well, apart from the fact that he has most of Israel against him, then George Mitchell's threat to cut loan guarantees to Israel (which in any case support Israel's colonialism), and the blowback from Israel's finance minister who said, "who needs you," the article asks whether Obama know what the hell he is doing?
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.
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