Wael Al Saad – The Logic of Resistance

You may wonder my explanation why Palestinian and the world are silent about Gaza. It may be the same reason why they have been silent about killing in Iraq, in Darfur or hunger in Africa etc. which are a product of an unjust system made by the bad part of us humans.

We have created this situation and the society, even the world we live in. This make each on of us is responsible for the current situation in Gaza.

So how can we face the real challenge together?

So long our communication channels are not well set up, our efforts are not effective and do not have any leverage and activism Information Management are not organized, so long no IT-group in this forum (PEF Palestinian-eForum – PEF) offer support to upgrade it from a 5000 member email-group into real advanced forum for all activists who believe in dialog and team work, so long as each focuses on his individual political point of view only and doesn’t listen, so long we do not step further and develop our co-creative consciousness,  we will not be able to plan any recognizable  strategy can be used to transfer the situation into another one. If we do not change ourself/minds the trend will keep on. And sure PNA and supporting whales is going with the trend.

The trend is not a resisting one. Our society is more material trendy than ever. No one is ready to give up something, anything, if he/she is not forced to. People want to have what others have. Consumption, comfort and survival is the trend, but not resistance.  Israeli products are almost in every shop in Jenin.

They cry because the flour prices raised so much, but they do not like to till the soil and seed the land. No one is willing to live primitive roots life, even most miss it or limit the trend on his personal costs.

They like warrior leaders, like Nasrallah (only to make my point clear), because a military solution does not need any self sacrifice by the majority. Because it is easier to put the challenge on someone else or on certain ideology. They just expect the warriors to finish the mission to establish new occupation in the age of power.

Yes, the power of non-violence is much difficult to have, because then each one who is committed is an individual resisting army.

In the end we have to put the finger in the middle of the wound. Each one of us is the problem and responsible. Either we say an honest NO for the occupation-matrix in all its dimensions and re-educate the society accordingly or we keep co-existing with it, feed it and support it.

This is the challenge of real liberation. This the crisis, which is to know what each wants to BE. To understand what does it mean to be Palestinian. Not to protest externally emotionally, but to protest internally continuously. To transform what it is.

We can not change the situation radically, but we can transform it and co-create a learning and consciousness evolution process, if we radically deeply commit to what we are.

Let me ask the 5000 members of PEF one thing: Can you give up using your cars for 1 month?

If 100 of you do and prints a T-shirt ” I walk for Gaza”, we have hope and hope is power. Otherwise we are killing Gazans. This is my logic.

Wael Al Saad is a Palestinian from Jenin. In the picture, Wael with one of his flowers.

Mary Rizzo – “No We Can’t”: the collapse of the Italian Left

Something totally unexpected happened in Italy last night. It officially became American. In a country that boasted hundreds of parties (too many, for sure) and political factions, our parliament has eliminated all elements of the left from the Parliament, including parties that existed from the founding moments of our Republic, and parties that, elsewhere in Europe, govern nations as large as Spain and Great Britain. There are no more Communists in the Parliament. Socialists are gone too. The Greens have faded to black. What we have is the stew of a party that copies in slogan and in fact the US Democratic Party. “Si può fare” was the slogan… “Yes we can”. Never catering to any kind of difficult analysis but being all smiles and handshakes, installing the idea of ‘change’ (but if they had governed for the past two years, what change were they asking us to believe in?) rather than in recognising that Italy is a country on the verge of collapse and if we don’t fix things quick, we are going to feel it painfully.

And, I’m not surprised the self-styled ‘radical’ left was excluded by the vote. They had no imagination to go beyond inserting their politicians here and there, making sure that they maintained their positions, without ever raising a self-critical voice to the positions they had adopted during the two-year reign in power, including allowing US colonisation in this country, from the enormous extension of the Dal Molin US military base to the ‘mission’ in Lebanon and the refinancing of the Afghan war effort. They succeeded in raising hospital costs and sticking the Union demands in a public offer to salvage Alitalia from certain bankruptcy and loss of jobs, all in the name of ‘protecting the National company’, as if we really need a national airline! They addressed a class that does not even exist, catering to the enormous category of State employees, taking advantage of social conflict between aspects of the disenfranchised, promising everything to everybody, from a minimum wage to a moveable salary scale that they can’t finance, to increase in pension funds. They certainly did not extend a cent towards the financing of my area of work, which is art conservation, because they believe they can get a lot of the work in ‘free training’ of college students. Unfair competition is what it is called, while they see it as the band-aid that is the only way Italy resolves its problems. They did not face the ecological and social disaster of waste disposal, and true to form, if there is anything that needs doing, from putting out the forest fires that are now the leitmotif of our summers and the feeding of the poor or aid to immigrants, it is all passed off to the enormous league of the millions of unpaid volunteers, which has always been something Italy excels in, having this solidarity resource that covers up all the holes that otherwise would send our beautiful country to the bottom of a pit, never to crawl back up.

There was more than enough to criticise them for, and they did not bother to look into this, therefore, losing millions of votes and consensus from their base. They never bothered to ask themselves what their base thought. From Parlato, the editor of the major leftwing newspaper, who supports the Israeli place of honour at the Turin book festival to Turco, the Health Minister, who let certain categories such as dentists run a totally free market service with no limit or no alternative provided by the State, to Bersani, the Economic Development Minister, with his new laws on selling property, which will do nothing but line the pockets of the ‘approved’ companies that inspect to update ‘standards’ and will freeze a real estate market that is already on its knees. The resolution of the conflict of interest in the mass media was not even on the agenda, and rather, we got the national outlets that stopped any kind of criticism of anyone. Everyone was democratic, every party got its 2 minute blurb on the news which was to state that the other parties were not right. A half hour of The Family Feud every evening would turn anyone’s stomachs, as there was no space remaining to honestly state that “we are mad as hell and we aren’t going to take it any more!” No, all of it became political salons and bla bla bla. And what is worse, the people most committed to social change abandoned the scene faster than anyone else.

I have always loved the fact that Italy had an enormous amount of major left parties and newspapers. Yet, in the two years the left was in power, it lost all sense of self-critique, and developed an idolisation of itself based on the assumption that people would trust that the politicians knew best. We stopped trusting a while back, as they betrayed us one day after the other. I am of course unhappy about the complete absence in my country of a formal institutional representation of the left. I am of course unhappy of the prospect of another Berlusconi term, and I am terrified of the implications on the foreign policy. I am unhappy that there was no internal mechanism of the left leaning parties that adjusted them to the sentiments of the people who are completely fed up with the governing left and miserable with the right. The minimum common denominator brought us the misery, and to be honest, it is not causing me pain as it did seven years ago. The failure of the system as a whole is the earthquake that perhaps we need to rebuild.
Mary Rizzo

I translate an article by a Christian Social group, from their newpaper “La Rocca”
THE GRIMACE – Raniero La Valle for n. 9 of Rocca (rocca@cittadella.org)

The blitz was a success. The Democratic party lost, but the left has been completely excluded from the Parliament. The operation in which an entire political area of the nation has been thrown out of the Parliament, for reasons of its proposals and even its name, is a classic operation that smells of regime, that as a matter of fact, not even Fascism, during its parliamentary phase, was able to do. Certainly the forced and litigious cohabitation within the Prodi coalition needed to be amended, but not through the massacre of political forces. The “incomplete democracy” of the “First Republic” meant that the Communist left would be excluded from government, which only provoked a lengthy torment and the aggregation outside the institutions of fringe groups active outside the parliament. The “simplified democracy” of the Pannellian and Veltronian two-party philosophy means that the left as a whole is pushed into the zone outside the institutions. And that is how we’ve ended up with the armed party, and now the risk is that the social, economic and cultural issues that are no longer admitted into parliamentary mediation will be shifted to other spheres of struggle, in the best of hypotheses to marches and demonstrations and in the worst to the casseurs that we saw in the Parisian peripheries.

This result is the outcome, without a doubt, of the total lack of realism of a left that has accepted to let itself be labelled as ‘radical’, ‘antagonist’ and ‘maximalist’, echoing those very terms in their own newspapers, and it even forgot that there can be no left in Italy if it does not in some measure also assume the culture and the political passion of a non-clerical Christianity. Yet, all of that would not have been enough to produce the results of 14 April, that is rather the effect, completely artificial (and therefore undemocratic), of three joint factors.

The first is that the electoral law established that there would be a limit of 4% of total votes at the lower representative branch and 8% at the Senate, in order to enter into Parliament, in a system that did not have as its goal to destroy the minor parties, but to force them to make coalitions with the major ones in order to overcome, together, the requested percentage restrictions. It is therefore the case that with the same electoral law of the precedent legislature, as much as it has been criticised, had each party represented within the Parliament.

The second factor is that the same electoral law hands out the premium of a minimum amount of 340 lower house representatives to assign to the winning list (and for the Senate, a regional premium), igniting in this way a heavy burden on the Parliament and seriously conditioning the electoral position of the parties, but at least the law dictated that the awarding of the premium would go to a coalition, not to a single party.

The third factor is that Veltroni, without waiting that this system was changed by democratic means, stripped it of its very nature, using the system against all logic and against the residual democratic character of the system, casting to the sea the coalition and praising his own self for being able to have shoved the allied parties out the door, from the Socialists to the Greens to Renewed Communists, while Berlusconi pretended to do the very same with his allies, however, keeping Fini (National Alliance and Northern League) close to his breast.

The result is that Berlusconi, ‘the old’, has won and Veltroni, ‘the new’ has lost, the Northern League is preparing to impose the breaking of constitutional equality between the North and South of the nation, Casini (Centre Union, Catholic party), saves himself a ‘forget me not’ position of a party that once was a recognisable Catholic presence and the left, uselessly united, abandons the Parliament, loses the public financing of their parties, will have a hard time keeping their headquarters and newspapers and even Vespa (television news conductor that praised bipolarism) today seems to show regret and even Fini laments that a lower house where these forces are not present is an ‘anomaly’. And, it is the height of absurdity that in this collapse, the losers are declaring victory, a victory of having set the foundations of an Anglo-Saxon and two-party system in Italy.

In reality, what has fallen in this earthquake is the illusion of a non-political Italy, where the problems that are pressing on us and the severe conflict of interests in a social sphere and in those of needs, can be resolved or ignored in the molasses of good manners. Faced head on with the winds of anti-politics, faced with the idiocy of the Ferrara’s (Abortion, No Thanks! Party) and the Jiminy Cricket Party, face to face with the accusation against the entire political ‘caste’, the winners were those who did the most ‘politics’, not whoever had taken refuge outside political games. Berlusconi played politics, because it is the maximum of politics to accuse all the others of being Communists; Veltroni didn’t even use the name of his adversary, maybe thinking that it wasn’t necessary to fight him, but to exorcise him. And in an Italy where we still have to fight for our right to bread, work, housing, health, he promised the ‘right to smile’, which we might interpret as sending the homeless and those with no job security to the dentist. Unfortunately, the smiles, on the night of 14 April, of millions of Italians have turned into a grimace, one of worry and pain.
Raniero La Valle

Khalid Amayreh – Shame on Arab Petrodollars

Occupied East Jerusalem, 15 April, 2008

Is Arab oil more precious than Arab blood? This is a question that many Palestinians are asking these days in light of the oil-rich Arab states’ reluctance to help the Palestinians withstand the most ferocious onslaught ever being waged by Zionism against the Palestinian people’s very existence.

Today, four Arab states, (Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, United Arab Emirates and Qatar) produce nearly 20 million barrels of crude oil per day. Translated into dollars, these four states alone make more than $2 billion dollars per day, or $60 billion a month, nearly $720 billion a year.

Now how much of this colossal amount of money goes to prop up Palestinian steadfastness in the face of diabolical Zionism, which seeks to occupy, enslave and probably annihilate Arabs and Muslims in the Middle East and beyond?

How much of it is used to enable the 1.5 million Gazans to overcome Israel’s continuing Nazi-like blockade of the Gaza Strip, which has already killed and mutilated thousands and reduced the entire coastal enclave into a huge concentration camp?

How much of this money goes to help Palestinian college students stay in their country and not leave because they don’t have sufficient financial means to pay for their education at Palestinian colleges and universities?

The Arab Sheikhs, Emirs and Kings won’t have to sacrifice much of their oil and gas revenue for the sake of Palestine and its suffering people.

A day’s revenue of Arab oil and gas can solve all the Palestinian people’s financial problems. It can enable Palestinian authorities to pay for the salaries of all civil servants and help poor college students continue their education for an entire year. It can also serve to subsidize basic consumer products such as bread, sugar and cooking oil, especially for the most impoverished segments of society.

Needless to say, a sincere effort on the part of these rich Arab states would enable Palestinians to put up the most effective resistance to Israel’s ethnic cleansing designs without having to worry about providing a loaf of bread for one’s kids at the end of the day.

It would also save a lot of Palestinian blood since many Palestinians, desperately struggling to feed their children, often risk their lives by crossing into Israel in order to find work.

More to the point, a meaningful Arab solidarity with the Palestinians in their enduring plight would make it more difficult for the genocidal terrorist Israeli state to blackmail the hopelessly weak Palestinian Authority in Ramallah into surrendering to Israeli dictates and perpetuating the national rift between Fatah and Hamas.

This writer knows of many college students who had to quit college because they can’t pay their tuition. We are talking about intelligent young men and women who want to stay put in their ancestral homeland in order to consolidate and perpetuate Arab-Islamic presence in this land.

But in order to do so, they need a real helping hand from their supposed Arab and Muslim brothers, many of them are at a loss as to what to do with the billions of dollars they have amassed.

What value do Arab billions have if they can’t help preserve the Al-Aqsa Mosque from Israel’s nefarious designs?

What value do these billions or trillions of dollars have if they can’t shield a Palestinian child in Rafah or Khan Younis from the real specter of starvation, imposed by a Nazi state constantly emboldened by Arab betrayal of the struggling Palestinians who are made to pay in blood the price of Arab-Muslim weakness and subservience to an evil empire called the United States?

What value does Arab money have if they can’t develop a potent media machine to counter Zionist lies, propaganda and hasbara against Islam, Muslims, the Palestinians and the Arabs?

To be sure, the oil-rich Arab states can do a lot to help the Palestinians who are at the forefront of a historical confrontation against Zionist expansionism and regional hegemony.

The Saudis, for example, can easily resolve the nagging salary problem; the Kuwaitis can build three or four modern hospitals in Gaza and the West Bank, which would help save the lives of thousands of Palestinians who die of preventable illnesses and treatable injuries inflicted by Zionist terrorists.

The UAE can cover the college expenses of a few thousand university students in Gaza and the West Bank. Qatar, which has good open relations with Israel, can use its connections to help the Palestinians have their own power-generating plants. Qatar, probably in cooperation with other states, can pay Egypt to provide regular fuel and electricity supplies to the Gaza Strip, thus enabling the tormented Gazans to free themselves from constant Israeli blackmail.

And the four states combined can donate to Egypt the 1.5 billion dollars which the US uses to emasculate the collective will of 80 million Egyptians.

So, why can’t these rulers do it? Do they believe that their billions are more important than the blood and lives of Palestinian children? Or more sacred than Arab-Islamic dignity? Shame on them if they do.

Do they think that the Almighty will forgive them for betraying the Palestinians? They will die sooner or later and will be brought into account by the Lord of the Universe.

Perhaps the real problem has more to do with their inability and less with their willingness and inclination. But this is no excuse at all. In fact, it is an excuse that is more obscene than a sin, because then surrendering the national will to a foreign master borders on national and religious apostasy.

The Palestinian people may forgive these rich Arabs for their clarion failure to fight Zionism, the common enemy of Arabs and Muslims, for reasons known to everyone.

But the rich Arabs can never be forgiven for accepting enslavement by the evil American empire and for squandering their billions on trivialities and excessively lavish lifestyles while Arab children are starving to death in the Gaza Strip.

Shame on you. God will not forgive you, and history will not be kind to you.

Trust betrayed – Brides on Tour Tragedy

Italian artists Pippa Bacca and Silvia Moro decided to make an artistic statement about trust. They wanted to travel by autostop (hitchhiking) from Milano to Syria. They would do it dressed as brides. This was first of all to attract attention locally to those who were on the road, but also because the bride represents an idea of future and hope, and generally, in most cultures, especially our Mediterranean one, the bride is considered to be a vessel of purity and is respected.

Along the way, they wanted local women to add an embroidered element to their gowns, and after all of this was done, it would serve as a testimony of the meeting of cultures and communication between people. Most of all, they had decided that they would need to let go of fear and trust that others would carry them safely. It was to express a message that almost is difficult to articulate without sounding too Pollyanna.

The dream was shattered into pieces on Friday, as it was discovered that one of the women was raped, assassinated, stripped of her clothing and buried in a shallow grave by one of the persons who gave her a ride.

When I first heard of this artistic endeavour, I wasn’t too keen on it. Especially because the radio speaker said they were to go as far as Tel Aviv. I later discovered they would go to Beirut and Damascus. I really hate it when there is a trend to call anything involving Israel for “peace”. This is what happens here, as if there is some automatic connection of the two. Those of us who are not disinformed know how it is, but most people think Israel is fighting for peace in a hostile world, and this kind of propaganda is damaging mostly because it is a lie. But when I learned more about the trip, I thought it was very symbolic and intriguing.

Then, I heard that the two women had a disagreement and split. They decided to meet up in Ankara. Also, this was odd. If they are supposed to be a vehicle for dialogue, they themselves should be the first example, and not a lesser consideration, there is safety in numbers.

No one knows what lies in store, especially “on the road” and in a totally vulnerable position as is a hitchhiker. Who knows where you will be taken, who is driving you? Does that person deserve trust just because you want to give trust?

The unfortunate Pippa Bacca was assassinated while trying to demonstrate that trust was a beautiful thing. Her the conclusion to this propostion expressed as art was instead a demonstration that her thesis was wrong. Not because this happened in a foreign country, the same thing could and does happen on any street in any town you can name. There are sick and violent people everywhere and there are also those whose trust is more angelic than human.

Palestine is not a nation, Palestinians are part of the Arab Nation

by Adib S. Kawar

As a student of political science who had been involved in the protection of the interests of his nation all his life, I would like to clarify few points regarding the definition of what is a nation, a people or a political entity.

There is a vast difference between a people or a nation with a special inherited characteristics and political entities that quite often had been created by colonialist powers and invaders.

The Arab nation had developed through out long centuries to reach its present formation and characteristics.

The Arab nation’s homeland had been the target of innumerable invasions by colonialist powers, and several political entities that were established on it’s soil, or parts of it to serve the occupying power’s interests, but with the expulsion of the colonizers the entity in question ceased to exist, but the indigenous people continued to exist and remained the same, Arab. Many a time a part or parts of a homeland were settled on a small or large scale, but they failed to change the character and ethnicity of its indigenous people. The so-called Crusaders colonized a large part of the Arab land but they failed to become its people. The Crusaders’ occupation lasted for two full centuries, but at the end they had to pack up and return home after being defeated and expelled by Arab resistance.

Some remnants of the invading crusaders that settled in our land, for one reason or another were left behind and are still living in it, and were assimilated into its people, but although there are still families of Crusader’s origin still carrying there old imported names, but they now consider themselves as part of the indigenous Arab people whose the Arab homeland is theirs. After thousands of years of movement of tribes and people settling among the indigenous population in other people’s land and getting assimilated in them during in the history of the human race there is nothing called pure blood, but after centuries of development settlers in foreign lands become a part of its people if they chose to become so.

Central Asian tribes swept our part of the world and the Ottoman Empire was established on most of the land that formed the Byzantine Empire, namely the Arab homeland and beyond in Eastern Europe, but failed to change the ethnic characteristic of the land and its people. Eastern European peoples got liberated and mostly their national states were re-established on their national land. This also applies to the Arab homeland that was colonized by Ottoman Turks, who failed to enforce the Turkish nationality (meaning ethnicity) on their colonized subjects although they fell under the yolk Ottoman Turkish colonialism for 500 years of occupation Arabs were still Arabs and not Turks.

Before the dismantling of the Ottoman Empire western colonialism represented by the two victorious colonialist powers in WW II, France and Great Britain, were preparing themselves to inherit the Arab territories of the dying empire. They met and divided among themselves the Arab Fertile Crescent, and split it into small political entities that were not large enough to be strong enough to protect themselves, but still the nationality of these created states is still Arab. The Arab Fertile Crescent was divided into six states: Starting from east to west they established what is known now as Kuwait, Iraq, Syria, Lebanon, Trans Jordan and Palestine. Non of these as well as other parts of the Arab homeland, the Arabian Peninsula and all through North Africa, Egypt and Sudan up to Morocco had abandoned their Arab nationality in spite of decades of continuous colonialism, settling by colonialists and even as was the case with Algeria which was annexed by France and Libya that Italian colonialism called it the fourth shore of Italy, and still there are some Spanish controlled enclaves on the shores of Morocco, non of these Arab states abandoned their Arab nationality although they form independent political entities whether colonized or free.

Zionist propaganda among many other baseless justifications for colonizing Arab Palestine declared that, there was nothing called “Palestinian Nationalism” or a “Palestinian state”. This is true, but this is a truth that is aimed to create a void. Palestine is not a whole nation, it is a part of the Arab homeland and Palestinians are a part of the Arab nation. Zionism adopted this justification to legalize their colonization of this Arab land, meaning that there are no legal owners of this land even though they exist(!!!); so a land without a people for a people without a land. Zionists tend to forget that there is no land on the surface of the earth without an owner even though very thinly populated. On the other hand and as per colonialist philosophy the white man is superior; so he has the right to invade other’s land, annihilate its people, settle it and colonize it. A Zionist theorist said the “barbarian” peoples of this world are not fit to exist, so they have to give way to establish “democracies”, like his saying “hadn’t Red Indians been annihilated the great American democracy would never had been established”. Does annihilation make democracy?

Colonialism of which is Zionism aimed at applying the theory of divide and rule. Colonialism splintered the Arab homeland into small state-lets that are not self-sufficient, and with the new colonialist/Zionist project to further splinter it as per their new colonialist project of the neo or greater Middle East, to eliminate its Arabic character and thus be the controlling power in it. Even the loose League of Arab States (note it is states and not nations) is not acceptable, simply for its name includes the word “Arab”. The colonialist/Zionist coalition wants to be replaced with a more splintered organization in which they want to include in it the Zionist entity and Turkey, but not Iran as long as it is ant-Zionist and anti-colonialist. But had it been under the Shah it would have been more then welcomed because the Shah was an American puppet, thus against the interests of his people and other peoples of the targeted region. All of this is because they want to eliminate any thing that is called Arab nationalism. Arab nationalism threatens the existence of the Zionist entity. Arab nationalism is the only protection for the Arab nation’s unity and liberty.

Do you believe in magic?

The other day, I posted a picture of Charlton Heston on this blog. The very next day, he met his maker.
Here’s a picture of Olmert and Bush. Just for the heck of it.

And, on behalf of the Robots (ARE THESE PEOPLE NUTS?) Blogger apologises for taking time to check out if the blog they host is spam. Included find the actual translation of their message)

Your blog is locked (We are censoring your content because we can).
Blogger’s spam-prevention robots (Zionist censors who are afraid to admit responsibility for being totalitarian) have detected that your blog has characteristics of a spam blog. (We act like we are responsible when there are 20 million real spam blogs, we selected you because we don’t like your politics and this is a way to do it that makes us look good) (What’s a spam blog?) (A spam blog is a way that our Provider looks like it has billions of clients exercising their right to free speech, giving Blogger the top cachet in users, but we have to look serious to other providers, otherwise some might catch on). Since you’re an actual person reading this, your blog is probably not a spam blog. (We are covering our ass here and trying to look hip too by acting like we are doing something correct, so let’s hope you’re too busy to bother to a letter that looks like a spam letter, because it basically is). Automated spam detection is inherently fuzzy, and we sincerely apologize for this false positive. (We couldn’t think of a more legit way to look like censors, so drink this one up, because you get what you pay for, and remember, we are a free service. Vooden! Get over it you stupid nebbish).
We received your unlock request on April 3, 2008. On behalf of the robots, we apologize for locking your non-spam blog. (We are hiding behind machines… pointing the finger at technology always works, can’t live with or without it, can you?) Please be patient while we take a look at your blog and verify that it is not spam. (Soon enough, your readers will stop looking for updates, and our goal of silencing you and blaming the robots will have succeeded! Have a nice day!)
Find out more about how Blogger is fighting spam blogs.

(thanks Steve at http://desertpeace.wordpress.com for the technical help!)

Khalid Amayreh – Building the Palestinian Contras

By Khalid Amayreh in Occupied Jerusalem

7 April, 2008 

 

Israel, the Bush Administration and the Palestinian Authority (PA), headed by Mahmoud Abbas, are collaborating to build a depoliticized Palestinian security force whose main task and raison d’être will be to crush any popular uprising against a prospective “peace deal” imposed upon the Palestinians.

 

The new force, whose members are being trained in neighboring countries, particularly Jordan, is being prepared to gradually replace the vast bulk of existing Fatah-dominated security forces in the West Bank.

 

The PA, acting on instructions from the donor countries, especially the US, has already laid off thousands of Fatah soldiers and officers for a variety of reasons, including retirement age, financial difficulties and the necessity of restructuring PA security agencies, notoriously plagued by corruption, nepotism, cronyism, indiscipline and lack of professionalism.

 

Many of the people being laid off, however, are in their early and mid 40s, which suggests that the PA is trying as much as possible to “dispose of” elements deemed “too patriotic” and “indoctrinated in hostility to Israel and Zionism.”

 

According to one cadet from the Hebron region, the force, whose members had to be thoroughly sifted by the Shin Bet, Israel’s chief domestic intelligence agency, is being trained in crowd-control tactics, conducting arrests, suppressing demonstrations as well as using rifles.

 

Currently the cadets receive a monthly salary of $600-800 per month, which will reach $1000-1500 after graduation. (This is nearly equal to the monthly salary of an average Ph.D holder at Palestinian universities).

 

Interestingly, most of the trainees don’t even possess a high-school diploma, and very few have a college degree.

 

One disgruntled officer, a traditional Arafatist from Dura, near Hebron, intimated to this writer that “ignorance is the main and sought-after qualification of these recruits.”

 

“The more ignorant, the more uneducated, the more stupid one is, the better qualified he will be viewed. They want blockheads, people whose brains are empty so that they would be able to handle them the way the want,” said the officer, who asked for anonymity for obvious reasons.

 

“They are following the old adage which says ‘a good soldier doesn’t think, he only obeys orders’.”

 

In addition to ‘nearly total ignorance’, the new recruits must be as apolitical as possible, as unreligious as possible and have no previous affiliation or association with any political groups, especially Islamist groups such as Hamas and the Islamic Jihad.

 

“They are trying to brainwash a given cadet in a way that if and when they instruct him to shoot his father, for example, he would shoot father, mother and brother as well,” said the disgruntled officer from Dura.

 

One PA officer involved in building the ‘new security force’ said the main purpose was to replace the existing, unreliable, and mostly corrupt security forces with professional forces that can “get the mission accomplished.”

 

However, when asked what the ‘main mission’ was, the officer responded, “the mission was always to be determined by the political leadership.”

 

A few months ago, PA Interior Minister General Abdel Razak al Yahya told hundreds of trainees at the village of Jeftilik near Jericho that “your mission is not to fight Israel, your mission is to establish security and restore law and order.”

 

“You are not here to confront Israel, the conflict of Israel has until now led nowhere. You must show the Israelis that you can do the job!!”

 

Earlier this year, more than 250 trainees were sent to Jordan for a four-month crash course sponsored and financed by the United States under the close supervision of Lieutenant General Keith Dayton.

Last year, Dayton botched up a plot conceived by his boss, Elliot Abrams, a neocon Jewish member of the Bush Administration, which would have seen forces loyal to Gaza’s former strongman Muhammed Dahlan topple and possibly crush the democratically-elected Hamas government.

 

However, Hamas preempted Dahlan’s planned coup, by carrying a counter-coup during which Hamas’s smaller but more disciplined and better trained forces decisively defeated and ousted Fatah forces, thus consolidating its control over the entire Gaza Strip.

 

 As a result of the ‘Gaza fiasco’, the Bush Administration reportedly sought a more ‘authentic alternative’ namely to establish a more bona fide Palestinian quisling force that would help the American-backed PA regime impose a possible ‘peace deal’ with Israel, presumably one that would allow Israel to annex large parts of the West Bank, including the bulk of East Jerusalem and surrounding Jewish colonies, in return for the creation of a deformed Palestinian entity, to be called a State, made up of disconnected Bantustans and truncated territories.

 

Hence, the ongoing efforts to create the new Palestinian Security Forces, whose main task is to repress and, if deemed necessary, kill Palestinians who dare oppose the liquidation of their just cause.

 

I asked Professor Abdul Sattar Qassem of the Najah National University in Nablus what could be done to thwart efforts to create a ‘quisling force’ whose main job is to repress Palestinians on Israel’s behalf.

Qassem said he thought that the term ‘quisling’ accurately described the new force or forces being created and trained by the CIA.

 

“First of all we have to tell our sons who are being trained in Jordan that they are being trained to carry out immoral and unpatriotic acts, that they will be instructed to kill Palestinians in defense of Israel.”

 

Qassem said he was certain that the PA was effectively a tool to liquidate the Palestinian cause in exchange for some money from the US.

 

He dismissed the PA claim that the new forces were necessary for re-establishing the rule of law and protecting the personal security of the Palestinian people.

 

“I think we can uphold the rule of the law without sending our sons to be trained by the CIA to kill their own countrymen on Israel’s behalf. Let the PA take its hands off the justice system, let them rein in their thugs, and law and order would be restored immediately.”

 

“The problem, the main problem, is that we are dealing with a lying authority.

 

“They lie a lot.”

Internet censorship – the ballad of Gilad and PePa

http://machetera.wordpress.com/2008/04/05/internet-censorship-part-3-an-inconvenient-mirror/ from the divine Machetera. At the bottom, a small commentary by me.

Not long after posting an article about Tony Greenstein’s obsessive and unsuccessful efforts to shut down the peacepalestine blog, the blog’s editor Mary Rizzo reported that her blog access (though not Machetera’s) had been shut down once more, this time on the basis of the false accusation that she was running a “spam blog.” Rather than delve into definitions of what constitutes a spam blog and why someone would run one, for now Machetera will simply make the following observations:

1. peacepalestine is not a spam blog,

2. Blogger does appear to have a shoot first, ask questions later approach;

3. Machetera does not have enough information at the present time to say whether WordPress has a less trigger-happy temper, although being somewhat self-interested she will hope for the best;

4. The timing of the latest shutdown for peacepalestine is certainly curious, coming as it did on the heels of Machetera’s recent post on the subject, although Machetera does not claim credit nor would she want to, and finally,

5. Something very curious is going on in what Gilad Atzmon would call the Zionist/crypto-Zionist world. Translation (since that is Machetera’s specialty): the opinions expressed by Gilad Atzmon and Mary Rizzo are upsetting enough to certain people, to try to block their internet publishing.

It won’t work. The example of peacepalestine demonstrates pretty clearly that this form of internet silencing is at best, a short term endeavor, because the internet is like water; by design it is meant to follow the path of least resistance, and it’s impossible to plug all the leaks all the time. As Machetera has already pointed out, for really effective internet censorship you need to operate with an iron hand, preferably through the U.S. Office of Foreign Assets Control. Even then it’s a slippery beast, even for those who invented it. Shut down peacepalestine in one manifestation, and it will flower in a thousand other places.

What is it that disturbs these particular censors so? Well, nobody likes thinking of themselves as a racist, but Atzmon posits that secular Jewishness is a form of racism, so settling for being an anti-Zionist is not enough – Manuel Talens spoke to him about it some years back:

Talens: Now tell me why you argue that secular Jewishness is a mere form of racism. There are so many millions of honest people of Jewish extraction who are not religious at all and nevertheless feel and consider themselves Jews that such an assertion surprises me. Could you explain it? And by the same token do not forget to put in plain words what Zionism is: keep in mind that you are dialoguing with Western Gentiles, whose cultural genes – the so-called memes – are Christian and who quite often feel baffled when confronted with notions such as Zionism, Semitism or their antonyms anti-Zionism and anti-Semitism.

Atzmon: OK a clarification is needed here. It is not the Jewish origin that makes one into a racist but rather the endorsement of a Jewish secular identity that “may” do so. As I mentioned before, once you remove the religious content from Jewishness you are left with the concept of Jewish blood. Zionism is in fact a nationalist perception that connotes Jewishness to race rather than to a religious belief. As such, Zionism is the belief that Zion (Palestine) is the national homeland of the Jewish people. This strange belief is basically grounded on a Biblical promise. In other words, the Zionists transform the spiritual text (the Bible) into a mere land registry. But then one may ask, who are the Jewish people? From a Zionist perspective, Jews are those who happen to be racially Jewish. In fact, Zionism predates Nazism. Early Zionists spoke about Jewish blood and racial eugenics when Hitler was still in nappies. The problem is that while Zionism started as a marginal esoteric political movement and was highly criticised by most Jewish ideological and religious schools of thought, it is now touted as the official voice of the Jewish people. I tend to argue that many Jews, and this would include even the so called “Jewish anti-Zionists”, are in fact nothing but crypto-Zionists.

In one of my latest papers I contend that those who call themselves Jews could be divided into three main categories: 1. Those who follow Judaism; 2. Those who regard themselves as human beings that happen to be of Jewish origin; and 3. Those who put their Jewishness over and above all of their other traits. Obviously, I have no problem with the two first categories, but the 3rd one is rather problematic. The 3rd category Jew is for instance: a Jew who lives in America (rather than an American who happens to be of Jewish descent), a Jew who plays the saxophone (rather than a saxophonist who happens to be Jewish), a Jewish anti-Zionist (rather than an anti-Zionist who happens to be Jewish). For the 3rd category Jew, the racial belonging is a primary qulity and this is, in fact, the very essence of Zionism. Thus, to be born a Jew is innocent indeed, but to be a Jew isn’t necessarily innocent. It all depends on the category one happens to endorse. Unless one falls into the first 2 categories, one isn’t necessarily innocent.

MT: Excuse my doggedness, but I want you to be extremely precise. To me this “one isn’t necessarily innocent” you have just mentioned suggests that it is still possible to belong to the 3rd category without being a racist. Is that what you mean?

GA: This is just because I am really trying to be polite.

MT: I insist: Are you ready to accept that these Jewish anti-Zionists who according to you are nothing but crypto-Zionists could still be wonderful human beings, not racists after all?

GA: You see, we are all “racially aware” but then being a “racist” is a different condition altogether. I will be very clear about the subject. To be a secular Jew and yet to make your Jewishness into a primary quality is a clear manifestation of a racist tendency. Many amongst the anti-Zionist Jews are simply unaware of the problems entangled with their racial approach. This is the reason why I have attempted to dialogue with them and try to push them towards a further realisation of their mistaken racial agenda. I call them to leave behind their racially exclusive anti-Zionist approach and to join a universal call instead. Needless to say, many Jews realise it by themselves. I argue that if Zionism is categorically wrong, then to those fighting it, one’s racial or ethnic belonging is irrelevant.

As Atzmon himself admits, this is “a serious challenge of the Jewish identity.” But he also points out, “I have seen many things written about me and yet I have never come across a sufficient counter argument. I start to wonder whether there is any argument as such.”

Atzmon’s thought provoking views are amply published (for now) at peacepalestine here or here, at his own website, and Machetera looks forward to publishing excerpts here in future as well.

And that was Machetera’s post. I’d like to advise those who have been faithful readers of Peacepalestine for 3 and a half years now, to understand that while it may look as if we are defeated into believing that the story ends here, it hasn’t. WordPress at the moment is “a parking space”… It may remain the main blog (If someone thought they were going to stop me from blogging, they were wrong), but then again, things are still in motion. YET… there are some things that must be said. Blogger acted fine once regarding me. This time, NO! And, more than that, they have blocked other political blogs for no reason. That should have been a red flag, but moving a blog with 800 posts is not something one really looks forward to doing, so the signs were not taken into due consideration and now we see a stream of attempts to close down Peacepalestine. Who is really responsible? I think we know the answer to that one, but as the Wicked Witch of the West might say…”All in due time, my pretty, all in DUE time!”

The red flag: Blogger spammed Steve of Desert Peace off. That should have been a warning to me as clear as this screen in front of me. Not only Steve a VERY popular blogger, he endorses a two-State solution, he is someone who, living in Israel, actually engages in fruitful dialogue and is an example of THE blog to salvage. Blogger didn’t care. I have no real illusions that it will be different this time, however… in the meantime, a few friends have been advised, and Blogger is being monitored as to how it will act. Not only that, but a few wrote letters. This one from Edna really says it all:

Dear Blogger

 

I am writing to complain in the strongest possible terms about what seems to be a targeting of pro-Palestinian sites by Blogger, one in particular:

http://peacepalestine.blogspot.com/

 

This blog was closed down unfairly about a month ago, and then reinstated, and has in the last few days been shut down again, the lastest reason given is that it is being regarded as SPAM.  This is insane!!

 

Are you aware of the huge readership this blog has, and how many people use it as a resource every day??  There is no SPAM there at all, only thought-provoking posts and very good quality writing about Palestine, which is also published at many other sites on the net.

 

What is Blogger’s real agenda here, one has to ask? Why is Peacepalestine being repeatedly targeted, while sites which are truly LIBELLOUS continue to be hosted by Blogger?

 

I find this one extremely offensive, with no real content except for the endless smearing of 2 well-known Palestinian activists:

http://azvsas.blogspot.com/  Why is this site being hosted at all by Blogger?

 

Would very much appreciate a letter back from Blogger.  If you are targeting Palestinian sites and anything anti-Israel, then wouldn’t it make more sense to stipulate that very clearly in your guidelines, so that progresive blogs can simply AVOID using Blogger at ALL, and instead rather be hosted by servers who genuinely support freedom of speech, such as WordPress.  The only freedom of speech Blogger seems to support is LIBEL.

 

Will appreciate an answer please.

 

Thanks (signed) 

I thank Edna for this, and I encourage others who are against censorship and who have supported Pepa to write to blogger support@blogger.com and to let them know we are watching and we aren’t going to take it sitting down. Not only are some bloggers and sites ready to expose the whole messy story, just as Machetera and Haitham have done, which isn’t going to leave Blogger looking too good at least in some sectors of activism, but it might just be time to leave the blog format (which I love) and go the route of a domain site. At any rate, just as much as we fight racism, we fight censorship, and we aren’t going to be silenced.

NEW! the letter Ma Chetera wrote to Blogger:

Hello,

I am a journalist who reads the peacepalestine blog on a regular basis 

and who has become aware that the blog’s editor has been denied access 

to her own blog because it has been flagged as a spam blog.

I can assure you that peacepalestine is not a spam blog, and surely 

all you have to do is look at the site to understand that immediately.

Fortunately, although the editor cannot post to her blog, I can still 

access its content, but if the lockout continues it would appear that 

Blogger means to encourage peacepalestine’s editor to move her blog 

elsewhere, since a blog which cannot accept new content is of limited 

use.

Is this indeed Blogger’s aim?

What procedure does Blogger follow when a site is flagged, as 

peacepalestine appears to have been?  Do you investigate and determine 

whether it is a malicious flagging or simply shut the site down 

immediately no matter what, pending an internal investigation? If blog 

access is denied pending such an investigation, how long might one 

reasonably expect such an investigation to take?

I would be very interested in Blogger’s response to these questions.

Thank you for your time and attention.

Ma. Chetera

Support Gazans!

Just today I discovered the site http://gazatoday.blogspot.com/ of a wonderful friend of mine, Sam. He is probably one of the most creative and sharp activists I have ever come across in my life. In his early 20s, he helps manage the Popular Committee Against the Siege www.freegaza.ps, which has come up with very imaginative awareness campaigns and is constantly reporting events of the siege that Gazans are the victims of. Some of them are the Human Chain, the candlelight vigil and the Dead Flowers campaign.

This person represents the brilliant future of Palestinians. Dedicated to nonviolent protest, they are examples for all of us. Gaza will be free and all Palestinians will get the long-overdue justice that has been denied to them. When that happens, it will also be due to the hard work and intelligence of Sam and his colleagues.