Appended below are four (in a series of five) links to poignant videos from the excellent Guardian series A Week in Gaza, detailing the impact of the Israeli blockade of the Gaza Ghetto on ordinary people. On this 60th anniversary of the Nakba, these heart-rending portraits of Gazans is particularly timely and offers a window into life in Gaza.

As Ali Abunimah, currently in Sydney, has said, Nakba Denial not only exists, but unlike Holocaust Denial still has some mainstream intellectual acceptance. The ongoing plight of the indigenous Palestinians after 60 years deserves our attention and support now more than ever. For our part in Australia, there is a strong campaign to have the Australian Parliament acknowledge the Nakba — please consider lending your support if you are in Australia.

1. The blockade and the smugglers (4.55)
Israel’s fuel blockade has ground Gaza’s infrastructure to a halt. In response, smuggling gangs bring fuel in from Egypt through underground tunnels. Read the rest of this entry »

Street Notes 12 May 2008

Franklin Lamb
Choufeit, Lebanon

In the lower Chouf village of Choufeit with its panoramic view of Beirut’s closed airport (which will likely stay closed for 4 or 5 more days as a Hezbollah pressure point on the Bush administration to achieve a settlement that it views as fair and just), Dahiyeh, Sabra, Shatila and Burj Burajneh Palestinian Refugee Camps; Pentecost Sunday started in a somber mood for the few remaining Christians and dominant Druze population of this picturesque, rugged, hilly and ancient village.

The reason was that virtually the whole village was in attendance at a 9 a.m. memorial service for two supporters of the Druze Lebanese Democratic Party, 18 year old ____ and 22 year old _____ (names withheld at the request of family pending notification of family members living outside Lebanon) who were probably shot as they drove too fast through a newly setup check-point on May 10th. (The exact circumstances and who exactly was responsible are not clear given the myriad explanations one receives depending on who one talks to in this tight-knit village. Read the rest of this entry »

It is good to see a serious, fair and interesting profile of Reverend Jeremiah Wright on Bill Moyers’ PBS Journal program. Moyers looks at the person and his politics, discussing Obama, history, theology, race and his faith. I found it thoughtful and inspiring—well worth your time.

See also:

• Rev Wright’s electric address to the National Press Club in Washington on Monday 28th April — transcript here, and his prior NAACP address in Detroit on the 27th April — transcript here.
• The Audacity of Hope sermon mp3
  

Also check out Monte Asbury’s posts Priest stands up to reporter on Jeremiah Wright (video clip below, with thanks to 99 and Homey) and Is Jeremiah Wright mostly right? The video clip below is also available to listen to as an mp3 (55 mins):

Investigative reporting hits the mark from within the corporate mainstream media: a NYTimes report on how the compliant media companies spins the media by reproducing the Administration’s own talking points; David Barstow examines primary source documents detailing the Pentagon’s response to criticism of then-Secretary of Defense Donald H. Rumsfeld by a group of prominent retired generals. Could this possibly signal that sections of the establishment are furnishing a basis for the US military to finally withdraw from Iraq?

The Generals Revolt Part 1 (8 minutes)

Read the rest of this entry »

Al Jazeera has produced a few programs recently that engage with the topic of the Israel Lobby; the Inside Iraq program features a short debate between John Mearsheimer and Norman Finkelstein; Frontline America also recently examined the influence of the Israel Lobby on Capitol Hill.

Inside Iraq - Motives for war - 04 April 08

Inside Iraq examines the ‘official’ and ‘unofficial’ reasons the US invaded Iraq.

Part 1 (12.09)

Read the rest of this entry »

Thanks to Dave and Haitham, this deserves wide circulation so I am adding it here as well.

You’ll be moved and encouraged, as I am, by the ordinary Americans who speak up for a stranger.

Yes, there were some that were silent — there invariably is — and this is a lesson about silence as acquiescence and passive complicity in discrimination.

John Quinones of ABC serves as a model for his mainstream media colleagues in this particular story. R/T: 7 minutes

Alan Ramsey provides an interesting write-up of Wednesday’s parliamentary motion ‘commemorating’ Israel (Blinkers off for the other side of story, SMH). “The whole affair”, he writes, “carefully orchestrated, carefully bi-partisan, lasted just 15 minutes.” Significantly, dissent came not just from a split Labor Party on this issue (most notably from MP Julie Irwin, pictured right, and others who absented themselves during the motion), but also came from the Opposition ranks, with Liberal (right-of centre party in Australia) MP Sussan Ley, pictured left, the only MP to speak up for the Palestinian people in Federal Parliament in this session. The motion was carried on voices and not put to a vote. Ramsey writes:

At 11.58am on Wednesday one half of the Australian Parliament “celebrated” the 60th anniversary of the state of Israel. More than a third of that one-half was absent, whatever their reasons. A number of MPs deliberately excluded themselves. Labor’s Kevin Rudd, as the host, did not. He spoke for eight minutes. “Celebrate” was the word Rudd used to begin his remarks. “Congratulations” was the word he used to end them. The Liberals’ Brendan Nelson spoke for seven minutes in supporting the Prime Minister. He concluded: “Shabat shalom forever.”

Nobody else spoke. The whole affair, carefully orchestrated, carefully bi-partisan, lasted just 15 minutes. The press gallery was almost empty. Read the rest of this entry »

Ditching the ‘Victor’ of Nahr el Bared for “Dr Death”?

Franklin Lamb,
Beirut

Barack v. Hillary isn’t the only Presidential election game in Washington these days. There is also the Samir v. Walid v. Michel (as in Geagea, Jumblatt and Suleiman) campaign underway as each seek through direct contact and surrogates, the US imprimatur in their quests to lead Lebanon.

This week it appears that Walid’s support is dropping faster than Hillary’s and Suleiman may end up like Fred Thompson (”failed to live up to expectations and not enough fire in the belly for the job”) and Geagea is skyrocketing faster than Barack did in February.

How so?

Despite months of heaping praises on Head of the Lebanese Army General Michel Suleiman, the Bush Administration has pretty much decided to dump the General, for reasons noted below by US Congressional sources. Read the rest of this entry »

Ten minute segment from Roy’s documentary ‘We’, in which Roy’s reading of her text is set to video footage.

Quotables from the Israeli government’s current (c)harm offensive

While you may have read about the first, Israeli Minister Sheetrit’s revealing outburst was by no means the only recent one. These are just a few picked up from a couple of news pieces, and seem unfortunately indicative of how the Israeli government public discourse has further degenerated, reflecting its actions on the ground.

• Interior Minister Meir Sheetrit: “We must take a neighborhood in Gaza and wipe it off the map“ (see also here; here and here)

• ”We need to topple the Hamas regime,” Tzachi Hanegbi, chairman of the Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee, told Israel Radio ahead of Barak’s briefing. ”We need to assassinate its leaders without any artificial differentiation between those who wear explosive vests and those who wear diplomatic vests.“

• Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni told reporters after the cabinet meeting, “There is no hope for the Palestinian people with Hamas. There is no hope for any kind of peace or the vision of a Palestinian state which includes the Gaza Strip without a real change on the ground.” (read: usual ‘never a partner for peace’ and attempting to dictate who governs and the shape of a future Palestinian state, which is to say, actively preventing one)

• Olmert’s Deputy, Vice Premier Haim Ramon, said he expected Hamas, which seized control in June, to be forced out within the year. “I believe a combination of steps against Hamas in Gaza will bring an end to the Hamas regime in Gaza,” Ramon said. “It will take a few months, maybe it will take a year.” Hamas sources said Hamas leaders were keeping a low profile, apparently to avoid assassination attempts. Asked who Israel could be targeting, minister Shaul Mofaz said: “Everyone, without exception.” Read the rest of this entry »

Dr Ibrahim Mousawi speaking at the World Against War international peace conference in London, December 2007 (10:13)

McCarthyism comes to Europe and the Levant: The Zionist Targeting of Lebanon’s Dr. Ibrahim Mousawi

by Franklin Lamb in Beirut and Ann El Khoury in Sydney

You’ve done enough. Have you no sense of decency, sir, at long last? Have you left no sense of decency?
– Joseph Welch to Senator Joseph McCarthy, April 1954

In a US Senate hearing just over fifty years ago, Boston lawyer Joseph Welch famously rebuked Senator Joseph McCarthy with these now immortal words. They have been immortalized because they have helped furnish what we understand McCarthyism to mean: extreme, mean and unreasonable persecution of people by means of witch-hunts and other tactics including guilt by association or through simple prejudice. This is done in order to achieve a political objective of silencing dissent and preventing the public from learning inconvenient truths. Read the rest of this entry »

Amid the illegal occupation and the murderous blockade of Gaza by the IOF, here’s some inspired dissent. Artist Peter Kennard meets members of a new generation of artistic dissenters in a movement spearheaded by artist Banksy, whose art has featured in Occupied Palestine as well as his native UK.

Art attack

by Peter Kennard | New Statesman | 17 January 2008

Banksy attracts the press attention, but around him is an increasingly influential movement of political artists operating outside the mainstream
The phone rings; the number is withheld. It’s Banksy. He wants to know whether I can go to Bethlehem over Christmas. He is putting on an exhibition, bringing together like-minded artists from all over the world to raise awareness of the situation in Palestine. Like the annual guerrilla art shows that have taken place in London for the past six years, it will be called “Santa’s Ghetto”. Two weeks later, I find myself involved in an experience that transforms my ideas about what artists can do in the face of oppression.

Read the rest of this entry »

A very Happy New Year to you and yours. May 2008 be a good one for you personally and a more peaceful one for the world. We remember that these are sometimes quite politically grim times for a good slice of humanity.

Yet even in the axial Israel-Palestine conflict, most obviously a key focus here, there have been promising glimmers of action and initiatives throughout 2007. Mazin Qumsiyeh has assiduously listed many of them in his excellent mailing list newsletter (see below, after the fold, for a summary).*

More locally in Australia, John Howard was ousted both from government and from his own seat, and David Hicks has finally been released from the Guantanamo Bay gulag, and has just finished serving the remainder of his sentence in his home town. With some of the mainstream media here reporting on this atrociously, it bears remembering that there is absolutely no evidence that David Hicks actually committed any crime whatsoever. He admitted to the charge of “supporting terrorism” as the linchpin of a plea bargain, after years of effort to secure his release. Let’s hope the man is let be to recover something of his life, and all best wishes to him and his courageous father, Terry.

Some reminders of the unstoppable force of the human spirit might be a fitting last post for 2007. This Week in Peace History, published by Carl Bunin and edited by Al Frank, is an interesting and valuable compendium to which you can sign up to receive by email. It is designed to remind us that our agency counts, and to appreciate that we are indeed “part of a rich history advocating peace and social justice.” Read the rest of this entry »

Thank you, Matt Howard, for courageously speaking up and speaking out against abuses in Iraq. Matt attained the rank of corporal in the United States Marine Corps and is head of the Vermont chapter for Iraq Veterans Against the War. He gave this statement at a recent protest at the Statehouse. The International Red Cross has just released a report entitled Humanitarian Tragedy In Iraq, detailing how at least 375,000 people have gone missing: the tip of the human rights crisis iceberg.

Iraq war is a betrayal of American democracy | Rutland Herald | November 11, 2007

In 2003 I illegally invaded the sovereign nation of Iraq with 1st Tank battalion 1st Marine Division. My commander in chief unleashed the world’s fiercest fighting force upon the country and people of Iraq, and now those of us used and betrayed by him are demanding justice.

Four and a half years after our opening “shock and awe” Bush’s lies are known throughout the world, and yet he continues to act with impunity. Four and a half years later the Bush regime has unleashed a hell upon the country of Iraq that only those who have been there can truly understand.

As a two-tour combat veteran of this brutal war, I have a responsibility to speak honestly and openly about what has been done and what continues to be done in our name. We veterans know that this war is not the one being sanitized on the nightly news. It has nothing to do with the liberation of the people of Iraq; instead it has everything to do with the subjugation and domination of these people in the name of U.S. imperial economic and strategic interests.

We did not go to war with the country of Iraq, we went to war with the people of Iraq. During the initial invasion we killed women. We killed children. We senselessly killed farm animals. We were the United States Marine Corps, not the Peace Corps, and we left a swath of death and destruction in our wake all the way to Baghdad.

Let me say again so that there is no misunderstanding. I stand here today as a former U.S. Marine saying we are killing women and children in Iraq. This is the true nature of war. War lends itself to atrocities. Don’t think you can use an organization designed to kill other human beings for anything humanitarian. That has never been our mission. That was crystal clear from the moment I was forced to bury the crate of humanitarian food given to me in Kuwait. Read the rest of this entry »