Hi. I fully endorse the central theme of this polemic - that of excoriating UFPJ in excluding obvious, indispensable isses from the call and themes of April 29th's demonstration. I do disagree with Heller on his analysis of international passivity to an attack on Iran, given the ultra-high world-wide anxiety around oil, current restive and demanding popular mobilizations throughout the middle east and Europe, as well as retaliatory actions in Iraq, here and elsewhere.
But that doesn't diminish the force and need for his call. Themes of rallies and marches are those discussed in the media, in follow-up lobbying to congress, in speeches at the event, the posters, etc., and who will be part of UFPJ stemming from the issues discussed and those deliberately avoided. It's actually amazing for leadership to be so far behind public consciousness on these interconnected issues. This is indeed a tipping point for the peace movement as well as the Bush regime. Heller lays is out well and the following essay undergirds it undeniably. Peace is not a single issue. Ed http://www.counterpunch.org/heller04132006.html CounterPunch April 13, 2006 Time to Shake Up the Peace Movement Lessons from Connecticut By STAN HELLER In what country will a huge peace coalition hold an anti-war rally have nothing to say about Iran, Israel and Palestine or Afghanistan? Is the answer Israel? Turkey? Micronesia? Sadly it's the USA. On April 29 United for Peace and Justice is holding a big demonstration in New York City called "March for Peace, Justice and Democracy". The only "peace" demand mentioned is bringing troops home from Iraq. The silence about Iran is staggering. On April 9 the Washington Post reported on US military planning for an attack. In includes this sentence, "Pentagon planners are studying how to penetrate eight-foot-deep targets and are contemplating tactical nuclear devices". Contemplating? We're not talking about mediation here, but dropping "tactical" Hiroshima-size atomic bombs. And UFPJ has nothing to say. The conventional wisdom smugly says this is all a bluff, that with all the losses in Iraq and sagging polls at home Bush would be crazy to attack Iran. But Sy Hersh reports [New Yorker April 17, 2006] that a government consultant with ties to the Pentagon told him " that the President believes that he must do 'what no Democrat or Republican, if elected in the future, would have the courage to do,' and 'that saving Iran is going to be his legacy.'" Mission is part of Bush's "reborn" personality. Remember he seriously believes that he was chosen by God to be President. Who is going to stop him? The non-cooperation of France and Germany of 2003 is a thing of the past. Russia and China? Can anyone believe that these money-sotted regimes would put up any opposition to a US full court press? How about the US Congress? Hersh reports that the White House briefings of the leadership are underway and the only questions that are being raised are "How are you sure you can hit the targets deep enough?" What about the Democrats? Kerry and Obama tried to win the macho crowd by claiming in 2004 that Bush wasn't taking a hard enough line on Iran. They're not about to change their spots now. Lieberman? He's probably signing his name on the nukes themselves. The peace movement seems paralyzed by the charge that Iran is developing nuclear weapons. Never mind that Scott Ritter, who was dead right about Iraq's WMD, has said repeatedly in interviews and speeches that Iran has no nuclear weapons program. [See my Jan. 24 video interview .] or that the IAEA officials have no evidence of such a program. Never mind that the US has thousands of nuclear weapons that could holocaust Iran in minutes. Never mind that Israel has hundreds of nuclear weapons pointed at Tehran. Oops, I mentioned Israel. UFPJ doesn't want to say anything about it. Condemn "unending oil war" and that's the beginning and ending of analysis. The Christian Zionists who see a Jewish conquest of Palestine as the start of Aramageddon? They don't really matter. AIPAC, which draws half the Senate and a third of the House to their blood-curdling conventions. Not really worth mentioning, not even the 2006 gathering which was devoted to demands that the US "take care" of Iran. Bush himself has stated, "We will use military might to protect our ally Israel", but why get into that? And those pesky Palestinians. Yes, they have their troubles, but why mention them in an anti-war movement? As if Israeli war-mongering wasn't based on its aparthied-like oppresson of Palestinians. As if an Israeli official hadn't publicly said that wiping out Saddam would help Israel impose a new "order" on the Palestinians. As if the al-Qaeda killers haven't tried to adopt the Palestinian cause as their own. Bringing up Palestine in connection with the war will just alienate us from those thousands and thousands of Israel partisans who are just itching to join the movement once we get rid of our "anti-Semitism". Uh-huh. Unstated in the UFPJ rally call is a rush to the Democrats. After grassroots activists pushed the UFPJ and ANSWER coalitions into having one successful giant demonstration on September 24, 2005, UFPJ passed a resolution to never work with ANSWER again! Instead it found new allies with liberal environmental groups, feminists and Jesse Jackson't PUSH. Jesse Jackson, father confessor to war criminal Clinton, is going to teach us morality. Grand. Dump all the bleeding hearts who sympathize with the Arabs and Muslims and the Dems will pick up votes in the heartland. Well, in CT this strategy of pandering to the so-called center has been tried and it's failed. The Connecticut Experience We in Connecticut have had a statewide umbrella group, Connecticut United for Peace, that for over three years has run the large statewide demonstrations. We're members of UFPJ, but years ago we formally decided that the oppression of Palestinians was intimately tied up with the war and have mentioned it in all our rallies. We started making plans for this year's March 18 rally last November, and we held two ultra-democratc votes about the demonstration's demands. Anyone who showed up at the meetings could vote. In November we proposed the slogan "End Israeli Occupation and Apartheid". We also had slogans for immigrant rights, opposition to persecution of Muslims and rejection of war with Iran. At our final meeting in January (with 125 in attendance) a number of people demanded a single issue rally, totally on Iraq, saying by going for the lowest common denominator we'd get labor, the Democrats and anti-war Jews. The majority wouldn't go for it. We weren't going to abandon the immigrants and Muslims and we'd be fools not to mention Iran, but we figured the real sticking point was Palestine. So we offered a compromise. Instead of the slogan "End Israeli Occupation and Apartheid" we offered the vague "Justice for the Palestinian People". People voted for the compromise by a large majority. Still the very notion that the Palestinians were the victims was too much for some and others were afraid of offending the Democratic Party and the Democratic Party oriented labor leaders. So the Israel-apologists, the Peace Council and some labor leaders went off and did their own thing. They held a rally on March 19, a day after ours and formed a group with the acronym COW, Connecticut Opposes War. On March 18 we marched 20 blocks from a largely Latino neighborhood and held and rally on the New Haven Green that according to the AP attracted 1,000. We think it was larger. Perhaps 10% were Muslim and Palestinians. We had pro-immigrant speakers in English and Spanish and a section of the Green with Spanish translators. It was a great demo, but we had expected double that number to attend and we blame it largely on the split. So how well did the splitters do on the 19th in Hartford? Politically the rally sucked. It was two blocks from Senator Lieberman's office and none of the speakers denounced Lieberman. Neither Democrat Ned Lamont who was challenging Lieberman for anti-war reasons nor Ralph Ferrucci who was running as a Green were invited to speak. The only chant was this embarrasing bleat,"We are Americans, This is Our Country". Imagine after three years of the war they still think we have to defend our patriotism? All the speeches denounced one person and one person only, George Bush. As if the Democrats hadn't pushed for the war enthusiastically and as if they weren't still supporting it. Iran was mentioned in one sentence. And, of course, they didn't say a word about Israel's constant pressure for war against Iraq and Iran or the fact that Gaza is now without flour. But the bottom line is numbers. Did they draw out the "silent majority"? No. Their rally was about the same size as ours (and included many of our people). It was hardly the breakthough that COW was predicting. There were a dozen Democratic state legislators. As for labor, state AFL-CIO President John Olsen spoke and there was a sizeable presence by SEIU-1199, maybe 50 or so union officials and members. That was about it.. Organized Jewish presence was invisible. No one saw a single sign from a Jewish organization and only one person objected to the tons of pro-Palestinian rights literature we gave out. On the other hand whatever was gained from the "middle" was lost from the fact the Muslims were conspicuous by their absence. The COW strategy is a model for what shouldn't be attempted on April 29th.. We have three weeks. Something has to be done to change the political direction of UFPJ. Ignoring Iran is maddness. Abandoning Muslims and Palestinians is disgraceful. Silence about Israel is inexcusable. We need to pressure the out of touch UFPJ leadership. We need public statements, petitions and a ton of emails to the UFPJ steering committee at their address <>[EMAIL PROTECTED] Tell them to change the demands and to get speakers who'll talk about all the realities of the war. Stanley Heller is a longtime labor and anti-war activist, chairperson of the Middle East Crisis Committee and host of its weekly TV news program. It can be seen on the internet www.TheStruggle.org. He is a member of the organizing committee of Connecticut United for Peace and can be reached at [EMAIL PROTECTED] *** http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/703804.html Ha'aretz 09/04/2006 There is no hunger in Gaza By Gideon Levy For the information of all the anxious: There is no hunger in the territories. No baby has died of malnutrition; no child is walking around with a swollen belly. There is no lack of flour, and from Rafah to Jenin rice is available. Let the tongue-cluckers relax: The talk about a "humanitarian disaster" is exaggerated. The international relief and aid organizations are trying in despair to cry "wolf," to alert the Israelis and the world and enlist them in the cause to save the Palestinian people, knowing that only exaggerated talk might move anyone. They might be right, but their calls are coming too soon, and also much too late. The use of the term "humanitarian disaster" is actually proof of the dehumanization of the Palestinians. There's no flour? "Humanitarian disaster." There is flour? Then there's no disaster. There's an assumption that all the Palestinians need is a daily serving of food so they won't be considered disaster victims. It's enough that they have water and food in their troughs to conclude that their situation is fine. But human beings, including the Palestinians, have a few other basic needs as well. The real humanitarian disaster in the territories began a long time ago, and it is not hunger. Those who regard the neighboring people as human beings know this very well. It is true that the dimensions of the disaster are worsening, but that's been taking place over years, and the food index is not the only measure. The cessation of the flow of funding since the rise of Hamas might threaten to depress the economic situation even further, but the thought that if they only have enough food, their needs will be satisfied and our conscience can be clear, is outrageous. There's no need to waste words on the scope of poverty in the territories. Sixty-five percent of Gazans and 48 percent of the West Bankers now live under the poverty line, according to a UN report from last December, issued before the decision was made to freeze the transfer of their tax money to them. There is no need to be an expert in economics to understand that if 37 percent of Gazans with jobs - more than 73,000 people - were employed by the Palestinian Authority and now their livelihoods are threatened due to a lack of money to pay their wages, the situation will only get worse. Palestinian society, which has a very high level of solidarity, will know how to deal with that disaster. Because of the food handed out by UNRWA and the other organizations, there won't be hunger any time soon in Gaza, even if the number of those suffering from malnutrition does increase. But even if they have bags of flour and rice, the living conditions of the Palestinians are chilling. They live in prison. Their daily routine includes humiliation that is no less terrible than malnutrition. Anyone who has to beg for permission to leave his village, to spend hours crowded in line at a checkpoint just to reach his destination, anyone whose bedroom is brutally invaded in the middle of the night by the occupation army, whose time and life is considered valueless, and whose basic human dignity has been trampled into dust, cannot find any consolation in the fact that flour and rice is available. Those who think that all it takes is providing a quota of flour to be free of any responsibility for the fate of the people they occupy, are suffering from a serious case of moral blindness. Does the fact that a Palestinian youth is not hungry in any way blunt the fact that he cannot dream, cannot aspire to a career, an orderly education, a vacation or simple pleasures of life? Does the fact that his belly is not completely empty cover up for the miserable present and the hopeless future? The departure of Israel from Gaza does not remove a speck of the responsibility it has for the fate of Gaza's imprisoned residents. Israel, which forbids Gazans from going to the West Bank - a violation of signed agreements - and prevents the provision of supplies from both Israel and Egypt, has never left Gaza, not even for a moment. The world and people of conscience in Israel do not need to wait for the first Palestinian child to die of hunger to raise the hue and cry. Enough Palestinian children have been killed because of too easy trigger fingers or disgraceful health services. The responsibility is not with the international relief agencies, but on Israel's shoulders. But Israel's conscience in recent years operates only according to one index, the index of protest from Washington. If Washington remains quiet, everything can be covered up. Those who have been silent until now can remain enveloped in their silence. Those whose conscience doesn't torture them and whose sleep is uninterrupted by Israel's behavior in the territories can continue resting in peace. There is no "humanitarian disaster." Israel will find a solution to the food crisis, and the stores in Gaza won't lack for flour. But those who regard the Palestinians as only requiring basic food should remember that even in the zoos, where the animals presumably don't lack for a thing, people are often shocked by the conditions of their imprisonment. --------------------------------------------------------------------------- LAAMN: Los Angeles Alternative Media Network --------------------------------------------------------------------------- Unsubscribe: <mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]> --------------------------------------------------------------------------- Subscribe: <mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]> --------------------------------------------------------------------------- Digest: <mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]> --------------------------------------------------------------------------- Help: <mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]> --------------------------------------------------------------------------- Post: <mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]> --------------------------------------------------------------------------- Archive1: <http://www.egroups.com/messages/laamn> --------------------------------------------------------------------------- Archive2: <http://www.mail-archive.com/[EMAIL PROTECTED]> --------------------------------------------------------------------------- Yahoo! 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