[LAAMN] Genocide In Gaza: Don't Call it Ethnic Cleansing- Emma Rosenthal
Statement of Cafe Intifada (For this and similar posts go to: www.cafeintifada.wordpress.com. © 2009 Emma Rosenthal All Rights Reserved. Permission to print in its entirety, attributed to Cafe Intifada and Emma Rosenthal, including links. Permission not granted to groups or individuals asserting racist, suremacist ideologies. ) In light of the ongoing brutal assault by the Israeli Offense Forces upon the population of Gaza, the following history and definition of genocide provided by the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum is important in understanding the motivation, rationale, purpose and scope of Israeli (U.S. funded and sanctioned) actions. Many shy away from applying the word genocide to the Palestinian people, perhaps because it is inflammatory, perhaps because it has been reserved for those catastrophes recognized by the Holocaust Industry*. But on closer examination, the definition of genocide clearly applies to this current campaign as well as the expressed intent of the Israeli government and the zionist trajectory vis a vis the indigenous population. Like the word, holocaust which is, in religious terms, a burnt offering of spiritual purification, ethnic cleansing implies that there is something pure, clean, redemptive in the process of the destruction of a people: of their way of life, communities, homes, jobs, social structure; in the imposition of death, dismemberment, deformation, rape, trauma and brutality. There is no justification: not security, not history, not assertions of divine promise or destiny, that can excuse the war crimes being perpetrated on Gaza, a territory already under siege: prevented from receiving health care, education, basic supplies, disallowed control of its own borders or freedom of movement of its residents. (And yet, even these excuses are an obfuscation of the real nature of Israeli hegemony and the U.S. imperialist imperatives that support and maintain it.) Israeli actions easily meet at least four of the five criteria of genocide provided below, and if one considers the large number of children in Israeli prisons: held without education, medical care, legal counsel or contact with their families, then one could argue it meets all five. This latest and most brutal action is surprising only in scope, not intent. Israel has walled Gaza under brutal and devastating conditions of isolation, poverty, and desperation; Israel's own Warsaw Ghetto. The current assault is part of a long trajectory intent upon destroying a people, a land, a history, a culture and a way of life. There is certainly nothing cleansing about it! - Emma Rosenthal Cafe Intifada What is Genocide From The United States Holocaust Memorial Museum* (Printing of this article in no way should suggest any endorsement by the Memorial Museum of the work, scope, mission or purpose of Cafe Intifada.- c.i.) http://www.ushmm.org/wlc/article.php?lang=enModuleId=10007043 http://www.ushmm.org/wlc/article.php?lang=enModuleId=10007043 History What is Genocide?The term genocide did not exist before 1944. It is a very specific term, referring to violent crimes committed against groups with the intent to destroy the existence of the group. Human rights, as laid out in the U.S. Bill of Rights http://www.archives.gov/national_archives_experience/charters/bill_of_rights.html or the 1948 United Nations Universal Declaration of Human Rights http://www.unhchr.ch/udhr/, concern the rights of individuals. In 1944, a Polish-Jewish lawyer named Raphael Lemkin (1900-1959) http://www.ushmm.org/conscience/history/lemkin/ sought to describe Nazi policies of systematic murder, including the destruction of the European Jews. He formed the word genocide by combining geno-, from the Greek word for race or tribe, with -cide, from the Latin word for killing. In proposing this new term, Lemkin had in mind a coordinated plan of different actions aiming at the destruction of essential foundations of the life of national groups, with the aim of annihilating the groups themselves. The next year, the International Military Tribunal at Nuremberg charged top Nazis with crimes against humanity. The word “genocide” was included in the indictment, but as a descriptive, not legal, term. On December 9, 1948, in the shadow of the Holocaust and in no small part due to the tireless efforts of Lemkin himself, the United Nations approved the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide http://www.unhchr.ch/html/menu3/b/p_genoci.htm. This convention establishes genocide” as an international crime, which signatory nations “undertake to prevent and punish.” It defines genocide as: [G]enocide means any of the following acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or
[LAAMN] Fisk: Leaders lie, civilians die, Nurit Peled-Elhanan: the Pogrom
http://www.independent.co.uk/opinion/commentators/fisk/robert-fisk-leaders-lie-civilians-die-and-lessons-of-history-are-ignored-1215045.html Leaders lie, civilians die, and lessons of history are ignored When the IRA were firing mortars over the border into Northern Ireland, when their guerrillas were crossing from the Republic to attack police stations and Protestants, did Britain unleash the RAF on the Irish Republic? Did the RAF bomb churches and tankers and police stations and zap 300 civilians to teach the Irish a lesson? Robert Fisk The Independent 29 December 2008 We've got so used to the carnage of the Middle East that we don't care any more – providing we don't offend the Israelis. It's not clear how many of the Gaza dead are civilians, but the response of the Bush administration, not to mention the pusillanimous reaction of Gordon Brown, reaffirm for Arabs what they have known for decades: however they struggle against their antagonists, the West will take Israel's side. As usual, the bloodbath was the fault of the Arabs – who, as we all know, only understand force. Ever since 1948, we've been hearing this balderdash from the Israelis – just as Arab nationalists and then Arab Islamists have been peddling their own lies: that the Zionist death wagon will be overthrown, that all Jerusalem will be liberated. And always Mr Bush Snr or Mr Clinton or Mr Bush Jnr or Mr Blair or Mr Brown have called upon both sides to exercise restraint – as if the Palestinians and the Israelis both have F-18s and Merkava tanks and field artillery. Hamas's home-made rockets have killed just 20 Israelis in eight years, but a day-long blitz by Israeli aircraft that kills almost 300 Palestinians is just par for the course. The blood-splattering has its own routine. Yes, Hamas provoked Israel's anger, just as Israel provoked Hamas's anger, which was provoked by Israel, which was provoked by Hamas, which ... See what I mean? Hamas fires rockets at Israel, Israel bombs Hamas, Hamas fires more rockets and Israel bombs again and ... Got it? And we demand security for Israel – rightly – but overlook this massive and utterly disproportionate slaughter by Israel. It was Madeleine Albright who once said that Israel was under siege – as if Palestinian tanks were in the streets of Tel Aviv. By last night, the exchange rate stood at 296 Palestinians dead for one dead Israeli. Back in 2006, it was 10 Lebanese dead for one Israeli dead. This weekend was the most inflationary exchange rate in a single day since – the 1973 Middle East War? The 1967 Six Day War? The 1956 Suez War? The 1948 Independence/Nakba War? It's obscene, a gruesome game – which Ehud Barak, the Israeli Defence Minister, unconsciously admitted when he spoke this weekend to Fox TV. Our intention is to totally change the rules of the game, Barak said. Exactly. Only the rules of the game don't change. This is a further slippage on the Arab-Israeli exchanges, a percentage slide more awesome than Wall Street's crashing shares, though of not much interest in the US which – let us remember – made the F-18s and the Hellfire missiles which the Bush administration pleads with Israel to use sparingly. Quite a lot of the dead this weekend appear to have been Hamas members, but what is it supposed to solve? Is Hamas going to say: Wow, this blitz is awesome – we'd better recognise the state of Israel, fall in line with the Palestinian Authority, lay down our weapons and pray we are taken prisoner and locked up indefinitely and support a new American 'peace process' in the Middle East! Is that what the Israelis and the Americans and Gordon Brown think Hamas is going to do? Yes, let's remember Hamas's cynicism, the cynicism of all armed Islamist groups. Their need for Muslim martyrs is as crucial to them as Israel's need to create them. The lesson Israel thinks it is teaching – come to heel or we will crush you – is not the lesson Hamas is learning. Hamas needs violence to emphasise the oppression of the Palestinians – and relies on Israel to provide it. A few rockets into Israel and Israel obliges. Not a whimper from Tony Blair, the peace envoy to the Middle East who's never been to Gaza in his current incarnation. Not a bloody word. We hear the usual Israeli line. General Yaakov Amidror, the former head of the Israeli army's research and assessment division announced that no country in the world would allow its citizens to be made the target of rocket attacks without taking vigorous steps to defend them. Quite so. But when the IRA were firing mortars over the border into Northern Ireland, when their guerrillas were crossing from the Republic to attack police stations and Protestants, did Britain unleash the RAF on the Irish Republic? Did the RAF bomb churches and tankers and police stations and zap 300 civilians to teach the Irish a lesson? No, it did not. Because the world would have seen it as criminal behaviour. We didn't want to lower ourselves to the IRA's level.
[LAAMN] If Hamas Did Not Exist (CounterPunch)
Israel Has No Intention of Granting a Palestinian State If Hamas Did Not Exist By JENNIFER LOEWENSTEIN Let us get one thing perfectly straight. If the wholesale mutilation and degradation of the Gaza Strip is going to continue; if Israels will is at one with that of the United States; if the European Union, Russia, the United Nations and all the international legal agencies and organizations spread across the globe are going to continue to sit by like hollow mannequins doing nothing but making repeated calls for a ceasefire on both sides; if the cowardly, obsequious and supine Arab States are going to stand by watching their brethren get slaughtered by the hour while the worlds bullying Superpower eyes them threateningly from Washington lest they say something a little to their disliking; then let us at least tell the truth why this hell on earth is taking place. The state terror unleashed from the skies and on the ground against the Gaza Strip as we speak has nothing to do with Hamas. It has nothing to do with Terror. It has nothing to do with the long-term security of the Jewish State or with Hizbullah or Syria or Iran except insofar as it is aggravating the conditions that have led up to this crisis today. It has nothing to do with some conjured-up war a cynical and overused euphemism that amounts to little more the wholesale enslavement of any nation that dares claim its sovereign rights; that dares assert that its resources are its own; that doesnt want one of the Empires obscene military bases sitting on its cherished land. This crisis has nothing to do with freedom, democracy, justice or peace. It is not about Mahmoud Zahhar or Khalid Mashal or Ismail Haniyeh. It is not about Hassan Nasrallah or Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. These are all circumstantial players who have gained a role in the current tempest only now that the situation has been allowed for 61 years to develop into the catastrophe that it is today. The Islamist factor has colored and will continue to color the atmosphere of the crisis; it has enlisted the current leaders and mobilized wide sectors of the worlds population. The primary symbols today are Islamic the mosques, the Quran, the references to the Prophet Muhammad and to Jihad. But these symbols could disappear and the impasse would continue. There was a time when Fatah and the PFLP held the day; when few Palestinians wanted anything to do with Islamist policies and politics. Such politics have nothing to do with primitive rockets being fired over the border, or smuggling tunnels and black-market weapons; just as Arafats Fatah had little to do with stones and suicide bombings. The associations are coincidental; the creations of a given political environment. They are the result of something entirely different than what the lying politicians and their analysts are telling you. They have become part of the landscape of human events in the modern Middle East today; but incidentals wholly as lethal, or as recalcitrant, deadly, angry or incorrigible could just as soon have been in their places. Strip away the clichés and the vacuous newspeak blaring out across the servile media and its pathetic corps of voluntary state servants in the Western world and what you will find is the naked desire for hegemony; for power over the weak and dominion over the worlds wealth. Worse yet you will find that the selfishness, the hatred and indifference, the racism and bigotry, the egotism and hedonism that we try so hard to cover up with our sophisticated jargon, our refined academic theories and models actually help to guide our basest and ugliest desires. The callousness with which we in indulge in them all are endemic to our very culture; thriving here like flies on a corpse. Strip away the current symbols and language of the victims of our selfish and devastating whims and you will find the simple, impassioned and unaffected cries of the downtrodden; of the wretched of the earth begging you to cease your cold aggression against their children and their homes; their families and their villages; begging you to leave them alone to have their fish and their bread, their oranges, their olives and their thyme; asking you first politely and then with increasing disbelief why you cannot let them live undisturbed on the land of their ancestors; unexploited, free of the fear of expulsion; of ravishment and devastation; free of permits and roadblocks and checkpoints and crossings; of monstrous concrete walls, guard towers, concrete bunkers, and barbed wire; of tanks and prisons and torture and death. Why is life without these policies and instruments of hell impossible? The answer is because Israel has no intention of allowing a viable, sovereign Palestinian state on its borders. It had no intention of allowing it in 1948 when it grabbed 24 per cent more land than what it was allotted legally, if unfairly, by
[LAAMN] Tues. Jan. 6: MOTH STORYSLAM (Theme: Dirt)
*MOTH STORYSLAM (Theme: Dirt) * http://tinyurl.com/MOTHinLAJan09 * NEW LOCATION! * Tuesday January 6 @ 7:00 pm - 9:30 pm *El Cid * 4212 Sunset Boulevard Los Angeles, CA 90029 http://www.elcidla.com The Moth believes that everyone has a story. The Moth created StorySLAM to give those stories a forum. Following the wild success of our Mainstage series, The Moth sought to accommodate all the people who asked, When can I tell my story? and to encourage those people who doubted they had a story worth telling. The Moth StorySLAM provides a stage and a microphone, a theme to inspire and shape the evening, a lively and supportive audience, and a host to guide the festivities. Stories are limited to five minutes, and ten stories are heard. The stories are scored by three teams of audience-member judges, and a winner is announced at every SLAM. SLAM winners later face off in a Moth GrandSLAM. Since 2001, the raucous, moving, funny and wild quilt of themed stories that emerge during each show has kept the crowds coming back again and again. SLAMs are now held on both coasts, in New York City and Los Angeles! How it Works: 7:00 PM *sign up to tell a story, volunteer to be on a judging team or just sit back and listen. 7:30 (SHARP), we'll pick the first name and the show will begin. Each teller will have 5 minutes to tell his or her tale. After each story, the judges confer, and give a score. The teller with the highest score becomes our StorySLAM winner. The winner will compete with the year's other winners in our next GrandSLAM Championship. Eventually, LA and NY will face-off! Story Tips: *Be Forewarned:* The Moth is NOT a venue for readings, it is a venue for tellings. No notes, papers, or cheat sheets are allowed on stage. Contestants are judged on sticking to the five-minute time frame, sticking to the theme and having a story that sticksone that has a conflict and a resolution. *Start in the action.* Have a great first line that sets up the stakes or grabs attention. *Not:* So I was thinking about climbing this mountain. But then I watched a little TV and made a snack and took a nap and my mom called and vented about her psoriasis then I did a little laundry (a whites load) (I lost another sock, darn it!) and then I thought about it again and decided I'd climb the mountain the next morning. *Yes:* The mountain loomed before me. I had my hunting knife, some trail mix and snow boots. I had to make it to the little cabin and start a fire before sundown or freeze to death for sure. *Steer clear of meandering endings.* They kill a story! Your last line should be clear in your head before you start. Know your story well enough so you can have fun! Watching you panic to think of the next memorized line is harrowing for the audience. Make an outline, memorize your bullet points and play with the details. Enjoy yourself. Imagine you are a dinner party not a deposition. *No standup routines please.* The Moth LOVES funny people but requires that all funny people tell funny STORIES. *No rants:* Take up this anger issue with your therapist, or skip therapy and shape your anger into a story with some sort of resolution. (Stories = therapy!) *No essays:* Your eloquent musings are beautiful and look pretty on the page but unless you can make them gripping and set up stakes, they won't work on stage. For more information, contact http://www.themoth.org/contact [Non-text portions of this message have been removed] --- LAAMN: Los Angeles Alternative Media Network --- Unsubscribe: mailto:laamn-unsubscr...@egroups.com --- Subscribe: mailto:laamn-subscr...@egroups.com --- Digest: mailto:laamn-dig...@egroups.com --- Help: mailto:laamn-ow...@egroups.com?subject=laamn --- Post: mailto:la...@egroups.com --- Archive1: http://www.egroups.com/messages/laamn --- Archive2: http://www.mail-archive.com/la...@egroups.com --- Yahoo! Groups Links * To visit your group on the web, go to: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/laamn/ * Your email settings: Individual Email | Traditional * To change settings online go to: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/laamn/join (Yahoo! ID required) * To change settings via email: mailto:laamn-dig...@yahoogroups.com mailto:laamn-fullfeatu...@yahoogroups.com * To unsubscribe from this group, send an
[LAAMN] Article: Israel has no intention of granting a Palestinian state even if Hamas did not exist
From Counterpunch Date: Jan 2, 2009 10:46 AM Israel Has No Intention of Granting a Palestinian State If Hamas Did Not Exist By JENNIFER LOEWENSTEIN Let us get one thing perfectly straight. If the wholesale mutilation and degradation of the Gaza Strip is going to continue; if Israels will is at one with that of the United States; if the European Union, Russia, the United Nations and all the international legal agencies and organizations spread across the globe are going to continue to sit by like hollow mannequins doing nothing but making repeated calls for a ceasefire on both sides; if the cowardly, obsequious and supine Arab States are going to stand by watching their brethren get slaughtered by the hour while the worlds bullying Superpower eyes them threateningly from Washington lest they say something a little to their disliking; then let us at least tell the truth why this hell on earth is taking place. The state terror unleashed from the skies and on the ground against the Gaza Strip as we speak has nothing to do with Hamas. It has nothing to do with Terror. It has nothing to do with the long-term security of the Jewish State or with Hizbullah or Syria or Iran except insofar as it is aggravating the conditions that have led up to this crisis today. It has nothing to do with some conjured-up war a cynical and overused euphemism that amounts to little more the wholesale enslavement of any nation that dares claim its sovereign rights; that dares assert that its resources are its own; that doesnt want one of the Empires obscene military bases sitting on its cherished land. This crisis has nothing to do with freedom, democracy, justice or peace. It is not about Mahmoud Zahhar or Khalid Mashal or Ismail Haniyeh. It is not about Hassan Nasrallah or Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. These are all circumstantial players who have gained a role in the current tempest only now that the situation has been allowed for 61 years to develop into the catastrophe that it is today. The Islamist factor has colored and will continue to color the atmosphere of the crisis; it has enlisted the current leaders and mobilized wide sectors of the worlds population. The primary symbols today are Islamic the mosques, the Quran, the references to the Prophet Muhammad and to Jihad. But these symbols could disappear and the impasse would continue. There was a time when Fatah and the PFLP held the day; when few Palestinians wanted anything to do with Islamist policies and politics. Such politics have nothing to do with primitive rockets being fired over the border, or smuggling tunnels and black-market weapons; just as Arafats Fatah had little to do with stones and suicide bombings. The associations are coincidental; the creations of a given political environment. They are the result of something entirely different than what the lying politicians and their analysts are telling you. They have become part of the landscape of human events in the modern Middle East today; but incidentals wholly as lethal, or as recalcitrant, deadly, angry or incorrigible could just as soon have been in their places. Strip away the clichés and the vacuous newspeak blaring out across the servile media and its pathetic corps of voluntary state servants in the Western world and what you will find is the naked desire for hegemony; for power over the weak and dominion over the worlds wealth. Worse yet you will find that the selfishness, the hatred and indifference, the racism and bigotry, the egotism and hedonism that we try so hard to cover up with our sophisticated jargon, our refined academic theories and models actually help to guide our basest and ugliest desires. The callousness with which we in indulge in them all are endemic to our very culture; thriving here like flies on a corpse. Strip away the current symbols and language of the victims of our selfish and devastating whims and you will find the simple, impassioned and unaffected cries of the downtrodden; of the wretched of the earth begging you to cease your cold aggression against their children and their homes; their families and their villages; begging you to leave them alone to have their fish and their bread, their oranges, their olives and their thyme; asking you first politely and then with increasing disbelief why you cannot let them live undisturbed on the land of their ancestors; unexploited, free of the fear of expulsion; of ravishment and devastation; free of permits and roadblocks and checkpoints and crossings; of monstrous concrete walls, guard towers, concrete bunkers, and barbed wire; of tanks and prisons and torture and death. Why is life without these policies and instruments of hell impossible? The answer is because Israel has no intention of allowing a viable, sovereign Palestinian state on its borders. It had no intention of allowing it in 1948 when it grabbed 24 per cent more land than
[LAAMN] Fw: Sign Gaza Appeal Letter from Ramsey Clark - 360, 000 Petitions so far say ~ Stop the Massacre in Gaza!
Please help the people of Gaza by signing this petition and forwarding it to everyone you know. It is being initiated by former US Attorney General Ramsey Clark, and has several hundred thousand signatures already. That's why I think it's especially worth taking the time to circulate, although I sign any that are sent to me. Thanks, Hajja Romi As of Friday morning, more than 360,000 petitions have been sent! Please add your voice to the thousands who are demanding: Stop the massacre in Gaza! Please help get the word out - pass this message along, post it on local bulleting boards Indymedia, Sign the Petition Online Now - http://www.iacenter.org/gazapetition Join the ONLINE PETITION initiated by Ramsey Clark - sign on and send the message to President Bush, President-Elect Obama, VP Cheney, VP-Elect Biden, Secretary of State Rice, Secretary of State designate Clinton, Congressional leaders, the U.N. Secretary General, Security Council, the Israeli President, Prime Minister and cabinet, and members of the world media appealing for Israel to Immediately Cease Its Murderous Bombing, Siege and Threatened Invasion of Palestinian Gaza Urgent Appeal for Israel to Immediately Cease Its Murderous Bombing, Siege and Threatened Invasion of Palestinian Gaza! To: President George W. Bush, President-Elect Barack Obama, Secretary of State Condoleeza Rice, Secretary of State Designate Hillary Clinton, Vice President Richard Cheney, Vice President-elect Joe Biden, Congressional leaders, U.N. Secretary General Ban, U.N. General Assembly President d'Escoto-Brockmann, members of the U.N. Security Council, U.N. member states, the President, Prime Minister, Cabinet and Opposition leader of Israel, and Major media representatives: For 60 years, Israel has persecuted the Palestinian people with impunity in defiance of United Nations General Assembly and United Nations Security Council Resolutions, orders of the International Court of Justice, International Law and fundamental human rights. Throughout the years, Israel has proclaimed itself the victim as it grew richer, more powerful and more violent, while URGENT! The International Action Center is mobilizing for demonstrations across the U.S. to stop the attack on Gaza, and we are networking with activists across the globe who are taking to the streets against U.S./Israeli war crimes. To view a roundup of the growing number of international actions, see: http://www.iacenter.org/palestine/gazademos123108. Please consider making an emergency donation at http://www.iacenter.org/donate to help with the costs of organizing and mobilizing. NYC: Gaza Massacre: Emergency Demonstration - Sat. Jan. 3, 1 pm, Times Square Emergency Demo in Boston, Sat, Jan 3: Stop the US/Israeli Attack on Gaza! LA event Friday at 4:30 pm at the Israeli Consulate at 6380 Wilshire Blvd in Los Angeles Solidarity with heroic Gaza: Statement from the International Action Center - Dec. 27, 2008 / also en Español Video: Support for Gaza! http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E4hejAqOUMYfeature=channel_page Palestinians were abused, impoverished, divided and demeaned. A consistent tactic of Israel through all the years has been to divide Palestinians against their most effective organizations. Through most of the recent years Israel has attacked Fatah. Now it is Hamas that Israel attacks. But there is only one Palestinian people and there can be only one Palestinian State. This has been the guiding principle of the PLO. Israel's policy has always been to destroy the possibility of a Palestinian State. Its criminal assault on Hamas is in truth Israel's continuing assault on the possibility of a Palestinian State: divide and conquer. Now in the waning days of the disastrous Bush Administration, the government of Israel with its Prime Minister under criminal indictment, is testing whether world opinion will permit it to escalate its isolation and impoverishment of Palestine and selective and systematic assassination of Palestinian leadership in Gaza to a genocidal, indiscriminate assault and invasion of Palestinian Gaza, knowing full well its acts will inflame passions throughout the Middle East and Arab and Muslim worlds risking conflict of disastrous magnitude in Lebanon, Syria, Iran, Afghanistan, and elsewhere, even between India and Pakistan. Beyond crushing Gaza's capacity to resist and imposing its final solution on Palestinians, Israel is seeking confrontation that will lead to war with the U.S., the European Union, and NATO fighting for Israel against Iran, Syria, Lebanon, Pakistan and Afghanistan to impair their ability to prevent expansion of Israel's domination of the region while the only one President at a time the U.S. has, George W. Bush, will support Israel, finding all fault with Gaza. In these dangerous and difficult days and hours the undersigned call upon the United Nations, the United States, the
