 Get
The Facts to the Public
By Dorothy
Naor
I have long been
perturbed by the nearly total silence in the Israeli and
International media about daily occurrences in the
Occupied Territories—e.g., the number of
Palestinians killed, injured (Israeli deaths and injuries
are always reported), the amount of land expropriated,
the numbers of homes demolished. As a result of
this silence, attacks against Israelis appear to be
committed in a vacuum. For instance, few people
know that the most recent attacks which killed 8 Israelis
in 3 days, were preceded by a week in which 72
Palestinians were killed by the IOF.
Yesterday I decided to do
something about the situation, albeit in a very small
way, a sort of preliminary step to test the waters.
I had planned to go to
the Marwan Barghouti trial in Tel Aviv. At 7:00 AM
the news reported that only a small number of people
outfitted with special permits would be allowed into the
courtroom; knowing full well that I would not be among
these privileged few, I decided to demonstrate at the
courthouse entrance holding up a placard with figures
showing the numbers of lives lost in the years since the
signing of the Oslo agreements.
Under the heading
“Violence Breeds Violence” were listed annually
the number of Palestinians and Israelis killed from 1993
through 2002.* The numbers are revealing. Particularly
noticeable is the enormous difference between the figures
in 1999 when people on both sides still hoped for a
settlement and the numbers of those killed since.
Year
Palestinians
Israelis
1993
187
32
1994
144
141
1995
48
47
1996
81
72
1997
20
43
1998
27
18
1999
8
9
2000
Oct-Dec.
292
49
2001-
Sept. 29
?2002
1671
615 [495 deaths of the 615 have occurred
since Ariel Sharon became PM]
I had hoped that these
figures would give passersby some food for thought, would
show the link between the two sides and the enormous
increase in lives lost (Palestinian and Israeli) since
Sharon became PM.
What actually occurred
was a different matter. When I arrived, others on
the Israeli ‘left’ who had come to the trial
earlier were in the building upstairs outside the
courtroom. Consequently, I found myself alone among
a group of 50-60 of extreme right wingers who instantly
took offence at the poster. For the hour and 50
minutes that I remained there, I experienced shoving,
attempts to hide me and the poster from the view of
passers by, attempts to tear the poster out of my hands
and to destroy it, as well as a steady stream of verbal
abuse. A leader of the attackers ordered that I be
delegitimized. The tactics used to do this included
obscuring me from view by waving large Israeli flags in
front of my face, covering my poster with theirs
(consisting of photographs of Israelis killed in
terrorist attacks), and placing their bodies in front of
mine, no matter where I stood. While these attempts
were largely successful, they attracted the attention of
the media, which rushed to film both the acts of the
opposition and the poster, and even resulted in 4
interviews (BBC, a French reporter, a few questions from
the Jerusalem Post reporter, and one unidentified). This
media attention further angered the right-wingers. Ugly
abuse was hurled in the air: “I hope your daughter
will be killed by a suicide bomber.” “I
hope you will be killed by a terrorist.” “May
you be raped.” “Go to Canada.”
“You’re a rotten apple. Get out!”—is
a sampling of the more common sort. The worst was
reserved for the Arabs. I have no intention of
repeating it in writing.
Although it made no sense
to argue with these people, I did not remain entirely
silent. I can’t say that I won any friends among
them when after they complained about how many Israelis
had been killed I told them to thank Sharon and his
government.
The police’s
distaste with me was obvious. For the most part the
police ignored me. On two occasions when the crowd
became overly menacing, I shouted for help. In both
instances one policeman came, but only to tell me to move
on and to stay away from the others. Would have
loved to, but unfortunately the others refused to leave
me alone. Finally, a friend from upstairs who had
heard that I was downstairs alone came to my aid. After
he told the police that they were fascists they, quite
surprisingly, formed a cordon for a few minutes to keep
the others from us.
As for the media, despite
its attention to the poster and myself, I have found no
evidence of this in the newspapers or elsewhere.
Was it nevertheless worth
the doing? Yes! For one thing, I learned
something about myself: I could take abuse and not return
it. I could even keep my calm. More
important, I learned an important fact: the stark
truth—even when consisting only of bare
numbers--panics right wing extremists. They
obviously are scared stiff that the public learn the
truth and consequently question the lies and deceit being
fed it.
We therefore have to make
every effort not only to inform ourselves, but also to
get the data out to the public both in Israel and
abroad—on placards, on fliers that can be
distributed in the market place, on street corners, and
in other public places. We must put on our
thinking caps and be creative and find ways to reveal
what really goes on here to the uninformed person on the
street.
Letter from Dorothy Naor Oct.4th.,2002.
*Statistics for
Palestinian casualties: B’tselem; for Israeli
casualties: ICT [The International Policy Institute for
Counter Terrorism at the Interdisciplinary Center in
Herzliah]
Seven Pillars of
Jewish Denial
By Kim Chernin
I am thinking about American Jews, wondering why so many
of us have trouble being critical of Israel. I faced this
difficulty myself when I first went to Israel in 1971. I
was an ardent Zionist, intending to spend my life on a
kibbutz in the Galilee and to become an Israeli citizen.
Back home, before leaving, I argued almost daily with my
mother, an extreme left wing radical, about the Jews'
right to a homeland in our historical and therefore
inalienable setting. However, once established on my
kibbutz on the Lebanese border, I began to notice things
that disrupted my complacency.
We used to ride down to our orchards on kibbutz trucks
with Arab workers from the neighboring villages and were
occasionally invited to visit. We liked sitting on a rug
on a dirt floor, eating food cooked over an open fire,
drinking water from the village well. Above all, we loved
the kerosene lamps that were lit and set in a half circle
around us as it grew dark. But walking home it occurred
to me that our kibbutz had running water, electricity,
modern stoves. Our neighbors were gracious, generous, and
friendly, although I had learned by then that the land
the kibbutz occupied had once belonged to them. We were
living on land that was once theirs, under material
conditions they could not hope to equal. I found this
troubling.
The path from this troubled awareness to my later ability
to be critical of Israel has been long and complex. Over
the years I have spoken with other Jews who have traveled
this same path, and to many more who haven't. In each of
us I have detected mental obstacles that make it hard,
sometimes impossible, for us to see what is there before
our eyes.
Our inability to engage in critical thought about our
troubled homeland is entangled by crucial questions about
Jewish identity. Why do American Jews find it difficult
to be critical of Israel? Here, set out in linear form,
are seven obstacles to a Jew's ability to be critical of
Israel.
Seven Obstacles:
1. A conviction that Jews are always in danger, always
have been, and therefore are in danger  now. Which leads to:
2. The insistence that a criticism is an attack and will
lead to our destruction. Which is rooted in:
3. The supposition that any negativity towards Jews (or
Israel) is a sign of anti-Semitism and will (again,
inevitably) lead to our destruction. Which is enhanced
by:
4. Survivor's guilt. Which contains within itself:
5. A hidden belief that we can change the past. Which
holds:
6. An even more hidden belief that a sufficient amount of
suffering confers the right to violence. Which finally
brings us to:
7. The conviction that our beliefs, our ideology (or
theology), matter more than the lives of other human
beings.
.Israel has no right to try
Barghouti
By Adam Keller
It was just a bit over two years ago - September 12,
2000. The Peace Tent was erected in the plaza outside the
Tel-Aviv Cinemateque, under the slogan "Israel
and Palestine - Two States Now!". In the list of
featured speakers it was no surprise to see the name of
Marwan Barghouti, member of the Palestinian Legislative
Council, together with such speakers as Dalia Rabin, Uri
Avnery and Tamar Gozanski...
A speaker of fluent Hebrew - picked up in prison during
the first Intifada - and the personal friend of many
Israelis from all over the political spectrum,
Barghouti attended innumerable such events during
the seven years of the Oslo process - always emphasizing
his firm support for the two-state
solution. Just two weeks later, Ariel Sharon staged his
Temple Mount provocation, embroiling the peoples in a
cycle of bloodshed which is still far from ended. And
today Marwan Barghouti had another public appearance in
Tel-Aviv, just a few streets away from the Cinemateque: a
handcuffed prisoner, he was brought to the Tel-Aviv
District Court, there to be charged by the state of
Israel with heinous acts of terrorism.
A number of Gush Shalom activists arrived at the court -
among them Uri and Rachel Avnery - together with
representatives of Machsom-Watch, New Profile, and Women
for Peace. We had come two hours in advance to be
sure of a place in the courtroom. After a prolonged wait
in front of a locked door, a band of security men emerged
to push us far back and announce that admittance would be
restricted to those on a list prepared long in
advance. The only journalists allowed were those on
a specific "pool" - just when and by whom it
was defined was not clear, but quite a few
well-known Israeli and foreign journalists found
themselves out. As for the general public, it turned out
that "Families of the vicitims of
terrorism" were to be given precedence - such
precedence that once they went in there was no
place left for anybody else. ("Sorry, the
courtroom is full, no more places inside").
The suicide bombings of the past two years,
indiscriminate as they were, have hit at all parts
of the Israeli population (the same could be said for the
Palestinians killed and wounded in the scarcely less
indiscriminate bombings and bombardments by Israeli tanks
and aircraft). In the sad ranks of the bereaved families,
all political opinions could be represented. But
the families selected for the privilege of being present
in the courtroom during the Barghouti trial were all of
the extreme right.
Thus was produced the scene which we could see on our TV
screens tonight: Barghouti, on his entry to the
courtroom, meeting a uniformly hostile audience,
which throughout the proceedings continued to shout abuse
at the accused in the dock and his lawyers. Any hint that
some parts of the Israeli society had a different
attitude was carefully excluded from that courtroom, but
not - as it turned out - from the media coverage.
We were left outside the locked doors - among the chaotic
medley of Israelis and Palestinians, Jews and
Arabs, right-wingers and left-wingers, activists,
police and security men, all mixed up in an increasingly
heated atmosphere. The stickers which we wore on our
clothing, improvised on the previous evening for exactly
the case that we wouldn't be allowed in, bore the slogan
"Barghouti to negotiations - not to trial". It
drew considerable attention, some of it adverse.
Debates often degenerated into shouting matches and
bitter recriminations. We were faced with bereaved family
members with genuine grief. But does even grief for
a daughter killed in a suicide bombing - incidentally,
one which happened when Barghouti was already behind bars
- justify a woman in rudely shouting at any
Palestinian she could see "You are aliens
here, foreigners! This is our land and ours only!")?
On the TV news the outdoors events got considerable
attention, probably to th e chagrin of those who wanted
it to be a neat show trial.
The biggest surprise however was given by the youngest
member of Barghouti's legal team, Advocate Shammai
Leibowitz - like his grandfather the late Professor
Yeshayahu Leibowitz an Orthodox Jew adept at giving
unorthodox interpretations. "The struggle of the
Palestinians to be free of the occuption is reminiscent
of the Exodus of our forfathers from Egypt. Moses had
killed an Egyptian foreman which he saw beating a Hebrew
slave, and had to flee from Egypt. The Egyptian
aurhorities had no right to try Moses like Israel now has
no right to try Barghouti."
After this declaration Adv. Lebowitz had to be rescued
from the court premises under police protection.
[Reported by Adam Keller]GUSH SHALOM - pob 3322, Tel-Aviv
61033 - http://www.gush-shalom.org/
Somebody
Blew Up America
by
AMIRI BARAKA
http://www.counterpunch.org/poem1003.html
Somebody Blew Up
America
They say its some
terrorist,
some barbaric
A Rab,
in Afghanistan
It wasn't our American terrorists
It wasn't the Klan or the Skin heads
Or the them that blows up nigger
Churches, or reincarnates us on Death Row
It wasn't Trent Lott
Or David Duke or Giuliani
Or Schundler, Helms retiring
It wasn't
The gonorrhea in costume
The white sheet diseases
That have murdered black people
Terrorized reason and sanity
Most of humanity, as they pleases
They say (who
say?)
Who do the saying
Who is them paying
Who tell the lies
Who in disguise
Who had the slaves
Who got the bux out the Bucks
 Who got fat from plantations
Who genocided Indians
Tried to waste the Black nation
Who live on Wall
Street
The first plantation
Who cut your nuts off
Who rape your ma
Who lynched your pa
Who got the tar,
who got the feathers
Who had the match, who set the fires
Who killed and hired
Who say they God & still be the Devil
Who the biggest
only
Who the most goodest
Who do Jesus resemble
Who created
everything
Who the smartest
Who the greatest
Who the richest
Who say you ugly and they the goodlookingest
Who define art
Who define science
Who made the
bombs
Who made the guns
Who bought the
slaves, who sold them
Who called you
them names
Who say Dahmer wasn't insane
Who? Who? Who?
Who stole Puerto
Rico
Who stole the Indies, the Philipines, Manhattan
Australia & The Hebrides
Who forced opium on the Chinese
Who own them
buildings
Who got the money
Who think you funny
Who locked you up
Who own the papers
Who owned the
slave ship
Who run the army
Who the fake
president
Who the ruler
Who the banker
Who? Who? Who?
Who own the mine
Who twist your mind
Who got bread
Who need peace
Who you think need war
Who own the oil
Who do no toil
Who own the soil
Who is not a nigger
Who is so great ain't nobody bigger
Who own this city
Who own the air
Who own the water
Who own your crib
Who rob and steal and cheat and murder
and make lies the truth
Who call you uncouth
Who live in the
biggest house
Who do the biggest crime
Who go on vacation anytime
Who killed the
most niggers
Who killed the most Jews
Who killed the most Italians
Who killed the most Irish
Who killed the most Africans
Who killed the most Japanese
Who killed the most Latinos
Who? Who? Who?
Who own the ocean
Who own the
airplanes
Who own the malls
Who own television
Who own radio
Who own what
ain't even known to be owned
Who own the owners that ain't the real owners
Who own the
suburbs
Who suck the cities
Who make the laws
Who made Bush
president
Who believe the confederate flag need to be flying
Who talk about democracy and be lying
Who the Beast in
Revelations
Who 666
Who know who decide
Jesus get crucified
Who the Devil on
the real side
Who got rich from Armenian genocide
Who the biggest
terrorist
Who change the bible
Who killed the most people
Who do the most evil
Who don't worry about survival
Who have the
colonies
Who stole the most land
Who rule the world
Who say they good but only do evil
Who the biggest executioner
Who? Who? Who?
Who own the oil
Who want more oil
Who told you what you think that later you find out a lie
Who? Who? Who?
Who found Bin
Laden, maybe they Satan
Who pay the CIA,
Who knew the bomb was gonna blow
Who know why the terrorists
Learned to fly in Florida, San Diego
Who know why Five
Israelis was filming the explosion
And cracking they sides at the notion
Who need fossil
fuel when the sun ain't goin' nowhere
Who make the
credit cards
Who get the biggest tax cut
Who walked out of the Conference
Against Racism
Who killed Malcolm, Kennedy & his Brother
Who killed Dr King, Who would want such a thing?
Are they linked to the murder of Lincoln?
Who invaded
Grenada
Who made money from apartheid
Who keep the Irish a colony
Who overthrow Chile and Nicaragua later
Who killed David
Sibeko, Chris Hani,
the same ones who killed Biko, Cabral,
Neruda, Allende, Che Guevara, Sandino,
Who killed
Kabila, the ones who wasted Lumumba, Mondlane,
Betty Shabazz, Die, Princess Di, Ralph Featherstone,
Little Bobby
Who locked up
Mandela, Dhoruba, Geronimo,
Assata, Mumia, Garvey, Dashiell Hammett, Alphaeus Hutton
Who killed Huey
Newton, Fred Hampton,
Medgar Evers, Mikey Smith, Walter Rodney,
Was it the ones who tried to poison Fidel
Who tried to keep the Vietnamese Oppressed
Who put a price
on Lenin's head
Who put the Jews
in ovens,
and who helped them do it
Who said "America First"
and ok'd the yellow stars
Who killed Rosa
Luxembourg, Liebneckt
Who murdered the Rosenbergs
And all the good people iced,
tortured, assassinated, vanished
Who got rich from
Algeria, Libya, Haiti,
Iran, Iraq, Saudi, Kuwait, Lebanon,
Syria, Egypt, Jordan, Palestine,
Who cut off
peoples hands in the Congo
Who invented Aids
Who put the germs
In the Indians' blankets
Who thought up "The Trail of Tears"
Who blew up the
Maine
& started the Spanish American War
Who got Sharon back in Power
Who backed Batista, Hitler, Bilbo,
Chiang kai Chek
Who decided
Affirmative Action had to go
Reconstruction, The New Deal,
The New Frontier, The Great Society,
Who do Tom Ass
Clarence Work for
Who doo doo come out the Colon's mouth
Who know what kind of Skeeza is a Condoleeza
Who pay Connelly to be a wooden negro
Who give Genius Awards to Homo Locus
Subsidere
Who overthrew
Nkrumah, Bishop,
Who poison Robeson,
who try to put DuBois in Jail
Who frame Rap Jamil al Amin, Who frame the Rosenbergs,
Garvey,
The Scottsboro Boys,
The Hollywood Ten
Who set the
Reichstag Fire
Who knew the
World Trade Center was gonna get bombed
Who told 4000 Israeli workers at the Twin Towers
To stay home that day
Why did Sharon stay away?
Who? Who? Who?
Explosion of Owl
the newspaper say
The devil face cd be seen
Who make money
from war
Who make dough from fear and lies
Who want the world like it is
Who want the world to be ruled by imperialism and
national
oppression and terror violence, and hunger and poverty.
Who is the ruler
of Hell?
Who is the most powerful
Who you know ever
Seen God?
But everybody
seen
The Devil
Like an Owl
exploding
In your life in your brain in your self
Like an Owl who know the devil
All night, all day if you listen, Like an Owl
Exploding in fire. We hear the questions rise
In terrible flame like the whistle of a crazy dog
Like the acid
vomit of the fire of Hell
Who and Who and WHO who who
Whoooo and Whooooooooooooooooooooo!
Copyright 2002.
Amiri Baraka.
Senator
Robert Byrd, West Virginia speaking to Donahue in USA, 4th
October 2002
BYRD: Well, we have an
administration that seeks power. And the Constitution -
this administration wants to believe that the
Constitution - gives the president the inherent power to
strike preemptively, to make preemptive strikes against
another nation, on the basis of suspicion or on the basis
of whatever the president determines.
The Constitution doesn’t give
that power. This Constitution only gives the president
the inherent power to repel an unforeseen and sudden
attack against the United States or its military forces.
This administration
wants this Constitution to be read in such a way that the
president will have the power without the declaration by
the Congress; the power by one man, who determines to
deliver a preemptive strike. That is the Bush doctrine.
This Constitution does not give this administration that
power, or any other administration.
I don’t want the Congress
to be on the wrong side of this Constitution. This
Constitution was made by the framers. And it is supposed
to endure throughout the ages. We must not put aside this
Constitution.
Let me tell you what
this resolution would do, that’s coming up here from
the administration. Get this. The president is authorized
to use the armed forces of the United States as he
determines to be necessary and appropriate, in order to
defend the national security of the United States against
the continuing threat posed by Iraq. And enforce all
involved, all relevant U.N. Security Council resolutions
regarding Iraq.
This is an
open-ended grant to the president of the United States -
whatever he may be, Democrat or Republican - not just
now, but for the unforeseen future, to make any attacks.
To use the military force of the United States anywhere
he wants, wherever he wants, whenever he wants, however
he wants, if he perceives it, if he determines it to be
necessary and appropriate.
What does that mean?
To be necessary and appropriate in order to defend the
national security of the United States against the
continuing threat posed by Iraq. I’m not going to
vote for that kind of resolution.
That’s an
open-ended resolution for the president of the United
States to take our military, do whatever he wants,
whenever he wants, however he wants, in order to deliver
a preemptive attack on any force that he determines might
be connected with Iraq.
At this moment, Senator Byrd is the
longest-serving member of Congress, having served in the
House and then having been reelected to the Senate eight
times.
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