The pseudonymous "Seven" regularly sends me news tips from California, so I asked her what's on her mind, and she sent along the following note. Seven is a Palestinian-American woman who does not want her real name used lest she have trouble visiting her relatives in Palestine.
So much in the news today all over the world but two things stand out from today as particularly obscene and cartoonish: 1)
Badil, the Palestinian refugees' rights organization, is accusing Fatah of capitulating to American/Israeli demands by agreeing to remove all references to Palestinians from the "outcome document" in Durban next week. And 2) The Collaborator in Chief''s son gave an interview yesterday in which he said that: a majority of Palestinians,"
including himself, "collaborate with Israel."
By the way, the person who wrote that is also a
collaborator and you can read pretty succinct descriptions of him here and here.
I envisioned this whole cathartic post about Fatah and they're collaborating ways,
but that's just so daunting because they give me so much material to
work with and I am really tired. Do I mention the obvious, like their
support for the slaughter in Gaza? Or do I talk about how they fooled the Palestinians in the West Bank
and told them that their living conditions would improve if they turned
their weapons in and gave up on resisting the occupation? They didn't
get anything in return for doing that, in fact they're getting their
land in the West Bank stolen at a faster rate, the checkpoints are
still there, the settlers are multiplying, the Israelis are still
invading towns and villages in the West Bank everyday and
arresting men, women and children and throwing them in prisons for
months or years at a time without ever charging them. 53 men, women and
children were arrested in the last seven days. Some people did get
jobs, they're the new "security apparatus" and they go out and arrest
people on behalf of Israel, daily. The people in Gaza are starving,
they are wounded, they are traumatized, the children there "want to die" but the West Bank is not really Disneyland. By the way, this is the man the U.S. is trying to pawn off on Palestinians as the next legitimate leader. Remove one Saddam, insert another.
Oh and did you read about the Bush torture memos today? Obama already let anyone involved in state sponsored terrorism off the hook. They're higher up on the ladder than those soldiers that go to jail for raping Iraqi girls and executing restrained detainees, so no jail time for them.
I often wonder what goes through the minds of people like Berel and even Witty when they read that. It's hard to imagine somebody going on and on about Hamas being the devil incarnate or the obstacle to peace after reading that.
But somehow it just doesn't stick, does it?
RE: "They're higher up on the ladder than those soldiers that go to jail for raping Iraqi girls and executing restrained detainees, so no jail time for them."
Yeah, we know.
I can tell what went through my mind.
That is that the choice to approach one's dissent by non-violent means exclusively is a rational one in nearly EVERY circumstance.
It is effective strategy and allows one to not have nightmares about what one caused on other innocent civilians.
As someone like Obama is the most likely factor that would limit/stop (for really the first time in a long time) the expansion of settlements, to adopt a method of dissent that he could NOT stand behind, would be counter-productive, a statement that the author wanted their anger to be justified, more than they wanted an actual improvement in condition.
Jessica Lynch..the Tawana Brawley of the Third Mechanized Unit.
Rykart – Poster child of the american nazi party.
@ Witty
Wanna give us a few historical and contemporary examples when dissent by violent means is rational? What exceptional circumstances allow for a rational exception to the Witty general non-violent dissent rule? Or is that too much ask, Richard Witty? Something beyond generalizations for a change? If you are only talking to yourself, you don't have to answer. Try to remember, we can't literally read your well-intentioned mind.
@ Privates England and Lynch
I think I understand what you say. Appalachia is getting tired of being used, mostly as cannon fodder (both of you; I know, you were only thinking of a way to pay for college when you joined the US Army) and scapegoats for elite American agendas (England thought of humiliating those arab captives in just the most effective way–short of raping their family females in front of them, and made up her own tools? Or was there a foreign consultant involved much higher up in rank than her?) benefitting "white trailer trash" the least–though Lynch lept at the chance
to benefit from the physical wreck left of her body briefly (a book, a film, taking the medal) before
her hometown hillbilly values shone through when she went public saying she wasn't a hero
like Audie Murphy & no longer wanted to be part of the elite's PR campaign.
Phil: "…They're higher up on the ladder…"
Citizen: Unlike Pvt. England. (& the handful of others used as scapecoats for implementing our
torture & humiliation policy–they were white males–also one black guy, but the MSM never
indicated that in any way).
rykart: "Jessica Lynch..the Tawana Brawley of the Third Mechanized Unit"
I don't think Ms Brawley ever came clean in public as Pvt Lynch did–note Citizen's comment. It took a while, but with a broken up body, an ultra fast dip in the US PR pool while she was still under military orders and at the bottom of rank, that does not seem fairly comparable to
Ms Brawley's situation. Am I wrong?
@ Chris Berel
Go Chris! You're my hero!
What the hell does fair have to do with the American Nazi party and its leaders like Alice, LT, LD, Rykart, Citz, and Joachim?
Hi Alice
I'm not aware that Lynch ever recanted her outrageous rape fib, used to turn her astonishingly racist "biography", by the dreadful opportunist Rick Brag into a national sensation. instead, she caught a nasty case of retrograde amnesia, claiming no recollection of the Iraqi "rapists" who in reality, treated her wounds and saved her life.
"That is that the choice to approach one's dissent by non-violent means exclusively is a rational one in nearly EVERY circumstance."
Palestinians have been using non-violent protest for a very long time, many people have been killed doing so. Like the person that was killed earlier today in Bilin for protesting against the theft of his land.
It's not that I have an issue with you supporting non-violence, it's just a shame you don't preach to the Israelis about their daily violence against Palestinian civilians.
Would you have been opposed to the Warsaw ghetto uprising? Or is that violence acceptable? Did you support the war in Iraq and Afghanistan? Or is that violence also acceptable?
Is it only acceptable when the West and Israel commit dastardly acts of violence but the brown people should always practice non-violence so that they don't have to wrestle with their conscience at night?
Such strange logic.
7,
I do preach to the Israeli and pro-Israeli right about the humanity of Palestinian civilians.
The most important point about violence as a means, is that it STOPS the achievement that you seek (if you seek improvement of Palestinians' lives).
I would chuck too much shit at Pvt. England if I were you. She did hard time so that Rumsfeld and the rest of the gang wouldn't have to.
Phil Im not defending Israel or US zionist organizations but there is another side to this story that has gone unmentioned.
The Durban also rejected a document on the Arab Slave Trade because it angered Arabs and because it contradicted the typical view of racism as a strictly European phenomenon. This document was written in 2003 at the Johannesburg Conference on led Arab led Slavery. It included recognition and reparations for the Arab Slave Trade and forced Arabization of Africans and called for dialog between African and Arab nations. All references to the Arab Slave Trade, Arab Colonization, or Arab racism are written in parenthesis so as not to offend Arabs. The Arab league nor Arab countries have ever apologized for the Arab Slave and some Arab countries still benefit from African Slave Labor, yet they are able to maintain good standing and respect within the UN.
You can see the declaration here.
I am not defending Israel but Phil I would like to know your opinion on the UN's refusal to include this document at the Conference and their failure to address the Arab Slave Trade and Arab Colonialism in general. I look forward to hearing your thoughts.
Declaration on Arab-led Slavery
link to docstoc.com
You can read about it in the Durban review.
link to durbanreview.org
I hope you tell your friend "Seven" about the UN's refusal to include the Document on Arab-Led Slavery because this brings a new perspective to the conference.
Hi Janey,
Clearly you missed the point of my post which is about Fatah collaboration with Israel, in my opinion the "representatives" of the Palestinian people have a duty to put the Palestinian issue on the table at every "event" they possibly can. If the U.S. and Israel want to omit something about the "Arab slave trade" it has nothing to do with Fatah acquiescing to Western demands and agree to drop all language about Palestine and Israeli apartheid. These are two different issues that we are discussing but I applaud your efforts at distraction and moral deflection.
If they are a state, their duty is the well-being of their constituents, not your definition of appropriate resistance.
Abbas still holds to his demands (67 borders), which are nearly identical to what Hamas is reported to demand.
If militancy brings war and suffering only, how is that honorable?
Compared to the courage of those that adopt peaceful, but still assertive, methods of dissent?
The guy is out of his fucking mind.
He holds up as evidence of Palestinian intransigence, the fact that Fatah's position regarding the inadmissibility of acquiring land by war and the illegality of the settlements is the same as Hamas' !!!
It's also the position that Switzerland and Holland, Germany and Portugal, Italy and Sweden, the UN and every other country on earth plus the International Court of Justice has taken year after year and decade after decade.
If war is the only proposal offered by Hamas, then that is what will occur.
Their statement was permanent, unconditional.
Do you think they were lying?
It's not the only proposal offered by Hamas.
So which is the real Hamas?
Unconditional rejection is a different beast than "if".
Citizen – If you don't mind a response from someone else: violent means are rational when no other are available. Not good, not to be preferred, but rational. What was known about Palestine prior to the '72 Olympics? IMO, they had no voice prior that, the Western perspective was, almost exclusively, Israel's. The world heard from Palestine at Munich, and the lesson I took from that was about minority voices, although it was decades before I truly understood that lesson.
Not only are violent means rational, they are spontaneous, not so much planned (as Munich was,) but more often the last resort of desperation, as is visible from violent revolutions the world over. Where such violence is one of many alternatives, it does not appear with frequency, because it is less effective than other alternatives, not least because of the harm caused the actor. The toll on the society from which the actors come is great, which to me adds to the purposefulness of the action. That such actions are taken despite that harm betokens the level of desperation IMO.
You think that Palestinian activists are so disorganized or so emotion-driven, that they don't choose their approach?
That ONLY desparation drives their approach, and not strategy, not goal?
And, that that is preferable in some way, to your thinking?
Richard, you are responding to "not so much planned" right? The distinction I was working towards, and lost track of, was that such activity doesn't need to be directed by some type of command force, or say by outside forces such as Al Qeda, as often is presupposed in current times, but IMO rather is the result of factors affecting people who then coalesce or unite because of the circumstances.
Perhaps using spontaneous added to the miscue: I meant that IMO this is a response latent within us all, that can be evoked by circumstances. Desperation: a state in which all hope is lost or absent. There is no connotation of disorganization. Desperation is an emotional state, but emotions are not disorganized simply by virtue of being intense.
Preferable to what?
It appears that Margret has just stated that it is okay to kill innocent people to get heard. But she didn't mean that, what she meant was that it is okay and possibly a good thing to kill Jews for any reason you can think of.
Magret, not being very bright, will deny this, but that's expected.
Margaret (not "Magret"–from the guy who said misspellings indicate anti-semitism, though his grammar & spelling is constantly terrible) is very bright. She remembers the Stern Gang and other early Jewish terrorists groups, the font of so many later Israel State leaders. As she said to me:
"violent means are rational when no other are available." I don't disagree. I'm not saying terrorism, whether state-sponsored or not, is moral in the final analysis (means versus ends), rather that, as Phil says, the West Bank is not Disneyland and neither is Gaza. In comparison, Israel is, and even more so, the USA, home of Israel right or wrong policy & blowback, beginning at 9/11.
Thank you, Citizen, for making the connection to Israel's formation, the details of which IMO it is necessary to consider whenever morality is raised in relation to the conflict over Israeli and Palestinian rights. As a concept, 'morality' does not seem to apply to the world we occupy. Instead it's use, when speaking of the US and Israel, has come to indicate for me that the user may have a black and white perspective of events that doesn't include recognition that nothing being done by the other side hasn't been done by one's own.