In a piece yesterday on National Public Radio, legal affairs correspondent Nina Totenberg, who ought to know better, suggested that the Palestine Liberation Organization should be considered a terrorist organization.
NINA TOTENBERG: Federal law makes it a crime to provide material support to any organization designated a terrorist group by the secretary of state….The nonprofit Humanitarian Law Project has a long history of engaging in such activity, mediating international conflicts and promoting human rights. But it has stopped doing some of its work for fear of being prosecuted under the material support provision…
David Cole, representing the Humanitarian Law Project, notes, however, that the State Department designates organizations as terrorist groups without review. Thus, for example, the PKK [the Kurdistan Workers Party] is designated a terrorist organization, but the PLO is not.
I hate to break it to you, but the US recognized the PLO as the legitimate representative of the Palestinian people in 1991. The PLO has a seat at the U.N.
Why do I land on this little boo-boo? Because Nina Totenberg is a smart, generally well-informed, empowered Jewish liberal who surely epitomizes the well-meaning D.C. elite. And my theme these days is from Cicero (via Nader): freedom is the participation in power. Nina Totenberg has considerable freedom. I have freedom. Jews in this society have tremendous freedom.
Palestinians have very little freedom, and have had little for decades. Totenberg’s ignorance on this score, and reflexive prejudice, reveals what Palestinians are up against in Washington.
For get Progressive except Palestine — how’s objective except Palestine?
And NPR is one of the better news outlets in the United States, and it still fails us.
What’s an empowered Jewish liberal?
I didn’t know there was a well-meaning D.C. elite of any kind.
Hasbara point #4.
Now now, let’s not be hasty. Avi has a point. It looks to me like any well-meaning federal level players — say, Cynthia McKinney, Howard Dean, Ned Lamont — have been summarily exiled from the D.C. “elite.”
Yeah. “Liberal” and “empowered” don’t really fit in the same sentence any more when it comes to US politics.
NINA TOTENBERG: Federal law makes it a crime to provide material support to any organization designated a terrorist group by the secretary of state
Wonder if Nina Totenberg is familiar with the Central Fund of Israel?
Looks like the US Supreme Court is going to decide now if speech, merely talking about any group on the terrorist shit list can land any American writer in jail for fifteen years for providing “material support”–even say, writing an article discussing whether or not a group should be on the list:
link to huffingtonpost.com
Better follow this case you Mondoweiss scribblers. It looks like the word “terror” and its derivatives is truly the oppressive gift that just keeps on giving.
BTW, I think some programs on George Orwell and his works are scheduled soon on CSPAN2
Lest, we forget:
‘NPR’ doesn’t quote Palestinians because their view is ‘predictable’
NPR’s ‘Morning Edition’ Joins Vigilantes
Terry Gross interviewed Times’ Ethan Bronner yesterday
Bob, I emphatically agree. NPR is NOT an objective news source when it comes to I/P. The only U.S. outlets that seem to be are Christian Science Monitor and Time magazine (Tim McGurk). Otherwise, we have to rely on the Internet for an objective (and oftentimes not so objective — meaning the Palestinian POV) perspective of the situation.
OT:
[The Annual Threat Assessment overview] supports the conclusions of the December 2007 National Intelligence Estimate (NIE) which concluded that Iran had abandoned its nuclear weapons program and had not made the political decision to start it up again.
from Some Straight Thinking About Iran, Philip Giraldi
***
…a new web site was launched last week that illustrates how your state is contributing to the Israeli defense budget, and what could have instead been done with the money. At www.aidtoisrael.org I learned that my home state of Texas will give more than $2.5 billion over the ten year period. For the same amount, over 2 million people could have been provided with primary health care.
from Questioning the “Special Relationship” with Israel, No Wonder Israel is Able to Invest in R&D!, Stephanie Westbrook
I had an html typo. How Much Military Aid to Israel … Do you provide??
Hmm. I didn’t have a type either time. I must be doing something incorrect because the links keep prepending the link for this site. I would be much obliged if someone could explain it. Here is one last try. If it doesn’t work, please just type it in manually. The site is well worth visiting.
How Much Military Aid to Israel do you Provide?
Phil, if you would have kept reading the same article also says:
In 2004 the United States Congress declared the PLO to be a terrorist organisation under the Anti-Terrorism Act 1987, citing among others the Achille Lauro attack.[27][28]
Yeah. And just shy of two years ago, President Nelson Mandela was still on the Terrorist Watch List. Funny, they neglected to mention that in the article. You’d think 2008 would be more relevant than 2004.
So how come the IDF isn’t a declared terrorist organization? The USS Liberty incident? The Lavon affair? Lillehammer? And now, recently, Dubai?
iirc, the Kahanists are officially a terror organization – according to Israel they are, at least. Yet Israel provides material support to Kahanist settlements and is thus indeed a state supporter of terrorism.
Yonira, if you had any reading comprehension, you would have seen that it is the Secretary of State who has the power to declare a given group a “terror organziation”, not the Zionist tools in Congress.
Granted: that one man’s terrorist is another man’s freedom fighter. Granted: that killing civilians is a problem when committed by Israel and not only when committed by the PLO.
But the facts you quote from 1991 tell an incomplete story. Much history has occurred since: including: the second intifadeh, when the Al Aqsa Martyrs Brigade did attack civilians on either side of the green line and Arafat’s “lies” regarding the arms shipment of the Karine A in January of 2002.
It is true that Arafat has been dead for more than six years and Abbas is a man of a different sort (quisling according to most commentators here, possible interlocutor according to the Obama White House). But when you skip from 1991 to the present you are deleting some major chunks of relevant history.
Talk about incomplete stories — the murders of literally thousands of Palestinian civilians by the Israeli military over decades?
Whose deleting major chunks of relevant history now?
What makes you think she doesn’t know better than to produce the scheisse required by her bosses?
So why can’t we find out how or why Nina — an otherwise responsible and accomplished journalist — goes along with the usual claptrap?