“In the End, we will remember not the words of our enemies, but the silence of our friends" --Martin Luther King
We know the most vociferous opponents of Palestinian freedom that walk the halls of Congress. Their words and actions are clearly supportive of the most brutal of Israeli actions against Palestinians, leaving no room for doubt of their racism and total disregard for human rights. They are the Bull Connors of our age. I wonder though if the greatest impediment to advancing new US policies that could help bring peace and justice to the Middle East come not from the Ros-Lehtinens and Chuck Schumers and Steny Hoyers of Congress, but from “friends” in Congress who sometimes say the right thing, but their actions often perpetuate a deadly status quo.
Barbara Lee presents herself as an opponent of Israel’s continued military occupation of Palestinian lands. She has, after all, packaged herself as a “renegade for peace and justice”, the title of her autobiography. To that end, Lee has shown a willingness to not support some of the most egregious of AIPAC resolutions supporting Israeli oppression of Palestinians that come through congress on a regular basis, and on rare occasions even actively opposes them. When news reached Barbara Lee of the wounding of Tristan Anderson, her constituent, by the Israeli military, by all reports Lee was genuinely concerned for his recovery and wanted an investigation into this tragedy.
It seems, however, that political expediency often gets in the way. She has, to her credit, publicly called for a thorough investigation in Tristan’s case, but little has come of it. As the recent slaying of Jawaher Abu Rahmah has shown us, Israel has not changed its practice of reckless use of tear gas. It has been nearly two years since the wounding of Tristan Anderson, and Barbara Lee continues to play it safe for the most part, working, as she says, “behind the scenes”. Instead of aggressively going after the truth of what happen and showing a willingness to hold Israel accountable for its actions, she calls for support for the policies of President Obama, which are clearly a failure.
Obama’s muted criticisms of Israeli policies are accompanied by unprecedented generous rewards while Israel ignores these “concerns”. It is no wonder that Israel is then bulldozing Palestinian homes at a record pace, at the same time building and expanding settlements contrary to international law. Israel knows it will get all it wants from President Obama and congresspeople like Ros- Lehtinen and Lee.
This was made crystal clear to us when Barbara Lee supported Obama’s extra gift to Israel under the guise of “Iron Dome”, a program of dubious military value that meant an extra $200 million (for starters) from US taxpayers for the Israeli military, above and beyond the regular $3 billion annual subsidy. The vote last May was one of the rare times that military aid to Israel was standing alone, and not part of an overall foreign aid package. Barbara Lee refused to join progressives like Dennis Kucinich, John Conyers and Pete Stark in opposing this further subsidy to a state that refuses to end its military aggression against the Palestinian people. With this vote, she did not look like a renegade, but rather like a conformist supporting militarism and occupation, while we live at an “hour in history needs a dedicated circle of transformed nonconformists”, as Martin Luther King said years ago.
Lee is considered by many to be one of the most progressive voices in Washington. For her to then support military aid to Israel hurts our cause immensely. It helps perpetuate the myth that “There Is No Alternative” but to passively wait for Israel to change its policy. Lee’s policies (and Obama’s) are reminiscent of those who called for “constructive engagement” with apartheid South Africa. We know, however, that there is an alternative; namely a call for human rights, a call for the rule of international law, and the end of US military aid that supports an unjust system of oppression.
In the closing weeks of the last Congress, retiring Congressman Brian Baird of Olympia, Washington (He was Rachel Corrie’s Congressional representative) made a brief speech on the floor of the House decrying Israeli violence against civilians. He said “Let us call on Israel to stop killing children.” On February 10th, we will gather at the Oakland Federal Building that houses the offices of Barbara Lee, and we will pause to remember the slaying of Jawaher Abu Rahmah (with US-supplied tear gas) and so many women who have suffered so much as a direct result of Israel’s oppression of Palestinians and denial of their basic rights. We too will call out, “Israel, Stop Killing Children” “Israel, Stop Killing Women.” “Israel, Stop Jailing Activists” and most importantly, we will call for an end to Congressional funding of a brutal military occupation, an occupation that Barbara Lee says she opposes.
We are looking forward to the day that Lee moves from carefully guarded words to actions that match her stated dedication to peace and justice. We invite Barbara Lee to join us on the 10th as an active partner in the struggle for freedom for Palestine.
Some helpful links:
Here is a detailed look at Lee’s record of late on the issue of Palestine
link to stopaipac.org
and here is the amazing speech by Congessman Baird (now retired)
link to youtube.com
Our protest on Feb. 10th will be all about opposing funding of Israel’s oppression of Palestinians. We hope that Lee joins us.
thanks jim, i’ll try to make it there on the 10th. the complicity of congress makes me so frustrated. i hold them equally responsible for what’s going on over there.
Maybe the rest of us can join in an email campaign.
Lee is following in the footsteps of her former boss, Ron Dellums, who talked tough on a lot of issues important to “progressives,”but whose bowels turned to jelly and his spine of vermicelli when it came to Israel. He was far worse on the issue than Lee,and considering his seniority and prestige in the House, his actions, in some circumstances,and lack of it in others was far more damaging to the Palestinian cause and, for that matter, to the anti-apartheid struggle in which he had pretensions of being a public leader.
In 1984, he refused to take a position on a Berkeley initiative that would have deducted from US aid to Israel the amount that Israel spent in the West Bank and Gaza and did the same in 1988 when there was another measure to make the refugee camp of Jabiliya a sister-city to Berkeley.
He also joined his fellow members in Congress in keeping silent about Israel’s arming of the murder machines of Guatemala,Chile, El Salvador, and the Contras, but his biggest favor to Israel and to AIPAC was when, unbeknownst to the anti-apartheid movement, he pulled a plank out of the anti-apartheid legislation what would have penalized Israel for selling arms to South Africa which was, ironically,onlyreported in the Washington Times.
When I asked him about it at a major anti-apartheid conference at UC Berkeley, he dropped his voice and admitted that “one Democrat after another and came to me and said, Ron, if you don’t pull the plank from that legislation, you’ll have to take my name off of it.”
Rather expose his fellow Democrats for the phony human rights activists that they were, Dellums proved to be no different,when he elected to pull the plank with the hope that the news wouldn’t get around.
I was sitting in the back of the hall but I was later told that a dozen black South African exiles who were sitting in the front row as honored guests were in a state of shock as they heard his answer.
And what was the response of the anti-apartheid movement in the Bay Area to Dellums act of betrayal? They, predictably, totally ignored it, because their admiration for Dellums outweighed their concern for those suffering under apartheid. Only the “Middle East Labor Bulletin,” which I edited, and Jane Hunter’s “Israeli Foreign Affairs,” carried the story.
The Congressional Black Caucus is emblematic of the sad state of black politics in America where anyone who aspires to its leadership is obligated to genuflect to the primacy of Jewish suffering and keep silent when it comes to Israel. Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton both have learned their lessons, as have, with one or two exceptions, the members of the CBC. Some of them may not vote AIPAC’s way on every occasion, but they are never public about it.
There was a time when there were some black members of Congress that displayed some courage but Cynthia McKinney was the last abd the best of them.
If more evidence is needed, just look at the list of the 39 members of Congress who signed a statement calling for the release of Jonathan Pollard. Half of them were “stepinfetchits” from the CBC.
Lee twice approved a resolution congratulating Sharon on being elected and then re-elected. As I recollect it, she hadn’t really made any move on Tristan Anderson until Henry Norr wrote a critical article about her silence the Berkeley Daily Planet.
As long as Lee is treated with kid gloves by pro-Palestinian activists she will continue to play the same games with her supporters. A sit-in at her office might go a long way in getting her to find some spine that her boss never had.
In 1984, he refused to take a position on a Berkeley initiative that would have deducted from US aid to Israel the amount that Israel spent in the West Bank and Gaza and did the same in 1988 when there was another measure to make the refugee camp of Jabiliya a sister-city to Berkeley.
Yikes Jeffrey, you been doing this for 26 years now huh? I can see why you are so angry.
40 years, beginning with a 4 1/2 month trip to Lebanon and Jordan in 1970. And you bet I am angry and not only at Israel but at those US politicians and the faux solidarity activists who have let the Israel lobby lead them around by the nose.
Jeffrey I do understand your frustration. I worked on Dellum’s first campaign (Berkeley city council many years back) and then his run for congress. It is frustrating to realize that he could not have moved to the next level without the zionist support. Barbara Lee inherited that baggage. That is politics.
Hopefully we can over come their influence even in the most progressive congressional districts. But until we can, we have to live with the consequence.
I remember well Dellums running for City Council as a much welcome fresh face and a good friend of mine worked for him for many years. And I watched as he became ever more of an empty shell as he moved up the political ladder and consequently he was nothing more than a shell when he was elected mayor of Oakland, still supported blindly by those who made a habit of doing so when he betrayed the anti-apartheid movement.
We will never get past the starting gate unless we agree that NO politician gets a pass, and particularly the progressive ones from communities such as Berkeley and San Francisco; that unless they are willing to speak up for what is just and decent their life will be made miserable as Lee’s should be now for her cowardice on every issue dealing with Israel and Palestine.
The success of the Zionist Lobby has not only been due to their having a lot more money with which to buy politicians, but also to their willingness to play hardball to get their way. At the same time, the Left, has shown a total lack of courage in challenging phony Democrats and not just on this issue, but also, for example, key pieces of legislation like NAFTA which never would have been passed under Clinton had the labor unions (there being no labor movement) told those Democrats who voted for it, before they did so, that labor would oppose their re-election.
The slogan needs to be “Want respect? Show respect!”
If the CBC would stand together on this issue, they would be impregnable, but they cave one by one.
Sadly, they do stand together on this issue. On the side of the status quo.
We are going to be sure that Barbara Lee knows that she cannot continue to say “peace, peace” and at the same time fund cluster bombs, tear gas canisters, jet fighters to a nation determined to ignore human rights norms and international law.
Two of the worst are John Lewis, Atlanta and Bobby Rush, Chicago, the first a heroic civil rights activist and the second a former Black Panther. Both are proof that working that within the system is a sham only for opportunists. Whereas other SNCC leaders kept fighting for social justice outside of the system in various ways, Lewis and Rush embraced it (and with it Israel and its injustices) and have nothing but successful political careers to show for it.
It wasn’t just a black thing. Tom Hayden, as an assemblyman in a largely Jewish district in Santa Monica, went over to Lebanon with wife [I ain't] Fonda, Jane, to sit with Israeli soldiers as they shelled Beirut in 1982, then refused to meet with Israeli peace activists, and his tongue close to the Israel Lobby’s behind through his tour as state senator.
It was years before he offered an explanation for his craven behavior. That he is still considered as a legitimate spokesperson on the left and can be heard on Democracy Now! is just another example of how deeply Zionism has infected the progressive community. Had someone embraced the South African Defense forces in the same way during the apartheid era, would that be overlooked today? Hardly. But, on the left, as everywhere else in this America of ours, when it comes to Israel, there are no standards of decent behavior.
Hayden is still one of the few ex-Congressmen who’s spoken out at all about the AIPAC stranglehold on the US government. With the rest, it’s all omerta
Hayden’s not an ex-Congressman. Fortunately, he didn’t get quite that far. Years later he wrote a confessional about how AIPAC put pressure on him at a local level, which was an important disclosure, but I have no recollection of him saying anything since or speaking on behalf of the Palestinians.
He was, in fact, one of those who despite being aware of how Washington functions became active as one of Progressives for Obama.
I know Tom, going back to when he arrived in Berkeley from Back East, and he always seemed to me to be the kind of guy who put his finger in the wind to see which way it was blowing. His actions in Israel were, in a word, unforgivable, but he didn’t stop there. He went on KPFA defending his stance and two years later, when he was speaking for the Democratic Socialists (LOL) of America, he ran off the stage through the back to avoid an encounter with me a handful of activists including a Lebanese woman who was a programmer at KPFA.
Hayden’s not an ex-Congressman
My mistake.
Still, his disclosure was important, mainly because he has still been one of the few politicians to speak out in any detail. Unfortunately, most of them have been easy targets for smear campaigns.
He spoke out once, after years of betrayal, when he was no longer vulnerable or needing the Lobby’s help. Is that a person you can trust?
I read an article some years ago that I am pretty sure was by Hayden. It contained a brief description of the Israel Lobby’s informal ‘vetting’ system within the Democratic Party. Unfortunately, I wasn’t saving articles in pdf at the time and have been unsuccessful in finding it to add to my archives.
Hayden wrote his “mea culpa” for CounterPunch in 2006, as he watched the next Israeli assault on Lebanon unfold. It took him a quarter of a century to do so and even then he does not admit sitting with Israeli soldiers as they shelled Beirut, having refused to meet Israeli anti-war activists, nor for the statements he made defending Israel in succeeding years.
He is still stuck in Israeli-speak when he refers to the “provocative kidnapping” of Israeli soldiers by Hezbollah and Hamas.” While not accepting that as a justification for Israel’s response, and noting that Israel was holding 9,000 prisoners, one should wonder if Israel had not launched that war four years ago, would he ever have owned up to what he and Jane did in 1982? Here’s the article and, for me, it reeks of wimpiness.
link to counterpunch.org
I’m delighted to see my friend Jim Harris begin to expose Barbara Lee’s hypocrisy here, but in at least one respect he is way too generous to her.
Jim writes: “When news reached Barbara Lee of the wounding of Tristan Anderson, her constituent, by the Israeli military, by all reports Lee was genuinely concerned for his recovery and wanted an investigation into this tragedy.”
I can’t say whether her concern was genuine, but I can point out the fact that Ms. Lee didn’t say a word in public about Israel’s shooting of Tristan Anderson until 11 days after it happened. And it wasn’t because the news hadn’t “reached” her: starting right after the incident (for those who don’t know, Tristan had his skull shattered by a high-velocity tear gas canister fired directly at him), I and others called her office repeatedly to demand that she make a statement – and that she do something: specifically, that she use her position on the Congressional committee that every year initiates the legislation that gives Israel its military aid (the Foreign Operations Subcommittee of the House Appropriations Committee) to fight for an end to that aid.
A week after the shooting, when she still hadn’t said a word about Tristan, I let her office know that I was writing a column for the Berkeley Daily Planet about her silence, that I and others would raise the issue at an appearance she had scheduled at the Commonwealth Club, and that we would be leafleting at several readings she had planned at local bookstores to promote her book (“Renegade for Peace and Justice: Barbara Lee Speaks for Me”!!!). Only after that did she come up with a three-sentence statement about Tristan, in which she did indeed express concern for him and vowed to “press for answers about this tragic incident,” but offered not a syllable of criticism of Israel.
I actually went ahead and did the column I’d planned, then made it into a leaflet some of us handed out at her book readings. In it I compared her response in Tristan’s case (and also the week and the street uprising that went by before she said a thing about the Jan. 1 police murder of Oscar Grant as he lay face down on a BART platform) to her reaction to the shooting of four Oakland cops that spring: in the latter case she put out not one but two press releases within 24 hours of the incident, and the day after that she was on the House floor (and on YouTube) delivering a six-minute tribute to these “fallen heroes.” If anyone is curious, the column is still posted here.
One thing to note about Rep. Lee: she could say almost anything about Israel, if she wanted to, and still not face any credible threat to her job. Ironically, she owes the lock she has on this district in part to her political courage – in being the only member of the House to vote against the Congressional authorization for the use of force after 9/11. Too bad that courage doesn’t extend to Palestine!
Jeffrey and Henry, thanks for all the historical insights to what Jim has written. We need to get after Members of Congress who plan not to run again. Might they be willing to show more spine?
You fellows can keep knocking at the masters back door, and see if they will eventually listen to you. Keep employing the same methodologies and than they can be written like epitaphs on your tombstones. As for this generation I know the truth –
THE TRUTH
“I have often been asked by policy analysts, policy-makers and those stuck with implementing those policies for my advice on what I think America should do to promote peace or win hearts and minds in the Muslim world. It too often feels futile, because such a revolution in American policy would be required that only a true revolution in the American government could bring about the needed changes.”
I have lost count regarding how many times I have posted this, so you can either get back on the merry-go-round and have another annual meeting a few decades from now, or do what is necessary.
I don’t actually know anything you have ever accomplished politically Vared/VR so perhaps you can enlighten us some evidence of your success as well patronizing us with your wisdom.
So, tell us, dear shielder of the Zionist Lobby, what should us less gifted mortals do?
Do you have a problem reading Mr. Blankfort? I have addressed this issue numerous times on this site, read the archives of our past exchanges. The first thing you need to do is stop expunging history (US) to the current issue as if nothing occurred previously, foundational, to put us in this position. If you refuse to see reality, and cannot (refuse) identify the actors or the nature of the system you approach, it is a given that little to nothing can be accomplished.
Second stop lying and accusing those who disagree with you with ridiculous and inflammatory statements (“dear shielder of the Zionist Lobby”). There are no “less gifted mortals” here, just the stubborn, willfully ignorant, and those who have swallowed the propaganda fest in this country (the deceived). Which category are you in, thinking and encouraging the common system redress (what you have been instructed to do by those who oppose you) which accomplishes zero (essentially) except surface change, if that?
“In the End, we will remember not the words of our enemies, but the silence of our friends” –Martin Luther King
Oh, don’t be ridiculous, Martin. Nobody has reproached me for either.
“…the Bull Connors of our age”
Sure, I get it: They are indeed the duly constituted authourities, but they are just a little mixed up.
So which country did Bull Connor steal, despoil, dis-inherit, and eventually eliminate?
Ah yes, Israel will redound to the credit of Peruvians everywhere. I’m proud to be one myself!
What i think should happen on Feb 10th (when Jawaher will be remembered internationally and at the Oakland Federal Building ) and in the coming months, is that we focus on the issue of ending military aid to Israel as the only way to bring about change.
I know some people have great respect for Lee, others have much contempt, still others have something in-between, but that is not the issue. The issue is not the status of your relationship to Barbara Lee.
The issue is that we must demand from congress that military aid to Israel be ended, and it is wrong for any Congressperson to support such aid. We will be relentless in demanding from Lee that she change her votes on this issue.
Several people who personally know Barbara Lee have told me she is scared out of her mind of the pro-Israel lobby, and that is why she does not do anything to oppose our military aid to Israel, and Israel’s illegal abuses of said aid. As another member of Congress told me, aid to Israel is “the third rail of U.S. politics… No, it’s its OWN rail. Touch it and you die.”
Die literally, or only die metaphorically, as in not get re-elected?
If it’s just the latter, isn’t it strange that someone would be scared out of his or her mind just for that?
“Several people who personally know Barbara Lee have told me she is scared out of her mind of the pro-Israel lobby, and that is why she does not do anything to oppose our military aid to Israel, and Israel’s illegal abuses of said aid.”
Then she better find another line of work, hadn’t she? She needs help liberating herself from this failure of principles. Hopefully you all can help her figure that out.
Here’s a line for Rep Lee from the Duke of Wellington: “Threaten and be damned.”
I really wish Brian Baird would speak out and kick the lid off this conspiracy.