Omar Barghouti sent us this in response to our post on the US refusing to issue him a visa for his upcoming speaking tour. Barghouti is the author of the upcoming book Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions: The Global Struggle for Palestinian Rights:
Ms. Clinton can sing the tunes of freedom all she wants when watching the news of Arab popular revolts from Morocco to Bahrain, but she is not fooling any average-intelligence person in the Arab world. US policy, especially after the veto cast yesterday against the most benign UN Security Council resolution, simply reiterating universal, long-held facts that Israel's colonial settlements are illegal and thwart just peace, is being exposed to the new generation of restive, fearless, freedom-aspiring Arab youth as the main cause of their oppression, of buttressing and protecting the tyrants that have denied them all freedoms for decades. It has long been exposed, too, as the key partner of Israel in its occupation, colonialism and apartheid. Without US largess, Israel's multi-tiered system of racist and colonial oppression cannot possibly survive.
Freedom, from the US establishment's perspective, amounts to the "liberty" to bow to their hegemony and accepting their multinationals' pillage of the world as fate. We shall continue to speak truth to power no matter what the consequences. We shall continue to struggle for nothing less than full freedom, full justice, full self determination, and full emancipation from US imperial hegemony.
It is the responsibility of states to preserve order.
How to is an important open question.
Opposition to oppression does not create order. Democratic self-governance does, that forms an orderly succession of government. (Israel has it. US has it. Europe has it. If Lebanon can reconcile its parties without suppressing the rule of law, then it has it. If Palestine can conduct elections as planned, without opportunistic boycott by Hamas, then it has it.)
It is important for Israel to renounce expansion, and reconcile contending title claims (including requiring repealing the three laws passed in 49 and 50 that prohibited return, hindered access to Israeli courts, then expropriated “abandoned” land).
But, that leaves Israel standing, and as Israel. And that is important as well, that that remain confidently, as an affirmation of self-governance in the present.
Richard, what does the Hamas boycotting of something or other have to do with Omar’s campaign and the US to deny him a visa? From what you wrote, you believe that his US tour will cause the downfall of the US regime, which is absurd.
I look on the denial of the visa as a recognition of sorts that BDS is a success, especially in the US. Bravo Omar.
Barghouti coming to the US was another topic. My comment wasn’t about that.
And guys, if you read my actual post, you’d also note, “How is an important question”.
You still wrote of Hamas boycotting elections (why not, when they are the elected incumbents and were not consulted)?
It’s the responsibility of states not to preserve order at any expense, Dick Witty, that’s the whole point of the Egyptian and Tunisian uprisings, as well as the Nakba, and, of course, the uprising that lead directly to the US Revolutionary War. You’re comment’s a twit, not a wit. “Ve must have order!”
Veddy interesting, Herr Witty.
Ordung über alles.
The responsibility of a state is to protect it’s citizens and borders. Thinking about it, does Israel have borders? Is it a State yet?
Israel had no defined borders (we all know why) and so therefore is is almost a state – yet it sure is in a bit of state!
And it just so happens being a jew has no defined borders either except blood-line.
That a dangerous and narrow view of the goals a state should have. Ben Ali, Mubarak, King Fahad, Gaddafi, Bouteflikka, Saleh, King Abdullah of KSA, King Abdullah of Jordan, Assad and of course Netanyahu (even Obama) all share your view of course.
Let’s try again:
It is the responsibility of states to protect the rights of their citizens, and in doing so preserve order.
Fine in theory Richard, but as usual you offer no concrete solutions to the problems of how a population overcomes an oppressive government or occupier, just bland motherhood statements. Of course it’s important that Israel renounce expansion etc but Israel clearly doesn’t want to do that. So what do you propose?
*King Hamad (of Bahrain) I meant, King Fahd (KSA) is dead.
Sumud, Ben Ali died today; you should be offering your sympathies to Richard instead of throwing trick questions at him.
Wow Walid – I am amazed if that’s true! I see ppl on twitter say that France 2 are reporting Ben Ali had died, other agencies yet to confirm. What is it with these old fogies? Shah was deposed and died shortly after, Ben Ali now and Mubarak reportedly sick.
When you live in a zionist ivory tower I guess all questions except “how fabulous is Israel?” are trick questions aren’t they?
How to you me is he answer. I is know how it is you I though.
If only peace and self determination, Avi. If only. You are being fascistic in your indelible response to Witty’s narrativity.
why, that’s quite witty of u.
Israel is not democratic self goverance. its foriegn entity internaly deciding who rules another people’s land
Please recall that Americans also have the “liberty” to bow to the hegemony of the oligarchs (sometimes called the American “Establishment”) who run our government — run it as if they had bought and paid for it, which some of us suppose they have. Those folks don’t even pay taxes, so safe do they feel from the reasonable demands of the people!
Americans have for a while now been experiencing the costs of “neoliberalism” (the American system of rampant capitalism) whereby the rich get richer (indeed, vastly richer) while the teachers and schools and other services to poor and ordinary people are cut back (as they have been so much more severely been cut back in “poor” or “third world” countries which require “help” from the “World Bank” and “IMF”).
It’s one world now and we are all banana republics.
Teach us, Mr. Barghouti, how to shake off this awful government.
It’s all one world, and the US is desperate to establish/retain hegemony over it. The great struggle of the century will be against this last vestige of imperialism.
The first order of business is to “shake off” (Nakbaize) the Israeli settlements which the USA is totally enmeshed in–against Washington’s dire warning; the second order of business is to wake up Tea Party types to the cost of our foreign as well as domestic policy. Costs such as 9/11, the war on Iraq, our continued presence in Afghanistan, and our Iran sanctions, not to mention those 750 military bases around the world, and all that money going to Israel & Egypt.
Wow. THAT is a powerful statement. Bravo Barghouti. I’ve linked to this on my blog.
The main cause of Arab oppression is right at home. Barghouti can join the list of people denying that it’s not mainly the fault of the Arab states that they deny freedom to their citizens, he can try pinning the tail on Israel and the US, but to find the donkey he’s going to have to look around the area. There is little or no freedom in the Middle East and there hasn’t been.
It stinks in the parts of the Middle East where the US has no sway.
Israel and the US are new to the area and it stank long before they got there.
That the Arab regimes are so corrupt is no excuse to continue to aid them in their corruption. Americans have the civic duty to end this aid in the areas where their government has sway. To the extent Americans do not do try to do this, they, as participants in the only superpower in the world, are the main cause of said oppression.
No, Citizen, that does not make them the MAIN cause.
And it does not change the facts. America bought into the shit that was there, it didn’t invent it and it’s not the main beneficiary of it.
You’re absolutely right that we should work against it, but it’s the civic duty of the Arabs to change their governments a hell of a lot more than it is our duty to it.
When I read posts like yours, I feel as though I’m hearing a bumbling drunkard shouting from some alley.
I don’t expect you to know history, but here’s a short lesson:
At the turn of the last century, the British and French empires appointed friendly governors to run the areas under the control of those empires. It is often referred to as the colonial era.
Those same appointed client rulers remained in power, first supported by the British and French and later by the United States.
And much in the same way the Palestinians are not to blame for Britain’s false promises to hand Palestine over instead of giving it to Zionists, so did the United States with other rulers in the region.
That’s a century-long history condensed into a short paragraph so that you can comprehend it, hopefully.
A little more history and a “core” issue that gets lost in the fog of the sham “Peace talks.”
“Palestinian refugees and internally displaced Palestinians (IDPs) represent the largest and longest-standing case of forced displacement in the world today. On the 60th anniversary of the Nakba (or ‘Catastrophe’), the destruction of Palestine and the massive displacement of Palestinians by Israel in 1948, two out of every five refugees in the world are Palestinian. At the beginning of 2007, there were approximately seven million Palestinian refugees and 450,000 internally displaced persons (IDPs), representing 70% of the entire Palestinian population worldwide (9.8 million).
Palestinian refugees include those who became refugees following the first Arab-Israeli war in 1948 and the second Arab-Israeli war in 1967, as well as those who are neither 1948 nor 1967 refugees, but outside the area of former Palestine and unable or unwilling to return owing to a well-founded fear of persecution.”
link to badil.org
and the five centuries prior to that, Avi?
why don’t YOU tell us fusty about the five centuries prior?
thank you for the link ellen.
and we still get asked why we focus on palestine. i want to scream it from the rooftops.
“It is the responsibility of states to preserve order.
How to is an important open question.”
True. Unfortunately the security services of both Hamas and the Palestinian Authority practice torture in their respective domains. (Notice, btw, that I criticized Hamas too.) It’s a little hard to see how there could be truly fair elections in either the West Bank or Gaza so long as the security forces torture dissidents. How do political activists do their work under those circumstances? If you browse the HRW site and look at a report they put out on Feb 3, the PA even beat up demonstrators who were showing their support for pro-democracy forces in Egypt.
Maybe there’s a need for a Palestinian revolt against their own governments–then, with a truly democratic regime in power they will have negotiators that truly represent them.
Human Rights Watch
Though that said, a revolt by Palestinians in the West Bank against the PA would probably not receive favorable attention, or any attention at all, in the US press. Things would be different in Gaza, no doubt.
My link didn’t work. Here it is again–
HRW report
I’m getting my links and posts all mixed up. The above was a response to Witty.
“and the five centuries prior to that, Avi?”
Very few places were democracies in the five centuries before the Europeans colonized the Middle East. I assume we’re talking about the period before the early 1800′s. And those places which were democratic were crude racist democracies like the US–practicing slavery in some states, ethnically cleansing the Native Americans and stealing their land (on that last point rather like Israel in a later era).
You simpleton. Europe was ruled by brutal and corrupt monarchs until the mid-1800s.
And 500 years prior, Europe was wallowing in disease and dirt, still suffering the barbarity of the Catholic church and the Inquisition.
yes, Donald pretty crude, but existent.
“yes, Donald pretty crude, but existent.”
And very rare, and only marginally better than the monarchies from a human rights perspective . So you’re blaming the Arab region in the 1700′s for being like almost everyone else. Then the Europeans came along and ensured that Arabs would be prevented from democraticizing for another century or so.
Your lecturing the same Omar Barghuoti that spent years being held in an Israeli prison for no crime whatsoever.
nope
I think you have Marwane Barghouti in mind Chaos. And then there’s the politician Mustapha Barghouti. I don’t know the connections to Marwane, but I believe Omar and Mustapha are distant cousins.
Dear Omar,
We in Philadelphia were anxiously awaiting your arrival, and the opportunity to meet with you, hear you talk, and exchange ideas with you. We’re following what Haymarket books’ response is to the VISA denial, and will be looking for ways to coordinate actions with the ACLU, PEN, and the Center for Constitutional Rights.
For now, we will be consistently calling the state department and letting them know that the suppression of speech is not what we want from our government.
Department of State:
Visa Services
Public Inquiries Division
202-663-1225
usvisa@state.gov
We’ll also ‘like’ the facebook page “Let Omar Barghouti Be Heard”.
I personally am looking forward to reading your book in April, and, n’shallah, meeting you.
In solidarity,
Matt Graber
Philly BDS
Of course you can also give the State Dept and various SD luminaries a tweetful re: Omar Barghouti’s visa denial, and ask all your followers to do the same:
Twitter: State Department
Twitter: PJ Crowley
Twitter: Alec Ross
And arabic speakers can now do the same:
Twitter: State Department Arabic Media Hub
Thanks Sumud!
thank you sumud.
yesterday i could hardly say a peep at this news it frustrates me so much.
omar is a star, he’s huge. i wondered about this before, if they were going to come down on him but i didn’t want to verbalize it. i was afraid it might make it happen if i even gave thought to it.
he’s a threat, bds is a threat and him as the face of bds is a massive threat. we have to carry the message strong and loud. i can’t stand this. omar is an amazing powerful speaker. w/soh.
i can’t stand this. i can’t stand it. it infuriates me to no end.
It may have ‘stank’ to unwashed but powdered european noses but it certainly WAS NOT BLOODY till the euros came and colonized under the guise of false biblical blah blahs.
of course it was bloody.
Freedom(for the 5th fleet)!
Gotcher freedom rat cheer!
link to bbc.co.uk