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Saving Illinois from Senator Kirk

I went completely bonkers yesterday reading Senate fight over the number of Palestinian refugees….. So livid I shot Senator Kirk off a tweet to remind him his job is not in the Knesset!

Senators will vote on an amendment crafted by Sen. Mark Kirk (R-IL) that would require the State Department to report on how many of the millions of people currently supported by the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestinian Refugees (UNRWA) are actually ……..refugees.

Excuse me? Two Peoples One Future

According to former AIPAC (American Israel Public Affairs Committee) staffer – now critic – MJ Rosenberg, Mark Kirk cultivated a relationship with AIPAC since he was a Congressional aide. According to Rosenberg, between 2000 and 2010 – Representative Mark Kirk received $1,025,437 from “pro-Israel” PACs, making him #7 out of all members of Congress and #1 of all House members.

According to Rosenberg: It is not because Kirk is pro-Israel. Virtually every member of the House and Senate supports our special relationship with and aid to Israel. It is because no one is more reliable than Mark Kirk when it comes to supporting the status quo. His idea of supporting Israel is simply to keep things just as they are, which, not coincidentally, is also the way the lobby sees it…

The lobby and its PACs will be going all out for Kirk this year [2010]. In fact, his election will surely be their #1 priority. If he wins, the lobby will have a stalwart enforcer of the status quo who can be expected to pressure his colleagues to fall in line.

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U of Chicago SJP’s mock wall

I’ve got to hand it to Chicago, though. Some top of the line rad activists there took down Chicago Friends of Israel (CFI ) on the University of Chicago Students for Justice in Palestine’s mock wall.

From Sami Kishawi ‘s Sixteen Minutes to Palestine: ‘Palestine doesn’t exist because there is no “P” in Arabic’

According to one CFI member, this de facto annexation of Palestinian land is not illegal because Israel is allegedly not occupying any Palestinian territory. He also claimed that annexation is strictly a legal term and because there have been no legal opinions condemning the wall, Israel has the privilege of constructing the wall along whichever route it pleases. I curtly reminded him of the ICJ ruling.

The CFI member then argued that Palestine never existed and couldn’t have ever existed “because the letter ‘P’ is not part of the Arabic language”. Two other CFI protesters quickly urged him to stop speaking.

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U of Chicago SJP’s mock wall

(Hat tip Michael Levin)

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“Sen. Mark Kirk (R-IL)”

IL stands for Israel?

RE: “Saving Illinois from Senator Kirk”

FROM Robert Naiman, Policy Director at Just Foreign Policy, 11/23/12:
“Would It Make a Difference to Progressives if Norman Solomon Goes to Congress?”

(excerpts) A key paradox for progressives of our national political life goes something like this: everybody complains about Congress, but nobody does anything about it. . .
. . .Even now, the national infrastructure for effective caring is too weak. If the Progressive Caucus and the groups that support it effectively exercised all the functions of a political party, the fact that Norman Solomon is a candidate for Congress with a serious possibility of winning would be foremost in the consciousness of every pragmatic peace advocate in the United States. Every pragmatic peace advocate would know that Norman is running, every pragmatic peace advocate would know that there is a primary on June 5 and that voting by mail is already underway, every pragmatic peace advocate would know that Norman will survive the primary if he places second, every pragmatic peace advocate would understand why it matters if Norman survives the primary, and every pragmatic peace advocate would be doing their bit to help ensure that Norman survives the primary. . .
. . .I am looking forward to Norman going to Congress because I know that Norman will work to raise the profile of the Progressive Caucus and will work to help make the Progressive Caucus more effective. Right now progressives in Congress are fighting to end the wars, to prevent war with Iran, to curtail drone strikes, to cut the military budget and redirect the money to human needs. But too few progressives in the country even know these fights are taking place, still fewer are engaged in them.
With Norman in the Progressive Caucus, with Norman on TV, more people would know about these fights and more people would be engaged in them.
Having Norman in Congress would do a lot to help build the progressive movement for political reform in this country. Check out his website. – http://solomonforcongress.com/ Think about what you could do to help move the ball forward.*

SOURCE – http://www.commondreams.org/view/2012/05/22-7

* I made a modest contribution via ActBlue and Paypal. – https://secure.actblue.com/contribute/page/solomonforcongress?refcode=site-front-button

Sometimes I wonder how many Jews offered Right of Return were actually expelled by the Romans, and how many are actually only the descendants? And should we have a subcommitee to resolve Khazar questions?

PS. However irrelevant, Khazar question is very interesting. I read an article discussing markers on Y chromosomes of Ashkenazi Jews. Apparently, two “priestly” groups, Cohens and Levys, have their somewhat separate markers that very consistently point to the origin of Cohens in Middle East/Fertile Crescent, while Levys markers connect them to Samoyeds and Aitay peoples, i.e. Siberia. Non-priestly Ashkenazi Jews have more eclectic markers, including a group that is well represented in Levant outside Fertile Crescent, Turkey and Aegean, which would point to Philistines. Siberian/Khazarian Y-chromosomes belong to 15-20% of Ashkenazis, about 1/2 of them Levys.