Hello,

On Monday, May 20, 2013, my Kindle edition of the New York Times displayed an article titled "Israeli report casting new doubts on shooting in Gaza" by Isabel Kershner. This report seemed definitive until I reached the end of the article. In the last portion, I learned that the investigative body had never contacted the father of the boy. At that moment, I understood that the report is military propaganda.

Now I infer that this article was simply an attempt to help the Israeli government with their whitewashing of this particular shooting. Although many others have been reported, this one received special attention because it was part of a documentary. This was evidently the reason for the new investigation. I assume that the aid of the New York Times was requested to publicize the results. Finally, Isabel Kershner seems to have agreed to use her journalistic credibility in the form of her name on this article.

I note that in the future I will ignore anything out of the ordinary reported by Isabel Kershner because I won't know if she wrote it as a reporter or in some other role.

Harold P. Hjalmarson
Albuquerque, NM

Not much to say about this except: Watch the video, produced by the College of Management outside Tel Aviv to promote its annual student party on the beach Funjoya. (Thanks to Max Blumenthal.)

Here's news coverage of the matter. From the Times of Israel: "College removes 'racist' video." Not sure why they put racist in quotes?

The four-minute clip shows a group of attractive students on a bus heading to the party in Eilat. After taking a wrong turn on a desert road, they encounter a threesome of lecherous Arabs with terrible teeth and unibrows who order them off the bus. ... [Etc]

The student union’s Facebook page also filled quickly with complaints. Critics claimed that while the students were portrayed as attractive, the video presented Arabs as ugly and brutish. They also contended that the clip was offensive to homosexuals...

The clip was quickly taken down by the student union, which said it would exercise more caution in the future while insisting that the film had been taken out of context and blown out of proportion.

“The clip is meant for comedic purposes only, and it was only meant to entertain while getting the students excited about the traditional vacation in Eilat that will take place this weekend,” the union said. “In less than one day, the video received thousands of positive reactions alongside criticism. We had no intention of hurting any population, and if someone was offended from the video directly or indirectly we sincerely apologize.”

Larry Derfner at +972 is appropriately concerned about attitudes in his adopted country. And he scorns the apology above.

I wish I could say that the young Israelis who made this film and the “thousands” who immediately gave “positive reactions” to it were marginal in this society – that they were “hilltop youth” in the West Bank, or slum-dwellers growing up amid severe poverty, ignorance, violence and crime. But they’re not. They’re college students in their early twenties from the heart of the country, from the College of Management Academic Studies in Rishon Lezion, outside Tel Aviv. And the ones who made this little film aren’t marginal on their 12,000-student campus, either – they’re in the Student Union, they’re involved, they’re the leaders of tomorrow, as people like to say of such young adults.

I am very relieved to read there was an outpouring of protest against the four-minute film from other students at the college....

I don’t know which is more stupefying in its moral numbness, the movie or the “apology.” They were just having some good clean fun. They didn’t mean to hurt anybody. It was taken out of context, blown out of proportion. And my favorite - if anyone was offended (which they still can’t understand why that should be, but, being the noble, humble people they are, then by all means) they apologize.

They honestly don’t know what they did wrong. They’re genuinely stumped that anyone could find what they did not funny, but ugly, sickening, vicious, sadistic.

Malsin has an angular face and a dry wit, and he goes out to the Middle East a lot. But he can't go to Israel or Palestine. He was kicked out of Israel in 2010 after being detained for eight days at Ben Gurion airport and interrogated for hours and hours by "manipulative, misleading, mendacious" officials about his writings critical of Israel. 

"Jared, I’ve always wanted to ask you," I said. "Did you use your brother’s passport?"

"I don’t have a brother."

"Sorry, it was just something I heard back then, when we were all wondering why they were holding you."

"Yes there were a ton of rumors about why it was happening."

"Did that experience change your life?"

"Of course. I mean, I lost my job [he'd been working at Ma'an News for 2-1/2 years]. And my home in Palestine. I had to change my life completely."

"I meant spiritually."

"Oh. Yes. I feel like I got some empathy for the experience of detention and incarceration. Just a little. Like when I told this guy about it recently, he said,  'Yes I know, I was in prison for four years.' A tiny taste. Like a grain of sand."

When I got home, I got down two books from the shelf.  The first was a Henry Miller book containing his story about being deported from England in 1934, called "Via Dieppe-Newhaven."

Miller was a poor writer in his 40s then, living in Paris. His first book was about to come out, Tropic of Cancer, but he was in a bad way. He'd broken up with his wife and the Chicago Tribune had lately fired him as a proofreader and he'd moved in with a journalist. His wife was starving and on his case and he rustled up some money to go to England. He was tired of hearing French and wanted to speak English.

"After turning round and round like a rat in a trap I got the brilliant idea of beating it myself. Just walk out on the problem, that's always the easiest way..."

But he ending up giving most of the money to his wife, and on the boat across the channel he got drunk and bought beers for others and made the mistake of asking about cheap rooms in Paris. An official heard Miller, and when he got in the immigration line they asked him to show them his money. The questioning was humiliating.

"I see that you are a married man. Is your wife living with you -- and your friend? Or is she in America?"

"I don't see that that's any of your business," I said. "But since you brought the subject up I'm going to tell you something now. The reason I came away with so little money is because I gave the money for my trip to my wife before leaving..."

"Wasn't that rather foolish to give your wife all that money and come to England penniless, or almost so?...You're a writer, Mr. Miller?"

"Yes."...

Couldn't I give him the name of a magazine I had written for in the last year or two? I said no, I had been too busy writing a book... [W]hat were the names of the books?

"There's only one," I said. "It's called Tropic of Cancer."

At this I thought he would throw a fit. I didn't know what had come over him for the moment. Finally he seemed to bring himself under partial control and, in the suavest, the most sarcastic voice imaginable, he said, "Come, Mr. Miller, you don't mean to tell me that you write medical books too?"  

In the end the English authorities put a cross on his passport and kept him in a jail overnight and then shipped him back to France the next day. Miller was glad to get back to France. He was filled with joy and understanding--that all life is voyage, "voyage within voyage." 

It’s a beautiful story. I’m not doing it justice on literary or philosophical terms. But my business here isn't literary.

I got Miller's book a year ago after I read George Orwell's praise for it in this book. The two writers could not be more different. Orwell understood Miller as "a simple individualist who recognises no obligations to anyone else-- at any rate, no obligations to society as a whole." But he also recognized Miller's outstanding gifts, his lack of shame and bold prose, and he found "Via Dieppe-Newhaven" moving on political terms:

I remember reading it just after Munich [1938] and reflecting that, though the Munich settlement was not a thing to be proud of, this little episode made me feel more ashamed of my country. Not that the British officials at Newhaven behaved much worse than that kind of person behaves everywhere. But somehow the whole thing was saddening. A couple of bureaucrats had got an artist at their mercy, and the mixture of spite, cunning and stupidity with which they handled him made one wonder what is the use of all this talk about democracy, freedom of the press, and what not.

Think about Jared Malsin’s story-- the wanton destruction of a young foreign writer’s livelihood after days of detention and interrogation.

Well, there have been many other cases like that. Israel denied entry to Noura Joudeh, a teacher from Texas, and destroyed her job at a school in Ramallah earlier this year after she came to the border on two occasions, and they asked her endless questions about Palestinians she has talked to. Frank Barat, human rights activist and writer, got thrown out last month after four hours of interrogation, including going into his email account. The great Noam Chomsky and his daughter couldn't get in from Jordan after "multiple interrogations" in 2010 (“I was invited by [Birzeit] university, by the philosophy department to give several lectures on topics I work on, American foreign and domestic policy. Perfectly straightforward, I do it all the time, in many countries," he told Al Jazeera). Sandra Tamari got deported after eight hours of questioning and demands to look at her email, and the US Embassy went right along with it. Poet and therapist Lillian Rosengarten is barred from going to Israel for ten years. She was on a boat trying to visit Gaza. Soldiers tased a crewmember, trampled poor Reuven Moskowitz's harmonicas, and then deported Lillian and Reuven and two other artists. The scholar Norman Finkelstein wanted to visit a dear friend in Hebron. He was held for 24 hours and asked questions about his connections to Al Qaeda and how he intended to finance his trip, treatment his lawyer compared to “the behaviour of the Soviet bloc countries.”

They had Jared Malsin at their mercy, and they destroyed his job.

Look at all that wreckage, and Henry Miller’s moving ordeal-- and you know: George Orwell would hate Israel.

Three men from a group calling themselves "Arabs with Altitude" ascended to the summit of Mt. Everest on May 22.  Among them was Palestinian-American Raed Zidan, who lives in Indianapolis and Dubai.  The 41-year-old climber became the first Palestinian man to scale the world's tallest mountain. A Palestinian woman got there in 2011.

According to the Dubai newspaper, The National: 

After four years of planning and preparation, a trio of UAE-based climbers reached the top of Everest yesterday.

The group, calling themselves Arabs with Altitude, were Qatari national Sheikh Mohammed Al Thani from Sharjah, and Dubai residents Raed Zidan, a Kuwait-born Palestinian, and Iranian Masoud Mohammed.

They reached the top of the 8,848-metre Himalayan peak at 10 am local time, according to their blog.

The three climbers  joined 35 foreigners, along with 29 Nepalese Sherpa guides, that comprised a charity expedition which is attempting to raise a million dollars to promote education in Nepal.

A fourth member of the Arab group, Raha Moharrak, summited on May18, becoming the first Saudi woman and youngest Arab national to reach the top of the mountain.

The first Palestinian and first Arab woman to make it to climb Everest was the Yaffa-born Suzanne al Houby.  The UAE-based alpinist  made her historic ascent on May 21, 2011.

Raha Moharrak on the summit

The summit approach

Unidentified climber at base camp with Palestinian flag

The photographs are from the group's Facebook page, "Arabs on Top of the World."

Rough Google translation of Arabic statement on Zidan's facebook page:

Palestine President Mahmoud Abbas on Friday telephoned leading Palestinian climber Zidan, who managed to raise the Palestinian flag on top of the 'Everest'. And the pride of the President in contact with this achievement, he said, 'is a pride for all the Palestinian people', and thanked him for the effort to achieve this great feat.

The Palestinian leader Zidane (41 years) from the village of Kafr standing near Qalqilya, was able to raise the Palestinian flag on top of the 'Everest' highest peak on earth. Zidane was born in Kuwait to Palestinian parents, a resident of the United Arab Emirates, and is married and has three children, Lydia, Lilian, Khalid, and his hobbies are driving fast and climbing.

Zidan also succeeded earlier in arriving at the highest peaks of five continents of the world, and to raise the flag of Palestine on them, namely: Kilimanjaro is the highest peak mountain in Africa and is located in Tanzania (5850 meters), Mount Vinson highest peak in Antarctica (4890 meters), Mount Elbrus's highest peak Europe, located in the Russian Caucasus (5642 meters), Mount Aconcagua the highest peak in South America (6942) and is located in the Andes mountain range, Mount Kosciuszko in Australia's highest mountain (2300 meters).

Correction:  Relying on a report from Ynet and a prediction of the organizers of the expedition quoted in the Khaleej Times, we erroneously reported that the three male members of  the "Arabs with Altitude" group had reached the summit of May 20 when they did not do so till May 22.  Suzanne al-Houby was the first Palestinian to climb Everest and not Raed Zidan as we reported.

Did you see Medea Benjamin pestering our Commander in Chief about drones? Like the prophets of old, she didn’t respect Presidential decorum.

The President was caught up short. He sputtered as if awakened from a teleprompter dream. But, then, he kicked into gear. For a paragraph or two, he spoke what was on his unscripted mind.

Obama is surrounded by Empire Jews. What would he be like, policy-wise, if he was surrounded by Jews of Conscience?

We’ll probably never know what unscripted Obama is like. I doubt he knows anymore. Did he ever know?

Benjamin is yet another marginal Jew making a splash on the world scene. Even as she was led out of the room, she continued speaking the truth.

Marginal Jew that she is, Benjamin has an international justice agenda that includes Israel/Palestine. Though I doubt she quotes from “real” Jews like Maimonides, Rashi and Sir Jonathan Sacks – the accusation leveled against the Church of Scotland’s “The Inheritance of Abraham.”

Maybe she simply embodies the prophetic without using footnotes. Like most Jews of Conscience.

Like the American establishment, Jewish establishments don’t fare so well in the prophet’s red glare. At times the Jewish establishment appears triumphant while the prophet’s path is hardly a yellow brick road. Ultimately the tables are turned. The Jewish establishment of the day is swept away.

Is this the fate of the American establishment now represented by President Obama? Though Obama seems to have a dual role – he’s also fronting for the Jewish establishment. Right now, I can’t imagine one establishment without the other. To change one you have to change both.

That’s heavy lifting.

Speaking of heavy lifting, it’s an oxymoron to refer to prophets in the Jewish context as marginal. Read Isaiah or Jeremiah. Tell me if God thinks the prophets are marginal.

Even if we scrap God, who knows best, the prophets or the establishments?

Does the Jewish establishment really believe their truths will outlast the judgment of history, let alone Jewish history that has the prophetic at its core?

On the American establishment, think of Secretary of State Kerry in the Middle East right now. He’s a high official in the rather exclusive Major Super Power club, though he, too, started out as a – marginal - insurgent.

With Kerry, I always feel he’s carrying on an inner monologue that he periodically checks to see if anyone’s listening.

That’s the way he ran for President. This doesn’t bode well for change in the Middle East.

President Obama is in monologue mode, too. His recent trip to Israel was a 48 hour monologue. Mostly, he wondered around museums and posed for photo-ops.

Unscripted – with a Jewish prophetic urging – what did the President really want to say in Israel – and Palestine?

Instead, it was like the President was back in his Harvard days looking at the shoes of his white peers and wanting very much to walk in them. Obama’s “walking in another’s shoes” motif may have begun there.

And, then, yesterday there’s that marginal Jew, Medea Benjamin, interrupting the President’s monologue. What if she had interrupted his monologue in Israel/Palestine?

Prophetic shoes. Perhaps one day President Obama will try them on.

Secretary of State John Kerry is making an all-out effort to restart peace negotiations between Israel and Palestine. Many well-intentioned, highly intelligent people from around the world have engaged in some way, shape, or form in the Palestinian-Israeli issue and many of these people have had hands-on experience in resolving other longstanding, global issues, like those of Ireland, South Africa, and U.S. civil rights. While there is always a great deal to learn from other global experiences, the case of Palestine is different and unless Secretary Kerry recognizes this, all the efforts and millions of dollars being thrown at this conflict will be in vain, as will the latest U.S. negotiations blitz.

Three issues related to this conflict that are crucial to understand are: historic guilt, colonial responsibility, and the U.S. “special relationship” with Israel.

Today’s global powers bear a tremendous amount of historic guilt, not only, as is popularly believed, for the anti-Semitism their ancestors practiced against Jews. This was very real throughout the 19th and 20th centuries – and earlier – and it was rampant in mainly white, Christian European places like Germany, Poland, France, Austria, and, yes, even in the U.S.

But these countries should also understand their historic responsibility for making the Palestinians pay for European and American crimes. Their guilt vis-à-vis Jews has hobbled their objectivity and skewed their capacity to see the acts of Israel for what they have been, and continue to be: crimes against humanity.

Long before the Holocaust, the political ideology of Zionism charted a path towards ethnically cleansing Palestine from its native Muslim and Christian Palestinian population, aiming to create what was dubbed a “Jewish State.” This colossal, historic injustice of dispossessing Palestinians is no longer a point of contention: even Israeli historians have meticulously documented this fact.

Furthermore, many of those same global powers, led by the U.S., were born out of a colonial history that displaced indigenous populations. As such, these powers see the Israeli enterprise as very similar to their own and find it difficult to hold Israel accountable for fear that this will then boomerang on them.

Thus, instead of seeing the Palestinian-Israeli conflict for what it really is – ongoing colonialism – these powers prefer to frame the conflict as one in which the parties have equally valid, competing narratives that require a partition of the land. And meanwhile, as they remain transfixed on this outdated partition paradigm, they can offer no explanation as to why their respective governments allowed the reality on the ground to gradually render this solution unfeasible.

Ever since the New York Times headline of May 14, 1948 - “ZIONISTS PROCLAIM NEW STATE OF ISRAEL” – the U.S. has taken sides in this conflict, arming, funding, diplomatically covering for, and politically and militarily planning with Israel in its determination (always camouflaged in euphemisms) to ethnically cleanse Palestine.

Israel worked hard to cast the U.S. support in cement. Israeli leaders understood very well the inherent weaknesses of an open political system and wasted no time in creating a pro-Israel lobby that transformed what is supposed to be a foreign affairs issue into a U.S. domestic issue. Israel’s domestication of the U.S. political scene – courtesy of American proxies – is alive and well today; just ask newly appointed Secretary of Defense Chuck Hagel.

U.S. president Barack Obama epitomizes this reality. During his recent trip to Israel, he visited the Yad Vashem (Holocaust Museum) to declare that Israel’s future existence and security as a “strong Jewish state” would ensure that there will never be another holocaust.

What did he mean? Was the idea to imply that if Israel, as a “Jewish state,” ceased to exist (like other states with a racially-based raison d’etre, such as the U.S. prior to the Civil War or South Africa during its Apartheid era), then Jews in New York, Chicago, and Los Angeles, would be slaughtered?!

Adding insult to injury, Obama then did a huge favor to Israel’s right wing by going outside official protocol to lay a wreath on the tomb of Theodor Herzl, the founder of the political ideology of Zionism.

Through his actions, intentionally or otherwise, Obama gave credence to the ‘right’ of a Jewish state in Palestine, while ignoring the indigenous people of Palestine – including Christians, Muslims and even some Jews – upon whose ruins the Israeli state was built. Palestinians are still struggling for survival in the face of an ethnic cleansing campaign that began more than 65 years ago and is still going on.

Indeed, Palestine is different, really different. A more basic and more relevant issue than artificial partition is still waiting to be seriously addressed: Is Israel to be a state of all its citizens—Jewish and non-Jewish—or not? The answer to this question goes to the heart of Zionism’s racially-based enterprise and opens the way to a historic reconciliation and a homecoming of Palestinian refugees to what is today called Israel.

Things are escalating here in the Bay Area over American Muslims for Palestine's (AMP) "End Apartheid Now" Muni bus ads. Seven out of twelve members of San Francisco's board of supervisors have stepped into the fray, requesting San Francisco Municipal Transportation Agency (MTA) to donate proceeds from the ad to  the city's Human Rights Commission to “be used to fight growing intolerance alienating the Jewish community." Yes you heard that right.

Supervisor Scott Wiener, above, calls AMP's money "dirty money," and he says there is a precedent for the donation, spelled out in The San Francisco Chronicle. "Wiener upset over MTA accepting anti-Israel ad money:"

When advertisements went up on Muni buses implying that Muslims are “savages,” the San Francisco Municipal Transportation Agency donated the revenue from the ad campaign to the Human Rights Commission. Now several supervisors are asking why the same isn’t being done for ads calling Israel an “apartheid” state.

In other words, they see no difference between suggesting that Muslims are savages and calling Israel an apartheid state. Pro-Israel bloggers are enthused.

AMP has issued a press release. Along with the other members of its coalition, Jewish Voice for Peace, the Council on American Islamic Relations, the Asian Law Caucus and the National Lawyers Guild, they are urging San Francisco authorities to uphold open debate.

The coalition calls on the San Francisco Municipal Transportation Agency to "resist pressure to donate ad proceeds to the Human Rights Commission, which would officially equate the political ads with hate speech."

(SAN FRANCISCO 05/24/2013) – Civil rights organizations call upon San Francisco authorities to resist pressure to stigmatize Muni bus ads that quote Nobel Peace Prize laureate Archbishop Desmond Tutu characterizing Israeli policies as apartheid. The coalition, including Jewish Voice for Peace, the Council on American Islamic Relations, the Asian Law Caucus and the National Lawyers Guild, urges San Francisco authorities to uphold open debate on one of the most important human rights issues of our time.

The ads, which first appeared on Muni buses on May 7, were placed by the education and advocacy organization American Muslims for Palestine. They feature political speech that critiques Israeli policy and US foreign aid to Israel. The ads make no denigrating statements about Jewish people or Judaism, nor do they reference that community at all. But in response, the Jewish Community Relations Council, the Anti-Defamation League and the American Jewish Committee – institutions with long histories of attempting to stifle open and honest debate about Israeli policies – have unleashed a relentless smear campaign to mislabel political critique as hate speech. They conflate AMP’s political message with hate-filled racist and Islamophobic ads placed by Pamela Geller and her American Freedom Defense Initiative, which call Palestinians and Muslims ‘savages,’ and denigrate an entire religion and its adherents.

The Southern Poverty Law Center has classified the Freedom Defense Initiative as a hate group.

“Critique of Israel’s race-based system of governance is not hate, it is core political speech. It is critical to the free marketplace of ideas to resist the pressure to demonize political speech and equate it with anti-Jewish or hate-filled speech,” said Dr. Hatem Bazian, AMP chairman and Berkeley professor.

The coalition is urging the Municipal Transportation Authority and San Francisco supervisors to resist pressure to donate ad proceeds to the Human Rights Commission, which would officially equate the political ads with hate speech. The coalition also urges authorities to resist pressure to shut down its vehicles as a public forum for political speech altogether.

“Many Israeli authorities and other notable figures such as former President Jimmy Carter have used the legal term apartheid to characterize Israeli state policies,” said Carol Sanders of Jewish Voice for Peace. “San Francisco has long been a city where diverse opinions, political speech, and freedom of expression have been valued and protected. It should stay that way.”

The transportation authority may consider a letter sponsored by Supervisor Scott Wiener and signed by six other supervisors calling for condemnation of AMP’s ad at its next meeting. The coalition of human rights and social justice activists is urging SFMTA to uphold the First Amendment guarantee of free speech and refrain from equating political speech with hate speech. To do otherwise would be a disservice to the people of the San Francisco Bay area, where open debate about the great issues of our time and diversity of political opinion are so highly valued.

An almost unheard of thing happened near the end of President Barack Obama’s much anticipated speech on counterterrorism Thursday: a critic publicly challenged him on the ongoing detention of prisoners at Guantanamo Bay and the use of drones in targeted killings. And in the charged confusion, something resembling an exchange occurred.

“You are commander-in-chief! It’s been 11 years; release [the Guantanamo inmates] today!” Code Pink founder Medea Benjamin bellowed at the National Defense University in Washington DC. 

“We’re addressing that, ma’am,” the president answered, struggling to get a word in. He then went on to directly address the issue:

 “I know the politics are hard. But history will cast a harsh judgment on this aspect of our fight against terrorism and those of us who fail to end it. Imagine a future — 10 years from now or 20 years from now — when the United States of America is still holding people who have been charged with no crime on a piece of land that is not part of our country. Look at the current situation, where we are force-feeding detainees who are being held on a hunger strike. I'm willing to cut the young lady who interrupted me some slack because it's worth being passionate about. Is this who we are? Is that something our Founders foresaw? Is that the America we want to leave our children?”

Incredibly, and somewhat surreally, Benjamin was allowed to stay, only to pounce again.

“Can you stop the signature strikes killing people on the basis of suspicious activities?” she called out.

As security ultimately escorted her away, Benjamin continued: “... thousands of Muslims that got killed — will you compensate the innocent families? I love my country.  I love the rule of law. Abide by the rule of law! You’re a constitutional lawyer!”

And, again, Obama did not entirely brush her off:

“The voice of that woman is worth paying attention to.  (Applause.)  Obviously, I do not agree with much of what she said, and obviously she wasn’t listening to me in much of what I said.  But these are tough issues, and the suggestion that we can gloss over them is wrong.”

In the aftermath, the exchange has been dismissed as a “heckling” event. But the truth is that for a brief time the atmosphere in the room was electric. And, everyone present was transfixed, with every camera, and most every eye, trained on Benjamin. It was bizarre to see the leader of the free world struggle to continue this most important of speeches with the majority of his audience looking the other way. 

The term “speaking truth to power” is much bandied about, often by self-congratulatory journalists. But rarely do we witness an exchange that actually lives up to the spirit of the phrase.

Whatever you think about Benjamin’s tactics, they nevertheless spurred a riveting exchange. And they arguably could not have come at a better time on a more crucial set of issues: a president’s power to kill or indefinitely detain without due process.

As it happened, Obama’s chief of staff was sitting directly behind me, and I couldn’t help but catch some of his reaction. Not only did he seem unfazed, he even wondered aloud if he should call off the encroaching security guards. 

One was left to wonder if some quick political calculus was at play, not only because the confrontation offered Obama an opportunity to answer his harshest critics, but also because it was a gripping exhibition of democracy in action… even if it was freedom-of-speech by accident.  (“How did she get in here?” many a scandalized journo uttered in the aftermath.)

Explaining her actions after the speech, Benjamin told the New York Times:

“People around the world are tired of nice words from President Obama, and they want some concrete action….Some say it’s rude to interrupt the president, but it’s rude to kill innocent people with drones.” 

Even before Benjamin injected herself into the proceedings, the speech was compelling. Obama addressed many of the deep concerns about his counterterrorism policies to date, including their constitutionality and their morality.

The president called for an end to the perpetual war footing the country has maintained since 9/11. While admitting and defending his “lethal targeted action with drones,” Obama also said he would move to significantly circumscribe their use with new guidelines for transparency and accountability. He also said he would begin anew the effort to end the scourge that is Guantanamo.

“So America is at a crossroads.  We must define the nature and scope of this struggle, or else it will define us.  We have to be mindful of James Madison’s warning that ‘No nation could preserve its freedom in the midst of continual warfare.’ Neither I, nor any president, can promise the total defeat of terror.  We will never erase the evil that lies in the hearts of some human beings, nor stamp out every danger to our open society.”

Obama acknowledged the “hard fact” that innocent civilians had been killed by U.S. drones. 

“And for the families of those civilians, no words or legal construct can justify their loss.  For me, and those in my chain of command, those deaths will haunt us as long as we live, just as we are haunted by the civilian casualties that have occurred throughout conventional fighting in Afghanistan and Iraq.”    

He used the targeted killing in Yemen of the U.S. citizen Anwar Awlaki to address a core anxiety about his policies.

“For the record, I do not believe it would be constitutional for the government to target and kill any U.S. citizen — with a drone, or with a shotgun — without due process, nor should any President deploy armed drones over U.S. soil."

Because Awlaki was actively trying to kill Americans, Obama said, his citizenship should have offered no more of a shield than the citizenship of a deranged domestic sniper as a SWAT team approached.

Still, Obama appeared to recognize that the unchecked use of drones could be corrosive to the nation’s democratic underpinnings.  “To say a military tactic is legal, or even effective, is not to say it is wise or moral in every instance. For the same human progress that gives us the technology to strike half a world away also demands the discipline to constrain that power — or risk abusing it.”

“Unless we discipline our thinking, our definitions, our actions, we may be drawn into more wars we don’t need to fight, or continue to grant presidents unbound powers more suited for traditional armed conflicts between nation states,” Obama said, regarding the need to dial down the unchecked power that Congress delivered to the Oval Office 12 years ago via the Authorization for Use of Military Force.

He called for revisiting the rules so that lethal force would only be used on those who pose a “continuing and imminent threat,” and that there must be a “near certainty” that no harm would come to civilians.

"America does not take strikes to punish individuals; we act against terrorists who pose a continuing and imminent threat to the American people, and when there are no other governments capable of effectively addressing the threat,” Obama said.

In regard to the last line, Democracy Now noted a McClatchy newspapers report that said, “Obama’s speech appeared to expand those who could be targeted in drone strikes and other undisclosed ‘lethal actions.’ Up until Thursday, Obama and his top aides have said that drone strikes are restricted to killing confirmed ‘senior operational leaders of al-Qaeda and associated forces’ plotting imminent violent attacks against the United States. But Obama dropped that wording Thursday, making no reference at all to senior operational leaders.” 

Obama also offered a variety of possible new drone oversight approaches, one being the establishment of a new a special court, and the other an in-house group within the executive. 

Democracy Now’s Amy Goodman spoke to a number of administration critics after the speech. They were in the main critical of these proposals, suggesting that they were tantamount to asking judges for “death warrants.” 

Obama went on to point out the fiscal absurdities involved in keeping Guantanamo open —$150 million each year to incarcerate 166 prisoners. But, beyond the money, to the rest of the world, Guantanamo stands for an “America that flouts the rule law.”

For her part, Benjamin objected to the NY Times and others calling her a “heckler”:

“I think a heckler is a very negative term, and I think it’s a positive thing when people find the courage to speak up to leaders who are not leading. And I didn’t do what I did to embarrass the president. I did it because I feel that he needs to be pushed more, that it has been over four years now of policies that have been killing innocent people with drones. It has been now over 11 years that innocent people are still being held in Guantánamo and now being force-fed. These are crisis situations, and it requires more from us as citizens.”

Private Manning is a 25-year-old, low-ranking intelligence officer facing a 22-count federal indictment – including one count of aiding the enemy – alleging he leaked the largest number of classified U.S. military records in history. Indeed, Manning admitted in court last February to feeding confidential data to the whistleblower website Wikileaks, thus stunning the world with over 700,000 items revealing heretofore unguessed-at diplomatic corruption, military malfeasance, and war crimes. These revelations, according to Bill Keller of The New York Times, played a role in launching the 2011 Arab Spring. Although prosecutors say they will not seek the death penalty, Manning, if convicted, faces a possible 150 years in prison.

If Private Manning were some straight dude, we of LGBT-town would just keep shopping. But Bradley Manning is gay. Therein lies our shame.

Thankfully, SF Pride Board President Lisa Williams has already yanked Manning off the roster, “repudiating” his selection as a “mistake” by an unnamed staff member. For making that announcement “prematurely,” wrote Ms. Williams, this person was – in what will prove an historic salute to the S/M community – “disciplined.” (Interestingly, Ms. Williams did not mention the use of a “safe word.”)

Lisa Williams, who organized campaign offices for Barack Obama and works for other Democratic politicians, wrote, “[E]ven the hint of support for actions which placed in harm[’]s way the lives of men and women in uniform … will not be tolerated by the leadership of San Francisco Pride.”

Right on, Ms. Williams! I share your Obama-driven anger! For is it not President Obama who finally abolished the military’s infamous “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” policy? Is it not Mr. Obama who is the first president to support, while in office, our right to legal marriage?

Bradley Manning has done something horrible to LGBT-town – far worse than revealing war crimes. He raises the question: Do LGBT people, in some way, owe our improving legal status to those very war crimes Manning revealed?

We of LGBT-town are oppressed enough without having to ponder that, thank you!

Besides, the fact that we have ignored the U.S. invasion and occupation of Iraq and Afghanistan, and rarely if ever bother to protest, as LGBT people, foreign policy abuses, suggests that Bradley Manning wouldn’t even want to be our Grand Marshal.

The best example of Private Manning’s leaks is the video that PC thugs entitled “Collateral Murder.” If you’re bored enough to click on the link, you’ll see a U.S. Apache attack helicopter in 2007, hovering over a public square in eastern Baghdad. Soldiers piloting the copter dryly – yet with a certain patriotic panache – target and shoot down two Reuters employees and about 12 Iraqi civilians. A minivan carrying several children then arrives, attempting to rescue the wounded, and is fired upon. All those on the ground, including the children, are killed. We hear a soldier say, “Well, it’s their fault for bringing their kids to a battle.”

It’s known that Private Manning, as a gay man, faced abuse in the military. In fact, homophobia has been advanced as a motive for his leaking information in the first place. But think, LGBT-town! Those shooters had been instructed by enlightened U.S. military personnel not to be homophobic. In fact, all during that helicopter massacre, you do not hear one antigay slur!

At his February court appearance, Private Manning explained that he had wanted to “spark a debate” on U.S. policies concerning Iraq and Afghanistan, saying, “The most alarming aspect of the video to me … was the seemingly delightful bloodlust of the aerial weapons team. They dehumanized the individuals … by referring to them as ‘dead bastards,’ and congratulating each other on the ability to kill in large numbers.”

Is this the type of person we want as our Grand Marshal? I’m all for outing people, but classified data is just TMI. Yet Bradley Manning brutally ripped the door off the U.S. Army’s closet, thus placing in harm’s way the troops who daily and heroically place innocent civilians in harm’s way. He has betrayed our deep psychological need not to know anything about what our government does in our name.

In June, Manning will begin his trial – much of which will be, thank God, secret – a trial that will revive the homophobic stereotype LGBT-town has worked for years to erase: the commie fag. To counter that stereotype, it’s important for us to surround ourselves – as does SF Pride – with peppy, stalwart capitalist sponsors like Verizon, AT&T, and Wells Fargo (the latter, a proud investor in the private prison industry; take that, commie fag).

In conclusion: DUH?! It is impossible for Bradley Manning to be the Grand Marshal of any Gay Pride event: He’s in prison, you idiots. He can’t really be there.

Furthermore the UN special rapporteur on torture alleges that Manning’s been subjected to “cruel, inhuman, and degrading treatment,” so he probably doesn’t feel a whole lot of “Pride” these days.

Let that be a lesson to every LGBT-town queer who seeks acceptance in President Obama’s US of A. When it comes to government-sponsored mass killings and human rights abuses, maybe “Don’t Ask Don’t Tell” isn’t such a bad idea, after all.

Please note that there's a week of action planned just before Bradley Manning's trial begins in June. Demonstration at Fort Meade on June 1, as well as other events (http://www.bradleymanning.org/featured/week-of-action-for-bradley-june-1-8).

References:

Bradley Manning, charges, court martial:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2012/jan/19/bradley-manning-officer-recommends-court-martial

Manning, Guilty Pleas:

link to usnews.nbcnews.comnews/2013/02/28/17132690-judge-accepts-bradley-mannings-guilty-pleas-on-10-lesser-charges-trial-on-12-others-set-for-june?lite

Bill Keller, NY Times, Manning:

http://ggsidedocs.blogspot.com.br/2013/04/bill-keller-on-manning-and-arab-spring.html

link to www.nytimes.com02/20/opinion/keller-wikileaks-a-postscript.html

SF Pride, Lisa Williams statement:

link to lgbtweekly.com26/sf-pridebradley-manning-will-not-be-a-grand-marshal/

Lisa Williams bio:

link to sfpride.orgboard.html

(Note: Williams’s Obama campaign work has been removed from SF Pride bio)

Glenn Greenwald response to Williams, discussion of Manning case:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2013/apr/27/bradley-manning-sf-gay-pride

Obama Signs Don’t Ask Don’t Tell Repeal:

link to www.nbcnews.com40777922/ns/politics-white_house/t/obama-signs-repeal-dont-ask-dont-tell/

Obama’s support for gay marriage:

link to blogs.wsj.com2013/03/28/obama-gay-marriage-is-constitutional/

Leaked “Collateral Murder” video:

link to vimeo.com

Bradley Manning & homophobia in Army:

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/wikileaks/8616397/WikiLeaks-Bradley-Manning-endured-army-homophobia.html

Manning’s Court Martial Statement:

link to www.nytimes.com03/01/us/bradley-manning-admits-giving-trove-of-military-data-to-wikileaks.html?pagewanted=all

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/03/12/bradley-manning_n_2858850.html

Statement Highlights:

http://www.bradleymanning.org/news/highlights-from-bradley-mannings-feb-28-2013-statement-explaining-actions-as-acts-of-conscience

Wells Fargo:

link to npa-us.orgfargo_-_banking_on_immigrant_detention_0.pdf

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/10/17/immigrants-wells-fargo_n_1016339.html

Manning Trial Delayed Until June:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2013/jan/09/bradley-manning-trial-delayed

Secrecy in trial;

link to www.wjla.com2013/05/bradley-manning-trial-secrecy-shrouds-pretrial-hearing-88414.html

UN Rapporteur on Torture Denounces Manning’s Treatment:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2012/mar/12/bradley-manning-cruel-inhuman-treatment-un

link to www.salon.com07/un_top_torture_official_denounces_bradley_mannings_detention/

General info:

June 1 Demo for Manning:

http://www.bradleymanning.org/featured/reserve-your-seat-today-buses-from-baltimore-new-york-city-and-washington-dc-june-1-2013

Bradley Manning website:

http://www.bradleymanning.org

Gay Neocon take on Manning’s Case:

link to www.out.comcommentary/2012/05/31/bradley-manning-no-gay-hero

Manning for NYC Pride Petition:

http://www.change.org/petitions/nyc-heritage-of-pride-add-pfc-bradley-manning-to-the-list-of-grand-marshals-for-nyc-pride-2