Total number of comments: 26 (since 2009-10-10 17:23:31)
JGlatzer
I am a Senior at Cal State Northridge, where I am the President and Co-Founder of Students for Justice in Palestine, and a Senior Reporter for the Daily Sundial campus newspaper.
Website: http://sundial.csun.edu/author/joseph-glatzer/
what connection does anyone in mainland usa have with alaska? i think you proved the point
if anyone used the term "the jewish mindset" the racist alarms would go off. but why is it ok for you to say this about palestinians? grow up and making racist comments on the internet
Thanks for the awesome article Alex. Below is the comment I submitted to the J Street U website of that statement.
"I agree with the principle of free and open debate regarding not just speech you love, but also speech you might hate. There are of course exceptions to this.
It shouldn't be against the law and it shouldn't be punished with fines etc if someone makes an anti-semitic or racist or homophobic statement.
I hate all this speech of course, but it's protected speech under the first amendment. As much as we hate it, if we don't protect this speech it leads to thought police and a decline in civil liberties which endangers all our rights. Pretty soon any legitimate criticism of Israel's policies can be labeled "anti-semitic" by a university, and fines can be doled out according to campuswatch.com assessments.
The exception to free speech is someone who is an accomplice to war crimes. Michael Oren was a spokesman for the Israeli Army during their attacks on Lebanon in 2006 and Gaza in 2009. He was an official propaganda minister trying to spin war crimes.
This is clearly evidenced by Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International's documentation of illegal cluster bomb attacks and illegal targeting of civilian infrastructure.
For Gaza, the Goldstone Report details many war crimes including targeting houses of worship, targeting civilians, targeting UN compounds, the use of COIN, and of course the white phosphorous attacks.
Would any decent school host a spokesman for Augusto Pinochet during his reign? If they did you would expect a massive outcry, and this what we are seeing in regards to Israeli government figures and spokesmen. War criminals don't have free speech rights.
Especially war criminals who helped destroy hundreds if not thousands of children's and university students' right to their freedom of speech and education when their schools were blown up."
#1 Other than UNRWA and every other country in the world besides the US and Israel you mean? (and maybe Australia and Palau)
#2 If Palestinians are the ONLY refugees in the world with 5th and 6th generation refugees; it's only because Israel's obscenity of ignoring UN resolution 194 for 62 years; and not allowing the refugees to return is unique in the world.
#3 If Palestinians were given citizenship somewhere and better chances at rights and a decent life, maybe they could find more permanent settlement and not have to pine for the return to Palestine in squalid camps across the Middle East. Still, even a refugee I know in Cairo, Egypt who's family is very successful vows to one day return to Ashkelon. Palestinians are the people of hope, and your pathetic post won't ever change that
lol this is great. Ahmed: here's the problem. For the goyim like you, Israel makes you pay a price for aliyah. You have to help sweep the mines and cluster bomb-lets out of southern Lebanon, because Israel is considering re-occupying and setting up new colonies for Somali and Haitian Jews!
Well, at least Jaron at the NY Times (and Time magazine) responds to my messages and admits I made "informed and well argued points". He's also friends on facebook with some kind of Israeli rastafarian reggae group for peace, so I have hope for the future
FROM TONY BLAIR!
"Bronner noted the almost surgical nature of the Gaza conflict in comparison to others. “The damage is not that extensive, but it’s difficult to report that and put things into proportion when there’s such a heated focus on the place.”
Amazing
Bronner is horrified of the angry Arab masses moving into West Jerusalem to presumably rape the good Jewish women and lower the property values.
I swear to God, could it get any more "Jim Crow"? Is Bronner starting a "Jewish" Citizen's Council?
This is an admirable summing up of the American media propaganda visavi Israel.
My mom is a right wing Republican, however I remember in my youth my mom telling me "Of course Palestinians deserve their own State" long before it was fashionable and acceptable to say so. She listens to my experiences in Palestine and the truth of the issue. She is my window into the right-wing Zionist mindset. She said when people hear "Palestinian" they automatically think "terrorist".
This is the mindset that has to be changed before we try to convince people with facts and numbers. If people still have a knee-jerk reaction of Palestinians as terrorists, it won't matter what we say; no matter how horrific the statistic they will say, "Well, they're terrorists, it's too bad but they deserved it." As an ex right wing Zionist, I can admit this used to be my mindset.
Forget Brand Israel, we need to advocate Brand Palestine. We need to "humanize" Palestinians in conjunction with the other aspects of our struggle. In everything we say and do with this issue, we need to emphasize how much Palestinians are just like us or anyone else in the world. They are just regular people.
Thank you very much for your kind words. I would however add a few clarifications.
In respect to the Berkeley liberalism comment: I didn't mean to imply that it takes a visiting Berkeley liberal to show Palestinians liberal or feminist thinking. I was only attempting to point out that this young woman (who happens to be a Palestinian born in Jerusalem) who attends UC Berkeley, possibly learned something about protesting the powers that be, and advocating for rights, in Berkeley and applied it to the soccer situation.
I apologize if it came across with racist undertones or condescending to Palestinians; as if they need an American to teach them liberal values. I also thank you for pointing this out, because I had no idea it came across this way, and it's good to know so I can frame some things in my writing more effectively in the future.
That point of view it appeared to you I have, is not me at all. Before the trip, I already knew the founder of the PFLP (a Marxist movement) George Habash, was a Christian by birth and actually an atheist.
On their way to the New Year's Eve party, one of the Gaza locals I met was stopped by Hamas for wearing a keffiyah and was made to take it off. This is because it was on the Fateh anniversary, and the keffiyah in Gaza likely symbolizes support for Fateh. He is very critical of Hamas, he is a secular leftist, and his father was involved with the DFLP in the past.
I also know that Palestinians have historically been the most secular Muslim majority country in the Middle East, and that the PLO had been a secular movement not Islamist movement from the start.
In the article I also included the part with Mr. Ramadan where he says "we are not fundamentalists" and that to him Islam means coexistence and acceptance.
Not long before we arrived in Gaza, the PFLP had a 70,000 strong anniversary rally there. In a territory of 1.5 million people, this proportion of the population in a political rally is no small feat.
It makes me so sad to see this violation of people's humanity and victimizing them on their own land. These are the types of video I watch and then wonder how anyone cannot understand Palestinian suffering and can think Israel is a lovely democracy that needs the occupation for "security".
Phil: The title is fantastic lol. I am going to try to bring up the "Zionization of Haiti aid" in my zionist teacher's class tomorrow during current events.
I haven't listened to the interview yet, but thanks for posting more about the trip. I think there is a lot that has been unsaid. But, in my opinion, Amira Hass's article does an excellent job describing our experience. I don't think enough has been written though, by a long shot.
This is a really affecting story. Sometimes I think about the fact that my apartment in the San Fernando Valley of California is built on stolen Mexican land, and stolen Native American land before that. I think all of us in the West are living on stolen land of one sort or another.
Is the only difference between us and Israel that their land grab and ethnic cleansing was more recent? Why isn't there an active movement for indigenous people's rights in this country, to have an independent Indian state or a one state solution with Indians getting equal rights?
Has the statute of limitations on it not being OK to live on stolen land passed for us in America, or Canada or Australia?
For how many years does Israel have to create facts on the ground for, until it's no longer OK to bring up a just solution for Palestinians?
I had actually gone through a liberal transformation already a few years before; but I was a proud PEP for a while at that point. I actually saw Janeane Garofalo on Real Time with Bill Maher in September 2007, talking about Palestinian rights and arguing with Bill. I was really intrigued at the possibility of a new hidden issue to discover.
I bought the Israel Lobby a few weeks later out of sheer curiosity, while still being skeptical. When I read the part about home demolitions and the utter indefensible nature of them, my walls came down and I sat there in shock and horror.
Actually, I am Catholic. My parents divorced when I was young and I was raised by mom in a Christian Right Wing Republican home in Orange County, CA.
I was raised to believe in American exceptionalism and certainly part of that is "Israel is our greatest ally for democracy and freedom against the crazy Muslim terrorists" type of thing.
However, I got more of my Zionist education from listening to Dr. Laura, Sean Hannity, and Rush Limbaugh every day.
Re: the incident in class, it was a big rowdy class of like 50 people, so comments came and went fast. There was a Syrian guy in class who jumped in and said, "Professor --- has been to Israel and he has met with families which were victims of suicide bombings too. He is simply a man of peace".
So, there was no retribution or risk for the teacher. Everyone knows he's a 60's era hippie for peace, who has peace and "citizen of the world" posters around his classroom. He's a beloved guy at Pierce College, I was the one who looked like a jerk to the class.
stop the mental gymnastics to understand why obama does what he does. who cares? it's irrelevant. he has stated on numerous occasions how he supports israel no matter what, etc. why don't you take the administration at their word on this, and deduct through the US's actions that they don't care about Palestinians at all. Their job is to provide diplomatic cover of a "peace process" while Israel continues colonizing and seizing Palestine. Again: judge a man's intentions by his actions, nothing more nothing less.
of course it's interesting to know what's going on behind the scenes, but let's remember that there's only one real way to judge what a politician's true intentions are: by what they do. when bush threw palestinians under the bus time and again nobody wondered what his "true intentions" were. let's face reality and judge obama by his actions. he has as much if not more palestinian blood on his hands as president bush or any other president before him, aside from his father let's say.
it's never been more clear to me: the united states's job is to cover for israel while it takes over 100% of palestine and completes the nakba it started in 1948 which has never ended.
I must say that as someone who has dual identities, as a Palestine solidarity activist with many like minded Middle Eastern friends, and also as someone of Jewish background; there are some really offensive sentiments here. What does Chomsky lacking "mainstream support" have to do with the truth of what he says? He's dedicated his life to Palestinians for decades, including being on the Board of Directors of the Middle East Children's Fund, which builds educational facilities for Palestinians in refugee camps; and gives financial donations to the children of Gaza. He donates his time for this cause selflessly, and you have the nerve to dismiss him as a "leftist Jew"?
It seems you have a very sick habit of throwing around the term "Jew" in a very offensive way. The context is really hateful. Philip Weiss presents the issue from his, Jewish Americans, Israelis, and Palestinians' perspectives. If you are going to push away good natured, genuine and honest people because they happen to be Jewish or Israeli, I think you need to take a hard look at your own prejudices, and that you might be no better than the settler who just cut down a Palestinian olive tree.
thanks for the link: I already read the Juan Cole piece, but I always love reading about Palestine issues on counterpunch.
So true Jeffrey. I refuse to believe Israel today represents the best of "Jewish Character", and no matter how much "brand Israel" factoids are thrown at me, it won't matter. I think Phil Weiss, Max Blumenthal, Glenn Greenwald, Amy Goodman, Noam Chomsky, etc. etc. represent not only the VERY BEST in Jewish Character, but also human character and dignity.
very true post phil. thanks.
AM-I totally agree. I didn't mean to say it was anything the guests did wrong, they were amazing, but Jon's guilt by association tactics he tried to play on them was shameful at best.
WJew: fayyad is an idiot. in fact worse. he is a stooge for the international monetary fund, and his declaration means absolutely nothing. there can be no palestinian state established against the will of israel. if they don't like it they just put up a checkpoint or say it's a closed military zone and that's the end of fayyad's ridiculous plans. there is a fiction being perpetrated: that the "peace process" is leading to anything other than further israeli colonization of palestine, and fayyad as a client of the US and Israel is doing his job by giving Palestinians false hope that there can possibly be a state within 2 years.
RE: establishment of state in 1988. It means something in some ways, but Palestine is clearly not a state, it is a territory under occupation aka military dictatorship. It means a little more than nothing. What I was upset about that Jon threw that out there, it was as if he thought that the cure-all. Just declare a state he says, well what my point was is that they did in '88 and it didn't change or mean shit.
i totally agree. there is only one nuclear power in the middle east (Israel), whose ally (the US) is occupying the other country's (Iran's) neighbors (Iraq and Afghanistan). Not to mention that Israel is still violating Lebanon's sovereignty every single day, and that it has already violated the Geneva Conventions by threatening aggressive war against Iran.
Jon's hasbara made me sick! It was like he was reciting the greatest hits of StandWithUS: the Jews had refugees too, Palestinian children learn hate from their TV shows, why don't the Arab countries help Palestinians, Iran has nuclear weapons. This last one is the worst.
The false guilt by association of what any Arab, ME, Muslim country does to be blamed on Palestine. Was it Palestinians that threw the Jews out in 1948 from the other Arab countries? It's just plain racist to lump them all together like that. It's like saying to a Honduran angry about Zelaya being thrown out of office, "Well, you know the Latin countries have their faults too, look at what Daniel Ortega does in Nicaragua. Why doesn't he help Hondurans."
Actually the dumbest part was when Jon suggested Palestine just declare statehood as if they didn't already in 1988.
"I severely criticize the John Lewis formula for achieving equality, of hating and eliminating White self-governance (Biblical Separation) by emphasizing how evil that is (White voluntary self-association), and then somehow urging mutual and universal acceptance to realize a civil single state." I totally agree Mr. Witty: we need separate but equal.
"The angry Martin Luther King approach entirely conflicts with any assertion of intention for unity."
The Federal Bureau of Investigations (FBI) called MLK, "the most dangerous Negro in America."
By the way: a large amount of jobs in Israeli society are based on military service, obviously Palestinian-Israelis are not eligible for these jobs. Also, in terms of Israeli citizens, 4 times as much money per pupil is spent on Jewish students as Arab students. The comparison to Jim Crow is quite appropriate; does this sound familiar? The Arab classes are overcrowded and dilapidated, underfunded, with a constant teacher shortage.