Pictures of goats in trees

update below
According to Yahoo:

In Morocco, the native Tamri goats are so enticed by the berries of Argan trees that they have become adept at climbing the branches to reach their food. Even stranger still, the goats' droppings contain seed kernels which local farmers then grind into an oil that is used in cooking and cosmetics.

I'm skeptical. Maybe the Morocco Export Council is thinking, "Oh, those stupid Americans. Surely if we post some pictures of native Tamri goats in trees, we will be able to sell more berries. They will never for a moment suspect we know how to use the photoshop because they think we don't understand these things. Ha ha ha ha!" Or maybe somebody else is thinking this.

Note also the reference to Abbas' speech at the UN. The speech urging the UN to recognize Palestine as a state is harmful or not harmful to the peace process. Leaving aside the questions of what exactly the peace process is, i.e. whether it can only occur under US-sanctioned auspices or at least with US approval of the process, the blurb on Yahoo's front page functions as a barrier, positing "helpful or harmful" to the peace process, as opposed to many other possible questions:

Why the P.A. taking is the initiative, why they would want to, or feel they have to, or of the US losing its primacy in the Middle East, and if so, why do others see the US's influence as less useful or relevant than before, or simply whether or not its the best course of action for the Palestinians to take, to further their interests. No, its important for Americans to regard other people as children, and therefore, ironically, important for the press to treat Americans as children to help perpetuate this.

Do people actually buy this, and look at things, and avoid looking at other things, the way this approach dictates? Undoubtedly some do. I suppose the stereotype of Palestinians dancing in the streets probably helps, reinforcing the image of those hot-headed, passionate desert peoples, etc.

Reuters,"Abbas stakes Palestinian claim to state at U.N."(the Yahoo news link above)

"Obama sold Israel bunker-buster bombs"(also here)

"Israel on alert for possible Hamas attack"

Lt. Col. Avital Leibovich, an army spokeswoman, says there is "concrete intelligence" that Hamas and maybe other militant groups are trying to infiltrate the border.

She says an attack might be timed to torpedo the Palestinian statehood bid at the U.N., an effort being led by Hamas' chief rival, Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas.

Israel has more to benefit from an attack by Hamas at this point than Hamas does, in terms of the propaganda value of being able to point to it as yet another proof of the brutishness of the Palestinians, and Hamas has a lot to lose if they attack Israel, especially now, in terms of credibility and goodwill. That doesn't automatically make the assertion of "concrete intelligence" so much hogwash, but it still reminds me of the goats in the trees.

Cross-posted here at Hugo Zoom.

update: Rob Payne kindly references this goaty discussion, here. Also, he mentions this by Philip Giraldi:"Biggest Losers in Palestine Veto? The American People" as well as a recent Counterpunch piece by Uri Avnery. All three are worthwhile.

I wonder if US and Israeli politicians are feeling boxed in now, as if they have no choice but to be even more recalcitrant. Maybe they feel this in part because of how the political zeitgeist has shifted so far to the right in both countries, which of course is something they had a hand in creating. Or maybe they blame it on the Palestinians, for not co-operating in the the continual confirming and reconfirming of their own agreeable powerlessness, and committing the crime of embarrassing the two countries.

But they're not boxed in. All they have to do is acknowledge Palestine's claim as legitimate, as opposed to continuing the fictional peace process that fools fewer people each day. If they actually did this it could even lead to a nonfictional peace process. Could you imagine that?

6 November 2010

Alternate Focus:"How Israel Influences the United States"

Retired CIA analysts Bill and Kathleen Christison talk about Israel's influence on the United States.This conversation was filmed at St. Mark's Cathedral in Seattle, Washington, during a February 2010 conference. (I believe he's referring to the Citizens United decision at around 25:00 minutes in.)

James K. Galbraith, "Obama’s Problem Simply Defined: It Was the Banks"

Two from that Rob Payne feller:

"Raining in Iraq" and

"If only Al Gore"

BBC: "China, Germany attack US stimulus"

Germany's finance minister calls the US stimulus programme "clueless", while China warns of its "negative impact".

And, from Phronesisaical: "Does. Not. Compute." (I'm not clear on Cheryl Rofer's view of the alleged bomb plot, although you don't have to definitively believe or disbelieve the government's version to have questions regarding the details.)


Johann Hari: Not his finest hour: The dark side of Winston Churchill

from Consumertrap.com: "Does the USA Really Have Public Broadcasting?"

7 October 2010 Mearsheimer interview etc

John Mearsheimer on the State of the Israel Lobby [Fall, 2010]

Cléa Thouin, assistant editor for the Journal of Palestine Studies[yt link], interviews John Mearsheimer [via Mondoweiss]


Helena Cobban , "When is an act of war not an act of war?"

Cobban suggests that the difference between "war" and "air strikes" in polling re military action against Iran makes an enormous difference, which reminds me of my suspicion of establishment polling in general and also makes me wonder if large numbers of Americans are stupider than a can of paint.

Ismael Hossein-zadeh and Karla Hansen, Asia Times, Why the US doesn't talk to Iran:

The repeated refusal of Iranian offers of dialogue by successive United States administrations suggests that US foreign policy in the Middle East has been driven not by national interest but by the military-industrial complex's need for a constant, external threat to justify its huge share of the treasury. Whether it is the perceived pursuit of nuclear weapons or support for terrorism, there has always been a convenient reason to target a nation.

BDR:

"Republicans are shitty, and no amount of Democratic shittiness changes that essential truth."

Maria Bustillos,The Awl, "How the For-Profit College Can Destroy Your Life"
via Susie Madrak


by Nancy Solomon, NPR:"Schools Urged To Teach Youth Digital Citizenship"

Freshman Tyler Clementi jumped off a bridge a few days after his sexual encounter with another man was broadcast online. Clementi's roommate, Dharun Ravi, and Ravi's friend Molly Wei were arrested on invasion of privacy charges. They haven't said why they allegedly broadcast the video, but by all accounts, they were good students who had no history of cruel behavior.

"I think it's a case where good kids can do terrible things," says John Palfrey of the Berkman Center for Internet and Society and author of Born Digital: Understanding the First Generation of Digital Natives.

But what if they were from a trailer park, instead of the kind of kids whose parents fit nicely into public radio's demographics? I hardly ever visit NPR's website, but here in one of the first things I come across, is just the sort of thing for which their detractors take them to task. But I guess it also dovetails nicely with the case of a good government that can do terrible things, so it's all good.


Louisville Courier-Journal, Yoga can be dangerous to Christians' faith, says Louisville's Southern Baptist Seminary President

Actually, Albert Mohler has said scores of crazy things over the years, including a backhanded endorsement of torture.

Peace talks, yet again

Russia Today September 14, 2010
'US - Israel's partner in crime, not a referee'

Israeli and Palestinian leaders are holding a new round of direct talks. The main issue being discussed is whether a current freeze on Israeli settlement-building in the West Bank will be extended. Palestinian President Abbas threatens to walk out on the negotiations if construction continues. For more on this, RT talks to Omar Barghouti, an activist from the Palestinian Campaign for the Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel.

no. 2: RT America September 02, 2010
Is Israel-Palestinian peace attainable?

Peace negotiations have started in Washington DC between Israelis and Palestinians. President Barack Obama held a series of high-stakes meetings with Israeli and Arab leaders. As negotiations continue today, is there a chance the negotiations today could work?

/////////////////////

Is Israel manipulating media?
RT America June 01, 2010

In many ways, public opinion is shaped by the media, so will the media coverage of the attack affect public opinion of Israel. The mainstream media has been pro Israel in the past but will that change now after the conflict on the Mediterranean? Danny Schechter says that Israel has targeted conservative media in America, saying that Israel is the victim not the Flotilla participants.

The verbiage above is from Russia Today. I am not optimistic about the peace talks. I also think most observers here in the US, both the establishment press and people in general, have tuned them out, in part because nobody really expects them to be successful, even if many(maybe most?) Americans might have difficulty understanding Barghouti's point of view, and may just chalk it up to Palistinian intransigence, or shrug about how difficult it is to understand the middle east.

I'm guessing very few Americans would easily accept the possibility that US foreign policy is an obstacle to peace. It's hard not to wonder if the only reason these talks are even happening is because of the Memorial Day weekend flotilla raid, and the need Israel and the US have to seem to respond with a peace overture, and the need Fatah has to seem to reciprocate. So, they all go through the motions. I remember in 2000 I was under the impression that Arafat was walking away from a pretty good deal, but later I learned that most of the land swaps was of desert for arable, cultivated land that had been taken by settlers, in exchange for desert.

7 September 2010

Omar Barghouti explains the aims of the Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions movement

Should people boycott Israel? Pt.1 Omar Barghouti. And, part 2:



Should people boycott Israel? Pt.3:



(the conclusion of this interview, parts 4 and 5, is here.)

"Not guilty. The Israeli captain who emptied his rifle into a Palestinain schoolgirl"

"Taliban call for joint inquiry into civilian Afghan deaths considered"

"Blood on our Farms: Is Monsanto Responsible for 1 Suicide Every 30 Minutes?"
(via Alternet)

Interview with Omar Barghouti, cont'd

Here is the conclusion, parts 4 and 5(below,) of Paul Jay's interview with Omar Barghouti.

Parts 1-3 are here.

Eden is a place we leave

It seems Israel is always in the news in some fashion, but these two items from earlier this week really got my attention:

1. Harvard divestiture: there are conflicting reports regarding whether or not Harvard has divested its endowment of all Israeli investment. They have sold all their directly held Israeli stocks, but their PR guy says they still hold Israeli stocks indirectly, via funds that hold Israeli stocks. Sounds like divestment to me, and if so it’s a real coup for the global boycott/divestment/sanctions movement. However I wonder if it’s a temporary gesture intended to test the waters for something more formal(Harvard did not actually announce they had divested, but journalists scoured their endowment’s quarterly statement and picked up on it.).

I also wonder if it’s just temporary because it may be meant as a signal from the Ivy community to Israel to not push so much on bombing Iran. I wondered the same thing about BHO saying he was supporting the Islamic center in Manhattan, if it was his way of indirectly telling Israel he’d rather just engage in bellicose rhetoric towards Iran but not actually attack, what with US personnel in Iraq and elsewhere in the region being rendered sitting ducks afterwards. It could also be that Obama would send such a signal because of being troubled by the needless deaths of Iranians, but I doubt this.

Links: Business Insider, Guardian UK, Boston Globe.



2.The flap about Eden Abergil's photos:

Abergil is an ex-IDF soldier who posed in photos with Palestinian prisoners in 2008, yucking it up for the camera with involuntary models who were blind folded and twist-tie handcuffed. She posted the photos on Facebook(!), without restricting their access just to FB friends, although she has since done so. I imagine if this story eventually becomes bigger news in the mainstrean US media that we'll hear pompous op-ed types wringing their hands about whether or not it was "appropriate" to out Abergil.* I note that the Guardian and the BBC both pixilate her face in the images they show, but the un-edited pics are freely available at lots of sites, such as Gawker.

BBC:

"This shows the mentality of the occupier, to be proud of humiliating Palestinians," Palestinian Authority spokesman Ghassan Khatib told the Associated Press news agency. "The occupation is unjust, immoral and, as these pictures show, corrupting."

AP/Daily Mail:

"These are disgraceful photos," said Capt. Barak Raz, an Israeli military spokesman. "Aside from matters of information security, we are talking about a serious violation of our morals and our ethical code and should this soldier be serving in active duty today, I would imagine that no doubt she would be court-martialed immediately," he told Associated Press Television News.

Haaretz:

"Israeli blogger Lisa Goldman contacted the former soldier via Facebook, who replied: "I don't speak to leftists."

*Arguably, the more readily people here decide to interpret this story as simply an issue of whether or not it was right to out Eden, the more likely that the corrupting "mentality of the occupier" applies to the proponent of such a view.

OK, so the title is not a JV original. It comes from an old "Ironside" episode.

Monday, 7 June 2010

Asia Times, "We are all Gazans Now", Pepe Escobar


BBC[text and video link] "21 Miles Off The Coast of Palestine" (about 43 minutes)

Adam Curtis links to an early 70s documentary about the 1947 passage of the Exodus, which was also intercepted outside territorial waters. The Exodus, carrying Jewish refugees from a port in Marseilles, was intercepted by the British who were enforcing an immigration limit on Palestine. No, this is not the Hollywood film with Paul Newman.


CBS News(AP) "Many Gulf Federal Judges Have Oil Links"

More than half of the federal judges in districts where the bulk of Gulf oil spill-related lawsuits are pending have financial connections to the oil and gas industry, complicating the task of finding judges without conflicts to hear the cases, an Associated Press analysis of judicial financial disclosure reports shows.

Two standards

Veteran White House reporter Helen Thomas has received a great deal of criticism for recent comments about Israel, but the comments of someone else involved are at least as offensive.

Asked by Rabbi David Nesenoff if she had “any comments about Israel?” Thomas responded, “Tell them to get the hell out of Palestine.” Upon further questioning, Thomas would say that Israelis should go to countries like Germany, Poland and the United States.

Nesenoff, who appears to lead a congregation in Smithtown, New York, put these comments in a brief youtube video and predictably, as well as understandably, there has been outrage. The matter has been picked up on the web by outlets like The Drudge Report (where the current lead is a link to a breitbart.tv page featuring the embedded clip), WorldNetDaily and Mediaite. Former White House Press Secretary Ari Fleischer believes Thomas should lose her job as a columnist for Hearst and the gang of intellectuals on this morning’s edition of Fox & Friends seemed to agree with this sentiment.

Thomas has apologized on her website, helenthomas.org, where she added that “mutual respect and tolerance” are necessary for “peace” in the Middle East. Many will no doubt find her apology weak. Writing on the popular Hot Air blog, Allahpundit sarcastically responds, “I’m satisfied. Who among us hasn’t innocently stumbled into a statement of support for ethnic cleansing when we didn’t really mean it?”

I think Thomas may be sincere. At one point in the video, Thomas is laughing as if she might not literally mean what she is saying. Furthermore, the clip is so short that it is hard to believe that Nesenoff and Thomas did not communicate with each other before and after the depicted exchange. Perhaps this would add context that changes the appearance of her comments. Perhaps not.

More importantly, there is the issue of how highly critical comments about Israelis spur more anger in the popular media of the United States than does Israel’s actual mistreatment of Palestinians or their attack on a naval vessel bringing much needed supplies to Gaza. This is a comparison that I’m sure Dead Horse readers had already made on their own, but this affair does bring one more example of the double standard that exists in terms of what is considered acceptable to say about whom.

Nesenoff operates a website called RabbiLIVE.com. On the main page of this site, one can currently find a commentary by the proprietor that compares those trying to break the Gaza embargo to the oil spewing from Deepwater Horizon. “As the White House and BP scratch their heads trying to figure out what to do about the crap creeping up onto the coast,” Nesenoff writes, “Israel knows exactly what to do.” As far as I can tell, nobody has been angered by this statement.

Perhaps the full contents of the essay are needed to insure that it is clear Nesenoff is talking about:

Sludge At Sea

By Rabbi David Nesenoff

At at recent press conference Helen Thomas, the White House correspondent, chimed in with calling the recent flotilla event a “massacre”, the same words used by the President of Turkey. In a recent interview I had with Thomas on the White House lawn, she aped the mantra of the Iranian terrorist Ahmedinajad as she pleaded for the Jews to leave Israel and go back to Germany and Poland.

Meanwhile as our coast and these poor birds and fish are terrorized by the barrels and globs of oil that threaten our people and plates, the sludge of inhumanity endeavors to slither onto the shores of Israel as well. I’ve seen puddles of spilled gas sometimes at the local pump and I’ve watched Schindler’s List and the Pianist, but the magnitude of sludge has never hit me so strongly as I am witnessing unfold on video in my lifetime.

The videos show blackened birds searching for breath and Israeli children dodging rockets fired from Gaza while Israeli soldiers are beaten, knifed and fired upon. A defenseless dead Jew is acceptable; a Jew who kills in self defense is condemned by the world. The Jew is blown up, rocketed upon, blasted, and beheaded. But the tears are reserved for the birds.

As the White House and BP scratch their heads trying to figure out what to do about the crap creeping up onto the coast, Israel knows exactly what to do.

It doesn’t quite match the poetry of “one Palestinian in the sea equals pollution; all Palestinians in the sea equals solution,” but the thought is there.

Yes, call it a massacre

AFP photo


How else can you possibly "spin" the attack on the aid convoy? John Caruso calls it a massacre, and he's right.

Al Jazeera: Israeli forces have attacked a flotilla of aid-carrying ships aiming to break the country's siege on Gaza. Up to 16 people were killed and more than 30 people injured when troops stormed the Freedom Flotilla early on Monday, the Israeli Army Radio said. The flotilla was attacked in international waters, 65km off the Gaza coast.

Reuters: Israeli commandos intercepted Gaza-bound aid ships Monday and at least 10 pro-Palestinian activists on board were killed in bloodshed that plunged Israel into a diplomatic crisis.

Houston Chronicle(AP): Israeli warships attacked at least one of the six ships carrying pro-Palestinian activists and aid for blockaded Gaza, killing at least two and wounding an unknown number of people on board, an Arabic satellite service and a Turkish TV network reported early Monday. The Israeli military refused to comment on the report.

I wonder if the US and UK meda will call it a "grave mistake." Or something. Look, they said it as plainly as possible after the attack on 9-11. Our support of the regime in Tel Aviv is why they hate us, especially when they do things like this. Not for scantily-clad runway models, or fast food, or freedom.

Terrorism against American and Israeli civilians is wrong, but so is terrorism by governments against civilians, against NGOs, and against aid convoys. Even terrorism by governments the US supports. On Memorial Day and every day, America is supposed to be against this kind of thing, no matter how often we've fallen short of that. Call it what it is. It is unprovoked aggression, the blockade itself is wrong, and the attack is indeed a massacre.

Al jazeera: traffic lights in Jerusalem

from Al Jazeera's Youtube channel, via Irish4Palestine and Xymphora.

Two Tribes

Another video from Russia Today- this time with nice crispy sound that syncs properly, but the video is somewhat washed out. C'est la vie, as Russians no doubt say.

Earlier today CNN posted a poll in which they stated that a majority(71 %) of respondents believe that Iran presently has nuclear weapons.(the poll also says that while a majority of the respondents are presently against military action, it also suggests great malleability in that opinion should the rhetoric heat up, and very little concern about adverse repercussions-- something I partly blame on a childishly jingoistic press. I wonder how many people put 2 and 2 together regarding the US de facto policy of destabilizing Pakistan, the one Islamic country that definitely does possess nuclear weapons and how people feel about that, or if they even give much thought to it.

Repercussions-- like what? Like another massive oil embargo, or the real unification of the Islamic world against the US, or a crumbling of America's capacity for international influence, when Russia and China AND even the EU finally decide that we're a nation of depraved nutballs who can't be trusted. And many thousands killed. Oh yeah, that.

Actually,I don't have a hard time accepting that a majority of Americans do in fact believe this regarding the supposed existence of Iranian nukes, even though the CIA itself apparently doesn't believe this. What I have a harder time understanding, and the poll doesn't address this, is why Americans tend to trust American elites so easily regarding the outside world. So that when a foreign country does something(or appears to do something) that American elites don't approve of and the usual American TV talking heads tell us that country X is defying us because they're irrational or crazy, they just accept this uncritically. And they just accept that country X cannot possibly have sane, legitimate reasons for those contrary policies that don't conform to US government wishes , whether said policies are hypothetical or real.

The thing is, people generally have no problem believing that our elites lie to us and screw us over in virtually all other areas, but apparently regarding foreign policy they just accept that these people who so frequently mislead and even just plain lie to us, nevertheless also know what's best and sincerely mean to protect us. I guess these are two separate questions. Exceptionalism again, at least for part of it. God gave Adam the right to give names to the animals, and to America to determine whether or not foreigners are crazy.

Michel Chossudovsky, above, says that the US has nuclear warheads in Turkey and in Europe that are aimed at Iran. Additionally, most experts agree that Israel has nuclear weapons, even if this is a mostly forbidden topic for discussion in the popular US media. My point is, although I don't think any country that doesn't presently have nukes should decide to get them, it's hardly insane or unreasonable for Iran's elites to want to have nuclear weapons. Given how actively belligerent both the US and Israel have been to various middle eastern and other Islamic countries, it strikes me as pretty understandable that the Iranians should want nukes.

I also question whether the US would in fact be threatened by the existence of an Iranian nuclear weapons arsenal, assuming we left them alone. Israel might possibly be threatened-- but even that I'm skeptical of. If anything, the likely net effect of a secure Iranian nuclear weapons arsenal might well be a better behaved Israel, one that doesn't threaten her neighbors so readily and is more likely to want to make legitimate concessions towards a real peace with the Palistinians, or-- at the very least-- stops launching so many "you kill one, we kill 500" military operations against her neighbors.

The problem of course, is that it be a secure nuclear arsenal. But who is likely to subvert Iranian nuclear security, besides Israel and the US?

Again, I'm not suggesting that for Iran to acquire nukes is a preferred outcome. As I've said before in comments here and elsewhere, I have often puzzled about why Ahmedinejad has never publicly suggested a linkage between greater co-operation in allowing IAEA oversight, and negotiating to account for and reduce(or even eliminate*) Israel's nukes. Also to clarify, when I say "nukes" I am specifically referring to nuclear weapons, and not simply powerplants, which after all they, along with the Israelis, are allowed by international law.


(*The "eliminate" is probably dreaming, hence in parentheses. Still there's no question to me that for neither Israel nor Iran to have nuclear weapons would be the ideal situation, and I don't see how a US military operation against Iran can do anything but kill more people and make that contingency even less likely to ever happen.)

14 December 2009

Banksy's 2009 Christmas card, via[1] and[2]


Haaretz: "Golda Meir told Poland: Don't send sick or disabled Jews to Israel"


via Helena Cobban's del.icio.us feed:

Cotoret, "Maariv’s defense analyst: Rabbis own the IDF"

Cobban's summary:

Didi remez's excellent translation of articles by Ofer Shelah in Maariv. Shelah wrote that when Brig. Gen. Gershon Hacohen and other officers were visiting Torat Hehaim yeshiva in the Gush Katif settlement bloc, they "were assaulted by yeshiva students, their uniforms were torn and their rank insignia ripped off. Rather than insisting that the rioters be arrested, either immediately or within a short while, a humiliating pact was made with them, as part of which the security establishment was to pretend as though nothing had occurred..." And much more...

from Firedoglake,via Avedon Carol:

Data: "It turns out that a significant minority of about 25 percent of the people who opposed the plan - or about 12 of the overall sample - did so from the left; they thought the plan didn't go far enough."

Avedon's comments:

So, 15% of Americans actually know that "The Plan" for health care reform will hurt our chances of getting real health care reform. However, not all of us oppose the plan for that reason - some support it because they understand that it will pretty much kill real health care reform.

Newsweek seems to lay all the blame for no WMDs at Tommy Franks' feet. While it is difficult to regard General "We don't do body counts" as a sympathetic figure, at least he didn't promote or anoint the war before it happened. He didn't write any of Junior's or Cheney's or Rumsfeld's lines in 2003, nor sell a weekly magazine with an issue released less than two weeks before the war would start featuring a cover story* about George W. Bush's devoted Christianity with Bush praying for the cover image(which is hard to find online now).

*"Bush and God", Howard Fineman, Newsweek,March 10, 2003.

Consumer culture as a balm against reality, now in Hebrew

According to Noam at the Promised Land blog , the tagline of this Cellcom ad is “What do we all want? Some fun, that’s all”.

as Anya Achtenberg wrote in the comments there:

I wanted to find a shred of hope in this absurd commercial — the possibility of a communal game, Palestinians and Israeli Jews. Absurd. What is on the other side of the wall is meant to be hidden. Some sort of animals the IDF must keep in line. Playful at the moment. But still animals to be hidden, disappeared, kept behind a wall. A wall? A concrete monstrosity.

via Helena Cobban, who notes one commenter's view that the ad

"was most likely conceived and designed by high-ups in the advertising company-- and that they would have designed it to appeal to the broadest possible zeitgeist in (Jewish) Israeli society".

In other words, it wasn't calculated to shock Israelis, the presumption being most are OK with the wall. She also has a piece at the Boston Review on the decline of the Israeli peace movement, which she also discusses in her blog, in which she argues that in the past 10-15 years a lot of moderate to dovish Israelis have simply left Israel. She doesn't explicitly spell out the demographic consequence, nor does she see it as a principal cause(it was left out of the BR piece by the editors), but the meaning is clear.


Cobban:

How far has the peace movement fallen? One benchmark for comparison is the war that Sharon and former Prime Minister Menachem Begin launched against the PLO in Lebanon in 1982. In September of that year, Lebanese Falangists, operating (as Ari Folman’s brilliant film Waltz with Bashir reminds us) with extensive support from the Israeli military, undertook a two-day massacre in the refugee camps of Sabra and Shatila. Hundreds of thousands of Israelis—as much as 20 percent of the population at the time—took to the streets in outrage, forcing the government to establish the Kahan Commission, which recommended serious sanctions for Sharon.
By contrast, pollsters found that 94 percent of Jewish Israelis supported the recent war in Gaza. Veteran peace activist Daphna Golan, who teaches human rights law at Hebrew University, recalled the anguish and isolation she felt during the Gaza war, especially in the face of widespread pro-war activism among Hebrew University students. Golan said university authorities did not respond to her complaints about posters she described as “extremely racist” hung at the entrance of the Givat Ram campus.

N.B. For some reason I had difficulty accessing the BR article directly through the linked URL, as it seemed their server was rejecting the hyperlink. So I had to go to their homepage, where the article, "Peace Out" is currently listed, although you can probably use their in-site search window if need be. Anyway it's worth reading, and if you have difficulty like I did the URL is here:

http://www.bostonreview.net/BR34.4/cobban.php

http://www.bostonreview.net/

Is TV news one-sidedly in support of Israel?

from The Real News:Is TV news one-sidedly in support of Israel?

cross-posted at Hugo Zoom.

Some recent things

artist: Fay Valentine


Seems there is a


Tell "The Progressive" to drop George McGovern from 100th Anniversary Event
Facebook page. The people signing on are angered that McGovern spoke out against the Employee Free Choice Act. The Progressive magazine is holding its 100th Anniversary Conference in Madison, Wisconsin on May 1st and 2nd.(Not too surprisingly, the magazine also has a Facebook group, which has a discussion board.)

NATO commemorated their 60th anniversary this past Saturday, April 4th. I'm not clear what purpose they serve in the post-Soviet era, let alone why they are fighting in Afghanistan, which isn't exactly a particularly North or particularly Atlantic part of the world. Ironically or not, April 4th is also the anniversary of Martin Luther King's assassination.


Al Jazeera, from February 2008, "Asia's hidden arms race"

and more recently,

How to survive a Gaza refugee camp

and

Why can't Iran have nuclear weapons?
a recent comment forum, also at Al Jazeera, from last month.


a new (to me) web site:

U.S. Media and Israel: Sharing the Balanced Truth about Israel Media Coverage in the U.S.

Two from Reuters video

Helen Suzman(2):



Gaza assaults spark global backlash:



As always, the shoes are a nice touch.

In medias res: welcome young 2009

The year is barely 24 hours old as I write this, and 3 notable persons have already passed on:

• Claiborne Pell, 90, American politician, Senator from Rhode Island (1961-1997)
  
• Nizar Rayyan, 49, Palestinian military commander for Hamas, air strike.
  
• Helen Suzman, 91, South African anti-apartheid activist, MP (1953–1989)

For some time me brain been percolating a post about American decline, and given this background preoccupation, inevitably I find myself thinking about how these three person's lives illustrate various perspectives on that topic.

Nizar Rayyan was by no means a choir boy, but he was the closest thing Gaza had to a secretary of defense, and in some ways his death and the stolid, "nothing-to-see-here" way the US press has dealt with it helps illustrate one aspect of US decline, as we juxtapose the IDF airstrikes against Hamas with the EU's condemnation and the US's official impassivity, as Bush, jnr insists he won't break off his last Christmas vacation as president to address the Israeli violence. and our new talk-show-culture president elect insists on framing the conflict in terms of how he thinks he would react if he was an Israeli parent, discussing hypothetical danger to his daughters whom we should see as people, unlike, say, your average no-good Palistinian kid. Americans have traditionally flattered themselves that their government leads the world, but the EU shows leadership while the US establishment, the Congress having voted to supply the bombs that destroy Gazan lives, hide behind the moral indolence of their shrub-clearing lame-duck president.


Claiborne Pell's death reminds me of how forward-thinking the US welfare state once was with respect to financing higher education, as we juxtapose the 1960s and the era of the Pell Grant, still around but endangered , with the current state of financial aid and higher education, as state and federal budgets put the squeeze on working-class and lower-middle class aspirants to a better life.

Helen Suzman was a civil rights pioneer-- from South Africa. She was one of Nelson Mandela's few white friends who visited him in jail and agitated for his release, years before hip Western kids identified him as a signifier of coolness, like the Dalai Lama or Coldplay or yes, Barack Obama. Her life, and those (several) dark chapters in South Africa's history remind me of how, here in the US, we once had a functioning left, one that successfully shamed many American institutions into divesting themselves of their South African holdings, something that might be impossible today, when so many people seemingly settle for voting as absolution in which a vaguely religious political leader forgives you for your civic laziness because you voted for him. And don't forget to help him pay off Hillary Clinton's debt to pollster Mark Penn. I hear he doesn't really need the money, but hey, a contract is a contract. Yes you can.


photos: Reuters


cross-posted at Hugo Zoom

Alternate Focus in Hebron: state of lawlessness

I've had the html for a post regarding this short film/video embed from Alternate Focus sitting in my drafts folder for about a month now, and apropos of Rob Payne's "Gaza: a slow death" from yesterday, I suppose this is the right time to post this. I would also like to call attention to Bob in Pacifica's excellent "Thinking Frontal and Backwards" from last week. I learn something new (and add to my prospective reading list) practically every time I read one of Bob's longer posts.