One Nation Progressive Coalition Organizes Huge Rally to Push for ‘Jobs, Justice and Education’ This Saturday in Washington

The following article originally appeared in Alternet:

When Barack Obama defeated John McCain to become president and Democrats retained solid control of Congress in the 2008 elections, progressives rejoiced at the prospect of having their agenda implemented. Two years later, it hasn’t quite worked out that way. Progressives have found themselves locked out of the debate in Washington on issues such as health care and the war in Afghanistan while the right wing has regrouped. With the economy still in the doldrums, many are predicting a Republican resurgence in the November 2010 Congressional elections.

But a new coalition of hundreds of liberal organizations is looking to change the absence of progressives in the national debate by asserting a progressive policy agenda this Saturday with a large rally in Washington. The rally is taking place under the banner of the “One Nation Working Together” coalition. Endorsing organizations ranging from the NAACP to the American Federation of Teachers to CodePink Women for Peace are hoping to see tens of thousands of people at the Lincoln Memorial call for the creation of new jobs, the strengthening of the safety net and the need for quality public education, among other demands.

When Barack Obama defeated John McCain to become president and Democrats retained solid control of Congress in the 2008 elections, progressives rejoiced at the prospect of having their agenda implemented. Two years later, it hasn’t quite worked out that way. Progressives have found themselves locked out of the debate in Washington on issues such as health care and the war in Afghanistan while the right wing has regrouped. With the economy still in the doldrums, many are predicting a Republican resurgence in the November 2010 Congressional elections.

But a new coalition of hundreds of liberal organizations is looking to change the absence of progressives in the national debate by asserting a progressive policy agenda this Saturday with a large rally in Washington. The rally is taking place under the banner of the “One Nation Working Together” coalition. Endorsing organizations ranging from the NAACP to the American Federation of Teachers to CodePink Women for Peace are hoping to see tens of thousands of people at the Lincoln Memorial call for the creation of new jobs, the strengthening of the safety net and the need for quality public education, among other demands.

Larry Cohen, president of Communications Workers of America, a union that represents over 700,000 people, sees the One Nation Working Together coalition as a “big tent” of progressives working together. The union, along with groups like the National Council of La Raza, a Latino rights organization, and Green For All, an environmental group pushing for green jobs, are key organizers behind the effort, which was first put together by the NAACP and the Service Employees United International 1199 union.

“The overarching message is that together, we represent a majority of the country, and we believe in the change that was represented in the 2008 election,” said Cohen. “We’re going to work together for economic justice. It’s not there.”

The coalition’s call for more unemployment relief, economic stimulus, workers’ rights and protecting Social Security and Medicare is likely to resonate in an weak economy plagued by an official unemployment rate of 9.6 percent. Recently released U.S. Census data has added to the economic doom and gloom, with figures showing that 44 million Americans–one in seven–are living below the poverty line, a record high. In addition to demanding economic justice, One Nation Working Together is also calling for immigration reform and an end to detentions and deportations of undocumented workers, a halt to racial profiling and mandatory minimum sentencing that disproportionally affects people of color and protecting and enhancing voters’ rights by allowing former felons to vote and securing representation in Congress for residents of D.C.

“We’re really about restoring national priorities to focus on jobs, justice and education,” said Denise Gray-Felder, a senior adviser and the director of communications for the coalition. “It’s time for a movement of American people in this country to really put aside our differences, move beyond the hatred and the divisiveness that others have tried to create in this country and come together for what I like to call jobs, jobs and more jobs.”

Another of the coalition’s demands is for an overhaul of U.S. Senate rules, where constant Republican filibusters have frustrated a progressive agenda that has gotten more support in the House of Representatives.

“We need to break the gridlock in Washington, and we need decisive leadership and policy that will move all in Congress, especially the Senate, forward,” reads the coalition’s policy principles, in part.

The rally, which has been promoted by progressive publications like the Nation and media figures like MSNBC’s Ed Schultz, came together in the past few months as national organizations and activist groups in New York City began to have a conversation about the need for a broad progressive agenda, according to Cohen. Organizers are hoping for tens of thousands of people to come out for speeches, music and comedy during the four-hour afternoon program. There will be a number of feeder marches into the rally at the Lincoln Memorial led by different organizations endorsing the effort. And there will be dozens of local events happening around the country in conjunction with the rally, ranging from a march in Brattleboro, Vermont demanding an end to the war in Afghanistan, to solidarity actions in California and voter registration drives around the country.

Corporate media coverage of the rally has painted it as a response to Tea Party activism and to Glenn Beck’s rally at the Lincoln Memorial in August. But Gray-Felder said it was about laying out a platform to refocus the nation’s priorities and to help the economy rebound.

“It’s not personality driven, this is not about celebrities or glitz,” Gray-Felder said. “It’s about average people in America who have real concerns about how to pull our country back together and put our country back to work.”

Many of the major groups that are part of the One Nation Working Together coalition are strong supporters of the Democratic Party, and the rally seems in part an attempt to encourage progressive Democrats to get out the vote come November, although the organizers say the rally is about issues and not political parties. Organizing for America, a project of the Democratic National Committee, will reportedly encourage its members to attend the event.

David Sirota, a liberal columnist and author of The Uprising: An Unauthorized Tour of the Populist Revolt Scaring Washington, was skeptical of the rally. Sirota said the organizations behind the coalition have been “acquiescent” to the Obama administration even in the face of a presidential administration pushing an agenda at odds with the progressive movement’s priorities.

“Rank and file people who are participating, I think they should participate if they can. But this raises much deeper and much more embarrassing questions for the leaders of the organizations and the media voices who are all of a sudden organizing this,” said Sirota. “It raises not deeper questions about what they ultimately want to get done, but deeper questions about where their loyalties lie, who they respond to, and where they have been for the last two years.”

Many progressives have been deeply disappointed with the Obama administration, which has followed the Bush administration’s tack on civil liberties, escalated the war in Afghanistan and pushed through a health care plan without a public option.

“I hold out hope that maybe this march will be about making specific demands on the White House,” said Sirota.

For Cohen, the rally is a crucial event. He says the coalition is looking for the October 2 rally to be a “renewal of this notion that we need a big tent and groups like these groups to put real resources into joint work.”

“We’re putting huge resources not only into the march, but to continue to work together in key states for November 2nd, and also far beyond,” he said.

Avigdor Lieberman’s UN Speech Shows the True Face of Israel

PHOTO: Israeli Ministry of Foreign Affairs website. Israeli Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman addresses the General Assembly at the United Nations in New York.

Yisrael Beiteinu’s strong third-place showing in Israel’s February 2009 elections for the Knesset was met with dread and disgust from many different quarters.  Avigdor Lieberman, the founder and leader of the far-right party and the current Foreign Minister, ran a campaign filled with fascist overtones as he called for “loyalty oaths” to be signed by Palestinian citizens of Israel.

But perhaps we should take a look at Lieberman again in light of his much-condemned United Nations General Assembly speech yesterday and instead feel glad that the true face of Israel is shining to the world because of his position of power.

At the UN, Lieberman called for a “long-term intermediate agreement” instead of a solution dealing with all the final-status issues, dismissed the notion that the occupation and colonization of Palestine is at the core of the conflict and proposed a deal with the Palestinians that would be “about moving borders to better reflect demographic realities.”  Although Lieberman claimed that he was not talking about “moving populations,” it’s apparent that Lieberman’s plan would result in the expulsion of Palestinian citizens of Israel to a Palestinian state, all in the service of making Israel an “ethnically pure” Jewish state.

Reactions from Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and U.S. Jewish leaders were swift, and the media narrative laid out is that Lieberman’s speech revealed “differences” within Israeli politics about the “peace process.”  The New York Times reports today that “sharp differences within the Israeli government over peace negotiations played out in the unusual setting of the United Nations General Assembly on Tuesday.”

Netanyahu’s office distanced the prime minister from the speech and said that Lieberman’s speech was “not coordinated” with Netanyahu and that Netanyahu wants “direct talks” with the Palestinian Authority to go forward.

The reaction from Netanyahu was about promoting the image of Israel as willing to sit down and negotiate for peace with the Palestinians, which Lieberman’s speech did damage to.  But that’s all it was about–Netanyahu and the State of Israel’s policies are completely in line with Lieberman’s plan of ethnically cleansing the non-Jewish citizens of Israel and of continuing to colonize the West Bank.

Under Netanyahu, the Bedouin village of Al Araqib has been destroyed multiple times to make way for a Jewish National Fund “ambassador forest.”  Netanyahu has presided over the continued colonization of the West Bank, despite talk of a “settlement freeze,” and that’s likely to accelerate in the coming weeks.  An recent Israeli Supreme Court ruling has Palestinians in Sheikh Jarrah worried about further dispossession at the hands of Jewish settlers, and Silwan in East Jerusalem is still under the threat of home demolitions to make way for Israeli settlements and a theme park.

The list can go on and on.  Actions speak much louder than words, and the State of Israel under Netanyahu has continued routine Israeli policies of land theft, colonization and slow ethnic cleansing.  That’s not much different than the Israel Lieberman showed at the UN yesterday in words.  Maybe that’s a good thing; the true, ugly face of Israeli policy, which the Palestinians know all-too-well, was shown to the world, further confirming that the “peace talks” are useless, and that Netanyahu is playing a public relations game for the international community while the status quo is sustained.

American Islamophobia, Inextricably Linked with Support for Israel

One of the themes that has arisen from my blogging lately on Israel/Palestine and anti-Muslim sentiment in the United States is the close connection American Zionism has with the existence of Islamophobia and anti-Arab attitudes here.

You can see it in the Simon Wiesenthal Center’s opposition to the Park51 Islamic community center in lower Manhattan; in how intertwined the opposition to the Park51 project is with big-wig Zionists’ funding; and in the alliance between far-right groups, who see the Israel/Palestine conflict as a key battle in the fight to end “Islamism,”and right-wing Zionists like Pamela Geller.

Continuing with that theme, Alia Malek, the author of A Country Called Amreeka: U.S. History Retold Through Arab-American Lives, has a new piece in the Nation magazine titled “Invisible Arab-Americans” that sums what I have been writing about up nicely:

The Arabs and Muslims who do exist in the American perception are overseas and foreign. We glimpse them as subjects of geopolitics and of American engagement in the Arab and Muslim worlds, which has often been adversarial and based on a reductionism that conflates many diverse countries, peoples and situations. This is not a dynamic that began with the “war on terror”; it has been in place since 1948, when the United States began to identify with the new state of Israel, which necessitated delegitimizing Palestinian national aspirations and any dissent from American-backed Israeli policies.

Washington Post Not Interested in Palestinian Account of Silwan Shooting

The "City of David" tourist center in Silwan, East Jerusalem. PHOTO: Ellen Davidson

Example number 156,783 of the U.S. corporate media doing a terrible job explaining the realities of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict: the Washington Post’s Joel Greenberg on the deadly events yesterday in the East Jerusalem neighborhood of Silwan.  Like most establishment media accounts of any event in Israel/Palestine, what Israelis say is taken as the truth, while Palestinian narratives of what happened are ignored or distorted.

In the wee hours of the morning yesterday, a private Israeli security guard who protects the illegal Jewish settlement that has been inserted into the heart of Silwan shot and killed two Palestinians.  The exact circumstances are, of course, disputed, but Greenberg only reports on the Israeli version of the killings:

A police spokesman said the guard told investigators he fired into the air after his vehicle was blocked with large garbage bins and stoned from surrounding rooftops…

The trouble began before dawn in the neighborhood of Silwan – under the walls of the Old City – where about 400 Jewish settlers live among 30,000 Palestinians.

Residents and police said a confrontation developed between local youths and the security guard, who was patrolling in a jeep. Such incidents are common in the neighborhood, where tensions have risen in recent months since the announcement of plans by city hall to demolish dozens of Palestinian homes to make way for a park.

Hanan Odeh, who lives nearby, said that before the incident there was stone-throwing and a loud argument between Israelis and local youths. Later, she said, she heard a burst of automatic gunfire and saw a fleeing man, limping on one leg, who collapsed on the stairs under her house. He was identified as Samer Sarhan, 32, a father of five…

Ariel Rosenberg, a spokesman for the Housing Ministry, said the guards operate under police guidelines and have no policing functions other than protecting the settlers. He said they often display restraint in the face of rock-throwing provocations by local youths. The guard who opened fire, he said, faced “a lynching, was under a clear mortal threat and fired in self-defense.”

So, according to the Post‘s account of the shooting, the private security guard–who, by the way, is protecting an illegal settlement, though the Post never mentions that–was under imminent threat and only fired in self-defense.

Let’s take a look at other accounts of what happened.

Joseph Dana, a writer who lives in Jerusalem, reports in the Electronic Intifada:

“At 3:30 or 4am I heard some noise outside of my window,” Silwan resident Abdallah Rajmi told me as we stood on a narrow street in the middle of a battle between young Palestinian stone throwers and Israeli occupation forces from the Border Police. “I thought it was a simple drunken fight but then I heard a lot of noise coming from the people involved and my neighbors began waking up…”

Rajmi recalled the events as tear gas and rocks were being thrown from both sides onto the alley where we were standing. “At this point I went to my roof to see what was happening and I saw three settler guards with ‘small weapons’ approach a group of young Palestinian men,” referring sarcastically to the guards’ large Uzi assault riles. “The guards began shooting the men and everyone in Silwan woke up…”

“I could not believe my eyes. I saw a man lying in his own blood and dying. The settler guards had just shot him in cold blood and watched him dying. He was there, on the ground, for one hour until an Israeli ambulance arrived on the scene, of course they would not allow any of us to get near him. The Israelis did, however, bring over forty settler guards and Border Police to the scene before the he was moved.”

The dead man was named as Samir Sarhan, aged about 30 according to news reports, and the father of five children.

Phil Weiss, in his blog Mondoweiss, relays what the director of the Wadi Hilweh Information Center in Silwan told him:

I walked down the hill past the City of David settlement, a messianic Jewish colony on occupied land, with a big gold sign in English. I found my way to the Wadi Hilwah Information Center. A man with a limp– shot by a settler guard in both legs, I was later told–walked me back to Jawad Siyan, the director of the office. A thin, intense man of about 35, he vented his despair over Palestinian powerlessness as he fielded telephone calls and a teenager brought me coffee.

The 55,000 people of the village were “sad and shocked” tonight, Siyan said grimly. Villagers had continually complained to Israeli police that the settlers had taken the law into their own hands; but the complaints were ignored. Armed guards in the settlement– which has been spearheaded by a religious group called Elad– roamed the town freely, with the support of the Israeli border police. They threatened Palestinians with impunity.

The incident today began–Siyan said witnesses had told him– when Palestinians and settlers shouted abuse at one another, as they often do, and the guards had fired guns in the air. The Palestinians had run away. The guards had chased them, and shot at them. Two men were seriously injured. Israeli security forces had arrived within minutes, but Samar Sarchan, 35 years old, lay on the ground for an hour before an ambulance arrived. He later died of his injuries.

Those accounts by Dana and Weiss throw the Post‘s reporting into serious question.

The Paradox of ‘Peace Talks’: ‘Success’ Means Failure for Palestinians

Palestinian Authority (PA) President Mahmoud Abbas has capitulated to the Israeli demand that direct “peace talks” continue to go on between Abbas and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu despite the coming resumption of full-scale settlement building in the West Bank when the so-called “settlement freeze” ends.  This confirms many observers’ fears about a sham agreement being signed between Israel and the PA.  Under intense pressure from the United States and Israel, the PA is going to sign away Palestinian rights guaranteed to them under international law and will deliver a huge setback to the cause of Palestinian self-determination.

This is the central paradox of the current “peace talks.”  The “success” of the peace talks, as Palestinian analyst Nadia Hijab points out in a Al Shabaka policy brief released today, is in fact a “worse scenario” than the peace talks collapsing.  If Abbas signs an deal with Netanyahu, it will inevitability be a sham agreement that boxes Palestinians into bantustans and ignores Gaza and Palestinian refugees.

Hijab writes:

The United States appears determined to push for a framework agreement within a year and both Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Mahmoud Abbas, President of the Ramallah-based Palestinian Authority (PA), are aiming for that goal. Such an agreement, U.S. peace envoy George Mitchell explained in a September 2 press conference, would be more than a declaration of principles but less than a peace treaty. In it, the two sides would reach the “fundamental compromises” necessary for a peace accord. Like its predecessor, the Obama administration has already indicated that the accord would still have to be fleshed out and then implemented over the course of several years – which virtually ensures that it will be delayed if not derailed as happened to past peace accords.

If the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) and PA were unable to secure a sovereign state and rights through U.S.-brokered negotiations with Israel between 1993 and 2000, when they were in a much stronger position, they are highly unlikely to do so today with such a badly skewed Israeli-Palestinian power dynamic. Instead, next year is likely to see a grand ceremony where Palestinian leaders will sign away the right of return and other Palestinian rights in an agreement that would change little on the ground. The plan of the PA’s appointed prime minister, Salam Fayyad, to declare a Palestinian state in 2011 could unwittingly contribute to this outcome by providing the appearance of an “end of conflict” while the reality remains unchanged. If the rest of the world sees that the government of “Palestine” is satisfied with international recognition and a U.N. seat, they will be happy to move on to other problems leaving the Palestinians at Israel’s mercy.

Such a scenario could sound a death-knell for Palestinian human rights. The Palestinian people have shown a remarkable capacity to regenerate resistance and evolve new strategies after suffering harsh setbacks over the past century. But there may be no recovery this time around. A “peace agreement” would end the applicability of international law to the resolution of the conflict; permanently fragment the Palestinian people; and demobilize Arab and international solidarity.

Explaining Shariah Law, From One Neocon to Another

Paul Woodward of War in Context posts this video of an interview that Glenn Beck conducted at the end of August with neoconservative Frank Gaffney, the president of the Center for Security Policy, the organization that authored a recent report titled, “Shariah: The Threat to America:”

Gaffney, who has said that President Obama “may be” a Muslim and who fancies himself as an expert on Islam apparently, defines shariah as “a political program that the authorities of Islam have long believed, a millennium or so, must be imposed over the entire world, to be ruled by a theocracy, a caliph and to impose Shariah as the rules.”

Well, not really.  Lee Smith, who himself is an ardent supporter of Israel and a fellow at the neo-conservative Hudson Institute, had an surprisingly informative piece in Tablet magazine in mid-August, responding to the right’s fulminations over the creeping “threat” of shariah coming to America (if anyone can recommend a better explanation from a non-neocon source, please do so in the comments section) :

Sharia is not a concrete legal code; it is the idealized notion of God’s law. Because there is no way to approach what is ostensibly divine except through human agency, sharia as such does not exist except as interpreted by human beings over the long course of Islamic history. The word “sharia” necessarily means many things to many people. Even though Islam is very simple in its basics, including conversion—you are a Muslim if you testify there is no God but God and Muhummad is the messenger of God—the faith comes with a fabulously esoteric scholarly tradition…

If to Gingrich sharia stands for everything wrong with Islam, Muslims associate it with all that is best about Islam—justice, accountability, the rule of law, and even democracy. That is to say, it’s a highly idealized version of reality that has little basis in fact. For most Muslims (moderate and non-moderate alike), sharia is a catchall phrase for legal principles that have rarely, if ever, existed in actual Muslim societies, where the law of the land is not God’s but the ruler’s. It is not abstract notions of “sharia” but the actual application of the ahkam al-sultaniyya, or laws of the ruler, that have shaped the reality of most Muslim societies over the last millennium.

Israeli Beauty Products Company Ahava Complicit in the Sins of Occupation

This article originally appeared in Alternet:

Walk into any Ricky’s store, a beauty shop chain in New York, and you will find a shelf filled with Ahava products. For $28, you can buy mineral toning cleanser; for $22, Dead Sea liquid salt; and for $9, purifying mud soap. The products made by Ahava (which means “love” in Hebrew) seem innocent enough, perfectly enticing for anyone fond of beauty products.

But looks can be deceiving. As activists from the peace group CodePink’s Stolen Beauty campaign are fond of chanting at protests, Ahava can’t hide its “dirty side.”

For nearly two years, an international campaign spearheaded by Palestine solidarity activists has targeted Ahava and the various stores that carry its products, including Ricky’s, calling for a boycott. The boycott campaign has heated up recently, eliciting push-back from Jewish organizations around the country and a response from the CEO of Ahava.

While Ahava labels its products “made in Israel,” they are actually manufactured in a settlement in the Israeli-occupied West Bank in Palestine. According to the Stolen Beauty campaign, the company exploits Palestinian resources from the Dead Sea.

Under the Geneva Conventions, and various United Nations resolutions, all of Israel’s settlements–which house about 500,000 settlers–are illegal, as is excavating natural resources in an occupied area. Israel has occupied the West Bank, East Jerusalem and the Gaza Strip since the 1967 Six-Day War. The settlements are widely seen as an obstacle to the creation of a viable and contiguous Palestinian state.

“[The boycott] is about a just peace for Israelis and Palestinians,” said Nancy Kricorian, CodePink’s coordinator for the Stolen Beauty campaign. “The situation on the ground there is dehumanizing and demoralizing and terrible.”

Ahava, which rakes in profits of nearly $150 million a year, according to a Dec. 2009 CNN report, is owned by entities deeply involved in Israel’s settlement project in the occupied West Bank. According to Who Profits? 37 percent of the company is owned by Mitzpe Shalem, an illegal settlement located in the eastern West Bank; another 37 percent by the private investment fund Hamashibr Holdings, which also is a major shareholder in two companies that export produce made in settlements; 18.5 perent by the U.S.-based Shamrock Holding, owned by the Roy E. Disney family of Walt Disney fame, and which is a shareholder in a company that manufactures electronic detection systems that are used on the West Bank separation barrier; and 7.5 percent by the West Bank settlement of Kalia.

In an interview, Kricorian acknowledged that Ahava is a huge target, and likened the Stolen Beauty campaign to a “game of whack-a-mole,” as new places where Ahava products are sold pop up frequently. But Kricorian says it isn’t just about hurting the company’s sales.

“A boycott campaign is strategic, and it’s a long-term thing,” she said. “It’s not just about hurting the company’s sales. It’s also about educating the public about, in this particular case, the company’s illegal practices and sullying the company’s name and reputation.”

The campaign to boycott Ahava, in both the United States and around the world, has racked up some important victories. In August 2009, activists successfully pressured Oxfam International to drop Sex and the City star Kristin Davis as a spokeswoman because she was also working with Ahava. In November 2009, the Dutch Foreign Ministry agreed to investigate Ahava’s manufacturing and labeling practices. Costco, a large U.S. retailer, was pressured into halting the sale of Ahava products at its stores in January 2010. The Palestinian Authority, which governs the West Bank, has included Ahava products in its boycott of settlement products campaign, confiscating and destroying products made in West Bank settlements. Recently, four activists in London were acquitted on charges of trespassing after direct actions in 2009 in which they locked themselves onto oil-filled drums inside an Ahava shop.

AHAVA did not respond to inquiries for comment.

The Stolen Beauty campaign, which began in the aftermath of the brutal Israeli invasion of the Gaza Strip in 2008-’09, is part of the larger boycott, divestment and sanctions (BDS) movement that grew out of a 2005 call by a vast swathe of Palestinian civil society groups for BDS against Israel. Modeled on the anti-apartheid movement that targeted South Africa, the Palestinian-led BDS movement demands that Israel withdraw from the occupied Palestinian territories, implement equal rights for Palestinian citizens of Israel and recognize the “right of return” for Palestinian refugees and their descendants who fled or were expelled from Palestine during the 1947-’49 Arab-Israeli war.

“The BDS campaign has become the most effective, morally consistent, nonviolent form of solidarity with the colonized Palestinians against Israel’s apartheid and colonial rule,” Omar Barghouti, a founding member of the Palestinian Campaign for the Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel, wrote in an e-mail. “The Stolen Beauty Campaign against Ahava, led by our partner CodePink, is a truly inspiring BDS campaign, as it is creative, focused, well-researched and very effective in conveying the message across to and, more crucially, in mobilizing BDS action in a wider, more mainstream audience.”

The Israeli government has taken notice of the growing BDS movement. The Israeli Knesset recently passed a preliminary reading of anti-boycott legislation that would impose fines on Israeli activists promoting boycotts of Israel. A February 2010 report by the Reut Institute, an Israeli think-tank with close ties to Israel’s government, identified the BDS movement as an threat to the state.

In the United States, the BDS movement, and the campaign against Ahava, has also generated controversy. After a Washington, D.C.-based group protested in July 2010 against Ahava products being sold in Ulta, a beauty store, the Jewish Community Relations Committee of Greater Washington urged supporters to buy Ahava products.

Brooklyn’s Ricky’s shop has also become the epicenter of a dispute over the Boycott Ahava movement. After a July 9 protest outside the store led by CodePink’s Stolen Beauty and Brooklyn for Peace, which signed onto the campaign in May, a group of rabbis in Brooklyn drafted a letter in response, urging people to buy Ahava products and denouncing the campaign. The rabbis’ letter claimed that “CodePink ignores the history and legal status of Mizpeh Shalom” because it is located in “‘Area C’, a huge section of the West Bank over which Israel, again by joint agreement, was granted full control, except over Palestinian civilians.” (The Area C designation comes out of the 1993-era Oslo Accords between Israel and the Palestinian Authority. Area C incorporates all West Bank settlements.)

“Local Jewish leaders find the idea of a boycott of Israel to be a misguided and one-sided approach to a complex and deeply troubling conflict,” said Rabbi Andy Bachman, a signatory to the letter and a member of the liberal group J Street’s Rabbinic Cabinet. “The problem with a boycott is there’s one side that’s all right and another side that’s all wrong. If that’s what the boycotters think, then there really is nothing to discuss. But if not, then why not boycott Palestinian business for years of rejecting peace accords?”

So far, Ricky’s has not budged, and continues to sell Ahava products. Dominick Costello, the president of the store, refused to comment.

The relentless targeting of Ahava hasn’t gone unnoticed by the company. A letter that has recently been circulated by Ahava to its business partners states that “our company and products have been the subject of unfortunate, ugly and clearly politically motivated smear attacks” that are being pushed by a “couple of small radical fringe organizations, which are part of a larger and more insidious campaign aimed against the State of Israel.”

The surge in attention to the boycott campaign is a sign that “we’ve gotten attention to issue of settlements like we never got before,” said Naomi Allen, an activist who sits on Brooklyn for Peace’s board and is involved in the group’s Israel/Palestine committee. Beginning this month, Brooklyn for Peace plans to hold protests outside the Ricky’s shop in Brooklyn on the last Tuesday of every month.

“This is not an argument that we’re going to lose, because [what's] right and international law are on our side,” Allen said. “The issue of Ahava is a clear-cut issue. There’s no excusing the fact that this is occupied territory which is being stolen from the rightful owners and exploited for profit that isn’t being shared with the rightful owners.”

Jewish Groups Denounce ‘Museum of Tolerance’ Builder Simon Wiesenthal Center for Support of Islamophobia

On Friday, September 16, a coalition of groups protested outside the New York “Museum of Tolerance,” denouncing the Simon Wiesenthal Center’s support of Islamophobia.  This report originally appeared in the Indypendent:

PHOTO: Ellen Davidson

A coalition of four Jewish groups, backed by a wide array of peace and justice organizations, held a demonstration Sept. 16 outside the Simon Wiesenthal Center’s Museum of Tolerance in New York, denouncing the organization’s opposition to the Islamic community center in lower Manhattan.

Organized by Jews Say No!, American Jews for a Just Peace, Jewish Voice for Peace and Jews for Racial and Economic Justice, about 100 demonstrators walked in front of the museum on East 42nd Street in midtown Manhattan, chanting “Islamophobia isn’t pretty, it has no place in New York City” and “Islamophobia is a shame, New Yorkers say not in our name.”

“If you’re going to put tolerance in your name, you got to put it in your game, and the Museum of Tolerance has not done that,” Jon Moscow, an activist with Jews for Racial and Economic Justice, told members of the press.  “Statements that its leaders have been making have been feeding this frenzy of Islamophobia and anti-Arab racism.”

As the Cordoba House controversy, manufactured and fueled by far-right blogs and the right-wing press, heated up, Rabbi Marvin Hier, the dean and founder of the Simon Wiesenthal Center, appeared on Fox News in early August and criticized the proposed Muslim community center.

“Having a 15-story mosque within 1600 feet of the site is at the very least insensitive,” Hier said.

The Park 51 Muslim community center, of which the Cordoba House interfaith center will be a part, has sparked an acrimonious national debate over Islam and religious freedom, setting the stage for an upsurge in anti-Muslim sentiment across the United States.

The Simon Wiesenthal Center describes itself as an “international Jewish human rights organization” that promotes “human rights and dignity.”

The Wiesenthal Center’s executive director, Rabbi Meyer May, told Crain’s New York that “religious freedom does not mean being insensitive … or an idiot.”

“The museum says its aim is ‘to challenge people of all backgrounds to confront their most closely held assumptions and assume responsibility for change.’ That’s a beautiful vision. But it’s one that is wholly inconsistent with the actions of the museum’s leadership,” said Hannah Schwarzschild of American Jews for a Just Peace.

Center for Constitutional Right's Richard Levy: Simon Wiesenthal Center has given us 'a new definition of chutzpah.' Photo: ELLEN DAVIDSON

Demonstrators also harshly criticized the center’s decision to build a Jerusalem branch of the Museum of Tolerance on top of a centuries-old Muslim cemetery, known as the Mamilla cemetery.  They said that the center’s project, which has resulted in the “disinterment of hundreds of graves,” according to the Center for Constitutional Rights, is another example of the center disregarding the rights of Muslims.

“I’m just going to take a minute to tell you a new definition of a Yiddish word called ‘chutzpah.’ … It refers to brazen nerve,” said Richard Levy, a lawyer working with the Center for Constitutional Rights on a petition filed with several international bodies to halt the construction of the museum in Jerusalem. “This cemetery, which stands in West Jerusalem for a thousand years, is now subject to the bulldozer of this organization. So that’s the meaning of the word chutzpah: to say you stand for tolerance, and perform that kind of an act, is the most despicable kind of hypocrisy.”

Also speaking at the demonstration was Debbie Almontaser, herself the victim of a anti-Muslim, anti-Arab smear campaign reminiscent of the controversy over the Park 51 project that ultimately forced her to resign as the founding principal of the Khalil Gibran International Academy, a dual-language Arabic public school in Brooklyn.

“Why are the museum and Simon Wiesenthal leaders not taking a principled stand against the hatred of Islam and Muslims?” Almontaser asked.  “I say to them: Be just. Speak to your mission.”

House Republicans Pal Around with anti-Muslim, anti-Black racist David Yerushalmi

It should come as no surprise that elected officials are aiding and
abetting anti-Muslim sentiment in the U.S., especially with mid-term elections nearby.  But it was still a little shocking to read Think Progress national security blogger Matt Duss’ post on a newly released report titled “Sharia: The Threat to America.”

Duss writes that the report, authored by the neoconservative Center for Security Policy, was presented to Rep. Trent Franks (R-AZ) and Rep. Pete Hoekstra (R-MI).  Here’s the slightly shocking part:  also attending the event Duss reported on was David Yerushalmi, the general counsel for the Center for Security Policy.

So just who is this Yerushalmi fellow that Republican politicians were palling around with?

Yerushalmi has been aptly described as a “Jewish fascist” by blogger Richard Silverstein.  As Silverstein highlighted in August 2007, Yerushalmi has said:

One must admit readily that the radical liberal Jew is a fact of the West and a destructive one…Indeed, Jews in the main have turned their backs on the belief in G-d and His commandments as a book of laws for a particular and chosen people…What interest does America have in a strong Israel? If your answer is democracy in a liberal or western sense, know you have sided with the Palestinians of Hamas.

Yerushalmi was a member of the Stop the Madrassa Coalition, which was instrumental in the anti-Arab, anti-Muslim smear campaign that brought down Debbie Almontaser, the founding principal of Khalil Gibran International Academy, a dual-language Arabic school in Brooklyn.  He has followed his Islamophobic buddies Pamela Geller and Robert Spencer in joining in their war against the Muslim community center near Ground Zero, and is an attorney with the so-called American Freedom Defense Initiative, which is run by Geller and Spencer.

That’s not even the worst part.  Charles Johnson, the blogger at the formerly right-wing, hawkish website Little Green Footballs who “parted ways with the right” for, in part, its “Anti-Islamic bigotry that goes far beyond simply criticizing radical Islam, into support for fascism, violence, and genocide (see: Pamela Geller, Robert Spencer, etc.),” has the rundown on Yerushalmi:

This is a good time for some background information on Pamela Geller’s associate David Yerushalmi, who is an advocate for criminalizing Islam itself and imposing 20-year sentences on practicing Muslims. Yes, really.

He’s not simply anti-Muslim, though; Yerushalmi also wrote a now-infamous article titled “On Race: A Tentative Discussion, Part II,” in which he advocated a return to a pre-Bill of Rights Constitution, and the restriction of voting rights to white male land-owners. Again … yes, really.

Here’s a lengthy article at Talk To Action on the bizarre views and causes of David Yerushalmi: Anti-Semitic White-Supremacist Orthodox Jew Tries To Ban Islam In US.

Yerushalmi has deleted as much evidence of the “On Race” article as he could; he removed it from the Internet Archive and the Google cache, and put his entire website behind a registration wall. But here’s a PDF that contains the full article, and it’s as ugly and twisted a piece of racism as anything I’ve ever seen. Yerushalmi opens by calling Islam “an evil religion,” and “blacks … the most murderous of peoples.”

A quote:

“There is a reason the founding fathers did not give women or black slaves the right to vote. You might not agree or like the idea but this country’s founders, otherwise held in the highest esteem for their understanding of human nature and its affect on political society, certainly took it seriously. Why is that? Were they so flawed in their political reckonings that they manhandled the most important aspect of a free society – the vote? If the vote counts for so much in a free and liberal democracy as we ‘know’ it today, why did they limit the vote so dramatically?”

So there you have it: House Republicans are openly associating themselves with a “Jewish fascist” who has called “blacks…the most murderous of peoples” and advocates for the criminalization of Islam.

9/11 anniversary weekend brings out spirited demonstrations

The following two pieces, one from last Friday night and the next from Saturday, originally appeared in the Indypendent:

On Night Before 9/11, New Yorkers Voice Strong Support for Muslim Community Center:

As the anniversary of 9/11 and the Islamophobic rally led by far-right blogger Pamela Geller converge today, over 1,000 New Yorkers gathered Sept. 10 at Park Place in lower Manhattan for a candlelight vigil in support of the proposed Muslim community center two blocks from Ground Zero that has ignited a national firestorm over Islam in America.

Organized by New York Neighbors for American Values, a new coalition of over 100 groups formed in response to the opposition to the Cordoba House project, faith leaders, elected officials, musicians and activists voiced strong support for the proposed Islamic community center, which will also include a September 11 memorial, a restaurant and culinary school and more.

“This is not just an issue I should support silently,” said Frank Fredericks, the co-director of Religious Freedom USA.  “This is a core, essential issue that Americans should stand up for.”

The supporters of the center, holding candles, filled more than two blocks, and some had to stand on a sidewalk across the street from the vigil.  The music of Bob Marley, John Lennon and a live rendition of Woody Guthrie’s “This Land is Your Land” filled the air.

“There’s enough for all of us.  Nobody has to be thrown away.  We can do this thing if we hang together.  There’s enough room in this neighborhood for an Islamic center,” the keynote speaker of the event, Representative Keith Ellison (D-MN), the first Muslim elected to Congress, said.  “We don’t have to say they gotta go…They are our fellow Americans.”

The action came the night before the 9th anniversary of the September 11 attacks and a planned rally in lower Manhattan organized by the right-wing Stop Islamization of America group.  A counter-protest against Islamophobia and in support of Muslims backed by a broad left-wing coalition is also being held on September 11.

“No neighborhood should be off-limits for any particular group,” said Aliya Latif, the civil rights director for the New York chapter of the Council on American Islamic Relations.

Stop Islamization of America, led by Geller and Robert Spencer of the anti-Muslim blog Jihad Watch, is protesting the planned Muslim community center two blocks away from Ground Zero, claiming that it is “an effort to insult the victims of 9/11 and to establish a beachhead for political Islam and Islamic supremacism in New York.”  Geller is a leading Islamophobic voice who has called for the removal of the Dome of the Rock in Jerusalem, one of the most holy sites for Muslims, and has posted on her website a picture that replaced the Prophet Muhammad’s face with that of a pig. Spencer has compared the Islamic holy book, the Quran, to Adolf Hitler’s Mein Kampf, and thinks that Islam is “innately extremist and violent.”

“I think we all know that nobody would object to a community center on Park Place unless it was sponsored by Muslims.  And no one can say with a straight face that that’s not based on religious discrimination,” said Richard Gottfried, a New York State Assemblyman.  “People who share American values do not do that.”

The vigil came in the midst of an increase of anti-Muslim sentiment across the country, stoked by the right-wing press.  There has been a spate of anti-Muslim actions over the past couple of weeks as the debate over the Muslim community center in New York has heated up.  While two-thirds of New York City residents want the proposed center to be moved farther away from the site of Ground Zero, a majority of Manhattan residents support the project, according to a recent New York Times poll.

“We have every right to worship wherever we want.  This country was founded on the basis of religious freedom,” said Rabyaah Althaibani, a Muslim Arab-American.

***

On 9/11 Anniversary, Park 51 Islamic Center Sparks Rallies, For and Against

(with Ellen Davidson)

Thousands rallied in Manhattan’s City Hall Park, near the site of Ground Zero, on the ninth anniversary of the 9/11 attacks to denounce anti-Muslim bigotry, while blocks away an equal number demonstrated against the proposed Cordoba House Islamic community center at 51 Park Place in lower Manhattan.

At the Unity and Solidarity Rally, speakers denounced racism, urging protesters to fight growing anti-Muslim sentiment in the United States and the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq and the Israel/Palestine conflict.  The multiracial crowd heard antiwar activist Cindy Sheehan, former U.S. Rep. and Green Party presidential candidate Cynthia McKinney, former U.S. Attorney Ramsey Clark, the Raging Grannies and representatives of peace, religious, labor, and community organizations including the Albany Central Labor Federation, the Bail Out the People Movement, Riverside Church, Jews for Racial and Economic Justice, the Islamic Society of North America, United for Peace and Justice, the Center for Constitutional Rights and Veterans for Peace. The anti-Islamophobia protest was organized by the International Action Center and backed by a broad coalition of leftist, Muslim, Arab and Palestine solidarity groups.  Demonstrators marched to Foley Square, chanting and holding signs against anti-Muslim bigotry.

At the anti-Cordoba House rally, the mostly white participants waved U.S. flags and chanted “No mosque here.”  Speakers at the anti-community center rally included Pamela Geller, a leading voice on the Islamophobic right, and the notorious Dutch politician Geert Wilders, who has stated that he “hates Islam.”

View a slide show that features pictures from both actions here.