The social order shakes: Israeli journalist Noam Sheizaf on the Israeli social justice movement

This interview originally appeared in Waging Nonviolence.

If there was one country thought not to be in danger of catching the contagion of uprisings in the Middle East, it was Israel. Nobody thought much of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s statement on March 30 that, at a time when “everything is shaking and rocking…the only stable place, the only stable country, is this democracy Israel.”

But a month and a half later, Netanyahu’s statement is laughable. A mass movement has now erupted in Israel, shaking the status quo. What first started as a tent-city protest in Tel Aviv over the high cost of housing has mushroomed into tent cities all over Israel, hundreds of thousands of demonstrators pouring into the streets and disruptions of business-as-usual in the Israeli Knesset. Angry over the high cost of living and the yawning gap between the rich and the poor in Israel, the protestors have called for “social justice” in the form of public housing, rent control and a raise in the minimum wage, among other demands. Stanford University professor Joel Beinin recently wrote that the Israeli protests were a revolt against neoliberalism.

The movement is said to represent the strongest challenge yet to Netanyahu’s government.

Criticism of the movement, though, has been voiced by Palestinians and activists involved in the Palestine solidarity movement. They have pointed to the fact that the social justice movement has stayed silent over the occupation of Palestine and has not connected the dots between Israel’s massive and illegal settlement project in the West Bank and the housing crisis within Israel proper.

To go beyond the headlines, I recently caught up with Noam Sheizaf, an independent Israeli journalist based in Tel Aviv. Sheizaf, whose work has appeared in the Nation, Haaretz, Yedioth Ahronoth and more, is an editor and founder of +972 Magazine, a blog-based web magazine. Sheizaf recently authored a piece titled, “It’s all about real-estate: Understanding the tent protests.”

Alex Kane: What is your general take on the tent cities and mass protests currently making headlines in Israel?

Noam Sheizaf: I think it’s one of the most significant events I have seen in Israeli politics, certainly in the 20 years I have been following it closely. In the events I can remember that I witnessed in my own lifetime, this is one of the most important ones, most unexpected, and most promising one, perhaps.

AK: What do you think the political significance of the protests are?

NS: If you’re talking the narrow political games of the Knesset and the government, I don’t think we’ll see a lot happening right away. I don’t think this protest right now is a serious threat to the government. It’s more a challenge than a threat.

I think the protest is challenging something very important in the Israeli social order. There’s an unwritten agreement between various groups in Israeli society—I’m talking about the Jewish society. This is something that enables the entire system that we see here. So by declaring that the current social order is not suitable for us anymore, I think that the middle-class, the upper-middle class, the people who are protesting, are making a serious challenge against the structure of Israeli society. It’s more of something that represents an undercurrent in society than what you see on the surface. Because, ultimately, this protest doesn’t touch the significant political questions that we always hear about from Israel: the occupation, the future of the West Bank, the relations between Arab and Jewish citizens. But it touches on the layer beneath it that holds everything together. So, I think this is a major, major thing.

Read the whole interview here.

U.S. media buys Israel’s Naksa spin, ignores contary evidence

Variations on the line the Israeli government fed to Israeli media yesterday about the killings of demonstrators in the Golan Heights Sunday have made its way to the U.S. media, despite there being little evidence produced to support their claims.

The New York Times report is representative of how U.S. corporate media is covering the killings:

Israeli military officials on Monday disputed the casualty figures announced by Syria a day earlier, after Israeli forces fired on protesters who had tried to breach the Syrian frontier border with the Israeli-held Golan Heights. The discrepancy in numbers underlined the messages being conveyed by each side…

Israel said the government of President Bashar al-Assad in Syria was exploiting the Palestinian issue by sending unarmed protesters to the frontier in order to divert attention from its own antigovernment uprising and the bloody attempts to put it down.

Israel could not provide an exact number of how many protesters had been killed. But the Israeli military said Monday that 10 protesters were killed after they threw makeshift firebombs and started a fire that set off land mines near the border town of Quneitra, on the Syrian side of the lines.

“There were also a lot of shows being put on for the cameras,” said Lt. Col. Avital Leibovich, a spokeswoman for the Israeli military. “If somebody was shot in the toe, 30 people would crowd around with a stretcher. At night, when there was no shooting, the ambulances kept running up and down, their lights flashing in the dark.”

The Washington Post and the Christian Science Monitor reports have similar bents.  On CNN, Eliot Spitzer interviewed Aaron David Miller, and they both agreed that the protests had been “orchestrated” by the Assad regime, which is in the middle of suppressing its own uprising for democracy.

It very well may be that the Syrian regime decided not to block protesters from approaching the Israeli-occupied Golan Heights.  But that is a far cry from saying that Syria deliberately orchestrated unarmed protests by, perhaps, paying demonstrators, implying that Palestinian refugees demanding their rights can’t protest on their own initiative.  Max Blumenthal does a good job of casting doubt on the “demonstrators-for-hire” claim here.

More evidence and analysis point in the opposite direction of the Israeli military’s justifications that are printed in U.S. media.  The Israeli government has not produced a shred of evidence in support of their claims (and if they have, do point them out to me).  Yet there’s plenty of evidence to support claims of Israeli troops firing on protesters and killing them.

Before getting into the evidence and analysis, though, it’s worth asking:  why were there only hundreds of people marching to the Golan Heights on Naksa Day, if the Assad regime really wanted to divert attention from their own oppressive tactics?  Couldn’t they have brought out thousands if that were true?  And why would they be blocking people from reaching the Golan again if they wanted to provoke Israel more?

Over at the Electronic Intifada, Jillian Kestler D’Amours, a journalist based in Jerusalem, interviews Salman Fakhreddin, an activist who protested in the Golan.  His response testifies to reports that Israeli snipers killed unarmed demonstrators:

Yesterday, hundreds of refugees from Syria — Palestinians and Syrians — marched to the ceasefire line near Majdal Shams in a place called the Valley of Tears. We usually use this place for families [living opposite of the ceasefire line] to meet each other and to speak to each other with loudspeaker on all days of the year. Yesterday, it was a demonstration in memory of the war of ‘67 and the occupation of the Golan, West Bank and Gaza and Sinai. When these people reached the ceasefire line, the Israeli forces were well prepared with snipers. They were there already and they began firing live bullets and they killed and injured hundreds of people. Twenty-three people were killed yesterday.

It is a blood harvest of the Israeli army. I think first they began shooting to kill and during the afternoon and at beginning of the night, they began firing tear gas and rubber bullets. It means that the Israeli army yesterday was standing on its head and thinking with its feet. They dealt with the issue in the opposite of a humanitarian way. They decided to kill people in order to frighten them not to continue with this demonstration because they are afraid of the delegitimization of the state of Israel and the Israeli policy in the international community.

On the other hand, the demonstration yesterday and the demonstration of Nakba Day [on 15 May] is trying to develop a culture of nonviolence in the area, in the struggle against the Israelis, or what’s called the popular resistance. In Israel, they want to stop that because they are afraid it will reach the knowledge of the international community and the internal Israeli community will join this struggle as a peaceful struggle against colonialism and apartheid in this place of the world.

I think the idea was to stop that and because of that, they chose this way: to kill people first and then to shoot them with tear gas.

An eyewitness account for Amnesty International reported on by the Ma’an News Agency deal further blows to Israeli claims:

The global rights group said they had spoken to a human rights activist in the Israeli-occupied Golan Heights who “contradicts IDF [Israeli army] claims that all possible non-lethal means were used to disperse the protesters before lethal force was used.”

The march, marking Naksa day which commemorates the 1967 war, saw thousands of demonstrators calling for an end to Israel’s occupation of Palestinian and Syrian lands rush the ceasefire line. Syria’s state media say 23 were killed by Israeli army fire, while the Israeli military say 10 died throwing Molotov cocktails toward landmines.

A human rights activist who was 10 meters from the army told Amnesty he saw Israeli soldiers sheltering behind multiple barbed wire fences and periodically firing live ammunition at protesters some 60 meters away between 11am to 9pm.

The activist said soldiers had initially warned protesters in Arabic before opening fire, as Israeli army statements had said, but that troops did not fire tear gas or sound bombs to disperse the protesters until around dusk, in contradiction to army assurances that all non-lethal means were used, Amnesty said in a statement.

The rights organization also noted that while military spokespeople said Israeli troops aimed at the lower half of protesters’ bodies, Syrian health authorities reported that the majority of injuries were to the upper body.

Amnesty said it was “seriously concerned that Israeli troops used excessive force by firing live ammunition against protesters who were not endangering the lives of Israeli military personnel or others.”

The Israeli disinformation about the Naksa Day killings are similar to what happened after the flotilla raid and the death of Jawaher Abu Rahmah.  But the U.S. media continues to print Israeli spin without investigating what really happened.

U.S. already affirmed ’67 borders–only to have Obama backtrack

President Barack Obama is set to deliver a hotly anticipated speech tomorrow to “argue that the political upheaval [in the Arab world] raises the prospect for progress on all fronts, and will offer ‘some specific new ideas about U.S. policy toward the region,’” the New York Times reports. And according to a report in the Israeli daily Yediot Ahronoth, Obama will “call upon Israel to withdraw to the 1967 lines, with border alterations that will be agreed upon with the Palestinian Authority”–a move that would “disturb” Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

But perhaps Netanyahu has little to worry about. The Obama administration has already backtracked on the 1967 borders in private meetings with Palestinian officials, according to documents released by Al Jazeera as part of the “Palestine Papers.” The backtracking on the 1967 lines came despite an an affirmation in the Bush administration-backed “Road Map” on Middle East peace that the ’67 borders would be the border for Israel and a Palestinian state.

Analysis by Ali Abunimah for Al Jazeera indicates how little a commitment to the 1967 borders by Obama in his speech Thursday could mean:

In apparently contentious meetings between Mitchell and Palestinian chief negotiator Saeb Erekat and their respective teams in September and October 2009 — whose detailed contents have been revealed for the first time — Mitchell claimed the Bush administration position was nonbinding. He pressed the Palestinians to accept terms of reference that acquiesced to Israel’s refusal to recognize the 1967 line which separates Israel as it was established in 1948 from the West Bank and Gaza Strip where Palestinians hoped to have their state…

At a critical 21 October 2009 meeting, [George] Mitchell read out proposed language for terms of reference:

“The US believes that through good faith negotiations the parties can mutually agree on an outcome that achieves both the Palestinian goal of an independent and viable state encompassing all the territory occupied in 1967 or its equivalent in value, and the Israeli goal of secure and recognized borders that reflect subsequent developments and meets Israeli security requirements.”

Erekat’s response was blunt: “So no Road Map?” The implication of the words “or equivalent in value” is that the US would only commit to Palestinians receiving a specific amount of territory — 6258 square kilometers, or the equivalent area of the West Bank and Gaza Strip — but not to any specific borders.

Antiwar Radio’s Scott Horton interviews me on ‘How Your Tax Dollars Fuel the Hatred of Muslims’

I was on Scott Horton’s show on Antiwar Radio last week.  The MP3 of the interview is here, or you can stream it here.  Here’s the Antiwar.com description of the interview:

Alex Kane, frequent contributor to the blog Mondoweiss, discusses his article “How Your Tax Dollars Fuel the Hatred of Muslims;” the Islamophobes “training” law enforcement agencies that Muslims are their enemies, Islam is a terrorist religion and Sharia law is coming to take over the US; the questionable involvement of local cops in fighting terrorism, which is essentially a foreign policy problem; Israel’s interest in perpetuating a negative view of Muslims and Arabs; and how the US government shows more allegiance to Israel than its own Muslim citizens – the consequence of a foreign policy that is unwaveringly supportive of Israel.

How Your Tax Dollars Fuel the Hatred of Muslims

This article appeared in AlterNet today, where you can read the whole piece.  Here’s an excerpt:

The decade after the 9/11 attacks has seen the creation of a profitable cottage industry of self-styled “experts” on Islam. As Sarah Posner recently noted in an article on Religion Dispatches, anti-Muslim fear-mongers, ranging from politicians to national security experts, have “cultivated awide-ranging conspiracy theory that totalitarian Islamic radicals are bent on infiltrating America, displacing the Constitution, and subverting Western-style democracy in the U.S. and around the globe.”

What hasn’t gotten a comprehensive look, at least until now, is how public tax dollars have been funding parts of this industry under the guise of counter-terrorism trainings for city and state law enforcement across the country, which after 9/11 has gotten heavily involved in fighting terrorism.

A recently released report by the Political Research Associates, a group that monitors the right in America, puts the spotlight on how “public servants are regularly presented with misleading, inflammatory, and dangerous information about the nature of the terror threat.” The report, titled, “Manufacturing the Muslim Menace:  Private Firms, Public Servants, and the Threat to Rights and Security,” examines frames—like “Islam is a terrorist religion,” or “mainstream Muslim-Americans have terrorist ties”—and how they are propagated to law enforcement officers.

These trainings have caught the eye of Senator Joe Lieberman, the chairman of the Senate’s Homeland Security committee, and Senator Susan Collins, a ranking member. A March 29 letter to Attorney General Eric Holder and Secretary of Homeland Security Janet Napolitano from the senators reads, in part:  “We are concerned with recent reports that state and local law enforcement agencies are being trained by individuals who not only do not understand the ideology of violent Islamist extremism but also cast aspersions on a wide swath of ordinary Americans merely because of their religious affiliation.”

The letter asks the attorney general to provide a list of grant programs being used to fund counter-terrorism trainings and asks about “improved oversight” of these trainings—demands that mirror the recommendations made in the Political Research Associates’ publication.

AlterNet recently caught up with Thom Cincotta, the author of the report and a Political Research Associates’ staff member, to delve into more detail on this subset of the anti-Muslim cottage industry.

Alex Kane: How did this project come to be?

Thom Cincotta: At the Political Research Associates, we have been, for the past two years, looking at the growth of the domestic security apparatus, particularly how local police have been mobilized to fight terrorism—specifically in new forms of collaborative bodies like intelligence fusion centers and Joint Terrorism Task Forces. This mobilization represents a tremendous, unprecedented growth of our domestic intelligence apparatus, and with the new powers, capabilities and resources at the hands of that bureaucracy, there are risks for our civil liberties.

In examining that infrastructure, we have had an eye out for opportunities for the politicization of intelligence-type policing, and during the course of our investigation into fusion centers, we noticed some courses being offered at the local level. Specifically, in Massachusetts, we noticed that one company called Security Solutions International in May 2009 was offering a seminar on the “radical jihadist threat” that was hosted by the Massachusetts Bay Transportation Authority. The description of that course included things like the “legal wing of jihad in America,” and that right away set off red flags that this course content might not simply be looking at detecting valid terrorism.

Read the whole piece here.

‘The Palestine Cables’: Head of Egypt’s military council was seen as ‘obstacle’ to Israeli blockade of Gaza

This article originally appeared in Mondoweiss:

WikiLeaks has partnered up with the Israeli newspapers Haaretz and Yedioth Ahronoth and the Lebanese outlet Al Akhbar to release over 6,000 State Department cables on Israel. A series of posts on the new cables will be published in Mondoweiss in the coming days as part of the “Palestine Cables” feature.  Read the whole series here.

Israel knows who it likes in Egypt–Omar Suleiman, the former intelligence chief–and who it doesn’t, like the current head of the ruling Egyptian Higher Military Council Mohamad Hussain Tantawi.

Haaretz publishes a report on a cable detailing Israel’s complaints about Tantawi:

IDF officers complained to their American counterparts in November 2009 that Gen. Mohamed Hussein Tantawi, Egypt’s defense minister at the time and the current leader of the ruling military council, was “an obstacle” to the efforts to counter arms smuggling to Gaza through Sinai. The comments came during a meeting held as part of U.S.-Israel strategic dialogue.

The significance of the cable lies in what it may portend for the future of Egyptian-Israeli relations in the post-Mubarak era.  Publication of the cable comes in the midst of the most heavy Israeli attack on the Gaza Strip since “Operation Cast Lead,” and a large Palestine solidarity demonstration in response at the Israeli embassy in Giza, Cairo.

The ongoing demonstration at the embassy reflects the Egyptian populace’s overwhelming opposition to the Israeli occupation and the siege of Gaza.  But under Hosni Mubarak, Egypt has been Israel’s chief regional partner in enforcing the crippling four-year-long blockade of the Gaza Strip.

Since Mubarak’s overthrow in February, a looming question has been to what extent the Egyptian government and military would continue to enforce a blockade that the vast majority of their population detests.  The cable makes clear that there is some tension between the Egyptian and Israeli militaries.

What that may mean for the blockade of Gaza remains to be seen, but there have been mixed signals so far from Egypt’s military.  While a delegation calling itself “Tahrir 4 Gaza” managed to bring in a symbolic bag of cement–the “first bag of cement not approved by Israel” and that hadn’t come through smuggling tunnels, according to a press release–the delegation had to contend with a recalcitrant Egyptian military.  Posts by activists on tahrir4gaza.net claimed that the military, beforehand, pressured them to “reschedule the event,” and that authorities warned bus companies against transporting delegation members to the border.

Currently, only 300 Palestinians are allowed to leave Gaza daily through the Rafah crossing, and the Palestinian Ma’an News Agency reported March 6 that “getting out of Gaza is harder than ever.” The agency stated that the “blacklist” — Palestinians who are banned from entering Egypt — “has got longer since the Egyptian revolution, quashing hopes that the new regime would lift the siege.”

I recently spoke with Nadia Hijab, senior fellow at the Institute for Palestine Studies, to get her take:

Israel has been hoping to rid itself of responsibility for Gaza for “a long time now, and I would think that the military would be very aware of that,” said Hijab. “The military will probably walk a fine line between loosening up the blockade without inheriting Gaza.”

Noura Erakat, a Palestinian attorney and analyst, had this to say on the future of the blockade:

“Given the considersations that this new regime will have, and the threats that it will face, it can’t [decide to lift the blockade] in a vacuum.” Those threats include Israel’s powerful military as well as the possibilities of strict conditions on or cuts to U.S. military aid. The worst-case scenario, according to Erekat, could be Israeli forces threatening to police the border themselves on the Egytian side.

The cable on Tantawi isn’t conclusive at all.  But if things weren’t smooth sailing between Israel and Egypt’s respective military commands in 2009, what will happen now if a truly democratic Egypt asserts itself in the region and charts a somewhat more independent course?

Jewish left continues to take on the Simon Wiesenthal Center

This article originally appeared in Mondoweiss:

Protesters outside the Simon Wiesenthal Center in New York City. (Photo: Bud Korotzer)

A coalition of progressive Jewish organizations on both coasts yesterday slammed the Simon Wiesenthal Center’s honoring of the civil rights-era Freedom Riders while “engaging in anti-Muslim bigotry that is no less destructive than that against which the Freedom Riders protested,” as Alan Levine, a New York activist and civil rights lawyer who worked in Mississippi in 1964 and 1965, put it in a press statement.

Simultaneously, Jewish peace groups, Palestine solidarity groups and the Islamic Shura Council of Southern California held a protest against the Wiesenthal Center in Los Angeles. The central demand of the protests was for the center, which runs the Museum of Tolerance, to be “a voice for justice on behalf of the Muslim community,” instead of a voice disrespecting Muslims.

It was the latest action to try and turn the heat up on the Simon Wiesenthal Center, which came out against the Park 51 Muslim community center and is building a Jerusalem branch of its Museum of Tolerance on top of a historic Muslim cemetery.

Jews Against Islamophobia, a coalition consisting of Jews Say No!, Jewish Voice for Peace, Jews for Racial and Economic Justice and American Jews for a Just Peace, has targeted the Simon Wiesenthal Center since mid-September. The coalition has conducted frequent demonstrations outside the Museum of Tolerance, holding up signs calling out the center’s “hypocrisy” and passing out flyers to passer-bys and those going into the museum.

Rabbi Marvin Hier, the founder of the Simon Wiesenthal Center, appeared on Fox News last August to say that the location of the proposed center, known as Park 51, was “insensitive.” The executive director of the center, which describes itself as a Jewish organization that “promotes human rights and dignity,” expressed similar sentiments to Crain’s New York Business.

The protests highlight the split within the American Jewish community over Park 51 and Islamophobia. For instance, Marc Tracy of Tablet pointed out last August that “out of the [Marist] pool of registered New York City voters, only 20 percent of Jews approve of the center, while 71 percent oppose it.”

In interviews, members of the coalition say their aim is to highlight alternative Jewish voices against Islamophobia and in support of the Park 51 project as well as attempt to pressure the center to reverse what they say is a hypocritical position. “As much as [mainstream Jewish organizations] want to marginalize others in the Jewish community, I think there are lots and lots of Jews who stand for the principles of justice together with other communities,” said Donna Nevel, a member of Jews Say No!

The coalition’s actions are meant to “let institutions such as the Wiesenthal Center know that they can’t get away with Islamophobic and anti-Arab racist comments and just assume that there’s not going to be any pushback,” said Jon Moscow, a leading member of Jews for Racial and Economic Justice, a New York City-based social justice organization. Jewish groups’ opposition to Park 51 shows a “real misunderstanding of Jewish history in America, and to use the old phrase, ‘what’s good for the Jews,’” Moscow said.

In an emailed statement, the Simon Wiesenthal Center said that “the issue is not the right to build the Islamic Center, but one of sensitivity by religious leaders to the suffering of innocents. The Simon Wiesenthal Center believes that the feelings of the families of the victims of the 9/11 attacks are paramount.” The statement went on, saying, “if the families agree to the Islamic Center’s proposed location, fine; if they ask that it be moved, we would hope that the organizers would be sensitive to those feelings and move the location elsewhere in Manhattan.”

Those involved with Jews Against Islamophobia are also highlighting the connection between Islamophobia here and abroad by denouncing the Simon Wiesenthal Center for the building of a Museum of Tolerance on top of the Islamic Mamilla cemetery in Jerusalem. The Center for Constitutional Rights, which has filed a petition with several international bodies to halt construction of the museum, says the project has resulted in the “disinterment of hundreds of graves.”

A three-part investigation by the Israeli daily Haaretz documented the building of the museum, reporting that “hundreds of skeletons that were buried in Jerusalem’s central Muslim cemetery over a period of some 1,000 years” were “cleared away from the site swiftly and clandestinely during five grueling months of nonstop work.”

Rebecca Vilkomerson, the executive director of Jewish Voice for Peace, says that the Wiesenthal Center is using the word “tolerance as a fig leave, to engage in behavior that is anything but tolerant. There is a sort of fetishization of Jewish victim hood, but it doesn’t translate into identifying other forms of oppression, such as Islamophobia. In fact, by opposing Park 51, they are engaging in Islamophobia themselves.”

Vilkomerson says that given the history of discrimination against Jews in the U.S. and Jewish struggles in solidarity with other marginalized groups, the Jewish community should be standing firm against Islamophobia.

“It’s ‘never again’ for everyone, not just ‘never again’ for us. Therefore, its our responsibility to speak out when other groups are being targeted.”

The uncertain future of the Gaza blockade post-Mubarak

The overthrow of Egyptian dictator Hosni Mubarak has caused a lot of people to speculate on what the Egyptian revolution means for the people of Gaza.

Under Mubarak’s rule, Egypt was the junior partner in the Israeli/U.S. effort to squeeze the people of Gaza following the Hamas takeover in 2007.  Mubarak’s gone now, so what happens next?

The only thing that’s clear is that the situation is in flux.

The Egyptian media outlet Al Masry Al Youm‘s Baudouin Long speaks to analysts on “the future of Egyptian diplomacy in Palestine”:

Following the revolution, several experts believe Egyptian diplomacy in Palestine could shift slightly toward a more balanced approach than the traditional backing of the Palestinian Authority (PA) as opposed to Hamas.

Sayyed Amin Shalaby, executive director of the Egyptian Council for Foreign Relations, is convinced that “Egyptian diplomacy will be more assertive and supportive of the rights of Palestinian people.” He affirmed that “Egypt will be working more for the reconciliation between Hamas and Fatah. In the new regime, when a democratic government will be elected, the tension with Hamas will decrease…”

For Manuel Musallam, a member of the revolutionary council of Fatah who lived in Gaza for 15 years until 2009, Egypt must open the Rafah border. “It would be the first step to prove Egypt’s real determination to change its approach to the Palestinian issue… We will see if the new regime will open the border with Gaza,” he said.

But a Western diplomat in Cairo said the Egyptian military is not keen on complying with Hamas’ demand to open the Rafah border: “The Military is extremely concerned by the security in Sinai, especially after the explosion of the gas pipeline on 5 February. It won’t be keen on opening the border”.

Gaza expert Sara Roy, on Foreign Policy‘s Mideast Channel, comments:

Given the changing political landscape in neighboring Egypt, Gaza’s strategic importance may become even more vital for regional security. There are emerging indications in policy circles that the Egypt-Gaza relationship and how it may evolve are far more worrisome to the U.S. and Israel than is publicly acknowledged…

The power balance in the region is slowly but inexorably shifting in a manner that does not favor US-Israel dominance (with its acceptance and legitimizing of Israeli occupation and Palestinian dispossession). It is the Arab people — not their regimes — who have always supported Palestinian rights, and they may soon be in a position to insist on them. So, too, will Palestinians.

I interviewed some experts on this topic for a piece I wrote in the latest issue of the Indypendent:

Nadia Hijab, a senior fellow at the Institute for Palestine Studies told The Indypendent that Egypt’s rulers fear any further opening of Rafah could provide impetus for Israel to throw Gaza into Egypt’s lap. Egypt occupied Gaza for nearly two decades starting in 1948. Following its sweeping victory over Arab states including Egypt in the 1967 Six Day War, Israel began the direct military occupation of Gaza, the West Bank and East Jerusalem, among other lands.

Israel has been hoping to rid itself of responsibility for Gaza for “a long time now, and I would think that the military would be very aware of that,” said Hijab. “The military will probably walk a fine line between loosening up the blockade without inheriting Gaza.”

Noura Erekat adds, “Given the considersations that this new regime will have, and the threats that it will face, it can’t [decide to lift the blockade] in a vacuum.” Those threats include Israel’s powerful military as well as the possibilities of  strict conditions on or cuts to U.S. military aid. The worst-case scenario, according to Erekat, could be Israeli forces threatening to police the border themselves on the Egytian side.

 

Cracks Appear in the Gaza Blockade

This piece originally appeared in the Indypendent’s latest issue.

The popular revolution that ousted Egyptian dictator Hosni Mubarak has focused renewed attention on Egypt’s role in the blockade of the Gaza Strip. For nearly four years Egypt has aided Israel and the United States in strangling Gaza’s economy, but there are small signs that the siege may be easing.

“The world keeps watching as Gaza is blockaded,” said Mousheera Jammal, a Palestinian activist in Gaza who has been involved with organizing against the clampdown, but “there is hope because of the Egyptian youth.”

On March 6, a delegation organized by Tahrir 4 Gaza successfully crossed the Egyptian border into Gaza and delivered a “symbolic 50-pound bag of cement.” It was the “first bag of cement not approved by Israel” and that hadn’t come through smuggling tunnels, according to a press release from Tahrir 4 Gaza.

Organizers had to contend, however, with a recalcitrant Egyptian military which is currently running the show in Egypt. Posts by activists on tahrir4gaza.net claimed the military pressured them to “reschedule the event,” and that authorities warned bus companies against transporting delegation members to the border.

Organizers are now planning to bring 30 tons of cement into Gaza as part of a series of trips that would “eventually culminate in the permanent opening of the border to people and goods between post-revolutionary Egypt and Palestine,” according to delegation head Ahmed Elassy.

Since 2007, both Israel and Egypt have imposed a crippling siege on the 1.3 million Palestinians in Gaza to undermine the government led by Hamas, which won elections in January 2006 for the Palestinian parliament and the following year defeated a coup launched by the U.S. and Israeli-backed Fatah.

Cementing its role as junior partner in U.S. and Israeli dominance in the region, Egypt shut the Rafah crossing along Southern Gaza, closing a critical point of access for trade, goods and people.

Palestinian attorney and analyst Noura Erekat explains that Egypt’s cooperation with the blockade is largely due to pressure from the United States and Israel, as well as a view shared with Israel that the Islamist Hamas movement is a threat.

Yet the revolution in Egypt has altered this equation. Prominent Egyptian figures such as Arab League General Secretary Amr Moussa and Nobel laureate Mohamed ElBaradei have spoken out against the blockade. The Muslim Brotherhood, Egypt’s largest opposition group, is also against the blockade. And Egypt’s Foreign Minister Nabil al-Arabi has called for an end to the siege.

The key player is Egypt’s military, however. It has close ties to Israel, receives $1.3 billion a year in U.S. military aid and is ruling the country by decree while elections are organized.

The Palestinian Ma’an News Agency reported March 6 “getting out of Gaza is harder than ever.” The agency stated that the “blacklist” — Palestinians who are banned from entering Egypt — “has got longer since the Egyptian revolution, quashing hopes that the new regime would lift the siege.”

According to observers, the Egyptian military’s position on the blockade, and its insistence on allowing only 300 Palestinians per day to leave Gaza stems from various factors.

Nadia Hijab, a senior fellow at the Institute for Palestine Studies told The Indypendent that Egypt’s rulers fear any further opening of Rafah could provide impetus for Israel to throw Gaza into Egypt’s lap. Egypt occupied Gaza for nearly two decades starting in 1948. Following its sweeping victory over Arab states including Egypt in the 1967 Six Day War, Israel began the direct military occupation of Gaza, the West Bank and East Jerusalem, among other lands.

Israel has been hoping to rid itself of responsibility for Gaza for “a long time now, and I would think that the military would be very aware of that,” said Hijab. “The military will probably walk a fine line between loosening up the blockade without inheriting Gaza.”

Noura Erekat adds, “Given the considersations that this new regime will have, and the threats that it will face, it can’t [decide to lift the blockade] in a vacuum.” Those threats include Israel’s powerful military as well as the possibilities of  strict conditions on or cuts to U.S. military aid. The worst-case scenario, according to Erekat, could be Israeli forces threatening to police the border themselves on the Egytian side.

“Fundamentally, the official position is the same for now,” wrote Issandr El Amrani, and Egyptian journalist, in a March 7 blog post on arabist.net. “Egypt has a moral responsibility to address the humanitarian situation in Gaza, as well as encourage the international community to pressure Israel into lifting the siege.”

U.S. funded Israeli-linked security company pushes anti-Muslim ideology

As Representative Peter King’s hearings on “Muslim radicalization” refocus attention on Islamophobia, a new report sheds light on the  network of private security firms tapping into public funds that push an anti-Muslim agenda to law enforcement agencies.

An organization called Security Solutions International (SSI) is one focus of the Political Research Associates’ report (pdf) , titled “Manufacturing the Muslim Menace:  Private Firms, Public Servants, & the Threat to Rights and Security.”

SSI “trades on the reputation of Israeli counterterrorism expertise by using Israeli veterans as trainers.”

This is the ideology that SSI, which “taps into public funds for its trainings,” promotes, according to the report:

Following civil liberties advocates’ criticism of SSI’s courses on “Radical Islamic Culture” in 2008, SSI intensified its promotions for the course. SSI Chief Executive Officer Solomon Bradman responded to criticism by saying, “I can’t take the responsibility of my course linking their religion [Islam] to terrorism. I think their religion got linked to terrorism a long time ago.”56 SSI planned to expand the reach of its “Islamic Jihadist Threat” seminar, holding it in even more venues, including Detroit, Minneapolis, Washington, DC, Dallas, Kansas, and Boston…

The Counter Terrorist’s coverage [, an SSI publication,] includes infrastructure protection, school shooting threat assessments, intelligence gathering and what SSI calls “the Radical Islamic Threat.” Articles like “U.S. Prison Recruitment for Jihad”—a piece by M. Zuhdi Jasser and Raphael Shore, founder of the Clarion Fund, a nonprofit organization “that aims to alert Americans about the real threat of Radical Islam”—reinforce an image of Muslims as menacing militant fundamentalists. The magazine’s regular inclusion of such articles allows the publication to function as a credentialed law enforcement outlet for authors who exaggerate and distort terrorist threats.

The report also notes other instances where a far-right pro-Israel agenda has been promoted hand-in-hand with Islamophobia.

Here’s the bottom line the report gives on support for Israel and Islamophobia:

Islamophobic story lines characterize the widespread support for Palestinian statehood and opposition to the continuing Israeli occupation of Palestinian lands among Muslim-American leaders as evidence of sympathy for terrorism.

The report is further evidence of Scott McConnell’s observation “that anti-Muslim bigotry is becoming embedded in American political culture, and Israel and its supporters are playing a substantial role in generating it.”