Children from Kufr Qasem develop their own activities to educate one another about history, geography and their rights as part of Badil's Youth Education and Activation project, August 2009. Badil

This article is based on my personal experience as a teacher of Palestinian students in Israeli public schools and through my work as school inspector and history curriculum team coordinator for Arab schools from 1975 until 2004. During this period I was engaged in efforts at textbook reform, and on research about Israel's education system which I undertook for my doctoral dissertation.

¹

Background
 
Israel has a highly centralized public education system which is operated and controlled by the Ministry of Education. The only major exception is the ultra-orthodox Jewish education system which enjoys autonomy for ideological reasons.² The state education system operated by the Ministry is composed of two separate streams: the public secular stream, and public national religious stream.
 
Palestinian students make up one quarter of all students in the Israeli state education system.³ All public schools in Palestinian communities in Israel belong to the public secular stream; no public religious schools are available for Palestinians. Public education for Palestinians is administered by the Department for Arab Education, which is a special administrative entity within the Ministry of Education and under its direct control. The Department for Arab Education has no autonomous decision making authorities.
 
Up until 1987, the Department for Arab Education was headed by a Jewish-Israeli director who was appointed by the Ministry and involved in policy making to ensure control over the Palestinian population.⁴ Since then, Palestinians have been appointed to lead the Department but have been excluded from policy decision making as a result of parallel organizational reform which provided for the integration of Arab public schools into the Jewish public education system and its local authorities. Thus, while the Department for Arab Education continued to exist and came to be headed by a Palestinian employed by the Ministry, the heads of Arab Education have held no real power. The Department is only meant to oversee the education of Palestinians and answer to Jewish-Israelis who continue to be in charge.⁵
 
From the beginning, Israeli politicians saw in the state education system, an instrument to realize Zionist political objectives: the founding of a Jewish nation with a shared identity rooted in Zionist beliefs.⁶ Conversely, the educational system was used to ensure a complete lack of Arab and Palestinian identity among the Palestinian citizens of the state.⁷
 
In 1953, Israel passed the Public Education Law with the aim to centralize the education system. In this context, the goals of public education were defined and formalized for the first time. The first goal stated that the educational system seeks to raise youth on the values of Israeli culture, and love of the [Jewish] nation and people of Israel.⁸ This goal remained in place throughout subsequent amendments of the law. No positive goals have been formulated for the education of Palestinians based on the values of Arab, Muslim, and Christian culture and the Palestinian nation. Thus, the teaching of Palestine's history in Israeli schools, both Jewish and Arab, is based on the Zionist narrative which holds that Jews are one people that formed their identity in the land of Israel (Palestine) more than one thousand years ago, and returned to it to form that identity again.⁹
 
Of course Palestine was, and has remained, inhabited by its Arab-Palestinian population, who have marked it with its culture, landmarks, and language. But the Zionist narrative avoids facing this reality. This is expressed in Israeli educational texts and curricula through:

• the secularization of myths from the Torah, i.e. their transformation into facts: the myth of the promised land, for example, is turned into an actual land of the forefathers and the presentation of Israel as the historical homeland of the Jewish nation;
• promotion of a system of social beliefs, such as we are victims, we call for peace, our wars are defensive, our arms are pure, Palestinians hate us, they are the aggressors;¹⁰
• selectiveness in the choice of facts and explanations, ignoring contradictory arguments, especially facts connected to Arab-Palestinian history, or at best, presenting them as a narrative that is part of distorted history.

 
Main findings from research
 
In 1953, the Ministry of Education issued the first history curriculum for Jewish public and religious elementary schools.¹¹ This curriculum was translated into Arabic with some adjustments,¹² and Palestinian students were expected to learn the same narrative as their Jewish peers. Arab and Jewish teachers were subsequently charged with the task of preparing textbooks according to that curriculum. History at that time was taught in a complete chronological cycle, with ideas introduced in elementary school (fifth through eighth grade), revisited and expanded upon in High School (ninth through twelfth grade). In my research, I undertook, among others, to investigate how Zionist history has been presented to Palestinian students in history textbooks up until 1975.
 
Early history textbooks for Palestinian fifth graders,¹³ tell the history of Palestine from the perspective of the [Jewish] people of Israel based on the Torah. Exceptions are a few scattered paragraphs which state that the Canaanites colonized the mountains of Judea and the Negev, the Jebusites colonized the mountains of Jerusalem, and that Palestinians differ from Canaanites and are not Semites.¹⁴
 
As expected, the texts were strongly driven by the Torah: The Hebrews were begot from Abraham, who crossed the Euphrates and settled in an area which naturally splits into three parts, including the middle region, called Sharon, and the northern region, which is separated from the middle region by the Jezreel Valley.¹⁵ Canaanites that lived in that area are described as the primitive tribes.¹⁶
 
The textbook then mentions Jacob, calling him by his last name, Israel: Israel became the father of the Israelite tribes.¹⁷ It then describes the exile of the Israelites to Egypt, and their flight from Egypt, led by Moses: The exodus of the Israelites led by Moses was an important event in their history that remained in the nations mind with the passing of eras. It was a great event that placed them in history as a nation.¹⁸ When the book gets to Joshua Ben Nun, it points to his heroic feats and the sacrifice of his people, which secured victory for them against their enemies.¹⁹
 
The textbook follows the narrative from the Torah, era after era, until the destruction of the temple and the Babylonian capture. From there, the Jews return from captivity during the reign of Cyrus the Great. The book does not deviate from heroic descriptions of the Israelites, justifying all of their wars, and describing the indigenous population of Canaanites and others as enemies and primitive people while using contemporary Hebrew names for names of places and localities, and ignoring their original names.
 
This method is repeated with regard to the history of Palestine under Hellenic rule. The main thrust of the text here concerns the heroic deeds of the Maccabees and their wars, Judah Maccabee went forth with his brothers to secure the foundations of governance and protect the people from enemies, battling the Adamites, and Omarites and the inhabitants of the Galilee, as well as standing up to military campaigns of the Seleucids.²⁰
 
Sixth grade history textbooks do not differ in method or content. The history of Palestine under Roman rule is the history of Jews in Israel until the destruction of the temple in 70 BC. About seven hundred years of the indigenous Palestinians' history is absent from the pages of the book until the onset of the Arab-Islamic conquest. It briefly mentions the Arab conquest of Jerusalem under the heading The Conquest of Jerusalem, with one sentence in particular standing out: Omar [the second Muslim caliph] treated the Jews, who helped the Muslims, well, left them their property and pardoned them from paying taxes.²¹ The aim of this sentence is to provide assurance of a Jewish presence in the city at that time.
 
Although this book revolves around Arab-Islamic history and Islamic civilization until the fall of the Abbasid empire, it does not mention Palestine until the start of the crusades. It also remains silent about Arab initiatives in Palestine, such as the building of Ramla by Sulayman bin Abd al-Malek, and the construction of the Hisham Palace in Jericho. Casual mention is given (pp. 155-156) of the building of the Dome of the Rock, and then the Aqsa mosque, during the reign of Abd al-Malek ibn Marwan.
 
Returning to the history of Palestine, a history textbook for seventh graders called Yearning for Zion contains the following sentence: facing [the Christian oppression of Jews in Europe], their attachment to their beliefs grew and their desire to return to Zion, the land that the Romans forced them out of in the first century AD, deepened.²² Under the heading The Relationship Between Jews in Diaspora and the Land of Israel the book reviews at length stories of individuals or small groups of Jews that immigrated to Tiberias, Safad, and the villages of Galilee between the years 1141-1662. It describes their achievements in every field, portraying them as the ones who made the area blossom.
 
To sum up, the textbook omits the history of Palestine from 638 to 1791 except insofar as it pertains to Jews. The two main exceptions are the construction the walls of Jerusalem by Sultan Suleiman the Magnificent in 1542, to protect the city from Bedouin attacks (p. 186), and the mention of Napoleon's siege of Akka (p. 301).
 
The Zionist historical narrative is completed in the eighth grade history textbook²³ which presents the contemporary history of Palestine. The topic is divided into two units: The English in Israel (instead of the British Mandate in Palestine) and The Founding of the State of Israel. Thirty of sixty class periods that eighth graders must attend are devoted to this second chapter. In the spirit of the curriculum, the narrative in this book revolves around subheadings with suggestive meanings, such as The Continuous Yearning for Return and National Independence (pp. 178-182). This chapter, as well as the chapters that follow, address at length everything that has any connection to contemporary Jewish history from the perspective of the Zionist historical narrative, until the founding of the state of Israel in 1948. Under the heading War of Independence (p. 222), the book states that the armies of the Arab countries entered the country in May of 1948 and fought against the Israeli forces . . . which were able to push back these armies until the four countries that have shared borders with Israel were forced . . . to sign a truce. As for Arab-Palestinian society, it is completely absent in the textbook. Moreover, not even one word is spent on the Palestinian refugees.
 
This trend repeats itself in the high school curriculum and textbooks, and which are all translated from Hebrew, with the only exception of the book The History of Arabs prepared by Salman Falah (a former education inspector) who writes that Omar Ibn al-Khatab divided greater Syria into the regions of Hims, Hama, Aleppo and Israel [sic].²⁴
 
Efforts at educational reform
 
In 1975, I began my work as school inspector and coordinator for the history team in the Arab schools and set out to change the situation. A first success came in 1976 when a new curriculum was issued for elementary and middle schools.²⁵ The new curriculum differed from its predecessor in the following ways: 

• The name Palestine was inserted into the curriculum for the first time, instead of the land of Israel. Places were named using their original Arabic names rather than the Hebraized names of the older curriculum;
• The emphasis on the Torah narrative was reduced, and the histories of other peoples, like the Canaanites, were highlighted. Emphasis on the Zionist narrative of the history of Palestine was reduced, and an Arab-Palestinian historical narrative was introduced for contrast. For instance, a new headline read: The beginning of Jewish colonization and the Arabs in Palestine²⁶ instead of the previous Yearning for Zion and the Return to Israel. In other words, the focus of the curriculum shifted from the Zionist historical narrative of Israel towards a history of Palestine.

 
Following the publication of the new curriculum, I also oversaw the preparation of a series of books that replaced the previous textbooks. A new book which most strongly related to Palestinian history was a history textbook for the sixth grade.²⁷ It said, for example, that The Torah states that the prophet Moses . . . (p. 26), and that Joshua Ben Nun resorted to subterfuge in his battle against the Canaanites (p. 28). This stylistic change, which makes mention of the Torah in reported language, improved the objectivity of the text, allowing for a critical approach towards the Torah-Zionist narrative. A seventh grade textbook surveying at length the history of Palestine under the rule of the crusaders, moreover, notes: The crusaders also built relationships with the Muslims in their everyday life by hiring Arab craftsmen, as well as being influenced by their Eastern style of dress and manners.²⁸
 
Part two of the history textbook for the eighth grade contains the heading Palestine in the Age of Political Organizations, and says: For forty years in the nineteenth century, the Ottomans tried to control the inhabitants of Palestine by recognizing local leadership.²⁹ In this way, the Arab-Palestinian narrative began to gain ground in textbooks, albeit in a limited fashion.
 
As for high school, I oversaw the preparation of a new curriculum in 1999, which was only approved by the Education Ministry after a two-year long battle. This curriculum included an entire unit called Modern Arab-Palestinian Society.³⁰ It covers the Palestinian presence on the land until 1948. In the unit on The War of 1948, we prepared a chapter titled The Origin of the Refugee Problem (Expulsion? Escape?).³¹ By the time I stopped working with the Ministry of Education in 2004, a version of the textbook that included this chapter had not yet been published. The Arab-Palestinian narrative did however appear in a general, brief form in the three sections of textbooks over which I oversaw preparation.³²One chapter ends with the sentence, many Palestinians whose cities and villages were occupied were forced to leave their homes and became refugees, because of the dangers of war and its destruction, and because of a number of massacres that were perpetrated against them, such as the Massacre of Deir Yassin in April 1948.
 
The ideological backlash
 
In April 2004, I left my post at the Ministry of Education, but I continued to follow the government's development of the curriculum. A new high school curriculum was issued in 2007³³, which was followed in 2008 by a new curriculum for elementary and middle school levels,³⁴ replacing both the 1976 and 1999 curricula. The new curriculum for elementary school completely erased modern Palestinian history. Also erased was the unit called The History of Arab-Palestinian Society in the Modern Era for high schoolers. Again, the Zionist historical narrative is imposed on Palestinian students in history textbooks which ignore the history and culture of the Palestinian people. Just as in the period before 1975, anything connected to the history of the Palestinian people has been erased in the revised curricula of 2007 and 2008.
 
Such orientation will leave a negative impact on students in the long term. First, the connection between the Palestinian-Arab students and their history, culture and identity is severed. This effect is reinforced by the lack of extra-curricular educational activities in Arab schools, such as the commemoration of important events, including the Nakba, massacres, and important political events. This in addition to the prohibition on commemorating national personalities and thinkers such as Ghassan Kanafani, Mahmoud Darwish and Edward Said. Such commemorations are now about to become explicitly banned by the Ministry of Education. Severing this connection means that the cultural wellsprings, which allow students to build their collective history and identity, are dried out. As a result, students are likely to slide towards alienation from their homeland, and opportunities for reflection on the Palestinian people's history and their ongoing Nakba, which are vital for students to form their world view, are missed.
 
The second impact of a Zionist historical narrative in curricula, including the use of Hebrew names and the Hebraization of Arabic names of places in textbooks, is to raise students on the idea that the country, Palestine, called Eretz Yisrael (the Land of Israel), belongs to Jews. Palestinian students are inculcated with the idea that Jews are the original and oldest inhabitants of the land and the most attached to it. Raising Arab-Palestinian students on this idea, while not providing adequate cultural and historical knowledge to challenge it, encourages alienation from their homeland.
 
Feelings of alienation will later on undermine the capacity of students to tackle oppressive policies, especially in matters of land and social culture, and transform them into easy prey for the dominant Israeli political discourse which can be summarized as follows: this is the land of the Jewish people. We returned to our rightful historic homeland and built it up. You Arab-Palestinians are just passers-by, strangers to this land, and a source of annoyance to our presence. This is the discourse underlying Israeli political demands for the recognition of Israel as a Jewish state.
 
Palestinian history teachers can do little to correct this negative trend. They are limited by the state curriculum and textbooks, and banned from deviating from these texts. They are also monitored by officials in the schools, and by the Ministry of Education. Ultimately, Palestinian students have no choice but to memorize history as it is presented in the textbooks, because they will take their final high school graduation exams (bagrut), in which the Ministry of Education prepares the questions and evaluates the students' answers.
 
Some would argue that history classes and textbooks are no longer central for students to get to know their history and build a collective memory and identity. New means of communication, as well as the role of television and computers, have become the vectors of that memory. Scholars, however, agree that school textbooks, and especially history textbooks, have remained central in building memory and fashioning identity.³⁵ This, because students, like others in society, absorb information from various sources in a haphazard and unsystematic manner, and usually in an individual setting. History classes on the other hand, meet day after day, year after year, and from an early age until maturity. School history education is delivered through systematic, didactic and pedagogical methods, and in a collective setting with peers. History classes and history textbooks therefore remain the central and strongest element in the fashioning of identity, and play a crucial role in building collective memory, or, as in our case, erasing it.
 
Endnotes
1 Barghouthi, Said: Ideology, Education and Multiculturalism: A Study of Jewish Education in Israel Submitted for PhD, The Faculty of Social and Environment Studies, The University of Liverpool, 2003
2 The Structure of the Education System in Israel (in Hebrew) www.ab-lifeschooling.com
3 The State of Arab Education at the start of the 2009/2010 school year, The Committee for the Monitoring of Arab Education (in Hebrew), a study without date.
4The establishment of separate Arab departments was a common practice in the early period of Israel's existence as a means of control over the Palestinian population in all aspects of daily life. Key positions in the Department for Arab Education were held by Jews, the majority of whom were intelligence officers. (See: Ian Lustick, Arabs in the Jewish State. Israel's Control of a National Minority; University of Texas Press, 1980; also: S. Mar'i, Arab Education in Israel, Syracuse University Press, 1978.)
5 Text of a Job Vacancy posting for Principal of the Administration for Arab Education, The Ministry of Education 20003, (in Hebrew).
6 Bin Eleizer, Uri, A Nation in Military Uniform and the War: Israeli in its Early Years, Zamaneem, 49 (Summer 1994) pg. 51, (in Hebrew.)
7 Al-Haj, Magid: Education, Empowerment and Control: The Case of the Arabs in Israel, State University of New York, 1995, pg. 128
8 Eideen, Shafeeh, The Goals of Education in Israel, Tel Aviv 1976, pg. 10 (in Hebrew.)
9 Prior, M, Zionism and the State of Israel. London, 1999 pg. 205-211
10 ibid., pg. 228
11 Curriculum for State and State Religious Elementary Schools, Ministry of Education and Culture, Jerusalem, 1953 (in Hebrew.)
12 Curriculum for State Arabic Elementary Schools, Ministry of Education and Culture (no date or place of publishing)
13 Hadad, Ezra, Daniel, Ilyas: The History of Fifth Grade in Elementary School, according to the new curricula, Taburski, Tel Aviv, 1957.
14 ibid., pg. 60
15 ibid., pg. 61
16 ibid., pg. 61
17 ibid., pg. 63
18 ibid., pg. 65
19 ibid., pg. 68
20 ibid., pg. 149
21 Ibrahim, Hayla and al-Thahur, Abd al-Karim: History for Sixth Grade in Elementary School According to the New School Curricula, Taburski, Tel Aviv 1963, pg. 117.
22 Abu Manneh, Butrus, History for Seventh Grade in Elementary School according to the New School Currricula, Taburski, Tel Aviv, 1964, pg. 205
23 Falah, Salman, History for Eighth Grade in Elementary School According the the New School Curricula, Dar al-Nahdha, Nazzereth, 1975.
24 Falah, Salman: History for Arabs in 10^th Grade, pg. 46
25 History for the Elementary and Middle Levels, Ministry of Education and Culture, The Center for Educational Curricula, 1^st Printing, Arshelem, Jerusalem, 1976.
26 ibid., pg. 36
27 Barghouthi, Said, Zubi Yousef, Frances Fayhim, The History of Peoples Civilizations around the Mediterranean, The Ministry of Education and Culture, Education Administration, Department of Educational Curiculla, Arshliam, Jerusalem, 2004, revised edition, pg. 285.
28 Barghouthi, Said, History Lessons for Seventh Grade, the Ministry of Education and Culture, Education Administration, Department of Educational Curricula, Urshalim al-Quds, 2004, revised edition, pg. 285
29Barghouthi, Said, Bashara Zahir, Zubi Yousef, Kabha Moustafa: History for Eight Grade, Part Two, according to the history curriculum for Arab schools, first printing, Ministry of Education, Culture and Sports, The education secretary, p. 158.
30 History Curriculum for High School in Arab Schools (10^th 12^th Grade), The Ministry of Education, Culture and Sports, Education Administration, The Center for Educational Curricula, Experimental Printing, Jerusalem, 1999, pg. 28-33.
31 ibid., pg. 33
32 The first was called The Palestinian Question in the book Modern Middle Eastern History Barghouthi, Said and others, The Modern Middle East, Part Two according to the curriculum for teaching history at advanced levels in Arab Schools, Ministry of Education, Culture and Sports, Education Administration, Department of Educational Curricula, and The University of Haifa, Department of Educational Curricula, 1998, pg. 276 319; the second The General History of the Arabs in Palestine in the book The Arab Citizens of Israel Al-haj majid (editor), Barghouthi Said (Education editor): The Arab Citizens in Israel, Chapters for High School Civics, The Ministry of Education and Culture, The University of Haifa and the Van Lear Institute in Jerusalem, 1992, pg 12 29; the second The General History of the Arabs in Palestine in the book The Arab Citizens of Israel; the third was called The Geographical, Political, and Historical Context of the Founding of Israel in the book Civics for High Schools. To Be Citizens in Israel, Civics Text for High Schools, Ministry of Education, The Education Secretary, The Center for Curriculum Planning and Development, 2008
33 Educational for the teaching of history for high school, Ministry of Education (tarbiyya wa t3leem) the secretary of Education, The Center for Curriculum Planning, Jerusalem, 2007
34 Educational Curriculum, History for Elementary and Middle School Levels in Arab Schools, The Ministry of Education (tarbiyya wa t3leem), The education secretary, The Center for Curriculum Planning and Development, 2008
35 W. Jacobmeyer, International Textbook Research, Goteborg, 1990, pg. 8-9

Source: http://www.badil.org/en/al-majdal/item/1265-palestinian-history-and-identity-in-israeli-schools in the issue of Al Majdal: http://www.badil.org/en/al-majdal/itemlist/category/158-nakba-education-on-the-path-of-return

The NTNU, a Norwegian University, was presented with the opportunity to vote on a motion that would ask the Board of Directors to consider making it a policy in their University to restrict academic or research partnerships with Israel. There are many who think that this kind of “politics” in “academic institutions” is unfitting, but there are others who have a different point of view, given the South African precedent and today's unanimous opinion that it was vital towards bringing that country out of Apartheid.

Universities are not citadels in the sky, they are often corporations that are financed with a combination of private and public investments. They also have clients who pay for their services in the way of tuition, and some of these tuitions are in the hundreds of thousands of Dollars and Euros for a single cycle of “Education” that results in the granting of a Diploma, which at that point leads the owner of this title to have more access to employment possibilities. In other words, looking at facts and what's at stake, it’s more about money than it is about smarts. Since they have  profit as their purpose, they make decisions for their “investors” so that the balance sheet encourages further investment.

There are others who believe that since these institutions produce “Culture”, they have as their priority a level of standards that should be met so that the product is one of value. Culture is something that can be created autonomously, because it is part of human existence and present in every human activity, although it takes money to promote it and develop it further. Culture is ideas and ideals, it is the possibility to express a thought or sensation that can be shared with others. Culture at that point is quite powerful, and it has the power to create debate upon the quality of a product such as “education”, and if the quality may be enhanced by an establishment of a standard of recognition of the rights of others, including the rights of people under military occupation to academic freedom, this topic is ripe for discussion as to whether the institution should make a vocal stand and act upon a belief that pressure upon an apartheid regime must be fought from the bottom up, from a cultural level, with a common interest in promoting freedom.

The decision the board at NTNU was about to make actually never really hit the table, the motion was not even going to be voted upon. In fact, a motion was made to “throw out the motion” and this was unanimously accepted. There is your debate about “Academic Freedom”!

Why did the board vote to not even vote upon the motion? Why did they unanimously decide that this question should not be dealt with? The words are LOBBYING and PEER PRESSURE. Yes, they buckled under due to lobbying and pressure and probably wanted to protect all their esteemed colleagues from having a finger pointed at them. No motion, of course, no vote, and no one to have to express even a word of criticism about Israel, if any of them felt this might be fitting or worthy of expressing. Session closed and NTNU fades back into splendid oblivion.

I took a look at the rah rah site against Boycotts of Israel, Engage, located in the UK. Evidently, they were going to be very pleased that this precedent was not set, and claim it as a victory, (just as we would have claimed it as a victory if :1- the motion was debated, 2- the motion passed, and as a partial victory if there was dissent from a vote to reject the proposition of the motion.) You see, academic people sell one thing: their reputation, the opinion others have of them. This is how they earn their living, and they are all in the same boat. Perhaps no one wanted to put one of their colleagues on the spot, risking making a statement that would put this person on a side that would then be in some way spotlighted. Being conformist and non-controversial is considered as a guarantee that their institution can continue to bring in investments and make profit.

Now, let’s take a look at the Engage commentary on this. I am highlighting portions of the original, with my own comments in (red and parentheses).

Trondheim academic boycott motion thrown out

November 12, 2009 Mira Vogel

Some days ago I wondered whether a Norwegian university was going to force its employees to boycott Israelis. (This kind of rhetoric automatically creates the “controversy” and puts the spotlight on individuals. It sets the tone as if it is a gag order, as if it is a person-to-person demand. An academic boycott is about economic/research collaboration between institutions that determine the policy and the ways that their investments are going to be utilised. This is always expressed in terms of money and investment. If one invests in academic institutions that have economic-institutional partnerships with others that thrive due to a military occupation of another people and constrict those occupied to martial law due to their ethnic group/religion, then it is a valid issue whether this type of institution is welcome as a partner. Are the Israeli institutions outside the life of Israel, or do they operate in the same sphere? I don't believe Israel is sensitive to pressure of this sort, but other places in the world are, and with the loss of income and partnerships, it could be an incentive to at least open debate on this issue in Israel, rather than wall themselves into moral victimhood. An institution outside Israel actually could and should be pressured to change and analyse the appropriateness of their investments, if they are tied in with organisations or entities that are not in conformance with the goals of the institutions and foundations themselves. It is not such a bizarre request, and the ethical component is present in most business decisions. A complete boycott would be ideal, but this is one step). The answer turned out to be a no from the board, none of whom objected to a proposal to throw out the motion. (The motion does not seem to have been discussed by those who had proposed it. A unanimous acceptance of a motion to reject a motion is not taking a position at all, it is an easy way out.)

Haaretz:

Some of the people in attendance (who? Board members or members of the public?) spoke in favor of scrapping the vote, Alsberg told Haaretz. The main arguments raised were that Norwegian universities should not [make] their own foreign policies, and that a boycott would be harmful to NTNU. (While respecting the right of the Board to feel they cannot make certain decisions that will have international resonance, every university decides its policies within certain limits and selects with whom it collaborates. It often is influenced by foreign policies of the States they are located in, pretending the contrary is almost laughable).

According to Alsberg, who collected signatures from over 100 NTNU scholars against the boycott, the move was prevented due to a combination of factors. He said these included media attention; opposition to the boycott by the Norwegian Ministry for Higher Education; and petitions, including his own. (There it is… the fear of attention and pressure from others. This is certainly not doing any justice to individual or academic freedom).

But Erez Uriely, director of the Oslo-based Center against Anti-Semitism, said the boycott was prevented largely thanks to Alsbergs petition. (Why the “but”… they admit that the decisive factor was the list of names of the esteemed colleagues of the Board. They want to all be able to go out for dinner together after all! And here was one of the worries written on the petition: “To be associated with a controversial opinion in a difficult conflict will have negative consequences for NTNU. It’s a violation at an international level. Do we really want to be known as the first Western University that is in favour of an academic boycott against Israel?”)

Norwegian politicians often take anti-Israeli positions and then renege when this creates an outcry, he said. The petition against a boycott of Israel at NTNU is an unusual event which tipped the scale.

Norway, Israel and the Jews note the disappointment of boycotters and predicts that they will return:

For anyone in doubt, please observe that Mr.Lysestl and his comrades are dedicated, hard working people who honestly believe they are engaged in a battle against ultimate evil. They will regroup and recover. If it had not been for the tremendous effort of people from around the globe in general and professor Bjrn Alsgaard* at NTNU in particular, the motion for boycott might have passed. (And here we have a lesson for all of us. If we want to influence people with power, they listen to the pressure of other people who will judge them on a personal level and who do not want to assume responsibility of having attention drawn to them, as well as the insinuation in the petition that there was going to be some financial difficulties if they stepped out of line, things like losing jobs too. Hardly a realistic threat, but for a group voting on something for economic reasons, this will have its impact. They will avoid discussing an issue rather than disappoint the expectations of someone or be accused of being ineffective financially. The considerations to make are: it’s either hopeless because you simply cannot fight something where what matters is being able to avoid discussion of an issue rather than addressing a motion presented and then voting on it. The reasons for this priority have little to do with the institution itself, I believe, but something more down to earth such as being able to share a cigar at the birth of a grandson, getting a positive review of a book published or being invited to speak at a convention in an exotic site. Should academic institutions be considered as particularly effective starting places? I don't think so. Or – perhaps we have to concentrate our efforts towards MORE pressure and requiring people to actually face issues rather than avoid them.)

Kudos to the academics at Trondheim who spoke out against the boycott by signing Bjrn Alsbergs* petition. (Thus closes the article, remember these names. We also remember the names of those who signed Mohamad Khodr’s petition, and we thank all of them for caring and trying. We won’t give up.)

This fall, I began my first lecture on Eurocentrism by asking my students, How Eurocentric is your day? I explained what I wanted to hear from them. Can they get through a typical day without running into ideas, institutions, values, technologies and products that originated outside the West – in China, India, the Islamicate or Africa?

The question befuddled my students. I proceeded to pepper them with questions about the things they do during a typical day, from the time they wake up.

Unbeknownst, my students discover that they wake up in ‘pajamas,’ trousers of Indian origin with an Urdu-Persian name. Out of bed, they shower with soap and shampoo, whose origins go back to the Middle East and India. Their tooth brush with bristles was invented in China in the fifteenth century. At some point after waking up, my students use toilet paper and tissue, also Chinese inventions of great antiquity.

Do the lives of my students rise to Eurocentric purity once they step out of the toilet and enter into the more serious business of going about their lives? Not quite.

I walk my student through her breakfast. Most likely, this consists of cereals, coffee and orange juice, with sugar added to the bargain. None originated in Europe. Cereals were first cultivated in the Fertile Crescent some ten thousand years BCE. Coffee, orange and sugar still carry – in their etymology – telltale signs of their origins, going back to the Arabs, Ethiopians and Indians. Try to imagine your life without these stimulants and sources of calories.

How far could my students go without the alphabet, numbers and paper? Yet, the alphabet came to Europe courtesy of the ancient Phoenicians. As their name suggests, the Arabic numerals were brought to Europe by the Arabs, who, in turn, had obtained it from the Indians. Paper came from China, also brought to Europe by the Muslims.

Obstinately, my students’ day refuses to get off to a dignified Eurocentric start.

In her prayer, my Christian student turns to a God who – in his human form – walked the earth in Palestine and spoke Aramaic, a close cousin of Arabic. When her thoughts turn to afterlife, my student thinks of the Day of Judgment, paradise and hell, concepts borrowed from the ancient Egyptians and Persians. ‘Paradise’ entered into English, via Greek, from the ancient Avestan pairidaeza.

 Of medieval origin, the college was inspired and, most likely, modeled after the madrasa or Islamic college, first set up by a Seljuk vizier in eleventh century Baghdad. In a nod to this connection, professors at universities still hold a ‘chair,’ a practice that goes back to the madrasa, where the teacher alone sat in a chair while his students sat around him on rugs.

When she finishes college and prepares to receive her baccalaureate at the graduation ceremony, our student might do well to acknowledge another forgotten connection to the madrasa. This diploma harks back to the ijaza – Arabic for license – given to students who graduated from madrasas in the Islamicate.

Our student runs into fields of study – algebra, trigonometry, astronomy, chemistry, medicine and philosophy – that were introduced, via Latin, to Western Europe from the Islamicate. She also encounters a variety of scientific terms – algorithm, alkali, borax, amalgam, alembic, amber, calibrate, azimuth and nadir – which have Arabic roots.

If my students play chess over the weekend and threaten the King with ‘check mate,’ that phrase is adapted from Farsi – Shah maat – for ‘the King is helpless, defeated.’

When she uses coins, paper currency or writes a check, she is using forms of money first used outside Europe. Gold bars were first used as coins in Egypt in the fourth millennium BCE. With astonishment, Marco Polo records the use of paper currency in China, and describes how the paper used as currency was made from the bark of mulberry trees.

At college, my student will learn about modernity, ostensibly the source and foundation of the power and the riches of Western nations. Her professors in sociology will claim that laws based on reasoning, the abolition of priesthood, the scientific method, and secularism – hallmarks of modernity – are entirely of Western origin.  Are they?

During the eighteenth century, many of the leading Enlightenment thinkers were keenly aware that Chinese had preceded them in their emphasis on reasoning by some two millennia. By the end of this century, however, a more muscular, more confident Europe chose to erase their debt to China from its collective memory.

Similarly, Islam, in the seventh century, made a more radical break from priesthood than the Reformation in Europe. In the eleventh century, an Arab scientist, Alhazen – his Latinized name – devised numerous experiments to test his theories in optics, but, more importantly, theorized cogently about the scientific method in his writings. Roger Bacon, the putative ‘founder’ of the scientific method, had read Alhazen in a Latin translation.

When our student reads the sonnets of Shakespeare and Spenser, she is little aware that the tradition of courtly love they celebrate comes via Provencal and the troubadours (derived from taraba, Arabic for ‘to sing’) from Arab traditions of love, music and poetry. When our male student gets down on one knee while proposing to his fair lady, he might do well to remember this.

On a clear night, with a telescope on her dormitory rooftop, our student can watch stars, many of which still carry Arabic names. This might be a fitting closure to a day in the life of our student, who, more likely than not, remains Eurocentric in her understanding of world history, little aware of the multifarious bonds that connect her life to different parts of the ‘Orient.’

M. Shahid Alam is Professor of Economics, Northeastern University, Boston. He is the author of Israeli Exceptionalism: The Destabilizing Logic of Zionism (Palgrave Macmillan: 2009). You may contact him at alqalam02760@yahoo.com .

http://us.macmillan.com/israeliexceptionalism (check out this book!)

When the first Arab Human Development Report (AHDR) was published in 2002, a star glistened in a vast, gloomy sky. The fact that a UN-sponsored report, authored by independent Arab scholars would receive so much attention in Arab media, was in itself a promising start. The fact that such terminology as human security, personal security, economic security, etc – as highlighted in the report – would even compete with the largely ceremonial news bulletins’ headlines in many Arab countries was in itself an achievement. But then, the star quickly faded, the terms became clichés, and the report, published seven times since then, became a haunting reminder of how bad things really are in the Arab World. 

Those who wish to discredit Arab countries, individually or as a collective, now find in these reports plenty of reasons to fuel their constant diatribes; those who genuinely care and wish for things to improve are either silent or muted. 

The last report, sponsored, like the rest, by the United Nations Development Program (UNDP) was published in July 2009. It was the grimmest. Its statistics are intriguing, although depressing. 2.9 million square kilometers of land in the Arab World are threatened by desertification. Natural resources are depleting at an alarming level. Birth rates are the highest in the world. Unemployment is skyrocketing. 50 million new jobs must be created by 2020. Arab oil-based economies leave some Arab countries entirely vulnerable to market price fluctuations or the depletion of oil altogether. While many economies, especially in Asia are shifting or have already achieved great strides into becoming knowledge-based economies, Arab economies are still hostage to the same cycle of oil and cheap labor. In fact, 70 percent of the Arab region’s total exports, according to the report, is oil. 

The problem is not just economic, or environmental, it’s societal as well. Inequality is entrenched in many Arab societies. Women’s rights are not the only individual rights violated. Men’s right are violated too, that is if they are not members of the dominant group, which are either divided by blind political allegiance, tribal or sectarian membership, or economic leverage.   

Admittedly, Arab societies are, of course, not the only societies that suffer from these ills, but sadly, the problems of Arab countries are most convoluted, accentuated by the fact that there is little action to rectify the problem, neither at individual country’s level or using joint platforms, for instance, the Arab League. Why didn’t the Arab League hold an emergency summit following the release of the first or even the last AHDR report? One would think that problems of such magnitude, ones that affect the lives of 330 million people, are pressing enough for such gatherings. 

Arab media has been highlighting the issue and the shortcomings, some media outlets more than others. But the discussion is largely political, at times a mere attempt at discrediting this government or that leader, and are still conducted in general terms. The latest report for example was supplemented by opinion polls conducted in four Arab countries – Kuwait, Lebanon, Morocco and occupied Palestine. One need not emphasize the different human development challenges in these countries, situated in diverse geopolitical settings. One cannot possibly devise the same solution to a country occupied by a foreign army, to an independent country with untold oil wealth, to a third with immense human potential but dire poverty.  

Generalized problems can only obtain generalized, thus superficial solutions. Therefore, it has been summarily decided that the problem lies in lack of education, not the inequitable and unrepresentative political systems. Education became the buzz word, as if education is a detached value; therefore, education cities are erected in Arab countries that can easily afford importing the best teachers and curricula money can buy. More, research institutions are also making appearances in various Arab capitals. Those existing in rich Arab countries are operated largely by foreigners, whose sense of priority lies, naturally, elsewhere. One fails to grasp the wisdom. 

But of course, education is a mindset, a culture even. What is the point of pursuing a PhD in a society where nepotism determines who does what? It’s most rational, from a self-seeker’s point of view, to spend time knowing and passing one’s business cards to the ‘right people’ than spending years of one’s life pursuing a university degree. 

UNDP had recently launched “The Arab Knowledge Report 2009”, jointly with the United Arab Emirates-based Mohammad bin Rashid al-Maktoum Foundation. Another depressing read, nonetheless. Governments were criticized for paying lip service to ‘reform’, yet “widening the gap between word and deed.” It concluded that Arab countries are far from being knowledge based societies. Numbers and more numbers told the story: Finland spends $1000 per person on scientific research, while less than $10 are spent annually in the Arab world. More, the number of published books averages one for every 491 British citizens, while in the Arab world it’s one for every 19,150. But that should not be much of a surprise considering that one-third of older Arab citizens are illiterate, two-thirds of whom are women. Meanwhile, more than seven million children, who should be in school, are not. Illiteracy stands at 30 percent in the Arab world. 

Dr. Ghassan Khateeb, of Birzeit University in the occupied West Bank believes that there “is a direct relation between the lack of investment and the problematic situation we find ourselves in relation to knowledge.” “This is all related to politics; the lack of democracy and the lack of knowledge enforce each other,” he was quoted as saying. 

Paul Salem, writing in the British Guardian, while recognizing the failure of Arab governments, found that others are also, if not equally, responsible. “The cost of a single month of Western military spending in Iraq or Afghanistan would be enough to triple total aid for education in the Middle East. The cost of two cruise missiles would build a school, the cost of a Eurofighter a small university.” 

Alas, some Arab governments, spend twice, if not three times more on their military budget than invest in education. And keeping in mind that nearly one out of every five Arab citizens lives below the poverty threshold of two-dollars a day, the tragedy is suddenly augmented. 

Arab governments must rethink and reconsider their current priorities and course of action. They must think and act individually, but collectively as well, before the crisis turns into a catastrophe, as will surely be the case if nothing is done. 

- Ramzy Baroud (www.ramzybaroud.net) is an author and editor of PalestineChronicle.com. His work has been published in many newspapers, journals and anthologies around the world. His latest book is, "The Second Palestinian Intifada: A Chronicle of a People's Struggle" (Pluto Press, London), and his forthcoming book is, “My Father Was a Freedom Fighter: Gaza’s Untold Story” (Pluto Press, London), now available for pre-orders on Amazon.com.

“Right and wrong are the same in Palestine as anywhere else. What is peculiar about the Palestine conflict is that the world has listened to the party that has committed the offence and has turned a deaf ear to the victims."
–Famed British Historian Professor Arnold Toynbee

“In the name of justice there cannot be subjection and in the name of peace there cannot be impunity.
–President Alvaro Uribe Velez of Colombia

“Neutrality helps the oppressor, never the victim. Silence encourages the tormentor, never the tormented.”
– Elie Wiesel 

The Honorable Marit Arnstad, Chairman of the board

The Honorable Rector Torbjern Digernes

Norwegian University of Science and Technology

Trondheim, Norway 

Rarely in history do individuals, minority groups, or institutions have an opportunity to courageously adopt a principled unpopular stand that could be transformative in world affairs.   

For sometime during the genocide of Gaza it was two extraordinary Norwegian physicians and humanitarians who risked their lives to save the lives of Gazans.  

'This is what hell must look like'

Two Norwegian doctors witnessed first-hand the nightmare scenes inside Gaza
Guardian, January 16, 2009 

Norway has always been known for its worldwide humanitarian efforts and generous foreign aid.   It is no coincidence that Norway is always ranked first in the world by the United Nations. 

The Norwegian University of Science and Technology (NTNU) has just such a historic opportunity tomorrow when it considers voting for an academic boycott of Israel, a nation that for too long has lived by violence, ethnic cleansing, military expansionism, illegal occupations, subjugation of millions of innocent Palestinians, defied all divine and international laws that respect and value human life, and that since its establishment has committed countless terrorist acts and war crimes, lately documented by the Goldstone Report, all with impunity, never accountable for its actions in courts of justice, the U.N., or to all of humanity.   The West, especially the U.S., has constantly protected Israel’s interests at the expense of its own interests.           

You may remember this headline in Aftenposten, 12/1/06: 

“USA threats after boycott support” 

“US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice threatened Norway with "serious political consequences" after Finance Minister and Socialist Left Party leader Kristin Halvorsen admitted to supporting a boycott of Israeli goods.” 

A quote by the Nobel Prize Winner Alexander Solzhenitsyn encompasses both Israel’s non-stop violence against innocent Palestinian, Lebanese, Syrian, Egyptian and Jordanian civilians and its brilliant intimidating propaganda that established the persecutor as the persecuted. 

“Violence can only be concealed by a lie, and the lie can only be maintained by violence. Any man who has once proclaimed violence as his method is inevitably forced to take the lie as his principle.” 

As a former academician I plead and urge you to take the only righteous stand possible against Israel and that is for your esteemed University to vote yes on an academic boycott of Israel.   Your courage will open the door for Universities and other institutions around the world to follow your example. 

In 1982 Sharon invaded Lebanon committing a widespread genocide that began in Southern Lebanon and ended in a three month devastating siege of Beirut, a city overwhelmed by hundreds of thousands of refugees from Southern Lebanon who fled the Israeli army’s advance.  This genocide resulted in the murder of 20,000 Lebanese and Palestinian civilians other than the cold blooded massacre of 1,700 Palestinians in the refugee camps of Sabra and Chatila.  Under Sharon’s protection, encouragement, and direction, the Christian Phalangists shed the blood of men, women, the elderly and children.  Sharon even provided powerful night lights for the murderers to commit their slaughter.  All the world could do is condemn the massacre without laying blame on Israel. 

From the air, sea and land Sharon unleashed his murderous campaign upon a crowded urban city bombing churches, mosques, hospitals, schools, orphanages, retirement homes, electrical and water plants, roads, bridges, the airport and sea port; not even ambulances and medics were spared.  

He would bomb bakeries where men, women and children stood in long lines for scarce bread.  

Planes would bomb an area and await the gathering of ambulances, medics and citizens to pull persons out of the wreckage only to bomb it again to inflict more casualties.  

Ambassador Phil Habib, Reagan’s personal envoy to stop the genocide in Beirut worked hard to reach a peace agreement between Sharon and Lebanon while promising the safety of the Palestinian civilians upon the departure of Yasser Arafat and the PLO from Lebanon.   However, he discovered that Israel could never be trusted to keep its word.   

In John Boykin’s book, “Cursed is the Peacemaker” (2002, Applegate Press) he quotes Ambassador Habib as saying.

“I had signed this paper which guaranteed that these people in west Beirut would not be harmed.  I got specific guarantees on this from Bashir (President of Lebanon) and from the Israelis–from Sharon'.  He said he 'had been given assurances… that no action would be taken against the Palestinians remaining in the camps…. On the basis of those assurances we (Americans) had given our word.  We had been deceived…. Sharon was a killer, obsessed by hatred of the Palestinians,' Habib said.  'I had given Arafat an undertaking that his people would not be harmed, but this was totally disregarded by Sharon whose word was worth nothing.'" 

As is customary with Israel and U.N. Resolutions, Israel defied and rejected over a dozen UN Security Council Resolutions asking Israel to at least allow humanitarian aid into Beirut. 

Israel’s intransigence to make peaceful concessions to the Palestinians that they too may enjoy the freedom, liberty and independence their occupiers enjoy makes us all complicit in this tragedy with our silence and inaction. 

“He who passively accepts evil is as much involved in it as he who helps to perpetrate it. He who accepts evil without protesting against it is really cooperating with it.”
–Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. 

It is shocking that the world accepts Israel’s genocides and threats against its neighbors as fait accompli without regard to the never ending suffering of Palestinians under its brutal military occupation.   Palestinians and Lebanese die, suffer and endure in silence in a world conditioned to accept Israel’s “right to self defense”, a euphemism for wanton murder.   They die in silence, absent from the western conscience due to the blanket support of most western media outlets, none more so than in America, the nation exporting democracy and freedom through smart bombs and biased politicians who if they dare to criticize Israel jeopardize their ambitions and become  the recipients of the worst media smears.   In the U.S. no debate or action is allowed against Israel either by our own “never challenge Israel” government or by our staunchly Pro-Israel media. 

The academicians and experts invited to your university to speak on this issue know first hand their personal victimization at the hands of Pro-Israel forces.    They have risked much for the truth and are honorable men and women. 

Please do the right thing and vote for an academic boycott of Israel, a nation that is neither civilized nor democratic, by setting an educational precedent for your university, faculty, alumni, but most importantly for your students, that standing up for principles is the foundation for all just laws and human rights for all peoples and not just the powerful few. 

Teach them to adopt “freedom from fear” as their guiding principle in life while facing all challenges, especially challenges that discriminate between the powerful and the weak, the haves and have nots, that no people should be victimized by the power of money and weapons. 

“"Freedom from fear" could be said to sum up the whole philosophy of human rights”
-The late Honorable Dag Hammarskjold 

“Giving Flight To Dreams”….Yes, we dare to dream, we dare to act.

SIGN THE PETITION:
http://www.petitiononline.com/boycott9/petition.html

Now Israel is free to massacre Gaza again without worrying about back-talk from anyone in the MSA meetings. 
 
Here is the Boycott-Israel resolution that pained MSA so much that they shut down the First Amendment–
 
http://dearbornboycottsisrael.blogspot.com/2008/09/msa-resolution-to-boycott-apartheid.html
 
_________________________________

MSA Resolution to Boycott Apartheid Israel, and to Stop Apartheid on Campus

Photo: Malcolm X, meeting with the leadership of the Palestine Liberation Organization in 1964. 

This was sixteen years after European Zionists invaded Palestine, destroying over 400 Palestinian villages. 

It was an extremely violent ethnic cleansing operation.

It exiled the majority of Palestinians out of Palestine.

This Resolution was proposed for an immediatevote by the Michigan Student Assembly, at the University of Michigan.

This Resolution then was torn up by the Assembly's General Counsel, as the "Michigan Daily" reporter watched:

http://dearbornboycottsisrael.blogspot.com/2008/09/attempted-resolution-proposal.html 

But the Resolution was again presented to the Assembly for a vote. This Resolution has also been proposed for a vote by the University's LSA Student Government: 

Resolution to Boycott Apartheid Israel, and to Stop Apartheid on Campus 

Resolution Summary: 

1. Boycott all Israeli products.
2. Take that $1 trillion you’re spending to kill Muslims, and spend it instead on re-building Detroit.
3. Stop 400 years of White Privilege—the University should admit every Black high school graduate.

Boycott all Israeli products 

WHEREAS, White Supremacism, including Zionism, is the most genocidal force on Earth, 

WHEREAS, Congress has paid $300 billion to Israel, according to Congressman John Dingell, 

WHEREAS, Israel spent that money on a genocidal ethnic cleansing campaign against the Palestinian people, which has culminated in the Israeli siege against Gaza, 

WHEREAS, Israel has forced 1.5 million Palestinians into a concentration-camp existence in Gaza, where childhood malnutrition and anemia are rampant, 

WHEREAS, Israel is threatening to unleash a “Holocaust” on Gaza, 

WHEREAS, Malcolm X was right— the Zionists had no “legal or moral right to invade Arab Palestine, uproot its Arab citizens from their homes and seize all Arab property for themselves”

WHEREAS, Israel’s alliance with Apartheid South Africa was "more intimate and more extensive than anything similar in Israel’s history", according to Professor Benjamin Beit-Hallahmi, 

WHEREAS, Israel has hundreds of nuclear weapons, which it tried to share with Apartheid South Africa,

WHEREAS, Israel is training its pilots to nuke Iran, a land of 76 million people who have never invaded anyone,

WHEREAS, Israel trained and oversaw SAVAK, the brutal force of torturers who kept the Shah of Iran in power, 

WHEREAS, the United States has been bleeding Iran with economic sanctions, then with U.S.-imposed dictatorship, then with U.S.-fueled invasions, almost continuously since 1952, 

WHEREAS, those economic sanctions still make it impossible for Iranians to get spare parts for any airplane, from anywhere in the world, 

WHEREAS, Israel is demanding even crueler economic sanctions against Iran,  

THEREFORE, the Michigan Student Assembly demands that Congress impose a total boycott against all Israeli products,

THEREFORE, we demand that Congress cut off all aid to the racist state of Israel, the last Apartheid State on Earth. 

THEREFORE, we demand that the University of Michigan Board of Regents declare a boycott against all products imported from the racist state of Israel. 

Take that $1 trillion you’re spending to kill Muslims, and spend it instead on re-building Detroit. 

WHEREAS, Congress has spent $1 trillion to kill millions of Iraqis since 1991,

WHEREAS, Congress has killed over a million Afghans since the 1980’s, using a series of unbelievable excuses,

WHEREAS, the U.S. repeatedly bombs Somalia, using more unbelievable excuses, 

WHEREAS, Senator Clinton threatens to “obliterate Iran”, and Senator McCain sings “bomb bomb bomb, bomb bomb Iran”, 

WHEREAS, Senator Obama threatens to invade Pakistan, then President Bush launches military strikes directly on Pakistan,

WHEREAS, Congress’s trillion-dollar genocide against Muslim lands is conducted at the direct expense of Black America,

WHEREAS, Congress’s trillion-dollar occupation of Muslim lands is conducted at the direct expense of Black America, the Michigan Student Assembly demands that Congress immediately remove its trillion-dollar army of occupation from every nation on Earth, because that army only brings coups, torture, racism, and death to the planet; 

THEREFORE, we demand that Congress immediately spend that trillion dollars, which was stolen from Black America, on the immediate rebuilding of Detroit, including mass transit that every Detroiter can walk to, including the best elementary, secondary, and university education in the nation, including the best neighborhood clinics, the best neighborhood libraries, and the best housing infrastructure in the nation, and including the necessary industrial facilities to build all of those things, and to employ every Detroiter of working age, with full union wages and benefits, 

THEREFORE, we demand that Congress similarly rebuild every U.S. inner city, and that this rebuilding be directed by Black engineers, architects, professors, physicians, educators, and managers, and that this rebuilding be staffed by Black union labor, nationwide, until Black unemployment ceases to exist, 

Stop 400 Years of White Privilege—

–the University should Admit every Black high school graduate. 

WHEREAS, centuries of government policy, backed up by organized white violence at every level, has attempted to beat down African political power, financial power, industrial power, and landholding power, from the Congo to Chicago, 

WHEREAS, Martin Luther King Jr. was right— the U.S. government is “the greatest purveyor of violence in the world today”,

WHEREAS, the U.S. has murdered and imprisoned African and African-American leadership on a mind-boggling scale, from Lumumba in the Congo, to Mandela in South Africa, to Fred Hampton in Chicago, to Marcus Garvey, to the Orangeburg Massacre, to the Jackson State Massacre, to the U.S.-Israeli-South-African invasion of Angola in the 1970’s, to the U.S.-Israeli-South-African creation of death squads across the African continent which have murdered millions and stripped Africa of unimaginable wealth, 

WHEREAS, today’s white suburban power structure was built with a trillion-dollar federal highway subsidy, and with massive governmental subsidies to build all-white suburban settlements, which have sucked the wealth and political power of Black America into virtually all-white enclaves, while barring the bulk of Black America from entry, 

WHEREAS, white political, economic, employment, and educational power has always been built on massive federal subsidies, from the railroads in the 19^th century, to the government-backed white academies created to suck away resources from any public educational system that might benefit Black students, 

THEREFORE, the Michigan Student Assembly finds it obscene that a violent, 400-year steamroller of white privilege– where whites use the riches of Black labor to perpetuate a closed circle of privileged white university admissions, a closed circle of white business connections, a closed circle of white jobs, perpetuated by a heavily subsidized white suburban political machine,– is called a “meritocracy”, while the slightest effort to get Black students into the University is called “reverse racism”; 

THEREFORE, the Michigan Student Assembly demands that the University of Michigan Board of Regents immediately guarantee admission, tuition-free, to every Black student who graduates from every Michigan high school, together with year-round tutoring for every new student who needs it; 

THERFORE, we declare, in advance, a highly visible picket line and a 3-day student strike, if any state authority attempts to “stand in the schoolhouse door” to block the open admission of Black students to this University.

____________________________________________________________________

Photo: In 1975, Israel had helped South Africa to invade Angola, sending military advisers and electronic equipment to the front. 

The next year, you see the Prime Minister of Apartheid South Africa, John Vorster (second from right), meeting with Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin (right), with future Israeli Prime Minister Menachem Begin (left), and with Moshe Dayan, in Israeli-occupied Jerusalem (al-Quds).

Loss Of Innocence: Gaza children's artwork

The paintings show the destruction of apartment blocks, mosques, ambulances and civilians, through the use of helicopters, planes, drones, phosphorous weapons, bulldozers and direct fire from soldiers. The sun, trees, birds and Gaza cry. Gaza sends an SOS and the world simply stands still and looks on. A Dove of Peace, in one painting, sails in a boat over a Desert of Indifference. As a result of Operation Cast Lead over 300 children were killed, many more injured, 1400 children orphaned of at least one parent, 30% of children suffer serious mental health problems and all the children are traumatised. Not surprisingly, the children say that what they dream of for the future is freedom and peace. 
  
The launch of the exhibition took place in the cathedral on Saturday 26th September. The Cathedral Dean welcomed everybody and Professor Victor Merriman from Liverpool

Hope University, gave a remarkable and inspiring keynote speech. Rod Cox guided people around the exhibition adding interesting personal anecdotal material to each painting. A wonderful team of volunteer stewards have patiently watched over the precious paintings from 8am-6pm every day for the duration of the ten-day exhibition.

Hundreds of visitors have now viewed the exhibition. Their comments attest to being profoundly moved and shocked by the children's paintings. Photographs of the paintings in the setting of this magnificent cathedral, the largest cathedral in the UK, will be sent to the children in Gaza so that they can follow the progress of their artwork and know that people are seeing their truth: the truth of the assault. The exhibition has been booked by schools, colleges, conferences and hospitals in the UK where it will continue to do its invaluable work of reaching the hearts and minds of ordinary people.

Anne Candlin

Exhibition Co-ordinator, Liverpool

October 2009

FFI

YouTube movie showing the contents see

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=575N0JRzaIs

Rod Cox has a website with some background information at

http://rodcoxandgaza.blogspot.com/

Currently on show at the Cathedral in Liverpool see

http://www.liverpoolcathedral.org.uk/content/musicandevents/whatson/detail/Loss_of_Innocence__Exhibition__Gaza_childrens_artwork_until_6_Oct_09/371.aspx

http://rodcoxandgaza.blogspot.com

Paul J. Balles views a major public relations manual for Israel lobbyists. Written by Dr Frank Luntz, a US Republican political consultant and pollster, on behalf of The Israel Project, a US media advocacy group, it teaches pro-Israel propagandists how to hoodwink people about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, how to silence critics and how to avoid making statements that produce negative reactions.

More than 50 years ago, Vance Packard shook the commercial world with the publication of his book The Hidden Persuaders. It was, as the book jacket claims, “A revealing, often shocking explanation of new techniques of research and methods of persuasion.”

Packard revealed, “If people couldn’t discriminate reasonably, marketers reasoned, they should be assisted in discriminating unreasonably, in some easy, warm, emotional way.”

Much merchandizing success, according to Packard, “…hinged, to a large extent, upon successfully manipulating or coping with our guilt feelings, fears, anxieties, hostilities, loneliness feelings, inner tensions”.

Packard raised serious questions of morality related to the “people-manipulating activities of persuaders … and their ability to contact millions of us simultaneously”, giving them “the power to do good or evil on a scale never before possible in a very short time”.

Among the most evil of the hidden persuaders are the political propagandists. Their “evil” stems from the fact that they have a political agenda, which discriminates unreasonably and is designed to manipulate emotions.

The manipulative approach to politics is, of course, not a discovery of the 1950s, or even the 20th century. Napoleon Bonaparte set up a press bureau that he called his Bureau of Public Opinion. Its function was “to manufacture political trends to order”.

Just as Napoleon Bonaparte believed that “public opinion is a mysterious and invisible power, to which everything must yield”, Niccolò Machiavelli, Italian author of The Prince, described the arts with which a ruling prince can maintain control of his realm.

In a document published by The Israel Project entitled “The Israel Project’s 2009 Global Language Dictionary”, Dr Frank Luntz unmasks a modern-day propaganda campaign that would have made Napoleon and Machiavelli proud. He writes:

There is NEVER, EVER, any justification for the deliberate slaughter of innocent women and children. NEVER. The primary Palestinian public relations goal is to demonstrate that the so-called “hopelessness of the oppressed Palestinians” is what causes them to go out and kill children. This must be challenged immediately, aggressively, and directly.

The emotional appeal to saving children works, but the appeal is based on two lies:

(1) that Palestinians generally (not only suicide bomber extremists) are the ones who kill children, while Israelis (not individual extremists, but Israel’s armed forces) never slaughter Palestinian children.

(2) The second falsehood is that the Palestinians have a public relations goal that must be challenged when, in fact, the Palestinians have proven to be hopeless and goalless when it comes to public relations. Unlike Frank Luntz, the Palestinians have no effective PR voices. They can’t even get their ambassador in the UK to speak out to the British public about Israel’s lies and propaganda.

Next, Luntz attempts to sound reasonable by speaking of acceptable disagreements about economics or politics against fundamental principles of civilized people. The evil allusion here is that the Palestinians are the uncivilized people who target Israeli children.

“We may disagree about politics and we may disagree about economics. But there is one fundamental principle that all peoples from all parts of the globe will agree on: civilized people do not target innocent women and children for death,” writes Luntz.

The entire passage, again appealing unreasonably to emotions, makes the pretence that Israel did not target innocent women and children for death with their murderous indiscriminate bombing and missile attacks on Gaza against a huge civilian population of women and children.

However, distorted propaganda about children isn’t enough for Luntz. This is but one part of a page out of 114 pages devoted to this manual for distribution to thousands of propagandists for Israel.

Advancing only as far as page nine, the guided Israel promoters will find “Words that work” (sections that are actually throughout the book). Here’s what Luntz has to say about Gaza:

Israel made painful sacrifices and took a risk to give peace a chance. They voluntarily removed over 9,000 settlers from Gaza and parts of the West Bank, abandoning homes, schools, businesses, and places of worship in the hopes of renewing the peace process.

How generous he makes the Israelis appear, when in fact the removal of Jewish settlers from Gaza had nothing to do with giving peace a chance. As the Israeli Yossi Alpher points out, removal of the settlers gave a demographic advantage to Israel. He says, “no longer are Jewish and Arab populations mixed there in a manner that points to a single binational state as the solution”.

In other words, Ariel Sharon could close the borders, imprison Gazans, hoping they will simply be forced to leave by starvation, murder fishermen and initiate military operations whenever they’re not involved in attacking Lebanon to the north, to slaughter more Hamas women and children.

Then Luntz adds more “Words that work” for the indoctrination of his readers – Israeli propagandists:

Despite making an overture for peace by withdrawing from Gaza, Israel continues to face terrorist attacks, including rocket attacks and drive-by shootings of innocent Israelis. Israel knows that for a lasting peace, they must be free from terrorism and live with defensible borders.

As mentioned earlier, withdrawal from Gaza had nothing to do with an “overture for peace”. The rocket attacks have been a response to being locked into an open-air prison; and they’re aimed at land stolen by Israel. The “drive-by shootings of innocent Israelis” are figments of Luntz’s imagination.

The “free from terrorism and live with defensible borders” line is the overworked motto that twists the truth in the continuing belief that if repeated often enough it will be believed.

No matter how often the propagandists repeat this mantra, the truth is that a few resistance fighters from Hamas have lobbed ineffective rockets against a well-supplied army of Israel’s state terrorists; and the borders they want to defend are on land stolen from the Palestinians.

One might wish that the training in how to spread Israeli propaganda would stop there. If the Palestinians were up to the task, they might counter the lies with what they know of the history and suffering of Palestinians under occupation. Unfortunately, those with the linguistic ability to cope with the Israeli propaganda machine worry about endangering themselves and their families by speaking the truth.

Those who can only speak Arabic fluently are often busy fighting tribal wars within (Gazans vs. the Palestinian Authority), and they can’t compete with Israel’s skilled English speakers or against the organized promotional efforts Israel makes with Americans and Europeans.

Making the task of exposing the lies and deceit exceptionally difficult, Luntz’s propaganda tract, which unravels advice about the “how-to” of Israeli propaganda for 114 pages, seems Herculean to say the least.

Luntz offers advice about things like “Americans want a team to cheer for. Let the public know GOOD things about Israel.” He follows that with “Draw direct parallels between Israel and America – including the need to defend against terrorism.”

He tells his readers to make salient comparisons between Israel and America: “The language of Israel is the language of America: ‘democracy’, ‘freedom’, ’security’, and ‘peace’”.

Even while Israel is throwing Arabs out of their homes in East Jerusalem to make room for Jews, Luntz repeats the boast about how “Israel, America’s ally, is a democracy in the Middle East”. If he reported the truth about the so-called democracy in Israel, he would reveal how it’s really a bigoted apartheid state.

The book is full of charts showing just how effective Israel’s propaganda campaign has been. Not only do Americans believe that Israel is America’s closest ally in the Middle East, but that they both share the same values.

Another chart shows that 58 per cent of Americans believe that the US should support Israel, while only 9 per cent believe that they should support Palestinians. Even when coaching others in how to propagandize, Luntz couldn’t resist the revealing boast about how effective their PR work has been.

The entire screed utilizes all the tricks available to a clever wordsmith: how to use rhetorical questions to silence others, how to pretend that you’re sympathetic with the people but not their evil leaders, how to avoid making statements that produce negative reactions.

All of that came from the first of 18 chapters. Several other chapters, especially on “words that work”, talk about settlements, Israel’s so-called right to self-defence, Hamas, and tackling a nuclear Iran will be taken up in coming exposures.

Establishing lasting peace is the work of education; all politics can do is keep us out of war.

I am certainly not in the habit of defending Barack Obama against his detractors, but the controversy drummed up by rabid right-wing hysterics over President's back-to-school speech on Tuesday is quite simply bizarre and absurd. However, the manufactured uproar and outrage over the President's socialist/fascist/communitarianist (hey, pick an ideology, any ideology!) "brainwashing" of unsuspecting and impressionable students on one of their first days of school brings up very real and very serious concerns over both the potential and realities of aggressive government indoctrination and the abuse of open access to America's youth.

In the days leading up to Obama's fifteen-minute long, syndicated speech, the conservative netherworld was abuzz over what sort of cultish and dangerous hypnotism our Kenyan-born Commie Muslim commander-in-chief would dish out in classrooms all over the country. The paranoia and fear promoted by political and media demagogues and repeated thoughtlessly by their audience of ventriloquist dummies created a sort of dual-McCarthyism, equal parts Joe and Charlie.

Last week, Glenn Beck warned listeners of his radio show about the dangers of Obama's upcoming speech and "the indoctrination of your children," saying that the Presidential address was evidence of the "get 'em while they're young" approach of of big government's brainwashing tactics. Meanwhile, NewsBuster's contributing editor Mark Finkelstein repeatedly compared the address to Chinese communism, likened Obama to Mao Zedong, and even inquiring in one blog post whether "our MSM report on the interesting parallel between our president's plan for our children and the approach of another Great Leader from the past?" Then there was Mark Steyn, a Canadian author and political commentator, who, while speaking on the Rush Limbaugh Show made extensive reference to Saddam Hussein’s cult of personality in Iraqi schools and warned against Obama's attempt to do the same here in the United States.

On September 2nd, Michelle Malkin accused Obama's classroom address (still six days away at that time) of serving as a government tool for recruiting "junior lobbyists" to serve as foot-soldiers for promoting his crazed liberal agenda, citing the "activist tradition of government schools" (I think they're called public schools, actually) as evidence:

"Zealous teacher's unions have enlisted captive schoolchildren as letter-writers in their campaigns for higher education spending. Out-of-control activists have enlisted their secondary-school charges in pro-illegal immigration protests, gay marriage ceremonies, environmental propaganda stunts, and anti-war events."

Yeah, if only.

In a recent article, Lauri Regan of American Thinker wrote that "Obama has turned his team of brainwashers on the task of indoctrinating America's youth…My children are off limits," whileTownhall.com's Meredith Jessup bemoans the loss of mandatory prayer and religion in public schooling as "big-government influence continues to be ushered in." Jessup thusly concludes that "This massive abuse of government power – reaching into our kids' classrooms – is unacceptable."

A OneNewsNow column from September 4th identifies Diane Jewell, a parent in Indiana, as worrying that "her daughter is being indoctrinated into socialism" by attending public Junior High School. Jewell believes that "it is not Obama's place to talk to children directly, without parental input" adding that she is "very concerned with the increasing involvement of federal government in education." Obviously, Jewell now "regrets her decision to quit homeschooling and in retrospect she wishes she had stayed at home in order to continue homeschooling her daughter."

In a September 1 post featured on her tellingly-titled "Atlas Shrugs" blog (and headlined "Obama in the Classroom: Keep Your Kids Home from School September 8"), Newsmax.com contributor Pamela Geller wrote,

The fascist in chief is taking his special brand of brainwashing to the classroom. Keep your kids home. I think this man is a threat to our basic unalienable rights. I don't want him indoctrinating my children. Seriously.

Ask your school what their participation is in this leftist indoctrination outrage. Keep politics out of the classroom. Keep communists and their propagandists away from small children.

Seriously?

Not to be outcrazied, American Family Association radio host and conservative activist Bryan Fischer wrote in a September 1 column that Obama's speech "is likely to be an exercise in nation-wide indoctrination…The capacity for mischief here is enormous." Then, echoing Geller's sentiments that parents should opt their children out of viewing the speech, Fischer continues,

Unless we get public assurances from the White House that the president won't address health care or global warming or the homosexual agenda (under the color of "human rights for people different than us") this might be a great time for parents to exercise their opt-out authority and give their students a biography of George Washington to read while the President turns the minds of an entire generation to mush.

WorldNetDaily news editor Bob Unruh floated the idea that Obama's speech to students has "been cited as raising the specter of the Civilian National Security Force, to which he's referred several times since his election campaign began, but never fully explained" while also pointing out how creepy it is for the elected President of the United States of America to speak directly to the nation's children about the importance of education. "Parents across the country are rebelling against plans by President Barack Obama to speak directly to their children through the classrooms of the nation's public schools without their presence, participation and approval," Unruh wrote, before quoting random insane rantings of conservative web-forum comments:

"He's recruiting his civilian army. His 'Hitler' youth brigade," wrote one participant in a forum at Free Republic.

"I am not going to compare President Obama to Hitler. We'll leave that to others and you can form your own opinions about them and their analogies. … However, we can learn a lot from the spread of propaganda in Europe that led to Hitler's power. A key ingredient in that spread of propaganda was through the youth," wrote a blogger at the AmericanElephant.com blog, where the subject of the day was a national "Keep-Your-Child-at-Home-Day."

"Totalitarian regimes around the world have sought to spread their propaganda and entrench their power by brainwashing the children. I guess it's easier to indoctrinate a six-year-old instead of fighting a 26-year-old or being challenged by a 46-year-old in the voting booth," the blogger wrote.

Brett Curtis, an engineer from Texas, told the New York Times that the idea of the speech "seemed like a direct channel from the president of the United States into the classroom, to my child," and would therefore keep his three children home from school that day since he doesn't "want our schools turned over to some socialist movement." Jim Greer, the Republican Party chairman in Florida, said he "was appalled that taxpayer dollars are being used to spread President Obama’s socialist ideology," while Kansas City talk show host Chris Stigall, with thoughts of sugar plums and executive pedophilia floating in his head, stated that he "wouldn’t let my next-door neighbor talk to my kid alone; I’m sure as hell not letting Barack Obama talk to him alone."

Never mind the sheer ignorance of all these people, especially the clear fact that none of them knows the definition of fascism or socialism, or could explain the difference between a democracy and a republic, for that matter. Nevermind the fear-mongering and hateful resentment of a recently beaten-up political party. Nevermind the fact that Obama's speech wound up being totally innocuous, completely devoid of politics whatsoever, and called upon this nation's students to take pride in their education, trying hard, and doing their best to achieve their goals. Nevermind that, as Time.com's Michael Scherer put it, "President Obama's speech to your kids reads like a paean to individual striving and free market capitalism, the sort of thing that Ayn Rand and Barry Goldwater might have signed onto. At root, Obama's message is one of individual responsibility, a disquisition on the freedom of American youth to fail or succeed on their own tenacity and merits," and was anything but "lefty, neo-socialist, communitarian brainwashing." 

Never mind that this country's education system is already tailor-made to spread misinformation, entrench mythologies, and promote American exceptionalism to our young children. American history, as taught in schools, is generally nonsense meant to instill and preserve a sense of City-on-a-Hill nationalism, along with healthy doses of tall-tale founding myths, gung-ho militarism, and ethnic cleansing justification in the form of righteous Manifest Destiny. As James W. Loewen explains in his 1995 book Lies My Teacher Told Me: Everything Your American History Textbook Got Wrong, textbooks used to teach our children "leave out anything that might reflect badly upon our national character." More to the point, Helen Keller (y'know the deaf, mute, and blind kid who was actually a radical and progressive political thinker, one of the founders of the ACLU, and a staunch supporter of the NAACP and actual socialism) stated clearly why American history is made up of gross simplifications and hero worship: "People do not like to think. If one thinks, one must reach conclusions…Conclusions are not always pleasant." Anyone who has actually studied real American history knows this to be true.

Students in the United States are taught that Christopher Columbus discovered America and proved that the earth was round (not true); they are not taught that Columbus was a genocidal manic (true). Institutionalized racism and ethnocentrism is all but ignored in history class, Native Americans are demonized as savages (they weren't) and colonists (who were savages) are celebrated as civilized co-existers. (The reason the Pilgrims in New England had such bountiful crops is because all the Native Americans who planted them had either died from European-borne plague or had fled in fear of plague, which John Winthrop, governor of the Massachusetts Bay Colony, called "miraculous.") Students are taught that Albert Einstein failed his math class (he didn't, and was, in fact, a mathematical prodigy by the age of 12). They learn that Isaac Newton was hit on the head by a falling apple and "discovered" gravity (not true), Benjamin Franklin flew a kite in a storm and "discovered" electricity (also not true), and that George Washington chopped down his father's prized cherry-tree and then didn't lie about doing it. (This is a fairy tale created by a man named Mason Locke "Parson" Weems, author of the "biography" The Life of George Washington, with Curious Anecdotes Laudable to Himself and Exemplary to his Countrymen, in which Weems recalled many fantastic, adulatory confabulations about a fabulously deified Washington, with particular emphasis on his overwhelming moral fortitude and infallibility. At various points in the work, Weems refers to Washington as a "hero," a "demigod," "the Jupiter Conservator" [or, "Jupiter, Savior of the World"] and, quite simply, the "greatest man that ever lived".) 

Perhaps it was Weems' Washington biography that Bryan Fischer wants children to read while they're busy skipping Obama's speech. Additionally, what makes Fischer's suggestion that the President's speech would turn "the minds of an entire generation to mush" especially ironic is that the school system in this country already is doing just fine pulverizing truth and stifling critical thought without Obama's help. 

Nevermind that in November 1988, President Ronald Reagan spoke directly to students on political issues via C-Span. During his address, Reagan even called taxes "such a penalty on people that there's no incentive for them to prosper…because they have to give so much to the government." Nevermind that in 1989, President George H.W. Bush spoke to America's youth about drugs via a live television feed. Then, in 1991, he delivered another speech on the value of education via a telecast on CNN and PBS. Media Matters for America reminds us that "while president, George H.W. Bush gave a speech to schoolchildren intended 'to motivate America's students to strive for excellence; to increase students' as well as parents' responsibility/accountability; and to promote students' and parents' awareness of the educational challenge we face.'" According to an article inThe Washington Postfrom October 2, 1991, the "White House sent letters to schools across the nation to encourage teachers and principals to allow students to tune in the speech, which was also carried live by the Mutual Broadcasting and NBC Radio Network. The live television and radio coverage was arranged at the request of the Education Department."

Nevermind that, as researcher Simon Maloy points out, George W. Bush posted a "teacher's guide" on the White House website intended to help students understand the "freedom timeline" and encouraged them to "explor[e] the biographies of the President, Mrs. Bush, Vice President, and Mrs. Cheney."

Nevermind that Obama tells our nation's children, "What you make of your education will decide nothing less than the future of this country. What you’re learning in school today will determine whether we as a nation can meet our greatest challenges in the future," while Bush promoted an agenda to make the United States, in his own words, "a more literate country and a hopefuller country," especially by urging us, in a May 1, 2002 speech, to "take advantage of our fantastic opportunistic society." Whereas on Tuesday Obama spoke of responsibility and accountability, encouraging our young students to stay in school and to "develop your talents, skills and intellect so you can help solve our most difficult problems. If you don’t do that – if you quit on school – you’re not just quitting on yourself, you’re quitting on your country," Bush told a crowd in South Carolina on February 21, 2001 that if "you teach a child to read…he or her will be able to pass a literacy test.” Bush also pointed out, in early January of 2000, that “One of the great things about books is sometimes there are some fantastic pictures” and philosophically mused that “Rarely is the questioned asked: Is our children learning?" Sure, Obama may have motivated whole classrooms full of young, inspired minds with his hopeful expectations when he concluded that "Here in America, you write your own destiny. You make your own future," but Bush hit the nail on the head when, in LaCrosse, Wisconsin on October 18, 2000, he dazzled his audience with this deft word-smithery: "Families is where our nation finds hope, where wings take dream." 

And yet, apparently it didn't seem dangerous for that man to be allowed to talk to children. In school.

Wow. 

But hey, regardless of everything else, one thing seems clear. The right-wing commentators attacking Obama's student address all seem to have something in common: they sure do love America's innocent children and want to protect them, at all costs, from the malevolent machinations (whether Fascist or Communist..or both, together, no matter how mutually exclusive they may be) of a nefarious federal government brain trust. How dare the commander-in-chief and his minions seek to manipulate, indoctrinate, and take advantage of our country's young people by luring them into blindly supporting and advancing the president's every whim? How can decent, freedom-loving, and patriotic citizens simply stand back and do nothing about the looming specter of brainwashed hordes of American students, duped and enlisted by an administration's imperial motivations and ideological agenda, pouring out of government schools as robotic, unthinking recruits and unwitting defenders of a terrifyingly authoritarian regime? 

It would come as no surprise that the very same people lambasting Obama for attempting to infiltrate America's school system in an effort to indoctrinate the malleable minds of our youth are staunch advocates of the United States' military might, planetary hegemony, who "Support Our Troops" bumper stickers on their American-made, gas-guzzling clunkers. The irony here is that the people who are apparently trying to "protect" our children from the grasp of "big government" have no problem with federally-mandated programs that, not only allow, but guarantee US military recruiters access to school kids. It seems that while they fear the multicultural commander-in-chief's motives for telling students to study hard, they are just fine with the military's invasion of those same students' privacy in an effort to condition them to kill indigenous people in foreign countries at the behest of that same commander-in-chief.

A recent piece by journalist David Goodman reveals:

"In the past few years, the military has mounted a virtual invasion into the lives of young Americans. Using data mining, stealth websites, career tests, and sophisticated marketing software, the Pentagon is harvesting and analyzing information on everything from high school students' GPAs and SAT scores to which video games they play. Before an Army recruiter even picks up the phone to call a prospect…the soldier may know more about the kid's habits than do his own parents."

Goodman, in his Mother Jones article, explains that a provision slipped into the No Child Left Behind act by Louisiana Republican then-Representative (now Senator) David Vitter and signed into law by George W. Bush in 2002, was a boon to military recruiters. The provision "requires high schools to give recruiters the names and contact details of all juniors and seniors. Schools that fail to comply risk losing their NCLB funding." As a result, Goodman continues, "this little-known regulation effectively transformed President George W. Bush's signature education bill into the most aggressive military recruitment tool since the draft. Students may sign an opt-out form — but not all school districts let them know about it."

But that's not all. 

Goodman reports that, in 2005, it was discovered that the Pentagon had spent the past two years amassing records from Selective Service, state DMVs, and data brokers to create a database of tens of millions of young adults and teens, some as young as 15, Goodman reports. The result of this massive data-mining project, overseen by the Joint Advertising Market Research & Studies program, is a recruiting database holding over 34 million names. The JAMRS database, run by credit report heavyweight Equifax, is described by its own website as "arguably the largest repository of 16-25-year-old youth data in the country."

Ari Rosmarin, Senior Advocacy Coordinator at the New York Civil Liberties Union and currently working on the NYCLU's "Project on Military Recruitment and Students’ Rights," explains how difficult, if not impossible, it is for students to opt-out of the JAMRS database. In an interview on Democracy Now!, Rosmarin said, "According to the Pentagon, the only way to what they call opt-out of the database is for your parent — a student cannot do this his or herself — a parent needs to send a letter to the Pentagon, asking the Pentagon to take their student out of the list. And even then, you’re not removed from the list; you’re put into what’s called a suppression file, which is a separate list within the JAMRS system and database system that keeps you away out of that list, but you’re never really removed from the list."

Even though the NYCLU filed and ultimately settled a lawsuit against the Pentagon in 2005, charging them with violating the Privacy Act and the Defense Act, which prohibits keeping information on students as young as fifteen, maintaining the information for over three years, the collection of Social Security numbers, and clarifying opt-out information, the military refused to cease the collection of racial and ethnic data.

This data is vital because the recruiters prey on poor and minority students. As a result, black and latino kids wind up in the military in disproportionate numbers to all other demographics. Eric Ruder reports, "In 1995, Tom Wilson, then a high-level official in charge of the Army's personnel department, let the truth slip out in an interview. He explained how the military targeted students "particularly in inner cities…I hesitate to use the term at-risk kids, but kids who would otherwise be called at-risk." Perhaps the war-crazy right-wing in this country was worried that if minority students are inspired by an African-American president's motivation to become writers, inventors, doctors, lawyers, or architects, there might not be enough soldiers left to invade and occupy more foreign countries.

The Pentagon spends roughly $600,000 every year collecting information from commercial data brokers such as the Student Marketing Group and the American Student List, which keep records on millions of high school students. The government also secretly gathers information from unsuspecting internet users, vocational test-takers, and even videogame enthusiasts. Goodman reports,

This year, the Army spent $1.2 million on the website March2Success.com, which provides free standardized test-taking tips devised by prep firms such as Peterson's, Kaplan, and Princeton Review. The only indications that the Army runs the site, which registers an average of 17,000 new users each month, are a tiny tagline and a small logo that links to the main recruitment website, GoArmy.com. Yet visitors' contact information can be sent to recruiters unless they opt out, and students also have the option of having a recruiter monitor their practice test scores. Terry Backstrom, who runs March2Success.com for the US Army Recruiting Command at Fort Knox, insists that it is about "good will," not recruiting. "We are providing a great service to schools that normally would cost them."

Recruiters are also data mining the classroom. More than 12,000 high schools administer the Armed Services Vocational Aptitude Battery, a three-hour multiple-choice test originally created in 1968 to match conscripts with military assignments. Rebranded in the mid-1990s as the "ASVAB Career Exploration Program," the test has a cheerful home page that makes no reference to its military applications, instead declaring that it "is designed to help students learn more about themselves and the world of work." A student who takes the test is asked to divulge his or her Social Security number, GPA, ethnicity, and career interests—all of which is then logged into the JAMRS database. In 2008, more than 641,000 high school students took the ASVAB; 90 percent had their scores sent to recruiters. Tony Castillo of the Army's Houston Recruiting Battalion says that ASVAB is "much more than a test to join the military. It is really a gift to public education."

To put all its data to use, the military has enlisted the help of Nielsen Claritas, a research and marketing firm whose clients include BMW, AOL, and Starbucks. Last year, it rolled out a "custom segmentation" program that allows a recruiter armed with the address, age, race, and gender of a potential "lead" to call up a wealth of information about young people in the immediate area, including recreation and consumption patterns. The program even suggests pitches that might work while cold-calling teenagers. "It's just a foot in the door for a recruiter to start a relevant conversation with a young person," says Donna Dorminey of the US Army Center for Accessions Research.

The efforts of aggressive military recruiters are also aided by a number of popular videogames. One of them, "American's Army," was created by the Pentagon itself and is available to play free online. According to Goodman, "one in four males between the age of thirteen and twenty-four have played this game" and the users who play it are, according to the Army, "29% more likely to be interested in serving in the military." The other is the insanely popular Xbox game "Halo 3," which has sold more copies than the entire Harry Potter series. The Army spent over a million dollars to sponsor the game and, in turn, players can link automatically from the game to the GoArmy.com recruiting website. 

There have been endless stories about recruiting misconduct and lies military recruiters tell our nation's vulnerable youth, once the recruiting process begins in earnest. Recruiters lie about non-binding contracts, "no combat" clauses in contracts, and threaten young recruits who change their minds about joining the military after signing up for theDelayed Enlistment Program. 

But, it seems, that this stuff doesn't bother conservative commentators or lawmakers, few of whom have actually served in the military themselves. The inconsistency of right-wing attacks never ceases to boggle the mind. They fear big government infiltration of public schools and yet support the most appalling example of big government: endless war and aggressive imperialism. In order to stay at war and maintain the Empire, the United States needs soldiers, by any means necessary. It doesn't seem to matter that while some schools don't have adequate or appropriate learning materials or resources for their students and faculties and that vital programs like "music" are being cut from budgets due to lack of funding, the US government, under President Barack Obama, has a yearly defense budget of over $700 billion (which doesn't include the $100 billion per year that Iraq and Afghanistan cost). In fact, as Goodman tells us, "for every new GI it signed up last year, the Army spent $24,500 on recruitment. (In contrast, four-year colleges spend an average of $2,000 per incoming student.)"

On second thought, maybe Obama just wants our nation's children to stay in school so that military recruiters know right where to find them. Hey, Fischer, what's that cherry-tree story again?

A drawing by Nour Naser from Gaza

A child from Gaza sent us this drawing after the Israeli attack on Gaza. The barbed wire is evident in the drawing that talks of the siege on the city, and the sky is almost blocked by the Israeli planes that are raining on them lots of missiles and fire, while Palestine is bleeding exactly like the injured children who are dying. The faces of the dying children are full of sadness and sorrow, their home has been bombed, yet the Israeli soldier is still firing at them and at the ambulance that came to their rescue.
A picture or a drawing speaks better than a thousand words can.

Romi Elnagar: Art therapy enables children to deal in nonverbal ways with traumatic events in their lives.

Many who work with children who have experienced traumatic events, such as child psychologists, believe it is crucial for children to express their feelings about those events if they are to recover from their suffering.  Art is a way for children to communicate the full range of emotions, and one of the most important ways to express feelings of anger, pain and fear.  Child psychologists have found that art therapy works to enable children to show in nonverbal ways what they have experienced and to deal with traumatic events in their lives.

For example, the organization Darkness to Light, which deals with child sexual abuse, uses art therapy in its work, and says, "Anyone who has experienced psychological trauma may have difficulty expressing their experience directly or effectively in words…Art is a non-threatening way to visually communicate anything that is too painful to put into words." (1)

People working with child survivors of the horrendous civil war in Sierra Leone also used art as part of the healing process.  Children can show in pictures events that are too traumatic to be even brought to the surface of consciousness.  Often, it is only when a child begins to draw that he can even remember what he has suffered, as painful events are brought to consciousness in the pictures he makes.  Elsewhere in Africa, children's drawings of torture, rape and murder have been so detailed and so powerful that they have been used to bring a case in the International Criminal Court against janjaweed groups in Darfur.

I am more concerned, however, with helping children to deal with and overcome their terrible experiences through their art, and in particular, those children who have suffered the devastating and brutal Israeli Occupation of Palestine.

There are some organizations and individuals working on the West Bank and Gaza to help children overcome the traumas caused by seeing the helplessness of parents and caretakers in the face of vicious genocidal oppression, the hopelessness of poverty, starvation and incarceration in Gaza, which has been called the largest open-air prison on the planet and the brutality of daily beatings, violence and murder.  While art therapy cannot be expected to right these wrongs, it may help to make young victims able to achieve a humanity that their oppressors can only envy, if they were even able to comprehend it.

Giving these children in the Occupied Territories and Gaza the tools to show what they have witnessed furthermore enables adults in their lives to understand and to validate their experiences.  Artistic expression can nurture dignity and self-respect when individuals feel powerless in the face of oppression and violence.  Helping children to regain a lost sense of safety and peace is what art therapy is all about, for Palestinian children and for the young victims of war, genocide and oppression everywhere.

These are the goals of organizations like the Palestinian Child Arts Center in Hebron, and Hope and Play.org (a British organization that works with refugee children worldwide).  Another organization, the Arab Resource Center for Popular Arts in Lebanon (al-Jana)  says, "…the belief of Al-Jana [is] that the challenges that face these so called "marginalized communities" have enriched their existence and as such have contributed to a stronger sense of community building; creative problem solving; and communal initiative and resiliency. Their vibrant culture reflects this resourcefulness and deep human spirit." (2)

In Jenin, a Freedom Theater provides a refuge for children from a world of Israeli raids and harrassment.  The director of the theator, Juliano Khamis, says, "Art cannot free you from your chains, but art can generate and mobilize discourse of freedom.  Art can create debate. Art can expose."  (3)

Most of all, children's art can expose the ordeals they have suffered, and by doing so, pave the way for healing.

(1) http://www.darknesstolight.org/KnowAbout/articles_art_therapy.asp
(2) http://www.al-jana.org/thome.htm
(3) http://english.aljazeera.net/programmes/general/2008/09/20089513844349738.html

Romi Elnagar is a Palestinian Mothers’ Network Member, retired elementary schoolteacher with master's in art education

Press TV's weekly programme Remember the Children of Palestine allows one of those rare opportunities to see brief reports about the daily life of Palestinians from a human framework. Each week, it features films and guests who talk about issues such as education, health, the family and holidays, as well as featuring music videos and guest speakers who address issues such as activism and relief work.

This week I had the honour to be invited to add a contribution about the language that activists are dealing with when they are struggling to get the message through. It's a very complicated topic, and one that PTT dedicates a lot of energy to addressing (the intervention is at 26'00"). But enjoy the entire show, there is a lot of interesting material!

Thanks to Iqbal, Nada, Lauren and the other ladies and gentlemen who made it a positive experience.

see www.presstv.ir

NOT certain the embedding is quite right, you can see it also on Press TV's site (until I work out the technical problems!)
http://www.presstv.ir/programs/detail.aspx?sectionid=3510533&id=105084#

Israeli strategists rely on game theory models to ensure the intended response to staged provocations and manipulated crises. With the use of game theory algorithms, those responses become predictable, even foreseeable—within an acceptable range of probabilities. The waging of war “by way of deception” is now a mathematical discipline.

Such “probabilistic” war planning enables Tel Aviv to deploy serial provocations and well-timed crises as a force multiplier to project Israeli influence worldwide. For a skilled agent provocateur, the target can be a person, a company, an economy, a legislature, a nation or an entire culture—such as Islam. With a well-modeled provocation, the anticipated reaction can even become a powerful weapon in the Israeli arsenal.

For instance, a skilled game theorist could foresee that, in response to a 911-type mass murder, “the mark” (the U.S.) would deploy its military to avenge that attack. With phony intelligence fixed around a preset goal, a game theory algorithm could anticipate that those forces might well be redirected to invade Iraq—not to avenge 911 but to pursue the expansionist goals of Greater Israel.

To provoke that invasion required the displacement of an inconvenient truth (Iraq played no role in 911) with what lawmakers and the public could be deceived to believe. The emotionally wrenching nature of that incident was essential in order to induce Americans to abandon rational analysis and to facilitate their reliance on false intelligence.

Americans were (predictably) provoked by that mass murder. The foreseeable reaction—shock, grief and outrage—made it easier for them to believe that an infamous Iraqi Evil Doer was to blame. The displacement of facts with beliefs lies at heart of how Israel, the world’s leading authority in game theory, induces other nations to wage their wars.

False but Plausible

To displace facts with credible fiction requires a period of “preparing the minds” so that the mark will believe a pre-staged storyline. Thus the essential role of a complicit media to promote: (a) a plausible present danger (Iraqi weapons of mass destruction), (b) a plausible villain (a former ally rebranded as an Evil Doer), and (c) a plausible post-Cold War threat to national security (The Clash of Civilizations and “Islamo-fascism”).

Reports from inside Israeli intelligence suggest that the war-planners who induced the 2003 invasion of Iraq began their psyops campaign no later than 1986 when an Israeli Mossad operation (Operation Trojan) made it appear that the Libyan leadership was transmitting terrorist directives from Tripoli to their embassies worldwide. Soon thereafter, two U.S. soldiers were killed by a terrorist attack in a Berlin discotheque. Ten days later, U.S., British and German aircraft dropped 60 tons of bombs on Libya.

The following is a senior Mossad operative’s assessment (published in 1994 in The Other Side of Deception) of that 1986 operation—five years before the Gulf War and 15 years before the murderous provocation that preceded the invasion of Iraq:

After the bombing of Libya, our friend Qadhafi is sure to stay out of the picture for some time. Iraq and Saddam Hussein are the next target. We’re starting now to build him up as the big villain. It will take some time, but in the end, there’s no doubt that it’ll work.

Could this account by former Mossad case officer Victor Ostrovsky be correct? If so, Tel Aviv’s Iraqi operation required more pre-staging than its relatively simple Libyan deception.

America the Mark

From a game theory perspective, what is the probability of a violent reaction in the Middle East after more than a half-century of serial Israeli provocations—in an environment where the U.S. is identified (correctly) as the Zionist state’s special friend and protector?

During the 1967 War, the Israeli killing of 34 Americans aboard the USS Liberty confirmed that a U.S. president (Democrat Lyndon Johnson) could be induced to condone murderous behavior by Israel. Two decades later, Operation Trojan confirmed that a U.S. president (Republican Ronald Reagan) could be induced to attack an Arab nation based on intelligence fixed by Israel.

For more than six decades, the U.S. has armed, financed, befriended and defended Zionism. This “special relationship” includes the U.S.-discrediting veto of dozens of U.N. resolutions critical of Israeli conduct. From a game theory perspective, how difficult was it to anticipate that—out of a worldwide population of 1.3 billion Muslims—19 Muslim men could be induced to perpetrate a murderous act in response to U.S support for Israel’s lengthy mistreatment of Arabs and Muslims, particularly Palestinians?

Israeli game theorists operate not from the Center for Morality or the Center for Justice but from the Center for Rationality. As modeled by Zionist war planners, game theory is devoid of all values except one: the ability to anticipate—within an acceptable range of probabilities—how “the mark” will react when provoked. Thus we see the force-multiplier potential for those who wage war with well-planned provocations and well-timed crises.

Israeli behavior is often immoral and unjust but that does not mean it is irrational. For Colonial Zionists committed to the pursuit of an expansionist agenda, even murderous provocations are rational because the response can be mathematically modeled, ensuring the results are reasonably foreseeable. That alone is sufficient for a people who, as God’s chosen, consider it their right to operate above the rule of law.

Jeff Gates is author of Guilt By Association, Democracy at Risk and The Ownership Solution. See www.criminalstate.com.

When I was a high school student in Ramallah, one of the better known "people-to-people" initiatives, Seeds of Peace, often visited my school, asking students to join their program. Almost every year, they would send a few of my classmates to a summer camp in the US with a similar group of Israeli students. According to the Seeds of Peace website, at the camp they are taught "to develop empathy, respect, and confidence as well as leadership, communication and negotiation skills — all critical components that will facilitate peaceful coexistence for the next generation." They paint quite a rosy picture, and most people in college are very surprised to hear that I think such activities are misguided at best, and immoral, at worst. Why on earth would I be against "coexistence," they invariably ask?

During the last few years, there have been growing calls to bring to an end Israel's oppression of the Palestinian people through an international movement of boycott, divestment and sanctions (BDS). One of the commonly-held objections to the boycott is that it is counter-productive, and that "dialogue" and "fostering coexistence" is much more constructive than boycotts.

With the beginning of the Oslo accords in 1993, there has been an entire industry that works toward bringing Israelis and Palestinians together in these "dialogue" groups. The stated purpose of such groups is the creating of understanding between "both sides of the conflict," in order to "build bridges" and "overcome barriers." However, the assumption that such activities will help facilitate peace is not only incorrect, but is actually morally lacking.

The presumption that dialogue is needed in order to achieve peace completely ignores the historical context of the situation in Palestine. It assumes that both sides have committed, more or less, an equal amount of atrocities against one another, and are equally culpable for the wrongs that have been done. It is assumed that not one side is either completely right or completely wrong, but that both sides have legitimate claims that should be addressed, and certain blind spots that must be overcome. Therefore, both sides must listen to the "other" point of view, in order to foster understanding and communication, which would presumably lead to "coexistence" or "reconciliation."

Such an approach is deemed "balanced" or "moderate," as if that is a good thing. However, the reality on the ground is vastly different than the "moderate" view of this so-called "conflict." Even the word "conflict" is misleading, because it implies a dispute between two symmetric parties. The reality is not so; it is not a case of simple misunderstanding or mutual hatred which stands in the way of peace. The context of the situation in Israel/Palestine is that of colonialism, apartheid and racism, a situation in which there is an oppressor and an oppressed, a colonizer and a colonized.

In cases of colonialism and apartheid, history shows that colonial regimes do not relinquish power without popular struggle and resistance, or direct international pressure. It is a particularly naive view to assume that persuasion and "talking" will convince an oppressive system to give up its power.

The apartheid regime in South Africa, for instance, was ended after years of struggle with the vital aid of an international campaign of sanctions, divestments and boycotts. If one had suggested to the oppressed South Africans living in bantustans to try and understand the other point of view (i.e. the point of view of South African white supremacists), people would have laughed at such a ridiculous notion. Similarly, during the Indian struggle for emancipation from British colonial rule, Mahatma Gandhi would not have been venerated as a fighter for justice had he renounced satyagraha — "holding firmly to the truth," his term for his nonviolent resistance movement — and instead advocated for dialogue with the occupying British colonialists in order to understand their side of the story.

Now, it is true that some white South Africans stood in solidarity with the oppressed black South Africans, and participated in the struggle against apartheid. And there were, to be sure, some British dissenters to their government's colonial policies. But those supporters explicitly stood alongside the oppressed with the clear objective of ending oppression, of fighting the injustices perpetrated by their governments and representatives. Any joint gathering of both parties, therefore, can only be morally sound when the citizens of the oppressive state stand in solidarity with the members of the oppressed group, not under the banner of "dialogue" for the purpose of "understanding the other side of the story." Dialogue is only acceptable when done for the purpose of further understanding the plight of the oppressed, not under the framework of having "both sides heard."

It has been argued, however, by the Palestinian proponents of these dialogue groups, that such activities may be used as a tool — not to promote so-called "understanding," — but to actually win over Israelis to the Palestinian struggle for justice, by persuading them or "having them recognize our humanity."

However, this assumption is also naive. Unfortunately, most Israelis have fallen victim to the propaganda that the Zionist establishment and its many outlets feed them from a young age. Moreover, it will require a huge, concerted effort to counter this propaganda through persuasion. For example, most Israelis will not be convinced that their government has reached a level of criminality that warrants a call for boycott. Even if they are logically convinced of the brutalities of Israeli oppression, it will most likely not be enough to rouse them into any form of action against it. This has been proven to be true time and again, evident in the abject failure of such dialogue groups to form any comprehensive anti-occupation movement ever since their inception with the Oslo process. In reality, nothing short of sustained pressure — not persuasion — will make Israelis realize that Palestinian rights have to be rectified. That is the logic of the BDS movement, which is entirely opposed to the false logic of dialogue.

Based on an unpublished 2002 report by the Israel/Palestine Center for Research and Information, the San Francisco Chronicle reported last October that "between 1993 and 2000 [alone], Western governments and foundations spent between $20 million and $25 million on the dialogue groups." A subsequent wide-scale survey of Palestinians who participated in the dialogue groups revealed that this great expenditure failed to produce "a single peace activist on either side." This affirms the belief among Palestinians that the entire enterprise is a waste of time and money.

The survey also revealed that the Palestinian participants were not fully representative of their society. Many participants tended to be "children or friends of high-ranking Palestinian officials or economic elites. Only seven percent of participants were refugee camp residents, even though they make up 16 percent of the Palestinian population." The survey also found that 91 percent of Palestinian participants no longer maintained ties with Israelis they met. In addition, 93 percent were not approached with follow-up camp activity, and only five percent agreed the whole ordeal helped "promote peace culture and dialogue between participants."

Despite the resounding failure of these dialogue projects, money continues to be invested in them. As Omar Barghouti, one of the founding members of the BDS movement in Palestine, explained in The Electronic Intifada, "there have been so many attempts at dialogue since 1993 … it became an industry — we call it the peace industry."

This may be partly attributed to two factors. The dominant factor is the useful role such projects play in public relations. For example, the Seeds of Peace website boosts its legitimacy by featuring an impressive array of endorsements by popular politicians and authorities, such as Hillary Clinton, Bill Clinton, George Mitchell, Shimon Peres, George Bush, Colin Powell and Tony Blair, amongst others. The second factor is the need of certain Israeli "leftists" and "liberals" to feel as if they are doing something admirable to "question themselves," while in reality they take no substantive stand against the crimes that their government commits in their name. The politicians and Western governments continue to fund such projects, thereby bolstering their images as supporters of "coexistence," and the "liberal" Israeli participants can exonerate themselves of any guilt by participating in the noble act of "fostering peace." A symbiotic relationship, of sorts.
SOURCE: http://electronicintifada.net/v2/article10722.shtml

The lack of results from such initiatives is not surprising, as the stated objectives of dialogue and "coexistence" groups do not include convincing Israelis to help Palestinians gain the respect of their inalienable rights. The minimum requirement of recognizing Israel's inherently oppressive nature is absent in these dialogue groups. Rather, these organizations operate under the dubious assumption that the "conflict" is very complex and multifaceted, where there are "two sides to every story," and each narrative has certain valid claims as well as biases.

As the authoritative call by the Palestinian Campaign for the Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel makes plain, any joint Palestinian-Israeli activities — whether they be film screenings or summer camps — can only be acceptable when their stated objective is to end, protest, and/or raise awareness of the oppression of the Palestinians.

Any Israeli seeking to interact with Palestinians, with the clear objective of solidarity and helping them to end oppression, will be welcomed with open arms. Caution must be raised, however, when invitations are made to participate in a dialogue between "both sides" of the so-called "conflict." Any call for a "balanced" discourse on this issue — where the motto "there are two sides to every story" is revered almost religiously — is intellectually and morally dishonest, and ignores the fact that, when it comes to cases of colonialism, apartheid, and oppression, there is no such thing as "balance." The oppressor society, by and large, will not give up its privileges without pressure. This is why the BDS campaign is such an important instrument of change.

Faris Giacaman is a Palestinian student from the West Bank, attending his second year of college in the United States.

Source: http://electronicintifada.net/v2/article10722.shtml

Yes, the good ones are going into combat

By Moshe Tur-Paz

http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/1106972.html
Richard Cohen, a columnist for The Washington Post, recently wrote about how proud his graduating class from a school in Queens, New York was of three of its students who went on to win Nobel Prizes, another who became a renowned psychologist and yet another who was a trailblazing women's basketball player." That is how Gideon Levy describes his vision for school achievement in Israel ("Kfir wants you?" – August 10). He contrasts his vision with the fact that Yedioth Aharonoth actually paid tribute to the schools that came in first in the "combat unit and draft evasion index."

The school at which I am principal, Shaked-Sde Eliyahu, is a regional religious school in the Emek Hama'ayanot area near Beit She'an. The school came in first in the "combat unit competition," with 87 percent of its graduates serving in combat units, commando units and volunteer units for soldiers lacking combat qualifications.

I am not ashamed of this achievement. On the contrary, I am proud of it. My school has a success rate of more than 70 percent on the matriculation exams. It has a rich curriculum, varied and creative course offerings, and a broad range of Jewish studies. Most of its graduates, especially students from the religious kibbutz movement, complete a year of community service before serving their full army service or alternative national service.

Richard Cohen is a good Jew who has chosen not to live in Israel. He can write his column in his safe haven. Meanwhile, the graduates of the Shaked School, the Hispin yeshiva and the Sulam Tzur comprehensive school from my area will lay in wait on ambush duty, serve at roadblocks and endanger their lives in all those activities that Gideon Levy so abhors. Service in the Israel Defense Forces is a necessity very much connected to education.

Service in a combat unit isn't just an existential need of the State of Israel. It is also an expression of friendship, love of the land, ambition, leadership, physical and mental stamina and an awareness of collective duty. The Education Ministry should develop, encourage and reward the teaching of values in schools. Values education includes volunteerism, compassion, tolerance of the other, development of humanitarian values and creativity as well as contributing to the state even if it means risking one's life.

Israelis are entitled to know the matriculation rates at their children's schools, but that's not enough. They are also entitled to know about the values taught at these schools. I, too, am very concerned about the results of the army survey. I am concerned that the top 10 schools with graduates in combat units (five religious and five secular) all belong to the rural education school network. I am concerned that the large cities (especially those between Hadera and Gedera) are underrepresented on the list. I am concerned that the things that have been said about the contribution of the "State of Tel Aviv" to the defense of the state could turn out to be correct.

Last Shabbat, soldiers from the army's Nativ course, most of whom are about to be converted to Judaism, were hosted by families on my kibbutz, Tirat Zvi. This week a new group of immigrants whose parents had left Israel joined the kibbutz. And two weeks ago, my kibbutz hosted children from Ilan, the organization for disabled children, for an enrichment summer camp. For many years now, the religious kibbutz movement has taken a leading role in volunteering and community service.

The Education Ministry would do well to continue to encourage and develop values education. Parents and schools would do well to examine educational outcomes from a value and societal standpoint, including enlistment in the IDF. The graduates of "Kochav Nolad" (the Israeli version of "American Idol"), will apparently fight for their right to the recognition and success Cohen has achieved. To our regret, we will have to lean on our sword for many more years and rely on our graduates, who are fighting for the state's existence.

The writer is the principal of the Shaked School at Sde Eliyahu, whose graduates were ranked first by the IDF and Education Ministry according to participation in combat units.

On 25 June, the Portland Indymedia website published an article entitled 'Rose City Antifa: Statement on Anti-Semites and their Collaborators' [1]. Rose City Antifa is part of the Anti-Racist Action Network.

Since its creation in 1999 during the protests against the World Trade Organization in Seattle, Indymedia has been an essential source for community organizing. However, this 'Statement on Anti-Semites', and the list of irresponsible comments attached to it, is an example of enabling unscrupulous individuals to divide and weaken the community Indymedia was founded to serve.

The statement refers to a talk by Valdas Anelauskas, a Lithuanian immigrant who describes himself as a 'radical conservative'. The talk was a critique of the 'Frankfurt School', a Marxist theory of psychology. The anti-war activists who invited him to speak in Portland have a long record of inviting liberal speakers – this is the first conservative they have hosted. They organized a protest against a recent American Israel Public Affairs conference, which took place during the Gaza massacre. This is when the allegations of antisemitism began.

Following Anelauskas's presentation, those who organized the meeting were denounced as 'fascist collaborators', One of the ringleaders was tried in his absence by anonymous contributors to Indymedia. The organizations he has been involved in for decades were 'called on' to 'call him out'. The co-op where he works was told to fire him or face a boycott campaign, though it is illegal to dismiss employees for their opinions. The statement ended:

       'This statement is a beginning; other fascist collaborators should not consider themselves to have been let off the hook in any way. No compromise and no half-measures!'

Strong stuff. As if someone was signaling to German bombers above Portland.

The statement makes no distinction between words and violent acts, implying that Anelauskas's ideas are so dangerous, those who invited him should be ostracized for life. Anelauskas is a rarity, an extreme right-wing intellectual. He does not advocate violence. He does not deny the Holocaust. Unlike the Zionists who started the campaign to shut him up, he opposes the Iraq war. He presents us with a clear choice: are the feelings of American Jews more important than the lives of Arab children? Portland anti-fascists have answered loud and clear, staking their place in the modern American left.

Rebuttals of the Antifascist statement have not been given equal prominence on Indymedia, and some have been disappeared. It's straight out of the Moscow Trials: respected activists are publicly denounced on the basis of hearsay, and people accept it. Just as in Stalin's Russia, apologies and confessions don't help, they just encourage the persecutors. Here is a statement by one of the Portland accused – "I don't deny the horrors of WWII including the Holocaust and the many forgotten details of that time", and here is the antifascist response: 'This itself is a classic Holocaust-denial strategy'. That's right, affirming that the Holocaust happened is Holocaust denial.

The only people who identified themselves a members of minorities in the Indymedia comments disagreed with the antifascist statement. One African-American said he is opposed to campaigns against thought crimes, and that arguments, even ethnically-based ones, don't hurt him. In reply, the antifascists treated him differently from white people arguing the same thing: they were condescending rather than abusive.

Recently, The Israel Project, a Washington DC think-tank, issued a report on the right language to use to manipulate the public. Its chapters include "Gaza: Israel’s right to self-defense" and "Talking to the American Left"; killing babies and political correctness. It recommends using leftist phrases, such as 'call out antisemitism' and 'oppression'. This is what the anti-racists do. This does not imply a conspiracy, nor they have been infiltrated by Zionists: they help them without doing so consciously.  Here is a good example from the Indymedia comments on the antifascist witch-hunt:

       'As a former Portland resident who is tired of leftists who have come to accept antisemitism, I want to thank you for your actions'.

Notice the lack of specific examples, and the use of personal feelings as a weapon of argument. 'Antisemitism' could mean any criticism of Israel. When the Republicans at the Oregon Commentator website reproduced the Indymedia statement approvingly, the antifascists were nonplussed, not understanding that it is quite logical for right-wing Zionists to welcome the aid of left-wing antifascists. As a conservative diplomat wrote:

       "The tactics of [X] plumb the depths of dishonor and indecency and include character assassination, selective misquotation, the willful distortion of the record, the fabrication of falsehoods, an utter disregard for the truth, and the substitution of political correctness for analysis".

Can you guess what 'X' stands for? Anti-Racist Action? No, the Israel Lobby.

Anti-Racist Action's latest antics include postering a Portland neighborhood with the photo and address of an anti-immigration guy they disagree with, then trying to provoke a fight when he appears in public [2]. Their tactic is obvious – start with unpopular right-wingers, then move on to their more liberal opponents: first the 'Nazis', then the 'Nazi-enablers'. Pick us off one by one. Sound familiar? ARA is more of a danger to the progressive community than the insignificant or imaginary 'fascists' they 'confront' and 'call out'. Their messianic certainty recalls the worst excesses of the seventies left. ARA has nothing to do with combating genuine threats, and everything to do with increasing its own power. If they asked us to agree with them, the antifascists would be implying that we are able to judge which ideas are dangerous, and avoid them, but are unable to listen to them safely.. If you can judge which arguments are wrong in advance, then you
 are also capable of listening to them without the danger of being misled by them. It is illogical to say 'I am smart enough to work out which ideas I am not smart enough to be exposed to'. So the  antifascists cannot ask; they must demand: 'defy us, or capitulate'.

Those who realize the need to stand up against intimidation are forced into a corner. We are now obliged to defend Valdas Anelauskas and the decision to invite him. The danger of doing this is overwhelmed by the danger of not doing it, and handing a victory to the self-appointed thought police. The ironies are almost funny – we have antifascists who use totalitarian tactics, anti-sexist men brimming over with macho aggression, and anarchists who want to be cops. Anti-Racist Action opposes the 'capitalist court system': it's too fair. It doesn't accept hearsay, for one thing.

What can you do to counter this threat to community and freedom? Listen to individuals further to the right than you have up until now; they don't bite. I enjoy listening to Valdas Anelauskas: he is so right-wing, he makes Michael Savage sound like Karl Marx. When you hear that someone is a 'Holocaust denier', don't believe it – find out for yourself. Hold meetings in your community to discuss Israel, race, and other issues, and state in advance that any allegations of antisemitism will be ignored. Invite controversial speakers from left and right. Never apologize. Say no to intimidation and censorship.

1. 'Statement on Anti-Semites', http://portland.indymedia.org/en/2009/06/392268.shtml?discuss
2. 'Rogue of the Week', Willamette Week, http://wweek.com/columns/rogue/#35..36

Read the magazine online at: http://www.badil.org/al-majdal/al-majdal.htm

Bethlehem, August 2009: The BADIL Resource Center for Palestinian
Residency and Refugee Rights announces the release of its Spring /
Summer 2009 issue of al-Majdal, Badil's English-language quarterly magazine.

This issue of al-Majdal draws on the research and experience of the
participants in the Israel Review Conference
(http://israelreview.bdsmovement.net), and the topics on which they
focused to provide an overview of routes, challenges, and
recommendations for "Litigating Palestine." They evaluate past attempts at taking Israel and its abettors to court, assess the role of law in
attaining justice for victims, and ­perhaps of particular interest to
non-lawyers ­the role of civil society in supporting legal battles to
attain justice for Palestinians.

A recurring theme is the consistent interference of executive and
legislative branches of government to shield Israel and its agents from
prosecution. Susan Akram and Yasmine Gado's article on civil tort claims
in U.S. courts shows how the U.S. government has consistently interfered
to ensure that courts dismiss Palestinian cases on procedural and
jurisdictional grounds. Bill Bowring looks into the situation in Europe
making it clear that Palestinians “do not have the possibility of
addressing complaints to the European Court of Human Rights and the
European Court of Justice.

Contributions in this issue also explore possibilities for legal action
that can potentially overcome ­or at least bypass  someome of these
limitations, by targeting third parties. John Reynolds describes the
case targeting the U.K. government as a third party complicit in Israeli
violations. Deborah Guterman examines the case of Quebec courts against
Canadian corporations involved in the construction of Israeli colonies
in the West Bank. Karen Pennington and Joseph Schechla revisit US courts
in an examination of whether recent precedents targeting Islamic
charities may reopen the door to challenging the Jewish National Fund
and other Zionist para-state organizations as charitable organizations
in that country.

As this issue goes to print, news is circulating about the change in
Spanish universal jurisdiction laws as a direct attempt to protect
Israeli war crime suspects from prosecution. Meanwhile, there is an
ongoing legal challenge to Heidelberg Cement for its plunder of quarries
in the occupied West Bank, and a German-E.U. challenge to European
imports from Ma'ale Adumim's Soda-Club. The U.K. has announced a partial
arms embargo on Israel, while U.K. courts have dismissed the case
challenging the U.K. government for its failure to fulfill its
obligations under international law with respect to Israel's activities
in the Occupied Palestinian Territory. These are some of the many
examples of the ways in which the courtroom has developed as a site of
struggle to attain justice for Palestinians. As such, it is important to
learn from the experiences of the past and coordinate action for the
future in order to increase chances for success.

———————————
Visit the al-Majdal homepage at http://www.badil.org/al-majdal/al-majdal.htm

or download the full PDF version of this issue of al-Majdal at:
http://www.badil.org/al-majdal/2008/autumn-winter/majdal39-40.pdf

Annual subscriptions to the printed version of the magazine are
available for Euro 25 (4 issues).

Subscribe online at
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or through email requests addressed to the editor at info@badil.org

Of course it all started out with the lies that “Palestine was a land without people for people without land”. There is a double lie in this infamous statement. As if Palestinians, the indigenous people of the land for thousands of years, did and do not exist and as if the “Jews” from all over the world constitute “people” in the sense that Germans, Russians, French, Egyptians, Indonesians are one people. The Zionists were able to market the idea because the Christian West was simply too racist and too Anti-Semitic to have too many “Jews” and wanted the “Jews” simply out of Europe. That is why it started out with the Russian Pogroms and ended in the German Holocaust. I think the support Israel gets from Europe and the West is an extension and continuation of this Anti-Semitic feeling that never ceased to exist. Of course with such a tragic history, one can understand why the “Jews” of Israel are really messed up people.

More troublesome is the belief and conviction they are God's “Chosen People” as if the rest of humanity is God’s trash, and if this is the case, then I wonder why there are some 1.3 Billion Muslims and some 1.7 Billion Christians who simply stuck to their faith knowing they are not God’s “Chosen People”, but God’s trash. I could not imagine what the rest of humanity thinks of all of this if all are deemed “trash” and outcast and not covered with God’s grace. With the likes of Shamir, Begin, Ben Gurion, Golda Meir, Peres, Barak, Livni, Olmert, Sharon, Netanyahu, Lieberman, Sheetrit, Aharonovich, Jabotinsky, Ashkenazi, Rabbi Kahane, Rabbi Goldstein and Rabbi Ovadia Josef, one has to question God’s judgment if HE/SHE ever thought that one day this kind of people can claim they are the “Chosen Ones” and who at best can only be described as racist, hateful, criminal killers, murderers, terrorists and land thieves, and they will commit the crimes they committed in Palestine and recently in Gaza all in HIS/HER name.

I am not aware that the ALL Mighty was desperate to have his human creation believe in HIS/HER “Oneness”, but to have the likes of these people as HIS/HER Chosen Ones is a desperate, hasty and regretful act with long historical consequences that we see today in the Apartheid Wall, in the ever expanding Jewish Settlements, in the siege and starvation of Gaza, in the daily humiliations of millions of people at some 650 “security checkpoints” and in the daily theft of land and water. I am sure God and Moses regrets such hasty decision and promise, and I am sure God and Moses never imagined the “Chosen Ones” would turn away from Judaism and embrace Zionism as the true faith of Israeli Jews and most Jews around the world. They simply believe they have to kill whoever is living on the land, they believe in exiling and transferring those remaining on the land, depriving them of their rights to life, liberty and property. I guess Zionism and the unsubstantiated notion of the Promised Land transformed “Jews” from the believers of the Book to land thieves and murderers. They went even further calling the land thieves, trespassers and terrorists, Gush Emunim, the “Block of Faithful”, what Chutzpah. Only Israel's Zionist “Jews” can do this.

However this is only part of the story. They also believe that when one tells lies and keeps repeating the lies they will become the truth, especially when the cowardly West does not dare to challenge their truth. The world and especially the West does not have what it takes to challenge Israeli “Jews” on the notion of “natural growth in Jewish Settlements” let alone have they the courage to challenge them on their daily crimes in Occupied Palestine and especially Gaza, their continued violations of international laws and their Occupation.

That is why their soldiers commit cold blooded murder; use human shields, kill innocent people, commit massacres and Israelis see nothing wrong with it. They simply adore some one like Rabbi Meir Kahane, they worship Rabbi Goldstein who mowed down Muslim worships in Hebron, they adore their own army that fires tank rounds at children playing on the beach, target civilian apartments, destroy farms and uproot century-old Olive trees for the hell of it. They simply stand up and cheered as their tanks, jets, artillery level Gaza, killing so many innocent women and children and simply destroying the entire Gaza Strip. It looked like the 4^th of July and they were cheering as the jets dropped phosphorous bombs on civilian targets. They cheered the power of their destructive force and they simply have no remorse for what they have done to so many hundreds of thousands of people. They are taught in their Yeshivas, killing Arabs is simply an act of divine order and is part of the new Zionist’s faith.

They try to create facts on the ground, through land and water theft, and they claim they are building a “security wall” rather than an “Apartheid Wall” knowing well they are simply stealing the land, the water, destroying farms simply because they see nothing wrong with it and then they tell the world it is for “security” as if only the Israeli Jews are entitled to have peace and security and the Palestinians are simply God’s trash. If they are talking security then let them build their own wall a mile high along the 67 borders and no one will give a damn. Let them live in the Ghetto they have formed around themselves.

The daily humiliations, millions of Palestinians had to endure should tell all of us something about this new Israeli “Jewish” psyche as part of a grand scheme to dehumanize the Palestinians just like the Nazis did when they commenced to dehumanize the Jews and ended up putting them in death camps. Palestinians have to wait for hours simply to go from one village to an adjacent village or to access their farms, and Israelis do this to supplement their land theft, ethnic cleansing of Arabs from Jerusalem, destruction and demolition of thousands of homes, with 6,000 Palestinian homes slated for demolition in Jerusalem. The Israelis simply do not see anything wrong with their occupation; they see nothing wrong with what they and their army and government are doing to the Palestinians. Israelis and their cousins in the US have some serious issues.

Soldiers manning these security checkpoints make a young man from Nablus play the fiddle so they can have a laugh while hundreds of old, men and women - some very sick - have to wait for hours just to go through security, in scenes reminding us of old Cowboy movies when cattle had to go through revolving metal doors. Some soldiers bored with their job stay talking with their boyfriends or girlfriends or simply entertain themselves while hundreds if not thousands wait in the hot sun or cold rain - waiting their turn to go through. And Bibi Netanyahu offers Palestinians “economic peace” so his “Jewish” people can make load of money selling Israeli products – as if buying an Israeli product is a substitute for freedom and liberty. Some Arab villages do not have drinking water so that adjacent Jewish settlements can have swimming pools and green gardens. These land thieves do not think there is something wrong, of course they never cared because they simply believe Arabs are God’s trash.

I am sure so many of us who traveled to or live in Palestine have stories to tell. I am sure visiting Europeans feel this unique Israeli behavior as they arrive at Tel-Aviv airport, certainly they feel it more as they depart Israel.

Having said all of this in favor of Israeli Jews, I have to say there some very noble and honorable exceptions. There is the Peace Now movement, there is the Machsom Watch, there is the Women in Black, there are the demonstrations against the war on Gaza, there are the editorials in such papers as Haaretz, there are the novelists, the writers the journalists, the philanthropists and the tens of thousands of Israel Jews who are against the continued Jewish Occupation, and who reach out and extend their hands in peace, toward follow man and fellow neighbors the Palestinians. There are the brave soldiers who refuse to serve in the Occupied Territories and who have the courage to speak out and challenge their commanders and their lies especially during the War on Gaza. There are my personal friends who I have the honor and privilege to call my friends and brothers. That is why there is hope that one day the Israeli “Jews” and beyond them the American Jews will reclaim their faith again, and become true Jews and embrace Judaism as God meant it to be, a light onto other nations.

Note: I will devote my next posting to the Palestinians, and I have a whole lot to say.

Memo to him: the problem is not with his previous booklets, it's with Israel.

Anyway, here's the full text (CLICK ON FULL SCREEN TO ENLARGE, THEN ON CLOSE TO RETURN TO THIS BLOG):

The Israel Project's 2009 Global Language Dictionary –

I see favorably the publication of these hasbara materials inasmuch as they prove that Zionists don't actually believe that the world's negative view of Israel has anything to do with irrational antisemitism (otherwise they wouldn't waste their time trying to convince anyone). Other than that, I expect them to be professionally made and factually accurate. So that I did two searches on subjects the "hasbarization" of which I was curious about.

First, I typed in LOYALTY OATH on the search box. I was surprised to find no result. Mr. Liberman's initiative that Israeli Arabs should take a loyalty oath or be stripped of their citizenship is something an Israel advocate would be asked about, but this booklet offers no recipee to fend the questioner off.

Next, I typed in SETTLEMENTS. I did get a full chapter devoted to them. After listing a few somewhat dated arguments, on p. 63 we get the formula that summarizes it all:

WORDS THAT WORK
Israel does not talk about dismantling Arab settlements within Israel. In a democratic society, Jews and Arabs should be able to live side-by-side in peace. Nobody ever says Israeli territory has to be free from Arabs. One should ask the Palestinian leadership why they always demand land that is free from Jews.

Note the terminology shift currently under way. Just like a few years ago the Jewish immigrants to Israel were suddenly turned into refugees, and voilà, the Palestinian refugees were wiped out from the debate, because they cancelled out with the Jewish refugees, the Arab towns of Israel are now being termed settlements, and voilà, there's no injustice at all: Jewish settlements in the West Bank cancel out with Arab settlements in Israel. I denounce the Israeli checkpoints between Jericho and Ramallah, but why do I say nothing about the checkpoints set up by Arab falafel vendors on the roads of Tel Aviv?

That aside, the Words That Work include something that is not terminological at all, but which is simply a bare-faced lie, namely that the Palestinian leadership "always demand land that is free from Jews."

Up to a very recent time, no one talked about Jews remaining in the West Bank under a two-state solution. Everyone understood that Israeli Jews are deeply and unabashedly racist, and, in order to avoid living under Arab rule, they would be prepared to accept the unthinkable: higher taxes in Israel proper. Only very recently has the Hasbara community begun to claim the human right not to be uprooted from where you went to grab someone else's land in the first place. So that the Palestinian leadership had had nothing to say on the issue, because it was not a subject of debate.

Until now. But on Saturday, 4 July 2009, at the Aspen Institute’s Aspen Ideas Festival, in, of all places, Aspen, Colorado, Palestinian primer minister Saleem Fayyad was for the first time ever asked about his views on the subject. His answer:

“In fact the kind of state that we want to have, that we aspire to have, is one that would definitely espouse high values of tolerance, co-existence, mutual respect and deference to all cultures, religions. No discrimination whatsoever, on any basis whatsoever.

“Jews to the extent they choose to stay and live in the state of Palestine will enjoy those rights and certainly will not enjoy any less rights than Israeli Arabs enjoy now in the state of Israel.”

The Zionists went immediately ballistic. They took to the cyberspace to say, zillions of times "if you believe this I have a bridge in Brooklyn to sell to you." Others were more straightforward:

don't listen to them! DO NOT BELIEVE THEM!! the arabs are very capable of lying and then making life miserable for the Israelis. and than it might be too late..and they can make horrible laws too. they have ruled Jews before.

Why were they so furious? Because finally Fayyad had learned the Israeli technique of making offers that the other side can't take, so as to appear as very generous when the offer is actually meaningless.

But the Israel Project’s 2009 Global Language Dictionary chose to ignore this Palestinian display of smartness, and instead instructed the Hasbara gang to lie about it.

Not that the Hasbara gang didn't know that lying is the approach to take when apologizing for Israel, mind you.

Dear Gentlemen:

For over one hundred years Lamar Company has nobly served this nation, its customers and shareholders.  It's generosity in offering free public service access to its billboards is truly laudable.

It's a company that reflects the best of our American values, hard work, superior service, good governance and outstanding service to its clients.   Thus it's expected that Lamar would also uphold our democratic values where divergent opinions, free speech, debate and dialogue are respected and nurtured especially when it comes to issues of life, death, immoral and illegal oppression of other people's lands and freedoms.   Lamar's primary service is to provide the public with information space bought by Americans whether companies, organizations, or individuals.

That is why it is most disturbing and disappointing to learn that Lamar in Albuquerque, N.M. reneged on its contract with a local grassroots organizations of diverse Americans from different faiths including Jews, Christians, and Muslims who had legally purchased ten billboards to run a message for eight weeks only to have it abruptly canceled in three weeks due to some minor complaints by Pro Israel supporters.  (Please see press release below).

The coalition was formed to highlight the immoral but politically motivated decision by our Congress to send thirty billion dollars above the annual billions of economic and military aid to Israel given the assault on Palestinian families in Gaza earlier this year that led to the deaths of hundreds of children.   The United Nations, the European Union, Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch, Several Israeli human rights organizations, our National Lawyers Guild and so many more have deemed Israel's attack on Gaza as WAR CRIMES after their thorough investigation.   They found Israel even used illegal and banned weapons against civilians such as White Phosphorous bombs.

Although our knowledge maybe limited on the Israeli Palestinian conflict, one thing we as Americans understand and support is Freedom of Speech, our Constitutionally guaranteed First Amendment to free speech, press, religion, assembly, and petition.

Israel's supporters thrive on our freedom of speech by ensuring that Israel's interests in all our media, films, think tanks, and lobbies is paramount.   Unfortunately, the victims of this conflict, the Palestinians have no such wealth, funding or political voice in this country.  

Thus its vital for Americans with a human conscience and compassion who know first hand Israel's oppression of millions of helpless families under an illegal occupation as identified even by our own government have the smallest of opportunities to let America know of our blind, expensive, and counterproductive support of Israel, the sole nuclear power aggressor in the Middle East.

Gentlemen, I urge you to find the courage of your conscience, compasion, and patriotic love of our liberties to reconsider Lamar's decision to remove these billboards and allow them to stand for the remaining five weeks as per the agreed contract.   Lamar approved the billboard but is sadly succumbing to the complaints of the few in lieu of the liberty and survival of the many.

I am most grateful for your kind attention to this matter.   I await your response and God willing your reconsideration of this tragic decision.

God Bless, Respectfully

Mohamed Khodr M.D., M.P.H.

Member, The Coalition to Stop $30 Billion to Israel

http://stop30billion.com/index.php

For Immediate Release April 28, 2009

Contact: Lori Rudolph, 505-550-9553, lorir@unm.edu, Rich Forer, 265-1898, rich_forer@yahoo.com

LAMAR OUTDOOR ADVERTISING BOWS TO PRESSURE FROM PRO-ISRAEL GROUPS:

REMOVES BILLBOARDS AND STIFLES FREEDOM OF SPEECH

ALBUQUERQUE, NM – An Albuquerque-based billboard company pulled ten billboards today that had featured a political message. The contract between a local grassroots group, the Coalition to Stop $30 Billion to Israel, and Lamar Outdoor Advertising was supposed to be for eight weeks; the billboards were taken down after only three weeks.

Correspondence from Lamar indicated that the company had received complaints about the billboards’ message, which said: “Tell Congress: Stop Killing Children. End Military Aid to Israel.”

The Coalition has scheduled a meeting with Lamar officials on Friday. In the meantime, supporters are phoning Lamar to request the billboards be put back up.

On April 8th, the Coalition to Stop $30 Billion to Israel erected the billboards throughout the Albuquerque area in order to inform the public about the misuse of their tax dollars, denominated in human lives. The group was motivated by concern for the Palestinian people who had recently been

subjected to a massive invasion of the Gaza Strip by the Israeli military. Over 1,400 Palestinians – mostly civilian, including three hundred children – were killed and over 5,000 were injured. In 2007 the Bush administration signed a Memorandum of Understanding that provides $30 billion of U.S. taxpayer dollars to Israel over a ten year period beginning in 2008. The majority of these dollars will be used to purchase American-made weapons.

The design of the billboard had been approved by Lamar and the billboards’ wording and final image were suggested by Lamar’s graphics designer.

According to information from Lamar, it appears groups claiming to be pro-Israel have conducted a campaign to pressure Lamar to remove the billboards. The Coalition believes this is a deliberate attempt to silence its right to free speech because the humanitarian message of the billboards supports equal rights for the Palestinian people, thereby necessitating criticism of Israel.

See also: http://marcovilla.instablogs.com/entry/stop-30-billion-to-israel/