Compiled by Blaine Coleman

University of California at Berkeley–
Student Senate votes for divestment against Israeli war crimes

UC Berkeley student senate passes divestment resolution

Press Release
From UC Berkeley SJP (Students for Justice in Palestine)

March 18, 2010

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

Download the text of the UC Berkeley Divestment Bill here. 

For the first time in the University of California history, the UC Berkeley Student Senate has approved a bill to divest from two US companies in response to the Israeli occupation of Palestinian territories and to Israel’s siege and bombardment of the Gaza Strip.  

This Resolution is on the Web at:
http://www.inminds.co.uk/boycott-news-0376.html

* "The Wayne State University Student Council voted for total divestment from Israel." 

http://dearbornboycottsisrael.blogspot.com/2008/07/blog-post.html

 Resolution for Ending Support to Israel:  

The Human Rights Commission urged Ann Arbor City Council to also approve this Resolution.

Click on the Resolution to enlarge it.

_______________________________________________
 "Arms Divestment and Cessation of US Military Aid to Israel"
 A resolution of the Interfaith Council for Peace and Justice and its MiddleEast Task Force

 http://peacepalestinedocuments.blogspot.com/2006/01/approaches-to-economic-engagement.html

As persons of faith who believe in the equal worth and dignity of all people, we are distressed that Israelis and Palestinians have become locked in an escalating cycle of violence. We categorically condemn the taking of any life, Israeli or Palestinian. We are convinced that only the end of the Israeli occupation and the establishment of a geographically and economically viable independent Palestinian state can bring peace to the Middle East and achieve the goal of two nation-states — Israel andPalestine — living peaceably side-by-side, with equality and security, possibly in a confederation.

We have long been dismayed by threats to the existence of Israel. We areequally dismayed by the continual military occupation and virtual colonization of Palestinian territory by Israeli armed forces and settlers,the human rights abuses against Palestinians, and the destruction of the Palestinian economy. Devastation of the physical and social infrastructure in the West Bank and Gaza — including the forcible eviction from anddemolition of homes — does not quell terrorism. It engenders more.

Such actions fuel deeper hatred of Israel in surrounding countries, while causing a major humanitarian disaster among Palestinians. And they leave Palestinians continually vulnerable to expulsion from the land in which they have been deeply rooted for generations. U.S. weapons and military funding are being used in these violations of human rights andinternational agreements. Americans of conscience must protest.

We do not have faith that governments alone will take the necessary actions to bring about a change in the Israeli government policies described above. We therefore believe that nonviolent civilian action is needed, aiming tolimit the present intense funding of Israeli military activities.

Accordingly, we will work with those groups who are calling on the governing bodies of our religious institutions, the City of Ann Arbor, the University of Michigan, and our fellow citizens 

* to use their influence to encourage the United States government to end its complicity in these violations of human rights by suspending it smilitary aid and arms sales to Israel, and

* to divest themselves from all companies that manufacture or sell arms and other military hardware to Israel, in order to bring about:

* Israel's compliance with United Nations Resolution 242, which calls for "the withdrawal of Israeli armed forces from territories occupied in therecent (1967) conflict";

* Israel's compliance with the United Nations Committee Against TortureNov. 2001 Report (paragraph 53), which recommends that Israel's use of "thecrime of torture and other acts of cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment orpunishment" must be prevented;

* Israel's cessation of settlement building and expansion, and itsvacating of existing settlements in the Occupied Territories in compliancewith the Fourth Geneva Convention, which states "The Occupying Power shallnot deport or transfer parts of its own civilian population into the territory it occupies." (Article 49, paragraph 6, 1949);

* Israel's acknowledgment of the applicability of United NationsResolution 194 (1948) with respect to the rights of refugees, andacceptance that refugees should either be permitted to return to theirhomes and property or be justly compensated for their losses.

This statement is derived from multiple sources, including severaluniversity divestment petitions; and from members of the Middle East TaskForce of the Interfaith Council for Peace and Justice and thePalestine-Israel Action Group of Ann Arbor Friends Meeting.

"Call for Peace in the Middle East" by Ann Arbor Committee for Peace which later changed its name to Michigan Peaceworks. 
[This Resolution calls for an End To US Military Aid to Israel until the Occupation Ends and ALL the settlements are dismantled]
 
See below:

http://nyc.indymedia.org/en/2004/07/39754.html 
 
Preamble: The Ann Arbor Area Committee for Peace recognizes that theconflict in Palestine/Israel is an issue of great concern in our community,around which emotions often outweigh objectivity.

We do not wish to contribute to the discord, but rather to unify people around common goalsof nonviolence and fairness. Our organization formed shortly after 9-11-01 to address issues of peace, civil liberties, and civil rights-particularly how these issues would be affected by the U.S. government military response to the 9-11 attacks. We consider a peaceful resolution to the Israeli/Palestinian conflict to be an important element in curtailing the cycle of violence worldwide.

Statement: Over the past two years, we have witnessed in grief and anguishthe appalling destruction resulting from the spiral of violence in theMiddle East. Violence will only beget further violence. We condemn in the strongest terms the practices that bring about the deaths of innocent people and the destruction of communities.

Fortunately, there are many who work for peaceful resolution of theconflict. These people and organizations give hope that future generationsof Israelis and Palestinians can live normal, secure lives, in peace witheach other. We support the Israeli and Palestinian peacemakers, including the Bereaved Families for Peace, who call on their fellow citizens torenounce violence. We support the Israeli soldiers who refuse to serve inthe occupied territories. We support those from Israel and other countrieswho work with Palestinians to rebuild destroyed homes. We support the efforts of those states and organizations that have made proposals for a just peace, including the member states of the Arab League, which hascalled for normalization of relations with Israel in exchange for creationof a Palestinian state and a complete Israeli withdrawal from the occupied territories of the West Bank, Gaza, and East Jerusalem.

In solidarity with all those working for peace in the Middle East, we call for the following: 

* An immediate end to the Israeli Occupation of the West Bank, Gaza,and East Jerusalem;

* An immediate end to the violence on both sides, recognizing violence as including Occupation, military incursions, and suicide bombings;

* A full evacuation of all settlements with the exception of minornegotiated border adjustments;

* A just settlement for the refugees who have been forced by war toleave homes in Israel, the West Bank, and Gaza;

* Establishment of the state of Palestine side by side with the stateof Israel with the boundaries established by UN Resolution 242;

* Social and economic justice and full legal rights for all citizens of both states;

* A major international effort to assist the reconstruction of Palestine;

* An end to U.S. military aid to Israel until the Occupation ends and the settlements are dismantled;

* Negotiations towards arms control and disarmament of weapons of massdestruction for the entire region;

* Recognition of and normalization of relations with Israel by all thecountries of the Middle East. 

Adopted by the Ann Arbor Area Committee for Peace on November 11, 2002

Resolution to Divest in Principle and Practice, From Israel by the National Lawyers Guild 

http://peacepalestinedocuments.blogspot.com/2006/01/approaches-to-economic-engagement.html

(Adopted by NLG National Convention 10/24/04)

WHEREAS the Israeli government with its illegal occupation and expansionist program in the Palestinian West Bank and Gaza Strip is engaged, and has been engaged in grave human rights violations including but not limited to:

the use of live ammunition on unarmed civilians (including men, women, and children);
massive and disproportionate use of force including the firing of missiles from Apache helicopter gunships against defenseless civilian populations;
illegal mass arrests and institutionalized torture (including men, women, and children); the willful destruction of agricultural land;
the deprivation of water;
forced malnutrition with concomitant health consequences including stillborn deaths and irreversible developmental damage to children;
the mass demolition of homes and confiscation of land;
hostage taking and extra-judicial assassinations;
denial of medical services to the sick and wounded;
the use of human shields (including children);
the targeting of schools, and hospitals;
the building of illegal fortified "Jewish-only" Israeli colonies/settlements on confiscated land connected by "Jewish-only" bypass roads, and the heavily subsidized transfer of hundreds of thousands of its own civilian population into these colonies/settlements;

WHEREAS the International Court of Justice has ruled that Israel's Apartheid Wall violates international humanitarian law which governs Israel's administration of the Palestinian territories it has occupied since 1967 as well as the fundamental human rights of the Palestinians;

WHEREAS by virtue of, but not limited to, the Principles of the Nuremberg Charter and Judgment;

The United Nations Declaration of Human Rights;
International Covenant of Civil and Political Rights;
The Geneva Conventions, in particular, but not limited to the 4th Geneva Convention, the Convention Against Torture, the Convention on the Rights of the Child, Protocol 1, Additional to the Geneva Conventions, as well as other international covenants and the general humanitarian principles of international law,
these acts constitute war crimes, and in some cases crimes against humanity.

WHEREAS, the U.S. Foreign Assistance Act of 1961, 22 USC sec. 2304, provides that "no security assistance may be provided to any country the government of which engages in a consistent pattern of gross violations of internationally recognized human rights;"

WHEREAS, the UN General Assembly on October 22, 2003, reaffirming the principle of the inadmissibility of the acquisition of territory by force, and …. reiterating its opposition to settlement activities in the Occupied Palestinian Territories almost unanimously, with the exception of the US, Israel,…
 
BE IT RESOLVED that the NLG seeks, in principal and practice, to support national and international campaigns to divest from Israel…and (a) support divestment campaigns to make full public disclosure of any and all investments it or other institutions have in Israel and of any and all profits earned from companies invested in Israel, and (b) either immediately divest from those companies, or cause such companies to disinvest from Israel until all of the following conditions are met:

1. Withdraw armed forces;
2. Permit interested refugees to return to their homes and compensate the rest;
3.End torture;
4.Vacate all Jewish-only settlement/colonies;
5.Compensate all Palestinian victims.

"University of Sussex students vote to boycott Israeli goods"

November 27, 2009

http://www.muslimnews.co.uk/paper/index.php?article=4378

"Faculty Senate in Wisconson passes divestment bill"

"Dearborn Student Gov't Demands Divestment"

"Dearborn student government pushes 'U' to divest funds from Israel"

"The student government at the University's Dearborn campus last week unanimously passed a resolution calling for the University's Board of Regents to vote to divest from Israel."

Reported in the Michigan Daily, at:

http://www.michigandaily.com/content/dearborn-student-govt-demands-divestment 

http://www.michigandaily.com/content/dearborn-student-govt-pushes-israel-divestment 

Call to divest from Israeli Occupation, by Howard University's faculty of the College of Arts and Sciences 

Adopted May 13, 2003  

Approved unanimously by the Ann Arbor Human Rights Commission.

 http://www.jai-pal.org/content.php?page=501 

"Prominent call for divestment at Howard"

by: Will Youmans – The Arab American News

17th, March 2007

Activists calling for ending financial support for Israel welcomed a victory at a university in Washington, DC. The faculty of the College of Arts and Sciences at Howard University voted overwhelmingly to call on the university's board of trustees to divest from Israel.

The faculty at this historically Black institution came down with a 25 to 2 vote in favor of divestment, beginning with the identification of university "funds that are being invested in 'offending' companies that are offering material support to Israeli Occupation."

The March 8th call was introduced by David Schwartzman, a biology professor of Jewish origin. He told "The Arab American News," there was not much opposition, except by the college's Dean, who refused to put divestment on the agenda. He plans on introducing a similar resolution to the faculty Senate this spring.

He sponsored the measure in the hope that "these resolutions start spreading around the country and generate action comparable to the anti-apartheid movement in the 1980s."

Personal reflections on my forthcoming lecture

Since the date for my new lecture became fixed, a few months back, at my alma mater university in the State of Minnesota, USA, where I received my first 4 years of higher education, and earned my Bachelor’s degree, I was in a quandary.  Certainly, this would not be the first lecture I give to an American academic audience in my long career, but since I chose the topic of “Whither Palestine/Israel: What Future?  I have been preoccupied almost constantly with this lecture.  Whatever else I was doing, researching, writing, attending conferences, workshops, meetings, etc, or being involved in domestic and manual chores at home, and so forth, this forthcoming lecture dominated my mind.  It was my nagging concern, and I kept pushing to have it become my wife’s nagging concern too.  Why?

Whatever I read on this broad subject during this period (and I read a lot!); whatever came into my “in box”—reports, studies, analyses, position papers, book reviews, articles, petitions to sign, etc., all was perused; and some was read thoroughly and carefully, with the forthcoming lecture in mind! Why? What was I looking for?

The audience to whom I will be speaking, who is not unfamiliar to me (because I taught there for seven years) was firmly nestled in the back of my mind … my memory.  Basically, this is an audience of privileged Catholic young men and women; the product of middle and upper economic classes; well-bred and well-immersed in the so-called “Judeo-Christian tradition”; and who do well financially when they graduate.  They succeed in gravitating voluntarily and enthusiastically, with unmatched conviction, nurtured by a deep sense of Catholic loyalty (avoiding the wrath of generations of cumulative Catholic guilt), to good job opportunities in mainstream sectors that reproduce and sustain prevalent American culture.  My recollection of this audience (at least in the mid to late 1970’s and through the review of the “Alumni magazine”, which I receive regularly) is that they are not much interested in knowing and analyzing the changing state of the world beyond US borders, unless they happen to have been somehow affected by it, or participating in it through the direct occupation of other countries, e.g., Iraq, Afghanistan, Somalia, Haiti, etc, or indirectly, e.g., Palestine.

Therein lays my quandary.  My main and nagging concern was this: How can I constrict more than a century-old Palestinian struggle for liberation and against foreign colonialism in a lecture of about 30-40 minutes, to such an audience, without “force spoon-feeding” them; without suffocating them with reams and reams of information; and without thrusting them into the realm of history, to where they would be very reluctant to go on their own volition? How best to etch in their brains one or two deep insights that they will not forget, and that they would keep coming back to for reference, even if they naturally resist doing so?

At the same time, doesn’t this quandary apply in speaking to any audience who identifies and supports the illegal American invasion and occupation of Iraq and Afghanistan as their patriotic duty? Wouldn’t this require at least two to three “pruning” attempts before you can get to the core of the issues, and before you can get such an audience to see and acknowledge the core?

Initially, and as a way out of my predicament, I began working on a basic premise that I need to find and cast in front of them bits of critical data, strung in a somewhat coherent logical chain that can be verified empirically, without requiring leaps of a different system of logic.  I started squeezing my mind, and everything I read and re-read.  I wanted to come up with some type of a list of what is important (for them to know) and what is less important?

I concluded, readily, that they needed to have a visual image of how the land of Palestine was effectively eviscerated, decimated, dismembered … since 1947.  So, I worked on providing maps revealing the gradual obliteration of the land of Palestine.  This is easy to show, because such maps abound.  But this, in itself, wasn’t satisfactory to me.  Should I, then, refer them to basic good references that document this process of genocidal tragedy? But, then, how I can bring them from there to today? How can I entice them to cross with me, quickly and without major diversions, the last century of the Zionist colonial onslaught on Palestine?

How much detail should I expose them to, while introducing the entire “Oslo process”, for example? But, regardless of the level of detail I would provide them, what essence would they retain from these “Oslo” details? And what essence I want them to hold on to and, hopefully, internalize? Should I, for example, highlight the fragmentation of the land (the essence of coherent geography and space)? Should I underscore the acquiescence to a continued military colonial occupation, as it is driven and encouraged by the emergence of a Quisling “Palestinian Authority” in its role as a sub-agent for Israeli control and oppression? Or, should I give more attention to the pre-designed role of “Oslo” in the total fragmentation of the Palestinian people, and the dissolution of their struggle for liberation and freedom, etc ? Or, should I deal with all the above components as constituting the elements of an insidious plan? And finally, is my audience opposed, in principle, to military occupation and colonization of another people?

Or, on the other hand, should I start with the now and telescope it back into its historical context? Why not, it occurred to me, start shocking them by focusing, for example, on the most recent racist genocidal calls to “curb Palestinian births” by one Martin Kramer of Harvard’s Weatherhead Center for International Affairs? Or, by the Israeli decision to erase the 800 years old Palestinian Mamilla Cemetery in Jerusalem to make room for a Jewish so-called “Museum of Tolerance” in its stead?  Or, by the multitude of stories of Palestinian daily human sufferings and humiliation on the military checkpoints, in all Palestinian areas under occupation (Gaza, West Bank, Jerusalem)?  Or, should I focus on the rise in numbers and percentages (since 2001) of attempted suicides among Palestinian young people (18 – 30 years of age), mostly women (about 80%), because of the absence of hope, blocked horizons, and evaporating alternatives for decent human and free existence? Etc, etc.

As always, I attempted to engage my wife in this process of mental deliberations.  She was instrumental in helping me get out of this predicament.  “This is important, but not shocking ”, she advised.  “Why don’t you focus on the real basics? It is about time, at this critical stage, to re-focus on the real essentials of the entire struggle, and to forcefully engage your American audience to reflect on these essentials.” And this is what I am doing.  I “shifted gears” to go faster towards the target! What are the real essentials, and where do we go from here? This will be the core of my forthcoming lecture.

Essential one:

The creation of Israel, as a result of the “Partition Resolution” (UNGA 181) in 29 November 1947 is illegal and has no legitimacy, just like the invasion and occupation of Iraq by American forces.

*  “Israel was created, mainly, by Zionist terrorism and ethnic cleansing – a pre-planned process that saw three-quarters of the indigenous Arab inhabitants of Palestine dispossessed of their homes, their land and their rights.” 

*  The assertion that Israel’s birth certificate and legitimacy was given by the UN Partition Resolution is pure Zionist propaganda, because: 

“In the first place the UN without the consent of the majority of the people of Palestine did not have the right to decide to partition Palestine or assign any part of its territory to a minority of alien immigrants in order for them to establish a state of their own.” 

• “The UN General Assembly did pass a resolution to partition Palestine and create two states, one Arab, one Jewish, with Jerusalem not part of either. But the General Assembly resolution was only a recommendation – meaning that it could have no effect, would not become policy, unless approved by the Security Council.”
   
• “The General Assembly's recommendation never went to the Security Council for consideration because the U.S. knew that, if approved, it could only be implemented by force given the extent of Arab and other Muslim opposition to it; and President Truman was not prepared to use force to partition Palestine.  So the partition plan was vitiated.”

*  Hence, the push and pressure on the Palestinians to recognize the Zionist state.  “In international law only the Palestinians could give Israel the legitimacy it craved.”  (See Alan Hart, “ Zionism Unmasked" , Palestine Think Tank, 13 February 2010.)

*  “The vote was 33 in favor, 13 against and 10 abstentions, with a requirement for a 2/3 majority. Is that a large majority? Abstentions obviously were not counted, but why and under what pressure of ideals were those abstentions made? And what about the other countries, more than the fifty-six voting within the UN, and probably more including the many colonies that were probably excluded at the time?”

*  “The UN Partition Plan of 1947 is of dubious validity … based as it was on a limited and perhaps contrived vote count. … Further questions arise from the Plan itself in which it says: ‘The Security Council determine as a threat to the peace, breach of the peace or act of aggression, in accordance with Article 39 of the Charter, any attempt to alter by force the settlement envisaged by this resolution;’

*  The historical record documents clearly that there was a large "attempt to alter by force the settlement envisaged by this resolution," and that “rose immediately from the Israeli ‘defence' forces who quickly set about the ethnic cleansing of over 400 towns using tactics which today would be considered terror.”  (For the above, see Jim Miles, “ Shlaim's Israel and Palestine”,, 18 January 2010,  Jim Miles's ZSpace Page).

*  Although I accept the position of those who argue that “Israel exists and the vote is irrelevant”, it is, nevertheless, imperative to keep reminding that Israel, as a state, was created by Zionist colonialism and terror, not a political peaceful entity along side of Palestine, but a settler colonial entity on top of Palestine, and obliterating it.

*  It is vital to keep questioning “What is the true nature of this state of Israel that commands the allegiance of the American people and is now seeking to enlist the governments of the world against its perceived ‘existential’ enemy, Iran?” and that may ignite a third world war!

*  It is vital to keep reminding that this rogue state is in defiance of international law, the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, the Geneva Conventions that apply to occupying powers.  This is a state “that possesses weapons of mass destruction, including hundreds of nuclear weapons, and refuses to sign the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty”, not to mention stockpiles of chemical and biological weapons;

*  It is crucial to keep reminding that this State “has defied more than 160 UNGA and 39 UNSC resolutions, demanding it act as a civilized state abiding by international law and protocol”;

* It is fundamental to keep reminding that this is “a state that has systematically confiscated, appropriated, annexed, and assimilated virtually all land belonging to the Palestinians in a sixty-year period of time, leaving them approximately 14 percent of their original land, making it the greatest visible land theft known to human kind in our day”;

*  It is important to keep reminding that this is “ a state that proclaims itself a democracy but is not and, with malicious intent, confiscates the money belonging to a democratically elected government in Palestine and arrests their representatives without charge or trial.” (See William A. Cook,  “The Unstated Script of the Wiesel Open Letter to President Obama”,  23  February 2010, Information Clearing House. 

Essential Two:

The “Oslo Process” with all its accords, starting with the “Declaration of Principles” in September 1993, is an international plan, inspired, devised and supported by the very Western powers that created the illegitimate state of Israel.  It was imposed on the Palestinians for the simple reason to force them to acquiesce to the status quo of Israeli colonialism and occupation of the entire land of Palestine. “By mortgaging the Palestinian leadership to US and Israeli sponsorship, by creating and maintaining administrative, legal and financial structures that will ensure this dependence, Oslo has been what it was designed to be from the start: the mechanism of ending the Palestinian quest to end Israeli colonialism and occupation, and the legitimation of Israel's racist nature by the very people over whom it exercises its colonial and racist dominion.”

The main pillars of this process, as it has been shown in actual application and results, are the following:

• The fragmentation of Palestinian political leadership, and the obfuscation and destruction of the principle of “representation”, namely, the relationship between the PLO and the PA;
• The fragmentation of the Palestinian people into unconnected pieces and geographies: West Bank, Gaza, Jerusalem, Areas occupied in 1948, refugees in camps, “shatat” (Diaspora) Palestinians, Areas “A”, “B”, and “C” in the West Bank, etc ;
• The Palestinian dependence on international aid for their basic physical survival, the daily running of the administrative governing apparatus, with emphasis on security rather than on the productivity of agricultural lands for food security, etc;
• The creation of distorted and corrupt social and economic classes who usurped power and economic resources, rendering society more pauperized: “A political class”, “A policing class”, “A bureaucratic class”, “An NGO class”, and “A business class”;
• The continued international legitimation of Israel’s racist nature.  (For the above, See Joseph Massad, “Oslo and the end of Palestinian independence”, Al-Ahram Weekly Online, 21-27 January 2010). 

Essential Three:

The only way to ensure Palestinian emancipation from this system of occupation, colonialism and apartheid is to work towards establishing a free, democratic, secular and non-racist country in the entire land of historic Palestine, while Israeli Jews embark on self-liberation from the dominant racist Zionist ideology.  The cardinal question is this:  How to break this vicious cycle of colonial occupation and apartheid, and to expose the various measures of “managing the conflict” as delusionary substitutes for a just, lasting and democratic solution targeting the entire people of the historical land of Palestine? How to really seize the initiative for freedom and democracy? What should be our guiding principles?

To start with, what’s the situation today in Palestine/Israel?

• The status quo on the ground reveals the presence of 3.8 million Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza, about 40% of whom live in, what has been described, an open air prison in Gaza; nearly half a million illegal Zionist colonists (called “settlers”)living in the West Bank; and 1.3 million Palestinians living as a subjugated minority on their land, inside Israel, among nearly 6.0 million Israeli Jews.
   
• At the end of 2008, at least 7.1 million Palestinians, representing 67 percent of the entire Palestinian population (10.6 million) worldwide were displaced persons (6.6 million refugees and 427,000 IDPs). This makes Palestinian refugees and internally displaced persons (IDPs) the largest and longest-standing case of displaced persons in the world today.
   
• Starting sometime un the late 1980s, “the number of settlements, and even the size of their population, became immaterial because the apparatus of Israeli rule was perfected to such a degree that the distinction between Israel proper[Areas occupied in 1948] and the occupied territories [Areas occupied in 1967]—and between settlements in the West Bank and Gaza Strip and Jewish communities inside Israel—was totally blurred.   Similarly, the takeover of land ceased to be chiefly for the purpose of settlement construction and became primarily a means of constricting the movements of the Palestinian populace and of appropriating their physical space”.
   
• “As far as Israeli citizens and their range of interests are concerned, the annexation of the territories is a fait accompli. …  The continuation of the status quo creates a quasi-stable situation: the Jewish community, a loose framework of cultures and ethnic tribes in constant tension, is held together by enmity to the Palestinian “Other”, and by a determination to rule them. … Fragmentation became the major tool of Israeli control, to preserve their rule over Israel/Palestine from the river to the sea. … The ruling Jewish community will continue, even when it becomes a minority, to force this split on the Palestinians with the usual carrots and  sticks, dictating the agenda, presenting threats, imposing collective punishments and bribery. … The ‘peace process’ serves as a curtain behind which divide and rule is entrenched”.
   
• “They have invented a unique concept of a ‘state’: its ‘sovereignty’ will be scattered, lacking any cohesive physical infrastructure, with no direct connection to the outside world. …  The airspace and the water resources will remain under Israeli control.  Helicopter patrols, the airwaves, the hands on the water pumps and the electrical switches, the registration of residents and the issue of identity cards, as well as passes to enter and leave, will all be controlled (directly or indirectly) by the Israelis.”
   
• “The status quo will endure as long as the forces wishing to preserve it are stronger than those wishing to undermine it, and that is the situation today in Israel/Palestine.”  

• Several factors sustain the current status quo and ensure its survivability.  These include the high level of fragmentation of Palestinian society and the ongoing incitement of the fragments against each other; the “mobilization of the Jewish community into support for the occupation regime, which is perceived as safeguarding its very existence”; the sustained funding of the status quo by the so-called “donor countries”, which “frees Israel from the burden of coping with the enormous cost of maintaining the control over the Palestinians and creates a system of corruption and vested interests” ; the ongoing delusion that “negotiations” will end the status quo, thus rendering it a temporary state; and “the silencing of all criticism as an expression of hatred and anti-Semitism”.
• The status quo is characterized by a huge gap in GDP between Palestinians under occupation and the occupying Israelis, of a magnitude of 1:20. “This gap cannot endure without the force of arms … which enforces a draconic control system. … All the economic, social and spatial systems of governance in the occupied territories are designed to maintain and safeguard Israeli privileges and prosperity on both sides of the ‘Green Line’, at the expense of millions of captive, impoverished Palestinians”.  

• This status quo is labeled, by Benvenisti, as “de facto bi-national regime” , a term stressing  “the total dominance of the Jewish-Israeli nation, which controls a Palestinian nation that is fragmented both territorially and socially.” (For the above quotes, see Meron Benvenisti, “The Inevitable Bi-national Regime”, January 2010).
   

To work strategically on our liberation process, we need to instill an appropriate discourse that embodies our future strategic vision.  This discourse should start by purging itself from the language of  “two-state solution”,  “two states for two people”, “West Bank and Gaza”, “East Jerusalem”, “peacemaking”, “direct or indirect negotiations”, “state building”, “legal or illegal settlements”, etc.  Our language should focus on means of resistance to achieve our liberation towards living in a free, non-racist, secular country in the entire land of historical Palestine; on emancipation from occupation and economic dependency; on individual and collective rights; on international law; on responsive and accountable leadership; on self-reliance and productivity; and on the right of all the refugees and displaced persons, who were ethnically cleansed from their homes and country by the Zionist colonial movement, to return to Palestine.

To embark on this course, we should be committed to struggle, with anti-Zionist Jews, for:

• “The dismantlement of the existing system of colonial apartheid, and all forms of racist political, spatial, economic, and psychological separation on the historical land of Palestine”, on the premise that: “all activities resulting from the illegal and criminal Zionist-Western colonization of Palestine, since Palestine was targeted at the turn of the twentieth century, including land and water theft for exclusive Jewish-Zionist settlements, political and legal structures, displacement and replacement of indigenous populations, privileged access and exploitation of natural resources, etc, are null and void, and should be dismantled.”

• “The unhindered return of all Palestinian individuals and groups who were forced by the Zionist colonial enterprise, with the active support of the Western imperialist centers, to abandon their homes and properties; and to exercise their inalienable natural right to acquire these properties back;”
• “The unobstructed productive use of their lands and other natural resources for the indigenous development of the society;”
• “The total freedom of all the people of historical Palestine to chose the type of their governance system, without any coercion or prejudice;”
• “The safeguarding of the seminal principle of separating religious beliefs from the political system, and the use of religion as the basis of government;”
• “The legal guarantee of equal rights of individuals and groups for all minorities living in the new Palestinian Society;”
• “The insistence on the basic principle that majority-minority relations must be based on equality and non-exploitation.” 

Such a worthwhile, justified, and difficult but legitimate struggle would: 

• “Rectify the historical and continuous evil and injustice done to the Palestinian people;
• Preserve the geographical and territorial integrity of the land of Palestine, and will work as a counterweight to the insidious process of fragmentation;
• Insist on the Right of Return of all Palestinians to their lands and properties from which they were forcefully and criminally evicted;
• Dismantle all Zionist and Jewish-Israeli structures and laws that were built on inequality and on the exclusion of Palestinian Arabs, with the purpose of imposing and maintaining a hegemonic control of the Zionist-Ashkenazi state over the entire region;
• Allow and encourage mutual living and existence between the Palestinian Arabs and Israeli anti-Zionist Jews in the historical land of Palestine, within a democratic, non-sectarian, equal, non-repressive, non-exploitative, just and open society;
• Promise genuine and sustainable development of the territory of Palestine, for the benefit of all its inhabitants, especially the poor and the marginalized, by focusing on the effective, productive and purposeful use of land and water, for the full employment potential of its workers;

Set an important human example of how antagonists may live together harmoniously in a delineated physical space, once racist and exclusionary ideology and practices are expunged.”

(For the above quotes, see Khalil Nakhleh, “Thinking the Thinkable”, 20 August 2008,  http://www.kanaanonline.org/articles/01633.pdf). 

Khalil Nakhleh, Ph.D.

Independent Researcher and Writer

Ramallah, Palestine/Israel

(Struggling to Transform Our Homeland)

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