October 21, 2009
Settlers attack Palestinian family in Sheikh Jarrah, injure seven
October 20, 2009
The settlers who have recently occupied the house of the Gawi family, forcefully evicted from their home in Sheikh Jarrah on 2 August 2009, launched an attack today on the Palestinians camping outside. According to local sources, seven Palestinians were injured and four arrested.
The attack started between 8 and 8.30pm, when a driver of a lorry delivering furniture to the occupied house, accompanied by four settlers, attacked a five year old boy from the Gawi family who was playing nearby. The settlers then attacked a small tent where the Gawi family have been living since the eviction. The tent was full of mainly women and children at that time. A Palestinian woman who was hit hard by the driver had to be taken to hospital. A fight broke out immediately, involving at least 15 settlers. Several members of the family sustained light injuries and a 15-year old girl from the neighbourhood was hit by a falling TV as the settlers managed to tear down the tent.
When police arrived, they made no attempts to stop the settlers attacking the family and later arrested four Palestinians. Two were released and another two, Khalet Gawi and Saleh Diab have been taken to hospital and told to come back to the police station tomorrow for further questioning. Four settlers were taken for questioning and released immediately.
The Gawi and Hannoun families, consisting of 53 members including 20 children, have been left homeless after they were forcibly evicted from their houses on 2 August 2009. The Israeli forces surrounded the homes of the two families at 5.30am and, breaking in through the windows, forcefully dragged all residents into the street. The police also demolished the neighbourhood’s protest tent, set up by Um Kamel, following the forced eviction of her family in November 2008.
At present, all three houses are occupied by settlers and the whole area is patrolled by armed private settler security 24 hours a day. Both Hannoun and Gawi families, who have been left without suitable alternative accommodation since August, continue to protest against the unlawful eviction from the sidewalk across the street from their homes, facing regular attacks from the settlers and harassment from the police.
The Karm Al-Ja’ouni neighbourhood of Sheikh Jarrah is home to 28 Palestinian families, all refugees from 1948, who received their houses from the UNRWA and Jordanian government in 1956. All face losing their homes in the manner of the Hannoun, Gawi and al-Kurd families.
The aim of the settlers is to turn the whole area into a new Jewish settlement and to create a Jewish continuum that will effectively cut off the Old City form the northern Palestinian neighborhoods. Implanting new Jewish settlements in East Jerusalem and the West Bank is illegal under many international laws, including Article 49 of the Fourth Geneva Convention.
US vows to join Israel in 'fight against Goldstone'
Bethlehem – Ma’an – The US pledged on Tuesday to help Israel combat the Goldstone report documents alleged war crimes committed during the attack on Gaza last winter.
This offer to “fight the Goldstone report” came during a meeting between US Ambassador to the UN Susan Rice and Israeli President Shimon Peres in Jerusalem, according to a statement from Peres’ office.
“It is outrageous that a respected institution like the United Nations provides a platform to spread lies and stories about Israel,” Peres told Rice during their closed-door meeting, according to the statement.
“We will not tolerate our youth being labeled war criminals. We must do everything to stop the deceptions and wrongs produced by the Goldstone report,” he continued. “The United Nations provides a stage for [Iranian President Mahmoud] Ahmedinejad, who threatens to annihilate Israel, and lets him stand judge. This is nothing short of ridiculous.”
The statement says that, in response to the President’s remarks, “Rice promised that the United Sates will continue to stand by Israel as a loyal friend in the fight against the Goldstone report.”
Justice Richard Goldstone’s four-person team visited Gaza twice this year, and compiled a 575-page report based on hundreds of individual testimonies and thousands of documents. The report accuses both Israel and Palestinian armed groups of committing war crimes during Israel’s three-week assault against Gaza last December and January.
Last Friday the UN Human Rights Council in Geneva voted to endorse the report and refer the document to the UN bodies in New York.
IAEA lays out draft nuclear deal for Iran, West
The UN nuclear watchdog says Iran, the US, Russia and France should answer by Friday. |
Iran and Western powers move to consider a draft nuclear deal proposed by the UN nuclear watchdog after three days of crunch talks in Vienna.
IAEA Director-General Mohamed El-Baradei said the draft agreement, which he says could dramatically reduce international concerns over Tehran's enrichment activities, has been sent to Iran, Russia, the United States and France after three days of negotiations.
"I have circulated a draft agreement that in my judgment reflects a balanced approach to how to move forward," said El-Baradei after the meeting broke up around 1 p.m. local time (1100 GMT) in Vienna.
"I very much hope that people see the big picture — that this agreement could pave the way for a complete normalization of relations between Iran and the international community," he added.
Details have not been confirmed, but the plan is believed to involve Iran trading its low-level uranium with higher level.
Iran has repeatedly maintained that it prefers to buy the fuel rather than exchanging it.
El-Baradei said the countries have until Thursday, October 23, to inform the UN nuclear body whether they accept the compromise.
His comments come as diplomats from Iran, France, Russia and the United States gathered in Vienna for talks on a deal to supply highly-enriched uranium for Tehran's research reactor.
Tehran's research reactor, which supplies medical isotopes for treating cancer to more than 200 hospitals in Iran, requires uranium enriched up to 20 percent.
Western countries have proposed that Iran export low-enriched uranium to Russia for further refinement, then on to France for fabrication into fuel assemblies.
But France, due to its past failure to fulfill obligations to provide Hexa-fluoride gas to Iran, was later removed from the list of potential suppliers.
Press TV's correspondent to Vienna said the French diplomats were nevertheless included in the talks after they formally apologized for their breach of agreement in the past.
October 20, 2009
Israeli forces step-up campaign against Jerusalemite leaders
October 20, 2009
Bethlehem – Ma’an – Two Jerusalem leaders were harassed and interrogated by Israeli forces Tuesday, marking a steep increase in targeted detentions and raids of organizers involved in the Al-Aqsa Mosque sit-ins and demonstrations during the Jewish holidays earlier this month.
In the latest incident, Israeli police released senior Fatah official and Jerusalem affairs official Hatem Abdul Qader after detaining him for hours at the Allenby Bridge as he returned to Palestine from Jordan on Tuesday.
Abdul-Qader said authorities on the bridge handed him an order to submit to further interrogation by Israel’s intelligence unit at 12pm on Wednesday, an order he said he intended to refuse.
On Thursday Abdul Qader was taken from his car along with Islamic Movement leader Ali Sheikha. The two reported they had been taken by undercover Israeli agents at the Qalandiya military checkpoint between Jerusalem and Ramallah. He said officers disguised as motorists disabled his car and “kidnapped” the two officials. They were taken to Israel’s Russian Compound prison in West Jerusalem.
At that time he was also given an order to appear in front of Israeli intelligence at 10am the following Wednesday.
Abdul Qader called the latest detention “provocative,” since he was on a “semi-official” visit to Jordan in the capacity of a Palestinian Authority representative.
The official has been interrogated four times in the last two weeks, following the Palestinian protest of Israeli extremist action around the Al-Aqsa Mosque during the Jewish holidays earlier this month.
Israeli forces target home of Al-Quds Capital of Arab Culture organizer, seize documents
Prior to Abdul Qader's detention and interrogation, Israeli Special Forces stormed the home of Al-Quds Capital of Culture organizer and architect Ihab Al-Jallad early Tuesday morning, sources reported.
Al-Jallad was questioned about the Al-Aqsa Mosque sit in that took place more than one week ago, while other masked soldiers ransacked his home and terrified his children, he said. The soldiers took three computers from the home, as well as digital memory devices, CDs and several paper files.
According to Al-Jallad, the Israeli officer questioning him said he and dozens of other Jerusalem leaders were being observed, that all activities in Jerusalem were being monitored - particularly those in the Al-Aqsa Mosque - and that no political or cultural activities would be permitted to go ahead without express permission from Israeli police.
“The officer even mocked our slogan, ‘Al-Aqsa in Danger,’” Al-Jallad said, referring to the campaign launched by Jerusalem religious and community leaders encouraging Palestinians to visit Jerusalem and particularly to pray at the Al-Aqsa Mosue in the Old City.
Earlier that morning Israeli forces raided a warehouse used by Jerusalem community groups and event organizers. According to Al-Jallah, Israeli forces vandalized material used for cultural events and seized some goods.
“Israeli forces cannot terrify our children and cannot prevent us from doing our duty for Jerusalem…We will continue our program and activities by God’s will,” Al-Jallal said.
This is the second time in as many months that Israeli forces have broken into Al-Jallad’s home.
Israel pulls textbook with chapter on Nakba
Or Kashti
Haaretz
19 Oct 2009
The book had already been approved by the ministry.
"Collecting the books from the shops is an unnecessary [form of] censorship," said Dr. Tsafrir Goldberg, who wrote the controversial chapter on the war. "The process of approving the text was completed in serious fashion from both the pedagogic and the historic points of view. The fact that the education minister changed does not mean that it is possible to bypass this procedure."
On September 22, Haaretz reported that the textbook, which is meant for 11th and 12th-grades, for the first time presented the Palestinian claim that there had been ethnic cleansing in 1948.
"The Palestinians and the Arab countries contended that most of the refugees were civilians who were attacked and expelled from their homes by armed Jewish forces, which instituted a policy of ethnic cleansing, contrary to the proclamations of peace in the Declaration of Independence," states the text, which presented the Palestinian and the Israeli-Jewish versions side by side.
Criticism about the book was voiced by history teachers.
"Presenting Israel's claims as being equal to those of Arab propagandists is exactly like presenting the claims of the Nazis alongside those of the Jews," one of them said.
On the other hand, another teacher noted that the most important component in studying history is to introduce as many points of view as possible.
Following the newspaper report, Education Minister Gideon Sa'ar instructed the ministry's director general, Shimshon Shoshani, to examine the book and look into the process of approving texts in general.
Officials in the ministry said Sunday that an examination carried out by Michael Yaron, who is in charge of history studies, found "a great many mistakes, some of them serious. As a result of this examination it was decided that the original version of the textbook must be withdrawn and returned to the stores only after being corrected."
Among other things, the Shazar Center was asked to exchange the original Palestinian text that appears in the book, written by Walid Khalidi, for another that is closer to reality, said Goldberg, who finished making the changes recently.
Another demand was that the term "ethnic cleansing" be redacted. Goldberg says that he changed the phrase and spoke instead of an organized policy of expulsion.
When the corrections have been completed, the book will be reviewed again at the publishers and in the ministry, before it is given final approval.
"The state has the right to determine the contents of textbooks but this is not supposed to be done by the education minister," Goldberg said.
He noted, though, that some of the remarks were merely cosmetic and did not pose any problem. "The publishing house decided to make the corrections as a form of self censorship," Goldberg said.
Zvi Yekutiel, the executive director of the Shazar Center, said that "the book has to be aimed at the widest possible consensus and not at the fringes on the left or the right. We made a mistake and we are correcting it."
Last month, Yekutiel said that there had been no remarks about the chapter on the War of Independence during the process of approving the book.
He added that "the explicit instruction from the ministry was to include controversial points of view so that the students can confront them and make up their own minds."
Yekutiel said the ministry would pay for the collection of the books from the stores.
The ministry approved the textbook for use in the schools on July 26, after it had been sent to two external assessors - an academic and a teacher.
It was granted approval after an examination of its suitability for the curriculum and its scientific reliability.
The ministry spokesman said last week that, "from the start the book was intended to go into use as a textbook only from this coming January, so the students were not yet exposed to the relevant material. It was decided as well that the director general's circular should be corrected to make it clear that the responsibility and authority for approving textbooks is on the inspectors and coordinators who are responsible for the various subjects taught and who have to examine the books before they are approved and pass on their remarks and instructions."
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Brazil to Impose Tax on Foreign Inflows, Mantega Says
By Adriana Brasileiro and Andre Soliani
Oct. 19 (Bloomberg) -- Brazil will impose taxes on purchases by foreign investors of real-denominated, fixed-income securities and on purchases of stocks, Finance Minister Guido Mantega said.
The measures are being taken “to avoid an excess speculation in the stock market and in capital markets,” Mantega told reporters in Sao Paulo.
The real has gained 35 percent since the beginning of the year, the best performer amid the 16 most traded currencies tracked by Bloomberg. The currency has gained 5.3 percent in the past month.
The central bank started purchasing dollars on May 8 in a bid to temper the real gains. The currency weakened 0.5 percent to 1.7177 per U.S. dollar at 4:28 p.m. New York time.
Earlier today, the Brazilian real was cut to “underweight” from “overweight” in RBC Capital Markets’ model portfolio on concern the government would impose new taxes.
Today’s announcement reverses last year’s decision to end such taxes. In October 2008, President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva eliminated a tax, known locally as IOF, of 1.5 percent on foreign investments in certain financial products and of 0.38 percent on foreign-currency loans.
“Excess global liquidity could lead to an over-appreciation of the real,” Mantega said. That would threaten to hurt the country’s exporters and further fuel demand for imports.
Foreign investor will pay a 2 percent tax when they enter the country to buy stocks or fixed-income securities.
In the short term, the measure may help keep the real above 1.7 per U.S. dollar, said Antonio Madeira, chief economist at MCM Consultores Associados Ltd. As the market creates new investment strategies to bypass the tax, the impact in the currency market will be lost, he said.
Mantega said the measures may not lead the real to weaken, but are designed to slow its appreciation and prevent the creation of bubbles in Brazilian markets. “These are to prevent excesses,” he said.
Latin America’s biggest economy has rebounded from its first recession since 2003, powered by local demand. Industrial production expanded in the past eight months, companies resumed hiring and retail sales have returned to pre-crisis levels.
Gross domestic product, after contracting in the last quarter of 2008 and first quarter this year, expanded 1.9 percent in the April-June period from the previous quarter, beating analyst expectations for a 1.7 percent rise. Mantega has said the economy can grow 5 percent next year.
Brazilian central bank President Henrique Meirelles said in an interview last week that emerging-market currencies that have been appreciating as economies recover from a global recession may become volatile as markets overprice assets.
‘Unnecessary Volatility’
Central banks need to “alert investors and markets of the risks of exaggeration in the formation of prices, which can lead to future corrections and create unnecessary volatility,” Meirelles said in the interview in New York.
The real’s gain this year is the largest among the world’s 16 most-traded currencies. The Bovespa stock index rose 1.9 percent today and is up 80 percent this year.
The currency is gaining even as the central bank buys dollars daily in a bid to stem the advance.
Brazil’s international reserves have risen by $26.1 billion this year to $232.2 billion on Oct. 16, according to data compiled by the central bank.
Analysts estimate the real will end the year at 1.75, according to the median of 20 forecasts compiled by Bloomberg.
Brazilian economists raised their year-end forecast for the real to 1.7 from 1.76, according to a weekly central bank survey of about 100 analysts published today.
“We don’t want short-term speculation, we don’t want exaggerations,” Mantega said.
To contact the reporters on this story: Adriana Brasileiro in Rio de Janeiro at abrasileiro@bloomberg.net; Andre Soliani in Brasilia at asoliani@bloomberg.net
The Pentagon’s Recruitment Two-Step
Far from breaking, or even straining, the U.S. military is ready to surge into Afghanistan at any time. At least that is what military officials implied last week when they announced their "historic" recruitment figures for the year.
"It’s something that the framers never [anticipated]," enthused Bill Carr, deputy undersecretary of defense for military personnel policy, talking about the increased aptitude and education levels of the 2009 recruits. He boasted this at an Oct. 1 Pentagon briefing designed to highlight how the Army beat its fiscal year recruiting goals by 3 percent. "[It's] really an American achievement."
While the framers may have had other things to say – this being the eighth year of two simultaneous foreign interventions in which the nation’s leaders still cannot clearly articulate why we are there and what a so-called victory or exit should look like – that is another story. This is a story about how the military sells escalation, and to do so effectively, it must convince the public that its volunteer forces are healthy, hearty, willing, and able to surge another day.
For one, it lowers its recruitment goals year after year, and then when it achieves or exceeds those goals, it enjoins mainstream news reporters in the Pentagon briefing room to write the story straight. That’s how you get headlines like this one from the Washington Post: "A Historic Success in Military Recruiting; In Midst of Downturn, All Targets Are Met."
Then it throws the words "historic" and "record high" around so much that reporters like Eli Lake at the right-wing Washington Times apparently get confused. He led his report with "the U.S. military Tuesday reported the biggest surge in recruits since the end of the draft – an increase that likely will relieve pressure on troops serving in Iraq and Afghanistan by allowing them to spend more time at home between overseas deployments."
The Pentagon press office couldn’t have written it better, but now I am confused. According to Lake, the Pentagon told him the 169,000 recruits for FY 2009 is the "highest figure since 1973, the first year of the modern all-volunteer force." But a quick look at the FY 2008 figures shows the U.S. Armed Forces recruited 184,841 last year. And the goals were set higher. For example, last year the Army’s recruitment goal was set at 80,000; it exceeded that with 80,517. The Army’s 2009 goal was 65,000; it exceeded that goal by recruiting 70,045. This can hardly be recognized as a 36-year record, can it?
Slate.com’s Fred Kaplan noticed the fancy footwork at the press briefing, too, and called military officials to explain why the Army seemed to be "shrinking" while everyone else was reporting that it was exploding at epic levels. They told him they lowered goals year to year because of higher retention rates: it was just unnecessary to set the goals so high this year because so many soldiers were re-enlisting. In fact, they set FY 2009 reenlistment goals at 55,000 and got 68,000, another blowout year.
Don’t pop the corks yet. As Kaplan points out, in the years previous they had not only exceeded greater expectations for retention, but exceeded this year’s 2009 figures, too. For example, in FY 2008, the goal was 65,000 reenlistments. They got 72,000, in effect, 4,000 more than this year.
Kaplan actually suggests there might be more than a shell game at hand:
"Back in the 1980s, when I was a defense reporter for the Boston Globe, Ronald Reagan’s defense secretary, Caspar Weinberger, actually did this. The military fell short of the recruitment goal one year, so Weinberger (or perhaps an assistant secretary) simply lowered the goal and declared success. (A former official in the Army’s recruitment command, who still works in the Defense Department, confirmed my memory of this incident.)
"I’m not saying that someone in the Army today is pulling this same stunt. But something odd is going on, and the powers that be in the Pentagon and Congress might want to start asking questions."
Not that this should come as any surprise. The military is obviously pulling out all the stops to prod, cajole, and intimidate the remaining administration skeptics into surging in Afghanistan. However, the idea that the Armed Forces could go from a "death spiral" in 2007 to an "American dream," a veritable gold rush of brains, brawn, and spirit two years later, should give anyone pause.
True or not, this is the Pentagon’s story and they are sticking with it. Which is unfortunate. In order to fairly debate continuing the two-front occupation on its merits, we need to know the real fitness of our Armed Forces. Propping it up à la Weekend at Bernie’s is doing no one any good – not the American people sacrificing for the war, nor the military ranks, which are expected to carry on with existing resources as though the last eight years never happened.
Uncle Sam: The Employment Fairy?
While military officials play fast and loose with the recruitment outlook, they also understate the effect the depressed economy has on their ability to steer young men and women into to local recruitment offices, and the jacked-up signing bonuses – $14,000 per recruit, on average – they use to keep them there.
Instead, the Pentagon says a heightened sense of commitment and super recruitment efforts fanning about the country – more than 8,000 recruiters in the field – are pulling in the numbers. Gathering from stories over the last year or so, these recruiters indeed worked pretty hard. In fact, in some places, their jobs may be killing them.
But what military leaders seemed reticent to acknowledge during the Oct. 1 briefing is that the recession is indeed a primary reason for the exceeded, albeit reduced, annual recruiting goals. What kind of patriotism is it when a young high school graduate with no discernible options is willing to risk life and limb for a paying job, and if he’s lucky enough to get out with his brains intact, a college education? Is it just plain self-preservation? Desperation even?
One look at state unemployment figures, and one wonders. The military says the majority of its recruits still come from the South. Historical and cultural attachments aside, several Southern states exceed the national unemployment average, which is now at around 9.8 percent, and their sons and daughters are clearly seeing the military as a way out. For example, by the most recent assessments, Florida’s jobless rate is at 10.9 percent, Georgia’s is at 10.1 percent, South Carolina’s is at 11.5 percent, and Alabama’s is at has 10.4 percent.
But high unemployment is by no means exclusive to the South. Michigan still leads all other states with 15.3 percent unemployment, while Nevada has 13.2 percent, California 12.2 percent, Rhode Island 12.8 percent, and New York 10.3 percent.
Perversely, the climate couldn’t be better for the all-volunteer military. Unfortunately, says blogger Michael Roston, "I’d rather salute Americans by finding them jobs that don’t involve armored vehicles and improvised explosive devices."
And how about citizenship? Don’t forget the more than 22,000 enlisted holding green cards. They’ve been promised the fast track to naturalization if they take up the gun. One of the dirtiest secrets of our time is that we rail and writhe over the encroaching surge of immigrant DNA into the American gene pool, but we gladly welcome that blood to spill in our never ending conflicts overseas.
So You Want to Join the Military?
Paul Sullivan, director of Veterans for Common Sense, has been fighting for years to bring attention to the real toll of war on the men and women of the Armed Forces. His organization has launched a federal lawsuit against the government for allegedly denying and delaying care to wounded vets, and it gives no quarter in the struggle to shed light onto the meat grinder of the war machine. He did not take well to the upbeat tone of the recent Pentagon briefing.
"The Pentagon report is all ’smoke and mirrors,’" he said in an e-mail, noting that the military was spending upward of $1.7 billion on advertising and recruitment each year. "This is a multi-billion sales campaign, not a recruiting effort."
"Overall, the Washington Post failed to do any real investigative journalism," into how the military came up with its recruitment figures, Sullivan said.
It certainly wouldn’t have taken much investigation for the Washington Post or any of the other mainstream news outlets to balance out what was an obvious Pentagon PR blitz with stuff we already know. And what we already know – but may not be willing to examine too closely – is that without high unemployment and record signing bonuses, recruitment is a tough slog. And the reasons are obvious.
There are the soldier suicides and sexual assaults, the low morale, and the lifelong injuries and combat illnesses – like those incurred by those who have lived near the base burn pits overseas or have eaten spoiled food or showered in dirty water supplied by defense contractors. We all know about the backlogs at the VA and the fact that soldiers who were promised money to cover college tuition this year still haven’t received it.
We know that once in, soldiers will be expected to rotate in and out of the war zone on a 1:1 dwell time ratio – that’s one year in, one year out. And the Army doesn’t seem to care what shape you’re in when you redeploy, at least according to these harrowing accounts. Meanwhile, domestic strife is high among military families, especially for female soldiers, who represent 11 percent of deployed servicemembers and have triple the divorce rate of their male counterparts.
According to recent studies, 44 percent of the more than 400,000 Iraq and Afghanistan vets who have gone to the Veterans Administration for medical care since the beginning of the war were diagnosed with post-traumatic stress disorder or another mental health need. Those vets are also at greater risk of heart disease, another study finds. And, an estimated 320,000 returning soldiers are said to have some degree of brain injury due to blasts and accidents on the battlefield.
As for the fighting itself, the Washington Post has been vigilant lately about producing stories that suggest how weak links in the chain of command have put soldiers in harm’s way in Afghanistan. Recent reports in other news outlets point to sinking morale among the troops there.
However, when less than one half of 1 percent of the population is actually serving in the Armed Forces, it is difficult for the rest of us to comprehend the hardships of the professional military. But think about it: we may be avoiding the dreaded draft by straining these volunteers to the limit, but at what cost? Without our attention and outrage, the surges will continue, through this generation and likely into the next, if some of today’s warhawks and counterinsurgents have their way.
So while it is obvious why the Pentagon would like to steer our focus in another direction, that does not let the media off the hook, since it should have known it was being fed a line.
Read more by Kelley B. Vlahos
- Lara Logan Casts Her Spell for War – October 12th, 2009
- PATRIOT Act Fight Needs More Patriots – October 5th, 2009
Slob for the Israel Lobby
by Jeffrey Blankfort on October 17, 2009
"Prior to the vote, Col. Richard Kemp, the former commander of British forces in Afghanistan, addressed the UN session, and said that based on his knowledge and experience, during Operation Cast Lead the IDF "did more to safeguard the rights of civilians in a combat zone than any other army in the history of warfare."
"Speaking on behalf of UN Watch, an independent Geneva human rights group, Kemp added that "Israel did so while facing an enemy that deliberately positioned its military capability behind the human shield of the civilian population."
Olmert visit sparks Palestine movement at US university
Activists stage a sit-in to protest former Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert's visit to Tulane University. (Abdul Aziz/Penta Press) |
On 13 October, Tulane University, an elite university in the southern United States, hosted former Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert as a featured speaker. Forced from office due to corruption charges and under indictment in his own country, Olmert's speaking engagements at respected American universities should at the very least raise questions as to the propriety of such events. That he and members of his military and political cabinet have been accused of war crimes during the 2006 Israeli invasion of Lebanon and last winter's invasion of Gaza requires people of good conscience to raise their voices in dissent. In response to his visit, a coalition of students, teachers, activists and community members -- Muslims, Jews, Christians, Palestinians and their allies -- rallied in opposition and protest inside and outside the event. Despite much hostility, they also found a great deal of support and more momentum for their organizing efforts.
Although outnumbered, we were more powerful than the war criminal and his Mossad protectors and stronger than his security checkpoints and his electronically amplified lies. We strapped red tape to our bodies and stashed fake-bloodied clothes in our packs. Those of us who had the required documents, who had student IDs from New Orleans universities, passed through the checkpoints while our barred friends and allies gathered outside, armed with truths painted on poster board and voices amplified by our growing numbers. With less than two weeks' notice, we had formed a broad coalition that planned a multi-phased action to reclaim the same campus that is home to TIPAC (the Tulane-Israel Public Affairs Committee). In 2007, the university hosted conservative commentator Ann Coulter for "Islamo-Fascism Awareness Week" in 2007 and had invited Olmert for a brief respite from international and Israeli courts. As Tulane University constructed a safe-haven and solicited interviews and meetings on behalf of its delinquent guest, dozens of our neighbors began to organize. And scores more responded to the call for action.
Tulane has long been an unwelcoming environment to our broader community, as well as to Muslim and Arab students. Olmert's strategists and local friends chose the city's most Zionist and "secure" nonreligious institution for his visit, and many activists questioned the wisdom of challenging a hostile student body and a sometimes even more hostile private police force. Tulane voices have been almost entirely absent in a great many community dialogues and meetings about Palestine solidarity work, and the prospect of initiating a campaign for boycott, divestment and sanctions on Tulane's campus has always seemed laughable. But New Orleans is a city where so many feel linked to the Palestinian struggle through shared themes like the experience of diaspora, the right of return and near-daily racist violence and oppression by police and military authorities. There is no space in our city where Israeli war criminals will not be challenged.
Tulane was as hostile an environment as we expected. Hundreds of Tulane students showed up to hear Olmert speak, and many laughed and applauded when he made jokes about the comments of overwhelmed Palestinians who threw up their hands in exasperation at his remarks (i.e., lies) and walked out of the building. Many of our own group were only kept silent by the red tape we'd hidden on our bodies and then used to cover our mouths when Olmert first walked onto the stage. Scrawled on the tape were words that enumerated some of Olmert's administration's crimes, such as "human shields," "illegal settlements," "white phosphorous" and "occupation."
We breathed deeply and sat through an onslaught of racist lies about our Palestinian friends and family, until Olmert began to talk about the mistake Israel had made in "withdrawing" from Gaza. Then, one by one, our jaws aching from biting down on our testimonials of what we have seen with our own eyes and what our families and friends continue to suffer, we rose from our seats throughout the auditorium, slowly made our way to the aisle, and walked out.
Olmert's audience became our own for a moment. They gasped and whispered as more than 20 individuals stood glaring at Olmert and his guards and then marched out of the auditorium. As we left, we heard the chants of our friends, and breathed freely for what felt like the first time in over an hour. The hostility inside was palpable, but we were embraced by our friends outside whose numbers had easily tripled since we'd last seen them. They'd been shouting for two hours now, competing with calls of "Heil Hitler" and "Palestinians are Nazis" from students passing by. A Muslim woman in a hijab (headscarf) was hit with plates of food thrown from an adjacent third floor balcony while campus police looked on.
Within 20 minutes we'd set up the next phase of our action: four persons dressed in bloodied clothes laid down on the ground in front of the auditorium, and we placed cardboard grave markers with the numbers of massacred Palestinians and Lebanese around them. As students began to flow out of the auditorium, we handed out fliers detailing Olmert's war crimes and tried to stop passersby from spitting on our friends on the ground. We were mostly successful, and prevented a student from urinating on one of the participants.
We were not at all surprised by the hostility we faced, but we were surprised by the positive responses of far more Tulane students than we expected. Members of Tulane Amnesty International, Tulane American Socialist Students United and individual undergraduate and graduate students were active in every phase. They were joined by students from the General Union of Palestine Students and Amnesty International of University of New Orleans and students from Loyola University. As a result of this action, the challenges we face in our local solidarity work seem more surmountable. Indeed, Olmert's visit marked the beginning of Tulane's Palestine solidarity movement.
Emily Ratner is an organizer and mediamaker based in New Orleans. She is a member of the International Jewish Anti-Zionist Network, and a graduate of Tulane University (class of 2007). In June, she joined a New Orleans delegation to Gaza. She can be reached at emily A T nolahumanrights D O T org.
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President Peace’s Predators
Seems like President Barack Obama — Nobel Peace Laureate Obama – has taken his predecessor’s predator drone program and jacked it up with steroids. The New Yorker’s Jane Mayer reports this week that the number of Obama-authorized strikes in Pakistan equals the sum launched by the Bush Administration — in the last three years of his tenure. Wow. And the Republicans were worried that he wouldn’t be man enough. Mayer’s article goes on to detail two predator drone programs — one publicly acknowledged by the U.S Military, the other directed by the C.I.A:
From Mayer: The U.S. government runs two drone programs. The military’s version, which is publicly acknowledged, operates in the recognized war zones of Afghanistan and Iraq, and targets combatants in support of U.S. troops stationed there. The C.I.A.’s program is aimed at terror suspects around the world, including in places where U.S. troops are not based. The program is classified as covert, and the C.I.A. declines to provide any information to the public about where it operates, how it selects targets, who is in charge, or how many people have been killed. Nevertheless, reports of fatal air strikes in Pakistan emerge every few days. According to a new study by the New America Foundation, the number of drone strikes has gone up dramatically since Obama became President. General Atomics Aeronautical Systems, the defense contractor that manufactures the Predator and its more heavily armed sibling, the Reaper, can barely keep up with the government’s demand. With public disenchantment mounting over the U.S. troop deployment in Afghanistan, many in Washington support an even greater reliance on Predator strikes. And because of the program’s secrecy, there is no visible system of accountability in place. Peter W. Singer, the author of “Wired for War,” a recent book about the robotics revolution in modern combat, argues that the drone program is worryingly “seductive,” because it creates the perception that war can be “costless.” Cut off from the realities of the bombings in Pakistan, Americans have been insulated from the human toll, as well as the political and moral consequences.