jpost on israeli apartheid week

Israeli Apartheid Week 2009 may
be coming to a campus near you
Tori Cheifetz, JPost, Jan 29 2009

Israeli Apartheid Week will take place on Mar 1-8 on college campuses in 27 cities internationally, in what has become a growing phenomenon since the annual event was started in 2005. Although the schedule for this year’s version has not yet been released, a message on its Web site makes clear what the focus will be:

This year, IAW occurs in the wake of Israel’s barbaric assault against the people of Gaza. Lectures, films and actions will make the point that these latest massacres further confirm the true nature of Israeli Apartheid. IAW aims to continue to build and strengthen the growing Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions (BDS) movement at a global level

An archive of past Israeli Apartheid Weeks on apartheidweek.org confirms the event’s growing popularity. In 2005, the event took place only in Toronto. The next year, it grew to include Montreal and Oxford. Five locations, including New York, were added in 2007, bringing it to the US for the first time. From 2007 to 2008, there was a huge jump, as 19 locations were added for a total of 24 (certain others were discontinued). This year, with the addition of three new locations, Israeli Apartheid Week will be held in 27 cities. In addition to existing programs in Canada, the UK and the US, the event will now reach South Africa, the West Bank, Mexico, Scotland and Norway. Locations include Abu Dis, Berkeley, Bir Zeit, Edinburgh, Edmonton, Johannesburg, Oxford, Kalkilya, San Francisco, Soweto, Tulkarm and Washington, DC. In certain cities, the events will take place on more than one campus. In Toronto and Montreal, events for the week will be taking place on three campuses per city, as they have in the past. The Web site was relaunched on Wednesday with new material for Israeli Apartheid Week 2009. Web surfers are invited to learn about the history of the week, the proposed academic boycott, and BDS calls. Speakers have included Balad MK Jamal Zahalka in 2007 and former MK Azmi Bishara, also of Balad, who began Israeli Apartheid Week 2008 with a live broadcast from Soweto. In his February 2007 Israeli Apartheid Week speech at the University of Toronto, Zahalka spoke of the “myth of Israeli democracy”:

Democracy is Israel’s most important export. This product is so important that it gives Israel moral legitimacy, political legitimacy, influence and acceptance.

Pro-Israel campus groups have been gearing up to respond to Israel Apartheid Week 2009. Dan Hadad, director of advocacy for Hillel Montreal, has been present for past Israeli Apartheid Weeks and said there would be a focus again this year, on Canadian campuses, on the “Canadian apartheid of aboriginals.” In a YouTube video called “Israeli Apartheid Week 2008 Trailer,” Salim Valley of the Palestine Solidarity Campaign provided reasoning for this link between Canadian aboriginals and Palestinians:

At the world conference against racism, what did they do when they saw overwhelmingly Dalits, indigenous people from South Africa, African peasants, and people from Asia marching together under the banner ‘Zionism is racism’? When Palestinians took up the course of the Dalits, when some Palestinians stood with indigenous people in South America, when together in South Africa – the home once of Apartheid – they stood together, the ruling class, carriers of misery, racists throughout the world started trembling.

In the same video, Rafeeh Ziadah of Coalition Against Israeli Apartheid, dismissed the option of dialogue between Israelis and Palestinians:

Nobody would have asked a black South African to dialogue with a white South African. Nobody would have asked a black from the southern United States to dialogue with members of the KKK. Now, by that same logic, we Palestinians have nothing to dialogue about with Zionists.

The focus in past years’ weeks has included “Apartheid and the Current Context in Palestine,” “Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions Movement against Israeli Apartheid: Lessons from South Africa,” “Nakba and the Right of Return,” and “Voices for Palestine: Resistance to Racism and Apartheid.”

new lows: a deniable apology

President Shimon Peres called Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan on Friday, following Thursday’s spat at the World Economic Forum in Davos, in efforts to soothe the tensions. Turkish media outlets reported that Peres had apologized to Erdogan during their five-minute phone conversation, but Peres’ office issued a statement insisting that the words “I’m sorry” were never spoken by the president. The following is the transcript of the phone conversation between the two leaders issued by Turkey’s state-run Anatolian Agency on Friday:

Peres: Such things happen between friends. I am very sorry for today’s incident. Firstly, my respect towards the Turkish republic and you a prime minister has never changed.
Erdogan: Firstly, of course. There is no doubt that such arguments can happen between friends. But nobody can even speak to a tribe leader so loudly and in front of the international community, and not to the leader of the Republic of Turkey.
Peres: I raised my voice. In fact my friends tell me that I have quite a voice. This has nothing to do with my relationship with the prime minister of the Republic of Turkey. I am very sorry for what happened today.
Erdogan: I heard that you are going to hold a press conference.
Peres: Not today, but tomorrow.
Erdogan: If you express these sincere feelings, which I believe you will, in tomorrow’s press conference, I assume this problem will be mostly overcome.
Peres: Of course I will publicly express these remarks.
Erdogan: Thank you very much for your call Mr. President.
Peres: I thank you and wish you a nice flight.

you must remember this …

Powerpoint 24-slide presentation:

(1) Taking Saudi Out of Arabia
Laurent Murawiec, RAND
Defense Policy Board
July 10, 2002

(2) Taking Saudi out of Arabia:
Contents

* The Arab Crisis
* “Saudi” Arabia
* Strategies

(3) The Arab Crisis

(4) The systemic crisis of the Arab World

* The Arab world has been in a systemic crisis for the last 200 years
* It missed out on the industrial revolution, it is missing out on the digital revolution
* Lack of inner resources to cope with modern world

(5) Shattered Arab self-esteem

* Shattered self-esteem
* Could God be wrong?
* Turn the rage against those who contradict God: the West, object of hatred
* A whole generation of violently anti-Western, anti-American, anti-modern shock-troops

(6) What has the Arab world produced?

* Since independence, wars have been the principal output of the Arab world
* Demographic and economic problems made intractable by failure to establish stable polities aiming at prosperity
* All Arab states are either failing states or threatened to fail

(7) The Crisis of the Arab world reaches a climax

* The tension between the Arab world and the modern world has reached a climax
* The Arab world’s home-made problems overwhelm its ability to cope
* The crisis is consequently being exported to the rest of the world

(8 ) How does change occur in the Arab world?

* There is no agora, no public space for debating ideas, interests, policies
* The tribal group in power blocks all avenues of change, represses all advocates of change
* Plot, riot, murder, coup are the only available means to bring about political change

(9) The continuation of politics by other means?

* In the Arab world, violence is not a continuation of politics by other means — violence is politics, politics is violence
* This culture of violence is the prime enabler of terrorism
* Terror as an accepted, legitimate means of carrying out politics, has been incubated for 30 years …

(10) The crisis cannot be contained to the Arab world alone

* The crisis has irreversibly spilled out of the region
* 9/11 was a symptom of the “overflow”
* The paroxysm is liable to last for several decades
* U.S. response will decisively influence the duration and outcome

(11) “Saudi” Arabia

(12) The old partnership

* Once upon a time, there was a partnership between the U.S. and Saudi Arabia
* Partnerships, like alliances, are embodied in practices, ideas, policies, institutions, people — which persist after the alliance has died

(13) “Saudi” Arabia

* An instable group: Since 1745, 58% of all rulers of the House of Saud have met a violent demise
* Wahhabism loathes modernity, capitalism, human rights, religious freedom, democracy, republics, an open society — and practices the very opposite
* As long as enmity had no or little consequences outside the kingdom, the bargain between the House of Saud and the U.S. held

(14) Means, motive, opportunity

* 1973: Saudi Arabia unleashes the Oil Shock, absorbs immense flows of resources — means
* 1978: Khomeiny challenges the Saudis’ Islamic credentials, provoking a radicalization and world-wide spread of Wahhabism in response — motive
* 1979-1989: the anti-Soviet Jihad gives life and strength to the Wahhabi putsch within Sunni Islam — opportunity. The Taliban are the result

(15) The impact on Saudi policy

* Wahhabism moves from Islam’s lunatic fringe to center-stage — its mission now extends world-wide
* Saudis launch a putsch within Sunni Islam
* Shift from pragmatic oil policy to promotion of radical Islam
* Establish Saudi as “the indispensable State” — treasurers of radical, fundamentalist, terrorist groups

(16) Saudis see themselves

* God placed the oil in the kingdom as a sign of divine approval
* Spread Wahhabism everywhere, but keep the power of the al-Saud undiminished
* Survive by creating a Wahhabi-friendly environment — fundamentalist regimes — throughout the Moslem world and beyond

(17) The House of Saud today

* Saudi Arabia is central to the self-destruction of the Arab world and the chief vector of the Arab crisis and its outwardly-directed aggression
* The Saudis are active at every level of the terror chain, from planners to financiers, from cadre to foot-soldier, from ideologist to cheerleader
* Saudi Arabia supports our enemies and attacks our allies
* A daily outpouring of virulent hatred against the U.S. from Saudi media, “educational” institutions, clerics, officials — Saudis tell us one thing in private, do the contrary in reality

(18 ) Strategies

(19) What is to be done?

* During and after World War I, Britain’s India Office backed the House of Saud; the Foreign Office backed the Hashemites. The India Office won
* But the entire post-1917 Middle East settlement designed by the British to replace the Ottoman Empire is fraying
* The role assigned to the House of Saud in that arrangement has become obsolete — and nefarious

(20) “Saudi Arabia” is not a God-given entity

* The House of Saud was given dominion over Arabia in 1922 by the British
* It wrested the Guardianship of the Holy Places — Mecca and Medina — from the Hashemite dynasty
* There is an “Arabia,” but it needs not be “Saudi”

(21) An ultimatum to the House of Saud

* Stop any funding and support for any fundamentalist madrasa, mosque, ulama, predicator anywhere in the world
* Stop all anti-U.S., anti-Israeli, anti-Western predication, writings, etc., within Arabia
* Dismantle, ban all the kingdom’s “Islamic charities,” confiscate their assets
* Prosecute or isolate those involved in the terror chain, including in the Saudi intelligence services

(22) Or else …

* What the House of Saud holds dear can be targeted:
—Oil: the old fields are defended by U.S. forces, and located in a mostly Shiite area
—Money: the Kingdom is in dire financial straits, its valuable assets invested in dollars, largely in the U.S.
—The Holy Places: let it be known that alternatives are being canvassed

(23) Other Arabs?

* The Saudis are hated throughout the Arab world: lazy, overbearing, dishonest, corrupt
* If truly moderate regimes arise, the Wahhabi-Saudi nexus is pushed back into its extremist corner
* The Hashemites have greater legitimacy as Guardians of Mecca and Medina

(24) Grand strategy for the Middle East

• Iraq is the tactical pivot

• Saudi Arabia the strategic pivot

• Egypt the prize

gaza ‘preintroduction’ to iran

Iran will soon pose N-threat, says Israel
Angus Hohenboken, Australian, Jan 31 2009

Israel’s ambassador to Australia has described his country’s military offensives in Gaza as a “preintroduction” to tackling the military threat posed by a nuclear-equipped Iran. Israeli ambassador Yuval Rotem told a meeting of Sydney’s Jewish community yesterday that he expected Iran would soon pose a major nuclear threat. Seven News reporter Sarah Cummings reported that, after telling a camera operator to turn off his camera, Rotem told those gathered he expected Iran to stockpile enough uranium over the next 14 months to “be at the point of no return.” Cummings reported:

(He said) the country’s recent military offensives were a preintroduction to the challenge Israel expects from a nuclear-equipped Iran within a year.

During the meeting, held in a relaxed breakfast setting, Rotem spoke about the war in Gaza, which has killed more than 1300 Palestinians. Cummings said Rotem made the point that “Israel’s efforts in Gaza were to bring about understanding that we are ready to engage in a decisive way.” Seven said a staff member had invited Seven News “accidentally.” While being filmed before the discussion, Rotem said, before telling the cameraman to stop filming:

The best thing to do is to have a very open dialogue, if there are no reporters or journalists here. I am far more reserved in the way I am saying my things (on camera).

Later in the afternoon, the Israeli ambassador denied that Israel was planning an attack, but said Iran needed to be stopped.

it hadda be playin on the jukebox

It had to be flashin’ like the daily double
It had to be playin’ on TV
It had to be loud mouthed on the comedy hour
It had to be announced over loud speakers

The CIA and the Mafia are in cahoots

It had to be said in old ladies’ language
It had to be said in American headlines
Kennedy stretched and smiled and got double crossed by lowlife goons and agents
Rich bankers with criminal connections
Dope pushers in CIA working with dope pushers from Cuba working with a
big time syndicate from Tampa, Florida
And it had to be said with a big mouth

It had to be moaned over factory foghorns
It had to be chattered on car radio news broadcasts
It had to be screamed in the kitchen
It had to be yelled in the basement where uncles were fighting

It had to be howled on the streets by newsboys to bus conductors
It had to be foghorned into New York harbor
It had to echo onto hard hats
It had to turn up the volume in university ballrooms

It had to be written in library books, footnoted
It had to be in the headlines of the Times and Le Monde
It had to be barked on TV
It had to be heard in alleys through ballroom doors

It had to be played on wire services
It had to be bells ringing
Comedians stopped dead in the middle of a joke in Las Vegas

It had to be FBI chief J. Edgar Hoover and Frank Costello syndicate
mouthpiece meeting in Central Park, New York weekends,
reported Time magazine

It had to be the Mafia and the CIA together starting war on Cuba,
Bay of Pigs and poison assassination headlines

It had to be dope cops in the Mafia
Who sold all their heroin in America

It had to be the FBI and organized crime working together
in cahoots against the commies

It had to be ringing on multinational cash registers
A world-wide laundry for organized criminal money

It had to be the CIA and the Mafia and the FBI together
They were bigger than Nixon
And they were bigger than war

It had to be a large room full of murder
It had to be a mounted ass- a solid mass of rage
A red hot head
A scream in the back of the throat

It had to be in Kissinger’s brain
It had to be in Rockefellers’ mouth
It had to be central intelligence, the family, all of this, the agency Mafia
It had to be organized crime

One big set of gangs working together in cahoots

Hitmen
Murderers everywhere

The secret
The drunk
The brutal
The dirty and rich

On top of a slag heap of prisons
Industrial cancer
Plutonium smog
Garbage cities

Grandma’s bedsores, father’s resentment

It had to be the rulers
They wanted law and order
And they got rich on wanting protection for the status quo

They wanted junkies
They wanted Attica
They wanted Kent State
They wanted war in Indochina

yeah

It had to be the CIA and the Mafia and the FBI

Multinational capitalists
Strong armed squads
Private detective agencies for the oh so very rich
And their armies and navies and their air force bombing planes

It had to be capitalism
The vortex of this rage
This competition
Man to man

The horse’s head in a capitalist’s bed
The Cuban turf
It rumbles in hitmen
And gang wars across oceans

Bombing Cambodia settled the score when Soviet pilots
manned Egyptian fighter planes

Chile’s red democracy
Bumped off with White House pots and pans

A warning to Mediterranean governments

The secret police have been embraced for decades

The NKPD and CIA keep each other’s secrets
The OGBU and DIA never hit their own
The KGB and the FBI are one mind

Brute force and full of money
Brute force, world-wide, and full of money
Brute force, world-wide, and full of money
Brute force, world-wide, and full of money
Brute force, world-wide, and full of money

It had to be rich and it had to be powerful
They had to murder in Indonesia 500000
They had to murder in Indochina 2000000
They had to murder in Czechoslovakia
They had to murder in Chile
They had to murder in Russia

And they had to murder in America.

nuclear outlaw no. 2 (after israel)

India to sign IAEA deal on Monday – ambassador
Sylvia Westall, Reuters, Jan 29 2009

India is set to sign an inspection agreement with the UN nuclear watchdog on Monday, said  its ambassador to the Vienna-based IAEA, Saurabh Kumar, on Thursday. The inspection deal with the IAEA is a precondition of a US-led agreement allowing nuclear nations to supply India with nuclear material and technology for its domestic power sector. “We have set some time aside for this on Monday,” he added, referring to the signing of the pact. He declined to give further details of the agreement, which must be ratified by Delhi before it can come into effect. The draft agreement in July said India would be required to make its declared civilian reactors — 14 out of 22 — subject to regular IAEA non-proliferation inspections. The agency hopes to have the reactors under inspection by 2014. In August, IAEA Director General Mohamed ElBaradei hailed the draft as a positive step, after it was approved by the agency’s board of governors, saying:

I believe the agreement is good for India, is good for the world, is good for non-proliferation, is good for our collective effort to move towards a world free from nuclear weapons.

The 45 nations which make up the Nuclear Suppliers’ Group (NSG) agreed in September to lift a three-decade global ban on nuclear trade with India, paving the way for the fuel and technology deal. The ban had been in place since 1974, when India carried out its first nuclear test explosion. Washington said in September the deal would forge a strategic partnership with the world’s largest democracy, help India meet rising energy demand and open up a nuclear market worth billions of dollars. The Bush administration pushed hard to get required approvals for the controversial pact from the NSG, IAEA and the US Congress, which gave the deal the thumbs up in October. Some nations criticised the deal because India has not signed the Non-Proliferation Treaty which is meant to stop the spread and production of nuclear weapons and mandate gradual disarmament, and a companion test ban pact.

spanish war crimes prosecutions – reaction

Israel fighting Spain’s war crimes probe
JPost, Jan 30 2009

[update] Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni spoke on the phone with her Spanish counterpart Miguel Moratinos on Friday, concerning the previous day’s decision by a Spanish judge to launch a probe of seven former top security officials for alleged war crimes in the 2002 bombing in Gaza that killed top Hamas terrorist Salah Shehadeh and 14 other people. Moratinos assured Livni that his government would amend the authority of the Spanish courts to prevent such probes from being launched in the future. Livni told Moratinos that this was “very important news for the Israeli public.” Moratinos stressed, however, that any amendments would not be made in time for the Shehadeh case, but he said that his office would work to annul the investigation, Army Radio reported on Friday afternoon.

The Foreign and Justice ministries were working Friday to bring about the cancellation of the previous day’s decision by a Spanish judge to open a probe of seven former top security officials for alleged war crimes in the 2002 bombing in Gaza that killed top Hamas terrorist Salah Shehadeh as well as 14 other people. The investigation has been ordered against National Infrastructures Minister Binyamin Ben-Eliezer, who was defense minister at the time; Likud Knesset candidate Moshe Ya’alon, who was chief of General Staff; Dan Halutz, then commander of the air force; Doron Almog, who was OC Southern Command; then-National Security Council head Giora Eiland; the defense minister’s military secretary, Mike Herzog; and Public Security Minister Avi Dichter, who was head of the Shin Bet (Israel Security Agency). Ya’alon told Army Radio on Friday that the threat of legal action didn’t concern him:

It’s all propaganda, and it’s being led by Arab groups with the help of Israelis who are giving them information. I’m not worried that they might charge me. The aim is to make out that we are war criminals, in order to delegitimize Israel and hurt its good name. We conducted an inquiry and found that the home where most of the victims were was meant to be undergoing renovation. Two days earlier, we had a chance to hit Shehadeh, but since innocent civilians were in the area, we didn’t approve the attack. Even the High Court has turned down a similar petition, and in the US, it was rejected out of hand.

The Justice Ministry rejected allegations that it had failed to take seriously a request from Spanish authorities to turn over key documents connected to the targeted killing of Shehadeh, issuing a statement on Thursday night. According to Justice Ministry spokesman Moshe Cohen:

The Spanish authorities asked to receive materials in the course of January, and because of the large quantity of the material in question, the preparation of the documents has continued until now. In consultation with all of the relevant people in different government ministries, it was decided – in an exceptional decision – to comply with the Spanish judge’s request to acquire documents concerning legal proceedings in Israel regarding the Shehadeh affair.

Israel to appeal Spanish war crimes
probe against its senior officials
Barak Ravid, Haaretz, Jan 30 2009

[Update] Spain announced on Friday its plans to amend legislation that granted a Spanish judge the authority to launch a war crimes investigation against senior Israeli officials in. Spanish Foreign Minister Miguel Moratinos telephoned Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni on Friday, and told her his government was undertaking swift action to amend the law in an effort to limit the courts’ authority and thus prevent such investigations from being pursued. Livni welcomed Spain’s decision to amend the law, and said it was an important announcement for the Israeli public, saying on Friday:

Legal systems around the world have been exploited by cynics whose sole purpose is to hurt Israel. It’s good that Spain decided to put an end to this phenomenon.

Israel will on Friday appeal a decision by a Spanish judge to open a probe against National Infrastructures Minister Benjamin Ben-Eliezer and six other current or former Israeli officials over a 2002 bombing in Gaza that killed one Hamas militant and 14 other people, inluding nine children. Judge Fernando Andreu said the attack by Israel, which targeted senior Hamas militant Salah Shehadeh in a densely populated civilian area, might constitute a crime against humanity. Ben-Eliezer, who was defense minister at the time of the bombing, blasted the decision as “ludicrous”:

even more than ludicrous, it is outrageous. Terror organizations use the courts of the free world and the mechanisms of democratic nations to file suit against a country that operates against terror. I do not regret my decision. Salah Shehadeh was a Hamas activist, an arch-murderer whose hands were stained with the blood of about 100 Israelis and who carried out the most heinous attacks against our citizens.

The Justice Ministry on Thursday sent the Israeli Embassy in Madrid a large quantity of documents, which included legal rulings and Supreme Court decisions dealing with the targeted killing of Shehadeh. Israeli Ambassador to Spain Rafi Shotz will on Friday give the material to the Spanish judge, in order to help bring a cancellation of the ruling. Defense Minister Ehud Barak earlier Thursday lambasted Andreu’s decision as “hallucinatory” in a statement released by his ministry:

Whoever calls the assassination of a terrorist a ‘crime against humanity’ is living in an upside-down world. All senior officials in the security establishment, current and erstwhile, have acted appropriately on behalf of Israel and from a commitment to defend its citizens.

The judge is acting under a doctrine that allows prosecution in Spain of such an offense or crimes like terrorism or genocide even if they are alleged to have been committed in another country. Andreu announced the probe in a writ issued Thursday. The people named in the suit include Dan Halutz, former IDF Chief of Staff and IAF commander at the time, as well as Ben-Eliezer. Opposition leader Benjamin Netanyahu also condemned the decision to open the probe, saying on Army Radio:

It’s absurd. Israel is fighting against war criminals, and they are charging us with crimes? There is nothing more ridiculous and absurd than them accusing us, a democracy legitimately protecting itself against terrorists and war criminals, of these crimes. It is absurd, and makes a mockery out of international law.

Meanwhile, Israel is preparing for a wave of lawsuits by pro-Palestinian organizations overseas against Israelis involved in the latest Gaza fighting, claiming they were responsible for war crimes, due to the harsh results stemming from the IDF’s actions against Palestinian civilians and their property. Senior Israeli ministers have expressed serious fears following the war about the possibility that Israel will be pressed to agree to an international investigation of the losses among non-combatants, or alternately, that Israelis will be faced with personal suits, such as happened to Israeli officers who were accused of war crimes in Britain for their actions during the second intifada.

israeli surrealism with rami fortis (1980s)

shultz, part one

shultz, part two

seventies prophecy of the day

war in the east,
and a war in the west,
war in the north,
and a war in the south,
crazy jew against them all,
what a terrible fall …

- prince far i : “under heavy manners” (1976)

protests at zionazi colonel’s london lectures

Israeli Colonel Talk at London Student Centre
fil, Indymedia, Jan 29 2009

On Jan 29, Hillel Student Centre in London hosted Colonel Geva Rapp, one of the commanders of the recent ground operations in Gaza. Over 100 people assembled outside to protest against Israel’s military atrocities in Gaza and called for Rapp to be arrested for war crimes. This talk had been publicised earlier in the day:

Please publicise widely and demonstrate against the Colonel Geva Rapp, deputy commander of the Israeli Ground Forces in Operation Cast Lead against Gaza. He should be charged for War Crimes and should not be travelling freely in the UK.

DEMONSTRATE TODAY

* Day & Date: Thursday 29th January (today)
* Time: 6:00pm (Talk starts at 6:30pm)
* Venue: The Jewish London Student Centre in Euston, 163 Euston Road.
* Speaker: Colonel Geva Rapp, the head of the ground operations in Gaza (Operation Cast Lead)!

The Zionists are going to have another meeting on the morning of Jan 30 at the Dorchester, where the Isreal army murderer Colonel Rapp will be with another General, whose name we don’t yet know. They are hoping that calling their meet at short notice will stop demonstrations happening. Don’t let them have their meeting without knowing of our anger at what they are doing in Gaza. Bring as many people as possible. Stop the Genocide!