SURVIVAL INSTINCT OR JEWISH PARANOIA?

Such scenes posted around the world do not endear Israel to the rest of the world.

"I write for a very selfish reason. When one day, Israelis stand trial for the occupation and the war crimes against the Palestinian people, I would like to be counted as someone who spoke up. I was brought up on stories of the Holocaust. I was told that even more despicable than the Nazis themselves were all those who knew what was happening and allowed it to happen. Jews have always felt abandoned by a world full of bystanders. Being a bystander doesn’t mean doing nothing. It means collaborating. And I don’t want to be a collaborator. "~ Avigail Abarbanel

This Jewish psychologist makes some excellent points about the people of Israel. In my opinion, in many ways she is an innocent who seems to be unaware of the ultimate Zionist goals for humanity. Despite my Western and rather jaded gentile take on all things Zionist, I appreciate fully her analyses of various unpleasant aspects of Jewish behaviour. This piece I picked up after the next piece titled ISRAEL'S GROWING INSANITY. Both articles are well worth reading.

14th January 2009

By Avignail Abarbanel

Resposted January 30, 2010

This piece appeared on Electronic Intifada on 18th January 2009. Here is a link to it:

http://electronicintifada.net/v2/article10206.shtml.

This piece has been translated into French and republished on the Info Palestine site. The translation is at:

http://www.info-palestine.net/article.php3?id_article=5929.

In late 2002 Yonatan Shapira, a former Israeli Black Hawk helicopter pilot and a few of his fellow pilots published the Pilots’ Letter in which they said:

“We, veteran pilots and active pilots together, who served and still serve the State of Israel during long weeks each year, object to perform illegal and immoral orders of attacks that the State of Israel performs in the territories.

“We, who were raised to love the State of Israel and to contribute to the Zionist enterprise, refuse to take part in the attacks of the air force in concentrations of civilian population.

“We, for whom the IDF and the air force are inseparable parts of us, refuse to continue and harm innocent civilians.

“These actions are illegal and immoral and are a direct result of the ongoing occupation, which corrupts Israeli society as a whole.

“The continuation of the occupation delivers a mortal blow to the security of the State of Israel and to her moral strength.”

This letter came after a series of attacks on the densely populated enclave of Gaza. For Shapira and his fellow pilots the last straw came following a mission in which “a one-ton bomb was dropped (equal to a hundred suicide bombs) on a house in the Al-Deredg quarter in Gaza, one of the most crowded neighborhoods in Gaza, indeed in the whole world.”

Shapira described how he and other pilots couldn’t sleep at night after and during these operations. This was despite a briefing by Dan Halutz Head of the Air Force at the time who said, “… everything taking place before the mission is justified according to my moral compass …” and his reassuring words: “Sleep well tonight … you executed this mission perfectly.”

Two days ago, on the 11th of January, Shapira participated in a program on Israeli radio in which he was confronted with a Lieutenant Colonel in the Israeli Air Force, pilot Ye’ohar Gal. Here is what Gal had to say:

Dresden after America and Britain dropped 14 000 tons of bombs over a solid 24 hour period.

“I think we should go at it more strongly. Dresden, Dresden. Devastate a city. At the end of the day we‘re told that war has changed. It is no longer tanks roaring ahead, we no longer face regular rank-and-file armies. Missiles are targeting population centers.The remains of Dresden after the Americans and British have dropped literally hundreds of thouands of pounds on it.

It did not start today, nor yesterday. It has been the state of affairs for over a decade now. The Arab states have realized that it is very difficult, rather impossible to defeat us on the battlefield, so they have changed their warfare.

The battle is now waged between the old lady in Jabalya and the old lady in Sderot or Ashdod. The entire people, from the old lady down to the child, are an army. An army that fights. I call them (Palestinians) a people ~ although I do not see them as such. A people is fighting another people. Civilians are fighting civilians.

I tell you that we, as sons of Holocaust survivors, must know that this is the essence of our lives, coming from there: no one throws a stone at us. I'm not talking about missiles. No one will throw a stone at us for being Jews.

Yonatan (Shapira) is one of the people who have lost their survival instinct. As simple as that. He does not understand that a war of cultures is being waged here between the likes of him and the likes of myself. He is fighting for peace.

“I want peace too, like Yonatan…

“I want the Arabs of Gaza to flee to Egypt.

That’s what I want.

I want to destroy the city.

Not necessarily the people in it.

“Make it crystal clear: no one is going to fire at us.

Not a bullet from Gilo to Jerusalem,

not a missile from Gaza to Sderot.

One of hundreds of mountains of bodies after the shelling of Dresden, AFTER the war had been legally ended.

I will not agree to a single bullet shot at us by the enemy. As soon as the enemy opens fire on me my survival instinct tells me to destroy the enemy. To defeat the enemy. If we do not defeat the Hamas ~ our deterrent force vis-a-vis the Arab states, who are also aspiring to destroy us one way or another ~ woe to us if we do not maintain this gap between us and them.” (Transcript Eyal Niv; Translation Tal Haran).

Gal sounds like he was enjoying the massacre of Gaza just winding up at the time. He makes no sense in some ways yet in others all too much. He says he does not see the Palestinians as people. He says he wants to erase their cities like the British and Americans did Dresden but not the people who he wants gone somewhere else. He sounds totally paranoid with unreasonable reason.

I have often written about Jewish trauma and its effects on Israeli outlook on life in general and on the way it treats the Palestinians in particular. I get the impression that people are not so interested in my psychological take on the conflict. The mainstream media seem to prefer purely political or economic analyses, and that’s what I read in most newspapers and see on TV channels like the BBC or the Australian ABC or SBS.

But Gal’s sentiments, which I know are widely echoed in the Israeli media and public ~ I listen to Israeli radio, read the newspapers and blogs, and correspond with Israelis ~ prove once more that we are not dealing simply with politics here

but with psychology and more specifically, the psychology of Jewish trauma. This trauma pre-dates the Holocaust and goes right back to early Jewish narrative about Jewish identity, right back to the stories of the Old Testament.

Gal says that Shapira lost his ‘survival instinct’ but what he calls survival instinct I call trauma-induced Jewish paranoia.

Both Shapira and I have both lost our Jewish paranoia alongside a growing number of Jewish peace activists inside and outside Israel. And thank goodness we have, because it means that we have healed from Jewish trauma. As a result we are healthier more peaceful people, who do not see the world exclusively in adversarial terms.

We no longer think about everything in terms of whether ‘it’s good for the Jews or not’, we do not believe that our life’s purpose is to preserve the Jewish people, and we can work as equals alongside non-Jewish people to promote peace.

We no longer spend every waking moment worrying about anti-Semitism, as we were taught to do. We know it exists as do other forms of racism, but we do not allow it to define who we are, what we do, or what we think and feel about ourselves and about others.

Being free from Jewish trauma means

being free from fear of anti-Semitism.

Zionist Jews think I have gone insane because I don’t fear anti-Semitism and refuse to focus on it, but I think I have gone sane. I once received an email from an Israeli who said to me: ‘You are naïve and stupid but regardless, when they finally come to get you, you will run to us and we will still accept you with open arms.’ I responded,

'Thanks but I had my time in Israel and I’d rather take my chances elsewhere’. Trying to convince him that no one is coming to get me, was pointless.

These are not just the ramblings of one man. This echoes the feelings of the majority of Israeli Jews and most Zionist Jews. Even very educated people feel this way. ‘Because we were victims of anti-Semitism we can never relax and must always be vigilant in case a new enemy of the Jews will come to destroy us.’

Living with trauma is a terrible thing and it leads to precisely the sort of views and sentiments expressed by Gal, and the kind of crimes committed by Israel right now. Trauma that is a product of past hurts can make you believe that everyone hates you and wants to destroy you ~ now, always, not just in the past. Some people respond to trauma by becoming aggressive and frightening, to make sure it doesn’t happen to them again. Just like Gal says, ‘No one will throw a stone at us for being Jews’."

You have not begun to appreciate the depth of our guilt.

We are intruders.

We are subverters.

We have taken your natural world, your ideals, your destiny, and played havoc with them.

We have been at the bottom of not merely the latest great war, but of every other major revolution in your history.

We have brought discord and confusion and frustration into your personal and public life.

We are still doing it.

No one can tell how long we shall go on doing it.

Who knows what great and glorious destiny might have been yours if we had left you alone."

~ Marclis Eli Ravage, Century Magazine February, 1926

My first thought here was of the beautiful land of North America, once pristine and full of nature and glory, now stripped of its wealth through activities like blasting, or the Tar Sands, which leave death and pollution in their wake. There is such utter truth and blatant hatred in this statement. Such obscene activities can only be the political outcome of a paranoid, self delusional, aggrandized people. This author does not seem to be aware of this part of history or has chosen to omit it for now.

This is a human reaction to victimhood and as a psychotherapist I can understand it. Anyone can understand the desire to not be hurt again but the question is at what cost to oneself and to others?

Together with the fierce determination to not be hurt again comes a perception of oneself as righteous and ‘better than’. Moreover, the former victim will hold survival as the highest value, above everything else.

I am sad to say that

the identity of the Jewish people

is based entirely on survival.

At least three important Jewish festivals are based on a story of a bloody victory over an enemy that sought to destroy the Jews, Passover, Purim and Hanukah. I stopped celebrating these festivals years ago because I find their real meaning offensive.

If life is only about survival

it does not leave much energy for anything else.

From what we know about the human brain we know that living with the belief that one is under constant existential threat can lead to tunnel vision, to short-term thinking, to lack of empathy, to constant stress.

This ultimately leads to an isolationist mentality and an inability to see the humanity of others. This is Israel in 2009.

This is the country that is walling the Palestinians in and then walling themselves in from the world. These are the people who starve their neighbours, force them to live in squalor, and refuse them even the basics of survival, is hell bent on genocide.

Note that Gal says, ‘for being Jews’. And this is another problem with trauma. It leads to blindness. Israelis don’t accept that their problem with the Palestinians was caused by the occupation. They really believe that it is because they are Jewish that the Palestinians are angry and attack them.

This is why the great over reaction to the primarily grade school Hamas missles by using thousands of tons of bombs in retaliation.This image by Carlos Latuff may seem "funny" to us, and true, but to the Israelis it is how things are.

Most Israelis do not even know that Israel committed ethnic cleansing in 1948.

Ah the glory of Bolshevik education, history rewritten. Today they deny the existence of Nakba. To publically speak of the Nakhba is a crime now. It is as if it never happened they try to convince the world. Yet the rest of the world is to never ever forget the Holocaust ONLY of the Jews in WW2.

The fact that, since Israel Day is the same day as Nakba, it infuriates them and is taken as a personal attack. However they insist on celebrating their day on the same day as when they began the expulsion of so many Palestinians. It certainly proves that the winner rewrites history to his own advantage and glory.

Most Israelis are convinced to the core that Israel is the ‘good guy’ in this story who has done no wrong, the small weak David standing in front of a giant anti-Semitic Goliath. To many Israelis the Palestinians are not the same as the Nazis but are the Nazis, the powerful, non-human, faceless, single-minded psychopathic murderers who were determined to exterminate the Jews for being Jews.

This takes some stretch of the imagination. The Palestinians were a people of the land, olive growers, fruit growers, farmers. They never had guns or weapons and fled their homes to avoid war, not realizing it was forever.

When Israelis kill Palestinians they are killing Pharaoh and his army (Passover), Hamman and his 10 sons (Purim) and the Greek occupying army (Hanukah) over and over again. The Palestinians are the recipients of 2000 years of unresolved rage that has more to do with the past than the present.

In therapy we call this ‘misplaced anger’. But I guess it is more comfortable for Israelis to blame Palestinian anger on anti-Semitism than to take responsibility for their real history.

The implications of seeing the conflict from within the lens of Jewish trauma are very serious. Can we really negotiate with this?

Can we explain to Israelis that their perspective on life and on the conflict is seriously flawed?

If we tried will they listen, and do the Palestinians have time to wait until they do?

I know from the personal experience

of having been born and raised in Israel,

in a Jewish family,

that this psychology is very powerful

and very deeply embedded in one’s identity.

To give up on it means to question everything one stands for, and that’s painful. It was very painful to me. But the cost of not doing it, we are seeing right now in Gaza and the Palestinians have experienced for a very long time usually away from the watchful eyes of the world.

This is why we, who sympathize with and support the Palestinian cause should not hesitate to acknowledge this human sacrifice from its participants. Here I especially refer to the teenaged Shministim who refuse to serve at great personal cost that will follow them for the rest of their lives.

Most are jailed again and again for 65 day periods and put into isolation for refusing to go against a defenseless population whom they do not see as an enemy. And it is THESE young people who let us know that there IS hope for Israel! Mass indoctrination does not always overcome common human decency.

Many of these young people are homeless because they were cast out. Israel insists on service from every young person upon graduation from Gr.12 which also unites the citizens and often sets their careers in place. By this refusal, they are giving up opportunities for the future and refusing to become "true Israelis" as one with their compatriots.

What Avignail is describing from the view of a Jewess is breaking free of the matrix, eating the red pill, shedding the illusions and delusions of a lifetime ~ of beginning to SEE the truth, not what you have been told is the truth.

We can all relate to how truly painful it can be as we shed, often in isolation almost everything that defined us and yet kept us in unity with those around us. She speaks of beginning to become isolated from her countrymen, something we Truthers and revisionists have been experiencing for a long time now. Daring to break free is equally frightening for those around us whether Gentile or Jew.

It doesn’t help that Israel has a powerful friend in the US, a country whose collective mindset is very similar to that of Israel’s. As long as the US enables Israel’s blindness by vetoing any decision against it in the UN Security Council, by supporting Israel financially and militarily, there will be no reason for Israeli leaders to question their perception of reality.

Israel needs real friends who with ‘tough love’ can save it from itself, who can help it see what it is unable to see. Indulging Israel’s trauma and blindness is costing the lives and wellbeing of Palestinians, and it is inexcusable.

Gal thinks that Shapira has no survival instinct but he is wrong. Shapira and others are doing what they are doing because they know that Israel’s survival is threatened by its very own actions, its own psychology, not by the Palestinians or anyone else.

They are not worried that Israel will be attacked or that the Israelis ‘will be thrown into the sea’.

They are worried about the social, emotional and spiritual cost to a society that has become one of the worst perpetrators of ethnic cleansing in modern history.

Israel is falling apart from within, losing its humanity, its dignity and its identity, and they know it.

Gideon Levy a Ha’aretz newspaper reporter recently asked:

“If Israelis were so sure of the rightness of their cause, why the violent intolerance they display toward everyone who tries to make a different case?”

CANADA ~ THE WINTER OLYMPICS

I have lived in a city that hosted the Olympics before and was left with a rather unsavoury aftertaste when all was said and done. That aftertaste was all that remained from my reaction which had begun the moment it was announced they would be held in my town.

Fortunately I arranged to have major surgery while the games were on so I had the wonderful excuse of hospitalization and did not have to deal with the ensuing traffic jams.

During the months before, the homeless became even more homeless as the annual town prettification progressed. Because the climate here is very mild compared to the rest of Canada we have a largish number of "outdoor campers", more than most cities.

In preparation for the whole 2 weeks of games, evictions increased to take advantage of the big bucks promised by the games. Well, the games came and went. But I noticed some nasty effects, the worst of which was my rent increasing by 1/3, which to a single mother with two children, is a major blow.

It seems these games had attracted the attention of the Canada Real Estate Board who declared my beautiful neighbourhood of quaint homes surrounded by the ocean as "The safest and best place in which to raise a small family in Canada."

That was, folks, the beginning of the end. I happen to be against this whole NWO thing as anyone who talks to me knows, and have long felt that these Olympics, a wonderful concept when held in ancient Greece, to have been hijacked to serve as a method of wakening the eyes of the world to the prospect of globalization.

Start with the beer and entertainment, then tell them about the banking, military and chipping. By then they won't think so much of globalization, already equating it with the "fun" games.

However, speak of that in the 1970's, 80's, or 90's and people just thought you loonier than the proverbial tune. I still support this belief and have loosely followed the trials suffered by the local people in anticipation of these events over the decades. Now we see everything happening in Vancouver, just as events unfolded in Beijing, Atlanta and every other locale blessed with hosting status.

The people of Chicago were saved from this hell when Obama failed to bring in the games for his Chicago masters.

What I see in Vancouver in 2010 are the usual increased costs. Every time the games are held, the budget is at least triple the original budget. You would think the natives would know this and protest from the getgo but they keep silent until the budget is bigger than the proverbial elephant hiding in the room. The sweeping of the streets is evidence.

Nowhere was this more painful than in Beijing as homes and neighbourhoods were just razed and the residents sent scuttling with no place to call home. Although not quite as horrid, what has been going on in British Columbia has been pretty darn nasty.

An anarchist! Look at her shirt! Is there a bomb under her hat?

This is the same Canada, most Canucks consider this to be land of the free and free speech is a given. Wro-ong! For the last year or three the protectors of the peace *giggles* have been harassing citizens non stop over the games. We have now become a police state and I see the games as being a reason to justify this change to the people, just as China did in terms of installation of survey materials everywhere. Increasing surveillance is BIG business and "keeps us all safe from terrorists". It was even made an arrestable offence to wear anti-games t-shirts or display posters from your home!

By laws were passed making it an offense to display anti games material. Students and citizens who had nothing to do with the protest, found themselves under scrutiny and having to prove their innocence from having committed no crime. The Marxist pressure of political correctness was applied so heavily that to be heard nay saying the games in public was guaranteed to bring a "Hush, someone might hear you" to someone's lips.

The height of this idiocy came last month when Amy Goodman of Democracy! Now was halted at the borders and treated scandalously by the border guards. Ms. Goodman, an internationally acclaimed journalist, was en route to speak at the Vancouver Library and the University of Victoria, both hotbeds of wild, anti establishment anarchists as you all know.
after hours of interrogation and rudeness, the five agents came down to the money question: "What are you going to say about the Olympics?"

Befuddled, Amy thought they referred to the aforementioned failed Obama bid and

the big business war connection to the peaceful games

If it had not been so pathetic, it would have been hilarious. These boarder guards would fit well in a Palestinian/Israeli passpoint they were so neurotic. No, it was all about the Vancouver Olympics something that had not even crossed her grid of consciousness what with her mind being occupied with things that really mattered, human rights, war, crooked politics, etc etc etc.

As a result of choosing the wrong person to treat in such a way, more British Columbians became aware of just how repressive it can be in our corner of land of the free. Americans laughed. (Not that they have much to laugh about!) Because our country is so large, the news of what happens in the East rarely manages to cross the country unless it has to do with hockey so I cannot gauge the reaction of folks back East.
The author of the following piece has got it. Normally I do not speak too much of such "trivialities" but for the people of British Columbia, this has been a big eye opener ~ seeing just how eroded our rights have become.

Of course, come the big event, most will settle back and enjoy the figure skating and hockey along from their living room but many are griping at the outrageous cost of tickets available to all Canadians at costs none can afford. But in the meanwhile, most of us are sick to death of the damned thing knowing that from the start, almost every word from the promoters/politicians was just plain propagandist pap.

AS THE OLYMPICS NEAR, VANCOUVERITES ARE DREADING THE GAMES

By Dave Zirin

Sports Illustrated

January 25, 2010

When I arrived in Vancouver, the first thing I noticed was the frowns.

The International Olympic Committee has leased every sign and billboard in town to broadcast Olympic joy, but they can't purchase people's faces. It's clear that the 2010 Winter Games has made the mood in the bucolic coastal city decidedly overcast.

Even the customs police officer checking my passport started grumbling about "$5,000 hockey tickets."

Polls released on my first day in Vancouver back up this initial impression. Only 50 percent of residents in British Columbia think the Olympics will be positive and 69 percent said too much money is being spent on the Games.

"The most striking thing in the poll is that as the Olympics get closer, British Columbians are less likely to see the Games as having a positive impact," said Hamish Marshall, research director for the pollster, Angus Reid.

"Conventional wisdom was that as we got closer to the Olympics, people here would get more excited and more supportive." If the global recession hadn't smacked into the planning last year, with corporate sponsors fleeing for the hills, maybe the Vancouver Olympic Committee would be on more solid ground with residents. But public bailouts of Olympic projects have decisively altered the local mood.

I tell ya Gord, YOU are wearing the HBC history of imperialist colonization!What did you say? Oh you don't care! AHHHH I got it now.

I spoke to Charles, a bus driver, whose good cheer diminished when I asked him about the games.

"I just can't believe I wanted this a year ago," he said. "I voted for it in the plebiscite. But now, yes. I'm disillusioned."

This disillusion is developing as the financial burden of the Games becomes public. The original cost estimate was $660 million in public money. It's now at an admitted $6 billion and steadily climbing.

An early economic impact statement was that the games could bring in $10 billion. Price Waterhouse Coopers just released their own study showing that the total economic impact will be more like $1 billion. In addition, the Olympic Village came in $100 million over budget and had to be bailed out by the city.

Security was estimated at $175 million and the final cost will exceed $1 billion. These budget overruns are coinciding with drastic cuts to city services. On my first day in town, the cover of the local paper blared cheery news about the Games on the top flap, while a headline announcing the imminent layoff off 800 teachers was much further down the page.

As a staunch Olympic supporter, a sports reporter from the Globe and Mail said to me, "The optics of cuts in city services alongside Olympic cost overruns are to put it mildly, not good."

But these aren't just p.r. gaffs to Vancouver residents, particularly on the eastside of the city where homelessness has spiked. Carol Martin who works in the downtown eastside of Vancouver, the most economically impoverished area in all of Canada, made this clear: "The Bid Committee promised that not a single person would be displaced due to the Games, but there are now 3,000 homeless people sleeping on Vancouver's streets and these people are facing increased police harassment as they try to clean the streets in the lead up to the Games."

I strolled the back streets of the downtown east side and police congregate on every corner, trying to hem in a palpable frustration and anger. Anti-Olympic posters wallpaper the neighborhood, creating an alternative universe to the cheery 2010 Games displays by the airport. The Vancouver Olympic Committee has tried to quell the crackling vibe by dispersing tickets to second-tier Olympic events like the luge. It hasn't worked.

The people of the downtown east side and beyond are developing a different outlet for their Olympic angst. For the first time in the history of the games, a full-scale protest is being planned to welcome the athletes, tourists, and foreign dignitaries.

Would you trust your freedoms to this man? Slimy, sanctimonious, sniveling, supercilious Steven, wondering when he can go home escape the commoners.

Bringing together a myriad of issues, Vancouver residents have put out an open call for a week of anti-game actions. Different demonstrations on issues ranging from homelessness to indigenous rights have been called. Protesters from London and Russia, site of the next two Olympics will be there.

Expect a tent city, expect picket signs, expect aggressive direct actions. Tellingly, according to the latest polls, 40 percent of British Columbia residents support the aims of the protesters, compared to just 13 percent across the rest of Canada.

Harsha Walia of the Olympic Resistance Network said, "We are seeing increasing resistance across the country as it becomes more visible how these Games are a big fraud."

The Games will also coincide with the largest and longest-standing annual march in Vancouver, the Feb. 14 Memorial Women's March meant to call attention to the hundreds of missing and murdered women ~ particularly indigenous women ~ in British Columbia.

The Vancouver Olympic Committee asked the Memorial March organizing if they would change the route of the march for the Olympic Games. As Stella August, one of the organizers with the downtown eastside Power of Women Group, said to me, "We are warriors. We have been doing this for 19 years and we aren't going to bow down to the Olympics."

One thing is certain: if you are in Vancouver, and competitive curling doesn't get your blood pumping, there will be quite the spectacle outside the arena.

FILMMAKER LOACH URGES CULTURAL BOYCOTT OF ISRAEL

THANK YOU, MR. LOACH!! YOUR HELP IS APPRECIATED
FROM ALL WHO CARE ABOUT PALESTINE.

Fri, 15 Jan 20
Press TV

The acclaimed British director and winner of Palme d'Or at the Cannes Film Festival, Ken Loach, has called for the boycott of Israeli movies at the international film festivals and cultural events.

“The massacres and state terrorism in Gaza make the showcasing of Israeli films in various sections of international film festivals unacceptable,” Loach was quoted as saying at a ceremony commemorating Israeli offensive on the besieged Gaza Strip by IRNA.

“Tel Aviv sponsors various international film festivals with the intention to open the way for Israeli films.”

He added the call for a boycott of Israeli cultural products comes from many writers, artists, journalists, lawyers, academics, trades unionists and teachers. They see it as “a contribution to the struggle to end Israel's occupation, colonization and system of apartheid.”

Last July, Loach withdrew his film ''Looking for Eric'' from the Melbourne International Film Festival in protest against the Israel's sponsorship of another filmmaker. Tel Aviv provided airfare for Tatia Rosenthal, whose film ''9.99'' is an Israeli-Australian co-production.

In May 2009, Loach as director of the Edinburgh International film festival returned a £300 gift from the Israeli embassy as a sign of his cultural boycott of Israel and in protest at Tel Aviv's policies towards the Palestinian people.

Loach has been active towards the Palestinian cause in the part of the world he knows best, the world of film and theatre.

The Toronto international film festival (TIFF) came under fire in September for selecting Tel Aviv as the subject of its inaugural City-to-City Spotlight strand. Renowned movie makers including Loach, Jane Fonda and David Byrne were among those who signed a statement supporting Canadian film-maker John Greyson, who withdrew his short film “Covered” from TIFF after learning of the program.

In a letter to the festival, Greyson cited Israeli action in Gaza and the expansion of illegal settlements as reasons for his withdrawal.

A United Nations inquiry led by former South African Judge Richard Goldstone details what investigators call Israeli actions "amounting to war crimes, possibly crimes against humanity" during Israel's offensive against Gaza.

Tel Aviv is worried that charges could be lodged against politicians and army officers for war crimes committed during Israel's 22-day offensive against blockaded Gaza Strip. Top officials who would be in the judicial cross-hairs could include former Prime Minister Ehud Olmert, former Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni as well as current Defense Minister Ehud Barak.

More than 1,400 Palestinians were killed during three weeks of Israel's land, sea and air assault in the impoverished coastal sliver. The offensive also inflicted $ 1.6 billion damage to Gaza economy.

Filmmaker Ken Loach Joins the Cultural Boycott of Israel

Ken Loach, Wikipedia

Edinburgh film festival refuses Israeli grant due to pressure by Ken Loach

FROM HOLOCAUST SURVIVOR TO PALESTINIAN RIGHTS ACTIVIST

HEDY EPSTEIN, THE JEWISH REBEL WHO SMILES WITH PEACE

January 8, 2010
The Palestine Telegraph
By PT Editor Maysaa Jarour

Hedy Epstein is what some might see as a contradiction in terms: a survivor of the Holocaust and also a staunch advocate for the Palestinian people. Born in 1924 in Freiburg, Germany, Epstein was 14 when she escaped from Nazi persecution via the Kinderstransport to England. Since her 1948 arrival in the U.S., Epstein has been an advocate for peace and human rights.

Hedy at 14

In 2001 she founded the St. Louis chapter of the Women in Black anti-war group that originated in Israel, and has actively advocated for Palestinian rights since visiting the West Bank in 2003. As the last decade came to a close, Epstein continued her advocacy by traveling with the women's peace advocacy group CodePink to the Gaza Freedom March. The Dec. 31 march was a planned nonviolent demonstration to protest Israel's blockade of Gaza, with 1,000 advocates from abroad joining Palestinians in a march to the Gaza-Israel border checkpoint.

Although Egyptian authorities refused to let the full contingent of protesters into Gaza, the 100 activists that were permitted to enter carried on the anti-blockade message. Prior to the planned Gaza march, Epstein spoke with us about her past experiences in Israel, dealing with the controversy of being a Holocaust survivor who criticizes Israel, and the Gaza Freedom March.

How did you get interested in the Israel/Palestine issue?
I was born in Germany, I'm Jewish ~ after Hitler came to power, my parents realized very quickly that Germany was not a good place to raise a family. They were willing to go anywhere in the world, but one place they were not willing to go to was Palestine ~ they were anti-Zionists.

As a child I didn't quite understand this, but if my parents were anti-Zionist, I was anti-Zionist. I came to the U.S. in 1948, around the same time Israel became a state, about which I had mixed feelings. On the one hand it was a place for Holocaust survivors to go to, those who could not or did not want to return to their homes, but on the other, I considered my parents' ardent anti-Zionism.

While I was new in the U.S., Israel and Palestine remained on the back burner of my interests. In 1982, I heard about the massacres in the refugee camps of Sabra and Shatila in Lebanon ~ I wanted to know who was responsible for this, what had happened between 1948 and 1982. As I learned more, I became increasingly disturbed by the policies of Israel and its military. Fast forward to 2003 ~ I was in the West Bank for the first time, and have been there five times since then.

This will be my third try to go to Gaza. The first try was with the Free Gaza Movement when they tried to take boats through Israel's naval blockade, but right before, in Cypress, I became ill ~ it was 120 degrees, with matching humidity. The second try, the Free Gaza Movement members were worried what about might happen to me, so in deference I didn't go with them.

I was to go again in June 2009, but the day before I was to go, I was assaulted. I don't know whether I was targeted or if it was a random act of violence ~ I was coming back from the airport, but my suitcase and pocketbook, neither were touched ~ it was not theft.

Why did you decide to go with CodePink and participate in the group's Gaza Freedom March?
I've known about CodePink for quite some time and when I found out they were planning a march to Gaza, I decided I would go. I tried twice and didn't succeed, and so maybe the third time is the charm. Egyptian organizers recently told the group they could not go through the Rafah border. Other times groups were told they could not go, but then were permitted to go with restrictions. So we will go forward, and we'll take it one day, one minute at a time. And if we don't get in, that too will make a huge statement.

How have people reacted to your decision to be an advocate for Palestinians?
It depends whom you're talking to or whom you're talking about. The mainstream, organized Jewish community, both locally and in other places, have called me anti-Semitic, a self-hating Jew.

I'm not anti-Israel, but you're not allowed to criticize Israel or else you're anti-Semitic, and if you're Jewish you're a self-hating Jew. I don't hate myself. You're allowed to criticize every other country, including the U.S., but not Israel, why is that?

How do you think Israel will respond to nonviolence/direct action?
I don't know. I hope they will be nonviolent. When I was in the West Bank, before I went, I was told that the Palestinians are going to hurt me, they are going to do awful things to me. But they were the ones that protected me.

In one demonstration, in 2006, near Ramallah, I lost some of my hearing because an Israeli sound bomb went off very close to me. The Palestinians near me were very concerned.

I was strip-searched, internally searched at Israel's David Ben Gurion airport, I was told that "I was a terrorist, I'm a security risk." An 80-year-old woman is a terrorist? What, do I have a bomb in my vagina?

Do you think there can be peace in Israel in the near future?
In the near future, no. I'm an inveterate optimist, so someday there will be peace, but a lot of things have to change before that happens. If the occupation were to stop overnight, it would make all the difference in the world.

Israel is the fourth-largest military entity in the world. They have the newest equipment, and it's used on the Palestinians.

Also, if the U.S. stopped funding Israel, that would be another way of bringing about peace.

We have humongous problems in this country, people are unemployed, losing their homes, we could use that money instead of overseas in a destructive way.

Let's use it constructively. I think we should let the people decide what they want instead of telling them what they should do.

GAZA FREEDOM MARCH: ON THE MARCH AT LAST

The protest at Tahrir Square. Photo by Ellen Davidson

Ellen Davidson and Judith Mahoney Pasternak
The Indypendent

31 December 2009

At 9:50 this morning, hundreds of Egyptian Museum-bound tourists milled around Tahrir Square in downtown Cairo. Camouflaged among them were several hundred Gaza Freedom marchers, their “Free Gaza” t-shirts and “My heart is with Palestine” buttons hidden under jackets, their backpacks holding a day’s worth of water and snack foods.

At a few minutes before 10, says marcher Brad Taylor of New York City, the marchers converged and began to march down Meret Basha Street, waving banners and “Free Gaza” signs in Arabic and English and blocking traffic on half this heavily traveled multi-lane main artery. The Gaza Freedom March was on the march at last, if not in Gaza.

In Gaza, hundreds of Gazans marched with international activists against the Israeli blockade of the territory, according to Haaretz newspaper. Gaza residents have been unable to rebuild since Israel’s devastating bombing and invasion last year because the Israeli blockade has prevented construction materials from being brought into the area. Some 300 Israeli activists protested on the Israeli side of the Erez crossing.

The members of the GFM delegation in Cairo had come from around the world to join the march in Gaza, but were unable to get into the territory because the Egyptian government refused to allow them through the Rafah border crossing, which Egypt controls. Israel has completely shut down any movement through the Erez crossing at the other end of the territory.

In Cairo, the marchers got about 100 yards before they were completely blocked by a solid line of Cairo police in riot gear. The police surrounded the marchers from all sides, says Taylor, and began to push them very violently, dragging demonstrators off the street and throwing them onto the sidewalk, some pulled by the hair.

After ten or 15 minutes of very intense pushing and shoving, the entire group had been moved onto sidewalk. By 11:00, all the marchers were penned in. The police were letting people in ~ indeed, they were sometimes forcing onlookers into the penned-in crowd.

Some GFM participants, however, were unable to join the march, as they were held on the sidewalk in front of the Lotus Hotel, where many GFM organizers are staying. Beginning around 9 am, police barricaded activists on the sidewalk. They allowed non-GFM participants to leave the area, but anyone who looked like they might be part of the GFM delegation was prevented from going outside the police line.

Some 15-20 people stayed out on the sidewalk in front of the hotel, holding banners and signs and chanting “Israel, Open the Border” in Arabic. At about 3 pm, police closed in on them and forced them inside the building, where they were no longer visible to passersby.

As of 3:45 pm, 200-300 protesters were still inside the police circle at Tahrir Square. They had set up a makeshift toilet, said Antony Lowenstein, who had been inside since the morning, and were settling for the long haul and strategizing their next moves. “The energy of all the people was just amazing,” he said.

Updated on December 31, 2009

ONE DAY WE WILL ALL BE TERRORISTS

All we say to America is, "Be true to what you said on paper."
.... Somewhere I read of the freedom of speech.
Somewhere I read of the freedom of the press.
Somewhere I read that the greatness of America
is the right to protest for right.
~ Martin Luther King, Jr., April 3, 1968

For, if they take you in the morning,
they will be coming for us that night.
~ James Baldwin in a letter to Angela Davis, 1970

By Chris Hedges
December 29, 2009
Truthdig


Syed Fahad Hashmi can tell you about the dark heart of America. He knows that our First Amendment rights have become a joke, that habeas corpus no longer exists and that we torture, not only in black sites such as those at Bagram Air Base in Afghanistan or at Guantánamo Bay, but also at the federal Metropolitan Correctional Center (MCC) in Lower Manhattan.

Hashmi is a U.S. citizen of Muslim descent imprisoned on two counts of providing and conspiring to provide material support and two counts of making and conspiring to make a contribution of goods or services to al-Qaida. As his case prepares for trial, his plight illustrates that the gravest threat we face is not from Islamic extremists, but the codification of draconian procedures that deny Americans basic civil liberties and due process. Hashmi would be a better person to tell you this, but he is not allowed to speak.

This corruption of our legal system, if history is any guide, will not be reserved by the state for suspected terrorists, or even Muslim Americans.

In the coming turmoil and economic collapse,
it will be used to silence
all who are branded as disruptive or subversive.

Hashmi endures what many others, who are not Muslim, will endure later.

Radical activists in the environmental, globalization, anti-nuclear, sustainable agriculture and anarchist movements ~ who are already being placed by the state in special detention facilities with Muslims charged with terrorism ~ have discovered that his fate is their fate.

Courageous groups have organized protests, including vigils outside the Manhattan detention facility. They can be found at www.educatorsforcivilliberties.org or www.freefahad.com. On Martin Luther King Day, this Jan. 18 at 6 p.m. EST, protesters will hold a large vigil in front of the MCC on 150 Park Row in Lower Manhattan to call for a return of our constitutional rights. Join them if you can.

The case against Hashmi, like most of the terrorist cases launched by the Bush administration, is appallingly weak and built on flimsy circumstantial evidence. This may be the reason the state has set up parallel legal and penal codes to railroad those it charges with links to terrorism. If it were a matter of evidence, activists like Hashmi, who is accused of facilitating the delivery of SOCKS to al-Qaida, would probably never be brought to trial.

Hashmi, who if convicted could face up to 70 years in prison, has been held in solitary confinement for more than 2½ years. Special administrative measures, known as SAMs, have been imposed by the attorney general to prevent or severely restrict communication with other prisoners, attorneys, family, the media and people outside the jail.

He also is denied access to the news and other reading material. Hashmi is not allowed to attend group prayer. He is subject to 24-hour electronic monitoring and 23-hour lockdown. He must shower and go to the bathroom on camera. He can write one letter a week to a single member of his family, but he cannot use more than three pieces of paper. He has no access to fresh air and must take his one hour of daily recreation in a cage.

His “proclivity for violence” is cited as the reason for these measures although he has never been charged or convicted with committing an act of violence.

Hashmi’s brother, Faisal, told me by phone from his home in Queens.

“My brother was an activist. He spoke out on Muslim issues, especially those dealing with the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. His arrest and torture have nothing to do with providing ponchos and socks to al-Qaida, as has been charged, but the manipulation of the law to suppress activists and scare the Muslim American community.

My brother is an example. His treatment is meant to show Muslims what will happen to them if they speak about the plight of Muslims. We have lost every single motion to preserve my brother’s humanity and remove the special administrative measures.

These measures are designed solely to break the psyche of prisoners and terrorize the Muslim community. These measures exemplify the malice towards Muslims at home and the malice towards the millions of Muslims who are considered as non-humans in Iraq and Afghanistan.”

The extreme sensory deprivation used on Hashmi is a form of psychological torture, far more effective in breaking and disorienting detainees. It is torture as science. In Germany, the Gestapo broke bones while its successor, the communist East German Stasi, broke souls.

We are like the Stasi. We have refined the art of psychological disintegration and drag bewildered suspects into secretive courts when they no longer have the mental and psychological capability to defend themselves.

“Hashmi’s right to a fair trial has been abridged,” said Michael Ratner, the president of the Center for Constitutional Rights.

“Much of the evidence in the case has been classified under CIPA, and thus Hashmi has not been allowed to review it. The prosecution only recently turned over a significant portion of evidence to the defense. Hashmi may not communicate with the news media, either directly or through his attorneys. The conditions of his detention have impacted his mental state and ability to participate in his own defense.

“The prosecution’s case against Hashmi, an outspoken activist within the Muslim community, abridges his First Amendment rights and threatens the First Amendment rights of others,” Ratner added. “While Hashmi’s political and religious beliefs, speech and associations are constitutionally protected, the government has been given wide latitude by the court to use them as evidence of his frame of mind and, by extension, intent.

The material support charges against him depend on criminalization of association. This could have a chilling effect on the First Amendment rights of others, particularly in activist and Muslim communities.”

Constitutionally protected statements, beliefs and associations can now become a crime. Dissidents, even those who break no laws, can be stripped of their rights and imprisoned without due process. It is the legal equivalent of preemptive war.

The state can detain and prosecute people not for what they have done, or even for what they are planning to do, but for holding religious or political beliefs that the state deems seditious.

The first of those targeted have been observant Muslims, but they will not be the last.

“Most of the evidence is classified,” Jeanne Theoharis, an associate professor of political science at Brooklyn College who taught Hashmi, told me, “but Hashmi is not allowed to see it. He is an American citizen. But in America you can now go to trial and all the evidence collected against you cannot be reviewed. You can spend 2½ years in solitary confinement before you are convicted of anything.

There has been attention paid to extraordinary rendition, Guantánamo and Abu Ghraib with this false idea that if people are tried in the United States things will be fair. But what allowed Guantánamo to happen was the devolution of the rule of law here at home, and this is not only happening to Hashmi.”

Hashmi was, like so many of those arrested during the Bush years, briefly a poster child in the “war on terror.” He was apprehended in Britain on June 6, 2006, on a U.S. warrant. His arrest was the top story on the CBS and NBC nightly news programs, which used graphics that read “Terror Trail” and “Web of Terror.”

He was held for 11 months at Belmarsh Prison in London and then became the first U.S. citizen to be extradited by Britain. The year before his arrest, Hashmi, a graduate of Brooklyn College, had completed his master’s degree in international relations at London Metropolitan University. His case has no more substance than the one against the seven men arrested on suspicion of plotting to blow up the Sears Tower, a case where, even though there were five convictions after two mistrials, an FBI deputy director acknowledged that the plan was more “aspirational rather than operational.”

And it mirrors the older case of the Palestinian activist Sami Al-Arian, now under house arrest in Virginia, who has been hounded by the Justice Department although he should legally have been freed. Judge Leonie Brinkema, currently handling the Al-Arian case, in early March, questioned the U.S. attorney’s actions in Al-Arian’s plea agreement saying curtly:

“I think there’s something more important here, and that’s the integrity of the Justice Department.”

The case against Hashmi revolves around the testimony of Junaid Babar, also an American citizen. Babar, in early 2004, stayed with Hashmi at his London apartment for two weeks. In his luggage, the government alleges, Babar had raincoats, ponchos and waterproof socks, which Babar later delivered to a member of al-Qaida in south Waziristan, Pakistan. It was alleged that Hashmi allowed Babar to use his cell phone to call conspirators in other terror plots.

“Hashmi grew up here, was well known here, was very outspoken, very charismatic and very political,” said Theoharis. “This is really a message being sent to American Muslims about the cost of being politically active. It is not about delivering alleged socks and ponchos and rain gear. Do you think al-Qaida can’t get socks and ponchos in Pakistan?

The government is planning to introduce tapes of Hashmi’s political talks while he was at Brooklyn College at the trial. Why are we willing to let this happen? Is it because they are Muslims, and we think it will not affect us? People who care about First Amendment rights should be terrified. This is one of the crucial civil rights issues of our time. We ignore this at our own peril.”

Babar, who was arrested in 2004 and has pleaded guilty to five counts of material support for al-Qaida, also faces up to 70 years in prison. But he has agreed to serve as a government witness and has already testified for the government in terror trials in Britain and Canada. Babar will receive a reduced sentence for his services, and many speculate he will be set free after the Hashmi trial.

Since there is very little evidence to link Hashmi to terrorist activity, the government will rely on Babar to prove intent. This intent will revolve around alleged conversations and statements Hashmi made in Babar’s presence. Hashmi, who was a member of the New York political group Al Muhajiroun as a student at Brooklyn College, has made provocative statements, including calling America “the biggest terrorist in the world,” but Al Muhajiroun is not defined by the government as a terrorist organization. Membership in the group is not illegal. And our complicity in acts of state terror is a historical fact.

SO much for speaking the truth!

There will be more Hashmis, and the Justice Department, planning for future detentions, set up in 2006 a segregated facility, the Communication Management Unit, at the federal prison in Terre Haute, Ind. Nearly all the inmates transferred to Terre Haute are Muslims.

A second facility has been set up at Marion, Ill., where the inmates again are mostly Muslim but also include a sprinkling of animal rights and environmental activists, among them Daniel McGowan, who was charged with two arsons at logging operations in Oregon. His sentence was given “terrorism enhancements” under the Patriot Act.

A GREAT INTERVIEW BY AMY GOODMAN FROM DEMOCRACY NOW! FROM RECENTLY RELEASED ENVIRONMENTAL ACTIVIST, JEFF LUERS, AFTER 9 1/2 YEARS BEHIND BARS. INCISIVE VIEWS ON THIS TOPIC.

Amnesty International has called the Marion prison facility “inhumane.” All calls and mail ~ although communication customarily is off-limits to prison officials ~ are monitored in these two Communication Management Units. Communication among prisoners is required to be only in English.

The highest-level terrorists are housed at the Penitentiary Administrative Maximum Facility, known as Supermax, in Florence, Colo., where prisoners have almost no human interaction, physical exercise or mental stimulation, replicating the conditions for most of those held at Guantánamo. If detainees are transferred from Guantánamo to the prison in in Thomson, Ill., they will find little change. They will endure Guantánamo-like conditions in colder weather.

Our descent is the familiar disease of decaying empires. The tyranny we impose on others we finally impose on ourselves. The influx of non-Muslim American activists into these facilities is another ominous development. It presages the continued dismantling of the rule of law, the widening of a system where prisoners are psychologically broken by sensory deprivation, extreme isolation and secretive kangaroo courts where suspects are sentenced on rumors and innuendo and denied the right to view the evidence against them.

Dissent is no longer the duty of the engaged citizen
but is becoming an act of terrorism.

Now you know one of the main reasons for the creation of FEMA camps around North America.

Chris Hedges, whose column is published on Truthdig every Monday, spent two decades as a foreign reporter covering wars in Latin America, Africa, Europe and the Middle East. He has written nine books, including “Empire of Illusion: The End of Literacy and the Triumph of Spectacle” (2009) and “War Is a Force That Gives Us Meaning” (2003).