How can it be anti-Semitic for anyone else to oppose the dispossession, oppression and ethnic cleansing of the Palestinians? The answer is: It cannot, at all.
Calling Israel an apartheid state and racist and so many other shameless adjectives is not anti-Semitic, it is a statement of facts.
The frenzied debate over the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA)'s definition of anti-Semitism – or more precisely, definition and illustrative examples – has centred on whether the document restricts criticism of the state of Israel and delegitimises solidarity with the Palestinians.
"You can, if you want, say everything the state of Israel has done since its birth has been racist," Freedland claimed. "All it prohibits is branding as a racist endeavour 'a state of Israel' – the principle that Jews, like every other people on Earth, should have a home and refuge of their own".
First, let us recall the precise text in question, part of what is presented in the IHRA document as a list of examples of contemporary anti-Semitism: "Denying the Jewish people their right to self-determination, eg., by claiming that the existence of a State of Israel is a racist endeavour".
To suggest significance in reference to "a", not "the", State of Israel is a very weak position. The IHRA document features nine references to Israel in total, and all of them clearly refer to the actual existing State of Israel, not a hypothetical one (which, of course, would not make any sense).
Similarly, a draft working definition of anti-Semitism circulated (then ditched) by the now defunct European Monitoring Centre on Racism and Xenophobia – on which the IHRA document is heavily based – also makes clear that the example in question refers to the actual State of Israel.
But that's not all. The IHRA document prefaces the list of illustrations by saying that they "could" be examples of anti-Semitism, "taking into account the overall context". These qualifications are stressed by those who seek to downplay the potential for the document to have a chilling effect.
However, given that this list includes clear-cut cases of anti-Semitism such as "calling for, aiding, or justifying the killing or harming of Jews" and Holocaust denial, it is no wonder that the qualifying "could" is often omitted in practice for all the illustrative examples.
And, in practice, the IHRA document is already being used to attack Palestinians and their allies, and to claim that describing Israel in terms of apartheid or settler colonialism is "anti-Semitic".
Let us return to the claim advanced by Zionists such as Jonathan Freedland, that the IHRA example in question is about a "principle" – namely "that Jews, like every other people on Earth, should have a home and refuge of their own".
Here, and not for the first time, Freedland uses terms like "home" and "refuge" when what is actually being discussed is a state. The IHRA document is not about a "principle" – it is about conflating self-determination not just with statehood, but with ethnic statehood.
For Palestinians, the consequences of such a conflation are very much not theoretical; the creation of the State of Israel as a "Jewish state" meant ethnic cleansing and forced exile, and its continued existence as such means ongoing dispossession, discrimination and dehumanisation.
As two London-based Palestinian human rights advocates noted recently: "For Palestinians, the idea that claiming the 'existence of the State of Israel is a racist endeavour' is in itself anti-Semitic is disconnected from the history and nature of Israel's founding and ongoing policies".
Reading a letter published in The Guardian this week by a group of British-Palestinians, asserting their right to have the "reality" of their experience past and present in “the public space”, I think of all the Palestians who ask me: "How can it be anti-Semitic for me to oppose my own dispossession? And by extension, how can it be anti-Semitic for you to have solidarity with me?"
Indeed. Yet this is the absurd equation Israel and its friends have always tried to insist on, and which must continuously be resisted.
With patented angst, Noam Chomsky opined on President Daniel Ortega’s Nicaragua to an agreeing Amy Goodman a couple of weeks ago: “But there’s been a lot of corruption, a lot of repression. It’s autocratic, undoubtedly.”
Earlier in their DemocracyNow! interview, the main talking points were established via a video clip of a dissident former official from Ortega’s Sandinista Party: Ortega’s “entire government has been, in essence, neoliberal. Then it becomes authoritarian, repressive.”
Left out of this view is why the US has targeted Nicaragua for regime change. One would think that a neoliberal regime, especially if it were authoritarian and repressive, would be just the ticket to curry favor with Washington.
In Chomsky’s own words, Nicaragua poses a threat of a good example to the US empire
Since Ortega’s return election victory in 2006, Nicaragua had achieved the following, according to NSCAG, despite being the second poorest country in the hemisphere:
+ Second highest economic growth rates and most stable economy in Central America.
+ Only country in the region producing 90% of the food it consumes.
+ Poverty and extreme poverty halved; country with the greatest reduction of extreme poverty.
+ Reaching the UN Millennium Development Goal of cutting malnutrition by half.
+ Free basic healthcare and education.
+ Illiteracy virtually eliminated, down from 36% in 2006.
+ Average economic growth of 5.2% for the past 5 years (IMF and the World Bank).
+ Safest country in Central America (UN Development Program) with one of the lowest crime rates in Latin America.
+ Highest level of gender equality in the Americas (World Economic Forum Global Gender Gap Report 2017).
+ Did not contribute to the migrant exodus to the US, unlike neighboring Honduras, El Salvador, and Guatemala.
+ Unlike its neighbors, kept out the drug cartels and pioneered community policing.
Nicaragua targeted by the US for regime change
Before April 18, Nicaragua was among the most peaceful and stable countries in the region. The otherwise inexplicable violence that has suddenly engulfed Nicaragua should be understood in the context of it being targeted by the US for regime change.
Nicaragua has provoked the ire of the US for the good things its done, not the bad.
Besides being a “threat” of a good example, Nicaragua is in the anti-imperialist ALBA alliance with Venezuela, Bolivia, Cuba, and others. The attack on Nicaragua is part of a larger strategy by the US to tear apart regional alliances of resistance to the Empire, though that is not the whole story.
Nicaragua regularly votes against the US in international forums such as challenging retrograde US policies on climate change. An inter-ocean canal through Nicaragua is being considered, which would contend with the Panama Canal. Russia and China invest in Nicaragua, competing with US capital.
The NICA Act, passed by the US House of Representatives and now before the Senate, would initiate economic warfare designed to attack living conditions in Nicaragua through economic sanctions, as well as intensify US intelligence intervention. The ultimate purpose is to depose the democratically-elected Ortega government.
Meanwhile, USAID announced an additional $1.5 million “to support freedom and democracy in Nicaragua” through non-governmental organizations (NGOs) to overthrow the democratically elected government and “make this truly a hemisphere of freedom.” That is, freedom for the US empire.
Holding Nicaragua to a higher standard than our own government
Although Chomsky echoes the talking points of the USAID administrator Mark Green about “Ortega’s brutal regime,” he can’t quite bring himself to accept responsibility for regime change. Chomsky despairs, “it’s hard to see a simple way out at this point. It’s a very unfortunate situation.”
Chomsky is concerned about corruption, repression, and autocracy in Nicaragua, urging the democratically elected president to step down and run for re-election. Need it be mentioned that Chomsky chastised leftists who did not “absolutely” support Hillary Clinton? It is from this moral ground that the professor looks down on Nicaragua.
These charges of corruption and such are addressedby long-time solidarity activist Chuck Kaufman:
+ The World Bank, IMF, and EU countries have certified Nicaragua for its effective use of international loans and grants; funds were spent for the purposes they were given, not siphoned off into corruption.
+ Kaufman asks, “why a police force that in 39 years had not repressed the Nicaraguan people would suddenly go berserk,” while videos clearly show the violence of the more militant opposition.
+ Ortega won in 2006 with a 38% plurality, in 2011 with 63%, and 72.5% in 2016. The Organization of American States officially accompanied and certified the vote. Kaufman notes, “Dictators don’t win fair elections by growing margins.”
Alternatives to Ortega would be worse
Those who call for Ortega’s removal need to accept responsibility for what comes after. Here the lesson of Libya is instructive, where the replacement of, in Chomsky’s words, the “brutal tyrant” and “cruel dictator” Qaddafi has resulted in a far worsesituation for the Libyan people.
Any replacement of Ortega would be more, not less, neoliberal, oppressive, and authoritarian. When the Nicaraguan people, held hostage to the US-backed Contra war, first voted Ortega out of office in 1990, the incoming US-backed Violeta Chamorro government brought neoliberal structural adjustment and a moribund Economy.
The dissident Sandinistas who splintered off from the official party after the party’s election defeat and formed the MRS (Sandinista Renovation Movement) are not a progressive alternative. They are now comfortably ensconced in US-fundedNGOs, regularly making junkets to Washington to pay homage to the likes of Representative Iliana Ros-Lehtinenand Senator Marco Rubio to lobby in favor of the NICA Act. Nor do they represent a popular force, garnering less than 2% in national elections.
When the MRS left the Sandinista party, they took with them almost all those who were better educated, came from more privileged backgrounds, and who spoke English. These formerly left dissidents, now turned to the rightin their hatred of Ortega, have many ties with North American activists, which explains some of the confusion today over Nicaragua.
The world, not just Ortega, has changed since the 1980s when the Soviet Union and its allies served as a counter-vailing force to US bullying. What was possible then is not the same in today’s more constrained international arena.
Class war turned upside down
Kevin Zeeseof Popular Resistance aptly characterized the offensive against the democratically elected government of Nicaragua as “a class war turned upside down.” Nicaragua was the most progressive country in Central America with no close rival. Yet some North American left intellectuals are preoccupied with Nicaragua’s shortcomings while not clearly recognizing that it is being attacked by a domestic rightwing in league with the US government.
Noam Chomsky is a leading world left intellectual and should be acclaimed for his contributions. His incisive warning about the US nuclear policyis just one essential example. Nevertheless, he is also indicative of a tendency in the North American left to accept a bit too readily the talking points of imperialist propaganda, regarding the present-day Sandinistas.
There is a disconnect between Chomsky’s urging Nicaraguans to replace Ortega with new elections and his longtime and forceful advocacy against US imperialist depredations of countries like Nicaragua. Such elections in Nicaragua would not only be unconstitutional but would further destabilize a profoundly destabilized situation. Given the unpopularity and disunity of the opposition and the unity and organizational strength of the Sandinistas, Ortega would likely win.
Most important, the key role of Northern American solidarity activists is to end US interference in Nicaragua so that the Nicaraguans can solve their own problems.
The rightwing violence since April in Nicaragua should be understood as a coup attempt. A significant portion of the Nicaraguan people have rallied around their elected government as seen in the massive demonstrations commemorating the Sandinista revolution on July 19.
For now, the rightwing tranques (blockades) have been dismantled and citizens can again freely circulate without being shaken down and threatened. In the aftermath, though, Nicaragua has suffered unacceptable human deaths, massive public property damage, and a wounded economy with the debilitating NICA Act threatening to pass the US Senate.
Max Blumenthal interviews Daniel Ortega
PALESTINA
Os Estados Unidos acabaram de cortar a ajuda econômica de $200 milhões para a Palestina após ter cortado sua contribuição à agência da ONU que cuida de cerca de 4 milhões de refugiados palestinos (UNRWA) dos refugiados palestinos apenas The United States, a major ally of Israel, has cut more than US$200m in economic aid to Palestinians, in a move that comes months after also drastically cutting its contribution to the UN agency for Palestinian refugees (UNRWA).
A Organização pela Libertação da Palesstina (OLP) denunciou o "uso de chantagem como arma política. O povo palestino e seus líderes não se deixarão intimidar e não sucumbirão à coerção", disse Hanan Ashrawi. "Os direitos do povo palestino não estão à venda. Não há glória em bullying e punição de um povo sob ocupação. O governo estadunidense já demonstrou maudade em sua cumplicidade com a ocupação israelense e o roubo de terra e recursos; agora está exercendo maudade econômica punindo as vítimas palestinas da ocupação."
Os Estados Unidos dão a Israel anualmente $3.1 bilhões em "ajuda militar". A partir do ano que vem, graças a Barack Obama, a quantia vai aumentar para $3.8 bilhões anuais durante 10 anos. Obama assinou o acordo antes de deixar a presidência. Não era melhor do que Trump. Era apenas mais dissimulado. Deixou a seu sucessor a cama arrumada; Trump só está deitando e rolando nela
"The Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) quickly denonced the US move, Calling it "the use of cheap blamail as a plitical tool. The Palestinian people and leadership will not be intimidated and will not succumb to coercion. "The rights of the Palestinian people are not for sale," PLO Executive Committee member Hanan Ashrawi said in a statement. "There is no glory in constantly bullying and punishing a people under occupation. The US administration has already demonstrated meanness of spirit in its collusion with the Israeli occupation and its theft of land and resources; now it is exercising economic meanness by punishing the Palestinian victims of this occupation."
The decision to cut Palestinian funding comes amid a severe humanitarian crisis in the Gaza Strip, where more than 160 Palestinians protesting for their right to return to the areas from which they were forcibly expelled from in 1948 have been killed by Israeli gunfire since March 30 during weeks-long demonstrations near the fence with Israel.
Officials in the Gaza Strip, which has been administered by Hamas since 2007, have previously blasted the US for its support to Israel, saying that Washington has long lost its regional credibility.
The US had planned to give the Palestinians $251m for good governance, health, education and funding for civil society in the current 2018 budget year that ends on September 30.
Washington gives Israel annual military aid of $3.1bn. Next year, that figure will increase to $3.8bn under a 10-year deal agreed by Barack Obama shortly before he stepped down as US president. One of the excuses (if the White House needed any) is the Great March of Return in the Gaza Strip.
Since the Great March of Return protests began, Israel’s soldiers have killed more than 160 Palestinians, including 23 under 18, 5 journalists and 2 paramedics. More than 17.000 were injured. Many of them severely: 68 amputations, more than a hundred castrations by live fire, hundreds of knee caps to cause live long handicap.
Why would Israel’s soldiers be instructed to shoot to kill teens running away from the fence, Palestinian journalists, farmers, and unarmed protesters? Surely one of the most militarized states in the World is not scared of a march? In fact they are. Colonial governments are at their weakest when they use naked violence against indigenous people.
When the colonizers are in control, they can maintain the pretense of a “democratic state” (though they are anything but). Right now, Israel fears what all colonial projects fear– any questions regarding its legitimacy, and the mass protests in Gaza forefront that Israel is not a legitimate state, but rather a colonial one built on the genocide (massacres, forced expulsion, theft of land) of indigenous Palestinian inhabitants. Colonial sights were set on Palestine in the late 1800’s in Western Europe through the lens of zionism, a white supremacist ideology (read the words of its architects–Herzl, and later Jabotinsky). In 1948, 78% of Palestinian land was violently colonized to create what is called the state of Israel. In 1967, the remaining 22 % (the West Bank and Gaza) was invaded and occupied.
The people of Gaza are the refugees from historic Palestinian land that was colonized in 1948 and again in 1967. Some residents of Gaza have been made refugees by Israel several times over. Land theft has continued in the West Bank, Naqab desert, other parts of what is now called Israel, and occupied Al Quds (Jerusalem) to this day. Plans are currently underway to demolish the entire Palestinian Bedouin village of Umm al-Hiran between April 15th and the 29th, and plans for a new town (built exclusively for Jewish settlers) are already in place. Israel plans to build 1,600 new settlement units northeast of Al Quds. Just this week, armed settlers forced Palestinian farmers to leave their land in Al Khader (south of Beit Lahem (Bethlehem)). The list goes on and on. The Nakba is now.
What’s left of Palestine for Palestinians is only about 4% of historic Palestine that’s supposedly under Palestinian control. And even in this 4%, Palestinians have no sovereignty. They are subject to military raids, arrest of political leaders, no control of air space, no control of mineral or water rights and checkpoints that strictly control movement of Palestinians into and out of this 4% area which is already broken into small ghettos. And the internally displaced Palestinians who live in Apartheid conditions in what is now called Israel are treated similarly.
The Gaza Strip has been under an Israeli land, naval, and air starvation blockade for 11 years. This prevents food, medicine, and reconstruction materials from entering Gaza. Gaza has also been militarily invaded by Israel three times in the past 12 years alone– in 2006, 2012, and 2014. During the 2014 invasion, over 2,200 Palestinians in Gaza were killed, more than 11,000 were injured and more than 500,000 people were displaced. 11,000 homes were destroyed in Gaza through bombing by Israel’s forces. Today, 96 per cent of Gaza’s water supply is unsafe to drink. Residents get power for about three hours a day. 80 percent of the population lives in poverty. Unemployment rates are over 40% (the highest in the world), and the rate of food insecurity is about 50 percent. The health system is close to collapse. 40% of children have anemia and malnutrition.
Why has the siege of Gaza been so brutal and at the same time, mostly invisible to the West (except when the most egregious aspects of it force itself into Western consciousness)? Because black and brown lives don’t matter much to the governments of the US and Europe, as long as those black and brown people die quietly. Palestinians become visible when we die or are shot in large numbers because ignoring a massacre offends Western sensibilities of itself as “just” and even then, reports in Western media of our deaths and injuries, in the passive voice, abound. Palestinian protesters “die in clashes” rather than a rogue illegitimate state military murdering them in direct contravention of international law. Alternatively, we are seen in the press, when we defend ourselves, as “militants” (something Western governments, and especially colonial settler state governments abhor). Robert F. Williams, a leader in the Black liberation movement, said that the “militant is a ‘militant’ because he defends himself, his family, his home, and his dignity. He does not introduce violence into a racist social system–the violence is already there, and has always been there. It is precisely this unchallenged violence that allows a racist social system to perpetuate itself."
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