domingo, 29 de julho de 2018

Reality check : Pakistan's Iram Khan

Breaking News PALESTINE: 17 year old Palestinian activist Ahed Tamimi has been freed from jail
Palestinian teen activist Ahed Tamimi has been released from Israeli prison after completing her eight-month sentence in a case that sparked international condemnation.
Tamimi broke down in tears as an emotional crowd welcomed her in the village of Nabi Saleh on Sunday. She was released with her mother, Nariman, who also served an eight month sentence. 
Addressing the crowd, Tamimi thanked activists and the media for their support during her prison stay.
"This is a very happy moment for me," Tamimi's father, Bassem, told Al Jazeera prior to his daughter's release. "We have missed them a lot. But I am also worried because the [Israeli] occupation is continuing and still in our lives."
Bassem's happiness, however, was expressed through a heavy heart, as his 21-year-old son, Waed, remains in Israeli detention since being arrested in an overnight raid on his home in May.
Meanwhile, the occupation continues its damages. Israeli border police forces arrested a Palestinian man and two Italian artists next to the Israeli separation wall in the southern occupied West Bank city of Bethlehem on Saturday evening.  The artists, one of whom was identified as Italian citizen Jorit Agoch, have been painting a mural of Ahed Tamini.  The Palestinian man arrested along with them is Mustafa al-Araj, 31, a resident of the nearby Aida refugee camp and the co-owner of a local volunteer organization. Al-Araj, recently engaged, is set to be married in 10 days.  Video of the incident, which took place yesterday around 7 pm [Noon EST] shows three armed Israeli soldiers pulling the men out of their car and searching them before putting them in handcuffs.
The soldiers then took the men into a permanent Israeli military base near the wall.
Sources told Mondoweiss that the three were transferred to an Israeli detention center for interrogation in Atarot, Jérusalem.

Pakistan's military deployed more than 371,000 soldiers for the elections, more than it has ever done before, and the results showed.
Each of the country's 85,000 polling stations was secured by army personnel, with civilian law enforcement and, in some cases, electoral officials, relegated to a supporting role
Entry to the polling stations was strictly controlled, and in several instances, media workers reported being disallowed from entering - despite having proper accreditation - by military personnel.
The army says it played "no direct role" in the polling process, and it only ensured security and the sanctity of the ballot process. Opponents allege it intervened directly in vote counts.
The EU's observer mission did not pass judgment on the issue, but did note "during counting, security personnel recorded and transmitted the results, giving the impression of a parallel tabulation".
Imran Khan's Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) emerged as the single largest party in parliament for the first time ever.
The PTI has broken the duopoly held by the Pakistan People's Party (PPP) and Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz (PML-N) for decades.
Pakistan has also been directly ruled by the military for roughly half of its 70-year history.
Iram Khan's PTI's victory was built on the back of two major wins. First, it was able to wrest much of southern and northern Punjab from the outgoing PML-N, breaking the party's vote bank in its political heartland.
Second, it was able to hold on to most of its seats in the northwestern province of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa (KP), which has historically always voted out its incumbent party. The PTI won the most seats in KP in 2013, but holding on to them represented an historic first.
The first and foremost challenge that the PTI faces as a ruling party is to transform Iram Khan from the perennial opposition leader that he has been in his 22-year political career into a statesman and to chalk out a strategy to placate all the major political parties which have declared the election rigged.
Speaking in a televised address on July 26, Khan offered an olive branch to the opposition and said he was happy for them to have any constituency investigated where they thought there were irregularities. He pledged there would be no political victimisation and all state institutions would be strengthened so they remain independent.
He said he would set a personal example of austerity and offer himself for accountability so that a corruption-free society could be realised and vowed policies to pull the poor out of the poverty trap. He also said he would strive to have harmonious relations with all neighbours.
Whether the opposition would accept the olive branch, remains to be seen, but at least initially, they all seem intent on demanding a recount, although the PTI's fairly clear mandate at the centre means the coalition-building process should be relatively straightforward, with the party also expected to lead KP's provincial government. In Sindh, the PPP is expected to form the provincial government, while in Balochistan, the provincial government will likely be led by the Balochistan Awami Party (BAP).
The key to stability, however, will lie in who leads the provincial government in Punjab, the country's most populous province.
The PML-N and PTI are neck and neck in the province, with 127 and 123 seats, respectively, and both are vying to form a government.
If the PML-N is successful in holding on to a province it has governed for more than a decade, it may set up a political confrontation with the PTI at the centre.
Whatever happens, I think Iram Khan's was Pakistanis best choice. He has been open to Iran, to India and to talk about the fate of Kashmir. Therefore, let's hope he will be able to rule and get things right. 
In Pakistan, historically, the political evolution of the society has been nipped in the bud by an all-powerful military establishment because of which state policies have always fallen short of becoming coherent. The more the military establishment made incursions into democratic spaces, the more shaky institutions of state remained and the more fragmented the polity became. The “sovereign” role played by the GHQ in Pakistan is an example of such a scenario. The more military officials got involved in issues of politics, governance, and national interest, the more blurred the line between national interest and hawkish national security became. It is a terrible mistake and one that has severe ramifications to allow the military of a nation-state to bludgeon its democratic processes.
Instead of deterring the growth of democracy, the goal should be to empower the populace of Pakistan sufficiently to induce satisfaction with the Pakistani constituency’s role within current geopolitical realities such that a dis-empowered populace does not succumb to ministrations of destructive political ideologies.
Now I turn to India. The ultra-nationalist right wing Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), currently in power in India, and its votaries have completely ignored how diverse communities can grow historically within the framework created by the combined forces of modern national and transnational developments.
The discourse endorsed/ disseminated by the JP serves to emphasize, reinforce, and create cultural myopia and monocultural identities. The short-sightedness of the Bhajpa will prove detrimental to the constitutional integrity of India.
The increasing communalization of Indian politics is a juggernaut that seriously questions the myth of secularism in India, and the increasing religiosity in Pakistan is just as damaging. As a poignant reminder to the student of Indian history and subcontinental politics, I would like to point out that Jawaharlal Nehru observed in the Constituent Assembly of India that the greatest danger to India will not be from Muslim communalism but from Hindutva which could potentially become expansionist and communally belligerent.
Such an irregular politics polarizes these ethnic groups into Hindus and Muslims who are required to disavow their cultural, linguistic, and social unities.
Although former Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif and Prime Minister Narendra Modi extended the olive branch to each other the traditional Indo-Pak enmity has been put on the backburner during Pakistani political parties on the campaign trail, the ideological and power rivalry between India and Pakistan transcend the Kashmir dispute.
During the last decade and a half, each military crisis between India and Pakistan has been followed by attempts at diplomatic rapprochement, which have turned out to be fiascos. The two countries go through sporadic peacemaking efforts, characterized by negotiations. For instance, in January 2004, the then Indian Prime Minister, Atal Behari Vajpayee, and the Pakistani President, General Pervez Musharraf, agreed “‘to the resumption of a composite dialogue”’ on all issues “‘including Jammu and Kashmir, to the satisfaction of both sides.” Musharraf assured the Indian government that he would not permit “‘any territory under Pakistan’s control to be used to support terrorism in any manner.” But this joint statement could not mitigate the existing skepticism.
Many observers interpreted the joint statement as a tacit admission of Pakistan’s past support for the LOC in Kashmir and an indication of its resolve to finally end military confrontation over the dispute. However, there was also considerable skepticism in India on the nature of change in Pakistan’s policy: was it tactical or strategic? Similarly, the Pakistani government feared that India was taking unfair advantage of Islamabad’s restraint to consolidate its political and military grip over Kashmir. At the time, Vajpayee and Musharraf took a judicious approach to nuclear warfare, and a dangerous situation mellowed.
Considering Pakistani foreign policy is dictated by Rawalpindi (the old city), not Islamabad (the modern capital), it remains to be seen what sort of impact elections in Pakistan will have in Indo-Pak relations. A civilian government in Pakistan, particularly a coalition government, cannot take a call on foreign policy without the intervention of the security establishment and military.
Military interventions and self-promotion in the name of democracy, which is a given in autocratic and oligarchic forms of government, must be strongly discouraged by constitutional means and methods in both India and Pakistan.
Vis-à-vis Kashmir, regardless of the possibility of nuclear restraint in South Asia, a resolution of the Kashmir dispute and insistence on accountability for human rights violations would put a monkey wrench in the drive in both countries to beef up their nuclear arsenals.
Counting the Cost: Pakistan, the IMF and China

PALESTINA
Ahed Tamimi's press conference
Israel has completely shut down a Palestinian university in Jerusalem amid a series of assaults on academic Freedom.
On 14 July, Israeli police raided and shut down the Hind al-Husseini college in the Sheikh Jarrah neighborhood of occupied East Jerusalem, prohibited an academic conference from taking place and detained 15 participants of the conference.
Police acted on the order of Gilad Erdan, Israel’s minister of public security and strategic affairs, who claimed that the conference promoted “incitement” against the Israeli state.
As well as being in charge of policing, Erdan leads Israel’s global effort to thwart activism in support of Palestinian rights.
The president of Arab American University, a private institution based in the West Bank city of Jenin, condemned Israel’s closure of the college. Ali Abu Zuhri argued it was an attempt to impose new facts on the ground aimed at changing the cultural and historical identity of Jerusalem, according to the Palestinian news agency Wafa.
“Cultural genocide”
Israel’s closure of Hind al-Husseini college “is one more manifestation of Israel’s relentless assault on Palestinian education and culture, a systematic assault that is tantamount to cultural genocide,” said Nada Elia, an organizing committee member of the US Campaign for the Academic and Cultural Boycot of Israel (USACBI). “Israel imposes a Zionist curriculum on Palestinian schools in annexed East Jerusalem and has devised a Kafkaesque system of work permits in the West Bank that prevents faculty who hold foreign passports from teaching there legally, making them prone to arrest and deportation. At the same time", she said, "Israel claims that the boycott, divestment and sanctions (BDS) movement, “rather than its own assault on Palestinian education, is preventing academic exchange and the free flow of ideas.”
She says that because Birzeit University – headquartered beside the West Bank city of Ramallah – released a statement earlier this month admonishing Israel’s “breach of academic freedom” after 15 of its academics who hold foreign passports had their visa renewals either significantly delayed or denied outright.
Already, “some professors have been forced to leave the country,” the university stated, while others remain under threat of removal from faculty positions.
“These international professors play a critical role not only in the ongoing provision of quality education at Birzeit University but also in the long-term development of Palestinian higher education,” it said, warning that if this policy continues, Palestinian universities “will be further isolated from the global academic environment.”
More than half of Palestinian academics who hold foreign passports and work at Palestinian universities have had delays or denials of Israeli visas over the past two years, preventing them from beginning or staying in their faculty positions, according to the Palestinian Authority’s minister of education.
Israel has placed foreign academics who teach at Birzeit “effectively under house arrest” in order to avoid any of the hundreds of checkpoints around the West Bank, explained Elia, writing for Middle East Eye.
Birzeit underscored the right to education as a fundamental human right enshrined in international law and admonished Israel for ignoring its responsibility as an occupying power in preventing Palestinians’ access to education.
While Israel holds Palestinian education hostage, it is involved in many exchange programs with educational and research institutions around the world, Elia told The Electronic Intifada.
The British Committee for the Universities of Palestine (BRICUP) has launched the “Empty Chair” campaign to bring attention to Israel’s violation of Palestinian academic Freedom.
USACBI is responding to the ongoing attacks on Palestinian education by asking faculty to endorse the academic and cultural boycott of Israel and for students to pledge not to participate in study abroad programs in Israel.

#StopTheWar is a hashtag coming from many activists in #Gaza who urge the international community to hinder Israel’s attempts to launch another large-scale aggression against the occupied, blockaded, unlivable, and exhausted Gaza Strip. #GazaUnderAttack

Gaza Children’s March

FREE GAZA NOW!
The people of Gaza have been subjected to decades of expulsion, occupation, siege and massacre. They have now seized control of their Fate. They are risking life and limb as they protest nonviolently to reclaim their basic rights. It takes just one minute to send a video showing your support for Gaza in its moment of truth. Do it now! Send your videos to METOOGAZA.COM
Yanis Varoufakis


OCHA  




domingo, 22 de julho de 2018

Rogues USA & Israel vs Palestine: Hardline & Shelling & Hasbara


Precision Nazism I    


A fragile calm was appearing to be holding in the besieged Gaza Strip as a result of a deal between Hamas and Israel. Nevertheless, the Israeli artillery shelled a resistance site in the Malaka area in eastern Gaza City in the central besieged Gaza strip on Saturday Morning. The shelling came hours after a ceasefire after was reached following a violent night fo
The deal, brokered by Egyptian and United Nations officials a couple of hours before the bombing, was designed to restore calm and end the Israeli onslaught on Hamas positions and other violence that resulted in the deaths of four Palestinians and one Israeli soldier on Friday. 
Since March 30, the IDF has killed at least 140 Palestinians, including women, children paramedics and journalists.
Israeli Defense Minister, the fascist Moldavian immigrant Avigdor Lieberman who lives in an illegal colony in the West Bank, confirmed he makes no distinction between civilians and combatants killed during Israeli crackdown on popular protests along Gaza"s eastern boundary: "There are 159 dead terrorists, there are some 5.000 wounded," he said, with his piggish scornful smile.
Israel had agreed to calm down for a while only because one of its criminal snipers died from his wounds. 
But, as always, its officials said one thing around the negotiation table and did other as soon  the United Nations' représentatives their back in Cairo.
Meanwhile, in the West Banck, Young Palestinians esalated the apartheid wall and raised their Nation's flag. 
Nothing can stop Palestinian youngsters to fight for Freedom and for having a future, just like our children have.  


       Precision Nazism II

Israel's parliament on Thursday adopted a law defining the country as the nation-state of the Jewish people, provoking fears it will lead to blatant discrimination against its Palestinian citizens.
The legislation, adopted by 62 votes to 55, makes Hebrew the country's national language and defines the establishment of Jewish communities as being in the national interest.
The bill also strips Arabic of its designation as an official language, downgrading it to a "special status" that enables its continued use within Israeli institutions. 
It stipulates that "Israel is the historic homeland of the Jewish people and they have an exclusive right to national self-determination in it". It also states that an undivided Jerusalem is the capital of Israel.
"This is a defining moment in the annals of Zionism and the history of the state of Israel," Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu told the Knesset after the vote.
Palestinian members of the Knesset have condemned the bill.
"It has passed a law of Jewish supremacy and told us that we will always be second-class citizens,” Ayman Odeh, the head of the Arab Joint List - an alliance of four predominantly Arab parties - said in a statement following the law’s passage.
Ahmed Tibi, one of the lawmakers, said: "I announce with shock and sorrow the death of democracy."
The Jewish nation-state law features key elements of apartheid, which is not only immoral but also absolutely prohibited under international law. 
By defining sovereignty and democratic self-rule as belonging solely to the Jewish people - wherever they live around the world - Israel has made discrimination a constitutional value and has professed its commitment to favouring Jewish supremacy as the bedrock of institutions. 
There are currently over 65 Israeli laws that already discriminate against Palestinian citizens in Israel and Palestinian residents of the Occupied Palestinian Territory (OPT) on the basis of their national belonging. The new law states: 
Self-determination is "exclusive" to the Jewish people/Israel is the Jewish nation's historical homeland; 
Views the establishment of Jewish-only settlements as being in the national interest;
Arabic will be demoted from official language to a "special" status;
Calls the "undivided" city of Jerusalem Israel's capital;
National symbols include only the Israeli flag, menorah, Jewish holidays, Hatikva anthem, the Hebrew calendar, and Israel's Independence Day. 
Palestinian Liberation Organization (PLO) Executive Committee Member Dr; Hanan Ashrawi strongly denounced the "Jewish Nation-State" Bill saying that with this law, Israel is legalizing apartheid.
"This law gives license to apartheid, discrimination, ethnic cleansing and sectarism at the expense of the Paltsinian people. Such racist and prejudicial legislation is illegal by all standards of international law, democracy, humanity, justice, tolerance and inclusion". Israeli government coalition has exposed its "true character by sustaining an official Policy of Jewish ethnic supremacy, which regulates the indigenous Palestinian citizens to second-class status. It also affirms Israel's willful intent to erase the Palestinian narrative, presence and continuity on the land, while actively eradicatin the history, culture and Identity of the Palestinian people chich predate the creation of the state of Israel".
She called upon all members of the international Community and people of cosncience to question "such unlawful and immoral policies, such legislation and blatant discriminatory policies", and to bring Israel to compliace with the norms and standards of civilized behavior. 
"Despite all Israeli efforts ar eradicatin our rights and our Identity, the Palestinian people's resilience and determination to attain their freedom and historical validation will prevail".

Meanwhile, Netanyahu and Trump are making the 'ultimate deal' and Hanan Ashrawi warns: It will never be accepted by the Palestinians.
When Truth is assassinated

"The New Yorker" has an important forming-opinion role among intelectuals and liberals in general. Wikipedia describes it as an " American magazine of reportage, commentary, criticism, essays, fiction, satire, cartoons, poetry. It started as a weekly in 1925 and is now published 47 times annually. Although its reviews and events, listings often focus on the cultural life of New York city, The New Yorker hasa wide audience outside the city and is read internationally. It is It is published by Condé Nast (Vogue, Vanity Fair, GQ, etc.). It is well know for its illustrated and often typical covers,... its rigorous fact checking and copyediting, its journalism on politics and social issues..  ". The important part of the pitch is the credibility of the review. 
On July 8th, The New Yorker published a short piece by Adam Entous, under the graphic above, titled “The Maps of Israeli Settlements That Shocked Barack Obama.” In the article, Entous purports to tell us the heretofore unknown inside story of how the Obama administration came to the surprising realization that Israeli settlements were taking over the West Bank. In the kind of irony The New Yorker might best appreciate, the magazine’s latest promotional tag line is: “Fighting Fake Stories With Real Ones,” and this Adam Entous article is the epitome of fake.
As Entous narrates it, in 2015, the third year of Obama’s second term, as his “Presidency was winding down,” a gentleman called Frank Lowenstein—who was, and still is,the Special Envoy for Israeli-Palestinian Negotiations and Senior Advisor to the Secretary of State—stumbled upon a map of West Bank settlements “that he had never seen before.” Though Lowenstein—as, you know, Special Envoy for Palestinian Negotiations and all—had seen “hundreds of maps of the West Bank” and had one “adorning” his office, this “new map in the briefing book” was a revelation to him. It showed clearly that “not only were Palestinian population centers cut off from one another but there was virtually no way to squeeze a viable Palestinian state into the areas that remained.”
Shocked, shocked, Lowenstein scurried off to show the map to Secretary of State John Kerry, telling him: “Look what’s really going on here.” After studiously having the map’s information “verified by U.S. intelligence agencies,” Kerry then unfurled the map on a coffee table in the White House for President Obama to see. As Ben Rhodes, “one of Obama’s longest-serving advisers,” recounted, Obama, too, was “shocked” at Israel’s “systematic” use of settlements to “cut off Palestinian population centers from one another.”
All of this shock was then translated into action. Of the rhetorical sort. Kerry “incorporated [the key findings] into …speeches and other documents, and Lowenstein “walk[ed] [the Israelis] through” those findings—though he “didn’t show the maps to the Israelis.”(Because what? He didn’t want to “shock” them? Didn’t want to make the case to them toostrongly, lest it upset them? Didn’t want to have to apologize? [see below] Pause for a moment, or more, to consider that demurral, which remains unexplained by Entous or Lowenstein. It’s the kind of withholding of information one would do in the face of an innocent child one wants to protect, or in the face of a more powerful superior one does not want to annoy. What is the place for such reticence in the relation between the United States and Israel?)
Capping off this new wave of decisive rhetorical action, driven by the “alarm” over what he saw in the “maps” (now plural), President Obama “decided to abstain on a U.N. Security Council resolution condemning the settlements.” In the true punchline of the article, Entous presents this abstention as “Obama’s final act of defiance against Benjamin Netanyahu…before Donald Trump took office and put in placepolicies that were far more acceptingof the settlers.”
All in all, this article presents a perfect exemplar of ideological production: it produces without recognizing the bizarre, nearly delusional aspects of liberal ideology in its current state; for the author and his likely readers, it shows the faults of that mindset but does not seethem, and in fact turns them into a story re-confirming the virtue of those—whether author, reader, or subject of the story—who hold that mindset. It’s not only fake; it’s a fake-out.
Let’s walk through all the possible meanings of this article.
Either:
1) The story is true. Entous, using his reliable, inside-the-room sources and direct quotes, has accurately reported something that actually happened. Harvard-educated Barack Obama and his team of oh-so-smart and-well-educated foreign-policy wonks—Yale-educated Secretary of State Kerry and Special Envoy for Palestinian Negotiations Frank Lowenstein, and Rice- and NYU-educated Ben Rhodes (whose brother, David, is President of CBS News)—were completely unaware of what the Israelis had been doing for the 48 years before they just happened to see that map. Neither Barack Obama nor John Kerry during their careers as senators and presidential candidates, nor Obama, during over six years as President, had ever imagined any such thing. 
They must have missed this UN map, on the left, showing in red all the West Bank areas inaccessible to Palestinians, which has been around since 2009. 
And they must have missed this other one, on the right, also widely available since 2009, showing Israel's relentless theft and pulverization of Palestinian land.  Which is the map that MSNBC apologized for showing to its viewers right after the Israeli lobby reacted.
o, in this case, if this story is true, Obama and his team are as politically stupid as Trump and his, regarding Palestine at least. If this story is true, it means that years of studying in the highest academies of the empire and working in the highest levels of political power may only yield abysmal ignorance regarding one of the most important issues in the world.
Which is, in fact, quite possible.
In a meeting at the Left Forum last year, Andy Trimlett, who produced and directed the fine new documentary, 1948: Creation and Catastrophe (which I support), told of how he was able to get a Master’s degree in Middle East Studies from the University of Washington while learning virtually nothing about what the creation of Israel entailed. He’s not the only person I’ve heard that from.
So, in his acerbic tweet, the excellent British journalist Jonathan Cook is right in his skepticism regarding this New Yorker story, but he may also be underestimating the political vacuity of the “educated” American, especially regarding Palestine and Israel: The New Yorker insults its readers’ intelligence with this article claiming that Obama officials only worked out – accidentally – in 2015 that Israeli settlements had taken over 60% of the West Bank. Who could have guessed what Israel was up to?! 
Or:
2) The story is not true. Obama and Co. knew very well, all along, what Israel was doing, and they are now putting out this story—a flat-out lie–because… Well, maybe because after the Gaza massacre, with the tide turning among the Democratic constituency, to exacerbate the image of Trump as the absolute villain, etc., the Obama team, as an exemplar of establishment Democratic liberalism, wants to pose as naive innocents rather than the conscious collaborators with ethnic cleansing they were and still are. They really want The New Yorker’s readership to have that image of Obama as the one who continually “defied” Netanyahu, versus Trump who is now capitulating to him.
That, too, is a flat-out lie, as anyone who isn’t mis-educated into political stupidity by the media, the politicians, and the highest academies of the empire knows. The whole “Obama’s final act of defiance” punchline, which is in Entous’s voice, makes the story fake. There was no series of “acts of defiance” by Obama, of which the lame-duck abstention on the Security Council resolution was the “final” one.
It’s fair to say, and to his credit, that Obama acted against Netanyahu’s wishes in accepting the Iran deal, which Trump has abrogated. And Obama made good noises, from early in his administration, about the dangers of Israeli settlement construction—which, of course, indicates that he knew about all those “systematic” problems before he discovered The Map. But he, like his predecessors, did nothing about it. He, like they, enabled and supported the systematic, two-state-destroying settlement of the West Bank, and continually supported Israel in whatever violence it wanted to do to the Palestinians—including bombing the crap out of them in Gaza, twice. No slouch in that regard, Obama was first American President to give bunker-buster bombs to Israel—secretly, precisely because he had publicly said Israel had to curtail settlement construction in exchange for such gifts and didn’t want it to be known that he was capitulating. He was also the first American President to demand that “Palestinians must recognize that Israel will be a Jewish state”—a new, gratuitous, and excessive demand, insisted upon by Netanyahu. The lame-duck abstention on the Security Council resolution cost Israel nothing. Overall, Obama’s Palestine-Israel policy, consistent with American policy over decades, was one of continual capitulation to the will of Israel–including specifically on settlements. That is not some new policy “put in place” by Donald Trump.
And, if the story is not true, then, either:
2A) Adam Entous and The New Yorker—that oh-so-intelligent, sophisticated, and “reliable” journal—fully and sincerely believe the fake story the Obama people are putting out, and are communicating that bullshit to you in good faith, as what they think is true, in-depth knowledge of an important aspect of American foreign policy that you should have. In which case, Entous and The New Yorker are as stupid and gullible as any Trump supporter.
Or,
2B) Entous and The New Yorker know very well this is a fake story that Obama and his people are putting out, and they are consciously collaborating with them to get you to believe something they know to be untrue. (And the lite, bad faith version of this—that they can deny that they “know,” even if they suspect, the story is not true, because they take these— i.e., their—people at their word, share their objectives, and don’t ask too many questions—is no less deceptive and pernicious.)
Why would they do this? Because it’s the tortured-humanitarian version of Obama’s and the liberal Democrats’ implication in the colonization of Palestine that they want you to have. And because it helps enforce the fairy tale of how the good, progressively-intentioned American presidency under Obama has been completely overturned by the bad, anti-American-values presidency of Trump.
So, in any possible reading of this article, it’s a damning indictment of the liberal ideology embodied by Obama Democrats and/or by an iconic media outlet of highbrow culture. In any possible reading, someone’s a political fool. In option 1, it’s a true story, and Obama and his team were terribly ignorant fools who should not have been allowed near the responsibilities of the Presidency; in option 2, it’s a fake story, and Entous and The New Yorker have themselves either been fooled by, or are complicit in trying to fool their readers with, the Obama team’s mendacious attempt to create a false image of themselves, and a phony nostalgia about American politics. There is no option 3.
In all options, of course, the target of the tomfoolery is the audience, the likely reader of The New Yorker. Indeed, in option 2B, which gets Jonathan Cook’s vote (and mine) and is at least as likely as any other, the reader is the only one being fooled.  The article, and the ideology, counts on the reader not noticing that these are its only possible—and all quite damning—meanings. Any reader who doesn’t notice this is totally captured within, and faked-out by, the ideology the article reproduces.
There’s no bigger problem in the United States today than the citizenry’s widespread mis-education into political gullibility, not to say stupidity, and it’s the height of foolishness to think this is only a problem of Republicans and rightists, of those who read Breitbart and not those who read The New Yorker, or of those who finish their education at high school and not those who get it finished off at one of the higher academies of the empire.
The United States has always been a ship of fools, with a thousand captains barking fake orders and fake news to convey the suitable propaganda. Reader, beware of the hasbara. It is everywhere.

Apartheid? You decide.

PALESTINA


#StopTheWar is a hashtag coming from many activists in #Gaza who urge the international community to hinder Israel’s attempts to launch another large-scale aggression against the occupied, blockaded, unlivable, and exhausted Gaza Strip. #GazaUnderAttack

American Jewish youth visiting Israel were given maps that erased Palestine — one traveler called it into question, on video. Check it out!

Collective punishment : Israel block fuel shipment to Gaza
GIDEON LEVY: Were it not for the Gaza Strip, the occupation would have been long forgotten. Were it not for the Gaza Strip, Israel would have erased the Palestinian problem from its agenda and continued on blithely with its crimes and annexations, with its routine, as if 4 million people were not living under its heel. Were it not for the Gaza Strip, the world would also have forgotten. Most of it already has. This is why we must now salute the Gaza Strip — mainly the spirit of the Gaza Strip, the only one that is still breathing life into the desperate and lost cause of the Palestinian struggle for liberty. 
The resolute struggle of the Gaza Strip should also spark admiration in Israel. The handful of people with a conscience who still remain here should give thanks to the unbroken spirit of the Gaza Strip. The spirit of the West Bank crumpled after the failure of the second intifada, as did the spirit of the Israeli peace camp — most of which shattered long ago. Only the spirit of the Gaza Strip stands steadfast in its struggle.
And so, anyone who does not want to forever live in an evil country must respect the embers that the young people of the Gaza Strip are still trying to stoke. Were it not for the kites, the fires, the Qassam rockets, the Palestinians would have entirely exited the awareness of everyone in Israel. Only the World Cup and the Eurovision Song Contest would hold any interest. Were it not for the blackened fields in the south, there would be a huge white flag fluttering not only over the Gaza Strip but over the entire Palestinian people. Seekers of justice, including in Israel, cannot wish for this kind of submission.
It’s difficult, even insolent, to write these words from tranquil and secure Tel Aviv, following one more sleepless and nightmarish night in the south, but all days and nights in the Gaza Strip are much more difficult due to Israel’s inhumane policy, supported by most of its citizens, including people who live in the south. They don’t deserve to shoulder the burden but every struggle exacts a price from innocent victims, who we wish do not become casualties. One should remember that only Palestinians are being killed. On Saturday, the 139th victim of Israeli fire along the border died. He was 20. On Friday a 15-year-old boy was killed. The Gaza Strip is paying the full price in blood. This doesn’t cause it to desist. That is its spirit. One cannot but admire it.
The spirit of the Gaza Strip is unbroken by any siege. The evil ones in Jerusalem shut down the Kerem Shalom border crossing, and Gaza shoots. The malicious ones in the Kirya government complex in Tel Aviv prevent young people from receiving medical treatment in the West Bank in order to save their legs from being amputated.
For years they have been preventing cancer patients, including women and children, from receiving lifesaving treatment. Only 54 percent of requests to leave the Gaza Strip for medical reasons were approved last year, compared to 93 percent in 2012. That is wicked. One should read the letter written in June by 31 Israeli oncologists who called for a cessation of the abuse of Gaza women with cancer whose applications for exit permits take months to process, sealing their fates.
The 31 rockets fired into Israel from the Gaza Strip Friday night are a restrained response to this malice. They are no more than a muted reminder of the fate of the Gaza Strip, addressed to those who think that 2 million people can be treated like this for over 10 years while continuing as if nothing was happening.
The Gaza Strip has no choice. Nor does Hamas. Any attempt to pin the blame on the organization — which I only wish was more secular, more feminist and more democratic — is an evasion of responsibility. It wasn’t not Hamas that closed the Gaza Strip. Nor did the Gaza Strip’s inhabitants close themselves off. Israel (and Egypt) did it. Every hesitant attempt by Hamas to make some progress with Israel is immediately answered by automatic Israeli refusal. Nor is the world willing to talk with them, who knows why.
All that’s left are the kites, which might lead to another round of merciless bombing and shelling by Israel, that Israel of course does not want. But what choice does the Gaza Strip have? A white flag of surrender over its fences, like the one the Palestinians in the West bank raised? A dream of a green island off the coast of the Mediterranean, which Israeli Transportation Minister Yisrael Katz will build for them? The struggle is the only path remaining, a path that should be respected, even if you are an Israeli who might be its victim




OCHA  




What a beautiful world this would be, 

if we could only rid it of power-and-money-crazed-slime-buckets