Is it ignorance, indifference or just cowardness of artists, creators, athletes, "intellectuals", who benefit from dirty money of Zionist sponsors or clients?
They not only expose the deep-rooted racism of the American society - which doesn't come as a surprise at all - but also provide yet another refutation to American exceptionalism - the widely-held belief that the US is fundamentally different from and superior to other nations.
This is because the events currently unfolding in the US mirror almost perfectly the core dynamics of the mass uprisings we regularly witness around the world that are triggered by the violent and oppressive policies of authoritarian or colonial regimes.
I personally witnessed many such uprisings during my lifetime, in Israel-Palestine, several different Arab countries and also in the US.
I was a high school student in the US in the 1970s when widespread protests - then termed "race riots" - engulfed predominantly African American urban areas of the country. I also experienced apartheid at school and witnessed and engaged with the birth of the Black Lives Matter movement there in 2013.
What I've been observing in the last five decades as I lived through these citizen rebellions as a teenager and as a professional journalist, and what I feel in my bones as I watch the widespread protests in the US today, is that they are all born out of identical political and human phenomena.
Three shared elements define all these uprisings across time and space: why protesters take to the streets, how the political ruling class reacts, and how the mainstream media covers what is happening.
First, a ravaged, poverty-stricken and helpless citizenry that has been mistreated for decades by its own ruling elite or by an occupying power finally takes to the streets to express its despair in the only manner available to it.
African Americans, Palestinians, have both suffered demeaning and sustained poverty, dilapidated socio-economic conditions, permanent political powerlessness and decades of unfulfilled promises of change.
The overriding motivation behind all the citizen rebellions that I have witnessed in my lifetime, from the repeated anti-racism protests in the US to the Arab uprisings of the past decade, has been the chronic humiliation of ordinary citizens at the hands of the ruling elites. The ruling classes' slow but steady dehumanisation of the masses eventually broke through the surface and triggered public protests.
Not surprisingly, the most common spark that sets off mass protests across the world is the killing of civilians by government troops or the private militia and thugs of ruling elites.
Oppressive governments and colonial regimes are killing unarmed, helpless citizens with the very same sense of entitlement and impunity from Palestine and the US. Within the same week that the Minneapolis police killed George Floyd, for example, Israeli army troops in Jerusalem shot and killed Iyad Halak, a 32-year-old autistic Palestinian man who did not understand their orders. I didn't hear any complain in Western social-media or even read a line about it and other daily Palestinian mistreatment and killing.
Once masses take to the streets to protest against the senseless killing of their compatriots at the hands of state security forces, the governments often make a series of generic statements: "We are investigating cases of security forces who killed unarmed civilians"; "People have the right to protest peacefully but not to use violence"; and "We will look into the wider grievances of citizens and make sure that unacceptable conditions are improved quickly."
Over the years, I listened to government officials, police commissioners and bureaucrats make these very same statements, albeit in different languages, from the US to Iraq, Lebanon, and Israel-Palestine.
The problem with these statements is that nobody believes them any more. Exasperated citizens see elites who make promises and offer thoughts and prayers as selfish liars and insincere brutes who will do and say anything to stay in power, especially to maintain the existing economic structures that enrich them and impoverish everyone else.
As these statements no longer succeed in sedating angry, frustrated masses that often do not have much left to lose, the governments simultaneously unleash more state violence to bring uprisings under control. Police forces and army troops beat, gas, forcefully detain and even kill protesters to subdue the masses.
This has been the case during the Arab uprisings and Palestinian intifadas, and it is the case now in the US.
Surprisingly, these elites ignore the long-term consequences of repeatedly beating down protesters and killing innocent civilians. Those consequences include repeated national uprisings and revolutions, some of which have removed Arab autocrats from power since 2011.
The final common element that I found in all the citizen rebellions that I witnessed first-hand is the mainstream media's broad failure to probe deeply into the causes of the protesters' discontent.
In Israel-Palestine, other Arab nations and the US, whenever the citizenry takes to the streets en masse, the media focuses primarily on the drama of crowds of protesters confronting the police. They provide detailed reports on property vandalism or attacks against security forces, but rarely take the time to humanise the protesters by reporting empathetically and accurately on the web of inhuman and discriminatory conditions that caused them to revolt.
The media widely fails to explore the structures of racism, colonialism, abuse of power and lack of equal rights in the US and Israeli-occupied Palestine that trigger protests year after year, and decade after decade.
As long as governments and occupying forces around the world continue to reach for their guns, tear gas canisters and batons to disperse protesters demanding dignity, equality and freedom from state violence, masses who have little left to lose will continue to rise against their oppressors.
In a globalised and deeply connected world, where mainstream media cannot continue to mask the interconnected and deep-rooted grievances of the subjugated and demeaned peoples, these citizen rebellions can soon pave the way for a "global intifada".
Today, even the last remaining proponents of American exceptionalism are being forced to abandon their misguided beliefs, as the US acts exactly like other authoritarian and colonial powers and unleashes more violence upon protesters who only want freedom from state violence. As the state appears unable and unwilling to uproot the racist power structures that are preventing millions of Americans from living their lives with dignity, it is certain that African Americans and other mistreated citizens will continue their quest for social justice.
Across the globe, from the US to the Middle East, pauperised citizenries are rising up to reform or remove the militarised, racist and violent governments and regimes ruling over them. They are legion. And they will continue their fight until they succeed.
And so will the Palestinians. Whose coun try, whose land, whose natural resources, were stolen and whose lives matter, too.
Jus to prove it, last month, Joe Biden conducted an online fundraiser cohosted by two pro-Israel people; the former Obama ambassador to Israel, Dan Shapiro, and academic Deborah Lipstadt. Biden told donors that "it was important to condemn criticism of Israel that drifts toward anti-Semitism, including on the political left", even as he acknowledged that he had "gotten in trouble" for such calls in the past. "Criticism of Israel's policy is not anti-Semitism," Biden said. "But too often that criticism from the left morphs into anti-Semitism."
Biden followed with comments that were not so much offensive to Just people as disingenuous, and showed a total divorce from current Israeli political reality. He said he was "disappointed" in Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu for having moved "so, so far to the right" and called for Israel to "stop the threat of annexation" of occupied West Bank territories. "It'll choke off any hope of peace," Biden said.
Netanyahu did not "move to the right." He has been a fascist all his political life. As for the "threat of annexation" - it is not a threat, it is a "promise" inscribed in the current governing coalition agreement. Israel will annex the Jordan Valley. The question is what will Biden do about it. And the answer is clear - nothing. Aside from the usual nostrums and bromides.
Just a few weeks earlier, Biden had said that he opposed Donald Trump's "short-sighted and frivolous" decision to move the US mission in Israel to Jerusalem, but "now that it's done, I would not move the embassy back to Tel Aviv".
Biden in effect has endorsed one of the most incendiary decisions of Trump's presidency, moving the US embassy to the divided city of Jerusalem: endorsing Israeli sovereignty, including over East Jerusalem, which is supposedly reserved for a Palestinian capital. This Democratic presidential hopeful, who served as vice president in an administration that refused to do any of these things, has swallowed the poison pill and declared it delicious.
Biden's white paper addressed to Zionist Jewish voters, The Jewish Community: a Record and a Plan of Friendship, Support, and Action offers more disheartening content. While he promises to resume aid to the Palestinian Authority (PA), he conditions it on the PA halting its welfare payments to the surviving family of shahids who died at the hands of Israel. As PA President Mahmoud Abbas has refused such demands in the past, this would mean that Biden would effectively continue Trump's cutoff of all support to the Palestinians.
In earlier statements, Biden's senior adviser Tony Blinken had explained that his candidate would not condition US aid to Israel on Israel's adherence to international law: "He [Biden] would not tie military assistance to Israel to any political decisions that it makes. Period. Full stop. He said it; he's committed to it." Blinken also emphasised that, if elected president, Biden will push back against the BDS movement as well as efforts to denounce Israel for its violations of international law at the United Nations. "Will we stand up forcefully against it and try to prevent it, defuse it and defeat it? Absolutely," he said.
Biden's senior adviser then added for good measure this even more insulting condescension towards the Palestinian people and its leadership: "In the category of 'Never missed an opportunity to miss an opportunity', I think a reminder to Palestinians ... that they can and should do better and deserve better and that requires leadership: leadership to make clear the reality of the Jewish state; leadership to make clear the need to end incitement and violence; leadership to bring people along for the prospect of negotiatin."
If I had a nickel for every pro-Israel politician who offered uninvited advice to Palestinians saying they "deserved better" and would do so much better if they only "accepted the reality of things", I would be a millionaire. In essence, such a statement demands they should accept the decimation of every aspiration they might have and every right to justice.
Toend where I started, in a conventional Democratic presidential campaign, more than 50 percent of cash contributions originate from Jewish pocketbooks. Unlike the grassroots campaign of Bernie Sanders, which relied on millions of small donations, Biden's is the most conventional of such campaigns and desperately needs the support of pro-Israel CEOs and hedge fund managers capable of giving millions.
Therefore, just like Barack Obama, Biden cannot afford - even if he wanted to - an independent approach to US policy towards Israel. Just like Obama did in his 8 years in the Presidency, he must do what the Israel lobby and its donors dictate. His presidency would follow the same tack as Clinton's, Obama's and Trump's.
The linchpin of Biden's Israel-Palestine policy is a two-state solution. It is a dead letter. Unless the international Community is ready to bring in United Nations troops to throw out the illegal settlers - which it will never do.
Some may not see the danger in pinning an entire foreign policy on a faded delusion. But there is a steep price. When you base such policy on the belief in something that does not and cannot exist, you render yourself irrelevant to the region. You offer no solution. You offer houses built of sand.
This means that the region will continue to shake with unrest like a powder keg about to explode. And Biden will have nothing relevant to offer. He will be worse than Obama, who himself was a failure in the region from beginning to end.
He will be slightly better than Trump, but only on keeping appearances - like did Obama and Clinton. But that is not saying much. It is like the doctor telling you he has good news and bad news. The good news: you do not have inoperable cancer. The bad news: you have multiple sclerosis.
PALESTINA
Apartheid Adventures
I hear and read everyday, since the "troubles" began in Minneapolis - like in Ireland? - phrases such "We have a responsiblity to uphold human values.”
So when an armed force commits an atrocity, or a sovereign cracks down on civil liberties, we see routine responses by human rights activists: boycott and sanctions. I don’t need to go into all the injustices that I chronicle on this blog and other colleagues do elsewhere. Remember that Israel killed more than 500 children in Gaza six years ago during an onslaught that galvanized American and many European "activists" and left American and European politicians tonguetied…. or that it killed over 200 unarmed protesters at the Gaza fence during weekly protests two years ago demanding a return by refugees to their villages…
Yet when solidarity activists use these basic tools, Israel’s supporters and American leaders seek to marginalize the BDS Movement as antisemites, and the activists very rarely get a hearing on radio, TV or lines in newspapers. Even "liberal" Zionists supported legislation last year that characterizes BDS as antisemitic, and "not a friend to Israel.” As if lovers of freedom don’t have a right to speak up when it concerns the rogue state of Israel.
BRASIL
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