Peace and Justice Post

Ilan Pappe

Uruknet, April 1, 2008

Dr. Ilan Pappe, whose parents fled Nazi Germany, received his doctorate at Oxford University and was Senior Lecturer of Political Science at Haifa University in Israel, Academic Director of the Research Institute for Peace at Givat Haviva, and Chair of the Emil Tourma Institute.

He is currently Chair of the Department of History at the University of Exeter and Co-Director of the Exeter Center for Ethno-Political Studies. Pappe has just completed a cross-Canada tour on the topic of his book, The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine. Am Johal interviewed him in Vancouver for rabble.ca.

Am Johal: Why did you decide to leave Israel?

Ilan Pappe: The main reason was an inability to function as an academic which is what I was within the Israeli academic community.

I could not manage a proper dialogue with my professional group or with the public at large. There was a feeling of being irrelevant to the debate. Israel was becoming a closed society.

My family wasn’t safe because of threats. That alone wouldn’t have pushed me out, but was a factor.

Thirdly, I thought the focus of the struggle over the public discourse is much more outside of Israel to change public opinion to a different reality.

Continued . . .

Forty years after King’s last stand

The Socialist Worker, April 4, 2008

MARTIN LUTHER King Jr. was assassinated in Memphis 40 years ago in the midst of a struggle that he saw as part of the next stage for the civil rights movement–supporting a strike of African American sanitation workers. Here, BRIAN JONES reviews an excellent new book, Michael Honey’s Going Down Jericho Road, which tells the story of that struggle.

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WHEN MARTIN Luther King Jr. was assassinated in April 1968, he was in Memphis supporting 1,300 striking sanitation workers. This particular fact is sometimes mentioned in civil rights histories; when it is, the significance of that strike–for King, and for the strikers–is little understood. Likewise, the role of Black workers generally in the fight for racial and economic equality is not nearly as well studied.

In Going Down Jericho Road, historian Michael Honey brings to life the story of the Memphis sanitation strike, illuminating it not only with an organizer’s sensitivity to the dynamics of the movement (Honey is a civil rights veteran himself), but with the voices of Black sanitation workers, union activists and Black radical youth.

Continued . . .

What the Classroom Didn’t Teach Me About the American Empire

Howard Zinn | ZNet, April 3, 2008

With an occupying army waging war in Iraq and Afghanistan, with military bases and corporate bullying in every part of the world, there is hardly a question any more of the existence of an American Empire. Indeed, the once fervent denials have turned into a boastful, unashamed embrace of the idea.

However the very idea that the United States was an empire did not occur to me until after I finished my work as a bombardier with the Eighth Air Force in the Second World War, and came home. Even as I began to have second thoughts about the purity of the “Good War,” even after being horrified by Hiroshima and Nagasaki, even after rethinking my own bombing of towns in Europe, I still did not put all that together in the context of an American “Empire.”

I was conscious, like everyone, of the British Empire and the other imperial powers of Europe, but the United States was not seen in the same way. When, after the war, I went to college under the G.I. Bill of Rights and took courses in U.S. history, I usually found a chapter in the history texts called “The Age of Imperialism.” It invariably referred to the Spanish-American War of 1898 and the conquest of the Philippines that followed. It seemed that American imperialism lasted only a relatively few years. There was no overarching view of U.S. expansion that might lead to the idea of a more far-ranging empire — or period — of “imperialism.”

I recall the classroom map (labeled “Western Expansion”) which presented the march across the continent as a natural, almost biological phenomenon. That huge acquisition of land called “The Louisiana Purchase” hinted at nothing but vacant land acquired. There was no sense that this territory had been occupied by hundreds of Indian tribes which would have to be annihilated or forced from their homes — what we now call “ethnic cleansing” — so that whites could settle the land, and later railroads could crisscross it, presaging “civilization” and its brutal discontents.

Continued . . .

As the Damascus Arab League Summit has illustrated, the principle of Arab unity has rarely been as fragile. For the people of this region, this is a tragedy. The more Arabs are divided on crucial issues affecting their lives, the more unprotected and powerless ordinary people feel. For in the world of geopolitics small is definitely not beautiful.

Every crack that forms within the Arab nation represents another vulnerability that offers its enemies a quicker route to fulfilling their own goals. For instance, on Sunday, an Arab League statement warned Israel that the league’s continued support for the 2002 Saudi “Arab Peace Initiative” was contingent upon Israel’s actions. The Israeli papers have reacted by suggesting the offer isn’t workable anyway because it relies on the agreement of all 22 Arab League member countries, many of which are currently at odds with one another.

Such divisions have given the Israelis an excuse to pour public scorn on the Arab Peace Initiative, which they never intended to take seriously anyway, since they have little intention of pulling back behind pre-1967 borders or handing over East Jerusalem to become the capital of a new Palestinian state.

Put simply, the more Arabs can’t get along, the more Israel is strengthened. The current animosities between Lebanese are music to the Israeli government’s ears because a strong, unified and economically viable Lebanon might emerge as a potential threat on its borders.

Continued . . .

The Jerusalem Post, April 3, 2008

By JPOST.COM STAFF

Hamas agrees to a Palestinian state established along the 1967 borders, exiled Hamas leader Khaled Mashaal says.

Mashaal: We accept state on ’67 borders

In an interview published Wednesday in Palestinian newspaper Al-Ayam, Mashaal referred to the 2006 prisoners’ document as proof of this, saying “There is a Palestinian document and in it all organizations say they agree to a state in the 1967 borders.”

The prisoners’ document, also known as the National Reconciliation Document, was drafted by members of different Palestinian factions including Fatah and Hamas, held in an Israeli prison. It calls for the “establishment of an independent Palestinian state with Jerusalem as its capital on all the territories occupied in 1967,” but does not explicitly recognize Israel’s right to exist within its pre-1967 borders.

Continued . . .

By Saeed Shah | McClatchy Newspapers, April 1, 2008

Amir Haider Hoti, the new chief minister of the North West Fronteir Province of Pakistan.

ISLAMABAD, Pakistan — The new top official in Pakistan’s terrorism-racked northwest frontier has demanded that the United States end missile strikes in the country and called for negotiations with militants — an approach that would dramatically alter the American-inspired war on terror there.

Amir Haider Hoti, who took the oath of office Tuesday as chief minister of the North West Frontier Province, said in an interview with McClatchy that military action should now be used only as a “last resort.”

“To some extent, the interests of Pakistan have been sacrificed to the war on terror. We’ve suffered a lot,” Hoti said. The United States “should let us handle it, let Pakistan handle it.”

Hoti’s demands, if he carries them out, could severely undercut U.S. strategy in Pakistan. President Bush has relied on an alliance with Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf to attack Islamic militants in the tribal areas.

But Musharraf’s party was drubbed in Pakistan’s February parliamentary elections, and there are growing concerns in Washington that the country’s newly elected leaders will reverse the military-dominated strategy, which has caused an angry public backlash in Pakistan.

Continued . . .

The Times, April 3, 2008, April 3, 2008

Food stamps are the symbol of poverty in the US. In the era of the credit crunch, a record 28 million Americans are now relying on them to survive – a sure sign the world’s richest country faces economic crisis

GETTY

Disadvantaged Americans queue for aid in New York

By David Usborne in New York | The Independent, April 1, 2008

We knew things were bad on Wall Street, but on Main Street it may be worse. Startling official statistics show that as a new economic recession stalks the United States, a record number of Americans will shortly be depending on food stamps just to feed themselves and their families.

Dismal projections by the Congressional Budget Office in Washington suggest that in the fiscal year starting in October, 28 million people in the US will be using government food stamps to buy essential groceries, the highest level since the food assistance programme was introduced in the 1960s.

The increase – from 26.5 million in 2007 – is due partly to recent efforts to increase public awareness of the programme and also a switch from paper coupons to electronic debit cards. But above all it is the pressures being exerted on ordinary Americans by an economy that is suddenly beset by troubles. Housing foreclosures, accelerating jobs losses and fast-rising prices all add to the squeeze.

Continued . . .

The Guardian, 3, 200
Tania Braningan in Beijing

A Chinese court has jailed one of the government’s most prominent critics for three and a half years on subversion charges, prompting an international outcry.

The US immediately criticised the ruling and the European Union called for the release of Hu Jia, a dissident who has pursued issues ranging from democratic rights, support for Aids sufferers and self-determination for Tibet.

Human rights groups also put pressure on the International Olympic Committee – currently in Beijing to finalise arrangements for the August games – to speak out about the repression of activists.

They warned that Hu’s sentencing this morning reflected a systematic crackdown on critics ahead of the Olympics, pointing out that he is the third activist to be convicted on the same charge in just two months.

The 34-year-old had been held under house arrest in his flat at the Freedom City complex for more than 200 days before his detention in December. During this time he made a video diary showing the intense scrutiny he was subjected to. His wife and baby daughter remain under house arrest.

Continued . . .

In central London on the evening of March 15^th around 150 people met together to commemorate the life and struggle of Dr George Habash, founder of the Arab National Movement and the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine; a man who contributed more than most to the revolutionary struggles of a liberated Palestine and a free and united Arab Nation. Organised by the George Habash Memorial Committee (London) the meeting brought together people from many different backgrounds from all over England. It was especially significant that most of those attending were young people from mainly Palestinian, Arab and also Western backgrounds, whose political affiliations reflect the political spectrum of the Palestinian liberation movement.

In front of a backdrop of a massive Palestinian flag and next to a portrait of George Habash with a beautiful bouquet of flowers, Sukant Chandan opened up the meeting as Chair by welcoming the attendees and the guest speakers Dr Manuel Hassasian PLO representative to Britain, George Galloway MP, and Leila Khaled the legendary Palestinian revolutionary and central committee member of the PFLP.

Continued . . .