Peace and Justice Post

You might think that 20 percent of the American Congress going on all-expenses-paid, weeklong junkets to a foreign country — paid for by a lobby for that country — would be newsworthy, especially when the top congressional leaders of both parties are leading the trips.

You would be wrong.

Eighty-one congressional representatives from all over the country, led by Democratic Whip Steny Hoyer and House Majority Leader Eric Cantor, are traveling to Israel this month. Most are freshmen congressmen, and the group includes half of all the freshmen Republicans voted into office in 2010.

The weeklong trips are being paid for by the American Israel Education Foundation (AIEF), which was created in 1990 as a supporting organization of AIPAC, America’s major pro-Israel lobbying organization, and they are located in the same building. AIEF, which is only one of numerous organizations pushing pro-Israel policies, has an annual budget of over $24 million, with an even larger endowment.

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 Aslak Sira Myhre,  The Journal  of Turkish Weekly, Aug. 10, 2011

Oslo – When terror struck Oslo, many in the West’s first response was to blame Muslims. In pubs and on the streets of Oslo, girls wearing headscarves and boys who looked South Asian were immediately harassed. On Facebook, Muslims and immigration-friendly politicians were slandered. It was only when it was clear that the terrorist was a white, native Norwegian – a Muslim hater and not a Muslim – that the calm, collective reaction my country is generally so proud of began.

For decades, political violence in this country has been almost the sole preserve of a few neo-Nazis and other racist groups. During the 1970s they exploded bombs in left-wing bookstores and at a May Day demonstration. In the 1980s two people were executed for betraying a neo-Nazi group, and in the past two decades, two Norwegian boys – both ethnic minorities – were killed by racist hoodlums.

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Interior minister ties final go-ahead to protests over housing prices, cost of living that have shaken Israel in recent weeks.

Middle East Online, Aug. 11, 2011

Construction of more settler homes to be announced in a couple of days

JERUSALEM – Israel’s interior minister Eli Yishai has given final approval for the construction of 1,600 new settler homes in east Jerusalem, his spokesman said on Thursday.

Roei Lachmanovich also said the interior minister was set to give final approval for another 2,700 settler homes in east Jerusalem neighbourhoods in “a couple of days.”

“He has approved 1,600 homes in Ramat Shlomo and will approve 2,000 more in Givat Hamatos and 700 in Pisgat Zeev,” Lachmanovich said.

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by Josh Ruebner, Dissident Voice,  August 9th, 2011

The Roman philosopher and politician Cicero urged orators to “Strain every nerve to gain your point.”  The Obama Administration appears to have taken his advice to heart in its attempts to make the case that the United States should oppose Palestinian efforts to gain membership in the United Nations this fall.

However, its rhetoric has been so convoluted, its logic so flawed, and its reasoning so shoddy that its efforts have been desultory and unconvincing.  Take, for example, the following quotes:

No vote at the United Nations will ever create an independent Palestinian state.  And the United States will stand up against efforts to single Israel out at the United Nations or in any international forum. (Applause.)  Israel’s legitimacy is not a matter for debate.

— President Barack Obama, Remarks at the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) Policy Conference, May 22, 2011

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Today marks the 50th anniversary of the start of the chemical warfare program in Vietnam without sufficient remedial action by the U.S. government. One of the most shameful legacies of the Vietnam War, Agent Orange continues to poison Vietnam and the people exposed to the chemicals, as well as their offspring. H.R. 2634, the Victims of Agent Orange Relief Act of 2011, which California Congressman Bob Filner just introduced in the House, would provide crucial assistance for social and health services to Vietnamese, Vietnamese-American, and U.S. victims of Agent Orange.

From 1961 to 1971, approximately 19 million gallons of herbicides, primarily Agent Orange, were sprayed over the southern region of Vietnam. Much of it was contaminated with dioxin, a deadly chemical. Dioxin causes various forms of cancers, reproductive illnesses, immune deficiencies, endocrine deficiencies, nervous system damage, and physical and developmental disabilities.

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(Hong Kong, August 10, 2011)

The Asian Human Rights Commission wishes to announce that a report on the situation of the human rights defenders of Balochistan has been uploaded on our website.

This report was compiled by Ms. Angelika Pathak, a London-based researcher who previously worked for Amnesty International as their Pakistan researcher. According to Ms. Pathak the report is divided in five parts:

– An introduction which explains the special protection under which human rights defenders were placed when in December 1998 the General Assembly (including Pakistan) adopted the UN Declaration on Human Rights Defenders, the first UN instrument that explicitly recognizes the importance and legitimacy of the work of human rights defenders and lays down their right to effective protection; in Balochistan many political activists could be understood as in some sense defending the rights of the Baloch but in the narrower sense the term is applicable only to journalists, lawyers and human rights activist.

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MWC News, Aug. 6, 2011

To: Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu
From: Lenni Brenner

Sir,
I applaud your offer to answer questions on any topic, from Arabs and others, worldwide. The old saying is correct: ‘Better jaw-jaw than war-war.’

As an 11 year old, I remember the creation of Israel in 1948 and the race between the USA and the USSR to recognize the new state. But, as I became a historian, I realized that the American public’s support for Israel was based on sympathy for the survivors of the holocaust, and the Biblical notion that God had given Israel to his chosen people. Few American Jews, fewer gentiles, had an in-depth knowledge of Zionism’s history. That remains true to this day.

You recently addressed America’s Congress. Many Americans support some of your positions. But few can outline your Likud Party’s politics beyond your speech, or know anything about its history. Revisionist Zionism is the dominant ideological movement in the party. Indeed your father was secretary to Vladimir Jabotinsky, Revisionism’s founder. But how many American politicians can define Revisionism? How many American Jews have read even one word by Jabotinsky?

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MWC News, March 15, 2011

Rassvyet, Berlin, November 4, 1923

Note: If you want to know what Benjamin Netanyahu really thinks about coexisting with Palestinians, Vladimir Jabotinsky’s 1923 article, The Iron Wall (We and the Arabs), is a must read. Benzion Netanyahu, the Israeli Prime Minister’s father, was Jabotinsky’s secretary.

When Britain declared Palestine to be the future Jewish national home, Palestine included today’s Jordan. But in 1921 London separated it from Palestine and gave it to the son of Britain’s puppet Sharif of Mecca. As no Jews lived there, the World Zionist Organization’s leaders accepted the loss. But Jabotinsky insisted that the WZO had to “revise” its policy. Britain giving part of Palestine to an Arab would inspire Palestinians to struggle on until they got it all back.

When Jabotinsky died in 1940, Revisionism was a minority within the Zionist camp. Few outside its ranks read The Iron Wall. But since 1977 Israel has had five Zionist-Revisionist Prime Ministers. The Knesset, Israel’s parliament, has declared the 12th of the Hebrew month of Tevet as “Jabotinsky Day,” when schools study his writings. Indeed his Iron Wall has become essential for anyone seeking basic understanding of Israel’s grim reality.

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By Stuart Littlewood, uruknet.info, Aug. 8, 2011

What a thought-provoking piece Prof Lawrence Davidson’s latest article is, whether you agree with every word or not.

Titled ‘The Palestinian Bid for UN Statehood Recognition’, it makes the point that the Palestinians’ move, which Tweedle-dum Obama and Tweedle-dee Netanyahu (they never contradict each other, you’ll remember) are desperate to discourage, merely replicates the process by which Israel itself gained recognition as a state. The world will recall that America recognized the Jews’ declaration of an Israeli state with almost indecent haste… like immediately.

The bid also echoes the UN’s original intention to divide Palestine between Jews and Arabs. So there’s no attempt by the Palestinians to break new ground here. What they propose chimes nicely with what went before. How can there possibly be a valid objection? Recognition should be accorded Palestine just as easily as it was accorded Israel.

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The massacre of 77 people in Norway by a Muslim-hating extremist has prompted soul-searching among some Christians and Jews, but also has provoked rationalizations from some in Israel and elsewhere who view fear and loathing of Muslims as key to their political cause, writes Lawrence Davidson.

By Lawrence Davidson, Consortium News,  Aug. 8, 2011

By now the world is aware that, despite the ardent wishful thinking of the Western media, the terrorism that struck Oslo on July 22 was not perpetrated by a Muslim individual or organization. It was done by a local Norwegian named Anders Behring Breivik.

The object of his terror was the Norwegian government and its cultural and foreign policies. The government’s sins seem to have been being too much in favor of multiculturalism, too little opposed to Muslims, and not being an ally of Israel.

Breivik is at the violent end of a continuum of fear and loathing toward those who are culturally and/or religiously different. In this case, Muslim immigrants in Europe.

Like millions of others along this anti-Other continuum, he is angry that people different from himself are showing up in his neighborhood. It probably never occurred to him that given one or two generations most of these outsiders would be brought to share the culture and outlook of their adopted lands.

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